ENVY, POISON, AND DEATH

At the heart of this volume are three trials held in Athens in the
fourth century BCE. The defendants were all women and in each case
the charges involved a combination of ritual activities. Two were
condemned to death. Because of the brevity of the ancient sources,
and their lack of agreement, the precise charges are unclear, and the
reasons for taking these women to court remain mysterious.

Envy, Poison, and Death takes the complexity and confusion of the
evidence not as a riddle to be solved, but as revealing multiple social
dynamics. It explores the changing factors—material, ideological, and
psychological—that may have provoked these events. It focuses in
particular on the dual role of envy (phthonos) and gossip as processes
by which communities identified people and activities that were
dangerous, and examines how and why those local, even individual,
dynamics may have come to shape official civic decisions during a
time of perceived hardship.

At first sight so puzzling, these trials reveal a vivid picture of the

socio-political environment of Athens during the early-mid fourth
century BCE, including responses to changes in women’s status and
behaviour, and attitudes to ritual activities within the city. The volume
reveals some of the characters, events, and even emotions that would
help to shape an emergent concept of magic: it suggests that the
boundary of acceptable behaviour was shifting, not only within the
legal arena but also through the active involvement of society beyond
the courts.

Esther Eidinow is Professor of Ancient History at the University of

Bristol.
 Envy, Poison,
and Death
Women on Trial in Classical Athens

ESTHER EIDINOW

1
 3
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 Acknowledgements

The seed of this book was planted in 2007, in a seminar paper given at
the University of Manchester during a Leverhulme Early Career
Research Fellowship: I thank both the Leverhulme Trust and the
University of Manchester, especially Stephen Todd, for giving me
that opportunity. The paper became an article in Past & Present, and
I am very grateful to the anonymous referees for that journal, who
offered so many useful and interesting comments. After it developed
into a book proposal, Hilary O’Shea and the two anonymous
reviewers at Oxford University Press (one of whom also read the
book when it was nearing completion) gave invaluable encourage-
ment and advice; and in its progress towards publication, Annie Rose
and Charlotte Loveridge continued to give it patient support. In
between, a Solmsen Fellowship at the Institute for Research in the
Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison provided some
crucial time, for which I am very grateful. The editorial and produc-
tion teams at OUP have been marvellous, and I also wish to thank
Simon Hornblower, Robin Osborne, Charles Stewart, and the
anonymous reviewer for the press, who gave so much of their time,
encouragement, and counsel. This book is dedicated to Simon.
 Contents

Figures ix
Abbreviations xi

P A R T 1 : T HE WO M E N
1.1 Introduction: Overview and Approach 3
1.2 The Evidence 11
1.3 What Charges? 38
1.4 Conclusion: ‘If Anyone Has Cursed Me . . . ’ 65

PA RT 2: E NVY
2.1 Introduction: ‘As Rust Eats Iron’ 71
2.2 Defining Emotions 80
2.3 Narratives of Phthonos 102
2.4 Phthonos and Misfortune 140
2.5 Conclusion: ‘Careless Talk . . . ’ 162

PART 3: POISON
3.1 Introduction: ‘A Relish for the Envious’ 167
3.2 Identifying Gossip 171
3.3 Genres of Gossip 180
3.4 Gossip . . . In Public 191
3.5 Gossip . . . In Private 212
3.6 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 224
3.7 From Gossip to Action 254
3.8 Conclusion: ‘A Covert Form of Witchcraft’ 261
viii Contents
PART 4: DEATH
4.1 Introduction: ‘Killed by Idle Gossip’ 265
4.2 After the War . . . 267
4.3 Dependence and Vulnerability 292
4.4 ‘Dangerous Women’ 312
4.5 Conclusion: Envy, Poison, and Death 326
Epilogue: Social Trauma? 328

Bibliography 337
General Index 381
Index Locorum 403
 Figures

1. Conceptual Blend of ‘Death, the Grim Reaper’ 245

2. Conceptual Blend of a Generic Binding Spell 248
 Abbreviations

For ancient authors and works, and modern collections of ancient evidence,
I have used the abbreviations in S. Hornblower, A. Spawforth, and E. Eidinow,
eds, Oxford Classical Dictionary (4th edn, Oxford, 2012) where available.
Additional abbreviations are listed below:

Arist. Virt. Vit. Aristotle de Virtutibus et Vitiis (On Virtues and

Vices)
Clairmont C. W. Clairmont, Classical Attic Tombstones, 9
vols (Kilchberg, 1993–5)
Dion. Hal. Din. Dionysius of Halicarnassus De Dinarcho
(Concerning Dinarchus)
DT A. Audollent, ed., Defixionum Tabellae (Paris,
1904). Numbers refer to items not pages.
DTA Inscriptiones Graecae, iii Inscriptiones Atticae
aetatis Romanae, Pars 3: Appendix.
Defixionum Tabellae, ed. R. Wunsch (Berlin,
1897). Numbers refer to items not pages.
Joh. Chrys. In 1 Cor. Hom. John Chrysostom Homily On Corinthians 1
Joh. Chrys. In 2 Cor. Hom. John Chrysostom Homily On Corinthians 2
Max. Tyr. Maximus of Tyre
Men. Kith. Menander Kitharistes (The Lyre-player)
Men. Sik. Menander Sikyonioi (The Sicyonians)
NGCT D. Jordan, ‘New Greek Curse Tablets
(1985–2000)’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine
Studies 41 (2000) 5–46. Numbers refer to items
not pages.
Pl. Ly. Plato Lysis
Plut. De am. prol. Plutarch De Amore Prolis (On Affection for
Offspring)
Plut. De cohib. ira Plutarch De Cohibenda Ira (On the Control of
Anger)
Plut. De inim. util. Plutarch De Capienda ex Inimicis Utilitate
(How to Profit By One’s Enemies)
Plut. De invid. Plutarch De Invidia et Odio (On Envy and
Hate)
Plut. De rect. rat. aud. Plutarch De recta ratione audiendi (On
Listening to Lectures)
xii Abbreviations
Plut. Para. Plutarch Parallela Minora (Greek and Roman
Parallel Stories)
SGD D. Jordan, ‘A Survey of Greek Defixiones not
included in the Special Corpora’, Greek,
Roman, and Byzantine Studies 26 (1985)
151–97. Numbers refer to items not pages.
TM Trismegistos Texts Database, coordinated by
M. Depauw, www.trismegistos.org.

Note: I have usually adopted familiar Latinized spelling for personal names;
in most cases, other Greek words are transliterated directly from Greek.
I have used transliteration for single words and short phrases in order to help
make the text as accessible as possible, but have included Greek for longer
quotations and/or where it seemed useful.
 Part 1

The Women
 1.1

Introduction: Overview and Approach

Politics ‘happens’ where one may be led to least expect it—in the
nooks and crannies of everyday life, outside of institutionalized
contexts that one ordinarily associates with politics.1
The events that form the kernel of this book took place in Athens, in
the middle years of the fourth century BCE. They comprise a number
of intriguing trials in which the defendants were all women—puzzling
targets for a society like Athens, where the law courts are largely
regarded as the domain of the male political elite. These cases are
graphai, or public cases, but just what kind of charges they included is
debated: the evidence for each trial is multiple, various, and sketchy. It
seems likely that at least two of them were graphai asebeias or trials
for ‘impiety’; the implication that these women were involved in
magical activities is a consistent theme throughout the ancient
sources and the modern scholarship. It is hard to say more than
this: the sources are either too brief, or too late, or simply too
contradictory to provide clarity. Little is known about the three
women in question, the sparse historical evidence throwing only the
faintest of silhouettes down through time. Boehringer: A história das mulheres
These are obviously not novel problems: in general, the evidence é a história dos homens
for the lives of ancient women is usually voiced by others, and
inextricably entangled in the conventions of different genres. There
is now a burgeoning field of scholarship grappling with the problems
of identifying and exploring the roles played by women in ancient
communities. Marilyn Katz’s analysis of over twenty years ago offers
a useful framing of the ways in which these explorations have moved
from consideration of ‘women’ to a more comprehensive exploration

1
Besnier 2009: 11.
4 Envy, Poison, and Death
of gender, and from writing a history of women to writing ‘a history
of women in society’.2 In line with these approaches, most scholarly
studies of these trials have focused on the question of the nature of the
charges, in the process of which these women fall into familiar, static
social categories—be those sexual, magical, religious, or legal. The
danger of such analyses is that we cease to see these women as
anything more than cyphers for a kind of male violence understood
to be endemic in Athenian society, the inadvertent victims of political
struggles, their appearance in court the by-product of an attack by
one elite male on another, a spin-off of episodes of religious intoler-
ance, a side effect of the struggles of an elite patriarchy.3
And yet, the little evidence we have alludes to both the agency and
power of these women; indeed, it was this that brought two of them to
their deaths. Moreover, the extent of their influence may be inferred
by the role they appear to have played in the cultural imaginary4: we
can glimpse it in a number of stories or anecdotes that relate crimes
and legal cases that seem remarkably similar to these trials.5 A fable
from Aesop’s collection, a model speech for the law courts, a philo-
sophical exemplum: each of them relates how a woman’s ritual

2
Katz 1992 (quotation, p. 96). The field of scholarship on ancient women is too
great to cite here. However, the question of how and why women’s lives may have
changed has not been much explored. Exceptions include Osborne (1997), who raises
the question of how changes in Athenian legislation prompted shifts in the social
attitudes to, and representations of, women, with repercussions for lived experience of
both genders; also van Bremen (1996), who considers the role of women as bene-
factors in Greek cities of (predominantly) Asia Minor, over a period of four centuries.
3
Filonik (2013: 83) argues that there was no systematic religious repression at
Athens and that ‘the historical record cites a handful of individual trials for impiety
out of nearly two centuries of Athenian democracy, more often than not placed in a
very particular political context. Those individual trials or sometimes groups of trials
reflect important turning points in the life of the community, more often than not
being linked to various periods of instability, crisis, anxiety, sometimes even coups
d’état, war, and, last but not least, either a threat of falling under foreign domination
or frustration at the defeat.’ However, he does not attempt a closer analysis than this,
nor does this seem to account for the list of trials and potential trials he provides (82);
he also does not explain those trials that do not fall into such an obvious category,
such as the trials of these women.
4
By this term I am referring not to the imagination of the individual, but to the set
of shared ideas and images, narrative structures, and symbologies that members of a
culture or society draw upon to organize their world view, and which gives shape and
boundaries to their imaginations. For a useful discussion, see Dawson 1994: 48.
5
Other scholars have suggested that one or other of these fictional characters be
directly identified with the historical women, but have not raised the possibility that
these characters indicate the development of a common cultural narrative.
 Introduction: Overview and Approach 5
actions led to her death. For us, looking back over time, fact and
fiction seem to be converging in a larger cultural narrative of a
particular kind of risk. When we approach these women from this
perspective—asking what risks they represented, how they developed,
and why these women played such a key role in their expression—
these trials start to assume greater significance, raising questions
about the social and political environment of fourth-century BCE
Athens. In this light, the complexity and confusion of the evidence
is not so much a riddle to be resolved, but may rather be seen as
articulating multiple dynamics. This study suggests that it forms
the starting point for a historical investigation, one that places
these women and their trials at its heart, and explores the chang-
ing factors—material and ideological—that may have provoked
these events.
Rather than writing a history of these women in society, this study
sets out to build on previous approaches to recover a history of society
through the experiences of these women. The most obvious dimen-
sion of this is the larger changing political and economic situation of
Athens—and this will be the focus of part 4 of this book. But the
approach of this study is based on a sense that ‘large-scale processes
such as state formation, subsistence change and population move-
ments need to be understood in locally meaningful contexts of feeling
and understanding’.6 Thus, before exploring events at the macro-
level, this study will pursue some more everyday expressions of
feelings, focusing on the emotion of phthonos, or envy. It will examine
first the role of phthonos in local social dynamics, and then how these
dynamics may have interacted with the larger civic processes of the
law courts. It is a truism that the detailed information needed to
assemble an account of local circumstances rarely survives; neverthe-
less, by bringing together a wide variety of different kinds of evidence
from across the ancient world, as well as by drawing on resources
from other periods and disciplines, it may be possible to assemble an
alternative account that allows us to suggest, if not fully describe,
more local or individualized events.

6
Tarlow 2000: 719. Recent scholarly approaches offer helpful tools. In particular,
research into the role and power of the emotions and connected work on cognition
raise key questions about, and offer insights into, the nature and development of social
relations. See Chaniotis (2012: 14–16), who provides a seminal overview of the role of
‘emotions history’, as well making a similar point about the connection between
emotion and cognition.
6 Envy, Poison, and Death
Underpinning this analysis is an assumption that there are cross-
cultural, and diachronic similarities between emotions. This book
does not attempt to explain how this occurs, or in what ways ver-
nacular emotion concepts connect across cultures, which categories
they belong to, or the ways in which they have evolved.7 However, it
also does not assume that those similarities are absolute and that the
modern concept can simply be mapped onto its ancient counterpart.
Quite the contrary: the argument made here is that whatever element
of emotions can be held to be universal, crucial aspects are culturally
specific. We must take careful account of these aspects in any descrip-
tion of a culture and/or events affecting or affected by members of
that culture. This means that rather than arguing for either a univer-
sal or a cultural–relativist point of view of emotions, this study
embraces both approaches, treating emotion as inseparable from
cultural context, and emphasizing its role as a social phenomenon,
that is, the ways in which our knowledge and expression of an
emotion are crucially affected by social relations, and how in turn
social interactions are shaped by emotions.8 This is not to deny the
intrapsychic or physiognomic experience of emotion, but the focus of
this study is on the ways in which social interactions give those
experiences significance and meaning, and lead, in turn, to action. It
is attempting to delineate not so much what an ancient emotion
comprises, so much as what it might do.
This approach can perhaps be summed up by regarding emotions
as cultural models or schemas: this incorporates not only their
responsive mode, but also their expressive and creative roles,

7
For an examination of these questions, a useful start is Griffiths 1997.
8
In general, the focus of existing studies in this area has been on trying to distil the
individual’s experience of an emotion from our evidence. See, for example, Braund
and Most 2003; Cairns 1993, 2003a and 2003b, 2008, 2009, and 2011; Harris 2001;
Konstan 2001; Konstan and Rutter 2003; Kaster 2005; and Sanders 2014. Chaniotis
(2012: 16) emphasizes how perceptions of, and responses to, emotions are to a great
extent socially and culturally determined.
The approach used here is based on research on the emotions in both cultural
anthropology and psychology that highlights the social and psychological construc-
tion of emotions. Although emotions may feel like private personal experiences—and
certainly involve multiple, complex, probably iterative mental processes—they are
also profoundly shaped by an individual’s interactions with the world at interpersonal,
group, and broader cultural levels (see especially Parkinson 1996). The question of the
extent to which personal and social factors interact in this context is a source of much
debate, especially in the field of psychology: see further part 2, section 2.
 Introduction: Overview and Approach 7
encompassing the ways in which emotions appear to help us organize
and evaluate our experiences. It offers a way to contemplate how
emotions participate in both individual and group experience; and it
grounds a method for their examination, through the analysis of the
varieties of cultural discourse or ‘emotion talk’. Part 2 uses this
approach as the basis for examining some of the different cultural
schemas of phthonos, revealing how narratives of phthonos differ
across contexts and genres. It examines the power of ‘phthonos talk’
for creating explanations for events and experiences, and how it was
used to elicit meaning from otherwise inexplicable events or experi-
ences.9 In particular, it highlights the ways in which attributions of
phthonos relate to the reciprocal relationships that structured many
aspects of ancient Greek society, specifically the darker emotions
arising from the process of giving gifts and all the responsibilities
and attendant risks that come from being socially interdependent.
This approach can, I suggest, help to explain not only the dynamics of
mortal phthonos, but also the puzzling ancient phenomenon of the
phthonos of the gods.
As this analysis will illustrate, phthonos talk includes both formal
and informal discourses, and part 3 examines one of the more
informal genres, namely gossip. Its informality increases its social
potency: not just a vehicle for narrative, gossip is rather a ‘recon-
structive genre’ from which an account of events will emerge.10 This
study explores how this aspect of gossip creates, supports, and dev-
elops the power of phthonos across different contexts, public, private,
and secret.11 Gossip as a discourse may offer us an insight into those

9
See Eidinow (2011a) for use of cultural models to analyse ancient Greek
discourse about fate, luck, and fortune.
10
See Eidinow (2011b) for the ways in which narratives are crucial creative forces
in social networks: the stories that we tell are shaped by, but also help shape, the
context—the relationships and institutions—in which we tell them.
11
Riess (2012) has indicated envy as a link between courtroom and binding spells
(citing Eidinow 2007: 204 and 231, but rather misstating her approach, which turns
on risk management). He asserts (169) that ‘many forensic speeches must have been
motivated by envy’ and that ‘although envy could not be openly expressed in court
and was literally driven underground through the use of curse tablets, it still lingered
in the background of many lawsuits’. It is not clear why he argues that binding spells
had this effect. He does not examine the use of phthonos in forensic speeches; nor does
he provide analysis of the ways in which envy may be connected to magical action,
beyond mention of the evil eye (29, 165, 169, 177) and as a ritual to frame negative
emotions (177). The argument that ‘one could at least wish in malign magic what one
could not openly say in court’ (230) does not seem to take into account the substance
8 Envy, Poison, and Death
whose voices are rarely heard; but even when those voices are familiar,
the presence of gossip deepens our understanding of the dynamics that
lurk beneath the surface of our usual historical documents. Gossip
provides a lead into ‘the interstices of respectability’ by following
‘exactly the contours of local and regional concerns’.12 This approach Fofoca (gossip) como ação
goes beyond arguing that gossip reveals values and the formation of social
values—the context for social action—to assert that gossip is social
action. Thus, in our attempt to understand the historical past, it is
important to see how, why, where, and when particular nuggets of
gossip became credible, powerful—and, finally, acted upon.13
In doing so we gain insights into the ways in which people were
actively making sense of their surrounding environment. As demon-
strated by anthropological and historical work concerning other
times and places, gossip (with envy) is a ‘sense-making technique’,
and it frequently encompasses cosmological elements. Thus, local
explanations of otherwise inexplicable events within communities,
particularly misfortunes and suffering, though rooted in social ten-
sions, may include accusations of supernatural violence.14 Sometimes
such accusations, like gossip, identify people—not fate, or luck, or
accident—as the agency behind unfortunate experiences; sometimes
they seek out the role of the divine; often, the two are inextricable.15
This study similarly argues that the relationship between phthonos,
gossip, and the menace of supernatural power is inextricable. The
book’s fourth part, ‘Death’, examines the larger political and

and intent of forensic speeches, and is contradicted by his own argument that (228)
‘the new discourse on moderation and self-control had a profound impact on the
language inscribed on the early tablets by making them sound temperate and
restrained’.
12
White 1994: 78.
13
See Tonkin 1992: 89, as White 1994: 79. See Stewart and Strathern (2004: ix–x)
for the relationship between gossip and witchcraft in terms of a processual model of
social action.
14
Favret-Saada (1980: 6): ‘An onslaught by witchcraft, on the other hand, gives a
pattern to misfortunes which are repeated and range over the persons and belongings
of a bewitched couple.’ See also and perhaps most famously, Evans-Pritchard (1937:
63): ‘the concept of witchcraft provides a natural philosophy by which the relations
between men and unfortunate events are explained and a ready and stereotyped
means of reacting to such events. Witchcraft beliefs also embrace a system of values
which regulate human conduct.’
15
This is a topic of much ethnographic research: for example, see Evans-Pritchard
1937: 63–83 and 99–106. There is discussion in Stewart and Strathern 2004: passim,
but see especially 1–28, and Ashforth 2005: passim and especially 20–5.
 Introduction: Overview and Approach 9
economic situation of Athens in which such micro-social forces
might gain deadly traction. Finally, in the Epilogue the book explores
an additional psychoanalytical interpretation, introducing the idea of
social trauma to explain how individual concerns might be trans-
formed into group and/or civic action.
In making these connections, I am building on the insights of other
ancient scholars, who have noted the role of gossip in accusations of
magic;16 and, in a broader historical context, this is drawing on
studies of other times and places that have linked envy, gossip, and
supernatural power. In particular, one of the influences on this study
has been the approaches used in cross-cultural studies of the phe-
nomenon of witchcraft. This is, of course, not an argument for the
precise replication of historical or cultural circumstances across time
and place, and this book is certainly not claiming that these trials are
simply identifiable as the pursuit of ‘witches’ for ‘witch-craft’.17
Nevertheless, this book does explore the idea that these trials reveal
some familiar societal response, of a sort that has occurred within
other cultures within a certain pattern of circumstances: in some ways
the evocation of what has been called a synthetic image.18 It might
also be argued that witch-hunts offer one example, and the trials of

16
See, for example, Gordon 1999, Versnel 1999, and more recently Graf 2010. In
the same volume Edmonds III (2010) uses similar material to emphasize the uncer-
tainty of such accusations, also noted by Versnel (1999: 133). See also Salvo (2012:
260), whose analysis follows Versnel (2002: 73 and 37–40) in arguing that one
manifestation of these accusations (prayers for justice) was a form of social control,
and was intended to calm tensions (further discussed on pp. 221–3); and Sanders
(2014: 30) who mentions the link between gossip and phthonos and the evil eye, and
(45) briefly examines the link between envy and gossip.
17
Nor is this the approach of the work done in different disciplines on the
phenomenon of witchcraft across the world, which has stressed the crucial import-
ance of exploring this phenomenon against its cultural background, and helped to
clarify the wide variety and differences that emerge in the spaces between particular
cultural manifestations of a concept that may, at first, look very similar. Scholars in
this area have argued that a detailed reading of the social, political, legal, and religious
forces at work in the trial of any particular individual or coven is necessary. See, for
example, Roper 1994, Purkiss 1996, and Rowlands 2003. Stewart (2014 [2008]: 9)
notes the context of beliefs about the devil in Greece, which ‘never experienced a
phase of witchcraft persecutions during the late middle ages and renaissance’.
18
See Needham (1978: 41), who describes the make-up of synthetic images (they
comprise ‘primary factors’ such as certain numbers and colours) which capture the
imagination and persist across time, place, and culture, but importantly with specific
modifications. Galt (1982: 669) uses this to describe the cultural ubiquity of the
concept of the evil eye; Ostling (2011: 6) uses it to think about ‘the imagined witch’.
10 Envy, Poison, and Death
these ancient women another, of a moral panic, ‘a scare about a threat
or supposed threat from deviants or “folk devils”, a category of people
who, presumably engage in evil practices and are blamed for men-
acing a society’s culture, way of life, and central values. The word
“scare” implies that the concern over, fear of, or hostility toward the
folk devil is out of proportion to the actual threat that is claimed.’19
The important aspect here is not the specific activities or social
categories that are represented (although these play their part), but
the perceived threat that they present.
In reflecting on the nature of a society’s objects of fear, this book
picks up on some of the themes of a previous publication, Oracles,
Curses, and Risk, including the social construction of risk, explan-
ations of misfortune, the overlap between those social dynamics and
the search for responsibility and blame, and, finally, the point where
the fear of risk prompts action. In that earlier book, I examined the
selection of, and response to, risk at the level of the individual; in this
book I am interested in group selections and responses. Of course, the
two are inextricable, but it is precisely the nature of the interface, and
subsequent interaction, between individual and group that is of
interest here: why do individual emotions become so powerful?
What are the wider circumstances in which that occurs? And how
and why does a private feeling become a public action?

19
Goode and Ben-Yehuda 2009: 2, their italics. This is a debated topic in sociology,
but as the authors emphasize, this is not about panic in the sense of a headlong
stampede, but moral panic, although they regard both as (3) ‘emotionally charged
social phenomena entailing fright and anxiety.’
 1.2

The Evidence

To begin this inquiry we will first lay out the evidence for the
historical trials of Theoris, Ninon, and Phryne, and then examine
the concomitant (fictional) stories about similar trials.

THEORIS OF LEMNOS

Of the three women, we have most information about the trial of a

woman called Theoris, who appears briefly in three sources, repro-
duced below. These are a law-court speech by the fourth-century BCE
orator Demosthenes against a certain Aristogiton; a biography of
Demosthenes, written four hundred or so years later by the essayist
Plutarch; and a brief reference by a second-century CE lexicographer,
Harpocration, to the work of a Hellenistic historian, Philochorus.

οὑτοσί—τὰ μὲν ἄλλα σιωπῶ, ἀλλ᾽ ἐç᾽ οἷς ὑμεῖς τὴν μιαρὰν Θεωρίδα, τὴν
Λημνίαν, τὴν çαρμακίδα, καὶ αὐτὴν καὶ τὸ γένος ἅπαν ἀπεκτείνατε,
ταῦτα λαβὼν τὰ çάρμακα καὶ τὰς ἐπῳδὰς παρὰ τῆς θεραπαίνης αὐτῆς,
ἣ κατ᾽ ἐκείνης τότ᾽ ἐμήνυσεν, ἐξ ἧσπερ ὁ βάσκανος οὗτος πεπαιδοποίηται,
μαγγανεύει καὶ çενακίζει καὶ τοὺς ἐπιλήπτους çησὶν ἰᾶσθαι, αὐτὸς ὢν
ἐπίληπτος πάσῃ πονηρίᾳ.
Demosthenes 25.79–80
It was this man [Eunomus]—the other matters I will not mention—who
took the potions and incantations from the maidservant of Theoris of
Lemnos, the filthy sorceress whom you executed for those things, both her
and all her family.1 The maidservant informed against her mistress, and

1
See n. 13 for discussion of miaros, here translated as ‘filthy’.
12 Envy, Poison, and Death
this evildoer has had children by her, and with her help performs his tricks
and acts of deceit, and says he treats those who are seized by fits, when he
himself is caught in acts of wickedness of every kind.2

This first passage mentions Theoris in passing, during the trial of one
Aristogiton, a politician in Athens on trial as a state debtor.3 It is has
been argued that the speech was given sometime in 325/4 BCE, on the
basis of a reference made by the orator Dinarchus to the trial’s initial
speech for the prosecution (made by Lycurgus), in which his use of
the term ‘lastly’ is taken to indicate that the speech was fresh in his
audience’s minds.4 Dinarchus was speaking against Aristogiton after
the Harpalus affair in 323, and thus, it is argued, it is likely that this
speech dates to just before that time. This, of course, only gives us a
terminus ante quem for the events relating to Theoris that it describes.
Throughout this speech, Demosthenes is painting, in broad and
colourful strokes, a picture of Aristogiton’s family background as
shameful and chaotic. This description of Aristogiton’s twin brother
Eunomus, the man being discussed here, is intended to add to this
impression. Eunomus, we have been told earlier, has prosecuted his
brother for selling his sister (whose father, it is implied, was a slave,
25.55); his connection with Theoris, through her maidservant and her
magical paraphernalia, is clearly meant to imply the worst.
Theoris’ appearance is brief but vivid. Demosthenes describes her
as a pharmakis from Lemnos, which, since this trial takes place after
390, could still indicate that Theoris was an Athenian citizen rather
than marking her as foreign.5 The term pharmakis can be translated
as ‘witch’, but with a particular emphasis on the use of drugs.6 But the
meaning is more complex than this suggests, involving a significant
double ambiguity, also present in the related noun pharmaka, which
can be used to mean ‘drugs’ or ‘spells’ that may be either harmful or
healing (or both), and which may be either natural or supernatural
(or both).7 In this passage, pharmaka appear as one of the reasons for

2 3 4
Tr. Vince 1935. Following MacDowell 2009: 300–1. Ibid.: 298.
5
Since this is the date when it is thought that the Athenians regained control over
the island after losing it in the Peloponnesian War; see Salomon 1997: 76ff. and Cargill
1995: 13–14. Albeit, she could have been one of the ‘dispossessed’ of the island (see
Zelnick-Abramowitz 2004 and for further discussion on this aspect, pp. 14 and 64).
6
See, for example, Ogden 2002a: 98.
7
Scarborough (1991: 139) notes the use of pharmakon in Homer to mean magic,
charm, or enchantment, with appropriate adjectives to indicate what kind of effect it is
meant to elicit in each case. He argues that drugs were understood to comprise both
 The Evidence 13
Theoris’ execution: it seems that when Demosthenes says to the jurors
‘whom you executed for those things’, he is referring back to ta
pharmaka kai tas epoidas, ‘drugs/spells and incantations’. This is
the first appearance of this hendiadys; it will stay in use for some
time, coming to express a complex idea of secret knowledge and
supernatural power.8
Was Theoris practising harmful spells, and was that why she was
taken to court? She may have been engaged in such activities, but it is
difficult to establish that they were illegal in ancient Athens. Drawing
on evidence for such legislation from later periods risks overlooking the
very different context in which it emerged, and the changing profile of
‘magic’ as a category of ritual activity separate from ‘religion’.9 The
details that Demosthenes supplies about Eunomus’ activities may help
to position Theoris in a professional context: he notes that Eunomus
claims to be able to cure the falling sickness, or epilepsy.10 This sets
him, and perhaps therefore also her, in the realm of the self-proclaimed
experts in healing whom we find criticized by, for example, the author
of the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease.11 The author of that
text uses a list of abusive terms—magoi, kathartai, agurtai, alazones—to
describe those who, in his opinion, wrongly attribute the disease (among
others) to divine intervention, and thus prescribe katharmous . . . kai
epaoidas [sic] (‘purifications and incantations’), alongside other—as he
sees it—pointless prescriptions.12

supernatural and agricultural elements, and that the power of drugs was a result of
both their divine properties and the knowledge brought to bear by those who grew or
used them (162). Derrida (1981) analyses the rich semantic ambiguity of the term
pharmakon in the writings of Plato.
8
A ‘hendiadys’ is a figure of speech in which a single complex idea is expressed by
means of two words joined by a conjunction. For the long-term influence of this
hendiadys in the fourth century BCE ‘through the trial of cases involving harm caused
by magical means’, and its continued use, see Gordon 1999: 251. It seems still to be
potent in contemporary popular ideas about witchcraft (a Google search [02/05/2015]
for ‘witchcraft “spells and incantations” ’ produced 18,400 results). See pp. 167–8 for
further discussion of this phrase in the context of Xenophon’s recollections of Socrates.
9
As Hopfner 1928: 384. Ogden (1999: 83–4) argues ‘that harmful magical
practice was generally illegal throughout Graeco-Roman antiquity’, but struggles to
find evidence for Athens and has to admit that there was no ‘comprehensive outlaw-
ing of magic’; for a more cautious consideration, see Phillips 1991.
10 11
Dem. 25.80. This point made by Scarborough (2006: 23).
12
Hippoc. Morb. sacr. 2.3–4; he points out that they do this on the basis of claims to
being pious (θεοσεβέες, literally ‘god-honouring’) and of having superior knowledge.
14 Envy, Poison, and Death
To return to Theoris, if the kinds of ‘magical’ activities she prac-
tised were illegal, it would surely have been enough for Demosthenes
simply to point out that Eunomus practised this trade himself, with-
out further qualifying his remarks by reference to Theoris. The fact
that Demosthenes does not do this, and instead specifically calls this
woman to mind, suggests there was something further about her
practice that the audience was expected to find objectionable. This
is reinforced by Demosthenes’ use of the adjective miaros, which can
be translated as ‘filthy’, but can have the much stronger sense, ‘pol-
luted’, indicating a metaphysical stain.13 But the reasons for its use
remain unclear: it seems problematic to explain this as caused simply
by her use of pharmaka, which Eunomos has inherited and is using.
It may be, as Kai Trampedach has suggested, that this term is
associated with her description as ‘Lemnian’, and together these are
intended metaphorically to associate Theoris with the mythical
‘women of Lemnos’ who murdered their husbands.14 Trampedach
links this to the fact that, as Demosthenes observes, Theoris’ crime led
to the execution both of her and of her genos or clan. However, this is
not really equivalent to the killing of husbands that takes place in that
myth, and there is nothing, at least at first sight, in the passage that
suggests any similar crime. The term miara may be simply a term of
opprobrium, one that condemns and isolates Theoris.15

13
LSJ s.v. miaros. Some further examples of its use in this speech will help define its
area of meaning, and also help to illuminate the associations that the audience will
have with this term before it is used of Theoris. Demosthenes is building the
prosecution’s case by depicting Aristogiton as a thoroughly bad character. He uses
the adjective repeatedly to describe Aristogiton in terms of crimes, such as being a
state debtor, but still participating in civic activity (25.28); displaying unfit political
conduct (25.32); sycophancy (25.41); abandoning his father (exiled in Eretria) and
refusing to bury him (25.54); biting off a fellow prisoner’s nose, and swallowing it
(25.62); as well as in reflection on the collective activities comprising non-burial of his
father, sale of his sister, and the denunciation of Zobia (the metic woman who had
looked after him) for not paying the metic tax (25.58—the adjective is repeated). The
sense of miaros that emerges is of wrongdoing that (i) powerfully undermines the city,
(ii) is repulsive to right-thinking fellow-citizens, and (iii) cannot be forgotten or
forgiven. In Christian exorcisms and spells, the term is used as an adjective to describe
the devil and demons (my thanks to Charles Stewart for this latter point).
14
Trampedach 2001: 147.
15
Similarly, it is worth noting here that any possible ‘contamination’ which might
be thought to be the reason for Theoris being called miara does not seem to have
attached in any way to her magical paraphernalia. It seems to have been quite
acceptable for Eunomus to have inherited her tools and techniques and to go on to
use them, even if Demosthenes treats him and his activities with contempt.
 The Evidence 15
However, there may be a further reason that explains the intro-
duction of Theoris’ name here: she was, according to Plutarch’s Life of
Demosthenes, prosecuted by Demosthenes himself. If Demosthenes
wanted to remind his audience of his devotion to ridding the city of
evils, then introducing her name was a powerful interjection. The
description that Plutarch gives is brief, but introduces some new
material. The source of Plutarch’s information is unknown: as he
notes in the introduction to this ‘Life’, he used a variety of sources:16

κατηγόρησε δὲ καὶ τῆς ἱερείας Θεωρίδος ὡς ἄλλα τε ῥᾳδιουργούσης

πολλὰ καὶ τοὺς δούλους ἐξαπατᾶν διδασκούσης· καὶ θανάτου τιμησάμενος
ἀπέκτεινε.
Plutarch Demosthenes 14.4
He also accused the priestess Theoris of many other evil deeds, and in
particular of teaching slaves to deceive and he had her killed by fixing
the penalty as death.

There are a number of differences of detail with the preceding

Demosthenic passage: first, use of the term hiereia or ‘priestess’
carries far more implicit respect than the description there. Moreover,
as Plutarch’s use of this word in other parts of his voluminous
writings suggests, it indicates some role of leadership in a regular
ritual activity: an externally granted office, rather than a claim to
authority, with specific responsibilities towards a particular sanctuary
and the rites carried out there.17 Plutarch usually employs the
word with some indication of the goddess to which the priestess
was attached; this reference to Theoris stands out because it
lacks such an affiliation.18 New terms are also used to describe the

16
He cites over twenty names throughout the text, many of whom were writing
between the late fourth and late third centuries, most of whom are lost, as well as
alluding to oral sources at the end of the piece (Dem. 31.7); see Holden 1893: xi and
MacDowell 2009: 11. Theopompus’ name appears most closely to the detail about
Theoris, in connection with a story about Demosthenes’ refusal to conduct a certain
impeachment (he would not act as a sycophant). He was prosecutor in both the
examples that follow (a case against Antiphon, and the prosecution of Theoris);
however, this does not mean they have the same origin.
17
See Flower 2008: 189. The term hiereia is not found in dedicatory inscriptions for
portrait statues until the first half of the fourth century (see Connelly 2007: 135).
18
A selection: Tim. 8.1.2, a priestess of Persephone; Rom. 3.3.4, a priestess of
Hestia (that is a vestal virgin); Nic. 13.6.3, a priestess of Athena. These are examples
from other Lives, but there are further examples from across his other writings,
16 Envy, Poison, and Death
charges: ‘criminal deeds’ and ‘teaching slaves how to deceive’. The
former is simply too vague to evaluate, while the latter is difficult to
relate to Greek legal practice, and does not, at first sight, seem to be
relevant to our questions here about Theoris’ ritual activities.19
Rather, this seems to be concerned with social control, a theme that
is explored in a later section, and which may suggest a connection
between slaves and particular kinds of religious practice, although
none is mentioned explicitly here.
Finally, we turn to Harpocration, who cites the passage given above
from Demosthenes’ Against Aristogiton, but introduces a further set
of terms to describe both Theoris and her crime.

ΘΕΩΡΙΣ Δημοσθένης ἐν τῷ κατ’ Ἀριστογείτονος, εἰ γνήσιος. μάντις ἦν ἡ

Θεωρὶς, καὶ ἀσεβείας κριθεῖσα ἀπέθανεν, ὡς καὶ Φιλόχορος ἐν ςʹ γράçει.
Philochorus ap. Harpocration, s.v. Theoris
(Dindorf = FGrH 382 F 60)
THEORIS: Demosthenes in his speech Against Aristogiton, if legitimate.
Theoris was a mantis and was put to death on a charge of impiety, as
Philochorus writes in his sixth book.

First, the charge is here described as one of impiety (asebeia). Yet,

although this was, at least officially, an offence tried in the Athenian
courts, nevertheless, it is very difficult to define (and, probably for
that reason, it has been argued, was often used in legal battles between
political rivals).20 This source also introduces a further term to
describe Theoris: mantis is usually translated as ‘seer’, and custom-
arily indicates the practice of foretelling the future. However, it has
been argued that the appearance of a variety of terms for those who
practised supernatural arts is typical of ancient Greek evidence.21
Although each term may once have been used to denote a specific
skill, in general the ancient Greek market for such services does
not seem to have demanded so much precision. A mantis might
be involved in supernatural activities other than fortune-telling,

including De mul. virt. 257f1, a priestess of Artemis, and 262d2, a priestess of Demeter;
Para. 314f5, a priestess of Hera; and Quaest Rom. 292a6, a priestess of Athena.
19
Ziehen (1934: 2238) urges caution in our use of this passage of Plutarch and
suggests (2237) that this text indicates that Theoris taught her slaves how to poison.
20
See Cohen 1991, ch. 8; Todd 1996: 115, with n. 23.
21
See Bowden 2003: 61; also Eidinow 2007: 26–30; cf. Dillery 2005: 169–70.
 The Evidence 17
including the creation of pharmaka.22 Whether we agree or not,
across these three sources the specific nature of Theoris’ activities
remains vague, perhaps reflecting the imprecise reality of her actual
practice. However, it is the use of hiereia—indicating a more official
role—alongside the more loosely used terms mantis and pharmakis
that is most puzzling.23 We may gain some insight from a comparison
with our second case, that of Ninon.24

NINON

Ninon’s trial and execution is mentioned in passing by Demosthenes

in three speeches, their very brevity suggesting that the case in which
she was involved was well known to his audience. In the first passage,
Demosthenes is discussing the behaviour of Glaucothea, the mother
of his political opponent Aeschines. He says that she brought together
thiasoi in which Aeschines played an active, and somewhat embar-
rassing, role.25 Demosthenes then goes on to mention that there was
another hiereia or priestess who was executed for this kind of activity.

τὸν δ’ Ἀτρομήτου τοῦ γραμματιστοῦ καὶ Γλαυκοθέας τῆς τοὺς θιάσους

συναγούσης, ἐç’ οἷς ἑτέρα τέθνηκεν ἱέρεια, τοῦτον ὑμεῖς λαβόντες, τὸν τῶν
τοιούτων, τὸν οὐδὲ καθ’ ἓν χρήσιμον τῇ πόλει, οὐκ αὐτόν, οὐ πατέρα, οὐκ
ἄλλον οὐδένα τῶν τούτου, ἀçήσετε;
Demosthenes 19.281
And then, when you have in your power a son of Atrometus the
dominie, and of Glaucothea, the fuglewoman of those bacchanalian
routs for which another priestess suffered death, will you release the
son of such parents, a man who has never been of the slightest use to the
commonwealth, neither he, nor his father, nor any member of his
precious family?26

22
Pl. Resp. 364c.
23
See the discussion in Henrichs (2008: 5–6) on the terms for mantis and hiereus in
particular.
24
Most scholars give her name as Ninos, except for Collins (2001), who gives
Nino. In the sources her name appears in the accusative case: Ninon, so the nomina-
tive is unknown. In calling her Ninon, I have followed the appropriate entry in LGPN,
ii, Attica.
25 26
Dem.18.259–60. Tr. Vince and Vince 1926.
18 Envy, Poison, and Death
We learn the name of this priestess from one of the two ancient scholia
on this passage: it was ‘Ninon’. It seems that Ninon, like Glaucothea,
was organizing some form of cultic group.27 But the scholion that gives
Ninon’s name goes on to provide a very different explanation of her
activities, and this, in turn, diverges from those given by a second
scholion.28 The first comment, which names not only Ninon, but
also her prosecutor, goes on to link Demosthenes’ phrase, ‘what Glau-
cothea did’, to a non-existent antecedent ‘pharmaka’. It then explains
that Ninon was actually accused of making love potions (philtra) for
young people.29 In contrast, the second scholion, although it does not
give a name for the priestess, reads the Greek correctly, and elaborates
that it was her rituals (which mocked the Mysteries) which led to her
prosecution. It also offers an explanation as to why her activities led to
a court case, while Glaucothea was allowed to practise unharmed; some
scholars have argued that this is a creation of the scholiast.30

495a <ἐç’ οἷς ἑτέρα τέθνηκεν ἱέρεια>] ἐç’ οἷς çαρμάκοις καὶ ἄλλη ἱέρεια
τέθνηκεν. λέγει δὲ τὴν Νῖνον λεγομένην. κατηγόρησε δὲ ταύτης Μενεκλῆς
ὡς çίλτρα ποιούσης τοῖς νέοις.
495b ἐç’ . . . ἱέρεια] ἐξ ἀρχῆς γέλωτα εἶναι καὶ ὕβριν κατὰ τῶν ὄντως
μυστηρίων [ὅτι] τὰ τελούμενα ταῦτα (νομίζοντες) τὴν ἱέρειαν άπέκτειναν·

27
From the later fourth century onwards, the term thiasos appears to have been
used more regularly and specifically of subgroups within a phratry, and of organized
cultic groups. Earlier, there is evidence of its being used of gatherings or groups of
revellers or cult worshippers, some, perhaps, spontaneous; it might also be used more
generally to indicate a group or association. See discussions in Poland 1909: 16–22,
and on phratries esp. Lambert 1993: 81–93 and Andrewes 1961: 9–12. Arnaoutoglou
(2003: esp. 63–70) offers an overview of scholarship, and examines later use of
terminology; he also argues that originally thiasoi were not necessarily Dionysiac,
but simply convivial. Harp. and Suda s.v. Thiasos (theta 379 and 380, Adler) indicate it
has a religious purpose; Hesych., s.v. thiasos (theta 573), discusses choreutai, but no
specific religious setting. See IG II2 2343–61 for organized cult thiasoi dating mostly to
the end of the fourth century BCE. Revellers: Ar. Ran 156 and Eur. Bacch. 680. Group
or association: see Ar. Thesm. 41, Eur IA. 1059, Eur. Phoen. 796.
28
Scholia to Dem. 19.281: 495A and B (Dilts); see MacDowell 2000, esp. 327.
29
Dickie (2001: 52) discards this charge on the basis that although it may still have
been a part of Menecles’ case, it is a quite unexpected spin on the story that does not
emerge from the Demosthenic account. Hansen (1995: 26), albeit in a very brief
account, appears to accept it (she ‘was charged with having administered a potion,
probably an aphrodisiac, to her devotees of young people’).
30
Parker (1996: 194–5 n. 152) describes the oracle giving Glaucothea permission
as ‘a transparent scholiast’s invention to explain a supposed contradiction in the text’.
 The Evidence 19
μετὰ τοῦτο τοῦ θεοῦ χρήσαντος ἐᾶσαι γενέσθαι τὴν Αἰσχίνου μητέρα
μυεῖν ἐπέτρεψαν.
Scholia to Demosthenes 19.281: 495A and B (Dilts)
495a <for which another priestess was executed> for which spells/
potions another priestess was executed. He says it is Ninon that is
spoken of. Menecles accused her of making potions for young men.31
495b for which another priestess was executed] First of all, believing that
her initiations/services brought ridicule and insult to the real mysteries, they
executed the priestess; then, once the god had given permission through an
oracle, they allowed the mother of Aeschines to conduct initiations.

Two further passages of Demosthenes, from two speeches made

Against Boeotus, reveal a little more about Ninon’s accuser, Menecles.
In both he is given the epithet ‘the man who secured the conviction of
Ninon’ and described as one of the leaders of a gang of young
sycophants. In the first speech Demosthenes associates him with the
defendant of that case. But little further information is given about
Ninon in either of the speeches; rather, the case is referred to as if
everyone knew about it.32

νῦν δὲ λαχὼν δίκην τῷ πατρὶ τὠμῷ καὶ μεθ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ κατασκευάσας

ἐργαστήριον συκοçαντῶν, Μνησικλέα θ᾿, ὃν ἴσως γιγνώσκετε πάντες,
καὶ Μενεκλέα τὸν τὴν Νῖνον ἑλόντ᾿ ἐκεῖνον, καὶ τοιούτους τινάς, ἐδικάζεθ᾿
υἱὸς εἶναι çάσκων ἐκ τῆς Παμçίλου θυγατρὸς καὶ δεινὰ πάσχειν καὶ τῆς
πατρίδος ἀποστερεῖσθαι.
Demosthenes 39.2
But, as it is, he brought suit against my father, and having got up a gang
of blackmailers to support him—Mnesicles, whom you all probably
know, and that Menecles who secured the conviction of Ninon, and
others of the same sort—he went into court, alleging that he was my
father’s son by the daughter of Pamphilus, and that he was being
outrageously treated, and robbed of his civic rights.33

ἐπειδὴ δ᾿ οὗτος αὐξηθεὶς καὶ μεθ᾿ αὑτοῦ παρασκευασάμενος ἐργαστήριον

συκοçαντῶν, ὧν ἡγεμὼν ἦν Μνησικλῆς καὶ Μενεκλῆς ἐκεῖνος ὁ τὴν Νῖνον
ἑλών, μεθ᾿ ὧν οὗτος ἐδικάζετό μου τῷ πατρὶ çάσκων υἱὸς εἶναι ἐκείνου.
Demosthenes 40.9

31
See Dickie 2001: 51.
32 33
Dem. 39.2 and 40.9. Tr. Murray 1936.
20 Envy, Poison, and Death
But after Boeotus had grown up and had associated with himself a gang
of blackmailers, whose leaders were Mnesicles and that Menecles who
secured the conviction of Ninon, in connexion with these men he
brought suit against my father, claiming that he was his son.34

These speeches, while giving us little information about the trial

itself, do allow us to speculate about the date of the trial: Demos-
thenes 19 was delivered in 343 BCE, three years after the negotiations
that it discusses, but the speeches against Boeotus were made in 348
and 347 respectively, giving a slightly earlier terminus ante quem.35
The details of the latter speech may allow a possible further refine-
ment: they tell us that Boeotus had brought together his gang of
sycophants, including Menecles, before he prosecuted his father
Mantias (39.2 and 40.9), and we know that Mantias died before
358 BCE (when Mantitheus initiated a prosecution against Boeotus
and his mother Plangon).36 Demosthenes’ phrasing does not make it
certain that Menecles had already charged Ninon by the time that
Boeotus met him, but it is certainly possible from what he says, since
the implication is that Boeotus was establishing connections with
some disreputable characters. If this is the case, then the trial of
Ninon could well have taken place before 358 BCE. If we want to
narrow it down still further, we can work with the approximate
age of the protagonist of these speeches: MacDowell argues that
Mantitheus was born around 380 BCE.37 If Boeotus demanded to be
registered in the deme Thorikos after his brother had been regis-
tered, then that must have been soon after 362 BCE. This may mean,
therefore, that the trial of Ninon can be located as occurring between
362 and 358 BCE.38 This brings her a little closer in time to the case of
Glaucothea, who, if Aeschines was born around 390 BCE, would
presumably have required (oracular) permission sometime between

34
Tr. Murray 1936.
35
MacDowell (2009: 74) notes that trials were not held in the latter part of 349/8
BCE because there were insufficient funds to pay juries (citing Dem. 39.17).
36
See Dem. 40.3 and 18.
37
On the grounds that Mantitheus was a taxiarch in 349/8 (39.16–17) and that to
hold that office it was necessary to be around 30 years old.
38
Trampedach (2001: 138) states that the trial took place in 350 BCE, but most
scholars do not try to identify a specific date: Dickie (2001: 52): in ‘the 350s or 340s’;
Parker (2005a: 163): the fourth century; Versnel (1999: 115): ‘Somewhere in the fourth
century, at any rate before 343 BCE’.
 The Evidence 21
380 and 370 BCE—before her son reached manhood and began to
assist her, as Demosthenes describes.39
Further, but clearly unreliable information about what happened
next is added by Dionysius of Halicarnassus writing about the orator
Dinarchus, and the speech Against Menecles that was attributed to
him: ‘For the defendant is the Menecles who successfully accused the
priestess Ninon, and who was prosecuted by her son.’40 However, he
goes on to observe that this is a spurious attribution since Dinarchus
would have been too young to deliver the speech:

Κατὰ Μενεκλέους ἀπαγωγῆς· ῾ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, καὶ τῶν νόμων καθ᾿

οὕς.᾿ καὶ οὗτος εἴρηται παιδὸς ὄντος ἔτι Δεινάρχου. ὁ μὲν γὰρ κρινόμενός
ἐστι Μενεκλῆς ὁ τὴν ἱέρειαν Νῖνον ἑλών, ὁ δὲ κατηγορῶν υἱὸς τῆς Νίνου.
ἔστι δὲ ταῦτα πρεσβύτερα τῆς Δεινάρχου ἀκμῆς. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Δημοσθένους
περὶ τοῦ ὀνόματος [δεδηλώκαμεν] λόγος, ἐν ᾧ τούτων μέμνηται, κατὰ
Θέελλον ἢ Ἀπολλόδωρον ἄρχοντα τετέλεσται, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ Δη-
μοσθένους δεδηλώκαμεν. εἰ δ᾿ ὡς τεθνηκότος ἤδη τοῦ Μενεκλέους ὁ
Δημοσθένης ἐκεῖ μέμνηται λέγων· ῾ἑωρᾶτε γὰρ πάντες αὐτὸν χρώμενον,
ἕως ἔζη, Μενεκλεῖ᾿, παλαιὸς λόγος τίς ἐστιν. ὅτι δὲ οὗτος ὁ Μενεκλῆς, ἐν
αὐτῷ τῷ λόγῳ δεδήλωκεν ὁ κατηγορῶν.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus Dinarchus 11
Against Menecles, on his arrest: ‘Gentlemen of the jury, even of the laws
by which . . .’ This too was delivered when Dinarchus was still a minor: for
the defendant is the Menecles who secured the conviction of the priestess
Ninon, and the prosecutor is the son of Ninon. These events are earlier
than the prime of Dinarchus: for the speech of Demosthenes On the
Name, in which he recalls these events, was completed during the archon-
ship either of Theëllus or of Apollodorus, as we have shown in our work
on Demosthenes. And if Demosthenes is referring to Menecles as already
dead when he says ‘For you all observed his association with Menecles
while Menecles lived’, the speech is an old one; and that this Menecles is
the one in question the prosecutor has shown in the speech itself.41

Finally, the first-century Jewish historian and priest Josephus sup-

plies us with a very specific charge: he gives a list of those put to
death by the Athenians because they ‘uttered a word about the gods
contrary to their laws’. Mostly consisting of men, the list includes

39
Dem. 18.258; Harris 1988 and Trampedach 2001: 138.
40
Dion. Hal. Din. 11; see Dickie 2001: 52.
41
Tr. Usher 1974; slightly adapted.
22 Envy, Poison, and Death
such famous characters as Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diagoras, and
Protagoras. However, if we accept the emendation of nun, then
the name of the woman may be ‘Ninon’—otherwise it could be a
reference to Theoris, or another unlucky priestess.42

τί δὲ δεῖ θαυμάζειν, εἰ πρὸς ἄνδρας οὕτως ἀξιοπίστους διετέθησαν, οἵ γε

μηδὲ γυναικῶν ἐçείσαντο; Νῖνον γὰρ τὴν ἱέρειαν ἀπέκτειναν, ἐπεί τις αὐτῆς
κατηγόρησεν, ὅτι ξένους ἐμύει θεούς· νόμῳ δ᾿ ἦν τοῦτο παρ᾿ αὐτοῖς κεκω-
λυμένον καὶ τιμωρία κατὰ τῶν ξένον εἰσαγόντων θεὸν ὥριστο θάνατος.
Josephus Against Apion 2.267–8
Can one wonder at their attitude towards men of such authority when
they did not spare even women? They put Ninon the priestess to death,
because someone accused her of initiating people into the mysteries of
foreign gods; this was forbidden by their law, and the penalty decreed
for any who introduced a foreign god was death.43

Along with the second scholion to Demosthenes’ 19.281 cited above,

Josephus’ account suggests that there was a profound intolerance in
Athens of religious innovations. However, this statement has been
received by scholars with different degrees of scepticism. Some have
dismissed it out of hand, arguing that it originates in Josephus’
experience of his own Jewish culture and that there is no contempor-
ary evidence that supports this, and only a very little from a later
period.44 Others have argued that although there may have been a law
against the introduction of foreign gods, it is difficult to identify just
what it comprised and/or how it developed;45 moreover, for those

42
Dover (1975) argues that this is based on a tract written by Demetrius of
Phaleron intended to describe how there has always been tension between Athenian
people and intellectuals, and illustrating this with a description of the fifth-century
trials for impiety.
The emendation that results in the identification of Ninon is adopted by St.
J. Thackeray (1926), who attributes it to Weil; the emendation appears in Blum 1902.
43
Tr. Thackeray 1926.
44
See Trampedach 2001: 140; later supporting evidence for Josephus is found in
Serv. Aen. 8.187: ‘Among the Athenians, it was stipulated that no one be allowed to
introduce religious cults [or ‘objects’]: for which reason Socrates was condemned to
death’ (‘cautum fuerat apud Athenienses ne quis introduceret religiones: unde et
Socrates damnatus est’). However, Krauter (2004: 237) argues that Servius worked
from the same sources that we have and used these to come to his conclusion about
the existence of a law (rather than the other way around).
45
See Derenne 1930: 223–36; Rudhardt 1960; Versnel 1990: 123–30; Parker 1996:
214–17.
 The Evidence 23
taking this position, the consensus seems to be that even if such a law
was available, it was seldom used.46 In the context of this discussion it
is also important to note that the various sources draw attention to
two different kinds of innovation. The scholion appears to condemn
the introduction of new activities in light of existing practices, while
Josephus’ comments emphasize the crime of religious practice that
introduced foreign gods. These two sources do not mention other
ritual activities—for example spells of some description designed for
young people—that the scholia interject; and none of our sources for
Ninon’s case uses the term asebeia. The question of Athenian intoler-
ance will be considered in the next section, but, as we shall see, these
charges against Ninon are echoed, to a certain extent, in those that
were brought against the hetaira, Phryne.

PHRYNE

Represented in court by the renowned fourth-century orator Hyper-

ides, Phryne was the only one of these three women to be acquitted.
The date of her trial is uncertain, but it probably occurred between
350 and 340 BCE.47 The case has received a great deal of attention,
both ancient and modern, and it provides, at least in comparison with
those of the other women discussed here, a wealth of evidence. The
reasons for this are manifold, and touch on some of the themes
discussed already in the introduction. In particular, the celebrity of
the characters involved and especially their occupations, seem to have
captured the imagination of commentators.

46
e.g. Parker (1996: 216): ‘In practice therefore individuals seem to have “intro-
duced new gods” with some freedom . . . They were called to account only if they or
their religious associations proved objectionable on other grounds.’ And, despite a
later description of the suspicions generated by foreign cults (1990: 102), Versnel also
notes that (128) ‘Many private cults of foreign gods must have passed unnoticed or
were condoned.’
47
Raubitschek (1941: 904) gives this date on the basis of the report that Anaxim-
enes wrote Euthias’ speech, and must have done this before Anaximenes’ arrival in
Macedonia, the date of which is uncertain. The Suda, s.v. Anaximenes (alpha 1989,
Adler) describes Anaximenes tutoring Alexander (late 340s); on the basis of his
dedication to Alexander of the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, Berve (1926, ii: 35–6)
suggests that Anaximenes knew Alexander before 342 BCE; Flower (1997: 21–3)
suggests Anaximenes may have been at the court by 343/2 BCE.
24 Envy, Poison, and Death
The story of the trial that survives offers a beguiling blend of fact and
fiction. Hyperides’ speech, hugely admired in antiquity, became a victim
of its own success.48 Although only fragments survive, the speech is
perhaps best known for what it was said to have achieved without words:
a peroration in which Hyperides opened Phryne’s clothing to reveal her
breasts. But this startling scene in fact almost certainly never occurred.
Plutarch and Athenaeus both provide a description of this moment,
their respective versions each giving a slightly different emphasis:

ὡμιληκὼς δέ, ὡς εἰκός δή, καὶ Φρύνῃ τῇ ἑταίρᾳ ἀσεβεῖν κρινομένῃ

συνεστάθη· αὐτὸς γὰρ τοῦτο ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ λόγου δηλοῖ· μελλούσης δ᾿
αὐτῆς ἁλίσκεσθαι, παραγαγὼν εἰς μέσον καὶ περιρρήξας τὴν ἐσθῆτα
ἐπέδειξε τὰ στέρνα τῆς γυναικός· καὶ τῶν δικαστῶν εἰς τὸ κάλλος ἀπι-
δόντων, ἀçείθη.
Plutarch Lives of the Ten Orators 849e
And, as it is indeed reasonable to suppose, it was because he had been
intimate also with Phryne the courtesan that when she was on trial for
impiety he became her advocate; for he makes this plain himself at the
beginning of his speech. And when she was likely to be found guilty, he led
the woman out into the middle of the court and, tearing off her clothes,
displayed her breasts. When the judges saw her beauty, she was acquitted.49

ἦν δ᾿ ἡ Φρύνη ἐκ Θεσπιῶν, κρινομένη δὲ ὑπὸ Εὐθίου τὴν ἐπὶ θανάτῳ

ἀπέçυγεν· διόπερ ὀργισθεὶς ὁ Εὐθίας οὐκ ἔτι εἶπεν ἄλλην δίκην, ὥς çησιν
Ἕρμιππος. ὁ δὲ Ὑπερείδης συναγορεύων τῇ Φρύνῃ, ὡς οὐδὲν ἤνυε λέγων
ἐπίδοξοί τε ἦσαν οἱ δικασταὶ καταψηçιούμενοι, παραγαγὼν αὐτὴν εἰς
τοὐμçανὲς καὶ περιρήξας τοὺς χιτωνίσκους γυμνά τε τὰ στέρνα ποιήσας
τοὺς ἐπιλογικοὺς οἴκτους ἐκ τῆς ὄψεως αὐτῆς ἐπερρητόρευσεν δεισιδαι-
μονῆσαί τε ἐποίησεν τοὺς δικαστὰς τὴν ὑποçῆτιν καὶ ζάκορον Ἀçροδίτης
ἐλέῳ χαρισαμένους μὴ ἀποκτεῖναι.
Athenaeus Deipnosophistae 590d–e
Phryne was from Thespiai, and when Euthias successfully indicted her,
she escaped the death penalty; Euthias was so angry about this that he
never argued another case, according to Hermippus.50 Hyperides spoke
in support of Phryne, and when his speech accomplished nothing, and

48
For the fragments, see Jensen 1917, who provides ten (frr. 171–180); cf. Marzi
1977, who supplies only eight, but retains Jensen’s numbering. O’Connell (2013)
proposes a further fragment in Poll. 8.123–4 (see discussion on p. 30, n. 74). Ancient
praise: Quint. Inst. 10.5.2; Dion. Hal. De imit. 5.6; [Longinus] Subl. 34.2–4.
49 50
Tr. Fowler 1936. Hermippos FGrH 1026 F 46 (= 68a I Wehrli).
 The Evidence 25
the jurors seemed likely to convict her, he brought her out in public,
ripped her dress to shreds, exposed her chest, and at the conclusion of
his speech produced cries of lament as he gazed at her, causing the
jurors to feel a superstitious fear of this priestess and temple-attendant
of Aphrodite, and to give in to pity rather than put her to death.51

Plutarch stresses the impact of her beauty, but Athenaeus gives the
scene a distinctly religious tinge. His account describes her as the
‘servant and devotee of Aphrodite’ (which, it has been suggested, may
be Hyperides’ own formulation); moreover, we learn that the display of
Phryne’s body prompted in the jurors a profound sense of religious
awe (deisidaimonesai).52 This story hints at others that make a similar
divine association: for example, Athenaeus relates how Phryne removed
her clothes and let down her hair in front of everyone at the Eleusinian
festival, inspiring the artist Apelles to create his Aphrodite Anadyo-
mene.53 In relating this detail, Athenaeus does not condemn Phryne’s
behaviour; rather the implication is that this woman, in her body
and behaviour, and above all in her beauty, teetered on the divine.
And finally, according to Athenaeus, the plaintiff Euthias was appar-
ently so upset by the outcome of the trial that he never prosecuted again.
Across these two accounts there is surely some irony, and no little
humour.
Although numerous modern scholars have accepted the account of
the trial at more or less face value, it seems likely that its infamous
culmination was an invention.54 Athenaeus’ patchwork of anecdotes
enables us to pinpoint the timing of its creation when he quotes
another version of the scene preserved in verses from the Ephesian
Woman of Posidippus, a writer of comedies active from around 290
BCE. The extract describes how Phryne stood before the Heliaia on a
capital charge, ‘said to have corrupted all the citizens’, but pleaded in
tears with the judges, and so saved herself. Despite its comic potential,
no mention is made of Hyperides or the infamous peroration.55
It suggests that this memorable incident, far from providing a histor-
ical report, was developed sometime after 290 BCE. Scholars have

51 52 53
Tr. Olson 2010. See Naiden 2006: 102. Ath. 13.591f.
54
As Cooper (1995: 305–6) notes: see Cantarelli 1885: 465–82; Semenov 1935:
271–9; Foucart 1902: 216–18; Raubitschek 1941: 893–907; Kowalski 1947: 50–62; to
which we can add Versnel (1990: 118), who refers to the ‘unconventional methods of
her counsel’ and does not question it.
55
Ath. 13.591e–f.
26 Envy, Poison, and Death
identified its originator as either Idomeneus of Lampsacus, who wrote
a work on the Athenian demagogues, or Hermippus of Smyrna, or
perhaps a combination of the two.56 Moreover, this was not the only
embellishment. These two accounts, prefaced as they are by descrip-
tions of Hyperides’ multiple relationships with a variety of prostitutes
kept at a number of locations, draw on a biographical fiction that
depicts Euthias and Hyperides going to court to fight over the famous
hetaira.57
These elaborations do not mean we should throw out the whole
briefing with the biography. There is some historical evidence to
support the idea that Hyperides and Phryne were known to be
connected, since other enemies of Hyperides also brought cases
against Phryne.58 And a political motivation seems the most obvious
explanation, especially since Hyperides apparently accused Euthias of
being a sycophant.59 In the end, whichever viewpoint we take, it is
clear that we need to approach this material with some awareness of
the ways in which the layers of storytelling have been assembled, and
the strong appeal of such narratives to both ancient and modern
imaginations.
Let us start with the original charges made against Phryne, which
are summarized in an anonymous treatise on rhetoric (techne tou

56
Bollansée (1999: 386 n. 22) gives a succinct overview of the different attributions;
as noted there, Cooper (1995: 304 and 312–16) has suggested a combination of the
two ancient authors.
57
Cooper 1995: 303–18. Described in Ath. 13.590d and Plut. X orat 849e, who
claim to be drawing on Hyperides’ own speech, probably Hyp. fr. 172 (Jensen =
Syrianus Ad Hermogenem 4.120 Walz). See Cooper 1995: 309–10: Idomeneus was
probably the first to interpret the passage in this way, but it becomes part of the
biographical tradition about the orator (e.g. see Alciphron 4.4.4 and 5).
58
Other accusations made against Phryne by enemies of Hyperides: Aristogiton,
described in Ath. 13.591e.
59
Sycophant: Harpocration, s.v. Euthias (= Suda s.v. Euthias, epsilon 3497, Adler)
reports that Hyperides accused Euthias of this (Hyp. fr. 176 Jensen); it was supported
in antiquity by the tradition that Anaximenes of Lampsacus had been hired by Euthias
to write his speech (see Hermippus FGrH 1026 F 67). Other motivations put forward
by modern scholars include Raubitschek (1941: 904), who suggests that Euthias was
trying to avoid paying Phryne her fee. This is based on Alciphron 4.3.1 (= Hyp. fr.
179) in which a hetaira called Bacchis complains to Hyperides that Euthias’ prosecu-
tion of Phryne threatens any hetaira chasing a fee—and may mean a charge of asebeia;
and Alciphron 4.5.3 (= Hyp. fr. 179), which depicts Bacchis scolding another hetaira
called Myrrhine for turning to Euthias to revenge herself on Hyperides (see O’Connell
2013: 113–14).
 The Evidence 27
politikou logou), and are followed by what is usually taken to be the
actual epilogue of the prosecutor of the case, Euthias.60

οἷον, ἀσεβείας κρινομένη Φρύνη· καὶ γὰρ ἐκώμασεν ἐν Λυκείῳ, καινὸν

εἰσήγαγε θεόν, καὶ θιάσους ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν συνήγαγεν. Ἐπέδειξα
τοίνυν ὑμῖν ἀσεβῆ Φρύνην, κωμάσασαν ἀναιδῶς, καινοῦ θεοῦ εἰσηγήτριαν,
θιάσους ἀνδρῶν ἐκθέσμους καὶ γυναικῶν συναγαγοῦσαν.
Phryne charged with asebeia. For she held a komos in the Lyceum. She
introduced a new god and she held thiasoi for men and women.
(Euthias) ‘So I have shown that Phryne is impious because she joined
in a shameless komos, because she has organized the introduction of a
new god, and unlawful thiasoi for both men and women.’

Phryne’s impiety is linked here with what appear to be a list of three

separate charges: the joining in of a ‘shameless’ komos, the introduc-
tion of a new god, and the assembly of mixed-sex thiasoi. The first
and the third accusations are perhaps the most puzzling. Why should
Phryne’s komos—which is something like a religious festival or
celebration—have been described as shameless?
One reason may be the reference in the summary to the public
space where these gatherings took place. The Lyceum lay outside the
walls of the city, to the south-east. Although it eventually became
famous as a philosophical school, it was originally a sanctuary dedi-
cated to Apollo Lyceus and it retained this association.61 This god
was, as Michael Jameson has clarified, very much concerned with the
hoplite citizens of the community, and the use of this space reflected
this ideology.62 During the Archaic and Classical periods it was used
for mustering troops, military drills, and exercise, with perhaps an
Archaic gymnasium, and then under Pericles a more elaborate set of
buildings; it may be that the gymnasium was part of a larger sanctuary
space.63 The Assembly also seems to have met there before the Pnyx

60
Anonymous Seguerianus 215 = Euthias fr. 2 Baiter–Sauppe = Spengel 1.390.
61
According to Paus. 1.9.3, and see SEG 19.227.
62
See discussion in Trampedach 2001: 143, and Hintzen-Bohlen 1997.
63
Kyle 1993: 78, and see Jameson 1980, Travlos 1980, and Lynch 1972. Harpocration
(s.v. Lykaion) notes the disagreement among the sources about the dates of the gymnasia
(Theopompus FGrH 115 F136 attributes it to Pisistratus, while Philochorus FGrH 328 F 37
associates it with Pericles; Hesychius, s.v. Lykaion kai Thumbraion (lambda 1368), agrees
with the latter). Xen. Eq. mag. 3.1.6–7 describes cavalry displays; Ar. Pax 353–7 marshal-
ling troops; Xen. Hell. 1.1.33 military drills; a gymnasium structure and trainers are found
in Pl. Euthphr. 272d–273b and Socratic Aeschines fr. 15 Krauss (see Lynch 1972: 15).
28 Envy, Poison, and Death
was established as a permanent location.64 As well as gathering to
exercise or for military and civic purposes, the Platonic dialogues also
suggest that individuals would meet there to talk, perform, and
debate.65 Since this would mean the presence of a number of young
men, it may be that the charge had connotations of the corruption of
youth (recalling the charges made against Socrates). With the emend-
ation of a word, this charge may also be traceable in the extract from
Posidippus, quoted in Athenaeus: what reads now as corruption of ‘all
the citizens’ (tous bious), may in fact be corruption of the youth (tous
neous).66
Another reason for the disapproval of the komos may lie in
the nature of the groups assembled there; indeed, the thiasoi are
described as ‘unlawful’. However, the grounds for use of this term
are not made clear. It seems unlikely that legal approval was needed to
hold such a gathering, and a law attributed to Solon (from the far later
Digest), suggests that a thiasos was recognized as legal so long as it did
not infringe ‘public law’; however, the date and thus the specific
contextual concerns of this passage are much debated.67 The presence
of individuals of both genders may have been the problem. Women
were certainly involved in thiasoi (think of Lysistrata’s gripe at the
beginning of Aristophanes’ play of that name that her sisters are
always ready to trot off to random religious festivals)—but were
these usually single-sex events?68 In general, the epigraphic evidence
that could illuminate this question is available only for later periods.
However, a few inscriptions survive that appear to be lists of thiasotai
and these include both male and female names.69 Other sources also

64
IG I3 105.
65
End of fifth century: Socrates and his companions in Euthyd. 271a, Euthphr. 2a,
Symp. 223d; Prodicus of Keos in [Plato] Eryxias 397c–d; and Protagoras in Diog.
Laert. 9.54. Isocrates taught rhetoric in the Lyceum during the first half of the fourth
century BCE, as did other sophists and philosophers. Performances of poetry are
mentioned in Alexis fr. 25 K-A, Antiphanes fr. 120 K-A, and Isoc. 12.18–20 and 33.
66
See Cooper 1995: 314 n. 28.
67
Dig. 47.22.4 (= Solon fr. 76a Ruschenbusch); see Versnel (1990: 119 n. 92), who
appears to interpret it as evidence that all gatherings had to be ratified by public law,
but it seems more likely that it renders any association a legal person for the purpose
of enacting agreements, provided those agreements are themselves legal in their terms
(with thanks to Robin Osborne, priv. comm.).
68
Ar. Lys. 1–5.
69
See Jones 1999: 307–10 (App. 1). IG II2 2346, first half of the fourth century:
Aristola, l.100 and Agathokleia, l.105, although the end of the word here is supple-
mented; IG II2 2347 (Salamis, second half of the fourth century, but see Threatte
 The Evidence 29
offer some insight. For example, from Demosthenes’ attacks on
Aeschines it becomes apparent that the revels of Glaucothea—
initiations into the mysteries of the god Sabazius—involved both
men and women, while imagery from vases may indicate that
both men and women could be present at ecstatic religious revels.70
In another source, Harpocration, a different kind of disapproval of
these gatherings is evinced. They are now described as single-sex, but
comprise women of much lower status and, Harpocration suggests
rather coyly, of doubtful virtue:

Ὑπερείδης ἐν τῷ ὑπὲρ Φρύνης. ξενικός τις δαίμων, ᾧ τὰ δημώδη γύναια

καὶ μὴ πάνυ σπουδαῖα ἐτέλει.
Harpocration, s.v. Isodaites (Dindorf )
Mentioned by Hyperides in his oration for Phryne. Some foreign
daimon in whose honour women of the lower classes and particularly
the ones that did not excel in virtue used to hold teletai.71

This brings us to the question of the god, according to Harpocration

one called Isodaites. Described as ‘foreign’ in this definition, and as
‘new’ in the other extract, the name is nevertheless a Greek word, and
was recognized as an epithet of Dionysus in later sources, although
there is also evidence, from Hesychius, that the name was associated
with Pluto, either as a name of that god, or as the name of his son.72
The name, meaning something like ‘equal shares’, may, at least at
first, carry insinuations to modern ears of some kind of social pro-
gramme, but as an epithet or name of Dionysus it more probably
alludes to the joys (and pains?) of drinking wine.73 The possible risks

1980: 661), face B right col. 2 includes (l.30–3) Parthenion, Hesychia, Erotis,
Aitherion; see discussion in Ascough (2003: 55), who notes that these women were
not identified with reference to fathers or husbands.
70
Dem. 18.259ff. and see also 19.199 for Glaucothea; for the image of women and
men celebrating what appears to be worship in honour of Cybele on the Ferrara krater
(dated 440–430 BCE), see Dillon 2002: 160–1. Parker (2005a: 326 n. 126) doubts the
arguments from iconography put forward by Moraw (1998: 199–200, 259) that mixed
private thiasoi developed in the fifth century; however, these show Dionysiac revels
involving satyrs and maenads.
71
Tr. Versnel 1990: 119.
72
Harp. s.v. Isodaites; Hyp. fr. 177; Plut. De E 398a; or Pluto (Hesych. s.v. Isodaites
[iota 952]).
73
As Versnel (1990: 119 n. 93) notes: Eur. Bacch. 421–3: ‘In equal measure to rich
and humble he gives the griefless joy of wine.’
30 Envy, Poison, and Death
of introducing worship of a new divinity into Athens will be discussed
in more detail in the next section, but it should be noted here first that
‘Isodaites’ does not sound like a new god or even a foreign god;
moreover, Harpocration’s phrasing also suggests that such assemblies
in honour of such a god were not, in fact, such a rare event.
Perhaps it was instead the way in which these meetings were
being organized that contravened acceptable religious practice?
Some indication of this may survive in fragments of the speech by
Hyperides that include some terminology from the Eleusinian Mys-
teries referring to the revelatory aspect of the Mysteries’ ritual:
anepopteutos ‘someone who has not experienced the epopteia’ and
epopteukoton ‘the people who have experienced the epopteia’.74 It
has been suggested that these were references to the participants of
Phryne’s rites, but Peter O’Connell has argued that it seems more
likely that these references to aspects of the Eleusinian Mysteries
were part of Hyperides’ rhetorical strategy, offering a way of ridi-
culing Euthias’ attack on Phryne.75 Instead, the teletai may bring
with it associations with independent ritual practitioners, like those
agurtai (‘beggar-priests’) and manteis described by Plato as knock-
ing on rich men’s doors and trying to sell a range of supernatural
services.76
We end this discussion of the evidence for Phryne’s trial, as we did
for those of the other women, trying to configure a scattering of vivid
splinters of evidence. Anecdotes and arguments, assumptions and
archetypes: the pieces can be assembled now one way, now another.
In Phryne’s case, perhaps, we can see the creative process most clearly
at work, as the figure of the ‘celebrity hetaira’—already a fabrication—
is gradually muffled in further layers of fiction.

74
Hyperides frr. 174 and 175 (Jensen) = Harp. anepopteutos and epopteukoton,
respectively.
75
Foucart 1902: 216–18 and Marzi 1977: 306–7; Raubitschek (1941: 905) argues
that the terms refer specifically to the ritual bathing of the participants, but see
O’Connell 2013: 111. O’Connell argues that Hyperides provided an extensive descrip-
tion of legal procedures for cases involving the Eleusinian Mysteries; he suggests that
Poll. 8.123–4, which also includes these rare terms for participants, comprises a
missing fragment from that speech. For ridicule as one of Hyperides’ rhetorical
weapons, see O’Connell 2013: 114–15, Cooper 1995: 301–12, Bartolini 1977: 118.
O’Connell also suggests that Hyp. fr. 198 (Jensen) may indicate that another line of
attack was to imply that Euthias was guilty of some misdemeanour with regard to
the Mysteries.
76
Pl. Resp. 365a.
 The Evidence 31
FICTIONAL WOMEN

In addition to these historical cases, a number of fictional accounts of

women being taken to court convey some more murderous stereo-
types. These narratives bear a striking similarity to the historical cases:
they each feature a woman who has been taken to court because she has
used either pharmaka or incantations. They suggest that the figure of a
woman standing trial for supernatural activities may have become a
stock figure of the cultural imaginary of ancient Greek society.
The first is an Aesop’s fable. From among the many manuscript
variants, two versions of the story have been gathered: one, listed first
below, is probably from the oldest rescension of the fables, the
Augustana; the other from more recent rescensions.77

a) Γυνὴ μάγος. Γυνὴ μάγος ἐπῳδὰς καὶ καταθέσεις θείων μηνιμάτων

ἐπαγγελλομένη διετέλει πολλὰ τελοῦσα καὶ ἐκ τούτων οὐ μικρὰ βιοπορ-
ιστοῦσα. ἐπὶ τούτοις γραψάμενοί τινες αὐτὴν ὡς καινοτομοῦσαν περὶ τὰ
θεῖα, εἰς δίκην ἀπήγαγον καὶ κατηγορήσαντες κατεδίκασαν αὐτὴν ἐπὶ
θανάτῳ. θεασάμενος δέ τις αὐτὴν ἀπαγομένην ἐκ τῶν δικαστηρίων ἔçη·
ὦ αὕτη, σὺ τὰς τῶν δαιμόνων ὀργὰς ἀποτρέπειν ἐπαγγελλομένη, πῶς οὐδὲ
ἀνθρώπους πεῖσαι ἠδυνήθης; Τούτῳ τῷ λόγῳ χρήσαιτο ἄν τις πρὸς
γυναῖκα πλάνον, ἥτις τὰ μείζονα κατεπαγγελλομένη τοῖς μετρίοις ἀδύνα-
τος ἐλέγχεται.
Aesop Fables no. 56 (Perry 1952)
A female magos who promised to make incantations that calmed the
anger of the gods did a good trade and from these activities made a
handsome living. On these grounds, certain people charged her with
innovating in divine matters and they accused her and condemned her
to death. A certain person, seeing her leaving the court, said to her: ‘You
claim to be able to calm the anger of the gods, how come you could not
persuade ordinary mortals?’ Someone might use this tale against a

77
I have used the variants given by Chambry 1925/6: no. 91 (but using Perry 1952:
no. 56 for the older version). See Perry 1936 and Kurke 2011: 43–5 for an overview of
the complexity of the prose fable tradition. Perry (1952: 156) argues that although we
cannot know the history of the Augustana before the tenth century, it is likely that it
reflects ‘an ancient recension or combination of recensions, dating from sometime
between the death of Alexander and the third century after Christ’. It has been argued
that Demetrius of Phaleron was the first to collect Aesop’s fables, in the fourth century
BCE, and that the Augustana has aspects that reveal an Athenian influence (see Diog.
Laert. 5.80 with Perry 1936; also Keller 1862: 361; Perry 1959: 32–5.) Perry (1962: 340)
suggests that we may have the text ‘of Demetrius himself ’ in PRyl.
32 Envy, Poison, and Death
wandering woman, who although she promises greater things, proves
incapable of ordinary achievements.

b) Γυνὴ μάγος. Γυνὴ μάγος καὶ θείων μηνιμάτων ἀποτροπιασμοὺς ἐπαγ-

γελλομένη πολλὰ διετέλει ποιοῦσα καὶ κέρδος ἐντεῦθεν ἔχουσα.
Γραψάμενοι δέ τινες αὐτὴν ἀσεβείας εἷλον καὶ καταδικασθεῖσαν ἀπῆγον
εἰς θάνατον. Ἰδὼν δέ τις ἀπαγομένην αὐτὴν, ἔçη· Ἡ τὰς τῶν θεῶν ὀργὰς
ἀποτρέπειν ἐπαγγελλομένη, πῶς οὐδὲ ἀνθρώπων βουλὴν μεταπεῖσαι
ἠδυνήθης; Ὁ μῦθος δηλοῖ ὅτι πολλοὶ μεγάλα ἐπαγγέλλονται, μηδὲ μικρὰ
ποιῆσαι δυνάμενοι.
Aesop Fables no. 91 (Chambry 1925–6).
A female magos who promised to be able to turn away the anger of the
gods by sacrifice did a roaring trade and from this made a good income.
Certain people accused her and charged her with impiety. They found
her guilty and led her to her execution. Seeing her being led away, one
person said, ‘You claimed to be able to turn away the anger of the gods;
how come you were unable to change the decision of a group of men?’
The story shows that many may boast of great things, and are not able
to achieve even small things.

In the older version, the gune magos has an expertise in epoidai

(incantations); in the more recent versions she makes a profit dispens-
ing epoidai to quell the anger of the gods. In the older version, she is
taken to court on a charge of ‘innovating in divine matters’; in the more
recent version, this has become a charge of asebeia. In both versions, as
she leaves the courtroom the gune magos is asked why, if she can control
the gods, she was unable to persuade the jury. The content of the morals
of these alternative versions is of some interest: neither mentions the
legal machinery involved, or the role of justice (as a virtue or a judicial
process);78 rather, they both focus on more general conclusions. The
newer version is banal, a general insight into the likely reality behind
claims of greatness. The older version, however, gives slightly more
social detail, and with it brings a heightened sense of personal inter-
actions.79 The story is positioned as being relevant to those women who
wander and, presumably, offer similar supernatural services.

78
As Zafiropoulos (2001: 117) observes of this tale and of the fables in the
Augustana in general.
79
Zafiropoulos (2001: 118) argues that ‘the presentation of interpersonal relation-
ships in the Augustana usually supports the stronger protagonist’s demand for self-
interest and his need for victory and survival’.
 The Evidence 33
The accusations in each version, and the questions they raise, are,
by now, familiar. The charge of innovation in the first version is one
that we have already met in the cases of Ninon and Phryne. It has
been argued that it is the procedure used by the woman that opens
her to this charge.80 However, the acts in question (using incantations
to placate the gods) are scarcely innovative.81 In the second version,
incantations have become sacrifice—again, hardly novel—and the
case is referred to as one of asebeia. From the point of view of legal
process, the use of different terms in these two accounts is unprob-
lematic: asebeia can be seen as simply providing the general category
of offence, while innovating could have been the content of the
specific indictment. The two versions of the story could be said to
be focusing on different aspects of the charge.82 This is not surprising.
Philochorus the fourth-century historian apparently noted the charge
against Theoris as being one of asebeia for practising similar activ-
ities. The parallel may extend beyond this. Although in referring to
Theoris Demosthenes gives no indication that she was suspected of
innovative religious ritual activities, nevertheless, he does mention
that her servant was able to take on her ‘drugs/spells and incanta-
tions’, and in later evidence the term hiereia is used to describe her.
Both versions also lead us to reflect on the apparent difference
between general opinion and legal charge. It is implicit in both
accounts that while some people found the activities of the gune
magos indictable, others were quite happy to employ her for the
same reasons. Similarly, Theoris must have been doing business
when she was arrested for her activities—and it has been suggested
that this Aesopian woman may be Theoris. But the parallel does not
quite work, since, as we have seen, Theoris is the only one of the
women in the cases examined who does not seem to have been
accused of religious innovation.83

80
Dickie (2001: 52): ‘The offence committed by the woman was not then sorcery,
but attempting to placate the wrath of the gods by means that were felt to be at odds
with Athenian tradition, presumably because they involved sorcery.’
81
Neither Versnel (1990: 117) nor Iles Johnston (1999: 113) suggests that this
character was trying to invoke the dead (contra Dickie 2001: 330 n. 20).
82
Compare the indictment against Socrates (quoted in Diog. Laert. 2.40), which
does not mention the general charge of asebeia, only ‘wrongdoing’ (adikein), and then
lists the individual charges (see Gagarin 2012: 296).
83
Gordon 1999: 274 n. 56.
34 Envy, Poison, and Death
We move to the final three examples in this section, which are
perhaps the most straightforward of these accounts in the sense that
they continue the themes of pharmaka, but make no mention of
impiety. The first is a model forensic speech, the second a philosoph-
ical exemplum, the third, a biographical narrative. In each case, a
woman stands accused of murder or attempted murder and defends
herself by arguing that she thought she was restoring her victim’s
love, not taking his life; in the last example, we learn a little more
about the social pressures that could be involved in such a situation.84
The first example is found in a model speech by Antiphon: the
infamous Against the Stepmother for Poisoning.85 The case concerns
the poisoning of one Philoneus and his friend during dinner at
Philoneus’ house in the Piraeus. The speech lays out the events
leading up to their deaths (14–20) and fills in at least some of the
background. Initially, the murderer was assumed to be a slave
woman, the mistress of Philoneus, who had served the two men
poisoned wine after dinner. She was arrested, tortured for informa-
tion, and executed. But the case was reopened when an illegitimate
son of Philoneus’ friend, at the behest of his dying father, charged his
father’s wife, his stepmother, with the murders. He argues that the
slave woman was merely an accessory to his stepmother’s plot to kill
her husband, and supplies the intriguing information that this was, in
fact, her second attempt to kill her husband in this fashion. The first
time, her husband had caught her slipping something into his drink,
but she had denied that it was poison, pleading that it was, in fact, a
love philtre. According to the stepson, this was also the line of
argument she had used to persuade Philoneus’ mistress to carry out
her plan. Philoneus was threatening to discard this woman and place
her in a brothel. The stepmother promised her that she had the means

84
This story pattern is familiar from myth, but again shows interesting nuances:
the story of Deianeira poisoning Hercules ‘in ignorance’ appears to be told in Hes. fr.
25.18–25 M/W; in Soph. Trach. the figure of Deianeira is a more domesticated
character than her mythic heritage might suggest (see Dickerson and Williams
2009: 100–1). This might be thought to bear some connection to the story patterns
and stereotypes apparent in Antiphon 1, but the date of the play is uncertain (see
Easterling 1982: 19–23).
85
Gagarin (2002: 139) suggests that this court speech was probably written around
419/18 (a secure date for Antiphon 6); he observes that this is ‘likely to be later, or at
most just a few years earlier’.
 The Evidence 35
to ensure that this would not happen: the love philtre would restore
his feelings for her.86
It is likely that this case would have gone to the Areopagus. As
Aristotle tells us, this court judged ‘Trials for homicide and wound-
ing, if the killing or wounding is committed deliberately . . . so are
those for pharmaka, if one causes death by giving it, and arson’.87
Arguments have been made for the Palladium, on the basis that the
jury is addressed in the speech as dikastai; but the term appears to
have been used across the different Athenian courts.88 Moreover, the
prosecution does not seem to respond to the speaker’s argument that
even if his stepmother only meant to seduce his father, she still
deserved to die, which would suggest the context of the Palladium.89
Quite the contrary, in fact: the plaintiff seems at pains to emphasize
how his stepmother had planned the death of her husband, stating
that ‘she killed him intentionally, planning the death . . . by sending
the drug and ordering [the slave] to give it to him to drink, she killed
our father’.90 The emphasis on intent here is surely intended to

86
This case also brings to mind the story of Medea as portrayed by Euripides; this
would have been performed around fifteen years before, as Gagarin (2002: 147)
points out.
87
[Arist.] Ath. Pol. 57.3, tr. MacDowell 1963: 44.
88
Dikastai at Antiph. 6.1: This argument is made by Wallace (1989: 103–4), but
see MacDowell (1963: 56), who suggests that it was possible that this term could
be used of jurors across all the courts, including, he notes, the Twelve Gods
themselves (e.g. Dem. 23.66).
89
Parker 2005a: 133.
90
Antiph. 1.26: ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἑκουσίως καὶ βουλεύσασα τὸν θάνατον <ἀπέκτεινεν> . . . ἡ
δὲ πέμψασα τὸ çάρμακον καὶ κελεύσασα ἐκείνῳ δοῦναι πιεῖν ἀπέκτεινεν ἡμῶν τὸν
πατέρα (contra Gagarin 2002: 149–50), who quotes this sentence while at the same
time arguing that the plaintiff ‘is clearly not interested in her intent or state of mind
when she provided the drug’ and that the plaintiff ‘is not concerned to show that she
knew the drug was a poison, rather than a love potion’ (150). Granted that the plaintiff
only asserts that she is a murderer, it still does not seem to be the case that ‘the speaker
seems to have no interest in the question of whether his stepmother deliberately
intended to kill or not’ (149). The prosecutor repeatedly draws attention to the
intention of the defendant not just to deliver the drug (as Gagarin argues), but to
commit murder (Antiph. 1.26: ἑκουσίως καὶ βουλεύσασα τὸν θάνατον; see also 1.22,
stressing the forethought of the defendant: ὑμεῖς δ᾿ οὐ τῶν ἀποκτεινάντων ἐστὲ βοηθοί,
ἀλλὰ τῶν ἐκ προνοίας ἀποθνῃσκόντων, ‘you are not here to champion the murderers,
but those who were wilfully murdered’ (tr. Maidment 1941), and for a similar contrast
between those unwillingly murdered and those planning to commit murder, see 1.6).
He contrasts this with the position of the defence (that she killed him ἀβούλως τε καὶ
ἀθέως, ‘without thought and without scruple’, 1.23; similarly, see also 1.27, where he
contrasts involuntary crimes with those committed ἐκ προνοίας, ‘with forethought’).
It is hard to see how this can be interpreted as indicating that (Gagarin 2002:
36 Envy, Poison, and Death
counteract the impression of the letter of the law, which mentions the
‘giving’ of poison. In this case, the stepmother is the will behind the
act; the slave woman who gave it was purely instrumental.91 We do
not know the imagined or intended outcome of this prosecution, but
it is possible that a second example offers some insight.
This is found in the Magna Moralia, a treatise on ethics traditionally
attributed to Aristotle, in which the writer explores the role of to
hekousion, ‘the voluntary’, in actions. In this example, he describes
how an anonymous woman was brought before the Areopagus, charged
with administering a fatal potion. She claims she had only meant her
target to fall in love, not to die, and so had acted without an under-
standing of the consequences of her actions; as a result she is acquitted.

οἷόν çασί ποτέ τινα γυναῖκα çίλτρον τινὶ δοῦναι πιεῖν, εἶτα τὸν ἄνθρωπον
ἀποθανεῖν ὑπὸ τοῦ çίλτρου, τὴν δ᾿ ἄνθρωπον ἐν Ἀρείῳ πάγῳ ἀποçυγεῖν·
οὗ παροῦσαν δι᾿ οὐθὲν ἂλλο ἀπέλυσαν ἢ διότι οὐκ ἐκ προνοίας. ἔδωκε μὲν
γὰρ çιλίᾳ, διήμαρτεν δὲ τούτου· διὸ οὐχ ἑκούσιον ἐδόκει εἶναι, ὅτι τὴν
δόσιν τοῦ çίλτρου οὐ μετὰ διανοίας τοῦ ἀπολέσθαι αὐτὸν ἐδίδου. ἐνταῦθα
ἄρα τὸ ἑκούσιον πίπτει εἰς τὸ μετὰ διανοίας.
[Aristotle] Magna Moralia 1188b35–8 (= 1.16.2)
We are told that a woman once gave a man a love-potion that proved
fatal to him. She was put on her trial before the court of Areopagus; and
was acquitted expressly on the ground that she acted without under-
standing the consequence. Affection prompted the deed; and she failed
of her loving purpose. Because, then, the cup was given with no thought
of the man’s death, it was regarded as an involuntary homicide. In this
case, then, the Voluntary falls under the head of Understanding.92

As the narrative explains, the reasons for the woman’s release were
quite straightforward: the Areopagus was for deliberate, wilful
planned acts of murder, so someone who did not intend to kill her
victim could not be convicted there.93 Some scholars regard this

150) ‘Antiphon’s strategy, in other words, is to portray the stepmother as the primary
agent in a plot to give her husband a drug.’ Rather, the text seems to draw particular
attention to the stepmother as the primary agent in a plot to commit murder.
91
See the discussion in MacDowell 1963: 44–5, 62–4.
92
Tr. Tredennick and Armstrong 1935.
93
Parker (2005a: 133) expresses surprise on the grounds that ‘one might expect
any unsolicited use of pharmaka against another for whatever motive to be highly
objectionable’, but this overlooks the role of intention in the remit of the Areopagus.
Parker seems to accept Plato’s legislation against pharmakeia as an Athenian
 The Evidence 37
anecdote as offering further elucidation of the case described in
Antiphon 1, explaining what would have happened to the woman
on trial; others have argued that it may also connect directly with
aspects of some of the historical cases discussed above, helping to cut
through the confusion surrounding at least one of these cases.94
But just before we turn to examine those charges, there is a final
tale to set among this collection. In his treatise on the Virtues of
Women, Plutarch gives an account of Aretaphila’s attempt to kill the
tyrant of Cyrene, Nicocrates. Aretaphila is caught red-handed and, in
her defence, she claims she had created her own potions to make her
husband love her more deeply. At first sight, this seems very similar to
the stories we have already explored here, in which a woman fears the
loss of her partner. However, Aretaphila offers a little more detail
about the social context that prompted her actions, when she pro-
vides a further justification. She states that she created her potions
because she herself feared the potions and devices of ‘bad women’ for
whom she knew she was epiphthonos, that is, they felt phthonos
towards her.95 We will return to some of these details, especially the
question of the associations between phthonos and accusations or
actions relating to pharmakeia, later.

legislative reality (on this see further pp. 43–4), but does observe (133 n. 72) that since
the stepmother’s alibi (used twice) was that it was only a potion, there was little
likelihood of such a charge.
94
Parker (2005a: 133 n. 72) links the example in the Magna Moralia with the case
discussed in Antiphon’s speech. However, although he discusses these examples
alongside the historical cases, he makes no mention of any association between them.
95
Plut. De mul. virt. 256b–c: καρποῦμαι πολλαῖς ἐπίçθονος οὖσα κακαῖς γυναιξὶν ὧν
çάρμακα δεδοικυῖα καὶ μηχανὰς ἐπείσθην ἀντιμηχανήσασθαι, μωρὰ μὲν ἴσως καὶ
γυναικεῖα, θανάτου δ᾽ οὐκ ἄξια· πλὴν εἰ κριτῇ σοι δόξειε çίλτρων ἕνεκα καὶ γοητείας
κτεῖναι γυναῖκα, πλεῖον ἢ σὺ βούλει çιλεῖσθαι δεομένην.
 1.3

What Charges?

The Athenian law courts were an arena for displaying and disputing
political, and so male, power: in such a context, why bother to put
these women on trial? One answer may be that they were closely
associated with (male) political figures, and their indictments were
part of the ongoing feuding of the Athenian political class. We will
look at further cases that illustrate this aspect as we proceed.1 How-
ever, although this is possible (especially in the case of the well-
connected Phryne), too little, if anything, is known of these women’s
families or friends, let alone the substance or context of the trials, to
substantiate this claim. Besides, even if we prefer such an explanation,
then the choice of charges against these women (taken individually
and in combination) remains puzzling. From supernatural activities
of various kinds, including introducing new gods, making religious
innovations, casting spells, and brewing potions; to various social
offences, such as illicit gatherings, teaching slaves how to deceive; to
involuntary murder using drugs or potions, we are left wondering
about the plausibility and significance of these accusations.

MURDER?

That the main charge was one of murder is possible in at least some of
the cases discussed here. Mirroring the charges brought against the

1
For example, see the case against Archias, described in [Dem.] 59.116; discussed
on pp. 319–20 and 51, n. 51. We can draw a slightly indirect parallel with those
women we find cursed in the texts of binding spells that target important political
figures; see Eidinow 2013a: 177.
 What Charges? 39
stepmother in Antiphon’s speech, or the anonymous woman in the
Magna Moralia, it could be argued that this is the implication of the
references to love philtres or pharmaka in the cases of Theoris and
Ninon. This is the conclusion that Derek Collins draws about the case
of Theoris: focusing on the discrepancy between what we know of
Athenian law and the charges described in the fullest account (the
passage from Against Aristogiton), Collins argues that Theoris was
brought to trial (and executed) simply for applying pharmaka, spe-
cifically with an intention to kill.
Collins’s argument draws in part on an inscription from the island
of Teos on the coast of Asia Minor which dates to the early fifth
century (c.470 BCE).2 The inscription recorded the public curses that
the Teans required their magistrates to pronounce against those who
would harm their community. The original stone is now lost, but the
discovery of another similar inscription has helped to clarify the text.3
One of the clauses concerns ‘whoever makes pharmaka against the
Teans as a community or against an individual’, and threatens death
for them and their family.4 This parallel, Collins argues, not only
provides an explanation why Theoris was executed for pharmaka,
but could also illuminate the reasons for the execution of her family
as well.5
However, this parallel needs to be treated with caution. The Tean
curses may not indicate a straightforward legal penalty, but rather an
invocation for divine punishment, which would work whether or not
the malefactor was detected; although presumably it is possible that
there was accompanying legislation that ensured mortal penalties if
he was caught.6 More significantly, perhaps, is that fact that no

2
Collins 2001: 486–7.
3
The second document, SEG 31.985, dates to c.480–450 BCE. It also demonstrates
the close relationship between Teos and its colony Abdera; see Graham 1992: 54–6.
4
ML 30.
5
Collins (2001: 489, drawing on Harris 2001) argues that the family could possibly
have been found guilty of being accomplices in the crime, perhaps charged with
bouleusis of intentional homicide for a victim who had died.
6
Collins (2001: 486–7) discusses the Tean curses as part of his argument that
Theoris was indicted for murder; he understands it literally as threatening public
execution. But see the discussion in Parker (1983: 193–4 and again, 2005b: 77), who
suggests that these were not legal provisions. Latte (1920: 76) argues that by 300 CE, if
not earlier, the role of the curse in offering effective legal protection had played out in
the Hellenistic world, although the formulae could still be seen in inscriptions. This
decline is marked by the appearance of secular penalties alongside those of the
supernatural at the beginning of the third century BCE.
40 Envy, Poison, and Death
similar example is known from ancient Athenian law. The closest
parallel may appear in the curse uttered at the beginning of meetings
of the Council and Assembly, as far as we can tell from our sources.7
These covered plotting against the people of Athens, negotiating
with the Persians against the people of Athens, and attempts to
become or restore a tyrant. The threatened penalty does appear to
have been the destruction of the wrongdoer, along with his family,
but there does not appear to have been a clause covering use of
pharmaka.
Further support for a lack of legislation in this area may come from
Plato’s Laws, in which the philosopher himself advocates the need for
legislation that distinguishes between harm caused by pharmakeia
through, on the one hand, natural and, on the other, supernatural
means. It may be that his suggestions arose from actual cases con-
ducted in the fourth-century BCE courts, cases of harm or dike blabes,
caused by objects that had no actual physical contact with their
victim.8 Indeed, Richard Gordon has insightfully suggested that, in
a context in which there was no charge for harm caused by super-
natural means, Demosthenes’ hendyadic phrase, ‘drugs/spells and
incantations’, could have been understood as verbal shorthand for
‘poisoning of an unnatural kind’ by the jurors, perhaps because such a
charge was not yet officially recognized in Athenian courtrooms.9
This is ingenious; nevertheless, it suggests that the reason for Theoris’
execution, along with that of her family, requires a different
explanation.
A further possibility may emerge from another of Demosthenes’
speeches, a blatantly political confection, written for Diodorus in his
legal feud with Androtion. At the very beginning of that speech
Diodorus describes the judicial machinations of his opponent: they
have included not only indicting Diodorus for parricide, but also
accusing his uncle of asebeia (‘impiety’) on the grounds that he
associated with his nephew.10 He does not give us details of the
charges made against him, but he does note that his opponent failed
to get a fifth of the votes, implying that this was a graphe procedure.

7
The primary source for this is Ar. Thesm. 332–67 (with Sommerstein 1994, and
Austin and Olson 2004, ad loc.); see also Isoc. 4.157, Dem. 18.30, 19.70 (with
MacDowell ad loc.), and 23.97, Din. 2.16.
8
Plato Leg. 932e–933e.
9 10
Gordon 1999: 250. Dem. 22.2–3.
 What Charges? 41
He also uses the term ‘asebeia’ to refer to his crime when he proclaims
to the jury that if he and his uncle had been found guilty, then ‘who,
whether friend or stranger, would have consented to have any deal-
ings with me? What state would have admitted within its borders a
man deemed guilty of such impiety?’11 Diodorus tells us that his uncle
escaped the charge, but the reason was that Diodorus himself was not
convicted of parricide. This suggests that the two cases were being
pursued, if not together, then at least in close temporal proximity.12
Could it be that, similarly, Theoris’ family was indicted on a charge of
impiety, on the grounds that they had associated with a woman accused
of impiety, and that, therefore, when she was found guilty, so were
they? Could we take this parallel even further to suggest that Theoris’
original crime, whatever it was, had been against a member of her own
family?13 This could then return us to the earlier comparison with the

11
The case Against the Stepmother for Poisoning may provide another apposite
example. Although the plaintiff does not accuse his stepbrother of impiety explicitly,
he repeatedly brings up the idea, using terms such as atheos (‘godlessly’) and anosios
(‘profanely’) to describe both the killing (21, 23, and 26), and the impropriety of his
stepbrother’s position (5). In turn, he emphasizes his own piety in bringing the case,
and the piety of the jurors if they convict the defendant using terms that indicate piety
(25), including the term eusebeia (25). Finally, he mentions the underworld gods (31),
which Gagarin also takes as a hint of the ‘idea of pollution’. He argues that the
speaker’s final remark here ‘seems almost perfunctory’ (1997, ad loc.), but this may
be because Gagarin does not seem to place much emphasis on the other references to
holy/unholy behaviour throughout the rest of the speech. If we take Gagarin’s point
that references to homicidal pollution are to be understood as rhetorical, this speech is
interesting for the careful course that the speaker steers between an accusation
of impiety and more general statements of unacceptable behaviour.
12
MacDowell (1963: xx) argues that the charge was for associating with Diodorus
and for not taking the legally required action in the law courts against his own brother’s
killer; the ‘association’ between Diodorus and his uncle refers to the time that has passed
with the uncle taking no legal action. However, in Demosthenes the Orator (2009: 169 n.
54) he accepts Parker’s correction (1983: 123 n. 72) that there was no legal requirement
for a relative to prosecute, only a ‘moral duty’. Parker argues that ‘“association” with the
killer’ is the key issue here, on the grounds of the pollution that thus arose; he points out
that this would not normally be a problem in cases where the killing had occurred
between families. He does not mention the case of Theoris and her family.
13
Murder cases were expected to be conducted by members of the victim’s family
(see Dem. 43.57 and Poll. 8.118, and IG I3 104, with discussion in MacDowell 1963:
16–22 [where it is cited as IG I2 115]), so the plaintiff would not have been a family
member employing the usual procedure. If this did not happen (as would be the case
here, if the family is still associating with the murderer), then a non-family member
would have to select an appropriate legal process. Examples of non-family members
taking action occur in cases where slaves have been murdered, e.g. Pl. Euthphr. 3e–4b
and [Dem.] 47.68–73. In both cases, religious guidance is sought from the exegetai or
expounders of religious/unwritten law (see MacDowell 1963: 11–16).
42 Envy, Poison, and Death
women of Lemnos; it would also provide an implicit explanation of
Demosthenes’ use of the word miaros (discussed above, p. 14, n. 13), to
describe Theoris, as well as his apparent reluctance to state the charge
explicitly: both aspects suggest that Theoris was strongly polluted. In
turn, memory of such a train of events could explain the disapproval
that Demosthenes appears to be trying to draw down onto Eunomus.
Thus, finally, it is not the tools as magical devices, or the activities
related to those tools, which are meant to prompt condemnation, but
an association, however indirect, with this woman.
But what then of the mention of pharmaka kai epoidai? Collins
argues that the fact that the speaker mentions epoidai, the casting of
incantations, would have been irrelevant to the original charge
against Theoris. It was included by the speaker simply in order to
sully those involved in the case by associating them with a woman
who cast spells and uttered incantations. In particular, he hopes it
would attach to Eunomus, who, it becomes clear, has a relationship
with Theoris’ maidservant and inherited Theoris’ drugs and incanta-
tions, which he also uses. The ‘magical features’ of the case ‘are rhet-
orical embellishments marshalled for the purpose of discrediting a
witness’ and the speaker may even have ‘misremembered or deliberately
embellished the facts of the case, while relying upon sensationalism
and the lack of expertise of the jurors to make the point that Theoris
had been executed for magic’.14
It is an ingenious argument, but in the end it begs—and raises—a
number of questions. First of all, would the jurors fall for the kind of
rhetorical embellishment that Collins describes? If the charge was
intentional murder, then the case would have been held in the
Areopagus, as the model from the Magna Moralia describes.15 The
jurors there were experienced ex-magistrates: would they have been
befuddled by slippery forensic rhetoric confusing magic or murder?16

14
Collins 2001: 477. Gordon (1999: 251) similarly ends his argument with the
suggestion that society simply found Theoris unimpressive and tiresome (and the
suggestion is not unrelated to her gender). He notes that the speaker knew how to
‘smear her convincingly: by representing her as nothing more than a female sorcerer,
of the sort that anyone would thankfully be rid of ’.
15
MacDowell (1963: 60) suggests that the rule may have been that ‘homicide was
intentional whenever death resulted from an act which was intended to cause harm’. If
Theoris’ case were about an unpremeditated murder, then it would have been tried in the
Palladium, in which case the penalty would have been exile (see Harrison 1968: 198).
16
On the process of presenting an enklema or graphe to the magistrate, and its
likely content, see Gagarin 2012: 295–6 and Harris 2013: 115–16.
 What Charges? 43
Collins’s argument suggests that it was feasible—or that the jurors
would have thought it so—to be executed on a charge of ‘practising
magic’. Presumably this is not intended to mean that this was the
overall procedure, but is meant to be a reference to one of the charges
recorded in the enklema against Theoris as part of a larger charge. But
this still raises the question of the nature of the wrongdoing: it would
not be enough to charge someone with using drugs/spells and incan-
tations.17 If the answer is that these drugs/spells and incantations had
been used to kill someone—and this was a charge of murder—then it
raises the question of why Demosthenes does not simply refer to that
crime. After all, in other similar cases, where pharmaka result in
death, the crime is referred to as phonos or homicide, not a poisoning
or bewitching.18 The explanation of murder can be applied most
obviously to two of the fictional trials, but it is significantly more
difficult to relate it to those historical cases that involve the creation of
pharmaka but make no mention of harm caused or an intent to
murder; nor does it help to resolve the role of the ritual aspects of
those cases.

MAGIC?

As described above, there is little if any evidence that one could be taken
to court simply for creating pharmaka or using incantations per se.19
The Tean curses do not provide evidence for Athens, and besides they
focus on evidence for doing harm rather than simply the questionable
activities themselves; similarly, Plato’s discussion of legislation against
those practising these arts is directed towards punishing the likely
physical harm that these might effect, rather than the acts themselves.20

17
As Gagarin (2012: 312) has argued in an analysis of relevance in Athenian
forensic argument: ‘For them, law was not just a matter of written statutes, but could
include the broad set of customs or traditional rules that the Athenians generally
accepted whether or not they were enshrined in statute.’
18
MacDowell (1963: 64) observes that in Antiphon 1 and 6, the crime is referred to
by those involved as a phonos, although pharmaka are involved.
19
The difficulties of establishing the illegality of magical practice in ancient Athens
are well illustrated by Ogden (1999: 83–4).
20
Pl. Leg. 933b–e. Dickie (2001: 60) also makes this observation. He provides a
succinct and compelling analysis of Plato’s concerns: on the one hand, regarding the
44 Envy, Poison, and Death
Indeed, this also seems to be the point of the often-quoted observation
in Plato’s Meno that elsewhere Socrates would be arrested as a goes
(‘sorcerer’) for the effect that he has on his audience (he is able to numb
the soul and mouth of the speaker, so that he is unable to speak well on a
subject [virtue] as he claims to have done many times before).21 This
episode also appears to contrast Athens’ tolerance for such activities
with that of other cities, although that alone does not indicate that there
was no specific legislation against magic-working in Athens.22
Again, as above, it seems more likely that this charge would have
accompanied other accusations, as part of a larger legal process.
Scholars have argued that it was particularly likely to have accom-
panied the charge of introducing ‘a new religion’.23 That it was, as it
were, an inseparable further dimension of a discourse of distrust that
surrounded religious innovation, especially novel ideas introduced
from abroad.24 This might align with the periodic attempts by the
Athenians to control the religious ritual activities taking place within
their city, and the evidence for suspicion regarding the practitioners
of supernatural services, especially those who lived off the proceeds or
used them to garner political support.25
However, the association of these two charges is not inevitable.
Although there is ample evidence for it from later periods, especially
under the Roman Empire, this does not mean that it was also the case
in Classical Athens. To help us better understand not only the events

harm potentially caused by sorcery, and, on the other, the threat posed by the impious;
as Dickie observes, the two should not be conflated.
21
Pl. Meno 80a.
22
As Dickie points out (2001: 329 n. 6, criticizing Iles Johnston 1999: 122 for
making this assumption).
23
Derenne 1930: 232–3, Reverdin 1945: 215–16, Dodds 1951: 204–5; see Versnel
1990: 115–18.
24
The ideas of new religion and foreign religion are somewhat elided by Versnel.
In his initial analysis (1990: 16) he argues that: ‘the present two charges are not
contradictory at all as they represent the two sides of one very current coin. The
universal tendency to associate prophets of a new religion with sorcery or magic, so
typical of various periods in classical antiquity and especially of the Roman imperial
period, was not lacking in classical Athens either.’ In a more recent work, the
argument is made again in discussion of what he calls ‘the three priestesses’. Here
Versnel (2013: 139) narrows down ‘new religion’ to the idea of foreignness: ‘Introdu-
cing foreign cults and the suspicion of practicing magic are, throughout antiquity, two
sides of one medal and at Athens might provoke an asebeia process of which there
were several in the 4th c.’
25
Ar. Pax 1052–119 and 1061–86, Av. 987–8, Eq. 1085, Vesp. 380, for examples.
 What Charges? 45
themselves, but also the processes of historical change over time, it is
important to try to distinguish, where possible, between, say, associ-
ation with foreign gods vs new rituals, and new rituals vs new
performances of old rituals. As we have seen, the accusations against
these women are far from simple. In Ninon’s case, the scholia make
the link between her and, in this case, philtra, but this is based on a
misunderstanding of the text that could well be born of associations
frequently made at a later time. The most contemporary source,
Demosthenes, mentions simply the bringing together of thiasoi, as
part of the discussion of the activities of the mother of his enemy
Aeschines. The brevity of this reference is puzzling: if Demosthenes
wanted to raise suspicions against Glaucothea and Aeschines, then
why did he not provide more details about Ninon’s case? Although we
are given to understand that her activities were like Glaucothea’s
initiations into the mysteries of the god Sabazius, no mention of the
identity of Ninon’s god is made here. If Demosthenes wanted to
emphasize the alien nature of Glaucothea’s activities and the dangers
this posed to the city of Athens, why not reinforce this point with
mention of the foreignness of Ninon’s divinity? If this was because it
was simply Sabazius again, then there would have been no harm in
repeating the idea (although, we also have to observe that with at least
twenty years separating the two events, this was hardly a new or foreign
entity).26 Although a later source, Josephus, argues that this case
concerned the introduction of new gods, this demands cautious treat-
ment, since he also tells us that such introductions were forbidden
(which, as we shall see, is highly questionable).
One possibility for some resolution may lie in the scholion to this
speech, which, rather than referring directly to new gods, mentions
mockery of the Mysteries. This could mean new rituals, or existing
rituals wrongly performed, perhaps in the wrong place (a problem
that seems to have been at the heart of one of the most well-known
impiety trials of the Classical period, the ‘mocking of the Mysteries’ in
415 BCE).27 We will examine this possibility in more detail shortly. For

26
Compare, in the case of Phryne, the description of Isodaites as ‘foreign’ by
Harpocration, but only as ‘new’ in the quotation of the charge itself; the god has a
Greek name, as Parker (1996: 163) observes and is ‘not so new after all’, as Versnel has
noted (1990: 119).
27
Similarly, the Aesopian parallel includes the accusation of introducing new
things peri ta theia, ‘regarding things divine’, which need not necessarily mean a new
god. ‘In the wrong place’ recalls the profanation of the Mysteries: see Murray 1990: 156.
46 Envy, Poison, and Death
now we can observe that, with regard to the associations that some
scholars have made between magic and new ritual practice, this does
not seem to be the case here. The argument that there is simply a
‘universal tendency to associate prophets of a new religion with
sorcery or magic’ may be assuming a context that did not exist in
fourth-century BCE Athens.28
Similarly, we must be cautious with our assumptions about the
identity of these women simply as magic-workers. To stay with the
case of Ninon, one scholar has argued (with reference to the famous
description by Plato in the Republic of itinerant manteis) that she
‘must have belonged to that elusive lot of agurtai kai manteis’ offering
‘prophetism, charlatanism, bigotry and hocus pocus’: a description
that certainly recaptures the dismissive tone of the philosopher’s
original phrasing.29 Indeed, Plato’s own approach to these activities
is rather more cautious. Although he clearly dislikes the profit motive
of these characters, he is more cautious in his handling of what we
might call their prophet motives, and careful not to dismiss the power
(both actual and social) of the rituals that they offer: ‘it is not easy to
know the truth about these and similar practices, and even if one were
to find out, it would be difficult to convince others’. Moreover, he
appears to struggle to find the words to make a clear distinction:
‘promising to persuade the gods by bewitching them, as it were, with
sacrifices, prayers, and incantations’.30 This may be because the clear
distinction between ‘magic’ and ‘religion’, which an unqualified use of
these two modern terms suggests, is not at play in the Classical

28
Vernsel 1990: 116. We can note in passing here that they do not appear in the
charges brought against Socrates in 399 BCE—although the highly reminiscent phrase
philtra kai epoidai does occur in descriptions (by his friends) of Socrates’ powerful
use of persuasion (see pp. 167–8).
29
Versnel is here bringing together the description of the itinerant manteis in Pl.
Resp. 364b–c and the description of the more harmful type of atheist in Leg. 908d and
909b. His precis introduces aspects that are hard to find in the original Greek.
Moreover, Versnel’s example of the suspicious attitude towards manteis (117; Soph.
OT 386f., in which Oedipus berates Tiresias for being a magos and a dolios agurtes
‘tricky beggar-priest’), is undermined by the fact that Tiresias, as the audience knows
and Oedipus will come to know, is proved right in the end.
30
Pl. Leg. 933b (tr. Saunders 1970). In his account in the Republic (364e), Plato
quotes the wrongdoers themselves as they, in turn, quote Homer as support for their
services.
 What Charges? 47
material.31 Rather, those who were offering ritual services to the gods
were not necessarily stepping so far outside a familiar ritual context.
This is borne out when we turn to Plato’s proposed legislation
against magic-working, where we find he also does not equate these
activities directly with impiety. Rather, he is concerned about the
impious nature of such practitioners, and the attitude they show
towards the gods when they promise to be able to bend them to
their will through these activities (as we will see, this focus on a
mindset, rather than specific actions, also appears in other evidence).
Plato’s proposed punishment for these wrongdoers is physical isola-
tion in order that their ideas cannot be transmitted.32 Indeed, it is for
activities that are more recognizably ‘religious’ (the setting up of
shrines on private or public ground, sacrificing to any god whatso-
ever, sacrificing in a state of impurity) that Plato reserves the penalty
of death ‘for their impiety’.33
But what is also clear from his discussion of such activities is that
Plato’s view of impious action included activities that were common
within the city of Athens. Plato himself tells us that,

ἔθος τε γυναιξί τε δὴ διαçερόντως πάσαις καὶ τοῖς ἀσθενοῦσι πάντῃ καὶ

κινδυνεύουσι καὶ ἀποροῦσιν, ὅπῃ τις ἂν ἀπορῇ, καὶ τοὐναντίον ὅταν
εὐπορίας τινὸς λάβωνται, καθιεροῦν τε τὸ παρὸν ἀεὶ καὶ θυσίας εὔχεσθαι
καὶ ἱδρύσεις ὑπισχνεῖσθαι θεοῖς καὶ δαίμοσιν καὶ παισὶν θεῶν, ἔν τε
çάσμασιν ἐγρηγορότας διὰ çόβους καὶ ἐν ὀνείροις, ὡς δ᾽ αὕτως ὄψεις
πολλὰς ἀπομνημονεύοντας ἑκάσταισί τε αὐτῶν ἄκη ποιουμένους, βωμοὺς
καὶ ἱερὰ πάσας μὲν οἰκίας, πάσας δὲ κώμας ἔν τε καθαροῖς ἱδρυομένους
ἐμπιμπλάναι καὶ ὅπῃ τις ἔτυχε τῶν τοιούτων.

31
The cases of these women bring into sharp relief the difficulties of understanding
the ancient perception of the relationship between (the modern categories) of magic
and religion. Parker’s approach over time illustrates these issues: in an earlier discus-
sion of these women (1996: 163 with n. 34) he draws an implicit line between magic
and religion. His discussion of the introduction of new gods brings up the ‘prosecu-
tion of three “priestesses”’, but only the case against Phryne is discussed in the text;
the evidence for Theoris and Ninon is given in a footnote. His argument is that the
case of Phryne along with that of Socrates reveals ‘the Athenians . . . affirming their
right of ultimate control over all the religious practices of Attica’ (1996: 217). In
contrast, in later work (Parker 2005a: 133), Ninon and Theoris are discussed without
mention of Phryne, religious practice, or the introduction of new gods. They are
described as ‘two women cunning in spells’, although other associations are also
alluded to: ‘in both cases, the expertise in spells or philtres may have been a symptom
of a broader impiety rather than the core of the case’.
32 33
Pl. Leg. 907d4–909d2. Pl. Leg. 910d.
48 Envy, Poison, and Death
It is customary for all women especially, and for sick folk everywhere,
and those in peril or in distress (whatever the nature of the distress), and
conversely for those who have had a slice of good fortune, to dedicate
whatever happens to be at hand at the moment, and to vow sacrifices
[910a] and promise the founding of shrines to gods and demi-gods and
children of gods; and through terrors caused by waking visions or by
dreams, and in like manner as they recall many visions and try to
provide remedies for each of them, they are wont to found altars and
shrines, and to fill with them every house and every village, and open
places too, and every spot which was the scene of such experiences.34

This brings us to the question of the range, nature, and relative

wrongdoing of independent, let alone innovative, religious activities.
If ‘magical activities’ might be one of the constitutive charges of a
larger general charge, then it was likely that the larger charge was one
of impiety, or asebeia.

ASEBEIA

Before sifting through the details of the charges related to ritual

activities, and the various ways in which they have been approached
by different scholars, it is useful to examine one particular significant
legal process: the graphe asebeias, which, in Athens, was one of a
number of legal charges that concerned some kind of offence against
the gods.35 Asebeia can be translated variously as ‘impiety’ or more

34
Pl. Leg. 909e–910a (tr. Bury); cf. Men. Dys. 260–3.
35
We know most about those cases that were conducted in Athens—although,
even here this information is relatively sparse—where, alongside the charge of impi-
ety, such cases included ‘wrongdoing concerning a festival’ (usually conducted by
means of a probole), temple robbery (hierosulia), ‘theft of sacred money’ (Dem.
19.293 and Antiph. 2.1.6), and offences against olive trees (Lysias 7, although it
does not mention asebeia at all). Not all such charges were equivalent: the graphe
asebeias with some exceptions (see Harrison 1968: 82) appears to have been an agon
timetos, that is, the penalty would be set by the prosecutor, with an alternative
offered by the defendant if he was found guilty. In contrast, those found guilty of
hierosulia were automatically punished with death or exile, along with property
confiscation and loss of burial rights; there was no room for debate (see Xen. Hell.
1.7.22, and SEG 12.100 for the case of Theosebes of Xypete). On the impossibility of
working out the attitude in the rest of Greece, and how this does or does not contrast
with Athenian attitudes, see Krauter 2004: 235.
 What Charges? 49
broadly as ‘religious offence’,36 and a graphe was a ‘public’ charge, so
any willing person could bring a graphe asebeias against an individ-
ual.37 Indeed, in the Platonic dialogue the Euthyphro, which is set just
before Socrates’ trial, Socrates mentions that he has never met the
man who has brought the graphe against him.38 This, of course, laid
the charge open to abuse: the use of the graphe asebeias against
political rivals has been well documented.39 And if not attacked
directly by their enemies, individuals might still be prosecuted by
proxy, that is, by sycophants. Indeed, in the case of the women under
consideration here, Ninon and Phryne were accused by individuals
who had reputations for being sycophants. Of course, this does not
negate the possibility that there may also have been genuine
concern about religious matters among those who were involved in
bringing these prosecutions.40
In the process that followed, a preliminary hearing or anakrisis
took place in front of a magistrate, the archon basileus, before the case
went to a court with a jury of 500 or more.41 Beyond a straightforward
decision between guilt and innocence, a graphe charge had potential

36
Religionsvergehen, as Krauter (2004: 231) translates the Greek term.
37
Procedures may have varied, as I have noted elsewhere (see Eidinow 2015: 66 n. 49).
38
Pl. Euthphr. 2b7–9.
39
They include the fifth-century BCE ‘attacks on intellectuals’ associated with
Pericles (although by now, it is well established that the historicity of a number of
these cases is doubtful); the late-fourth-century proceedings against pro-Macedonian
sympathizers (Demades in 324/3 and Aristotle in the following year; then in the period
of democratic revival 318/17 BCE, Theophrastus, Demetrius of Phaleron, Theodorus the
atheist, and Stilpo the Megarian). See a compelling discussion in O’Sullivan 1997; as
she notes (145), there is evidence to suggest that the prosecution of Theodorus was, as
Bauman (1990: 125) puts it, an ‘unequivocal case of “pure” asebeia’.
40
Filonik (2013: 80) gives a stark statement of this approach (‘the use of religion in
those trials appears as a purely instrumental measure, serving various forms of
political agenda, even if feeding on existing superstition and fear’). A more nuanced
view is found in Todd (1996: 115 n. 23): ‘It is a striking fact, and one which has never
been adequately explained, that charges of impiety at Athens often seem to have been
highly politicised.’ Todd gives as examples the trials of Socrates, Andocides, and the
case of the sacred olive stump (Lysias 7, where the speaker appears to have retained his
property under the regime of the oligarchs). Indeed, we see this demonstrated in the
way that charges of impiety were themselves part of the great game of litigation: so in
Lysias 21.20 it appears that the charge of taking bribes has been levelled by a group
already on a charge of impiety. Janko (2001: 14) gives an overview of the mixed
motives of those who prosecuted Socrates and points out that the fear of the intellec-
tual was crucially mixed with fear of ‘atheism’; Connor (1991) argues that Socrates
was killed on religious grounds, and see also Parker 1996: 202.
41
[Arist.] Ath. Pol. 57.2–3, Dem. 35.48. See MacDowell 1963: 33ff., Harrison 1971:
9 and 48.
50 Envy, Poison, and Death
implications for both sides. For if the person bringing the charge
failed to capture one-fifth of the votes at trial or abandoned his case,
he would be fined 1000 drachmae and suffer at least partial atimia.42
Since the graphe was an agon timetos, it meant that the penalty was
not fixed by law. Once the defendant was found guilty, the jurors had
to choose between penalties proposed first by the prosecutor and then
by the defendant—a process that Socrates, for one, did not appear to
take seriously.43
This leaves the question of what actions might come under the
charge of asebeia—and here we meet with some greater uncertainty.
At one level, we might argue that the general charge of asebeia might
be held to include any smaller charge that could be made to sound
relevant;44 on the other hand, it is worth looking at which particular
activities the Athenians themselves were likely to include. In terms of
what the Athenians understood asebeia to mean, as Cohen has
pointed out, the ‘unreflective ordinary language conception of the
Athenian citizen’ is probably captured by Euthyphro’s response to
Socrates in Plato’s dialogue of that name: he states that ‘impiety is that
which is not pleasing to the gods’.45 Aristotle offers us a more detailed
definition that turns on the meaning of the term plemmeleia, which
means ‘error’, but may also convey an element of impious offence. It
can, as Aristotle explains, be committed against gods, daimones, the
dead, parents, or the fatherland.46 The cases brought or crimes
referred to in the forensic corpus give some idea of the variety of
misdemeanours that might be included under this heading. For
example, as noted above, the speaker of Demosthenes’ speech
Against Androtion, Diodorus, tells us that it was possible to bring
an impiety charge for murder. The example in that speech is the
murder of a kinsman (his father); but a puzzling fragment of a speech

42
On prosecutions with the potential for partial atimia, see Hansen 1975: 29 (and
for exceptions MacDowell 1978: 64). The extent of the atimia is discussed by Harris
(1992: 79–80), reviewing MacDowell (1990); Rubinstein (2000: 92 n. 43) offers an
overview of the debate.
43
See Todd 1993: 134.
44
As one anonymous reader of this text has observed (pers. corresp.). For system-
atic listings of the evidence for trials in Athens and beyond, see Krauter 2004 and
Filonik 2013.
45
Pl. Euthphr. 7a. See Cohen (1991: 204–5), who notes (205) that ‘it is reasonable
to suppose that the legal scope of the term is narrower’.
46
Arist. Virt. Vit. 1251a30. The additional nuance is apparent also in the noun’s
cognates; see entries in LSJ s.v. plemmeles (2).
 What Charges? 51
by Hyperides suggests that the murder, or the mistreatment of the
dead, need not be that of a kinsman.47 Returning to Diodorus, we
learn that it was also possible to prosecute under this charge if
someone had not brought a homicide charge against the murderer
of a kinsman.48 These cases raise questions about the perceived
sanctity of family ties, and may be explained by the pollution caused
by murder.49
However, the majority of crimes prosecuted through a graphe
asebeias were what Hyperides elsewhere calls peri ta hiereia (and he
distinguishes these crimes from, for example, mistreating parents or
making illegal proposals).50 Again, law-court speeches offer some idea
of the many different kinds of ‘errors’ the category might encompass:
for example, offences against priests or private individuals ‘with a
religious mission’, and the actions of officials who represented the
people in religious activities but failed to fulfil the customary criteria.51
Two famous trials from 399 BCE supply examples that are particularly
salient for this study. First, the trial of Andocides is itself a case of
asebeia. Andocides was part of the prosecution against those who
profaned the Mysteries, and this case was brought against him for
breaking a law that banned those convicted of impiety from entering
temples (Isotimides’ decree, passed shortly after the events of 415).52

47
Hyperides (fr. 70) suggests that after a number of wealthy Aeolians had been
found dead at Rheneia, the Delians accused the Rheneians of impiety, followed by the
Rheneians bringing the same charge, in turn, against the Delians, but we lack
important contextual and detailed evidence to understand why this event seems to
have resulted in these particular charges.
48
Dem. 22.2; see discussion on pp. 40–1.
49
Tetralogies I and III make these points at some length. It seems likely that there
was a conception of asebeia by association for the kinsman—and perhaps for the
city—but see Parker 1983: 130.
50
Hyp. 4.5.
51
Examples of offence: IG II2 1635 (B, frg. a111).135–6 (= IDélos 98 [B, frg. a1] ll.
26–7; see RO 28) (against Delians who had chased the Athenian representatives of the
Amphictyony from the temple and beaten them). Cf. Versnel (1990: 123), who gives
an overview of offences against religion, drawing on Derenne (1930: 9–12). Versnel
(1990: 123–4) includes Dem. 21.1, 12, 20, 34, 51, 55 (but although Meidias’ offences
were described as asebeia during the trial, this was not prosecuted as such; see the
discussion in Eidinow 2015); and the case of Archias ([Dem.] 59.116), which he argues
demonstrates that a priest who sacrificed at the wrong time and place would have
‘offended both state and gods’ (see further discussion on pp. 319–20).
52
For the original events: Thuc. 6.53.1 and Andoc. 1.10, 29–32, 58, and 71. On his
return to Athens in 403 BCE, Andocides tried to bring a prosecution against one
Archippus for mutilating his family’s herm (Lys. 6.11–12).
52 Envy, Poison, and Death
But his case also introduces three other types of asebeia relating to
those events and the famous desecration of the herms in 415 BCE: the
defacing of sacred objects, the revelation of the secrets of the Myster-
ies, and the mocking of the Mysteries.53 The other example is the most
well documented and thoroughly discussed of all impiety cases, that of
the philosopher Socrates. The charges against Socrates famously
included that he ‘has broken the law by not duly acknowledging
(nomizein) the gods whom the [Athenian] polis acknowledges [and]
introducing other new divinities (daimonia). He has also broken the
law by subverting/corrupting the young.’54 These two cases together
introduce some useful comparative material for reflection on the
charges that we find in the cases made against these women: the
question of the legality of introducing new gods, treatment of particu-
lar ritual activities, and, perhaps somewhat more surprisingly, the
teaching of those of lower status. We turn to these next.

RELIGIOUS MISDEMEANOURS

The passage from Josephus relating to Ninon which was cited earlier
indicates a society with no tolerance for the introduction of new gods;
but from the same period, but in contrast, we find Strabo praising the
Athenians for their tolerance, ‘for they welcomed so many of the
foreign rites that they were ridiculed by comic writers’.55 These two

53
Other examples of the defacing of sacred objects: I Ephesos 2; of revelations:
(Aeschylus) Arist. Eth. Nic. 1111a10, Ael. VH 5.19; (Diagoras of Melos) Diod. Sic.
13.6.7, Schol. Ar. Av. 1071, Lys. 6.17; of mockery: the charge against Alcibiades is
preserved in Plut. Per. 22 (it does not mention asebeia explicitly, but we are told he
was charged with impiety in Per. 19; and see also Thuc. 6.27, 53, and 60, and Xen. Hell.
1.4.13, 14, and 20).
54
Favorinus ap. Diog. Laert. 2.40; Xen. Mem. 1.1–2 and Ap. 10; Pl. Ap. 24b–c (tr.
Parker 1996: 201). The verb, nomizo, translated here as ‘acknowledge’, straddles both
the idea of ‘customary practice’ and ‘belief ’ (see Derenne 1930, Fahr 1969, Versnel 1990:
125, Parker 1996: 201). Dover (1975) has argued that only Socrates can be taken to have
been prosecuted for his attitudes towards the gods; in his edition of Aristophanes’
Clouds, he translates nomizo as ‘accept (or treat, practise) as normal’, which captures
both physical and mental attitudes. Yunis (1988: 62–6) provides a neat and effective
analysis of the way in which theous nomizein (65) ‘must be something distinct from
worshipping gods, but must be a necessary concomitant of worshipping gods’.
55
Strabo 10.3.18. He mentions specifically ‘the Bendideian rites mentioned by
Plato, and the Phrygian by Demosthenes when he casts the reproach upon Aeschines’
 What Charges? 53
statements appear to illustrate two clear and contrasting positions—
and, indeed, some scholars have adopted one or other, for example
arguing that certain kinds of cults which smacked of ‘being foreign’
were more likely to be regarded with suspicion and intolerance by the
Athenians.56 However, the difference between them may not be as
clear as first appears. In particular, the question of how to apply the
terms ‘new’ or ‘foreign’ to either divinities or ritual practices poses
significant problems.
In terms of gods, ‘new’ or ‘foreign’ could mean divinities known
from other Greek communities, but not yet enjoying cult in Athens,
as well as deities from further afield. If a god required civic space and
funds, and all the trappings of institutionalization, there were regular
procedures by which Council and Assembly would grant official
sanction.57 However, some gods designated as ‘new’ to the civic
pantheon were already being worshipped in Athens by groups or
individuals before they received this official recognition: the cults of
Pan and Bendis are good examples. It was also possible to rent land
on which to conduct worship, and to remain privately funded. Some
cults did not even go this far: the cult of Adonis, for example, was
famously celebrated by groups of women on their domestic rooftops,
and its devotees do not seem to have arranged for or been designated
a location of civic cult.
It has been described as ‘standard practice’ for Athenians to intro-
duce new gods, but the details of this practice varied. Gods might be
introduced by individuals or groups. They might stay the same or be
transformed; remain the concern of subgroups or be absorbed into
the pantheon of the city.58 As this suggests, in terms of ‘new’ or
‘foreign’ ritual practice, evidence for myriad smaller cult activities
indicates that individuals and groups could, and did, perform

mother and Aeschines himself that he was with her when she conducted initiations’
(tr. Jones 1928).
56
e.g. Burkert (1985: 316), who states: ‘From the helplessness of those who wish to
hold on to tradition there springs an irritation which can be dangerous, especially if
political or personal motives are involved as catalysts.’
57
Large cults needed a number of different resources: Garland 1992: 19–21, Parker
1996: 124–31 and 2005b: 61–2. Foreigners needed two permits to found a temple for
their gods in Athens. These covered both the right to acquire a piece of land (enktesis)
and permission to build a temple on it: for Bendis IG II2 1283; Egyptian devotees of
Isis and the Cyprian ones of Aphrodite Ourania IG II2 337 = LSCG 34 333/332 BCE; see
Pecírka 1966, Versnel 1990: 122, with Parker 1996: 216 and Purvis 2003: 9.
58
See Parker 1996: 199 for the quotation and ch. 9 of that volume for evidence.
54 Envy, Poison, and Death
unregulated ritual acts of worship around the city—just as Plato
portrays, with some anxiety, in the Laws.59 Sometimes this took
place in unoccupied land, sometimes on sacred land that had been
rented, sometimes celebrants gathered unofficially.60
However, little of this suggests that there was a wide diversity in the
activities brought to bear in worship. Much has been made of the
strangeness of ecstatic cult to Athenian sensibilities, but as Robert
Parker has succinctly noted: ‘One can scarcely insist enough on the
paradox that ecstatic dancing . . . was, in all seeming, indigenous in
Greece.’61 We should bear in mind the nature of the sources from
which any such impression arises. For example, Demosthenes is
scarcely a neutral witness in his description of Aeschines’ participa-
tion in the cult of Sabazius under the direction of his mother, but even
so, his partisan report does not, in fact, suggest that Aeschines should
be regarded with suspicion.62 Rather, Demosthenes places emphasis
on Aeschines’ shameful poverty and his lack of opportunity and
experience. He ends the account with an ironic comment on Aeschines’
undoubted pride in his good fortune. This is not about Aeschines’
religious activities being dubious, but their role in marking him as a
young man of no account.63 With all this in mind, the next two sections
set out some further aspects to consider as we explore the possible
religious misdemeanours committed by these women, and the ways in
which scholars have tried to understand them.

59
Pl. Leg. 909d–910a.
60
Archaeological evidence for individual shrines in Wycherley (1970), and Purvis
(2003: 8) observes the random distribution of shrines to gods and heroes among
private dwellings in Athens and (11) examines how use of the terms demosia and idia
and hiera and hosia suggest that the category of ‘sacred’ encompassed both public and
private. See Hdt. 5.66 and Ar. Aves 1534; also shrines built by nympholepts offer
further examples (see Connor 1988). These unregulated examples may have been the
focus of worship by individuals and/or small groups, if only families. A larger group
example is the cult of Adonis, celebrated at the Adonia, which suggests that ecstatic
cult activity did not per se receive regulation, nor, more specifically did it require a
space of its own for celebration (see Ar. Lys. 3; and IG II² 1177, dating to the mid-
fourth century, which forbids anyone from bringing together regular spontaneous
revels in the Thesmophorium in the deme Piraeus; see Parker 1996: 162).
61 62
Parker 1996: 160. Dem. 18.259–60.
63
Krauter makes this point more generally about the evidence from law-court
speeches for cases of asebeia (2004: 234): ‘Diese aber sind nicht in erster Linie
Zeugnisse für das antike Recht, sondern für die antike Rhetorik.’
 What Charges? 55
TRADITIONAL GODS: NEW APPROACHES

A number of scholars have argued that these women were prosecuted

on charges of impiety because they had dared to play the part of
priests in private religious ceremonies.64 However, their likely
offences are often left somewhat vague, in part, because, as we have
seen, there are difficulties in giving a clear account of the nature of
what was considered new or foreign, and, in part, because we are
somewhat hampered by perceptions of what counted as innovatory
activities.
Matthew Dickie argues that Ninon was probably condemned on
a charge of impiety for the way she was conducting mysteries, and
he sees the same offence as the basis for the accusation and execution of
the gune magos in the first version of Aesop’s fable for innovating
in divine matters (kainotomousan peri ta theia). This he takes as
implying that this woman’s crime was ‘attempting to placate the
wrath of the gods by means that were felt to be at odds with Athenian
tradition, presumably because they involved sorcery’.65 This suggests it
was the innovatory nature of what this woman was doing, apparently
here the use of incantations, which was judged to be problematic. However,
it is hard to find corroborating evidence that shows that the use of
incantations was regarded with particular suspicion.66 More generally,

64
See discussion by Parker (1996: 158–63). Dickie (2001: 51) on Theoris, argues
that Philochorus was likely to have got these kinds of details correct because he is a
historian who was interested in cult. Parker (1996: 163 n. 34) by implication regards
these women as ‘priestesses’ but does not try to distinguish between their likely
offences (except for Ninon, where he indicates a slight preference for the charge of
‘initiating in rites of foreign gods’). Garland (1992: 150) argues that Ninon was a
priestess for a civic cult, and that was what prevented her from taking part in these
rituals, but cf. Krauter 2004: 238 n. 36. Krauter (2004: 233 and 237–8) is reluctant to
consider the trials of Theoris and Ninon as historical cases since the evidence is
obscure.
65
Dickie (2001: 51–2, quotation, p. 52), taking the older version of the fable as
being closer to a fourth-century rendering; see also Gordon 1999: 249.
66
Versnel (1990: 117) appears to suggest this, although the thrust of his argument
is not wholly clear to me here. He notes the claims of the sorceress and her ‘epoidas’,
and observes that ‘these practices were generally associated with professionals of
foreign cults’, but the further example that he gives (Max. Tyr. 19.3) concerns priests
of Cybele who will apothespizousin (‘give oracles’) for 2 obols. He states that Pentheus
in Euripides’ Bacchae ‘does not hesitate to expose the foreign prophet as a goes
epoidos’, but cites l. 234, where the phrase is one of a number of descriptions of
Dionysus that Pentheus is reporting; the emphasis of his criticism seems to be on the
stranger’s seductive activities and allure. The additional citations, Pl. Meno 80a–b and
56 Envy, Poison, and Death
the glimpse of everyday religious creativity provided by Plato
(described above, pp. 53–4) does not seem to portray a context of
intolerance; similarly, his description of itinerant salesmen also sug-
gests that there was, in actuality, something of a ‘market in magic’.
And when we remember the sanctioned activities of Glaucothea, this
appears even more puzzling. Innovation alone seems insufficient to
condemn Ninon to death.
Two possible, and not necessarily mutually exclusive, routes to
resolution are apparent. The first is to attempt to narrow down the
nature of the activities that Ninon and her group may have been
pursuing. With regard to the problems outlined above concerning the
difficulties of identifying new gods and new activities, there is a
notable exception—and we return to the possibility that Ninon was
accused of profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Athenians in the
Classical period appear to have perceived a strong link between
the preservation of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the well-being of
the democracy; and it has already been noted how often the profan-
ation of the Mysteries appears in trials for impiety.67 Details of the
fifth-century prosecutions for ‘the mocking of the Mysteries’ survive
in the charges against Alcibiades preserved by Plutarch.68 These offer
an account of all the ways in which his activities were understood to
be ‘mimicking the Mysteries’. These included where they happened,
how he was dressed, what he called himself, and the way he distrib-
uted other official titles, including his ‘initiates’.
Is it possible then that Ninon’s misconduct—or that of any of the
women here discussed—was somehow connected to a misrepresen-
tation of Eleusis? In the case of Phryne, we know the name of the god
in question, and this does not resonate with an Eleusinian context;
nor is such a charge made explicitly in the summary of the case or the
record of Euthias’ words that survive. However, as noted above, some
of the language found in the fragments of Hyperides’ speech suggest
that references to Eleusis may have been introduced into the case,
either by Euthias as part of his argument, or, indeed, by Hyperides to

Hippoc. Morb. sacr. 1.9 (6.358ff.), are similarly given with little contextual discussion,
e.g. the apparent comparative tolerance of Athens revealed by the Platonic comment,
or the element of competition motivating the remarks of the Hippocratic author.
67
Mylonas (1961: 224): ‘divulging the secrets of the cult was considered compar-
able to the destruction of the democracy’; see also Graf 2002 and Gagné 2009.
Contemporary views of the significance of the Mysteries: e.g. Isoc. 16.6, Lys. 6.54.
68
Plut. Alc. 22.
 What Charges? 57
ridicule the charges. In the case of Theoris, despite some scholars’
attempts to link her to such innovations, there is no mention of rituals
of this kind.69 Perhaps Demosthenes does not mention this aspect
because it would undermine his arguments against Aeschines, since
Glaucothea’s activities were therefore fundamentally different; at the
same time, however, the brevity with which he mentions Ninon
suggests that her crimes were well known anyway. Returning to the
scholiast’s elaboration of this material, we have to ask whether or not
the writer was drawing on specific knowledge of events or, alterna-
tively, on general ideas of what was a possible charge.

‘NEW’ GODS?

An alternative possibility is that these women were, at least in part,

taken to court because they had introduced the rites of gods that were,
as yet, unknown in the city of Athens. In favour of this argument, the
case against Socrates may confirm that there was a law against
introducing new gods. It has been argued that the specific charge
originates in a fifth-century decree by the diviner Diopeithes. This,
according to Plutarch, provided for ‘the public impeachment of such
as did not believe in gods, or who taught doctrines regarding the
heavens’, and enabled the prosecution of the philosopher Anaxagoras
as an indirect attack on Pericles himself.70
The existence of this original decree—and trial—has been chal-
lenged on the grounds that the only evidence for Diopeithes is late
and the account of the trial muddled.71 The nature of its relation to
Socrates’ trial is unclear. There are similarities of language between
the two accounts, but, it has been objected, (i) it would be impos-
sible for Socrates to be prosecuted by means of a decree of the mid-
fifth century, and (ii) Socrates was prosecuted with a graphe

69
Gordon (1999: 250) argues that she was taken to court on the grounds that she
had perpetrated an ‘undesirable religious innovation’, but just what this was, and
whose target this made her, remain opaque (see further below).
70
Plut. Per. 32 (tr. Perrin 1916); supporting this we find Derenne 1930: 168ff. and
Dodds 1952: 189. See also Burkert 1985: 467 and Versnel 1990: 124. Dover (1975:
esp. 39–40) raises questions about the accuracy of this account.
71
Cohen (1991: 212–13) dismisses law and trial as inventions; cf. Parker (1996:
208–9), who comes to no ‘confident conclusion’.
58 Envy, Poison, and Death
asebeias, whereas Diopeithes’ decree introduced an eisangelia.72 In
response it has been suggested that either a law was developed as
part of the reforms of 403/2, or that the prosecution of Socrates was
an interim ‘improvisation of sorts’ before a law was developed later in
the fourth century BCE.73 Presumably, it is also possible that the late
account of the trial actually draws on the account of the trial of
Socrates. In the end, however we analyse this material, the evidence
of Socrates’ own trial brings us to the undeniable conclusion that,
although it seems to have been a rare occurrence, it was possible to
be condemned on such a charge.74
We can perhaps get some further help from Socrates’ own attempt
at analysing the charges made against him in the version of his
defence given by Plato. He offers a range of possible implications of
the different accusations and the ways in which they relate to each
other.75 This examination offers echoes of the accusations concerning
innovation that were levelled at Ninon, Theoris, and Phryne: for
example, Socrates was ‘teaching them not to believe in the gods the
state believes in, but in other new spiritual beings’, while Ninon and

72
Dover 1975: 40; see Versnel 1990: 128–9. But a charge of impiety using eisange-
lia was brought by Lycurgus against Menesaechmus, probably after 324 BCE (Lycurg.
fr. 14.1 [Berlin Papyrus 11748]). The case concerned the annual pilgrimage to Delos;
the papyrus seems to suggest it was illegal to offer certain sacrifices unsupervised. The
dating of the case assumes that Lycurgus had probably ceased to be responsible for
Athens’ finances (see Plut. X orat. 841b, 852b; Diod. Sic. 16.88.1 with Faraguna 1992:
197–205 and Harris 2001b: 156) after which Menesaechmus attacked him at his last
euthynai (Harris 2001b: 216).
73
See Versnel 1990: 128–9 (quotation, p. 129); the idea that a law—either the law
that sanctioned the trials of Phryne, Ninon, etc., or a precursor of it—was developed
during the archonship of Euclides draws on Derenne 1930 and Reverdin 1945:
213, 217.
74
Cohen (1991: 213–15) examines the characterization of charges made against
Socrates in the beginning of Plato’s Euthyphro (3b–c) and Apology (23) and Xeno-
phon’s Memorabilia (1.1.9–16). The first depicts the charges as concerning religious
innovation and not conforming to traditional beliefs and myths—and Cohen observes
that this is never challenged as an inappropriate charge; the last two raise the question
of speculation about the universe and natural phenomena—and it is denied that
Socrates was interested in these topics. Krauter (2004: 239, citing also Garland 1992:
145–50) argues that it is not clear that kaina daimonia meant the introduction of a
foreign god.
75
Pl. Ap. 26a-c (tr. H. N. Fowler); Xen. Mem.1.1.5 explains of Socrates, πιστεύων δὲ
θεοῖς πῶς οὐκ εἶναι θεοὺς ἐνόμιζεν (‘And since he had confidence in the gods, how can
he have disbelieved in the existence of the gods?’), where he seems to be drawing a
distinction between a sense of trust or confidence and one of customary practice
illustrating belief (see also the discussion in note 72 above).
 What Charges? 59
Phryne were introducing new or foreign gods.76 It also places
emphasis on the significance of the spread of these ideas. In the
case of Socrates, the charge of corrupting youth was underpinned,
as later writers recalled and most scholars now argue, by Socrates’ role
as the teacher of Critias, a leader of the vicious revolution of the
Thirty in 404 BCE.77 Because of the Amnesty of 403/2, this material
could not be introduced in the official charge. But it could apparently
be brought up in the courtroom, even fifty years after the original
trial.78 In this regard, there are no direct parallels with any of the cases
of the women who have been discussed. But some concern about the
extent of these women’s influence may still be apparent; for example,
in the charge against Ninon that she was making philtra for young
men and against Theoris that she was teaching slaves; while Phryne’s
pejorative social influence is surely shown by her assemblies of either
men and women or women of a lower class and doubtful virtue. We
can even, perhaps, link these three concerns to each other via the
context of cult activity. There is no evidence that slaves were prohib-
ited from being initiated into mysteries, and indeed some evidence
that they were able to participate in the cult of Sabazius. Since
initiations for Sabazius involved the gathering of men and women
in thiasoi, and since Sabazius was worshipped with ecstatic rights, as
was Isodaites, these different accusations may therefore be connected
by ritual.79 However, in none of these cases is this aspect highlighted,
as it is in the case of Socrates. It seems less likely that these women
were feared for the extent of their social or political influence. That
said, perhaps it is most likely that these details appear in the sources
as projections of the concerns of writers of later periods.

76
Pl. Ap. 26b: διδάσκοντα μὴ νομίζειν οὓς ἡ πόλις νομίζει, ἕτερα δὲ δαιμόνια καινά.
77
Aeschin. 1.173 for Critias, and see Xen. Mem. 1. 2. 9 and 12–46 (Alcibiades is
included alongside Critias as someone who did the city great harm). The complexity
of the motives behind the trial of Socrates is manifest in the range of emphases
brought to bear in modern analyses: see, as a small selection, Taylor 1932: 104,
Finley 1977, Rankin 1987, Connor 1991, Garland 1992: 136–51, Parker 1996: 201,
Krauter 2004: 240–1, Waterfield 2009.
78
Hansen (1995) has argued for a similar situation in the case made by Lys. 30, but
see Todd 1996: 116 and 2000a: 297–8.
79
Slaves: SEG 24.223, dated to the second half of the fourth century, shows thiasoi
including slaves honouring gods at Eleusis; IG II² 2934 and IG II² 4650, from Attica,
are both dedications to the nymphs, which appear to include slave names. For later
evidence for thiasoi of Bendis on Salamis in five mid-third-century texts (Osborne
2004–9), see the discussion in Parker 2011: 237. For slaves in the cult of Sabazius, see
Ar. Vesp. 9.
60 Envy, Poison, and Death
Nevertheless, we may be able to follow this trail a little further. It
has long been claimed that the crime of asebeia was one that con-
cerned the threat posed by what one thought alongside what one
did.80 Teaching implies a claim to knowledge, and its involvement in
a charge of asebeia indicates a concern with the wrong kind of
knowledge and its transmission.81 This is explicit in the accusations
against Socrates, and we also see it realized in the physical isolation
that Plato imposes on his impious practitioners of magic in the Laws;
indeed, for Plato, the level of punishment is calibrated according to
the psychological state of his wrongdoer. The knowledge that these
women may have been thought to claim is not made explicit in the
evidence for the historical cases, although we might see the potential
to innovate tacitly attributed in the employment of particular para-
phernalia. However, there is one fictional story that offers a different
perspective. The Aesopian fable, although at first sight appearing to
focus on innovation in terms of activities, makes a quite different
point with its moral. This concerns not the woman’s use of incanta-
tions or any other specific activity, but rather her claim to the power
to placate the gods. This moves us away from the usual poles of
religious debate to a different concern altogether: that of a claim to
a particular private power, namely, a specific and personal relation-
ship with the gods. As we will see, this could be viewed as posing a
particular threat to the city and its inhabitants.

ASEBEIA REVISITED

What is profoundly clear here is the fluidity of the charge of asebeia

and its apparently capacious nature.82 This impression lies partly in

80
Cohen (1991: 210) gives an overview of this debate and some of the ancient
evidence that suggests impious thought was as important as behaviour; cf. Krauter
2004: 236–40.
81
As Saunders (1996: 97) says: Plato ‘calculates penalties on the assumption that
the degree of the technical knowledge misused by the offender is a measure of his
psychic vice’.
82
Scholars’ opinions have varied: some have considered a fairly circumscribed
set of charges; others have emphasized the greater fluidity of the charge. Rudhardt
(1960: 91–3) argued that the law strictly defined impiety (even in the fifth century),
but, as Cohen (1991: 207) points out, this has not been influential (and is not
well supported by the evidence). Cf. Thalheim (1896: 1529), who described it as
 What Charges? 61
the nature of Athenian law itself, which, it has been argued, offered
litigants flexibility in both interpretation of law and procedure
adopted.83 In the case of asebeia, this would be supported by (and
support) the perceived nature of the offence. Much of what we have
already discussed is concerned with the protection and conservation
of traditional ritual activity within the polis: this is the yardstick
against which the charge of asebeia is measured out. The gods were
‘sometimes benevolent and sometimes malign, with an unstable
devotion to moral virtue’, so, as observed earlier, the law of impiety
dealt with ‘a wide variety of acts supposed to be likely to attract the
gods’ hostility’.84 However, as other scholars have argued, and, as we
have seen, it is possible to gain some idea of the kinds of concerns that
provoked prosecution.
The nature of asebeia meant that the potential danger of disrupting
the relationship with the gods was one that the entire city had to
confront.85 Plato suggests that the judgement of what counts as impiety
should turn on the opinion of the citizens about each other.86 Some-
thing like this seems to have happened to Theoris, although it was her
servant who denounced her. But some have argued that this makes it
more likely that she was charged with asebeia; because asebeia was
viewed as an offence that could draw down the wrath of the gods on the
whole state, slaves would be encouraged to denounce their masters or
mistresses.87 Moreover, the term asebeia does seem to have been
used in forensic oratory in a way that suggests the audience was
expected to react to its appearance. There are plentiful examples of

exhibiting ‘Unbestimmtheit und Dehnbarkeit’ (‘indeterminacy and extensibility’;

repeated by Lipsius 1984: 359–60) but with clear central cases; cf. also Cohen 1991:
205. Ostwald (1986: 528–36) argues that the use of the eisangelia procedure in the
fifth century intimates that the definition of the offence was left to the prosecutor;
although there was a change of procedure in the fourth century, he doubts that this
marks a stricter definition of the crime.
83
See Osborne 1985 (and see the 2010 reprint for responses to critics of this view);
this point is also made by Cohen (1991: 207–10).
84
Saunders 1996: 91.
85
On the question of whether or not impiety was connected to fear of wrath of
gods, see Pl. Leg. 910b1–6, cited by Dickie (2001: 329 n. 13) as ordinary Athenian
attitudes, but cf. Parker 2005b: 68. It is seldom found in other sources, but this could
simply mean that it is taken for granted.
86
Pl. Leg. 910d.
87
See Dickie 2001: 51. Lys. 5.3–5 is a charge of sacrilege that prompts reflection by
the speaker on the temptation for slaves to lay such charges in order to acquire their
freedom (see also Lys. 7.16).
62 Envy, Poison, and Death
the term asebeia being introduced into a speech, and attached to a
particular legal decision, even in a case that was not a graphe asebeias
(and with no reference to an obvious religious misdemeanour) in
order, it seems, to increase the sense of shared danger provoked by a
particular offence.88 Importantly, this need not mean that the ideas
that were raised in these arguments reflected actual cult practice.89 But
these apparent attempts by speakers to infuse a situation or decision
with a sense of danger appear to be intended to leverage an implicit
understanding that confronting the risk of asebeia was a shared
responsibility.90 In at least some cases, then, the law of asebeia can be
understood to have reflected understanding of a profound cosmo-
logical connection between the well-being of the city and the relation-
ships of its citizens (both as individuals and as a group) with the gods.

SOCIAL CONTROL?

Attention to the incidental details of the charges has led some

scholars to suggest that it was not simply the introduction of new
gods or rituals that may have been perceived as problematic: there
may have been other factors at play. Most generally, scholars have
drawn attention to the need of the Athenian state simply to exercise
control. Thus, Robert Parker has argued that the cases of Socrates and
Phryne reveal ‘the Athenians . . . affirming their right of ultimate
control over all the religious practices of Attica’. He suggests the
problem was not that Isodaites was a new, foreign god, but that he
was not approved by the Athenian state.91 With regard to these trials,
Richard Gordon has suggested that there were individuals within the
state dispensing discipline. In the case of Theoris, these were ‘the
legitimate specialists’, who would consider her as ‘as aiming at unto-
ward religious or “salvific” capital’. But the identity of these specialists
is unclear; nor is it plain what or why this capital was perceived as

88 89
See Eidinow 2015. As Krauter 2004: 234.
90
See Eidinow 2015; cf. Cohen (1991: 205), who, in looking for the bases for actual
legal prosecutions, sets these examples aside as simply ‘exaggerated usages’ of the
term.
91
Parker 1996: 217.
 What Charges? 63
dangerous.92 Moreover, there does not seem to be further evidence for
this kind of concern, although we can trace the occasional attempt at
local regulations.93 Similarly, in this context of exerting order, Plu-
tarch’s comment on Theoris that she was ‘teaching slaves how to
deceive’ may be taken as significant. However, there is little evidence
to indicate concern with slave unrest at this time (and few, if any,
stories of slave revolts from the time of this trial). The charge seems
more likely to express fears appropriate to Plutarch’s own time.94
The gender of these three defendants has also been raised as a
possible exacerbating factor in their trials. Frequently these explanations
draw attention to the sexuality of these women: for example, some have
assumed that all three women, not just Phryne, must have been hetairai.
The argument is made solely on the basis that their names were men-
tioned in court, and this was not usual for respectable women.95 But
there are indications that their social status may have been higher than
this implies: for example, the suggestion that Ninon’s son may have
hired a speech-writer so as to attack the man who took his mother
to court. Even if the story is judged to be spurious, it suggests that Ninon
was thought to have come from a family of some standing.96 Moreover,
it seems likely that women who had been condemned to death and
executed were probably no longer considered ‘respectable’, whatever
their status beforehand. But even were we to accept that these women
were hetairai, the argument that follows is unconvincing, that
is, that they were therefore considered dangerous because of their

92 93
Gordon: 1999: 250. See note 60 above on IG II² 1177.
94
Versnel (1990: 118 n. 87) draws a parallel between this and a judicial prayer
from Amorgos that features a slave who has run off with other slaves (SGD 60), but he
does not elaborate on the implications. It suggests that the writer was unable to have
recourse to a civic judicial process (he does not threaten this in his prayer). However,
the text has been dated to between the second century BCE and second century CE
(Gager 1992: 165; it is discussed further in this volume on pp. 226–9). The hero
Drimacus, a leader of runaway slaves, seems specific to Chios; but even he occupied a
middle ground, both in myth (he would send back runaway slaves) and in cult (both
slaves and masters offered him dedications); see Nymphodorus of Syracuse FGrH 572
F 4 ap. Ath. 6.265c–266e (cf. Graf 1985: 121–5).
Arnaoutoglou (2007) analyses literary and epigraphic legal texts for evidence of the
areas of life in which communities demonstrate a fear of slaves. His findings reveal
concern with the behaviour of individuals, not groups. The areas of life that he notes
receive legislation include non-performance of duties, betrayal of the family to which
they belonged, conduct that might disrupt the hygiene of sacred and secular public
places or disturb civic relations with the divine, uncontrolled sexual behaviour, and
economic offences.
95 96
e.g. Trampedach 2001: 148. See Dickie 2001: 53.
64 Envy, Poison, and Death
essential social ambiguity (neither prostitute, nor wife). Apart from
imposing a distinctly modern analysis on lived ancient experience, it
fails to account for how and why these three women/hetairai in
particular became so dangerous that they had to be put on trial for
their lives.
An alternative, but not unrelated approach posits links between
these women and the various more dissipated aspects of ecstatic
worship of ‘foreign’ cult and/or erotic magic; but as we have seen,
such aspects alone cannot offer an adequate explanation for these
events.97 The foreignness of the women themselves is another aspect
on which commentators have focused, but it is difficult to establish
the identity of these women closely enough to understand what role it
could have played in their trial.98 It is true that Theoris is specifically
described as a Lemnian: but at this point Lemnos was a possession of
the Athenians, one that they had regained after the Peloponnesian
War. The use of the term may indicate that Theoris was one of the
‘dispossessed’ of Lemnos (i.e. not from an Athenian settlement), but it
could also be a rhetorical device by which Demosthenes distanced her
from his Athenian audience—or, in the end, simply a way to identify
her. For the other women, this aspect seems to have been irrelevant:
although we know that Phryne was from Thespiai in Boiotia, little
seems to have been made of that in the trial, while we have no
evidence of origin for Ninon.

97
See e.g. the discussions of Hansen 1995: 26 and Parker 1996: 214–15.
98
Not only as a characteristic that leads to suspicion, but also one that enabled
innovation, at least in the case of Theoris (Gordon 1999: 250).
 1.4

Conclusion: ‘If Anyone Has

Cursed Me . . .’

Across the different cases examined here, certain charges, and the
reasons for bringing them, appear more significant than others. But
this does not mean that the details of the other, possible charges
(including, for example, the creation of pharmaka) should be elided
or dismissed as simply irrelevant.1 The attempt to distinguish a single
accusation may be an understandable legacy of our own court system
(and, before that, of the Roman legal system). However, it does not
necessarily help us to understand what went on in an Athenian
courtroom, where a variety of accusations against the plaintiff may
have been introduced into a case to elaborate the main charge.2
So, why bring those particular accusations to bear? We can gain
some foothold on this question by turning again to the procedure of
graphe asebeias: scholars have rightly noted that this seems often to
have been employed with political as much as religious intent—and
that this was appropriate to a culture characterized by the inextricable
association of these two dimensions.3 The variegated nature of such
cases is well illustrated by the trial of Socrates, where the minor or
even unofficial indictments reveal the sociopolitical context of this
event, and the nature and content of local popular feeling that

1
The section title is from a pharmakon or binding spell discussed later in this
section.
2
Todd (1996: 108) goes so far as to argue that ‘in order to be found guilty in an
Athenian court, you did not actually need to have done (or not done) anything in
particular’.
3
Parker 1996: 207; Krauter 2004: 241 (cf. Garland 1992: 151). Connor (1991)
provides a thought-provoking account of the ways in which religion and politics were
integrated.
66 Envy, Poison, and Death
was working against the philosopher. More apposite to this study,
perhaps, is the account given by Plutarch of the trial of Aspasia, wife
of Pericles, who was accused of asebeia. The basis for the charge is
unknown, but an additional accusation is also reported: the procure-
ment of freeborn women for Pericles.4 After mentioning the decree of
Diopeithes, and the case against Anaxagoras, the narrative observes
the delight with which the people accepted these divisive stories
(tas diabolas); the mention of diabole in this context is something
to which we will return later in this book. Meanwhile, although the
source is late and must be treated with caution as evidence for what
actually happened, it does indicate, in parallel to the events of the trial
of Socrates, the malicious dynamics that could surround and support
a public charge of impiety.
These examples in turn suggest that the charges brought against
Theoris, Ninon, and Phryne would somehow have resonated with a
jury of Athenian citizens, and therefore reflect current social dynamics.
To explore these more deeply, in particular those that might lead to
accusations linking women and pharmaka being brought into the
courtroom, I want to return now to the story of Aretaphila (mentioned
in section 2).5 When she was discovered trying to kill the tyrant
of Cyrene, Nicocrates, she argued that she had created her potions in
part because she was aware of the phthonos of others. Although we
know this was a fabrication (in the sense that Aretaphila intended
to commit a murder), it was put forward as a credible excuse.
This association between phthonos and magic-making is one that
we also find attested in epigraphic evidence. A binding spell dating to
the fourth century BCE is one of very few that gives us explicit
information about the motivations behind aggressive magical action:

Εἴ τις ἐμὲ κατέδεσεν | ἒ γυνὴ ἢ <ἀ>νὴρ ἒ δ<ο>ῦλος ἒ ἐ- | λεύθερος ἒ ξένος ἒ

ἀσ- | ‘ σ· τος ἒ οἰκεῖος ἒ ἀλλώτ- | ρτος[sic] ἒ ἐπὶ φθόνον τὸν | ἐμεÐ ι ἐργασίαι ἒ
ἔργοις, | εἴ τις ἐμὲ κατέδεσ- | εν πρὸς τὸν ἙρμεÐ ν τὸ- | ν ἐριόνιον ἒ πρὸ‘ ς· τὸν
| κάτοχον ἒ πρὸς τὸν δό- | λιον ἒ ἄλλοθί πο, ἀντι- | καταδε‘ __ σ· μεύω τὸς
ἐχ‘ ρ· θ- | ὸς ἅπαντας.
_
If anyone has cursed me, whether woman or man or slave or free or
stranger or citizen or household member or outsider, from envy (phtho-
nos) of me, my work and deeds. If anyone has cursed me in the presence

4 5
Plut. Per. 32.2. Plut. De mul. virt. 256b–c.
 Conclusion: ‘If Anyone Has Cursed Me . . .’ 67
of Hermes the Erionios or in the presence of [Hermes] the Binder or in
the presence of [Hermes] the Trickster or elsewhere, I curse, in turn all
my enemies.

This is one side of a curse tablet dating approximately to the time of

these trials, the early fourth century BCE, and known now by its
catalogue entry as NGCT 24.6 Although its writer clearly suspected
he had been the victim of supernatural attack, he did not know the
identity of the perpetrator and in writing his own spell he took an all-
encompassing approach. But just like Aretaphila centuries later, the
motivation he identifies in his unknown aggressor is phthonos. We
turn to an examination of this emotion next, in order better to
understand its role in ancient Greek culture more generally, and, in
particular, its links to accusations of pharmaka.

6
For text and dating, see Jordan 1999.
Part 2

Envy
 2.1

Introduction: ‘As Rust Eats Iron’

Phthonos is a virulent, powerful, toxic force. The quotation that heads

this section is from one of the entries on this word in the Suda. This
offers a number of definitions of phthonos, sourcing them from across
different Classical literary genres.1

Φθόνος, νόσημα ψυχῆς ἀνθρωπικὸν καὶ ἐσθίον ψυχήν, ἣν ἂν καταλάβῃ,

ὥσπερ ἰὸς τὸν σίδηρον. καὶ ὁ ἔρως ταὐτόν ἐστιν. οἷς ἐκεῖνος ἔχθιστον
καλῶς τὸ θεῖον, περιτρέπων τὸ συμçυὲς ἀρρώστημα εἰς αὐτοὺς τοὺς
ἐκçύσαντας αὐτά. καὶ ἴαμβοι: τὸ δευτερεῦον τοῦ çθόνου γράμμα ξέσας
εὕροις ἐν αὐτῷ τὸν çόνον γεγραμμένον. καὶ Σοçοκλῆς: ὁ çθόνος ἕρπει
πρὸς τὸν εὖ ἔχοντα. καὶ αὖθις: πιστὰ τοῖς ἀκούουσι τὰ κατὰ τῶν μεγάλων
διὰ τὸν çθόνον. καὶ Πίνδαρος: ὄψον δὲ λόγοι çθονεροῖς. καὶ αὖθις: σçόδρα
δὲ λαμπρὸς ὢν παρὰ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ὅμως ἐσκοτίσθη καὶ αὐτὸς ὑπὸ τοῦ τὰ
πάντα διεσθίοντος çθόνου: δίκην γὰρ θανάτου ὦçλε.
Phthonos, [Meaning a] human sickness of the soul and [one] eating
whatever soul it seizes, just as rust [eats] iron. And erotic desire is the
same thing. For them[?], phthonos calls the divine a most hateful thing,
turning the congenital ailment towards those who engendered it.
And iambic verses [sc. are attested as follows]: ‘having scraped away
the second letter of phthonos, you could find written in it phonos
[“homicide”]’.
And Sophocles [writes]: ‘phthonos creeps towards the one who is
well-placed.’ And elsewhere]: ‘listeners place credence in what is said
against the great, because of phthonos.’ And Pindar [writes]: ‘speeches
[are] a relish for the envious.’

1
Phthonos: phi 510 Adler, Suda On Line, tr. Boeri, 23 July 2008 (accessed 3 Feb.
2015), http://www.stoa.org/sol-entries/phi/510.
72 Envy, Poison, and Death
And elsewhere [it is written]: ‘despite being a great celebrity among
the Athenians, he too was eclipsed by all-consuming phthonos; for [ . . . ]
he was condemned to a sentence of death.’

The several quotations cover a wide span of time. The first is probably
the latest, a fragment attributed to Aelian, writing in the second century
CE: ‘A human sickness of the soul and [one] eating whatever soul it
seizes, just as rust [eats] iron’.2 We might dismiss this as a colourful
expression of the Second Sophistic, a period characterized by a focus on
rhetoric as a significant and prestigious art form. However, the entry
goes on to list a number of quotations that date from much earlier and
express related sentiments. Examining these is a useful way to start
building our understanding of the perceived effects of this emotion, the
situations in which phthonos was understood to be manifest, and
something of how it was regarded.
The second definition in this entry, from the Greek Anthology,
reports that having scraped away the second letter of phthonos, you
could find written in it phonos, that is, ‘homicide’.3 A similar thought,
not listed here, is found in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, where the
chorus provide a list of the unavoidable travails of mortal existence.
These consist of the suffering that man imposes on man—and they
are, to a certain extent, the evils that we might expect: phonoi, staseis,
eris, machai (‘murders, revolutions, strife, warfare’) and, finally,
phthonos.4 To modern ears, perhaps, the final item seems somewhat
anticlimactic, but it echoes the implied relationship of the quotation
from the Greek Anthology, drawing attention to the violence with
which phthonos was imbued.5
The following passages in the Suda entry describe some of the
kinds of relationships in which phthonos was understood to be

2
Ael. fr. 335 Domingo-Forasté (338 Hercher). The online entry notes: ‘here
mangled (“locus desperatus”: Adler). Read καλεῖ (manuscript G) for καλῶς, and
Hercher’s αὐτό for the final αὐτά’. Compare the similar imagery of Men. fr. 761
K-A in which phthonos consumes an individual, ‘as rust in iron tools, moths cloaks,
and wormwood wood.’ Cf. also Joh. Chrys. In 1 Cor. Hom. 31.4 (PG 61.264).
3
cf. Anthologiae Graecae, App. VII (Problemata, aenigmata) 47, 42.6–7 (Basilii
Megalomytis) (Cougny) (Καὶ πρῶτον ἕν μου, δεύτερον, γράμμα ξέσας, ǀ πανευçυῶς
εὕρῃς με χεῖρα θανάτου· [sic]).
4
Soph. OC 1234–5.
5
Most (2003: 132) notes the anticlimactic aspect, citing Jebb 1907: 195 ad 1233,
Kamerbeek 1984: 174 ad 1234, 5, and Fähse, who suggested transposing phthonos and
phonoi (opposed by Lloyd-Jones and Wilson [1990: 252 ad 1234–5]; but cf. Silk 2000:
149 n. 110).
 Introduction: ‘As Rust Eats Iron’ 73
manifest. The first passage is a quotation from Sophocles—this time
from the Ajax—which describes how phthonos operates within soci-
ety: ‘phthonos creeps towards the one who is well-placed’.6 What may
be a scholiast’s comment on the line follows: ‘listeners place credence
in what is said against the great, because of phthonos’. This introduces
some aspects of the mechanics of the operation of phthonos.7 There is
more detail in the final two, brief quotations in this entry. The first
dates to the fifth century, and is from the poetry of Pindar. It gives
some insight into the experience of the one who speaks: ὄψον δὲ λόγοι
çθονεροῖσιν, that is, ‘words [are] a relish for those who are phtho-
neroi’.8 And just how deadly this combination of phthonos, speech,
and willing audience may be is evinced by the last definition, dating
to the third century CE, in which Diogenes Laertius describes how
the politician Demetrius of Phaleron fell victim to phthonos: ‘despite
being a great celebrity among the Athenians, he too was eclipsed by
all-consuming phthonos; for [ . . . ] he was condemned to a sentence
of death.’9
Having worked our way through this entry, we might be more
tempted to understand that last phrase as ‘because of being a great
celebrity’; and certainly the definition found in another of the Suda
entries for Phthonos (phi 509, Adler), can be taken to support that:10
Φθόνος: πάθος λύπης ἐπὶ τῇ τῶν πέλας εὐπραγίᾳ. τῶν ἐπιεικῶν τινος. ἐκ
τούτου δῆλον, ὡς καὶ çθονερὸς ἂν εἴη ὁ λυπούμενος ἐπὶ ταῖς τῶν ἐπιεικῶν
εὐπραγίαις. οὗ κειμένου, ἐπεὶ προδήλως ἀλλότριον τοῦ σπουδαίου τὸ
λυπεῖσθαι ἐπὶ ταῖς τῶν ἀγαθῶν εὐπραγίαις [οἱ γὰρ ἐπιεικεῖς ἀγαθοί],
οὐκ ἂν εἴη ὁ ἐπιεικὴς çθονερός.
This states first that the term means ‘[an] emotion of distress at the
prosperity of those nearby’. It then reinforces this idea, while also
giving an explicit condemnation of the characters of those who feel
such an emotion:
[But if phthonos is distress at the evident prosperity] of one of the decent
[people], from this it is clear that he who is grieved at the prosperity of
decent people would be [sc. called] phthoneros. This being given, since

6
Soph. Aj. 157.
7
Schol. Soph. Aj. 154. Boeri notes that the quotation is unidentifiable.
8
Pind. Nem. 8.21, further discussed on p. 112.
9
Diog. Laert. 5.76 (abridged).
10
Phthonos: phi 509 Adler, Suda On Line, tr. Roth, 7 Oct. 2011 (accessed 3 Feb.
2015), http://www.stoa.org/sol-entries/phi/509.
74 Envy, Poison, and Death
obviously being grieved at the prosperity of the good is alien to the
virtuous man (for decent people [are] good), the decent man would not
be envious.11

The final Suda entry on Phthonos, phi 508 Adler, introduces some
further phthonetic vocabulary: Φθόνος: ἡ ἐπὶ τοῖς καλοῖς τοῦ πλησίον
βασκανία παρὰ τῷ Ἀποστόλῳ (‘Phthonos: a malignant attitude to the
fine things of someone close by, in the Apostle’).12
Although it gives its source as a later period—and which gospel
writer it means is unclear—the sentiment it offers aligns with some
aspects of the other entries, for example the notion that this emotion
is exercised towards those close to you and is provoked by their ‘fine
things’, their prosperity, or good fortune.13 The term baskania is one
that we will explore further in a later section of this book. Suffice to
say here that over time it develops connections with the uncontrol-
lable and potentially extremely harmful form of malignant attitude,
the ‘evil eye’, which is, in turn, also associated with phthonos. Explicit
discussions of these forces, as well as examples of amulets to protect
against them, are found in greatest profusion after the first century CE,
but there are earlier allusions to various aspects of them in the
corpora of tragedy and oratory.14

11
As notes to the online entry detail (tr. Roth, ed. Whitehead and Roth): similar
entries are found in other lexica, see Photius s.v. Phthonos (phi 154) (Theodoridis); the
second quotation is from Alexander of Aphrodisias, Commentary on Aristotle’s
Topica 141.31–142.2, but omitting the beginning of the sentence. The final Suda
entry on Phthonos, phi 508 Adler, raises the question of baskania and is discussed
in section 2.3, on pp. 135–6.
12
‘Phthonos’: phi 508 Adler, Suda On Line, tr. Whitehead, 21 Oct. 2010 (accessed
3 Feb. 2015), http://www.stoa.org/sol-entries/phi/508.
13
See a list of references to apostolic writings on phthonos in Walcot 1978: 86–7.
This entry is from Gennadius of Constantinople’s fragmentary commentary on
Romans (Theodoridis 1998: LXIX–LXXIII); for this and further notes, see the online
entry (tr. Whitehead, ed. Roth and Whitehead).
14
The most explicit discussion can be found in Plut. Quaest. conv. 5.7.680–3,
which draws on Democritean explanations of how the eyes work to depict the eye as
giving off a stream of particles harmful to the person being observed. See Bryen and
Wypustek (2009: 546 n. 21) on how, among the documentary papyri, many of the
personal letters include the wish that the recipient and their family (especially their
children) should remain abaskanta, i.e. ‘untouched by the evil eye’.
Earlier examples include the role of the eye of an envious mortal in causing damage
to the observed: Aesch. Ag. 947; but it may also be the eye of a god, Aesch. Ag. 468–70;
see Walcot 1978: 34. In fourth-century forensic sources baskanos and baskainein
already convey a sense of malignancy; see further discussion on pp. 135–6.
 Introduction: ‘As Rust Eats Iron’ 75
We will return to a number of the different themes raised above, but
first, we will take a closer look at phthonos. The definitions above offer
an initial idea of the modern emotions concept that phthonos evokes:
the closest English translation for it is probably ‘envy’. According to
Aristotle, phthonos is one of the emotions provoked by the prosperity
of others and manifesting as ‘a pain that arises at the sight of the good
fortune of another . . . like themselves’, for example in birth, family,
age, reputation, that is, someone who has what we could have:

ἐστὶν ὁ çθόνος λύπη τις ἐπὶ εὐπραγίᾳ çαινομένῃ τῶν εἰρημένων ἀγαθῶν
περὶ τοὺς ὁμοίους, μὴ ἵνα τι αὑτῷ, ἀλλὰ δι᾿ ἐκείνους· çθονήσουσι μὲν γὰρ
οἱ τοιοῦτοι οἷς εἰσί τινες ὅμοιοι ἢ çαίνονται. ὁμοίους δὲ λέγω κατὰ γένος,
κατὰ συγγένειαν, καθ᾿ ἡλικίαν, καθ᾿ ἕξιν, κατὰ δόξαν, κατὰ τὰ ὑπάρχοντα.
Phthonos is a kind of pain at the sight of good fortune in regard to the
goods mentioned; in the case of those like themselves; and not for the
sake of a man getting anything, but because of others possessing it. For
those men will be envious who have, or seem to have, others ‘like’ them.
I mean like in birth, relationship, age, moral habit, reputation, and
possessions.15

This sounds a little like what may, in contemporary English-speaking

cultures, colloquially be called jealousy. Modern usage suggests that
they share a similar context, in which an object of desire sets up
tension between two individuals. Those competing in such a zero-
sum paradigm must be of roughly equal status for this to occur,
because otherwise there can be no sense of rivalry.16 But the ancient
concept draws out some key nuances between the two: whereas zelos
(‘jealousy’) is concerned with wanting for oneself something that
someone else has, the key element of phthonos, at least as Aristotle
understood it, was not necessarily the desire to get something for
oneself, but essentially the desire that someone else not have it.17

15
Arist. Rhet. 1387b (tr. Freese 1926).
16
Walcot 1978: 28–9. Elsewhere Aristotle (Eth. Nic. 1108a35) distinguishes three
emotions that occur in response to the fortunes of one’s neighbours: phthonos,
nemesis ‘indignation at undeserved good fortune’, and epichairekakia, ‘spitefulness’.
Aristotle organizes them in terms of his tripartite system made up of excess, defi-
ciency, and mean, so that nemesis is the mean between phthonos and spitefulness.
17
Definition of zelos: Arist. Rhet. 1388a30–3, where it is described as a character-
istic of virtuous men, in contrast to those who feel phthonos. The pain caused by the
achievements of others is mentioned in Pind. Pyth. 1.83–4 and Parth. 1.8–10. For a
76 Envy, Poison, and Death
A similar definition is given by Socrates in Xenophon’s Memorabilia.
He carefully delineates the nature of phthonos: not pain at a friend’s
misfortune, nor at an enemy’s good fortune, but irritation at a friend’s
success, even a friend whom one has been willing to help when they
were in trouble:

çθόνον δὲ σκοπῶν, ὅ τι εἴη, λύπην μέν τινα ἐξηύρισκεν αὐτὸν ὄντα, οὔτε
μέντοι τὴν ἐπὶ çίλων ἀτυχίαις οὔτε τὴν ἐπ᾽ ἐχθρῶν εὐτυχίαις γιγνομένην,
ἀλλὰ μόνους ἔçη çθονεῖν τοὺς ἐπὶ ταῖς τῶν çίλων εὐπραξίαις ἀνιωμένους.
θαυμαζόντων δέ τινων εἴ τις çιλῶν τινα ἐπὶ τῇ εὐπραξίᾳ αὐτοῦ λυποῖτο,
ὑπεμίμνῃσκεν ὅτι πολλοὶ οὕτω πρός τινας ἔχουσιν, ὥστε κακῶς μὲν
πράττοντας μὴ δύνασθαι περιορᾶν, ἀλλὰ βοηθεῖν ἀτυχοῦσιν, εὐτυχούντων
δὲ λυπεῖσθαι.
Considering the nature of phthonos, he found it to be a kind of pain, not,
however, at a friend’s misfortune, nor at an enemy’s good fortune, but
he said those who feel phthonos are only those who are annoyed at their
friends’ successes. Some expressed surprise that anyone who loves
another should be pained at his success, but he reminded them that
many stand in this relation towards others, that they cannot disregard
them in time of trouble, but aid them in their misfortune, and yet they
are pained to see them prospering.18

thorough overview of phthonos in the ancient world, see Walcot 1978, with Sanders
2014.
Toohey 2014, Ben Ze’ev 2000, and Parrott and Smith 1993 are among the most
useful discussions of the differences between the modern emotions; Konstan 2003b
explores the evidence for ancient equivalents of jealousy focusing on zelotupia;
Sanders 2014 discusses envy and jealousy, comparing modern as well as ancient
meanings, and finding overlaps between the two. Although the approach of estab-
lishing modern colloquial uses of the terms ‘envy’ and ‘jealousy’ is useful, it can
become confusing. Thus, emulation is given as part of the table of envy scripts by
Sanders (2014: 31), but elsewhere in ancient (and modern discussion) is identified as
an element of zelos or zelotupia, ‘jealousy’ (see Konstan 2003b: 13–14).
18
Xen. Mem. 3.9.8, cf. Isoc. 1.26. Sanders (2014: 39) suggests a script of ‘covetous
envy’, in which there is ‘also a desire to obtain the goods ourselves’. However, the
examples he provides do not necessarily illustrate this. For example: Eur. Supp. 241,
which provides evidence of resentment against the rich, but not of desire for the
acquisition of wealth; Ar. Eq. 580, which concerns the care given by the chorus
members to their hair and toilet (why would this be coveted?); Thuc. 6.16.3, which
concerns the wealth of the liturgist—but presumably no one would wish to be in the
position of paying liturgies; Philemon fr. 92.2 K-A, which describes wealth stirring up
envy, hate, and abuse, but without mention of desire for the wealth; Xen. An. 1.9.19,
where the individual in question is Cyrus, who is unlikely to desire his subjects’ wealth
(although he might not want them to have it); and Xen. Cyr. 7.5.77, which again
makes no mention of the desire for the rich person’s wealth but rather seems to
 Introduction: ‘As Rust Eats Iron’ 77
This definition is closer in time to the events that form the focus of
this study than some of the previous descriptions given above, but as
we have seen from the references given in the Suda, phthonos is an
emotion term that seems to remain both remarkably consistent and
strikingly prevalent. The definitions we have examined here are
largely about interpersonal relations, but they also encompass the
dynamics between groups and individuals, and groups and groups.
Picking up on this aspect, some scholars have suggested that the
tension arises from a public/private dichotomy, that is, as ‘a prefer-
ence for private satisfaction to the detriment of public aims and
goals’.19 But this definition adds an emphasis that is not there in
Aristotle’s, at least. Aristotle is not concerned primarily with the
impact of private desire on public policy—although that is surely
part of the fallout of phthonos, and his later, brief mention of phtho-
nos’ role in exacerbating injustice reinforces this aspect.20 Rather, his
initial definition is actually a focus solely on the private realm, or—
bearing in mind the difficulties of giving a definition of ‘private’ in the
ancient world—the personal pitched against the personal.
Indeed, cautious though we must be about such generalizations,
the evidence from these sources, and more widely across Greek
literature, suggests that this emotion seems to have been regarded
as an inevitable dimension of social relations. As analysed by Otanes
in the constitutional debate of book three of Herodotus’ Histories,
phthonos was understood to be an unavoidable aspect of the human
condition, rooted in most of mankind from birth—however virtuous
one’s character:21

indicate the potential for resentment at the way the wealth has been obtained,
encouraging the wealthy to be virtuous, ‘for we may be sure that the more a man
has, the more people will feel phthonos towards him and plot against him and become
his enemies, particularly if, as in our case, he draws his wealth and service from
unwilling hands’ (tr. Miller 1914, adapted). The analysis offered by Cairns (2003a: 239
n. 12) offers a subtle description of this kind of phthonos as focusing on the possessor
of the privilege, rather than the privilege (object or person) they possess.
19
Bulman 1992: 11; cited also by Guettel Cole 2001: 203.
20
In the Eudemian Ethics (1234a30), Aristotle draws attention to the way in which
phthonos, as an emotion, contributes to the not-virtue of injustice, just as the emotion
of righteous indignation (nemesis) contributes to the virtue of justice (dikaiosune); so
this does not appear to be concerned with a justified if malicious redistribution of
goods.
21
Hdt. 3.80.3–5. The innate nature of phthonos also receives implicit comment in
other passages: see, for example, Hdt. 4.104 (on the Agathursi, who demonstrate lack
of phthonos in their household arrangements).
78 Envy, Poison, and Death
καὶ γὰρ ἂν τὸν ἄριστον ἀνδρῶν πάντων στάντα ἐς ταύτην ἐκτὸς τῶν
ἐωθότων νοημάτων στήσειε. ἐγγίνεται μὲν γάρ οἱ ὕβρις ὑπὸ τῶν παρεόν-
των ἀγαθῶν, çθόνος δὲ ἀρχῆθεν ἐμçύεται ἀνθρώπῳ. δύο δ᾿ ἔχων ταῦτα
ἔχει πᾶσαν κακότητα· τὰ μὲν γὰρ ὕβρι κεκορημένος ἔρδει πολλὰ καὶ
ἀτάσθαλα, τὰ δὲ çθόνῳ. καίτοι ἄνδρα γε τύραννον ἄçθονον ἔδει εἶναι,
ἔχοντά γε πάντα τὰ ἀγαθά. τὸ δὲ ὑπεναντίον τούτου ἐς τοὺς πολιήτας
πέçυκε· çθονέει γὰρ τοῖσι ἀρίστοισι περιεοῦσί τε καὶ ζώουσι, χαίρει δὲ
τοῖσι κακίστοισι τῶν ἀστῶν, διαβολὰς δὲ ἄριστος ἐνδέκεσθαι.
Give this power to the best man on earth, and it would stir him to
unaccustomed thoughts. Insolence is created in him by the good things
to hand, while from birth phthonos is rooted in man. Acquiring the two
he possesses complete evil; for being satiated he does many reckless
things, some from insolence, some from phthonos. And yet an absolute
ruler ought to be free of phthonos, having all good things; but he
becomes the opposite of this towards his citizens; he feels phthonos
towards the best who thrive and live, and is pleased by the worst of his
fellows; and he is the best confidant of slander.22

This final ancient idea about phthonos, alongside the disturbing

familiarity of this emotion to modern eyes, leads to a series of
questions about our access to the emotional experience of the histor-
ical individual subject, and the kind of phenomenon we are trying to
analyse: how do we go about such an investigation? If we can accept
that ‘emotions are materially constituted and material culture is
emotionally constituted’,23 then when we look at historical objects,
or historical documents, are we managing to access something of the
individual subjective experience or ‘reactions to emotions rather than
emotion itself ’?24 Since subjective experiences by their very nature
vary so widely (not only from person to person, but also within a
single individual), the risk is that historians import their own values
into evaluation of historical contexts, ignoring radically different
conceptions of self and agency, for example.25 Yet, at the same time,

22
Tr. Godley 1920 (slightly adapted).
23
See Gosden (2004: 39), whose theoretical approach emphasizes the importance
of trying to understand the relationship between emotions and objects.
24
Quotation from Stearns and Stearns (1985: 826) on what they think is to be
found in historical documents.
25
On this problem, see Weinstein 1995: 302 and Tarlow 2010: 184 (on Harris and
Sørensen 2010a, and their response, Harris and Sørensen 2010b: 189). Voutsaki (2010:
75) argues that before we discuss individual agency in any particular society, we
should aim to understand ‘the notions of the person held in that society’ and identify
 Introduction: ‘As Rust Eats Iron’ 79
it is hard to imagine how historians can attempt to tell the stories of
past cultures without approximating the historical ‘experiencing
self ’.26 Historians and archaeologists have argued that although full
empathetic understanding of historical individuals may not be pos-
sible, it is important that we not ‘suspend . . . our personal expect-
ations of emotions in our analysis’, lest our analyses become ‘even
more abstract or even pale reflections of past worlds’.27 In the next
section I lay out a necessarily brief overview of some trends in the
wide range of research into the emotions, which I hope will help to
clarify the approach taken in this study. It sets out a relational view of
emotions, and emphasizes the analysis of ‘emotion talk’ as a way of
accessing the cultural narratives of a ‘social emotion’.

specific cultural and moral traditions in order to do this. Questioning conceptions of

the self raises further questions about perceptions of agency and personhood in a pre-
modern, relational world, which may involve non-human entities. Bill Sillar (2004:
183) addresses this problem in detail using an anthropological approach in the
context of Andean peoples, comparing and contrasting their (modern) ritual activities
with what is recorded of those of their forbears, the Inkas. He interrogates the idea of
agency, and perceptions of agency as cultural/historical constructs, but underlines the
importance of continuing to consider, and seek, individual motivation, without which
we can only see ‘people as unmotivated automatons who unconsciously maintain
tradition . . . or people who merely react to changes in their environment’. Gardner
(2004b and c) addresses questions of understanding agency in archaeological
approaches; he also raises the question of group/institutional agency.
26
The idea that study of the emotions can make a significant contribution to
scholarship is now firmly established across the study of different periods of history.
27
Harris and Sørensen 2010b: 189. A new set of terms may be needed to provide a
language for such analyses: Harris and Sørensen 2010a and b, with Smith 2010: 174.
Tarlow (2000: 728) draws on the idea of ‘ethos’ to sketch a link between emotional
standards and subjective emotional experiences (see Jenkins 1991: 389). A common
theme across many of these analyses is the importance of the physical body as the
basis for analysis; as Tarlow (2000: 718) puts it ‘bodies . . . can be considered as part of
the way in which emotion is culturally enacted, experienced and represented’; see also
Meskell 1998a and b.
 2.2

Defining Emotions

‘HE NEVER DISSECTED A MONKEY’

We start in the nineteenth century, as a crucial debate—one that is

still not resolved—begins to spark. In 1806, the anatomist and phys-
ician Sir Charles Bell publishes Essays on the Anatomy of Expression
in Painting. His book is something like a handbook for artists, and yet
it offers much more. Drawing on an analysis of ancient art, it sets out
a concept of beauty, focusing on the importance of emotional expres-
sion. But his approach is based on his extensive knowledge of human
anatomy, and he urges the artist to become a scientist, and study
dissection. As well as practical advice, he imparts a philosophical
viewpoint, careful to distinguish the more elevated beauty of humans
from that of animals, who are only capable of a lower form of expres-
siveness. In humans, ‘in the muscles of the face there is a provision for a
superiority of expression’, he states.1 In the expanded version of the
book (its third edition, titled The Anatomy and Philosophy of Expres-
sion as Connected with the Fine Arts, first published in 1844) these
observations about physiognomy and emotional expression are linked
to the will and design of God.2 The book proves extremely popular,
going through seven editions in that century alone.3
Much is at stake here. In the copy of his old tutor’s book (the
expanded edition), Charles Darwin scribbles his responses. Where
Bell notes ‘the most remarkable muscle in the human face is the
corrugator supercilii which knits the eyebrows with an energetic
effect which unaccountably, but irresistibly conveys the idea of

1 2
Bell 1824 (1806): 56. On links to God, see Bell 1865: 105.
3
After the expanded version (or third edition) was published in 1844, there were
editions in 1847, 1865, 1872, 1873 (NY), 1877, 1890 (see Cummings 1964: 191, n. 2).
 Defining Emotions 81
mind,’4 Darwin comments in the margin: ‘monkey here? . . . I have
seen well developed in monkeys . . . I suspect he never dissected
monkey.’5 His notebooks for 1838–9 are full of similar and related
material, making observations on both non-human primates, and
humans in other cultures and other countries.6 Alongside his other
work, he continues to explore and develop what would become his
‘Three Principles of Expression’.7 He makes inquiries, through jour-
nals, of the emotional expressions in other countries; he sends out
‘Queries about Expression’; he even makes notes about his own new-
born son, William.8 Darwin does not seek to explain what emotions
are or how they evolved; he even denies that they are useful. He
argues, simply, that the muscle actions of humans, praised as unique
by Charles Bell, are also found across mammal and primate species,
which use them to express similar emotions.9 They may no longer
serve that same purpose in humans now, but as a vestige of those
earlier responses, they still offer a powerful mode of communica-
tion.10 Actions that were once intentionally undertaken, or instinct-
ively occurred, could become habitual, and, in turn, hereditary.
Darwin intends to write another chapter for his Descent of Man,
but it proves too long. Two days after he finishes correcting the
page proofs of that volume, and before he begins work on the sixth
and final edition of On the Origin of Species, he starts to write The
Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals: it is finished in four
months, and first published in Great Britain in 1872.11
But the debate was far from over. In 1884, the psychologist William
James published a paper entitled ‘What is an Emotion?’ In it he
outlined a theory that took the opposite point of view from Darwin.

4
Bell 1865: 137. See Ekman 1999: xxv (who, however, misquotes Bell: ‘knits the
eyebrows with an enigmatic effect’).
5
Ekman 1999: xxv. This is the source of the quotation used above as a subtitle.
Elsewhere (e.g. Matsumoto et al. 2008: 227 n. 1) this is quoted as ‘He never looked at a
monkey.’
6
Ekman 1998: xxvii, and see Ekman 2009.
7
Richards (1989: 232–3): the three principles are (i) the principle of ‘serviceable
associated habits’, (ii) the ‘principle of antithesis’, and, finally, (iii) ‘The principle of
actions due to the constitution of the Nervous System, independently from the first of
the Will, and independently to a certain extent of Habit’.
8
Burkhardt and Smith 1988 and Burkhardt et al. 2010. Darwin 1867; Darwin
1892: 131–2.
9
Matsumoto et al. 2008: 226, with 227 n.
10
See Griffiths 1997: 44–5, who calls this a ‘pattern of “adaptive–historical” explanation’.
11
Criticized by James 1884, 1890, and 1894.
82 Envy, Poison, and Death
Whereas Darwin argued for fundamental feelings that were innate,
not learned, and which were expressed through the body, in James’s
view the emotions were perceptions of one’s own physical reactions.
There may be a contextual trigger, but this simply stimulates the
body, and ‘our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the
emotion’.12 The symptoms of the emotion may vary from person to
person (so a single category of emotion may be indicated by different
sets of physical symptoms), but this occurs within limits.13 Conscious
emotional experience was, as he put it, ‘not a primary feeling, directly
aroused by the exciting object or thought, but a secondary feeling
indirectly aroused’.14 In responses to criticism, it has been suggested,
he seemed to enlarge on this to argue that the context of perception is
important to what is perceived.15 But in essence, as one scholar has
argued, his presentation of the division of body and mind can be
described as ‘export quality Cartesianism machined to a high stand-
ard by means of nineteenth century positivism’.16 In this brief snap-
shot, we see the way in which emotions have been wielded as part of
the armoury of beliefs about the nature of humanity, and in particu-
lar, human rationality. Both Darwin and James emphasized the
difference between body and mind. For Darwin, our emotions were
shared with our animal ancestors, a product of instinct and inherit-
ance. For James, there was a clear division between body and mind:
we perceive, we respond physically, and we feel.17 These two
approaches are still influencing modern theories of emotions.

WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

In modern, western cultures, the popular view of emotions sees them as

‘private, unlearned and physiological’: phenomena that can perhaps be
tamed or repressed, but are an integral part of our precious, personal,

12
Although he also argued in his articles that emotions are multiply determined,
so not all emotions are caused by physiological reactions. See James 1884b: 189 (cited
by Larsen et al. 2008: 182): how the body feels those changes is raised in a footnote on
p. 193, where, he argues, ‘The question is too minute for discussion here’, and directs
the reader to ‘The Feeling of Effort’ (in the Anniversary Memoirs of the Boston Natural
History Society, 1880, and a summary in Mind 20: 582).
13 14
See Gendron and Barrett 2009: 9 and Black 2002. James 1884a: 516.
15 16
See James 1884a; Gendron and Barrett 2009 324–5. Lyons 1999: 31.
17
Richards 1989: 437–40.
 Defining Emotions 83
sometimes secret, selves.18 However, the study of emotion across a
number of different academic disciplines—philosophy, psychology,
anthropology, and history—suggests a different perspective. The ways
in which emotions have been understood to operate or function, the
very meaning of ‘emotion’ itself, have been interrogated, with each part
of that initial triad challenged, fragmented and, in some cases, more or
less discarded. The idea that emotions in different times and places can
be considered with a ‘common-sense’ approach in which we simply
assume an understanding of the nature of the emotional expression—
that they felt the same as us—has now largely been laid to rest.
Nevertheless, the answer to James’s question—just what is an
‘emotion’?—and how emotions work, is far from settled. The arguments
are cross-disciplinary and complex; emotions theorists differ as to the
variety of experiential components that may comprise the experience of
‘an emotion’ (e.g. cognitive, feeling, motivational, somatic, or motor
components), even as to how they define those components.19 These
arguments are stimulating, but not necessarily appropriate, for the
analysis of the emotions of historical subjects. In what follows, I will
try, necessarily briefly, to outline what I understand to be the main
strands of this debate, concentrating on those that seem to be most
relevant to this project.

The ‘Basic Emotions’

Acknowledging that this is a profound simplification, I start with two
contrasting fundamental approaches. The first, sometimes called
affect programme theory, posits that certain emotions—surprise,
anger, fear, sadness, joy, and disgust—should be regarded as a distinct
category of ‘natural kinds’. These are basic or fixed emotions that are
biologically given (with a unique neural circuit, or other neural
signature), as a result of evolution. These emotions exist independent
from our perception of them.20 As such, the theory suggests, it is
possible to draw reliable conclusions about the category from one
member of it, and thus conduct a scientific research programme.21

18 19
Lutz 1986: 284. See Moors 2010, esp. 1–3.
20
See Moors 2010: 20–1. Barrett (2006b: 21) argues (22) that the psychological
study of emotion is dominated by the paradigm of natural kinds.
21
See, challenging this, Barrett 2006a and 2006b. See also Griffiths 2004 (where he
qualifies his understanding and use of the term). On developments in the meaning of
the term ‘natural kinds’ across disciplines, see e.g. Griffiths 1997: 4–5.
84 Envy, Poison, and Death
This initial approach, in which Darwin’s work played a seminal
role, heralded an ongoing interest in and debate about the nature of
emotion (in particular, the question of whether bodily activity causes
emotions or vice versa).22 But this lapsed during 1940–60 as other
theories gained dominance.23 In the 1960s, however, the pioneering
research of Magda Arnold, Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer, and
Sylvan Tomkins began to reopen the subject, and since the 1980s
study of the emotions has grown rapidly.24 More recent work now
emphasizes how these fundamental emotional expressions play a key
role in individual human interactions, and are crucial communicative
processes. Perhaps most famously, Paul Ekman, drawing in part on
the work of Sylvan Tomkins, has argued that there are six universal
‘basic emotions’. These are happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger,
and disgust combined with contempt, with each of these emotion
words indicating a ‘family of related states’, whose members share
nine characteristics (distinctive universal signals, presence in other
primates, distinctive physiology, distinctive universals in antecedent
events, coherence among emotional response, quick onset, brief dur-
ations, automatic appraisal, and unbidden occurrence).25 Another
way of thinking about this idea of a family is in terms of a theme
and variations, where the variations are the result of individual,
cultural, and contextual differences.26

22
Darwin 1872.
23
Some say behaviourism (see Gendron and Barrett 2009: 317), others anthropo-
logical relativism (see Ekman 1998: xxiii) diminished this approach. Rosenberg (2005:
10) notes that, in addition, (i) early work indicated that the study of facial expressions
did not supply useful data and (ii) even if it had, there was no way to measure it.
Gendron and Barrett (2009: 316–17) argue that, in fact, a number of key works in the
field of what has now been labeled psychological constructionism were published
during this period.
24
Magda Arnold’s work offered an initial ‘appraisal model’ of the emotions (see
Arnold 1960). Appraisal models place emphasis on the ‘meaningful interpretation of
an object by an individual’ (see Gendron and Barrett 2009: 317 and Clore and Ortony
2008: 628–9).
25
Tomkins 1962 and Ekman 1992a. Carol Izard was also a pioneer in this area,
influenced by Tomkins’s initial work (see Izard 1971). As Ekman (1992a: 550) notes,
Tomkins and McCarter (1964) and Izard (1971) also found evidence for the recog-
nition of interest and shame, but Ekman has reservations about these findings (first,
on the grounds that interest may not be an emotion, and second, on the evidence for
shame). Ekman (1992c: 191–2) also raises the possibility that embarrassment, awe,
and excitement may be candidates for this status. For ‘family of related states’, see
Ekman 1992c: 172 and Ekman and Friesen 1975.
26
Ekman 1992c: 173.
 Defining Emotions 85
As Ekman explains, the ‘basic’ in the phrase ‘basic emotions’ refers
primarily to two key ideas: first, that there are ‘a number of separate,
discrete, emotional states’ that can be identified and differ in their
expression through the face; and, second, that the function of these
tasks and their universal attributes were shaped by evolution. In
response to anthropological findings that, across cultures, different
facial expressions may signify differently, he has formulated the
notion of ‘display rules’ to explain how universal facial expressions
might be modified according to cultural strictures.27 This approach
has provided the basis for much of the research into emotions that
has followed. As Ekman himself has stated, its value lies ‘in the
questions it directs attention to and the research findings that are
generated by those who work from this stance’.28
Ekman’s use of ‘basic’ also suggests how other non-basic emotions
may be formed, that is, as combinations of the basic emotions, in
blends or mixed emotional states.29 However, before this analytical
step is taken, he suggests considering whether non-basic emotions are
indeed to be classified as such: are they simply part of the family of a
basic emotion? If not, then there are a number of other possible
distinct categories, including moods (e.g. apprehension, irritation),
emotional attitudes (e.g. love or hatred), traits (timorous, hostile), or
disorders (depression, mania), and finally ‘emotional plots’, which
involve specific information, such as settings and stories (examples
include grief, infatuation, and jealousy).30
Ekman himself has dealt robustly with challenges to his methods,
and to conflicting anthropological research.31 It is important to
realize that his theory of the basic emotions involves room for

27
Ekman and Friesen 1969.
28
Ekman 1992a: 552. For example, his work on the links between facial expression
and emotion is also supported by work on autonomic nervous system (ANS) physi-
ology, and he has proposed that each emotion produces distinctive ‘patterned changes
in both expression and physiology’ which are not linked to the cause of the emotion
(see Ekman et al. 1983 and 1990, and Ekman 1984 and 1992b).
29
Ekman 1992c: 170 and see Ekman and Friesen: 1975.
30
Ekman 1992c: 194. Other scholars have suggested that experiences of more
complex emotions can be explained in two ways: either because some of these basic
emotions are triggered simultaneously—the imagery used is of particular circuits of
emotions firing simultaneously—or because of the way we communicate our personal
experience: see Lindquist and Barrett 2008: 513–14.
31
Ekman 1992b: 34 and 1999a.
86 Envy, Poison, and Death
individual and cultural variation. He recognizes, indeed emphasizes,
the important role played by the language of emotion, not only in
terms of the nuances of expression and understanding that a particu-
lar term can introduce, but also the possible effects on a culture of not
having a word for a particular emotion.32 Work in this field remains
vibrant and constructive. There is ongoing research into the ways in
which recognition of particular emotional expressions may be related
to brain activation.33 These new findings support the conclusions that
humans have evolved physiological systems for recognizing certain
emotions—and that this has an obvious social function.34 In addition,
research that involves measuring facial behaviour itself, rather than
using inferential judgements, may also prove useful to students of
emotions.35
However, as approaches become increasingly influenced by con-
structionist theories of emotion, the argument that there are
emotions that are ‘natural kinds’ and can be identified objectively
has been criticized as conveying key assumptions that are not dem-
onstrated by scientific research, and as presenting an obstruction to
the development of productive scientific research into the nature and
process of emotions.36 In an overview of work in the field in 2003,
James A. Russell et al. concluded that ‘Emotion expressions may not
be expressions and may not be related to emotions in any simple
way.’37 Others have posed different criticisms. Paul Griffiths, for
example, has argued that a scientific research programme on ‘emo-
tion’ as a category is impossible, since, in fact, too many different
types of phenomena exist under this heading. He compares the
category ‘emotions’ to that of ‘vitamins’—on closer inspection this
comprises a variety of different chemicals that are best described
individually.38

32
Ekman 1999a: 317. He gives the example of the German Schadenfreude, which of
course does not exist in English, although the emotion it describes is recognized (see
further on this emotion pp. 225 and 250).
33
Roesch et al. 2011 provides a useful overview of the different approaches that
such research has taken.
34
Russell et al. 2003: 342; cf. Matsumoto et al. 2008.
35
e.g. using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS); see Rosenberg 2005.
36
Barrett 2006a and b; constructionist theories are discussed further on pp. 87–95.
37 38
Russell et al. 2003: 342. Griffiths 1997 and 2004.
 Defining Emotions 87
Evaluating Emotions
One alternative route to research in this area is to tackle emotions as
processes of cognitive evaluation. Based on an approach developed by
Magda Arnold, appraisal theories emphasize the experience of emo-
tions as intentional, that is, concerned with an individual’s particular
experience of an object or situation rather than simply being caused
by that object or situation.39 Different theories suggest that different
aspects of a situation may be appraised, which leads to the experience
of different emotions. Some theorists use a structural approach,
looking at the dimensions of the individual’s relationship with the
object or situation; others focus on the qualitative nature of the
relationship.40 Many of these appraisal models introduce a second
cognitive stage or stages, which follow an initial stimulus, and which
(either simultaneously or cumulatively) shape the initial data. Criti-
cisms of the idea of cognitive appraisal often depict it as involving the
articulation of an explicit proposition. In fact, most cognitive
approaches suggest that the appraisal process is, like many of our
cognitive processes, rapid and inaccessible, and that there may be a
number of different cognitive routes to emotional appraisal.41 Thus,
some theorists have argued that emotions are more like instinctual
reactions to different situational structures, so we are like chameleons,
responding to our changing environment by simply reflecting appro-
priate emotions.42
With some similarities of approach, theorists who argue for a distinct
‘psychological constructionist’ approach lay particular emphasis on the
role of the social context in our cognitive processing.43 They tend to

39
Arnold 1960.
40
e.g. for the structural approach, see De Rivera 1977; Kemper (1978) focuses on
concerns with power and status. For overviews of the different dimensions of
appraisal that various theorists have proposed for different emotions, see Frijda
1986: 201–4 and Ellsworth and Scherer 2003.
41
The sequence of the appraisal may also vary and there are a number of ‘dual-
process’ models of appraisal (see Scherer 1984, 2001). See discussion in Gendron and
Barrett 2009 and Clore and Ortony 2008.
42
Chameleons: Clore and Ortony 2008: 633; they cite Parkinson 2007, who argues
(22) for emotions ‘as direct adjustments to relational dynamics’; Roseman (1991)
argues for a theory that categorizes how combinations of five appraisals will lead, in
any given situation, to thirteen qualitatively different emotions.
43
As Gendron and Barrett 2009. Brosch 2013 provides a compelling comparison
of appraisal and psychological constructionist theories of emotions.
88 Envy, Poison, and Death
argue that emotions comprise basic psychological components that are
involved in other mental states, either a mental feeling (‘affect’) or
physical stimulation, a low-level affective reaction. Emotional states
occur through a process of categorization, using conceptual know-
ledge.44 This approach suggests that emotions are grounded in core
affect—‘continuous and fluctuating affective states’—so-called because
they occur in changes of body state (face, voice, nervous system) or the
‘core’ of the body.45 But the two are not equivalent: what people know
and how they process what they know about an emotion and how it
works inform them of what they are feeling. Importantly, the context of
the event (both in the here and now, and in memory) is crucial to this
mental process.46 Lisa Feldman Barrett compares this process to the way
we see colour: the wavelengths of particular colours remain the same,
but whether we see blue and green as two separate colours will depend
on whether our culture has separate concepts for blue and green.47
Neuroscientific research supports this emergent variable approach,
offering insights into the ways in which mental and social events
interact. Research demonstrates how fundamental domain-general
neural processes underpin diverse emotional experiences—rather
than being directly related to a limited number of emotions—with
implications for the ways in which we understand and explain the

44
Toobey and Cosmides (1990) argue that some of this knowledge arises from
mankind’s evolutionary history (419): ‘emotions . . . constitute a treasure-house of
information about the nature of ancestral conditions and about the power of various
evolutionary processes’.
45
Wilson-Mendenhall et al. 2013.
46
Barrett (2006b), who points out that other psychological phenomena have been
studied as emergent properties rather than (21) ‘entities to be found’. She notes
(2006a: 48) that core affect may be supported by a kind of ‘hard-wiring’ in the
human physiognomy; see also Lindquist and Barrett 2008: 514. Damasio (1994:
131–9) argues for a split between primary emotions that are ‘preorganised’ and
secondary emotions ‘which occur once we begin experiencing feelings and forming
systematic connections between categories of objects and situation, on the one hand,
and primary emotions, on the other’. He recognizes ‘a large biological component’ to
what he calls primary emotions, noting the experiments that have demonstrated links
between affect and particular parts of the brain. Primary emotions are emotions that
we experience early in life, and these become the basic scaffolding of our emotions,
while secondary emotions are shaped by an individual’s experience when they are
older, and ‘are relative to particular cultures’ (285 n. 16).
47
Barrett 2006b; other models of this process have been put forward, e.g. Russell
(2003) has suggested a process of attribution, in which a person is prompted by a
change in his mood (core affect) to attribute that change to a particular object, and
this process is followed by a fuller appraisal.
 Defining Emotions 89
variability of emotions.48 Moreover, it appears that the less typical an
emotion is (e.g. pleasant sadness, unpleasant happiness), the harder
the neural system has to work to process it, and the more difficult it is
for the person experiencing the affect to identify it within social
emotions categories. In turn, it appears that emotional language
also contributes to how we perceive representations of emotion.49
This process may be iterative, leading us to reinterpret and refine our
interpretations, resulting in increasingly reflective evaluations.50
Whereas psychological constructionist theories attempt to tackle
the variability of emotion by looking at the experiences and neuro-
physiology of the individual, social constructionist theories focus on
the way that emotions vary between cultures. Some cultures seem to
have emotions that do not occur elsewhere. An often-quoted example
is the Japanese amae, which is described as a sense of childlike
dependency on someone or something, which gives a sense of great
comfort. However, the extent to which such emotions are constructed
is debated, and a spectrum of approaches has developed. Across the
social sciences, what has been called ‘the affective turn’ has prompted
provocative and profound reflection both on the role and process of
the emotions in individual and community life—and on how we
study these phenomena.51

Socially Constructing Emotions

We might start, along with Paul Griffiths, by identifying two models
of the social construction of emotion, which he calls, respectively, the
‘social concept’ model and the ‘social role’ model.52 The social con-
cept model describes an emotion as fundamentally conceptual, the act
of classifying situations; moreover, it is the concept of a particular
culture or group, rooted in cultural beliefs and understandings. Grif-
fiths is highly critical of this propositional attitude account of emo-
tions on a number of grounds, including the idea that emotions may
be felt without beliefs (for example, because the object of the emotion

48
See Coan 2010.
49
Gendron et al. 2012, Wilson-Mendenhall et al. 2013 and 2015, and Russell and
Fehr 1994.
50
See Cunningham and Zelazo 2007. (As Clore and Ortney 2008: 15 argue, this
has implications for how we think about the relation between apparently unconscious
attitudes and explicit attitudes, e.g. with regard to race).
51 52
Greco and Stenner 2008. Griffiths 1997.
90 Envy, Poison, and Death
is either imagined or does not exist), and, in turn, that beliefs may be
held without emotions—or that we deny those emotions; he has also
argued that this approach takes no account of the connections
between emotions and physiological changes.53
Leaving the ‘social concept’ model, we turn to what Griffiths calls
the ‘social role’ model, which also involves cognitive elements with a
similar focus on engagement with the world.54 A number of scholars
emphasize the key part played by the psychologist J. R. Averill in
opening this avenue of research, in particular in an article titled ‘A
Constructivist View of Emotion’, published in 1980.55 This approach
sets an individual firmly and integrally in his or her social context,
applies social constructionist theories, and focuses on the relational
nature of the emotions. In other words, it concentrates on ‘the
unfolding of social practices’, which, in turn, opens up the possibility
that ‘many emotions can exist only in the reciprocal exchanges of
a social encounter’.56 Although we may not go so far with this argu-
ment, it inevitably prompts consideration of the nuances inherent in

53
Griffiths (1997: 27) finds this approach among philosophers such as Robert
Solomon (1976). As he puts it (2008: 10): ‘We should identify the experience of having
an emotion (as opposed to just a simple “feeling”) as embodying thoughts, judgments,
and other cognitive elements’, and (11) ‘the emotion is first of all a mode of
engagement’. Solomon himself continued to argue that ‘emotions are judgments’;
and—a further crucial point—that we are responsible for our emotions (see 2003a,
esp. the preface). He expresses concern that psychological approaches, which tend to
see emotions as preceding cognition, pay little attention to this aspect (see Solomon
2003b: viii). His research programme has proved highly influential. Examples of
philosophical analyses that examine the role of cognition in the emotions (exploring
different aspects), include, Michael Stocker (2003) who has explored cognitive theor-
ies and ‘affectivity’; Cheshire Calhoun (2003), who has offered ‘cognitive sets’ as a way
of thinking about the discontinuities between beliefs and emotions; and Martha
Nussbaum (2003) who draws on and develops the ancient Greek Stoic view that
(22) ‘emotions are forms of evaluative judgments that ascribe great importance to
things and persons outside one’s control’.
54
As Harré describes it (1986b: 5): ‘It turns out that the dominant contribution to
the way that aspect of our lives unfolds comes from the local social world, by way of its
linguistic practices and the moral judgements in the course of which the emotional
quality of encounters is defined.’
55
Averill 1980.
56
Harré 1986b: 5. Constructionist approaches have also received criticism. As part
of the thoughtful siege Ian Hacking (1999) lays to the notion of social constructionism
in general, he observes (18–19) with regard to the social construction of emotion in
particular, that such an approach dilutes the meaning of construction to a code rather
than a description—and the code stands for (19): ‘not universal, not part of pan-
cultural human nature, and don’t tread on me with those heavy hegemonic (racist,
patriarchal) boots of yours’. Nevertheless, he credits the approach with raising our
 Defining Emotions 91
the interpretation of some emotion terms. A particular social context
may lead to distinct emotional expectations and reactions, even if, at
first sight, they resemble each other. And differences in the represen-
tation of emotions may indicate more than simply diverse ways of
talking about the same thing, raising questions about differences in the
construction or composition of emotion experiences.57
For example, take the emotion acedia or accidie (in Greek, ἀκηδία)
described by St Evagrius of Pontus, a monastic theologian of the
fourth century CE, who spent much of his later life in Egypt transcrib-
ing the wisdom of the Desert Fathers. Acedia appears in the Praktikos,
a volume providing guidance for purifying the soul (a process called
praktike). It is one of eight generic logismoi ‘(tempting) thoughts’
(forerunners of the seven deadly sins, instituted by Gregory the Great,
in which acedia does not appear), and it feels like this:
The demon of acedia—also called the noonday demon [Ps 90:6 LXX]—
is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all. He presses his
attack upon the monk about the fourth hour and besieges the soul until
the eighth hour. First of all he makes it seem that the sun barely moves,
if at all, and that the day is fifty hours long. Then he constrains the
monk to look constantly out the windows, to walk outside the cell, to
gaze carefully at the sun to determine how far it stands from the ninth
hour, to look now this way and now that to see if perhaps [one of the
brethren appears from his cell]. Then too he instils in the heart of the
monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself, a hatred for
manual labour. He leads him to reflect that charity has departed from
among the brethren, that there is no one to give encouragement. Should
there be someone at this period who happens to offend him in some
way or other, this too the demon uses to contribute further to his hatred.
This demon drives him along to desire other sites where he can more
easily procure life’s necessities, more readily find work and make a real
success of himself. He goes on to suggest that, after all, it is not the place
that is the basis of pleasing the Lord. God is to be adored everywhere.
He joins to these reflections the memory of his dear ones and of his
former way of life. He depicts life stretching out for a long period of

consciousness about ideas that are otherwise simply taken to be inevitable. He

suggests instead that we unpack the meaning of social construction, distinguishing
its relevance to, respectively, objects and ideas, and exploring how the latter exist
within a ‘matrix’ (34), that is ‘the individuals falling under the idea, the interaction
between the idea and the people, and the manifold social practices and institutions
that these interactions involve’.
57
Harré 1986b: 5 and Heelas 1986: 258.
92 Envy, Poison, and Death
time, and brings before the mind’s eye the toil of the ascetic struggle
and, as the saying has it, leaves no leaf unturned to induce the monk to
forsake his cell and drop out of the fight. No other demon follows close
upon the heels of this one (when he is defeated) but only a state of deep
peace and inexpressible joy arise out of this struggle.58
The experiences and feelings that Evagrius describes here are prob-
ably all too familiar to some of us—we might describe them in terms
of ennui, boredom, or even depression—and yet the emotion of
acedia itself, by that name, is no longer current.59 Crucial to our
understanding of this emotion are the particular contexts in which
it originated and then developed. So, for example, acedia was associ-
ated with the challenges of monastic life, but as that lifestyle became
less popular, and as the Church began public teaching on the vices in
the early thirteenth century, its meaning shifted.60 Where once it had
described a state of mind, over time it became associated more with
the behaviour that state of mind evoked. Moreover, the term acquired
a different nuance for those more preoccupied with seeking worldly
rewards, rather than the spiritual insights of contemplation. It began
to be associated with the concept of amaritudo or bitterness: for
example, the parson in the Canterbury Tales describes how the
mother of ‘Accidie’, which makes a man ‘hevy, thoghtful and wraw’,
is ‘bitternesse’ (which is, itself, made from ‘Envye’ and ‘Ire’).61
Although elements of the description of the emotion may seem
familiar to many of us, for Evagrius, the experience was integrally
bound up with a specific context.
The implications for the historian are manifold. In our attempts to
describe emotions in a historical or cultural context other than our

58
Description from Driscoll 2003: 9; translation from Evagrius Ponticus Praktikos
12 in Bamberger 1971: 18–19. W. V. Harris (2001: 21) translates it as ‘“listlessness” or
something similar’, and observes that it was known to Cicero (Att. 12.45.1). Wenzel
(1967) translates the Greek as ‘lack of care, incuria’ and notes its appearance in a
Hippocratic text, Glands (the date of which is disputed). Luciani-Zidane (2009: 29)
notes that it is also found in Empedocles and Lucian but does not give references.
‘Accidia’ is the normal form in the later middle ages (and is found at least as early as
the ninth century CE; see Wenzel 1967: 206 n. 1).
59
For a history of acedia see Luciani-Zidane 2009 and Wenzel 1967, cited in Harré
and Finlay-Jones 1986. Solomon (2001) uses the phrase ‘the noonday demon’ as the
title for his examination of depression (both his own experience and an examination
of the history of this disease across cultures).
60
Wenzel 1967: 68–9.
61
Ziolkowski 2003: 105. The parson: Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales X (I) 676–7 in
Benson 2008: 310.
 Defining Emotions 93
own, the ways in which they are embedded in and emerge from social
interaction is an essential aspect—and this may deftly change the
nature of our focus. We are no longer talking (just) about the private
meaning of emotion or the experience of the individual, but focusing
on emotions as sociocultural constructions, linked to specific con-
texts. This leads, in turn, to consideration of the crucial role played by
the emotions in the formation of a moral order and the establishment
of what is considered normative.62 In this view, emotions are not only
socioculturally determined, but prescribe ‘a function of shared
expectations regarding appropriate behaviour’.63 They not only
inform ideas about the nature of the self, but also about relations
between self and other, and concern questions of moral order.64 Thus,
if the Dinka of Sudan understand envy in terms of witches and
witchcraft, not only does this suggest that their ‘envy’ is not the
same emotion as that experienced by those who do not, but also
that their understanding of envy links to and has implications for a
realm of cultural knowledge about, at least, the nature of social
interactions and supernatural power.65 And, of course, these impli-
cations are relevant not only to our subjects of study: the historian

62
Harré 1986b: 6. For example, in this context, Stearns and Stearns (1985:
813) distinguish between what they call ‘emotionology’ and emotions. The latter
refers to the familiar although ‘complex set of interactions among subjective and
objective factors, mediated through neural and/or hormonal systems, which give
rise to feelings’, while the former is ‘the attitudes or standards that a society,
or a definable group within a society, maintains toward basic emotions and
their appropriate expression; ways that institutions reflect and encourage these
attitudes in human conduct’. This view has been criticized on the grounds that it
suggests that emotions can form a subject of research (Weinstein 1990: 301;
although some might take issue with this characterization). Emotionology is
(833) a ‘powerful force . . . shaping the behavior of individuals and groups’,
but the way in which it will shape them, and why, and how those changes link
to the wider social context and other historical forces, is far from predictable.
Emotionology provides an overall framework; its creators raise but leave unex-
plored the possibility that there may exist subgroups within a specific emotio-
nology (828).
63
Averill 1980: 308.
64
Lutz and White 1986: 417. Something of this aspect is found in the analyses
of ancient anger that have been presented by Douglas Cairns (2003b: 13–16), who
links this prescriptive aspect to an argument for the evolutionary origin of emo-
tions and their role in the development of human sociality and in ensuring
cooperation.
65
Heelas 1986: 258.
94 Envy, Poison, and Death
must also retain a reflexive awareness about his or her own assump-
tions about the emotions. These too are shaped by the experiences,
institutions, and social structures where they occur.66
In terms of the transmission of sociocultural concepts, it is clearly
not accurate to stop at what Claudia Strauss calls a ‘“fax” model of
socialization’—that is, the idea that we simply receive and follow,
largely unconsciously, a set of norms imposed by the hegemonic
cultural structure within which we live.67 Instead, she emphasizes
how the communication and expression of culture is made complex
by the ways in which the information that individuals receive about
their culture is ambiguous and diverse, received and understood
differently by different individuals, and, of course, experienced
with diverse emotions. How we perceive, describe, and respond to
situations in turn creates the emotional culture in which we live. As
Michelle Rosaldo succinctly put it: ‘Feelings are not substances to
be discovered in our blood but social practices organized by stories
that we both enact and tell.’68 Averill argued that emotions were
transitory social roles, and others have developed this idea to
consider the ways in which emotions provide us with narratives or
plot structures, in some cases, regarding these almost as scripts where
we play out dramatic roles that are recognizable to others as particular
emotions.69

66
Averill (1992: 16) notes how researchers tend to find most natural or funda-
mental those emotions that have that status in their own culture. Sanders (2014)
analyses current feelings about envy and jealousy as part of his examination of similar
ancient emotions.
67
Strauss 1992a: 10.
68
Rosaldo 1984: 143.
69
Sarbin (1995; see also 1986a and 1986b) uses metaphors drawn from drama
and rhetoric to examine the ways in which narratives inform our emotional com-
prehension and interactions. He argues that we use rhetorical actions of two sorts in
our emotional interaction: dramaturgical actions occur in the moment, and the
actor is the author of a ‘concurrent script’; dramatistic rhetoric comprises the
cultural ‘plots’ or narratives that we absorb from plays, films, stories, songs, folk-
tales, fables, myths, legends, etc. (these become guides to actions). For the usefulness
of examining ancient emotions in terms of narrative processes or scripts, which can
be used to elicit an emotion term’s ‘emotional terrain’, see Kaster 2005: 7–9 and
Sanders 2014: 36ff.
Scheer 2012 offers an insightful development of the idea of ‘emotional practices’,
exploring the concept of emotion in light of practice theory, that is ‘as a kind of
practice’ (194, italics in original).
 Defining Emotions 95
The ‘Nervous System’
The analysis so far suggests that in thinking about the social con-
struction of emotion—or rather the social practice of emotion—we
need to set the individual into a larger circuit of creativity. This is to
borrow imagery from Kathleen Stewart’s moving account of ‘ordinary
affects’, which she describes as ‘an animate circuit that conducts force
and maps connections, routes and disjunctures. They are a kind of
contact zone where the overdeterminations of circulations, events,
conditions, technologies and flows of power literally take place.’70 It is
a reminder to us of the emergent nature of emotion, of the matrix of
information that comprises lived experience: emotions ‘are public
feelings that begin and end in broad circulation, but they’re also the
stuff that seemingly intimate lives are made of ’.71
This is, in some ways, reminiscent of Michael Taussig’s conception
of the ‘nervous system’, as a way of examining the manipulation of
biological and social bodies (meaning both the individual and insti-
tutional, and the relations between them).72 It draws our attention to
emotions, not as discrete, individualized phenomena, but as dynam-
ics developed within networks of relationships, socially conceptual-
ized and enacted within familiar schemas, comprising rhetoric and
narratives that are both verbal and physical. As Parkinson argues,
some of these will be influences that work as it were ‘top-down’,
cultural influences that work through processes of socialization,
while others will be dynamic, situational processes that generate
emotional meaning in real time.73 Rather than thinking of any of
these processes as monolithic, the scale and timing of interactions
need consideration.74 Recent work in psychology also supports these

70
Stewart 2007: 3. As she points out, this draws inspiration from Raymond
Williams’s ‘structures of feeling’, which he describes (2009: 132) as ‘meanings and
values as they are actively lived and felt’. These, he stresses are ‘a social experience
which is still in process, often indeed not yet recognized as social but taken to be private,
idiosyncratic, and even isolating, but which in analysis (though rarely otherwise) has its
emergent, connecting and dominant characteristics, indeed its specific hierarchies’.
71
Stewart 2007: 2.
72
As Charles Stewart notes (pers. corresp.); Taussig 1992.
73
Parkinson 1996, 2007, 2012.
74
See Parkinson 2012, with esp. Scherke 2012. Rosenwein (2002: esp. 36 and 43;
and 2006) has highlighted the possibility of identifying ‘emotional communities’,
which are similar to social communities, but defined by their own system of feeling.
Within a single community or culture, there may also be subgroups holding different
96 Envy, Poison, and Death
ideas that emotions are not simply intrapsychic events, but rather
processes that emerge through both cultural and social (group and
interpersonal) interactions.75 And, recently, in sociocultural anthro-
pology, Henrietta Moore has argued for the role of ‘sociality’ (defined
as ‘a dynamic relational matrix within which subjects are constantly
interacting in ways that are co-productive, and continually plastic and
malleable’) as a crucial part of understanding how human beings
work with affect and emotion.76
The notion of the cultural model or schema may provide a lens
with a wide enough angle to encompass these various aspects—social
and individual, structured and fluid, defined and ambiguous, identi-
fied and emergent.77 These are powerful ideas about how the world
works that are learned and shared by individuals within a culture,
often without their being aware of this process. Usually taken for
granted, these flexible sets of mental associations of objects and
relations are used to represent, organize, and evaluate experiences.
They enable us to interact swiftly with the world around us and it is
possible to hold alternative models simultaneously.78 As well as
reflecting the regularities of a culture, these models or schemas are
also understood to be flexible and to evolve. This approach describes
knowledge or action as emerging from interaction between these
mental phenomena—be they statements or non-verbal experiences,
sensations, or symbols—as they stimulate or inhibit each other. Certain
neural pathways may become repeatedly activated, but novel pathways

values, working with diverse models of emotions, and expressing themselves in

contrasting ways to each other or to the dominant configuration.
75
Averill (2012: 216, quoting Kroeber and Parsons 1958: 583) draws our attention
to the distinction between social and cultural systems in such an overview. These two
separate spheres of influence are interrelated, but indicate different processes: whereas
culture operates by transmitting and creating ‘patterns of values, ideas and other
symbolic-meaningful systems as factors in the shaping of human behaviour and the
artifacts produced through behaviour’, society comprises a ‘specifically relational
system of interaction among individuals and collectives’.
76
Quotation from Long and Moore 2013: 4, and see Moore 2013: 30–1. Moore (see
esp. 2013: 26–30) argues that this interrelational aspect is what is missing from the
view of affect suggested by, for example, Massumi 2002, who views it as autonomous.
77
See Eidinow 2011a, who uses the concept of cultural models to analyse repre-
sentations of luck, fate, and fortune in ancient discourses.
78
D’Andrade 1995: 122–3.
 Defining Emotions 97
can also be forged.79 As a result, two people may be aware of the same
schema, but have very different responses to it; moreover, the emotions
that a person associates with a particular schema will develop over
time, shaped by that person’s life experiences.80
This links schemas at one level to appraisal processes;81 but they
also align with network theories of emotions, which can explain their
development as a gradually increasing set of links between biologic-
ally relevant stimuli. The idea of a network of associations that
underpins these theories was initially developed when ‘a computa-
tional metaphor of the mind ruled’; more recent approaches are
influenced by the connectionist or dynamic systems metaphor.82
This involves a model of parallel, rather than sequential processing
of information, and mirrors some of the observations of iterative
neural processing that occurs during and as part of emotional experi-
ence, already described in this section, as well as psychological and
neuroscientific research into the variability of emotional experience,
and the possibilities for new directions of research into emotion as a
social phenomenon. For the purposes of this study, the primary
emphasis must be on finding ways of exploring that phenomenon in
historical subjects, and the model of networked schemas offers a way to
do this, through the analysis of cultural discourses, or emotion talk.83

EMOTION TALK

The ‘emotion talk’ of a society offers crucial insights into the nature of
both the cultural schemas and the individual experiences of an
emotion.84 As Paul Heelas puts it, ‘emotion talk functions as a kind

79
This is a very brief summary of Strauss and Quinn 1997: 50–5. For a useful
overview of the history of the development of schema theory and connectionist
models (in artificial intelligence), see D’Andrade 1995: 122–49 and Moors 2010:
18–20. Interaction emerges from within social life, so neural pathways are shaped
not just by shared information, but by associations with particular emotions, uncon-
scious knowledge and desires, the influence of other people, indeed, by the interaction
of different schemas (see Strauss 1992a: 13–15; D’Andrade 1995: 148–9).
80
See Holland 1992; summarized by Strauss (1992a: 15).
81
D’Andrade (1995: 222) has suggested that ‘an appraisal is the activation of a
schema’. He suggests that in fact there are two appraisals, a primary appraisal that is
‘innate’ and a secondary one in which cultural knowledge plays a major formative role.
82 83 84
Moors 2010: 20. Strauss 2005. Edwards 1999.
98 Envy, Poison, and Death
of spotlight’.85 If an emotion remains vague and ill-defined (‘hypo-
cognized’), then it may receive little attention in a society; if, in
contrast, it receives much cultural elaboration (‘hypercognized),
then that emotion is likely to hold particular significance for that
culture, which is likely to enhance an individual’s experience of it.86
The nature of that elaboration matters: for example, what kinds of
metaphors are used to describe it, which body parts do these meta-
phors refer to, and what sensations do they evoke?
A brief example can be made using the emotion of anger. George
Lakoff and Zoltán Kövecses have explored the imagery used in
relation to the concept of anger in US English, showing its ‘elaborate
cognitive structure’, one which is interestingly motivated by bodily
experience. They draw attention to the ways in which the cultural
model of anger and its physiological effects emphasizes heat and
highlights the ways in which it is dangerous, both to the person
with the emotion and to those around him or her.87 In contrast, as
Michelle Rosaldo has clarified, although ‘anger’ among the Philipino
Ilongots (a tribe of headhunters) is superficially similar to modern
Western models, it appears to differ from them in important ways,
and is associated with different metaphors and images. She notes how
we may be able to deny our true feelings (and be tormented intern-
ally), but, unlike the Philippine Ilongots, ‘We cannot be “paid”
for “anger” which, so satisfied, then dissolves, and we cannot “forget”
an “anger” whose expression would prove undesirable.’88 Rosaldo
also found that, although the Ilongots could hide their feelings, they
did not, like us, think of them as toxically bubbling away beneath the
surface. As this suggests, the metaphors of an emotion can provide
insights into the underlying schema of an emotion from a variety of

85
Heelas 1986: 259; Kaster (2005: 8) claims that emotion talk ‘is just the lexicalized
residue of what happens when the data of life are processed in a particular way—
through a sequence of perception (sensing, imagining), evaluation (believing, judging,
desiring) and response (bodily, affective, pragmatic, expressive)—to produce a par-
ticular kind of emotionalized consciousness, a particular set of thoughts and feelings’.
86
See also D’Andrade 1995: 224. In particular, the extent to which an emotion is
culturally elaborated—that is, whether it is tightly defined and seems significant—will
influence the way in which it is consciously experienced. As Tarlow (2000: 727–8)
discusses, the question of the authenticity of emotion—public or private, personal or
collective, spontaneous or pre-coded—thus becomes somewhat more difficult to
identify, but this may not matter ‘to a delineation of social emotional values’.
87
Lakoff and Kövecses 1987.
88
Rosaldo 1984: 144, but cf. Spiro 1984. See also D’Andrade 1995: 227.
 Defining Emotions 99
perspectives, which encompass both its individual experience and its
social role: for example, the origin of an emotion, the extent to which it
is understood to be controlled by or in control of the person feeling it, the
ways in which it may be brought to an end or changed, are just some of the
perceptions that will influence how it plays out in social interactions.89 As
Rom Harré points out, ‘emotions are strategic. They play roles in forms of
action. And actions occur in situations . . . Emotions do not just happen.
They are part of the unfolding of quite standard dramatic scenarios.’90
This raises the rhetorical role of emotion talk, and the ways in
which the expression of emotional schemas relates to individual and
group motivations. In examining these aspects of emotion talk, Holly
F. Mathews analysed the ‘directive force of morality tales’, exploring
the telling of the tale of La Llorona or the ‘Weeping Woman’, a
folktale that recounts the story of a troubled marriage. Her account
of her fieldwork in Mexico describes how the story’s telling differed
according to the gender of the teller, conveying diverse emotional
cultural schemas that motivated the behaviour of the characters in
different ways, and drawing out different lessons for the story’s
audience, according to the goals of the teller.91 Thus, in a version of
the folktale told by a father to chastise his errant daughter, when the
wife goes crazy and begins to walk the streets, the husband experi-
ences anger or rage that prompts him to seek revenge—and he kills
her or her lover. But in another version of the story told by the
daughter’s mother, when the wife finds out that her husband has
another woman, she feels sadness—and she kills herself. As these
examples suggest, these tales tend to reflect on the suffering caused by
‘bad’ behaviour, but also on attitudes to male dominance; different
versions communicate various models of marriage and gender.
The morality tale is a cultural form that offers a representative series
of events, a slow burn, as it were, of cultural values. A contrasting form
of emotion talk is evoked by Michael Taussig’s description of the
‘cultural elaboration of fear’ in the nineteenth century rubber plant-
ations of the Congo. There, narratives of savagery, cannibalism, and
potential rebellion shared by white workers in the Congo were crucially
combined with the experiences of torture, by both victim and victim-
izer. Talk and reality became horribly and violently intertwined: ‘Far
from being trivial daydreams indulged in after work was over, these
stories and the imagination they sustained were a potent political

89 90
A point made by Heelas 1986: 258. Harré 1986b: 12.
91
Mathews 1992: 127–62.
100 Envy, Poison, and Death
force without which the work of conquest and of supervising rubber
gathering could not have been accomplished . . . they functioned to
create, through magical realism, a culture of terror dominating both
whites and Indians.’92
How do these tales acquire their power? D’Andrade, for example,
argues that the motivational force of a particular schema for an
individual comes from the emotional content the schema conveys
when it is learned. This may happen through socializing agents within
our culture, and he posits a hierarchy of internalization levels with
corresponding levels of motivation for the individual. Strauss takes a
similar approach, but stresses the ways in which the process of
internalizing a cultural model—and its motivational force—will
vary from individual to individual, shaped by their emotionally sali-
ent personal experiences and conscious self-understanding (‘personal
semantic network’93). For example, her research into the goals of a
group of blue-collar workers in America reveals that they may have
shared similar models of success, but held these models with diverse
levels of awareness. The result was what she calls ‘different ways of
believing’ which, in turn, resulted in different goals.94
These different examples illustrate how emotion talk and emotion
actions take place within specific social structures—which encompass
both individual experiences and actions as well as institutions—both
drawing from and giving meaning to the occasions in which they are
used. They conform to certain schemas, but these are, importantly, more
than just a system of rules. They are explanatory narrative structures,
closely related to a society’s moral order, and an individual’s personal
experience: ‘People thus define how and what they should feel in terms
of externalized forms of emotion talk.’95 An expression of personal
emotion is also a statement about oneself, or others, as social beings.
Emotions are cognitive, linguistic, embodied, and social
manifestations—all of which relate to, and shape, each other. Without
denying the role of individual and individual processes, examining
this aspect directs us ‘away from the “private” and instead concentrate[s]
on what it means to be emotional as that is socially defined’.96

92
Taussig (1984: 492 and 494): ‘The systems of torture they devised to secure
rubber mirrored the horror of the savagery they so feared, condemned—and fictio-
nalised.’ See further the development of these ideas into the ‘nervous system’
described in Taussig 1992.
93 94 95
Strauss 1992b: 211. Strauss 1992b. Heelas 1986: 260.
96
Ibid.
 Defining Emotions 101
This brings us back to the text with which we started this exploration: a
binding spell from ancient Athens that offers phthonos as its core
motivation. The larger context of emotion studies provokes a host of
questions about the significance of this emotion term, and the schemas it
may comprise: What events provoked its use here? What kinds of
relationships might it signal? What social meanings could it hold? To
start to answer these questions, we need to explore this emotion concept
and the variety of narratives in which it occurs, setting this text in the
nexus of cultural meanings that phthonos evoked.
 2.3

Narratives of Phthonos

A proverb found in Theopompus suggests that from the Greek point

of view you were only really safe from the phthonos of your fellow
men once you had died:

Ἐπίσταμαι γάρ, ὅτι τοὺς μὲν ζῶντας πολλοὶ μετὰ δυσμενείας ἐξετάζουσι,
τοῖς δὲ τετελευτηκόσι διὰ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν
των ἐπανιᾶσι τοὺς çθόνους.
For I know that many people scrutinize the living invidiously, but on
the dead, because of the number of intervening years, they are sparing
with their phthonos.1

Although care is needed over the extent to which we judge such

individual statements to represent broadly held views, nevertheless,
it is notable how widespread this thought is across other literature of
the Classical period, particularly rhetorical texts.2 The emotion talk
around phthonos in ancient Greek literature has a startling preva-
lence. This is in part because of the kinds of sources that have
survived, but it is surely not the only reason.3 It has been suggested
that it is an important element of phthonos that it is limited to those

1
Theopompus FGrH 115 F 395 = Theon. Prog. 1 (II 63, 18 Sp.), translated in
Shrimpton 1991: 114, who urges caution in its interpretation: see 112 and 115.
2
Dem. 18.315: τίς γὰρ οὐκ οἶδε τῶν πάντων, ὅτι τοῖς μὲν ζῶσι πᾶσιν ὕπεστί τις ἢ
πλείων ἢ ἐλάττων çθόνος, τοὺς τεθνεῶτας δ’ οὐδὲ τῶν ἐχθρῶν οὐδεὶς ἔτι μισεῖ (‘Every-
body knows that against the living there is always an undercurrent of more or less
phthonos, but no one hates the dead, not even their enemies’); and 19.313. Thuc.
2.45.1–2: Φθόνος γὰρ τοῖς ζῶσι πρὸς τὸ ἀντίπαλον, τὸ δὲ μὴ ἐμποδὼν ἀνανταγωνίστῳ
εὐνοίᾳ τετίμηται (‘Phthonos confronts the living, but those who are no longer in our
path are honoured with a good will that holds no rivalry’). Also Cic. Balb. 16, Hor.
Carm. 3.24.31, and Quint. 3.1.21.
3
As Sabini and Silver (1986: 167) observe, ‘Traditionally, envy has an important
place in the account of human misbehaviour.’
 Narratives of Phthonos 103
of similar social standing.4 But as has been noted, the description of
the bad behaviour of kings towards their subjects given by Herod-
otus’ character Otanes (in the constitutional debate of book three of
the Histories) demonstrates that things are not so simple. And this
is reinforced when Herodotus makes Achaemenes say to his
brother, King Xerxes of Persia, as he contemplates invading Greece:
‘For these are the ways that gladden the hearts of the Greeks:
they feel phthonos towards success and hate those who are more
powerful.’5
It is impossible to pursue the evidence for the development of
phthonos in detail here, but I will explore some examples of the
differences in nuance—the manipulation and formation of its cultural
models—between and among genres and authors over time. In what
follows, I want to draw attention to the ways in which phthonos and
its cognates were used rhetorically, first in praise poetry of the sixth/
fifth centuries BCE, and then in forensic oratory of the fourth century
BCE. I have chosen these examples because their juxtaposition creates
some illuminating contrasts, including form, genre, and context of
composition. In both studies, it can be seen how, ‘phthonos talk’
offered a potent force for the negotiation of significant social dynam-
ics; and how, as these dynamics changed over time, they prompted
different narratives about phthonos. The final sections of this part of
the book will be on the nature of the cultural institutions from which
these diverse narratives emerged, and the supernatural context in
which they operated.

ENVY AND PRAISE

Perhaps we should not be surprised to find that Pindar, a writer of

praise poetry, also offers some useful insights into the nature of
phthonos and its role in community relationships. Carey has pointed
out how the possibility of phthonos is a rhetorical topos of the praise

4
Lanzillotta (2010: 81) appears to be asserting this in his description of the
sociological aspects of phthonos: ‘a sort of existential proximity is necessary’; he
draws on Hes. Op. 25–6.
5
Any Greek: Hdt. 7.236.1; cf. also Hdt. 3.80.3, with further discussion on p. 77.
Envy of friends: Aesch. Ag. 832–7.
104 Envy, Poison, and Death
poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides.6 There is a startling plethora of
forms of the term across the extant and fragmentary praise poems,
from phthonos to phthoneros (‘envious’), to aphthonos (‘lack of envy’),
and aphthonetos (‘being without envy’). Whether these terms convey
negative or positive reflections on human nature, they were selected
with a ‘conscious controlled artistry’ and were intended to speak to
an audience’s concerns.7 However, in exploring the ways that phtho-
nos appears and is manipulated across Pindaric poetry we are not
piecing together an intricate philosophical thesis. The range of its uses
in these poems reveals a shared culture of ideas and feelings, and the
ways in which diverse contexts and audiences might shape the careful
creative choices being made.8 Pindar presents a phthonos that is a
crucial part of a distinctive cultural value system: at first sight it may
seem a long way from everyday experiences of envy. But his insights
quickly convey his audiences into the heart of the communities he
describes, offering a complex and nuanced perspective on attitudes to
phthonos and the network of relations within which it could develop;
it provides modern readers with an almost programmatic view of this
ancient emotion.
In general, phthonos is the unavoidable response of others to great
achievements.9 For example, in Pythian 1, addressed to Hiero of
Syracuse, the poet explains how ‘townsmen are grieved in their secret
hearts | especially when they hear of others’ successes’; in Pythian 7 we
hear how the noble deeds of Megacles of Athens are met with phthonos;
in Olympian 6 (for Hagesias of Syracuse) the poet makes a general
statement about the phthonos accruing to those who ‘drive first around
the twelve-lap course’ and are blessed with divine favour (charis).10

6
Carey 2007: 203.
7
Carey 1981: 4. For example, ‘more generous’, Ol. 2.94; ‘ungrudging’ Ol. 6.7;
‘without stint’, Ol. 11.7; or even ‘an abundance’, Nem. 3.9: these are all translations of
forms of aphthonetos, and see also Isth. 5.24; cf. Ol. 13.5, where aphthonetos seems to
translate as asking the god to be, literally, ‘without phthonos’.
8
As opposed to Bulman’s (1992) systematic world view and complex association
of concepts.
9
Instead, when the event prompts an aspiration for things that are possible, other
terms are used: for example, in Ol. 7.7 Pindar evokes in a few swift lines a prosperous
man’s flourishing home life that makes his friends ‘jealous’ (that is, zalotos) for his
harmonious and well-chosen marriage.
10
All translations in this section are from Race 1997a and b. Hiero: Pyth. 1.83–4;
Megacles: Pyth. 7.18–19: this is possibly a reference to his ostracism; Ol. 6.74–7.
 Narratives of Phthonos 105
In contrast, but to the same point, he tells us that there are men whose
achievements deserve praise that is given me phthoneraisi, that is,
‘without begrudging it’.11 In epinikian poetry, phthonos is the unavoid-
able fellow traveller of victory, but this is not to say that phthonos is
simply ‘the antithesis of victory’ as one scholar has suggested.12 Rather,
it presents a closer, almost symbiotic phenomenon, which could be said
to play a natural and even necessary role.13 It appears at both the mortal
and the divine levels, and Pindar presents himself, the poet, as standing
in the front line in an ongoing and pervasive battle against it.14
To understand its significance we need to understand the cultural
attitudes towards a successful individual, his place in a community—
and the risks attendant on holding such a position. On the one hand,
for the city, the success of a local athlete was a glorious thing. On the
other, the enhanced status of the athlete separated him from his
community, not only in terms of his physical location, but also in
terms of his sense of himself and his limits.15 Some approaches have
focused on the more supernatural aspects of the risks involved:
success in the games could be viewed as superhuman, and indeed
the heroization of historical athletes was not unknown.16 But as other
sources remind us, there was marked ambivalence around such a
phenomenon: the relevant myths tend to be accounts of complicated
and painful relations between community and individual, in which
the athlete in life or death punishes his fellow citizens for their
behaviour towards him, and is then appeased with cult.17 And to

11
Pind. Isth. 1.41–5.
12
Crotty (1982: 7) in discussion of Pind. Pyth. 2 argues that ‘it sets on its head
everything which makes victory good and desirable’.
13
Scholiast on Ol. 6.6–7 agrees: τοῦτο δὲ προστίθησιν ἐπειδὴ οἵ πολῖται κατὰ çύσιν
ἀλλήλοις çθονοῦσιν (see Boeke 2007: 88 n. 157, citing Bulman 1992: 87 n. 51).
14
It is rather surprising to read (Kurke 2013: 175), ‘Generally though, if such
tensions exist in the community, the poet does not reveal them. Instead, his is a
picture of complete harmony, between the individual and his family and between the
family and the polis.’
15
Crotty (1982: 107) describes how the journey to the games was a journey out of
the community, ‘not only in a spatial but a moral sense as well’.
16
Fontenrose 1968, Currie 2005, Hornblower and Morgan 2007: 25. Redfield (2003:
95) has observed how particular individuals—oikists, lawgivers, and athletes—are
separated from their community by a particular status, and not reintegrated. Horn-
blower discusses these categories in the context of heroization, and adds the element of
healing, in the sense that, as heroes, all three may acquire healing powers.
17
Crotty (1982: 122–4) gives stories of returned athletes who are rejected by their
communities. These include Oebatas of Dyme (Paus. 6.3.8; 7.17.6–7), Cleomedes of
Astypalaia (Paus. 6.9.6–8), and Euthycles of Lokri (Callim. frr. 84–85 Pfeiffer). Crotty
106 Envy, Poison, and Death
seek any kind of heroization for oneself was, of course, to claim more
than one’s mortal status; Pindar himself warns against this: ‘Do not
seek to become Zeus; you have all there is, if a share of these blessings
should come to you. Mortal things befit mortals.’18
More mundane ambitions also presented risks. Leslie Kurke has
drawn attention to the ways in which Pindar carefully manipulates
the victories of individuals and the associated megaloprepeia (‘lavish
public expenditure’), a quality that if taken too far, could indicate a
tyrannous intent. She argues that Pindar represents it not only as a
personal, aristocratic achievement but also a civic benefaction, draw-
ing it into the rhetoric of civic and personal gift exchange.19 In
Pindar’s poems, the fear that a returning athlete might overreach
his political status is not stated explicitly (and, in a number of cases,
where the poem’s honorand is already in such a position of power,
this sentiment would be irrelevant). Nevertheless, the topos remains,
traceable in the encouragement the poet offers to his subjects that
their displays of wealth and power should be tempered with virtue,
wisdom, and self-control.20 In response, as Pindar himself repeatedly
observes, this kind of behaviour will garner the kind of praise that the
victory deserves—praise that he, the poet, is instrumental in shaping,
praise that encompasses both individual and community.21
This brings us to the risks attendant on a victory from the point of
view of the athlete. Not only is there the possibility of failure, but

(ibid. 129) notes the ambivalence of rejection—how what is judged to be ‘bestial’ (and
therefore rejected) may be later lauded for its superhuman nature.
18
Isth. 5.14–15: μὴ μάτευε Ζεὺς γενέσθαι· πάντ᾿ ἔχεις, | εἴ σε τούτων μοῖρ᾿ ἐçίκοιτο
καλῶν. θνατὰ θνατοῖσι πρέπει; see also Isth. 4.12, Pyth. 10.29–30, Ol. 3.44–5, 9.27–39,
Nem. 3.19–22.
19
As Kurke (2013: 149) notes: ‘Pindar can represent athletic victory within the
closed circuit of aristocratic gift exchange. On the other hand, victory at the games can
be located within the public sphere of megaloprepeia, as a common benefaction
bestowed on the city by the victor.’ She compares (2013: 159ff.) the ideology of
megaloprepeia expressed across the poems of Pindar with that in evidence for Athens
(e.g. Thucydides’ depiction of Alcibiades’ presentation of his achievements to the
Athenians, where he describes his athletic successes both in terms of their meaning to
himself and his family, and as bringing glory to the city and its inhabitants: Thuc. 6.12
and 16.3–6). See also Plut. Nic. 3.1–3; Lys. 21.1–5 and 25.12–13; and cf. discussion in
Pl. Resp. 560d8–561a8. As Kurke observes, modern scholarship on megaloprepeia is
plentiful (see for example, Ober 1989: 199–247, Whitehead 1983, with further refer-
ences in Kurke 2013: 149 n. 20), but little applied to Pindar.
20
Pyth. 5.1–4, 11.50–8; Ol. 2.53–6; Nem. 3.70–5. See the hint to Hiero at Ol.
1.99–100, and Thero, Ol. 2.5–7.
21
Isth. 3.6–7: the debtors who must respond with hymns.
 Narratives of Phthonos 107
there is the potential for a success not to be recognized, for there to be
no kleos (‘good report’) for the victor and, as importantly, for his
family.22 Kurke has explored the larger economy of kleos, and what
she calls its ‘inevitable entropy’, which she sees arising from the
impact of a largely oral culture on the collective memory. As a result,
‘even while the integrity of the house requires spatial and temporal
continuity, it also necessitates the continual renewal of the family’s
achievements by each new generation’.23 The essential need for
achievements to be recognized is apparent throughout Pindar’s
poems. Men are known and judged by the reputation that follows
them, and if glory is silenced then ‘a noble deed dies’24: praise for
deeds that deserve them is just, something that Zeus himself might
take care of.25
Thus, the praise expressed with and within epinikian poetry can be
seen to be part of a larger social, even cosmological, system of
exchange between individual and community: each party has its
office.26 It not only ensures that both parties receive the recognition
they deserve, thus achieving harmony, but it reaches into the very
personhood of the individuals involved and the structure of the
community in which they live and will die.27 As the poems them-
selves indicate, epinikia of the kind Pindar writes may themselves
provide kleos. But they are also intended to help elicit recognition and
praise from within the community, smoothing the successful athlete’s
return.28 The journey home, the welcome back, were far more sig-
nificant than a simple celebration: they were part of an individual’s
restoration, setting him back into a political and mortal community
he had briefly left behind. The poet and his work play a key role in
easing that transition, in highlighting the roles and activities to be
performed that would keep both the system of reciprocal exchange
and community dynamics well oiled with praise and favours. In a

22 23
Pind. fr. 94a (Maehler). Kurke 2013: 18, with n. 10.
24 25
Pyth. 1.98–101; fr. 121 (Maehler). Nem. 3.29, Ol. 7.89–90.
26
Crotty (1982: 61–2) shows how Pindar’s argument about the need for praise
(and the need for people to give that praise) draws on Homeric sentiments (e.g. Hom.
Il. 9.318–20: that the individual who achieves fine things must be praised, or else he
suffers the same as the man who does nothing). In turn, ‘without just praise, the
community cannot fulfil its office of assuring individual kleos. It then ceases to be of
any use . . . it offers nothing to distinguish itself from the state of nature.’
27
Report goes even to the dead: see Ol. 8.74–84 and Kurke 2013: 58.
28
e.g. Ol. 11.7.
108 Envy, Poison, and Death
number of places Pindar explicitly notes his role as a ‘shepherd’ of the
words of renown that follow hymns of praise, and he sets his own
praise beside that of the community.29
But praise poetry also reveals to us the weak points in this system.
On the one hand, the returning victor may have ambitions; on the
other, the members of the community, far from being passive recipi-
ents, could also exhibit disruptive behaviours and emotions. And
chief among them, as described by Pindar, was phthonos. The term
and its cognates are used, on the one hand, to evoke their opposite,
referring to the giving of ‘ungrudging’ praise: the townsmen of
Hagesias are asked to be unreserved in such a context (aphthonon
aston); praise of Hagesidamus opens with a description of ‘praise
without stint’ (apthonetos d’ainos) for Olympic victors; in the hymn
for Herodotus of Thebes, the poet announces, ‘it is necessary to give
praise to those who deserve it with no begrudging thoughts’ (me
phthoneraisi . . . gnomais); and, while praising Phylacidas of Aegina,
he instructs his audience, ‘if someone has entered into the clear road
of divinely granted deeds, do not grudge (me phthonei) to blend into
your song a fitting vaunt in return for toils’; finally, for Aristoclidas of
Aegina, he asks from the muse herself that he be granted ‘an abun-
dance (aphthonian) [of song]’.30 This pattern of recognition of and
reciprocity for victory, which underpins Pindar’s poetry, includes
only one example in which encouragement to be ungrudgingly gen-
erous is directed at a victor—the tyrant Thero.31 In all other cases
Pindar uses these concepts to discuss the attitudes and behaviours of
the townsfolk, those receiving the victor and giving praise, including,
of course, himself. In turn, for phthonos in, as it were, its positive
sense, we learn of its prevalence: for those who are successful it is
impossible to escape;32 for those who are not successful, it is almost
inevitable that they will feel it towards those who are.33 Those on the

29
Ol. 11.8–9, Pyth. 5.108–15.
30
Hagesias, Ol. 6.6; Hagesidamus, Ol. 11.7; Herodotus, Isth. 1.43–5; Phylacidas of
Aegina, Isth. 5.22–5; Aristoclidas of Aegina, Nem. 3.9.
31
Ol. 2.94: a man more generous—Thero.
32
Parth. 1.8: ‘upon every man lies phthonos for his achievement’; Pyth. 7.18–19:
‘but this grieves me, | that phthonos requites your noble deeds’; Isth. 2.43 ‘phthonetic
hopes hang about the minds of mortals’; fr. 94a (Maehler) ‘phthonos attaches to every
excellent quality a man possesses’. (And see p. 115, n. 73 for discussion of Pyth.
11.54–8.)
33
Pyth. 1.81–3: ‘and townsmen (aston) are grieved in their secret hearts | especially
when they hear of others’ successes.’
 Narratives of Phthonos 109
receiving end of this emotion include, in particular, the athletes for
whom Pindar is writing, men like Hagesias of Syracuse, who drive
‘first around the twelve-lap course’, and, on whom ‘Charis sheds a
glorious appearance’.34 Phthonos is perceived to be a part of the nexus
of dynamics between an individual and his fellows: after all, politai are
the last people to recognize a glorious achievement.35
But alongside this vision of phthonos produced by athletic victory,
Pindar also gives us a glimpse into the broader life of this emotion. It
is not just male victors who risk exposure to this most virulent of
emotions; phthonos reaches into all parts of the adult community. In
his poem for Thrasydaeus, Pindar vividly evokes the gossip that
follows young wives, his questions about the reasons for Clytemnes-
tra’s behaviour mimicking its spiteful speculations.36 Moreover, not
only does phthonos for individuals arise from the wider community,
but it also lurks at the heart of the family itself. In a Paean written for
the Abderites, Pindar notes how ‘hate-mongering phthonos | has now
disappeared | for those who died long ago’, but the next line suggests
that the phthonos arises from within the family rather than the
community: ‘a man must give his forefathers | their due portion of
ample glory’.37 The juxtaposition of these lines suggests that those
who might have felt phthonos do not, but this is only because of the
passage of time, and the fact of death.38 Similarly, the dangers threat-
ened by a lack of recognition between father and son is suggested by
Pindar’s urging at the end of Isthmian 2 that ‘the son never keep silent
his father’s excellence’.39 And Isthmian 7 may offer another example
of the potential for this danger by celebrating its opposite. Written to

34
Ol. 6.73–7.
35
Ol. 5.15–16: those who strive are recognized ‘even by their fellow citizens’. Kurke
(2013: 175) notes that Stoddart (1990: 24) takes this to be a Pindaric ‘joke’ on the
topos of envy. Whether it is or not, it alludes to a common understanding of civic
relations.
36
Pyth. 11.22–9. On the meaning of l. 30, see Hubbard 1990.
37
Paean 2.50–8.
38
Rutherford (2001: 270) interprets these lines in a similar way but reads this
reflection on envy as serving ‘a double function: (i) it refers to the bad political
situation in the past (in which case the envy is that felt by different groups of ancestors
for each other); and (ii) it serves as a foil for the following exhortation to praise (in
which case it is the envy of present and future generations for their ancestors). He
observes (n. 36) that Pindar may intend both meanings at once.
39
Isth. 2.43.
110 Envy, Poison, and Death
honour Strepsiades of Thebes for his victory in the Pancration, the
poem focuses on his uncle, also called Strepsiades, who died in battle.
In this poem we see, perhaps, reciprocity of the gift of recognition,
and the confirmation of its importance within the family, as well as
the community. As Pindar says: ‘But the ancient | splendour sleeps;
and mortals forget | what does not attain poetic wisdom’s choice
pinnacle, | yoked to glorious streams of verses.’40 Finally, a fragment
raises interesting questions of interpretation in this context: ὁ γὰρ ἐξ
οἴκου ποτὶ μῶμον ἔπαινος κίρναται.41 It has been argued that this must
mean ‘self-praise or partisan praise is no praise at all or worse’. But
there is another possibility, supported by the material above, that this
is neither an observation about the general relationship of praise and
blame, nor a comment on the interaction between an individual
family and the surrounding community. Instead, it refers to emo-
tional reactions to success from within a family.42
But why and how is phthonos so powerful? When Pindar evokes
the sensation of being the recipient of phthonos, he describes it in
physical terms, as like being struck with a rough stone. The imagery
suggests the punishment of stoning and ideas of retribution that arise
from within the community without judicial intervention.43 Phthonos
is thus not only associated with ideas of impulsive grassroots justice,
but also implicated as a cause of death.44 Indeed, as we will see, it
becomes apparent from the poems that phthonos can cause just such

40
Isth. 7.16–19: ἀλλὰ παλαιὰ γὰρ | εὕδει χάρις, ἀμνάμονες δὲ βροτοί, | ὅ τι μὴ σοçίας
ἄωτον ἄκρον | κλυταῖς ἐπέων ῥοαῖσιν ἐξίκηται ζυγέν·. See Kurke (2013: 66), who sees
this as referring back to Thebes, but also ahead to the family of the two Strepsiadai, and
notes ‘the reciprocal exchange of good offices between ancestors and descendants’ also
in Ol. 8 and Pyth. 5. In Ol. 10.86–94 the imagery of familial descent is used to describe
the role of song and its relationship to achievement and kleos (Kurke 2013: 77).
41
Pind. fr. 181 (Maehler).
42
Kirkwood argues for the first interpretation (1984: 21–2) against Nagy (1979),
who gives ‘for praise is by nature mixed with blame’. Kurke summarizes (2013: 76):
since praise is part of an exchange system, the house that produces the achievement
cannot then produce its own praise, which must come from outside. The fragment is
included in the scholia to Nem. 7.61–3, which describes how a ‘guest-friend’ creates
praise and holds back blame. Kurke sees this as the poet drawing on networks of xenia
among the dark households; this is surely part of the image, but it is also a statement
made by the poet, emphasizing his key role in creating kleos.
43
On stoning as a form of popular justice, see Rosivach 1987 and Forsdyke 2008.
44
Ol. 8.54–61: ‘But if I have recounted in my hymn Melesias’ glory gained from
beardless youths, | let no ill will cast a rough stone at me, | because I will likewise
declare | a glory of this sort at Nemea too, | and the one gained thereafter in the men’s
bouts | of the pancratium. Truly teaching is easier for one | who knows, and it is
 Narratives of Phthonos 111
damage to one’s presence and person in the community, although not
necessarily through physical means.

Talking and Not Talking

Pindar reveals not just the sensations associated with phthonos, but
some of the ways in which it was perceived to operate within a
community. It is described as working in two ways, which are often
found together. As we might expect, bearing in mind our source,
these play out through the game of words and the world of talk. On
the one hand, phthonos may lead to the repression of the achieve-
ments of an individual, and therefore prevent the correct allocation of
glory; on the other, it may provoke attributions of blame against the
victim, and the spreading of lies about him or her. One of the most
poignant examples of phthonos operating in both directions is
depicted in Nemean 8. This refers to the story of how Ajax was driven
to his death, in effect by the lies of the Greeks, who favoured Odysseus
and awarded the armour of Achilles to him rather than Ajax. Pindar
compares the physical wounds that the Greeks were able to inflict on
their enemies to the wounds they caused Ajax with their ‘hateful
deception that existed long ago’. Ajax, dead, cannot speak for himself:
the great warrior’s glory is silenced, his reputation destroyed by
gossip.45 Another mythical scene provides a further example. Cly-
temnestra’s murder of Agamemnon becomes a scenario in which the
dynamics of phthonos play out, in both the envy of young brides (as
we have seen already) and the phthonos that attaches to men of more
than ‘low ambition’, like Agamemnon.46 A final example comes with
a twist, since this time Pindar deliberately rewrites the myth to make
his point. Rather than the usual story—that Tantalus tried to trick the
gods by serving them his own son—Pindar recounts how the dis-
appearance of Pelops, stolen by Poseidon who had fallen in love with
him, provides fodder for gossip of the neighbours. It was they who
spread the rumour that Pelops’ mother had cut him up, boiled him,

foolish not to have learned in advance, | for less weighty are the minds of men without
experience.’
45
Nem. 8.33; see further Crotty 1980.
46
Pyth. 11.29–30: ἴσχει τε γὰρ ὄλβος οὐ μείονα çθόνον· | ὁ δὲ χαμηλὰ πνέων ἄçαντον
βρέμει. (I interpret l. 30, following Hubbard (1990), as referring to the poor and
envious man.)
112 Envy, Poison, and Death
and served him for dinner.47 By presenting the generally accepted
myth as a result of malicious talk, Pindar demonstrates how powerful
such slander is, and how those who are blessed by the gods are always
at the mercy of those who spread it. But these events are not limited to
myth, as Pindar notes incidentally in a famous phrase, kakologoi de
politai (‘For townsmen are scandalmongers’).48 And so he illustrates,
with vivid evocations of real-world situations, how even mythical
individuals react to their neighbours’ fortune or misfortune with
phthonos and evil talk. And the same is true for his clients: for example,
the kind of success that Hagesias of Syracuse has enjoyed is likely to
meet with momos (‘blame’) coming from those who feel phthonos.49 An
elaborate, circumspect warning for Hiero creates a link between talking
too much (about one’s own successes) and stirring up phthonos, which
links to slander.50 Finally, we see the rarity of a neighbour who minds
his own business, when Pindar announces how, ‘If man has any enjoy-
ment | of his fellow man, I would say that a neighbour who loved | his
neighbour with fixed purpose is a joy to him worth | everything.’51
The slanderer’s stories are described as ὄψον δὲ λόγοι çθονεροῖσιν:
that is, for those who feel phthonos, they are a treat to be savoured, to
be rolled around the tongue.52 Nevertheless, the image of the phtho-
netic man that Pindar evokes is one of isolation, perfectly capturing
the sterile, obsessive, and ineffectual thoughts associated with this
emotion: ‘Another man, with phthonos in his eye, rolls an empty
thought in the dark that falls to the ground’.53 The obsessive, unre-
mitting nature of this kind of thinking means that even the unpre-
dictability of fortune is not a comfort for those who feel this
emotion.54 In contrast to the praise poetry that Pindar himself cre-
ates, phthonos and the slander associated with it are conducted in
secret, whispered, a benefit neither to those who spread the slander
nor to those who receive it, dependent on the company of men who
are bad by nature.55 Slanderers cannot flourish among good men;

47 48 49 50
Ol. 1.47–51. Pyth. 11.29. Ol. 6.74–7. Pyth. 1.81–3.
51
Nem. 7.86–9. Crotty (1982: 134–5) on geuetai (translated here as ‘having
enjoyment of ’), as ‘coming to know someone through particular social institutions,
closely associated with the trial of others’ character of strength’; as he notes, it can be
used to mean trial in battle (Hom. Il. 21.60–3), but in the Odyssey it is also used in
contexts of literal ‘tasting’; see Hom. Od. 17.411–13, 20.178ff., 21.98, 22.8–14.
52 53 54
Nem. 8.21. Nem. 4.39–40. Pyth. 2.89–91.
55
Pyth. 2.75–7, and 81–2. Most (1985: 111 and 112 n. 79) notes how ‘the general
moral tenor of this passage suggests the inadvisability of confining the reference of oi
 Narratives of Phthonos 113
indeed, they often end up impoverished.56 An example of this think-
ing occurs at the end of Pythian 4, in Pindar’s final plea for the ruler
Arcesilaus to take back Damophilus, a young Cyrenean who had
been exiled. One of the virtues that Pindar highlights is Damophilus’
capacity to oppose violent acts and nasty talk: he ‘deprives a malicious
tongue of its shining voice | and has learned to hate the person who is
violent’.57 In Pythian 2, Pindar portrays the slanderer as a fox, and
himself, in turn, as a wolf, chasing the fox, who ‘fawns on all and
weaves his utter ruin’, one of a series of images that sets up the poet
and his work as being on the offensive against this kind of language.58
Elsewhere, he keeps away dark blame, and brings praise like streams
of water;59 he is water against smoke;60 the visible and bobbing cork
of the nets, rather than the weights, labouring in the depths of the
sea;61 or he is like an athlete himself, making great efforts, taking on
these many risks.62

Poetic Strategies, Poet’s Strategy

Thus, as Leslie Kurke has persuasively argued, these poems map the
dynamics of a system of reciprocity that may both comprise and help
to negotiate the challenges presented by the return of a victor. She sets
it in the turbulence of a society moving from a pre-monetary to a
monetary economy, and makes the compelling suggestion that this
enables the use of ‘many different, even competing, symbolic systems
and ideologies’, a number of them drawing on different models of
exchange.63 Kurke argues that the ‘poet’s strategy to allay the envy of

agathoi too strictly to the nobility, cf. kakagorian 53, ariston 56, kalos 72–3, kakon 76,
agathois 96’. See also Ol. 1.47, Nem. 8.26.
56 57
Ol. 1.53. Pyth. 4.283–4.
58
Fox and wolf: see Pyth. 2.81–2. Goldhill 1991: 141, where he cites Lefkowitz
(1980: 42): ‘the poet in speaking the truth portrays himself as a combatant’.
59
Nem. 7.61–2.
60
Nem. 1.24: as Carey (1981: 113) notes, smoke has a number of associations with
undesirable emotions, such as anger (Hom. Il. 18.110), phthonos (Plut. An seni 787c,
Prae. ger. reip. 804d), or bad governance (e.g. incipient tyranny, Alc. 74).
61
Pyth. 2.78–80: see Most 1985: 108–9.
62
See Crotty (1982: 137) on Nem. 7.64–74, who also makes the point about risk;
Pindar compares songs to the pentathlon. He defines himself in contrast to those
poets who have been deceptive in Nem. 7. His insistence on his good will here and the
comparison to athletes is not unusual, but receives unusual emphasis.
63
Kurke 2013: 226.
114 Envy, Poison, and Death
the victor’s fellow citizens is to include them emphatically, both in the
poem as paradigm of megaloprepeia and in the victory itself ’.64 As Kurke
has shown, these processes of inclusion consist of integrating myths of
landscape, cities, and peoples into the poems; associating the origin of a
victor with more general praise of his city of origin and its inhabitants;
and encouraging and developing a shared celebration of the victory and
its victor, as we have seen above.65 But the nature and extent of inclusion
in the victory itself or the glory arising from it is far from straightforward;
nor is it clear-cut just how such an approach might relate to the presence
of phthonos, especially when praise itself may feed this dread emotion.66
It is essential for Pindar’s purposes that the two parties—the victor
and the city (and its inhabitants) to which he returns—while related,
remain distinct, each fulfilling the particular roles that maintain their
relationship. On the one hand, he highlights the choice that a suc-
cessful individual makes to share his glory with his city.67 On the
other, any glory that the individual will enjoy turns on the choices
that the city and its inhabitants make to offer praise and celebration of
the victor and his success.68 Thus, in Olympian 5.1–7 (in honour of
Psaumis), the reciprocal relationship between city and victor is
described—both the gift of the victor to his city and the request for
a celebratory reception of the victor by the city:

Ὑψηλᾶν ἀρετᾶν καὶ στεçάνων ἄωτον γλυκύν

τῶν Οὐλυμπίᾳ, Ὠκεανοῦ θύγατερ, καρδίᾳ γελανεῖ
ἀκαμαντόποδός τ᾿ ἀπήνας δέκευ Ψαύμιός τε δῶρα·
ὃς τὰν σὰν πόλιν αὔξων, Καμάρινα, λαοτρόçον,
βωμοὺς ἓξ διδύμους ἐγέραρεν ἑορταῖς θεῶν μεγίσταις
ὑπὸ βουθυσίαις ἀέθλων τε πεμπαμέροις ἁμίλλαις,
ἵπποις ἡμιόνοις τε μοναμπυκίᾳ τε.

64
Kurke 2013: 170 and 173: Pindar’s poetry aims at ‘merging’ the oikos of the
victor and polis, although elsewhere this image is less strong, e.g. the statement that
Pindar ‘skilfully assimilated the interests of these two spheres’ (6).
65
Kurke 2013: 170: e.g. Ol. 13, 19.97–9, Nem. 10 (examples are myriad).
66
e.g. Ol. 2.95–8, Pyth. 1.42–5, Nem. 8.20–2.
67
e.g. in Nem. 5.4–5 and 7–8 Pindar notes how ‘Pytheas | has won the crown for
the pancratium in Nemea’s games . . . and he has glorified the Aiakidai, heroic war-
riors . . . and his mother city’; in Ol.4.8–12 we find Psaumis, ‘crowned with Pisan olive,
is eager to arouse glory for Kamarina’; while in Isth. 1.64–7, Herodotus brings honour
to seven-gated Thebes. See also Nem. 4.12–13, where Timasarchos of Aegina brings
‘a wreath of crowns’.
68
In Nem. 4.11, the poet asks that the victory be received by the city; in Pyth. 12.4–6
the city of Akragas is asked explicitly by the poet to receive the crowns of the victor.
 Narratives of Phthonos 115
Daughter of Ocean [Kamarina], with a glad heart receive this finest | sweet
reward for lofty deeds and crowns won at Olympia, | gifts of the tirelessly
running mule car and of Psaumis, | who, exalting your people-nourishing
city, Kamarina, | honoured the six double altars at the gods’ greatest festival |
with sacrifices of oxen and the five days of athletic contests | with chariots,
mules and single-horse racing.

Victor and city are separate, and each receives instruction about
appropriate behaviour towards the other. The care with which such
relationships are presented suggests some of the difficulties that were
perceived as likely to be involved.69 Similarly, when at the end of
Olympian 7, we see that ‘at the celebrations of the Eratidai | the city
too holds festivals’ the ‘too’ (kai) is important because of its acknow-
ledgement of difference and of the potential for that difference to
become tension.70 Pindar’s following and final line, ‘But in a single
portion of time | the winds shift rapidly now here, now there,’ is an
image that implicitly evokes such potential.71
The reassurance Pindar gives that the glory accruing to an individual
will also have significance for his city may ameliorate certain bad
feelings, in particular, concern about the political ambitions of an
individual.72 However, as a strategy for defusing phthonos, this
approach can only ever be partly successful.73 As noted earlier in this

69
See also Isth.1: both the community and the victor must make sure they play their
part. Similarly, Ol. 7 opens with an address to Rhodes and describes the victor and his
father as ‘members of Herakles’ mighty race’, bathing the reader/audience in the warm
glow of mythical digression. But as the poem moves towards its close, it reminds
the audience that the victories that this poem celebrates are Diagoras’ alone, and they
are listed at some length (80–5); the poem ends with a plea to Zeus that the victor be
granted ‘respectful favour | from both townsmen and foreigners’ on the grounds that
he ‘abhors insolence’; while the very last lines mention the separate celebrations held by
the victor’s clan and the city. Kurke (2013: 173) uses this example in her argument that
Pindar ‘succeeds in merging the oikos and polis through the narration of foundation
myths’; she does not discuss the end of the poem.
70
Ol. 7.93–4: Ἐρατιδᾶν τοι σὺν χαρίτεσσιν | ἔχει θαλίας καὶ πόλις
71
Cf. Kurke (2013: 170), who sees the kai as an acknowledgement of the tensions
or hostilities ‘likely to exist’.
72
Kurke (2013: 181–9) discusses hubris, koros, and fear of tyranny.
73
Pyth. 11.54–8 appears to suggest that simply avoiding dire hubris can keep away
the envious, but these lines are extremely corrupt. Kurke (2013: 188) argues, with
Young (1968: 21), that the phrase ‘the envious are warded off ’ (l. 54) should be taken
as an apodosis to the following lines, which continue ‘But if a man has won the peak |
and dwelling there has avoided dire | insolence . . .’, going on to talk about his noble
death and provision of good name to his descendants. Her supporting examples (Isth.
3.1–3 and 5.21–5; Nem. 11.13–17) each describe how victors should avoid arrogance,
116 Envy, Poison, and Death
section, achievements generate phthonos.74 Instead, in some of his
phthonos narratives he offers some more direct advice, making it plain
both how the emotion works and why it is to be despised.75 In this
context, his comments might be taken as directed towards those who
might feel phthonos, suggesting that it is a desirable characteristic to
be able to avoid it. He points out that this is not hard if one is sophos,
‘wise’, or that a ‘good man’ might have the means to praise a young
victor; whereas phthonos is ‘the companion of empty-minded men’
(κενεοçρόνων ἑταῖρον ἀνδρῶν).76 Similarly, he implicitly compares the
behaviour of the phthoneroi with that of the tyrant, in so far as phthonos
is explained as a result of not understanding mortal limits. In a difficult
metaphor that appears to use the imagery of a measuring line or a
plumb line, he argues that the man who feels phthonos hurts himself,
because he does not understand either his own limits, or the fact that it
is the gods that hand out favours, and that they do so unpredictably:

ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ ταῦτα νόον

ἰαίνει çθονερῶν· στάθμας δέ τινος ἑλκόμενοι
περισσᾶς ἐνέπαξαν ἕλκος
ὀδυναρὸν ἑᾷ πρόσθε καρδίᾳ,
πρὶν ὅσα çροντίδι μητίονται τυχεῖν.
But not even that soothes the mind of those men who feel phthonos; by
pulling, as it were, a measuring line too far, they fix a painful wound in
their own hearts, before they gain all that they contrive in their thoughts.77

and the first two link this to deserving (ungrudging) praise, which support the
interpretation of ll. 55–8; while the last offers reflection on how those who achieve
are still mortal, but should be praised. With this reading, these lines provide the only
explicit instruction about how to avoid phthonos, which otherwise, the poems tend to
imply, is inevitable for deeds that are admirable (e.g. Pyth. 7.18–19, Parth. 1.8). In
contrast, others have read them as offering a more dire vision of the persistence of
phthonos (see Race 1997a: 375): ‘Those who feel phthonos fight back in their delusion.
Who, having won the peak and dwelling there in peace avoids (their) dread inso-
lence?’ With this reading the apodosis is no longer reversed, and the death and good
name of the next lines offer the achieving man some solace. However, even if the first
reading is correct, this is not the same as saying that phthonos is destroyed through
sharing an achievement: it is merely kept at a distance.
74
See p. 104.
75
Contra Kurke (2013: 193), who argues that he adopts a pose of pained resigna-
tion, giving as examples Ol. 6.74, Pyth. 7.19, and Nem. 8.21.
76
As reported by Plutarch to be Pindar’s comment on phthonos fr. 212 (Maehler),
in Plut. De inim. util. 10.91f, and compare Isth. 1.41–6, Nem. 4.39–40.
77
Pyth. 2.90–1. The metaphor is vivid but difficult. Gildersleeve (1885: ad loc.)
offers the image of a measuring line with two sharp pegs; Most (1985: 119 and 1987)
 Narratives of Phthonos 117
In contrast, the poet sees clearly, and explains the way of the world:
that the gods glorify some at one moment, and others the next.78 To
guide them through the baffling and obstacle-filled context that he
depicts, Pindar offers his patrons and audience his own extraordinary
talents. All this poisonous talk provides a setting for him to draw
attention to the value of his poetry and an opportunity to advertise his
own skills as both a creator of kleos and a warrior against rumour.79
In the creation of reputation, he is anxious to emphasize, poetry can
achieve what other forms of commemoration cannot.80 But praise
cannot be indiscriminate; it must be handled with care.81 Words are
powerful, and a successful individual must avoid too many of them—
even at times be silent.82 After all, as he admonishes himself, in his
hymn to Epharmostus of Opous, ‘boasting inappropriately sounds a
note of madness’.83
Demonstrating excess or koros is linked by Pindar to hubris and,
among many other hazards, it may lead in turn to phthonos—in the
sense of both a hostile response from the audience and/or divine
hostility.84 Instead, as the opening of Isthmian 3 states, the right kind
of behaviour for victors is very clear: ‘If a man is successful, | either in
glorious games | or with mighty wealth, and keeps down nagging

understands it as referring to a plumb line; Carey (1981: 61) offers a switch in

metaphor, from measuring line to a wound from a spear or sword.
78
Pyth. 2.89–90.
79
As Mackie (2003: 20 n. 38) has observed, between epinikian and rumour, there is
a ‘complex and endlessly interactive relationship’; see her illuminating discussion
(pp. 19–20) on the intersection between poetry, rumour, and reputation.
80
He competes not only with other professionals, but also with other forms of
commemoration, in particular statuary, as an anecdote by the scholiast to Nem. 5.1a
illustrates: the Aeginetans choose a bronze statue rather than an ode as giving better
value, and then change their minds; see Smith 2007: 92 and Thomas 2007: 149; also
Nem. 6.28–30 and Isth. 2.44–6.
81 82
Ol. 2.94. The need for silence: Isth. 1.63 and Isth. 5.51.
83
Ol. 9.38–9.
84
Dangers of overdoing it: for tyrants, Pyth. 1.82–4, Ol. 2.92–7; for others, Ol.
5.23–4, Nem. 8.19–21, Pyth. 3.59–60, 8.15 and 32, Nem. 10.20, and somewhat indir-
ectly, Isth.1.62–3. Linked explicitly to hubris: Ol. 13.10. Hubris is here the mother of
koros, which reverses the usual relationship. These concepts linked to phthonos: Nem.
8.19–21; or to a painful response: Nem. 10.20. See Mackie (2003: 16–19) for discussion
of this theme as a ‘break-off ’ in Pindar’s poetry and Mackie (2003: 33–5) and Dickie
(1984) on the ways in which Pindar urges the victor not to overreach himself. See also
the story of Tantalus (Ol. 1.55–64), in which greed for more olbos (‘happiness’)
becomes greed for the nectar and ambrosia of the gods, which he steals, and which
leads to punishment from the gods; and compare the story of Ixion, Pyth. 2.24–9.
118 Envy, Poison, and Death
excess in his mind, | he deserves to be included in his townsmen’s
praises.’85 In turn, for those who witness success, as Pythian 9
describes, it is essential ‘to praise even one’s enemy | wholeheartedly
and justly when he performs noble deeds’.86
The poet steps in to offer his song as a mode of praise that
ameliorates these complex issues of reception, while satisfying the
needs of the victor, and making clear why and how this praise is
necessary in the first place.87 Across the odes, he underlines the need
for a good reputation, now and into the future, as well as advising,
guiding, and demonstrating just how he can help to build that
reputation. In addition to offering praise himself, he leads citizens
into celebration, and works to shape their everyday attitudes. He also
demonstrates an understanding of, and works with, the ‘things that
are said’, the everyday rumours that shape common understanding.88
In an environment filled with verbal risks, Pindar shows himself
doing battle with two groups of slanderers who are named explicitly.
These include not only the multitudes of envious fellow citizens, who
bad-mouth and blame their victims, but also the professionals, spe-
cifically Archilochus, the seventh-century ‘blame poet’ or writer of
iambos (what we might call ‘epimomic’ poetry).89 Where the former

85
Isth. 3.1–3.
86
Pyth. 9.93–6: the quotation describes the behaviour of the old man of the sea,
who commands that others do the same.
87
Encouraging praise: Isth. 2.44–5; spreading the news: Nem. 5.2–6, 6.57b; the
power of verse: Pyth. 3.114–15, Nem. 7.20–3; the need to hymn success: Pyth. 1.91–3,
Nem. 7.11–13 and 9.6–7; fr. 121 ‘but a noble deed dies when left in silence’, a plea to
the gods not to keep the line of Diagoras of Rhodes in obscurity; Ol. 7.93–4.
88
The poet’s task: Pyth.10.57–60, Nem. 1.24, 8.21, 9.53–5; encouraging both
victor’s and citizens’ righteous behaviour: Ol. 5.23–4, 6.72–4, 7.89–92, Nem.
11.13–16; Isth. 1.42–6, 2.37–42, 6.69–72; and encouraging citizen’s celebration Isth.
7.20–3; Nem. 2.23–35, 5.40, 9.6–7, 11.17–21, Ol. 11.8–11, Pyth. 10.55–9. Now and into
the future: Ol. 11.5–6, Isth. 4.37–45. Working with citizen gossip: Pyth. 5.108–15.
Things ‘that are said’: Isth. 4.7–12, 6.24–5; Ol. 1.28–29 ‘I think, in men’s talk | stories
are embellished beyond the true account | and deceive by means of elaborate lies’; Ol.
7.11 ‘fortunate is the man who is held in good repute’. On Pindar’s own refusal to lie,
see p. 119, n. 91.
89
I use the modern colloquial term ‘bad-mouth’ here and elsewhere in this study
because it not only draws attention to the power of abusive and critical speech, but
also the range of types of relevant speech acts, including and especially gossip or
slander, which is a theme of this study; as such it seems to offer a helpful reflection of
such ancient Greek terms as kakologia and cognates. For ‘blame poet’, see Kurke 2013:
88, with further discussion of the imagery of poetic resources, p. 101. Pyth. 2.82 may
be a further reference to the genre of Archilochian ‘blame’ poetry. Pindar brings
himself into the poem almost immediately afterwards: ‘May I never have such a
 Narratives of Phthonos 119
group is criticized as empty-headed and deceitful, concealing their
maliciousness, Archilochus is quite blatant in his hostile craft, offer-
ing a stark contrast with Pindar and his own work.90 His presence in
the poem illuminates Pindar’s particular skills as a verbal warrior. His
comments on Archilochus add to the emphasis he has already given
to his own careful management of words, his measured use of affect,
his refusal to lie.91 Indeed, he scolds himself when his speculations
about the gods appear to be going too far: ‘But cast that story | away
from me, my mouth! | For reviling the gods | is a hateful skill.’92
Phthoneroi and Archilochus are connected through the imagery used
to describe nasty talk, and it is worth examining this in some more
detail, since here we find these activities embodied, through meta-
phors for the experience of giving and receiving gossip and abuse, and
the evocation of the bodily sensations involved.

Bite, Feast, Gnash, and Fatten

Across the Pindaric corpus, there are a great many images concerned
with links between perverse appetites, modes of eating, blame, and
phthonos, which bring to mind the visual depictions of phthonos from
later periods. For example, Archilochus is described as fattening
himself on his hatred, which recalls the tasty morsel of hatred enjoyed
by the phthoneroi in Nemean 8;93 while the way in which this
indiscriminate feeding leaves the malicious poet en amachaniai or
‘resourceless’ brings to mind the isolation of the man ‘who rolls his
empty thought in the dark that falls to the ground’.94 The kind of
censure that Archilochus employs has a bite (dakos) to it, which

disposition’—that is, to write such poetry. This poem also contains other Archilochian
elements, such as animal imagery. For Archilochian blame poetry and Pindar, see
Most 1985: 125–6.
90
Pyth. 2.76–7.
91
Careful measure: e.g. Ol. 13.43–50. Refusal to lie: Ol. 4.17, Ol. 13.52, Nem.
1.17–21; see discussion in Brown 2006.
92
Ol. 9.35–9; the dangers here are linked with those of ‘boasting’ about oneself.
The verb for reviling (loidoresai) appears only here in the Odes. The activity it
describes, and the way it links to phthonos will be a point of discussion in section 2.4.
93
Pyth. 2.55–6 and Nem. 8.21.
94
Pyth. 2.55 and Nem. 4.39–40. For the idea that the feeding itself leaves the poet
resourceless, see Steiner 2002: 305; others have argued that it represents his poetic
sterility.
120 Envy, Poison, and Death
Pindar seeks to avoid, but it brings to mind the behaviour of phtho-
nos, personified in the story of Ajax told by Pindar in Nemean 8, as it
feasts on the body of the dead warrior, once it has ‘rolled him onto his
sword’, and then consigns his real achievements to oblivion.95 Failure
behaves the same way. Those who were beaten by Aristomenes of
Aegina in the wrestling match at the Pythian games of 446 BCE are
described as ‘shrinking home down alleyways . . . bitten by failure’ (κατὰ
λαύρας . . . | πτώσσοντι, συμçορᾷ δεδαγμένοι).96 While at the end of
Olympian 2, Pindar warns against those greedy men who, out of envy,
praise a man’s achievements to excess—and eclipse them.97
The poet is drawing on a set of associations between nasty eating
habits—animalistic or even cannibalistic—and those who use invec-
tive, as depicted in lyric or epic poetry.98 With this in mind, we can
see that those who are described as gossiping about the fate of Pelops
in Olympian 1, blaming Pelops’ mother for his disappearance and
accusing the gods of cannibalism, are invoking the very activities of
which they would typically, as spreaders of malicious rumour, be
understood to be guilty.99 In fact, we could go a step further and
argue that, through indulging in phthonos, they are themselves actu-
ally engaging in the cannibalistic activities that they describe, by, as it
were, consuming their targets. This idea of phthonos as ‘consuming’ is
found in later literature and iconography, vividly evoking the violence
of the power of envy. For example, we have seen the description of the
fall from grace suffered by Demetrius of Phaleron, who ‘suffered
eclipse through all-devouring phthonos’.100 But importantly, it should
be understood not just as consuming the victim of phthonos, but also
the phthoneros himself.101 One of the physical features of some of the
later representations of the phthoneros is emaciation.102 The earliest

95
Nem. 8.23: κεῖνος καὶ Τελαμῶνος δάψεν υἱόν, | çασγάνῳ ἀμçικυλίσαις; Pyth.
2.53: δάκος . . . κακαγοριᾶν, ‘bite of censure’.
96 97
Pyth. 8.86–7. Ol. 2.95–8.
98
See Nagy (1979: 226–7) and discussion by Steiner (2002: 300–1). The idea of
biting and feasting may bring to mind, in turn, the ‘gnashing jaws’ of Euryale, the
fearsome gorgon (younger sister of Medusa), whose killing is described in Pyth.
12.21—although in this instance she is wailing, not feeding.
99 100
See Steiner 2002: 303–4. Diog. Laert. 5.76–7 (tr. Hicks 1925).
101
Plut. De rect. rat. aud. 39e. Dunbabin and Dickie (1983) give a thorough
analysis of the later evidence for the pain of the individual afflicted by phthonos.
102
e.g. as a characteristic of a group of Hellenistic-Roman terracottas (perhaps
particularly those from Smyrna); see LIMC 8.1 Phthonos 1–9 (993). Dunbabin and
Dickie (1983: 20–1) explain that previous work on these figurines identified them as ‘a
 Narratives of Phthonos 121
literary description of Phthonos with this feature appears in Menan-
der, but it was also, apparently, one of the characteristics of the
figure’s earliest known depiction by the fourth-century painter Apel-
les, who, according to Lucian, painted Phthonos leading Diabole (an
image to which we will return).103
Viewed like this, phthonos and the associated activity of blaming
can be seen as a very violent set of behaviours. Were there specific
situations in which such behaviour was particularly feared? Glenn
Most has suggested that these references to phthonos were written for
individuals who were, because of their context, exposed to ‘a situation
of exceptional political instability and unrest’—and he gives as
examples of the former, the Athenian tyrants;104 and of the latter,
Aegina105 and Thebes.106 References to phthonos also occur in the
odes written for the Sicilian tyrants where it shows some distinctive
characteristics. For example, in contrast to its usual functions of
repressing or eclipsing achievements with lies, phthonos against the
tyrant Thero plays out in people talking too much—and thus obscur-
ing his reputation.107
Nevertheless, this explanation of phthonos as a symptom of polit-
ical instability is not wholly satisfactory. Although there seem to be
many references to phthonos in odes for Aeginetan victors, this may
be because there are a number of these odes (Pindar wrote eleven
poems for Aeginetan victors, some of them concerning the same
families as those poems mentioning phthonos). With that in mind,
it is perhaps more striking that only half of these have references to
phthonos. Moreover, the political explanation risks eliding a number
of distinctive aspects of the Aeginetan odes themselves, as well as the
historical context, which might lead to different explanations. In

rendering of a tubercular subject suffering from a respiratory spasm’; see also the
bronze statuette, LIMC 8.1 Phthonos 10 (993); and in literary descriptions, e.g. Joh.
Chrys. In 2 Cor. Hom. 27.3 (PG 61.587). Other physical characteristics include
exaggerated body parts, and hands grasping the throat along with other features
suggesting choking. However, it is important to note that these characteristics are
not consistently applied: there are a number of representations of Phthonos as a
handsome young man (see, for example, LIMC 8.1. Phthonos 11, 16, 21 and 22, and 26).
103
Men. fr. 761 K-A; Luc. Cal. 5.
104
Ol. 1.47, 2.94, 6.7, and 74, Pyth. 1.85, 2.90, 3.71, and Isth. 2.43.
105
Ol. 8.55, Pyth. 8.72, Nem. 3.9, 4.39, 8.21, and Isth. 5.24.
106
Pyth. 11.29 and 54; Isth. 1.44 and 7.39; see Most 2003: 135.
107
Ol. 2.96–100.
122 Envy, Poison, and Death
particular, the careful acknowledgement of the achievements of fam-
ily members other than the victors themselves reminds us that phtho-
nos was also possible between family members. Of the appearances of
phthonos listed by Most, the majority seem to have little reference to
the political atmosphere. Among them, we find a plea that the poet
himself not be a victim, which has been read as referring to the poet’s
embarrassment, disgust, or defiance at mentioning an Athenian
trainer; others see it as a rhetorical marker, the ‘artfully negatived
form’ of in effect announcing a shift in topic—‘Watch me now!’108
This leaves two very striking descriptions of phthonos: the consump-
tion of Ajax, discussed in Nemean 8, and the vivid image of the
envious man and his empty thoughts in Nemean 4. The latter image
seems most likely to be a way for Pindar to highlight the power of his
own poetic offering, in contrast to the ineffectual words of the envious
man (ll. 39–40).109 In contrast, the poignant tale of Ajax reverses this
dynamic: lies becomes powerful, and the good man is swallowed by
silence. This could be a powerful commentary on the kinds of trouble
that a community split by political differences might suffer.110 How-
ever, its setting in the poem suggests a different emphasis: it follows
discussion of the achievements of the victor’s father, Megas. It illus-
trates how praise excites phthonos, and offers reflection on the
responsibility of the living towards the dead; the role of right speech
and the dangers of silence; and the poet’s own choice of poetic form
and style.111
Similarly, the argument that the three poems for Theban victors in
which phthonos is mentioned all concern situations of instability and
unrest is hard to maintain when we look more closely at the examples
adduced in support. These include, first, a reference to Herodotus of
Thebes’ father, which may refer to his exile or that he had fought for
the Persians at Plataea;112 second, mention of the uncle of Strepsiades,
also called Strepsiades, who fell in battle—and to whom the victor has

108
Ol. 8.55, as Burnett 2005: 216.
109
The plots lurking in the water (l. 36) mentioned just before the phthonetic man
have been taken as referring to specific enemies; but more recent scholarship suggests
it refers to any poet who cannot brave these dangers as Pindar does (see Burnett 2005:
125).
110
The date of the poem is unknown, which makes it more difficult to speculate
about what these events might be.
111
See Nem. 7.64–9; use of silence, see this section, n. 87.
112
Isth. 1.32–8.
 Narratives of Phthonos 123
dedicated part of his crown, while Pindar praises him for defending
his ‘dear country’, all of which scarcely suggest current political
instability;113 and, finally, Pythian 11 for Thrasydaeus of Thebes, in
which Pindar praises a city where ‘I find the middle estate flourish-
ing’.114 This latter sentiment has been read in a number of different
ways over the years (e.g. as a personal apology for Pindar’s own
involvement with the Sicilian tyrants, as a rejection of tyrannical
behaviour, or of Athens), but most recently it has been seen as part
of a tradition of admonition against the arrogance of athletes, which
could be seen as ‘quasi-tyrannical’.115 It might, as we have seen, carry
the potential to be politically dangerous, but, as Chris Carey indicates,
we should not exaggerate this connection—and, besides, it is hardly in
evidence here.116 These latter references do not seem to indicate a
situation of political instability and unrest; rather, they offer com-
ment on or describe the kinds of social dynamics that might beset
those who are politically involved or prominent, or both.
Of the individual poems, the ode written for Athenian Megacles,
who was exiled by ostracism before his victory, does refer to a political
event. But this raises questions about what we mean by ‘political
unrest’, since this was, after all, a process intended to pre-empt such
troubles.117 That political instability might provide the context for the
ode to Hippocleas of Thessaly is possible, since the poem was com-
missioned by one of the ruling families of Thessaly, and it seems true
that there was increasing rivalry between elite families during the fifth
century.118 However, the reference to phthonos in this poem is not to
mortal phthonos, but part of a wish that the boy athlete, so successful
up to now, not encounter divine phthonos. As Most points out, there
are also three other poems that reference phthonos, with no such
politically unstable context: these were written for, respectively,
a Rhodian, a victor from Epizephyrian Lokri, and Xenophon of
Corinth.119 In turn, there are poems that concern stasis but do
not mention phthonos: for example, Olympian 12, which hymns

113 114
Isth. 7.23–5. Pyth. 11.50–4.
115
See Hornblower 2006: 59, citing in particular Young 1968: 1–26.
116 117
Carey 2007: 203. Pyth. 7.19.
118
Pyth. 10.20; see Stamatopoulou’s (2007) overview of the Thessalian. See also fr.
109, which was intended for a Theban audience. Polybius (4.31.6) reports of the
Thebans medizing that ‘we do not praise Pindar for encouraging them to remain
active with these verses’.
119
Ol. 7.6, 11.7, 13.25.
124 Envy, Poison, and Death
Ergoteles, now of Himera, Sicily, but originally from Knossos, Crete,
and deprived of his homeland by an unnaturing or hostile faction
(stasis antianeira); or Paeans 9 and 14, the latter too fragmentary to
provide a sense of context, but the former including stasis among a
list of possible catastrophes facing Thebes.120
Phthonos may be seen as an element of political instability, but it is
far from an indication of such. In general, Pindar’s odes reveal some
of the common ideas and cultural models concerning mortal behav-
iour and expectations of behaviour with regard to victory and its
celebration—along with the darker emotions and activities that
trailed in their wake. We can see that phthonos could develop a
particular political potency, as it is depicted in Pindar’s poetry. It
may be that the developing polis ideology, which turned on a carefully
balanced choreography of benefaction between elite and citizen,
threw into high relief the role of phthonos, and its potential for
political catastrophe.121 But the presentation of phthonos varies in
response to the tensions and concerns of each particular context.122
Thus, it may also have a positive value;123 sometimes silence is better;
sometimes boasting is encouraged.124 The concept of phthonos was
already familiar across Archaic communities: phthonos was part of
the expected and accepted emotional reaction to a victorious or
prosperous individual who vaunted his success.125 It was an acknow-
ledged risk for communities in which there were powerful individuals
whose authority might generate resentment. But there were certainly
other settings in which it might emerge. And Pindar shows us how it
works at the mortal level: people talk.

120
See Hornblower 2006: 77, with Silk (2007: ad loc.), translating antianeira as
‘unnaturing’.
121
Goldhill (1991:128): ‘there is a rewriting of the terms of praise in the context of
the developing ideology of the collectivity of the polis’.
122
See Carey (1981: 51ff.).
123
Pyth. 1.85: it is better to be a victim of phthonos than to be an object of pity.
124
Boasting: Isth. 2, in which Thrasybulus of Akragas, nephew of the tyrant Thero,
is urged not to keep quiet about his dead father Xenocrates’ achievements; cf. the
discussion in Kurke (2013: 190). Silence, or caution: in the case of the non-tyrannical
victor, encouragement to praise oneself, if it occurs at all, is treated with some
circumspection, for example, Isth. 1.62–8.
125
Rather than seeing the final three examples as simply ‘statistical outriders that
confirm an evident trend’, as Most (2003: 135). With Most, we can compare Bacchyl-
ides’ presentation of envy, which presents the emotion as an obstacle for all to
overcome (though we might emphasize its persistence a little more than Most allows).
 Narratives of Phthonos 125
ENVY AND BLAME

Evidence from fourth-century Athens, largely from the forensic cor-

pus, provides another perspective on phthonos. Across these speeches,
we find envy of others’ fortunes—that is, often their material wealth—
used to explain the (bad) behaviour of individuals. At its simplest, and
commonest, phthonos is used to explain individual action, most often
by calling into question the motivation behind the accusations and
associated behaviours of one’s rival.126 This may be achieved in a
variety of ways: for example, by attributing it to one’s opponent,
perhaps through a description of an action, or listing it among
possible motivations; or by asserting that in contrast to one’s oppon-
ent, you will not sink to being motivated by phthonos.127 Once this is
established, it then becomes possible to weave this into a larger
argument about the case. For example, the speaker of Lysias 24
(On the Refusal of a Pension to the Invalid, written in around 403
BCE) cites phthonos as the ultimate cause for the court case against
him—and, in the process, scores a number of other rhetorical points.
Against an opponent who seems to be making an argument that
concerns material possessions, the speaker states that he himself is
poor, not a beneficiary of good fortune. Thus, he cannot explain the
phthonos of his adversary as a response to his wealth, only his own
virtuous character: ‘It is clear that he feels phthonos towards me
because, although I have to bear this sore misfortune, I am a better
citizen than he is.’128
As with the poetry of Pindar, the discourse of phthonos in the
forensic corpus shows how this emotion was inseparable from
the networks of relationships in which it occurred. Take for example,
the accusation of phthonos made against Theramenes in Lysias 12

126
Sanders (2014: 82) provides a useful analysis: he finds ninety-eight accusations,
prohibitions, and denials of phthonos (breaking down into twenty-eight direct accusa-
tions, fifty-two indirect, nine prohibitions, and nine denials). He points out (35) that
such accusations of phthonos are also made against cities, but it should be borne in
mind that these uses of phthonos describe the motivations of groups in narrative
accounts (e.g. Lys. 2.48, 2.67, Dem. 15.15), explain the actions of groups in political
calls for action (Isoc. 14.20), or are observations about human characteristics (Isoc.
4.47) and function rather differently from how the litigious accusations do.
127
Opponent’s actions are phthonos and unjust: Is. 2.23, Dem. 39.34; among a list
of possible motivations: Dem. 9.54; denying that one will have the same phthonos as
one’s enemy: Isoc. 15.259.
128
Lys. 24.3, tr. Lamb 1930.
126 Envy, Poison, and Death
(Against Eratosthenes). The speaker uses phthonos to describe the
motivations of Theramenes (who had led the more moderate section
of the Thirty before Critias had done for him): ‘So long as he found
favour, he showed himself loyal; but when he saw Pisander, Callaes-
chrus and others getting in advance of him, and your people no
longer disposed to hearken to them, immediately his phthonos
towards them, combined with his fear of you, threw him into co-
operation with Aristocrates.’129 The generation of phthonos is not
only about the relationship between those who succeed and those
who do not, but also turns importantly on the social context and the
evaluations that take place within it. Success prompts recognition and
attention from some, and it is losing this that concerns Theramenes
and provokes his phthonos; and his phthonos, in turn, motivates his
desire for the public reputation of others to be destroyed.130 In these
ways, the attribution of phthonos in law-court speeches in Classical
Athens suggests a clear line of descent from the concerns of Pindar’s
poetry. It is an emotion stirred up by those who see others succeed,
which makes a person not only unwilling to offer acknowledgement
of that success, but also desirous to see it destroyed, along with the
ruination of any broader public recognition of that success.
However, shaped by the relational structures of the democratic con-
text and the contentious arena of the law court, it also acquires some
further dimensions. It becomes almost a technical term to describe the
kinds of emotions that one should experience in certain circumstances,
in particular when confronted by either those who have goods they do
not deserve, or those who have fortune that they do not use to benefit the
city.131 The result is a righteous emotion that can be wielded against
one’s opponent, as Demosthenes demonstrates in Against Meidias:

μεγάλην μέντἂν ἀρχήν, μᾶλλον δὲ τέχνην εἴης εὑρηκώς, εἰ δύο

τἀναντιώταθ᾿ ἑαυτοῖς ἐν οὕτω βραχεῖ χρόνῳ περὶ σεαυτὸν δύναιο

129
Lys. 12.66 (tr. Lamb 1930). Fear of the loss of public reputation because of
phthonos is also demonstrated by the defendant in Lysias 3.9, who reports how he is at
risk of ridicule from those who feel phthonos towards him, and for this reason does
not seek redress for the assaults on him and his family by the prosecutor, Simon.
130
Guettel Cole (2001) argues that, over the period of the fourth century, the
Athenians had found a new political maturity that enabled them to develop rituals for
the recognition and commemoration of successful individuals, which also protected
them from the dangers of phthonos; see further, this section, p. 134.
131
See the discussion in Konstan 2007: 80; Cairns 2003a: esp. 246–7.
 Narratives of Phthonos 127
ποιεῖσθαι, çθόνον ἐξ ὧν ζῇς, καὶ ἐç᾿ οἷς ἐξαπατᾷς ἔλεον. οὐκ ἔστιν
οὐδαμόθεν σοι προσήκων ἔλεος οὐδὲ καθ᾿ ἕν, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον μῖσος καὶ
çθόνος καὶ ὀργή· τούτων γὰρ ἄξια ποιεῖς.
It would be indeed a great method that you have devised, or, rather, a
great trick, if you could in so short a time make yourself the object of
two contradictory sentiments, rousing phthonos by your way of life and
compassion by your deceptions. You have no conceivable claim to
compassion; no, not for an instant. On the contrary, hatred, phthonos
and wrath—those are what your conduct calls for.132

This is a righteous phthonos, one that can be used against rivals in the
courtroom. It can become, in turn, linked with an oppositional merit,
as shown in Isaeus 6, On the Estate of Philoctemon: ‘No phthonos
ought, therefore, to be felt against them, but rather, by Zeus and
Apollo, against our opponents, if they obtain what does not belong to
them.’133
As a result, as Hippias of Elis described, there developed ‘two types
of phthonos: one type is just, when a person feels phthonos towards
bad men who are honoured; the other is unjust, when one feels it in
regard to good men’.134 But, as the forensic corpus reveals, any such
clear conceptual demarcation brought with it considerable rhetorical
complexity, in which adroit manipulation of phthonos talk was a
requirement of effective persuasion. As others have noted, there are
no explicit attempts by speakers to incite what we may call ‘bad’
phthonos in the jury—as we have seen already in the example from
Isaeus 6.135 But this does not mean that speakers did not try to instil
‘bad phthonos’ in more subtle ways. Indeed, the Rhetorica ad Alexan-
drum draws our attention to the skills involved in depicting the

132
Dem. 21.196 (tr. Vince 1935, adapted).
133
Isae. 6.61 (tr. Forster 1927). Comparative appeals include: Isoc. 8.51, Dem.
28.18, Dem. 37.52. Konstan (2007) argues that phthonos acquired a negative reputa-
tion in the Classical period (from a neutral or positive status in the Archaic period) on
account of its role in the ideological struggles of the democracy.
134
D-K 86 B16 (Stob 3.38.2, from Plutarch’s lost On Slander; see Konstan 2007:
195 and Walcot 1978: 12). Some modern scholars have also adopted this categoriza-
tion: see Sanders 2014: esp. 10 and 78.
135
See Cairns 2003a: 245–6.; cf. Sanders (2014: 83), who argues that ‘orators
openly call on their audience to feel phthonos’—but he means ‘good phthonos’. The
invitation is offered to the group as a whole, rather than an individual. Sanders (2014:
35–6 and 87) suggests that this is one way of not accusing an individual of feeling
phthonos, but it is hard to see how this ameliorates the social power of this invitation.
128 Envy, Poison, and Death
circumstances of one’s rival in order to incite phthonos in the jurors.136
In turn, ‘good’ phthonos also posed risks, which must be confronted
rhetorically. Sometimes this could be dealt with directly: speakers
simply ask that their audience look on their previous actions or
current status with understanding, and not phthonos.137 But a speaker
may inadvertently arouse phthonos, for example, by relating what
he sees as the truth, but which others judge differently. And so we
find speakers asking their audience to treat their words with care,
and expressing the hope that they will not provoke undeserved
phthonos.138
Thus, the handling of phthonos in fourth-century forensic rhetoric
was no simple matter. In the adversarial environment of the law
court—enhanced by the underlying tensions implicit in the social
structures of the democracy—there were certain situations in which
speakers described phthonos as justified. Moreover, references to
phthonos in the forensic corpus reveal a further ambiguity: although
it is treated as a hateful emotion, destructive and ‘un-Athenian’, it is
also clearly understood to be an emotion that everyone can relate to, or
has felt themselves, and, most importantly, may be expected to feel in a
democracy. The ways in which the speakers play across these different
cultural models of phthonos allow us to appreciate its powerful pres-
ence in Athenian social relationships. A couple of more detailed
examples will show the subtlety with which these ‘blame games’ were
played.

Righteous and Destructive

In On the Crown, written in 330 BCE, Demosthenes is not only
defending his political ally Ctesiphon, but also, and perhaps more
importantly, his own reputation. In arguing that Ctesiphon’s proposal
to award him a crown was not illegal, he sets himself an intriguing
political challenge: he must discuss his achievements, but he must
also avoid explicit and unapologetic self-praise. That this was the

136
[Arist.] Rh. Al. 1440a35–1440b4 and 1445a13–29; see also discussion in Cairns
2003a: 247.
137
Past actions: Andoc. 2.6; current status: Lys. 21.15.
138
See, for example, Isoc. 9.39, Dem. 20.74.
 Narratives of Phthonos 129
challenge he faced was recognized by ancient commentators, who
praised the rhetorical techniques he used.139
In this speech, perhaps unsurprisingly, Demosthenes is extremely
concerned with the emotion of phthonos—and for a number of
different reasons. First, he must avoid evoking in his audience the
emotion of phthonos. One of his key ploys is to redirect this emotion
so that it is associated quite clearly with his opponent.140 As a number
of scholars have observed, Demosthenes appears to argue that the
case is brought because of phthonos.141 In this speech, the term itself
occurs six times, spaced across the text so that it creates a ‘red thread’
of vicious emotion around which the case expands, and to which
Demosthenes repeatedly returns. But the meanings it conveys do not
remain static; rather, Demosthenes gradually builds a set of associ-
ations, emphasizing particular dimensions of the concept that align
with, and reinforce, the different aspects of his argument.
From the beginning Demosthenes clearly associates the emotion of
phthonos with his opponent. The term is used first (18.13) as part of a
description of Aeschines’ position or stance in bringing Demosthenes to
court. The metaphor is militaristic—ἐν ἐπηρείας τάξει καὶ çθόνου τοῦτο
ποιεῖν—bringing to mind a line of troops. The way in which Demos-
thenes arranges his speech, the repetition of epereia from the preceding
section (18.12), means that we also associate phthonos with a whole
host of nasty verbal activities. He lists loidoria (‘abuse’), propelakismos
(‘insulting treatment’), as well as referring to vicious concepts of
personal enmity: hubris (‘outrage’) and echthrou men epereia (‘malice
of hostility’).142 The theme of private hostility and uncivic behaviour is
firmly established, and then gradually expanded. As Demosthenes

139
For example, Quintilian (Inst. 11.1.22) on how his approach redirects the blame
towards his opponent.
140
In this respect, he may be recalling the argument of Aeschines made against
him thirteen years before in On the Embassy (Sanders 2014: 85 implies that the two
speeches are related in this way). However, this seems like a long period over which to
seek such revenge; and, to be rhetorically effective, it would depend on the jurors
being similarly aware of the previous speech. Besides, it would be rather self-defeating
for Demosthenes to remind his audience of those charges. It seems more likely that
these kinds of charges were part of the armoury of an orator, as ps-Aristotle’s
comments (Rh. Al. 1445a12–26) on uses of phthonos indicate.
141
See Cohen 1995: 77–81 (envy and enmity) and also Sanders 2014: 87, with n. 43.
142
Dem. 18.12: ἐχθροῦ μὲν ἐπήρειαν ἔχει καὶ ὕβριν καὶ λοιδορίαν καὶ προπηλακισμὸν
ὁμοῦ καὶ πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα· ‘[the prosecution] includes private malice and violence,
railing and vituperation, and the like’. Tr., here and throughout, Vince and Vince
1926.
130 Envy, Poison, and Death
depicts it, Aeschines’ nasty language of accusation reaches out to
threaten not just the orator, but also the city and citizens, because
Aeschines is misusing the law courts and, to an extent, shaping the law
to his own advantage (15–16).143
The next mention of phthonos (121) repeats the argument of the
first—that Aeschines is motivated by this emotion—but then
expands on it: ‘Then why this miserable pettifogging? Why these
insincere arguments? Why do you not try hellebore for your
complaint? Are you not ashamed to prosecute for phthonos, not
for crime; misquoting this statute, curtailing that statute, when
they ought to be read in their entirety to a jury sworn to vote
according to their direction?’ The fact that Aeschines confuses his
own phthonos with the crucial concept of injustice shows how far
he has gone. Demosthenes compares this activity with the uncivic
behaviour of sycophancy; but he also associates it with madness,
referring to the use of hellebore (a traditional treatment for that
ailment).144
The next occurrence of phthonos (279) moves the concept of
phthonos from an external emotion that motivates Aeschines to act,
to a personal characteristic of Aeschines, alongside private enmity
and mean-spiritedness: ‘But for a man who never once sought to
bring me to justice for any public, nor, I will add, for any private
offence, whether for the city’s sake or for his own, to come into court
armed with a denunciation of a crown and of a vote of thanks, and to
lavish such a wealth of eloquence on that plea, is a symptom of private
hostility, phthonos, and small-mindedness.’145 As noted above,
Demosthenes associates phthonos with nasty verbal activities, and
this emphasizes again that it is a private enmity that brings Aeschines
to court, rather than concern for public welfare. At the beginning
of the speech, he notes how Aeschines ‘as prosecutor . . . enjoys
an advantage’ because ‘people listen with delight to insults and
accusations’.146

143
Sanders (2014: 87) suggests that Demosthenes may be marking phthonos as a
characteristic not of political rivalry but of a vicious character. See Sanders (2008) on
Aristotle’s associations of phthonos and bad character.
144
Dem. 18.121–2. For hellebore, see Ar. Vesp. 1489.
145
Dem. 18.279.
146
Dem. 18.3–4.
 Narratives of Phthonos 131
The final three occasions of phthonos talk broaden the meaning of
the word to include the emotions and motivations of the jurors
themselves. Here we find phthonos portrayed in a subtly different
light, as one that every citizen naturally may feel towards those who
are more fortunate, in particular, if they are wealthier. This could
present a dilemma: how can Demosthenes discuss this aspect when
he has already made it clear that Aeschines’ phthonos is so very
un-Athenian? He resorts to referring to phthonos as an increasingly
anonymous and anodyne quantity. So (303), the jurors are asked
to listen to a list of Demosthenes’ achievements and judge them
aneu phthonou, that is, ‘without phthonos’, as dispassionate witnesses
and judges of this case. The phrasing of such a request underlines just
how natural it is that one citizen, in the presence of another’s success,
should feel this emotion—but is achieved without making a direct
accusation. Moreover, it could be argued that the jurors have in effect
been told that they have the capacity to be better men than Aeschines.
Nevertheless, the risk is still there, both for Demosthenes and for the
jurors. He proceeds (305) to explain that he wishes to guard against
phthonos; whose phthonos is not spelled out—but after the previous
mention the implication is obvious. However, he makes it clear that
he too is implicated if they feel this emotion: he must himself ensure
that their phthonos is not aroused.
Finally, in 315, he quotes a proverb (that we have noted earlier)
concerning the unavoidable nature of phthonos among the living,
and this is directly followed by a plea not to judge him unfairly
in comparison with previous generations: ‘Everybody knows
that against the living there is always an undercurrent of more or
less phthonos, while the dead are no longer disliked even by their
enemies. Such is human nature; am I then to be criticized and
canvassed by comparison with my predecessors?’147 The proverb
normalizes phthonos, clarifies that it is a common reaction to good
fortune. Without identifying the jurors, it lets them slip gently off the
hook, while emphasizing how they also must reciprocate in their
treatment of him.
In Against the Crown Demosthenes moves from the phthonos of
his accuser, which he argues is a private emotion, and which is,
moreover, un-Athenian, uncivic, and disrespectful of citizen ideals,

147
Dem. 18.315; see the beginning of this section, and cf. Thuc. 2.45.
132 Envy, Poison, and Death
to the potential phthonos of his audience, which becomes, in contrast,
increasingly acceptable. The contradiction this entails is made less of
a reproach to his fellow citizens by his first not attributing it (305),
and then normalizing it as a part of everyday human nature (315),
which the speaker emphasizes by himself taking some responsibility
for keeping it under control. In turn, Demosthenes’ attitude to his
own achievements—this careful phthonos talk—recalls aspects of
phthonos in Pindaric poetry, in which the poet warns his subjects
away from boastfulness.

Ungrateful and Inevitable

At one level, Demosthenes’ speech (20) Against Leptines concerns a
law to abolish the privilege of ateleia, that is, exemption from all taxes
and liturgies.148 At another level, it investigates, and constructs, the
qualities of the ideal Athenian citizen’s character—and one of its chief
concerns is the nature and role of phthonos.149 The background to the
speech is as follows. The privilege of ateleia extended not only to
those who had been granted it directly, but also to their descendants,
which meant that the burden fell more heavily on those who still had
to pay. As has been extensively documented elsewhere, the fourth
century had seen increasing resentment among those who were liable
for liturgies and capital levies; the system of collection seems to have
been breaking down by the late 360s.150 It was particularly resented in
a time of increasing military costs, especially in the aftermath of the
Social War.151 Leptines proposed not only removing existing grants
of ateleia (except for the descendants of the tyrannicides, Harmodius
and Aristogiton), but also making it illegal to confer it on anyone in
future.152 This speech comes from what was actually a second attack
on the law: a man called Bathippus had initiated a graphe nomon me
epitedeion theinai (‘a case against an unsuitable law’) against Leptines,

148
In some cases it meant just liturgies, but see MacDowell 2004.
149
As Hesk 2000: 40–51.
150
Dem. 51: trierarchic obligations hired out; [Dem. 50]: deme-based collection
rather than proeisphora; [Dem.] 47.20 and 44: no equipment in the dockyards; Dem.
50.7: trierarch must provide own crew. See Hornblower 2011: 273–4.
151
As Isoc. 8 and Xen. Vect. attest; see Kremmydas 2012: 33 for the dating of the
speech and likely chronology regarding the Social War.
152
MacDowell 2000: 231.
 Narratives of Phthonos 133
but died before he could see it into court.153 This second attack, by
Bathippus’ son Apsephion, used the same procedure, but because it
took place two years after the original law was enacted, Leptines was
no longer personally liable.
Demosthenes (along with another man, one Phormio) was a syne-
goros (a ‘co-speaker’); this would have been the second speech from
the prosecution. At the beginning of the speech, Demosthenes gives
his reasons for supporting the case: that he thinks its abolition will
benefit Athens in general, and more particularly, he wants to support
the son of Chabrias, a famous Athenian general killed at the battle of
Chios in 357/6, who had been awarded ateleia.
Demosthenes develops a discourse of risk that highlights the dan-
gers of phthonos. This speech famously demonstrates how acceptance
of Leptines’ law will lay the city open to this emotion, since it prevents
the citizens from showing appropriate gratitude to their benefactors.
Phthonos is positioned as a key danger to the ideal image of Athenian
civic behaviour, a threat to the individual, to the citizen, and to the
city itself. He sums up its risks for a person’s character thus: ‘For to
give no reward in the first instance is an exercise of judgement; to take
it away when given shows phthonos, and you must not seem to have
been prompted by that.’154
Repeatedly, Demosthenes sets phthonos amongst other undesirable
characteristics, in opposition to the ideal values of a well-ordered and
harmonious city, lining up triads of adjectives against each other as if
they were doing battle.155 In this argument he stresses again and again
that the city itself is not naturally given to phthonos—and yet, there
are incidental comments that suggest otherwise. An example of this
occurs when Demosthenes asks the jurors to rethink their valoriza-
tion of Themistocles, and their admiration of his deceit and trickery.
Far better to venerate Conon, he argues, and his open approach to
military action.156 In the process, he apologizes to the jurors, and asks
them not to feel phthonos. The implication here, in contrast to the

153
On the translation of this term, see Kremmydas 2012: 48.
154
The danger of phthonos summarized in Dem. 20.56–7 (tr. here and what
follows by Vince 1930, with some adaptations).
155
Adjectives arrayed in 10 and 157 (the ethos the law will engender); 13 and 142
(current national character); while 164 comprises examples of both the latter, and 165
offers the bad characteristics against which the jurors of Athens are arrayed.
156
Dem. 20.74: ‘Therefore it is not right that so great a man should be wronged by
you, or should gain less than those orators who will try to prove that you ought to
134 Envy, Poison, and Death
rhetoric of the rest of his speech, is that it is a default setting for his
audience.157
Across the two speeches examined in this section, the role and
nature of abuse merits some attention. In the first speech, On the
Crown, Demosthenes frequently returns to the role of loidoria
(‘abuse’), remarking, for example, on how people like to listen to
the abuse of others, and discussing the accusations made against him
in these terms.158 Obviously, Demosthenes is anxious to draw a line
between Aeschines’ accusations and those that the jurors should take
seriously.159 Soon after the second mention of phthonos, Demos-
thenes spells out the difference between accusation and abuse:
‘Accusation, I would say differs from abuse in that accusation pre-
supposes an offense punishable by law, but abuse entails insults of the
kind that enemies naturally direct at each other.’160
But other examples show that it was also useful to be able to blur
this distinction: on a number of occasions Demosthenes refers to the
charges brought against him and the abuse of his enemies in the same
phrase, the one devaluing the other by association.161 There may also
be some further implications relevant to our investigation in this
discourse about abuse, since, as Demosthenes himself makes clear,
loidoria describes the kind of ritualized abuse encouraged during the
Dionysian procession.162 Susan Guettel Cole argues that the Dionys-
ian procession with its phallephoria complete with abuse, which
occurred just before the public proclamation of honours, was
intended to ‘decontaminate a space and make it unsafe for phtho-
nos’.163 She does not return to Demosthenes’ accusations against

deduct something from what was bestowed on him.’ From the account, the Athenians
appear to have admired Themistocles’ behaviour; see Hesk 2000: 48.
157
Kremmydas (2012: 317) explains that this is a ‘variation of a standard rhetorical
formula to pre-empt potential hostile reactions on the part of the audience, since what
Dem. is about to say undervalues the Athenian hero’; other examples include Dem.
18.321 and Isoc. 15.8.
158
Abuse of others: 18.3; accusation against him: 18.11, 12, 15, 123, and 138.
159
In 10.75, Demosthenes points out the strategy (of the Athenians themselves) of
turning the subject ‘into laughter and ridicule’ (εἰς γέλωτα καὶ λοιδορίαν) in order to
avoid doing their duty.
160
Second mention of phthonos: 18.121; accusation and abuse: 18.123.
161
e.g. Dem. 18.3, 22.21, 22, and 23, 57.17.
162
He refers to the unrestrained talk of the ritual procession: τῆς δὲ πομπείας
ταύτης τῆς ἀνέδην γεγενημένης.
163
Guettel Cole 2001: 212. The phallus is a well-known ancient apotropaic symbol.
Charles Stewart notes (pers. corresp.) that a phallus in public could be geloion
 Narratives of Phthonos 135
Aeschines, but the implication is that Aeschines’ use of abusive
language in the wrong setting transgresses this ritual arrangement,
and so lays the way open for phthonos, endangering those receiving
honours and, by association, the city and its citizens.164 These obser-
vations by Demosthenes about Aeschines’ language also reinforce
Demosthenes’ argument about Aeschines’ private motivation: his
personal enmity has brought him to the point of using language
that is only publicly acceptable when used in a ritualized setting.
Turning to the second speech, we find an additional term, which
can be translated as ‘to abuse’, baskainein. Demosthenes instructs the
jurors that if a man has great wealth but has not done them wrong,
then (he pleads) you need not baskainein.165 The precise meaning
here is unclear: it could refer to the attitude of the citizens or to the
temptation to bad-mouth a person. Whichever it is, it seems to follow
a similar pattern to the operation of phthonos and/or loidoria, which
we have already seen. Here and elsewhere, the term is sometimes
linked indirectly to phthonos.166 In On the Crown, Demosthenes
uses baskanos as an adjective six times. All except the first and last
citations refer to Aeschines, whose phthonos Demosthenes has
repeatedly mentioned,167 while in Against Meidias, Demosthenes
uses it as an example of perhaps excessive abuse that might be
employed against a member of the jury if he offended Meidias or
one of his retinue.168 In later use, baskania and related vocabulary will
come to describe the phenomenon of the evil eye, and there may be
some indications of these developments in On the Crown, when
Demosthenes observes that Aeschines’ use of the term goes (sorcerer)
against him is better applied to Aeschines himself;169 while in Against
Aristogiton, the term appears to be used in association with the activities

(‘laughable’) or atopon (‘absurd’), both of which were techniques for defusing the evil
eye in Byzantium; he suggests that this was probably taken over from antiquity.
164
Elsewhere, the relationship depicted between the two phenomena is less elab-
orate: e.g. Dem. 9.54, where he lists the motivations driving the Athenians: ‘λοιδορίας,
çθόνου, σκώμματος’ (‘abuse, envy, jesting’); Demosthenes speculates that these may be
divinely inspired (see further p. 154). That abuse is expected in court seems to be the
case in Pl. Tht. 174c.
165
Dem. 20.24: οὐχὶ δεῖ δήπου τούτῳ βασκαίνειν.
166
cf. Dem. 8.19 and 22, 16.19, 18.189 and 307, and Isoc. 5.11, 12.155, 15.62 (the
latter used in association with phthoneo).
167
Dem. 18.108, 119, 132, 139, 242, 317.
168 169
Dem. 21.209. Dem. 18.276 and cf. 19.109.
136 Envy, Poison, and Death
of a ritual practitioner.170 None of these examples directly associate
this term or its cognates with supernatural aggression, nor do they
necessarily manifest a direct association with phthonos. However,
they do refer to the kind of malicious gossip employed to disparage
others’ achievements, or to terms of abuse, and the idea that baskania
may be connected with a disruptive reaction to the acquisition of
good fortune by others is still apparent in these earlier sources.171

A Discourse of Attribution
These examples demonstrate the power of what I have been calling
phthonos talk. The attribution of phthonos creates an explanation, and
makes meaning out of the inexplicable. It identifies a perpetrator and
his action, gives the context of that action, offers an explanatory
agency or means by which the action is achieved, and intimates the
perpetrator’s purpose.172 These heuristic categories are the five ‘basic
forms of thought’ that Kenneth Burke used to break down the notion
of motives: Act, Scene, Agent, Agency, and Purpose. And this frame-
work, called ‘dramatism’, has been successfully used by Adam Ash-
forth to think about the presumption of malice underpinning life in a
world of witches in Soweto, South Africa. In that culture, the assump-
tion is that ‘everyone is jealous of everyone else, regardless of appear-
ances . . . especially despite appearances of comity’.173 This has some
parallels in ancient Greek culture, in particular the concern with
the potential for occult attack from among one’s friends and
neighbours, and I will return to this later. However, it is a different
aspect of Burke’s approach to motive that I want to draw attention
to here, that is, his emphasis on the role of discourse in its social
context.174

170
Dem. 25.80. Cf. also Ar. Eq. 103 and Plut. 571. In Pl. Phd 95b5–6, Socrates
famously observes to Cebes that baskania may disrupt their discussion if the claims
they make about it are too great. It is not clear from where this danger emanates, but
the idea that claims to achievement are under threat would suggest an association with
phthonos.
171 172
See Hesk 2000: 213 n. 33. See Lanzillotta 2010: 75.
173
Ashforth 2003: 217.
174
In interpreting Burke’s dramatism (1945) I am guided here by Benoit (1996),
who is in turn guided by Mills (1940), but notes other interpretations of Burke’s
meaning.
 Narratives of Phthonos 137
Burke focuses on ‘discourse intended to explain, interpret, ration-
alize, characterize, justify, or account for our actions’.175 Rather than
it being an examination of the cognitive functions and/or internal
motivating states that underpin a person’s actions, we can consider an
attribution of phthonos as a discursive entity that creates a narrative
of causality linked inextricably to social norms and values. In thinking
of phthonos claims in this way, I am working with a conception of the
Greek self as comprising an objective–participant model (as described
by Christopher Gill), which emphasizes how, in ancient Greek cul-
ture, communal values and norms shaped and were shaped by par-
ticipation in shared dialogue.176
Phthonos talk is another example of a participant discourse in
which we can see the bases of an ethical life being established, but it
demonstrates the darker, more disruptive aspects of this conception.
When phthonos is attributed to another, we see that those who are
involved (the agents) are known to each other and to the others
before whom this discourse is played out (the scene); the act is
some kind of attack. As with an attribution of phthonos, this emotion
also acquires its agency by means of a discourse of some kind. This
may be explicit, for example, a speech in the law courts, perhaps the
slander or diabole that precedes or accompanies it; it may be hidden,
which means that, in the case of a spell, the attribution of agency is
more difficult (we will return to this aspect of occult agency in the
next section of the book); or it may be a missing discourse, for
example, a lack of acclamation where an achievement suggests it.
Burke’s analysis of the elements of motive reveals the construction
of the storyline in such a discourse. In making an attribution of
phthonos, the speaker is not of course giving his audience the ‘true’
motivation of the perpetrator; rather, he is presenting a rhetorical
action that directs an audience’s attention to a particular configur-
ation of events—a familiar narrative of blame. But that narrative will
also confer a couple of significant rhetorical benefits on the speaker
himself. First, it will draw attention to his state of good fortune
(otherwise why would he attract phthonos in the first place?). Second,
it will draw attention away from his own role in the creation of any

175
Benoit 1996: 77.
176
Gill 1996: 175; Eidinow 2013b uses this notion to discuss the process of oracular
consultation.
138 Envy, Poison, and Death
problematic situation, be it the overweening pride of an Olympic
victor, or the less than civic behaviour of an Athenian politician.
This analysis leads us to the content of phthonos talk, and a
realization about the fundamental set of values that underpin it.
This is a discourse that concerns the shared, normative understand-
ing of the allocation and recognition of good fortune in Greek society.
In all the cases above, phthonos is understood to be a response to
someone else’s experience of good fortune, and the cause of disrup-
tion of the usual cycles of reciprocity that otherwise develop from
such an experience. Thus, Pindar’s poetry urges ordinary mortals to
engage in the rituals of recognition of great men who have been
blessed with good fortune by the gods; phthonos prompts the break-
down of these relationships. In turn, in Demosthenes’ speeches, we
see phthonos called out explicitly as the emotion that obstructs the
cycles of mutual benefaction (among mortals) that follow divinely
granted episodes of good fortune. The speech Against Leptines offers
a forceful disquisition on the cycle of civic benefaction—good fortune
leads to benefits granted, which leads to (gifts of) gratitude—and a full
and clear explanation of how phthonos impedes or prevents its
fruition. And this makes sense of Demosthenes’ almost incidental
request to the jurors not to feel phthonos, rather than, say, simply
anger, regarding his comments on Themistocles and Conon.177 If we
understand phthonos to be concerned with the emotions related to
benefactions, its use here is appropriate: Demosthenes is suggesting
that the reputation and recognition of one individual be given to
another. It is not the undervaluing of Themistocles that poses the
risk—Demosthenes does not suggest that he be stripped of honour—
but the gift of additional respect to Conon.
The implications are that phthonos is an inevitable human
response. Yet both authors also give us some further insight into
the relational, emergent nature of phthonos in different civic contexts.
In Pindar’s poetry, the plea to ordinary mortals not to show phthonos
towards those who have achieved is, in turn, also a subtle instruction
to the successful individual not to ignore their responsibilities. Com-
pare the caution with which Demosthenes presents his own good
fortune in On the Crown: he must defend his right to this award, but
he also recognizes that his own presentation of the good fortune that

177
Dem. 20.74.
 Narratives of Phthonos 139
led to this situation is a key part of the generation of phthonos. As
both Pindar’s poetry and the rhetoric from the courts demonstrate,
the occurrence of phthonos marks a particular breakdown of the
reciprocal relationships that run like nerves through the ancient social
body. A culturally specific emotion term, phthonos highlights the
profound social tensions that accompanied perceptions, and per-
formances, of good fortune—the gifts of the gods.
 2.4

Phthonos and Misfortune

PHTHONOS AND ‘THE GIFT’

The dynamic of reciprocity—a sense and system of mutual

obligation—oiled the wheels of ancient Greek life, but its accompany-
ing negative aspects also played a crucial role in shaping social
action.1 Marcel Mauss, in his work on the gift, commends the gift-
exchange system as a way of creating social harmony, but he also
consistently refers to the potential dangers of ‘the gift’.2 This negative
aspect is multifaceted, and most obviously includes declining to be
drawn into the process of giving gifts. As we might expect with the
‘total’ social phenomenon of the ‘the gift’, the dangers of stepping

1
e.g. Dewald (2008) discusses gift exchange as a key dynamic in Archaic society,
while Van Wees (2002) argues for changing patterns of acquisitiveness in the xenia
relationships of the Archaic period. On reciprocity in Homer and Hesiod, see Ulf
2006, esp. p. 87; on the complexities of reciprocity in the Iliad, Gould 2001b; and on
the role of benefaction, including negative examples, as a system of explanation in
Herodotus, Gould 2001a. Van Wees (1998: 32–3) discusses examples from anthro-
pology of competitive reciprocity, noting (33) that ‘the antagonistic nature of reci-
procity as a force for status differentiation seems to sit uneasily with its conciliatory
nature as a force for social integration’. He goes on to stress that such competitive
reciprocity is ‘most of the time . . . an effective, and on the whole preferable, alternative
to violent competition for status’.
2
e.g. Mauss (1990: 22) on the mistrust with which the gift is regarded among the
Trobrianders (mentioned again with more emphasis in discussion of the Germanic
‘pledge’ (62; see further below); (27), he also notes the potential threat of death from
not reciprocating among the Maori; (59) in his description of classical Hindu law, he
notes that ‘the gift is therefore at one and the same time what should be done, what
should be received, and yet what is dangerous to take’; and (62) in his description of
the pledge in Germanic law, he notes how ‘the pledge, the “gage”, like the thing that is
given, holds danger for both parties’, giver and recipient. It is important to stress that
‘the gift’ is not just an object that is representative of social relations: it is a process that
creates them; see Mauss 1990: 72–3.
 Phthonos and Misfortune 141
outside the rituals of giving are potentially catastrophic.3 But gifts
themselves involve risk: for example, the danger that I, the giver, will
lose out, that the recipient of my giving will not recognize my gesture,
or not repay it in full.4 And, of course, it is possible to reciprocate
actively, but still involve negative emotions. In his spectrum of reci-
procity, organized according to emotional and physical distance from
the familial group, Sahlins reminds us that even giving itself can be
aggressive.5 First, ‘generalised reciprocity’ describes transactions that

3
Mauss (1990: 3) describes a ‘total’ social phenomenon as one in which ‘all kinds
of institutions are given expression at one and the same time’. The point is made most
explicitly in his description of the potlatch among the Native American societies of the
American Northwest (39–43): the obligation both to give and to receive—and the
extreme social and spiritual consequences if one refuses to play one’s role. Mauss
(12) put it in terms of spirits. He argued that in Maori law, ‘to make a gift of something
to someone is to make a present of some part of oneself ’. He goes on to explain just
how dangerous it is for the recipient to retain that thing, because it exerts a magical or
religious hold over them. Mauss famously attributed this power to the hau, that is, the
soul of the thing itself. However, his account of Maori beliefs has been extensively
criticized: see Firth 1959 and Sahlins, 1972: 149–83. Although scholars have largely
rejected the idea of the hau, Mauss’s notion that ‘by giving one is giving oneself, and if
one gives oneself it is because one “owes” oneself—one’s person and one’s goods—to
others’ is sustained (46). Lévi-Strauss (1987: 46–9) argued that Mauss had mistaken
an indigenous belief for the objective reason for gift exchange—he set the circulation
of exchange in the unconscious mind; Godelier (1999: 52) in turn re-roots it in the
social, arguing that the hau means the original donor has an inalienable ownership of
an object, which is socially acknowledged. Osteen (2002: 3) gives alternative analyses
of the meaning and role of the spirit of the gift. For example, in exploring examples of
apparently irrational giving, Sykes (2005: 74–5) comes to the conclusion that the hau
of a gift is relational in its nature (166–7): ‘the gift you take into your hands begs you
to think of yet another person, maybe the one who gave it to you, or maybe another
person you have not met. That is how the gift works. This is the hau of it, not bush
spirits or spirits of the dead, but the spirits of living others that insist themselves
upon you, the additional, unexpected share of the transaction that remains with
you.’ In this context, gifts then can be described as being both relational and as
representative, signifying a particular social relation (see Osteen 2002: 3, who cites
also Berking 1999: 5).
4
Mauss (1990: 3) reminds us of these tensions at the very beginning of his essay,
when he refers to ‘the present generously given even when, in the gesture accom-
panying the transaction, there is only a polite fiction, formalism, and social deceit, and
when really there is obligation and economic self-interest’, but he does not offer any
detail about these emotions, who holds them, at what point in the ritual, and why.
Osteen (2002: 26) observes that in the moment, the obligation conveyed by a gift may
be far from the thoughts of the giver (and, we can add, perhaps from the mind of the
recipient). Caillé (2001: 34) discusses the ‘Dale Carnegie paradox’, in which one must
behave as if one is spontaneously sincere, in order to further one’s goals.
5
Sahlins 1972: 193–9. This model has been challenged and modified to fit the
ancient Roman relationship of the client (which was expressed in terms of kinship,
although this kinship was fictional); see Crook 2005, and cf. Kirk 2007.
142 Envy, Poison, and Death
are ‘putatively altruistic’, most usually found among family members,
friends, or neighbours, where obligations are seldom made explicit
and there is little sense of any time limit on their repayment. ‘Bal-
anced reciprocity’ occurs between individuals who are not so close—
perhaps between those in a market context. This is ‘direct exchange’,
in which transactions are expected to be timely and equivalent.
Finally, ‘negative reciprocity’, usually between strangers, involves
aggressive behaviour, which is intended to maximize one’s own
interests, and which may result in exploitation.
As these examples and models indicate, gift-giving both creates and
is given meaning through a process of transactions between people.6
We have only to think of gift-giving and the desire for social approval
to realize the importance of the relations surrounding a gift.7 The gift
only comes to be realized as a gift by the response of the recipient: ‘the
donor knows that she gives, she does not know what she gives, since
only the recipient actualizes the value of the gift’.8 The relationship
gives meaning to the gift—and the gift to the relationship.
James Laidlaw (2002) provides an intriguing example of these
dynamics, in his examination of the giving and receiving of dan,
particular types of charitable gifts given in India, which are not only
unreciprocated, but can convey misfortune from giver to recipient.
Those who receive dan in different relationships are affected by it in
different ways. Thus, the priests of Banaras, who willingly receive dan,
but do not reciprocate, also receive the misfortunes of their donors. In
contrast, the Jain renouncers avoid this disaster by means of a ritual of
giving in which those who give such a gift mark it as their gift, but never
refer to it as such, while those who receive it do not acknowledge it as a
gift—and so there is no reciprocity, rather, the dan becomes a ‘free gift’.9

6
Godelier 1999: 104. In modern societies processes of giving may appear to be less
personal: Godelier (14) gives the example of charitable giving, in which the benefi-
ciaries of the charity are shown on television. However, in tracing the history of the
modern form of production in the USA and UK, James Carrier (1995a, esp. pp. 6–8)
has focused on the relationships between people and objects (how they are (7) ‘really
made, bought, given or even used’ rather than seeing them in terms of (10) ‘mass
structures of meaning and identity’) and how this then shapes the relationships
between people who share or transact objects, and vice versa. See further Carrier
(1995b: 91): ‘commodity logic is . . . a social value that binds and obligates potential
transactors to each other’.
7 8
See Van de Ven 2002. Caillé 2001: 34.
9
Laidlaw (2002) is building on the work of Parry (esp. 1986) on ‘pure-gift’
ideology. As Laidlaw points out, Malinowski identified the existence of the free gift
 Phthonos and Misfortune 143
The meaning of a gift reaches well beyond the momentary response
of giver and recipient. The giving of a gift is an assertion of identities,
while rejecting it may be to reject a definition of oneself.10 This can
also be extended to gift-acquiring for others. Thus, if a person buys a
gift for a close friend which does not align with the giver’s sense of
identity, it may come to form an identity threat to them. Some
research suggests that the giver may then try to correct this feeling
by buying ‘identity-expressive products’.11 These kinds of implicit
dynamics indicate how and why gift-giving may be used as an
instrument for acquiring or maintaining status and control.12 And,
of course, underpinning these dynamics, these private meanings are
shaped by public structures of meaning, which are ‘regenerated,
modified and subverted in part by what people do in their private
lives’.13 It is much more than the thought that counts.
In this context, my suggestion is that phthonos expressed a spec-
trum of negative responses to the expectations and obligations
involved in the social networks of reciprocity that pervaded ancient
Greek society: these comprised specifically, resentment at giving (that
is, at the expectation that one has to give); resentment at receiving
(which is, in the end, a resentment at the expectation that one has to

among the Trobrianders, an analysis that Mauss was quick to correct; see Douglas
1990: viii.
10
Bergadaà 2006: research on charitable giving illustrates how the self-identity of
givers motivates their giving of donations; Schwartz (1967) describes an office game
called the ‘Office Pollyanna’, which vividly evokes gift-giving as an expression of the
views of others. It involved choosing the recipient of a gift (at random) and presenting
them with an inexpensive item which made (1) ‘comical or witty reference to that part of
their personal makeup which in the eyes of the giver, is most worthy of exaggeration’.
These examples help to demonstrate the way in which a gift is a confirmation of self-
identity by the giver, and an imposition of identity upon the recipient.
11
Ward and Broniarczyk (2011) point out that research suggests that we tend to
give presents that conflate our own tastes with those of the recipient, which leads to
unwanted or disliked gifts. They argue (165, citing Mintel 2008) that this may be why
gift registries are increasingly popular (annually in the United States gifts worth $19
billion are registered for and more than $5 billion purchased).
12
Ward and Broniarczyk 2011: 177. This dynamic can be seen in studies of
charitable giving in villages of northern Thailand, which show it to be ‘a complex
language expressing both domination and resistance’ that ‘should not be located in the
margins of volition and religion. Rather it is central to the political dynamics of the
relations between elites and subalterns in class-stratified societies’ (see Bowie 1998,
quotation from p. 478). Lévi-Strauss (1965: 76) argued that the exchange of goods is a
way of creating and shaping personal relationships, as a strategy for ensuring security.
13
Carrier 1995a: 7.
144 Envy, Poison, and Death
give in return); resentment at others giving (that they have the gifts to
give in the first place); and resentment at others’ receiving (even if you
already have what they have). The last appears to take us close to
what is nowadays (in modern Britain at least) colloquially known as
jealousy—especially if you are the one charged with making this gift.
Indeed, Aristotle appears to support this argument when he
describes how those who are already great and have good fortune
are phthoneroi. But the emphasis here is not (as has been translated)
on the fear of having their own fortune carried away, but rather on a
sense of resentment that others also take or have what they regard as
an appropriate possession for themselves.14 Indeed, Aristotle himself
gives us a variety of ‘scripts’, emphasizing how phthonos may be made
worse if the individual in question also wants the possession in
question, or thinks they should have it.15 The hand that feeds us
may not only be bitten; it may bite back.16

Mortal Phthonos: Reciprocity and Resentment

In diverse literary and sociopolitical contexts, the cultural model of
phthonos emphasized different aspects of the gift-giving relationship.

14
Sanders (2014: 39) identifies a ‘possessive jealousy’ script of envy that he
conflates with Arist. Rhet. 1387b28–31. The crucial aspect of this emotion is the desire
to retain one’s own possessions, and it describes the phthonos of the great man.
However, some caution is necessary: when Aristotle explains the phthonos of the
great man as πάντας γὰρ οἴονται τὰ αὑτῶν çέρειν, we can translate this as ‘because they
think that everyone is trying to deprive them of their own’ (tr. Freese 1926, and see
also Sanders 2014: 54), but translating pherein as ‘deprive’ imports an extra nuance.
Compare another translation: ‘for they think everyone else is taking what is theirs’
(Ross); here phthonos arises not from losing something of one’s own, but from others
gaining something that one regards as one’s own—while one has actually lost nothing
oneself. This is borne out by the examples Sanders gives that can be read (in
accordance with Aristotle) as concerned with not seeing another possess something
that by rights is theirs: e.g. in Xen. Cyr. 3.1.39, the king of Armenia may feel phthonos
that his son may admire the man he goes hunting with more than him, but it does not
say that the son stops admiring the King; in Ar. Thesm. 249 Agathon is told that he has
begrudged helping Euripides (which does not prevent him helping others), and in 252
he does not grudge a material gift, which he can spare; finally, in Ar. Lys. 1192, the
speakers deny phthonos—that is, they do not mind seeing another acquire something
they have—but it is also apparent that they can spare it. Although there is an element
of not relinquishing something of one’s own, the aspect of denying another is just as
strong here—it is the root of Aristotle’s set of ‘scripts’.
15
Arist. Rhet. 1387b.
16
The original quotation is from Emerson 1929: 286.
 Phthonos and Misfortune 145
The examples that have been discussed are from specific genres of
praise and blame. But the connections they have enabled us to trace
between phthonos, or cognates of phthonos, and responses to bene-
factions and good fortune can also be seen in other genres of writing.
I have written elsewhere about the ways in which uses of phthonos
and its cognates in the Homeric epics illuminate the crucial role of the
gift in the communities described in those poems, and the complex
customs, implicit assumptions, expectations, and resulting behav-
iours that accompanied it.17 In epic, when individuals talk about
phthonos and themselves, they tend to deny the emotion; in contrast,
statements made about others and phthonos tend to be statements of
attribution. These are usually challenging—either reprimands or
insults (or the one understood as the other)—and can lead to conflict.
As these examples show, when individuals deny that they have
phthonos, they are stating their capacity, and willingness, to be
involved in basic reciprocal relationships; in contrast, an attribution
of phthonos makes an accusation that a person is unwilling to do so.
In the Homeric poems, phthonos talk is a way of signalling informa-
tion about the nature of one’s participation in the crucial social
system of reciprocity. In particular, it flags the darker emotions:
feelings of resentment and anger at being involved in a system that
required one to give or to receive, or to observe others giving or
receiving.
In later work, as we have seen, the emphasis of phthonos falls more
on the instinctive response to an individual’s actual or even potential
good fortune, and draws attention to actions, potential actions—or,

17
See Eidinow forthcoming a. The observation of Walcot (1976: 26) that phtho-
nein ‘can be used in Homer when it means not much more than “to be unwilling”’
supports the idea that the notion of resentment regarding processes of benefaction
was a part of the meaning of phthonos and the social tensions it described already in
these works. Of the ten examples of its use in the Homeric poems, eight occur in the
Odyssey, a work that comments particularly on the importance of gift exchange. Von
Reden (2003: 59–66) argues for a difference in the meaning of gifts between the two
epics. The gifts of the Odyssey are still often made in contexts of gift exchange. In the
Iliad, the context of battle serves to underline the characters’ views that there are more
important values than survival, and gifts tie into a system of exchange that emphasizes
individual heroic values (e.g. Hom. Il. 12.310–21, where Sarpedon’s explanation to
Glaucus that the land they receive from their people means they must fight well in
order to earn kleos in battle).
146 Envy, Poison, and Death
indeed, lack of action—that disrupt the cycle of reciprocity.18 Herod-
otus’ Histories repeatedly offers examples of this phthonos talk: for
example, Aristodemos’ valiant death in battle is not granted recogni-
tion, because it is said to have occurred because he wished to die, a
story that Herodotus attributes to the phthonos of those spreading the
story. Presumably they did not wish actually to die themselves, but are
unwilling to recognize his sacrifice.19 Similarly, after the battle of
Salamis, the Greek generals are constrained by their phthonos:
although the benefits it has brought are obvious, they cannot bring
themselves to honour Themistocles’ successful leadership. Able to
vote twice, they each put themselves in first place, their phthonos
exacerbated by the sense that they should have this recognition.20
In contrast, when Themistocles returns from Sparta, one Timodemus
of Aphidna, who is otherwise unknown—and in fact his insignifi-
cance and lack of political weight are stressed—repeatedly claims the
victory of Salamis for the whole Athenian people; ‘crazed’ with
phthonos, he cannot bear to see the gift of recognition granted only
to Themistocles.21
These examples concern extraordinary battle honours, but the
same pattern emerges at a domestic level, according to Xerxes, King
of Persia. Defending his friend Demaratus, he provides a program-
matic statement of phthonos: ‘if one citizen prospers, another citizen
has phthonos towards him and shows his enmity by silence, and no
one (except if he has attained the height of excellence; and such are
seldom seen), if his own townsman asks for counsel, will give him
what he thinks to be the best advice’. Xerxes opposes a stranger’s
attitude to that of a citizen: the stranger will give good advice, and is
‘beyond all men his well-wisher’; he offers a tidy opposition between

18
Examples from Herodotus: potential good fortune: Hdt. 3.146.1, Maeandrius
does not want (phthonesas) Syloson to recover Samos. Actual good fortune: Hdt.
3.30.1, Cambyses’ response of phthonos (phthonoi) to his brother’s facility with the
bow; Hdt. 3.52.5, Periander invokes the phthonos his son will gain (phthoneesthai) by
returning home; Hdt. 7.139.1, Herodotus’ own allocation of honour to the Athenians
may provoke phthonos (epiphthonon); Hdt. 8.69.1, those who feel phthonos (phtho-
neontes) at Artemisia’s good fortune.
19
Aristodemus: Hdt. 9.71.4–9.72 (phthonoi). Another example: Demaratus slan-
ders Cleomenes (phthonoi) in Hdt. 6.61.1.
20
Hdt. 8.124.1 (phthonoi).
21
Hdt. 8.125.1: katamargeon (‘crazed’) is rare, poetic, and strong. In Pl. Resp.
(329e6–330a), the man comes from Seriphos, ‘an island noted for its insignificance’
(see Bowie 2007).
 Phthonos and Misfortune 147
an ideology of aristocratic gift exchange (the gift being that of trust)
and rivalry between citizens.22 With acknowledgment that Xerxes is
making a case for his friend—and that what he presents is surely a
simplification of social relations—we may still see some reflection
here of the concerns about the disruptive nature of phthonos in a civic
context.23
Across all these examples, whether they are voiced by a character
or by Herodotus as narrator, the power of phthonos attributions is
apparent. Most obviously, in the latter example, Demaratus slanders
and is in turn slandered; when he is accused of phthonos, Xerxes asks
that Achaemenes not subject him to kakologia, that is, not ‘bad-
mouth’ him. But it is also true of Herodotus’ own narrative: the
Spartans are subtly demeaned by their inability to recognize a brave
soldier; while Themistocles’ eligibility for honour is only emphasized
by the figure of the raving Timodemus—who offers a stark parallel to
the Greek generals.
In contrast, Thucydides rarely uses the term in his own narrative,
preferring to put it in the mouths of his characters. Nevertheless, we
gain a strong sense of its role in the war: its appearance introduces a
further layer of explanation, one that supports the sense of contin-
gency that emerges from his experiential account of events. His
earliest use of it sets the context most clearly: he is describing the
destruction wrought by stasis; phthonos appears in a devastating final
sentence about the possible reasons why citizens who would not join a
political faction had to die.24 It may have been because they were
disliked for keeping apart, or, he suggests, they were killed because
others felt phthonos that they might survive. It also occurs again after
the siege of Amphipolis: the Spartans will not support Brasidas; they
give some strategic reasons.25 But Thucydides’ emphasizes their emo-
tional response to Brasidas’ success: that they acted in this way ‘partly
through phthonos of their leading men, partly because they wanted to
recover their men’. This almost incidental comment forms a powerful
assessment of Spartan character.

22
Hdt. 7.237.2 (phthoneei) and 3 (tr. Godley 1920).
23
Opposition is a simplification in Kurke (2013: 80), who reminds us (91) that the
polis is a complex institution, with many strands: ‘aristocratic ideology may not
always be coextensive with the aristocratic group’. The sharing of women prevents
the Agathursi from feeling phthonos (4.104.1).
24 25
Thuc. 3.82.8. Thuc. 4.108.7.
148 Envy, Poison, and Death
Other examples of the use of phthonos for characterization occur
in speeches. These rhetorical uses of phthonos resonate with those
in forensic oratory, not only in their content, but also in the
ways that speakers manipulate the term. They also reveal a variety
of contexts in which phthonos may emerge. Pericles crafts his
employment of phthonos so as to discourage its expression—only
a man who cannot achieve is unable to praise another or hear him
praised because of phthonos.26 But in fact, as he admits, phthonos is
such a common emotion that, as noted before, only the dead are
safe from it.27 Meanwhile, Diodotus perhaps gives us the context
for these remarks when he sets out his argument in the Mytilene
debate (3.43.1). He observes that his fellow Athenians do not even
need to feel certain that a man will gain success from the advice he
gives in the Assembly before their phthonos towards him is
aroused.
Thucydides also uses phthonos talk to reinforce individual char-
acterization. Examples of some of the more belligerent comments
about phthonos include Alcibiades confronting head-on the phtho-
nos that he provokes;28 and Hermocrates’ address to the Camar-
ineans, where he is unapologetic about the phthonos and fear that
other states in Sicily feel towards Syracuse.29 And, still in Sicily,
one might compare Nicias’ desperate reasoning about the phthonos
of the gods: the Athenians may have been the object of phthonos
when the fleet set out, but surely cannot deserve it any more.30 We
will address the topic of the phthonos of the gods next in this
section; for now, it reminds us of the sense of phthonos mentioned
earlier, in which a great man simply cannot bear to see another
enjoy good fortune.
Across all these examples we see phthonos linked to episodes that
describe responses to good fortune or its absence—the emotional
difficulties of granting public praise, or accepting with equanimity
the good fortune granted to others. They reinforce the wider social
and cosmological associations of phthonos. Gifts and reciprocity are
part of the social system by which the members of a community take
care of each other, protecting groups and individuals from experi-
ences of misfortune. But, as the example of Nicias demonstrates, this

26 27 28
Thuc. 2.35.2 and 2.64.5. Thuc. 2.45.1. Thuc. 6.16.3.
29 30
Thuc. 6.78.2. Thuc. 7.77.3 and 4.
 Phthonos and Misfortune 149
idea also relates to divine behaviour. Before leaving this topic, I want
to suggest that this mortal model can help us to understand divine
phthonos—although it comprises fundamental differences from the
mortal dynamic of reciprocity, in both the nature of the gifts and the
perception of the giver.31

Divine Phthonos: A Different Currency

Ancient Greek narratives about divine phthonos repeatedly draw
attention to the ways in which the gods undermine mortal notions
of reciprocity, and how unexpected and often unpredictable provi-
sions of fortune, both good and bad, destabilize the mortal system of
reciprocity.32 For example, Pindar’s descriptions of the dynamics of
phthonos reveal that it is not only individual and mortal communities
that are involved. Crucially, this system of exchange is underpinned
by the presence and role of the gods.33 It is their granting, or not, of
favour, their gifts, that can bring a man success or cause him to topple
from victory to disaster.34 Pindar’s words remind both his subject and
his audience of their mortal fragility, their dependence on unseen
powers.
The role of the gods in this system has been described as a reflection
and reinforcement of social dynamics among the elite, and it is true
that Pindar introduces divine favour to reinforce mortal status.35 But

31
Cf. Siegel (2006: 9), where he argues that naming the source of fortune and
misfortune (in his study, this is witchcraft) means that these experiences are ‘possibly
recovered for the social’.
32
A detailed discussion of divine phthonos can be found in Eidinow forthcoming a.
33
Ol. 7.89–91, 9.28–9 and 100–4, 10.21, 14.5–6; Pyth. 1.41–2 and 8.76–7; Isth. 5.11.
See Kurke (2013: 129–131) for gift-exchange imagery reinforced by the victor’s
relationship with Apollo in Pyth. 5. 23–31, Dioscuri in Nem. 10.49–54, Hermes in
Ol. 6.77–81; and (131–2) for invented relationships in Pyth. 5.30–1, Isth. 1.52–4,
2.13–19, 6.3–7, and 8.61–60. It is not clear whether or not Kurke sees these relation-
ships only as metaphorical references to gift exchange or not (see esp. 134, 136).
34
Pyth. 7.19–21. The sentiment is perhaps most succinctly and famously expressed
in Pyth. 8.95: ‘Creatures of a day! What is someone? What is no one? A dream of a
shadow is man.’ The unpredictability of life, except for families blessed by the gods, is
also described in Ol. 8.12–14, 12.10–12a, 13.105–6; Pyth. 5.54–5 and 7.19–21; Nem. 6.1–7;
Isth. 3.18b, 4.4–21. Tuche: Isth. 4.31–5, fr. 38 (Maehler). The fates: Isth. 6.16–18. Fate: Ol.
2.21 and 35, Pyth. 12.30; fr. 232 (Maehler), and Charis’ vacillation: Ol. 7.11–12.
35
Kurke (2013) recognizes the role of the gods in the system of gift exchange, but
her concern is with how the model relationship between divinity and mortal ratifies
aristocratic gift exchange (see, for example, pp. 110, 131, 136–9).
150 Envy, Poison, and Death
there is another side to Pindar’s presentation of the role of the gods, in
which the nature of divine favour introduces a note of uncertainty
about mortal status. Pindar works hard to create a picture of the ideal
chain of reciprocal relationships, in which benefit and thanks are, as it
were, nested within each other, across the levels of god, elite, and
citizen. But he also makes clear how the gods are not bound into this
mortal system of reciprocity. Their presence and indeed their gifts
introduce a crucial note of uncertainty, a strong sense of risk, into
this structure.
Pindar provides a reminder of the unknowability of one’s own
fate—both to the individual athlete, so that he not seek higher status,
and to the citizen audience, so it gives praise to those who deserve it.
The gods may deny their favours just as easily as they give them. As
he notes: ‘One must not contend with a god, | who at one time raises
up these men’s fortunes, then at other times gives great glory to
others . . . | It helps to bear lightly the yoke one has taken upon
one’s | neck, and kicking against the goad | you know, becomes a
slippery path.’36 At the root of this profound unpredictability is the
risk of the envy of the gods. Thus, at Olympian 13.24, as he hymns
Xenophon of Corinth, Pindar asks that Zeus may be apthonetos
(‘without phthonos’)—for all time to come—concerning words of
praise; at Isthmian 7.39, as he sets out to sing in honour of Strepsiades
of Thebes, he asks that the phthonos of the gods cause no disruption
(ὁ δ᾿ ἀθανάτων μὴ θρασσέτω çθόνος). In Pythian 8.72–3, Pindar
intervenes on behalf of Aristomenes of Aegina to ask the gods for
their ‘favour without phthonos’ (opin aphthonon),37 and assumes a
similar role in Pythian 10.20 for Hippocleas of Thessaly, when he asks
that his subject and his father not encounter ‘phthonetic reversals
from the gods’ (çθονεραῖς ἐκ θεῶν j μετατροπίαις). When he then
implores, ‘May the god not be pained in heart’ (ll. 21–2: θεὸς εἴη |
ἀπήμων κέαρ), the physical suffering of the god brings to mind the
pains that afflict mortals suffering phthonos.
At the root of both mortal and divine phthonos is the risk inherent
in the gift of good fortune itself.38 Pindar shows how this danger
reverberates through three different levels. First, there is the divine

36
Pyth. 2.89–90, 93–6.
37
As translated by Race, but note that opis usually means ‘vengeance’, not ‘care’ or
‘favour’ (LSJ gives no other examples), and can mean ‘regard’.
38
Hornblower (2006: 30–3) discusses the role of the gift in Pindar.
 Phthonos and Misfortune 151
gift of good fortune, which produces success or prosperity, but may
just as easily be reversed, or produce such self-belief that the individ-
ual destroys himself.39 Second, there is the gift of the glory of that
success or prosperity (material or not) by the individual to the
community. And finally, comes the gift of recognition and honour
from the community back to the individual.40 In each case, phthonos,
both mortal and divine, may rear its head and bite.
Confronted with the possibility of this danger, any successful
individual must manage his gift of the glory of that success or
prosperity (material or not) to the community; in return, the com-
munity must achieve a fitting gift of recognition for the individual.
Bridging the dangerous distance between individual and community
is the poet, trying to keep hubris, koros, the inevitable mortal phtho-
nos all in check by keeping the nexus of gifts in circulation.41 And yet
this may not be enough: as Pindar stresses again and again, divine
phthonos is the inherent cosmological risk of good fortune—
unavoidable, yet unpredictable, desired and feared.
Herodotus provides a similar sense of the pervasive nature of
divine phthonos, reinforcing the sense of supernatural involvement
that suffuses his work. This begins with Solon’s almost programmatic
instruction to Croesus, where the sage describes the divine as phtho-
neron te kai tarachodes (‘prone to phthonos and troublesome’).42 This
is not, as some scholars have suggested, criticism of the gods for being
acquisitive or competitive.43 Despite its context—the tour of the
King’s treasury—this is a lesson about the risks involved in the
reception of divinely maintained fortune, not the dangers of excess.
Similar vocabulary occurs with regard to the events that befall Xerxes.

39
The latter is illustrated by the story of Ixion (Pyth. 2.21–41), which provides a
powerful illustration of the dangers of the divine gift.
40
Crotty (1982: 120) notes that success is ‘neither wholly human nor wholly
divine; it both violates and respects the injunction to be content with what one has’.
41
Pindar works to ensure that the gods are on his side, and his patron’s. With the
gods on side: Ol. 6.101–2, 7.87–95, 8.10–11, 9.21–30; Pyth. 6.7–9; Nem. 7.31–2.
Ol.11.10 has been read as meaning that the poet also needs a god’s help to succeed.
Dickie (1987: 122) observes that Pindar’s poetry is apotropaic—intended to keep away
the dangers of phthonos—but Dickie links this directly to the evil eye.
42
Hdt. 1.32.1.
43
Contra Lanzillotta (2010: 91), who suggests that in this episode (Hdt. 1.32.8–9)
and that of Polycrates’ ring (Hdt. 3.40) the gods are motivated by avarice (the gods
‘simply keep for themselves, as divine privilege, the right to enjoy happiness without
counterpoint’).
152 Envy, Poison, and Death
For example, in the commentary by Xerxes’ uncle Artabanus, who
echoes Croesus’ conclusion that the gods are simply phthoneros
towards men.44 And in Themistocles’ account of Xerxes’ defeat,
although he describes Xerxes as impious and wicked, this is not an
explanation about the Persian king’s lack of success in conquering
Europe and Asia.45 Instead, Themistocles states that the gods and
heroes simply ‘begrudged’ (ephthonesan) them. The impression that
Xerxes is the victim of more elaborate divine machinations is also
reinforced by the mysterious dream figure, who will not let Xerxes
turn back from his plans to conquer the Greeks.46
And this latter episode highlights a further dimension of the
phthonos of the gods: while these divine dynamics seem closely to
follow the mortal model, simply disrupting the dynamic of reci-
procity, they also diverge in important ways. First, divine gifts occur
in a very different currency from that of mortal gift exchange. Again,
Herodotus offers some instruction: Solon tells Croesus about the
glorious death of Tellus, then the unexpected deaths of Cleobis and
Biton. Perhaps, in part, these stories are about Croesus’ shortcomings
(although his pride in the wealth he has amassed is only human), but
they also underline the very different currency of divine gift
exchange.47 This is highlighted by the detail that the mother of
Cleobis and Biton, albeit indirectly, asks for the deaths of her sons.
They are the deserving recipients of ultimate good fortune from the
gods—who take their lives. These divine ‘gifts’ are delivered in a
currency that subverts our mortal understanding of what is valuable.
Related to this is the divine gift that leads to destruction: Phere-
time, queen of Cyrene, mother of Arcesilaus III, and her horrible
death offer a good example.48 In Pheretime’s case the divine oppor-
tunity to avenge herself is a gift that destroys her. The explanation is
that ‘Revenge that is too extreme attracts the phthonos of the gods’.49

44
Hdt. 7.46.1.
45
Hdt. 8.109.3. See Macan (1908 ad loc.), who argues that the description of
Xerxes’ destruction of sacred places should be seen ‘not as the justification of the
ways of gods to man, but as a statement of pure matter of fact —a fact inevitable, since
what mortal invested with such power could avoid pride, presumption, impiety, sin?’.
46 47 48
Hdt. 7.16–18. See Pelling 2006. Hdt 4.205.
49
αἱ λίην ἰσχυραὶ τιμωρίαι πρὸς θεῶν ἐπίçθονοι γίνονται. The term used here,
epiphthonos, also occurs when Herodotus is explaining how the Athenians played
the crucial role in the Persian defeat—and he admits that his opinion may be
epiphthonon, that is, it may be looked on with phthonos (Hdt. 7.139.1); see also
Hdt. 9.79.2, where the general Pausanias uses the verb epiphthoneo to indicate
 Phthonos and Misfortune 153
At one level, the excesses of her actions are certainly significant—and
yet this aspect was not enough to condemn the eunuch Hermotimus,
whose revenge on Panionius for his castration fails to provoke divine
phthonos, despite being, as Herodotus tells us, ‘the greatest that we
know of ’.50 Compare the story of Polycrates, whose fate is sealed by
his constant, unremitting good fortune. Polycrates considers himself
to be eutuches (‘fortunate’), but, as Amasis explains, this can only be
temporary. The gods are envious (‘the divine is phthoneron’), and
their ‘gifts’ set up an impossible dynamic: the obligation they establish
cannot be repaid, but nor can the gift be returned.51
With these latter examples in particular, we hear something of the
bewilderment that Nicias expresses to his men in the passage, men-
tioned earlier in this section, from Thucydides. Whereas for Pindar,
and in fact much of Herodotus, references to divine phthonos can
seem to provide a systematic explanation of events, Nicias’ observa-
tions underline the gulf between divine and mortal status and per-
ception. Although Nicias offers it as encouragement to his men, it
seems rather to communicate a sense of their helplessness, in par-
ticular, his inability to understand divine reasoning.
Coming finally to evidence from the fourth century, and the
forensic speeches examined earlier, we find the role of phthonos as a
mortal phenomenon is by far the greatest focus of this phthonos talk.
At first sight there is little that obviously links to the behaviour of the
gods. This is perhaps its own explanation: the complexity of mortal
phthonos, in particular its link to a vicious character (as in Against
Leptines), may have made it conceptually difficult to associate it with
the gods. Certainly, when it does occur—for example, in Aristoph-
anes’ Wealth in the mouth of Wealth himself as he explains his
blindness—it appears (in this context, comically) as venomous.52

condemnation of the act of insulting the dead. (See Nilsson 1967: 761 for the
argument that this difference in treatment turns on gender: because Pheretime is a
woman, revenge is less acceptable than it would be for a male.)
50
Hdt. 8.105–6.
51
Hdt. 3.40.2, linking it to Solon’s earlier explanation by this phthonetic vocabu-
lary. Kurke (1999: 109) notes that Polycrates must give something back to the gods,
and sees the anthropological parallels (making the Maussian reference), but does not
link this to phthonos.
52
Ar. Plut. 87–92. Wealth explains Zeus was motivated by phthonos to blind him,
so as to prevent him from rewarding those who deserve it.
154 Envy, Poison, and Death
Yet similar patterns of explanation can still be found. Even as
Demosthenes is criticizing Aeschines in On the Crown, he refers to
the cycle of fortune that Solon describes: ‘Seeing that a man who
thinks he is doing very well and regards himself as highly fortunate is
never certain that his good fortune will last till the evening, how can it
be right to boast about it, or use it to insult other people?’53 Similarly,
as already noted, reference to ti daimonion (‘some divine power’),
which may drive a state or a person to ruin, also echoes preceding
patterns of divine causation.54 In general, however, it seems that
although divine phthonos still occurs as an explanation in certain
writers, its role in the cultural imaginary is slowly being taken over by
a personification of the phenomenon that divine phthonos once
directed: Tuche (‘chance’ or ‘fortune’).55
In the material examined above, divine benefactions mirror, but
pervert, a mortal system of benefaction, destabilizing expectations
and assumptions, and drawing attention to the power of the gods and
their unfathomable motivations. Solon emphasizes to Croesus the
difference between being olbios (prosperous) and eutuches (‘fortu-
nate’): olbios may look better at first glance, but it cannot be relied
upon. Divine gifts are unpredictable in terms of both their nature (are
they in fact good fortune?) and steadfastness (they may appear or
disappear without warning). Where phthonos talk provided Homeric
characters with a potent force for their negotiations of status, the
phthonos talk we find in later narratives of divine phthonos offers
another kind of negotiation, as mortals attempt to explain their
experiences of fortune and misfortune.

53
Dem. 18.252 (tr. Vince and Vince 1926): ἣν γὰρ ὁ βέλτιστα πράττειν νομίζων καὶ
ἀρίστην ἔχειν οἰόμενος οὐκ οἶδεν εἰ μενεῖ τοιαύτη μέχρι τῆς ἑσπέρας, πῶς χρὴ περὶ
ταύτης λέγειν ἢ πῶς ὀνειδίζειν ἑτέρῳ; This follows a reference to Aeschines’ baskania,
but the implications do not seem to be supernatural.
54
See Dem. 9.54, where Demosthenes seems to link it to mortal phthonos, referring
to the madness of the men of Athens whom he addresses, which may be motivated by
‘love of loidoria, phthonos, and jesting’, as he notes his fear that ‘some divine power’ is
driving Athens to its doom (see also Aeschin. 3.117). Cf. Whitehead (2009: 331), who
does not note the reference to mortal phthonos.
55
See Eidinow 2011a. Dover (1974: 78) argued that belief in divine phthonos still
prevailed in the fourth century; Dickie (1987) makes this argument, drawing attention
(120) to links between tuche and phthonos in the poetry of Pindar and in tragedy
(although he offers no examples). Whitehead (2009) agrees, but emphasizes the lack
of evidence to support this position and argues for the burgeoning role of tuche in
Polybius, Pausanias, and Plutarch (he does not adduce the orators).
 Phthonos and Misfortune 155
Stories of divine phthonos have a particular sense structure of their
own, revealing the gap between mortal expectations of reciprocity
and divine unknowability. In these narratives, different authors
emphasize different aspects of events, some stressing links with
excess, others with pride, still others with cosmological order, or a
blend of all three. But what all of these stories direct our attention to is
man’s unbearably uncertain relationship with his gods, and the sense
of insecurity and ignorance that accompanies experiences of fortune
and misfortune, one’s own and those of others. Attributions of
phthonos between mortals are a crucial element in this matrix of
uncertainty, offering a mortal cause, but one that is inextricably
linked to the manipulation of occult powers.

PHTHONOS AND OCCULT AGGRESSION

We have seen how narratives about divine phthonos could be used to

explain random and inexplicable events of fortune and misfortune by
offering justifications, validations, consolations, and explanations.
Here I want to draw attention to the ways in which mortal phthonos
also played its part in structuring experiences of otherwise inexplic-
able misfortune, and in reinforcing a sense of insecurity. In making
this argument, I am drawing on research into other societies in other
times and places, to highlight a recurring cross-cultural pattern. From
the villages of Germany in the sixteenth century, to the forests of
Colombia, from the bocage in northern France, to the townships of
Soweto, South Africa in more modern times, we find similar inter-
personal behaviours and narratives of explanation in which the envy
of another’s success is pinpointed as the root cause of that person’s
misfortune.56 Across these cases, in the terms of Kenneth Burke’s
‘dramatism’, the attribution of motive involves the identification
of an agent—usually a person within the community, and often
known, if not related, to the victim—whose agency is supernatural

56
e.g. Ashforth 2005 (Soweto, South Africa), Campbell 1964 (Greece), Favret-
Saada 1980 (northern France), Galt 1982 (Italy), Roper 1994 and 1996 (early modern
Germany), Taussig 1991 (Colombia). There are of course myriad more examples that
could be mentioned here; some of these will be introduced as part of the discussion
that follows.
156 Envy, Poison, and Death
power.57 As has been noted, Adam Ashforth has used this approach
to explore the experiences of witchcraft in modern Soweto. He uses it
to highlight the problems of epistemology that this mode of explan-
ation presents: one can never know who is a witch and who is not,
whose jealousy has been activated.58
Ashforth emphasizes the ways in which friends and neighbours are
the likely source of such attacks—and this is a pattern that other
scholars of witchcraft in other African countries have observed.59
I want to suggest that a similar pattern of occult insecurity pertained
in ancient societies. The two examples I will put forward are both
from later than the period under study here. I use them because they
offer, in each case, unusual access to the behaviour and concomitant
thoughts of individuals going through these experiences. My sugges-
tion is that these patterns of behaviour, at least, can also be traced in
earlier evidence.
The first case dates to 197 CE, and concerns one Gemellus Horion, a
landholder in Karanis in the Egyptian Fayyum, whose neighbours
were stealing his harvests. We know about this case because Horion
filed a number of petitions, first with the prefect Quintus Aemilius
Saturninus, who authorized him to approach the epistrategos, then,
before that latter hearing occurred, with the strategos, Hierax.60 This
case is distinctive because of the use of particular rituals by the
thieves. To begin with, Horion’s neighbours, Sotas and Julius, along
with Julius’ wife and a friend called Zenas, had marched into Horion’s
field and demanded to repossess his land; next, they arrived with a
brephos or ‘fetus’, and stole his harvested crops. When Horion and
two village officers visited Julius to complain, he threw the fetus at
Horion in the presence of the village elders. He then proceeded to
gather in the remaining crops in the field, taking them and the fetus
home with him.

57
In interpreting Burke’s dramatism I am guided here by Benoit (1996), who is in
turn guided by Mills (1940), but notes other interpretations of Burke’s meaning.
58
Ashforth 2003; see this volume, p. 136.
59
See especially Geschiere 2013.
60
P. Mich. VI 422 (copy SB XXII 15774; TM 12261) and P. Mich. VI 423 (copy
424; TM 12262); text published by Youtie and Pearl 1944. See Bryen and Wypustek
2009 for details of the case and (ibid.: 536 n. 2) for discussion; and the Leuven
Homepage of Papyrus Collections (http://lhpc.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/archives/texts/90.
pdf , accessed 1 December 2014) for details about the collection of papyri concerned
with Gemellus Horion and his family.
 Phthonos and Misfortune 157
Gemellus associates the use of the fetus with the emotion of
phthonos—and here that emotion seems to have taken on almost
physical dimensions.61 The fetus, he reports, is intended to encircle
his tenant farmer with phthonos (l. 13 phthonoi periklisai), and later,
when Julius throws it at him in turn, to do the same to him
(ll. 17–18). This imagery brings to mind the operation of a binding
spell, which is intended to prevent its victim from acting; and we
could say that it is remarkably successful in this respect—it even
prevents the village officials and elders from doing anything to stop
Julius.
We have one narrative here, which depicts Horion as the victim of
magical activity and of phthonos. But, as Ari Bryen and Andrzej
Wypustek observe, there are other perspectives that can be
extracted from the evidence.62 Gemellus Horion’s family, it seems,
had moved to Karanis relatively recently: his grandfather had
bought a house there in 154 CE.63 The family had grown quite
wealthy quite rapidly, and at the time of these events owned a lot
of land (by 189 CE, at least four houses, seven courtyards, and shares
in other dwellings and courtyards).64 Horion himself occupied a
privileged position in the community: he was a citizen of Antinoo-
polis, with access to provincial Roman magistrates.65 However, it is
possible he did not spend a great deal of time in Karanis itself.
Moreover, it appears that he was not prepared to support a liturgy
(he petitioned to be excused on the basis that he was blind in one
eye and had a cataract developing in the other), and there seems to
have been some trouble with the collection of taxes.66 It may be that

61
See Frankfurter 2006 for the argument that the fetus was likely to be real, Bryen
and Wypustek 2009 for the analysis of its relation to phthonos.
62
Bryen and Wypustek 2009: 539–42.
63
P. Mich. VI 428 (sale of a house; TM 12266).
64
P. Mich. VI 370 (census declaration; TM 12174).
65
On Gemellus Horion’s family see especially Biezunska-Malowist 1957, cited by
Bryen and Wypustek (2009: 540), along with the archive of Gemellus Horion
(Smolders 2013). Alston (1995: 129–32) argues that Gemellus Horion did not inherit
Roman citizenship from his grandfather, but see Smolders 2013 and Bryen and
Wypustek 2009: 540 n. 10. For evidence that he was an Antinoite citizen (his right
to wear the chlamys), see P. Mich. VI 426.18 (TM 12264). He appears as a represen-
tative of landowners and public cultivators of the village of Kerkesoucha: SB XIV
11478 (Youtie 1974: 149–52; TM 14456).
66
That he may not have spent a lot of time in Karanis, see Smolders 2013: 3–4 n.
12; the property in P. Mich. VI 370 is listed through the estate manager. In P. Mich. VI
425 (TM 12263) Horion complains that a tax collector’s assistant has demolished the
158 Envy, Poison, and Death
in such a context, it was in fact Gemellus who was seen as the source
of phthonos, since he disrupted the cycle of benefaction in the com-
munity by taking from its resources, and then refusing to contrib-
ute.67 This may be reinforced by the possibility that his eye diseases
were also perceived as being related to the evil eye, which, as we have
seen, is a phenomenon closely linked to phthonos.68 It may be that a
fetus was thought to offer protection, and the neighbours had
brought it with them to shield themselves from Gemellus, rather
than to attack him, while they asserted what they perceived to be
their rights to property that he refused to share.69
A second example takes us forward two centuries to Antioch and
the precarious, intensely competitive world of the professional orator.
Libanius had trained in Athens, and taught rhetoric in Athens,
Constantinople, and Nicomedia before becoming municipal sophist
of Antioch, in ancient Syria, in 354 CE; within and beyond the city he
was connected to an impressive network of scholarly and government
notables, which both supported and endangered him, in turn. He also
ran a school of education, and had to attract students by competing in
public-speaking competitions, an experience that he himself describes
in terms of extreme aggression.70

doors of the house there (198 CE). Petition to be released from liturgy: P.Mich.
426.1–24, 199/200 CE.
67
Bryen and Wypustek (2009) introduce the parallel of C. Furius Chresimus.
68
Plutarch’s essay On Envy and Hate makes parallels between phthonos and sore
eyes (Plut. De invid. 537e), and see also Philodemus, περὶ κακιῶν Liber Decimus, col.
xii.15 (ed. Jensen). Discussions of the physical operation of the evil eye in Plut. Quaest.
conv. 680c–683b and Heliod. Aeth. 3.7–9. Capelle (1953) argued that both were likely
to be derived from the same source (Phylarchus), but cf. Dickie 1991. See Alvar Nuño
2012 for ancient associations between ocular pathologies and the evil eye. The only
ancient description of the casting of the evil eye is in Ap. Rhod. Argon. 4.1669ff. Later
iconography certainly associates the evil eye with phthonos: see most famously the
Kephallenia mosaic, where text and image establish the connection unequivocally:
LIMC 8.1. Phthonos 16 (p. 994); for other examples, see Dunbabin and Dickie 1983.
The phallos (an apotropaic symbol against the evil eye) is also found in images relating
to phthonos: see examples in Dunbabin and Dickie 1983: 36–7. See also this volume,
p. 120.
69
Youtie and Pearl (1944: 125) note that a premature infant or animal would
count as an aoros (that is, one that has died untimely); they also mention that it is
biaiothanatos (‘dead by violence’ (?)) and ataphos (‘unburied’) and this ‘might
produce considerable agitation, to put it mildly, in those against whom its malignant
force was directed’. PGM IV.2578 uses an embruon gunaikos as an ingredient in a
sacrifice intended to subject a woman to the spell-maker’s will.
70
See Lib. Or. 1.91, 2.14 (tr. thoughout this section are from Norman 1992);
Cribiore 2007: 91–2.
 Phthonos and Misfortune 159
But by the 380s, this life of feuding competition seems to have
reached something of a peak: Libanius appears to have been facing
increasing criticism and disapproval, which his own conduct did little
to ameliorate. This is the context for a number of incidents that he
describes, which provide first-person insight into the supernatural
violence that pervaded interaction between professional rivals. The
most famous example occurs in 386 CE, and is the culmination of a
notable period of difficulties. These included a plague and famine in
the previous year, marked disciplinary problems with students at his
school, and a charge of magic made against his (dead) secretary,
which culminated in a number of arrests, exiles, and floggings for
the practice of various forms of divination.71
In this episode, Libanius is the victim: he describes how he finds
himself unable to speak, read, or write; he suffers from gout; he
becomes unsociable, not visiting the baths or going to dinner, and
he cannot study.72 He has a dream that seems to him to ‘portend
spells, incantations and the hostility of sorcerers’; he starts to wish to
die.73 He has his suspicions of who has done this to him, although
nothing is said explicitly. When he falls ill, he reports, there were
people ‘prophesying that I would be dead before morning, and, in
fact, in other cities it was said that I was dead already’. More to the
point, throughout the earlier stages of his suffering, when the cause
was still unknown, his ‘friends kept urging me, and each other too, to
prosecute certain individuals who were rumoured to be responsible
for this’. Libanius restrains them, ‘telling them to offer up prayers
rather than to have folk arrested for secret machinations’.74
The cause of all his distress becomes clear to him when a mutilated
chameleon ‘turned up from somewhere or other’ in his classroom. He
observes how its head was tucked between its hind legs, a front leg was
missing, while the other was covering its mouth to silence it.75 This is

71
Lib. Or. 1.241–2 (in this passage, note the double meaning of cheimoni to mean
winter, and a charge of magic, as noted by Norman 1992, ad loc.). The ill-discipline
included students leaving the teacher they were registered with and applying to work
with another, thus cheating the original teacher out of payment. Petit (1979, ad loc.)
suggests that Libanius resorted to some kind of magical action to diminish this
mobility, noting that he is unwilling to give details about it; see Norman 2000: 112–14.
72
Lib. Or. 1.243–4. See, for discussion of this incident, Bonner 1962 and Graf 1997:
164–5.
73
Lib. Or. 1.245 çάρμακα δὲ καὶ μαγγανεύματα καὶ πόλεμον ἀπὸ γοήτων ἀνδρῶν
ταῦτα ἐδόκει δηλοῦν; see Brown 1970: 127–9.
74 75
Or. 1.247 and 248. Lib. Or. 1.249.
160 Envy, Poison, and Death
no joke.76 But although, according to his Autobiography, this discovery
appears to allay his symptoms, a speech he wrote at about the same
time suggests that it does not soothe his concerns. Instead, it confirms
his sense that there are people plotting against him. In the speech, he
works his way through the different constituents of the city with whom
he is in contact. He explains how and why, if any of them is responsible
for the spell, they cannot claim they are acting in revenge; rather, they
have wronged him.77
What kind of injury they have done him, and the motivations
behind it, become apparent from other anecdotes, in which we find
Libanius has been allocated the role of magic-maker, accused of
provoking other people’s suffering. First, in Constantinople, one
Bemarchius goes around spreading the story that Libanius beat
him by using sorcery, specifically by hiring a ‘man who controlled
the stars’.78 We are told that the accuser is supported by a group
of accomplices: ‘Chagrin, fear, and phthonos made them his
accomplices—all these emotions in the case of the professors, phtho-
nos in the case of the rest.’79 Similar events occur when he moves to
Nicomedia: a rival speaker asserts that he has been bewitched by
Libanius (this is why Libanius has consistently beaten him in rhet-
orical competitions). The man accuses Libanius of afflicting mental
illness on his wife by magical means, and then of having killed her.80
The case goes to court—in the end, on Libanius’ insistence—but is
dismissed. The implications of this case ripple out through wider
society: the man is reduced to buying students, and we are told
therefore ‘he became a laughing-stock throughout the city’. He is
defended by only one citizen, who is upset that his own wife’s name
has become entangled in the gossip about the case.81

76
Although some make this interpretation: Festugière 1959: 113, as observed by
Norman 2000: 125.
77
Lib. Or. 36, written soon after (he refers to the chameleon, in §3).
78
Lib. Or. 1.43 (early 340s): ἀνδρὶ τυραννοῦντι τῶν ἄστρων.
79
Lib. Or. 1.44: ἐποίει δὲ αὐτῷ τοὺς συνεργοὺς λύπη τε καὶ çόβος καὶ çθόνος· τοὺς
μὲν σοçιστὰς πάντα, τοὺς ἄλλους δὲ τὸ çθονεῖν.
80
Lib. Or. 1.49 and 62ff.
81
Lib. Or. 1.64–6. There are yet more examples of accusations against Libanius:
twice it is alleged that he has used body parts in magical activity. In one claim, a rival
bribes a boy to accuse Libanius of decapitating two girls so as to use their heads in the
creation of binding spells. In another, one Sabinus links Libanius to the head of a
corpse and a forged letter (see Lib. Or. 1.98 and Or. 1.194).
 Phthonos and Misfortune 161
The idea that it is phthonos that lies behind these interactions is
reinforced by its appearance in further similar cases.82 Thus, Libanius
himself defends his secretary Thalassius by claiming that his accuser
was envious of his brother, and sought his death through sorcery.83 In
another example, even as he casts himself as supporting his ex-pupil,
he passes on the rumours that Severus’ extraordinary successes at
court are the result of sorcery.84 And it is important to bear in mind
that, under anti-pagan legislation, making this connection could have
extremely serious consequences for the accused. In the case of the
charge brought by Bemarchius, Libanius himself tells us that the
(newly appointed) governor Limenius tried to indict him on an
accusation of magic;85 while the trials at Scythopolis in Palestine
during the late 350s may have put Libanius directly in danger—as it
was, some of his friends were put on trial.86
The destructive power of phthonos is emphasized again and again.
It need not necessarily lead to overt accusations of sorcery, but the
association appears to have been so common that it did not need to be
made explicit.87

82
That the focus on phthonos in Libanius’ writing is not idiosyncratic is suggested
by Basil of Caesarea’s homily On Envy, which dates to around 364 CE. As Vasiliki
Limberis’ (1991) analysis makes clear, this work suggests that phthonos and the evil
eye were ‘pervasive problems’ (184) in Basil’s parish; Basil similarly links phthonos
with gossip (see De invid. 10 Migne). The homily also uses the imagery of rust
consuming iron that we saw in the Suda (see p. 72; De invid. 1a Migne), and provides
vivid descriptions of the physical appearance of those suffering from phthonos (see De
invid. 5 Migne).
83
Or. 42.12.
84
Bear in mind that Severus’ father had pulled him out of class during his second
year. See Cribiore (2007: 147), who suggests (211) that in his later works (Or. 58.30–1
and 38.6) accusations of pederasty and homosexuality take the place of magic in
explaining the success of youths whom Libanius believes have not been properly
trained.
85
Lib. Or. 1.45–7.
86
Sandwell 2005: 115–16; Cribiore 2013: 155–6; Libanius pleads for his friends
Ep. 37 (= Norman 49) to Modestus (cf. Amm. Marc. 14.12.6ff.).
87
In Or. 30.15, Libanius notes how spite and phthonos would be enough for
neighbours to start proceedings against anyone they wanted to accuse of making
sacrifices (forbidden: C. Th. 16.10.7, in 381 CE, and reinforced in 385 CE: C. Th.
16.10.9).
 2.5

Conclusion: ‘Careless Talk . . .’

Among the charges that our sources tell us were made against The-
oris, Ninon, and Phryne are accusations that they were involved in
magical activities.1 Theoris is described as a pharmakis by the man
who prosecuted her; Ninon is accused in a later source of creating
philtra for young men; Phryne is implicitly associated with this charge
by virtue of the effects of her beauty (a story type that recurs), and
perhaps also her profession. This charge has been hard to make sense
of in a strict legal sense, but, as has been argued in the first part of this
study, it may provide us with a thread to follow as we try to under-
stand the social dynamics and related emotions that motivated mem-
bers of the Athenian community to bring these women to court and
condemn them. To help examine those dynamics, at the end of part 1
this study introduced one of the few pieces of evidence that
suggests the kinds of emotions associated with the casting of magic,
a binding spell that is unusually eloquent about the suspicions of its
writer. And now, if we return to that spell—written by a man who
feared that he was himself the victim of occult aggression—we may
have some greater sense of the resonances set up by its mention
of phthonos.
Phthonos is the dark companion of good fortune: its appearance
signals the breakdown of the reciprocal relationships that ran like
nerves through the ancient social body. Our sources describe the
experience of this emotion, for the person suffering it, for the afflicted
victim, and, finally, for the wider community. But what gives

1
The full quotation is ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’: this was a British government
propaganda campaign of the Second World War intended to discourage gossip and
rumour that might aid the enemy. Taylor (2010) gives further details about the
campaign and its chief designer, Cyril Kenneth Bird.
 Conclusion: ‘Careless Talk . . .’ 163
phthonos this capacity to spread its poison so effectively? At one level
it is the idea, found across cultures, that this phenomenon
was connected with supernatural interventions, sometimes explicit,
sometimes assumed. However, our sources also suggest a more mun-
dane aspect, one that underpins even the supernatural explanations:
talk. From praise poetry to the law courts, from personal writings to
magical spells, and in the accounts given by the historians, phthonos
comes alive in the mouths of those afflicted by it.
Some of our sources are more detailed than others. This aspect
receives perhaps the most sustained attention in Libanius’ accounts of
accusations and counter-accusations. Those attacking him do so by
spreading rumours; those supporting him use those rumours to
diagnose his illness. Similarly, the evidence relating to Gemellus
Horion can be teased apart to suggest the kinds of local stories that
formed the basis for the accusations of phthonos being made. But the
role of talk in the power of phthonos has been manifest across the
different case studies, from Pindar’s ‘relish for those feeling phthonos’
to Demosthenes’ concern with baskania. Phthonos acquires its power
through what is said—or indeed, in what is carefully not said—about
another person. Phthonos talk categorizes the victim and identifies
the guilty party, and then builds a network of support for those
judgements. Another term for this is ‘gossip’.
Part 3

Poison
 3.1

Introduction: ‘A Relish for the Envious’

We are looking at the ways in which phthonos or envy acquired its

social force. Let us start this section by returning to the Suda entry
with which the discussion of phthonos began. The quotation from
Pindar reveals something about the social mechanisms involved in
the operation of phthonos: ‘words [are] a relish for those who are
phthoneroi’.1 It is words, of various different kinds and genres, which
will form the backbone of this section on ‘poison’. To illustrate why,
we turn again to the trial of Socrates. This may seem like an odd
choice, since, as we have seen, unlike the women’s trials, there is no
mention of pharmaka or philtra kai epoidai in the accusations against
him. Nevertheless, this phrase does occur throughout Xenophon’s
defence of Socrates in the Memorabilia—usually in the context of his
making friends, but also of his gaining followers.2
The phrase philtra first occurs in this discussion as Socrates
answers Chaerecrates’ concerns about how he should win the friend-
ship of his brother Chaerophon. In response, Socrates demonstrates
to Chaerecrates his understanding of how to manage social relation-
ships successfully. For example, how to get an invitation to dine with
an acquaintance on the occasion of a sacrifice, by inviting him first.
The philtra in question involve manipulating the dynamic of
reciprocity—giving so that you will in turn receive—but importantly,
they also comprise the clever use of words.3 This is also true of the
second example, where Socrates is discussing with Critobulus the

1
Pind. Nem. 8.21.
2
If these items could lead to a prosecution for asebeia, it seems unlikely that
Xenophon would repeatedly describe Socrates as discussing, recommending, and
claiming their use for himself.
3
Xen. Mem. 2.3.11 and 14.
168 Envy, Poison, and Death
nature of making friends. He refers first to the singing of incantations,
then to philtra—the two terms appear to belong together: ‘There are
spells (epoidas), they say, wherewith those who know charm (epai-
dontes) whom they will and make friends of them, and drugs (philtra)
which those who know give to whom they choose and win their
love.’4 The Sirens are given as a first illustration, but more current
examples soon follow. These include Pericles, who made the city love
him using spells, that is, through his speeches. In contrast, the
account continues, Themistocles made the city amulets (a metaphor
for the ships and fortifications he constructed for Athens).5
Finally, in his meeting with the intriguing Theodote, Socrates
describes again the techniques in which he is an expert, and how he
(like her) uses philtra and epoidai to attract and retain his clients, who
study these things with him, çίλτρα τε μανθάνουσαι παρ᾿ ἐμοῦ καὶ
ἐπῳδάς.6 The parallels he draws between them highlight the similar-
ities and differences of their fields of expertise. His potions and spells
comprise his mastery of rhetoric, but are used with a similar intent to
hers, that is to attract clients. In turn, although her potions and spells
are for love, her sparring with him suggests that she is also expert in
rhetoric. In the end, they tussle charmingly over who gets to use the
‘wheel’—an erotic magical device—on whom first.
These examples illustrate the various dimensions and associations
of drugs, spells, charms, and words that this part of the book,
‘Poison’, will examine—so, ‘poisons’ in both their literal and meta-
phorical senses. The multivalence of the Greek idea of spells or
charms is well known. Socrates uses the term philtra here—since
the emphasis is particularly on spells of attraction—but another
commonly used term is pharmaka. This can allude to drugs that do
harm and those that bring benefits; it can refer to natural forms of
drug, but also supernatural forms; it may also indicate potions,
amulets, and binding spells or curse tablets.7 The link between
drugs and spells is perhaps less obvious to a modern mind, but
makes sense in a culture in which words were understood to be able
to work some kind of change in the world, including on a person’s

4
Xen. Mem. 2.6.10 (tr. Marchant and Todd, rev. Henderson 2013): εἶναι μέν τινάς
çασιν ἐπῳδάς, ἃς οἱ ἐπιστάμενοι ἐπᾴδοντες οἷς ἂν βούλωνται çίλους αὐτοὺς ποιοῦνται·
εἶναι δὲ καὶ çίλτρα, οἷς οἱ ἐπιστάμενοι πρὸς οὓς ἂν βούλωνται χρώμενοι çιλοῦνται
ὑπ᾽ αὐτῶν.
5 6
Xen. Mem. 2.6.13. Xen. Mem. 3.11.16–18.
7
Scarborough 1991: 139, as discussed on p. 12 above.
 Introduction: ‘A Relish for the Envious’ 169
physical or mental state. Thus, incantations could be used, for
example, as part of a healing treatment; while, in turn, potions,
amulets, and curse tablets were a physical instantiation of the verbal
power that helped to create them, and might, in the last two cases, be
inscribed upon them.
Pindar in his third Pythian ode offers a glimpse of the different
ways in which pharmaka can be used when he describes Asclepius
healing the sick: ‘some he tended with calming incantations (epaoi-
dais [sic]), while others drank soothing potions, or he applied rem-
edies (pharmaka) to all parts of their bodies; still others he raised up
with surgery’.8 In contrast, we find Plato using pharmaka to describe
binding spells;9 and the Tean community calling down a curse on
anyone who uses pharmaka deleteria (harmful pharmaka) against the
Tean state or individual citizens.10 The ambiguity of these terms is
neatly on show in Plato’s discussion in the Laws of the proposed
penalties for pharmakeia (the creation and use of pharmaka). Phar-
maka is used to describe the activities of practitioners of both medi-
cine and magic, while epoidai are included (alongside curse tablets) as
some of the supernatural ‘weaponry’ (intended to do harm) in the
armoury of those who sell magical services.11
Turning back to Xenophon’s Memorabilia, we see the speaker
using this complex set of associations to describe the words that
Socrates employs to persuade his audience. This power was not
unique to Socrates: across a range of writers we see rhetoric and the
associated skills of sophistry linked with supernatural power.12 The
idea that words could have supernatural power did not apply only
to the polished formulations of professional speakers, but also to
less formal forms of speech. We have seen that the term baskainein and
its cognates, usually employed to describe someone bad-mouthing
another, gradually developed to acquire associations of malevolent

8
Pind. Pyth. 3.51–3 (tr. Race 1997a): τοὺς μὲν μαλακαῖς ἐπαοιδαῖς ἀμçέπων, | τοὺς
δὲ προσανέα πίνοντας, ἢ γυίοις περάπτων πάντοθεν | çάρμακα, τοὺς δὲ τομαῖς ἔστασεν
ὀρθούς.
9 10 11
Pl. Resp. 364b–c. ML 30. Pl. Leg. 933a.
12
See for example, Dem. 29.32, where Demosthenes links rhetoric, sophistry, and
sorcery via skill in speaking; Din. 1.66 and 92, where Demosthenes is described as a
goes (‘sorcerer’). De Romilly (1975) discusses magic and rhetoric, and magic and
sophistry in the writings of Gorgias, Plato, and Isocrates. Burkert (1962: 50–1)
discusses the links made by Plato between rhetoric, sophistry, and deceit, and goeteia
(e.g. Plato Symp. 203d); see further discussion in Hesk 2000: 213.
170 Envy, Poison, and Death
supernatural activity.13 It is to these casual, everyday forms of verbal
‘poison’ that we turn our attention in this section of the book; in
particular, to the gossip that itself concerned the creation, possession,
and employment of pharmaka, natural and supernatural. Gossip will
be the key to this code of social tensions and unofficial accusations. It
will offer a way into the unspoken, the implicit, the untold stories of
dread and harm in ancient Greek society; and it will also help to
clarify how a community moves, as it were, from unsociable whispers
to civic action.
In part 3 we start by examining how gossip has been analysed as a
phenomenon, before looking at the ways in which scholars of ancient
Greek culture have approached it, and how we may problematize and
complicate their methodologies. Scholars of gossip have suggested a
three-stage process as a model to describe how gossip operates,
comprising circulation, formation of meaning (not necessarily con-
sensus), and action.14 In what follows, we will use this paradigm to
trace different pathways of gossip through ancient society.

13
See pp. 74 and 135. Aeschines calls Demosthenes a goes at Aeschin. 2.124, and
153, 3.137 (and a magos) and 207.
14
Merry 1997: 54.
 3.2

Identifying Gossip

The word ‘gossip’ originates from the Old English ‘god-sibb’ or ‘gods-
sibling’ meaning godparent. The term was used of those (of both
genders) who acted as ‘sponsors’ at a baptism, but it also seems to
have developed a more specific meaning, describing those women
who attended a mother ‘before, during and after a birth’.1 These god-
sibbs were invited to witness the birth for the purpose of the child’s
baptism, and evidence suggests that the presence of a certain number
of women was considered necessary.2 Over time, ‘gossip’ has come to
be associated with a particular activity, that of ‘idle’ talk, usually about
a person, and evaluative in nature, and in some way ‘superfluous (in
the sense of being unnecessary or excessive)’.3 We tend to be quite
loose in our use of the term (unlike some other cultures);4 in particular,

1
Christening attendees: see Rosnow 2001; quotation, Sugg 2007: 112.
2
Wilson (1990: 70–1, citing MacFarlane 1976: 50, 118 and 415) notes that there is
evidence to indicate anxiety about the number of women present at a birth as god-
sibbs, citing the diary entry for 14 January 1658 of Ralph Josselin, which describes how
his wife gave birth to their eighth child ‘so strongly and speedily that . . . only 2 or 3
women more gott in to her, but god supplied all’. Josselin seems to have gathered the
local women to attend his wife, but other evidence suggests it was the woman’s own
choice whom she invited to attend her. Not being invited was considered a slight, but
it was also sometimes linked to much more serious subsequent suspicions, such as
accusations of witchcraft. Historical records suggest that women who were not invited
to a birth ran a risk of being accused of witchcraft if anything happened to the baby,
presumably because they were thought to be resentful (see Purkiss 1996: 101–5). (This
is possibly the source of those fairy tales where lack of an invitation to an event
involving a child is seen as a slight that must be supernaturally avenged.) The god-
sibbs shared responsibility with the midwife for preparing the birthing room and
protecting it from both natural and supernatural threats (see Wilson 1990: 73 and 74,
and Purkiss 1996: 101).
3
Rosnow 2001: 201–11.
4
Compare the eleven different words for different types of gossip identified in a
small Spanish community in Gilmore 1978.
172 Envy, Poison, and Death
there is an overlap with ‘rumour’. But definitions suggest that whereas
rumour may or not involve people and is always speculative, ‘gossip’
is always about people, and may include fact or supposition; more-
over, in general, its use still bears a sense of contempt.5
And yet, recent research in evolutionary psychology suggests we
should treat this activity with far more respect, since it seems it is
‘what makes human society as we know it possible’.6 Far from being a
tool for more effective hunting, or for abstract discussion, ‘language
evolved to allow us to gossip’—and gossip facilitated social bonds.7
Seeking gossip’s origins, Robin Dunbar describes it as a ‘kind of vocal
grooming’ for large social groups, comparable to the physical groom-
ing that can be observed among primates.8 This one-to-one activity
allows them to build social bonds, developing trust with and know-
ledge of individuals. Gossip, he argues, allows us to do the same thing,
but at a much larger scale, passing information through a broad
network of individuals, to find out about mutual acquaintances, to
assess personal contacts, and thus to oversee our social networks.
The basic motivation behind gossip in his account is that it helps to
identify and deal with ‘free riders’, that is, individuals who do not
cooperate with others. Research shows how free riders are less likely to be
successful in a community that both cooperates and gossips, since their
activities are more likely to be revealed.9 Moreover, some simple experi-
ments suggest that free riders themselves are less willing to step out of
line if they think that others are commenting on them.10 In agreement
with these hypotheses, the neuroscientists Uta Frith and Chris Frith have
observed that information about other people which is received
through gossip plays a key role in how we behave towards them. If we

5
The distinction between rumour and gossip follows Rosnow (2001: 211). Rosnow
(207–8) argues that this must now be updated to include the ways in which rumours
are spread other than by word of mouth, e.g. the Internet and newspapers, and that
interest in rumours is not necessarily short-lived (he notes that some themes of
rumours ‘may endure virtually forever’). Allport and Postman (1947: ix) define
rumour as ‘a specific (or topical) proposition for belief, passed along from person to
person, usually by word of mouth, without secure standards of evidence being
present’. Stewart and Strathern (2004: 39) argue that scandal is always damaging,
while rumour and gossip need not be; rumour circulates more widely than gossip.
Besnier (1996: 544) states that scandal is ‘gossip that has become public knowledge’
and rumour is ‘the unconstrained propagation of information about an event of
importance to the group.’
6 7 8
Dunbar 2004: 100–10. Dunbar 1996: 79. Ibid.: 78–9.
9 10
Ibid.: 172, citing Enquist and Leimar 1993. Dunbar 2004: 108.
 Identifying Gossip 173
hear good things about a person, then we are more likely to trust
them, even more so than if we see those good things for ourselves.11
In turn, as other scholars have observed, if you do not have gossip
about a person, or know their precedents in behaviour, then that
person can seem much more dangerous.12
Most popular understandings of gossip align, at least in part, with
the analyses above: gossip does usually concern people’s reputations,
especially the difference between them and their actual behaviour,
aiding the social processes involved in allocating responsibility, liabil-
ity, and trust.13 Overall, these approaches draw particular attention to
the role of gossip as a powerful way of spreading information.14 But as
further examination suggests, this is only a small part of what it can do.

‘ALL STRANGERS SHOULD BE SHOT!’

The idea that gossip helped to forge social bonds was the basis of the
analysis of anthropologist Max Gluckman—but with a much less
roseate glow. The quotation that heads this section comes from an
example he provides of gossip being used to establish and then
protect the identity of a small community.15 Gluckman describes
how in a Welsh village ‘back tattle, gossip and scandal’ were used to
prevent differences of opinion among the villagers from exploding
into direct confrontation. When the crisis point was reached and
could no longer be avoided, a stranger was manoeuvred into taking

11
Frith and Frith (2012, especially p. 302) describe the results of experiments
concerned with the effects of reputation, conveyed through word of mouth. This is
part of a larger argument about the ways in which we keep track of our own and
others’ reputations for cooperative and trustworthy behaviour.
12
See Merry 1997: 67 for references.
13
I say ‘in part’, because the analyses above stress positive evaluations (even if
negative ones must be implicitly a part of the story they tell) and the positive role that
this can play within an organization or small group (see Rosnow 2001 and Baumeister
et al. 2004). Popular definitions of gossip tend to highlight its role in spreading
negative evaluations (see, for example, Michelson et al. 2010, esp. 376).
14
Some scholars use this basic definition to identify gossip, perhaps emphasizing a
specific purpose: for example, to be able to make comparisons quickly and easily. See
e.g. Hannerz 1967, Besnier 1989, Tannen 1990, Bergmann 1993, and Suls 1977 (who
emphasizes comparisons).
15
See Gluckman 1963: 312 (the story is from Frankenberg 1957).
174 Envy, Poison, and Death
the necessary crucial and controversial decision at a village meeting.
Once this had been achieved, gossip then stepped in again, flooding
over the apparent rift like a soothing balm. It blamed the stranger (‘all
strangers’ according to the phrase that heads this section) for ‘des-
troying village unity’, and subsequently (consequently?) a sense of
harmony among the villagers was restored.
As this anecdote suggests, Gluckman understood the social func-
tion of gossip to be largely focused on its role within a group, and he
emphasized how it works ‘to unite a group within a larger society, or
against another group, in several ways.’ He stated that ‘The more
exclusive the social group, the greater will be the amount of gossip in
it.’16 His explanation, inspired by the approach of the British
structural-functionalist school, was based on the assumption that
institutions promoted social cohesion and stability. Thus, Gluckman
developed a notion of gossip as ‘social glue’, holding group members
firmly within the boundaries of a homogenous, shared set of values,
binding them together in harmony, preventing disagreements from
emerging into the open, and ensuring that competition for leadership
cannot get out of hand. Gluckman did mention (this is rarely
observed in summaries of his work) that gossip of this kind depends
on a pre-existing sense of community; and that, when a group begins
to lose such a sense, then gossip will ‘accelerate the process of
disintegration’.17 But, as one of Gluckman’s early critics, Robert
Paine, observed, this still means that gossip is made explicable only
in terms of the social structure—be it integrative or disintegrative to
that structure.18 Moreover Gluckman’s only nuancing of this picture
was a brief discussion of the gossip about royalty, between social
classes (lower about upper and vice versa), and about celebrities,
which ‘produces a basis on which people transitorily associated can
find something personal to talk about’.19
Paine offered an alternative: ‘It is the individual and not the
community that gossips. What he gossips about are his own and
others’ aspirations, and only indirectly the values of the community.’20
Writing a few years after Gluckman, Paine also understood gossip as
playing a variety of social roles, but did not agree that it was primarily
about advancing the values, and thus the ‘overall unity’ of the

16
Gluckman 1963: 308–9, and 313 and 309 for quotations.
17 18
Ibid.: 313–14. Paine 1967: 282.
19 20
Gluckman 1963: 315. Paine 1967: 281.
 Identifying Gossip 175
group. Instead, he saw it as instrumental, a conduit of communica-
tion used by individuals as a way of forwarding their particular
interests. In this ‘transactionalist stance’, gossip may support social
values, bringing people a sense of cohesion or belonging, but it may
also be deeply disruptive to the community as a unit, pushing its
members into opposing factions—even destroying a community.21
The distinctive dimensions of Paine’s approach have been devel-
oped by others. On the one hand, in terms of its (destructive)
individual power, scholars have explored how gossip can work as a
weapon, often wielded without accountability.22 Niko Besnier’s work
on the Pacific Ocean island of Nukulaelae has shown the power and
reach of gossip within a small community. He notes that in gossiping
conversations, ‘reputations are made and undermined, actions are
evaluated and condemned, motives are speculated upon and criti-
cized, virtues are scrutinized and found wanting, and rumours are
started and circulated’.23 On the other hand, anthropologists have
drawn attention to Paine’s argument that gossip plays a significant
part in managing information. For example, it may be described as
performing a key role in the storage and retrieval of a group’s
information resources or in shaping legal precedents and disputes.
Indeed, some cultures draw a distinction between this kind of gossip
and gossip that is judgemental.24
Both Paine and Gluckman developed approaches that revolve
around the interaction of the individual and institution, and empha-
size gossip’s role in establishing trust.25 Returning to the insights
on gossip offered by researchers in evolutionary psychology and
neuroscience discussed earlier, these also draw attention to gossip
as a vehicle for spreading information about people, since the
individual, and his or her motivations for gossiping, are firmly
situated within the group. Questions of trust and cooperation are
about individual interactions within the compacts formed by social

21
Paine 1967: 283; called ‘transactionalist’ by Handelman (1973: 210).
22 23
Bailey 1977 and Goodwin 1982. Besnier 2009: 36.
24
Storage and retrieval, as argued by Roberts (1964); legal precedent and dispute,
as argued by Cox (1970); distinction between information and judgement in Hannerz
(1967); and see Merry 1997: 50–1. Other distinctions between types of gossip include
positive and negative gossip (Leaper and Holliday 1995), blame and praise gossip
(Soeter and van Iterson 2002), and critical and uncritical gossip (Taylor 1994).
25
Gluckman 1968: 31.
176 Envy, Poison, and Death
institutions. They lead us back to the fundamental need for group
solidarity and harmony. And, in turn, these individual interactions
both inform and are clearly informed by group experiences.

‘HOW’S THAT? HER? HOW DID SHE

GET TO DO THAT??’

However, recognizing gossip as a dynamic process of information

‘management’ between individuals peels back the lid of the function-
alist approach. It prompts the recognition that society and informa-
tion about society may interact at many different levels. And this
leads to a more detailed interrogation of the nexus of interactions that
underpin processes of gossip and their implications. As noted already,
a three-stage process has been suggested to describe how gossip
operates. This comprises circulation, formation of meaning (not
necessarily leading to consensus), and action, and this will provide a
basis for the approach of the rest of this part of the book.26 The first
two stages of this model will be explored across sections 3.2–6, and we
will return to the final stage, action, in section 3.7.
First of all, in terms of circulation, there is the nature of the
information exchange itself. The easiest model is one in which one
party knows and another does not. Thus, gossip may be thought of in
terms of patterns of economic exchange. As the market expands, so
does the gossip in circulation. There are benefits for those involved
(although probably not the subject of the gossip), including enter-
tainment, information, the intimacy of the relationship involved,
perhaps money, and surely status, and power.27 However, the process
of gossip is rarely so simple. To begin with, there is the nature of the
‘currency’ itself: the information that gossip transmits is far from
certain, and this has a number of implications.28
As already mentioned, gossip does not produce an account that
resembles the normative structure of a ‘story’, but is rather ‘a

26
Merry 1997: 54.
27
Bergmann 1993: 67. Economic exchange: Rosnow 2001: 219; social status: see
Baumeister et al. 2004.
28
Merry (1997: 51–2): ‘[gossip] thrives when the facts are . . . neither publicly
known nor easily discovered’.
 Identifying Gossip 177
reconstructive genre’, a process that enables the creation of a narra-
tive. This has a number of consequences. First, it may bear on how
those who do the gossiping are regarded. Being a gossip, especially a
judgemental gossip, is to risk the censure of the community.29 This
may be rooted in the impression that the gossiper has gossiped at all,
let alone because he or she has gossiped too much, or the gossip itself
is revealed to be inaccurate.30 This can be illustrated by the dialogue
that has supplied the quotation used above as a subtitle.31 Two women
are starting to gossip. The woman who has initiated the gossip begins
by mentioning an absent mutual acquaintance; the response her friend
makes establishes that she both knows the person and is prepared to
enter into a relationship of gossip.32 As this demonstrates, gossip can
be a way of creating friendship and influence, but those who gossip
need to play their hand carefully: the process may backfire on the
person spreading the gossip in the first place.33 Some studies have
noted how, in some groups, particular phrases tend to be used around
episodes of gossip, apparently to indicate that the speaker is not finally
responsible for the content of the information that they are relaying.34
But although we have focused here on the person providing the gossip,
this reminds us that information management is more than informa-
tion delivery: the audience of gossip also plays a crucial role. Far from
being simply passive recipients, he, she, or they may also, at any
moment, help to generate information.35

29
See Merry (1997: 52) for a range of evidence, including her own research among
urban African Americans (1981) and Campbell’s work on Greek pastoral nomads
(1964: 291), as well as research on Austrian mountain villagers (Heppenstall 1971),
and Chinese peasants (Wolf 1972); see also Foster 2004.
30
On the dangers of gossiping too much, see e.g. Bergmann 1993: 99.
31
Bergmann 1993: 93; discussed further below.
32
As Bergmann 1993: 93.
33
Friendship and influence: Foster 2004: 83–4. Rosnow (2001: 219–22) offers the
three functions of information or news-bearing, influence, and intimacy—although he
does mention the incentive of ‘fun’ elsewhere (219). Emler (1994: 136–7) suggests that
gossip is unscheduled, informal, face-to-face (one-to-one), and between acquaint-
ances. The idea that gossip may backfire is based on examinations of different cultures
(see Kurland and Pelled 2000 and Brison 1992, which are both concerned with small,
close-knit, and relatively egalitarian communities; see Harrison 1993: 618).
34
See Haviland (1977) on ‘or so I hear’ and Bernstein (1983) for ‘It’s just talk . . .’.
35
See Roberts 1964. There are some cultures or contexts where the role of an
audience is more visible than in others: for example, studies of gossip among Fiji
islanders reveal how those listening join in the conversation (at different levels) and,
in some examples, become co-authors of the story being told. Brenneis (1987)
examines the aesthetic aspects of the gossip produced. Goodwin (1990: 229–57,
178 Envy, Poison, and Death
Gossip turns on the sharing of particular meanings: this is not just
about understanding the content of the information being spread, but
also its import in terms of values and principles—and, crucially, the
ways in which these may have been transgressed.36 This notion of
ideals and gossip offers a useful basic model for the interaction
between the values of a society and the way it prompts gossip. But
it is also important to recognize that gossip will reflect the dynamic
and diverse nature of society, drawing attention to the ways in which a
particular ideal may be differently regarded by diverse parts of society,
at different times. For example, the nature of a woman’s background—
slave or free, foreigner or citizen—may become a matter of gossip only
when the identity of her son and his claims to citizenship are in
dispute.37 Gossip is, in this sense, co-created, as becomes clear when
we think about these moments of telling, hearing, and judgement.38
This takes us from the circulation of gossip to the formation of
meaning, demonstrating how these two stages overlap: although
gossip is itself a creation (with noted aesthetic qualities), it is also a
creative force. First of all, there is the process of cultural learning that
occurs in the spread of gossip. Part and parcel of the maintenance of
norms, gossip not only provides a system of policing, but also a
process of teaching members of a group about what is acceptable.39
The information in question involves shared cultural models, social
meanings, references to commonly known events and people.40
Without those shared references, gossip is unlikely to make sense—
but at the same time, it is gossip that helps to create their sense.41 It is

esp. 256–7) examines the ways in which stories offer participation structures: these
provide situations for social organization as individuals choose which version or teller
of a story they choose to support. The nature of participation may then result in
changes to the structure of the recounting of the story itself (e.g. elaboration, topic
shift, etc.). Abrahams (1970) describes how gossip is judged by the community (of the
Caribbean island of St. Vincent) as to whether it has been used appropriately.
36 37
See Almirol 1981. e.g. Dem. 57.18–19.
38
Handelman (1973: 212), drawing on Goffman (1961), stresses the importance of
the encounter, and its transformational nature.
39
Baumeister et al. 2004.
40
Merry (1997: 54) calls them ‘cognitive maps of social identities and reputations’.
41
But it can come together, as Donald Roy (1959: 161) describing his own
experience of working in a factory: ‘the disconnected became connected, the nonsense
made sense, the obscure became clear, and the silly actually funny . . . the interaction
began to reveal structure’. For the ways in which shared cultural meanings are
necessary for gossip’s subtleties to make sense, see Noon and Delbridge 1993,
 Identifying Gossip 179
illustrated literally by the topographical gossip of the Hai||om Bush-
men of southern Africa, which ‘comprises the cognitive processes by
which they orientate themselves’. As they travel, each bushman
gathers information ‘about plant use, the topographical transitions
between countries, the travels and travel accounts of fellow Hai||om,
the exchanges between social groups and other relevant informa-
tion’.42 In the process of gossiping, these individuals are literally
constructing a map of their world. In turn, this example highlights
the dynamic, emergent nature of gossip.
Thus, in terms of the first two stages of gossip identified above—
circulation and the formation of meaning—as well as ‘a way of
drawing a social map of reputations and as a means of political
competition and conflict’, gossip also sets an individual in their larger
social context. It provides a system that allows personal identity to be
constantly shaped and reshaped, as relationships are negotiated.43
The idea that the narrative of gossip may play this role has received
some support from more recent cognitive analysis of the role of
narrative as the link between individual cognition and the surround-
ing culture. Cultural narratives of all sorts help to determine our sense
of our own identity, setting ourselves not just in our current social
position, but also in historical time—and, beyond that, establishing
our cosmological location. As Armin W. Geertz puts it: ‘our texts and
narratives are not just hermetic containers of semantic worlds, but
also and more significantly, producers of neural mappings, minds,
selves, memories, histories and worlds’. And, alongside ‘religious nar-
ratives, autobiographies, hagiographies, myths and legends, dreams
and vision narratives’, he explicitly includes ‘even gossip’.44

Abrahams 1970, and, often quoted, the comments of Gluckman (1963: 313–14) on the
frustration of not being able to access a group’s gossip.
42
Widlok 1997: 328.
43
As Merry 1997: 69, and compare Bailey 1971: 281 and Dunbar 1996: 66.
44
See Geertz 2004: 376.
 3.3

Genres of Gossip

The previous material, starting with social harmony and ending with
cosmological insights, gives us some idea of how scholars have ana-
lysed gossip as a social process.1 This section and the following three
sections of the book will use these approaches to examine the role and
pathways of gossip in and through the ancient society of Athens. This
one will examine the language and locations of gossip; the following
three comprise case studies demonstrating the ways in which the
presence of gossip can be traced in different kinds of ancient dis-
course. The first looks at ‘public’ gossip in the law-court speeches, and
the question of the border between gossip and slander. The second
examines gossip in epitaphs, and curse and confession inscriptions.
I have called this kind of gossip ‘private’ to indicate its more personal
nature. The third case study explores the relationship between gossip
and binding spells, and the significance and meaning of secrecy in this
context. Each case study explores its material not only for the pres-
ence of gossip, but also for the ways in which these different dis-
courses may themselves have fostered gossip.2

1
The idea that gossip is a key aspect of the Mediterranean social environment is far
from new, and much work has been done on this in both ancient and modern Greek
society, e.g. Du Boulay 1976, Cohen 1991, Hunter 1994: 108. See Cohen (1991: 38–41)
for a compelling defence of comparing and relating social practices in the ancient and
modern Mediterranean.
2
Does the size of the community matter? It has been debated whether or not
Athens was a face-to-face community (see Hunter 1994: 117, but cf. 97 and 150–1),
but recent debates about the size of the Athenian population and how that affects
interpersonal relations are not at issue here. Even in a modern city, ‘the essential
conditions for the existence of personal reputations still obtain for more people’
(Emler 1990: 178). In Athens this consideration is supported by the fact that demes-
men were considered synonymous with neighbours, and that both were called into
court as witnesses (as Hunter 1994: 117).
 Genres of Gossip 181
The ancient vocabulary of gossip tells us a little about perceptions
of gossip. As well as those words that associate gossip with babble and
chatter or idle talk, such as the verbs laleo or perilaleo and huthleo
(and related nouns, e.g. lalia or huthlos), other terms draw attention
to diverse aspects of the creation of gossip.3 Thus, the literal ‘making
of stories’ is highlighted by the noun logopoiema, meaning an ‘idle
tale’, ‘piece of gossip’, and the verb logopoieo, meaning ‘to write or
compose’.4 This aspect of manufacturing a story is underlined (with
horrible consequences) in Plutarch’s account of the barber who
spreads the story of the Sicilian disaster of 415 BCE. The man is
punished because he is a logopoios, that is, a story-maker, who is
unable to provide details of the event: ‘But, on being asked from
whom he had learned the matter, he was unable to give any clear
answer, and so it was decided that he was a story-maker, and was
trying to throw the city into an uproar. He was therefore fastened to
the wheel and racked a long time, until messengers came with the
actual facts of the whole disaster.’5
Where it is used to indicate gossiping, logopoieo is often in associ-
ation with the idea of, literally, ‘going around’ (perieimi), alluding to
the physical process of spreading the stories in person.6 The activity
of story circulation is also emphasized in another noun, spermologos,
which is used to describe ‘one who picks up and retails scraps of
knowledge, an idle babbler’, and originates in the imagery of a bird

3
See LSJ, s.v. perilaleo ‘chatter exceedingly, gossip’, Ar. Eccl. 230, M. Aur. Med. 1.7,
Ar. Ran. 376; huthlos: Pl. Ly. 221d, Dem. 35.25; old wives’ gossip: Pl. Tht. 176b, Porph.
Abst. 4.16; plural: Pl. Resp. 336d.
4
Antiphanes 166.2 K-A; see also Andoc. 1.54, where he claims that the story that
he informed against his associates to save his own skin is one that his enemies
invented; and Andoc. 3.35, where he uses the term to criticize the ways in which the
ambassadors negotiating peace between Athens and Sparta lay claim to resources that
they do not in fact have.
5
See Plut. Nic. 30.1 (tr. Perrin 1916): ὡς δ᾽ ἐρωτώμενος παρ᾽ οὗ πύθοιτο σαçὲς οὐδὲν
εἶχε çράζειν, δόξας λογοποιὸς εἶναι καὶ ταράττειν τὴν πόλιν, εἰς τὸν τροχὸν καταδεθεὶς
ἐστρεβλοῦτο πολὺν χρόνον, ἕως ἐπῆλθον οἱ τὸ πᾶν κακόν, ὡς εἶχεν, ἀπαγγέλλοντες.
As Danielle Allen (2003: 100) points out, the barber is a slave, and those who punish
him are citizens. Thus, the story also clarifies gossip and social relations, and the
nature of the city's control over both.
6
Din. 1.32: It is used to describe Demosthenes’ behaviour when he was attempting
to associate himself in public with Charidemus’ embassy to the Persian king by ‘going
around the agora telling stories’. In Dem. 21.198, Demosthenes himself uses it to
describe Meidias’ behaviour, and how he is ‘going about’ telling the story that
Demosthenes has cancelled the prosecution. See also Dem. 4.48–9 and 6.14.
182 Envy, Poison, and Death
picking up seeds.7 Demosthenes accuses Aeschines of being a sper-
mologos peritrimm’ agoras—that is, literally, a ‘storyteller worn
smooth by (his activities in) the marketplace’.8
This brings to mind the places where gossip would circulate, also
highlighted by certain terms: thus, lesche indicates gossip of the sort
that went on in the leschai or places where men would spend their
time. (The word later came to be used of public buildings where
meetings were held.)9 Theognis uses the verb leschazo with kaka
(‘bad things’) to indicate malicious gossip.10
But not all gossip is straightforwardly mortal. Pheme is perhaps
more closely related to the concept of rumour than gossip, but the two
are difficult to distinguish.11 It indicates a report in general circula-
tion, often about a person’s reputation (and when it offers the infor-
mation they want, litigants in the courts can become suspiciously
anxious to deny that such stories are the same as mere malicious
gossip).12 The source of a pheme is often unknown and mysterious,
and this can be seen to have several implications.13 First, it allowed
those who spread a story to distance themselves from it.14 Second,
and perhaps more importantly, this sense of an obscure origin may
also have led the term to develop a distinctive ‘other-worldliness’.15

7
See LSJ, s.v. spermologos, ‘picking up scraps, gossiping’: D.H. 19.5, Plut. De cohib.
ira 2.456c; one who picks up and retails scraps of knowledge, an idle babbler, gossip:
Dem. 18.127, Act. Ap. 17.18, Ath. 8.344. See also spermologia, ‘babbling, gossip’: Plut.
Alc. 36, 65b; and spermologeo, ‘to pick up seeds’ Plut. De tranq. anim. 2.473a, and ‘to
be a gossip’ Philostr. VA 5.20.
8
Dem. 18.127; cf. Ar. Nub. 447, where the same term ‘peritrimma’ is used to
describe someone practised in the law courts. Strepsiades uses this term alongside a
number of others that are concerned with the glib, deceptive, and abusive use of
speech by such characters.
9
LSJ, s.v. lesche: as a place to hang about: Hom. Od. 18.329, Hes. Op. 493. Public
building: Paus. 3.14.2 and Plut. Lyc. 16.24. Gossip: Eur. Hipp. 384; and in a less malicious
sense, discussion: Hdt. 9.71.3 and 2.32.1, Soph. OC 167, Call. Aet. 1.1.16, Epigr. 2.3.
10
Leschazo: Thgn. 613. Herodotus has perilescheneutos (2.135.5), and prolesche-
neuomai (6.4.1).
11
LSJ, s.v. pheme: common report (not gossip): Aeschin. 2.145, Hdt. 9.100, Hom.
Od. 20.100, Aesch. Ag. 938, Ar. Eq. 1320, Pl. Leg. 672b. Reputation: Hes. Op. 760,
Thuc. 1.11, Aeschin. 1.127. Good report or fame: Hdt. 1.31, Isoc. 5.134.
12
Aeschin. 2.145.
13
e.g. report or rumour of mysterious origin: Hes. Op. 763; cf. Aeschin. 1.128 (see
LSJ s.v. pheme).
14
As Lewis 1996: 13.
15
Prophetic utterance: Od. 2.35, 5.72; Soph. OT 43, 86, 475, 723, El. 1109, Trach.
1150; Eur. Hipp. 1056, Ion 180, Hel. 820; Pl. Phd. 111b; Isoc. 9.21; Xen. Symp. 4.48; cf.
Cyr. 8.7.3 (see LSJ, s.v.).
 Genres of Gossip 183
Herodotus uses it of a prophetic utterance about the fall of Babylon,
and the appearance of the portent (teras) it foretold—a mule giving
birth; more specifically, after Adrastus kills Croesus’ son, pheme is used
to describe the message of Croesus’ dream that had foretold this death
(the events had ‘fulfilled the pheme of [Croesus’] dream’).16 And in his
account of the banishing of Cleomenes, Herodotus uses the term
pheme and the more explicitly prophetic kledon (an omen in a chance
utterance) interchangeably to describe the words of the priestess of the
Acropolis who had banned his entrance to the sanctuary.17
These are specific utterances or messages, but more general
rumours can also acquire a portentous and even prophetic signifi-
cance. For example, as the Greeks line up at Mykale, the story
(pheme) goes around that there has been a victory for them in Boiotia,
which does wonders for their morale—and Herodotus comments on
how the timing of this message seems to be evidence of ‘the divine
order of events’.18 And of course, it is this kind of message that gets
talked about, as Isocrates suggests when he describes how he prefers
not to join in the speculation about the birth of Evagoras of Salamis:

περὶ οὗ τὰς μὲν çήμας καὶ τὰς μαντείας καὶ τὰς ὄψεις τὰς ἐν τοῖς ὕπνοις
γενομένας, ἐξ ὧν μειζόνως ἂν çανείη γεγονὼς ἢ κατ᾽ ἄνθρωπον, αἱροῦμαι
παραλιπεῖν, οὐκ ἀπιστῶν τοῖς λεγομένοις, ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα πᾶσι ποιήσω çανερὸν
ὅτι τοσούτου δέω πλασάμενος εἰπεῖν τι περὶ τῶν ἐκείνῳ πεπραγμένων,
ὥστε καὶ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων ἀçίημι τὰ τοιαῦτα περὶ ὧν ὀλίγοι τινὲς
ἐπίστανται καὶ μὴ πάντες οἱ πολῖται συνίσασιν.
I prefer to say nothing of the portents, the oracles, the visions appearing in
dreams, from which the impression might be gained that he was of
superhuman birth, not because I disbelieve what is said, but that I may
make it clear to all that I am so far from resorting to invention in speaking of
his deeds that even of those matters which are in fact true I dismiss such as
are known only to the few and of which not all the citizens are cognizant.19

As these examples suggest, it is not only the origins of the rumour, but
also the way in which it spreads that suggest a supernatural power.
Indeed, after 465 BCE, Pheme acquired a cult in Athens, in recognition
of the role of rumour in announcing the victory won by the Greeks
over the Persian forces at the battle of Eurymedon.20

16
Hdt. 3.153.1–2; dream: Hdt. 1.43.2–3. See LSJ, s.v.
17 18
Hdt. 5.72.2 and 4. Hdt. 9.100.2.
19 20
Isoc. 9.21 (tr. Van Hook 1945). Aeschin. 1.128 and 2.145.
184 Envy, Poison, and Death
The meaning of pheme therefore ranges across a spectrum of
registers, natural and supernatural, and contexts, personal and imper-
sonal. These possibilities can, with no great fanfare, introduce greater
significance to what may seem to be at first sight only idle chatter.
With a little less subtlety, the more obviously prophetic term kledon
also appears in contexts where the relation to gossip is unavoidable.
First, an example from tragedy: in Euripides’ Alcestis, Alcestis, facing
her own death, laments for her daughter, fearing that a stepmother
‘will cast some disgraceful slur (kledona) on your reputation and in
the prime of your youth destroy your chances of marriage’.21 But this
idea of a reputation-in-the making is also found in the law courts. For
example, when Andocides is describing the gossip about the ‘evil
spirit’ which lives in the house of Hipponicus, the father of his rival
Callias—and which, he argues, is in fact Callias himself—he describes
it as a kledon, ‘on the lips of little children and silly women through-
out the city’.22 In this context, this more poetic term with its super-
natural resonance fits the content of the gossip that it describes; it
highlights how Callias’ monstrous deeds are more appropriate to a
tragedy than to real life.
I start by drawing attention to this supernatural dimension of
gossip because it is rarely discussed: instead, modern scholarly ana-
lyses have highlighted the role of gossip in maintaining shared socio-
cultural values. For example, Virginia Hunter has drawn attention to
the role of gossip in ‘sanctioning individual conduct and thereby
ensuring appropriate standards of community behaviour’. She evokes
Athens’ reputation for being a shame culture, whose inhabitants were
profoundly anxious about breaking implicit standards of behaviour
and exposing themselves to public mockery.23 Gossip was the over-
seer of this system: even as it elicited ridicule for deviant behaviour,
it set the ideal standards to which individuals should conform. It
bridged family and community values, dragging details of private life
into the public spotlight, while penetrating deep into the privacy of
the oikos, as Aeschines describes in Against Timarchus: ‘But in the
case of the life and conduct of men, a common report which is

21
Eur. Alc. 315–16: μή σοί τιν᾽ αἰσχρὰν προσβαλοῦσα κληδόνα | ἥβης ἐν ἀκμῇ σοὺς
διαçθείρῃ γάμους (tr. Kovacs 1994); other examples where kledon means ‘reputation’
include Aesch. Ag. 927 and Choeph. 505; Soph. OC 258.
22
Andoc. 1.130 (tr. Maidment 1968): παρὰ τοῖς παιδαρίοις τοῖς μικροτάτοις καὶ
τοῖς γυναίοις κληδὼν ἐν ἁπάσῃ τῇ πόλει.
23
Hunter 1994; see Dodds 1951: 28ff.
 Genres of Gossip 185
unerring does of itself spread abroad throughout the city; it causes the
private deed to become matter of public knowledge, and many a time
it even prophesies what is about to be.’24
Hunter argues that gossip helped to maintain an Athenian sense of
identity ‘by the images it evoked, by the standards it proclaimed, and
by the morality it enforced. For, in criticizing one another, Athenians
declared what it was to be an Athenian. Gossip thus helped to sustain
the position of Athenian citizens as an elite surrounded by slaves and
aliens.’25 Indeed, she suggests that such gossip, used in the courts,
may have played a levelling role, weeding out those who did not
conform to common values and behaviours, and she focuses, in
particular, on gossip as a form of surveillance over women.26
David Cohen also emphasizes how gossip and its purveyors play a
key part in containing social behaviour. He describes how the con-
stant flow of information that occurs in densely packed neighbour-
hoods, whether it comprises fact or inference, enables the formation
of ‘moral taxonomies of public evaluation’. When these evaluations
enter channels of gossip, they can make or break people’s reputa-
tions.27 He sees gossip, especially women’s gossip, as providing an
answer to the question of how Athenian women’s lives, neighbour-
hood lives, overlapped and interacted with larger structures of social
and civic control, arguing that they were ‘themselves agents in pro-
cesses of social control that governed both their lives and the lives of
men as well’.28 In both these analyses, we see how gossip does not
simply reflect social realities, but is part of their creation. Gossip is a
tool for encouraging social conformity, and thus social equilibrium.
By generating reputation, it helps to maintain the social fabric,

24
Aeschines 1.127–8 (tr. Adams 1919): περὶ δὲ τὸν τῶν ἀνθρώπων βίον καὶ τὰς
πράξεις ἀψευδής τις ἀπὸ ταὐτομάτου πλανᾶται çήμη κατὰ τὴν πόλιν, καὶ διαγγέλλει
τοῖς πολλοῖς τὰς ἰδίας πράξεις, πολλὰ δὲ καὶ μαντεύεται περὶ τῶν μελλόντων ἔσεσθαι.
See Hunter 1994: 116.
25
Hunter 1994: 118.
26
Hunter 1994: 117: she mentions that Ober (1989: 150) suggests that gossip in the
law courts could have been a topos encouraged by orators who composed for wealthy
clients, but observes there is no way to confirm this. On gossip about women, see
McLure 1999: 57.
27
Cohen 1991: 50. Fact or inference: ibid.: 65; e.g. Isae. 3.13–14, in which the
neighbours offer testimony that a woman must be a hetaira because of what went on
in the house of the local man she visited.
28
Cohen 1991: 161.
186 Envy, Poison, and Death
repressing open conflict and upholding normative categories of
behaviour, without the imposition of rigid rules.
But as Paine challenged Gluckman, gossip has more divisive
aspects. Laura McClure has observed in her analysis of ancient
Athenian society that gossip may have a ‘dual function’, both reinfor-
cing and subverting a dominant culture. It can thus become ‘a vehicle
of resistance for the socially marginal’.29 This dimension of gossip,
she argues, may have been what shaped its depiction in Classical
drama, as potentially threatening male citizens and their polis.30 As
she notes, there were both male and female domains of gossip:31 on
the one hand, there is plenty of literary evidence indicating how
ancient Athenian men gathered and chatted; and more, as we shall
see later on in this section, emerges from the forensic speeches, where
gossip could be transformed into slander, and acquire civic power.32
But ancient Greek literature portrays women as particularly suscep-
tible to talking, and women’s gossip as less public—and therefore less
controllable.33
A brief overview of the latter begins with Semonides of Amorgos,
writing in the seventh century BCE, who offers us descriptions of at
least two types of women—literally, ‘a fox woman’ and ‘a dog
woman’—whose behaviours include some of the worst aspects of
gossip:

τὴν δ᾿ ἐξ ἀλιτρῆς θεὸς ἔθηκ᾿ ἀλώπεκος Another the god made from a wicked
γυναῖκα πάντων ἴδριν· οὐδέ μιν κακῶν vixen, a woman who has expertise in
λέληθεν οὐδὲν οὐδὲ τῶν ἀμεινόνων· everything. Nothing of what is bad
τὸ μὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν εἶπε πολλάκις κακόν, escapes her notice, nor even of what
τὸ δ᾿ ἐσθλόν· ὀργὴν δ᾿ ἄλλοτ᾿ ἀλλοίην ἔχει. is good, since she often calls the latter
bad and the former good. Her mood
is different at different times.

29
McClure 1999: 56, drawing on Spacks 1982: 19–38.
30 31
McClure 1999: 58. Ibid.: 57 (cf. Sanders 2014: 45).
32
e.g. male places for gossip included workshops and shops, often in or near the
Agora: Dem. 21.104, 24.15, 25.52 and 82; Hyp. 4.21; Isoc. 18.9; Lys. 23.3, 24.20; Ar.
Nub. 1003; and Men. Kith. 64–5; cf. Ar. Eq. 1375–6, Av. 1441, Plut. 338; Antiphanes
fr. 247 K–A; Men. Sam. 510. See Ober 1989: 148–9 and Hunter 1994: 98–100.
33
See discussion by Hunter 1994: 99 and 220 n. 8, who also cites Ober’s observa-
tion (1989: 149) that prostitutes and entertainers at parties ‘may have been conduits of
gossip between classes’; and Lewis 1996: esp. 10–11.
 Genres of Gossip 187

τὴν δ᾿ ἐκ κυνός, λιτοργόν, αὐτομήτορα, Another is from a bitch, ill-tempered,

ἣ πάντ᾿ ἀκοῦσαι, πάντα δ᾿ εἰδέναι θέλει, her mother all over again. She wants
πάντῃδὲ παπταίνουσα καὶ πλανωμένη to hear everything and to know every-
λέληκεν, ἢν καὶ μηδέν᾿ ἀνθρώπων ὁρᾷ. thing and peering and prowling every-
παύσειε δ᾿ ἄν μιν οὔτ᾿ ἀπειλήσας ἀνήρ, where she yaps even if she sees no one.
οὐδ᾿ εἰ χολωθεὶς ἐξαράξειεν λίθῳ A man can’t stop her with threats, nor
ὀδόντας, οὐδ᾿ ἂν μειλίχως μυθεόμενος, even if in anger he should knock out
οὐδ᾿ εἰ παρὰ ξείνοισιν ἡμένη τύχῃ, her teeth with a stone, nor can he by
ἀλλ᾿ ἐμπέδως ἄπρηκτον αὐονὴν ἔχει. speaking to her soothingly, not even if
she happens to be sitting among guests,
but she constantly keeps up her yapping
which nothing can be done about.34

These vivid, repulsive images find more mundane counterparts in

fifth-century drama and fourth-century rhetoric. In Aeschylus’ Aga-
memnon, the chorus mutters about woman’s tendency to be taken in
too quickly by good news—and the difficulty of quashing a story that
is spread by women. Phaedra in Euripides’ Hippolytus gives us a
‘woman’s’ point of view when she lists ‘lengthy and idle chats’
among the pleasures of life. In comedy, we find the women of
Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazousae proclaiming themselves to be familiar
with ‘talking’. In comparison, the women of the Thesmophoriazousae
argue that being ‘talkative’ is one of the characterizations of women
by Euripides that they find unfair.35
Turning to the law-court speeches, we find multiple examples of
women’s gossip described (with some contempt). For example,
Demosthenes, describing the activities of one Zobia who has been
ill-treated by the defendant (Aristogiton), says she behaved ‘just like
a woman’ (using gunaios, a scornful term for ‘woman’), when she
‘went about among her acquaintance with complaints of his con-
duct’.36 Compare the passage from Andocides’ description of the evil
spirit resident in Hipponicus’ house, cited earlier, where he blames

34
Sem. fr. 7.7–20 (Stob. 4.22.193, ed. and tr. Gerber 1999).
35
Aesch. Ag. 483–7; Eur. Hipp. 384; Ar. Eccl. 120 and Thesm. 393.
36
Dem. 25.57: ἀλλὰ γυναίου πρᾶγμ᾿ ἐποίει καὶ πρὸς τοὺς γνωρίμους προσιοῦσ᾿
ἐνεκάλει.
188 Envy, Poison, and Death
‘little children and silly women’ for spreading the story throughout
Athens. We also find more subtle allusions to women’s gossip.
A memorable example occurs in Lysias 1, when the old slave woman
brings Euphiletus news of his wife’s lover. She carefully explains her
particular role as a messenger, and anxiously denies that she is simply
meddlesome (polupragmosunei, literally ‘with interfering curiosity’). It
may be that Lysias was alluding to a familiar neighbourhood character,
and perhaps raising a sympathetic chuckle in an otherwise tragic tale.37
But as well as evoking an amusing stereotype, these literary
examples also suggest the power of women’s gossip. For individuals,
its effects could be devastating, as incidental moments from tragedy
suggest. We have already mentioned how Alcestis fears for her
daughter’s reputation, at the mercy of her future stepmother. Medea
offers another example as she emerges from her house, fearing to
leave the women of Corinth to gossip and find fault with her.38 Such
gossip may be feared because it brings with it threats of further
repercussions. Aristotle’s account of the Syracusan potagogides
(translated as ‘provocatrices’) and the tyrant Hiero’s so-called ota-
koustai (‘eavesdroppers’) builds on this very stereotype. He relates
how Hiero would send these out ‘wherever there was any gathering or
conference’. Not only were these women intended to listen, but they
also had other eristic purposes, that is, ‘to set men at variance with
one another and cause quarrels between friend and friend and
between the people and the notables and among the rich’.39
Although these references may indicate contempt for a female
stereotype, men were also perceived to be culpable: we have seen
that local gossip in Pindar is spread by and about both men and

37
Lys. 1.15–16. The comedy of Lysias’ old slave woman may have been reinforced
by the fact that slaves too were represented as having a role in spreading
information—and, more importantly, of spreading information about their masters.
Explicit comic scenes portray slaves as revelling in gossip: in Aristophanes’s Frogs
(750–3), Aeacus confesses to Xanthias how much he loves to eavesdrop on his masters
when they gossip (the verb used here is laleo)—and then blab it all to outsiders. In
Menander’s plots, the gossiping slave often becomes the linchpin of events (see
Hunter 1994: 84–5, 89). Such slave gossip also has significance beyond the domestic
sphere: in [Dem.] 50.48, it is the slaves who have discovered that the ship they are on
will bring home an Athenian exile. To what extent such literary references represent
real-life events is uncertain, but it seems likely that the audiences of all these narratives
would need to find the behaviour described plausible, if not familiar.
38
Eur. Alc. 315–16 and Med. 214–15.
39
Arist. Pol. 1313b11–15 (tr. Rackham 1932): καὶ τὸ διαβάλλειν ἀλλήλοις καὶ
συγκρούειν καὶ çίλους çίλοις καὶ τὸν δῆμον τοῖς γνωρίμοις καὶ τοὺς πλουσίους ἑαυτοῖς.
 Genres of Gossip 189
women. Of the examples just mentioned, after Medea’s initial protests
to the chorus of Corinthian women, she goes on to blame neighbours
in general. She laments how ‘before they get sure knowledge of a
man’s true character [people] hate him on sight, although he has done
them no harm’.40 And we have plenty of evidence in the courts for the
generally accepted idea that men’s private gossip could be both
malign and damaging. A few examples from Demothenes’ speeches
include abuse of Meidias for gossip; observation of jurors’ gossip (in
the process of abusing Aristogiton); a description of the kinds of
gossip the Athenians spread about Nicobulus; and a claim that he
will be accused in court by Boeotus, ‘as he is wont to do also in private
life’. Similarly, we see Isaeus accusing his opponent Diocles of con-
tinually spreading malign gossip about the speaker’s father; mention-
ing the stigma arising from having rights disputed; and protesting
that he will not ‘give those who wish to do so, a good occasion to
speak evil of me’.41
Rather, the difference between the sexes appears to be more about
a division of subject matter: women were concerned with events
concerning family members and neighbours, in particular other
women.42 In turn, it has been observed that, in the masculine
realm, ‘gossip had a special power in classical Athens’ because of
the particular procedures of the democratic system.43 This encour-
aged the examination of one’s fellow men for qualification to partici-
pate in everything from being a citizen to holding office, and has been
described as a system that ‘allowed people, strangers even, to interact
as if they trusted each other’.44 However, I want to argue that while
that may be true of such objective systems of evaluation as weights
and measures for marketplace transactions, the arena of social and
political relationships was somewhat more ambiguous and complex.
It may be the case that the administrative structures that were

40
Eur. Med. 219–21 (tr. Kovacs 1994): ὅστις πρὶν ἀνδρὸς σπλάγχνον ἐκμαθεῖν
σαçῶς στυγεῖ δεδορκώς, οὐδὲν ἠδικημένος. Aristotle (Pol. 1277b) acknowledges the
different expectations of male and female behaviours: ‘for a man would be thought a
coward if he were only as brave as a brave woman, and a woman a chatterer if she were
only as modest as a good man’ (tr. Rackham 1932).
41
Dem. 21.148, 25.67–71, 37.52, 40.22; Isae. 8.36–7 and 44, 2.43.
42
Aristotle (Pol. 1313b) notes that it is in his final form of democracy that women
acquire dominance in the home and ‘carry abroad reports against the men’ (tr.
Rackham 1932).
43 44
Hunter 1994: 116. Johnstone 2011: 3.
190 Envy, Poison, and Death
instituted were intended to provide an objective framework. How-
ever, the processes of evaluation—the interactions by which decisions
were obtained—were highly subjective, dependent on personal feel-
ings, and often achieved through presentation, performance, and
persuasion. In this rhetorical game, gossip played a key role.
The law courts will offer material for my first case study, but I will
not be presenting arguments to show how important honour and
reputation were to an Athenian male. That ‘men judged others, and
expected to be judged by reputation’ has been thoroughly argued by
other scholars, and there is no need to revisit it here.45 Instead, I will
focus in this case study on one of the ways in which that reputation
might be undone: though the power of gossip, and, in particular, the
ways in which that gossip was made present in court.

45
Cohen 1991: 97.
 3.4

Gossip . . . In Public

GOSSIP VS. SLANDER

ἔπειτα οἱ μὲν ἐπειδὰν πρότερον λόγον λάβωσιν, οὐ μόνον ἃ ἔχουσιν

αὐτοὶ δίκαια περὶ τοῦ πράγματος λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ συσκευάσαντες
λοιδορίας ψευδεῖς κατὰ τῶν κρινομένων ἐξιστᾶσιν τῆς ἀπολογίας·
ὥστε συμβαίνειν αὐτοῖς δυοῖν τὸ ἕτερον, ἢ περὶ τῶν ἔξωθεν
διαβολῶν ἀπο[λογου]μένοις τῆς [περὶ το]ῦ πράγματος [ἀπολο-
γία]ς ἀπολελ[εῖçθαι, ἢ] μὴ μεμνη[μένοις] τῶν προκ[ατηγορηθ]έντων,
ο[ἴησι]ν καταλείπ[ειν παρ]ὰ τοῖς δικαστ[αῖς ὅτι] ἀληθῆ ἐστιν
[τὰ εἰρ]ημένα.

Hyperides, 1 fr. IVb.9.

Also, accusers, speaking first, do not confine themselves to
putting the just arguments which support their case, but
trump up baseless slanders about the accused and so deprive
them of the means of defence. The latter are thus affected in one
of two ways. Either they defend themselves against the extrane-
ous charges and fall short in the relevant parts of their defence,
or else they forget the accusations which have just been made,
and so leave the jury with the impression that these are true.1

In this carefully crafted passage from his Defence of Lycophron,

Hyperides ‘comes clean’ about the tactics used by speakers in court.
For modern readers, he succinctly sums up the evidence of the forensic
speeches. It was clearly a common gambit to accuse one’s opponent
of a variety of types of wrongdoing. Here again, we see the language of
loidoria, or ‘slander’, used to try to create a distinction between legal

1
Tr. Burtt 1954. The heading for this section is a quotation from this passage.
192 Envy, Poison, and Death
charges and plain abuse.2 But a further useful term occurs here, one
that both reinforces this distinction and ratchets up the power of this
accusation: diabole. Translated in this passage, rather neutrally, as
‘charges’, this term, by the fifth century, had acquired a strong
negative sense of ‘slander’ or ‘abuse’.3 And we have seen it used
(albeit by a later source) to describe the divisive courtroom environ-
ment in which Aspasia was charged with asebeia.4 In this section, we
see Hyperides manipulate the idea. His next move is to explain how
his opponent Ariston has (unfairly) employed various rhetorical
strategies against him. He leaves the charge of diabole percolating in
the jurors’ minds, while, explicitly, he accuses Ariston of ‘robbing him
of his defence’ by (it seems) slandering his witnesses, and instructing
them on his likely line of argument. Only after that does he deny the
accusations made against him.5 And, of course, what he does not
explain to the jurors is that his defence, that one has been the victim
of diabole, was just as common as the activity of slandering.6
But if it was possible to introduce such slanders in the courtroom,
how far could one go? It has been argued that in a society in which
there was no forensic evidence, there would have been a need for a
broader conception of relevance, with more and different kinds of
background information allowed as evidence than are in a modern
courtroom.7 However, careful analyses of forensic speeches suggest
that, although irrelevant prejudicial material can certainly be found
across the corpus of forensic oratory, most of the arguments pre-
sented by speakers can be assessed as having a direct or indirect
bearing on the case in question.8

2
See also Hyp. 4.10, Lycurg. 1.11–13, and Lys. 19.5–6, cited by Hunter (1994: 102).
Such attacks also went on in the Assembly: see Thuc. 6.15.2.
3
As Carey observes (2004: 2), although the word essentially means ‘divide’ and
examples of its neutral use are found even in the fourth century (Pl. Symp. 222d), by
the late fifth century, noun and verb forms have come to possess a negative sense,
associated with false allegations and abuse.
4 5
See p. 66 of this volume (discussing Plut. Per. 32.2). Hyp. 1 fr. IVb.10–11.
6
Hunter 1994: 222: Antiph. 5.79, 6.7; Dem. 48.55, 57.30, 36, and 52; Din. 1.54;
Hyp. 1 fr. IVb.14; Lycurg. 1.11 and 149; Lys. 9.1, 3, and 18–19.
7
On what counts as relevant, see the analyses by Gagarin 2012 and Lanni (2006:
chs. 3–4), who argues that there was a stricter emphasis on relevant material in the
homicide courts, but even that was difficult to enforce; see Lys. 3.44–6. By the late
fourth century there were rules in place intended to try to control speakers (see
[Arist.] Ath. Pol. 67.1, and Carey 2004: 4).
8
As Carey (2004), who also cites Rhodes 2004, observing (2) that Rhodes misses
some examples (e.g. the irrelevant character attack on Agoratus and his brothers in
 Gossip . . . In Public 193
This is not to suggest that relevance was always wholly clear: the
careful play of ambiguity was itself part of the rhetoric of the court, as
the Hyperides passage makes clear. But when we turn to the question
of diabole, we find that speakers are, at least superficially, careful to
present this material as relevant. Thus, in making his case against
Nicomachus, the speaker of Lysias 30 attacks his opponent for diabole
(for the accusation that the speaker was one of the Four Hundred),
and then brings up similar charges (his subversion of the democracy)
in criticizing him.9 He introduces the information first almost inci-
dentally as part of his outraged rhetoric of self-defence (a kind of ‘how
could he do this to me, when in fact it’s true of him!’). But then it
becomes part of his rhetoric of a larger service that he is doing the
jurors, and beyond that the city: ‘I should have made no reference to
these events had I not learnt that he was going to attempt, by posing
as a democrat, to save himself in despite of justice, and that he would
produce his exile as a proof of his attachment to the people.’10
Moreover, he goes on to suggest that the city (represented by the
jurors) also has a right to seek revenge in light of what he alleges has
occurred:

ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ ἑτέρους ἂν ἔχοιμι ἐπιδεῖξαι τῶν συγκαταλυσάντων τὸν δῆμον

τοὺς μὲν ἀποθανόντας, τοὺς δὲ çυγόντας τε καὶ οὐ μετασχόντας τῆς
πολιτείας, ὥστε οὐδένα εἰκὸς αὐτῷ τούτου ὑπόλογον γενέσθαι. τοῦ μὲν
γὰρ ὑμᾶς çυγεῖν μέρος τι καὶ οὗτος συνεβάλετο, τοῦ δὲ τοῦτον κατελθεῖν
τὸ πλῆθος τὸ ὑμέτερον αἴτιον ἐγένετο. ἔτι δὲ καὶ δεινόν, εἰ ὧν μὲν ἄκων
ἔπαθε χάριν αὐτῷ εἴσεσθε, ὧν δ᾿ ἑκὼν ἐξήμαρτε μηδεμίαν τιμωρίαν
ποιήσεσθε.
But I on my part could point out others among those who combined to
subvert the democracy who were either put to death or exiled and
debarred from the citizenship, so that he cannot expect to get any credit
on that account. For while this man did contribute his share to your
exile, he owed his return to you, the people. And besides, it would be
monstrous if you should feel grateful to him for what he underwent
against his will, but should exact no requital for his voluntary offence.11

Lys. 13.65–9), but in general supporting his view that litigants tend to stick to subjects
that are relevant to the facts of the case.
9
Lys. 30.7–9 (Lysias’ speeches, here and below, tr. Lamb 1930).
10
Lys. 30.15. See Carey 2004: 7.
11
Lys. 30.15–16.
194 Envy, Poison, and Death
However, more frequently, it is establishing the truth of these allega-
tions, rather than their relevance, that is of concern to the speakers.
Thus, for example, in Against Leocrates, we find Lycurgus arguing
about the details of business done with and by Amyntas (the husband
of his elder sister). Amyntas is dead (as he tells us) so cannot be
produced as a witness. However, Lycurgus is anxious to reassure his
audience that what he is saying is not simply ‘talk’ (logos, which he
contrasts with aletheia or ‘truth’), and so he has found others who are
willing to testify.12 As he and the jurors would have been well aware, it
was perfectly possible for a speaker to make up information, even
when it was fairly certain he would not be able to get away with his
version of events.13
The basis for this concern with ‘truth’ is at one level obvious: it was
more persuasive. The idea behind introducing this material into the
courtroom was to persuade your audience that here was a character
that deserved their punishment.14 But it was surely more complicated
even than this: the underlying aim of diabole was not simply to
damage your opponent in court; its cold hand also reached beyond
this arena, into daily life—as some of the speakers profess to fear. For
example, in Lysias 3, the speaker repeatedly explains that he had been
unwilling to come to court because they were, not want the events
under discussion widely known. He was sure that if they were, he was
then likely to become periboetos, that is, ‘much talked of ’.15 A second
example offers further illumination: the speaker of the first speech
against Boeotus has the same name as the man he is prosecuting. His
concern is that the reputation of his rival will tarnish his own. He refers to
the ways in which someone may acquire a bad reputation, describing how
this may happen either through the filing of a suit or ‘a wholly disagree-
able scandal’. As he introduces his rival’s patchy military service, he
mentions that this is something that ‘all of you who were at home saw’.16
As we will see, when such allegations are made, there is often
an appeal to ‘what everyone knows’ (sometimes, but not always,

12
Amyntas dead: Lycurg. 1.123. He uses the phrase ἵνα δὲ μὴ λόγον οἴησθε εἶναι
ἀλλ᾿ εἰδῆτε τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ‘so that you may not think this is just talk, but know it to be
the truth’ (tr. Burtt 1954).
13 14
Harris 1988: esp. the discussion, p. 213. Carey 2000: 206.
15
Lys. 3.3–4 and 30.
16
Dem. 39.15–17 (tr. Murray 1936). Hunter (1994) includes this episode in her
Appendix of Gossip under the theme ‘Military Service’ (118).
 Gossip . . . In Public 195
supported by witnesses or depositions). This gives another reason
why such background material may have been considered relevant in
the courtroom. If this is what everyone knows, and what everyone is
talking about anyway with regard to the litigants, then it becomes
relevant through association. For both sides it becomes important to
shape that information to one’s own advantage, perhaps as an attack,
perhaps as a defence against allegations not yet made. Moreover, if
people are not talking about this beforehand (and the appeal to general
knowledge is simply rhetorical), then it is likely they soon will be.
The process of turning ordinary gossip into an accusation is a
process of creating the means for action.17 But we can add to this:
the process of creating an accusation can, in turn, also create ordinary
gossip. This social process is not a simple linear structure, but rather a
self-sustaining cycle. In the law courts, it was certainly a case of ‘I
appeal to common report; you spread slander.’ But, drawing on our
evidence, and on the theoretical approaches to gossip outlined in the
previous sections, we can develop this formulation so that it includes
the audience of that gossip: ‘I make genuine accusations, you spread
slander, and we both draw on and foster common report.’18
Once we return to the courts themselves, these can become fine
distinctions, but keeping them in view allows us to maintain sight of
the different verbal genres at play—and the rhetorical feints that
connected them.19 Many of the juicy allegations or accusations pro-
duced by one speaker against another look ripe to be labelled as
gossip, but the passages in question offer little evidence for this: the
speakers give little or no indication that these accusations were being
discussed elsewhere or were already regarded as common knowledge.
A first example of this is from Isaeus 3 (On the Estate of Pyrrhus), in
which Nicodemus is being prosecuted for giving false testimony when

17
See White 1994: 1. She observes how earlier scholars of gossip linked gossip and
‘scandal’ (although see Besnier 1996, mentioned on p. 172 n. 5), and makes the same
link, but replaces ‘scandal’ with ‘accusation’. However, Gluckman’s definition of
slander appears to be gossip that has gone beyond ‘general interest in the doings,
and the virtues and vices, of others, which characterizes any group’ (1963: 312).
18
The original formulation (‘I appeal to common report; you spread slander’) is in
Lewis (1996: 13).
19
For example, there is some elision of gossip and slander in Virginia Hunter’s
argument (1994: 101–2): ‘what they say about an opponent amounts to statements
“making moral judgments” or what we have defined as gossip’, and the habit of
slander is summed up as a strategy that ‘has left the forensic orations full of gossip’.
196 Envy, Poison, and Death
he swore he had betrothed his sister to Pyrrhus without a dowry.20
Although the argument focuses on the dowry, a further dimension is
briefly introduced: Nicodemus’ own status as a citizen. Apparently, it had
been challenged by a member of his own phratry, and Nicodemus won the
case by only four votes. The plaintiff argues that his uncle, Pyrrhus, would
not have married a woman whose brother was not a citizen. The case is
neatly made, complete with a call for testimony, but it is not clear that this
is a case of gossip. There is no report of general suspicions or common
knowledge, and it is not clear what the testimony is about—the dowry or
the citizenship.
Another example occurs in Isaeus’ speech (7) On the Estate of
Apollodorus, in which Thrasyllus is attempting to maintain his legal
position as the adopted son of Apollodorus; he has been attacked by one
of Apollodorus’ female cousins and now attempts to strike back. His
approach is to point out that she and her sister are not to be trusted with
an inheritance; they have form. They have already inherited an estate
from one brother, but not given up a son for adoption into his house.
Again, although this account introduces past omissions or offences by
the target, even describing the state of the inherited property in strong
terms as ‘shamefully and deplorably desolate’, this is still not clearly
gossip.21 For the same reasons given earlier, the lack of any allusion to
third-party discussion suggests that this is more likely to be an aggressive
slanderous attack by the speaker. Such allegations are simply the accusa-
tions and denials, claim and counterclaim that make up much of the
basic discourse of an Athenian law-court speech. If they are categorized
too quickly as ‘gossip’, we risk losing sight of the distinctive nature of this
reconstructive genre and its particular employment in the law court.

Gossip vs Truth
At first sight, the discourses of gossip and of forensic oratory might be
thought to be fundamentally different; as Besnier has described: ‘gossip
is blurred, incomplete, and unframed, while oratory is clear, complete
and framed. Oratory’s form is predictable, its delivery poised, its voices
seemingly monologic, while the gossip text is messy, full of pitch
variations and heteroglossic.’22 Both may be artful and aim to persuade,

20
Isae. 3.37.
21
Cf. Hunter 1994: 103. Speeches by Isaeus, here and below, tr. Forster 1927.
22
Besnier 2009: 124.
 Gossip . . . In Public 197
but they take place in different settings (public vs private). Moreover,
each has distinctive implications for the way they are prepared (one is
polished, the other spontaneous), and for the likely effects they may
produce. Although those who gossip in other settings may work hard
to establish the truth of what they say, there is no requirement to do
so.23 But in the Athenian law courts, the two genres coincide and
overlap, and this produces certain distinctive markers. When speakers
introduce gossip, that is, unsubstantiated reports about people, into
their speeches, they do so by means of a number of specific techniques.
Moreover, they also play with the very framework of gossip, signalling
that they are, as it were, performing gossip through the use of particular
speech acts characteristic of that genre. Rather than giving the impres-
sion that they are untrustworthy, this allows them to imply a different
kind of truth claim in their speeches.
The most obvious way in which gossip is introduced into the
speeches is through explicit references to the things that ‘people, in
general, are saying’ or things that ‘everyone knows’. The speakers not
only introduce nuggets of current gossip, but they also frame it in a
way that is itself suggestive of the common discourse of gossip. An
example occurs in Isaeus’ speech On the Estate of Dicaeogenes, where
the speaker describes how ‘Everyone saw [Dicaeogenes’] mother
seated in the shrine of Eileithyia and charging him with acts which
I am ashamed to mention but which he was not ashamed to commit.’
A second example occurs in Demosthenes’ speech Against Eubulides,
when the story of Eubulides’ and his group’s corrupt approach to
creating citizens is followed by the account of his father’s dishonest
approach to the deme register. As verification, the speaker claims,
‘These facts all the older ones know.’24
This kind of appeal means that one’s own role in spreading this
information can be played down: as Demosthenes observes as he lists
vivid little nuggets of information about Aeschines’ family in On the
Crown, ‘Everybody knows that without being told by me.’25 It appears
to have been a good ploy to seem to rely on the information that

23
Ayim (1994) examines the acquisition of knowledge through gossip. She
describes gossipers anxious to establish the truth of the information they gather,
comparing gossip to scientific inquiry (87).
24
Isae. 5.39. Dem. 57.59–60, and quotation, 61 (tr. Murray 1939b). For further
examples where general knowledge is called upon, see Dem. 39.16, 54.34, and [Dem.]
45.63–5 and 70, and 58.28; Din. 1.30, 2.8 and 11; Lys. 6.32; Isoc. 17.33–4.
25
Dem. 18.129 (tr., here and below, Vince and Vince 1926).
198 Envy, Poison, and Death
already existed among the jurors. For example, speakers might ask
them to consult what they have heard, as, for example, does Demos-
thenes regarding Meidias: ‘Who of you does not know the mysterious
story of his birth—quite like a melodrama!’26 Or they may instruct
the jurors to think about what they know or remember about the
defendant, and then consider what that means about their own
behaviour towards him, as does Andocides of his opponent Cephi-
sius, ‘whom every one of you sitting in this court knows too well to
trust with anything belonging to him’.27 This approach may even
include explicit appeals to what the jurors know that they do not
know, for example, in Against Stephanus (1) (of Stephanus):
‘Although he has so large an estate that he gave his daughter a
marriage portion of one hundred minae, he has never been seen by
you to perform any public service whatever, even the very slightest.’28
Such an allusion to ostensibly shared knowledge may be very brief: for
example, where a speaker simply acknowledges an acquaintance in
common: ‘Cinesias, with the character we know’;29 or makes a reference
to a shared experience, such as ‘even those who have no dealings with
you are exasperated’.30 So long as it achieves a note of collusion with
right-minded citizens (which, of course, includes the jurors), such an
appeal is powerful. These moments of complicity with the jurors work
not only to spread information, but also to draw them onto the speaker’s
side, helping to create the impression that they share the same perspec-
tive, and so what the speaker says cannot be called slander.31 Less specific
claims of knowledge may be phrased as reports by other people: ‘he was
seen by a number of people’ or ‘it is clear that he . . . [did such and
such]’.32 Although these appeals to more general knowledge may achieve
less intimacy with their audience, they may still work as truth claims for
the speaker, reinforcing the value of their particular allegations.
The speaker can also use descriptions of gossip of a more personal
and explicit nature to bolster a claim. Thus, he may describe how he
himself has discussed some aspect of the case with some group of
people. For example, in On the Estate of Ciron, the speaker implies that

26
Dem. 21.149–50 (tr., here and below, Vince 1935).
27
Andoc. 1.139 (tr., here and below, Maidment 1941) and compare Dem. 2.22, Din.
1.30, and Isae. 3.37.
28 29
[Dem.] 45.66 (tr., here and below, Murray 1939a). Lys. 21.20.
30
Dem. 21.195.
31
Compare also the suggestion in Hyp. 4.22 that even children know.
32
e.g. Lys. 14.25 and Din. 1.15, respectively.
 Gossip . . . In Public 199
he has discussed the situation with his friends: ‘And when my oppon-
ent claimed this house and everything else that Ciron left behind him,
although he said that he had left nothing, I did not think (and my
friends agreed with me) that in these painful circumstances I ought to
use violence and carry off my grandfather’s body.’33 In other cases, it is
clear that the speaker has been participating in gossip about the case,
but the other parties remain anonymous: for example, in Against
Agoratus, we are informed of Agoratus: ‘I am told that he is concocting
for his defence the plea that he went off to Phyle, and was in the party
that returned from Phyle, and that this is the mainstay of his case.’34
Sometimes this information is dropped inadvertently into the account:
for example, Aeschines tells us about Timarchus: ‘his mother begged
and besought him, as I have heard . . . ’—an almost incidental truth
claim, inserted as the story develops.35 It may be that the speaker makes
a very strong point of his own role in passing on gossip. One example
comes from Demosthenes’ Against Conon, in which the plaintiff,
Ariston, regales the audience with the appalling activites of the Triballi:

ἀκούω γάρ, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, Βάκχιόν τέ τινα, ὃς παρ᾿ ὑμῖν ἀπέθανε, καὶ
Ἀριστοκράτην τὸν τοὺς ὀçθαλμοὺς διεçθαρμένον καὶ τοιούτους ἑτέρους
καὶ Κόνωνα τουτονί, ἑταίρους εἶναι μειράκι᾿ ὄντας καὶ Τριβαλλοὺς ἐπω-
νυμίαν ἔχειν· τούτους τά θ᾿ Ἑκαταῖα κατεσθίειν, καὶ τοὺς ὄρχεις τοὺς ἐκ
τῶν χοίρων, οἷς καθαίρουσ᾿ ὅταν εἰσιέναι μέλλωσι, συλλέγοντας ἑκάστοτε
συνδειπνεῖν ἀλλήλοις, καὶ ῥᾷον ὀμνύναι κἀπιορκεῖν ἢ ὁτιοῦν.
For I hear, then, men of the jury, that a certain Bacchius, who was
condemned to death in your court, and Aristocrates, the man with the
bad eyes, and certain others of the same stamp, and with them this man
Conon, were intimates when they were youths, and bore the nickname
Triballi; and that these men used to devour the food set out for Hecate
and to gather up on each occasion for their dinner with one another the
testicles of the pigs which are offered for purification when the assembly
convenes, and that they thought less of swearing and perjuring them-
selves than of anything else in the world.36

33
Isae. 8.38.
34
Lys. 13.77 (such details could also be heard at the pre-trial procedure, Lys.
13.86–88) and cf. Lys. 31.27–9.
35
Aeschin. 1.99 (all speeches by Aeschines, here and below, tr. Adams 1919).
36
Dem. 54.39 (tr. here and below, Murray 1939b). Hunter (1994: 119) lists this
passage under ‘resort to false oaths’; this is one of the crimes committed by this group
as listed by Demosthenes, but the gossip itself is clearly much broader than that, and
deliberately includes other impious behaviour.
200 Envy, Poison, and Death
In this instance, the role of the speaker in finding out this information
(for which he offers no further proof but his own inquiries) is heavily
emphasized: ‘The contempt, however, which this fellow feels for all
sacred things I must tell you about; for I have been forced to make
inquiry.’37 In light of the nature of the crime, and the seriousness of
the allegations being made, this act of gossip suddenly becomes a
much-needed investigation on behalf of the city and its citizens.
Similarly, in his speech On the Mysteries, Andocides provides a
detailed account of Callias’ domestic chaos. Callias had married a
woman (a daughter of Ischomachus); then made her mother, Chry-
silla, his mistress (the daughter tried to hang herself); then grew tired
of Chrysilla and (in various different contexts) denied that the child
she had was his. He finally fell for her again and then tried to present
the boy to his phratry, the Kerykes, which involved him swearing that
the boy was his son. Andocides calls witnesses to this statement, but it
is certainly possible that these are only testifying to the final allegation
(Callias’ appearance among the Kerykes and the oath that he was the
father of Chrysilla’s son). However, if that is the case, then the rest of
the story stands as unsupported allegation—with only Andocides’
own claim at the beginning of his account: ‘You must let me tell
you . . . it is quite worth hearing, gentlemen’.38
As noted in the previous section, Aeschines’ vivid description of
how pheme or reputation is created is phrased in a way that denies
any suggestion that talk is created by individuals: ‘But in the case of
the life and conduct of men, a common report which is unerring does
of itself spread abroad throughout the city; it causes the private deed
to become matter of public knowledge, and many a time it even
prophesies what is about to be.’ It leaves instead the impression that
gossip functions simply as an impersonal and objective witness, with
a certain supernatural animation of its own. In contrast, the insinu-
ations that we see here, that everyone is talking, and everyone must
know the details of an individual’s private life, are just as specious.
The ‘gossip’ they allude to may not, in fact, be as widespread as they
are suggesting or, in fact, exist at all.39

37 38
Dem. 54.39. Andoc. 1.124–9.
39
On pheme, see Aeschin. 2.145; see p. 182 of this volume for discussion. Unsur-
prisingly, Aeschin. 1 is full of such insinuations; see e.g. 44–5, 53, 55–6, 69, 116, 130,
158. Hunter (1994: 220) also gives the following references: Dem. 19.199–200 and 226,
21.149, 54.34, and [Dem.] 59.30; Din. 2.8; Isae. 3.40, 6.19 (and cites Ober 1989: 149).
Hunter (1994: 102) suggests that speakers may assume ‘or pretend to assume’
 Gossip . . . In Public 201
In the inheritance case on the estate of Astyphilus (Isaeus 9), this
possibility is explored: the speaker describes what ‘is said’, but then
notes how difficult it is to find people to testify in its support. In the
end, the witness whom he finds swears an ‘Oath of ignorance’. The
effort to provide a witness neatly suggests that the speaker is anxious
to tell the truth, painting a thin veneer of veracity over what may be,
in fact, only allegations.40 As noted, this kind of information, even if it
does not in fact exist, may, through its airing in the court, become
gossip—as some of the speakers profess to fear. Those who promul-
gate this kind of information may also fear the consequences.
For example, in Demosthenes’ Against Olympiodorus, the speaker,
Callistratus, provides a vivid description of the mistress of his
brother-in-law and rival Olympiodorus flaunting her luxury. The
picture he creates appeals to widespread knowledge; he then follows
this account with a deposition, intended, explicitly, to avoid the
charge of diabole.41
This brings us to the framing of gossip, and its manipulation. As
Niko Besnier has argued, for some genres, such as forensic speeches, a
more complete and verbally attractive performance can increase a
truth claim. In contrast, gossip is perceived as ‘unsaid, understated or
waiting to be filled in by the audience’.42 When the two are brought
together, we can see some examples of the ways in which ‘performing
gossip’ (rather than reporting on gossip) also gives speakers further
support for its introduction into speeches, by helping them to con-
struct an impression of the truth of their claims. In the law-court
speeches we find this artfully created through a repeated affect—
praeteritio or paraleipsis—that of the apparent spontaneous second
thought, in which the speaker suddenly decides to leave the worst
accusation unsaid. This enables him to damage his opponent, while
acquiring credit for his own care with language—and without requir-
ing the provision of any actual evidence.43
Bringing up the military record of his accuser, the speaker of
Against Simon offers a very clear example of the use of this technique

widespread knowledge of this gossip, but does not pursue the point of the truth claims
of such references to gossip here; later in the same discussion she briefly raises the
question of whether or not we can ever know if we are dealing with the truth.
40
Isae. 9.16–18.
41
Dem. 48.55. Similar use of vivid imagery that may or may not be connected to
current gossip is found in Dem. 42.24.
42 43
Besnier 2009: 124. As Fisher 2001 ad §39.
202 Envy, Poison, and Death
(and I have highlighted the relevant parts of the translation with
italics):
ἐβουλόμην δ᾿ ἂν ἐξεῖναί μοι παρ᾿ ὑμῖν καὶ ἐκ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιδεῖξαι τὴν
τούτου πονηρίαν, ἵνα ἠπίστασθε ὅτι πολὺ ἂν δικαιότερον αὐτὸς περὶ
θανάτου ἠγωνίζετο ἢ ἑτέρους ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος εἰς κίνδυνον καθίστη.
τὰ μὲν οὖν ἄλλα ἐάσω· ὃ δ᾿ ἡγοῦμαι ὑμῖν προσήκειν ἀκοῦσαι καὶ τεκμήριον
ἔσεσθαι τῆς τούτου θρασύτητος καὶ τόλμης, περὶ τούτου μνησθήσομαι. ἐν
Κορίνθῳ γάρ, ἐπειδὴ ὕστερον ἦλθε τῆς πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους μάχης καὶ
τῆς εἰς Κορώνειαν στρατείας, ἐμάχετο τῷ ταξιάρχῳ Λάχητι καὶ ἔτυπτεν
αὐτόν, καὶ πανστρατιᾷ τῶν πολιτῶν ἐξελθόντων, δόξας ἀκοσμότατος
εἶναι καὶ πονηρότατος, μόνος Ἀθηναίων ὑπὸ τῶν στρατηγῶν ἐξεκηρύχθη.
Ἔχοιμι δ᾿ ἂν καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ εἰπεῖν περὶ τούτου, ἀλλ᾿ ἐπειδὴ παρ᾿ ὑμῖν οὐ
νόμιμόν ἐστιν ἔξω τοῦ πράγματος λέγειν, ἐκεῖνο ἐνθυμεῖσθε· οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ
βίᾳ εἰς τὴν ἡμετέραν οἰκίαν εἰσιόντες, οὗτοι οἱ διώκοντες, οὗτοι οἱ βίᾳ ἐκ
τῆς ὁδοῦ συναρπάζοντες ἡμᾶς.
I could wish that I were allowed to expose this man’s wickedness before
you in all its other effects, so that you might understand how in justice
he ought far rather to be on trial for his life than bringing others into
peril of losing their native land. I will, however, pass over all those things,
and will mention only one which I consider you ought to hear, as being a
sure proof of his brazen-faced audacity. In Corinth, where he arrived
after our battle with the enemy and the expedition to Coronea, he
fought with the taxiarch Laches and gave him a beating; and when the
citizens had set forth in full military strength, he was specially noted for
insubordination and knavery, and was the only Athenian ordered by the
generals to be banned by herald. I could go on to relate many other
things regarding this man; but, since it is not lawful to speak in your court
beyond the limits of the case, I ask you to reflect on this: it was these men
who forced their way into our house, they who pursued us, and they
who forcibly seized and dragged us out of our path.’44
A single example is made to generate infinite possible crimes, but with
not a piece of evidence in sight; indeed, there is not even reference to
evidence of gossip to support his accusation.45

44
Lys. 3.44–6.
45
For a similar approach to evidence, see Dem 21.130; he reads out his memo-
randa of Aeschines’ crimes and finishes with the tantalizing observation: ‘I have
omitted other instances, for no one could compress into a single narrative the violent
acts that he has spent a lifetime in committing.’ See also Dem. 39.26, where the
omission appears to have the advantage that he does not have to describe in detail his
father’s lack of business acumen; and Dem. 54.44, where the water clock prevents a
detailed exposition of Conon and his son’s lack of service to the state. Further
 Gossip . . . In Public 203
Lysias appeals to the limits apparently set by the nature of the
proceedings to shape his narrative and justify his missing details.
In Against Ctesiphon, Aeschines uses his fear of enmity as the
reason why he omits information: ‘Here he married a woman
who was rich, I grant you, and brought him a big dowry, but a
Scythian by blood. This wife bore him two daughters, whom he
sent hither with plenty of money. One he married to a man whom
I will not name—for I do not care to incur the enmity of many
persons—the other, in contempt of the laws of the city, Demos-
thenes of Paeania took to wife.’46 In Demosthenes 24, an attack on
Timocrates, it is modesty that apparently restrains the speaker,
Diodorus: ‘Ah, but he was a good manager for his sister. Why, if he
had committed no other crime, he deserves destruction on that
account alone. He has not given her in marriage, he has sold her.
An enemy of yours from Corcyra, one of the faction now in power
there, used to lodge at his house whenever he came here on
embassy, and wanted to have his sister—I will not say on what
terms. He took the man’s money, and he has given him the girl;
and she is in Corcyra to this day.’47 As this last passage demon-
strates, the material becomes almost more persuasive if the infor-
mation omitted is trivial: it sounds far more realistic if it is a detail
that has been forgotten.48
The technique of leaving information unsaid and implicit is a power-
ful device in the context of the law courts in several different respects.
First, it tantalizes: the implication is that the situation is as bad as it could
be. Consider this example from Lysias’ Against Philon, where the
speaker is criticizing the defendant, Philon: ‘the strange things of
which his mother accused him while she was alive I will pass over’.49
Second, it engages: creating ‘gaps’ in the narrative that draw an audience

examples include: Isae. 8.40–3: ‘If you understood the impudence of Diocles and his
behaviour on all other occasions, you would have no difficulty in believing anything in
my story;’ Lys. 13.67: ‘Now, to tell of all the other injuries and infamies, gentlemen,
which have been the practice of this man and his brothers would be a lengthy task;’
Lys. 14.28: ‘Well, to relate all the offences that he has committed, gentlemen, either
against the citizens, or against foreigners, or in his dealings with his own relations or
with ordinary people, would be a lengthy affair.’
46 47
Aeschin. 3.172. Dem. 24.202 (tr., here and below, Vince 1935).
48
Another example at Dem. 21.139, where the omitted detail is the precise sum of
money used for bribery.
49
Lys. 31.20.
204 Envy, Poison, and Death
in, involving them in the creative process of building the very story they
are meant to judge. When combined with an explicit appeal to the jurors’
existing knowledge, this approach not only heightens this sense that the
speaker knows what he is talking about, but also builds a strong sense of
collusion between speaker and jurors. An example occurs in a speech
made by Apollodorus against Timotheus, where Apollodorus states: ‘The
specific instances of the perjuries which he has committed without scruple
would make a long story; but I will call to your minds the most flagrant
instances and those of which you are all well aware.’50 In Aeschines’ speech
against Timarchus, the collusive aspect of such an approach is made more
explicit with an invitation to the jurors to investigate the matter for
themselves: ‘But, you say, although he was worthless when he held office
alone, yet when he was associated with others he was all right! How so?’
Aeschines then recounts myriad stories of wrongdoing.51 Finally, the
language of ‘I could tell you, but . . .’ offers a rhetorical structure for
supplying all the necessary information, with the implication that any
omitted material would be simply superfluous anyway. Thus, for
example, Diodorus declaims against Timocrates: ‘Well, about his father
I will say nothing disrespectful; though I could tell you a long story about
thieving—however, so far as I am concerned, let his father be worthy of
all the compliments that Timocrates may lavish upon him.’52
The interaction between the genres of gossip and forensic rhetoric
is complex, dynamic, and interactive—and reaches beyond the law
courts. As we have seen, gossip could move seamlessly into forensic
rhetorical structures as part of the case being made. This occurs, for
example, in a case already mentioned, concerning the estate of Pyr-
rhus, in which the legal status of Nicodemus, his sister, and her
daughter is being questioned. Apparently, the neighbours ‘have
given evidence of quarrels, serenades, and frequent scenes of disorder
which the defendant’s sister occasioned whenever she was at Pyr-
rhus’s house’.53 A further example occurs when Lycurgus is attacking

50
[Dem.] 49.66 (tr. Murray 1939a), with italics added for emphasis. See also [Dem.]
45.27, where the name of the speaker’s mother is left unspoken, ‘but whom you know of
yourselves, even if I do not name her’. Further examples of the combination of these two
approaches (the appeal to existing or widespread knowledge, and the ‘I could tell you,
but . . .’): Lys. 30.2 and [Dem.] 49.66–7. A variation on this theme is the combination of the
‘I could tell you, but . . .’ technique with a deposition by the neighbours in Isae. 3.10–14.
51
Aeschin. 1.107–15.
52
Dem. 24.127 and compare Dem. 23.213.
53
Isae. 3.13.
 Gossip . . . In Public 205
Leocrates, and supports his allegations with the testimony of neigh-
bours, family, and friends: ‘first the testimony of the neighbors and
the men living in this district who know that the defendant ran away
during the war and sailed from Athens, next that of the people
present at Rhodes when Leocrates was delivering this news, and
finally the evidence of Phyrcinus, whom most of you know as the
accuser of Leocrates in the Assembly for having seriously harmed
the two per cent tax in which he had an interest.’54 We must bear in
mind that the speaker would have written the witness statements
himself, for the witnesses to swear to their validity; nevertheless,
the presentation of this information is certainly suggestive of the
dynamics of gossip. This kind of rhetoric could also be ‘reversed’:
the speaker of Lysias 7, On the Olive Stump, adduces the lack of
knowledge of his neighbours in order to prove that an action did not
occur. He cannot have chopped down the sacred olive stump because
his neighbours, among others, including passers-by, previous own-
ers of the plot of land, and his slaves, would have known.55 He also
cleverly points out that his opponent should have persuaded the
hostile neighbours to give evidence against him.56 As these and the
other examples indicate, the insinuation of damaging information
was a powerful form of attack that had the potential to reach beyond
the confines of the court, and the litigants themselves, to involve
the rest of the city. But even this could become a rhetorical feint:
an example occurs in a curious speech written to attack Alcibiades.
The speaker explains that he is unwilling to describe Alcibiades’
many misdeeds—adultery, stealing wives, acts of lawless violence—
because he would make public the injuries suffered by many of his
fellow citizens.57
These techniques make play not only with gossip itself, but also with
the distinctive aspects of it as a genre. They allude to what everyone
knows; they introduce what no one knows but will come to find out;
they play with implicit knowledge and manipulate the explicit. The
difficulties this raises of distinguishing gossip from slander can be
seen by comparing two passages from a speech written by Demos-
thenes in support of Phormio against Apollodorus. When the speaker

54
Lycurg. 1.19. On witness testimony in the fourth century BCE see Carey 1995.
55
Lys. 7.14–18, 28, and 39. See esp. 18–19 for evidence of hostile neighbours.
56
See discussion of the role of neighbours in Cohen 1991: 87–90.
57
Andoc. 4.10; see also Lys. 3.3–4 and 30.
206 Envy, Poison, and Death
first attacks Apollodorus for not spending what he should on litur-
gies, it is simply an accusation of wrongdoing. Demosthenes goes
through the figures systematically—this is, if you like, one way of
giving authority to these claims. He does not appeal to third-party
discussion, and there is no indication that this is gossip.58 However, as
he turns to Apollodorus’ private life, indications appear that show
that we are dealing with this very different genre. He describes to
Apollodorus how his brother has not complained about his licentious
lifestyle: ‘Archestratus, to whom your father formerly belonged, has a
son here, Antimachus, who fares not at all as he deserves, and who
does not go to law with you and say that he is outrageously treated,
because you wear a soft mantle, and have redeemed one mistress, and
have given another in marriage (all this, while you have a wife of your
own), and take three attendant slaves about with you, and live so
licentiously that even those who meet you on the street perceive it,
while he himself is in great destitution.’ What marks this as gossip is
not the lascivious detail of these claims, but the phrase ‘even those
who meet you on the street’, which signals to the audience that
Demosthenes is aware of and indicating the kind of third-party
discussion about Apollodorus’ behaviour and its implications that
lives and breathes in gossip.59

GOSSIP AND ANXIETY

What made these claims so powerful? It has been argued, by Virginia

Hunter, that the gossip in these lawsuits ‘often reached an ideological
level in the demands it placed on the elite to conform publicly to the
image of the good citizen deserving of charis’.60 She assembles a list of
themes of gossip, and suggests that gossip helped to preserve the
descent group itself against outsiders by enforcing certain images,
ideas, and standards of behaviour, such that ‘in criticizing one
another, Athenians declared what it was to be an Athenian’.61 It is

58 59
[Dem.] 36.36–9. [Dem.] 36.44–5 (tr. Murray 1939).
60
Hunter 1994: 117.
61
Hunter (1994: 115–17): ‘to preserve the descent group itself against outsiders
by the images it evoked, by the standards it proclaimed, and by the morality it
enforced . . . in criticizing one another, Athenians declared what it was to be an
Athenian’. Her themes of gossip (118–19) include: public service, military service,
 Gossip . . . In Public 207
certainly the case that these assertions, allegations, and reports con-
cerning ‘what everyone knows’ or not, together generate an index of
ideal behaviours. In a society in which a legal case was a political
weapon, they reflect the concerns of a particular constituency of the
population. (As Hunter herself points out, we do not know what
kinds of uses of gossip other social classes may have made.)62 How-
ever, they also reveal some further, darker dimensions of what it
meant ‘to be an Athenian’.
Among these, the most obvious to emerge from this material is the
need to become adept in manipulating gossip: this analysis suggests a
striking transparency to Athenian daily life. By instituting what was,
in effect, a system of self-policing (and beyond that, of self-litigation),
each citizen was perforce (by laws and decrees) an ‘agent of law
enforcement’, not standing on the margins of dispassionate proced-
ure, but employing and directing individual emotions and social
processes of evaluation.63 In the law courts, the idea that prosecutions
were made on this basis is made quite plain by the emotional explan-
ations of the speakers themselves, who sometimes explain that the
public case they are bringing (graphe) is occasioned or accompanied
by feelings of personal grievance (although this might well be coupled
with statements about also benefitting the city).64 Moreover, the
system was structured in such a way that there were plenty of
opportunities for individuals to play out their personal feelings,
even in political settings. For example, the examinations of public
officers allowed anyone to raise an objection at the dokimasia before a

treatment of kin, treatment of parents, care of patrimony, associates, private life and
conduct, sexual mores, character, status, criminal record; less frequently, maltreat-
ment of friends, resort to false oaths, dishonesty or other unacceptable conduct in
public office.
62 63
Hunter 1994: 117. Ibid.: 124.
64
See for example: Dem. 54.33, and [Dem.] 53.1–3 and 15, 58.49 and 52, 59.1 and
14–15; Lys. 7.20, 13.1, 15.12; Hunter (1994: 127) provides evidence of feuds.
Kucharski (2012: 171–2) argues for the prominent role of personal enmity in public
prosecutions, and lists five of thirty-one speeches where the speaker explicitly or
implicitly denies personal enmity, eleven where he explicitly admits it, and eight
where he presents himself as ‘a disinterested agent of the state’. Making such personal
statements would also indicate that the case was not being brought by a sycophant,
which was another risk that this legislative structure posed; see Hunter 1994: 126–7;
cf. Osborne 1990. But Kucharski (2012: 192) adds that even enmity could be coupled
with charges of sycophancy, if it was the wrong sort of enmity. Lys. 24.2 lists envy,
money, and vengeance as personal motives for court cases that are not acceptable.
208 Envy, Poison, and Death
citizen was appointed, or, after he had served his term, to bring
forward a prosecution at the euthyna.65
But as well as thinking about the ways in which this structure was
set up to encourage what Hunter has called institutionalized ‘private
initiative’, we need also to think about how it felt to live within such a
system, and balance it with the idea of ‘institutionalised vigilance’.66
Indeed, it becomes a regular plea at the end of law-court cases that the
jurors exercise vigilance for their city and its future, in one way or
another: for example, to protect her foreign policy,67 her identity,68 or
her laws;69 to safeguard the loyal service of her citizens70 and the
security of their families and women;71 or to take care of the Athen-
ians’ relationship with their gods—and it becomes their liability if
they do not.72
The need for such judicial vigilance can be set in a broader emotional
context of anxiety. At the individual level, as Joseph Roisman has argued,
the rhetorical material is replete with indications of a conspiratorial
outlook (and this is reinforced by evidence from non-forensic sources).73
As he notes, although, in part, these accusations of personal and political
plotting are recurrent themes of law-court speeches, their use suggests
that they were taken seriously by their audience.74 Plotting was envi-
sioned around, for example, cases concerning inheritance,75 murder,76
commercial transactions,77 and citizen status.78 Moreover, overlapping
with these personal claims are accusations made on behalf of the state:
political conspiracies—both national and international—appear across a
number of cases.79 Together these suggest that the imagination of the
Athenian citizenry not only kept alive the memory of past conspiracies
and their horrors, but that this also helped to prompt concern about
the future of the democracy. The context this created was one within

65
[Arist.] Ath. Pol. 55.2–4. Lys. 26 is a wonderful example of a case brought
concerning a dokimasia.
66
For institutionalized ‘private initiative’ (as opposed to ‘self-help’), see Hunter
1994: 124.
67 68 69
Dem. 23.188–9. Dem. 24.94. Lys. 1.48–50.
70 71 72
Lys. 18.23, 20.32. [Dem.] 59.112. See Eidinow 2015.
73 74 75
Roisman 2006. Ibid.: 152. Dem. 43.1–10.
76
Antiph. 1.3, 5, 9, 21, and 25–7 (see Roisman 2006: 11–18).
77
Specifically maritime fraud in Dem. 32 (see Roisman 2006: 35–7); and inter-
nationally, the grain trade Dem. 56 (see Roisman 2006: 145–9).
78
Dem. 57 (see Roisman 2006: 88–94).
79
National: Lys. 12, 13, 30; Isoc. 20.10–13 (see Roisman 2006: 66–94); and
international: e.g. [Dem.] 7 (see Roisman 2006: 130).
 Gossip . . . In Public 209
which gossip could become a remarkably potent weapon, and one
that must be handled with skill. After all, as Aeschines points out, it
was possible to earn the hatred of one’s neighbours by describing their
outrageous behaviour in too much detail.80

Gossip and Phthonos

In these speeches we see the impacts of a hypervigilant environment,
in which talk about others helped to shape and direct legal cases. Such
a background makes sense of the need for the expert management of
gossip, as it made its way from street corner to courtroom, and back
again. More specifically for this study, it provides a context in which
to draw connections between gossip and phthonos.
We have seen above how phthonos and abusive talk are closely
related. Here we see how much of that abusive talk comprised
gossip—and we begin to understand why the fourth-century painter
Apelles is said to have painted Phthonos leading Diabole.81 This
relationship is also apparent in the accounts of the trial of Socrates.
Both Xenophon and Plato put forward phthonos as part of the
explanation for why the jury convicted Socrates. Xenophon, in the
Apologia, explains that there were a number of individuals among the
jurors who felt phthonos, specifically in response to Socrates’ claimed
relationship with the divine.82 Just as we might expect from the
previous discussion, they feel it in response to Socrates’ assertion of
his divine blessing. And Socrates’ own behaviour makes it worse:
Xenophon gives phthonos as the reason why Socrates’ conviction by
the jury was made more certain, describing how Socrates brought it
upon himself (phthonon epagomenos) by his arrogant behaviour.83

80
Aeschin. 3.174: ‘I have seen people hated who recount too exactly the sins of
their neighbours’.
81 82
Luc. Cal. 5 (see discussion p. 121). Xen. Ap. 14.3.
83
Xen. Ap. 32. 2. In the Memorabilia, Xenophon offers a broader view of the role
of phthonos in Athenian society, as Socrates discusses with Critobulus what qualities
make a man’s friendship worth winning. Critobulus (2.6.20.6) reflects on how men
who vie with each other for primacy in cities feel phthonos as well as hatred for each
other. And Socrates agrees that there are ‘hostile elements’ in men, who hold the same
things to be honourable and pleasant and then fight for them (‘strife and anger lead to
hostility, covetousness to enmity, phthonos to hatred’, 2.6.22.1). His message is, in the
end, one of optimism, but even this is cast in terms of phthonos: there are true friends
who are able to share their wealth and supply one another’s wants and ‘phthonos they
take away entirely, regarding their own good things as belonging to their friends and
210 Envy, Poison, and Death
In Plato’s account, there are similarly multiple references to phthonos,
but here it is depicted as the cause of both the indictment and the verdict,
linking the gossip of daily life to the courtroom. He depicts Socrates
describing the prevailing atmosphere against him, in which people had
been accusing him of activities that were linked with not believing in the
gods.84 They have apparently been doing this ‘for a long time’, when the
jurors were children or youths. And of course, to this kind of rumour and
gossip, there is no defence: ‘But the most unreasonable thing of all is this,
that it is not even possible to know and speak their names, except when
one of them happens to be a writer of comedies.’ He goes on to discuss the
persuasive forces behind this spreading gossip, which includes phthonos
and slander: ‘And all those who persuaded you by means of phthonos and
slander . . .’. He notes the way it spreads: ‘and some also persuaded others
because they had been themselves persuaded’.85
It becomes unclear whose phthonos is being referred to here—those
persuading or those being persuaded. And this ambiguity continues
as Socrates, first, indicates the phthonos and diabole of his accusers,
Meletus and Anytus, noting how they have condemned many in the
past, and then also describes to the jury how they, his fellow citizens,
have found his words have moved them to phthonos.86 The case
seems, in some key respects, to be an illustration of the situation that
Aristotle describes in the Rhetoric, as he discusses those who do
wrong and those who are likely to be attacked by them. Among the
latter he lists, ‘those who have been slandered, or are easy to slander;
for such men neither care to go to law, for fear of the judges, nor, if
they do, can they convince them; to this class belong those who are
exposed to hatred or phthonos’.87 In conclusion, the evidence sug-
gests that in a context of hypervigilance, making gossip public (or

thinking their friend’s good things to be their own’ (2.6.23.5). Finally, the conversation
becomes more specifically focused on Athens and the Athenians, as Socrates and
Pericles explore the reasons why the city has become so degenerate. They explore the
lack of harmony in the city, arising from the attitudes of Athenians: ‘they feel more
phthonos and are more bitter against one another than against the rest of the world’
(3.5.16.5; all tr. Marchant and Todd, rev. Henderson 2013).
84
Pl. Ap. 18c: the accusations include being a thinker about ‘things in the air and
things below the earth, and who makes the weaker argument the stronger’.
85
Pl. Ap. 18d (tr. Fowler 1914).
86
Pl. Ap. 37d.
87
Arist. Rhet. 1372b (tr. Freese 1926): καὶ τοὺς διαβεβλημένους ἢ εὐδιαβόλους· οἱ
τοιοῦτοι γὰρ οὔτε προαιροῦνται, çοβούμενοι τοὺς κριτάς, οὔτε δύνανται πείθειν, ὡς
μισούμενοι καὶ çθονούμενοι.
 Gossip . . . In Public 211
creating public gossip) harnessed popular feelings and social emo-
tions, including phthonos, to create allegations, which then, in turn,
created popular feeling, in an ongoing cycle.88 In the next section, this
kind of vicious cycle—between accusation and emotion—will provide
the model for analysis of some more ambiguous accusations.

88
Szwed (1966: 435): gossip ‘is not only a means for an individual to assemble
basic information on his peers, but it is also a technique for summarizing public
opinion’.
 3.5

Gossip . . . In Private

‘ACCUSATIONS AGAINST ME’

We have seen how gossip itself could be seen as a metaphorical

poison. We come now to the question of how gossip coincides with
more literal senses of poison—in accusations of deaths brought about
by poison, spells, and/or dirty tricks. Trying to locate and pin down
this kind of informal narrative is hard enough in our own society, let
alone for the ancient world. Nevertheless, there is evidence that
can help us to piece together something of how this social dynamic
may have surfaced in ancient society. As is often the case when
examining ancient sources for evidence of magical practices, much
of the material is not from the place or time under discussion.
Moreover, it is partial: although a few inscriptions will offer us a
longer and more detailed narrative, the evidence in question usually
gives only a very brief snapshot of events. Indeed, sometimes it is
only iconography that leads the viewer to suspect that this is a
text that includes an accusation of some kind of foul play.1 However,
these fragments can still offer some insight into a common pattern
of responses to a particular experience of misfortune—usually
the death of an individual—and the ways in which its effects may
have rippled out through wider society.

Raising Suspicions
One of the primary sources for such information is ancient funerary
inscriptions in which the gods are implored to punish those who are

1
On Fluchhände, for example, see further p. 213.
 Gossip . . . In Private 213
responsible for the death of the deceased.2 A number of these epi-
taphs also contain allegations of foul play, and they often include an
image of two raised arms with open hands (so-called Fluchhände).
This is not only a gesture of prayer or cursing, but seems to be
specifically marked as an invocation of divine vengeance in cases of
premature and unnatural death.3 A famous example comes in the
form of two very similar grave markers from Rheneia (an island near
Delos), which date to the end of the second/beginning of the first
century CE. The details of the text indicate that the provenance is a
Hellenistic Jewish community, one which, not unusually, employed
Greek language and practice.4 Both epitaphs rail ‘against those who
have murdered with trickery or poisoned/bewitched the wretched,
untimely dead’; the victims are a Heraclea and Marthine, respectively.
They ask that ‘thus the same fate may happen to those who murdered
or poisoned/bewitched her, and to their children’.5

2
There are collections made by Cumont 1923, 1926, and 1933, Björck 1938. See
also Pippidi 1976/7 and Jordan 1979. This material has been the focus of increasing
interest in recent scholarship: see Versnel 1991: 97 nn. 44 and 45. For more detailed
discussion, see Versnel 1999, 130–1, and 2002a (in the former, he seeks to identify
emotions that may have motivated certain curse texts, focusing on the intention to
cause victims to lose face; in the latter, he discusses the role of these texts in processes
of social control; Salvo 2012 comes to similar conclusions). Although my conclusions
are different, this discussion owes much to his analyses. See also Graf 2007 and 2010;
Edmonds 2010.
3
As (Graf 2007: 145) notes, the ubiquity of this gesture as a symbol of prayer was
already noted in antiquity ([Arist.] Mund. 400a16); see further Jakov and Voutiras
2005. Graf (2007: 146 and 150) refines the arguments of Cumont (1933, esp. 31) and
Robert (BÉ 1968: no. 338) that this symbol in epitaphs indicated ‘only and alone an
invocation for divine vengeance of a death that was felt to be premature and to result
from the action of a malevolent human’. Some only include this image with the name
of the dead person, and no further information (see Graf 2007: 145–9).
4
See further Gager 1992: 185–7 and van der Horst and Newman 2008: 137–43.
5
The full text for Heraclea runs (IG XI 2532 I A): ἐπικαλοῦμαι καὶ ἀξιῶ τὸν |
ὕçιστον, τὸν κύριον τῶν πνευμάτων | καὶ πάσης σαρκός, ἐπι τοὺς δόλωι çονεύ- | σαντας
ἢ çαρμακεύσαντας τὴν τα- | λαίπωρον ἄωρον Ἡράκλεαν, ἐχχέαν- | τας αὐτης τὸ
ἀναίτιον vιμα ἀδί- | κως, ἵνα οὕτως γένηται τοῖς çονεύ | σασιν αὐτὴν ἢ çαρμακεύσασιν
καὶ | τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτων, Κύριε, ὁ πάντα ἐ- | çορῶν καὶ οἱ ἄνγελοι θεοῦ, ᾧ πᾶσα ψυ- | χὴ
ἐν τῇ σήμερον ἡμέραι ταπεινοῦτα μεθ᾽ἱκετείας ἵνα ἐγδικήσῃς τὸ αἷμα τὸ ἀ- | ναίτιον
ζητήσεις καὶ τὴν ταχίστην.
See for Heraclea: IDélos 2532 I A–B; SIG 1181; CIJ, no. 725; Björck 1938: 29 no. 11;
SEG 14.505; Couilloud 1974, no. 485; Guarducci 1978: 236–8; SEG 37.687; Gager
1992: 185, no. 87; SEG 46.966; Noy et al. 2004, no. Ach70. Wilhelm 1901 gives details
of the stone, now in the Bucharest National Museum; see also discussions in Deiss-
mann 1911 and Bergmann 1911. See for Marthine: IDélos 2532 II; Noy et al. 2004, no.
Ach71, now in the Epigraphical Museum, Athens. Salvo (2012: 244) argues that
214 Envy, Poison, and Death
Some epitaphs are phrased rather less precisely over the manner of
death.6 For example, an epitaph from Phrygia from a husband for his
dead wife and child reads: ‘If, by my particular fate, it had to be; if by
dastardly hands, o Helios see this!’.7 Another from Amisos: ‘If a
dastardly trick killed me, let there be divine, justice-dealing light’.8
Indeed, the sense of uncertainty across these texts is often striking—
both about the nature of the offence and the identity of the culprit.9
Nevertheless, the indication of foul play remains, and if we recall that
these inscriptions were likely to have been read out loud, then this
reinforces the idea that setting up such an inscription was a way of
‘voicing’ suspicions within a community. This is even more likely in
those cases where the epitaph was written as if spoken by the victim. For
example, an inscription dating to the second/third century CE lists the
travels and achievements of a doctor called Antiochus. Although his
grave is in Thasos—the monument was set up by his parents, son, and
wife—the inscription relates how he was apparently allei phar-
machtheis, (‘poisoned/bewitched in a foreign land’).10

Marthine’s stone was influenced by that of Heraklea on the grounds that the former is
only inscribed on one side, and is missing the term zeteseis in l. 13, which is found in the
similar inscription on the latter stone (A, l. 13 and B, l. 18). Graf (2007: nos 5 and 7) lists
thirteen other texts that are similarly explicit about the cause of death and the desire for
revenge. See Pippidi 1976/7 and Jordan 1979 on IDélos 2533 for consideration of solar
invocations.
6
The following examples are collected by Robert (1936: 122).
7
εἰ μὲν ίδίᾳ μοίρῃ ὤçειλεν· εἰ δὲ χερσὶ δολοποιοῖς, Ἥλιε, βλέπε Hadrianoi, Pisidia,
or Phrgyia, c.200 CE; Graf 2007: 17; Ramsay 1888: 265, no. 7; Cumont 1923: 75, no.
12; Robert 1936: 122; Björck 1938: 26, no. 3; Bean 1959: 109, no. 78 (see also BÉ 1961:
no. 739).
8
εἰ δὲ δόλος με . . . [δαμάσσε?] θεῖον çάος ἔκδικον ἔστω Amisos (Pontus), c.200 CE;
Graf 2007: 18. Björck (1938: 25, no. 2) leaves the lacuna blank; Anderson et al. (1910:
17, no. 9) and Robert (1936: 122) read εἰ δὲ δόλος με [κτάνεν? . . . θ]εῖον çάος ἔκδικον
ἔστω.
9
Uncertainty emphasized by Graf (2010) and Edmonds (2010). But Graf (2007:
143) notes how epitaphs for visible violent deaths often identify the perpetrator. The
text may not preclude a legal process, but may also occur because the culprit was
known but somehow out of legal reach (whether through a lack of evidence, or
insufficient resources on the accuser’s side to take that person to court); e.g. a text
from Syria (Hauran, SEG 7.1239), where the murderer was a senior adminstrator and
presumably, therefore, it was difficult for the family to seek mortal justice.
10
Graf 2007: 13 (date given: late); IG XII 8.450 and Pfohl 1966, no. 23. Graf (2007:
141) states that this was more likely to be a suspicion of foul play than actual
poisoning—on the basis of the fact that the victim died far from home.
 Gossip . . . In Private 215

Protesting Innocence
Texts from the corpus of curse tablets may offer some further insights
into the social dynamics surrounding such suspicions and/or accusa-
tions of poisoning—and from another perspective. Among the corpus
of binding spells is a group of texts from the temple of Demeter at
Knidos in Asia Minor, protestations against injustice done to those
who wrote them.11 But these are not all simple victims: among them
are those who feel they have been unjustly accused of crimes them-
selves, and we focus here on those that concern accusations of
poisoning. In the first, a woman calls down a curse on herself if she
is guilty as accused:
ἀνιεροῖ Ἀντιγό- | νη Δάματρι Κού- | ραι Πλούτωνι θε- | οῖς τοῖς παρὰ Δά-
| ματρι ἅπασι καὶ | πάσαις· εἰ μὲν ἐ- | γὼ çάρμακον Ἀ- | σκλαπιάδαι ἢ ἔ- |
δω[κ]α, ἢ ἐνεθυ- | μήθην κατὰ ψ- | υχὴν κακόν τι | [α]ὐτῷ ποῖσαι, ἢ ἐ- |
κάλεσα γυναῖκ- | α ἐπὶ τὸ ἱερόν, | τρία ἡμιμναῖ- | α διδοῦσα ἵνα | {ι}αὐτὸν
ἐκ τῶν | ζώντων ἄρῃ, | ἀναβαῖ Ἀντιγό- | νη πὰ Δάμα- | τρα πεπρημέ- | να
ἐξομολ<ογ>οῦμ[ένα], | καὶ μὴ γένοιτο | εὐειλάτ[ου] τυ- | χεῖν Δάματρος, |
ἀλλὰ μεγάλα- |_ς βασάνους βασ- | ανιζομένα· εἰ δ’ε<ἶ>- | [πέ] τις κατ’ἐμοῦ
_
π- | ρὸς Ἀσκλαπίδα<ν> εἰ κ- | [α]τ’ἐμοῦ καὶ παριστ- | άνετα[ι] γυναῖκα |
χαλκοῦς δο<ῦ>σα | ΙΑΝ δ’ἐμοῦ ΤΑ-
_
Antigone dedicates (this tablet?) to Demeter, Kore, Pluto, and all the
gods and goddesses beside Demeter. If I have given a potion to Ascla-
piadas or conceived in my soul of doing anything bad to him, or have
summoned a woman to the sanctuary, giving her 3 half-minae,12 so that
she might take him from the living, let Antigone come to the sanctuary
before Demeter, burning (pepremenos), and confess, and may Antigone
not find Demeter merciful, but may she be tormented with great

11
These come from a group of fourteen or so curse tablets and date approximately
from the first/second century BCE. See Newton 1862–3: (ii): 719–45 (= Blümel 1992:
85–103, nos 147–59). They are included in the category of ‘prayers for justice’
identified by Versnel (1991, 1998, 2002a, 2010), a genre distinguished from binding
spells by their intention to persuade the divinity addressed to punish the perpetrator
of a wrong that they have suffered. The majority of prayers for justice date to the
Hellenistic or later periods, but see Versnel (2010) for some reconsideration of
earlier cases.
12
A unit of ancient Greek currency, a mina or mna was roughly equivalent to 100
drachmae.
216 Envy, Poison, and Death
suffering. And if anyone says anything against me to Asclapiadas, if
[anyone] brings forward [as a witness] against me a woman giving her
coppers.13
The other text was obviously written in similar circumstances of
accusation and denial. The writer appears to be a woman cursing a
man who has accused her of giving pharmaka to her husband:

[ἀνα]τίθημι Δάματρι καὶ Κούραι τὸν κατ’ ἐμο[ῦ]

[ε]ἴπ[α]ντα, ὅτι ἐγὼ τῶι ἐμῶι ἀνδ[ρὶ] çάρμακα ποιῶ· ἀνα[βαῖ]
παρὰ Δάματρα πεπρημένος μετὰ τῶν αὐτοῦ [ἰδίων]
πάντων ἐξαγορεύων, καὶ μὴ τύχῃ εὐειλάτου
[Δ]άματρος καὶ Κούρας μηδὲ τῶν θεῶν τῶν παρὰ Δά[μα]-
τρος, ἐμοὶ δὲ ᾖ{η} ὅσια καὶ ἐλεύθερα ὁμοστεγησάσῃ ἢ ὧι πο[τε]
τρόπωι ἐπιπλεκομένηι· ἀνατίθημι δὲ καὶ τὸν κατ’ ἐ[μοῦ]
γράψαντα ἢ καὶ ἐπιτάξαντα· μὴ τύχοι Δάματρος καὶ
[Κ]όρας μηδὲ θεῶν τῶν παρὰ Δάματρος εὐιλάτων, ἀλλ’ἀ[ν-
αβαῖ μετὰ τῶν ἰδίων πάντων παρὰ [Δ]άματρα πεπρημένος.
__
I dedicate to Demeter and Kore the man who spoke against me that
I made poisons for my husband. May he come to the sanctuary of
Demeter, burning, along with all his people and publicly confess, and
may he meet with mercy neither from Demeter and Kore nor from the
other gods with Demeter. But let it be holy and free for me under the
same roof, whatever dealing [I have with him] at any time. I dedicate
also the man who has written [accusations] against me or directed
another man to accuse me. Do not let him find Demeter or Kore or
the gods with Demeter merciful, but let him burn and come before
Demeter with all his people.14
The two tablets share similar formulae with a third tablet—more
fragmentary, but with some indications that accusations of poisoning
had also prompted it to be written. However, in this case, it appears
that the writer was afraid of being poisoned. The text is extremely
fragmented, but two lines of the text appear to include mention
of an attempted poisoning, possibly with an exotic, overseas concoc-
tion: ll. 14–15, εἴ τι ἢ ἐμοι πεποίκει çάρμ[α]- | [κον] ἢ ποτὸν ἢ
_ _

13
DT 1 (IK I 147); see also Eidinow 2013: 391.
14
DT 4 (IK I 150A1); see also Eidinow 2013: 392.
 Gossip . . . In Private 217
κατάχριστον ἢ ἐπακτὸν [ἢ] [τινι] ἡμῶν (that is, literally ‘if anyone has
made (for use) _against me or one of my family, a drug or spell, a
potion or an ointment or a charm imported from another country’.15
The formulaic similarities suggest a common source: Angelos
Chaniotis suggests that these were ‘angry and frustrated women,
interacting with each other’, and that the similarity of formula indi-
cates that they ‘talked to each other about their concerns’.16 It is an
appealing idea, but needs to be treated with some caution. Their own
words rather suggest that these women may have felt isolated from
their communities and by the gossip about them. It may be relevant to
observe that curses from shared localities and contexts which share
formulae, for example defixiones for the Athenian law courts, which
are likely to have been written by men, are not taken to indicate that
men are either very emotional and/or talking to each other about
their concerns. In fact, quite the opposite: the suggestion has been
made that the process of commissioning these texts did not allow for
an emotional discharge because they were likely to have been written
by an intermediary.17
Perhaps it is more likely that the texts draw on a shared oral tradition,
and/or the same spell-seller. Alternatively, it may be that these texts were
phrased by the priests of the sanctuary as part of a conflict resolution
process. For example, the term pepremenos may indicate a divine punish-
ment (‘burning with fever)’ or the impact of the discovery and publication

15
DT 8; IK I 154. (possibly early first or second centuries BCE): epakton, translated
here as ‘spell’, according to LSJ, s.v., may indicate something imported.
16
Chaniotis 2009: 64. Although Chaniotis (54) warns the reader that our ancient
sources provide us with men’s views on women, he provides (65) a passage of Polybius
concerning Oenanthe (15.29.8–14) to support his argument about the emotional
interaction of women in a temple. But Polybius’ comments elsewhere suggest that
he may not be wholly objective in his view of women’s mental and emotional faculties
(see, e.g., on Teuta 2.4.8 and 2.8.12). Moreover, it seems unlikely that he meant this
episode to be taken as representative of female behaviour: Oenanthe’s behaviour is
outrageous, and the response of the women around her is part of the overheated
tension that will lead up to Agathocles’ overthrow. (The Thesmophorium appears to
provide a focus of stories about outrageous acts by and against Oenanthe: in 15.33.8,
Oenanthe is dragged from the Thesmophorium to the stadium naked on horseback. It
seems that a temple provides a useful setting for describing acts by and against
women, especially those that violate customary norms, e.g. Polyb. 15.27.2–3, in
which Danaë is dragged from the temple of Demeter, and through the streets of
the city, unveiled.)
17
Graf (1997: 146–7) emphasizes the importance of spontaneity, although else-
where (157) he suggests that these texts were thought to offer individuals a way ‘to
master emotionally an otherwise difficult crisis’.
218 Envy, Poison, and Death
of a crime (‘burning with shame’), or it may be an allusion to a
particular ordeal set up by the sanctuary officials as a test of
innocence—a ‘burning by fire or water’.18 It is possible that these
protestations of innocence were made as publicly as the epitaphs
already described above, that is, that these curse tablets were pinned
up and on display, available to be read by any visitor to the temple of
Demeter.19 This would not have been an isolated phenomenon; there
is a curse from Delos that bears some remarkable similarities to these
texts. It is inscribed on a stele in the Sanctuary of the Syrian Gods,
with an introduction in which the writer, one Theagenes, ‘raises his
hands to Helios and the Holy Goddess’ and asks for justice against a
woman to whom he has lent money for her manumission, and who
has not returned it.20

Confessing Guilt
Some of the expectations and assumptions about the process and
result of dedicating a wrongdoer to the gods, in particular the divinely
caused suffering that will afflict them until they come to the sanctu-
ary, is shared with other texts: the so-called confession inscriptions
from Asia Minor, specifically Lydia and Phrygia. These texts, which
date from the first to third centuries CE, appear to have been set up
near sanctuaries in small towns or rural temples, and record an
offence (social or religious) that the individual has committed, and
the divine intervention that followed.21 They were written by indi-
viduals, or their families, and concerned a realization that a misfor-
tune being experienced was related to some offence that had been

18
Chaniotis 2004: 7. Burning with fever: Blümel 1992: 85 (and see Kantzia 1997 =
SEG 47.1291 in support). Burning with shame: Versnel 1999: 154, and burning as an
ordeal: Versnel 1994: 150–4.
19
Newton 1862–3: ii.724.
20
Björck 1938: 30 no. 14.The text ends with a request that ἀξιῶ καὶ δέομαι πάντας
τοὺς θεραπευτὰς βλασçημεῖν αὐτην καθ᾽ὥραν. It has been suggested by Versnel (1999:
141, followed by Salvo 2012: 252–3) that this means ‘all the worshippers (therapeutas
includes those ‘devoted to the goddess, including the sacred personnel of the temple’)
gossip about this woman’; the phrase kath’horan (according to Versnel) should be
translated as ‘at the right time’. However, other uses of the phrase indicate something
that happens early (see Polyb. 1.45.4 and 3.93.6; IGUR 1277), so the phrase may rather
be an encouragement to be prompt.
21
See Petzl 1994, with additional texts noted in Gordon 2004: 1 n. 4, and a list of
more general studies in Chaniotis 2004: 4 n. 10.
 Gossip . . . In Private 219
committed against the gods. According to the texts, a visit to the
sanctuary followed, where instruction was received about how to
make atonement. It is likely that the local priests played some role
in the process of divine instruction, but the nature of their activity is
unclear.22
Again, these confession inscriptions covered a wide range of
offences, but we focus here on one that concerns an accusation of
the use of pharmaka. This histoire curieuse, as Louis Robert described
it, was set up in public by the relatives of a woman called Tatias. It
adds some further detail to our developing picture of the dynamics of
social suspicion that revolved around episodes of misfortune.23 First,
we see the role of gossip in spreading suspicion, leading to the victim
of the gossip (the alleged perpetrator of the crime) creating curses,
which she ‘sets down’ in the temple (ll. 4–13): Ἰουκοῦνδος ἐγένετο ἐν |
διαθέσι μανικῇ καὶ ὑπὸ πάν- | των διεçημίσθη ὡς ὑπὸ | Τατιας τῆς
πενθερᾶς αὐ- | τοῦ çάρμακον αὐτῷ δεδόσ- | θαι, ἡ δὲ Τατιας ἐπέστησεν
| σκῆπτρον καὶ ἀρὰς ἔθηκεν | ἐν τῷ ναῷ ὡς ἱκανοποιοῦ- | σα περὶ τοῦ
πεçημίσθαι αὐ- | τὴν ἐν συνειδήσι τοιαύτῃ (‘Iucundus had gone mad,
and everyone was saying his mother-in-law Tatias had given him a
poison/bewitched him. But Tatias raised her sceptre and set down
curses in the temple, to defend herself against what was being said
about her, although she knew she was guilty of the crime.’)
In several ways, this process appears similar to that described in the
two curses from Knidos discussed above. Tatias is setting up public
curses with a conditional self-punishing clause; the Knidos curses also
seem to have included clauses that asked for punishment for the
curser if what she was claiming was untrue. The erection of the
sceptre, however, can be argued to take this a step further: it seems
likely that it was, or signalled, a ritual indicating the beginning of a

22
Zingerle (1926: esp. 45–6) suggested legal trials, including capital punishment,
but this view has been widely criticized. Although some still argue for a more formal
judicial process (Petzl 1988 and 1994), there is some consensus that priestly inter-
ventions were limited to receiving or witnessing the vows made by different parties
(those offending or offended against), possibly negotiating between them, helping to
identify acts of atonement, and setting up the final texts recording these events. See
Chaniotis 2004, esp. 5–9 and 26–43, and Ricl 1995, and below note 25.
23
Smyrna, second century CE; SEG 4.648; TAM 318. See Gordon 1999: 246–7 and
Versnel 1991: 76, who also discuss TAM 318 and note the similarities with DT 1, and
the dangers of gossip that these texts indicate; Versnel (1999: 134) refers to ‘the idiom
of suspicion’.
220 Envy, Poison, and Death
divine judicial process—a way of alerting the gods, and the surround-
ing community, that justice was being sought.24
The story continues (ll. 14–23): οἱ θεοὶ αὐτὴν ἐποίήσαν ἐν | κολάσει
ἣν οὐ διέçυγεν· ὁ- | μοίως καὶ Σωκράτης ὁ υἱὸς | αὐτῆς παράγων τὴν
ἴσοδον | τὴν ἰς τὸ ἄλσος ἀπάγουσαν | δρέπανον κρατῶν ἀμπελοτό- | μον,
ἐκ τῆς χειρὸς ἔπεσεν | αὐτῷ ἐπὶ τὸν πόδαν καὶ οὕ- | τως μονημέρῳ
κολάσει ἀ- | πηλλάγη. (‘But the gods inflicted punishment on her,
which she did not escape. In like manner, her son Socrates, going by
the entrance of the sacred grove and carrying a pruning knife with a
hook, dropped it from his hand onto his foot, and after only a day
came release from this divine punishment.’)25 Thus, as the account
notes, Tatias’ request in fact came to pass. This tragic course of events,
the inscription reveals, led Tatias’ relatives to the conclusion that
Tatias had been punished by her own curse, and so must have been
guilty.26
This story aligns with, but provides a more complete narrative
than, the previous examples of the social dynamics involved in
these kinds of accusations. We see how the formation of an accus-
ation, a protestation of innocence, the affirmation of guilt, and
appeasement of a god all developed from within the general commu-
nity. As with the curses from the temple of Demeter at Knidos, which
mention the people who have spoken against the writers of these
texts, accusing them of malicious supernatural activities, the confes-
sion inscription highlights the gossip of the community as the motiv-
ation for Tatias’ initial curse. In turn, any resulting public claims of
guilt and innocence were surely not only caused by, but also them-
selves generated, more talk. The text shows that Tatias’ descendants

24
See Petzl 1994: 4, Ricl 1995: 73, Chaniotis 1997: 366, Versnel 2002a: 64–5,
Gordon 2004. It has been argued (Eger 1939: 290) that the sceptre was set up in the
case of unknown offenders and curses laid down if their victims were known, but
Versnel (2002a: 64–5) argues against this.
25
Gordon (1999: 247) has argued that the phrase ‘the gods inflicted punishment
on her, which she did not escape’ describes the workings of a religious court; but,
although the significance of the sequence of events, and the setting up of the
inscription itself may have been brokered by the local priests, it seems unnecessary
to envisage any active power other than that of the divine, or to see this as anything
other than a story of supernatural justice. More recently, the assembly of a larger
collection of evidence has allowed scholars to argue more specifically that although
priests were involved in the process of resolving conflict, it is unlikely that trials took
place (see Ricl 1995: 69, Chaniotis 2004: 6).
26
Robert 1936: 122–3.
 Gossip . . . In Private 221
saw what had happened to her as a demonstration of her guilt.
I would argue that it is likely that the setting down of curses did not
stop the community’s gossip, but exacerbated it, as people reported to
each other what they saw happening and tried to make sense of it. For
Tatias’ relatives, their perception of what had occurred would be
rooted in the shared knowledge and gossip of the community,
which developed a narrative of explanation in response to the
sequence of experiences and events.
Written by both the accused and the accusers, these texts—
epitaphs and curses—seem to reveal the powerful and disruptive
role of gossip within a community, and at a different level from that
of the public arena of the law courts. It has been argued that creating
such inscriptions helped to contain the negative emotions of a com-
munity. Two approaches have been taken. The first views these texts
as offering a process for seeking some experience of justice in a
situation in which civic legal redress is otherwise unachievable.27
This certainly seems likely; nevertheless, at the same time, it is clear
that the type of experience would differ across the diverse texts. The
Lydian confession inscription, for example, suggests some kind of
centralized, semi-formalized process, in which a third party (the
priests of the sanctuary), invested with the authority and power of
the divinity they represented, offered not only a conduit to the god in
question, but also some concrete negotiation and resolution among
those involved. In turn, the curses from Knidos (and the stone from
Delos), submitted to, and perhaps put on display in, the local sanc-
tuary, offered at least a shared space, which formalized both the
presence of the divine, and the scrutiny of the community. It may
also indicate a system, more or less formalized, which helped produce
the texts of the tablets in the first place. Whether this process resulted
in a sense of resolution is unknown.28 And finally the epitaphs, viewed
here as individual cries for justice, seem not to have been supported by
any such system, however informal, by which the authority of the
god—and of the community—could be brought to bear.
Moreover, in terms of an experience of justice, it is not only the
presence of the god or of the community that is more or less formal-
ized in these texts; the identity of the culprit him- or herself is also in
play. For example, the stories related in the confession inscriptions

27
Versnel 2002a: 73 and 37–40, followed by Salvo 2012: 260.
28
See Versnel 2002a and Chaniotis 2004.
222 Envy, Poison, and Death
name the culprit, offence, and punishment; their neat narratives of
cause and effect confirm expectations of divine justice. This contrasts
with the levels of uncertainty evinced in both epitaphs and curses:
some of these texts name a culprit, some do not. This does not
necessarily indicate a lack of knowledge: consider the curse from
Delos, written against a woman to whom Theagenes had lent
money—he certainly knew who she was. And, in a small community,
the activities alluded to in the other texts (gossip, accusations, etc.)
may also have been intended to identify an individual who was widely
suspected to have done these things.29 This suggests that the explan-
ation that these curse texts and their production would have offered
a process for seeking some experience of justice may be further
developed. These texts may have been expressions of suspicions
relating to particular people, and therefore represent an attempt to
get them punished. Alternatively, they may have been written by
people distressed by the situation in which they found themselves—
with no understanding of what caused it. The same is the case with
the epitaphs: their writers may have had their suspicions and been in
search of justice. Alternatively, they may simply have been seeking an
explanation for the mysterious death of a loved one.30
This leads us to examine the second kind of ‘social containment’
that has been suggested, in particular for the curse tablets. This empha-
sizes a sense of emotional release, which seems to draw on implicit
contemporary theories that expressing oneself is a way of seeking
closure.31 This requires some further consideration of the contempor-
ary ideas being applied, which depend on a specific therapeutic setting
in which what is said is explicitly heard and validated—a very different
environment from that under discussion here. It is, of course, possible
that a random event that brought suffering to the target might provide
divine validation; but if not, then what kind of emotional release was
likely? It is also worth bearing in mind that these inscriptions are not
addressed only to the divine. Setting out an account of events so

29
Jordan 1979: 523 n. 5.
30
An aspect that both Graf (2007) and Edmonds (2010) emphasize.
31
e.g. Salvo (2012: 257), who argues for a process in which women’s feelings were
amplified through sharing them with each other, and then focused in concrete action
through the setting-up of the curse tablets; thus, the social function of the display of
emotions in the Knidian prayers ‘was to satisfy and cool strong retaliatory emotions
and to “detoxify” the social interrelationships within the city’.
 Gossip . . . In Private 223
clearly and in public suggests an attempt to redirect an existing shared
narrative—the gossip of the community. These inscriptions, publicly
displaying unresolved suspicions and likely to be read aloud by
members of a community, seem more likely to have become the
stuff of further talk, threads to be spun into substance through
whispers and hearsay. If we then turn our attention to those individ-
uals who were alluded to in these curses, or perhaps, better put, who
feared they were the targets, then how might they react? It seems
likely, from the evidence already discussed, that the suspicion that
one had been cursed would lead one, in turn, to curse . . . And was it
likely then that if one set up a curse, one expected, in turn, to be
cursed?
Daniel Ogden’s marvellous summary of this cycle of experience as
a ‘magical arms race’ also brings to mind the paranoia that accom-
panies the source of that imagery.32 And, indeed, that kind of extreme
emotion also seems to emerge from the sentiments of the epitaphs,
whose writers appear to have imagined people living alongside them
who were prepared to plot and poison them, but whose identity
remained concealed. In the end, rather than containing anxieties,
we can imagine these texts doing precisely than opposite: as well as
expressing the anguished state of than individual who set the text up
in the first place, it seems likely that these vivid, public expressions of
desperation would also heighten the anxiety of other members of the
community. If their fear that they also could become the targets of an
occult attack was exacerbated, it makes it more likely that they, in
turn, might resort to such activities.

32
Ogden 1999: 51. See Pl. Leg. 933a–b for the power of suggestion in this context.
Hendershot (1999) uses evidence from popular culture to illustrate the levels of social
paranoia engendered by the nuclear arms race.
 3.6

Public, Private, . . . and Secret

‘IF ANYONE HAS BOUND ME . . .’

The texts discussed in the previous two sections offer insights into
some of the more overt responses that people might make to the
social threats they perceived. However, there were other, less explicit
reactions, and these included the creation of binding spells that were
similarly inscribed, but were not put on display.1 One example, found
near the banks of the Eridanos in the Kerameikos at Athens, appears
to mention the threat of poison explicitly, with the phrase ‘whoever
gave a pharmakon to Hyacinthus’. We do not know if this Hyacinthus
was the writer of the text or a third person, but this phrase may
indicate that a suspected poisoning provoked the writing of this text.2
Other spells (as I have argued elsewhere) provide evidence for the
risks that other people were perceived to present across a number of
specific areas of life—including the law courts, political, performative,
and commercial activities, as well as erotic relationships. However,
although there have been attempts to assign these spells to particular
categories, and argue that they were in general concerned with com-
petition, a number of those spells that date to the pre-Imperial period
are ambiguous. These include, for example: spells that have been
categorized as concerned with commercial competition, but which
address too many other types of profession, or other areas of life, for
this to be their (only) motive; judicial spells that mysteriously target

1
The quotation that heads this chapter comes from the first line of the binding spell
NGCT 24; Attica, very early fourth century BCE (Jordan 1999), discussed on pp. 66–7.
2
Listed under SGD 14; it is also possible that Hyacinthus was a corpse involved in
the curse ritual. Compare also DT 8, a text from Knidos (possibly early first or second
centuries BCE), discussed on p. 217.
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 225
women among their list of ‘litigants’; and ‘erotic’ spells that also seem
to be concerned with the professional aspects of their victim’s life.3
The ambiguous nature of these spells may signal an environment
in which hostilities were not confined to particular categories of life,
but in which there had been a more general breakdown of social
relations. This prompts a more detailed analysis of what these spells
were intended to achieve. The writing of binding spells was a practice
firmly set in the context of Athenian everyday experience, but it was
not only expressive; it was also creative. As Bruce Kapferer has
argued, we should not regard magical practices simply as represen-
tations of social realities, but foremost as ‘exercises in the construc-
tion and destruction of the psychosocial realities that human beings
live and share’.4 This approach enables us to move away from focus-
ing on the feelings of the spell-writer (and such questions as whether
or not a spell text can express real feeling if it has been commissioned
from a third party).5 Instead, it turns our attention to the way in
which the ritual of cursing was intended to address and reshape
relations between victim and spell-writer.

The Language of Humiliation

One analysis that touches on the relationship created between victim
and spell-writer has been developed by Henk Versnel, who argues
that Schadenfreude or ‘malicious laughter’ underlies the creation of
binding spells in ancient Greek culture. This posits that some binding
spells can be construed as protests against the pain of ridicule, while
others were clearly intended to ensure that their victims would
become a laughing stock, by binding their targets so that they
would be incapacitated and unable to perform their social roles
effectively.6

3 4
See Eidinow 2013a. Kapferer 2003: 302.
5
Spell-writer, see Graf 1997: 146–7.
6
Versnel (1999: 127) was inspired in particular by Campbell’s work (1964),
specifically on the uses of ridicule and mockery as forms of social control in a
community dominated by social values of honour, shame, and competition. Much
work has been done on the role and power of public mockery in ancient society and
there is no question that fear of public mockery played a significant part in the
Athenian value system and is one of the multiple emotions involved in the ‘arms
race’ of binding spells (as described by Ogden 1999: 51).
226 Envy, Poison, and Death
Although use of the term Schadenfreude does need some more
reflection, processes of mockery and laughter are certainly useful for
this analysis, since, as Versnel demonstrates, they are often expressed
through gossip.7 His perhaps most vivid example is the Amorgos
curse (now lost, but a text and translation is provided below), which
he argues was written by a man who felt himself to be ultimately
humilitated, made a fool of by the charming and aptly named Epaph-
roditus, who has encouraged his slaves to flee.8 Versnel argues that
this tablet is prompted by anticipation, or indeed, experience of,
Schadenfreude, because, after all, ‘we must realise that being deserted
by one’s slaves is—especially in the context of a face-to-face society—
both a very public (in the sense of conspicuous) event and a grievous
attack on the victim’s dignity’.9
Side A
Κυρία Δημήτηρ, Βασίλισσα, ἱκέτης σου, προσπίπτω δὲ ὁ δοῦλός σου· τοὺ
(ς) ἐμοὺς | δούλους ὑπεδέξατο, του(ς) κακοδιδασκάλησε, ἐγνωμοδότησε,
συνεβούλευσε, | ὑπενόθευσε, κατέχαρε, ἀνεπτέρωσε ἀγοράσαι, ἐγνωμοδό-
τησε çυγῖν | τις Ἐçαçρόδ[ει]τ[ος], συνεπέθελγε τὸ παιδίσκην αὐτός,
ἵνα, ἐμοῦ μὴ θέ- | λοντος, ἔχειν αὐτὸν γυναῖκα αὐτήν. δι’ἐκήνην τὴν αἰτίαν
δὲ αὐτὴν πεçευ- | γέναι σὺν καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις. Κυρία Δημήτηρ, ἐγὼ ὡ
ταῦτα παθὼν ἔρημος | ἐὼν ἐπί σε καταçεύγω σοῦ εὐγιλάτου τυχεῖν καὶ
ποῖσαί με τοῦ δικαίου τυχεῖν, | ποιήσαις τὸν τοιαῦτά με διαθ[έ]μενον μὴ
στάσιν μὴ βάσιν μηδ(αμ)οῦ ἐμπλησθῆναι | μὴ σώματος μήτε {ο}νοῦ, μὴ
δούλων μὴ παιδισκῶν μὴ δουλεύθοιτο, μὴ ὑπὸ μυ[κρ]- | ῶν μὴ ὑπο

7
Versnel 1999: 136–9. Schadenfreude may be a misleading term to use here, since
recent research has suggested that it is ‘not a public mocking intended to humiliate
someone; it is typically a private enjoyment lacking any element of severe mocking or
humiliation’ (Ben Ze’ev 2014: 88). It does not seem an appropriate description of
situations in which a person enjoys another’s pain and suffering in a situation of
extreme violence and even death (as, for example, Versnel 1999: 151, referring to
damnatio ad bestias, a punishment in which people were thrown to wild animals). We
can compare the story that Socrates tells of Leontius’ son Aglaeon (Resp. 439e–40a),
who does not want to look at the bodies of the executed, but is overcome by desire.
Such an emotion is coherent, but is not Schadenfreude: see Ben Ze’ev (2014: 88), who
argues that ‘we should distinguish between schadenfreude and cruelty as expressed,
for example, in sadism or when the other person experiences great suffering’. See
further in n. 20, on the passive nature of Schadenfreude, which also does not fit
Versnel’s analysis.
8
SGD 60; text Bömer 1963: 992 ff.; tr. Eidinow 2013: 423–4.
9
Versnel 1999: 127–8 (italics in original).
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 227
μεγάλου μὴ ἐπιβαλόμενός τι ἐκτελέ{σε}σαιτο, καταδε{ε}σμὸ(ς) αὐτοῦ |
τὴν οἰκίαν λάβοιτο ἔχ[ο]ι, μὴ παιδὶν κλαύσετο. μὴ τράπεζαν ἱλαρὰν θῦτο.
μὴ κύων | εἱλακτήσαιτο, μὴ ἀλέκτωρ κοκκύσαιτο, σπείρας μὴ θερίσαιτο,
καταντίσας καρποὺς | μὴ ἐπί[στα]ιτο ετεραν(?), μὴ γῆ μὴ θάλασσα
καρπὸν ἐνένκαιτο, μὴ χαρὰν μ[ακ]αρίαν | ἔχ[ο]ιτο, αὐτός τε κα[κ]ῶς
ἀπόλοιτο καὶ τὰ παρ’αὐτοῦ πάντα.

Side B
Κυρία Δημήτηρ, λιτανεύω σε παθὼν ἄδικα, ἐπάκουσον, θεά, καὶ κρῖναι |
τὸ δίκαιον, ἵνα τοὺς τοιαῦτα ἐνθυμουμένους καὶ καταχαίροντε(ς) καὶ
λύπας | ἐπιθε(ῖ)ναι κἀμοὶ καὶ τῇ ἐμῇ γυναικὶ Ἐπικτήσι, καὶ μισοῦσιν
ἡμᾶς ποιῆσαι αὐ- | τοῖς τὰ δινότατα καὶ χαλεπώτερα δινά. Βασίλισσα,
ἐπάκουσον ἡμῖν | παθοῦσι, κολάσαι τοὺς ἡμᾶς τοιούτους ἡδέως βλέποντες.

Side A
Mistress Demeter, O queen, I, your suppliant, throw myself before
you, your servant. A certain Epaphroditus, has enveigled my slaves,
he has taught them evil, he has counselled them, he has hatched
conspiracies, he has corrupted them, he has rejoiced over them, he
has incited them to run about, he has counselled them to run away.
He has bewitched a slave girl, without my permission, so that he can
have her as his. For that reason she fled with the other runaways.
Mistress Demeter, I have suffered these things and, all alone, I run to
you, may you be merciful and help me find justice. May you make this
man who has perpetrated these acts against me find no fulfilment,
neither at rest, nor in motion, neither of the body, nor of the soul, let
him not be served either by slave boys or girls, let him not achieve
anything, whether he takes on something small or great. May a binding
spell seize his household, let no child cry for him and let him not
prepare a gracious table. Let no dog howl, let no rooster crow. When
he sows, let him not reap, if he produces a good harvest, let him not
produce (another?), let neither land nor sea bring forth fruit. Let him
have no delight or bliss. But let him be horribly destroyed and every-
thing with him.
Side B
Mistress Demeter, I, who have suffered injustice, pray to you, hear
me, goddess, and make a just judgement, so that on those who think
such things and rejoice and bring grief on me and on my wife Epictesis,
and hate us, on them you make the most terrible and and painful
horrors. O Queen, listen to us, who suffer, punish those who look
happily on us.
228 Envy, Poison, and Death
Before examining this text, it is worth briefly pausing to consider
whether ancient evidence supports the claim that shame would have
been a first reaction to such a situation. In Xenophon’s Memorabilia,
Diodorus says that he would ask friends and neighbours to help
recover runaway slaves. He also mentions offering a reward—a very
public strategy if this was a shameful event.10 That fear might be a
more appropriate emotion is suggested by the description of neigh-
bours helping to guard neighbours against runaway slaves.11
When we turn to the text itself, we find similar nuancing is
necessary. Side A is squarely aimed at Epaphroditus, but the idea
that the primary motivation behind the writing of the curse was the
Schadenfreude that Epaphroditus was relishing is hard to establish.
Vernsel has translated the lines τοὺ(ς) κακοδιδασκάλησε, ἐγνωμοδό-
τησε, συνεβούλευσε, | ὑπενόθευσε, κατέχαρε, ἀνεπτέρωσε ἀγοράσαι,
ἐγνωμοδότησε çυγῖν as ‘[he] has led them into evil ways, indoctrin-
ated them, advised them, misled them, he rejoiced (in my misery), he
has them wandering round the market place, he persuaded them to
run away’. It seems unlikely that katechare, ‘he rejoiced’, occurring in
the midst of this long list of wrongdoing, should be the only verb that
does not take the object tous, ‘them’. The verb katachairo, ‘I rejoice’,
certainly carries an idea of malicious joy, but the exultation described
is perhaps more accurately translated as the rejoicing of the villain
over his spoils.
The text on Side B may offer some more useful material: it con-
tinues the enraged howl of the spell-writer, and provides a list of types
of people against whom the spell is targeted—the enemies of the spell-
writer and his wife. This includes those who have thought about
hurting them, and those who have found pleasure in plotting against
them, and those who hate them. We are reminded of the paranoid
statements of the epitaph writers described in the previous section,
who felt themselves the victims of secret plots and dirty tricks. But the
key phrase is the final request: κολάσαι τοὺς ἡμᾶς τοιούτους ἡδέως
βλέποντες. Versnel translates this as ‘punish those who rejoice in our
misery’. In fact, the Greek is more restrained than this: it refers to those
who look on what has happened and find it pleasurable. Taken out of
context it might be interpreted as showing that the writer of the spell
text was afraid of Schadenfreude, but if we bear in mind the list of
offences that precedes it, again, it is difficult to identify it as the primary

10
Xen. Mem. 2.10.1–2.
11
Xen. Hiero, 4.3 and Pl. Resp. 578e–579a. See Fisher 1993: 81.
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 229
motivation behind the writing of the spell. In situ, it offers yet another
circumlocution for ‘our enemies’, and depicts one more of a number of
activities that the writer fears from those who are hostile to him. In
sum, the text does not appear to be primarily motivated by fear of the
mockery or Schadenfreude of others.
Evidence of the desire to engender ridicule does appear in a group
of seven spell texts from a cache of twelve found together in the Agora
at Athens in a well ‘sunk into the courtyard of the Poros building’. The
relevant targets across this cache comprise wrestlers (five, with three of
them against a wrestler called Eutychian), a runner, and sets of lovers
(three).12 The repetition of formulae and the handwriting of this group
of texts indicates that they were probably prepared by two or possibly
three persons—perhaps a professional and an apprentice (as David
Jordan has suggested)—and possibly in advance of their specific com-
mission, as the configuration of one text suggests.13
The seven spells relevant to this inquiry include four of the five
spells written against wrestlers (three against a wrestler called Euty-
chian), one against a runner, and two of the erotic type: these all
include a formula asking that the victim aschemonesei, that is, ‘dis-
grace himself ’ (or, in the case of the last type of spell, ‘themselves’).
The formula is both rare and late—the spells date to the mid-third
century CE—and it seems to have been used without much thought,
since it is applied inappropriately in the erotic texts.14 Although the
desire for the victim to fall over and make a fool of himself is certainly
expressed, when it is viewed in context, it becomes apparent that this
is far from the primary aim of these spells. Rather, the overriding
intent of each spell is to prevent the target from functioning at all.
To illustrate this analysis, below is the translation of the first spell

12
SGD 24–35 (Agora inv. 948+949, 950, 952, 953, 955–60, 964, 1000), which
describes the location (Well V; see Jordan 1985: 210–11). (There are further curses
in this collection that share aspects of the relevant formulation, but are unclear, e.g.
33–4; 35 addresses a ghost.)
13
Jordan 1985: 210–11. For the configuration that suggests the name of the target
was added after the text, see SGD 38.
14
Date from context, SGD 24; but cf. Jordan 1985: 212. There is one curse on a pair
of lovers (Agora Inv. No. IL 1000) in which it is asked that the male partner ‘must fall
and disgrace himself ’; Versnel (1999: 150) admits that it is not appropriate to this
context. Agora Inv. No. IL 952 only involves the lovers disgracing themselves; there is
no wish that they fall down. This formula does not appear at all in 948 + 949; among
the spells against wrestlers, it occurs in all three spells against Eutychian (Agora Inv.
Nos 950, 957, and 960) and the one against Petres (Agora Inv. No. 955), but not the
spell targeting Attalos (Agora Inv. No. IL 956).
230 Envy, Poison, and Death
against Eutychian (the text begins with ‘Borphor syllables’, that is, a
magical invocation, and continues):
-babaie, mighty Betpyt, I hand over to you Eutychian, whom Eutychia
bore, that you may chill him and his purposes, and in your dark air also
those with him. Bind in the unilluminated aion of oblivion and chill and
destroy also the wrestling that he is going to do in the . . . this coming
Friday. And if he does wrestle, in order that he may fall and disgrace
himself, Mozoune Alcheine Perpertharona Iaia, I hand over to you
Eutychian, whom Eutychia bore. Mighty Typhon, Kolchoi Tontonon
Seth Sathaoch Ea, Lord Apomx Phriourinx over the blacking out and
chilling of Eutychian, whom Eutychia bore, Kolchoicheilops, let Euty-
chian grow cold and not be strong this coming Friday, but let him be
weak. As these names grow cold, so let Eutychian grow cold, whom
Eutychia bore, whom Aithales promotes.15
The second spell against Eutychian again focuses on making sure
he cannot function—and reinforces this message with some further
phrases:
-babaie, mighty Betpyt, I hand over to you Eutychian, who is going to
wrestle with Secundus, that you may chill Eutychian and his purposes,
and his power, his strength, his wrestling, and in your dark air also those
with him. Bind in the unilluminated aion of oblivion and chill and
destroy also the wrestling of Eutychian, wrestler. If with regard to
Secundus you chill him and do not allow Eutychian to wrestle, in
order than he may fall and disgrace himself, Morzoune Alcheine Per-
pertharona Iaia, I hand over to you Eutychian. Mighty Typhon, Kol-
choicheilops, let Eutychian the wrestler grow cold. As these names grow
cold, so let Eutychian’s name and breath, impulse, charm, knowledge,
reckoning, knowledge grow cold. Let him be deaf, dumb, mindless,
harmless, and not fighting against anyone.16
The desire for the victim to ‘fall and disgrace himself ’ is certainly
one of the aims of the text, but it is far from the only or even the
primary motivation. The spell appears to be intended to cover all
aspects of the situation, just in case the target does manage to wrestle
(or in the case of the runner, to ‘get past the starting line’). Indeed,
some of the other texts make no mention of this aspect at all.17 If we are

15
Agora Inv. No. IL 950 (tr. Jordan 1985: 215).
16
Agora Inv. No. IL 960 (tr. Jordan 1985: 216).
17
Inv. No. IL 956 (tr. Jordan 1985: 218) for the wrestler Attalus: this focuses on the
desire for ‘blacking out and chilling and powerlessness’. It also includes the similia
similibus formula: ‘just as these names grow cold, so too let Attalos’ name and breath,
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 231
looking for a primary motive for these texts, it appears to be that the
victim not be able to compete at all. That he also cut a sorry figure is
sometimes made explicit—but almost only as a last resort—and that he
become an object of mockery is not mentioned. Nor does such a desire,
implicit or explicit, appear in any other binding spell text to my
knowledge.18 Even in those texts that seem to have been written in
response to an injustice or harm already done, where an appetite for
revenge including humiliation might be expected, there is no mention
of such intent. As with the majority of binding spell texts, they restrict
themselves to binding, that is, inhibiting the functioning of their
enemies, and reducing specific, contextual risks, in the person of mortal
enemies.19 It appears that rather than the desire to humiliate the target
being explicit or a primary goal of a binding spell, it was perhaps taken as
one possible result of the inability to function that it might inflict.20
In conclusion, it is hard to locate in these texts the desire for
malicious pleasure that has been claimed. It does not seem to be
present either as a source of motivation in writing the spells, or in
descriptions of their desired outcome. If we pause and consider the
nature of Schadenfreude, this absence makes sense. If this emotion
arises from observing the misfortunes of others—which have come
about as a result of contingency or happenstance21—actually writing
a binding spell to bring about a situation of misfortune (in order then
to enjoy it) seems to be a different matter. The situation requires an
initial emotion to motivate the writing of the spell in the first place,
and this raises the question of the nature of that emotion.22

impulse, knowledge, reckoning grow cold’. There is no mention of what should

happen if he does wrestle.
18
As Versnel admits (1999: 129 and 156). He appears to suggest that this is
because they display ‘mere lists of names and simple instructions to bind the oppon-
ent’, but there are a number of more elaborate formulas, and derision or humiliation
does not appear among them.
19
See Eidinow 2013a.
20
But fear could work just as well: Eur. Alcmene F 88a (Collard and Cropp 2008).
Among the few times that curses are explicitly mentioned in ancient literature, people are
using them to explain or excuse a particular misfortune or failure; see Brown 1970: 25 and
Dover 1974: 133–56. Magical explanations might coexist with more spiteful ones: Cic.
Brut. 217 and Libanius Or. 1.43, 62, and 245–9, discussed in more detail on pp. 158–61.
21
As Charles Stewart points out (pers. corresp.). Ben Ze’ev (2014: 83–4) observes
that Schadenfreude is typically seen as a passive emotion. Van Dijk and Ouwerkerk
(2014) note the ways in which scholars have sought to identify different kinds of
Schadenfreude (6), ‘ranging from the mildly to the seriously morally negative joy’.
22
See van de Ven 2014 on the relationship between phthonos and Schadenfreude,
discussed in more detail on pp. 250–3.
232 Envy, Poison, and Death
As even the few spells we have looked at above suggest, these texts
are concerned with causing the immobility of the victim, at least, and
sometimes their suffering as well, frequently using a metaphor of
binding. Recalling the discussions earlier in this book about the
imagery of emotion talk, I suggest here that an examination of the
formulae of the texts of these binding spells may be helpful. Focusing
on the figurative language relating to binding, which is particularly
common in Attic binding spells, may help us understand how these
activities were understood to address and reshape the relations of
victim and spell-writer. They can offer some insight into not only
what those who wrote or used these spells may have imagined that
they were doing to their victims, but also the origins of the perceived
power of this practice.

Deducing Intention
In later Greek and many Roman tablets, the apparent intention of
binding spells appears to become markedly more violent, and spell-
writers may even set their sights on murder—asking not just that
their victims be bound, but that they be wholly destroyed.23 This
vicious approach is, most scholars have come to agree, in contrast to
the desires generally expressed in earlier spells, which may be agon-
istic, but are not intended to be fatal or even cause suffering.24 These
deductions about the purpose of these earlier spells tend to draw on

23
DT 93a (Brigantium, first century CE), DT 129 (Arezzo, mid-second century CE).
Apparently rare early examples of the death wish may appear in SGD 89 (Sicily,
second century BCE); DTA 75 (Athens, fourth century BCE); and DT 92 (Black Sea, third
century BCE), although, as with most curse tablets, the texts are fragmentary and some
of the readings speculative.
24
e.g. Graf (1997: 157) argues that they were ‘a means to master emotionally an
otherwise difficult crisis’; Versnel (1998: 232) has recognized this aspect in some
tablets, designating them as ‘prayers for justice’, whose writers explicitly express their
intention to punish the target for a wrongdoing. In these texts, body parts may be
listed in detail, or not mentioned at all, but the passion of the writer is manifest, and
the victim is clearly intended to suffer: ‘there is a strong and often explicit link between
the wish that a person shall suffer, struck by an affliction or even by death, on the one
hand, and the enumeration of body parts or the mention of the body as a whole, on
the other’. This he contrasts with texts in which (Versnel 1998: 222) ‘all these formulas
can be qualified as functional and instrumental in that they can be understood as
instruments to bind—that is to restrain—competitors without the explicit, and per-
haps even implicit, aim of physically hurting or tormenting them’. There is some
overlap between the two categories: Versnel has identified spells that occupy a middle
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 233
some later literary evidence that offers few details, for example, the
report of Galen, who mocks the claims of ritual experts who targeted
their opponents in court with binding spells.25 Neveretheless, other
anecdotes hint at different outcomes from the use of binding spells,
including the affliction of severe pain and disablement, or even, albeit
indirectly, the potential to cause death (as an example, consider the
account of the suffering of Libanius, already described).26
Unfortunately, there is little equivalent literary material that can
help us to clarify the motivations of those who wrote the earlier

ground (so-called ‘border-area curses’) which involve elements of both these formu-
lae. These tend not only to ask the god for help, offering some kind of justification for
the appeal, but also to dedicate the stolen item to the deity’s charge in the case of
stolen goods, or to deliver the wrongdoer to the gods. A full description of their
characteristics can be found in Versnel 1991: 64–8, updated in Versnel 2010: 280.
Nevertheless, he has recently drawn attention to the way in which (in accordance with
his analysis) the listing of body parts in some of these ‘border-area’ curses suggests
that they should be labelled as prayers for justice rather than binding spells, and this
category should be enlarged (some prayers for justice may not be ‘written out in full’;
see ibid.: 337). (For elements of supplicatory prayer, see ibid.: 332–3; the importance
of lists of body parts, ibid.: 339–40; and reducing the number of ‘border-area’ cases,
ibid.: 340.) Erotic binding spells may also be considered as occupying some kind of
middle ground, since they tend to list a victim’s body in detail, and have the clear
intention of invoking torment. In his earlier work, Versnel suggests that this is because
lovers feel a ‘“legitimate” indignation’ about their situation, similar to the emotions of
those seeking revenge for harm done, although they are in fact seeking not a negative
but a positive final result. Versnel (1998: 264): ‘In both types of texts, judicial prayers
and erotic magic, torture and punishment unequivocally presuppose that the practi-
tioners are wrong, aggrieved, deprived of something they feel entitled to.’ In a footnote
(Versnel 1998: 264 n. 131), he qualifies this as not being concerned with ‘offences not
tolerated by society’ but rather as a ‘personal “affront”, demonstrably assessed as an
act of injustice by the lover’ (see also Versnel 2010: 280 n. 21). I am not concerned
here with the category of ‘prayers for justice’: there is no doubt that it has been a
tremendous advance in the study of curses, and has been adopted productively by
many prominent scholars (Versnel 2010: 276). Rather, my aim is to explore the
language of binding spells, specifically the metaphor of binding itself.
25
e.g. Gal. XII p. 251 Kühn; see Faraone 1991: 15 and related discussion.
26
Libanius Or. 1.245–9, as discussed on pp. 158–61 Graf (1997: 164) offers another
example from the Account of the Miracles of Saints Cyrus and John. Sophronius
describes the binding of a man called Theophilus, who is afflicted with dreadful
pains, until a dream of Saints Cyrus and John reveals to him how to undo the binding
spell that has been cast upon him (Graf 1997: 165; also discussed in Gager 1992: 121).
Although Graf provides a number of later examples that suggest that curses were
intended to do more harm than disempower their victim, he does not accept this as
part of the ‘ideology of ritual binding’ (Graf 1997: 142). This is on the grounds, it
seems, that it does not fit the five categories of binding established by modern
scholarship and that ‘the mechanism [of binding] is not so direct.’
234 Envy, Poison, and Death
tablets. However, in the texts of the spells themselves there may be
some clues. There, we find a number of formulae that indicate that
the writers of binding spells intended slightly more than simply to
neutralize their opponent. Different so-called similia similibus for-
mulae are included, aimed at transferring to the victim of a spell the
characteristics of some object or action mentioned in it (e.g. that the
victim be like the corpse with which the victim is buried, or the lead
on which the spell is written, or even resembling the way the curse
tablet itself has been set apart).27 Some spell texts are inscribed with
scrambled letters, or written backwards, which is then mentioned in
the spell as the desired effect that the spell will have on the target or
on his or her thoughts, words, or deeds.28 The figurines found with
some spells seem to be included for a similar purpose: these little dolls
are bound and sometimes twisted; some appear in miniature cof-
fins.29 These early spells do not mention pain or death for the target;
nevertheless, it is hard not to connect these representations—the
twisted body, the boxed figures—with such an outcome, and with
the impression that the writers intended to cause their targets pain.
So, is this what was meant by ‘binding’?

Analysing Metaphor
Most scholars are now agreed that binding is a metaphor, and use of
the verb ‘to bind’ indicates that we are entering a realm of analogical
thinking.30 But what is the analogy here? Fritz Graf argues that
binding is a description of a larger sequence of actions that involved
piercing or nailing a ritual object, and which aimed, more or less
explicitly, to transfer to the victim the characteristics of these or some
of these actions.31 So, for example, on DT 49 we find the instruction ‘I
bind, I make disappear, I bury, I nail down’, and on SGD 48, similarly,
‘I bind, I bury, I make disappear among men’, while other tablets

27
Examples of each are found on DT 68 (Attica, fourth century BCE), DTA 105
(Attica, third century BCE), and DT 85 (Boiotia, third/second century BCE),
respectively.
28
DTA 65 (Attica, fourth/third century BCE).
29
SGD 9 (Athens, early fourth century BCE).
30
Kagarow (1929: 9) suggested that the verb ‘to bind’ must once have referred to a
real act of binding, and had since become symbolic.
31
Graf 1997: 135ff.
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 235
include mention of burying their victim.32 It does not appear that
these are included as a summary of ritual actions; they were more
likely part of a common formula.
As to why this metaphorical language may have been perceived to
work, Graf turns to Stanley Tambiah’s theory of performative power:
in civic oaths that include magical acts, the ritual act gives a different
intensity that uses ‘other codes than just the linguistic one’.33 The
participants themselves are caught by the strangeness of the meta-
phor, which, as he puts it, ‘they must first decipher’. However, when
he talks of curse tablets he gives this explanation a slightly different
twist, arguing that the magical acts that gave rise to binding spells
were performed alone, and this isolation crucially shaped the nature
and content of the formulae. In this context, he states, the action of
binding the tablet, or piercing a tablet or a doll, was done by the
magician as a record of his action: ‘a lasting condensation of his
words’.34 And rather than the metaphor working as a code, the spell
made ‘explicit what the sorcerer wishes’. He attributes the origins of
this practice to similar practices in Mesopotamia—but makes no
comment about how and why they may have transferred to Greece.35
Henk Versnel also stresses the performative power of analogical
language in magical spells: under a larger category heading of analogy,
he lists comparison, simile, metaphor, and historiolae.36 He notes of all
these techniques that ‘for some reason or other’ they are powerful in
themselves, and ‘if incorporated into the formula impart their power,
in other words persuasive force’.37 But quite how this power is created
or how these analogies are selected, he admits is puzzling: ‘In this
process we often observe that the logical relevance of a particular
comparison is not the decisive consideration.’38 Elsewhere, he focuses
on the listing of body parts, maintaining that anatomical curses draw
on ideas of punishment. However, he observes that ‘although we are
well informed about the different procedures and instruments of
ancient torture, such as whip, wheel, rack, and corporal punishment
in general, lists of body parts being tortured in a judicial context are
conspicuously lacking in our evidence’.39 Instead, like Graf, he turns to

32
For example, on curses, DT 49 (Athens, c.300 BCE), SGD 170.
33
Graf 1997: 209, drawing on Tambiah 1985: 18–21.
34 35 36
Graf 1997: 212. Ibid.: 170. Versnel 2002b: 122.
37 38
Ibid. Ibid.: 129 (italics in original).
39
Versnel 1998: 245.
236 Envy, Poison, and Death
Near Eastern influences to explain the origin of this approach, and
to explain its power argues that ‘these forms of expressive intensifica-
tion . . . are intended to exert an irresistible rhetorical pressure upon the
addressee’.40
In an initial approach to this material, Derek Collins rejected the
use of metaphor and the idea of ‘sympathetic magic’ in favour of a
more literal approach to binding: ‘the binding of a figurine is the
binding of its agency, not a symbolic or persuasive act’.41 However, in
later work, he has tried again to explain the metaphor of binding and
its links to the listing of body parts via the appearance of binding in
ancient Greek myth. He argues that ‘binding’ is a ‘metaphorical
precedent in Greek religious thinking’ that acquires its power because
of its use by the gods in (chiefly) Homeric epic: they cannot kill each
other, but they can constrain each other, and other creatures. On this
basis, Collins asserts that binding is associated with divine power, and
this precedent leads to mortals asking gods to bind their mortal
enemies in binding spells.42 However, this approach also raises
numerous questions: for example, there is no reference to these
precedents in the binding spells themselves; moreover, the binding
of the gods in these stories includes descriptions of ropes and
shackles, and the spells do not.43 Finally, the obsessive focus on
particular body parts found in binding spells does not seem to fit
the cursory mention of hands and feet in the literary texts he cites.
Although the idea of the body part representing the whole person

40
Ibid.: 224–5. The list should be thought of as resembling a ‘camera’s “panning-
shot”’ and its effect on our attention, such that it enables ‘the period of the practi-
tioner’s projective fixation upon the victim . . . [which] can be extended as long as
possible’. This idea introduces intriguing questions about the cognitive experience of
binding—although a culturally more appropriate metaphor, in terms of the gaze,
might be the evil eye—but it remains unclear how and why the metaphor of binding
relates to the use of body parts.
41
Collins 2003: 43; see Riess 2012: 200. Riess himself sets binding spells in the
context of ‘curses’ more generally, linking the agos of a broken conditional curse to the
binding produced through a spell, through the fact that both could be undone by a
ritual (205): ‘Very clearly, defixiones and loimos, and, consequently, arai, belong
together in the imagination of ancient believers.’ Despite his own acknowledgement
of the differences (203), this approach appears to conflate these two genres.
42
Collins 2008: 67–9.
43
Collins (ibid.: 67) notes mention of a rope in a later spell, but is cautious about
attributing that explicit form of binding to earlier spells. Elsewhere in his argument
(ibid.: 80), he observes that binding is ‘a realization, through magic, of Greek notions
of disability and impairment’ and inverts ‘cultural notions of health’.
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 237
makes this connection clearer, it leaves unanswered why these specific
body parts should be singled out for inclusion.44

The Imagery of Punishment

From myth to Near Eastern influence to torture—these suggestions
illustrate the difficulty of identifying the origins of this binding
metaphor. But perhaps the answer lies closer to home: the realm of
civic punishment. In Athens the most common verb for magically
binding a victim seems, from current evidence, to have been built
around verbs of binding (-deo), often the verb katadeo.45 In turn, both
katadeo and deo were used to describe being physically tied up, and
can indicate being attached to something, being detained, and being
sent to prison (deo is the commoner).46 That the two ideas were
related is illustrated very clearly in some binding spell formulae:

44
Ibid.: 16.
45
See Wunsch DTA, p. v (he finds it sixty times in his collection) and p. iii for
discussion of the meaning of binding; and see Kagarow 1929: 25–8 for discussion of
the two categories of types of verb—those to do with binding and those to do with
registering the victim.
46
Riess (2012: 214) also argues that binding spells had more violent implications
than have previously been suggested by scholars and makes this connection between
binding in the spells and physical binding, arguing that katadeo was used as a
metaphor of Athenian origin for the binding of those awaiting execution. However,
he does not examine the language of the spells beyond this verb form, nor does he
offer examination of texts about civic punishment. Rather he argues that it indicates
that ‘the victim was to be bound metaphorically to face trial in front of the gods’
and that ‘the gods defined what καταδῶ meant in each individual case and mobilized
the dead to impose all kinds of adverse conditions on the intended targets of spells’
(see also p. 229, where he emphasizes the role of the gods in determining ‘if and how
καταδῶ was supposed to harm the victim in each individual situation’). This is a vivid
image, but, unfortunately, it is not supported by the curse texts. The role that he
allocates the dead (to do the killing) does not align with the explicitly acknowledged
immobility of the dead in certain spells (see e.g. DT 43, and compare Eidinow 2013a:
152–4). It is difficult to see active dead in the spells he cites (DTA 99, 100, 102, 103)
even indirectly; however, he argues (213 n. 243) that the Greeks did not have clear-cut
ideas of the dead.
Examples of deo used to mean ‘to bind’: Hom. Il. 5.385–91, Od. 22.189–90; Hes. Theog.
652 and 718; Hdt. 6.75.2; Aesch. Pers. 744–5; Soph. Aj. 108, 240; Eur. Cyc. 234; and
Andromeda frr. 122 and 128 (Collard and Cropp 2008); Xen. Hell. 3.3.11; Andoc. 1.45;
Ar. Eq. 367 and 1048, Ran. 619, Thesm. 942, 1019, 1022, and 1031; Pl. Leg. 882b, 855c;
Arist. Pol. 1306b; Herod. 5.10, 18 (with desmos in Lys. 6.21). See further Halm-Tisserant
(1998: 72). Examples of katadeo: Hdt. 3.143.2 and 5.72.4, Thuc. 8.15, Pl. Ti. 70e.
238 Envy, Poison, and Death
DTA 45, for example, asserts: ‘I bind Euandrus, in a lead binding’
(Εὔανδρον [κ]ατα- | δῶ ἐν δεσμ[ῶι] μο- | λυβ[δίν]ωι).47
One striking aspect of binding spell formulae is the lists of parts of the
body. Can this be explained by reference to ancient types of detention?
The Greeks themselves do not seem to have been very precise in their
terms or descriptions for different mechanisms of physical binding as a
civic punishment. Indeed, it is often hard to tell which specific type of
device or approach is being referred to in the sources. Among them are
the kuphon (‘pillory’), kloios (‘collar’), podokakke (‘stocks’), tumpanon
(defined by LSJ as ‘name of some instrument of torture of execution’;
this term also means ‘cudgel’, and so may indicate that a form of beating
was involved).48 The most common, but perhaps most confusing, was
the xulon. This term for ‘an instrument of punishment’, is translated
literally as ‘the wood’, but could indicate a ‘wooden collar’, the ‘stocks’,
or a pentesuringon xulon, which combined collar and stocks ‘with holes
for the neck, arms, and legs’; it might also refer to a ‘gallows’ or a ‘stake
on which criminals were impaled’.49
This ambiguity may be explained as part of the Athenian ‘unwilling-
ness verbally to go into too much detail in the face of death, and
specifically perhaps the death of citizens’.50 Nevertheless, both texts
and images suggest that there was a wide range of punishments to
draw on, with a variety of configurations of restraint. Victims could
be seated or standing;51 the hands, arms, legs, or feet, or throat of the
prisoner might be bound. For example, if a prisoner was wearing a kloios

47
But, I would argue, for the purposes of this argument an exact parallel of this sort
is not necessary: in the curse texts there are other rarer verbs such as katadesmeuo or
katecho for example, and they too emphasize the restraining of the victim.
48
But this may be undermined by the lexical approach to apotumpanismos, also
once thought to be related to tumpanon, meaning cudgel, and now shown to be more
like crucifixion, although there were variations over time and place (see pp. 240–2,
and Gernet 1968: 302–3 and 307).
49
Definitions from LSJ. kloios: Xen. Hell. 3.3.11, Eur. Cyc. 235; kuphon: Ar. Plut.
476 and 606, Arist. Pol. 1306b; xulon: Ar. Eq. 367, 705, and 1048, Nub. 592, Lys. 680;
Andoc. 1.45; Dem. 18.129 and 24.105; Hdt. 6.75.2 and 9.37.2 (Spartan examples: King
Cleomenes and Hegesistratus, the seer, share a topos of self-mutilation while
imprisoned in a xulon—Cleomenes dies and Hegesistratus escapes); podokakke: Lys.
10.16; Dem. 24.105; tetremenon xulon: Ar. Lys. 680; pentesuringon xulon: Ar. Eq. 1048;
see discussion in Hunter (1994: 179–81). See also discussion by Allen (2003: 200),
where apotumpanismos and other forms of being ‘fastened’ are discussed.
50
Todd 2000b: 36–7.
51
See in particular Pl. Leg. 855c, [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 45.1, where the man sent for
apotumpanismos is already seated in preparation for his punishment, and, as Gernet
(1968: 295) points out, depictions of punishment of Prometheus.
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 239
or bound to a kuphon, then perhaps his legs and hands would be left
free, and must be bound separately; in turn, there were also specific
devices for binding the feet, including the podokakke. This might well
explain why, in binding spells, we find lists of the different parts of the
body as separate targets, with, in particular, a repeated use of ‘hands’
and ‘feet’, especially in Attic binding spells; and why we find curse
figurines with their hands and feet bound.52
In addition, it does not seem far-fetched to suggest that the binding
of the tongue, which is also common in Attic binding spells, could be
a reference to the desired effects of a collar or neckband: the writers of
these spells wanted to prevent their victims from talking. The descrip-
tion of Hercules’ suffering in Euripides’ Hercules Furens (1092) sug-
gests that one side effect of the collar was to lose one’s breath—part of
the process of asphyxiation that led to death; Hercules also mentions
his limbs going numb (ll. 1395–8). And the idea is also supported
by the scene in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousae (1002–6) where
Mnesilochus complains about the excruciating pain in the throat
that being ‘fastened to the plank’ causes—which the Scythian Archer
set to watch over him ‘inadvertently’ tightens. It is something of a
theme of this episode in the play that Mnesilochus just keeps talking:
the Scythian makes this explicit when he asks (1110) how apotanou-
mene lalais, that is, literally, ‘even though you are about to die, you are
babbling’.53 It seems plausible that part of the joke here is the contrast
between the punishment Mnesilochus is undergoing (a binding of his
neck that is meant to stop his tongue) and his constant flow of chatter.
This raises questions about the likely targets of such texts. The
binding of a victim’s tongue is often taken as a sign that a spell text is
likely to have been written for a judicial context, and to relate specifically
to making speeches or giving evidence in court.54 But perhaps a broader

52
More obscurely perhaps, are the occasional references to the binding of the
genitals found, albeit rarely, in some tablets (DTA 77, SGD 57, and SGD 58). Some
images from pottery may depict prisoners or slaves who have some kind of object or
weight fastened to their penis (fragment of kantharos from Boiotia, now Leipzig,
Antikenmuseum der Universität T 326, 575–550 BCE: see Seeberg 1967: pl. IIIb and
Halm-Tisserant 1998: pl. 11, C70; and image on a skyphos from Boiotia, now
Antikenmuseum, Basle 51, c.420 BCE: see Seeberg 1967: 28, pl. 5 and Halm-
Tisserant 1998: pl. 11, C71). Could these refer to some judicial binding practices—
or even popular punishments?
53
On the Scythian’s mangled Greek as a source of humour, see Friedrich 1918,
Brixhe 1988, and Willi 2003: ch. 7.
54
Ogden 1999: 27.
240 Envy, Poison, and Death
scope is applicable. Although the binding of the tongue does occur in a
number of tablets with judicial terminology, of the sixty-seven binding
spells identified as judicial by Faraone, only seventeen bind the tongue
of a victim. In comparison, of twenty-five tablets categorized as ‘com-
mercial’, eight include mention of a tongue.55 Moreover, a number of
the judicial binding spells that mention the tongues of their victims also
include the names of women who were unlikely to be giving evidence in
court.56 It may be that these are examples of the loose use of repetitive
formulae, usually applied to male targets—but there is a further possi-
bility. We have seen above the potency of gossip, both male and female;
perhaps these texts were aimed at preventing their targets from indul-
ging in such nasty, idle talk.57
To turn to the intentions of the writers of binding spells: physically
binding a victim would not normally have drawn blood. Moreover,
some texts refer explicitly to a spell-binding being loosed, and these
forms of punishment could, of course, be released. But some of those
texts also refer to the spell not being loosed, some until they gain their
purpose, another until their victim goes down into Hades.58 How
does the metaphor of civic punishment align with spells that have
more explicitly darker ambitions, and do they help us to understand
the intentions of those who leave this aspect implicit?
In the realm of civic punishment, it is clear that this type of physical
binding could have far more deleterious effects than simply immobil-
izing a target, and, indeed, that some forms were used as a mode of
bloodless execution.59 And here I turn to a suggestion first made by
A. Keramopoullos in 1923, that the idea of binding that we find in
binding spells was linked to the punishment of apotumpanismos.60

55
Of these, only the early Sicilian curse tablets (SGD 95, 99, 100, and 108) target
the tongue specifically. Of the others, the tongue is mentioned in concert with other
particular parts of the target—often the spirit, sometimes the hands, feet, perhaps the
body: see DTA 65, 66, 68, 79, 88, 94, 95, 105, and 107; DT 49, 51, 87. Commercial:
DTA 68, 74, 75, 84, 86, 87, and 97; DT 52; and SGD 75. See Eidinow 2013a: 195–209.
56
SGD 46 and DT 50; see also DTA 68, 89; and DT 49, 50, and 87.
57
DT 50: where the formula ‘tongue and deeds’ probably stands in for the more
common ‘words and deeds’.
58
Not being loosed: SGD 18 and SGD 170; Hades: DT 50.
59
It seems to have been important to the Athenians to select bloodless forms of
peace-time execution: Allen 2003: 213; Todd 1997: 3.
60
References for descriptions of apotumpanismos: Lys. 13.56, 67, and 68; Dem.
8.61, 9.61, 10.63, 19.137, and 21.104–5; [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 45.1, Arist. Rhet. 1382b and
1385a. An alternative term appears to have been sanis, ‘the plank’: Hdt. 7.33.1 and
9.120.4; Plut. Per. 28; and Ar. Thesm. 930–46, 1001–2, and 1012; see also Ar. Eq. 367
and 705, Pl. Resp. 362 and Dem. 21.105.
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 241
For a long time thought to be a punishment that involved being
clubbed to death, apotumpanismos was reimagined by modern
scholars as a kind of crucifixion, after the discovery at the site of
ancient Phaleron of a common grave containing seventeen bodies,
each wearing an iron collar and with clamps on their hands and
feet.61 Keramopoullos argued that this was evidence for a form of
capital punishment, in which the victim was tied to a pole using five
clamps, and left to die, but with his hands by his sides, and this must
be, in fact, apotumpanismos.62 He went on to provide a compelling
case for this approach, using detailed philological and literary evi-
dence.63 In terms of the dates of this punishment, Keramopoullos
noted that the graves in Phaleron were pre-Solonic in date, and
argued for the introduction of apotumpanismos by Draco, and evi-
dence for its continuing use to the end of the fourth century.64
In arguing its relationship to binding spells, he drew attention first to
the similarities between apotumpanismos and the physical arrangement
of certain of the magical figurines, but went on to argue for a connection
to the larger idea of binding.65 The later date of the evidence for binding
spells (in comparison to that for physical binding) was not an issue, he
suggested: earlier binding spells were written on perishable materials or
simply sung as incantations.66 The potentially powerful effect that this
punishment might have had on the ancient Athenian imagination may
be suggested by the many representations of it on the Athenian stage
between 460 and 411, including Aeschylus’ Prometheus Vinctus,
Sophocles’ lost Andromeda, Euripides’ Hercules Furens and lost
Andromeda, and Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae. It has also been

61
See Kourouniotis 1911 and Pelekidis 1916, and discussion in Keramopoullos
1923: 19–20. Since then, other mass graves have been found; some of the individuals
have fetters, others not (see Papadopoulos et al. 2007). Allen (2003: 234) suggests that
the podokakke was an early form of apotumpanismos.
62
Different versions or postures of apotumpanismos appear to have been possible;
see below.
63
Keramopoullos 1923, and see discussion in Gernet 1968: 291 and 305.
64
Keramopoullos 1923: 84, with which Gernet concurs (1968: 306). In terms of
evidence, Keramopoullos (1923, 60–1) argued that the depiction of Prometheus in
Aeschylus differs from that in Hesiod, because of the influence of apotumpanismos,
although others have argued that the punishment is recalled by Hesiod’s description
of Prometheus as chained around a pillar.
65
Keramopoullos 1923: 67.
66
See ibid.: 67–75 for the motivations underlying the creation of curse tablets, and
108 for discussion of dates. Faraone (1985) discusses the humnos desmios of the
Erinyes, Aesch. Eum. 306.
242 Envy, Poison, and Death
argued that the frequently found imagery of a seated Prometheus may
reflect a version of punishment for this crime, for which there is also
literary evidence.67
If the realm of physical punishment, specifically apotumpanismos,
is the source of this key metaphor of binding in these spells, then this
gives a different perspective on their use, and may offer further insight
into the mindset of the spell-makers, in particular, their implicit
attitudes towards the victim. First, asking for someone to be bound
in a binding spell could indicate wishing them something far nastier
than, for example, temporary immobility for the sake of competition.
It could actually be a request for that victim to be punished in such a
way that he or she could end up suffocating to death. This would also
explain the ways in which some of those texts make explicit their
desire for the binding spell to be loosed—or not. Second, those who
used these spells wanted their victims to suffer a devastating loss of
status: Stephen Todd emphasizes the public aspect of the resulting
penalty, and its implications, arguing that it involved ‘a humiliating
expulsion from the community’.68 Third, and building on this last
point, physical ‘binding’ may have been associated with a particular
type of crime. Louis Gernet has argued that apotumpanismos was
originally used to punish certain kakourgoi, a category that included
highway robbers, slave traders, wall piercers, purse-snatchers, and
thieves, the last in particular, a class of target very familiar from a
number of binding spells.69 He goes on to suggest that apotumpanis-
mos was likely to be used on those discovered red-handed, who were
then executed without trial (by means of apagoge). This was a sort of
private, personally directed justice, but, importantly, still receiving the
support and approval of the community—therefore, a sort of ‘popular

67
Visual evidence: Attic proto-Attic krater, Nettus Painter, 600 BCE, now National
Museum, Athens, 16384; see Halm-Tisserant (1998: pl. 25, E6a); cup, Arcesilas
Painter, 570–555 BCE, now Vatican Museum, 16592; see Halm-Tisserant (1998: pl.
26, E12). Literary evidence: Pl. Laws 855c, [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 45.1, and possibly Hes.
Theog. 522; see also discussion in Gernet 1968: 292 and 295.
68
Coleman 1990; Todd (2000b: 45–7) has emphasized the public aspect of apo-
tumpanismos (‘crucifixion’), and its implications, arguing that it involved ‘a humili-
ating expulsion from the community’; and see the example of Mnesilochus in the
Thesmophoriazusae (943–4), who is told that part of his punishment is the humili-
ation of being exposed to public view.
69
Gernet 1968: esp. 314–25; [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 52.1; see also Isoc. 15.90, Antiph. 5.9,
Lys. 10.10, 13.67 and 68.
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 243
justice’.70 But can we explain the creation of such a metaphor in the
ancient Athenian imagination?

Mapping to Blending
Initial ideas about how metaphor ‘works’ are clearly described by
George Lakoff, who in collaboration with Mark Johnson, developed
Conceptual Metaphor Theory. This posited that metaphor is at the
heart of human thought processes, not just in particular settings, but
rather ‘our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both
think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature’.71 Metaphors
allow us to understand one domain of experience in terms of another:
so time is money; argument is war; love is a journey. On the whole,
this theory posits, we understand a less ordered and more abstract
conceptual domain by means of structures from a more ordered and
more experientially concrete domain.72
Importantly, these metaphors are ‘primarily a matter of thought
and action and only derivatively a matter of language’, that is, they
develop from the way we interact with our physical and cultural
environments.73 So, for example, we understand an experience such
as ‘love’ primarily in terms of concepts for other natural kinds of
experience, which emerge from our interactions with each other and
with the world. We might use metaphors of journeying to describe
the experience of being in love (‘Look how far we’ve come’, ‘It’s been a
long bumpy road’, ‘This relationship isn’t going anywhere’, ‘We’ll
have to go our separate ways’) or we might think of love in terms of an
exchange (‘What am I getting out of this?’, ‘She invested a lot in this
relationship’, ‘I’m putting more into this than you are!’, ‘Giving and
receiving love’).74 Working in conjunction with these conceptual
metaphors are image schemata: these are what Beate Hampe has
called ‘the “embodied” anchors of the entire conceptual system’.75

70
Gernet (1968; esp. 318–22; quotation from 321) discusses the development of
apagoge originating from private vengeance, but which (320) ‘se renforce de la
collaboration ou de l’assistance d’une collectivité’.
71
Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 5.
72
For discussion of the term ‘domain’, see Langacker 1987: 147.
73 74
Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 153. Kövecses 2010: 23.
75
Hampe 2005: 2. Johnson (1987: xiv and xvi) describes an image schema as ‘a
recurring dynamic pattern of our perceptual interactions and motor programs that
gives coherence and structure to our experience’.
244 Envy, Poison, and Death
These are rooted in, and develop from, our own experience of our
bodies moving through space, interacting with, and manipulating
objects. A basic list was developed by Lakoff and Johnson, but it has
continued to evolve: it includes for example, CONTAINMENT/CON-
TAINER, PATH/SOURCE–PATH–GOAL, ENABLEMENT, BLOCK-
AGE, RESTRAINING, CONTACT, SCALE.76 Further research has
developed and refined these analytical tools: identifying, for example,
different schematic systems, which draw on our sensory-motor experi-
ences, such as force dynamics.77 Metaphors can then extend the use of
image schemata into abstract or imaginative thinking.
Conceptual metaphor theory well describes this common cognitive
process of understanding one thing in terms of another. Nevertheless,
it has its limits: it allows only for the mapping of associations in one
direction, and fundamentally it seeks to describe a stable knowledge
system that is stored in long-term memory, rather than being able to
account for emergent concepts that are constructed during discourse.78
In reality, as Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier have described, we
often draw on more than one source when we create concepts. They
offer a helpful example, involving the popular image of the hooded and
skeletal Grim Reaper, which is created by the bringing together or
‘blending’ of a number of ‘mental spaces’: these are a space with an
individual dying; one with a prototypical human killer; one relating to
harvest; and, finally, one that describes the personification of Death
itself (a so-called causal tautology, in which a particular kind of event is
caused by an abstract causal element—Death causes dying).79
The blend allows the bringing together of metonymic elements from
each of these four spaces to create a final concept. The skeleton is
metonymically related to death, its outcome; this, in turn, is brought
together with the scythe, which stands metonymically for a reaper and
for the manner of killing.80 Through these associations, the idea of the

76
See Johnson 1987: 126, and Lakoff 1987: 267.
77 78
See Talmy 2000: ch. 7 (409–70). Evans and Green 2006: 437.
79
The blend for Death, the Grim Reaper is described by Turner and Fauconnier
(1995), as well as Fauconnier and Turner (1998) and (2002), to which this discussion
is indebted. Fauconnier and Turner (1998: 138) describe mental spaces as ‘small
conceptual packets constructed as we think and talk for purposes of local understand-
ing and action’.
80
Some of the metonymic associations only appear in a single input space. This is
true for example of the cowl that the Reaper wears, which is part of a priest’s habit.
Although priests themselves do not feature in an input space, they are metonymically
associated with humans dying, since they are often present at deaths and burials, and
concerned with the hereafter (see Fauconnier and Turner 1998: 161–2, 170 and 177).
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 245
Human Death Causal Tautology

manner Empty Cause

CAUSE
specific event element of
of dying class of events

Killer

Reaper Death
Killer
reaper Death-in-General
CAUSE
CAUSE
CAUSE dying
being cut down event of dying
kills
reaps by specific means
plant victim person who dies

Death, the Grim Reaper

Reaping/Killing/Causing Death

Plant/Victim/Person who dies

Fig. 1. Conceptual Blend of ‘Death, the Grim Reaper’ (Source: Fauconnier

and Turner 2002: 292).
Copyright 2002 Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending
and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, a member of the
Perseus Books Group.

cause of deaths, death-in-general, becomes ‘Death the killer’; through

association with the scythe, it becomes ‘a reaper of men’. The Grim
Reaper thus emerges from the blend itself, rather than simply mapping
from one object to another, as with metaphor theory. Fauconnier and
Turner describe this process in a diagram reproduced here (Figure 1).
The creation of the Grim Reaper describes how, instead of simply
mapping concepts from one conceptual domain to another, we actu-
ally ‘blend’ selected elements from different conceptual domains. This
is part of our everyday cognitive apparatus: the structure or elements
from different domains are assembled in different configurations to
create a new structure, and they produce new meaning. This assembly
occurs by means of three constitutive processes. The first, composition,
246 Envy, Poison, and Death
is the bringing together of elements from separate inputs: an example
from the instance of the Grim Reaper involves the plants, the person
who dies, and the victim being brought together to create the target of
the metaphor. The second, completion, is the unconscious and effort-
less recruitment of background knowledge in the form of ‘frames’ or
schematic knowledge that organizes meaning. The Grim Reaper blend
invokes the schematic frame of death, that is, the unavoidability and
authority of death and dying, and this has its counterpart in the
agricultural frame of harvesting; these draw in part on image schemata,
for example, COMPULSION, REMOVAL, COLLECTION, and
CYCLE. Finally, the third process, elaboration is the online processing
that produces the structure unique to the particular blend, introducing
further ideas and emotions specific to the blend.81
Conceptual blending may offer new insight into the cognitive
creation of a ritual space, as Jesper Sørensen has argued. In a powerful
analysis of ritual, he argues that ‘religious and magical rituals involve
a blended space consisting of elements projected from input spaces
themselves created by elements from two general domains—sacred
and profane—and structured by a ritual frame’.82 Within the ritual
space that this creates, further instances of conceptual blending take
place. In transformative or manipulative magic, the aim of these
blends is to effect a change in the state of affairs in one domain,
either through the transfer of qualities from one domain to another,
or via the manipulation of elements in another domain.83

Blending and Binding

On the basis of this analysis, I suggest that ancient Greek binding spells
are examples of manipulative magic, and that we may see some of them

81
See Fauconnier and Turner 1998: 144 and 179–81 for discussion of these
processes, and the role of image schemata.
82
Sørensen 2007: 63. Sacred is carefully defined as involving (53) ‘special beings
violating ordinary ontological assumptions, special and privileged discursive reper-
toires, and special modes of interaction’; while ‘profane’ refers to the everyday world
(65). In this model, religious concepts gain their potency through their connection with
the profane. The efficacy of a ritual will emerge from a particular element with ‘magical
agency’. The agency emerges from the operation of the blend, the connections it creates
between the sacred and profane domains, and the elements within them.
83
Ibid.: 96–7.
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 247
as explicitly involving a process of conceptual blending that engages
specific image schemata and schematic frames. The blending may have
been expressed through language or action, or both (the relationship
between action and language in the creation of many of these binding
spells is uncertain); the emphasis may have varied not only across
practitioners and practice, but even between individual spells.
In this blending process, the structure from one input space is
imposed on the elements projected from the other input space, con-
figuring the relation between the elements in the final blend.84 The first
input space is the configuration of elements that are involved in the
creation of the ritual act: we can call it the Ritual space. It comprises
one person who hates or fears another and seeks to acquire supernat-
ural support to restrain the risk their enemy poses. The other input
space is that of a civic Courtroom during the imposition of state-
sanctioned penalties. The structure of this second domain is imposed
on elements from the first domain, configuring their relationship and
creating the blend of the target domain, the binding spell.
The composition process of the blend maps diverse elements from
these two domains: the subject of the Ritual space is functionally related
to the litigant of the Courtroom space, and this invests the spell-writer
with power; the personal enemy maps onto the criminal of the Court-
room space, creating a legitimate victim in the blend; and, the jurors of
the Courtroom space may find their counterpart in those gods and
supernatural figures that a spell-writer frequently invoked as wit-
nesses.85 Finally, the (often repeated) appeal to ‘bind’ in the language
of the spell finds its closer counterpart in the state-sanctioned penalties
of the judicial process. This creates in the final blend an authoritative
means of punishment. In some spells, the use of further similes, such as
those that make comparisons between the target of the spell and lead,
on which it is inscribed, will introduce further metaphoric associations
that emphasize the effects of that punishment; use of materials such as
lead tablets, even lead figurines, reinforce the connections already
established by this conceptual blend, and strengthen the metaphoric
connection with a metonymic connection.
This can be illustrated in a diagram that shows the two input
spaces, a generic space (which shows the general instances, and the

84
Ibid.: 125; this is a one-sided topology network; see Fauconnier and Turner 1998.
85
Eidinow (2013a: 151–4) gives examples of different formulae, involving super-
natural personnel in different roles.
248 Envy, Poison, and Death
Generic Space
a: agent (CONTAINER/SOURCE)
b: instrument (COMPULSION)
c: supporters (ENABLEMENT)
d: target (OBJECT)
a

b
Input Space 1:
c Input Space 2:
Ritual
Courtroom
a1: Petitioner d
a1 a2 a2: Litigant
b1: Binding
b1 b2 b2: Penalty
c1: Divinity
c1 c2 c1: Jurors
d1: Personal
enemy d2: Criminal
d1 d2

a3
b3
c3
d3

The Blend:
A Generic Binding Spell
a3: Spell-writer/commissioner, allied with
supernatural powers
b3 and c3: Legitimately and authoritatively
imposing penalty
d3: Wrongdoer

Generic mapping:
Mapping:
Projection:

Fig. 2. Conceptual Blend of a Generic Binding Spell.

related image schemata that enable connections between the elements

of the two input spaces) and the final blend (see Figure 2).86 This
shows how image schemata in this blend also facilitate connections
between the different elements of the input spaces by setting up
counterpart connections: litigant and spell-writer can be linked by
their role as a CONTAINER—of the authority of the court, on the
one hand, and of the knowledge of the ritual, on the other; they are
also the SOURCE of the process. The image schema COMPULSION
facilitates the connection between the language of binding and the
penalty imposed in a judicial process: one offers a legal and social

86
For description of generic space, see Fauconnier and Turner 1998: 143.
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 249
force, the other a metaphysical force. Divinity and jurors are both
supporters, their authority providing ENABLEMENT to the two
respective processes. Finally, the personal enemy and the criminal
are connected as OBJECTS of these two processes.
As a result of the conceptual blend, the desired manipulation of the
spell is more than simply the imposition of a metaphor of binding.
Rather, it takes place within a new structure in which the spell-writer
or commissioner becomes an agent of justice, allied with the power
and authority of a supernatural agent, and instituting a process of
legitimate punishment against a deserving target—a source of poten-
tial wrongdoing. This blend of civic and supernatural authorities
lends the binding spell a strong sense of legitimacy. The use of the
Courtroom as the input space for the spell draws our attention to the
ways in which binding spells could be viewed, through a particular
perspective, as instruments of civic order.
The blend brings together a supernatural power, appealed to by an
individual, with the power of the state.87 Within the blend, the author-
ity of divinity becomes the individual’s claim on divine help to bind his
or her enemies. But state and divinity are also connected outside the
blending space, since the power of the god supports the power of the
state to punish. Meanwhile, the blend supports the spell-writer’s case,
by simultaneously hiding and highlighting aspects of his situation. On
the one hand, it draws attention to a sense of having been wronged in
some way, since it invokes a legitimate form of punishment; on the
other hand, by evoking the moment of civic judgement, it conceals the
idea that there could be any kind of plea in defence.
The idea that this was the mental space that supported the idiom of
binding may be supported by the development of further judicial
imagery in other contexts. The language of Attic binding spells
encompasses verbs of dedicating or consigning victims, and more
explicit use of judicial language is found in spells from outside Attica.
For example, a curse from Alexandria in Egypt uses the language of
orders for arrest and delivery (as recorded in the documentary
papyri) to present its target to the chthonic powers.88

87
Gernet’s analysis of the penalty of apotumpanismos in a context of apagoge as
allowing a free hand to personal acts of cruelty (1968: 329: ‘les cruautés légitimes ont le
champ libre’) shows how this profane domain is particularly appropriate for this role
in the conceptual blend of the binding spell.
88
Suppl. Mag. 2, no. 54 (Alexandria, Egypt, third century CE): ll. 21–2, comm.
‘similar wording is used in orders for arrest and delivery in the documentary papyri,
250 Envy, Poison, and Death
In the Attic binding spells, whether or not we accept the cognitive
process described above, the use of this metaphor provides a powerful
image of punishment that disables the victim, precludes the possibil-
ity that they will continue to pose a risk to the spell-writer, and
conveys potent associations of a range of suffering, from physical
pain to extreme humiliation. If this is the basis for the metaphor on
which binding spells draw, then it supports the idea that these are a
personal, direct mode of punitive action against one’s enemies; it also
introduces the additional notion that Athenians may have associated
the binding spell with processes of punishment that were legitimized
by their fellow citizens, and by the state.

The Emotions of Binding

If these are the connotations of the use of the metaphor of binding in
these spell texts, then it is hard to see how this kind of occult attack can
be seen as having been generated simply by the desire to generate, or
from fear of, Schadenfreude. Rather, these spells, in general, seem to
have been intended to remove the risk that their target posed, while the
imagery invokes a legitimate and painful punishment or execution.89
We have seen what kind of emotion an ancient Greek assumed might
fit such a context. It is named explicitly in the binding spell NGCT 24 as
phthonos. This does not mean that Schadenfreude is totally unrelated. It
has been argued that ‘phthonos includes the idea of malice or Schaden-
freude’. However, closer examination of the major passage used to
support this statement—a discussion of comic laughter (both on and
off stage) in Plato’s Philebus—does not sustain this assertion.90 The

e.g. P. Hib. I 54, 20–2, (TM 8204). See also SGD 150 (Cyrenaica, third century BCE),
DT 69 (Attica, undated), NGCT 89. This analysis may help to explain something of
the conceptual relationship between binding spells and prayers for justice. This is not
an attempt to dissolve the boundaries between these categories, but to suggest how
they may have been conceptually associated for those writing these spells (manifest in
the border-area curses that Versnel has identified).
89
In that case, they seem designed to neutralize situations that might generate such
misfortunes, pre-empting the potential for our enemies to enjoy them by attacking
them first.
90
See Sanders 2014: 102, who also cites Frede 1993: 56, n. 2; Wood 2007: 78;
Halliwell 2008: 301 and Munteanu 2011: 95–7 as describing this as Schadenfreude. Of
these, Munteanu does unquestioningly assume that phthonos and Schadenfreude are
the same. However, the other authors offer more nuanced readings: Frede (1993: 56 n.
2) is actually explaining the decision to translate phthonos as ‘malice’ rather than envy;
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 251
paidikos phthonos (‘playful phthonos’) that Socrates evokes is an idio-
syncratic version of this emotion that, in fact, does not translate easily
as ‘envy’, or ‘malice’, or ‘Schadenfreude’.91
In order to persuade us of his interpretation, Socrates elides a
number of aspects of what are quite different contexts. By assuming
that we must feel some resentment when we laugh at others—
whatever the context—he persuades us that the experience of watch-
ing a comic performance is equivalent to that of participation in daily
life. Our attitude to characters on stage is assumed to be the same as
that towards, first, our neighbours, and then our friends.92 The result
is that the ‘playful phthonos’ we feel towards those on stage is grad-
ually transmuted to the phthonos of the social sphere, which, as we
have seen, is scarcely playful.
For this to work, however, Socrates achieves two further elisions.
The first makes phthonos and the enjoyment of the ridicule of others
appear to be virtually the same thing: Socrates says, ‘But certainly
we see the envious man rejoicing in the misfortunes of his neigh-
bours’, and similarly, later on he asks, ‘Did we not say that pleasure
in the misfortunes of friends was caused by envy?’93 However,
although in each case we can see that phthonos may lead to expres-
sions of ridicule, in neither case is it necessary for them to be
equivalent.94 But it is easy to be misled by this into thinking that they

at lii, she also describes how such laughter ‘presupposes at least some kind of inherent
malice’, which suggesting that she sees the two as separate emotions/states. Similarly,
Wood (2007: 78 n. 3), although he raises the possibility of translating phthonos as
Schadenfreude, distinguishes the difference between Schadenfreude, envy, and malice,
and ends his observations with ‘malice is a more appropriate translation’; Halliwell
states that the connection between laughter and phthonos ‘posits a kind of mild
Schadenfreude’, again, suggesting that the two emotions are distinct.
91
I challenge the use of Schadenfreude here, as I have previously in this section
(p. 226), on the grounds that the modern analyses of Schadenfreude argue that it does
not comprise public mocking.
92
Pl. Phil. 48a (comedies); 48b (neighbours); 49d (friends). Delcomminette (2006:
445) observes how this elision allows Socrates to discuss a kind of phthonos (and
resulting ridicule) that offers no real risk to those who indulge in it.
93
Pl. Phil. 48b and 50a, respectively (tr. Fowler 1925). As Cerasuolo (1980: 16)
observes, Socrates appears to be dealing with epichairekakia (as defined by Aristotle;
see discussion p. 75).
94
Modern research into the emotions makes specific links between envy and
Schadenfreude, arguing that envy can be an important antecedent of Schadenfreude
(see, for example, Van Dijk et al. 2006 and van de Ven 2014).
252 Envy, Poison, and Death
must be the same emotion, and this is because of the second, and
perhaps more important, elision: Socrates’ curious description of the
nature of phthonos itself.
Socrates creates a version of phthonos that is unlike any we have
come across so far.95 In the case of comic laughter, the ridicule and
laughter that Socrates describes as evidence for phthonos is provoked,
not by the target’s possession of some aspect of fortune that we do not
want them to have, but by the target’s acknowledged lack of self-
understanding of his own faults. The dialogue then turns from ridi-
culing the weak on stage to a discussion of the phthonos we feel
towards our friends—and this also is rooted in the idea that our
friends are deluding themselves. It is difficult to understand how
this can be perceived to be the phthonos that we have seen operating
across our other sources, which is a response to the good fortune of
others, not to their mistaken belief that they are fortunate.96 Socrates’
discussion of comedic phthonos has transformed it into something
quite pleasant, even therapeutic, in nature.97 It bears little resemblance

95
Sanders (2014: 102) cites three further passages, which he says ‘show phthonos
encompassing a malicious pleasure’: Pl. Lach. 184c1–4, where those who claim
excellence in fighting must really excel, because otherwise they will be mocked; Pl.
Phdr. 240a5–6, where a lover is envious of his boys when they have property but
rejoices when they lose it; and Dem. 9.54, where Demosthenes cannot safely identify
phthonos as the emotion that prompts the Athenians to urge Philip’s ‘henchmen’ to
speak and then laugh at them.
However, although these episodes demonstrate that feeling phthonos may, in
different ways, lead to an emotion that looks in some ways like Schadenfreude, none
of them indicates that the two emotions are identical. The Demosthenes passage
perhaps most clearly separates phthonos from ridicule, since the orator can only make
a possible connection between the two (see Halliwell 2008: 301 n. 93). The emotional
processes described in the other two passages, although more complex, lead to similar
conclusions: in the Laches, phthonos is felt towards those we feel have something we
want—and it is only when we discover that they do not have it that we feel we can
ridicule them; while in the Phaedrus the lover feels phthonos that his beloved might
have independence, and then rejoices when he does not—but this is an expression of
relief, not ridicule. Halliwell (2008: 301) offers examples of situations where phthonos
at someone’s success leads to laughter at their undoing: these include Lys. 3.9, Arist.
Rhet. 1387a1–3; examples where phthonos seems connected with ad hominem ridicule
include Dem. 9.54, Alexis fr. 52 K-A, Ar. Thesm. 146.
96
Pl. Phil. 49d–e; the conflation of misfortunes and self-deception is made clear in
50a: Socrates declares that ‘when we laugh at the ridiculous qualities of our friends, we
mix pleasure with pain, since we mix it with envy; for we have agreed all along that
envy is a pain of the soul, and that laughter is a pleasure; yet these two are present at
the same time on such occasions’.
97
Socrates provides ‘a prescriptive (and not descriptive) notion of the “laughable”’,
as Prauscello (2014: 199) has observed.
 Public, Private, . . . and Secret 253
to the vicious emotion that we have seen elsewhere, in which the verbal
expression of phthonos is far more extensive, far more poisonous, far
more dangerous than Socrates allows.
To return full circle, then, to the discussion with which we began, it
seems unlikely that Schadenfreude (either fear of it or the desire to
generate it) is an adequate description of the kind of emotion that
motivated the writing of binding spells. Instead, the emotion of
phthonos seems a far more appropriate candidate. Not only is it
named as playing this role in a spell text, but the analysis of the
previous sections reveals how well it participates in the nexus of likely
social dynamics in play. Phthonos was an emotion that was aimed at
others within one’s social network who had enjoyed or might enjoy
good fortune. As we have seen, it generated, and was generated by,
gossip and abuse. Similarly, binding spells were intricately bound into
social networks of hostility and suspicion; they were created to
restrain those whose success or potential achievements were per-
ceived as threatening. Their creation was likely to have been one of
the responses to, and provocations of, gossip, and the result was itself
a form of abuse.
The roles of phthonos and gossip in binding spells draw our
attention back to the metaphorical associations between binding
spells and judicial activity. The analysis created by the conceptual
blend above highlights a further important parallel. It suggests that,
although binding spells may have been motivated by dark emotions,
such as phthonos, they would not necessarily have been written or
commissioned with a sense of shame, as we might expect. Drawing on
ideas of civic punishment, the blend transforms the spell’s victim into
a deserving target; it illuminates the psychology of the aggressor, who
sees himself as a victim. And this, in turn, aligns with a sentiment
made explicit in fourth-century forensic rhetoric—that feeling phtho-
nos is not only understandable, but also in some situations justified,
and should even be encouraged.
 3.7

From Gossip to Action

We have explored poisonous words and words about poisons, and

evidence for the links between these two, across public, private, and secret
arenas. We return to the mechanics underpinning these activities, and
Merry’s three-stage process of gossip: circulation, formation of meaning
(not necessarily consensus), and action.1 Our case studies have revealed
some of the ways in which these first two stages occurred, albeit in diverse
ways—and how they might lead to the third stage, action.
Curse tablets, vengeful epitaphs, and binding spells are all fodder
for gossip, and these texts suggest how gossip played a key role in
leading a community to interpret events, and allocate blame and
responsibility. Reading this evidence, we enter a world of half-hidden
hatreds and fears, whispered suspicions, and anonymized accusa-
tions, all generated by, and helping to generate, what Georg Simmel,
in his analysis of the power of secrecy, called ‘the possibility of a
second world’, one in which powerful mortal emotions interacted
with supernatural powers to create desperate and terrible scenarios.2
Among scholars of ancient Greek magic, discussion about whether
or not the practice of binding spells is secret has largely revolved
around the question of whether or not it was illegal.3 There is little
evidence to suggest that it was, but the argument already presented
concerning the final intention of these spells may offer some reasons
why this form of occult attack appears to have been little mentioned.
The desire to cause this kind of suffering, perhaps possible death, to

1
Merry 1997: 54–69.
2
Secrecy secures, as Simmel (1906: 462) puts it, ‘the possibility of a second world
alongside of the obvious world, and the latter is most strenuously affected by the
former’.
3
For details of the discussion, see Eidinow 2013a: 297 n. 69.
 From Gossip to Action 255
an opponent, was not something to publicize, even if one felt it was
justified. But does this mean these activities were ‘secret’? Even if they
were never directly talked about, these texts and the emotions that
prompted them would have been hard to conceal: plenty of people
were involved. There were those caught up in the relationships of
hatred and hurt that prompted the creation of these spells in the first
place; perhaps a professional spell-writer or other experts; and finally
friends and neighbours who would have spread information about
the situation, the actions taken, and any resulting effects.
The result would have been not so much a situation of secrecy, but
rather what we might call ‘secretism’, borrowing the term from Paul
Johnson’s analysis of the role of secrecy in Brazilian Candomblé.4
This comprises ‘the active milling, polishing and promotion of
secrets’, in which secrecy does not so much conceal as advertise:
viewed in this way, secrecy becomes a kind of ‘flirtation’, revelling
in the ‘unspoken exchange between exhibition and voyeurism’.5 We
have seen this process at work in the techniques of the forensic
orators as they hint at, are apparently shocked by, or refuse to disclose
information about their opponents. We see evidence for it again in
the social conflicts that can be glimpsed in the curse tablets, epitaphs,
and binding spells. Secrets as secretism are intimately linked to social
structures of gossip, each giving the other not only momentum, but
also meaning.6
Thus, ‘secretism’ could be said to be an important part of the
efficacy of these texts—although not necessarily in terms of individ-
ual validation or social containment (as others have argued).7 Rather,
such a social process could have helped to shape and reinforce
existing community values. Simmel argued that a ‘secret’ acquires
its greatest power, its meaning, in the moment of revelation.8 That
moment unveils a ‘second world’ of feelings and actions that was, to
begin with, never suspected. Glimpsing it reshapes understanding of
the world we see around us, both re-explaining past events and
adjusting future expectations. This idea of secrecy and revelation
may also help to explain how and why gossip, which plays a key
role in ‘secretism’, is one of the processes by which communities at

4
Simmel 1906: 486; see discussion in Johnson 2002: 3.
5 6
Johnson 2002: 3. Ibid.: 4.
7 8
See pp. 221–3. Simmel 1906: 465–6.
256 Envy, Poison, and Death
all levels of society establish how to interpret and then act on specific
events.9
A social network analysis can help to clarify these processes fur-
ther. The evidence considered in this study illustrates the dynamics of
a dense social network, that is, where everyone is directly connected
to everyone else.10 This kind of network is understood to improve
information flow, but it also allows for more efficient dissemination
of social expectations, with closer monitoring and pressure to con-
form and cooperate with the normative expectations of the net-
work.11 Individuals will tend to share information that is consistent
with the flow of conversation—and likely to gain them approval.12
They will select from their available material to find a story that
‘echoes’ the tenor of the existing discussion or dispositions that
have been displayed.13 This process leads to the reinforcement of

9
See discussion in section 3.2, p. 176. Marjorie Harness Goodwin’s study of the
interactions of children on a street (Maple Street) in Philadelphia in the 1970s
provides a vivid example. She notes (1990: 286): ‘the particular way in which talk is
structured creates participation frameworks: an entire field of action including both
interrelated occasion-specific identities and forms of talk; a speaker may transform the
social order of the moment by invoking a different speech activity’. She offers an
analysis of a particular phase of gossip among the girls she studied—the so-called ‘he-
said-she-said’ argument strategy, in which accusations are framed as something said
originally by someone else (thus allowing both sides to deny direct responsibility for
their part in the confrontation). The resulting dispute is much more complex and
long-running than the typically two-party strategies, used, for example, by the boys
she studied, e.g. (p. 195) Annette: ‘and Arthur said that you said that I was showin’ off
just because I had that blouse on’. Goodwin (1990: 190ff.) examines how a particular
type of gossip dispute can shape the social organization of a group, going through a
series of recognizable stages, and paralleling Turner’s formulation of ‘social drama’
(citing Turner 1980: 150–1). We can compare studies of community policing in the
US that have established how local knowledge of individuals, their behaviours, and
their reputation all play a part in enforcing laws, sentencing decisions, and disposition
recommendations (see Merry 1997: 68–9).
10
Merry (1997: 59–62) distinguishes between small-scale and complex societies, in
order to examine how gossip leads to action at these different levels. On the signifi-
cance of the density from a network analysis perspective, see Foster and Rosnow 2006:
170. The effect of third-parties on dyadic relationships within such networks is
explored by Burt 2001 (see also Coleman 1988 and 1990: esp. 283–6, and Putnam
et al. 1994: 174–5).
11
Foster and Rosnow 2006: 170, citing also Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) for work on
the dissemination of social expectations through denser gossip networks. Ellickson
(1991: 57) reports that some individuals use gossip intentionally to enforce social
control.
12
Burt 2001: 40.
13
See ibid., esp. 41–2; he argues that this occurs because of an individual’s sense of
etiquette; while Sobel (2001: 79) highlights the individual’s self-interest.
 From Gossip to Action 257
predispositions; and, if the echo is repeated, as is probable in a closed,
dense network, and gets ‘louder’, it is likely to push predispositions to
their extremes.
In the context of this study, this analysis is useful for thinking about
how and why local gossip might come to generate a legal charge; that is,
how the first two stages of our three-stage process of gossip may lead to
the third—action. But at the same time, of course, we have to bear in
mind that this process was not automatic. A model of this type can
illustrate a generic pattern of activity, but the contextual details are
crucial. For that reason, it is useful to pause here and consider an
example where gossip failed to find purchase in the Athenian law courts.
The ‘case of Nicodemus’ is mentioned again and again across a number
of legal speeches over a period of roughly twenty years. However, despite
apparent attempts to turn these accounts into something more serious,
they remained at the level of gossip.14 As far as we know, the basic facts are
as follows: some time after 348 BCE, a man called Nicodemus, from the
deme of Aphidna in Athens, was horribly murdered, his eyes gouged out,
and his tongue cut off.15 He had been a supporter of Meidias and Eubulus,
enemies of Demosthenes, and been part of a group, formally led by
Euctemon, who had tried to convict Demosthenes of deserting from the
campaign by Athens against Euboea in 348 BCE.16 The story was put about
that Demosthenes had, apparently, bought Nicodemus off.17 After his
death, a young man called Aristarchus, a friend of Demosthenes, was
found guilty of the crime and went into exile. But this was not the end of it.

14
The story will resurface centuries later, in Athenaeus, in a convoluted form,
relating how Demosthenes, once, when he was drunk, because of his feelings for
Aristarchus, insulted Nicodemus and struck out both his eyes (according to Idome-
neus FGrH 338 F 12 ap. Ath. 13.592–3). Fisher (2001 ad §170) suggests that this may
indicate that the killing was thought to have taken place at a drunken party, and could
at least suggest mixed motives (sexual as well as political). Worthington (1992: 180)
argues for political motives only and discounts this evidence. It could be argued that
this case offers a study of the relationship between rumour and gossip (as defined by
Difonzo and Bordia 2007). In particular, it is noticeable that while his accusers tried to
elevate the allegations against Demosthenes to rumours (unverified information, used
to make sense of events), the story retained its character as gossip (that is, lacking
urgency and largely concerned with details about Demosthenes’ private life).
15
Aeschin. 1.172.
16
Dem. 21.103–4 and Aeschin. 2.148. Demosthenes argues (103) that Meidias was
behind this prosecution, planning it after his attack on him in the theatre in 348/7;
Demosthenes returned to serve as choregos (responsible for funding a dramatic or
lyric chorus) at the Great Dionysia.
17
Aeschin. 2.148.
258 Envy, Poison, and Death
It appears that Meidias regarded Demosthenes as responsible for
the murder—and we hear this from Demosthenes himself.18 In his
case against Meidias, which must have occurred soon after these
events (347/6), and which concerned quite different matters, Demos-
thenes relates how his opponent ‘went round the Agora and ventured
to spread impious and atrocious statements about me to the effect
that I was the author of the deed’. When this failed, he goes on,
Meidias tried to persuade the relatives of the dead man (who were
prosecuting Aristarchus) to accuse Demosthenes of the crime.19
Demosthenes emphasizes how Meidias continued to socialize with
Aristarchus: he pictures Meidias in Aristarchus’ house, putting his
hand in his, treating him as a friend, just the day after denouncing
him in the Council Chamber.20 Of course, in relating such a vivid
picture, Demosthenes was working hard to distance himself from the
crime of which Aristarchus was being accused and for which he was
eventually found guilty. But the case continued to haunt Demosthenes.
In 346 BCE, Aeschines was prosecuted by Timarchus and Demos-
thenes for his role in Athens’ negotiations with Philip; in defence,
some time between late summer 346 and spring 345, Aeschines
prosecuted Timarchus . . . and the Aristarchus story resurfaced.21 In
that speech, Aeschines tells us that Aristarchus was one of a number
of fatherless young men whose relationship with Demosthenes fitted
a particular pattern; nowadays we might describe it as ‘grooming’.
Aristarchus, apparently, was vulnerable: his father was dead, his
mother unable to manage, and he himself was mentally unstable.22
The household was quite wealthy: Aristarchus is said to have given
Demosthenes three talents. Aeschines relates how Demosthenes pre-
tended to become the boy’s lover—and fed his ambition.23 Although
Aeschines is quite vivid in his description of the growing friendship
between the two, he is nonetheless quite careful in his insinuations
that Demosthenes was involved in plotting murder. Nevertheless, it is
hard to miss his meaning, particularly when he underlines the link

18
Dem. 21.102–22; and see MacDowell 1990: 325–44.
19 20
Dem. 21.104–5 (tr. Vince 1935). Dem. 21.116–19.
21
Fisher 2001: 2–20: Aeschines 1, which was given some time between late
summer 346 and spring 345, and Aeschines 2, in 343 BCE.
22 23
Unstable: Aeschin. 1.171. Lover: Aeschin. 1.171.
 From Gossip to Action 259
between the cutting out of Nicodemus’ tongue and his ‘tendency to
speak out freely, trusting in the laws and in you’.24
The introduction of this material into the case has been called
irrelevant, but it illustrates the deployment of gossip in the law courts
as discussed in this study.25 By introducing what seems to have been
current gossip about Demosthenes himself, Aeschines reinforces his
arguments about Timarchus’ corrupt lifestyle, transforming the
accusations he is making against an individual into an indictment
of both Timarchus and Demosthenes—and he is successful. More-
over, without turning this into an outright accusation, Aeschines’
account of these events makes clear the threat he poses to Demos-
thenes. By the time Aeschines presents On the Embassy (343 BCE) his
accusations against Demosthenes are stated more baldly: ‘you saved
yourself by buying off the man who indicted you, Nicodemus of
Aphidna, whom afterward you helped Aristarchus to destroy’.26
Although he is still careful not to deny that Aristarchus was the
main protagonist, he nevertheless argues that Demosthenes should
not enter the marketplace because he has been polluted—presumably
through association with the murderer.
Finally, twenty years later, we see the same story return, in the case
against Demosthenes brought by Dinarchus.27 Demosthenes was one
of a number of men being prosecuted for taking bribes from
Harpalus—and a team of ten prosecutors spoke against him.28 Rather
than providing any evidence for the charge, the case turned on a
thorough presentation of Demosthenes’ character as corrupt, venal,
and deceitful. The case and context were obviously more extensive
and complex than this one particular charge—the Athenians were, for
example, incensed by Demosthenes’ handling of the city’s relation-
ship with Alexander and the Exiles’ Decree, but it is worth noting that

24
Aeschin. 1.172 (tr. Adams 1919). The punishment of cutting out the tongue of
those whose speech somehow betrays their culture is found in other times and places,
from heretics in medieval France (Pettegree 2005: 60) to traitors among the modern
Mafia (Hess 1998: 114). Could the cutting out of Nicodemus’ tongue be an example of
a more violent version of binding the tongue of an enemy who was and who
threatened to be talking against you?
25
Carey (2000: 22): ‘an irrelevant character assassination’.
26
Aeschin. 2.148 (tr. Adams 1919). He does not bother to support this with any
kind of testimony, or reference to general knowledge, but leaves it as a bald accusation.
27
Dinarchus 1 (Against Demosthenes) was probably delivered in March 323 BCE
(Worthington 2001: 8).
28
Worthington 2001: 41.
260 Envy, Poison, and Death
the story of Nicodemus’ murder resurfaces here again. First, it provides
evidence of Demosthenes’ corruption (because he had bought off
Nicodemus). Then it blossoms into the tale of the murder, in which
Demosthenes is described explicitly as a conspirator, and one who,
moreover, betrayed Aristarchus—even, finally, being responsible for
expelling him from the city.29 The case brought by Dinarchus was
successful; Demosthenes fled into self-imposed exile.
That Demosthenes had played a key part in the murder of Nico-
demus was a powerful accusation; moreover, it seems to have drawn
on stories about Demosthenes that were in widespread and long-
running circulation. Across the speeches, the uses of this gossip vary
in detail and success according to the prominence of the politicians in
question, and the favour with which the city regarded them; for
example, Aeschines’ employment of the story becomes more explicit
as his own political stature develops. But although his enemies per-
sisted in airing this gossip in both the formal setting of the courtroom
and the informal arena of the Agora, Demosthenes was never pros-
ecuted on a charge of murder.

29
Not only does Dinarchus invite the audience to bring their own knowledge to
bear, he also gives us Aristarchus’ point of view, describing Demosthenes as a daimon
or ‘supernatural force’, responsible for all his misfortunes (a description that perhaps
deliberately echoes the language used of Demosthenes by Aeschines in Against
Ctesiphon); see Eidinow 2011a: 143–50.
 3.8

Conclusion: ‘A Covert Form of

Witchcraft’

The cases made against Theoris, Phryne, and Ninon provide us with a
complex of accusations concerned with magical practice for which we
have little context, and which it is difficult to align with possible
official charges. In trying to understand the social dynamics that
might have given rise to such accusations—and brought them into
the courtroom—we have followed a thread suggested by a binding
spell, NGCT 24. This gives a possible motivation for writing such
spells—that of phthonos—and we have examined the meaning of this
emotion term across a variety of literary genres and social contexts.
In this part of the book, we have looked at some of the social
processes that made phthonos so powerful, in particular, the crucial
role played by certain types of ‘talk’: on the one hand, talk between
mortals, from the gossip of the family and on the street corner to the
exercise of diabole in the law courts; and, on the other hand, talk
between mortals and between mortals and gods, in the toxic formulae
of curses, spells, and epitaphs, and the fears and accusations that they
encompassed. We have seen the close relationship between these
kinds of poisonous talk and talk of poison: a vicious cycle of suspi-
cions and allegations.1
The kinds of accusations that circulate in malignant gossip can
result in real harm, but this may occur in different ways, through
diverse processes. The case of Nicodemus demonstrates the failure of

1
Charles Stewart (pers. comm.). Stewart and Strathern (2004: ix) call gossip ‘a
covert form of witchcraft against persons’; Stirling (1956) states that, in literate
society, gossip as an outlet for aggression that is anonymous and so avoids conflict
is a descendant of witchcraft and sorcery; see also Foster and Rosnow 2006: 161.
262 Envy, Poison, and Death
gossip to take root and develop into a legal case of its own. During his
description of it, in the prosecution of Timarchus, Aeschines asks his
fellow citizens about another victim of gossip, Socrates: ‘Did you put
to death Socrates the sophist, fellow citizens, because he was shown to
have been the teacher of Critias, one of the Thirty who put down the
democracy?’2 Aeschines’ question highlights again the crucial role of
‘charges’ that were not part of an official indictment, but which were
clearly circulating in the community. It also underlines how particu-
lar individuals were more vulnerable to such accusations than others.
And this leads to a final question, perhaps in fact the most basic for
this study, that must be asked in the investigation of the charges
brought against Theoris, Phryne, and Ninon: if there is gossip circu-
lating about a person’s activities, what is it that creates the right
environment and what makes that person seem a suitable target, for
that gossip to become transformed into legal action?

2
Aeschin. 1.173 (tr. Adams 1919).
Part 4

Death
 4.1

Introduction: ‘Killed by Idle Gossip’

What is it that allows a seed of gossip to take root and flourish, which
takes it from the street corner into the law court, and gives it such heft
that it can be used to condemn a man, or woman, to death?1 In the
case of Socrates, the context is well known: the strength of the anger
against Critias and his fellow oligarchs, the fear of sophistic world
views, the concern about offending the gods. All of these factors
would have come together to form a compelling case against Socrates.
But in the trials of Theoris, Ninon, and Phryne such circumstances
are difficult to identify. As we noted at the beginning, these are
women, with little or no public, political role: what are the stories
that transform them into figures that presented such risks that two of
them were executed for their activities? To get a better understanding
of the phenomena of these trials—and the deaths to which they led—
we need not only to examine the charges involved, and the likely
operations of gossip and envy, but also the context in which these
dynamics grew powerful.
This final part of the book will examine the wider environment in
which these trials occurred, setting them in the larger context of
Athens and Attica in the early fourth century. It will argue that the

1
The title of this section comes from the title of Rosnow and Georgoudi 1985; it
refers to the jury’s verdict recorded on the death of one Ida Bodman, who shot herself
eighteen months after moving to Western Springs, Milwaukee. The cause was,
apparently, poisonous telephone calls. The Milwaukee Sentinel (October 16, 1915)
records that ‘she knew others were receiving them by the lifting of eyebrows and
breaking up of scattered groups of her new friends whenever she went near them’.
More recently, cyberbullying (‘deliberately using digital media to communicate false,
embarrassing, or hostile information about another person’; see Schurgin O’Keeffe
and Clarke-Pearson 2011: 800) can generate ‘gossip’ that can reach a wider audience
extremely quickly, and can be extremely difficult to confront.
266 Envy, Poison, and Death
evidence for this period of Athens’ history indicates that there was
particular concern about the role of women in society, and the
potential risks this could present. It will suggest that this was related
to the context of the socio-economic impacts of the Peloponnesian
War, and, importantly, contemporary perceptions of those impacts.
These included not only physical dimensions, such as changes in the
population, but also what we might describe as the metaphysical
dimensions, by which I mean effects on the community’s understand-
ing of its relationship with unseen powers.
This approach will not comprise an argument for a radical break-
down of Athenian society, and nor is it intended as a definitive
description of its state. It will be exploratory and speculative, an
arrangement of some of the pieces to evoke a particular picture.
And necessarily even more tentative will be the questions and possi-
bilities it will raise about the situation of women in that environment.
Nevertheless, it will be an attempt to set the trials of these women in a
historical context, and one that encompasses the psychological and
emotional dimensions of its subject.
 4.2

After the War . . .

ἐπεὶ νῦν γε τίς οὐκ ἂν ἐπὶ τοῖς γιγνομένοις τῶν εὖ çρονούντων

ἀλγήσειεν, ὅταν ἴδῃ πολλοὺς τῶν πολιτῶν αὐτοὺς μὲν περὶ τῶν
ἀναγκαίων, εἴθ᾿ ἕξουσιν εἴτε μή, πρὸ τῶν δικαστηρίων κληρουμένους,
τῶν δ᾿ Ἑλλήνων τοὺς ἐλαύνειν τὰς ναῦς βουλομένους τρέçειν
ἀξιοῦντας, καὶ χορεύοντας μὲν ἐν χρυσοῖς ἱματίοις, χειμάζοντας
δ᾿ ἐν τοιούτοις ἐν οἷς οὐ βούλομαι λέγειν, καὶ τοιαύτας ἄλλας
ἐναντιώσεις περὶ τὴν διοίκησιν γιγνομένας, αἳ μεγάλην αἰσχύνην
τῇ πόλει ποιοῦσιν;
For as things now are, who among intelligent men can fail to be
chagrined at what goes on, when we see many of our fellow-
citizens drawing lots in front of the law-courts to determine
whether they themselves shall have the necessaries of life, yet
thinking it proper to support at their expense any of the Hel-
lenes who will deign to row their ships; appearing in the public
choruses in garments spangled with gold, yet living through the
winter in clothing which I refuse to describe; and showing other
contradictions of the same kind in their conduct of affairs,
which bring great shame upon the city?1
In this section I want to take a closer look at what is known—and not
known—about the socio-economic situation of Athenians in the early
to mid-fourth century. The quotation that heads this chapter may
give substance to some of the more immediate difficulties of this
endeavour: it is from Isocrates’ Areopagiticus, written in c.357 BCE.
The passage describes the kinds of conditions in and contradictions
with which some Athenians may have been living, brought about by
economic deprivation. Among them are citizens happy to appear,

1
Isoc. 7.54 (tr. Norlin 1929).
268 Envy, Poison, and Death
dressed in spangled garments, as ‘dancers’ in a public chorus, but who
would then live through the winter in clothes that Isocrates finds so
appalling he refuses to describe them.
But to what extent can we trust this image? Isocrates is one of our
chief sources for this period, but his writings have an intellectual and
moral agenda that makes it difficult to calibrate them as evidence. This
image of the conflicted Athenian, for example, is presented as part of a
systematic but emotional comparison of the city’s idealized past with
the moral and social problems of the present. It was intended to
highlight the virtues of the city’s ancestral constitution and institutions,
above all those of the Areopagus, whose restoration as a guardian of the
city’s laws Isocrates is pleading for here.2 We need to bear these
underlying ideas in mind: Isocrates’ political philosophy and his vision
of civic education underpin and shape his arguments, and he presents
his views with complex rhetorical audacity.3 Moreover, we must also
consider the context of this writing. It is possible that Isocrates’ political
speeches were written to be read, and so not actually delivered to their
audience: they therefore cannot necessarily be interpreted as having to
appeal to widespread popular values.4 Nevertheless, the images they
offer, while perhaps rendered in starker lines so as to support Isocrates’
particular purpose, need not simply be discarded. They may emphasize
some of the bleaker aspects of life in Athens, but they still spoke to an
audience that lived in that city, and it is likely that they captured some
sense, some perception, of what life was like for some of its inhabitants.

A NEW START?

The Athenians had been at war for twenty-seven years—and they had
lost. The sequence of events at the end of the Peloponnesian War is
well known: narrowly avoiding the destruction of the city and the
enslavement or annihilation of its inhabitants, Athens lurched from

2
Too 2000: 182–3.
3
For an overview of Isocrates’ life and work, see the introduction to Mirhady and
Too 2000. Some speeches had a more rhetorical focus than others: compare Isoc. 8
(with Moysey 1982) with Isoc. 6 (Harding 1974). His self-characterization as a writer
(not declaimer) of political speeches probably indicates a critique of contemporary
political oratory (see Too 1995: 74–112).
4
Hunt 2010: 21.
 After the War . . . 269
democratic to oligarchic to democratic regime. There is no doubt that
this period was one of immense upheaval for the inhabitants of the
city, both immediately and with longer-term consequences.5 At the
ideological level, it suggested not only that Athens could be beaten ‘in
every way at every point’ on the battlefield, but also that the idea of
democracy itself could be defeated.6 More mundanely, a lot of men
had been lost. Isocrates makes particular reference to the debilitating
effects of Athenian military campaigns on the size of the population
(although some of these comments are clearly connected to and
coloured by his own views of the importance of autochthony).7 This
is not to suggest this was a radical phenomenon suddenly brought
about by the Peloponnesian War.8 Indeed, the events that followed
the Persian Wars—the ongoing campaigns in the early part of the
period and the slow build-up of momentum towards the First Pelo-
ponnesian War, coupled with events further afield—may have wors-
ened this situation.9
The demographic evidence for fourth-century Attica has been
closely debated on the basis of different models and interpretations

5
For a marvellous and curiously neglected analysis of the trauma and its effects of
the last years of the Peloponnesian War and its immediate aftermath, see Rubel 2000
(and now, in translation, 2014).
6
The quotation is from Thuc. 7.87.6, describing the completeness of the Sicilian
disaster; see Osborne 2003: 257. In 411, the Athenians themselves voted democracy
out of existence; but in 404 the Spartans imposed its end.
7
Isoc. 8.88; cf. 50. See the discussion in Davidson 1990: 35. The importance of
autochthony is also found elsewhere in this speech (94) and in the Areopagiticus
(7.74).
8
So, for example, in Herodotus some Spartan speakers claim that the Athenians
were suffering economically from the Persian Wars (8.142.3, but see Bowie 2007 ad
loc. for the rhetorical exaggeration here).
9
It is, of course, difficult to know what that would have meant in terms of actual
casualties or fatalities in the Persian Wars. Raaflaub (1998: 31) observes that whereas
hoplite warfare, which was intermittent, probably left enough survivors in a social
group to provide support for extended families, naval warfare would have killed a lot
more a lot more quickly, producing casualties in huge numbers and leaving many
families in desperate conditions. He notes that these were also likely to be predom-
inantly lower-class casualties, leaving families in more difficult conditions, and sug-
gests that the problem was brought to public attention after a major naval disaster. For
example, in 454 BCE Athenian troops had been involved in a campaign against the
Persians on Cyprus, but they diverted these forces to aid Inarus, a Libyan who was
leading an Egyptian revolt against the Persians. A casualty list (ML 33) from that
campaign lists 177 men from one tribe alone. We also know that despite initial
successes, the entire fleet of 200 plus a relieving squadron of fifty were wiped out.
Thucydides (1.110.1) reports that few, out of many, escaped alive.
270 Envy, Poison, and Death
of the evidence. Mogen Herman Hansen’s work has provided scholars
with a clear and compelling line of argument, from which various
different approaches have subsequently been developed; I will run
through the key points here. If we start by comparing the size of the
population in 431 BCE with its size by the end of the Peloponnesian
War, we find that estimates of that first number have ranged fairly
widely.10 However, it is generally agreed that during the late fifth
century Athens lost more than half of its adult male citizenry.11 The
most obvious cause of this was losses in battle itself, but there would
also have been deaths off the battlefield, while men were on cam-
paign.12 This links to the second fundamental cause of the city’s drop
in population, disease—the most obvious and devastating example
being that of the plague: ‘Nothing did the Athenians so much harm as
this or so reduced their strength for war.’13 From what Thucydides
tells us, the plague devastated the soldiers in their camps. And when
we turn back to the city, the evacuation of the countryside would have
created even better conditions for the spread of infection.14 As well as
through disease, Athens’ population—and importantly the numbers
of able, working bodies—would also have been reduced through
emigration of non-Athenians and the loss of slaves.15

10
Numbers in 431 BCE: Hansen (1988a: 14–28) suggests a minimum of 60,000
citizen males over eighteen, which implies a very large total population; Garnsey
(1988: 90) suggests 250,000 for the total population; Rhodes (1992: 83; and 1994: 567)
and Akrigg (2007: 31) estimate 300,000 (the total population of 300,000 comprising
about 45,000 adult male citizens, slightly over 100,0000 wives or children of citizens,
somewhat under 50,000 metics, free men, and women metics, or visitors, and some-
what over 100,000 slaves). Rhodes (1994: 567 n. 6) notes that the crucial question for
the fourth century is whether the number of citizens before the poorest were disfran-
chised in 321 was 31,000 (Diod. Sic. 18.18.4–5) or 21,000 (Plut. Phoc. 28.7); he
observes that Ruschenbusch (1979) argues for the lower figures, and Hansen (1985),
more persuasively, for the higher (and see Hansen 1988b). For an overview of the
literature, see Scheidel’s addenda in Garnsey 1998: 195–200.
11
See Scheidel 2007: 58, summarizing Hansen 1988a: 14–28. Following Ehrenberg
1969, Rhodes (1994: 567) posits a total population of 210,000 (29,000 citizens, 71,000
wives and children, 35,000 metics, and 75,000 slaves).
12
See Akrigg 2007: 30–3.
13
Thucydides 3.87.2. Akrigg 2007: 33 highlights the importance of this quotation.
This section of this volume is indebted to his considerations of the impacts of the war
on the Athenian population.
14
See Hanson 1983 and Foxhall 1993.
15
Thuc. 7.27.4–5. Emigration outweighed, as Akrigg (2007: 32–3) argues, the
number of Athenians returning to Athens after the loss of overseas possessions.
 After the War . . . 271
The literary evidence for fighting forces suggests that there was a
significant depletion of manpower: for example, from the 25,000
hoplites of the Peloponnesian War to 9,000, and then around
11,000 in the Corinthian War in the 390s.16 Similarly, Xenophon
suggests a shortage of recruitable men when he mentions a decree put
out to support the battle of Arginusae (406 BCE) that ordered slaves
and freemen, as well as all those of military age, to embark, and
observes that many hippeis also joined the force.17 It seems likely
that the Athenians themselves were extremely aware of the loss of
men, at least in the years directly after the war: Andocides, in pleading
for his life, points out that the Athenians are ‘ready to give Athenian
citizenship to Thessalians and Andrians because of the shortage of
men’.18 Even when read in its rhetorical context, it seems plausible
that Andocides is alluding to a common discourse of the time. It may
also be reflected in the payments given to encourage attendance at the
Assembly, which rapidly rise during the first decade of the fourth
century (attendance is in fact better than in the fifth century).19
The drop in numbers did not necessarily mean more plentiful
resources. During the war, Decelea had been occupied by the enemy
since 413 BCE, and the evacuation of that area meant a higher con-
centration of people in the city, all struggling to find the wherewithal
for survival.20 The occupation meant that property had been des-
troyed, and for some Athenians, this may have meant financial ruin.21
The forensic speeches may offer further insight into this situation. For
example, in a speech by Isaeus which concerns the estate of Nicos-
tratus, who died while serving abroad as a mercenary, one Chariades
is making a claim on this estate, arguing that he was Nicostratus’
business partner and had been adopted by him while they were
both serving abroad. During his attack on Chariades, the speaker

16
25,000 hoplites, Thuc. 2.13; 9,000, Lys. 20.13 (confirmed by van Wees 2001);
11,000, Xen. Hell. 4.2.17 (but not a full turnout); see Hornblower 2011: 209.
17
Xen. Hell. 1.6.24. Gabrielsen (1994: 107): conscription of oarsmen and hyperesiai
was ‘the exception rather than the rule’ during the fifth and fourth centuries.
18
Andoc. 1.149.
19
Probably around 400 BCE: Loomis 1998: 20–2. [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 41.3; Ar. Eccl.
184–8, 293, 308, 380–90 (note that the payment was made to the first to arrive); and
see [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 62.2 and Rhodes 1994: 568; attendance better in fourth than fifth
century: see Hansen 1976.
20
Thuc. 2.17.
21
See Thuc. 7.27–8; Strauss (1986, esp. 50) notes that the results of the occupation
are likely to have been highly diverse, depending on individual situations; this is
supported by Ar. Eccl. 591–3.
272 Envy, Poison, and Death
notes that ‘many others before now have claimed the property of men
who have died abroad, sometimes without even knowing them’.22
Athens had also lost her empire. This drastically diminished
the prosperity of her citizens, both rich and poor, with no
overseas possessions for the former, and no cleruchies for the
latter. Xenophon recounts a meeting between Socrates and one
Eutherus in which Eutherus explains how ‘I came home when the
war ended, Socrates, and am now living here . . . Since we have lost
our foreign property, and my father left me nothing in Attica, I am
forced to settle down here now and work for my living with my
hands. I think it’s better than begging, especially as I have no
security to offer for a loan.’23
This is not to say that aspects of these kinds of experiences did not
occur in Periclean Athens, but literary evidence from the early part of
the fourth century seems to offer increasing numbers of stories about
experiences of poverty. In Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae, for example,
which was presented in the first decade after the war, we hear about
Athenians with no cloaks and nowhere to sleep, who are catching
pneumonia.24 The ‘heroine’ Praxagora is particularly aware of the
need to feed the inhabitants of the city, and this becomes the basis for
the reassignment of public space in the city under the new regime.25
The problems of poverty, in particular not having enough to eat, were
also the theme of Ploutos (Wealth), presented four years later, a play
that offers a vivid overview of the gap between rich and poor. Wealth
is blind, and cannot find honest men to help; instead he stops with the
unjust and dishonest. Chremylus offers a vivid description of the life
of the poor (ll. 535–47):

σὺ γὰρ ἂν πορίσαι τί δύναι᾿ ἀγαθὸν πλὴν çῴδων ἐκ βαλανείου | καὶ

παιδαρίων ὑποπεινώντων καὶ γραϊδίων κολοσυρτόν; | çθειρῶν τ᾿ ἀριθμὸν
καὶ κωνώπων καὶ ψυλλῶν οὐδὲ λέγω σοι | ὑπὸ τοῦ πλήθους, αἳ βομβοῦσαι
περὶ τὴν κεçαλὴν ἀνιῶσιν, | ἐπεγείρουσαι καὶ çράζουσαι· ‘πεινήσεις· ἀλλ᾿

22
Isae. 4.21 (tr. Edwards 2009: 73).
23
Xen. Mem. 2.8.1 (tr. Marchant and Todd, rev. Henderson 2013); see also Pl.
Euthphr. 4.
24
Ar. Eccl. 415–21; dated 392/1 BCE.
25
Ar. Eccl. 676–90. The theme of food in these two plays is examined by David
(1984: 5–8). Sommerstein (1984) draws out the change in Aristophanes’ point of view
in his last two surviving plays, and attributes it to the author’s own perceptions and
perhaps experience of poverty in Athens.
 After the War . . . 273
ἐπανίστω.’ | πρὸς δέ γε τούτοις ἀνθ᾿ ἱματίου μὲν ἔχειν ῥάκος· ἀντὶ δὲ
κλίνης | στιβάδα σχοίνων κόρεων μεστήν, ἣ τοὺς εὕδοντας ἐγείρει· |
καὶ çορμὸν ἔχειν ἀντὶ τάπητος σαπρόν· ἀντὶ δὲ προσκεçαλαίου | λίθον
εὐμεγέθη πρὸς τῇ κεçαλῇ· σιτεῖσθαι δ᾿ ἀντὶ μὲν ἄρτων | μαλάχης
πτόρθους, ἀντὶ δὲ μάζης çυλλεῖ᾿ ἰσχνῶν ῥαçανίδων, | ἀντὶ δὲ θράνου
στάμνου κεçαλὴν κατεαγότος, ἀντὶ δὲ μάκτρας | πιθάκνης πλευρὰν
ἐρρωγυῖαν καὶ ταύτην· pρά γε πολλῶν | ἀγαθῶν πᾶσιν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις
ἀποçαίνω σ᾿ αἴτιον οὖσαν;
What benefits can you provide, except blisters in the bathhouse and
masses of hungry children and old ladies? Not to mention the lice,
gnats, and fleas, too numerous to enumerate, that annoy us by buzzing
around our heads and waking us up with the warning, ‘get up or you’ll
go hungry!’ And on top of that, you have us wearing rags, not coats, and
sleeping not on a bed but a bug-infested twine mat that doesn’t let you
get any sleep, under threadbare burlap instead of a blanket, with our
heads not on a pillow but a hefty stone. And to eat, not bread but
mallow shoots, not cake but withered radish leaves. We sit not on chairs
but on broken crocks, and instead of a kneading trough we get one side
of a barrel, and that’s broken too. Now haven’t I revealed the many
blessings you bring to all humanity?26
Supporting these comic presentations of Athens’ problems is evi-
dence from the law courts: Andocides in his speech ‘On the Peace
with Sparta’ (dated to 391 BCE) notes that: ‘There are those who are
already complaining that they cannot see the meaning of the treaty, if
it is walls and ships which Athens is to recover. They are not
recovering their own private property from abroad: and walls cannot
feed them. This objection also requires an answer.’27
Scholars once argued that such details indicated that fourth-
century Athens was in serious decline; however, views have now
shifted in the other direction.28 As scholars have observed, Athens
appears to have managed her recovery from the war on a number of
fronts relatively quickly:29 that she could, for example, introduce pay
for the Assembly is an important point.30 And, on the international

26
Ar. Plut. 535–47 (tr. Henderson 2002); and see also 218f., 503f., 627ff., 750ff.;
see further David 1984: 7.
27
Andoc. 3.36 (tr. Maidment 1941).
28
See Herman 2011 and its review by Forsdyke (2012).
29
French 1991.
30
See n. 19 above. On the other hand, she was probably no longer paying her
magistrates (see Hansen 1991: 240–1; cf. Gabrielsen 1981: 57–87 and 97–9).
274 Envy, Poison, and Death
political stage, she continues to play a significant role. Indeed, it is largely
accepted that behind much of Athens’ foreign policy over the next half-
century lies the desire to regain her empire (and it will take only around
five years before this can be stated explicitly by Xenophon, albeit through
the Thebans’ speech, on the eve of the Corinthian War).31 In practice,
what this means is that after an initial period in which she acts as a
subordinate ally of Sparta, she soon develops an independent foreign
policy.32 Trading interests carefully between Sparta and Thebes, while
maintaining both links and conflict with Persia, Athens was almost
continuously involved in warfare, on a number of different fronts. As
the 360s close, she is recovering from the battle at Mantinea, while
fighting in the North Aegean, first for Amphipolis, then the Chersonese
and the Propontis, as well as in Asia Minor and the islands. The early
years of the 350s will see her embroiled in the Social War, her allies
apparently accusing her, as Demosthenes put it to his fellow Athenians, of
‘plotting against them’ and grudging them ‘recovery of what was yours’.33

‘EVEN THE POOR HAVE LEISURE,

SINCE THEY HAVE MISTHOS’

All this military activity might suggest a secure and powerful state;
and, indeed, Athens and the Piraeus do relatively rapidly recover both
wealth and prestige—and over the course of the fourth century, the
Athenians will increase their public revenue to a remarkable level.34
But to begin with at least, it is clear that times were hard: the reliable
fifth-century sources of revenue were gone. There was no empire, and
the mines at Laurion were not yet back in production;35 some

31
Xen. Hell. 3.5.10. See Rhodes 2010: 262. The Demaenetus affair (Hell. Oxy. 9–11;
396 BCE) reveals the anxiety of the Athenians about openly confronting the Spartans.
For the Theban call for Athenian help against the Spartans, see Xen. Hell. 3.5.8–15;
and for attempts to ally with Persia, see Andoc. 3.15.
32
Austin (1994: 547): ‘Athens was at war almost continuously from 378’; but she is
embroiled in the Corinthian War (395-387/6), supporting Evagoras of Cyprus against
Persia (Xen. Hell. 4.24) fighting alongside Egyptians (Ar. Plut. 179; Isoc. 4.140). There
is fighting in Asia Minor and the Hellespont (Xen. Hell. 4.8.30); see discussion in
Hornblower 2004: 227–8.
33
Dem. 15.3 and 15.
34
Dem. 4.37–38, as French (1991: 38). See Pritchard 2010: 51–5 on the Athenian
recovery, especially the reassertion of her prowess in ‘war-making’.
35
This will take until the middle of the fourth century: see Hopper 1953.
 After the War . . . 275
attempts were made to extract money from allied cities early on: we
hear of the Athenian general Thrasybulus squeezing money from
cities in Asia Minor and setting up taxes in cities in the Black Sea
area.36 The Second Athenian Confederacy started to collect funds
in 373 BCE—called syntaxeis or contributions (there was to be no
tribute)—and the contributions were far lower than the money raised
under the empire.37
And it is expensive to run the democracy, especially one that is
determined to (and perhaps must) engage its poorer members, which
is the emphasis of this new regime.38 Not everyone agrees with this
approach, of course. The quotation that heads this subsection is from
Aristotle’s Politics, and expresses criticism of the kind of democracy
that has sufficient revenue that it may pay the poor so that ‘they are
not hampered at all by the care of their private affairs’, and can take
part in the government and administration of the state.39 The danger
Aristotle identifies is that ‘the poor become sovereign over the gov-
ernment, instead of the laws’. But Athens in the early fourth century
had far more practical concerns: primarily, how to structure its
administration so that there was sufficient revenue to support this
approach to government.40

Resourcing the Navy

As a snapshot of the city’s financial circumstances, we can consider the
evidence that suggests the difficulties the city experienced in maintain-
ing her navy. Even as her military activities demonstrate Athens’
burgeoning political confidence, they also reveal her financial needs.
Despite the ubiquity of Athens on the international stage, the naval lists
of the 370s reveal that Athens was building almost no new ships;

36
Lys. 28 and Xen. Hell. 4.8.30. Taxing traders in the Hellespont: RO 18, and Xen.
Hell. 4.8.27. Thrasybulus is killed at Aspendus in 389 BCE after his troops plunder the
town (even though he has collected money from it): Xen. Mem. 4.8.26–30; Diod. Sic.
14.94, 99.4–5.
37
Second Athenian League: IG II2 43 = RO 22. References are made to a gross
sums of 45 talents (Dem. 18.234) and of 60 talents (Aeschin. 2.71).
38
Pritchard 2015. As he makes clear (31), this expense was relatively cheaper than
the fifth century: ‘Yet it still added up to a significant public expense.’
39
See Arist. Pol. 1293a1–10 (tr., here and below, Rackham).
40
Payment of magistrates is a contested issue: in this approach I follow Pritchard
2014; he takes issue with Hansen 1979 and 1980; cf. Gabrielsen 1981.
276 Envy, Poison, and Death
two-thirds of the fleet comprised old vessels, many in poor repair and
badly equipped.41 The problem seems to have come to something of a
head in the years 358/7 and 357/6, when it became impossible to send
out a fleet because the equipment for the ships had not been returned or
was not available, and the markets in the Piraeus could not supply the
requisite sailcloth. At about this time, the first legislation to deal with the
lack of effective organization and naval defaulters is introduced.42
Support for the crew was also hard to find: it seems to have become
quite usual for generals to raise their own funds.43 For example, in 375
BCE, when Timotheus sent out sixty ships to the Peloponnese (at the
request of the Thebans, to distract the Spartans), he received 30 talents—a
not inconsiderable sum—but needed more and, despite victories, was
forced to send repeated requests for funds to Athens.44 By the late 360s,
the situation was not much better: in Against Polycles, Apollodorus tells
us that when he was trierarch he received full pay for his crew for only two
out of seventeen months—and only ration money for the other fifteen.45
Perhaps it is not surprising that generals might consider going
freelance. As Athens is embroiled in the Social War, a lack of
resources leads the general Chares to hire himself out to the rebellious
Persian satrap Artabazus. This in turn leads the king himself to order
the Athenians to recall him—or face his support for their rebels.46 In
the second of the Olynthiac speeches (349/8 BCE), Demosthenes

41
On the lack of equipment, see IG II2 1613.284–310, where the triremes number
349, but there are full sets of oars for only 291 and steering oars for fewer: IG II2 1611.
Trierarchs seem to have held on to equipment and/or equipped their own ships (Dem.
51.5 and [Dem.] 47.23; see Cawkwell 1984: 341). Gabrielsen (1994: 146–57) stresses
the problems of ‘lengthy retention or misappropriation’ of equipment ‘on naval
administration and organisation’.
42
Gabrielsen (1994: 158–9) sees the laxity about this issue of equipment as arising
from the prioritization of the recruitment of trierarchs. Requests for epidoseis (‘vol-
untary gifts’), which start in 394, also become more frequent from about this time (see
Rhodes 2010: 236.
43
Pritchard 2012: 48–9. The money was considered public property: see Pritchard 2014:
8, citing Dem. 24.11–14; Lys. 28.1–4, 6, and 10, 29.2, 5, 8–11, and 14; Xen. Hell. 1.2.4–5.
44
Isoc. 15.109 and Arist. Oec. 1350a3. In the same year, a law of 375 reveals
concern for purity of silver coinage; Stroud (1974) suggests that the growth of the
confederacy led to the need for reputable currency, but, coupled with the financial
distress of those years, may have encouraged forgery.
45
Cawkwell (1984: 338) notes that Demosthenes (4.22–3 and 28) observes that
only ‘ration money’ will be available for the ten ships he advocates as a standing force.
46
Diod. Sic. 16.21–2. In the late 360s, King Agesilaus of Sparta hired himself out to
the Egyptians in similar fashion in order to raise money for Sparta for the war against
Messenia (Plut. Ages. 40).
 After the War . . . 277
suggests that this was not a unique situation: ‘Why is it, think you,
men of Athens, that all the generals you dispatch—if I am to tell you
something of the truth about them—leave this war to itself and
pursue little wars of their own? It is because in this war the prizes
for which you contend are your own—(if, for instance, Amphipolis is
captured, the immediate gain will be yours)—while the officers have
all the dangers to themselves and no remuneration; but in the other
case the risks are smaller and the prizes fall to the officers and the
soldiers—Lampsacus, for example, and Sigeum, and the plunder of
the merchant-ships. So they turn aside each to what pays him best.’47
In response to these kinds of difficulties, the first half of the
fourth century saw a new system of financial administration insti-
tuted. This had advantages—not so great a dependence on a central
body for decisions—but also brought disadvantages, in particular,
that more people could pocket the money that moved between
different parts of the system, and it was harder to keep track of
overall funds.48 The reform of finance in 378/7 involved a reassess-
ment of the taxable wealth of citizens and metics.49 But the property
tax (eisphora) was difficult to collect, and this led to various admin-
istrative attempts to facilitate the flow of money into the city’s
coffers. One way was to embed the administrative apparatus within
a structure of social relationships:50 first, the organization of symm-
ories;51 then the creation of an advance full payment, the proei-
sphora, paid by the richest three members of the symmory, who
then must collect what they were owed from the others.52 A similar
system was gradually instituted to resolve the problems of financial
support and organization for the navy: in the early part of the
century, there appears to have been some trouble recruiting trier-
archs, even though the size of the fleet was reduced.53 Initially, the
city allowed for a system of syntrierarchies (two men sharing a

47 48
Dem. 2.28–9 (tr. Vince 1930). Rhodes 1979/80: 310.
49
Perhaps this is also when the army fund (to stratiotikon) was created to receive
surplus revenue not otherwise allocated (see [Dem.] 49.12 and 16). Although, in fact,
under Eubulus it appears that much of this money went to the theoric fund under the
direction of a treasurer who was able to join the Council in supervision of the old
financial committees. This changed once Demosthenes and associates gained political
supremacy.
50 51
See Christ 2007: 65–7. 378/7: Philoch. FGrH 328 F 41.
52
Rhodes 1979/80: 310.
53
Gabrielsen 1994: 180–1 and 178–9, respectively.
278 Envy, Poison, and Death
trierarchy), before Periander’s reforms were passed (358/7 BCE).
These established a symmoriai system for sharing the costs of a
trierarchy among a group of sixty men, turning the trierarchy, like
the eisphora, into a compulsory obligation to the state.54
But these changes also introduced unforeseen consequences, in so
far as they made no distinction between the wealthier and poorer
members of the group. As with the other financial demands on the
wealthy, this system was likely to have exacerbated social tensions.55
We have seen some evidence for this already in the forensic speeches,
in the phenomenon of phthonos directed at the wealthy, and the
discourse that develops around it. Whereas phthonos is at root the
resentment felt by those without fortune towards those who have it,
in the context of fourth-century Athens, the cultural model becomes
more complex. We see it nuanced to express, in particular, resent-
ment against those who have good fortune but do not fulfil their
civic obligations; while those who do provide for the city use this as a
shield against the phthonos that their good fortune might otherwise
provoke.56
Osborne estimates that only around 1,000 citizens would have
faced major demands for cash, and that this may have been a lower
number than those supporting these demands in the fifth century.57
In the material we have already observed, the case of Timotheus
is illustrative. On his return to face charges of treason, he found
himself in dire financial straits (if Apollodorus is to be believed). The
description of his monetary arrangements—a series of loans, the
mortgaging of his land, the need to distribute money for pay
among the trierarchs in charge of the ships, all exacerbated by his
own inability to repay his private debts—illustrate the kinds of
demands faced by the wealthy. These included liturgies of
various kinds, eisphorai, and the general requirements of civic

54
Ibid.: 84, 157–60, and 198–9, and see discussion in Christ 2006: 167.
55
This inequity was tackled by Demosthenes in his naval reform (in the 340s); see
Dem. 18.102–8 and Gabrielsen 1994: 207–13; see further Christ 2006: 168.
56
See pp. 132–6.
57
Osborne 1991: 140. See Kron 2011: 130–1 for further evidence for the wealthiest
Athenians numbering 1,200. Osborne notes (1991: 144) that the ‘Old Oligarch’ (3.4)
alleges that there were 400 trierarchs in the middle of the fifth century. Certainly it
seems that a trierarch was appointed for every trireme in the shipsheds (Thuc. 2.24.2).
In the fourth century, trierarchs were only appointed once it had been decided to send
ships out (IG II2 1629.180–271; Dem. 4.36).
 After the War . . . 279
philanthropy.58 That the wealthy feel overburdened emerges from
the sense of persecution that is apparent in some political and
forensic rhetoric.59 In turn, as is clear from the rhetoric of the law
courts, there is suspicion of those who have money in an invisible
form. Other evidence suggests that this may have been well placed.60
The appearance of mortgage horoi in the early fourth century BCE
may have been, in part, a result of the attempt to conceal wealth, as
well as being evidence of the need among the wealthy for an add-
itional source of income.61 But we should look beyond the simple
desire for financial gain: ‘In Athens, where the local community is
closely linked to political identity and to financial contributions
(landed wealth is visible and hence “good”), the economics of the
exploitation of that land could not but be bound up with local social
and political factors.’62 These activities have further implications
for our understanding of the fourth-century context: as French
observes, these transactions suggest that land was an ‘acceptable
object for commercial negotiation’, although to take this as far as
selling that land in its entirety could be represented as financial
mismanagement—not only undermining one’s family, but also
betraying one’s obligations to the city itself.63 Osborne also stresses
the ways in which many of these leases, especially of orphan estates,
are remarkable for their short-term nature and the risk involved. He
suggests that they indicate a fear of being reduced to dependency in a
context of financial need, if not crisis.64 Although it may be true that
leases might draw attention to one’s property wealth, it is also worth

58
He was removed from the command because the Athenians thought he was
wasting time, and charged with treason. See [Dem.] 49.9–15 and 22–7 and Plut. X
orat. 836d.
59
See Xen. Vect. 6.1; the argument was made in the law courts that rich defendants
were condemned so that property could be confiscated: Lys. 30.22, 19.11, 27.1, and
later, Dem. 10.43–5.
60
Isae. 5.43, 7.39–41, 11.44–50; Lys. 20.23; Dem. 21.156 and 160–7, 48.12, 33, and
35, and [Dem.] 45.66. Cohen (1992: 199–207) argues that the wealthy concealed their
money in banks, and this perhaps explains, in part, the rise of private banks (see
Shipton 1997: 416–17, 422); see also Christ 2006: 191–4, Gabrielsen 1994: 53–60.
61
On the horoi, see Osborne 1988 and 1991. Christ (2006: 192) suggests that
‘posting stone markers (horoi) on his property recording debt’ might be a way for a
landholder to reduce the appearance of landed wealth.
62
Osborne 1988: 138.
63
Aeschin. 1.94–105; see French 1991: 29–30; Osborne 1991: 141–2. See also Isae.
7.31–3, in which the end of a family’s estate is taken as threatening the end of a family
line.
64
Osborne 1991: 318–19.
280 Envy, Poison, and Death
considering how this relatively rapid turnover of short-term leases of
land might work for both lessor and lessee as a way of blurring the
appearance of their property assets.65

Feeding the City

An additional effect of this system was to direct those with funds and
resources into other forms of raising money, which helped to drive
Athens’ role as a centre of commerce. This was encouraged not so
much by the pressures of empire, as in the fifth century, as by the
profits to be made from trade, and was reinforced by the advantages
that the city obtained for traders. By the middle of the fourth century,
the Piraeus was again a trade hub, helping to support the costs of
warfare and running the democracy. And this was also crucial in the
ongoing efforts to feed the population of Attica, which seem to have
been a continuous anxiety during this period.66
Foreign and military policy shows continued concern with pro-
tecting the corn trade route. For example, conflict in the North
Aegean during the 370s and 360s related directly to problems of the
supply of grain, and vice versa.67 Athens was no longer self-sufficient,
and corn shortages were likely to have been created by crop failure
(disease and drought), by piracy, and by the unsettled conditions of
the period.68 It is true that over a period of 185 years (between 507 BCE
and 322 BCE) there are only fifteen possible—and probably ten—
attested occurrences of food shortage in Athens.69 However, it is
also worth noting for the purposes of this study that these all occurred
in the fourth century, and half of them in the period 387/6–357.

65
Gabrielsen 1986: 105; cf. Christ 2006: 192–3.
66
During the fifth and fourth centuries the Athenians always needed to import
over half of their annual requirements from overseas, as argued by Moreno
(2007: 323).
67
See Dem. 50.6, 12, and 19 (and Heskel 1997: 142–8).
68
For this not to be the case for a period of time was worth remarking on (see Xen.
Hell. 6.2.6, of Corcyra in 373; Plut. Ages. 31.1–2, of Lakonia in 370; and Diod.
Sic.16.42.8, of Cyprus in 344/3). See the discussion in Austin 1994: 559.
69
Moreno (2007: 311), using Garnsey (1988: 145–6) states nine, but lists ten likely
periods of food shortage, all in the fourth century. Garnsey (1988: 145–6) gives as
likely: (145–6) 388/7, 362/1, and 361/0, (147) 376/5 or 374/3 and 357; he notes further
shortages in the years 350s [also possibly others in the 390s]; then (157) a further five
in the years 338/7, 335/4, 330/29, 328/7, and 323/2 (with further discussion 154–62).
 After the War . . . 281
The Athenians did their best to get the situation under control. The
cleruchies that were founded during the fourth century (Skyros,
Lemnos, Imbros, Sestos, the Chersonese, and Potidaia) were not
only intended to remove hungry mouths, and lessen the chance of
hunger-driven discontent, but were also designed—on the basis of
fifth-century models—to ensure a considerable quantity of grain
made it to Athens.70 In these settlements, after the existing population
was expelled, the landscape was divided into a few large holdings
owned by pentakosiomedimnoi.71 These were intended to be ‘surplus-
producing’ landscapes.72
Meanwhile, the administration and regulation of the Athenian
grain trade and market was ‘by far the most heavily regulated part
of the Athenian economy’.73 An elaborate, systematic structure was
set in place to control the movement of grain, along with laws
intended to control the behaviour of individuals in this area. For
example, hoarding and excessive profits were regulated;74 and no
Athenian citizen or metic was to engage in or lend money on the
transport of grain to any destination other than Athens.75 As well as
these sticks, there were also carrots, in the form of the extension of the
honours system. To refer back to the discussion above of the eco-
nomic difficulties created for the population by Athens’ engagement
in conflict, it is notable that the award of honorary decrees by the
Athenians for trade-related services develops most dramatically in
periods after defeats (Peloponnesian War, the Social War, and the
Battle of Chaeronea).76

70
Moreno 2007: 103–15.
71
Scholiast Aeschin. 1.53; Philoch. FGrH 328 F 154.
72
Moreno 2007: 112–13, 319—on Samos (see Heraclides FHG II.216). Moreno
argues that this was for protection of the grain supply, but it is not clear that this
excludes the rationale of reducing population numbers in Athens.
73
Moreno 2007: 334; the details are given in App. 4. The personnel involved
included agoranomoi (who oversaw the agora); metronomoi (responsible for weights
and measures); sitophylakes (supervised the grain market and enforced laws against
individuals); epimeletai tou emporiou (oversaw the import market, including the
unloading of grain); and epimeletai tou sitou (in charge of transport, weighing, storage
of public grain, and sale at a price set by the demos). See also Reed 2003: 48–9 for
Athens’ control of trade.
74
Hoarding: Lys. 22.5–6; profits: Lys. 22.8 and 12.
75
Dem. 34.37 and 35.51; Lycurg. 1.27. Austin (1994: 562): laws attested in the
second half of fourth century but may be older.
76
Engen 2010: 136. She notes in particular that the defeat in the Social War in 355
marks ‘a major turning point in Athens’ use of honorary language’ (ibid.: 133–5, and
282 Envy, Poison, and Death
‘LYDIANS AND PHRYGIANS AND SYRIANS
AND EVERY OTHER SORT OF BARBAROI’

The corn trade was just one small part of the commercial activity that
was steadily growing again in early fourth-century Athens. That life
had been difficult for metics in Athens after the Peloponnesian War,
or that the difficulties were greater than the rewards, is suggested by
the fact that their numbers seem to have dropped, at least if our
commentators are to be believed.77 Certainly, for those who had
stayed to fight for the democracy, there was little recognition—for
them or their orphaned children.78 Isocrates notes, admittedly rather
melodramatically, how Athens is deserted by emporoi (traders), xenoi
(temporary non-Athenian visitors), metoikoi (metics); instead, there
is a floating population that passes through the city.79 In the Ways
and Means, Xenophon agrees, in so far as he also wants to attract
more foreigners to Athens; while at the same time he refers to them in
a distinctively insular fashion as ‘Lydians and Phrygians and Syrians
and every other sort of barbaroi’.80 He recommends better access to
the legal system—and, in fact, in the mid-fourth century, the reorgan-
ization of the dikai emporikai offered non-residents more rapid
resolution of their cases.81 This weakened the status difference
between visiting merchants and resident metics, as did the fact that
economic power could enhance status.

citing Whitehead 1983: 67–8), when Athens begins to honour native citizens for
services performed as public officials (only), in the same way that they honoured
foreign benefactors, using the language of philotimia, and the formula of the ‘hortative
intention’ (that the decree shall be inscribed so all should know Athens honours those
with philotimia). She attributes this change in part to the severe crisis of revenue and
food caused by the conflict, and also notes the possible evidence for a prolonged
drought (Engen 2010: 59; Camp 1982: 9–17).
77
The title of this subsection is from Xen. Vect. 2.3; dated to 355/4 BCE (Tuplin
1993: 32).
78
Those non-citizens who survived had to buy back the moveable property
confiscated by the Thirty (Lys. fr. 1.34–47 Carey). Thrasybulus’ proposal to enfran-
chise those who had fought for the democrats in 403 was blocked; instead they were
carefully examined to see if they had done what they claimed, then given en masse
1,000 drachmae for sacrifices and dedications (less than 10 drachmae per man) along
with a crown of olive (see Aeschin. 3.187); the dead were granted (along with the
citizen dead) public burial and perpetual honours (Lys. 2.66, [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 40.2,
schol. to Aeschin. 3.195, Plut. X orat. 835f–36a); for attitudes towards orphans, see
further pp. 298–302.
79 80
Isoc. 8.21. See n. 77 above.
81
As Demetriou (2012: 205) also notes.
 After the War . . . 283
The ambivalent attitude that may at first appear in Xenophon’s
comments is mirrored in law-court speeches. Opponents are criti-
cized for their ill-treatment of metics, but Aeschines, for example,
suggests that pederasts turn to ‘foreigners and metics’ so as not to
harm citizens.82 However, when we look more closely at the ideo-
logical approach that underpins such statements, it suggests that
Athenian attitudes to foreigners should be seen more in terms of
the larger struggle to safeguard Athenian identity that plays out across
this period, rather than being based in aggressive racial prejudice. It is
significant that the suspicion that some who claimed to be Athenians
might be non-citizens (and there is evidence for this charge recurring
in inheritance or property disputes) does not seem to have resulted in
any actual convictions.83 It may be taken to indicate how successfully
Athens managed to ‘enforce simultaneously an open immigration
policy, but an exclusive citizenship policy, and rigorously guard the
dividing line’.84 It was an environment ripe for gossip.
When, in 346/5 BCE Demophilus proposed the scrutiny of the deme
registers to expel non-citizens, this may have been because Athens
was again in the ascendant (as when the citizenship law of 451 was
introduced).85 The Peace of Philocrates led Athenians to believe that
they were again attaining a position of superiority—so must reinforce
the boundaries between them and everyone else. But the policing of
this dividing line produced a strong sense of watchfulness: some of
the pleas made by those defending themselves in court suggest just
what suspicions it could arouse if one even talked like a foreigner.86 In

82
After the restoration of the democracy the administrative approach to non-
citizens remains ambivalent. The citizenship law of 451/0 is re-enacted, retroactively
at first, and then with 403/2 as the terminus. Theozotides appears to have put forward
a decree that gave support to the orphans of those citizens (and only citizens) who had
died in the struggle; while Phormisius proposed the restitution of political rights only
to landowners—a move that Lysias (see Lys. 34) and others opposed and won. Finally,
in 401/0 it may be that around 1,000 non-citizens were enfranchised for their part in
the kathodos (but the epigraphic evidence of IG II2 10 is unclear: see e.g. Osborne
1981–2, D6, Whitehead 1984, and Harding 1987). Bakewell (1999: 20) discusses this,
and more broadly, the ways in which Lysias 12 and 31 play with the ideological
oppositions of the good metic and the bad citizen.
83
See Isae. 3.3 and 37, 6.12 and 52; and [Dem.] 44 and Din fr. 55 and fr. 62;
Hyperides frr. 13–26 appear to be from two speeches Against Aristagoras in a graphe
aprostasiou case.
84
Kapparis 2005: 112: e.g. Isae. 12 and Dem. 57.
85
Kapparis 2005: 94–5, who provides the comparison.
86
Wallace 2010: 150.
284 Envy, Poison, and Death
particular, time and again it is the indefinable status of women that
seems to have created a key vulnerability for those seeking to prove
their Athenian citizenship. Sometimes this might turn on the ques-
tion of their civic status, but the charge could even be made that these
women did not actually exist.87
The presentation of metics and foreigners in forensic oratory at
Athens makes it clear that members of the mobile population—those
who chose to live away from home—were to be regarded with
suspicion.88 But it also suggests that mobility was an increasing factor
in many people’s lives.

‘PROCURING THEIR DAILY LIVELIHOOD

AS BEST EACH ONE CAN’

At Athens, the Peloponnesian War would have meant, if only briefly,

that there were fewer people scattered across more land, so that
scarcer labour may have been one of the consequences: parallels
with the situation in England following the Black Death raise these
possibilities.89 In that context, the result was higher wages for
labourers, who were in a position to make demands. But, of course,
the situation depends in part on the ways in which systems of landhold-
ing were structured.90 For example, in Roman Egypt, as Duncan-Jones
has observed, a similar situation led to changes in the character of
Egyptian land leases—less land being leased for longer periods.91

87
Isae. 6.10–16 (see Kennedy 2014: 98).
88
See the analysis of McKechnie (1989: 16), giving as examples Lys. 31.9, Dem.
29.3, and Isae. 4.7 and 27 (which gives the other side of this argument, praising his
clients for not going abroad, unless they were commanded to by the Athenians).
89
The quotation that heads this subsection is from Isoc. 14.48 (tr. Van Hook),
discussed further below. Akrigg (2007: 41) cites Scheidel’s comparison between
England after the Black Death and the Antonine plague (2002).
90
It is important to examine, as Scheidel (2010, esp. 20–3), how different institu-
tional constraints might influence the outcome of such a situation differently. As he
points out, this observation was made by Brenner (1976), who emphasized the role of
peasants; but he also cites the more recent comparative work of Borsch (2005), who
compares the effects of the Black Death in England and Egypt, revealing how the
economic outcomes of each of the epidemics were shaped by the structure of
landholding in each location.
91
Duncan-Jones 1996, esp. 120–34, as cited by Scheidel (2002). A number of other
pieces of evidence are cited in this context, but the types of information are not
available for fourth-century Athens.
 After the War . . . 285
For Athens, there is conflicting evidence: one monolithic account of
triumphant revival or serious decline will not do. The story will have
been different for diverse parts of the population; but nuancing the
account appropriately is difficult. The evidence suggests a time of
change, with hardship for some. On the one hand, as John Davies
has observed, there are a number of political dynasties that dominate
fifth-century sources and then disappear in the fourth century, and it is
usually argued that these have died out; it may be that financial
difficulties render them invisible in the historical record.92 On the
other hand, as Claire Taylor has argued, the evidence for the involve-
ment in politics of a higher proportion of citizens from non-city demes
may suggest a change in the distribution of wealth, along with a higher
percentage of the surviving population taking on some land ownership,
and moving around the territory of Attica in patterns of ‘circular’
migration’.93
The images that Isocrates paints—the quotation that heads this
section is from one such description—indicate that there were at
least some families facing extreme poverty.94 This may indicate that,
even if the population had dropped by the end of the war, it was
possible that there were too many people in Athens to be comfort-
ably fed and employed, even allowing for help from what we might
call ‘extended families’.95 Perhaps this was a situation that did not
last for very long; nevertheless, we can still construct some idea of
that experience. For someone living in Athens, a city that was busy,
thriving, crowded, with lots of opportunities for work, and lots of
people to do it, it may have meant that there was little land available,
low wages, and probably low standards of living and increasing
inequalities.96

92
Davies 1981: 84–5. As Taylor (2007: 81) suggests of the family of Alcibiades (Lys.
14.31 and Isoc. 16.46 indicate financial difficulties; cf. Lys. 14.7–8 for Alcibiades’ son
in the cavalry, c.395 BCE); and for Cimon’s family, see Davies 1971: 309–11.
93
Taylor (2007: 81; she cites Foxhall 1992: 156–9, Osborne 1992: 23–4, Morris
2000: 140–1, and Foxhall 2002: 211) indicates that land distribution in Attica was
‘remarkably egalitarian’. Kron’s analysis (2011) supports an impression that mid- to
late fourth-century Athens had a remarkably equal distribution of wealth, especially
when viewed in comparative perspective. Circular migration: Taylor 2011.
94
Isoc. 14.48–9 (tr. Van Hook), discussed on p. 289.
95
Thuc. 2.14ff. See Hornblower 2011: 190, and the suggestion that a larger,
recently uprooted, and distressed civic population may be one explanation for why
Athenian oratory and politics grew more aggressive during this period.
96
Akrigg 2007: 38–9.
286 Envy, Poison, and Death
Greater Mobility
These kinds of experiences, multiplied across Greece, may be, in part,
why the fourth century is understood to have developed an increasing
mobile working-population. In addition, there were those forced to
move because of War or political violence.97 There had been exilings
throughout the Peloponnesian war, and these continue as modes of
military and political control.98 The evidence suggests that one
response was to take up a profession in which it was an advantage
to be mobile.99 The idea was sufficiently familiar for it to become part
of an anecdote about the philosopher Diogenes the Cynic, in which he
explains impatiently to someone who has criticized him for his exile,
that that was why he had become a philosopher in the first place.100
Many craftsmen had long been itinerant, responding to demands
for those with specialist skills.101 But on the road now, alongside these
craftsmen, there were increasing numbers of philosophers and

97
During the early fourth century, Sparta, Thebes, and Athens all use the exile
and resettlement of populations as methods of political/military assertions of power,
and see the concern of Aeneas Tacticus (Poliorc. 5–10; written in the 360s) with the
precautions to be taken by a city if there are exiles. Not for nothing did Alexander
order the Greek states to restore their exiles (324; Diod. Sic.18.8.1–5)—as many as
20,000 men gathered to hear this proclamation. See McKechnie’s analysis of this
figure (1989: 25–7, quotation on p. 27) as a plausible indication of the likely number of
exiles ‘“left over” from the middle of the century who still needed settlement in 324
BCE’; he also draws attention to the movement of populations in Sicily and Italy
during the late fifth to mid-fourth centuries (McKechnie 1989: 34–48).
98
Examples of exilings during the Peloponnesian War because of stasis (sup-
ported by Athens) include: Samos 412 (Thuc. 8.21), producing 400 exiles; at Chios 409
(Diod. Sic. 13.65.4), 600 exiles. After that war: at Theban Cadmea 382 (Xen. Hell.
5.2.31) 300 exiles; Tegea 370 (Diod. Sic. 15.59.2; Xen. Hell. 6.5.10) 1400 exiled and 800
take refuge with the Spartans. There are also examples of exiled populations being
made citizens ([Dem.] 59.104, Isoc. 12.94, 14.51–2, Lys. 23; cf. Thuc. 3.55.3 and
3.63.2), or founding a new city (Hdt. 1.164–8), or even captives being returned:
Diod. Sic. 13.114.1 (see discussion in Schaps 1982: 206). Exilings are discussed in
Seibert 1979: during the war (54–92) and afterwards (92–147).
99
McKechnie (1989: 5) notes that particular occupations developed more than
others (mercenary services demonstrate tremendous growth for example, more so
than long-distance trading) and for different reasons—so some develop in response to
forms of recruitment or developments in techniques of warfare.
100
Diog. Laert. 6.49; Diogenes the Cynic described himself as ‘cityless, homeless,
deprived of a fatherland—a beggar, a wanderer, living from day to day’: Diog. Laert. 6.38.
101
See Burford 1965: 21–34, 1969, and 1972. Note in particular the explanation of
how the usual pattern of work (fairly local mobility) may have changed as the impact
of the Peloponnesian War on finance meant that greater distances had to be covered.
McKechnie (1989: 145) reinforces this argument by pointing out that it was likely that
these skills were closely guarded by their possessors, and passed down within families.
 After the War . . . 287
orators (encompassing practitioners and teachers), cooks, actors,
manteis, and hetairai, alongside freelance generals and other military
specialists, such as professional drill sergeants.102 The protreptic
literature of the period demonstrates how professional training was
being promulgated across a variety of professions.103 Freelancers
included skilled generals, and they drew on the increasing numbers
of available mercenaries.104 This phenomenon was partly a matter of
demand, and partly a matter of supply—the one feeding the other.105
In the mid-370s, when Timotheus set out to defend Corcyra, it
proved impossible to man the sixty ships he had been voted within
Athens, and instead he recruited men as he sailed through the
Cyclades—men he then had to find the money to pay.106 Meanwhile
Iphicrates, sent out to replace Timotheus, faced similar financial
problems: he had to hire out his sailors as farm labourers to the
Corcyraeans, and in 371 BCE he sent Callistratus to Athens with a
request for funds or peace. This may have been in part a matter of the
drop in manpower caused by mortality, but it is also likely that men
had left Athens in search of work.

Family Stories
As we have seen, those who left their communities might go
because they were forced to do so, or because they were prompted
by their own political beliefs, as a quick way of making some

102
Pl. Lach. 183a–b, Xen. An. 2.1.7. See also Meritt 1940, no. 8, col. 1, ll. 33–6; cf.
[Arist.] Ath. Pol. 42.3, with Rhodes’s commentary (1981) ad loc. For a travelling
chorus trainer: SEG 27.19, l. 5. For these references, see McKechnie 1989: 157 and 174
n. 195.
103
Ibid.: 157–8. For medicine, see the Hippocratic treatises, The Art, Ancient
Medicine, and Decorum; for rhetoric, Isoc. I; for cookery, Ath. 14.661e; for philosophy,
Aristippus (Diog. Laert. 2.85), Aristotle (Diog. Laert. 5.22), Theophrastus (Diog. Laert.
5.50), and Demetrius of Phaleron (Diog. Laert. 5.81).
104
McKechnie 1989, ch. 4, with Whitehead 1991. Mid-century: Aeneas Tacticus
expects mercenaries to be used alongside citizen armies (Poliorc. 10.7, 10.18–19,
12–13, 22.29).
105
As McKechnie (1989: 101) argues: ‘as the tendency to use mercenary armies
gained strength so the numbers of unemployed and wandering mercenaries
increased’.
106
Timotheus: Xen. Hell. 6.2.11–12. See Isoc. 8.48 and 79 for mercenaries as
hoplites while Athenians man the ships; but compare 7.54 (357 BCE), where foreign
oarsmen are hired (and see Gabrielsen 1994: 96). Callistratus was sent to Sparta as one
of the envoys for peace (Xen. Hell. 6.3.3ff.); see Tuplin 1977.
288 Envy, Poison, and Death
money, or as a way of life. In most of these accounts, the emphasis
is on the fate of the male citizens, but occasionally we are also given
glimpses of the effects on their families.
Sometimes, we learn, families were forced to move together: thus,
Thucydides mentions the women and children who were part of the
expulsions of population from Aegina by the Athenians in 431 BCE, and
from Potidaia in 430/29 BCE.107 Such families might then become
separated: Lysias 12 comments on what happens after the Thirty
limited citizen rights at Athens to 3,000 men and also details how
those men had to leave their children in foreign, sometimes hostile
lands.108 In other circumstances, those who chose to go had to decide
whether or not to take their families with them. As Xenophon tells us of
the men who came, like him, to fight for Cyrus: ‘For most of the soldiers
had sailed away from Greece to undertake this service for pay, not
because their means were scanty, but because they knew by report of
the noble character of Cyrus; some brought other men with them, some
had even spent money of their own on the enterprise, while still another
class had abandoned fathers and mothers, or had left children behind
with the idea of getting money to bring back to them, all because they
heard that the other people who served with Cyrus enjoyed abundant
good fortune.’109 Other evidence may suggest that women and children
accompanied such campaigns.110 (And scholars have argued that this
became more usual during the Hellenistic period.)111

107
Thuc. 2.27.1 and 2.70.3–4.
108
Lys. 12.97; see discussion in McKechnie 1989: 23.
109
Xen. An. 6.4.8 (tr. Brownson, rev. Dillery); discussion in Austin 1994: 534.
110
For children on military campaigns, see Xen. An. 5.3.1, and on the Sicilian
expedition, see Thuc. 7.60.3.
111
Later evidence from Miletos (Milet. I.3 33–93) shows the granting of citizenship
to mercenaries (most of those whose origins are known come from Crete), and
reveals a complex picture of family ties within the settlement. However, this must
be treated with caution, since the presence of women in the records does not mean
that families were brought on campaign (see Loman 2004: 50; see also Thonemann
2007: esp. 160, and Chaniotis 2002). As Pomeroy has noted (1983: 207–22), the fact
that some of the men are listed twice indicates that they came alone to fight, and then
brought their families over. The small size of families and few daughters, and the fact
that the sex ratio is (216) ‘more skewed among the children of parents whose ethnics
are given and who do not come from Crete’ she attributes to the difficulties of their
lifestyle, and, as a result, a higher likelihood of infanticide of girl children. The
inscriptions provide evidence of single mothers, but only as part of extended family
groups. One is a mother of two sons accompanied by her own father and mother; the
other migrated with her adult son and his wife. There are eight single fathers with
children; only one single parent has a daughter (member of extended family group,
 After the War . . . 289
Isocrates’s speeches of 357 (Areopagiticus) and 355 (On the Peace)
are particularly concerned with the effects on families of the increase
in itinerancy and provide a dark view, disenchanted and despair-
ing.112 In these speeches he focuses on the bands of men and the
trouble that they could cause, emphasizing the fear of mercenary
activity. There is more detailed evidence about some of the possible
effects on families in Isocrates’s Plataicus. This speech concerns the
state of the Plataeans, expelled by the Thebans in 374 BCE, who found
refuge and citizenship in Athens and had to start their livelihood all
over again. He describes the fate of children reduced to slavery,
parents unworthily cared for, wives separated from husbands, and
daughters from mothers. He describes how people are being forced to
work for hire, ‘the rest procuring their daily livelihood as best each one
can, in a manner that accords with neither the deeds of their ancestors,
nor their own youth, nor our own self-respect’.113
As was said at the beginning of this section, how far we can trust
Isocrates’ words as evidence for widespread destitution remains a
question. He was willing to adjust his material in order to make a
rhetorical point more powerful.114 Nevertheless, he does suggest
something of the tensions and questions that were under debate
and may help to provide some insight into these kinds of experi-
ences.115 Somewhat dryer, but no less compelling evidence for the
difficulties created by such situations can be found in the forensic
corpus: we have noted above, for example, the court case over the
estate of Nicostratus, who died while serving abroad as a mercenary.116
Other cases indicate the troubles caused within families by male
relatives absent or killed while on military campaign.117 Often and

Milet. I.3.62). There are thirty-six orphanoi: they may have had mothers (listed with
patronymics), but they appear to have no fathers. There are eleven adult daughters in
families, and another seventeen women travelling alone.
112
See Isoc. 4.167–8 and 8.24; the damage these groups could wreak: 5.119–23 and
6.8–9.
113
Isoc. 14.48–9 (tr. Van Hook).
114
e.g. in 8.77, where he references Pericles’ policy of keeping Attic citizens within
the city walls as if they were afraid to go out to fight, whereas in fact Pericles was
restraining them from fighting.
115
Fuks 1984: 39 [132]: ‘the “roving population” of the poor (especially the
mercenaries) and the miserable condition of the poor in general’.
116
Isae. 4.21(tr. Edwards 2009: 73) see p. 271.
117
See, for example, Isae. 7 and Isae. 9.
290 Envy, Poison, and Death
unsurprisingly in these cases, the focus is squarely placed on the male
protagonists: we have to look carefully to find information about the
experiences of other family members.
The Aegineticus of Isocrates, also a case about the rights to an estate,
may offer one example. The estate in question was created by one
Thrasyllus, who inherited the mantic books of a man called Polem-
aenetus. After travelling from city to city selling his services as a seer,
he finally settled back at home in Siphnos: he had two sons, Sopolis
and Thrasylochus. In this speech, the claimant explains that Thrasyl-
lus had married his father's sister, and that he himself was adopted by
Thrasylochus; he is in dispute for his estate with a half-sister of
Thrasylochus (the result of one of Thrasyllus’ relationships on the
road).118 The story he tells aims to show his emotional devotion to the
family (as well as his legal right to the inheritance) and illustrates
many of the themes of enforced itinerancy discussed above.
In the speech, he relates how, when exiles from Paros and Siphnos
drove out an oligarchic faction from the island, the family left
Siphnos.119 We know that Sopolis was absent at this juncture, per-
haps already gone to Lycia, where he died.120 Taking their movable
property with them, Thrasylochus and his family settled first in
Melos—the speaker helping Thrasylochus, who then persuaded him
to go with him to Troezen. The speaker agreed, but it only becomes
apparent that he also took his own family with him when he reports
that his mother and younger sister died of disease there.121 That these
women were dependent on him is clear from his earlier description of
the slaughter of his father, uncle, brother-in-law, and three cousins.122
The next move took them all to Aegina, where they lived as metics,
and where Thrasylochus adopted the speaker (or so he claims) and
died.123 It then emerges that in all his travels, Thrasylochus was also
accompanied by a mother and sister, who had been travelling separ-
ately; we also learn of their illness.124
In this narrative, the speaker employs the figures of these women,
at least in part, to provoke pity and compassion in his audience. For
this to be effective, it had to be plausible: it is likely that something of

118
Isoc. 19.5–9.
119
This probably dates the speech to the end of 394/early 393 BCE.
120 121 122
Isoc. 19.40. Isoc. 19.20–2. Isoc. 19.19.
123
Isoc. 19.24. See discussion in McKechnie 1989: 18–19.
124
Isoc. 19.11 and 25; when the speaker describes Thrasylochus’ final illness, he
mentions how they have not yet arrived.
 After the War . . . 291
these women’s real-world experiences can be glimpsed in the inci-
dental detail that the speech provides. It seems likely that those
experiences were not uncommon, although they were rarely recorded.
It prompts us to ask how many other such women lurk in the
interstices of our evidence, caught in such situations of dependence
and survival—and whether and how they are represented by our
sources.
 4.3

Dependence and Vulnerability

‘SO MANY REFUGEE SISTERS AND NIECES

AND FEMALE COUSINS’

It has been stated about ancient Roman society that it is likely that, ‘as
a result of mortality and divorce, we must envisage societies in which
widows and orphans were pervasive and vulnerable’.1 This quotation
also seems applicable to Athenian society, in which men, probably
around their late twenties or early thirties, typically married women
in their late teens or early twenties; the men probably had an add-
itional life expectancy of around 25–30 years (if they lived in fairly
healthy environments).2 If we add to this the effects of the warfare
that stretched across the fifth and fourth centuries, and, in Athens, the
impacts of the oligarchic revolution (404–403 BCE) and the plague,
then, this study suggests, the prevalence of widows and orphans
would have been markedly increased.3
Can we assign some numbers to such observations? One study
estimates that 558 Athenian wives in every thousand lost their hus-
bands at some time after their marriage and that there were 200

1
The heading of this section is from Xen. Mem. 2.7.2 (discussed further on p. 296).
On the composition of Roman society, see Saller 2007: 90–1, with quotation from
p. 91. Saller points out that the representation of the family in ancient texts is husband,
wife, children—that is, ‘nuclear’. See also Scheidel 2009.
2
Limits of marriageable age: Pl. Leg. 721b (30–5 years old for a man), 772d (25–35
years old for a man), 785b (30–5 for a man, and 16–20 for a girl). Aristotle suggests
that a man was in his prime physically between 30 and 35 and mentally at about 49
(Rhet. 1390b). He advocates marriage at age 18 for women and 37 for men (Pol.
1335a29), and this has been put down to his own age at the time of his marriage (see
Sallares 1991: 148). Sallares (1991: 149) discusses variations across poleis in the age of
marriage for women.
3
Cudjoe 2010: 17–22.
 Dependence and Vulnerability 293
more widows than widowers.4 Losses in war are likely to have exacer-
bated such demographic factors. The demographic effects of the
defeats in the years 413–403 would not have been felt on the number
of citizens coming of age until the decade 395–385 BCE.5 Over
this period, it seems likely that the age structure of the population
changed; fewer young people meant fewer dependants, but it
also presented problems for family support and/or the continuation
of family lines. Of course, the economic situation would have
fluctuated—and it would have been perceived differently by different
social groups according to the diverse pressures affecting them, as
outlined in the previous section. In general, however, it seems likely
that there would have been a substantial number of women who were
left without direct male support.6

Widows
In Athens, we are famously told, women’s legal ownership of property
was very restricted—to one medimnos of barley.7 But, as Lin Foxhall
has explained, ‘the relationships that Athenians perceived between
people and property’ were somewhat more complicated: ‘the concepts
of management, disposal and use could join together in several
different ways, depending on social context to form what we call
“ownership”’.8 There is evidence, for example, of women owning
slaves: in law-court speeches we are told that, in Athens, Pasion the
banker left his wife, Archippe, her maids in his will; and that Neaera
could buy and sell slaves (albeit, this is in Corinth).9 We also hear of
women’s ownership of himatia kai chrusia. This technical term,
literally meaning ‘clothing and jewellery’, described the personal pos-
sessions of a new bride, which may, or not, have been part of her

4 5
See Golden 1981: 329. See discussion in previous section.
6
See discussion in Golden 1981: 316–29 and Cudjoe 2010: 58.
7 8
Isae. 10.10. Foxhall 1989: 26.
9
Pasion: [Dem.] 45.28; Neaera: [Dem.] 59.18. Perhaps the emphasis on nomoi
poleos, as Schaps points out (1979: 115 n. 47), draws attention to the fact that such a
sale would have been illegal in Athens; Neaera’s ownership of the slaves she had
purchased is confirmed by a group of Athenian arbiters (Schaps 1979: 46) As Schaps
observes (ibid.: 155 n. 48), it is not clear whether or not Phrynio has claimed the maids
or just his own movable property. What this evidence may reflect is that ownership
was a separate matter from commerce—in which the legal limit for women was one
medimnos of barley.
294 Envy, Poison, and Death
dowry.10 This latter point was important, since if these items were
not part of the dowry, they need not be returned to the wife if
her husband died or the couple divorced, since, legally they belonged
to the husband (while the dowry belonged to the wife).11 In general,
apart from the dowry, it seems likely that married women would not
amass personal possessions, in contrast to women of independent
means, such as Theodote, whose lovely house is admired by Socrates.12
Although there were legal limits to the value of the transactions
they could conduct, there is evidence for women handling much
larger sums, although this was likely to depend on the attitude of
the husband, if he was still living.13 After his death, a woman could
choose to stay in her husband’s house, and there is evidence for
widows doing this in various circumstances—alone, with son(s), or
with a son and daughter. There appears to have been some particular
recognition and protection (by the archon) of pregnant women, who
could stay in their deceased husband’s house.14 We also see wives
taking over the management of financial affairs and of the household
when their husbands were away or had died. After her husband’s
death, it seems likely that the woman was in control (kyria) of any
property that her husband had left her.15 Aeschines refers to those
households with rich young orphans whose ‘fathers had died and
their mothers were managing their property’—but with little respect,
and an indication that they were vulnerable to mistreatment.16

10
See Dem. 25.56, [Dem.] 59.35 and 46; Lys. 12.19; Dem. 41.11, cited in Schaps
1979: 115, nn. 56–9. Schaps (ibid.: 10–11) observes that a woman probably kept these
items herself (as the example of Dem. 41.27 suggests); that husbands may return such
property out of goodwill (e.g. Isae. 2.9), and that there is no example of a husband
keeping such items for himself, despite his legal title to it.
11
See Foxhall 1989: 32–7 and Schaps 1979: 10.
12
Xen. Mem. 3.11.4.
13
See Foxhall 1989: 36; Dem. 27.53–5 and [Dem.] 36.14–16. Evidence ranges from
women as household managers (Ar. Lys. 492–7 and Eccl. 210–13; Pl. Leg. 805e; [Dem.]
59.122; and of course the famous Xen. Oec. 3.12) to situations where household
management is kept by the men (Ar. Thesm. 418–23) or put in the charge of a slave
(Men. Samia 301–3).
14
Dem. 43.75: but she did not need to be a pregnant woman, as the law quoted
there might be taken to suggest, as Cudjoe (2010: 65ff.) argues. There do not seem to
be examples of widows choosing to remain in the house with a daughter only.
15
Dem. 41.8–11, 17, and 21. Schaps (1979: 56) notes that it is usually non-
Athenian women or widows who tend to become most freely involved in business
affairs. Cudjoe (2010: 159–61) argues that the loss of these rights when a woman
remarried appears to have been theoretical.
16
Aeschin. 1.170.
 Dependence and Vulnerability 295
The freedom of widows went beyond their financial affairs: stories
from the orators show some women making choices about their
relationships.17 It has been suggested that this potential for freedom
may have been viewed as dangerous to the status quo. Thus, some
scholars have cited Pericles’ famous words at the end of the funeral
oration, when he urges the widows of the war dead to do nothing to
excite men’s blame, or even praise; while others have argued that the
portrayal of sexually voracious widows in later plays of Aristophanes
may also be indicative.18
Widows are mentioned in a number of the funeral orations of this
period, but with little evidence that they received any kind of organ-
ized support.19 Pericles, for example, focuses primarily on consola-
tion rather than suggesting the possibility of practical help.20 And,
although in his Funeral Oration Lysias does mention aid for wives of
the kind that their husbands would have provided, this appears to be
as insubstantial as the other emotional consolations that he suggests
for parents and children.21 (They should all receive charis—the par-
ents ‘high regard’ and the children ‘affection’.)22 Ps-Plato’s Menexenus
includes parents and children being directed to take care of widows
and children. As evidence, this must be treated with care—the text is,
after all, a parody—but even here, although orphans and mothers are
described as being in the care of the city, only orphans are mentioned
as receiving specific support.23
In sum, it seems that during the fifth and early to mid-fourth
century, widows did not receive any specific support, although there
is evidence for civic protection of pregnant widows. The expectation
appears to have been that they would either be able to cope on their

17
Andersen (1987: 43) cites Dem. 27.13–15 and 29.26; Hyp. 1 fr. IVb.3 and 7; Isae.
9.27–9 and 6.51. He suggests that a woman with small children, or who was pregnant,
may have had a rare moment of choice about whose oikos (that of her father’s or of her
dead husband) she must return to (citing Levy 1963).
18
Pericles: Thuc. 2.45.2; the argument is made persuasively by Andersen (1987);
Aristophanes: see McGinn 2008: 24–5, who cites Henderson 1987: 118–19, 128.
19
Also observed by Cudjoe (2010: 70). Hyp. 6.27 does not mention widows.
20
See den Boer 1979: 34. Pericles: Thuc. 2.45.2.
21
Lys. 2.75.
22
Similarly, Demosthenes (60.33) reports that both the orphans and the parents of
the war-dead will receive assistance (not only distinction but also ‘tender care’), but
this does not seem to include any particular material support.
23
[Pl.] Menex.: orphans and mothers (248e), care for orphans (248d). In the
Phaedo (116a), Plato tells us that after Socrates’ death, his disciples felt like orphans.
296 Envy, Poison, and Death
own, or with their sons,24 be looked after by their adult children, or
return to their natal families. Some evidence suggests that women
might live together.25
However, that a woman’s natal family might provide the support
and protection needed was far from certain, nor was it a matter of
law.26 There is some evidence of the strain such support could put on
a household: Xenophon reports how Aristarchus prevails on his
single female relatives, who are living with him as his dependants,
to support themselves by their weaving and bread-making.27 He
complains of being in great need, and explains to Socrates that
since the revolution there has been a great exodus to the Piraeus.
But only the men seem to have gone, so that ‘a crowd of my
women-folk left behind, are come to me—sisters, nieces, and
cousins—so that we are fourteen in the house without counting
the slaves’.28 He explains that ‘there is nothing from the land
because our enemies have seized it, and nothing from our house
property, now there are so few residents in the city. Portable
property finds no buyers, and it’s quite impossible to borrow
money anywhere.’ The next statement is particularly striking: ‘It’s
hard Socrates to let one’s people die, but impossible to keep so
many in times like these.’
Some commentators have argued that this account of hardship would
not have been a typical situation: but this is difficult to judge, especially
in light of the subject matter.29 The women of a household were not
a common topic of discourse in ancient Greek texts. Presumably this

24
The sons would look after their mother on their majority; see [Dem.] 46.20 for
the case of a son’s duty to his epikleros mother, and Lysias 24.6 for a son looking after
his mother without any inherited resources.
25
Lys. 3.6 and 29: although this may just be an example of an extended family.
26
Uncertain: see for example, the apparent lack of support for the widow of
Diodotus in Lysias 32: her father and brother in fact appear to have defrauded her
sons, and she gave evidence against her father (12–13, 15–17) to the rest of the family;
Isaeus 8 is a horror story concerning Diocles and his behaviour towards his half-sisters
and their families. Matter of law: see discussion by Cudjoe 2010: 95–7, citing Isae.
8.8–9 and Dem. 41.25–6.
27
Xen. Mem. 2.7.2.
28
Tr. here and below Marchant and Todd, rev. Henderson 2013. Taylor (2011:
127) uses this as an example of ‘women moving alone’; it seems rather better to fit her
pattern of ‘circular migration’ of men—but the two are not exclusive.
29
Sallares (1991: 433 n. 69) says that this ‘is an exaggerated example of the
unbalanced sex ratio’.
 Dependence and Vulnerability 297
was because such a situation was likely to remain undiscussed until
something brought it, usually dramatically, into the public eye.
Examples of this happening include the speaker of Against Simon
describing how he has taken in his sister and her daughters, in his
account of Simon’s outrageous invasion of his home; or the speaker
of On the Property of Aristophanes, who has taken on his sister and
her many children after the execution of her husband.30
If there was no natal family to return to, a woman’s future marriage
prospects were likely to be limited.31 A woman might remarry as soon
as her husband had died; and, indeed, this might take place against a
woman’s will.32 Generally, remarriage was much easier for wealthy
women, who appear to have been much in demand, but it would have
been desirable, even a necessity, for poor women.33 As the example of
Demosthenes’ own mother, Cleobule, demonstrates, the question of
remarriage was also potentially fraught with dangers.34 It suggests
that even wealthy households—whose affairs, presumably, were in
sufficient order that they could be left for the wife to manage on
her own—were potentially extremely vulnerable.
The case Against Diogiton reinforces this aspect with disturbing
details.35 The background to the case is the death of Diodotus, who is
killed while on military service, but has provided for his family in his
will. His wife is also his niece, and it is her father, Diogiton, who is
executor of the will. But Diogiton’s primary concern is not for the
welfare of his daughter and grandchildren. First, he conceals the
death from the family; then he marries off the bereaved wife, and
sends away her children. When the boys come of age, he explains to
them that he has had to spend most of their inheritance—now they
must support themselves. They are fortunate: when they seek help

30
Lys. 3.6–7 and 29; Lys. 19.9 and 32–5.
31
Cudjoe (2010: 98–9) argues this on the basis that fathers and brothers appear to
have been under a moral obligation to marry and dower their sisters. He cites as
examples of fathers: Isae. 8.7–8, 11.39; Lys. 19.14–15, 32.6; Dem. 27.5, 28.15–16, 29.43,
40.6–7, 20–2, and 56–7; of brothers: Isae. 2.3–6, 11.38–9; Lys 19.33, 13.45.
32
A frequent occurrence: of forty-eight widows in the orators, eighteen out of
twenty-five who were young and of child-bearing age got remarried at the death of
their husbands (see Cudjoe 2010: 114 n. 250; Hunter 1989: 294).
33
Wealthy woman: Dem. 30.33; compare [Dem.] 59.7–8. Poorer woman: [Dem.]
59.113. There were particular legal protections ensuring marriage for wealthy heir-
esses; see Dem. 43.54.
34
Dem. 27; see also [Dem.] 45 (for the example of Archippe) and Isae. 7.
35
Lys. 32.
298 Envy, Poison, and Death
from their mother, she turns to her daughter’s husband and this court
case ensues. This example also draws attention to the potential for
considerable tensions around the breaking up and reformation of
households, with particular hazards for children. This is a common
aspect of the forensic speeches, where embezzling male relatives
appear with disturbing frequency.36 And this brings us to consider-
ation of the situation of orphans.37

Orphans
Model life tables suggest that in the ancient world the death of the
father of a family before the children reached the age of fifteen was
very common indeed.38 As we have seen, taking care of widows and
orphans was not necessarily viewed as a public duty, but rather as a
private obligation that the state would protect.39 Guardianship was
the usual response: a father would arrange for this in his will. If he did
not, the responsibility fell to the closest male agnate (but this could
introduce conflicts of interest), or the eponymous archon would
appoint a guardian. The guardian was meant to manage an orphan’s
estate and business affairs, handing it over when they came of age: the
corpus of forensic speeches shows how often this was perceived to have
been mismanaged.40 As Aristotle tells us, the eponymous archon had a
number of responsibilities towards orphans and heiresses, including
overseeing the institution of a guardianship (and any rival claims made
in these instances) and ensuring guardians provided maintenance;
fining or supervising lawsuits brought against those who did orphans
or heiresses or their property any harm, and granting leases of houses
(receiving rents if necessary) of orphans and heiresses until they

36
It is balanced by the folk-tale theme of the wicked stepmother; see Golden 1990:
143–4 and Watson 1995.
37
Wives and children evacuated in times of crisis, for example, during the Persian
invasion and the Peloponnesian War: Hdt. 8.41.1, Thuc. 1.89.3, Lys. 2.34, ML 23.6–8;
cf. Thuc. 2.6.4, 2.78.3, 4.123.4; Isoc. 6.73–4; Lys. 12.97 and 16.4; cf. Dem. 19.194, Men.
Sik. 281–2.
38
Hübner and Ratzan 2009b: 9, as many as a third of all children ‘in every social
and economic stratum over the entire Mediterranean’ and ‘another third before they
reached the age of twenty-five’.
39
Ibid.: 13.
40
A good example is found in Isae. 5.9–11; but that the topos was powerful and
misused is discussed in Dem. 38.19–20 and again in [Dem.] 53.29.
 Dependence and Vulnerability 299
reached the age of fourteen.41 We also know that their property was
protected by laws that precluded a guardian from putting their prop-
erty at risk, for example through a bottomry loan.42
However, even if we argue that the joint family type prevailed in
Classical Greece, this would not necessarily mean that there were
male relatives available to offer support; this was perhaps especially
the case in times of war or stasis.43 In periods of heavy military losses,
it seems likely that there would be more bereaved women and
children needing support, and fewer extended families able to absorb
them. Indeed, Plato in designing his own city, including marriage
laws, suggests that there may be times when it is not possible for
young women left fatherless to find an eligible male relative, or indeed
suitable men in the city itself.44 And this literary evidence is sup-
ported by Walter Scheidel’s analysis of ancient demographic realities,
which concludes that it was likely that there would have been few
agnatic relations to fill the role of guardian, especially for those
children born to older men.45 In their place, non-relatives could be
and were appointed: Cudjoe suggests that this might happen because
of a lack of available or trusted relatives, or to enhance connections.46
Children could also be sent out to work in order to support them-
selves, and could be apprenticed by either parent (although evidence
for this is sparse); it is possible that some exposed children would
have been rescued for precisely this purpose.47

41
We also hear of orphanophylakes in Xen. Vect. 2.7; elsewhere orphanistai: see
Suda s.v. Orphaniston (omicron 652, Adler); Soph. Aj. 512. Cf. ‘Old Oligarch’ 3.4
(with discussion in den Boer 1979: 52).
42
[Arist.] Ath. Pol. 56.6–7, and see also Dem. 37.45, 43.75, Aeschin. 1.58, and Isae.
11.6. Other protections for orphans included exemption from public services for a
year after they came of age: Lys. 32.24–5.
43
Gallant 1991: 27–30; Lys. 13.45–6: children left orphaned because of the perse-
cution of the Thirty.
44 45
Pl. Leg. 925a–b. Scheidel 2009: 31–40.
46
Cudjoe 2010: 181–2. For examples of friends appointed, see Dem. 27.4–5; cf. also
Diog. Laert. 5.12–13.
47
There is little evidence for apprenticeship, but a letter survives from a boy called
Lesis, apprenticed in a foundry, complaining about his treatment (Harris 2004;
Eidinow and Taylor 2010). Lesis writes to his mother, and a man (Xenocles) who is
not his father. Golden (2003: 18) discusses apprenticeships within families. Later
evidence suggests a mother or father could make the arrangement (see Golden
2009: 48). As an example of a girl child who appears to have been sold into slavery,
and was possibly a foundling, the story of Neaera and her upbringing is a reminder
that child prostitution was also part of this picture ([Dem.] 59). See discussion by
Saller 2007: 108; see also Lys. 20.11, Isoc. 4.68, Arist. Pol. 1323a; and on infant
300 Envy, Poison, and Death
An overview of the evidence for Athens suggests that there was little
regulated and consistent provision for families in which the father had
died, at least before the end of the fifth century. There is some evidence
for the provision of food made by Solon for widows and orphans, but
this is contested.48 By the fourth century, there appears to be some
support for some male children.49 Some more certain intervention by
the state does seem to have occurred with regard to the effects of war in
some locations. Outside Athens, for example, there is evidence that
some cities made provision for families of the war-dead: a text from
Thasos of uncertain date includes provision for the parents of the dead,
along with their children, both male and female. According to Diodorus
Siculus, similar provisions were found in a decree from Rhodes.50 But in
the case of Athens, the evidence for the support of family members—
even male children—of those who had died in battle is patchy and
uncertain. This may be the result of our evidence, or, indeed, of the
nature of the legislation itself. The appearance of such legislation may
have been intermittent, perhaps a response to some crisis, rather than a
long-term promise of welfare support. We do not know the circum-
stances of the Thasian decree, but the Rhodians passed their measures
while besieged by Demetrius at the end of the fourth century, and the
result was, apparently, increased morale and support.
Pericles’ statement in the funeral speech as recorded by Thucydides
is the first unequivocal indication of there being a law to support the
children of those who die in battle.51 It has been argued by some,
drawing on the phrasing of the Greek, that this was a new law of its
time, and it appears from other evidence only to have lasted into the
mid-fourth century.52 If we take ps-Plato’s Menexenus as offering some
reliable account of previous practice, it appears that these children

exposure and enslavement, see Ael. VH 2.7, Plut. De am. prol 497e; and de Ste Croix
1981: 169–70.
48
This is attributed to Solon; the sources are late: Diog. Laert. 1.55) and lexicog-
raphers, Harp, Suda, s.v. Sitos (sigma 502 Adler) and Phot. 514.6, argue that a law was
introduced by Solon providing food to women and orphans; see Stroud 1971: 288.
49
State support: Arist. Pol. 1268a8–11, [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 24.3.
50
For Thasos, see Thasos I 141.5, and Pomeroy 1982: 116–18. Rhodes: Diodorus
Siculus (20.84.3).
51
Thuc. 2.46.1. Den Boer (1979: 46) argues that this is a new piece of legislation;
see also Cratinus fr. 183 K-A.
52
Den Boer (1979: 51) argues that ‘there were rules governing the care of war
orphans, but there is no trace of any “laws” before the fourth century’. Aeschin. 3.154
and Isoc. 6.82 seem to talk about it in the past tense.
 Dependence and Vulnerability 301
were paraded in the theatre of Dionysus, dressed in their new armour.
A herald announced that their fathers had died as brave men and the
state had brought the boys up and was now about to let them manage
their own affairs, since they had become adults. Thus, the sources
suggest, they were separated from the ephebes, by attaining maturity
without a period of transition.53
The evidence of a later law, dating to around 403–402 BCE—the
final part of which survives on stone—seeks to prevent the extension
of the provision of support given to the sons of citizens to bastards
(nothoi) and (oddly) adopted orphans (poietoi) whose fathers died
fighting against the Thirty.54 The decree was proposed by one Theo-
zotides, whose political career, and perhaps its contentious nature,
may be attested by the discovery of an elaborate curse tablet on which
his name is inscribed.55 There was opposition: a papyrus fragment of
a speech by Lysias, disputing the decree, survives.56 The editor of the
inscribed text, Ronald Stroud, suggests that Lysias’ attack on Theozo-
tides failed, but others are not so sure, since the wording of the
inscription is ambivalent: it refers to the beneficiaries of the decree
as ‘the children of these men’ (sc. the Athenian dead).57 The context
for the decree is likely to have been the re-enactment of the Periclean
citizenship law—so that the nothoi and poietoi would have been born
in a period when the legislation was relaxed (Lysias’ argument), but
now was re-enacted (presumably Theozotides’ case).58 If we take this
legislation as an illustration of contemporary concern with maintain-
ing Athenian identity, then the focus on bastard sons at least makes
sense—but this does not provide an explanation for the decree’s
attempt to exclude adopted sons. Instead, as Niall Slater has sug-
gested, this may instead be regarded as evidence for the city’s con-
cerns about its available finances. It may suggest that posthumous
adoption was widespread, with many families finding they had no
legitimate sons; it may also have been a process that was being abused
by families seeking to take advantage of this benefit.59

53
Loraux 1986: 57; details of the ritual: [Pl.] Menex. 249a3–b2, Aeschin. 3.154.
54
Ogden (1996: 79) suggests that Theozotides may have thought that adopted
children would have support from their new fathers.
55
See Stroud 1971: 285–7. On the curse tablet, see Eidinow 2013: 174.
56
P. Hib. I 14 (TM 61454; Lysias 128–50 Carey).
57 58
Ogden 1996: 79. See Stroud 1971: 285–7.
59
Slater 1993. He considers (84) that the decree may have been an attack on the
legislation of the Thirty, specifically the revision of Solon’s law on adoption, which
302 Envy, Poison, and Death
Whatever the outcome of this particular debate, however, the evi-
dence as a whole suggests that any provision made was only for certain
male orphans. In turn, for girl children, even less support seems to
have been organized, although there was protection in place for
heiresses, as Aristotle describes.60 We know of no state dowry supply
at Athens, as mentioned in regulations from fourth-century Thasos
and Rhodes, although there is reference to a law that required the
nearest kin to supply the poor, fatherless daughters of relatives with
dowries (or marry them themselves).61 Girl children who had no form
of active male support in this environment were extremely vulnerable.
As an example of possible dangers, the new fragment of Hyperides’
Against Timandrus appears to give us a brief glimpse of one girl whose
legal guardian separated her from her brother at the age of seven,
carrying her away to Lemnos; the brother was unable to recognize her
when they met again.62 In many ways, this young woman was lucky:
her case was pursued by her brother. But if, for example, she had had
no brother, or if it was the brother who had sold her into slavery (as
occurred in another case),63 then she would have had little recourse.

Unmarried Girls
Girls without a dowry would find it hard to find a husband, but
staying at home in a poor household was likely to be expensive and
difficult.64 Poverty was relative, but a drop in standards could prove

had been the cause of much litigation. Rubinstein (1993: 23, cited by Slater 1993: 82)
notes that we know of ten testamentary adoptions where the testator is identified: of
these, five died in war and five while travelling.
60
[Arist.] Ath. Pol. 56.6–7.
61
The fabled dowering of the daughters of Aristeides (Dem. 20.115, Aeschin.
3.258, Plut. Arist. 27.1–3) appears to have been highly unusual. Thasos and Rhodes:
see above, note 50. [Plat.] Menex. 248d–249b appears to be following this precedent:
his own system of state support for war orphans mentions only boys. Kin to supply: in
Isae. 1.39 these are only referred to in terms of daughters; in Dem. 43.54 the law is
given in more detail and refers to heiresses.
62
Tchernetska et al. 2007. The two sisters had lost both parents; the brother
appears to have had a mother still living.
63
As Aristogiton sold his sister (and mother): see Dem. 25.
64
Apollodorus is unable to give his daughter in marriage because of poverty:
[Dem.] 59.8 and see further [Dem.] 59.112. For fathers faced with girl children
whom they cannot feed, see Ar. Pax 119–23 and Ar. Ach. 731–5, where Dicaeopolis
sells his daughters in the marketplace.
 Dependence and Vulnerability 303
disastrous.65 However, the problems presented by the lack of a dowry
may have paled at times in contrast to the lack of available husbands.
There is ancient evidence that seems to allude to just such a predica-
ment during the war years themselves: in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, in
conversation with the magistrate, Lysistrata explains how girls have
not been able to get married, but must ‘lie single because of the army’;
this may mean that husbands have gone away, or allude to deaths in
battle. She refers to older women who are ‘left sitting at home
clutching at any straw of an omen’, and just before this comment,
Lysistrata has referred to bearing sons and seeing them sent off to war
as hoplites (the magistrate asks her not to raise painful memories).66
Although this is a comedy, and so cannot be taken as a straightfor-
ward report on events, nevertheless, it is likely to have been making
some reference to the contemporary situation (some scholars have
argued that this may be an allusion to the impacts of the disastrous
Sicilian expedition).67
Not only the war itself, but Athens’ concomitant internal conflicts
may also have been perceived to be a cause of this problem: Lysias in
Against Eratosthenes tops his list of the crimes of the Thirty with the
point that their actions ‘prevented many men’s daughters from being
given in marriage’.68 The remarriage of widows would also have
removed eligible men from the available pool. This may have been
one of the factors in the development of a decree we find recorded in
later sources that allowed an Athenian citizen to marry one citizen
woman and get citizen children from another.69 Although the authen-
ticity of this decree has been debated, others see it as having been
prompted by a lack of manpower following the Sicilian disaster.70

65
Dem. 28.21: Demosthenes says that, unless his patrimony is returned to him, his
sister will not find anything befitting her status because of the poverty of the house-
hold. See also Men. Aspis, where a brother’s death results in poverty for a young
woman.
66
Ar. Lys. 591–7 (tr. Sommerstein 1990).
67
ll. 587–90; see Sommerstein 1990, ad loc. The plight of unmarried girls is also a
theme of tragedies: cf. Aesch. Eum. 959–60; Soph. El. 188, Ant. 810–13 (cf. 654); Eur.
IT 369–71, Med. 985, Or. 1109, Hec. 416–18 and 612, and IA 461.
68
Lys. 12.21; see also Lys. 13.45 and Hyp. 1 fr. IVb.12–13. See Schaps 1979: 41.
69
Sources for the decree: Hieronymus (frr. 44–5 Wehrli) in Diog. Laert. 2.26, who
associates this decree with Socrates, as does Ath. 13.555d–556b; Aul. Gell. NA 15.20.6
relates it to Euripides; see also Suda, s.v. Leipandrein (lambda 377, Adler).
70
Sceptical discussions: Hignett 1952: 344–5, Woodbury 1973: 24–5; but in favour:
Harrison 1968: 17 and MacDowell 1978: 90. Golden (1981: 330), who cites these
discussions, argues that it does not seem improbable, although ‘best to regard this as
304 Envy, Poison, and Death
Without it, a young woman would have lived as a pallake (concubine)
with a man, and any resulting children would have suffered civic
restrictions.71
Across all this material, we can glimpse only fragments of women’s
lives—and distorted fragments at that. But even these suggest a lived
experience in which the neat categories of citizen and non-citizen
were often blurred by the demands of poverty and the need to survive,
while the risk of destitution prompted the crossing of social bound-
aries. For example, both Demosthenes and Isaeus mention how the
poor could be bribed to take on non-citizens, in the sense of claiming
them as relatives or adopting them; and it has been suggested that this
is, in fact, what (in [Demosthenes] 59) Stephanus did in marrying off
Neaera’s daughter Phano to Phrastor and Theogenes.72 Another situ-
ation that might give rise to such an arrangement was when unmarried
girls became pregnant, a situation which would ruin a daughter’s
chance of a respectable marriage. Such a catastrophe is found at the
centre of a number of plays by Menander—along with the important
resolution that the girl will be able to marry her rapist.73 In the
Adelphoi, for example, the conversation between Geta and Sostrata
that follows the rape of Sostrata’s daughter reveals the range of
options—and the likely reality. Geta urges that the rape be kept secret,
since the wealthy young man will probably deny it happened, and the
daughter’s reputation will be ruined, while Sostrata contends that she
will take the rapist to court and force him to marry her daughter.

our sources do, as an exceptional situation caused by heavy losses in the war’. Some
scholars focus on only the concern to produce citizen children; so Strauss (1986: 74)
suggests the point of the decree may have been that the second woman could be a
non-citizen, and that it coincides with abrogation of citizenship law. This is accepted
by Cudjoe (2010: 21 n. 50 and 133 n. 300), but cf. Kapparis (2012), who argues against
the decree on the grounds that only one citizen parent was needed to produce citizen
children, according to Dem. 57.3. Ogden (1996: 72–7) traces the legislation that relates
to citizenship, arguing that the Periclean citizenship law was probably revoked before
403 BCE (he speculates 411 BCE) and then reinstated with the restoration of the
democracy in 403 BCE in the archonship of Eucleides (see Harrison 1968: 26 n. 1).
[Dem] 59.16 (so, sometime before 340 BCE) indicates it is again illegal to cohabit with a
non-citizen, but since this clearly continued, it suggests that cohabitation with the
intention of producing legitimate children was not possible (see Just 1989: 62–3).
71
See Ogden 1996, esp. 152–65 for restrictions on citizenship. Children excluded
from anchisteia: Ar. Av. 1649–68, Isae. 6.47, Dem. 43.51.
72
See Isae. 12.2; Dem. 57.25: those who are forced by poverty to adopt foreigners.
On Phano [Dem.] 59.50 and 72, see Ogden 1996: 124.
73
Omitowoju 2002: 166–203.
 Dependence and Vulnerability 305
However, as we are told by a lamenting slave in a fragment from
Menander’s play Plokion or ‘Necklace’, those parents who were too
poor to make arrangements would have to find some other way to take
care of the future of their daughter. An extreme solution (presumably
intended to be comic) is threatened by Niceratus in the Samia, who,
when he thinks his unmarried daughter is pregnant, threatens to burn
the baby and then to kill the woman (Chrysis) protecting it.74 More
mundanely, away from the comic stage, it is also possible that some
young women would simply have been left to fend for themselves.75
With no economic support from a relationship, a woman would
have to find work. Some might follow the armies, perhaps involved in
food preparation, although it was more likely that many went along as
personal attendants, entertainers, and sexual partners.76 If we return to
the situation in European communities following the Black Death, one
result may have been that changes in the social structure created more
opportunities for women to enter the workforce at home.77 For some
women it was more essential that they take advantage of this situation
because they had no other means of survival, as the speaker of Demos-
thenes’ speech Against Eubulides, one Euxitheus of Halimous, explains.
As described elsewhere, Euxitheus has been evicted from his deme, in
response to the scrutiny of the demes instigated by the decree of

74
Men. Adelphoi 337–41 and 350, respectively. Men. Plokion fr. 298 K–A (Aul.
Gell. NA 2.23.15). Men. Sam. 553–4 and 560–1.
75
Omitowoju (2002: 215) suggests that it is unclear ‘whether these negative
responses would result in fathers repudiating daughters so that they are forced to
cross the boundary and lose all claims to respectability’.
76
Dalby (1992) argues that, in relation to the campaign described in Xenophon’s
Anabasis, it was important for the men of the Ten Thousand to prepare and serve
their own food, but Loman (2004: 49–50) argues more generally that women were
‘probably’ responsible for food production on foreign campaigns. Her argument is
logical: the ‘fewer men were tied to food production, the more men were available for
fighting’. However, she offers no evidence for this (although it may be that there is no
evidence). Note that at Thuc. 2.78.3, 110 women are left in Plataea to bake bread;
while in the preparations for the Sicilian expedition (6.22), we find Nicias detailing the
need to take bakers (‘from the mills’; their gender is unclear); the implication is that
this is unusual. For women as entertainers: Xen. An. 6.1.12; women accompanying the
Greeks: Xen. An. 4.3.19 and 5.4.33; women smuggled in to the camp: Xen. An. 4.1.14;
daughters given to mark an agreement: Xen. Hell. 4.1.14.
77
French (2011: 9) gives a succinct overview of the situation, and of the ensuing
debate by scholars over whether or not this is to be considered a ‘golden age for
women’. See, for example, Mate (1998: 11–20), who stresses that traditional gender
roles did not change. She also emphasizes the fluctuating nature of this employment,
such that women found themselves out of work as the male labour force met demand.
306 Envy, Poison, and Death
Demophilus of 346/5 BCE.78 He must show that both his parents were
citizens. First, he defends his father’s foreign accent on the grounds that
he was held prisoner during the second half of the Peloponnesian War
(the Decelean War). Then he protests that his mother’s status has also
been questioned because she has been forced to take on a series of jobs
that are not respectable: she sells ribbons in the market; she worked as a
wet nurse.79 However, he argues, this was because of the misfortune
that Athens was suffering at the time, and he refers to her husband
being absent on military service.80 He points out that there were many
Athenian women citizens who worked in such jobs, or at the loom, or
in the vineyards.81
Similarly, recent analysis suggests that, although we may not have
much palpable evidence, many women were employed in agricultural
tasks.82 The law limiting their transactions to one medimnos (if we
accept it had influence) would still allow participation in petty com-
merce: women could take part in various crafts, especially wool-
working.83 We also find evidence among grave epigrams for women
working: in fact, a profession is a separate theme only in grave
epigrams from Attica—for both men and women, appearing in 75
per cent of the grave epigrams for men and 25 per cent of those for
women.84 The professions named for women are one priestess, two
nurses, and one midwife, also called a physician;85 but there are also a
couple of epigrams in which the vocabulary appears to indicate some
kind of labour, without designating a particular profession.86 As
Tsagalis has observed, this is an important indicator of shifts in the
attitudes and expectations of this society: bridging public and private,
it emphasizes with pride that work is essential for personal survival as

78
See in this volume, pp. 197 and 320.
79 80
Dem. 57.18–19, 35. Dem. 57.42–5.
81
The plays of Aristophanes show women engaged in various occupations, as do
images on vases, but with concomitant difficulties of knowing the status of these
women, e.g. Ar. Thesm. 443–58 for a woman who is employed in garland-weaving
after her husband dies in Cyprus.
82
Scheidel 1995.
83
Schaps 1979: 19, Brock 1994, but cf. Scheidel 1995. For the idea that this was not
always observed in practice, see Cudjoe 2010: 120 n. 262, 157–8, and discussion, 293.
84
Tsagalis 2008: 208, citing Breuer 1995: 48; further discussion, this volume,
pp. 323–5.
85
See also Stears 1995: 123–4. Priestess: CEG 566; nurse: CEG 534 and 571;
midwife: CEG 569.
86
Tsagalis 2008: 212; see CEG 491 and 537.
 Dependence and Vulnerability 307
well as political well-being, and highlights the role of the individual.87
This is a development typical of the fourth century more generally,
but even more remarkable when we consider that this focuses, albeit
rarely, on women.
However, there were professions that were not such sources of
pride: how representative a type is the girl described by the fourth-
century comic poet Antiphanes who has no relations to act as her
guardians and so works as a hetaira?88 The fear that this might be the
fate of oneself or of that of the women in one’s family may have been
greater than the reality. Nevertheless, Apollodorus is certainly
appealing to a strong image when he argues that the acquittal of
Neaera would create a precedent by legitimizing Neaera’s conduct: it
could mean that poor women of citizen status would be unable to
marry if they had to compete for husbands with prostitutes who
could provide a substantial dowry, and so would themselves be
forced to turn to prostitution.89 Similar fears are referred to in a
speech by Isaeus, which reports that Athenian men would keep
marrying prostitutes. These passages suggest that there was concern
that some prostitutes must therefore have managed to conceal them-
selves as citizen women.90
Prostitution could involve mobility: for example, we have con-
sidered those who moved with the armies. Even for a free woman,
the nature of her economic dependency would dictate where she had
to live. If the prostitute was also a slave, this mobility would be
enforced by those who had bought her. Neaera, for example, moves
according to the requirements of her owners, or to whom she owes
money. The hetaira Lais seems to have had a similar career: born at
Hykkara, Sicily in 422 BCE, she arrived in Corinth after Hykkara was
plundered (415 BCE), as a prisoner of war. She clearly spent time in
Athens, perhaps through her association with the philosopher and
student of Socrates, Aristippus, who travelled widely, and seems to
have written a piece about her (‘To Lais’). Her death is said to have
occurred in Thessaly, where she had gone as companion to a

87
Tsagalis 2008: 213 (further discussion, this volume, p. 325).
88 89
Antiphanes fr. 210 K–A. [Dem.] 59: 111–14.
90
Isae. 3.17–18, since [Dem.] 59.16 tells us that Athenian men could not marry
foreign women. See also Dem. 22.61: both parents must have been citizens as well as
prostitutes, since the children were Athenian citizens; Lys. fr. 299 (Carey) tells us that
the hetaira Nais had a kyrios; see discussion in Cohen 2000 and 2008.
308 Envy, Poison, and Death
Thessalian returning home.91 It was possible for some of these
women to make considerable sums of money (Sinope from the
Black Sea is one famous example).92
But, as the almost incidental stories of the orators reveal, to live
such a life in Athens could be highly precarious. The story of Zobia, as
recounted in Against Aristogiton (1) is a fine example: it describes
what happens to a woman of metic status who requests the return of a
loan from a man (Aristogiton) who is unwilling to pay it back. When
she starts to complain to other people about him, he charges her with
not paying her metic tax. Zobia manages to avoid being sold into
slavery because she has the support of her prostates; but, as noted
above, Aristogiton’s mother and sister were not so lucky. And they
also illustrate how a relationship to a citizen family member might not
only not provide security, but could even present further danger.93

‘AMONG THE PRISONERS BROUGHT TO

APOLLO AT DELPHI WAS MANTO’

The story of Manto, daughter of Tiresias, albeit legendary, brings

together a number of themes discussed so far. According to Pausan-
ias, Manto was taken prisoner after the fall of Thebes to Thersander
and the Argives. Her father had died during the journey to Delphi.
She is told to go to Klaros, and is then captured by the Cretan leader
Rhacius—her son will be the seer, Mopsus.94 Although there is no
direct evidence that she is a seer herself, Manto’s story connects
experiences of dependency on male relatives, enforced itinerancy,
enforced sexual service—and introduces one last dimension: mantic
powers.

91
Birth: Steph. Byz., s.v. krastos; Ath. 13.589a, [1. 182]; arrival in Corinth: Plut. Alc.
39, Ath. 13.588c; associated with Aristippus: Diog. Laert. 2.75, Ath. 13.588e; and
Diogenes (‘the Cynic’) of Sinope: Ath. 13.588e. She is said to have died in Thessaly,
in a temple of Aphrodite, at the hands of a group of envious women: Plut. Amat. 767f
and Ath. 13.589a–b; see Strothmann 2014.
92 93
See Amphis fr. 22.12 K–A. Dem. 25.57 and 25.55 and 65; see this
volume, p. 302.
94
See Paus. 7.3.1–2. We might also turn to another Manto, daughter of Polyidus
(great-grandson of Melampus), whose grave could be seen by Pausanias at Megara
(1.43.5); she and her sister Astycratea had journeyed there with their itinerant father,
who had come to Megara to purify Alcathous for the murder of his son Callipolis.
 Dependence and Vulnerability 309
In Greek texts, the word agurtes and related terms are used to refer
to beggars.95 But by the fifth century, this family of terms has acquired
a more nuanced meaning: to describe itinerant sellers of ritual prac-
tices of various kinds, and it has become instantiated as a term of
abuse.96 An illustrative example—one of the most famous uses of the
term—shows Oedipus insulting Tiresias in Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyr-
annus as ‘a crafty agurtes who has sight only when it comes to profit,
but in his art is blind’.97 But the earliest occurrence of the term,
linking beggary and ritual practice, seems to be around 458 BCE, in
Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, where it is used by Cassandra, the sad, mad
Trojan princess, cursed with a gift of prophecy that no one will
believe, as she describes how she has been mocked by friends who
have turned on her, and abused her.98 A related term, ageirousan,
appears in a fragment of a play by Aeschylus, the Semele or Hydro-
phoroi. We know very little about it, except that it features Hera
transformed into a priestess, begging (ageirousan) on behalf of the
Nymphs of the river Inachos in Argos.99 In both these examples, one
a first use of the term, the description is of a woman fallen on hard
times, and she is associated with ritual practice. In the first instance,
the woman is a mantis forced to take to the streets; in the other, a
poor woman who begs in a ritual context. They are both remarkable
women, and this draws attention to how far they have fallen. The idea
of the bereft and begging woman is far from new (think of Androm-
ache’s heart-rending description in the Iliad of the miserable future
her son will endure, without a father, forced to live as a beggar and an
outcast).100 However, perhaps these representations of begging

95
See LSJ s.v. agurtazo, ‘to collect by begging’ (e.g. Hom. Od. 19.284).
96
This process is charted in Eidinow Forthcoming b, on which this discussion
draws. See also Flower (2008: 66) and Giammellaro (2013), who argues that it was
simply a term intended to indicate a beggar, and that it was the marginal status of
beggars that brings it inevitably to have associations with supernatural powers,
comparing this to the modern idea of the gypsy.
97 98
Soph. OT 388–9. Aesch. Ag. 1269–74.
99
Aesch. fr. 220a–c (Sommerstein 2008) (= fr. 168 Radt) and see Pl. Resp.
381d4–7 (ὡς ἱέρειαν ἀγείρουσαν); two lines from the fragments (fr. 220a 16–17) are
attributed by Asclepiades to the Xantriai (Schol. Ar. Ran. 1344), followed by Dillon
(2002: 96) and Dickie (2001: 80), but Sommerstein (2008: 224–7) argues for the
Semele or Hydrophoroi. The practice of women collecting gifts in honour of divinities
that aid childbirth also seems to be alluded to in Herodotus’ description (4.35.3) of the
Delian women collecting gifts for Arge and Opis (two Hyperborean virgins).
100
Hom. Il. 22.446ff.
310 Envy, Poison, and Death
women on the Athenian stage indicate that the prominence of this
group in society had become more marked.
In literature of the fourth century, the term continues to present
this associations between beggardom, travelling, and ritual. This is
largely a tale of male seers: they are, by far, more prominent in our
sources.101 However, their situation also has relevance to the envir-
onment we have been describing: the increasing and increasingly
bitter comments about (male) seers across literary genres turn on
the perceived monetization of magic, reinforcing the impression that
this activity was increasingly a resort of those forced to make a
living.102 Meanwhile, evidence for women manteis is much rarer
and more partial, found in assorted literary and epigraphic sources
from across places and centuries that comes together to allow a
glimpse of a half-seen underlying reality. Sometimes these are allu-
sions to groups of women. For example, we find in Hippocratic
treatises the female engastrimuthoi, or ‘belly-talkers’, described with
some contempt; and in an early third-century BCE decree, from Mile-
tos, women who ‘perform initiations for Dionysus in the city or in the
country’ are required to report to the priestess of Dionysus in the city
and pay a regular fee.103 Sometimes we learn of individuals: ‘Asterie
the seer’ appears in a collection of epigrams; one ‘Satyra the seer’ is
commemorated in an epitaph dating to the third century BCE; and a
stele from Mantinea, dating to the fifth century BCE, depicts what must
surely be a female seer.104
Such women may once have taken to the road, and then settled
(bringing to mind the roaming pattern of the seer Thrasyllus, in
Isocrates’ Aegineticus).105 For example, in Plato’s Symposium, we
famously meet Diotima, a priestess from Mantinea, who is described
as having managed to delay the onset of a plague in Athens for ten
years through her directions about sacrifices. This woman is teaching

101
See Flower 2008: 212.
102
The term is also used in Pl. Resp. 364b2–365a3 (cf. Leg 845e3); Cratinus in his
Drapetides (Storey 2011a: fr. 62); and Lysippus (Storey 2011b: fr. 6b) in his Bacchae,
where, according to Hesychius s.v. Agursikubelis (alpha 461), he used the term to
mock the Athenian seer and politician Lampon.
103
Engastrimuthoi in Hipp. Epid. 5.63 and 7.28 and in Philochorus (FGrHist 328
F 78); Initiations at Miletos: LSAM 48.19ff.; see Burkert 1987: 33.
104
Satyra: SEG 35.626; see Flower 2008: 214. Asterie: the ‘New Posidippus’ (P. Mil.
Vogl. VIII 309) AB 26 (IV 36–9).The stele from Mantinea depicts a woman with a
liver in her hand: Flower 2008: 212; see discussion by Möbius 1967.
105
See this volume, p. 290.
 Dependence and Vulnerability 311
Socrates about love, and in the course of the conversation outlines the
connections between skills in love and skills in such supernatural
services as ‘all divination and priestcraft concerning sacrifice and
ritual and incantations, and all soothsaying and sorcery’.106 As
Michael Flower has argued, whether or not Diotima herself is a
fictional creation, she represents a ‘type of individual who was recog-
nisable to Plato’s contemporaries’.107 She is discussed by modern
scholars in terms of her presentation as a philosopher, but we must
not forget her connections with the supernatural.108 She is rare not
only for her intellect but for the ease with which she is depicted
discussing these techniques. As we will see, other such female prac-
titioners of the fourth century seem to have engendered great anxiety.

106 107
Pl. Symp. 201d. Flower 2008: 212.
108
For example, Waithe 1987, Hawthorne 1994. Halperin (1990a: 113–52 and
1990b, a shorter version of the article) discusses the construction of Diotima as a
‘“woman”’, representing (297) ‘the erotics of (male) philosophical intercourse’.
 4.4

‘Dangerous Women’

In ‘Women and Democracy in Fourth-Century Athens’, Michael

Jameson argued that the writings of certain fourth-century sources,
specifically Plato and Aristotle, indicate a view that women enjoyed
excessive freedom under the Athenian democracy.1 Jameson posited
that the true target of Plato’s and Aristotle’s ‘fantasies of imminent or
present gunokratia’ was democracy and that their discourse not only
brings to bear the rich resources of a misogynistic culture, but also the
long-held anxiety of the upper classes that slaves, foreigners, and
women will somehow undo the democracy. He notes that those
women for whom we have evidence of their trials, Phryne, Ninon,
and Theoris, along with other ‘dangerous women’ who are mentioned
or brought to court in this period, tend to be foreigners, and in most
cases are associated with slaves.2 He sees these trials as illustrating the
particular kinds of social weakness that the democracy engendered:
although ‘the public, political sphere remained impregnable so long
as the democracy survived, in the area of social relations the discrep-
ancy between ideal and the real had reached a point that it served to
fuel anxiety over status relations in general’.3 Jameson’s focus
embraces society more generally, and aristocratic dislike of democ-
racy in particular; in what follows, I want to build on his initial
arguments in a slightly different direction, by looking more closely
at what this evidence reveals in terms of anxieties about ‘dangerous
women’.

1
Jameson 1997: the title is from his reference (103 n. 11) to ‘dangerous women’.
2
Jameson 1997: 102, citing Plut. Phoc. 34, where Plutarch’s source appears to
blame the presence of slaves, foreigners, disenfranchised citizens, and women for the
condemnation of the (anti-democratic) general Phocion and his associates.
3
Jameson 1997: 103.
 ‘Dangerous Women’ 313
A number of such women appear in speeches written by Isaeus,
playing a key role in the contestation about matters of inheritance
that these present.4 Alce, for example, appears in a speech probably
written in 365/4 BCE, which concerns the estate of (originally) one
Euctemon, who had three sons, Philoctemon, Ergamenes, and Hege-
mon, and two daughters.5 The speech introduces a number of themes
related to the context of warfare that we have explored earlier in this
part of the book. All three sons predecease their father—the last to die
is Philoctemon in a battle off Chios (6.27). On the death of Euctemon,
Philoctemon’s nephew Chaerestratus claimed the estate on the
grounds that he had been adopted by Philoctemon, and was named
in his will. This was opposed by one Androcles, a relative of Eucte-
mon, who claimed the estate for himself, along with Euctemon’s
daughter in marriage (her husband had died) on the grounds that
he was next of kin to this heiress. He then made two further claims:
first, that Philoctemon had not made a will; and second that the estate
was not liable for adjudication because Euctemon actually had two
legitimate sons by a woman called Callippe (to whom he apparently
called himself guardian). In response, Chaerestratus had no option
but to prosecute Androcles on a dike pseudomarturion (case for false
witness). This speech, delivered by a friend of Chaerestratus, sets out
to prove that Callippe’s sons were not legitimate heirs, but were in fact
the children of a prostitute, the woman called Alce. And, according to
the account given by the speaker, it is Alce who is at the heart of all
the wrongdoing that has occurred.
The bulk of the speech is given over to narrating the ways in which
Alce inveigled Euctemon, and then Androcles and his associate
Antidorus, into committing crimes; in the process, we are given a
full picture of Alce’s life. It seems that Euctemon owned a building in
Piraeus in which he kept a group of prostitutes, managed by one of his
freedwomen. Alce was among the prostitutes, and the speaker implies

4
All eleven of Isaeus’ surviving speeches (there were perhaps fifty genuine
speeches, according to ps.-Plut. Life of Isaeus, 839f) concern questions of succession,
as do a number of the fragmentary speeches, although the individual charges vary (see
Edwards 2007: 2). Harrison (1968: 123) argues: ‘This predominance in its turn is
probably partly due to the fact that the rules were in the fourth century both
complicated and fluid, and this gave play to litigation and the skill of the logographer.’
5
Isae. 6. Date: Edwards (2007: 100), based on §6.14: fifty years have passed since
the departure of the Sicilian expedition in summer 415 BCE.
314 Envy, Poison, and Death
she had something of a reputation: ‘I think many of you know her,’ he
says to the court, in a trope that we have seen used before.6
Alce had been in a relationship with a man called Dion, with whom
she had had two sons whom Dion had brought up as his own. When
Dion had been forced to flee because of a crime he had committed,
Euctemon appears to have taken care of Alce, and she had become
manager of an apartment block in the Kerameikos. Euctemon is
described as becoming increasingly fond of her, spending ‘much of
his time in the apartment block; sometimes he even dined with her,
abandoning his wife and children and the house he lived in. Despite
the protests of his wife and sons, he not only did not stop going there
but in the end, he lived there completely.’7
With this background filled in, the accusations become more
focused—and start to include details that sound familiar. The speaker
relates how Euctemon ‘was reduced to such a condition by drugs or
disease or some other cause’, so that Alce was able to persuade him to
introduce the elder of her two sons into his phratry, under his name.8
Later, after the death of Philoctemon, the speaker describes how Andro-
cles and Antidorus, in turn, ‘fell under the influence of that woman’ and
together they plotted to acquire Euctemon’s estate.9 Alce is described as
‘the woman who destroyed Euctemon’s reason’, and, more generally, as
showing contempt ‘not only for the members of Euctemon’s family but
for the whole city’.10 She is portrayed as being at the heart of the plot to
plunder Euctemon’s estate—and, worse still, responsible for his not
being properly attended to and buried.11
Then we turn from the personal to the religious: Alce, it seems,
has disregarded a law concerning religious activity within the city,
which the speaker asks to be read aloud for the benefit of the court.
Although we do not know what the law was, it has been interpreted as
one that regulated attendance at the Thesmophoria.12 And the
speaker follows it with a description of how Alce attended a festival,
entering the temple, seeing the activities inside and seeing ‘what she

6
Isae. 6.19 (tr. Forster 1927, used throughout this section).
7 8
Isae. 6.21. Isae. 6.21.
9
Isae. 6.29; note the contemptuous use of anthropos to describe her, which may
also signify her possible slave status.
10 11
Isae. 6.48. Isae. 6.38–40.
12
Isae. 6.48–50. Wyse (1904: ad 48): ‘The law probably contained regulations
concerning the Thesmophoria in which women of servile origin or of immoral life
were not allowed to participate.’
 ‘Dangerous Women’ 315
was not entitled to see’.13 He concludes with a reading of ‘the decrees
that the Council passed concerning her’, making it sound as if
regulation had been passed specifically in response to Alce’s activ-
ities.14 Although the speaker does not use explicit terms of impiety to
describe her behaviour, the association of ideas is still clear: ‘she has
dared’ to see what she should not have seen. Moreover, he frames this
point by emphasizing how the people (and here he addresses the
dikastai as ‘you’) framed the law in terms that were ‘solemn and
pious’, and did this because they believed it important ‘to honour
these goddesses and the other gods’.15 Alce comes across as a sinister
figure, one who has scant respect for the values and structures of polis
and oikos, who has tremendous influence over the men she meets—
who may (possibly) use pharmaka to get her way—and who sets the
city at risk with regard to the gods.
Alce is remarkably clearly drawn; she provides something of a set
of characteristics that we also find used to portray other similar
women. One example is the woman who is the focus of another
speech by Isaeus (undated), On the Estate of Pyrrhus. She is the
mother of a woman called Phile, and may or may not have been a
slave, and/or a hetaira: the ambiguity and fluidity of her identity is the
crucial problem in the case.16 The estate in question was inherited
from Pyrrhus by Endius, his nephew, whom he had adopted. When
Endius died, because he had no children, a number of claimants
appeared: on the one hand, Xenocles of Kopros, who claimed that
his wife Phile was the legitimate daughter of Pyrrhus; and, on the
other, Endius’ younger brother (the speaker), on behalf of his mother.
Much of the case depends on the outcome of a previous trial, in which
Xenocles was prosecuted successfully for false witness after making a
declaration that his wife’s mother was married to Pyrrhus, and

13
Isae. 6.50.
14
It is possible that this could be an existing decree that he brings up here to
reinforce his point, but, as Wyse (1904: ad 51.5) observes, the Council met in
accordance with a law of Solon in the Eleusinion on the day after the Mysteries to
receive a report from the Basileus Archon about the conduct of the festival. Although
the Thesmophoria may not have received the same attention, perhaps the Council still
received some kind of report and made some kind of judgment.
15
Isae. 6.49–50.
16
See discussion in Wyse 1904: 3.39. Date uncertain; Edwards (2007: 48) reports
that it is possible that it was 389 BCE. Aspects of this case are also explored on pp. 196
and 204 of this volume.
316 Envy, Poison, and Death
therefore his wife, Phile, could legitimately claim his estate. He, in
turn announced his intention to prosecute those who had witnessed
Pyrrhus’s will. In turn, and possibly to prevent this prosecution, our
speaker took Nicodemus, the brother of Phile’s mother, to court, with
an indictment for false witness, since he had claimed at the previous
trial to have given his sister in marriage to Pyrrhus, and that Phile was
her child: this is the case for which this speech was composed.
According to the speaker, the woman-masquerading-as-wife seems
to have remained unchallenged in her position, but quite what her
position was is something of a mystery. It is far from clear that the
woman was a hetaira—although the speaker stresses how she was
available to any man who wanted her both before and after her
marriage to Pyrrhus—or, even if she was a hetaira, she was not a
citizen.17 For our purposes, we can see how, in order to make his case
against Phile and her mother, the speaker, Pyrrhus’s nephew, seems
to be appealing to familiar images of dangerous women. In the case of
the mother, the speaker observes how other ‘young men before now,
having fallen in love with such women, and being unable to control
their passion, have been induced by folly to ruin themselves in this
way’.18 Despite his claim that whenever she was at Pyrrhus’ house
there were fights, revelry, and frequent disorder, he is careful not to
give the name of the woman in question, which suggests that her
status was not so doubtful, nor her reputation so bad as he implies.19
But the name of the daughter is bandied around quite openly; indeed,
exactly what it was and who called her by it is part of the speaker’s
argument that she is not of the status that she claims. The character of
the illegitimate daughter, poised to take away the property of an
Athenian citizen woman, is scarcely realized, and yet she manages
to personify all the dangers that arise from the absence of a genuine
citizen identity that we have already seen above; the argument about
her name may not be factually persuasive, but through it the speaker
evokes ‘the dangerous woman’ of popular imagination.20
Similarly, in the speech On the Estate of Nicostratus, Hagnon
and Hagnotheus, Nicostratus’ brothers, assert that Chariades is

17 18
Isae. 3.11. Isae. 3.17.
19
Isae. 3.13; see Schaps 1977 on naming women in Athenian courts. It is also
possible that she was in fact an Athenian citizen, albeit one who had lived as a pallake.
20
Edwards 2007: 52.
 ‘Dangerous Women’ 317
attempting something of the same stratagem in his attempt to gain
Nicostratus’ estate. He has argued that he served with Nicostratus as a
mercenary, was his business partner, and had been adopted by him;
they argue that he is ‘foisting in not only himself but also his child by
the hetaira’.21 We also find this character of the over-influential
woman alluded to in other speeches: for example, in On the Estate
of Menecles (c.354/3), the speaker denies the argument of the pros-
ecution that he was adopted by Menecles when that man was ‘under
the influence’ of his second wife (the speaker’s younger sister).22 The
phrase calls to mind the Solonian law recorded by Demosthenes that
discounted inheritance arrangements when they were made under the
influence of mania, age, pharmaka, sickness, or a woman, or under
constraint.23 It has been suggested from the arguments put forward by
the defence that the plaintiff will have tried to convince the court that
the woman had no dowry, and that the couple were not properly
married; and he may also have painted her as a hetaira.24
Finally, these characteristics also pervade the case made against
another, more famous prostitute—and dangerous woman—Neaera.
The law-court speech, delivered by Apollodorus and dating between
343–340 BCE, presents a particular view of Neaera’s life story, as part of
a prosecution against her for (illegally, as an alien) acting as the wife of
a citizen.25 The case is squarely aimed at Stephanus, her partner in
crime and a long-time enemy of Apollodorus, so in some ways, Neaera
is just a foil; but the speaker makes full use of the risks she presents as a
dangerous woman. And not just her: before we turn to the details this
speech provides about the life of Neaera herself, we can consider first its
incidental introduction of two other such characters.26
The first is Neaera’s daughter, Phano. The speaker has already
established the doubtful status and character of this young women,
explaining not only the ambiguity about her parentage (never satis-
factorily resolved), but also just how like her mother she is in

21
Isae. 4.10; date of speech uncertain—Edwards (2007: 68) reports a suggested
c.350 BCE.
22
Edwards 2007: 32.
23
Isae. 2.19. Law: [Dem.] 46.14. The charge is also introduced at the end of Isae.
9.37, although no woman is identified in connection with this case.
24
See Wyse 1904: 234–5 and Edwards 2007: 28–9.
25
On date/authorship, Kapparis 1999: 28 and 48–52. Scholars have argued that
this is a graphe xenias, e.g., Todd 1993: 176, but cf. Kapparis 2005: 78.
26
[Dem.] 59: 116–17 (tr. throughout this section by Murray 1939b).
318 Envy, Poison, and Death
character, seeking ‘to emulate her mother’s habits and the dissolute
manner of living in her house’.27 There is a first marriage, to Phrastor,
who indicts Stephanus on the grounds that he had represented Phano
as his own daughter.28 In this section of the speech we also find what
may be an allusion to the working of magic: Phrastor falls ill after
sending Phano away; he has no support from his relatives, and is in a
helpless state. Neaera and her daughter then return, and, we are told,
he is psuchagogomenos by their attentions.29 The Greek word can
mean something as simple as ‘cajoled’ or ‘beguiled’, but it has another
meaning that alludes to supernatural persuasion, in particular that of
summoning souls—of the living or the dead.30 It may be intended to
suggest that Neaera and her daughter have used wiles that are not
wholly natural.
Phano is then married to Theogenes, who had been appointed as
King Archon, and, as his wife, officiates at ceremonies in a role reserved
for citizen women.31 For some reason (in what may be another exam-
ple of gossip at work) the problem of her identity is then raised before
the Areopagus, but in this case, it appears to have been because she was
accused of being an adulteress (this is the original reason why her
husband Theogenes then cast her out, although his deposition states
that he had found out she was not Stephanus’ daughter).32
To the case that the speaker is making, the exact nature of Phano’s
offences is almost an irrelevant detail. The audience is allowed no
doubt as to what kind of threat Phano’s activities might pose to the
city, as the speaker describes in some detail the ancient tradition that
surrounded the election of the King Archon and the role of that
officer’s wife, one that was established even before the time of

27
[Dem.] 59.38, 50–1 (quotation 50), 121–4; and see also the Epaenetus episode
§§64–72 (in which Epaenetus is caught having sex with Phano, is discovered by
Apollodorus, held to ransom, released on surety, fails to pay up, and then indicts
him for unlawful imprisonment on the grounds [we are told] that Phano was not
Stephanus’ daughter). The two settled with, it is alleged, Stephanus putting Phano at
Epainetus’ sexual disposal. See the discussion by Hamel (2003: 95–101) for the way in
which the speaker draws out the implications for his case against Neaera—and the
flaws in his arguments.
28
[Dem.] 59.50–62; see also p. 304 of this volume. Phrastor brings a suit against
Stephanus, but then tries to get his son with Phano entered into his own phratry and
genos, the Brytidae; he takes them to court when they refuse.
29
[Dem]. 59.55.
30
The term is found with the more supernatural meaning in Pl. Leg. 909b, Xen.
Mem. 3.10.6, Diod. Sic. 4.4.3.
31
[Dem.] 59.72.
32
[Dem.] 59.73–87. Kapparis (1999 ad loc.): argues that the document at 59.84 is a
forgery.
 ‘Dangerous Women’ 319
Theseus.33 We are left with the clear impression that in every
dimension of both her birth and behaviour the figure of Phano is
dangerous, to individual citizens, to the oikos, to the city and its
venerable traditions and identity, and, finally, to the city’s relation-
ship with its gods.34 In turn, these descriptions of Phano’s behaviour
exacerbate the dangers posed by Neaera’s own status and actions.
They allow the speaker to introduce the idea of impiety into the case,
even though Neaera has not committed any straightforward offence.
And Phano is not the only one to play this role. A further story makes
this association even more directly and explicitly.
The speaker compares Neaera and a man called Archias, who had
been a hierophant, or high priest, of the temple at Eleusis. It is likely
that Archias was convicted of impiety. Among the charges brought
against him is that he had sacrificed on the altar in the court at Eleusis
when it was neither the right day for the sacrifice, nor his to perform;
the sacrificial victim, we are told, had been supplied by the hetaira,
Sinope. Archias, apparently, was punished; although we do not know
what the punishment was, it was delivered so stringently that ‘the
pleading of his relatives and friends did not save him, nor the public
services which he and his ancestors had rendered to the city; no, nor
yet his office of hierophant’.35 As we have noted earlier, it seems likely
that there were also political motives underlying the case against
Archias: if Plutarch is to be believed, Archias had tried to warn the
ruler of Thebes (also Archias) that he and his men were to be
ambushed by the anti-Spartan Theban faction led by Pelopidas, return-
ing from exile in Athens.36 Thus, even as this story explicitly described
a dangerous woman who had led a man, a priest no less, into a perilous
act of impiety, it also may have brought with it further resonances of
treachery and deceit.
Sinope herself is not mentioned again, nor was she in fact neces-
sarily guilty of anything. Nevertheless, the mention of her presence
and her apparent influence in the moment of commission of an act of
impiety reinforces the tenor of the speaker’s argument against
Neaera. The juxtaposition of these three women—Phano, Sinope,

33
[Dem.] 59.74–7.
34
These different levels of appeal are made explicit in the peroration, esp. §110–14.
35
See earlier discussion of this case, p. 51, n. 51 of this volume. Krauter (2004: 233)
regards this as a graphe asebeias.
36
Plut. Pelop. 10.3–4.
320 Envy, Poison, and Death
Neaera herself—conflates and reinforces the threat of the dangerous
woman who crosses civic and sacral boundaries, who leads individual
citizens into impious actions, and who thus undermines the safety of
the city. From Sinope’s role in Archias’ fate, the speaker slides neatly
into a discussion of Neaera, and the idea that she might escape
punishment, although ‘she has committed acts of sacrilege against
this same god, and has transgressed the laws’.37 The jury is faced not
only with the threat of letting women like Sinope and Neaera escape
punishment for their crimes (while others who are of higher status
and greater service to the city pay the penalty), but also the risk that,
as jurors of the case, they will encourage others like them to do the
same.38
There are still more dangerous women haunting the forensic
corpus—although little beyond these salient characteristics is
known about them. They include, for example, the sister of Lacedae-
monius, mentioned by Demosthenes in his speech Against Eubulides.
This trial probably took place on the occasion of the review of the
deme register of 346/5: the speaker, one Euxitheus, was appealing
against his ejection from the deme of Halimous, as discussed above.
Eubulides had made the original demand for his disenfranchisement,
and the other demesmen had voted to support him.39 Euxitheus
indicates that Eubulides had put forward various arguments to
show that his parents were not Athenian. First of all, it was claimed
that his father had a foreign accent. Euxitheus defends him on the
grounds that he had been taken prisoner in the Decelean War and
then sold as a slave; it was a long time before he had come home.40
Second, it was argued that Euxitheus’ mother sold ribbons in the
Agora, and had worked as a wet nurse—apparently intimating that
she was a poor foreigner. Euxitheus, as we have seen, argues that

37
[Dem.] 59.119.
38
Mentioned by Apollodorus in the context of the case of Neaera, is Metaneira,
whose initiation Lysias arranged ([Dem.] 59.21). She seems to provide us with an
exception to the image of the ‘dangerous women’: the story is presented as a contrast
to the account of Neaera and her protector, the positive to their negative image of the
perversion of citizenship. But we also have to bear in mind that the contrast runs deep.
Lysias is, after all, a metic, and so already at some level, less than a citizen; it may be
that this makes his consorting with a prostitute somehow more acceptable. See Goff
2004: 154.
39
MacDowell 2009: 288; see discussion in this volume, p. 197.
40
Dem. 57.
 ‘Dangerous Women’ 321
she was simply an Athenian who, like many who suffered during the
Peloponnesian War, had to find a way to support herself.41
It has been suggested that the real issue of the matter (which the
speaker has elided here) may have turned on this role as wet nurse: if
Euxitheus’s mother was pregnant while his father was away, then this
casts doubt on his paternity.42 However, Euxitheus focuses (unsur-
prisingly) on other motivations: not only long-held enmity between
the two families, but more recently, another trial, in the course of
which the speaker gave evidence against Eubulides. This was a
prosecution against a woman—‘the sister of Lacedaemonius’—for
impiety. That she is not mentioned by name suggests her respectabil-
ity.43 That we have not heard more about her may be because
Eubulides failed to gain a fifth part of the votes.

. . . AND AMBIGUOUS RELATIONSHIPS

The majority of these women emerge from the kaleidoscopic rhetoric

of the forensic corpus drawn in hyperreal and unlikely colours. But
their exaggerated characteristics also showcase the nightmares of the
Athenian citizen imaginary. Marriage and adoption were strategies
used in the fourth century to maintain family interests and property
rights.44 These women threatened those strategies: the potential
ambiguity of their status became a weapon, wielded by acquisitive
men and/or the women themselves. It confused and obscured kin and
marital relationships, putting Athenian families and citizenship in
jeopardy.
In a society in which the civic identity of women was hard to
ascertain, a little gossip may have been enough to suggest that a
wife was no straightforward citizen wife, but was, in fact a pallake
or a hetaira—or vice versa.45 We see this suggested in the forensic

41 42 43
Dem. 57.30–45. Dem. 57.42. Dem. 57.8.
44
Rubinstein 1993: 62–4 and 1999: 55–61.
45
Underpinning this is the question of whether or not women who were citizens
could be given as pallakai in the first place. In support, Sealey (1984) argues for the
existence of dowries for pallakai on the basis of Isae. 3.39, and the idea that benefits
other than a dowry are referred to there.. Ogden (1996: 151 and 158–63) argues that
citizen pallakai were possible, but unlikely, and (159) that the Isaeus passage cannot
be taken as evidence, since, he argues, there is no indication that the men in question
322 Envy, Poison, and Death
evidence: Demosthenes attempts to represent Plangon as a citizen
and pallake; Isaeus represented Phile as a bastard, and her mother as a
citizen–hetaira/pallake;46 in turn, as we have seen, Apollodorus offers
plenty of ‘evidence’ to support his allegations of Neaera’s simulation
of citizen–wife.47 Although the facts that lie behind these accusations
may be impossible to ascertain, we can see how, in the context of the
law courts, speakers were able to use these common ideas, these
shared fears, to manipulate perceptions of status.
Women who blurred these boundaries—the argument seems to
be—could also cross others. The descriptions offered in these speeches
show women luring men from their civic duty by inducing them to join
in impious actions. And similar stories appear across ancient literature,
ranging from allegations about Pericles and his relationship with the
hetaira who became his wife, Aspasia (rumoured to have been brought

are Athenian citizens—but he does not engage with Sealey’s argument. Indeed, in
some ways he seems to agree with Sealey, since he argues with the support of New
Comedy (citing Plautus Stichus 562 and Trinummus 612 and 685–91) that it was usual
for a concubine to be given without a dowry—which is the conclusion that Sealey also
comes to (1984: 117). Kamen (2013: 66) agrees with Ogden (in a passage on the status
of nothoi), while Kennedy (2014: 114–15) states that, though citizen pallakai were
possible, there is no evidence that the term was ever used about a citizen woman; later
(117), she argues that the fact that Neaera was accused of pretending to be a citizen
wife indicates that the difference between a pallake and a wife was citizenship.
However, she argues that it was far from a servile status, and gave metic women
legal protection (contra Patterson 1991: 284). Finally, Harrison (1968: 14) argues that
the speaker is emphasizing the lack of a formal marriage agreement (by engue)
between Nicodemus and Pyrrhus, and (15) supports the idea that pallakai would
have included ‘free women who formed these unions on their own initiative’.
46
Dem. 39.26, 40.8 and 27. Cf. Ogden (1996: 158–9), who suggests that these
examples are not convincing evidence, because in each case the woman was likely to
have been a legitimate wife. But if this was the case, he does not explain what
Demosthenes is trying to achieve, since presumably the jurors were aware of what
was possible or not; perhaps these speeches may still reveal what was plausible. There
is evidence for citizen hetairai in Plutarch’s description of Alcibiades’ happy home life
(Alc. 8.3), but Ogden (1996: 160) stresses this is the only certain reference and
dismisses descriptions of hetairai as coming from Attica (Thais ‘need merely have
hailed from the city’); he offers no comment on the evidence that Lamia was said to
have a citizen father (Ath. 13.577c) and dismisses the famous Antiphanes fragment,
which states that the hetaira ‘is a citizen woman’ with the assertion that this is about a
‘pseudo-hetaira’ (fr. 210 [Hydria] K–A; see Kurke 1997: 116 for the association of
hetairai and gold).
47
It is also represented in fictional situations: in Menander’s Perikeiromene, we
find gossip working precisely in support of such a situation, with characters referring
to the relationship of Polemon and Glycera in terms of a proper marriage. See
discussion in Konstan 1987: 127.
 ‘Dangerous Women’ 323
to court on a charge of asebeia and pandering), to the gossip that
Athenaeus records concerning Demetrius of Phaleron (the Athenian
statesman’s grandson) and the way in which he seated his hetaira
Aristagora at the Panathenaea and celebration of the Eleusinian
Mysteries.48
This is the usual matted discourse of misogyny of ancient Greek
literature. Nevertheless, the patterns repeated across these stories are
striking: these women not only corrupt the individual, but they put
the city itself in danger—in part, because they endanger the blood-
lines of the oikos, but also because of the supernatural consequences
of their actions or influence. And the forensic evidence itself indicates
how closely these patterns interacted with reality.49 When the orators
refer to such women, they are generating and reinforcing, as much as
drawing on, the cultural model of the dangerous woman.
It is striking that this discourse of risk was also reinforced from the
opposite direction, as it were, through a discourse of public praise for
a very different kind of woman. The commemoration of women in
the form of inscribed epitaphs shows a marked increase during the
fourth century BCE. There are 162 surviving epitaphs from fourth-
century Attica, with family members attested in forty-five: eleven
epitaphs for men, and thirty-four for women.50 The grave stelai on
which they are found also feature sculpted figure scenes—probably
mass-produced, and likely to give some indication of what was
considered to be an ideal family.51
Altogether, this evidence offer indications of the idealized charac-
teristics of a woman: the standardized vocabulary notes how she was
‘virtuous and moderate’.52 It is also particularly striking how many of
these appear to be concerned with family-oriented relations; in par-
ticular, the surviving epitaphs emphasize the role of the wife.53 As
well as the verbal emphases, there are a number of aspects of the

48
Demetrius in Ath. 4.167; Pericles in Plut. Per. 32.
49
As mentioned, there was a Solonian law (preserved in Dem. 46.14) that dis-
counted inheritance arrangements when they were made under the influence of mania,
age, pharmaka, sickness, or a woman—or under constraint.
50 51
Tsagalis 2008: 184. See Younger 2002: 172–3.
52
agathe kai sophron; see Younger 2002: 181 (and tr.).
53
Tsagalis (2008: 184–5) gives one epitaph to a woman for every three for men;
this remains stable outside Attica during the fourth century, but within Attica, it
changes to four epitaphs for men to every three epitaphs for women. Tsagalis (2008:
186–7): women are commemorated as wives in 41.02%, and as mothers in 25.64% of
cases where family terms are employed. On women’s control over the oikos, see
324 Envy, Poison, and Death
visual depictions that reinforce the idealized oikos-focused role of a
woman: most generally the activities that occupy these women set
them in a domestic sphere.54 Typically, one woman is seated (usually
regarded as the deceased) and another stands:55 the relationship
between these two figures (one seated, one standing) is often under-
stood to be that of mother and daughter, but other figures are also
depicted (for example, another woman, probably a maid, perhaps
holding a baby) and sometimes the scenes appear almost crowded;
one includes a small dog.56
In terms of further scene-setting, we also see kalathoi (or wool
baskets) in various positions, and sometimes the women in the scene
are working wool.57 The seated figure may hold an object such as a
kithara (lyre); she may be adjusting/holding a mantle or receiving or
putting on (or taking off) jewellery.58 The standing woman often has
a box, and may be taking something from it;59 often, the standing
woman is holding a child.60 In addition, we should also take note of
the use of the dexiosis motif, in which individuals are shown clasping
hands—and women are shown performing this action both with men

Tsagalis 2008: 187, and Breuer 1995: 65. Foxhall (1989: 22–44) explains how import-
ant a wife’s dowry was to the well-being of her new home.
54
Younger 2002: 178 (this description is indebted to his analysis); he emphasizes
how the female viewer of these stelai would have been affected by them, causing her to
(191) ‘imagine the deceased individual’s character and qualities, to feel for her the
emotions that her loved ones once felt for her, and finally to remember that she will
join her’.
55
Younger (2002: 174) notes that in a survey of the images where figures are
named, this tends to be a seated figure, and is often on the left of the image. He takes
this to be what is conventionally termed the ‘primary deceased’. Clear mother and
daughter relationships: see Younger 2002: 174 with n. 32.
56
Crowded: Clairmont no. 4.930 includes as well as the seated woman, two young
women, one holding a baby, and a maid. Small dog: Clairmont no. 2.284.
57
Kalathos: under or beside the chair: Clairmont nos 120, 247; 1.176, 1.184, 1.246,
1.691; 1.894, 1.986, 2.829, 2.948; 3.384b[?]) or in scenes of working wool: Clairmont
nos 1.220, 1.309, and 2.650.
58
Kithara: Clairmont no. 3.411. Bracelets: Clairmont no. 2.319a Mantle: Clair-
mont no. 2.464.
59
Famously, the Archestrate stele, in which a young woman holds a box from
which Archestrate (seated) takes a sash; Archestrate gazes at her daughter, who is
leaning against her knees and holds a bird: Clairmont no. 2.820.
60
Box: Clairmont nos 2.891, 3.404 and 423. Open box: Clairmont no. 2.306.
Holding an infant: Clairmont no. 2.894, Clairmont no. 2.780, and Clairmont no.
2.806.
 ‘Dangerous Women’ 325
and with other women61—which seems to underline this role of
responsibility and trust that women were expected to fulfil.62
After the initial and obvious contrasts, there are in fact some
compelling similarities between our two discourses. First, both the
stelai and the forensic speeches reveal a focus on the oikos and the
important role played by individual women within that institution.63
And although the women depicted in, on the one hand, the speeches,
and on the other hand, the epitaphs, are playing quite different roles,
both representations draw our attention to the importance of the
family: first, the way in which a good woman or wife can support such
a structure, and then, how her opposite can wholly undermine it,
threatening family, city, state.

61
Tsagalis 2008: 190. Younger (2002: 197 n. 31) notes that in Clairmont there are
224 two-figure stelai with a man and a woman, 75 where both figures are men, and
110 where both are women.
62
On dexiosis as intimating relations between living and dead, especially in the
context of the difficulties of burial during the Peloponnesian War, see Tsagalis 2008:
189, citing Pemberton 1989: 48, Davies 1985: 630, and Shapiro 1991: 654. Younger
(2002: 178) suggests that it signifies the close relationship of deceased and survivor
before and after death.
63
Tsagalis (2008: 185) draws attention to the ‘Entwicklung der Einzelpersonlich-
keit’ of this period (see discussion in this volume, p. 306). see Christes 1975: 32.
 4.5

Conclusion: Envy, Poison, and Death

Pharmakeia was the starting point for our exploration: the poisons
and curses with which these women’s trials were imbued, but for
which there was no certain evidence, or even clear statements. Trying
to understand the reasoning behind these accusations, we followed
the suggestion of a spell that phthonos might be the reason for their
employment—and found that it might also be a motivation for the
attribution of their use. This ‘phthonos talk’, we saw, was engendered
and expressed through gossip—a potent discourse of poison in itself,
one that brings suspicion alive and makes it powerful—in the right
circumstances. Those circumstances came under investigation in this
part of the book, where we have examined the possible context for these
events, setting out some ways in which the sociopolitical environment of
fourth-century Athens might become fertile ground for gossip against
three women, allowing it to develop into violent civic action.
To whatever extent the city of Athens did in fact suffer from
depleted resources in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War, there
is some evidence that, for many, there were real and perceived
economic difficulties. Moreover, even as the city recovered, these
would have exacerbated existing social tensions. As the city of Athens
fought to overcome the legacy of its defeat and to attain its previous
dominance, what it meant to be an Athenian was a focus of concern.
We see this issue raised indirectly across a variety of verbal and visual
discourses, in legislation concerning civic recognition, and in the
everyday vigilance over one’s own and others’ behaviours. Finally,
in terms of family structures, it is likely that one result of the
Peloponnesian War and its aftermath was that there were, and/or
there were perceived to be, more single women and girl children—
both Athenian citizens and those of more ambiguous status—living
in the city without (adequate) economic support.
 Conclusion: Envy, Poison, and Death 327
In the forensic speeches, charges of individual and political con-
spiracy offer evidence for a cultural mindset of suspicion—and at the
centre of many of these discourses, in the context of fractured family
relationships and fights over inheritance, we repeatedly find the figure
of the ‘dangerous woman’. Whether or not all these stories describe
actual events, the cases of Theoris, Ninon, and Phryne suggest that
these discourses of risk and real life could collide with devastating
results.
 Epilogue: Social Trauma?

‘Cultural trauma is the most threatening because like all cultural

phenomena it has the strongest inertia; it persists and lingers
considerably longer than other kinds of trauma, sometimes over
several generations, preserved in collective memory or hiberna-
ting in collective subconscious, and occasionally gaining sali-
ence when conducive circumstances arise.’1

In Demosthenes Against Boeotus (2), the speaker notes how danger-

ous his prosecutors are: he considers how they have conspired against
him to bring the case, and how if they will do that, it becomes quite
likely that they would also resort to other forms of wrongdoing—and
he mentions explicitly pharmakeia or poison. I mention this final
passage because it summarizes the kinds of social structures, inter-
personal dynamics, and emotional behaviours that this book has been
trying to examine as it explores the factors involved in shaping events
that led to the trials of Theoris, Ninon, and Phryne. In this final
section, I want to offer two further thoughts: the first adds one more
dimension to the explanations we have been considering; the other
reflects on the role of these trials themselves in historical change.
In examining the factors that gave rise to these trials, this study has
attempted to combine macro- and micro-social dynamics, examining
both the broader historical context and the individual emotions of
those involved. However, in trying to bring these two elements together,
there is always, inevitably, a gap, one which only the question of indi-
vidual mental processes can bridge. Thus, this final addition to the causal

1
Sztompka 2000: 458. Sztompka refers to ‘cultural trauma’, which is the focus of
Alexander et al. (2004); Robben (2005) refers to ‘social trauma’ (346, citing Sztompka
2000). Argenti and Schramm (2010b: 14) describe the relationship between the two.
 Epilogue: Social Trauma? 329
explanations put forward so far is a psychoanalytical interpretation of
the phenomena of these trials. This brings us back to the role of context,
and a desire to move beyond an explanation in which violence against
women is simply taken as inevitable. Drawing on more recent studies of
political violence and its impact on communities and society, I want to
suggest the consideration of a crucial intermediary stage—trauma.2
By introducing this term, it is important to stress this study is not
attempting to describe individuals within ancient Athenian society in
terms of combat trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder, although
individual and group experiences are integrally related.3 Rather, the
use of this term is intended to raise questions about the trauma
experienced by a society, either as a whole or in groups, the damage
‘inflicted by major social change’ to ‘the social body and its cultural
frame’, rather than the physical tissue of an individual.4 This is to
explore the ways in which traumatic experiences may exist in social

2
Robben 2005, Siegel 2006. A version of this approach, phrased in terms of a
religious crisis, has been put forward by some as an explanation for the apparent
religious intolerance that the asebeia trials of the late fifth and early fourth centuries
demonstrate (see Scholz 2000: 159–61 and Garnsey 1984: 3). Krauter (2004: 235)
suggests that Parker (1996: 210) is sceptical about a religious crisis, but his position is
more ambiguous: although he does not think that traditional religion was under-
mined, he does support the idea that ‘in the sense that speculative thought was
perceived by some as a threat, perhaps for the first time, a kind of crisis did arise’.
He sees this lying specifically in the idea (found, for example, in the presentation of
Socrates in Ar. Nub. and Pl. Leg. 886d–e, 889b–890a, 967a–d) that there was an
‘alliance between a scientific determinism that was pushed to an atheistic extreme and
sophistic determination’. Other scholars have explained this in terms of anxiety about
the threat to tradition (Burkert 1985: 316); as a conflict between generations (Graf
2002: 126f.); or as political intolerance of intellectual developments (Dodds 1951:
189–93 and Versnel 1990: 127.
3
The concept of combat trauma has been very successfully introduced into
discussions of ancient military history: see Shay 2003: 199, Crowley 2012, Meineck
and Konstan 2014. Nor should social trauma be understood as simply the sum total
of individual traumas. Robben and Suárez-Orozco (2000: 346) give the following
description ‘it ruptures social bonds, destroys group identities, undermines people’s
sense of community, and entails cultural disorientation because taken for granted
meanings become obsolete’.
4
Robben 2005: 346 and Sztompka 2000: 450. Note that Sztompka argues that
trauma is a collective phenomenon and is experienced by groups (communities or
societies) and so ‘cannot be treated as an individual psychological predicament’ (458).
Feuchtwang (2011: 12–13) is wary that the language of ‘collective trauma’ arises from
‘a predominant political culture of being a victim’, but this discussion seems to focus
largely on individual trauma. Although he says at first (13) that he could not find
evidence ‘in any clinical sense’ for ‘collective trauma’, later in his book (121,122, and
134) he does then use the term to refer to shared group experiences, the effects of
which are transmitted through different social structures.
330 Envy, Poison, and Death
memory, bridging the gap between the individual and the collective,
and transmitted between generations.5 As recent work has stressed,
such memories need not be expressed through straightforward modes
of reference: they may emerge through non-discursive practices,
embodied actions, ritual, and other performative practices.6
My suggestion is that the trials of these women are evidence for
social trauma, and that they occurred within a society in which a
sense of unity had been severely and catastrophically disrupted. Trust
had broken down, not only between individuals, but also between
individuals and ‘the social institutions and cultural practices that
structure experience and give meaning to social lives’, including
religious practices.7 In short, the Athenians had experienced a severe
social trauma, one which prompted a search for meaning and explan-
ations of their experiences, and which was created by, and in turn
itself led to, political, social, and supernatural violence.8
Piotr Sztompka, drawing on the work of Robert Merton, has
suggested a sequence of responses to radical sociocultural changes,
which can be summarized as resulting in a vicious cycle of cultural
destruction and a virtuous cycle of cultural reconstruction.9 In many
ways, the steps taken to reconfigure the radical democracy of Athens
in the early fourth century reveal a fierce commitment to responses of
the latter kind. Similarly, if we pursue this kind of analysis, the
evidence indicates activities that may be described as efforts at cul-
tural reconstruction: the emergence of novel structures of employ-
ment, for example, and the instantiation of new cults, or ritual
activities, can be seen in this light. Similarly, even crimes of certain
kinds, although illegitimate, may also indicate a creative response to
experiences of traumatic change.
Working in more detail with this typology, we might describe some
of these activities simply as examples of ‘adaptive innovation’,

5
See papers in Alexander et al. 2004.
6
See papers in Argenti and Schramm 2010a; in particular Argenti and Schramm
2010b: 22–5.
7
Robben and Suárez-Orozco 2000: 5.
8
After the trauma there are attempts to make sense of this experience. Within
society, different groups will find different kinds of meaning in their experiences of a
particular event. See Weinstein (1995: 308), who suggests that we must be prepared for
‘heterogeneity, discontinuity, and the capacity of people actively to construct versions of
the world’, rather than try to interpret historical events from a single perspective. The
result may be a competition for meaning; see Robben and Suárez-Orozco 2000: 349.
9
Sztompka 2000: 461, drawing on Merton 1938.
 Epilogue: Social Trauma? 331
while others are more purposeful attempts to change the traumatic
condition (either some aspect or the whole environment) with some
form of cultural production (the latter is a strategy of ‘rebellion’
according to Merton’s typology). However, if we take the trials of
these women to be, in their turn, an extreme response to such creative
activities, then this highlights a different, additional response to
trauma. The nearest description in Merton’s typology is what he
calls ‘ritualism’: this involves coming back to established traditions
and routines as a way of deflecting, or hiding from, trauma. But
although this neatly captures the dynamic of turning to the estab-
lished legal structures in order to find resolution, it does not help to
explain the motivation of destruction that a capital charge appears to
involve.
Some recent anthropological work may offer some further insights:
I turn to the work of James Siegel in his examination of the witch-
hunts of East Java which took place following the collapse of Presi-
dent Suharto’s New Order in 1998.10 In previous periods, jealousy and
envy were at the root of witchcraft accusations in Indonesian culture;
accusations of witchcraft tended not to surface explicitly, but remained
at the level of gossip, related to specific events.11 In contrast, these
witchcraft accusations were a matter of collective action, and resulted
in violence. Siegel argues that these events were responses to a long
drawn-out experience of trauma that began for his subjects with the
transfer of power between Sukarno and Suharto in 1965/6 and culmin-
ated in the fall of Suharto in 1998.12 He evokes the primal uncertainty of
the experience of loss that this trauma engendered;13 in particular, the
ways in which, under Suharto, the government’s power was both
a source of mortal danger and consuming fear, and the only basis
of security against the dangers that, it is argued, were posed by society.14

10
The witch-hunts and lynchings took place on the island of Java, especially the
area of Banyuwangi: about 120 people were killed in a space of three months.
11
Siegel 2006: 129–30, citing Geertz 1960: 109.
12
Although Siegel emphasizes the novelty of these killings, Herriman (2007) and
(2009) takes the opposite point of view (see discussion in Geschiere 2013: 196).
13
Siegel emphasizes this primal uncertainty as a form of the sublime that we are
unable to determine using our own cognitive powers; it is a form of the pure gift (see
Siegel 2006, esp. 21–6).
14
Siegel 2006: 72.
332 Envy, Poison, and Death
As well as being invasive and threatening, the government surveillance
of the Suharto regime provided a source of identity and authority.15 But
when Suharto fell, any ability to appeal to authority was gone. In that
context, in the popular imagination, the figure of the witch took a new
shape, absorbing the sense of menace that previously the regime had
embodied: ‘Seen from the place of those possessed or obsessed by
feelings of overwhelming catastrophe, those closest were the unrecog-
nisable face of malevolence’.16 The witch could be anywhere: in the
absence of the structures of the regime, some of those accused of
witchcraft were unable to verify even their own identity, and to be
sure they were not themselves witches.17
I am not arguing that this provides a direct parallel with the
situation in fourth-century Athens. This is not an attempt to find a
single universalizing explanation (and recent work examining the
transmission of social trauma in different contexts and cultures
confirms the variability of this phenomenon).18 Nevertheless, Siegel’s
marvellous study offers some guidance for thinking about the ways in
which the trauma of past experience may integrate both with long-
held fears and the lived emotions of current experience to create a
novel sense of menace—one that demands action. In fourth-century
Athens the trials of Theoris, Ninon, and Phryne can perhaps be seen
as rooted in the traumatic experiences of the Peloponnesian War and
its aftermath. Whereas once the behaviour of these women might
result merely in gossip, perhaps the creation of further, defensive
ritual practice, such local, specific responses were evidently no longer
sufficient; instead another process was set in train—which led to
violence, albeit through legal channels.
The differences between events in ancient Athens and those that
Siegel describes are also instructive, in particular in thinking about
how social trauma may become politicized, and the ways in which its
meaning may be contested in various contexts by diverse groups. One
example lies in the different roles played by state and civic processes
in each example. In Indonesia, ‘the appearance of the “witch” fol-
lowed by the “witch hunt” offered a means for local control of

15 16
Ibid.: 130–3. Ibid.: 160–1.
17
Ibid.: 123–6. He describes how recognition by authority allows some of those
accused of witchcraft to find their voice and deny the charges (146–53).
18
Compare the diverse responses to trauma across the papers in Argenti and
Schramm 2010a.
 Epilogue: Social Trauma? 333
general—or national—malevolence when state control failed’.19 In
contrast, in Athens, where citizen and state were inseparable, the
response was to turn to legal action. The trials of Theoris, Ninon,
and Phryne, as part of the discourse that identified ‘dangerous
women’, reinforced Athenian identity, individual and group, through
the assertion of boundaries of behaviour, gender, and status. But they
also reached beyond the mortal context, crucially encompassing—
and attempting to control—claims on divine power. In bringing these
aspects together, the Athenian court generated the image of a par-
ticular and unexpected enemy—not just a ‘dangerous woman’, but
one more closely identifiable to modern eyes as the figure of the
witch.20
As I have argued elsewhere, we might see these trials in terms of a
resolution of conflict, one that reasserted the status quo. However, the
repetition of the pattern—three trials at least—suggests that such a
resolution was not achieved, and that the struggle for meaning con-
tinued.21 And other evidence may also indicate that the issues these
trials raised were under wider consideration. For example, Plato, in
the Laws, seems to be tussling with questions that mirror some of the
themes of these trials: how to punish the use of pharmaka (natural or
supernatural) to inflict injury, and the appropriate penalties for profes-
sionals as opposed to private citizens.22 As the fourth century advances,
we might also consider the development of the gunaikonomoi as further
evidence for concerns about the role and control of women in

19
Siegel 2006: 161.
20
Cf. Stewart 1991, who encourages the study of the witch (15) ‘as a symbolic
statement of what the society conceives witchcraft to be about’. See Stratton 2007 for
discussion of the ways in which different historical contexts emphasize particular
images of the witch; Edmonds (2010: 245) cites this work, but criticizes it as overly
schematic, drawing attention to the role of genre and individual authorial preference
in shaping these images. Roper (2012) provides a nuanced psychoanalytically
informed cultural history of the witch, exploring both the vast range of representa-
tions of witches and the multiple ways that individuals made sense of witchcraft.
21
Mendonsa (1982: 3–5) offers a model of conflict resolution that includes the
perception of misfortune, the linking of that misfortune to deviance, the labelling of a
deviant, and the resolution of conflict (see Eidinow 2010: 33).
22
Pl. Leg. 932e–933e; Gordon (1999: 251–2) suggests that this ‘reproduces a
practical distinction which must have emerged in fourth-century Athens’; he emphasizes
the role of cases involving harm by magical means, rather than ‘death through direct
magical action’ such as the use of philtra.
334 Envy, Poison, and Death
Athenian society, especially with regard to their behaviour at gather-
ings related to religious events. What the gunaikonomoi comprised
and when they were instituted in Athens is uncertain: that it may have
been in the fourth century (perhaps by Demetrius of Phaleron) is
suggested by Timocles. Timocles refers to an individual holding the
position, while Athenaeus, Philochorus, and Lynceus seem to be
talking about a group.23 The responsibilities of the office in Athens
included burial legislation, and, according to Pollux, the punishment
of disorderly women.24 Athenaeus connects it with a law about feasts,
Menander refers to weddings, while Philochorus seems specifically to
be concerned with private gatherings, especially marriage feasts and
thusiai (sacrifices and associated feasting). Overall, the impression is
that both at Athens and elsewhere, some care was being taken to
control occasions in which group ritual activities took place, and that
this was particularly focused on the behaviour of women.25
And this brings me back to my final point: this study began
with the idea that ‘large-scale processes such as state formation,

23
See O’Sullivan 2009: 68 n. 52. Sources for the gunaikonomoi: Ath. 6.245a
includes Timocles fr. 34 K–A, as well as the fragments of Men. fr. 208 (Kekryphalos)
K–A and Philochorus FGrH 328 F 65 for the third century; see Nagle 2006: 257;
perhaps supporting this is a fragment of Hyperides (Hyp. fr. 14 (Jensen) (= Harp. s.v.
hoti chilias) which mentions that women who were akosmousai (without decorum) in
the street were fined 1,000 drachmae; Hesychius s.v. platanos (pi 2475) tells us that the
fines imposed by the officials at Athens were written on a white board and hung from
a plane tree (see Ogden 1996: 366). Aristotle (Pol. 1300a4–8, and at 1322b37–1323a3)
seems to relate such offices to aristocratic or elite women.
24
Poll. 8.112; see O’Sullivan 2009: 66–71, esp. 66 n. 48 for earlier scholarship.
25
The office is found, held by an individual or by a group, in other parts of Greece.
For example, in all-female festival contexts, including Methymna, Lesbos, where the
holder was responsible for preventing men from entering a shrine during a women’s
pannychis (LSCG 127.5-10, fourth century BCE, perhaps 340s); at Andania, where, as
well as appointing those women with particular cultic roles, the holder oversaw other
aspects, including the dress of participants (Syll.3 736.26 and 32, 146 BCE; Gawlinski
2012: 133 dates the creation of the office to the fourth century BCE). At Thasos, with
other civic officials, gunaikonomoi were responsible for overseeing the purity of those
attending religious feasts (Pouilloux 1954, no. 141.5–7, dated 360–340 BCE). In
Magnesia, gunaikonomoi selected nine girls to participate in a festival of Zeus Sosi-
polis (LSAM 32.20, 197–196 BCE). In Syracuse, it seems that there were very strict rules
on what women were allowed to wear and when they were allowed to walk outside;
during the day, the gunaikonomoi had to give permission (Phylarchus FGrH 81 F 45;
third century BCE). In third-century BCE Gambreion, (Syll.3 1219.17–25), where a
gunaikonomos was elected by the people, he oversaw mourning behaviour. Ogden
(2002b: 203) claims that the key role of gunaikonomoi was to select women for
festivals and supervise their behaviour, but Osborne (2011: 174) argues that tasks
related to cult activities were marginal aspects of their responsibilities.
 Epilogue: Social Trauma? 335
subsistence change and population movements need to be under-
stood in locally meaningful contexts of feeling and understanding’.26
It ends here with the suggestion that one of those local contexts may
have been an experience of trauma that, at the local level, shaped
responses which, in turn themselves influenced larger processes of
historical change. It seems likely that these trials played their part in
helping to develop widespread attitudes to such activities. As we have
seen, although supernatural activities were a source of gossip and
accusation, they were not illegal, only condemned if their use resulted
in death. And yet among these cases are charges of supernatural
activity with no mention of murderous outcomes.
This suggests that the legal boundaries of acceptable behaviour were
shifting, and that these cases indicate how attitudes to particular
activities were developing not only within the legal arena, but also
with the active involvement of society beyond the courts. By means of
gossip of the kind that we have examined, the Athenian community
was identifying the activities that it found threatening and deserving
of social censure. In a legal setting in which character was evidence,
gossip acquired official power and could be presented as an implicit
social accusation alongside the explicit legal charge. Thus, the evalu-
ation of events at the local level, shaped by emotions such as phtho-
nos, became inextricably part of the judgements made in other,
official civic spheres. The trials of these women, at first sight so
puzzling, their myriad charges so hard to pin down let alone recon-
cile, may through their very confusion give us new insights into this
period: not only into the conflicted nature of society in Athens during
the early to mid-fourth century, but beyond this, to the characters,
events, and local social processes that shaped an emergent, historical
concept of ‘magic’.

26
Tarlow 2000: 719.
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 General Index

abaskanta (untouched by evil eye) 163, akosmousai (women without

see also baskanos decorum) 334
Abdera, Abderites 39, 109 Akragas 114, 124, see also Thero
Abrahams, Roger 178 Akrigg, Ben 270, 284–5
accidie 91–2 Alcathous 308
accusations 8–9, 26, 38–67, 125, 161, Alce 313–15
212, 256, 261, 331 Alcestis 184, 188
acedia 91–2 Alcibiades 52, 56, 59, 106, 148, 205,
Achaemenes 103, 147 285, 322
actors 287 Alexander, Jeffrey 330
Adonis 53–4 Alexander of Aphrodisias 74
adoption 196, 301, 321 Alexander the Great 23
Adrastus 183 exiles decree of 259, 286
Aegina, Aeginetans 117, 121, 288, Allen, Danielle 181, 238, 240
290 Allport, Gordon 172
athletes from 108, 114, 120–1 Almirol, Edwin 178
Aelian 72 Alston, Richard 157
Aemilius Saturninus, Quintus 156 Alvar Nuño, Anton 158
Aeneas Tacticus 286–7 amae (‘dependency’ in Japanese) 89
Aeschines (orator) 17, 19–20, 29, 45, amaritudo (bitterness) 92
52–4, 57, 129–31, 134–5, 154, 170, Amasis 153
182, 184–5, 197, 199–200, 203–4, Amnesty of 403/2 BCE 59
209, 258–60, 262, 283, 294, see also Amorgos 63, 226, see also Semonides
Glaucothea Amphipolis 147, 274, 277
Aeschines (Socratic) 27 amulets 74, 168–9
Aeschylus 52, 74, 187, 241, 309 as metaphor 168
Aesop’s fables 5, 31, 33, 45, Amyntas 194
55, 60 anakrisis (preliminary hearing) 49
Agamemnon 111 analogical language, in spells 237
Agathocles 217 Anaxagoras 22, 57, 66
Agathokleia (thiasotes) 28 Anaximenes of Lampsacus
Agathon 144 (rhetorician) 23, 26
Agathursi 77, 147 Andania 334
age (as evidence of legal Andean analogy 79
incapacity) 317, 323 Andersen, Øivind 295
Agesilaus 276 Andocides 49, 51–2, 184, 187, 198, 200,
Aglaeon son of Leontius 226 271, 273
agon timetos 48, 50 Andrewes, Antony 18
Agora (at Athens) 181, 186, 229, 258, Androcles 313
260, 281, 320 Andros, Andrians 271
Agoratus 199 anger 93, 98–9, 113, 209
agurtai (beggar-priests) 13, 30, 46, ‘basic’ emotion 83–4
308–9 of the gods 31–2, 83
Aitherion (thiasotes) 29 anosios (profane) 41
Ajax 111, 120, 122 Anthology, Greek 72
382 General Index
anthropology, anthropological Argenti, Nicholas 330, 332
findings 6, 83, 96, 140, 155–6, Arginusae, battle of 270
173–4, see also Candomblé, dan, Aristagora (hetaira) 323
Douglas, Fiji, gift, Gluckman, hau, Aristarchus (associate of Meidias) 258
Ilongots, Indonesia, Inkas, Lévi- Aristarchus (character in Xenophon’s
Strauss, Maori, Mauss, potlatch, Memorabilia) 296
Soweto, Thailand, Trobrianders Aristippus 287, 307
Antidorus 313–14 Aristoclidas of Aegina 108
Antigone (cursing woman) 215–16 Aristocrates 125
Antimachus 206 Aristodemus 146
Antinoopolis 157 Aristogiton (prosecuted by
Antioch 158 Demosthenes) 11–12, 14, 16, 39,
Antiochus (doctor) 214 135, 187, 189, 302, 308
Antiphanes (comic poet) 307 Aristogiton (tyrannicide) 132
Antiphon 34–7, 39 Aristola (thiasotes) 28
anxiety 4, 206, 208, 223, 311–12, 329, Aristomenes of Aegina 120, 150
see also fear Ariston (opponent of Hyperides) 192
apagoge (privately directed judicial Ariston (plaintiff in Demosthenes
process) 242–3, 249 54) 199
Apelles 25 Aristophanes 28, 52, 153, 187, 241, 272,
painted Phthonos 92, 121 295, 303
Aphrodite 25, 53, 308 change of viewpoint in 272
Ourania 53 on female occupations 306
Apollo 149 Aristotle 35, 36, 50, 130, 144, 189, 210,
Lyceus 27 275, 287, 292, 298, 302, 312, 334
Pythius 308 charged with pro-Macedonian
Apollodorus (orator, prosecutor of sympathies 49
Neaera) 204–6, 276, 302, 307, on gossip 188
317–18, 322 on phthonos 75, 77, 130, 210
Apollodorus, estate of (subject of ‘arms race’, magical 223
Isaeus 7) 196 army, armies 288, 305
apotumpanismos (crucifixion) 238, fund (stratiotikon) 277
240–2, 249 Arnaoutoglou, Ilias 18, 63
appraisal processes 97 Arnold, Magda 84, 87
apprenticeship 299 Artabanus 152
Apsephion 133 Artabazus 276
Arcesilaus, name of kings of Cyrene Asclapiadas 215–16
III 152 Asclepius 169
IV 113 Ascough, Richard 29
archaeology 54, 79, see also iconography asebeia (impiety) 16, 23, 26–7, 32–3,
Archestratus 206 40–1, 44, 48–52, 60–2, 66, 167, 192,
Archias 38, 51, 319–20 323, 329
Archilochus 118–20 Ashforth, Adam 8, 136, 155–6
Archippe 293 Aspasia 66, 192, 322–3
Archippus 51 Aspendus 275
archon, eponymous 198 Assembly, Athenian 27, 40, 53, 148, 192,
archon basileus (‘King Archon’, 199, 205, 268
Athenian magistrate) 49, 318 pay for 271, 273
Areopagus 35–6, 42, 267–8 Astycratea 308
Aretaphila 37, 66–7 Astypalaia 105
Arezzo 232 Astyphilus, estate of (subject of
Arge (Hyperborean virgin) 309 Isaeus 9) 201
 General Index 383
ataphos (unburied) 158 Bathippus 132–3
ateleia (exemption from taxes and Bauman, Richard 49
liturgies) 132–3 Baumeister, Roy 173, 176, 178
Athenaeus 24–5, 28, 257, 323, 334 Bean, George 214
Athens, Athenians passim beggar-priests see agurtai
citizenship and citizen status 12, 189, begging 272, 308–9
196, 208, 288, 301, 303–4, 307–8, Bell, Charles 80–1
316–18, 321–2, 333 belly-talkers 310
economic situation after 400 BCE 5, Bemarchius 160–1
8–9, 207–311 Bendis, cult of 52–3, 59
food supply of 208, 280–1 benefaction(s) 106, 124, 138, 140, 145,
foreigners, attitudes to 282–4, 154, 158
see also metics Benoit, William 156
navy, difficulties of financing in fourth Benson, Larry 92
century 275–7 Ben-Yehuda, Nachman 10
oligarchs, oligarchy 49, 265, 269, 292, Ben Ze’Ev, Aaron 76, 226, 231
see also Four Hundred, Thirty Bergadaa, Michelle 143
population of 180, 266, 269–70, Bergmann, J. (epigraphist) 213
280–1, 285, 293 Bergmann, Jörg 173, 176, 177
religious policies of 44, see also new Berking, Helmuth 141
gods and religions Berve, Helmut 23
atheos (godless) 41 Besnier, Niko 3, 172, 173, 175, 195, 196, 201
athletes 105, 109, 113, 123 biaiothanatos (dead by violence) 158
atimia (loss of civic rights) 50 Biezunska-Malowist, Iza 157
Atrometus (father of Aeschines the binding as metaphor 234–7
orator) 17 binding spells 7, 38, 65–6, 101, 162,
Attica (territory of Athens) 47, 59, 62, 168–9, 224–55, 259, 261
265, 269, 280, 285, 306, 322–3, analogical language in 237
see also Athens apotumpanismos and 240–3
Austin, Colin 40 blending and 246–50
Austin, Michel 274, 280, 281, 288 body parts listed in 233, 238–40
autochthony 269 emotions and 250–3
Averill, James 90, 93, 94, 96 gossip and 180
Ayim, Marianne 197 Libanius and 160, 233
metaphorical 234–7
Babylon 183 prayers for justice and 215
Bacchis (hetaira) 26 purpose of 157, 240
Bacchylides 104, 124 Schadenfreude and 225, 231, 250–3
Bailey, Frederick 175, 179 thieves frequently targeted in 242
Bakewell, Geoff 283 Biton 152
bakers, women as 305 bitterness 92
Bamberger, John 92 Björck, Gudmund 213, 214, 218
Banaras 142 Black, John 82
barbaroi 282 Black Death 284, 305
Barrett, Lisa Feldman 82–8 Black Sea 232, 275, 308
Bartolini, Gianfranco 30 blame 110–13, 137, 145, 175, 254, 295,
Basil of Caesarea 161 see also momos
baskainein, baskanos, baskania (words ‘blame games’ 125
implying abuse and ‘blame poetry’ 118
malevolence) 74, 135–6, 154, 163, blending, conceptual 243–4, 246–7, 249
169–70, see also evil eye blood, avoided in Athenian
bastards 301, 322, see also nothoi executions 240
384 General Index
Blümel, Wolfgang 215, 218 Callistratus (speaker of
boastfulness, boasting 32, 117, 119, 124, Demosthenes 48) 201
132, 154 Cambyses 146
bocage (Northern France) 155 Camp, John 282
Bodman, Ida 265 Campbell, John 155, 177, 225
body parts 98, see also binding spells Candomblé (Brazil) 255
Boeotus 18–20, 189 cannibalism 99, 120
Boiotia 64, 183, 234, 239 Cantarelli, Luigi 25
Bollansée, Jan 26 Canterbury Tales 92
Bonner, Campbell 159 Capelle, Wilhelm 158
Bordia, Prashant 257 ‘Careless talk . . . ’ 162
boredom 92 Carey, Chris 103, 104, 113, 116, 123–4,
Borphor syllables 230 192–4, 259, 282, 307
Borsch, Stuart 284 Cargill, Jack 12
bottomry loans 299 Carrier, James 142–3
Boulay, Juliet du 180 Cartesianism 82
boule see Council Cassandra 309
Bowie, Angus 146, 269 casualties 269
Bowie, Katherine 143 causal tautology 244–5
Brasidas 147 Cawkwell, George 276
Braund, Susanna 6 Cebes 136
breasts, Phryne’s 24 Cephisius 198
Brenner, Robert 284 Cerasuolo, Salvatore 251
brephos see fetus Chabrias 133
Breuer, Christine 306, 324 Chaerecrates 167
Brigantium 232 Chaerestratus 313
Brison, Karen 177 Chaeronea, battle of 281
Brixhe, Claude 239 Chambry, Émile 31–2
Brock, Roger 306 chameleon, Libanius and the 159–60
Broniarczyk, Susan 143 Chaniotis, Angelos 5–6, 217
Brosch, Tobias 87 Chares 276
Brown, Christopher 119 charges 38–67, see also accusation
Brown, Peter 159 Chariades 271, 316
Bryen, Ari 74, 156–8 charis 104, 109, 149, 206, 295
Bulman, Patricia 77, 105 Chaucer, Geoffrey 92
Burford, Alison 286 Chersonese 274, 281
burial 14, 48, 282, 325 children 270, 273, 282, 288–9, 292,
legislation about 334 295–304, 307, 313, 324
Burian, Peter 34 girls 288, 302, 326
Burke, Kenneth 136–7 interactions of 256
Burkert, Walter 53, 57, 169, Chios 63, 286, 313
310, 329 battle of (357/6 BCE) 133
Burkhardt, Frederick 81 choregos 257
Burnett, Ann 122 Chremilus 272
Burt, Ronald 256 Christ, Matthew 277–80
Christes, Johannes 325
Caillé, Alain 141–2 Christianity, analogies with 14
Cairns, Douglas 6, 77, 93, 126–8 Chrysilla 200
Calhoun, Cheshire 90 chthonic powers 249
Callaeschrus 126 Cimon 285
Callias 184, 200 Cinesias 198
Callistratus (Athenian politician) 287 Ciron 198–9
 General Index 385
citizen status, citizenship (Athenian) 12, Council 40, 53, 258, 277, 315
189, 196, 208, 288, 303–4, 306–8, courtroom space 247–9
316–18, 321–2, 333 courtroom spells 7, 247
Athenian law of 451 BCE 283, 301, 304 cowl, used metonymically for death 245
Demophilus, decree of 305–6 Cox, Bruce 175
Milesian 288 Crete, Cretans 124, 288, 308
Cleobis 152 Cribiore, Raffaella 158, 161
Cleobule (mother of Demosthenes) 297 Critias 59, 126, 162, 265
Cleomedes of Astypalaea 105 Critobulus 167, 209
Cleomenes, king of Sparta 146, 183, 238 Croesus 151–2, 154, 183
cleruchies 272, 281 Crook, Zeba 142
clientship, Roman 141 Crotty, Kevin 105, 107, 111–13, 151
Clore, Gerald 84, 87, 89 Ctesiphon 128
‘clothing and jewellery’ (himatia kai Cudjoe, Richard 292–7, 299, 304, 306
chrusia) 293 cult(s) see Adonis, Drimacus, Pheme,
Clytemnestra 109, 111 Sabazius, thiasos
Coan, James 89 ecstatic 54
cognitive: foreign 44, 64
analysis of narrative 179 of dead athletes 105
approaches to emotions 83, 87, 90, 100 Cummings, Frederick 80
blending 243–4, 246–7, 249 Cumont, Franz 213, 214
‘maps of social identities’ 178 Cunningham, William 89
Cohen, David 16, 50, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, Currie, Bruno 105
129, 180, 185, 190, 205 curses, curse tablets and -texts,
Cohen, Edward 279, 307 cursing 7, 38–9, 65–7, 168–9, 180,
coinage, silver 276 213, 215–24, 226, 229, 231, 232–3,
Coleman, James 242, 256 235–7, 239, 249–50, 254, 255, 261,
Collins, Derek 17, 39, 42, 236 301, 326, see also Teos
colour 88 anatomical curses 235, see also body
combat trauma 328 parts
conceptual blending see blending ‘border-area’ curses 233
confession inscriptions 180, 218–21 motivation for 241
Congo 99–100 public 39–40, 43
Connelly, Joan 15 see also binding spells
Connor, W. Robert 49, 54, 49, 65 Cybele 29, 55
Conon (Athenian general) 133, 138 cyberbullying 265
Conon (defendant in speech by Cyprus 53, 269, 280, 306
Demosthenes) 199, 202 Cyrene, Cyrenaica 37, 66, 113, 152, 249
Constantinople 156, 158 Cyrus (the Younger) of Persia 288
constructionist theories of emotion Cyrus, St. 233
psychological 87, 89
social 89–90, 95 daimon, plural daimones 29, 50, 260, see
cooks, cookery 287 also demons
Cooper, Craig 25, 26, 28, 30 daimonion, plural daimonia (divine
Corcyra 203, 280, 287 power) 52, 58, 154
Corinth 188, 202, 293, 307 ‘Dale Carnegie paradox’ 141
Corinthian War 271, 274 Damophilus of Cyrene 113
corn supply and trade, Athenian 280, dan (Indian charitable gifts) 142
282 Danae (woman in Polybius) 217
Coronea 202 dancing, ecstatic 54
corrupting the youth 28, 52, 59 D’Andrade, Roy 96–8
Cosmides, Lida 88 ‘dangerous women’ 312–21, 323, 333
386 General Index
Darwin, Charles 80–2, 84 Derrida, Jacques 13
David, Ephraim 272 Derenne, Eudore 22, 44, 51, 52, 57, 58
Davidson, James 269 Descartes see Cartesianism
Davies, John 285 devils 9, 10, 14
Dawson, Graham 4 Dewald, Carolyn 140
dead, phthonos not felt towards the 102 dexiosis (hand-clasping) 324
death 212–14, see also apotumpanismos, diabole (slander) 66, 121, 137, 192–4,
execution, homicide, murder, 201, 209–10, 261, see also slander
poison, punishment Diagoras of Melos 22, 52
as ‘Grim Reaper’ 244–6 Diagoras of Rhodes 115, 118
as penalty 22, 42, 193 Dicaeogenes 197
attitudes to 146, 152, 238 Dickie, Matthew 18, 19, 20, 21, 33, 37,
binding spells and 250 43, 45, 55, 61, 63, 117, 120–1, 151,
curse tablets and 234 154, 158, 309
epitaphs describe manner of 214 Difonzo, Nicholas 257
personification of 244 dikai emporikai (commercial
result of gossip 265 courts) 282
wish for 232 dikastai 35, 315, see also jurors
deceit, Demosthenes on 133 dike pseudomarturion (case for false
Decelea, Spartan occupation of 271 witness) 313
defixio, plural defixiones 217, 225, 236 Dillon, Matthew 29, 309
Deianeira 34 Dinarchus 12, 21, 259–60
Deissmann, Adolf 213 Dinka of Sudan 93
Delbridge, Rick 179 Diocles 189, 203, 296
Delos, Delians 51, 58, 213, 218, Diodorus (character in Xenophon’s
221–2, 309 Memorabilia) 228
Demades 49 Diodorus (litigant in Demosthenic
Demaenetus affair 274 speech) 40–1, 50
Demaratus 146–7 Diodorus of Sicily (historian) 300
demes (villages of Attica) 285, 305 Diodotus (in Lysias 32) 296–7
Demeter 16, 215–18, 220, 227–8 Diodotus (in Thucydides) 148
Demetriou, Denise 282 Diogenes Laertius 73
Demetrius of Phaleron 22, 31, 49, 73, Diogenes of Sinope, the Cynic 286, 308
120, 287, 323, 334 Diogiton (in Lysias 32) 297–8
Demetrius Poliorcetes 300 Dionysus, 29, 55, 310
democracy 269, 312, 330 festival (Dionysia) 257
cost of running 275 processions 134
phthonos and 128 theatre of, at Athens 309
women and 189, 312 Diopeithes, decree of 57–8, 62
Democritus 74 Dioscuri 149
demography 269, 293, 299, see also Diotima of Mantinea 310–11
population discourse 136–8
demons 14, 91–2, see also daimons/ disgust 83–4
daimones display rules 85
‘noonday’ 91 divination 311, see also dreams,
Demophilus, decree of 305–6 mantis, seers
Demosthenes 11–23, 40, 45, 50, 52, as criminal offence 159
128–30, 133–6, 163, 182, 205, Dodds, Eric 44, 57, 184, 329
257–60, 276–8, 297, 303–5, 320, dokimasia 207–8
322, 328 dolls 234, see also figurines
Den Boer, Willem 295, 299–300 Douglas, Mary 143
depression 85, 92 Dover, Kenneth 22, 52, 57, 58, 154, 231
 General Index 387
dowries 203, 294, 302–3, 307, 317, social constructionists theories
321–2, 324 of 89–90, 95
Draco 241 talk 97–102
dramatism 136 Empedocles 92
dreams 48, 152, 159, 179, 183 emporoi (traders) 282
Drimacus 63 Endius 315
Driscoll, Jeremey 92 engastrimuthoi (belly-talkers) 310
drugs 12–13, 40–3, 168, 314, see also Engen, Darel 281–2
pharmaka, philtra engue (betrothal) 322
Dunbabin, Katherine 120, 158 enklema 41–2
Dunbar, Robin 172, 179 Enquist, Magnus 172
Duncan-Jones, Richard 284 envy 5, 7–9, 75–6, 109, see also phthonos
as ‘sense-making technique’ 8
Easterling, Patricia 34 divine 7, 149–55
eating as metaphor for phthonos 119–20 gossip and 9
Edmonds III, Radcliffe 9, 213, 214, jealousy and 76, 94
222, 333 Plutarch on 158
Edwards, Derek 97 Schadenfreude and 251
Edwards, Michael 313, 315–17 witchcraft and 93
Egypt(ians) 91, 156, 249, 269, 276, 284 Epaenetus 318
Ehrenberg, Victor 270 Epaphroditus 226–8
Eidinow, Esther 7, 16, 38, 49, 51, 62, 96, Epharmostus of Opous 117
137, 145, 149, 154, 208, 216, 231, Epictetus 227
237, 240, 247, 254, 260, 299, 301, epidemics 284, see also Black Death,
309, 333 plague
eisangelia (type of prosecution epigrams 306, 310
process) 58, 61 epigraphic evidence, epigraphy 28, 63,
eisphora (property tax) 277–8 66, 283, 310, see also curses,
ekklesia see Assembly epigrams, epitaphs, inscriptions
Ekman, Paul 81, 84–6 epilepsy 13
Eleusis 56, 59, 319, see also mysteries epinikia (victory odes) 107, see also
Ellsworth, Phoebe 87 Bacchylides, Pindar, praise
Emerson, Ralph 144 epitaphs 180, 213–14, 218, 221–3, 228,
emigration 270 254–5, 261, 310, 323
Emler, Nicholas 177, 180 epoidai (incantations ) 13, 42, 46, 167,
emotional communities 95 169, see also incantations
‘emotionology’ 93 epopteia (highest grade of Eleusinian
emotions 76–101, 160, 232, 252, see also initiation) 30
anger, binding spells, envy, fear, Eratidai 114
hatred, jealousy, love, nemesis, Eretria 14
phthonos Ergamenes 313
‘basic emotions’ 83–5, 93 Ergoteles of Himera 124
behind curse texts 213 Eridanos 224
cognitive approaches to 83, 87, 90, 100 Erinyes (Furies) 241
evolutionary theory of origins 93 Erotis (thiasotes) 29
language of 89 ethos 79
modern theories of 5–7, 76–101 Euandrus 237
network theories of 97 Eubulides 197, 320–1
physiognomy and 80, 88 Eubulus 257, 277
psychological constructionist theories Euctemon (enemy of Demosthenes) 257
of 87, 89 Euctemon (estate of, in Isaeus 6) 313–14
relational theory of 79, 90 Eunomus 11–14
388 General Index
Euripides 35, 55, 144, 184, 187, 239, 303 figurines 121
Euryale 120 found with spells 234, 239, 241, 247
Eurymedon, battle of 183 Fiji, gossip in 177
eusebeia (piety) 41 Filonik, Jakub 4, 49, 50
Eutherus 172 Finlay-Jones, Robert 92
Euthias 23–7, 30, 56 Finley, Moses 59
Euthycles 105 Firth, Raymond 141
euthyna (account of period of Fisher, Nick 202, 228, 257–8
office) 208 Flower, Michael 15, 23, 309, 310–11
Euthyphro 49–50 Fluchhände 212–13
eutuches 154 Fontenrose, Joseph 105
Eutychian 229 food 272, 280, 300, 305, see also famine,
Euxitheus of Halimous 305, 320–1 grain
Evagoras of Salamis in Cyprus 183 shortages of 280, 282
Evagrius, St. 91–2 force dynamics 244
Evans, Vyvyan 244 foreigners, attitudes to at Athens 282–4
Evans-Pritchard, Edward 8 Forsdyke, Sara 110, 273, 349
evolutionary psychology 172, 175 Foster, Eric 177, 256
evil eye 7, 9, 74, 135, 151, 158, 161, 236 Foucart, Paul 25, 30
eye disease connected with? 158 Four Hundred (oligarchs in 411 BCE) 193
execution 39, 55, 237, 240, 242, 250, fox, slanderer as 113
see also punishment, capital Foxhall, Lin 270, 285, 293–4, 324
exegetai (expounders of religious Frankenberg, Ronald 173
law) 41 Frankfurter, David 157
exile, exiles 14, 113, 122–3, 193, 257, Frede, Dorothea 250
260, 286, 290 ‘free riders’ 172
as penalty 42, 48, 159, 193 French, Alfred 273–4
decree of Alexander about 259, 286 Friedrich, Johannes 239
exorcisms 14 Friesen, Wallace 84
Frijda, Nico 87
Fahr, Wilhelm 52 Frith, Uta and Chris 172–3
Fähse, Gottfried 72 Fuks, Alexander 289
famine 159, see also food
Faraone, Chris 233, 240, 241 Gabrielsen, Vincent 271, 273,
Fauconnier, Gilles 244–5, 247, 256 275–80, 287
Favret-Saada, Jeanne 8, 155 Gagarin, Michael 33–5, 41, 42, 43, 192
Fayyum 156 Gager, Joseph 63, 213, 233
fear 10, 49, 160, 231, see also anxiety Gagné, Renaud 56
as ‘basic’ emotion 83–4 Galen 233
of betrayal 332 Gallant, Thomas 299
of conspiracy 209, 332 Galt, Anthony 9, 155
of mockery 225 Gambreion 334
of returning athletes 106 Gardner, Andrew 79
of slaves 63 Garland, Robert 53, 55, 58, 59, 65, 306
of sophists 265 Garnsey, Peter 270, 280
of tyranny 115 Gawlinski, Laura 334
of wrath of gods 61, 154 Geertz, Armin 172, 179
festivals, religious 25, 27–8, 48, 115, 314, Geertz, Clifford 331
see also Dionysus Gemellus Horion 156–8, 163
women and 31, 334, see also gender 4, 99, 153
Thesmophoria as factor in prosecutions 42, 63
fetus 156–8 roles 305
 General Index 389
Gendron, Maria 82, 84, 87 positive/negative 175
generals, freelance 276, 287 private 212–23
Gennadius of Constantinople 74 reputation and 173
Georgoudi, Marianthe 265 slander and 180, 191–209
Germany 155 slaves and 187
Gernet, Louis 238, 241–3, 249 three-stage process of 254
Geschiere, Peter 156, 331 truth and 196–206
Geta 304 witchcraft and 8
geuomai (taste) 112 Gould, John 140
Giammellaro, Pietro 309 Graf, Fritz 9, 56, 63, 159, 213–15, 217,
Gill, Christopher 137 222, 225, 232–5, 329
Gilmore, David 171 Graham, A. John 39
girls, unmarried 302–8 grain supply and trade, Athenian 208,
Glaucothea (mother of 280–1
Aeschines) 17–18, 20, 29, 45, 56 graphe, plural graphai 3, 40, 42,
Glaucus 145 49–50, 207
Gluckman, Max 173–5, 179, 186 aprostasiou 283
Glycera 322 asebeias 3, 48–9, 51, 57–8, 62, 65, 319
Godelier, Maurice 141–2 nomon me epitedeion theinai (charge
gods, traditional 55–7, see also new gods of proposing unsuitable law) 132
god-sibbs 170 xenias (charge of being a
goes (sorcerer), goeteia (sorcery) 33, 44, non-citizen) 317
55, 135, 169–70 Greco, Monica 89
Goff, Barbara 320 Green, Melanie 244
Goffman, Erving 178 Gregory the Great 91
Golden, Mark 293, 298–9, 303 Griffiths, Paul 6, 83, 86, 89–90
Goldhill, Simon 113, 124 ‘Grim Reaper’ (conceptual blend) 244–6
Goode, Erich 10 Guettel Cole, Susan 77, 126, 134
Goodwin, Marjorie 175, 178, 256 gunaikonomoi (controllers of
Gordon, Richard 9, 13, 33, 40, 42, 55, 57, women) 333–4
62, 63, 64, 218, 219, 220, 333 gymnasium 27
Gorgias 169
Gosden, Chris 78 Hacking, Ian 90
gossip 7–9, 170–260 passim Hades 240
ancient Greek words for 181 Hagesias of Syracuse 104, 108–9, 112
Aristotle on 188 Hagesidamus 108
as Mediterranean phenomenon 180 Hagnon 316
as ‘sense-making technique’ 8 Hagnotheus 316
as ‘social glue’ 174 Halimous (deme of Attica) 305, 320
as weapon 175 Halliwell, Stephen 250–2
between classes 186 Halm-Tisserant, Monique 237, 239, 242
etymology of word 171 Halperin, David 311
Euripides on 187 Hamel, Debra 318
Fijian evidence for 177 Hampe, Beate 243–4
in epitaphs 180 Handelman, Don 175, 178
in law courts 185, 189, 191–211, 259 Hannerz, Ulf 173, 175
networks of 256 Hansen, Mogens Herman 18, 50, 59,
operation of 170 270, 271, 273, 275
origins of 172 Hanson, Victor 270
pheme and 182 Harding, Phillip 268, 283
phthonos and 161, 209–11, 253 Harmodius (tyrannicide) 132
Pindar on 109, 112, 120, 188 Harpalus affair 12, 259
390 General Index
Harpocration 11, 16, 26–7, 29, 45 Hignett, Charles 303
Harré, Rom 90–3, 99 Himera 124
Harris, Edward 6, 21, 39, 42, 50, 58, 78, Hintzen-Bohlen, Brigitte 27
79, 92, 194, 299 Hippocleas of Thessaly 123, 150
Harris, Oliver 78–9 Hippocrates, Hippocratic treatises 13,
Harris, William 92 56, 92, 287, 310
Harrison, A. Robin W. 42, 49, 303, 304, Hipponicus 184, 187
313, 322 Holland, Dorothy 97
Harrison, Simon 177 Holliday, Heithre 175
harvest 155–6, 227 Homer 46, 107, 140
used metonymically for death 244, 246 on pharmakon 12
hate, hatred 85, 119, 127, 209 on phthonos 145
and phthonos 209–10 homicide 42–3, see also murder
hau (soul of a thing) 141 homosexuality 161
Haviland, John 177 Hopfner, Th. 13
Hawthorne, Susan 311 Hopper, Robert 274
Heelas, Paul 91, 93, 97–100 Hornblower, Simon v, 105, 123, 124,
Hegesistratus (seer) 238 132, 150, 271, 285
Heliaia 25 horoi (mortgage) 279
Helios 214, 218 Hubbard, Thomas 109, 111
Hendershot, Cyndy 223 hubris (outrage) 115, 117, 129, 151
Henderson, Jeffrey 295 Hübner, Sabine 298
hendiadys 13 humiliation 225–6, 231, 239, 242, 250
Henrichs, Albert 17 humnos desmios (binding song) 241
Heppenstall. M. A. 177 Hunt, Peter 268
Hera 16, 309 Hunter, Virginia 180, 184–6, 188–9,
Hercules 34, 115, 239 192, 194, 196, 199–200, 206–8,
Hermes 67, 149 238, 297
Hermippus 24, 26 Hyacinthus 224
Hermocrates 148 Hykkara (Sicily) 307
Hermotimus 153 Hyperboreans 309
herms, mutilation of 51–2 Hyperides 23–30, 51, 56, 191–3, 283,
hero(es), hero cults, heroization 63, 302, 334
105–6
Herodotus (historian) 269, 309 iconography
pheme in 182–3 of cursing 212–13
phthonos in 77–8, 103, 146–7, 151–3 of phthonos 120–1, 158, 209
reciprocity and 140 of women 323–4
Herodotus of Thebes (athlete) 108, ‘identity-expressive products’ 143
114, 122 Idomeneus of Lampsacus 26, 257
Herriman, Nicholas 331 Iles Johnston, Sarah 33, 44
Hesiod 103, 140, 241 Ilongots (Philippines) 96
Hesk, Jon 132, 134, 136, 169 Imbros 281
Hesychia (name of thiasotes) 29 immobility of victim (as wish in curse
hetaira (courtesan), plural hetairai 23, tablets) 232, 237, 242
26, 30, 63–4, 185, 287, 307, 315–17, impiety see asebeia
319, 321–3 Inachos 309
Hierax 156 Inarus 269
hiereia see priestesses incantations 11, 13, 31–3, 40, 42–3, 46,
Hiero II of Syracuse 104 55, 60, 159, 168, 241, 311, see also
hierophant (high priest ) 319 epoidai
hierosulia (temple-robbery, sacrilege) 48 Indonesia 331–3
 General Index 391
infanticide 288 kalathoi (wool baskets) 324
information management 175–7 Kamarina, Kamarineans 114–15, 148
initiation 19, 53, 320, see also Eleusis, Kamen, Deborah 322
mysteries, telete Kammerbeek, Jan 72
into mysteries of Dionysus 310 Kapferer, Bruce 225
into mysteries of Sabazius 29, 45 Kapparis, Konstantinos 283, 304, 317
Inkas 79 Karanis 156–7
innocence, protestations of 215, 218, 220 Kaster, Robert 6, 84, 98
inscriptions 15, 28, 39, 212–13, 221, 288, katharmoi (purifications) 13
see also confession inscriptions, kathodos (return i.e. of the democrats
curse tablets, epigrams, epigraphic from Phyle, 403 BCE) 283
evidence, epitaphs Katz, Marilyn 3–4
intolerance 4, 22–3, 53, 56, 329 Keller, Otto 31
Iphicrates 287 Kemper, Theodore 87
Isaeus 127, 189, 195–6, 302, 307, 313, Kennedy, Rebecca 284, 322
315, 322 Kephallenia 158
Isis 53 Kerameikos 224, 314, 324–5
Isocrates 28, 169, 183, 267–9, 282, Keramopoullos, Antonios 240–1
284–5, 289–90 Kerykes 200
on Athenian economic situation in King Archon see archon basileus
fourth century BCE 267–9 and Kirk, Alan 141
282–90 passim Kirkwood, Gordon 110
Isodaites 29–30, 45, 59, 62 kithara (lyre) 324
Isotimides, decree of 51 Klaros 308
Izard, Carol 84 kledon 183–4
kleos (good report) 107, 110, 117, 145
Jain religion 142 ‘economy of ’ 107, 113
Jakov, David 213 kloios (collar) 238
James, William 81–3 Knidos, curses from 215, 219–22, 224
Jameson, Michael 27, 312 Knossos 124
Janko, Richard 49 komos (revel, drunken procession) 27–8
Japanese analogy 89 Konstan, David 6, 76, 126, 127, 322, 329
Java, East 331–2 Kore (‘Maiden’) 215–16, see also
jealousy (zelos) 75–6, 85, 331 Persephone
and envy 76, 94 koros (excess) 115, 117, 151
Jebb, Richard 72 Kövecses, Zoltán 98, 243–4
Jenkins, Janis 79 Kowalski, Gorgius 25
jewellery 293, 324 Krauter, Stefan 22, 48–9, 50, 54, 55,
Jewish culture and evidence 22, 213 58–60, 62, 65, 319, 329
John, St. 233 Kremmydas, Christos 132, 133
Johnson, Mark 243–4 Kroeber, Alfred 96
Johnson, Paul 255 Kron, Geoffrey 278
Jones, Nicholas 28 Kucharski, Janek 207
Jordan, David 67, 213, 214, 224, 229–30 kuphon (pillory) 238
Josephus 21–3, 45, 52 Kurke, Leslie 31
Josselin, Ralph 171 Kurland, Nancy 177
judges 42, 210 Kyle, David 27
Julius 156–7 kyria, kyrios (words for legal competence
jurors 24–5, 40, 43, 320 or control) 294, 307

kakologia (abuse) 118, 147 Lacedaemonius, sister of 320–1

kakourgoi (malefactors) 242 Laches 202
392 General Index
Laidlaw, James 142 Lycurgus of Athens 12, 58, 194, 204
Lais (hetaira) 307 Lydia(ns) 218, 221, 282
Lakoff, George 98, 243–4 Lynch, John 27
Lakonia 280, see also Sparta lynchings 331
laleo and cognate words for babbling, Lyons, William 82
gossiping 181, 188 Lysias 125–6, 188, 193, 203, 283, 295
Lampsacus 277 Lysistrata 28, 303
Lanni, Adriaan 192
Lanzillotta, Lautaro 103, 136, 151 Macan, Reginald 152
Larsen, Jeff 82 McClure, Laura 186
Latte, Kurt 39 MacDowell, Douglas 12, 15, 18, 20, 35,
Laurion, silver mines at 274 36, 40–3, 49, 50, 132, 258, 303, 320
law courts passim, esp. 185, 189, MacFarlen, Alan 171
191–211, 259 McGinn, Thomas 295
lead (metal for curse tablets and McKechnie, Paul 284, 286–8, 290
associated figurines) 237, 247 Mackie, Hilary 117
Leaper, Campbell 175 Maeandrius 146
leases 279, 284 maenads 29
Leimar, Olof 172 magic, magical activities or
Lemnos 12, 14, 64, 281 practices 3–4, 7, 9, 12–14, 42–4,
women of (mythical) 14, 41–2 46–8, 56, 60, 64, 66, 100, 141, 157,
Leocrates 194, 204–5 159–61, 162–3, 168, 225, 233, 335,
Leptines 132 see also binding spells, Borphor
lesche, plural leschai (informal meeting- syllables, curses
place) 182 ‘magical arms-race’ 223
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 141 manipulative 246
Lewis, Sian 182, 186 medicine and 169
Libanius 157–61, 233 monetization of 310
Limberis, Vasiliki 161 new cults and 44, 46
Limenius 161 performative function of of 235
Lindquist, Kristen 85, 88 religion and 13, 46–7
Lipsius, Justus 61 rhetoric/sophistry and 42, 169
liturgies (civic financial obligations) 76, ‘sympathetic’ 236
132, 157–8, 206, 276–8 Magnesia (on Maeander, Asia
Llorona, La 99 Minor) 334
Lloyd-Jones, Hugh 72 magos, plural magoi 13, 31–3, 46,
loans 278, 299, see also mortgages 55, 170
Lokri, Epizephyrian 105, 123 Malinowski, Bronislaw 141–2
logismoi ‘(tempting) thoughts’ 91 mania (insanity), as evidence of legal
logopoios and cognate words 181 incapacity 317, 323
loidoria (abuse) 129, 134–5, 154, 191 Mantias 20
Loman, Pasi 288, 305 mantic books 289
Long, Nicholas 96 Mantinea 310
Loomis, William 273 battle of 274
Loraux, Nicole 301 mantis (seer), plural manteis 16–17, 30,
love 85, 243, 311 46, 287, 310, see also seers
love potions see philtra Mantitheus 20
Lucian 92, 121 Manto (daughter of Polyidus) 308
Luciani-Zidane, Lucrèce 92 Manto (daughter of Tiresias) 308
Lutz, Catherine 83, 93 Maori 140–1
Lyceum (Athenian gymnasium) 27–8 marriage 292, 297, 299, 302–8, 321
Lycia 290 Marzi, Mario 24, 30
 General Index 393
Mate, Mavis 305 momos (blame) 112
Mathews, Holly 99 monkeys 80–1
Matsumoto, David 81, 86 Moore, Henrietta 96
Mauss, Marcel 140–1, 143, 153 Moors, Agnes 83, 97
Medea 35, 188 Mopsus 308
medicine 169, 287, 306 Moraw, Susanne 29
medimnos of barley (as limit on women’s Moreno, Alfonso 280–1
transactions) 293, 306 Morgan, Catherine 105
Medusa 120 Morris, Ian 285
Megacles 104, 123 mortality 287, 292
megaloprepeia (magnificence, lavish mortgages 279
public expenditure) 106, 114, 148 mosaics 158
Megara 308 Most, Glenn 6, 72, 112, 113, 117, 119,
Megas 122 121–4
Meidias 51, 135, 181, 189, 198, 257–8 Moysey, Robert 268
Melampus 308 Munteanu, Dana 250
Melesias 110 murder 14, 31, 34–43, 50, 66, 111, 208,
Melos 290 213–4, 232, 257–60, 308, see also
Menander 121, 188, 304–5, 322, 324, 334 homicide, parricide, poison
Mendonsa, Eugene 333 Murray, Oswyn 45
Menecles (adopter of the speaker in muscle actions 80–1
Isaeus 2) 317 Mykale, battle of 183
Menecles (prosecutor of Ninon) 18–21 Mylonas, George 56
mercenaries 287–9 mysteries (cults requiring initiation) 22,
Meritt, Benjamin 287 see also initiation
Merry, Sally 170, 173, 175–9, 254, 256 Eleusinian (the ‘real’ Mysteries) 18,
Merton, Robert 330 19, 30, 45, 51–2, 56, 315, 323
Meskell, Lynn 79 mockery of 45, 52
Mesopotamia 237 of Sabazius 45
Messenia 276 slaves and 59
metaphor(s) 243–50, see also amulets, myth 14, 34, 63, 105, 111–12, 114,
binding, envy, poison, spells, water see also Alcestis, Cassandra,
Methymna (Lesbos) 334 Lemnos, Manto, Medea, Oedipus,
metics (resident foreigners) 14, 270, 277, Pentheus, Prometheus, Tiresias
281–4, 290, 308, 320 binding in 236
tax on 14, 277, 308 foundation myths 115
metonymy 244–5 Mytilene debate 148
miara, miaros (polluted) 11, 14, 42, see
also pollution Nagle, Brendan 334
Michelson, Grant 173 Nagy, Gregory 110, 120
midwives 171, 306 narrative(s) 4, 7, 94, 100, 179
migration, circular 285, 296 Neaera 293, 304, 307, 317–20, 322
Miletos, Milesians 288, 310 Needham, Rodney 9
Mills, C. Wright 156 Nemea, Nemean festival 110, 114
mines, silver 274 nemesis (righteous indignation) 75, 77
Mintel 143 ‘nervous system’ 95, 100
Mirhady, David 268 network(s) 7, 143
misthos (pay) 274 analysis, social 256
Mnesilochus 239, 242 of gossip 256
mobility, increase of in fourth century personal semantic networks 100
BCE 284, 286, 307 theory of emotions 97
Möbius, Hans 310 new gods and religions 44–5, 57–60
394 General Index
Newman, Judith 213 oratory 61, 74, 103, 130, 148, 192, 196,
Newton, Charles 215, 218 284, 286, see also Aeschines,
Nicias 148, 153, 305 Demosthenes, Isaeus, rhetoric
Nicocrates of Cyrene 37, 66 orphanistai, orphanophylakes
Nicodemus (in Isaeus 3) 195–6, 316 (orphan guardians) 299
Nicodemus of Aphidna 257–61 orphans 282–3, 292, 294–5,
Nicomachus 193 298–302
Nicomedia 158, 160 adopted 301
Nicostratus, estate of (subject of Ortony, Andrew 84, 87, 89
Isaeus 4) 271, 289, 316–17 Osborne, Robin v, 4, 28, 59, 61, 207, 269,
Nilsson, Martin 153 278–9, 283, 334
Ninon 17–23, 46–7, 49, 52, 55–9, 63, 64, Osteen, Michael 141
66, 162, 261–2, 265, 312, 327–8, 332 Ostling, Michael 9
nomizein theous (acknowledge the ostracism 104, 123
gods) 52 Ostwald, Martin 61
Noon, Mike 179 O’Sullivan, Lara-Louisa 49, 334
Norman, A. F. 159–60 Otanes 77, 103
nothoi (bastards ) 301, 322 Ouwekerk, Jaap 231, 251
Nukulaelae (Pacific island) 175
Nussbaum, Martha 90 Paine, Robert 174–5, 186
nymphs 59, 309 Palladium 35, 42
pallake, plural pallakai (concubine) 304,
oaths 199–201, 237, 235 316, 321–2
Ober, Josiah 106, 185–6, 200 Pan 53
occult aggression, attacks, and panic, moral 10
insecurity 136, 137, 155–6, 162, Panionius 153
223, 250, 254 Papadopoulos, John 241
occupations paraleipsis 201
changes in 286 parents, mistreatment of 50–1
of women 306 Parker, Robert 18, 20, 22, 23, 29, 36,
O’Connell, Peter 24, 26, 30 37, 39, 41, 45, 47, 49, 51, 52, 53,
Odysseus 111 54, 55, 57, 59, 61, 62, 64, 65, 329
Odyssey 112, 145 Parkinson, Brian 6, 87, 95
Oebatas of Dyme 105 Paros 290
Oedipus 46, 309 parricide 40–1
Oenanthe 217 Parrot, W. Gerrod 76
‘Office Pollyanna’ (game) 143 Parry, Jonathan 142
Ogden, Daniel 12, 13, 43, 223, 225, 239, Parsons, Talcott 96
301, 304, 321, 322, 334 Parthenion (thiasotes) 29
oikos (household) 114–15, 184, 295, 315, Pasion 293
319, 323–5 Patterson, Cynthia 322
olbios (fortunate, happy) 154 Pausanias (Spartan regent) 152
oligarchs, oligarchy (at Athens) 49, Pausanias (travel writer) 154, 308
265, 269, 292, see also Four pay see Assembly, misthos
Hundred, Thirty for magistrates at Athens 275
at Siphnos 290 Pearl, Orsamus 156, 158
olive trees, offences against 48, 205 pederasty 161, 283
Olympia and festival 108, 115, 138 Pelled, Lisa 177
Olympiodorus 201 Pelling, Christopher 152
Olson, Douglas 40 Pelopidas 319
Omitowoju, Rosanna 304–5 Peloponnesian War, First (c. 461–446
Opis (Hyperborean virgin) 309 BCE) 269
 General Index 395
Peloponnesian War, Second or Main philosophy 287
(431–404 BCE), effects of at philotimia (love of honour) 282
Athens 266–311 philtra (love-potions) 18, 34, 45–6, 59,
Pelops 111, 120 162, 167–8, 333
pentakosiomedimnoi (‘500-bushel Phocion 312
men’) 281 phonos see homicide
Pentheus 55 phthonos and 72
Periander (Corinthian tyrant) 146 Phormio (co-prosecutor of
Periander (fourth-century Leptines) 133
Athenian) 278 Phormio (prosecutor of
Pericles 27, 49, 57, 66, 148, 168, 210, Apollodorus) 205–6
289, 295, 300, 322–3 Phormisius 283
and Aspasia 66, 322–3 Phrastor 304, 318
citizenship law of law (451 BCE) 283, phratries (kinship groupings) 18, 196,
301, 304 200, 314, 318
Perry, Ben 31 Phrygia(ns) 214, 218, 282
Persephone 15, see also Kore religion of 52, see also Cybele
Persia, Persians 42, 152, 276 Phryne 23–30, 47, 49, 56, 58–9, 62, 64,
Greek wars and battles against 122, 66, 162, 261–2, 265, 312, 327–8, 332
152, 183, 269, 274, 298 phthonos (envy) 5, 71–9, 102–63, 278,
negotiations with as criminal see also envy, Schadenfreude
offence 40 Aristotle on 75, 77, 130, 144
Pettegree, Andrew 259 as emotion 77, 145, 253
Petzl, Georg 218–20 as pain at good fortune of
Pfeffer, Jeffrey 256 others 75, 162
Phaleron 240 dead people, not felt towards 102
phallephoria 134 democracy and 128
Phano, daughter of Neaera 304, 317–19 Demosthenes and 128–30, 133–6, 163
pharmakeia (knowledge of drugs/ divine 7, 149–55
spells) 36, 37, 40, 169, 326, 328 eating as metaphor for 119–20
pharmakis (woman with expertise in evil eye and 9
drugs or spells) 12, 162 gifts and 140–5, 148
pharmakon, plural pharmaka (drugs or good and bad varieties of 127–8
spells) 12–14, 17–18, 31, 34–6, gossip and 161, 209–11, 253
39–40, 42–3, 65–7, 167–70, 219, hatred and 209–10
314–15, 317, 319, 323, see also poison Herodotus on 77–8, 103, 146–7,
incantations and 42, 167 151–3
legality or illegality of 12–13 Hippias of Elis on 127
Teos curses about 39, 43, 169 Homeric epics and 145
trials for 35–6, 39 iconography of 120–1, 158, 209
pharmattein (treat) 41 Isaeus on 127
pheme (rumour) 182–4, 200 law courts and 126–7
Pheretime 152–3 magic-making/pharmakeia and 37, 66
Phile 204, 315–16, 322 phonos and 72
Philip II of Macedon 258 Pindar on 71, 103–24, 138, 150, 154,
Phillips III, C. Robert 13 163, 167
Philochorus 11, 16, 27, 33, 55, 281, Plato on 209–10
310, 334 Plutarch on 116, 158
Philocrates, Peace of (346 BCE) 283 Sophocles on 71–3
Philoctemon and estate of (subject of Suda on 72–4, 77, 167
Isaeus 6) 127, 313–14 Thucydides on 147–8
Philoneus 34 tyranny and 116
396 General Index
Phylacidas of Aegina 108 Athenian 180, 266, 269–70, 280–1,
Phylarchus 158 285, 293
Phyle 199, see also kathodos Poros building 229
physiognomy and emotions 80, 88 Posidippus (epigrammatist) 310
Pindar 124, 169 Posidippus (writer of comedies)
on gossip 109, 120, 188 25, 28
on pharmaka 168 Poseidon 111
on phthonos 103–24, 138, 150, Postman, Leo 172
154, 167 post-traumatic stress disorder 328
Pippidi, Dionisie 213, 214 Potidaia 281, 288
piracy 280 potions, love see philtra
Piraeus 54, 274, 280, 296, 313 potlatch 141
Pisander 126 Pouilloux, Jean 334
Pisidia 214 praeteritio 201
plague 159 praise 103–20, 124, 148, 150, 295, 323
Antonine 284 of self 124, 128
at Athens 270, 292, 310 praise poetry 103, 112, 163
Plangon 20, 322 Prauscello, Lucia 252
Plataea(ns) 289, 305 prayer(s) 213, 233
battle of 122, 183 (‘battle in Boiotia’) for justice 9, 63, 215, 232–3, 249
Plato, Platonic dialogues 13, 44, 49–50, Praxagora 272
52, 54, 56, 58, 295, 299–300, priestesses 15, 17–18, 55, 306, 309,
310–12, 333 see also Diotima
on itinerant agurtai and manteis 30, 46 Ninon as 18–19, 21–2, 55
on pharmakeia and pharmakon 13, of Aphrodite 25
36, 40, 43, 47, 60, 169 of Artemis 16
on phthonos 209–10 of Athena 15, 16, 183 (on Acropolis
‘pledge’, Germanic 140 of Athens)
plemmeleia (error, offence) 50 of Demeter 16
Plutarch 15–16, 24–5, 37, 56, 57, 66, of Dionysus 310
116, 154, 158, 181, 319 of Hera 16
Pluto 29, 215 of Hestia 15
Pnyx (meeting place of Athenian of Persephone 15
Assembly) 27–8 priests 21, 30, 46, 51, 55, 217,
podokakke (stocks) 238–9, 241 219–21, 245, 319, see also
poietoi (adopted orphans) 301 agurtai
poison (literal), poisoning 13, 16, 34–6, of Banaras 142
40–1, 43, 167–8, 212, 215, 216, 219, of Cybele 55
223, 224, 326, 328, see also Pritchard, David 274–6
pharmakeia, pharmakon Prodicus of Keos 28
as metaphor 163, 168, 170, 261, proeisphora (money advanced to pay the
315, 326 property tax) 132
Poland, Franz 18 profit motive of prophets 46
Polemaenetus 290 Prometheus 238, 241–2
Polemon 322 propelakismos (insulting treatment) 129
pollution (religious) 11, 14, 41, 51 Propontis 274
Pollux 334 prostitutes, prostitution 26, 64, 186, 307,
Polybius 123, 154, 217 313, 317, 320
Polycrates 151, 153 Protagoras 22, 28
Pomeroy, Sarah 288, 300, 302 Psaumis of Kamarina 114–15
population(s) 5, 286, 335 psuchagogomenos (beguiled, perhaps
Aeginetan 288 supernaturally) 318
 General Index 397
psychology 6, 95, 185, see also Richards, Robert 81, 82
constructionist theories, evolutionary Ricl, Marijana 219–20
public charges see graphe Riess, Werner 7, 236–7
punishment risk 5
capital 219, 241, see also execution, binding-spells and 224, 231, 247, 250
stoning gift-giving and 141–2, 150
civic 235, 237–8, 240, 253, see also gossip and 177
apotumpanismos leases and 279
corporal 237, 242 management of 7
divine 39, 117, 217, 220 phthonos and 128, 138, 151, 251
purification 199, 308, see also katharmoi social construction of 10
Purkiss, Diane 9, 171 women and 265–6, 315, 317, 323, 327
Purvis, Andrea 53, 54 ritual 13, 23, 44, 246
Putnam, Robert 256 abuse 134
Pyrrhus, estate of (subject of Isaeus 3) magical 246
196, 204, 315–16, 322 new, foreign 45–6, 53
Pythian festival 120 space 247–9
traditional 61
Quinn, Naomi 97 ‘ritualism’ 331
Quintilian 129 Rivera, Joseph De 87
Robben, Antonius 329–30
Ramsay, William 214 Robert, Jeanne and Louis 213
Rankin, David 59 Robert, Louis 214, 219–20
rape 304 Roberts, John 175, 177
Ratzan, David 298 Roesch, Etienne 86
Raubitschek, Antony 23, 25, 26, 30 Roisman, Joseph 208, 284
reciprocity 108, 110, 138, 140–52, 155, Roman evidence and analogies 44, 141,
167, see also gifts 232, 292
negative 142 Romilly, Jacqueline de 169
Redfield, James 105 Roper, Lyndal 9, 155, 333
relevance, forensic, notions of 43, 192–3 Rosaldo, Michelle 94, 98
religion(s) Roseman, Ira 87
foreign 44 Rosenberg, Erika 84, 86
magic and 13, 46–7 Rosenwein, Barbara 95
new 44–6 Rosivach, Vincent 110
religious offences see asebeia Rosnow, Ralph 171–3, 176–7, 256, 261, 265
resentment 143–5 Rowlands, Alison 9
return see kathodos Roy, Donald 178
of athletes 106–8 Rubel, Alexander 269
revenge 152–3, 193, 214, 231, 233 Rubinstein, Lene 50, 301, 321
worse when carried out by women 153 Rudhardt, Jean 22, 60
Reverdin, Olivier 44, 58 Ruschenbusch, Eberhard 270
Rhacius 308 Russell, James 86, 88, 89
Rheneia(ns) 51, 213 Rutherford, Ian 109
rhetoric, rhetorical devices and texts 42,
64, 72, 94–5, 99, 102–3, 122, 125, Sabazius 29, 45, 54, 59
127, 129, 134, 138, 158, 169, 189, Sabini, John 102
192, 195, 204, 208, 236, 268, 289, Sabinus 160
see also oratory sacred, definition of 54, 246
Rhodes, Peter 270, 271, 274, 277, 287 ‘sacred disease’ see epilepsy
Rhodes, Rhodians 115, 118, 123, 205, sacrifice 32–3, 158, 167, 310, 319, 334
300, 302 Sahlins, Marshall 141
398 General Index
Salamis, battle of 146 disaster (Athenian) in 181, 269,
Salancik, Gerald 256 303, 305
Sallares, Robert 292, 296 sickness (as evidence of legal
Saller, Richard 292, 299 incapacity) 317, 323
Salomon, Nicoletta 12 Siegel, James 149, 329–33
salvific capital 62 Sigeum 277
Salvo, Irene 9, 213, 214, 218, 221, 222 Silk, Michael 72, 124
Samos 146, 281, 286 Sillar, Bill 79
Sanders, Ed 6, 9, 76, 94, 125, 127, 129, silver 276, see also Laurion
130, 144, 186, 250, 252 Silver, Maury 102
Sandwell, Bella 161 Simmel, Georg 254–5
Sarbin, Theodore 94 Singer, Jerome 84
Sarpedon 145 Sinope (city on Black Sea) 308
satyrs 29 Sinope (woman in Demosthenes 59)
Saunders, Trevor 60, 61 319–20
scandal 172–3, 195 sins see Seven Deadly Sins
Scarborough, John 12, 13, 168 Siphnos 290
Schachter, Stanley 84 Sirens 168
Schadenfreude 86, 225, 231, 250–3 skeleton 244 (used metonymically for
Schaps, David 286, 293–4, 303, 306, 316 death) 244
Scheer, Monique 94 Skyros 281
Scheidel, Walter 270, 284, 292, slander 112, 130, 137, 195, 198, see also
299, 306 diabole
schemas 6–7, 96–7, 99–101 gossip and 180, 186–7, 191–2, 205
Scherer, Klaus 87 phthonos and 11, 210
Scherke, Katharina 95 Plutarch on 127
Scholz, Peter 329 Slater, Niall 301
Schramm, Katharina 330, 332 slaves 41, 59, 63, 188, 228, 270,
Schwartz, Barry 143 293, 296
scythe (used metonyically for curse tablets and 226–7
death) 244–5 gossip and 187
Scythia(ns) 203, 239 initiation and 59
Scythopolis (Palestine) 161 murder of 41
Sealey, Raphael 321–2 numbers of (at Athens) 270–1
Second Athenian League 275 punishment of 239
Second Sophistic 72 sources of anxiety 312
secrecy, secrets 56, 180, 255, see also teaching of (as criminal
mysteries charge) 15–16, 38, 52, 59, 63
Secundus 230 Smith, R. R. R. (Bert) 117
seers 16, 238, 290, 308, 310, see also mantis Smith, Richard 76
Seibert, Jakob 286 Smolders, Ruben 157
Semenov, Anatol 25 Smyrna 120, 219
Semonides of Amorgos 186–7 Sobel, Joel 256
Seriphos 146 social construction see constructionist
Sestos 281 network analysis 256
Seven Deadly Sins 91 ‘sociality’ 96
Shay, Jonathan 329 Social War (Athenian, 350s BCE) 132,
Shipton, Kirsty 279 274, 276, 281, 355
Shrimpton, Gordon 102 Socrates (Athenian philosopher) 13, 28,
Sicily 121, 124, 148, 232, 286, 307, see 33, 46, 58, 76, 136, 167–9, 209–10,
also Akragas, Hiero, Hykkara, 226, 251–3, 272, 294, 295, 296, 303,
Kamarina, Syracuse, Thero 307, 310, 329
 General Index 399
trial and execution of 21–2, 28, Stratton, Kimberly 333
46–50, 51–2, 57–60, 62, 65–6, 167, Strauss, Barry 271
209, 253, 262, 265 Strauss, Claudia 94, 97, 100
Socrates (son of Tatias) 220 Strepsiades (in Aristophanes) 182
Soeter, J. 175 Strepsiades of Thebes (in Pindar) 110,
Solomon, Robert 90, 92 122
Solon 28, 152, 154, 300, 315 Stroud, Ronald 276, 300–1
Sommerstein, Alan 272, 303, 309 Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo 329–30
sophists, sophistry 28, 65, 158, 169, 262 Suda 72–4, 77, 167
Sophronius 233 Sugg, Richard 171
Sopolis 290 Suharto, President of Indonesia 331–2
sorcerer see goes Sukarno, President of Indonesia 331
Sørensen, Jesper 246 Suls, Jerry 173
Sørensen, Tim 78–9 sycophancy (malicious prosecution),
Sostrata 304 sycophants 14, 19–20, 26, 49,
Sotas 156 130, 207
Soweto, South Africa 136, 155 Sykes, Karen 141
space (generic, courtroom, ritual) 247–8 Syloson 146
spells 12–14, 19, 23, 38, 42, 163, 224–5, symmories (groups of taxpayers) 277
see also binding spells, pharmaka syntaxeis (contributions) 275
as metaphor for oratory 168 synthetic images 9
Sparta(ns) 146–7, 181, 238, 269, 273–4, syntrierarchies 277–8
276, 286 Syracuse, Syracusans 148, 188, see also
Spiro, Melford 98 Hagesias, Hiero
Stamatopoulou, Maria 123 Syria 158, 214
stasis, plural staseis (civil strife) 72, Syrian gods 218
123–4, 147, 286 Sztompka, Piotr 328–30
Stearns, Carol and Peter 78, 93 Szwed, John 211
Steiner, Deborah 119–20
stele, plural stelai (stone monument) talk 111–24, 256, see also gossip
218, 310, 323–5 emotion talk 97–102
Stenner, Paul 89 Talmy, Leonard 244
Stephanus (of the deme Acharnae, Tambiah, Stanley 235
prosecuted by Apollodorus for false Tannen, Deborah 173
witness) 198 Tantalus 111, 117
Stephanus (of the deme Eroeadae, Tarlow, Sarah 5, 79, 98, 335
allegedly married to Neaera) 198, tasting 112
317–18 Tatias 219–21
Stewart, Charles v, 9, 14, 95, 134, 231, Taussig, Michael 95, 100, 155
261, 333 tautology, causal 244–5
Stewart, Kathleen 95 Taylor, Alfred 59
Stewart, Pamela 8, 172, 261 Taylor, Claire 285, 296, 299
Stilpo the Megarian 49 Taylor, Gabriele 175
Stirling, Rebecca 261 Taylor, James 162
Stocker, Michael 90 tax, taxation 14, 157, 205, 277, 308,
Stoddart, Robert 109 see also eisphora
Stoics 90 taxiarchs 20, 202
stoning 110 Tchernetska, Natalie 302
Strabo 52 Tegea 286
strategies, poetic 113 telete (initiation ritual) plural teletai 29–30
Strathern, Andrew 8, 72, 261 Tellus 152
stratiotikon (army fund) 277 Ten Thousand, the 305
400 General Index
Teos, curses from 39, 43, 169 Thucydides 106, 147–8, 153, 269–70,
Teuta 217 288, 300
Thailand, gifts in 143 on phthonos 147–8
Thais (hetaira) 322 thusiai (sacrifices) 334, see also sacrifice
Thalassius 160 Timarchus 199, 204, 258–8, 262
Thalheim, Theodor 60 Timasarchus of Aegina 114
Thasos 214, 300, 302, 334 Timocles 334
Theagenes (man cursed on Delos) 218, Timocrates 203–4
221 Timodemus of Aphidna 146–7
Thebes, Thebans 114, 121–4, 274, 286, Timotheus 204, 276, 278, 287
308, 319, see also Herodotus, Tiresias 46, 308–9
Pelopidas, Strepsiades, Thrasydaeus Todd, Stephen v, 16, 49, 50, 59, 65, 77,
medism of 123 168, 238, 240, 242
Themistocles 133–4, 138, 146–7, Tomkins, Sylvan 84
152, 168 tongue
Theodote 168, 294 binding of 239–40
Theogenes 304, 318 cutting out of 257, 259
Theopompus (historian) 15, 102 Tonkin, Elizabeth 8
Theodorus the atheist 49 Too, Yun Lee 268
Theophilus 233 Toobey, John 88
theoric fund 277 Toohey, Peter 76
Theoris of Lemnos 11–17, 39–40, 47, 55, torture 34, 233, 235, 237–8
57–9, 61–4, 66, 162, 261–2, 265, in Congo 99–100
327–8, 332 tragedy 74, 154, 184, 188
Theosebes of Xypete 48 Trampedach, Kai 14, 21, 22, 27, 63
Theozotides and decree of 283, 301 trauma, social 9, 269, 328–35
Theramenes 125–6 Travlos, John 27
Thero 106, 108, 121, 124 trials passim
Thesmophoria (female festival) 217, of Aretaphila 37
314–15 of fictional women 31–7
Thespiai 24 of intellectuals at Athens 22
Thessaly, Thessalians 123, 150, 271, 307 of Ninon 17–23
thiasos, plural thiasoi (subgroups of of Phryne 23–30
phratries; cultic subgroups) 17–18, of Socrates see Socrates, trial and
27–9, 45, 59 execution of
at Eleusis (slaves) 59 of Theoris 11–17
of Bendis 59 ‘Triballi’ (young disorderly
thiasotai (members of thiasoi) 28 Athenians) 199
thieves targeted in binding spells 232 tribute 275
‘Thirty’, the (oligarchs at Athens) 59, trierarchs, trierarchy (as liturgy) 132,
126, 262, 282, 288, 299, 276–8
301, 303 Trobrianders 140, 143
Thomas, Rosalind 117 Troezen 290
Thonemann, Peter 288 truth 194, 196–206
Thorikos (Attic deme) 20 Tsagalis, Christos 306, 323–5
Thrasybulus (Athenian general and tuche, personified as Tuche (chance,
politician) 275, 282 luck) 149, 154
Thrasybulus of Acragas 124 tumpanon (cudgel?) 238
Thrasydaeus 109, 123 Tuplin, Christopher 282, 287
Thrasylochus 290 Turner, Mark 244–5, 247, 256
Thrasyllus (litigant in Isaeus 7) 196 Turner, Victor 256
Thrasyllus (seer in Isocrates 19) 290 Typhon 230
 General Index 401
tyranny and tyrants 37, 66, 106, 108, Widlok, Thomas 179
117, 121, 123, 188 widows 292–300, 303
fear of 115 wife, wives 64, 99, 171, 203, 214–15,
legislation about 40 292–3, 294, 297, 314–17,
phthonos and 116 321–3, 325
tyrannicides 132 Willi, Andreas 239
Williams, Raymond 95
uncertainty Wilson, Adrian 171
in accusations 9, 214, 222 Wilson, Nigel 72
of divine gifts 150, 155 Wilson-Mendenhall, Christine 88, 89
of experience of loss resulting from witchcraft 8–9, 13, 93, 149, 156, 171,
trauma 331 256, 261, 331–3
underworld gods 41, see also Hades gossip and 8
unmarried girls 302–8 witches 9, 93, 136, 155–6, 332–3
witch-hunts 10, 331
Van Bremen, Riet 4 Wolf, Margery 177
Van de Ven, Jeroen 142 wolf, poet as 113
Van de Ven, Niels 251 women passim, see also Aspasia,
Van der Horst, Pieter 213 democracy, hetaira, Neaera,
Van Dijk, Wilco 231, 251 Ninon, Phryne, priestesses, Tatias,
Van Iterson, Ad 175 Theoris, widows
Van Wees, Hans 140, 271 armies and 288, 305
Versnel, Henk 9, 20, 22, 23, 25, 28, 29, ‘dangerous’ 312–21, 323, 333
33, 44–6, 51, 51–3, 55, 57–8, 63, festivals and 31, 314
213, 215, 218–21, 225–6, 228–9, history of 3–4
231–3, 235, 250, 329 iconography of 323–4
Vincent, St. (Caribbean island) 178 lack political role at Classical
Von Reden, Sitta 145 Athens 3, 265
Voutsaki, Sofia 78–9 legal limitations on ownership of
Voutiras, Emmanuel 213 property by 293–4
naming of, in court 316
Waithe, Mary 311 occupations of 306
Walcot, Peter 74–6, 127, 145 Wood, James L. 250
Wallace, Robert 35, 283 Woodbury, Leonard 303
war see Corinthian War, Peloponnesian wool-working 324
War, Persia, Social War Worthington, Ian 257, 259
Ward, Morgan 143 wrestling 120, 229–30
war-dead, provision for families Wycherley, Richard 54
of 300–2 Wypustek, Andrzej 74, 156–8
water, as metaphor in Pindar 113, 122 Wyse, William 314–15, 317
Waterfield, Robin 59
Watson, Patricia 298 Xenocles of Kopros 315
weddings 334 Xenocrates of Acragas 124
‘Weeping Woman’ folktale 99 xenoi (foreigners, temporary non-
Weinstein, Fred 78, 93, 330 Athenian visitors) 282
Welsh villages, gossip in 173 Xenophon (Athenian author) 13, 58, 76,
Wenzel, Siegfried 92 123, 167, 169, 209, 228, 271, 272,
wet nurses 306, 320–1 274, 282–3, 288, 296, 305
White, Geoffrey 93 Xenophon of Corinth (athlete) 123, 150
White, Luise 8, 195 Xerxes 103, 146–7, 151–2
Whitehead, David 106, 154, 282, xulon (‘wood’; instrument of
283, 287 punishment) 238
402 General Index
Younger, John 323–4 zelos (jealousy) 75, 104 (zalotos)
Youtie, Herbert 156–8 Zenas 156
Yunis, Harvey 52 Zeus 106, 107, 115, 127, 150,
153
Zaphiropoulos, Christos 32 Zingerle, Josef 219
Zelazo, Philip 89 Ziolkowski, Jan 92
Zelnick-Abramowitz, Rachel 12 Zobia 14, 187, 308
 Index Locorum

Aelian 832–7 103

Varia Historia 927 184
2.7 300 938 182
5.19 52 947 74
Fragments 1269–74 309
335 (Domingo-Forasté = 338 Choephoroe
Hercher) 72 505 184
Aeschines Eumenides
1. Against Timarchus 306 241
44–5 200 959–60 303
53 200, 281 Persae
55–6 200 744–5 238
69 200
Fragments
94–105 279
220a–c (Sommerstein 2008 = fr. 168
99 199
Radt) 309
107–15 204
220a 16–17 309
116 200
127 182 [Aeschylus]
128 182 Prometheus Vinctus 241
130 200 Aesop
158 200 Fables
170 295 56 (Perry) 31
171 258 91 (Chambry) 32
172 257, 259 Alciphron
173 59 4.3.1 26
2. The Speech on the Embassy 4.4.4 26
71 276 4.4.5 26
145 182 4.5.3 26
148 257 Alexander of Aphrodisias
3. Against Ctesiphon In Topica 141.31–142.2 74
117 154 Alexis (K-A)
154 300, 301 fr. 25 28
172 203 fr. 52 252
174 209
187 282 Amphis (K-A)
195 282 fr. 22.12 308
258 302 Andocides
Aeschines the Socratic 1. On the Mysteries
fr. 15 27 10 52
29–32 52
Aeschylus 45 238
Agamemnon 54 181
468–70 74 58 52
483–7 187 71 52
404 Index Locorum
Andocides (cont.) Aristophanes
124–9 200 Acharnenses
130 184 731–5 302
139 198 Aves
149 271 987–8 44
2. On His Return 1071 52
6 128 1441 186
1534 54
3. On the Peace with Sparta
1649–68 304
15 274
35 181 Ecclesiazousae
36 273 120 187
184–8 271
4. Against Alcibiades 210–13 294
10 205 230 181
Anonymus Seguerianus 293 271
215 (= Euthias fr. 2 Baiter– 308 271
Sauppe) 27 380–90 271
415–21 272
Anthologia Palatina (Cougny) 591–3 271
Anthologiae Graecae, App. VII 676–90 272
(Problemata, aenigmata)
47, 42.6–7 (Basilii Megalomytis) 72 Equites
103 138
Antiphanes (K-A) 367 237, 238, 240
fr. 120 28 580 76
fr. 166.2 181 705 238, 240
fr. 210 307, 308, 323 1048 237, 238
fr. 247 186 1085 44
Antiphon 1320 182
1. Against the Stepmother for 1375–6 186
Poisoning 34, 37, 44 Lysistrata
3 208 1–5 28
5 208 3 54
9 208 492–7 294
21 208 591–7 303
23 35 680 238
25–7 208 1192 144
26 35
27 35 Nubes
447 182
2. Anonymous Prosecution for Murder 592 238
(First Tetralogy) 1003 186
1.6 48
Pax
5. On the Murder of Herodes 119–23 302
9 242 353–7 27
79 192 1052–119 44
6. On the Choreutes 34, 44 1061–86 44
1 35 Plutus
7 192 87–92 153
Apollonius Rhodius 218 ff. 273
Argonautica 338 186
4.1669 ff. 158 476 238
 Index Locorum 405
503 ff. 273 1387b28–31 144
535–47 273 1388a30–3 75
606 238 [Aristotle]
627 ff. 273 Athenaion Politeia
750 ff. 273 24.3 300
Ranae 40.2 282
156 41.3 271
376 181 42.3 287
619 237 45.1 238, 240, 242
1344 310 52.1 242
Thesmophoriazousae 55.2–4 208
41 56.6–7 299, 302
146 252 57.2–3 49
249 144 57.3 35
252 144 62.2 271
332–67 40 67.1 192
393 187 De Mundo
418–23 294 400a16 213
443–58 306 Magna Moralia
534 40 1188b35–38 (= 1.16.2)
930–46 240 36
942 237
Oeconomica
1001–2 240
1350a3 276
1012 240
1019 237 Rhetorica ad Alexandrum
1022 237 1440a35–1440b4 128
1031 237 1445a13–29 128
Vespae Athenaeus
9 60 Deipnosophistae
380 44 4.167 323
1489 130 6.245a 334
6.265c–266e 64
Aristotle
8.344 182
De virtutibus et vitiis
13.555d–556b 303
1251a30 50
13.577c 322
Ethica Nicomachea 13.588c 307
1108a35 75 13.588e 307
1111a10 52 13.589a 307
Politica 13.589a–b 308
1268a8–11 300 13.590d 26
1277b 188 13.590d–e 24
1293a1–10 275 13.591e 26
1306b 237, 238 13.591e–f 25
1313b11–15 188 13.591f 25
1323a 300 13.592–3 257
14.661e 287
Rhetorica
1372b 210 Basil of Caesarea
1382b 240 On Envy 161
1385a 240 Callimachus
1387a1–3 252 Aetia
1387b 75, 144 1.1.16 182
406 Index Locorum
Epigrammata 119 134
2.3 182 121–2 130
Fragments 127 182
84–5 (Pfeiffer) 105 129 197, 238
132 134
Cicero 139 134
Brutus 189 134
217 231 234 275
Epistulae ad Atticum 242 134
12.45.1 93 252 154
Pro Balbo 258 21
16 102 259 29
259–60 17, 54
Cratinus (K-A) 276 134
Drapetides 311 279 130
183 300 307 134
Demosthenes 317 134
2. Second Olynthiac 321 134
22 198 315 102, 131
28–9 277 19. On the False Embassy
4. First Philippic 70 40
22–3 276 109 134
28 276 137 240
36 278 194 298
37–8 274 199 29
48 181 199–200 200
6. Second Philippic 226 200
19 181 281 18
313 102
8. On Affairs in the Chersonese
293 48
19 134
22 134 20. Against Leptines
61 240 24 134
9. Third Philippic 56–7 133
54 125, 135, 154, 252 74 128, 133, 138
61 240 115 302
10. Fourth Philippic 21. Against Meidias
43–5 279 1 51
63 240 12 51
20 51
15. On the Freedom of the Rhodians 34 51
3 274 51 51
15 125, 274 55 51
16. For the Megalopolitans 102–22 258
19 134 103–4 257
18. On the Crown 104 186
3 134 104–5 240, 258
3–4 130 105 240
12 129 116–19 258
30 40 139 203
102–8 278 148 189
108 134 149 200
 Index Locorum 407
149–50 198 21 303
156 279 29. Against Aphobus for Phanus
160–7 279 3 284
195 198 26 295
196 127 32 169
198 181 43 297
209 134 30. Against Onetor 1
22. Against Androtion 33 297
2 51 32. Against Zenothemis 208
2–3 40
34. Against Phormio
21 134
37 281
22 134
23 134 35. Against Lacritus
61 307 25 181
48 49
23. Against Aristocrates 51 281
66 35
97 40 37. Against Pantaenetus
188–9 208 45 299
213 204 52 127, 189
24. Against Timocrates 38. Against Nausimachus and
11–14 276 Xenopeithes
15 186 19–20 297
94 208 39. Against Boeotus 1
105 238 2 19
127 204 15–17 192
202 203 16 197
25. Against Aristogiton 1 302 17 20
28 14 26 202, 322
32 14 34 125
41 14 40. Against Boeotus 2
52 186 3 20
54 14 6–7 297
55 308 8 322
56 294 9 19
57 187, 308 18 20
58 14 20–2 297
62 14 22 189
65 308 27 322
67–71 189 56–7 297
79–80 11 41. Against Spoudias
80 13, 136 8–11 294
82 186 11 294
27. Against Aphobus 1 297 17 294
4–5 299 21 294
5 297 25–6 296
13–15 295 27 294
53–5 294 42. Against Phaenippus
28. Against Aphobus 2 24 201
15–16 297 43. Against Macartatus
18 127 1–10 208
408 Index Locorum
Demosthenes (cont.) 47. Against Euergus and Mnesibulus
51 304 20 132
54 297, 302 23 276
57 41 44 132
75 294, 299 68–73 41
48. Against Olympiodorus 49. Against Timotheus
12 279 9–15 279
33 279 12 277
35 279 16 277
55 192, 201 22–7 279
51. On the Trierarchic Crown 132 66 204
5 276 66–7 204
54. Against Conon 50. Against Polycles
33 207 6 280
34 197, 200 7 132
39 199, 200 12 280
44 202 19 280
56. Against Dionysodorus 208 48 188
57. Against Eubulides 208, 283, 320 53. Against Nicostratus
3 304 1–3 207
8 321 15 207
17 134 29 298
18–19 178, 306 58. Against Theocrines
25 304 28 197
30 192 49 207
30–45 321 52 207
35 306
36 192 59. Against Neaera 299
42 306, 321 1 207
45 305 7–8 297
52 192 8 302
59–60 197 14–15 207
61 197 16 304, 307
18 293
[Demosthenes] (following MacDowell 21 320
2009) 30 200
7. On Halonnesus 208 35 294
36. For Phormio 38 318
14–16 294 46 294
36–9 206 50 304
44–5 206 50–1 318
44. Against Leochares 283 50–62 318
55 318
45. Against Stephanus 1 297 72 304, 318
27 204 73–87 318
28 293 74–7 319
63–5 197 104 286
66 198, 279 111–14 307
46. Against Stephanus 2 112 208, 302
14 317, 323 113 297
20 296 116 38
 Index Locorum 409
116–17 317 DT
119 320 1 (IK I 147) 216, 219
Digest 4 (IK I 150) 216
47.22.4 (= Solon fr. 76a Ruschenbusch) 28 8 (IK I 154) 217, 224
43 237
Dinarchus 49 234, 235, 240
1. Against Demosthenes 50 240
30 197, 198 51 240
15 198 52 240
32 181 68 234
54 192 69 249
66 169 85 233
92 169 87 240
2. Against Aristogiton 92 232
8 197, 200 93a 232
11 197 129 232
16 40
DTA
Diodorus Siculus
45 237
4.4.3 318
65 234, 240
13.6.7 52
66 240
13.65.4 286
68 240
13.114.1 286
74–5 240
14.94 275
79 240
14.99.4–5 275
84 240
15.59.2 286
86 240
16.21–2 276
87 240
16.42.8 280
88 240
16.88.1 58
89 240
18.8.1–5 286
94 240
18.18.4–5 270
95 240
Diogenes Laertius 97 240
1.55 301 75 232
2.26 303 77 239
2.40 33, 52 99 237
2.75 308 100 237
2.85 287 102 237
9.54 28 103 237
5.80 31 105 234
5.12–13 300
5.22 287 Euripides
5.50 287 Alcestis
5.76 73 315–16 184, 188
5.76–7 120 Andromeda 241
5.81 287 Bacchae
6.38 286 421–3 29
6.49 286 680 18
Dionysius Halicarnassensis Cyclops
De Dinarcho 234 237
11 21 Hecuba
De imitatione 416–18 303
5.6 24 612 303
410 Index Locorum
Euripides (cont.) 5.18 237
Hercules Furens 241 Herodotus
Hippolytus 1.31 182
384 182, 187 1.32.1 151
1056 182 1.32.8–9 151
Iphigenia Aulidensis 1.43.2–3 183
461 303 1.164–8 287
1059 18 2.32.1 182
2.135.5 182
Iphigenia Taurica 3.30.1 146
369–71 303 3.40 151
Medea 3.40.2 153
214–15 188 3.52.5 146
219–21 189 3.80.3 103
985 303 3.80.3–5 77
3.143.2 237
Orestes 3.146.1 146
1109 303 3.153.1–2 183
Phoenissae 4.104 77
796 18 4.104.1 147
4.205 152
Supplices 76
5.66 54
241 77
5.72.2 183
Fragments (Collard and Cropp, also 5.72.4 183, 237
Kannicht, TrGF) 6.61.1 146
88a (Alcmene) 231 6.75.2 237, 238
122 (Andromeda) 237 7.16–18 152
128 (Andromeda) 237 7.33.1 240
Evagrius Ponticus 7.46.1 152
Praktikos 12 (Bamberger) 92 7.139.1 146, 152
7.236.1 103
Gennadius of Constantinople 7.237.2 147
Commentary on Romans 7.237.3 147
(Theodoridis) 74 8.41.1 299
Harpocration 8.69.1 146
Epopteukoton 30 8.105.6 153
Euthias 26 8.109.3 152
Isodaites 29 8.124.1 146
Hoti Chilias 334 8.125.1 146
Lykeion 27 9.37.2 238
Sitos 300 9.71.3 182
Theoris 16 9.71.4–72 146
Thiasos 18 9.79.2 152
Heliodorus 9.100 182
Aethiopica 9.100.2 183
3.7–9 158 9.120.4 240
Hermippos (FGrH 1026) Hesiod
F 46 24 Opera et Dies
F 67 26 25–6 103
Herodas 493 182
5.10 237 760 182
 Index Locorum 411
763 182 Hyperides (Burtt)
Theogonia 1. In Defence of Lykophron
522 242 1 fr. IVb.3 295
652 237 1 fr. IVb.7 295
718 237 1 fr. IVb.9 191
1 fr. IVb.10–11 192
Fragments (Merkelbach and West) 1 fr. IVb.12–13 303
25.18–25 34 1 fr. IVb.14 192
Hesychius (Latte, Hansen, and 4. In Defence of Euxenippus
Cunningham) 4.5 51
Agurtes (alpha 461) 310 4.10 192
Isodaites (iota 952) 29 4.21 186
Lykaion kai Thumbraion (lambda 4.22 198
1368) 27
platanos (pi 2475) 334 6. Funeral Speech
thiasos (theta 573) 6.27 295
fr. 68a I
Hippias of Elis (D-K 86) fr. 70
B16 127 Against Timandrus
Hippocratic Treatises Tchernetska et al. 2007 302
De arte 287 Fragments (Jensen)
De prisca medicina 287 14 334
De decente habitu 287 172 26
Epidemiae 174 30
5.63 310 175 30
7.28 310 176 26
De glandulis 92 177 29
De morbo sacro 179 26
1.9 56 198 30
2.3–4 13
4 40 IDélos
98 [B, frg. a1] ll. 26–7 51
Homer
2532 I A–B 213
Iliad
2532 II 213
5.385–91 237
2533 214
9.318–20 107
12.310–21 145 Inscriptiones Graecae
18.110 113 I2 115 41
21.60–3 112 I3 104 41
22.446 ff. 309 I3 105 28
II2 10 283
Odyssey II2 43 275
17.411–13 112 II2 337 = LSCG 34 53
18.329 182 II2 1177 54, 63
19.284 309 II2 1283 53
20.100 182 II2 1611 276
20.178 ff. 112 II2 1613.284–310 276
21.98 112 II2 1629.180–271 278
22.8–14 112 II2 1635 51
22.189–90 237 II2 2343–61 18
Horace II2 2346 28
Carmina II2 2347 28
3.24.31 102 II2 2934 59
412 Index Locorum
Fragments (Jensen) (cont.) 8–9 296
II2 4650 59 36–7 189
XI 2532 I A 213 38 199
XII 8.450 214 40–3 203
Isaeus 44 189
1. On the Estate of Cleonymus 9. On the Estate of
39 302 Astyphilus 289
2. On the Estate of Menecles 16–18 201
9 294 27–9 295
19 317 37 317
43 189 10. Against Xenaenetus on the
3. On the Estate of Pyrrhus 283 Estate of Aristarchus
11 316 10 293
17–18 307 11. On the Estate of Hagnias
10–14 204 6 299
13 204, 316 39 297
13–14 185 44–50 279
17 316
37 196, 198, 283 12. On Behalf of
39 321 Euphiletus 283
40 200 2 304
4. On the Estate of Nicostratus Isocrates
7 284 1. To Demonicus 287
10 317 26 76
21 272, 289 4. Panegyricus
27 284 47 125
5. On the Estate of Dicaeogenes 68 300
9–11 298 157 40
39 197 167–8 289
43 279 5. Philippus
6. On the Estate of Philoctemon 313 11 135
10–16 284 134 182
12 283 6. Archidamus 268
19 200, 314 73–4 298
21 314 82 300
29 314 7. Areopagiticus
38–40 314 54 267
47 304
48 314 8. On the Peace 132, 268
48–50 314 21 282
49–50 315 24 289
50 315 48 287
51 295 51 127
52 283 50 269
61 127 79 287
88 269
7. On the Estate of
Apollodorus 289, 297 9. Evagoras
31–3 279 21 182, 183
39–41 279 39 128
8. On the Estate of Ciron 12. Panathenaicus
7–8 297 18–20 28
 Index Locorum 413
33 28 1.194 160
94 286 1.241–2 159
155 135 1.243–4 159
14. Plataicus 1.245 159
20 125 1.247 159
48 284 1.248 159
51–2 286 1.249 159
2.14 158
15. Antidosis 30.15 161
8 134 36 160
62 135 38.6 161
90 242 42.12 161
109 276 58.30–1 161
259 125
Epistulae
16. De Bigis 37 161
6 56
LIMC
46 285
8.1 120, 121, 158
17. Trapeziticus [Longinus]
33–4 197 Περὶ ὕψους or De sublimitate
18. Special Plea against 34.2–4 24
Callimachus LSAM
9 186 32 334
19. Aegineticus 48 310
9 290 LSCG
11 290 34 53
19 290 127 334
20–2 290
24 290 Lucan
25 290 Calumniae non temere credendum
40 290 5 121, 209
Lycurgus
20. Against Lochites
1.11 192
10–13 208
1.11–13 192
John Chrysostom (Migne PG) 1.19 205
In 1 Cor. Hom. 1.27 281
31.4 (PG 61.264) 72 1.123 194
In 2 Cor. Hom. 1.149 192
27.3 (PG 61.587) 121 fr. 14.1 [Berlin Papyrus 11748] 58
Josephus Lysias
Contra Apionem 1. On the Murder of
2.267 22 Eratosthenes
15–16 188
Libanius 48–50 208
Orationes
2. Funeral Oration
1.43 160
34 298
1.44 160
48 125
1.45–7 161
66 282
1.49 160
67 125
1.62 160
75 295
1.64–6 160
1.91 158 3. Against Simon
1.98 160 3–4 194, 205
414 Index Locorum
Lysias (cont.) 16. For Mantitheus
6 296 4 298
6–7 297 18. On the Confiscation of the Property
9 252 of the Brother of Nicias
29 296, 297 23 208
30 194, 205
44–6 192, 202 19. On the Property of Aristophanes
5–6 192
5. For Callias 9 297
3–5 61 11 297
6. Against Andocides 32–5 297
11–12 51 20. For Polystratus
17 52 11 300
21 237 13 271
32 197 23 279
54 56 32 208
7. On the Olive Stump 21. Defence against a Charge of Taking
14–18 205 Bribes
16 61 1–5 106
20 207 15 128
28 205 20 198
39 205
22. Against the Corn Dealers
9. For the Soldier 5–6 281
1 192 8 281
3 192 12 281
18–19 192 23. Against Pancleon 286
10. Against Theomnestus 1 3 186
10 242 24. On the Refusal of a Pension 125
16 238 2 207
12. Against 3 125
Eratosthenes 208, 283 20 186
19 294 25. Defence against a Charge of
21 303 Subverting the Democracy
66 126 12–13 106
97 288, 298
26. On the Scrutiny of
13. Against Agoratus 208 Evandros 208
1 207
45 303 27. Against Epicrates and his Fellow
45–6 299 Envoys
56 240 1 279
65–9 193 28. Against Ergocles 275
67 203, 240, 242 1–4 276
68 240, 242 6 276
77 199 10 276
14. Against Alcibiades 1 29. Against Philocrates
7–8 285 2 276
25 198 5 276
28 203 8–11 276
31 285 14 276
15. Against Alcibiades 2 30. Against Nicomachus 59, 208
12 201 2 204
 Index Locorum 415
7–9 193 Papyri
15 193 P. Hib. I 54, 20–2 249
15–16 193 P. Hib. I 14 301
22 279 P. Mich. VI 370 157
31. Against Philon 283 P. Mich. VI 422 156
9 284 P. Mich. VI 423 156
20 203 P. Mich. VI 425 157
27–9 199 P. Mich. VI 426 158
P. Mich. VI 428 157
32. Against Diogiton P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309 310
24–5 299
Pausanias
34. Against the Subversion of the 1.9.3 27
Ancestral Constitution of Athens 3.14.2 182
283 6.3.8 105
Fragments (Carey) 6.9.6–8 105
1.34–47 282 7.3.1–2 308
128–50 282 7.17.6–7 105
299 307 Philemon (K-A)
Maximus of Tyre fr. 92.2 76
19.3 55 Philochorus (FGrH 328)
Menander F 37 27
Aspis 303 F 41 277
Dyskolos F 60 16
260–3 48 F 65 334
F 78 310
Kitharistes F 154 281
64–5 186
Philostratus
Samia Vita Apollonii
301–3 294 5.20 182
510 186
553–4 305 Photius (Theodoridis)
Phthonos (phi 154) 74
Sikyonioi
Pindar
281–2 298
Isthmian Odes
Fragments (K-A) 1 115
208 334 1.32–8 122
298 305 1.41–5 105
761 72, 121 1.41–6 116
Milet. 1.42–6 118
I.3 33–93 288 1.43–5 108
I.3 62 288 1.44 121
1.52–4 149
ML
1.62–3 117
23.6–8 298
1.62–8 124
30 39, 169
1.63 117
33 269
1.64–7 114
NGCT 2 124
24 67, 224, 250, 261 2.13–19 149
89 249 2.37–42 118
Nymphodorus of 2.43 108, 109, 121
Syracuse (FGrH 572) 2.44–5 118
F 4 63 2.44–6 117
416 Index Locorum
Pindar (cont.) 7.86–9 112
3.1–3 116, 118 8.19–21 117
3.6–7 106 8.20–2 114
3.18b 149 8.21 73, 112, 116, 118, 119, 121, 167
4.4–21 149 8.23 120
4.7–12 118 8.26 113
4.12 106 8.33 111
4.31–5 149 9.6–7 118
4.37–45 118 9.53–5 118
5.11 149 10 114
5.14–15 106 10.20 117
5.21–5 116 10.49–54 149
5.22–5 108 11.13–16 118
5.24 104, 121 11.13–17 116
5.51 117 11.17–21 118
6.3–7 149 Olympian Odes
6.16–18 149 1.5–17b 117
6.24–5 118 1.28–9 118
6.69–72 118 1.47 113, 121
7.16–19 110 1.47–51 112
7.20–3 118 1.53 113
7.23–5 123 1.99–100 106
7.39 121 2.5–7 106
8.61–60 149 2.21 149
Nemean Odes 2.35 149
1.24 113, 118 2.53–6 106
1.17–21 119 2.92–7 117
2.23–35 118 2.94 104, 108, 117, 121
3.9 104, 108, 121 2.95–8 114, 120
3.19–22 106 2.96–100 121
3.29 107 3.44–5 106
3.70–5 106 4.8–12 114
4.11 114 4.17 119
4.12–13 114 5.15–16 109
4.39 121 5.23–4 117, 118
4.39–40 112, 116, 119 6.6 108
5.1a 117 6.6–7 105
5.2–6 118 6.7 104, 121
5.4–5 114 6.72–4 118
5.7–8 114 6.73–7 109
5.40 118 6.74 116, 121
6.1–7 149 6.74–7 104, 110
6.28–30 117 6.77–81
6.57b 118 6.101–2 151
7 113 7 115
7.11–13 118 7.6 123
7.20–23 118 7.7 104
7.31–2 151 7.11 118
7.61–2 113 7.11–12 149
7.61–3 110 7.80–5 115
7.64–9 122 7.87–95 151
7.64–74 113 7.89–90 107
 Index Locorum 417
7.89–91 149 2.89–90 117, 150
7.89–92 118 2.89–91 112
7.93–4 118 2.90 121
8 110 2.90–1 116
8.10–11 151 2.93–6 150
8.12–14 149 3.51–3 169
8.54–61 110 3.59–60 117
8.55 121, 122 3.71 121
8.74–84 107 3.114–15 118
9.21–30 151 4.283–4 113
9.27–39 106 5 110
9.28–9 149 5.1–4 106
9.35–9 119 5. 23–31 149
9.38–9 117 5.30–1 149
9.100–4 149 5.54–5 149
10.21 149 5.108–15 108
10.86–94 110 6.7–9 151
11.7 104, 107, 108, 123 7.18–19 104, 108, 116
11.5–6 118 7.19 116, 123
11.8–9 108 7.19–21 149
11.8–11 118 8.15 117
11.10 151 8.32 117
12.10–12a 149 8.72 121
13 114 8.76–7 149
13.5 104 8.86–7 120
13.10 117 8.95 149
13.25 119, 123 9.93–6 118
13.43–50 119 10.20 123
13.52 119 10.29–30 106
13.105–6 149 10.55–9 118
14.5–6 149 10.57–60 118
19.97–9 114 11.22–9 109
Pythian Odes 11.29 121
1.41–2 149 11.29–30 111
1.42–5 114 11.50–4 123
1.81–3 108, 112 11.50–8 106
1.82–4 117 11.54 121
1.83–4 75, 104 11.54–8 108, 115
1.85 121, 124 12.4–6 114
1.91–3 118 12.21 120
1.98–101 107 12.30 149
2 105 Paeans
2.21–41 151 2.50–8 109
2.24–9 117
Partheneia
2.52–6 120
1.8 108
2.55 119
1.8–10 76
2.55–6 119
2.75–7 112 Fragments (Maehler)
2.76–7 119 38 149
2.78–80 113 94a 107, 108
2.81–2 112, 113 121 107
2.82 118 181 110
418 Index Locorum
Fragments (Maehler) (cont.) Lysis
212 116 221d 181
232 149 Meno
Plato 80a 44
Apologia 80a–b 55
18c 210 80a3 40
18d 210 Phaedo
23 38 95b5–6 136
24b–c 52 111b 182
26a–c 58 116a 295
26b 59 Phaedrus
37d 210 240a5–6 252
Euthydemus Philebus
271a 28 48a 251
48b 251
Euthyphro 49d 251
2a 49d–e 252
2b7–9 49 50a 251
3b–c Respublica
3e–4b 41 329e6–330a 146
7a 50 336d 181
272d–273b 27 362 240
364b–c 46, 169
Laches 364b2–365a3 310
183a–b 287 364c 17
184c1–4 252 364e 46
365a 39
Leges
381d4–7 309
672b 182
560d8–561a8 106
721b 292
578e–579a 228
772d 292
785b 292 Symposium
805e 294 194a5 40
845e3 310 201d 311
855c 237, 238 203d 169
882b 237 222d 192
886d–e 329 223d 28
889b–890a 329
907d4–909d2 47 Theaetetus
908d 46 174c 135
909b 46, 318 176b 181
909d–910a 54
Timaeus
909e–910a 48
70e 237
910b1–6 61
910d 47, 61 [Plato]
925a–b 299 Eryxias
932e–933e 333 397c–d 28
933a 169
933a–b 223 Menexenus
933b 46 248d 295
933b–e 43 248e 295
967a–d 329 249a3–249b2 301
 Index Locorum 419
Plutarch Demosthenes
Amatorius 14.4 15
767f 308 31.7 15
An seni respublica gerenda sit Pericles
787c 113 22 52
De amore prolis 28 240
497e 300 32 57, 323
De capienda ex inimicis utilitate 32.2 66
10.91f 116 Lycurgus
De cohibenda ira 16.24 182
2.456c 182
Nicias
De E 3.1–3 106
389a 29 13.6.3 15
De invidia et odio 30.1 181
537e 158 Pelopidas
De mulierum virtutibus 10.3–4 319
256b–c 37, 66
257f1 16 Phocion
262d2 16 28.7 270
34 312
De recta ratione audiendi
39e 120 Romulus
3.3.4 15
De tranquillitate animi
2.473a 182 Timoleon
Parallela minora 8.1.2 15
314f5 16 [Plutarch]
Praecepta gerendae reipublicae Life of Isaeus
804d 113 839f 313
Quaestiones convivales Pollux
5.7.680–3 74 Onomasticon
Quaestiones Romanae 8.112 334
292a6 16 8.118 41
8.123–4 24, 30
Vitae decem oratorum
835f–836a 282 Polybius
836d 279 4.31.6 123
841b 58 Posidippus (1), comic poet
849e 26 Ephesian Woman 25
852b 58
Posidippus (2), epigrammatist
Vitae:
P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309 AB 26 (IV
Agesilaus
36–9) 310
31.1–2 280
40 276 Quintilian
Alcibiades Institutio oratoria
22 56 3.1.21 102
36 182 10.5.2 24
39 308 11.1.22 129
65b 182 RO
74 113 18 275
Aristides 22 275
27.1–3 302 28 51
420 Index Locorum
SEG 167 182
4.648 219 258 184
7.1239 214 1234–5 72
12.100 48 Oedipus Tyrannus
14.505 213 43 182
19.227 27 86 182
24.223 60 386 46
27.19 287 388–9 309
31.985 39 475 182
35.626 310 723 182
37.687 213 386 182
46.966 213
47.1291 218 Trachiniae 34
1150 182
Semonides (Gerber)
fr. 7.7–20 187 Strabo
10.3.18 52
Servius
Serv. Aen. 8.187 22 Suda (Adler)
Anaximenes (alpha 1989) 23
SGD Euthias (epsilon 3497) 26
9 234 Leipandrein (lambda 377) 303
14 224 Orphaniston (omicron 652) 299
24–38 229 Phthonos (phi 508) 74
38 229 Phthonos (phi 509) 73
46 240 Phthonos (phi 510) 71, 74
48 234 Sitos (sigma 502) 300
57 239 Thiasos (theta 379 and 380) 18
58 239
60 63, 226 Supplementum Magicum 2
75 240 54 249
89 232 Syll.3
95 240 736.26 334
99 240 736.32 334
100 240 1219 334
108 240
150 249 TAM
170 235 V.1 318 219
Solon (Ruschenbusch) Theopompus (FGrH 115)
fr. 76a 28 F 136 27
F 395 102
Sophocles
Ajax Thucydides
108 237 1.11 182
157 73 1.89.3 298
240 237 2.6.4 298
512 299 2.13 271
Andromeda 241 2.14 ff. 285
Antigone 2.17 271
654 303 2.24.2 278
810–13 303 2.27.1 288
2.35.2 148
Electra 2.45 131
188 303 2.45.1 148
1109 182 2.45.1–2 103
Oedipus at Colonus 2.45.2 295
 Index Locorum 421
2.46.1 300 8.7.3 182
2.64.5 148 De equitum magistro
2.70.3–4 288 3.1.6–7 27
2.78.3 298, 305
3.55.3 286 De vectigalibus 132
3.63.2 286 2.3 282
3.82.8 147 2.7 299
4.108.7 147 6.1 279
4.123.4 298 Hellenica
6.12 106 1.1.33 27
6.15.2 192 1.2.4–5 276
6.16.3 76, 148 1.4.13 52
6.16.3–6 106 1.4.14 52
6.27 52 1.4.20 52
6.53 52 1.6.24 271
6.53.1 51 1.7.22 48
6.60 52 3.3.11 237, 238
6.78.2 148 3.5.8–15 274
7.27.4–5 270 3.5.10 274
7.27–8 271 4.1.14 305
7.60.3 288 4.2.17 271
7.77.3 148 4.8.26–30 275
7.77.4 148 4.8.27 275
7.87.6 269 4.8.30 275
8.15 237 5.2.31 286
8.21 286 6.2.6 280
TM 6.2.11–12 287
8204 250 6.3.3 287
12174 157 6.5.10 286
12261 156 Hiero
12262 156 4.3 228
12263 157
12264 157 Memorabilia
12266 157 1.1–2 52
14456 157 1.1.5 58
61454 301 1.1.9–16
1.2.9 59
Xenophon
1.2.12–46 59
Anabasis
2.3.11 167
1.9.19 76
2.6.10 168
2.1.7 287
2.6.13 168
4.3.19 305
2.7.2 292, 296
5.3.1 288
2.8.1 272
5.4.33 305
2.10.1–2 228
6.1.12 305
3.9.8 76
6.4.8 288
3.10.6 318
Apologia Socratis 3.11.4 294
10 52 3.11.16–18 168
14.3 209
32.2 209 Oeconomicus
3.12 294
Cyropaedia
7.5.77 76 Symposium
3.1.39 144 4.48 182