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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 April 2021
This article reconsiders the historical and typological relation between Greek maturation rituals and Greek mystery religion. Particular attention is given to the word κλεινός (‘illustrious’) and its ritual uses in two roughly contemporary Late Classical sources: an Orphic-Bacchic funerary gold leaf from Hipponion in Magna Graecia and Ephorus’ account of a Cretan pederastic age-transition rite. In both contexts, κλεινός marks an elevated status conferred by initiation. (This usage finds antecedents in Alcman's Partheneia.) Without positing direct development between puberty rites and mysteries, the article argues on the basis of shared vocabulary and other ritual elements that age-transitions influenced the ideology of mystery cults. It is further claimed that puberty rites and mysteries performed similar functions in their respective social contexts, despite obvious differences of prestige and visibility. Age-transition rites have been analysed in Bourdieu's terms as ‘rites of institution’, in which young elites were publicly affirmed in civic roles: private mysteries can be described in analogous but opposed terms as rites of ‘counter-institution’, in which familiar ritual language and symbols of elite status were used to construct an alternative ‘imagined community’ of mystery initiates.
1 Seaford, R., ‘Dionysiac drama and Dionysiac mysteries’, CQ 31 (1981), 252–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 See also Seaford, R., Euripides Bacchae (Warminster, 1996)Google Scholar and Dionysos (New York, 2005).
3 A. van Gennep (transl. M.B. Vizedom and G.L. Caffee), The Rites of Passage (Chicago, 1960; first published as Les rites de passage [Paris, 1909]), with developments by Turner, V., The Ritual-Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (London and New York, 1967)Google Scholar and Bourdieu, P., Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar. The term rite de passage properly denotes any ritual that follows the three-stage pattern of separation, liminality and reintegration (especially connected with birth, puberty, marriage and death/burial), but in current usage is usually applied to transitions from adolescence to adulthood.
4 Fundamental are Jeanmarie, H., Couroi et courètes (Lille, 1939)Google Scholar; Brelich, A., Paides e parthenoi (Rome, 1969)Google Scholar; and C. Calame, Les Chœurs de jeunes filles en Grèce ancienne: morphologie, fonction religieuse et sociale (Les parthénées d'Alcman) (Paris, 20192; first published 1977; partially translated by J. Orion and D. Collins: Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece: Their Morphology, Religious Role, and Social Function [Lanham, 2001]). See also Cole, S.G., ‘The social function of rituals of maturation: the Koureion and the Arkteia’, ZPE 55 (1984), 233–44Google Scholar; Sourvinou-Inwood, C., Studies in Girls’ Transitions: Aspects of the Arkteia and Age Representation in Attic Iconography (Athens, 1988)Google Scholar; and Winkler, J.J., ‘The ephebe's song: tragôidia and polis’, in Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (edd.), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Social Context (Princeton, 1990), 20–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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6 Griffith, M., ‘Public and private in early Greek institutions of education’, in Too, Y.L. (ed.), Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Leiden, 2001), 36–43Google Scholar; Dodd, D. and Faraone, C. (edd.), Initiation in Ancient Greek Rituals and Narratives: New Critical Perspectives (London and New York, 2003)Google Scholar, especially the contributions of F. Graf, ‘Initiation: a concept with a troubled history’ (at 3–24) and B. Lincoln, ‘The initiatory paradigm in anthropology, folklore and history of religions’ (at 241–54).
7 OF 474–96, with the addition of SEG LXII; for discussion, see F. Graf and S.I. Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets (New York, 20132) and Edmonds, R.G. III (ed.), The ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further Along the Path (Cambridge, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Dionysiac background of the tablets has been decisively established by the discoveries of OF 474 (Hipponion; see below), 485–6 (Pelinna) and 496n (Amphipolis); in addition to Graf and Johnston (this note), see Graf, F., ‘Dionysian and Orphic eschatology: new texts and old questions’, in Carpenter, T.H. and Faraone, C. (edd.), Masks of Dionysus (Ithaca, 1993), 239–58Google Scholar.
8 The editio princeps is Kouremenos, T., Parássoglou, G.M. and Tsantsanoglou, K. (edd.), The Derveni Papyrus: Edited with Introduction and Commentary (Florence, 2006)Google Scholar; subsequent textual scholarship is reflected in Laks, A. and Most, G.W. (edd.), Early Greek Philosophy, Vol. VI: Later Ionian and Athenian Thinkers, Part 1 (Cambridge, 2016), 373–435Google Scholar and Kotwick, M., Der Papyrus von Derveni (Berlin, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For discussion, see also Betegh, G., The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, Theology and Interpretation (Cambridge, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Papadopoulou, I. and Muellner, L. (edd.), Poetry as Initiation: The Center for Hellenic Studies Symposium on the Derveni Papyrus (Washington, DC, 2014)Google Scholar.
9 OF 463–5 (= SEG XXVIII 659–61); see Lévêque, P., ‘Apollon et l'orphisme a Olbia du Pont’, in Ghidini, M. Tortorelli, Marino, A.S. and Visconti, A. (edd.), Tra Orfeo e Pythagora: origini e incontri di culture nell'antichità: atti dei seminari napoletani 1996–1998 (Naples, 2000)Google Scholar and Ferrari, F., ‘Orphics at Olbia?’, in Colesanti, G. and Lulli, L. (edd.), Submerged Literature in Ancient Greek Culture: Case Studies (Berlin and Boston, 2016), 177–86Google Scholar.
10 Burkert, Thus W., ‘Bacchic teletai in the Hellenistic Age’, in Carpenter, T.H. and Faraone, C. (edd.), Masks of Dionysus (Ithaca, 1993), 260Google Scholar (repr. in F. Graf [ed.], W. Burkert, Kleine Schriften III: Mystica, Orphica, Pythagorica [Göttingen, 2006], 121): ‘[W]hereas until recently the mere existence of Bacchic mysteries before the Hellenistic Age was controversial, by now the most relevant testimonies for these mysteries are seen to belong to the sixth and fourth centuries b.c. It is rather the Hellenistic and imperial evidence that appears barren and unpromising by comparison.’
11 See n. 6 above.
12 See Graf (n. 6), 19. Parallelism without derivation is implied also in Seaford's comparisons of ancient initiations with modern near-death experiences: see Seaford, R., ‘Mystic light in Aeschylus’ Bassarai’, CQ 55 (2005), 602–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar and id., ‘Mystic light and near-death experience’, in M. Christopoulos, E.D. Karakantza and O. Levaniouk (edd.), Light and Darkness in Ancient Greek Myth and Religion (Lanham, 2010), 201–6.
13 See Segal, C., ‘Dionysus and the gold tablets from Pelinna’, GRBS 31 (1990), 411–19Google Scholar; Edmonds (n. 7), especially the contributions of C. Riedweg, ‘Initiation – death – underworld: narrative and ritual in the gold leaves’ (at 219–56), C.A. Faraone, ‘Rushing into milk: new perspectives on the gold tablets’ (at 310–30) and C. Calame (transl. S. Merkel), ‘Funerary gold lamellae and Orphic papyrus commentaries: same use, different purpose’ (at 203–18); and M. McClay, ‘Memory and performance: strategies of identity in the Orphic-Bacchic lamellae’ (Diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2018).
14 An exception is Seaford (n. 1), 254 (mentioning OF 487).
15 On the impact of the Hipponion discovery, see Graf and Johnston (n. 7), 61–4; this leaf is not referenced in Seaford (n. 1). My Greek text and translation for the most part follow Bernabé, A. (ed.), Poetae Epici Graeci II: Orphicorum et Orphicis similium testimonia et fragmenta. Fasc. 1–2 (Munich and Leipzig, 2004–5)Google Scholar.
16 OF 474–84a and SEG LXII 644. Of these, OF 474–7 preserve extended texts of between ten and twenty lines in length; the remainder contain an abbreviated form of the same text with local variants. On the definition of the B-group in relation to the other tablets, see Zuntz, G., Persephone: Three Essays on Religion and Thought in Magna Graecia (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar; Graf and Johnston (n. 7), 94–134 (with different criteria of classification); and Janko, R., ‘Going beyond multitexts: the archetype of the gold leaves’, CQ 66 (2016), 100–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 See n. 15 above.
18 The empty space below line 16 on the tablet leaves no doubt that κλεινοί was the final word of the inscription. Even if the full version of the B-text continued beyond this line, as Janko (n. 16), 122 cautiously suggests in his reconstructed ‘archetype’, this was where the Hipponion inscriber intended his text to end.
19 Carratelli, G. Pugliese, Les lamelles d'or orphiques (Paris, 2003)Google Scholar and A. Bernabé and A.I. Jiménez San Cristóbal (transl. M. Chase), Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets (Leiden, 2008).
20 See Musti, D., ‘Le lamine orfiche e la religiosità d'area locrese’, QUCC 16 (1984), 73–5Google Scholar (see below) and de Jáuregui, M. Herrero, ‘Dialogues of immortality from the Iliad to the gold leaves’, in Edmonds, R.G. III (ed.), The ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further Along the Path (Cambridge, 2011), 286–90Google Scholar.
21 See Herrero de Jáuregui (n. 20).
22 The supplement is uncertain, but this does not affect the present argument: Davies, M. and Finglass, P.J. (edd.), Stesichorus: The Poems (Cambridge, 2014), 450Google Scholar.
23 On κλέος and poetic praise in Pindar, see Kurke, L., The Traffic in Praise (Ithaca, 1991)Google Scholar. For κλεινός used in epinician of places: Pind. Ol. 3.2, 6.6–7, 7.81, 9.14, Pyth. 4.280, 9.15 and 9.70, Nem. 1.2, Isthm. 2.19, 9.1, Dith. fr. 76 S.–M., Bacchyl. 2.6, 5.12, 11.78; of people: Pind. Pyth. 1.31, Bacchyl. 5.182–6 and 9.21–4 (see further below); of myths/exploits: e.g. Pind. Pyth. 8.23; of song/festival: Pind. Pyth. 3.114, 5.20, Bacchyl. 8.31. For comparable uses in tragedy: Aesch. Pers. 474; Soph. Aj. 596, 861, El. 681, OT 1525, Trach. 750; Eur. Heracl. 38, Hipp. 423, El. 5, Ion 590, Hel. 57, 105, Phoen. 951, 1688, Or. 17, etc.
24 It is beyond the scope of this article to review in detail all debates surrounding the Ephorus fragment: see Griffith (n. 6), 74–80, with earlier discussion by Willetts, R.F., Ancient Crete (New York, 1965), 115–18Google Scholar; Calame (n. 4), 416–24 (= [2001], 245–9); Dover, K., Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge, Mass., 1978, 2nd edn 1989), 189–90Google Scholar; and Percy, W.A., Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece (Urbana and Chicago, 1996), 59–72Google Scholar.
25 On comparisons of Crete and Sparta in ancient sources, see R.F. Willetts, The Civilization of Ancient Crete (Berkeley, 1977), 146–90; Calame (n. 4), 416–24 (= [2001], 245–9); and Griffith (n. 6), 51–2; on Spartan coming-of-age ritual, see especially J. Ducat, Spartan Education: Youth and Society in the Classical Period (Swansea, 2006). Spartan/Cretan dining-halls: Arist. Pol. 2.1263b37–1264a1 and 2.1271b20–1272b23. Homoerotic courtship: e.g. Xen. Lac. Pol. 2.12–14, with Dover (n. 24), 185–96 and Percy (n. 24), 73–92.
26 Thus Griffith (n. 6), 51–2.
27 Ephorus refers throughout the fragment to the boy's family as his φίλοι. Following V. Parker, ‘Ephoros (70)’, in I. Worthington (ed.), Brill's New Jacoby (Leiden, 2011; consulted 27 April 2020 at http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1873-5363_bnj_a70), I take this as a reference to older male relatives rather than to the boy's age-mates; cf. Bremmer, J., ‘An enigmatic Indo-European rite: paederasty’, Arethusa 13 (1980), 283–7Google Scholar and Dover (n. 24), 189.
28 For further discussion, see Griffith (n. 6) and nn. 24–5 above.
29 See Calame (n. 4) and id., Alcman: introduction, texte critique, témoignages, traduction et commentaire (Rome, 1983). On Partheneia as a genre, see also the valuable overview of Swift, L., The Hidden Chorus: Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric (Oxford, 2010), 173–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 The debates surrounding the roles of Hagesichora and Agido and their precise relationship do not impinge on the present argument: for review of interpretations, see Calame (n. 4), 483–8 and 557–70; Calame (n. 29), 312–13; and Bowie, E., ‘Alcman's first Partheneion and the song the Sirens sang’, in Athanassaki, L. and Bowie, E. (edd.), Archaic and Classical Choral Song: Performance, Politics and Dissemination (Berlin and Boston, 2011), 37–44Google Scholar. On the problematic dialect form κλεννός, see Calame (n. 29), 457–8 and Hinge, G., Die Sprache Alkmans: Textgeschichte und Sprachgeschichte (Wiesbaden, 2006), 117Google Scholar.
31 For discussion of this fragment (including evidence for male leaders of female choruses), see Calame (n. 4), 122–3 (= [2001], 58–9) and Calame (n. 29), 454–61.
32 F. Budelmann, Greek Lyric: A Selection (Cambridge, 2019), 72. Alcman's only other clear use of κλεινός—an apparent reference to ‘famed Sardis’ (κλ[ε]ι̣ναὶ Σάρ[διες, fr. 13d PMG)—resembles other usages in other poetic sources: see above. PMG 4.1.11 in the apparatus criticus also notes κλήν̣ο̣ν as an uncertain reading from another small scrap of papyrus.
33 Calame (n. 4), 441–2 (= [2001], 259–60), 503–6, 516–19, 546–50, 559–71; Swift (n. 29), 177–8; and Bowie (n. 30), 39–44. Conceding these points, however, does not require commitment to the view that Agido alone is prepared to undergo initiation (but not the members of the chorus): Bowie (n. 30), 39–44.
34 See nn. 24–5 above.
35 OF 478–83, 484a, 494–5, SEG LXII 644 (all dated to the period between the third and first centuries b.c.). Zuntz (n. 16), 376–8 argued that the B-texts originated in Crete and were later elaborated in western Greece and Thessaly, but today nearly all scholars imagine that the B-texts were first composed in western Greece and that the later Cretan versions were excerpted from the longer text. On the Cretan tablets in their local context, see Tzifopoulos, Y., Paradise Earned: The Bacchic-Orphic Gold Lamellae of Crete (Washington, DC, 2010)Google Scholar.
36 LSJ9 s.v. κλεινός II; cf. Ath. Deipn. 11.782c (repeating the testimony of Ephorus).
37 Similar terms appear in age-transition ritual vocabulary of other Greek cities, though usually in martial rather than in erotic contexts: e.g. Tyrt. fr. 12.19 W., Soph. Ant. 671 and Lycurg. Leoc. 77.2 (quoting the Athenian Ephebic oath: οὐδὲ λείψω τὸν παραστάτην), with discussion in Griffith (n. 6), 79.
38 Seaford (n. 2 [2005]), 49–75; cf. McClay (n. 13), 1–49.
39 Seaford (n. 1), 258–9; see Bremmer, J., ‘Transvestite Dionysus’, in Padilla, M. (ed.), Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece: Literature, Religion, Society (London and Toronto, 1999), 183–200Google Scholar. Later tablet texts, however, increasingly depart from the practice of the earlier fourth-century tablets by including the gender and the proper name of the deceased (e.g. OF 481, 491, 495a, 496b): Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal (n. 19), 59 and 99; McClay (n. 13), 40–1, 73–4 and 131.
40 Griffith (n. 6), 79.
41 Musti (n. 20), developed further in McClay (n. 13).
42 Musti (n. 20), 74 (my translation).
43 See McClay (n. 13).
44 Cf. Seaford, R., ‘The politics of the mystic chorus’, in Billings, J., Budelmann, F. and Macintosh, F. (edd.), Choruses, Ancient and Modern (Oxford, 2013), 261–80Google Scholar and McClay (n. 13).
45 McClay (n. 13), 30–43.
46 Cf. Nagy, G., ‘Genre and occasion’, Mètis 9–10 (1994), 11–25Google Scholar and Jennings, T., ‘On ritual knowledge’, JR 62 (1982), 111–27Google Scholar.
47 Bourdieu (n. 3), 118–19.
48 Griffith (n. 6), 74–80.
49 Sourvinou-Inwood (n. 4), Dodd and Faraone (n. 6).
50 Hubbard, T., ‘Popular perceptions of elite homosexuality in Classical Athens’, Arion 6 (1998), 48–78Google Scholar.
51 For discussion, see Graf, F., ‘Exclusive singing’, in de Jáuregui, M. Herrero et al. (edd.), Tracing Orpheus: Studies of Orphic Fragments (Berlin and Boston, 2011), 13–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 Ar. Ran. 145–58, 312–71, etc.; on initiatory themes in the Frogs, see also Lada-Richards (n. 5) and Griffith (n. 5).
53 Graf (n. 7), 255.
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55 Along similar lines, see Redfield, J., ‘The politics of immortality’, in Borgeaud, P. (ed.), Orphisme et Orphée: en l'honneur de Jean Rudhardt (Geneva, 1991), 103–17Google Scholar.
56 Hsch. s.v. ἀρκτεία (α 7281 Alpers–Cunningham), Σ Ar. Lys. 645 Dübner; see Cole (n. 4), 238–44.
