The involvement of the other deities in this process may be interpreted in several ways. The Eumenides, like the Tritopatores, were prayed to in hopes of facilitating human fecundity.56 In this role, they might be supplicated in hopes that they would help the Tritopatores ensure the group's reproduction. Alternatively, if we consider the Eumenides' association with the Erinyes and Semnai Theai, which had been established in at least some places by the middle of the fifth century, then we might guess that they are invoked here because of their involvement with issues of pollution and purification, particularly pollution that arises from transgressions committed within a family.57 Thus, they might be supplicated in hopes that they would help to purify the polluted Tritopatores. Zeus Eumenes is a novelty, but his name, particularly in a context where he accompanies the Eumenides, suggests that he is playing the same function as they are.58 Zeus Meilichios is well known as a god concerned with purification, with the world of the dead and with the welfare of households or family groups. Typically, he was worshipped by small groups or families rather than by cities and took an interest in their immediate concerns. Thus he, too, would be at home in the context I have suggested for the rite described by the lex sacra, either as a god who could help to purify the polluted Tritopatores or, alongside of them, as a god who could promote the fecundity of those performing the ritual.59
The lex sacra stipulates that these rituals must be carried out before the Kotytia. We have very little knowledge of the goddess to whom this festival was consecrated, variously known as Kot(t)ya, Kottytia, Kotyto, or Kotys, and worshipped in Thrace as well as Sicily, and probably in Corinth and Athens, too; what information we do have has been collected and discussed by the inscription's editors, on whose comments I base my own.60 An important feature of Kotyto's cult in Sicily (and so, we presume, in Selinus) was a rite in which cakes and nuts were tied to a branch and snatched at by the revelers.61 This rite, very similar to those of the eiresione and korythale that are known from Attica and elsewhere, implies a festival concerned with fertility.62 Evidence for the Kotytia in mainland Greece suggests vulgar and scurrilous behavior, per haps including ithyphallic processions and cross-dressing.63 These elements, too, would be appropriate to a fecundity festival. Behind this picture of the Kotytia as a fecundity festival we may glimpse why it was important to make sure that all the spirits responsible for facilitating reproduction during the succeeding year (including the Tritopatores) were in good working order before the Kotytia began. A similar surmise could be made regarding the sacrificial rhythm at Marathon. The Marathonian calendar tells us that the Tritopatores and Kourotrophos were to receive offerings before the Skira, a festival that probably included rites performed by women in honor of Demeter in order to renew their sexual powers for the succeeding year.64
In sum, although the evidence is too scant for us to be certain, the ritual described on Side A of our lex sacra from Selinus may be interpreted as a sort of "mass for the dead," in which the living endeavored to improve the postmortem lot of certain dead progenitors, not only out of sympathy but because the condition of these ancestors affected things of vital interest to the living themselves, such as fecundity. One further point may be considered briefly. In one of the last, fragmentary lines of the text, we find the word "statues" (agalmata) shortly after the verb "slaughter." Perhaps we have here a reference to rites performed in front of statues of the Tritopatores, which would fit in well with other uses of statues to control the dead that we shall consider next.
Our second text that describes ghost-averting rituals, from fourthcentury Cyrene, declares that they had been ordered by Apollo-that is, by the Oracle at Delphi, the same institution that advised Orestes on how to deal with Agamemnon's and Clytemnestra's ghosts in myth and advised many another ghost-haunted individual or city as well. 6' The text concerns a ghostly "visitant" who has been sent against someone's house by means of magic (a hikesios epaktos).66 The suffering householder deals with the visitant by, first, proclaiming its name for three days, if he knows it. Interestingly, the text goes on to specify at this point the possibility of the visitant being the spirit of a dead person, which implies that a visitant might also be some other form of supernatural creature as well. This probably alludes to the possibility of a ghost deputizing some sort of agent, for example, an alastor or erinys, to work on his behalf. The text goes on to say that if the householder does not know the name of the visitant, he should instead address it by saying, "0 person [anthropos], whether you are a man or a woman...." The householder then makes figures (kolossoi) 67 of wood or earth, both male and female, and entertains them by offering them portions of food. (We can probably assume that if the householder knew who the visitant was, he made only one figure, either male or female.) Finally, the householder carries both the figures and the food to an unworked forest and deposits them there. This has both a practical function, insofar as the figures have been removed from any area where people are likely to encounter them accidentally, and a symbolic function, insofar as the figures now are located at an eschaton, the marginal boundary of an inhabited area.
As in the Selinuntine rite against elasteroi, then, the afflicted person deals with the ghost first by feeding it. And yet, as in the Selinuntine rite, these actions are not assumed to be sufficient. Rather than avoiding the ghost by not turning around, however, the householder removes the ghost-now apparently transferred into a statue-to a wilderness where it cannot harm the living. Such uses of statues to represent and thereby control restless ghosts was probably fairly common; the Spartans' use of statues to control the ghost of the traitor Pausanias (following the advice of professional psychagogoi) is a famous example, as is the Orchomenians' use of a statue to control the ghost of Actaeon.61 This use of statues to represent and control the dead is scarcely surprising, considering the ways that the Greeks used statues representing their gods. A sacrifice for a god was often made in front of the god's statue, with the expectation that the latter could receive the offering for the former. Statues of gods were washed, dressed, and ornamented with jewelry, and statues of gods, like those of the dead, might temporarily be taken out into the wilderness, during which time the god was considered to be in retreat.69 Analogously, the Greeks used very small statues as magical dolls: by affecting the doll, one affected the individual whom the doll represented.70 In short, the idea of manipulating statues that represented a dead person in order to manipulate the dead person him- or herself fits comfortably within the Greek mentality-and indeed, within ancient Mediterranean mentalities generally; the Mesopotamians, for example, also manipulated statues or figurines of ghosts in order to ban them.71 The Cyrenean rite, far from being aberrant, reflects what was probably a common practice.
Broadly, the aversion rites in both the Selinuntine and the Cyrenean text align with the funerary practice of feeding the dead and making them comfortable in other ways, but more specifically, they are also similar to another ad hoc method of appeasing and averting the dead: the suppers (deipna) that could be sent to crossroads at the time of the new moon. Several ancient sources tell us that these were left by the statues or shrines of Hecate (hekataia) that stood at crossroads, and were dedicated both to the goddess and to "those who must be averted" (hoi apotropaioi ).72 As Hecate was a goddess credited with the power either to hold back the unhappy dead or to drive them on against an unlucky individual, hoi apotropaioi surely refers here to the dangerous ghosts of the dead. Offering these suppers to both the dead and their mistress guaranteed not only that the dead would be fed and appeased but also that Hecate would help to keep them under control.73 The timing reflects a belief that souls were especially likely to be abroad on the night of the new moon; if one wanted to do something to appease them, this was the easiest-and also the most necessary-time to make contact.
It has sometimes been assumed that these suppers were taken to the crossroads every month, as a prophylaxis against such ever-present and abundant sources of potential danger as the souls of those who had died you
ng (aoroi). But like the Selinuntine rite for the Tritopatores, it is also possible that the suppers were offered only as the need arosewhen some terrible occurrence signaled that the dead were angry. The monthly suppers are not mentioned in any festal calendars, which would tend to support the latter idea, although the omission may also mean only that they were taken to the crossroads by individuals on their own behalf, not by representatives of the state or any other body. In either case, their regular offering does not seem to have been understood as so crucial to the health of the polls as a whole that state sanction and control were necessary.
The dead could indeed cause citywide problems, however. The very fact that the Selinuntine lex sacra and the Cyrenean inscription were public documents indicates that cities wanted to ensure that ghostly problems suffered by individuals could be cleared up quickly and correctly. The implication, familiar from Greek myth and also from the Tetralogies of Antiphon, is that a ghost pursuing an individual might attack those around that individual as well, particularly if they had failed to punish the offender.74 Some scholars have suggested that the codification of Athenian murder laws in the seventh century (supposedly by Draco) reflects an increased concern about pollution at this time, but it might also be argued that it reflects an increased concern with the ghosts who follow in pollution's wake-it is difficult, in any case, to divide these two concerns very strictly, as we shall see later.75 Moreover, we know that in times of crisis, cities might conclude that they were being persecuted by the dead and call in experts who knew how to deal with them. The most famous instance involved the ghost of Pausanias, which caused problems for the Spartans in the mid fifth century. According to Plutarch, the Spartans hired psychagogoi ("conductors of souls") to expel it from the temple where it was lurking. The psychagogoi first appeased the ghost with sacrifices and then drew it out. Thucydides, who also tells the story, makes no explicit mention of psychagogoi or sacrifices, but says that the Delphic Oracle commanded that Pausanias's body be buried at the entrance to the temple and that two statues of the dead man be erected "in place of" (anti) him, which surely indicates that some ritual was to be performed in connection with these statues, similar perhaps to the Cyrenean ghost-expelling ritual. Similarly, the Orchomenians were told by Delphi that they might control the ghost of Actaeon by burying the dead man's body and binding a statue of him to a rock. State-sponsored exorcisms probably also lie behind the story of Epimenides' "purification" of Athens after the Athenians' gross mistreatment of dead bodies following the Cylonian affair in the late seventh or early sixth century.76
One more piece of evidence probably should be treated in this section of the chapter, although its brevity makes it impossible for us to be sure that it concerns aversion of ghosts rather than an invocation. An early fourth-century oracular tablet from Dodona carries the question "Shall we hire Dorius the psychagogos or not? ""Psychagogoi, as we have just seen, could be hired to deal with troublesome ghosts; we might imagine that the inquirers, whether members of a family group or a city, were asking the oracle whether Dorius was the right person to exorcise a ghost that was attacking them, just as the Spartans had inquired about how to get rid of Pausanius's ghost at Delphi, as the Athenians had asked Delphi what do to after the Cylonian Affair, as the Cyreneans had in quired at Delphi about the best sort of aversion rituals to deal with hike- sioi epaktoi, and along much the same lines as Pelias supposedly inquired at Delphi concerning the relocation of Phrixus's ghost in Pythian 4. The great oracles seem to have been in the business of giving such advice. It is possible, however, that the inquirers were considering hiring Dorius to invoke a ghost for some reason-this is the role that psychagogoi play in Aeschylus's lost play of the same name, for example, and the role that Admetus first thinks Heracles has played when he brings back what Admetus presumes is the ghost of Alcestis.78 The resolution of this issue would make little difference to what is really important about the oracular tablet, however: it proves that by the early fourth century, psychagogoi were a familiar part of daily life, who could be openly discussed and who even garnered the approval of gods, including Zeus, when they were right for a job.
DAYS OF THE DEAD
The only civic festival designed to avert, appease, or control the dead on an annual basis about which we have good information was the Anthesteria, which was celebrated by all the Ionians and the Athenians. Most of our information about the festival comes from Athens, although Anthesteriai elsewhere were probably similar.79
As we know it from classical sources, the Athenian Anthesteria seems at first glance to have been a conglomeration of what were once separate rites with different purposes. We can discern Dionysiac elements, such as the opening of the new casks of wine and the "marriage" of Dionysus to the basilinna (queen), and celebrations of young life, such as the ceremonial introduction of young children into the festival life of the city for the first time. The name of the festival itself incorporates both of these elements, as it alludes to the new, flowering blooms of the vine.80 Other evidence indicates that the dead were very much a concern at the Anthesteria as well. On the second morning of this three-day festival, the doors of houses were coated with pitch and people chewed buckthorn, acts that were supposed to avert ghosts.81 These precautions, which focused on the individual person and the private house, suggest that the dead were imagined to wander freely in the upper world during the Anthesteria, released from the bonds that normally held them close to their graves. Anyone, anywhere, was at risk of being attacked. The idea is much like the one behind the old, traditional celebration of European Halloween, a night when the ghosts could wander freely, as well as like that described for Singapore in the excerpt that opened this chapter.
On the final day of the Anthesteria, an offering described as eudeipnos was given to the ghost of a dead maiden named Erigone and perhaps to other dead maidens as well. This supper, and other rites performed in her honor, were meant to deter Erigone from attacking living Athenian maidens who had reached the age for marriage.82 Also on the final day, a mixture of grains (panspermia) was offered to Hermes Chthonios. This rite was said to have been established following the great Flood, when the few survivors gathered together and ate whatever food was available. Theopompos tells us it was intended to propitiate Hermes "on behalf of the dead." 83 Perhaps the idea behind both the mythic panspermia and the real ones offered annually at the Anthesteria was that by winning Hermes' favor, the living could guarantee his solicitude for the dead, for whom he acted as guide back and forth between the lower and upper worlds. This might be especially important at the end of the Anthesteria, when the dead who had been wandering amongst the living for three days would have to return to Hades. The Anthesteria may, in fact, have concluded with a ceremonial cry in which the souls were ordered to depart, lest there be any confusion about their visit being over.84 Again, the Singaporean ritual provides a close parallel in its "passports" for the dead: transgression of the boundary must be carefully managed.
Another element that expressed the Anthesteria's deep concern with the dead and the problems they could cause for the living was its aitiological use of the story of Orestes' pursuit by the Erinyes-that is, his pursuit by the avenging representatives of his mother's ghost. Following the murder of his mother, Orestes arrived in Athens at the time of the Anthesteria. The Athenians, afraid that they might incur the wrath of the Erinyes by offering Orestes formal hospitality and thus incorporating him into their community, bade him drink and eat alone. But, lest he feel singled out, they did the same. It was supposedly in commemoration of this that on the second day of the festival, all Athenians drank their new wine alone and in silence, rather than communally and with the laughter and song that such an occasion would normally merit. The story may be a comparatively late addition to the festival, imported to forge a link with the epic cycle and to showcase Athens' hospitality to even the most polluted of visitors, but both the story and the rite nonetheless express a fear that ghostly problems might be contagious, and that appe
asing the problematic dead could be a concern of the city just as much as of any single citizen.85
Scholars have puzzled over the question of how all of these elements-the honoring of Dionysus, the celebration of new life and the appeasement of the dead-came together to create the festival complex known as the Anthesteria, and what ideas, cumulatively, it articulated .16 The fact that from at least the late archaic period Dionysus was a god associated with mysteries and thereby with the world of the dead is surely of relevance,87 but there is a broader reason at work as well. In Greece and elsewhere, the dead, and especially the unhappy dead, were assumed to be envious of those who were still enjoying life: thus, success and joy were often accompanied by a heightened awareness of possible misfortune and the jealous spirits who brought it. As Plato put it, "keres cling to most of the good things of life." 88 Given this attitude, the Greeks would have assumed that the dead were particularly likely to burst forth from the Underworld and attack them at that time of year when the living were celebrating renewal and abundance. A ritual complex that simultaneously rejoiced in the new vintage, the growth of flowers, and the health of the young even as it appeased and then exorcised the envious, restless dead, makes sense, then.89 Similarly again, European Halloween follows the agricultural harvest and thus coincides with the time of plenty. The Singaporean festival of the dead articulates the same connection, inasmuch as the food, operas, and rock concerts provided "for the dead" are certainly enjoyed at least as much by the living.
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