IX. DIONYSIAC RELIGION IN GREECE

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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] It seems to have been the women who were the first to give in to the invading worship,[7\9] 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 success[8\9] 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\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 festivals[10\9] 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\9] 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\9] In Greece the awful god received the blood of human victims.[13\9] 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\9] 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\9]

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\9] The Korybantic form of the malady, which was religious in character[17\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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 poems[22\9] related how the daughters of King Proitos of Tiryns wandered in the holy frenzy of Dionysos[23\9] 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\9] The cure was effected through the intensification of the Dionysiac frenzy "with loud crying and inspired dancing,"[25\9] and, further, by the use of certain special purificatory devices.[26\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] The festal year of Delphi was divided, though unequally it is true, between Apollo and Dionysos.[31\9] To such an extent had Dionysos taken root at Delphi,[32\9] 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\9] 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\9] The two divinities have many of their titles and attributes in common; in the end the distinction between them seems to disappear entirely.[35\9]

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\9] 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\9] 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\9]

§ 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\9] But the prophecy of which there was no "art" and which "no man could be taught"[40\9] (for it came in a moment by "inspiration")--of this Homer shows no trace.[41\9] 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\9] 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 sortilege[43\9] 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 nowhere[44\9] shows any knowledge of the striking phenomena of ecstatic mantikê.[45\9]

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\9] The earth-goddess was displaced by Apollo here as at many other oracular sites.[47\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9]

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 madness[52\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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 (~cha/risma~), 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 types[58\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9]

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\9] 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\9] In hoarse tones and wild words[64\9] 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\9] {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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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 hinted[70\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] the occurrence of a prodigy,[74\9] 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\9] and even fire and water[76\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] when he employs in his purificatory ritual hymns and incantatory formulæ which regularly imply an invisibly listening being to whom they are addressed;[82\9] when he uses the clang of bronze instruments whose well-known property it is to drive away ghosts.[83\9] Where human blood has been shed and requires "purification" the Kathartic priest accomplishes this "by driving out murder with murder",[84\9] 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\9] In this way the anger of the dead is washed away--for this anger is itself the pollution that is to be removed.[86\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] 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\9] when we hear of Hekate as dwelling "in the depth of the hearth",[94\9] and being honoured together with the underworld Hermes, her masculine counterpart, among the domestic gods who "were left to us by our forefathers".[95\9]

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\9] 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\9] 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\9] {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\9] 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\9] 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\9] Similar beliefs produced similar results in each case; perhaps there is even some historical connexion between them.[101\9] 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\9] 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\9] To them men consign with averted faces the remains of the purificatory sacrifices[104\9] 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 legend[105\9]--even closer to themselves. By magic arts and incantations, they compelled the wandering ghosts and even Hekate herself to appear before them:[106\9] the magic power forces them to do the will of the spirit-raiser or to harm his enemies.[107\9] 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\9]--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\9] 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\9] But among all these examples of the type,[111\9] 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\9]

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\9] where Epimenides was instructed in this lore as an adherent of the cult of the underworld Zeus.[114\9] 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\9] the long ecstasy of his soul,[116\9] and his final return from solitude to the light of day, much experienced and far-travelled in "enthusiastic wisdom".[117\9] Next he journeyed through many lands bringing his health-giving arts with him, prophesying the future as an ecstatic seer,[118\9] 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\9] 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\9] With potent ceremonies of which his wisdom alone knew the secret, with sacrifice of animals and men, he appeased[121\9] 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\9] 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 Epimenides[123\9] and Pherekydes drew were connected with the business and professional activity of these men;[124\9] but when it is related of Hermotimos that he, like his country-man Anaxagoras, attempted a distinction between pure "mind" and matter,[125\9] 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 body[126\9]--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\9] 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\9] 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\9: We may safely take it for granted that ~Dio/nusos~ 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 ~Deo/nuso~--on inss. found in a few Greek towns surrounded by Thracian influences, e.g. Abdera, Maroneia. Acc. to him the transition from ~i~ to ~e~ 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 ~i~ to ~e~ before a vowel (side by side with the much commoner reverse process) seemed quite compatible with the laws of Greek phonetics. He even counted ~Dio/nusos--Deu/nusos~ (Anakreon) among the examples of this vowel change within the limits of the Greek language (Gr. Etym.^5, p. 608 f.). At any rate ~Ea/sôn = Ia/sôn~, and ~patroue/an = patrôi/an~ are certain cases of it (see Meister, Gr. Dial. i, 294; G. Meyer, Gr. Gramm.^2, p. 162). Kretschmer himself, Einl. 225, supplies ~Asklêpeo/dôros, Dei/ = Dii/~. 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 ~Asklêpio/dôros~ the Thracian influence must have been a secondary phenomenon operating to cause the alteration of the old [=i][=o] into [=e][=o]. Why should we not use the same explanation in accounting for the change from ~Dio/nusos~ to ~Deo/nusos~ and (if Thracian influence is to be presumed--by no means probable in view of the statement of EM. 259, 30, ~Deo/nusos, hou/tô ga\r Sa/mioi prophe/rousin~) say that this Thracian influence was a secondary one acting upon the original Greek form of the name ~Dio/nusos~?--It is evident that the ancients had no idea that ~Dio/nusos (Diô/nusos, Dio/nnusos)~ 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 ~Saba/zios~ or otherwise. (So too Hdt. regards ~Dio/nusos~ 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\9: The women in Boeotia ~entheô/tata ema/nêsan~ (cf. Eur., Ba.). ~tai=s Lakedaimoni/ôn gunaixi\n ene/pese/ tis oi=stros bakchiko\s kai\ tai=s tô=n Chi/ôn~, Ael., VH. iii, 42. Hdt. ix, 34, speaks inclusively of the madness of the women in Argos (~tô=n en A/rgeï gunaikô=n maneise/ôn~), 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 ~mai/nesthai~ 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} ~mai/nesthai (= bakcheu/ein~ in Ant. Lib. 10). The ~mai/nesthai~ 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. ~melanaig. Di/on.~) 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\9: 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., ~X~ 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\9: 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\9: Cf. also Sch. Ar., Ach. 243.]

[6\9: Cf. Eur., Ba. 217 ff., 487, 32 ff. The daughters of Minyas ~epo/thoun tou\s game/tas~ (see Perizon. ad loc.) ~kai\ dia\ tou=to ouk ege/nonto tô=| theô=| maina/des~, Ael., VH. iii, 42. Throughout all these legends the contrast between Dionysos and Hera, who is the patroness of marriage, is very marked.]

[7\9: ~orsigu/naika Di/onuson~--unknown poet ap. Plu., Exil. 17, p. 607 C; Smp. 4, 6, 1, p. 671 C; E ap. D. 9, 389 B. ~hi/lathi, eiraphiô=ta, gunaimane/s~, h. Hom. 34, 17.]

[8\9: Like an infection or a conflagration. ~ê/dê to/d' eggu\s hô/ste pu=r epha/ptetai hu/brisma Bakchou=, pso/gos es He/llênas me/gas~, Pentheus in E., Ba. 778.]

[9\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\9: Details given by Weniger, Dionysosdienst in Elis, p. 8 (1883).]

[11\9: At Delphi there was a festival called ~hêrôï/s~ in which the Dionysiac Thyiades took part; a ~Seme/lês anagôgê/~ was the chief feature of the ~drô/mena phanerô=s~ (Plu., Q.Gr. 12). The name ~hêrôï/s~ 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 ~archaio/tera Dionu/sia~ (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, ~neku/sia~: Hsch., ~agria/nia~ (it was specially ~epi\ mia=| tô=n Proi/tou thugate/rôn~ [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 ~theolo/goi~, it is unfortunately impossible to say with certainty whether it is the Delphians who ~Dio/nuson kai\ Zagre/a kai\ Nukte/lion kai\ Isodai/tên onoma/zousin~ or whether this only applies to the ~theolo/goi~ (in which case they are probably Orphics).]

[12\9: The Agrionia to the "savage" god (~ômêstê\s kai\ agriô/nios~ as contrasted with the ~charido/tês kai\ meili/chios~, Plu., Ant. 24) were celebrated in Thebes and Argos. ~agriô/nia kai\ nukte/lia hô=n ta\ polla\ dia\ sko/tous dra=tai~ are opposed to the ~olu/mpia hiera/~, by Plu., QR. 112, p. 291 A. Bacchic din, ~pso/phos~, at the ~nukte/lia~, Plu., Smp. 4, 6, p. 672 A.--Temple of D. ~Nukte/lios~ at Megara: Paus. 1, 40, 6. Nocturnal festivities (~nu/ktôr ta\ polla\~, Eur., Ba. 486) at the Dionysia at Lerna = Paus. 2, 37, 6, at the festival of ~Dio/nusos Lamptê/r~ in Pellone: Paus. 7, 27, 3. ~o/rgia~ 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 ~oi=stros bakchiko/s~ 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: ~du/smainai~ (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\9: 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 ~Ba/ssaroi~ (whom he seems to take for a Thracian tribe.]

[14\9: Clem. Al., Arn., Firm. all speak of the ~ômophagi/a~ 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 ~ka/llisto/s esti kairo/s, ho\n kai\ auto\s ho Andro/machos~ (79 ff. of his poem) ~edê/lôsen, hêni/ka kai\ hoi tô=| Dionu/sô| bakcheu/ontes eiô/thasi diaspa=n ta\s echi/dnas, pauome/nou me\n tou= hê=ros ou/pô d' êrgme/nou tou= the/rous~ (Antid. i, 8 = xiv, p. 45 K.). ~hêni/ka--echi/dnas~ are Gal.'s words not Andromachos'. Cf. also Prud., Sym. i, 130 ff.]

[15\9: 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 ~ho\s mai/nesthai ena/gei anthrô/pous~. His Scythian subjects took exception to this. For them the religion was specifically Greek, A Borysthenite says to the Scythians: ~hêmô=n ga\r katagela=te, ô= Sku/thai, ho/ti bakcheu/omen kai\ hêma=s ho theo\s lamba/nei. nu=n hou=tos ho dai/môn kai\ to\n hume/teron basile/a lela/bêke kai\ bakcheu/ei kai\ hupo\ tou= theou= mai/netai.~]

[16\9: 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\9: 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\9: Phenomena of ~korubantiasmo/s~: hearing the sound of flutes Pl., Crit. 54 D, Max. T., Diss. 38, 2, p. 220 R.; cf. Cic., Div. i, 114; seeing ~phantasi/ai~, 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: ~hoi korubantiô=ntes ouk e/mphrones o/ntes orchou=ntai~, Ion, 534 A. "Sober drunkenness" ~me/thê nêpha/lios~ of the ~korub.~, Philo, Mund. Op. 23, i, p. 16 M.--The name shows that those attacked by the disease were regarded as "possessed" by the Korybantes. ~korubantia=n to\ Koru/basi kate/chesthai~, Sch. Ar., V. 9. The Korybantes ~mani/as kai\ entheiasmou= eisin empoiêtikoi/~, ib. 8. ~e/ntheos ek semnô=n Koruba/ntôn~, E., Hip. 142; Sch. ad loc.: ~Koru/bantes mani/as ai/tioi. e/nthen kai\ koruba/ntia=n~.--Arrian gives an unusually good account of the Korybantic frenzy of the Phrygians in a little noticed passage ap. Eust. on D.P. 809: ~mai/nontai tê=| Rhe/a| kai\ pro\s Koruba/ntôn kate/chontai, ê/goun korubantiô=si daimonô=ntes~ (i.e. possessed by the ~dai/môn~, see Usener, Götternamen, 293). ~ho/tan de\ kata/schê| autou\s to\ thei=on, elauno/menoi kai\ me/ga boô=ntes kai\ orchou/menoi prothespi/zousi ta\ me/llonta, theophorou/menoi kai\ maino/menoi~. The complete similarity between this condition and that of the Bacchic worship is sufficiently obvious.]

[19\9: 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 ~thei=a~, 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 ~korubantiô=ntes~ of 215 E are not to be distinguished from the ~theô=n kai\ teletô=n deo/menoi~ of 215 C (C states the general rule of which E is a particular application). This homoeopathic cure of the ~korubantiô=ntes~ by the intensification and subsequent discharge of the disorder is implied in all that we hear of the character of the Phrygian mode as ~enthousiastikê/~ and of the ~me/lê Olu/mpou~ 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 ~korubantiô=ntes~ are also meant in Arist., Pol. 8, 7, 1342a, 7 ff ~. . . kai\ ga\r hupo\ tau/tês tê=s kinê/seôs~ (i.e. ~tou= enthousiasmou=) katakô/chimoi/ tine/s eisin; ek de\ tô=n hierô=n melô=n horô=men tou/tous, ho/tan chrê/sôntai toi=s orgia/zousi tê\n psuchê\n me/lesi, kathistame/nous hô/sper iatrei/as tucho/ntas kai\ katha/rseôs~. Plato's analysis (Lg. 790 D ff.) is exactly parallel: the cure for the ~manikai\ diathe/seis~ of the Korybantic patients is ~ouch hêsuchi/a alla\ tounanti/on ki/nêsis~, whereby they are assisted to regain their ~he/xeis e/mphrones~. (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 ~ka/tharsis tô=n pathêma/tôn~ 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 ~ka/tharsis~ and ~iatrei/a~ of the ~korubantiô=ntes~ is the object of the initiation ceremony of the Korybantes (whose true ~ba/kchoi~ are the ~korubantiô=ntes~, i.e. the worshippers who are in need of and capable of cure; of the ~Koruba/ntôn mustê/ria~ which are held ~epi\ katharmô=| tê=s mani/as~ (Sch. Ar., V. 119-20, ~ekoruba/ntize~); cf. the ~teletê\ tô=n Koruba/ntôn~ (Pl., Euthd. 277 D, including ~thro/nôsis~: D. Chr. 12, p. 388 R., § 33 Arn.; Lob., Agl. 116, 369. There is a parody of ~thro/nôsis~ in the initiation scene of Ar., Nub. 254, where Streps. sits ~epi\ to\n hiero\n ski/mpoda. tethronisme/nos toi=s theoi=s~ = initiated {308} in P. Mag. Lond. 747 f. = Kenyon, Greek Papyri in B.M. i, p. 108); and cf. the ~mêtrô=|a kai\ korubantika\ te/lê~: D.H., Dem. 22. At the initiation ceremony (~korubantismo/s; ka/tharsis mani/as~ Hsch.) held in the ~Korubantei=on~ (Hdn. Gr. 1, 375, 15 Lentz; App. Prov. ii, 23) the famous music of "inspiration" was played; there was also ~chorei/a~ (Pl. Euthd.), ~ê=choi~ e.g. the sound of ~tu/mpana~ (Ar., Ves. 120 f.; Luc. DD. 12, 1), and also it appears incense-burning: ~osmai/~, D.H., Dem. 22; cf. above, chap. viii, n. 39. All these stimulants intensified the pathological tendency of the ~korubantiô=ntes~ 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 ~katha/rseis~ practised in Korybantic festivals, and then to have been exaggerated into a fable. Even doctors had no doubt that ~mani/a~ 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 ~korubantismo/s~, of cure by intensification and discharge of the emotional state.]

[20\9: ~ô= ma/kar ho/stis . . . thiaseu/etai psucha/n, en o/ressi bakcheu/ôn, hosi/ois katharmoi=sin~, E., Ba. 72 ff.--dicunt sacra Liberi ad purgationem animae pertinere Serv. on Vg., G. ii, 389; cf. also on A. vi, 741.]

[21\9: ~Dio/nusos lu/sios~ (like ~D. meili/chios eleuthereu/s~ and ~saô/tês~) 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 ~lu/sios~ is shown by its being contrasted with ~bakchei=os~, which by common consent means the god ~ho\s mai/nesthai ena/gei anthrô/pous~ (Hdt.); e.g. in Korinth, Paus. 2, 2, 6; Sikyon, Paus. 2, 7, 5-6. And ~D. bakcheu/s~ and ~meili/chios~ in Naxos, Ath. iii, 78 C.]

[22\9: In the ~kata/logos gunaikô=n~ as it seems; fr. 54 Rz. But perhaps also in the Melampodia (fr. 184 Kink.).]

[23\9: ~ema/nêsan, hôs Hêsi/odo/s phêsin, ho/ti ta\s Dionu/sou teleta\s ou katede/chonto~. [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 ~ta\s Argei/as gunai=kas manei/sas dia\ tê\n Dionu/sou mê=nin~: D.S. 4, 68, 4. (~mani/a~--in the reign of Anaxagoras--Paus. 2, 18, 4; Eust., on B 568, p. 288, 28).--Otherwise, it is generally Hera who sends the ~mani/a~ Akousil. ap. [Apollod.] 2, 2, 2, 2 [fr. 14 Diels]. Pherekyd. ap. Sch. on ~o~ 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\9: [Apollod.] 2, 2, 2. Acc. to Hdt. ix, 34, the treatment of Melamp. was applied generally to all the ~Argei=ai gunai=kes~ (who acc. to [Apollod.] § 5, were also attacked by the madness); cf. D.S. 4, 68, 4. (~. . . ta\s Argei/as ê\ hô/s tines ma=llo/n phasi, ta\s Proiti/das~ Eustath. ~kata\ tê\n histori/an~). ~therapeu/ein~ is D.S.' word; ~eka/thêren~, Sch. Pi., N. ix, 30; purgavit Serv.] {309}

[25\9: ~Mela/mpous paralabô\n tou\s dunatôta/tous tô=n neaniô=n met' alalagmou= kai/ tinos enthe/ou chorei/as ek tô=n orô=n auta\s es Sikuô=na sunedi/ôxe~ (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: ~alla\ mê\n no/sôn ge kai\ po/nôn tô=n megi/stôn, ha\ dê\ palaiô=n ek mênima/tôn pothe\n e/n tisi tô=n genô=n hê mani/a eggenome/nê kai\ prophêteu/sasa hoi=s e/dei apallagê\n heu/reto, kataphugou=sa pro\s theô=n eucha/s te kai\ latrei/as, ho/then dê\ katharmô=n te kai\ teletô=n tuchou=sa exa/ntê epoi/êse to\n heautê=s e/chonta pro/s te to\n paro/nta kai\ to\n e/peita chro/non, lu/sin tô=| orthô=s mane/nti kai\ kataschome/nô| tô=n paro/ntôn kakô=n heurome/nê~. 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\9: ~katharmoi/~ [Apollod.] § 8. The regular kathartic materials are ~ski/lla, **a/sphaltos~, water, etc.; Diphilus, fr. 126 K., employs them all for his own purpose, ap. Clem. Al., Str. vii, p. 844 P. The black hellebore (~elle/boros me/las~) was popularly known as ~melampo/dion~ because Melampous had first gathered and employed it for the purpose (Thphr., HP. 9, 10, 4), esp. when he cured and purified the ~Proi/tou thugate/ras manei/sas~ (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 ~kathartê/s~ becomes ~Mela/mpous tis aipo/los~ [hence Plin., NH. 25, 47]; the reason may be elicited from Thphr., HP. 9, 10, 2). The place where the ~katharmoi/~ took place and where the ~katha/rsia~ 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\9: Melampous ~He/llêsin ho exêgêsa/menos tou= Dionu/sou to/ te ou/noma kai\ tê\n thusi/ên kai\ tê\n pompê\n tou= phallou=~, 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 ~manê=nai~ and to have been healed by Melamp. (ix, 34).]

[28\9: ~Mela/mpous phi/ltatos ô\n Apo/llôni~, Hes., Eoiai, (168 Rz.) ap. Sch. A.R. i, 118. ~phi/los Apo/llôni~, D.S, 6, 7, 7 Dind. The poet of the family tree of the Melampodidai given in ~o~ 244 ff. undoubtedly regarded Melamp. as an Apolline ~ma/ntis~ (like all ~ma/nteis~ 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 ~ma/ntis~, we learn from [Apollod.] 1, 9, 11, 3. The same is said of Polypheides, a descendant of Mel. ~o~ 252: ~auta\r hupe/rthumon Poluphei/dea ma/ntin Apo/llôn thê=ke brotô=n o/ch' a/riston, epei\ tha/nen Amphia/ros~. 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\9: See above, chap. iii, n. 32.]

[30\9: Plu., Is. et O. 35, p. 365 A. Sacrifice made by Agamemnon to Dionysos ~en muchoi=s Delphini/ou par' a/ntra kerdô/|ou theou=~, Lyc. 207 ff.]

[31\9: 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 ~para\ mêtri\ kai\ a/llois athana/toisi~.]

[32\9: ~Dionu/sô| tô=n Delphô=n oude\n hê=tton ê\ tô=| Apo/llôni me/testin~, Plu., E ap. D. ix, 384 D.]

[33\9: ~ta\ de\ nephô=n te/ estin anôte/rô ta\ a/kra (tou= Parnasou=), kai\ hai Thuia/des epi\ tou/tois tô=| Dionu/sô| kai\ tô=| Apo/llôni mai/nontai~, 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\9: Apollo himself in an oracular command ~Puthia/sin pentetê/roisin . . . e/taxe Ba/kchou thusi/an chorô=n te pollô=n kukli/an a/millan~; 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\9: ~Delphoi\ de\ diplê=| prosêgori/a| timô=sin (se/~, i.e. Apollo), ~Apo/llôna kai\ Dio/nuson le/gontes~, Men. Rhet., p. 446, 5 Sp.]

[36\9: Arg., Sch. Pi., P., p. 297, Böckh [p. 2, 5 ff. Drch.]: ~. . . tou= prophêtikou= tri/podos~ (in Delphi) ~en hô=| prô=tos Dio/nusos ethemi/steuse~. And again ~. . da/ktulon~ (a part of the ~no/mos Puthiko/s) apo\ Dionu/sou, ho/ti prô=tos hou=tos dokei= apo\ tou= tri/podos themisteu=sai~. As it has been previously said that at the Delphic ~mantei=on prô/tê Nu\x echrêsmô/|dêsen~, Dionysos seems to be here regarded as ~pro/mantis~ of Nyx. Thus, at Megara there was a temple of ~Dio/nusos Nukte/lios~ in the immediate neighbourhood of, and in all probability closely associated with a ~Nukto\s mantei=on~: Paus. 1, 40, 6.]

[37\9: 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 ~diamasti/gôsis~ in Sparta, of which Paus. is reminded). Introduction of the worship of ~Dio/nusos Phallê/n~ 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 ~Dio/nusos e/ndendros~). 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: ~Maina/das hai\ geneê=s Einou=s a/po Kadmêei/ês~. (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 ~thi/asoi~ arranged according to locality (there were three ~thi/asoi~ 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 ~en Taba/rnei~, Thettale ~pro\s tô=| the/atrô|~. See the ~archai=os chrêsmo/s~ with explanatory notes in prose, restored by ~Apollô/neios Moko/llês, archai=os mu/stês~ (of Dionysos): Ath. Mitth. 15 (1890), p. 331 f.]

[38\9: 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 ~e/kstasis~). 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\9: ~hê\n dia\ mantosu/nên tê\n hoi= po/re Phoi=bos Apo/llôn~ ~A~ 72.]

[40\9: ~to\ a/technon kai\ adi/dakton (tê=s mantikê=s) toute/stin enu/pnia kai\ enthousiasmou/s~ [Plu.] Vit. Poes. Hom. ii, 212. The only form known to Homer is ~hê tô=n emphro/nôn zê/têsis tou= me/llontos dia/ te orni/thôn poioume/nê kai\ tô=n a/llôn sêmei/ôn~ (Pl., Phdr. 244 C).]

[41\9: The Ps.-Plutarch of the last note does, however, find in Theoklymenos' position among the suitors, ~u~ 345-57 (in any case a passage added by a later hand), a proof that he is an ~e/ntheos ma/ntis, e/k tinos epipnoi/as sêmai/nôn ta\ me/llonta~. 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 ~A~ 91 ff. or ~Ê~ 34-53. The derivation of the word ~ma/ntis~ from ~mai/nesthai~, 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 ~manu/ô~ is much more probable.]

[42\9: Pytho: ~th~ 80, ~I~ 405. Dodona: ~P~ 234, ~x~ 327 f., ~t~ 296 f. An oracle is questioned perhaps in ~p~ 402 f. See Nägelsbach, Hom. Theol., p. 181 f.]

[43\9: See Lob., Agl. 814 f. (even the regular use of the expressions ~anei=len ho theo/s, hê puthi/a~ 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\9: Even the case of Helenos is no real example of this: ~Ê~ 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\9: 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 ~ma/nteis~ or ~prophê=tai~.)]

[46\9: 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 ~enthousiasmo/s~ does not exclude other stimulants. The Pythia drinks from the inspired spring--like the ~ma/nteis~ at Klaros: Ath. Mitth. xi, 430--and thereupon becomes ~e/ntheos~: Luc., Herm. 60. The prophetess of Apollo Deiradiotes at Argos by drinking the sacrificial blood ~ka/tochos ek tou= theou= **gi/netai~: Paus. 2, 24, 1. The Pythia chews the sacred laurel-leaves to become inspired: Luc., Bis Acc. 1; also {312} the ~da/phnê, hê=s pote geusa/menos peta/lôn ane/phênen aoida\s auto\s a/nax skêptou=chos~: 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\9: e.g. in Sparta: ~e/stin eponomazo/menon Ga/sêpton hiero\n Gê=s. Apo/llôn d' hupe\r **auto\ hi/drutai Malea/tês~, 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\9: See above, chap. iii, p. 97. Welcker, Götterl. i, 520 ff.]

[49\9: See above, p. 260 ff.]

[50\9: At Amphikleia in Phokis there was an oracle of Dionysos: ~pro/mantis de\ ho hiereu/s esti, chra=| de\ ek tou= theou= ka/tochos~, Paus. 10, 33, 11. The words of Cornutus probably refer to Greece (chap. xxx, p. 59, 20 Lang): ~kai\ mantei=a e/sth' ho/pou tou= Dionu/sou e/chontos . . . ~ cf. Plu., Smp. 7, 10, 17, p. 716 B: ~hoi palaioi\ to\n theo\n~ (Dionysos) ~mantikê=s pollê\n e/chein hêgou=nto moi=ran~.]

[51\9: 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\9: ~. . . ho/sous ex Apo/llônos manê=nai le/gousi~ (i.e. the ancient ~chrêsmolo/gous~), Paus. 1, 34, 4. ~mani/a tou= chrêsmolo/gou~, Diogen., Pr. 6, 47. So, too, ~epi/pnoia~: Sittl, Gebärden der Gr. u. R. 345. ~ho enthousiasmo\s epi/pneusi/n tina thei/an e/chein dokei=~, Str. 467.--~hoi numpho/lêptoi kai\ theo/lêptoi tô=n anthrô/pôn, epipnoi/a| daimoni/ou tino\s hô/sper enthousia/zontes~, Eth. Eud. i, 1, 4, 1214a, 23.]

[53\9: Ecstatic condition of the Pythia: D.S. xvi, 26; misconstrued in a Christian sense, Sch. Ar., Plu. 39 (see Hemsterh. ad loc.). ~ho/lê gi/gnetai tou= theou=~, Iamb., Myst. 3, 11, p. 126, 15 Parthey. Description of a case in which the prophesying Pythia became completely ~e/kphrôn~: Plu., Def. Or., 51, p. 438 B.]

[54\9: 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. (~kath' heautê\n gi/gnetai hê psuchê/~ in dreaming and ~mantei=ai~: Arist. ap. S.E., M. 9, 21 [fr. 10 R.]. ~e/oike hê archê\~ (of ~nou=s) apoluome/nou tou= lo/gou **ischu/ei ma=llon~ in enthousiasmos, EE. 1248a, 40; cf. 1225A, 28.) This is ~e/kstasis~ 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 ~e/ntheos~: see above, chap. viii, n. 50; cf. pleni et mixti deo vates, Minuc. 7, 6. The priestess at the oracle of Branchidai ~de/chetai to\n theo/n~, Iamb., M. 3, 11, p. 127, 7 Par.--~exoiki/zetai ho en hêmi=n nou=s kata\ tê\n tou= thei/ou pneu/matos a/phixin, kata\ de\ tê\n metana/stasin autou= pa/lin esoiki/zetai ktl~: Philo, Q. rer. div. 53, i, p. 511 M., speaking of the ~e/ntheos katochôtikê/ te mani/a, hê=| to\ prophêtiko\n ge/nos chrê=tai~ (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 ~eu/êthes, to\ oi/esthai to\n theo\n auto/n, hô/sper tou\s eggastrimu/thous, {313} enduo/menon eis ta\ sô/mata tô=n prophêtô=n hupophthe/ggesthai, toi=s ekei/nôn sto/masi kai\ phônai=s chrô/menon orga/nois~. But this was evidently the ordinary and deep-rooted opinion (~to\n theo\n eis sô=ma katheirgnu/nai thnêto/n~, 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.): ~elthe/ moi, ku/rie Hermê= hôs ta\ bre/phê eis ta\s koili/as tô=n gunaikô=n ktl.~--Neither in mantikê nor in ~e/kstasis~ 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 ~hoi=on a/llos geno/menos kai\ ouk auto/s, theo\s geno/menos ma=llon de\ ô/n~, no longer experiencing a sense of division between himself and divinity ~metaxu\ ga\r oude/n, oud' e/ti du/o all' he/n a/mphô~ (as the subtle mysticism of Plotinos describes ~e/kstasis~, 6, 9, 9-10; 6, 7, 34-5). In the above-mentioned magic invocation of Hermes the ~go/ês~ who has conjured the god into himself says to the god (l. 36 ff., p. 117) ~su\ (soi~ MSS.) ~ga\r egô\, kai\ egô\ su/ (soi~ MSS.) ~; to\ so\n o/noma emo\n kai\ to\ emo\n so/n; egô\ ga/r eimi to\ ei/dôlo/n sou ktl.~ [Cf. Swinburne, Songs before Sunrise ii, 74 f.]]

[55\9: 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 ~ouk apoda/mou Apo/llônos tucho/ntos~, 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 ~theopha/nia~ 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 ~enthousiasmo/s~ 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 ~chrêstê/rion~ takes place in the temple of Apollo at Patara in Lykia (Hdt. i, 182). And so in general ~phugo/ntôn ê\ metasta/ntôn (tô=n peri\ ta\ mantei=a kai\ chrêstê/ria tetagme/nôn daimoni/ôn) apoba/llei tê\n du/namin (ta\ mantei=a)~, Plu., DO. 15, p. 418 D.]

[56\9: The cult of Zeus in Crete was held ~met' orgiasmou=~: 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\9: A remarkable example is given by Herod. (ix, 94), who tells us of the blind Euenios in Apollonia who suddenly became possessed of {314} ~e/mphutos mantikê/~ (not acquired by learning). He is a true ~theo/mantis~ (Pl., Ap. 22 C).]

[58\9: The ancients knew quite well that ~Ba/kis~ and ~Si/bulla~ were really common nouns denoting inspired ~chrêsmô|doi/~: thus the ~Si/bulla~ is the ~parônumi/a~ of Herophile, Plu., P. Or. 14, p. 401 A, and ~Ba/kis~ an ~epi/theton~ of Peisistratos, Sch. Ar., Pax 1071. The words are clearly used to denote whole classes of individuals by Arist., Prob. 954a, 36: ~nosê/mata manika\ kai\ enthousiastika/~ are liable to attack ~Si/bullai kai\ Ba/kides kai\ hoi e/ntheoi pa/ntes~. 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 ~hê Puthi/a, hê **Puthia/s~ 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 ~hê Si/bulla~, and Herod. when he says ~Ba/kis~ 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? ~sibullai/nein~, of course = ~enthe/azein~ (D.S. 4, 66, 7), but the verb is naturally enough derived from the name ~Si/bulla~, just as ~baki/zein~ is from ~Ba/kis~, ~erinu/ein~, from ~Erinu/s~ 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, ~Phutô/~ or perhaps rather ~Phoitô/~; cf. ~phoita\s agu/rtria~, A., Ag. 1273 (so Lachmann on Tib. 2, 5, 68): the Arcadian Bakis was called Kydas or Aletes (cf. ~Phoitô/~) 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 ~chrêsmô|doi/~ 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 ~ek numphô=n ka/tochos~: 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 ~chrêsmoi/~ 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\9: Of this description were the ~chrêsmolo/goi~ 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 ~epi\ Pallêni/di~ and prophesied to him ~enthea/zôn~ (Hdt. i, 62 f.; he is an Athenian in [Pl.] Thg. 124 D--where he is mentioned side by side with ~Ba/kis te {315} kai\ Si/bulla~--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\9: 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 ~chrêsmoi/~ of Herophile first appeared in which she prophesied the ~Trôïka/~. 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: ~Li/bussa = Si/bulla~ anagrammatically. See Alexandre, p. 74 f.) Herophile was identified also with the ~prô/tê Si/bulla~ 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 ~Phrugi/a~ who calling herself Artemis prophesied in Delphi (so, too, Philetas following Herakl. and see also Suid. ~Sib. Delphi/s~). This is due to the local patriotism of the inhabitants of the Troad. Their Sibyl is the Marpessian (= the ~Phrugi/a~ 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 ~eruthrai/a~, may be guessed from Paus. 10, 12, 2 ff. (The same source as that of Paus. is used by St. Byz. s. ~Mermêsso/s~, 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\9: The Erythraean Sibyl was dated by Eusebius in Ol. 9, 3 (the absurd addition ~en Aigu/ptô|~ 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. ~Si/bulla Apo/llônos kai\ Lami/as~ 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 ~poluchroniôta/tê~ [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 ~ne/os kti/stês~ 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 ~au=this d' entha/de egô\ hê=mai~ 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\9: ~r~ 383 ff.]

[63\9: 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. ~nosê/mata manika\ kai\ enthousiastika/~ of Sibyls and Bakids Arist. Prob. 30, 1, 954a, 36. The Sibyl prophesies ~mantikê=| chrôme/nê enthe/ô|~, Pl., Phdr. 244 B. ~mainome/nê te kai\ ek tou= theou= ka/tochos~, Paus. 10, 12, 2. deo furibunda recepto, Ov., M. xiv, 107. There is in her divinitas et quaedam caelitum societas, Plin., NH. vii, 119. ~katochê\ kai\ epi/pnoia~ [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 ~kata/schetos ek numphô=n, manei\s ek numphô=n~ (Paus. 10, 12, 11; 4, 27, 4), ~numpho/lêptos~ (cf. ~theo/lêptos, phoibo/lêptos, pano/lêptos, mêtro/lêptos~; Lymphati: Varro, LL. vii, p. 365 Sp., Paul. Fest., p. 120, 11 ff., Placid., p. 62, 15 ff. Deuerl.).]

[64\9: ~Si/bulla de\ mainome/nô| sto/mati ktl.~: Herakleitos ap. Plu., Pyth. Or. 6, p. 397 A. fr. 12 By. = 92 Diels (the words ~chili/ôn . . . theou=~ 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 ~Si/bulla~. 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\9: Homer knows Kassandra as one of the daughters of Priam and indeed as ~Pria/moio thugatrô=n ei=dos ari/stên~, ~N~ 365; probably that it why she is allotted to Agamemnon as his share of the spoil and why she is slain with him, ~l~ 421 ff. The ~Ku/pria~ is the first to tell of her {317} prophetic skill. Was it the narrative of ~Ô~ 699 which first suggested to the ~neô/teroi~ the idea of her knowledge of the future? (In reality that passage alludes rather to the ~sumpa/theia~ 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 (~phrenomanê/s, theopho/rêtos~, Ag. 1140, 1216). As such she is called by Eur. ~mantipo/los ba/kchê~, Hec. 121. ~phoiba/s~ 827. ~to\ bakchei=on ka/ra tê=s thespiô|dou= Kassa/ndras~ 676. She wildly shakes her head like the Bacchants ~ho/tan theou= manto/sunoi pneu/sôs' ana/gkai~, IA. 760 ff.]

[66\9: About the Arcadian Bakis (Kydas or Aletes by name) ~Theo/pompos en tê=| th' tô=n Philippikô=n a/lla te polla\ historei= para/doxa kai\ ho/ti pote\ tô=n Lakedaimoni/ôn ta\s gunai=kas manei/sas eka/thêren, Apo/llônos tou/tois tou/ton kathartê\n do/ntos~, Sch. Ar., Pa. 1071. The story is closely parallel to that of Melampous and the Proitides, see above, nn. 22-5.]

[67\9: Cf. e.g. Hippocr. ~p. partheni/ôn~ (ii, p. 528 K.; viii, 468 L.). Upon their recovery from hysterical hallucinations the women dedicate valuable ~hima/tia~ to Artemis ~keleuo/ntôn tô=n ma/nteôn~. This is the regular name for the ~ma/goi, kathartai/, agu/rtai~ (cf. Teiresias ~do/lios agu/rtês~, S., OT. 388; Kassandra is accused of being ~phoita\s agu/rtria~, A., Ag. 1273). Hp. speaks elsewhere also of their manner of healing epilepsy, i, p. 588 K. (vi, 354 L.).]

[68\9: ~katharmoi\ . . . kata\ tê\n mantikê/n~, Pl., Crat. 405 AB. The ~ma/nteis~ 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 ~ma/nteis kai\ teratosko/poi, hagu/rtai kai\ ma/nteis~ possess the arts of ~magganeu/mata, epô|dai/, katade/seis~ and ~epagôgai/~ which compel the gods to do their will, Pl., Rp. 364 BC; Lg. 933 CE. These ~ma/nteis~ 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 ~ma/nteis~ 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\9: 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: ~stugero\s de/ hoi e/chrae dai/môn~, ~e~ 396 (cf. ~k~, 64), is said of an invalid who lies ~dêro\n têko/menos~. Cf. ~nou=sos Dio\s mega/lou~, ~i~ 411. In such cases help is sought from the ~iatro/mantis~ (A., Sup. 263) who is at once ~ma/ntis~ and ~teratosko/pos~ and ~kathartê/s~ like his divine prototype Apollo: A., Eum. 62-3. In a long illness King Kleomenes I of Sparta resorts to ~kathartai\ kai\ ma/nteis~, Plu., Ap. Lac. 11, p. 223 E.]

[70\9: ~A~ 313 f.; ~ch~ 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\9: Nothing is said in Homer of the purification of the murderer or the homicide: see above, chap. v, n. 166.]

[72\9: Thus at the ~amphidro/mia~ all who have had anything to do with {318} the ~mai/ôsis, apokathai/rontai ta\s chei=ras~ (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 ~apotropiasmo\s kai\ ka/tharsis~ 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 (~e/ria~) 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. ~ste/phanon ekphe/rein~. Both are lustral materials. Use of olive branches at ~katharmo/s~: 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 ~chtho/nioi~ (hence its use as a bed for corpses: see above, chap. v, n. 61; cf. ~toi=s apothanou=sin elaa=s sunekphe/rousin~: Artemid. iv, 57, p. 236, 20 H. ~koti/nô| kai\ taini/a|~ the goddess crowns Chios in his dream and points the man thus dedicated to death to his ~mnê=ma~: Chio, Epist. 17, 2). This makes the olive suitable for lustration and ~apotropiasmoi/~. 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. ~rha/mnos; ami/antos hê pi/tta; dio\ kai\ en tai=s gene/sesi tô=n paidi/ôn (tau/tê|) chri/ousi ta\s oiki/as, eis ape/lasin daimo/nôn~ (see above, chap. v, n. 95). It is the neighbourhood of these (chthonic) ~dai/mones~ that cause the pollution.]

[73\9: 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\9: Cf. Plu., Sept. Sap. Conv. iii, p. 149 D, and on this Wyttenb. vi, p. 930 f.]

[75\9: Purification of houses (~ch~ 481 ff.); e.g. [D.] 47, 71. It was customary to purify ~oiki/as kai\ pro/bata~ 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 ~deisidai/môn; kai\ pukna\ de\ tê\n oiki/an katha=rai deino\s Heka/tês pha/skôn epagôgê\n gegone/nai~.]

[76\9: 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 ~enagi/smata~ 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 ~to\ para\ toi=s Pe/rsais kalou/menon hiero\n pu=r~ to go out, ~me/chri a\n tele/sê| tê\n ekphora/n~, D.S. 17, 114, 4.]

[77\9: "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 ~deisidai/môn~ mortifies himself and ~exagoreu/ei tina\s hamarti/as hautou= kai\ plêmmelei/as~, but in what do these ~hamarti/ai~ consist?--~hôs to/de phago/ntos ê\ pio/ntos ê\ badi/santos {319} hodo\n hê\n ouk ei/a to\ daimo/nion~, 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\9: 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 ~mi/asma~, a pollution arriving from without, a taint arising from contact with a hostile ~daimo/nion~ 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\9: See Appendix v.]

[80\9: What the Greeks meant by ~mi/asma~ 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: ~chei=res me\n hagnai/~ she says ~phrê\n d' e/chei mi/asma/ ti~. Does the Nurse think of any moral disgrace or defilement of the distressed woman in this ~phreno\s mi/asma~? Not at all: she only asks, ~mô=n ex epaktou= pêmonê=s echthrô=n tinos?~ in other words by "defilement of the mind" she can only conceive of an enchantment, something from without that comes, by ~epagôgê\ tinô=n daimoni/ôn~ (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: ~pollô=n o/ntôn kai\ kalô=n en tô=| tô=n anthrô/pôn bi/ô|, toi=s plei/stois autô=n hoi=on kê=res epipephu/kasin, hai\ katamiai/nousi/ te kai\ katarrupai/nousin auta\~, Lg. 937 D.)] {320}

[81\9: Diseases come ~palaiô=n ek mênima/tôn~, Pl., Phdr. 244 DE; i.e. from the rage of departed generations of souls or of ~chtho/nioi~, Lob., Agl. 635-7. Esp. madness is a ~nosei=n ex alasto/rôn~, S., Tr. 1325, a ~ta/ragma tarta/reion~, E., HF. 89. Cure of such diseases is undertaken not by doctors but by ~kathartai/, ma/goi kai\ agu/rtai~, 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 ~katharmoi/~ and ~epô|dai/~, partly with various prescriptions of abstinence ~hagnei=ai kai\ katharo/têtes~. These last are explained by Hp. on dietetic grounds but the Kathartai themselves derived them from ~to\ thei=on kai\ to\ daimo/nion~ (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: ~hima/tion me/lan mê\ e/chein, thanatô=des ga\r to\ me/lan~ (all trees with black berries or fruit belong to the inferi: Macr. 3, 20, 3). Other superstitions are found with these: ~mêde\ po/da epi\ podi\ e/chein, mêde\ chei=ra epi\ cheiri/; tau=ta ga\r pa/nta kôlu/mata ei=nai~. 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 ~dai/môn~ (360-2) which must therefore be averted. Acc. to popular belief it is always God who ~to\ anthrô/pou sô=ma miai/nei~ (cf. p. 362). For this reason the magicians purify, ~kathai/rousi~, the sick ~hai/masi kai\ toi=sin a/lloisi~ which are used to purify people ~mi/asma/ ti e/chontas~ or on whom a curse has been laid. The ~katha/rsia~ are buried or thrown into the sea (~kai\ eis ha/la lu/mat' e/ballon~, A 314), or carried away into a deserted mountain district (p. 362). Such ~katha/rsia~ are now the resting place of the ~mi/asma~ that has been washed off, and so the magician drives ~eis ore/ôn kephala\s nou/sous te kai\ a/lgê~, Orph. H. 36, 16. Similarly in India, Oldenberg 495.]

[82\9: Epôdai used for stopping the flow of blood, ~t~ 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 ~sunepa/|dousi/ tina epô|dê/n~, 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 ~rhizotomi/a~ are ~epiklê/seis~ of the ~dai/môn hô=| hê bota/nê anie/rôtai~: 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 ~epaoidai/, me/lê, ê=choi~, and ~kathai/resthai no/sôn, hupostêsa/menoi ta\s no/sous daimo/nia ei=nai, kai\ ta\ toiau=ta exairei=n lo/gô| pha/skontes du/nasthai~, 2, 9, 14.]

[83\9: Clashing of bronze used at ~apokatha/rseis~ 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 (?) ~chalkou= {321} auda\n chthoni/an, E., Hel. 1346. At eclipses of the sun or moon ~kinou=si chalko\n kai\ si/dêron a/nthrôpoi pa/ntes~ (cf. Plu., Aem. 17; Juv. vi, 443; Mart. xii, 57, 16 f., etc.) ~hôs tou\s dai/mones apelau/nontes~, 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\9: ~pho/nô| pho/non ekni/ptein~, E., IT. 1233. Purgantur <cruore> cum cruore polluuntur . . . Heraclit. (p. 335, 5 Schust. [5 D. = 130 B.]).]

[85\9: A.R. iv, 703 ff. ~katharmoi=s choirokto/nois . . .~: A., Eum. 283, 449, ~hai/matos katharsi/ou~; cf. Müller, Aesch. Eum. 124. Representation of the ~katharmo/s~ of Orestes on well-known vase-paintings: Mon. d. inst. iv, 48, etc.]

[86\9: 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 ~mi/asma~ 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. 3~a~, 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 ~ouch horôme/nê patro\s mê=nis~ 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 ~katharmo/s, hilasmo/s~ 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\9: The ~pharmakoi/~ 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. ~pharmakoi/~: the variation is explained by Hellad. ap. Phot., Bibl., p. 354a, 3 ff. Bk.) The ~pharmakoi/~ serve as ~katha/rsia~ to the city (Harp. 180, 19 Bk.): Hippon. fr. 4; Hellad. ap. Sch. Ar., Eq. 1136. ~pharmako/s = ka/tharma~, Phot., Lex. 640, 8 Pors. The ~pharmakoi/~ were either burnt (after being put to death) like other propitiatory victims: Tz., Ch. v, 736, prob. following Hippon. (the burning of the ~pharm.~ at Athens seems to be alluded to by Eup. ~Dê=m.~ 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 ~pharmako/s~ 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: ~kathê/ras tou\s Ephesi/ous tê=s no/sou~, Philostr., VA. 4, 10-11. Was the stoning a sort of counter-enchantment? See Roscher, Kynanthropie, 38-9.] {322}

[88\9: Among the ingredients of a ~Heka/tês dei=pnon en tê=| trio/dô|~ was an ~ôo\n ek katharsi/ou~: Luc., DM. 1, 1; or the testicles of a sucking pig that had been used as a victim: D., 54, 39. The ~oxuthu/mia~, sacrifices to Hekate and the souls of the dead (see above, chap. v, n. 176), are identical with the ~katha/rmata kai\ apolu/mata~ which were thrown out at the crossroads in the ~Hekatai=a~: Did. ap. Harp. ~oxuthu/mia~; cf. E.M. 626, 44. ~katha/rsia~ is the name of the purificatory offerings: ~katha/rmata~ 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 ~tê=| Heka/tê| meta\ tô=n a/llôn katharsi/ôn~, Plu., QR. 68, p. 280 C. Even the blood and water of the purificatory sacrifice, the ~apo/nimma~, is also dedicated to the dead: Ath. 409 E ff. The fact that the ~katha/rmata~ are made over to the invisibly present spirits at the cross roads might be derived also from the necessity for throwing them out ~ametastrepti/~ (see below, n. 104). Even the Argive custom of throwing the ~katha/rmata~ into the Lernaean lake (Znb., iv, 86; Dgn., vi, 7; Hsch. ~Le/rnê theatô=n~) 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\9: Annual ~teletê/~ to Hekate in Aegina reputed to have been founded by Orpheus. Hekate and her ~katharmoi/~ 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 ~chtho/nioi~ at the Triopion in Knidos was, however, Greek: Böckh on Sch. Pi., p. 314 f.; CIG. i, p. 45.]

[90\9: ~chthoni/a kai\ nerte/rôn pru/tanis~: 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 ~chthoni/a~. She is ~Admê/tou ko/rê~ (i.e. of Hades, K. O. Müller, Introd. Scient. Myth. 245): Hsch. She is called ~admê/tê~ 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 ~chthoni/a~ 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 ~Gê= Heka/tê~. This would certainly be very remarkable but on the stone itself the actual words are ~tê\n sebo/mesth' Hek[a/tên]~. [But cf. Tab. Defix., p. xiii, a 13.]]

[91\9: Hekate goddess of childbirth: Sophr. fr. 7. worshipped in Athens as ~kourotro/phos~, Sch. Ar., V. 804. Samian worship of the ~kourotro/phos en tê=| trio/dô|~ (i.e. as Hek.), [Hdt.] V. Hom. 30; Hes., Thg. 450: ~thê=ke de/ min~ (Hek.) ~Kroni/dês kourotro/phon~. (Even as early as this ~kour.~ 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.) ~Genetulli/s~ goddess of childbirth is said to be ~eoikui=a tê=| Heka/tê|~: Hsch. ~Gen.~ 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 ~hupe\r paido/s~: inscr. from Larisa, Ath. Mitth. xi, 450. Hek. is also a goddess of marriage: as such (~ho/ti gamê/lios hê Heka/tê~, Sch.) she is called upon with Hymenaios {323} by Kassandra in Eur., Tr. 323. Hekate is ~gamê/lios~ simply as ~chthoni/a~: the ~chtho/nioi~ frequently take part in marriage as well as birth: see above, chap. v, p. 64 ff.; Gaia: see Welcker, Götterl. i, 327. Offering made ~pro\ pai/dôn kai\ gamêli/ou te/lous~ to the Erinyes: A., Eum. 835.]

[92\9: Hekate present at funerals (rushing ~pro\s a/ndras nekro\n phe/rontas~, Sophr. fr. 7) ~erchome/na ana/ t' êri/a kai\ me/lan hai=ma~ Theoc. ii, 13. ~chai/rousa skula/kôn hulakê=| kai\ hai/mati phoi/nô| en ne/kusi stei/chousa kat' êri/a tethnêô/tôn~, 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): ~haimopo/tis, kardio/daite, sarkopha/ge, aôrobo/re~ are said of her in the Hymn. Magic, 5, ll. 53-4 (p. 294 Ab.). ~phthisi/kêre~ should be also read, ib., l. 44 (~kê=res = psuchai/~, see above, chap. v, n. 100); cf. ~ômopha/goi chtho/nioi~, P. Mag. Par. 1444. ~Heka/tê akrourobo/rê~ on a defixio from Megara ap. Tab. Defix., p. xiii_a_, l. 7 Wünsch. Probably ~aôrobo/rê~ should be read (Wünsch differently, p. xx_b_).]

[93\9: See above, chap. v, nn. 66, 132.]

[94\9: Medea in E., Med. 385 ff.: ~ou ga\r ma\ tê\n de/spoinan hê\n egô\~ (as magician) ~se/bô ma/lista pa/ntôn kai\ xunergo\n heilo/mên, Heka/tên, muchoi=s nai/ousan hesti/as emê\s.--Dê/mêtros ko/rê~ is addressed as ~puro\s de/spoina~, 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\9: The pious man cleans and decorates every month ~to\n Hermê=n kai\ tê\n Heka/tên kai\ ta\ loipa\ tô=n hierô=n ha\ dê\ tou\s progo/nous katalipei=n~, Theopomp. ap. Porph., Abs. ii, 16 (p. 146, 8-9 N.). Acc. to this Hekate and Hermes belong to the ~theoi\ patrô=|oi~ 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\9: 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\9: Hekate (~nai/ousa~ at the crossroads, S. fr. 492 N.) meets men as an ~antai/a theo/s~ (S. fr. 311) and is herself called ~antai/a~ (fr. 311, 368; cf. EM. 111, 50, where what precedes is from Sch. A.R. i, 1141). The same adj. applies to a ~dai/môn~ that she causes to appear: Hsch. ~antai/a, antai=os~, in this as in most cases with the added sense of hostile. Hek. ~phainome/nê en ekto/pois pha/smasin~, Suid. ~Heka/tên~. (from Elias Cret. on Greg. Nz. iv, p. 487 Mg.). She appears or sends apparitions by night as well as by day: ~Einodi/a, thu/gater Da/matros, ha\ tô=n nuktipo/lôn epho/dôn ana/sseis kai\ methameri/ôn~, E., Ion, 1048 ff. Meilinoe, a euphemistically (cf. above, chap. v, n. 5) named daimonic creature, either Hekate or Empousa, meets ~antai/ais epho/doisi kata\ zophoeide/a nu/kta~, Orph. H. 71, 9. Hek. appears at midday in Luc., Philops. 22. In this midday vision she opens the earth and ~ta\ en Ha/idou ha/panta~ become visible (c. 24). This reminds us of the story told by Herakl. {324} Pont. of Empedotimos to whom Plouton and Persephone appeared ~en mesêmbri/a| stathera=|~ 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\9: See Append. vi.]

[98\9: See Append. vii.]

[99\9: Hekate herself is regarded as having the head of a dog: undoubtedly an ancient conception of her (she has ~skulakô/dea phônê/n~, H. Mag. 5, 17 Ab.). She is sometimes even a dog herself: Hsch. ~Heka/tês a/galma~, 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.: ~kuri/a Heka/tê einodi/a, ku/ôn me/laina~. 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 ~saphô=s~ the hounds of Hekate were ~ponêroi\ dai/mones~: 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 (~hepôpi/da~) 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\9: See Dilthey, Rh. Mus. 25, 332 ff.]

[101\9: 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\9: ~hoko/sa dei/mata nukto\s pari/statai, kai\ pho/boi kai\ para/noiai kai\ anapêdê/seis ek tê=s kli/nês kai\ pho/bêtra kai\ pheu/xeis e/xô, Heka/tês phasi\n ei=nai epibola\s kai\ hêrô/ôn epho/dous, katharmoi=si/ te chre/ontai kai\ epaoidai=s~, Hp., Morb. Sac. vi, 362 L.; cf. Plu., Supers., 3, p. 166 A; Hor., AP. 454. Hekate is ~maniô=n aiti/a~, Eust., Il., p. 87, 31 (hence also releases men from madness in the initiations of Aegina, see above, n. 89); cf. ~e/ntheos {325} ex Heka/tês~, E., Hip. 141. Dreams of Hekate, Artemid., 2, 37, p. 139, 1 ff. H. The ~hê/rôes apoplê/ktous poiei=n du/nantai~: Sch. Ar., Av. 1490. The ~hê/rôes~ are also the source of nightmares, Rh. Mus. 37, 467 n. (like Pan as Ephialtes: Didym. ap. Sch. Ar., Ves. 1038--where ~Eua/pan~ should be read, from ~eu/a~ the noise of bleating goats and ~Pa=n~: 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, ~ea\n de\ sunousia/zê|~, Artemid., p. 139, 21 H. General statement: ~oneirô/ssein~ comes ~apo\ daimo/nôn energei/as~ Suid. ~oneiropolei=n~, p. 1124 Gaisf. Seirenes: Crusius, Philol. 50, 97 ff.]

[103\9: The "Banquets of Hekate", besides the ~katha/rmata~ referred to above (n. 88), included also the specially prepared dishes that were made and put out for Hekate ~kata\ mê=na~ (Ar., Plu. 596) at the ~triaka/des~ (see above, chap. v, n. 88) or else at the ~noumêni/ai~, Sch. Ar., Plu. 594: ~kata\ tê\n noumêni/an, hespe/ras~; cf. the offering to Hekate and Hermes at each ~noumêni/a~: 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 ~katha/rsia~ and the ~Heka/tês dei=pna~ would be again combined.--Ingredients of the offerings to Hek.: eggs and toasted cheese (Sch. Ar.); ~tri/glê~ and ~maina/s~ Ath. 325 B.; flame-cakes (of cheese, ~plakou=ntes dia\ turou=~, Paus. Lex. ap. Eust. 1165, 14) ~amphiphô=ntes~ (see Lob., Agl. 1062 f.).]

[104\9: The person ~katha/rmata ekpe/mpsas~ throws them away ~aostro/phoisin o/mmasin~: A., Cho. 98-9. The vessel filled with the purificatory offerings was emptied ~en tai=s trio/dois~ and ~ametastrepti/~: Schol. ib. This was regular with ~katharmoi/~: Theoc. xxiv, 94 ff., and at offerings to the Erinyes: S., OC. 490. Even Odysseus is obliged at his sacrifice to the dead ~apono/sphi trape/sthai~, ~k~ 528. Medea in collecting her magic juices turns her eyes ~exopi/sô chero/s~: S. ~Rhiz.~ fr. 491 N.; A.R. iv, 1315; cf. also Lomeier, de lustrat., p. 455 f. This remained the rule at sacrifices to ~chtho/nioi~ and in magic ceremonies which regularly had to do with the underworld. Even Marc. Emp. in giving directions for the cure of ~phusika/~ often enjoins nec retro respice e.g. 1, 54, likewise Plin., NH. 21, 176; 29, 91. In making an enchantment ~poreu/ou anepistreptei\ mêdeni\ dou\s apo/krisin~ 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 ~ametastrepti/~, 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--~chalepoi\ de\ theoi\ phai/nesthai enargô=s~. Hence Odysseus, when he is returning Leukothoë's wimple by throwing it into the sea, must ~auto\s apono/sphi trape/sthai~, ~e~ 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.) ~hoi entugcha/nontes nukto\s hê/rôsi die/strephon ta\s o/pseis~: 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 ~su/mbola~, those invaluable fragments of Greek old wives' wisdom, runs: ~apodêmô=n tê=s oiki/as mê\ epistre/phou; Erinu/es ga\r mete/rchontai~ (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\9: Appearance of ~ei/dôla~ 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 ~No/stoi~ (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. ~Psuch.~; S., ~Polux.~; 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 ~ei/dôlon~ of Killos (see A. Marx, Griech. Märchen von dankbaren Thieren, p. 114 f.).]

[106\9: Spirit-raising at entrances to the underworld at definite ~psuchomantei=a~ or ~nekuomantei=a~: see above, chap. v, n. 23. There were, however, ~psuchagôgoi/~ who could compel individual souls to appear at other places as well: E., Alc. 1128 f. Such ~psuchagôgoi/~ belonging to the fifth century and to be found in Thessaly are spoken of by Plu. ap. Sch. E., Alc. 1128. People ~tou/s te tethneô=tas pha/skontes psuchagôgei=n kai\ theou\s hupischnou/menoi pei/thein, hôs thusi/ais te kai\ euchai=s kai\ epô|dai=s goêteu/ontes~ 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 ~Heka/tês epagôgê/~ occurs as early as Thphr., Ch. 28 (16).]

[107\9: ~agu/rtai kai\ ma/nteis~ profess ~ea/n ti/s tin' echthro\n pêmê=nai ethe/lê| meta\ smikrô=n dapanô=n homoi/ôs di/kaion adi/kô| bla/psein, epagôgai=s tisi kai\ katade/smois tou\s theou/s, hô/s phasi, pei/thonte/s sphisin hupêretei=n~, Pl., Rp. 364 C. And esp. from Lg. 933 AE we get a good idea of the fear that the ~ma/nteis~ and ~teratosko/poi~ generally inspired with their ~katade/seis epagôgai/, epô|dai/~, and other ~magganei=ai~ (we even hear of wax-figures on house-doors, grave-stones, ~epi\ trio/dois~, 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. ~epagôgai/~ are "evocations" of spirits or gods: see Ruhnk., Tim., p. 115. ~epipompai/~ have the same meaning: see above, chap. v, n. 168. ~epipe/mpein~ frequently in this sense in the Orph. H. ~katade/seis, kata/desmoi~ 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 ~ana/gkê (ho epa/nagkos~ is frequent in the magical books) or ~peithana/gkê~ of which Porph. ap. Eus., PE. 5, 8, specially tells us (probably deriving it from Pythagoras of Rhodos). ~pei/thein~ is Plato's weaker word: the most extreme is ~biastikai\ apeilai/~ Iamb. Myst. 6, 5 [i.e. Porph. Ep. Aneb. fr. 31 Parth.]; cf. ~to\ dei=na pra/xeis ka\n the/lê|s ka\n mê\ the/lê|s~: refrain in a magic hymn, P. Mag. Par. 2252 ff.--Just as in these incantations the ~kata/desis~ 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 ~katade/seis, kata/desmoi~, 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 ~katadô= (katadi/dêmi to\n dei=na~ 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: ~atelê=, enanti/a pa/nta ge/noito~, nn. 64, 98. The carrying out of this is entrusted to Hermes ~chtho/nios~ or to Hekate (~katadô= auto\n pro\s to\n Hermê=n ktl.~) as the ~ka/tochoi dai/mones~; cf. nn. 81, 84, 85, 86, 101, 105, 106, 107. Sometimes the promoter of the ~kata/desis~ says of himself ~katadô= kai\ kate/chô~ 109, etc. The defixio itself is called ~ho ka/tochos~, Gk. Pap. in B.M. (Ken.), No. 121, ll. 394, 429 = p. 97-8. ~katadei=n~ is therefore here = ~kate/chesthai poiei=n~ (= disable him--not make him "possessed") and implies the delivery of the victim into the power of the infernal spirits.--The ~ma/nteis~ and ~kathartai/~ 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 ~ge/nos~ of ~anemokoi=tai~ at Korinth was able ~tou\ ane/mous koimi/zein~: Hsch. Suid. ~anemok.~: cf. Welcker, Kl.S. iii, 63. The claims made by these ~kathartai/~ 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\9: Abaris had been mentioned by Pindar (Harp. ~A/baris~); Hdt. mentions him in iv, 36. There we hear of the arrow which he bore along with him ~kata\ pa=san tê\n gê=n~ and of his complete abstention from food (cf. Iamb., VP. 141). The arrow, a ~su/mbolon tou= Apo/llônos~ (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 ~hôs to\n oïsto\s perie/phere~, 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 ~e/ntheos~ (Eudoc.) as ~kathartê/s~ and ~chrêsmolo/gos~, as driving away pestilences by magic arts (esp. in Sparta, where ~kôlutê/ria~ = apotropaic sacrifices, were instituted and a temple of ~Ko/rê sô/teira~ 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 ~epôdai/~ (Pl., Chrm. 158 CD); was a type of ~eukoli/as kai\ lito/têtos kai\ dikaiosu/nês~: 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. ~A/b.~, Suid. ~proêrosi/a~. Sch. Ar., Eq. 729; Lycurg. ~kata\ Menesai/chmou~; 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. (~Puthago/ras en tô=| pro\s A/barin lo/gô=|~, 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 ~peri\ tô=n Puthagorei/ôn~.--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 ~kata\ Kroi=son to\n Ludô=n basile/a~ (prob. about the time of the ~Sa/rdeôn ha/lôsis~, 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 (~kata\ tê\n [=]n[=]g Olumpia/da~, for so the figure in Harp. should be read and not ~[=]g Ol.~; the right reading is preserved from Harp. in Suid. ~A/b.~). This view, however, is not, as Diels thinks, obtained by making Abaris forty years older than Pyth. (The ~akmê/~ 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\9: Ekstasis of Aristeas: ~tou/tou phasi\ tê\n psuchê\n, ho/tan ebou/leto, exie/nai kai\ epanie/nai pa/lin~. Suid. ~Ariste/as~. His body lies as if dead ~hê de\ psuchê\ ekdu=sa tou= sô/matos epla/zeto en tô=| aithe/ri ktl.~ 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 ~Arima/speia~ said that Aristeas reached the Issedones ~phoiba/lamptos geno/menos~ (Hdt. iv, 13); which at least means in some strange way impossible for other men, i.e. in Apolline **ecstasy (cf. above, n. 63, ~numpho/lêptos~, etc.; ~en eksta/sei apophoibô/menos~, P. Mag. Par., p. 63 Wess.). So, too, Max. Tyr. 38, 3, p. 222 ff., makes Aristeas describe how his ~psuchê/, katalipou=sa to\ sô=ma~ 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 ~e/kstasis~ 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 ~ei/dôlon~ 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 ~e/kstasis~ of the soul of Aristeas and it was so understood by the authority (apparently Thpomp.) whom Apollon., Mirab. 2, is following.]

[110\9: Hdt. iv, 15, Thpomp. ap. Ath. 13, 605 C: the bronze laurel was set up ~kata\ tê\n Ariste/a tou= Prokonnêsi/ou epidêmi/an ho/te e/phêsen ex Huperbore/ôn paragegone/nai~. 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 ~epidêmi/a~ of Aristeas in Metapontum fell acc. to Hdt.'s own calculation (~hôs sumballo/menos . . . heu/riskon~) 240 years (not 230) after the second ~aphanismo/s~ of Aristeas from Prokonnesos. As Aristeas had in his poem spoken of the beginning of the Kimmerian invasion (Hdt. iv, 13) his first ~aphanismo/s~ 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 ~Arima/speia~ had been foisted upon Aristeas; cf. D. H., Thuc. 23; ~p. hu/psous~, 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 ~Arima/speia~ 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. ~Pei/sandros Pei/sônos~ fin. we might be justified in attributing the composition of the ~Arima/speia~ 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\9: 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. ~Phor.~: see Meineke, Com.^2, p. 1227 ff.--At the end of the above-mentioned enumeration of ~ma/nteis~ ap. Clem. Al., a certain ~Empedo/timos ho Surako/sios~ 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. ~Emped., Iouliano/s~: Rh. Mus. 32, 331, n. 1; cf. Damasc. ap. Philop. in Arist. Meteor., p. 117, 10 Hayd. Suid. ~Emped.~ calls (probably a guess) the work in which Empedot. gave an account of his visions ~peri\ phusikê=s akroa/seôs~. (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 ~Hermo/timos~ 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. ~Ioul.~): 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. (~meta\ tou= sô/matos~, p. 122, 2) beheld ~pa=san tê\n peri\ tô=n psuchô=n alêthei/an~: 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\9: Apollon., Mirab. 3 (prob. from Thpomp.); Plin., NH. vii, 174; Plu., Gen. Soc. 22, p. 592 C (~Hermo/dôros~--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 ~Hermo/timos~ 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 ~ge/nos~ 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\9: 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 ~katha/rsia~ 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 ~kata\ te/chnên mantikê/n~, Arist., Pol. 1274_a_, 25.]

[114\9: See above (pp. 96 f). As one who had been initiated into the orgiastic cult of Zeus in Krete (Str. 468), Epimenides is called ~ne/os Kou/rês~: Plu., Sol. 12; D.L. i, 115. He is called ~hiereu\s Dio\s kai\ Rhe/as~ in Sch. Clem. Al. iv, p. 103 Klotz.]

[115\9: Legend of the ~a/limon~ of E.: H. Smyrn. 18. D.L. i, 114. Plu. 7 Sap. 14. He was prepared for it by living on ~aspho/delos, mala/chê~ and the edible root of a kind of ~ski/lla~ (Thphr., HP. 7, 12, 1). All these are sacred to the ~chtho/nioi~ (on ~aspho/delos~, 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\9: ~hou= (Epimeni/dou) lo/gos hôs exi/oi hê psuchê\ ho/poson ê/thele chro/non kai\ pa/lin eisê/|ei en tô=| sô/mati~, Suid. ~Epimen.~ This is possibly the meaning of ~prospoiêthê=nai (le/getai) polla/kis anabebiôke/nai~, D.L. i, 114. Epimenides like others ~meta\ tha/naton en toi=s zô=si geno/menos~, 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 ~eksta/seis~. This cave-sleep is interpreted as a state of ekstasis by Max. Tyr. 16, 1: ~en tou= Dio\s tou= Diktai/ou~ (see above, chap. iii, n. 23) ~tô=| a/ntrô| kei/menos hu/pnô| bathei= e/tê suchna/~ (cf. the ~psuchê/~ of Hermot. which ~apo\ tou= sô/matos plazome/nê apodêmei= epi\ polla\ e/tê~, Apollon., Mir. 3) ~o/nar e/phê entuchei=n auto\s theoi=s ktl.~ Thus his ~o/neiros~ became ~dida/skalos~ to him, Max. Tyr. 38, 3; cf. Sch. Luc., Tim. 6, 110 Rb.]

[117\9: ~sopho\s peri\ ta\ thei=a (deino\s ta\ thei=a~, Max. Tyr. 38, 3) ~tê\n enthousiastikê\n sophi/an~, Plu., Sol. 12. Epimen. is put among the ~e/ntheoi ma/nteis~, 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 ~alla\ chro/non tina\ ekpatê=sai, ascholou/menon peri\ rhizotomi/an~ (which he needed as an ~iatro/mantis~); 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\9: 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 ~peri\ tô=n esome/nôn ouk emanteu/eto, alla\ peri\ tô=n gegono/tôn me\n adê/lôn de/~ 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 ~ma/ntis~.]

[119\9: Delos: Plu., Sept. Sap. 14, p. 158 A. (There is no need to suppose that there has been any confusion between this ~me/gas katharmo/s~ 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 ~po/leis eka/thêren a/llas te kai\ tê\n Athênai/ôn~, Paus. 1, 14, 4.]

[120\9: The purification of Athens from the Kylonian ~a/gos~ by Epimenides is now further confirmed by the Aristotelian ~Ath. pol.~ 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 ~Ath. pol.~ rightly observes. It certainly does not follow (as e.g. Bauer takes for granted in his Forsch. zu Arist. ~Ath. pol.~ 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 ~tou\s ho/rous~ (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 ~enagei=s~. In Plu., however, Solon is still far from having thoughts of his ~nomothesi/a~, he is still only ~ê/dê do/xan e/chôn~ c. 12 (not till c. 14 does his archonship begin). Solon's archonship is put by ~Ath. pol.~ in the year 591/0 (c. 14, 1, where we should be careful to avoid arbitrary alteration of the figures); Suid. ~So/lôn~, Eus., Chron. also date it in Ol. 47, and the same period is implied by Plu., Sol. 14, p. 168, 12. (~Ath. Pol.~ {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 ~enagei=s~ 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. ~Epimeni/dês; eka/thêre ta\s Athê/nas tou= Kulônei/ou a/gous kata\ tê\n [=]m[=]d Olumpia/da~ (604/1)--that in the Kirrhaian war there was an ~Alkmai/ôn~ 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 ~Kulô/neion a/gos~ 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 ~loimo/s~, 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 ~Kul. a/gos~ 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\9: 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 ~chtho/nia~ that Epim. institutes. Thus (as Abaris founded a temple at Sparta for ~Ko/rê sô/teira~) he founded at Athens, evidently as the concluding part of the purification, ~ta\ hiera\ tô=n semnô=n theô=n~, i.e. of the Erinyes: D.L. i, 112.]

[122\9: 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\9: 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\9: 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 ~anê\r philo/sophos~ (Max. Tyr. 38, 3, p. 222 R.).]

[125\9: Arist., Meta. 1, 3, p. 948_b_, 19 f.]

[126\9: See Append. viii.]

[127\9: See above, chap. i, n. 41. Archiloch. fr. 12: ~kei/nou kephalê\n kai\ chari/enta me/lê Hê/phaistos katharoi=sin en hei/masin ampheponê/thê~. E., Or. 40 f.: the slain Klytaimnestra ~puri\ kathê/gnistai de/mas~ and Sch. ~pa/nta ga\r kathairei= to\ pu=r, kai\ hagna\ dokei= ei=nai ta\ kaio/mena, ta\ de\ a/tapha memiasme/na~. E., Sup. 1211: ~. . . hi/n' autô=n~ (those who are being buried) ~sô/math' hêgni/sthê puri/~; cf. ~ha/gnison pursô=| me/lathron~, IT. 1216. On a grave inscr. from Attica (Epigr. Gr. 104): ~entha/de Dia/logos katharô=| puri\ gui=a kathê/ras . . . ô/|chet' es atha/natous~--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 ~pu=r katha/rsion~ (E., IA. 1112; ~katharsi/ô| phlogi/~, E., Hel. 869) and go straight ~pro\s athana/tous~. Iamb., Myst. v, 12, also explains how fire ~ta\ prosago/mena kathai/rei kai\ apolu/ei tô=n en tê=| hu/lê| desmô=n, aphomoioi= toi=s theoi=s~, etc.]

[128\9: Cf. also Pl., Lg. 677 DE; Plu., Fac. Orb. Lun. 25, p. 940 C.]

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