Theoretically, we can distinguish between two reasons that the living might choose to make offerings to the dead.' On the one hand, they might do so out of affection. Expressions of this might include both "funerary rites," directed to an individual at the time of his or her death and on certain days thereafter, and civic "festivals of the dead," during which all of the city's dead received offerings and were honored at the same time. On the other hand, the living might bring offerings to the dead not out of affection but rather in fear that they would cause harm if not appeased. Some such defensive rituals might be undertaken spontaneously, by individuals who thought that ghosts were haunting them. Others might be undertaken by all members of a city during appointed "days of the dead," when such ghosts were imagined to wander freely in the upper world-again, the Singaporean holiday is an example.
It would be wrong, however, to assume that any single offering, or complex of offerings, was necessarily motivated by only one emotion. Although I shall organize my discussion under the rubrics mentioned in the preceding paragraph, we shall see that the occasions on which the Greeks interacted with the dead sometimes incorporated both rites that expressed affection and rites provoked by a desire to avert trouble. This makes sense: the line between giving gifts out of a desire to please and giving gifts in hopes that the recipient will behave as one wishes is rather thin.
This point rests on another one: in the Greek view, death did little to change the essential features of human personality. Ghosts retained the emotions of living persons and were assumed to feel the same way about both good and bad treatment as they would have felt when alive; the real difference lay in what the dead were able to do about their feelings. There were some types of dead who were predisposed to be unhappy and vindictive, most often because of something that had happened while they were still alive, but even the kindest soul, if left unhonored, would become angry and make that anger known. This lack of any real qualitative difference between the angry dead and the peaceful deadand thus the potential for the latter to become the former-is reflected by the fact that actions performed to soothe the angry are often the same as those used to honor the peaceful.
FUNERARY RITES
That the Greeks considered the performance of funeral rites important to the disembodied soul is underscored by the practice of adopting heirs who would be able to carry them out if natural heirs were lacking. The right to inherit property was tied to the performance of these rites; more than once, settlement of a disputed estate hinged on the heir being able to prove that he was carrying out his obligations to the deceased.2
Because these rites often have been discussed, I shall offer only a sketch here, emphasizing a few aspects important for later arguments.' Following death, the body was washed and laid out by the women of the family (prothesis). A passage from Aristophanes indicates that vine branches and the herb origanos were strewn under the body as part of this process. In antiquity, this bitterly pungent herb was believed to repel harmful animals; in later European folklore, we hear of it being used to avert ghosts and demons. Together these observations suggest that its use in funerary rites reflects a fear that even in death, evil forces of some kind were waiting to attack the departing soul or the body.4 An attack on either would be disastrous: the soul might be diverted by a manipulative magician for his own purposes, and thus be prevented from reaching the haven of the Underworld,' and damage to the body could affect the postmortem functioning and thus the happiness of the soul, as the practice of maschalismos perhaps attests.6 It was the duty of the sur vivors to provide protection against such attacks until the body was safely in the ground and the soul had begun its journey to the Underworld. Although later in date than the period we are discussing, Apuleius's story of Thessalian witches snatching a corpse's nose and the ghost returning to complain about it provides a humorous example of the sort of risk against which origanos and similar apotropaic measures might have been employed in Greek funerals. Perhaps amulets against such attacks were buried with the dead as well; we have some late examples of what seem to be amulets for postmortem protection made out of metal, and it is possible that earlier types made of perishable materials once existed, too.7
The traditional length of prothesis was one day; this would fit with the fact it was on the third day after death (counting inclusively) that the body was carried out to the place of burial (ekphora).8 The swiftness of burial reflects not only the obvious need to remove a decomposing corpse quickly but the perception that the individual no longer belonged amongst the living. As many anthropological studies have discussed, in ancient Greece and elsewhere death initiates a rite of passage for both the deceased and those left behind; the passage begins to approach completion only when the corpse has been removed from the company of the living.9
The deceased was accompanied to the grave by family members and perhaps by other mourners, too, although funerary legislation of the late archaic and classical periods sometimes restricted the number of people who might participate, as well as the places at which they might sing their laments. In Athens, for example, Solon passed laws to the effect that only women over the age of sixty or women closely related to the deceased might take part in the ekphora and lament.10 Solon's laws curbed the most extreme forms of behavior during lamentation, such as self-laceration, mourning for anyone other than the person immediately dead, and excessive funeral gifts as well. He also ordered that the prothesis take place inside a house, and that the ekphora take place before sunrise on the day after the prothesis. Plato's laws for funerary conduct in his ideal city take all of these ideas a bit further; real laws in some other places similarly aimed to restrict the ostentation of the funeral, the number of people lamenting or otherwise participating, and the degree to which it was public.11
Offerings were made at the grave at the time of the funeral. These always included choai, libations made of honey, milk, water, wine, or oil mixed in varying amounts.12 There was also a "supper" (deipnon or dais) of various foods; the dead who partook of these sometimes were described as eudeipnoi, which we best can translate, perhaps, as "those who are content with their meal." The word, a euphemism, seems to reflect the hope that, once nourished, the dead would realize that they had nothing to complain about.13 There is some evidence that water was also given to the dead person so that he could wash, just a host would give a living guest water in which to wash before a meal.14 Offerings to the dead might also include jewelry, flowers, and small objects used in everyday life such as swords, strigils, toys, and mirrors (although gifts, like lamentation, were sometimes restricted by funerary laws). It is hard to avoid the conclusion that these gifts were expected to be useful in the afterlife, particularly when ghost stories tell of the dead demanding objects that were forgotten or omitted at the time of burial.15
A grave marker (sema or stele) often was set up at some time after burial; according to Cicero, post-Solonian Athenian funerary laws at tempted to restrict the size or grandeur of these markers.16 The stele or sema subsequently might be decorated with ribbons, myrtle branches, or fillets of colored wool; it was also common for survivors to cut off and offer some of their hair.17 Several theories have been proposed to explain the latter practice. One argues that offerings of hair were symbolic human sacrifices-pars pro toto-and another that cropped hair marked the survivors as being "different," as being in a marginal period of mourning. Either idea could be supported by interpreting funerary offerings of hair within the context of other occasions when the Greeks made offerings of hair, which tended to be associated with marginal periods as well; a good example is the practice of adolescents dedicating their hair to a divinity during the ritual marking passage into adulthood. This thesis is complicated, however, by the fact that heroes were amongst the recipients of adolescents' hair; because heroes were members of the class of dead themselves, we are thrown back on the supposition that there was a special link between hair offerings and the dead per sewhether it be predicated on the theory of a pars pro toto sacrif
ice or something else.18
Having provided the dead with all of these gifts, the living had, for the moment, met their obligations. They returned home, where another meal (perideipnon) was provided.19 This, their first real meal following the death, unified the survivors and implicitly signified their ability and willingness to continue life in the absence of the deceased. The separation process continued to move the living and the dead further apart, but the link was not completely broken. On certain days after the funeral (the third, ninth, thirtieth, and possibly also after a year), additional offerings were made at the grave. Some evidence suggests that, as nowadays, offerings were also made on the anniversary of the deceased's birth, death, or both, and that survivors made additional offerings whenever they wanted the help of the dead person, or whenever they wanted him or her to participate, albeit distantly, in a family occasion such as a wed- ding.20 Because much of our evidence for these practices is literary, and because one of the things that funerary legislation sought to moderate was the frequency with which survivors might visit the tomb, we must wonder how often Greeks of the classical period really visited their deceased relatives after the initial month or so, but if nothing else, the literary references suggest that periodic visits to the tomb were a desideratum and that offerings were a means of winning the dead's help. The very fact that laws had to be enacted, moreover, suggests that left to their own devices, survivors visited tombs fairly frequently.
There were probably several reasons that lamentation, visits to the tomb, and other funerary rites were considered important-including the fact that they provided opportunities for survivors to display their wealth and family loyalty-but the Greeks themselves so often describe these rites as fulfilling the needs and desires of the deceased that we must accept this as a serious motivation. Funerary rites were believed to benefit the dead, and deprivation of them meant an unhappy afterlife for the disembodied sou1.21 In other words, Greek funerary rites attest to the expectation that the deceased had some sentience in the afterlife and some of the same desires that he or she had had while alive, and to the idea that the living could-and should-gratify those desires. This idea, as we saw in chapter z, is amply attested in our literary sources as well.
FESTIVALS OF THE DEAD
The only festival of the dead about which we have good information is the Attic Genesia. Something like it probably existed in other city-states as well, however, for Herodotus refers to the Genesia as being practiced kata per Hellenas, "throughout the Greek peoples," and there was a month named Genesion in the city of Magnesia on the Meander.22 That it was a ritual performed by children for their dead parents (and perhaps for grandparents and more distant progenitors as well) is implied not only by the name of the festival itself, which suggests "begetters," but by the context in which Herodotus refers to it: he uses the Genesia as an analogy for Issedonian funeral practices performed by sons for their fathers. Because of its connection to the familial dead, scholars have assumed that the Genesia was a festival of the first type that I mentioned at the beginning of this discussion-that is, a festival motivated by an affectionate desire to please and honor the dead rather than by a fear of their anger lest they be left unpropitiated.23 In this case, it would be similar to American Memorial Day, when flowers are left on graves and parades honor those who died in battle.
In Attica, the Genesia was held annually on the fifth day of the month Boedromion. Libations were made to Ge and to the dead.24 It is likely that other things happened at the Genesia as well, but we have only one other piece of information to help us fill out the picture. A sacrificial calendar from the Attic deme of Erchia tells us that on the day of the Genesia, a holocaust offering of a piglet and a wineless libation were made to the hero Epops or Epopeus; simultaneously, offerings were also made to Zeus Epoptes.25 Other information about Epops hints that these sacrifices may have been intended to appease or avert any dead who might be angry. Pausanias tells us that a hero named Epopeus was worshipped at his grave in Sicyon, near which was an altar to "the gods who avert" (apotropaioi theoi ). To these, Pausanias continues, the Greeks were accustomed to perform rites that would avert evil things.26 The antecedent of the pronoun "these" (toutois) is unclear: does it refer only to the apotropaioi theoi or both to these theoi and to Epopeus himself? The an swer scarcely matters; the propinquity of the hero's grave to the altar of the apotropaioi theoi itself suggests his involvement in the aversion of evils. Both the name of the hero and the epithet of his cult partner at Erchia, Zeus Epoptes, mean "Watcher," a term that well describes divinities suited to such a task. Indeed, in the first line of the Choephoroi, Orestes invokes Hermes Chthonios, in his capacity as the god who controls the dead, precisely as patroi' epopteuon krate, "watching [my] ancestral powers." Perhaps the role that this "watching" hero played in Erchia, like that he played in Sicyon, involved controlling the dead, and it was for this reason that he received special offerings at the Attic Genesia. If so, then this "festival of the dead"-during which the dead in general were honored-also had qualities associated with "days of the dead"-during which the dangerous dead were controlled or averted.27
There has been some debate about whether the Genesia was from its beginning a communally celebrated festival, held on a single day of the year, or rather a festival that developed from the custom of individuals visiting the graves of their progenitors on days decreed by their genos. Felix Jacoby, who argued the latter, further interpreted Philochorus's remark that Solon had the regulations for the Genesia inscribed on the axones to mean that it was Solon who turned the Genesia from an aristocratic festival celebrated exclusively by members of the elite gene on days of their own choosing into a citywide festival, open to all and restricted to a single day of the year. By this argument, we might see the establishment of a citywide Genesia, like other funerary legislation, as another late archaic way of controlling and limiting interaction with the dead so as to weaken familial allegiances in favor of allegiance to the polis. Even if the Genesia was citywide before Solon's time, Solon's decision to have the regulations for the Genesia publicly displayed suggests that he wanted to accentuate its civic aspects.21 Whatever we conclude about the origins of the Genesia, its form in the late archaic and classical periods demonstrates that by now, attention to the dead was a concern of the city or other groups larger than the family of the deceased.
Only once in classical sources do we hear about anything else that sounds like a festival of the dead. Demosthenes tells us that a woman paid a large sum to honor her dead father at the annual Nemesia; the scholiasts and lexicographers tell us that the Nemesia honored the dead and that it lasted all night.29 The name "Nemesia" implies a concern with averting wrath, and thus with soothing the dead who would otherwise cause problems. The fact that offerings might be made to dead parents during the Nemesia suggests once again that we can make no absolute distinction between rites performed out of affection and those performed out of fear. It was important to keep the dead happy, lest they return to cause trouble in their unhappy state.
APOTROPAIC RITES
There were also rites that were intended, first and foremost, to appease or avert the dead who were already angry or deflect their anger. I shall start with those that were performed by individuals on an ad hoc basis, whenever a need was perceived, and then move on to citywide rituals.
In the Choephoroi, Electra explains that she is taking libations to the grave of her father at the request of her mother, who has been having nightmares. Agamemnon does not, so far as Aeschylus tells us, appear in these nightmares himself, but Clytemnestra's decision to make offerings to his ghost indicates that she believes that Agamemnon is responsible for them. This is openly expressed in Sophocles' Electra by Chry- sothemis, who carries libations and offerings to be burnt (empura) to Agamemnon's grave and explains that the ghost of Agamemnon himself has appeared to Clytemnestra in the night.30 Notably, in both plays, the offerings that are intended to stop the angry ghost from sending troublesome dreams are identical
to those used at funerals and some civic festivals that honor the dead-the line between peaceful dead and the angry dead is very slender, indeed. Electra's remark that the formulaic request made to the dead while pouring out choai was that they "return good for good" implies her awareness that they could bring the opposite as well.31 In fact, Electra manages to transform the one sort of of fering into the other: sent by her mother to propitiate Agamemnon's angry ghost, the girl instead uses the choai to win his help.
Outside of literary sources like these, we occasionally find references to the use of libations and food to appease the dead in off-hand remarks such as that of Plutarch, who describes the libations that Apollo made after killing Python as being the same as those that people offer to soften the anger of "daimones whom they call alastores and palamnaioi"- that is, the dead who seek vengeance for their violent deaths or the supernatural agents who act on behalf of those dead.32 This suggests that, in Plutarch's day at least, the appeasement of the dead by means of libations was familiar enough to be used by analogy to describe something unfamiliar, such as the mythic rite in question. But, most important, we are lucky enough to have two detailed descriptions of real aversion rituals, one contained in a lex sacra written on a lead tablet from Selinus, dated to about 450 B.C.E., and another from a Cyrenean inscription, dated to about 330 B.C.E.
Side A of the Selinuntine text" describes rituals that are to be undertaken by a group at a specific time of year, to which we shall return. Side B describes rituals to be undertaken at any time by any individual who believed that he or she was being pursued by an elasteros-again, this may mean either the soul of a dead person or another supernatural agent sent by that soul; the word is a variation of the more familiar alastor mentioned by Plutarch in the passage cited just above.34 The afflicted individual, who apparently had committed murder (the most common reason to be pursued by an alastor), is instructed to make a proclamation that he is about to begin the rite and then to purify himself. Having received (hypodekomenos) the elasteros as a guest, the individual offers it water with which to wash, a meal to eat, and salt.35 He then sacrifices a piglet to Zeus (a typical offering in rites of purification from murder) and leaves the place where the procedure was performed, having "turned around," which probably means that he does not look back as he leaves; this is common in rites in which the dead or dangerous divinities such as the Erinyes or Hecate are expected to appear (even Orpheus had to avoid looking at the soul of his dead wife until she had been reincorporated into the world of the living). After this, apparently, he can be reincorporated into normal life, for the text goes on to decree that he may be addressed by others, eat with others, and sleep wherever he wishes.
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