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, Orchom2., p. 12, with the Orphic κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου, and this suggestion has been followed, though with hesitation, even by Lobeck, Agl. 360, 373. It rests solely on the fact that the Orphic κατάβασις was very doubtfully ascribed according to Clemens to Prodikos of Samos, according to Suidas to Herodikos of Perinthos (or to Kerkops, or to Orpheus of Kamarina); while the Minyas, according to Paus. 4, 33, 7, was very doubtfully ascribed to Prodikos of Phokaia. Müller first identified Prodikos of Samos with Herodikos of Perinthos, and then both of them with Prodikos of Phokaia. The justification of such a procedure is by no means “self-evident” and the identification—entirely depending upon this quite arbitrary view—of the Orphic κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου with the Minyas is in the last degree hazardous. Such an alternative title to an ancient narrative poem can only be defended by fictitious and quite untenable parallels. The name Μινυάς has no parallel in Orphic literature, and suggests rather a poem dealing with heroic adventure in which the Nekyia would only be an episode. If we are to believe in the double title we require at least to be told how the name (Minyas) could possibly have been given to a poem whose contents as implied by the title κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου plainly consisted in a descent to Hades—made by Orpheus himself (as Lobeck also understands, p. 373). Besides, everything we learn about the Nekyia of the Minyas differs widely from the temper and doctrine of Orphism, which should have manifested themselves very distinctly in such a vision of the life to come. Nor is anything from the Minyas given elsewhere under the name of Orpheus, like so many of the details of underworld mythology. There is nothing to suggest that it was Orpheus who sought the atra atria Ditis: an unprejudiced interpretation of fr. 1 (ap. Paus. 10, 28, 2) would suggest that it was rather Theseus and Peirithoos whose descent to Hades supplied the framework for the Hades episode in the poem. There is then not the slightest justification for including the Minyas in the list of Orphic poems or for citing what is known of its contents as Orphic mythological doctrine (which last Lobeck himself did not do: he knew too well the real nature and meaning of Orphism). Cf. Dümmler, Delphika, p. 19 (Bas. 1894).
[4] Allusions in the Iliad and Odyssey presuppose the existence of an old poem on the journey to Hades of Herakles: how he was commissioned by Eurystheus, conducted by Athene (and Hermes), went down below and wounded Hades himself and carried off the dog of Hades. Many hands must subsequently have taken part in filling in the details of the adventure: we cannot, however, definitely name the poet who gave its final form and character to the whole. As far as the individual features of the poem are known to us (esp. from the survey given in [Apollod.], 2, 12. Myth. Gr., 2, 122 ff. W., combining both early and late mythological characteristics), they are rather the features of a vigorous story of heroic adventure, full of movement and tending to the gruesome and the extravagant—not of a static or [244] tranquil narrative that would allow of the calm reception of pictures illustrating the quiet ordinary life and events of frequent occurrence in the mysterious world of darkness. In this respect the κατάβασις of Herakles in its traditional form must have differed noticeably from the Nekyia in λ, as well as from the Minyas. In fact, not one of the fabulous details current in later times about Hades can be traced back to a description in the Herakles adventure (even “Kerberos” seems to have got his name elsewhere).
[5] Hyperides, Epit. § 35–9 = p. 92 f. (Blass3): Leosthenes will meet ἐν Ἅιδου the Heroes of the Trojan war, the Persian war, and also Harmodios and Aristogeiton. This is a stereotyped rhetorical idea: cf. Pl., Ap. 41 A-C. An epigram from Knossos on a Cretan who has distinguished himself in a cavalry battle (BCH. 1889, p. 60, ll. 1–2, after Simon., Ep. 99, 3–4 Bgk.), ll. 9–10: τοὔνεκά σε φθιμένων καθ’ ὁμήγυριν ὁ κλυτὸς Ἅδης ἴσε πολισσούχῳ σύνθρονον Ἰδομενεῖ.
[6] Kerberos is first named in Hes., Th. 311, and he is the same hound of Hades which Homer knows and leaves unnamed, as Hesiod does, Th. 769 ff. According to this account he admits everyone, fawning about them and wagging his tail: but anyone who tries to slip out of Hades again he devours. That Kerberos inspires terror in those who enter Hades is therefore a conception of later ages (when his name was sometimes derived from the fact that he τὰς κῆρας, ὃ δηλοῖ τὰς ψυχάς, ἔχει βοράν: Porph. ap. Eus., PE. 3, 11, 11, p. 110 A, etc.): the superstitious are afraid τῷ Κερβέρῳ διαδάκνεσθαι (Plu., N.P. Suav. Ep. 1105 A; cf. Verg., A. vi, 401; Apul., Met. i, 15 fin.). The honey cakes given to those who enter Hades are intended to pacify him (Sch. Ar., Lys. 601; Verg., A. vi, 420; Ap., Met. vi, 19). It cannot be proved that this is an ancient conception (certainly not from the absurd invention of Philochoros, fr. 46, to which Dieterich, Nekyia, 49, appeals). Ar., Lys. 601, speaks of the μελιτοῦττα for the dead without suggesting any such purpose; and in fact honeycakes would hardly be a satisfactory bait to a dog: they rather suggest offerings for underworld snakes (as in the cave of Trophonios, Ar, Nu. 507; for the Asklepios-snake, Herond. iv, 90–1) and for spirits appearing as snakes (and hence customary at offerings for the dead, and even e.g. according to the precepts of the ῥιζοτόμοι when digging up medicinal plants, Thphr., HP. 9, 8, 7). In the lines of Sophokles, OC. 1574 ff., Löschcke, Aus der Unterwelt, p. 9 (Progr. Dorpat, 1888) finds an expression of the idea that there was need of pacifying Kerb. in his rage against souls entering Hades. In reality nothing of the kind is even suggested there. The traditional text is unintelligible, and is emended and interpreted with probable correctness by Nauck (δός instead of ὅν). Adopting this correction the words express a prayer of the Chorus addressed to a child of Tartaros and Ge, who is called ὁ αἰένυπνος, which must mean “who sends to everlasting sleep” (not “who sleeps for ever”)—(or to separate παῖς Γᾶς καὶ Ταρτάρου from αἰένυπνος as the Schol. would do, is impossible. The αἰένυπνος, as the Schol. has already noticed, can hardly be anyone else than Thanatos (it would be an unintelligible epithet for Hesychos, of whom L. thinks). Thanatos, however, is nowhere else called son of Tartaros and Ge (nor is Hesychos, while Typhon and Echidna are, though the adj. would not suit them; who else besides Soph., OC. 40, calls the Erinyes daughters of Ge and Skotos?). The Chorus pray to him (acc. to Nauck’s correction) to grant Oedipus a safe passage in his journey to Hades. Terrors of all kinds were to be met with on the way there, ὄφεις καὶ θηρία (Ar., Ra. 143 ff., 278 ff.; we may also remember Verg., [245] A. vi, 273 ff., 285 ff., etc.): that Kerberos is among these terrors is suggested by Soph. as little as it is by Aristoph. in the Frogs. In fact, Soph. had spoken of him a few lines before (1569 ff.) in words which suggest anything rather than danger to those who enter Hades. Sophokles, then, cannot be made to serve as witness for the view that the Greeks thought of Kerberos after the manner of the two piebald dogs of the Indian Yama that terrify and drive back the dead. Further, there is no good evidence for a Greek tradition of two hounds of Hell. Nor can it be proved by the case adduced by Löschcke: the picture on a sarcophagus from Klazomenai of a naked boy holding a cock in each hand and standing between two (female) dogs that leap round him (in a manner suggesting play rather than anger). The picture can hardly have a mythical sense. This cannot give support to the view (as old as Wilford) that Κέρβερος is no other than one of the two piebald (çabala) dogs of Yama and a creation of primitive Indo-Germanic times. In any case, the evidence is weak enough. See Gruppe, Gr. Culte u. Mythen, i, 113–14; Oldenberg, Rel. d. Veda, 538 [= 459 Fr. T.].
[7] Agatharch. p. 115, 14 ff. Müll., says that it is a popular belief τῶν οὐκέτι ὄντων τοὺς τύπους ἐν πορθμίδι διαπλεῖν, ἔχοντας Χάρωνα ναύκληρον καὶ κυβερνήτην, ἵνα μὴ καταστραφέντες ἐκφορᾶς ἐπιδέωνται πάλιν.
[8] Cf. v. Duhn, Arch. Zeit. 1885, 19 ff.; Jahrb. arch. Inst. ii, 240 ff.
[9] Charon’s fare (2 obols instead of the otherwise usual one—the difference not satisfactorily explained) is first mentioned in Ar., Ran. 140, 270. That this is the purpose of the money that was inserted between the teeth of the dead is frequently asserted by later authors. The many different names which were given to this “Charon’s penny” (καρκάδων, cf. Lobeck, Prol. Path. 351; κατιτήριον, δανάκη and simply ναῦλον: see Hemsterh. Lucian, ii, 514 ff.) show that this idea and the symbolism underlying it was a favourite subject of speculation. In spite of this we may doubt whether the custom of supplying the dead with a small coin has really arisen out of the wish to give them the fare-penny for the underworld ferryman. It is extremely doubtful whether Charon and his boat can have been figures of such clear dogmatic fixity as to have given rise to such a remarkable custom expressing itself in such a literal fashion. The custom itself, now, it seems, attested in Greece only from graves of a late period (see Ross. Archäol. Aufs. i, 29, 32, 57 Anm.; Raoul Rochette, Mém. de l’Inst. de Fr., Ac. des Ins. xiii, p. 665 f.) must be ancient (though no older than the use of coined money in Greece), and has held its own with the most remarkable tenacity in many parts of the Roman Empire to a late age—even through the Middle Ages to our own time (cf. among others Maury, La magie et l’astrol. dans l’antiq. 158, 2). It is not very hard to understand that it might be ingeniously connected with the poetical story of the ferryman of the dead, and this plausible explanation of the strange custom might then become a part of popular belief. The custom itself ought rather to have been brought into connexion with the practice common in many lands of satisfying the requirements of the dead by the gift of some diminutive and all but symbolical object which is offered at burial and put in the grave (see something of the kind in Tylor, i, 193–4). Parva petunt Manes: pietas pro divite grata est munere; non avidos Styx habet ima deos. The obol may be the last symbolical vestige of the entire property of the dead which the ancient law of the dead required to be placed undiminished in their graves. τεθνήξῃ . . . ἐκ πολλῶν ὀβολὸν [246] μοῦνον ἐνεγκάμενος: the epigram of Antiphanes Maced. (AP. xi, 168) expresses more nearly perhaps, though in sentimental language, the original and primitive intention of the gift of an obol, than does the fable of Charon’s penny (cf. AP. xi, 171, 7; 209, 3). According to German superstition “money should be laid in the mouth of the dead man so that if he has buried a treasure he may not return”, Grimm, p. 1785, n. 207. Here the undoubtedly ancient conception is quite clearly betrayed: that by giving a coin the property of the dead was bought up. The evidence for this first and proper meaning of the custom has been preserved in the strangest fashion, together with the custom itself, even down to the eighteenth century, when J. Chr. Männlingen voices it, Albertäten 353 (summarized in A. Schultz, Alltagsleben e. d. Frau im 18 Jh., p. 232 f.): this custom, common both to heathendom and Christianity, of putting a penny in the coffin of the dead “means that men buy up the property of the dead, whereby they think they will have good luck in their life”.
[10] Ar., Tagenist. fr. 488, 9: διὰ ταῦτα γάρ τοι καὶ καλοῦνται (οἱ νέκροὶ) μακάριοι· πᾶς γὰρ λέγει τις, ὁ μακαρίτης οἴχεται κτλ., μακαρίτης, then, was already, by that time, a common expression for the dead which had lost its full sense and value, just like the German “selig” (which is borrowed from Greek). Strictly speaking it means a condition approaching the existence of the μάκαρες θεοὶ αἰὲν ἐόντες. The full meaning still appears in the appeal to the heroized Persian monarch: μακαρίτας ἰσοδαίμων βασιλεύς, Aesch., Pers. 633 (νῦν δ’ ἐστὶ μάκαιρα δαίμων, E., Alc. 1003); cf. also Xen., Ages. xi, 8, νομίζων τοὺς εὐκλεῶς τετελευτηκότας μακαρίους. Such passages allow us to see that μακάριος, μακαρίτης were not used of the dead in any sense κατ’ ἀντίφρασιν, as χρηστός sometimes is (Plu., Q. Gr. v, p. 292 B; though on grave inscr. it is generally meant in its proper sense); cf. εὐκρινής, Phot. Suid. μακαρίτης frequently occurs as applied to one lately dead in late writers: see Ruhnken, Tim., p. 59. Lehrs, Popul. Aufs2., p. 344. Doric form ζαμερίτας: Phot. μακαρίτας. μακαρία “Blessedness”, the land of the Blessed, i.e. the dead, is only used in a humorous sense in such phrases as ἄπαγ’ ἐς μακαρίαν (Ar. Eq. 1151), βάλλ’ ἐς μακαρίαν. So, too, is ἐς ὀλβίαν. ὡς εἰς μακαρίαν· τὸ εἰς ᾅδου, Phot. (μακαρία, the name of a sacrificial cake—Harp. νεήλατα—occurs in modern Greek usage as a cake used at funerals, Lob., Agl. 879).
[11] The punishment of Ixion for his ingratitude to Zeus consisted according to the older form of the story in his being fastened to a winged wheel and then being whirled through the air. That Zeus ἐταρτάρωσεν him (Sch. Eur., Ph. 1185) must then be a later story or one which did not become current till later: not until A.R. iii, 61 f., is there any mention of Ixion in Hades, though after him frequently; cf. Klügmann, Annali d. Inst., 1873, pp. 93–5. (The analogy with the punishment of Tantalos and its displacement from the upper world to Hades is obvious; see Comparetti, Philol. 32, 237.)
[12] Aesch., Eum. 273 f.; cf. Supp. 230 f. The fact that in this passage the poet says ἐκεῖ δικάζει τὰμπλακήμαθ’, ὡς λόγος, Ζεὺς ἄλλος simply shows that he is not simply following his own ideas in this fancy of a judgment in the other world (οὐκ ἐμὸς ὁ μῦθος). It does not in the least suggest (as Dieterich, Nek. 126, seems to think) that he is reproducing popular tradition or could be so doing. Only theological doctrines, at that time at least, knew anything of such a judgment in the future life upon the deeds of this: it is their λόγος that Aesch. is following (in this one point). See below, [p. 425].
[13] Gorg. 523 A ff. (whence Axioch. 371 B ff., etc.). When Plato [247] keeps closer to popular belief, in Ap. 41 A, he speaks of the judges in Hades, Minos, Rhadamanthys, Aiakos καὶ Τριπτόλεμος καὶ ἄλλοι ὅσοι τῶν ἡμιθέων δίκαιοι ἐγένοντο ἐν τῷ ἑαυτῶν βίῳ. He says nothing of a judgment given on the deeds done in this life, and clearly does not imply any decision as to the good or evil deserts of those who have just left the upper world and come down to Hades. We should be much rather led to suppose that those ἀληθῶς δικασταί, οἵπερ καὶ λέγονται ἐκεῖ δικάζειν exercise their powers as judges among the dead, too, and decide between them in their disputes just as Minos does in the Nekyia of λ 568–71, and as Rhadamanthys still does in Pi., O. ii, 83 ff., on the μακάρων νᾶσος. Only the number of those who have this wide authority below is extended (in Plato) almost indefinitely. The process seems to have been as follows: the allusions in the Odyssey were taken up and in the course of the elaboration of the picture of Hades the number was enlarged of those who like Minos are patterns of justice among the dead and give judgment among them. Then philosophico-poetical speculation (perhaps not without Egyptian influence) about a judgment in the next world handed over to this increased number of judges in Hades the office of judging the conduct during their lifetime of those who have just entered Hades.—The selection of judges is not hard to understand. Aiakos, Rhadamanthys, and Minos are regarded as patterns of justice: Dem. 18, 127. Minos as judge in Hades was taken from λ 568 ff. Rhadamanthys is known to δ 564 as dwelling among those who have been translated alive to Elysion. There he is—not judge: there is nothing there to judge, but—πάρεδρος of Kronos, acc. to Pi., O. ii, 83. As soon as men began to transfer Elysion to Hades (of which more [later]) Rhad. also found his place there. His fame as the most just of judges (see Cratin., Χείρωνες, 231 [i, p. 83 K.]; Pl., Lg. 948 B, etc.; cf. also Plu., Thes. 16 ad fin.) allowed him easily to find his place next to Minos as judge over the dead. Aiakos, too, as a model of εὐσέβεια (Isoc. 9, 14, etc.), lawgiver to Aegina, arbitrator among the gods themselves (Pi., I. viii, 24 f.), seemed naturally called to be a judge among the dead. His position as judge, however, was never so secure as that of Minos and Rhadamanthys. Pindar, though he often speaks of Aiakos and the Aiakidai gives no hint of a special position held by Aiakos in the next world. Isoc. 9, 15, λέγεται παρὰ Πλούτωνι καὶ Κόρῃ μεγίστας τιμὰς ἔχων παρεδρεύειν ἐκείνοις where nothing is implied as to his office of judge but merely to the honour done to Aiakos in being given a seat near the ruling pair (cf. Pi., O. ii, 83, of Rhad.; Ar., Ra. 765, there is a rule in Hades that the best artist λαμβάνει θρόνον τοῦ Πλούτωνος ἑξῆς. Proedria of the Mystai in Hades, etc.). Aiakos is κλειδοῦχος of Hades; [Apollod.] 3, 12, 6, 10; Epigr. Gr., 646, 4; P. Mag. Par. 1264 ff.; πυλωρός (cf. Hades himself as πυλάρτης, Θ 368) in Luc., D. Mort. 13, 3; 20, 1, 6; 22, 3; De Luct. 4; Philops. 25 and Philostr., VA. 7, 31, p. 385 K. “Holder of the Key” is an office of high distinction (suggested in the case of Aiakos perhaps by the cult offered to him together with chthonic powers): keys belong to many of the gods—Plouton himself, Paus. 5, 20, 3, and others; see Tafel and Dissen on Pi., P. 8, 4; in P. Mag. Par. 1403 comes the trimeter, κλειδοῦχε Περσέφασσα Ταρτάρου κόρη. It is difficult to believe that the attribution of this remarkable office of distinction to Aiakos was a later invention than the apparently commonplace office of judge. It seems, in fact, that Eurip. in the Peirithoos (fr. 591 N.) made Aiakos the first to meet Herakles as he entered Hades, i.e. probably at the gate itself. It can hardly be anything but a [248] reminiscence of Eurip. that suggested (not to Aristoph. himself—see Hiller, Hermes viii, 455—but to a well-read grammaticus) the name “Aiakos” as that of the person who meets Herakles at the very gate of Plouton in the Frogs (l. 464). Just because the story of Aiakos’ position as holder of the key at the gate of Hades was an old one and mentioned by respected authorities, the belief in his position as judge never quite prevailed, in spite of Plato.
[14] This is obviously Attic invention. Plato certainly mentions Triptolemos in addition to Minos and the other judges. But it seems that to the Athenians Minos was unacceptable as a type of justice (he was, especially on the stage, the object of bitter attacks as an enemy of the country; see Plu., Thes. 16). and they tried to substitute their own Triptolemos for him in the triad of judges. Thus we find Triptolemos not beside Minos but in his place in a picture of the underworld on a vase from Altamura (Tript. Aiak. Rhad.), and in an analogous picture on an amphora at Karlsruhe (Aiak. Tript., the left side is broken off but prob. represented Rhadamanthys not Minos). Cf. Winkler, Darst. d. Unterwelt auf unterital. Vasen, p. 37. For the rest, nothing suggests that the three judges on these vase-pictures pass judgment on the deeds of men done in their lifetime: in strictness nothing is implied about their giving judgments. What is certain is simply that they, as types of justice, ἐπὶ ταῖσι τοῦ Πλούτωνος οἰκοῦσιν θύραις (like the Mystai in Ar., Ra. 163): they enjoy the rights of πάρεδοι of the divine pair, and hence they are seated on θρόνοι or δίφροι.
[15] Ar., Ra. 145 ff., 273 ff. “Darkness and mud,” σκότος καὶ βόρβορος, as manner and place of punishment for ἀμύητοι καὶ ἀτέλεστοι, are derived from Orphic teaching: Pl., Rp. 363 D; Olympiod. on Pl., Phd. 69 C. By an inaccurate extension of meaning this fate was said to threaten all ἀτέλεστοι without distinction: Plu. π. ψυχῆς ap. Stob. Fl. 120, 28 (4, 108, 2 Mein.); Aristid., Eleus., p. 421 D. = ii, 30 Keil; Plot., 1, 6, 6. Plotinos undoubtedly has the right interpretation of the reason for this strange form of punishment: the mud in which the uninitiated lie marks them out as μὴ κεκαθαρμένους who have not shared in the purifications such as were offered by the Orphic initiation ceremonies. Hence they remain fixed for ever in their original foulness (and in darkness because of their ignorance of the θεῖα). It is, in fact, an allegorical punishment which has no meaning outside the range of Orphic doctrines of katharsis and atonement. Aristoph. transfers it to those who have seriously transgressed the laws of city or religion, for whom it was unsuitable: this only shows that an appropriate penalty in Hades for crimes against civil society had not yet been invented. It had evidently been thought sufficient to say generally that the ἀσεβεῖς (or at least the more heinous offenders) would be punished in Hades. This commonplace form of the opinion is probably to be regarded as a final echo of some definite theological doctrine which had become vulgarized and emptied of distinct meaning among the general public of the profane. The author of the first speech against Aristogeiton ([D.] 25) who speaks of the εἰς τοὺς ἀσεβεῖς ὠσθῆναι in Hades (53), confesses himself an adherent of Orpheus (11).—The μεμυημένοι dwell in Hades next to the palace of Plouton himself: Ar., Ra. 162 f., where they have the privilege of προεδρία, D.L., vi, 39. When a distinction between a χῶρος εὐσεβῶν and a χῶρος ἀσεβῶν in Hades began to be made, the initiated, in order that they might not be deprived of their privileged position, were given προεδρία in the χ. εὐσεβῶν. In this way, e.g. the author of the Axioch. 371 D (who [249] can hardly have written before the third century) tries to reconcile the hopelessly contradictory pretensions of the εὐσεβεῖς and μεμυημένοι to reward in Hades.
[16] Sex. Emp., M. ix, 53. Suid. Διαγόρας.
[17] Descents to Hades occurred in the Κραπάταλοι of Pherecr. (i, p. 167 K.); the Βάτραχοι and Γηρυτάδης of Ar.; [Pherecr.] Μεταλλ. (i, p. 174 K.); and probably also in the Τροφώνιος of Cratin., etc.—On a vase from Eretria, fifth century, there is a representation of a repulsive scene of torture; an old woman, naked and tied to a tree, is being tortured by three satyrs. This, according to J. Zingerle, Archäol. epigr. Mittheil. a. Oesterreich, 18, 162 ff., is a parody of some incident from a comedy of the time, the plot of which was laid in Hades. But nothing in the picture suggests that the lower regions are the scene of this gruesome affair; and what would the satyrs be doing there?
[18] Utopian existence in Hades; see in partic. [Pherecr.] Μεταλλ. (i, p. 174 K.). A pretext for such parodies was perhaps given by the Orphic promise of an everlasting carouse for the initiated at the συμπόσιον τῶν ὁσίων in Hades (Pl., Rp. ii, 263 C, μακάρῶν εὐωχία, Ar., Ra. 85). Many details were borrowed from the descriptions of the reign of bliss upon earth in the golden age under Kronos’ rule which had long been a familiar subject of comedy (cf. Pöschel, Das Märchen vom Schlaraffenland, 7 ff.). The golden age in the dim past and the land of Elysion in the future always had many features in common. (See above, chap. ii, [n. 49].) From these traditional pictures of a spirit-world only to be met with in the long-vanished past or in the next world, the whole Greek literature of imaginary Utopias drew its sustenance (see my Griech. Roman, ii, § 2, 3). That literature was really an attempt to transpose those early fantasies of a land of spirits into real life and on to the inhabited world.
[19] ἔστι γ’ εὐδαίμων πόλις παρὰ τὴν ἐρυθρὰν θάλατταν, Ar., Av. 144 f. (cf. Griech. Roman, 201 ff.).
[20] λίμνη (the Acherousian lake: Eur., Alc. 443, and often afterwards). Charon: Ar., Ra. 137 ff., 182 ff., 185 ff.—σκότος καὶ βόρβορος 144 ff., 278 ff., 289 ff. Abode and life of the Mystai: 159, 163, 311 ff., 454 ff.
[21] τὸ Λήθης πεδίον, l. 186. This is the earliest reference to Lethe of which we can be quite sure; but it is made so casually that it is obvious that Aristoph. is merely alluding to a story well known to his audience. Plato makes use of the Λήθης πεδίον together with the Ἀμέλης ποταμός (hence 621 C: Λήθης ποταμός) in the myth at the close of the Republic, x, 621 A, which is intended to illustrate and support the theory of palingenesia. Of course, this ingenious fancy was eminently suitable for use by adherents of the doctrine of metempsychosis; but there is nothing to show that it had been actually invented for the special benefit of this doctrine, i.e. by Orphics or Pythagoreans—as many have supposed. It is probable that it was nothing more originally but an attempt to explain symbolically the unconscious condition of the ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα. Does Theognis already (704, 705) refer to it?—Περσεφόνην . . . ἥτε βρότοις παρέχει λήθην, βλάπτουσα νόοιο. Other references to the Λήθης πύλαι, Λάθας δόμοι, Λήθης ὕδωρ are all later; the Λήθης θρόνος in the account of Theseus’ journey to Hades in [Apollod.] Epit. i, 24, is perhaps taken from older legendary material. (Bergk’s assertion, Opusc. ii, 716: “The conception of Lethe’s fountain and stream is certainly ancient and popular: the well of Lethe is nothing but the fountain of the gods: whoever drinks of it forgets all sorrows, etc.,” [250] is entirely devoid of foundation in fact.) The river of Lethe was in later times localized on earth like Acheron and Styx; in the R. Limia of Gallaecia—far away on the western sea—men rediscovered the Oblivionis flumen (account of the year 137 B.C.: Liv., Epit. 55; Flor. 1, 33, 12; App., Hisp. 72: Plu., QR. 34, p. 272 D; cf. Mela, 3, § 10; Plin., NH. 4, § 115. Absurd aetiology in Strabo, p. 153).
[22] This is presumably the meaning of the words which Pausanias (10, 28, 5) uses: his absurd mannerism makes him talk round the incident instead of simply describing it. (Much too artificial explanation of the circumstance in Dümmler, Delphika, p. 15 [1894].)
[23] Paus. 10, 28, 4.
[24] See [Appendix iii].
[25] Eurynomos: dark-blue body like a bluebottle, with prominent teeth, sitting on a vulture’s skin, Paus. 10, 28, 7. There seems to be no mention of him in literature: whether the statement of Pausanias that he was a δαίμων τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου who eats the flesh of corpses off their bones, is anything more than a guess, we cannot tell. The vulture-skin indeed suggests that the nature of the Daimon who sits on it was related to the vulture. The fact that the vulture eats the flesh of corpses was often observed by the ancients (see Plu., Rom. 9, etc.: Leemans on Horapollo, p. 177). Welcker (Kl. Schr. v, 117) sees in Eurynomos nothing but the “corruption” of the body, in which case he would be a purely allegorical figure. On the contrary he is much more likely to be one of those very concretely imagined spirits of Hell (only with a euphemistic name), like the lesser spirits Lamia, Mormo, Gorgyra, Empousa, etc. (a word about them will be found below, [Append. vi]). The artist must have known him from some local tradition. He devours the flesh of the corpse: thus a late epigram (Epigr. Gr. 647, 16) calls the dead λυπρὴν δαῖτα Χάρωνι. Even in Soph., El. 542, we have; Ἅιδης ἵμερον τέκνων τῶν ἐκείνης ἔσχε δαίσασθαι (Welcker, Syll., p. 94).
[26] Paus. 10, 28, 3. Cf. O. Jahn, Hermes, iii, 326.
[27] The third century vase-paintings from Southern Italy also as a rule keep within the limits of the epic Nekyia. In addition to the few special types of the sinners undergoing punishment in Hades (Sisyphos, Tantalos, the Danaids) we have allusions to the journeys to Hades of Theseus, Peirithoos, Herakles, and Orpheus. All attempts to read mystical or edifying intentions into these (as in Baumeister’s Denkm. 1926–30) are now regarded as completely mistaken. (Orpheus appears there not as founder and prophet of his mysteries but simply as the mythical singer who goes down to the underworld to rescue Eurydike with his singing. This is rightly maintained by Milchhöfer, Philol. 53, 385 ff., 54, 750 f., against Kuhnert, Arch. Jahrb. viii, 104 ff.; Philol. 54, 193.) Nothing at all is suggested as to the fate of mankind in general. On a vase from Canosa a father and mother with a boy stand on the left of Orpheus: this, too, must belong to the region of mythology. (They cannot, however, be Dionysos and Ariadne as Winkler suggests, Darst. d. Unterw. auf unterit. Vasen, 49. But it is difficult to imagine that they can be a family of Mystai as Milchhöfer supposes.)
PART II
CHAPTER VIII
ORIGINS OF THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY
THE THRACIAN WORSHIP OF DIONYSOS
The popular conception of the continued existence of the souls of the dead, resting upon the cult of the dead, grew up and coalesced with a view of the soul derived from Homeric teaching on the subject, which was in essential, though unrecognized, contradiction with the cult of souls. The popular conception, unchanged in all essentials, remained in force throughout the coming centuries of Greek life. It did not contain within itself the seeds of further development; it did not make any demand for better and deeper ideas of the character and condition of the soul in its independent life after its separation from the body. Still more, it had nothing in it that could have led beyond the belief in the independent future life of those souls to the conception of an everlasting, indestructible, immortal life. The continued life of the soul, such as was implied in and guaranteed by the cult of souls, was entirely bound up with the remembrance of the survivors upon earth, and upon the care, the cult, which they might offer to the soul of their departed ancestor. If that memory dies out, if the venerating thoughtfulness of the living ceases, the soul of the departed is at once deprived of the sole element in which it still maintained its shadow of an existence.
It was impossible, then, that the cult of the souls should produce out of itself the idea of a true immortality of the soul or of the independent life of the soul indestructible by its very nature. Greek religion as it existed among the people of Homer could not shape such a belief of its own accord, and even if it were offered from outside could not have accepted it. It would have meant giving up its own essential character.
If the soul is immortal, it must be in its essential nature like God; it must itself be a creature of the realm of Gods. When a Greek says “immortal” he says “God”: they are interchangeable ideas. But the real first principle of the religion of the Greek people is this—that in the divine ordering of the world, humanity and divinity are absolutely divided in place and nature, and so they must ever remain. A deep [254] gulf is fixed between the worlds of mortality and divinity. The relations between man and God promoted by religion depend entirely upon this distinction. The ethical ideas of the Greek popular conscience were rooted in the frank admission of the limitations proper to human capacity which was conditioned by an existence and a fate so different from that enjoyed by the gods; in the renunciation of all human claims to happiness and independence. Poetic fancies about the “Translation” of individual mortals to an unending life enjoyed by the soul still united to the body might make their appeal to popular belief; but such things remained miracles in which divine omnipotence had broken down the barriers of the natural order on a special occasion. It was but a miracle, too, if the souls of certain mortals were raised to the rank of Heroes, and so promoted to everlasting life. The gulf between the human and the divine was not made any narrower on that account; it remained unbridged, abysmal. The bare idea that the gulf did not in reality exist, that actually in the order of nature the inner man, the “Soul” of man belonged to the realm of gods; that as a divine being it had everlasting life—such an idea would involve further consequences about which no one can be in much doubt: it would have contradicted every single idea of Greek popular religion. It never could have become widely held and believed in by the Greek populace.
Nevertheless, at a certain period in Greek history, and nowhere earlier or more unmistakably than in Greece, appeared the idea of the divinity, and the immortality implicit in the divinity, of the human soul. That idea belonged entirely to mysticism—a second order of religion which, though little remarked by the religion of the people and by orthodox believers, gained a footing in isolated sects and influenced certain philosophical schools. Thence it has affected all subsequent ages and has transmitted to East and West the elementary principles of all true mysticism: the essential unity of the divine and the human spirit; their unification as the aim of religion; the divine nature of the human soul and its immortality.
The theory and doctrine of mysticism grew up in the soil of an older cult-practice. Greece received from abroad a deeply emotional religious cult, accompanied by practices that stimulated mysterious and extraordinary imaginings. The sparks of momentary illumination struck out by this faith were fed and fanned by mysticism till they became a vivid and enduring flame. For the first time, clearly [255] discernible through its mystical wrappings, we meet with the belief in the indestructibility and eternal life of the soul: we meet it in the doctrines of a mystical sect which united in the worship of Dionysos. The worship of Dionysos must have sown the first seed of the belief in an immortal life of the soul. To explain how this may have happened; to make clear to the mind of the reader how the essence and inner reality of that worship was bound to stir up the belief in an immortal life—such is our next task.