There are several other issues that we need to consider in connection with the curse tablets. The first is their very nature as "tablets," as written documents. The possible origins of this practice of communicating with the realm of the dead through writing is taken up in chapter 3, but here we might consider the evolution of the practice within Greece itself. Early tablets are terse, typically including only the name of the victim(s) and a verb such as "bind" or "register." Later tablets include more information, including instructions as to how the curses are to be carried out and by what agents. It is very likely that the deposition of the simpler, earlier tablets was accompanied by oral instructions similar to those written on these later tablets. Indeed, judging from spells for making curse tablets that are found in the magical papyri, one of which we shall examine below, even the lengthier tablets had to be accompanied by oral commands. The "binding song" (hymnos desmios) sung by the Aeschylean Erinyes, which bears similarities to phrases on later tablets, is probably a dramatized version of what such an oral incantation would have sounded like in the fifth century.119 The fact that the normal means both of addressing the gods and of contacting the dead in early Greece was through sung or spoken words lends additional support to this idea. Notably, even after the more elaborate tablets began to appear, tablets including only the name of the victim or the name and a verb continued to be produced, which suggests that, even after the idea of writing more elaborate tablets had been introduced, it was still acceptable to intone most of the instructions orally.120 There are a couple of ways to explain this. If one were hiring a professional to create the tablet, the rationale for keeping it simple might have been financial: scribes usually charged by the word.121 If one were making the tablet oneself, it may have been a matter of skill: a person who was scarcely literate would opt for scratching on the simplest effective inscription and pronouncing the rest.
By assuming that the fuller tablets include information approximately like that which was spoken aloud at the time when simpler ones were deposited, we should be able to use the fuller tablets to get a better idea of how all the tablets, both early and late, were understood to work, and what role the dead played in the process. A number of tablets from later periods address the dead with phrases such as "you who lie here having died untimely" or "you unmarried ones." 122 For example, a third-century tablet from Attica runs as follows: 123
Kerkis
Blastos
Nikandros
Glukera
I bind Kerkis, the words and deeds of Kerkis and also the tongue, in the presence of those who died before marriage [eitheoi ];124 and whenever they read this, then [words missing] ... to/for Kerkis . . . to talk. I bind him and his young women and his profession and his capital and his business and his words and deeds. Hermes of the Underworld, restrain them in every way until they become senseless.
This tablet aligns with the apparent preference, evinced not only by other tablets but by many spells of the magical papyri, of asking certain types of dead to carry out the curse, referring to them individually or collectively by terms such as "those who died incomplete," or "those who died violently." For example, instructions from one papyrus spell tell the practitioner to pronounce the following as he places the tablet on the grave of someone who died aoros or biaiothanatos:
I entrust this curse tablet to you, chthonic gods,125 and to men and women who have died untimely deaths, to youths and maidens, from year to year, month to month, day to day, hour to hour. I adjure all daimones of this place to stand as assistants beside this daimon [that is, all the dead souls of the cemetery must help the soul in whose grave the tablet is placed]. And arouse yourself for me, whoever you are, whether male or female, and go to every place and every quarter and to every house, and attract and bind her.... Let her be unable to either drink or eat, not be contented, not be strong, not have peace of mind, not find sleep without me.... drag her by the hair, by her heart, by her soul, to me ...126
The marginal status of aoroi and biaiothanatoi would both facilitate interaction with the living and make them easier prey for the practitioner-they were neither impeded nor protected by the walls of the Underworld. In this respect, the aoroi and biaiothanatoi are the exact opposites of a certain type of soul briefly discussed earlier, who had obtained special protection from the gods of the Underworld during the afterlife by being initiated into mystery cults while alive-indeed, it is likely that the two curse tablets from early fourth century mentioned above, which invoke the atelestoi ("incomplete") dead are explicitly directed to the souls of those who died uninitiated. 127 A variation on this theme is found in some late texts in which the practitioner who wants to persuade a soul to cooperate promises that, once it has finished his task, he will set it free or even protect it from having to serve other prac- titioners.128 Another reason that the restless dead would be more valuable to the practitioner lies in their disposition: because they were envious and embittered, they could more easily be roused into action against the living.129
It was probably not only the aoroi, the biaiothanatoi, and similarly unhappy souls who were invoked, however, even if they were preferred. First of all, sometimes there would have been a problem with identifying which graves contained such corpses. An epitaph on a tombstone or the presence of a loutrophoros (a jar used to carry the water for a girl's wedding bath) might make it clear that a grave belonged to an aoros, but the graves of biaiothanatoi and those who had failed to be initiated into mystery religions surely were rarely, if ever, marked as such.130 Unless one happened to know the circumstances under which an individual had died, and where he or she was buried, one probably had to choose a grave at random and hope for the best. Moreover, if one wanted to bury the tablet with the corpse,131 rather than simply placing it on the grave or just below the surface, it was probably easiest either to do this surreptitiously at the time of burial or, if later insertion was necessary, to choose a new grave, as the freshly dug soil would be easier to excavate. In short, the practitioner could not always count on having access to the "best" sorts of souls, and had to take what he could find; even a "normal" soul might be compelled to cooperate. Plato's allusion to the placement of cursing materials on the graves of parents suggests that the souls of older people at least were not excluded as possibilities. 132
Another important issue is what the dead were expected to do to the victims of the curse. Different circumstances probably demanded different techniques, and each practitioner undoubtedly had his own preferences as well. Most commonly, the practitioner or his client expressed a wish to restrain the victim from an action, or sometimes to hamper his movement more severely by "binding" him. Figurines that sometimes accompany the curse tablets, which show the victim with hands tied behind the back, suggest this idea, but tablets that "bind" not only the victim but such intangibles as his business support a less literal reading of the verb. Formulaic though the language of the tablets may be, then, we cannot use those formulas to develop an iron-clad axiom about what was supposed to happen to the victims.133 The only thing that is clear is that until very late times, the purpose of a tablet was not so much to kill or seriously harm the victim as to restrict his or her movements and behavior.134 Within these limits, the range of specific actions was probably broad. One tablet instructs the dead to "throw difficult fires" into all the limbs of the victim and make him burn, perhaps referring to the infliction of a fever. A very late tablet from Syria instructs the ghosts of the aoroi and biaiothanatoi to leap up in front of a team of horses in a race in order to frighten them, which is exactly what the ghost of Myrtilus, a murdered charioteer, was believed to do to horses competing in the Olympic races centuries earlier. 13S The oral commands of the magical papyri provide further examples illustrating the range of injuries that the dead could inflict, including insomnia and lack of appetite (e.g., PGM IV.2730-39). Generally, these are the same sorts of afflictions that the dead might impose upon the living of their own accord.136
SUMMARY
We have covered a lot of ground in this chapter, and thus it would be a good idea to recap the most important points:
The living had to meet not only certain basic needs of the dead, such as burial and periodic nourishment, but more complex needs as well: they had to help protect them from immediate threats after death, such as demonic interference, to help guarantee their safe passage to the Underworld, and occasionally also to perform rites after the death of an individual in order to "purify" his soul or otherwise help it achieve a peaceful afterlife.
Care of the dead was a civic concern as well as a concern of the individuals most directly involved with any given dead person. This was because the displeasure of the dead might make itself felt not only against those immediately responsible but against the entire group. We shall see further instances of this in chapters to come.
By the classical period, the souls of dead might be manipulated by ritual practitioners who had expertise in such arts. As servants of the living, the dead might be pressed into all kinds of service, but they were particularly used to injure others among the living. Troublesome ghosts could also be exorcised or controlled by these practitioners.
Finally, it is striking that all of the information to which we can assign a date for the latter two topics is from no earlier than the late archaic or early classical period: Epimenides purified Athens at the turn of the seventh and sixth centuries; the Spartans hired psychagogoi in the mid fifth century; the Selinuntine law dates from the mid fifth and the Cyrenean from the mid fourth century; the Dodonian tablet mentioning a psychagogos named Dorius is from the early fourth century. Curse tablets begin to appear in the late sixth and early fifth centuries. This supports the conclusion reached in chapter i based on examination of narrative sources: the dead began to be perceived as a bigger source of problems, and new methods of dealing with them began to develop, in the late archaic and early classical periods. In the next chapter, we shall explore some of the reasons for, and some further ramifications of, this development.
The quotation from Sayers is taken from a collection of her short stories compiled by James Sandoe under the title Lord Peter (New York: Harper & Row, 197z), 3 zo, reprinted here with the kind permission of HarperCollins, Inc.
Martha's knees gave under her. She sank down.... She looked up and saw the wizard standing before her, a book in one hand and a silver wand in the other. The upper part of his face was hidden, but she saw his pale lips move and presently he spoke, in a deep husky tone that vibrated solemnly in the dim room:
Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey"
Masquerading as a wizard in order to rescue a woman held captive in the Basque region of Spain, Lord Peter Wimsey constructs himself to match what his audience would expect of such a man. A book of spells, a wand, and, most important, obscure incantations spoken in a foreign tongue. In the popular imagination of many cultures, the wizard is someone who comes from without to work his magic in a language inaccessible to other people.
In this chapter, I construct my own portrait of one type of Greek wizard who had a special attachment to the world of the dead: the goes. When he entered Greece during the late archaic age, the goes, like Wimsey's wizard, had some foreign elements in his makeup, but more impor tant, and also like Wimsey's wizard, the goes was responding to homegrown needs and incorporating native ideas.
Before we can move on to the goes, however, we need first to reiterate and build upon some conclusions from the information presented in chapters i and z and then examine the milieu into which the goes entered. Foreign elements, however attractive, are not accepted by cultures without good reason. If the Greeks adopted practitioners who specialized in communicating with the dead, there must have been changes in their own culture that made those specialists attractive, even necessary.
CHANGING CONCEPTS
In chapters i and z, I sketched models of Greek beliefs in the ability of the dead to interact with the living. I suggested that at the earliest stage, the Greeks presumed that most of the dead were feeble and unable to affect the living. I also noted, however, that in some passages of the Homeric poems, we already encounter the idea that those souls whose bodies had not received funeral rites were both capable and desirous of returning to inflict harm on the living, particularly on those responsible for their plights. This belief probably rested on the assumption that the soul could not pass over into the Underworld and find rest until the funeral rites were completed, and also on the correlative assumption that the unburied dead were not restrained by its physical boundaries. There is also a trace, in two episodes of the Odyssey, of the idea that those who died before accomplishing whatever was considered to mark success in life were excluded from the Underworld, too, and might return to harm the living.
All of these beliefs, both the earlier and the later, are to be found in other ancient Mediterranean cultures as well; in fact they are common throughout both the ancient and modern worlds.' The first idea-that the dead are feeble-arises naturally from the sight of a corpse. The second-that the soul may not enter the Underworld until its body is buried-also makes sense; the dead but unburied individual is neither fully a member of the land of the living nor fully separated from it. He or she is out of place and, like all things out of place, potentially troublesome. The third idea-that those who die unfulfilled become unhappy ghosts-expresses the poignant feeling that a life has been cut off prematurely, but also reflects the idea (familiar from adolescent initiation rites as well) that one cannot pass successfully into a new stage of existence until the previous stage has been completed. In cultures where roles in life are closely determined by gender, class, or other qualities that the individual cannot change, the standards for success in life tend to be sharply circumscribed (a woman must bear children if her life is to be considered successful, for example). Thus, more people die in a state that is viewed as "incomplete" and the accompanying fear is liable to carry greater weight; the implications of these beliefs are discussed further in chapter 4.
But it was not only the unhappy dead who were imagined to travel back and forth between the upper and lower worlds. From early times, myths suggest that truly extraordinary men might do so as well, even while they were still alive. Our earliest Greek text about such a journey is the Odyssey, but given that Odysseus alludes to the fact that Heracles had already visited Hades, we must assume that the Greeks had been telling stories of heroic katabaseis for some time. Indeed, journeys to the land of the dead have been part of the hero's repertoire at least since Enkidu descended in the Epic of Gilgamesh. We should not forget, however, that Odysseus, Heracles, and Enkidu are extraordinary figures; although these tales certainly imply that the boundaries between the two worlds were not perceived as impermeable, surely no normal person believed that he might enter Hades and emerge alive again any more than that he could kill the Lernean hydra or Ishtar's Bull of Heaven. That is the point: the ability to enter and then return from Hades is part of what made these men heroic.
Eventually, the heroic ideal was distantly imitated in the real world. The nekuomanteion (oracle of the dead) at Ephyra, which began operations around the time when the nekuia of the Odyssey took its final form, offered the average person an opportunity to ask questions of the dead. We do not know whether the dead were imagined to appear to the questioners or the questioners were imagined to descend to them, but either way, encounters between the living and the dead occurred. It is important to remember, nonetheless, that at Ephyra and elsewhere, nekuomanteia were built at what were believed to be entrances to the Underworld, places where the upper and lower worlds were closer together than normal. Whichever way the travel ran, it only worked at these special locations. Indeed, even Heracles had entered Hades through a special cave, and Odysseus (if in fact he actually entered the Underworld at all) did so by sailing to a particular place to which Circe had carefully directed him, at the utter edge of the upper world. At first, then, it was assumed that if interaction with the dead were possibl
e at all, it was only under certain circumstances. One could not do it just anywhere at any time. Somewhat later than the Odyssey, in the epic Nostoi, the ghost of Achilles returns from Hades to advise the departing Achaeans, which implies that these rules were loosening up: the souls of heroes, at least, could apparently flout the rules now and return to the world of the living even after they had been properly buried, wherever and whenever they wished.
We saw an allusion to the belief that souls could be "led up" from Hades in an epigram of Simonides', dated to shortly after 479, and in a reference to Empedocles practicing goeteia from approximately the same date. We found a fully developed ritual of psychagogia in Aeschylus's Persians, dated to 47z,, and know that Aeschylus also wrote a play called Psychagogoi (now lost). Heracles refers to professionals called psychagogoi in Euripides' Alcestis, and we meet one of them by name in an oracular tablet from Dodona inscribed a few decades later. These and other references to psychagogia probably reflect, as I shall discuss below, the introduction of new beliefs and technology from Eastern cultures, as well as changes in native Greek attitudes toward the dead. It is also in Aeschylus that we first hear of the living seeking something more from the dead than conversations and advice. In the Choephoroi, Electra, Orestes, and the Chorus of Mycenaean women beg the soul of Agamemnon to help them punish his murderers. Similar requests are found elsewhere in fifth-century tragedy.2 By now the dead are assumed to be capable of responding to their survivors' requests with action of some sort, and to be particularly willing to do so when those actions will help to avenge their own deaths. At about the same time, we begin to see evidence of curse tablets (katadesmoi), which depended on the activity of the dead for their success. These tablets provide our earliest evidence for two ideas that will be important in this chapter. First, the dead were becoming all-purpose factotums of the living. They were invoked not only to take vengeance upon their former persecutors or to defend the surviving members of their family but also to perform a wide variety of tasks in which they were unlikely to have any personal interest. Second, the living could invoke souls to whom they did not necessarily have a familial relationship. The fact that groups of tablets, each inscribed for a different reason and on behalf of a different client have all been found in a single grave indicates that the specific identity of the dead was of little concern to the practitioner who deposited them (although, judging from the explicit invocation of aoroi and biaiothanatoi on later tablets, we might guess that the practitioner would prefer certain types of dead). Indeed, the deposition of a curse tablet at the grave of a loved one was probably viewed as highly undesirable.' From the middle of the fourth century, we have an explicit set of instructions from Cyrene, detailing how one is to deal with a ghost that has been sent against one.
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