On the Order of the Athenian Catalogues of Aiseitoi

Extract

According to Pausanias II 14 one of the two main differences between the cult at Phlius and that at Eleusis lay in the circumstance that at Phlius the hierophant was not appointed for life (οὐκ ἐς τὸν βίον πάντα ἀποδέδικται). The implication that at Eleusis the hierophant was appointed for life is borne out by inscriptions such as the one concerning the old man Glaucus who died as hierophant after many years in office. On the other hand, the inscriptions never mention living men as exhierophants, ex-daduchi, ex-sacred-heralds or ex-altar-priests, except such altar priests as resigned to take the higher post of daduchus. Therefore, students have long been agreed that the hierophant, daduchus, sacred herald and altar priest, i.e. the incumbents of the four great Eleusinian priesthoods, held their office for life. (See, for example, P. Foucart, Les mystères d'Éleusis [Paris, 1914], 168–206, especially 171 for the hierophant and 203 for the sacred herald.) As far as I know, this interpretation of the evidence has never been refuted. Recently, however, this interpretation of the evidence has been repudiated without argument by J. A. Notopoulos (“Studies in the Chronology of Athens under the Empire,” Hesperia XVIII [1949], 1–57, especially 1 and 23), who, asserting, in what he describes as a “systematic study,” that the hierophant and sacred herald “occupy their office for an interval of one or more years, then vacate it only to be re-elected to it later,” dresses a table of the catalogues of aiseitoi (the four great Eleusinian priests and various clerks and other functionaries entitled to public maintenance) in what purports to be a chronological order.