If we disentangle the various pieces of information that Diogenes is providing, we can conclude the following. In the third century B.C.E., the biographer Satyrus reported that Gorgias had claimed to help his teacher Empedocles work goeteia. Diogenes adds that Empedocles' own poetry gives evidence of this and other things as well. He goes on to quote lines in which Empedocles claims to do two things: raise the dead and alter the weather. Because the fragment of poetry is then directly followed by Diogenes' quotation of a remark by the historian Timaeus, that Empedocles' weather magic earned him the title of "wind-stopper" (kolu- sanemos), Diogenes must have meant to exemplify Empedocles' reputation as a goes by the claim he made in his own poetry about being able to lead souls out of Hades. Certainly, this was how the Suda understood the situation when offered a rationalized account of Empedocles' miracle in later antiquity: "[T]hey say that Empedocles . . . brought [a woman] who was not breathing back to life. They say that this [woman] without breath was such that for thirty days her body remained without breath or food. Thus [Empedocles] was a goes. "s3
Use of binding spells-and thereby the dead-may lie behind the way that the fifth-century historian Pherecydes uses the term goes, too. There are, he said, two types of Dactyls (a group of semi-divine metallurgists): "those to the left" who are goetes; and "those to the right" who, in contrast, are "releasers"-analuontes. By at least the fourth century, as shown in an Attic curse tablet, one of the specialized meanings of the verb analuo is "to release from a binding spell," and so we can guess that the opposition implied is between those Dactyls who were experts in the sort of techniques that the tablets employ and those who released victims from the bonds imposed by the former.54 Although I am not saying that the term goes was never used broadly to refer to wonderworkers of various kinds, particularly by those who scorned goeteia, these sources and others suggest that control of the dead was the very essence of goeteia. Notably, we do not find goeteia specifically connected with any other particular branch of magic-such as rhizotomia- until much later, and even then only infrequently.
GOETEIA AND MYSTERIES
Before continuing, we need to consider some other ideas that cluster around goeteia. Tradition persistently connects it with two other things. The first is mystery initiations that aimed to guarantee a better afterlife. In the same breath as he calls them goetes, Diodorus Siculus, quoting the fourth-century B.C.E. historian Ephorus, tells us that the Dactyls were experts in "initiations and mysteries" (teletai, mysteria), that their student was Orpheus, and that Orpheus was the first to introduce those initiations and mysteries into Greece; Orpheus was himself called a goes and founder of orgiastic initiations by Diodorus's younger contemporary, Strabo, as well as by Lucian. Of course, there are many earlier sources connecting Orpheus with mysteries as well, and Diodorus's source for his information on the Dactyls is an Orphic poem that goes back at least to the early Hellenistic period. Even earlier, in Euripides' Bacchae, Pentheus had called the disguised Dionysus-who had come to Thebes in order to introduce new mysteries-a "chanting" (epoidos) goes, and Plato, in his Republic, had connected the door-to-door marketing of curse tablets and "sendings" of ghosts with on-the-spot initiations into mysteries, implying that the same practitioners offered both services. To back up their claims, Plato continues, the practitioners produce books by Orpheus and Musaeus, the latter of whom, like Orpheus, was already famous by the fifth century as the founder of mysteries.55 Empedocles also combined a reputation for goeteia with that as a teacher of doctrines about the soul, its postmortem experiences, and what should be done to prepare it for the afterlife. Indeed, as Peter Kingsley has recently reminded us, Empedocles' Sicilian brand of eschatology bears strong resemblances to that attributed to Orpheus.56 Epimenides, who, as we shall see in chapter 7, had certain traits of the goes, was also credited with introducing mysteries to Athens. Epimenides may have been among those mystery initiators to whom Plato refers as "children of the Moon," in fact, for he called himself this in a fragment of his poetry quoted by Aelian.57
This combination of goeteia and eschatological mysteries makes sense: the expert who knows enough about how the afterlife works to invoke and control the souls of the dead should also know how to ensure that a soul would get a good deal once it was down there, and especially how to protect a soul against the sort of postmortem intrusion it would otherwise suffer at the hands of the goetes themselves. In particular, both undertakings would require the practitioner to have a special relationship with the gods of the Underworld, who could support his invocations by forcing souls to obey his call and support his initiations by promising his clients a better deal in the afterlife. An interest ing confirmation of this idea is found in the two spells that we examined in chapter z that seem specifically to invoke souls described as ateleis or atelestoi-"uninitiated"-in the same way that other spells invoke the untimely dead, the violently dead, and the unburied:58 the practitioner knew that uninitiated souls would be easier to manipulate because, like these others, they were shut out of the best-protected parts of the Underworld. Such a practitioner needed to have good knowledge of Underworld geography, as well-the twists and turns and forking paths that would confuse the unprepared soul, such as Plato's Phaedo describes, and the landmark trees and dangerous bodies of water to which the Bacchic gold tablets refer to. Here again we find the figure of the goes lurking in the background, for such an interest in Underworld details can be traced back to the Sicilian and south Italian milieu from which both Empedocles and many of the eschatological ideas associated with Orpheus emerged.59
The man who could both invoke souls and guarantee their protection in the afterlife naturally would know how to keep dangerous souls at bay as well. What Plato says in the Phaedrus about experts in purifications and initiations being able to release those who have become sick or crazy due to "ancient wraths" (palaion menimaton) is relevant in this context, for as Burkett has noted, the word for wrath-minima-usually refers to the anger of the dead.60 Thus, the passage alludes to the physical and mental illnesses that the angry dead were believed to cause and the role that a professional initiator could play in protecting the living from their attacks. We can imagine that the professional either "purified" the one suffering the effects of this wrath-that is, led him through rituals in which he atoned for whatever wrong he had committed against the dead-or helped the sufferer "purify" the dead who were in distress, along the lines discussed in chapter z with reference to the Tritopatores of the Selinuntine lex sacra and the progonoi of Republic 364-65. Once relieved of their distress, these dead souls would stop causing problems for the living. The author of the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease may have had in mind the same sort of pro fessionals to which the Phaedrus refers when he scoffed at those who tried to cure epilepsy through "purifications and incantations" (kathar- moi, epaoidai). Nor should we forget that Empedocles' doctrines of the soul and its postmortem experiences were presented in his poem entitled Purifications (Katharmoi). Preparing the soul for death and aiding the living who were persecuted by unhappy souls were part of the same expert's repertoire because both tasks required knowledge of what happened to souls after death and how postmortem experiences could be improved through rituals.61 The vocations of the goes and the initiator draw closer together still when we recall that unhappy souls were especially dangerous at two particular times: when the living were undergoing initiation into any of several ancient mystery cults and when the newly dead soul was making the transition to the Underworld, as discussed in the next chapter. Something like this belief, as we saw in chapter z, may also account for the use of origanos in funeral rites.
In short, although we surely cannot go so far as to call everyone who performed mystery initiations goetes or presume that every goes was also an initiator, the frequent coexistence of the two roles helps us to recognize that each was essentially an expert in the care and control of the disembodied soul. It would by no means be remarkable for their jobs to be performed by the same person, as Plato a
ctually tells us was the case. The fact that the concept of mystery religions seems to have entered Greece at about the same time as the idea of magically manipulating the dead, as noted earlier in this chapter, supports this thesis beautifully.62
As noted in chapter z, this same practitioner might also protect an entire city-state from dangerous souls-not by calling them up but by sending them away. A scholiast, who says he depends on Plutarch for his information, describes the psychagogoi who were hired by Sparta to appease the ghost of the traitor Pausanias as goetes who knew how to use purifications (katharmoi) and goeteia that could either "send ghosts out against others" (epagousi) or "send them away" (eksagousin).63 As we shall see in chapter 7, Epimenides' "purification" of the Athenians after the Cylonian Affair in the late seventh or early sixth century probably also involved the control and exorcism of ghosts.64 Both the Spartans and the Athenians were instructed to hire these experts by the Delphic Oracle, which implies that the goes was anything but an outcast, feared and detested by the average Greek of the classical period.65 The early fourth-century oracular tablet from Dodona discussed in chapter z, which asks the oracle, "Should we hire Dorius the psychag(5gos or not?" points to the open use of such a practitioner by a city or another group at the advice of a panhellenic oracle as well.66
Before continuing with our analysis of the term goes, we should pause to consider another term with which it is often linked by modern scholars and sometimes by ancient authors as well: magos. Heraclitus, the earliest extant Greek author to mention magoi, connects them with baccboi, maenads, and mystai-in other words, participants in mystery rites. Moreover, Heraclitus threatens all of these individuals with "tortures after death," which, given Heraclitus's sometimes sarcastic turn of mind, implies that release from tortures after death was precisely what these specialists promised to those who hired them. All in all, the fragment from Heraclitus suggests that the magoi were considered special ists in the care and use of the soul along the same lines as I have just sketched for goetes.67 This hypothesis is supported by the late fourthcentury Derveni commentator, who says that magoi use incantations and sacrifices to prevent "daimones who get in the way" (daimones empodon) from interfering with initiation rituals; the passage goes on to identify these daimones as the souls of the dead.68 Notably, however, only one of the many other references to magoi in classical sources, so far as I know, suggests any connection to the dead at all: at Herodotus 7.43, the magoi help Xerxes make libations and sacrifices to the dead heroes buried at Troy. More problematic still is the absence of magos and its cognates from the one place where we would most expect to find them if invocation of the dead were among their primary concerns in the minds of the Greeks: the necromantic scene in Aeschylus's Persians (although there are possible programmatic reasons for this, discussed below).
Herodotus credits the true Persian magoi with a variety of functions, including the interpretation of dreams and portents such as eclipses, the propitiation of river gods through sacrifice, and the recitation of sacred theogonies. Magoi in Greece similarly had a variety of skills, including the production of drugs and protective amulets and perhaps divination. Xenophon's description of them as "technicians of the divine" (hoi peri tous theous technitai) is likely to come close to the common Greek view: they knew a lot about the gods that was hidden from the average indi- vidual.69 There are two possible explanations for their occasional association with the invocation, protection, or initiation of souls. First, these may really have been among their many skills during the classical period, either because they were among the duties of the original magoi in Persia or because those who called themselves magoi in Greece had adopted such skills from the goetes. Alternatively, people may have carelessly conflated the two types of practitioner, crediting to the magos the characteristics of the goes. Those who scorned such things, such as Heraclitus and Plato, would have been especially likely to do this, but by the time of the Derveni commentator (probably the late fourth century), the confusion may have been common; indeed, the distinction between the two words may have eroded to the point where they were virtually synonymous. For all these reasons, it is hard to determine whether interaction with the dead was originally part of the Persian magos's art or not. Whichever way we answer this question, however, the Derveni commentator's juxtaposition of those who initiate with those who avert and propitiate demonic souls confirms again that the two pursuits are but different sides of the same coin, just as Heraclitus had implied.70
GOETEIA AND SONG
The second phenomenon with which goetes regularly were connected was singing and more broadly music of all kinds. The Suda and Cosmas defined goeteia as an act of "calling upon" (epiklesis) the dead; earlier sources repeatedly connected goeteia with the epoide, or chanted song.71 The Dactyls were credited both with the invention of various forms of music and with the composition of ep6idai.72 Their student Orpheus, of course, was the most famous singer of all-by classical times we find him using his lyre and his voice to persuade the gods of the dead to release the soul of his wife, and by Varro's day he was known as the author of a book called the Lyre, which taught others how to invoke souls through music as well.73 The crediting of such a book to Orpheus verifies that in ancient eyes what Orpheus did with his music was not really different from the way a goes used epoidai or the incantations written on curse tablets to call up a soul, even if Orpheus and the goes desired the souls they invoked for very different reasons. Broadly, all of these connections between invocation of souls and song are part of a belief in the ability of all kinds of sound to enchant the individual soul.74
But we need not go so far afield in proving the importance of this association between goeteia and song, for it is attested by the very term itself. As already noted, goes and its cognates are built from the same root as the older words gods and goad .75 This makes sense: the goes, like the lamenter, wishes to communicate with the realm of the dead. There is more to be learned from this linguistic connection between goes and gods, however. Further consideration will help to confirm what I suggested earlier: that the ritualized manipulation of the dead was imported by the Greeks from foreign cultures during the later archaic or early classical age.
To begin with, the word goes does not appear in our sources until the late seventh or early sixth century, in a fragment from the epic poem Phoronis. The relatively late appearance of the word and the lack of any synonym in earlier Greek must make us wonder whether the Greeks encountered the phenomenon it described only after their own language was well developed. Notably, the other words that the Greeks eventually came to use for approximately the same sort of practitioner are either derivations of words that originally had other connotations in Greek (ep(5idos), were formed from existing words (psychagogos), or were borrowed from other languages (magos).
Nor was the go- root itself a perfect fit. The gods was stereotypically performed by women, not by men, who ideally were associated instead with the threnos. So far as I have been able to discover, however, the professional use of ritual technologies to make the dead work one's will was associated exclusively with men in archaic and classical times.76 Notably, for example, in the Persians, the queen does not invoke Darius herself. She pours libations and grieves, as a good wife should, but she asks the chorus of male Persian elders to sing the special songs that will bring Darius back into the light. It is not until the imperial period that we meet women who invoke the dead; even Medea stops short of this until she falls into Seneca's hands. Although there is no doubt that, in real life, women as well as men commissioned curse tablets, we have no evidence that women made or deposited them. One, or possibly two, real women were brought to trial for mixing potions and singing incantations during the later classical period, but these were secondary charges, added to the far more serious accusation of introducing foreign cults. At any rate, we do not hear of either of them invoking the dead." One of the fables in the Aesopean corpus mentions a female magos (gyne magos) who similarly is charged with both introduc
ing new religious practices and selling incantations to appease the wrath of the gods, but this, again, shows no connection to invocation of the dead.71
By the late fifth century, literary sources portray women who are preparing pharmaka as invoking Hecate. This may seem to suggest, contrary to what I have just concluded, that female magic had begun to be associated with spirits of the dead, for as we shall see in another chapter, Hecate's role as the goddess of magic grew from her role as the leader of dead souls. Even so, in these passages, the women are not portrayed as calling up souls; the explanation may rather be that Hecate, who was already connected with one form of magic (invocation of the dead) came to be associated with other forms as well. Alternatively, the association may be due to Hecate's prominent role as a birth goddess and kourotrophos, which would have brought her into contact with women and their folk-medicinal practices.79 The other magical trick that was stereotypically connected with women was "drawing down the Moon" (that is, pulling the Moon down closer to the Earth than it normally was), which was thought to facilitate gathering magical herbs or other natural substances that pharmakeutrides might use.80
In sum, the masculine gender of the noun goes and the consistent association of the word with men is probably more than accidental: the heart of goeteia-invocation of the dead-seems to have been a male vocation.81 This exclusivity might be explained in either of two ways: perhaps the imported techniques were introduced to Greece by male representatives, or perhaps the first Greeks to adopt the techniques were males. The two explanations work together in fact: males would be far likelier to exchange information with other males than with females.
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