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The Mysteries and the Oresteia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Michael Tierney
Michael Tierney
Affiliation:
University College, Dublin
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Extract

As long ago as 1893, Dieterich, in a famous article on the ‘initiation’-scene in Aristophanes' Clouds, pointed out that there are a great many echoes of ritual hidden in ordinary works of Greek literature, especially in comedy and tragedy. His hint was followed up in 1900 by F. Adami, whose paper remains a storehouse of such echoes, but who has by no means exhausted the subject. G. Thomson's article in a recent issue of this Journal collects a number of instances in the Oresteia of Aeschylus in which similar echoes can be heard. The purpose of the present contribution is partly to criticise the interpretation put by Thomson on certain of the references to mystic rites which Headlam and he have noted, and partly to attempt to carry the search a stage farther.

The point in Thomson's valuable paper on which most doubt will be raised in his readers' minds is his tendency to attribute to the Eleusinia all allusions to mysteries in the Oresteia. In his zeal for the exclusive glory of Eleusis, he assumes that its mysteries involved both rites and doctrines which the general consensus of scholars has denied to them. In one place he dismisses this general agreement by lumping modern authorities together as ‘archaeologists’ (p. 22, n. 13), a title which most of them, probably, would humbly deprecate. His procedure raises an important problem in method, and for this reason I may be excused for discussing some of his conclusions.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , 1937 , pp. 11 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1937

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References

1 RhMus XLVIII. pp. 275 f.Google Scholar; reprinted in his Kleine Schriften, pp. 117 f. The reference is to the last paragraph of the article.

2 De Poetis Scaenicis Graecis Hymnorum Sacrorum Imitatoribus: Classische Philologie, Supplementband XXVI. pp. 244 f.Google Scholar

3 For a pretty example recently brought to light cp. Wünsch's comparison (Kern, P-W, XVI. col. 1239) between the opening lines of the second strophe in the parodos of Eur. Supp.: , and the famous Eleusinian formula quoted by Hippolytus, (Philos. V. 8, 40)Google Scholar: . This echo incidentally guarantees the veracity of Hippolytus as against the scepticism of Wilamowitz, (Glaube der Hellenen I p. 175, n. 4)Google Scholar.

4 JHS 1935, lv. pp. 20 f.Google Scholar

5 C. xxii.

6 Graillot, , Culte de Cybèle, p. 131Google Scholar; Dieterich, Mithrasliturgie,2 pp. 174, 217; de Labriolle, , Litterature Latine Chrétienne, p. 313Google Scholar.

7 Wilamowitz, , Glaube, II. p. 381Google Scholar: ‘es kann wohl nur Dionysos sein.’

8 Aglaophamus, p. 187.

9 p. 26. I would except the identification in note 34 of Firmicus' nocte quadam with the νύκτες Ἑλευσίνιαι. Nocturnal celebrations were common to all mystery-cults. Th e same criticism applies to the preceding note 32; the use of the veil was common in both the mysteries and the marriage-rite, and the phrase (Ag. 1178) has nothing specifically mystical about it.

10 Sophocles, O.C. 1052–1053.

11 Philostratus, , Apoll. vi. 11Google Scholar. It is rash to equate Pythagorean with Eleusinian. Pythagoreanism is rather akin to the Orphic-Dionysiac cults (Herod. 2. 81).

12 Orpheus, p. 153, quoted on p. 34, n. 68.

13 Quoted by Thomson, p. 30: .

14 l. 457.

15 There was at a late date an Eleusinian version of them: Xenocrates ap. Porphyry de Abstinentia IV, 22: .

16 Orphic, Argonaulica, l. 198Google Scholar, Hymn. Orph. (Abel), LXIX. 1. 2Google Scholar. In any case there is no evidence that the group of three Erinyes, implied by the name Tisiphone, is early.

17 Cratylus, 400 C.: . This passage incidently shows that Plato regarded the idea of a judgment as Orphic. Cp. Guthrie, , Orpheus, p. 157Google Scholar. Thomson (p. 25, n. 24) says, as against Guthrie, that the reference in the Phaedo (108a) is to Eleusinian ritual, not to the Orphic tablets. He has Plato himself, as well as Guthrie, against him.

18 Rep. 363 C–366 B. Cp. Thomson p. 23, n. 14, ad fin. It is not at all certain that ὁὑὸς αὐτοῦ in Rep. 363 C means the Eleusinian Eumolpus. Eusebius (Kern, , Orphicorum Fragmenta, p. 6, test. 18Google Scholar) makes Musaeus son of Eumolpus. Both were in any case Orphic figures, whereas Orpheus was not Eleusinian.

19 Gorgias, 493 B.

20 Frogs, ll. 145–151Google Scholar. Thomson, p. 33.

21 I have tried to show (Proc. Royal Irish Academy, 1935, Vol. XLII. Section C. no. 10Google Scholar) that the rites parodied by the Chorus oimystae in the Frogs are really those of the Lenaea, at which the play was produced. On Orphic elements in the Frogs see Dieterich, , Nekyia, p. 72Google Scholar; Maas, , Orpheus, pp. 112 f.Google Scholar

22 So thinks Dieterich, l.c. I believe that it is unnecessary to assume any contamination of Eleusinian and Orphic in Eleusis itself. If the rites parodied in the Frogs were those of the Lenaea, their partly Eleusinian character is explained by the connexion between Eleusis and the latter. When Plato in the Phaedo (69 c) speaks of βόρβορς in Hades, the context, with its immediate reference to the proverb , makes it certain that just as in the case of πηλός τις in Republic II he is talking about the Orphics. The note of Olympiodorus (Kern, O.F. p. 248, no. 235) confirms this: .

23 Orpheus, p. 160. Cp. Thomson's note above cited. Maas (Orpheus, pp. 113 f.) agrees with Thomson's view, but his arguments really point to common popular acquaintance with ideas which the Orphics had made into some sort of system.

21 Thomson, p. 33, n. 59.

25 Thomson, p. 22.

26 Thomson, p. 25, n. 24.

27 Pausan., X. 31.

28 Gorgias, 493 A. See Rohde, , Psyche, Eng. tr., pp. 586 f.Google Scholar, for a discussion of the connexion. Dieterich, , Nekyia, pp. 47, 67 f.Google Scholar, also deals with this passage.

28 Wilamowitz, (Glaube, II. p. 183Google Scholar) may be right in thinking that Polygnotus drew for this picture on ideas native to Thasos or Paros, where mysteries were ancient.

30 Dieterich indeed (Nekyia, p. 75, n. 2) thinks that ‘in später Zeit fand ja auch das Orphische in Eleusis Eingang,’ an d cites this text from Aristides as evidence. On Aristides and Eleusis see Kern, P-W, XVI. col. 1257.

31 Cataplus, 22. See above. This is the only passage in Lucian's works which definitely ascribes such ideas to Eleusis. The Menippus is clearly based on literary sources, mostly Plato, although in one place (476 f.), where he speaks of how rich and poor are alike in Hades, there is an echo of the Eumenides, 11. 368 f.

32 Not ‘Eleusinian,’ as in the last sentence of his paper.

33 1. 72. My references are to Wilamowitz's ed. minor.

34 11. 26 4 f.: .

35 ὄψει δὲ κ᾿ εἴ τις ἄλλος ἤλιτεν βροτῶν

ἤ θεὸν ἤ ξένον τιν᾿ ἀσεβῶν

ἤ τοκέας φίλους

ἔχονθ᾿ καστον τῆς δίκης ἐπάξια

36 Cp. Thomson, p. 33. The resemblance between the passage just quoted and the list in Ar. Ran. (145–151) is very striking. The discrepancies, however, between these and other mentions of the ‘unwritten laws’ are enough to show that these laws were never strictly formulated.

37 . There can be no doubt that the same judgment is also referred to in Supplices, 230 f.: , and is identical with the judgment in Pindar, O1. II. 65: . Note in Eumenides 35 and in Pindar ἀλιτρά. It seems perfectly safe to assume that the λόγος is some non-Eleusinian mystic doctrine and that and τις are all to be identified with the Dionysiac-Orphic .

38 1. 387. ἄτιμ᾿ ἀτίετα διόμεναι

λάχη θεῶν διχοστατοῦντ᾿ ἀνηλίῳ

λάμπᾳ δυσοδοπαίπαλα δερκομένοισι

καὶ δυσομμάτοις ὄμως

For λάμπᾳ (l. 389) Wieseler reads λάμπᾳ. The change seems unnecessary, as either word means ‘slime.’ (Cp. L. & S. s.v. λάπη). Hermann's ‘sunless light’ is poetical but pointless, and the meaning ‘light’ is much less well-attested than ‘slime.’ Note that the Erinyes are children of Night, who is very prominent in Orphic cosmogonies as early as Aristophanes' parody of one in the Birds.

39 Aristophanes, , Frogs, 335Google Scholar; Eurip., , Bacchae, 414Google Scholar.

40 Lucian, CompareMenipp. 474 f.Google Scholar, where at least one feature (the abolition of all distinction between the great and the humble) has its parallel in Eum. 368:

.

Not only the prospective fate of Orestes, but his condition as pursued by the Furies, is a living death for, as Apollo emphasises, their visitation of the living world is a monstrous horror.

41 Rep. II. 365 A: . The θυσίαι are identical with Orphic rites (). And this is again the significance of θυσιῶν, which is better attested than ὁσίων, in Phaedo, 108 a (cp. Burnet's note). I t has nothing to do with Hecate.

42 Thuc. II. 102. Cp. Plut. de exil. 9, p. 602 d: .

Note that in Eur. Medea, when Aegeus appears at Corinth after having visited Delphi, Medea asks him : ; (1. 682). Aegeus has a special reason for taking the route he has: he is going to Troezen.

43 This point was clearly seen by Müller, K. O. (Eumenides, Eng. trans., 1853, pp. 132–133)Google Scholar, but he had no real explanation of it to offer. His idea (ibid., p. 131) that the flight of Orestes after his purification is supposed to bring him to Rhegium and elsewhere, attributes to the Athenians of Aeschylus' time the same mythological material as has come down to us.

44 Cp. Proclus in Plat. Tim. 42, c.d., quoted by Kern, , Orph. Frag. p. 244, no. 229Google Scholar: , and the rest of the passage.

45 Ol. II. 75: .

46 Burnet, , E. Gr. Phil.3 p. 222, no. 115Google Scholar; Ritter-Preller,9 p. 151, beginning .

47 Cp. Nilsson, , Min-Myc. Rel. pp. 544 f.Google Scholar; Cumont, , After-life in Roman Paganism, pp. 154–155Google Scholar. In later times the voyage is through the aether and the Islands of the Blest are the sun and moon.

48 Ed. Kroll p. 330, l. 14. For this quotation I am indebted to Festugière, , L'Idéal Religieux des Grecs et l'Évangile, Paris, 1932, p. 124Google Scholar, note 3. As is there remarked, the Cynic comparison of the wise man with Odysseus, and the of the Epicurean Metrodorus of Lampsacus, both derive from the same source. Plato (or rather the Socrates of the Clouds) had made the analogy with the philosopher's quest a commonplace.

49 In all probability the sacred legend of the wanderings of Dionysos ha d something to do with the origin of this doctrine. Cp. Eur. Bacchae, passim, and Aristoph. Frogs, ll. 400–401: . Note how in the passage from Vettius Valens all the motives recur—sea and land, long lapse of time, πόνος;, and the semi-mystic term κατόπτης. which recalls the of Socrates in the Clouds (1. 225).

50 Cp. Thomson, p. 20. I should prefer to keep καθαρμούς and at most to read πολλοῑς for πολλούς.

51 Gold leaf from Thurii, Kern, , Orph. Frag., p. 106Google Scholar, 30, IV. C. The same formula is many times repeated.

52 Philoct. 133. As πομπός, however, he is guide of the dead: Soph. O.C. l. 1548: . Also in Hymn. Orph., 57, 6 (Abel, p. 88)Google Scholar.

53 Cp. Plutarch, , Consol. ad Uxor. 10Google Scholar: . The σωτηρβολα so common in mystic language is equivalent to : Thomson, p. 22.

54 Compare Orestes' words (Eum., 11. 278–279): , and the speech of Apollo giving him his directions, with the instructions on the gold plate from Petelia (Kern, , Orph, Frag., p. 104, no 32 aGoogle Scholar) and with the similar document from Thurii (ibid. p. 108, no. 32 f.) which end . In both cases the idea that purification gives some sort of knowledge is apparent.

55 Cp. Dieterich, , Mithrasliturgie, p. 160Google Scholar. Lagrange, with whom Nilsson is inclined to agree, denies rebirth for Eleusis: Nilsson, , Die Eleusinischen Gottheiten, in Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, XXXII. 1935, p. 122, n. 2.Google Scholar