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Priestess in the Text: Theano Menonos Agrylethen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood
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Extract

Plutarch's account of the condemnation and punishment of Alcibiades by the Athenians (Plut. Alc. 22.5) includes the following statement: … ἔτι κα καταρσθαι προσεϕηφίσαντο πντας ἱερεĩς κα ἱείας, ὧν μóνην φασ Θεανὼ τν Μνωνος Ἀγρυλθεν ντειπεīν πρòς τò ϕφισμα, φσκουσαν εὐχν, οὐ καταρν ἱρειαν γεγονναι.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , April 1988 , pp. 29 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1988

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References

Notes

1. See on this Hatzfeld, J., Alcibiade. Étude sur l'histoire d' Athènes à la fin du Ve siècle (Paris, 1940), p. 204Google Scholar and n.4. See also Diod. 13.69.2; Nepos, Alc. ( = vii) 4.5; cf. Max. of Tyr. vi.6 = Suda s.v. Eumolpidai; Justin v.1.1.

2. See e.g. most recently, Garland, R. S. J., ‘Religious Authority in archaic and classical Athens’, BSA 79 (1984), 77Google Scholar. On Theano see Kirchner, I., Prosopographia Attica (Berlin, 1901–1903), no. 6636Google Scholar; Toepffer, I., Attische Genealogie (Berlin, 1889), pp. 96–7Google Scholar n.l and especially Clinton, K., The Sacred Officials of the Eleusinian Mysteries (Philadelphia, 1974 [= Transactions of the American Philosophical Society n.s. 64.3.]), p. 70Google Scholar no. 2; cf. also p. 16 and n. 31.

3. Unless we count Hatzfeld's formulation (Hatzfeld n. 1), p. 204 (n. 4) ‘1’ anecdote … de la prêtresse Theano qui aurait refusé de prononcer la malédiction' as the expression of such doubts.

4. These assumptions and schemata also underlie some modern interpretations of the Antigone; I am putting forward my suggestions pertaining to the ways in which the fifth-century audience made sense of that play in a paper to be published in JHS 108 (1988)Google Scholar.

5. On the established role of curses in Athenian public life see e.g. [Lys.] 6.51; Dem. 20.107, and see also Din. 2.16; Andoc. 1.31. For a discussion of ancient curses see Vallois, R., BCH 38 (1914), 250–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ziebarth, E., Hermes 30 (1895), 57–70Google Scholar. Cf. also, for example, on the curse laid by the Amphictyons which guarantees the sacred land of the Delphic oracle Aesch. 3. (c. Ctes.) 110.

6. Cf. Vallois (n. 5), 255, 266–7; Clinton (n. 2), p. 16.

7. I hope to develop various aspects of this relationship elsewhere (in a paper entitled ‘What is polis religion?’ to be published in a volume on the Greek polis edited by O. Murray and S. R. F. Price). For a recent discussion, collection of data, and bibliography on Athenian priests and their authority, see Garland (n. 2), 75–78.

8. Vallois (n. 5), 267 n. 1.

9. As Vallois himself acknowledges (Vallois (n. 5), 226–7 and n. 1).

10. The challenges to religious practice which took place outside mainstream religion, in the sectarian outside of Orphism and Pythagoreanism (on this challenge see Detienne, M., Dionysos Slain (Baltimore and London, 1979), pp. 53–67Google Scholar; Burkert, W., Greek Religion (Oxford, 1985), p. 303)Google Scholar, are not relevant here, since the episode is situated at the heart of the polis. The notion, which is becoming fashionable, that Greek tragedy somehow subverted the discourse of the polis is, in my view, the result of simplified, culturally determined, readings of the tragedies – and of the classical polis discourse, especially religious discourse – despite disclaimers to the contrary. But this is beyond my scope here.

11. See Lysias 30 passim. I discuss this in my paper on polis religion (cf. n.7).

12. On the question of Theano's priesthood see Clinton (n. 2), p. 16 n. 31. On asebeia: Burkert (n. 10), pp. 316–7. On the hierophant Archias' conviction for impiety cf. [Dem.] 59.116–7; cf. Clinton, p. 17.

13. I discuss this aspect of Polyneikes elsewhere (see n. 4).

14. Here he follows the version that only the Eleusinian clergy had cursed him, while in the discussion of the laying of the curses, of which the Theano story is part, he says that all the priests and priestesses cursed him (See on this Hatzfeld (n. 1), p. 204 and n. 4).

15. On Theodoras see Clinton (n. 2), p. 16 no. 2.

16. Garland (n. 2), 77.

17. See Clinton (n. 2), pp. 90–91.

18. I am discussing some aspects of these questions elsewhere (cf. n. 7). On the lifting of curses see Vallois (n. 5), 264. I must note with regard to Theodoros, that one argument that can perhaps be brought against the view that he was historical is the fact, which may, of course, be entirely coincidental, that the name ‘Theodoros’ seems to have attracted stories of some form of what could be subsumed (when viewed through the perceptual filters of a later era) under the notion ‘religious dissent’ and which have some reference to the Eleusinian cult. Thus, apart from the story here under consideration, according to Plut. Alc. 22.4, the person who impersonated the keryx during the profanation of the Mysteries was called Theodoros. And according to Diog. Laert. 2.101, Theodoros the atheist philosopher made an irreverent remark to the hierophant Eurykleides (see on this episode Clinton (n. 2), pp. 21–22). Obviously, this recurrence of the name Theodoros in these three contexts may be due to coincidence, and even if it is not, it may be that there had been one (perceived) historical dissenter called Theodoros, and for that reason the name was taken over and attached to other comparable incidents.

19. Lefkowitz, M. R. and Fant, M. B., Women's life in Greece and Rome (London, 1982), p. 260Google Scholar (no. 260).

20. On this type of nom parlant see Calame, C., Le récit en Grèce ancienne. Enonciations et représentations de poètes (Paris, 1986), pp. 153–61Google Scholar. On the name Theodoros see Calame, p. 154.

21. Clinton (n. 2), p. 96 no. 4; Toepffer (n. 2), p. 81.

22. See Clinton (n. 2), nos. 15, 17, pp. 55–57.

23. Clinton (n. 2), p. 95 no. 1.

24. Clinton (n. 2), pp. 47–48.

25. On whom see Davies, J. K., Athenian Propertied Families 600–300 B.C. (Oxford, 1971), p. 516Google Scholar.

26. On the name Menōn cf. Kirchner (n. 2), 10064–10085.

27. With regard to the role of women cf., for example, Loraux, N., Façons tragiques de tuer une femme (Paris, 1985), p. 104Google Scholar n. 2 on the perceptions of, and approaches to, women in Plutarch and other texts of the same era which are different from those of the classical period.

28. Cf. Boon, J. A., Other Tribes, Other Scribes. Symbolic anthropology in the comparative study of cultures, histories, religions and texts (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 27–46Google Scholar.