The text then continues with further instructions that stipulate how one may get rid of other kinds of elasteroi, apparently meaning either those who were brought about by something other than murder or perhaps those who were brought about by particularly heinous forms of murder. The afflicted individual must begin by purifying himself in the same way as the murderer mentioned earlier does. He then sacrifices a full-grown sheep on the public altar and marks a boundary with salt and water poured from a golden vessel. It is not clear what this boundary separates-is the sacrificer to be separated from the altar on which the sheep was slaughtered? From the precinct as a whole? Whatever the answer, the salt seems to take on a different role here from that which it played in the first part of the text, but one that it also played commonly in antiquity: it purifies and averts evil and thus can be used to erect a boundary between dangerous things and things that must be protected.36
In their fuller form, and particularly as translated and analyzed in the excellent editio princeps by Michael Jameson, David Jordan, and Roy Kotansky, the instructions are interesting for many reasons, but here I would emphasize just a few that are important for us. First, the elasteros is controlled by means of a meal-indeed, it is welcomed to the meal with all manner of politeness, as one would welcome a living guest (although notably, of course, the "host" here averts his eyes from his "guest"). Thus, as we have seen before, the same method is used to control an angry soul as is used to honor and please peaceful souls-one group blends seamlessly into the other. Second, precautions are taken to ensure separation of the elasteros from the living, in the first case by instructing the one performing the rite to avert his eyes and in the second by establishing a physical boundary between the elasteros and the afflicted person. This implies that, even as it is being placated, the elasteros continues to pose some threat; the dangerous dead are never completely soothed.
Finally, in the seventh line of the instructions, it is said that these procedures will work either for an elasteros who is patroios (ancestral) or for one who is xenikos (from outside the family). What is an "ancestral" elasteros? An elasteros that has persecuted the family for generations? An elasteros from within the family? Either is possible but the latter seems more likely. As mentioned already, in the first line of the Choephoroi, Hermes Chthonios is called on as patroi' epopteuon krate ("watching ancestral powers"), which gives us a comparandum, from about the same date as our inscription, for using the adjective patroioslpatroios to refer to the ancestral dead or their agents. Moreover, as Orestes enters the play with the knowledge that the dead Agamemnon will impose all sorts of dreadful supernatural punishments upon him if he remains un- happy,37 the similarity between Orestes' predicament and that assumed by the Selinuntine text is very close. Thus, the passage from the Choephoroi supports the assumption that patroios in the Selinuntine text refers to a familial ghost. The Selinuntine text, in return, provides evidence from real life for the belief that we found attested in literary sources such as the Choephoroi-the familial dead, who normally protect the living, can become the dead who persecute them if they are unhappy for some reason. The other adjective in the Selinuntine text, xenikos, may be directly oppositional to patroios in its simplest sensethat is, it may indicate a ghost not related by blood to the afflicted individual-or it may refer to a ghost brought about by murder within the confines of a guest-host relationship (xenia), which would be another type of particularly dreadful murder, and thus likely to produce a problematic ghost .31
The other complex of rituals described in the lex sacra from Selinus (on the so-called "Side A") are not rites of aversion, but as we shall see, they share with Side B's rites the assumption that the dead must be kept happy if the living are to survive and thrive. The first part of the text is imperfect, due in part to intentional erasures, but in line 3 we can discern references to a consecration that must be performed by members of a household (homosepuoi). When the text picks up again (line 7), it seems to be concerned with a new sacrificial complex, the date of which is carefully specified. It had to occur before a festival called the Kotytia, and also, in years in which the Olympic games were held, before the month-long truce that ushered in the games. Later in the inscription, we learn that part of the rituals may be repeated again annually, although the subsequent performances are to take place "at home," in contrast to the first performance, which takes place in various sanctuaries. The idea would seem to be that if the first, more formal performance of the rites turns out not to have been completely effective, the participants could supplement and reinforce it by subsequent rites.
The rituals were apparently optional, insofar as they were not automatically performed every year; if they had been, there would have been no need to provide for the possibility of their being repeated a year later. Moreover, the dual criteria laid out for the first performance-that it be either before the Kotytia or before the Kotytia and the Olympic truceindicates uncertainty as to when the first performance would be held. Both the first and the subsequent performances must have been actuated by perceived need, by something that had happened in the community that indicated that a readjustment of relationships with the other world was necessary.39 That this readjustment was scheduled to take place before the Kotytia implies that whatever was to be accomplished at the Kotytia might be at risk without the readjustment. The reference to members of a group in the early part of the inscription, the reference to performing rites at home in the last part, and some of the deities for whom the rites are performed (whom we shall discuss shortly below), all suggest that the rituals were to be performed by a relatively small group, such as a genos or family, or by an individual representing that group, rather than by the city as a whole, or its representatives. The rites must have addressed some concern common to such a group, then. The city published the inscription, we must assume, because completion of the rituals by these smaller groups was important to the welfare of the whole population as well, however.
The rituals begin with the sacrifice of a full-grown sheep to Zeus Eumenes and the Eumenides and another to Zeus Meilichios in the precinct of a hero called Myskos.40 Then follows the most interesting part of the text. "Those to whom it is permitted" are to make sacrifice to the "polluted" (miaroi) Tritopatores "in the manner that one sacrifices to the heroes." Specifically, wine is to be poured through the roof of their shrine (which may have been a small, almost completely buried structure like one found in Paestum)41 and a ninth part of the sacrifice previously made to Zeus Meilichios is to be burnt in their honor. Following this, the participants are to perform an aspersion and anoint something-perhaps an altar to the Tritopatores or perhaps representations of them. They sacrifice a sheep to the "pure" (katharoi) Tritopatores, pour a libation of honey mixture and prepare a theoxenia: a table and couch are set out, with crowns of olive branches, more honey mixture in new cups, cakes, and meat.42 Some or all of this is burnt, and further anointing is done. The rite finishes with the sacrifice of a ram to Zeus Meilichios in the precinct of the hero Euthydamus. Statues are mentioned in a later line of the text that is too fragmentary to read; perhaps these were of some or all of the deities mentioned.
The Tritopatores were ancestral spirits 43 worshipped in Athens and parts of the Greek world that were influenced by Athens: Delos, Troizen, Selinus, Cyrene. Inscriptions indicate that their worship was primarily carried out on the level of the small group (genos, phratry, or family) rather than that of the city.44 We should probably see them as somewhat more distant from their worshippers than members of the dead with whom the worshipper had been personally acquainted, such as parents and grandparents, and yet less distant than the city's ancestral, founding heroes, who are often worshipped in conjunction with, yet as distinct from, the Tritopatores.45 Their name, which seems to mean "thricefathers" or "great-grandfathers," would support this; 46 few Greeks would have lived long enough to meet their great-grandchildren, and to those great-grandchildren, they would thus be almost semi-mythical figures. The "trito-" part of their na
me, moreover, need not be under stood precisely to mean "thrice" in the sense of three generations removed, but may rather be understood to function in this word as it does in others, as an emphatic-thus, for example in "Trismegistos," an epithet of Hermes'. In that case, the Tritopatores might also include ancestors somewhat more distant than great-grandfathers. The individual identities of the Tritopatores (if they were ever thought of in those terms) probably were ever-changing, as the generations passed and formerly familiar ancestors who had once been given cult at their individual graves slid into this vaguer, yet still important, collective.47 The members of a genos or similar group naturally would have worshipped Tritopatores together, as they would have believed themselves to have many ancestors in common.
We might guess that as "great-grandfathers," the Tritopatores would be concerned with the welfare of the group worshipping them and particularly with the group's reproductive viability-for if it died out, from whom would they receive worship? This is borne out by ancient statements. In Athens, the Tritopatores were asked to bless marriages and promote the conception of children. In Marathon, they were worshipped in conjunction with Kourotrophos, the goddess concerned with the nurture of children, as well as with some more obscure figures who were probably local heroes and thus ancestors of a sort, as well. Hesychius calls the Tritopatores the "first causes" (archegoi) of generation .41
How can these ancestral spirits be either "polluted" (miaroi) or "pure" (katharoi)? The editors of the text suggest that the closest parallels for this puzzling concept are to be found in such cults as that of the Maniai in Arcadia, who according to myth first appeared black to Orestes in his polluted state and then, after he had bitten off one of his fingers to propitiate them, appeared white. Based on this, the editors suggest that the Tritopatores first became polluted because of a polluting crime committed by one of their worshippers and then were purified by rites performed by their worshippers. But although the analogy works insofar as it offers an example of divinities' essential nature being changed by the actions of mortals, it fails in an important aspect. In the case of Orestes and others like it that the editors cite, polluting behavior on the part of humans makes deities angry and vindictive but there is no instance, to my knowledge, in which a deity is polluted by bad human behavior.49
A better parallel for the miaroi and katharoi ancestral ghosts of the Selinuntine text can be found in a famous passage from Plato's Republic. Plato says that itinerant ritual experts promise that they can, for the right price, use sacrifices and chants to help a client expiate transgressions (adikemata) committed either by himself or by his progenitors (progonoi). We might assume this refers to the idea of "inherited guilt"that the living pay experts to expiate the transgressions of their progenitors so as to escape being punished for those transgressions themselves-were it not for the way in which the statement is reiterated a few lines later: Plato says that the ritual experts use sacrifices and other rituals to provide absolutions (luseis) and purifications (katharmoi) from transgressions both to those who are still living and to those who have already died. The experts claim that their rituals were handed down by Orpheus and Musaeus.50
Plato's ritual experts affect the souls of the dead progenitors as well as the living, then, ameliorating their postmortem situation through rituals. The fact that the rituals are described as purifications suggests that the trouble in which the progenitors find themselves is considered a state of pollution. That they are polluted because of what they themselves did while alive, rather than because of anything that their living descendants subsequently did, is made clear by Plato's second statement: they require release and purification from their own transgressions. In other words, Orpheus and Musaeus have taught their itinerant priests how to turn a miaros ghost into a katharos ghost, just as the ritual described in the Selinuntine law does. Peter Kingsley has shown the likelihood of a Sicilian or southern Italian origin for the mysteries to which Plato alludes in the passage from the Republic and for Orphic mysteries of Plato's time more generally,s' which suggests that the ritual experts to whom Plato refers may be drawing upon the same core of beliefs that the Selinuntine law addressed. The Selinuntine rituals are controlled and prescribed by a city and used by a group, whereas those in the Republic can be initiated by either an individual or a city (idiotas ... kai poleis, 364e5) but this is a minor distinction: the specific application of rites, particularly when they are disseminated by itinerant specialists, is liable to such changes.52
The Selinuntine law and the passage from Plato have brought two important ideas to our attention. The first is that the dead suffer the consequences of transgressions that they committed while alive. Or to put it another way, if they go to their graves in a miaros state, not having atoned for polluting transgressions, they might expect to remain miaroi and to suffer whatever consequences for miasma the powers of the Underworld hand out. This aligns well with the more general idea, popular in Greece from the late archaic period on, that the dead would be punished for what they did while alive unless they had prepared beforehand by being initiated into mystery rites that released them from paying for their transgressions after death (another service, in fact, that Plato's itinerant experts are willing to provide for a price). The second idea seems more surprising at first glance: the living are able to ameliorate the situation in which their dead ancestors find themselves by performing rituals on their behalf. Perhaps the living can even hire ritual experts to perform postmortem variations of initiation ceremonies that were otherwise performed for the living, for the final line in the passage from the Republic refers to teletai performed for the dead, and Orpheus and Musaeus were particularly associated with such initiations. But we really should not be surprised by this idea-after all, if the dead suffer hunger, thirst, and other physical needs that the living can address, why would they not suffer religious needs that the living can address as well, including a need for purificatory rituals? Similarly, in early modern Europe, clergymen could baptize stillborn babies and in contemporary Romania and Greece, a girl who dies unmarried will be given a "marriage" ceremony before burial; vital rites left unperformed before death are better performed postmortem than not at all .53 Roughly analogous, too, is the sacrifice made to Hermes Chthonios "on behalf of the dead" on the last day of the Anthesteria, for as I suggest below, this was intended to ensure that Hermes, the guide of the dead, would see the dead safely back into the Underworld after their three-day visit to the land of the living. Threatening though they sometimes were, the Greek dead were envisioned as weak enough to need all sorts of help from the living upon occasion.
As we have seen already, when the dead were discontented-hungry, thirsty, unburied, or in any other kind of need-the living might be made to suffer as well, until those needs were met. What Plato says in the Phaedrus about experts in purifications and initiations being able to release those driven crazy by "ancient wraths" speaks precisely to this point, for the word used for wraths-menimata-usually refers to the anger of the dead; as we shall see in chapter 4, the infliction of madness was one of the dead's favorite ways of troubling mortals.54 When an individual suspected that the dead were angry with him, he first had to have his case diagnosed by a ritual expert, and then had to undertake to "cure" himself by performing whatever actions for the dead the ritual expert had prescribed. Based on this model, we can hypothesize that dead who were suffering under the burden of pollution-like our Selinuntine Tritopatores-might also be imagined to manifest their need for ritual attention by inflicting illness on the living. Alternatively, or additionally, the polluted state of the Tritopatores might manifest itself among the living, insofar as while they were miaroi, the Tritopatores would not be able perform the tasks that the living required them to. When we recall that one of the most common ramifications of pollution, according to Greek belief, was sterility, the possibility of some of the Tritopatores being miaroi becomes especially problematic; the very spirits who were expected to bless marriages and facilitate procreation migh
t be unable to do their job if they were polluted. A group suffering from impaired fertility might come to suspect, therefore, that one or more of their Tritopatores was miaros. This would be the signal to perform the rituals described in the lex sacra. If improvement in the form of pregnancies and births did not follow, then another ritual would be performed a year later.
With this possibility in mind, let us return to the lex sacra and consider whether its rites can be interpreted accordingly. They begin with a libation and holocaust offered to the Tritopatores in their polluted state; this can be understood as an attempt to assuage any anger they might be feeling toward the living who had not previously addressed their need for purification, or to call them forth formally to the rite. Then follows aspersion, an action well known in Greek and other Mediterranean religions as a method of purification, and the anointing of somethingprobably either the altar of the Tritopatores or statues of them. Anointing also was part of some purificatory processes in antiquity.55 After these actions had been finished-that is, when the Tritopatores had been purified-the participants were told to sacrifice a sheep to the katharoi Tritopatores and prepare a welcoming meal. The sheep was to be sacrificed as one would sacrifice to the gods, in contrast to the earlier sacrifice to the polluted Tritopatores, which was conducted as a heroic sacrifice. This aligns with the idea that the Tritopatores have passed into a new, pure state of existence.
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