μισθοῦ μυϵῖν: Apsines, Aristogeiton and initiation for pay

Abstract

The Ars rhetorica attributed to Apsines of Gadara contains five cryptic references to a speech prosecuting the Athenian politician Aristogeiton for proposing an illegal law to raise state revenue. It is disputed whether Aristogeiton is supposed to have moved to legalize payment (μισθός) for ‘closing one’s eyes’ (μύϵιν, i.e. taking bribes) or for ‘initiating’ (μυϵῖν) into the Mysteries. It also remains a mystery how Aristogeiton’s scheme was to function. I argue that ‘initiate for pay’ is correct and that in fact Apsines wrote the declamation against Aristogeiton. I reason to the best explanation of ‘payment’: neither an entrance fee into the Mysteries nor a tax, but payment made by pilgrims to something like a syndicate empowered by contract to conduct preliminary initiation. Such a scheme would contravene religious norms. The declamation’s speaker therefore must have prosecuted Aristogeiton on an indictment of νόμον μὴ ἐπιτήδϵιον θϵῖναι (‘proposing an inexpedient law’) so far unparalleled in Greek declamation. Moreover, I suggest that Apsines’ marriage ties to the Keryx clan at Eleusis supports his authorship of the Ars. These cryptic references highlight the influence that the Mysteries and the figure of Aristogeiton exerted on composers of declamations in the Imperial period.

I. Introduction: a declamation prosecuting Aristogeiton

In the Ars rhetorica attributed to Apsines of Gadara (ca. AD 190–250), we find five cryptic references (T1–T5 below) to a prosecution purportedly brought against Aristogeiton, a disreputable politician active in Athens from ca. 338 into the 320s BC. Perhaps a descendant of the tyrannicide, mired in debt, Aristogeiton himself prosecuted politicians such as Hyperides and Demosthenes ¹ but also incurred fines and imprisonment (Din. 2; [Dem.] 25 and 26). In our sources he is pilloried as ‘wicked’ (πονηρός) ² given to ‘privileging of private profit, power, and pleasure above the laws, values, and interests of the community, and the use of deceit, flattery, and slander to attain them’. ³

I say ‘purportedly’ because in a declamation mentioned by Apsines, the speaker is portrayed as prosecuting Aristogeiton for having proposed a bill contrary to the laws. In other words, this declamation described in its backstory Aristogeiton’s purported proposal of a law, the import of which I hope to ferret out. A declamation was a fictitious speech composed in the rhetorical schools as the teacher’s example or the student’s exercise, or even one delivered orally or in writing to an audience by a sophist or connoisseur. Producers and consumers of declamations constituted the audience of the Ars. ⁴ I say ‘cryptic’ because it is disputed whether Aristogeiton’s proposal was to legalize μισθοῦ μύϵιν (‘closing one’s eyes for a payment’, i.e. taking bribes) or μισθοῦ μυϵῖν (‘initiating [into the Mysteries] for a payment’). Since initiands into the Mysteries already paid an entrance fee, and a μισθός is not a tax, the identity and workings of Aristogeiton’s proposed new charge create a puzzle.

In this paper I argue for the second of these interpretations, and I go on to offer what I consider the most plausible account of this mysterious, lost declamation. I suggest a state-awarded contract, impious because against sacred norms, as the sort of system Aristogeiton is supposed to have proposed. I argue that the declamation’s legal form was a prosecution on a γραφὴ νόμον μὴ ἐπιτήδϵιον θϵῖναι, an ‘indictment for proposing an inexpedient law’, which, if I am right, would give us an indictment not known in any other declamation. Finally, I propose that Apsines’ tie by marriage to the priestly Keryx clan helps support his disputed authorship of the Ars. My goal is to enhance our understanding of declamation in Apsines’ time and, especially, of how the Mysteries and the figure of Aristogeiton were foci of interest.

Our first reference to Aristogeiton’s purported motion in the Ars is the following: ⁵

T1: ἐν σπάνϵι χρημάτων ἔγραψϵν ὁ Ἀριστογϵίτων μισθοῦ μυϵῖν καὶ κρίνϵται.

In scarcity of money, Aristogeiton made a motion to initiate for pay and is put on trial. (2.13.21–22)

The translations appended to the two most recent editions of Apsines diverge over the motion’s content by diverging over accentuation. George Kennedy read the motion as legalizing μισθοῦ μύϵιν (‘closing one’s eyes for pay’, i.e. ‘allowing the citizens to overlook illegal actions in return for a bribe’). Michel Patillon read it as μισθοῦ μυϵῖν, ‘to initiate [into the Eleusinian Mysteries] for pay’. ⁶ We already have two problems. The first is to decide between μύϵιν and μυϵῖν. For simplicity’s sake I have used the latter above. From the decision about accentuation arises a second problem, namely how Aristogeiton’s purported motion could be plausible enough to serve as the matter of a prosecutorial declamation.

In addition to these problems, we face a third: did the author of the Ars pen a declamation against Aristogeiton’s purported motion? Finally, we may consider whether our conclusions bear on the authorship of the Ars, seeing that Malcolm Heath has reproposed the old contention that the work is not by Apsines of Gadara. ⁷

It will help to set forth at the outset the other four references to Aristogeiton’s motion in the Ars. I observe that in their Greek text, Dilts and Kennedy print μυϵῖν, which I transmit here.

T2: ἔγραψϵν ὁ Ἀριστογϵίτων μισθοῦ μυϵῖν· ἀντιλέγϵι τις, οἷον ‘ἐγὼ μὲν ᾤμην ἄλλους πόρους τινὰς τοῦτον ϵὑρϵῖν χρημάτων ϵἰσφορᾶς’.

Aristogeiton made a motion to initiate for pay; someone speaks against him, for example, ‘I was thinking that this man would find some other resources for raising funds’. (2.19.1–3)

T3: ἔγραψϵν ὁ Ἀριστογϵίτων μισθοῦ μυϵῖν καὶ κρίνϵται. ἁρμόσϵι γὰρ ϵἰσβαλϵῖν

οὕτως· ‘Ἀριστογϵίτονι τούτωι οὐκ ἤρκϵι τὰ ἄλλα σύμπαντα, οὐ νόμων καταλύσϵις, ὑφ’ ὧν κωλύϵται τῆς πολιτϵίας, οὐ κλοπαὶ δημόσιαι, οὐ τὰ ὀφλήματα, οὐ τὸ αἰτίαν παρασχϵῖν καὶ αὐτῆς τῆς ἀπορίας, ἀλλ’ ἔτι καὶ τοῖσδ’ ἐπϵτόλμησϵν’.

Aristogeiton introduced a motion to initiate for pay and is put on trial. Now it will be fitting to attack him in this way: ‘Everything else was not enough for this Aristogeiton here, not undoing of the laws by which he is debarred from taking part in government, not thefts of public money, not the fines, not his providing a reason even for his lack of means itself, but beyond that he has dared these things now’. (3.11.15–19)

T4: ἡ δ’ ἀντιπαράστασις τὰ πολλὰ ἀπὸ τῶν ἐκβάσϵων ϵὑρίσκϵται, οἷον ϵὐπορίαν ποιϵῖ τὸ μισθοῦ μυϵῖν, ἀλλὰ τοῦτο ἐκβήσϵται, ἀδοξία, ὀργὴ παρὰ θϵῶν.

Counter-objection is invented very often from results: for example, initiating for pay creates wealth, but this will result, [namely] bad reputation, wrath from the gods. (5.6.5–8)

T5: οὕτως γίνϵται ἀντιπαράστασις· ‘δϵῖ μισθοῦ μυϵῖν, ἵνα ϵὐπορῶμϵν’· τούτωι ἀντιπαρέστησα [manuscript A, cf. below] ἕτϵρον τρόπον βϵλτίω· ἑτέρως χρήματα δϵῖ πορίζϵιν, οἷον ϵἰσφορὰν ἐπιγράφϵιν …

This is how counter-objection comes about: ‘It is fitting to initiate for pay, so that we may be in funds’. To this I proposed as a counter-objection a different, better way: ‘It is fitting to bring in money another way, for example by levying an extraordinary tax …’. (5.8.18–21)

II. Textual questions

First, μυϵῖν vs μύϵιν. Although editors beginning with Walz print μυϵῖν (‘to initiate’) in the above passages, the two primary manuscripts, Par. gr. 1874 (= A, tenth century) and Par. gr. 1741 (= B, 12th century), read μύϵιν (‘to close the eyes/mouth’ or ‘have eyes/mouth closed’). ⁸ Likewise, the first edition of Apsines’ Ars, in volume 1 of the Aldine Greek orators (1508), prints μύϵιν everywhere except T1. μύω expresses the root idea from which μυέω takes its meaning, for initiands were not to see the sacred objects until the culmination of the rite. Their eyes were shut, at least ritually, and μυέω as the causative verb literally means ‘make someone close their eyes or mouth’. ⁹ Accents in manuscripts generally lack ancient authority, and μυϵῖν must be right because:

1. 1. The passive of μυέω not μύω is employed in a scholion on Hermogenes’ De stasibus, attributed in the manuscripts to ‘Syrianus’. ¹⁰ The scholiast clearly refers to the same declamation:

   • T6: Ἀριστογϵίτων, ἐν σπάνϵι χρημάτων, γράφϵι νόμον, παρ’ Ἀθηναίοις μισθοῦ μυϵῖσθαι.

   • Aristogeiton in scarcity of money introduces a law that among the Athenians, initiation should be for payment. (RG 4.183.19–20)

2. 2. In other declamations we find initiation denoted by forms of μυέω, ¹¹ while forms of μύω are absent from the rhetoricians. ¹²

3. 3. Aristogeiton was prosecuted by Dinarchus (Orat. 2) for taking a bribe in the Harpalus scandal, and the pseudo-Demosthenic Against Aristogeiton I has him selling the indictment against Hegemon ([Dem.] 25.47). As Hermogenes (Stat. 32.9–33.14 Rabe) insisted, the subject matter of a declamation should not be unconvincing or the case obviously disreputable, and if one side lacks forceful arguments, the question lacks issue. Although a bribe is sometimes ironically dubbed a misthos, ¹³ even one received by ‘Aristogeiton’ in [Dem.] 25.37, given the severe condemnation of bribery in Athens (punishable by death, Isoc. 8.50), and the fact that legalized bribery would destroy the legal system, it would amount to no accomplishment to compose a declamation prosecuting a politician for proposing that. ¹⁴ On the other hand, although to legalize bribery presumably would stir up ‘wrath from the gods’, unsanctioned religious innovation would seem more likely to motivate that phrase in T4.

What was impious in Aristogeiton’s proposal, then, had to do with initiation for payment. The first critic known to me to notice this and break away from the Aldina’s μύϵιν by printing μυϵῖν in a quotation of Apsines was Jacob Gronovius. ¹⁵ He will have been relying on his knowledge of T6 from volume 2 of the Aldina (p. 70), where μυϵῖσθαι is printed.

Second, in T5, with Patillon I adopt manuscript A’s ἀντιπαρέστησα against B’s ἀντιπαρϵστήσαμϵν and Christoph Eberhard Finckh’s conjecture ἀντιπαραστήσομϵν, which Dilts and Kennedy adopt. ¹⁶ We have no strong reason to print future tense, for first person aorist plurals signal apparent author references elsewhere in the Ars. ¹⁷ As the only author reference in the aorist singular in the manuscripts, A’s lection commends itself as difficilior. It is the manuscripts’ aorist tense as such, however, that matters for present purposes, for from it follows Patillon’s ¹⁸ inference that the author refers to an earlier work of his own in T5.

Of the above-quoted passages, only T5 with first person aorist marks itself as transmitting material from a declamation written by the author of the Ars. One supposes that T4, coming a little earlier in the same discussion of antiparastasis, gives material from the same declamation. T1 and T3 also speak of a prosecution of Aristogeiton for his μισθοῦ μυϵῖν bill, and T2 has someone ‘speak against’ him. The economical explanation is that all six passages hearken back to material from one and the same declamation written by the author of the Ars.

Apsines can hardly be responding to a genuine speech, either extant or merely reported, of the historical Aristogeiton. That Aristogeiton’s proposal is fictitious is given away by the detail that he proposed his law in a time of ‘scarcity of money’. That detail fits Athens’ financial crisis in the middle of the fourth century BC, especially during the Social War (357–355), but not the time of Aristogeiton’s political activity, the so-called Lycurgan period when finances were notably improved. ¹⁹ We may wonder, however, whether Apsines’ declamation replies to another declamation put in the mouth of Aristogeiton. Philostratus (V S 2.31.12) reports that Philagrus of Cilicia declaimed in the character of Aristogeiton in the 170s. One can imagine a sophist rising to the challenge of arguing for a disreputable but profitable law in the character of a disreputable speaker. ²⁰ Nevertheless, because Apsines’ references to Aristogeiton’s speech in T1–T5 look at it from the point of view of the prosecutor’s speech, it is not necessary to posit a prior, extant declamation in the mouth of Aristogeiton in order to explain those passages; Apsines can well have invented whatever skeleton of Aristogeiton’s speech he needed to serve the fictional backstory of his own declamation. For its part, T6 does not refer to Aristogeiton’s speech through the lens of a later prosecution but simply as an example of the ‘disreputable’ (ἄδοξος) subcategory beneath the ‘mixed’ theme. In the mixed theme, the speaker appeals to a mixture of future outcomes, emotion and judgements of character, ²¹ and in the ‘disreputable’ subcategory, both speaker and proposal are disreputable. The information in T6 is consistent with the hypothesis that Apsines did not reply to an extant declamation but merely invented the entire rhetorical situation. Since we have no evidence of a μισθοῦ μυϵῖν speech composed by anyone else, parsimony favours the supposition that T6, too, is derived from Apsines’ declamation.

One more piece of information in T6 deserves notice, however, before we try to make sense of the matter of Aristogeiton’s purported proposal. This is his proposal’s legal form. T6 reports that Aristogeiton ‘introduces a law’ (γράφϵι νόμον). When the Athenian law code was revised in the fourth century after the Tyranny of the Thirty, ²² nomoi (‘laws’) and psēphismata (‘decrees’), were made clearly distinct acts of the Assembly with different procedures for enactment. Nomos defined classes of persons, actions, things, etc., and regulated them over time. A psēphisma mandated a response to particular situations and/or persons. A law trumped a decree, but both had to cohere with existing laws. Canevaro notes: ‘There were also two separate procedures for rescinding the two kinds of measures: one could bring a graphê paranomôn (a public action against an illegal decree) against a psêphisma and a graphê “nomon mê epitêdeion theinai” (a public action against an inexpedient law) against a nomos’. ²³ If the suit against an ‘inexpedient’ law was brought within the year, it could also call for the proposer of the law to be punished. ²⁴ Although in the rhetoricians, a form of γράφω with infinitive but no noun is usually predicated of the proposer of a decree, we should not conclude from γράφω + infinitive but no noun in T1–T3 that T6’s ‘law’ reflects a misunderstanding. Apsines uses γράφω + infinitive but no noun in a passage where the generalizing language shows that a law is proposed: ‘someone introduces a motion (γράφϵι τις) to exile every successful public speaker’ (1.33, tr. Kennedy). The same locution is applied to proposing a law in a passage assigned to ‘Sopater and Syrianus’:

[W]hile the poor man was on embassy, the rich man introduced a bill (ἔγραψϵν) that anyone possessing less than five talents of property not take part in government; and if the law (νόμου) stood for a year, the decrees [which would include the poor man’s appointment] would be nullified. (RG 4.283.15–17) ²⁵

That the rich man’s bill is a law is confirmed by an anonymous commentator on Hermogenes who, presenting the same scenario save with a ratification limit of 30 days, specifies that the rich man ‘introduced a law’ (ἔγραψϵ νόμον, RG 8.409). Apsines knew that Aristogeiton had been convicted on a γραφὴ παρανόμων brought by the father of a youth whom he had illegally accused via a psēphisma. ²⁶ But he also well knew the distinction between νόμος and ψήφισμα (RG 1.46, 3.7), as did ‘Syrianus’ in the passage containing T6 (RG 4.183.11–12) and elsewhere. ²⁷ The generalizing language of Aristogeiton’s bill belongs to a law not a decree. We do not, then, have reason to discount this evidence of T6, whose author had access to more texts than we.

III. Aristogeiton’s proposed law

We must now grapple with the chief problem that arises once the above conclusions are adopted. Aristogeiton’s proposal that it be legal ‘to initiate for payment’ is attacked as a shocking and impious innovation. Yet participants in the Mysteries at Eleusis did in fact pay fees. What, then, was portrayed as wrong in Aristogeiton’s (fictitious) proposal? Considerations include these: (1) in the Classical period, in addition to purchasing sacrificial animals, pilgrims to the Mysteries paid entrance fees; (2) as far as we know, they paid fees under the Empire as well; (3) the pilgrim had to be instructed and purified in order to be eligible for the festival and rites. This instruction and purification is called μύησις, Kevin Clinton’s ‘preliminary initiation’. And (4), no separate fee seems to have been levied for muēsis. I propose that our declamation’s speaker attacked Aristogeiton’s proposed law on two grounds: it imposed a fee for muēsis contrary to sacred norms; the revenues would not be treated as the property of the Two Goddesses but of the state, and their collection would profit unauthorized persons, including Aristogeiton.

From its primary meaning, ‘cause someone to close their eyes/mouth’, in connection to the Mysteries μυέω takes on the sense ‘to make someone a μύστης’, an initiate. Muēsis was performed upon individuals at any time before the festivals of the Lesser and/or Greater Mysteries, to make them worthy of taking part. ²⁸ It could be administered by any adult member of the Eumolpidae or Kerykes who had been initiated: ‘the Kerykes are to initiate the initiands, each one separately (…δίχα τοὺς] μύστας ἕκαστον), and the Eumolpidae in the same way’. ²⁹ Only Eumolpidae and Kerykes could perform muēsis. That restriction is implied in lines 30–31: ‘and to perform initiation are whoever are willing of the Kerykes and Eumolpidae’ (μυϵῖν δὲ h[οὶ ἂν θέλ]ωσι Κηρύκων καὶ Eὐ[μολπιδῶν). ³⁰ The restriction is explicit in a law of the next century: ‘if anyone performs initiation knowing that he is not a member of the Eumolpidae or Kerykes, or if anyone brings a person for the sake of obtaining muēsis [to someone not belonging to the clans] of the Two Goddesses, any Athenian who wishes [may] file a phasis against him’. ³¹ Muēsis could take place either at Eleusis or in the City Eleusinion. ³² The clan members who administered muēsis are called ‘mystagogues’ in an inscription of the second or first century BC, although we do not know whether that term was applied to them in Aristogeiton’s time. ³³ The inscription tells us that the μύσται, once prepared by the mystagogues, were then accompanied by them on the procession of the city to Eleusis. ³⁴ The ensuing rites, on the other hand, to which the mustai were now eligible to be admitted, were conducted by priests and priestesses, who were also of those clans (Isoc. 4.157). The distinction between initiation and the festival is seen in their different dedicatory victims: a ewe for muēsis, a piglet for the festival. ³⁵

For the festival proper of the Mysteries, entrance fees are attested from the beginning of our records. A law from around 460 BC records amounts that priests, priestesses and the Eumolpid and Keryx clans received from each initiate. ³⁶ The amounts going to the clans are specified in ll. 20–23. At least by the second century BC, this entrance fee to the Mysteries was called ϵἰσαγώγϵιον, and the Eumolpidae (and, one supposes, the Kerykes) were still receiving a share. ³⁷ Clinton specifies that ‘the fees go to the clans and not to individuals. A share of these fees is paid out, apparently annually, to each member of the Eumolpidai and Kerykes’. ³⁸ We deduce this from the notice that to each member of the Kerykes was allotted ‘also a portion from the Great Mysteries and from the [Mysteries] at Agrae as large as to each of the Eumolpidae’. ³⁹ IEleusis 638 (= IG II² 1078) from ca. AD 220 shows that, still in the time of Apsines, ‘the archon of the clan furnishes to the Eumolpidae both the other things and the allotment (διανομῆς)’, ll. 34–36.

For muēsis, on the other hand, we have no record of a fee. From records of the epistatai of the shrine, we know only that a sacrifice of a ewe was required. Public slaves working inside the Eleusinian Telesterion had to be ritually pure. Thus, IEleusis 159.62 (= IG II² 1673 a+b) of 336/5 or 333/2 BC records the expenses for initiation (ϵἰς μύησιν) and for other sacrifices for four stoneworkers at least two weeks before the Lesser Mysteries. The only expense identified for muēsis is 12 drachmas for a sacrificial ewe. The time frame shows that the reference is not to a ritual during the festival. Moreover, IEleusis 177.269 records an expense of 30 drachmas for μύησις of two public slaves, and this amount covers only the ewe (cf. l. 418). ⁴⁰

In doubt about this conclusion, someone might counter that public slaves would not need to be schooled in the lore of the Mysteries in order to do work within the Telesterion, but only to be purified by the sacrifice, so that we cannot infer from its absence in the list of expenses that there was no fee for muēsis. But such an argument merely invents a fee for muēsis and then justifies the invention from an assumption for which there is no evidence. A second doubt might arise from the law mentioned above (cf. n.31) that barred non-clan members from conducting muēsis. This law bespeaks activity, not only of people unsure of their genealogy, but also of fraudulent mystagogues belonging to neither sacred clan, who charged their marks money. Again, however, too many unevidenced assumptions are needed to conclude that legitimate muēsis required its own fee. Our texts show us no expense required for muēsis beyond that for the sacrificial ewe. The mystagogues received, not a fee paid by an individual mustēs, but the above-mentioned distribution from sums awarded to the clans after the ceremonies.

As for the entrance fee to the festival proper, the ϵἰσαγώγϵιον, we should not think that mustai no longer paid it during Apsines’ time. It is true that the endowment associated with the Panhellenion, a league set up by Hadrian in 131/2, contributed to the Mysteries, and various priests received monies from it. Its finances were still sound in AD 169/70. ⁴¹ Donations from that endowment, however, or from other donors, many of whom are memorialized in inscriptions, provide no indication that initiands had ceased to contribute fees. Care was taken throughout the history of the Eleusinian cult to perform its functions ‘according to the norms of our fathers’ (κατὰ τὰ πάτρια), a notion invoked in many inscriptions, and still ca. AD 220. ⁴² In fact, IEleusis 638, as noted above, implies that initiates did still pay fees, for the allotment to the Eumolpidae had to come from income. Initiands into various other mysteries paid fees in the Imperial period; ἰσηλύσιον (sic, for ϵἰσηλύσιον) was the term for the entrance fee for the Iobacchoi at some point before AD 178. ⁴³ Athenaeus (2.12 40e), contemporary with Apsines, speaks of the high costs of mystic initiations. On the do ut des principle, one expected to give to the god in order to receive, and that meant giving to the god’s functionaries:

Sacred space reserved for intimate personal contact with divinity (mysteries, oracles, or incubation) was accessible only to those qualified by special purification. In such cases, payment of fees and closely monitored participation in rigidly structured preliminary rites defined ritual eligibility. ⁴⁴

It is a good bet that the absence of records of initiates’ fees in the Imperial period is only a result of the nature of our documentation. The records from which we would expect information are financial accounts and laws/decrees, and these need to have survived in copies inscribed on stone. Our latest accounts of overseers at Eleusis recorded on stone, however, are remains of the inventory on IEleusis 178bis (= SEG 35.1731) of ca. 325–320 BC. I suspect that at some point after the Athenian dēmos ceased to govern itself autonomously, the overseers and stewards from Eleusis were no longer required to have their financial records inscribed for the public, as had been done in the case of IEleusis 177 (= IG II² 1672) in 329/8 BC and back through time. ⁴⁵ Our only substantial remains of a law about the Mysteries from after the fall of the democracy, from the first century BC, IEleusis 250 (SEG 21.494), regulate the sacred procession to Eleusis and the duties of the ‘mystagogues’, but the surviving lines do not mention expenses.

In a sense, though, the question of actual initiatory expenses ca. AD 200 is moot, for the world presupposed in declamations was fictive; it was Donald Russell’s ‘Sophistopolis’, based loosely on the Athens of the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Although the legal climate in ‘Sophistopolis’ needed to map approximately but not rigorously the laws known to the Classical Attic orators, errors about well-known facts made many a declamation flawed. ⁴⁶ In this world of declamation, as in the real Classical Athens, initiation at Eleusis cost money. We know this from the pseudo-Demosthenic Against Neaera, often attributed to Apollodorus (394/3–post-343 BC), in which Lysias is said to have ‘wanted, on top of the other expenses he made on her, also to initiate (μυῆσαι)’ his young mistress, and, spending money ‘on the festival and the Mysteries on her behalf’, he ‘promised to initiate (μυήσϵιν) her himself’ ([Dem.] 59.21, and see below on this broad sense of μυέω). Apsines will have known Against Neaera. He also should have been aware that Lysias would have been barred by law from initiating the teen personally, for the restriction of that function to the Eumolpidae and Kerykes was known to ancient scholarship: ‘these [i.e. the Eumolpidae] are the ones who conduct muēsis (οἱ μυοῦντϵς) … and both the Kerykes and they belong to those involved with the Mysteries’. ⁴⁷ Moreover, Apsines’ ties by marriage to the clan of the Kerykes (cf. section IV below) put him in a position to know the traditions and regulations of the cult.

Pulling all this information together, I hypothesize that Apsines represented Aristogeiton as on trial for proposing that the dēmos institute a fee, not for participation in the festivals of the Mysteries (a fee for the festival was already in place), but for muēsis, which qualified the pilgrim to take part in the festival. Whatever else might be wrong with Aristogeiton’s proposal, this new fee would have been illegal from the start because it would have been an innovation against the ‘ancestral norms’ (τὰ πάτρια) that governed the Mysteries.

Our task is complicated, however, by the ambiguity of muēsis and its cognate terms in ancient literary sources. Some writers connect μυ- terms to the festival procedures and rites as a whole. For example, Trygaeus in Aristophanes’ Peace wants to be initiated (μυηθῆναι) before he dies, but the dedicatory animal he requests is a piglet (374–75), not the ewe required for preliminary muēsis. In the story about Lysias and his mistress in Against Neaera, μυῆσαι/μυήσϵιν must mean ‘have someone initiated’, and the actions for which Lysias would pay extend over ‘the festival and the Mysteries’ ([Dem.] 59.21). On the other hand, Isocrates speaks of benefactions of Kore, which no one but ‘those who have undergone muēsis may hear’ (4.28), as though people underwent muēsis and afterwards were exposed to the revelatory rite. Similarly speaks Diotima in Plato’s Symposium: ‘perhaps even you might be initiated, Socrates, but I don’t know whether you are the sort to approach correctly the rites and the sight of the sacred things, for which sake this [initiation] exists’. ⁴⁸ A lexicographer’s gloss says that ‘those who have undergone muēsis at Eleusis are said to see the sacred objects in the second muēsis’. ⁴⁹ Those who see the sacred objects achieve the higher status of ἐπόπται (‘those who behold’), and are no longer mustai (‘those with eyes closed’). These levels of status were set by law. ⁵⁰ A second initiation, the ἐποπτϵία, requires a first. ⁵¹

What is more, ancient scholars recorded that instruction was part of muēsis. The ‘old’ scholia on Aristophanes, which preserve the work of the great Alexandrian commentators, define ‘those who have undergone muēsis’, οἱ μϵμυημένοι, as ‘those who have been taught the Mysteries’ or ‘those who know the Mysteries’. ⁵² Johannes Tzetzes in the 12th century quotes the commentator Symmachus (schol. rec. Tzetzae in R. 745b), who flourished around AD 100, as saying, ‘first those who have undergone muēsis were taught the Mysteries, and afterwards they became epoptai’. Diodorus Siculus (4.7.4) said that the Muses get their name from ‘initiating people, that is, from teaching’ (ἀπὸ τοῦ μυϵῖν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, τοῦτο δ’ ἔστιν ἀπὸ τοῦ διδάσκϵιν). The lexicographers explained μύστης as ‘learner’ ⁵³ or as ‘one who knows or teaches the mysteries’. ⁵⁴ But instruction must have been accomplished before the festival, for once that got underway, there would be no occasion for instructing all the pilgrims of differing degrees of prior knowledge, especially since, as we saw, it was illegal to conduct muēsis upon groups. Livy’s (31.14) story of the two ‘uninitiated’ youths (non initiati) whose clueless questions exposed their lack of instruction, and who were put to death, shows that instruction was mandatory and part of initiation. From the tradition available to him, Apsines will have known that muēsis was distinct from the subsequent festival activities.

An argument from inscriptions of the second century AD reinforces this conclusion. Diverse officials performed muēsis on emperors or imperial family members: a hierophantid, ⁵⁵ an altar priest. ⁵⁶ If muēsis were a ritual performed during the festival proper, a particular sacred office would be charged with it, as was true of the rituals we know. This diversity of officials having the right to μυϵῖν is consistent with our evidence about preliminary muēsis, since that could be performed by any mature Eumolpid or Keryx. In contrast, the priestess of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis did not belong to either of those clans but to the Philleidae, ⁵⁷ a clan that did not have the right to perform muēsis. I know no epigraphical evidence that this priestess performed muēsis. ⁵⁸

Therefore, an objection that Apsines would not have understood μυϵῖν to designate an initiatory procedure prior to the festival and its rituals rests on no firm basis. We have no reason to suppose that in AD 200 mustai no longer needed to be prepared to be mustai. On the contrary, preparation for participation remained mandatory on the principle that ‘the uninitiated may not enter the sanctuary’ (ἀμύητον μὴ ϵἰσιέναι τὸ ἱϵρόν), inscribed probably not earlier than the first century BC at Samothrace, whose famous mysteries were derived from the Eleusinian. ⁵⁹ There is no impediment, then, to my hypothesis that Apsines portrayed Aristogeiton as having proposed that a hitherto unheard-of fee be levied on preliminary muēsis. On the other hand, while I cannot prove that Apsines did not build his declamation on the unhistorical premises that muēsis was not performed before the festival and that participants paid no entrance fees, there is no reason to adopt such gratuitous assumptions.

We still must ask, what does Apsines accomplish by selecting Aristogeiton as the declamation’s target, out of all the adversaries available to him? An author of a declamation who makes Aristogeiton the imaginary opponent casts in that role a consummate villain enshrined in tradition as a politician who seeks monetary gain from every public act (cf. n.1). Our next difficulty, then, is to identify the intended recipient of the payment (μισθοῦ) for conducting muēsis. T2, T4 and T5 point to the state as recipient, but T3, to Aristogeiton. A solution must explain both prospective outcomes.

First, the state. The ‘we’ voice in T5 (ἵνα ϵὐπορῶμϵν) represents the people. Moreover, the prosecutor of Aristogeiton argues that a better way to bring in money is to ‘levy an extraordinary tax’ (ϵἰσφορὰν ἐπιγράφϵιν), T5. Eisphora was authorized by the Assembly to alleviate financial deficits of the state and was paid by those whose property exceeded a certain threshold. ⁶⁰ By the logic of ‘antiparastasis from results’ in T4, the evil results on which the counterargument turns will be suffered by the same people who will gain revenue, that is: the city. T2 is consistent with this conclusion, for the phrase πόροι χρημάτων in the orators and historians refers to avenues of state revenue.

On the other hand, as seen in [Dem.] 25 and 26, Aristogeiton was a palmary example of the politician who commits political crimes for money. T3 relies on this characterization, for it attacks Aristogeiton’s thefts, debts and responsibility for his own financial straits. The attacks insinuate that Aristogeiton’s inveterate corruption and manipulation of laws for personal gain motivate his proposal to legalize ‘initiating for pay’. Surely, T3 summarizes an invective in which the speaker alleged that Aristogeiton hoped that his law would open the way to monetary gain for himself. There was no point in choosing Aristogeiton as the opponent unless Apsines wanted his speaker to attack a quintessential crook.

Another puzzle arises from the term misthos itself, for that noun does not denote an entrance or initiation fee to mysteries in our surviving records, nor is it a tax. As in other cults, the worshipper’s entrance fees at the Mysteries were offerings made to Demeter and Kore during the festival and belonged to the goddesses. Afterwards, as we noted above, distributions were made to priests, priestesses and Eumolpidae and Kerykes. Isabelle Pafford writes, ‘[n]ormally an item of commerce, the coins became sacred offerings, and had to be dealt with accordingly’. ⁶¹ A misthos, on the other hand, is ‘an item of commerce’. When it denotes a payment made by an authority, the term refers to what we call either ‘salary’ ⁶² or ‘fee’ for particular tasks. ⁶³ Since T2, T4 and T5 indicate that Aristogeiton’s law was to bring revenue to the state, not to increase its expenses by expanding the payroll, misthos must refer to payment that makes its way into state coffers, not a payment made by an authority to a contractor or worker. This conclusion accords with T6, where the understood subject of the passive μυϵῖσθαι must be ‘people’ or ‘initiates’, so that in the genitive of price construction (μισθοῦ), they are the payers. Misthos in Aristogeiton’s bill, then, must refer to the fee paid by an individual for receiving muēsis, just as it refers to payment made by the recipient of teaching ⁶⁴ or doctoring, ⁶⁵ or legal representation or cooking, ⁶⁶ or by the audience of a display oration. ⁶⁷ We have seen that the clans received a share of the payments made by initiates. If Aristogeiton will make money as a result of his proposal, from T3 we infer that it would establish a system that would bring money to people like himself outside the two clans. ⁶⁸ It is for that reason, incidentally, that I posit that μισθοῦ appeared as a term in Aristogeiton’s proposed law and is not our prosecutor’s pejorative reformulation of some different term in it. Aristogeiton will want to propose neither entrance fee nor tax. He will want a scheme that funnels money to himself as well as to the state. To require the initiand to pay a misthos fits the bill.

The imaginary backstory within Apsines’ declamation, then, should have disclosed how Aristogeiton proposed to regulate collection of initiates’ payments so as to enrich himself and the state. Since, as T4 shows, the prosecutor attacked the proposed law for its impiety, he would need to explain and denounce details of its projected outworking. Since our scanty references do not disclose how the new misthos was to be collected, I suggest, speculating from what we do know, that Aristogeiton proposed that contracts be awarded for providing preliminary initiation. Aristogeiton could be acting on behalf of a syndicate, which, as he would contrive it, would win the contract from the state to supervise muēsis and collect fees for the service. In some Greek cities, the right to collect fees accruing to the cult was let to people who were not priests. ⁶⁹ State authorities would let contracts. ⁷⁰ Some religious needs were supplied under these, such as sacrificial animals (Isoc. 7.29) or ‘the contract costs (μισθώματα) of the procession’ at the Panathenaic Festival. ⁷¹ Thus we find the Archon Basileus and other sacred officials letting out contracts (μισθωμάτων, ἃ ἐμίσθωσϵν) in service of the Eleusinian Mysteries; ⁷² ‘μισθώματα here are … salaries or the price of contracts for services at the Mysteries which were contracted for by officials of the Mysteries’. ⁷³ Apsines will have known that public contracts were sold or let in fifth- and fourth-century Greece. ⁷⁴ Aristogeiton’s law would need to authorize not only the provision of muēsis for a fee but a system for transferring moneys to the state and a residue to persons like himself. We can imagine the law as authorizing initiation contracts, which Eleusinian officials then would sell or let, with Aristogeiton’s syndicate expecting to finagle the contract. Like tax or mining contractors, the syndicate would keep whatever sums it collected over and above the price of the contract. ⁷⁵ The gods would indeed be provoked if the amount collected from initiates were allowed to float, for ‘[t]he cult charges once fixed by the authorities could not be freely changed and the priests could not demand more than was prescribed’. ⁷⁶ The hypothesis of a contractors’ scheme fits our sources better than that of fees paid to individual mystagogues directly, for the former would enrich both state and operators, but the latter need not enrich the state. Since Aristogeiton would need to assure his own profit, perhaps his law would authorize sacred officials to award the contract, not at auction to the highest bidder, as was usually done, but directly, or perhaps the prosecutor would accuse him of colluding to ‘fix’ the auction. ⁷⁷ Whatever the mechanism of assignment, in any case, Aristogeiton’s scheme, the prosecutor could thunder, would bring bad reputation and divine anger (T4). It was one thing for the dēmos to borrow from and oversee temple finances. ⁷⁸ It would be another to secularize cult fees that should ‘all … belong to the Two Goddesses’. ⁷⁹

One may wonder whether Aristogeiton’s law allowed mystagogues outside of the two sacred clans to conduct muēsis, so as to process more pilgrims and collect more revenue. In the time after Tiberius,

the celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries attracted hundreds, if not thousands, of fee-paying initiates to Athens each year around the end of September … Those non-Athenians who came to Athens either to become initiates or simply to watch at least part of the festivities … must have … provided a temporary boost to the city’s economy. ⁸⁰

To expand the faculties of conducting muēsis beyond members of the sacred clans, however, might be a bridge too far even for Aristogeiton in the fictional backstory, and I do not press this point. Still, we can imagine the prosecutor in the declamation charging that Aristogeiton’s proposal could open the way to abuses like ineligible mystagogues.

We must go back now to T6’s evidence that Aristogeiton is to have proposed a law, a νόμος. In what legal form did Apsines couch the indictment? Since Aristogeiton lived at a time when nomos and psēphisma, and the procedures for challenging them, were clearly distinguished, Apsines should have known that the procedure against a law was a γραφὴ νόμον μὴ ἐπιτήδϵιον θϵῖναι. After all, he will have known that indictment from at least six cases. ⁸¹ Moreover, if Apsines did not know the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians first-hand, from scholarly tradition he should have known its distinction between γραφὴ παρανόμων and γραφὴ νόμον μὴ ἐπιτήδϵιον θϵῖναι (Ath. Pol. 59.2), seeing that Pollux (8.87–88) copies that passage. I know no evidence that the latter indictment was the theme of any other ancient declamation. Apsines speaks of two proposers of laws who were put on trial, Leptines in Demosthenes 20 (3.7) and Lycurgus of Sparta (3.12), but he does not attach legal names to the indictments. In the scenario in ‘Sopater and Syrianus’ mentioned above (cf. n.25), the poor man ‘returns after a year and prosecutes the rich man on a [γραφὴ] παρανόμων’ (RG IV.283.19–20), although it was a law not a decree that the rich man had proposed. We may smile at this use of terminology in ‘Sophistopolis’ when the personages in a speech are not known fourth-century figures, and in the fifth century, a γφαφὴ παρανόμων in fact could challenge a law as well as a decree. ⁸² Although I cannot prove that Apsines showed his speaker as prosecuting Aristogeiton on a γραφὴ νόμον μὴ ἐπιτήδϵιον θϵῖναι, he should and could have done so. That indictment’s emphasis on a law’s unsuitability (μὴ ἐπιτήδϵιον) aligns with what we read in T2–T5, where we do not hear that the law contravenes other laws but rather that it will harm the city, bringing wrath of gods and dishonour in the eyes of men. ⁸³ Since we know of no law that forbade a fee for preliminary muēsis, if Apsines’ speaker did appeal to existing norms to argue against that fee as such, they will have been ancestral customs received from the goddesses (τὰ πάτρια), as I suggested above, an even more dread authority than a nomos. ⁸⁴

The scenario I have proposed and its even more speculative twists cannot, of course, be proved to be the one that Apsines portrayed in his declamation. Something like it must have stood there, however, for better than other scenarios, it hits the points that T1–T6 require: money goes to state and Aristogeiton, ancestral norms are violated, gods are angry. Apsines could display his skill at writing a courtroom exposition of sacred law and procedure (see the next section) and could model how to assail an opponent with a preliminary prejudicial attack (προβολή, T1), irony (T2), invective in narrative (T3) and counter-objections (T4, T5). If I am right about the form of his speaker’s indictment, Apsines portrayed a species of prosecution embedded in the legal climate of the fourth century BC but unknown in any other declamation.

IV. Implications for authorship of the Ars

Heath’s argument (cf. n.7) that Apsines did not write the Ars rests on the third-person references to Apsines made throughout the work, on differences between its doctrine and doctrines attributed to Apsines by other rhetoricians and on the general unreliability of author identifications in manuscripts. While Heath makes a good case, I remain unpersuaded that the third-person references are not interpolations. ⁸⁵ I add in favour of authenticity the fact that Apsines’ wife, Annia, was distinguished among the Kerykes, being great-granddaughter of Claudius Lysiades, the imperial high priest from AD 138 to ca. 150, and granddaughter of Claudius Sospis, the altar priest from 191/2 or 192/3 until at least 209/10. This information is preserved on a statue base from the City Eleusinion, dated before 238, on which Annia is called ‘wife of Valerius Apsines the most excellent (κρατίστου) sophist’. ⁸⁶ Assuming from ἀντιπαρέστησα in T5 that the author of the Ars wrote the declamation against Aristogeiton, one may think that the author would have interest in and knowledge about the Eleusinian Mysteries and their relationship to the state. It is reasonable to suppose that Apsines, related by marriage to one of the priestly clans, would have such interest and knowledge.

I have sought to reason to the best explanation of the backstory and legal form presumed in the speech against Aristogeiton cited in the Ars. While details are speculative, we are on reasonably firm ground in concluding that Apsines wrote a declamation that portrayed Aristogeiton as on trial for proposing a law to authorize: (1) a fee for preliminary initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries and (2) a system for collecting those fees, which would profit Aristogeiton himself as well as the state.

Apsines’ cryptic references enhance our understanding of two areas of interest to composers of declamations: the Mysteries and historical personages as stock characters. First, T1–6 join references in other rhetoricians, such as those to a tyrannicide priestess (cf. n.12) or Russell’s ‘case of the Mysteries’, in which a man asks about secret rites he saw in a dream, to illustrate how cases involving the Mysteries provided composers of declamations ample opportunity for elaborating the legally ambiguous scenarios beloved of their genre. ⁸⁷ Indeed, I wonder whether Apsines may have written this piece during a time of dissension at Eleusis, in order to endorse the dread authority of ancient norms. Second, as we have seen, Aristogeiton appears in other rhetoricians as an example par excellence of the ‘disreputable person’ (ἄδοξον πρόσωπον). Declamation featured stock characters like the rich man, the poor man, the wife, the soldier, the teenaged girl, etc., but also personages from history, whose best-known traits made them too into stock characters. As Jeffrey Walker observes, ‘If one brings “Demosthenes” or “Alcibiades” or “honest farmer” or “Xanthias the crafty slave” on stage, or into a declamation exercise, each comes pre-equipped with a conventionalized and expected set of characteristics’. ⁸⁸ When Apsines’ audience encounters Aristogeiton, they expect outrageous legal manoeuvres to serve corrupt personal interests, whether a manoeuvre actually occurred, as in his decree against the youth (n.26), or whether it is a fiction in a declamation, as when Philagrus takes the part of Aristogeiton prosecuting Aeschines and Demosthenes in the same action (Philostr. V S 2.31.12, cf. ‘Marcellinus’ RG 4.472; on representations of Aristogeiton, cf. n.1). Historical characters tended to predominate in the public oral declamations of sophists, in which ‘history’ was invented for entertainment and intellectual challenge. ⁸⁹ We may well speculate that Apsines made a public display on the occasion of his fictional prosecution of Aristogeiton, perhaps with priestly family members in attendance. In any case, Apsines’ cryptic references show the hold that the Mysteries and the figure of Aristogeiton had on the inventive power and argumentative subtlety of Greek rhetorical culture in the Imperial period.