Psyche: The Cult Of Souls And Belief In Immortality Among The Greeks - free ebook by Erwin Rohde

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Psyche: The Cult Of Souls And Belief In Immortality Among The Greeks

Erwin Rohde

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Psyche

Psyche

The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks By ERWIN ROHDE LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER &amp; CO., LTD. NEW YORK: HARCOURT, BRACE &amp; COMPANY, INC. 1925 Translated from the eighth edition by W. B. HILLIS. M.A. Printed in Great Britain by Stephen Austin &amp; Sons, Ltd., Hertford....

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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

T HIS book offers an account of the opinions held by the Greeks about the life of the human soul after death, and is thus intended as a contribution to the history of Greek religion. Such an undertaking has in a special measure to contend with the difficulties that face any inquiry into the religious life and thought of the Greeks. Greek religion was a natural growth, not a special foundation, and the ideas and feelings which gave it its inward tone and outward shape never received abstract form

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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

T HE publication of a second edition of this book affords me a welcome opportunity of making my account more exact and to the point in certain places; of adding some points that had been overlooked or omitted; and of noticing with approval or disapproval some divergent opinions that had obtained currency in the interval. Controversy is, however, confined within the narrowest limits and to points of minor importance (and only then in answer to more serious and significant objections). The plan an

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PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH EDITIONS

PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH EDITIONS

I N supervising together this reprint of “Psyche” we have found ourselves faced with the question which Schöll and Dieterich had to decide in bringing out the third edition—whether changes or additions would be admissible. It went without saying that the text must remain untouched in the form last given to it by Rohde’s own hand. Nor was it possible to make any additions to the notes without seriously disturbing the carefully considered architecture of the whole book. It would have been more pos

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TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

R OHDE is very unsystematic in his mode of quoting from ancient authorities: he has, for example, four different ways of referring to the Iliad and the Odyssey, two of referring to Demosthenes and the Orators, etc. In quoting from the lesser authorities he sometimes used editions which have since become antiquated. (He even goes so far as to quote Clem. Alex. by the page and letter of Heinsius’ re-edition of Sylburg.) I have made an attempt to reduce the number of inconsistencies and to give ref

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I

I

To the immediate understanding of mankind nothing seems so self-evident, nothing so little in need of explanation, as the phenomenon of Life itself, the fact of man’s own existence. On the other hand, the cessation of this so self-evident existence, whenever it obtrudes itself upon his notice, arouses man’s ever-renewed astonishment. There are primitive peoples to whom death whenever it occurs seems an arbitrary abbreviation of life: if it is not due to visible forces, then some invisible magic

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II

II

Homer consistently assumes the departure of the soul into an inaccessible land of the dead where it exists in an unconscious half-life. There it is without clear self-consciousness and consequently neither desires nor wills anything. It has no influence on the upper world, and consequently no longer receives any share of the worship of the living. The dead are beyond the reach of any feelings whether of fear or love. No means exists of forcing or enticing them back again. Homer knows nothing of

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III

III

A test case of the thorough-going uniformity and consistency of the Homeric conception of the nature and circumstances of the souls of the departed is provided for us, within the limits of the poems themselves, by the story of Odysseus’ Journey to Hades —a test they are hardly likely to survive, it may well be thought. How is the poet in describing a living hero’s dealings with the inhabitants of the shadow-world, going to preserve the immaterial, dreamlike character of the Homeric “Souls”? How

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NOTES TO CHAPTER I

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

1 E. Kammer, Einheit d. Odyssee , 510 ff. 2 E.g. Il. Α 3, πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς ( κεφαλάς Apol. Rhod., as in Λ 55: mistakenly) Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν. Ψ 105, παννυχίη γὰρ μοι Πατροκλῆος δειλοῖο ψυχὴ ἐφεστήκει . . . ἔϊκτο δὲ θέσκελον αὐτῷ (cf. 66). 2 E.g. Il. Α 3, πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς ( κεφαλάς Apol. Rhod., as in Λ 55: mistakenly) Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν. Ψ 105, παννυχίη γὰρ μοι Πατροκλῆος δειλοῖο ψυχὴ ἐφεστήκει . . . ἔϊκτο δὲ θέσκ

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§ 2

§ 2

The translation, then, of Menelaos, while still alive, to the ends of the earth to live there in perpetual blessedness is indeed a miracle, but a miracle that finds its justification and precedent in the range of Homeric belief. The only thing new about it is that Menelaos has a special dwelling-place assigned to him, not in the land of the gods, the proper realm of immortality, nor as in the case of Tithonos and as Kalypso desired for Odysseus, in the company of a deity, but in a separate place

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§ 3

§ 3

The importance of this new creation for the later development of Greek belief makes it all the more necessary to be quite clear as to what exactly this novelty really was. Was it a Paradise for the pious and the just? A sort of Greek Valhalla for the bravest heroes?—or was it that a reconciliation and adjustment between virtue and happiness such as this life never knows had revealed itself to the eyes of hope in a Land of Promise? Nothing of the kind is warranted by these lines. Menelaos was nev

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§ 4

§ 4

But the individuals who are admitted to an everlasting life in the Elysian land at the end of the world are much too distantly removed from the habitations of the living for them to be credited with the power of influencing the world of men. 23 They resemble the gods only in the enjoyment accorded to them of an unendingly conscious life. Of the omnipotence of 62 the gods they have not the smallest share 24 any more than the dwellers in Erebos, from whose fate their own is otherwise so different.

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§ 5

§ 5

We were obliged to assume that the poet who inserted these inimitably smooth, melodious verses in the Odyssey was not the first inventor or discoverer of the Elysian paradise beyond 64 the realm of mortality. But though he followed in the footsteps of others, when he introduced into the Homeric poem a reference to this new belief, he was giving this idea for the first time an enduring place in Greek imagination. Other poems might disappear, but anything that appeared in the Iliad or the Odyssey

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§ 6

§ 6

It is natural to feel surprise that in none of these stories is there any mention of translation to a common meeting-place of the Elect, such as the Elysian plain seemed to be. We must on that account be content to leave unanswered the question to what precise extent these lines of the Odyssey which describe the translation of Menelaos to Elysium may have influenced the development of translation stories in the post-Homeric Epics. The influence must clearly have been 66 considerable. 31 The stor

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II

II

The Hesiodic poem known as the “Works and Days” consists of a number of independent pieces of didactic or narrative interest loosely strung together. In it, not far from the beginning, comes the story of the Five Ages of Men. As regards its subject-matter, the train of thought which unites this section to the passages which precede and follow it is hardly discoverable; in form it is quite disconnected. In the beginning we are there told the gods of Olympos created a Golden race whose members liv

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§ 2

§ 2

The men of the Golden Age, after sleep has overcome them and they have died and been laid in the earth, become by the will of Zeus “Daimones”—Daimones upon earth, watchers of men, wandering over all the earth, veiled in clouds, 71 observing justice and injustice, 34 dispensing riches like kings. These men of the earliest times have then become effective realities. They are not spirits confined to an inaccessible region beyond this world, but powers acting and working amongst men. In this exalted

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§ 3

§ 3

The Silver Age, then, belongs to a long-since vanished past. 44 The stalwarts of the Bronze Age, we are told, destroyed by their deeds, went down into the gloomy home of the dreadful Hades, nameless. Black Death seized them, for all their violence, and they left the light of the sun. Except for the addition of the adjective “nameless” one might, indeed, suppose that this was a description of the fate of the souls of the Homeric heroes. Perhaps, however, the word 45 only means that no honourable

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§ 4

§ 4

Hesiod says nothing of any influence upon this world exerted by the souls of the Translated in the Islands of the Blest, such as is attributed to the Daimones of the Golden 77 race, nor of any religious worship, which would be implied by such influence if it existed, such as the underworld spirits of the Silver Age receive. All relations with this world are broken off, for any influence from this side would completely contradict the whole conception of these blessed departed. Hesiod faithfully s

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§ 5

§ 5

Hesiod’s description, then, of the five Ages of Men gives us the most important information about the development of Greek belief in the soul. What he tells us of the spirits of the Silver and Golden race shows that from the earliest dawn of history down to the actual lifetime of the poet, a form of ancestor-worship had prevailed, based upon the once living belief in the elevation of disembodied and immaterial souls to the rank of powerful, consciously active spirits. But the company of these sp

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NOTES TO CHAPTER II

NOTES TO CHAPTER II

The history of Greek culture and religion shows no sudden break or revolution in its course. The Greeks neither at any time experienced a movement from within that caused a violent recoil from the path which they had chosen, nor were they ever diverted by the overwhelming might of an invading force from the natural course of their evolution. Out of their own natural feelings and reflexion this most intellectually gifted nation evolved the great ideas that nourished succeeding centuries. They ant

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§ 1

§ 1

Prominent among the chieftains, who, under the leadership of Adrastos, came to the help of Polyneikes and laid siege to Thebes, was Amphiaraos the Argive hero and seer descended from the mysterious priest and prophet Melampous. He was drawn into the war against his will, for he foresaw its unhappy end. After the decisive struggle in which the opposing brothers fell slain by each other’s hand, the Argive host turned to flight, and with them fled Amphiaraos. But before Periklymenos, who was pursui

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§ 2

§ 2

But the Epic was by no means uniform in intention, or carried through as a systematic unity; it was far from being the offspring of a learned reflection that could tolerate no discrepancy. Even here we find at least some few dim 96 recollections of the ancient belief in gods that can have their permanent abode in mountain hollows. The Odyssey (xix, 178 f.) calls Minos, the son of Zeus (cf. Il. xiii, 450; xiv, 322; Od. xi, 568) who ruled in Knossos the Cretan city, “the familiar gossip of great Z

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§ 3

§ 3

The “grave” under the Omphalos means in the case of Python the overthrow of an earth-dwelling Chthonic Daimon by the cult of Apollo. The “grave” of Zeus, which had thrust itself into the place of an older legend of the dwelling of Zeus in the cave of the mountain, expresses the same idea as this legend, but expresses it in a form current in later ages which knew of many “Heroes” who after their death and from their graves gave proof of a higher existence and a powerful influence. The Zeus that d

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§ 4

§ 4

Thus it may be that under many a Hero whose grave was shown in the Temple of a god an ancient local-god was hidden, whose abode beneath the earth had been converted into a “grave” now that he himself had sunk from a deity of higher rank to a human chieftain. It depended upon the circumstances of the case whether his humanization was complete or whether the memory of his former god-head (preserved in cult) secured for him a second elevation to the heavenly regions 51 among the Olympian gods whose

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NOTES TO CHAPTER III

NOTES TO CHAPTER III

1 Pi., N. ix, 24 ff., x, 8 f., [Apollod.] iii, 6, 8, 4 ( σὺν τῷ ἅρματι καὶ τῷ ἡνιόχῳ Βάτωνι . . . ἐκρύφθη καὶ Ζεὺς ἀθάνατον αὐτὸν ἐποίησεν ) etc. The expressions used to describe the translation and continued conscious existence of A. are noteworthy: κατὰ γαῖ’ αὐτόν τέ νιν καὶ φαιδίμους ἵππους ἔμαρψεν , Pi., O. vi, 14. Ζεὺς κρύψεν ἅμ’ ἵπποις , N. ix, 25. γαῖα ὑπέδεκτο μάντιν Οἰκλείδαν , x, 8. μάντις κεκευθὼς πολεμίας ὑπο χθονός , A., Th. , 588. ἐδέξατο ῥαγεῖσα Θηβαία κόνις , S. fr. , 873 (= 958

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§ 1

§ 1

When about the year 620 Drakon at Athens for the first time collected and committed to writing the customary law of his country he also ordained that the gods and the national Heroes should be honoured together according to ancestral usage. 1 We are thus for the first time introduced to Heroes as beings of a higher kind, mentioned side by side with the gods, and like them to be worshipped with regularly offered sacrifice. Their cult, like that of the gods, is by implication of long standing: it

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§ 2

§ 2

If now we inquire into the nature and essence of this species of higher beings that was as yet unknown to, or disregarded by, the epic we get little information on the subject from direct statements as to their nature by writers of antiquity. We can, however, learn a great deal about them from what we are told of individual Heroes and more particularly from what we know of the peculiar nature of the religious worship paid to them. 7 The Heroes were worshipped with sacrifice like the gods; but th

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§ 3

§ 3

The Heroes are, then, spirits of the dead, and not a species of inferior deities or “demigods”; 23 and quite distinct again from the “daimones” known to later speculative thought and, indeed, to popular superstition. These latter are divine spirits of a lower order; but spirits which have always been exempt from death because they have never entered into the finite existence of men. The Heroes on the other hand have once been living men; from being men they have become Heroes, and that only afte

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§ 4

§ 4

How it came about that the cult of ancestors was rescued from partial, and more than partial, oblivion, and rose to a new and lasting importance, that, indeed, we cannot say. We can give no real explanation indicative of the origin and progress of this important development in Greek religious life. We know neither the time nor the place of the first serious revival of this newly awakened primitive worship; nor can we tell the manner or stages of its diffusion during those obscure years of the ei

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§ 5

§ 5

The worship of a Hero is everywhere connected with the site of his grave. That is the general rule proved in innumerable cases. That is why in the case of a more than ordinarily revered Hero, his grave as the centre of his worship is set up in some prominent and honourable place—the market-place of the city, the Prytaneion, 30 or, like the grave of Pelops in the Altis at Olympia, in the very middle of the holy precinct, in the thick of the festival crowd. 31 Or else the Hero who guarded the city

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§ 6

§ 6

The “clans” that we meet with at Athens and in other Greek states are, as a rule, groups for which a demonstrable common kinship is no longer a condition of membership. The majority of such politically recognized, self-contained clans assemble together for the common worship of particular gods but many also honour a Hero as well, who generally in such cases gives his name to the clan. Thus, the Eteoboutadai at Athens paid honour to Boutes, the Alkmaionidai to Alkmaion, the Bouzygai to Bouzyges,

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§ 7

§ 7

We can no longer follow in detail the process of development and extension which the idea of the Hero underwent. The accounts which we possess show us the fully developed product, not the steps which led up to this result. We first get an idea of the number of Hero-cults existing in Greece during the greatest period of its history from the enormous number of graves or cults of Heroes mentioned by Pausanias in the account of his travels in the age of the Antonines over the most important countrie

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§ 8

§ 8

As a rule there was no difficulty in securing great or famous names when it was necessary to find a patron-Hero for the city. In particular the founder of the city and its regular worship of the gods, and the whole divine circle which hedged round the life of the citizens, was regularly worshipped with high honour as Hero Archegetes. 63 Naturally, they were mostly mythical or even arbitrarily invented figures to whom the greater or lesser cities of Greece, as well as their offshoots in foreign l

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§ 9

§ 9

Thus encouraged on all sides, Hero-worship began to multiply the objects of the cult beyond all counting. The great wars of freedom against the Persians had aroused the deepest and most religious feelings of the Greeks, and it did not seem too much when whole companies of those who had fallen for freedom were raised to the rank of Hero. Thus, even into a very late period, the solemn procession every year to honour the Greeks who had been left on the field of Plataea was never omitted; and at the

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§ 10

§ 10

However much the meaning attached to the name of Hero may have widened or even deteriorated, the belief in the Heroes lost none of its significance and long retained its hold on the people. The belief in such a class of spirits stood almost on a par with the belief in gods. If the circle of influence possessed by some particular local-Hero was narrow and restricted, that only made him seem all the nearer to his worshippers. The spirits of their ancestors, their own and the country’s peculiar pos

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§ 11

§ 11

The oracular Heroes are regularly confined to the neighbourhood of their graves. In addition, what we know of the legends that were told of the appearances or the unseen activities of these Heroes shows that, like the spirits that haunt ancient castles or caverns in our own popular mythology, they were confined within the boundaries of their native country, the neighbourhood of their graves or the site of their cult. They are, as a rule, artless stories of the anger displayed by a Hero whose rig

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§ 12

§ 12

But the belief in Heroes rose to still greater heights. Not merely in peaceful athletic contests, but in real need, in struggles when they were fighting to defend the highest possessions of all—the freedom and safety of their country—the Heroes were found on the side of the Greeks. Nowhere do we see more plainly how real and vivid was the faith of contemporary Greece in the Heroes than in the stories told of the appeals then made to them and of their participation in the Persian wars. At Maratho

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NOTES TO CHAPTER IV

NOTES TO CHAPTER IV

1 Porph., Abst. 4, 22, p. 268, 23 Nauck. 2 It is not quite clear whether it is legitimate to see in what Paus. 2, 2, 2, says about the graves of Neleus and Sisyphos a first trace of the worship of Hero-relics, as Lobeck does, Agla. 284. The oracle verse from Oinom. ap. Eus., PE. 5, 28, p. 223 B, in which Lykourgos is warned to honour Μενέλαν τε καὶ ἄλλους ἀθανάτους ἥρωας , οἳ ἐν Λακεδαίμονι δίῃ —is certainly quite late, later than the ἥκεις ὦ Λυκόοργε that was known already to Herod.; earlier ho

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I CULT OF THE CHTHONIC DEITIES

I CULT OF THE CHTHONIC DEITIES

The chief new feature revealing itself to comparative study in the development of religion in the post-Homeric period is the worship of chthonic deities, that is, of deities dwelling in the interior of the earth. And yet it is an undoubted fact that these divinities are among the oldest possessions of Greek religious faith. Indeed, bound as they are to the soil of the country, they are the true local deities, the real gods of home and country. They are also not unknown to Homer; but epic poetry

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§ 2

§ 2

As the numbers of the underworld beings increased, and their cult grew and expanded, these divinities began to have a very different meaning for the living from what they once had for the Greeks of the Homeric age. The upper and the lower worlds are drawn closer to each other; the world of the living borders upon that world after death over which the chthonic gods hold sway. The ancient belief that the earth-caverns of their own land, on which men dwelt and worked, were the near and accessible a

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II FUNERAL CEREMONIES AND WORSHIP OF THE DEAD

II FUNERAL CEREMONIES AND WORSHIP OF THE DEAD

The first duty that the survivors owe to their dead is to bury the body in the customary manner. This age takes the matter more seriously than the Homeric people had done. Whereas in Homer denial of burial to enemies fallen in war is often mentioned, it is now regarded as a religious duty that is seldom neglected to give back the bodies of the fallen foe for burial. To deny the honour of burial to members of one’s own city is an outrage of the most extreme kind; everyone knows what terrible veng

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§ 2

§ 2

Once the body is buried, the soul of the dead enters the invisible company of the “Better and Superior”. 65 This belief, which Aristotle regarded as of primeval antiquity in Greece, emerges very clearly in the cult-observance of these post-Homeric centuries from the obscurity which the Homeric age had imposed upon it. The soul of the dead has its special cult-group composed naturally enough of the descendants and family of the dead, and of them only. There even survived a dim memory of the time

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§ 3

§ 3

Like all other cults, the cult of the dead had more to do with the relations of the daimon to the living than with his nature and essence considered abstractly, and in itself: a dogmatic account of this nature was neither offered nor required by his worship. Still, the cult was founded upon a general 171 conception, merely evading more exact definition, of the nature of the departed spirit. Men sacrificed to the souls of the dead, as to the gods 116 and Heroes, because they regarded them as invi

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§ 4

§ 4

Though it is good and profitable in one’s own interest to enlist the sympathy and retain the goodwill of these invisible spirit powers by sacrifice, yet their worship is to a much greater degree conditioned by a sentiment of piety which no longer seeks its own advantage, but the greater honour and welfare of the dead. Such piety certainly takes on a curious form, but it is this which gives its special character to the cult of the souls, and the ideas which lie behind that cult. The souls of the

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§ 5

§ 5

We cannot at this late date trace the reawakening of the cult of souls in post-Homeric times or the varying stages it may have gone through in its development. Still, some of the facts are plain. Indications have already been noticed that point to the view that the cult of the dead was carried on in the days when the aristocratic regime still held sway in Greece with greater pomp and seriousness than in the centuries—the fifth and sixth—beyond which our knowledge hardly extends. In these earlier

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III TRACES OF THE CULT OF SOULS IN THE BLOOD-FEUD AND SATISFACTION FOR MURDER § 1

III TRACES OF THE CULT OF SOULS IN THE BLOOD-FEUD AND SATISFACTION FOR MURDER § 1

In the renewal and development of the cult offered to the dead, an important part was again played by that priestly association which exercised such a decisive influence on the public worship of invisible powers in the Greek states—the priesthood of the Delphic oracle. On the occurrence of disturbing portents in the sky recourse was had to the god, who gave orders that in addition to the gods and Heroes “sacrifice should be made to the dead also on the appointed days, in accordance with custom a

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§ 2

§ 2

It is true that the state directs the blood-feud required of the relatives of the dead man along constitutional channels that shall not contravene the laws of the community; but it does not in the least intend to abolish the fundamental idea of the ancient family vendetta. It reasserts the original claim to vengeance of the victim violently done to death—a claim closely bound up with the cult of the dead—by forbidding the old custom, common in Homeric times, of buying off the blood-guiltiness of

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§ 3

§ 3

Thus, the whole procedure at murder trials was directed rather to the satisfaction of invisible powers—the injured souls of the dead and the daimones that represent them—than of the state and its living members. In essence it was a religious act. As a result all was not at an end when the human verdict on the case had been given. On his return from exile the man guilty of involuntary homicide, besides receiving the 180 pardon of the relatives of the dead man, had still a double duty to perform;

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§ 4

§ 4

The Oracle, then, of the omniscient God sanctified and recommended these rites of expiation; the state regulated its judicial procedure in murder cases on the lines of the old family blood-feud. It was natural, then, that the ideas on which these religious and political institutions were based—the conviction of a continued existence enjoyed by the murdered man’s soul and of his consciousness and knowledge of what occurred among the living who survived, his anger and his powers—that these ideas s

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NOTES TO CHAPTER V

NOTES TO CHAPTER V

1 This dual efficacy of the χθόνιοι is explained naturally enough by their nature as underground spirits. There is no reason for supposing that their influence on the fertility of the fields was a later addition (as Preller does, Dem. u. Perseph. 188 ff., followed by many). Still less have we any grounds for regarding the protection of souls and the care for the fertility of crops as a sort of allegorizing parallel (soul = grain of seed) as has been usual since the time of K. O. Müller. 2 Ζεὺς κ

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§ 2

§ 2

Wherever the cult of the gods of the earth and the lower world, and particularly of Demeter and her daughter, was at its height it was not difficult for hopes of a better fate in the kingdom of souls below the earth, where those deities ruled, to become attached to participation in their cult. The tendency to connect closely such hopes with the worship of these gods may have existed in many different localities. In Eleusis alone, however (and in the cults, mostly of later origin, affiliated to E

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§ 3

§ 3

As to the actual details of what went on at the long-drawn-out festival itself our knowledge hardly extends beyond the most external circumstances, and is even so most incomplete. A few notices in late and often untrustworthy writers give us a very inadequate picture of what took place inside the great temple of initiation and of the essential Mystery. The secret which was committed 19 to the Mystai and Epoptai has been well kept. Considering the enormous number of worshippers indiscriminately a

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§ 4

§ 4

Inquiry is on the wrong track when a deeper meaning is sought for in the mimic presentation of the sacred myth at Eleusis whereby the human soul was to obtain the blessed hope of immortality. The conviction that the human soul was immortal in its own right, by reason of its own nature, was not a conviction that was obtained at Eleusis. That is why we may dismiss such fanciful analogies as those between the human soul and the seed of corn or the goddess of the earth’s life. Such analogies, if the

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§ 5

§ 5

In spite of many extravagant statements from antiquity, we have no means of estimating how widely participation in the Eleusinian mysteries (whether of those celebrated at Eleusis itself or in the numerous associated festivals) was extended in Greece. Still, it is probable that large numbers, not from Athens alone but from the whole of Greece, sought eagerly to enter the state of grace vouchsafed to the worshippers at Eleusis. In this way the more lively conception of the state of the soul in th

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NOTES TO CHAPTER VI

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI

1 H. Cer. 270 ff. (Demeter speaks) ἀλλ’ ἄγε μοι νηόν τε μέγαν καὶ βωμὸν ὑπ’ αὐτῷ τευχόντων πᾶς δῆμος ὑπαὶ πόλιν αἰπύ τε τεῖχος, Καλλιχόρου καθύπερθεν, ἐπὶ προὔχοντι κολωνῷ. ὄργια δ’ αὐτὴ ἐγὼν ὑποθήσομαι , ὡς ἂν ἔπειτα εὐαγέως ἔρδοντες ἐμὸν μένος ἱλάσκησθε . Building of the temple: 298 ff., and following that the instructions of the goddess as to the δρησμοσύνη ἱερῶν and the ὄργια , 474 ff. 1 H. Cer. 270 ff. (Demeter speaks) ἀλλ’ ἄγε μοι νηόν τε μέγαν καὶ βωμὸν ὑπ’ αὐτῷ τευχόντων πᾶς δῆμος ὑπαὶ π

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§ 2

§ 2

The soul, then, being safely arrived on the other bank and Kerberos passed by—what awaited it there? Those who had been initiated into the mysteries now counted upon enjoying the glad future that their hopes had formerly pictured. In reality this blessed future, vouchsafed by the grace of the deities who rule below, was not very hard to obtain. So many were initiated and recommended to divine favour that the picture of Hades, once so gloomy, began to assume a more genial aspect. Quite early we m

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§ 3

§ 3

The picturing of the future life, however seriously it might be carried on by adherents of certain mystical sects, remained for the poets and the public at Athens in the fifth century little more than an amusement of idle fancy in which a man might indulge his own whim with perfect freedom. The comic poets from Pherekrates onwards regarded a Descent into the Unknown country as a suitable framework for a burlesque play. 17 According to their fancy a Paradise, like that of the golden age on earth

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§ 4

§ 4

We ought to be able to observe the change which had come over the conception of the future life since the days of Homer from a consideration of the picture of the Underworld which Polygnotos of Thasos painted on one of the walls of the Hall of the Knidians at Delphi. The details of this picture are precisely known to us from the account given by Pausanias. The first impression that we get from it is the extraordinary vagueness and undeveloped state of the mythology of the underworld at this peri

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NOTES TO CHAPTER VII

NOTES TO CHAPTER VII

1 Plu. (the MSS. wrongly give Themistios) de An. fr. 6 ap. Stob., Fl. iv, 52 b, 48 H. = p. 107, 27 ff. Mein.; Luc., Catapl. 23. 2 Paus. 9, 31, 5. 3 The remains in Kinkel, Frag. Epic. i, 215 ff. This Μινυάς was identified by K. O. Müller, Orchom 2 ., p. 12, with the Orphic κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου , and this suggestion has been followed, though with hesitation, even by Lobeck, Agl. 360, 373. It rests solely on the fact that the Orphic κατάβασις was very doubtfully ascribed according to Clemens to Prod

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§ 2

§ 2

In the spiritual life of men and nations, it is not by any means the extravagant or, in one sense or another, the abnormal that is most difficult for our sympathetic understanding to grasp. By clinging to a traditional and too narrow formula for the Greek spirit we make difficulties for ourselves; but it is not really a matter of serious perplexity, if we reflect upon it, to understand how Greek religion at the height of its development regarded “madness” ( μανία ) as a religious phenomenon of w

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§ 3

§ 3

The Greek type of religion, perhaps from its very origin, certainly at the earliest period of its development in which it becomes accessible to our observation—the period to which the Homeric poems belong—had no leaning to anything resembling an excited emotional worship like that practised by the Thracians in their orgiastic cult of Dionysos. The whole movement wherever it came to their notice must have struck the Greeks of Homer as something strange and barbaric, attractive only through the in

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§ 4

§ 4

Wherever a cultus of this kind, making its aim and object the evocation of ecstatic raptures, has taken root—whether in whole races of men or in religious communities—there we find in close alliance with it, whether as cause or effect or both, a peculiarly vital belief in the life and power of the soul of man after its separation from the body. Our comparative glance over the analogous phenomena of other lands has shown us that the exalted worship offered to “Dionysos” among the Thracians was on

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§ 5

§ 5

Further than this the Thracians—who never quite outgrew a sort of semi-animated torpor of the intellect—could not go on the way marked out for them. The seed of a mystical form of religion that existed in the ecstatic dance-orgies of Dionysos-worship never came to fruition. We never feel with them that we are being taken beyond the region of vague unconscious emotion; it is but a passing illumination that for a moment of wild excitement reveals the near presence of overwhelming spirit-forces. No

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NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII

NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII

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 re

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§ 2

§ 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 th

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§ 3

§ 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 entir

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§ 4

§ 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 see

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§ 5

§ 5

The activity of the seer was not confined to foreseeing and foretelling the future. We hear of a “Bakis” who “purified” and delivered the women of Sparta from an attack of madness that had spread like an epidemic among them. 66 The prophetic age of Greece must have seen the origin of what later became part of the regular duties of the “seer”: the cure of diseases, especially those of the mind; 67 the averting of evil of every kind by various strange means, and particularly the supply of help and

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§ 6

§ 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

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§ 7

§ 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 becomin

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NOTES TO CHAPTER IX

NOTES TO CHAPTER IX

1 We may safely take it for granted that Διόνυσος is the Greek name of the god, though a completely convincing etymology for the word has yet to be found. Recent attempts to derive it from the Thracian language are not very convincing. (Tomaschek, Sitzber. Wien. Ak. 130, 41; Kretschmer, Aus der Anomia , 22 f.; Einl. 241.) Acc. to Kretschmer a Thracian origin for the name is proved by the appearance of the form Δεόνυσο —on inss. found in a few Greek towns surrounded by Thracian influences, e.g. A

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§ 2

§ 2

The Orphics wherever we meet with them in Greek countries always appear as members of a private cult-society who are held together by a specially organized and individual mode of worship. The old Thracian worship of Dionysos in its straining after the infinite conducted its revels under the open sky of night, seeking out deserted mountain-sides and forests where it was farthest from civilization and closest to unspoiled and untrammelled nature. How this cult may have accommodated itself to the n

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§ 3

§ 3

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

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§ 4

§ 4

The mixture of the elements that make up the totality of his being in itself prescribes for man the direction that his effort shall take. He must free himself from the Titanic element and, thus purified, return to the god, a fragment of whom is living in him. 42 The distinction between the Titanic and Dionysiac elements in man is an allegorical expression of the popular 342 distinction between body and soul; it also corresponds to a profoundly felt estimate of the relative value of these two sid

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§ 5

§ 5

This, then, is the keystone that completes the arch of Orphic religion—the belief in the divine, immortal, and abiding life of the soul for whom union with the body and its desires is a thwarting hindrance and repression—a punishment from which its one desire, as soon as it is awakened to a full knowledge of itself is to escape in order that it may belong entirely to itself in full enjoyment of its powers. The contrast between these ideas and those of the Homeric world is complete; there , the s

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NOTES TO CHAPTER X

NOTES TO CHAPTER X

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

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§ 2

§ 2

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

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§ 3

§ 3

In the teaching of Herakleitos of Ephesos the living power of the primal essence—the one 10 and universal, out of which arises through change the many and the particular, which manifests itself in the union, regarded as indissoluble, of matter and motive force—received even greater prominence than with the older Ionians. By them matter itself—described as either limited or not limited in reference to one particular quality—is regarded as self-evidently in motion. For Herakleitos the origin of al

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§ 4

§ 4

Even before the days of Herakleitos the torch of philosophic inquiry had been borne from the coasts of Ionia to the West by Xenophanes of Kolophon who in a life of adventure had wandered as far as Southern Italy and Sicily. For his fiery temperament the most subtle reflection was turned into life and experience, and the one enduring source of Being to which he ever directed his gaze became the universal Divinity that is all perception and thought, that tirelessly embraces all things in its thoug

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§ 5

§ 5

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

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§ 6

§ 6

Empedokles of Akragas did not belong to the Pythagorean school (it lost its external unity in his time); but he approaches Pythagorean doctrine so closely in his opinions and teaching about the soul of man, its problems and destinies, that there can be no doubt about Pythagorean influence upon the formation of his convictions on these points. His many-sided activities also included the study of natural science and he took up the researches of the Ionic Physiologists with zeal and a marked aptitu

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§ 7

§ 7

Empedokles took a fully developed “hylozoic” system (which in itself, with its introduction of the motive forces of Conflict and Love, already betrayed a latent dualism) and attempted to combine with it an extreme form of spiritualist teaching. His attempt illustrates very clearly the observation that a philosophic science of nature in itself could never lead to the establishment of the axiom that the individual “soul” after its separation from the body continues to exist, still less that it is

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NOTES TO CHAPTER XI

NOTES TO CHAPTER XI

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

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§ 2

§ 2

A peculiar position is taken up by Pindar. Two contrasted views of the nature, origin, and destiny of the soul seem to be combined in his mind with equal claim to authority. In the Victory Odes allusions predominate which imply an agreement with the popular view expressed in the sayings of poets and the presuppositions of the cult of souls and the worship of Heroes. After its separation from the body, the soul disappears into the underworld. 22 The piety and affectionate memory of relatives and

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§ 3

§ 3

But perhaps by the expression of such doubts we do less than justice to the influence which a Greek poet might exercise upon the minds and dispositions of his hearers. Greek popular opinion was very much inclined to place the poet on a pedestal to which his modern representative would hardly care to aspire, and to which at any rate he could never attain. The purely artistic value and importance of a poem did not seem to be impaired by the demand that it should at the same time instruct and edify

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§ 4

§ 4

The Attic Tragedy of the fifth century must of its own accord, even if the conscious purpose of the dramatists had not tended in the same direction, have developed into an artistic product based on psychological interest. The real theatre of that drama must inevitably have become the interior of its hero’s mind. The tragic poet attempted something hitherto unknown. The characters and events of ancient legend or history which had passed shadowlike before the minds of the hearers or readers of all

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§ 5

§ 5

Towards the great problems of dramatic philosophy—the problems of the freedom or compulsion of the will, the guilt and destiny of man—Sophokles took up a position that differed essentially from that of his great predecessor. A maturer and calmer self-abandonment to the observation of life and its difficulties made him less able to rest content with simple or sweeping solutions of the complexities; made him seek out other and more various modes of understanding. The individual man, stamped with t

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§ 6

§ 6

In the course of a long life Sophokles was able to make himself complete master of his art and grow up into strong and generous manhood without the guidance or support of either theological or philosophical learning. Theology he did not care to seek out in its hiding place, the obscurity of isolated sects. Philosophy, in the period of his impressionable youth, had not yet reached Athens, and when he had attained riper years his noble simplicity of temper had little to gain or to fear from the me

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NOTES TO CHAPTER XII

NOTES TO CHAPTER XII

1 The learned and more particularly the philosophers of later ages paid special attention to utterances of the older poetry that gave expression to belief of a spiritualist tendency. Just as they selected and preserved passages from Pindar (and from Melanippides in the case soon to be mentioned ), which bore witness to an advanced view of the soul, so they must also have given us similar passages from other melic or from iambic and elegiac poets—if such passages had existed. They must, for examp

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§ 2

§ 2

Plato had not always given his assent to the belief in immortality. At any rate, it must have remained very much in the background of his thoughts and his belief in the days when he still regarded the world from the point of view of a slightly more developed Socraticism. Not only at that period (in the Apology ) does he make his Sokrates go to his death without the most distant approach to a belief in the undying vitality of his soul, but also in the first sketch of his Ideal State—a sketch made

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§ 3

§ 3

It is evident that in what he thus, clothing philosophy in the language of poetry, says of the origin, destiny, and character of the soul, which though beyond time is yet placed within time, and though beyond space is yet the cause of all movement within space—that in all this Plato is following in the track of the theologians of earlier times. Only in the poetry and speculative thought of theologi , not in any physiologists’ doctrine, did he find the conception, imaginatively expressed and poin

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§ 4

§ 4

There is an “other-worldly” tone in this philosophy, and its doctrine of the soul. Far beyond the world in which life has placed man lies the realm of pure Being, the good, the perfect, and the unspoilt. To reach that realm at last, to free the mind from the unrest and illusion of the senses, to be rid of the desires and emotions that would “nail” 74 it down here below, to sever its connexion 75 with the body and bodily things—that is the soul’s highest duty. The only reason why it is banished i

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NOTES TO CHAPTER XIII

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIII

Plato and the Platonic account of the nature, origin, and destiny of the soul closes a period. It marks the end of that theological and spiritualist movement to the force and significance of which nothing bears clearer witness than the fact that it could have such a conclusion. After this point its development ceases—at least it disappears from the surface of Greek life: like one of those Asiatic torrents with which the ancients were familiar it buries itself underground for a long stretch of it

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§ 2

§ 2

At the outset of this period, and illuminating a long stretch of it with the light of his genius, stands the figure of Aristotle. In what this master di color’ che sanno had to say of the soul’s nature and destiny two voices are distinctly audible. The soul, he instructs us, is that which in a living and organic physical body brings the potentially existing to actual existence. It is the form to the body’s matter, the culmination of the capacities of independent life residing in the particular b

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§ 3

§ 3

The dogmatic teaching of the Stoics on the subject of the human soul is closely bound up with the materialistic pantheism by means of which they explained all the phenomena of life, of being and becoming upon earth. God is All, and divinity is nothing outside this “all”, which forms the world: the Universe is God. God is thus not only the matter but the form, the life and the power of the world. Divinity is the original matter, the etherial Fire, the fiery “breath” which maintains itself or chan

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§ 4

§ 4

The limited doctrine of immortality which, as we have seen, was not an essential part of the teaching of Stoicism, began to be called in question as soon as the rigid dogmatism of the school was subjected to the too-searching criticism of other schools of thought. In the clash of opinions Stoicism began to be doubtful of the absolute validity of its own teaching. The boundaries of orthodox doctrine once so firmly drawn now became more fluid; exchange and even compromise became common. Panaitios,

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§ 5

§ 5

Stoicism had a long and vigorous life. More than ever during the first and second centuries of our era did it fulfil its real task of acting as a practical guide to conduct, not as a mere museum of dead erudition. It made good its claim to provide its adherents with the autonomous freedom and independence of a mind at peace with itself, whose virtue was proof against the tribulation and failure of life, and not corrupted by its plenty. It was not always blind imitation of a literary fashion or t

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§ 6

§ 6

The atomist doctrine renewed by Epicurus demanded in the most emphatic manner of its adherents that they should abandon the belief in personal survival. For the atomist the soul is corporeal, a compound made 505 up of the most mobile of the atoms which form the plastic elements of air and fire. It occupies all parts of the body, and is held together by the body, while at the same time, and in spite of this, holding itself in essential distinctness from the body. 72 Epicurus also speaks of the “S

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NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV PART I

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV PART I

Philosophic teaching and the philosophic outlook were at this time by no means confined exclusively to the narrow circles dominated by particular schools. Never more widely or more effectively than in this Hellenistic period did philosophy in one shape or another provide the basis and common medium of a culture that no one of moderate wealth and leisure would willingly be without. Such ideas as educated people of the time generally possessed, dealing in a more connected and definite form with th

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§ 2

§ 2

The conception of the departed spirit as one who has been raised to a higher state of dignity and power receives clearer and more conscious expression where the departed one is called a Hero. This class of intermediate beings standing on the border line between mankind and godhead—the world of the Heroes—was in no danger of extinction at this period of Greek religious belief. The attitude of mind that could think of certain special souls as withdrawn from the limitations of visible existence and

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§ 3

§ 3

The souls of the departed show their power and the fact that they are still alive more particularly in the effect that they have on this life and on the living. For the purposes of the Cult of Souls they are regarded as confined to the region of the inhabited earth; they continue in the grave or near it, for a time or permanently, and can therefore be reached by the offerings or the prayers of their living relatives. There can be no doubt that at this time men still believed, as they had done si

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§ 4

§ 4

The Cult of Souls for all its expansion gave no assistance to the picturing of what might be the condition of the departed souls independently of their connexion with the living. Those who troubled themselves about such matters and sought further information were obliged to have recourse, if not to the systems of theologians and philosophers, then to the imaginative accounts and pictures of ancient poetry and legend. The idea of a distant realm of the souls into which the strengthless shadows of

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§ 5

§ 5

All the various modes of conceiving the life enjoyed by the soul after the death of the body, as they had been explored, modified, and developed in the course of centuries, were admitted on an equal footing to the consciousness of the Greeks in this late period of their maturity. No formulated body of religious doctrine had by a process of exclusion and definition given the victory to any one conception at the expense of the others. But where so much was permitted and so little proscribed it is

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§ 6

§ 6

But such reassertions of the antique temper were of rarer and rarer occurrence. The ancient world to which it had given such toughness and energy of purpose was on its death-bed. With the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth century it enters upon its last agony; a general failure of nerve had long threatened the loosely bound masses that shared in the Græco-Roman civilization. In the general atrophy that beset its old age the vigorous blood of the genuine and unadulterated Greek and

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NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV PART II

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV PART II

1 See above, chap. v, p. 162 f. 2 Lucian 50, De Luctu : washing, anointing, crowning of the dead body, πρόθεσις : c. 11. Violent dirge-singing over the dead, 12; accompanied by the αὐλός , 19; and led by a special singer θρηνῶν σοφιστής , 20. Special lament by the father, 13. The dead is before them with jaws tied up and so secured against unsightly gaping—19 fin. (a stronger form of the Homeric σύν τε στόμ’ ἐρείδειν , λ 426). For this purpose narrow bands are drawn round the chin, cheeks, and f

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APPENDIX I

APPENDIX I

In many legends death by lightning makes the victim holy and raises him to godlike (everlasting) life. We need only remember the story of Semele who now ζώει ἐν Ὀλυμπίοις ἀποθανοῖσα βρόμῳ κεραυνοῦ (Pi., O. ii, 27), or that of Herakles and his vanishing from the pyre of wood lighted by Zeus’ flash of lightning (see partic. D.S. 4, 38, 4–5), or the parallel accounts of the translation or death by lightning of Erechtheus (above, chap. iii, n. 39 ). The primitive, popular belief finds unusually clea

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APPENDIX II μασχαλισμός

APPENDIX II μασχαλισμός

ἐμασχαλίσθη is the word used by Aesch., Cho. 439, of the murdered Agamemnon. Soph., El. 445, says ὑφ’ ἧς ( Κλυταιμνήστρας ) θανὼν ἄτιμος ὥστε δυσμενὴς ἐμασχαλίσθη —also of Agamemnon. What particular abomination was meant by this brief statement must have been immediately understood by the Athenian public of the day. A more detailed account is given by Phot. and Suid. μασχαλίσματα (cf. Hesych. s.v.; Apostol., Pr. xi, 4), and they give Aristophanes of Byzantium as their authority. (Not from Aristo

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APPENDIX III ἀμύητοι, ἄγαμοι AND DANAÏDES IN THE UNDERWORLD

APPENDIX III ἀμύητοι, ἄγαμοι AND DANAÏDES IN THE UNDERWORLD

In Polygnotos’ picture of the underworld were to be seen the figures τῶν οὐ μεμυημέων, τῶν τὰ δρώμενα Ἐλευσῖνι ἐν οὐδενὸς θεμένων λόγῳ —an old man, a παῖς , a young and an old woman, who bear water to a πίθος in broken pitchers: Paus. 10, 31, 9–11. The myth is evidently founded upon an etymological play on words—those who have neglected the “completion” of the holy τέλη and are ἀτελεῖς ἱερῶν ( h. Cer. 482) must perform the vain labour in the realm of Persephone of carrying water in broken vessel

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APPENDIX IV THE TETRALOGIES OF ANTIPHON.

APPENDIX IV THE TETRALOGIES OF ANTIPHON.

I ought not to have admitted the doubt suggested in chap. v, n. 176 , as to the genuineness of the Tetralogies traditionally ascribed to Antiphon. I have examined more carefully the well-known linguistic variations between the Tetralogies and speeches i, v, and vi of Antiphon, and also the recently noticed divergences (see Dittenberger, Hermes , 31; 32) of the Tetralogies from Athenian law (for which the author, like the declamation-writers of later times, substitutes occasionally a “ ius schola

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

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

For the purpose of ritual purification it is necessary to have water drawn from running springs or streams, or from the sea: θάλασσα κλύξει πάντα τἀνθρώπων κακά , Eur., IT. 1193. (Hence in the exalted 589 semi-oracular language of bardic poetry ἡ ἀμίαντος = θάλασσα , Aesch., P. 578. At a sacrifice ὁ ἱαρεὺς ἀπορραίνεται θαλάσσᾳ , sacrificial calendar from Kos: Inscr. Cos , 38, 23.) Various details on this point in Lomeier, De lustrat. c. 17. In the water thus drawn from running sources the power

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

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

Hekate herself is addressed as Γοργὼ καὶ Μορμὼ καὶ Μήνη καὶ πολύμορφε : Hymn. ap. Hipp., RH. iv, 35, p. 102, 67 D.-S. Sch. A.R. 591 iii, 861, says of Hek. λέγεται καὶ φάσματα ἐπιπέμπειν (cf. Eur., Hel. 569; D. Chr. iv, p. 73 M. [i, p. 70 Arn.]; Hsch. ἀνταία ) , τὰ καλούμενα Ἑκάταια ( φάσματα Ἑκατικά , Marin., V. Procl . 28) καὶ πολλάκις αὐτὴ μεταβάλλειν τὸ εἶδος διὸ καὶ Ἔμπουσαν καλεῖσθαι . Hekate-Empousa also in Ar. Tagen. fr. 500–1: Sch. Ar., Ran , 293; Hesych. Ἔμπουσα . Thus Hekate is the sam

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APPENDIX VII

APPENDIX VII

The Hosts of Hekate cause fear and sickness at night: εἴτ’ ἔνυπνον φάντασμα φοβῇ χθονίας θ’ Ἑκάτης κῶμον ἐδέξω , Trag. Incert. fr. 375 (Porson suggested Aesch.). They form the νυκτίφαντοι πρόπολοι Ἐνοδίας , Eur., Hel. 570. (These πρόπολοι τᾶς θεοῦ are probably also referred to in the defixio CIG. 5773; Wünsch, Tab. Defix. , p. ixb.) They are nothing else than the restless souls of the dead wandering in the train of Hekate. Nocturnal terrors are produced by Ἑκάτης ἐπιβολαὶ καὶ ἡρώων ἔφοδοι , Hp.,

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APPENDIX VIII DISINTEGRATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND REDUPLICATION OF PERSONALITY

APPENDIX VIII DISINTEGRATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND REDUPLICATION OF PERSONALITY

In that period of extreme excitement the Greeks must have had frequent experience of the abnormal but by no means unusual psychical state in which a division of consciousness takes place and becomes apparent. The single personality splits up into two (or more) distinct centres of consciousness; and these give rise to two personalities (succeeding each other, or contemporaneous), with a double will and a double intellect appearing in one man. Even unprejudiced psychological observers of our own t

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APPENDIX IX THE GREAT ORPHIC THEOGONY

APPENDIX IX THE GREAT ORPHIC THEOGONY

The information about a coherent Orphic Theogony and Anthropogony which has come down to us from the statements of Neoplatonic philosophers and their contemporaries, is derived, as Lobeck very rightly concluded, from the ἐν ταῖς ῥαψῳδίαις Ὀρφικαῖς θεολογία, ἣν καὶ οἱ φιλόσοφοι διερμηνεύουσιν (Damasc., Princ. , p. 380 K.). This last statement means that they were explained in lectures given by the heads of the Platonic school since the time of Syrianos ( Ὀρφικαὶ συνουσίαι of Syrian.: Procl., in T

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APPENDIX X PREVIOUS LIVES OF PYTHAGORAS. HIS DESCENT TO HADES

APPENDIX X PREVIOUS LIVES OF PYTHAGORAS. HIS DESCENT TO HADES

Pythagoras’ miraculous power of remembering what had happened long ago in previous lives seems to be already alluded to in the lines of Empedokles, 430 ff. M. = fr. 129 D. The legend in which it was related how Pythag. showed that he had once been Euphorbos the son of Panthous who had been slain by Menelaos in the Trojan war, must, at any rate, have been put forward at an early period. The story is often told or alluded to: D.S. 10, 6, 1–3; Sch. V. 599 on Ρ 28: Max. Tyr. 16 (i, 287 f. R.); Porph

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APPENDIX XI INITIATION CONSIDERED AS ADOPTION BY THE GOD

APPENDIX XI INITIATION CONSIDERED AS ADOPTION BY THE GOD

The Mystes whose soul is speaking in the first of the gold tablets found at Sybaris (Diels, No. 18) says, l. 7–8: ἱμερτοῦ δ’ ἐπέβαν στεφανοῦ ποσὶ καρπαλίμοισι, δεσποίνας δ’ ὑπὸ κόλπον ἔδυν χθονίας βασιλείας . This ὑπὸ κόλπον ἔδυν . . . can hardly mean anything else than: I seek (as ἱκέτης ) the protection of her maternal bosom (or lap). It would certainly be attractive to take this (with Dieterich, de hymn. Orph. , p. 38) as referring to a symbolical act, corresponding to the ceremony in which i

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

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

Invocations and conjurings of ἄωροι and other νεκυδαίμονες of an earlier period are mentioned above ( p. 594 f.). To a later period belong 604 the defixiones found at Cyprus (Kurion) and edited in the Proc. of the Soc. of Bibl. Archaeology , p. 174 ff. The defixiones are there called παραθῆκαι, φιμωτικαὶ τοῦ ἀντιδίκου (i, 39, and frequently), or φιμωτικὰ καταθέματα (iv, 15, etc.). φιμοῦν and φιμωτικόν in this rude Egypto-Syrian Greek are equivalent to the terms, otherwise usual for such magic ch

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