In many legends death by lightning makes the victim holy and raises him to godlike (everlasting) life. We need only remember the story of Semele who now ζώει ἐν Ὀλυμπίοις ἀποθανοῖσα βρόμῳ κεραυνοῦ (Pi., O. ii, 27), or that of Herakles and his vanishing from the pyre of wood lighted by Zeus’ flash of lightning (see partic. D.S. 4, 38, 4–5), or the parallel accounts of the translation or death by lightning of Erechtheus (above, chap. iii, [n. 39]). The primitive, popular belief finds unusually clear expression in the words of Charax ap. Anon. de Incred. xvi, p. 325, 5 ff. West., who says of Semele, κεραυνοῦ κατασκήψαντος ἠφανίσθη· ἐκείνην μὲν οὖν, ὁποῖα ἐπὶ τοῖς διοβλήτοις λέγεται, θείας μοίρας λαχεῖν ᾠήθησαν. (In this account Semele is immediately raised to heaven by the flash of lightning—a version of the story frequently given by later authors: Ζεὺς τὴν Σεμέλην ἐκ τῆς γῆς εἰς τὸν Ὄλυμπον κομίζει διὰ πυρός, Aristid. 1, p. 47 Dind. [O. 41, 3 K.]. Cf. Philostr., Imag. i, 14; Nonnus, D. viii, 409 ff. The passage of Pindar quoted above would also admit of a similar interpretation.) Generally speaking, ὁ κεραυνωθεὶς ὡς θεὸς τιμᾶται (Artem. 2, 9, p. 94, 26) as one ὑπὸ Διὸς τετιμημένος (ib. 93, 24). The belief in such elevation of a mortal through the disruption and purification of his body by the sacred fire of lightning (a πῦρ καθάρσιον of the highest kind—see chap. i, n. 41) need not be of late origin simply because it so happens that only late authorities speak of it in unmistakable terms (as Wilamowitz thinks, Ind. Schol. Götting. hib. 1895, pp. 12–13). Such lofty conceptions were by this time no longer the product of popular imagination. Besides, it is quite clearly referred to in the above-mentioned story of Semele (see esp. D.S. 5, 52, 2) and in those of Herakles, Erechtheus, Asklepios. In the same way lightning struck the tomb of Lykourgos (as afterwards that of Euripides) as θεοφιλέστατος καὶ ὁσιώτατος (Plu., Lyc. 31). When the statues of the Olympic victor Euthymos at Locri and Olympia are struck by lightning it shows that he has become a Hero: Pliny, NH. vii, 152. The body of the person struck by lightning remains uncorruptible: dogs and birds of prey dare not touch it: Plu., Smp. 4, 2, 3, p. 665 B; it must be buried in the place where the lightning struck it (Artem., p. 95, 6; cf. Fest., p. 178b, 21 ff.; Plin., NH. ii, 145). Every detail shows plainly that the διόβλητος was regarded as holy. This, however, does not prevent death by lightning from being regarded on other occasions as the punishment of crime—as in the cases of Salmoneus, Kapaneus, etc.; though in some even of these cases the idea is occasionally present that the lightning’s victim is raised to a higher existence. This is distinctly so when Euripides in Suppl. makes a character call Kapaneus, who has been killed by lightning, a ἱερὸς νεκρός (935) and his τύμβος (rogus) ἱερός too (981). ἱερός never means [582] “accursed” like the Lat. sacer: it is invariably a title of honour. Kapaneus is here called “holy” just as Astakides, on his translation to everlasting life, is ἱερός in Kallimachos; and as Hesiod speaks of the ἱερὸν γένος ἀθανάτων (with τύμβος ἱερός cf. S., OC. 1545, 1763). We must not fail to observe that in this passage, where a friend of Kap. is supposed to be speaking, the latter is certainly not regarded by Eurip. as an impious person (as he is generally in Tragedy, and by Eurip. himself in Phoen., and even in Suppl. the enemy so regards him (496 ff.), though acc. to this speaker Amphiaraos too is snatched away in atonement for his crime). Euripides in fact makes him highly praised by Adrastos (861 ff.) as the very opposite of a ὑβριστής; and it is obvious that Euadne’s sacrifice of her life which immediately follows is not intended to be offered for the benefit of a criminal and enemy of the gods. For these reasons Euripides ennobles the character of Kapaneus and, consequently, the death of the Hero by lightning can no longer stand for his punishment, but is on the contrary a distinction. He becomes a ἱερὸς νεκρός. This, however, could not have been done by Eurip. unless the view that such a death might in certain circumstances bring honour on the victim and elevate him to a higher plane of being, had been at that time widespread and generally recognized. Eurip. therefore provides the most distinct evidence for the existence of such a belief in his time. (As one of the exalted dead Kapaneus is to be separated from the rest of the dead and burnt παρ’ οἴκους τούσδε: 935, 936, 1009—i.e. before the ἀνάκτορον of the Goddesses at Eleusis: 88, 290.)—Finally Asklepios, in all the stories that are told of his death by lightning (and already in Hes. fr. 109 Rz.), is never regarded as entirely removed from this life: he lives on as Hero or god for all time, dispensing blessings. Zeus allows him to live on for ever immortal (Luc., DD. 13), and acc. to later versions of the story, in the constellation Ophiuchus (Eratosth. καταστ. 6; Hygin., Astron, ii, 14); the real and primitive conception evidently being that he was transported to everlasting life by Zeus’ lightning-flash. So Min. Fel. 22, 7, says quite rightly: Aesculapius, ut in deum surgat, fulminatur.
APPENDIX II
μασχαλισμός
ἐμασχαλίσθη is the word used by Aesch., Cho. 439, of the murdered Agamemnon. Soph., El. 445, says ὑφ’ ἧς (Κλυταιμνήστρας) θανὼν ἄτιμος ὥστε δυσμενὴς ἐμασχαλίσθη—also of Agamemnon. What particular abomination was meant by this brief statement must have been immediately understood by the Athenian public of the day. A more detailed account is given by Phot. and Suid. μασχαλίσματα (cf. Hesych. s.v.; Apostol., Pr. xi, 4), and they give Aristophanes of Byzantium as their authority. (Not from Aristophanes—for they differ in many particulars—but from a closely related source come the two versions [583] of the Scholion to Soph., El. 446 and EM. 118, 22 f.) According to their authority μασχαλισμός is something done by the murderer (οἱ φονεύσαντες ἐξ ἐπιβουλῆς—Aristoph.) to the corpse of the murdered man. He cuts off the extremities of his victim, strings the severed parts on a chain and puts them on.—On whom? on himself? or the murdered man? Aristophanes’ words are undecisive: the Schol. Soph., El. 445, speaks in the first version of “himself” (ἑαυτοῖς, p. 123, 17 Papag.) and in the second of “him”, i.e. the murdered man: περὶ τὴν μασχάλην αὐτοῦ ἐκρέμαζον αὐτά [τὰ ἄκρα], p. 123, 23; cf. 124, 5. This too is probably the meaning of Schol. Ap. Rh. iv, 477; EM. 118, 28–9, speaks distinctly of hanging the chain round the neck of the dead man. This is, in fact, the most probable version. The murderer hung the limbs, strung together on a rope, round the neck of his victim and then drew the rope under the armpits (μασχάλαι): a proceeding which is far from being “impossible” (as has been said), as anyone may discover by trying it for himself. The murderer then crossed the ends of the rope over the breast of his victim and after drawing them under the armpits fastened them behind his back. From this process of drawing under the armpits the whole procedure is called μασχαλισμός, and the μόρια of the dead man thus fastened to his body are his μασχαλίσματα (Aristoph.).
Anyone who wishes to reject this description of μασχαλισμός (as some have done recently) must first of all show from what source Aristophanes of Byzantium—whom no one who knows him would accuse of improvizing such details or of concealing his ignorance by invention—can have got his information if not from actual report and historical tradition. The possibility that he arrived at it by straining the meaning and giving a private interpretation of his own to the words μασχαλίζειν and μασχαλισμός is excluded by the nature of these words. They offer no hint whatever in the direction of the special meaning suggested by his account. We cannot indeed say (as Wilamowitz does on A., Cho. 439) that “grammar” forbids us to accept the explanation of what happened in μασχαλίζειν given by Aristoph. To say: ἐμασχαλίσθη, “he had to suffer μασχαλίζειν, μασχαλισμός,” is equally correct whatever sense we give to the process of μασχαλισμός. But the word itself does not testify, by its mere form, to the absolute or exclusive correctness of Aristophanes’ interpretation: it denotes without distinction absolutely any proceeding in which the μασχάλαι figure at all. Verbs in -ιζειν, derived from the names of parts of the body, can denote according to the circumstances the utmost variety of actions done to or with the part of the body concerned: cf. κεφαλίζειν, αὐχενίζειν, τραχηλίζειν, λαιμίζειν, ὠμίζειν, ῥαχίζειν, χειρίζειν, δακτυλίζειν, γαστρίζειν, σκελίζειν (and even πυγίζειν). What particular sort of activity applied to the μασχάλαι is indicated by the verb μασχαλίζειν cannot be decided from the mere form of the verb. This only makes it the more necessary to adhere to Aristophanes’ interpretation, which must have been derived from some other source, i.e. from actual knowledge. It may be true that μασχαλίζειν, considered simply from [584] the point of view of its form, might conceivably mean to tear the arm from the shoulder at the armpits (as Benndorf suggests, Monument von Adamklissi, p. 132 A)—though such an ἐκμοχλεύειν τὸν βραχίονα ἐκ τῆς μασχάλης should rather be ἀπομασχαλίζειν or ἐκμασχαλίζειν. But that out of its many possible meanings the verb should have just this particular one is not suggested by anything: least of all by the sculptured relief on which the gods appear to be tearing out the right arms of their defeated enemies. Such scenes according to Benndorf represent μασχαλισμός. But can the Greeks really have attributed to the gods this much execrated practice of cowardly murderers? We are not told by anyone that this scene represents μασχαλισμός—that is only a conclusion drawn from an apparent agreement between the representation and the view (itself as yet unproved) of what happened in μασχαλίζειν. Is the correctness of the meaning assigned to the word to be proved in its turn from its agreement with the representation? A most palpable argument in a circle!
There is no valid reason for rejecting the statement of Aristophanes; and there must be very good reason indeed for so doing before we may discredit such an authority. He gives his information with no uncertain voice and no suggestion of hesitation, and it must be regarded as the simple account of well-established facts. It would receive additional confirmation—if it needed any—from the very meaning and conception of the word μασχάλισμα. μασχαλίσματα must be the product of μασχαλισμός; they are, in fact, the severed μόρια of the murdered man, with which too Aristophanes identifies them. Σοφοκλῆς ἐν Τρωΐλῳ πλήρη μασχαλισμάτων εἴρηκε τὸν μασχαλισμόν (probably a mere oversight for τὸν τράχηλον): Suid. s.v. ἐμασχαλίσθη (Soph. fr. 566 = 623 P.). If μασχαλίζειν had consisted in the dislocation of the arm from its socket, it would be impossible to say what such μασχαλίσματα might be. They are without doubt identical with what are otherwise called, in descriptions of mutilations of the corpse of a murdered man, ἀπάργματα (Jason after the murder of Apsyrtos ἀπάργματα τάμνε θανόντος, A.R. iv, 477; cf. Schol. and EM. 118, 22 ff.), ἀκρωτηριάσματα, τόμια (τὰ ἀποτμήματα καὶ ἀκρωτηριάσματα τοῦ νεκροῦ, Hesych.). These expressions allow us to conclude that the whole procedure is intended to offer the murdered man as a sacrifice to some sort of ἀποτρόπαιοι. The μασχαλίσματα are the ἀπαρχαί of this sacrificial victim. Indeed, Aristoph. of Byzantium, ap. Phot. [Suid.] μασχαλίσματα, definitely states that μασχαλίσματα was the name given to τὰ τοῖς μηροῖς ἐπιτιθέμενα ἀπὸ τῶν ὠμῶν (not ὤμων as the edd. give; as also Nauck, Arist. Byz., p. 221) κρέα ἐν ταῖς τῶν θεῶν θυσίαις. This refers—though it does not seem to have been remarked by those who have hitherto dealt with the passage—to the parts of the body which were cut off from the raw flesh of the ἱερεῖον before the sacrifice, laid on the severed μηροί of the victim, and burnt up completely with these: the ὠμοθετεῖν in fact so often mentioned in Homer (A 460 i.; Β 423 f.; γ 456 ff.; μ 360 f.; ξ 427 f.). If these ὠμοθετούμενα could also be called (in [585] a comparison) μασχαλίσματα, that again shows that at the μασχαλισμός there was no tearing out of an arm from its socket, but that in reality the extremities of the murdered man (—ἀκρωτηριάσαντες μόρια τούτου) were hewn off and a piece cut off ἐκ παντὸς μέρους τοῦ σώματος as the grammarians following Aristophanes say. Only in this case is the proceeding like that which took place at the ὠμοθετεῖν when the sacrificers ἔκοψαν μικρὸν ἀπὸ παντὸς μέλους (Aristonic. in Schol. A 461; Apollon., Lex. Hom. 171, 8; lex. Rhet. ap. Eust. A 461, p. 134, 36: ὠμοθέτησαν· τὸ ἀφ’ ἑκάστου μέλους τοῦ ἱερείου ἀπετέμοντο καὶ ἀπήρξαντο ἀπ’ ὠμοῦ [so the last word should be written here too, though Eustath. found—and was surprised—ὤμου] καὶ ἐνέβαλον εἰς τὰ μηρία κατὰ τὴν θυσιάν). So too it is said of Eumaios: ὁ δ’ ὠμοθετεῖτο συβώτης, πάντων ἀρξάμενος μελέων, ξ 427 f. (this is the passage in which ἡρμήνευσε [ὁ ποιητής], τί ἐστι τὸ ὠμοθετεῖν: Schol., B.L. A 461; it is this passage, and not A 461, which is meant by Hesych. too s.v. ὠμοθετεῖν, when he says ἐξηγεῖται δ’ αὐτὸς Ὅμηρος; cf. also Dion. Hal. 7, 72, 15).
μασχαλισμός was then essentially an offering intended to avert evil or, what comes to the same thing, a kathartic offering (i.e. a symbol indicating such an offering). It was consummated by murderers ἐπὶ ταῖς καθάρσεσιν (Sch. S., El. 445); ὑπὲρ τοῦ τὴν μῆνιν ἐκκλίνειν as Aristoph. Byz. says (p. 221 N.); τὸ ἔργον ἀφοσιούμενοι as we are told by Apostolius, Prov. xi, 4. All these mean the same thing. But besides these there may still have been another intention present in the minds of the superstitious. The mutilation of the murdered man took place according to Sch. S., El. 445 (in the second version; there is something similar even in the first, p. 123, 18 f.) ἵνα, φασίν, ἀσθενὴς γένοιτο πρὸς τὸ ἀντιτίσασθαι τὸν φονέα. The mutilation of the corpse was transferred to the ψυχή that was leaving the body—such is the ancient conception to which Homer too is not a stranger (cf. e.g. λ 40 ff.). If the dead man is mutilated he will not, for example, be able to hold or throw the spear which in Athens was borne before the murdered man at his funeral (if he left no kinsman as avenger behind him) and was then set up beside his grave ([D.] 47, 69: Eur., Tro. 1147 f.: Poll. viii, 65; Ister ap., EM. 354, 33 ff.; AB. 237, 30 f.)—certainly for no other purpose than that of supplying the dead man himself with a weapon with which to take vengeance on his own account since no one else would βοηθεῖ him. (Thus among the Tasmanians a spear was planted on the grave of the dead that he might have a weapon ready for fighting: Quatrefages, Hommes fossiles et hommes sauvages, p. 346.) Probably the Greek murderer when he ἐμασχάλιζεν, calculated in exactly the same fashion as the Australian negro who cuts off the thumb from the right hand of his fallen foe in order that his soul may no longer be able to hold a spear (Spencer, Princ. of Sociol. i, p. 212).
In Soph., El. 446, the murderer after the μασχαλισμός also wipes the bloody instrument of death on the head of the murdered man. Murderers did this ὥσπερ ἀποτροπιαζόμενοι τὸ μύσος τὸ ἐν τῷ φόνῳ [586] (Schol.). There are passages in the Odyssey which allude to the custom (μέγα ἔργον, ὃ σῇ κεφαλῇ ἀναμάξεις, τ 92) as well as in Herodotos and Demosthenes (see Schneidewin on Electra). Their meaning is quite correctly given in Eust. on Od. τ 92: ὡς εἰς κεφαλὴν δῆθεν ἐκείνοις (τοῖς πεφονευμένοις) τρεπομένου τοῦ κακοῦ. Evidently a mimic version of εἰς κεφαλὴν σοί. Something similar is intended when the murderer sucks the blood of the murdered man three times and spits it out again three times. Ap. Rh. describes such a scene (iv, 477 f.); and something similar occurred in Aesch. (fr. 354; EM. refers to this in immediate connexion with μασχαλισμός). Here too the object is the κάθαρσις of the murderer, the expiation of the impious deed. (ἣ θέμις αὐθέντῃσι δολοκτασίας ἱλέασθαι, A.R.; ἀποπτύσαι δεῖ καὶ καθήρασθαι στόμα, A.) Spitting three times is a regular feature in magic charms and counter-charms: in this case the blood of the murdered man and with it the power of vengeance that rises up out of the blood, is averted, (despuimus comitiales morbos, hoc est, contagia regerimus, Plin., NH. 28, 35.)—What “savage” tribe ever had more primitive ideas or a more realistic symbolism than the Greek populace—and perhaps not populace only—of classical times in the sinister backwaters of their life into which we have here for a moment descended?
APPENDIX III
ἀμύητοι, ἄγαμοι AND DANAÏDES IN THE UNDERWORLD
In Polygnotos’ picture of the underworld were to be seen the figures τῶν οὐ μεμυημέων, τῶν τὰ δρώμενα Ἐλευσῖνι ἐν οὐδενὸς θεμένων λόγῳ—an old man, a παῖς, a young and an old woman, who bear water to a πίθος in broken pitchers: Paus. 10, 31, 9–11. The myth is evidently founded upon an etymological play on words—those who have neglected the “completion” of the holy τέλη and are ἀτελεῖς ἱερῶν (h. Cer. 482) must perform the vain labour in the realm of Persephone of carrying water in broken vessels: the Δαναΐδων ὑδρείας ἀτελεῖς (Axioch. 371 E). It can only have been an oversight that made Pausanias forget to say that the πίθος is τετρημένος, for this is essential to the story (see Pl., Gor. 493 BC; Philetair. ap. Ath. 633 F, 18 [2, p. 235 K.]; Zenob., Prov. ii, 6, etc.), and certainly cannot, as Dieterich, Nekyia, 70, imagined, be replaced by the κατεαγότα ὄστρακα. That the οὐ μεμυημένοι, the ἀμύητοι, as the inscription on the picture called them (Paus. § 9), were in fact those who had neglected the Eleusinian mysteries is only a conclusion of Pausanias’ (or of his authority), as we see from the way he speaks in § 11; but it is probably the right conclusion. The Orphics took over the Eleusinian fable, but exaggerated it to the point of absurdity: they τοὺς ἀνοσίους καὶ ἀδίκους κοσκίνῳ ὕδωρ ἀναγκάζουσι φέρειν in Hades (Pl., Rp. 363 D; Gor. 493 BC). In this they followed a hint given by a popular proverb—representing one of the ἀδύνατα—κοσκίνῳ ὕδωρ φέρειν (which is also Roman: cf. Plaut., [587] Pseud. 102; as an “ordeal”: Plin., NH. 28, 12). It is not until later (nor in surviving literature before the Axiochus, 371 E: though perhaps a little earlier on vase paintings from South Italy) that the story occurs in which it is the daughters of Danaos who are punished in Hades by having to fill the leaking vessel. The reason given for this punishment is their murder of the sons of Aigyptos in the marriage bed: but why did the punishment take this particular form? Clearly in the case of the Danaides their non-fulfilment of an important τέλος is requited in the ever ἀτελεῖς ὑδρεῖαι. Their marriage union was uncompleted through their own choice (thus marriage itself was often called a τέλος and the wedding was preceded by προτέλεια and compared with the τέλη of the mysteries). In this it is certainly implied that their deed had not been expiated, and they themselves had not found other husbands, but had as it were immediately after their impious deed been sent down to Hades (cf. Sch. Eur., Hec. 886, p. 436, 14 Dind.). The daughters of Danaos came to the underworld as ἄγαμοι. To die before marriage was regarded as the height of ill-luck by the common people (cf. Welcker, Syll. ep., p. 49): the essential reason being that those who die thus leave behind them nobody who is called upon to keep up the cult of their souls (E. Tro. 380). Other ideas may have been vaguely combined with this. Thus, on the graves of ἄγαμοι a λουτροφόρος was set up—a figure of a παῖς or a κόρη λουτροφόρος, or a vessel called the λουτροφόρος which has been identified with certain bottomless vases (see Furtwängler, Samml. Sabouroff, on Pl. lviii–lix; cf. Wolters, Ath. Mitth. xvi, 378 ff.). Can this have referred to a similar fate awaiting the ἄγαμοι after their death, a fate such as was imputed to the Danaides in particular as mythical types of those who are ἄγαμοι by their own fault?—an ever unsuccessful carrying of water for the λουτρόν of the bridal bath. (Dieterich, Nekyia, 76, with some probability takes this as the reason for the water-carrying.)
Of these two myths, was the one which appears later in order of time—the story of the Danaids—merely a subsequent development out of the earlier one (even said to occur on a black-figured vase), which told of the vain water-carrying of the ἀμύητοι? I cannot be so sure of this as I once was. I cannot indeed admit (with Dümmler, Delphica, 18 ff., who, however, fails to prove an earlier date for the story of the Danaids’ jar) that it would be difficult to imagine how a special class of human beings came to be replaced later on by certain mythical representatives such as the Danaids were. But it is a very suspicious fact that the Danaids do not as a matter of fact represent the particular class of mankind—the ἀμύητοι—whose place they are supposed to have taken as their mythological representatives. They are not ἀμύητοι at all, but ἄγαμοι. The ἄγαμοι and their ἀτελεῖς ὑδρεῖαι in Hades must have been familiar in popular belief: in addition to this the mystical fable of the similar behaviour of those who had neglected the τέλος of initiation may have sprung up, but certainly not as the model of the ἄγαμοι story, more probably as a subsequent [588] rehandling of it for the purposes of mystical edification. (The story of the ἄγαμοι has a much more primitive and popular flavour; and it alone gives a definite relation between the special labour of water-carrying in Hades and the nature of their default on earth.) The mythical fate of the ἄγαμοι was then forgotten owing to the competing interest of the story of the ἀμύητοι, which, in fact, absorbed it, when a poet—for a poet it must have been—took up what still-surviving custom and its accompanying legend applied to the ἄγ. in general and transferred it to the Danaides. This version of the myth was then victorious in the general consciousness both over the popular tradition about the ἄγαμοι and the mystery-fable of the ἀμύητοι.—It remains to be said that the Danaids (and the ἀμύητοι too in a lesser degree) were supposed to be punished by their ἀτελεῖς ὑδρεῖαι, This, so long as it was a matter of the ἄγαμοι simply, cannot have been the meaning of that fate of purposeless toil in their case any more than it was in the case of Oknos. Even Xenophon, Oec. vii, 40, lets us see that the vain toilers are not as a matter of fact intended to inspire horror, as sinners, but rather pity. His words are: οὐχ ὁρᾷς, οἱ εἰς τὸν τετρημένον πίθον ἀντλεῖν λεγόμενοι ὡς οἰκτίρονται, ὅτι μάτην πονεῖν δοκοῦσι; νὴ Δί’, ἔφη ἡ γυνή, καὶ γὰρ τλήμονές εἰσιν, εἰ τοῦτό γε ποιοῦσιν. This gives us the attitude of mind from which the whole story originally grew up.