Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2011
The Object of this brief survey is to discover, if we can, from the surviving plays of Aeschylus how, in the opinion of enlightened and pious men of his age, the spirits of the dead were to be approached when it was thought desirable to do so, and to compare the methods which were then in use with those of other, especially of later, epochs. I speak of enlightened and pious men, for surely Aeschylus was both. Had he been born a generation later, he would probably have been something of a philosopher, influenced, as Euripides was, by the critical opinions of the contemporary sophists and investigating the fundamental assumptions upon which the traditional beliefs of his country rested. As it was, he, like his contemporary and acquaintance Pindar, came sufficiently early to take the form of their beliefs from tradition, with no more than revisal of details here and there (Pindar will not believe impious myths and does not know what to make of tales which represent the gods as fighting one another, Aeschylus is not sure that a god will really feel human passion for a mortal woman), ennobling the whole with their own lofty thoughts and feelings, in which the Athenian goes further than the Theban, for he was the deeper of soul and even the Apolline religion of Pindar, lofty though it is, the fruit apparently of a genuinely religious mind which had something mystical in it, lacks the sublimity of Aeschylus' attitude toward Zeus.
1 Pindar, O. i, 36 sqq.; O. ix, 35 sqq.
2 Aesch., Aga., 1203. For the poet's varyingly serious use of such material, see my art. Theology and Mythology in Aeschylus, in Harv. Theol. Rev., XXXIX (1946), 1–24Google Scholar.
3 The precise meaning of ἥρωες, both in Homer and in hero-cult, is “gentlemen,” “nobles.”
4 χαλεποὶ δὲ θεοὶ φαίνεσθαι ἐναργεῖς, ϒ 131.
5 Aesch., P.V., 567.
6 Cho., 1048 sqq.
7 Eum., 29 sqq.
8 τοὺς δὲ ἀργοὺς λίθους ἐφ᾽ ὦν ἑστᾶσιν ὅσοι δίκας ὑπέχονσι καὶ οἱ διώκοντες, τὸνμὲν ῞ϒβρεως τὸν δὲ 'Aναιδείας αὐτῶν ὀνομάζουσι, Pausanias, i, 28, 5. The meanings of αὶδὼς and its compounds and cognates are well discussed in the relevant articles in Liddell-Scott-Jones.
9 Aesch., Aga., 1096 sqq., 1217 sqq.; Eum., 116 sqq. In the latter case, “seen” is not quite accurate, for the Chorus are asleep when the ghost appears to them.
10 This means precisely and literally what it says. I become steadily more convinced that Homer's activity was not later than about 900 B.C. and that he wrote his works, not necessarily in alphabetical characters. This latter fact accounts among other things for their preservation over so long a period with so little sign of interpolation, such as must almost inevitably have occurred had there been no early and authoritative written text to appeal to, while the absence of such a written text is reason enough for the complete disappearance of all earlier works, save for such passages, mostly short stock formulae, as he is reasonably thought to have borrowed from them. I take him to be the author of practically the whole Iliad and the whole Odyssey, as we now have them.
11 a 260 sqq.
12 νεκὑων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα, κ 521 etc.
13 Ibid., 522–25.
14 Ibid., 519–20, with the note of Eustathios, p. 1668, 22, who says that in Homer μελίκρητον is supposed to be honey mixed with milk, but in later authors honey diluted with water.
15 Ibid., 527 sqq., with λ 35 sqq., which supplements it in one or two details.
16 Examples in Oikonomos, G. P., De profusionum receptaculis sacris (Athens, 1921), 8 sqqGoogle Scholar. It is of course found also in the cult of chthonian gods and in heroworship.
17 See Eitrem, S., Opferritus und Voropfer (Kristiania 1915), 416Google Scholar sqq.
18 Ar., Birds, 1553–64. Peisandros is said to have lost his ψυχὴ because he is cowardly and therefore ἄψυχος, cf., e.g., Aesch., Sept., 192.
19 Cf. ω 5 sqq.
20 As represented by Horace, following Neoptolemos of Parion, Ars Poet., 278–80.
21 Pickard-Cambridge, A. W., The Theatre of Dionysus at Athens (Oxford 1946), 68Google Scholar sqq.
22 Cho.,439.
23 τοίγαρ κέλευθον τήνδ᾽ ἄνευ τ᾽ ὀχημάτων / χλιδῆς τε τῆς πάροιθεν ἐκ δόμων παλιν/ἔστειλα, she says (Pers., 607–9) whether this means on foot and without personal ornaments or on foot and so without her royal state (τε joining synonymous expressions).
24 As, e.g., K 292–3.
25 See Pers., 620–21.
26 Supp., 119, 130; Cho., 563–4.
27 βάρβαρα σαφηνῆ, Pers., 635, i.e., in clear, intelligible Persian (the Persian characters call themselves “barbarians” throughout the play, with no thought of it being derogatory, exactly as in Plautus barbare means Latine, barbaria Italy and barbarus Roman or Italian). I cannot imagine why Headlam wanted to alter the text here.
28 Ar., Frogs, 1028–29, ἐχάρην γοῦν ἡνίκ᾽ ἐκώκυσαν (ἤκουσα codd.) περὶ Δαρείου τεθνεῶτος,/ὁ χορὸς δ᾽ εὐθὺς τὼ χεῖρ᾽ ὡδὶ συγκρούσας εῖπεν ἰαυοῖ. The speaker, Dionysos, seems to embody the average silly-ass spectator; Aristophanes rather liked the average man, but clearly recognized that he was normally incontinent, a coward and a fool. He means, “Well, I did like it when they howled about Dareios being dead (Pers., 647–56 especially) and at once the chorus clapped their hands together like this and said Ochone!” This much, then, the audience may be expected to have carried away in their heads, a general memory of lamentable words, cries and gestures.
29 E.g., the ghost of Achilles does not know how it fares with his father and son, λ 492 sqq.
30 Cho., 459.
31 Cho., 489.
32 Seneca, Oedipus, 561; in Statius, Theb. IV, 549–51, Manto, at her father's bidding, uses something like a spell: carmenque serit quo dissipat umbras,/quo regit et sparsas; qualis, si crimina demas,/Colchis et Aeaeo simulatrix litore Circe.
33 Statius, ibid., 503 sqq.
34 Lucan, VI, 730 sqq.
35 Statius, ibid., 537 sqq.
37 Pap. Oxyr. 412; the inserted lines come between λ 49 and 51, the text being somewhat altered to fit them. The material is handily set forth in Vol. II, pp. 83–5 of V. Bérard's edition of the Odyssey (Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1924); his conclusions are amusing, but quite negligible.
38 See in general KP, 2245, 31 sqq.
39 A.VI, 426–29.
40 Pausanias, II, 3, 6–7.
41 Cf. Pausanias, I, 43, 7, a child of Apollo's having been exposed and killed by dogs, the Argives were troubled, not directly by the child's ghost, but by an avenging spirit, a Poine, sent by Apollo. In the Corinthian case (see last note), the statue which commemorated the event did not show the children, but a Deima, or fearful visitation, represented as a frightful-looking woman.
42 Heliodoros, Aethiopica, VI, 14 (p. 175, 19 sqq. Bekker); for Lucan, see next note.
43 Lucan, VI, 619 sqq., cf. 712 sqq., the ghost has not far to come.
44 Ibid., 777 sqq.
45 Heliod., ibid., p. 177, 4 sqq.
46 Chrysost., Hom, in Matth. XXVIII, (XXIX), p. 336 B-D Montfaucon.
47 Recognitiones, II, 13. The Homilies, II, 26, make it clear that Simon himself killed the child, παιδίου ψυχὴν τοὺ ἰδίου σώματος χωρίσας.
48 Horace, Epod., V, 29–40.
49 Juv., Sat. VI, 548–52.
50 IV 2015 sqq. P.
51 KP 2245, 31 sqq.
52 Plautus, Most., 484 sqq.; Pliny, epp., VII, 27, 4 sqq. Both are manifestly from Greek sources. Cf. Lucian, Philops., 31.
53 HN, 2232,9 sqq.
54 S. Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Iulianum, X, 340B Spanheim.
55 [Plut.], Moralia, 109 B-D.
56 Artemid., Onirocr., II, 69, p. 161, 20–26 Hercher.
57 Cicero, Tusc, I, 37, de diuin, I, 132.
58 As Nero, Suet., Nero, 35; Caracalla, Herodian, IV, 12,4.
59 Abundant illustrations in Farnell, L. R., Greek Hero-cults and ideas of Immortality (Oxford, 1921)Google Scholar.
60 Pausanias, VI, 9, 6–8.
61 Olivieri, A., Lamellae aureae Orphicae (H. Lietzmann, Kleine Texte, 133, Bonn 1915), p. 12Google Scholar.
62 A sketch of some of the most important is given in OZ, I, par. 259 sqq.
63 For instance, Menippus, 15 and indeed almost the whole dialogue.
64 OZ I, par. 250.
65 Aesch., Pers., 633 sqq.
66 Pseudo-Seneca, Octavia, 461.
