[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.