Restless Dead

by Sarah Iles Johnston

  The erection of hekataia and the wearing of amulets such as I described in the last chapter were very important forms of protection, but they were optional and private; their deployment was left to the individual. In chapter z, I noted that in many poleis, there were also formal, state-sanctioned rituals directed toward the control of threatening ghosts, such as the one described by the Selinuntine lex sacra. In the next section of this chapter, I suggest that the polis similarly sponsored festivals that attempted to stop vengeful ghosts from interfering with girls' ability to marry and procreate. For the moment, this will mean leaving aside Hecate. In the long run, however, study of these rituals and the myths attached to them will enhance our understanding of her association with dangerous ghosts.

  THE DYING MAIDEN

  The girl's passage into womanhood in ancient Greece has been much studied in the past few decades.45 It now is clear that rituals aimed at guaranteeing its successful completion were practiced in many poleis. By supporting and controlling these cults, the polls also supported and controlled the transition of its daughters into adults who would marry properly and produce new citizens; these cults, then, were in the interest of the polis as well as the individual girls and their families, and the beliefs that they expressed must be assumed to have been shared, on some level, by all or most of the citizens.46

  Attached to each of these rituals was a myth that explained its foundation. Although there are numerous variations, almost all of them fall into one of two types, each of which centers on a girl who typically is identified as the daughter of an early king (or, in some cases, the story centers on several daughters of a king). The other main role in the story is played by one of the goddesses who, in real life, is expected to help girls complete the transition into womanhood. The goddess who most commonly takes on this role is Artemis; Hera is second, and Athena and Aphrodite make occasional appearances.

  In the first type of story, the girl angers the goddess. Examples of this type include the stories of Callisto,47 the Proetides'48 Ariadne'49 and the daughters of Cecrops.50 The goddess either kills the girl herself or drives her to suicide. Occasionally, the girl is saved after a period of madness or illness and enters into a proper marriage (the Proetides), but at least in our extant myths, this is the exception.51 In a variation on this basic type, a member of the girl's family angers the goddess, who then de mands that the girl be killed; the most familiar example of this is the story of Iphigenia. Sometimes, the goddess takes pity at the last moment and rescues the girl, carrying her off to a new life as a temple servant (Iphigenia, in another version of her story).

  In the other type of story, the girl is injured or threatened by someone else, usually a person from outside of her family. Sometimes, the girl dies, often by her own hand (Erigone and Aspalis, to be discussed below). Frequently, she does this by hanging herself, a form of death that was closely associated with virgins in both real life and myth.52 Sometimes the goddess rescues her from her plight, but usually at the price of her life, or at least her normal pursuit of it: the girl is transformed into a statue in the goddess's temple or becomes a priestess who serves the goddess (Dictynna/Aphaia;53 Aspalis).

  Typically, the transgression that leads to disaster in either type of story involves behavior that is inappropriate for the transitional girl. The overwhelming number of examples involve sexual misbehavior: either the girl is seduced (Callisto; Carya, to be discussed below), or she is raped or nearly raped (Dictynna/Aphaia; Aspalis). Once in a while, the transgression is not sexual but nonetheless involves the girl doing something that is inappropriate for unmarried women. The daughters of Cecrops, by peeping into the basket that hid the infant Erichthonius, symbolically assumed maternal duties before they were married. The transgression committed by the Proetides in one version of their myth was to worship Hera in her capacity as a goddess of married women while they were still virgins.54 In other cases, we do not hear about any specific incident that precipitates the chain of events, and we can only imagine that in a fuller version of the myth, one was provided (the Pandareids, to be discussed below). What is most important, however the details of these myths may vary, is that a girl who is at the age where she should be progressing from her virginal state to the state of motherhood fails to do so: she dies or is permanently removed from normal life before she can marry and bear children. As in many cultures, then, the story told to those who are about to undergo transition into sexual maturity presents the worst-case scenario: the paradigmatic virgin fails to complete the process and suffers terribly.

  Often, the myth ends by telling about the institution of a cult in which local girls symbolically replicate the struggle or death of the girl on whom the myth focused. It has been suggested by some scholars that such rituals symbolically "kill" the virgins who participate in them, in order that a reproductively active woman may be "born." Virginity and motherhood cannot coexist, after all, and so the first must be eliminated to make way for the other. It also has been argued that, by participating in the cult, the real girls ensured the goddess's help during their transition. She would have been understood as a potentially angry force who had to be placated by the performance of rites.

  Both of these observations are correct, but in turning so much of their attention to the goddess and the real girls who participated in her cult, scholars have tended to overlook another important character: the mythic virgin who dies. Some have suggested that she must have originally been a "doublet" for the goddess-that is, a divinity of similar function who was displaced by the stronger figure and fell into the subordinate roles of mythic victim and cultic heroine.55 In many cases, this is surely correct, but it does not adequately explain why myth condemns the girl to death or eternal virginity. Frozen forever in the middle of her transitional period, never able to complete it and attain the status of mother, this girl represents an absence of the good things that the goddess can provide and thus plays negative to the goddess's positive qualities in a way that the girls who act out her role in ritual never will, or so they hope. Such polar opposition is not always the case in myth and ritual combinations. In some instances, the mythic figure instead ends up enjoying the same blessings for which the ritual's participants hope: the women who participated in the Thesmophoria in order to guarantee fecundity, for instance, took as their mythic exemplar a story about Demeter recovering her daughter and restoring fertility to the earth. Even within the context of transitional myths, happy endings are possible: after all, in one version of their myth, most of the Proetides survive, marry, and bear children. Cretan Leucippus successfully changes from a girl to the man he wishes to be.56

  The key to understanding the tragic fates of some mythic girls lies in recognizing that they could be more than just passive victims. There is reason to think that they, like the goddesses with whom they were connected, could cause trouble for the real girls of the polls, if not effectively dealt with. Let us start with the example of Erigone, an Athenian heroine whose story was associated with the Anthesteria.

  ERIGONE

  There are two variations of Erigone's myth, in each of which we can discern contamination by other myths and rituals. The one that is better known tells of how Dionysus came to Athens during the time of King Icarius, who is said to be Erigone's father. Having received the gift of wine from Dionysus, Icarius shared it with his neighbors. Becoming drunk for the first time, they believed that Icarius had poisoned them and therefore murdered the king. Discovering his body, Erigone hanged herself in grief from the tree under which it lay.57

  The other version of Erigone's myth makes her the daughter of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, who pursues Orestes to Athens seeking vengeance for their murders. At this point, the story splits into two endings. Either Erigone hangs herself in grief when Orestes is acquitted on the Areopagus, or she is threatened by Orestes, who has already killed her brother, Aletes. In the second variation, Artemis intervenes at the last moment, whisking Erigone away to become a priestess in her Athenian temple.58
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  The first version of Erigone's story has been contaminated by Dionysiac concerns: except, perhaps, in a late version that makes Dionysus seduce Erigone,59 there is no further connection between the girl and the god of wine. We might guess that because the rites associated with Erigone's myth were practiced at the same time of year as the Anthesteria, this festival that incorporated so many other diverse elements incorporated her rites, too, and thereby pulled Erigone into Dionysus's orbit. An attempt to cover the patch is made by attaching Erigone to Icarius, an early Athenian king who served as eponym for the Icarians, and who seems to have been associated with the advent of wine from early times. Icarius's story (his introduction of wine and subsequent death) really has little to do with the paradigm that underlay Erigone's story, as we shall see.60

  The second version of Erigone's story serves to bring her into connection with the epic cycle, and specifically with the popular Mycenean saga. The plot may have been suggested by the fact that Orestes' flight from Mycenae already was associated with the Anthesteria: the first day of the festival included a special rite that commemorated his arrival in Athens after the murders.61 But whatever the exact apparatus was that brought Erigone into association with the House of Atreus, the point was to associate a local Athenian heroine with an important, panhellenically famous myth.

  Underneath the accretions of each version lies the simple tale of a maiden whose life was cut off before she could marry. The fact that in both versions her tragedy is precipitated by the death of her father-the man who would have arranged her marriage-and in one version by the subsequent death of her brother as well-the man who would have arranged her marriage in her father's absence 62-makes this point even clearer: she is alone, without anyone to guarantee her proper passage from maiden to wife. It is also significant that she dies by hanging herself, for as noted already, this is a means of death particularly associated with the deaths of virgins and even more so with the deaths of virgins connected to Artemis. As Helen King as shown in detail, this bloodless death emblematizes the fact that they have not and never will "bleed" as women are properly bound to bleed-on their wedding nights or in the course of childbirth.63 As we shall see below, hanging oneself on a tree, as opposed to anything else, is also typical for girls connected to Artemis and may reflect this goddess's connection with trees in cult. Of course, the alternative ending to the story, in which Erigone becomes a priestess of Artemis, follows another theme commonly found in maidens' tragedies, as we have seen, and indicates that the myth originally was an aition for some Attic cult of Artemis.

  The myth goes on to say that, as she was hanging herself, Erigone cursed the Athenians, condemning all their daughters to "swing" just as she was swinging from the tree. Athenian virgins then began to kill themselves in droves. To stop the suicides, and at the advice of Delphi, the Athenians then instituted the rite of the Aiora ("Swinging"), in which girls fulfilled the letter if not the spirit of Erigone's curse by swinging on chairs suspended from trees by ropes in much the same manner as children now swing. Indeed, in vase paintings of the scene, the activity sometimes looks rather playful.64 The Aiora was celebrated on the third and final day of the Anthesteria.65

  A song called the Aletis ("Wanderer") also was performed by Athenian girls on the third day of the Anthesteria. Our sources say that it commemorated the wandering of Erigone (whom they say took on the name Aletis) as she searched for her missing father.66 We might guess that the name of her brother in the second version of the myth ("Aletes") alternatively explained the institution of the song in some version of the story that we have lost, or that the brother's name is a by-formation of Erigone's. It is hard to imagine a song performed in a ritual context in ancient Greece without an accompanying dance; the function of the Aletis dance must have been, at least in part, the same as that which Claude Calame has suggested for so many other dances performed by maidens: it simultaneously honored the goddess and put marriageable girls on display to the rest of the polis.67 The name of the song implies a further significance, however, for it echoes a theme found in many myths about girls undergoing transition: often, the event that interrupts their transition also compels them to leave their homes and wander abroad in the countryside or in foreign lands (Ariadne leaves Crete, lo travels the ancient world, the Proetides run in the fields). This is appropriate, for transition represents a time of life when the individual is neither fully a girl nor fully a woman: she is at home in neither camp. Even when not connected with transitional myths, wandering is associated with characters who are exiled from normal life and normal roles-Odysseus is a prime example of this. Indeed, the Etymologicum Magnum tells us that Aletis was not only the name of an Athenian song and a nickname for its heroine, but also a nickname of that most abnormal of all mythic characters, Medea, a woman who spent her life wandering in exile from one city-state to another precisely because she rejected the proper female roles of dutiful daughter, submissive wife, and nurturing mother.68 Dangerous ghosts, too, are paradigmatic wanderers, in part because they are excluded from resting in the Underworld; mormones, as mentioned in chapter 5, were defined by one late source as planetes daimones, wandering daimones. It is likely that the wandering song and dance of Athenian maidens both reenacted Erigone's sufferings and symbolically represented the detached, liminal stage of the singers themselves, which, if not successfully resolved by marriage in the near future, would cast them into a state of eternal wandering, eternal detachment.

  In the story of Erigone as we now have it, then, we can see a female maturation rite that at some point became swallowed up into the larger festival of the Anthesteria. We can guess that the original version of the myth would have told of a girl who, like Iphigenia, died in one version and in another became a priestess of Artemis, the goddess under whose jurisdiction the Aiora and the Aletis were performed. The girls who performed the rite would have expressed the symbolic, temporary exile of their transitional period by reenacting her wandering in a song and dance, and would have averted the possibility that they might really hang themselves in madness, and thus be eternally frozen in a virginal state, by "hanging" themselves on swings-by symbolically sharing in Erigone's suffering, they avoid experiencing it in reality. Thus protected, they have prepared themselves to move forward into marriage.

  What has all of this got to do with the angry dead? Let us return to the version of the myth in which Erigone hangs herself. The Etymologicum Magnum tells us that after her death, Erigone became a prostropaios, or vengeful ghost, returning to cause trouble for the Atheni- ans.69 Servius reports that after Erigone's death, all the other Athenian maidens hanged themselves because they suddenly were compelled to do so by madness (furore). Hyginus gives a similar story.70 Given that prostropaioi and similar demonic creatures frequently were blamed for causing madness in antiquity, it does not seem too great a leap to combine the reports and conclude that it was Erigone's ghost who maddened the Athenian virgins, thus ensuring the fulfillment of the curse she made when dying. The report goes on to tell about the institution of the Aiora at Apollo's command and to describe it as eudeipnos.71 This adjective, which might be translated as "content with their suppers," and its cognate noun, eudeipnia, are otherwise used only to describe offerings made to appease the souls of the dead.72 The Aiora must have included, then, not only the swinging, but a meal to propitiate the ghost of Erigone, and perhaps the souls of other dead maidens as well.

  The rituals associated with Erigone now have revealed themselves to be concerned not only with female maturation but also with the ap peasement of dangerous souls. The latter function would have been well at home on the third and final day of the Anthesteria, when offerings were also made to Hermes Chthonios and all the dead. Earlier, on the previous day, Athenian doors had been painted with pitch and buckthorn leaves were chewed, both of which were methods of protecting oneself against dangerous ghosts. There may also have been a ceremonial cry at the end of the festival in which the souls were ordered to de- part.73 A rite that ave
rted and propitiated Erigone, one particular ghost who was liable to persecute one particular group of victims (Athenian girls), could easily have been attracted into this larger complex of rituals designed to ensure safe relationships with the dead. The entire sequence bears a resemblance to the annual Mesopotamian festivals during which the friendly, familial dead were first invited to rise and accept offerings of food and then were ordered to return to the Underworld, taking with them any ghosts that had been causing trouble for the living.74

  It might still seem odd that a rite of aversion was attached to transitional rites, but this combination will make sense once we remember the ghosts we met in chapter 5. Those who return from the dead of their own accord seek to victimize one of two types of people. First, those who have wronged them or failed to avenge a wrong done against them. Thus, Clytemnestra returns to haunt Orestes because he killed her, and Agamemnon would have haunted Orestes if he had not killed Clytemnestra. Second, others who are about to succeed where they did not. Lamia and Mormo, who are childless themselves, return to kill children or cause miscarriages, ruining other women's chances at fulfillment; Gello also kills virgins before they can marry. Taraxippus, the ghost of a murdered charioteer, frightens racehorses into crashing as they round the post at Olympia. Envy goads unhappy spirits into attacking those who are enjoying successful lives. Thus, it makes sense for the Athenians to take special care to prevent Erigone from causing trouble for their own daughters, who were trying to complete the transition that Erigone had not.

  CARYA

  Of all the mythic maidens who suffer early death or transfiguration, it is only Erigone whom our sources specifically say returned as a prostropaios. If I have analyzed Erigone's role in transitional rites correctly, however, then we would expect other such maidens to be feared as well, and for other rituals of transition to incorporate appropriate rites of aversion or propitiation. We shall not always find these ideas expressed overtly, however. To begin with, the lacunose state of our evidence means that we do not possess full descriptions of all myths and rituals. We might imagine, for example, that Gello was associated with a transitional rite on Lesbos, but we do not have enough evidence to prove it.75 This problem is made worse by the tastes of many of those who transmit the myths to us. Tragedians, for example, were certainly interested in death and the dead, as we saw in chapter i, and sometimes even brought ghosts on stage, but they were not very interested in providing detailed portrayals of creatures such as Gello unless they could be sculpted into figures who emblematized moral and ethical dilemmas (as do the Erinyes in the Eumenides). Other authors, including the composers of epinician odes for instance, have little interest in such topics at all. Much of our evidence for what people really believed about the dead-and did about the dead-comes in bits and pieces from lexicographers, scholiasts, and the offhand remarks of ancient authors who are discussing something else. This sort of information, of course, is very much at the mercy of chance.