There is some reason to think that the Agriania or Agrionia, a festival directed toward Dionysus that was celebrated in many city-states, was also concerned with appeasing or exorcising the dead, for Hesychius defines it as "a nekusia [festival of the dead] among the Argives and agones [contests] among the Thebans." The latter part of this statement may reflect the fact that the Orchomenean version, and perhaps also the version in nearby Thebes, included a ritual in which the priest of Dionysus pursued women who attempted to escape from him. But we are stalled regarding the first half of Hesychius's statement, for it is our only direct indication that the Agriania had anything to do with the dead; all our other sources emphasize its connection with Dionysus and with this ritual pursuit.90
Hesychius makes one more statement that will help, however. In a separate entry, he mentions an Argive festival called the Agrania that honored one of Proetus's daughters; surely this is simply the Agriania under an alternative spelling.91 According to myth, the Proetides, daughters of King Proetus, were stricken with madness, in most versions because they had mocked Hera or her statue. They left their home in Argive Tiryns (or in Argos itself, according to some later versions of the myth) and wandered in the wilderness. According to one version, they believed that they were cows; in another, they contracted a hideous skin disease that marred their beauty. The two need not be mutually exclusive; the important thing is that either affliction would have prevented the Proetides from pursuing the normal goals of young girls: marriage and maternity, which stood under the protection of the goddess whom they had offended, Hera.
In Bacchylides' version of the myth, King Proetus cured his daughters himself, with the blessing of Hera, but in other versions he called in the famous Dionysiac seer Melampus, who undertook to cure the girls after some haggling over fees. With the help of his brother Bias, Melampus pursued, captured, and healed all of them but one, Iphinoe, who-as early as Hesiod's version of the story 92-was said to have died in the process. Some people said Iphinoe's tomb was in the marketplace of Sicyon, others located it in the marketplace of Megara (although there she was called the daughter not of Proetus but of another primeval king, Alcathoos). Still other myths may have located her tomb in other places, for Melampus's cure of the Proetides, which is closely tied to Iphinoe's death, was claimed by a variety of cities. In Megara, and probably also in Sicyon and perhaps elsewhere, libations and offerings of hair were made to Iphinoe by girls about to embark on marriage. Pausanias says that this rite was similar to that in which the daughters of the Delians once cut their hair for the dead virgins Hecaerge and Opis before they married.93 In other words, it was one of the hair offerings connected with a transitional rite mentioned earlier in this chapter.
All of this brings us back to Hesychius's second statement, that the Argive Agrania honored one of Proetus's daughters. As Walter Burkert aptly notes, "`honoring' a heroine presupposes her death"; there can be little doubt that what this hair offering and accompanying rites refer to, therefore, is the ritual in honor of Iphinoe that Pausanias describes as occurring in Megara, and that perhaps occurred in Sicyon and other Argive city-states, too.94 Thus, we can add to our store of information about the Argive Agriania the likelihood that at some point marriage able girls made offerings to a dead virgin at her tomb. Why? The answer here (and in similar cases that we shall study in chapter 6) may be found in the story of Erigone, another virgin who died before her time. If not propitiated by offerings and other rites during the Anthesteria, Erigone's envious ghost would attack living Athenian virgins-and so, too, it seems safe to assume, the ghost of Iphinoe would attack living Argive virgins.95
Interpreting Iphinoe's rites in this way makes for a nice correspondence between the Athenian Anthesteria and the Argive Agriania and begins to explain why Hesychius calls the Agriania a nekusia. The dedication of both festivals to Dionysus and the fact that both were held in the springtime brings them closer together still, and encourages a further hypothesis: perhaps the Argives, like the Athenians, believed that all souls were abroad at this time of year when the abundance of good things would make them envious. The Agriania may have included rituals directed toward all the dead that were similar to those we examined when discussing the Anthesteria: avertive rituals such as the smearing of pitch and chewing of buckthorn and propitiatory rituals such as the offering of a panspermia.
Although the interpretation I have just offered applies only to the Argive Agriania in the strictest sense, with a few changes it may work for the Orchomenean, Theban, and other Boeotian versions as well (which appear in our sources under the variant spelling of "Agrionia"). These include elements absent from the Argive version and its aition, at least as we know them. Plutarch says that the Orchomenean ritual included a chase in which the local priest of Dionysus pursued some of the women of the town; he goes on to tell us that a priest named Zoilus once forgot himself and killed the woman he caught. The real women who ran the annual race were supposed to be descendants of the Minyads, daughters of King Minyas. Maddened by Dionysus, the Minyads had killed one of their infants and run wild into the mountains. The Theban story of the daughters of Cadmus, who tore Pentheus apart after having been maddened by Dionysus, is an analogue.96
In the Argive tradition, we have virginal daughters who wander madly. In the Boeotian tradition, we have married women (for they have borne children) who wander madly. The single distinction should not distract us unduly: it is likely that there was once a version of the myth in which the Minyads were virgins, too, for use of the patronymic collective marks them not as wives but as daughters, and in Greek myth, daughters are always virgins.97 The Boeotian daughters of Cadmus may once have been virgins as well, for although we know them best by their individual names, thanks to Attic tragedy, the fact that they acted together as sisters implies that their primary loyalty was to their natal family.
For some reason, these (hypothesized) Boeotian versions of "maidens' tragedies" became the "mothers' tragedies" now familiar to us. We can see traces of this beginning to happen in the Argive area as well, for another story, which became confused with that of the Proetides, told of Argive mothers running wild under Dionysus's influence and the Proetides themselves, in one version of their tale, incited other women of the area to tear apart their children.91 These variations indicate that the story of the maddened, wandering virgin and the story of the maddened, infanticidal mother were mutually attractive-a far from surprising point given that, as I shall discuss in chapters 5, 6, and 7, maidens who fail to become brides and women who fail at motherhood are really only subtypes of a figure whom we might call the failed female. The passage of a girl out of her natal household into marriage and the motherhood that sets the seal upon marriage can be truncated and ruined at either end of the process with the same result: she becomes an unhappy soul, frustrated in her attempt to complete her life as a woman, who must be propitiated lest she return to ruin the lives of other females. Although the deities blamed for such failures in myth are most often Artemis and Hera, Dionysus takes on the role as well in some versions of the Proetides' myth, in the Minyads' myth, in the myth of Carya, and more faintly in the extant version of the myth of Erigone. Thus, rituals to propitiate these dead women's souls could be attracted into the sphere of a Dionysiac festival such as the Anthesteria or the Agriania/Agrionia.99 The name, built on the root agrios, "wild," applies equally well to the Boeotian mothers' maddened rambles and to the crazed wanderings of the Proetides in their deluded, marginal state.
We have no direct evidence that the Boeotian versions of the festival included propitiation of a dead individual, as did the Argive versions, but the ritualized chasing of women by Dionysus's priest and the legendary death of one of them at the hands of Zoilus suggest a version of the myth in which one or more of the Minyads died during her period of wandering, which would serve as an aition for such a rite. Thus, the various Boeotian versions of the Agrionia, like the Argive versions of the Agriania, may well have included appeasement of a dead w
oman's soul. If so, they might have been performed by married women (for whom the Minyads as we know them in the extant version of the myth would have served as negative exemplars), rather than by maidens. Perhaps the Boeotian Agrionia also included rites directed toward all of the dead, as in the Athenian Anthesteria, and as I have conjectured for the Argive Agriania-but this takes us too far into the realm of conjecture to be pursued any further.
Civic "days of the dead" aimed at protecting not only the individual citizen but the vitality of the whole citizenry from damage that might be done by the dead. This is the implication behind the story of Orestes as it was told at the Anthesteria, behind the story of Erigone, probably behind the story of Iphinoe, and perhaps behind some now-lost version of the Minyads' myth. Indeed, as we shall discuss in chapter 6, the collective, annual appeasement of certain classes of problematic dead, such as dead maidens, probably took place in many areas of Greece. These manifestations of civic concern for individuals' relationships with the dead, then, agree with the conclusion that we reached after our examination of the Selinuntine and Cyrenean texts: keeping the dead happy was more than just a private affair.10°
CURSE TABLETS
In most of the situations discussed in this chapter, there is a presumption that the dead are causing problems of their own volition-that they are angry or unhappy and choose to attack the living for their own reasons. An exception is found in the Cyrenean text, which explicitly allows for the possibility that the ghost might have been sent against the victim by another person, presumably by ritual means. The curse tablets (katadesmoi) that will serve as the topic of this final section provide another good example of the dead returning not of their own accord but because they have been compelled to do so by ritual techniques.
Curse tablets begin to show up in the archaeological record in the late sixth century in Sicily and in the mid fifth century in Athens; they show up elsewhere in the Greek world beginning in the fourth century.101 It is my assumption that, from the very beginning, most of the curses written on these sheets of lead depended on the dead for their enactment, for the following reasons. First of all, the great majority of tablets during the classical and Hellenistic periods were deposited in or near graves, suggesting that propinquity to the dead was in some way important to the enactment of their curses.102 The graves of aoroi, those who had died prematurely, were particularly popular so far as we can tell from cases in which the age of the deceased can be determined from skeletal remains or grave goods.103 It follows, as Fritz Graf recently has empha sized, that the dead within whose graves so many tablets were deposited had some active role to play.104
But what? Without further information, it would seem safest to assume that the dead are imagined only as messengers between this world and the next, carrying the words of the tablets to deities in the underworld. This has parallels in Mesopotamian practice, as we shall see in chapter 3, and I think it is likely that the Greek dead were imagined to play this role. But I would argue that on most occasions, the dead of the classical period were envisioned as doing even more, besides-not on the basis of the few tablets that actually state this, although we shall return to them momentarily, nor on the basis of many tablets from the imperial period, which explicitly describe the dead as actively carrying out the curses. There is another, and more convincing reason. By far, the deities most frequently mentioned on tablets of the classical period are Hecate, Hermes, and Persephone.105 It is "in their presence" that the practitioner either binds or registers (katagrapho) the dead. The latter term, which was used in business and legal contexts in antiquity as well, implies that these deities are expected to take note of the registration and then set in motion the proper chain of events to effect the curse.106
But what, exactly, are they expected to do, and why are they the deities chosen to do it? Let us begin with Hecate. Her only connection to the Underworld during this period is her role as the mistress of the restless dead. In Euripides' Helen, Helen and Menelaus refer to her as the one who leads forth ghosts and an unassigned fragment of fifthcentury tragedy portrays her as leading packs of them through the night.107 She has no other role that connects her to the dead or to the Underworld. Nor does she have any role as a goddess who punishes individuals-either before or after death-at this time. The only way to understand the tablets' constant requests that Hecate witness or register their curses is to presume that she is to ensure their enactment by commanding those whom she rules-the dead-to carry out the work that the tablets describe. Centuries later, the more loquacious magical papyri make this point specifically: several times, Hecate is asked to rouse the dead, particularly the aoroi, to do what the practitioner asks.108 A similar interpretation should be adduced for Hermes, who as early as Aeschylus's Persians is portrayed as having the ability to help stir the souls of the dead into action 109-a natural development of his role as the one who leads them into Hades after death-and who, like Hecate, has no other connection with the dead or the Underworld during the classical period. Persephone, the queen of the dead, could release souls when she wished to and thus fits the scenario too; she is implored by Electra in the Choephoroi to help guarantee the support of Agamemnon's ghost.110 Notably, entities whom we could more easily imagine as inflicting the damage described in the curses themselves-such as the Erinyes-almost never appear in the tablets, which tends to support the idea that deities are chosen not on the assumption that they will work the curse but rather in the expectation that they will mobilize others to do so.
It is important to remember, in evaluating the thesis that I am offering, that most of it aligns perfectly well with other beliefs of the classical period. As early as Sappho, as we saw in chapter i, restless dead such as Gello are imagined to be capable of causing trouble for the living on their own, and by the fifth century at the latest, certain gods-most notably Hecate and Hermes-are known to have had special control over them. The only novelty presented by these tablets of the classical period is the idea that they were a new way in which a practitioner could ask a god to make the dead do something.
As noted, on a few tablets from the classical period, we do find the dead themselves mentioned. In the earliest example that I know of, from early fourth-century Attica,"' the victim is simultaneously bound in the presence of (pros) 112 "she who is next to Persephone" (i.e., Hecate), Hermes, Tethys, and the "incomplete" (atelestoi )113 dead, which implies that the gods and the dead are understood to be functionally equivalent. In another fourth-century Attic tablet, the victim is bound in the presence of (pros) those below-hoi kat6.114 As the gods mentioned in tablets are almost always carefully specified, and as hoi kato is a term commonly used of the dead, particularly in Attic tragedy,115 we have to assume that the writer was using this phrase to refer to the dead. These references show that it was possible to imagine the dead playing the same role as Hecate and Hermes, and, more important, indicate that the dead were on the minds of those who wrote the tablets; thus these tablets help to confirm my earlier hypothesis that the dead were important to the enactment of the tablets' curses. But so far as the exact function accorded to the dead in these examples is concerned, I would suggest that there has been a kind of transference: their writers registered their victims in the presence of the dead as well as of the deity who would command them, thus moving the dead into a magisterial role that they did not normally play. 116
If my analysis concerning the role that the dead played in the enactment of curses is correct, then the tablets provide evidence from the early classical period of three important ideas. First, certain gods were taking on a new or at least increased importance in their roles as controllers of the dead, most prominently Hermes and Hecate. In neither case does this role contradict any aspect of our earlier picture of the god-it can be understood as a development of Hermes' role as psychopompos and of certain aspects of Hecate's persona that we shall examine in chapter 6-but their specific roles as gods who might help the practitioner by facilitating his access to the souls of the dead are de
finitely new. This makes sense: before the advent of the curse tablets and other means of invoking the dead against other people, there was no real need for such a divine role. Second, the living could call for aid upon even the dead to whom they did not have a familial relationship. Indeed, in some tablets, the practitioner indicates that he has no idea in whose grave he is burying the tablet by using such phrases as "you buried here, whoever you are," and in only a very few tablets is the ghost addressed by his own name.117 The apparent distaste of the dead for serving the living in this capacity, evinced in several tablets, suggests moreover that one would not wish this role upon a departed loved one.18 Third, the dead were beginning to be understood as all-purpose factotums of the living. They could be asked not only to help take vengeance upon their former persecutors or to defend the surviving members of their family, as Electra and Orestes hope that Agamemnon will in the Oresteia, but also to assist in a wide variety of tasks in which they were unlikely to have any personal interest-the hobbling of orators' tongues, for example. The dead, then, were no longer only threats in their own right, but also tools to be used against one's opponents; to the long-standing, generalized fear of random attacks by the envious or vengeful dead was now added the fear that the dead might be used against one by a competitor (correlatively, the dead, particularly those who had died under unfortunate circumstances, had more to fear than just the usual dreariness or punishments of the Underworld; they might be shanghaied into servitude). The curse tablets, then, confirm that in the fifth century, we have entered into an era of belief different from that shown in the Homeric poems. We have passed from a situation in which the dead scarcely interacted with the living, and then only at their own discretion and under very specific circumstances-when their bodies were unburied, for exampleto one in which the living could activate the dead at their pleasure, for many reasons.
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