Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals

by J. C. Lawson

All this evidence, with corroboration from other sources than those to which I have referred, has recently been set forth by Miss Harrison, who certainly has made out a strong case for the view which she thus summarises: ‘The leading out of the pharmakos is then a purely magical ceremony based on ignorance and fear; it is not a human sacrifice to Apollo or to any other divinity or even ghost, it is a ceremony of physical expulsion[950].’ In other words, the pharmakos was treated as an incarnation of the polluting influence from which the city was suffering; and his expulsion (which only incidentally involved his death) was the means of purification.

But there are certain points in the practice which incline me to put forward another view of the pharmakos. His mission undoubtedly was to purify the city; but the question to my mind is whether he was expelled as a personification of the pollution or was led out and despatched to the other world as a messenger on the city’s behalf to petition Apollo or some other deity for purification from the defilement.

It might, I think, have been this Greek rite which was present to Herodotus’ mind when he was describing human sacrifice among the Getae. He was apparently familiar, we saw, with the conception of the human victim as a messenger; and the contrasts in method which seem to have struck him most would certainly have been provided by the ceremony of the pharmakos. The Getae chose the victim by lot from among themselves; the Athenians apparently selected some deformed or criminal slave—one of the very scum of the population. The Getae impaled their messenger upon the spears of warriors; the Athenians treated the pharmakos as a burnt-sacrifice. The Getae entrusted their messages to the victim before he was slain; did the Athenians perchance whisper their petitions for purification in the ear of the dead pharmakos as he lay on the pyre? Was he the messenger whose treatment Herodotus had in mind?

There are certain points in the ritual itself which make for that view. The pharmakos was maintained for a time at the public cost. Why so? A kindred custom of Marseilles in ancient times supplies the answer. ‘Whenever the inhabitants of Marseilles suffer from a pestilence, one of the poorer class offers himself to be kept at the public expense and fed on specially pure foods. After this has been done he is decorated with sacred boughs and clad in holy garments, and led about through the whole city to the accompaniment of curses, in order that upon him may fall all the ills of the whole city, and thus he is cast headlong down[951].’ The pharmakos was therefore publicly maintained in order that he might be purified by diet. Again, we know, the pharmakos was provided before the sacrifice with cheese, barley-cake, and dried figs—pure food, it would seem, with which to sustain himself on his journey to the other world. Again, he was smitten seven times on the privy parts with squills and branches of wild fig and other wild plants. Why with squill and wild fig? Because plants of this kind were purgative, as Miss Harrison[952] very clearly points out. Among other evidences of the existence of this idea, Lucian[953] makes Menippus relate how before he was allowed to consult the oracle of the dead he was “purged and wiped clean and consecrated with squill and torches.” And why on the privy parts? Because sexual purity was required. When Creon was bidden to sacrifice a son for the salvation of his city in a time of calamity such as commonly called for the sacrifice of a pharmakos, Haemon was refused because of his marriage[954], and Menoeceus was the only pure victim. And why beaten at all? Because again, as Miss Harrison shows[955], the act of beating was expulsive of evil and pollution. So then the chief part of the ritual was devoted to purifying the pharmakos himself.

But if the pharmakos was thus himself made pure, how could his expulsion purify the city? How could a man deliberately cleansed by every religious or magical device serve as the embodiment of that pollution of which the city sought to be rid? Miss Harrison[956] seeks to explain this difficulty on the grounds of that combination of the notions ‘sacred’ and ‘accursed,’ ‘pure’ and ‘impure,’ which the savage describes in the word ‘taboo.’ But the notion of ‘taboo,’ though complex, is not illogical; anything supernatural, which when properly used or respected is holy, is logically enough believed to be fraught with a curse for those who misuse or disregard it. But deliberately to purify that which is to be the embodiment of defilement is not the outcome of a complex but logical primitive notion; it is simply illogical.

The view of the rite then which I propose is briefly this. The pharmakos was originally a messenger, representative of a whole people, carrying to some god their petition for deliverance from any great calamity; and, that he might be fitted to enter the presence of the god, he was purified, like Menippus before he was allowed to approach even an oracle, by every known means. But the office of pharmakos did not always remain a post of honour. It was naturally not coveted by those who found any pleasure in life; and gradually the duty devolved upon the lowest of the low. Instead of an Iphigenia or a Menoeceus the people’s chosen representative was some criminal or slave, and the personality of the messenger overshadowed the character of his office. The original purport of the rite was forgotten. Instead of being honoured as the people’s ambassador, specially purified for his mission of intercession with the gods, he was deemed an outcast by whose removal the people could rid themselves of pollution. Thus the religious rite lost its true motive and degenerated into a magical ceremony of riddance.

That this debased idea was the vulgar interpretation of the rite in historical Athens is absolutely proved by a passage from Lysias’ speech against Andocides: ‘We needs must hold that in avenging ourselves and ridding ourselves of Andocides we purify the city and perform apotropaic ceremonies and solemnly expel a pharmakos and rid ourselves of a criminal; for of this sort the fellow is[957].’ But the whole ritual forms a protest against that idea. Its keynote was the sanctification, not the degradation, of the pharmakos. In Marseilles indeed the people’s change of attitude towards the messenger whom they so scrupulously purified had gone so far that imprecations upon him were substituted for the prayers which he should have been bidden to carry; but in Athens and in Ionia the ritual itself, so far as we know, contained no suggestion of contempt or hatred of the victim. It was only the appearance and the character of those who were selected as pharmakoi which made of the word a term of vulgar abuse such as we find it to be in Aristophanes[958]; for the scattering of the victim’s ashes to the winds and waves must not be interpreted as an act denoting any abhorrence of the dead man. Its significance is rather this. Religious motives had involved an act of bloodshed, and the people who had performed it as a religious duty were, like Orestes, none the less guilty of blood. In any case of blood-guilt it was held prudent for the guilty party to take precautions against his victim’s vengeance; and one means to this end was, as we shall see later, to burn the body and scatter its ashes. In the modern story from Santorini there is a precaution mentioned which has precisely the same object; the victim’s hands, as well as his head, were cut off. This, as I shall show later, is a survival of the old μασχαλισμός or mutilation of murdered men, by which they were rendered innocuous, if they should return from the grave, and incapable of vengeance upon their murderers. There is then, I repeat, nothing in the ritual itself which suggests any contempt or hatred of the victim, as there assuredly would have been if from the first he had been the incarnation of the city’s defilement.

Possibly then the pharmakos was originally a messenger from men to gods, sent in any time of great calamity and peril; possibly too this significance of the rite had not in Herodotus’ time been wholly supplanted by the lower view to which Lysias gave utterance. Lysias was addressing a jury and abusing an opponent; a vulgar and base presentment of the pharmakos suited the occasion. But sober and reflective men may still have read in the ritual its early meaning and have recognised in the pharmakos, for all his sorry appearance, the purified representative of a people sent by them to lay their prayers before some god.

This, I am aware, is a suggestion and no more. To prove the existence of this motive underlying any given case of human sacrifice in ancient times is, owing to the meagre character of the data, impossible. But since at any rate the conception of the dead as messengers was known to the ancients—for that much, I think, I have proved—the suggestion deserves consideration. If it be right, it shows that even the most ugly and repulsive ceremonies of Greek worship need not be regarded as damning refutation of the beauty of Greek religion. Though the act of human sacrifice is horrible, the motive for it may have been sublime. Where else in the civilised world is the faith which whispers messages in a dead ear? Who shall cast the first stone at those who in this faith dared to speed their messenger upon the road of death? Surely such a deed is the crowning act of a faith which by dreams and oracles, by auspices and sacrificial omens, has ever sought after communion with the gods.

Yet no, that faith aspired even higher; another chapter will treat of a sacrament which foreshadowed not merely the colloquy of men with gods as of servants with masters, but a closer communion between them, the communion of love; for, as Plato says in the text which heads this chapter, ‘all sacrifices and all the arts of divination, wherein consists the mutual communion of gods and men, are for nought else but the guarding and tending of Love.’