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Lollianos and the desperadoes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Jack Winkler
Jack Winkler
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Extract

‘Without exaggeration and oversimplification little progress is made in most fields of humanistic investigation.’ With this disarming quotation from A. D. Nock, Albert Henrichs begins his book-length interpretation of P. Colon, inv. 3328. In the same spirit of humanistic progress, I would like to reconsider some aspects of the text and to offer a different assessment of its place in the history of religion and literature.

The fragments are from three pages of a hitherto unknown Greek novel, Lollianos' Phoinikika. Frags A and B luckily include book-ends, from whose subscriptions we know the author and title of the work. Frag. C is just scraps which yield no continuous sense. Frag. A brokenly and confusedly mentions youths, women dancing, (furniture?) being thrown off the roof, sobriety, kissing, and then, in a slightly more intelligible scene, the male narrator's loss of virginity with a woman named Persis, her gift to him of a gold necklace which he refuses, the assistance of one Glauketes in taking the necklace elsewhere, and finally what seems to be a confrontation between Persis' mother and the two lovers. This last is similar to Achilles Tatius ii 23–5. Achilles Tatius also offers the closest parallel to frag. B, a ghastly description of human sacrifice and cannibalism. This scene is the focus of most of Henrichs' interpretation and I will limit myself to it in the present article.

The central question raised by this new novel fragment is how to assess the relative importance of religious and literary parallels. Is the Phoinikika to be regarded as a document in religious or in literary history, or perhaps somewhere on the borderland of both? There has been a lively discussion in the last half century of the thesis that the ancient novels were written and read as religious documents, deriving their basic structure and many details from the myths and cults of particular religions. Henrichs devotes most of his book to arguing that the sacrifice scene in Lollianos is inspired by an actual rite, probably of a Dionysian character, and that the Phoinikika serves to illuminate a little-known corner of religious history. His views are based on an extensive collection of liturgical, mythical and ethnological parallels concerning oath rituals, the sacrifice of children, cannibalism, and face-painting. Of all the parallels cited, the two which are closest in every way to Lollianos are Achilles Tatius iii 15 and Cassius Dio lxxi 4. On the strength of these Henrichs asserts that Lollianos' description of a ritual murder represents, more or less directly, the cultic practice of the Egyptian Boukoloi. Without postulating a religious message for the Phoinikika as a whole, Henrichs does claim that this scene yields valuable information about the structure of ancient mystery rituals (78 n. 6) and that these new fragments support the methodological correctness of Kerenyi's and Merkelbach's approach to the ancient novels.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 100 , 1980 , pp. 155 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1980

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References

1 Henrichs, A., Die Phoinikika des Lollianos, Pap. Texte u. Abh. xiv (Bonn 1972)Google Scholar: hereafter ‘Henrichs’. See also ZPE iv (1969) 205–15, v (1970)22 [reporting A. Dihle], vi (1970) 42–3 [reporting M. D. Reeve]; ‘Pagan ritual and the alleged crimes of the early Christians’, in Kyriakon, Quasten, Festchr. J., edd. Granfield, P. and Jungmann, J. A. (Munster Westf. 1970) 18–35Google Scholar; Browne, G. M., ZPE x (1973) 77Google Scholar; Cazzaniga, I., Vetera Christianorum x (1973) 305–18Google Scholar; Koenen, L., Bull. Amer. Soc. Papyrologists xvi (1979) 109–14Google Scholar; Sandy, G., AJP c (1979) 367–76Google Scholar; C. P. Jones, Phoenix (forthcoming).

The quotation is from Nock, A. D. ‘Hellenistic Mysteries and Christian Sacraments’, Mnem. v (1952) 213Google Scholar, repr. in his Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, ed. Stewart, Z. (Cambridge Mass. 1972) 820Google Scholar. The sentiment is typical of Nock, especially when he wanted to express courteous disagreement with a work under review (see Stewart's introduction ibid. 3, and Nock ibid. 175). Prof. Henrichs reminds me that the context continues as follows: ‘In reacting against them we must beware of exaggeration in the opposite direction and of any tendency to assume simple relations of cause and effect in an area in which they are very rare.’

2 The name Glauketes and general considerations of style suggest that P. Oxy. 1368 be assigned to Lollianos (Henrichs 8–10). Prof. Henrichs is scheduled to edit further Oxyrhynchus fragments containing the name Glauketes.

3 Summarized Henrichs 29 f.

4 Kerenyi, K., Die griechisch-orientalische Romanliteratur in Religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung (Tübingen 1927Google Scholar; revised edn Darmstadt 1962). Merkelbach, R., Roman und Mysterium in der Antike (Munich/Berlin 1962)Google Scholar. ‘Damit bestätigt der neue Romanpapyrus die methodische Richtigkeit dieser Interpretationsweise’ (Henrichs 78).

5 Trenker, S., The Greek Novella in the Classical Period (Cambridge 1958)Google Scholar. Wehrli, F., ‘Einheit und Vorgeschichte der griechisch-römischen Romanliteratur’, MH xxii (1965) 133–54Google Scholar. Wehrli traces the commonness (Einheit) of several narrative patterns, underlying and preceding (Vorgeschichte) the surviving Greek and Latin novels. Methodological remarks of the same tendency may be found in Karl Bürger, Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Romans: i Der Lukiosroman (Wissens. Beilage zum Prog. des Herzoglichen Gymnasiums in Blankenburg am Harz 1902) and Perry, B. E., The Ancient Romances (Berkeley/L.A. 1967) 320 fGoogle Scholar.

6 Henrichs does not deny that the Phoinikika is an engagingly vulgar and entertaining work (7) nor that the described ritual is made to serve the requirements of a literary fiction (28). But he maintains that the scene can in some sense be regarded as reporting an actual rite, whereas I propose that the requirements of Grand Guignol are so paramount that the informative value of the scene is seriously compromised.

7 P. Oxy. 2944. Turner, E. G., The Papyrologist at Work, GRBS Monographs vi (Durham N.C. 1973) 8–14Google Scholar. This story, so far from being unknown to any classical author, is alluded to in a parodic way by Petronius Sat. 79–80. Its connection with Roman art has been extensively studied. See Lucas, H., ‘Ein Märchen bei Petron’ in Beiträge zur alten Geschichte und griechisch-römischen Alterthumskunde: Festschr…Otto Hirschfeld (Berlin 1903) 257–69Google Scholar. For collections of wise judgements among various peoples, see ibid. 262 n. 4.

8 Other parallels adduced are despised superstitious rituals (Plut, , de superstit. 166aGoogle Scholar), mourning rituals (Hdt. ii 85), festival joking (Lucian Sat. 2, cf. Plaut. Poen. 1195, Petr. Sat. 22), festival disguise (FGrH 396 F 24 = Ath. xiv 622d), and a disguise which is not religious, festive or ritualistic (Heliodoros vi 11.2). Henrichs (64) is close to the truth when he perceives that the villains' disguise is frightening: ‘Ein viel praktischerer Zweck dieses Mummenschanzes war sicher, die Initianden gründlich zu erschrecken’. The experience of terror may indeed play a part in an initiation (Plut., fr. 178Google Scholar Sandbach). The emotional pattern of a secular melodrama may in abstraction be identical with that of a religious rite: ‘Demeter and Kore and he who is called Iacchos signify … to the uninitiated some fear or danger first, but afterward they bring about some good’; ‘Sarapis and Isis and Anoubis and Harpokrates—the gods themselves and their statues and their mysteries and every account (logos) of these gods and also the gods who share the same temples and altars—signify disturbances and dangers and threats and crises, from which they save (the dreamer) contrary to expectation and hope’ (Artemidoros, Oneir. ii 39Google Scholar, 174 f. Pack). But this ambiguous and very general narrative structure of crisis followed by rescue need not be seriously religious, for though most religion is based on fear, it is wrong to infer that all fear is religious.

9 ‘Ein sachliches Ordnungsprinzip’, Henrichs 28.

10 Apuleius' brigands when they first begin to carouse (before the three robber tales are inserted) are compared to Lapiths and Centaurs (iv 8); Lollianos' brigands are either compared to Lapiths and Centaurs or use an enormous cup on which is engraved such a scene (B 1 verso 13–15).

11 Night is the time of terrors in Apuleius—highwaymen and thieves (i 15, iv 18, viii 17), witches (ii 22), wild young aristocrats (ii 18)—and throughout ancient belief. Good examples are Ar. Av. 1482–93, Eur., Hel. 569 f.Google Scholar, Xen., Eph. v. 7.7.Google Scholar, Harmodios ap. Ath. iv 149c, Plut., Kim. 6Google Scholar, Babr. lxiii, scenes of necromancy such as Hld. vi 14 f., tabellae defixionis (Collart, P., ‘Une nouvelle Tabella Defixionis ďÉgypte’, RPh iv [1930] 248–56)Google Scholar, and magical hymns (to Helios: to Selene: Dilthey, , RhM xxvii [1872] 375–419)Google Scholar. ‘And one of the old Greek doctors in fact describes a pathological state into which a man may fall “if he is travelling on a lonely route and terror seizes him as a result of an apparition” (Hippok Int. 48 = vii 286 Littré)’: Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley/LA 1951) 117Google Scholar. The ghost stories told to frighten children, which Plato mentions in disapproval, are set at night (Rep. ii 381e).

It is commonly said that noon too is a time of terror, but some of the texts cited in support have been carelessly read. Some mention ghosts that appear at midday, to be sure, but in a sacred grove so thick and shady that no daylight enters; the point is not that noon is dangerous but that in such places it is always virtually night (Lucan iii 423–5, cf. 401; Stat. Theb. iv 438–41, cf. 420–3; Lucian, Philops. 22–4)Google Scholar. Most of the other references to such a belief are based on the principle that rural deities rest and take their swimming-break or siesta at midday, just as the shepherds do, and that they do not like to be disturbed (Theok. i 15–18, Philostr. Her. p. 143 Kayser, , Auson., Mosel. 178–88)Google Scholar. Several of these also refer to sacred, and presumably shady, groves (Kallim. H. vi 38, Ov. Fasti iv 762, cf. 751 ff.). The deities that deliberately appear at that time to mortals are as likely to be helpful as harmful (Herakl. Pont. fr. 95 Wehrli; A.R. iv 1312 f.; Kaibel, Epig. Gr. 802)Google Scholar. But for a ghostly and dangerous army at noon, see n. 43. For an ambiguous attack by either guerrillas or demons, in modern Greek folklore, see R. & E. Blum (n. 25) 107 f.

12 An interesting explanation of how such amulets are effective against brigands: ‘si quis in via tutus ambulare voluerit, latrones timere non curet, quia fugat eos et pro unius viatoris persona multae personae videntur insidiantibus…si quis item facit in ambulando et in manu portaverit, non sentit laborem itineris, fugat daemonia, prohibet maleficia, venena discutit, avertit oculum malum’ (Cod. Bonn. 218, p. 85 in Heim, R. ‘Incantamenta Magica Graeca Latina’, Neue Jhb. f. Kl. Phil. Suppl. xix 1 (1892) 463–576Google Scholar.

13 Spectral armies: Lucan i 521, 569–83; Paus. i 32.4; Pliny, N.H. ii 148Google Scholar; specifically black—Stat. Theb. iv 438–42; and see the stories of military panic below, p. 164. Hekate's komos: Trag, incert. frag. 375N2; Apuleius, Apol. 64Google Scholar; magical hymn to Hekate, , RhM xxvii (1872) 375–419Google Scholar; Abt, A., Die Apologie des Apuleius von Madaura und die antike Zauberei, RGVV iv 2 (Giessen 1908) 123–30, 229–32Google Scholar; Bolkestein, H., Theophrastos' Character der Deisidaimonia als religionsgeschichtliche Urkunde, RGVV xxi 2 (Giessen 1929) 41Google Scholar; black robed at night, A.R. iii 861 f. Demons and revenants: Lucian, Philops. 29Google Scholar; cf. Johanna, ten Vrugt-Lentz, , Mors Immatura (Diss. Rijks-Univ. Leiden 1960, publ, at Groningen)Google Scholar.

14 All modern editors have accepted the conjecture armati, partim for the MS armati, but the Groningen group in their commentary on Bk iv 1–27 (Groningen 1977) reject this. They find it more reasonable that all of the band look like ghosts as they go off into the night (not wearing any special outfit) but not all are carrying swords. It is quite true that a division into two work-parties with two separate appearances is not functional here; even the earlier separation into two groups who went separate ways (Met. iv 8) was really a narrative convenience, so that one group could tell the other their stories. Lollianos' group, who I imagine do go separate ways, may still have a single goal and are following different routes to it.

15 Lemures are ordinarily frightening and dangerous ghosts (Hor. Epist. ii 2.209; Pers. 5.185; Schol. Pers. 5.185: lemures dicuntur dii manes, quos Graeci δαίμονας vocant, velut umbras quasdam divinitatem habentes). Apuleius in a different mood distinguishes ghosts as good (lares), bad (laruae), or unspecified (lemures and manes) (de deo Soc. 15); but Augustine, commenting on this very passage of Apuleius, gives the more common usage—lemures and laruae are both the souls of evil persons (C.D. ix 11).

16 Cited in n. 1.

17 Prof. Hagedorn of the Institut für Altertumskunde der Universität zu Köln has kindly examined the papyrus under a microscope and reports that the traces, which are in very poor condition, are somewhat closer to ηλι than to σκοτ. The latter is possible but seems to demand a close spacing of letters and perhaps a running together of οτ. For parallels to the expression, cf. Xen., Anab. ii 5.9Google Scholar, διὰ σκότους ἡ ὁδός (metaphorical); Plut., Q.Rom. 279Google Scholar f, μϵτὰ ϕωτός … διὰ σκότους. Thucydides describes the invisibility of soldiers in dark night with the phrase ἀνὰ τὸ σκοτϵινόν. Plutarch uses the metaphor of a nerve-wracked traveller wandering through the darkness (διὰ τοῦ σκότους) to show the similarity of dying and being initiated (fr. 178 Sandbach). Prof. Henrichs informs me that διὰ τοῦ σκότους is written in the margin of a transcription in his files, and may perhaps have been a suggestion by one of his students.

18 Wendland, P., ‘Antike Geister- und Gespenstergeschichten’, Siebs, T. (ed.), Festschr. zur Jahrhundertfeier der Universität zu Breslau, im namen der schlesischen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde (Breslau 1911) 35–55Google Scholar; Morley, L. Collisoli, Greek and Roman Ghost Stories (London 1912)Google Scholar; Tambor-nino, J., De antiquorum daemonismo, RGVV vii 3 (Giessen 1909)Google Scholar; Ettig, G., ‘Acheruntica, sive descensuum apud veteres enarratio’, Leipz. Stud, xiii (1890/1891) 249–410Google Scholar; Pfister, , s.v. ‘Epiphanie’ § 19Google Scholar, Gespenster, Schreckende, RE Suppl. iv (1924) 297Google Scholar. When this paper was finished, I finally obtained a copy of Dölger, F. J., Die Sonne der Gerechtigkeit und der Schwarze, Liturgiegesch. Forsch, xiv (Munster Westf. 1918)Google Scholar, which amply documents one type (black) of demonic appearance.

19 ‘Lemures and Manes…stand for the vague conceptions formed of the shades of the dead who dwelt beneath the ground. These were a nameless crowd, hardly individualized, not distinguishable from the fleeting phantoms who fluttered about the tomb.’ Cumont, F., After Life in Roman Paganism (New Haven 1923) 72Google Scholar.

20 Lawson, J. C., Περì Ἀλιβάντων, CR xl (1926) 52–8Google Scholar, 116–21. In another picture which showed Odysseus in the underworld there was depicted a daimon named Eurynomos eating the flesh of corpses and tossing aside the bones: (Paus, x 28.7).

21 Ed. Th. Zahn (Erlangen 1880) 122 ff. These are the acts by Prochoros (early fifth century), not those by Leukios (mid-second century).

22 James, M. R., The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford 1924, repr. 1963) 323Google Scholar. The Acts of Peter are, like Lollianos, a second century work. See also Acts of Andrew 22 (James 345) and the Apostolic Histories of Abdias vi 22 (James 466). The woman at Philostr. VA iii 3 who frightens Apollonios' companions in India is black to her breasts and white below. They flee from her ὡς δϵῖμα, but it seems to be the mixture of colours which alarms them, not her blackness or whiteness.

23 Daimones often appear as vicious dogs (Acts of Andrew 6–7, James 339; Arabic Gospel of the Infancy 35, James 82; Proklos, in remp. ii p. 184.1Google Scholar Kroll) or as dog-faced (Jacoby, A., ‘Der hundsköpfige Dämon der Unterwelt’, Arch, für Religionswiss. xxii (1922) 219–25)Google Scholar. Pace LSJ, προκύνητϵ is probably correct in the curse tablet quoted above in n. 11: note that (i) the daimon is in the service of Hekate, who is sometimes dog-faced and usually accompanied by dogs, (ii) it runs by night, and (iii) is violent to men. All this makes προσκύνητϵ an inappropriate emendation. For the obvious fear of meeting unfriendly dogs at night; cf. Claudius meeting Cereberus: ilium vidit canem nigrum, villosum, sane non quem velis tibi in tenebris occurrere (Sen., Apocol. 13)Google Scholar. Medieval folklore pictured demonic skeletons with dog heads (Kretzenbacher, L., Kynokephale Dämonen Südosteuropȧïscher Volksdichtung, Beitr. zur Kenntnis Südosteuropas und des Nahen Orients v [Munich 1968])Google Scholar.

24 Lipsius-Bonnet ii 1.146 (ingentem Aegyptium nigriorem fuligine). Cf. also Lucian, Philops. 16Google Scholar (an exorcised phasma/daimon μέλανα καὶ καπνώδη τὴν χρόαν); Pap. Gr. Mag. VII 349–59, vol. ii p. 16 παιδίον μελάνχρουν Plutarch's description of the evil daimon who appeared to Brutus before Philippi is vague (δεινήν καὶ ἀλλόκοτου ὄψιν ἐκφύλου σώματος καὶ φοβεροῦ Brut. 16), but Florus and Valerius Maximus in retelling the same story draw from the common repertoire of frightening descriptions to specify the daimon's colour as black (atra quaedam imago, Flor. ii 17.8; hominem ingentis magnitudinis, coloris nigri, squalidum barba et capillo inmisso, Val. Max. i 7.7). Jesus', discourse in the Pistis Sophia (364–71)Google Scholar on the five major classes of sublunary demons includes the all-hairy Paraplex, three-faced Hekate, the succubus Typhon (palewhite?, cf. Plut., de Iside 33Google Scholar, πάρωχροσ) and Ariouth Aethiopica, quae est αρχων feminina, nigra penitus (367, ed. Petermann, trans. Schwartze, Berlin 1851 = 140, ed. Schmidt, C., trans. Macdermot, V., Nag Hammadi Studies ix [Leiden 1978])Google Scholar.

25 Joannou, P.-P.Démonologie populaire—démonologie critique au xie siècle, Schr, zur Geistesgesch. des öst. Europa v (Wiesbaden 1971) 13Google Scholar. For traces of this belief in modern times, see R., and Blum, E., The Dangerous Hour: The Lore of Crisis and Mystery in Rural Greece (London 1970) 72Google Scholar n. 1, 101, 110, 111, 332.

26 Death (Stat., Theb. iv 528)Google Scholar, Charon (Val. Flac. i 814 f.), Cerberus (Hor., Od. ii 13.34Google Scholar, Stat., Theb. ii 28Google Scholar), Pluto (ibid. ii 49), the escort of souls (‘A man took me who was hateful to look upon, altogether black, and his raiment exceedingly foul’, Acts of Thomas 55, James 390), the buildings (Ap. Met. vi 19), even the frogs (Juv. ii 150). Cf. Radke, G., Die Bedeutung der weissen und der schwarzen Farbe in Kult und Brauch der Griechen und Römer (diss. Berlin, Jena 1936) 18–20Google Scholar, with further examples of black eidola. A physical explanation sometimes given for the blackness of underworld ghosts is that cremation fires have charred the body and bones (Sil. Ital. xiii 447, Stat. Theb. viii 5 f.).

27 The colour of the native Egyptian brigands is not surprising to readers of Achilles Tatius, whose boukoloi are black (iii 9.2). Evidently the dead pirates on the shore around Charikleia are not black—at least they are never so described (i 1–4, v 20–33). That an army of ghostly soldiers may be explicitly black is seen from Stat. Theb. iv 438–42.

28 Snowden, F. M., Jr., Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Cambridge Mass./London 1970) 179Google Scholar f.; Wiesen, D. S., ‘Juvenal and the Blacks’, Class. et Med. xxxi (1970) 132–50Google Scholar.

29 So it is partly because Brutus' soldiers are facing a desperate battle that they are startled when they open the gates and meet a black man (Plut., Brut. 48Google Scholar, App. B.C. iv 17.134, Florus ii 17.7). Severus was on the lookout for an omen at the moment when an Ethiopian jester met him, carrying a garland of cypress (HA Sept. Sev. 22.4–5).

30 P. 161 and n. 33. P. Oxy 416 (=Lavagnini, B., Erot. Graec. Fr. Pap. [Leipzig 1922] 1935)Google Scholar—a ‘god’ with a mournful, frightening and squalid look, appearing in the darkness; Plato's torturing demons are ἄγριοι ἄνδρεσ (Rep. x 615e); Hekate's dogs are μέλανες . . . καὶ λάσιοι πιναρᾷ καὶ αὐχμώσῃ τῇ λάχνη Luc. Philops. 24.

31 An important testimony to the low level of this fear on a scale of civilized rationality is Agatharchides de mari Erythraeo 16 (Müller GGM): ‘But Ethiopians will terrify Greeks. In what way? By their blackness and difference of form? Such a fear among us does not survive the age of childhood. In battles and the greater struggles, events are not decided by appearance of colour but by valour and leadership.’

32 The irrational fears of children are a topos of ancient literature: Pl. Rep. i 330; [Pl.] Axioch. 367a; Lucr. iii 87 f.; Proklos, in remp. ii 180Google Scholar. 18 f. Kroll.

33 Ps.-Quint, . Decl., 10Google Scholar describes a typical malevolent ghost as pallid (v), funereal and squalid (xvi). Calcidius pictures the visible form of the lower, more material and passionate demons: exsanguium quoque simulacrorum umbraticas formas induuntur, obesi corporis inluviem trahentes (Comm. in Platonis Timaeum 135, ed. J. Wrobel, Leipzig 1876).

34 nigri lemures, Pers. v 185; nocturnos lemures, Hor. Epist. ii 2.209 (nocturnos does not necessarily mean ‘black’).

35 nemo tam puer est ut Cerberum timeat et tenebras et larvarum habitum nudis ossibus cohaerentium, Sen. Ep. 24.8; macilentam uel omnino evisceratam formam diri cadaveris fabricatam, prorsus horribilem et larvalem, Apul., Apol. 63Google Scholar; Petron., Sat. 34Google Scholar.

36 Hyperbole, at Priap. 32Google Scholar: aridior…pallidior…pro sanguine pulverem…ad me nocte solet venire et affert pallorem maciemque larvalem; at Apul., Met. i 6Google Scholar, lurore+maciem = larvale simulacrum.

37 terrore larvarum interfectorumque catervae, Amm. Marc, xiv 11.17; larvale simulacrum … et miserabiles umbrae, id. xxxi 1.3; Manias autem, quas nutrices minitantur parvolis pueris, esse larvas, id est manes, quos deos deasque putabant, quosque ab inferis ad superos emanare credebant, Festus s.v. ‘Manias’, p. 115 Lindsay.

38 tenet ora profanae / foeda situ macies, caeloque ignota sereno / terribilis Stygio facies pallore gravatur / inpexis onerata comis, Lucan vi 515–18.

39 Petron., Sat. 62Google Scholar; Larvati—furiosi et mente moti, quasi larvis exterriti, Festus, p. 106 Lindsay.

40 I have come across no Greek texts which describe the underworld or its inhabitants as bloodlessly white or pallid. Latin references are numerous: Sen., Oed. 583–98Google Scholar (inter umbras, pallentes deos… exsangue vulgus), Sil. Ital. xiii 408, and often in Stat. Theb. (shades—ii 48, 98; iv 519, 625; viii 1; corpses—iv 510 f.; Pluto—iv 525; Charon—viii 18).

41 Not only are the living dead so described, but the nearly dead, persons emaciated or anaemically white, are said to look like ghosts. See Athenaios' collection of comic passages (xii 551c–552f). iurisconsulti e tenebris procedebant, pallidi, graciles, vix animam habentes, tanquam qui tum maxime reviviscerent (Sen., Apocol. 12)Google Scholar. I take this to be the meaning of Soph., Phil. 946Google Scholar f νεκρόν ἠ καπνοῦ σκιάν εἴδωλον ἄλλωσ and Soph., O.C. 109Google Scholar f. τόδ᾿ ἄθλιον εἴδωλου since paleness and emaciation seem to be implied quite clearly in the former.

42 Swathing oneself in a white sheet is the commonest impersonation of a ghost in American folklore. For an example from modern Greece of the same appearance, see R. & E. Blum (n. 25) 100: ‘When one of my babies was just three days old I expected the Moirai to come to bless the child, for they usually do that on the third day. I decided to stay up and wait for them in order to see what they looked like. But curiosity is a bad thing and the Moirai decided to punish me for mine. At midnight they appeared in the form of three big white sheets and they danced around me. I was very, very frightened and felt ashamed of having been curious. I immediately ran off to bed and saw nothing of what the Moirai did to my child.’

43 Smoke—Il. xxiii 100, Lucian, Philops. 16Google Scholar; clouds— Sil. Ital. xii 652 f.; dreams—A. Ag. 1218, Proklos in remp. ii 130.13 Kroll; shadows—σκιοϵιδῆ ϕαντάσματα seen flitting about graveyards and tombs, Pl. Phaedo 81d; the same phrase of a ghostly army glimmering in dawn light and also at noon, Damascius, Vita Isidori (Zintzen, C. [Hildesheim 1967] 92)Google Scholar.

44 Sen., Thy. 668–74Google Scholar; Lucan iii 420; a prayer for protection at nightφόβους δ᾿ ἀπόπεμπε νυχαυγεῖσ Orphic hymn 2.14; demons are ὔλης καὶ πονηρίας ἀπαυγάσματα Tatian adv. Graec. 15, and see Dodds, E. R. (ed.) Proclus, The Elements of Theology 2 (Oxford 1963) 309Google Scholar, 318 f. Maximos of Tyre described the ghost-raising at Avernus: εἴδωλον ἀμυδρὸν μὲν ἰδεῖν καὶ ἀμφισβητήσιμον (viii 2b Hobein).

45 If Damaskios' collection of tales of haunting and supernatural visitation had survived (Phot. Bibl. cod. 130), our examples of white, black and tenuous ghosts could no doubt be extended. Since the issue is fright, I have not included examples of ghosts who appear as they looked in life, since these are regularly benign, nor of those with radiant faces, who are divine or angelic.

46 Bonner, C., ‘Demons of the Bath’, Studies Presented to F. Ll. Griffith (London 1932) 203–8Google Scholar.

47 The same incident is described by Pausanias (x 1.11) and Polyainos (vi 18). Both add a visual detail: the moon was shining.

48 Cf. the ghosts in flickering light mentioned above, p. 163.

49 Henrichs 124–9. There is some evidence which suggests that robbers actually did wear black clothing. Artemidoros ii 3 (103.6–8 Pack): ‘Black clothing is in general a bad sign, except for those who work by stealth’; id. ii 20 (137.4 Pack): ‘The crow is symbolic of an adulterer or a thief, both on account of its colour and because it often changes its voice’. The plausibility of this is confirmed by a folk-etymology: furtum a furvo, id est nigro, dictum Labeo ait, quod clam et obscure fiat et plerumque node’ (Digesta xlvii 2.1). I am not sure of the meaning of Paulus, Sententiae iii 4b (de inst, her.) 2Google Scholar: ‘condiciones contra leges et decreta principum uel bonos mores adscriptae nullius sunt momenti: ueluti si uxorem non duxeris, si filios non susceperis, si homicidium feceris, si larvali habitu processeris et his similia’.

50 Henrichs 7.

51 ‘Bisher war nur die Einkleidung von Einzelpersonen bekannt’, ibid. 124.

52 Ibid. 124.

53 Reinheitsvorschriften im griechischen Kult, RGVV ix 1 (Giessen 1910) 16–18.

54 The author of The Sacred Disease (ch. 2, p. 589 Kühn) nicely marks it as superstitious when he gives it as one of the rules of witch-doctors, faith-healers, quacks and charlatans that their patients are not to wear black because it is a sign of death. See also Reg. iv 91 f. and the Pythagorean taboo (D. L. viii 19, 33 f.). In a liturgical context, the mixture of white and black is shocking: ‘On the birthday of the temple of Artemis at Ephesos, when all were clad in white, John alone put on black raiment and went up into the temple; and they took him and essayed to kill him’. Acts of John 38 (James 236). For other examples of the liturgical incompatibility of black and white, see Rush, A. C., ‘The Colors of Red and Black in the Liturgy of the Dead’, in Kyriakon (n. 1) 698–708Google Scholar. The gods' and daimones' sensitivity to colour-integrity is shown by Pliny's observation that the shades refuse to obey a necromancer who has freckles, N.H. xxx 1.16.

55 Henrichs 56–73. The interesting fragment of Euphorion (88 Powell=103 Scheidweiler), πάντα δέ οἰ νεκυηδὸν ἐλευκαίνοντο πρόσωπα shows that the Titans' frightening approach to Zagreus fits into the larger pattern I have traced of ghostly disguises, and is perhaps most similar to Hermes' black-ghostly disguise to frighten the infant Artemis (Kallim. H. iii 69). It does not follow that any white-face disguise is automatically a reference to the Titans.

56 The pais is certainly a male person, but whether a child or an adult servant is not determinable. Much of Henrichs' argument is based on taking the pais as a child, though the two contemporary narrative texts upon which he draws most heavily in other respects deal with the sacrifice of a centurion's ‘companion’, who is male and may be either young or old, slave or free (Dio lxxi 4) and the sacrifice of a free young woman (A.T. iii 15). Most of the narrative parallels from novels concern free young women. This may be Lollianos' deliberate inversion, comparable to the conclusion of Book i, where the hero loses his virginity but is offered a compensatory payment.

57 Stengel, Paul, ‘ΣΦΑΓΙΑ’, Hermes xxi (1886) 307–12Google Scholar.

58 Schwenn, F., Die Menschenopfer bei den Griechen und Römern, RGVV xv. 3 (Giessen 1915)Google Scholar.

59 Griffiths, J. G., ‘Human Sacrifices in Egypt: the Classical Evidence’, Ann. du Service des Antiquités de l'Egypte xlviii (1948) 409–22Google Scholar incorrectly considers A.T. iii 15 as evidence for actual human sacrifice in Egypt. He points to aspects of the style which indicate that it is a Bildbeschreibung and assumes that an actual mural depicted such a scene. But Achilles Tatius often uses an ecphrastic style and seems to feel that it is sadistically appropriate to moments of physical horror: cf. iii 1–4, 7–8, v 3–5. Much less is Leukippe's gut-filled pseudo-stomach (A.T. iii 21) to be compared to one of the parts of the dismembered Osiris (Henrichs 70 n. 77).

60 Making a solemn oath may include the drinking of human blood, but it is the oath-takers' own blood: Hdt. i 74, iv 70 (Lydians and Medes), Tac., Ann. xii 47Google Scholar (Armenia). Herodotos specifies (i 74.6) that this custom goes beyond Greek practice. At Hdt. iii 11 Phanes' sons are killed and their blood drunk, but this is a sheer atrocity with no religious element, as is the Skythian revenge, Hdt. i 73.

61 One character even draws attention to the extraordinary coincidence between the ritual's prescriptions and the theatrical illusion which they design: πάντως δὲ καὶ ὀ χρησμὸς ἠμῖν εἰς τὸ λαθεῖν χρησιμοσ (iii 21.3).

62 Fictional desperadoes are likely to worship Ares: Apul., Met. iv 21Google Scholar (hymn to Mars); Lucian, Navig. 36Google Scholar (an imagined band of brigands whose watchword is Enyalios). But the fact that outlaws are regularly conceived in fiction as having a quasi-military organization (so too Lollianos' brigands, Henrichs 43), does not mean that we can derive any factual information about robbers as soldiers from such descriptions. The Groningen commentary on Apuleius, Met. iv 1–27Google Scholar, App. I ‘Military terms in the robber episode’, seems to blur the line between historical report and fictional image.

63 E.g., Sympathetic Executioner: ii 11.3–9, iv 6.4–7, v 5.4–6. Rapist Foiled by a Religious Scruple: iii 11.3–5, v 4.5–7.

64 E.g. Potiphar's Wife: iii 12.3–6. Bride Buried Alive: iii 8, and Chariton i 8.

65 Other heroines suffer this fate, or seem to: Sinonis (actually Trophima) eaten by a dog (Iambl. Bab. = Phot., Bibl. cod. 44 p. 77a 29 ff.)Google Scholar; This be apparently eaten by a lion (Ovid, Met. iv 96–104Google Scholar). Cf. A.T. iii 5: Kleitophon and Leukippe worry about death by sharks, just before they land on the brigand-infested shores around Pelousion.

66 Skylla, , Kyklops, , Laistrygonians, in the Odyssey; Hdt. iv 106Google Scholar; Alexander's letter to Aristotle 5 (ippotami), 7 (bats with human teeth), 13 (cinocefali); Pliny, N.H. vi 187–95Google Scholar; vii 2.24; Bousiris a cannibal (Schol. Lucian, Jup. Trag. 21Google Scholar), Sphinx a cannibal (Ps.-Quint, . Decl. 12)Google Scholar; Lucian, V.H. i 3, 35Google Scholar; ii 44, 46; Martyrdom of Matthew (James 460); in witchcraft, PGM iv 2594–2596, cf. 2656 f.

67 Cf. Xen., Eph. iii 11.4Google Scholar, δεισιδαίμονες δὲ φύσει βάρβαροι

68 Char. i 7–14, Long, i 28–30, ii 19–29, Xen., Eph. i 13–ii 12Google Scholar. These groups are hostile but not deadly, so their presence in the story does not lead to those thrilling scenes of ritual murder. One group of pirate-kidnappers is not ultimately even hostile: A.T. ii 13–18, viii 17. Kallisthenes gathers a group of idle fishermen to help him kidnap the heroine, but instead of Leukippe they snatch her cousin Kalligone. We learn six books later that she has fallen in love with her captor and he has mended his ways.

69 E.g. the near-crucifixion of Habrokomes (Xen., Eph. iv 2Google Scholar), of Chaireas (Char, iv 2–3), or Rhodanes (twice, Iambl. Bab. = Phot., Bibl. cod. 94 p. 74a12, 78a12)Google Scholar; the near-ignition of Charikleia (Hld. viii 9); the induced epileptic fit of Leukippe (A.T. iv 9).

70 Consider the contrast between Kleitophon explaining his misfortunes to the Egyptian general, who will turn out to be a villain but who is able to give Kleitophon the appearance of a sympathetic hearing (A.T. iii 14), and Kleitophon's lament in the case of the outlaws: ‘Now, o gods, you have put us into the hands of Egyptian brigands, to deprive us even of a sympathetic hearing. A Greek outlaw would respond to our speech and his hard heart might melt at our prayers… If I were as persuasive as the Sirens, still the butchers would not listen’ (A.T. iii 10.2 f.).

71 There is an allusion to the possibility of other such sacrifices at iii 22.3.

72 Josephus knew an anti-semitic legend of an annual human sacrifice (contra Apionem ii 8) and Damokritos of a seven-yearly one (πϵρὶ Ἰουδαίων, Suda s.v. ‘Damokritos’). Josephus' critique of the legend is in many ways parallel to my analysis of Lollianos and Dio lxxi 4.

73 Charikleia and Kalasiris are secret witnesses of a gruesome necromancy at Hld. vi 12–15. For an historical parallel, cf. the role of Vindicius in Plut., Publ. 4Google Scholar.

74 Nilsson, M. P., The Dionysiac Mysteries of the Hellenistic and Roman Age (Lund 1957, repr. N.Y. 1975) 4Google Scholar: ‘Whereas the old mysteries were hidden in secrecy, the Bacchic mysteries were not. Otherwise, we should not have so many representations that refer to their ceremonies…’.

75 Ibid. 133–9; Nock, A. D., ‘A Cult Ordinance in Verse’, HSCP lxiii (1958) 415Google Scholar–21= Essays (n. 1) 847–52.

76 This is properly a Pythagorean observance, probably quite ancient, and taken over by a Dionysiac fellowship. Nock (n. 75) 416 (=Essays 848).

77 Nilsson (n. 74) 106–15.

78 Some of the Desperadoes vs Victim scenes, insofar as they contain any religious structure at all, may be viewed as a subgroup of the tales of Impiety Punished. The classic instance is the tale of Kinesias (Lys. fr. 53 Thalheim = Ath. xii 551d), the leader of what is virtually a satanic group celebrating a Black Mass, as Lysias describes them. Cf. the parody of Eleusinian initiation enacted in the house of Poulytion, Paus. i 2.5.

79 Though only A.T. iii 15 among the surviving novelists has given us a scene of sacrifice which serves for the induction of new recruits into an outlaw band, the idea that outlaws are a counter-society with their own quasimilitary rules of organization, inflexibly opposed to the established order, is common (Onos, Apuleius, Xen. Eph., Heliodoros). Even if Lollianos' scene were not fiction but a camera-accurate glimpse of actual proceedings, one could view the atrocities as ‘motivated by … anti-social feelings rather than by religious convictions’ (Sandy (n. 1) 371).

80 Cf. Livy x 38, the Samnite legio linteata; x 38.2, velut initiatis militibus.

81 ‘Sacramentum infanticidii. Die Schlactung eines Kindes und der Genuss seines Fleisches und Blutes als vermeintlicher Einweihungsakt im ältesten Christentum’, Ant. u. Christ, iv (1934) 188–228.

82 Sallust makes clear that some of his information is transmitted by rumour (14.7, 17.7, 19.4, 22.1, 48.7). His report of Catiline mentions only human blood (22.1, which may be no atrocity at all but merely a solemn oath on a self-inflicted wound, cf. n. 51) but was later understood as an instance of child murder (Dio xxxvii 30.3). The pattern of accusation is pre-set and can ironically be charged against the very reporter (Invect. in Sall. 14).

83 Brigandage, sacrilege and child murder combined in a scrap of modern Greek folklore: ‘I think I read somewhere that in France two men wanted the devil to help them do bad things, to steal or something. They set up a picture of a goat and they killed a boy for the devil so he would help. They prayed, “Oh Diavolo, we give you this boy so that you will see we pray to you and that we worship you so that you will come help us. Diavolo, you who help the woman murder her unwanted child, you help those who steal…”. I don't know how the rest of it went. The Solomonaiki has the liturgy for the black magic in it.’ R. & E. Blum (n. 25) 99.

84 ‘Dieser heidnische Weiheakt (Kindestötung und Verschwörungsritualen) ist für uns nur in der Polemik fassbar, deren Zuverlässigkeit meist zweifelhaft ist. Hier ist die Bedeutung des Romanpapyrus evident, der Dölgers Kombinationen in überraschender Weise bestätigt… Die gnostischen Sekten und Christen nachgesagten Vergehen wie Kindesmord, Kosten von dem Fleisch und Blut des Opfers sowie Promiscuität finden sich hier als Bestandteile eines zusammenhängende Rituals ohne die Verzerrungen, die eine der Propaganda dienende Polemik notwendig mit sich bringt.’ Henrichs 37.

85 μυστήρια is used of women's ‘secrets’ or ‘genitals’ in a rare reference to Lesbianism, Artem, i 80 (97.9–14 Pack).

86 Both sophisticated and popular entertainment show cases of hypocritical religious façades concealing an erotic adventure: low-brow—the moechus Anubis mime (Tert., Apol. 15Google Scholar, Joseph., Ant. xviii 66–80)Google Scholar; middle-brow—Ps.-Kallisth, . Alexander Romance i 1–21Google Scholar; high-brow—Hld. ii 33. iii 9. iv 5–9.

87 Both παîς and μϵιράκιον are used in the discussion of love at A.T. ii 35–8, but there the tone is rather different from that of the narratives.

88 Hyg. 274.10–13 (Hagnodike the first woman doctor) represents the story-pattern of a popular novella; cf. Bonner, , ‘The Trial of St. Eugenia’, AJP xli (1920) 253–64Google Scholar; Paus. v 6.7–8 (a mother passes as a male trainer to bring her son to the Olympic games); Suet., Aug. 45Google Scholar; Iambl. Bab. (Phot., Bibl. cod. 94 p. 78a)Google Scholar, Euphrates dresses as the farmer's daughter and she as the executioner; Geffcken, J., The Last Days of Greco-Roman Paganism, tr. S. MacCormack (Amsterdam 1978) 291Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, E., Bandits (London 1969) 68Google Scholar. According to Eustathios, Parthenope cut her hair short for a different reason (on Dionys. Perieg. 358, Müller, GGM 280)Google Scholar; he may be reporting not the novel but a parallel legend.

89 The corpses might even be identical with the two corpses in P. Oxy. 1368: Glauketes is frightened by their ghostly request for burial.

90 James n. 22 473 f. Resurrection is so taken for granted in the Acts of John that characters discuss its advisability in particular cases as if they were recommending a hot toddy. Drusiana, lying in her tomb, is nearly violated by the wicked Kallimachos and his henchman Fortunatus, but a huge serpent kills the latter and sits on the former for several days. John enters the tomb and brings Kallimachos back to his senses, then restores Drusiana to life, at which point they debate whether to resurrect Fortunatus as well. They do so but it turns out to have been a bad judgment: the resurrected villain gnashes his teeth, curses them and exits stage left (70–84, James 245–9).

91 Plut., de soll. anim. 973e–974aGoogle Scholar.

92 The cross-over from drama to novel may be illustrated by stories of sleeping draughts thought to be poison—Apul. Met. x 11, Xen., Eph. iii 5.11Google Scholar. The Apuleian novella is analysed as a mime by Wiemken, H., Der griechische Mimus (Bremen 1972)Google Scholar.

93 Supported by refs in the Hist. Augusta (a hollow reed indeed) to Marius Maximus (Marc. Ant. 21.2, Avid. Cass. 6.7.).

94 Or A.D. 171, as argued by Schwartz, J., ‘Sur une demande de prêtres de Socnopéonèse’, Ann. du Service des Antiquités de ľÉgypte xliv (1944) 235–42Google Scholar.

95 Rohde, E., Der griechische Roman 5451 n. 1, 623Google Scholar; von Premerstein, A., Klio xiii (1913) 93Google Scholar; Altheim, F., Literatur und Gesellschaft i 123Google Scholar; Sethe, , ‘Βουκόλοι’, RE iii (1899) 1013Google Scholar.

96 Henrichs believes that the human sacrifice of the Phoinikika is that of the Boukoloi (‘Die Eingeweihten des Romanpapyrus kann man mit den ägyptischen Bukolen identifizieren’ 37; ‘… so war die kultische Wirklichkeit der Bukolen’, 50) but that it is not directly connected with the celebrated (or notorious) episode narrated by Dio lxxi 4. ‘Even if our attempt to link the Boukoloi and the Phoinikika were to be contradicted by new finds, it remains true that the oath-sacrifice in Lollianos’ novel is strikingly similar to the ritual murder of the Boukoloi described by Cassius Dio and Achilles Tatius. This similarity is explained best by related phenomena, which first become fully intelligible in connection with the myth of Dionysos-Zagreus’, Henrichs 51.

97 Trenkner (n. 3) refers to tales of wily thieves (29 f., 87 f.) and desperate coups (49 f.). In the novels, a favourite ploy is the noble youth doubling as a bandit: Thyamis in the Aithiopika, Hippothoos in the Ephesiaka, Menelaos and Kallisthenes in Leukippe (cf. viii 17.3, ἔρως δὲ με λῃστείας ὐποκριτὴν πεποἰηκε already in the Odyssey a noble man pretends to be an illegitimate noble man turned adventurer, xiv 199 ff.; and Lucius is falsely believed to have turned to a life of crime (Met. vii 1 f.). On the popular stage there was the robber-mime (Reich, , Der Mimus i 88–92, 198, 564Google Scholar) and historiography contains many anecdotes about heroic desperadoes (Dio lxxv 2.4, Claudius in Judaea; lxxvi 10.1, Bulla in Italy; Alexander's, Letter to Aristotle 9Google Scholar) and in later times the same stories were sanctioned by adding the reform of the brigand into a monk (PG xxxiv 1145, xxi 105; PL lxxiii 1170 f.; Pallad., Hist. Laus. 52, 73Google Scholar; Sulp. Sev. Vita Martini 5.6; MacMullen, R., Aegyptus xliv [1964] 198)Google Scholar. The ‘Robin Hood’ stories told of Bulla contain the very same elements that are used in the accounts of the Boukoloi: bribery, disguise and military entrapment; see below p. 176. The larger social and historical picture of banditry is well sketched by Hobsbawm, E., Bandits (London 1969)Google Scholar. Since his historical sources are poems and ballads, Hobsbawm faces a similar problem of interpreting the myths of banditry as an image of the real patterns of bandit behaviour. His analysis of ‘social bandits’ is the proper background for further study of the Boukoloi.

98 RE Suppl. vii (1940) 1239–44.

99 MacMullen, R., ‘Nationalism in Roman Egypt’, Aegyptus xliv (1964) 179–99Google Scholar.

100 Schwartz, J., ‘Quelques Observations sur des romans grecs’, Ant. Class, xxxvi (1967) 536–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. ‘En fait, sa “description” des Boucoloi ne peut pas être cohérente, car il unit, non sans quelque arbitraire, deux histoires.’ I put ‘account’ in quotes, as Schwartz does ‘description’, to pose the question of the historicity of the text.

101 History: Hdt. v 18; Xen., Hell, v 4.5–6Google Scholar with an alternative version at v 4.7 = Plut., Pelop. 11.1–2Google Scholar = Plut., de gen. Socr. 596dGoogle Scholar (an historical novella based on the incident); Plut., Solon 8.5.Google Scholar Fiction: A. T. ii 18.; Ps.-Quint, . Decl. 259Google ScholarTyrannicida veste muliebri, in which the tyrannicide complains that the statue honouring his deed has represented him in the woman's clothing in which he actually performed it; perhaps also we should list Eur. Hek. 1160–71 as a variant on this theme and, facetiously, Plaut., Casina 900–10Google Scholar, which does conceal a ‘sword’.

102 Atrocity as an act of display: Hdt. i 73.5, Klearchos fr. 47 Wehrli ( = Ath. xii 54.1c-e).

103 The military situation in A. T. contains the same elements—desperation and massive numbers (ἀνδρῶν ἀπονενοημένων . . . πολὺ συνηθροῖσθαι λῃστήριον ὠς εἶναι μυρίουσ iii 24.1) and reluctance of the general to attack under these circumstances (iv 1.1).

104 Millar, F., A Study of Cassius Dio (Oxford 1964) 34Google Scholar, 42 f., 72.

105 ἐς ὄσον γε καὶ τὰ πράγματα ἐπέτρεψε i 2.

106 Fuks, A., ‘The Jewish Revolt in Egypt (A.D. 115–117) in the light of the Papyri’, Aegyptus xxxiii (1953) 131–58Google Scholar. He labels the ‘account’ in Dio lxviii 32 as a ‘late, clearly anti-Semitic story’ (156). Schwartz, J., ‘Avidius Cassius et les Sources de l'Histoire Auguste (à propos ďune légende rabbinique)’ Historia-Augusta-Colloquium 1963 (Bonn 1964) 135–64Google ScholarPubMed.

107 Cannibalism, quite apart from whether it occurs or not, is still used as a xenophobic fiction by writers on classical subjects. A glaring example is Wallis Budge, E. A., Osiris (London 1911, repr. 1973) 176Google Scholar, 195 (note the explicit statement of the audience's and narrator's self-identification with the government Administrator as a safe context for the narration). A less outrageous example which nonetheless contains the same assumptions about the narrative context is Cary, M.-Warmington, E. H., The Ancient Explorers (London 1929) 8Google Scholar. Some ancient authors were more acute; cf. the strong statement of Hdt. ii 45, also Isok. Bousiris, Diod. Sic. i 67, and the analysis by Eratosthenes, p. 179 below.

108 I remember only one instance of that Herodotean note: the Armenian leader Tiridates at costly games in his honour at Puteoli shot at wild beasts from his elevated seat and—if anyone can believe it, ϵἴ γέ τωι πιστόν—transfixed and killed two bulls with a single arrow (lxiii 3.2).

109 J. Schwartz (n. 89) 540: ‘Ces Boucoloi se présentent comme l'un des accessoires obligés du roman grec exotique… Pour (Héliodore), ils ne constituent plus qu'un souvenir littéraire, tout comme chez St. Jérôme (Vita Hilarionis 43 =PL xxiii 52 f., ad ea loca quae vocantur Bucolia, eo quod nullus ibi Christianorum esset, sed barbara tantum et ferox natio).’

110 Kleitophon and friends set sail from Berytos on a ship bound for Alexandria (ii 31.6). When it sinks they are washed ashore at Pelousion, the easternmost branch of the Nile (iii 5.6), from which they set out by small hired boat to sail along the Nile to Alexandria (iii 9.1). While passing an unspecified city they are attacked by a group whom their boatman identifies (in the generic singular) as ὁ Βουκόλος (iii 9.2). The ‘King’ of the Boukoloi, and presumably their base of operations, is said to be a two-day journey from there (iii 9.3). Within two stades of that village they encounter militia (iii 13.1). By the next day they have reached a trench and the place of Leukippe's sacrifice, which is near a village filled with tens of thousands of brigands (iii 24.1) and from which Menelaos and Satyros have just escaped by running (iii 17.1). That village is described and its name given as Nikochis (iv 12). It is destroyed by a force from Alexandria (the metropolis, iv 18.1) and the whole river celebrates its freedom from the Boukoloi (iv 18.1, 3). The subsequent boat journey to Alexandria takes three days along the Nile (v 1.1).

111 Prof. Sandy calls attention to Od. xi 293: Melampous in his attempt to rustle cattle from Iphikles was captured for the king by βουκόλοι ἀγροιῶται.

112 Goossens, R., ‘L–Égypte dans L'Hélène ďEuripide’, Chronique l'Egypte x (1935) 243–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar assembles some of the same data that I have used, but interprets fiction as historical fact wherever possible, alleging that Euripides knew of the herdsmen at Rhakotis because Theoklymenos mentions watchers (σκοπούς, 1174) whom the Greeks have eluded. He is tempted to believe that Euripides used these ‘historical Egyptian’ herdsmen in I.T., though he otherwise omitted them from Helen (249 n. 1).

113 Kallimachos seems to be the earliest source for the version with a rescued maiden (Dieges. iv 5–17 Pfeiffer i 103). From earliest times there are stories of maidens being carried off by pirates (Od. xv 427, Arist. fr. 76 Rose, Hdt. i 1.4, vi 138), only in later times are they also rescued (outside the novels, cf. Sositheos' Lityerses; the cluster of stories concerning Hymenaios, assembled by Schmidt, R., de Hymenaeo et Talasio [Kiel 1886])Google Scholar.

114 R. MacMullen (n. 99).