What can the story tell us about these goddesses and their relationship to the dead? We know that, like the Erinyes with whom they are identified in Aeschylus's Eumenides and later texts, the Semnai Theai were involved with avenging murder. Murder cases were heard on the Areopagus on the last three days of each month, days that were sacred to the Semnai Theai. Oaths were taken in their name at these trials.70 They also were associated with the dead in other ways that suggest they were their special guardians. For example, Hesychius tells us that according to Attic custom, the "double-fated," that is, people who had been presumed dead and then turned up alive after all, were not allowed to enter the precinct of the Semnai Theai.71 Having been placed under the protection of the Semnai Theai when presumed dead, the doublefated would have been in danger of being claimed by the goddesses once and for all if they came near the goddesses before being formally declared alive. Part of Epimenides' story, then, is easily understood: to rid themselves of the curse that arose from the Cylonian Affair, the Athenians had to acquire the help of the Semnai Theai, the goddesses closely associated with the dead, and especially with avenging their murders. Epimenides led the way in making amends to the goddesses by erecting "nameless" altars in their honor and then thanked them after the cure by building their temple.
Relying on an animal's random movements to choose sites where important foundations would be laid is not unusual in Greek tradition; most famously, Cadmus used this method to determine where Thebes was to be built. Implicit in the method is the idea that the god(s) will guide the animal to the spot where the city or precinct or altar should be, and also implicit, therefore, is the idea that the sacred spot truly is sacred. But the use of a herd of sheep in our story, and thus the erection of many altars spread throughout the city, suggests either a multiplicity of divinities concerned, each of whom demanded her own sacred spot, or a perceived need to decentralize worship of these divinities, to spread their protection as widely throughout Attica as possible. The two explanations are not mutually exclusive, but the latter seems more relevant in our case because we know that elsewhere the Semnai Theai did not object to being worshipped as a collective in a single spot. This multiplicity of altars might remind us of other sacred objects that dotted the Athenian landscape, the hekataia and herms. Such relatively small and simple points of worship, as discussed in chapter 6, played the important role of providing ongoing protection against quotidian dangers that larger temples and sanctuaries, open only a few days a year and distant from the everyday lives of the people, could not.
Because the story tells us that these altars to the Semnai Theai were erected in response to the problems caused by the Cylonian Affair, we must presume that the Semnai Theai were expected to cope with whatever lay at the base of those problems, and subsequently to protect Athens from similar problems thereafter. Most sources are vague, saying only that there was a plague (loimos) or curse (agos) in Athens, but Plutarch tells us that phantasmata were haunting the city-presumably the ghosts of the murdered men. This makes complete sense within the context of what we have learned about the disgruntled dead in other chapters, and given this, we might guess that the Semnai Theai served not only as champions of the dead who helped to avenge them when necessary, but also, more broadly, as divinities who buffered the ongoing relationship between living and dead in both directions, providing a recourse for the living who believed that they were being attacked by the dead, as well as for the dead who had been treated badly by the living.
This story about Epimenides and the Semnai Theai should be contemplated further in light of the aition at the end of the Oresteia. We have already noted that Athena manages to persuade the Erinyes to subordinate their interest in protecting blood relationships for the good of the city. But she simultaneously does something else that is equally important. She establishes rules of "fair conduct" between living and dead. So long as they are suitably honored in cult,72 the former Erinyes, now known as Semnai Theai, will never again menace the entire city with disaster because murders committed by individuals within it remain unavenged to the satisfaction of the dead. The goddesses will temper the demands of the dead whom they represent with the needs of the living, relinquishing some of their power to the city, and particularly to its judicial system. In this sense, the Oresteia and the story of the Cylonian Affair articulate the same concerns, present closely similar problems, and then, not surprisingly, solve the problems in virtually the same way (the only way that would make sense to their Athenian audiences): through the establishment or enhancement of cult to the Semnai Theai. It is not just women and mothers who are put in their place at the end of the Oresteia, then, but also the dead, and particularly the dead of the family who cry out for revenge. Although the city cannot tolerate murder, it also cannot tolerate constant invasions from the world of the dead. Subordination of the Erinyes-or rather, let us say, transformation of the Erinyes into the polis-friendly Semnai Theai-works in much the same way as the funeral legislation discussed in chapter 3.
Which brings us back to Epimenides, who is credited by Plutarch not only with clearing up the Cylonian problem but also with helping Solon to develop and implement his funerary legislation. In particular, he supposedly helped to teach all the Athenians to be more "moderate" in their mourning and the women to give up their "harsh and barbaric" funerary customs-surely this refers to the excessive laments discussed in chapter 3. We cannot be sure that the story has a historical basis, as Plutarch is our only source for it, but it resonates with the other parts of the story in a way that makes it, if not factually true, then at least conceptually coherent, for both of the important contributions that Epimenides made to the developing city of Athens can be understood to involve the regulation of relationships between the living and the dead. When we also hear from Plutarch that Epimenides was an expert in mysteria, this falls quite nicely into place with his solution of the Cy Ionian problem as well, for, as emphasized in chapters 3 and 4, the mystery initiator was essentially an expert in how to negotiate with the dead and other denizens of the Underworld, and we would expect to hear about him soothing or averting troublesome souls. His combined solution of the Cylonian Affair and his founding of mysteries make it tempting to call Epimenides a goes, for he certainly fits the general criteria laid down for that term in chapter 3. But if we were to take this step, his assistance to Solon in the institution of funerary laws would leave us with an intriguing problem-or rather an intriguing point to consider. In adding this to the mix, we not only travel further than we did in chapter 3 toward an image of a goes working fully in public and for the public benefit, but confront the possibility of a goes who served at the right hand of one of Athens' most sober rulers. This picture may seem as incredible as that of Madame Blavatsky advising Abraham Lincoln, but we must remember something else that we concluded in chapter 3: the negative portrait of the goes during the archaic and classical periods is derived largely from intellectuals such as Plato, who found much to reject in other forms of traditional religion as well.73
But let us return to the Cylonian Affair. The thematic similarity of Epimenides' story to the ending of Oresteia is also important because it offers insights into Aeschylus's equation of the Erinyes and the Semnai Theai. We have good reason to think that Aeschylus invented not only the equation itself but the whole idea of Orestes being freed from the Erinyes through standing trial in Athens. To do so, he probably built upon a story that already existed, in which the maddened Orestes simply visited Athens while being chased by the Erinyes. Our first attestation of this tale is only in Euripides' Iphigenia among the Taurians,74 but it looks older than the plot of the Oresteia,71 both because maddened wandering is paradigmatically attached to the blood-guilty in Greek myth as early as Homer, and also because it is hard to imagine even Euripides inventing ex nihilo a story line for Orestes that completely ignored Athens' glorious role in his salvation, in the aftermath of the vastly popular and influential Oresteia. Even if we do stretch our imaginations that far, the
very fact that Euripides ignored Aeschylus's version implies that it was not based on a very old tradition.
The story of Epimenides' cure also looks older than the plot of the Oresteia. Although detailed reports of what Epimenides did to end the curse are extant only in Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch, the tradition of his having ended it through his religious expertise is found in the first section of the Aristotelian Athenian Constitution, which draws on older material; a few decades earlier than the Athenian Constitution, Plato refers to Epimenides' having performed sacrifices for Athens under the direction of an oracle.76 Hermann Diels was probably correct in thinking that there was some historical basis for the story, which takes it back to the time of Epimenides himself, or shortly thereafter-that is, to the late seventh or very early sixth century.
If the fifth-century Athenians wanted an aition for the cult of the Semnai Theai, then, they probably had a good one at hand long before Aeschylus offered them the tale of Orestes' trial, and one that articulated exactly the same issues, as we have seen. Aeschylus remodels the earlier aition, and yet does it so successfully as to make the earlier aition virtually obsolete. There were good political reasons for his success. In the Oresteia, Athens becomes the savior of a foreign visitor unfairly pursued by a ghost and her agents, whereas the story of Epimenides presents a foreigner saving Athenians from dead who are justifiably punishing them for their scandalous misbehavior. The Cylonian Affair might have been a particularly sensitive issue during the early 450s, when Pericles was beginning his rise to power, for he was a direct descendent of the Alcmaeonidae. Anything that helped to distract attention from the Cylonian Affair and its connection to important Athenian cults such as that of the Semnai Theai would therefore have been welcome. Moreover, not to forget Lardinois's thesis, the plot of the Oresteia allowed the Athenians to attach a local cult to panhellenic myth.
But we must not forget that Aeschylus's version did something more, as well. By affiliating the dead with creatures who were already frightening in their Homeric incarnations, and by making them even more dreadful himself, Aeschylus emphasized, far more than the story of Epimenides had, the threat that uncontrolled, angry dead might pose for the city. This fits well into the spirit of his time. As noted in chapter 3, by 458 B.C.E., relations between the living and the dead had become more problematic than they had been in earlier days because the dead themselves had come to seem like more of a problem.
As we also saw in chapter 3, it was the goes who came to the rescue: as a porter between the Underworld and the upper world, in charge of passages back and forth between them, the goes played a vital role in keeping relations between the living and the dead under control, at times on behalf of the polis. How interesting it is, therefore, that when the time-tested methods of the Aeschylean Erinyes have failed and Orestes is wriggling from their grip, they try to arrogate the role of the goes themselves, chanting a spell to bind Orestes' wits (hymnos desmios phrenon) just as a goes would, so that he cannot defend himself well in court.77 Apparently, the Erinyes are trying to use the dead whom they formerly represented to do the work that they no longer can. Of course, the Erinyes' binding spell fails: neither Orestes nor his defense counsel, Apollo, is struck mad when they enter court, and so the Erinyes lose their case, and Orestes is set free. The Erinyes are too old-fashioned to use the new goetic technology effectively.
There is indeed a goes in this play, however: Athena. It is she whose magical powers of speech soothe the champions of the dead into a cooperative mood. She knows the words that will enable her to tuck them away in a special cavern where their fearsome visages will be out of sight but from which they can be called up again when the polls needs them. Notably, the term that Athena uses to describe her persuasive words is the same one that is used elsewhere in the trilogy to denote choai offered to appease the dead: meiligma;78 like the goes, Athena has adapted tra ditional funerary practices to new uses in order to control the Erinyes and deploy them to serve her own interests. She also describes her words as a thelkterion (a "charm"): they have the same power as a goetic epoide to enchant their listeners.79 What we witness at the end of the Oresteia, then, is the goddess of civic concerns herself adopting the skills of the goes to ensure her city's welfare. However much Aeschylus may fold it into the official cult of the Semnai Theai, goeteia has become a vital part of the Greek polls; an art once brought into the city by the Cretan Epimenides now comes naturally to the goddess synonymous with the city of Athens itself.
Which is not to say that Athens embraced goeteia wholeheartedly, even in the fifth century. Our picture of the typical goes as an itinerant worker reminds us that he never became fully incorporated into civic life, as some other religious practitioners did. The goes offered services that were valuable and unique, but in doing so he simultaneously dabbled in matters that most people preferred not to think about too often; moreover, if one believed what the goetes claimed, they had the power to marshal considerable forces against mortals, as well as to soothe those forces; there must always have been some feeling of unease when one was in the presence of a goes.
But then, all of this can be said of the gods as well; how could one ever feel at ease in the presence of Athena either? And, more important, it can be said of the dead themselves, these creatures with whom the goes interacted to earn his living. Gods, dead, goetes: it is to the extraordinary figure that one looks for extraordinary help and the extraordinary, by definition, cannot dwell too comfortably among us. If the dead refrain from molesting us and agree to accommodate our desires, it is because the goes understands what makes them extraordinary and to some extent partakes of it himself. It takes a thief to catch a thief.
Athena's actions in the Oresteia did not settle the matter forever, of course: through the medium of tragedy, Athenians were to consider many times again the nature of the relationship between the living and the dead, and not a few times the relationship between the polis and the dead. The dead were restless indeed, never completely settling into a role, accepting a single identity, or acquiescing to any single set of operational guidelines constructed by the living-here again they are similar to the gods, whose roles, identities, and modi operandi must be continually reexplored in myth and cult because their patterns seem transitory or indiscernible to the human eye. Like the diffracted images of a Picasso painting, the dead offer views of our own world that challenge our presumptions about it, but like such a painting, too, they also reward us with insights that we could not obtain from a simple photographic reflection.
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