INCONSISTENCIES IN

GREEK AND ROMAN RELIGION II

 STUDIES
IN GREEK AND ROMAN
RELIGION

EDITED BY H.S. VERSNEL

IN CO-OPERATION WITH F.T. VANSTRATEN

VOLUME 6, II
INCONSISTENCIES IN GREEK AND ROMAN RELIGION II

TRANSITION AND REVERSAL

IN
MYTH AND RITUAL

BY

H.S. VERSNEL

E.J. BRILL
LEIDEN • NEW YORK • KOLN
1993
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Com-
mittee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library
Resources.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

(Revised for vol. 2)

Versnel, H. S.
Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman religion.

(Studies in Greek and Roman religion, 0169-9512;

V. 6)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents: 1. Ter Unus. Isis, Dionysos, Hermes
- 2. Transition and reversal in myth and ritual.
I. Title.
BL722.V47 1990 292 90-2301
ISBN 90-04-09266-8 (pbk.: v. 1)
ISBN 90-04-09267-6 (cloth: v. 2)
ISBN 90-04-09268-4 (set)

ISSN 0169-9512
ISBN 90 04 09267 6 (vol. 6, II)
ISBN 90 04 09266 8 (vol. 6, I)
ISBN 90 04 09268 4 (set)

© Copyright1993 by E. j. Brill, Leiden, The Nt!iherlands

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FOR HADEWYCH
the second
Toch hou ik er niet van, Marij"ke.Zeljs als
't iets zij"nzou waar het echteniettemin
alsje het schrijft met een volmaaktetegenzin
stralenduit oplicht-wie wordt er gelukkig van?
Anton Korteweg, Stand van zaken, Amsterdam 1991
(met een kleine aanpassing)
 CONTENTS

PREFACE ......................................... XI

ABBREVIATIONS XIII

INTRODUCTION 1

Chapter I
WHAT IS SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE IS SAUCE FOR THE
GANDER: MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW
1. QUESTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2. THE RISE AND GROWTH OF MYTH AND RITUAL THEORY . . . . 20
1. Jane Ellen Harrison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2. Myth arisesfrom rite: the Cambridgeschool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3. Myth as a scenariofor dramatic ritual: the 'Myth and Ritual
School' proper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3. THE FUSES BLOW: OUT AND OUT MYTH AND RITUAL THEORISTS 37
4. CRITICISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
5. INITIATION, A MODERN COMPLEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
1. From Harrison to Burkert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2. Marginality: profits and pitfalls of a concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
6. EPPURE SI MUOVE ... : MYTH AND RITUAL PARI PASSU . . . . 74
7. PROSPECTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Chapter II
KRONOS AND THE KRONIA
1. MYTH 90
2. RITUAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3. CONTRADICTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
VIII CONTENTS

4. THE FESTIVAL OF REVERSAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

5. THE AMBIGUITY OF THE KRONIA AND RELATED FESTIVALS ... 122
1. The paradox of the impossibleharmony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
2. The paradox of thefestive conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6. THE KING OF A PRIMEVAL REVERSED WORLD ............ 129
7. CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Chapter III
SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA
1. THE EVIDENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
1. Saturn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
2. Saturnalia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
2. SATURNIAN MYTH AND RITUAL: THE CARNIVALESQUE SIGNS OF
THE REVERSED ORDER ............................. 150
1. The eccentricgod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
2. The cult ........................................ 153
3. Licence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
3. LOOKING BACK: ORIGINS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
1. The implicationsof the calendricalposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
2. The implicationsof the topographicalposition . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
3. The contributionsof myth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
4. An interim balancesheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
5. A new interpretationof Lua . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
6. The originof theSaturnalianimagery:therelationshipof myth and
ritual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
4. LOOKING FORWARD: THE CONTINUING STORY OF MYTH AND
RITUAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
1. The ambivalenceof theSaturnalianking: Mythical topicalities. . . 191
a. Redeunt Saturnia Regna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
b. Non semperSaturnaliaerunt ....................... 205
2. The king must die. Ritual re-enactments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
 CONTENTS IX

Chapter IV
THE ROMAN FESTIVAL FOR BONA DEA AND THE
GREEK THESMOPHORIA
1. THE FESTIVAL OF BONA DEA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
1. Traditional interpretations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
2. THE THESMOPHORIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
1. The evidenceand the traditionalinterpretation. . . . . . . . . . . . 235
2. New directionsin interpretingthe Thesmophoria.......... 240
3. Numphai sleepingon lugos:theparadoxof the Thesmophoria. . . 245
4. The contributionof myth ............................ 250
3. BACK TO BONA DEA ................................ 261
1. Wine in, myrtle out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
2. The presenceof wine ............................... 264
3. Ambiguous virgins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
4. The contributionof myth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
4. Two FESTIVALS, ONE PARADOX ....................... 274
5. GUNE-PARTHENOS: ON THE FATAL AMBIGUITY OF THE FEMALE
RACE ........................................... 276
6. CONCLUSION ...................................... 284

Chapter V
APOLLO AND MARS ONE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER
ROSCHER
1. COMPARING TWO GODS: RosCHER AND AFTER 290
2. COMPARING TWO GODS: A STRUCTURALIST VIEW 296
3. THE SOCIAL ROOTS OF A STRUCTURAL ANALOGY 313
1. Apollo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
2. Mars .......................................... 319
5. KINDRED FUNCTIONS, DIFFERENT IMAGES ............... 328

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................... 335

INDEXES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
 PREFACE

Some chapters ( or sections of chapters) of this book originated as

short( er) essays-two of them in Dutch-and have been completely
rewritten and elaborated. Others are original contributions. Ac-
cordingly, various people have read and criticized sections of the
book in different phases between the status nascendi and the coming
of age. Gerhard Binder, Josine Blok, Jan Bremmer, Fritz Graf and
Renate Schlesier have offered helpful advice and valuable criticism
on various sections, which will be accounted for in more detail in the
introduction. I had the special privilege of trying out a number of
issues during a visiting lectureship at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes
Etudes (Section des Sciences Religieuses) in Paris. I drew lots of in-
spiration from the enthusiasm, the tokens of interest, and the always
refreshing 'other' way of posing questions by colleagues of both this
school and that of the Sciences Sociales. I trust nobody will be
offended when I single out Stella Georgoudi, the mater castrorum,
for a special tribute to her Greek hospitality and helpfulness.
I am grateful to all these colleagues and friends for having helped
to improve the book. This is no less, though in a different way, true
of the students of my Leiden seminar on 'Ambiguities' in the
academic year 1989-1990. Gradually I have come to realize that the
topics broached during that seminar must have been a most alarm-
ing experience to students who are normally treated to the Second
English war, the history of the slave trade, or the causes of the
French revolution. Have I really succeeded in convincing Jan ter
Horst that there must be an explanation for why a mythical father
castigates his mythical daughter with a mythical rod of myrtle be-
yond the fact that myrtle was the most popular material for making
besoms due to its abundance in Roman parks and gardens? How-
ever, when Jent Bijlsma, speaking on the goats of Polyphemos,
could be heard explaining to the lesser-gifted: ''these are not natural
goats, these are pre-cultural goats", I knew our common efforts had
not been in vain. Add Lily Knibbeler's attempts to make me under-
stand what I actually meant, and it must be clear that I have greatly
benefitted from this experiment. I dedicate the footnotes of the
XII PREFACE

present book to this happy class (the only part of the book, by the
way, that does not provide full translations of all the quotations in
foreign languages).
Once more, a stay at Vandoeuvres and one in the Dutch Histori-
cal Institute in Rome offered the necessary rest and ideal academic
circumstances to proceed. Once more, too, it was Peter Mason who
conscientiously corrected most of the English text, though some sec-
tions, to be detailed in the introduction, had been translated by
others in earlier stages. I am grateful to all of them for their efforts
to improve the text, and apologize that the profusion of my later in-
sertions, especially in the footnotes, has eventually distorted the
picture.
 ABBREVIATIONS

Books and articles for which I use the name-date system are given
in the bibliography. Other books (mainly works ofreference) which
I cite simply by (name and) abbreviated title are given here. For the
abbreviations of periodical titles I have followed the conventions of
L 'Annie philologique.For the abbreviations of collections of papyri
see: J. F. Oates, R. S. Bagnall and W. H. Willis, Checklistof Editions
of GreekPapyri and Ostraca(BASP Suppl. 1, 19782). Corpora of in-
scriptions are referred to as (e.g.) I.Priene; these works are either list-
ed inJ. J.E. Hondius, Saxa Loquuntur(Leiden 1939) and, currently,
in SEC or form part of the series InschriftengriechischerStadte aus
Kleinasien(1972- ). For a full list of the epigraphical corpora covering
Asia Minor see: St. Mitchell, CR 37 [1987] 81 - 2). The exceptions
are listed below.

Abh. Abhandlungen
Adonis Adonis. Relazioni de! colloquiazn Roma 1981
(Rome 1984)
AE L 'anneeepigraphique( 1888- )
AFA G. Henzen, Acta Fratrum Arvalium (Berlin
1874)
AL AnthologiaLatina
ANET J. B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Re-
latingto the Old Testament(Princeton 19552 , 3d
ed. with supp. 1969)
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergangder romischenWelt (ed.
H. Temporini & W. Haase, Berlin 1972-)
ARW Archivfiir Religionswissenschaft
BE Bulletinepigraphique(by J. & L. Robert, annu-
ally in REG until 1984, continued by a team
of epigraphists, 1987- , cited by year and
paragraph number)
CGF G. Kaibel, Comicorum GraecorumFragmenta
(Berlin 1899)
GIL CorpusInscriptionumLatinarum (1863- )
CLE Carmina Latina epigraphica(ed. F. Biicheler
1926)
XIV ABBREVIATIONS

Diet. Ant. C. Daremberg & E. Saglio, Dictionnairedes

antiquitesgrecqueset romaines(Paris 1877-1918)
FGrHist F. Jacoby, Die FragmentedergriechischenHistori-
ker (Berlin - Leiden 1923-58)
FHG FragmentahistoricorumGraecorum(ed. C. & T.
Muller, 1868 - 78)
GB J. G. Frazer, The GoldenBough I-XIII (Lon-
don 1911-363)
GGR M. P. Nilsson, GeschichtedergriechischenReli-
gion I-II (Munich 19673-1961 2)
GR W. Burkert, GreekReligion. Archaicand Classi-
cal (Oxford 1985)
HrwG Handbuchreligionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegrif.fe
(ed. H. Cancik, B. Gladigow & M. Laubscher,
1988 - )
IBM Inscriptionsof the British Museum
JG InscriptionesGraecaeI-XIV (1873- )
IPhilae A. & E. Bernand, Les inscriptionsgrecques[et
latinesj de Philae (Paris 1969)
IGR InscriptionesGraecaead Res Romanas Pertinentes
I-IV (ed. R. Gagnat et alii, Paris 1911-27)
ILS lnscriptionesLatinae SelectaeI-III (ed. H. Des-
sau, Berlin 1892 - 1916).
Kaibel G. Kaibel, EpigrammataGraecaex lapidibuscol-
lecta(Berlin 1878)
KBO Keilschrifttexteaus Boghazkoi ( 1916- )
LEW A. Walde &J. B. Hofmann, LateinischesEty-
mologischesWorterbuch(Heidelberg 1938-543)
LIMC Lexicon lconographicum Mythologiae Classicae
(Zurich 1981-)
LSAM F. Sokolowski, Lois sacreesde l'Asie Mineure
(Paris 1955)
LSCG F. Sokolowski, Lois sacries des cites grecques
(Paris 1969)
LS] H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, H. S.Jones,A Greek-
English Lexicon (Oxford 19402)
LSS F. Sokolowski, Lois sacreesdes cites grecques.
Supplement(Paris 1962)
OCT Oxford Classical Texts
OF 0. Kern, OrphicorumFragmenta(Berlin 1922)
 ABBREVIATIONS xv

OGIS OrientisGraecaeI nscriptionesSelectaeI -II (ed. W.

Dittenberger, Leipzig 1903-5)
OLD OxfordLatin Dictionary
OMS L. Robert, OperaMinora SelectaI-IV (Amster-
dam 1969), V (1989)
PCG Poetae comici graeci ( ed. R. Kassel & C.
Austin 1983- )
PG Patrologiaecursus completus. Series Graeca(ed.
J. P. Migne)
PCM Papyri GraecaeMagicae. Die griechischenZauber-
papyri I-II ( edd. K. Preisendanz et alii, Stutt-
gart 1973-42)
PMG Poetaemelici graeci (ed. D. L. Page, Oxford
1926)
PSI Papyri SocietaItaliana (1912-)
RAC Reallexikonfur Antike und Christentum(ed. Th.
Klauser et alii, Stuttgart 1950- )
RE Paulys Real-Encyclopadieder classischenAlter-
tumswissenschaften(ed. G. Wisowa, E. Kroll et
alii, Stuttgart-Munich 1893-)
RML Ausfiihrliches Lexicon der griechischen und
romischenMythologie(ed. W. H. Roscher et alii,
Leipzig 1884-1937)
Sb Sitzungsberichte
SEC SupplementumEpigraphicumGraecum(ed. J.J.E.
Hondius et alii 1923-71, continued by H. W.
Pleket et alii, Amsterdam 1976- )
Syll. 3 Sylloge lnscriptionum GraecarumI-IV (ed. W.
Dittenberger et alii, Leipzig 1915-243).
Thes.L.L. ThesaurusLinguae Latinae (Leipzig 1900- )
 INTRODUCTION

When we asked Pooh what the opposite of an In-

troduction was, he said: "The what of what?",
which didn't help us as much as we had hoped,
but luckily Owl kept his head and told us that the
Opposite of an Introduction, my dear Pooh, was
a Contradiction, and, as he is very good at long
words, I am sure that that's what it is.
A. A. Milne
The House at Pooh Corner

Culture is a categorical construct. As a corollary, it cannot but pro-

voke numerous and disquieting contradictions, anomalies, am-
biguities and paradoxes-in short, all those inconsistencies which
threaten to make the world a jelly. This is the keynote of Inconsisten-
cies in Greekand Roman Religion as expounded in the introduction to
the first volume. In that introduction I also sketched-heavily lean-
ing on Mary Douglas' theories of cultural ambiguities and Leon
Festinger's analyses of cognitive dissonance-the universal feelings
of discomfort induced by disturbances of the cultural universe
among such divergent categories as adolescents, adults-both Wes-
tern and non-Western-scholars, theologians, politicians, and idio-
tai, with a special focus on historians' aversion to the paradoxical.
Numerous and varied are the prevailing strategies to escape from
unbearable clashes or to cope with irritating ones. One, for instance,
is to reduce or deny the ambiguity by a deliberate choice for one of
two contradictory options. The inherent rejection of the other option
can take the form of abominating, tabooing, destroying, forbidding,
but also of various types of denial. Denying the existence-or at least
the relevance-of oneof two conflicting options is a prevailing course
of action.
More interesting, however, and less researched is the strategy of
keeping the inconsistency from the retina altogether, for instance,
by a virtuoso winking process, which enables the subject to save two
conflicting realities or convictions by keeping them radically apart 1 .

1 After the first volume had appeared, Marliesjansen drew my attention to R.

Foley, Is it possible to Have Contradictory Beliefs?, Midwest Studiesin Philosophy10
2 INTRODUCTION

The pervasive influence of this strategy in history, especially in the

history of religions, and the fierce resistance of modern historians to
perceiving, accepting or appreciating it 2 was the theme of the first
chapter of the first volume: the curious Hellenistic paradox of
simultaneously embracing both absolute freedom and total submis-
sion in relation to kings and gods.
For all that, sooner or later such inconsistencies will attract atten-
tion, if not generally, then atleast in more critical circles. Even then,
the two conflicting elements are sometimes saved, for instance,
through the development of new hermeneutic systems. The incon-
sistency appears to be no inconsistency after all: the submission to
a fatherly and righteous ruler is the highest form of democratic free-
dom, as second-century political philosophers contend; or the ser-
vice of the Lord is the most sublime form ofliberation, as the apostle
Paul taught.
Finally, however, it also happens that people maintain two con-
flicting elements, while simultaneously acknowledging their incom-
patibility and the impossibility of denying or eliminating either of
them. The aporia lies in the nature (or culture) of things. Instances
of such paradoxes are the clash between the demands made by
intransigent gods and those made by an equally intransigent social
or political system; or the blatant paradoxes that emerge when mor-
tals acquire divine traits. Two literary genres in particular have the
natural mission of questioning, problematising and challenging so-
ciety by tearing away the covers that hide such inconsistencies, and
thus disclosing tensions and dissonances in religious, cultural and
social life. These are tragedy and comedy, whose task is to explore,
analyse and finally to communicate these fundamental tensions to
their contemporaries. They are neither able nor expected to offer

(1986) 327-55, whose argument in favour of the answer "no" primarily shows that
the gap between logical and psychological approaches is even wider then I
supposed.
2 To the few exceptions in the study of ancient culture and history lauded in In-
consistencies
I, 22 ff. I should add: N. H. Bluestone, Womenand theIdeal Society:Plato's
Republicand ModernMyths of Gender(Oxford 1987), who provides a revealing discus-
sion of the many desperate attempts to get rid of the inconsistencies in Plato's the-
ories on the position of women in his ideal state. For D. Cohen, whose gratifyingly
related approach I recorded (23 n.74), see now his Law, Society,and Sexuality: The
Enforcementof Morals in ClassicalAthens (Cambridge 1991) esp. eh. 1-3, 6, 7, 9. A par-
ticularly relevant study by Mary Beard will be amply discussed and exploited in
eh. IV of the present volume.
 INTRODUCTION 3

solutions. The second chapter of the first volume treats Euripides'

tragedy the Bacchae, staging the insoluble paradox between the total-
itarian demands of a tyrannical god and the no less totalitarian
claims of society. The third chapter illuminates the impossible con-
sequences, indeed the absurdity, of divine praise when applied to a
human being, as seen through the eyes of the satirist Martial.

What the first volume did not discuss becomes the central issue of
the second: Mary Douglas' fifth and last provision for dealing with
ambiguous events, which is, in a way, the collective variant of the
individual initiatives by tragedians and comedians just mentioned.
Collective myths and rituals are often created and performed in
order to expose in word or action anomalies and paradoxes of nature
or society, thus reducing the threat of their inherent tensions. Both
myth and ritual may even go further and devise a non-realistic,
paradoxical and internally contradictory imagery in order to show
what happens if one ventures outside the borders of orderly society.
These strategies prevail especially in two types of festivals: festivals
of licence,such as the Saturnalia and carnival; and rituals of initiation.
Both carry the notion of 'transition'; both are marked by signs of
reversal. The present volume discusses some focal issues connected
with the relevant myth and ritual.
By way of introduction, the first chapter3 presents a survey of the
history and development of the myth and ritual debate. One of its
objects is to discover why this debate started in the last quarter of
the nineteenth century and why it was revived in the last quarter of
the twentieth. Another purpose is to show that the two shifting
paradigms, so conspicuous here, naturally exploited the same dra-
matic material of 'dying and rising heroes' . The reason is that the
two festive types under discussion-the New Year festival and the
rites of initiation-both involve the notion of transition as their cen-
tral feature. The former type was discovered and researched in the
framework of the 'fertility paradigm', the latter in that of the social
interpretation of religion. The title of this chapter does not imply that
nothing has changed between the two stages of the debate-on the
contrary, the chapter shows exactly how much has changed-but it

3 The essay that was first published in the Dutch periodical Lampas 17 ( 1984)
194-246, was translated by P. P. J. van Caspel and edited by L. Edmunds for publi-
cation in Edmunds 1990. Renate Schlesier offered a shower of comments and
suggestions on this version. Chr. Auffarth's pertinent reactions prompted me to
clarify my argument further and to adjust my formulations.
4 INTRODUCTION

does give expression to views concerning both the identical thematic

contents and the functionally related natures of these two types of
festival.
Myth and ritual of transition and reversal: even the outsider will
expect an occasional paradox or inconsistency here. Yet it appears
that many scholars, especially those of a previous generation, are
unwilling to accept the internal inconsistencies in the myths and
rituals of reversal. Once more, the 'strain towards congruence' (Q.
Skinner) makes itself manifest. The thesis that these internal contra-
dictions should not be smoothed over or-worse-explained away,
for instance by assuming a fusing of traditions ( an overworked
panacea in classical scholarship), is advanced in chapter II, on Kro-
nos and the Kronia 4 • The utopian imagery of the Golden Race un-
der king Kronos is reflected in the affluence and euphoria of the At-
tic festival of the Kronia; the dystopian traits of despotism, cruelty,
savagery-in short, the radical abolition of moral standards-,
which are another recurring characteristic of the mythical Kronos,
can be recognized in some (alleged) Kronian cults and sacrifices. It
is argued that the stark contradictions in these complexes of myth
and ritual reveal the very essence of their function and message.
The third chapter 5 has a similar objective with respect to the
closely related Roman myth and ritual of Saturnus and the Satur-
nalia. Fortunately, the evidence here permits us to cast glances both
backward and forward in time. Accordingly, there is an attempt to
discover the origins of the Saturnalian festival and one of Saturnus'
early functions, including the nature of the goddess Lua Saturni. On
the other hand, the Saturnalian imagery provides an ideal opportu-
nity for demonstrating how the contradictory-utopian and
dystopian-components could be (and were) still eagerly exploited
in the early imperial period. Their continuing power becomes ap-
parent in expressions illustrating the reigns of two emperors: they
give voice to the high expectations of the reign of Augustus and
to the disillusion after the disconcertingly 'Saturnalian' emperor

4 A first, shorter version of this chapter was commented on and edited by Jan
Bremmer for publication in Bremmer 1987a.
5 Jan Bremmer and Fritz Graf offered comments on the first three sections, and
Gerhard Binder read the entire chapter. We also discussed the theme of section 4
during the 'Bochumer Altertumswissenschaftliches Colloquium', on: "Kar-
nevaleske Phanomene in antiken und nachantiken Kulturen und Literaturen" in
May 1992.
 INTRODUCTION 5

Claudius. Finally, there is a sketch of the revival of Saturnian myth

and ritual in the late Roman empire.
While chapter II and chapter III deal with a Greek and a closely
related Roman myth and ritual complex respectively, each of the
next two chapters treats a pair of comparable instances of Greek and
Roman myth and ritual. In chapter IV the Roman festival of Bona
Dea is compared with the Greek Thesmophoria 6 . Both are wom-
en's festivals displaying a reversal of roles and, more generally, a
suspension of normal routine. Here a focal problem emerges: how
do we explain the paradox that, on the one hand, matrons celebrate
their basic procreative qualities in rites that focus on sexual symbol-
ism, while, on the other, they are rigorously prevented by anta-
phrodisiac symbolism from satisfying their erotic desires? It can
even be argued that matrons were temporarily reduced to the status
of virgins during these festivals. In both cases the concomitant
myths help us to explain the ritual paradox in the light of the con-
trasting functions and images of matrons and virgins in ancient soci-
ety. The conclusion is that, if there is a necessary return to 'pre-
cultural' circumstances during these festivals, matrons cannot con-
tinue to act as matrons. They must once again assume the status of
maidens on the brink of marriage.
Exactly hundred years have passed since Roscher claimed that
Apollo and Mars shared so many elements of myth and ritual that
they must originally have been identical gods. In accordance with
the prevailing 'meteorological' preoccupations of the time, the gods
were considered to be images of the Sun. This theory was sufficiently
untenable to be completely discarded soon after its emergence. As
a corollary, the similarities in the myth and ritual of Apollo and
Mars disappeared from the discussion as well. Chapter V presents
a reconsideration and elaboration of Rosch er' s arguments for his
comparison 7 . For, as a matter of fact, they appear remarkable
enough to require a new analysis and explanation. This explanation
is sought in the gods' early roles in the context of initiation. With
respect to Apollo, Jane Harrison' s earlier initiatory suggestions

6 The English version of an abridged draft of this chapter was corrected by P.

Walcot for publication in the "European" issue of G&R 1992, appearing in the
same year as the present book. Josine Blok and Fritz Graf contributed some
comments.
7 An earlier version appeared in VisibleReligion4/5 (1985/6) 134-72. I benefit-
ted from comments and suggestions by Jan Bremmer and Fritz Graf.
6 INTRODUCTION

have been circumstantially substantiated by Walter Burkert. I now

argue for a similar function for early Mars, who, as both myth and
ritual indicate (and as might be expected), is more directly con-
cerned with the military aspects of Italic initiatory practice.
Myth and Ritual of transition and reversal cannot but provoke
paradoxes, ambiguities, contradictions-in short, inconsistencies;
and that is what this book is about. However, as is evident from the
above survey of contents, no chapter can ignore the history of the
issue and the shift in the paradigms that form the frame of interpre-
tation; indeed, some chapters actually make it their task to discuss
these questions. In other words, this is myth and ritual in transition,
which calls for a few further remarks.
In a Dutch anthropological periodical 8 , the Indian anthropolo-
gist Rajendra Pradhan analyses a peculiar feature of the Dutch
character: the obsession with the weather. In his attempt to detect
why this is so, and more especially why this is manifested through
frequent conversation on the topic, he distinguishes three types of
explanation: a) the physical or climactic; b) the social; and c) the cul-
tural. The first two explanations are offered by his Dutch informants
themselves as follows:
a. we talk about weather because, unlike the inhabitants of more
privileged regions, we have weather, and very bad, ever-changing
and unpredictable weather at that,
b. we talk about weather because, since it is uncivil to keep silent
in the presence of fellow humans, it is a neutral topic, useful as an
initial point of contact with a stranger or as a stopgap when an angel
is passing over 9 . Talking about weather therefore involves a stark
paradox: it functions as an instrument for maintaining social cohe-
sion by the act of not really saying anything.
These two explanations belong to 'native exegesis', to use V. W.
Turner's phrase. For this very reason, they are liable to serious sus-
picion in anthropological circles. Consequently, Pradhan considers

8 Mooi weer, meneer. Why do the Dutch speak so often about the weather? Et-
nofoor2 (1989) 3-14, with thanks to Marliesjansen for drawing my attention to it.
9 G. Leech, Semantics. The Study of Meanings (Harmondsworth 1981) calls this the
'phatic function oflanguage', and defines it as (41 ): "the function of keeping com-
munication lines open, and keeping social relationships in good repair ... it is not
what one says, but the fact that one says it at all, that matters". On phatic speech
and its insidious consequences for the interpretation of written or spoken source
material see: InconsistenciesI, Introduction.
 INTRODUCTION 7

these explanations inadequate, or at least not exhaustive, without

discarding them completely. The real solution, he argues, is to be
sought in a third option, the cultural explanation, which answers to
the demands of the 'collective mentality':
c. the Dutch are obsessed with the weather for the very reason that
it does not fit neatly into their scheme of things, which is based on
order, regularity and control. The Dutch, he states, prefer every-
thing to be regular, ordered and controlled: you have only to look
at the polders with their straight canals, the neat gardens, the rigid
temporal framework of social life, with fixed times to eat, to pay
visits, to work and to interrupt work, etc., etc. Now, the ever-chan-
ging and unpredictable Dutch weather is a metaphor for all that is
irregular, disorderly and uncontrollable. That is why it is discussed,
not only with an occasional stranger but also and even more 'ritual-
ly' in the private domain of the family, till death us do part.
I mention this discussion because it is a splendid and very recogni-
zable illustration of one of the implicit (and sometimes explicit)
premises of the present book: that in explaining codes and
conventions-in our case: myths and rituals-it is most naive, un-
profitable, unwise and therefore inadmissible to adopt a single,
monolithic clue and to ignore or decline all others unconditionally
as being superseded, short-sighted or downright stupid.
If we transpose the above three options to the conceptual
categories of the well-known scholarly approaches to the interpret-
ation of religion, anybody will immediately recognize the three
major schemes connected with the names of Tylor, Durkheim and
(for instance) Geertz respectively, i.e. with 1) the substantive, 2) the
functionalist, and 3) the cosmological, symbolic-perhaps including
structuralist and semiotic-, cultural approaches to religion; or, to
put it another way, religion as communication, as social cohesion
and as orientation 10 .
"Belief in spiritual beings" was Tylor's "rudimentary [or] mini-
mum definition of religion" 11 . Belief in these beings involved the

10 It is unnecessary, of course, to dwell on this classification, which can be

found in any historical survey of anthropology, especially anthropological ap-
proaches to religion. I have especially consulted: Kardiner & Preble 1962; Van Baal
1971; Waardenburg 1974; Lewis 1976; Sharpe 1980; Evans-Pritchard 1981; Kuper
1985; Doty 1986; Harris 1986; Morris 1987. Cf. below p.15 n.1. For a recent, stim-
ulating and critical summary I refer to Platvoet 1990, to whose discussion I am
much indebted.
11 For a long list of sympathizers up to 1966 see Platvoet 1990, n.29. For a short
8 INTRODUCTION

necessity of communicating with them. Tylor and his contempora-

ries, especially J. G. Frazer, viewed this communication first and
foremost from the perspective of the wish to achieve direct goals: fer-
tility of the human population, of cattle and fields, and defence
against illness and enemies. 'Religion as communication' one might
also call it 12 , albeit in the strict sense of communication with ad-
dressable objects of religion and in the context of generally clearly
defined, specific goals. Though it has been heavily censured by
representatives of later schools for its 'individualism', 'intellectual-
ism', 'utilitarianism', 'evolutionism', and a craving for 'origins' 13 ,
more recent investigators-even in the field of sociology 14-are
heading for a re-evaluation of the Tylorian position 15 .
"Religion as social cohesion" is the well-known Durkheimian
definition. Durkheim's phrase "The reality expressed by religious
thought is society'' 16 highlights a radical farewell to any religious

discussion: B. Gladigow, HrwG I (1988) 26-40. Of course, the phenomenological

school is the most conspicuous inheritor, with R. Otto and, in a different way, M.
Eliade as the most important names. Cf. for instance R. Otto's attack on the func-
tionalist approach (Das Heilige [Breslau 1917] 8): "Wer das nicht kann (i.e. 'sich
besinnen') oder wer solche Momente iiberhaupt nicht hat, ist gebeten nicht weiter
zu lesen. Denn wer sich zwar auf seine Pubertiits-gefiihle Verdauungs-stockungen
oder auch Sozial-Gefiihle besinnen kann, auf eigentiimlich religiose Gefiihle aber
nicht, mit dem ist es schwierig Religions-psychologie zu treiben."
12 As does Platvoet 1990.
13 In the background there is sometimes fear of Western ethnocentric projection
in the Tylorian model. In general, these warnings are salutary. I refer for instance
to H. G. Kippenberg, Diskursive Religionswissenschaft, in: B. Gladigow & H. G.
Kippenberg (edd.), Neue Ansi.itzein tier Religionswissenschaft(Munich 1983) 9-28;
idem, Introduction, in: H. G. Kippenberg&B. Luchesi(edd.),Magie. Diesozialwis-
senschaftliche Kontroverseiiberdas Verstehenfremden Denkens(Frankfurt 1978). However,
one detects traces of paranoia here and there, especially in the sheer spasmodic fear
of the use of the term magic. I have discussed this in: H. S. Versnel, Some Reflec-
tions on the Relationship Magic-Religion, Numm 38 (1991) 177-97. In my view,
it is an illusion to believe that the substantive approach is more ethnocentric than,
say, the semiotic.
14 One of the most impressive: P. L. Berger, Some Second Thoughts on Sub-
stantive versus Functional Definitions of Religion, Journalfor the ScientificStudy of
Religion13 (1974) 125-33. He reproaches the functionalists for an "interest in quasi-
scientific legitimation of the avoidance of transcendence''.
15 See for instance: R. Horton, A Definition of Religion and Its Uses, Journal
of the Royal AnthropologicalInstitute 90 ( 1960) 201-20; idem, N eo-Tylorianism: Sound
Sense or Sinister Prejudice?, Man 3 (1968) 625-34; E. Ross, Neo-Tylorianism: A
Reassessment, Man 6 (1971) 105-16.
16 "La realite qu'exprime la pensee religieuse est la societe", Les fomu:s elbnen-
tairesde la vie religieuse(Paris 1912) 616, and cf. the statements quoted below p.26
n.22.
 INTRODUCTION 9

objective beyond the social function as a cohesive instrument.

Again, later specialists 17 have mercilessly denounced its deficien-
cies: it is a (deliberately) reductionist 18 definition, which aims to ex-
plain religion fully in terms of one of its non-religious social func-
tions. It has been correctly objected that, on the one hand, it is not
applicable to all religious behaviour 19 , and, on the other, it is ap-
plicable to many non-religious rites. Furthermore, there is the per-
sistent danger of petitioprincipii in the analysis and interpretation of
(religious) motives, most conspicuous in the frequent confusion of
intent and effect. 20 Yet few will deny that the study of the social
functions of religion has been and still is an important and most
productive branch of religious studies 21 .
"Religion as orientation" 22 , "to create a world of meaning in
the context of which human life can be significantly lived" 23, is the
third of the major definitions. The differencewith the previous one is
that it does not primarily ask what religion does for society, but what

17 H. H. Penner, The Poverty of Functionalism, HR 11 (1971) 91-7; idem, Im-

passe and Resolution:A Critiqueofthe Study ofReligion (New York 1989); H. Burhenn,
Functionalism and the Explanation of Religion, journal for the Scientific Study of
Religion 19 (1980) 350-60; Berger, o.c. (above n.14). Cf. M. E. Spiro, Religion:
Problems of Definition and Explanation, in: Banton 1966, 85-126, against inter-
preting religion in terms of the non-religious aspects of religion instead of its reli-
gious aspects.
18 On types ofreduction see: E. H. Pyle, Reduction and the 'Religious' Expla-
nation of Religion, Religion 9 (1979) 197-214.
19 Particularly aggravating is the fact that functionalism cannot account for the
revolutionary and sometimes anti-social aspects of religion, and its failure to ac-
count for social change: I. C. Jarvie, The Revolutionin Anthropology(London 1964).
20 R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure part 1, published
separately as idem, On TheoreticalSociology(New York-London 1967) is still a lucid
introduction to the merits and pitfalls of the functionalist approach. Cf. also: G.
W. Stocking Jr. (ed.), FunctionalismHistoricized(Madison 1984), esp. 106-30.
2 1 Cf. for instance: R. N. McCauley & E. Th. Lawson, Functionalism Recon-
sidered, HR 23 (1984) 372-81.
22 Best-known in the form in which it was introduced by C. Geertz, Religion as
a Cultural System, in: Banton 1966, 1-46 = Geertz 1973, 87-125, from which I
quote his well-known definition ofreligion (p. 90): "a system of symbols which acts
to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men
by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these con-
ceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uni-
quely realistic". Geertz had predecessors, among whom I single out Mary Doug-
las. Segal 1980, 181 contrasts her to Hooke, Durkheim, Malinowski, and Radcliffe
Brown (while Penner 1968, 51, adds: Kluckhohn, Spiro and Leach) and praises her
for concentrating on the meaning, not the effectof ritual. See below eh. I, nn.67 f.
Cf. Platvoet 1990, 202 n.34.
2 3 T. F. O'Dea, The Sociologyof Religion (Englewoods Cliffs 1966) 5.
10 INTRODUCTION

it says about society (and culture). The focus is on 'meaning' 24 in-

stead of 'effect'; on 'making sense', instead of 'effectuating cohe-
sion'. The similarity with the Durkheimian definition is that both
nonetheless are essentially 'functionalist': in the service of society,
either as an instrument for maintaining its coherence or as an instru-
ment for constructing a cosmology 'to live by' 25 . Another point of
similarity is that this symbolic-cosmological function is not restricted
to religion either.
It is therefore legitimate to lump together the latter two options
as an instrumental and a symbolic functionalist 26 definition respec-
tively, and to contrast this functionalist category with the Tylorian
substantivist-communicative definition. In the domain of myth and
ritual, a good illustration of what I mean is offered by W. R.
Comstock 27, who distinguishes inter alia the following aspects in the
functions of myth and ritual: they 1) provide" assistance in the sym-
bolic articulation of the social patterns and relationships them-
selves", 2) serve to "validate the society", 3) contain a "performa-
tory function", 4) have a "heuristic, educative" function, and 5)
are helpful in "solving personal and social dilemmas". It will be im-
mediately apparent that here symbolic and instrumental functions,
if distinguishable at all, cannot be separated, since one is often de-
pendent on the other.

24 Geertz accepts the challenge conveyed by S. Langer, PhilosophicalSketches

(Baltimore 1962), that "the concept of meaning, in all its varieties, is the dominant
philosophical concept of our time'', that ''sign, symbol, denotation, signification,
communication ... are our (intellectual] stock in trade." And, with Max Weber,
he basically believes that man is "an animal suspended in webs of significance he
himself has spun", Geertz 1973, 5.
25 Geertz 1973, 118, himself, speaking of the effects of a special ritual, says:
"By inducing a set of moods and motivations-an ethos-and defining an image
of cosmic order-a world view-by means of a single set of symbols, the perfor-
mance makes the model for and model of aspects of religious belief mere transposi-
tions of one another."
26 Instrumental and expressive symbols are distinguished by Mary Douglas
1970, 3. Cf. particularly the phrase ofGeertz quoted in the preceding note. In the
same vein already: W. J. Goode, Religionamongthe Primitives(New York 1951) 223:
"Religion expressesthe unity of society, but it also helps to createthat unity". Cf.
Doty 1986, 44 ff. There is also a higher common multiple of the two 'functions'
"doing for" and "saying about", in a statement made by P. Berger o.c. (above
n.14) 127, in his discussion of the 'functionalists' R. Bellah, C. Geertz, and Th.
Luckmann: ''In all three cases, religionis definedin termsof what is does-be it for socie-
ty, for the individual, or for both. And this, of course, is what the word 'functional'
essentially means." Cf. also Platvoet 1990, 202 n.33.
27 The Study of Religion and Primitive Religions (New York 1972) 38-40. For an
evaluation see: Doty 1986, 48 f.
 INTRODUCTION 11

In distinguishing 'substantive' and 'functional' approaches to

religion one may feel tempted to apply the term 'paradigm', and I
have occasionally yielded to that temptation. In doing so, I am con-
sistently referring to the division between the nineteenth-century
'substantive' paradigm with its focus on individual and often
utilitarian motives, and the twentieth-century 'socio-cultural'
paradigm, with its emphasis on collective mentality and behaviour.
I mention the term 'paradigm' especially because the recent discus-
sion of this concept may help to clarify one of the main themes in
the present volume: the reluctance to select a single clue as a unique,
monolithic and exclusive definition, while radically rejecting other
ones. Th. S. Kuhn recently complained that his concept 'paradigm'
is being grossly abused and misinterpreted in the modern discus-
sion28. Though understandable, this reaction seems a bit naive.
The inventor of a concept should be delighted that the invention is
so widely acknowledged that it has found a niche in everyday jargon,
which simply needs 'broad definitions' 29. The same has happened
to terms like 'taboo', though the Polynesians have not drawn much
glory from their contribution to our language. After all, we all have
a broad idea of what we are talking about when we use the term
'structuralist', however vague the concept may be, and few will need
(or could stand) Fx(a): F/b) = Fx(b):Fa-1(y), to further a better
understanding of what is really intended.
However, there was yet another target for Kuhn's displeasure.
While some applications of Kuhn's concept of 'paradigm' in the
natural sciences are open to criticism 30 , the concept has proved

28 ScientificAmerican (May 1991) 14 f.

29 This is not to say that the use of the term paradigm should be open to any
whim of any speaker. M. Bernal's flirtation with "a post-Kuhnian age, (in which)
paradigm shifts or flip-flops of a fundamental sort are now seen as possible",
(Arethusa,special issue 1989, 17; on p.55 he is even praised for having offered sever-
al paradigms in his Black Athena!) is verging on improper use (in more than one
sense of the word). Cf. M. B. Skinner, CJ83 (1987) 70-1, who refers to the 1973
and 1978 issues of Arethusa, which made isolated researchers (in women's studies)
suddenly aware of a common endeavour, as "Clearly an example of a Kuhnian
'paradigm-shift' in operation." It may be so, but one should beware of inflation.
For a similar criticism ofGinzburg's use of the concept 'paradigm' see: P.H. H.
Vries, De historicus als spoorzoeker, TheoretischeGeschiedenis15 ( 1988) 163-83, re-
vised in: idem, Vertellersof drift. Een verhandelingoverde nieuwe verhalendegeschiedenis
(Hilversum 1990) 86-107, esp. 98. For a balanced account of paradigms and an-
cient history see: J. Ober, Models and Paradigms in Ancient History, The Ancient
History Bulletin 3 ( 1989) 134-7.
30 After The Structureof Scientific Revolutions(Chicago 19702 ), Kuhn revised his
12 INTRODUCTION

helpful in analysing developments in the social sciences. However,

it has been pointed out that in this sector paradigms are, as a rule,
not radically exclusive. This tolerance has earned anthropology the
qualification: 'polyparadigmatic' 31 , which is exactly what I had in
mind with the rainy introduction to this theoretical discussion.
If you arrive soaking wet (and late) at work, you will talk about
the rain, but not necessarily in order to foster communication. What
you really ( want to) do is to curse your beastly climate. This perfect-
ly substantive behaviour may even lead to a direct communication
with the rain, such as by cursing it all the way to your office in a
monologueinterieur. You may also use your climatological comments
in the Durkheimian functionalist sense, to fill a gap. It happens all
the time, and it is subject to the same restrictions as the Durk-
heimian interpretation of religion, since a discussion of politics or
the price of vegetables may function in the same way. Finally,
your comments may also very well be taken as an expression of
the collective mentality, in the sense of cultural or cosmological
interpretation, although, as a rule, this will be harder to substan-
tiate.
Similarly, whoever throws pigs into a chasm and after some time
places the putrefied remains on an altar before spreading them over
the fields is acting in an essentially substantive manner. Ignoring,
neglecting or playing down this aspect, as overenthusiastic addicts
to the social or cultural interpretation of religion are sometimes
tempted to do, cannot but result in desperately cramped interpreta-
tions. However, this does not mean that different connotations of
the ritual do not deserve serious attention 32 , nor that the 'fertility'
interpretation should reign supreme 33 . In fact, it is even less recom-

ideas in The Essential Tension (Chicago 1977). For criticism see for instance:
I. Lakatos, Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,
in: I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge
(Cambridge 1970) 91-196; P. Feyerabend, Against Method (London 1975).
31 For application of the concept 'paradigm' to social theory see: B. Barnes, T.
S. Kuhn and Social Science(London 1982). On 'tolerance': S. Seiler, Wissenschajts-
theoriein derEthnologie.Zur Kritik und Weiterfohrungder Theorievon ThomasS. Kuhn an-
hand ethnographischen Materials (Berlin 1980); P. Kloos, Culturele antropologie als
polyparadigmatische wetenschap, in: A. de Ruijter (ed.), Beginselenin botsing
(Utrecht 1981).
32 For a different (additional) meaning of the pigs see: p.256
33 In fact, much of the criticism of the monomaniac fertility interpretation is
fully justified and convincing. See for instance: H. Cancik, Fruchtbarkeit, HrwG
2 (1990) 447-50.
 INTRODUCTION 13

mendable to start a total war against Durkheimian and Turnerian

explanations and stubbornly adhere to the old rule of rain magic and
fertility 34. Nor is it necessary to swap instrumental functionalist in-
terpretations completely for semiotic/symbolic ones 35 .
In my view, the three types of interpretation should be put to the
test in any issue, for they say different things about religion, myth
and ritual. Each of them may turn out to be helpful in explaining
elements that cannot be explained by others 36. That they are not
mutually exclusive I hope to show in every chapter of this book. The
(new) fascination for 'initiatory' interpretations 37, for instance, is

34 N. Robertson is perhaps the most characteristic-and militant-represen-

tative of this attitude. Cf. for instance, The Riddle of the Arrhephoria at Athens,
HSCPh 87 (1983) 241-88, esp. 280,: "the concept of 'initiation rites' in ancient
Greece needs to be contested on the whole broad front where its proponents are en-
trenched". Why this crusade? The curious results of his most learned but genuinely
regressive approach will become apparent at various points in the present book. See
for instance his interpretation of the Thessalian Peloria ("festival of the giants")
as tables heaped with food, below Ch. II p.131 n.136. For a more differentiated
approach see below n.36.
35 As F. Zeitlin is in danger of doing in an exclamation quoted below p.244,
though in the same article she convincingly combines the agricultural and the social
'paradigms' in the context of the Oschophoria, Pyanopsia and Theseia festivals.
Cf. also the criticism by D. Sider, CW82 (1988) 127, of Bremmer 1987a, as cited
in InconsistenciesI, 30 n. 93.
36 I find this exemplarily demonstrated by A. F. C. Wallace, Religion: An An-
thropologicalView (New York 1966) 168 ff., though he restricts himself to biological,
psychological and sociological functions. In a different way, this is expressed by G.
J. Baudy, Exkommunikation und Reintegration.Zur Geneseund Kultu,junktion Jrii.h-
griechischerEinstellungenzum Tod (Frankfurt 1980) 574 n.137: "Wer ( ... ) neue
Komponenten zu isolieren versteht, sollte das bereits Entdeckte nicht bei-
seiteschieben, damit die eigene Leistung in umso hellerem Licht erstrahle, sondern
sich um eine Integration bemiihen.'' The same author offers some valuable re-
marks on the ever important agricultural aspects of early religions in his: Das
alexandrinische Erntefest: Ein Rekonstruktionsversuch, Mitteilungenfur Anthro-
pologieund Religionsgeschichte 6 (1991) 5-110, esp. p.6 with n.1. And cf. below p.167
n.136.
37 Initiation, or more generally 'transition', is as popular an issue within the
present socio-cultural paradigm as was Frazer's dying and rising king/god in his
substantive one. There is a hectic activity in the application of initiatory elements
these days, which will be treated in chapter I. In his review of Bremmer 1987a, con-
taining contributions by a great number of scholars, C. Grottanelli, HR 29 (1989)
58-64, esp. 63, writes: "This book is not the only sign that initiation ( .... ) may
be the new (though not so new) demiercri", followed by a few warning remarks.
There is a spate ofrecent or planned monographs: Chr. Sourvinou-Inwood, Studies
in Girl's Transitions:Aspects of the Arkteia and Age Representationin Attic Iconography
(Athens 1988); K. Dowden, Death and the Maiden: Girl's Initiation Rites in Greek
Mythology (London-New York 1989); Y. Dacosta, Initiations et societessecretesdans
l'antiquite greco-romaine(Paris 1991). J. N. Bremmer's forthcoming book Birth,
14 INTRODUCTION

certainly helpful and revealing in a number of instances but, as will

be argued in the first chapter, it runs the same risks ofmonopolisati-
on and dogmatism as did the dying and rising god in the paradigm
of Frazer's magico-religious views. However, trying to be as incon-
sistent as possible, I shall add a new initiatory god to the rapidly ex-
panding list in the fifth chapter, while also trying to show that a
(mildly) structuralist analysis may very well be combined with ques-
tions of social origins. Something comparable is attempted in the
combination of the socio-cultural interpretation of the Saturnalia
and the enquiry into its agricultural background (indeed, a question
of origins). The three approaches will be most apparent in the fourth
chapter. The women's festivals include aspects offertility, of social
function, and of cultural meaning.
All this means that there is an ambiguity in the title, as is fitting
for a book in a series on inconsistencies: transitions and reversals are
not only the themes of the myths and rituals under discussion, but
they also indicate the changes in the interpretation of myth and ritu-
al during the last hundred years.

Maturity, and Deathin Ancient Greecefocuses on related issues. For more literature see
eh. I below. Furthermore, there have been two conferences on the theme in recent
years, one in Montpellier in 1991, and one in Rome, which resulted in a special
fascicle of MEFRA 102 (1990) 1-137. And, of course, there is the present volume.
 CHAPTER ONE

WHAT IS SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE IS SAUCE FOR THE

GANDER: MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW

And it was in this way that the complex of myth

and ritual, though not indissoluble, became a
major force in forming ancient cultures, and as it
were, dug those deep vales of human tradition in
which even today the streams of our experience
will tend to flow.
W. Burkert

The debate on the complex of problems concerning the interrelation

of myth and ritual is exactly a century old by now. The primary aim
of the present chapter is to obtain an insight into its history and de-
velopment. I have found that it is impossible to gain an adequate im-
pression of the present state of theory in this field if its previous histo-
ry is overlooked or is sketched along too rudimentary lines.
Naturally, a survey of the evolution in toto means entering an al-
ready well-ploughed field. There is no lack of historical and critical
surveys of earlier views and I have made grateful use of them 1• The

1 This is only a selection of titles on the theory of myth and ritual (for literature

on specific myth and ritual complexes see below nn.21 ff. and 35 ff.): C. Kluck-
hohn, Myths and Rituals. A General Theory, HThR 35 (1942) 45-79, reprinted in:
J. B. Vickery (ed.), Myth and Literature(Lincoln 1969) 33-44; L. Raglan, Myth and
Ritual, and S. E. Hyman, The Ritual View of Myth and the Mythic, both in: Se-
beok 1974, 122-35 and 136-53; W. Bascom, The Myth-Ritual Theory,Journal of
AmericanFolklore70 (1957) 103-14; Ph. M. Kaberry, Myth and Ritual: Some Re-
cent Theories, BICS 4 (1957) 42-53; J. Fontenrose, The Ritual Theory of Myth
(Berkeley-Los Angeles 1966); H. H. Penner, Myth and Ritual: A Wasteland or a
Forest of Symbols? H&TBeiheft 8 (1968) 46-57; R. A. Segal, The Myth-Ritualist
Theory of Religion, Journal of the ScientificStudy of Religion 19 (1980) 173-85. Also
important are the relevant passages in Kirk 1971, 8-31; Kirk 1974, 66-8; 223-53;
Burkert 1979, 34-9; 56-8; Burkert 1980, 172-82; Graf 1985a, 43-57. The title ofW.
G. Doty, Mythography.The Study of Myths and Rituals (Alabama 1986), is slightly mis-
leading in so far as the bulk of the book consists of a (good) discussion of various
theoretical approaches to myth, though including two (good) chapters on myth and
ritual. I would also mention the interesting chapter 'La ripetizione mitico-
rituale' in Di Nola 1974, which treats the subject from the perspective of 'repeti-
tion phenomena'. Not all of these publications, which will be henceforth cited
by name and date, are of equal value. The article by Kaberry, for instance, is
insignificant; both Penner and Segal fail to draw the necessary distinctions
16 CHAPTER ONE

emphasis here is on those aspects of the theories of myth and ritual

that relate to the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean world, a fea-
ture that distinguishes this essay from, for instance, Kluckhohn
1942, Kaberry 1957, Penner 1968, and Segal 1980, all of them
studies offering a broader, notably anthropological perspective. I
have tried, moreover, to prevent the critical element from domi-
nating: Bascom 1957 and Fontenrose 1966 contain many valuable
thoughts, but, because of their strongly negative bias, are not the ap-
propriate tools for an introduction to the subject. In plan and ap-
proach my introduction is closest to the survey by Burkert 1980,
which, however, does not go beyond a summary view.
What distinguishes the present effort from all its predecessors is
that it does not stop short at those theories that, until now, have been
associated with the phrase 'myth and ritual', but pays special atten-
tion to the newest trends in classical studies. The main task I have
set myself is to show where the roots of the recent approach are to
be found; to what extent there is a connection between the old and
the new points of view; and, finally, to pose the question whether the
gap that separates them is as unbridgeable as is commonly believed.
The way I have arranged the material is unorthodox and some
aspects of the disposition are no doubt debatable. The two phases
are characterized by two names: Jane Ellen Harrison and Walter
Burkert. The overall structure, moreover, is based on Harrison's
suggestions about the various ways in which myth and ritual may
be connected.

1. QUESTIONS

Myth was the dominant factor in nineteenth century (and earlier)

studies of the history of religion until a change took place somewhere
in the last quarter of the century. Textbooks that nowadays would
carry 'Religionsgeschichte', 'history of religion', in the titles were
then classified regularly as 'mythology', as witness the well-known
works by Gruppe, Preller and Roscher.
Ritual dominates the scene in practically all the textbooks on
Greek and Roman religion during most of the twentieth century.

between the theories of Harrison and Hooke (see below pp.23-37). In the otherwise
important article of Segal one reads: '' According to myth and ritualist theory
religion is primitive science", which is, as a general rule, quite mistaken.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 17

This is what M.P. Nilsson says when speaking about the prot-
agonists in this field from around the turn of the century, H.
Usener 2 and A. Dieterich 3 : "Der Umschwung war vollendet: statt
der Mythen waren die Riten in den Vordergrund getreten" ("The
reversal was complete: instead of myths, rites had come to the
fore''). Nilsson, author of the two monumental volumes of Geschichte
dergriechischenReligion4 , ''that masterpiece of patient brilliance'', as
it has been called5, died in 1967, the year in which the third edition
of volume I was published. On the same page I quoted from, Nilsson
continues: "Seitdem ist keine durchgreifende oder grundsatzliche
Anderung der Methode und der Richtung der Forschung eingetre-
ten'' (''Since then there has not been any radical or essential change
in method and direction ofresearch"). In this nonagenarian's view,
then, rite, cult, and ceremonial action had carried the day, once and
for all. Only recently, nonetheless, an American scholar, B. Lin-
coln, complained that' 'ritual (is) a neglected area for study ( ... ) for
most scholars have tended to give far more attention to myth than
to ritual", and "there still exists a grievous imbalance in favor of
myth" 6 .

2 On this 'herosktistes der modemen Religionswissenschaft' (thus his son-in-law,

A. Dieterich, in ARW 8 [1905] p.X.) see: H.-J. Mette, Nekrolog einer Epoche:
Hermann Usener und seine Schule, Lu.strum22 (1979/80) 5-106; A. Momigliano,
New Paths of Classicism in the Nineteenth Century, H&TBeiheft 21 (1982) 33-48;
Aspetti di Hermann Usener,jilologo dellareligione.Seminario della Scuola Normale Su-
periore di Pisa (Pisa 1982); J. N. Bremmer, Hermann Usener,in: Briggs & Calder
1990, 127-41. Cf. also: R. Kany, Mnemosyneals Programm.Geschichte,Erinnerungund
die Andacht zum Unbedeutendenim Werk von Usener, Warburgund Benjamin (Tubingen
1987).
3 There is a bibliography of this 'founding father' of the German 'religions-

geschichtliche' school in his Kleine Schriften(Leipzig-Berlin 1911) 11-42.

4 Nilsson I (Munich 19673, 19401>,II (Munich 19612 , 19501>.A bibliography of
Nilsson's works: E. J. Knudtson, Beitriige zu einer Bibliographie Martin P. Nils-
son, in: Dragma:FestschriftM. P. Nilsson (Lund 1939) 571-656, reprinted in Scripta
Minora (1967-68, Lund 1968) 29-116; C. Callmer, The Published Writings of Prof.
M. P. Nilsson 1939-1967, ibid. 117-39. Cf. Waardenburg 1974, 191-7. Biographi-
cal sketches and evaluations of his works are given by E. Gjerstad, M. P. Nilsson
in memoriam, Scripta Minora (1967-68) 17-28; C.-M. Edsman, Martin P. Nilsson
1874-1967, Temenos3 (1968) 173-6; McGinty 1978, 104-40; J. Meijer, in: Briggs
& Calder 1990, 335-40.
5 Thus A. D. Nock, who was honoured by his fellow students with the proud
title of 'the greatest living authority on Pauly-Wissowa', and who was lauded by
Nilsson (GGR Vorwort) as "der bewiihrteste Kenner der spiitantiken Religion".
For an epistolary contact between the two giants see: M. P. Nilsson, Letter to
Professor A. D. Nock, HThR 42 (1949) 71-107; 44 (1951) 143-51. There is a bib-
liography in Nock 1972, II, 966-86.
6 B. Lincoln, Two Notes on Modern Rituals,JAAR 45 (1977) 149.
 18 CHAPTER ONE

What actually happened, then, in the interval between Nilsson's

complacent statement, dating from the middle of this century, and
Lincoln's complaint in 1977? Has the evident shift of interest from
myth to ritual round 1900 been followed by a reverse movement in
recent decades? In a way, this is indeed what has happened, as can
be seen from a comparison of Nilsson's work referred to above with
W. Burkert's textbook of Greek religion (Burkert 1985) or his more
explicit study of myth and ritual (Burkert 1979). Like other modern
scholars, Burkert has given myth its due once again. A theory of
myth and ritual worthy of the name should focus on myth and ritual;
it is therefore no coincidence that both the myth and ritual complex-
es I plan to discuss were discovered at a time when-precisely be-
cause of the shift of interest-both elements were topics of debate:
the last quarter of the 19th and the last quarter of the 20th century.
A qualification might be in order, though: myth, of course, has
never been supplanted completely by ritual. Some scholars have set
great store by myth, such as Freud, Jung, and Kerenyi from a psy-
chological viewpoint; Dumezil, whose comparative mythology, as
far as the classical cultures are concerned, focuses specially on
Rome-a subject that I shall leave out of account here-or Mircea
Eliade, whose phenomenological school includes Lincoln, quoted
above. Furthermore, myth, of course, takes pride of place in the
studies of the Paris school ofVernant, Vidal-Naquet and Detienne 7 ,
and in other recent, especially semiotic, studies. It may not be too

7 A discussion of Kerenyi and Dumezil would be beyond the scope of the

present chapter. On the latter see: C. S. Littleton, The New ComparativeMythology.
An AnthropologicalAssessmentof the Theoriesof GeorgesDumezil (Berkeley-London 1966,
19823); 'Aspetti dell'opera di Georges Dumezil', Opus 2 (1983) 327-421; J.-C.
Riviere, GeorgesDumezil ala decouvertedes Indo-Europeens(Paris 1979); J. Ries, L' ap-
port de Georges Dumezil a l'etude comparee des religions, RTh 20 (1989) 440-66;
Belier 1991. Neither do I discuss the representatives of the Paris school here, not
because their work is of no interest for the study of myths and rituals-cf. for the
contrary InconsistenciesI, eh. 2, and various sections of the present book-, but be-
cause whenever they try to bring them into a cohesive pattern, they practically
never do so in the usual sense of 'myth and ritual'. Gordon 1981 offers an excellent
introduction to their ideas. See also: Ch. Segal, Jean-Pierre Vernant and the Study
of Ancient Greece, Arethusa 15 (1982) 221-34; R. di Donato, Aspetti e momenti di
un percorso intellettuale: Jean-Pierre Vernant, RSI 96 (1984) 680-95; W. B. Tyr-
rell & F. S. Brown, Athenian Myths and Institutions: Words in Action (Oxford 1991).
For Eliade on Eliade see: M. Eliade, Journey East, Journey West I, II (San Francisco
1981). See further: J .A. Saliba, 'Homo Religiosus' in Mircea Eliade. An Anthropological
Evaluation (Leiden 1976) and I.P. Culianu, Mircea Eliade (Assisi 1978). Critical
views in: G. Dudley, Religion on Trial: Mircea Eliade and his Critics( 19 77); L. Alfieri,
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 19

adventurous to say that the concept of myth and ritual was en-
gendered by the tension that sprang from having to choose between
myth or ritual. That, however, is not the only kind of tension. Here
is another instance: in his Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient
and Other Cultures (1971) 31, G.S. Kirk states categorically: "There-
fore it will be wise to reject from the outset the idea that myth and
religion are twin aspects of the same subject, or parallel manifesta-
tions of the same psychic condition just as firmly as we rejected the
idea that all myths are associated with rituals". Incidentally, both
in this book-embodying his Sather Lectures-and in his still better
known The Nature of Greek Myths (1974), one of Kirk's explicit aims
is to refute all general theories of the origin, meaning, and function
of myth. One of the five 'overall' theories he eliminates is the theory
that there is always (at least originally) a link between myth and
ritual-the minimum definition of the myth and ritual theory.
In 1979, however, Burkert's Sather Lectures appeared in print:
Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual. He had certainly
read Kirk, but still he states (p.58): "And it was in this way that the
complex of myth and ritual, though not indissoluble, became a
major force in forming ancient cultures, and as it were, dug those
deep vales of human tradition in which even today the streams of our
experience will tend to flow". This has quite a different ring. In-
deed, to refer to the evident contrast between the views of these two
scholars as a 'tension' would be rather a euphemism. Both views will
be discussed later on. For present purposes, it may suffice to ask two
obvious questions, to be dealt with consecutively:
a. How and when did the idea arise that myth and ritual might
be closely related, a view that was evidently so successful that Kirk
thought it worthwhile to oppose it emphatically?
b. How is one to explain the fact that practically simultaneously
two eminent scholars entertain such totally different views of this in-
terrelation?

Storiae mito. Una criticaa Eliade (Pisa 1978); C. Tacou (ed.), Mircea Eliade (Cahier
de l'Herme, Paris 1978). Cf. Smith 1978, 88 ff.; I. Strenski, Four Theoriesof Myth
in Twentieth-CenturyHistory (Iowa City 1987) 70-128; Auffahrt 1991, 6-21, whose
views will be discussed infra. Eliade phrases his own preference for myth above rite
(Methodological Remarks on the Study of Religion, in: M. Eliade andJ. Kitagawa
(edd.), The History of Religions [Chicago 1959], 86-107) as follows: "Symbol and
myth will give a clear view of the modalities (of the sacred) that a rite can never
do more than suggest''.
20 CHAPTER ONE

2. THE RISE AND GROWTH OF MYTH AND RITUAL THEORY

Interest in ritual in primitive cultures arose in Germany and Britain

more or less simultaneously. In a period in which Max Miiller's
theories 8 reigned supreme and every single myth was thought to be
an allegory of meteorological and atmospheric phenomena, W.
Mannhardt 9 dispatched questionnaires all over Europe in search of
traces of belief in vegetation, grain, and wood spirits and related
manners and customs. About the same time E. B. Tylor 10 managed
to interest the Anglo-Saxon public in the peculiar features of primi-
tive cultures outside Europe. Darwin 11 published his Originof Spe-
cies in 1859 and evolution and progress were in the air: might not
Mannhardt's rye wolves and stalk hare be the very archetypes from
which, much later, the radiant figures of Demeter, Dionysus or
Adonis emerged? Might not religion have had its origin in spirit
worship? Tylor himself professed a straightforward evolutionism:
unable to understand nature around him, primitive man tried to in-
fluence his environment. To achieve this he practised magic rites
(which did not work, but he did not realize this) and in a later stage

8 J. H. Voigt, Max Muller. The Man and his Ideas (Calcutta 1976). Shorter
studies: Van Baal 1971, 20-6; R. M. Dorson, The Eclipse of Solar Mythology, in:
Sebeok 1974, 25-63; Sharpe 1975, 35-46; Burkert 1980, 166; Lloyd-Jones 1982,
155-64. More in: Graf 1991, 339 n.32. Cf. also F. M. Turner, The GreekHeritage
in VictorianBritain (New Haven-London 1981) 77-134, on 'Greek Mythology and
Religion' in this period.
9 W. Mannhardt, Roggenwolfund Roggenhund(Danzig 1865-66); Die Korndii.monen
(Berlin 1868); Antike Wald- und Feldkulte (Berlin 1875-77, Darmstadt 1904-52 );
MythologischeForschungen(Strassburg-London 1884). On his work and influence see:
Frazer GB I, p. XII-XIII; De Vries 1961, 212-6; Waardenburg 1974, 173.
IO E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (London 1871). An assessment of his work:
Kardiner 1962, 56-77; F. Golz, Der primitive Mensch und seine Religion (Giitersloh
1963) 12-40; Van Baal 1971, 30-44; Waardenburg 1974, 288-9; Sharpe 1975, 53-8;
U. Bianchi, The HistoryofReligions(Leiden 1975) 83-6; Evans-Pritchard 1981, 91-4;
Morris 1987, 91-106, on the 'intellectualists'. Recently, there is a revival of interest
in Tylor's evolutionism and its background. See for instance: G. W. Stocking Jr.,
Matthew Arnold, E.B. Tylor and the Uses of Invention, AmericanAnthropologist65
(1963) 783-99; M. Opler, Cause, Process, and Dynamics in the Evolutionism of
E. B. Tylor, South-Westernjournal of Anthropology20 (1964) 123-44; J. W. Burrow,
Evolution and Society:A Study in VictorianSocial Theory(London 19702) 228-59. Cf.
Smith 1978, 261 n.58.
11 G. Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution(London 1959). Interest-
ing on the social and mental context: J. W. Burrow, o.c. (preceding note); D. F.
Bratchell, The Impact ofDarwinism. Texts and CommentaryIllustratingJ 9th-centuryReli-
gious, Scientificand LiteraryAttitudes (London 1981) and R. J. Richards, Darwin and
the Emergenceof EvolutionaryTheoriesof Mind and Behavior(Chicago-London 1987). A
full biography: P. Brent, CharlesDarwin (London 1981, Feltham 19832).
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 21

he tried to explain this no longer understood ritual and other riddles

by means of some myth (which did not fit in, but he did not realize
this either)-a twofold misinterpretation, therefore, for which only
Germans could have invented a term such as 'Urdummheit'
('primeval stupidity'), a phrase that did not fail to find a comfortable
niche in anthropological jargon 12 .
Certain vague relations between myth and ritual can be glimpsed,
but credit for the first clear-cut theory is due to the Scottish Semitist
and theologian W. Robertson Smith, whose famous and influential
Lectureson the Religion of the Semitesintroduced his well-known theory
of sacrifice 13 . His interest in 'ritual institutions' as social instru-
ments influenced both Durkheim and Freud; offundamental impor-
tance for our subject is the fact that in his view, sacrifice as
communion-man shares in the vital force of the consumed
animal-acquires an additional mythical dimension: as a totem
animal, the sacrificial victim is raised to divine status. Myth arises
from a social rite.
These are the indispensable preliminary stages. It was, after all,
Robertson Smith who pointed out the road taken by his student and
friend James Frazer 14 . The twelve volumes of Frazer's The Golden
Bough-next to the Bible and Kitto's The Greeks-still adorn many
a British upper middle class drawing room 15 . The work has been

12 F. R. Lehmann, Der Begriff 'Urdummheit' in der ethnologischen und

religionswissenschaftlichen Anschauungen von K. -T. Preuss, A. E. Jensen und G.
Murray, Sociologus2 (1952) 131-45.
13 W. Robertson Smith, Lectureson the Religion of the Semites(Edinburgh 1889,
18942). The German translation Die Religion der Semiten (Tubingen 1899) was
reprinted in 1967. Biographical surveys: J. S. Black and G. Chrystal, The Life of
William RobertsonSmith (London 1912); T. 0. Beidelmann, William RobertsonSmith
and the SociologicalStudy of Religion (Chicago 1974); M. Smith, in: Calder 1991,
251-61. Cf. also: Van Baal 1971, 45-53; Waardenburg 1974, 265; Evans-Pritchard
1981, 69-81. E. Durkheim, L'annee sociologique12 (1913) 326, already referred to
"all that we owe to Robertson Smith ... ", and Douglas 1970, 25, states: "Robert-
son Smith founded social anthropology".
14 "But for Smith", said Frazer, "my interest in the subject [anthropology.
H.S.V.] might have remained purely passive and inert" (quoted by Kardiner
1962, 82). See: Ackerman o.c. (next note) 58-63; R. A.Jones, Robertson Smith and
James Frazer on Religion, in: G. Stocking Jr. (ed.) FunctionalismHistoricized,Histo-
ry of Anthropology 2 (Madison 1984) 31-58.
15 J. G Frazer, The Golden Bough I-II (London 1890); I-III 2 (1900); I-XII 3
(1907-1915r Volume IV, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, was published separately: London
1906, 1907 . An abridged edition appeared in 1922 = New York 1950. Other re-
visions and abridged editions: Theodor Gaster, The New GoldenBough (New York
1959); M. Douglas and S. MacCormack, J. G. Frazer. The IllustratedGoldenBough:
22 CHAPTER ONE

praised as "perhaps the greatest scientific Odyssey in modern hu-

manism" (Malinowski) and disparaged as "part of what every
schoolboy knows, and what every gentleman must at least have for-
gotten" (Marett). In a book in which people were asked about their
experiences with ecstasy (Ecstasy, London 1961), one person ans-
wered the question "What has induced ecstasy in you?" as follows:
"Reading The Golden Bough for the first time". And this informant
was not such a fool either, for he had also gone into ecstasies "find-
ing ten chromosomes when I knew they ought to be there''. So it
must surely be a marvelous book.
In the definitive version (there had been earlier, shorter editions)
the first two volumes are called The Magic Art and the Evolution of
Kings, and this title provides the code words: magic lay at the roots
ofreligion, and the most important means with which primitive man
tried to control nature and vegetation lay in magic-sacral kingship.
Just as nature goes through an annual cycle of budding, flowering,
bearing fruit, withering and dying, so each year the 'aged' king had
to be supplanted by a new vigorous successor, for it is the king's
magic power that sympathetically influences and even controls
vegetative life. Nature's death has to be overcome by a new, young
king who defeats the old one in a ritual fight-or somehow supplants
him. The King Must Die is the title of a best-seller by Mary Renault,
a book one might read as a kind of romanticized 'Frazer abridged'.
So much for rite. There is, however, also a mythical representation
or transposition of the natural cycle, dealt with by Frazer in other
parts of his series: Adonis, Attis, Osiris, published originally in 1906

A Study in Magic and Religion (London 1978). Biographical works: R. A. Downie,

James GeorgeFrazer. The Portraitofa Scholar(London 1940); idem, Frazerand the Golden
Bough (London 1970). They are all superseded now by R. Ackerman,]. G. Frazer:
His Life and Work (Cambridge 1987) (highly praised by C. R. Phillips III, Classical
Scholarship against its History, AJPh 110 [1989] 636-57, esp. 644-50, in an impres-
sive plea for 'Wissenschaftsgeschichte' as an indispensable tool for 'sociology of
knowledge'. His own contribution: The Sociology of Religious Knowledge in
the Roman Empire, ANRW II, 16, 3, 2677-2773, is a model in this respect). Cf.
also: Kardiner 1962, 78-109; Sharpe 1975, 87-94; Evans-Pritchard 1981, 2-52;
R. Ackerman, in: Briggs & Calder 1990, 77-83. A comprehensive list of works on
Frazer: Waardenburg 1974, 59-60. A critical account: M. J.C. Hodgart, In the
Shadow of the Golden Bough, The Twentieth Century 97 (1955) 111-19; S.
MacCormack, Magic and the Human Mind: A Reconsideration ofFrazer's Golden
Bough, Arethusa 17 (1984) 151-76; Auffarth 1991, 16 f.; R. Fraser, The Making ofthe
'GoldenBough'. The Originsand Growthofan Argument(London 1990). For more criti-
cism see below section 4.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 23

as a separate volume; The Dying God, Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild
(with thanks to Mannhardt) and Balder the Beautiful. A great many
cultures, notably those of the Mediterranean world and the Near
East, so Frazer contended, have their 'dying and rising gods'. They
represent grain, green plants and trees. Their myths tell of menace,
downfall, sojourn in the underworld and death, but also ofresurrec-
tion. During the annual New Year festivities lamentations are heard
bewailing the god who has died, but it is not long before they are
replaced by hilarious joy: the god has risen or has manifested himself
again, heralding a promise of new life.
There thus emerges an almost ideal parallelism of myth and ritu-
al, both reacting to or reflecting the vegetative cycle of nature:
RITE MYTH
Sacral year king guarantees Year god represents
fertility of nature; natural vegetative force;
suffers ritual death; dies, is imprisoned in
underworld;
new, vigorous king succeeds. rises again, is reborn.

This scheme is a fundamental one: it is invoked by all myth and ritu-

al theories of the first phase. As a matter of fact, until a few decades
ago the twentieth century remained 'in the shadow of the golden
bough'. We shall concentrate, primarily, on two schools: the 'ritu-
alist' Cambridge school, which in the area of classical studies ap-
plied itself above all to the Greek material, and the Myth and Ritual
school proper, which centered on the pattern of the ancient Near
East. Before dealing with these schools, however, we must focus on
one specific figure, even though she herself, without any doubt, be-
longs to the former school. The reason for this preferential treatment
will soon become evident.

1. Jane Ellen Harrison

Robertson Smith and Frazer both taught in Cambridge. So didjane
Ellen Harrison 16 . 'Bloody Jane' to friends, a 'blasphemous Ker' as

16 Autobiographical data in her books Reminiscenses of a Student's Life (London

1925), and Alpha and Omega. Essays (London 1915). Biographical information: J. G.
Stewart,Jane Ellen Harrison. A Portraitfrom Letters (London 1959); R. Ackerman, J.
E. Harrison: The Early Work, GRBS 13 (1972) 209-30; McGinty 1978, 71-103; S.
J. Peacock, Jane Harrison: The Mask and the Self (New Haven 1988), with the rather
severe review by W. M. Calder III, Gnomon 63 (1991) 10-13; R. Schlesier, Jane
24 CHAPTER ONE

she said herself 17, and the last maenad found running wild accord-
ing to many others, she led an unorthodox life, which gave rise to
many rumours, with such standard ingredients as libertinism in
matters of sex and religion, more or less pronounced feminism, and
hovering between the extremes of esthetic refinement on the one
hand and the "beastly devices of the heathen" on the other. I note
this for the sole reason that later criticism seems to have been in-
spired, at least partly, by the aversion aroused by these in themselves
less relevant features of her life. Additional information about her
may be gleaned, for instance, from her Reminiscencesof a Student'sLife
(London 1925). From her best known and most important works,
Prolegomenato the Study of GreekReligion (1903) and Themis (1912) 18
she emerges as someone who boasts a vast knowledge of Greek,
above all archaeological, material (archaeology had been her start-
ing point), has an unmistakable tendency to follow and practise the
most recent trends rather uncritically (she herself mentions-in
chronological order-Frazer, Durkheim, Bergson and Freud) 19 ,
and who is criticized by Kirk 1971, 3, for being "utterly uncon-
trolled by anything resembling careful logic". When "her cus-
tomary lack of consistency'' is referred to 20, this may be taken, not

Ellen Harrison, in: Briggs & Calder 1990, 127-41. Several contributions to Calder
1991, among which the most perceptive introduction to Harrison's intellectual po-
sition and achievement by Schlesier (Schlesier 1991, in a German version also in
Kippenberg & Luchesi 1991, 193-235). See also the literature mentioned by P. G.
Naiditch, in: Calder 1991, 124 n.2.
17 In a letter to G. MurraI, in: Stewart o.c. (preceding note) 113.
18 Prolegomena(1903, 1907 , 19223 ), reprinted by Meridian Books 1955 and
Merlin Press (London 1961), recently also by La Haule Press. Themis: A Study in
the Social Origins of GreekReligion (1912 1, 19272), reprinted by University Books
(New York) together with Epilegomena(1962), and Merlin Press (London 1963).
19 In Epilegomenato theStudy of GreekReligion (Cambridge 1921) p. XXII, she for-
mulates her own scientific achievements thus: (1) Totem, Tabu and Exogamy, (2)
Initiation Ceremony, (3) The Medicine-Man and King-God, (4) The Fertility-Play
or Year Drama. This is precisely the reverse order of her Werdegangfrom Frazer
via "the genius ofDurkheim" (ibid. n.1) towards Freud. McGinty 1978, 79: "As
a result, to read her oeuvre in chronological order is almost like reading a mul-
tivolume history of the discipline of comparative religion disguised as a series of his-
tories of Greek religion", (and cf. ibid. 2 n.35). Cf. also Schlesier 1991, n.73.
20 McGinty 1978, 96. W. J. Verdenius, in his review of Epilegomenaand Themis,
Mnemosyne4th ser. 16 (1963) 434: "Her principal weakness was the susceptibility
which induced her to adopt the latest fashion in philosophy, psychology and ethnol-
ogy". And long before this G. van der Leeuw, who admired her, betrayed irritation
when confronted with her volatility. See: J. N. Bremmer, Gerardus van der Leeuw
andJane Ellen Harrison, in: Kippenberg & Luchesi 1991, 237-41. For some more
contemporaneous criticism see: Th. W. Africa in: Calder III 1991, 29 ff.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 25

unjustly, to sum up a virtually unanimous verdict. Still, I should like

to show that at least part of the inconsistencies found in her studies
may be caused, to a certain extent at any rate, by the unmanageable
and intrinsically contradictory subject of her choice.
In 1890, a year after the publication of Robertson Smith's major
work and in the very year in which the first two-volume edition of
Frazer' s GoldenBoughwas published, Harrison' s MythologyandMonu-
mentsof AncientAthens appeared. In the introduction she says (p. Ill):
"My belief is that in many, even the large majority of cases ritual
practicemisunderstoodexplains the elaboration of myth''. In the last
analysis, even the most beautiful, the loveliest Greek myths derive
from "always practical ritual". A quite telling phrase in an 1891
paper-"a solution I believe to be wholly novel"-shows that she
expects to be the first to offer this solution 21 . Without doubt, she is
being sincere in this respect. Frazer, who, as we have seen, had opt-
ed for the very same starting point, did not feel any forceful urge to
put the presumed interrelation of myth and ritual on a solid theore-
tical basis, and Robertson Smith was publishing at practically the
same time. It just so happened, as is often the case, that either direct
or indirect mental contact gave rise, almost simultaneously, to relat-
ed viewpoints. However, a glance in modem surveys and textbooks
of anthropology and the history of religion will show that, in this
broad perspective, the other two scholars have ousted Jane Harri-
son. I wish to show that, at least in the context of myth and ritual,
Harrison deserves more credit than she was given and that in her
works all the problems were touched upon that later authors dealt
with in their way.
In the ProlegomenaHarrison still adheres to the view, quoted
above, that myths were created in order to account for rites. In line
with nineteenth century ideas, the gods were supposed to belong to
the domain of myth. They arise as a kind of personification from

21 JHS 12 (1891) 350. Actually, this refers to her interpretation of the Kekrop-
ides myth, which she was the first to explain from the perspective of myth and ritu-
al. J. N. Bremmer, o. c. (preceding note) 238, finds it hard to believe that Harrison
had neither heard about Smith's lectures nor read his book before her own publica-
tion, but Schlesier 1991, 187 n.11, makes a good case for Harrison' s ignorance.
That Harrison was later on influenced indirecty by Smith via Durkheim (Bremmer
ibidem)is a different matter ( see next note). Burkert 1980, 174, has pointed out that
previous initiatives in this direction had already been taken by K. 0. Miiller and
von Wilamowitz. On Harrison and Miiller see: Schlesier 1991, 191 ff.
26 CHAPTER ONE

rites, especially apotropaic ones, meant to protect crops and settle-

ments. These daimones are products of an almost intellectual ex-
planatory process, and in her Themis Harrison systematises these
numerous demons into one prototypical, genuinely 'Frazerian' year
god, denoting him, for the occasion, by a home-made Greek term
as the eniautos daimon.
In the same Themis, however, there is a sudden emphasis on the
social component of the myth-making process: ''Strong emotion col-
lectively experienced begets this illusion of objective reality; each
worshipper is conscious of something in his emotion not himself,
stronger than himself. He does not know it is the force of collective
suggestion, he calls it a god" (Themis, pp. 46-47). Dionysos, for in-
stance, who was first a typically 'Frazerian' eniautos daimon, is now
called "his thiasos incarnate" (p. 38). Here Durkheim has ousted
Frazer 22 .
It is necessary to realize the implications of this step. In the
Frazerian scheme, man is the manipulator:he believes he can control
externalprocessesby means of specific, above all magical methods,
rites. Myth, then, is a kind of verbal account of these rituals. In the
new interpretation, on the other hand, man is theonewho is manipulat-
ed: however the ritual may relate to external data like fertility of the
soil, what counts is what theparticipant himself experiences,his own emo-
tion. The mythical images, therefore, are products, first and fore-
most, of spontaneous,collectiveemotions23 . I do not think it an exagger-

22 Humphreys 1978, 96, suggests that her attention was drawn to Durkheim by
the lectures of Radcliffe-Brown, which she attended at Cambridge in 1909. Hum-
phreys also gives a good assessment of Durkheim's work. See also: Harris 1968,
464-82; S. Lukes, Emile Durkheim. His Life and Work (1973 1 , Harmondsworth
1975); Kardiner 1962, 108-33; Evans-Pritchard 1981, 153-69; Morris 1987,
106-40; F. Pearce, The RadicalDurkheim(London 1989). The remarkable similarity
appears inter alia from the following quotations from Durkheim, Lesformes ilemen·
tairesde la vie religieuse(Paris 1912 1, 19685) 597: "!'experience religieuse, c'est la so·
ciete"; 603: "la formation d'un ideal( ... ) c'est un produit nature! de la vie so·
ciale"; 606: "la religion est un produit de causes sociales". On this aspect of
Durkheim's theory see especially: R. N. Bellah, Religion, Collective Representa·
tions and Social Change, in: R. A. Nisbet (ed.), Emile Durkheim(Englewood Cliffs
1965) 166-72. On Durkheim's influence on Radcliffe-Brown see: A. Kuper 1985,
49 ff., with Harrison on p. 38. On the possible influence of Robertson Smith on
Durkheim see: R. A.Jones, La genese du systeme? The Origins ofDurkheim's So-
ciology of Religion, in: Calder 1991, 97-121, and other works cited there.
23 Harrison herself recognized this evolution: "Primitive religion was not, as I
had drifted into thinking, a tissue of errors leading to mistaken conduct; rather it
was a web of practices emphasizing particular parts of life, issuing necessarily in
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 27

ation to maintain that the seeds of one of the great controversies in

twentieth century approaches to ancient religions can be detected
here. The two lines may be illustrated by comparing two types of ap-
proach: that of such scholars as Deubner, Nilsson and Latte, in
which rites are studied primarily with regard to their external func-
tions and aims, and in which there is hardly any room for myth, ex-
cept as an aetiological explanation of the ritual acts; and the ap-
proach of a very disparate group of modern scholars, guided by
Burkert and Vernant, on the other; here myth and rite are consi-
dered to be, in the first place, forms of expression which identify or
integrate the cultural community itself. I shall come back to this
subject.
Just as the year king-god scheme represented Harrison's first ap-
proach, for which she had invented the term eniautos daimon, so her
second approach can be exemplarily illustrated by a hymn from
Palaikastro in Eastern Crete that had recently been discovered 24 .
The inscription probably dates from the third century BC, but cer-
tain elements of the text indicate a much older period. In this hymn
the Megistos Kouros, identified as the young Zeus, is invited to come
to Mount Dikte, heading the daimones for this year, and "to spring
into the wine vats, the herds, the crops, the cities, the ships, the
young citizens and Themis". Here she is at last: Themis. Now, no
true Frazerian would hesitate to recognize the year god in this
Megistos Kouros, especially if one accepts the most recent interpreta-
tion by M. L. West of a corrupt fragment of the text which says, in
his view, that the god first "has gone into the earth" 25. Harrison,
however, thinks otherwise.
In her view, the hymn points to the mythical Kouretes 26 , who

representations and ultimately dying out into abstract conceptions" (Themis p.

XII).
24 M. Guarducci, I. Cret. III, II, 2. Cf. eadem,Antichita Cretesi, in: Studi in onore
di D. Levi II (Catania 1974) 36 f.; eadem, Epigrafia GrecaIV (Rome 1978) 128 f.
25 M. L. West, The Dictaean Hymn to the Kouros,JHS 85 (1965) 149-59, pro-
posed to replace Harrison's "Lord of all that is wet and gleaming, thou art
come. .. " by an interpretation which results in: "master of all, who to earth art
gone''. Later on he recanted his metrical suggestions, while maintaining his textual
conjectures (ZPE 45 [ 1982] 9 ff.). West's reading, which completely ignores Harri-
son's treatment of the text, seems very improbable to me and has, as far as I know,
not provoked much enthusiasm. See: Guarducci o.c. (preceding note) and J. M.
Bremer, Greek Hymns, in: Versnel 1981a, 205 f. Cf. also Motte 1970, 56-60.
26 There are also historical Kouretes: S. Luria, Kureten, Molpen, Aisymneten,
AAntHung 11 (1963) 11-6; D. Knibbe, Forschungenin Ephesos IX, Fasz. I, 1: Die
Kureteninschriften (Ost err. Arch. Inst. 1981).
28 CHAPTER ONE

perform a war dance at the birth of the Cretan Zeus. As such, it

reflects a social event of central importance in all primitive commu-
nities: the rites of initiation that turn boys into men, admitting them
to the community of adult men. The elements of threat, torture and
death that, as we will see below, often play a role in initiatory rites,
can be recognized, she believes, in the myth of the Titans, by whom
the Dionysos-Zagreus infant (closely related to Zeus Kretagenes) is
torn to pieces. They are the mythical reflections of the elder mem-
bers of the tribe, disguised as spirits of the deceased, who 'kill' the
initiation candidate, reduced to the status of a baby, so that a new
human being may arise. The MegistosKourosthat is invoked "is ob-
viously but a reflection or impersonation of the body of Kouretes"
(p.27), who in their turn are mythical reflections of the human ephe-
boi. In other words, the mythical characters '' arise straight out of a
social custom" (p.28) and this amounts to saying (p.29) that "The
ritual act, what the Greeks called the dromenon,is prior to the divini-
ty" (in other words: "is prior to myth").
That much we knew already, but now we are in for a surprise: in
a related discussion a dozen pages earlier, Harrison maintained that
investigation of the ritual is a primary condition in order to fathom
the religious intention of a particular complex. She then continues:
"This does not, however, imply, as is sometimes supposed, that
ritual is prior to myth; they probably arose together. Ritual is the
utterance of an emotion, a thing felt in action, myth in words or
thoughts. They arise pari passu. The myth is not at first aetiological,
it does not arise to give a reason; it is representative, another form
of utterance, of expression" (p.16). When she returns to this rela-
tionship at greater length later on in the book (pp.327 ff.), she
describes myth as the words uttered by the participants in a ritual,
originally probably no more than cries and interjections. In fact, this
explains their simultaneous occurrence: "(myth) is the spoken cor-
relative of the acted rite, the thing done; it is to legomenonas contrast-
ed with or rather as related to to dromenon" (p.328).
This may suffice to explain the irritation felt by many a reader
used to more consistent reasoning; in particular, the parenthetical
clause, "as is sometimes supposed," is a jewel. But this does not
diminish the fact that she has outlined a novel and serious possibili-
ty: that of the simultaneous origin of myth and ritual in certain situa-
tions. And she even appears to introduce yet a third possibility when
she writes: ''When we realize that the myth is the plot of the dromenon
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 29

we no longer wonder that the plot of a drama is called its 'myth'"

(p. 331). Actually, the suggestion that myth can also function as the
scenario of a (dramatic) ritual seems to be formulated here in nuce.
It is difficult to say what exactly she meant by this expression, which
was, as a matter of fact, exploited by a school of later scholars who
indeed maintained that myth could be the scenario of dramatic
action 27 .
To sum up: in sometimes rudimentary form and with often dubi-
ous argumentation Harrison offered three suggestions on the in-
terrelation of myth and ritual. These are:
1. myth arises from rite,
2. myth and rite arise pari passu,
3. myth is the scenario of a dramatic ritual.
Moreover, she tested these theoretical possibilities in two cases of a
specific myth and ritual complex:
A. the Frazerian complex of year king, year god and New Year
festival,
B. the initiation complex.
We shall now see that for decades to come it was only types 1) and
3) of these theoretical possibilities that attracted any attention, and
that in the initial phase interest was focused almost exclusively on
A) the New Year myth and ritual complex. The remaining two sug-
gestions, 2) and B), did not receive much credit or attention until
very recently. As stated earlier, I shall structure my remarks accord-
ing to the patterns of interrelation put forward by Harrison.

2. Myth arisesfrom rite: the Cambridge schoo/28

Two genuine classical philologists, G. Murray and F.M. Cornford,
each contributed a chapter to Themis. In his 'Excursus on the Ritual

27 In Themis, 331-4, she says that "the mythos is the plot which is the life-
history of an Eniautos-daimon" and in Ancient Art and Ritual (London-New York
1913) eh. V: "From ritual to art: the dromenon and the drama" she elaborates
upon this theme. But it is problematic whether we may call this "myth as the
scenario for ritual" since she regards both the god (eniautosdaimon) and the drama
as having developed from one and the same annual rite.
28 On the Cambridge ritualists see now: Calder 1991; R. Ackerman, The Myth
and Ritual School:J. G. Frazerand the CambridgeRitualists (New York-London 1991);
Doty 1986, 73-8. A complete bibliography: Sh. Arlen, The CambridgeRitualists:An
AnnotatedBibliography(London 1990).
30 CHAPTER ONE

Forms preserved in Greek Tragedy' (pp.341-63) Murray explains

the rise of tragedy from a dancing ritual around the eniautosdaimon
Dionysos. In tragedy, Murray-adopting Harrison's schemes-
holds, the following underlying pattern may be discovered: 1) agon,
a fight between the year god and his enemy; 2) pathos, the year god
suffers sacrificial death; 3) messengerarrives, bringing word of the
god's death; 4) threnos,lamentation; 5) anagnorisis,the killed god is
recognized; 6) theophany,the god's resurrection and manifestation.
The very next sentence in Murray's paper is: "First, however,
there is a difficulty to clear away" (p.344), and that is precisely what
the reader had already suspected. After all, we are always told that
a tragedy that ends well is not a very good tragedy, and that this is
the reason why the rare tragedies with happy endings run the risk
of being assigned a place among the satyr plays. In order to solve
his difficulty, Murray assumed that the positive final chords had be-
come detached from the tragedy proper and ended up as a separate
theme in the satyr plays. This is one of the first explicit invocations
of the 'disintegration of the pattern', a stereotyped plea in the myth
and ritual debate.
In later works Murray repeatedly returned to the myth and ritual
notion 29 , for instance in the initial chapters of his popular Five Stages
of GreekReligion30 . He also wrote the preface to Th. Gaster's corn-

29 For Murray's scholarly achievements see: F. West, GilbertMurray: A Biogra-

phy (London 1984) and D. Wilson, GilbertMurray OM 1866-1957 (Oxford 1988). A
short impression: Lloyd-Jones 1982, 195-214. Cf. also: R. L. Fowler, in: Briggs
&Calder 1990, 321-34; idem, in: Calder 1991, 79-95; P. G. Naiditch, ibid. 124n.3.
Murray returned to myth and ritual theories in other works: Euripidesand his Age
(New York 1913, Oxford 19462) 28-32; Aeschylus, the Creatorof Tragedy(Oxford
1940) 145-60; cf. R. L. Fowler, in: Calder 1991, 90 n.25. Criticism in A. W.
Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedyand Comedy(Oxford 1927) 185-206. In his
reissue of this book (1962) 126-29, T. B. L. Webster gives a reassessment of Mur-
ray's achievement. For other theories on the origin of tragedy, see: H. Patzer, Die
AnfangedergriechischenTragodie(Wiesbaden 1962); G. F. Else, The Originand Early
Form of GreekTragedy(Cambridge MA 1965). Recent theories on the ritual origins
of tragedy: Burkert 1966a = 1990, 13-39; F. R. Adrados, Festival,Comedyand Trage-
dy. The GreekOriginsof Theatre(Leiden 1975); idem, The Agon and the Origin of the
Tragic Chorus, in: Serta Turyniana. Studies A. Turyn (Urbana 1974) 436-88; J. J.
Winkler, The Ephebes' Song: Tragoidiaand Po/is, Representations11 (1985) 26-62 =
J. J. Winkler & F. I. Zeitlin (edd.), Nothing to Do with Dionysos?Athenian Drama in
Its Social Context(Princeton Univ. Press 1990) 20-62.
°
3 Four Stages of GreekReligion originated as a series of lectures at Columbia
University in 1912. It was revised and enlarged with an additional chapter as Five
Stagesof GreekReligion (London 1935, 19463).
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 31

prehensive book Thespis: Ritual, Myth and Drama in the Ancient Near
East (1950), discussed below. Here at last a connection emerges be-
tween Greece and the ancient Near East, which had been exploited
hardly or not at all in the Cambridge school since Frazer. It was
F.M. Cornford who went farthest in this respect. In his The Origin
of Attic Comedy ( 1914) he held the rather surprising view that comedy,
no less than tragedy, arose from a ritual New Year festival around
the death and rebirth of the god. He had already adumbrated this
theory in his contribution to Themis, in which he discussed the origin
of the Olympic games: the winner in the contest, the Megistos Kouros
of the year, is led in a wild komos, and celebrates a sacral marriage
with the king's daughter. These, he held, are also the ingredients of
comedy. In his later work, however, Cornford 31 extended his vision
further: man evolves from the magical (Frazer) through the mythi-
cal (Frazer/Harrison) to the philosophical/rational stage, the stage
to which Cornford in fact devoted the bulk of his studies. The con-
tacts with the cultures of the Near East were specified by Cornford
in a posthumous publication, The Unwritten Philosophy (1950), in
which he linked motifs from Hesiod's Theogony with seasonal myths
from the Near East, an initiative that has had a highly productive
sequel in the last twenty years or so32 .
This means that the Cambridge school 33 was eventually posthu-
mously freed from a certain Greece-oriented position of isolation,

31 On Cornford see: D. K. Wood, in: Briggs & Calder 1990, 23-36; M. Cham-
bers, in: Calder 1991, 61-77; the rich bibliographical note by P. G. Naiditch, ibid.
125 n. 4. Remarkably, the leading French structuralist in the classical field, J. -P.
Verna"nt, highly appreciates the works of Cornford, whereas his mentor Louis Ger-
net, a pupil of Durkheim, had little or no appreciation for the works of Harrison
and Cornford. Cf. also Loraux 1981, 35-73, and below n.88. On Gernet see: S.
Humphreys, The Work of Louis Gernet, in Humphreys 1978, 76-106; A. Maffi,
Le 'Recherches' di Louis Gernet nella storia del diritto greco, QS (1981) 3-54; C.
Ampolo, Fra religione e societa, StudStor25 (1984) 83-9; R. di Donato, Une oeuvre,
un itineraire, in: L. Gernet, Les Grecssans miracle(Paris 1983) 403-20.
32 H. Otten, Vorderasiatische Mythen als Vorlaufer griechischer Mythenbil-
dung, FuF (1949) 145-7; A. Heubeck, Mythologische Vorstellungen des alten
Orients im archaischen Griechentum, Gymnasium62 (1955) 508-20; G. Steiner, Der
Sukzessionsmythosin Hesiods Theogonieund ihrenorientalischenParallelen(Diss. Hamburg
1958); P. Walcot, Hesiod and the Near East (Cardiff 1966); M. L. West, Early Greek
PhilosophJ!and the Orient (Oxford 1971); Kirk 1971, 2-20; Burkert 1979 and 1984.
33 I leave aside A. B. Cook with his massive monograph Zeus 1-111(Cambridge
1914-1942). He is perhaps the most typical disciple of Frazer, but he did not con-
tribute to myth and ritual theory. On this scholar see: H. Schwab! in: Calder 1991,
227-49.
32 CHAPTER ONE

partly under the influence of another Myth and Ritual school

which-in similar isolation-directed attention to the Near East. I
now turn to this other school.

3. Myth as a scenariofor dramatic ritual: the 'Myth and Ritual School' proper
In 1933 the Old Testament scholar S. H. Hooke edited a volume of
studies to which many scholars contributed: Myth and Ritual: Essays
on the Myth and Ritual of the Hebrews in Relation to the Culture Pattern of
the Ancient East, and 25 years later he edited another volume titled
Myth, Ritual and Kingship (1958), in which both opponents and sup-
porters had their say-an ideal state of affairs for later historians 34 .
It was this school of myth and ritual theorists that gave this com-
plex its characteristic name and content 35 . The titles of these books
are programmatic, pointing as they do to cultures of the ancient
Near East, including the Israelite one, and the theme is the interrela-
tion of myth and ritual in a context in which kingship plays an
important role 36 . The thesis is that in these areas there existed an

34 His earlier collection The Labyrinth (London 1935) has no bearing on the new
ideas. Hooke's try-out was: The Babylonian New Year Festival,Journal of theMan-
chesterEgyptologicaland Oriental Society 13 (1927) 29-38. The most convenient in-
troduction to his ideas is his Middle EasternMythology(Harmondsworth 1963). On
the scholar Hooke see: E. C. Graham, Nothing is Herefor Tears. A Memoir of S. H.
Hooke (Oxford 1969).
35 Several studies have been devoted to the 'Myth and Ritual School'. In Myth,
Ritual and Kingship (Oxford 1958), Hooke gives a historical survey of this approach,
which he refuses to call a 'school'. There is also a critical essay by S. G. F. Brandon
in the same collection. Cf. also: J. Weingreen, The Pattern Theory in Old Testa-
ment Studies, Hermathena108 (1969) 5-13; E. O.James, Myth and Ritual in theAncient
Near East (London 1958); Versnel 1970, 201-35; J. W. Rogerson, Myth in Old Testa-
ment Interpretation(Berlin 1973) 66-84 and literature below nn. 75 ff. Recently
Auffarth 1991, 38-118, presented a reconsideration of the main issues of the Myth
and Ritual school.
36 So recently: Auffarth 1991, who holds that the festivals marking the turn of
the year should not be seen as an annual recreation of the natural world (in the sense
of Eliade's 'eternal return', which he rejects) but rather as periods in which people
experience and dramatize the catastrophes that would occur if the gods were not
there to protect order and prosperity. Now, these gods (more often the God) might
decide to surrender the nation to chaos if the king, guarantor of justice, would fail
to do his duty. Thus, according to Auffarth, the festivals in discussion, which are
all marked by signals of reversal (for this aspect see below and chapter II) have their
focus in the legitimation and evaluation of kingship, rather than in issues of fertility
or cyclical re-creation. It is impossible to discuss this rich and provocative book in
any detail here. But as it deals with two major issues of the present chapter it may
serve clarity if I just mention in general terms where I agree and where I do not.
Of the two major characteristics marking these festivals of transition in the Ancient
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 33

endemic, widespread 'cult pattern'. What did this pattern look like
and how was the idea conceived?
It all began with the Babylonian New Year festival, the so-called
Akitu festival 37 • All the gods, headed by Marduk, come to Babylon
to celebrate the New Year in ceremonies that include a sacred marri-
age. The king is subjected to a curious ritual: the insignia of his dig-
nity, his scepter, ring and crown are taken from him and laid down
in front of Marduk's statue. The king kneels down and the priest
pulls one of his ears; the king professes his innocence and is given
the promise that his kingship will prosper. The insignia are returned
to him and he is struck by the priest, which makes the king cry. From
other sources we learn that the king then rides through the city in
a kind of triumphal procession, together with Marduk.
That is, in itself, already more than enough for a Frazerian
scheme, as Frazer himself had not failed to notice 38 . Here we seem
to have a variant of the ancient regicide, toned down into abdica-
tion, humiliation, and re-investiture. So much for the rite. As for the
myth, the Enuma Elish, the Creation Epic, was recited during these
New Year festivals. It told how Marduk (originally, of course, an
older, in fact Sumerian, god) led the gods to war against Tiamat, the
chaos monster of the primeval flood; how he defeated Tiamat's

Near East: 'royal ideology' and 'reversal', A. takes kingship as the kernel. Ifwe
restrict ourselves to the Ancient Near East this will not raise much protest. But look-
ing at other cultures and watching A. 's attempts to demonstrate the same emphasis
for instance in Greek festivals, problems loom up. The Kronia-not having any
visible relationship with kingship (see the next chapter)-are left out of the discus-
sion and the Anthesteria resorted to, where the (scarce) royal elements have to sup-
port a heavy ideological construction. It soon appears, as will be amply shown in
the present book, that the basic common denominator of such festivals of the turn-
ing of the year is an, often carnivalesque, demonstration of the stagnation of any
official form of power, both political and social-involving a temporary anomiawith
social reversal-including (where it exists) kingship. This does not detract at all
from the great value of A. 's analyses of the royal elements in the Near Eastern fes-
tivals, where he in fact can and does follow a long series of predecessors, and where
I generally agree with him. But it does mean that it is unnecessary (and may be
even damaging) to search for royal interpretations at all costs and play down other
characteristic elements such as references to fertility or, especially, references to
'recreational' aspects. A. 's rejection of Eliade's 'eternal return' seems to have been
very much inspired by his own point of departure. See my remarks below p.120
n.102.
37 This festival figures in all myth and ritual studies. There is a very circum-
stantial treatment by S. A. Pallis, The BabylonianAkitu Festival(Copenhagen 1926).
See now: Auffarth 1991, 45-55.
38 In two volumes of the GoldenBough(see above n. 15): The Dying God, 111; The
Scape Goat, 354 ff.
34 CHAPTER ONE

forces, sliced her in two and fashioned heaven and earth from the
two pieces. What we have here, then, is a case of perfect parallelism:
the rite performed by the king is a reflection, in human terms, of
what happened to the god in primordial mythical times, 'in illo tem-
pore'39. Creation of the cosmos after a victory gained over chaos
corresponds to the regeneration of kingship after a period of chaotic
anarchy during the king's absence, a correspondence confirmed by
the mention of the king's sacred marriage 40 . For the correspon-
dence to be perfect, the myth would have to contain the element of
the god's downfall, too, as is fitting for a 'dying and rising' god and
as is told, for instance, of other Near Eastern gods (notably Tam-
muz). Did Marduk, too, perish first? In the Enuma Elish this is not
the case, but on a sorely damaged tablet from the sixth century
BC 41 it is recorded that Marduk is imprisoned, beaten and wound-
ed: "People are looking in the streets for Marduk. Where is he held
captive? ( ... ) The Enuma Elish they sing in Nisan is about him who
is in prison ... ''. This, then, would complete the myth and ritual
pattern, the 'cult pattern':
RITE MYTH
Crisis situation between old Threat by primeval chaos in
and new, the shape of a monster,
King is dethroned and humiliated, Marduk taken prisoner,
King is reinstated, Marduk gains victory,
becomes king,
Triumphal pageant, Triumphal pageant,
Sacred marriage. Sacred marriage (celebrated
on New Year's day).

Numerous scholars, especially in Britain and Scandinavia, (for in-

stance, C.J. Gadd, E.O.James, A.R.Johnson, K.I.A. Engnell and

39 According to the famous expression coined by M. Eliade. He has certain

connections with the myth and ritualists, for instance in Eliade 1949, chapter II,
and 19642 , 335 ff.
40 E. D. van Buren, The Sacred Marriage in Early Times in Mesopotamia,
Orientalia13 (1944) 2 ff.; S. N. Kramer, The Sumerian Sacred Marriage Texts,
PAPhS 107 (1963) 485 ff.; W. H. Ph. Romer, Sumerische'Konigshymnen'der /sin Zeit
(Diss. Utrecht 1965). Cf. for more literature Auffarth 1991, 52 n. 22, who does not
see any relationship with fertility in this rite.
41 There are ample commentaries by H. Zimmern, Zurn babylonischen Neu-
jahrsfest, Ber. Sachs. Ges. Wiss. 70 (1918); F. Thureau-Dangin, Rituels accadiens
(Paris 1921) 127 ff. S. H. Langdon, The Epic of Creation(Oxford 1923) 20 ff. provid-
ed another edition under the title 'The Death and Resurrection of Bel-Marduk'.
Cf. Auffarth 1991, 51, with more recent literature in n.18.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 35

G. Widengren) have tried to discover this New Year complex in

other Near Eastern cultures as well 42 . According to Hooke and
others, the theory is not to blame for the unavoidable problems that
arise. In many cultures, only the mythic component has been
preserved; everywhere we have to allow for disintegration of the pat-
tern due to migration, retouching or theological intervention 43 . As
for Israel, one could already hark back to the fundamental studies
by S. Mowinckel, who had recognized in some psalms mythic-ritual
texts accompanying the king's enthronement as Yahweh's repre-
sentative44.
As stated earlier, this myth and ritual school had hardly any con-
tact with the earlier Cambridge school 45 . Frazer, who was hon-
oured by the Cambridge group 46 , is virtually ignored by Hooke
and his followers. One sometimes gets the impression that they feel
embarrassed when reminded of the unmistakably Frazerian aspect
of their cult pattern. Hooke even strongly opposes Frazer's "non-
historical method of the purely comparative approach'', and this
leads to several other characteristic differences between Hooke and
Harrison, to single out these two scholars. As Harrison saw it, in the
last analysis everything had started with magic and had developed
gradually 47 . Hooke, on the other hand, was not interested in the
magical origins of sacral kingship, if any. Whereas Frazer and Har-
rison held that all over the world rite and myth developed in corn-

42 Most enthusiastically by K. I. A. Engnell, Studies in Divine Kingship in the An-

cient Near East (Uppsala 1943) and G. Widengren, Sakrales Konigtum im Alien Testa-
ment und imjudentum (Stuttgart 1955).
43 This is the most conventional-and convenient-escape for desperate
defenders of a pattern, exploited by Murray as well as by the 'Out-and-out myth
and ritualists' (see below).
44 S. Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien I-IV (1922-24), II: Das Thronsbesteigungsjestjah-

wiihs und der Ursprung der Eschatologie. See Auffahrt 1991, 65-76, with recent litera-
ture 66 n.7.
45 S. A. Hooke gave one of his books, Alpha and Omega. A Study in the Pattern of
Revelation (Welyn 1961), the same title as the one Jane Harrison had chosen for one
of her books. In the collections, however, there is hardly any reference to the Cam-
bridge school.
46 Frazer later distanced himself from the Cambridge movement, as is evident
from his correspondence with Marett, in which he also belittles the influence of
Robertson Smith. See: R. Ackerman, Frazer on Myth and Ritual,JHI 36 (1975)
115-34, and his book (1991) cited above n.28.
47 McGinty 1978, 79: "Harrison depended so heavily on evolutionism that, the
general theory of evolution of primitive religion having been overturned, her analy-
sis has lost most if not all of its cogency. ''
36 CHAPTER ONE

parable ways through spontaneous evolution, Hooke adopted a

diffusionist view. He thus betrayed his own origin, the Pan- Egyp-
tian diffusionism advocated by G. Elliot Smith and W. J. Perry and
the Pan-Babylonian version defended by A. Jeremias and others 48 .
There are further differences, such as the stronger emphasis on king-
ship, which is understandable against the background of the culture
of the ancient Near East. By far the most significant one, however,
is the fact that in the relation of myth and rite the order is reversed,
or at least given a reversed bias. Whereas the Cambridge ritualists
in general, in spite of variants, believed in the rise of myth from rite,
the new Orientalist myth and ritual theorists shifted the emphasis.
Hooke did not exactly exclude this sequence, but he side-stepped the
question of origin. Taking a synchronic viewpoint, he regarded roy-
al ritual as a dramatic representation of the mythical scenario. In his
first volume of papers he writes: "In general the spoken part of a
ritual consists of a description of what is being done, it is the story
which the ritual enacts. This is the sense in which the term 'myth' is
used in our discussion. The original Myth, inseparable in the first
instance from its ritual, embodies in more or less symbolic fashion,
the original situation which is seasonally reenacted in the ritual"
(p.3). The passage is not free from ambiguity 49 , but it does give a
clear indication of what the author does and does not accept. It is
at any rate the shortest statement of this myth and ritual approach 50
and as such a direct heritage from the Pan-Babylonian J eremias 51 ,

48 G. Elliot Smith, The Ancient Egyptians and the Origins of Civilisation (London
1911, 19232 ); Human History (London 1930); W. J. Perry, The Children of the Sun:
A Study in the Early History of Civilization (London 1923); The Growth of Civilization
(London 1924). See: A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History I (London 1955) 424-46. The
strongly astral emphasis in these positions may be considered a late offshoot of Max
Miiller's astral mythology. On astral mythology in Old Testament and related
studies: J. W. Rogerson o.c. (above n.35) 45-84.
49 To quote from another collection, The Siege Perilous (London 1956) 43:
" ... the ritual myth which is magical in character, and inseparable from the ritual
( ... ) is older than the aetiological myth which has no magical potency ... ''.
50 That this order does indeed occur can be documented by the coronation ritu-
al of the Japanese emperor, in which what happened in illo tempore is imitated in a
ritual form: M. Waida, Conceptions of State and Kingship in Early Japan, ZRGG
28 (1976) 97-112. Eliade has unequivocally opted for this view of the relationship
between myth and ritual. A. E. Jensen, Mythos und Kull bei Naturviilkern (Wiesbaden
1951), translated as Myth and Cult among Primitive Peoples (Chicago 1963), gives
precedence to myth as well. However, his definition of myth is so broad that it prac-
tically covers the concept 'content of belief.
51 A. Jeremias, Handbuch der altorientalischen Geisteskultur (Leipzig 19292 ) 171.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 37

who wrote in 1929 that '' alles irdische Sein und Geschehen einem
himmlischen Sein und Geschehen entspricht'' (' 'everything that ex-
ists and happens on earth reflects something that exists and happens
in heaven'') and that the earthly king is an'' Abbild des himmlischen
Konigs" (" an image of the heavenly king"). Thus the flock of the
faithful need not worry: whatever was said of Him, God came first
and had always done so. Those who preferred to think that He Him-
self might have arisen from some earlier social ritual were always
welcome in libertine Cambridge.

3. THE FUSES BLOW: OUT AND OUT MYTH AND RITUAL THEORISTS 52

In one of her later works, with the appropriate title Epilegomenato the
Study of GreekReligion ( 1921), Jane Harrison threatened to prove that
the well-known legend ofDonjuan had arisen from a fertility ritual
(p. xlii n. 1). Murray had already preceded her by applying the
myth and ritual scheme to Shakespeare's works 53 . It was to be
expected-why should diffusion be confined to the Near East? Why
would evolution obtain only in Greece? Patelmundus. One of the con-
tributors to another volume of essays edited by Hooke, The Labyrinth
(1935) was A. M. Hocart. The final sentence of his paper 54 , which
also concludes the book, is: ''Thus we have gone round the world
in search of the true myth, the myth that is bound up with life. We
have found it in India, beneath the Southern Cross, in the plains of
North America. We have come to find it at our doors". We would
not be wrong to think of Hocart as the founder of what we might call
"out and out myth and ritualism". In an earlier work, Kingship
(1927), he had already discovered a coronation ritual that had
spread all over the world, starting from Mesopotamia. It was based
completely on the New Year scheme but consisted of a much greater
number of elements, twenty-six in fact, which are consequently

His 'catechism' Die Panbabylonisten,deralte Orientund die AegyptischeReligion(Leipzig

1907) is still worth reading.
52 A survey of the themes discussed in this section minus the anthropological
data is given by Hyman 1974.
53 Hamlet and Orestes. The Annual ShakespeareLecture before the British Academy
(1914).
54 This contribution is incorporated in the collection edited by A. M. Hocart,
The Life-givingMyth and OtherEssays (London 1952, 19702). A bibliography and as-
sessment: R. Needham, A Bibliographyof Arthur Maurice Hocart(Oxford 1967) and
Man 4 ( 1969) 292. His most influential books are Kingship (London 1927) and Kings
and Counce/ors(Cairo 1936, Chicago 19702).
38 CHAPTER ONE

arranged from a to z. This opened the floodgates. Lord Raglan, in

a book that became very popular, The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth
and Drama ( 1936) 55 , maintained that all myths in the whole world,
without exception, were based on a single primordial rite, sacral
regicide, and had their origin in Mesopotamia. And soon Guy
Fawkes, William Tell, Robin Hood and Thomas a Becket came to
follow suit 56 .
It all looks like a serious application of the witty argument by one
of his students who proved irrefutably that G. Murray himself must
be a dying and rising god. Jane Harrison, by contrast, is cautious
for once in her pious wish: "It would be convenient if the use of the
word myth could be confined to such sequences, such stories as are
involved in rites" (Themis, p.331). S. E. Hyman 57 , a forceful advo-
cate of the myth and ritual theory and admirer ofHarrison's Themis,
"the most revolutionary book of the 20th century" 58 , not only as-
serted that myth was always concomitant with rite, "like a child's
patter as he plays'', but also showed that Darwin's evolutionary the-
ories followed the myth and ritual pattern 59 : the 'struggle for life' is
the agon, the 'survival of the fittest' the theophany of Murray's tragic
scheme. The wildest excesses, however, were due to Murray's
namesake, the well-known Margaret Murray 60 , with her theories

55 The book was reprinted in New York-London 1979. For a short survey of his
ideas see Raglan 1974. Raglan was a faithful disciple ofHocart. In the introduction
to The Life-giving Myth (p. XIII) he writes: "Since none of these rites and customs
can reasonably be supposed to arise naturally in the human mind, their distribution
must be due to historical causes.'' Diffusionism is hard to kill as witness for instance
N. S. Josephson, GreekLinguistic Elements in the PolynesianLanguages(Heidelberg
1989).
56 On Becket and Guy Fawkes see: Fontenrose 1966, 14 ff.
57 Leaping for Goodly Themis, New Leader45 ( 1962), 25 f. ( cited by Fon ten rose
1966, 26). Other works by Hyman: TheArmed Vision(New York 1948); Myth, Ritu-
al and Nonsense, Kenyon Rev. 11 (1949) 455-75; and Hyman 1974.
58 In a review of Fontenrose, Python, in: CarletonMiscellany 1 (1960) 124-7 (cited
by Fontenrose 1966, 26).
59 The Tangled Bank: Darwin, Marx, Frazer and Freud as Imaginative Writers (New
York 1962).
60 M. A. Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (Oxford 1921, many
reprints); The Godof the Witches(London 1933 = Oxford 1981). For a short account
of Murray, her followers and her critics see: K. Thomas, Religion and the Declineof
Magic (Harmondsworth 1973) 614 ff. Some recent, though quite different, theories
on the relationship between witches and pagan myth and ritual: H. P. Duerr,
Dreamtime:Concerningthe BoundarybetweenWildernessand Civilization (Oxford 1985);
C. Ginzburg, / Benandanti: Stregoneriae culti agrari tra Cinquecentoe Seicento(Turin
1966); idem, Storianotturna. Una decifrazionedel sabba(Turin 1989). Especially the lat-
ter books are fascinating and innovative.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 39

about witches as later priestesses of ancient pagan rituals. She

manages to demonstrate that '' at least in every reign from William
the Conqueror to James I the sacrifice of the incarnate God was con-
summated either in the person of the king or in that of his sub-
stitute "61. To be frank, I prefer the explicitly romanticised fictions
of Robert Graves, Shirley Jackson (Hyman's wife), and J. B.
Vickery 62 , who introduced the theme in literature.
When I first became acquainted with myth and ritual theory more
than twenty years ago, I had not the faintest notion that I would ever
call Gaster's comprehensive work Thespis (above p.31) a moderate
book. This study gives a concise survey of what is known about the
'Seasonal Pattern' of the Near East and discusses the related
Canaanite, Hittite and Egyptian myths, with a few excursions into
Greek drama and English mummery play. After our voyage across
the seething waters of so much wilder seas, I am inclined to consider
this book as a relatively calm and clear fairway and to recommend
it-as a first introduction to a limited part of the myth and ritual
approach-to those interested readers who are firmly resolved not
to take the author's word for everything he claims 63 .
As far as myth and ritual theory in anthropological literature is
concerned, a few remarks will suffice, from which it may become
clear that some anthropologists have not wholly unjustly been in-
cluded in the present section. Here we should especially mention B.
Malinowski 64 , who found his source of inspiration in Frazer and

61 M. A. Murray, The Divine King in England (London 1954). For an assessment

of these and similar theories see: E. Rose, A Razor for a Goat (Toronto 1962).
6 2 Robert Graves, The White Goddess (New York 1958); S. Jackson, in: The Lot-
tery (I owe this information to Burkert 1980, 181 f.); J.B. Vickery, The Scapegoat
(New York 1972), 238-45. Cf. Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance (Cambridge
1920), which book had a great influence. More data in: Hyman 1974.
63 Theodor Gaster is perhaps the last true Frazerian. Next to the abridged Gold-
en Bough (above n.15), he also edited Myth, Legend and Custom in the Old Testament.
A Comparative Study with Chaptersfrom Sir James Frazer's 'Folklore in the Old Testament'
I, II (1969, New York-London 19752).
6 4 His most famous book, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London 1922, New
York 19612) contained a preface by Frazer. See on this work: M. W. Young (ed.),
The Ethnography of Malinowski: The Trobriand Islands 1915-1918 (London 1979). On
Malinowski's place in anthropology: R. Firth (ed.), Man and Culture. An Evaluation
of the Work of Bronislaw Malinowski (London 1957); Kardiner 1962, 160-86; Harris
1968, 547-67; Waardenburg 1974, 169-72; M. Panoff, Bronislaw Malinowski (Paris
1972); S. Silverman (ed.), Totems and Preachers:Perspectiveson the History of Anthropolo-
gy (New York 1980); Kuper 1985, 1-35. On his influence on the study of myth: I.
Strenski (ed.), Malinowski and the Work of Myth (Princeton UP 1992).
40 CHAPTER ONE

Robertson Smith and also quoted Harrison approvingly. A practis-

ing anthropologist himself, he gave a definition of myth as, above
all, 'charter', an explanation providing legitimation and foundation
of customs, rules, moral codes and rites: "There is no important
magic, no ceremony, no ritual without belief; and the belief is spun
out into accounts of concrete precedent. The union is very intimate,
for myth is not only looked upon as a commentary or additional in-
formation, but is a warrant, a charter, and often even a practical
guide to the activities with which it is connected" 65 . This is one of
the monolithic theories of myth attacked by Kirk and others. In this
respect Malinowski still betrays the influence of his mentors,
without being a genuine myth and ritual theorist: other phenomena
besides rites also find their legitimation in myths, and he later speaks
of "myth as a dramatic development of dogma" 66 , thus following
a different course.
Nevertheless, it is remarkable to see how other anthropologists
venture very far-reaching statements about the interrelation of myth
and rite. Kluckhohn 194 2, 58, claims that we cannot speak of priority
in the relation between myth and ritual: "The myth is a system of
word symbols, whereas ritual is a system of object and act symbols.
Both are symbolic processes for dealing with the same type of situa-
tion in the same affective mode''. That is why they are interdepen-
dent, and the task they have in common is to "reduce the anticipa-
tion of disaster" (p. 69). E. Leach puts it in an even less equivocal
way: "myth, in my terminology, is the counterpart of ritual: myth
implies ritual, ritual implies myth, they are one and the same" 67 .
Such statements can be explained if we think of the functionalist

65 Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (Glencoe 1948) 85. 'Explanation'
this time not in the intellectualist sense used by Tylor and Frazer.
66 The essay under this name appeared in: Sex, Culture and Myth (London 1963).
67 E. R. Leach, The Political Systems of Highland Burma (London 1954) 13. Al-
though Kluckhohn, contrary to the tendency of functionalism, paid due attention
to the needs of the individual and Leach, later on, dissociated himself from func-
tionalism and embraced structuralism, in this case the functionalist background is
clear. This has been convincingly shown by Penner 1968, 51: "they share one basic
assumption. This is the assumption that myths and rituals are to be explained by
reference to their function for the solidarity or unity of society and the psyche''. In
this context he refers to Harrison, Hooke, Gaster, Malinowski, Kluckhohn, Spiro
and Leach. His criticsm of this functionalistic approach, which often confuses goal
with effect, is refreshing. Kluckhohn's views on the function of myth and ritual as
presented in the text is largely adopted by Burkert (see below) and for instance also
by Auffahrt 1991, 32-5, where he attractively concludes: "Ein wichtiger Gesichts-
punkt ist, dass der Untergang gerade nicht Realitiit wird, es bei Spiel mit einer sus-
pendierten Realitiit bleibt". See also below eh. II.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 41

perspective from which these anthropologists operated. Others

put more emphasis on myth and ritual as symbolic means of giving
sense, form and definition to the social universe within which man
functions as a social being. In Natural Symbols Mary Douglas main-
tains that "Ritual is the institutionalized rhetoric of symbolic
order' ' 68 , an absolute condition for the idenfication of the group
and the integration of the individual in the group. Substitute 'myth'
for 'ritual' in this statement and the truth value remains the
same 69 . Many objections have been raised against the generalizing
and totalizing claims of the statements quoted above 70 . In an-
thropological circles the discussion is still in full swing, offering
many scholars ample opportunity to prove their skills in matters of
jargon, analysis and polemics. Let us hasten back to our own limited
territory, where, for that matter, we shall meet with the very same
discussion.

4. CRITICISM

There is a story that Bertrand Russell once proposed to get Jane

Harrison a bull on condition that she and her lady friends would
demonstrate how maenads managed to tear such a beast to pieces
with their bare hands. Russell, the logician, simply could not believe
that the unaided human hand was capable of such an act. His
proposal is a mild form of criticism, but matters could be different,

68 Douglas 1973. The phrase quoted is by an anonymous reviewer in TLS

(1970) 535. Segal 1980, 181, rightly points out the difference between Douglas and
her predecessors: ''The real difference between Douglas and her antagonists is that
she concentrates on the meaning, not the effect, ofritual, if not myth. For Harrison
and Hooke, Durkheim, Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, the meaning of myth
and ritual is secondary. Its effect, on either society or the individual, is primary.
The meaning is at most a means to that effect. For Douglas the reverse is true."
69 Cf. Leach o.c (above n.67) 15: "ritual action and belief alike to be under-
stood as forms of symbolic statement about social order''. Very interesting on the
neurobiological origins of the connections between myth and ritual: E.G. d' Aquili,
Ch. D. Laughlinjr,J. McManus, TheSpectrumof Ritual. A Biogenetic StructuralAnaly-
sis (New York 1979), who write for instance on p. 160: "In this regard is the func-
tion of myth to supply a solution to the problem raised at the conceptual level and
the function of concomitant ritual to supply a solution at the level of action".
70 In addition to the works mentioned in n.1 I mention: H. Baumann, Mythos
in ethnologischer Sicht I, II, Studium Generate12 (1959) 1-17 and 583-97; P.S. Co-
hen, Theories of Myth, Man 4 (1969) 337-53; J. A. Saliba, Myth and Religious
Man in Contemporary Anthropology, Missiology1 (1973) 282-93.
42 CHAPTER ONE

as witness the judgment of the Plato specialist P. Shorey 71 : ''Profes-

sor Murray has done much harm by helping to substitute in the
minds of an entire generation for Arnold's andjebb's conception of
the serene rationality of the classics the corybantic Hellenism of Miss
Harrison and Isadora Duncan and Susan Glaspell and Mr. Stark
Young's 'Good Friday and Classical Professors', the higher
vaudeville Hellenism of Mr. Vachel Lindsay, the anthropological
Hellenism of Sir James Frazer, the irrational, semi-sentimental,
Polynesian, free-verse and sex-freedom Hellenism of all the gushful
geysers of 'rapturous rubbish' about the Greek spirit". That is how
real classical scholars judged the Cambridge school, and Dodds,
therefore, with his irrational Greeks was not always taken seriously
either. Indeed, Cambridge was in such bad odour that M. I.
Finley 72, the best-known ancient historian there, saw fit to point
out en passant that he wrote his World of Odysseusbefore he ever set
foot in Cambridge, and Kirk his Myth after he left his Cambridge
post for Yale. Both books were said to exude a Cambridge odour.
Murray, by the way, was an "unregenerate Oxford Australian".
From all this one can perhaps imagine the emotional responses the
other myth and ritual school elicited in contemporary orthodox cler-
ical circles. Robertson Smith had already had to listen to this 73:
"His mind is like a shop with a big cellar behind it, and having good
shelves and windows ( ... ). But he doesn't grow his own wool, nor
does he spin the thread, nor weave the webs that are in his cellar or
on his shelves. All his goods come in paper parcels from Germany''.
Behind all this is the aversion to ethnological comparativism, espe-
cially if this refuses to stop short at Genesis 1: 1. And Robertson
Smith did not stop. A notorious 'Robertson Smith case' resulted,
partly in reaction to his blasphemous conviction that Moses could
never have written the entire Pentateuch. This led to his dismissal
from the chair of Old Testament studies of Free Church College in
Aberdeen in 1881. Two years later he moved to Cambridge, where
he came to hold a chair of Arabic.
I have not heard about any early retirement among later myth

71 P. Shorey, in Saturday Review of Literature 4 (1928) 608, as quoted by Cl.

Kluckhohn, Anthropologyand the Classics(Providence 1961) 20.
72 M. I. Finley, Anthropologyand the Classics(The Jane Harrison Memorial Lec-
ture 1972), also in: Finley 1975, 105, where I also found the preceding quotation.
73 J. S. Black and G. Chrystal, The Life of William RobertsonSmith (London
1912) 401.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 43

and ritual theorists, but the accusation of having "recklessly im-

posed their pattern" on Israelite religion 74 is only a mild version of
what has also been voiced in stronger terms. This kind of emotional
criticism is highly interesting from the point of view of cultural histo-
ry, but it does not allow of any reasonable discussion. In this respect
it is radically different from other forms of critical approach.
For example, the building blocks of a theory can be tested for
hardness: the tablet on which Marduk's downfall is described may
be interpreted as Assyrian war propaganda against the hostile
supreme deity75; the hymn of the Kouretes itself hardly contains
any reference to initiation elements; in many ways it seems rather
to refer to the New Year complex 76 ; in tragedy there are simply no
traces of Murray's theophany and resurrection.
Or we can tackle the pillars of the building: P. Lambrechts 77 was
the first to aver that some alleged dying and rising gods, such as Attis
or Adonis, did die in the myth but did not disertis verbis rise again.

74 Thus H. Frankfort, The Problemof Similarity in Ancient Near Eastern Religions

(Frazer Lecture 1951) 8, an important criticism.
75 W. von Soden, Gibt es ein Zeugnis dafiir class die Babylonier an die Wieder-
aufstehung Marduks geglaubt haben?, ZA NF 17 (1955) 130-66; cf. Auffarth 1991,
50 f. Very sceptical also: J. Z. Smith, A pearl of Great Price and a Cargo of Yams:
A Study in Situational Incongruity, History of Religions 16 (1976) 1-19, reprinted in
revised form in Smith 1982, 90-101. He argues that the New Year complex was the
product of Hellenistic apocalyptic ideas. Cf. idem, 1978, 72-4, and, Dying and Ris-
ing Gods, in: M. Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopediaof Religion 4 (1987) 520-7, ignoring
the work by Italian scholars mentioned in the following notes. J. A. Black once
more explored the whole Akitu complex: The New Year Ceremonies in Ancient
Babylon: 'Taking Bel by the Hand' and a Cultic Picnic, Religion 11 (1981) 39-59.
Although he rejects the idea of a dying and rising god, he accepts a parallelism be-
tween the enthronement rites of Marduk and those of the king. Cf. also: Z. Ben-
Barak, The Coronation Ceremony in Ancient Mesopotamia, OrientaliaLovan. Peri-
od. 11 ( 1980) 55-67, with new evidence. See A. Livingstone, Mystical and Mythologi-
cal Explanatory Works of Assyrian and BabylonianScholars(Oxford 1986) 156-8 for the
political significance of the combat between Marduk and Tiamat. Auffarth 1991,
49, 60 n.13, mentions the possibility that the Epic of Creation after all is not as old
as is usually assumed and may have been created in praise of Marduk as the royal
god of Babylon.
76 See: West o.c. (above n.25) and Fontenrose 1966.
77 Lambrechts, Les fiites 'phrygiennes' de Cybele et d'Attis, BIBR 27 (1952)
141-70; La 'resurrection' d'Adonis, in: Melanges I. Levy (Bruxelles 1955) 207-40.
Cf. more recently: D. M. Cosi, Salvatore e salvezza nei misteri di Attis, Aevum 50
(1976) 42-71; U. Bianchi, Adonis: Attualita di una interpretazione 'religionsge-
schichtlich', and P. Xella, Adonis oggi: Un bilanco critico, both in: Adonis. Relazio-
ni delcolloquioin Roma 1981 (Rome 1984); S. Ribichini, Salvezza ed escatologia nella
vicenda di Adonis? in: Bianchi & Vermaseren 1982, 633-47.
44 CHAPTER ONE

A similar statement was made about Tammuz by other scholars 78,

and it has been suggested that a christological perspective imposed
a pattern upon the gods of the Near East, only half of which has actu-
ally been attested. Moreover, it has been pointed out that for Greece
we do not know anything about either sacral kingship or coherent
complexes of myth and ritual 79 . Even the actual existence of sacral
regicide, so often recorded in anthropological literature, has been
questioned. Informants too often refer to former times: "We our-
selves do not practise this any more, but our grandparents still
chopped up a king" 80 . We might consider introducing a category

78 E. M. Yamauchi, Tammuz and the Bible, JBL 84 (1965) 283-90. C. H.

Ratschow, Heilbringer und sterbende Gotter, in: Antike und Universalgeschichte. Fest-
schriftH. Stier ( 1972) 398 ff., argues that the act of dying itself is the symbol of salva-
tion. See also: C. H. Talbert, The Myth of a Descending and Ascending Redeemer
in Mediterranean Antiquity, NTS 22 (1976) 418-40. There is a reassessment of the
problems in: S. Ribichini, Adonis. Aspetti 'orientali' di un mito greco (Rome 1981)
181-97. Very explicit on the emphasis on death: Th. Podella, Som-Fasten.Kollektive
Trauerum den verborgenenGott im Alten Testament(Neukirchen-Vluyn 1989) 35-7. An
entirely different position has been taken by Burkert 1979, 99 ff.; 129 ff. and cf.
idem, Literarische Texte und Funktionaler Mythos: Zu Istar und Atrahasis, in:
J. Assman, W. Burkert, F. Stolz, Funktionenund Leistungendes Mythos. Drei altorien-
talischeBeispiele (Gottingen 1982) 63-82.
79 H.J. Rose, Myth and Ritual in Classical Civilisation, Mnemosyne 3 (1950)
281-7; M. P. Nilsson, Cults, Myths, Oracles,and Politics in Ancient Greece(New York
1951) 10-12. On the supposed cohesion of myth and ritual M. Eliade, Antaios 9
(1968) 329, says "<lass wir nicht einen einzigen griechischen Mythos in seinem
rituellen Zusammenhang kennen". Cf. S. G. Pembroke, Myth, in: M. I. Finley
(ed.), The Legacyof Greece.A New Appraisal(Oxford 1981) 301 ff.: "A one-to-one cor-
respondence between myth and ritual is not to be found in Greece." For a similar
discussion on sacral kingship and the myth and ritual theory in the Israelite context:
N. Snaith, Thejewish New YearFestival:Its Originsand Developments(London 1947);
H. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago 1948); J. de Fraine, L 'aspectreligieux
de la royauteisraelite(Rome 1954); A. R. Johnson, Sacral Kingship in Ancient Israel
(Cardiff 1955); K. H. Bernhardt, Das Problemder altorientalischenKonigsideologieim
A. T. (Leiden 1961); J. Eaton, Festal Drama in Deuterolsaiah(London 1979).
80 Thus for instance Fontenrose 1966, 8 ff., but see my remarks in the following
note. Moreover, he utterly fails to recognize the importance of what I would call
'mythic ritual'. A short discussion of the implications of this phenomenon in: J. van
Baal, Offering, Sacrifice, and Gift, Numen 23 (1976) 161-78, esp. 176-77; idem,
Dema: Descriptionand Analysis of Marindanim Culture (The Hague 1966) 540 f. The
question of whether the rituals as related in literature were ever actually performed
becomes pressing when we have to evaluate the well-known charges against Christi-
ans and other sects. See: Henrichs 1972; idem, Pagan Ritual and the Alleged
Crimes of the Early Christians, in: Kyriakon. Festschrijtj. QuastenI (Munster 1970)
18-35; idem 1981. Cf. W. Schafke, FriihchristlicherWiderstand, in: ANRWII, 23,
1 (1979) esp. 579-96; R. M. Grant, Charges of 'Immorality' against Various Reli-
gious Groups in Antiquity, in: R. v.d. Broek and M. J. Vermaseren (edd.), Studies
in Gnosticismand HellenisticReligionspresentedto G. Quispe!(Leiden 1981) 161-70. Cf.
for medieval and early modern Europe for instance the long list of 'cannibals'
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 45

'mythic ritual' to describe this very frequent and highly interesting

phenomenon.
Anyone who wants a survey of such instances of specific and
detailed criticism should consult J. Fontenrose 81 , who stated cate-
gorically as early as 1959 in his book Python: A Study of Delphic Myth
and its Origins (pp.461-2): "The rituals did not enact the myth, the
myth did not receive its plot from the rituals", and who, responding
to the criticism from the myth and ritual quarter, devoted a book to
The Ritual Theory of Myth ( 1966). The annoying thing is that this form
of criticism, however useful and even necessary it may be, will never
tip the scales. Of course, Raglan, Hyman and Margaret Murray
spoke the language of the initiated, which does not require a book to
defend or to attack it. There is no convincing the initiated: they see
a great light in which all the pieces can be fitted into the big jigsaw
puzzle. As for the non-initiated, they thought it all nonsense anyway.
And in any case, even detailed criticism among reasonable people
usually has only marginal effects. Even if it is conceded that the
tablet recording Marduk's imprisonment has another background

among Western European sectarians in: N. Cohn, Europe'sInner Demons(St. Albans

1976) 16 ff., and R. Po-chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder.Jews and Magic in Refor-
mation Germany(London 1988). For a different approach see: J. Winkler o.c. (below
n.144). There is a remarkable variant in the early Rabbinical laws which provided
detailed prescriptions of rituals without ever assuming that they would be per-
formed in actual reality. Here a system of ideas is expressed not in a mythical but
in a ritual literary form. "The ritual is myth": J. Neusner, Ritual without myth:
the Use of Legal Materials for the Study of Religions, Religion 5 (1975) 91-100.
81 However, Fontenrose does not exactly excel in anthropological knowledge.
There is an abundance of evidence on sacral kingship, which clearly proves that
ritual regicide is (or was) a common feature in not a few African cultures. I only
mention here: T. lrrstam, The King of Ganda:Studiesin theInstitutionof SacralKingship
in4frica (1944, repr. 1981); P. Hadfield, Traits of Divine Kingship in4frica (New York
1949, repr. 1979); L. Mair, African Kingdoms (Oxford 1977); M. W. Young, The
Divine Kingship ofthejukun: A Re-evaluation of some Theories, Africa 36 (1966)
5-53. Recently, African sacral kingship, including the issue of regicide, has drawn
much attention: A. Adler, La mart est le masquedu roi. La royautesacreedes Moundang
du Tchad (Paris 1979); L. De Heusch, The Drunken king, or the Origin of the State
(Bloomington 1982); idem, Rois nes d'un coeurde vache(Paris 1982); idem, Sacrificein
Africa. A StructuralApproach(Manchester 1985); G. Feeley-Harnik, Issues in Divine
Kingship, Annual Review of Anthropology14 (1985) 273-3; J.-C. Muller, Le roi bouc
emissaire:Pouvoiret rituelchez les Rukuba du Nigeria central(Quebec 1980). The discus-
sion on the meaning ofregicide has received a fresh impulse by the provocative the-
ories of Rene Girard. See: Simon Simonse, De slaperigheidvan Koning Fadyet.Regicide
en het zondebokmechanisme in de NilotischeSoedan, in: W. van Beek (ed.), Mimese en
geweld. Beschouwingenoverhet werk van Rene Girard(Kampen 1988) 172-208. Cf. also
the balanced discussion of the pitfalls of terminology by Price 1983, 235-9, and the
discussions by Burkert, Girard and Smith in: Hammerton-Kelly 1987.
46 CHAPTER ONE

-itself an arguable point-there is still a mass of data left. It is thus

essential to ask how many data we need before we feel justified in
speaking of a pattern, and that is where opinions differ widely.
Refuting theories in a genuinely scientific way is only possible
when these theories claim to have general validity. As the Dutch es-
sayist Karel van het Reve says82 , popularizing Popper: if a scientif-
ic theory claims that all redheads are alcoholics, we can refute this
proposition by pointing to one redhead who is not an alcoholic-and
whoever came up with that general proposition simply has to hold
his tongue henceforth. This neatly sums up Kirk's approach in his
works mentioned above 83 . In The Nature of Greek Myths he proves
that the five monolithic theories of the origin and essence of myth-
theories claiming to possess general and exclusive validity-are
untenable because we can always find some myth that does not fulfill
the conditions stipulated. As regards the interpretation of myth and
ritual, he reasons as follows: if an interrelation could be proved, it
would not provide the one and only explanation for the rise of
myths, for we know many myths that cannot possibly have any ritu-
al connection, such as myths which explain why it is that a snake has
no feet and walks on his belly. And in so far as there really are
demonstrable relations between ritual and myth, their nature varies
widely. There are instances in which the myth arises from the ritual
or is invented for the occasion as an aetiological explanation-the
types we have dealt with for the most part so far. Then there are
forms in which myth and ritual arose independently but were
compounded-for instance, again, as an explanation of the rite-.
And there are a few myths that generate a ritual. Certain dramatic
actions in the mysteries imitate the myth of Demeter and Kore,
which in its turn may have been based on an older rite. And it may
also happen-but such cases are extremely rare-that ritual and
myth arise simultaneously as parallel responses to some critical
situation, in Kluckhohn's words: "to reduce the anticipation of
disaster''.
82 K. van het Reve, Een dag uit het {evenvan de reuzenkoeskoes
(Amsterdam 19802)
117.
83 Kirk 1971, 1-31; 1974, 223-53; idem, Aetiology, Ritual, Charter: Three
Equivocal Terms in the Study of Myths, YClS 22 (1972) 83-102. His sceptical ap-
proach has, in its turn, provoked critical reactions: TLS 14-8-1970, 889-91 (the
anonymous author was the same as the one of New YorkReview of Books, 28-1-1971,
44-5, namely E. Leach); J. Culler, YaleReview 60 (1970) 108-14; J. Conradie, The
Literary Nature of Greek Myths: A Critical Discussion of G. S. Kirk's Views,
AClass 13 (1977) 49 ff. A balanced account: R. Ackerman,JHJ 34 (1973) 147-53.
A structuralist view: C. Calame, QUCC 14 (1972) 117-35.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 47

We can hardly accept this as the last word on this matter. As I

said, Kirk's skeptical approach has already provoked serious criti-
cism. Was not the baby thrown out with the bathwater? Moreover,
granted that the redhead is not an alcoholic now, does that imply that
he has never been one before? Perhaps he was forced in some way to
leave the bottle alone? Or, being an alcoholic at heart, did he switch
to drugs as a substitute? Is his red hair natural? Or could it be that
all redheads were indeed originally alcoholics, but that migration
and acculturation have led to the disintegration of their way of life?
It is time for a very brief conclusion. Frazer is a fallen giant:
that is the communis opinio nowadays. "There have been no answers
because there were no questions'', says one of his wittiests critics,
J. Z. Smith 84 , thus paraphrasing Gertrude Stein as well as Frazer
himself, who in the introduction to the third edition of The Golden
Bough writes: ''It is the fate of theories to be wasted away ( ... ) and
I am not so presumptuous as to expect or to desire for mine an ex-
emption from the common lot. I hold them all very lightly, and have
used them chiefly as convenient pegs on which to hang my collec-
tion of facts"-which we might call the understatement of the cen-
tury. However, the giant who once wrote in a poetical, visionary
vein: "The dreamland world of fancy. There is my own true
home ... " 85 , remains a colossus, albeit a fallen one. Evolution of
religion from magic is an outdated notion by now. Nor should we,
as many epigones used to do, maintain the myth and ritual complex
connected with the year king and the year god as a scheme for any-
thing and everything, outside of which there is no salvation. Setting
aside, however, such notions as original regicide, we cannot very
well deny that in many cultures the time around the New Year is ex-
perienced as a period of transition, of crisis or of threat. The old
must be 'finished off, the new joyfully hailed; in between there is
no man's land. This notion is often represented ritually through sig-
nals of anarchy, lawlessness, anomia, and mythically as the menace
of the chaos from which the cosmos must be created. Mircea Eliade,
for one, has given an excellent sketch of all this and we shall discuss
various instances in the present book. Let us leave it at that for the
moment.

84 J. Z. Smith, When the Bough breaks, in: idem 1978, 208-39, who dismantles
the enormous structure of The GoldenBough piece by piece. Other important criti-
cism: Fontenrose 1966; E. R. Leach, The Golden Bough or Gilded Twig, Daedalus
90 (1961).
85 In his poem 'June in Cambridge'.
48 CHAPTER ONE

A farewell, equally, to the monolithic explanation of myth as a

stereotyped companion to rite. On the other hand, there are certain
links, such as Jane Harrison's types 1 and 3, which we have dealt
with 86 . That one variant-very rare, according to Kirk-in which
myth and rite emerge paripassu (Harrison, type 2) we have only men-
tioned so far. Like the specific second myth and ritual complex, the
initiation scheme (Harrison, type B), this variant has not come into
the limelight until recently 87 . A name is associated with this combi-
nation of initiation and myth and ritual in a new key: Walter
Burkert.

5. INITIATION: A MODERN COMPLEX

Harrison's Themis, though valued more highly by the writer herself,

was generally much less appreciated than her Prolegomena 88 . There

86 Of course, there is room for numerous refinements to the various kinds of

relationship between myth and ritual. D. Richard, Tolerance and Intolerance of
Ambiguity in Northern Tai Myth and Ritual, Ethnology(1974) 1-24, demonstrates
that ritual may function in a conservative fashion while myth may be tolerant
towards modern ideas.
87 Of course, there are exceptions. A typical Einzelgiingerlike Walter Otto makes
the "Zusammenfall von Kultus und Mythos" the central doctrine of his most
celebrated book Dionysos. Mythos und Kultus (Frankfurt 1933). This founder of
(another) 'Frankfurter' school eschewed any contact with anthropological theory or
comparativist trends in the history of religions and by no means borrowed his ideas
from Jane Harrison. See: W. F. Otto, Das Wart derAntike (Darmstadt 1962) 383-86
(bibliography); McGinty 1978, 141-80; A. Henrichs, Der Glau be der Hellenen:
Religionsgeschichte als Glaubensbekenntnis und Kulturkritik, in: W. M. Calder
III, H. Flashar, Th. Lindken (edd.), Wilamowitz nach 50Jahren (Darmstadt 1985);
H. Cancik, Die Gotter Griechenlands 1929: Walter Otto als Religionswissen-
schaftler und Theologe am Ende der Weimarer Republik, AU 27, 4 (1984) 71-89;
idem, Dionysos 1933: W. F. Otto, ein Religionswissenschaftler und Theologe am
Ende der Weimarer Republik, in: R. Faber & R. Schlesier (edd.), Die Restauration
der Gotter(Wiirzburg 1986) 105-23; cf. also Auffarth 1991, 120 n.4.
88 Harrison's own opinion: Arian 4 (1965) 399. Nilsson GGR I, 11, 64, was very
reserved. For criticism from the side of the school of Durkheim see: M. David,
L 'annee sociologique12 (1909-12) 254-60. Earlier, there had been more positive
sounds: ibid. 8 (1903-4) 270-6. Cf. also A. Reinach, RHR 69 (1914) 323-71. In the
background one feels the more general Durkheimian reservations regarding ethno-
logical approaches (i.e. Van Gennep ): F. A. lsambert, At the Frontier of Folklore
and Sociology: Hubert, Hertz and Czarnowski, Founders of a Sociology of Folk
Religion, in: Ph. Besnard (ed.), The Durkheimiansand the Foundingof FrenchSociology
(Cambridge-Paris 1983) 152-76; cf. n.31 above. See generally: G. Murray, Jane
HarrisonMemorial Lecture1928, reprinted in: Epilegomenaand Themis (above n.18)
559 ff.: "I think there was also, in conservative or orthodox circles, rather more
dislike of Themis as a 'dangerous book' than there had been of the Prolegomena".
Murray, in his turn, was reproached of being "etwas zu entgegenkommend gegen-
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 49

is no need to ask why. The strongly utilitarian and ritualistic ap-

proach to the ancient religions in particular might, at a pinch, swal-
low an occasional eniautos daimon-the term is even found once in
Nilsson's handbook, and Nilsson was surely not one of Harrison's
admirers 89-but could not sympathize with apparently 'aimless'
myth and ritual complexes in which the much sought-after element
of fertility was not paramount. It might appear surprising at first
sight that Themis was not enthusiastically received in Durkheim' s
circles either, which took offence-not unfairly-at the erratic, as-
sociative and intuitive nature of the book. Durkheim's maxim that
as soon as a psychological explanation is suggested somewhere you
may be sure that it is a wrong one proved to be ominous in this con-
text. What we can see now is that as the New Year myth and ritual
complex came under ever more violent critical fire, attention
switched to the initiation complex: the initiant arose from the dying
god's ashes. Before the sixties H. Jeanmaire's Couroi et Couretes
(1939, reprinted 1978) was the only major study in the classical field
in which the initiation scheme was applied to Greek myths and rites
in a consistent manner, to which we might add G. Dumezil, Le
problemedescentaures:Etude de mythologiecompareeindo-europeenne ( 1929).
The proviso in theclassicalfield is important, however, for outside that
domain, notably in the Germanic and Old Persian contexts, numer-
ous studies were devoted to Miinnerbunde,Jungmannschaftenand Ge-
heimbunde,which were generally recognized as historical reflections
of groups of youths in the initiation phase 90 . However, contacts be-

iiber manchen ldeen Jane Harrisons": 0. Weinreich in his review of Five Stagesof
GreekReligion, Philo/. Wochenschr.46 (1926) 643 f. = AusgewiihlteSchriftenII, 205-6.
The same critic wrote in his review of Themis: "Wenn sogar ein Gelehrter von ganz
anderer Richtung wie C. Robert in 0idipus einen 'Jahresgott' gefunden hat ( ... )
dann ist das ihrer Theorie vom eniautosdaimonzuzuschreiben. 0b sie in diesem Falle
stimmt, ist aber eine andere Frage, AusgewiihlteSchriftenII, 368.
89 Ironically, the term met with an outspoken distaste in her own circles: "I
hate 'daemons' of all sorts, and 'year-daemons' worse than any", wrote Cook in
a letter to Murray of 23 august 1923 (as quoted by R. Ackerman, in: Calder 1991,
15), but, then, Cook had never reached the rank of epoptesin Harrison's teletai.
90 A selection ofliterature on Miinnerbunde:H. Schurtz, Altersklassenund Miinner-
bunde(Berlin 1902); L. Weniger, Feralis Exercitus, ARW9 (1906) 201-47; 10 (1907)
61-81; 229-56; L. Weiser, Altgermanischejunglingsweihen und Miinnerbunde(Buhl
1927); H. Webster, PrimitiveSecretSocieties.A Study in Early Politicsand Religion(New
York 1908; 19322); 0. Endter, Die Sage vom wilden Jager und von der wildenJagd
(Diss. Frankfurt 1933); 0. Hofler, Kultische Geheimbundeder GermanenI (Frankfurt
1934); G. Widengren, Hochgottglaube im altenIran (Uppsala 1938); S. Wikander, Der
arischeMiinnerbund(Diss. Lund 1938); J. Przylusky, Les confreries de loups-garrous
50 CHAPTER ONE

tween these studies and those dealing with the Graeco- Roman
field,-in which A. Alfoldi is the most prominent figure-were not
made until very recently.
Any attempt to ascertain which scholar might have given the ini-
tial impulse to the renewed interest in the initiation pattern is bound
to be arbitrary. No doubt A. Brelich may be credited with having
encouraged the interest in this subject in the sixties, with such
studies as Le iniziazioni I, II (1960-61), which remained rather ob-
scure, and above all with Paides e Parthenoi I (1969), which was al-
ready in manuscript in 1960 (volume II was never published). In an
extensive introduction Brelich presents an anthropological typology
of initiation customs, which he then applies to Greek situations. It
was precisely in this period that anthropological interest in initiatory
rites was given a new incentive 91 . Eliade's Birth and Rebirth (1958;
reprinted as Rites and Symbols of Initiation, 1975) has done much to
make the typical characteristics of initiation more widely known. In
the same decade of youthful elan and students' protests P. Vidal-

clans Jes societes indo-europeennes, RHR 121 (1940) 128-43; W. E. Peuckert, Ge-
heimkulte (Heidelberg 1951); J. de Vries, AltgermanischeReligionsgeschichte(Berlin
19562) I, 454-5; G. Widengren, Der Feudalismus im alien Iran (Kain 1969); G.
Dumezil, The Destiny of the Warrior (Chicago 1970); 0. Hofler, Verwandlungskulte,
Volkssagenund Mythen (Osterr. Ak. Wiss. Phil-Hist. Kl. Sitz. Ber. 279, Vienna
1973); Alfoldi 1974, esp. 107-50; H.-P. Hasenfratz, Der indogermanische 'Miin-
nerbund', ZRGG 34 (1982) 148-63, in the wake of Hofler; Bremmer 1982; idem
19876, 38-43.
9! The amount of literature on initiation is overwhelming. Besides the works of
Van Gennep, Brelich and Eliade mentioned in the text, I single out: M. Zeller,
Knabenweihen(Diss. Bern 1923); A. E. Jensen, Beschneidungund Reifezeremonienbeiden
Naturviilkern(Stuttgart 1933); J. Haeckel, J ugendwcihe und Miinncrfest auf Feuer-
land, Mitteilungender Oesterreichischen Gesellschaftfii.r
Anthropologie43-4 7 ( 1947) 84-114;
V. Popp (ed.), Initiation. Zeremoniender Statusiinderungund des Rollenwechsels(Frank-
furt 1969); J. L. Brain, Sex, Incest, and Death: Initiation Rites Reconsidered, Cur-
rent Anthropology18 (1977) 191-208; A. Droogers, The DangerousJourney: Symbolic
Aspectsof Boy's Initiation amongthe Wageniaof Kisangani (Zai"re)(The Hague 1980); U.
Bianchi (ed.), TransitionRites: Cosmic, Socialand Individual Order(Rome 1986); J. S.
La Fontaine, Initiation (Manchester 1986). F. Sierksma, Religie, Sexualiteiten Agressie
(Groningen 1979) 260 ff. has a rich bibliography. A recent summary of the main
aspects: Auffarth 1991, 424-40. A general sociological approach of status passage:
B. G. Glaser & A. L. Strauss, Status Passage(Chicago 1971). For a particularly in-
teresting methodological approach to the application of classification and definition
in the study of ritual, especially initiation, sec: J. A. M. Snoek, Initiations (Diss.
Leiden 1987). Cf. also: J. P. Schojdt, Initiation and the Classification of Rituals,
Temenos22 (1986) 93-108. For the ancient world, Y. Dacosta, Initiations et sociitis
secretesdans l'antiquiti greco-romaine(Paris 1991) summarizes the main results of earli-
er discussions. For girl's initiation see below.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 51

N aquet published 'Le chasseur noir et l' origine de l' ephebie

athenienne' 92 , a study in which he maintained that it was not only
the Spartan but also the Athenian youths that were subjected to initi-
ation rites of a strongly archaic type well into historical times.

1. From Harrison to Burkert

Initiation was again in the air, and when I now select W. Burkert
as a starting point, this is not in the first place because he may be
regarded as the most innovative and authoritative scholar of Greek
religion of our times 93 , but, first, because a few younger specialists
owe their inspiration primarily to Burkert, and, secondly, because,
in my view, it was Burkert, more than anyone else, who placed the
initiation complex in the context of the myth and ritual approach.
His Weisheit und Wissenschaft: Studien zu Pythagoras, Philolaus und
Platon (1962) 94 had already drawn attention to initiation symptoms,
but a basic application was presented in 'Krekopidensage und Ar-
rhephoria' (1966b), an ideal case of myth and ritual. The rite
prescribes that each year the Arrhephoroi, two girls between seven and
eleven years old, are to be secluded on the Acropolis, where they
have to weave the peplos for Athene. They are assigned the task of
taking an object, the nature of which must remain unknown to
them, to Aphrodite's garden through an underground passage, and
returning with an equally invisible object, wrapped in cloths. The
myth tells of two of the daughters of Kekrops, Athens' most ancient
king, Aglauros and Herse, to whom the goddess Athena gave a kiste
which they were forbidden to open. However, they disobeyed and
what they discovered inside-(one or) two snakes and the Erichtho-
nios child-frightened them so much that they threw themselves
down from the Acropolis. The myth ends half-way-the tragic low

92 Annales ESC 23 (1968) 947-64, reprinted in idem 1981, 151-74. English ver-
sion in PCPS 194 (1968) 49-64. Reconsiderations and answers to critics in: The
Black Hunter Revisited, PCPS 212 ( 1986) 126-44; in revised form: Retour au chas-
seur noir, in: MelangesPierreLevequeII (Paris 1989) 387-411.
9 3 See on W. Burkert and the significance of his work: L. J. Alderink, Greek
Ritual and Mythology: The Work of Walter Burkert, Religious Studies Review 6
(1980) 1-14; Burkert iiber Burkert, FrankfurterAllgemeineZeitung 3 aug. 1988, 29 f.;
An Interview with Walter Burkert, Favonius 2 (1988) 41-52. The most important
review of his handbook I have seen is the one by B. Gladigow in: GGA 235 (1983)
1-16.
94 English edition: Lore and Sciencein Ancient Pythagoreanism(Cambridge Mass.
1972).
52 CHAPTER ONE

point-whereas the rite ends in a positive way with the girls' return.
The cost in terms of girls would have been prohibitive anyway-
respectable girls, too, for they came from upper-class circles. Apart
from that, there is splendid parallelism along the lines of a scheme
that has been exploited everywhere as a narrative pattern in myths
or tales of 'the girl's tragedy' 95 : prohibition-seclusion-violation
of the prohibition-girl threatened with punishment or death-
liberation. As a rule, the subject is a virgin, who is enjoined to re-
main a virgin (prohibition), is locked in for that purpose (seclusion),
becomes pregnant in spite of that (violation of prohibition), is threa-
tened with death by a wicked father or relative, but is saved, ulti-
mately, by her son or another male relative. This, however, as had
long been recognized 96 , is the typical pattern of the girl's initiation,
which is supposed to turn the girl at puberty into a young woman.
In this process two components-apart from all kinds of symbols of
leavetaking and new beginning, which in the much better known in-
itiation rites for boys have often been elaborated more fully-play

95 On this scheme: Burkert 1979, 14 ff. = 1990, 40-59. The scheme was al-
ready detected by J. G. von Hahn, SagwissenschajtlicheStudien Qena 1876); see:
Bremmer 1987b, 26, who gives a survey of the classical instances of the 'mother's
tragedy' on p. 27 ff. He disputes Burkert' s interpretation of this motif as a reflection
of girls' initiation on the ground that in some cases the mother of the hero is already
married. One may grant him this point but the enigma of the origin of the motif
is not solved. For his solution: "Apparently, great heroes come into being during
periods of intense crisis and transition in their mother's lives and they become the
more extraordinary thanks to their mother's hardships" (p.30), though obviously
true, fails to do justice to the stereotypednatureof the mother's particular hardships.
We shall see below that Burkert later changed his frame of interpretation. On the
myth of the bad father see also the literature in Alfoldi 1974, 104 n.147; D. Briquel,
in: Bloch 1976, 73-97. On a specific aspect of female imprisonment: R. Seaford,
Imprisonment of Women in Greek Tragedy, JHS 110 (1990) 76-90. For the Ar-
rhephoria as an initiatory rite see also: Brule 1988.
96 This was not the first time that the Arrhephoriawere explained as a relic of in-
itiation ritual: Jeanmaire 1939, 264 ff.; Brelich 1961, II, 123-6; cf. idem 1969,
231-8. Recently, several authors have remarked that the rites represent a prepara-
tory stage rather than being real initiatons in view of the age of the girls: Calame
1977, 237-9; Zeitlin 1982, 151. Brule 1987, 98 ff. regards the Arrhephoria among
other things as an ordeal of virginity in the last year before menarche. I can neither
entirely grasp nor, as far as I can grasp them, accept the recent views of N. Robert-
son, The Riddle of the Arrhephoria at Athens, HSCP 87 (1983) 241-88, any more
than I can fathom other myth and ritual interpretations by this author, such as: The
Origin of the Panathenaea, RhM 128 ( 1985) 231-95; The Ritual Background of the
Dying God in Cyprus and Syro-Palestine, HThR 75 (1982) 3-59; Melanthus,
Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History, GRBS 29 (1988)
201-61.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 53

an important role: during the period of seclusion the girl has to learn
to demonstrate the truly womanly skills-the 'work-complex' in the
words of a specialist 97 -and her female sexuality will have to be un-
sealed. Many frightening means are available for this purpose, such
as painful circumcision, mass deflorations, sexual humiliations, and
so forth 98 . F. Sierksma's book De roof van het vrouwengeheim (The
Theft of the Female Secret, 1962), which deals with this subject
among others, was renamed Religie, sexualiteit en agressie (Religion,
Sexuality, and Repression)-and justly so-when it was reprinted
in an academic edition ( 1979) 99 . This is the explanation Burkert
gave for the secret in the kiste which the girls were not allowed to
know and yet had to discover: we have here the symbols of woman's

97 H. E. Driver, Girl's Puberty Rites in Western North America, Universityof

CaliforniaPublications.AnthropologicalRecords6 (1941-2) 21-90: esp. 61.
98 Besides the works of Brelich, Eliade, Jeanmaire and Burkert, there is a vast
literature on girl's initiations and their possible relics in women's festivals. See for
instance: A. Winterstein, Die Pubertiitsriten der Miidchen mit deren Spuren in
Miirchen, Imago 14 (1928) 199-274; R. Briffault, "The Mothers": A Study of the Ori-
gins of Sentimentsand Institution II (London 1952) 187-208; R. Merkelbach, Sappho
und ihr Kreis, Philologus101 (1957) 1-29; J. Gage, Matronalia(Bruxelles 1963) pas-
sim; J. K. Brown, A Cross-cultural Study of Female Initiation Rites, AmericanAn-
thropologist65 (1963) 837-53; J. Stag!, Die Frauensuque und ihre Stellung zu den
anderen Melanesischen Geheimbiinden, Wiener VolkerkundlicheMitteilungen 14/5
(1967-8) 69-104; B. Lincoln, The Religious Significance of Women's Scarification
among the Tiv, Africa 45 (1973) 316-26; J. Prytzjohansen, The Thesmophoria as
a Women's Festival, Temenos 11 (1975) 78-87; G. E. Skov, The Priestess of De-
meter and Kore and her Role in the Initiation of Women at the Haloa at Eleusis,
Temenos11 (1975) 6-47; D. Visca, Le iniziazioni femminili: un problema de recon-
siderare, Religionee Civilta 2 ( 1976) 241-74; N. J. Girardot, Initiation and Meaning
in the Tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, AmericanJournal of Folklore90
(1977) 274-300; C. Calame (ed.), Rito e poesia oratein Grecia(Rome 1977); Calame
1977; B. Lincoln, Women's Initiation among the Navaho: Myth, R'.ite and Mean-
ing, Paideuma23 (1977) 255-63; Graf 1978; B. Lincoln, The Rape of Persephone:
A Greek Scenario of Women's Initiation, HThR 72 (1979) 223-35; B. Lincoln,
Emergingfrom the Chrysalis.Studies in Rituals of Women's Initiation (Cambridge Mass.
1981); J. N. Bremmer, Greek Maenadism Reconsidered, ZPE 55 (1984) 267-86;
Brule 1987; Dowden 1988. On the Arkteia at Brauron P. Perlman, Acting the She-
Bear for Artemis, Arethusa22 (1989) 111-33, provides a full bibliography, together
with a curious interpretation of her own: '' 'Acting as the she-bear' the maiden ark-
toi entered these hiding places where they like the hibernating she-bear were trans-
formed, at least ritually, from maiden to mother"; Chr. Sourvinou-Inwood, Studies
in Girl's Transitions. Aspects of the Arkteia and Age Representationin Attic Iconography
(Athens 1988). For more recent literature on the Arkteia see below p.329 n.131.
On the differences between girl's and boy's initiation: S. G. Cole, The Social Func-
tion of Rituals of Maturation: The Koureion and the Arkteia, ZPE 55 ( 1984) 233-44.
99 In this book there is also a very extensive bibliography on initiation. Cf. also
B. Bettelheim, Symbolic Wounds. PubertyRites and the Envious Male (London 1955).
54 CHAPTER ONE

fertility, notably the child, which may also be recognized in the ob-
ject, swaddled in cloths, that is returned after the girls' stay in
Aphrodite's garden.
All this started long ago with the research into the better-known
boys' initiation. For her theory Harrison could consult Les rites de
passage (1909) by A. van Gennep 100 , the first to make a systematic
study of rites of transition. The distinction he makes between ritesde
separation,ritesde marge,and ritesd'agregation,through which the youth
took leave of the old situation, remained in seclusion for some time,
and entered his new status, respectively, is still exemplary. Later
anthropologists have added many typical features to the ones
gathered by Van Gennep, the marginal period having increasingly
become the center of interest.
It is not always easy to distinguish the three constituent elements
clearly; they tend to merge smoothly. Frequent examples of the ele-
ments are: the boy gives up his childhood by withdrawing from his
mother, giving up his old name, banishing his origin from his
memory, leaving the old status behind by amputation oflimbs, hav-
ing a tooth knocked out, etc. As a member of the male community
he is accepted as a new human being. He is often actually reborn-
the mother sometimes being allowed to reappear only once before
being consigned to permanent absence-, is given a new name, and
receives the dignities and insignia of a full-grown man. In between
these two situations his existence as a social being has been suspend-
ed. Everywhere the marginal period is felt to be a period of threat,
chaos and death. The symbol of the labyrinth is often staged literal-
ly, as the boy is led around in the labyrinth in the dark or blindfold-
ed, loses his orientation and identity and has to be aided to escape,
the labyrinth being seen as the realm of death but also as the womb:
'birth and rebirth'. During this time the young boy is in exile, locked
in an initiation house or expelled from the tribe into the marginal

IOO Translated as: The Rites of Passage(London 1960). Bibliography of Van Gen-
nep in: Waardenburg 1974, 85-9; K. van Gennep, Bibliographiedes oeuvresd'Arnold
van Gennep(Paris 1964). A scholarly biography: N. Belmont, Arnold van Gennep,le
Jranfaise(Paris 1974), translated as: Arnold van Gennep,Creator
criateurde l 'ethnographie
of FrenchEthnography(Chicago 1979); H. A. Senn, Arnold van Gennep: Structura-
list and Apologist for the Study of Folklore in France, Folklore85 (1974) 229-43; R.
di Donato, Une oeuvre, un itineraire. In: L. Gernet, Les Grecssans miracle(Paris
1983) 403-20; the studies collected in Studi Storici 25 (1984) 5 ff. On Harrison and
Van Gennep see: Schlesier 1991 , n. 117.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 55

territories where culture and society are no longer valid and other
laws prevail. This is-as in the case of the girls-the time of tests and
trials: torture, (sexual) humiliation, trials of strength, matches, the
struggle to survive outside the tribal community. It is also the time
of instruction: threatened by death-a great god or a monster is
coming to devour them, to tear them to pieces or to roast them, after
which they will be restored to life as new human beings-they are
taught the secret myths of the tribe, the ritual customs and the use
of men's weapons.
This nonsocial, marginal situation is marked or 'signaled' by a
great variety of external features. Virtually all such marginal signals
reflect some opposition to normal social features 101 . In matters of
dress, role reversal is often obligatory, boys having to wear girls'
clothes, or we find status reversal, clothes being used to mark com-
plete social degradation. In a reversal of food habits, novices may
be forced to partake of the very kinds of food and drink that are so-
cially taboo. Communication sometimes takes place by means of a
private language, a corrupted form of social everyday language.
The boys have their hair shaved off, walk on one shoe, or paint their
faces white or black. In other ways, too, the verkehrteWelt may be-
come manifest: the boys are permitted to do what is never allowed
under normal circumstances. They are free to steal, to demand food
under threat, to give the whole tribe a fit by staging night raids and
even demolishing the entire roof of a house 102 . Obviously, there is
a resemblance here to other 'periods of licence' or legateAnarchien
such as Carnival or Saturnalia, to which I shall return.
Looking for remnants of these initiatory elements is a fascinating
pursuit and Jeanmaire' s book mentioned above makes for absorb-
ing reading. In point of fact he already adumbrated virtually all that
later scholars were to deal with at greater length and in greater
detail, the references to rituals still in use in Greece often being the

101 Kenner 1970, with too much emphasis on reversal as a symbol of death.
Cf.: Versnel 1981, 582 ff.
l02 These rnids have been treated by K. Meuli in a series of studies on masks,
carnival lore and charivari, collected in his GesammelteSchriften I (Basel-Stuttgart
1975). Cf. also Eliade 1975, 83 with notes 9, 10, 11. Comparable rites can be found
in women's initiation: R. Wolfram, Weiberbiinde, Zeitschriftfur Volkskunde 42
(1933) 143 ff.; M. Eliade, Mystere et regeneration spirituelle, Eranosjahrbuch 23
(1955) 81 ff. For the continuity in charivari ritual see: J. Le Goff et] .-Cl. Schmitt
(edd.) Le charivari(Paris etc. 1981); H. Rey Flaud, Le charivari:lesrituelsfondamentaux
de la sexualite(Paris 1985).
56 CHAPTER ONE

most convincing part of the argument. That the Spartan krupteia

with all it entails is a vivid example of an initiatory situation needs
no argument, of course 103 . And that forms of paederasty which were
found in Crete and Athens are relics of the sexual humiliations men-
tioned above is also an arguable thesis 104 . Sometimes there is also
evidence of mythical references to initiatory motifs. In 1893 Craw-
ley105 had already pointed out that Achilles, who hides in the isle of
Skyros disguised as a girl, and who has been reared, moreover, out-
side the domain of civilisation by a centaur, represents the typical
initiation candidate. The same may be said of Philoctetes, who is
banished, with a stinking wound in his leg, to a lonely island 106.
Once again it is interesting to find a ritual accompanied by a
myth, as was the case with the Arrhephoria: the Theseus myth and
the Oschophoria festival1° 7 . A characteristic feature of this festival

103 Krupteia as a relic of initiation: Brelich 1969, 1-207, with a vast bibliogra-
phy. But Nilsson had already seen the essential in: Klio 12 (1912) 308-40 = Opuscula
selecta2 (Lund 1952) 826-69. With more emphasis on initiatory elements: H. Jean-
maire, La cryptie lacedemonienne, REG 26 (19) 121-50. Cf. generally: J. Ducat,
Le mepris des hilotes, AnnalesESC 29 (1974) 1452-64;] .-P. Vernant, Entre la honte
et la gloire, Metis 2 (1987) 269-98. On the typically initiatory assignment to lead
the life of a herdsman and hunter in Greece: A. Schnapp, Pratiche e immagini de
caccia nella Grecia antica, DA 1 (1979) 36-59.
104 Paederasty as an act of subjection during initiation: Van Gennep 1960, 171;
Jeanmaire 1939, 455-60; Brelich 1969, 84 f.; 120 f.;J. N. Bremmer, An Enigmatic
Inda-European Rite: Paederasty, Arethusa 13 (1980) 279-98; cf. idem, Orpheus:
From Guru to Gay, in: Ph. Borgeaud (ed.), OrphismeetOrphee(Geneve 1991) 13-30,
on 'paederastic' aspects of the Orpheus myth. Cf. Burkert 1979, 29 f.; H. Patzer,
Die griechische Knabenliebe, SbFrankfurt(1982). B. Sergent, L 'homosexualitidans la
mythologiegrecque(Paris 1984) and G. Koch-Harnack, Knabenliebeund Tiergeschenke:
lhre Bedeutungim piiderastischenErziehungssystemAthens (Berlin 1983), are criticized by
Th. J. Figueira, A]Ph 107 ( 1986) 426-32. After this B. Sergent, L 'homosexualitiin-
itiatiquedans !'Europe ancienne(Paris 1986) has extended his theory over other Euro-
pean cultures. See the review by E. Cantarella, Iniziazione Greca e cultura in-
doeuropea, DHA 13 (1987) 365-75. Scepticism in: F. Buffiere, Eros adolescent.La
pidirastie dans la Greceantique(Paris 1980) 55-9. K. J. Dover returned to the problem
in his 'Greek Homosexuality and Initiation', in: idem, The Greeksand their Legacy.
CollectedPapersII (Oxford 1988) 115-34, where he reacts to the theories of Bremmer,
Patzer and Sergent. Cf. also D. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality
(London 1990) ch.3, and below n.169. Various forms of temple prostitution are
also explained as (relics of) initiation ritual: Graf 1978, 73.
105 E. Crawley, Achilles and Scyros, CQ 7 (1893) 243-6, whose views are gener-
ally accepted: Bremmer 1978, 7 n.12.
106 For Philoctetes as the image of the initiate/ephebe see: P. Vidal-Naquet, Le
'Philoctete' de Sophocle et l'ephebie, in: Vernant & Vidal-Naquet 1973, 159-84,
and the literature in Bremmer 1978, 9 n.33. For motifs of girl's initiation in Greek
myths see Dowden 1989.
107 Theseus and the Oschophoria:Jeanmaire 1939, 243-5; 338-63. When Graf
1979, 17 n. 7, suggests: "Im einzelnen freilich wiiren seine Analysen nochmals zu
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 57

is a procession of young men carrying bunches of grapes from

Athens to the temple of Athena Skiras in Phaleron, headed by two
boys in women's clothes; there is a sacrifice accompanied by lamen-
tations. The youths are served special dishes, namely beans and
greens (the pyanepsia),by special cooks or waitresses, the deipnophoroi,
who also tell them stories ( muthoi). There is a foot race of the ephe-
bes, the winner being offered a draught of a panspermia. Plutarch
links this festival with Theseus and his exploits, and the reader who
is prepared to view the Oschophoria as a ritual reflection of the initi-
ation of ephebes, might now also follow Jeanmaire when he recog-
nizes in Theseus the mythical reflection of the initiation candidate.
Theseus, too, is an ephebe: he puts on girls' clothes, he plunges to
the bottom of the sea, has to enter the labyrinth, threatens to be an-
nihilated by a divine monster, but escapes and returns to assume
kingship. The theory that in the muthoithose women tell the boys the
seed might be hidden from which these myths finally developed is
highly suggestive, and from there, of course, it will not take long be-
fore Heracles's labours are interpreted as the mythical reflection of
a phase of initiation as well.
We can go even further: just as in the New Year complex king and
god are supposed to be one another's reflection in fall and rise, so
here the search has been for mythic-divine-and not only heroic-
reflections of the initiation candidate. Harrison' s MegistosKouroswas
an example, but in the Greek pantheon there is another prototypical
kouros,whose long hair is a signal of the ephebe on the eve of his initi-
ation, to whom the boys dedicate their locks of hair on attaining
manhood, who remains unmarried, an archer, the god from afar.
As early as 1895 Th. Homolle 108 was aware that the Spartan apellai,
notably those celebrated in the initial month of the year, Apellaios,
were the rite during which the young men were admitted into the
community of adults, and with thanks to Homolle ( and Van Gen-
nep) Harrison concludes (Themis, 441): "Apellon [the older form of

iiberpriifen", it would be wise to pay special attention to the Salaminioi inscription.

Cf. Vidal-Naquet 1981, 164 ff. Additions in Brelich 1969, 444 ff. Cf. also: J.
Wilkins, The Young of Athens: Religion and Society in the Herakleidaiof Euripides,
CQ 40 (1990) 329-39, esp. 334 f. Recently C. Calame, TMseeet l'imaginaireAthenien.
Legendeet culte en Greceantique (Lausanne 1990) shows that the Athenians "ephe-
bized" Theseus in the 5th century, as if to emphasize those aspects of the legend
that take their meaning only fully in Athens. This 'symbolic' approach need not
be in contradiction with the originally initiatory nature of the Theseus myth.
108 T. Homolle, Inscriptions de Delphes, BCH 19 (1895) 5-69.
58 CHAPTER ONE

Apollon] is the projection of these rites; he, like Dionysos, like Hera-
kles, is the arch-ephebos, the Megistos Kouros".
As I have pointed out, nearly everything has already been said-
often as a brief suggestion-and the reason why many things have
been said once again in recent times is twofold: first, they had been
brushed aside during several decades, and, second, our store of in-
formation has increased to such an extent that, thanks to a wealth
of comparative material, that which was formerly no more than a
hypothesis may be, if not proven, at least made more plausible.
Hence a paper by W. Burkert: 'Apellai und Apollon'1° 9 , followed
by another by one of his pupils, F. Graf, about Apollo Delphi-
nios110, the god that is more immediately concerned with the young
man's admission into the official political and social roles. Here and
elsewhere a good deal of research remains to be done. We shall
return to this god and his initiatory aspects later in this book. Bur-
kert' s final synthesis is pure 'Harrison': '' Achilleus, fast ein Doppel-
ganger Apellons" (Achilles, almost a double of Apellon).
In the instances mentioned above it is always a matter ofritual re-
lics 111, mythical references to evident initiatory elements or, in the
most interesting cases, of longer mythical-narrative sequences,
where the ritual counterpart has been given by the ancient authors
themselves, the protagonist is at least a typical ephebe, or several
elements refer unmistakably to initiation. A case in point is the
Theseus myth, which seems to satisfy all three requirements. Apart
from that, however, we can make a great stride forward by research
in myths and legends that do not so evidently and immediately fit
into this frame, in order to see whether they do not go back, after
all, to a similar initiation scheme. There are precedents in various
fields; certain fairy tale types were believed to contain recognizable
initiation elements. Tom Thumb and Snow White, for instance,

109 With the remark on p.11: "Es ist erstaunlich wie diese These, kaum
beachtet, aus der Diskussion unversehens wieder verschwunden ist." Cf. also the
good discussion in idem 1985, 260-4. I have added some observations below in eh.
V. See also the recent remarks in Auffarth 1991, 427-9.
110 Burkert 1975a and Graf 1979, respectively.
111 Cf. also the recent attempt to trace back the Lupercalia to initiation ritual
in: Chr. Ulf, Das RomischeLupercalienfest.Ein Modellfallfur Methodenprobleme in der
Altertumswissenschaft(Darmstadt 1982), and the attempts by M. Torelli to explain
the archaeological finds in Lavinium as elements of initiation ritual: Torelli 1984.
For some reactions to this book see below p.322 n.108. Cf. also: idem, Riti di pas-
saggio maschili di Roma arcaica, MEFRA 102 (1990) 93-106.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 59

turn out to be something quite different from that which some of us

believed in even up into old age. Robin Hood once more puts in an
appearance, not as a year king or year god this time, but as the lead-
er of a Jungmannschaft, and in the classical field Odysseus, the Ar-
gonauts, Oedipus and others have long preceded him 112 .
What we perceive here is the shaping of a pattern, a process that
may be compared, fundamentally, to the former myth and ritual ap-
proach, though it is rooted in a new paradigm, the one of the social
interpretation of myth and ritual. Instead of the 'dying and rising'
complex of gods and kings around the New Year festival, the frame
of reference is now the initiation candidate, banished, sorely tried,
sometimes doomed to death, coming off triumphant, returning with
a new status. With Frazer and his followers the myth and ritual com-
plex had its function within the larger frame of vegetative fertility,
which could be influenced by means of magic, or, more generally,
ritual. The initiation complex has been embedded in a wider frame
too, that of 'marginal existence'. We have thus left the realm of na-
ture and have entered upon the domain of culture and society. An
evaluation of the most recent myth and ritual explorations in the

112 Generally on initiatory evidence in fairy tales etc.: V. Propp, Le radicistoriche

dei racontidi fate (1946, Turin 19722); A. Fierz-Monnier, Initiation und Wandlung.
Zur Geschichtedes altfranziisischenRomans im 12. Jhdt. (Bern 1951); J. de Vries,
Betrachtungenzum Mo.rchenbesondersin seinem Verhaltniszu Heldensageund Mythos, F. F.
Communications 150 (Helsinki 1954); Enzyclopadiedes Marchens, s. v. 'Archaische
Ziige', 735; 'Brauch' 692; 'Brautsproben'; Eliade 1975, 124 ff.; idem, Wissenschaft
und Marchen, in: F. Karlinger, WegederMo.rchenforschung (Darmstadt 1973) 311-9,
the sole contribution in this collection which connects the fairy tale with initiation.
Nor is there any emphasis on initiatory elements in the rich and balanced account
by J. L. Fischer, The Sociopsychological Analysis of Folktales, CurrentAnthropology
4 (1963) 235-95. On Tom Thumb: P. Saintyves, Les coniesde Perraultet les recits
paralleles(Paris 1923); Propp, o.c. 362; G. Germain, Essai sur les originesde certains
themesodysseenset sur la genesede l 'Odyssee(Paris 1954) 78-86 (Odysseus, too, was a
dwarf). On Snow White: N. J. Girardot and A. Winterstein in studies cited above
(n.98). On Robin Hood: R. Wolfram, Robin Hood und Hobby Horse, Wiener
PrahistorischeZeitschrift19 (1932) 35 7-74. On Odysseus, particularly the episode with
the Cyclops: Germain o.c.; especially Bremmer 1978, discussed below. On the Ar-
gonauts: R. Roux, Le problemedes Argonautes. Recherchesur les aspects religieu.xde la
legende(Paris 1949); A. Heiserman, The Novel beforethe Novel (Chicago 1977) 11-40;
R. L. Hunter, Short of Heroics: Jason in the Argonautika, CQ38 (1988) 436-53. On
the initiatory references of the Symplegades: Eliade 1975, 64 ff.; J. Lindsay, The
ClashingRocks (London 1956). Oedipus: M. Delcourt, Oedipe,ou la legendedu heros
conquerant(Paris 1944, 19812); V. Propp, Edipo alla Lucedelfolclore(Turin 1975); J.
N. Bremmer, Oedipus and the Greek Oedipous Complex, in, idem 1987a, 41-59.
F. Crevatin, Eroe, RSA (1976/7) 221-35, even contends that the term herosoriginal-
ly denoted a youth as member of a Mannerbund or Jungmannschaft.
60 CHAPTER ONE

classical field is incomplete without first taking a critical glance at

this modern anthropological research on marginality, by which
these studies of classical issues have been decisively influenced. I
shall do this first, briefly adding a few examples of significant appli-
cations of this theory to classical problems. With the help of another
example I shall go on to show that the methodological dangers we
find looming here are comparable to-and no less impressive
than-those that were inherent in Frazer's theory.

2. Marginality: profits and pitfalls of a concept

Whoever comes across terms such as 'marginal' or 'liminal' nowa-
days should know that Van Gennep's scheme underlies these con-
cepts, but that in recent studies, notably under the influence of the
anthropologist V. W. Turner, these terms are taken in a much wider
sense 113 . It was found that the eccentric existence in the margin of
society, the asocial or antisocial way of life, is marked by a whole
range of phenomena. In this context we may distinguish, in a purely
systematic fashion, marginal groups or individuals, which find them-
selves in the 'eccentric' situation either for some considerable time
or permanently, from marginal periods or situations, in which individu-
als or groups withdraw from social patterns temporarily, often by
way ofritual demonstration. In either case the atmosphere of margi-
nality is marked by stereotyped marginal signals 114 . A few exam-
ples follow.
Marginal groups or individuals 115 that have their whereabouts,
sometimes literally, on the outskirts of society are-apart from the

1 13 V. W. Turner, Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Pas-

sage, in: J. Helm (ed.), Proceedingsof theAmericanEthnologicalSocietyfor 1964 (Seattle
1964) 4-20; idem, The Forestof S!,mbols(Ithaca-London 1967) 93-111; idem, The Ritual
Process(Harmondsworth 1974 ); idem, Comments and Conclusions, in: B. A. Bab-
cock (ed.), The ReversibleWorld (Ithaca-London 1978) 276-96; idem,Process, Sys-
tem, and Symbol: A New Anthropological Synthesis, Daedalus 1977, 61-80; idem,
Dramas, Fields and Metaphors:SymbolicAction in Human Society(Ithaca-London 1974)
eh. 6. See also: Gluckman 1955; idem 1963; Lewis 1976, 1 ff.
114 The concept of marginality was already exploited by E. V. Stonequist, The
Marginal Man (New York 1937). For a recent sociological collection of studies see:
R. Ferguson, M. Gever, T. T. Ming-Ha, C. West (edd.), Out There:Marginalization
and ContemporaryCultures(New York 1990).
115 I am aware that this is a very rough presentation which requires refinements
in many respects. In his Dramas, Turner makes a distinction between 'liminality',
'outsiderhood' and 'structural inferiority'. However, the characteristics of these
different categories largely concur.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 61

juvenile groups of the Jungmannschaft type-monks, anchorites,

pirates, bandits, as well as, in a sense, animals, and from a certain
point of view also the gods and the dead. In this context those people
who have specific contacts with the gods, the dead or animals also
rank as marginal: the possessed, lunatics, godly men, prophets,
seers, shepherds. These individuals often live literally in the margin
of society, outside the boundaries of culture. The same may be the
case with groups that do not take part in the social process: beggars,
cynics, hippies, tramps. Groups that oppose society above all in a
political sense: anarchists, revolutionaries, millenarians, messia-
nists. Strangers, especially when of a different color, are marginal
by definition, but also groups within a society that nonetheless are
felt to be strange somehow: migrant workers, metics, immigrants,
slaves. Groups or individuals that do not function fully in society:
children, adolescents, sick, poor, unemployed and those that, while
functioning fully, do so within some specific area only: women,
priests, kings.
Marginal situations are situations that tend to remove individual
persons or groups temporarily from a normal social existence.
Initiation-and in particular the period of the 'margin'-is the ex-
ample we have discussed, but no less exemplary are festivals of an
exceptional character, during which things that normally are forbid-
den are tolerated, roles are reversed and people generally kick over
the traces 116 . Instances of such Ausnahmejeste are the Carnival and
its ancient equivalents such as the Saturnalia and the Kronia, but
also women's festivals such as the Thesmophoria, Dionysiac fes-
tivals, the Roman festival of Bona Dea, giving women in seclusion
an opportunity to indulge in excesses in their own way. I shall dis-
cuss a number of these festivals of licence in the present book 117 .
Other marginal situations are periods of mourning, of disease, espe-
cially epidemics, famine, and social phenomena of acculturation
and disintegration accompanied by crises of identity 118 .

116 On these periods of licence see above all: Lanternari 1976.

117 On the Kronia see below eh. II, Saturnalia eh. III, Bona Dea and Thes-
mophoria eh. IV.
118 In Versnel 1981 I paid attention to the anomic aspects of liminality. I no-
ticed there that mourning as a period ofliminality for the relatives had scarcely been
investigated in modern scholarship. Since then several monographs have appeared:
R. Huntington and P. Metcalf, Celebrationsof Death. The Anthropologyof Mortuary
62 CHAPTER ONE

Obviously, there are a great many cross-relations and overlaps

between the groups and situations mutually as well as between the
concepts of 'marginal group' and 'marginal situation': members of
messianist movements or utopians may be viewed, of course, as
temporary marginals but also as groups 'in permanent transi-
tion'119.
People in marginal situations are outside normal society, they are
asocial, but that does not imply that they necessarily lead a totally
atomized existence. On the contrary, more often than not a new,
different, nonstructural relationship develops, for which V.W.
Turner coined the term communitas. There is a feeling of fellowship,
of solidarity, which distinguishes this group from the structured so-
ciety. This communication is brought about among other things by
marginal signals, which, as a rule, are nothing but opposites to the
current cultural signs 120. People in liminal situations may shave off
their hair or, on the contrary, wear it long, paint their faces, wear
a felt hood or women's clothes, dress in a strange, eccentric way, ab-
stain from sexual acts or, just the reverse, indulge in perversions or
abolish sex distinctions. They speak a different language or remain
totally silent. They follow deviant habits in matters of food and
drink, change their names, perform acts of self-mutilation or tattoo-
ing, and so forth.
Let us now, with the help of a few examples, demonstrate how this
concept of marginality can be used to elucidate puzzling problems
in the ancient religions. For this purpose I select some suggestions
from studies by F. Graf and J.N. Bremmer respectively, who both,
more than others, and following in Burkert's footsteps, use the con-
cept of marginality as a tool in their research.
The ancient libation (Gr. spondai, Lat. libatio), a drink offering
that is poured out on the ground or on an eschara,may consist of the

Ritual (Cambridge 1979, 19802), which, however, concentrates on the dead, not
on the living. Cf. also: L. M. Danforth, The DeathRituals of Rural Greece(Princeton
U .P. 1982); S. Humphreys and H. King (eds.), Mortality andImmortality:theAnthro-
pologyandArcheologyofDeath(London 1981); Gnoli & Vernant 1982; R.Garland, The
Greek Way of Death (London-Ithaca 1985). For Rome: J. Scheid, Contrariafacere:
Renversements et deplacements clans Jes rites funeraires, AION(archeol)6 (1984)
117-39.
119 I borrow this concept from C. H. Hambrick, World-Messianity. A Study in
Liminality and Communitas, ReligiousStudies 15 (1979) 539-53.
12° See for the adoption of signals of poverty by modish marginal groups: Turn-
er 1974b, and the discussion of the felt cap in: Bremmer 1978, 19 f.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 63

following basic ingredients: milk and honey, wine, water, oil. In a

paper entitled 'Milch, Honig und Wein' F. Graf 121 made a study of
the frame of reference of these ingredients. He found that milk and
honey in particular are the liquid signals of marginal and abnormal
situations and groups 122. According to the Hellenic conception,
Greek men drink wine mixed with water. Milk and honey, on the
other hand, are characteristic of women and children, of marginal
groups such as the Pythagoreans, but also of barbarian nations, who
are typified as milk drinkers (Teutons, Scythians), and of utopian,
'natural' man of both prehistoric and eschatological times 123•
Grafs thesis is fully demonstrable: "Honig und Milch ... waren
also abnorm, marginale FliiBigkeiten" (honey and milk ... were
'abnormal', marginal liquids). With a little more trouble a case
could also be made for water, oil, and even for wine, if undiluted.
Now, if a libatio wholly consists of ingredients that refer to the mar-
gin, the question arises what this may signify. The answer can be
found in the fact that the libatio of this composition is itself used spe-
cifically in marginal situations, for instance in contacts with the
dead, with heroes, with the underworld: in the liminal sphere, there-
fore, between death and life. There is an ideal correspondence here
between signifiant and signifie.
In a paper on the Greek pharmakosJ.N. Bremmer 124 sheds new
light on this scapegoat and the related rites from the point of view
of 'the margin'. The fact, for instance, not understood hitherto, that
the pharmakos is beaten with 'squills or twigs of the wild fig tree' is
convincingly explained by the fact that these plants, being sterile,
belonged to the 'marginal' sphere. Of course, there is no problem
in interpreting the persons who served as pharmakoi in historic times
as marginal because, on the whole, it was marginal characters such
as criminals, paupers and riffraff generally that were cast in that
role. Here too, therefore, there is an excellent correspondence be-

121 Graf 1980. Cf., however, A. Henrichs, The 'Sobriety' of Oedipus: Sopho-
cles OC 100 misunderstood, HSCPh 87 (1983) 87-100.
122 On various diets as signals of segregation: Douglas 1970, passim; eadem1975,
249-75.
123 On spec:fic types of food as characteristics of marginal civilizations and bar-
barians, see also: J. N. Bremmer, ZPE 39 (1980) 33; Auffarth 1991, 316 ff., and
the literature cited below p.108.
124 J. N. Bremmer, Scapegoat Rituals in Ancient Greece, HSCP 87 (1983)
299-320.
64 CHAPTER ONE

tween signifiant and signifii, both clearly belonging to the margin.

When, however, kings who acted as scapegoats in the myths are de-
fined as "the lonely marginal at the top" we see tensions looming
ahead between these two categories of signijiant and signijii. This is
one of the dangers inherent in a general sense in the theories of mar-
ginality described so far. These dangers might be classified as
follows:
1. There is no need to be a structuralist to conclude that within
any conceivable society it must be possible to point to binary opposi-
tions in which one member is abnormal or marginal, as compared
with other, central or normal members. It is a well-known fact,
moreover, that people tend to declare their own group the center
and all others outsiders. If we take the-very incomplete-list of im-
aginable marginals quoted above, it is hard to avoid the conclusion
that virtually everybody, depending on the comparison, is or may
be marginal, with the exception of a roughly forty-year-old, diligent,
healthy, native, non-hunchbacked man with close-cropped hair, en-
titled to carrying arms, and in possession offull civic rights, wife and
children 125 . That I am not really exaggerating may be apparent
from the results of a study in 'Astrology and Marginality' by R.
Wuthnow 126 , which concludes that "it was the more poorly educat-
ed, the unemployed, non-white, females, the unmarried, the over-
weight, the ill, and the lonely, who were most taken with astrology."
Even those who hold that this still does prove something will un-
derstand that, at the same time, it verges dangerously on tautology.
Armed with such a definition, you could take practically any
category and prove that it is a marginal one, with the exception of
the 'normal' family man with all the normal characteristics men-
tioned above. A criminal as a marginal pharmakosis not a debatable
point: any criminal is marginal by definition. A king as a scapegoat
is much more interesting but at the same time less easy to explain
if you start from the margin model. In my opinion, the power and
the tragedy of the ultimate sacrifice, in this case, are effected not be-
cause the king is a marginal person but because the king as the centre

12 5 Confirming the words of Detienne in: Detienne & Vernant 1979, 186:
"Dans la cite grecque, comme on le sait, ce sont Jes marginaux qui manquent le
moins. ''
126 R. Wuthnow, Astrology and Marginality, Journal of the Scientific Study of
Religion 15 (1976) 157-68.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 65

of society is made a marginal person through his expulsion from that

which society considers the position of highest prestige. It is under-
standable, therefore, that the king as scapegoat belongs virtually ex-
clusively to the mythical imagination 127 •
Nearly all (groups of) people, then, are (potentially) marginal in
some respect or another and so also are most situations. In various
studies that I consulted the following ancient peoples and territories
were labeled 'marginal': Scythians, Teutons, India, Southern Italy,
Thracia, Lemnos, Troy, Lycia, Scheria, Ithaca, Skyros, Boeotia,
Euboia, certain regions in Attica. True, such statements will always
be tenable with regard to a certain period and a carefully selected
centre, but there is an obvious danger of arbitrariness and general-
ization. The same applies to gods and demigods discussed in these
various studies, such as Apollo, Dionysos, Hermes, Pan, Poseidon,
Athena, Artemis, Heracles, Theseus, who are either called marginal
in a more general way or labeled outright 'initiation gods' 128 .
2. Whereas we can try to escape the preceding danger by using
precise definition and careful argumentation, the following objec-
tion cannot be met successfully because it does not depend on the
researcher's skill or honesty. The marginal signals are seldom specif-
ic. An exemplary illustration of this phenomenon is found in the liba-
tio signals, which, as we have seen, implied generalreferences to high-
ly divergent marginal situations and groups and could only be
specified thanks to the fact that the context referred to was known to
us. In my country, when you see a man in an entirely black suit, you
at once assume that he is in a marginal situation. Which situation

127 Albeit 'egregious', the king is first and foremost the symbol of the centre of
society: Lewis 1976, eh. 9: The Power at the Centre; Cl. Geertz, Center, Kings
and Charisma, in J. Ben David & T. N. Clark, Culture and its Creators(Chicago
1980) 150-71, with on p. 157 the king as 'the center of the center'; E. Shils and M.
Young, The Meaning of the British Coronation, in: E. Shils, Centerand Periphery:
Essays in Macrosociology(Chicago 1975). Cf. for antiquity: Versnel 1981b. For the
Greek imagery see: Vernant & Vidal-Naquet 1972, 99-131, esp. 105: "symmetry
between the pharmakos and the king of legend in which the former, at the bottom
of the scale, took on a role analogous to that which the latter played at the top''.
Very interesting on narrative variants of kings turning into pharmakoi: J. Stern,
Scapegoat Narratives in Herodotus, Hermes 119 (1991) 304-11.
128 Cf. Dowden 1989, 198 f.: "It may seem shocking or insensitive to those
used to structuralist approaches to systems of gods to assert that goddesses appear
largely interchangeable in our study". In chapter V, I shall be so bold as to add
the god Mars and present literature on other 'initiatory' gods (p.310). For Heracles
see also: F. Bader, De la prehistoire a l'ideologie tripartie: Jes travaux d'Herakles,
in: Bloch 1985, 9-124.
66 CHAPTER ONE

that is, however, requires additional information: he is walking be-

hind a coffin, he carries a prayer book (on Sunday) or he is serving
refreshments. When you observe a man wearing a long white or
orange robe, with a curious hairdo or a clean-shaven head and a
painted face, you have to pay attention to the context before you can
tell whether this is a religious marginal or someone from the margi-
nal sphere of carnival or the circus 129 . In other words, the traffic is
unimpeded in one direction only: from the situation to the signals.
Only the former (the si'gnijie") is specific; the signals (the sz'gnijiant)
usually are not, and cannot in themselves, therefore, be related with
certainty to any one marginal situation, not even when they seem
to fit into an orderly pattern 130 .
3. Here we touch upon a third point. The protagonists of the initi-
ation myth and ritual theory seldom fail to play what they consider
their trump card, the 'internal coherence' of the pattern in which all
the pieces neatly fall into their proper slots. A characteristic passage,
for instance, is the following: "In this way all the different motifs
which, taken separately, may of course occur in different contexts,
are explained by one hermeneutic key which is, from a methodic
point of view, to be preferred to all kinds of supposed in-
fluences" 131. Now it cannot have escaped anybody's notice that

129 A good example in: A. Droogers, Symbols of Marginality in the Biogra-

phies of Religious and Secular Innovators. A Comparative Study of the Lives of
Jesus, Waldes, Booth, Kimbagu, Buddha, Mohammed and Marx, Numen 27
(1980) 105-21, where it appears that liminal signals such as "nature (versus cul-
ture), travelling and provisional lodging (versus sedentary life), non-violence and
solidarity" ( = Turner's communitas H.S. V.) are characteristic of both (religious)
innovators' 'who prosper in the margin of society'' and of initiates. Numerous, too,
are the similarities with behaviour of people in mourning: Versnel 1980. All this
does not exclude derivation: sacral kings from Central Asia have borrowed their
initiatory rites from shamanistic initiations. See: M. Waida, Notes on Sacral King-
ship in Central Asia, Numen 23 (1976) 179-90; K. Czegledy, Das sakrale Konigtum
bei den Steppenvolkern, Numen 13 (1966) 14-26.
°
13 Cf. Henrichs, o.c. (above n.121) 97, on Grafs discussion of ritual symbols
marking 'marginal' phases and transitions during the 'ritual process': "Although
this structural aproach has its demonstrable merits whenever the ritual context of
wineless libations is known, our lack of information renders it inapplicable in all
but one of the cases listed above.''
131 Bremmer 1978, 23. Cf. also Graf 1978, 67: "Dass diejenige Deutung eines
Rituals der W ahrheit am niichsten kommt, welche moglichst alle Einzelheiten
geschlossen erkliiren kann, ist eine Binsenwahrheit"; Burkert 1966, 14: "Betrach-
tet man die Arrhephoria-Riten ( ... ) als Miidchenweihe, so wird das Ganze von An-
fang bis Ende durchsichtig, sinnvoll und notwendig". But cf. his reconsiderations
below in section 6 of this chapter.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 67

those two essential dangers mentioned so far-the general applicabili-

ty of the marginality concept and its inherent fatal elasticity, on the
one hand, and the lack of specificity of really unmistakable marginal
signals, on the other-are, mutatis mutandis, in general a threat to any
theory that tries to recognize a pattern within a diversity of
phenomena. These objections were raised repeatedly, notably to the
old myth and ritual advocates, Frazer among them, not least by
those scholars who have recently discovered a different pattern.
So let us finally evaluate the 'coherence' trump card in this light.
In the Times obituary, Tylor's work was eulogized as follows: "He
held that the enumeration of facts must form the staple of the argu-
ment, and that the limit of needful detail was reached only when
each group of facts so displayed its general law that fresh ones came
to range themselves in their proper niches as new instances of an al-
ready established rule" 132 . Those words were written by a believer:
automatically all the threads fall just right, weaving the pattern of
Tylor's animism. One small matter, though: nobody believes in this
pattern any more, no more than anybody believes in Frazer's cen-
tral theses. And yet the latter had filled many hefty tomes chock-full
with 'facts, facts, facts', which all-so he maintained-fell exactly
into their proper places 133 • All the same, even if all the pieces were
to fit brilliantly in one single pattern, that still does not guarantee
the 'truth' of that pattern: "The accepted truths of to-day are apt
to become the discarded errors of tomorrow'', as Dodds once put
it 134 . The researcher is not to blame for this, and fortunately no-
body seems to mind this horrible truth too much, for even those who
agree with me that '' all kinds of supposed influences'' as a notion
is, in point of fact, an absolutely viable and general factor in con-
structing cultural realities, cannot do without theory, pattern or
scheme if they want to get on with their research.
Bearing in mind the three dangers mentioned, let us now look at
a specific theory in which-unlike the cases of libatio and pharmakos,
which remained practically entirely within the realm of the rite-our
only information derives from a mythical story which, moreover,
does not deal at all with a young man and has nonetheless been inter-
preted as a literary reflection of the ritual intiation scheme.

132 Quoted by Kardiner 1962, 63.

133 See on this methodological principle: Smith 1978, 240-64.
134 Dodds 1968 p. VIII.
68 CHAPTER ONE

In a paper entitled 'Heroes, Rituals and the Trojan War' J. N.

Bremmer 135 discusses a number of heroes who figure in the epics,
concluding that the traditions '' designate their protagonists as
young men in the transition from boyhood to adulthood" (35).
When, in this context, Achilles, Pyrrhus/Neoptolemos, Philoctetes
and Paris are discussed, this will surprise nobody after what we
remarked before, but there are already complications. Anyone who
writes "For our purpose we deduce from this interpretation that
Achilles' arrival at Troy fell in the ephebic period of his life'', must
needs keep silence about the equally pseudo-historic context of the
equally ephebic son of Achilles, Neoptolemos, who, from the histori-
cal point of view, cannot very well have arrived at Troy as an ephebe
ten years later than his father. What should worry us much more,
however, is the fact that the list includes not only the young men
mentioned above but also Hector and Odysseus: Hector above all
because of his special hair-cut, the Hektoreioskome, Odysseus on ac-
count of a number of elements in his history 136 . The fact that Odys-
seus, on whom we are going to focus from now on, was already a

135 Bremmer 1978. In some respects he was preceded by G. Germain, o.c.

(above n.112). See also the cautious survey of the discussion in: Graf 1991, 358 ff.
Bremmer has largely accepted my criticism of his interpretation of the Odyssey:Lam-
pas 17 (1984) 141 n.49. Recently Auffahrt 1991 has made another attempt ofa con-
siderably different nature to explain the Odysseywithin an initiatory scheme. See be-
low n.139. In still another way: P. Scarpi, II ritorno di Odysseus e la metafora de!
viaggio iniziatico, in: M.-M. Mactoux & E. Geny (edd.), MelangesPierreLevequeI
(Paris 1988) 2 45-59.
l36 On the whole, the interpretation of the Homeric kouroi with their long hair
as a reflection of youthful warriors is liable to serious criticism. For instance: H.
W. Singor, Oorsprongen ontwikkelingvan de hoplietenphalanxin het archai·sche Griekenland
(Diss Leiden 1988) 125, argues that the term kouroslike iuvenisdenotes the age group
between 20 and 45 or 50 (For the age of iuvenis see below pp.329; 333.). Matters
are highly complicated, of course, by the nature of our 'historical' source. Homer
freely used techniques as condensation, displacement and figuration (Verdichtungs-
arbeit, Verschiebungsarbeit,Darstellung according to Freud). See: P. Wathelet, Les
Troyensde l' Iliade: mytheethistoire(Diss. Liege 1986); cf. also: M.J. Alden, The Role
ofTelemachus in the 'Odyssey', Hermes 115 (1987) 129-37. F. Hartog, Le miroir
d'Herodote(Paris 1980) 59-79, has made the revealing discovery that Herodotus IV
understands the Scythians as cunning ephebes and P. Vidal-Naquet, The Black
Hunter Revisited, PCPS 212 (1986) 124-44, to whom I owe some of these referen-
ces, infers that ephebeiahas become a semantic category by the fifth century, work-
ing as a 'symbolic operator'. The problem, however, is that the Homeric descrip-
tions of the kouroi, being the normal warriors, precisely lack explicit references to
the ephebic situation, in contradistinction to the scarce references to actual initiato-
ry scenes as for instance the story of Odysseus' hunt with the sons of Autolykos in
Odyssey19.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 69

king and had a little son when he sailed from Ithaka, even if not a
decisive difficulty, is apt to rouse the reader's suspicion. These com-
plications may help to explain why there is a certain wavering in the
description. Having started out to show that several heroes found
themselves "in a transitional state", Bremmer concludes that all the
heroes mentioned, including Odysseus, are described as young men
in the transition from boyhood to adulthood, whereas, on page 23,
he had inferred from Odysseus' tale that his was "an evident case
of royal initiation,'' which, though doubtlessly related, is a different
thing 137 .
What are the narrative elements that turn Odysseus into an ephe-
be in the initiatory period or, in other words, typify the narrative
scheme of Odysseus' wanderings as the mythical reflection of initia-
tion rites? "What conclusion can we draw? It will be clear that we
recognize an evident case of royal initiation in the tale of the prince,
who has to leave home, wanders around, is present at cannibalistic
activities, visits the underworld, has a wound in the thigh, is an
archer, is sexually very active, returns as a beggar, restores the cul-
tural order as a symbolic survivor of the Flood and finally becomes
king'.' (Bremmer 1978, 23). In support of this thesis a number of
parallels had been listed before, showing, for instance, that can-
nibalistic performances, the notion of the primeval flood, sexual ac-
tivities, and so forth are typical of the atmosphere of initiation and
transitional rites. This is not enough, however, to dispel any doubts
we may feel: the presumption that Odysseus is a typical archer is
only evidenced by his shot through the axes 138 , whereas everywhere
else in the epic he is the adult warrior with the normal equipment;
his leg wound is a scar, possibly a relic from his time as an ephebe,
but only by way of a memento; and as for that sexual appetite, we
are equally justified, or even more so, in maintaining that the texts
depict Odysseus, despite his enforced contacts, as a faithful and
above all married hero 139 . There are many more details that call for

137 See e.g. A. Alfoldi, Ki:inigsweihe und Miinnerbund bei den Achiimeniden,
SchweizerischeArchivfar Volkskunde47 (1951) 11-6, and the works of Widengren and
Wikander mentioned in n.90.
138 See: Auffarth 1991, 502-23.
139 The tension that looms up here is spotlighted by the recent reconsiderations
by Auffarth 1991. He reserves the genuine initiatory elements in the Odysseyfor
Telemachos (rightly so, in my view). Though also detecting initiatory aspects in the
story of Odysseus, he practically restricts them to the scar and the 'Bogenprobe'.
70 CHAPTER ONE

some reservations 140 , but that is not what I am concerned with

now.
The issue at stake is rather the essential dangers as formulated
above inherent in the method. That the protagonist of the Odyssey
finds himself in a Turneresque 'transitional state' is, in the case of
an adventurous wanderer, as yet no more than a tautology 141 . It is
here, therefore, that the problem of the general applicability of the
notion of 'marginality' reveals itself. Now the question arises if and
how a more specific 'transitional state' can be demonstrated. The
argumentation needed to turn Odysseus into an initiation candidate
has to be based entirely-because there is no ritual counterpart
available and the protagonist, moreover, as a forty year old father,
cannot very well be depicted as an ephebe-on a bunch of marginal
signals, but such signals, in this case too, are practically without ex-
ception nonspecific (the second problem pointed out above). In the
list of signals quoted above I can detect only one specific initiatory
element: the scar on the thigh, but that, of all things, goes back diser-
tis verbis to Odysseus' youth and is as such beyond the scope of the
pseudo-historical narrative sequence the pattern is believed to be

The day of Odysseus' return coincides with the day of the ephebic initiation (in-
cluding the bow-test). After nineteen years the king returns on the day of the initia-
tion of his nineteen year old son. It is the festive day of Apollo, a New Year's fes-
tival. Odysseus is not an ephebos,but a sacral king, who by his safe return from great
dangers and his excellence at the bow-contest proves his righteousness: " ... den
Ablauf der Handlung, gipfelnd in dem Fest des Apollon, einemJ ahresfest zur Auf-
nahme der Epheben unter die Manner, mit dem athletischen W ettkampf der
Bogenprobe, zugleich der (Wieder-) Einsetzung des Basileus, mit seinem Eid zur
gerechten Amtsfiihrung und seiner Hochzeit mit der 'Konigin'" (288). On initia-
tory elements in the Telemachos tale, see: C. W. Eckert, Initiatory Motifs in the
Story of Telemachus, CJ 59 (1963/4) 49-5 7; U. Holscher, Die Odyssee.Epos zwischen
Miirchenund Roman (Munich 1988) 251-8. On the function of Telemachos for the
plot of the Odysseysee: T. Krischer, Odysseus und Telemachos, Hermes 116 (1988)
1-23, who even thinks that "der Odysseus der Odyssee aufTelemach angewiesen
ist; er wiirde ohne die Aktivitiit des Sohnes seine ldentitiit als Held des trojanischen
Krieges verlieren" .
140 Such scepticism is for instance expressed by A. Heubeck, Zur neueren
Homerforschung, Gymnasium 89 ( 1982) 441 f.
141 Consequently, Ch. Segal, Transition and Ritual in Odysseus' Return, PP
22 (1967) 321-42, has not the slightest difficulty in interpreting motifs such as sleep,
purification by baths, the threshold, or, if necessary, the total Odyssey,as one great
'transition' from death to life, though, for that matter, without any reference to in-
itiation. Cf. also: P. Wathelet, Priam aux Enfers ou le retour du corps d'Hector,
LEG 56 (1988) 321-35: Priam's search for Achilles through the Greek camp cor-
responds with a rite de passageto 'the other world'.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 71

based on 142. All the other signals that have been suggested, such as,
notably, the elements of (man-eating) monsters and survival after a
primeval flood-if we may interpret Odysseus' adventures at sea in
this fashion at all-also fit smoothly into other schemes that are not
necessarily initiatory 143 . In point of fact, they belong to the stereo-
typed elements of this type of adventure story. There is a striking
parallel in a debate between A. Henrichs and J. Winkler 144 . The
former, basing himself on, among other things, cannibalistic ele-
ments in a recently discovered Lollianus fragment, discovers a ritual
background in the context of secret cult societies, whereas the latter
shows in detail that all the elements belonged to the stock in trade
of classic fiction. There is some affinity between Henrich' s approach
and that of R. Merkelbach 145 , who defended the theory that virtu-
ally all remaining classical novels are based on some initiation pat-
tern, but this time initiation into theHellenistic mysteries. Every-
thing fits perfectly: "This book only [!] intends to prove that the
novels are really mystery texts" (from the preface).
This discussion is fully comparable-and endless, because the
thesis is, at best, plausible but incapable of proof. It could not be
proven until an immediate ritual counterpart went with it, the sig-
nals pointed specifically to one type of ritual, or the story could solely
and exclusively be interpreted as the reflection of this specific (and
not of any other) ritual. That this is not the case as far as the Odyssey

142 On the wound of the thigh as an initiatory signal see in particular: G. J.

Baudy 1986, 50 ff.; Auffarth 1991, 44 7-56. There are more initiatory signals in con-
nection with Odysseus' youth: Bremmer 1978, 15 f. The same for Nestor: idem,
ZPE 47 (1982) 143 n. 43. On Odysseus' initiation via hunting probes: Nancy F.
Rubin and W.M. Sale, Meleager and Odysseus: A Structural and Cultural Study
of the Greek Hunting-Maturation Myth, Arethusa 16 (1983) 7-71, with a reply to
criticism: Arethusa 17 (1984) 211-22.
143 Therefore I am in agreement with Graf 1991, 359, when he-though gener-
ally in sympathy with Bremmer's argument-warns: "Freilich sollte die Frage
nach der Verbinding von Epos und Ritual mit einem priizisen hermeneutischen In-
strumentarium angegangen werden ... ''.
144 Henrichs 1972; J. Winkler, Lollianos and the Desperadoes, JHS 100 (1980)
153-81.
145 R. Merkelbach, Roman und Mysterium in der Antike (Munich-Berlin 1962).
Previous attempts in this direction: K. Kerenyi, Diegriechisch-orientalische
Romanliter-
atur in religionsgeschichtlicher
Beleuchtung (Tiibingen 1927, Darmstadt 19622 ). A
different, but not preferable approach: G. Wojaczek, Daphnis (Meisenheim 1969).
An excellent critical discussion: A. Geyer, Roman und Mysterienritual. Zurn
Problem eines Bezugs zum dionysischen Mysterienritual im Roman des Longos,
WJA 3 (1977) 179-96; cf. also: G. Freimuth, MH 21 (1964) 93 ff. An interesting
72 CHAPTER ONE

is concerned is a fact for which, in the nature of things, we cannot

blame the interpreter, who is, in fact, fully entitled to give a max-
imalist interpretation with the help of his key. He has this right
above all because elsewhere and under more favourable conditions
he has drawn attention to initiatory elements in later myth or rite
more convincingly and with illuminating results, as we shall have
the opportunity of noticing time and again in our further investiga-
tions. Nonetheless, the reader has the right and the duty to assess
each interpretation critically. And the present reader, for one, tends
to shy away from reducing the Odysseyto an initiatory scheme in such
a drastic and rather mechanistic way for two reasons.
The first reason is that this would mean squeezing a great number
of elements into one strait-jacket 146 , whereas we have a wider and
more natural interpretive model at our disposal1 47 . Nobody, how-
ever, should accept this critical remark without having read Brem-
mer's highly suggestive article, which offers an exemplary intro-

attempt at mediation between the extreme points of view: R. Beck, Soteriology, the
Mysteries and the Ancient Novel: Iamblichus Babylonicaas a Test-Case. In: Bianchi
& Vermaseren 1982, 527-46.
146 P. Scarpi, II ritorno di Odysseus e la metafora del viaggio iniziatico, in:
MelangesP. LevequeI (Paris 1988) 245-59, esp. 251, warns us that the search for ritu-
al backgrounds of the heroic myths "ha implicato quasi una meccanica riduzione
al rito dell' immenso patrimonio mitologico condensato nell' epopea omerica".
147 One might, for instance, understand the adventures of Odysseus as expres-
sions of his temporary sojourn outside the boundaries of normal time and place,
an 'eccentricity' marked by both utopian and dystopian imagery. On this ambigui-
ty see below eh. II. As R. Scodel, The Achaean Wall and the Myth of Destruction,
HSCP 86 (1982) 33-50, has shown, the Homeric poems contain quite a few refer-
ences to the 'pre-deluvial' era, and she even argues that the story of the Trojan war
itself may have originated in Zeus' wish to destroy the race of the hemitheoi,as the
episode of the destruction of the Achaean wall certainly does. In the context of
'eccentric' experiences there is quite a difference between the statement that
Odysseus represents a youth during his initiation and the well-known theory that
both fairy-tales and (a specific type of) myths, including the one of Odysseus, go
back to shaman tales - the records of their ecstatic experiences in the 'other world' :
L. Frobenius, KulturgeschichteAfrikas (Frankfurt 1933 = Zurich 1954) 306; K.
Meuli, Scythica, in: Meuli 1975 II, 835 ff.; F. vonder Leyen, MythusundMiirchen,
DeutscheVierteljahrschrijtfii.r Literaturwissenschajt
und Geistesgeschichte
33 (1959) 343 ff.;
M. Eliade, Les savants et les contes des fees, NouvelleRevue Francaise3 (1956) 884
ff.; M. Luthi, Das europiiischeVolksmiirchen (Munich 19786) 105. On the Odysseyin
this perspective: H. Petersmann, Homer und das Miirchen, WS 15 (1981) 43-68;
R. Mastromattei, La freccia di Odysseus, QUCC 29 (1988) 7-22. On fixed
mythemes and imageries as conventional epic patterns ready to be inserted when-
ever necessary: G. Crane, The Odysseyand Conventions of the Heroic Quest, ClAnt
6 ( 1987) 11-3 7; idem, Calypso.Backgroundsand Conventionsof the Odyssey(Frankfurt a.
Main 1988).
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 73

duction into the new approach of myth and ritual, and in which
more arguments are advanced than those briefly quoted here-the
wooden horse as the hobby-horse of initiation rites, for instance.
And after that one should continue and read Auffarth 1991, a con-
siderably heavier but equally provocative work on the same theme
with a different approach.
The second reason is that by following this course we might be
tempted (once again) to reduce mechanically all myths of this genre
from the whole world to one relatively narrow ritual scheme. "It
would be possible, and indeed easy, to find parallels in myth and
ritual for every incident in the Odyssey'', says Lord Raglan in The
Hero, referring to sacral kingship. We have seen the upshot of such
statements and their underlying arguments: practically nobody be-
lieves in his theory anymore. An identical kind of reasoning is now
applied to the Odysseyand initiation, and now, too, everything al-
ways seems to tally. Here, as an illustration, is a contribution by the
present author: Penelope is a girl in the initiatory phase. For, as we
know, in this period girls are generally locked up in secret rooms to
practice, by night, women's handicrafts (spinning in the first place).
Mythical relics of aggressive men bursting in upon women and des-
troying their handwork are known from various cultures, prenuptial
licence occurring as well in this context: the girls are assaulted and
have to give in 148 • Q.E.D. In the same way, however, it might be
proved that Alexander the Great is a super initiation candidate:
young, unmarried, adventurous journey in far-off lands, (homo)
sexual appetite, war, danger, victory, (mass) marriage. And it
would be even more perfect if we were allowed to include the Alex-
ander romances with their fairy-tale elements.
Meanwhile a problem comes into view. How arewe to explain that
an 'Odyssey pattern' shows itself in so many myths, fairy tales and
stories, if we are not prepared to trace this pattern invariably back

148 Handworking during the night and male aggression: A. Slawik, WienerBei-
triigezur Kulturgeschichteund Linguistik 4 (1936) 737 ff.; Peuckert, o.c. (above n.90)
253. Licence: D. Zelenin, Russische(Ostslawische)Volkskunde(Berlin 1927) 337 ff.;
E. Gasparini, Nozze, societae abitazionedegli antichi Slavi (Venice 1954) 22 f. Cf.
Eliade 1975, 46. Generally: H. Rey-Flaud, Le charivari.Les rituelsfondamentauxde la
sexualite(Paris 1985). Jan Bremmer reminds me that Burkert 1966 has indeed, in
an aside, suggested a connection between the handwork of the Arrhephoroiand the
peplosof Penelope. On the literaryfunction of Penelope's action: A. Heu beck, Pene-
lopes Webelist, WJA 11 (1985) 33-43.
74 CHAPTER ONE

either to the 'New Year complex' or to the 'initiation complex' or

even to any ritual whatsoever? In order to look for a tentative answer
to this question we now turn to Walter Burkert for the second time.
It is he who can guide us, by way of an approach we have not yet
discussed.

6. EPPURE SI MUOVE ... : MYTH AND RITUAL PAR! PASSU

In 1970 Burkert published a paper entitled 'Iason, Hypsipyle and

New Fire at Lemnos: A Study in Myth and Ritual' 149 . Kirk's criti-
cal studies had not yet appeared at the time, but monolithic myth
and ritual theories had already been sufficiently subjected to criti-
cism. Burkert, too, conceded whole-heartedly that there exist myths
without a rite, and rites without a myth, that we know of aetiological
myths of the most trite variety, and that it is out of the question,
therefore, that myth should always be connected with ritual. Still,
there exist complexes-such as the Arrhephoria complex he had dis-
cussed before-in which the connection is so close that the observer
feels spurred on to consider the matter afresh. One such complex is
that of the women of Lemnos 150 . According to myth, Aphrodite in-
flicted them with an unbearable stench as punishment for some
offense. The result was that their husbands refused to have inter-
course with them and took Thracian girls as concubines. Not a little
vexed at this behaviour, the women-all except one-murdered the
men in their immediate surroundings, thus condemning themselves
to sexual continence. The Argonauts put in at the island on their
return voyage and having met nothing much but dragons for some
time restored order: thereafter the demographic balance was set
right again. The ritual orders all Lemnian fires to be extinguished
once a year; during the period of nine days without fire, offerings
are to be made to subterranean gods, after which new fire is to be
brought by ship from Delos and all fires may be lit again.
A brief note in a later gloss links myth and rite emphatically: once
a year the women of Lemnos are said to keep men off by chewing

149 Burkert 1970 = 1990, 60-76.

150 Here, too, a predecessor had noticed the essentials: G. Dumezil, Le crimedes
Lemniennes(Paris 1924). Cf. Detienne 1972, 172-84, who, from a structuralist point
of view, arrives at comparable conclusions. For some recent reconsiderations on the
Lemnian fire see: P. Y. Forsyth, Lemnos Reconsidered, EMC 28 (1984) 3-14; R.
P. Martin, Fire on the Mountain: Lysistrata and the Lemnian Women, ClAnt, 6
(1978) 77-99.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 75

garlic. This is a striking parallel indeed and the 'message' is clear

in both: lack of fire means disorganization of social life (no hearth
fire, no bread, no work for blacksmiths and potters, no burnt offer-
ings, no communication, therefore, with the gods), it is a period of
standstill and stagnation, typical of the transition to the New Year,
and the myth represents this sterile, asocial aspect in its own way.
In both fields there is an atmosphere of menace and death.
How are we to explain this parallelism, which even Kirk 151 was
later prepared to acknowledge? What came first, myth or ritual?
Burkert refuses to answer this question, since in his words, it '' trans-
cends philology, since both myth and ritual were established well be-
fore the invention of writing" (p.14). In his conclusion, though, he
hints more than once that myth and ritual, in the final analysis, de-
rive from one single origin, for instance when he maintains that
myth may becomeindependent of ritual (p.14) or when he stresses the
importance of myths for the reconstruction of rites: "Myth, being
the plot, may indicate connections between rites which are isolated
in our tradition" (p.14). Anyway, rite is considered a necessary
means of communication and solidarity within a social group.
Feigned fear and agression may prevent real disaster. Myth, how-
ever, does the same with different means. Here too the theme is
menace and death, but now the victims are human beings, whereas
the ritual confines itself to animals: "only the myth carries, in phan-
tasy, to the extreme what, by ritual, is conducted into more innocent
channels" (p.16) 152 . This is a theme Burkert has elaborated in a
fascinating way in his theory of the origin of the tragedy, which I am
not going to discuss here 153 .
At the same time, and above all, we recognize here guarded, ten-
tative phrases that immediately remind us of Harrison's second
myth and ritual relation-"they arise pari passu" -, notably in the
shape it was given by some of the anthropologists quoted above,
Kluckhohn above all. This impression is confirmed when we turn to

151 Kirk 1974, 246: "It stands out, then, as the one clear case in the whole
range of Greek heroic myths - with the C ecropides tale as a weaker ally - in which
the myth-and-ritual theory is vindicated".
152 Cf. idem, Gnomon 44 ( 1972): "Rituale, dramatisch-theatralische Mitteilung
im Spannungsfeld biologisch sozialer Antinomie. So tritt eine tiefere Parallelitat
zum Mythos zu Tage".
153 Burkert 1966a = 1990, 13-39; idem 1983. lndependently,J.-P. Guepin, The
Tragic Paradox (Diss. Amsterdam 1968) had arrived at comparable conclusions,
although there are important differences as well.
76 CHAPTER ONE

Burkert's 'Griechische Mythologie und die Geistesgeschichte der

Moderne', a treatise published in 1980 154 , and find that with
regard to the myth and ritual relation Harrison and the anthropolo-
gists are quoted emphatically and with approval, criticism is relegat-
ed to a footnote, and Kirk-in this connection, that is-is not even
mentioned. It is a succinct, albeit extremely scholarly and informa-
tive survey, and the reader has the feeling that the author has more
to say. He did so indeed in the 1977 Sather Lectures mentioned
above, which were published in 1979 and came on the market more
or less simultaneously with this treatise. Here for the first time the
essence of myth and the essence of rite were investigated and
described in a way that had not been pursued in this context ever
before.
In dealing with myth Burkert takes as a starting point the struc-
tural approach to the fairy tale narrative inaugurated by V. Propp
and simplified and transformed later by others 155 . According to
Propp, all Russian fairy tales of a certain category were found to
consist of sequences of thirty-one elements (functions, motifemes),
a number that strikes us as sufficiently arbitrary to have been disco-
vered, not imposed 156 . In point of fact A. Dundes, in his introduc-
tion to the latest edition, points out that Propp follows an empirical,
inductive method (which Dundes calls syntagmatic), that stands in
stark contrast to the speculative, deductive (paradigmatic) approach
of the structuralist par excellenceClaude Levi-Strauss. Whereas the
latter starts from hypothetical polar oppositions, trying to place
everything within this structure, Propp simply describes the linear
order of narrative elements he perceives again and again. The final
twenty elements of Propp's collection have been summed up by Bur-
kert as follows: there is an instruction, a task to go in search of some-
thing (something lost) and to get it, the hero gathers relevant infor-
mation, decides to set out upon the quest, starts on his way, meets
with others, either helpers or enemies, there is a change of scenery,

154 Burkert 1980.

155 V. J. Propp, Morphologyof the Folktale (Austin-London 19732 ). For other
works of this scholar see above n.112. I can only give a rough summary ofBurkert's
ideas and he does not follow Propp in every respect.
156 In contradistinction to Hocart's 26 elements of royal coronation (above
p.37). Although it is true that, provided one skips some doublets, the Russian al-
phabet appears to consist of 31 letters, even in the original Russian edition the 31
motifemes are not indicated with letters.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 77

the object is found and taken possession of by force or by cunning,

it is brought back, the hero being chased by the adversary, success
is there, the hero comes off triumphant.
It is this linear aspect in particular that strongly appeals to Bur-
kert, who has no use for Levi-Strauss' algebra 157 and, therefore,
does not show any appreciable affinity with the approaches of Ver-
nant or Detienne either. Numerous other schemes have already
been suggested as an organizational principle of fairy tales and the
like 158 , but none as short as Burkert's proposal. In point of fact
Propp's entire scheme-and many other patterns as well, for there
are more, of course-may be summarized in one verb: 'to get'.
What have we got, after all? Nothing but a program of action, elabo-
rated into a narrative and varied through a number of transfor-
mations-a program derived directly from life, from biology. For
what the hero does in Propp's schema is essentially similar to what
the rat does when-driven by hunger-it goes in search of prey and
returns with the spoils, having escaped the street urchin's stones, the
cat's jaws and envious fellow-rats. The identical pattern may be
transposed to the world of the primates in that stage in which food
could only be obtained by way of long marches, hunting or gather-
ing, which involved the most horrible dangers outside the relative
safety of the settlement. It is not possible, even approximately, to do
justice to the very scholarly discourse, which shows a marked recep-
tiveness to the new doctrine of sociobiology. I note the conclusion:
''Tale structures, as sequences of motifemes, are founded on basic
biological or cultural programs of action" (p.18).
In the second chapter Burkert deals with ritual. Here he has al-
ready been preceded by several others on the avenue which he wants
to take himself and which proves to lead to biology once more. From
other scholars, ranging from Julian Huxley to Konrad Lorenz 159 ,

157 See for instance his amusing treatment of this type of structuralism in Bur-
kert 1979, 10 ff. For a recent attack on the imposition of modern Western binary
classificatory principles on anthropological data, especially ritual, see: S. Tcher-
kezoff, Dual ClassificationReconsidered:Nyamwezi SacredKingship and OtherExamples
(Cambridge 1987).
158 For instance in A. G. Dundes, The Morphologyof North AmericanIndian Folk-
tales (Helsinki 1964): Lack-Lack Liquidated: Task-Task Accomplished; Deceit-
Deception; Interdiction-Violation-Consequence-Attempted Escape.
159 K. Lorenz, Das sogenannteBose: Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression(Vienna
1963, 197025). English translation: On Aggression(New York 1966). Burkert 1979,
35 ff.; idem, Glaube und Verhalten: Zeichengehalt und Wirkungsmacht von
78 CHAPTER ONE

he borrows the definition of ritual: "Ritual is action redirected for

demonstration". With many animal species living socially it has
been found that certain types of group behaviour possessed an evi-
dently biological function originally, but became detached from
their origin and acquired a new function: that of a communication
signal, the effect of which is binding on the group 160 . These ritual
acts are highly stereotyped, are repeated 161 and exaggerated, often
manifested in theatrical and dramatic forms, and are pre-eminently
social actions. K. Meuli 162 had already observed that with humans,
too, ritual behaviour might become divorced from its original roots
and acquire some new function fostering solidarity, such as mourn-
ing behaviour. Sociologists and anthropologists in their turn have
said repeatedly and in various contexts that the integration of the
group is maintained primarily by ritual means.

Opferritualen, in: Le sacrificedans l'antiquite (Entretiens Hardt XXVII, Geneva

1981) 91-125. Already in the period in which this was written and ever more in the
decade that followed there has been much criticism of the view that human agres-
siveness is a basic feature in and of society. In later works Burkert (Burkert 1983,
1 f.; Hammerton-Kelly 1987) has acknowledged this. Here is his response in "Bur-
kert iiber Burkert", FranlifurterAllgemeineZeitung 3-8-1988, p.30: "Es mag sein, class
das iiberwaltigende Interesse unserer Gesellschaft an der Dampfung, ja Be-
seitigung der Aggression zum Filter geworden ist, der U nbequemes nicht passieren
!asst: es ware zu bedenken, class Ausnahmezustanden "starken Empfindens",
Begeisterung ebenso wie Panik, <lurch die sozialwissenschaftliche Standard-
methode des Fragebogens kaum zu erfassen sind; es mag auch sein class die Art der
Interaktionen heutzutage <lurch die Revolution der Medien in der Tat veriindert
wird .... '' On the other hand, it may also be that recent experiences in the Arabian
desert, in Yugo-Slavia, or in the weekly gladiatorial shows on the benches of our
soccer arenas simply prove that Burkert-and, worse, Lorenz-was essentially
right after all. In this context the works by R. Girard, whatever the value of their
central thesis, still stimulate reflection. See his contribution to Hammerton-Kelly
1987. On his ideas see: P. Dumouchel (ed.), Violenceet verite:autour de Rene Girard
(Colloque de Cerisy, Paris 1985); Chr. Orsini, La penseede Rene Girard(Paris 1986);
G. Baudler, Am Anfangwar das Wort, oderder Mord? Die Faszination des Lebens
und die Faszination der Totungsmacht am Ursprung der Religion, ZKTh 111
(1989) 45-56. For criticism see: R. Gordon, Reason and Ritual in Greek Tragedy.
On Rene Girard, Violenceand the Sacred,and Marcel Detienne, The Gardensof Adonis,
ComparativeCriticism 1 (1979) 279-310.
160 Douglas 1973; K. Lorenz, A Discussion on Ritualization of Behaviour in
Animals and Man, PhilosophicalTransactionsof the Royal SocietyLondon, Ser. B. 251
(1966) 247-526;]. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Der vorprogrammierte Mensch. Das Ererbteals bestim-
menderFaktor im menschlichenVerhalten(Vienna 1973, 1976 2).
161 Repetition is one of the most essential principles in ritual: J. Cazeneuve, Le
principe de repetition clans le rite, Cahiersinternationauxde sociologie23 (1957) 42-62;
Di Nola 1974, 94-144.
162 Especially in: Entstehung und Sinn der Trauersitten, Schweizerische Archivfur
Volkskunde43 (1946) = Meuli 1975 I, 333-51.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 79

A great number of ritual customs are interpreted by Burkert as

ritualized, therefore stereotyped and 'degenerate' biological ac-
tions. We knew that the Olympian sacrifice should be understood as
a relic from palaeolithic hunting customs 163 , but it may come as a
surprise to many a reader to learn that the ritual of pouring out oil
on to a sacred stone derives, in the final analysis, from the canine
habit of demarcating territory. Whether such detailed interpreta-
tions are convincing or not, what is interesting is the consequences
of these two views for myth and ritual, at least for the types of myth
and ritual we are discussing in the present section.
If we consider them in the light of Burkert's recent theories, we
will soon notice that we are dealing with a single phenomenon with
two aspects: both myth and ritual are 'programs of action', both
have a biological background involving transformations of action
patterns bearing immediately upon the most essential needs, crises
and dilemmas of animal and primitive human existence, both have
become detached from their origins, both now primarily serve com-
munication and solidarization. Myth (the myths at issue) is the ver-
bal expression, rite (the rites at issue) a reflection in action, of essen-
tially identical situations and their inherent psychic emotions. For
the first time an impressive attempt has been made to underpin Har-
rison's second option theoretically. There are myths and rites that
are so closely connected that many of us had already been under the
impression that these, at any rate, must have some common origin.
This is by no means true of all myths and rites, and it may even only
hold for a small minority. But where there is such a plausible connec-
tion we now have at least a well-argued theory as to roughly how this
parallelism might have arisen.

7. PROSPECTS

So far I have essentially done no more than arrange, describe and,

to a lesser degree, evaluate. The fact that the critical aspect was em-
phasized more forcibly in the latter part of the discussion may be ex-
plained by the fact that the first phase of the myth and ritual theory
had long been concluded and assessed, whereas the most recent ap-
proach is still in full swing. That is why critical observations can
certainly be useful, but never definitive. I do not want to con-

163 K. Meuli, Griechische Opferbriiuche Meuli 1975 II, 907-1021.

80 CHAPTER ONE

elude, however, without once more gathering in the lines we have

observed so far. The resultant synthesis may no doubt strike the
reader as sweeping. To make matters worse, the lack of space pre-
vents me from arguing more specifically. However, a few illustra-
tions of what I mean will be given in later chapters. What I have to
offer here is thus nothing but a tentative, somewhat intuitive sugges-
tion that enables me to return to those complexes that up to now had
been felt to be mutually exclusive: the myth and ritual complex of
the New Year-sacral king-dying and rising god, on the one hand,
and that of initiation, on the other.
Let us concentrate exclusively on the two complexes we have
discussed-we might conceive of others, of course, but not many
nor such easily recognizable ones-and consider the following
questions:
What might be the reason that in the head of one person, Jane
Harrison, the notions of two complexes could exist one after or
beside the other, the divine protagonists changing effortlessly from
one complex into the next (Megistos Kouros, Dionysos)?
How can we explain that some enthusiasts trace back the entire
world-wide mythology to one myth and ritual complex, whereas
others are reducing a considerable number of myths to the other
complex?
How is it that some New Year specialists time and again point out
resemblance, affinity or relation with initiation ideology, whereas
initiation specialists are repeatedly drawing parallels with New Year
elements? 164
What do we infer from the fact that a myth and ritual theorist
of the old stamp, A.M. Hocart, wrote a book about coronation
rites of kings, whereas a representative of the recent trend, J. N.
Bremmer, is seen to waver between boys' initiation and royal initia-
tion?

164 For these associations see for instance Burkert 1966, 25: "In den lnitiations-
riten erneuert sich das Leben der Gemeinschaft, in den daraus gewachsenen Neu-
jahrsriten erneuert sich die Ordnung der Palis". Cf. idemon the legend of Romulus
in: Historia 11 (1962) 356 ff.; Bremmer 1978b, 33 f. on elements oflustration as fea-
tures of New Year festival and initiation; Eliade 1975 passim, especially eh. XII,
XIII, p. 48; idem, The Myth of theEternalReturn (New York 1954) 62-73; Nouvel An,
peau neuve, Le Courier8(1955) 7-32. In Egypt the coronation (initiation) of the new
king is seen as the beginning of a new aeon and a new year: J. Bergman, lch bin
Isis (U ppsala 1968) 212 ff.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 81

Why is it that both types of approach claim primeval images

like the flood 165 and man-eating monsters 166 , beside numerous
other elements such as role and status reversal, experience of

165 There are relatively few examples of the primeval flood as a signal of initia-
tion. Generally, the deluge theme is pre-eminently the image of chaos, seen as the
obstacle to kosmos.The latter can only come to being after the victory over the chaot-
ic deluge, a victory that is generally celebrated on New Year's day. Meuli 1975 I,
283-99, concludes: "Jene 'regeneration totale du temps' ist von alten Volkern
begriffen und dargestellt worden als das Auftauchen einer neuen, reinen Welt aus
den Wassern der Sintflut" and he gives a substantiation of this statement in Meuli
1975 II, 1041 ff. The same ideas already in: H. Usener, Sintjlutsagen(Bonn 1899)
36 ff. Cf. also: G. Piccaluga, Lycaon (Rome 1968) 69; Burkert 1983, index s.v.
'Flood'; J. Rudhardt, Les mythes grecs relatifs a l'instauration du sacrifice. Les
roles correlatifs de Promethee et de son fils Deucalion, MH 27 (1970) 1-15; idem,
Le themede l'eau primordialedans la mythologiegrecque(Bern 1971). For a full discussion
of the Greek material see: G. A. Caduff, AntikeSintjlutsagen(Gottingen 1986): rela-
tionship with New Yearfestival: 229, 246, 255-8, 275 f. (with documentation), con-
nection with initiation: 276 (without documentation). I agree with his predilection
for a more general interpretation of the victory over the Flood as a guarantee of
"Ordnung". The theme has a central function in Near Eastern mythology: J. G.
Frazer, Folklorein the Old TestamentI (London 1918) 104-360, in the revised edition
by Theodor H. Gaster, Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament(New York-
London 1969, 19752) 82-130; A. J. Wensinck, The Ocean in the Literature of the
WesternSemites(Amsterdam 1918); 0. Kaiser, Die mythischeBedeutungdes Meeresin
Aegypten, Ugarithund Israel (Berlin 19622); J.P. Lewis, A Study of the Interpretationof
Noah and the Flood in Jewish and ChristianLiterature(Leiden 1968, 19782). Generally
on the symbolism of the Flood: H. Gollob, Chrysaor.Mit einemAnhangeuberdie Sint-
flutsage (Vienna 1956). Cf. also the literature cited by Smith 1978, 98, and more
recently on the "most studied narrative ever": A. Dundes (ed.), The FloodMyth
(Berkeley 1988).
166 On man-eating monsters and anthropophagy as symptoms of initiation:
Bremmer 1978, 16 f. Cannibalism as a ~ign of (recurrent) periods of chaos and dis-
turbance of order: A. J. Festugiere, Etudes de religiongrecqueet hellinistique(Paris
1972) 145 ff.; M. Detienne, Dionysosmis d mort (Paris 1977) 5-60; C. Grottanelli,
The Enemy King is a Monster. A Biblical Equation, SSR 3 (1979) 5 ff.; Versnel
1980, 591, and see below eh. II (p.94). Chr. Sourvinou-lnwood, BICS 33 (1986)
42 n.22, gives an extensive bibliography. Until very recently it was generally as-
sumed that anthropophagy was practised, at least for ritual-cultic purposes, in pre-
historic times. See for instance: H. Matjeka, Anthropophagie in der priihisto-
rischen Ansiedlung bei Knowize und in der priihistorischen Zeit iiberhaupt,
Mitteilungen der AnthropologischenGesellschaftWien 26 (1896) 129 ff.; W. Coblenz,
Bandkeramischer Kannibalismus in Zauschwitz, Ausgrabungenund Funde7 (1962) 67
ff.; J. Kneipp & H. Buttner, Anthropophagie in der jiingsten Bandkeramik der
Wetterau, Germania66 (1988) 489-97; R. Tannahill, Fleshand Blood. A History of the
Cannibal Complex(1975). This belief is also professed in Hammerton-Kelly 1987,
index s. v. Recently, however, serious doubts have been expressed. See for instance:
Nature 348 (29 nov. 1990) 395. The theories about cannibalism in Minoic Greece
suffered the same fate: Hughes 1991, 18-24. This, of course, does not mean that
W. Arens, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropologyand Anthropophagy(Oxford 1979) is
right in rejecting all testimonies of man eating. Cf. R. Rosaldo in: Hammerton-
82 CHAPTER ONE

anarchy, and so forth, for their own complex? 167

How is one to explain that both can refer to world-wide materials,
and, finally, how is it that so much attention was and still is paid to
these two myth and ritual patterns and relatively little to others?
Now let us just give specific form to these questions once more.
In the sequence of the epic of the Odysseyand the story of Troy con-
nected with it, the hero leaves his country, has to wander, to wage
war far from home, takes Troy by means of a stratagem, is threa-
tened by water (sea), by man-eating and other monsters, returns
home, is menaced again, is finally triumphant and becomes king
(again).
If we had been obliged to decide, after reading the second section
of the present chapter, which pattern had been transformed into a
myth in this case, would not the New Year pattern offall and return
of the sacral king and the battling god have been an obvious choice?
It was this choice that was made long ago by Lord Raglan and
others, witness the way he manages to fit all details into his pattern.
And if we had been asked the same question after the reading of sec-
tion five, would we not have hesitated to answer the question, be-
cause the story, when you come to think of it, fits very well into the
initiatory scheme as well?
Meanwhile, the reason for all this has become abundantly clear,
and so the questions asked above have been essentially answered.
Both situations, that of the New Year and that of initiation, have a
firmly related ritual and social function and follow, in essence, iden-
tical basic patterns: the old situation has to be taken leave of (symbol
of death, fall, farewell: the separation);there is a period of transition
between old and new (sojourn in death, underworld, labyrinth,

Kelly 1987, 240: "I have spent three years in northern Luzon living with a group
who are headhunters. Their headhunting is vastly exaggerated and overreported,
but they do headhunt; there is no question about that"; cf. also: G. Weiss, Elemen-
tarreligionen (Vienna-New York 1987) 142-59. Recently, T. D. White, Prehistoric
Cannibalism at Mancos 5MTUMR-2346 (Princeton U.P. Laurenceville 1992) has re-
opened the discusion and established cannibalism in a Colorado pueblo of around
1100 AD.
167 It cannot be said that the fairy tales in which persons are swallowed up by
a whale or dragon are necessarily connected with initiation ritual. For the
widespread occurrence of this motif see: W. Fauth, Utopische Inseln in den
'Wahren Geschichten' des Lukian, Gymnasium 86 (1979) 49 ff.; U. Steffen, Das
Mysterium von Tod und Auferstehung: Formen und Wandlungen desjona-Motivs (Gottingen
1963); idem, Drachenkampf Der Mythos vom Bosen (Stuttgart 1984); N. Forsyth, The
Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton UP 1987).
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 83

flood, foreign countries, a monster's belly: the marge);the new situa-

tion is accepted (rebirth, resurrection, reinvestiture, return and
reintegration: the agregation).That one complex is embedded in a
process of nature, the other in a social passage, is, seen from a struc-
tural point of view, not immediately relevant. What matters is the
close relationship in the typically transitional situations and the
mythical symbols in which they find their expression.
Here I could stop. I have suggested a tentative explanation for
both the radical substitution and the persistent thematic intertwin-
ing in the history of the two major theories of myth and ritual of the
last hundred years. Functional and ( consequently) structural analo-
gies are responsible. Hence acceptance of one of the theories does
not entail the need to reject dogmatically the other one. However,
what we have not considered so far is the question of what urged hu-
man culture to ritualizethe two related passages so emphatically and,
more precisely, why this was expressed in imagery which was so
closely related, if not identical. In other words, if we accept that
periods of transition-i.e. crisis-are inherent in natural and social
life, and that they naturally provoke similar reactions, we still have
not elucidated the bafflingformal similarities in the ritual and mythi-
cal expressions. I would therefore not like to end without making a
few suggestions. They should be seen, however, as an encore:what
follows has no strict dependence of the previous argument.
This argument has its starting point in the similarity of the two
myth and ritual complexes. Burkert's recent work has not yet been
taken account of in the discussion. So let us now take the ultimate
step: suppose we had not been asked the question about the interpre-
tation of the Odysseus story until after reading section 6. Would we
not be inclined to class it under the head of Propp' s narrative struc-
ture and-as the next step-to consider, with Burkert, whether the
story reveals references to deep-rooted biological and cultural
schemes of action? If one checks it, again everything fits. That
would mean that we have reached a deeper level of interpretation,
which does not supersede the other two but supports and envelops
them. We might conceive of it in this way: the most elementary and
primordial scheme of (originally bio-sociological) functions has been
conserved and transformed, in ritualized and mythicized form, at
precisely those points where human society experiences primal crisis
most intensely. Apart from incidental calamities like epidemics,
wars, earthquakes and floods, these are precisely the critical and
84 CHAPTER ONE

painful moments of transition that are experienced nowhere more

keenly than during initiatory periods and at the turning points of the
agricultural or social year. In this way the structural relationship be-
tween these two 'crises' and their mythical-ritual representations is
now placed in a historical evolutionary perspective. This seems to
be implied in Burkert's clearly evolved view 168 . The author of
'Kekropidensage und Arrhephoria: vom Initiationsritus zum
Panathenaenfest' now writes (1979, 57): "The pattern called 'the
girl's tragedy' can [my italics H.S.V] be interpreted as reflecting in-
itiation rituals; but these, in turn, are demonstrative accentuations
of biologically programed crises, menstruation, defloration, preg-
nancy, birth". In the latter study, Odysseus and the Cyclops no
longer have anything to do with initiation. Instead, they are related
to very remote reminiscences from even palaeolithic action patterns
(cf. the lance tempered in the fire). And when Burkert discusses
phenomena of role reversal and sexual submission (pp. 29-30), initi-
ation is found to play only a marginal role in the predominantly bio-
logically oriented argument ( apes also offer themselves in an act of
submission )169 .
No doubt not everybody who is perhaps prepared to acknowledge

168 One perceives traces of a shift in the frame of interpretation in later works
of Burkert. Burkert 1980, 184, discusses the overtly Freudian theory of 0. Rank,
DerMythos derGeburtdesHeiden(Vienna 1909), in which the' Aussetzung- und Riick-
kehrformel' is traced back to the 'father-son conflict'. Burkert considers this "eine
der solidesten Leistungen" and states: "dies leuchtet weithin ein". The implica-
tions of this assessment are crucial: one of the traditional ingredients of the initia-
tion theory has been detached from this context and is now exploited in a different
type of interpretation. Very interesting on the neurobiological origins of the con-
nections between myth and ritual: E. G. d'Aquili, Ch. D. Laughlinjr,J. McMa-
nus, The Spectrumof Ritual. A BiogeneticStructuralAnalysis (New York 1979). More
recently on the motif of exposure in legend and folk tale: Bremmer 1987b, 30, who
now also seeks the function of this element outside the sphere of initiation. Cf. also
Auffarth 1991, 457 .
.. 169 Before Burkert this issue was already discussed by D. Fehling, Ethologische
Uberlegungenauf dem Gebietder Altertumskunde(Munich 1974) 18 ff.: "Kopulations-
verhalten als Rangdemonstration'', which has been supplemented by recent
studies on the social function of 'institutionalized homosexuality'. Though no
doubt often connected with initiation-ritual, its application generally exceeds the
strict boundaries of the period of initiation. Homosexual subjection appears to have
a broader function as a powerful component of social hierarchy: it supports the sta-
tus and position of older men over and against women and young men. See: G.
W. Creed, Sexual Subordination: Institutionalized Homosexuality and Social
Control in Melanesia, Ethnology 23 (1984) 157-76, and bibliographical references
there; G. Herdt (ed.), Ritualized Homosexualityin Melanesia (Berkeley-Los Angeles
1984); idem, The Sambia. Ritual and Genderin New Guinea (1987).
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 85

the structural affinity of the two complexes is willing to take this ulti-
mate step. I would repeat that I consider it as no more than a sugges-
tion, a suggestion, though, that deserves serious consideration. In
a series of books-especially The Hero with a Thousand Faces ( 1949,
19752)-, that have come in for a good deal of discussion, J. Camp-
bell deals with a mythical complex 'the adventure of the hero',
whose structure he outlines as follows: 1. departure; 2. initiation; 3.
return. This is a familiar scheme by now, but what is interesting is
that Campbell proceeds totally independently of the scholars
referred to above. He interprets the entire scheme with the help of
Freud and Jung above all in terms of depth psychology, citing
material from dreams. How these images get into our dreams is not
explained, at least not explicitly, and here the recent movement of
socio-biology, despite the criticisms it has received, might well be
revelatory 170 .

170 M. Eliade 1975, 128 (with a very hazy note on p. 165) suggests that the in-
itiation scheme was prior and landed in dreams and myths, whereas at the same
time he nevertheless concedes that "every human life is made up of a series of or-
deals, of 'deaths' and of 'resurrections'". But if this is so, it is far more likely that
these ordeals common to human life have given shape to both the initiation scenario
and-independently-to the materials dreams and myths are made of. See on this
and similar questions: H. von Beit, Symbolik desMii.rchens.VersucheinerDeutung(Bern
1952) and Enzyklopii.diedes Mii.rchenss. v. 'Aufgabe', where, conversely, the unfeasi-
ble assignment known from fairy tales is seen as the reflection of 'Alptraumer-
fahrungen'. Nor is it very likely that Snow White has borrowed her seven dwarfs
from initiation ritual: H. Bausinger, Anmerkungen zu Schneewittchen, in: H.
Brackert ~ed.), Und wenn sie nichtgestorbensind . .. Perspektivenauf das Mii.rchen(Frank-
furt 1982 ) 39-70. What Campbell omits has been made up by G. J. Baudy: Ex-
kommunikationund Reintegration.Zur Geneseund KulturfunktionfruhgriechischerEinstellun-
gen zum Tod (Frankfurt 1980). He offers a psycho-ethological explanation of
deep-seated fears, for instance the fear of voracious monsters, interpreting them as
relics of primates' primordial fear of the 'Artfeind' (the praedator; cf. in the same
vein: d' Aquili et alii o.c. [above n.168] 178: "When ritual works [ ... ] it powerfully
relieves man's existential anxiety and, at its most powerful, relieves him of the fear
of death and places him in harmony with the universe"). On p. 33 f. he juxtaposes
the initiand, who is in danger of being swallowed up, and the fairy tale hero in the
same situation, as I have done, but does not suggest an evolutionary link between
the two. On pp. 250 ff., however, he wishes to trace the fairy tale motif back to initi-
ation (specifically, the shamanistic scenario), which seems unnecessary to me. Ob-
viously similar problems of origin emerge in different fields: it is the basic problem
of Freud's Oedipus theory. It plays an important role in the discussion between
Henrichs and Winkler (above n.144), where the latter-I think convincingly-
refers to ''patterns of narrative, the basic plots and formulae of popular entertain-
ment'', without, however, inquiring into the origins of these patterns. It also
figures in the discussion between F. Ranke, KleinereSchriften(Bern-Munster 1971),
who explains the popular fancies of the 'Wilde Heer' as "innerseelische Vorgiinge
86 CHAPTER ONE

As regards our two myth and ritual complexes we thus find that
what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, which is probably
due to the fact that both sauces are prepared by the same cook, who
works with only one recipe. The primordial 'crisis', which is
experienced continuously in the risks of daily ventures, has a stero-
typed program: leaving the relative safety of the familiar environ-
ment-setting out for sheer superhuman enterprises and unspeak-
able dangers in a marginal landscape marked by monsters and every
sort of nameless terror, often to the very limits of death-returning
in triumph. These indispensable, successive actions are reflected in
the imagery of our two complexes and in fairy tales and myths of the
Odysseytype. Equating the sauces of goose and gander does not neces-
sarily disqualify either of them. Nor does it entail a depreciation of
the remarkable progress made in our field through the recent shift
in our model of interpretation, as I hope to have made clear and shall
further elucidate in later chapters. While, as I remarked in the In-
troduction, in the natural sciences some implications of Kuhn's con-
cept of 'paradigm' are liable to criticism, the concept has proved
helpful in analysing developments in the social sciences. However,
it has been pointed out recently that in this sector paradigms are, as
a rule, not radically exclusive. This tolerance has awarded an-
thropology the qualification: 'polyparadigmatic'. And this is exactly
my point.
Though the new paradigm introducing the social interpretation of
myth and ritual has cleared the way for explanations that were un-
heard of in the first half of this century, - I am especially referring
to the application of the concept of 'marginality', both in the rites
of initiation and in the festivals of reversal-, the new model by no
means completely eradicates or replaces the old one. First, I would
not (and did not) deny that the presence of the two patterns
described by the myth and ritual theorists can actually be demon-
strated. What I oppose is the totalitarian, monolithic interpretation

des numinosen Erlebnis" (especially as manifest in hysteria, epilepsy, etc.) and his
fierce opponent 0. Hoffler, Verwandlungskulte, Volkssagen und Mythen (Sitz. Ber.
Oesterr.Ak. Wiss. Phil.-hist. Kl. 279 [19731), who traces this 'wild army' back to
historical, culticjungmannschaften. It is also present in the discussion on the origins
of the Eleusinian and other mysteries. See for instance on the ambivalence of
human initiation and agricultural fertility as the ultimate background of the mys-
teries: G. Casadio, Per un'indagine storico-religiosa sui culti di Dioniso in relazi-
one alla fenomenologia dei misteri I, SSR 6 (1982) 209-34.
 MYTH AND RITUAL, OLD AND NEW 87

of such mythical patterns from the point of view of just one of the
complexes. Secondly, I do not doubt that there are myths which, in
the final analysis, go back to some New Year scenario, nor that there
are myths which derive their origin from initiatory schemes.
However, I think it unlikely that all the stories with the scenario
described above have developed in either one of these ways. Anyone
who goes to such lengths, while still acknowledging that every-
where-in both complexes and in a great mass of myths, fairy tales,
stories (and dreams) from all over the world-we can discern a more
or less identical basic pattern, has the right if not the duty to try to
find an explanation for this phenomenon. Perhaps this can be done
without the help of recent ethological and biological insights, but it
may be better to try to incorporate them. In any case-and that was
my chief aim-we can understand now why the champions of the
two complexes have so often encroached upon each others' terri-
tories.
To return to the Odysseus theme, I, for one, think that an origin
in some New Year scenario is less plausible than a descent from
some initiatory scenario. Much more plausible than either, though,
is the interpretation of this story as a variation on the biological-cul-
tural program of action, which may have been carried over into both
complexes and which, independently,has become the material from
which dreams, fairy tales and myths of a certain type have been
fashioned. Of course, whoever thinks all this much too vague and
prefers to sit down and reread the Odysseyitself is right, too.
In The GoldenBough IV (1914) p. vii, Frazer sighs: "The longer
I occupy myself with questions of ancient mythology, the more diffi-
dent I become of success in dealing with them, and I am apt to think
that we who spend our years in searching for solutions of these in-
soluble problems are like Sisyphos perpetually rolling his stone up-
hill only to see it revolve again into the valley''.
This is a pessimistic expression of what I found more hopefully
phrased by the anthropologist E.M. Ackerknecht 171 : "If anthropo-
logy returns to the comparative method" [and as we have seen, re-
cent developments in the borderland of anthropology and the clas-
sics tend in that direction H. S. V.], '' it will certainly not forget what
it has learned meanwhile in general and what it has learned about

171 I found this quotation in a book from which I have learned more than I have
been able to account for within the scope of this paper: Smith 1978, 264.
88 CHAPTER ONE

the limitations of the method in particular. It will return only in that

spiral movement, so characteristic of scientific thought, arrivingafter
half a centuryat the samepoint but at a higherlevel. It will know better how
and what to compare than it knew fifty years ago''.
Sisyphus' stone rolling but landing at a higher level each time?
Let us hope so, even if the stone turns out to obey Zeno's laws.
 CHAPTER TWO

KRONOS AND THE KRONIA

Ce Cronos, pere de Zeus ( ... ) est

un personnage divin fort ambigu.
P. Vidal-Naquet

"Myth, in my terminology, is the counterpart of ritual: myth im-

plies ritual, ritual implies myth, they are one and the same"; thus
E. Leach takes his stand in a discussion that can have no end 1 . In
the previous chapter we have analysed the three possible forms of
relationship between myth and ritual. At the beginning of the dis-
cussion stands Frazer's definition of myth as 'mistaken explanation'
of ritual. An inverse relationship has been postulated by the myth-
and-ritual school of Hooke and his followers: myth as the scenario
for ritual. A third possible explanation for the link between the two
was offered by Jane Harrison: "They probably arose together.
Ritual is the utterance of an emotion, a thing felt in action, myth in
words or thoughts. They arise paripassu''. We have also traced relat-
ed expressions of the latter view in several more recent anthropologi-
cal studies. And we have heard the critical voice of G. S. Kirk, who
argues that any monolithic theory regarding myth and ritual should
be rejected: all three forms of interrelation do indeed occur, but rites
without myths and myths without rites outnumber the few instances
of interrelated rites and myths.
Kirk did have a point, of course, but this clearly did not mean the
end of the investigation of myth and ritual. If "myth and ritual do
not correspond in details of content but in structure and
atmosphere' ' 2 , it is worthwile investigating whether there are in-
deed any examples at all of a myth and rite operating pari passu as
"symbolic processes for dealing with the same type of situation in
the same affective mode", as Cl. Kluckhohn expressed it. W. Bur-
kert has done so in recent years with regard to Greece, in his analysis
of myth and ritual complexes discussed in the previous chapter.

1 For this and similar expressions see above p.40.

2 Thus the formulation by F. Graf, ZPE 55 (1984) 254.
90 CHAPTER TWO

Although even Kirk has been convinced by Burkert's arguments

that in these complexes myths and rites indeed are more or less
parallel representations of a certain affective atmosphere surround-
ing the turn of the year, it cannot be denied that in both complexes
strong aetiological components are present too; if the myth does not
explain details of the ritual, it does at any rate translate them into
words and images.
It is my belief that there was in Greece a myth and ritual
complex-also related to the transition from the old year to the
new-in which myth and rite were indeed formed paripassu, possibly
even more clearly so than in the cases just mentioned, and developed
as parallel expressions-interrelating ones, it is true, but interrelat-
ing in such a subtle and at the same time complicated manner that
here at least the rite cannot be taken as example for the myth, nor
the myth as scenario for the rite. I am referring to the myth and ritu-
al complex of Kronos and the Kronia 3 .

1. MYTH

The oldest version of the myth of Kronos is also the most

complete 4 • Apart from minor additions and variations-in them-
selves often quite significant-the myth as Hesiod tells it in the The-
ogonyhas not changed essentially in the course of time 5 • Here is a
short summary:
Like Iapetos, Themis, Rhea and others, Kronos belonged to the
race of the Titans, children ofOuranos and Ge, the first generation
of gods. Kronos hated his father, who had banished his children to
the depths of the earth. At their mother's lamentations, only Kronos
among the Titans was prepared to take action against his father, and

3 Materials and discussions in: M. Mayer, art. 'Kronos' in: RML II, 1 (1897)
1452-573; M. Pohlenz, Kronos und die Titanen, Neuejahrb. 19 (1916) 549-94; idem,
art. 'Kronos' in: RE XI (1921) 1982-2018; U. von Wilamowitz, Kronos und die
Titanen, SbBerlin(1929) = Kleine SchriftenV, 2 (Berlin 19712) 157-83. A very com-
plete recent survey in: W. Fauth, art. 'Kronos' in: Kleine Pauly 3 (1979) 355-64.
These authors are cited henceforth by name and year only.
4 A structuralist analysis of the Hesiodic myth: M. Detienne and J.-P. Ver-
nant, Les rusesde !'intelligence.La metisdes Grecs(Paris 1974) 62-103. A Freudian in-
terpretation,: G. Devereux, La naissance d' Aphrodite, in:J. Pouillon et P. Maran-
da (edd.), Echangeset communications.Melanges Cl. Levi-StraussII (The Hague-Paris
1970) 1229-52 (revised version in: idem, Femme et Mythe [Paris 1982] 97-126).
5 For developments of the myth in the Orphic Poems see: M. L. West, The
OrphicPoems(Oxford 1983) index s.v.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 91

with his sickle he cut ('mowed') (181) off Ouranos' genitalia. From
the resulting drops of blood sprang the races of the Erinyes, the
giants and the nymphs. Out of the froth ( = the semen) of the genita-
lia, which had fallen into the sea, Aphrodite was born. Next, Kronos
and his sister/spouse Rhea produced children, including the first
generation of Olympians, the family of gods currently in power:
Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, and lastly Zeus. Kronos,
fearing that one of them would overthrow him (462) 'gulped down'
all his children immediately after their births (katepine: 459, 467,
473, 497). Rhea, however, brought her last child, Zeus, into the
world on Crete, where he grew up hidden in a cave without his
father's knowledge. Instead of the baby, Rhea had fed Kronos a
stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. Once he had grown up, Zeus
forced Kronos to regurgitate the other children; first came the stone,
which has been displayed in Delphi ever since 6 . After this liberation
he freed Kronos' brothers, the Cyclopes, who had been chained in
the Underworld by their father Ouranos ( 501); in return for their
rescue, the Cyclopes gave Zeus his thunderbolt. The hundred-
handed giants were also freed (652, 659) from their subterranean
prison at the edge of the world (621/2), where they had been held
in heavy irons (618), in order to assist Zeus and the other Olympians
in their battle against the Titans 7 . An interpolated passage (Th.
687-712) does, indeed, say that Zeus destroyed the Titans with his
thunderbolt, but the authentic text ascribes the victory to the
hundred-handed giants, who drove the Titans deep under the earth

6 On the omphalossee most recently: Chr. Sourvinou-lnwood, Myth as History:

The Previous Owners of the Delphic Oracle, in: Bremmer 1987a, 215-41, esp. ap-
pendix: 233-5; B. Mezzadri, Lapierre et le foyer, Mitis 2 (1987) 215-20. On its
function as the centre of the earth (and the cosmos): E. A. S. Butterworth, The Tree
at the Navel of the Earth (Berlin 1970), passim; see index s.v. M. Eliade has explored
the idea of the navel of the world in various works, especially in: The Sacredand the
Profane(New York 1959) and idem 1964, 316-25. Cf. also the thoughtful study by
Smith 1978, 104-28. Recently Ballabriga 1986, eh. I 'Le probleme du centre' ques-
tioned the 'centrality' of the Delphic omphalosin Greek representations. According
to him, the Greeks related the symbolism of the axis mundi to places outside Greece
proper, to the margins of the known world. But I endorse the objections made by
H. Vos, Mnemosyne43 (1990) 254-5. I shall return to the meaning of the omphalos
and to the ritual of pouring olive oil on it every day and placing unworked wool
on it on festive days (Paus. 10, 24, 6) below pp.142 and 173.
7 The iconographic tradition in: J. Dorig & 0. Gigon, Der Kampf der Gotterund
Titanen (Olten und Lausanne 1961). On 'wars of the gods' in general see: B.
Gladigow, Strukturprobleme polytheistischer Religionen, Saeculum 34 ( 1983)
292-304, esp. 298 ff.
92 CHAPTER TWO

and bound them in strong chains (718). It is true that this part does
not say explicitly that Kronos suffered the same fate, but a later pas-
sage, in which the monster Typhoeus (who according to the scholiast
on II. 2, 783 is a son of Kronos) waylays Zeus, includes an interpo-
lated line (851 ): "The Titans, in Tartaros, keeping Kronos
company".
In Erga 168, it is mentioned that Zeus settled the heroes after their
deaths at the edges of the earth, where they lead carefree and happy
lives on the Islands of the Blessed, where the spelt-giving soil yields
a rich harvest three times a year. Verse 169 then continues: "far
from the immortals. Among them Kronos is king'', and in the sub-
sequent passage it is stated: "his bonds the father of men and gods
had broken''. These verses have long been rejected as interpolations
but it has recently been argued 8 that they should be retained since
they are in complete concordance with the image of the ideal reign
of Kronos, known to Hesiod. I am not qualified to take sides here,
but even if it is not Hesiodic, this version must have been known as
early as the late archaic era 9 , since Pindar is familiar with it ( Ol. 2,
70 f.).
Since the publication of the Hurrian-Hittite Kumarbi myth in
1945 10 scholars have agreed all but unanimously that Hesiod must
have derived important parts of the Kronos myth indirectly from

8 M. van der Valk, On the God Cronus, GRBS 26 (1985) 5-11. The same sug-
gestion had been made by B. Lincoln, IF 85 (1980) 152 n.2, who argues that the
striking content of this line-that the fallen Kronos was made ruler of paradise by
Zeus-led to its suppression in the majority of manuscripts. For some interesting
parallels ofa 'retired' god in a far away place, especially, on an isle in the Ocean,
see: Auffarth 1991, 60 and 96.
9 See: West 1978, ad lac.; Verdenius 1985, ad loc.
to See for instance: H. Erbse, Orientalisches und griechisches in Hesiods The-
ogonie,Philologus108 (1964) 2-28; A. Heubeck, Mythologische Vorstellungen des
Alten Orients im archaischen Griechentum, in: E. Heitsch (ed.), Hesiod (Darm-
stadt 1966) 545-70, and A. Lesky, Griechischer Mythos und Vorderer Orient ibid.
See also above p.31 n.32. The texts in ANET 120-6. Some recent treatments with
extensive bibliography: Burkert 1979, 18-22, and his works mentioned in the next
note. On the pl~_ceof origin: V. Haas, Vorzeitmythenund Gotterberge in altorientalischer
und griechischerUberliejerung(Konstanz 1983). H. Podbielski, Le mythe cosmogo-
nique clans la Theogonied'Hesiode et Jes rites orientaux, LEG 52 (1984) 207-16, puts
forward the parallel with Attis as an argument for the Oriental origin of the castra-
tion motif. Likewise the hundred-handed giants may be an oriental motif: K.
Gross, Menschenhandund Gotteshandin Antike und Christentum(ed. W. Speyer, Stutt-
gart 1985) 370-3. On the oriental origin of the myth ofTyphon see: Auffarth 1991,
56 n.2.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 93

this much older tale. For here Kumarbi castrates his father Anu by
biting off his genitalia and becomes pregnant by them with three (or
five) children, among whom is the god of the storms, comparable to
Zeus. Kumarbi regurgitates all the children except the god of the
storms, who emerges by a more or less 'natural' route and dethrones
his father. His father makes a final attempt at resistance with the as-
sistance of a monster born from his semen (Ullikummi), but to no
avail.
The striking resemblance between the two tales has even led to the
hypothesis, notably argued by W. Burkert 1 1 , that the derivation of
the Theogonymyth from an oriental tradition could not have taken
place until the eighth or seventh century, as this was the period in
which orientalisation had a much greater impact on the Greek world
than scholars have previously been inclined to believe. Parts of the
motif are found as early as the Iliad: Kronos is the father of Zeus,
Hades and Poseidon ( 15, 187) and of Hera ( 5, 721; cf. 4, 59). He
resides at ''the limits of the earth and of the sea'', where lapetus is
too. This place is identified with the depths of Tartaros, which "lies
around it" (8, 477-80), a subterranean abode to which Zeus has ex-
pelled his father and where he remains among the "subterranean
gods" (14, 274; cf. 15, 225).
Later versions add new elements. In Apollodorus 1, 1 ff., the
Kouretes have a secure position as Zeus' protectors. It is by means
of an emetic that Kronos is made to vomit; furthermore, he has also
fathered the hybrid Cheiron (1, 2, 4). Apollodorus does not enlarge
on Kronos' whereabouts after his defeat, although it is this aspect
in particular that traditionally was enriched elsewhere with stereo-
typed features, and which right down to Roman times gave rise to

11 W. Burkert, Oriental Myth and Literature in the Iliad, in: R. Hagg (ed.),
The Greek Renaissance of the Eighth Century BC. Tradition and Innovation (Stockholm
1983) 51-6; idem 1984. Burkert argues for a separate origin of two major themes:
the Succession myth and the War of the Titans (for a revealing new Hurritic-Hittite
text see below n.147). Cf. R. Mondi, The Ascension of Zeus and the Composition
of Hesiod's Theogony, GRBS 25 (1984) 325-44, who distinguishes two clearly
differentiated 'songs' in the works of Hesiod, and F. Solmsen, The Two Near Eas-
tern Sources of Hesiod, Hermes 117 (1989) 413-22, who also pays attention to
Hesiod's attempts at unification. Cf. now also the survey by Mondi 1990. Walcot's
suggestion that many elements of the myth have more in common with the Meso-
potamian than with the Hittite evidence is re-assessed by Auffarth 1991, 123 ff.,
who argues that Syrian and Asia Minor elements must have amalgamated via
Cyprus. However, see the recent criticism of these and similar orientalising theories
by G. Casadio, QUCC 36 (1990) 163-174 esp. 168 f.
94 CHAPTER TWO

variation and amplification. This tendency also began with Hesiod.

So far the picture has been largely negative. It is a picture that al-
ready met with uneasiness and resistance in antiquity: parricide,
infanticide-even cannibalism- 12 , rebellion in a ruthless struggle
for power, lawlessness and a complete absence of moral standards:
all these elements were spotted and-sometimes-condemned 13 .
Kronos' stock epithet ankulometes-possibly meaning 'with the
curved sickle' originally 14-was generally interpreted as 'with
crooked tricks' or 'devious', a negative description; his actions were
part of the unbridled excesses of a distant past, his punishment
seemed just, his time was over. Apparently the oriental myth was
associated with a deity, possibly of pre-Greek origin, who no longer
functioned as an active and intervening god.

12 Even allowing for the differentiation in categories of cannibalism as suggest-

ed by M. Detienne, Dionysosmis a mort (Paris 1977 [ = DionysosSlain, Baltimore-
London 1979]), 133-160, esp. 136. On the horror of cannibalism in the imagination
of ancient Greeks and Romans and its use as a tool of invective against deviant reli-
gious groups, see the literature above p.81 n.166 and Inconsistencies I, 143 f. Cf. also:
Sourvinou-Inwood 1986, 42 n.22; Hughes 1991. For cannibalized children see: A.
Henrichs, Human Sacrifice in Greek Religion, in: Le sacrificedans l'antiquite(Entre-
tiens Hardt XXVII, 1980) 224 ff. On the motif of child sacrifices in connection with
Kronos below p.101. Significantly, Kronos' crimes largely concur with the three
major violations of the Greek cultural code as analysed by A. Moreau, A propos
d'Oedipe. La liaison entre trois crimes, parricide, inceste et cannibalisme, in:
Eludes de littiratureancienne(Paris 1979) 97-127, who demonstrates that their combi-
nation was experienced as 'le comble de dereglement'. Cf. Parker 1983, 326; Brem-
mer 1987a, 50 f. with more literature in nn.39 f.; Detienne, o.c.; also: idem, Be-
tween Beasts and Gods, in: Gordon 1981, 215-28. Equally significant is the
identification of tyranny with these signs of anticultural behaviour by Plato Rep.
571 C-D, discussed by Detienne. Cf. W. Ameling, Tyrannen und Schwangere
Frauen, Historia 35 (1986) 507 f. For the Roman view: Scheid 1984. Cf. Inconsisten-
cies I, 53. Cf. also: 0. Longo, Regalita, polis, incesto nell' Edipo tragico. In: Atti
dellegiomatedi studiosu Edipo. Torino11-13 aprilel983 (ed. R. Uglione, Torino 1984)
69-83, with special reference to disturbances in family relationships. For canniba-
lism as a standard ingredient of the definition of alterity in European tradition see:
P. Mason, Seduction from Afar: Europe's Inner Indians, Anthropos 82 (1987)
581-601, and generally: W. Arens, The Man-eating Myth. Anthropologyand An-
thropophagy(New York 1979). Here, too, associations with incest and other types
of sexual deviance are rife, as they are for instance collected by A. Pagden, The Fall
of Natural Man. The American Indian and the Origins of ComparativeEthnology(Cam-
bridge 1982); B. Bucher, Die Phantasien der Eroberer. Zur graphischen Repriisen-
tation des Kannibalismus in de Brys America. In: K.-H. Hohl (ed.), BerlinerFest-
spiele. Mythen der Neuen Welt. Zur Entdeckungsgeschichte Lateinamerikas(Berlin 1982)
75-91.
13 E.g. Plato Rep. 2, 377E-378D; Euthyphro 5E-6A; Cicero ND 2, 24, 63 ff.
14 See: Lexikon desfruhgriechischen Epos, s. v.; Chantraine, Dictionnaireetymologique
de la languegrecque,s. v.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 95

Yet all this is only one side of the matter. There is another, which
is the diametrical opposite of this negative picture. First of all, Kro-
nos is king, or to express it more strongly: "Kronos is the king" 15 .
The title basileus is stereotypical from Hesiod until late antiquity.
Strikingly, Julian Conviv. 31 7D still makes a distinction between
Kronos and Zeus: "O, King Kronos and Father Zeus". Kronos is
even presented as the one who introduced the principle of kingship.
Hesiod Th. 486, calls him "the first king" and as late as Byzantine
times an author says: "Kronos introduced kingship". That nothing
negative is implied by the term basileus is apparent from another
epithet: megas(great), with which he is commonly qualified in the Il-
iad, as well as by Hesiod 16. On the contrary, Kronos' kingdom,
which is usually visualised as existing on earth, was a realm of peace,
justice and prosperity. Pindar so strongly associated such benefits
with human kingship that he calls the abode to which the pious travel
after death, a king's "tower" (0/. 2, 125 ff.) 17 .
Such references bring us to the theme of the Saturnia regnaor 'life
at the time of Kronos', as the Athenians called the happy period un-
der Peisistratos (Arist. Ath. Pol. 17, 5), the Golden Age at the begin-
ning of time, now irrevocably in the past. This image, too, is
familiar even to Hesiod. In his description of the races of men, which
perhaps was also derived from oriental myth and seems to have been
a tradition unknown to Homer, he says that everything began with
the Golden Race (Erga 109-26): people lived like gods, without wor-
ry, exertion or suffering. They were not bothered by old age: their
limbs were eternally young and they revelled happily ( 115). Death
came like sleep. The earth yielded fruit of its own accord, abundant-
ly and plentifully, and people lived contentedly in the midst of peace
and profusion. After their disappearance from the face of the earth
they became good daimones, guardians of mortals and bestowers of

15 Thus: Harrison 1912, 495; "Kronos immer basileusgenannt": Nilsson CCR

I, 511 n.4. In Hesiod: Th. 462,476,486,491; Erga 111,169 ff. More references
in Pohlenz 1916, 558, and 1921, 1988; Mayer 1897, 1458; on the regime ofKronos,
"das ja immer eine Konigsherrschaft ist": Gatz 1967, 134, and register A 3a; A
46. In Or. Syb. I, 292, it is predicted that Kronos will return 'invested with the pow-
er of a sceptre-bearing king'.
16 ll. 5, 271; 14, 192 and 243; Hes. Th. 168,459, 473, 495.
17 Cf. L. Gernet et A. Boulanger, Le geniegrec dans la religion(Paris 19702) 89;
Gelinne 1988, 233, with emphasis on the specific location of the tower, which is sur-
rounded by meadows. Comparably, Motte 1973, 15 f.; 261 f., refers to this situa-
tion as a "situation ideale et originelle".
96 CHAPTER TWO

wealth (126). This marks the beginning of a rich tradition of utopi-

anism and 'wishing-time' 18 with which Kronos is closely associat-
ed; and this, too, dates from Hesiod, for according to him the people
of the Golden Race lived when Kronos was king in Heaven (Erga
111). The tradition of making this Utopian time Kronos' era can be
followed from the Alkmaeonis, via Empedocles and the I nachos of
Sophocles (alone among tragedies 19); the theme widens in Old
Comedy, as is shown especially in Athenaeus 6, 267E ff. Here it is
the motif of abundance, of a 'land of Cockaigne', that receives par-
ticular attention; there are descriptions of primeval eras, of Pluto's
underworld, and of the far-away land of the Persians, who were
generally notorious for their excess and luxury 20 .
In connection with this motif and partly as a reaction to it as well,
there arose in the fourth century a remarkable alternative, possibly
under the influence of Antisthenes. According to Plato, Kronos'
realm was not one of superabundance. On the contrary, it was a
realm of simplicity, indeed, of the simplicity of animals 21 . Here
bliss is defined ethically and justice is the code word; this theme blos-
somed in Latin literature, particularly under the influence of Cynics
and the like, as an argument for their rejection and condemnation
of the decadent luxury of real life 22 . This rejection led to the de-
velopment of a peculiar ambiguity in the appreciation, and accord-
ingly in the 'setting', of the 'natural, wild existence' in later, espe-
cially Roman, literature. When this state of life was portrayed as
unbridled and inhuman, it was placed before the realm of king
Kronos/Saturnus, who was then pictured as the bringer of moral
standards, justice and civilisation. Alternatively, the era of Kro-
nos/Saturnus itself could be imagined as the period of wild life, but

18 The most accessible surveys: Lovejoy & Boas 1935, 23-102; Gatz 1967;
Blundell 1986, esp. 135-64.
19 Fr. 278 Radt, part of which recurs in a fragment of Philodemus PeriEusebeias,
P.Herc. 1609 IV 14 ff. A recent discussion: W. Luppe, ZPE 62 (1985) 6-8.
20 On these motifs see Gatz 1967, 114 ff. and the literature cited below, n.108.
21 See: Lovejoy and Boas 1935, passim; Blundell 1986, eh. 8, pp.203-24: 'Hard
Primitivism and the Noble Savage'. M. J. O'Brien, Xenophanes, Aeschylus and
the Doctrine of Primeval Brutishness, CQ 35 ( 1985) 264- 77, demonstrates that the
concept of the theriodesbios(the 'bestial' interpretation of primitivism) cannot be at-
tested before the latter part of the fifth century.
22 H. Hommel, Das hellenische Ideal vom einfachen Leben, Studium Generale11
(1958) 742 ff.; R. Visscher, Das einfacheLeben. Wort und MotivgeschichtlicheUnter-
suchungenzu einem aktuellen Thema (Gottingen 1965).
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 97

then 'wild' had the sense of the simple, natural, but not bestial-a
natural life without the complexities of civilisation.
As the geographical horizon expanded, Kronos moved ever fur-
ther to the West 2 3, where he was identified with similar deities,
such as Saturnus. Eventually we find him on a Utopian island west
of Britannia, where he is represented as either asleep or in chains 24 .
On the other hand, he was also placed to the East in Phrygia, asleep
again 25 . In structural terms, a god sleeping and a god wearing
chains are identical 26 : both gods are 'out of action'.
This selective survey offers a remarkably ambiguous, even con-
tradictory, picture. Kronos is, on one hand, the god of an inhuman-
ly cruel era, which is devoid of ethical standards; on the other, he
is the king of a Golden Age of abundance, happiness and justice. He
is the loser who has been exiled, chained and enslaved, but he is also
the great king par excellence, who has been liberated and rules
supreme 27• His realm was thought to have existed either before
historical times, or was imagined as continuously existing 'after
time', i.e. in death 28 • It was sometimes situated on the earth, some-

23 See: Pohlenz 1921, 1998 ff. This was the traditional place of the Isles of the
Blessed: Gelinne 1988, 230 ff.
24 See: F. M. Ahl, Amber, Avallon, and Apollo's Singing Swan, AJPh 103
(1982) 373-411, esp. 400 f.; A. P. Bos, A "Dreaming Kronos" in a Lost Work by
Aristotle, AC 58 (1989) 88-111.
2 5 Kronos was often assimilated with divinities of Asia Minor: Meuli 1975 II,
1076; L. Robert, Hellenica7 (1949) 50-4;JS (1978) 43-8. Robert also shows that the
Kronos mentioned in an inscription from Corinth is the Roman Saturn: REG 79
(1966) 746.
26 W. B. Kristensen, De antieke opvatting van dienstbaarheid, Med. Kon. Ak.
Wet. (1934) = idem, Verzameldebij'dragentot kennisderantiekegodsdiensten(Amsterdam
1947) 215; I. Scheftelowitz, Das Schlingenund Netzmotiv, RVV 12 (Giessen 1912) 8.
The motif of the sleeping god may have been derived from an oriental tradition:
B. F. Batto, The Sleeping God: An Ancient Near Eastern Motif of Divine
Sovereignty, Biblica 68 (1987) 153-77. On the representation of the dead as being
in chains see InconsistenciesI, 84. There is also a structural congruence between
sleep/death and geographic 'elimination': "Cronus' eternal sleep is a kind of death:
his boundaries are those between life and death as well as the Straits of Gibraltar.
Reality is double ... ": F. M. Ahl, o.c. (above n.24), 401. On the other hand,
"Wecken und Losen sind verschiedene Bilder fiir denselben religiosen Ge-
danken": Meuli 1975 II, 1076.
27 This fate was not shared by other Titans. Prometheus, of course, is suigeneris.
When, in a fragment of Kratinos' Ploutoi (P. Vitelli fr. 1, PSI XI [ 1935] 1212) the
Titans call themselves 'Ploutoi', this is to serve the intrigue of the comedy. See: J.
Schwarze, Die Beurteilungdes Periklesdurch die attischeKomiidieund ihre historischeund
historiographische
Bedeutung(Munich 1971) 40-3.
28 Of course the imagery of the netherworld, especially the Isles of the Blessed
98 CHAPTER TWO

times deep down in the earth, sometimes at the edge of the world 29.
It is now possible to construct the following table of oppositions:
Negative Positive

Kronos as a person: father-mutilator wise, great king

child-murderer
cannibal
tyrant
His rule: lawlessness ideal situation
lack of moral standards materially:
unstable hierarchy abundance,
struggle for power land of Cockaigne
rebellion no slavery
ideologically:
natural order and
justice
peace
simplicity
His present locked up, chained liberated or
situation: enslaved escaped
asleep: powerless a great king of
blessed people

In addition the following oppositions beyond the categories of posi-

tive and negative can be set forth:

or Elysium, closely corresponds with that of the period of the Golden Race. For sur-
veys of the various representations and their possible origins see: A. T. Edwards,
Achilles in the Underworld. Iliad, OdysseyandAethiopis, GRBS 28 (1985) 215-27; H.
Thesleff, Notes on the Paradise Myth in Ancient Greece, Temenos22 (1986) 129-39;
G. Lanczkowski, Die Inseln der Seligenund verwandte Vorstellungen(Frankfurt 1986);
Gelinne 1988. In several articles (On the Image of Paradise, /F85 [1980], 151-64;
The Lord of the Dead, HR 20 [1981) 224-41) B. Lincoln has pointed out the
remarkable similarities in various Inda-European myths regarding the con-
gruences of first (Utopian) kingship on earth and rulership in the netherworld. He
detects traces of this correlation in Indian, Iranian, Celtic and Germanic literature.
In Indian myth, for instance, Yama is the first king, the first mortal and the first
of the dead (he is depicted as being chained with a fetter on his foot). The Irish
Donn was the first king, who also was the first to die and establish the realm of the
dead, according to Irish tradition a paradisiac faery-land. He also compares the
myth of Kronos, which he calls a "special case". Though I cannot accept his sug-
gestion that we have a transformation of the Proto Inda-European myth of creation
in the dismemberment of Kronos, this does not detract from the importance of his
findings.
29 For the structural equivalence of spatial and temporal transformations see:
M. Opitz, NotwendigeBeziehungen(Frankfurt 1975) 21. For concurrence of death,
Utopia, eschatia,see for instance: M. Zumschlinge o.c. (below n.116) 25 ff. I shall
return to these issues below p.107.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 99

Place or time of in illo tempore still existing

Utopia: irrevocably past but not in this world:
either in the hereafter
(for chosen people) or
in far away outer
regions (e.g. the West)

out of reach within reach, in a spe-

cial sense
The existence of such violent oppositions within one and the same
divine ambience calls for an explanation, and explanations have
been proposed, of course. They generally boil down to a denial of
the seriousness of the contradictions or to other strategies which we
shall discuss later. The difficulty of accepting such 'solutions',
however, becomes clear from a review of the cult and the rites sur-
rounding the god, in which exactly the same ambiguity will turn up.

2. RITUAL

"Kronos scheint im Kult keinen festen Platz zu haben, er ist ein

Schatten" (apparently, Kronos has no fixed place in cult: he is a
shadow) thus Nilsson, unconsciously paraphrasing a statement by
von Wilamowitz: "Er ist eben ein Gott ausser Diensten, abgetan
wie die rohe Urzeit" (as a god, he is out of action, finished like the
primeval ages ) 30 . The evidence fully bears out the correctness of
these statements. A really old cult is only attested in Olympia, where
Kronos' priests are called hoi basilai-a possible, but not certain,
correlate of the kingship of Kronos basileus. We know of only one
temple in Athens, built by Peisistratos, for Kronos and Rhea. The
only known temple statue is the one of Lebadeia, belonging to the
Trophonios sanctuary. In Athens, on the 15th ofElaphebolion (circa
April), Kronos was given a cake having twelve little globules on it.
These few facts outline the cultic tableau 31 : a few further pieces of
ritual data will be given below. Realising, on the other hand, that
Kronion, as a month name as well as a city name 32-the latter es-
pecially in Sicily-is quite common, one cannot but come to the con-

30 CCR I, 511; Wilamowitz 1929, 38.

31 For full references and more details on the cults see: Pohlenz 1921, 1982-6.
On the popanon:Deubner 1932, 154.
32 The evidence was collected by Pohlenz 1929, 1984 f.; Cf. also CCR I, 512;
Wilamowitz 1929, 36; RE, s.v. Kronion.
100 CHAPTER TWO

clusion that, in earlier times, Kronos must indeed have had a cultic
significance that he later lost, perhaps after being ousted by a newly
introduced generation of gods. What specific function-if any-he
originally had is an unsolved problem. That he was connected with
the harvest is possible but far from certain 33 . Anyway his so-called
'sickle' cannot prove this 34 . Nor is etymology of any help 35 . The
result is, to quote Nilsson (ibid.) once again: "Er ist mythologisch,
nicht kultisch'' (he is mythical, not cultic). This is, as I hope to
show, a correct conclusion, but it has implications that reach much
further than was suspected by Nilsson, who was primarily interested
in gods that were tangible in cult. The following short description
of a number of rituals associated with Kronos does not contradict
this conclusion, but rather, as will become clear, confirms it.
Kronia were celebrated on Rhodes on the sixth of Metageitnion.
Porphyry, De abstin. 2, 54, tells of humans being sacrificed to Kronos
during that festival 36 . In later times, a condemned criminal was
kept alive until the Kronia, and then taken outside the gates to
[Artemis] Aristoboule's statue, given wine to drink and slaughtered.
From the date it has been concluded that this typical example of a
scapegoat ritual springs from the Artemis cult and only became

33 See for instance: Graf 19856, 93: "Kronos ist sowenig ein Erntegod wie
Saturnus ein Saatgott", and see literature on this discussion in his n.124. In the
wake of Wilamowitz he rather thinks of a connection with '' eine Pause des biiuer-
lichen Jahres" .
34 If so, Perseus, too, should have been a harvest god, as already Wilamowitz
1929 rightly argued. Even so, M. P. Nilsson, The Sickle ofKronos, BSA 46 (1951)
122 ff. = OpusculaIII, 215-9, argues that the sickle refers to the corn harvest. Con-
tra: West 1978, 217. Various authors have pointed out that the so-called sickle may
well have been a weapon of oriental origin. Besides the references in the literature
on Kronos see: A. A. Barb, Cain's Murder-weapon and Samson's jawbone ofan
Ass, JWI 35 (1972) 386-9.
35 See the dictionaries of Frisk and Ch,antraine. Recently a new etymology was
proposed by J. Haudry, Les trois cieux, Etudes inda-eurapeennes 1 (1982) 23-48: from
ker 'cut' and the element -ana, like kl-onas from *kel-, and thranas from *dher-.
However, both his etymological and semasiological arguments seem very bold, to
say the least.
36 It is irrelevant to my investigation whether this is indeed a historical human
sacrifice or, as is more likely, a legendary sacrifice based on the theme of the cruel
myth, such as the case treated by A. Henrichs, Human Sacrifice in Greek Religion,
in: Le Sacrificedans l'antiquite(Entretiens Hardt 27, Geneva 1981) esp. 222 n.6. Graf
19856, 74-80, esp. 80 n.44, generally may be right in saying that reports of primi-
tive human sacrifices refer to chaotic primeval situations. They must be understood
as "mythisches Reflex eines harmlosen Rituals, nicht als historische Erinnerung an
einen friihen Zustand". Hughes 1991, 123-5, esp. 125, calls the Rhodian sacrifice
"primarily an execution".
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 101

associated with Kronos later. This may well be true, although it is

dangerous to build a case on a chance temporal coincidence. What
is important, however, is the fact that elsewhere as well, Kronos is
associated specifically with bloody and cruel human sacrifices. The
ancient view is summarised by SophoclesAndr. fr. 126 Radt, as fol-
lows: "Of old there is a custom among barbarians to sacrifice hu-
mans to Kronos". Other testimonia on alleged human sacrifices for
Kronos refer to barbarian customs too. Best known are the
Phoenician-Punic human sacrifices, which are supposed to have
been introduced by a former king, El/Kronos 37 . The Carthaginian
god in whose huge bronze statue children were burnt to death was
also identified with Kronos/Saturnus 38 . It was said that in Italy and
Sardinia, too, humans had been sacrificed to Saturnus 39 -probably
just as legendary a fact 40 as Istros' remark about Crete that the
Kouretes in ancient times sacrificed children to Kronos 41 , or the

37 E.g. Philo of Byblos ap. Porph. De abst. 2, 56; Euseb. Praep. Ev. 1, 38d, 40c;
Or. pro Const. 13. A full collection of the evidence in: Simonetti 1983, who argues
that it was the Greeks who interpreted these sacrifices as being intended for Kronos,
whereas actually they were mostly anonymous piacular offerings in cases of dis-
aster. However, these identifications of foreign 'murderous' gods with Kronos are
anything but "gleichgiiltig" as Wilamowitz 1929, 37, thought. Cf. also Martelli
1980; Mondi 1990, 159 ff.; Hughes 1991, 124 f.
38 The locusclassicus:Diod. 20, 14, 6. On the material evidence see most recent-
ly: H. Benichou-Safar, Sur ]'incineration des enfants aux tophets de Carthage et
de Sousse, RHR 205 (1988) 57-67; Hughes 1991, 115 f.; S. Brown, Late Carthaginian
Child Sacrificeand SacrificialMonumentsin TheirMediterraneanContext(Sheffield 1992).
39 E.g. Dion. Hal. 1, 38, 2; Diod. 5, 66, 5; Demon in Schol. Hom. Od. 20, 302.
According to Timaeus (FGrHist F 28) Sardaniosgel6swas the laughter that resounded
when septagenarians were sacrificed by their children to Kronos on Sardinia, and
in F 29 he connects this with human sacrifice to Kronos at Carthage; cf. also Suda
s.v. Sardaniosgel6s. On this 'sardonic laughter' see: M. Pohlenz, Berl. Phil.
Wochenschr.(1916) 949. Cf. D. Arnould, Mourir de rire clans l'Odyssee: Jes rap-
ports avec le rire sardonique et le rire clement, BAGB (1985) 177-86; C. Miralles,
Le rire sardonique, Melis 2 (1987) 31-44. Perhaps this belongs rather in the at-
mosphere of 'malicious laughter': M. Dillon, Tragic Laughter, CW 84 (1990/1)
345-53.
40 Although E. Ruschenbusch, Uberbevolkerung in archaischer Zeit, Historia
40 (1991) 375-8, accepts it as one of the truly historical measures against overpopu-
lation in archaic times.
41 Istros FGrHist 334 F 48 = Porph. De abstin. 2, 56; Euseb. Praep. Ev. 4, 16.
F.Jacoby, FGrHist III b (Supp.) I, 651; II 519 f., regards this as a misinterpretation
of the mythical weapon-dance round the child Zeus. "Ma none da escludere che
essa fosse ricollegata al ricordo di un antico rituale, se si considera la notizia di An-
ticlide relativa a sacrifici umani compiuti a Litto in onore di Zeus (FGrHist 140 F
7)": G. Marasco, Sacrifici umani e aspirazioni politiche, Sileno 7 (1981) 167-79,
esp. 171, with more literature. For a full discussion of child sacrifice in Greek and
Roman literature see: Martelli 1981. The iconographic dossier on (alleged) child
102 CHAPTER TWO

later reports by Christian authors of human sacrifices in Greece

itself.
Surveying all these data, one is not surprised that Kronos fre-
quently stands as a signum for human sacrifice, bloody offering and
even cannibalism. Side by side with the above-mentioned text by
Sophocles stands, for instance, Euhemeros' view that Kronos and
Rhea and the other people living in the reign of Kronos used to eat
human flesh 42 .
A more negative and gruesome picture can hardly be imagined.
The appearance of another, again utterly contrasting one is there-
fore all the more striking. According to Empedocles, and in
Pythagorean circles generally, Kronos is the very symbol of blood-
less sacrifice 43 . The Athenian cake offering is a good illustration of
this 44 , and Athenaeus 3, 11OB, informs us that by way of offering
the Alexandrians used to put loaves of bread in Kronos' temple,
from which everybody was allowed to eat. This peaceful and joyous
aspect crops up in an almost hyperbolic form in the Attic celebration
of the Kronia 45 . Apart from a short note of Demosthenes 24, 26,
with mention of the date (12 Hekatombaion = circa August), we
have two somewhat more detailed reports.
Plutarch Moralia 1098B: "So too, when slaves hold the Kronia feast or
go about celebrating the country Dionysia, you could not endure the
jubilation and din."

Macrobius Saturnalia 1, 10, 22: "Philochorus [FGrHist 328 F 97] says

that Cecrops was the first to build, in Attica, an altar to Saturn and

sacrifices in Greece has been collected and discussed by A.-F. Laurens, L'enfant
entre l'epee et le chaudron. Contribution a une lecture iconographique, DHA 10
( 1984) 203-51.
42 Ennius Euhemerus9, 5 = Lactantius Div. Inst. 1, 13, 2. See for full evidence:
Lovejoy & Boas 1935, 53-79.
43 See Pohlenz 1916, 553; 1921, 2009 f. for references.
44 On sacrificial cakes and bloodless sacrifices see: A. Henrichs, The Eu-
menides and Wineless libations in the Derveni Papyrus, in Atti de!XVII Congresso
Int. di PapirologiaII (Naples 1984) 255-68, esp. 257-61.
45 This festival and related ceremonies of the 'Saturnalian' type both in Greece
and Rome have been discussed many times. The most important discussions are:
Nilsson 1906, 35-40, 393; Bomer 1961 III, 415-37; Kenner 1970, 87-95. I have not
seen Ph. Bourboulis, Ancient Festivalsof the SaturnalianType (Thessalonica 1964). A
short summary: Burkert GR 231 f. On the Attic Kronia in particular: Deubner
1932, 152-5. In his informative article: Poseidon's Festival at the Winter Solstice,
CQ34 (1984) 1-16, N. Robertson curiously underestimates the fundamental impor-
tance of role reversal in festivals of Poseidon and elsewhere.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 103

Ops, worshipping these deities as Jupiter and Earth, and to ordain

that, when crops and fruits had been garnered, heads of households
everywhere should eat thereof in company with the slaves with whom
they had borne the toil of cultivating the land. For it was well pleasing
to the god that honour should be paid to the slaves in consideration of
their labour. And that is why we follow the practice of a foreign land
and offer sacrifice to Saturn with the head uncovered." (tr. P. V.
Davies).
The former text merely says that slaves/servants had a festival with
a banquet, during which they enjoyed themselves mightily, and
which-in Plutarch's time-was celebrated in Attica at any rate 46 .
The latter testimonium is more explicit.
Finally, the Roman poet Accius (Ann. fr. 3M, Bae.; Fr. Poet. Lat.
Morel p.34) adds that most Greeks, but the Athenians in particular,
celebrated this festival:
''in all fields and towns they feast upon banquets elatedly and everyone
waits upon his own servants. From this had been adopted as well our
own custom of servants and masters eating together in one and the
same place.''

Some scholars have contended that Accius projected the attested Ro-
man custom of masters waiting upon their slaves at the Saturnalia,
to the Greek Kronia, about which we know only that masters and
slaves dined together. However, there is no ground for such scepti-
cism. First, our other sources are much too scanty to rely on argumen-
ta e silentio. Secondly, when masters regale their servants, this natur-
ally implies some sort of reversal of normal functions, whether this
is ritually demonstrated or not. A number of closely related 'Satur-
nalian' festivals in Greece show that ritual freedom of slaves could
indeed take various forms. In Troizen, for instance, the slaves were
for one day allowed to play knuckle-bones with the citizens, and the
masters treated the servants to a meal, possibly during a Poseidon
festival. During the Thessalian festival of the Peloria, dedicated to
Zeus Peloros, strangers were offered a banquet, prisoners freed of
their fetters; slaves reclined at dinner and were waited upon by their

46 Some scholars argue that the masters have retired from the festival by this
late period (M. P. Nilsson, in: RE 11 (1921) 1975 f.; Bomer 1961 III, 417), or-
even more ingeniously-: '' Probably the masters only appeared for the first course
or two ... " (Parke 1977, 30), but in my view it is far more likelythat only the most
conspicuousfeatures have found a place in the reports.
104 CHAPTER TWO

masters, with full freedom of speech. At festivals of the god Hermes

on Crete too, the slaves stuffed themselves and the masters
served 47 . Ephoros (FGrHist 70 F 29) even knows of a festival in
Kydonia on Crete where the serfs, the Klarotes, could lord it in the
city while the citizens stayed outside. The slaves were also allowed
to whip the citizens, probably those who had recklessly remained in
the city or re-entered it 48 . In connection with this, Bomer 49 has
drawn attention to a formerly neglected datum, namely that on a
specific day of the Spartan H yakinthia "the citizens treated all their
acquaintances and their own slaves to a meal''. The festival of
Hermes Charidotes on Samas, during which stealing and robbing
were permitted, presents a slightly different situation, because the
specific master-slave relationship was not involved. More examples
could be given, but these suffice.
Before summarising our findings about the ritual, one more word
must be said about iconography 50 . Except on coins, representations
of Kronos with uncovered head are very rare for the older period.
The usual type of statue is of a seated Zeus-like god, his head leaning
on a hand. The back of the head is almost always covered by a fold
of the robe. This type occurs as early as the fifth century BC, and
is found quite frequently until late in the Roman period. Even the
ancients could only guess at the meaning of this headgear, which was
unusual in Greece: "Some claim his head is covered because the be-
ginning of time is unknown"-such is the guess of the Vatican
Mythographer III, 1, 5, alluding to the identification of Kro-
nos/Chronos. Modern scholars have considered grief as a possible
reason-sadness at his downfall and oppression-or the secrecy of
his plans 51 . No unanimous conclusion has been reached, however.

47 Troizen and Crete: Carystius ap. Athenaeus 14, 639BC. Peloria, Baton
FGrHist 268 F 5.
48 There are nice modern parallels. In Belgium on St. Thomas Day (December
21) female servants were permitted to shut their masters out until they had been
given presents, and in the Middle Ages English pupils barred out their school-
masters until they had met certain demands. Mentioned with references by Brem-
mer 1987b, 87 n.48. Cf. also Lewis 1976, 142.
49 Bomer 1961 III, 179: Polykrates ap. Athen. 4, 139C ff. (FGrHist 588 F 1).
50 See the extensive discussions in Mayer 1897, 1549-73; Pohlenz 1921, 2014 ff.
51 Add to the older suggestions in the literature above n.3: "the irrational coun-
sel, not fathomable by human reason": M. van der Valk, o.c. (above n.8);
"souligne ses caracteres chtonien et mystique, en meme temps que ses rapports
etroits avec !'Orient": Le Glay 1966, 502. The attribution of 'dreamthinking' to
the god Kronos can be traced back at least to the 4th century BC. Cf. Tertull. De
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 105

There are also references to a different type of 'wrapping'. We are

told several times that the feet of the Roman statue of Saturn were
shackled (or wrapped in woollen bandages) and that on his holiday
the statue was freed of its chains 52 . Apollodorus of Athens (FGrHist
224 F 118) states that this was also a Greek custom with regard to
the Kronos statue, although Macrobius, who quotes him, incorrect-
ly dates this festival in December. Some modern scholars, including
Jacoby 53 , interpret this statement as referring to Roman customs
that this author of the second century BC supposedly knew of. In my
opinion it is at least equally probable that he was familiar with such
a custom from his own Greek surroundings, perhaps in particular
from Alexandria, where he lived and from where our knowledge of
other novel elements comes as well. A Kronos/Saturnus in chains is,
for that matter, a topos in the later magical papyri from Egypt 54 .
This survey of cultic and ritual aspects leads to the conclusion that
Kronian ritual is just as ambiguous as Kronian myth. For ritual too
we can draw up a diagram of opposite positive and negative
elements.

anima 46, 10, quodprior omnibusSatumus somniarit, with the note of J. H. Waszink,
and idem, VChr 1 ( 194 7) 143 ff.; MelangesH. GregoireII (Bruxelles 1950) 639 ff. The
theme of Kronos as the pondering and dreaming guardian of age-old wisdom is
elaborated in Orphic and Neoplatonic theology. See for instance Prod. In Plat.
Cratyl. Comm. p. 57, 19ff. Pasquali, who also asserts that Kronos passes his 'plans'
to his son Zeus by the mediation of oracles: ibid. p. 27, 21 ff. = OF 155. Plut. De
facie in orbelunae 26-30, 940F-944F (cf. De dejectuorac. 18, 419E-421A) relates that
people make pilgrimages to the sleeping Kronos on his isle in the Western sea in
order to be illuminated by his visions. Cf. H. Cherniss, PlutarchMoralia 12 (Cam-
bridge Mass.-London 1957) 180 ff. The myth of the dreaming and, during his
dream, prophesying Kronos is most likely of oriental origin: Berossos FGrHist 680
F 4, 14, tells us of a Kronos who predicted the biblical Deluge in a dream. See: F.
Cumont, RHR 58 (1931) 38 f., and the ample discussion by Alfoldi 1979, 20-5, to
whom I owe various references.
52 Macr. Sat. 1, 8, 5; Min. Fe!. 22, 5; Stat. Silv. 1, 6, 4 (and commentary by
Vollmer); Arnob. 4, 24. Cf. Bomer 1961 III, 425. I shall return to the issue offet-
tered gods in the next chapter. See for the time being: G. A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus
(Konigsbergen 1829) 275; Meuli 1975 II, 1035-81; M. Delcourt, Hephaistosou la
legendedu magicien(Paris 1957) 18 ff.; 65 ff.; Graf 1985b, 81-96.
53 FGrHist Comm. 244 F 118, followed by Meuli 1975 II, 1039 n.9.
54 Most illustrative is a passage in PCM IV, 3086-91: '' If, while you are speak-
ing, you hear the heavy step of [someone] and a clatter of iron, the god [Kronos]
is coming, bound with chains, holding a sickle". Cf. the analysis of this passage
and further information on Kronos in magic: S. Eitrem, Kronos in der Magie,
MelangesJ. Bidez (Bruxelles 1934) 351-60, and before him: A. Dieterich, Abraxas
(Leipzig 1891) 76 ff. More recently: R. Kotansky, Kronos and a New Magical In-
scription Formula on a Gem in the J.P. Getty Museum, AncW3 (1980) 29-32.
106 CHAPTER TWO

Negative Positive

Sacrifice: pre-eminently bloody bloodless sacrifices,

cakes, loaves of bread
Atmosphere of frightening ritual exulted celebrations
Kronian ritual: of homicide, infanticide: with unlimited free-
dom and abundance:
extreme tension extreme relaxation
Iconography: head covered ( = ?) freed from shackles
in shackles all year on holiday
long
(the last possibly, but not conclusively, Greek)

3. CONTRADICTIONS

It has become clear that oppositions within the myth of Kronos have
close correspondences in ritual. On the one hand, there is a complex
of failing standards and lawlessness, patricide and infanticide, can-
nibalism, rebellion and enslavement: Kronos ankulometes. On the
other hand, there is the complex of peace and natural well-being,
material abundance and ethical justice, the breaking of chains: Kro-
nos megas/basileus.
Either of the two complexes is in itself quite familiar: the negative
one shows the characteristics typical of chaos 55 , which, as we will
see, has been visualised in many cultures as a primordial era before
the introduction of human culture, but which in certain situations
can return to the real world for a short while 56 . The positive com-
plex presents the usual image of Utopia where-not always, but

55 I shall use the concept 'chaos' throughout in the general sense of 'absence of
order', 'state of confusion', which can, for instance, manifest itself as the absence
of normal culture, codes, distinctions, definitions, conventions. I am not referring
to the specifically Hesiodic idea of Chaos, whose cosmology and essence are the
subject of an endless discussion. See recently: H. Podbielski, Le chaos et Jes confins
de l'univers clans la Theogonied'Hesiode, LEG 54 (1986) 253-63; Ballabriga 1986,
eh. 4 'L'Univers et I' Abime', pp.257-90; R. Mondi, CHAOS (GR) and the Hesiod-
ic Cosmogony, HSPh 92 ( 1989) 1-41 (with a refreshing turn in the approach of the
problems). He also notes that side by side with this specific concept Hesiod also em-
ploys the term in the more general meaning referred to above: "all that is formless,
boundless, indeterminate, and indifferentiated" (p.37). Cf. idem 1990. See also:
Chr. Auffarth, Chaos, HrwG 2 (1990) 193-5.
56 On the symbolism of chaos see literature cited by Versnel 1980, 591 n.209
and 594 n.216; Eliade 1964, chs XI and XII, passim. Cf. above p.81 nn.165 f., and
below, p.121 n.104.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 107

often-a natural abundance eliminates social tensions and suppres-

sions and sometimes even eliminates the existing hierarchy. Accord-
ingly, elements of both pictures are standard ingredients in des-
criptions of 'the Other' 57-the most effective (and revealing)
instrument of self-definition 58 -, no matter whether it regards the
imaginary barbarian who is supposed to live in the margins of the
known world, or any other 'Other' that will serve to demonstrate the
superiority and rightness of one's own culture or section of a culture.
Besides barbarians 59 -on a scale gradually fading from (near-)real-
ism to the unimaginable world of fairies, for instance going from

57 Of course, this ambiguity has not gone unnoticed. Besides the literature
mentioned in the following notes see also: Sourvinou-Inwood 1986, 44. In their
fundamental article Rosellini & Sai'd 1978, 966, conclude: "Ainsi, clans le discours
d'Herodote, Jes eschatioiapparaissent comme un espace ambivalent: territoire des
agrioi andres et des anthropophages, qui representent !'extreme sauvagerie, mais
aussi terre d'election de merveilles, ou vivent, situes au confins de l'espace et non
a
plus l'oree de l'histoire Jes hommes de l'age d'or". Cf. Hall 1989, 149: "This
schizophrenic vision of inferiority and of utopia gives rise to an inherently con-
tradictory portrayal of the barbarian world. It is the home on the one hand of
tyrants and savages, and on the other of idealized peoples and harmonious relations
with heaven"; Vandenbroeck 1987, 142: "It is in relation to the demands made
by the ideology of a specific social group or class on the construction of the repre-
sentation of self that the image of the same 'Other' can be filled in with totally diver-
gent categories (e.g. the good savage or the barbarian savage)".
58 "Ethnocentrism, defined as the inability to escape from the central and ir-
reflexive categories and concepts of one's own culture, is responsible for the fact
that wildness cannot but be modelled on the important aspects of one's own cul-
ture" (Vandenbroeck 1987, 15, as translated by P. Mason). Any image of an alter-
native world-Golden Age, Elysium, Utopia, eschatological expectations, exotic
cultures-is always and necessarily a negative of our own culture: M. Davies,
Description by Negation. History of a Thought-pattern in Ancient Accounts of a
Blissful Life, Prometheus13 (1987) 265-84; "Ere the World began to be". Descrip-
tion by Negation in Cosmogonic Literature, Prometheus14 (1988) 15-24.
59 Literature abounds. Some general works: F. Hartog, Le miroird'Herodote.Es-
sai sur la representationde l'autre (Paris 1980, also in an English translation); B. D.
Shaw, Eaters of Flesh, Drinkers of Milk: The Ancient Mediterranean Ideology
of the Pastoral Nomad, AncSoc 13/4 (1982/3) 5-31; L. Bernot, Buveurs et non-
buveurs de lait, L'Homme 28 (1988) 99-107; Vandenbroeck 1987; Hall 1989.
Various connections of antique images with early modern representations of terra
incognita,especially the New World: P. Mason, Seduction from Afar. Europe's In-
ner Indians, Anthropos 82 (1987) 581-601; The Ethnography of the Old World
Mind: Indians and Europe, Anthropos84 (1989) 549-54; The Deconstructionof America
(London 1990); Classical Ethnography and its Influence on the Perception of
the Peoples of the New World, forthcoming in: M. Reinhold, J. R. Fears & W.
Haase (edd.), The ClassicalTraditionand the AmericasI. I am indebted to Peter Mas-
on for having communicated several of his papers to me before they were pub-
lished.
108 CHAPTER TWO

Skythians to Amazones 60 ( or worse )-we detect sectarian groups 61

and-in a different way-women 62 as constructs of the Other.
Literature abounds since the issue is in the centre of interest. Gener-
ally, two extremes can be distinguished: the 'noble savage' type with
the peaceful diet of the vegetarian-drinkers of milk, eaters of
honey 63 -, and the beastly savage: eater of raw meat, even can-
nibalistic. Cultural and moral codes may vary accordingly 64 . Espe-
cially in Herodotus there is a tendency towards a correlation of culi-
nary and sexual practices and we find a great variety of deviances
in between the two extremes. The more geographically remote a
people, the more likely its culinary and sexual practices will be to
deviate from the Athenian norm, as Rossellini and Said were the
first to show in their innovating article on Herodotus' representa-

60 On the anti-normal features of the Amazones see for instance: J. Carlier-

Detienne, Les Amazones font la guerre et !'amour, L'Ethnographie 76 (1980-1)
11-33; P. Dubois, Centaurs and Amazons. Women and the Pre-history of the Great Chain
of Being (Ann Arbor 1982); Tyrrell 1984. In a less rigidly structuralist way and with
perceptive insights in the earliest Greek images of the Amazons, J. H. Blok, Ama-
zones Antianeirai (Diss. Leiden 1991. English edition forthcoming).
61 Good instances can be found in the opposition between the 'vegetarian'
Pythagoreans and the 'cannibalistic' Cynics (and, of course, Christians). See for
instance: W. Burkert, Craft versus Sect: The Problem of Orphics and Pytha-
goreans, in: B.F. Meyer & E. P. Sanders (edd.),Jewish and Christian Self-definition
III (London 1982) 1-22; M. Daraki, Les fils de la mort: la necrophagie cynique et
stoi:cienne. in: Gnoli & Vernant 1982, 155-72. M. Detienne, Between Beasts and
Gods in: Gordon 1981, 215-28, argues that both extremes represent attitudes that
fundamentally reject the polis' system of values.
62 I refrain from giving a survey of the enormous literature on 'gender' and
'bounding'. Among the works cited in eh. IV, the following proved to be particular-
ly rewarding and inspiring: Loraux 1981; Peradotto & Sullivan 1984; Skinner
1986; Blok & Mason 1987, especially the contributions by Blok and Mason; Win-
kler 1990. A recent general survey of the literature: G. Clark, Women in the Ancient
World (Greece and Rome. New Surveys in the Classics 21, 1989). The congruence
of the representations of 'the' female and 'the' foreigner/barbarian recurs in
modern descriptions. It is revealing to compare the (without exception negative)
qualities attributed by modern Greek males to women O. Du Boulay, Portrait of a
Greek Mountain Village [Oxford 1974] 100-20) with those attributed to the Romioi,
denoting the pastoral population of the mountainous districts of Northern Greece
(P. Leigh Fermor, 'Roumeli. Travels in Northern Greece [Harmondsworth 1983 =
1966], 107-113).
63 Or even more extreme: those who survive on perfumes: Aulus Gellius NA 9,
4, locates in India a people who live entirely on the perfume of flowers. This brings
them on the culinary level of the gods. See: Mason 1987.
64 Hall 1989 exemplarily summarizes recent research when she concludes that
incest, polygamy, murder, sacrilege, castration, female power, and despotism are
images by which the Athenian tragedies defined the non-Greek world.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 109

tions of the 'sauvage' 65 . They also analysed the internal logic and co-
herence in the changing images between diet and (sexual or moral)
behaviour. Of course, confusion and intertwining may occur: the
society of the Cyclopes betrays features of both the idyllic pastoral
or even the vegetarian/Utopian world and of the world of the brutal
savage or the carnivorous beast 66 . However, this is rather excep-
tional: though disparate elements of the two great opposites may in-
termingle now and then, generally we find rather strict distinctions
between the harmless/ideal and the threatening/dark opposites of
normality 67 ,-as we have it exemplarily in Ephoros' distinction be-
tween cannibalistic and vegetarian Skythians 68 . However, being
constructions of alternative realities, neither is really good. ''The
vegetarian is no less inhuman than the cannibal" 69 .

65 Rossellini & Said 1978 (Cf. Mason 1987, from whose phrasing I have bor-
rowed). They tend to draw a rather sharp line between 1) a gradual and concentric
increasing of 'Otherness' and 2) the total inversion of the normality. Illustrative is
the description of Cambyses' expedition against the Ethiopians: as it gradually
moved away from the 'civilised' world, so the diet to which his men had to resort
passed from cereals via draught animals and herbs to a selective anthropophagy
(Herodotus 3, 17 ff.). Anthropophagy like human sacrifice occurs only in barbarian
cultures according to Herodotus, 4, 94; 5, 5; 9, 119.
66 Fundamentally: Vidal-Naquet 1981, 46-56 = Gordon 1981, 85-9. Also Kirk
1971, 162-71; Cl. Calame, Mythe grec et structures narratives: le mythe des Cy-
clopes clans l'Odysstfe,Ziva Antika 26 (1976) 311-28; Auffarth 1991, 292-314, with
more literature, whose Dionysiac interpretation, however, I cannot accept. See also
G. Crane, Calypso.Backgroundand Conventionsof the Odyssey(Frankfurt 1988). Even
the island of the Phaeacians has its ambiguities (Vidal-Naquet, o.c.). Cf. also above
n.57. All the same, in either of the two imaginary worlds one representation is
clearly dominant: "Die fiktionale Utopie als Gegenbild unserer Welt hat demnach
zwei Ausrichtungen, und beide sind Zerrformen der Wirklichkeit als Eutopie im
Entwurf einer positiven, als Dystopie in dem einer negativen ldealitiit, als wunsch-
und alptraumhaftes Bild der Gesellschaft wie in den Homerischen Archetypen
Phiiakeninsel und Kyklopenhohle": W. von Koppenfels, Utopiefiktion und menip-
peische Satire, Poetica 13 ( 1981) 16-66.
67 Cf. W. Speyer, Die Griechen und die Fremdvolker, Eos 77 (1989) 17-29.
This is, for instance, also true for the literary representations of yet another type
of territory outside culture, the wild lands: G. Petrone, Locusamoenusllocushorridus:
due modi di pensare ii bosco, Aufidus 5 (1988) 3-18, who compares the ambiguity
of the images of the Underworld. Cf. also the analysis of the imagery of waste land
in antiquity in: G. Traina, Paludi e bonifichede! mondoantico (Rome 1988).
68 FGrHist 79 F 42. Homer Il. 13, 5, already knows of northern peoples, the
Hippemolgoi and the Abioi (literally those without food) who live on a milk diet
and are 'the most righteous of mankind'. They reappear as the law-abiding
Skythians who eat cheese made from mare's milk in Aesch. fr. 198 N. Strabo 7,
3, 7-9, articulates the two Skythian extremes in terms of rawness (iimotes)and justice
(dikaiosune).Cf. especially: E. Levy, Les origines du mirage Scythe, Ktema 6 (1981)
57-68.
69 Vidal-Naquet in: Gordon 1981, 87. Cf. Detienne cited above n.61.
110 CHAPTER TWO

So, despite the obvious analogies with the representations of

'Otherness' 70 cited so far, there is one conspicuous difference be-
tween the dual alternatives just mentioned and the two opposites
which together form the Kronian ambiguity. The bewildering thing
about Kronos is that, in his myth and ritual, these extreme opposi-
tions are united in one greater composition-without, however, be-
ing 'solved' or so much as reconciled. Na tu rally, this has not es-
caped scholars' attention. "Diese Vorstellungen sind unvereinbar"
(these representations are irreconcilable), von Wilamowitz wrote in
1929; "Ce Cronos, pere de Zeus ... est un personnage divin fort
ambigu'' (this Kronos, father of Zeus, .... is a very ambiguous per-
son), Vidal-Naquet wrote fifty years later 71.
That the ancients, too, observed the contradictions-consciously
or unconsciously-is apparent from a large number of details. The
stock epithet ankulometesis usually interpreted as meaning 'plotting
crooked, devious things', but side by side with this it is also ex-
plained as 'sensibly deliberating on crooked matters' 72. The oppo-
sition between bloody and bloodless sacrifices also leads to con-
tradictions: Athenaeus' report of the Alexandrians' sacrificing
loaves of bread to Kronos violently clashes with Macrobius' infor-
mation (Sat. 1, 7, 14 ff.) that it was the Alexandrians in particular
who made bloody sacrifices to their Kronos (and Sarapis), in a typ-
ically Greek manner. Comparable to this is the fact that in the Athe-
nian inscription mentioned above, the bloodless sacrifice of a round
cake to Kronos is immediately followed by a sacrifice of a piece of
pastry in the shape of an ox (bloodless, but referring to bloody mat-
ters )73. Cheiron's status ever since Pherecydes 74 as the son of Kro-

70 Mason 1987, 153, for instance, notes that the eating of his children by Kro-
nos is a form of 'culinary incest' in which can be perceived an overlapping of the
two semantic fields which we see separatelyin the representations of the savage
world.
71 Wilamowitz 1929, 36; Vidal-Naquet 1981, 363. The latter has made some
highly valuable remarks on this paradox: "!'age d'or d'Hesiode, !'age de Cronos,
I' age preculinaire et presacrificiel, I' age 'vegetarien' que nous decrivent tant de tex-
tes, est ( .... ) aussil'age de I'anthropophagie et du sacrifice humain" (ibid. 43); cf.
363-4.
72 References in nn.13 f. above.
73 Cf. above n.31; Deubner 1932, 154 f.; K. Mar6t, Kronos und die Titanen,
SMSR 8 (1932) 48-82; 189-213, esp. 67 n.2.
74 Pherecydes in schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1, 554; 2, 1235; Pind. Pyth. 3, 1 ff.; 4,
115; Nern. 3, 47; Apoll. 1, 9; Verg. Georg.3, 92. Pan, too, is the son ofKronos in
one tradition: Borgeaud 1979, 66 f.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 111

nos, is in my opinion, based on this ambiguity: Cheiron, too, is a

creature midway between human and animal. He betrays elements
of the wild, bestial and uncontrolled ( especially when connected with
the centaurs as a group). But he possesses elements of culture and
justice as well: he teaches the art of healing and other arts, and al-
ready in Homer is called "the most righteous of the centaurs" (Il.
11, 832).
In antiquity, too, people noticed the paradox and sometimes tried
to get rid of it, for instance by condemning or ignoring Kronos'
negative aspects. Modern scholars seem to dislike contradictions
even more 75 . One of the commonest modern mechanisms for ex-
plaining contradictions is to call them anomalies that developed ac-
cidently, either under the influence of foreign cultures or as a result
of the gradual clustering within Greece of initially quite unrelated
traditions. Furthermore, an internal evolution and deformation is
also possible. Pohlenz, for instance, searches for a solution to his
problem: "das goldene Zeitalter ... passt schlecht genug zu dem
Frevler Kronos" (the Golden Age does not go with the criminal
Kronos), in a merging of different traditions: the mythical one in-
volving an evil Kronos was supposedly combined later with the mer-
ry agricultural festival that was assumed to be specifically Attic.
Mar6t-' 'Kronos ankulometesauch sonst scharf von Kronos megaszu
trennen" (Kronos ankulometesmust be separated from Kronos me-
gas)-even perceives two completely independent original Kronos
figures, namely, a cosmogonic and a vegetative dying and rising
god 76 . The discovery of the Kumarbi poem, of course, provided the
'oriental excuse': this horrid, barbarian tale allegedly had nothing
to do with the original Kronos and was simply ascribed to him later
on. A great number of such 'solutions' have been proposed.
Of course, I would not deny that in Hesiod's works various,
sometimes contradictory or incongruous, influences can be dis-
cerned77. Nor can there be any doubt that gods, myths and rites are

75 On this aversion and the strategies to get rid of contradictions see: Inconsisten-
cies I, Introduction.
76 Pohlenz 1921, 2006; K. Mar6t o.c. (above n.73), 58 and 213.
77 Cf. Mondi o.c. ([1984] above n.11) 325, on the radical unitarian position:
"the commentator must either explain away, often at the expense of great effort
and ingenuity, the glaring discrepancies and obscurities in that text in his attempt
to preserve its integrity, or delete enough of it so that what remains is synchronically
consistent, the work of the 'original Hesiod'. The only other recourse would be to
112 CHAPTER TWO

products of age-long traditions showing development, deforma-

tions, assimilations and amalgamations. Nevertheless, the solution
offered by the analysis of such historical processes is of a limited
relevance. For assimilation and identification do not occur arbitrari-
ly; there must have been affinities or similarities that encouraged the
process: why was Kronos the one to be identified with Kumarbi?
This was undoubtedly not merely because he was a fading god, who
suffered no damage from this nasty imputation. In other words, the
question should not concern primarily the how, but the why. And
there is another even more relevant consideration. Even if a diversi-
ty in the origins of various elements can be shown, the most impor-
tant problem remains: the question why the Greeks ever since
Hesiod-in whose works the paradox, as we have seen, is already
fully present-not only tolerated the clashing components of the
Kronos figure for centuries, but apparently deliberately elaborated
upon them. For we find specifications of Kronos as a god of human
sacrifice in the same period in which Kronos was given additional
significance as the god of Cockaigne in comedy and as the gentle
king of a realm of peace in philosophy. Any explanation is in this
case only entitled to that name if it accepts the coincidentiaoppositorum
as a structural datum and makes it the core of the problem 78•
Matters are complicated by the fact that there is no unanimity
about the development of the isolated complexes either. In terms of
atmosphere, the myth of the Golden Race and the ritual of the Attic
Kronia evidently belong together 79 , but how did they come to-
gether? Almost without exception the explanations in the older
studies presuppose a development. The myth came first, then the
ritual, says von Wilamowitz: "Die Menschen wollen fiir einen Tag

suppose that Hesiod's sense of clarity and narrative logic was either weak or dis-
turbingly different from our own" (the latter option, for that matter, to my mind
not being as desperate as Mondi apparently thinks).
78 This is well seen by J. Schvola, Decay, Progress,the GoodLife? Hesiod and Pro-
tagorason the Developmentof Culture(Helsinki 1989). Here the inconsistency between
the Kronos of the Succession Myth and the Kronos of the Myth of the Ages is fully
acknowledged, but the optimistic and pessimistic views which they contain are ex-
plained as two sides of Hesiod's moral message.
79 This connection is particularly emphasized by the bloodless offerings for
Kronos. Above p.63, we have seen that bloodless sacrifices and libations of milk
(and/or water and honey) refer to marginal situations in general. But as such they
also specifically refer to the marginal precosmic era. Besides the literature men-
tioned see also Graf 1985b, 26-9; Bremmer 1987b, 80 f. For Rome see below pp.177
and 268.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 113

das selige Leben fiihren, wie es im goldenen Zeitalter unter Kronos

gewesen war. " (for one day, people wish to revive the blissful life,
as it had been in the Golden Age of Kronos). No, the ritualists reply,
"antike Feste entstehen nicht auf diese Weise" (ancient festivals do
not originate in this manner: Deubner, as well as Nilsson, Ziehen,
Jacoby, Bomer and others), and Ed. Meyer explains that the image
of the Golden Age arose precisely from this type of festival 80 . The
festival itself, it was unanimously decided, belongs to a widespread
genre that entitles oppressed people, servants or slaves, to one single
day of relaxation, for reasons of humanity for instance 81 . As these
festivals were certainly not connected exclusively with the harvest,
they could be associated with various gods.
The very same 'which was first' question applies to the negative
aspects of the myth and ritual. According to Gruppe, the myth of
Kronos as a child devourer was fabricated after the example of the
ritual child and human sacrifices; Pohlenz, on the other hand, sees
things exactly the other way round: because the myth was familiar,
Kronos came to be associated with all kinds of human sacrifices 82 •
Indeed the only Greek human sacrifice, viz. the one on Rhodes,
originally belonged to Artemis.
All these views involve implicit assumptions concerning the inter-
relatedness of myth and rite, but none of them even approaches a
meaningful interpretation of the Kronos complex as a whole. The
only theory from this period (the early twentieth century) that does
aspire emphatically to that goal has only one drawback: it is untena-
ble. Frazer8 3 has integrated the whole of the Kronos myth and ritu-
al complex in his comprehensive theory of the year-god: he pictures
Kronos as a dying and rising god of vegetation. His festival therefore
must be considered a celebration surrounding the turn of the year;
the human sacrifices are explained as a substitute for regicide. With-
in this theory the dark and the bright aspects are indeed integrated
in one comprehensive picture. However, as we have seen in the first
chapter, Frazer himself is a faded god, and although elements of his
general theory have certainly remained of value, Andrew Lang's

80 Wilamowitz 1929, 37; CCR I, 514; other references in Bomer 1961 III, 420
n.2; E. Meyer, Kleine SchrijtenII, 39 ff.
81 CCR I, 36; Bomer 1961 III, 422.
82 Pohlenz 1921, 1998, where other references can be found.
8 3 J. G. Frazer, GB III, 9 ff.; VI, 351 ff.; IX (Aftermath) 290 ff.
114 CHAPTER TWO

attack 84 on his Kronos theory in particular is irrefutably final. If

year-gods ever existed, Kronos is very unlikely to have been one.
Even his connection with the harvest is debatable; his sickle does not
necessarily make him a vegetation god; merry slaves' feasts are not
connected with Kronos alone, and so on and so forth. The golden
bough is broken, il:nd yet Frazer deserves praise for being the first
to take the contradiction in Kronian myth and ritual seriously and
to try to integrate it in a holistic explanation.
Without Frazer, the following passage by Karl Meuli, who actual-
ly uses a different model of interpretation, would not have been con-
ceivable: "Bei den gefesselten Gottern zeigt sich der Zusammen-
hang von Leben und Tod, von Gluck und Grauen; sie sind hose und
gefahrlich, darum bindet man sie mit Ketten fest; und sie sind wenn
ihnen die Fesseln gelost sind, gnadig und giitig und schenken den
Menschen das Gluck' ' 85 . This too is a serious approach to the con-
tradiction, but it has a different point of departure: the festival of
chained and unchained gods and men, and the ambiguity of its sym-
bols and atmosphere. For "Immer gilt fur die Menschen, was fur
ihre Gotter gilt; beim Fest sind auch sie gelost und vom Zwang des
Alltags befreit" (What applies to the gods, also applies to mankind:
during the festival they, too, are released and freed from the con-
straints of daily life). Whereas Frazer' s myth and ritual complex was
conceived within the paradigm of fertility, Meuli concentrated on
the link with death. We will not follow him in this view any more
than we followed Frazer. Death symbolism does play a part, but
cannot serve as the monolithic key to the interpretation. We do fol-
low him, though, in taking the concepts of chaining and being un-
chained as the starting point for our interpretation of the coincidentia
oppositorum,and, behind it, of the connection between Kronos' myth
and ritual.

84 A. Lang, Magic and Religion(London 1901) 82 ff. For a discussion of Frazer's

myth and ritual theory and critical views on Frazer in general see above pp.22 and
47.
85 "Gods in chains manifest the connection between life and death, between
happiness and horror; they are malignant and dangerous. For this reason they are
fettered. But when they are released from their fetters, they are merciful and gentle
and give happiness to mankind": Meuli 1975 II, 1034 f.; on his theories see now
also Auffarth 1991, 19.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 115

4. THE FESTIVAL OF REVERSAL

The Attic Kronia belong to the 'Saturnalian' festivals, as has often

been stated. In the case of carnival or one of its medieval equiva-
lents, 'la fete des fous' 86 , social and hierarchical roles are reversed:
the fool is king and rules at will. Under his rule, humans turn into
animals, women play out men's roles; children command their
teachers, slaves their masters. We find freedom for women at other
Greek festivals; at the Kronia and related festivals it is the slaves who
are free. They sometimes are literally unfettered, then treated to a
banquet, often even waited upon by their masters. There is freedom
of speech, and in Rome, as we shall see in the next chapter, perhaps
even the freedom of putting the masters on trial, or at least of ex-
pressing criticism in various ways; also in Rome, slaves take the
whip to freemen, or, something more peaceful but no less unusual,
play knucklebones with them. Drinking wine is sometimes explicitly
permitted, contrary to conventions, for slaves do not drink wine, or
at best drink it only in scanty measure.
Two aspects are combined here: on the one hand, the reversal of
roles, and on the other, the elation caused by the collective abun-
dance of food and drink, summarised by Macrobius Saturnalia 1, 7,
26: totaservislicentiapermittitur. In modern literature, this kind of fes-
tival is known under different names: 'periods of licence' (Frazer),
'rituals of rebellion' (Gluckman), 'rituals of conflict' (Norbeck),
'legitimate rebellion' (Weidkuhn), side by side with German terms
such as 'legale Anarchien', 'Ventilsitten', 'Ausnahmezeiten' or
'gelegentliche Entgleisung' 87 . The emphasis on the aspect oflegiti-
mate deviance is linked to the type of functionalist explanation at-
tached to it. For a short time, oppressed social groups are given an
opportunity to release pent up aggression in a game of reversed

86 J. Heers, Fetes desfous et Carnavals(Paris 1983), and more literature below.

Cf. now also Auffarth 1991, 24-7.
8 7 I have discussed rites of reversal in a different context in Versnel 1980, 582
ff., and cf. also above p. 55 n .102 and pp.103 f., and there is more in the next chap-
ter. The works of the authors mentioned in brackets in the text will be cited below.
For further literature on the orgiaalimentare(indulging in abundant meals and the
concomitant imagery of the Land of Cockaigne) see: Bremmer 19876, 80 n.17.
There is now also a useful discussion of the functions and meanings of festivals of
reversion in: Auffarth 1991, eh. 1 "Das Fest der verkehrten Welt" pp. 1-37, whose
views on this topic concur largely with mine. On the various terms that are in use
in the sociological and anthropological jargon see: ibid. 22 n.1, 28 n.4.
116 CHAPTER TWO

roles; thus the possible dangers of a real revolution are neutralised.

This was in fact the no nonsense interpretation of Nilsson and
Bomer, and this function of the festival has sometimes been recog-
nized as such by the participants themselves; for instance an ex-slave
typified it in 1855 as a "safety-valve to carry off the explosive ele-
ments"88. Recently more emphasis has been laid on the demon-
strative and symbolic aspects of these safety-valve effects: via ritual,
the conflict is made clear in an enlarged but symbolic form, and the
real conflict is encapsulated. "The supreme ruse of power is to allow
itself to be contested ritually in order to consolidate itself more
effectively" 89. For this reason Norbeck 1963 speaks of "dramas of
conflict''.
These explanations, useful though they may be, do not cover the
total range of the phenomena. At least equal attention should be
paid to the function of legitimation or confirmation of the social sta-
tus quo90 . The established order is confirmed by the absurdity of the

88 F. Douglas, My Bondageand my Freedom(New York 1855) 253 ff., and see the
comments by E. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll (New York 1974) 577 ff., both cited
by Bremmer 1987b, 86 n.43. Zijderveld 1982 demonstrates the same awareness in
medieval carnival clubs. More references in: N. Zemon Davis, The Reasons of
Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaries in Sixteenth Century France, P&P 50
(1971) 41-75, esp. 48 n.21.
89 Balandier 1972, 41. Cf. Lewis 1976, 142, with interesting parallels of
modern 'feasts of fools'. Similar views on chiliastic movements: A. F. C. Wallace,
Religion: An AnthropologicalView (New York 1966); W. E. Miihlmann, Nativismus
und Chiliasmus. Studien zur Psychologie,Soziologieund historischerKasuistik der Umsturz-
bewegungen(Berlin 1961).
90 Bremmer 1987b, 86 f., warns against the use of the term 'legitimation' in
this connection: "We should at least ask: legitimation for whom? Perhaps in the
eyes of the masters but hardly for the slaves". In the same veine, Lane Fox 1986,
81, holds that processions and festivals in Hellenistic cities did not 'legitimate' or
'justify' the pre-eminence of the leading notables: there was no longer a real alter-
native. In the strict sense of the term this argument may be justified, but in the com-
mon anthropological jargon 'legitimation' pertains to the total structure of society:
by looking in the carnival mirror all social groups e contrarioget the 'right' picture
of how real society actually works and where everybody's place should actually be.
This implicit confirmation of the status quo (' 'strong collective images of concord'',
as Lane Fox ibidem calls it) involves the legitimation that it is good and should re-
main as it is, in the same way as Malinowsky's charter myth has 'founding', 'con-
firming' and 'legitimizing' functions. All this is excellently phrased by Auffarth
1991, 35 f.: '' Das Fest der verkehrten Welt bietet auch die Gelegenheit, das Selbst-
bewusstsein der Gemeinde zu formieren und zu zeigen' '. It serves "um die Grund-
gesetze der Gesellschaft zu priifen, indem man ihr Gegenteil durchspielt. Har-
monie ist nicht der Inhalt des Fests, allenfalls sein Ergebnis." Cf. also the
quotations from Gluckman in the text. For a full discussion of the intricacies of the
concept 'legitimation' see: 'The Sociology of Legitimation', CurrentSociology35, 2
( 1987).
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 117

world turned topsy-turvy 91. A precursor in this view was Gluck-

man92, according to whom these rites "give expression, in a
reversed form, to the normal rightness of a particular kind of social
order''. Their main function is to attain' 'cohesion in the wider soci-
ety''. Of course, both functions mentioned may reinforce each
other, but they are still distinguishable: neutralising potential ag-
gression is not identical to confirming the social status quo by means
of a demonstration of the absurd. Or as B. Sutton Smith 93 says
about 'playing': "We may be disorderly in games either because we
have an overdose of order or because we have something to learn
through being disorderly''. As a matter of fact both aspects, 'the re-
bellious' and the 'cohesive', are often found side by side in different
expressions of one ritual feast. The dissociative one is acted out in
the theatrical conflict of role reversal, the integrating and status quo
preserving one is manifest not only in the role-playing but also
demonstratively in the collectiveand egalitarianexperience of the fes-
tival as an image of abundance.
Whereas earlier interpreters of the carnival laid special emphasis
on the safety-valve effect, recent scholars tend to pay more attention
to its functions as a source of solidarity and legitimation 94. In addi-

91 Just as do jokes, parody or mockery. Instead of contesting the status quo, they
remind us of the incontestability of reality: Douglas 1975, 106 f.; Chr. P. Wilson,
Jokes. Form, Content, Use and Function(London 1979) 228-31; A. C. Zijderveld, The
Sociology of Humour and Laughter, CurrentSociology31 (1983) 1-103, esp. 42; U.
Eco, The Frames of Comic 'Freedom', in: T. A. Sebeok (ed.), Carnival! (Berlin-
New York-Amsterdam 1984) 6 f. Of course, there is also room for more experimen-
tal functions of humour: see below n.96.
92 Gluckman 1959, from which I quote; idem 1963. His first explorations in this
direction: An Anarysis of the SociologicalTheoriesof B. Malinowski (Oxford 1949) 16.
Cf. also: P. L. van den Berghe, Institutionalized Licence and Normative Stability,
Cahiersd'etudesafricaines3 (1963) 413-23. E. Z. Vogt, Rituals of Reversal as a Means
of Rewiring Social Structure, in: A. Bharati (ed.), The Realm of theExtra-human(The
Hague 1976), introduces the term 'rewiring'.
93 B. Sutton Smith, Games of Order and Disorder, as quoted by V. W. Turner
in Babcock 1978, 294.
94 Safety-valve: e.g. in: N. Zemon Davies, Societyand Culture in Earry Modern
France(London 1975) 122 ff.; Burke 1978, 202 ff. The aspect of legitimation: inter
alios in Zijderveld 1982 and H. Pleij, Het gilde van de Blauwe Schuit. Literatuur, volks-
feest en burgermoraalin de late middeleeuwen(Amsterdam 19832) 63, 87, 241 f. For
some specific cases see: A. H. Galt, Carnival on the Island of Pantellaria, Ethnology
12 (1973) 325-39; D. Gilmore, Carnival in Fuenmayor: Class Conflict and Social
Cohesion in an Andalusian Town, Journal of AnthropologicalResearch32 (1975)
331-49; L. Barletta, Il carnevalede[ 1764 a Napoli. Protestae integrazionein uno spazio
urbano(Naples 1981).
118 CHAPTER TWO

tion to this, scholars have detected the potentially 'experimental'

functions of this type of festivals: theatrical demonstrations of so-
cial criticism may foster gradual changes in society 95 . However,
this function cannot be attested before the early modern period,
and seems to be completely absent in the ancient world. V. W.
Turner 96 explains why: in a rapidly changing and ever more com-
plex society social and cultural categories tend to become unstabi-
lized and liable to re-classification. In primitive cultures-including
the Ancient World-, social categories are so firmly fixed that in
ritual reversal, however revolutionary its images, the playful
alternatives never carry the germs of structural social change. By
way of comparison one might refer to the ancient slave revolts which
practically never provoked-nor were intended to provoke-social
revolution. We shall see that the same is true for the literary genres
that provide images of Utopia.
Reversal rituals may function in very different contexts 97 and are
by no means restricted to agricultural rituals (Frazer) or death sym-
bolism (Meuli). The religious anchorage is quite variable too, i.e.
there is not necessarily a connection with any one specific 'reversal
god'. Indeed, gods need not be involved at all. The theories men-

95 So all the authors mentioned in the preceding note. Cf. also: Scribner 1978;
Schindler 1984.
96 In: Babcock 1978, 281-6. Elsewhere (Images of Anti-Temporality: An Essay
in the Anthropology of Experience, HThR 75 [ 1982) 253) he describes this type of
festival as '' an opportunity to play with the factors of socio-cultural experience, to
disengage what is mundanely connected, what people may even believe to be
naturally connected, and to join the disarticulated parts in novel, even improbable
ways" (my italics H.S.V.). Cf. W. Willeford, The Fool and His Scepter: A Study in
Clowns and jesters and Their Audience (Kingsport 1969) 108: "The fool breaks down
the boundary between chaos and order, but he also violates our assumption that
that boundary was where we thought it was and that it had the character we thought
it had: that of affirming whatever we have taken for granted and in that way pro-
tecting us from the dark unknown". Auffarth 1991, 32 f., lays considerable empha-
sis on the essentially experimental function of role-play but correctly concludes that
the results are rarely open: "Innerhalb des Spiels der Verkehrung ist das Experi-
ment anderer Ordnungen moglich. Das Durchspielen erweist in der Regel, <lasssie
nicht realisierbar sind. So attraktiv sie oft sind: Die Spielteilnehmer sind froh, wenn
sie wieder die Alltagsrealitiit ereicht haben. Die Spielregel sieht die Riickkehr zur
Normalordnung vor: Insofem ist das Ergebnis des Experiments vorgegeben."
97 This has been demonstrated particularly by Norbeck 1963, with a mild criti-
cism of Gluckman. Generally, Gluckman's point of departure in the sociological
model of 'equilibrium' and 'stability' has provoked some reservations, also in the
works of some specialists cited above, but this has scarcely influenced the general
lines of interpretation as summarized above.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 119

tioned above deal with categories of social and socio-psychological

processes, a level at which hierarchies are legitimated and social lay-
ers acquire solidarity via general consensus on the rightness of the
established order. This is the field in which generations of sociolo-
gists since Durkheim have operated, and the field in which, in their
opinion, religion was a function too. Many of them, however, in-
cluding convinced functionalists, have abandoned this extreme
point of view: ''the functional explanation of religion does not ex-
plain religion, rather it explains a dimension of society'' -thus
M. E. Spiro, and P. L. Berger 98 , too, has once more brought our
attention to "substantive versus functional definitions of religion".
"All societies are constructions in the face of chaos. The constant
possibility of anomic terror is actualized whenever legitimations ob-
scuring the precariousness are threatened or collapse", Berger and
Luckman write 99 , and in such situations, or more regularly in
ceremonially created periods of crisis-literally: separation between
two eras, situations, periods-a 'deep legitimacy' is required, refer-
ring to a mythical reality outside ours, 'the other reality', lying be-
yond the borders of history and space, an eternal truth that existed
before time but still exists behind it and behind our reality, and occa-
sionally mingles with ours in 'periods of exception' 100 .
Seen from this perspective, the reversal ritual offers another,
deeper meaning. Although not linked to any particular type of fes-
tival or sector of social life, reversal rituals are found predominantly
in the ceremonies accompanying a critical passage in the agricultur-
al or social year, moments of stagnation and rupture at which chaos
threatens, such as initiation, festivals of the dead, and in particular
the opening, eating/ drinking or offering of the first fruits of the har-
vest or the first wine as recurrent, or the accessions of new rulers as
incidental incisions in the progress of time. One or more such events
may develop into one or more regular New Year celebrations 1° 1 , in

98 P. L. Berger, Some Second Thoughts on Substantive versus Functional

Definitions of Religion, Journalfor the ScientificStudy of Religion 13 ( 1974) 125-33.
99 Berger & Luckman 1971, 121.
100 These concepts are used by Weidkuhn 1977, who finds his inspiration in

Eliade.
101 On the occurrence of several New Year festivals in one year: M. P. Nilsson,

Primitive Time-reckoning(Lund 1920) 270. Particularly interesting is the cumulation

of 'incision ceremonies' as a result of the interference of two different cultural
groups in a community. From the Middle Ages Christians had their own rites of
licence connected with Lent, which contributed to the development of Carnival.
120 CHAPTER TWO

which various elements are united into a fixed pattern. Eliade and
Lanternari 102 in particular have given a complete taxonomy of this
'grande festa'. The caesura between old and new is essentially ex-
perienced and dramatized as a disruption of social life, a vacuum
that is filled by a temporary return of the mythical primordial era
from before Creation or before the birth of the present culture 103 .
As already stated in the previous chapter, this is invariably ex-
pressed by images of chaos, dissociation, dissolution of order, a
topsy-turvy world, e.g. a temporary abolition of kingship and laws.
There are orgies in the sense of drinking bouts as well as in the sexual
sense, ritual fights between two groups, and the return and welcome

Among others Jews were a natural object of derision and mimicry, just as it was
a general Mediterranean custom to pelt the Jews with stones in the week before
Eastern. On the other hand, we know from Inquisition archives dating from 1571
that in Venice Christian bakers used to bring bread to the Jews in the Ghetto at
the end of Pesach. Though being cordially welcomed, the bakers were also bom-
barded with all sorts of projectiles by theJ ewish mob, mainly consisting of children.
See: C. Roth, A History oftheJews ofVenice(Philadelphia 1935); idem, The Eastertide
Stoning of the Jews and its Liturgical Echoes, Jewish QuarterlyReview 35 (1945)
361-71; B. Pullan, TheJews ofEuropeand the Inquisition ofVenice,1550-1670 (Oxford
1983). Interestingly, similar rituals on the same day are recorded for Islamic cul-
tures in connection with the Jewish festival ofMimuna: The Jews were allowed to
hold picnics on the territory of their Islamic neighbours, who even provided them
with bread, branches etc. During the festival, which was regarded as a festival of
renewal, there were rites of reversal. Male Jews were dressed as women or wore
Moslim clothes, which was normally strictly forbidden. See: H. E. Goldberg, The
Mimuna and the Minority Status of Moroccan Jews, Ethnology 17 (1978) 75-87.
102 Eliade 1949, 83 ff.; idem 1964, 326-43; Lanternari 1976. Gluckman 1963
describes a particularly interesting Swazi ritual, during which the king is temporar-
ily dethroned and humiliated at the occasion of a festival of the First Fruits. Recent-
ly, Auffarth 1991, 9-15, has criticized Eliade's concept of 'the eternal return', and
denounced the ideological motifs that lie hidden behind his ideas of creation and
cyclical re-creation. There is much in this with which I can agree. A. 's main differ-
ence from Eliade is that he wishes to see the New Year festivals essentially as a threat
of destruction ('Drohender Untergang"), which, thank God, does not come to reali-
zation, but is only experienced as a serious possibility. I am not sure that this is to
be preferred over Eliade's ideas of 'extinction and re-creation', to which the com-
plete imagery of these festivals clearly points. However, for the present issue it is
not necessary to take sides in this debate. For when he himself characterizes the fes-
tivals of reversal A. does so in precisely the same terms, images and symbols as the
ones made famous by Eliade-and his followers-(some of the most outspoken pas-
sages can be found on pp. 43; 70, 74-77, 150, 236, 257 /8) and in this characteriza-
tion he and I completely agree.
103 The death of a king may provoke the very same associations and imagery.
Versnel 1980 and especially for Rome: J. Scheid, Contraria facere: renversements
et deplacements clans Jes rites funeraires, A/ON (archeol)6 (1984) 117-39. For simi-
lar images in the context of initiation see the preceding chapter.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 121

of the dead. Rites de separation(to use the terminology coined by van

Gennep) may precede: purification, expulsion of the pharmakos
(scapegoat), bloody sacrifices, extinction of fire; ritesd'aggregationfol-
low: the wearing of new clothing, lighting of fire, renewal of king-
ship, the 'fixing of the fate' for the coming year. The chaos that is
acted out ritually is often anchored mythically in primeval chaos, for
instance in the image of the struggle between creator-god and chaos-
monster, or of deluge and consequent re-creation, as we have seen
in the Babylonian myth and ritual of the New Year. This primeval
chaos manifests itself as a temporary elimination of all contours, a
return to a state undefined by bounds and moral standards, express-
ing itself in the creation of monsters and monstrosities; a period of
total freedom manifesting itself in both total lawlessness and total
abundance 104 . This lends to the festival an atmosphere of complete
ambivalence: sadness, anxiety, despair because of the catastrophe of
the disrupted order; elation, joy and hope because of the liberation
from chafing bonds, and the pleasant experience of temporary abun-
dance. Thus the reversed world of society in crisis mirrors the cos-
mic chaos of mythical times, leaving aside the question of priority.
Both these modern interpretations of the festival of reversal-the
functionalist one (including the safety-valve effect and the confirma-
tion of the status quo) and the cosmic-religious approach in terms of
'deep legitimacy' -will contribute to an interpretation of the intrin-
sic contradictions of the Kronos myth and ritual complex.

104 On chaos as "l'absolue liberte" and the ambiguity of the sentiments in-
volved, see Eliade 1964, 76 and passim. Interestingly, Pausanias 8, 2, expresses his
belief in the story that Lycaon was changed into a wolf, since in these mythical times
the gods stil used to mingle with human beings (a typical Utopian image) and so
men could either become gods or beasts ( or worse). Chaos, in the sense of discon-
tinuance of normality, can also be evoked by reversal of less vital conventions:
wearing clothes inside out, eating forbidden food, naming objects by terms which
express their reversed meanings etc. We have seen these practices in the context
of initiation (eh. I), we now meet them again in New Year festivals. Particularly
interesting: B. G. Meyerhoff, Return to Wirikuta: Ritual Reversal and Symbolic
Continuity in the Peyote Hunt of the Huichol Indians, in: Babcock 1978, 225-40.
Of course, ritual chaos is not as radical and total as the mythical one: there are
boundaries, for instance in time and space. See: Meyerhoff, o.c.; M. Ozouf, Space
and Time in the Festivals of the French Revolution, CSSH 17 (1975) 372-84, esp.
372. There were restraints on violence and licence: Burke 1978, 202; P. L. van den
Berghe, Some Comments on Norbeck's African Rituals of Conflict, AmericanAn-
thropologist67 (1965) 485-9, esp. 485. There was a fixed closure: E. Norbeck,
Religionin Human Life. AnthropologicalViews (New-York 1974) 38, often in the form
of a conviction of the mock-prince: Burke 1978, 202.
 122 CHAPTER TWO

5. THE AMBIGUITY OF THE KRONIA AND RELATED FESTIVALS

1. The paradox of the impossible harmony

Like the periods of licence known from anthropological literature,

the Kronia (and similar festivals) have two aspects. The first one is
the orgiastic aspect of the shared experience of merry-making and
abundance in an atmosphere of dissolution of hierarchy, which in-
cludes a component of strong cohesion and solidarity 105 . Not only
the slave, but everyone experiences the liberation as a temporary
relaxation based on equality. Here, therefore, harmony prevails. This
harmony, however, was experienced as unpleasantly ambiguous, as
we learn from two closely related literary representations of ''The
Dream of the Great Harmony" 106 : comedy and Utopia.
Just like the festival of the Saturnalian type, comedy is-among
other things-pre-eminently a medium for generating solidarity 107 •
And like these festivals comedy may implement its task by the evoca-
tion of a reversed world. The resulting collective laughter is cohesive
and marks the boundaries of the cognitive and affective territory of
a group 108 • In Old Comedy, the representation of the land ofCock-
aigne, generally as an image of the golden primeval era, occasionally
as a vision of the future, is a standard theme. In this imagery, the
earth bears fruits of its own accord and the food offers itself ready
cooked 109 . Quite frequently this automaton implies the superfluity of

105 On the cohesive force of Greek festivals in general see: F. Dunand, Sens et
fonction de la fete dans la Grece hellenistique. Les ceremonies en l'honneur d' Arte-
mis Leucophryene, DHA 4 (1978) 201-18. For Rome: Clavel-Leveque 1984, pas-
sim. On the cohesive qualities of communal eating as a 'bandstiftender Ritus': G.
J. Baudy 1983, esp. 132. Cf. also Schindler 1984, 46, and more literature in the
next chapter p.159, n.105.
106 "Der Traum von der grossen Harmonie" is the title of the German transla-
tion ofj. Servier, Histoire de l'utopie (Munich 1971).
10 7 The relationship was already noticed by F. M. Cornford, The Originof Attic
Comedy(London 1914) 76 f. On the social function of Greek comedy see e.g.: Car-
riere 1979; David 1984. Very interesting observations in: Rosier 1986. Cf. W. von
Koppenfels o.c. (above n.66); Segal 1970 (on Roman comedy, for which see also
next chapter).
108 Cf. A. C. Zijderveld o.c. (above n.91) 47 ff.
109 "L'age d'or n'oppose pas un etat de nature a un etat civilise; ii gomme
entre eux toute difference. II presente Jes nourritures civilisees comme des produits
spontanes de la nature que l'homme trouverait sans rien avoir a faire, deja cultives,
recoltes, engranges, cuisines, tout prets a etre consommes": J.-P. Vernant,
Sacrifice et alimentation humaine, ASNP Ser. III, 7 (1977) 939, and cf. idemon the
'Tables of the Sun', below n.114. On comedy as a Utopian representation general-
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 123

labour and consequently of slaves: in Aristophanes' Birds 760-5 en

passant, and in Krates' Wild animals(PCG IV F 16 Kassel/Austin) as
the central theme of a discussion 110 . This image is also found in
philosophers such as Empedocles (B 128 D-K) and Plato Rep.
271aD-272 B 111 . In complete freedom there was complete equality
and complete abundance. In King Kronos' time "people even gam-
bled with loaves of bread" (Kratinos PCG IV F 176 Kassel/ Austin),
and Telekleides Amphictyonesfr. 1 Kock describes a country where
there were indeed slaves, who, however, did not work but "played
at dice with pigs' vulvae and other delicacies". By the way, we get
an answer here to the obvious question: "We are often left won-
dering what people actually did in the Golden Age'' 112 . So, what we
see is utter freedom, but it is actually too good to be true. Frequent-
ly, therefore, a few uncomfortable afterthoughts loom up in the
same context.
Pherecydes F .10 Kock describes a slaveless society, but also
makes it perfectly clear that in consequence the women have to work
their fingers to the bone in order to get the work done, and the fields
are neglected so that people starve (idem F .13). In Herodotus 6,
137 113 , Hecataeus for the same reason makes the slaveless primeval
situation end negatively via the labour of women and children. And

ly: E.-R. Schwinge, Aristophanes und die Utopie, WJA 3 (1977) 43-67. On the
truphe motif: H. Langerbeck, Die Vorstellung von Schlaraffenland in der alten at-
tischen Komiidie, Zeitschriftfur Volkskunde 59 ( 1963) 192-204; W. Fauth, Kuli-
narisches und Utopisches in der griechischen Komiidie, WS 7 (1973) 39-62, with
interesting remarks with respect to the issue under discussion on pp. 52, 56 and 61;
A. Barchiesi, Lettura de! secondo libro delle Georgiche, in: M. Gigante (ed.), Lec-
turae Vergilianae(Naples 1982) 43-55. On the automatonmotif: Gatz 1967, 118, and
register B 1,1; H.J. dejonge, BOTPYC BOHCEI, in: M. J. Vermaseren (ed.),
Studies in HellenisticReligions (Leiden 1979) 37-49. Comedy could also present Gold-
en Age imagery as the return to the simple agricultural life: C. Moulton, Aristophan-
ic Poetry (Giittingen 1981) 104 ff. On the absence of slavery: R. von Pohlmann,
Geschichteder sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus in der antiken Welt (Munich 19252); J.
Pecirka, Aristophanes' Ekklesiazusen und die Utopien in der Krise der Polis, Wiss.
Zeitschr. Humboldt Univ. zu Berlin, Gesellsch.-Sprachw. Reihe 12 ( 1963) 215 ff.; Vidal-
Naquet 1981, 230 ff.
110 Athenaeus 6, 267e, "the poets of the Old Comedy, when they discuss the
'ancient way of life', assert that in those times slaves were not employed".
111 Theopompus FGrHist 115 F 215, says that in Arcadia masters and slaves
were sitting at the same tables and sharing the same food and drink.
112 Blundell 1986, 136.
113 On this passage as a conjunction of Utopia and Elysium: L. Gernet, La cite
future et le pays des morts, in: idem, Anthropologiede la Greceantique(Paris 1968) 139;
Vidal-Naquet 1981, 363.
124 CHAPTER TWO

in his Utopian scheme for women, Aristophanes grants everybody

equal property, but does not manage this without the labour of
slaves. In other words: abundance, equality and abolition of slavery
are all very well, but only for a short time or in an imaginary world.
In such a chaos, reality would disintegrate.
Herodotus 3, 18 relates an Ethiopian custom of laying 'a table of
Helios': at night boiled meat is taken to a meadow and during the
day everybody is allowed to eat it. The natives, however, say that
it is the earth itself that time and again produces this food 114 . Here
again the automaton/luxury motif is found in combination with the
notion of equality. The sacrificial loaves in the temple of Kronos in
Alexandria, which everybody was allowed to eat, come to mind 115 .
Such images bring us to the concept of Utopia, which is also related
to the Saturnalian feasts 116 . Here too elements of the automaton and

114 The Utopian aspects of Ethiopian imagery and of the 'Tables of the Sun'
were recognized long ago: M. Hadas, Utopian Sources in Herodotus, GP 30 (1935)
113-21; T. Siifve-Siiderberg, Zu den iithiopischen Episoden bei Herodot, Eranos44
(1946) 68-80; A. Lesky, Aithiopika, Hermes 87 (1959) 27-38. Recently J.-P. Ver-
nant has devoted some interesting pages to the 'Table of the Sun': Les troupeaux
du Soleil et la Table du Soleil, REG (1972) XIV-XVI, revised and enlarged in:
Manger aux pays du Soleil, in: Detienne & Vernant 1979, 239-49. "Manger a la
Table du Soleil, c'est se situer au-dela" (p.247). Cf. also: R. Lonis, Les trois ap-
proches de l'ethiopien par !'opinion greco-romaine, Ktema 6 (1981) 69-87.
115 There are some remarkable associations which, ifl am not mistaken, have
gone unnoticed so far: Artemidorus Dreambook1, 5, first relates that a man dreamt
that he had dinner with Kronos, and when day came he was imprisoned (a very
telling image of the Kronian paradox: temporary relaxation-normal position in
chains). It is followed immediately by the story of a person who dreamt that he
received two loaves of bread. Chance or a vague connection with the cult-practice
of Alexandrian Kronos? Pausanias 6, 26, 1, after having related the spontaneous
wine-miracles in Greece as a token of the presence ofDionysos (on which see: Incon-
sistenciesI, 138), compares this with the Table of Helios. I wonder if the tradition
of spontaneous meals offered by a god to humans, both in Aethiopia and Egypt
(Alexandria), should somehow be connected with the well-known invitations by the
god Sarapis to come to his kline. See the literature in Engelmann 1975, 43 f. Signifi-
cantly, also in other contexts spontaneous creation fom the earth can be identified
as a gift of the gods: the little vulcanic isle that rose spontaneously from the sea near
Thera was called Automata and Hiera alternately: Strabo 1, 3, 16 (57); Seneca NQ
2, 26, 4-5; Plin. NH 2, 202; Iustin. 30, 4, 1-4.
116 Surveys in: H. C. Baldry, Ancient Utopia (Southampton 1956);]. Ferguson,
Utopias of the Classical World (London 1975). As always far more inspiring: M. I.
Finley, Utopianism, Ancient and Modern, in: idem, The Use and Abuse of History
(London 1975) 178-92. On easy living e.g.: A. Giannini, Mito e utopia nella letter-
atura greca prima di Platone, RIL 101 ( 196 7) 109 ff. On the Phaeacians as an image
of Utopia: Vidal-Naquet 1981, 60 ff. On Hellenistic Utopias see the literature cited
by M. Zumschlinge, Euhemeros. Staats-theoretischeund Staats-utopischeMotive (Diss.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 125

easy living prevail: they are found as early as Homer's land of the
Phaeacians, in the tales of the Hyperboreans, oflamboulos' Sun Is-
lands and of Euhemeros' Panchaia. In the last two cases, slavery is
absent. But these are Utopias of a fairy-tale nature ('utopia d'eva-
sione'), which by definition lie at the edge of or beyond the edge of
the world, the eschatiai,an all but unreachable land and at the same
time a 'land of no return', like Elysium after death. Moreover, as
Vidal-Naquet says: "Phaeacia is an ideal land and an impossible
society'' 117 . This becomes all the more apparent as soon as the po-
litical or social Utopia takes on a model function as 'utopia di
ricostruzione'1 18 and consequently is not absolutely inconceivable
(Hippodamos, Plato, Aristotle). Then, labour is indispensable and
slavery a matter of course 119 • In the Messianic Utopian vistas ac-
companying the accession of Roman emperors we also find in great
detail all the themes of abundance and isonomia, the annulment of
debts and disappearance of poverty-all this sometimes summa-
rized as a liberation from chains 120-but there is (of course) no
mention of a liberation of slaves. What is possible in the fairy-tale
is undesirable-and even threatening-in real life. Lucian (Saturn.
33) says that equality is most pleasant at table, but that Kronos
grants this equality only during holidays (ibid. 30).
Such aspects of the Kronia reveal a marked ambivalence in the
Greek concept of harmony: the ideal of freedom and abundance is

Bonn 1976). On the absence of slavery in Utopias the fundamental discussion by

J. Vogt, Slavery in Greek Utopias, RSA 1 (1971) 19-32 = idem, AncientSlaveryand
the Ideal of Man (Cambridge Mass. 1975) 26-38, esp. 29 ff.; Gatz 1967, 127 and
register B4c.
117 In: Gordon 1981, 93.
118 The terms are introduced by Giannini o.c. (above n.116).
119 The paradox is explicitly formulated by Arist. Polit. 1, 4, 1253B 33 ff., "If
every tool we had could perform its function, either at our bidding or itself perceiv-
ing the need, like the statues that were made by Daedalus or the wheeled tripods
of Hephaestus ( .... ) and if the shuttles in the loom could fly to and fro or a plec-
trum play on a lyre automatically, the manufacturers would have no need of assis-
tants nor masters of slaves''. Similarly, Ar. Eccl. 583 ff. makes Praxagora describe
the ideal communist society in which women have taken over the government, but
on the question who would work the land she answers: "the slaves" (651). Cf. J.
Pecirka o.c. (above n.109).
120 See the references to epigraphical sources: Versnel 1980, 551 ff. The literary
sources in Gatz 1967, 131 ff. I shall return to these expressions in the next chapter.
Release from fetters e.g. in Philo Legatioad Gaium 146, a common element in the
imagery of the coming of the millennium: W. A. Meeks, The First UrbanChristians.
The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven and London 1983) 184 ff.
 126 CHAPTER TWO

unstable; it cannot last, because it carries the seed of real social

anomie and anarchy. It is a dangerous game, just like the dice-
playing allowed to the slaves: during the Saturnalian festival the
relationships are open, the dice are thrown and there is the possibili-
ty that it is not the master but the slave who will win. This, however,
would not be equality but the world turned upside down.

2. The paradox of thefestive conflict

The second socially functional aspect of the Kronia and related fes-
tivals is that of the reversal of roles. Here the imagery is not marked
by the idea of harmony; on the contrary, there is intensified and for-
malised conflict: the hierarchy is inverted. Cockaigne and the
reversed world very frequently go hand in hand. In literature it is
often the occurrence of adunatathat herald the coming of the Golden
Age 121 . But the radical shifting of boundaries in role-reversal offers
not only greater boisterousness but also deeper disturbance: here,
anarchy has a truly subversive character. Once again, comparisons
with comedy 122 and Utopia are enlightening.
The freedom of slaves in Old Comedy never entails their
dominance. Aristophanes experiments to the very limit with rever-
sal between the sexes, but he is extremely reticent on the topic of
reversal between slaves and citizens. Slaves do not even assist in the
revolution of women: "De pouvoir servile, ii n'est pas et ii ne peut
pas etre question" 123 (there can be no question of power in the
hands of slaves, ever). The reason is evident: even as a comic scene,
this image would meet with resistance; slave rebellion was a struc-
turally feared phenomenon, and by no means an imaginary one.

121 Kenner 1970, 70, gives examples and literature in n.214. A combination of
adunatasuch as talking trees, fish and sparrows, fellowship between men and gods
and food growing from the earth: Babrius in the prologue to his collection. S. Luria,
Die Ersten werden die Letzten sein, Klio 22 (1929) 405-31, unnecessarily regards
these as two successive stages of a historical process.
122 According to one tradition (Platonios CGF p. 3 ff., and Scholion ad Diony-
sios Thrax, ibid. p. 12) comedy was 'invented' by peasants who staged their protest
against the injustice they suffered. Cf. E.-R. Schwinge, Alte Komodie und attische
Demokratie. Notizen zu ihrer Interdependenz, in: Literaturin derDemokratie.Fur W
Jens zum 60. Geburtstag(Munich 1983) 236-45.
123 Vidal-Naquet 1981, 226 and 267-88; cf. P. P. Spranger, Historische Unter-
suchungen zu den Sklavenfiguren des Plautus und Terenz, Abh.Mainz (1960) 662
ff. = 110 ff.; Loraux 1981, 157-96; Carriere 1979; L. Bertelli, L'utopia sulla scena:
Aristofane e la parodia della citta, CCC 4 (1983) 215-63. David 1984 rightly con-
trasts this with the general criticism of social misuses.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 127

It would be even more surprising to find rule by slaves in

Utopia 124 . It is possible to imagine a reversed world, often trans-
formed in images from the animal world in which the weak gain the
victory 125 , for instance in the chiliastic expectation of salvation, but
slaves ruling society is a notion that can enter the heads of slaves
alone. As a matter of fact, Eunous, the leader of a slave revolt in Sici-
ly, does call himself king and has his former masters wait upon him.
Similarly, the Circumcelliones have their carts pulled by their form-
er lords 126 . This might have been their idea, but it certainly was not
the idea. It is precisely one of the principal tasks of ritual, drama and
wishful thinking to channel and neutralise any excessive inclinations
in this direction. The reversal of roles is supposed to confirm and
legitimise its opposite, not itself.
Ritual is more direct than literary representation. Hence, ritual
reversal, however necessary as a 'holiday' oflimited duration, by its
nature includes a strongly threatening component. Adunata and im-
ages of reversal may, as has been said, precede or accompany the
Golden Age, but they also, and often, precede or accompany
apocalyptic catastrophe. In stark contrast to the Messianic images
of reversal during the early imperial era, Tertullian Apologeticum20:
"humble ones are raised, high ones are brought down", serves as
an announcement not of the realm of bliss but of a period of chaos
and catastrophe: "justice becomes a rarity ... the natural shapes
are replaced by monsters", exactly as in Egyptian prophecies and
elsewhere 127 . Once again it appears that reversal may point in two

124 See]. Vogt o.c. (above n.116).

125 H. v.d. Waal (ed.), lconclass.An IconographicClassificationSystemvol. 2-3, bib-
liography s.v. 'mundus inversus', 29 A, gives a survey of the iconographical
representations.
126 On the messianistic side ofEunous' revolt see: P. Green, The first Sicilian
Slave War, P&P22 (1962) 87-93. On the Circumcellions: Versnel 1980, 552, and
P. G. G. M. Schulten, De Circumcellionen.Een sociaal-religieuze bewegingin de late oud-
heid (Diss. Leiden 1984). The master serving as mount is a popular image in com-
ical situations: Plautus, Asin. 700 ff.; Phyllis riding Aristotle was an ever recurring
motif in stories, paintings and household objects from the thirteenth to the seven-
teenth century inclusive: N. Zemon Davies, in: Babcock 1978, 161 ff. Similar
revolutionary reversals are common throughout history. When, in 1525, during the
German peasant war the peasants occupied the houses of their lords, they claimed
their places at table and had themselves served by the knights, saying: "Heut,
Junkerlein, syn wir Teutschmeister (knights)": Burke 1978, 189.
l27 On these very interesting Egyptian prophecies see e.g.: S. Luria o.c. (above
n.121 ); J. Bergman, Introductory Remarks on Apocalypticism in Egypt, and J.
Assman, Konigsdogma und Heilserwartung. Politische und kultische Chaos-
128 CHAPTER TWO

directions: to total freedom = abundance, and to total freedom =

lawlessness and chaos. One of the implications is that rites ofrebel-
lion carry the seeds ofreal revolution. Aeneas Tacticus 22, 17, states
that festivals are the most frequent occasions of revolution in the
state 128 , and that applies afortiori to those festivals that carry an ele-
ment of ritual rebellion, as is illustrated by the rich tradition of car-
nival and revolution in particular 129 •
In both aspects of the legitimate licentia, the harmonious and the
conflictive, we observe a violent contradiction: on the one hand,
they aim at relaxation by means oflaughter, elation and abundance;
on the other hand, they refer to the impossible and the undesirable:
chaos, revolution, and, in close alliance with these, murder and
manslaughter, lawlessness, the disintegration of society. What is a
social ambiguity here is also the structural theme in the cosmic-
mythical model of the realm of Kronos.

beschreibungen in Aegyptischen Text en, both in: D. Hellholm (ed.), Apocalypticism

in the MediterraneanWorld and the Near East (Tiibingen 1983) 51-60 and 345-78.
Generally on adynata: E. Dutoit, Le theme de l'adynaton dans la poesie antique (Paris
1936).
128 Some instances: Xen. Hell. 4, 4, 2-4; Aen. Tact. 17, 3; Diod. 13,104, 5; 15,
40, 2; 16, 36, 3; Plut. Marc. 18, 3; Liv. 4, 37; Iustin. 43, 4, 6-11. Cf. A. Fuks, Slave
war and slave troubles in Chios in the third century BC, in: idem, Social Conflictin
Ancient GreeceQerusalem 1984) 260-9; Baudy 1986, 221. For this reason some cities
were carefully guarded during festivals of Dionysos (Aen. Tact. 17, 4) or during
the Floralia(Massilia: lustin. 43, 4, 6-11). Cf. Graf1985b, 79. W.R. Connor,JHS
107 ( 1987) 41, mentions an '' apparent convergence between festivals and political
disturbances", referring to T. Figueira, Hesperia53 (1984) 447-73, who observed
that the principal periods of instability in the early sixth century in Athens coincide
with the years of the Great Panathenaia. Generally on the connections between re-
bellion and religion: Chr. Grottanelli, Archaic Forms of Rebellion and their Reli-
gious Background, in: Lincoln 1985, 15-45. Note that in situations of reversal or
revolution the positions of women and slaves largely correspond or even coincide:
Vidal-Naquet 1981, 267-88 = idem, Slavery and the Rule of Women in Tradition,
Myth and Utopia, in: Gordon 1981, 187-200; F. Graf, Women, War, and Warlike
Divinities, ZPE 55 (1984) 245-54. Festivals are also ideal opportunities for sudden
attack: L. A. Losada, The Fifth Column in the PeloponnesianWar (Leiden 1972) 101;
111 f.
129 One has been made famous by the treatment by E. Le Roy Ladurie, Le Car-
naval de Romans (Paris 1979). Cf. generally: Weidkuhn 1969, 289-306. Scribner
1978 argues that carnival was exploited as an instrument to clear the way towards
Reformation. See for further literature: Bremmer 1983, 118 n.133. On female
'revolutions' see: N. Z. Davis, Women on Top: Symbolic Sexual Inversion and Po-
litical Disorder in Early Modern Europe, in: Babcock 1978, 147-90. Generally on
the connections between religion and rebellion: Lincoln 1985.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 129

6. THE KING OF A PRIMEVAL REVERSED WORLD

Like other cultures, Athens had several New Year festivals. One of
these, the Anthesteria 130 , shows an all but complete set of charac-
teristics of the 'grande festa': the opening of the wine-jars (primitiae
situation); licentiain the form of ridicule and abuse; collective wine-
drinking in which children and slaves were allowed to share; and a
sacred wedding of the king. In addition to these joyous aspects there
are threatening elements: the arrival ofKares or Keres, primeval in-
habitants or ghosts of the dead who are given a warm welcome and
subsequently wished away; banquets for the dead; the temporary
closing down of the temples in an atmosphere of doom. In all
respects there is clearly a temporary return to chaos in its twin
aspects of 'absolute freedom', mythically represented in the com-
memoration of deluge and re-creation on the last day of the festival.
The official New Year's Day, however, fell in midsummer, in the
month of Hekatombaion, a month that was formerly called Kron-
ion. Two veritable New Year festivals, the Synoikia and the
Panathenaea, are preceded by two festivals that have the typical
structure of the incision festival, marking the period 'in between':
the Skira and the Kronia 131 . The Skira, on 12 Skirophorion, shows
the following characteristics: an apopompe of the priests and the
primeval king out of the city-in the myth the king is killed; women,
at liberty to call meetings, take over men's roles; boisterous fun and
playing at dice; a sacrifice of an ox, which is called disertis verbis
bouphonia, 'ox-murder'. A complex, therefore, in which joy and
gloom unite in role reversals and the abolition of the normal social
relationships 132 .
These festivals are not connected with Kronos, but the Kronia fes-
tival, in which, as we have seen, role reversal and licentiadominate,
and which falls between Skira and the New Year festivals, is emphat-

130 On the Anthesteria see the discussions and literature in Burkert 1983,
213-43; GR 237-42; Bremmer 1983b, 108-20; and now exhaustively: Auffarth
1991, 202-76. He comes to the very same conclusions as I do with respect to the
Kronia as he acknowledges by adopting my formulation from the first version of
the present paper on Kronos: "Die Verhiiltnisse der goldenen Zeit in ihrer Am-
bivalenz von Eutopie und Dystopie, diese Utopie wird in den Grenzen des fest-
lichen Spiels Realitat" (258).
131 A good survey of this range offeasts in Burkert GR, 227-34. On the Synoi-
kia as festival of the "auslosung der politischen Einheit": Graf 1985b, 134.
132 On the Skira as a festival of reversal: Burkert 1983, 143-49. On the boupho-
nia: J.-L. Durand, Sacrificeet labouren Greceancienne(Paris 1986).
130 CHAPTER TWO

ically dedicated to Kronos, in the month that originally bore his

name. In light of the cosmic-religious interpretation of the festivals
surrounding the turn of the year, several of our earlier observations
suddenly take on an understandable and structural meaning. "Kro-
nos ist mythologisch, nicht kultisch'', Nilsson said. He is more right
than he realised; indeed, this statement touches the heart of the mat-
ter. During many a festival of incision-although this is not known
of the Kronia-one of the expressions for the stagnation of' normal'
existence is the closing down of the temples 133 : the contact with the
gods currently ruling is broken, the pre-Olympian era returns tem-
porarily. It is precisely Kronos' mythical character as god of a
primordial time that explains his presence in the un-cultic vacuum
between the times. He is primeval chaos in person, in its dual aspect
of freedom as a joy and freedom as a threat. Lacking fixed bound-
aries, there is a high degree of 'entropy'. The unstable equilibrium
may be upset at any time. Ritually, this is expressed by, among
other things, the freedom to play dice and gamble. In this chaos be-
tween times, fate still must be determined: 'the fixing of the fate' in
Babylon is an annual re-creation, while in Italy Fortuna Primigenia
reigns when Jupiter is still puer 134 . Everything is still unsettled, in-
cluding the question of who will be boss: slave or master. In Greece
too this mythical era before history or this time between the times
is characterised by 'abnormal' creatures which do not fall into natur-
al categories: Kronos' era is the period of giants, creatures with a
hundred hands, Cyclopes and other monsters 135 . The Thessalian
Peloria festival-a typical reversal festival-refers to mythical giants
from the primeval era 136 . As 'masks' they may return temporarily

133 See: Auffarth 1991, 229-31.

134 See the pertinent observations by Brelich 1949/50, 16 ff., to which we shall
return in the next chapter. Cf. for gambling, plays of chance, competition and
mimicry in this type of rituals: V. W. Turner, Carnaval in Rio: Dionysian Drama
in an Industrializing Society, in: F. E. Manning (ed.), The Celebrationof Society.Per-
spectiveson ContemporaryCultural Performance(Ohio 1983), 104-10, on: 'varieties of
playful experience'.
135 J.-P. Vernant, L'autre de l'homme. La face de Gorgo, in: M. Olender
(ed.), Le racisme.Mythes et sciences.MelangesPoliakov(Bruxelles 1981) 141-56, illumi-
natingly demonstrates how the Gorgo unites oppositions (masculine and feminine,
young and old, beautiful and ugly, human and beastly) and thus evokes a disorder
which is experienced as extremely threatening. Here is precosmic chaos, composed
into one horrible being.
136 Thus Nilsson 1906, 37. The Peloresare unconvincingly interpreted as the
(great) ancestors by Meuli 1975 I, 298 ff., following P. von der Miihll, Ausgewiihlte
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 131

in the period of crisis between the times. In fact this is a variation

of the return of the dead, who also belong to another time and
another reality: the world of the dead, too, is 'upside down>137 and
shows the ambivalence of "damonische Bedrohung oder die es-
chatologische Verheissung'' (demonic threat or the eschatological
promise) 138. In the form of the Kares or Keres the two images of
primeval creatures and the dead seem to intermingle 139.
Kronos is the god in chains: already in Hesiod the terms 'binding'
and 'fettering' are typically connected with his myth. His statue is
'chained', perhaps already in the Hellenistic period, certainly in
Rome. Kronos does exist, but only in mythical times: before the
present reality ( during the primeval era), or after it (death), or at the
outermost edges of this reality (the eschatiaz).He is either a prisoner
or asleep. In this perspective I would tentatively propose to interpret
his representations with covered head as follows: generally, in the
Greek and Roman world, covering or wrapping up the head indi-
cates that the person concerned is (temporarily) withdrawn from the
present reality and is in ( or in immediate contact with) 'the other
reality' 140 . This is precisely the essence of Kronos. His era,
however, returns once more in the chaos of the Festival of Old and
New: he is unchained, he wakes up or he is revived and again as-
sumes kingship for a limited period: the return of the basileus, a term
and a concept that for Greek and certainly for Athenian ears carries
the primordial connotation of the beginning of time 141 , as else-
where, too, the return of the wish-time is closely connected with the
figure of a king (the return of the 'sleeping' king, Saturnaliusprinceps,
rex,prince Carnival, slave risings with 'royal' leaders such as Eunous).

kleineSchrijten(Basel 1975) 436-41. Cf. Bremmer 1983a, 123. Even less can I accept
that "the name Peloriais most naturally taken as designating the tables heaped with
food": Robertson o.c. (above n.45) 8.
137 Smith 1978, 141-71.
138 B. Gladigow, Jenseitsvorstellungen und Kulturkritik, ZRGG 26 (1974) 308;
cf. n.28 above on the similarities between the imagery of Utopia and the Isles of
the Blessed.
139 Auffarth 1991, 233-5, offers the most fortunate discussion of this 'double
identity', adducing the illuminating parallel of the Israelite Rephaim.
140 H. Freyer, Caput velare(Diss. Tiibingen 1963) gives the (Roman) evidence
but is not very satisfactory in his interpretations. Cf. below, chapter V, on the hu-
man victims of the versacrum,who were made sacerand forced to leave their country
capite velati.
141 See e.g.: R. Drews, Basileus. The Evidencefor Kingship in GeometricGreece(New
Haven and London 1983) 7-9.
132 CHAPTER TWO

His rule refers to the dual freedom of unlimited abundance and abo-
lition of the established hierarchy, on the one hand, and of the
absence oflaw and standards, including rebellion, on the other. All
this is expressed by the mythical and ritual images that we have
described in the first part of this chapter, the Utopian images of
abundance and euphoria and the opposite ones of the absence of
moral standards, inhumanity and revolt.

7. CONCLUSIONS

Our conclusions can be expressed concisely because they are in fact

obvious from and implied in the foregoing. We have asked how we
can explain the violent contradictions in Kronos' myth and ritual if
we are not satisfied with the emergency solutions that resort to the
fortuities of derivation, acculturation and evolution. Our solu-
tion142 is that the contradiction between the joyous and the fright-
ening aspects of the Kronos complex is a structural characteristic of
the god and his religious context. The explanation of this lies in his
function as god of the periods of reversal and chaos. We have found
that there are ambiguities on two levels. In the functionalist view,
the legitimate anarchy comes close to the limits of the permissible.
The collective culinary orgy as well as, afortiori, the reversed hierar-
chy contain the seeds of the socially impossible and undesirable. The
oxymoron of euphoria and panic reaches a paroxysm in the Rhodian
Kronia: the victim is given large amounts of wine to drink and then
murdered. In the cosmic-religious view, on the other hand, abun-
dance and role-reversal appear to be images of the renewed ex-
perience of primeval chaos that is simultaneously Utopia and its
reverse: the relaxation of the banquets of the Golden Age under
Kronos in one and the same image as the 'sardonic' tension of Kro-

142 There have been stimulating suggestions in previous works. I mention in

particular: Meuli 1975 II, 1043-82, and 'Der Ursprung der Fastnacht', ibid. I,
283-99; Brelich 1949/50, and 1976, 83-95; Graf 1985b, 83. Cf. Burkert GR, 198:
"Kronos, the god of the first age, of reversal, and possibly of the last age", and
232: "and so at his festival there is a reversion to that ideal former age, but a rever-
sion th~t of course cannot last''. More generally, G. Dumezil, Le problemedes Cen-
taures.Etude de mythologiecompareeindo-europeenne (Paris 1929) had a keen eye for the
ambiguities of carnivalesque New Year festivals. That Utopian expectations con-
cerning a near or far future are so scarce in Greece can be explained from the gener-
al fact that "while speculations about the past were abundant, explicit pronounce-
ments about the future are surprisingly rare": E. R. Dodds, The Ancient Conceptof
Progress(Oxford 1973) 2. Cf. B. A. van Groningen, In the Grip of the Past (1953).
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 133

nos' Thyestian repasts 143 . This means that on both levels the con-
tradiction is a structural characteristic of Kronos' myth and ritual.
In this connection the words of B. Lincoln, speaking of 'interstitial'
situations, are worth quoting: "What is constant in all instances is
the fundamental perception that it is anomalies such as these-
places outside space, moments outside time; people and things be-
yond easy classification-that are most dangerous and most creative
as well 144 ". Consequently, attempts to soften the contradiction or
'render it harmless' via an exclusive appeal to historical develop-
ment or elimination of one of the contrasting components are not
only superfluous but fatefully veil its essential meaning.
Our initial question concerned the relationship between myth and
ritual. How are we to see this relationship in the case at hand and
to what extent is mutual dependence present here? W. B. Kristensen
wrote long ago: "Saturnus was a slave himself '1 45 . He was berated
for his folly and praised for his courage 146 . The brachylogy of this
phrase inevitably led to misunderstandings. None the less it refers
directly to the question we have asked ourselves. Is the mythical 'un-
chaining' of Kronos a projection of the slave's freedom at festivals
such as the Kronia? Or, on the other hand, was the myth of the
Golden Age the model for the relaxation of the Kronian festivals?
Furthermore, how are we, then, to interpret the dependence of the
dark and cruel aspects of myth and rite: was human sacrifice the ex-
ample or the imitation of Kronos' mythical atrocities?
It will be clear by now that in this case there can be no question
of such a one-sided dependence of myth and rite, in any direction.
By no means do I deny that the myth and ritual complex we have
described is a crystallised product of processes to which many
influences-non-Greek as well as Greek-have contributed and

143 Katepine-not only in Hes. Theog. (above p.91; cf. W. Burkert in: Bremmer
1987a, 38 n.57) but also in Plato, Euthyphro 6A and Apollod. 1, 1, 5-is the very
expression of this gluttony run wild.
144 Lincoln 1982. Comparably, V. W. Turner in: Babcock 1978, 279, on limi-
nal situations: "Liminal symbols tend to be ambiguous, equivocal, neutral, am-
bisexual rather than classificatory reversals. This is because liminality is conceived
of as a season of silent, secret growth, a mediatory movement between what was
and what will be where the social process goes inward and underground for a time
that is not profane time".
145 Kristensen o.c. (above n.26) 15.
146 "Einfach absurd": Bomer 1961 III, 425; "un lavoro geniale per impostazi-
one e per alcuni intuizioni": Brelich 1949/50, 16 n.3.
134 CHAPTER TWO

whose details escape us 147 . But the tenets of anthropology and com-
parative religion now enable us to outline a fresh hypothesis about
the fundamental connection between the mythical and ritual compo-
nents underlying this process of assimilation and evolution.
In the domain of ritual it all started with a-presumably agri-
cultural-festival. Perhaps this festival was somehow connected
with the stagnation in the 'cereal' year in July and August (did it
clinch the storage of the corn harvest, as did the Roman Consualia,
similarly in August, as we shall see in the next chapter?). For reasons
that escape us the festival was devoted to the god Kronos. We do
know that, in historical times, it was firmly anchored in a festive
complex which marked the transition from the old to the new year
and that, accordingly, it was celebrated with rites of role reversal.
In the domain of myth our starting point is the observation that
Kronos, for whatever reason, disappeared from active cult and be-
came a 'mythical' god, and that this god (consequently?) was con-
sidered to be a representative of the mythical era before history
proper, which began with Zeus and the Olympians.
As far as we can see, these two sets of data, the ritual and the
mythical, represent independent phenomena. However, both were
open to closely related associations, which can be summarized in the
notion of 'absence of order'. The ritual displayed an atmosphere
which the myth projected onto the precosmic era. Mythically, the
primeval era is represented in many cultures as a chaos of an ambig-

147 Perhaps a new piece of evidence may eventually throw more light on the ori-
gins of the relationship ofKronos and the Kronia. I owe this information to W. Bur-
kert by a letter d.d. 19-1-1992. It concerns a new Hurritic-Hittite bilingual, pu-
blished in KBo 32 (1990), and discussed by E. Neu, Das Hurritische: Eine
altorientalische Sprache in neuem Licht, Abh.Mainz (1988) 3. The text contains a
"Song of release', referring to the liberation of slaves and the remission of debts,
well-known from ancient Near-Eastern cultures (cf. the Hebrew 'Jubilee').
However, the text offers also a mythological introduction: "The Sungoddess of the
Earth" invites the Weathergod Teshub, and together they descend into the dark
earth, the abode of the 'primeval gods', with whom they celebrate a feast. During
that feast they confirm king Emar's obligation to implement the 'release'. In his
analysis of this fascinating piece of evidence (forthcoming in: KarnevaleskePhiinomene
in antikenund nachantikenKulturenund Literaturen(Boch um 1993]) Burkert argues that,
as Neu had already seen, this ritual of slave release goes together with a temporary
suspension of the separation of heaven and earth, including the separation of the
"primeval gods" [now out of action] and the reigning generation of gods. He
points out the striking analogy with Greek Kronos and the Kronia. All this might
indicate a more pervasive (and complex) influence of oriental prototypes then was
so far assumed.
 KRONOS AND THE KRONIA 135

uous nature: there is a positive, Utopian side coupled with refer-

ences to the catastrophic aspects of the annihilation of human
values. Equally, we find the same ambiguity in the absence of order
in ritual: abundance, on the one hand, and reversal of roles on the
other. Here 'abnormality' may lead to associations with murder in
the form of human sacrifice. Both myth and rite 'say' the same
thing: the Utopian cannot, the reverse Utopian must not exist in reali-
ty. In myth, this is expressed by the projection of these images onto
the eschatiai of time and space, Kronos' mythical territory. In ritual
it is expressed by realising the impossible for just a few hours or days
and thus underlining its exceptional character: the relaxation and
reversal are indeed subservient to society's proper functioning, but
as images of either the impossible or the undesirable and therefore
as exceptions-"denn Freiheit ist etwas, das womoglich noch
schwerer zu ertragen ist als Herrschaft" (for perhaps freedom is
even harder to endure than dominion) 148 . Whereas such festivals
are understood widely as a temporary return to chaos-and show by
their nature every characteristic of it-, in Greece it was natural to
associate them with the precosmic era of myth, which was thought
to return for one day. Both, however, though-as far as we can
see-for quite different reasons, were associated with the god Kro-
nos. All this justifies the conclusion that we have in this complex an
example of correspondence between myth and rite in '' structure and
atmosphere", and in such a way that both "symbolic processes deal
with the same type of experience in the same affective mode'', and
this "pari passu", according to the postulates referred to in the in-
troductory section of the present chapter.

148 Weidkuhn 1969, 302. Cf. Balandier 1972, 116. I have discussed the am-
biguity of freedom in the Hellenistic world at length in the first chapter of Incon-
sistencies I.
 CHAPTER THREE

SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA

Liminal symbols tend to be ambiguous, equivo-

cal, neutral, ambisexual rather than classificatory
reversals. This is because liminality is conceived
of as a season of silent, secret growth, a mediatory
movement between what was and what will be,
where the social process goes inward and under-
ground for a time that is not profane time.
V.W. Turner

1. THE EVIDENCE

1. Saturn
The many conspicuous features that Roman Saturn and Greek Kro-
nos had in common encouraged an early assimilation. We are well-
informed about some common traits, especially the nature of their
festivals, the Saturnalia and the Kronia. But the gods share enigmat-
ic aspects too: the mystery of their 'original' nature; their pro-
venance; and the question of alleged derivations of cult elements
from foreign sources. I shall first give a survey of the most relevant
evidence-for full information the reader should consult the abun-
dant modern literature 1•

1 Besides the articles in the well-known handbooks or encyclopedias (especially

the one by M. P. Nilsson in RE II, 2, 1 [1921] 201-11) and articles on special details
mentioned in the footnotes below, the following works are basic: J. Albrecht, Satur-
nus. Seine Gestaltin Sage und Kutt (Diss. Halle 1943); F. Bomer, Untersuchungenii.her
die Religion der Sklaven in Griechenlandund Rom III (AbhMainz 1961) 173-95 (=
415-37); M. Le Glay, Saturneafricain. Histoire(Paris 1966), esp. 449-78; A. Brelich,
Tre variazioni romane sul tema delle origini (Rome 19762) 83-95; Ch. Guittard,
Recherches sur la nature de Saturne des origines a la reforme de 21 7 avant J.-C.,
in: R. Bloch (ed.), Recherchessur les religionsde l'ltalie antique (Geneve-Paris 1976)
43-71; idem, Saturnifanum infaucibus (Varro LL 5, 42): apropos de Saturne et de
!'asylum, in: Melanges P. Weuilleumier(Paris 1980) 159-66; idem, Saturnia Terra:
mythe et realite, Caesarodunum15 bis (1980) 177-86; D. Briquel, Iuppiter, Saturne
et le Capitole. Essai de comparaison indo-europeenne, RHR 198 (1981) 131-62; P.
Pouthier,Ops et la conceptiondivine de l'abondancedans la religionromaineJusqu'ala mort
d'Auguste (Rome 1981); B. H. Krause, luppiter OptimusMaximus Saturnus. Ein Beitrag
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 137

Like Kronos in Greece, Saturn had scarcely any cultic reality in

Italy pace Dion. Hal. 1, 34, 52 . In Rome his cult was restricted to
one sanctuary, the famous temple 3 on the slopes of the Capitoline
hill, eight columns of which are still in situ. The treasure of state, the
aerarium Saturni, was kept in the cellars of this temple. It was also the
place where the quaestors administered the mint. Various series of
Roman coins bore the portrait of the god. There was an official pair
of scales in the temple and official charters are reported to have been
published on walls in the immediate neigbourhood 4 . This unique
temple of Saturn constitutes one of the oldest cult places of Rome.
Before its foundation there had been a very ancient altar 5 and the
temple itself was said to have been founded in or around 497 BC 6 ,

zur ikonographischen DarstellungenSatums (Trierer Winckelmannsprogram 5, 1983).

These works will be cited by name and date henceforth. As I had originally planned
this chapter as a section of my contribution to Bremmer 1987a, together with my
paper on Kronos, the basic parts had been written when I saw Graf 1985, who pro-
vides a short but perceptive analysis of the main features of the Saturnalian festival
on p.90-93.
2 Dion. Hal. 1, 34, 5, tells us that sanctuaries of 'Kronos' were ubiquitous in
Italy, but archaeology by no means confirms this view. Nor does epigraphy: in his
appendix 'Inscriptions a Satume hors d 'Afrique', Le Glay 1966, 340-3, records
only 33 instances. As far as they are Italic (27 x ) there are only 7 inscriptions from
central Italy; the rest are from North Italy, where a Celtic God hides behind this
name. Cf. C. B. Pascal, The Cults of CisalpineGaul (Bruxelles 1964) 176-9; F. Sar-
tori, Un dedica a Satumo in Val d'Ega, Atti VII Ge SDIR (1975-6) 583-600.
3 H. Jordan, Topographieder Stadt Rom I, 2 (Berlin 1871) 360 ff.; S. B. Platner-
Th. Ashby, A TopographicalDictionaryof Ancient Rome (Oxford-London 1929) 463 f.;
G. Lugli, RomaAntica. Ilcentromonumentale(Rome 1946) 148-51; F. Castagnoli, Foro
Romano (Rome 1957); Coarelli 1983, 199 ff.; P. Pensabene, Tempio di Saturno.Ar-
chitetturae decorazione(Rome 1984).
4 AerariumSaturni: Thes.L.L. I, 1055 ff.; Plut. Poplic. 12; QR 42; Paul. ex Festo
2, 14 (L); Macrob. Sat. 1, 8, 3; Serv. Georg.2, 502. See: M. Corbier, L'Aerarium
Satumi et l'Aerarium militare (Rome 1974). Coins: Babelon, Monnaie de la republique
romaineI, 288 no. 5; 399 no. 24; II, 188 no. 14 f.; 214 no. 2; 216 no. 8; Sydenham,
TheCoinageoftheRomanRepublic(London 1952)nos. 73, 79, 90,102,123,124. Cf.
Krause 1983, passim. The balance: Varro, L.L 5, 183. On the enigmatic text in
Varro L. L 5, 42: post aedemSaturni in aedificiorumlegibusprivatis parietes 'posticimuri'
sunt scripti, generally interpreted as 'charters' (cf. Cass. Dio 45, 17, 3); see also:
H. Erkell, Varroniana, ORom 13 (1981) 35.
5 Fest. 430, 35 (L); Serv. Aen. 2, 116; 8,319; Macrob. Sat. 1, 8, 2; Varro L.L.
5, 42:fanum infaucibus. Cf. Guittard 1980a and the discussion below p.179.
6 Dion. Hal. 6, 1, 4; Liv. 2, 21, 2, with Ogilvie's note. Pensabene o.c. (above
n.3) 12-5, gives the full evidence. Cf. E. Gjerstad, The Temple of Saturn in Rome:
Its Date of Dedication and the Early History of the Sanctuary, in: HommagesA.
GrenierII (Bruxelles 1962) 757-62. Latte 1960, 254 n.2, thinks that the temple was
founded circa 400 BC, but this must be the second temple.
138 CHAPTER THREE

on the 17th of December, the day of the Saturnalia 7. However, like

Kronos, the god who was worshipped here was ''une divinite
dechue" ( a fallen god) 8 •
The origins of the god and his name are lost in the haze of prehis-
tory. Etymologies which connect the name with Latin sero/ satus are
linguistically untenable 9 • Connections with Etruscan Satre deserve
more serious consideration 10 . More distant relations with a great
Phrygian god Satre have been suggested 11. But even if Etruscan in-
fluences could be ascertained, the fixed position of the festival in the
oldest Roman festive calendar 12 and the occurrence of the name in
the ancient carmenSaliare13 seem to betray an ltalo-Roman origin of
the god. The Romans themselves regarded Saturn as the original
ruler of the Capitolium, which, as they asserted, was called Mons
Saturnius in ancient times 14 .

7 Fest. 432, 9 (L), Satumo dies festus celebraturmense Decembre,quod eo aedis est
dedicata;Fasti Amit. 17 Dec.
8 Le Glay 1966, 450, adding: "mais nous devinons son antique grandeur".
9 Fest. 202, 17 (L); 432, 19 (L); Varro, L.L. 5, 64; Macrob. Sat. 1, 10, 20; Ar-
nob. 4, 9; Lact. Div. Inst. 1, 23, 5; Aug. G.D. 7, 13. The connection with sero is
still defended by some modern scholars (see the survey in Le Glay 1966, 450 n.10)
but is refuted by the length of the a in Satumus. Cf. Saeturnusin GIL I2 449; Paul.
ex Fest. 323 (L) Sateurnus. Cf. Bomer 1961 III, 183; idem, Ovids Fasten I, 234 and
see: LEW s.v. Radke 19792 still defends derivation from sa- and explains the name
as "der die Absicht, (sc. den Menschen) die Veranlassung zum Siien zu bringen,
sie das Siien zu lehren, ausgefiihrt hat" (!). Cf. idem 1987, 84 ff. See for the agrarian
function of Saturn below pp .165-1 71.
lO W. Schulze, Zur GeschichtelateinischerEigennamen(Berlin 1904) 181; G. Her-
big, Satre-Saturnus, Philologus74 (1917) 446-59. On the element ae in Saeturnusas
an indication of Etruscan influence: A. Ernout, Les elements etrusques du
vocabulaire latin, in: idem, PhilologicaI (Paris 1946) 50. An Etruscan origin of the
name had already been proposed by J. Scaliger, M. Ter. Varronis 'De lingua latina'
(1581) 30: "Porro Saturni nomen Tuscum esse omnes mihi concedent". Cf. Guit-
tard 1976, 50. Etruscan influence is perhaps also confirmed by the fact that Saturn
figures conspicuously in the Libri Sibyllini, which betray Etruscan influences: R.
Bloch, Origines etrusques des Livres Sibyllins, MelangesA. Ernout (Paris 1940) 25
f.; Pfiffig 1975, 312 f. Van der Meer 1987, 126-8, regards Etruscan Satre as an
Etruscization of Italo-Roman Saturn, which does not convince me.
11 P. Kretschmer, Saturnus, Die Sprache2 (1950) 65-71. Different suggestions:
Kleine Pauly s.v. Saturnus, 1570 f.; Guittard 1976, 43 f.
12 See the evidence in Le Glay 1966, 453 n.6. The low dating of the Numanic
calendar by A. Kirsopp Michels, The Calendarof theRoman Republic(Princeton 1967)
125-7 and 207-20 (so already eadem,The Calendar of Numa and the Prejulian Ca-
lendar, TAPhA 80 [1949] 320-46), has been rightly attacked by A. Degrassi, Fasti
anni Numani et Iuliani. Inscr. Italiae XIII 2 (1963) pp. XIX f.; Le Bonniec 1958,
110 ff., with bibliography. Coarelli 1983, 206, dates the calendar to circa 600 BC.
13 Fest. 432, 19 (L).
14 VarroL.L. 5, 42; Dion. Hal. 1, 34; 2, 1; Iustin. 43, 1, 5; Macrob. Sat. 1, 7,
27; Fest. 430, 30 (L). See: Poucet 1967, 76-98.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 139

Here we are confronted with a first inconsistency in the imagery

of the god. On the one hand, Saturn was regarded as autochthonous
and as belonging to the first stratum of Latin settlers. Consequently,
he was often regarded as the first king of Latium or even of Italy 15 •
On the other hand, he is generally depicted as an immigrant. Ac-
cording to Hyginus apud Macrobius Sat. 1, 7, 21 ff., for instance,
!anus was the first king of Latium and he received Saturn after his
wanderings and settled him in his country 16 . According to Varro
L.L. 5, 74 17 , he arrived, just as other gods, from the Sabine terri-
tory-a view, of course, that is more informative on later Saturnian
ideology than on the actual roots of the god 18 . So Saturn unites the
connotations of the arch-Roman and the prototypical foreigner 19 .
This is only the first of a series of paradoxes that we shall gradually
discover.
The foreign nature of Saturn seems to be ritually reflected in the
fact that his sacrifice was performed according to the ritus graecus,
that is capite aperto: with uncovered head 20 . This custom is attested

15 Latium: Verg. Aen. 7,203: Saturniagens; Sil. Ital. 3, 11; Italy: EnniusAnn.
25: Saturniaterra;Varro L.L. 5, 42; Verg. Georg.2, 173: Saturnia tellus;Aen. 8,329;
lustin. 43, 1, 5, ltaque Italia regisnomineSaturnia appellata.On Italy as Saturnia terra
see: Guittard 1980b, who thinks that the Saturnia terra "n'a pu se developper
qu'apres !'assimilation de Saturne a Kronos et comme une consequence des the-
ories euhemeristes" (183); Briquel 1984, index s.v. Saturn is ranged among the
Laurentan kings: RML IV, 433 ff., with sources on his arrival in Italy. The high
antiquity of Saturn and his ambiance is also indicated by the versusSaturnii, which
are versusantiquissimi (Fest. 4 32 L).
16 On !anus and Saturn as prototypical kings: A. Brelich, I primi re latini, in:
idem 1976, 57-103; Guittard 1976, 64 f.
17 Cf. Dion. Hal. 2, 50, 3; Augustin. G.D. 4, 23.
18 See on the historical value of the list of the 'Sabine gods' in Varro: E. C.
Evans, The Cults of theSabine Territory(PMAAR XI [1939]) 152 ff. ;J. Collart, Varron,
grammairienlatin (Paris 1954) 189-92; Poucet 1967, 47-51; Guittard 1976, 54 ff. On
the ideological implications of these Sabine connections as references to the 'third
function' of rural affluence: Pouthier 1981, 39 f. As a signum for ancient Italic agrar-
ian origin: Le Glay 1966, 454 ff.; Guittard 1976, 53 ff.
19 As far as I know, Brelich 1976 is the only one who has noticed and valued
this paradox, to which we shall return.
20 Already Cato apud Prise. 8, p. 377 H ( = Malcovati p. 35 no. 77) says: Graeco
ritufiebanturSaturnalia.Cf. Fest. 432, 1 (L ): apud earn(sc. aramSaturni) supplicantaper-
tis capitibus.Nam ltalici (. . ... ) velantcapita; ibid. 462, 29 (L); Paul. 106 (L); Mac-
rob. Sat. 3, 6, 17. Serv. Aen. 3,407, even contends that this was done exclusively
in the case of Saturn: sacrificantesdiis omnibuscaput velareconsuetos(. .. ) exceptotantum
Saturno. On ritus graecussee: J. Gage, Apollon romain. Essai sur le culte d'Apollon et le
diveloppementdu 'ritusgraecus'aRome des originesaAuguste (Paris 1955); Rohde 1936,
138 ff.;J. Linderski, The Augural Law, ANRWII, 16 (1986) 2219.
140 CHAPTER THREE

for only a few other cults, the sacrifice for Hercules at the Ara Maxi-
ma being the least problematic 21 , since this cult is incontestably of
Greek origin. However, in the case of Saturn and, for instance, that
of Honas, to whom people used to sacrifice with bare heads, accord-
ing to Plutarch QR 13, serious problems loom up, for neither of these
gods had Greek roots. The desperation of modern scholarship is ex-
emplarily illustrated by Latte 22 • He explains the capite aperto sacri-
fice for Honas as a human imitation of the god (who was represented
with uncovered head), whereas ancient explanations of the same
sacrifice for Saturn were based precisely on the opposition between
the covered god and the uncovered worshippers 23 . The least we can
do for the moment is to point out the problem: an essentially non-
Greek, though definitely eccentric, god is worshipped in a rite which
is usually qualified as ritu graeco24 . In searching for a solution to this
riddle, scholars have also referred to the later Hellenization of
Saturn. For it is undoubtedly true that Saturn adopted Greek traits
from his Greek pendant Kronos. The covered head is no less un-
usual for a Roman than for a Greek god: it must have been bor-
rowed from the imagery of Kronos 25 • The sickle is another Kronian
emblem 26. The identity of the two gods was already fully ac-
knowledged and exploited by Livius Andronicus 27 .

21 See: Freier 1963, 109-13. On the iconography see: C. Reinsberg, Das Hoch-
zeitsopfer eine Fiktion. Zur Ikonographie der Hochzeitssarkophage, ]DAI 99
(1984) 291-317.
22 Latte 1960, 236: "Die ~.eziehung zu dem Graecusritus versagt bei der Gestalt,
fur die wir kein griechisches Aquivalent kennen, ebenso wie bei Saturnus". On p.
256 n.4, he states that the uncovered head does not unequivocally prove Greek ori-
gin. Guittard 1976, 46 f., recognizes the problem and tries to solve it by emphasiz-
ing the strong relationship between Saturn and Hercules. Rohde 1936, 143, speaks
of the: ''sogenannte Graecusritus im Saturnkult'' and thinks that this ritual is as old
as the cult of Saturn itself, possibly deriving from Etruria. Cf. also Brelich 1976,
86, to whose pertinent questions I shall return.
23 Serv. Aen. 3, 407: ne numinis imitatio esse videretur;Macrob. Sat. 3, 6, 17: ut
omnesapertocapitesacrafaciant; hoefit, ne quis in aededei habitum eius imitetur; nam ipse
ibi opertoest capite.
24 This is another illustration of the great antiquity of the cult of Saturn in the
view of those ancient historiographers who wished to identify the early Romans as
Greeks: Dion. Hal. 1, 34, 4; 6, 1, 4; Plut. QR 11; Macrob. Sat. 1, 8, 2; 10, 22;
Serv. Aen. 3, 407; Fest. 432 (L). See: Briquel 1984, 419 ff.
25 See for this tradition: Alfoldi 1979, 20 f.; Krause 1983, esp. 5.
26 Fest. 202, 17 (L); 423, 12 (L); Macrob. Sat. 1, 7, 24; Plut. QR 42; Serv.
Georg.2, 406; Ovid. Fast. 1, 234. Cf. Krause 1983, 5.
27 Fr. 2 Morel: (lupiter) Saturnijilius; cf. fr. 15; Enn. Ann. 456 Yahl.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 141

According to a number of scholars, the Hellenization of Saturn

took place in a rather abrupt way in the year 21 7 BC, when, among
a series of piacular rites, ''there was a sacrifice at the temple of
Saturn and it was ordered that a lectisterniumshould be held and that
a public meal should be organized (the cry 'Saturnalia' resounded
through the city day and night) and that this would for always re-
main a festive day for the people" 28 . Livy's description of the
measures of the year 217 BC provides a good deal of the well-known
features of the Saturnalia of historical times. Many have accepted
the conclusion drawn by Wissowa 29 : "die Festfeier des alteinheimi-
schen Gottes Saturn us erfahrt eine vollige U mgestalltung nach
griechischen V orbilde" (the festival of the indigenous god Saturn
undergoes a complete transformation after a Greek model). Its suc-
cess does not alter the fact that this remark is a mere guess. It is at
least equally probable that age-old Roman customs were now offi-
cially recorded and ritually fixed 30 , perhaps after having been en-
riched with Greek elements (like the lectisternium31 for instance).
This assumption would receive additional support if it were true that
the cult of Saturn received particular attention during the second
Punic war in order to provide a kind of counterpoise to the Punic
Ba'al Hammon, who was identified with Saturn, by an act of evoca-
tio, as R. Bloch 32 has suggested. In that case an emphasis on au-

28 Liv. 22, 1, 19: Postremo,Decembriiam mense, ad aedemSaturni Romae immolatum

est, lectisterniumqueimperatum-et eum lectumsenatoresstraverunt-et conviviumpublicum,
acper urbemSaturnaliadiem ac noctemclamata,populusqueeum diemfestum habereac servare
in perpetuum iussus.
29 Wissowa 1912, 61. Cf. p.205: "Der Zeitpunkt der Umwandlung des
latinischen Kultes in einen griechischen ist in diesem Falle bekannt: ( .... ) 217
( .. )".
30 Thus convincingly: Nilsson 1921, col. 206. Cf. Latte 1960, 254/5: "Es ist
nichts in den Riten, was nicht in dem Bauernkult entstanden sein konnte". Bomer
1961 III, 423: "Die These uber den griechischen Ursprung der privaten Gastmiih-
ler in 217 unhaltbar", and ibid. 425: "Wir durfen getrost annehmen, class die
Romer fur die Art, wie sie mit ihren Sklaven feierten, ihren eigenen Stil hatten und
dafur nicht auf griechische Importe angewiesen waren." Cf. Graf 1985b, 93.
31 However, Guittard 1976, 47 f. is right in pointing out that Greek influence
must have been at work long before 217 BC. Cf. the important observation by
Rohde 1936, 143: "Catos Worte Graecoritufiebantur Saturnaliaklingen eher so, als
ob sie van einem alten Brauche gesagt wiiren, nicht van einem zu seinem Lebzeiten
eingefuhrten.''
32 Bloch 1976, 35 f., followed by Guittard, ibid. 49. Long before him E. Manni,
A proposito de! culto di Saturno, Athenaeum16 (1938) 223-32, had developed similar
ideas. Cf. also V. Basanoff, Evocatio (Paris 1947) 63-6.
142 CHAPTER THREE

thentic and ancient Roman ritual to attract the foreign god would
be quite appropriate.
Unfortunately we do not know the exact date of the only contem-
porary Greek author who mentioned the Saturnalia. Baton from
Sinope probably lived in the second part of the third century BC and
he tells us that the Roman Saturnalia were a completely Greek fes-
tival, the same festival that was called Peloria in Thessaly 33 . If he
wrote this before 217 BC, this would definitely prove that the Roman
Saturnalia possessed features that reminded the author of Greek cus-
toms. But even if he wrote (shortly) after this year it would be curi-
ous that he did not refer to the recent 'Hellenization' of the festival
in order to add force to his demonstration.
As we have seen in the previous chapter, there is no unequivocal
evidence on fettered statues of the Greek Kronos 34 . On the other
hand, this is one of the most characteristic marks of Roman Saturn:
the feet of the statue were 'chained' with woollen threads or fetters,
which were released on the day of the Saturnalia 35 . Another datum
without a parallel in Greece is handed down by Pliny NH 15, 32,
who tells us that the statue of Saturn was filled with oil 36 . This cus-
tom has been compared with the shedding of oil on the Kronos stone
at Delphi but this is not exactly identical and a convincing explana-
tion of this curious practice has not yet been proposed.
The inconsistencies discovered so far-a prototypical Roman god
who is at the same time a foreigner; a god with one of the oldest sanc-
tuaries in Rome and yet worshipped ritugraeco;a god who is in fetters

33 Apud Athen. 14, 639D-640A = FGrHist 268 F 5. G. Kaibel, in his Teubner

edition (1890) p.412, argues that it was not Baton but Athenaeus himself who in-
serted this piece of information, but F. Jacoby has shown that it is probably based
on authentic information: Cf. Briquel 1984, 421 f.
34 Cf. above p.105. I would recall, however, the information given by Pausanias

10, 24, 6 on the Kronos stone at Delphi: "every day they shed oil over it and during
every festival they place threads of unworked wool on it."
35 Verrius Flaccus apud Macrob. Sat. 1, 8, 5; Stat. Silv. 1, 6, 4, compedeexsoluta;
Arnob. 4, 24, numquisparricidiicausavinctum esseSatumum et ablui diebusstatis vinculo-
rum ponderibuset Levan"? Min. Fel. 23, 5.
36 Existimaturqueet eborivindicandoa carieutile esse:certesimulacrumSaturni Romae in-
tus oleorepletumest. Pausan. 5, 11, 10, has something of the kind on the ivory statue
of Zeus at Olympia. Krause 1983, 5, regards this as an exact parallel and accepts
the cosmetic motive for this strange custom as given by P!iny. However, there is
a difference: at Olympia the oil is poured over the statue; in Rome it is poured into
the hollow statue. Cf. also Piccaluga 1974, 312 f. and below p.189. On the libation
of oil over sacred stones see Burkert 1979, 42.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 143

but is liberated for one day (after which he is chained again)-are

matched by the paradoxes in his character as it appears from Roman
literature. No god in the Roman pantheon can boast a more para-
doxical character. Although his name cannot be connected with the
stem of the verb "to sow", Saturn undoubtedly had connections
with cereal activities, especially with the corn harvest. As we shall
investigate his functions in more detail below, it will suffice here to
point out the calendrical position of his festival between the two fes-
tivals of Ops and Consus in December. Consequently, later Roman
myth made him the husband of Ops, the goddess who personified
the wealth of the corn supply. In the imperial age Saturn was wor-
shipped side by side with Ops under the name of Frugifer 37 . Ac-
cordingly and significantly, he was generally lauded as the god and
king who had introduced agriculture in Italy and thus had given the
decisive impulse to the development of civilization. The locus
classicus38 , Verg. Aen. 8, 314 ff., describes how in the primeval era
of Fauni and Nymphs man led a beastly life without laws, agricul-
ture or civilization. Then came Saturn as an exile from the Olym-
pus, dethroned and fugitive (320-325):
"He gathered together the unruly race, scattered over mountain
heights, and gave them laws, and chose that the land be called Latium,
since in these borders he had found a safe hiding place. Under his reign
were the golden ages men tell of: in such perfect peace he ruled the na-
tions". (translation: H. Rushton Fairclouch, Loeb)

So Saturn's sickle may be viewed as a sign of affluence, peace, order

and stability. But it can also change into a bloody weapon in the
hands of a fearful and even horrible god.
As we shall have to return to the following issues in a different con-
text, I shall now only succinctly mention some major aspects which
betray the less agreeable sides of the god. In the first place, Saturn

37 At Lambaesis a temple was dedicated Saturnodominoet Opi Reginae(GIL VIII,

2670); there is a dedication FrugiferoSaturno aug(usto)sacr(um) (GIL VIII, 2666).
Combinations with Nutrix in Wissowa 1912, 208 n.5. Cf. Le Glay 1966, index s.v.
Frugifer.
38 Other sources on Saturn as culture hero: Fest. 202 (L); Macrob. Sat. 1, 7,
21-32; Plut. QR 12 and 42. Cf. the surveys in: Wissowa, in: RML col. 433 f.; Gatz
1967, 125; Brelich 1976, 92. On the development of the idea in Hellenistic times:
A. Alfoldi, From the Aion Plutonius of the Ptolemies to the Saeculum Frugiferum
of the Roman Emperors, in: Greeceand the EasternMediterraneanin Ancient Historyand
Prehistory.Studies presentedto F. Schachermeyr(Berlin-New York 1977) 1-30.
144 CHAPTER THREE

was closely connected with a deity called Lua. Now, a goddess called
Lua Mater presided over the destruction of the enemy weapons,
which were burnt and thus rendered harmless 39 • Her name is there-
fore associated with the concept of lues, 'destruction'. Romans of the
historical period seem to have identified Lua Mater and Lua
Saturni-erroneously, as I hope to show-; hence Lua Saturni 40 is
sometimes saddled with equally negative, or at least ambivalent,
traits. Serv. Aen. 3, 139, while commenting upon the phrase arbori-
busquesatisque lues, says that some numina are liable to perform both
good and evil deeds: ut (. .... ) sterilitatemtarn Saturno, quam Luae 41 ;
hanc enim sicut Saturnum orbandipotestatemhabere(for instance sterility
is attributed to both Saturn and Lua; for just as Saturn, the goddess
Lua has the power of making people childless). Apparently, Lua
could be both beneficent and malevolent, a fickleness she shared
with Saturn. I shall pay attention to the nature of the relationship
between these two gods in a later section.
Saturn had connections with the underworld, as may appear from
the position of his festival in December, a month which was appar-
ently reserved for gods with infernal or chthonic functions: Consua~
lia, Opalia, Angeronalia 42 . The ban on the performance of such
official acts as declaring war applied to both the Saturnalia (see be-
low) and to the days marked by mundus patet according to Varro 43 •

39 Liv. 8, 1, 6; 45, 33, 2, quibus spolia hostium dicare iusfasque est.

40 Varro L.L. 8, 36; Gell. 13, 23, 2.
41 Mss. Lunae. The conjecture Luae, proposed by Preller, Riimische Mythologie II,
22 n.3, is absolutely convincing and has been generally accepted. The counter-
arguments put forward by H.J. Rose, Fire, Rust and War in Early Roman Cult,
CR 36 (1922) 15 ff., followed by Dumezil 1956, 100, fail to convince. A number
of modern scholars deny the negative or disquieting aspects of Lua, since, in
their opinion, she was supposed to be a benevolent goddess connected with fertil-
ity or agriculture: "Eigenschaft die das Keimen der Saaten befordert" (A. v.
Domaszewski, Abhandlungen zur romischen Religion [1909] 109); "frisches Grun,
spriessende Saat" (Radke 1965, 186). I shall return to this problem in more detail
below pp.181-184.
42 The chthonic aspects have been particularly emphasized by Albrecht 1943,
36 ff. Cf. also Le Glay 1966, 460 ff. According to Plut. QR 11, some range the god
among the chthonic gods as belonging to the Nether World. Varro L.L. 5, 74, men-
tions him side by side with the chthonic V ediovis and in the cosmic system of Mar-
tian us Capella Saturn occupies the 14th region between the Manes and Vediovis:
Guittard 1980a, 164 (who should, however, not adduce 'the human sacrifice' to
Vediovis as an argument, since ritu humano in Gell. 5, 12, 12, has a different
meaning).
43 Apud Macrobius, Sat. 1, 16, 16-8. Cf. Fest. 145, 28 (L).
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 145

Of course, a chthonic nature does not necessarily carry negative or

unpleas;mt connotations. However, Etruscan Satre, who is almost
certainly related to Saturn, occupies a region in the dark and nega-
tive side of the liver of Piacenza, and so does Saturn in the related
description by Martianus Capella 44 . Satre is undoubtedly a fright-
ening and dangerous god who hurls his lightning from his abode
deep in the earth 45 .
It was commonly believed that the planet Saturn exercised harm-
ful influences, as is witnessed by Cicero and literature from the Au-
gustan period 46 and elaborated in later commentaries and astrol-
ogical works 47 . It is summarized by Servius Aen. 4, 92: Saturni
stellam nocendifacultatem habere(Saturn's star has the capacity to do
harm). The poetical use of his name, especially as a patronymic of
lupiter or Iuno, is often explained as a means to evoke a threaten-
ing or cruel atmosphere: crudelitatemaptum (inclined to cruelty,
Serv. Aen. 1, 23) 48 . The deities of the tertian fever are called his
daughters 49 •
These traits suffice as references to a gloomy and precarious at-
mosphere in violent contrast to the image of peace, well-being and
order that we found before. The frightful side of the god's nature
would be even more evident if it could be proven that Saturn origi-
nally, or at least in an early phase, was the god of the gladiatorial
munera,as many scholars have contended. As we shall return to this
problem as well, it may suffice for the moment to point out that we
have no single testimony from republican times that could une-
quivocally bear out a connection of Saturn with gladiatorial shows.

44 C. Thulin, Die Gotterdes Martianus Capella (RVV 1907) 29; Van der Meer
1987, 126-8.
45 Plin. NH 138, 52. Cf. Pfiffig 1975, 312 f., although Van der Meer 1987
doubts the value of this testimony.
46 Cic. De div. 1, 85; Prop. 4, 1, 84: et graveSaturni sidus in omnecaput; Hor. C.
2, 17, 23: impioSaturno;Ov. lb. 215 f.; Luc. 1, 652;Aetna 243;Juv. 6,569 f.; Nicar-
chus AP 2, 114, 3 f. He causes fever: Ptolem. tetr. 2, 83; cat. cod. astr. 7, 215, 28;
Firm. Mat. Math. 3, 2, 8; 3, 2, 26; 4, 19, 8. Cf. A. Le Boeuffie, Astronomie,astralogie.
Lexique latin (Paris 1987) 234.
47 Into the medieval and early modern period. See: F. Boll, C. Bezold, W.
Gundel, Stemglaubeund Sterndeutung.Die Geschichteund das WesenderAstrologie(Darm·
stadt 19745) index s.v. Saturn. On the 'melancholic' interpretation of Saturn: R.
Klibanski, E. Panofsky and F. Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy.Studies in the History of
Natural Philosophy,Religion and Art (London 1964).
48 Cf. idemadAen. 4,371: Saturnium(. ... )hocest, nocentem,and 372: ubicumque
infestosvult ostenderevel Iunonem vel Iovem, Saturniosappellat.
49 Theod. Prise. Phys. 4, 3 p. 250 Rose.
146 CHAPTER THREE

The notion of Saturn as a blood-thirsty god to whom gladiators

were sacrificed as human victims, which is indeed alluded to or
even explicitly mentioned in sources from the third century AD
onwards, has been explained from the close vicinity of the Satur-
nalia and the official munera in December. However, as we shall
see, Piganiol has at least succeeded in irrefutably demonstrating
that the production of gladiatorial munerabelonged to the tasks of
the quaestors and was paid with funds from the aerariumSaturni.
And it is also evident that the bloody and cruel atmosphere
apparently associated with Saturn provoked phantasies of pri-
meval human sacrifices in the cult of Saturn. Macrob. Sat. 1, 7, 31:
cumquediu humaniscapitibusDitem et virorumvictimisSaturnumplacarese
crederent(during a long period people had the idea that they could
placate Dis Pater with human heads and Saturn with human sac-
rifices).
Altogether we notice a striking ambiguity in the nature and
atmosphere of the myth and ritual of Saturn: just as in the
case of Kronos, there are joyful and utopian aspects of careless
well-being side by side with disquieting elements of threat and
danger.

2. Saturnalia
The 17th of December, the founding day of the temple, was also the
day of Saturn's festival, the Saturnalia 50 . Its increasing popularity
entailed a gradual extension of the festival, eventually over more
than a week, although the additional days never acquired official sta-
tus. Already in the first century BC the Atellane poets Novius and
Mummius spoke of septemSaturnalia51 . The festival is mentioned in
the calendar ofNuma and consequently belongs to the genuinely an-
cient Roman celebrations.

50 Besides the literature mentioned above n.1, see on this festival: V. d' Agosti-
no, Sugli antichi Saturnali, RSC 17 (1969) 180-7, with a useful survey of the evi-
dence in literary texts from Catullus to Macrobius; M. Grondova, La religionee la
superstizionenellaCena Trimalchionis(Bruxelles 1980) 89-94, an analysis of the Satur-
nalia model in the Cena.Cf. on related literary genres: Von Premerstein 1904, esp.
342 ff. On the ritual of reversal Kenner 1970, 88-92.
51 Macrob. Sat. 1, 10, 3. The characteristic suspension of the administration
of justice was similarly extended over several days: Macrob. Sat. 1, 10, 4 and
23.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 147

The festival opened with a public meal in front of the temple of

Saturn 52 , after which the cry 'io Saturnalia' was raised 53 , the starting
shot for the private merry-making. It was an occasion for all Ro-
mans, citizens and slaves, to enjoy a holiday: schools were closed 54 ,
physical exercises were suspended 55 as was the course of justice
since courts did not convene 56 : in other words, there was a
iustitium 57 . On this day it was forbidden to declare war 58 . Roman
citizens put off their togas 59 and covered their-normally bare-
heads with the pilleus 60 , the felt cap of the freedmen. There were ex-
uberant gorgings 61 and even more excessive drinking bouts. Sober
people were conspicuous exceptions 62 . Not even the strict and fru-
gal Cato would deny his slaves an extra ration of wine 63 . Anarchy

52 Liv. 22, 1, 19 (for the text see above n.28); Macrob. Sat. 1, 10, 18. Liv. 5,
13, 6, gives a number of Saturnalian features as characteristics of the first lectisterni-
um of 399 BC: private meals to which even enemies were invited; the suspension
of iurgiaand litia; the liberation of chained people. Since Dion. Hal. 12, 9, provides
the same information, the source must be Piso, who probably has mixed up various
elements known to him from various festivals and ceremonies: Latte 1960, 242,
n.2; Ogilvie ad Liv. loc. cit.
53 Liv. 22, 1, 19; Macrob. Sat. 1, 10, 18; Dion. Hal. 6, 1, 4; Petron. 58, 2;
Mart. 11, 2, 5; Dio Cass. 60, 19, 3.
54 Plin. Ep. 8, 7, 1; Mart. 5, 84; 12, 81. Freedom from work for both slaves and
school-children is a fixed combination in Hellenistic and Roman decrees concern-
ing festivals in general: L. Robert, BCH 108 (1984) 490 n.10. Cf. Dunand 1978,
201-18.
55 Lucian Cron. 13.
56 Macrob. Sat. 1, 10, 4 and 23. Cf. 1, 10, 1: poenasa nocenteexigerepiaculareest.
57 See on the concept ofiustitium: Versnel 1980, 6-05ff. Significantly, Varro in
Macrob. Sat. 1, 16, 16, says that the o,nly other occasions when official political ac-
tions were suspended were the days marked by mundus patet. We shall come back
to this relationship below p.175.
58 Macrob. Sat. 1, 10, 1.
59 Mart. 6, 24; 14, 1; Sen. Ep. 18 with the commentary ofV. d'Agostino, L.
Anneo Seneca.Paginedi vitae di culturaromana(Torino 19686 ) 12-4. That the putting
off of the toga and the concomitant adoption of the synthesisare indeed demonstra-
tive, in fact ritual, acts appears from reports that the wearing of the synthesisin every-
day life was strongly disapproved of (Suet. Nero 51) and even punished (Lucian
Nigrin. 14).
60 Mart. 14, 1; 11, 6, 4: pilleata Roma; Sen. Ep. 18. Cf. Grondova o.c. (above
n.50) 90 n.275, who compares the reaction after the death of Nero: Sueton. Nero
57, 1, tantumquegaudium publicepraebuit ut plebs pilleata Iota urbediscurreret.
61 Cato, De agr. 57; Gell. 2, 24, 3; SHA Alex. Sev. 37, 6; Mart. 14, 70, 1. Lex
Fannia Satumalibus in singulosdies centenosaeris insumi concessit.In Petron. Cena Trim.
69, 9, Encolpius says at the sight of a rich dish: vidi Romae Satumalibuseiusmodi cena-
rum effigiem. ·
62 Hor. Sat. 2, 3, 5; Mart. 14, 1, 9: madidi dies; Lucian. Cron. 13.
63 Cato, De agr. 57.
 148 CHAPTER THREE

was pushed so far as to allow gambling and dice-playing, which was

prohibited in everyday life 64 . The stakes were coins and nuts 65 . The
representation of the Saturnalia in the calendar of Philocalus 66
shows a man in a fur coat and with a torch, standing beside a table
on which dice are displayed. The legend runs: nunc tibi cum domino
ludere,verna, licet(now, slave, you have permission to play dice with
your master). A bunch of poultry symbolizes the festive meal.
The intellectual elite used to spend the holiday in learned improvi-
sations and table talk, as exemplified in Macrobius' Saturnalia.Satire
and derision were given free rein as lulian' s Symposiondemonstrates.
In less sophisticated circles the playful mood expressed itself in the
propounding and solving of riddles 67 •
The temporary experience of affluence was also reflected in the
exchange of presents. Frequently referred to by Martial, they often
bore satirical or enigmatic inscriptions 68 • The title of Martial' s 14th
book, Apophoreta,refers to the custom of taking presents home 69 .
Their contents could hide facetious surprises 70 • The principle of
mutuality confronted the less opulent party with serious financial
problems 7 1 . Therefore it was allowed to give a substitute present in-
stead, in the form of candles 72 or figurines made of wax or clay, the
sigillaria73 . There was even a special market 74 for these specifically

64 Suet. Aug. 71; Mart. 4, 14, 7; 5, 84; 11, 6,; 14, 1; Lucian Sat. 2. On prohibi-
tion of gambling see: M. Kurylowicz, Das Gliicksspiel im ri:imischen Recht, ZSSR
102 (1985) 184-219; Baltrusch 1988, 103 f.
65 Mart. 5, 84; 7, 91, 2; 13, 1, 7; 14, 1, 12.
66 H. Stern, Le calendrierde 351:. Etude sur son texte et sur ses illustrations(Paris
1953). On this calendar see now: M. R. Salzman, On Roman Time. The Codex-
Calendarof 351: and the Rhythms of UrbanLife in Late Antiquity (Berkeley 1990).
67 AP 286 Riese provides a collection of these Saturnalian riddles.
68 Suet. Aug. 75: titulis obscuriset ambiguis.
69 Suet. Vesp. 19, but they were sometimes dispatched, as very often in Martial.
See V. d'Agostino o.c. (above n.50) 183 f.
°
7 Catull. 14; Suet. Aug. 75. They could consist of bantering verses. Ovid Trist.
2, 491 f. talia (carmina)ludunturfumoso mensedecembri,quaedamnonulli composuisse fuit.
71 See Lucian Kronossolon,who is fully aware of the problem. The principle of
mutuality is also present in the strenarumcommercium(Sueton. Tib. 34, 2) of the 1st
of January. See: D. Baudy 1987, who provides an interesting discussion of the so-
cial meaning of this lopsided exchange of gifts.
72 Varro, L.L. 5, 64: cereisuperioribusmittuntur; Paul. ex Fest. 47, 27 (L); AP6,
249; Macrob. Sat. 1, 7, 32; 1, 11, 49. In Sat. 1, 7, 33, Macrobius even mentions
a law proposed by a tribune of the plebs non nisi cereiditioribusmissitarentur.Similar
substitutions of the strena:D. Baudy 1987, 2.
73 Macrob. Sat. 1, 11, 49; Sen. Ep. 12, 3.
74 Macrob. ibid..
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 149

Saturnalian objects and slaves and poor clients would receive an al-
lowance (the sigillaricium)75 from their masters or patrons to enable
them to procure presents-an ideal economic circle.
The most remarkable and characteristic trait of the Saturnalia
was the temporary suspension of the social distinctions between
master and servant. Saturnalibusto ta servislicentiapermittitur(during
the Saturnalia every kind of licence is permitted to the slaves), as
Macrobius Sat. 1, 7, 26, summarizes the prevailing liberty. One of
the extraordinary aspects of the communal meals was that masters
and slaves dined together 76 or that slaves even took precedence
over 77 or were served by their masters 78. Slaves and servants were
free to join their lords in gambling 79 and to tell them the truth or
criticise their conduct 80 . Of course, a few details may be the
products of later additions or transformations, but the Accius frag-
ment, for instance, unequivocally proves that freedom of the slaves
and equality with their lords belonged to the most ancient features
of the festival.
There is one other interesting but controversial piece of evidence:
Seneca, Ep. Luc. 5, 6 ( 4 7) 14, seems to say that during the Saturnalia
slaves held the reins of government in the household, performed offi-
cial functions in imitation of public offices and administered justice

75 Macrob. Sat. 1, 10, 24; 1, 11, 49; Suet. Claud. 5; SHA Hadrian. 17, 3;
Carac. 1, 8; Aurelian. 50, 3.
76 Macrob. Sat. 1, 11, 1: quod servicum dominis vescerentur, and this, as Iustin. 43,
1, 4, says: exaequatoomnium iure. Even at the imperial court: SHA Verus 7, 5.
77 Macrob. Sat 1, 24, 23, religiosaedomus prius famulos instructis tamquam ad usum
domini dapibus honorantet ita demum patribusfamilias mensaeapparatusnovatur.
78 This is already reported by Accius (Ann. fr. 3M. Bae; Fr. Poet. Lat. Morel p.
34) quoted above p.103, but it cannot be ascertained whether the waiting on by the
master actually refers to Roman custom. See for instance Bomer 1961 III, 174. Fur-
ther: Iustin. 43, 1, 4; Athen. 14, 639B: children of Roman citizens wait upon their
slaves. Auson. De fer. 15, festaque servorumcumfamulantur eri. Luc. Cron. 18; Cass.
Dio 60, 19: "at the Saturnalia slaves adopt the roles of their masters". These tes-
timonies in my view exclude the explanation advanced by D. Baudy 1986, 223
n.80, that this is not an instance ofrole reversal but of the hierarchic act of the distri-
bution of food by the master. Although this function is, of course, fundamental,
rites should be assessed in their context. In this case it is clearly the complex of sta-
tus reversal, as all other indications prove.
79 Cf. the text quoted above p.148 from the calendar of Philocalus ( = AL 395,
48).
80 In Hor. Sat. 2, 7, the slave Davus tells his master the truth. This whole satire
is based on the principle of the suspension and reversal of social distinctions: the
master becomes slave (of his passions) whereas the slave has a free mind-a clear
allusion to the libertasdecembris.
150 CHAPTER THREE

in the family, including their masters: institueruntdiemfestum, non quo

solocum servisdomini vescerentur, sedquo utique;honoresillis in domogerere,
ius dicerepermiseruntet domum pusillam rem publicam esse iudicaverunt.
However, there is room for disagreement on the constitution of the
text and its interpretation, so it may be advisable to approach it with
due reserve 81 .
After this rapid survey of the evidence we now tum to the major
questions regarding its meaning and its implications for the cult and
rite of Saturn.

2. SATURNIAN MYTH AND RITUAL:

THE CARNIVALESQUE SIGNS OF THE REVERSED ORDER

1. The eccentricgod
When we survey the evidence given above and compare Kronian
myth and ritual, the prevalence of the ritual aspects is striking. Of
course, in dealing with a Roman god this should not surprise us too
much. As for the mythical data, it is even less feasible to isolate them
from Greek models than it is in the case of presumed ritual deriva-
tion. This is particularly true for the notion of the Saturniaregna,the
celebrated theme of Augustan poetry which was for the first time
emphatically exploited by Vergi182 . The imagery of a Utopian reign

81 Many scholars paraphrase tile passage as follows: "Den Sclaven, die in die-
sen Tagen von ihren Herren bewjrtet wurden, wares erlaubt, Magistrate und
Richter nach zu iiffen" (Von Premerstein); "Nachricht bei Seneca, nach der man
im Hause nicht nur mit den Sklaven zusammen speiste, sondern ihnen auch die
Befehlsgewalt und die Rechtsprechung iibertrug: das Haus wurde in eine Art von
Miniatl!~staat verwandelt" (Weinstock); "von selbst folgte die Konsequenz, auch
andere Amter nachzuaffen, ( ..... ): Lucian. Sat. 2; besonders Seneca Ep. 47, 14"
(Nilsson); "jegliche Ehre wurde ihnen im Hause erwiesen, das Arnt, das sonst im
Haus nur der Patee familias und im Staate nur der hohe Beamte ausiiben durfte,
niimlich das der Rechtsprechung, konnte scherzhaft im privaten Kreis von ihnen
demonstriert werden" (Kenner). Apparently these authors do not read a stop be-
tween utiqueand honores.When I at first tended to accept this interpretation, my col-
leagues 0. Schrier and R. Nauta, warned me that it was based on a mistaken text
constitution. They put forward several arguments among which the most impor-
tant was that non quosolomust be opposed to sed quo utiqueand cannot be identical
to non solum quo. Since utiquemeans 'at any rate', 'certainly', the first part of the
sentence means: "a festive day, with the purpose that they would dine together,
not exclusivelyon that day but at any mte on that day." Cf. Nauta 1987, 87 n.57. Graf
reminds me of Varro, R.R. 1, 17, where slaves are ranged in a hierarchical struc-
ture. Cf. also Plin. Ep. 8, 16, 2, !ervisrespub/icaquaedamet quasi civitasdomusest.
82 Loci classici:Verg. Eel. 6,41; Georg.2, 173; 2,538; Aen. 7, 49; 7,203; 8,319.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 151

of bliss and peace that prevailed in a hoary past and which is now
bound to return, immediately recalls the idea of the golden race of
Kronos. However, this should not make us close our eyes to the es-
sential differences between Greek and Roman imagery. One dis-
tinction lies in the way this Saturnian image was represented 83 .
The Greeks expressed their 'wishing' images in terms of 'the golden
race' and of 'Kronian life', thus understanding the myth primarily
from a theological or anthropological point of view. The Romans,
on the other hand, viewed the Saturnia regnaprimarily as Saturnia sae-
cula, i.e. as a historical period: Saturn, though a god, was also a
(pseudo-)historical king. This is only one of numerous instances in
which Rome tended to express myth principally in historical
terms 84 . Another important distinction is closely bound up with the
first one. Whereas in the case of Kronos affluence was basically seen
as an automatic, spontaneous and effortless gift in a genuinely Uto-
pian fashion, in the Roman view Saturn's greatest contribution to
human well-being was his introduction of agrarian, above all cereal,
culture and, consequently, of civilized life. Later on we shall pursue
the development of this representation towards the overt Utopian
images of Augustan literature. In the meantime it will be useful to
keep in mind this typically Roman conception of the Saturnian con-
tribution when we shall undertake to explain the Roman origins of
the Saturnian complex in the next section.
As we have seen, the Roman myth of Saturn combines the con-

The return of the Saturnian realm: Eel. 4; Aen. l, 291 ff.; 6, 791 ff. Discussion of
the development of the idea: Gatz 1967, 207; A. Alfoldi, in a series of publications
under the title RedeuntSatumia regna,the last of which appeared in Chiron 9 (1979)
553-606, where on p.553 a survey of the earlier articles. See especially his Der neue
W eltherrscher der vierten Ekloge Vergils, Hermes 65 ( 1930) 369-84 = G. Binder
(ed.), SaeculumAugustum II (Darmstadt 1988) 197-215. Cf. the discussion below
pp.191-205.
83 This was observed by Gatz 1967, 204 ff.: "In Rom konnte der Mythos nur
nach politischer und, in antikem Sinn, historischer Aufladung tragfii.hig werden,
d.h. er musste 'saecula-risiert' werden." Cf. the discussion by H. C. Baldry, Who
invented the Golden Age?, CQ NS 2 (1952) 83-92.
84 "Alles das, was man iiber das Leben im Mythos der archaischen Kultur-
phasen sagen kann, mit der vollen Prasenz und Giiltigkeit des vorzeitlichen
Geschehens, gilt fur das romische Verhaltnis zur Geschichte, es ist ein Leben in der
Geschichte. Die archetypischen Situationen des Mythos, an denen der Grieche
sich, sein Verhalten, orientieren konnte, sind fur den Romer Situationen der eige-
nen Geschichte, die moresmaiorum iibernehmen die Rolle mythischer exempla":
B. Gladigow, Macht und Religion, in: Spielarteder Macht. HumanistischeBildung 1
(1977) 16-a very felicitous phrasing of a well-known fact.
152 CHAPTER THREE

trasting themes of the despised fugitive foreigner 85 and the idea of

the primeval good king, bringer of culture to Italy. In addition it
should be noted that just as in the case of Kronos, the Saturnian
reign was limited in time. Not only did Saturn suddenly arrive, he
also unexpectedly disappeared: subito non comparuisset(Macrob. Sat.
1, 7, 24). In this respect he closely resembles other founding heroes
of Rome such as Aeneas, Latinus, Romulus 86 , a tertium comparatio-
nis which has been attractively explained by Brelich 87 as one of the
standard characteristics of the universal culture bringer, who after
having prepared the conditions for human social life, retires and be-
comes a deus otiosusor continues his reign in a mythical abode. The
Roman myth expresses this by telling that Iupiter expelled Saturn
from the Capitolinus. Saturn was so solidly associated with the no-
tion of concealment that the name of his own country Latium could
be derived a latentedeo (the hidden god) 88 • Apparently it is not only
in a historical, but also in a mythical sense that Saturn was a
"divinite dechue". The cultic shadiness of Greek Kronos is paral-
lelled in Rome by the fact that Saturn had only one annual sacrifice,
which, moreover, did not display a single normal feature. Undoubt-
edly, however, Saturn had in many respects more 'reality' than his
Greek pendant: his mighty temple in Rome, the vital economic
function of his aerarium. Saturn, who had once introduced cereal
wealth, continued to represent its affluence and accordingly boasted
the lasting respect of the Roman people.
Just as in the case of Kronos, the disturbing ambiguities in the
god's cultic and mythical existence have provoked the usual escapist
mechanisms among modern scholars. On the one hand, for in-
stance, the negative and disquieting aspects were largely ignored
or denied, a denial which admittedly owes some justification to

85 According to Gatz 1967, 125, the motifs of flight and exile are not attested
before the Augustan period in Roman literature. This may be true but it should
be recalled that the story of Saturn's banishment by Juppiter already occurred in
Ennius' adaptation of Euhemeros' SacredHistory(apudLact. D.I. 1, 14, 1 = E. H.
Warmington, Remainsof OldLatin I, 418 ff.). Did every reader (want to) realize that
this Saturn actually was not Saturn but Kronos? It was particularly Ovid's Fasti 5,
191 ff.; 235 ff. that exercised such an influence that it was a matter of course for
Iuven. Sat. 13, 39, to speak of a Saturnusfugiens.See on this development: Johnston
1977.
86 This was observed by Preller, RomischeMythologieIII, 95 f.
87 Brelich 1976, 94 f.
88 Verg. Aen. 8, 322 f.; Ovid Fast. 1, 238; Herodian 1, 16; Min. Felix, Oct. 21, 6.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 153

the less unequivocal evidence. On the other hand, it was also con-
tended that the nice ancient Roman agrarian god derived his more
doubtful qualities from abroad: just as Kronos had been denatured
by the Hittite Kumarbi, so Etruscan Satre had infected the gentle
chthonic agrarian god with the cruel excesses of his Etruscan nature:
human sacrifice, gladiatorial blood and the negative connotations of
his lightning.
Instead of circumstantially contesting such suppositions, one per-
tinent question suffices: why Saturn? Roman religion simply bristles
with chthonic deities more (or at least equally) appropriate to having
negative qualities grafted upon them. For instance, Vediovis, Dis-
pater, or Angerona would have been excellent candidates. At all
events the alleged derivation of negative elements is most unlikely
if the god in question did not possess the proper predisposition. In
other words: it is methodically preferable to explore whether the am-
biguous nature of the god cannot be explained by his authentic na-
ture and function. In my opinion this can be done for Saturn as we
have done it for Kronos. However, there is one fortunate difference,
namely that in this case we shall be able to trace the god's most
prominent original functions in the agricultural year, a function
which, as I hope to show, can explain both his own intrinsic ambiva-
lence and the specific ambivalent nature of his festival, to which we
shall now turn.

2. The cult
On the 17th of December things happened which did not occur in
this combination in any other Roman festival. Saturnus really is
different. A chained god was freed from his bonds, a covered god
was worshipped capiteaperto.The chains may be authentically Ro-
man, the veiled head is almost certainly a Greek heritage. The fol-
lowing observations are intended to contribute to the solution of the
problems implied in these two data. We have already made some
comments on the meaning of the mythical fettering of Kronos. Let
us now add a few words on the meaning of ritual chains of divine
statues in general. Fettered statues are a common phenomenon,
both in and outside the Mediterranean world 89 . Two explanations

89 See the literature above p.105 n.45 and p.114 n.85. And add: Graf 1985b,
81 ff. On the specific ritual with the lugos:D. Baudy 1989, with further literature.
154 CHAPTER THREE

are usually advanced. One is that by binding the god people try
to keep their divine protector and benefactor for themselves. The
god is thus prevented from leaving his sanctuary and city 90 . The
other supposed motive is exactly the reverse: viz. to prevent a dan-
gerous god or demon from exercising his harmful influences 91 .
Although these explanations undoubtedly hold good for some in-
stances, they obviously do not cover the total range of the phenome-
na. As we have seen, Meuli distinguished a third category next to
benevolent and malevolent gods, namely the gods of an ambivalent
type 92. They are freed in-and as the symbolization of-periods of
exception. Kronos' chains-or sleep-were the symbolic expression
of his being 'out of action'. His liberation temporarily revived his
activity and restored his reign. This means that his chains are more
or less a function of his liberation: in order to be freed he must first
have been in chains. Or, to quote a variant expression from an
agricultural context: nemo condit nisi ut promat (nobody stores [the
products of the farm] except to bring them forth later, Varro, R.R.
1, 62). Another example is the way modern scholarship views ( some
of) the gods that were formerly called 'dying and rising gods'. As we
have seen, according to recent theories Adonis was not 'reborn'. At
least, this is no longer regarded as the essential element of the ritual.
The fact that he had to return to some form of existence was merely
necessary for creating a new opportunity to die again 93 . In other
words: the abnormal rite of exception-in this case the liberation of
Saturn-can only exist thanks to the existence of the norm to which
the rite is an exception.
Once we have learned to interpret Saturnus' liberation as a signal
of the period of exception-an interpretation which will receive deci-
sive support from our assessment of the nature of the Saturnalia in
the next section-, a solution presents itself for a problem which has

90 So already in antiquity: Polemon fr. 90 FHG 3, 146; Ar. fr. 194; Plato, Men.
970; Diod. 17, 41, 8; Curt. Ruf. 4, 13, 22; Plut. Alex. 24, 6f. 678C. Cf. Graf 1985b,
81.
91 Also noted in antiquity: Pausan. 9, 38, 5, on the malicious hero Actaion. Cf.
L. Robert, Documentsd'Asie Mineuremiridionale(Paris 1966) 91-9, on oracles with in-
structions to bind the obnoxious god Ares. See now: Chr. A. Faraone, Talismans
and TrojanHorses:GuardianStatuesin Ancient GreekMyth and Ritual (New York-Oxford
1992) 74-93.
92 Cf. also Graf 1985b, 81 ff. Piccaluga 1977, 48 f. argues that the liberation of
Saturn temporarily re-establishes the mythical reign of Saturn in historical reality.
93 See: C. Grottanelli, Da Myrrha alla Mirra: Adonis e ii profumo dei re siriani
(p. 36), and U. Bianchi, Adonis: Attualita di una interpretazione religionsgeschicht-
lich (p.73-81), both in: Adonis 1984, and above p.44 for the recent discussion.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 155

so far resisted interpretation: the question of the capite aperto

sacrifice. Above we noticed the problem: why did Romans follow a
so-called Greek rite in a sacrifice to a non-Greek god? Curiously
enough, the problem was already seen in antiquity, since it was only
in this case (contrary to the case of the same rites in the cults of Ho-
nos and Hercules) that ancient authors searched for an explanation.
As we saw, the most adventurous modern suggestion was that, since
Saturn was not Greek, the rite, though capiteaperto,did not refer to
ritus Graecus.Even Brelich, the only one to my knowledge who has
neatly formulated the crux, did not risk going further than the
''meagre but perhaps not totally void'' suggestion, as he calls it, that
perhaps in the cult of Saturn the order of cultic action itself was
reversed, just as other elements were 94 . I believe that with this
casual and tentative suggestion he has hit the mark and that it can
be considerably substantiated by the total context of the Saturnalia
festival as well as by a piece of evidence that has been neglected so
far.
Among the many ways of visualising a reversal, none is so obvi-
ous, unequivocal and popular as the reversal in attire. The most
easy and effective way to turn reality upside down is to change your
clothes for the garment of the opposite sex or of social antipodes, or
for distinguishing marks of animals or gods. Circumstantial infor-
mation has been presented on these forms of disguise and their func-
tion in the first chapter of this book 95 . By thus inverting normality
the new situation is marked as exceptional and abnormal. It is
noteworthy that among the signs that mark Greek sacrifices as
exceptional or extraordinary-such as the absence of wine or the
presence of milk-one is that the sacrificers do not wear the wreaths
that are normally one of the most characteristic signs of sacrificial
ceremonies 96 . This provides a perfect parallel for the reversal of the

94 Brelich 1976, 86 f.: "ci dobbiamo accontentare della magra, ma forse non
de! tuto vuota constatazione, che nel culto di Saturn us si rovescia anche I' ordine
de! rito sacrificiale ... ". He is followed by Briquel 1981, 148: "un processus d'in-
version".
95 On clothes as an important index of social position in antiquity and the im-
plications of reversal, recently: Bremmer 1987b, 78 f., who rightly points out that
we nowhere read of masters assuming their slaves' clothes on the Saturnalia. So
here the aspect of 'harmony', as discussed in the preceding chapter, prevails in the
commonwearing of the pilleus. In other Saturnalian customs, however, we notice
aspects of 'conflict'. As usual, both opposites go together in these feasts of fools.
96 On signals of abnormality in the sacrificial atmosphere: Graf 1980; on the
absence of wreaths: Graf 1985b, 27 f.
156 CHAPTER THREE

Saturnian sacrifice. During the festival everything is out of order,

above all clothing regulations. Moreover, Saturn himself is the mar-
ker of abnormality par excellence.His veiled head-irrespective
whether this is an originally Roman element or a Greek heritage-
stamps him as 'different' and exceptional. Another way of express-
ing a reversal of ordinary life is by imitating odd customs of foreign
nations. Romans could and did give expression to abnormality by
allusions to 'the Greek way of life'. In the (Roman) fabula togatait
was not allowed to stage slaves that outwitted their masters, whereas
this was accepted in the fabula palliata97 , the pallium conveniently
evoking a Greek atmosphere. In Greece, as any decent Roman
knew, odd things happened that were quite incompatible with Ro-
man customs. Graeculijust had a habit of mixing up the normal or-
der. Viewed in this light, it is very well possible and in my view be-
comes very likely that sacrificing ritu Graeco was just another
reference to the eccentric nature of the total ritual. This supposition
is supported by a tiny piece of evidence on Saturn himself which has
remained unnoticed so far. Apart from the covering of his head there
is another trait that sets him apart. The ivory 98 statue in his temple
was clothed with a purple-coloured cloak, as Tertullian, Testim.
anim. 2, 137, 12, testifies. His exact words are: pallio Saturni coccinato.
It is true that in the course of time pallium has become the term for
any kind of garment 99 . In this case, however, a positively un-
Roman pallium is meant-the extrinsecushabitus sharply censured by
the same Tertullian, De pallio 4, 9: Galaticiruborissuperiectio(a wrap
of Galatian red). Now, the pallium never quite lost the negative con-
notations of its Greek or, more generally, foreign flavour. It charac-
terized (Greek) philosophers, especially the Cynics and other dubi-
ous specimens, and prostitutes; in short, those marginals who
refused to subject themselves to the norms and codes of civilized
society 100 . A fortiori a purple pallium was the very opposite of what
could be regarded as normal Roman custom.

97 Donat. in Ter. Eun. 57: concessumest in palliata poetis comicisservosdominis

quodidemin togatanonJerelicet. Cf. Plaut. Menaechm.Pro!. 7-9: atque
sapientioresfingere,
hoepoetaefaciunt in comoediis:omnisresgestasesseAthenisautumnant,quoillud vobisgraecum
videaturmagis. On this alienating effect and the Saturnalian elements in Roman
comedy: Segal 1970.
98 If that is what Plin. NH 15, 32, means.
99 G. Leroux in: Diet. Ant. IV, 285-93.
too Whereas the stolafor instance developed into a genuine status-marker. In the
third century AD a matronastolataor femina stolataindicated a woman belonging to
the provincial, mostly equestrian, aristocracy: B. Holtheide, ZPE 38 (1980) 127-34.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 157

So here we have another feature which, together with the ele-

ments collected above, stamps Saturn as the god of the reversed
world. His function-at least in historical times-was to embody
references to an alternative world which, in periods of exception, in-
terrupted the steady course of normal life. The god of this period was
worshipped with reversed ('Greek') rituals. The god was different
and so was the behaviour of his followers during these liminal
periods 101 . We shall now reconsider their actions from the perspec-
tive of 'Saturnalian' ideology.

3. Licence
The god was not the only one to wear uncommon clothes or to break
his chains. The Saturnalian revellers had little to learn from him, as
we saw. The evidence collected above of course immediately calls to
mind comparable modern festivals like Carnival, Christmas or San-
ta Claus. The carnivalesque nature manifests itself in egalitarian
aspects such as the communal consumption of large quantities of
food and drink, the suspension of social distinctions and in general
an atmosphere of elation. On the other hand, there are also elements
of 'conflictive' demonstrations: a variety of role-reversals in which
the master serves the slave and may be criticized and rebuked. The
similarities with Christmas or New Year festivals are evident in the
exchange of presents and the concomitant atmosphere of mockery,
satire and surprise. Similarly, the candles form a trait d'union. The
most conspicuous signs of the Saturnalian anomiewere embodied in
the reversal of normal clothing customs. A Roman who puts off his

101 The above interpretation of various aspects of myth and ritual as having
reference to the 'exceptional' nature of Saturn seems to be strongly supported by
remarkable parallels in the myth and ritual of Greek Ares, especially a regulation
at Tegea, as they are convincingly explained by Graf 1984, esp. 252. First of all,
legend makes him come from Thrace, which historically is not true. The legend,
rather, points out his essential foreignness, as do the derivations ofDionysos from
Lydia or Thrace. Homer tells us that the giants Otos and Ephialtes locked him up
in a barrel, from where Hermes freed him again in the thirteenth month. More than
one scholar recognized a period oflicence behind this Homeric myth. M. Riemsch-
neider gives a comparative study: AAntHung 8 (1960) 4-34; cf. Burkert 1985, 169.
At Tegea there existed a stele representing Ares Gunaikothoinas, 'the feaster of wom-
en' or 'the one whom the women feast'. Again Graf convincingly interprets this
epiclesis (together with the aetiological explanations) as a signal of licence: the
women feast at the agora(men's place par excellence), honouring the very male god
whom they are usually to shun. All this closely resembles the elements ofSaturnian
myth and ritual as analysed and explained above.
158 CHAPTER THREE

togaand adopts a synthesisdoes not become a Greek, but he certainly

renounces the identity of the Roman citizen. If the total population
of Rome wears the pilleus, a complicated situation emerges: by be-
coming 'freedmen' the slaves' status is enhanced, while the citizens'
status is devalued. Increase and decrease lead to equality in a com-
mon freedom: the libertasdecembris.
The variegated symbolism ofliberation was by no means restrict-
ed to the Saturnalia. Its application in different contexts may help
to clarify the implications of their Saturnalian meaning. The pilleus
was frequently applied as the symbol of freedom in political
propaganda 102 . For instance, the coins issued by Brutus bore a pic-
ture of this cap of freedom, and as we saw above "the death of Nero
produced such joy that the plebs ran about through the whole city,
their heads covered with the pilleus''.
Nor was role-reversal or status-reversal restricted to the Saturna-
lia. The Compitalia, too, were marked as a holiday for slaves. The
Matronalia of the 1st of March were a New Year festival during
which the matrons '' served dinner for their slaves as did the masters
at the Saturnalia" 103 . It was perhaps on that same New Year day
that another role-reversal took place: the so-called Saliae virgines
performed a sacrifice in the Regia together with the pontifices and
wore the paludamentum and the apex of the Salii 104 .

102 On the pilkus see: R. Kreis-von Schaewen, RE 20, 1329; Meuli 1975 I, 268
ff.; D. Briquel, Tarente, Locres, les Scythes, Thera, Rome: precedents antiques
au theme de l'amant de Lady Chatterley?, MEFRA 86 (1974) 673-705, esp. 678-82,
discusses various forms of impositiopillei as a symbol of liberation.
I0 3 Macrob. Sat. 1, 12, 7, serviscenasadponebantmatronae,ut domini Saturnalibus.
Particularly interesting is the report by Asconius p. 7 (Clark) that during the Com-
pitalia the magistrivicorum,who were freedmen, were allowed to wear the togapraetex-
ta: sokbantautemmagistricollegiorumludosfacert, sicutmagistrivicorumfaciebantcompitali-
ciospraetextati.
104 Fest. 439 (L) Salias VirginesCinciusait esseconducticias,quaead Saliosadhibeban-
tur, cum apicibuspaludatas;quasAelius Stilo scribsitsacrificiumfacerein regiacum pontiji-
cibuspaludatascum apicibusin modumSaliorum. The traditional explanation proposed
by L. Deubner, Zur romischen Religionsgeschichte, RM 36-7 (1921-2) 14 ff., that
the virginesplayed the role of the absent warriors for reasons of propitiation, is not
very satisfactory. When I suggested that this may have been connected with the
reversal in initiation ritual (in: VisibleReligion 4/5 (1985/6] 134-72-revised as eh.
V in this book-158 n.112), I was not aware that Torelli 1984, 76 ff. and 106 ff.
had made the same suggestion: "rito di travestimento 'carnevale' parallelo (anche
questo il 1 Marzo?) ai Matronalia.'' See for a remarkable Greek parallel in the ambi-
ance of Greek Ares and other instances of women adopting 'warrior roles': Graf
1984. For other Roman festivals with elements of role-reversal-the Nonae Capra-
tinaeand the festival of Bona Dea-see: Bremmer 1987b, 76-88, and below chapter
IV.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 159

In the previous chapter we discussed the social and socio-

psychological functions of these festivals ofreversal: the channelling
of agressive impulses fostered by continuous repression, on the one
hand, and confirmation of the status quo by the exposure of the im-
possible reversed world, on the other. It is satisfying to note that this
appears to be more than a mere invention of modern anthropo-
logists 105: Latin authors explicitly discerned these functions. Colu-
mella R.R. 1, 8, 15-19, makes the general statement that a humane
treatment will yield willing slaves: "When I realised that such
friendliness on the master's part relieved the burden of their con-
tinual labour, I often joked with them and allowed them to joke
more freely". Solinus 1, 35, and Macrobius, Sat. 1, 12, 7, assert that
slaves were given cenaeon March 1 and at the Saturnalia by their
owners in order to foster obsequiumfor the immediate future. Dion.
Hal. 4, 14, 4 (cf. Cic. De leg. 2, 19, 29) says that at the Compitalia
the slaves are freed of their chains: ''in order that the slaves, being
softened by this instance of humanity, which has something great
and solemn about it, may make themselves more agreeable to their
masters, and be less sensible of the severity of their condition.''
Another essentially 'Saturnalian' relaxation was constituted
by Roman comedy. The fabula palliata provides an image of the

105 K. R. Bradley, Holidays for Slaves, SO 54 (1979) 111-8 = idem, Slaves and
Masters in the Roman Empire. A Study in Social Control(Bruxelles 1984) 40-44. To the
literature cited above p.116 n.88 add: K. H. Stampp, The PeculiarInstitution (New
York 1956) 170; 168; 365: letting out pent-up discontent; R. W. Fogel and S. L.
Engerman, Time upon the Cross(Boston 1974) I, 148; 240 ff.: "contribution to the
paternalistic nature of Southern slave society and engendering a 'sense of commu-
nity' both among Negro slaves themselves and with their white masters." The
Saturnalia display another basic socializing rite in the gift-giving, which inculcates
both hierarchy and social 'belonging': G. J. Baudy 1983, esp. 142: the beneficiary
remains in the debt of, that is dependent on, the benefactor. Cf. also B. Gladigow,
Die Teilung des Opfers. Zur Interpretation von Opfern in vor- und friihgeschicht-
lichen Epochen, in: K. Hauck (ed.), Fruhmittelalterliche Studien (Berlin 1984) 19-43,
esp. 22 f.; D. Baudy 1987, 7 ff. and 25: "So wiejedes Festmahl, auch das am Neu-
jahrstag, zwar soziale Bindungen, zugleich mit ihnen aber auch eine Hierarchie der
Teilnehmer schafft, ist das strenarumcommerciumdurchaus ein Ritual zur Bewii.1-
tigung sozialer Differenzen und Antagonismen, hebt sie aber nicht auf'. Again this
is a general principle: the birthday festivities of the aristocracy in 18th century Eng-
land "promoted social harmony while reinforcing influence within a deeply hierar-
chical society'': J. H. D' Arms, Control, Companionship and Clientela: Some So-
cial Functions of the Roman Communal Meal, EMC 28 (1984) 327-48, esp. 343,
who applies this to the public feasts given by emperors where the emperor's accessi-
bility as a God among human beings was staged. Cf. also J. Scheid, La spartizione
a Roma, StudStor 4 (1984) 945-56.
160 CHAPTER THREE

reversed world, where respectable Roman senators are worsted and

become puppets in the hands of their cunning slaves. Falli per servom
senem(A slave cheating his aged master) is the shortest summary of
Roman comedy. Here we have indeed a typical topsy-turvy world,
which sometimes presents itself in drastically realistic performances.
In Plautus, Asinaria 702, we see the young master on hands and
knees serving as a mount for his slave, who exultantly shouts: sic isti
solentsuperbisubdomari:"see, how the haughty are subdued." The
servuscallidus (the cunning slave) exults over his master and defies the
social order, exactly as it happened during the Saturnalia. This
resemblance has been often indicated, most emphatically by E.
Segal 106 and so have the strong similarities with medieval carnival

106 Segal 1970, who regrets having to admit that there are no ritual connections
between comedy and Saturnalia. However, it could be relevant that the name of
one of the first-known Oscan farces is Satoumos, written by Blaesus of Capreae in
the third century BC: M. Gigante, Rintone e il teatroin Magna Graecia(Naples 1971)
82, though we should not make too much of this. Of course, the most celebrated
name in this connection is Bakhtin, whose views of the carnivalesque aspects of an-
cient comedy have been analyzed and partially criticized by Rosier 1986. Cf. also
E. Lefevre, Saturnalien und Palliata, Poetica20 (1988) 32-46, and above p.122. For
further critical views on Bakhtin see: Auffarth 1991, 27 n.9. Comedy, like satire,
serves one of the functions ofliterature in general, viz. the "displacement of social
problems into an imaginary realm" (H. White, Literature and Social Action:
Reflections on the Reflective Theory of Literary Art, New LiteraryHistory 11 [ 1980]
166). Even more than other literature, comedy tends "to reaffirm the validity of
the strategies and conventions that they, the readers, have for making meaning of
the world" Q. A. Radway, Phenomenology, Linguistics and Popular Literature,
Journal of PopularCulture12 [ 1978] 96). But comedy, being a Saturnalian genre, uti-
lizes specific tools: the inversion ofreality. It also, in the end, takes the public back
to 'normal' reality, for instance by the stereotyped marriage-scenes: "Marriage as
a resolution pleases audiences because it displays the protagonists reintegrated into
their society; it is a social judgment reaffirming the worth of human society, both
its present and its anticipated future" Q. Perkins, Arethusa 18 [1985] 213, on the
ancient novel). However true this is, I, for one, would not over-emphasize this final
reconciliation at the cost of the basic topsy-turvy nature that characterizes the major
part of the plays, as M. Fuhrmann risks to do: Lizenzen und Tabus des Lachens.
Zur sozialen Grammatik der hellenistischen-romischen Komodie, Poetik und Her-
meneutik7 (1976) 65-102. Nor do other 'escapes' seem very convincing: for instance
the view that masters sometimes got what they deserved CT.Dingel, Herren und
Sklaven bei Plautus, Gymnasium88 [1981] 4-89-504). Or the common explanation
that the Greek nature of comedy and its characters maintained sufficient distance
to render the palliata acceptable to the Roman public. This idea was coined by F.
Leo, GeschichtederriimischenLiteraturI (Berlin 1913) and has been adopted by many
since. See for instance: P. P. Spranger, Historische Untersuchungen zu den
Sklavenfiguren des Plautus und Terenz, Abh.Mainz (1960) 110-3. In my view the
essential nature of Roman comedy is determined by a mixture of alien and familiar
traits ending up in a 'never-never-land' (the term is used by W. G. Arnott,
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 161

and the feast of fools 107 • Finally, a peculiar Saturnalian genre is

represented by the so-called 'Kneipgesetze': mock laws with instruc-
tions concerning the stomaching of impossible amounts of food or
drink. One of these legesconvivales,a lex Tappula, was mentioned by
Festus 108 and a bronze tablet with its very mutilated text turned up
a hundred years ago. Published by Mommsen, its interpretation
was considerably improved by Von Premerstein 109 , who convinc-
ingly argued for a date in the second century BC. Although the con-
tent of the law is lost, the praescriptio,which parodies official legisla-
tion, has been preserved. The names of the rogatoresare mentioned:
Multivorus, Properocibus, Mero, which obviously refer to gluttony
and drinking. The name Tappa Tapponis f. itself, though an exis-
tent name, is generally connected either with the notion of 'clown'
(von Premerstein) or with 'gluttony' (Mommsen). Recently, Kon-
rad suggested an etymological relationship with German 'Depp'
(fool, idiot), which still has parallels in modern North Italian.
However this may be, these rogatoresallegedly form the college of the
cissiberes,minor police officials who supervised the private conviviaor
perhaps rather the epula publica110, which became increasingly fre-

Menander,Plautus, Terence[London 1975] 46). Like Utopia, comedy is a mundusalter

et idem as Mercurius Britannicus ( = Joseph Hall) called his book on imaginary ex-
peditions to the Antipodes (ed. W. Knight, Frankfurt a. M. circa 1605). For the
aspects of 'metatheatre' in Plautus see: N. W. Slater, Plautus in Performance.The
Theatreof the Mind (Princeton 1985).
l07 Most emphatically by P. Toschi, Origini del teatroItaliano (Turin 1955). P.
Burke, PopularCulturein Early ModernEurope(London 1978), describes the medieval
carnival as a gigantic theatrical performance all over the town with a great variety
of scenes in which the weak gain the victory over the strong, the young chastise the
old, the servants outwit the masters. Moreover, he discerns three central themes:
"food, sex, violence". This is Roman comedy .... and Saturnalia. This does not
necessarily imply that carnival also originatedin the Roman Saturnalia (or the comic
theatre): R. Tamassia, Saturno e ii carnevale, AFL Siena 5 (1984) 363-76 (non vidi);
G. Brugnoli, II carnevale e ii Saturnalia, in: P. Clemente (ed.), I jrutti del Ramo
d'Oro. James G. Frazer e le ereditadell'antropologia= La RicercaFolklorica10 (1984)
49-54, an article which was communicated to me through the kind offices of
C. Grottanelli; Auffarth 1991, 24 f. However, it is likely that elements of Roman
ritual landed in the carnival as for instance the LexTappula, with its comic stress on
the number eleven, illustrates.
l08 Festus 496 (L), Tappulam legernconvivalernfictonomineconscripsitiocosocarmine
ValeriusValentinus,cuius meminit Lucilius hoe modo(1370 Marx): "Tappulam ridentle-
gern, conteruntOpimi". (canter,conterere,committere,confercodd. CongerraeScaliger).
109 Th. Mommsen, Bull. dell' 1st. di Corresp.archeol.(1882) 186-9; A. von Pre-
merstein, Lex Tappula, Hermes 39 (1904) 327-47. ILS 8761. A recent discussion:
Chr. F. Konrad, Quaestiones Tappulae, ZPE 48 (1982) 219-34.
110 This suggestion was made by G. Wissowa, Hermes 49 (1914) 628 f.
 162 CHAPTER THREE

quent in late republican times. One of the most interesting features

is its dating: a.d. XI K Und[ecembr(es)j:'the eleventh day before the
Kalends of the [non-existent] eleventh month', which is clearly a
joke and strongly reminiscent of the number eleven as the fool's
number in modern carnival tradition. What is more, whatever the
precise calculation 111 , it will always fall in the Saturnalian period.
Nor does this exhaust the allusions to the Saturnalia: the first vote
lies with the tribus Satureia. This can be understood as a word play
on both satur and Saturnalia, but at the same time as a political pun
on the tribunus plebis Saturninus who had issued a series of coins
showing the head of Saturn in the decade before 100 BC and who
was continuously involved in tribunician legislation concerning free
corn supply 112 . So Konrad and others venture the suggestion that
this 'Saturnalian' mock law contains a political joke at the expense
of the demagogue of the year 100 BC . 113
The latter suggestion, if correct, is highly illuminating of the am-
bivalent atmosphere surrounding these types of Saturnalian expres-
sion. Theatrical status-reversal often functions as the conductor of
social or political tensions 114 . And just as frequently happened dur-
ing Carnival in early modern history 115 , people might be suddenly
tempted to change illusion into reality. After all, the imagery is

111 See Konrad o.c. (above n.109) for various calculations.

112 This might be the background of the enigmatic pane repeti[toin the text, as
Konrad suggests.
113 This would receive strong support if Scaliger's conjecture in the Festus text
(above n.108) should be correct: Tappulam legemridentcongerraeOpimi. Opimius was
consul in 121 BC and a fierce opponent of the popular measures: he was responsa-
ble for the slaying of C. Gracchus in that year.
114 Comedy provided an ideal platform for criticizing actual political issues. At
Asculum, at the outbreak of the Social War in 91 BC, part of the audience objected
to a komoidoswho was not playing his part properly-apparently by giving inap-
propriate emphasis to lines with an implicit political meaning, and they lynched
him: Diod. 37, 12; cf. Appian. BC 1, 38; Obsequ. 54; Florus 2, 6, 9. Similar refer-
ences to political actuality in Rome: Cic. pro Sest. 106, and of course the famous
instance of the Metelli censured by Naevius. See: E. Frezouls, La construction du
theatrumlapideumet son contexte politique, in: Theatreet spectaclesdansl'antiquiti. Actes
du Colloquede Strasbourg(Strasbourg 1983) 193; E. Rawson, Theatrical Life in
Republican Rome and Italy, PBSR 53 (1985) 97-113, esp. 98 f.; N. Zorzetti, La
protestae il teatrolatinoarcaico(Forme, materiali e ideologie <leimondo antico 1980).
More generally on spectacles and public reactions in Rome: T. Bollinger, Theatralis
Licentia. Die Publikumsdemonstrationen an den ojfentlichenSpielen im Rom derfrii.heren
Kaiserzeit und ihre Bedeulungim politischenLeben (Winterthur 1969); E. Tengstrom,
Theater und Politik im kaiserzeitlichen Rom, Eranos 75 (1977) 43-56.
115 See the literature mentioned above p.128 n.128.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 163

closely related, if not identical, to that which is played out during

revolutions. We have already referred to what happened in Sicily in
135 BC when the slaves revolted against their Roman masters and
their leader Eunous adopted the title of king and had his former
masters wait on him. Similarly, in the fourth century AD the
Circumcellions, a marginal and allegedly revolutionary group of
deprived labourers with millenarian tendencies had their carts
pulled by their former lords 116 . The Romans were clearly aware of
this dangerous potential of Saturnalian euphoria. Cic. Cat. 3, 10,
reports that during the Catilinarian revolt the rebels under Cethegus
wanted to start their coup against the state on the day of the Saturna-
lia, and Diodorus (FHG II, p. XXVI) explains that they planned to
send murderers to the houses of the senators on that very day be-
cause then the houses were open to welcome the clients with their
presents. When the emperor Claudius sent his influential freedman
Narcissus to mutinous troops and the latter took the word in an at-
tempt to redress order, the soldiers shouted "lo Saturnalia", insul-
tingly alluding to the real role-reversal of the ex-slave 117 .
Accordingly, as in all festivals of legitimate rebellion, the anomie
of the Saturnalia was subject to restrictions on its duration: non sem-
per Saturnaliaerunt( the Saturnalia will not last for ever) is a proverbial
expression 118 , although the very rich sometimes gave the impres-
sion that they semper Saturnalia agunt (always celebrate the Saturna-
lia)119. Whoever wishes to protract its duration-i. e. project illu-
sion on real life-is either a real fool or a real rebel. The combination
of these two qualities is the material of which millenarism is made.
Later on we shall observe that both foolish satire and millenarian vi-
sion freely exploit Saturnalian imagery when giving shape to con-
ceptions of the undesirable reign of a fool or the impossible reign of
a messiah.
For the moment this picture of the Saturnalian complex and its
social functions may suffice as a starting point for an investigation
into its origins, which will provide further elucidation of the nature
and various aspects of the god and his festival.

116 For the evidence see above p.127 n.126.

117 Cass. Dio 60, 19, 3.
118 This appears from Sen. Apocol. 12, 2. It can be compared with the Greek
ritual saying: thurazeKeres, ouket' Anthestheria.
119 Petron. Sat. 44, 3.
164 CHAPTER THREE

3. LOOKING BACK: ORIGINS

The origins of the god Saturn lie hidden in the shades of prehistory,
a twilight which tends to foster a profusion of theories. When I ven-
ture into this field it is not in the hope of discovering the original na-
ture of the god but in the conviction that we can at least detect one
of his essential functions, and particularly the one that formed the
trait d'union with and lies at the origins of the Saturnalia.
A majority of scholars agree that Saturn must at some time have
been a chthonic deity, somehow connected with agriculture, and
more specifically with the corn harvest. According to some of them
his chthonic nature involved more gloomy aspects as well: connec-
tions with death and the underworld. This is sometimes supposed to
be an Etruscan contribution. As to the agricultural qualities there is
scarcely room for doubt for they are positively borne out by 1)
Saturn's calendrical position between the festivals of Consualia and
Opalia in December, the 'Sabine' month of affluence, and 2) his oc-
currence in the series of Sabine gods that were allegedly introduced
by Titus Tatius, and who for the greater part belong to the 'third
function' 120 (The characteristic sickle has less-if any-probative
value, since it is a primarily mythical attribute, most probably bor-
rowed from Kronos). However, the theory that he was also or more
specifically the god of sowing, which has been often defended even
by some of those who rejected the etymological connections with
sero/satus, should be abandoned 121 . For this would necessarily imply
that his festival celebrated the termination of the sowing season (the
beginning being quite out of the question), which is incompatible
with a number of calendrical and agrarian data: the sowing season
did not actually come to an end in this period and, moreover, there

120 It was Dumezil who associated the legendary Sabine contribution to the cul-
ture of Rome (including the achievements of king Titus Tatius) with the third func-
tion of agrarian affiuence. See his summary in 1966, index s.v. Tatius. He was fol-
lowed by Le Glay 1966, 454: "Decembre apparait done comme un mois Sabin".
Cf. Guittard 1976, and very circumstantially Pouthier 1981, 31-135, and passim.
Briquel 1981 made the attempt to include Saturn in the ideology of the first function
because of his similarities with luppiter. Although this article provides some perti-
nent insights (see below), it offers yet another demonstration that a faithful
Dumezilian can prove anything he wishes with the triadic system, and I shall not
follow him in this respect.
121 Forcefully attacked by Bomer 1961 III, 424 f., who, however, is wrong in
denying the agrarian character of the god. There is a better argumentation in Le
Glay 1966, 451 ff., followed by Guittard 1976, 52.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 165

were special festivals for this particular purpose: theferiae Sementivae,

which asferiae conceptivae were held inJanuary 122 . And even if it is
a mythical attribute, the sickle would fit the gathering of the harvest
rather than the sowing.
Unfortunately, those scholars who-correctly, in my opinion-
reject the association with sowing, generally do not advance beyond
an extremely vague characterization of Saturn, as for instance: '' un
<lieu de la fertilite et de la fecondite" 123 . When we are dealing with
a Roman god, belonging to a pantheon marked by 'specialization',
this is particularly unsatisfactory, to say the least. The success of any
attempt to reach a more precise characterization of (one of) the origi-
nal functions of the god depends on the satisfaction of two condi-
tions. One is the obligation to offer a convincing and natural expla-
nation of the calendrical position of the Saturnalia; the other is the
necessity to elucidate the nature of the cultic and ritual elements of
this festival in the light of its original function. I shall try to meet
these two conditions in this order.

1. The implications of the calendrical position

The Saturnalia occupy a position exactly between the Consualia of

the 15th and the Opalia of the 19th of December. We find a similar
triad in August: Consualia on the 21st, Opiconsivia on the 25th and
the Volcanalia in between, on the 23rd. The reason for the close con-
nection between the festivals ofConsus and Ops is one of the few un-
disputed issues of Roman religion. It has been treated many times,
most recently and circumstantially by Pouthier 124 . At the end of

122 However, there is a possibility that theseferiae Sementivaeare related to the

germination rather than the sowing of the corn: J. Delatte, Quelques fetes mobiles
du calendrier romain, AC 5 (1936) 381-91; J. Bayet, Les 'Feriae Sementivae' et les
indigitations clans le culte de Ceres et de Tellus, RHR 137 (1950) 172-206 ( = idem,
Croyanceset rites dans la Rome antique (Paris 1971) 177-205).
123 Le Glay 1966, 466, who adds as the only more certain statement that the
god has nothing to do with sowing.
12 4 It had previously been analysed by P.H. N. G. Stehouwer, Etude sur Ops et
Consus(Diss. Utrecht 1956); Pouthier 1981, 102-135. This is perhaps the right place
to remark once and for all that D. Sabbatucci, La religionedi Roma antica. Dal calen-
dariofestivoall'ordinecosmico(Milan 1988) is impenetrable to me, and as far as, occa-
sionally, I do see the light, inacceptable. For instance, in his view the cult ofConsus
actually was the 'culto tombale di Romulo' (274 ff.), and Consus himself was
primarily 'ii signore del consiglio'. ''Gageons que ce livre foisonnant d'idees neu-
ves sera tres discute" is the most elegant summary of the implicitly crushing cri-
tique by R. Turcan, RHR 206 (1989) 69-73.
166 CHAPTER THREE

August the corn was stored in the silos or barns (condere)125 . The
god who controls this activity is Consus, "qui preside a la mise en
reserve clans les greniers" (who presides over the storing of the corn
in the barns, Pouthier 1981, 104). The abundance of the stored corn
harvest represents the wealth of the agrarian community: Ops Con-
siva, ''protectrice du grain abondant ainsi accumule'' (protector of
the abundance of corn thus collected, Pouthier 1981, 105). Between
the action of storage and the permanentresult embodied in the stored
supplies, there is a moment of attention for the dangers that threaten
agriculture and its products. During the Volcanalia, Vulcanus is
propitiated with a 'sacrifice' of living fishes thrown into the fire 126•
Even allowing for the beneficial functions of fire 127, it cannot be de-
nied that Vulcanus' dangerous and frightening forces predominate.
This is the threat that is ritually bought off.
Taken together, the various functions and the interrelationship of
these three festivals in August are clear. The same cannot be said of
the three festivals in December. Firstly, there is the problem of the
duplication of the festivals of Consus and Ops. Numerous interpre-
tations of the December rites have been advanced to offer a solution.
The December festivals have been interpreted as the celebration of
the necessary inspection of the stock 128; as the end of the period of
threshing 129 ; as the termination of the sowing season 130 ; and as the
festival of the olive harvest 131 . Others remove it from the agrarian

125 It has been argued that these silos were not necessarily always subterranean,
since Varro R.R. 1, 57, advocates granariasublimia. But, first of all, he reflects the
fashion of his time, adding, moreover, that some people use subterranean caves as
granaries. Secondly, the fact that Consus had an underground altar and was sup-
posed to inhabit an underground dwelling is decisive proof that in early times it was
the latter fashion which must have been customary, pace Dumezil 1969, 293 and
Pouthier 105 n.5.
126 Fest. 274 (L); Varro, L.L. 6, 20. There is an exceptional agreement among
scholars on the interpretation. See for instance: Dumezil 1966, 316, and next note;
Pouthier 1981, 120.
127 Dumezil, ibid. 315: "le feu qui, pour le bien ou pour le ma!, devore et
detruit." Pouthier 1981, 119-23, seems to discern a positive force in Vulcanus:
"pas insensible a la notion d'abondance cerealiere de l'ete", but he does not make
clear exactly what he means. Dumezil, Les pisciculi des Volcanalia, REL 36 (1958)
121-30; idem 1975, 61-77, opts for a purely negative threat by the fire ofVulcanus.
128 W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Periodof the Republic (London
1895) 268-71.
129 G. Wissowa, Ops, in: RML III, 931; idem 1912, 202.
130 Latte 1960, 72; Le Bonniec 1958, 54 ff.
131 A. Kirsopp Michels, The Consualia of December, GP 39 (1944) 50.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 167

cycle and regard it as: the festival of the closure of the year (condere
annum132 ; a festival of the definitive setting of the sun, which sinks
into the earth (condere)at the end of the year 133 ; or a festival for the
dead (Consus as a god of the mundus)134 .
In an important article Dumezil 135 has convincingly objected to
these theories. They are not supported by the ancient evidence and
they fail to fulfil the requirements of the agricultural year 136 . Worst
of all, they fail to take account of the overt parallelism with the fes-
tivals of August, which should occupy a central place in the argu-
ment. In this connection Dumezil has suggested a perfectly convinc-
ing interpretation through an appeal to Varro R.R. 1, 62 -69. The
Roman polymath here asserts that nemofructus condit nisi ut promat,
and gives three major reasons why people promunt condita (bring to
light the stored products): for better protection, for consumption
and for reasons of trade. In eh. 69 he gives an additional motive:
part of the spelt is reserved ad sationem(for sowing). Here it also ap-
pears that any of these different motives has its proper, specific point
of time. The most important motive, that of consumption, is con-
nected with wintertime:far quod in spicis condiderisper messemet ad usus
cibatus expedirevelis, promendum hieme, ut in pistrino pinsatur ac torreatur
( spelt which you have stored in the ear at harvest-time and which
you prepare for food, should be brought out in winter, so that it may
be ground in the mill and parched: 63, cf. 69).
So the festivals of December just before the winter solstitium

132 F. Altheim, Altitalische und altriimische Gottesvorstellung, Klio 30 (1937)

39 ff., esp. 48 ff.; idem, Italien und Rom II 3 (Amsterdam-Leipzig, no date) 48 ff.
133 A. Brelich, Die geheime Schutzgottheit van Rom (Zurich 1949) 42-4; L. Deub-
ner, Njb 17 (1911) 327 f. = Kleine Schrijten (Kiinigstein 1982) 327 f. Recently Graf
1985b, 91 f., followed older authors-among others Meslin 1970-in explaining
the Saturnalia as a New Year festival. See below p.185.
134 Piganiol 1923, 13.
135 Consus et Ops, in: Dumezil 1969, 289-304, esp. 300 f.
136 His emphasis on the importance of agricultural events and their role in the
constitution of the festive calendar should be a continuous guiding principle, espe-
cially in the study of Roman religion, also to those who, like the present author,
are sceptical of his triadic constructions. Cf. G. J. Baudy 1986, 16: "Dern Inter-
preten der antiken Religion kann man in der Regel nicht nachsagen, class er von
Ackerbau und Viehzucht vie! verstiinde oder sich auch nur die Miihe machte, die
antiken Agrarschriftsteller zu lesen. Aber der Festkalender ist von landwirtschaft-
lichen Zyklen in einem Masse gepragt, class man die Kulte und ihre aitiologischen
Mythen nicht adaquat verstehen kann, ohne sich klar gemacht zu haben, an wel-
chen agrarischen Oaten sie ankniipfen." For a fundamental critique of Dumezil's
tripartition theory see: Belier 1991.
168 CHAPTER THREE

receive a natural explanation if regarded as the ritual celebration of

the opening of the silos or granaries in order to produce (promere)the
corn necessary for consumptive (or other) purposes. This attractive
interpretation of the functional duplication of the two cycles-the
one in August being intended for storage (condere)and the one in De-
cember for the first bringing out of part of the supply (promere)-can
be supported by an argument which Dumezil has failed to notice,
but which in my opinion provides decisive proof of its correctness.
In the famous series of indigitamentaeach of which represents a specif-
ic agragrian function 137 , Servius ad Georg. 1, 21, first mentions a
number of preparatory functions; next come the functions of sow-
ing, reaping, and collecting; and as the final couple: conditorand
promitor138, apparently the indigitamentaconnected with the storage
and the bringing out of the corn harvest. If, then, the function of con-
derehas its ritual celebration, it may be expected that this also holds
for its counterpart.
Incidently, these views of the function of the December festivals
may receive additional support from an interpretation of the god-
dess Angerona as proposed by Dumezil 's favourite scapegoat,
H. Wagenvoort. The festival of Diva Angerona fell on the 21st of
December, immediately following the Opalia. The nature of Diva
Angerona has long been a vexed question. Practically all the older
interpretations suffered from very weak or even impossible etymo-
logical fantasies. Using very attractive etymological and semasiolog-
ical arguments, W agenvoort proposed to connect the name with the
*angeraor angustiae,the 'narrows' which connected the world of the
living with the netherworld as the abode of the dead 139 . If this

137 The list goes back to Fabius Pictor. The fact that it already betrays pontifi-
cal construction (Latte 1960, 207 f.) by no means reduces the value of the opposi-
tion conderelpromereas actions in the domain of cereal production.
138 Similarly, Plautus Pseudo/.608, mentions the combination of functions con-
dus promusof a house slave: conduspromussum, procuratorpeni. Cf. Hor. Ep. 1, 1, 12,
condoet componoquaemox depromere possim, and the discussion by E. Fraenkel, Horace
(Oxford 1957) 445 and n. 3 (reference of P. Mason). In chapter IV of this book we
shall see a similar polarity in the Greek festivals of the Skirophoriaand the Thes-
mophoria(with the same distance in time) showing the alternation of condereand
promereof pigs.
139 H. Wagenvoort, Diva Angerona, Mnemosyne9 (1941) 215-7 = idem 1980,
21-4. This idea was an offshoot from an earlier study of the FaucesOrci, the 'gate-
ways to the underworld': Orcus, SMSR 14 (1938) 35 ff. = idem 1956, 102-31. As
a matter of fact, we are confronted with the same discussion that we have met con-
cerning the interpretation of the Saturnalia, since other scholars prefer to view
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 169

theory is correct and Angerona was indeed the goddess who presided
over the communications between these two regions, this would fit
in perfectly with the contiguity of the Angeronaliaand the Consualia/
Opalia which were, as we shall presently elucidate in more detail,
precisely intended to restore the interrupted communication with
the subterranean world. In the next section we shall observe the
close relationship between the representations of subterranean
cereal wealth and of the abode of the dead as united in the concepts
of the mundus and Dispater.
Another illuminating contribution by Dumezil1 40 is his analysis
of the different names of the deities. Consus is the same god in Au-
gust and December: he is and remains the protector of the stored
supplies. But the Ops of August is emphatically restricted to the kind
of wealth that consists of the corn supply (Ops Consiva), whereas in
December the nature of her wealth is not subject to restrictions. The
corn produced from the barns is now free and available for economic
manipulation: it becomes 'wealth' in the more economic and broad
meaning of the word.
Whereas Dumezil does not mention Saturn and the Saturna-
lia 141, Pouthier pays attention to the entire complex of the three fes-
tivals of December and the position of the Saturnalia among them.
The result, however, is disappointing. He seems to return to the old
picture of Saturn as the god of sowing: '' Saturne, <lieu des energies
cachees du sous-sol ( .... ) prend fictivement en charge les semailles
pour exprimer son integration a la serie de celebrations de de-
cembre." (Saturn, god of the energies stored in a subterranean
place ... takes charge over the seed-corn in order to express its in-

Angerona as an infernal goddess presiding over the end of the year and the death
of the sun at the hibernal solstice. See most recently: J. Aronen, Iuturna, Carmen ta
e Mater Larum. Un rapporto arcaico tra mito, calendario e topografia, Opuscula
Instil. Rom. Finl. 4 (1989) 65-88, esp. 83, with further literature.
140 His theories are adopted and elaborated by Pouthier 1981, 102-35.
141 He does mention the problem of Saturnus' position between the two De-
cember festivals in Dumezil 1975, 169 f., but avows that it is for him a "grand
probleme, que nous ne sommes pas encore en etat de resoudre", while vaguely
referring to the importance of the ideology of the end of the year. He was close to
the solution, however, when he called Lua mater in this connection: ''la 'Mere Dis-
solution', la bonne, utile destruction''. Partly following in his tracks, Briquel 1981,
131-62, esp. 145 ff., constructs a parallel between Volcanus/ Volturnus in August
and Saturnus/ Angerona in December, which would, for the complex of December,
result in an atmosphere of the "crise universelle" around the solstice; hence the
reversals of the Saturnalia. See below n.181 for a relevant note by J. Scheid.
170 CHAPTER THREE

tegration in the series of celebrations of December). Nor is this a

very lucid definition of Saturn's authentic functions.
I believe that we have only to follow the direction indicated by
Dumezil to make substantial progress in the interpretation of the
god, his 'parhedros'Lua, and his cult and ritual. In order to do so it
will be necessary to compare the threefestivals of August with those
of December, paying special attention to the related functions of the
interstitial festivals of Volcanalia and Saturnalia and the gods con-
nected with them 142. As we have seen, the Volcanalia marked a
point of crisis, a moment of retardation and stagnation between the
action of storing and the happy results of this activity. The crisis is
here represented in the image of the most fearful catastrophe that
threatens the harvest: fire. We have also seen that the festivals of
December present a reversed order: instead of storing and 'burying'
(condere)the harvest, it is now opportune to bring out the buried corn
from its depository (promere). During this festive cycle there is also
a moment 'in between', which marks a retardation between the situ-
ation of the hidden supplies and the action of the production. Now,
there is only one natural candidate for the function ritualized in this
critical moment, namely the action of removing or opening the bar-
rier which has so far kept locked the hidden supplies. Among the
great crisis ceremonies of pre-industrial societies one of the most im-
portant and ubiquitous is the opening of the stores, either of wine
or of food, and the first partaking of the primitiae143 . No other
festival carries such ambivalent connotations: there is the happy
expectation of affluence, but at the same time there is anxiety at

142 If anywhere, it is here that a maxim defended in recent scholarship on Ro-

man religion, for instance by J. Scheid and M. Beard, proves correct and helpful:
"In general, questions about the character of individual Roman deities seem to be
misplaced: Roman deities, as part of a pantheon, are understandable only through
their relationship (of similarity or opposition) with other members of that pan-
theon": M. Beard, Writing and Ritual. A Study of Diversity and Expansion in the
Arva! Acta, PBSR 53 (1985) 114-62, esp. 116 n. 15.
143 It suffices to cite the fundamental treatment by Lanternari 1976, who right-
ly interprets the primitiaesacrifice in terms of the experience of success, whose nega-
tive entailments people fear. He let himself be inspired by the psychological studies
of G. Gusdorf, L 'experience humainedu sacrifice(Paris 1948), who gives a very illumi-
nating treatment of feelings of debt, guilt or fear provoked by success. I have fol-
lowed a similar line of approach in Versnel 1977 and 1981b. The most informative
primitiae festival in antiquity is the Athenian Anthesteria, providing striking
similarities with the Saturnalia. On its ambiguous nature see above p.129, with the
references there.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 171

various levels: concern about the quality of the stock, which is now
inspected for the first time and which may have suffered from de-
cay .144 Furthermore, there is the awareness that with this action an
irreversible first step has been taken on the way towards total con-
sumption of the reserves. Last but not least, there is the fear of the
envy of gods or demons, which preferably strikes human society at
these critical moments on the border-line between hopes and fears,
affluence and hunger.
Our inference that the roots of the Saturnalia must be sought in
the critical and ambivalent ceremony of the opening of the corn
stores can be supported by other evidence. We therefore proceed to
call in the assistance of recent topographical research.

2. The implicationsof the topographicalposition

Until very recently scholars were at a loss concerning the problem
of the topographical location of the Opalia of the 19th of December.
In a convincing discussion Pouthier 145 has pointed out that the note
of the Fasti Amiternini on December 19: OPAL(IA) Fer(iae)Opi. Opi
ad Forum, cannot but refer to a place on the margins of the Forum,
somewhere in the vicinity of the temple of Saturn, a position that
mirrors the calendrical vicinity and the functional relationship of
these two gods 146 . A more comprehensive survey of the topographi-
cal evidence and a host of revolutionary new interpretations have
been presented by F. Coarelli 147 . I summarize his findings for their
relevance to our discussion.
Ever since Boni's publications, the small construction made of
tuff blocks, which lies behind the rostra and in the immediate vicini-

144 It was essential to protect the stored corn against decay of various types. For
that reason it was recommended to add laurel branches or leaves to the stores:
Geopon.2, 30, 1.
145 Pouthier 1981, 79-86. It had been suggested long before that Ops was a con-
tubernalisin the temple of Saturn: H. Jordan, De sacris Opis aedibusque Opis et
Saturni, Eph. Epigr. 3 (1877) 72; Mommsen, GIL 12 p. 337. However, since the
gods receive separate sacrifices, this is not very likely, as Pouthier p.81, argues.
Coarelli 1983, who calls Ops the 'parhedros' of Saturn (224), seems to adhere to
the older theories: ''l'ara Saturni era insieme consacrata a Ops, la dea dell' abon-
danze agricola."
146 Note that in the same Fasti Amiternini the sacrifice for Saturn is also quali-
fied as Saturn(o) ad For(um), as John Scheid reminded me.
147 Coarelli 1983, 199-226 (from which I cite), a reprint ofan article in DA 9-10
(1976-7) 346-77.
172 CHAPTER THREE

ty of the arch of Septimius Severus has been identified as the Vo/-

canal. This place of the fire ofVulcanus had strong chthonic conno-
tations; people that had been killed by lightning were buried
there 148 , as was Romulus 149 , whose 'Entriickung' came close to this
'heroic' kind of death. Coarelli ( 161-78) convincingly demonstrates
that this identification is due to a misunderstanding: the Volcanal
should be sought in the area of, or even exactly below the Lapis
Niger 150 . The little building near the rostra, which thus has become
anonymous, is to be identified with the ancient ara Saturni, whose lo-
cation, according to tradition, was indeed in front of the temple of
Saturn 151 . Nor is this all. Macrobius Sat. 1, 11, 48, records a sacel-
lum Ditis araeSaturni cohaerens(a small sanctuary of Dis Pater imme-
diately adjacent to the altar of Saturn) 152 • On the other hand,
Macrobius Sat. 1, 16, 16-18, also says: neepatentemundo, quod sacrum
Diti patri et Proserpinaedicatumest (in a period in which the 'mundus'
was not open. The 'mundus' is a holy place sacred to Dis Pater and

148 Fest. 370 (L); Gell. 4, 5, 1-6.

149 Porph. ad Hor. Epod. 16, 13. For the various versions of his death see for in-
stance: I. E. M. Edlund, Must a King die? The Death and Disappearance of
Romulus, PP 39 (1984) 401-8; D. Briquel, La legende de la mort et de l'apotheose
de Romulus, Caesarodunum 21bis (1986) 15-36.
150 He finds strong support for this location in all the sources. I see only one
problem: Fast. Amit. (Aug. 23) have: Volk(ano) Maiae supra Comit(ium), which does
not quite suit a location in the Comitium. For the recent discussion of the Lapis
Niger see: BCAR 89 (1984) 387. Ifl am right, Coarelli's identification of the Vo/-
canal and the room below the Lapis Niger has met with broad approval. See for in-
stance: C. Ampolo, La storiografia su Roma arcaica e i documenti, in: Tria Corda.
Scritti in onore di A. Momigliano (Como 1983) 13-26, with a number of further sur-
mises; G. Colonna, Sulla tomba di Lanuvio, PP 36 (1981) 74 f. identifies the
hundred and fifty 'ciottoli' below the Lapis Niger as oscilla, being gifts for Dispater.
In his view this supports Coarelli's theory. G. Camassa, Sull' origine e la funzione
de! culto di Volcanus a Roma, RSI 96 (1984) 811-54, even made it the point of
departure for his very adventurous comparison between Volcanus and Romulus,
corresponding with the equally congruent functions of the metallurgist and the
founder. However, F. Castagnoli, II Niger Lapis nel Foro Romano e gli scavi de!
1955, PP 39 (1984) 56-61, raises objections.
151 For a short survey of the excavations in front of the temple of Saturn see: G.
Maetzke, Area nord-occidentale de! Foro Romano, BCAR 91 (1986) 372-80.
152 Numerous scholars have doubted the existence of this sacellum, since Dis
pater already possessed at least one, perhaps even two other sanctuaries, one in the
Tarentum, the other possibly in the Circus Maximus. See for instance Wissowa
1912, 205 n.1; 310 n.10. Cf. on thesacellumDitis: Pouthier 1981, 94ff. Dion. Hal.
1, 7, 28-33; 2, 48-9, cites an ancient oracle mentioning an altar of Dis in a context
which evokes associations with Saturn. This is, however, an extremely dubious tes-
timony: Briquel 1984, 361 ff,; 368 ff.; Guittard 1980b.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 173

Proserpina). Combining these pieces of information, Coarelli pro-

poses to identify the subterranean sanctuary of Dis pater with the
mundus. If that is correct, as I think it is, we have now two topo-
graphical data on this little construction: it is adjacent to the altar
of Saturn (as reported by Macrobius) and it is a pit which is situated
"somewhere around the present comitium", as Plutarch, Romul.
11, 2, records. Now it so happens that there is indeed a round brick
construction at a distance of some 30 cm. from the ara Saturni, which
is generally identified as the umbilicus Romae, the 'navel' of Rome.
Moreover, since we know from Plutarch l.c. (cf. Ovid Fast. 4, 819
ff.) that Romulus drew the circle of the sulcus primigenius (first fur-
row, ritual act of foundation of a city) with the mundus as central
point 153 , we are prepared for the following identification: mundus
and umbilicusare the twin components that together form one com-
posite construction, which serves as the centre of the city 154 . Sever-
al sources describe the umbilicus(Greek omphalos)as the place where
the centre of human society is anchored in the depths of the
earth 155 . So Coarelli concludes that the circular construction of the

153 On Romulus and his founding activities see the literature in: BCAR 89
(1984) 335-6, and below pp.178 f.
154 This was also proposed by Monika Verzar, L'Umbilicus Urbis. II mundus in
eta tardo-repubblicana, DA 9/10 (1976/7) 378-98. Although others of Coarelli's
identifications have found broad acceptance, his identification of the round brick
construction with the mundusis generally disapproved. P. Verduchi, Lavori ai rostri
del Faro Romano: l'esempio dell' "Umbilicus", RPAA 55-56 (1982-4) 329-40,
points out that the so-called umbilicus is for the greater part a Severan construction
and that the hollow space inside is due to medieval additions. Circumstantial criti-
cism also in Castagnoli 1986. Cf. N. Purcell, Rediscovering the Roman Forum,
]RA 2 (1989) 156-6, esp. 162, and Pailler 1988, 411 ff., who deems it admissible
to speak of a mundusonly if the literary sources correspond with archaeological data.
However, "la presence d'une piece souterraine n'y est pas meme attestee". If,
then, generally "there is as much in the uncritical acceptance of the views of an
authority like Coarelli as there is in failing to question the old orthodoxy" (F. S.
Klein, AJA 93 [1989] 618), I would, indeed, express some doubt concerning this
specific identification of the mundus, although I am more positive than some of the
critics. However, this does by no means detract from Coarelli's valuable deduc-
tions, even if mundusand umbilicuscannot be demonstrated to be united or identical
constructions. For there is no reason to doubt that they were at least very close
neighbours, as is indicated by the literary evidence.
155 Coarelli 1983, 215, mentions the Delphic omphalos, Eleusis and above all
Verg. Aen. 7, 563 ff. with Servius ad loc., who mentions an umbiliciumltaliae, which
at the same time functions as spiraculaDitis or aditus inferorum.Cf. Cic. Verr. 2, 4,
48, 106. We may add that after protracted wanderings the island of Delos was an-
chored in the depths of sea and earth and from then on was an( other) omphalos.The
idea of the axis mundi that reaches from the centre of the world to the depths of the
174 CHAPTER THREE

umbilicusis the visible counterpart of the circular subterranean room

of the mundus, which by its nature was identified with the sacellumDi-
tis. This mundus bore the chthonic connotations of the realm of
death, on the one hand, and of cereal fertility, on the other (cf. mun-
dus Cereris)156 .
Finally, Coarelli illuminatingly adduces a report in the Scholia
Bern. adVerg. Eel. 3, 104, that the mundus was the place where every
year descendebat puer quo cognosceret
anni proventusad sacracelebranda.In
the wake of earlier scholars he interprets this as follows: "every year
a boy would descend into the mundus in order to vaticinate the
(cereal) yield of the coming year with respect to the celebration of
a sacred ritual". Not only does this clearly confirm the cereal func-
tion of the mundus, as an image of the communal corn silo 157 , but it
also has a striking parallel at Praeneste. Under a small sanctuary of
Fortuna, who is represented with two infants (sometimes identified
as Iuppiter and Iuno ), a pit has been discovered, which no doubt
should be identified as the mundus which had a central function in
the oracular practice at Praeneste. Again it was a boy who was to
produce the sortesfor consultation 158 .

earth and to the apex of heaven is a widespread image. M. Eliade has returned time
and again to the symbolism of the 'centre du monde': Eliade 1949, eh. I; Images
et symboles(Paris 1952) eh. I; Das Heilige und das Profane. Vom Wesendes Religiiisen
(Munich 1957) eh. I; Eliade 1964, eh. X, esp. 316 ff. Here also a discussion of the
omphalosas centre of the world (pp. 200 ff. and literature p. 206 f.) and on the mundus
(p.315). More titles of Eliade and an important evaluation: Smith 1978, 88-103,
and cf. ibid. 112-5. There may be a reflection of this ubiquitous axis imagery in the
tradition that the mundusis a subterranean mirror of the heaven above us: Fest. 144
(L); Schol. Bern. ad Verg. Eel. 3, 104.
156 Against Weinstock 1930, Coarelli assumes one mundus which combines the
idea of the centre (legend of Romulus) and the idea of the cereal (mundus Cereris).
For the idea of the mundus see the very ample discussion by Pailler 1988, 409-63.
157 This interpretation of the original function of the mundus was already pro-
posed by W. Warde Fowler, Mundus patet,JRS 2 (1912) 25-33 = Roman Essaysand
Interpretations(Oxford 1920) 24-37, who is followed by Coarelli.
158 Cic. Div. 2, 41, 86, with an extensive note of Pease on boys (and girls) as
media in oracular practice. See for further literature on children as media: Brem-
mer 1983, 50; F. Graf, in: Faraone & Obbink 1991, 211. Cf. Champeaux 1982,
63 f.; eadem,MEFRA 102 (1990) 283 n. 25. Fast. Praen.April 10, mentions a sacrifice
for Fortuna Primigenia: Utroeorumdie[eiusj oraclumpatet, (duo)virivitulum i(mmolant),
aptly compared with the mundus patet by Coarelli. However, contrary to what
Coarelli contends (p.223 "le sortesdi Praeneste, estratte da un bambino che dis-
cendeva nel pozzo"), I have not been able to find explicit evidence that at Praeneste
a boy descended into a pit (or mundus)to produce the sortes.Our sole explicit source,
Cic. Div. 2, 41, 85-7, says arcamessefactam eoqueconditassortes,quae hodieFortunae
monitutolluntur,and Quid igitur in hispotestessecerti,quaeFortunaemonitupueri miscentur
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 175

By way of provisional conclusion Coarelli suggests that this evi-

dence is relevant for both the chthonic and the cereal aspects of
Saturn (as combined with his 'parhedros' Ops), who probably con-
trolled the mundus, being the symbolic storeroom of the buried corn
supply. In this function he was later replaced by Dis pater (the 'rich
father'), and retained the aerariumas his sole responsibility.
The extensive expose of these brilliant combinations finds its
justification, I hope, in the fact that they splendidly fit into the
Saturnian scenery that I have so far tried to sketch and by the addi-
tional elucidation it will provide. First, however, I would like to
make two additional remarks. In the first place, there is still another
strong argument for associating the umbilicus with Saturn. The
Greek Kronos, as we have seen, was firmly connected with the exis-
tence of an omphalosat Delphi, traditionally regarded as the stone he
once had spit out. I would regard this as the mythical expression of
the idea that the stone originated in primeval times and, on the brink
of history, fixed the centre of the world 159 , just as this was done by
the mundus/umbilicus in Rome. My second remark concerns the des-
cent of the boy into the mundus. Admittedly, the ceremony of the
munduspatet is not attested for the month December (the three dates
are August 24th-pointing to a connection with the Consualia!-,
October 5th and November 8th 160). As we have seen 161 , however,

Cic. Div. 2, 41, 86, with an extensive note of Pease on boys (and girls) as media
in oracular practice. See for further literature on children as media: Bremmer 1983,
50; F. Graf, in: Faraone & Obbink 1991, 211. Cf. Champeaux 1982, 63 f.; eadem,
MEFRA 102 (1990) 283 n. 25. Fast. Praen.April 10, mentions a sacrifice for Fortuna
Primigenia: Utro eorumdie [eius] oraclumpatet, (duo)viri vitulum i(mmolant), aptly com-
pared with the mundus patet by Coarelli. However, contrary to what Coarelli con·
tends (p.223 "le sortesdi Praeneste, estratte da un bambino che discendeva nel poz·
zo' '), I have not been able to find explicit evidence that at Praeneste a boy
descended into a pit (or mundus) to produce the sortes. Our sole explicit source, Cic.
Div. 2, 41, 85-7, says arcam essefactam eoqueconditassortes, quae hodie Fortunaemonitu
tolluntur, and Quid igitur in his potest essecerti, quaeFortunaemonitupueri miscenturatque
ducuntur?Nor does his reference to archaeological evidence in 0. Brendel, AJA 64
(1960) 41-7; Roma Medio-repubblicana(1973) 278-81, tav. LXXIX, bear out this as-
sumption. The only facts ascertained by tradition are that the sorteswere once found
in an underground place or a grotto, that there is a mundus-like pit in the oracular
sanctuary and that a boy produced the sortesfrom an area. See the extensive discus·
sion in Champeaux 1982, 55-84, esp. 68 f.
159 See for the Delphic omphalosand its function above p.91 n.6. On the world-
wide symbol of the sacred stone as navel of the earth see literature above n.155.
160 Coarelli opts for the 8th of November as the period of sowing, in which it is
useful "di vaticinare anni proven/us."
161 Saturnalia: above p.147. Mundus: Latte 1960, 141. Macrob. Sat. 1, 16, 16,
item diebus Saturnalibus, sed et cum mundus patet, nefas est proelium sumere.
176 CHAPTER THREE

the ritual regulations concerning the days of the mundus patet are
identical with the ones of the Saturnalia, so the relationship is not
restricted to topography but includes the character and the general
atmosphere of the two ceremonies. In fact, this is far truer than has
been hitherto observed.
Now, in how far do our calendrical and topographical discoveries
fit into one Saturnian picture? The calendrical position of the Satur-
nalia on the 17th of December, its place exactly between the Con-
sualia and the Opalia, and the parallelism with the three related fes-
tivals of August led us to the inference that the festival must have
originated as the ceremony through which the hidden corn supply
was made accessible for inspection and consumption. This conclu-
sion is substantially corroborated by our inquiry into the topo-
graphical data: Saturn was topographically closely connected with
the 'Rich Father' Dispater and his mundus, a subterranean space
that was in some way or other associated with the hidden corn sup-
ply. These results may now encourage us to take a final step and
see if myth may further contribute to our investigation.

3. The contributionsof myth

As a starting-point I recall once more the remarkable testimony
provided by the Scholia Bernensia on the boy descending into the
mundus. I would point out that the opening and inspection of the hid-
den corn supply-the original kernel of the Saturnalia on our
supposition-can be precisely expressed by the words quoted: quo
cognosceretanni proventus.As a matter of fact, the traditional interpre-
tation: "in order to vaticinatethe yield of the comingyear" does not
really suit the Latin phrase, since neither cognoscere nor proventushas
prospective connotations. Proventus means simply the 'yield, the
crop, the supply' 162• It is therefore possible, and to my mind even
obvious, to interpret the (legendary) custom of the descending puer
as an image of the opening of the silos, the inspection of the stores
and the concomitant atmosphere of tension and expectancy.
However, even if one refuses to give up the prospective connota-
tions of this 'inspection of the anni proventus', its implications are still

162 As also appears from a formulation used by Paladius 7, 9 for an agrarian

method for determining the fertility of specific seeds and thus predicting the yield
of the crop of the next year. In this case it appears to be necessary to add the term
faturus: GraeciadseruntAegyptioshoe moreproventumfuturi cuiusqueseminis experin·.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 177

useful as an illumination of the critical atmosphere surrounding this

crucial opening of the barns. Let us return for a moment to Praenes-
tine Fortuna, who, besides providing an excellent parallel will also
guide us to the theme of this section: myth. Fortuna unites aspects
offertility and prognostication. Her name is related tofero/feraxljerti-
lis, on the one hand, and to fors, on the other 163 • The foundation of
her sanctuary had been instigated by a prodigium: mel ex oleafluxisse
dicunt (they say that honey was seen streaming from an olive-tree,
Cic. Div. 2, 85 f.). Now, streams of honey pouring spontaneously
from a tree (afortiori when this is a tree which itself produces one of
the essential victuals) belong to the basic images of the abundance
of the Golden Age 164 . Brelich 165 has explained the curious image of
Fortuna Primigenia (the 'original' or 'first-one') nursing the infant
puer Jupiter at Praeneste as the expression of the precosmic period
when Iupiter had not yet inaugurated the rules and norms of orderly
society and in which all things still lay in the womb of time, i.e. in
the ambiguous power of Fortuna. The destinies had not yet been
fixed and all options were open. This, then, finds its reflection in the
oracular function of Praenestine Fortuna. The sortes,which are con-
ditaeand are only recovered (tolluntur)at the day of the festival of the
goddess (11-12th of April), refer to the indeterminate ambiguity of
the time between the times, the caesura in wich the kosmosis tem-
porarily suspended and precosmic ambiguity returns 166 .

163 F. M. Lazarus, On the Meaning of Fors Fortuna: A Hint from Terence,

AJA 106 (1985) 359-67, emphasizes this aspect of the Fors Fortuna 'who brings
something'. Cf. I. Kajanto, Fortuna, in: ANRWII, 17, 1 (1981) 502-58, esp. 504:
'bringer', consequently: 'bringer of good luck, success'. Cf. Brelich 1976, 23 ff.;
Champeaux 1982, 208 f.
164 H. Usener, Milch und Honig, Kleine SchriftenIV (Leipzig 1913) 398-417;
Gatz 1967, index s.v.; esp. Piccaluga 1974, 153 ff. In this connection it is significant
that honey, as applied in nephaliasacrifices, is a signum for abnormal, pre-cultural
conditions: Graf 1980; 1985b, 27-9.
16 5 Brelich 1950, 16 ff.; idem, Roma e Praeneste. Una polemica religiosa nell'
Italia antica, in: Brelich 1976, 17-55. On Iuppiter Puer see also: J. Champeaux,
Religion romaine et religion latine: Jes cultes de Jupiter etjunon a Preneste, REL
60 (1982) 71-104, with the reactions by H. Riemann, luppiter lmperator, RM 90
(1983) 233-338; 91 (1984) 396 n.49. I cannot go into the vexed questions concern-
ing Fortuna as mother or daughter; see: Champeaux 1981. On the 'two' goddesses:
H. Riemann, Praenestinae Sorores. Praeneste, MDAI(R) 95 (1988) 41-73. On the
implications of the word puer see: G. Bonfante, Puer= filius, ]ilia, PP 36 ( 1981)
312-4.
l66 We noticed above (p.130) that, accordingly, New Year's day is the proper
moment to 'fix the destiny' of the year and as such is invariably connected with
 178 CHAPTER THREE

Returning to Saturn, we have seen that this god, who was both
the father and predecessor oflupiter, was also represented as having
reigned in the period before the creation of cosmic history (or who
introduced the preconditions for the creation of human civiliza-
tion ) 167. With respect to the mundus close to his altar, Plutarch
Romul. 11 specifies that Rome's foundation was accompanied by a
ritual in which all the would-be inhabitants, gathered from a great
number of foreign cities, threw a handful of earth from their native
land into the pit, which henceforth served as the centre of the new
city. This is clearly an act of sunoikismos168 , an act of creation of a
cosmos out of a precosmic chaos without contours-neither centre
nor boundaries-, social or political institutions. This interpretation
fits in perfectly with the legend of Romulus, who lured a bunch of
bandits, outlaws and apoleisto the place of future Rome by offering
them asulia169 • The phrasing of this particular episode in ancient
literature is revealing. Dion. Hal. 2, 15, 4, says that Romulus con-
secrated the place between the Capitol and the citadel which is today
called 'inter duos lucos', and made it an asylum for suppliants. There
he took up "fugitives, paying no regard to their calamities or to their

the taking of auspicia. For Rome see: H. Ericsson, Die romischen Auspizien in
ihrem Zusammenhang mit der Magistratur, AR W33 ( 1936) 294-303; Meslin 1970,
23-36; D. Baudy 1987, 18 ff.
167 By way of suggestion I here add some aspects of the Roman cult of Fortuna
which show remarkable similarities with some elements of the cult of Saturn. The
Fortuna of the Forum Boarium is completely enwrapped in a toga (Ovid Fast. 6,
569 ff.; Dion. Hal. 4, 40, 7; Val. Max. 1, 8, 11). The toga was just as un-Roman
for women as the pallium was for men. Fors Fortuna was a goddess particularly wor-
shipped by slaves and the poor with a hilarious festival of a carnivalesque nature
(Ovid Fast. 6, 755 ff. with Bomer ad loc.; Cic. Defin. 5, 70); on the occasion of their
manumissio,ex-slaves devoted little figurines with a pilleus to the goddess; cf. Cham-
peaux 1982, 235 ff. It was also the day on which king Servius Tullius, the apolisand
exsul who became king Uust as Saturn, below p.179), was commemorated. See:
Bomer 1957 I, 148-50. All this strikingly recalls Saturnalian phenomenology. I am
of course aware of alternative explanations such as the one proposed by Cham-
peaux. Moreover, I.Kajanto, o.c. (above n.163) contests any connection between
Praenestine and Roman Fortunae.
168 As was seen by Weinstock 1930, 118. Cf. further A. Szabo, Roma Quadra-
ta, Maia 8 (1956) 243-74, esp. 268; R.E. A. Palmer, The Archaic Community of the
Romans (Cambridge Mass. 1970), 182 f.; E. Peruzzi, Romulus' Furrow, PP 36
(1981) 106-28; Coarelli 1983, 224; Castagnoli 1986.
169 On the dubious nature of this conluviesconvenarum(lustin. 38, 7, 1) round
Romulus full evidence in: A. Schwegler, Romische Geschichte12 (Tu bingen 1867)
459, nn. 1-5, and 464 f. Cf. Alfcildi 1974, 120; Guittard 1980a, 165. The most re-
cent treatment: Bremmer 1987b, 38 ff.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 179

fortunes, provided only they were free men ( ..... ) and he offered
them citizenship". Plutarch Romul. 9, is even more explicit: "in the
asylum (hieron phuximon) all types were admitted and he did not hand
over slaves to their masters, nor labourers to their creditors, nor
murderers to the authorities". Similarly, Livy 1, 8, 6, says that
asuleia was offered to everyone irrespective liber an servus esset
(whether he was free or slave).
The Romulean creation of orderly society out of anomic chaos
was thus preceded and conditioned by a genuinely 'Saturnalian' in-
termezzo in which the slave is freed, the debtor cannot be called to
account and the guilty cannot be persecuted 170 . This mythical
imagery concerning the critical moment 'in between' has an exact
parallel in the reversed rules of anomy during the actual Saturnalia.
And Plutarch was well aware of this. Now, the crowning piece of
these revealing associations is that the Romulean asylum, place of
'Saturnalian' acquittal and liberation, was situated between the two
summits of the Capitolium. As Guittard 1980a has shown, it is this
very place where Varro L. L. 5, 42, located the ara Saturni: Saturnifa-
num infaucibus. This, of course, does not mean that it was indeed the
original site of the altar. But it does show that the polyhistor
found sufficient elements in the ideology surrounding this asylum of
Romulus to associate (if not identify) it with (the altar of) Saturn.
So we observe a strong parallelism in the myths of Saturn and
Romulus. Saturn is an exsul and as such associated with chaos and
lack of standards. However, as the first king in pre-cultural Italy he

170 Unnecessary to say that all this is not history in our sense of the word, an
asylumbeing a stark anachronism in 'the Rome of 753 BC', but it certainly was what
the Romans understood by history, that curious mixture of historicized myth,
legend and genuinely historical tradition. See above n.84. The theme of the ambi-
guous founder-hero is widespread. Brelich 1976, 41 ff., has made a comparison be-
tween Caeculus, founder of Praeneste and Romulus, who are both wild and lawless
figures. "II fondatore e una figura ambivalente-come lo e,p. es. su un piano cos-
mogonico, la generazione divina o titanica che precede quella dei padroni definitivi
de! cosmo-rappresenta ii non-ordine, ma anche la condizione imprescendibile
dell' ordine: percio elementi 'positivi' e 'negativi' si mescolano nel suo carattere
e nella sua storia" (53). Cf. also M. Benabou, Remus, lemur et la mort, AION(ar-
cheol)6 (1984) 103-15, on Romulus as an ambiguous figure who creates order but
comes forth from a world without order. On Caeculus see Bremmer 1987b, 49-62.
In all this we have the exact replica of rituals like the ones qualified by Weidkuhn
1977, 172: "cultivating savagery saves civilization", or as Lincoln 1982 said about
interstitial periods and places: ''anomalies such as these-places outside space, mo-
ments outside time, people and things beyond easy classification-that are most
dangerous and most creative as well".
 180 CHAPTER THREE

founds a mythical Utopia of order and peace. Similarly, Romulus,

exsul in the social and political chaos of pre-Roman 'history', as the
first king creates a historical realm of social order. Both mythical
founders thus unite the two extremes of Aristotle's expression (Pol.
1253a 5): "A man that is by nature and not merely by fortune city-
less (apolis) is either low on the scale of humanity or above it". Both
creations are prepared by images of Saturnalian reversal and the
liberation of the fettered.

4. An interim balance sheet

The calendrical complex of the December festivals put us on the
track of the roots of the Saturnalian festival. Just like the Volcanalia,
the Saturnalia functioned as a moment of stagnation and awareness
of crisis between the two surrounding festivals. Whereas the former
articulated the critical moment preceding the storage of the corn, the
latter ritualized the moment of anxiety during the opening of the
barn. The topographical evidence lent strong support to our theory.
In the context of the immediately adjacent structures of ara Satumi,
mundus, and umbilicus-even if they cannot be as positively identified
as Coarelli supposed-(not to mention the legendary asylum) we
descry a conjunction of the following motifs: the care for the hidden
cereal treasures, the creation of temporary connections between
world and subterranean space, and the tensions and ambiguities
connected with these critical moments. It is highly significant that
the taboos connected with the Saturnalia also applied to the days of
patet mundus 171 . Finally, a number of concomitant mythical associa-
tions afforded further corroboration. On two levels-the mythical
and the pseudo-historical-there are identical references to the im-
agery of the Saturnalian 'intermezzo' in the period between chaos
and cosmos, immediately preceding the creation of a realm of order
by a primordial king.
One divine person closely connected with Saturn has gone un-
recorded so far: Lua (Saturni). The following discussion has a
twofold purpose: it provides a new interpretation of the nature of
this goddess; and, by doing so, it completes the picture of Saturn's
primordial occupations.

171 Piccaluga 1977 not only noticed this, but also argued for an ideological con-
nection between the Saturnalia and the Mundus patet: both realize an interruption,
in daily reality, of a past usually considered irreversible: the mythical past and the
'dead' past.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 181

5. A new interpretationof Lua

Although, as we have seen, scholars generally agree on the etymolo-
gy of the name (related to luollues172), there is no agreement what-
soever as to the nature of the goddess Lua 173 . A small minority of
scholars regard her as an exclusively mild and benificent power who
has the control over the germination of the seed 174 ; according to
many others, she has a purely negative nature, since her name
betrays the function of 'destruction' 175 . Finally, some scholars opt
for an ambivalent nature displaying both positive and negative
aspects 176 . Her name occurs in the famous series of divine couples
given by Gellius 13, 23: Luam Saturni, Salaciam Neptuni, Horam Quiri-
ni, Virites Quirini, Maiam Vulcani, Heriem Iunonis, Moles Martis,
Nerienemque Martis. Scholars agree that the first elements of these
combinations, being abstract nouns, consistently indicate a quality
or modality of the god whose name is added in the genitive. Most
of them are transparent: we can distinguish the 'jumping quality' of
Neptunus, the 'will' (or 'impulse') and the 'male forces' ofQuirinus
and the 'masculine strength' of Mars. I shall not dwell on these
much-discussed 177 names and functions. However, it will be expe-
dient to single out Maia Vulcani for a brief discussion in view of the
correspondence between Vulcanus and Saturnus as gods in control

172 There are very few exceptions: Radke 1965, 166; idem 1987, 89; K. Kere-
nyi, Altitalische Gotterverbindungen, SMSR 9 (1933) 17-28, esp. 18, both utterly
improbable.
173 Jan Bremmer drew my attention to M. A. Marcos Casquero, Lua Saturni,
Helmantica31 (1980) 207-31, an article that had escaped me. I am also indebted to
Monserratjuffresa, who was so kind as to furnish me a copy. The author argues
that Saturn was essentially a negative and fearful god connected with funerary
ideology and only gradually became associated with agrarian qualities. He connects
Saturn with the human sacrifices of the Argei. Accordingly, Lua is the personifica-
tion of 'destruction' and as such fits into the Saturnian atmosphere of death.
174 Radke and von Domaszewski, quoted above n.41.
175 For instance Wissowa 1912, 208: "eine unholde Macht, die man zu versoh-
nen wiinschte, .... der von lues gewiss nicht zu trennen ist .... ; Feindin der
Saaten, also gewissermassen das feindliche Gegenspiel ihres Kultgenossen
Saturns"; Latte 1960, 55 n.3: "verderbliche, zerstorende Macht"; Eisenhut, in:
KleinePauly III, 743: "die vernichtende Macht".
176 So Dumezil 1956, 99-115 and idem 1966, 271, since the 'dissolution' of the
enemy weapons l}_aspositive effects for the Romans.
177 K. Latte, Uber eine Eigentumlichkeit in der italischen Gottesvorstellung,
ARW24 (1926) 244 ff., esp. 251 ff.; F. Altheim, Altitalische Gotternamen, SMSR
8 (1932) 146-65, esp. 162 ff.; K. Kerenyi, Altitalische Gotterverbindungen, SMSR
9 (1933) 17-28; W. Warde Fowler, The ReligiousExperienceof the RomanPeople(Lon-
don 1933) 481-5; Radke 1965, 24-36; 1987, 88 f.
182 CHAPTER THREE

of the critical moments of stagnation between the festivals of Consus

and Ops, and above all in view of the complex natures of their
parhedroi.
First, it should be noted that nowhere in Latin literature Lua
Mater, as the destroyer of the enemy weapons, is identified or even
connected with Lua Saturni, who-according to the practically
unanimous judgment of scholars-must have had a function in
agricultural ideology. In my view, the origin of the confusion con-
cerning the nature of the goddess Lua must be sought in the unneces-
sary but common assumption that there was only one goddess, who
must have combined the qualities of both Lua Mater and Lua Satur-
ni. And it is exactly the case of Maia Vulcani that may warn us
against the facile identification of two indigitamentathat go under one
name.
Maia Vulcani cannot be anything else than "das hemmungslose
Anwachsen der Feuerbrunst" 178 (the unbridled fanning of the fire)
connected as she is with the stem mag- (magnus, maior). It was quite
customary to make sacrifices to such negative deities, as the cults of
Febris, Tempestates, Verminus, Robigus, etc. prove, besides the
example of Vulcanus himself. Now, we should not forget that these
abstract nouns naturally carry the polysemy of their basic meaning.
This opens up the possibility that in othercombinations or contexts,
Maia, as 'growing power', may have quite different and even posi-
tive connotations. In this case this semantic doubling can be clearly
demonstrated since as goddess of the month of May (Maius), Maia
was the deity of the growing force in nature. So it is irrefutable that
we have to deal with two quite different numina having the same
name, though very different, and even contrasting, characters.
Returning to Lua, our first inference can be that the Lua Mater
who controls the destruction of the enemy weapons is not necessarily
the same as the Lua Saturni in the series in Gellius. The stem Lu-may
have destructive connotations, as appears from the function of Lua

178 Latte 1960, 130. I wonder whether perhaps an implicit reference to this
meaning is hidden in Varro, L.L. 5, 70: Ignis agnascendo.Ab ignis iam maiorevi ac
violentia Volcanusdictus. Of course, this is "eine seiner unsinnigsten Theorien"
(Eisenhut, Volcanus, RE Supp. XIV, 949); "fantaisiste" 0- Collart, Varron.De
L.L. livre V [Paris 1954) 188). But two things stand out: the most characteristic
quality ofVolcanus is violentia(so already in Plaut. Men. 330, ad Volcaniviolentiam),
and by the term maiore-i.e. the word whose stem is present in Maia Volcani-
reference is made to the fanning force of Volcanus.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 183

Mater, who is probably related to lues, but etymologically its mean-

ing is by no means exclusively negative. In my search for the authen-
tic meaning of Lua Saturni, I shall start from the generally accepted
fact that the abstracts in Gellius' list denote essential or conspicuous
qualities or activities of the gods thus named. We have found that
Saturn was the god whose festival was specifically connected with the
ambiguous moment of the opening of the subterranean corn sup-
plies. If this is so, it is only consistent if we try to explain Lua in the
light of the original and most obvious meaning of the stem lu-, as has
been done for the parallel case of Maia Vulcani. Of course, the
predominant meaning of luo in historical sources is 'to pay', but it
is certain that the original meaning is 'to make loose, to set free, to
liberate' , also 'to redeem' ( for instance a mortgaged property) 179 .
Characteristically for Rome, this original meaning has been pre-
served above all in the conservative language of law 180 . The combi-
nation of the basic function of Saturn and the basic meaning of luo
provides a most natural explanation of the nature of Lua Saturni.
This goddess embodies one of Saturn's major and original qualities:
to 'make loose, set free, liberate' the stored supply and make it
accessible for human use 181 . Though perhaps sharing Saturn's

179 See OLD s.v. n.15; LEWs.v.: 'lose, befreie, bezahle, lose auf, vernichte'.
Significantly, Varro L.L. 8, 36, when looking for words that yield the same form
though belonging to a different paradigma, mentions Lua and Luoin one phrase:
ut cum dico ah Saturni Lua Luam, et ah solvendoLuoluam: ''when I say accusative Luam
from Saturn's Lua, and also luam as future of Luo'making loose'."
180 Also in the word lues Latin preserved the two basic notions: 1) loosening in
the sense of destruction > decay, pestilence; 2) that which is not bound > fluid
water.
181 G. Dumezil, La courtisaneet Lesseigneurscoloris(Paris 1983) 172, does explain
Lua as ''la Dissolution'', but tries to interpret her function in the context of the
"crise hivernale" with the associated dissolution of the social hierarchy. Indepen-
dently, J. Scheid, Romulus et sesfreres: le collegedesfreres arvales, modeledu cultepublic
dans la Rome des empereurs(Paris-Rome 1990) 219, comes very close to my position
when, in an aside and without reference to Lua, he suggests that Saturn's main
function is that of "dissolveur" connected with the opening of the earth and the
production of the corn reserves. Both in Paris and in Leiden, colleagues reacting
to my paper on this subject, pointed out that the parallelism with the threatening
intermezzo of Vulcanus in August would be even closer if Lua could be seen as a
negative quality of the ambivalent Saturn (thus unconsciously reviving the ideas
first phrased by Wissowa [see above n.175]). This suggestion might also restore the
identification with Lua Mater, since the enemy weapons were also said to be sacred
to Vukanus. Though I would not principally rule out the possibility of Lua Saturni
being a negative quality of Saturn ( as the originator of overheating or decay of the
corn?), I still prefer the ideas as presented in the text. The day of the opening of
184 CHAPTER THREE

ambivalent nature in terms of the peculiar mixture of expectation

and anxiety of his festival, she is not to be identified with the Lua
mater who presided over the destruction of the enemy weapons and
who represented a different aspect of luo.

6. The originof the Saturnalianimagery:the relationshipof myth and ritual

As I remarked before, I do not claim to have detected theoriginal na-
ture of Saturn. I fear that our evidence is too lacunary ever to arrive
at definitive and all-embracing conclusions. However, our new in-
terpretation certainly does nothing to contradict the general surmise
that the god was somehow connected with the stored corn and its
chthonic ambiance. This function associates him with Consus 182,
but we are now able to distinguish the differences between their
functions as well. Whereas Consus protects the hidden corn sup-
plies, Saturn-assisted by, or in his quality of, Lua Saturni-
controls the critical moment of the opening and release of the sup-
plies. My suggestions thus focus on the specific function during his
unique festival of December 17th.
It now remains to investigate whether this interpretation can in-
deed elucidate other remarkable traits of his cult and ritual. If so,
this would lend additional support to our theory. Let us begin with
the iconographical peculiarities. The god's structural condition of
being in chains, as opposed to his exceptional liberation on the
day(s) of the Saturnalia-probably an authentically Roman
representation-is perfectly understandable as an image of the
'liberation' of the 'imprisoned' corn. This may have fostered the
adoption of the Greek Kronos iconography: the iconographic fea-
ture of the veiled head suits the 'hidden' god of the corn supply, just
as the mythical sickle suits his connections with the reapedcorn (and
not with sowing).
As the festival of the opening of the barns, the Saturnalia bears
the nature of an interstitial festival, an anomic stagnation of the nor-

the stores is in itselfsufficiently precarious and threatening to explain the parallelism

with the Volcanalia in August. And there is not one parhedrosin the list of Gellius
which in itself carries a negative notion. Only in combination with a negative god
(such as Vulcanus) the qualification may attract a negative connotation as well.
182 V. Basanoff, Regifugium(Paris 1943) 61-9, explains Saturn as the god who
has control of the aerariumin the cellars of his temple, and who functions as ''le 'con-
ditor' de la moisson commerciale".
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 185

mal course of the year. The elements ofiustitium, role-reversal, orgy,

licence and, more particularly, the freedom to gamble-an implicit
allusion to the open options during the anomic situation-are mar-
kers of the ambiguous atmosphere of these festivals of crisis. It is
these aspects, in addition to the calendrical position close to the end
of the year, which have.led some scholars to isolate the Saturnalia
from the agrarian festive complex of December and to view it as a
festival that marked the end of the (solar) year 183 • One of their ar-
guments is the use of candles at the Saturnalia. Given its phenome-
nology there is no objection whatsoever to calling the Saturnalia a
New Year festival 184 , provided it is not deprived of its originally
cereal nature. Though an amalgamation with the solar incision of
the winter solstitium was a matter of course 185 , I hope to have
demonstrated that it is a mistake to regard the Saturnalia itself as a
solar New Year festival. As to the candles, they may have been de-
rived from a ritual accompanying a neigbouring caesura in the solar
year. However, it would be rash to deny them an authentic place in
the original Saturnalian rites out of hand. The opening of the sub-
terranean barns and the production of affluence from their dark
abode may have elicited associated rituals such as making light by

183 See the literature mentioned above p.167. Bomer 1961 III, 428 ff., in par-
ticular, has attempted to deny the Saturnalia their agrarian functions. Cf. L. Deub-
ner, Kleine Schriften(Konigstein 1982) 119 f.: "Die Saturnalien sind ein Neujahrs-
fest, weil man das neue Jahr auch mit der Wintersonnenwende anfangen !assen
konnte''. More recently, Graf 1985b, 91, adopted a similar position: ''Dass es
dabei urspriinglich um ein Neujahrsritual handle, wurde schon lange vermutet und
diese Deutung verdient gegeniiber der gelaufigen eines Festes von Ackerbauern am
Ende der Aussaat den Vorzug''. However, agrarian festivals, and especially fes-
tivals of the primitiae (compare above all the Greek Anthesteria and the discussion
above p.170), can and often do develop features of a New Year festival. Moreover,
in the New Year theory the indisputable cohesion with the other two festivals of the
corn complex (Consualia and Opalia) is ignored. The originof the Saturnaliaas a
festival of Saturn at least requires an attempt to explain its originalfunction from
the calendrical context. And, last but not least, it is very hard to imagine a Roman
god having originated as the personification of such an abstract idea as New Year.
These objections by no means affect the value ofGrafs analysis of the Saturnalian
features of the festival, nor do they question the fact that in later times the Saturna-
lia unmistakably developed into a genuine New Year festival. See the following
foot-notes.
184 Pouthier 1981, 125, somewhat poetically calls the Saturnalia "un sacre de
transgression, qui permet de depasser le 'tunnel saturnal' ".
185 Solstitialis dies qui Satumaliorumfesta consecutusest, Macrob. Sat. 1, 2. The
Saturnalia were, in later times, amalgamated with the Brumalia and the ceremo-
nies of the 1st of January. See: Meslin 1970, passim.
186 CHAPTER THREE

the kindling of candles. At first sight this may perhaps seem a rather
adventurous construction, but this is precisely the way that free as-
sociation works 186 .
Recognition of this function might even help to explain an enig-
matic expression handed down by Festus 106 (L) in the context of
the Saturnalian sacrifice: Lucemfacere dicuntur Saturno sacrificantes,id
est capita detegere('making light' is said of those who are sacrificing
to Saturn: it means that they uncover their heads). The problem is
that the well-known custom of sacrificing capiteapertoto Saturn can-
not possibly explain nor have given rise to the curious expression lu-
cemfacere. Festus' explanation that lucemfacere originally meant 'to
uncover the head' looks very much like a secondary autoschedias-
ma. What then can its original meaning in the context of the cult of
Saturn have been? The expression calls to mind technical terms such
as sublucareand conlucare,which, as Festus 474 (L) says, mean: ramos
earum(i.e. arborum)supputareet velutisuptus lucemmittere.Conlucareautem
succisisarboribuslocum inplereluce187 . At the very least these expres-
sions confirm that abstract formulas such as 'to make light' may
refer to very practical and concrete actions like removing the obsta-
cles which prevent the daylight from shining through. This could
also be implied in lucemfacere as terminus technicus for the removal
of the barrier to the subterranean supplies, which was perhaps ritu-
ally celebrated with the kindling of candles and certainly with a capite
apertosacrifice to Saturn, and thus came to be projected on this more
visible rite of 'disclosure'.
Finally, there remain two questions of priority: the priority of the
liberation of Saturn as compared to the 'liberation' of the revellers,
especially the slave population, and the priority of myth and ritual.
As to the former issue, the question of 'which was first?' is particu-
larly justified if we recall that Macrobius Sat. 1, 8, 5 and Statius Silv.
1, 6, 4, denote the fetters of Saturn by the term compedes(slave-

186 It is certainly not more adventurous than the current interpretation of the
kindling of candles during Easter night in the orthodox liturgy. It is understood as
the sign that Christ has risen from the grave and so has returned to the light oflife
and that now light shines in the dark announcing the hope of a new salvation.
Although associations with the rising sun (or the New Year) no doubt may inter-
mingle, it would be reductionist to derive the rite from such 'natural' origins.
187 "Sublucare is to cut off the lower branches of trees and thus-as it were 'sup-
tus' [the meaning of this old word is unknown H.S.V.]-make light. Conlucare,on
the other hand, is a to enlighten a place by cutting down trees''. Cf. Cato De agr.
139, lucum conlucare;Colum. 2, 21, 3.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 187

chains). Nobody to my knowledge ever gave a more lapidary view

of this relationship than W. B. Kristensen in his expression already
quoted above: "Saturn was a slave himself' 188 . When Bomer
judged this to be '' einfach absurd'', his negative verdict was dictated
not in the last place by his wish to dissociate the religious aspects of
the Saturnian cult entirely from the carnivalesque relaxation of the
Saturnalia, an objectionable point of view.
As a result of our investigation we are now able to formulate some
conclusions with more conviction and on a more solid basis than has
hitherto been possible. First of all, it will be useful to outline the
difference with the case of Kronos. In his case, it proved impossible
to establish a particular agrarian or social activity which could serve
as the kernel of the myth and ritual complex. If there had been an
agrarian origin of the festival, it may have been of the nature of the
Roman Opiconsivia and Consualia of August: celebrations of the
end of the harvest and of the storage of the corn. But we cannot be
sure. However, whatever its original nature, myth and ritual should
be understood as two parallel expressions of the climate of ambiguity
surrounding the break between the Old Year and the New, an in-
terpretation which, of course, was supported by the calendrical posi-
tion of the Kronia in the final month of the Athenian year.
In Rome the situation is different. Here I do believe that I have
found the original agrarian kernel of the festival. Its nature as a
primitiae festival provides a most natural explanation for both the im-
ages of abundance and the tension and ambiguity in Saturnian cult
and ritual. We have analysed Saturn's basic function on the 17th of
December and concluded that all the characteristic features of the
god and his festival can be naturally explained as metaphors, trans-
formations and ritualizations of this function: his nature as a deus
otiosus during the rest of the year, his 'liberation' (luere) and activity
on the day of his festival, his iconography and various rites. Hence
we drew our conclusion that (supposed) connections with the
caesura in the solar year must have been the result of a secondary
assimilation with neighbouring festivals, an assimilation which no
doubt was fostered by the typical atmosphere of crisis common to
both types of caesura.
It is this very nature of a crisis festival that also provoked a ritual

188 Above p.133.

188 CHAPTER THREE

celebration with demonstrative role-reversal, suspension of norms

and law, and licence. We have repeated time and again that this
ritual was characteristic of various ki~ds of critical periods: the
calendrical (solar) end of the Old Year, agrarian incisions such as
primitiaefestivals 189 , social events such as initiation, the temporary
return of the dead, etc. Consequently, it is hardly justified to isolate
the liberation of the slaves from the total complex and take it either
as an imitation of or as a model for the liberation of Saturn. The
temporary liberty of the subdued, being a typical aspect of anomic
licence, simply belongs to the fixed taxonomy of crisis festivals in
general. On the other hand, we should not forget that this specific
festival of reversal focused on slaves and servants, while other rites
~oncentrate on different groups of those deprived of rights, such as
women. The very concrete liberation of Saturn from his bonds, as
an image of the 'liberation' of the cereal stores, may have fostered
this specificfocus of the festival. So I would conclude that the redemp-
tion of the god and the liberation of the slaves both reflect different
though closely associated aspects of the 'original Saturnalia': one as
an image of the opening of the corn supplies, the other as a more
general concomitant of the critical nature of this festival. Of course,

189 It may be worthwhile to pay attention to a curious and unexplained ritual

connected with the parallel complex of the festivals in August. They, too, bore a
critical nature as we have seen: there is elation and freedom at the Consualia (Dion.
Hal. 2, 31, 2: primitiaesacrifices; Varro ap. Non. p. 21: gymnastic games; Plut. QR
48, Dion. Hal. 1, 33, 2, Fast. Praen. 15 Dec. holidays for horse and donkey; tu.di
in the circus), followed by the cruel sacrifices at the Volcanalia. The Volcanalia
themselves were marked by the fact that people celebrated the festivities in 'huts'
(Paul. Nola Carm. 32, 137 ff.; cf. I. Opelt, Die Volcanalia in der Spatantike, VChr
24 (1970) 59-65), a sign of 'interstitial' relaxation: Bremmer 1987b, 81, but this is
only attested for late antiquity. More important is an enigmatic note by Varro L. L.
6, 21, on the Opiconsivia of the 25th of August. On this day a sacrifice was made
in the shrine of Ops Consiva in the regia, access to which was restricted to the
Vestales and the sacerdospublicus (probably the pontifex maximus). Varro con-
tinues: "Is cum eat, sujfibulum ut (aut mss.) habeat", scriptum.Aut in the manuscript
tradition does not make sense at all; the correction haul Uordan, TopographieII, 273
f.) yields nonsense, since in that case the restriction cannot but refer to the Vestales,
which is definitely refuted by is. So the only alternative is ut, generally accepted by
the editors. However, this conjecture has not at all elucidated the meaning of the
text, as Pouthier 1981, 60 f., demonstrates. The problem is that according to Festus
4 74 (L) the sujfibulumis an oblong piece of white cloth with a coloured border which
the Vestals used to wear whenever they offered sacrifice. I think that the enigma
of the male priest wearing a garment normally restricted to the Vestales on one
specific occasion can be solved elegantly by taking it as an instance of ritual
reversal.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 189

given the common source of these two separate lines and the rela-
tionship of their imagery, it was, right from the beginning, impossi-
ble to keep them apart.
A number of ancient authors expressed their views on the priority
of myth and ritual explicitly. Iustinus 43, 1, 3, writes: "The first in-
habitants of Italy were the Aborigines, about whose king Saturn it
is told that he was so righteous that under his rule nobody had a
subordinate function (neque servierit) nor private possessions. All
things were common property and this was not distributed, as if
there was one patrimony for all people together. By way of com-
memoration of this example it was instituted that during the Saturna-
lia all differences in juridical position are suspended (exaequatoomni-
um iure) and that everywhere slaves dine with their masters". Thus
Iustinus views the myth (which is in his perception [legendary] histo-
ry) as the scenario for the rite and, as we have seen, many Romans
shared this view. In his defence of a humanitarian treatment of
slaves, Seneca refers to the Golden Age, arguing that it was this
period which saw the origin of the Saturnalia with their one day of
liberty for the subjected. Similarly, Lucan regards the Saturnalia as
a present given by Saturn.
In contradistinction to the scholarly dissension on the very same
question concerning Kronian myth and ritual, modern scholars are
unanimous in their condemnation of the ancient Roman view. This
is quite understandable, given the common hesitation to grant early
Rome her own mythology 190-let alone to grant it priority over
ritual-and the obvious Greek origin of numerous mythical ele-
ments. The smooth assimilation of Greek mythical material by
Rome was, of course, highly fostered by the similarity between Kro-
nia and Saturnalia. It has to be admitted that we know nothing
about the existence of an early Roman myth of Saturn. The possibil-
ity should not be discarded that the function of Saturn generated a
spontaneous autochthonous representation of a god/king who in-
troduced the cultivation of corn and civilization and as such was the
signum for affluence 191 , peace and order, but we shall never reach

190 See the surveys of the debate on Rome's mythology in: E. Gabba, Dionigi,
Varrone e la religione senza miti, RS/96 (1984) 855-70; E. Montanari, Problemi
della demittizzazione romano, SMSR NS 10 (1986) 73-100; idem, Identitaculturale
e conflittireligiosinellaRoma repubblicana
(Rome 1988).
191 It would be helpful if we could prove 1) that the ivory statue of Saturn men-
tioned by Plin. NH 15, 32, was an old relic, and 2) that the fact that this statue was
190 CHAPTER THREE

beyond the realm of hypotheses. At most we can conclude that for

Saturnalian ritual an often assumed Greek origin is both unneces-
sary and unlikely. The origin of Saturnian myth cannot be deter-
mined unequivocally, although Greek components cannot be de-
nied. However, its relevance is not dependent on origins, as I shall
show in the next section.

4. LOOKING FORWARD: THE CONTINUING STORY OF MYTH AND RITUAL

The preceding sections of this chapter have confronted us with am-

biguities and paradoxes which were connected, directly or indirect-
ly, with the ambiguous nature of the Saturnian festival in Decem-
ber. I have argued that the specific tension connected with the ritual
opening of the new stores naturally entailed other rituals displaying
a similar mixture of both cheerful and disquieting aspects: the Satur-
nalia as we know them from late republican and early imperial
times. We also perceived traces of a myth which, probably derived
from Greek models, moulded the atmosphere surrounding the
Saturnian ritual into the image of a mythical reign of king Saturn,
which betrays comparable elements of ambiguity. Though on the
one hand generally pictured as a realm of bliss and happiness on the
brink of history, it is also described as the amorphous period before
human civilization during which man led a slothful, and indeed
beastly life 192 . This ambiguity, as we have seen, is common to vari-
ous representations of the alternative world: images of the hereafter,
the new heaven and earth of messianic movements, the Never Never
Land of fairy tales, and fantastic descriptions of foreign nations.
These images also developed in Rome outside the limited region of
myth and ritual discussed so far, and they sometimes betray strong
influences of Saturnian ideology, including its ambiguous nature.

filled with oil indicates in the statue ''ii depositario di quella possibilita di interruzi-
one per un ritorno, sia pure momentaneo, alla dimensione mitica", as Piccaluga
1974, 312 f. tentatively suggests. Personally I would explain this strange custom as
a sign of the material affluence produced by the god.
192 On the development of this contradiction, which does not specifically con-
cern us here, and its two constituents see: Gatz 1967, passim; F. Bomer, P. Ovidius
Naso. Die FastenII (Heidelberg 1959) 242. There are very complete discussions in
Novara 1983 and Kubusch 1986. For further references to specific ancient authors
see below n.199.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 191

The following short impressions do not claim to give a thorough

reconsideration of these much discussed topics, but aim to illustrate
the vitality of these concepts, to expose the astonishing incon-
sistencies they may provoke, and to offer some suggestions which
may help to solve-or at least place in a different light-a number
of vexed problems that haunt the discussion of Saturnian topics of
late antiquity.

1. The ambivalenceof the Saturnalian king: Mythical topicalities

The aureasaeculaof Saturn have disappeared. To go by the Augustan

poets this is a tragic and regrettable loss. The Saturnalia, generally
conceived as an imitation of this Golden Age, lasted only a few days:
non semperSaturnaliaerunt.Judging from Roman religious and secular
laws and customs, this was considered a necessary and fortunate re-
striction. In the paradox manifest from these two observations we
encounter the fundamental ambivalence of the Saturnalian dream.
One can focus either on the benificent or on the disquieting aspects
of the alternative world and the choice for either one is basically de-
pendent upon one's representation of the alternatives. The happy
vision of the Saturnia regnaisolates the blissful aspects and closes its
eyes to the precarious side of the picture. In this view it is deeply to
be regretted that Utopia only exists in myth or-for a restricted
period-in ritual. But to regret a loss is to desire: is it really
unimaginable that the blissful reign of Saturn should regain a histor-
ical existence, for instance under the ideal rule of a divine prince?
Is Saturnian Utopia really unreal? This is the-hopeful-question
that resounds in Augustan poetry.
The opposite reaction of reserved refusal, on the other hand, fo-
cuses on the anomic features of Utopian imagery as an undesirable
alternative to the law and order of regular society. Its advocates hail
the restrictions of Utopia as embodied in its relegation to myth or
to brief ritual. But applause may conceal anxiety. Can we be sure
that anomic Saturnia regnanever come to reality, for instance under
the reign of an arbitrary autocrat who creates his own insane topsy-
turvy world? It is this-anxious-question that resounds, half a cen-
tury after Augustus, in a very peculiar piece of literature.
Two Saturnalian kings each represent one of the two polar conno-
tations of Saturnalian Utopia. They call to mind the two tyrants of
the first chapter of InconsistenciesI, each of which embodied one of
the qualities of arbitrariness: the blessed high-handedness of the
192 CHAPTER THREE

good and beneficent father, the sinister despotism of the cruel dicta-
tor. The following sketches will illustrate the paradoxical coexistence
of these opposites in one period of Rome's history.

a. Redeunt Saturnia Regna

With his fourth Eclogue, Vergil coined the literary concept of the
returning Golden Age 193 for ages to come. The questions concern-
ing the previous history of the idea and of its literary models have
sollicited an awe-inspiring quantity of studies, which I shall not even
begin to cite 194 . The particular aspects I am interested in here may
well be treated without the burden of an extensive bibliography.
The Saturnia regnaof the fourth Eclogue bear the typical charac-
teristics of an utopia d 'evasione195 . Not only will human society be
freed from the stains of war and sin, but nature itself will recover its
original automatonaspects. Not a little part of the poem's beauty,
however, is due to the amalgamation of mythical references and
what can at least be understood as references to actual history. The
new born child, though anchored in actual history, remains suffi-
ciently anonymous to allow the application of mythical predicates
and-for that matter-to defy all the desperate scholarly attempts at
identification 196 . In other words, the deliberate vagueness sur-
rounding the protagonist and the emphatically mythical context al-
low an unrestricted Utopian, if not messianic, imagery. However,

193 Though it is incorrect to say that "The Augustan period was the time when
the myth of the Golden Age stopped developing and became a fixed poetic, politi-
cal, and philosophic symbol": K. J. Reckford, Some Appearances of the Golden
Age, CJ54 (1958) 79, rightly contested by Galinsky 1981, 193.
194 On the prehistory of the idea see above all: A. Alf<.ildi'sseries of studies un-
der the title RedeuntSatumia regna,cited above p.151 n.82. Surveys of the literature
on the fourth Eclogue can be found in: H. Naumann, AU24, 5 (1981) 29-47; W.
Krauss, Vergils vierte Ekloge: Ein kritisches Hypomnema, in: ANRWII, 31, 1
(1980) 604-45; W.W. Briggsjr., A Bibliography ofVergil's Eclogues, in: ANRW
II, 31, 2 (1981) 1270-357, esp. 1311 ff. They largely confirm a remark made by K.
Buchner, P. VergiliusMaro, derDichterderRomer(Stuttgart 1961, originally published
as the RE article on Vergil) 175: "Die vierte Ekloge konnte einen RE-artikel allein
fiillen."
195 See for the expression and its implications above p.125. A perfect illustra-
tion of the Utopian nature is the discontinuance of the distinctions between white-
simple-pure and purple-beautiful-decadent clothes: M. E. Irwin, Colourful Sheep
in the Golden Age: Vergil, Eclogues4, 42-43, EMC 8 (1989) 23-38.
196 See Briggs, o.c. (above n.194) 1314 ff. for a choice of parenthood, to which
the ingenious suggestions of G. Binder, Lied der Parzen zur Geburt Octavians,
Gymnasium90 (1983) 102-22, should be added.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 193

a crucial innovation becomes immediately apparent. Though the

definitive establishment of the realm of bliss is projected into the
future, the signs of its gradual development manifest themselves
here and now. This has no precedent in either Greek or previous
Roman literature 197 and is clearly an invention by Vergil himself,
most likely inspired by a Sibylline prophecy. Whereas previous
authors employed references to the reign of Kronos or Saturn only
by way of comparisonwith a contemporary situation, Vergil is the
first author who prophesies a real return in actual ( and immediate)
reality 198 .
This by no means implies that Vergil is consistent in his represen-
tation of the Saturnia regna, ancient or modern, nor that there is so
much as a steady progression in the development of his ideas of the
Golden Time 199 . When later, in Aen 6, 791 ff., the poet lays down

197 Gatz 1967, 93-97. Cf. V. Schmidt, Redeunt Satumia Regna. Studien zu Vergils
vierterEcloga(Diss. Groning~n 1977) 56 ff. ;J.-P. Brisson, Rome et !'age d'or. Fable
ou ideologie? in: Poikilia. Etudesj.-P. Vernant(Paris 1987) 123-43, argues that the
Golden Age was at first an escape from the present, but since Vergil became a
manifesto of the future.
198 If people previously expected the coming of a world of bliss in their own
times (nunc), they did not expect it to originate in their immediate surroundings
(hie). They had to go and search for it, as the most revealing example of Sertorius
illustrates (Plut. Sertor.8 f.; cf. Sall. Hist. 1, fr.100-3 M, on which Ferguson 1975,
157). On this escapist search for Utopia outside Rome: H. Fuchs, DergeistigeWider-
standgegenRom in der antiken Welt (Berlin 1964) 11 ff. There is a vast bibliography
on the late republican expectations of the imminent return of the Golden Age. See
besides the surveys mentioned above (n.197) especially the older studies by W. W.
Tam, Alexander Helios and the Golden Age,JRS 22 (1932) 135-60, who empha-
sizes the Eastern contribution; H.J. Rose, The Ecloguesof Virgil (Berkeley 1942)
171-87; J. Carcopino, Virgileet le mysterede la /Ve Eclogue(Paris 19432), and, more
recently, R. Gunther, Der politisch-ideologische Kampf in der romischen Religion
in den letzten zweiJahrhunderten v. u. Z., Klio 42 (1964) 209-97, esp. 259 ff.; Gatz
1967, 131 ff.; Ferguson 1975, 156-66. E. Stauffer,Jerusalem und Rom (Bern 1957)
20-39, and Christus und die Ciisaren(Miinchen-Hamburg 1966) 45-101, has inves-
tigated the similarities between Jewish and Roman messianic expectations, reveal-
ingly albeit not without some exaggeration. See: P. Prigent, Le culte imperial au
le siecle en Asie Mineure, RHPhR 55 (1975) 215-35, and on the eschatological and
apocalyptic atmosphere in the first century AD: M. Bodinger, Le mythe de Neron.
De !'Apocalypse de Saint Jean au Talmud de Babylone, RHR 206 (1989) 21-40.
199 As I. S. Ryberg, Vergil's Golden Age, TAPhA 89 (1958) 112-31, argued.
The most notorious discrepancy is, of course, the one between the different assess-
ments of the Satumia regnain the first and second books of the Georgics. They are
circumstantially analyzed by P. A. Johnston, Vergil'sAgriculturalGoldenAge. A study
of the Georgics(Leiden 1980) and Novara 1983 II, 718-84. On other inconsistencies,
including the Aeneisand the Eclogae,see for instance: P.A. Johnston, Vergil's Con-
ception of Satumus, CSCA 10 (1977) 57-70, and J. J. L. Smolenaars, Labour in
194 CHAPTER THREE

his cards and pictures Augustus himself as the prince who will re-
store the aurea saecula of Saturn, the allusions to this realm of bliss
are of a noticeably different order. The description is restricted to
the expectation that the whole world-imperium sine fine, including
the areas outside the known oikoumene-will be subjected to the rule
of the emperor, which will result in (eternal) peace, the pax Augusta:
the world domination of Rome under a good prince prepares the in-
auguration of peace, justice and civilization 200. Augustus, in his
turn, did not keep aloof. He organized his Ludi saecularesin 17 BC,
in complete defiance of the official calculations 201. These, however,

the Golden Age. A Unifying Theme in Vergil's Poems, Mnemosyne 40 (1987)

391-405. Nor is there any consistency among Augustan poets in general. See for
instance on Tibullus: M. Wifstrand Schiebe, Das ideateDaseinbei Tibull und die Gold-
zeitkonzeptionVergils(Diss. Uppsala 1981); on Ovid: Galinsky 1981; on Manilius:
E. Romano, Teoria del progresso ed eta dell'oro in Manilio, RFIC 107 (1979)
394-408. Any period displays its own instances of personal manipulation, as is at-
tested for instance by Lactantius, who makes Iupiter responsible for the end of the
reign of justice under Saturn, clearly alluding to Cicero Rep. 3, 23; 1, 50. See: V.
Buchheit, Goldene Zeit und Paradies auf Erden (Laktanz, Inst. 5, 5-8), WJA 4
(1978) 161-85, and 5 (1979) 219-35; idem, Iuppiter als Gewalttiiter. Laktanz und
Cicero, RhM 135 (1982) 338-42. On the historical contex: 0. Nicholson, Hercules
at the Milvian Bridge, Latomus 43 (1984) 133-42, esp. 136 f. Generally on lupiter's
role in the destruction of Saturn's agrarian Utopia (by his bird sign which inspired
Romulus to build city walls): St. Scully, Cities in Italy's Golden Age, Numen 35
(1988) 69-78. For Seneca's very personal interpretation see: A. Novara, Rude saecu-
lum que !'age d'or selon Seneque (d'apres Ad Luc. 90, 44-46), BAGB (1988) 129-39.
200 A stimulating discussion of the 'cosmological' ideology of the new imperial
geography: Cl. Nicolet, L 'inventairedu monde.Giographieetpolitiqueaux originesde I 'em-
pire romain(Paris 1988), esp. eh.I 'L'annonce de la conquete du monde: Jes resgestae
d' Auguste', and eh. II 'symbolisme et allegories de la conquete du monde'. Cf. also
the reviews by F. Millar,JRA 1 (1988) 137-41 ;J.M. Alonso-Nunez, LEG 57 (1989)
53-5. For the references in the Aeneid: E. Norden, Ein Panegyricus auf Augustus
in Vergils Aeneis, RhM 54 (1899) 466-82. Generally: Ph. R. Hardie, VirgilAeneid:
Cosmosand Imperium(Oxford 1986). In this context two of Augustus' initiatives are
most significant: 1) his monopolisation of the right to hold a triumph. See: F. V.
Hickson, Augustus Triumphator. Manipulation of the Triumphal Theme in the
Political Propaganda of Augustus, Latomus 50 (1991) 124-38; 2) the construction of
the gigantic horologium, uniting the Ara Pacis, the Mausoleum and the central
obelisk into one great celebration of victory over Egypt, the Augustan Peace, and
the person and family of the emperor. See the breath-taking discussion by E. Buch-
ner, Die Sonnenuhrdes Augustus: Nachdruckaus RM 1976 und 1980 und Nachtraguber
die Ausgrabung1980/1 (Mainz 1982). A good summary of the complete Augustan
ideological program: D. Kienast, Augustus. Prinzepsund Monarch(Darmstadt 1982)
171-263.
201 Some recent surveys: B. Gladigow, Aetas, aevum und saeclorumordo. Zur
Struktur zeitlicher Deutungssysteme, in: D. Hellholm (ed.), Apocalypticismin the
MediterraneanWorld and the Near East (Tiibingen 1983) 255-71, esp. 268 ff. on Au-
gustus' pia fraus; A. Strobel, Weltenjahr, grosse Konjunktion und Messiasstern.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 195

are trifles which should not bother a Saturnian prince. Augustus was
to introduce a new age? Well, let it begin.
Not surprisingly, the motif appears to be characteristic of
Augustan poetry and its later imitations in panegyrical literature.
The Golden Age, now firmly anchored in a historical reality and
linked with a real prince, has for the moment adopted the more
realistic aspects of an ideal but not entirely imaginary period of
peace, justice and prosperity 202. Exemplarily, Ovid Metam. 15, 830
ff., describes the consequences of Augustus' rule over all the lands
and seas:
''Whatsoever habitable land the earth contains shall be his, and the sea
shall come beneath his sway. When peace has been bestowed upon all
lands he shall turn his mind to the rights of citizens, and as a most
righteous jurist promote the laws. By his own good example shall he
direct the ways of men .... " (translat. F. J. Miller, Loeb)

Ein themageschichtlicher Uberblick, ANRW II, 20, 2 (1987) 988-1187, esp.

1029-57, on the Augustan period and the fourth Eclogue.
202 See for the connections of peace and ruler-cult especially: H. Windisch,
Friedensbringer-Gottessohne, ZNW 24 (1925) 240-60; H. Fuchs, Augustin und die
antikeFriedensgedanke (Berlin 19652 [1926]) Beilage 3, p. 167 ff.; 0. Weinreich, Stu-
dien zu Martial (Stuttgart 1928) 79 f.; Sauter 1934, 17-9; S. Weinstock, JRS 50
(1960) 49 f. On its prefiguration in the late republic:J.-C. Richard, Pax, concordia,
etla religion de Janus ala fin de la Republique romaine, MEFRA 75 (1963) 303-86.
On the idea of Augustus as the divine master of the world: W. Deonna, La legende
d'Octave-Auguste, dieu, sauveur et maitre du monde, RHR 83 (1921) 32-58; 84
(1921) 77-107, especially the former article. Various motifs are already present in
Melinno's hymn to Rome (2nd or 1st cent. BC):J.-D. Gauger, Der Rom-Hymnos
der Melinno, Chiron 14 (1984) 267 ff. They are elaborated upon in subsequent
panegyrical literature, particularly by Plutarch, Dion of Prusa and Aelius
Aristides: the theme of the good king (basileus:note how in these rhetorical treatises,
as in other literature of this period, the [Greek] term for 'king' has lost the negative
connotations traditionally inherent in this notion and is commonly used in the sense
of 'emperor': R. MacMullen, Social History in Astrology, AncSoc2 [1971] 105-16,
esp. 111 n.45, and cf. Cumont 1937, index s.v. basileus)as the image of god who
rules the Kosmos.Just as all elements were in continuous strife and chaos till the mo-
ment Jupiter created kosmos, so the new lupiter has created order and civilization
out of the chaos of worldwide discord: Plut. Mor. 317 A-C; 811 D, ably discussed
by M. H. Quet, Rhetorique, culture et politique: le fonctionnement du discours
ideologique chez Dion de Pruse et dans Jes Moralia de Plutarque, DHA 4 (1978)
51-133, esp. 67 f. Cf. J.H. Oliver, The Ruling Power: A Study of the Roman Em-
pire in the Second Century after Christ through the Roman Oration of Aelius
Aristides, TAPhS 43 (1953) 873 ff. The simultaneous existence ofopposite ideas (E.
Matthews Sanford, Contrasting Views of the Roman Empire, A]Ph 58 [1937]
437-56) proves that these testimonies voice the opinion of the elite. On the ideology
of pax as the result of Roman domination in late antiquity: U. Asche, Roms Weltherr-
schaftsideeund Aussenpolitikim Spiegelder PanegyriciLatini (Diss. Bonn 1983). On the
emperor as source of justice: L. de Salvo, La 'iustitia' e l'ideologia imperiale, in:
Le trasformazionideltacultura nella tardaantichita(Rome 1985) 71-93.
 196 CHAPTER THREE

In subsequent poetry and panegyrical literature in general we per-

ceive a continuous wavering between these 'realistic' expectations of
peace and justice under an ideal ruler and the hyperbolic fairy-tale
vistas of genuine Utopia. There is more to this than the customary
tendency to employ mythical and hyperbolic images as flowers in the
crown of praise. The age of Augustus saw another revolutionary in-
novation: the prince acquired divine traits 203 . His title Augustus,
various rituals and cultic performances in Rome and the provinces
raised the emperor to a level between god and man 204 . This (semi-)
divine status obviously fostered expectations of superhuman achieve-
ments which could-and indeed do in a remarkably broad spectrum
of the sources-amount to the realization of a new Golden Age. Due
to lack of space I cannot substantiate here my conviction that it is
fundamentally wrong to discard these expectations as idle and
meaningless adulations 205 . The benefactions, aid and salvation

203 A discussion of the ideological aspects of ruler cult would require at least a
chapter, if not a book, even after the perceptive works of S. R. F. Price, Between
Man and God: Sacrifices in the Roman Imperial Cult,JRS 70 (1980) 28-43; Gods
and Emperors: the Greek Language of the Roman Imperial Cult,JHS 104 (1984)
79-95; Price 1984. I hope to return to the subject elsewhere. For the moment, I
should not omit to refer the reader to the stimulating discussion by Hopkins 1978,
197-242.
204 By way of exception I mention one fundamental study of this divine status
of the emperor: Deissmann 1923, 287-323, who pays special attention to the ter-
minological parallels in the languages of Christianity and that of pagan ruler cult.
2o 5 I have discussed this problem in: Geef de keizer wat des keizers is en Gode
wat Gods is. Een essay over een utopisch conflict, Lampas 21 (1988) 233-56. Cf.
Hopkins 1978, 199, on divine honours paid to emperors: "Nor is it enough to say
that professional orators elaborated the language of panegyric, so that it took on
an academic life of its own, divorced from reality. That is true as far as it goes; but
why did subjects and kings spend long hours listening to this inflated rhetoric of
praise? What meaning did they attach to the extravagant metaphors and similes
scattered through honorary decrees and speeches? These rococo figures of speech
recurred too often to be simply meaningless or hypocritical." Cf. ibidem213 and
A. Alfoldi, Die zwei Lorbeerbaume de.~Augustus (Bonn 1973) 10: "Die sonderbare
Auffassung des Positivismus, <lass Ausserungen der Dichter keinen Zeugniswert
fur die Vergottung des Prinzeps besitzen ( ...... ) ist noch heute nicht ganz iiber-
wunden." Alfoldi also emphasizes the conscious vagueness of most terms referring
to the divinity of the emperor (augustus,numen,genius etc.) intended to prevent
potential contestations from the side of senatorial circles (ibid. pp. 11, 42, 51). It
is generally acknowledged that one of the most important incentives to deification
is gratitude. Habicht 1970, 160-71; L. Robert, CRA/(1969) 42-64; Gauthier 1985.
The formulas of gratitude are practically identical whether addressed to divine or
to human benefactors: L. Robert, HellenicaX, 54-62. Cf. the term soterkai euergetes
addressed to a human saviour in BE 1974, 402, and exactly the same in Ael. Arist.
HieroiLogoiIV, 36. There is a very interesting Roman attestation in an inscription
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 197

procured by any person naturally raise him to a superior rank: deus

est mortali iuvare mortalem (when a mortal helps another mortal, that
is god), says Pliny, NH 2, 18, and long before him Cicero said: ho-
mines enim ad deos nu/la repropius acceduntquam salutem hominibus dando
(nowhere do men come closer to gods than in giving salvation to
others). In his first Eclogue Vergil makes Tityrus explain that it was
young Octavian who had heaped benefits upon him with the
celebrated lines:

"It is a god who wrought for us this peace-for a god he shall ever be
to me; often shall a tender lamb from our folds stain his altar" (II. 7-8).

The blessings bestowed by a ruler naturally transcend the level of

private and personal assistance. They were described in terms of
peace, order and prosperity for all subjects in the realm or the world.
Like a real god the emperor was both gratefully honoured for this
and requested to continue fostering the commonwealth 206. Images
of this blissful realm are not restricted to literary sources but equally
abound in the epigraphical evidence, a few examples of which, dat-
ing from the first decades of the imperial period, will now be present-
ed by way of illustration 207 .

accompanying a votive gift by a procurator by the name of Aravos to the god lup-
piter Tonanspro Augusti servatorissui victoria.As S. Panciera, who published the text
in RPAA 48 (1975-6) 290-3, correctly remarks, servatorisnot an official epithet here,
but constitutes an expression of personal gratitude. "L'inscription doit etre versee
au dossier des temoignages d'honneurs divins ou quasi divins adresses a Auguste
de son vivant' ': M. Le Glay, Remarques sur la notion de salus dans la religion ro-
maine, in: Bianchi & Vermaseren 1982, n. 33.
206 "Deification was merely one ritual expression of (such) hopes" (Hopkins
1978, 226). Cf. also: M. E. Clark, Spes in the Early Imperial Cult. "The Hope of
Augustus", Numen 30 (1983) 80-105. On the typical combination of gratitude and
expectation in ancient prayer see: Versnel 1981a, 63 f. The same occurs in human
intercourse, for instance in honorary decrees for benefactors. See for instance:
Symm. ep. 10, 15; W. Janell, Ausgewiihltelnschriften(Berlin 1906) and on this: D.
Baudy 1987, 11 and 26 n.99.
207 I have discussed these and other examples in Versnel 1980, 551 ff., to which
I refer for a fuller treatment and literature. For the ideological contribution by Au-
gustan art see: P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor
1988). For the coinage see: A. Wallace-Hadrill, Image and Authority in the
Coinage of Augustus,JRS 76 (1986) 66-87. For epigraphic sources: G. Alfoldi, Au-
gustus und die Inschriften: Tradition und Innovation. Die Geburt der imperialen
Epigraphik, Gymnasium98 (1991) 289-324. Interesting on the ideology of 'bliss': E.
Wistrand, FelicitasImperatoria(Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia 48 [1987])
eh. 6 (p.44-62): 'Thefelicitas of Augustus'.
198 CHAPTER THREE

A decree from Halicarnassus 208 says about the reign of Au-

gustus:
"peaceful are (eireneuousz)
now land and sea, the cities flourish by good
order (eunomia), concord (homonoia)and plenty (eueteria).This is the
acme of the production (akme kai phora) of all that is good''.
This process has been set in motion
"by eternal and immortalphusis, which has now granted humanity its
greatest blessing, by introducing (enenkamene)Caesar Augustus into
our fortunate lifetime, the man who is the father of his fatherland, di-
vine Rome, who is Zeus Patroios 209 and the saviour of the entire hu-
man race .... ''
As a token of gratitude it is decided to erect altars and bring
sacrifices to Roma and Augustus. The famous series of inscriptions
containing decrees of the Koinon of Asia on the honours concerning
Augustus' birthday and its celebrations from 9 BC 210 contain com-
parable expressions:
" ........ since divine providence has performed its highest achieve-
ment and munificence in our lifetime by bringing us Augustus and
provided him with every virtue for the benefit of humanity, thus send-
ing a saviour for us and our posterity who has ended war and put every-
thing in order. When the Caesar appeared he exceeded all expecta-
tions. Not only did he outshine the benefactors preceding him, but he
did not leave any hope to coming generations to surpass him. The
birthday of the god thus was the beginning of good tidings (euaggelia)
for the whole universe (kosmos). ... "
Similarly, inscriptions honouring later emperors, especially on the
occasion of their accession, display Utopian metaphors, as one
decree from Assos 211 in honour of the accession of Caligula 212 may
illustrate:

208 IBM IV, 894 = V. Ehrenberg-A.H.M. Jones, DocumentsIllustrating the

Reigns of Augustusand Tiberius(Oxford 19552) no. 98 a. Cf. also I.Philae II, no 142
( = Kaibel 978) where Augustus is addressed as Kaisari pontomedontikai apeiron
krateonti.
209 On the various instances of the identification of Augustus with Zeus
Patroios see: L. Robert, OMS II, 1126.
210 A complete collection and discussion in: U. Laffi, Le iscrizioni relative al-
l'introduzione nel 9 a.C. de! nuovo calendario della provincia d' Asia, SCO 16
(1967) 5-98. The quotation is taken from no VI, II. 32 ff.
2l l I.Assos no. 26, with a full commentary and parallels.
212 On the return of the Golden Age with the accession of Caligula see: R. Mac-
Mullen, Roman Government'sResponseto Crisis (New Haven-London 1976) 25 and
literature in n.5. Cf. L. Robert, OMS I, 499 ff.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 199

"Since the reign of Gaius Caesar Germanicus Augustus, with vows

implored and abided by all people, has now been officially announced,
the universe does not know a measure to its joy, every city and every
nation hastens to behold the god, realizing that the happiest age for all
human beings is now bound to begin .... ''

Although these testimonies leave no doubt as to the firm connections

between the divinity of the emperor and the truly Saturnian bless-
ings he will bring, there is, so far, no explicit reference to the Saturnia
regnain these texts. However, precisely in the context of Caligula's
reign we encounter the most striking and explicit instance of Satur-
nian imagery and terminology in a peculiar piece of literature, the
Legatio ad Gaium213 . It will be worthwhile to give some quotations
from this interesting piece of rhetoric in the translation by Mary
Smallwood 214 . In Chapter 2 it is recalled that Caligula inherited an
empire over the whole earth and sea, with all the regions in complete
harmony, an empire stretching from the sunrise to the sunset. Now,
at his accession (par. 11 ff.)
'' the Roman people, the whole of Italy, and the nations of both Asia
and Europe rejoiced. For they were all delighted with him as they had
been with no previous Emperor, not because they were looking for-
ward to obtaining and enjoying benefits as individuals or communi-

213 Similar explicit references are ubiquitous in panegyrical literature of the im-
perial period: Sueton. Tiberius 59: aureamutasti Saturni saecula, Caesar;Calpurnius,
Eel. 1, 64: alteraSaturni rejeretLatalia regna;Bue. Eins.2, 23: Saturni... . dies; Sidon.
Apoll. Ep. 5, 8,2: Saturni aureasaeclaquis requirat?; Paneg. Lat. 9, 18, 5: Adeo ut res
est, aureailia saecula,quae non diu quondamSaturno regeviguerunt,nunc aetemis auspiciis
lovis et Heraclisrenascuntur.They also occur in plastic art, though, as always, it is
difficult to prove an unequivocal connection with Saturnian imagery. There can be
little doubt, for instance, that a double herme of Diocletian and Saturn, published
by H. Fuhrmann, Zurn Bildniss des Kaisers Diocletian, MDAI(R) 53 (1938) 35-49,
indicates that "Diocletian has brought back Saturniaregna", as Nock 1972, II, 663
n. 57, phrased it (and cf. the literature mentioned by 0. Nicholson, o.c. [above
n.199] 137 n.14). Less unequivocal, though very probable, are references to the
return of the Saturnia regnain Constantinian art. See: J. Gage, Le signum astrolo-
gique de Constantine et le millenarisme de 'Roma Aeterna', RHPhR 31 ( 1951)
181-223, esp. 200; F. Bastet, Die grosse Kamee in Den Haag, BaBesch43 (1968)
1-23, esp. 9 ff.; R. A. Tybout, Symbolik und Aktualitiit bei denfel. temp. repara-
tio-Priigungen, BaBesch 55 (1980) 51-63, esp. 56. Augustus' legendary(?) foun-
tains of oil of course symbolize Saturnian affluence, although I would not exclude
influences irom the most conventional form of euergetism of gymnasiarchs-the
supply of free oil-either.
214 E. M. Smallwood, Philonis AlexandriniLegatio ad Gaium (Leiden 19702 ) with
the commentary on pp. 161 ff.; cf. A. Pelletier, Les oeuvresde Philon d'Alexandrie
(Paris 1972) 71 f.
200 CHAPTER THREE

ties, but because they believed that they now possessed a consumma-
tion of good fortune, with happiness attending it. At any rate, there
was nothing to be seen throughout the cities but altars, victims,
sacrifices, people in white clothes, garlanded and cheerful, showing
their goodwill by their happy faces, banquets, religious assemblies,
musical competitions, horse-races, revels, night-celebrations to the
music of flutes and the lyre, enjoyment, recreation, holidays, and ev-
ery kind of pleasure appealing to every sense. At that time the rich had
no advantage over the poor, nor the nobility over the common people,
nor creditors over their debtors, and masters were not better off than
their slaves; for this period gave people political equality; so that the
'Age ofKronos' described by the poets ceased to be regarded as a poet-
ic fiction, because of the prosperity and plenty, the freedom from grief
and fear, and the festivities which went on by day and night, in private
houses and in public places alike, and continued without a break for
the first seven months."

Here, then, all the Saturn(al)ian ingredients have been moulded

into one majestic hyperbole which, however, contains germs of the
anomic. The Saturnia regna have returned and brought peace,
prosperity and justice and, even more emphatically, social equality
to the unmatched extent that masters are not better off than their
slaves. I know of nothing comparable in Greek or Roman literature
among the numerous panegyrical praises of a ruler or an empire 215 .
This is the imagery of the Saturnalia, now projected onto the blissful
reign of a beloved prince. Even within the single text of the Legatio
ad Gaium, however, we observe astonishing inconsistencies. The
revolutionary concept of equality as the characteristic of the ideal
reign is only a few lines later implicitly effaced and replaced by a
different image of the wishing world. After Gaius had recovered
from a serious illness, so the text continues (20), there were new out-
bursts of rejoicing all over the world. This time it is said that
"people rejoiced as if they were now just beginning to change from a
nomadic, savage life to a gregarious, communal life, to move from the

215 For this reason I seriously doubt whether this can indeed be explained com-
pletely by references to Aratus, DraculaSihyllinaIII, and lamboulos, as Smallwood
does. I wonder if we should not rather assume more direct influence by Jewish
prophetic literature here, even if the Sibylline Oracles themselves betray Jewish
borrowing of Hellenistic Utopian imagery: F. Schmidt, Hesiode et l' Apocalyp-
tique: acculturation et resistance juive a l'hellenisme, QS 15 (1987) 163-80. The
other themes of joy at the accession, parousiaor recovery of an emperor are topical.
We find practically identical formulas in a speech of welcome to Diocletian and
Maximian of AD 291 (Panigyriqueslatines, 3, 10 ed. Galletier).
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 201

+ isolation of pens and mountain huts + to walled cities, and to give

up an existence without a guardian (anepitropeutou)
for an organized life
under a guardian (epitropo1),a sort of herdsman or shepherd of the
domesticated flock.''

Here the suspension of social distinctions is replaced by an emphasis

on the civilizing forces of order and hierarchy and this 1s agam
repeated in the great praise of Augustus in 142 ff.:
"who rightly bore the name "Averter of evil" since he lulled the
storms [of internal strife] everywhere, who healed the sicknesses com-
mon to Greeks and barbarians alike ( ...... ). This is he who not mere-
ly loosened but broke the fetters which had confined and oppressed the
world. This is he who ended both the wars ( ....... ) and cleared the
seas of pirate-ships ( ..... ). This is he who set every city again at
liberty, who reduced disorder to order, who civilized all the unfriendly,
savage tribes and brought them into harmony ..... 216 ''

Although the latter characteristics are also commonly used to

describe one of the Saturnian alternatives (focusing on the aspect of
civilization) it is perhaps not by chance that the author associated the
term 'Age of Kronos' exclusively with the other, more radical,
image of equality and sheer topsy-turvydom.
Taken together, these passages sufficiently illustrate the firm con-
nections between the idealization of the ruler and the Saturnian ex-
pectations cherished by his subjects. There can be no doubt: it was
the new monarchical ideology that fostered the promulgation of this
imagery and stimulated its projection onto contemporary society. In
other words: Saturnia regna presuppose a (Saturnian) prince (king,
monarch, emperor) 217 . This, however, immediately provokes one

216 Note how the images ofliberation from bondage and the inherent subjection
of the liberated to the liberator amalgamate. I have discussed this type of ambiguity
at length in InconsistenciesI, esp. eh. 1. In the background, presumably, is the 'con-
flict' between the appearance of Augustus as vindex libertatis(R. Scheer, Vindex
libertatis, Gymnasium78 [ 1971) 182-88; D. Mannsperger, Apollon gegen Dionysos:
Numismatische Beitrage zu Octavians Rolle als Vindex Libertatis, Gymnasium80
[1973) 381-404), on the one hand, and the shifting from libertastowards liberalitas
of the patron, on the other (H. Kloft, Liberalitasprincipis:HerkunftundBedeutung.Stu-
dienzur Prinzipatsideologie[Koln 1970) esp. 34; idem, Freigebigkeit und Finanzen, der
soziale und finanzielle Aspekt der augusteischen Liberalitas,in: G. Binder (ed.),
SaeculumAugustum I [Darmstadt 1987) 361-88).
2 17 It is a marked feature of many Utopias that they are ruled by a king. Revolts
with utopian aspects are often led by charismatic leaders who immediately declare
themselves 'king'. See above p.163.
202 CHAPTER THREE

final question, which was left unsolved in Vergil' s revolutionary

idea that the Saturniaregnawere returning hereand now: the problem
of permanence. The fourth Eclogue is silent on the end of the new
period, which, after all, forms part of a cycle. Other authors,
however, could not sidestep the problem and declared that the new
Golden Age would last for ever 218 •
In the Apocolocyntosis4, 1, 8-10, the thread from which the Fates
spin the New Age of N era turns into gold in order to make a Golden
Age but there is more: the thread has no end (neemodusest illis). Like-
wise, Calpurnius Siculus, Eel. 4, 140, speaks of an endless metal
wire (perpetuo.... metallo),and the speech to Diocletian in Panegyrici
Latini 9, 18, 55, explicitly contrasts the temporal nature of the origi-
nal Saturnia regnawith the everlasting Golden Time of Diocletian:
aureailia saecula,quaenon diu quondamSaturnoregeviguerunt,nuncaeternis
auspiciislo vis et Heraclisrenascuntur( those Golden Ages that flourished
long ago, during the short reign of king Saturn, have now come to
new life under the eternal reign of Jupiter and Hercules). These are
clear reflections of the aeternitasimperii, one of the most popular
devices of imperial ideology 219 . Its Greek pendant aionia diamoneis
already foreshadowed in Hellenistic honorific formulas 220 • Now,
the finiteness of human life-the most serious defect of the em-
peror's divinity-was also a serious threat to the unity of the em-
peror and the eternal Saturniaregna.Like all irritating complications
it could be ignored, conveniently and successfully. However, if
necessary, there were three different keys that could open the doors
to (a restricted) eternity and they were eagerly exploited. The three
are united in one passage of Ovid's Metamorphoses,in which Iuppiter
foretells the death and deification of Caesar and the rule of
Augustus 221 . The first solution is to wish the ruler an exceedingly

218 Various aspects of this problem are discussed by G. Zuntz, AION-Gott

des Romerreichs, AHA W (1989)
219 The fundamental treatment of this concept is lnstinsky 1942. Cf. also A.
Arnaldi, Motivi di celebrazione imperiale su monete ed epigrafi, RIN 82 (1980)
85-107, and Etienne 1986.
220 Instinsky 1942, 324 f. In the first and second centuries AD the idea of aionia
diamoneis restricted to inscriptions of the Eastern part of the Empire, to be 'translat-
ed' in Latin only in the third century.
221 Etienne 1986 presents a clear sketch of the development of the three differ-
ent ideas. In the first century aeternitasrefers to the personal immortality of the em-
peror after his decease as it is ritualized in the consecratio.From Trajan onwards we
perceive the notion of continuity of the imperium in its quality of saeculumaureum
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 203

long life: tarda sit 222, illa dies et nostro serior aevo (far distant be that
day and later than our own time, Ovid Metam. 15, 868, referring to
the day of the definitive deification of Augustus at his death). This
is often expressed by the wish that the emperor may live eternally.
The wish is ubiquitous in other cultures as well 223 and may give rise
to scholarly disputes on its 'exact' meaning. There are places where
aionios or aeternus cannot but refer to the actual life of king or
emperor 224, although scholars have tried to contest it on the ground
that this would imply an absurdity 225. Here the common confu-

and embodied in the continuity of the imperial dynasty. Only after 250 AD the em-
perors become aeternus,perpetuus,sempiternusduring their lifetime: '' aucun souverain
n'y echappe". However, there are remarkable prefigurations in earlier, especially
Greek inscriptions, as we shall see infra.
222 Tardus and serusare topical in these prayers for a long life of the ruler: Sauter
1934, 116-23.
223 "May the king live for ever", is a fixed expression in the Old Testament.
Hopkins 1978, 200, quotes the slogan: "May Chairman Mao Live for Ever" and,
of course, these wishes belong to the stereotyped ingredients of ritual language:
"Daman sich <lurch ein Zeitpolster von unbestimmten Umfang vom fernen Tod
abgetrennt weiss, client die Fiktion unbegrenzter Aufschiebbarkeit als Surrogat der
vermeidbarkeit" (G. J. Baudy, Exkommunikation und Reintegration.Zur Geneseund
Kultu,junktionfrii.hgriechischer Einstellungenzum Tod [Frankfurt 1980] 49).
224 In the Rosetta inscription Ptolemy V is called aionobios. Inscriptions of
Greek cities pray for the aioniosdiamoneof the emperor himself (Syll 3 798 [Cyzicus
37 AD]; !GR IV, 1608 [Hypaepis, Lydia 41 AD])- Nero makes the people of
Rhodes sacrifice for his en hegemoniaidiamones (Syll 810, 14 ff.) in 55 AD, and
under Domitian the legend aeternitasAugusti appears on coins (foreshadowed by two
isolated coins of 15 AD from Tarrago and Merida with the legend aeternitasaugusta:
Etienne 1986). Cf. the strange and unique title of a priest at Karpasia on Cyprus:
archiereadia biou tes athanasiaston Sebaston.''The title of this priesthood is, certainly
for this island, unique" (T. B. Mitford & N. Nikolaou,JHS 77 [1957] 313-4). Latte
1960, 323 n. 1, regards this as the oldest reference to the aioniadiamoneconcept. This
title would be less astonishing if the inscription did not belong to thejulio-Claudian
period, but to the late third century, since from that time onwards emperors were
generally acclaimed as aeternusor perpetuus.Cf. also the semperAugustus formula. In
literature the eternity of the emperor is frequently proclaimed. Sauter 1934,
116-37, provides a good discussion and evidence also from the period after Martial
and Statius.
225 See for instance L. Robert's refutation (BE 1973, 380 p.147) of the mistaken
interpretation of the now notorious 'eulali' inscription from Ephesos by W. Jobst,
WS 85 (1972) 235-45: "Nous doutons que aei zeis soit proprement un souhait de
vie 'eternelle'; aei n' a point la force des formules tirees de aion; c' est plutot le souhait
de longue vie, de 'continuer a vivre'." Cf. R. Merkelbach, ZPE 10 (1973) 70.
Somewhat different is Syll 3 880 l. 15, where it is wished that the emperors will re-
main in the same dignity dia pantos te tou heautonaionos, where aion is clearly the life-
time of the emperors. Cf. also aioniois kairois as an indication of the time of the
emperor: L. Robert, Sur des inscriptions d'Ephese, RPh 51 (1977) 7-14 ( = OMS
V [1989] 425-37), esp. 10: "Quant au ( .... ) aioniois, ii me semble difficile."
204 CHAPTER THREE

sion of descriptive and expressive communication takes its toll. 'Ex-

pressive communication', 'interpersonal language', 'phatic com-
munion', as they are exemplarily represented in acclamations
vel similia do not normally carry a precise and well-defined
meaning 226. Of course, the dividing line with the two other 'keys'
is not absolute. Anyway, the vota of the later principate: de nostris an-
nis tibi luppiteraugeat annos (may Iupiter take years from our lives and
add them to yours) 227 are unequivocal: they express the wish that
the emperor may outlive his subjects. In the early principate these
vows sometimes acquire a remarkably realistic notion when people
offer (part of) their own lives in exchange for the continued existence
of the ruler2 28•
The second key is the assumption that the emperor will con-
tin:ue his rule even after his death. '' ... when Augustus abandon-
ing the world he rules, shall mount to heaven and there, re-
moved from our presence, listen to our prayers ... " (Ovid Metam.
15, 869 f.) is 'translated' as it were by an inscription (GIL X, 3757
= CLE 18): Nam quom te Caesar tern/pus] exposcet deum, caeloque re-
petes sed[em qua] mundum reges.. .. (For, Caesar, when the time
comes to claim you for deification, and when in heaven you will
ascend the throne from which you will reign the world .... ). The
idea that the emperor will continue his rule in heaven 229 acquires

226 For the terminology and a further discussion see: InconsistenciesI, 18 f.

227 Tertull. Apol. 35; AFA Henzen CXCVII and CCVII; cf. Ambrosius, Ob.
Val. 43. I have discussed these specific forms of self-sacrifice in Versnel 1980, esp.
567 ff.
228 V ersnel 1980. I shall return to this phenomenon below pp. 219 ff.
229 This is the option clearly preferred by the Romans if and when they were al-
lowed a free choice, which for instance Trajan and his successors emphatically did
(Plin. Paneg. 2, 3, Nusquam ut deo, nusquamut numini blandiamur).This is particularly
apparent from the fact that they tended to reserve the term aeternitasfor the imperium
and to use the concept for the person of the emperor only in the context of his con-
secratioas is characteristic of the entire second century AD. See: Instinsky 1942, 338
f.; Etienne 1986. Accordingly, L. Deubner, Die Apotheose des Antoninus Pius,
MDAI(R) 27 (1912) 13 ff., has recognizedAion in the winged youth of the pictures
with the apotheosis. Cf. F. Cumont, L'eternite des empereurs romains, Rev. Hist.
Lit. Rei. 1 (1896) 435 ff. The idea of a dead person who still dispenses his benefac-
tions among the living and therefore is 'eternal', recalls the title of aioniosbestowed
upon functionaries who provide funds to continue their function and the concomi-
tant benefactions after their deaths. The most typical function is that of aioniosgum-
nasiarches.See: A. Wilhelm, Reisen in Kilikien. Denkschr. Ak. Wien (1896) 153 ff.;
B. Laum, Stiftungen in dergn'echischenund romischenAntike I (Berlin 1914) 46-50; L.
Robert, Documentsde l'Asie Mineure miridionale(Paris 1968), 83 ff.; idem, OMS 446
ff.; P. Veyne, Le pain et le cirque(Paris 1976) 242. It is made explicit in the formula-
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 205

very curious institutional consequences in the Constantinian

era230.
The third key is the hope that the bliss will continue under the suc-
cessors and the dynasty as a whole: " ... looking forward to future
time and coming generations, the son born of his chaste wife .... "
(Ovid Metam. 15, 835 f.), a topos in panegyrical literature 231.
All this reflects the ideology of a genuine Saturnalian king with a
one-sided focus on the beneficent aspects of Utopian imagery. The
Saturniaregnahave come back and unlike their nature in myth and
ritual they are not subject to restrictions in time: this Saturnian
realm will last for ever. The price is the highest imaginable: the
voluntary surrender of freedom. The profit is peace, rest, order.
The disquieting aspects of the topsy-turvy world are either ignored
or completely reinterpreted as literary hyperboles of justice and
equality. Slaves, by the way, remain slaves and masters masters,
even in the most excessive picture in the Legatioad Gaium.

b. Non semperSaturnaliaerunt
By way of contrast we shall now present the picture of an emperor
whose rule was characterized as 'Saturnalian' for its insane arbitrar-
iness so that its expiration was hailed with gratitude and rejoicings.
This negative image of the Saturniaregna,as represented in Seneca's
Apocolocyntosis,will only require a very short treatment, since its
Saturnalian aspects have been analyzed in previous studies and
above all recently by Nauta 232.

tion of an inscription from Assos: I.Assos, no 28, ll. 10 ff., with the commentary
by Merkelbach and further literature. On the connections with the expressions eis
aiona,di' aionos:L. Robert, OMS II, 810 ff. (cf. on acclamations of this type Inconsis-
tenciesI, 243 ff.). It becomes really intricate when we read of a heros(i.e. a dead per-
son) that he is honoured as ton par'eniautoneis aionagumnasiarchonin an inscription
from Anemourion (Cilicia): "La precision par'eniautonqui semble nouvelle, doit in-
diquer que Ja fondation couvre chaque annee Jes frais de l'annee et non ceux d'un
trimestre, etc. comme ii arrive" (BE 1968, 548).
230 See for instance S. Calderone, Teologia politica, successione dinastica e con-
secratio in eta costantiniana, in: Le culte des souverains dans ['empire romain
(V andoeuvres-Geneve 1973) 215-61. The representations, including the meaning
of the pictures with the hand from heaven, are, however, hotly debated.
23 1 It becomes a specific characteristic of the official vota of the dynasty of the
Severi: Instinsky 1942, 340 ff.
232 Nau ta 1987. Cf. also the survey by K. Bringmann, Seneca's 'Apocolocynto-
sis': Ein Forschungsbericht 1959-82, in: ANRWII, 32, 2 (1985) 885-914, and the
exemplary treatment by G. Binder, Divi ClaudiiApokolokyntosisI, II (Modelle fiir
206 CHAPTER THREE

In contradistinction to the attempts at protracting the reign of the

good Saturnian prince as described in the preceding section, the so
called Saturnaliciusprinceps233 should not extend his rule beyond the
limited period of the Saturnalia. The function of this Saturnalian
king does not occur in our sources before the principate. It is com-
monly regarded as an imitation of the Greek symposiarchos,the toast-
master of the symposion.This may be accepted provided we do not
overlook the typically Roman connotations: even if it is not sure that
princepsis the ancient title, the title rexevokes a monarchical rule only
comparable to imperial autocracy, as is also indicated by various
privileges accorded to this 'king'. Just as the blissful Saturniaregnare-
quired the existence of a monarch to bring them to realization, so
the mock king of the Saturnalia could only receive his full con-
tours as the negative of a real princeps. We are told that a 'king'
used to be appointed by lot for the festival 234 , whose most arbitrary
orders-"you drink, you mix wine, you sing, you go, you come"
(Epict. Diss, 1, 25, 8); "sing naked, throw him into cold water etc."
(Luc. Cron. 4)-had to be strictly obeyed by the other convivales.The
classic example, of course, was young Nero in his role of Saturnalian
king 235 • The custom still existed around 400 AD, for bishop
Asterios of Amaseia pictures a military festival on New Year's Day
in which one of the soldiers played the role of the emperor and ruled
with absolute power 236 . This Saturnaliciusprinceps was expected to

den altsprachlichen Unterricht, Latein [Frankfurt 19871), with the literature on pp.
58 ff. For historical references see: H. Horstkotte, Die 'Mordopfer' in Seneca's
Apocolocyntosis',ZPE 77 (1989) 113-43. Those who reallywant to know what the word
kolokuntemeant to the Greek and Roman readers of Seneca may consult J. L.
Heller, Notes on the Meaning of kolokunte,/CS 10 (1985) 67-117, who in more than
fifty very interesting pages does not succeed in convincing me that it should not be
the pumpkin that was intended, but the plant lagenan·aitself.
233 I adopt the conventional use of this term, though it cannot be ascertained
that this was indeed an 'official' title of the person who was normally referred to
as 'king'. The term occurs only in Sen. Apoc. 8, 2, but, as Nauta 1987, 85 n.51,
correctly observes, the reason may be that it is applied to the princeps Claudius.
234 Sen. Apoc. 8, 2, Satumalici'uspn·nceps(but see the above reservations); Tac.
Ann. 13, 15, 2, Jestis Saturno diebusinter alia aequaliumludicraregnumlusu sortientium
evenerateasorsNeroni;Epict. Diss. 1, 25, 8, en Satomalioislelonchenbasileus;more details
in Lucian Cron. 2 and 4. It is not by chance that Saturnalian festivals generally re-
quire a king, prince or princess (Bakhtine 1968, 5; 81). He/she both embodies the
playful arbitrariness and is the personification of happiness. This corresponds
closely to the need for kings in Utopias; see above n.217.
235 Tac. Ann. 13, 15, 2 ff.
236 PG 40, 221. Cf. Lydus, De mens. 4, 10. See: M. P. Nilsson, Opusculaselecta,
I, 247.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 207

abdicate after his short reign 237 and that is just as it should be, for
this king represented the chaotic aspects of the Saturnia regna.Against
this background it is particularly interesting that in his Apocolocynto-
sis, which has been recently explained as a Saturnalian speech held
on the occasion of the Saturnalia celebrated at the court of Nero 238,
Seneca mocks the late emperor Claudius by implicitly-and some-
times explicitly-reproaching him for having turned Saturnalian
anomy into the constitutional standard of his emperorship 239 . The
Saturnalian inversion of norms, behaviour and status is apparent
throughout the speech 240 . The rule of the foolish mock king appears

237 Lucian. Cron. 2. It is Saturn who is speaking in this passage but from what
follows it appears that he is represented by the Saturnalian king.
238 The Saturnalian aspects of the Apocolocyntosis had been recognized by many
previous scholars, but Nauta 1987 was the first to exploit this nature in order to
argue that its setting was the Saturnalian festival at Nero's court and to analyse its
possible functions in that context. On its function as marking the transition from
a horrible tyranny to a new regime of a gentle prince see also: B. Maier, Philosophie
und romischesKaisertum.Studienzu ihrenwechselseitigen Beziehungenin derZeit von Caesar
bisMarcAurel (Vienna 1985) 73-8: "Es darf gelacht werden; und woriiber? Schreck-
en, Chaos, U nsinn der Vergangenheit, das alles soil nicht mehr gefiirchtet, das soil
<lurch Spott und Lachen entschiirft werden. Ein neues Zeitalter bricht an: voila Ne-
ron!". From a political point of view: A. Winsor Leach, The Implied Reader and
the Political Argument in Seneca's Apocolocyntosisand De Clementia,Arethusa 22
(1989) 197-230: "Two points needed to be made: first that Nero's accession could
be detached from the moral taint of his mother's contrivance, and secondly,
whatever the moral issues, that Claudius was gone for good, leaving the ambiguous
fact of the succession to be accepted as a new political reality.'' On one aspect: A.
Luisi, La sconsacrazione di Claudio e l' Apocolocintosi di Seneca, in: Religionee
politica nel mondoantico(Milan 1981) 174-82.
239 There are references to literary models as well. Claudius is pictured with the
full range of anticultural features of Polyphemus. See: C. Monteleone, Seneca: !'u-
topia negata, AFLB 29 (1986) 83-154, with a full dossier of allusions to contem-
poraneous political circumstances, including the 'Golden Age' of Nero.
24o Curiously, the same features of reversal have been recognized in Tacitus'
description of Claudius' reign, which, consequently, is labelled as a deliberately sa-
tirical piece of historiography by S. K. Dickison, Claudius: Saturnalicius Princeps,
Latomus 37 (1977) 634-47 (Cf. Scheid 1984, who argues that reign and death of
Vitellius were experienced as Saturnalian expressions). There is another, minor
but striking, similarity between a historian's record and a pun in the Apocolocyntosis:
M. G. Schmidt, Claudius und Vespasian: Eine neue Interpretation des Wortes
"Vae, puto, deus fio" (Suet. Vesp.23, 4), Chiron18 (1988) 83-9, argues persuasive-
ly that the famous last words of Vespasian cannot have been the ipsissimaverbaof
the dying emperor, but derive from the same type of satire as Seneca's Apoc. 4.3,
where Claudius' last words "Vae, puto, concacavi me" are the exact model.
However all this may be, J. M. Haarberg, The Emperor as a Saturnalian King:
On the Title of the Apocolocyntosis, SO 5 7 ( 1982) 109-14, certainly is right in charac-
terizing the Apocolocyntosisas an instance of Bakhtine's 'carnivalization of litera-
ture'. Bakhtine 1968, 6-8 and 198 f., also discusses the Saturnalia. For the Satur-
208 CHAPTER THREE

in the parody of a decree of banishment in 11, 4 and the absurdities

of the administration of justice in 14. The reversal in social hierar-
chy is clear in the portrayal of Claudius as the slave of his slaves in
6, 2 and his condemnation to the punishment of being a freedman's
slave in the underworld (15, 2). A particularly clear reference to
Saturnalian licence is Claudius' condonement of gambling (14, 3,
30-1) and his condemnation to remain an eternally frustrated gam-
bler in the underworld ( 14, 4-15, 1)241 .
Nor is this all. Seneca makes his aims perfectly clear through two
explicit references to the Saturnalian nature of Claudius: si mehercules
a Saturnopetisset hoe beneficium,cuius mensemtoto anno celebravitSatur-
naliciusprinceps, non tulisset(by Hercules, if he had asked this favour
[viz. his deification] from Saturn, whose month he celebrated dur-
ing a whole year as Saturnalicius princeps, his wish would not have
been granted). In 12, 2, at Claudius' funeral the causidici,Claudius'
tools in his evil practices, are derided with the words: dicebamvos: non
semperSaturnaliaerunt(I told you: the Saturnalia cannot continue for
ever). These two sentences clearly state what the other passages im-
ply: Claudius embodied the very negative connotations of the Satur-
nia regna;he had turned the temporary mock rule and the inversions
of the Saturnalian period into a permanent misrule. His Saturnalia
were prolonged over the year and, indeed, throughout his reign.
Small wonder that all subjects rejoiced at his funeral, which itself de-
velops Saturnalian features. Claudius is condemned to continue his
extravagancies in the underworld, where he continues his Satur-
nalian rule. "So the message is clear: in the underworld Claudius'
Saturnalian licence may continue forever, but on earth it has to
stop", as Nauta 1987, 90, concludes his analysis 242 .

nalian elements of the speech I summarize the analysis by Nauta 1987. For another
supposedly Saturnalian piece ofliterature, viz. Julian's Misopogonviewed as a satiri-
cal answer to the Saturnalian gibes levelled at him during the carnivalesque festivals
of the Kalends of January: M. W. Gleason, Festive Satire: Julian's Misopogonand
the New Year at Antioch,JRS 76 (1986) 106-19.
241 Note, however, that board games are common characteristics of nether-
world imagery: E. Vermeule, Aspectsof Deathin Early GreekArt and Poetry(Berkeley
1979), 80 f.
242 There are more and different allusions in the Apocolocyntosis. His friends in
the Underworld welcome Claudius with the acclamation: heurekamen,sunchairomen,
a parody of a liturgical formula of the Isismysteries: P. Roth, Two Notes on Sene-
ca's Apocolocyntosis,Latomus 46 (1987) 806-9. However, the puns and reversals in
the Apocolocyntosis must not be exaggerated. S. Wolf, Die Augustredein Seneca's
Apocolocyntosis. Ein Beitragzum Augustusbildderfriihen Kaiserzeit(Konigstein 1986)
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 209

Just as in the case ofKronos we are thus confronted with two types
of Saturnalian princes. One is the beloved bringer of Saturnian
blessings. He is "guardian, herdsman, shepherd, saviour, benefac-
tor, autocrator' ', to repeat one of the expressions we have come
across in the panegyrical literature, and thus he is posited between
man and god. His rule is arbitrary but this arbitrariness is benefi-
cial: his subjects enjoy order, justice, prosperity. Occasionally there
is even a rare sense of equality, the most outrageous-and
unique-expression of which was that ''masters are not better off
than slaves''. However, in our eyes the price is high. All equals have
now come to share the common status of subjects. Accordingly, their
acclamations never stop during the entire imperial period: ''Saviour
of the oikoumene,Saviour of the human race, Father of the fatherland
and of entire humanity'', they acclaim the person who is in the excel-
sissimum humanisgenerisfastigium (the highest summit of the human
race) as Pliny NH. Praef. 11, has it. Voting having been suspended,
the only function left to the human voice was to break into the
praises of the Saturnian prince uni sono.This is indeed typical of Uto-
pian Pax Augusta: requiescantin pace. This prince must rule in eterni-
ty either personally, on earth or in heaven, or via his successors.
The other type represents the anomic and threatening aspects of
the Saturniaregna. His arbitrariness results in the precise opposites:
chaos and injustice. Though he is master, the Saturnalian equality
makes him the slave of his slaves. This prince must not be granted
deification, he must not live on, neither on earth nor in heaven. If
his Saturnian reign must go on, this should be in the exile of the
netherworld.
We have here a perfect illustration of both the intrinsic ambiva-
lence of the Saturnian dream and the human faculties in temporarily
focusing on either of the contradictory aspects while excluding the
other from the visual field. It is not surprising that the death of a de-
tested emperor is hailed with the same rejoicings that welcome the
accession of his successor. But it is astonishing to find this expressed
in the overt inconsistency of rejoicing in the long desired expiration
of a Saturnalian rule, which unfortunately was prolonged beyond
its term (Claudius: non semperSaturnaliaerunt), and at the same time

argues that the speech of Augustus should have negative overtones and thus be an
expression of Seneca's pudetimperii.Utterly unconvincing, see: R. Jakobi, Gnomon
(1988) 202-9.
210 CHAPTER THREE

hailing the advent of the new prince, in terms clearly referring to the
Saturnia regna,which will hopefully last for ever (Nero: aureaformoso
descenduntsaeculafilo; nee modus est illis . ... )243 . As I have argued
elsewhere 244 with respect to the ambivalent 'tyranny' oflsis, it does
not need a philosopher like Seneca to thus reveal what normally re-
mains veiled. We simply observe that Saturniaregnacan be manipul-
ated in exactly the same way as the term turannos,both in one piece
ofliterature and in social ideology, since they accommodate the very
same internal paradox.

2. The king must die. Ritual re-enactments

Ever since their publication by F. Cumont in 1897245 , the Acts of
the Christian martyr Dasius have been the subject of fierce scholarly
debate. They inform us that every year, one month before the Satur-
nalia, a soldier of the Roman garrison of Durostomium (Moesia)
was by lot appointed king for the period of 30 days. He was dressed
up as the image of Saturn (kata ten autou tou Kronou homoiotetaeit'oun
idean), wore the regaliaand enjoyed royal luxury. At the end of the
period, however, he was to kill himself with a sword at the altar of
Kronos 246 . The Christian soldier Dasius refused to play this role
and hence suffered martyrdom on the 20th of November 303 AD.
Cumont accepted the authenticity of the story, convinced by the
parallel phenomena of the Persian Sacaea festival and the substitute
kingship in the Near East in general 247• So did Nilsson 248, Wein-

243 On expectations of a Saturnian Golden Age with the accession of Nero see
above p.199 n.213 and E. Cizek, L'epoque de Neron et ses controversesideologiques
(Leiden 1972) 70-92; D. Joly, La bucolique au service de l'empire: Calpurnius in-
terprete de Virgile, in: L 'ideologiede l'imperialismeromain (Paris 1974) 42-65.
244 Inconsistenciesl, eh. 1.
245 F. Cumont, Les Actes de S. Dasius, Anal. Boll. 16 (1897) 5-15. Also in:
Knopf-Kruger, AusgewahlteMartyrakten(1929 3) 91-5; BHG (Bruxelles 19573) 151
no. 491; BibliothecaSanctorum4 (1964) 483; H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian
Martyrs (Oxford 1972) no. 21.
246 parachrema tois anonoimois kai musarois eidolois prosekomisenheauton sponden
anairoumenoshupomachairas.Cumont reads anonumois.The problem is, however, that
the god to whom this sacrifice was brought was not anonymous. Perhaps we should
consider reading anomois?
247 F. Cumont, Anal. Boll. 27 (1908) 369-72. Cf. L. Parmentier, RPh 21 (1897)
143-9. P. Wendland, Jesus als Saturnalienkiinig, Hermes33 (1898) 175 ff., adduced
the story as an argument for his thesis that Jesus played the role of the dying Satur-
nalian king. Cf. also S. Reinach, Cultes, mytheset religionsl (Paris 1905) 332 ff.; J.
B. Frazer, The GoldenBough III, 138 ff., with more reservations in VI, 412 n. 1.
248 Nilsson 1921, 208: "es ist ein orientalischer Brauch, vermutlich des Sakiien-
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 211

stock 249 and others 250 . Geffcken and Wissowa 251 , on the other
hand, rejected the historicity of the event. In this context Wissowa's
sole argument: '' class der Saturnalienkonig ( noch [my italics H. S. V.]
imJ. 303 n. Chr.!) ...... dem Saturn als Opfer geschlachtet war-
den sei, sicher als apocryph zu gelten", is significant. This state-
ment implies first, that in his view human sacrifice cannot but be a
relic of barbarisms from a hoary past, and, secondly, that the fourth
century AD had definitely passed this primitive stage. These-and
similar-presuppositions are shared by practically all the other scho-
lars mentioned, including those who accept the authenticity of the
story. The latter invariably attribute the more cruel components of
the story to Oriental models, which had changed the "innocent
cheerful custom of the Saturnalia into an atrocious human
sacrifice" 252 . All this betrays a remarkably biased conception of
Roman delicacy and humanity as opposed to a typically Oriental
cruelty. We shall keep this in mind and reserve our own comments
until we have considered another vexed Saturnian problem.
In his Deferiis Romanis 33-7, Ausonius says that the muneragladia-
toria were dedicated to Saturn:

festes von den orientalischen Soldaten auf die S. iibertragen worden"; idem, Opuscu-
la I (Lund 1951) 248-51.
249 Weinstock 1964, 399: "Das fest von Durostorum war ein Saturnalienfest,
das aber von einem Siihnfeste, wie die Sakaeen es waren, beeinflusst wurden. So
kam das diistere Ende, der Tod, allerdings der freiwilliger Tod des Saturnalienko-
nigs hinzu."
25o Kenner 1970, 91: " ....... aus dem Orient neu zustromende Einfliisse den
harmlos-lustigen Brauch des Saturnalienkonigs zu einem grausamen Menschenop-
fer gewandelt haben''; Martelli 1981, 262, sees in the Acts of Dasius a confirmation
of the fact that ''nei saturnali si compivano, annualmente, sacrifici umani. ''
2 51 J. Geffcken, Die Verhohnung Christi <lurch die Kriegsknechte, Hermes 41
(1906) 220-9; G. Wissowa, in: RML 4,440; idem 1912, 207 n.9, quoted in the the
text. Scepsis also in H. Delehaye, Les passionsdes martyrset lesgenreslitteraires(Brux-
elles 19662) 230-5, and idem, Anal. Boll. 31 (1912) 269; BibliothecaSanctorum 4
(1964) 483 f.; I. Rockow, Die Passio des heiligen Dasius (BHG 491). Ein Zeugnis
fiir die antiheidnische Polemik gegen Ende der friihbyzantinischen Zeit, in: J.
Irmscher and P. Na gel ( edd.), Studia Byzantina Folge II = BerlinerbyzantinischeAr-
beiten44 (Berlin 1973) 235-47; Musurillo, o.c. (above n.245) p. XL f. I could not
consult R. Tamassia, Saturno e ii carnevale, AFLSiena 5 (1984) 363-76. A special
interpretation was proposed by W. Weber, Das Kronosfest in Durostorum, ARW
19 ( 1916-9) 316-41. Rejecting a connection with the Roman Saturnalia he argued
that it was a thirty-day Syro-Phoenician festival for the Sun, which closed with the
'death' of Saturn, represented by the soldier. S. Weinstock, A New Greek Calendar
and Festivals of the Sun,JRS 38 (1948) 37-42, esp. 40ff., initially adopted this the-
ory, but abandoned it in a subsequent publication (Weinstock 1964, 394 f.).
252 Kenner 1970, quoted above n.250.
212 CHAPTER THREE

'' And that gladiators once fought funerary battles in the Forum is well
known; now the arena claims as its own proper prey those who towards
the end of December appease with their blood the sickle-bearing son
of Heaven." (transl. H. G. E. White, Loeb)

According to Ausonius, then, by the end of December gladiators

used to propitiate with their blood the god Saturn. These munera, as
we learn from the calendar of Philocalus 253 , were given by the
quaestors in two different periods: from the 2nd to the 8th and from
the 19th to the 24th of December. The Saturnalia fell exactly be-
tween these periods. Julian Or. 4, 156 (Hertlein I p.202-3) mentions
spectacles (theamata)which take place in the month of Kronos and
bear a horrible nature (skuthropon). He connects these spectacula,
which cannot be anything else than the munera, with the Saturnalia.
Cyrillus, ContraJut. 4, 128 (PG 76, 698) relates that during the
m~nera "some Saturn" was hidden under the ground, with his
mouth wide open under perforated stones in order to be imbued
with the blood offallen gladiators 254 . Lactantius ID 6, 20, 35, refers
to the same custom: venationes,quae vocanturmunera,Saturnosunt attri-
buta (the hunting spectacles, which are called munera, belong to
Saturn).
These and other related data have provoked another lively de-
bate. Preller, Lafaye, Wissowa and Schwenn 255 denied any essen-
tial connection between Saturn and the gladiatorial munera, mainly
on the ground that the sources are late and betray contaminations
or confusions with other ceremonies. On the other hand, Saturn as
the god of the munerafound an enthusiastic advocate in Piganiol 256 .
He argued that Saturn was a chthonic god, who, like Consus, was
worshipped by shedding blood into a pit, which he identified as a
kind of mundus. The alleged Etruscan origins of both the god and the
gladiatorial munera provided an additional argument. Although es-
pecially the latter assumption is hotly disputed 257 and, moreover,

2 53H. Stern, Le calendrierde 354 (Paris 1953) 42 ff.

254 kekruptode tis hupogen Kronos lithois tetremenoishupokechenos
hina toi tou pesontos
katamiainoitoluthroi.
255 L. Preller, RomischeMythologieII3, 17 n.3: confusion with the bloodthirsty
Saturn of Carthage; Lafaye 1896, 1570 n.1; Wissowa 1912, 467 n.2: "aus der Nii.he
der Saturnalien erklart sich die irrige Ansicht die Gladiatorenspielen fii.nden zu
Ehren des Saturnus statt"; Schwenn 1915, 174.
256 Piganiol 1923, 126-36.
257 A connection between Etruscan Satre and gladiatorial munera cannot be
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 213

we have no evidence of republican date that can unequivocally con-

firm the connection between Saturn and the munera, Piganiol did
succeed in supporting his theory with an important observation: the
republican munera of December, which were official performances
and not private initiatives as were all other munera, were organized
by the quaestors and paid for from the aerarium Saturni. The rest is
sheer hypothesis, not least his assumption that the gladiators were
dedicated to Saturn like the victims who were thrown from the Tar-
peian rock to find their death close to the temple of Saturn 258• His
theory has met with quite divergent reactions. Some scholars, in-
cluding a few authors of important recent studies on Saturn, follow
him blindly 259• On the other hand, he was circumstantially criti-

established. Although many scholars have defended an Etruscan origin of the

muneragladiatoria, others argue for Campania as the cradle of this cruel art: F.
Weege, Oskische Grabmalerei,JDA/ 24 (1909) 99 ff., esp. 134 f., advanced the ar-
gument that the Campanian pictures of gladiators are prior to the Etruscan ones.
He has convinced others, for instance: J. Heurgon, Recherchessur l'histoire, la religion
et la civilisationde Capouepreromaine(Paris 1942) 99 ff.; E. T. Salmon, Samnium and
theSamnites(Cambridge 1967) 60; P. Sabbatini Tumolesi Longo, Documentigladiatori
dell' Occidenteromano.Atti Acc. Naz. Lincei 29 (1974) I. lscrizioni dell'etarepubblicana,
283-92; Ville 1981, 1-8. Yet the following testimonies suggest an Etruscan origin:
Nie. Damasc. FGrHist 90 F 84 = Athen. 4, 153 F, says explicitly that the Romans
borrowed their munerafrom Etruria, just as they did human sacrifice (cf. however,
thereservesofPfiffig 1975, 110-12). Tertull.Apol. 15; adnat. 1, 10, says that a per-
son, whom he identifies with Dispater, with a hammer (which cannot but refer to
the Etruscan Charon) used to drag the bodies of dead gladiators from the arena.
According to Isidorus 10, 159, lanista, the trainer of the gladiators, was an Etruscan
word. Finally, there is the notorious problem of the Phersu pictures, which are very
differently explained by various authors but which can hardly be dissociated from
the venatio. See: J. P. Thuillier, Les jew: athlitiquesdans la civilisationitrusque(Rome
1985) 586 ff., who, however, opts for a Campanian origin for the munera(ibid. 338
ff.); P. Blome, Das Opfer des Phersu: ein etruskischer Siindenbock MDAl(R) 93
(1986) 97-108. D. Emmanuel-Rebuffat, Le jeu du Phersu a Tarquinia: nouvelle
interpretation, CRAI (1983) 421-38, discerns a koinein Magna Graecia, Campania
and Etruria. Phersu is the ianitor Orciwho, in a theatrical performance, must pre-
vent Hercules from abducting Cerberus (in my view an impossible theory). Cf. on
the problem of origins also: A. Honie & A. Henze, Romische Amphitheater und
Stadien. Gladiatorenkiimpfe und Circusspiele (Zurich 1981) 13-5, and F. B. van
der Meer, Ludi scenicietgladiatorummunus. A Terracotta Arula in Florence, BaBesch.
56 (1981) 87-99, who argues for a relationship between the capture ofVolsinii in
264 BC and the introduction of the munera in Rome.
258 Ibid. 126; idem, Essai sur les originesde Rome (Paris 1917) 149. Something of
the kind is related by Timaeus on the Sardinians (FHG I, 199 fr. 28): the inhabi-
tants of the isle of Sardo (Sardinia) used to beat with wooden clubs people of over
70 years and thus to chase them from high rocks. He phrases this as follows: goneis
auton thuousi toi Kronoi. Cf. above p.101.
259 Le Glay 1966, 461-4, who rightly emphasizes the fact that all the muneraare
214 CHAPTER THREE

cised by G. Ville 260 , who denies any connection between Saturn

and the munera, either in the republican or the imperial period. Ville
wishes to prove that the munera of late antiquity had an exclusively
secular function and, consequently, he is obliged to discard the tes-
timonia just mentioned. Accordingly, he regards them as projec-
tions of different ceremonies which, contrary to the munera them-
selves, did stage the horrible act of shedding human blood as a
propitiation of a god. Besides Saturn there were other gods who were
said to be daubed with the blood of human victims 261 . Iupiter
Latiaris is singled out in a number of accounts, not just Christian
ones. The blood of gladiators 262, of criminals 263 or bestiarii264 was
collected in a patera265 and thrown into the face or the open mouth
of the statue oflupiter Latiaris 266 by a person of high rank, possibly
even the emperor or one of the consuls 267 . Without any doubt this
custom refers to the damnati ad bestias, who thus undergo their
punishment, which is at the same time an atrocious sacrifice, in the
centre of Rome 268, possibly in the Colosseum and during the munera
of December. Ville suggests that this cruel sacrifice was perhaps
preserved ("conserve") because its execution was deemed to be in-
dispensable to the safety of the state. He supports his assumption
with a testimony of Prudentius c. Symm. 1, 391-2, Talia pro patriaecen-
serelitanda salute religionisopemsubternisposcereab antris (They believed
that by these expiatory sacrifices for the welfare of the state, the as-
sistance of religious powers could be called in from a subterranean

concentrated in the month of December, the same month as the festival of Saturn;
Guittard 1976, 52 f., who even adduces Ville 1960, 276 f., although the latter wish-
es at all costs to dissociateSaturn from the munera. Cf. also Martelli 1981, passim.
260 Ville 1960, 273-335.
261 Justin. Apo!. 2, 12, an idol; Tertull. Apo!. 9, 5, lupiterquidam; Prud. c. Symm.
1, 396-8, Latiari in munere,but near the ara Plutonis;Cyprian. Plebiin Evangeliostanti
epistula 2, 3, the blood fell on the face of 'a god'. Cf. Schwenn 1915, 180 n.1.
262 Prudentius Loe.cit. (preceding note); Cyrill. c. Julian. 4.
263 Min. Fe!. 30; Tertull. Apo!. 9, 5.
264 Tertull. ibid.
265 Cyprian, Plebi in evang. stanti epist. 5, homofit hostia latrociniosacerdotis,dum
cruoretiamde iugulocalidusexceptusspumantipatera.... . See on the 'finishing stroke'
at the venationesand the manipulation of the blood of slain victims: L. Robert,
Hellenica3 (1946) 151-62, esp. 161 f.
266 Cyprian. Loe.cit.; Tertull. Scorpiace7. Cf. E. Pais, II sanguine delle vittime
gustato dai sacerdoti, Rend. Ac Naz. Lincei (1922) 5-13.
267 Justin. Apo!. 2, 12.
268 Tert. Apo!. 9, 5, in ilia religiosissimaurbeAeneadarumpiorum; idem, Scorpiace7,
media in urbe;Porphyr. De abstin. 2, 56.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 215

abode). He concludes that the munera had never been dedicated to

Iupiter Latiaris, but that the blood of the victims was used as a litatio
to this god, whose very nature had always required human
sacrifices 269 .
Exactly the same, so Ville contends, occurred in the case of
Saturn, whose proximity to the 17th of December fostered the con-
nection with the munera in the same month, but who, in his view,
traditionally had nothing to do with them. Again, the existence of
official munera enabled people to continue the practice of human
sacrifice which, as an independent cultic act, had been officially sup-
pressed long before. However, this is true only for the Punic Saturn.
In the Passio Perpetuaeet Felicitatis 7, it is related that the martyrs had
to fight in a munus on the occasion of the dies natalis of Geta. Accord-
ing to custom the convicts who were to die in a venatio were made
up and dressed like priests of Saturn, that is to say: they were 'devot-
ed' to the god. Thus the law was bypassed and Saturn-in this case
the Punic variant-received his human sacrifices 270 . Italian and
Roman acounts of Saturn as the god of munera or venationes,like, for
instance, the one by Lactantius quoted above, are, in the opinion of
Ville, projections of these Punic customs.
We are thus confronted with a choice of different ideas on the
'Saturnian munera' of late antiquity, which immediately recall the
variety ofreactions to the 'Saturnalian sacrifice' of Dasius. Both dis-
cussions focus on questions of origin, tradition or influences. Ac-

269 For the evidence which connects Iupiter Latiaris with human sacrifice see:
Ville 1960, 282 n.2.
27o Passio Perpetuaeet Felicita/is(ed. G. J.M. J. van Beek, Nijmegen 1936) 18,
cogerenturhabitum induere, viri quidem sacerdotumSaturni, feminae verosacra/arumCereri.
Cf. G. Picard, Les sacerdotesde Saturne et les sacrifices humains clans I' Afrique ro-
maine, Recueildes noticeset memoiresde la societearcheologique
du departementde Constantine
66 ( 1948) 117-23. He argues that the sacerdoteswere devoted to Saturn and that they
functioned as vicarious victims: vicariofor the real priest, hence the exact imitation
in dress and appearance. The goal was, as Migne already saw: ne humani cruoris
victima Saturnus fraudaretur. Cf. idem, Les religionsde l'Afrique antique (Paris 1934)
134. Le Glay 1966, 340, holds that the venationeshave taken the place of a real
sacrifice for Saturn. A stele from Sbeitla, now in Leiden, has a venatioat the place
where all other similar stelai display a sacrificial scene. He follows Picard in regard-
ing the sacerdotesas sacratiof sorts, but recognizes a sacral grade in the term. Com-
paring the rite of sub iugum mittere, he calls them "introduits" (ibid. 359 ff.). The
evidence of Punic human sacrifices has now been conveniently collected and dis-
cussed by Simonetti 1983, 91-111, whose interpretations are, in my view, to be
preferred to the ideas of Martelli 1981, who largely covers the same subject. On
the venationature of the munus in which Perpetua had to figure see: Robert 1982.
216 CHAPTER THREE

cording to Wissowa, the Dasius story could not be authentic because

it is inconceivable that human sacrifice still existed in the Rome of
303 AD. Others only felt free to accept its authenticity by the
discovery of age-old Near Eastern parallels which could explain
its sudden appearance in a Roman setting 271. Comparably, the
alleged connection between Saturn and the Roman munera was
either explained by or used as additional proof of the traditionally
cruel nature of the god. This again turned the discussion to ques-
tions of origin: Saturn's cruelty had its origin in Etruscan cul-
ture272. For those who cannot accept this idea of survival there are
two alternatives: if the evidence is irrefutable-and this cannot al-
ways be denied, not even by Ville 273-it is supposed to refer to non-
Roman customs that had survived in less civilized, preferably
'Oriental' regions such as Punic Africa or the non-Roman ambience
of Iupiter Latiaris. However, if at all possible, it is generally
preferred to impute the reports to either malignity (Christian) or
stupidity (pagan or Christian) or both2 74.
One theoretical possibility is conspicuously absent in this survey,
namely the possibility that rituals of human sacrifice can have origi-
nated more or less spontaneously in the period under discussion.
Whenever considered at all, it is rejected out of hand, as a rule im-
plicitly, sometimes with deliberate emphasis, as in the following
quotation: "Auffallig ist, <lass bis zur Zeit des Justin us hin niemals
derartige Menschenopfer fiir denjuppiter Latiaris erwahnt werden;
auffallig ist es, <lass sie trotz der wiederholten Verbote damals ex-
istiert haben sollen; und ganz undenkbarist es, dass sie erst in spaterZeit,

271 Reinach, o.c. (above n.247) 333, curiously discovers an authentic Roman
survival in the Saturnalian sacrifice of the Dasius Acts: "l'historie de Saint Dasius
parait prouver qu'a une epoque plus ancienne ce roi perdait la vie avec la couronne
et que la fete se terminait par un de ces sacrifices humains dont Jes auteurs ont con-
serve vaguement le souvenir."
272 So, after Piganiol, most unequivocally Le Glay 1966, 463, who argues
against Ville that the muneraderive their meaning from their very position in the
month of the Saturnalia and that the conjunction of these two ceremonies can be
only explained by their common Etruscan or;igin.
273 So, for instance, his correct inference that expressions such as "in the centre
of Rome" virtually exclude any suspicion that the information in question might
be concocted.
2 74 Thus F. Cumont, RP 21 (1897) 150, explained Cyrillus' report as a mis-
taken reference to the Taurobolium, and Nilsson 1921, 209, thinks that Kronosin
these testimonies must be seen "metaphorisch ... von jemandem, um dessent-
willen ein Mensch geopfert wird." See for other escapes Schwenn 1915, 180 f.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 217

etwa nicht allzulange vor Tertullian, eingejuhrt wiiren" (my italics

H.S.V.)21s.
I would not attempt to categorically disprove the correctness of
these views. Our evidence is of a nature and scarcity that will sup-
port practically any theory. Still, it will do no harm to realize that
without exception these suggestions are based on a range of
prejudices, of which the conviction that Christians generally told lies
about pagan religions is only the most conspicuous ( and refutable)
one. Some other and far more interesting presuppositions are: first-
ly, that similar unpleasant rituals could not and did not come into
being in imperial Rome, or, more generally phrased, that "Men-
schenopfer auf romischen Boden auch in jener roher werdenden Zeit
(3d and 4th centuries AD) vollig unerhort sind" 276 ; and secondly,
that if they do suddenly appear in our sources they are consequently
either survivals of a hoary past or inherited from other cultures,
where they are supposed to have been age-old customs as well.
When I now propose to suggest the possibility that rituals like that
of human sacrifice could develop spontaneously-albeit on the fer-
tile soil of various existing rituals-in imperial Rome, I realize that
I shall not be able to prove it any more than the sceptics could really
substantiate their negative verdict. Moreover, I do not claim to offer
more than a few impressionistic remarks which should, and I hope
will, be elaborated some day in a more fully documented investiga-
tion. For the moment I shall, for the sake of brevity, largely draw
on previous investigations that I have devoted to the notion of self-
sacrifice and devotio and refer to them for more information.

275 "It is curious that down to the time of Justinus such human sacrifices for
lupiter Latiaris are never mentioned; it is equally curious that they could have ex-
isted despite the repeated interdictions. And it is completelyincrediblethat theywould haue
beenintroducedin lateantiquity,for instanceshortlybeforeTertullian'': Schwenn 1915, 180
f. And he continues: "So kommt man denn zu der Annahme, dass irgendein Irr-
tum, irgendein Missverstandnis oder sogar boser Wille die Hauptstadt der Welt
mit einem Menschenopfer hat belasten wollen": the stupidity and malignity men-
tioned above. Of course, what Schwenn says here about lupiter Latiaris is also ap-
plicable to Saturn.
276 "Human sacrifices in Roman territory, even in these harsher times, are to-
tally unheard-of': Geffcken, o.c. (above n.251) 224, who firmly denies the exis-
tence of any human sacrifice in Rome even of those which Ville later accepted on
the-correct-ground that any contemporary could easily verify them. This is, I
think, the reason why the apologists, and most conspicuously Tertullian in his
Apologeticum,generally did not go off the rails when reporting pagan excesses. They
simply did not need concoction, reality being sufficiently disreputable as it was.
218 CHAPTER THREE

It so often appears that myth and ritual are rooted in age-old be-
liefs and practices that this has given rise to the mistaken and sheer
ineradicable notion that they are, by their very nature, nothingbut
survivals. Modern anthropology and ethology have essentially
changed our ideas 277 • Although no two scholars seem to agree on
the function of ritual, we may at least be sure that a rite, just as a
myth, may be generated at any moment in history and that elements
of quite different traditional rites may coalesce in a totally new
construction-sometimes beyond recognition-in the service of new
conceptions or beliefs 278. Unfortunately, these newer insights only
slowly penetrate into specialist text-books, where a romantic preoc-
cupation with relics and the concomitant search for origins have
largely dominated research until very recently 279. Examples are rife
and we can restrict ourselves to a case in point that we have already
discussed before.
The revolutionary institution of ruler cult in Rome provides a re-
vealing example of the co-operation of myth and ritual in creating
new expressions of adoration. We have traced one of its mythical
components in the myth of the Saturnia regna, but also emphasized
that the Augustan epoch saw some fundamental innovations, the
first traces of which can be seen in V ergil' s fourth Eclogue. Similar-
ly, the rituals of ruler cult, including its terminology, were mostly
borrowed from various sections of Roman religion, but they were

277 On the relationship of myth and ritual see above eh. I. On the nature of
myth and ritual and the various relevant theories: Burkert 1979, 1-58.
278 Out of a host of examples from modern religious developments the most
revealing is perhaps the way contemporary syncretistic religions in Africa or South
America mould the most divergent ritual elements into totally new and irrecogniza-
ble forms of ritual action. See the instructive warnings against 'Kontinuitats-
denken' in: H. Bausinger, Volkskunde. Von der Altertumsforschung zur Kulturanalyse
(Berlin 1971) 85 ff. J. Z. Smith, Imagining Religion. From Babylon to Jonestown
(Chicago-London 1982) 53 ff., whose chapter 'The Bare Facts of Ritual' should be
required reading for those interested in the present issue, adduces a splendidly rele-
vant text from Plutarch, De vitioso pudore, 534C.: At Athens, Lysimache, the
priestess of Athena Polias, when asked for a drink by mule drivers who had trans-
ported the sacred vessels, replied, "no, for fear it will get into the ritual" (all'okn6,
me kai touto patrion genetai).
279 In the case of Roman religion there is the aggravating complication that it
is generally described as extremely conservative in ritual and cult. See: J. North,
Conservatism and Change in Roman Religion, PBSR 30 (1976) 1-12, who,
however, emphasizes that this did not prevent considerable changes and innova-
tions (ibid. 3 and n. 6). An interesting instance of change in theActa FratrumArvalium
is discussed by M. Beard, o.c. (above p.170 n.142), esp. 136. The latter is an ideal
illustration of "ritualization" and the concomitant innovations in form and func-
tion, according to the definition cited in the text.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 219

moulded into a revolutionary new composition serving a new con-

cept. Hundreds of books and articles have been devoted to questions
of origin and derivation: where did the idea of the divine child
originate? Where the idea of the magnus saeclorumordo?Who was the
model for the divine ruler: Romulus, Scipio, Pompeius, Caesar,
Alexander, Hellenistic rulers in general, Egyptian kings in particu-
lar? Legitimate questions, no doubt, which, however, have for a
long time impeded the interest in, for instance, the nature of the
relationship between new concepts and new forms. If the works of
S. Price 280 have made one thing clear it is that the revolutionary
new phenomenon of authoritative rulership in Hellenistic times sim-
ply necessitated the creation of new ritual forms and concepts in or-
der to come to terms with this new reality.
Now, besides the sudden emergence of Utopian expectations as
a mythical novelty, the emperor cult in its early stages is marked by
another remarkable phenomenon in the domain of ritual. Though
it had its roots in tradition too, and foreign influences cannot be ex-
cluded, it adopted a radically novel shape which is directly relevant
to the subject under discussion: the ( re-)birth of the idea that human
life should be sacrificed for the well-being of emperor and/or im-
perium.
Above (p.204) we encountered the wish de nostris annis tibi Iuppiter
augeat annos. The matter, however, did not end with mere wishing.
The early principate witnessed the new phenomenon of people mak-
ing vows to offer their lives for the well-being of the emperor 281 . In
the background we recognize the wish not to survive the emperor,
ubiquitous in vows and panegyrics 282 . A remarkable instance is
what Suetonius, Augustus 59, tells us: "some householders provided
in their wills that their heirs should drive victims to the Capitol and
pay thank-offerings on their behalf, because Augustus had survived
them and that a placard to this effect should be carried before
them" 283 . The same idea occurs, to mention only one further

280 See above n. 203.

281 Provisional collection and discussion: Versnel 1980, 568-73.
282 For the evidence of the wish non superstesessesee: L. F. Janssen, Die Bedeu-
tungsentwicklung von superstitiolsuperstes,Mnemosyne28 (1975) 135-88; discussion
V ersnel 1980, 568 ff.
283 On the custom of having placards with vota etc. carried along in a (private)
procession see: P. Veyne, ''Titulus praelatus' ': offrande, solennisation et publicite
clans Jes ex-voto greco-romains, RA (1983) 281-300.
220 CHAPTER THREE

example out of many, in Paneg.Lat. 5, 8, 1-2, where the crowds flock

together at the advent of Constantine ut viderentquernsuperstitemsibi
libenteroptarent(in order to see the person of whom they prayed that
he would outlive them). This can result in the decision to meet a
voluntary death in order to prevent being left superstesafter the
premature death of a beloved emperor. A case in point is the reac-
tion of the soldiers of Otho after his suicide as reported by Tac. Hist.
2, 49. 284• But we also encounter the vow to sacrifice one's life in
order to protect the life-or to ward off the imminent death-of an
emperor, for instance during a severe illness.
On the 16th of January 27 BC, a tribunus plebis S. Pacuvius (or
Ampudius) "devoted" (kathosiose)himself to the princeps "in the
Iberian manner" and he invited others to join his action 285• Un-
doubtedly there is an Iberian component in the so-called devotiolberi-
ca, by which Iberian warriors promised to give their lives to defend
their general and, if necessary, to follow him in his death 286.
However, this devotiostands in the tradition of authentically Roman
customs too, like the sacramentum,which displays identical vows 287•
The most explicit case is related by Suetonius Cal. 14, 2: during a
sickness of Caligula non defueruntqui depugnaturos searmis pro saluteaegri
quiquecapita sua titulo propositovoverent(Some swore that they would
fight as gladiators if the gods allowed him to recover; others even
carried placards volunteering to die instead of him). Cassius Dio 59,
8, 3, who tells the same story and even adds the names of the
devoventes,takes it that they hoped that the emperor would grant
them a reward for their flattery. If that is so, they had reckoned with-
out the host, for Caligula demanded the fulfilment of the vows after
his recovery: one had to fight as a gladiator in obedience to his vow
(and survived), the other was thrown ex aggereand was killed 288 •
The idea that one person should give his life in order that another

284 The same story in Plut. Otho 17.

285 Cass. Dio 53, 20. See: F. Olivier, Un acte de devotion a Auguste !'an 27 av.
J.-C., in: ,¥elanges Ch. Gilliard (Lausanne 1944) 24-37.
286 R. Etienne, Le culte imperial dans la Peninsulelberique d'Auguste a Diocletien
(Paris 1958) 357-62; for further literature see: Versnel 1980, 571.
287 P. Herrmann, Der romischeKaisereid(Gi:ittingen 1968) 66 ff. J. Le Gall, Le
serment a l'empereur: une base meconnue de la tyrannie imperiale sous le Haut-
Empire?, Latomus44 (1985) 767-83, shows how emperors took advantage of the un-
conditional obligation of assistance as expressed in these oaths, in order to remove
potential adversaries.
288 Sueton. Cal. 27.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 221

may recover from illness or escape death is remarkably widespread

in the first centuries AD both in Italy and elsewhere 289. One case in
point is the common belief that Antinous drowned himself by way
of devotiopro saluteprincipis290. The same idea, again related to the
idea of sacramentum,underlies of course the title devotinumini maiesta-
tique Augusti and its variants. This title, claimed by legions and
cohorts, is the official expression of their readiness to give their lives
for the emperor2 91.
In all these expressions we can detect a development of ideas and
practices which moulded various traditional 'rituals' into a novel
phenomenon. Nor is this all. The manner one of the devoti men-
tioned above selected to meet his death attracts our attention: he
promised to fight as a gladiator in the arena and was afterwards com-
pelled to fulfil his vow. Nor was he the only gentleman who fought
in the arena. In fact it was at times quite in vogue for equites, and
even for an occasional senator, to appear in a gladiatorial show
despite the concomitant infamia292 . Their motives, depravity ex-
cepted293, are not recorded. It is often assumed that they acted for
reasons of profit or glamour 294, but other motives, including the

289 See the surveys in Versnel 1980; 1981b. In Versnel 1989 I have argued that
the New Testament idea of atonement through vicarious sacrifice has not been
modelled directly after classical Greek examples as some modern scholars think but
that more attention should be paid to the influence of contemporary
tendencies in pa-
gan ideology and practice.
290 SHA Hadrian. 14, aliis eum devotumpro Hadrianoadserentibus.Cf. Cass. Dio 69,
11.
291 See: H. G. Gundel, Devotus numini maiestatique.Zur Devotionsformel in
Weihinschriften der romischen Kaiserzeit, Epigraphica15 (1953) 128-50, who how-
ever, is wrong in assuming that it does not occur before 210 AD. Cf. also F. Taeger,
CharismaII (Stuttgart 1960) 244 ff.; 452; M. P. Charlesworth, The Virtues of a
Roman Emperor: Propaganda and the Creation of Belief, PBA 23 (1937) 105-33,
who, on p. 124, attractively argues for the serious implications of the term (against
Wissowa) by comparing it with the acclamation with which the senators greeted
their emperor by the third century: "we have been consecrated to you" (Cass. Dio
53, 20, 4). Cf. also D. Fishwick, NuminaAugustorum, CQ20 (1970) 191-7; H. Solin,
EpigraphischeUntersuchungen in Rom und Umgebung,Ann. Ac. Sc. Fenn. 192 (1975) 6 ff.
292 Seneca QN7, 31; Tac. Ann. 14, 14, 6; Iuven. 8, 195-210; Sueton. Caes. 39;
Augustus 43; Tib. 35; Cal. 30; Nero 12; Dom. 8; Cass. Dio 43, 23; 48, 43; 51, 22;
56, 25; 59, 13; 61, 17; 90, 8. It appears that it was often the emperor himself who
stimulated these initiatives. Cf. Lafaye 1896, 1574 f.
293 See for instance Toutain, Diet. Ant. s.v. ludus, 1376: "Ce gout irresistible
des membres les plus eleves de la societe romaine pour les metiers d'acteurs, d'ath-
lete, de gladiateur, de cocher, est un des temoignages les moins equivoques de la
demoralisation profonde et incurable dont souffrait alors le monde antique."
2 94 "Orientierung eher an griechischen als an romischen Verhaltensweisen,
222 CHAPTER THREE

ones of the above devotus, cannot be totally excluded. Remarkable

among the measures concerning the spectaculaissued by Claudius are
the following: the munerashould not be given hupertes heautousoterias
(on behalf of his own welfare) an ymore 295, and he forced the equites
who were accustomed to appear on stage during the reign of Caligu-
la to appear once more. This deterrent had the desired effect that no
more equestrians appeared on stage during his reign 296• Time and
again, from Augustus onwards, decrees had been issued forbidding
equestrians to appear in the arena, apparently with very poor
results 297•
Nor had Claudius' issue any lasting effect, since the gladiatorial
munerasoon obtained a fixed and permanent function in the emperor
cult throughout the empire 298. Having originated as a ceremony for
propitiating the dead or the gods of the netherworld, a function
which became obsolete in the course of time, they seem to have

Lust an der Selbstdarstellung, aber sicher auch die grossere Sensation fur das Pub-
likum, wenn Frauen, Ritter oder Senatoren auftraten": H. Galsterer, Spiele und
"Spiele". Die Organisation derludi Iuvenalesin der Kaiserzeit, Athenaeum59 (1981)
410-38, esp. 433.
295 Cass. Dio 60, 5, 6.
296 Cass. Dio 60, 7, 1. See: R. F. Newbold, The Spectacles as an Issue between
Gaius and the Senate, PAGA 13 (1975) 30-5.
297 See the evidence in: Baltrusch 1988, 147 ff. An inscription with a senatus-
consultum from the period of Tiberius was found recently: M. Malavolta, A
proposito de! nuovo S. C. da Larino, in: Sesta Miscellaneadi Studi Grecie Romani
(Rome 1978) 347-82, who gives a survey of the relevant evidence. On this text see
also: B. Levick, The senatusconsultum from Larinum, JRS 73 (1983) 97-115;
Baltrusch, o.c. Appendix 195-206.
298 Throughout the Western provinces we see local notables and above all
municipal high priests sponsoring gladiatorial shows pro saluteprincipis: GIL II,
1305; IV, 1180; 1194; 1196-8 (not certain); VIII, 7969; 8324; X, 4760; XIV, 2080.
For provincial high priests it was obligatory, for municipal high priests it was legiti-
mate and optional to give gladiatorial munera:Th. Mommsen, GesammelteSchrijten
VIII, 516-9. For comparable customs in Rome: Pers. 6, 48; Tac. Hist. 2, 95; Cass.
Dio 59, 8; 60, 5. For the Eastern provinces: Robert 1940, 270-5, who demonstrates
that for archiereisthe same was true as in the Western provinces: "Dans tous Jes
autres cas (other than the few muneraarranged by officials or private benefactors
who were not priests), Jes combats de gladiateurs sont lies au culte imperial de
fa~on expresse" (270); Cf. R. Merkelbach, Der griechische Wortschatz und die
Christen, ZPE 18 (1975) 101-36, esp. 133-6 ff. E. Baltrusch, Die Verstaatlichung
der Gladiatorenspiele, Hermes 116 (1988) 324-37, even argues that official public
munera given by magistrates cannot really be attested before imperial times and
are closely connected with the emperor. Compare to this: MacMullen 1986, who
explains the incredible growth of barbarism in penal law in the light of increasing
social distance. A monograph on this subject is announced for 1992/3: Th.
Wiedemann, Emperorsand Gladiators.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 223

regained a propitiatory connotation in the course of the principate,

in particular in connection with the salus Augusti 299 . We saw that
the venationes in which Perpetua had to appear celebrated Geta' s
birthday. Munera had already been arranged at the birthday ofVitel-
lius300.
Now, there is a generally neglected but to my mind significant fact
that may shed light on the elite involvement in the imperial gladia-
torial performing in the games. The military training of the iuvenes
was essentially directed at exhibitions in and hunting-activities
in- and outside the amphitheatre 301. Their specific instructors
are sometimes clearly professional trainers of gladiatorial techni-
ques302. The Iuvenalia, which formed the central occasion in which
these skills were demonstrated in the arena, were especially connect-
ed with imperial ideology and celebrations. Some luvenalia were in-
itiated by emperors (Caesar, Augustus, Nero and Domitian). And
in these imperial games, which included venationes303 , the par-
ticipants were members of the senatorial and equestrian orders, both
young and old 304. Here, then, the border between luvenalia and
gladiatorial games seems to blur 305.
The question of why these 'human sacrifices' were necessary for
the cult of the emperor was posed by R. Merkelbach 306. He ex-
plains the muneraas a ritual expression of the monarchical monopoly
over life and death: the emperor's privilege of rightfully putting peo-
ple to death should be demonstrated ad oculos. Attractive as this the-
ory may be, it does not account for all the aspects, notably the notion
of 'sacrifice' pro saluteprincipis. The propitiating component present
in this 'devotion' returns in a very interesting testimony from SHA,

299 Under Hadrian both functions are clearly distinguished: M. Buonocore,

Munera e venationes adrianei nel 119 d.C., Latomus 44 (1985) 173-7.
300 Tac. Hist. 2, 95.
301 See: M. Kleijwegt, Ancient Youth: The Ambiguity of Youth and the Absenceof
Adolescencein Greco-RomanSociety(Amsterdam 1991) 105-9.
302 Pinnirapus iuvenum (/LS 6635), on which see: Ville 1981, 217; summarudis
iuvenum (AE 1935, 27): Robert 1940, 263.
303 Cass. Dio 67, 14, 3.
304 Cass. Dio 53, 1, 4; Tac, Hist. 3, 62; Suet. Nero 11, 1.
305 Even more so if one follows Cl. Lepelley, Les cites de l'Afrique romaineau Bas-
Empire I (Paris 1979) 238 ff, esp. 241, who, on the basis of two letters by Augustine,
argues that iuvenesparticipated in the killing of religious fanatics, who sought volun-
tary suicide in the amphitheatre.
306 O.c. (above n.298) 133 ff. He uses the term 'Menschenopfer' for the gladia-
torial games in the cult of the emperor.
224 CHAPTER THREE

Maximus et Balbinus 8. It tells us that before he went to war in 238

AD, Maximus gave a munus in Rome: multi dicunt apud vetereshanc
devotionemcontrahostesfactam ut civium sanguinelitato speciepugnarumse
Nemesis, id est v£squaedamFortunae,satiaret(Many say that in ancient
times this 'devotio' was made against the enemy. The purpose was
to satisfy Nemesis [a power connected with Fortuna] with the blood
of citizens, that was offered under the guise of [gladiatorial] con-
tests). Of course the comment itself does not antedate the fourth cen-
tury but this makes it only the more interesting: in this age, the one
that produced most of our testimonies on muneraas sacrifices for var-
ious gods including Saturn, people apparently believed that the
munerawere, or could function as, a kind of devotioin which people
(civesRomani) offered their blood for the commonwealth by propitiat-
ing a divine power (Nemesis, pre-eminently the goddess of the
arena 307 ). This idea was obviously prepared by the essential func-
tion the munerapossessed in the imperial cult right from the first cen-
tury AD, but gradually gaining in importance.
Thus we see that there are plenty ofreasons for taking the 'sacrifi-
cial' connotations of rituals like the muneramore seriously than has
been done so far. The material conditions were there: the gladiatori-
al performances-unmatched, by the way, in any non-Roman bar-
baric civilization and one of the really astonishing riddles of Roman
culture 308 . Bloodshed and killing being their essential features, they

307 Interestingly, the author adds an alternative explanation of these munera

given before the war: alii hoe litteris tradunt quod veri similius credo, ituros ad bellum
Romanosdebuissepugnasvidereet vulneraetferrum et nudosinterse coon"entes, ne in hellohastes
timerentaul vulneraet sanguinemperhorrescerent. This is a prefiguration of the ethological
interpretations of aggression as most noticeably represented in the works of W.
Burkert.
308 Note that judicial executions increasingly acquired theatrical forms with pa-
rades of victims and dressing up of criminals as in some drama. See: K. M. Cole-
man, Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments,JRS
80 {1990) 44-73. An "almost ritual procedure": MacMullen 1986, 150. On the so-
cial functions of the muneraas a channel for conspicuous euergetism and a ritualistic
part of the advancement of young men upwards through the posts of government,
see: Hopkins 1983, eh. 1. Cf. more generally on this aspect: Veyne 1976, 394-419;
A. Marcone, L'allestimento dei giochi annuali a Roma nel IV secolo d. C.: aspetti
economici e ideologici, ASNPser. III, 11 (1981) 105-22. On the demonstrative stag-
ing of hierarchy in the amphitheatre: J. Kolendo, La repartition des places aux
spectacles et la stratification sociale clans !'Empire romain. A propos des inscrip-
tions sur Jes gradins des amphitheatres, Ktema 6 (1981) 301-15. Cf. also the next
notes.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 225

were a willing prey for re-interpretation as 'sacrifices' 309 . "In

gladiatorial contexts ( .... ) the Romans came very close to ( .... )
human sacrifice" is indeed the minimum formula one has to grant
Hopkins 310 . They thus satisfied the ethological definition ofrituali-

309 This interpretation may have received additional impulses from the
widespread practice of utilizing the blood of slain gladiators as a medicine against
illness: F. J. Dolger, Gladiatorenblut und Martyrerblut: Eine Szene der "Passio
Pepetuae" in kultur- und religionsgeschichtlichen Beleuchtung, Vortr. Biblioth.
Warburg 1923/4 (1926) 196-214; Ville 1960, 284 f.; Robert 1982. The custom was
even adopted by at least one emperor: Commodus dipped his hand in the blood of
a slain gladiator and ad caput sibi detersit (SHA Commodus 121, explained by B.
Mouchova, Omina Mortis in der Historia Augusta, Historia Augusta Colloquium
Bonn 1968/9 [1970] 121, as a reminiscence of the Lupercalia, which I doubt). Com-
modus himself was the 'product' of the same magic: to recover from a severe illness
Faustina had to take a bath in the blood of the gladiator with whom she had been
in love. She recovered and gave birth to Commodus (SHA Marc. Aur 19).
310 Hopkins 1983, 5. However, the question "why gladiatorial games?" has
never been definitively answered. There is a problem in the fact that they could
have been, and sometimes were, replaced by other more useful and less sanguinary
forms of euergetism, such as the paving ofa street (Piganiol 1923, 131 ff.), but that
"the stadium and the theatre were the major sources of instant popular honour"
(Lane Fox 1986, 79, adding a revealing example ofa certain Vedius who had donat-
ed an impressive monument, but was then assailed for not having given games in-
stead). "Nobody comes beyond 'cruel society'", says Hopkins 1983, 27, who him-
self offers the following functionalist explanations: "Gladiatorial shows and their
accompanying executions provided opportunities for the reaffirmation of the moral
order through the sacrifice(my italics H.S.V.) of criminal victims, of slave gladia-
tors, of Christian outcasts and wild animals. The enthusiastic participation by spec-
tators ( .... ) raised and then released collective tensions ( ... ). The gladiatorial
shows provided a psychic and a political safety valve for the population of the capital
( .... ). At the psychological level, the gladiatorial shows provided a stage ( .... )
for shared violence and tragedy. They also gave spectators the reassurance that they
themselves had yet again survived disaster.'' Essentially, these are also the views
of the other recent authors that I have seen. Coleman o.c. (preceding note): 1)
scapegoat ritual embracing human sacrifice, 2) the spectators-being as a group
physically and ideologically separated from the criminals-experience the em-
peror, who is in the centre, as the embodiment of justice, which lends him charisma
and authority. J. Maurin, Les barbares aux arenes, Ktema 9 (1984) 103-111: the
munera collect everything marginal that is in opposition to Roman civilization,
identify and destruct it, which involves sacrificial aspects. Clavel-Leveque 1984; ea-
dem, L'espace des jeux clans le monde romain: hegemonie, symbolique et pratique
sociale, ANRWII. 16. 3 (1986) 2405-2563, suggests a combination of various func-
tions among which dominate: substitutive practice by way of exorcisation of hidden
emotions (Freud); identification, isolation and destruction of dangerous groups of
outsiders; social practice of exchange in Roman society; an instrument for under-
standing and controlling the world; a manner of social integration. All this, I would
add, is in perfect agreement with the concept of the Christians as the prototypical
'outsiders' and enemies of the imperial Utopian ideology as I argued in Lampas 21
(1988) 233-56. "The courage of martyrs can hardly be separated, it seems to me,
from the Roman craze for gladiators": J. N. Bremmer, Mnemosyne 43 (1990) 274.
 226 CHAPTER THREE

zation as the change of form and function of behaviour in accor-

dance with the requirements of communication 311. To express it
metaphorically: in Ave Caesar,moriturite salutantthe salutatioregained
its etymological connection with salus, the salus publz'caembodied in
the salus principis312 . The development was, of course, fostered by,
and embedded in, the general ritual of the votapro saluteprincipis, es-
pecially those of the 3rd of January 313. The later devotional wish de
nostris annis tibi Iuppiter annos augeat has a remarkable prefiguration
in the spontaneous sacrifices for Augustus on New Year's day: omnes
ordinesthrew stipesinto the puteal of the lacus Curtius314 , an unequivo-
cal reference to their personal devotioto the princeps.
All this may warn us against too easily rejecting as Christian con-
coctions the reports which interpreted gladiatorial games as
'sacrifices' to various gods for the well-being of empire and
emperor 315. Even the variety of gods connected with the munera in
our sources can be explained in a different way than by assuming
confusion or fraud. It appears to be characteristic of precisely this
type of devotional 'human sacrifices' in general that people did not
know exactly to which god they were devoted. People could leave it
at that and accept the anonymity of these gods, as often hap-
pened316. They could also try and find suitable divinities, which in
the case of these 'human sacrifices' were naturally found in gods

311 See Burkert 1979, 35-58 and literature in n.17, especially: W. Wielder,
Stammesgeschichte und Ritualisierung(Munich 1970). Note for instance that in Sparta
the notorious "Knabenproben' only later acquired their most cruel and bloody
traits, probably as a result of tourist interest: Graf 1985a, 110.
312 For this identity see Versnel 1980, 566 ff.
313 L. W. Daly, Votapublicapro salutealicuius, TAPhA 81 (1950) 164-8, traces its
origins in republican times;J. M. Reynolds, Votapro saluteprincipis,PBSR 30 (1962)
32-6, shows that the prayers are identical throughout the empire. Important discus-
sions in: A. D. Nock, Deification andjulian,JRS 47 (1957) 115-23 ( = Nock 1972
II, 833-46; cf. ibid. I, 42); S. Weinstock, MDAI(A) 77 (1962) 306-27; idem, Divus
Julius (Oxford 1971) 167-74; A. Alfcildi, Die alexandrinischen Gotter und die vota
publicaamJahresbeginn,JAuC 8/9 (1965/6) 53-87; F. Bomer, Der Eid beim Genius
des Kaisers, Athenaeum44 (1966) 77-133; Herrmann 1968, 72 ff. On votapublicaon
coins: H. Mattingly, FBA 36 (1950) 155-95. On votive gifts for the salus of the em-
peror: Th. Pekary, MDAI(R) 73/4 (1966/7) 105-33. Cf. also L. C. C. Petolescu
Marghita, Votapro saluteprincipis, StudClas 16 ( 1974) 245-7. On the implications of
the notion of salus: M. Le Glay, o.c. (above n.205).
314 Suet. Aug 57, 1.
315 Ville 1960, 303, honestly observes that Julian himself, though abominating
the munera,did not abolish them for fear of insulting Saturn and thus harming the
commonwealth.
316 I have discussed this phenomenon at length in Versnel 1981b.
 SATURNUS AND THE SATURNALIA 227

who, for whatever reason, were associated with murder, killing or

human sacrifice. One of them was Saturn, whose 'negative' aspects
had never been forgotten and who, as we have seen, enjoyed a virtu-
al renaissance in late antiquity. I would by no means deny that for-
eign customs may have exercised their influence, both in the Roman
sacrificial munera317 and in the Saturnalian scene of Durostorum,
but it is obviously too simple-and therefore wrong-to deny any
Roman contribution to the development. Of course, the connections
with Saturn certainly do not prove that this god had always been con-
nected with munera and their sacrificial meaning. Nevertheless, I
hope that the above survey will invite further serious reconsideration
of the unremitting vitality and creativity of ritual action and its im-
plications for the meaning of' Saturnian' munera in late antiquity. It
fits in very well that, recently, three of the most imaginative
specialists in ritual studies: W. Burkert, R. Girard, and J. Z.
Smith 318 , have once more demonstrated that the creative force of
human agressiveness as the ultimate means for maintaining social
cohesion is ubiquitous in time and space.

317 A case in point may be the much disputed instance of the Gallic Trinci, in
whom Piganiol 1923, 62-71, recognized" gladiateurs consacres", according to Gal-
lic lore. Cf. on their Gallic prehistory: C. J. Guyonvarc'h, Le nom des Trinci
gaulois, Celticum9 (1964) 325-8; F. Le Roux, Note d'histoire des religions 2: Les
Andabatae gaulois et le theme mythique de la mort aveugle, ibid. 329-34. J. H.
Oliver and R. E. A. Palmer, Minutes of an Act of the Roman Senate, Hesperia24
(1955) 320-49, launched the interesting theory, followed by W. H. C. Frend, Mar-
tyrdom and Persecutionin the Early Church(Oxford 1965) 5, that, as the result of a
senatusconsultumof 177/8, the Christians were being substituted for these Trinci as
ritual sacrificial volunteers. H. Musurillo, The Acts of the ChristianMartyrs (Oxford
1972) XX, is sceptical. Cf. also W. 0. Moeller, Historia 21 (1972) 127.
318 Hammerton-Kelley 1987.
 CHAPTER FOUR

THE ROMAN FESTIVAL FOR BONA DEA AND THE

GREEK THESMOPHORIA

For "nature", read "culture".

J.] . Winkler
Long before his obsessional wish was finally-and posthumously-
fulfilled in 146 BC, the elder Cato had yet other concerns than Car-
thaginem delendamesse. In his manual for the farmer, De agricultura
143, he gives ample prescriptions concerning the way the wife of the
bailiff (the vilica) of an estate should behave.
"She must visit the neigbouring and other women very seldom, and
not have them either in the house or in her part of it. She must not go
out to meals or be a gad-about. She must not engage in religious wor-
ship herself or get others to engage in it for her without the orders of
the master or the misstress; let her remember that the master attends
to the devotions for the whole household." (translation: W. D. Hooper
& H. B. Ash. Loeb)

Similar instructions for women in general, often with such speci-

fications as the prohibition to attend nocturnal ceremonies or to be
initiated into foreign mysteries, are typical of republican Rome, no
less than of Greece 1 . According to the antiquarian tradition, the
consumption of wine-an occasional pull of Spatleseexcepted as we
shall see-, in particular, was forbidden 2 : "in the times of our an-
cestors women did not drink wine, with the exception of a few fixed
days on the occasion of religious festivals", says Servi us (ad Verg.

1 The theme is discussed in Inconsistencies

I, esp. 121. On its continuity in Chris-
tian house tables: D. L. Balch, Let Wives be submissive:The DomesticCodein 1 Peter
(Chico 1981). On the typically 'interior' functions of the housewife as part of their
'cultivation' see below pp.280 ff. These functions, of course, could be-and some-
times were-highly praised: T. E. V. Pearce, The Role of the Wife as CUSTOS
in Ancient Rome, Eranos72 (1974) 16-33. Very instructive on women's cultic ac-
tivities: E. Schuhmann, Hinweise auf Kulthandlungen im Zusammenhang mit
plautinischen Frauengestalten, Klio 59 (1977) 137-47.
2 Plin. NH 14, 89; Tertull. Apol. 6, 5; Isid. Etym. 20, 3, 2; Plut. QR 6; Numa
and Lycurg. 3, 6. On exceptions and the credibility of this tradition in general see
below pp.264-268.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 229

Aen. 1, 737) and he adds that during the reign of Romulus a certain
M(a)etennius had scourged his wife to death for having broken this
rule. No less dubious from the point of historicity, but equally
meaningful as a cultural signal is the theory that the kiss between
relatives was invented in order to enable men to subject the female
section of his family to an-admittedly rather primitive-breath
test • With respect to the restrictions imposed on women Cicero
3

Leg. 2, 9, 21, cites an ancient law:

"No sacrifices shall be performed by women at night except those
offered for the people in proper form; nor shall anyone be initiated ex-
cept into the Greek rites of Ceres, according to the custom. " 4

1. THE FESTIVAL OF BONA DEA

One-perhaps the only-exception referred to here is the festival of

Bona Dea. This December festival, about which little is known, has
made its name by a notorious incident in 62 BC 5 • During the fes-
tival, which was strictly reserved for women and which, in accor-
dance with the rules, was celebrated in the house of a magistrate with
imperium(in this case Caesar), the tribunus plebis P. Clodius was
caught roaming through the house dressed up as a woman. The sto-
ry goes that he owed both his surreptitious entry and his precarious
escape to a slave girl. The escapade attracted considerable attention
and was seriously resented since it concerned one of the holiest of
Roman ceremonies. Moreover, one version of the story has it that
Clodius and Caesar's wife-the mistress of ceremonies-were en-
joying a private momentsupremetogether at the culmination of the fes-
tival. Some of the particulars of the festival have come down to us
in the context of this faux pas of Cicero's most cherished betenoire,

3 The evidence on this curious interpretation: K. Schneider, /us osculi, in: RE

X 2 (1919) col. 1284 f.; S. Oppermann, Kuss, in: KleinePauly 3 (1969) 381. The
evidence of the ban on the use of wine is collected by Piccaluga 1964 and others,
and will be discussed below pp.264 ff.
4 Noctumamulierumsacrificiane suntopraeterolla quaepro populoritejient; nevequern
initiantonisi, ut adsolet,CereriGraecosacro.
5 Full discussion of the case: J.P. V. D. Balsdon, Fabula Clodiana, Historia15
(1966) 65-73; Ph. Moreau, ClodianaReligio. Un procespolitiqueen 61 av. J.-C. (Paris
1982); cf. D. F. Epstein, Cicero's Testimony at the Bona Dea Trial, CPh81 (1986)
229-35; H. Benner, Die Politik desP. ClodiusPulcher(HistoriaEinzelschr.50, 1987),
38 ff.; W. J. Tatum, Cicero and the Bona Dea Scandal, CPh 85 (1990) 202-8.
230 CHAPTER FOUR

while others have been collected from very disparate sources. Here
is a short summary of the features relevant to my inquiry 6 .
On the eve of the festive day all the male inhabitants leave the
magistrate's house. Even male animals or images of male perso-
nages are removed. Assisted by her servants the magistrate's wife
decorates the house with all kinds of plants and flowers, interalia ar-
ranging bowers made of wine leaves 7 . The cult image of Bona Dea
is transported from her temple and set up in the festive hall together
with the image of a serpent. A pulvinar for the goddess is arranged
as well as a table from which the goddess is supposed to take her din-
ner. There is a sacrifice of a sow 8 pro populoRomano (on behalf of the
Roman people) and the mistress of the house performs a libatioover
a fire in the presence of the Vestal Virgins. Then the women, includ-
ing the Vestals, make merry: there are references to festive eating
and drinking, music, jests, all summarized in the term ludereused in
a number of sources. The most surprising and interesting aspect is
the nature of the drinks: during this secret, exclusively female, noc-
turnal festival the women were allowed to drink-at the very least
to handle 9 -wine.

1. Traditionalinterpretations
As could be expected there is an abundance of interpretations of this
curious women's festival 10 . However, practically all of them can be

6 For the sources and all other data I can refer to the comprehensive survey
presented by H. H.J. Brouwer in his recent monograph on Bona Dea: Brouwer
1989.
7 Since the search for vine in December might find itself faced with difficulties
it is often assumed that different, but related, sorts ofleafage were applied, perhaps
ivy.
8 Juvenal 1, 2, 86 speaks of a young sow (teneraproca),Macrobius Sat. 1, 12, 20,
mentions a pregnant sow (suspraegnans)but it is not clear whether this relates to the
December festival.
9 While Plutarch Vita Caesaris10, restricts himself to a general reference to
revelry and music, Juvenal is the only ancient author who pictures the women as
actually drinkingwine. Since he does so in his very negative diatribe against immoral
and affected women (2, 6) this might be a doubtful source. However, as we shall
see later on, there are several other data, both mythical and ritual, that support a
strong connection between Bona Dea and the (mis-)use of wine.
to In order not to overburden the bibliography I give here a list of those titles
that will be cited for the sole reason of illustrating the traditional frame of interpre-
tation: R. Peter, BonaDea, in: RML 1 (1884-6) 789-95; A. Greifenhagen, BonaDea,
in: MDAI(R) 52 (1937) 227-44; idern,Bona Dea, in: RAC 2 (1954) 508-10; M. C.
Parra, Bona Dea, in: LIMC 3 (1968) 120-3.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 231

listed among two general types of approach, which, together,

dominate the scene. Both are typical representatives of the mono-
lithic 'vegetation' model, which, just as in other issues discussed in
the present book, appears to exert a dominant influence even in the
most recent textbooks and monographs. In one of them the goddess
Bona Dea is pictured as a very ancient goddess of fertility, a kind
of 'Earth Mother', whose rites and cult focused on the protection
and promotion of agricultural and fem ale fertility. We can trace this
characterization over more than a century: 'Erdmutter', she is
called by Peter in 1884, and she is said to be connected with "eine
urspriinglich agrarische Begehung, die erst nachtraglich auf das
weibliche Geschlechtsleben ausgedehnt wurde" (an originally agri-
cultural concern, which was extended to female sexuality in later
times, Radke 1965). She is identified or compared with goddesses
such as Fauna-"Bona Dea .... urspriinglich blosses Beiwort der
dem Acker Fruchtbarkeit verleihenden Fauna" (in origin a mere
epithet of Fauna who gives fertility to the fields, Greifenhagen
1954)-and Maia or Ops, "Deesse en tout cas de la fecondite" (at
any rate a goddess offertility, Bayet 1969), and this is how we find
her also in the most recent textbooks: "a somewhat vague earth-
goddess who promoted fertility in women" (Scullard 1981), "dea
della fecondita" (fertility goddess, Parra 1986), "Numen der
Fruchtbarkeit" (Numen of fertility, Muth 1988). In his compre-
hensive monograph Brouwer, too, arrives at this typology: '' as a fer-
tility goddess and through the female, representative, part of the
population she guarded the community. Since fertility, both of field
and cattle and of woman as well, was as much an individual concern
as one of society as a whole, Bona Dea acted as the protrectress of
both land and its tiller, his house and stock."
In this view fertility cult invariably involves a primeval antiquity,
just as, vice versa,the most ancient cults are automatically assumed
to relate to fertility. Going by the ubiquitous specification 'original-
ly', this approach is particularly interested in origins. Without deny-
ing its relevance and value, it should be regretted that this frame of
reference tends to monopolize the interpretation of the various ele-
ments of the ritual, including the most enigmatic ones. This is true
for instance for a very curious datum, not mentioned so far.
Plutarch QR 20 records that in honour of Bona Dea the women
offered wine as a libation which, however, they called 'milk', and
Macrobius Sat. 1, 12, 25, specifies that the wine which is introduced
232 CHAPTER FOUR

into the temple of Bona Dea is not referred to with its own name,
but that the vessel (vas) containing the wine is called 'honey-jar' (mel-
larium) and the wine 'milk' (lac). The traditional interpretation
understands these data as unequivocally referring to the oldest stra-
tum of Roman religion. For in these primeval times people did not
yet offer wine ( or meat), but only milk, honey (and sacrificial cakes):
"Urspriinglich brachte man als Opfergaben auch Milch und Ho-
nig" (in origin, people also made sacrifices of milk and honey, Peter
1884); "This may suggest an early agricultural origin" (Scullard
1981); "It looks as ifwe may assume that milk, in combination with
honey or not, had been the original offering proper to the goddess;
that though the tradition was still remembered the practice of the
ritual was different. Thus, the terms lac and mellariumsurvive when
wine is poured" (Brouwer 1989).
The second current theory holds that we are dealing with an es-
sentially Greek goddess, whose cult was adopted by Rome without
serious alteration. Scholars who hold this view often assume that the
Greek ritual was superimposed on top of an ancient ltalo-Roman
cult, which gradually succumbed under the weight. For instance,
this is the view put forward in the two best-known German hand-
books of Roman religion by Wissowa and Latte 11 . Wissowa sup-
ports his thesis with a reference to a nickname of the god des Bona
Dea, namely Damiatrix. This is probably a latinization of the Greek
Damia, the name of a Greek women's goddess. Furthermore, it is
suggested that her cult may have reached Rome via Tarente,
perhaps in 272 BC, the year in which this Greek city was conquered
by the Romans.
Latte, who denies an identification with Damia, seeks support for
the deity's Greek origin in archaeological representations, especially
in the frequent presence of the snake. Snakes were kept in the
precinct of the temple of Bona Dea, which also contained an apotheke,
where medicines could be obtained. All this, according to Latte,
suggests an identification with the Greek H ygieia. Indeed, inscrip-
tions testify that Bona Dea was widely invoked for her healing quali-
ties by both women and men. According to this view, milk and
honey may be regarded as referring to primeval times, albeit
primeval Greek culture: "Mindestens in den Anfangen waren es
nephaliahiera (at least in the beginning these were libations without

11 Wissowa 1912, 216-9, Latte 1960, 228-31.

 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 233

wine, Latte 1960, 228). Besides Damia and Hygieia, there is

another Greek goddess who may have been the matrix of Bona Dea:
Agatha Thea, a goddess whose precise identity is disputed, but who
probably belonged to the retinue of Asklepios (Greifenhagen 1937).
For present purposes it is not absolutely necessary to choose be-
tween a Roman and a Greek origin, and I therefore leave this
problem aside. I personally prefer the former option, and it is at least
worth noting that the numerous images of the goddess with a
cornucopia or a snake are anything but decisive for the Greek case,
since they cannot be attested before the first century AD. My point
is that neitherinterpretation, either the ancient Roman or the Greek
one (which can also be found in combination: Greifenhagen 1937;
Bomer 1957), is completely satisfactory. One crucial objection is
that both tend to select somedata for their interpretation and ignore
others, including the most remarkable and enigmatic. Typical, for
instance, is Latte's undisguised resignation when he has to acknow-
ledge-but is unable to account for-the riddle of why the Greek
Hygieia should have received an exclusively female cult in Rome,
whereas nothing of the kind is known for this goddess in her native
country. Even if a Greek provenance could be demonstrated, for
that matter, this originwould still not explain the meaningof various
surprising aspects of the ritual. The advocates of an ancient Roman
agricultural nature of the goddess, on the other hand, ought to show
some concern at least regarding the obvious question of why the
'primeval' libations of milk and honey-their trump card-were
changed into wine-offerings against all codes of female behaviour,
while still retaining their original names 12 • In other words, in the
phrase written in 1890: "Einen hiibschen Beleg fiir das spate und
eigentlich widersinnige Eindringen der Weinspende in diese Culte
liefert die Cultsprache (lac, mellarium) und Cultlegende der Bona
Dea" 13 , the crux implied in the term 'widersinnig' is still unex-
plained exactly one hundred years on.

12 Whereas in other cults the use of milk and honey remained in use well into
the historical period. They regard 'old-fashioned' gods and festivals: Ceres, Iupiter
Latiaris at the FeriaeLatinae,Cunina, the goddess of the suckling in the craddle, Ru-
mina, the goddess of sucking, Pales during the Parilia, a god Lactans, Priapus and
Faunus, as discussed by Brouwer 1989, 328 f.
13 "A nice attestation of this late and, as a matter of fact, absurd intrusion of
wine libations into these cults is presented by the cultic language (lac,mellarium)and
the cult legend of Bona Dea": H. Diels, SibyllinischeBliitter(Berlin 1890) 71 n.1.
234 CHAPTER FOUR

It is not by chance that the two conventional interpretations end

up in identical questions. This becomes evident when one peruses
textbooks on Greek religion sub voceDamia, in pursuit of possible
Greek origins. It soon becomes apparent that there, too, interpreta-
tions do not usually go beyond the magical code word 'fertility'.
What Nilsson wrote in 1906 14 on Damia and her partner Auxe-
sia- "von Anfang an waren sie Spenderinnen der vegetativen
Fruchtbarkeit, erstrecken aber wie alle iihnlichen Gottinnen ihre
Macht auch auf die Menschen'' (originally, they were givers of
vegetative fertility but like all similar goddesses they extend their in-
fluence to human life as well)-corresponds literally to Radke's
characterization of Bona Dea as quoted above. And it would be just
as easy to find similar qualifications in other more recent books. In
the case of Damia her primeval agricultural nature is inferred from
various details of her ritual: a sham fight, two female choruses that
insult the female race in general, secret sacrifices. "Diese Riten zie-
len wie die Thesmophorien sowohl auf die menschliche wie auf die
vegetative Fruchtbarkeit" Uust like the Thesmophoria, these rites
concern both human and vegetative fertility), concludes Nilsson.
The reference to the Thesmophoria is particularly relevant, since,
as we shall see, this Greek women's festival for Demeter, who is
doubtless either the same goddess as Damia or at least very similar
to her, shares a number of essential features with the festival of Bona
Dea. And, in this case, recent studies have opened our eyes for other
aspects, functions and meanings than fertility alone. For it is true
that "the most interesting contemporary analyses of Greek religion
often concern the complicated relation of myth and ritual, which has
been greatly illuminated from narrative, structuralist and function-
alist points of view. These new approaches have been hardly applied
to Roman myth and ritual" 15 .
That both the goddess Bona Dea and her festival were connected
with human and agricultural fertility can hardly be disputed.
Difficult problems loom up, though, when it appears that this
characterization provides satisfactory answers to only a fraction of
the questions raised by the evidence. In order to arrive at a more
complete and coherent assessment, the most promising way to ap-
proach the Roman festival will be by making a detour via the Greek

14 Nilsson 1906, 413-7.

15 Bremmer, 1987b, 76.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 235

Thesmophoria. Not only will it appear that here, too, progress can
still be made, but I also hope to show that the two festivals-closely
related in terms of myth and ritual-contain practically identical
messages at three levels: the substantivist (referring to fertility), the
functionalist, and the semiotic.

2. THE THESMOPHORIA

1. The evidenceand the traditionalinterpretation

The Thesmophoria, the most widespread Greek festival and the
principle cultform for Demeter (and Kore), was held in autumn-in
Athens (and a few other places) on the eleventh, twelfth and thir-
teenth day of Pyanopsion-just before the sowing season 16.
Though the evidence is not free of contradictions there is reason
enough to assume that the three-day festival 17 was reserved for
married women, probably more especially women of the upper clas-
ses18 under the direction of two female officials, the Archousai.The
first day bore the name 'Road Up' (Anhodos), probably referring to
the procession to and the assembling at the Thesmophorion. These-
cond was known as 'Fast' (Nesteia). On it the women abstained from
food and sat on the ground. The third day was called Kalligeneia'day
of fair offspring', a name that refers to the concern for bearing fine
children. At another festival 19 just before midsummer, probably
the Skira, women had thrown various objects related to fertility into
megara(caverns in the ground 20). The chief objects were sacrificed
piglets, and models of snakes and male genitals shaped out of dough.
The decayed remnants were recovered during the Thesmophoria by
a special group of women called the Antleriai ('Bailers'), who had
purified themselves for this holy job by a three-day period of (sexual)

16 Pyanopsion was the men sporimos, according to Plutarch de Isid. 378e. Cf.
Cornutus 28. However, the connection with the sowing season is less obvious in
some other calendars.
17 Since the tenth was also a local Demeter festival at Halimous on the coast of
Attica, and the ninth was another Demeter festival called the Stenia, there was in
effect a five-day period of women's religious activities.
18 Arist. Thesm. 330, eugeneisgunaikes. Cf. Detienne 1979, 197 n.3. For a general
discussion of the participants of the festival see Deubner 1931, 53 and below n.63.
19 Some scholars (for instance Simon 1983, 20: at the Steneia) assume that the
pigs were thrown down only few days before the 'remains' were 'bailed up' again,
which does not convince me.
20 For literature on the megarasee: Detienne 1979, 192 n.5.
236 CHAPTER FOUR

abstinence. The mixture of these unsavoury ingredients was placed

on altars. When scattered with seed in the field it was supposed to
promote fertility of crops 21 .
It can hardly be denied, then, that the core of this Demeter festival
is the concern for the promotion of human and cereal fertility 22 .
However, this 19th century discovery, though revealing and
productive in some respects, had damaging consequences in others:
the wish to impose a monolithic pattern entailed the need to explain
every single bit of information in this perspective. In some cases this
did not raise serious difficulties 23, but in others succes could only be
attained by distortion or even suppression of the facts: the paradigm
tyrannized the evidence. As I noticed above, both this process and
the curious pieces of evidence to which it is applied, betray strong
similarities with the festival of Bona Dea. I select a number of data
that seem to me most relevant and illustrative, leaving aside the few
that are of minor importance 24•
First of all, during the three days of the festival the women used
to camp in booths or shelters 25, arranged in rows within the open
space of the Thesmophorion. This clearly recalls the bowers of the
Bona Dea festival. Quite a number of authors report that the women
slept on beds (stibades)made of lugos( = [Gr.] agnos:[Lat.] vitexagnus
castus, withy, chaste tree, a kind of willow). This plant, generally

21 "the clearest example in Greek religion of agrarian magic" (Burkert 1985,

244). It is generally assumed that the festival got its name from the carrying of the
thesmoi, being these bearers of fertility. Simon 1983, 22, even suggests that these
thesmoiwere 'compost heaps' and that the rite represented a primitive 'fertilizing
by means of compost' (!).
22 Our main source, a scholion on Lucian (276 Rabe) says that the festival was
held eis sunthematesgeneseoston karponkai ton anthropon.
23 Although there is already ample opportunity for special pleading. Deubner
1932, 51, manages to gain a threefold profit from the poor piglets for his fertility
model. When thrown into the pits their task was to impart their inherent fertility
to the earth. When recovered again some months later, the remnants were loaded
with the fertility they had borrowed from the (naturally) fertile earth. Subsequent-
ly, these remnants, in their turn, had to impart their fertility to the fields again.
24 There is a full documentation in Deubner 1932, 50-60, and a complete col-
lection of the relevant texts in Dahl 1976. Burkert 1985, 242-6, gives the best short
description, while the perceptive short account by Parker 1983, 81-3, pays due at-
tention to the plurality of the layers of significance. Simon 1983, 18-22, contributes
a short discussion of the relevant iconographic material. A. C. Brumfield, The Attic
Festivalsof Demeterand theirRelationto theAgn'culturalYear(Diss. New York 1976, repr.
1981) is not available in any Dutch library. For Thesmophoria outside Athens see:
Nilsson 1906, 313-25.
25 skenai: Arist. Thesm. 658, and scholion ad. loc.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 237

regarded as unproductive and infertile, was supposed to work as a

strong antaphrodisiac and hence to prevent all sorts of undesirable
sexual impulses 26 . No manoeuvre illustrates better how relentlessly
a paradigm can impose its laws on the believer than the following
argument put forward by Nilsson and adopted by Deubner 27 .
Though perfectly aware of the connotations of lugosthroughout the
Greek world-and in spite of the fact that also other unmistakably
antaphrodisiac plants were applied during the Thesmophoria 28-,
they hold that this must be a laterinversion of its original meaning.
For originally, they argue, lugosmust rather have stimulatedfemale
sexuality. In support of their argument they refer to an isolated testi-
mony on the Milesian Thesmophoriawhere a pine twig was inserted
and hidden under the bed ofwillow 29 . Indeed, pine twigs were con-
sidered to promote fertility 30 , but, as we shall see, this is not reason

26 Plut. ls. et Os. 378e; Ael. NA 9, 26; Plin. NH 24, 59; Schol. Nie. Ther. 71;
Galen. 11,807; Dioscorides 1, 103; Eustath. Od. 9, 453. The majority contend that
"it restrains the impulse (horme, impetus)of sexual desire (aphrodision,Venus). See:
Fehrle 1910, 139-54; P. R. Arbesmann, Das Fasten bei den Griechenund Romern
(RVV, Giessen 1929) 90 ff.; F. Daumas, Sous le signe du gattilier en fleurs, REG
74 (1961) 61-8; Dahl 1967, 45-53; Blech 1982, 374f.; G. Sfameni Gasparro, Misteri
eculti misticidi Demetra(Rome 1986) 231 ff.; 247 ff. See also the literature mentioned
below n.65. J. Scarborough, The Pharmacology of Sacred Plants, Herbs, and
Roots, in: Faraone & Obbink 1991, 169 n. 102, gives further literature on modern
connotations. Agnus castus, under the name of piper monachorumor eunuchorum,re-
tained its reputation into the Middle Ages: Fehrle 1910, 153. On the 'chastity' of
willow in general: H. Rahner, Die Weide als Symbol der Keuschheit in der Antike
und im Christentum, Z. j kath. Theo[. 56 (1932) 231-53.
27 Nilsson 1906, 48 f.; Deubner 1932, 56. Also by Fehrle 1910, 143-8.
28 k(o)nuza, flea bane (Schol. Theocr. 4, 25 band 7, 68 a+ b; Nie. Ther. 70) and
kneoron(Hesych. s. v.). See Fehrle 1910, 153. "Eine Umdeutung oder Missdeutung
ist auch hier mi:iglich, vielleicht dienten die betreffenden Pflanzen nur dem prak-
tischen Zweck einer gewi:ihnlichen Streu" (Deubner 1932, 56 n. 7). Note that as
soon as a connotation does not fit the argument, it is either contorted into its reverse
or played down into meaninglessness.
29 Steph. Byz. s.v. Miletos: pituas kladon hupo ten stibada. This, in its turn, also
provokes reverse re-interpretations that must solve the inconsistency with the an-
taphrodisiac lugos. Blech 1982 375: "Die ihm (viz lugos)zugeschriebenen Wirkun-
gen und die N achricht, class die milesischen Frauen an den Thesmophorien Fich-
terzweigen fur ihre Lager gebrauchten, die nicht als ein Antaphrodisiakum
bekannt sind, !asst an einen Wechsel der Bedeutungen dieser Planze denken". All
problems are evaded by the solution proposed by Dahl 1976, 98: "The proper rea-
son for the use of this (lugos)and other plants (pine, a kind of flea-bane and a kind
of flax) are more probably that the smell of these plants especially when smoked or
burnt kept snakes and other venomenous animals away, and that the chaste-tree
and the pine are very flexible and lithe building materials".
30 See for instance: Fehrle 1910, 147 n.2.
238 CHAPTER FOUR

enough to pervert the functions of the other Thesmophoriac plants.

It is also reported that the women indulged in uttering abuse at
each other and even in striking each other with a scourge plaited out
of bark (morotton)31 . Both types of action were all the rage in the fer-
tility paradigm, as they reminded of Iambe's aeschrology and the
'Schlag mit der Lebensrute' (blow with the life-giving rod), re-
spectively32. However, in this particular case also different, more
'functionalistic' explanations have been reluctantly put forward. If
this ritual ended the day of fasting "it may have been in practice a
very satisfying release of the pent-up irritation brought on by hun-
ger", thus Parke's most excessive venture into the psycho-socio-
logical interpretation 33.
On the middle day prisoners were freed from their chains 34, a
custom explained by Deubner 1932, 58, as a magical means to pro-
mote fertility in women: knots and chains had negative effects on
everything connected with (re)production, especially confinement.
However, this-in itself not impossible-idea puts its advocates into
serious trouble. First, liberation from bondage is also attested for the
Panathenaea and the Dionysia 35. And secondly, what are we to do
with the complication that on the same (second) day of the Thes-
mophoria the law courts and council meetings were suspended as
well? To the first objection Deubner responded that the custom was
transferred from the Thesmophoria onto the other festivals as a' 'hu-
mane Massnahme" (humanitarian measure) 36. One wonders why,
if so, the privilege was restricted to these festivals and not extended

31 Winkler 1990, 197, with emphasis on the specifically female aspects of the
Thesmophoriacjoking, compares this to a "pillow fight in a girl's dormitory". But
why the special whips made of bark?
32 lambe/Baubo is closely connected with the Thesmophoria as Graf 1974,
168-71, convincingly argued. On Baubo see also: Di Nola 1974, 19-52; more re-
cently: M. Olender, Aspects of Baubo. Ancient Texts and Contexts, in: D. M.
Halperin,J.J. Winkler, F. I. Zeitlin (edd. ), BeforeSexuality.The Construction
of Erotic
Experiencein the Ancient Greek World (Princeton 1990) 83-114 = RHR 202 (1985)
4-55. On aeschrology: H. Fluck, Sku"ile Riten ingriechischen Kulten(Endingen 1931);
Di Nola 1974, 21-5; Chirassi Colombo 1979, 39 f. n.34.
33 Parke 1977, 86.
34 Markellinos ad Hermogenes, Rhet. Gr. 4, 462, 2 Walz. Cf. Sopatros ibid. 8,
67, 4.
35 Schol. Demosth. 22, 68.
36 '' An den Thesmophorien aber muss er einen rituellen Sinn gehabt haben,
denn wie wiire man sonst darauf gekommen, an dem Frauenfeste den Gefangenen
jene Gunst zu erweisen?' (Deubner 1932, 58). That is a question I have good hope
to solve later on.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 239

to others? The correct course of action, I would suggest, is to ask

what the three festivals may have had in common and to take this
common characteristic as the point of departure for further interpre-
tation.
The second problem was not responded to at all. This occurrence
is ignored even in Deubner' s very complete collection of the
evidence 37 . Perhaps not by chance. For it appears to confuse scho-
lars as may be best illustrated by one of them who thinks he has
found a no-nonsense solution: the suspension of law courts and
council meetings, so Parke 1977, 86, suggests, had to do with the
disruption of ordinary life caused by the departure of the women.
If I understand him correctly, men found it just a bit too trouble-
some to do business in such a chaos 38 .
Finally, there are two isolated, very enigmatic details that have
kept their secret to the present day. We hear of two sacrifices offered
by the women during or at the end of the Thesmophoria. One was
called zemia: 'punishment/penalty', and Hesychius, our sole source,
says: thusia tis apodidomene huper ton ginomenon en Thesmophoriois ("a
sacrifice made [to pay, compensate] for the things that happened
during the Thesmophoria"). To the best of my knowledge, Deub-
ner is the only one who attempted an explanation. He thinks it must
be a kind of expiatory sacrifice to pay for things that might have gone
wrong-'' V erfehlungen'' ( occasional errors )-during the festival.
And this, in its turn, fosters conjecture. Beforeginomenon, a term like
akairos or paranomos ('wrong') should be added.
The other (secret) sacrifice was called the 'Chalcidian Pursuit'
(Chalkidikon [apojdiogma). A mythical aition explains that once dur-
ing a war the women had prayed for victory and the enemy had fled
and had been pursued to Chalcis 39 . And that is all we know.

37 As it is lacking in most of the other surveys as well. Perhaps on the grounds

of no-nonsense considerations as the one advanced by Parke, as quoted in the text.
38 In this case, however, it can be ascertained that no practical reasons of dis-
ruption were involved. For we have a regulation that during the Thesmophoria,
if an assembly was to be held, it was held in the theatre of Dionysos and not on the
Pnyx (JG II 2 1006, 50-1). Xenophon, Hell. 5, 2, 29, records a similar escape for
Thebes. On the other hand, Aristophanes Thesm. 78-80, explicitely says: "today
there will be no dikasterianor meetings of the boule, since it is the middle day of the
Thesmophoria.'' So we can be sure that there is a ritual and not a practical reason
for this exceptional measure.
39 Hesychius and Suda, s.v. Dahl 1976, 99, "a symbolic act, to make sure that
no men and nothing harmful was present". Deubner 1932, 60, regards it as a relic
240 CHAPTER FOUR

2. New directionsin interpretingthe Thesmophoria

Ifl am now going to try and search for a more coherent and satisfac-
tory explanation of this collection of oddities, I emphatically do not
wish to reject or play down the aspects that refer to fertility, both hu-
man and agrarian. This feature is simply too obvious for doubt. In
this connection I would once more profess my conviction that any
attempt to radically replace the old fertility paradigm by any later-
functionalistic, structuralistic or semiotic-interpretation, is unwise
and uncalled for. Such a procedure will inevitably end up in dis-
tortion of the evidence, just as the old vegetation paradigm did, as
we just observed. We do have the right, however, to look for another
frame of reference in order to elucidate those elements which have
failed to find a convincing interpretation within the old paradigm.
And, after the previous chapters, it will not surprise the reader that
we shall start our quest in the context of the 'festivals of exception'.
For, indeed, the Thesmophoria (as well as the festival of Bona Dea)
clearly belongs in this category, as do, in a different social context,
the Kronia and Saturnalia.
During these few days the women laid off the burden of their nor-
mal routine and of their submissiveness to male dominance, more
especially their obedience to male phallokratia. For once, they en-
joyed privileges that were unimaginable in normal life: the right to
organize a women's society with complete autonomy and proper fe-
male archontes 40 , to ward off male intervention 41 ( except for finan-
cial support), to leave their houses and stay outside, even during the
night, to perform private and secret rituals. Whether the regular

of 'Analogiezauber' of the type we also meet in the Saliae Virgines. The women
left at home were required to assist their warrior husbands by mimetic actions.
"Dass das diogmamit den Thesmophoria verbunden wurde, war Zufall" (!).
°
4 For the 'political' nature of this 'cite des femmes' see especially Detienne
1979, 199 ff. and cf. below (n.80). There is a clear challenge in the fact that in
Athens the site of the Thesmophorion is adjacent to the men's place of assembly
on the Pnyx, where it was tentatively identified by H. A. Thompson, Pnyx and
Thesmophorion, Hesperia5 (1936) 151-200. This situation is well comparable to the
datum that at Thebes during the Thesmophoria the women occupied the place
where the bouleused to convene: Xen. Hell. 5, 2, 29. Also, of course, with the female
'occupation' of the prime magistrate's house during the festival of Bona Dea. Sig-
nificantly, at the modern Greek women's festival ofDomenicha, who is the patron
of the midwifes, women often adopt the role and paraphernalia of policemen and
thus indulge in acts of aggression towards men.
41 In another nocturnal women's festival for Demeter even male dogs were re-
moved: Paus. 7, 27, 10.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 241

Thesmophoriazousaienjoyed the privilege of drinking wine is a matter

of dispute. The only source that hints in this direction is Aris-
tophanes Thesm. 730 ff., which has a satirical flavour, just as Juve-
nal' s malicious references to drunken women during the secret
ceremonies for Bona Dea. But the women's festival of the Haloa,
also in honour of Demeter, which displays closely related features,
though in a more hilarious and exalted fashion, was notorious for the
profusion of wine (and sexual symbolism and obscene language) 42 .
Detienne has drawn attention to yet another significant signal of
reversal. Whereas women, being deprived of political rights, were
accordingly excluded from altars, blood and sacrifice, bloody
sacrifices are on record for the Thesmophoria, both in the descrip-
tions of the ritual (and in the archaeological remnants) and in the
myth. We shall see that women extended their sanguinary sacrificial
actions to the victimation of male intruders in two legendary tales
on male interference in the Thesmophoria (below p.250). Though
this important datum is generally ignored or even denied,
Detienne 43 has irrefutable proven that, though the sacrificial role of
the mageirosis normally men's job, the reverse is true for the Thes-
mophoria. Burkert 1985, 245, thus summarizes the basic charac-
teristics of the Thesmophoria: '' At the core of the festival there re-
mains the dissolution of the family, the separation of the sexes, and
the constitution of a society of women: once in the year, at least, the
women demonstrate their independence, their responsibility and
importance for the fertility of the community and the land.''
If we now consider the facts listed above in the light of reversal or
exception some of the most enigmatic reveal their secrets. First, the
booths or bowers of the Thesmophoria ( and of the festival of Bona
Dea), have been generally explained as a token of the great antiquity

42 Our main source is the scholion on Lucian p. 279-81 Rabe. On the Haloa
see: Deubner 1932, 60-7; on the Stenia, ibid. 52 f. Also: Chirassi-Colombo 1979,
esp. 37 f.
43 Detienne 1979, 186 ff. "Le mot mageirosau feminin n'existe pas .....
Autrement dit, le systeme grec ne permet pas de penser la femme comme boucher
et sacrificateur" (207). The exceptions are collected and explained on pp. 188 f.
and 194 ff. "La viande et le sacrifice du sang sont l'affaire des hommes" (190), fol-
lowed by an exhaustive discussion of the-ritual, mythical and archaeological (De-
los!)-evidence of the inversion of sacrificial roles at the Thesmophoria. Cf. already
Burkert in 1977, 368-9 (the German edition that was translated as Burkert 1985,
244-5).
242 CHAPTER FOUR

of the rites, going back to the period in which people indeed lived
in such primitive housing, at least in periods of agricultural activity.
Diodorus Sic. 5, 4, reports that the Syracusans celebrated the Thes-
mophoria mimoumenoi ton archaionbion ("imitating the old way of
life"). Another significant testimony records that the Eretrian wom-
en during the Thesmophoria "did not prepare the meat on fire but
by the heat of the sun" 44 : another most remarkable imitation of a
very anciennecuisine45 •
Even if this were an age-old heritage 46 and not a spontaneous act
of mimesis ( as Diodorus phrases it), originis not to be identified with
meaning.The meaning of its supposed 'preservation' can only be ex-
plored by asking why this specific habit was maintained in so limited
a number of exceptional festivals, whereas in other equally old-
fashioned agrarian ceremonies 'it had gradually fallen into abey-
ance', as it is generally phrased. Now, we have found an answer
to this question in various different contexts discussed in previous
parts of this book: aspects of 'primitivism' in rituals of exception
generally refer to the exceptional nature of the situation itself, sig-
nifying the reverse of normality, a temporary return to an a- or
precultural way of life, where various aspects of disorder yield an
ambivalent amalgam of hilarious euphoriaand of disquieting 'other-
ness'. And the women's festivals by their nature belong to these
periods of exception. Not only the temporary residence in huts 47 ,
but also the sitting on the ground and the sleeping on stibades48

44 Plut. QC 31 (298b). Cf. Nilson 1906, 319.

45 This has been demonstrated by L. Breglia Pulci Doria, Le Tesmoforie
Eretriesi, in: Recherchessur Lescultesgrecset l'occidentI (Naples 1979) 53-63. She even
argues that the fact, also recorded by Plutarch, that the same Eretrian women did
not use the name Kalligeneia, would point to a pre-politicalaspect of the festival in
which the production of legitimate citizen children did not yet play a role (which
I doubt). On cooking on fire as a signal of culture see: G. A. Caduff, Antike Sintjlut-
sagen(Gottingen 1986) 229 f.; Detienne & Vernant 1979, passim.
46 As Nilsson 1906, 319, explained it: "So erinnert man sich, class ganz be-
sonders in agrarischen Festen die alten, primitiven Sitten bewahrt werden, weil
man sie aus religioser Scheu nicht zu iindern wagt", adopted in the more recent
formulations quoted above p.232.
47 For evidence on living in huts as a temporary return to primeval times see
above p.188. Blech 1982, 398 f. (with further literature inn. 70), explains the cus-
tom as an attempt to reconcile increasing urbanization with the original agrarian
way of life.
48 Note that stibadesare typically attested for festivals which bore the nature of
exception: Thesmophoria, (perhaps) Tonaia; Thalysia (which seems to be the only
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 243

can then be excellently understood as signals of primitivism 49.

Once we recognize this-and I am not the first to point this
50
out -, this immediately entails a most natural and, above all, co-
herentexplanation of the liberation of prisoners and the suspension
of court sessions and council meetings, rites that have never been
understood correctly 51. For, as a matter of fact, they are the very
expression of the anomiacharacteristic of this type of festival of rever-
sal. Temporary liberation from chains and bondage was the central
feature of Kronia and Saturnalia. Moreover, the Saturnalia also
shared the official cessation of all public services with some other
Roman 'interstitional' ceremonies, such as the mundus patet. Else-
where52 I have argued that the Roman iustitium (literally the cessa-
tion of jurisdiction) mirrors Greek anomia, both being markers of
'periods of exception'-either of mourning, or of licence (or both,
for instance in festivals of the turning of the year). They signify the
interruption of normality through the suspension of normal law and

'normal' festival in this series), Dionysos-festivals, Hyakinthia. See: Blech 1982,

398, with literature in n.58. That the stibadeswere made of lugosmay be an addition-
al indication: Polyphemos sleeps on a bed made of twigs of this plant: Od. 9, 428.
49 As may be the instructions that the women's clothing had to be simple at the
Thesmophoria: no embroidered or purple robes, no make-up or gold ornaments:
Wachter 1910, 19; LSS 32, 33, ? 28, LSCG 68, 65, 16-23, as cited by Parker 1983,
83 n.36, who, however, perhaps more attractively, regards this rather as an inhibi-
tion of sexual attraction, in the context of chastity prescriptions. But these instruc-
tions are not restricted to the Demeter cult: P. Culham, Again, what Meaning Lies
in Colour, ZPE 64 (1986) 235-45.
°
5 Cf. J. M. Verpoorten, La stibas ou 1'image de la brousse clans la societe grec-
que, RHR 162 (1962) 147 ff.; Graf 1974, 178 f.; Burkert 1985, 242-6, esp. 244;
Bremmer 1987b, 80 f.; L. Breglia Pulci Doria, o.c. (above n.45).
51 The only exception I know ofis Zeitlin 1982, 139, who writes: "The days of
the Thesmophoria, during which the women actually occupied the male space of
power and authority near the Acropolis, also saw a cessation of the normal business
of political and economic life (at least on its second day), as though the society of
women functioned as an alternative reality to that of every day life, a temporary
surrender to the natural sacrality of life at its source, incarnated in the female
body". My objection is that in this view the Thesmophoria are isolated from the
general taxonomy offestivals ofreversal. There are a few other points of her, other-
wise very attractive, argument which I find difficult to accept. For instance when
she wishes to include the markers of primitivism as cited in the text with the female
government, as a coherent set of references to a mythical time when "women were
in charge". The myth concerning the original 'franchise' of the Athenian women
(see below n. 72), refers explicitly to equality of the sexes, not to matriarchy. More-
over, this specifically political myth belongs to a quite different level of meaning
than the far more generic references to primitivism.
52 Versnel 1980. See also the first chapter of the present book.
244 CHAPTER FOUR

order. And this is exactly the meaning of the same custom during
the Thesmophoria. From this point of view the ribald cheers and in-
decent speech of the women-even if originating in fertility rites-
acquire an overtone: they, too, suggest a reversal of the normal, in
particular the sexual, order: women usurp 'men's language' 53 .
This becomes particularly evident when we compare modern Greek
women's festivals, where the element offertility has now practically
disappeared 54, but indecent behaviour with imitations and mani-
pulations of male sexual organs and dirty language is still a standard
ingredient.
Clearly, the Thesmophoria is a festival of fertility and a number
of its most conspicuous aspects can be explained from this perspec-
tive. It is also a festival of exception, in some respects even of rever-
sal, a feature which helps us to elucidate other elements. Nor is this
all. If origin should not be identified with meaning, function is not
identical to meaning either. In one of the most perceptive recent
studies on the meaning of the Thesmophoria, F. I. Zeitlin 55 re-
marks: ''There is a considerable sophistication today among the
various disciplines in the study of ritual behavior which makes us
dissatisfied with the more facile explanations, the purely functional
social or psychological rationales, which refer every phenomenon to
such superficial commonplaces as release from tensions with social
solidarity as the optimum goal". Though I do not quite subscribe
to the depreciation of the functionalistic approach voiced here, I do
agree that, whereas functionalism asks what rites dofor society, one
can-and should-also ask what rites say about society. You can read
them, analyse the implied connotations, and inquire what they sig-
nify; how, in the words of Zeitlin (ibid.) "they exploit their status as
circumscribed and mimetic action to limit and yet to test the am-

53 Female 'bilingualism' -women must be versed in both the official male-

oriented and their own 'private' languages-is brilliantly analysed by Winkler
1990. In the present case, however, another option is explored: the challenge pro-
voked by women usurping men's 'private' language. Aeschrologia "violates social
norms" as Zeitlin 1982, 144, remarks.
54 Even to the degree that the midwife, who was in the centre of the women's
rites in especially the Thracian version of these festivals (see for instance: G. A.
Megas, GreekCalendarCustoms[Athens 19632), 53), has now left the scene, as I read
in a recent life report in Lychnan· 4 (1987) 27-9. (with thanks to Titia Bredee for
drawing my attention to this).
55 Zeitlin 1982, 131-2.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 245

bivalences of social process through their creative and disruptive ca-

pacities".
This third level of interpretation has been broached for the Thes-
mophoria in various ways by various scholars, who have considera-
bly advanced our perception of the festival's meaning. Although
their semiotic interpretations hide a common denominator, each of
them detects a different (aspect of the) message. While expressing
my debt to the inspiring works of especially Detienne, Winkler and
Zeitlin 56 , which reasons of space prevent me from even summariz-
ing, I shall focus on what I consider the core of the message hidden
in the myth and ritual of the Thesmophoria. We shall return there-
fore to the evidence and discuss a few riddles that have so far resisted
explanation.

3. Numphai sleeping on lugos: the paradox of the Thesmophoria

The beds of antaphrodisiac lugos confront us with a glaring incon-

sistency: on the one hand the festival focused on the fertility of (fields
and) women. The name Kalligeneia and a variety of fertility sym-
bols confirm this. It is, for instance, reported that the women
manipulated not only models of male genitals but that the female
pudendum played a role as well57 • On the other hand, however,
this 'fertility' -festival is marked by a rigorous prohibition of any sex-
ual action that is naturally preconditional for activating the procrea-
tive potentials of women: men are excluded 58 , both husbands and
other interested males 59 . There is a host of objects around that may
provoke-or at least refer to-erotic desire, but no opportunity to
implement this in sexual action. What is more, though men were
also excluded from some other festivals 60 , the Thesmophoria is

56 Detienne 1979 and 1981; Winkler 1990; Zeitlin 1982. Cf. below pp.258 f. for
their views of one aspect of the Thesmophoria.
57 According to a late source: Theodoretos of Kyrrhos, Graecarumaffectionum
curatio3, 84; cf. Athen. 14, 647 a.
58 Except, of course, in the reversed world of comedy. Note, however, that in
Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazousaione of the comical intruders, Kleisthenes, does
not even count as a man, since he is a kinaidos and therefore a 'honorary woman'
(Winkler 1990, 193).
59 There is a myth (see below p.250) that pictures the female hostile reactions
to male intervention, but we have a historical record of male reactions to the suspi-
cion of intervention by (other) men: Herod. 6, 16.
60 Mainly in the cults of Demeter. For the evidence see: Wachter 1910, 130 f.
246 CHAPTER FOUR

unique in being the only certain instance of a classical Greek festival

where the laywomen were required to keep themselves pure in the
period of preparation and during the festival 61 . In sum, during the
Thesmophoria the matrons were temporarily reduced to the status
of virgins before marriage: though sexually mature they are not (yet)
available for consummation 62 . The paradox is further complicated
by the fact that 'real' virgins were not admitted 63 . In this connec-
tion, it is also significant that Demeter and her daughter were called
'sacred-pure' (hagne thea) and that Demeter's priestesses, like the
Roman Vestal Virgins must be unmarried 64 .
It will be immediately evident now that sleeping on beds of anta-
phrodisiac lugos is the perfect manner to express (and effect) one side
of this paradox. In a recent study, in which she investigates initiato-
ry signals in various 'lugos'-stories, D. Baudy 65 arrives at the fol-

61 Fehrle 1910, 151: "Keuschheit wurde bei kultischen Begehungen von

'Laien' in iilteren Zeit in Griechenland sonst nirgends verlangt". Wachter 1910
does not even mention sexual abstinence among his full collections of 'Reinheits-
vorschriften im griechischen Kult'. Parker 1983, 85, mentions two other examples
but these concern only restricted groups with specific cultic functions, as may also
be the case in the Thesmophoria, if we assume that only the Antleriai had to prepare
themselves by sexual abstinence. However, "if more evidence were available, we
might find that preliminary abstinence could be imposed on any layman who was
to participate significantly in a ritual of special solemnity" (86).
62 "woman is here tamed, stripped of the apparatus of sexual attraction": Par-
ker 1983, 82. Cf. his argument above n.49.
63 Callim. Fr. 63 certainly refutes Luc. Dial. Meretr. 2, 1, which is un-
trustworthy. The status of hetairaiand slave women is not undisputed, although,
originally, they were excluded: Ar. Thesm. 293-4; Isaeus 6, 49-50. See above n.18,
Burkert 1985, 242, and especially Detienne 1979, 196 f., whose arguments I accept.
64 As noticed by Burkert 1985, 244, with the evidence. However, Stella Geor-
goudi warns me that this rule was not rigorously applied. There are a number of
exceptions. The comparison with the Virgines Vestales was already made by the
scholiast on Lucian 279 Rabe: tes Thesmophorouhai hiereiaiepartheneuonto dia biou
Athenesin, hos kai en Romei hai tes Hestias.
65 D. Baudy 1989. In this ingenious article (which seeks the origins of the
generally antaphrodisiac function of lugos in the /ugos-hedges that separated bulls
and cows, which I doubt) she rightly contests the views of those who, against the
overwhelming evidence, try to defend a fertilizing function of lugos. Apart from
Nilsson and Deubner (see above p.237), more recently: L. Kahn, Hermespasse ou
Lesambigui'tesde la communication(Paris 1978) 100 ff. See especially: Baudy, 2 f. and
17 n.65: "Die fruchtbarkeitsfordernde Bedeutung der Pflanze ist erschlossen,
belegt ist die Keuschheitssymbolik". All this is not at all refuted by the (scarce)
records that lugosis also said to promote lactation and menstruation in women. In
a reaction to criticism of his interpretation of the' Adonian' anemone, M. Detienne,
Dionysosmis a mort (Paris 1977) 130, aptly refers to a certain polyvalence in the
connotations of plants, which, however, need not be arbitrary. He acknowledges
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 247

lowing conclusion: "In every ritual context this vegetable symbol

warranted a 'virginal', 'pure' state that points already to its termi-
nation. The use of withy demonstrated ( .... ) that the cult par-
ticipants were subject to a cultural suspension of the procreative
function' ' 66 . This suspension of the procreative function in an
otherwise overtly procreative context is exactly what I regard as the
core of the 'message' of this festival 67 , as I shall argue in more de-
tail later on, though my frame of reference is different from the one
ofBaudy. The fact that lugosis particularly associated with the virgin
goddess Artemis 68 , adds support to this view.
Now, this ambiguity strikingly manifests itself in the unique Mile-

an 'apparent contradiction in the double register' of lugos(and other plants) but cor-
rectly points out that the two connotations go well together: "Pour le gattilier
(lugos), c'est la femme seule qui est concernee: la plante qui impose le silence du
desir clans son corps est aussi celle qui, en provoquant Jes menstres et en faisant
venir le lait, favorise clans l'organisme feminin l'activite de reproduction". (Cf.
also: Calame 1977, 285-9; D. Baudy 1989, 27 n.96: "Die antiaphrodisische Wirk-
samkeit soil also Fruchtbarkeit gerade nicht ausschliessen"). In other words: the
double connotation of the lugos(cf. also King 1983, 122-3) mirrors exactly the cen-
tral ambiguity of the Thesmophoria (between matron and virgin) as I hope to show.
Brule 1988, 129 f., perceives possible connections with the application of lugosin
other women's festivals, such as the Arrhephoria, and wavers between the function
of demonstrating the handicraft of the adult woman, (in casuplaiting) and the inter-
rupton of fertility.
66 "Im jeweiligen rituellen Kontext garantierte das pflanzliche Symbol einen
noch 'jungfriiulichen', 'reinen' Zustand, der bereits auf seine Aufhebung voraus-
wies. Der Gebrauch des Keuschlamms (lugos or agnos) demonstrierte ( .... ) die
Unterwerfung der Kult-Teilnehmer unter das Prinzip einer kulturellen Steuerung
der Fortpflanzungsfunktion''.
67 And not only of this festival. D. Baudy 1989, 16 ff., explains the lugos-
binding of the statue of Hera during the Samian Tonaia in the same vein: "Das
Keuschlamm konstituiert die Interimphase, wiihrend deren soziale Normen
( ..... ) der natiirliche Impulse in ihre Schranken verweist, den Zustand der
Keuschheit aufrechterhalten, um zum gegebenen, sozial determinierten Zeitpunkt
die Fruchtbarkeit im Rahmen einer legalen Verbindung zu gewiihrleisten. Die
Losung der Fesseln schliesslich gibt die 'Lizenz' zur ehelichen, also legalen Sexu-
alitiit und begriindet damit den 'thesmos' der Ehe". Significantly, the Samian
Hera-who is, like everywhere, the prototype of the matron-is also known as
parthenos(A. M. Cirio, La dea parthenos di Samo, Boll. Class. 2 [1981] 137-42). "As
a prerequisite to contracted marriage, virginity in turn belongs to Hera" (Burkert
1985, 133, with more evidence for Hera's premarital existence). I recognize here
the very same ambiguity as the one of the Athenian Thesmophoria in a Samian fes-
tival, which, as Baudy and others have well seen, bears marked traits of a festival
of exception, interalia also displaying rituals with lugos. See especially Graf 1985b,
93-6; Auffarth 1991, 270f. On Hera and the lugos see also: J. Burr Carter, AJA
(1987) 379.
68 Calame 1977, 285-9, with the criticism by King 1983, 122-3.
248 CHAPTER FOUR

sian custom of inserting a pine twig under these stibades of withies,

which, seen in this light, now reveals its meaning. It 'translates' the
paradox just described in a very precise manner: indeed, the festival
is about fertility and this is symbolized through the pine branch, but
it is not accorded consummation; as yet, the pine branch is 'under
cover', camouflaged by the antaphrodisiac lugos, which forms a
temporary barrier between the bearersand the symbolof fertility. This
suggestion is corroborated by the fact that the pine branch is also in-
volved in another more general, but equally ambiguous, Thes-
mophoriac context. According to our main witness 69 , "the 'Bailers'
fetch up 'unspeakable sacred things' that are made of dough: models
of snakes and male membra; they also take pine branches". Here
we have the very same paradox condensed in one sentence: overtly
sexual symbols are manipulated by a group of women who have
strict instructions to preserve a state of purity 70 . And it is as if this
is all summarized in the amazing ambivalence of the word kneoron.
Hesychius s. v. says that it is a plant used for the Thesmophoriac sti-
badeswith the function of ( sexual) purification, but that it also means
female pudendum. We shall come across other implicit paradoxes of
this type later on, just as we shall discover perfect parallels of ritual
'incognito' in the festival of Bona Dea.
When we now return to the remaining riddles of our list-the two
sacrifices called zemia and 'Chalcidian pursuit'-1 do not claim to
offer definite solutions here, but I would at least venture a few sug-
gestions. Again it is the specific line of approach that fosters fresh
opportunities for interpretation. The first sacrifice raised the ques-
tion of what could be so wrong in the ritual behaviour of the women
during the Thesmophoria to deserve a ritual 'punishment'. Because
he could not find offences Deubner had to invent them: possible ritual
errors that had to be propitiated. Once more one wonders why,
then, this very curious measure is attested only for this women's fes-
tival and not for (agrarian) rituals in general 71. And once more the

69 Schol. Luc. 276 Rabe. Cf. Dahl 1976, 98.

70 See for a discussion and the evidence of the chastity of the women: Parker
1983, 82 n.33. The same source furthermore tells us that the chasm lodges snakes
that eat most of what is thrown down; for this reason a noise is made when the wom-
en bail up, etc. This is another expression of the 'virginity' of the Bailers, since the
rite strikingly corresponds with well-known virginity ordeals, like the one ofLanu-
vium: Latte 1960, 167.
71 As we have them for instance in the Roman sacrifices as mentioned by Cato,
De agr. 139, and related piacular sacrifices for-unavoidable-infringements of di-
vine codes.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 249

natural answer should be sought in the exceptional nature of the

festival itself: we do not need to look for possibleflaws in parts of the
ritual, for the whole festival itself is manifestly (and necessarily)
wrong (as myth will unequivocally confirm). The normal codes of
behaviour are suspendend or reversed, women conspicuously do
wrong things, they manifest subversive traits in acts of aggression
or self-assertion, and as if this were not enough, during this festival
for human and agrarian fertility, the male katalyst was banned,
temporary sterility being the paradoxical result. Reason enough for
a ritual zemiafor this fundamental offence and with this the sacrifice
falls into the category of-mostly mythical-punishments for un-
avoidable wrongdoings 72 •
The evidence on the Chalcidian pursuit is less clear, since it does
not offer semantic clues (such as 'punishment') in the name or the
description. By way of suggestion, I would draw attention to a dis-
tant though remarkable parallel in the Roman festival of the N onae
Capratinae. There, too, women-in casu slave girls-are recorded
to have contributed to the flight, pursuit and annihilation of an ene-
my army, and it was said that the festival was founded in memory
of this feat. Now, it does strike us that the Nonae Capratinae, as
Bremmer 73 has demonstrated, was a festival of reversal, in which
slave girls were dressed in the outfits of, and were waited upon by
their mistresses, temporarily lived in huts (made of branches of the
wild-that is infertile-fig-tree) and mocked (male) passers-by. At
the least, this is a remarkable parallel, the more so since both are
connected with a (pseudo- )historical war and victory, and although
analogy does not prove, it certainly comforts conjecture, as R. Mac-
Mullen once wrote. Generally, female rituals of reversal, compris-
ing temporary liberation from male dominance, seem to have
evoked images of female martial activity, which, in their turn, foster
(aetiological) myths 74 . In a way, the women thus mirror the disrup-

72 One of the most telling being the women who had to pay the price for having
'mis-used' their votes for the name-giving of the city of Athens as related by Varro
ap. Augustine CD 18,9, on which see: C. Patterson, Attikai: The Other Athenians,
in: Skinner 1986, 49-67.
73 Bremmer 1987b, 76-88.
74 The evidence is collected and analysed by Graf 1984. The most striking
parallel is offered by the women's ritual at Tegea for Ares Gunaikothoina.There
women offer bloody sacrifices to the god of war in remembrance of a victory they
alone should have won over the Spartiates. Note that two 'threatening' images
coincide: women as warriors and women in sacrificial roles, both under strict exclu-
250 CHAPTER FOUR

tive imagery of the Amazones 75 . Ultimately, female martial aggres-

sion may release itself against their own husbands, as it is most
obviously illustrated by the myth and ritual of the 'Lemnian fire' 76 .

4. The contribution of myth

After this analysis of the elements that, together, construct the essen-
tial ambiguity of the Thesmophoria-matrons celebrating their
procreative qualities while being temporarily deprived of any oppor-
tunity of sexual fulfilment-it remains to ask what this means. As so
often, myth will put us on the track. Unfortunately, the Thes-
mophoria does not abound in mythical 'commentary' but the little
we have is informative.
One myth 77, belonging to a common type, tells us that in Cyrene
slaughterers (sphaktriai), their faces smeared with blood and swords
in hand, castrated the man who came to spy on them at the festival,
who was no other than King Battus himself. This is a mythical ex-
pression of the Thesmophoriac hostility to men, blown up to a grue-
some picture. Likewise, Aristomenes of Messenia, when he came
too close to women celebrating the Thesmophoria, was overpowered
with sacrificial knives, roasting spits, and torches, and then taken
captive 78• These stories-apart from adding proof to the existence
of female sacrificial activities-clearly reveal the tension between the

sion of men (cf. Detienne 1979, 189). See also: P. Vidal-Naquet, Esclavage et gy-
necocratie clans la tradition, le mythe, l'utopie, in: Vidal-Naquet 1981, 267-88,
translated in Gordon 1981, 187-200. N. Loraux, La cite, l'historien, Jes femmes,
Pallas32 (1985) 7-39 ( = Loraux 1989, 273-300), discusses the rare instances in his-
toriography where women had a share in institutions of stasis and concludes that
the paucity of these narratives proves that ancient historiography maintained the
principle of exclusion of the women also observed by the institutions of the polis.
75 As Detienne 1979, 210, illuminatively suggests, in which he is followed by
Zeitlin 1982, 146. Cf. especially Blok 1991.
76 In the ritual women shunned contacts with their husbands, but in the myth
they attacked and killed them. Fundamen ta! discussion by Burkert 1970 (cf. above
p.241). While Aristophanes used the Thesmophoria as the 'scene' of his play and
exploited its connotations to the full (see for instance F. I. Zeitlin, Travesties of
Gender and Genre in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazousae,in: H. Foley [ed.], Reflec-
tions of Womenin Antiquity [London 1981] 169-217), the Lemnian women performed
a 'programmatic function' in Aeschylus' Choephoroi,as F. I. Zeitlin, The Dynamics
of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia,Arethusa 11 (1978) 149-84, esp.
155 f., demonstrated. On the programmatic function of the expression Lemnion
lcakonin the Lysistrata, see: R. P. Martin, Fire on the Mountain: Lysistrata and the
Lemnian Women, C!Ant 6 (1987) 77-99.
77 Ael. Fr. 44 = Suda a 4329, th 272, s 1590, 1714.
78 Paus. 4, 17, 1.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 251

sexes 79 dramatized in the Thesmophoria. They also clearly demon-

strate that the festival is essentially wrong, disruptive and, conse-
quently in the eyes of one half of the society, threatening. Moreover,
it should be noticed-in passing, for the moment-that the specific
threat of the Thesmophoria in contradistinction to Bacchic 'excur-
sions', lies in the fact that the Demeter festival is directly connected
with the overt aims and goals of the polis, not least in its focus on the
production of legitimate citizen children 80 • Disruption within the
boundaries of, and even in the political centre of the polis, may be
expected to provoke a different set of responses, both ritually and in
the imagination, than do Bacchic excursions eis oros(' 'to the moun-
tain"), where reversal of cultural codes 'naturally' belongs. We
shall return to this seminal issue later.
Another myth 81 is more specific. Persephone was abducted in the
period in which, as a numphe, she was preparing herself for marriage
interalia by weaving clothes for her wedding and marital life. After
her disappearance, her mother Demeter entrusted the basket
(kalathos)in which these clothes had been stored to the Nymphs, but
the clothes themselves she took with her when she went to the isle
of Paros, where she was hosted by King Melisseus, 'king of the
bees'. After her stay there she showed her gratitude by giving the
bridal dress of Persephone to the sixty daughters of the king, while
also revealing the secret rituals of the Thesmophoria to them. From
that time on all the women celebrating the Thesmophoria bear the
ritual name of 'bees' (melissai).
In his well-known discussion of the connotations of bees (and
honey), Detienne 82 demonstrated that in the Graeco-Roman litera-

79 The nocturnal Demeter festival at Pellene (mentioned above n.41), where

even male dogs were removed, was followed by scurrilous bantering between men
and women.
80 As emphasized for instance by Zeitlin 1982, 132; 137 f. 143: "the occupation
of the Pnyx by the women constitutes a transference of the household's domain to
the central religious and political spaces" . On the markedly political aspects of the
Thesmophoriazousai: Loraux 1981, 126, with further literature. Cf. n.40 above.
Cf. also Gould 1980, 51, who rightly contradicts I. M. Lewis, arguing that rites
such as the Thesmophoria and the Panathenaea "are not 'peripheral' but 'central',
in Lewis' terminology: that is, its function is to reinforce official, 'male' morality
and the dominant structures of society, and the roleof womenin it must seemanomalous''
(my italics H. S. V.).
81 Apollod. FGrHist 244 F 89; cf. Callim. H.Apollo 110-1. See the analysis by
Detienne 1972, 154 f.; 1979, 211 f.; 1981, 100 ff.
82 Detienne 1981, where he announces a full-scale study on honey myths in
Greece, which I have not seen yet. Independently, M. Bettini, Antropologiae cultura
252 CHAPTER FOUR

ture over fifteen centuries the melissa was the emblem of female
domestic virtue. The bee distinguishes itself by a diligent and-
above all-chaste way of life, and by an extreme abstinence in sex-
ual matters. Adultery, or, more generally, any 'indecent' form of
sexual intercourse 83 , is a sin that bees abhorr and they retaliate by
abandoning the place of the crime or ( even attacking8 4) the culprit
himself. Restricting ourselves to the most directly illuminating and
relevant elements in Detienne's argument 85 , we may conclude that
the ritual name of 'bees' exactly symbolizes the expectations concer-
ning the female behaviour during this festival of reversal: although
everything may be messed up, and all sorts of extravagancies condo-
ned, the sexualcodesshould be carefully maintained 86 • Indeed, more

roTTlflna.
Parente/a,tempo, immagini dell' anima (Rome 1986), in a section on bees
(203-53), analyses the typical bee-features: 'odio verso I'impurita e la trasgressione
sessuale' (208); 'odio verso ogni lusso e lascivia ( ... ), ogni forma di sanguinolenza
o di putrido' (209), but also 'verso profumi' (210). The bee cannot be defined ac-
cording to normal categories: 'ne aromi-ne putrido', but also: 'ne maschio ne fem-
mina' (Arist. GA 759b; Aug. CD 15, 27, 4). His results ( cf. also: P. Scarpi, ll picchio
e il codicedelleapi [Padova 19841) support Detienne's, the more so since he does not
seem to have consulted Detienne's work, as C. Grottanelli, Api romane, api litu-
ane, SMSR 11 (1987) 311-6, remarks. The latter points out the complete con-
gruence with the imagery of the bee in other cultures, especially the Lituanian. Par-
ker 1983, 83, supports his conclusion: "The celebrants of the Thesmophoria are
termed 'bees', the pure type of ideal womanhood", with references to Apollodorus
(244 FGrHist F 89), and L. Bodson, Hiera Zoia (Bruxelles 1978) 25 ff, for bees and
Demeter. On the positive implications of the comparison between women and bees
especially in Hesiod and Semonides see also: Loraux 1981, 82, 108-111. P. Tri-
omphe, Le lion, la viergeet le miel (Paris 1989) 129-39 ('le vin et le miel') is curiously
unrewarding. F. Roscalla, La descrizione de] se e dell'altro: api ed alveare da
Esiodo a Semonide, QUCC 29 (1988) 23-47, has analysed the differences between
Hesiod and Semonides and comes to the conclusion that all comparisons of women
and bees just express that for the archaic Greek man no positive values can be found
in women. The ideal bee-hive lodges an ideal society from which the 'other', the
female, is excluded.
83 Already explicitly in Hesiod and above all in Semonides' diatribe against
women. For this reason bees detest the scent of aromatics and perfumes, being in-
struments of seduction: Arist. HA 9, 40, 626a 26 ff; Theophr. GP 6, 5, 1.; Ael. HA
5, 11; Geopon. 15, 2, 19.
84 Plutarch, Quaest.Nat 36; cf. Plutarch, Coniugaliapraecepta44, 144d.
85 For instance, omitting the "faintly unpleasant smell which accompanied the
fast kept by the worshippers of Demeter" (Detienne 1981, 102). I am also silent
about the supposed oppositions between the Adonia and the Thesmophoria, in
which I find much to praise, but regret that the structuralistic rigour occasionally
provokes such statements as: "the Thesmophoria took always place in a serious,
almost severe atmosphere" (101), which, as a general statement, is misleading.
86 When women duck out male supervision, suspicions of licentious behaviour
immediately loom up. The scholion on Lucian 280 Rabe records that during the
Haloa the priestess of Demeter secretly whispers into the ears of the women recom-
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 253

than carefully. For, apart from and beyond being the examples of
chastity, bees are often regarded as remaining virginal throughout
their lifetime, being notable for their asexual manner of reproduc-
tion87. Here, indeed, we have the ideal virgin mothers.
Now, the little myth about Demeter at Paros contains one curious
detail: the aition of the Thesmophoria does not refer to matrons, but
to numphai, here (as usually) in the explicit sense of virgins on the
eve of marriage. Far from being another clue to a supposedly initiato-
ry nature of the Thesmophoria 88, this is a strikingly accurate mythi-
cal translation of what we inferred from our analysis of the ritual
data: during the Thesmophoria the matrons are temporarily

mendations for adultery. On male curiosity and suspicion concerning women's

secrets see: Zeitlin 1982, 147.
87 Arist. GA 10, 759-60; Verg. Georg.4, 198-9, quodneeconcubituindulgent,neecor-
pora segnesin Veneremsolvunt aut fetus nixibus edunt. Verum ipsaeefoliis natoset suavibus
herbisoralegunt.Cf. Plin. NH 11, 46 ff., Apium enimcoitusvisus est numquam,proposing
various different solutions to the problem of asexual reproduction; Arist. GA 3, 9;
HA 5, 21. On the phenomen of parthenogenesis in Aristotle see: P. Manuli, in:
Campese, Manuli & Sissa 1983, 162-70. Cf. also: M. Detienne, Potageries de
femmes ou comment engendrer seule, Traverses5-6 (1976) 75-81. In this light bees
can become a threat to men, who do not appreciate the idea of generatiospontanea
(see below pp. 284 f.). The perspective may shift according to other features: having
stings, bees can also be pictured as aggressive and as such they are associated with
both Artemis and Aphrodite in Euripides' Hippolytos: Schlesier 1985, 28 f.
88 As it was argued by J. Prytzjohansen, The Thesmophoria as a Women's
Festival, Temenos11 (1975) 78-87, against the evidence that the festival concerned
married women and excludedvirgins. His main problem is how to get rid of the pigs,
which do fit in an agrarian but not really in an initiatory context. D. Baudy 1989,
26 n. 94, tries to save the initiatory interpretation and to get round this difficulty
by identifying the pigs as 'cakes in the form of female pudenda' (on the double
meaning of choirossee below), which does not convince me. Equally unconvincing:
G. E. Skov, The Priestess of Demeter and Kore and Her Role in the Initiation of
Women at the Festival of the Haloa at Eleusis, Temenos11 (1975) 136-47. This does
not deny that initiatory elements may hide in myths accompanying rites with a fo-
cus on agrarian or female fertility. Cf. B. Lincoln, The Rape of Persephone: A
Greek Scenario of Women's Initiation, HThR 72 (1979) 223-35 = idem, Emerging
from the Chrysalis.Studiesin Rituals of Women's Initiation (Cambridge [Mass. ]-London
1981) 71-90. But I am totally unconvinced by explanations ofEleusinian ritual as
having originated in a social ceremony of women's initiation. Nor does Dowden
1989 include the Eleusininan myth in his book. Another unconvincing idea was ad-
vanced by K. Kerenyi, Zeus und Hera (Leiden 1972) 126 f., who connects the festival
with taboos on menstruating women. Far more interestingly, Chirassi-Colombo
1979 undertakes a structural analysis of the festivals of the month Pyanopsion,
which concentrate on adolescents and women. Both are marginal groups, and as
such ideal ritual actors in this precarious period of transition and renewal. The male
rites (Oschophoria, Theseia) bear the stamp of puberty rites: after this period of
transition the adolescents will leave their marginal position. The female Thes-
mophoria, on the other hand, are also an interruption of normal life but do not en-
tail the same definitive change of status.
254 CHAPTER FOUR

reduced to the status of numphai. They become melissai, in the sense

of virginal and sexually abstinent maiden-bees 89 .
Again-comparably to the case ofkneoron mentioned above-an
ambivalence appears to be hidden in the term numpheitself. To quote
Winkler 90 : "numphe has many meanings: at the center of this ex-
tended family are 'clitoris' and 'bride'". So, on the one hand, a
numpheis a young maiden shortly before or during the period of her
transition from virgin (parthenosor kore) to wife or woman (gune or
meter).On the other hand, it is the term for that part of the female
body where eras and sexuality are concentrated. So, the notion of
nu;nphestructurallybetrays the same paradox as the Thesmophoriac
'bee-nymphs' do during a limitedperiod:they directly and emphatical-
ly refer to sexuality and the erotic, but only as a potentialquality, not
to be consummated for the time being.
If, then, our tentative inferences from the ritual facts are so
gratifyingly corroborated by myth, I venture to adduce two other
facts that may be relevant to the issue. One is a detail only attested
by Clemence Protr. 2, 19. 3. He says that "Thesmophoriazousae
were not supposed to eat the seeds of the pomegranates that had
fallen on the ground". Older scholars read in this statement a gener-
al prohibition on the eating of pomegranates during the Thes-
mophoria. However, Deubner 1932, 58, correctly argued that the
expression can only mean that pomegranates must have belonged to
the Thesmophoriac diet. And he adduced it as additional evidence
for his fertility interpretation. Now, far from denying that
pomegranates can relate to fertility, I would rather emphasize the

89 Numphai is also the term for bees in the larva stage just when they begin to
open up and sprout their wings: Arist. HA 551b 2-4; Photios s.v. numphai;Plin. NH
11, 48.
90 Winkler 1990, 181, where the evidence can be found. Cf. King 1983, 112:
"the term 'nymphe' would be applied to those in the 'latent period' stretching from
marriageable to married", referring to Schmitt 1979, 1068. Detienne 1981, 102,
speaks of the numphe as an ambiguousbee, standing at the intersections of two
categories, the koreand the meter,since the term "applies both to the young women
just before her marriage and to the bride before the birth of her children finally com-
mits her to the alien home of her husband''. This clears the way to the introduction
of an interstitial period of hedupatheia("excessive pleasure and satisfaction"),
known as the numphiosbios (the days immediately following the marriage) during
which the numpheenjoyed the unrestricted pleasures of eros(ibid. 103). I would not
deny, in fact I even welcome, this aspect of the imagery of the numphe, but it does
not alter the fact that the weight of the evidence centres on the unmarried, virginal
status of the nymphe, which will also be the focus of my further argument.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 255

more specificfunction of the fruit under discussion. Like apples, with

wich they are often subsumed under the collective term mela91 ,
pomegranates 92 more specifically refer to courtship, focusing atten-
tion on the sexually maturing maiden before marriage and to the
wedding ceremony itself. In other words, if they relate to fertility-
or rather, sexuality-, the reference is to potentials and expectations
rather than to fulfilment, least of all during the regular married
life93 . This appears to be true for both ancient and modern Greece.
Speaking on apples, quinces, and pomegranates Lawson 94 notes
their special signification in relation to marriage (and funerals 95):
"The classical custom of throwing an apple into a girl's lap as a sign
oflove is a method of wooing still known to the rustic swain. It is not
indeed regarded as a highly respectable method. ( .... ) The quince
and the pomegranate however are employed without any offence to
propriety. The pomegranate is far more commonly used. Sometimes

91 Winkler 1990, 183 ff., devotes an illuminative discussion to melain the widest
sense of the term as symbols of 'courtship and marriage-rites'. After the older litera-
ture cited in his n.20, the issue has been often discussed more recently: J. Trumpf,
Kydonische Apfel, Hermes88 (1960) 14-22; M. Lugauer, Untersuchungen zur Symbolik
des Apfels in der Antike (Diss. Erlangen-Niirnberg 1967); A. R. Littlewood, The
Symbolism of the Apple in Greek and Roman Literature, HSPh 72 (1968) 147-81;
Ph. I. Kakridis, Une pomme mordue, Hellenica 25 (1972) 189-92. For modern
Greece cf. G. F. Abbot, MacedonianFolklore(Cambridge 1903) 147f.; 170; 177, and
Lawson loc. cit. (below n.94). Again there is a double layer of meanings: "melon sig-
nifies various 'clitoral' objects" and for this reason stands for the sexual and erotic
attraction exercised and the expectations cherished by the maturing virgin, whose
near fulfilment are symbolized on the wedding day.
9 2 For an ample discussion of the pomegranate, though with bias on her
'precereal' visions see: Chirassi 1968, 73-90.
93 "In fact a closer look at the use of apples in marriage rites and seduction
scenes reveals repeatedly that they were designed to produce sexual desire in the
female, not fertility", thus, quite correctly, Chr. Faraone, Aphrodite's KESTOS
and Apples for Atalanta: Aphrodisiacs in Early Greek Myth and Ritual, Phoenix44
(1990) 219-243, the most recent discussion.
94 J. B. Lawson, Modern GreekFolkloreand Ancient GreekReligion. A Study of Sur-
vivals (Cambridge 1910), 558 f.
95 Cf. for antiquity for instance: Chirassi 1968, 73-90, esp. 90. Pomegranates
are not the only ingredients in the Thesmophoria with possible references to death.
The megaracan be viewed as places of birth, sexuality and death in the cultic imagi-
nation Q.-P. Vernant, Mythe et penseechez les Grecs [Paris 19692] 125 f.; Zeitlin
1982, 143) and, of course, Kore is both the bride of Death and the symbol of crea-
tive powers. IfI pass over this side of the matter, it is only because it is not directly
relevant to my argument. But see the remarks on the relation death-marriage below
p.279. For pomegranates, death and Demeter see above all: M. B. Arthur, Politics
and Pomegranates. An Interpretation of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Arethusa
10 (1977) 7-48.
256 CHAPTER FOUR

the bride and the bridegroom eat together from it; elsewhere the
bridegroom proffers it to the bride as the first gift on her entrance to
their home, and she alone eats of it; or again she may be required to
hurl it down and scatter its seeds over the floor 96 • ''

Accordingly, it was by eating from the pomegranate that Kore

confirmed her marriage in the netherworld. And among the few
goddesses who are (sometimes) connected with the pomegranate 97
the bride Kore/Persephone is by far the most prominent. If, then,
the pomegranate specifically 98 symbolizes the introductory period
before 99 , the initiation into, or the confirmation of marriage, this
again perfectly fits the Thesmophoriac symbolism that reduces ma-
trons to the status of numphaibefore or on the brink of marriage, ac-
cording to our earlier conclusions.
The other detail concerns the term choiros.Jt has the double mean-
ing of 'pig' and 'female sexual organ'. Recently, M. Golden 100 ar-
gued that the choirosof the Thesmophoria,far beyond simply combin-
ing these two meanings, stands for a potentially hostile natural force
which can be tamed to benefit human society; that force is female
sexuality. In his view the emphasis on pigs in the Thesmophoria
holds a message: "women's sexuality, like the pig, could help or
harm". With respect to our issue, however, this-well-known and
practically ubiquitous-ambivalence gains considerable relevance if

96 This would be a good parallel to the prescription cited by Clemens above that
the seeds that had fallen on the ground should not be eaten. Note that according
to Paus. 8, 37, 7, the pomegranates were treated as 'an accursed thing' in the wor-
ship of Demeter at Lycosura. During the Haloa the pomegranate belongs to a con-
siderable list offruits, vegetables, fishes and meat which are forbidden (Schol. Lu-
cian. 280 Rabe). Cf. Wachter 1910, 106 f. Perhaps since in this festival the focus
is not on the ambiguity Demeter-Kore, but rather on Demeter alone.
97 Hera, Athena, Aphrodite. See Chirassi 1968, 85-90.
98 It should be repeated that no plant or fruit is ever mono-referential. Being the
fruit that specifically signifies the performing of marriage, the pomegranate also ac-
companies Hera in her specific role of the bride of Zeus. Her statue at Argos has
a pomegranate in one hand (Paus. 2, 17, 4), and hence, we sometimes hear that
the pomegranate is the only species offruit that grows in honour of Hera (Philostr.
V. Apoll. 4, 28). This function could well be compared with the one of the Samian
Hera in which 'nymphal' elements figured as well (above n.67).
99 In the words of Chirassi 1968, 82, referring to the semi-divine trias of the
pomegranate: Hemithea, Rhoio and Parthenos: "Essi designano ii profilo mitico
de! primitivo dema femminile de! melograno sottinteso nella figura di Rhoio es-
primendone la femminilita come partheneia .... ''
IOO M. Golden, Male Chauvinists and Pigs, EMC 7 (1988) 1-12, where one can
find the ample documentation.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 257

we compare Varro's comment on the (Etruscan) custom that bride

and groom sacrificed a pig during the wedding ceremonies:
"Our women, particularly nurses, give the name porcusto the nature
which makes maidensfemale (naturamquafeminaesunt in virginibus),and
Greek women call it choiros,signifying that it is readyfor marriage(sig-
nificantesessedignum insignenuptiarum)'' .

Once more, this time in the double meaning of the Greek and Latin
terms for 'pig', we discover the same emphasis on the virginal girl
during her maturation towards marriage-i.e., on the numphe. It
also appears that the Greek term choirosis predominately applied to
young pigs 101 and, accordingly, to (parts of) young girls. This is
most clearly exemplified by Aristophanes in the Acharnenses760
ff. 102-where the wordplay, so cherished by comici, clearly opposes
the choiros as pudendum of young girls to the kusthos or kteis of
adult/married women. All this seems to confirm our previous con-
clusions that the central inconsistency of the Thesmophoria is the
paradox between its focus on the fertility and sexuality of the mar-
ried woman on one hand, and the emphatic suppression of any op-
portunity to consummate this, on the other. This paradox is consis-
tently expressed by symbols indicating the matron's temporary
return to the premarital virginal existence of the numphe. Further-
more, we found the paradox that sexual symbolism-such as the
'clitoral' implications of the term numphe and of melon(including its
function in courtship), the erotic elements of the numphiosbiosas ana-
lysed by Detienne, the pomegranate and the choiros-also tends to
be more emphatically applied to numphai, who are, on the other
hand, the very symbols of virginity. In other words: whereas (ritual)
references to female sexuality and eroticism are accepted in the con-
text of numphai, they tend to be avoided, as soon as regular house-
wives are involved. The question remains: what is the meaning of
all this?
By way of introduction to this question I shall give a survey of
earlier suggestions, for, as a matter of fact, the 'Thesmophoriac
paradox' has not gone completely unnoticed, although it has never
received the systematic attention it deserves. Actually, we are con-
fronted with a variant of the more general contradiction as pointed

101 LSJ s.v.; see: J. N. Adams, The Latin SexualVocabulary

(London 1982) 82.
102 "une scene d'une grossierete presque insupportable en fran~ais": V. Cou-
lon, in the Bude edition ad Loe.
258 CHAPTER FOUR

out by H.J. Rose in the context of eunuchs in the service of fertility

deities-the paradox that '' a goddess of fertility should be wor-
shipped by the unfertile" 103. This paradox, of course, can be seen
in a wider context if we consider the structural function of virgins
in the cult offertility goddesses 104. Here, A. D. Nock rightly reject-
ed the dynamistic theories of his time and suggested that "the re-
quirement of chastity in sacred ministers was based much more on
the impurity involved in sexual intercourse than on any peculiar
powers resting in the pure''. This is the perspective in which he and
many others also explain the temporary abstention of married peo-
ple at sacred seasons, before ploughing, sowing and reaping, such
as the Thesmophoria 105.
Recently, however, other-psychological and/or structuralist-
motives have been put forward. Burkert 1985, 244, explains the con-
tradiction between sexual symbolism and the demand of abstinence
during the Thesmophoria as an '' antithetic preparation which seeks
fulfilment in procreation and birth''. In the same vein Parker 1983,
83, writes: "A final layer of significance derives, perhaps, from con-
trast. Sexual abstinence is required before and during the Thes-
mophoria precisely because, without sexuality, there can be no fer-
tility. The ritual focuses attention on the idea of productive sexual
union by a paradoxical temporary insistence upon its opposite.
Everything marks the period of abstinence as abnormal; virgins,
who are permanently pure, have no parts in the rites".
Remarkably, Detienne, who, more than anybody else, has contri-
buted to the elaboration of the implicit paradoxes of the Thes-
mophoria 106-and some of whose arguments can be recognized in
the above analysis-does not seem to give an explanation. In an apt
formulation he phrases the central paradox of Thesmophoriac De-
meter as representing ''the contradictions of a society and of a sys-

103 H.J. Rose, CQ 18 (1924) 14, quoted by A. D. Nock, Eunuchs in Ancient

Religion, in Nock 1972 I, 7-15, esp.10.
104 Fehrle 1910, 63 ff. ; cf. Parker 1983, 79 ff.
105 Nock aptly quotes such testimonies as Athenagoras Legatio33; Macrob. Sat.
1, 23, 13; Plut. Numa 9.
106 Detienne 1979, 213, " ... le corps de l'epouse legitime est en etat de fecon-
dite. Fecondite d'autant plus assuree que le corps feminin est tenu a l'ecart du
plaisir amoureux''. If he, as far as I can see, does not search for an interpretation
of this paradox, this is mainly because he focuses his attention on other contra-
dictions; the one between peaceful, chaste and diligent 'bee' matrons(not; maidens)
and violent, blood-thirsty, man-hating 'mageirai'.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 259

tern of thought which deliberately relegates the feminine species to

the borders of politico-religious space, but which is bound, through
certain constraints internal to its own values, to entrust to women
a determining role in the reproduction of the entire system" 107 .
One remark in a very different context: "Les femmes au sacrifice,
surtout quand ii est sanglant, ne peuvent etre majeures" (women at
sacrifice, especially at bloody sacrifice, cannot be adult) 108 , stands
in isolation. However, as I hope to show later on, it goes to the heart
of the matter.
In a frontal attack on the 'phallocratic bias' in Detienne's discus-
sions of Adonia and Thesmophoria, Winkler asks the rhetorical
question ''why women would be celebrating their own inferiori-
ty?''. In his search for women's own view of the meaning of the fes-
tival he, like Detienne, discovers a' structured opposition of the sex-
es'. However, in his view the focus is on the notion that "phallic
men are peripheral and their pretensions amusing" 109 , and he fails
to pay attention to the Thesmophoriac paradox.
Finally, Zeitlin 1982, 131, approaches the Dionysiac and Thes-
mophoriac rituals of reversal in ''the hope to understand more fully
the encoding of the categories of male and female in the ritual idiom
as a significant conceptual frame for thinking about women". She
phrases her views on the Thesmophoriac contradictions as follows
(146): "Inherent in this harnessing of the powers offemale fecundity
which necessitates an active, even violent, role for women, is the
anxiety which surrounds the giving power to women, power that is
as close to parthenogenesis as possible''. The female role in procrea-
tion is ''paradoxically more clearly defined by the cultic chastity,
which seems to separate sexuality and fertility even as it separates
male and female spaces.'' She devises a structuralist opposition be-

107 Detienne 1979, 184, in Zeitlin's translation.

108 Detienne 1979, 188.
109 Winkler 1990, 188-209, esp. 206. Though he certainly scores a point here
and there, I cannot accept all his conclusions. "The notion that women gathered
for both festivals (Adonia and Thesmophoria) in order to express the excellence of
male farmers and the tawdriness of pleasure-bent females seems counter-intuitive"
(199), is rather a persiflage ofDetienne's view. Typical of Winkler, on the other
hand, is for instance his remark on the bakery genitals of the related Haloa (196):
"Presumably they were eaten, and if so, we may wonder with what licking of lips,
what nips and bites, what gestures with the food and offers to share''. Of course,
he is right in stating that "the laughter of the oppressed" itself is an expression of
subversiveness. Cf. also Zeitlin 1982, 145.
260 CHAPTER FOUR

tween two ways to promote fertility: one is by the sacralization of

sexuality (for instance in rites of promiscuity), the other (Thes-
mophoriac) by invoking rituals of abstention, which, however, are
homologues to each other, one from above the norm (too much), the
other from below (too little).
In the frame of her structuralist set of oppositions she explains the
central paradox of the '' disjunction of sexuality from maternity in
the interests offertility" as follows (149): "Rite in fact, acts out the
contradictions of female roles which are defined by chastity, on the
one hand, and obscenity on the other. Both are diametrically op-
posed and yet correlated with each other within the rite for the ac-
complishment of a common goal. The coexistence of these two with-
in a single ritual expresses, in fact, more openly than one might have
suspected, the inherent "double bind" under which the woman
operates. This double bind demands chastity from the wife and yet
insists on her sexual nature. Ritual is a frame that defines itself as
a bounded situation relegated to sacred time, space, and story, but
at the same time, it insists upon representing the 'facts' of social life,
secret in both domains but illicit in one and obligatory in the other''.
It has often been remarked that the ideal wife of the Mediterranean
man, ancient and modern, is a virgin mother, and it is this ambigui-
ty that forms the frame of Zeitlin's interpretations.
Different approaches and suggestions need not necessarily mono-
polize the scene to the effect of excluding all others: festivals like the
Thesmophoria may foster a variety of different 'meanings', depend-
ing on the gender, the social position and the degree of involvement
of the (participant) observers. They also depend upon cultural and
social development, for instance from a strictly agricultural towards
more urbanized and complex phases of society. In other words,
myth and ritual can have various different layers, they can be and
often are polyvalent, and should be analysed according to their
specific cultural environment. When I pay specific attention to the
curiously 'frustrating' aspects of the Thesmophoriac ritual later on,
this does not necessarily mean that I reject earlier explanations. Be-
fore pursuing our quest, however, we shall first return to Bona Dea
and analyse her myth and ritual from the same perspective. We shall
find ourselves confronted with strikingly similar paradoxes and
questions.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 261

3. BACK TO BONA DEA

"The female worshippers of Demeter correspond with the Roman

matrons who celebrated-also with secret rites-the festival of Bona
Dea", writes E. Simon 110 , and by now we are able to confirm her
statement. Both festivals are strictly reserved to ( decent or even well-
born) matrons, men being demonstratively exluded, but they are
both held in the political centre of the city. They refer to closely relat-
ed 'fertility' goddesses and the rites show interest in cereal and fe-
male fecundity. As for specific ritual elements both festivals reveal
similar features relating to an atmosphere of 'otherness' and these
take the form of a type of primitivism. Both are marked by the use
of primitive bowers or huts made ofleaves, while the Thesmophoria
adds rites such as sitting on the ground and lying on beds of twigs,
and the Bona Dea festival references to honey and milk as primitive
signals. In both rites serpents play a role as do, even more emphati-
cally, pigs. Most significantly, both are characterized by bloody
sacrifices performed by matrons. There is, moreover, an exception-
ally close intimacy with the central deity. The Greek women under-
stand their fast and 'primitive' behaviour as acts of sympathy with
the mourning Demeter, the Roman women invite the goddess to
come in person and arrange a table from which she is supposed to
take her dinner. Finally, besides being very serious and holy rites,
they also betray their nature of exception by female licence: we have
noticed remarkable analogies in various elements of 'ludic be-
haviour', although the emphatic references to wine are only attested
for the Roman festival.
However, these analogies by no means exhaust the list, as we shall
see by a detailed analysis of some features of the Bona Dea festival
not discussed so far. Two ritual elements attract attention because
of their diametrically opposite applications: whereas wine was expli-
citely welcomed, myrtle was banned. Our discussion will show that
this very combination is immediately relevant to an understanding
of the festival.

IIO Simon 1983, 17. Le Bonniec 1958, 422, rather equates the Thesmophoria
with the SacrumanniversariumCereris,followed by Detienne 1972, 151 f. One view
does not necessarily exclude the other.
262 CHAPTER FOUR

1. Wine in, myrtle out

Plutarch QR 20, wonders:
"Why is it that women when they put up in their houses a shrine to
the Women's Goddess, whom they call the Good Goddess, bring in no
myrtle, though they take pride in making use of all kinds of growing
and blooming plants?"

He gives two possible explanations, one with reference to a myth

that we shall discuss later, the other:
"Or is this because they abstain from many things, and particularly
from sexual pleasures, when celebrating this religious service? For they
not only exclude their husbands from the houses but they also remove
everything male when performing the customary rites in honour of the
goddess. Now, as the myrtle is sacred to Aphrodite, they shun it on
religious grounds" (Translation H.H.J. Brouwer).

Plutarch's explanation clearly hits the mark 111 : although myrtle is

one of the most widely used plants in rites and ceremonies, and an-
cient commentators tend to adapt their interpretations to the vary-
ing contexts 112 , scholarly works 113 on plants in general and the
myrtle in particular, make it abundantly clear that in Greek and Ro-
man culture the plant was notorious for its erotic-sexual symbolism
in accordance with its ubiquitous connections with Aphrodite-
Venus. Added to this, the word murtos also means female puden-
dum, more especially the clitoris. The plant was used in aromatic
oils-also to flavour a special type ofwine 114-. Now, although the

111 Brouwer 1989, 336-9, who is a firm believer in the fertility paradigm,
manoeuvres himself into serious difficulties. On one hand he would prefer to as-
sume purificatory and fertility functions of the myrtle, on the other he cannot deny
that the chastity of Bona Dea and her worshippers are an indispensable motif and
an original feature, which, of course, would tell for Plutarch's explanation. As so
often the solution is sought in a supposed development in the course of time. His
attempt to butter his bread on both sides results in an argument as opaque as his
conclusion is unconvincing: ''The association of myrtle with chastity seems to have
been superseded by that of myrtle with fertility (under the patronage of Venus), and
this will have led to the taboo on myrtle in the cult of Bona Dea" (339).
112 Blech 1987, 321: "die antiken Autoren gaben ihre Begriindung aus dem
Bereich der Anwendung heraus und gelangten damit zu verschiedenen Ergebnis-
sen".
113 Fehrle 1910, 239-42; A. Steier, Myrtos, RE 16 (1933) 1171-83; Chirassi
1968, 17-38: II mirto; K. Lembach, Die Pjlanzenbei Theokrit(Heidelberg 1970) 126;
P. Faure, Parfumset aromatesde l'Antiquite(Paris 1987) 158, 167; Blech 1987, 250 ff.
Cf. Detienne 1972, 122 f.; Bomer ad Ovid. Fast. 4, 15. The myrtle isAphroditesphu-
ton: Plut. Marc. 22.
114 It is especially for this double application that the myrtle is praised by Plin.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 263

twigs were common material for making wreaths in a wide range of

applications-funerary, for magistrates, for the Roman ovatio, in
various cults 115 -the plant was conspicuously avoided as material
for the bridal crown in Rome 116 , while it is hardly if at all attested
for the ancient Greek wedding 117 • Silentium clamat:the exclusion of

NH 15, 118. See especially: Steier, o.c. (above n.113) 1177 ff. The myrtle wine be·
longed to the type of alcoholic beverages, that, as we shall see, women were allowed
to drink.
115 Cf. Blech 1987, 321: "die Myrtenzweige und -Kranze scheinen die Fiihig·
keit zu besitzen, die Atmosphiire und kultische Interpretation ihrer Umgebung
anzunehmen, eine Eigenschaft, die sie mit fast alien anderen Kranzpflanzen tei·
!en".
116 There is only one text that might connect the myrtle with marriage: Plin.
NH 15, 122: Cato tria generamyrti prodidit, nigram, candid.am,coniugulam,fortassis a
coniugiis, illo Cluacinaegenere(the latter referring to Venus Cluacina who presides
over the coniunctioand "this arbor" ibid. 120). The obvious guesswork is additional
proof that Pliny does not know of the existence of myrtle functioning in the context
of marriage. Cato, Agr. 8 and 133, to which he is referring here, lists the myrtle
among a number of plants which lack names relating to function.
117 Faure o.c. (above n.113) 157: "Pendant des siecles, le myrte ( .... )a servi
a tresser Jes couronnes des nouveaux maries en Attique", is a totally unfounded
extrapolation from the modern application of myrtle for wedding wreaths both in
Greece and elswhere (Fehrle 1910, 239 ff., who professes the same conviction,
refers to REV, 305; Stengel, Hermes41 [ 1906] 231, where nothing of the kind can
be found). In fact, there are only three testimonies that can be, and sometimes are,
adduced in this connection and some if not all are spurious. The central text, gener·
ally referred to (but correctly omitted by Blech 1982, 80 n.36) Ar. Av. 160-1, with
the schol., actually disproves what it is supposed to prove: that myrtle belongs to
the atmosphere of the wedding. The scholion commenting upon the enumeration
ofluxuries, including the myrtle, correctly relates it to the numphiosbiosin general:
life of opulence and indulgence ( cf. above n. 90), and clearly does not know of the
existence of myrtle wreathsfor brides.Then, there are two other possible references,
mentioned by Blech I.e. Pind. fr. 52n 1.16 f. Snell, where maidens of a wedding cho·
rus use myrtle to bind up their hair. In view of its isolation, this may only refer to
the common usage of myrtle on festive occasions in general. Myrtle simply is
"Symbol der Festesfreude" (Steier o.c. [above n.113] 1179)-there was even a
regular myrtle market in Athens: Ar. Thesm. 37; Vesp. 860-one more reason for
paying attention to its absence from the wedding ceremony. Finally, in Stesich.
PMG 187 ,4, the chariot ofMenelaos on his way to his marriage with Helena is born·
barded with Cydonian apples, myrtle foliage and wreaths of roses. This, indeed is
the only unmistakable testimony, but at the same time it is remarkable that it con·
cerns the future husband, not the bride, and its combination with the melainvites an
interpretation as the one we have suggested above pp.256 f.: like the mela myrtle
may play its role here in the erotic introductionto the wedding night. As a matter of
fact, the ceremony of marriage, of course, is polyvalent as to its references. It may
refer to the-now licit-experience of erotic love (the numphiosbiosjust mentioned)
as a necessary condition for the production of legitimate children (the motive for
marriage); or it may be seen as the initiation to the regularly married life in which
the wife should be kept as far as possible from erotic seduction. Altogether,
however, it seems prudent to follow Steier 1182, in his conclusion: "Dass die
264 CHAPTER FOUR

myrtle from the bridal crown should be explained by its erotic

connotations: being the signum of Aphrodite/ Venus 118, it denotes
erotic seduction, and for that reason should be shunned in the con-
text of regular marriage, where Hera/Iuno reigns. Incidentally, the
majority of heroes, heroines and semi-goddesses that are connected
with (the name) of the myrtle are conspicuously marked by frustrat-
ed or illicit love affairs, or they concern Amazon-like types 119• Sig-
nificantly, the Samian Hera, who was bound with lugosduring the
festival of the Tonaia 120 , was also the goddess in whose cult myrtle
was strictly forbidden 12 1 •
Consequently, the exclusion of myrtle from the Roman ritual is
homologous with the inclusion of lugosin the Greek Thesmophoria:
both signify that during the festival, in spite of the overtly sexual at-
mosphere, there is no place for erotic lust (let alone for seductive ac-
tions by males such as Clodius).

2. The presenceof wine

That wine was taboo for Roman women is recorded by a number
of ancient sources. If we have reason to distrust Juvenal's isolated
report that during the festival of Bona Dea women indulged in wine
drinking, the remaining evidence for women's handling wine for Ii-

Myrtos, die bei uns die Pflanze des Brautkranzes ist, bei den Griechen und Romern
eine ahnliche Rolle als Hochzeitskranz gespielt habe, !asst sich nicht nachweisen' '.
118 The specific 'Aphrodisiac' nature of the myrtle, though better known from
Greek sources, was also a common trait in Roman representations: Plautus,
Vidulariafr. IV says haecmyrtus Venerisest. Cf. Verg. Eclog. 7, 62; Servius ad locum
and ad Aen. 3, 23. Moreover, Varro, L.L. 5, 154; Plin. NH 15, 121; August. CD
4, 16; Paul. ex Festo 134-5 (L) all connect the etymology of Venus Murcia with
murtos. Cf. Fehrle 1910, 239; Steier o.c. (above n.113), 1182; R. Schilling, La
religionromainede Venus(Paris 1982 = 1954) 212 ff.
119 The evidence is collected and discussed by Chirassi 1968, esp. 18-25 (who
tends to connect this heroic type with dying fertility goddesses of a precereal cul-
ture, in which I cannot always follow her). Geopon.11, 6, for instance, records that
the militant virgin Mursine, favourite of Athena, was killed by envious youngsters
and then metamorphosed into a myrtle tree by the goddess; Serv. Aen. 3, 23, tells
the same about a priestess of Venus, who, against the wish of the goddess, wished
to marry. Both stories refer to virgins that did not reach marriage. The graves of
Phaedra and Hippolytos at Troizen were adorned with transfixed myrtle petals as
a symbol offrustrated (and illicit) love. Note also that the 'adulterous' Aristaios (cf.
Detienne 1981) was educated by the nymph of the myrtle (Pind. Pyth. 9, 65; Apoll.
Rhod. 2, 504 ff.). Ar. Av. 1097 ff. speaks of parthenialeukotrophamurta. All this refers
to erotic love that did not find accomplishment in a regular marriage.
120 Athen. 15, 672C. Nilsson 1906, 46 ff; Blech 1987, 374; D. Baudy 1989, and
above n.67.
121 Schol. Ar. Ran. 330; Nie. Al. 619 f. and schol.; cf. Blech 1987, 251; 259.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 265

bations would not give too much cause for alarm at first sight.
However, as recent research has shown, the sacrificial use of wine
by women, perhaps even more than its alleged consumption, was a
downright violation of Roman social and ritual codes.
In an innovatory article on Bona Dea, G. Piccaluga 122 argued a-
mongst other things that the prohibition of wine was not as absolute
as is often assumed. Her arguments were adopted and elaborated by
0. de Cazanove 123, while others had already added support to
these views from the domain of archaeology 124 . Gellius 10, 23, 1-2,
says that women of all periods abstained from the wine called teme-
tum, but that they did drink loream, passum, murrinam and similar
'sweetened' wines 125 . This statement, combined with others, can
throw light on recent archaeological discoveries, which seem to
contradict the prevailing literary evidence. Archaic Latin graves of
aristocratic women contain wine-amphorae-one even contained an
olla for wine with the text salvetod Tita-thus irrefutably linking
(aristocratic) women with the consumption of wine 126 .
Now, if according to Gellius we should make a distinction be-
tween 'sweetened' (or, more generally, processed) and pure wines,
the contradiction is solved: in the archaic period aristocratic women
were allowed to drink certain brands of imported or processed wines
(spurcum vinum), as a token of their social status, but they had to ab-
stain from the pure, indigenous temetum, which was reserved for men
and gods 127. For this temetum, as Piccaluga had pointed out in an
earlier article 128 , is the only wine suited for sacrificial use. Ever

122 Piccaluga 1964.

123 De Cazanove 1987.
124 M. Gras, Vinet societe a Rome et clans le Latium a l'epoque archaique, in:
Modesdecontactsetprocessusde transformationdans lessociitisanciennes(Actes du colloque
de Cortone 1981 [Pisa-Rome 1983]) 1067-75.
l25 Cf. Varro in Non. p.884 L; Polyb. 6, 2 in Athen. 10, 11. Cic. Rep. 6, 6: car-
ent temetoomnesmulieres.
126 C. Ampolo, La formazione della cita nel Lazio, DA 2 (1980) 31-2; G.
Colonna, ArcheologiaLaziale 3 (1980) 53: "La gestione del vino e affidata nella socie-
ta aristocratica ( .... ) alla donna in qualita di padrona di casa, di materfamilias,
anche se in linea generale e tenuta ad astenersi da quella bevanda''.
127 Fest. 474 L. spurcumvinum est quod sacrisadhiberinon licet, ut ait LabeoAntistius
lib. X commentariiuris pontifici, cui aqua admixta est defrutumve,aut igne tactum est,
mustumveantequamdefervescat.Cf. Plin. NH 14, 119.
128 G. Piccaluga, Numa e il vino, SMSR 33 (1962) 99-103. Cf. 0. de Cazanove,
Jupiter, Liber et le vin latin, RHR 205 (1988) 245-65, both emphasizing the special
relationship between Iupiter and wine. The only exception, as Gras o.c. (above
n.124) 1072, rightly remarks, is the festival of Bona Dea but this is "un monde
renverse".
266 CHAPTER FOUR

since the time of king Numa there were prescriptions that it had to
be made from pruned, i.e. cultivated, vines 129• Cultivated wine is
opposed to wine from wild vines, just as Latin wine is opposed to im-
ported wine.
Accepting the core of this argument De Cazanove 130 has focused
attention on its most important corollary: the prohibition of temetum
for women exposes their political and religious inferiority, since it
involves their exclusion from the ceremony that creates contact be-
tween men and gods: sacrifice 131 . And there is more. According to
Plutarch, the Sabine women, once Romanized, were officially assig-
ned the tasks of processing wool and weaving, but they were denied
the tasks of grinding grain and preparing meat 132• Now, keeping
women from the kitchen is keeping them from sacrifice 133 . To all
this there is only one exception: the Vestal Virgins, who did have
the task of preparing the mola salsa for sacrificial purposes. However,
as we shall see in more detail below, the Vestals are not matrons.
Their 'extra-sexual' condition sets them outside the family, with a
judicial status that resembles that of men.
So De Cazanove can finally draw two sets of oppositions:
1. Men and Vestals-as opposed to matrons-have legal standing, the
right to process grain and meat, and the right to sacrifice in official
state ceremonies 134 .
2. Gods are accorded temetum, men may drink both temetum and
processed wines, while women may only drink processed wines.

All this implies that women were marginalized as compared to men

whose place was in the political and cultic centre of the city. They
were "incapables mais indispensables" as J. Scheid aptly phrased
their cultic position 135• This, to be sure, was not an inference con-

129 Plin. NH 14, 88, ex inputata vite libarevina diis nefas.

130 De Cazanove 1987, who, however, suggests that the generalprohibition of
wine for women may be of later date.
131 As had been noticed earlier by Piccaluga 1964, 207 f.
132 Plut. QR 85, alein, opsopoiein,mageireuein.
133 Indeed, whereas Cato Agr. 143, says that it is the task of the dominus to do
the sacrifices for the entire house, in eh. 83 he writes in more detail about the
sacrifice for Mars Silvan us ( consisting of meal, bacon, meat, wine) that "a woman
may not take part in this offering or see how it is performed".
134 The Cazanove notes that they had the right to handle the secespitaand they
assisted in various bloody sacrifices.
135 D'indispensables etrangeres. Les roles religieux des femmes a Rome, in:
Duby & Perrot 1991, 405-49, providing a good discussion of female incapabilities
in religious matters. Cf. also: E. Schuhmann o.c. (above n.1).
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 267

sciously expressed by the Romans themselves. When they reflected

on the prohibition of wine, they tended to relate it to the supposed
aphrodisiac effects of wine on women. Cato ap.Gellius 10, 23, says
that if a woman has drunk wine or committed adultery, she must be
punished 136 , thus linking the two sins. Valerius Maximus 2, 1, 5,
is more explicit: "In olden days the use of wine was unknown to
women, for fear that they might lapse into some disgraceful act. For
it is only a step from the intemperance of Liber pater to the forbid-
den things of Venus" 137 . And we have seen that in Roman legend
women were scourged to death for this violation 138 .
A comparison of the evidence on myrtle and wine reveals their
correlation. If in the Roman view wine provoked aphrodisiac excess-
es, the festival of Bona Dea made it urgent to clarify that in this spe-

136 multitatur si vinum bibit, si cum alieno viro probri quidjecit, condemnatur.
137 Cf. ibid. 6, 3, 9; Dion. Hal. 2, 25, 6. Cf. Hieron. Ep. 22, 8, 2; Isid. Etym.
20, 3, 2. On the aphrodisiac power of wine: R. Schilling, La religionromainede Venus
(Paris 1982 = 1954) 134 ff. with the evidence. For the same idea in ancient Greece:
InconsistenciesI, 160 n. 249. There is a flood of studies on the prohibition of wine
and its possible motives, to which I can refer for the evidence. P. Noailes, Les ta-
bous du mariage, Ann. soc. 2 (1937) = Fas et ius. Etudes de droit romain(Paris 1948)
1-27, explains the danger of wine drinking by the similarity of wine and blood. By
drinking wine women attract foreign elements to their house and family. M. Durry,
Les femmes et le vin, REL 33 (1955) 108 ff., sees the danger in the alleged abortive
power of wine; Piccaluga 1964, 208 ff., argues that its danger is hidden in its capaci-
ty of making people out of their wits. Her objection to earlier theories that women
did drink types of wine that in fact were even more dangerously alcoholic, also ap-
plies to her own theory, and her defense would also apply to the other theories.
Although her article is both innovative and stimulating I cannot accept her view
that the taboo on temetumwas intended to keep women from 'talking in a prophetic
and 'fanatic' way' and that, inversely, Fauna-Bona Dea, in whose cult women were
allowed to drink temetum, was essentially connected with divination. Cf. also L.
Minieri, "Vini usus feminis ignotus", Labeo 28 (1982) 150-63. On the acusations
of stuprumand adultery see: J. F. Gardner, Womenin Roman Law and Society(London
1986) 121-131. W. F. M. Klostermann, Huweli_jkstrouwen publiek belang(Rechts-
historische studies 15. Leiden 1988) 25-7 en 155 f. gives a good survey of the dis-
cussion.
138 The general prohibition of wine (temetum)on the ground of its alleged nega-
tive effects on women need not be at odds with the permission to drink other, sweet
and even more alcoholic, types of beverage. It was not so long ago that in my non-
viticultural country beer and geneva were exclusively reserved for men (and very
uncouth types of women), whereas matrons would enjoy an occasional sip (or two)
of lemon geneva, brandied raisins or eggnog. The difference lay in the degree of
sweetness, not in that of alcohol. Clearly, we are here in the domain of codes and
their rationalizations. And one of the best, most convincing, and most cherished
rationalizations in Rome was that Liber led to Venus.
268 CHAPTER FOUR

cial case the ritual use of wine 139 did not entail the disruptive erotic
effects generally associated with it. Hence: if wine comes in, myrtle
must go out. This is strikingly analogous to the Thesmophoriac li-
cence (perhaps including wine) and the significant suppression of
lurking erotic enticements through the application of lugos, konuza
and kneoron.Rome, as can be expected, displayed even more rigour:
ritual effected a duplication of the 'warning'1 40 • For only now do
we fully understand the curious detail that women called the wine
'milk' and the wine vessel 'honey-jar', to which we may add an ad-
ditional fact reported by Arnobius 141 , that the wine vessel was pres-
ent but covered with a cloth. If wine is permitted to women-sur-
prisingly and exceptionally-it must be covered, disguised and
made harmless by an innocent incognito142• These pseudonyms, in
their turn, carry several layers of significance. Milk and honey are
the markers par excellence of 'otherness', especially in the precultural
sense of the term 143 , and as such, even as mere denominators, they
help to determine the exceptional nature of this festival of reversal.
On the other hand, the mimicry may also have functioned as fuel
for "women's laughter", as Winkler characterized the women's
festivals 144 : "say, dear, would you be so kind as to pass the milk?".
All this is gratifyingly illustrated by myth, but before turning to
this, we have to pay attention to one special section of the merry-
makers.

139 Note that both in connection with the ritual and in the myth the sources
speak ofmerum, a name of wine proper for sacrifice: Amob. adv. Nat 5, 18; luven.
2, 6, 319.
140 This is an ideal instance of 'redundancy': in order that the message is
received it is repeated in more than one code: S. J. Tambiah, A Performative Approach
of Ritual (London 1981).
141 Amob. Nat. 5, 18, vini amphoraconstituaturobtecta ...
142 Just as the pinebranch (referring to sexual fertility) was covered and hidden
from view by the stibas of lugos (signifying temporary ascetism) in the Milesian
Thesmophoria. A parallel from comedy can be found in Arist. Thesm. 733-61: dur-
ing the festival a woman wraps up her bottle of wine and presents it as her baby.
143 Above pp.63, 108 f.; esp. B. D. Shaw, Eaters of Flesh, Drinkers of Milk:
The Ancient Mediterranean Ideology of the Pastoral Nomad, AncSoc 13/14
(1982/3) 5-31; L. Bernot, Buveurs et non-buveurs de lait, L 'Homme 28 (1988)
99-107; Auffarth 1991, 316 ff.
144 Cf. above p.259. This may be supported by the fact that, as Piccaluga 1964,
217, has well noticed, the passum (one of the wines permitted to women) was
preserved in vasculomellismore,according to Pallad. 11, 19. This may have fostered
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 269

3. Ambiguous virgins
Side by side with the Roman matrons the Vestal Virgins played an
important part in the Bona Dea festival. A short discussion of the
nature of this female priesthood will help us to understand the fes-
tival's meaning. That there was something queer about the Virgines
Vestales has long been noticed. The debate on their sexual status
seems to have no end. The central question that haunts the older
studies and that-unavoidably-was posed in terms of origins, is
this: if the sacred flame tended by these holy women is to be identi-
fied with the hearth-fire of the royal house, who, then, were these
guardians 'originally': the king's 'wives' or the king's daughters?
For, as a matter of fact, the Vestals carry traits both of the matron
and of the unmarried maiden. With respect to the former, it has for
instance been argued that hearth tending was the specific job of the
materfamilias, and that various cultic functions of the Vestals seem
to accord better to the view of Vestals as wives. Furthermore, their
costume resembles a matron's rather than a maiden's dress. More
precisely, there are strong indications that have led scholars to the
opinion that it represents the bridal dress worn on the wedding
day 145 . The ritual of the captiomight add support to this view: the
Vestals are 'taken' from their family by the Pontifex Maximus, an
act which is often identified as a symbolic wedding.
On the other hand, two seminal features seem to contradict the
maternal nature of the Vestals: first, of course, they are virgins;and
secondly, there is more than one of them. Furthermore, as we have
noticed above, a passage of Plutarch records that in early Rome
housewives were not allowed to grind grain or cook 146 , whereas
grinding at least was one of the central jobs of the Vestals, who had
to prepare the mola salsa. More generally, as we have seen, fertility
cults were often associated with virgin or chaste priestesses.
Instead of joining the continuing battle between the two positions,
several scholars have proposed to accept the ancient evidence for two

puns in the other situation of the Bona Dea festival, where it does no longer concern
'innocent' women's drinks, but dangerous wine, normally reserved for men (or
gods).
145 So: H. Dragendorff, Die Amtstracht der Vestalinnen, RhM 51 (1896)
281-302; Wissowa 1912, 509 n.5; Guizzi 1968, 111 f.
146 Plut. QR 85. On the sacrificial privileges of the Vestals see: J. Scheid in:
Duby & Perrot 1991, 409.
270 CHAPTER FOUR

co-existent and apparently contradictory roles for the Vestals, that

of virgins and that of matrons. The latest and most important is M.
Beard in a fundamental article 'The Sexual Status of Vestal
Virgins >147 . After providing a history of the debate and a discussion
of the evidence, she concludes that the Vestal Virgins possessed an
essentially ambiguous sexual status. Like some of her predecessors,
she pays due attention to the specific situation in which these two
qualities co-incide: the Vestal Virgin, as both matron and virgin, is
also and particularly a bride. Festus 454 L is explicit on this point
when he says that the hairstyle of the sex crines typifies both the
Vestals and the bride 148. Rather more reluctantly, Beard also hints
at male aspects in that some of the Vestals' privileges (the lictor, the
right to give evidence in court, the right to bequeath property in
their own right) are otherwise almost exclusively associated with
men. However, fearing to ask too much of the reader's compliance,
she does not elaborate upon this aspect. I believe that this particular
insight is not only right but that it is also an essential element in the
'construction' of the Vestal Virgin 149.
Beard also gives a survey of various interpretations by those who
had already accepted the dual nature of the Vestals. Though ap-
preciating their initiatives, she finds their solutions uncon-
vincing150. In an attempt at a new and radically different approach
Beard vindicates the ambiguity as an essential and structural feature
of the Virgines Vestales. It has a twofold function, a generic and a
specific one. The generic meaning should be sought in the basic

147 Beard 1980. J. Scheid, Le flamine de lupiter, Jes Vestales et le general tri-
omphant, Le tempsde la rijl,exion7 (1986) 213-29, esp. 224 ff., follows in her footsteps.
148 This ambiguity has been exploited by W. B. Kristensen, De antieke opvat-
ting van de dienstbaarheid, Med. Kon. Ak. Wet. 78(1934)83-114 = idem, Verzamelde
bi_jdragentot kennisderantiekegodsdiensten
(Amsterdam 1947) 203-229, esp. 221-3, who
sees the Vestals as brides of the god of the underworld.
149 J. F. Gardner, Women in Roman Law and Society(London- Sydney 1986) 24
f. is rather too legalistic when she contests the male aspects of the Vestal Virgins.
150 Koch, Vesta, RE VIII, 1717-76, recognized the ambiguity but had no eye
for its importance. Brelich, Vesta(Rome 1949) did give the paradox its due and
sought its meaning in the nature of the goddess whose living representations the
Vestals were assumed to be. To him Vesta was the mystic virgin mother of a precos-
mic area, like the Fortuna Primigenia that we have discussed earlier (p.177). I am
in sympathy with both Beard's appreciation of Brelich's insight and her criticism
of his interpretation: Vesta is certainly not the same as or even to be compared to
Fortuna and she has nothing at all of a precosmic goddess. Nor are other inter-
pretations of the ambiguity more convincing: Guizzi 1968, 106-8; H. Hommel,
Vesta und die friihromische Religion, ANRW I, 2 (1972) 406-16.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 271

functions of ambiguity in general as elucidated by Mary Douglas.

Ambiguity is one way to designate sacredness, the ambiguous object
or person being radically set apart and distinguished from any nor-
mal category. Hence, the Vestals were categorically separated from
their families and any conventional social structure: their isolation
puts them in a marginal position. Moreover, and more precisely, by
partaking of several sexual categories they are posited on the brink
between these categories. This interstitial position, Beard argues, is
symbolized by their bridal nature. I quote a very apt phrase which
will be of central import to my further argument: ''like the girl on
the day of her wedding, they are seen as on the brink between virgi-
nal and marital status, but perpetually on the brink, perpetually
fixed at the moment of transition from one category to another''.
The question of the specificmeaning of this 'perpetual rite de pas-
sage' cannot be separated from the question of how such an ambigui-
ty originated. It was not, of course, created deliberately 151 . Beard
argues that the ambiguity of the Vestals mirrors that of the focus of
their cult: the sacred fire, which evokes the following sets of opposi-
tions: pure/sterile-male/productive; earth-heaven; beneficial/
civilizing-destructive/ threatening. Fire as the centre of the cult,
"is a classic mediating force, reconciling apparently irreconcilable
extremes''.
While appreciating the general part of her exposition, I have
grave doubts with respect to this specific interpretation. The obvious
objection is that we are not talking about fire in general but about
the hearth-fire. And the basic connotations of this fire refer exclu-
sively to civilizing, productive, beneficial forces, whereas the oppos-
ing qualities are the preserve of Vulcanus 152 . Beard herself ad-
vances what is perhaps the most decisive argument against her

151 ''One does not of course imagine a ludicrous situation in which the early
Romans sat down and created a consciously formulated ambiguous priesthood,
carefully adding new elements of ambiguity to reinforce the sacred status of the
women" (Beard 1980, 21).
152 Beard's response (1980, 25 n.114) to this predictable objection is that "it
was impossible for one side of the element to be evoked without the other''. This,
to my mind, is less than convincing: perception and assessment are fundamentally
conditioned by the context in which observations are being presented. It is the con-
text that helps us to disambiguate our perceptions (see: the 'Introduction' to Incon-
sistenciesI), and it is very unlikely that the hearth-fire per se evoked the set of ambigu-
ous connotations listed above. Here, Dumezil 1975, 61-77, is surely right in
distinguishing between the sectors of Vesta and Vulcanus. See above p.166.
272 CHAPTER FOUR

specific interpretation of the Vestals' ambiguous position when

pointing out the resemblance to the sexual status of nuns: they too
are virgins (or at least chaste) with clear maternal and even male
aspects 153 . However, there is no spark of fire here. And she invites
the reader, for a more complete understanding of the Vestals' am-
biguous position, to dig more deeply, suggesting that the Vestals
themselves are independent mediators between the opposed terms of
'man' and 'woman', which might, in the end, also cast more light
on their involvement in such festivals as that of Bona Dea.
I would like to accept this invitation. Our inferences from the evi-
dence on the Thesmophoria and the festival of Bona Dea have al-
ready suggested the direction of our inquiry. For the Vestal Virgins
were not the only women marked by the ambiguity of being both vir-
gins and matrons. They were matched, though for a restricted peri-
od of time, by the Thesmophoriazousai, who, as we have seen,
betrayed the very same ambiguity in their sexual status: despite be-
ing matrons they were reduced to the status of virgins. I even in-
ferred that this ambiguity comprised the central paradox of the
Thesmophoria. In choosing to follow this track I feel encouraged by
the fact that the festival of Bona Dea is the only certain Roman
ceremony in which matrons and Vestals were associated 154 . And in
this case it is in myth that virgins take the place of matrons.

4. The contribution of myth

The first of Plutarch's two answers to the question cited above, 'why
the women bring in no myrtle at the festival of Bona Dea?' was:
"Is it because, as the mythologists relate, this goddess was the wife of
the seer Faunus, and after having been found out drinking wine in

153 The structural similarities of nuns and Vestal Virgins are not negated by the
observation that there are differences as well: R. Schilling, Vestales et vierges chre-
tiennes clans la Rome antique, RSR 35 (1961) 113-29.
154 It has been argued that this was also true for the Ludi Saeculares: J. B.
Pighi, De Ludis Saecularibus(Milan 1941) 189 (with 15511.35-6), but in this celebra-
tion all the sections of the Roman population were represented. Brelich 1949/50,
6 ff., already emphasized the similarity between the cults of Vesta and Bona Dea
in that both focused on castitasand pudicitia and men were excluded. But these re-
marks do not prove anything. On the other hand, it is significant that, as 0. Gil-
bert, Geschichteund TopographiederStadt Rom im Altertum(Leipzig 1883) II, 210 n.1,
noticed, some inscriptions mention a collegiumof sacerdoteswith a magistrafor Bona
Dea and he pointed out that this closely resembles the collegium of the Vestales with
their Maxima.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 273

secret was beaten by her husband with myrtle twigs ... ?" (transl.
Brouwer)

This aitionis also known to Arnobius, Nat. 5, 18, who identifies Bona
Dea with Fenta Fatua, beaten to death with myrtle by her husband
because she had ''emptied a full vessel of pure wine''. Lactantius DI
1, 22, 9-11, adds that Faun us afterwards deified his wife regretting
his rash act 155 .
Quite a different story, however, is handed down by Macrobius
Sat. 1, 12, 20-29. He first notes that Bona Dea is the same as Fauna
or Ops or Fatua and then continues:
"It is said too that she was the daughter ofFaunus, and that she resist-
ed the amorous advances of her father who had fallen in love with her,
so that he even beat her with myrtle twigs because she did not yield to
his desires though she had been made drunk by him on wine. It is be-
lieved that the father changed himself into a serpent, however, and un-
der this guise had intercourse with his daughter". (transl. Brouwer)
It will be immediately apparent that these two related but diverging
versions of a mythical theme, refer to the most remarkable elements
of the ritual and the cult of Bona Dea: wine, myrtle, serpents, female
modesty blemished. These stories of excess and punishment con-
structed after the model of the well-known Maetennius story (above
p.229) strongly corroborate our views of the interrelated meanings
of wine and myrtle.
The first version reflects the general taboo on wine for women and
pictures the consequences when this code is violated. The sole addi-
tional element, viz. the fact that the matron is beaten to death with
myrtle, cannot but signify that myrtle in this context bears strongly
negativeconnotations. And so it is applied: as an aetiological explana-
tion of its exclusion from the festival 156 . Lactantius (or his source),

155 He seems to mix up two divergent versions. In his view Bona Dea ( = Fenta
Fatua) is both wife and sister of Faunus. On the one hand she was so modest that
no man had ever seen her or heard her name, but on the other she made herself
guilty of emptying a full jug of wine. Macrobius, too, has these two versions. The
theme of a god(dess) falling in love, being rejected, taking revenge by killing the
beloved, and afterwards deifying him or her, is, of course, a topos. See: Burkert
1979, 112-5.
156 I cannot accept Piccaluga's theory (1964, 217) that the scourging of the girl
mirrors the way in which the passum is made and that the castigation with the bunch
of myrtle would refer to a sort of wine prepared with myrtle and which did not effect
ebriety. For, if so, how to explain the taboo on myrtle during the festival? Nor do
I see how this interpretation fits in with her other option, which I do accept, that
myrtle as an aphrodisiac is kept away from the festival just as men are.
274 CHAPTER FOUR

who makes Faunus regretthe death of his wife and deify her so that
she becomes Bona Dea, may refer to the exceptional situation of the
Bona Dea festival: what is not allowed in daily life is allowed to the
goddess and her servants.
The other version, however, is both more enigmatic and more in-
structive. First, there is an unequivocal linkage of wine drinking,
myrtle and excessive erotic desire. Faunus uses both wine and myr-
tle as instruments to stimulate his daughter's erotic appetite. The
symbol of the serpent also fits in. But, of course, the shocking part
is the act of incest performed by father Faunus. Even acknowledging
this god's doubtful reputation when it comes to assaulting unwary
women, an attempt to rape his own, very prude, daughther is some-
thing special indeed. Passing in silence possible models in Hellenis-
tic stories 157 we can regard this version as an extreme 'blow up' of
the most threatening expectations concerning the relation of wine
and erotic myrtle in the context of Bona Dea 158 . However, I would
draw the attention to one striking-and to my mind meaningful-
coincidence: in this unique version, presenting an extreme erotic ex-
cess, the matron of all other versions has disappeared, yielding her
place to a virgin(al daughter).

4. Two FESTIVALS, ONE PARADOX

When we survey this section on the myth and ritual of Bona Dea the
remarkable parallelism with the Thesmophoria strikes the eye.
Women violate the normal codes of behaviour, but, just as in the
Thesmophoria, there are warning signs: if wine is in, myrtle, sym-
bol of eros, must be out. And just as in the Thesmophoria, the female
sexuality and fertility, which is in the centre of things, is curiously
frustrated: no men are admitted to bring it to completion. And,

157 The story does savour a Hellenistic smell, and it might be compared with
other mythical stories about incest, the well-known story of Myrrha as well as
others. The source of this version of the myth is obscure: while the story of the
modest Bona Dea whom no man ever saw can be traced back to Varro according
to Macrobius, and that of the drinking housewife to Sextus Clodius The Godsand
Butas The Causesof Things according to Amobius, Macrobius does not reveal his
source of the incest scene. On the myth of Myrrha see for instance: C. Grottanelli,
From Myrrha to Myrrh: Adonis and the Perfume of the Syrian Kings, in: Adonis
1984, 35-60; A. M. G. Capomacchia, The Myth ofMyrrha: Aspects of the Con-
nections between Classical and Oriental Culture, ibid. 95-102.
158 As such it is closely comparable to the mythical 'blow up' of the gender ten-
sion in the Thesmophoriac ritual including castration and murder.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 275

again comparably to the Greek festival, there is a marked emphasis

on virgins, both in ritual (Vestal Virgins) and myth (Faunus and his
daughter), who assist or take the place of the matrons as soon as the
situation seems to require this.
So, in the end, the two closely related festivals of Greece and
Rome confront us with the same paradox: matrons celebrate their
basic procreative qualities by rites that focus on sexual symbolism.
At the same time they are rigorously prevented from satisfying erotic
desire by antaphrodisiac symbolism. Matrons become virgins, more
precisely, virgins on the brink between virginal and marital status.
Why? The answer to this question should be sought in the fun-
damental tension hidden in these two ambivalent festivals. In terms
of the dominant ideology of Greece and Rome, the ceremonies are
beneficialand necessaryfrom a socio-biological point of view but wrong
and undesirablefrom a socio-cultural point of view. Matrons are in the
centre of things, both literally and figuratively. Their specific
procreative potential is celebrated as essential for the continuity of
the community and this takes place in the centre of the community:
Kalligeneia close to the Pnyx, pig's sacrifice pro populo Romano in the
highest magistrate's house. The matrons enjoy a licentious excur-
sion from reality, but do so right in the centre of the city. Hence
these festivals affect the prevailing codes in two respects. First, they
focus the attention on the women's sexual import by references to
erotic aspects through licentious behaviour, dirty language, sexual
symbolism, drinking of wine etc. And secondly, they present women
taking over (part of) men's predominance while expelling the men
from the centre of things and adopting their dominant roles. The
first is intolerable in terms of the family codes, the second unthinka-
ble in terms of the codes of the community.
Now, I would suggest that there is only one way of coping with
the intolerable and of depriving the unthinkable of its extreme dis-
ruptive effects. The incompatibility of matrons doing un-matronlike
things should be mitigated. So, if for some indisputable reason ma-
trons must act as they do, they cannot remain matrons: for the time
being they must give up this status and adopt another, that of the
unmarried maiden. This, at any rate, is what both myth and ritual
unequivocally express. A short glance into Greek and Roman views
on virgin-maidens, matrons and the function of marriage can, final-
ly, teach us why.
 276 CHAPTER FOUR

5. GUNE-PARTHENOS: ON THE FATAL AMBIGUITY OF THE FEMALE RACE

"Emotional, self-indulgent, inebriate, gluttonous, irrational, weak.-

willed: these form the common-place description of women in the
fifth- and fourth-century Athens", writes R. Just 159 , in the most re-
cent discussion of the 'construction' of the female in classical
Athens. In the eyes of the 'club d'hommes' which, in the famous
words of Vidal-Naquet 160 , constituted the citizenry of Athens the
female race was marked by excessive expenditure on food, drink,
clothing, or any other bodily comfort or pleasure, and, more especi-
ally, by excessive sexual indulgence 161 . "To be a slave of pleasure

159 Just 1989, 166. The relevant sections of his book, esp. eh. 8. 'The attributes
of gender' (153-193), are partly based on earlier studies by the same author: Just
1975 and 1985. When I express my appreciation by consistently referring to this
valuable discussion this is not to say that it could not have gained by adducing some
rather more sophisticated recent studies, especially-but not only-the ones by the
French scholars cited below. Nor would I suggest that this is the one and only male
opinion of woman. Of course there is a variety of very different views, nor were
women consistently suppressed or depressed, as I have also argued elsewhere: Wife
and Helpmate, in: Blok & Mason 1987, 59-86. See above all: M. Lefkowitz,
Heroi"nesand Hysterics(London 1981); Winkler 1990. On the other hand, Greek men
could betray female weaknesses: Loraux 1989. I am talking about general and
clearly dominant images and representations.
160 Vidal-Naquet 1981, 269, who, however, informed me that he had not in-
vented the expression but borrowed it from Marrou, who was not the inventor
either.
161 Just 1985; cf. K. J. Dover, GreekPopularMorality in the Time of Plato and
Aristotle(Oxford 1974) 179 f.; 208 f.; idem, Classical Greek Attitudes to Sexual Be-
haviour, Arethusa6 (1973) 59-73 = Peradotto & Sullivan 1984, 143-158, esp. 148
f.; 154 f. Ambiguities abound: Aristophanes emphasizes that a good wife knows
how to enjoy the pleasures of the bed, but all the same female licence is under severe
control. Cf. S. Said, L'assemblee des femmes, Jes femmes, l'economie et la poli-
tique, in: Aristophane, Lesfemmes et la cite, (Cahiers de Fontenay 17 (1979)]; Cl.
Mosse, La femme dans la Greceantique(Paris 1983) 158 f. Of course, the complex of
female vices had been a toposlong before the classical period, cf. Hesiod and espe-
cially Semonides on female voracity in both culinary and sexual contexts: J.-P.
Vernant, A la table des hommes: le mythe de fondation du sacrifice chez Hesiode,
in: Detienne & Vernant 1979, 37-132, esp. 96, 104-7; Loraux 1981, 106 ff. For
women in Attic comedy see: H. P. Foley, The 'Female Intruder' Reconsidered:
Women in Aristophanes' Lysistrata and Ecclesiazousae,CPh 77 (1982) 1-21; J. F.
Gardner, Aristophanes and Male Anxiety-The Defense of the OIKOS, G&R 36
(1989) 51-62; for Spartan women see: Redfield 1977,esp. 148-9. Indulgence in both
drinking and sex is especially attributed to old women. See for instance: J. N.
Bremmer, The Old Women of Ancient Greece, in: Blok & Mason 1987, 191-215;
J. Henderson, Older Women in Attic Old Comedy, TAPhA 117 (1987) 105-30. Es-
pec. on wine: Piccaluga 1964, 214 n. 75;J. W. Salomonson, Der Trunkenbold und
die trunkene Alte, BaBesch55 (1980) 65-106. On erotic interests: A. Richlin, The
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 277

is the behaviour of a licentious woman, not a man'', thus the 4th

century Anaxandrides fr. 60 sums up a ubiquitous judgement. In
the background of these specific weaknesses is women's lack of self-
control, a deficiency common to women, slaves and children 162 , in
contradistinction to men who innately possess self-control. Both
slaves and women are naturally deprived of male logosor, in the
words of Aristotle Pol. 1253b 14 ff., of "the deliberative faculty of
the psyche and autonomy''. Of course, this is not to say that the sta-
tus of free women is completely to be equated with that of slaves.
Compare again Aristotle Pol. 1260a: ''Thus the deliberate faculty of
the psyche is not present at all in the slave; in a female it is inopera-
tive (akuron,) in a child still undeveloped" 163 . But there is a clear
dividing line between the free male citizen and all other human be-
ings: the line between autonomy and dependence.
Side to side with this there is another: the distinction between
women who enjoy the freedom to indulge in their natural passions,
and those whose natural inclinations are restrained and subjugated
to cultural control. The borderline, in other words, between 'natur-
al/wild' and 'cultural/tamed' women. The first quality is either
associated with mythical and other imaginary women in a marginal
landscape or with the virgin maiden in a premarital state. Both are
numphai164 • Myth presents us with women such as Artemis, Kore,

Gardenof Priapus.SexualityandAggressionin Roman Humor (New Haven-London 1983)

109-16. The worst category is that of (old) widows, who have been sexually
awakened but are no longer under male control: P. Walcot, On Widows and Their
Reputation in Antiquity, SO 66 (1991) 5-26.
162 M. Golden, Children and Childhood in Classical Athens (Baltimore-London
1990) 7; 9; 59-60, on women grouped with children. Cf. also Th. E.J. Wiedemann,
Thucydides, Women, and the Limits of Rational Analysis, G&R 30 (1983) 163-70,
on Thucydides associating children and women. In addition we should mention
barbarians as a mixed category of people who, being both wild and luxurious, unite
the features of the effeminate and the slavish.
163 See: S. R. L. Clark, Aristotle's Woman, HPTh 3 (1982) 171-91. In 'Wife
and Helpmate' (o.c. above n .159) I have argued that the most appropriate-though
by no means exclusive-characterization of the male-female relationship in ancient
Athens is the one of patronage. Cf. also: S. Campese, Madre materia: donna, casa,
citta nell'antropologia di Aristotele, in: Campese, Manuli & Sissa 1983, 15-79.
164 Discussed by Just 1989, ch.10: 'The savage without', whose discussion I am
summarizing here. He singles out Atalanta as a perfect illustration. Wild virgin she
rejects marriage and must be hunted down. She is caught, but both she and her
husband are transformed into lions. According to later mythographers Atalanta's
return to a state of nature also marks a return to sexual abstinence for, as a lion,
she can no longer have sexual intercourse with her mate. Cf. Sourvinou-Inwood
1987, 152, with a keener eye for the reversal aspects of the Atalanta myth.
278 CHAPTER FOUR

Atalanta and the countless anonymous nymphs of forests, rivers and

mountains, who are all pictured as virginal creatures of the wild.
"Shunning contact with males, living far from men and the life of
the city, the kore (maiden), like Artemis, the Virgin huntress, mis-
stres over wild animals and uncultivated land, shares in the life of
the wild" says Vernant 1982, 139.
Numphai of this type cannot be tamed: gods or demi-gods they keep
outside the borders of culture, in a landscape composed of natural
and imaginary elements: awe-inspiring, threatening, a terror espe-
cially to men, as the Amazons-wild women, warriors and bar-
barians-most distinctly illustrate 165
. Human numphai, on the other
hand, can-and must-be subjugated. Unmarried maidens are con-
sistently referred to as fields to be cultivated, ploughed, sown, ani-
mals to be broken in, mounted, domesticated. Women, especially in
their premarital state, are part of nature, part of wild, which men
must 'cultivate' 166. References to the domestication of young
horses, being the symbols of unbridled violence 167, are especially
rife in the imagery of marriage, terms like polos being as common
metaphors of the young (fe)male as are yoking and taming of mar-
riage168. Likewise, the well-known pictural representations of the

165 On the Amazons as particularly illustrative of the total complex of 'bewil-

dering' nymphal aspects see: P. Dubois,Centaurs and Amazons. Womenand the Pre-
Historyof the GreatChainof Being (Ann Arbor 1982); Tyrrell 1984, 53 ff.; and passim;
Blok 1991, 356 ff. A short discussion: L. Hardwick, Ancient Amazons-Heroes,
Outsiders or Women, G&R 37 (1990) 14-36.
166 Just 1989, 231. Cf. Gould 1980, 52: women are associated with "the wild
and the sacred, with what is outside the limits of ordered civilisation and with the
forces oflife, with mountains and forests, with rivers, springs and fountains", and
the evidence there. Th. E. J. Wiedemann o.c. (above n.162), argues that "where
Thucydides' women appear in any other than a purely passive role, it is to mark
a particular episode as an instance of the non-rational factors whose description he
had hoped to be able to leave to the poets, or to Herodotus" (169). Cf. Plato, Tim.
44a-b; Leg II, 653d-e; 666a-e. On children in general: Xen. Oecon.7, 10. Golden
o.c. (above n.162) 9 f.
l67 L. Ghiron-Bistagne, Le cheval et la jeune fille ou de la virginite chez Jes an-
ciens Grecs, Pallas 32 (1985) 105-121. She discusses a legend reported by Aeschin.
c. Timarch. 182, Dio Chrys. 32, 78; Diod. Sic. 8, 22: a girl having lost her virginity
is punished by her father, who locks her in with a horse, by which she is trampled
to death. The author points out (115) that the daughters of Proitos, droven out of
their wits on having reached the age of marriage, roamed through the mountains
as mares or heifers.
168 Girl as a filly, for instance in: Ar. Lys. 1308; Eur. Hippo{. 546-7. The
metaphor of the yoke for marriage: V. Magnien, Vocabulaire grec refletant Jes rites
du mariage, in: MelangesA. M. Desrousseaux(Paris 1937) 293-7; idem, Le mariage
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 279

erotic pursuit have been convincingly explained as being connected

with the notion of abduction and marriage, the running in pursuit to
capture a girl being correlative with the capture of animals. '' The no-
tion of the girl as a wild thing to be captured and tamed through
marriage ( ... ) is one of the perceptions expressed in our erotic pur-
suits'' 169 . Comparably (perhaps: consequently) the mythical sacrifi-
cial death of maidens is often represented in terms of their mar-
riage170, as, reversely, marriage is closely associated with death and
funeral 171: both denote a radical and definitive subjugation 172.

chez Jes Grecs anciens. L'initiation nuptiale, AC 5 (1936) 115-38, esp. 129-31;
Calame 1977, 411-20; M. Detienne, Puissances du mariage, in: Bonnefoy 1981 II,
67; Seaford 1987, 111, with a collection of verbs expressing domestication or
yoking, and the same motifs in modern Greek culture; cf. idem, Hermes 114 (1986)
50-9, esp. 50-54 and n.10.
169 Sourvinou-lnwood 1987, esp. 138. Cf. on closely related subjects the same
author: Menace and Pursuit: Differentiation and the Creation of Meaning, in: C.
Berard (ed.), Image et sociiti en GreceAncienne. L 'iconographiecommemithoded'analyse
(Actes du Colloque international Lausanne 1984) 41-58; Altars with Palm-trees.
Palm-trees and Parthenoi,BICS 32 (1985) 125-46, arguing for a relationship of this
motif in vase pictures and Artemis' protection of parthenoiin her function ofBrauro-
nian goddess of girl's initiation into marriage. These papers have been collected in
Sourvinou- In wood 1991.
170 N. Loraux, F(lfonstragiquesde tuer unefemme (Paris 1985), esp. eh. 2 'Le sang
pur des vierges' 61-82. "Lorsque la victime en est une vierge, tragiquement iro-
nique est le sacrifice, en ce qu'il ressemble par trop au mariage"(68). Cf. Seaford
1987; Foley o.c. (next note). On the relationship of virgins and death see also: L.
Kahn and N. Loraux, Mythes de la mort en Grece, in: Bonnefoy 1981. Next to
this there is another image: "marriage is for the girl what war is for the boy": Ver-
nant 1982, 23, elaborated by Loraux 1989, 29-53.
171 H. P. Foley, Marriage and Sacrifice in Euripides lphigeneia in Aulis,
Arethusa15 ( 1982) 159-80, esp. 169 ( = eadem,Ritual Irony. Poetryand Sacrificein Euri-
pides [Ithaca 1985] eh. 2) argues that the dramatic parallel of marriage and sacrifice
reflects the experience of the actual bride, whose separation from her former state
was marked by a temporary removal from society signifying a symbolic death. Cf.
Seaford in the works mentioned above n.168. With more emphasis on the wedding
as the initiation into a completely new phase in women's social life and parallels
from modern Greece: I. Jenkins, Is there Life after Marriage? A Study of the Ab-
duction Motif in Vase Paintings of the Athenian Wedding Ceremony, BICS 30
(1983) 137-45, esp.142. Emphasis on the violence motif in marriage: M. Detienne,
Les Danaides entre elles ou la violence fondatrice du mariage, Arethusa 21 (1988)
159-75, esp. 163 ff.; Chr. Segal, Violence and the Other: Greek, Female and Bar-
barian in Euripides' Hecuba, TAPhA 120 (1990) 109-32, esp. 115. Very fortunate
the formulation by Tyrrell 1984, 93, speaking of Achilles killing Penthesileia and
Theseus raping Antiope: ''The masculine side of the Amazon androgyne is cut
away, and the feminine side is ravished into submission. The daughter must mar-
ry". On the abduction= death ofKore as a nuptial paradigm: Chr. Sourvinou-In-
wood, The Young Abductor of the Locrian Pinakes, BICS 20 (1973) 12-20; eadem,
JHS 98 (1978) 104-14; Foley o.c. 161; Jenkins o.c. 142.
172 All this, of course, does not imply that marriage was not a most incisive
280 CHAPTER FOUR

The only way to incorporate women in society-that is to mould

them from a natural into a cultural being-is through marriage. The
wild, 'natural' and as such 'bewildering' aspects of the female race
are conceived as being operative and virulent only in-and neces-
sarily restricted to-the premarital period. In her essay 'Sur la race
des femmes et quelques-unes de ces tribus' 173 , N. Loraux, makes
the salient observation that the first woman, kalonkakon (pretty evil)
Pandora, who combines all these negative features with the seduc-
tiveness of her beauty, is presented in the appearance of a parthenos
aidoie, a respectable maiden(Hes. Th. 772). In Hes. Th. 513-4, it is
even more complicated. There it is said that Epimetheus was "the
first to receive the Zeus-made woman (gune), the (unmarried) girl
(parthenos).Rightly rejecting the make-shift solutions of this paradox
as presented in the well-known commentaries, Loraux points out
that it is exactly her nature of parthenosthat makes the first woman
so alarming: in the mythical universe there is no character more am-
biguous than the parthenos,who unites in her person every frightful
inclination denied to the adult woman, in particular the works of
Aphrodite 174 .
Consequently, the parthenosmust be tamed, yoked, domesticated,
cultivated, through marriage. The transition from premarital wild-
ness associated with mythical virginal females to the desired inclu-
sion in society is marked by rituals. Aelian. Var. Hist. 13, 1, for in-
stance, explains the girls' ritual at Brauron as a preparation for their
future marriage. By imitating bears they would rid themselves of all
savagery, shedding their wild state 175 . The wedding ceremony, as
Detienne 176 has shown, is illuminative in this respect: a child wear-
ing a crown of thorny plants entwined with acorns, offered bread

change in the life of the young man as well: P. Schmitt-Pante], Histoire de tyran,
in: B. Vincent (ed.), Les marginauxet les exc/usdans /'histoire (Paris 1979) 217-31.
173 Arethusa 11 (1978) 43-87, reprinted in Loraux 1981, 75-117, esp. 86 ff. Cf.
Schmitt 1977, 1062 f: Athena by providing Pandora's belt prepares the parthenosfor
marriage thus making her a numphe. On the symbolism of the belt see also: Blok
1991, 358-63.
174 Referring to Erga 521; 65-6; Th 205. She also notices that in these passages
the female function of fertility and reproduction are conspicuously absent. "On
conviendra du moins qu'en la femme Jes 'puissances de destruction' l'emportent
de beaucoup sur le 'principe de fecondite' ".
175 Cf. Tyrrell 1984, 73-4, and Schmitt 1977, 1062. Of course, several other bi-
ological or social incisions could function as point of transition: menarche, deflora-
tion, marriage and the first parturition: King 1983, 111 f.
176 Detienne 1972, 216 f.
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 281

from a winnowing basket to all the guests saying: "I have fled from
evil and found what is best'', which the Greeks interpreted as refer-
ring to the transition from the 'thorny' life (bios akanthodes)to the
'cultivated life' (bios hemeros)or from the wild life (bios agroios)to the
'life of milled corn' (bios alelesmenos).Both transitions, the one from
virgin to matron and the transition of mankind from a pre-agricultu-
ral to an agricultural age, involve the domestication of nature and
a shift from the province of Artemis to that of Demeter 177 .
However, this subjugation never loses a taint of precariousness.
Women remain a potential source of disorder. Though their domes-
tication could be so complete that they would express and enforce
the male model of society 178 the risk that they would run wild could
never be completely ruled out. The result is a lasting ambiguity be-
tween women's natural characteristics that are peripheral to the
male dominated body politic-woman as outsider-and her vital
significance for the existence of the state through her progeny-
woman as insider-. In other words, marriage retains a certain du-
ality in that the sexual-erotic facet (especially attributed to the 'fe-
male intruder') belongs to nature and thus affects its character as a
social and cultural institution 179• H. King 180 thus phrases this es-
sential tension:
"'Woman' is thus both excluded and included, alien and familiar. For
the Greeks woman is a necessary evil, a kalonkakon(Hesiod, Th. 585);
an evil because she is undisciplined and licentious, lacking the self-

177 For this transition from a blessed pre-agricultural age to one in which men
must labour for their sustenance see Vemant' s two studies on the Prometheusmyth
in Hesiod in: Gordon 1981, 43-79. Note that the art of wool-processing and weav-
ing, being the most lauded achievements of decent house-wives in literature and
(funerary) inscriptions, is also a stereotyped marker of cultivation: Burkert 1966,
15; D. Levin, Diplaxporphuree,RFIC 98 (1970) 17-36; H. Shapiro, lason's Cloak,
TAPhA 110 (1980) 263-86; I. D. Jenkins, The Ambiguity of Greek Textiles, Arethu-
sa 18 (1985) 109-32. It is one of the major strategies for keeping women under con-
trol and also for that reason plays an important part in the rites of girls' transitions
like the Arrhephoria.
178 Redfield 1977, 149.
179 Cf. J. Redfield, Notes on the Greek Wedding, Arethusa15 (1982) 186, who
also points out other ambiguities in marriage: consent (culture) versusforce (abduc-
tion, nature). Cf. Sourvinou-lnwood 1987, 140-1.
180 H. King, Bound to Bleed: Artemis and Greek Women, in: A. Cameron and
A. Kuhrt (edd.), Imagesof Womenin Antiquiry(London-Canberra 1983) 109-27. Cf.
also Gould 1980, 55: "in the mythical imagination of Greece ( .... ) is a profound
and ambivalent disquiet, an oscillation between obsessive fear and revulsion, on the
one hand, and, on the other, an implication of total dependence".
282 CHAPTER FOUR

control of which men are capable, yet necessary to society as construct-

ed by men, in order to reproduce it''.

She even argues that in Greek eyes all women are potential whores
if they are allowed to surrender to their uncontrolled desires; all
women are slaves of their emotions 181 of which only man can be
master. And just as other authors cited above she observes that as
the positive values of 'woman' tended to be centred on the concept
of the reproducer, the gune, so the negative values shifted to the un-
married girl.
Significantly, the only phase of life in which the female can be
equated with the male-at least in some respects-is the period in
which she is still a parthenos. Not only are terms such as polos used
for both boys and girls, but as especially P. Schmitt has noted, in
myth the parthenosoften leads a life comparable to that of the ephebos.
Atalanta, Artemis, the Amazones by applying themselves to hunt-
ing, use of arms, even war, usurp male/ephebic functions 182 . Ac-
cordingly, there are some reports on physical exercises and agones
for girls (not only in Sparta!), which sometimes are combined with
those of boys 183 . Significant, too, is the fact that, whenever mem-
bers of the female race are represented as acting on their own accord
in the centre of the city, this is practicaly always restricted to virgin
maidens, as witness for instances the Arrhephoroi on the Acropolis
and the Vestal Virgins in their sacred housing at the Roman
forum 184 . In this respect too, marriage is an essential instrument in

181 This even pertains to mourning, a domain practically reserved for women,
but where their excesses are no less feared: N. Loraux, Les Meres en deuil (Paris
1990).
182 Schmitt 1977, 1067: "Artemis renverse le tableau classique de l'espace
feminin et de l'espace masculin", and: "ces parthenoise sont faites ephebes".Just
as, in a different way, does the man-chasing old widow: P. Walcot o.c. (above
n.161) lOf. Cf. for Atalanta and the ephebes also Vidal-Naquet 1981, 172 f. In this
perspective we can understand even better the association of the Thesmophoria
with war-like actions as imagined in the apodiogma.Women and war only occur in
situations where men are not available: 1) the period before marriage, 2) the ab-
sence of men for political or military reasons, 3) excursions of women as a group
from society.
183 Graf 1985b, 60; cf. E. Specht, Schonzu sein undgut zu sein. Miidchenbildung und
Frauensozialisationim antiken Griechenland(Vienna 1989).
184 Loraux 1981, 174 ff.; Brule 1988, 139: "Enfin, en derniere analyse, cette
religion de l 'Acropole se definit comme pole de repulsion de la sexualite feminine
adulte. Le gestuel, mais aussi l'imaginaire, jouent a esquiver toute rencontre avec
la femme adulte. Et comme seule la femme adulte-mere est vraiment femme, le
statut sexuel de celles qui vivent sur le rocher est un statut qui ne tient ni du feminin
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 283

drawing boundaries and delineating culture: while transforming

wild animals into respectable women it also represents a definite
stage in the evolution from barbarism to civilization: telos ho
gamos185 . (Some) barbarians are promiscuous, (all) Greeks are
monogamous. And promiscuity may effect political equality among
the sexes or even the superiority of the females in non-Greek
cultures 186 • If, then, matrons are "onlookers by destination" 187 ,
and if women's membership of the polis is always derivative, depen-
dent on their association with the men, problems loom up as soon
as a structural and professional feminine authority is required in a
domain that is independent of male dominance. This occurs espe-
cially, if not exclusively, in the domain of cult. Significantly, women
performing structural sacral roles were, as a rule, not selected from
the matrons but from virgins (or widows). This is conspicuously so
in the case of the priestesses of Demeter and of the Vestal Virgins-
as argued above-but for instance also in that of the Pythia, who was
an old woman dressed up as a virgin maiden 188 . Much more could
be said on these issues but this must suffice for our purpose.

ni du masculin. '' And he continues to describe the presence of the maidens during
the Arrhephoria as a preparation to adult life.
185 Hesych. s.v. proteleia;Pollux, Onom. 3, 38. See: H. Bolkestein, Telos ho ga-
mos, Med.Kon.Ned.Ak Wet. 76 (1933) 21-45; Burkert 1985, 133: "Marriage is in a
special sense the goal and fulfilment of human life."
186 S. Pembroke, Women in Charge. The Function of Alternatives in Early
Greek Tradition and the Ancient Idea of Matriarchy, ]WI 1 (1967) 1-35. Cf.
Schmitt 1977, 1068. Again, the best instance is the Amazones, who just pick up
an occasional male for the mere purpose of procreation.
187 Cl. Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques(Paris 1955) 274, "und darum miissen sie
nicht, wie frei nach Schiller hinzugefiigt werden konnte, ins feindliche Leben
hinaus'', adds R. Schlesier, Odipus, Parsifal und die Wilden: Zur Kritik an Levi-
Strauss' Mythologie des Mythos, in: R. Faber & R. Schlesier (edd.), Die Restaura-
tion der Gotter(Wiirzburg 1986) 271-89, esp. 279.
188 Beard 1980, as discussed above pp.270-272. See also G. Sissa, Le corpsvirgi-
nal. La virginitifeminine en Greceancienne(Paris 1987), eh. 4: 'Parthenos audaessa'
59-65, on the complete isolation and chastity of the Pythia (Plut. De orac.def. 51,
438 C 1-3). P.61 on the legend told by Diod. Sic. 16, 26, that originally the Pythia
was selected from the virgins, but once a priestess having been abducted, it was
decided to choose an old woman instead, though dressed as a numphein wedding
dress. Sissa adduces a parallel of a priestess of Artemis Hymnia (Paus. 8, 5, 11;
cf. Plut. De amore22, Mor. 768 B): a widow vows sexual abstinence and becomes
priestess of Artemis. On the Pythia and virgins and the structural homology of old
women and maidens see also:J. N. Bremmer, The Old Women of Ancient Greece,
in: Blok & Mason 1987, 191-215, esp. 198.
284 CHAPTER FOUR

6. CONCLUSION

The above short impression can now serve as a grid that can help
us to 'read' the curious paradox hidden in our two festivals. During
their celebration Aristotle's famous dictum that the rule of a hus-
band over his wife is 'political', but, in contradistinction to
democratic practice, permanent, is set at nought. The solution of the
problem that women's psyche was by nature akuron (inoperative,
without command) by placing them under the kurieia of the husband
is cancelled during the women's festivals. They temporarily recreate
a liberty that was incompatible with the status of the matron.
Moreover, by their emphasis on the matrons' natural predominance
in the process of procreation they suggest men's superfluity in this
sector.
Matrons did things that were unimaginable in terms of the nor-
mal codes of family and society 189 . They usurped man's political
roles (dominant functions in the centre of the state), man's cultural
privileges (sacrifice, wine), man's language (sexual jokes) and dis-
carded their own specifically female roles ( care for the house) and
sexual codes (chastity by staying in the house and submission to the
phallokratia of their husbands). In sum, during the festivals the ever
lurking threat of matrons 'running wild' materialized. This neces-
sarily evoked other stereotyped components of the complex of 'na-
ture' in women's life and behaviour. Female 'wildness' was as
inextricably interwoven with-or rather sublimated in-the repre-
sentation of the parthenos/numphe-including its Amazonian 'mascu-
line' independence-as was incest with parricide or cannibalism as
negative signals of anticulture, and marriage with Olympian
sacrifice or agriculture as positive signals of culture. Expose one
item in myth or ritual, and others will be automatically attracted.
Women who exceed the boundaries of social codes to such an extent
as was the case in these festivals, fundamentally violate the defini-

189 I have focused on the Greek women, but it would not be difficult to give a
similar picture of Roman women as well. See for instance above p.228. I have the
impression that Romans-although having a keen eye for female propensity to ex-
cesses (cf. above p.267, on women and wine)-showed rather more interest in their
physical and mental inferiorities, as appears above all in juridical treatises: J. Beau-
camp, Le vocabulaire de la faiblesse feminine dans Jes textes juridiques romains du
III et IVe siecle, RD 54 (1976) 485-508; S. Dixon, Infirmitas sexus:Womanly Weak-
ness in Roman Law, RHD 52 (1984) 343-71. Cf. U. Mattioli, Astheneia e andreia.
Aspetti dellafemminilita nella letteraturaclassica, biblicae cristianaantica (Roma 1983).
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 285

tion of matronship. As I have argued in Inconsistenciesl, 1-35, there

are various strategies to cope with extreme tensions caused by cul-
tural paradoxes and ambiguities. One can try to cover, that is hide
from sight, one of the conflicting elements, for instance by calling
wine 'milk', expelling myrtle when introducing wine, covering
pine-branches under lugosbeds, calling women 'bees' when they in-
dulge in obscene language. One can also resort to strategies of
negotiation or adjustment: if matrons must return to nature they
cannotdo so as matrons.Then the web of associations closes: in break-
ing the fetters of social and marital codes women inevitably return
to nature; in returning to nature they inevitably return to the pre-
marital status of the maiden. Apart from all other natural-and
naturally negative-connotations implied in the adoption of the
virginal status, one should be singled out. The disjunction of 'sex/
sensuousness' and 'maternity/motherliness', which is so typical of
many cultures and most emphatically of the Greek and Roman, and
which is evidently jeopardized in the fertility festivals, is thus
safeguarded. In his illuminating analysis Friedrich 190 , writes: "In

190 P. Friedrich, The Meaning of Aphrodite(Chicago-London 1978), esp. 181-91.

Cf. Sh. B. Ortner, Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?, in: M. Rosaldo &
L. Lamphere, Women, Culture, and Society (Stanford 1974) 68. One of the con-
sequences of this classification is that sexuality-sensuousness and maternity-
motherliness tend to be kept as far apart as possible in many cultures and litera-
tures. To conjoin them would, to put it simply, entail or imply too great a concen-
tration of power. Also, the wildness and lack of control that are associated with sex-
uality would contradict and conflict with the moral stature and maternity of the
materfamilias ideal in at least some cultures. Another explanation for the antithesis
is that a conjunction would threaten the male's image of his authority by bringing
into the open the sexual and emotional power of the female; the antithesis, then,
is another instance of' 'keeping women in their place''. B. Simon, Mind andMadness
in Ancient Greece.The ClassicalRoots of Modem Psychiatry(Ithaca-London 1978) 248,
also argues that ''the awe inspired by the female sexual drive, experienced as dan-
gerous, was dealt with by social restrictions, and, to a certain extent, by the splitting
of women into two classes, those who were wives and those who were sexual ob-
jects". I would prefer to distinguish three classes: wives, whores and virgins, the
latter category carrying the germs of either of the two others. "The wildness of the
female sex can take two, opposed, forms. It might make the woman veer towards
Artemis, falling short of marriage and refusing any sexual union or, on the other
hand, it might propel her in the opposite direction, beyond marriage, towards
Aphrodite and into unbridled erotic excess" (Vernant 1982, 139). For this very rea-
son the maiden provokes strong suspicions (the Amazonian aspect of the numphe)
and strong social restrictions (parthenosaidoie). This ambivalence is also reflected in
the double mythical image of the unmarried woman: Artemis and Aphrodite, both
in their own way opposed to the matron Demeter. On the many connectons be-
286 CHAPTER FOUR

probably the majority of cultures sex and sensuousness are associat-

ed with wildness, evil, lack of control, both external and internal,
and, more generally, with an animal or primitive order of being"
(187). To this 'order of being' then, the women return during their
festivals and pay for it by returning to their premarital state of num-
phai. And it is this return from culture to nature that is mirrored with
great precision in the concomitant symbolism of the return from
cereal culture to the natural wildness of precultural primitivism.
"Premarital", "precultural", the two terms voice the tension we
have detected time and again during our enquiry into the women's
festivals-the ambivalence between the state of preparation during
the festivals, and that of the completion after the restoration of nor-
mality, to which the festivals serve as a prelude. We recognized it
in the ambiguous terminology and symbolism of the participant ob-
jects: kneoron,choiros,mela, the paradox of pine twig and lugos, but
also in the persons involved, most emphatically in the term numphe.
It is the same tension that can be discerned in the focus on fertility,
on the one hand, and the emphatic (sexual) continence, on the
other. During the festivals, the matron is not reduced to the status
of parthenostoutcourtbut to that of the numphein the prime of womanly
maturity just before its marital comsummation, that is: 'on the
brink'. And it is exactly this 'brinkmanship' which is the most
remarkable trait in the Vestal Virgins; like the women during the
festivals, they are both matrons and virgin numphai, but sentenced
to being perpetually on the brink, because they perform male tasks
in the centre of the city, and therefore can never be matrons. During
the temporary interruption of the festivals, the nymphal prelude to
marital fecundity is parallelled by the natural foreshadowing of agri-
cultural fertility. I believe that this insight may be a promising ap-
proach to a fresh interpretation of the unique myth of Demeter and
Kore 191 .

tween Artemis and Aphrodite see for instance: W. Fauth, Hippolytosund Phaedra
(Abh.Mainz 1959) II, 42, 75, 99-131. Artemis, the prototypical virgin, has also the
potentials of maternity, an ambiguity which is manifest in her double nature of wild
virgin and kourotrophos:Ph. Monbrun, Artemis etle palmier dattier, Pallas35 ( 1989)
69-93. Fundamentally on Artemis' polyvalence: J.-P. Vernant, Figures, idoles,
masques(Paris 1990) 137-207.
191 I cannot go into this question here, but would not omit to cite Zeitlin 1982,
149, who from a different point of view writes: "The sequence of events in the myth
 BONA DEA AND THE THESMOPHORIA 287

Finally, one last question: if this interpretation should prove cor-

rect, would this mean that other interpretations have lost their
value? By no means. On the contrary, both festivals are ideal illus-
trations of the polyvalence of myth and ritual and the shift of mean-
ing in the age-long cultural, social and political evolution. It is per-
fectly possible that the sexual abstinence of the matrons had its roots
in an ideology of fertility-our first level of significance-for in-
stance intended as a state of purity conditional to agricultural
productivity ( as scholars of an earlier generation argued) or as 'an
antithetic preparation which seeks fulfilment in procreation and
birth' as Burkert 1985, 244, has it. Nor would I exclude the possibili-
ty that the obligation to sleep on lugos originated in this primeval
context as well. In general, it seems not only unwise but also quite
unnecessary to rigorously play down or disregard clear references to
fertility such as male and female pudenda, serpents, pigs ( even used
as 'fertilizer'), pine branches, or the name Kalligeneia. Of course,
the extent to which these primeval elements retained their relevance
in later times is quite a different question. It is also true that these
elements seem to be less prominent in the festival of Bona Dea than
in the Thesmophoria 192 .
I also argued that the references to a state of 'primitivism' are
most illuminatively explained when viewed from the perspective
offered by our second level of significance, the functionalistic one
with its focus on aspects of social reversal during the festivals:

depends upon the double participation of mother and maid and points to the dyadic
relationship of the two goddesses in the mystery of their union and separation. The
myth, in fact, focuses upon the problematic of the separation of the two. As a hu-
man drama, the myth reenacts the necessary divergence between the lives of the
mother and daughter, but, as divine drama, it promises the eventual reunion of
their roles.'' This is a structuralist description of an enactment whose necessity and
meaning I have tried to clarify by my analysis of the women's festivals.
192 As Fritz Graf rightly notes in a letter. He also suggests that the vicinity of
the Saturnalia in the month of exception December may point to a more seminal
role of the element of reversal in the origin of the festival of Bona Dea. Although
we are in complete agreement concerning the interpretation of this type of festivals,
I perceive, in this specific case, a slight difference in our assessment of their origins.
As with the Saturnalia (above p.185 n.183) Graf tends to view the origin of the fes-
tival of Bona Dea first and foremost in terms of the exceptional calendrical period
round or before the turning of the year. Though fully alive to the idea that incisions
of this type may foster myth and ritual of reversal (see esp. chapters I and II of this
book), m this case I would rather focus on elements of the agricultural year as the
original kernel of this 'special treatment' of women and slaves, as it is undeniable
for the Thesmophoria and, in my view, also for the Saturnalia.
288 CHAPTER FOUR

women occupying the political centre, forming their own political

structure, usurping male privileges such as bloody sacrifices, ob-
scene 'men's language', drinking wine. The exceptional and revolu-
tionary excursion of the women from male-dominated society, in my
view originating in the context of primeval socio-economic con-
ditions, provoked a set of ritual-i.e. 'theatrical'-actions and
images: the atmosphere of exception fostered ubiquitous references
to exceptional times and settings: signs of primitivism, liberation of
prisoners, suspension of legal procedures.
But this does not imply that the evolution of meaning must have
come to an end in those stages. With the development of civilization,
the growing complexity of political systems, and the changing posit-
ions of women and men in society, the function and meaning of the
women's festivals must have undergone dramatic alterations 193 .
And it is at the third level, that of the 'meaning' of various cultural
elements in the context of historical society, that I hope to have
found a new meaning in elements that may have had a place already
long before, and whose core is the paradoxical intertwining of the
images of matrons and virgins.

193 Just as for instance the original reason for making children wear a bulla was
substituted by its later function of status-marker: H. Gabelmann, Romische
Kinder in Toga Praetexta,JDA/ 100 (1985) 497-541, one of the numerous instances
of this process of modernization of symbols, without which these usages would
probably have vanished.
 CHAPTER FIVE

APOLLO AND MARS ONE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER

ROSCHER

Without exaggeration and oversimplification

little progress is made in most fields of humanistic
investigation.
A.D. Nock

Apollo and Mars do not seem to have much in common, especially

not if we consider their iconographic representations: the first is pic-
tured as a youthful, beardless, naked or lightly clad kouros, armed,
if at all, with bow and arrow. The second is represented as an adult,
heavily armed warrior. This contrast in appearance seems to indi-
cate essential differences in nature and function as well. It may
therefore seem surprising that, more than a century ago, W. H.
Roscher, undertook to show that Apollo and Mars were, essentially
and originally, one and the same god. In the preface to his mono-
graph 'Apollo and Mars'1, which appeared in 1873, he expressed
his regret that, after a promising beginning in the early 19th century
(with names like Welcker, K. 0. Muller, Creuzer and Preller), the
study of mythology had reached an impasse. The cause of this
decline, he believed, was a lack of method, and the way to break out
of this impasse was to follow the lead of a science which was charac-
terized by a refined methodical approach: comparative linguistics.
If Indo-european languages could be traced back to one primeval
language, why should not the same principle apply to gods? Lauda-
tory references to A. Kuhn and above all Max Muller 2 lead to a
predictable outcome: both gods appeared to be representations of

I Roscher 1873, I. The main thesis of this monograph emerges again with
sometimes identical phrasing in the articles of his Mythologisches
Lexikon:Apollon
(RML I, 1 [1884-6] 422-49); Mars (RML 11,2 (1897] 2385-483).
2 On Muller see above p.20 n.8; on Kuhn see: P. Schmitt, Der Briefwechsel
zwischen Jacob Grimm und Adalbert Kuhn, in: Bruder Grimm Gedenkenvol. VI
(Marburg 1986) 135-207.
290 CHAPTER FIVE

the sun 3 . In accordance with this thesis a number of common quali-

ties were explained as solar functions.

1. COMPARING TWO GODS: RoscHER AND AFTER

First of all the names and epithets indicate a solar nature: 'Apollo'
itself is not transparent, but Phoibos, Lukeios, Aigletes and the
epithet of Mars, Loucetius or Leucetius, are significant. 'Mars' it-
self, so Roscher maintained, means 'gleaming', 'radiant'. The sun
traverses the course of the year, as do Mars and Apollo. The first
month of the year is sacred to them. Mars is connected with the first
day of the year, Apollo with the days of the new and the full moon
of every month. Moreover, the twelve priests of Mars, the Salii,
represent the twelve months. The majority of their feasts fall in the
warm season. Their arrival or birth takes place in spring. Mythico-
ritual elements suggest a struggle between winter and summer, the
old and the new year. During the summer the gods display an am-
biguous nature: they are both benevolent and frightening. Indeed,
the sun's warmth promotes fertility and makes the crops grow, but,
on the other hand, heat may cause fever, epidemics, mildew and bad
harvests. Then, the wrath of the gods must be expiated by lustral
rites, for instance by the expulsion of a pharmakos and the Roman
ritual of lustratio.
The oracular qualities, of course most in evidence for Apollo, are
directly connected with the solar nature: during its course, the sun
sees and hears everything 4 • The musical aspects are derived from
these oracular functions. Mars, of course, is not a particularly musi-
cal god, but in military skill he easily outstrips Apollo. All the same,
the Greek god has martial traits as well: his names Boedromios,
Boethoos, his cry eleleu,and song, the Paean, and last but not least,
his bow and arrows testify to this. This again is a solar function,
since in mythology the sun is represented as a youthful warrior who
triumphs over such mythical opponents as dragons and monsters.
The arrows are the victorious rays of the sun.

3 In the case of Apollo, Roscher 1873, 16, could refer to predecessors (Welcker,
Preller, Schwenk, Gerhard) so that the solar nature of Apollo "als eine gegenwiirtig
allgemein feststehende Annahme bezeichnet werden darf. ''
4 The oracular qualities vindicated for Mars bring Roscher into difficulties. He

gives only one testimonium (Dion. Hal. 1, 14) of a-very dubious-Mars oracle.
The spontaneous movements of the ancilia or hastae Martis have no specific sig-
nificance in this context. See for recent speculations on oracular functions in the
Mars-sphere: Palmer 1974, 92 ff. and 112 ff.
 APOLLO AND MARS 291

Both gods are frequently pictured as ancestors of tribes and na-

tions and founders of cities: patrooiand archegetai.Even foundation-
myths in which divine children are nurtured by a she-wolf and later
found a city, are common to both Mars and Apollo 5 • In this con-
nection it is important that both gods function as leaders and guides
in colonizing expeditions, particularly, of the type which bears the
Latin name of ver sacrum: if the gods are angry and manifest their
wrath by epidemics or failure of crops, a group of youths is con-
secrated to the god and expelled. Under the guidance of the god,
who sometimes assumes the shape of an animal, they roam the
wilderness in search of a place suitable for a new settlement.
Finally, there are also animals and plants that the two gods have
in common: wolf, goshawk and laurel are sacred to them.
There is no need for a detailed evaluation of this theory or the ar-
guments on which it is based. Already the judgement of the follow-
ing generation was practically unanimous. In 1912 Wissowa 6 for-
mulated his opinion on the nature-mythical interpretations as
follows: "so beweist das einerseits eine Verkennung der Anfange
mythologisches Denkens ( ... ) und andererseits die verhangnisvolle
Dehnbarkeit der angewandte Methode'' (on the one hand this indi-
cates a misconception concerning the origins of mythological
thought ... and, on the other, the fatal elasticity of the method),
and Nilsson 7 came to the conclusion: "denn diese weitlaufige Liter-
atur wird heutzutage kaum mehr vonjemand eingesehen. ( ... ) Der
grosse Bauder vergleichenden Mythologie ist eingestiirtzt" (to-day
hardly anybody consults this long-winded literature .... The great
edifice of comparative mythology has collapsed). "Few eminent vic-
torians are so forgotten as Max Muller; and few once famous scho-
lars have so lost their fame'', is the verdict of Lloyd-] ones 1982, 155.
That Mars is no solar god is as clear as sunlight, but even "eine der
sichersten Tatsachen der M ythologie" 8 ( one of the most certain

5 Ant. Lib. 30: Miletos the founder-hero of Milete was a son of Apollo. He was
exposed in the woods and fostered by wolves until he was found by shepherds. A
similar story in Plut. Parall. Min. 36 (FHG IV, 363) on Lykastos and Parrhasos.
Cf. Paus. 10, 16, 5. On this theme see: Binder 1964; Briquel 1976, 73-97; B. Lewis,
The SargonLegend(Cambridge Mass. 1980).
6 Wissowa 1912, 13. A less rigid rejection already in the first edition of 1902.
7 Nilsson GGR I, 5. See the excellent discussion by R. M. Dorson, The Eclipse
of Solar Mythology, in: Sebeok 1974, 25-63.
8 Thus Roscher in: RML I, 442.
292 CHAPTER FIVE

facts in mythology), viz. the solar nature of Apollo, appears to be an

invention of the fifth century BC 9 • Furthermore, the word Phoibos
is no longer interpreted as 'radiant' but rather as 'cathartic' or
'awful'10_ We should also note that even Roscher could not always
discern connections with the sun with equal certainty. His series of
data ranges from 'very sunny' to 'non liquet'. The functions of
founder and colonizer, for instance, were listed at the end of hisser-
ies. They were explained as a corollary of the central position of the
god in social life, and were not directly derived from solar qualities
(which would indeed have been very hard to demonstrate). Nor is
the typically nineteenth-century illumination of the martial traits by
references to the mythical sun as a youthful warrior one of the most
convincing parts of the argument.
The theory was replaced by others, which, in their turn, sought
their frames of reference in contemporary modes and fashions. For
Nilsson this was the theory of the vegetation cult, which took its in-
spiration from the works of Mannhardt and Frazer, and which, as
we have noticed above, has dominated the textbooks until recently.
A comparison of Nilsson's views of the god Apollo 11 with the ideas
of Roscher is highly instructive. Apollo is described as a god con-
nected with the fertility of cattle and crops, but this function is only
a derivation from an older quality. Originally Apollo was an
"iibelabwehrender Gott" (evil-averting god). 'Lukeios' is not the

9 The solar nature of Apollo was still defended by L. von Schroder, Arische
Religion II (Leipzig 1916) 499 ff.; H. Guntert, Der arische Weltkonigund Reiland
(Halle 1923) 292 f. An ample refutation in: L. R. Farnell, The Cultsof the GreekStates
IV (Oxford 1907) 136-44; P. D. Miller, The Originand OriginalNatureof Apollo(Diss.
Philadelphia 1939) 26 f.; H. Usener, Giittemamen(Frankfurt 19483), 303 ff. On the
origin of the solar aspects in the 5th century: P. Boyance, Apollon solaire, in:
Melangesj. Carcopino(Paris 1966) 149-70. Emphasis on the Hellenistic period: K.
J. Mackay, Solar Motifs or Something New under the Sun, Antichthon10 (1976) 35
ff. Simon 1983, ch.5, returns to the old theory with the assumption that Apollo was
the successor of Helios after the Mycenaean period. A new solar etymology of Apol-
lo: A. D. Papanikolaou, Ein Versuch zur Etymologie des Namens Apollon, Ciotta
64 (1986) 184-92, crushed by A. Heubeck, Noch einmal zum Namen des Apollon,
Ciotta65 (1987) 179-82, who argues that with Burkert's etymology (see below) "al-
les in bester Ordnung ist".
JO W. Fauth, 'Apollon', in: Der KleinePauly, I, 422: "Das Wort Phoibos( ... ) ist
noch vollig unerkliirt. '' Cf. also Nilsson GGR I, 559. But see: M. S. Ruiperez, Phoi-
bosApollon, Emerita21 (1953) 14 ff. and Burkert 1975, 14 n.56. Cf. also E. P. Hamp,
Phoibos,aphiktos, IF 81 (1976) 41 f.
11 GGR, 529 ff. Cf. the survey by Fauth o.c. (previous note) 442, with a com-
parable approach.
 APOLLO AND MARS 293

'radiant one', but means 'averter of wolves'. From this kernel the
god evolved towards the 'healer' (and e contrariothe sender of pes-
tiferous arrows), the cathartic and purifying god, ''der Schwerpunkt
seines Wesens in ill.tester Zeit" (his essential characteristic in the
remotest period: p. 542). The art of healing requires pharmakaand
carmina(Paean), which explains the mantic and musical aspects. The
origin of the god and his name may be traced back to Asia Minor.
Apollo had already been recognized as door-keeper (Aguieus) in
Hittite texts 12 and his purifying nature together with his sacred
seventh day of the month point to Babylonia.
From a methodological point of view it is instructive to notice that
the change in the frame of reference has entailed a shifting of several
elements from more central to more peripheral parts of the theory
and vice versa. Now that the apotropaeic function has become the
centre of interest, both the solar and the martial elements have dis-
appeared. Apollo's colonizing activities are not even mentioned in
this context 13 ; the title patroos is explained differently 14. On the
other hand, the mantic, musical and healing qualities have gained
ground. A second change is that the pursuit of a rigorous unity ap-
pears to have been abandoned. Apollo is so many-sided that a single
all-encompassing interpretation would inevitably result in a
simplification. A god whose roots lie in Asia Minor necessarily com-
bines foreign and Greek traits, and this implies the assumption of
a process of coalescence. So we see that an essentially mythical and
monolithic model has been replaced by a historicizing concept based
on evolution and amalgamation. Notwithstanding subsequent at-
tempts to ensnare the god in a single formula-the best known is the
one by W. Otto 15-one may say that Nilsson's fragmentary ap-
proach is typical of most of the historical studies of the twentieth cen-
tury, even if they have chosen a different starting-point.
Mars pursued a different course. Of course, he also had to lay

12 B. Hrozny, Archiv Orientalni8 (1936) 171 ff.

13 Apollo Archegetes is discussed under Delphi and interpreted in the light of
the oracular function: GGR I, 638 f.
14 On Apollo Patroos see: X. De Schutter, Le culte d'Apollon Patroos a
Athenes, AC 56 (1987) 103; Ch. W. Hedrich Jr., The Temple and Cult of Apollo
Patroos in Athens, AJA 92 (1988) 185-210.
1s W. Otto, Die GotterGriechenlands(Frankfurt 19562), 62-80. A book on Apollo
by M. Detienne has been announced, but was not yet available when the present
chapter was completed.
294 CHAPTER FIVE

aside his solar halo, but in this case the conditions for a monolithic
interpretation were more favourable. Although he is not less impor-
tant or dominant for Italy than Apollo is for Greece, his functions
are less multifarious and divergent. As a result, there have been
several attempts to present a single all-encompasing interpretation
of the god Mars 16 , which have led to a veritable battle of giants. On
the one hand, Mars was seen as a vegetation god by interalias Frazer,
Eitrem, Warde Fowler, Clemen, and Rose. In this connection he
was pictured as a dying and rising god, a representative of the
agricultural year. Accordingly, the equusoctoberwas sometimes inter-
preted as the corn-demon. As the defender of fields and crops he also
became the protector of the community, the city and its inhabitants
and, consequently, acquired military traits 17 • The alternative the-
ory argued for an evolution in the reverse direction. At the end of
his life Wissowa grudgingly relented to the extent that he differen-
tiated between a Roman military Mars and an Italic Mars with
primarily agricultural features 18 . But Dumezil resisted any tempta-
tion to make concessions. To him Mars was essentially military and
all possible agricultural elements were exposed either as military or
as the results of an evolution: as the defender of the community,
Mars also acquired the task of protecting the fields and the harvest
against human or demonic aggressors 19 .
Of course, there have been attempts to combine both aspects in
a single original unity. Following Fowler, Rose and Eitrem, it was
above all Latte 20 who regarded Mars as the fear-inspiring spirit of
the wilds: "der Exponent der unheimlichen, unvertrauten Welt

16 There are ample surveys in Balkestein 1963 and Scholz 1970.

17 See for instance: M. D. Petrusevski, L'evolution du Mars italique d'une
divinite de la nature a un dieu de la guerre, AAntHung 15 (1967) 417-22.
18 Wissowa 1912, 143: "Mars ist den Ri:imern nie etwas anderes gewesen als
Kriegsgott, und wenn man ihn um Schutz der Fluren anfleht so geschieht das nicht,
damit er das W achstum der Saaten fcirdere, sondern damit er Kriegsnot und Ver-
wiistung von den Feldern fernhalte." His partial 'conversion' in his review of W.
R. Halliday, Lectureson theHistoryof Roman Religion, in: Philo/. Wochenschr.41 (1921)
994, and in his review of E. Bickel, Der altromischeGottesbegriffin: Philo/. Wochenschr.
44 (1924) 678.
19 Dumezil 1966, 208-45, especially 215 ff., a summary of a number of earlier
studies. One of his disciples has discovered '2nd-function' traits in Apollo, too: V.
Strutynski, The Three Functions of I. E. Tradition in the Eumenides'of Aeschylus,
in: J. Puhvel (ed.), Myth and Law amongthe lndo-Europeans(Berkeley 1970) 211-18.
20 Latte 1960, 114. Cf. H.J. Rose, Some Problemsof ClassicalReligion (Oslo
1955): "spirit of the wild."
 APOLLO AND MARS 295

draussen" (the exponent of the unfriendly, unfamiliar world outside

the settlement). From here he draws two logical lines of develop-
ment, one towards the god of the fields-agriculture-and one
towards the god who averts enemies from the outer world-the sold-
ier. Further, there is the theory that views Mars primarily as a
chthonic deity of fertility and death (Hermansen, Balkestein, Wa-
genvoort)21. In 1970, U. W. Scholz 22 introduced a new monolithic
theory: Mars is essentially the central state god protecting the king
and the community, father ofltalic tribes and founder of cities, a po-
sition later usurped by Iupiter. This accounts for his various quali-
ties as defender of the community both in the military and the
agricultural sector. This time the equusoctoberis not a vegetation de-
mon but a symbol of the renewal of royal strength 23.
A survey of the twentieth century theories concerning Apollo and
Mars gives rise to three general observations:
1. Due to the solar eclipse after Roscher, the comparison, and cer-
tainly the identification of the two gods has disappeared from the
discussion. The consequence is that those elements for which Rosch-
er had convincingly shown a real congruence and similarity are to-
tally ignored in subsequent literature. A fresh analysis of the points
of similarity against the background of recent research is required.
2. Practically all the theories imply an evolution of the gods.
Generally, an attempt is made to demonstrate that there was an
original kernel from which the god developed under the influence of
socio-cultural changes and external influences. One may, as I do,
acknowledge the fundamental validity of this approach, but
nevertheless regret that it practically precludes a more holistic pic-
ture of the god. We may assume that the names Mars and Apollo
must have evoked a set of notions and associations in the mind of
the believer which together, though with different emphases accord-
ing to circumstances, time and place, fitted into a single general
mental representation. It is legitimate, then, to ask whether a pat-
tern uniting the apparently incoherent details can be discovered.
3. Roscher, originator and editor of the abundantly illustrated
MythologischesLexikon, made little or no use of iconographical ma-

21 Hermansen 1940; Wagenvoort 1956, 193 ff.; Balkestein 1963.

22 Scholz 1970.
23 On the Equus October see the survey by J. H. Vanggaard, The October
Horse, Temenos15 (1979 [1982]) 81-95.
296 CHAPTER FIVE

terial. This is understandable in the case of Mars, for whom we have

practically no pictures or images prior to the Greek influence in Ita-
ly, but it is surprising in the case of Apollo, the most depicted god
in the Greek pantheon. After Roscher the situation is even more
paradoxical: the little iconographic information available on Mars
has been frequently adduced as an instrument for interpretation,
whereas in the context ofreligious evaluation, the imagery of Apol-
lo, with one or two exceptions which we shall discuss, has carried
hardly any weight in the discussion 24 .

2. COMPARING TWO GODS: A STRUCTURALIST VIEW

Starting from the desiderata contained in these three observations,

I would like to attempt a fresh analysis of those elements in the myths
and cults of Apollo and Mars which are really analogous, to inquire
whether they may fit into a pattern, and if so to investigate the impli-
cations of this pattern for the believers' image of the god. Only after
this has been done is it permissible to trace this complex of associa-
tions and references back to one or more historical origins. The sup-
posed origin should combine in nuceas many elements of the pattern
as possible. I shall strictly limit my observations to those aspects
which seem to be relevant. For the evidence and all other aspects not
discussed here I refer to the textbooks and specialized studies. I shall
focus my attention on the archaic Apollo and, as far as possible, on
Mars before the Greek-Hellenistic influence.
A. Mars and Apollo are 'present' gods, but their presence is
neither stationary nor self-evident. They are represented as being
born or arriving from distant regions 25• As to Greece, similar

24 For information on the iconological aspects see: LIMC. The first volume
offers two comprehensive articles on Apollo and Ares/Mars, the second volume
provides the most complete series of illustrations.
25 Of an arrival of the god Mars nothing is known unless this should be implied
in Plaut. Trucul. 515: Mars peregreadvenienssalutatNerienemuxoremsuam. The first of
March as Natalis Martis is attested in the 4th century calendar of Philocalus and in
the Feriale Duranum. See: R. 0. Fink, A. S. Hoey, W. F. Snyder, The Feriale
Duranum, YCIS 7 (1940) 82 ff. Cf. also St. Weinstock, A New Greek Calendar and
Festivals of the Sun,JRS 38 (1948) 37 ff. It was also the day of the Matronalia, the
festival of married women in honour of Iuno Lucina, the goddess of birth, whose
temple was founded on this very day (see: F. Bomer ad Ovid Fast. 3, 167). Mars
is called the son ofluno by Ovid, Fast. 5, 229 ff. and Paul. ex Festo 86 L. See on
this day in the imperial calendar: P. Herz, Untersuchungenzum Festkalenderder
romischenKaiserzeitI (Diss. Mainz 1975) 149 ff.
 APOLLO AND MARS 297

epiphanies or epidemiaiare known of other gods as well, but with the

exception of Dionysos nowhere as emphatically as in the case of
Apollo, who is invited to come by means of humnoi kletikoi26 • In
Rome, however, the birth (or arrival) of Mars is unique. A new
period begins with the coming of the god: both Apollo and Mars are
connected with the first month of the year 27• Until very recently in
Greece there were folk customs connected with the month of
March 28 that recall the expulsion of the old Roman Mars, named
Mamurius Veturius, who bears a strong resemblance to the personi-
fied Februarius. This 'Old Year' was represented as an old man
clothed with skins who was ritually driven out of the city 29• There
is a remarkable parallelism between the Salii and their weapon-
dance for the 'new' Mars on his birthday, the first of March 30 , and

26 Humnoi kletikoi: Men. Rhet. 334,25-336,4; Norden 1913, 157 ff.; A. Came-
ron, Sappho's Prayer to Aphrodite, HThR 32 (1939) 1-17; P. Fedeli, Il carme61 di
Catullo(Freiburg 1972) 21 ff.; Chr. Brown, Dionysos and the Women of Elis: PMG
871, GRBS 23 (1982) 305-14. This does not imply, of course, that humnoi kletikoi
were not addressed to other gods as well.
27 Apollo was patron of the first month in Delphi, Elis, Tenos, Priene, Lamp-
sakos, Kuzikos, where the months are named: Apellaios, Apellonios, Apellaion,
Boedromios. The Athenian first month, Hekatombaion, though the name does not
carry Apollonian associations, was also dedicated to Apollon: Etymol. Magn. 321,
5; Bekker, Anecdot. 1, 247, 1.
28 F. Schneider, Kalendae Januariae und Martiae im Mittelalter, ARW 20
(1921) 391-402;]. A. Megas, GreekCalendarCustoms(Athens 19632) 79 ff.; A. N.
Anfiertiev, On the History of March Rites in Greece (in Russian), Sovietsk.Etnogr.
(1971) 133-9.
29 The central text on the expulsion of Mamurius is Lydus De mens. 4, 36. For
earlier times two texts may be relevant, though their connection with Mamurius
is disputed: Serv. ad Aen. 7, 188, cui et diem consecrarunt quopellemvirgisferiunt ad artis
similitudinem,and Min. Felix Oct. 24, 3, Nudi crudahiemediscurrunt,alii inceduntpilleati
(i.e. the Salii), scutaveteracircumferunt(the Salii), pellescaedunt(the Salii or the Galli?),
mendicantesvicatim deosducunt (the Galli). For Mamurius in pictures see: H. Stern,
Notes surdeux images du mois de Mars, REL 52 (1974) 70-4, and Stern 1981, esp.
436-9. On the figure and functions ofMamurius Veturius in general: A. Illuminati,
Mamurius Veturius, SMSR 32 (1961) 41 ff.; J. Loicq, Mamurius Veturius et
l'ancienne representation de l'annee, in: Hommagesj. Bayet (Bruxelles 1964) 401 ff.;
W. Fauth, Romische Religion im Spiegel der 'Fasti' des Ovid, in: ANRWII, 16,
1 (1978), 104-82, esp. 150 ff.; Bomer ad Ovid. Fast. 3, 259 ff.
30 The Salii danced on other days as well: on March 9 and 23 and October 19.
Fundamentally on the Salii in general: Helbig 1905, 205 ff. More recent literature
in Scholz 1970, 13 n.29. Add: Neraudau 1979, 216-26. Attempts to read Saliei as
the first word of the archaic Satricum inscription must be rejected: Versnel 1982.
Generally on the historical implications of this fascinating new text: Versnel 1980,
and the discussion ofthe recent literature in: 1990a. Dion. Hal. 2, 71 calls the dance
of the Salii a kouretismos.
298 CHAPTER FIVE

a similar weapon-dance by armed Kouretesat a place called Ortygia,

near Ephesus, which accompanied the birth of Apollo and his
sister3 1 . Another parallel, namely with the dance of the armed
Kouretesin Crete round the birth of the Cretan Zeus, the Megistos
Kouros, was noticed by Jane Harrison 32 . Here, too, we observe a
duplication in the imagery of the presence of the god. As we have
seen above (pp.28; 91) the myth pictures the god as a new-born baby
protected by the armed Kouretes.The famous hymn from Palaiokas-
tro, on the other hand, describes him as the MegistosKouros '' coming
for this year,'' exactly as Apollo's epidemiaat Delos is conceived ritu-
ally as an arrival and mythically as a birth.
B. Apollo and Mars have connections with the life and prosperity
of crops and cattle. They can excercise both positive and negative
influences. Yet they are definitely not typical vegetation- or fertility
gods. In this respect representatives of radically diverse schools are
so unanimous that the results of their explorations can hardly be sus-
pected. The emphasis on the lustrative or cathartic aspects of the two
gods is ubiquitous. It has been generally accepted that Apollo's typi-
cally Greek traits-kosmos, order, harmony etc.-should ultimately

31 Strabo 14, 1, 20, refers to the two children of Leto. He also mentions a statue
ofOrtygia with the two children. Tac. Ann. 3, 61, too, mentions the birth of Apollo
and Artemis in Ortygia = Ephesos. Neither are the Koureteslinked up exclusively
with Apollo. Strabo l.c. only mentions their sumposiaand he adds that "the youths
during the festival vie for honour, particularly in the splendour of their banquets".
In an inscription from Ephesos (D. Knibbe, Forschungenin EphesosIX,1, 1,nr A2 =
IEphesos V, 1449) the Kouretesare connected with the sanctuary of Artemis, and
other sources generally connect places with the name Ortygia with Artemis, not
primarily with Apollo (RML III, 1218-24). This means that it cannot beproventhat
the Ephesian Koureteshad specific connections with Apollo. However, as Bremmer
1990, 136 (following earlier suggestions made by 0. Murray in various studies; cf.
also M. Lombardo, Pratiche di commensalita e forme di organizzazione sociale nel
mondo greco: symposiae syssitia,ASNP 18 (1988] 263 = 86) observed: "the symposion
proper is the successor of the common meal of the archaic warrior clubs'', a fact
that, as we shall see below, tells for a connection between the symposiasts and Apol-
lo. Also on account of the parallel with the Cretan Kouretesbelonging to the infant
Zeus, I find it very difficult to disbelieve that both Kouretes and 'youths' were par-
ticularly connected with the male god. The problem seems to find its solution in
the fact that Leto, at least in Chios, was connected with athletic games of both boys
and girls, even in combination, a clear indication, as Graf 1985b, 60 f. shows, of
her connection with initiations of both sexes. J. N. Bremmer, Mnemosyne42 (1989)
263, comments that this may be exactly the reason that myth made her the mother
of Apollo and Artemis. On Ortygia and ephebes see also: G. Maclean Rogers, The
SacredIdentity of Ephesos.FoundationMyths of a Roman City (London-New York 1991)
68 f.
32 Harrison 1927, 1-74; 194-99. On the hymn see above p.27 f.
 APOLLO AND MARS 299

be traced back to his purificatory and harm-averting function. He

is alexikakosand apotropaiosand averts unpleasant mice, flies, mildew
and illness in general 33 . In texts on amulets and charms mainly
dating from the imperial period he is invoked as the doorkeeper who
wards off all evil 34 , but already the first attested purification in the
case of murder, that of Achilleus in the Aethiopis, was connected with
a sacrifice to Leto, Artemis and Apollo 35 . Even if the theory that
made Apollo a doorkeeper in Hittite texts has been refuted 36 , it is
virtually undeniable that his most obvious and central function is to
keep the impure in (or to dispel the impure to) the outer world where
it belongs, and to keep the pure in the inner circle where it belongs.
As the corollary of this function, he controls the passages which con-
nect, and the borders which divide, the two worlds of inside and
outside.
A perfect instance of this function can be discerned in the

33 See: Ch. W. Hedrich Jr., The Temple and Cult of Apollo Patroos in Athens,
AJA 92 (1988) 185-210.
34 Characteristically, a sacred law of Cyrene (SEC IX, 72; LSS 115, II. 4-7) gives
the instruction "to sacrifice to Apollo Apotropaios in front of the gates" in cases
of epidemics or death threatening the total community. Here the well-known Apol-
lo Prostaterios or Propylaios is explicitely pictured in his function of defender of the
border (Cf. Farnell 1907, 148-52). In later times images of Apollo with arrows were
put up outside the wall against the pest. See the fundamental study by 0. Wein-
reich, Heros Propylaios und Apollon Propylaios, AM 38 (1913) 62-72 = Aus-
gewii.hlteSchriftenI (Amsterdam 1969), 197-206; idem, De dis ignotis questiones selec-
tae, ARW 18 (1915) 8 ff., and cf. Parker 1983, 334-5; Faraone o.c. (above p.154
n. 91) 63 f. This task was taken over by Christ, for instance in the expression epebe
Kuriosepi ten thuran. See: L. Robert, HellenicaXIII (Paris 1965) 98. Cf. W. Deonna,
Christus Propylaios ou "Christus hie est", RA 22 (1925) 66-74. On Theoipropulaioi
cf. also: F. G. Maier in: Eranion. FestschriftH. Hommel (Tiibingen 1961) 93-104;
S. Charitonides, Hieron pules, AM 75 (1960) 1-3; G. Pugliese Carratelli, Theoi
Propulaioi,SCO 14 (1965) 5-10.
35 OCT Homer V, p. 105, 28 ff. That "Apolline purification took place at Del-
phi" has been contested by R. R. Dyer, The Evidence for Apolline Purification
Rituals at Delphi and Athens,JHS 89 (1969) 38-56 (and cf. the reticence of Parker
1983, 138-43, on Apollonian purification of murderers). With respect to the explicit
evidence at Delphi he may be right, but although he has to admit that "we find
extensive evidence that Apollo was regarded as a god of purity and that purification
rituals were held in some cities in association with his cult", he is unnecessarily
sceptical concerning the purificatory functions of Apollo and his cult in general.
There cannot be any doubt as to the purificatory aspects of such festivals as the
Delphic Stepteria(Fontenrose 1959, 453-61), and especially the Thargeliarites. The
fundamentally cathartic functions of Apollonian religion cannot be denied. See,
apart from the communisopinio in the well-known textbooks, for instance recently:
F. Costabile, II culto di Apollo quale testimonianza della tradizione corale e religio-
sa di Reggio e Messana, MEFRA 91 (1979) 525-43, and the preceding note.
36 Burkert 1975a, 3.
300 CHAPTER FIVE

Thargelia-rites, a truly Apollonian festival 37 . In Ionian cities the

impurity, miasma, was driven out in the representation of a phar-
makos, a scapegoat preferably selected from the marginal layers of
society, who was led through the city collecting the negative taints
from the community and carrying off the miasma in his person. This
type of apopompehas some resemblance to other rites of expulsion,
both in the Apollonian sphere 38 and, for instance, in the Roman
chasing of Mamurius.
Turning to Rome, we first note that the Roman lustratio39 was es-
sentially connected with the god Mars. In both the age-old carmenar-
vale and the lustratio-prayer handed down by Cato, Mars was re-
quested to ward off all kinds of disasters, epidemics and destruction
from the fields, the animals and from human society 40 . Again there
is .a kind of pharmakosinvolved: the suovetaurilia,boar, ram and bull,
were led around the community or the fields, thus articulating the
borderline between the inner and the outer world, after which they
were consecrated to Mars and killed 41 . In the case of the lustratio

37 On Thargeliaand pharmakossee: Burkert 1979, 59-77; Bremmer 1983b; Par-

ker 1983, 258-71. Since the Thargeliacan be seen as a festival of the primitiae and
the new harvest, the expulsion of the pharmakos has often been explained as a
fertility-ritual. Rather it is the articulation of the caesura in the (agricultural) year
when good comes in and bad things are driven away. Cf. Parker 1983, 28f. Some
cities received new fire from Delos or Delphi. This clear signal of a new beginning
was also at Lemnos accompanied by a (mythical) apopompe:Burkert 1970. Note the
analogy with the rites of the 1st of March at Rome: the fire of the temple of Vesta
was renewed (Ovid Fast. 3, 143 ff.; Macrob. Sat. 1, 12, 6) and fresh laurel branches
were attached to the houses (Alfcildi 1973, 4 ff.).
38 For instance during the Kameia at Sparta, in the cult of Apollo Aguieus at
Tegea, and during the Stepteriaat Delphi: Nilsson 1906, 150 ff. idem, GGR I, 532
ff.; S. Wide, LakonischeKulte (Leipzig 1893) 74 ff. M. Jost, Sanctuaireset cultesd'Ar-
cadie(Paris 1986) 483 f. On apopompein general see: R. Schlesier, Apopompe, in:
HrwG II (1990) 38-45.
39 I shall return to this theme below. A collection and discussion of the data:
Ogilvie 1961, 32 ff.; Versnel 1975. V.J. Rosivach, Mars, the Lustral God, Latomus
42 (1983) 509-21, emphasizes the lustral nature of the god and gives a survey of
the evidence.
°4 Carmenarvale:G. Henzen, Acta FratrumArvalium (Berlin 1874) CCIV, 32-38.
Literature on this fundamental text Versnel 1970, 38 ff. The crucial lines are: Neve
lue rue, Marmar, sins incurrerein pleores.SaturJu, JereMars, limen sali, sta berber.Cato,
De Agr. 141 : uti tu morbosvisas invisosque,viduertatem,vastitudinemque,calamitatesintem-
periasqueprohibessisdejendasaverruncesque.
41 There has been much debating about the undeniable fact that the suovetaurilia
have a scapegoat-character on the one hand, and yet can be sacrificed to Mars on
the other. See Versnel 1975. In the house-rite described by Cato De agr. 141, the
animals are sacrificed in a normal way, but at the occasion of the lustratioclassisthe
 APOLLO AND MARS 301

classis, "the priests carry the expiatory offerings (ta katharsia)in skiffs
three times round the fleet ( .... ), beseeching the gods to turn the
bad omens against the victims instead of the fleet. Then, dividing
the entrails, they cast a part of them into the sea, and put the re-
mainder on the altars and burn them." (Appian B. C. 5, 10, 96).
This is as close as anything to a scapegoat ritual. The expulsion
of Februarius (cf. Mamurius) in the last month of the year, the
month of purification (februare = purify) fits in very well with this
imagery of lustration, passage, and liminality 42 . Consequently, it is
by no means unjustifiable to characterize Mars as the 'Gott des
Draussens', but it is only part of the thruth. As Averruncus, averter
of evil taints, Mars controls the passages between the inner and the
outer world just as Apollo does. His essential position is on the bor-
derline, where he defends the division between the two worlds which
must not intermingle, except during limited periods. Accordingly,

entrails of the sacrificial animals are carried around the fleet and parts are thrown
into the sea, other parts are burnt. That something similar must have happened
in the other official lustrationesas well, is documented by Serv. auct. ad Aen. 8, 133,
proprielustraliadicunt quaeduabusmanibusacceptain arampontifex vel censorimponit;quae
nonprosecantur.This 'sacrificial' meat may not be eaten but is burnt in totoor rather
buried. This had already been seen by H. Usener, KleineSchriftenIV (Leipzig 1913)
117. Basically correct also: L. Deubner, Lustrum, ARW 16 (1913) 127 ff.; Latte
1960, 119. I think it very probable that this altar of Mars was the underground altar
of the Tarentum (cf. Versnel 1982 and see below) so that the actions of burning and
burying may have been two phases of one ritual performance: Lu.strum condere.This
implies that I do not agree with H. Petersmann, Lustrum: Etymologie und Volks-
brauch, Wjb 9 (1983): 210-30, who revives the old theory that Lu.strum is a purifica-
tory fire. On the ambivalence oflustrative and votive motives in one and the same
sacrificial action see also: G. A. Caduff, Antike Sintflutsagen (Gi:ittingen 1986)
260 with n.18: "Der Ubergang vom Pharmakosritual zum sog. Votivopfer ist
fliessend''.
42 The expulsion ofFebruarius is not mentioned in ancient Roman sources (for
pictorial representations see above n.29), but Byzantine sources mention an old
man who was wrapped in a mat of rushes and scourged and expelled from Rome.
This 'Februarius' is connected with the attack by the Gauls and sometimes he is
identified as Manlius Torquatus and described as a man of Celtic birth (Suda s.v.
Phebrouarios;Zonaras in Cass. Dio I, p. 111 [Boissevain]; Cedrenus, CSHB I, p.
263; Malalas, ibid. p. 183). These stories have been thoroughly analysed by J.
Hubaux, Rome et Veies.Recherches sur la chronologie
legendairedu moyenageromain(Liege
1958) 348-67; cf. 296-328. The story has a typical pharmakos-atmosphere and the
characterization as a Gaul fits into this picture. See: J. Gage, "Busta Gallica".
Camille et !'expulsion de Februarius (?), in: HommagesGrenierII (Bruxelles 1962)
707-20, esp. 713 ff. Cf. on the particularites of the month February: Brelich 1976,
105-35. Bremmer 1983b mentions an apopompein Tibet which shows striking
similarities.
302 CHAPTER FIVE

the carmenarvaleinvokes Mars with the prayer: limen sali, sta berber,
"leap on the threshold (or borderline), stand there" 43 .
C. Both gods are acquainted with the outer world, are even at
home there, but they are connected with the centre of the communi-
ty as well. As a matter of fact, since their seminal function is to artic-
ulate borders and division, the gods must necessarily be familiar
with the worlds on either side of the boundary-line. Indeed, one of
their most conspicuous features is that they cannot be confined to
one stable abode; they are elusive, hence frightening, yet essential
to the continued existence of society. Let us illustrate this ambiguous
position with a few well-known data.
Above (sub A) I have pointed out that both deities belonged to the
category of the "coming gods". It will be expedient to elaborate and
specify this notion now. One of the most characteristic myths about
Apollo is the one relating his arrival from the H yperboreans who live
in the utopian margin of the world. The god's happy return was
celebrated every year. The most distinguished place, of course, is
the centre of the civilized world, the omphalosDelos. The mythical
journey had a ritual parallel: every year, we are told, a sacred gift
was passed on from hand to hand and from country to country,
starting in the far North until it arrived at Delos 44 . On a legendary
level there is another, though perhaps less close, analogy: the
shamanistic priest of Apollo, Abaris 45 , is reported to have travelled
from Scythia bearing in his hand-or in another version even sitting
on-the arrow of Apollo. Once he had arrived in the civilized world,
he taught people how to avert epidemics and other disasters. So

43 Sali has a parallel in the hymn to the MegistosKouros of Crete where the god
is asked to come with the term: thore.The name of the Mars priests, the Salii is, of
course, most significant here. Cf. also the name of a god Salisubsilis.On satire(and
ludere)as ritual terms see: Piccaluga 1965, index s.v. Salii and salti.
44 On the primitiaesee: J. Treheux, La realite des offrandes hyperboreennes, in:
StudiesD. M. RobinsonII (Missouri 1953) 758-74. Cf. on the Hyperboreans: J. D.
Bolton, AristeasefProconnesus (Oxford 1962), index s.v.; Burkert 1985, 146 n.34. On
the Delian rites see: Calame 1977, 196 ff. The tradition that makes Delos the ompha-
los goes back to the 8th century BC: L. Santi Amantini, L'inno omerico ad Apollo
e l'origine dell'arcaica anfizionia delica, in: Contributidi storia antica A. Garzetti
(Genova 1977) 31-60.
45 On Abaris: Meuli 1975 II, 859-64; Burkert 1972b, 149 ff., 162. On the jour-
ney on (with) the arrow: Bremmer 1983a, 44-6. On the shamanistic aspects: M.
Eliade, Zalmoxis, the VanishingGod (Chicago 1972) 21-75, esp. 34-6; Bolton, o.c.
(preceding note) index s.v. Cf. also: J. F. Kindstrand, Anacharsis. The Legendand
the Apophthegmata(U ppsala 1981) 18 f.; 2 2 f.; 74 f.
 APOLLO AND MARS 303

Apollo seems to relate fundamentally to the idea of passing from the

margin to the centre of culture 46 . Negatively, we see Apollo operat-
ing from the margin in his function of hekaergosor hekatebolos 47 : his
arrows come from far and strike in the centre. One could even con-
sider the possibility that his oracular functions have something to do
with this ambiguous position: Apollo thus creates a passage from the
unreachable world of the sacred to the world of men by giving them
a temporary insight into things generally outside their reach 48 .
This transition from margin towards centre, from the divine/uto-
pian or the savage/natural world towards the world of human cul-
ture, may also be signified by the myth of the succession of his tem-
ples in Delphi 49 : the first made of laurel-wood, the second of wax
and feathers, the third of bronze and the fourth of stone. Apollo be-
longs to two worlds, the external 50 and the central; he is at home in
both, yet will stay in neither 51 .

46 Perhaps a reflection of this theme can be seen in the wanderings of Leto until
she found the island Delos, which became stable and even the centre of the world
only after it had received the great goddess: Hom. Hymn to Apollo 30-50; Callim.
Hymn to Delos 70-205.
47 W. Otto's characterization of Apollo as "Gott der Ferne", finds strong sup-
port in the archaeological imagery, as E. Simon, Die Gotterder Griechen(Munich
1969) demonstrates: "Kein Gott betont den Abstand so wie er" (122). On the ten-
sion between distance and nearness-and other ambiguities-in the religion of
Apollo see: Schlesier 1985, 3 f. On Apollo's ambivalence see also: M. Detienne,
L' Apollon meurtrier et Jes crimes de sang, QUCC 51 (1986) 7-17 (I did not see his
announced book on Apollo); G. Lorentz, Apollon-Asklepios-Hygieia. Drei Typen
von Heilgottern in der Sicht der vergleichenden Religionsgeschichte, Saeculum39
(1988) 1-11.
48 Of course, there are various other possibilities to explain the oracular func-
tion of the god. Cf. for instance: B. C. Dietrich, Reflections on the Origins of
Oracular Apollo, BICS 25 (1978) 1-18.
49 Chr. Sourvinou-Inwood, The Myth of the First Temples at Delphi, CQ 29
(1979) 231-51. Cf. the excavations of a laurel hut at Eretria: K. Schefold, Grabun-
gen in Eretria, AD 26 (1971) 267-73; E. Robbins, Cyrene and Cheiron. The Myth
of Pindar's Ninth Pythian, Phoenix32 (1978) 91-104, explains Aristaeas, Cheiron
and Apollo as mediators between nature and culture.
50 In this respect it is important that Apollo receives the task of herding the cat-
tle of Admetus and Laomedon (ll. 2, 766; 21, 448). As Nomios Apollo is at home
in the nape or saltus (Soph. OR 1103; Macr. Sat. 1, 17, 43; Schol. Ar. Nub. 144;
Steph. Byz. s.v. nape). This by no means makes him an original god of the
shepherds, as has for instance been argued by S. Solders, Der urspriingliche Apol-
lon, ARW 32 (1935) 144-55; A. J. van Windekens,,Le Pelasgique(Louvain 1952)
142; V. Georgiev, La koine Creto-mycenienne, in: Etudes Myciniennes(Paris 1956)
52. Rather, this is to be compared with Mars Silvanus who receives a sacrifice pro
bubus ut valeant:Cato De agr. 83.
51 According to Artemidorus Oneir. 2, 35, 133, 8 (Hercher) dreaming of Apollo
means apodemiasand kineseis.
304 CHAPTER FIVE

Mars' own territory, the campus Martius, lay outside the pomerium,
the sacred boundary-line of Rome, and it is there that he had his
main sanctuaries 52 • This has a perfect ceremonial parallel in the
prescription that an army under arms might never (with the excep-
tion of emergencies or the triumph) be led into the city, that is inside
the pomerium, the boundary between imperium domi and imperium
militiae. Even so, Mars had an age-old sanctuary right in the centre
of the city, the sacrarium Martis in the Regia, where the spear
representing the god was kept. Furthermore, the tail of the equus oc-
tober, which was sacrified to Mars on the Campus Martius, was carried
to this same centre so that the blood could be sprinkled on the hearth
of the state and bring prosperity. More striking still, after the closing
of the lustrum and the allied rites, the censor used to lead the new
army under the vexillum into the city 53 . Mars comes from outside
but, on particular occasions, he also penetrates into the centre. As
a blacksmith, his pendant Mamurius Veturius, of whom it is told
that he made eleven ancilia (shields) on the pattern of the one ancile
which had come down from heaven, belongs to the world of the mar-
gin as well 54 .
D. Mars and Apollo function as leaders (archegetai55) in a special
type of colonizing expeditions best known from Italy. In cases of epi-
demics or famine-signals of the ira deorum-a votum56 was pro-
nounced promising that every living being born in the following
spring would be consecrated when it reached maturity. The animals
were to be sacrificed and killed, the human beings were to be con-

52 On the location of the sanctuaries of Mars: Scholz 1970, 18 ff.

53 Varro L.L. 6, 93. Censorexercitumcenturiatoconstituitquinquennalemcum lustrare
et in urbemad vexillumduceredebet.The vexillumwas also hoisted during the comitiacen-
turiata: Varro ibid.; Macrob. Sat. 1, 16, 15; Liv. 39, 15, 11, but the citizen body
was not conducted into the city afterwards. Cf. E. Riganti, Varrone.De L. L. libro
6 (Bologna 1978) 189 f. On the vexillumin general see: G. Dumezil, Vexillumcaerule-
um, in: id.em,Rituels Indo-europeens a Rome (Paris 1954) 63-72.
54 On smiths as marginal persons: M. Eliade, Forgerons et alchimistes(Paris 1956
The Forgeand the Crucible[New York 19712]); Bremmer 1978, 16 n.71. Differ-
ently: Alfcildi 1974, 181-219.
55 On the term see: I. Malkin, Apollo Archegetes and Sicily, ASNP 16 (1986)
959-72, and the references there to Malkin 1987. Though he is certainly right in
linking the N axian Apollo Archegetes with the Delphic Apollo, his consistent efforts
to downplay Apollo's personalleadership in this kind of expeditions (which is clearly
implied in his title) induces less convincing explanations of the application of the
epithet.
56 On this versacrumsee: W. Eisenhut, versacrum,RE VIII A, 911 ff.; idem, ver
sacrum, Kleine Pauly; Heurgon 1957; Scholz 1970, 49 ff. and see below.
 APOLLO AND MARS 305

secrated and expelled. Strabo 5, 12, 250, uses the two terms katethu-
san (to sacrifice) and kathierosan(to consecrate) in this connection. In-
deed, there are indications that the expelled youths were regarded
as belonging to the sacred world and no longer to human society 57 ,
just like animals which had been consecrated but not killed (horses,
for example, which were released and were free to roam where they
wanted), or a piece of land that was sacred and might not be
cultivated 58 . Paul. ex Festa p. 519 f. (L) says: sed cum crudelevideretur
puerosac puellas innocentesinterficereperductosin adultam aetatemvelabant
atqueita extrafines suos exigebant(but since they deemed it cruel to kill
innocent boys and girls, they let them grow to adulthood and then
veiled [their heads] and expelled them from their territory). The
only certain historical instance is the versacrumvowed in 21 7 BC, ex-
ecuted in 195 and repeated in 194 BC 59 . It was dedicated to Iupiter
but nobody doubts that the proper god of the ver sacrumwas Mars.
This is interalia shown by the names of tribes which owed their origin
to aver sacrum-colonization, such as the Mamertini, and perhaps also
the Marsi. Or they might call themselves after the guiding animal,
which more often than not was a typical Mars-animal: the Picentes
after the picus (woodpecker), the Hirpi after the hirpus (a wolf)60 .
Mars, it may be recalled, was the god of the spring, the ver.
As we have seen, Roscher was the first to draw attention to the
resemblance with Greek stories that associate Apollo with colonizing
groups. Most informative is the legend of the foundation of
Rhegium 61 . Strabo 6, 1, 6:

57 They were capite velati, and thus belonged to the category of sacred objects.
Fugier 1963, 65; Versnel 1981b, 148 ff.
58 For instance: Suet. Caes. 81: equorumgreges,quos in traiciendoRubiconeflumine
consecrarat ac vagossine custodedimiserat.See on the similarity with human consecra-
tion: Versnel 1981b, 149-54. On vagrant horses cf. Dumezil, Bellator equos, in:
idem, Rituels indo-europeeens a Rome (Paris 1954) 73-91. For sacred land see LSJ, s.v.
anhetos,aphetos.
59 The vow: Liv. 22, 9, 7 ff. and 22, 10; the execution: Liv. 33, 44, 1-2 and 34,
44, 1-3. Cf. Heurgon 1957, and on the motive see: Bloch 1976, 38 ff.
60 Picus/Picentes:Strabo, 5, 4, 2; cf. Paul ex Festo 235, 16 (L). Hirpini: Strabo
5, 4, 12; Paul. 93, 25 (L). The Samnites were led by a bull during their versacrum
for Mars: Strabo 5, 4, 12. See Scholz 1970, 50 n.14; Alfoldi 1974, 69 ff.; R. Merkel-
bach, Spechtfahne und Stammessage der Picenter, in: Studi U. E. Paoli (Florence
1955) 513-20. In this respect it is interesting that P. Scarpi has pictured the picus
as belonging to the "spazio della trasgressione" and as a kind of mediator between
nature and culture: P. Scarpi, Picus: una mediazione per la 'Storia', Bolletino
dell'lstitutodifilologiagrecadell' Universitadi Padova5 (1979-80) 138-63; idem, Il picchio
e il codicedelleapi (Padova 1984). However, this is speculative.
61 Cf. Diod. 8 fr. 23, 2. On the foundation-legend of Rhegium see: G. Vallet,
306 CHAPTER FIVE

''Rhegium was founded by Chalcidians who, conforming to an oracle,

were consecrated to Apollo as a tithe (dekateuthentas)
on the occasion of
a bad harvest. Later they migrated from Delphi to Rhegium".

Indeed, we here observe a close resemblance with the ver sacrum, all
the more so in that we also hear of the tenth part of the population
in an Italic context. The emigrants are called hierai tau theau(Strabo
6, 260) or hierai tau theauDelphon apaikai (Athen. 4, 173), i.e. sacrati
or cansecrati.Dekateusis according to a vow is typical of Apollo, but
the dekateusisof persons in the context of a colonization has no other
explicitparallels. Yet the founding legends of Klaros, Asine, the Bot-
tiaioi, and the Magnetes betray striking resemblances 62 • The Italic
Mamertini, though obviously sacred to Mars, nevertheless main-
tained that they were under the guardianship of Apollo during their
migration 63 . Groups of colonizers would call themselves 'Apol-
loniatai' and the colonies that bore the name Apollonia were
legion 64 • Recently various scholars have tried to interpret the
founding of Naxos, Cyrene and Tarente from this perspective 65 .

RMgion et Zancle. Histoire, commerceet civilisationde citeschalcidiennes

du detroitde Messine
(Paris 1958); Gierth 1971, 70 ff.; J. Ducat, Les themes des recits de la fondation
de Region, in: Melangeshelleniquesoffertsa G. Daux (Paris 1974) 93-114; E. Manni,
L'oracolo delfico e la fondazione di Regio, in: Perennitas.Studi in onoredi A. Brelich
(Rome 1980) 311-20; RE s.v. Regium, 491 f.
62 Klaros: Paus. 7, 3, 1-3; Gierth 1971, 84. Asine: Paus. 4, 34, 9; Gierth 1971,
85; Bottiaioi: Arist. fr. 485 = Plut QC 35, 298f-299a; Plut. Thes. 16; Gierth 1971,
76 ff. The Magnetes: Athen. 4, 173e-f (FHG II fr. 198a). Cf. Conon Narr.29 =
FGrHist 26 Fl (29). The 3rd century foundation-inscription, though a forgery, pro-
vides much information: 0. Kern, Die Griindungsgeschichte vonMagnesiaam Maeander
(Berlin 1894); U. von Wilamowitz, Die Herkunft der Magneten am Maeander,
Hermes30 (1895) 177-98; 0. Kern, Die lnschriftenvon Magnesia(Berlin 1900) 17; B.
Schmid, Studien zu griechischenKtisissagen (Diss. Freiburg. Schweiz 1947) 94 ff.:
Parke and Wormell 1956 II, no's 378-82; I, 52-4; F. Prinz, Grundungsmythenund
Sagenchronologie (Munich 1979) 111-37, with special attention for the tradition con-
cerning the anthroponaparche.Related stories on the Gephyraioi: Suda s.v. doru kai
kerukeion;Zenob. 3, 26; Eustath. ll. 408,4. On Kolophon: Schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1,
308. Cf. Paus. 9, 33, 2; Diod. 4, 66, 56; Apollod. 3, 7, 4. And in general: Parke
and Wormell 1956, 448.
63 Festus 150 (L), J. Gage, Apollon romain (Paris 1955) 240 ff.
64 Stephan. Byz. s. v. mentions twenty five cities with this name. Cf. RE II, col.
111 ff. s. v. Apollonia.
65 Naxos: A. Brugnone, Annotazioni sull' Apollo Archegete di Nasso, in: Studi
E. Manni I (Rome 1980) 277-91; Valenza Mele 1977 discusses Apollo as the founder
of Naxos, Zancle and Regium and foundations of the dekateusis-type. Cyrene: P.
Roussel, La stele dite des fondateurs de Cyrene et la colonisation grecque, REG 49
(1936) XLII. Defradas 1972, 248, regards this colonization as the result ofa simple
'expulsion'. Tarente: M. Philippides, The Partheniai and the Foundation of
 APOLLO AND MARS 307

It is true that there have been reservations concerning the identifi-

cation of dekateusis and ver sacrum66 . One of the recurring counter-
arguments is that in Greek legends the customary motive for dekateu-
sis and colonization is overpopulation rather than the expiation of
the wrath of the gods, which is the current Italic motive. However,
this argument is untenable. Dion. Hal. 1, 16, gives a description of
the expedition of the so-called Aborigines from their home-city Re-
ate in the Sabine country, and mentions a group of consecrated
youths who "according to a custom wide-spread among barbarians
and Greeks''6 7 , were banned from the community
"whenever the population of any of their cities increased to such a
degree that the products of their lands no longer sufficed for them all,
or the earth, injured by unseasonable changes of the weather, brought
forth her fruits in less abundance then usual .... ''.

Next he describes how they were consecrated to a god, armed and

expelled. Then he continues:

Taras, AncW 2 (1979) 79-82; cf. S. Pembroke, Locres et Tarente. Le role des
femmes clans la fondation de deux colonies grecques, Annales ESC 25 (1970)
1240-70; M. Corsano, Sparte et Tarente. Le mythe de fondation d'une colonie,
RHR 196 (1979) 113-40.
66 A relationship between dekateusisand ver sacrum is accepted by inter alios:
Bomer 1961, 10, with literature in n.6; Parke & Wormell 1956 I, 51. Cf. H. W.
Parke, Consecration to Apollo, Hermathena72 (1948) 82-114; Burkert 1985, 84. A
special theory is defended by P. M. Martin, Contribution de Denys d'Halicarnasse
(1, 16) a la connaissance du ver sacrum, Latomus 32 (1973) 23-38. He is convinced
of an Indo-european origin of this colonization rite, but regards the Italic versacrum
as derived from the Greek custom via Epirus. There is scepsis in: Eisenhut, ver
sacrum, RE VIII, 911 ff.; idem, versacrum, Kleine Pauly, col. 1181; Heurgon 1957.
Cf. also]. Ducat, o.c. (above n.61) 105, and Malkin 1987, 39f. But recently Dow-
den 1989, 64, adduced various legends on various Leukippoi as a striking confirma-
tion: "We are close here-despite some denials-to the prehistoric Italian form of
the ver sacrum.' '
6 7 The Celts: Pomp. Trogus, Justin. 24, 4, Namque Galli, abundantemultitudine,
quum eos non caperentterrae,quaegenuerant,trecentamilia hominum ad sedesnovasquaeren-
das, veluti ver sacrum, miserunt. Their migration towards Italy is connected with the
action of impigros iuvenesby Livy 5, 34. On youth-groups as colonisators see: R.
Wenskus, Stammesbildungund Verfassung(Koln-Graz 1961) 295 ff.; 509 n.533; G.
Dobesch, Die Kelten in Oesterreichnach den ii.ltestenBerichtender Antike (Vienna 1980)
196 n.57, both cited by Bremmer 1982, 145 n.53. See also: K. Helm, Ver sacrum
bei den Germanen? in: Paul und BraunersBeitrii.ge69 (1947) 285-300; Th. Koves-
Zulauf, Helico, Fuhrer der gallischen Wanderung, Latomus 36 (1977) 40-92 =
idem, KleineSchrijten(Heidelberg 1988) 199-252; E. Sereni, Comunitdruralinell' Italia
antica(Rome 1955) 184 ff.; K. Tausend, Zur politischen Rolle germanischer Kult-
verbiinde, Historia 40 (1991) 248-56.
308 CHAPTER FIVE

"If, indeed, this was done by way of thanksgiving for populousness or

for victory in war, they would first offer the usual sacrifices and then
send forth their colonists under happy auspices; but if, having incurred
the wrath of Heaven, they were seeking deliverance from the evils that
beset them, they would perform much the same ceremony, but sorrow-
fully and begging forgiveness of the youths they were sending away.
And those who departed, feeling that henceforth they would have no
share in the land of their fathers but must acquire another, looked upon
any land that received them in friendship, or that they conquered in
war, as their country. And the god to whom they had been dedicated
when they were sent out seemed generally to assist them and to prosper
the colonies beyond all human expectation."

There cannot be any doubt that Dionysios is describing a ver sacrum

here, although he does not mention the term. However, his interpre-
'tation is more differentiated than the one we usually read in the La-
tin sources. Without neglecting the religious aspects, his description
focuses on demographic causes and measures. The main object was
to prevent overpopulation by a procedure which was known, he
says, both in Greece and Italy and which perhaps-but not
necessarily-is a relic of an Inda-European tradition.
Now, even if we would disregard the information given by Diony-
sios, it is easy to see that demographic intentions and religious moti-
vations are by no means incompatible. On the contrary, it is obvious
that the arbitrariness of the necessary decimation and relegation
would be hardly acceptable without religious sanction or legitima-
tion. For obvious reasons the emigrants are not allowed to return
(this is most emphatically expressed in some emigration -stories )68 •
It is also for that reason that they are given a special status, that of
sacri/hieroi, a 'consecration' which entails that they become social

68 Herod. 4, 156. The inhabitants of Thera throw stones at the colonists who
try to return to their homeland. Plut. QG 11, 293A, records that Eretrian colonists
who tried to return were driven off by lapidation and were called aposphendonetai
henceforth. A 4th century inscription from Cyrene (S. Ferri, Alcune iscrizioni di
Cirene, Abh.Berlin 1925, 5; SEC IX, 1939, 2, ll. 33 ff.) says that the colonists from
Thera had the right to return after five years if they had not found a suitable place
to settle. But anyone who refused to join the expedition was killed. The oath is
sealed with an extraordinary rite: A. D. Nock, A Curse from Cyrene, ARW 24
(1926) 172-3. Another curse concerning people who refuse to join a colonization-
expedition: Phot. 594, 9; Arist. fr. 554 (Rose), FHG II, 150 (fr. 143), on which see:
S. Pembroke, The Ancient Idea of Matriarchy, ]WCI 30 (1967) 32 f. For some
more examples of this principle in a combination of epipompeand apopompesee: J.
Stern, Scapegoat Narratives in Herodotus, Hermes 119 (1991) 304-11.
 APOLLO AND MARS 309

pariahs 69 , comparable to those persons who have transgressed a lex

sacrata, but, in this case, without being guilty. However, there is
another aspect as well: their expulsion implies an apopompe of
threats, famine or internal conflicts. This practically entails the idea
that the expulsion itself is an apopompe of undesirable things/
persons 70 , which places it in the category of expiation. Indeed, it
could be claimed that in many respects the emigrants of the ver
sacrumor the dekateusisand the pharmakoi in Ionia perform very simi-
lar social and emotional functions 71 .
While I am well aware that this aspect really requires more
detailed discussion, the above argument must suffice for the time be-
ing. On the other hand, it will do no harm to point out how incoher-
ent and insufficient the previous attempts to explain the colonizing
activities of Apollo and Mars have been. Roscher, as we observed,
was compelled to isolate his interpretation of this aspect from his so-
lar theory. He suggested that Apollo was the archegetesbecause he
was a founding deity, and that he was a founding deity because he
was an important deity. Nilsson and others 72 constructed a connec-

69 Most conspicuous in the group of youngsters around Romulus: on the one

hand they are pictured as a group of colonists, while, on the other, they are called
outlaws: latrones(Liv. 1, 9, 5). Thus they are sacriin the double sense of the term.
Significantly, Festus 424 (L) tells us that Rome was founded by a ver sacrum-
expedition: Sacraniappellatisunt Reateorti, qui ex SeptimontioLiguresSiculosqueexegerunt.
Nam veresacronati erant. On the lex sacratasee: Ogilvie ad Liv. 3, 55, 5; H. Fugier,
Recherchessur /'expressiondu sacri dans la langueLatine (Strasbourg 1963) 231 ff., and
passim on the ambiguity of the concept of sacer.
70 Rightly, Defradas 1972, 248, notes on the expedition ofThera: "II s'agissait
en verite d'une expulsion, et !'on comprend que, pour la justifier et pour vaincre
la resistance des victimes, on ait eu recours a des arguments religieux puissants
( .... ). Dans ces conditions Jes responsables de I' expulsion devaient tout naturelle-
ment se couvrir de I' autorite d' Apollon".
71 Pharmakoiwere also expelled in a way which prevented their return, some-
times, comparable with the dekateusis-colonistsabove, by rituals oflapidation. See:
Versnel 1977, 39 ff. The analogy in representation and symbolism of both
categories emerges in particular in the foundation-story of Rhegium where the 'fig'
plays an important role, whereas the wild fig is otherwise closely connected with
thepharmakos: Bremmer 1983b, 299-320, esp. 308 ff. Valenza Mele 1977, 517 ff.
has made some valuable remarks in this connection.
72 Nilsson, GGR I, 637-40. In the same vein: M. Lombardo, Le coniezioni
degli antichi sul ruolo degli oracoli nella colonizzazione greca, in: G. Nenci (ed.),
Recerchesulla colonizzazionegreca, ASNP ser. 3a II (1972) 63-89, espec. 86, and cf.
Malkin 1987, eh. 1. Defradas 1972 radically rejects any connection between Del-
phic Apollo and colonization in early times, but this thesis has been severely cen-
sured by later authors: P. Amandry, Les themes de la propagande delphique, RPh
30 (1956) 268-82; L. Gernet, Delphes et la pensee religieuse en Grece, AnnalesESC
310 CHAPTER FIVE

tion with his oracular functions: Apollo gave oracular advice on every
occasion, consequently also on the occasion of colonization. From
oracular advisor he became guide and leader. The weakness of this
solution springs all the more to the eye as it must ignore the striking-
ly analogous functions of the god Mars, who, however, cannot
match Apollo as an oracular authority. At the very least this con-
gruence should invite us to investigate the possibility of explaining
the common colonizing nature of both gods in a coherent fashion.
As· a matter of fact, I do believe that this is possible and, in order
to do so, I shall now first summarize our findings.
Apollo and Mars specifically operate in periods, places and situa-
tions which demand control over the division of two worlds, the in-
ner region of order, society, culture and the outer one of chaos,
wilderness, nature 73 . They maintain a necessary balance by gov-
erning and regulating the transitional rituals by which familiar and
beneficial elements are kept safe for, and inside the community, and
harmful and foreign ones are dissociated and expelled. Accordingly,
they are at home in both the marginal territories and at the centre.
As we shall see in more detail below, they are able to create order
out of a disorderly situation and to create or restore a social unity.
On the other hand, they are capable of eliminating from the cultural
centre those elements which endanger the existing cultural order.
Their basic function of dividing and hence giving shape to two con-
trasting worlds manifests itself in terms of both space (civilization
versus wilderness) and of time (tracing the boundary between old
and new periods), but we shall discover that the division in the social

10 (1955) 526-42. Cf. W. G. Forrest, Colonisation and the Rise of Delphi, Historia
6 (1957) 160-75.
73 Of course, similar ambiguities can be demonstrated for other gods as well.
Yet the differences are no less important. Hermes, for instance, is no doubt a medi-
ator between two worlds, but he represents confusion rather than distinction: L.
Kahn, Hermespasseou lesambigui"tes de la communication(Paris 1978). I also believe that
G. Costa, Hermes dio delle iniziazioni, Civilta classicae cristiana3 (1982) 277-95, is
correct in pointing out the connections of Hermes and initiation. Although he cor-
rectly states that these connections are not limited to one god, he fails to mention
Apollo or to refer to Burkert 1975a. For Hermes (and Herakles) as wine-pourer in
an initiatory context see: Bremmer 1990, 141. Cf. also P. Gordon, Le mythed'Hermes
(Neuilly-sur-Seine 1985) 50: Hermes as "initie-initiateur". In a different way
again Pan is the specific god of the eschatiai.When he enters the city the result is
chaos: Borgeaud 1979. Similar things, but again in a different vein, may be ob-
served in the case ofDionysos. See the discussion of and the literature on Dionysiac
ambiguities in InconsistenciesI, eh. 2.
 APOLLO AND MARS 311

field is certainly not less important and is perhaps the most essential
of all.
It is not necessary to follow Mary Douglas 74 -whose influence
on my conceptualization should be clear-in every detail of her fas-
cinating theory of purity and danger, in order to endorse her view
that fear of pollution is essentially a product of the need for order,
structure, and an identifiable set of norms and rules. It is perfectly
possible to define pollution and defilement as a disturbance of
categories or of a classificatory system. In his fundamental study
Miasma, R. C. T. Parker opens with a chapter called 'Purification:
a science of division', and he professes ''away oflooking that relates
purification to the desire for order" 75 . We shall return to this par-
ticular aspect and for the moment conclude that all the qualities,
myths and rites listed under the headings A to C fit smoothly into
the pattern we have sketched. Lustration is another word for main-
taining, creating or restoring boundary lines between the centric
order and the ex-centric disorder 76 . However, gods who are capa-
ble of this task must know their way in both worlds, and it is here,
I think, that we begin to descry faint hints on a purely structural lev-
el that may lead to decoding the proper place and meaning of their
function as leaders of emigrant-groups, as described under item D.
The emigrants have been ousted from society by way of a ritual
which has rendered them 'sacred', i.e. 'outsiders' or even 'outcasts'.
They are no longer recognized as familiar. To regulate the elimina-
tion of this type of superfluous and indeed 'foreign' material is one
of the essential tasks of both 'lustrative' gods. This may have some
connection with the fact that they also guide the outsiders during
their wanderings. Once having been put on this track, we might also
consider explaining their founding activities in the light of the other
side of their function: the task of establishing a new social order, the
centripetal component of their activities.
If we accept this structural analysis and the pattern of associations

74 Douglas 1970; 1973; 1975. For critical reactions see Parker 1983, 61 n.101.
Douglas has replied in Douglas 19732 .
75 P. 31: "Purifications such as these create or restore value rather than avert-
ing danger". Douglas has found a brilliant ally in Victor Turner. See especially:
Turner 1976/77. I myself have amply acknowledged my indebtedness to Douglas
in the Introduction of InconsistenciesI, and for Turner see above eh. I.
76 Parker 1983, 23: "Purification, therefore, marks off sacred places from pro-
fane, creates special occasions, and unites individuals into groups."
312 CHAPTER FIVE

it has disclosed for the moment, a new problem arises. It can hardly
be supposed that such abstract concepts and oppositions as mar-
gin/centre, borderline/passage, pollution/lustration, nature/culture,
outside/inside, old/new, should have crystallized into the very con-
crete and detailed representations which are so typical of Apollo and
Mars. Of course, I am not unaware of the thesis that ancient Roman
religion did not have anthropomorphic gods 77 . I am not contesting
this view when I remark that it can be neither verified nor falsified.
But it should at least be noted that Mars must have been a special
case in this respect. In the oldest piece of Latin that we have, the
carmen arvale, he is invoked as Jere Mars and asked to leap on the
threshold. He is the only deity to give rise to theophoric names, such
as Marcus. All the early data indicate that he was imagined as a war-
rior: his spear in the Regia, his priests, the Salii, wearing a special
tunic, a helmet, a spear and a shield. In the oldest festive-calendar
his feasts were typically military: the Equirria, the Armilustrium and
the Tubilustrium. Before a war he was roused with the cry Mars vigila.
All this proves that Mommsen 78 was right when he called Mars
"das Vorbild des Wehrmannes" (the model of the warrior) and it
is very hard to imagine that even in the remotest period the god
Mars was not conceived in the shape of a warrior.
There can be no doubt as far as Apollo is concerned. Despite
Roscher' s attempt to discover martial traits in the Greek god, he was
in fact nearly always and everywhere conceived and depicted as a
youthful, generally beardless, naked or lightly clad kouros, with long
hair as it becomes an ephebos 79 . His weapons, far from portraying

77 The an iconic nature of Roman religion is one of the standard ingredients of

the textbooks. The locusclassicusis Varro apud Augustin. CD 4, 31, which is rather
a reflection ofVarro's own theological ideas. Cf. J. Boyance, Sur la theologie de
Varron, REA 57 (1955) 57-85, esp. 65 f.: B. Cardauns, Varro und die romische
Religion, ANRW II, 16, 1 (1978) 80-103. For aniconic cult in antiquity see the
literature cited by Scholz 1970, 27 n.41, and B. Gladigow, Zur Konkurrenz von
Bild und Namen im Aufbau theistischer Systeme, in: H. Brunnes etalii (edd. ), Wort
und Bild (Munich 1977) 103-22. Varro's observation seems to be confirmed by ar-
chaeology. But aniconic cult does not necessarily imply the absence of mental
representations of a god.
78 Th. Mommsen, RomischeGeschichte I (Berlin 1861) 51, where one can find the
arguments. Cf. Norden 1939, 157. Anyway, Mars was represented as a warrior on
the earliest silver coins of Rome about 300 BC: A. Burnett, The First Roman Silver
Coins, Numismaticae Antichita classiche7 (1978) 121-42, although the imagery, of
course, betrays strong Greek influence.
79 So already in the earliest representations such as for instance the Mantiklos
 APOLLO AND MARS 313

him as a regular soldier, seem to be intended for hunting rather than

battle, just like the arrows of his youthful sister Artemis.
This means that we are now confronted with two problems. First,
how can we explain the remarkable structural resemblance of Apollo
and Mars, if the only previous attempt, made by the scholar who
discovered it, must be. rejected? The second problem is how to ex-
plain that gods who are structurally similar, should differ so marked-
ly in their outward appearance? These questions cannot be separat-
ed from one another, and in order to find an answer we must now
temporarily take leave of the structuralist approach and turn to the
investigation of social and historical origins and evolution. As to
Apollo we are lucky to have the illuminating studies by a specialist
who has caused a revolution in Greek religious studies, W. Burkert.

3. THE SOCIAL ROOTS OF A STRUCTURAL ANALOGY

1. Apollo
In an article published in 1975 Burkert 80 , though unconditionally
acknowledging Apollo's polyvalence and complicated nature 81 , elu-
cidated one major aspect which had already been noticed by Jane
Harrison 82 fifty years before: the ephebic-initiatory elements. The
name Apellon (Doric for Apollon) should be connected with the
name of the Doric month Apellaios and the allied feast of the Apel-
laia. In Lacedaemonia Apellai was the name of an assembly of the
people, in Delphi it was a festival of family groups. From this a basic

votive Apollo: Boston M.F.A. 03.997: M. Comstock and C. Vermeule, Greek,

Etruscanand Roman Bronzesin theMuseum of FineArts. Boston(Greenwich 1971) no.15.
Occasionally we meet a bearded Apollo (Corpus Vas. Berlin I, 9, 1; 21, and on a Cy-
cladic amphora: E. Simon, Die Gotterder Griechen(Munich 1969) 127, but the adoles-
cent Apollo is canonical.
80 Burkert 1975a. For the evidence I refer to this fully documented paper.
8! "Zu rechnen ist mit einer Vielfalt von orts- oder stammesgebundenen
Traditionen, die sich mannigfach iiberlagert haben um schieBlich in einem einheit-
lichen Namen und einem gewissen gemeinsamen Vorstellungsbild zum Ausgleich
zu kommen" (o.c. 4). In another article, Burkert himself connected Apollo with the
oriental Resep: Burkert 1975b, and the survey in Burkert 1985, 143ff. Indepen-
dently: M. K. Schretter, Alter Orientund Bellas. Fragender Beeinflussunggriechischen
Gedankengutes ausaltorientalischen
Quellen,dargestelltan den GotternNergal,Rescheph,Apol-
lon (Innsbruck 1974). Cf. Auffarth 1991, 130: "Einen Gott der wehrfahigen Man-
ner, den Ephebengott, gab es im Alten Orient nicht; das ist der neue, der
griechische Aspekt an diesem Gott".
82 Harrison 1927, 439-44.
314 CHAPTER FIVE

meaning of tribal or communal gathering may be deduced. The

sacrifices connected with the Delphic festival concern three basic
phases of social life: marriage, the young child, and the epheboson
the verge of adulthood. Since the latter aspect is clearly dominant,
the Apellaiamay be regarded primarily as the ceremony at which the
epheboi were introduced into the total community, which was
gathered especially for the occasion. From here it is a short step
towards the iconographic representations. Jane Harrison had al-
ready called Apollo the 'arch-ephebos', a projection of the youth in
the period of his initiation. Both in name and in appearance, Apel-
Ion was a representation of the central figure of the ritual and of the
ritual features themselves. The epheboswas represented just before
his hair is cut, which signifies the farewell to his boyhood 83 . He was
the counterpart of Achilles, the initianduspar excellence 84 (baptized
in fire, educated by Chiron, clothed in girl's dress), who was killed
by an arrow of Apollo.
All this fits very well with the well-known Doric rituals of initia-
tion such as the gymnopaidiaand the krypteia85 , when the youths are
expelled from the community in order to prove that they can main-
tain themselves by hunting8 6 , stealing ( and occasionally killing) in
the wilderness outside the settlement. Burkert made a few prudent
suggestions on the connections between these initiatory rites and the
nature of Apollo. He argued that Apollo was the god of lustration
because any rite de passageand particularly one of this importance

83 See for instance: S. C. Cole, The Social Function of Rituals of Maturation:

The Koureion and the Arkteia, ZPE 55 (1984) 233-44, and the literature on boys-
initiations cited in the first chapter, especially Bremmer 1978.
84 As we noticed before, the initiatory aspects of Achilles were noticed by E.
Crawley, Achilles and Scyros, CQ 7 (1893) 243-6, and have been mentioned by
many since. See: Bremmer 1978, 7 n.12. A structuralist comparison of Apollo and
Achilles is given by I. Chirassi-Colombo, Heros Achilleus-Theos Apollo, in: It mito
greco. Atti de! convegnointernazionale(Rome 1977) 231-69. See also: R. J. Rabel,
Apollo as a Model for Achilles, A]Ph 111 (1990) 429-40, esp. 430.
85 Gymnopaedia: Jeanmaire 1939, 531 ff.; Brelich 1969, 139 ff. Krypteia:Jean-
maire 1939, 550 ff.; Brelich 1969, 155 ff. Cf. Burkert 1975a, 19 n.75. Apollo's ser-
vitude, as the mythical basis of the Stepteriaand elsewhere, may be interpreted as
an image of his initiatory efforts: Jeanmaire 1939, 388 ff., 403; Brelich 1969, 387
ff. and index.
86 Recent finds of bronze statuettes of youths with wild goats, have been ex-
plained as scenes of initiation: I. M. Claude Rolley, REG 101 (1988) XX-XXI,
with references. For a related interpretation of the famous Minoan 'Chieftain cup':
R. B. Koehl, The Chieftain Cup and a Minoan Rite of Passage,JHS 106 (1986)
99-110.
 APOLLO AND MARS 315

demanded purification. But since this ceremony was only held once
a year, the god disappeared, to return a year later. This, according
to Burkert, would explain his remoteness and elusiveness. On the
other hand, it should be noted that the temple of Apollo often
dominates the centre of the city, with the agora and the cadastral
registry. F. Graf 87 investigated the latter aspect in particular, and
found that Apollo Delphinios had the special, though not exclusive
task of controlling the civic documents of the city; that hetairiaicame
together in his temple; and that he was directly connected with the
closure of the ephebic situation. Apparently, he was the god who in-
troduced the young man into the community and registered him as
a full citizen, which explains his position in the political centre.
As observed above 88 , we have been confronted with a deluge of
initiation-studies during the past decades, not all of which are equal-
ly convincing. The present theory, however, excels in coherence and
in the natural explanation of facts and relations that cannot easily
be explained along different lines. I, for one, am convinced that this
is one of those theories which will last and gain a deserved place in
the interpretation of the god Apollo. I even believe that some of Bur-
kert's suggestions could be carried somewhat farther to match the
pattern we have described.
Apollo is the remote god, as everybody will gladly concede.
However, so many specific Greek feasts were celebrated only once
a year that it seems very doubtful whether this phenomenon should
be the origin of this particular and very fundamental trait of the
ephebic god. Should not we rather seek the roots of his 'remoteness'
in the very concrete social situation of the young men who retired
into the outer world during their period of initiation and regressed
to a state of natural life, roaming the wilds like wolves 89 , with the

87 Graf 1979.
88 See particularly the introductory section and the first chapter of the present
volume.
89 Thus I hope to fill the gap noticed by Auffarth 1991, 428 n.32: "Bei Burkert
fehlt die Zwischenzeit, die eigentliche Ephebie''. Since the wolf plays an important
role in this type of "Jungmannschaften" and Apollo Lukeios is generally regarded
as their patron, I give here some literature on wolf and initiatory groups: L. Gernet,
Dolon le loup, in: Melanges F. Cumont (Bruxelles 1936) 189-208 = Gernet 1968,
154-71; J. Przyluski, Les confreries de loups-garrous clans les societes indo-
europeennes, RHR 121 (1940) 128-43; J. de Vries, AltgermanischeReligionsgeschichte
I (Berlin 19562) 496-505; M. Eliade, Zalmoxis, the VanishinghGod (Chicago 1972)
eh. I; Burkert 1972a, 97-152; Alfoldi 1974, 33-47; Bremmer 1982, 141 n.35; A. M.
316 CHAPTER FIVE

concomitant rabid and uncivilized behaviour? Their weapons were

probably bow and arrow, not yet the full armour of the hoplite. If
this is the case, the return of Apollo, i.e. his birth, could be interpret-
ed as an image of the return of the initiates from the marginal
region, or the liminal phase, a return which entailed their introduc-
tion into the society of the adult. This is indeed very often expressed
in terms of (death and) rebirth 90 . Compare again Harrison's great
discovery: the MegistosKouros of Crete. A new social period begins
with this reintegration. Thus Apollo's arrival inaugurated a new
season or a new year 91 . As an ephebe on the brink of adulthood, he
is the god of transition from the old to the new. But once we follow
this track there is more to say: if Apollo is the prototypical image or
projection of the epheboiduring their wanderings outside civilization,
a natural solution suddenly presents itself to the vexed problem of
why it was Apollo who became the guide and leader of groups of
young male oikistai. As we have seen, there are reasons to assume
very close affinities between oikistai-groups of the dekateusistype, who
were expelled not to return again, and groups of raving initiants
whose expulsion was of a temporary nature 92 • The former were ex-
pected to found a new independent community, the latter to be
( re- )integrated into an existing society 93 .

Bowie, Ritual Stereotype and Comic Reversal: Aristophanes' Wasps, BICS 34

(1987) 112-25, esp. 120 ff.; R. Buxton, Wolves and Werewolves in Greek Thought,
in: Bremmer 1987a, 60-79, esp. 67 ff. For a critical view see: V. Iliescu, Zurn ver-
meintlichen Miinnerbund der 'Wolfe' bei den Dakern, BJ 183 (1983) 166-74. Cf.
also below n. 136.
90 Exempli gratia: M. Eliade, Birth and Rebirth (New York 1958, republished un-
der a different title: Eliade 1975), and the literature cited by Brelich 1969, 23, 33.
Cf. above p.54.
91 The return of the initiates and the New Year festival are often combined:
Lanternari 1976, passim. However, it goes too far to trace every New Year's
ceremony back to initiatory ritual, as it is sometimes done. See above pp.80 ff.
92 As to the problem of this identification Eliade o.c. (above n.89) suggested a
distinction between three types of wolf-groups: groups ofinitiants; emigrants look-
ing for a new territory; out-laws looking for an asylum. He also notes that these
three categories cannot always be distinguished, as witness for instance Romulus.
Concerning the identification of Apollo as reflection of the roaming ephebes as
provisional or permanent exiles P. Kretschmer, Der Name der Lykier und andere
kleinasiatische Vi:ilkernamen, in: idem, KleinasiatischeForschungenl (1927) 15, al-
ready suggested: "Apollo Lukeios gilt als Schiitzer der Wolfe und der mit ihnen
gleichgesetzten Verbannten und fliichtenden Mi:irder". Cf. F. Altheim, A History
of Roman Religion(London 1938) 261. On the other hand, S. P. Lampros, Decondito-
rum coloniarumgraecorumindolepraemiisqueet honoribus(Diss. Leipzig 1873) was, as far
as I know, the first to regard the oikist as a reflection of Apollo.
93 These basic alternatives are the core of Victor Turner's ideas about the
 APOLLO AND MARS 317

Last but not least, I believe that we have arrived at the origin of
the central lustrative aspects of the god, and I also think that their
meaning must be sought at a deeper level than the one proposed by
Burkert, as cited above. Many rites and symbols which were ex-
plained as apotropaic or purificatory by Frazer and his school, have
been reinterpreted by Van Gennep and with even more rigour by
Mary Douglas 94 as articulations of transition, signals of division
and demarcation. Cutting off (a lock of) hair can be a symbol artic-
ulating the farewell to the old situation and the entrance into the new
one. Likewise, in different cultures various forms of mutilation have
a similar symbolic function 95 . The expulsion of the pharmakos-of
course quite distinct from initiation-, too, is much more than mere
purification. It implies re-integration, closing the ranks, drawing a
dividing line between the familiar and the foreign world. So it seems
that the lustration connected with the Apellaia is first and foremost
a signal of transition, implying the closure of the old situation and
the beginning of the new. No ritedepassagehas a massive and impres-
sive effect comparable to the initiation of a group of youths into the
community. Marriage, death and birth are also passages, but re-
main incidental and individual, restricted to a limited section of soci-
ety (except when they affect the person of the monarch )96 . The. in-
tegration of a group into the existing society, however, implies a
fundamental 'recreation', an end and a beginning on the level ofto-
tal society. This accounts for the emphasis on lustration in the sense
ofrite of demarcation, including, I would suggest, Appollo's 'lustra-
tive' qualities.
At this point it may be useful to explain what I have been trying
to argue, and, incidentally, what I have not been trying to argue.
1. Despite their differences in pictural representation, Apollo and
Mars share a number of fundamental qualities, which together con-
stitute a complex with the following components: birth or arrival

'social process' with which rituals of reversal and transition correspond: ·after
"breach-crisis-redressive action" the final option can be either "reinterpreta-
tion" (=reintegration) or "schism" (followed by the formation of a new group).
94 Van Gennep 1909 (English translation: 1960, 19772), Douglas 1970 en later
works.
95 On mutilation and cutting off a lock of hair: Brelich 1969, 31 ff., 34 and
n.88; Bremmer 1978, 24 f.
96 On the rites of transition in Greek family life see J. N. Bremmer, Birth, Matu-
rity,and Deathin AncientGreece(forthcoming). On the incisive nature of the death
of the prince see: V ersnel 1980.
318 CHAPTER FIVE

and the beginning of a new period; lustrative activities, that is:

incorporation of proper and 'normal' elements, elimination of im-
pure and foreign elements; the control of passages and border lines
between the inner and the outer world, and the fact that the gods are
at home in both worlds; the function of archegetes in the primitive type
of colonizing expeditions in which young men played a central part.
2. So far, the different and seemingly disparate elements have
nearly always been explained by resorting to processes of evolution
and influences from foreign cultures, the latter particularly in the
case of Apollo. I have not denied that such processes can play an im-
portant part in the development of the phenomenology of a god. In
the case of Apollo, for instance, it is in my opinion practically certain
that the Apollonian aspects of plaguegod, the pestiferous arrows,
purification, healing, and possibly also the oracular powers, have
been subject to strong influencess from Asia Minor and other orien-
tal cultures. This may perhaps explain why these aspects are so
much more conspicuous in the Ionian than in the Doric Apollo.
However, it is a mistake to assume that similar processes of amalga-
mation and evolution are fortuitous and arbitrary. The original god
must have had a number of characteristics that offer a starting point
for linking the influences from outside and the identifications with
foreign gods. It is for instance legitimate to ask which characteristics
of the original Apollo enabled him to become the typical god of the
Thargeliain Ionia.
3. This point of view gains extra credence in the cases of Apollo
and Mars from the fact that the patterns of their characteristics and
functions display such a close structural similarity. Although in
general, of course, the possibility of a coincidental convergence via
an independent evolution cannot be denied, these structural similar-
ities at least validate the question as to whether both gods were in-
deed related in terms of the origin of their common qualities and
functions. This implies neither the necessity nor even the suggestion
that both should stem from one and the same, possibly Indo-
european, divine figure, but it does imply that they both, indepen-
dently from one another, can be personifications of closely related
social rites and of the people who play the central roles in these rites.
It is possible, but by no means necessary, that these rites go back to
one ancient, viz. Indo-european, custom.
4. I follow Burkert' s interpretation of the original Apellon/ Apol-
lon as the reflection of the ephebosin the transitional period from the
 APOLLO AND MARS 319

status of boy to the integration in the community of men. The Apel-

laia were the ritual expression of this. In accordance with the propo-
sition under 2) I have made an attempt to interpret the structural
complex as summarized under 1) from this point of view. Not only
am I aware, but I even regard it as a methodological necessity, that
an interpretation like the present one maximalizes its claims at this
stage, interalia by including as many elements from the chosen start-
ing point as possible.
5. If I am right in assuming that the structural pattern receives an
elucidation from the reconstruction of the socio-historical perspec-
tive, this would prove once again that a combination of structural
and historical approaches can be fruitful indeed. A short treatment
of the god Mars in his original socio-historical function will, I hope,
add further support to the above assertions. Here we also arrive at
the point where I hope to contribute to a new insight into the
original-or, at least, the early-nature of a god.

2. Mars
If we now proceed to trace similar lines between structure and social
institutions in the case of Mars, we have no guide like Burkert to
show us the way 97 . We shall start from a Mars ceremony that even
at first sight has much in common with the Apellaia and we shall
gradually discover more, and more significant, correspondences.
Rome had several types of lustratio; the lustratioagri, urbis, exercitus,
classis, Capitolii and last but not least the great lustrum ceremony
itself-18 . There is no agreement on the etymology of the word, nor
need we go into this vexed problem, but what we can be certain of
is that the circumambulatioformed an essential and recurrent element
of the ceremonies. The priest or the magistrate led the 'purifying in-
strument' (frequently, though not always, suovetaurilia)round the
object that had to be lustrated. As I argued above, elements of a ritu-
al apopompeas a kind of scapegoat ritual can be detected here. But
once again we would undervalue and, as a result, misunderstand the
meaning of the ceremony if we left it by classifying it only in terms
of purification. This limitation, for instance, has induced the
widespread but erroneous idea that armies used to be lustrated (only

97 Burkert 1975a, 19, says: "Eine Art 'lustrum' miissen die Apellai sein," but
he does not expand on this suggestion.
98 For literature on Roman lustratioritual see above n.41.
320 CHAPTER FIVE

or preferably) aftercampaigns or battles, as a means of expelling the

evil taints contracted by the contact with ( the blood of) the
enemy 99 . Elsewhere 100 I have shown that, with only very few ex-
ceptions, all the testimonia on the lustratioexercitusplace the ceremo-
ny beforethe battle, even before the beginning of the campaign. I ar-
gued that the ritual's primary aim was to constitute and integrate the
social group into a cohesive whole. Thus, the lustratio forged the
army-often composed of various units-into a new body, just as a
new city is constituted by drawing a furrow with the sacred
plough 101 . In other words, the lustratio was essentially a rite
d'agrigation. The lustrum is particularly illustrative in this respect.
During the census-ceremony the censors 102 drew up the new roll of
citizens and assigned the male population to the centuriae. The
youths grown to manhood were enrolled as new citizens 103; citizens
who had misbehaved were ousted with a nota censoria.The ceremony
bore a military nature 104 , it took place on the campus Martius, and
the standard of war was hoisted. It was concluded by the circumam-

99 Just a few instances out of many: J. Heurgon, Tite Live, Ab urbecondita.Liber

primus (Paris 1963) ad 1, 28; R. Ogilvie ad Liv. 1, 28, 1; J. Bayet, Tite Live I (Paris
1958) 46; U. W. Scholz, Suovetaurilia und Solitaurilia, Philologus117 (1973) 6.
This does not mean that these authors deny the existence of other lustrations before
the departure.
100 Versnel 1975.
101 On rituals connected with the drawing of boundary lines, see: B. Gladigow,
Audi luppiter, auditefines:Religionsgeschichtliche Einordnung von Grenzen, Grenz-
ziehungen und Grenzbestatigungen, forthcoming in: 0. Behrends (ed.), Die
romischenGromatiker(Abh. Gottinger Ak. Wiss. 1992) 172-91.
102 Th. Mommsen, RiimischesStaatsrechtII, 1 (Leipzig 18873), 331-469, is still
the best survey of the functions of the censors and the lustrum. A modem treatment
with extensive literature: G. Pieri, L 'historiedu censjusqu 'alafin de la republiquero-
maine (Paris 1968).
103 J. Gage, Les rites anciens de lustration du populus et les attributs 'triom-
phaux' des censeurs, MEFRA 82 (1970) 43-71, expressly characterizes the Lu.strum
as "!'integration des jeunes gens du populus-pratiquement de la pubes militaire-
dans la societe des Quirites." Cf. idem,Classes d'age, rites et vetements de passage
clans l'ancien Latium, Cahiersintern.de sociologie24 (1958); La 'plebs' et le 'populus'
et leurs encadrements respectifs clans la Rome de premiere moitie du Ve siecle av.
J. -C. RH 94 ( 1970) 5-30; La ligne pomeriale et les categories sociales de la Rome
primitive, RD (1970), 5-27. He has incorporated his ideas in La chutedes Tarquins
et lesdibutsde la dpubliqueromaine(Paris 1976) and the articles mentioned above with
exception of the one on the "classes d'age" have been reprinted in the collection:
Enquetessur les structuressocialeset religieusesde la Rome primitive (Bruxelles 1977).
104 Liv. 1, 44, 1: edixit ut omnescivesRomani equitespeditesquein suis quisquecenturiis
in campoMartio prima luce adessent;Varro, L.L. 6, 86: omnes Quiritespedites armatos
privatosque,curatoresomniumtribuumetc. Cf. Dion.Hal. 4, 22; Varro, L.L. 6,93; Cic.
de Or. 2, 66, 268; schol. Cic. in Verr. p. 103 (Orelli).
 APOLLO AND MARS 321

bulatiowith the suovetauriliaround the newly constituted community.

The expression lustrum condere,whatever its origin, has always been
understood by the Romans in the sense of 'founding a new period
of five years.' "Indem aber der populus als exercituskonstituiert wur-
de, ward ein neuer Karper geschaffen, den der Beamte <lurch sein
priifendes Herumgehen zu einer Einheit zusammenschloss und
zugleich, ahnlich wie die pfluggezogene Furche bei der Stadtgriin-
dung nach ihnen konsolidierend nach aussen abwehrend wirkte, mit
einem schiitzenden Bannkreis umgab," writes H. Berve cor-
rectly105. As we observed before, the censor led the newly con-
stituted citizen-body as an army into the city.
At this point, a fresh comparison of Greek and Roman material
appears to be fruitful, for the similarities between Apellaia and lus-
trum are striking: both have the character of a gathering of the
citizen-body including the introduction of new members of the com-
munity, a rite d'agregation.In both we may interpret the lustrative
ritual as an articulation of this passage and a confirmation of the new
integrity. Moreover, both ceremonies marked the beginning of a
new social period 106 • There is one remarkable difference, however.

!OS "While the populus was constituted as exercitus,a new body politic was crea-
ted, which the magistrate united into a community by his mustering circumambu-
lation. At the same time he enclosed it in a protecting circle, just as the furrow at
the foundation of cities effected consolidation of the people inside and defence
against the ones outside": Lustrum, RE XIII, col 2042. Cf. Th. Mommsen,
RomischesStaatsrechtII, 1 (Leipzig 18873) 332: "Schlussact des Lustrum ... aufge-
faBt als eine von Frist zu Frist sich erneuernde Griindung (condere)der burgerlichen
Ordnung". E. Meyer, RomischerStaal und Staatsgedanke (Zurich-Stuttgart 1962) 165:
"Mit der Revision und Neueinteilung der Burger in die Abteilungen war die
Biirgerschaft fiir einige Zeit wieder von Grund aufneu konstituiert, der ganze Akt
also eine vollstandige Neugriindung der Burgerschaft als geordnete Gemein-
schaft.'' Cf. the very important contribution by Turner 1976/77, who explains the
lguvinian lustration-ritual as "the very means for maintaining order and structure
at the level of the state" and "a boundery-regulating or sustaining process."
106 There is yet another possible though very dubious analogy if we consider a
gloss in Hesychius apellai:sekoi, ekklesiai,archairesiai.The word sekoshas been inter-
preted as 'pen' or 'fold' by scholars who attempt to bring the god Apollo in
connection with herds and cattle. Burkert 1975a, 11, dismisses this suggestion but
does not provide another solution. Clearly, if Hesychius regards the apellai as an
assembly interalia to elect magistrates, it is legitimate to view sekosin the same light.
Perhaps sekoi were either the total enclosure of the place where the assembly was
held or the division into a number of precincts destined for distinct groups, possibly
age-groups. Another gloss by Hesych, apellein:apokleiein,might support this idea.
If this is right, there is a similarity with the Roman comitiawhere the so called saepta
(the word saeptum also means 'fence' and a 'fold' for cattle) enclosed the people
assembled to vote. One might assume that originally the saepta were intended
to separate different age-groups especially if it is true-but this is by no means
322 CHAPTER FIVE

The Doric festival, as far as we can see, had no military content

whatsoever. The Roman lustrum on the other hand, though focus-
sing on the total community, had a marked military setting. This
observation may help to explain the iconographic divergence be-
tween Mars and Apollo later on.
Inspired by this symmetry, may we now conclude that no less
than Apollo Mars originated in the setting of initiation and as a per-
sonification of the initiant? Undoubtedly, Greece is much richer
than Rome as to relics of puberty and initiatory myth and ritual.
The scholarly concentration on the one fairly clear Roman instance
of the Luperci illustrates this 107 . Of course, there may be more, but
the frantic pursuit of Jungmannschaften like that organized by
Alfoldi 108 does not exactly stimulate enthusiasm, even allowing for
the wealth of learning displayed.
I restrict myself here to a few references which seem to me to be
relevant and perhaps not too adventurous. In 1977 an inscription
was found at Satricum about 50 km. south of Rome which
commemorated a dedication made by suodalesof Poplios V alesios to
the god Mamars. In the editioprinceps109 of this epochal text dating
from c. 500 BC, I have presented an extensive treatment of groups
of suodalesand hetairiaiin Graeco-Roman antiquity, which frequent-
ly bore a coniuratio-like nature, and were often centred round an
aristocratic leader. The Roman evidence and a comparison with
related phenomena in other cultures-especially the Greek

certain-that the proverb sexagenariosde ponte does not refer to an ancient custom
to get rid of aged people but was intended to deny admittance to the passage (pons)
which led to the saepta(Varro apud Nonius 523, 21 ff.; Fest 425 L). Cf. J.P. Ner-
audau, Sexagenariide ponte, REL 56 (1978) 159-74. The sexagenariiwere discharged
from duty in the army long before any historic election was held, and this must have
influenced their position in the early community, just as the political existence of
the iunioresstarted with their entry into the army. Cf. on sekos,saeptaetc.: W. Pax,
Sprachvergleichende Untersuchungen zur Etymologie des Wortes amphipolos, in:
Wiirterund Sachen 18 (1937) 33 f.
107 The literature on this hotly debated issue is enormous. I mention only:
Binder 1964; Alfoldi 1974, passim, espec. 86-106. The monograph by Chr. Ulf, Das
romischeLupercalienjest.Ein Modelljallfur Methodenproblemein der Altertumswissenschaft
(Darmstadt 1982) is not really an improvement on earlier studies. A different ap-
proach: U. W. Scholz, Zur Erforschung der romischen Opfer, in: Le sacrificedans
l'antiquite (Entretiens Hardt XXVII, Geneve-Vandoeuvres 1981) 289-340.
lOB Alfoldi 1974, with my review: Versnel 1976. Cf. Bremmer 1982, and espec.
1987b, 25-48. Far more adventurous: Torelli 1984, with the severe criticism by C.
Ampolo, CR 38 (1988) 117-20, and L. RichardsonJRA 2 (1989) 147-50; idem, Riti
di passaggio maschili di Roma arcaica, MEFRA 102 (1990) 93-106.
109 Versnel 1980a.
 APOLLO AND MARS 323

hetairia-led me to the conclusion that the early sodalitas should be

understood as comradeship (close to the German 'Genossenschaft')
in time of peace, feasting and carousing in closed groups, which in
wartime functioned as the 'Gefolgschaft' of an aristocrat or prince
with whom a coniuratio relationship could exist. Bremmer 1982 has
added a host of data from other Indo-european civilizations, arguing
that in most cases we are dealing with veritable Jungmannschaften in
the stage of initiation. In a reconsideration of the text and an evalua-
tion of the various theories 110 , I have given my reasons why the
projection of these rather primitivejungmannschaften onto the Roman
situation of 500 BC does not strike me as appropriate. It is true,
however, that terms like sodalitas often function in a context of youth-
groups and their exploits in the margin of society. So I certainly
would not-and did not-exclude the possibility that the sodalitas of
Poplios V alesios was such a youth-group, operating as a, possibly
temporary, retinue of the aristocrat Publius Valerius, who may
perhaps be identified as the famous first consul Publicola. However,
it is also possible, and to my mind more likely that we have here a
more permanent retinue-perhaps evolved from an original youth
group-just as Bremmer demonstrates that in other cultures Jung-
mannschaften tended to develop into more permanent types of Manner-
bunde. But there is more to it than that.
There is a myth on the ancestor of the gens Valeria 111 ( to which
Poplios V alesios belonged), in which he is advised in a dream to
wash his sick children in a kettle with water boiling on the fire of a
subterranean altar. This altar, I believe I have shown, belonged to
Mars 112 , although in the surviving version it was dedicated to Dis
Pater and utilized to explain the origin of the Ludi saeculares. Now,
there is a unique scene in three variants, one on a cista of Praeneste
(late 4th century) 113 and two on Etruscan mirrors, dated c. 300

110 Versnel 1990a, 47-50.

111 Val. Max. 2, 4, 5; Zosim. 2, 1-3. I have discussed this myth in Versnel
1982.
112 J. Aronen, II culto arcaico nel Tarentum a Roma e la gens Valeria,Arctos23
(1989) 19-39, once more emphasizes the strong connections between the gens
Valeria and the Tarentum and argues for Faunus as the central god, in which I can-
not follow him. For a comprehensive discussion of the relevant parts of the Taren-
tum see: P. di Manzano, Note sulla monetazione <lei Ludi Secolari dell' 88 d.C.,
BCAR 89 (1984) 297-304; S. Quilici Gigli, Estremo Campo Marzio. Alcune osser-
vazioni sulla topografia, ARID 10 (1983) 47-57; E. La Rocca, La riva a mezzaluna.
Culti, agoni, monumentifunerari presso il Teverenel Campo Marzio Occidentale(Rome
H}84, non vidz).
113 Michaelis, Annali d. /stit. 45 (1873) 221 ff.; Mon. lned. IX Tav. LVIII.
 324 CHAPTER FIVE

BC 114 . We see either one or two or three children being lifted from
or immersed in the boiling or burning contents of a vase. The chil-
dren on the Etruscan mirrors are named Maris, the one on the cista
Praenestina is certainly identified as Mars. Of course a multitude of
interpretations have been proposed, too many to mention here 115 .
The most attractive seem to be those which connect the immersion
with death and rebirth, or rejuvenation 116 . Personally, I feel in-
clined to connect it with the rebirth scenes characteristic of initiation
ritual (compare Achilles, Demophon) and to accept Dumezil's in-
terpretation: "scenes d'initiation, mais guerrieres, et non pas seule-
ment 'juveniles'" (scenes of initiation, but belonging to the martial
and not only to the juvenile sphere ) 117 . I cannot discuss here vari-
ous interesting and probably relevant details such as the surnames
of Maris: Isminthians-related to Apollo Smintheus?-or the sur-
names Halna, surely connected with Thal (Iuventas) and Husrnana
(iuvenilis?).Or, again, Minerva as the nursemaid or mother of the
infant Mars, or the emphatic connection, here and elsewhere, of
Mars and Hercle 118 . As it is, there is sufficient reason to suggest a

114 Chiusi: Gerhard-Korte, Etr. Spiegel 166; Bolsena: ibid. 257B.

115 A few extensive discussions: Hermansen 1940, 51-62, in a revised form also
in: SE 52 (1984 [1986]) 147-64; Wagenvoort 1956, 193-232, esp. 212 ff.; Balkestein
1963, 124-39; Scholz 1970, 141-57. The interpretation of the Praenestine scene by
E. Simon, II dio Marte nell'arte dell'Italia centrale, SE 46 (1978) 135-47, does not
convmce me.
116 Cooking a person in a pot or kettle as a means to confer new life or youth:

W. Fauth, Hippolytos und Phaidra, Abh.Mainz (1959) 445 ff.; idem, Der Traum des
Tarquinius, Latomus 35 (1976) 500 ff.; Burkert 1972a, 97-152 = 1983, 83-134; C.
M. Edsman, lgnis Divinus. Lefeu commemoyende rajeunissement et d'immortalite(Lund
1949) 30 ff.; 151 ff.; Frazer's commentary on Apollodorus, Bibi. 3, 4, 3; ibidemvol.
II, 311-17: the appendix "Putting children on fire."; Chr. Sourvinou-Inwood,
Tityos, Tantalos and Sisyphos in Odyssey 11, BICS 33 (1986) 37-58, n.21. F. T.
van Straten, Ikonografie van een mythe, Lampas 17 (1984) 162-83, explains Athena
in a tripod on a 'mitra' from Axos (Crete) and a birthscene of Athena with a tripod
on a relief amphora from Tenos as a kind of deification and compares a votive in-
scription apotheotheis en toi lebeti(OGIS 611 ). On mutilation and cooking as symbols
of initiation see: Eliade 1975, 90 f., and idem, Shamanism(Princeton 1972) 41 ff.
117 Dumezil 1966, 244, a summary of earlier studies. Earlier he had proposed

a different, though related, interpretation: the immersion was intended to cool the
juror Martis of the Berserk-warrior: G. Dumezil, Horaceet les Curiaces(Paris 1942)
16 ff.; idem, Naissancede Rome (Paris 1944) 65 ff. (cf. Eliade 1975, 81 ff.), but he
seems to have abandoned this view.
118 The most recent ample discussion can be found in L.B. van der Meer,

Maris' Birth, Life and Death on Two Etruscan Mirrors, BaBesch63 (1988) 115-28,
to which I refer for all further details and literature. This does not imply that I en-
tirely agree with his conclusions: "Maris Husmana (the childlike Mars) refers to
the birth or rebirth from a krater as symbol of death, Maris Halna (the living Mars)
 APOLLO AND MARS 325

connection between Mars and the initiation of juvenile warriors and

again, there are reasons to assume a relationship between the sodali-
tatesduring their initiation and the ver sacrum-groups of twenty-year
old men who were, as Dion. Hal. expressly says, providedwith arms
and expelled. The latroneswho accompany Romulus combine the
central characteristics of both 119 • The two types of 'migrants' en-
joyed the patronage of the god Mars, and this adds support to the
suggestion that Mars may be the image of the adolescent who has
come to maturity and has received the armour belonging to the
adult-warrior.
The Praenestine scene is further illuminated by a story of
Praenestine origin, told by Aelian Var. Hist. 9, 16, the relevance of
which was revealed by Hermansen and Wagenvoort: it is related
that Mares was an Ausonian who died three times and was reborn
thrice, an unmistakable clue to the meaning of the immersion-scene
on the cista Praenestina. This Mares, so the story continues, was
half-human and half-horse. Here again a clear connection with the
god Mars emerges. This god is closely connected with horses and
horse-riding (Equirria, Equus October)and this element has been uti-
lized in various interpretations of the god. In this connection an in-
teresting Roman ritual deserves a short consideration.
According to Virgil Aen. 5, 588 ff., the Lusus Troiae120 was a laby-
rinth-play performed by adolescents making intricate figures with
their horses. Seneca Troiad. 777 f. adds that it was performed on a
dies lustri and that the boys were of noble birth: nobilesturmas121. A

to his life period, and Maris Isminthians (the Sminthian Mars) to his death. Cf.
also idem, The BronzeLiver of Piacenza:Analysis of a PolytheisticStructure(Amsterdam
1987) 114-20.
119 See note 69 above and Fab. Pictor, FGrHist 809 F4; Liv. 1, 8, 5; Lucan. 1,
97;Juven. 8, 272-75; Alfoldi 1974, 110,121,148; Briquel 1980, 279 ff.; Bremmer
1982, 137; idem 1987b, 38 ff. Looting as a typical occupation ofinitiants in Homeric
and Celtic society: Bader 1980, 9 ff., 32 ff.
120 The Lusus Troiae has been explained as a relic of initiation-ritual several
times. See particularly: Piccaluga 1965, 135-47. Cf. Bremmer 1978, 35 n.194 and
Neraudau 1979, 227-33. The connection with the North-European 'Troiaburgen'
may offer an additional confirmation of the initiatory function of the Lusus Troiae:
E. Krause, Die TroiaburgenNordeuropas(Glogau 1893); 0. Hofler, Siegfried,Arminius
und die Symbolik (Heidelberg 1961) 77-89; J. Bord, lrrgiirtenund Labyrinthe(Koln
1976) passim. Above all: W. Hunke, Die Troiaburgenund ihreBedeutung(Diss. Munich
1941), a typewritten dissertation which is cited by Bremmer 1978, 30 n.165.
12 1 And cf. Cass. Dio 48, 20, 2; 43, 23, 6; 51, 22, 4; 54, 26, 1; 56, 10, 6; 59,
11, 2; Plut. Cat. Min. 3, 1. That ancient social ritual is only maintained for the
higher classes is a general trend. Although Suet. Caes.39, 2, pueri maioresminoresque
is generally interpreted as referring to two age-groups there are also authors who
326 CHAPTER FIVE

similar performance is depicted on a well-known Caeretane vase 122 ,

where we see a labyrinth with the word TRUIA, two horsemen leav-
ing the labyrinth, a naked man with a stick or lance and seven
infantry-men with spears and shields portrayed in dance formation.
As we noticed earlier (p.54), the labyrinth is one of the common
symbols of initiation or more generally of birth and rebirth, and it
has been suggested that both the Lusus Troiae and the picture must
be interpreted as ceremonial relics of a primitive ritual of initiation.
There are two pieces of data which connect this TRUIA-ritual with
the god Mars. First, the Fasti Praenestini have on the 19th of
March: [Saliij Jaciunt in comitiosaltus [adstantibuspojntificibus et trzfbu-
nisj celer[umj.One of the few known functions of the tribuni celerum
was their supervision of the Lusus Troiae (Dion. Hal. 2, 64) 123 . Se-
condly, the dances of the Salii are referred to by the term redamptruare
or redantruare(Festus334 L). Paulus ex Festo 9 L has: truant:moventur,
which leads to the conclusion that truare, antruare, redantruareare
variations of a term meaning: "to perform a 'tru(i)a'-dance." This
would bring the horsemen of the Lusus Troiae and the Salii of Mars
in very close relation, as, in fact, they seem to be joined on the
Tragliatella vase 124 . Weapon-dances, though of course not limited

defend a social distinction here: senatoresand equites: P. Dinzelbacher, Uber

Troiaritt und Pyrrhiche, Eranos 80 (1982) 152 n.11. On the connection of iuvenes,
equitesand Luperci see: P. Veyne, Iconographie de la 'Transvectio Equitum' et de
Lupercales, REA 62 (1960) 100-12.
122 On the oinochoefrom Tragliatella see: G. Giglioli, L'oinochoe di Tragliatel-
la, SE 3 (1929) 111 ff.; V. Bianco, L'oinochoe di Tragliatella, Boll. Com. 11 (1964)
1-7. Cf. F. Cordano, II labirinto come simbolo grafico della cita, MEFRA 92 (1982)
I, 1-15; Neraudau 1979, 230 ff. Sceptical as to an identification of Lusus Troiaeand
the labyrinth-dance on the Tragliatella vase: K.-W. Weeber, Troiae lusus. Alter
und Entstehung eines Reiterspieles, AncSoc 5 (1974) 171-96; P. Dinzelbacher o.c.
(preceding note). In defense of this identification but with a funeral interpretation:
J. P. Small, The Tragliatella oinochoe, RM 93 (1986) 63-96. L.B. van der Meer,
Lejeu de Truia. Le programme iconographique de l'oenochoe de Tragliatella, Kte-
ma 11 (1986) 169-78, gives a survey of the theories. His own ideas are close to the
one defended by me. Important is a suggestion made by M. Cristofani, L 'artedegli
Etruschi (1978) 56, that the name of the leader of the seven infantrymen Ammarce
might have been intended as Mamarce. If correct this would provide a most direct
link with the atmosphere of Mars as god of the new warriors during their initiation.
Is it by chance that the woman on the vase is called Thesatei, which is a theophoric
name after the goddess Thesan = Mater Matuta, while the inscription ofSatricum,
dedicated to the god Mamars by a group of sodales,was found in the famous temple
of Mater Matuta?
123 On the connection of iuvenesand celeressee: Neraudau 1979, 259 ff.
124 This does not mean that we should identify the Salii with horse-men. See the
discussion between Th. Schafer, Zur Ikonographie der Salier, ]DAI 95 (1980)
 APOLLO AND MARS 327

to initiatory ritual, certainly belong to the common constituents,

as we have already noticed with regard to the dances of the
Kouretes 125 •
Even if we have to restrict ourselves to these few membra disiecta,
I think we may now cautiously conclude that Roscher was not so
wrong after all: Mars and Apollo present undeniable structural
similarities, but Roscher's sun has blinded subsequent investigators
and the parallelism has disappeared from the discussion. We have
found that both gods were at home in the external world outside
civilization but also shared a constituting function in the centre.
They articulated the division between the chaotic asocial world and
the world of well-ordered society. One of their basic common func-
tions was to expell the improper and to (re)integrate that which has
become proper. This process of rounding off and reintegrating
evoked associations with their control of the new season, new year,
new lustrum, new saeculum. Their familiarity with the 'margin' could
be connected with their function as leaders of migrant groups. So
much for the structural pattern.
As to socio-historical origins, I have argued that this pattern
receives the most coherent explanation against the background of
the role these gods once played in one of the most radical social
events of the primitive community: the farewell to boyhood and the
integration into the society of the adults. Marked by a contemporary
sojourn in the margin outside society-i.e. by an expulsion some-
times taking the form of a consecratio,by rites de marge, roaming and
uncivilized behaviour-this stage corresponds to the external
aspects of the structural pattern. The stage of rebirth, (re)integra-
tion and admission into society may be recognized in the centripetal
structural aspect of foundation and constitution, in casu in the in-
tegration of the new adults into society. So we have discovered a
natural congruence of structural and socio-historical components.
The most satisfactory result is perhaps that, what at first sight is a
baffling contradiction between the beneficent, harmonious and the
threatening, chaotic aspects of the gods has now received a coherent

342-93, and H. Gabelmann, Ri.imische ritterliche Offiziere im Triumphzug,JDA/

96 (1981) 436 n.1.
125 R. Wolfram, SchwerttanzundMiinnerbund(Kassel 1936/8); P. Scarpi, Lapyr-
rhiche o le armi della persuasione, DA 1 (1979) 78-97. I wonder whether the Saliae
Virgines(Festus 439 L) should not be explained in the context of initiation, rather
than in that of war. On the other hand, the tradition of men wearing women's
clothes on the Kalendae of lanuary and March (see Bomer ad Ovid. Fasti III, 167)
is rather a New Year-role reversal.
 328 CHAPTER FIVE

explanation. Once again we observe that inconsistencies may have

a structural meaning, though the present one is different from the
ones analysed in earlier chapters. All this, to repeat a previous warn-
ing, by no means implies that no other creative constituents may
have contributed to the genesis of the gods 126 .

4. KINDRED FUNCTIONS, DIFFERENT IMAGES

There is one problem we have not broached so far, that of the diver-
gence in iconography. How can the iconographic differences in an
otherwise structural and social parallelism be explained? Of course
we could easily dispense with the question by drawing attention to
the possibility that the iconography of both gods may have changed
dramatically in the course of the centuries which separate their ori-
gins from the time from which our information stems. Furthermore,
Mars, i.e. Roman Mars, is a god who belongs to one cultural entity,
the city of Rome. Apollo, on the other hand, is a highly composite
figure who has acquired characteristics from many cultures, and is
worshipped in many divergent ways in the very atomized Greek
po/is-world.
Although this might contain an element of truth, I would not like
to depend entirely on such argumentation. Apollo, as we have seen,
was not only represented very early as a kouros in the icono-
graphy, he is characterized as a prototypical youngster as early as
Homer 127 . This means that his ephebos-character was already stereo-
typed in or before the Dark Ages. Given the absence of his name in
linear B-texts, the possibility must be taken into account that not
only his name and function in the Apellaia, but also elements of his
iconography had been introduced in the late Bronze Age by North-
West Greek immigrants, albeit as mental concept. This of course
leaves the possibility intact that developments and refinements could

126 Above we have remarked that Oriental influences in the figure of Apollo are
undeniable, especially in the fields of diseases and epidemics. As to the ecstatic,
oracular qualities, it is often assumed that shamanistic influences from the North,
particularly Scythia play a role. K. Dowden, Apollon et !'esprit clans la machine.
Origines, REG 92 (1979) 293-318, traces connections with India. Yet it is also possi-
ble to connect the ecstatic, visionary and poetical with a Berserk-like trance: Hofler
1973, 7, 55,109 ff., 197 ff. onOdinandWodan. Cf. also G. Dumezil,Apollonsonore
et autres essais. Esquisse de mythologie (Paris 1982).
12 7 Sometimes very young indeed: M. Nagele, Zurn Typus des Apollon Lykeios,
JOA! 55 (1984) 77-105.
 APOLLO AND MARS 329

have taken place during the early archaic period, which was the time
in which the kouros-type was developed in monumental art, as well
as the appreciation of musical and cultural education, which is
characteristic of Apollo. On the strength of the cult-elements that we
have previously listed, and which go back to the oldest layer of Ro-
man culture, Mars, on the other hand, must have been traditionally
conceived as the heavily armed warrior.
One way to explain the iconographic difference would be to as-
sume that both representations are 'snapshots' of one and the same
course of events, but taken at different moments 128• Apollo, the
kourospar excellence,was pictured in the stage beforethe admission into
male society; hence his long hair, the absence of heavy armour, his
bow and arrow. As Apollonios Rhod. Argon. 2, 707 puts it: kouroseon
eti gumnos, eti plokamoisi gegethos(a youth, still naked, still enjoying
long hair) 129• Mars, on the other hand, as a fully armed warrior
was not principally represented as a youth. luvenis, it may be
recalled, was the term for any man between his eighteenth and his
fourty-fifth year 130 . His armour and the emphasis on the military
aspects rather picture him as an adult man, full citizen, and full sold-
ier. Since, on the other hand, there are strong reminiscences of rites
depassagein his myth and ritual (perhaps the suodalesof the Satricum
inscription; with more certainty: the ver sacrum groups, immersion
in fire, the armed dance of the Salii, the Lusus Troiae)one might infer
that his picture is taken in thefinal part or at the closureof the initiation:
the admission into the community of adult warriors. This would fit
in splendidly with the basic function of the typical Mars-ritual of the
lustrum. However, it is also-and perhaps more-likely that the
difference has its roots in a cultural dissimilarity. The Apellaia, as we
observed, did not contain marked military features. On the con-
trary, it displayed typically civic elements. Accordingly, both in
myth and ritual, Apollo was accompanied by a sister, who had very
comparable functions in the puberty rites of girls 131 . On the other

128 In this connection an observation by Dowden 1989, 26, may be relevant:

"selectiveperformance of what in other cultures would be a general initiation rite
is common in historical Greece", cf. the index s.v. 'selectivity'.
12 9 See: R. Hunter, Apollo and the Argonauts. Two Notes on Ap. Rhod. 2,
669-719, MH 43 (1986) 50-60, esp. 54 ff.
130 A recent discussion: M. Kleijwegt, Ancient Youth. The Ambiguity of Youthand
the Absenceof Adolescencein Greco-RomanSociety(Amsterdam 1991) eh. 3.
131 Artemis as the patroness of the girls reaching maturity at Brauron: Brelich
330 CHAPTER FIVE

hand, the Roman lustrum, though at least in later times a civil institu-
tion encompassing the whole of society, was fundamentally military
in its setting. The same can be said of all the specific Mars rites. This
would warrant a tentative conclusion that Greek civilization,
particularly as it developed in the early archaic period, put greater
emphasis on the process of civic education and on the preparation
of the youth for social skills (think of the education of Achilles, the
musical training in the Apollonian sphere etc. 132), though military
training of course was not lacking, whereas Rome paid most atten-
tion to a purely 'martial' training. In this respect it is not incon-
ceivable that youth groups were provided with a military outfit
during the final part of the rites de margeor by way of introduction
into the adult society. After all, in many cultures-including those
of Greece and Rome-youthful warriors were used for special
Berserk-like actions 133 .
Two recent studies strikingly illuminate the ambiguity concern-
ing the outward appearance of the two gods 134 . In an article on the
Athenian Apollo Lukeios, M. Jameson 135 discusses an inscription
(IC I3, 138) dealing with the military tax destined for the temenosof
Apollo Lykeios. This sanctuary was outside the walls of Athens and
its territory was used for military exercises and musters. The
Lykeion developed into the famous philosophical school, but it was
originally a gymnasium intended for physical exercises. There is a
tradition that the polemarch had his seat there in ancient times. It

1969, index s.v. The most recent discussions: Chr. Sourvinou-Inwood, Studies in
Girl's Transitions. Aspects of the Arkteia and Age Representationsin Attic Iconography
(Athens 1988); Dowden 1989; P. Perlman, Acting the She-Bear for Artemis,
Arethusa 22 (1989) 111-33; and cf. above p.53. n.98.
132 See most recently: Bremmer 1990, 138. Note that the puberty-rites of girls
had a strong musical and cultural accent as well: R. Merkelbach, Sappho und ihr
Kreis, Philologus101 (1957) 1-29, Calame 1977, where one will find references to
musical aspects of boy's initiation on pp. 36,230 ff., 353 ff.; E. Specht, Schonzu
sein undgut zu sein:Miidchenbildungund Frauensozialisation
im antikenGriechenland(Vien-
na 1989).
133 For Greece see: A. Brelich, Guerre,agonie culti nella Greciaarcaica(Bonn 1961)
passim. For Rome: G. Dumezil, Horaceet les Curiaces(Paris 1942); idem, Heur et mal-
heur du guerrier(Paris 1969).
134 Cf. also on the double aspect of wolf-outlaw and lawgiver as embodied in
name and nature of the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus: B. Kunstler, The Werewolf
Figure and Its Adoption into the Greek Political Vocabulary, CW 84 (1990-1)
184-205. "As both werewolf and master of the beast, Lukourgos initiated the Spar-
tan wolfmen into the mysteries of the polis" (205).
135 M. Jameson, Apollo Lykeios in Athens, Archaiognosia1 (1980) 213-36.
 APOLLO AND MARS 331

was also the place where the hoplite-dominated demosof the late sixth
century used to assemble. Following Burkert's lead, Jameson ex-
plains the god Apollo Lykeios as the representative and patron of the
initiandi during their wanderings outside the settlement 136 , but he
has to admit that, at Athens at least, Apollo-and this includes Apol-
lo Lykeios-had scarcely any connection with the ephebic status. I
quote some of his conclusions since they are directly relevant for my
argument: '' Apollo Lykeios at Athens conspicuously represents the
culmination of the initiatory, integrating process. He is the god of
the adult males, hoplites who have passed their tests and have been
fully accepted" (231). "At Athens he was the god of the initiated,
not of the initiants" (232). Finally he suggests that "the figure of
Apollo Lykeios came to be fixed on the moment of passing out of the
transition into full manhood, the end rather than the beginning of
the ephebeia, and thus attached to the assembled adult males"
(233). As the reader will have noticed, this is exactly the same as I
have suggested for the god Mars, and the resemblance with the
Campus Martius, outside the city, as the place of military and spor-
tive exercises and musters is encouraging indeed.
Secondly, F. Grar 37 provides a survey of the cults of Apollo
Lykeios in the Greek world and finds that Apollo Lykeios was con-
nected with two aspects of social reality. The first was the political
and civic function of the polis: his temple was often situated at the
agora,and it is the place where official documents, treaties etc. were
kept 138 . At Argos it was also the location of the eternal fire. More
specifically, the god was connected with mythical and historical in-
stances of a political restoration and a new beginning. The second
connection is with the ephebic stage, particularly, as Jameson
found, with the military aspects of this social stage. Graf traces both
aspects back to an original function of the god as the patron of a

136 For Apollo Lykeios as protector of initiandi see besides the literature cited
above n.89: W. E. Higgins, Wolf-god Apollo in the Oresteia, PP 31 (1976) 201-5,
esp. 204: "Apollo Lukeios acts on behalf of the suppliant outcast". J. D. Bing,
Lykopodes. A Contribution to Athenian Military History from Peisistratos to
Kleisthenes, Cl] 72 (1977) 308-16, discusses Argivian bodyguards of Athenian
tyrants with the emblem of Apollo Lykeios. Cf. also: M. Burzachechi, Cippi iscritti
dall'area sacra di Metaponto, PP 34 (1979) 279-95; and above all: Graf o.c. (next
note).
137 Graf 1985b, 221-6. In Graf 1979 he had done a similar investigation on
Apollo Delphinios, with comparable results.
138 Cf. also: R. Martin, Recherchessur l'Agora grecque(Paris 1951) 166 f.
332 CHAPTER FIVE

"Krieger-bund im Zeichen des Wolfs als urspriingliche ( ... )

Trager des Staates" (Warrior-society under the sign of the wolf,
constituting the original members of the state).
In this case we observe the military aspects, which were kept out-
side the walls at Athens, side by side with a central-political function
in one and the same god. Even in one-albeit pluriform-culture we
thus find a divergence in the final stages of one evolution: the Apollo
of the Apellai was not notoriously military, whereas the very close
pendant Apollo Lykeios was. The first was pictured as the ephebe
beforethe end of the initiation, the latter was the patron of the hoplites
after their acceptance into the world of adult warriors. This may
diminish our uneasiness when we observe similar divergences be-
tween the Greek Apollo and the Italic Mars 139 .
However, in these matters nothing is certain. It might be wrong
to draw too sharp a line between the period of the initiation, on the
one hand, and the first stage of manhood-status, with the accom-

139 It even leads me to another very tentative suggestion. Given the ambiguity
in the representation of the Greek Apollo, would it not be possible to view the
remarkable duplicates Mars and Quirinus in the same light? I am fully aware of
the complications, particularly as to the possibility that Quirinus is the local deity
of a community of the Quirinalis. Yet, there are a number of data that portray
Quirin us as a kind of peaceful duplicate of Mars. Servi us ad Aen. 1, 292 (cf. 6, 860)
says: Quirinusautem est Mars qui praeestpaci et intra civitatemcoliturnam belliMars extra
civitatemtemplumhabet. Cf. Claudian. De IV cons. Hon. 8. In later times Quiriteswas
the term in use for the male citizen body with avoidance of military references (see
esp. Suet. Caesar70). Connections with the curia as *coviriumon the one side, and
the identification of Romulus and Quirinus on the other, may lend additional
probability to the suggestion that Quirin us and Mars represent the same ambiguity
between the military/wild and the political/peaceful aspects of the various stages in
the social transition. This analysis may provide welcome solutions for many a
problem left unexplained in the theories of, for instance, Dumezil or, more recent-
ly, G. Radke. In ANR W II. 17, 1 ( 1981) there are two circumstantial contributions
on Quirinus, one along traditional lines by D. Porte, pp. 300-42, the other by G.
Radke, pp. 276-99, who makes him the god of the furrow, i.e. the founder of Rome.
Quite aware of the many difficulties I still regard Quirin us as the representative of
the *covirium,the "Gesamtheit der Biirgerschaft" (P. Kretschmer, Lat. quiritesund
quiritare,Ciotta 10 [1920] 147-57; W. Meid, Das Suffix no- in Giitternamen, Beitrage
zur Namenforschung8 [ 1957] 72-108, esp.101) or as "le dieu de la totalite sociale or-
ganisee" (Dumezil, but without his agricultural interpretations). In this respect I
find myself in nearly complete agreement with the comprehensive and perceptive
article by G. Prugni, Quirites,Athenaeum65 (1987) 127-61. There is a similar am-
biguity in the South-German god Tiwaz = Tyr. On the one hand he is the warrior
god par excellenceand for that reason equated with the Roman Mars. But as Mars
Thingsus he was also the god of the thing, the general assembly: J. de Vries, Altger-
manischeReligionsgeschichte I (Berlin 1935) 173-5.
 APOLLO AND MARS 333

panying military tasks, on the other. The discussion of the original

meaning of the word populus in Latin can be seen as an illustration
of this problem. In historical times it was the expression for the
whole citizen population. Originally, however, it must have been
the term for men able to bear arms, as is clearly illustrated by an-
cient terms and institutions: poplifugia,pilumnoepoploe(in the carmen
Saliare), populari, magisterpopuli140. This military body, as we have
seen , was constituted in the ritual of census and lustrum. But in the
field of etymology interpretations abound. Interesting, though high-
ly hypothetical, is the proposition by Lagercrantz *po-polos"mili-
tarisches Aufgebot" from "call up", cf. apello141 . He also compares
Greek apella < *apo-pel-ia, "call away". A direct derivation from
pubes is phonetically impossible, but the origin of publicus from an
amalgamation of populus and pubes is not unlikely 142 .
Nevertheless, a semantic relationship or even identity between
pubesand populus in early times has been argued. Livy uses the term
pubes to describe the warriors of early Rome, a term replaced by iu-
venes/iuventusin his later books. In both, however, the emphasis on
juvenile impetuousness is unmistakable, both in Livy and in other
authors. Festus 301 (L) has a crucial piece of information: Pube
praesenteest populo praesentesunekdochikosab his qui puberessint omnem
populum signijicans. So various scholars have concluded that those
referred to by the Italic root popl-publ-'' sont apparement formes par
desjeunes gens mobilises ou mobilisables au service certes de Rome,
mais non encore integres au corps privilegie des citoyens delibe-
rants" (apparently are constituted by young men mobilized or
ready for mobilization in the service of Rome, but as yet not inte-
grated in the privileged body of deliberating citizens) 143 , a group of
youthful warriors whose place is outside the walls, whereas the polit-
ical deliberations were conducted by older people integrated in the

140 LEW s.v. populor; Neraudau 1979, 327 ff.; and the works by Gage men-
tioned above n.105. On populus from Etr. puple see: C. De Simone, in: Gli Etruschi
a Roma. lncontrodi studio in onoredi M. Pallottino(Rome 1981) 93-103, but cf. Pros-
docimi, ibid. 140. See also: G. Prugni o.c. (previous note) 141, and notes.
141 0. Lagercrantz, Lat. populus, in: Melanges E. Boisacq II (Bruxelles 1938)
57-60.
142 E. Benveniste, "Pubes" et "publicus", RPh 29 ( 1955) 7-10; more literature
in: J. P. Morel, Pubepraesentiin contione,omni poplo, REL 42 (1964) 375-88; Ner-
audau 1979.
143 J. Gage, La ligne pomeriale et Jes categories sociales de la Rome primitive,
RD ( 1970) 19 and cf. his other works mentioned above n.105. A survey also in
Neraudau 1979, 327 ff.
334 CHAPTER FIVE

body politic. However, asj. P. Morel 144 demonstrated, this thesis

cannot be maintained. He showed that Plaut. Pseudo!. 126, pube
praesentiin contione,omni poplo, is really the same formula as the one
in Festus and means: "the total citizen body including the youthful
warrior-class''. But it cannot be denied that in Rome the warrior-
groups par excellenceconsisted in part of the same age groups that in
Greece are called epheboi.However, it appears that, in contrast to ar-
chaic Greece, the Roman pubeshad a more integrated function in the
army, possibly as shock-troops, without being full and uncondition-
al members of the citizen population on the other hand. Here the
vexed question of what exactly the Homeric kouroiwere might crop
up again, but, for the moment, the short notes made above p.68.
must suffice.
In 1973 T. H6lscher 145 argued forcibly that picturial art does not
enjoy the same freedom of manipulation as language and (visual)
phantasy. No one who utters the word 'helmet' has any compulsion
to specify, either linguistically or in his imagination, whether an At-
tic or a Chalcidian helmet is intended. Nobody needs to worry about
the sex of the horse of Alexander the Great until the animal is pic-
tured on mosaics. Even a person experiencing an epiphany or vision
may know that he has seen Maria, Apollo or Mars without having
perceived a precise picture of the god. We all know that the white
rabbit we have seen in our dream was actually aunt Louise, because
the dream was subtitled.
The artist, however, is obliged to choose. His choice is influenced
and qualified by cultural tradition and social convention. But it is
impossible to draw the representation of the 'marge' and that of the
'integration' in one and the same anthropomorphic image. Choices
have to be made and Greece made a different choice from Rome.
In practice this implies that extreme prudence should be exercised
in handling iconographic material. Anyone confronted with nothing
but the conventional representations of Apollo and Mars would
never come to the conclusion that these gods had anything in com-
mon, let alone that they are structural-and functional-duplicates.
Our argument has shown that religious interpretation cannot dis-
pense with iconography. But iconography in isolation is even more
precarious.

144 o.c. aboven.144.

145 T. Holscher, GriechischeHistorienbilder des 5. und 4. jhdts v. Chr. (Wiirzburg
1973) 11 ff.
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 INDEXES

I. NAMES AND SUBJECTS

Abaris 302 apotropaios299

abduction 278, 279, 283 archegetes291, 293, 304, 309, 318
abstinence (sexual) 235-237, 245-248, birth of 298, 316, 318
250, 252, 257, 258, 260, 262, 268, (controls) border/ division 299,
275, 277, 278, 283, 287 (see also: 300, 302, 310, 318, 327
chastity) (in the) centre 302,303,310,327,
abundance 96, 97, 107, 115, 117, 120- 332
125, 128, 132, 135, 143, 147, 148, coming god 296, 297, 302, 303,
157, 177, 187, 195, 198, 200 316, 318
abuse (ritual) 234, 238, 241, 244, 251 Delphinios 315
(see also: aeschrology) distant god 302, 303, 310, 315,
Achilles 56, 58, 68, 314 327, 332
aeschrology 238, 241, 244, 251 (see ephebos/kouros313-319, 328, 329,
also: abuse) 331
Agathe Thea 233 epidemiai298
agressiveness 227 fertility god 292, 298
Akitu festival 33 founder god 291, 292, 305, 306,
alterity 94, 157 (see also: the 'Other') 309, 311
Amazones 108, 250, 264, 278, 279, healing qualities 293
282, 285 hekaergos303
ambiguity 270-272, 286, 288, 290, 312, hekatebolos303
327, 328, 330, passim iconography 328-334
ambivalence see: ambiguity, poly- initiatory aspects 313-319, 327,
valence 329-334
anarchy (ritual) 47, 126-128, 147, 148, leader in colonizing expeditions
188, 243, 244 (see also: anomy, 291, 292, 304-306, 309-311,
chaos, licence, rebellion) 316, 318, 327
Angerona(lia) 168, 169 Lukeios 315, 316, 330-332
aniconic cult (Roman) 312 lustrative/purificatory nature 293,
anomia/anomy 47, 61, 120, 121, 134, 298, 299, 311, 314, 317, 318
157, 163, 179, 185, 188, 191, 200, military aspects 290, 292
207, 209, 243 (see also: anarchy, musical qualities 290, 293, 330
chaos, licence) (New) Year-god 290, 297, 316,
anonymous gods 226 327
antaphrodisiacs 237, 245, 246, 248, 275 oracular nature 290,293,303,310
Anthesteria129, 170 patroos 291, 293
anthropophagy see: cannibalism Phoibos 292
Apellaia 313, 314, 321 polyvalence 293
Aphrodite 253, 262-264, 285, 286 present god 296, 297
Apollo 58, 70, 289-319, 321, 327-334 shamanistic aspects 328
Aguieus 293 shepherd 303
alexikakos299 Sun-god 290-292
ambiguity of 290, 293, 298, 302, temple in Delphi 303
303, 318, 327, 332 Apollonia 306
apotropaeic/evil-averter 292, 293, Apolloniatai 306
299, 310, 327 apple 255, 256
346 INDEXES

arbitrariness 191, 192, 205, 206, 209 cannibalism 69, 71, 81, 94, 102, 107-
archer 57, 69 (see also: bow, hunting) 110
Ares 157, 249 carmenarvale 300, 302, 312
Argonauts 59 carmensaliare 138
Arkteia 53 carnival 115-120, 128, 157, 160-162
Arrhephoria52-54, 281, 282 Cheiron 93, 110,111,314
Artemis 247, 253, 277-283, 285, 286, chained gods 97, 105, 114, 131, 142,
298, 329, 330 153, 154, 184, 247
asexual reproduction 253, 284, 285 Chalcidian pursuit see: Chalkidikon
asylum 178, 179, 180 [apojdiogma
Atalanta 277, 278, 282 chaos (disorder) 33, 47, 54, 81, 94, 97,
Augustus 194-205 100, 106, 119-121, 124, 127-135,
'Ausnahmefeste' 61, 115-121, 154, 178-180, 195, 207, 209, 239, 242,
155, 240-245,247, 261,274, 287(see 311, 327 (see also: anarchy, anomy,
also: anarchy, 'legale anarchie', li- licence)
cence, exception) charivari 55, 73
chastity 237, 243, 246-248, 252-254,
Bacchic rites 251 258-260, 262, 283, 284, 287
baptism in fire 324, 325 child sacrifice 101, 113 (see also: infan-
barbarians 107-109, 283 ticide)
barn see: silo children 277
Baubo 238 (as media) 175
bee(s) 251-254, 258 chiliastic movements 116 (see also:
benefaction/benefactor 196-198, 204 millenarism)
Berserk 330 Christians (charges against) 44
birth (and rebirth, initiatory) 54, 316, Circumcellions 127, 163
324 Cockaigne (land of) 96, 112, 122, 123
blood of gladiator 225 coherence (argument of) 66, 67, 315,
bloodless sacrifice 102, 110 327
Bona Dea (festival of) 229-235, 261- cohesion (social) 117, 122, 244, 320
265, 267, 269, 272-274, 287 coincidentia oppositorum 112, 114 (see
earth goddess 231 also: ambiguity, ambivalence)
fertility goddess 231-235 colonization 304-310, 316
Greek origin 232 comedy 122-124, 126, 156, 159, 160,
healing power 232 245
sow sacrifice for 230 communal meals 149, 157, 159
booth see bower communitas62
bouphonia129 Compitalia 158, 159
bow (and arrows) 314, 316 (see also: concord 198
archer, hunting) confirmation of status quo 116, 117 (see
test 69, 70 also: legitimation)
bower 230, 236, 242, 261 (see also: hut) conflict (ritual) 126-128, 157 (see also:
Brauron 280, 329, 330 'legale Anarchie', licence, rebellion)
bride 263, 264, 269-271, 279 (see also: consecration 305-308, 311, 327
marriage, wedding) Consualia 165-171, 182, 184, 188
bulla 288 Consus 165-171, 182, 184, 188
Burkert, W. 51, passim cooking (rite of rejuvenation) 324
initiatory 324
Caeculus 179 Cornford, F.M. 31
Cambridge ritualists 23-32, 35, 36 coronation (ritual) 3 7, 38
camouflage (ritual) 248, 268 cosmos (order) 47, 177-180, 195, 201,
Campus Martius 304 311, 327
candle 148, 185, 186 covered head 104, 131, 153, 184, 305
 INDEXES 347

creation (myth of) 33, 34, 178, 179 from politics and sacrifice 241,
crisis (period of) 119, 130, 131, 170, 250,259,265,266,269
177, 179, 180, 187, 188 (see also: from preparing meat 265, 266, 269
anomy, stagnation) execution as theatrical act 224, 225
criticism (social) 118, 162 exposure 84
cult pattern see: patternism expulsion 306-309, 311, 314-317, 327
culture bringer 152
curse 308 fabula palliata 156, 159
Cyclopes 109 fabula togata 156
faded gods see: retired gods
Damia(trix) 232, 234 fairy tales (initiatory aspects) 58, 59, 85
Darwin, Ch. 20 falsification 46
death (image of marriage/wedding) 279 fasting 238
deification see: divine rulership Fauna 231, 267, 273
Delos 302, 303 Faunus 272-274
deluge see: Flood feast of fools 115, 161
Demeter 235, 236, 243, 245, 246, 251, Februarius 297, 301
253, 255, 256, 258, 261, 281, 283, feriae Sementivae165
286 fertility (interpretation of rituals) 231-
deus otiosus 152, 187 240, 258, 261, 262, 269, 274, 285,
devotio217-221, 224-227 287, 292
dice see: gambling fettered see: chained
diffusionism 36-38 fig (wild) 63, 309
Dis pater 172, 173, 175, 176 fire 166, 242, 269, 271
divine rulership 196-205 baptism/immersion in 324, 325
'dreamthinking' 104 First Fruit festival see: primitiae
Dumezil, G. 18 Fixing of the Fate 130, 177
Durkheim, E. 26 Flood (the Great) 69, 81, 129
dying and rising gods 23, 34, 43, 44, Fortuna (Primigenia) 130, 174, 177,
113, 154 178, 270
fosterage by wolf 291
eccentricity 72 foundation legends 306, 307
eleven 162 Fourth Eclogue 192
Eliade, M. 18 Frazer, J.C. 21, 22, 35, 47
Elysian Fields (see: Isles of the Blessed) function ~ meaning 244
eniautos daimon 26, 27, 29, 30, 49 (see functionalism 8-10, 40, 41
also: Year God) functionalistic interpretations of ritual
Enuma Elish 33, 34 116-119, 159, 225, 240-245, 287
ephebe 57, 58, 68-74, 282, 313-319, juror Martis 324
328-334
equality (in myth and ritual) 122-126, gambling 123, 126, 129, 130, 148, 149,
149, 157, 158, 189, 200, 201, 205, 185, 208
209, 283 genitals 235, 244, 245, 248, 253, 256,
equus october294, 295, 304, 325 257, 287
Ethiopia 124 Gennep, A. van 54
Eunous 127, 163 'Gefolgschaft' 323
evocatio141 Gernet, L. 31
evolutionism 35 gigantomachy 91
exception (festivals/periods of) see: Girard, R. 45, 78
'Ausnahmefesten' 'girl's tragedy' 52
exclusion of men 230, 235, 245, 249- gladiator(ial shows) 145, 146, 220,
251, 259,261,262,274,282,283 221-227 (see also: munera)
exclusion of women GoldenAge/Race95-98, 107,110,112,
348 INDEXES

113, 122, 123, 126, 127, 132, 133, iustztzum 147, 185, 238, 239, 243 (see
143, 151, 177, 189, 191-196, 207 also: suspension)
permanence of 202-205 luvenalia 223
return of 192-205, 207
'grande festa' 120, 129 joke 117
gratitude 196-198 'Jungmannschaft' 59, 61, 315, 322,
323, 332
hair(-cutting) 314, 31 7 justice 96, 97, 194-196, 200, 205, 209
Haloa 241, 252, 256, 259
handworking (initiatory) 53, 73 Kalligeneia235, 242, 245, 287
harmony (social) 122-126, 157 (see King
also: equality, cosmos) in the centre 64, 65
Harrison, J.E. 23-29, 35 death of 120
Hera 24 7, 256, 264 marginal/scapegoat 64, 65
Hercules 140 in Saturnalian imagery/ritual 131,
Hermes 310 201, 205-211
hetairiai 322, 323 sacral 22, 23, 32-37, 44, 45, 195
Hocart, A.M. 37 Utopian imagery 201, 206
holiday 147, 158 Kirk, G.S 46
homosexuality see: pederasty kiss 229
honey63, 108,177,232,233,251,252, 'Kneipgesetz' 161-163
261, 268 knot 238
Hooke, S.H. 32, 35, 36 Kore 255, 277, 279, 286
horse kosmos 195, 298
metaphor of premarital life 278, Kouretes 27, 28, 43, 93, 101,298,327
279 Kronia 102, 103, 112, 122, 125, 126,
riding 325, 326 129, 132, 136, 187, 189, 243
human sacrifice 100, 101, 102, 110, Kronion 99, 100, 112, 113, 115, 129
112,113,133,135,146, 211-227, 279 Kronos 90-135, 140, 151, 175, 184,
humnos kletikos 297 187, 193, 209
hunting (initiatory) 56, 71, 314 basileus 95, 99
hut, 188, 242, 249 (see also: bower) megas 95
Hygieia 232 krupteia 56, 314
Hyman S.E. 38
H yperboreans 302 labyrinth 54, 57, 325, 326
Lapis niger 172
Iambe 238 lectisternium141
incest 94 'legale Anarchie' 55, 61, 115, 163,
incognito (ritual) 248, 268 240-245 (see also: anomy, 'Aus-
indigitamenta 168 nahme', chaos, licence)
infanticide 94, 101 (see also child sacri- legitimation 116, 117, 127, 308
fice) Lemnian
initiation 28, 48-60, 68-74, 80-83, 158, fire 74
187,188,253,298, 313-319,322-334 women 74, 250
of boys 54-60, 68-74, 313-319, Leto 298, 299, 303
322-334 Jex Tappula 161
of girls 51-53, 73, 253, 281, 329, libation 62, 65
330 liberation
initiatory gods 65, 310 from chains 125, 159, 180, 201,
Isles of the Blessed 92, 97, 98, 131 238, 243
luppiter 194, 195, 295 of chained gods 105, 114, 131,
Latiaris 214-217 133, 142, 143, 153, 154, 184,
puer 177 186-188, 247
 INDEXES 349

of prisoners 103, 238, 243, 288 death god 295

of slaves 115, 122-126, 133, 149, distant god (of the wilds) 294, 295,
158, 159, 186-189 301, 304, 310, 327
licence (festival/period of) 55, 61, 73, dying and rising god 294
115-121, 128, 129, 157, 185, 188, founder god 291, 292, 295, 305,
230, 240-245, 252, 261, 268 306, 309-311, 318
lirninal period/situation 54-60, 157 (see and horses 325
also: marginal) iconography 328-334
lirninality 59-74 (see also: marginality) initiatory aspects 322-334
Lua (mater, Saturni) 144, 181-184 leader in colonizing expeditions
Ludi Saeculares194 291,292, 304-306, 309-311, 318,
Lupercalia58, 322 327
lustration 311, 317, 319-321 (see also: lustrative/purificatory nature 298,
lustratio, lustrum) 300, 311, 319-321
lustrum301, 304, 319-321, 329, 330, 333 military aspects 294, 295, 311, 330
lusus Troiae 325, 326, 329 model/image of the warrior 312,
luxury see: abundance 325, 329
(New) Year-god 290, 294, 297,
M(a)etennius 229, 273 327
Maia (Vulcani) 181, 182 oracular nature 290
Malinowski, B. 39 present god 296, 297
Marnertini 305 state god 295
Marnurius Veturius 297,300,301,304 Sun-god 290-292
'Mannerbund' 49, 323 vegetation/fertility god 294, 295,
Mannhardt, W. 20 298
Marduk 33, 34 Marsi 305
Mares 325 matron 247, 250, 253, 256, 257, 261,
marginal (see also: lirninal) 266, 267, 269, 270, 272, 274, 275,
groups/persons 60, 61, 64-66, 156, 283-285, 287 (see also: marriage,
253, 271, 278, 304, 316, 323, wedding)
325, 327 Matronalia 158
period/situation 54-56, 59-63, 66, meat eating 108, 109
93, 97, 112, 133,135,301,315, Megistos Kouros 27, 28, 31, 298, 316
316, 323, 327 Melisseus 251
signals 55, 56, 60, 62, 65-67, 70, messianism, millenarisrn 127, 163, 192,
71 193
marginality 59-74, 133 'metereological' interpretation 291
margins see: eschatiaileschatioi milk 63, 108, 109, 231-233, 261, 268
marriage 255, 256, 264, 278-281 mock law see: 'Kneipgesetz'
arnbiguiity of 281, 282 monsters 81
as death/sacrifice 279 mourning 61, 62, 66, 243, 282
as yoke/subjugation 278-283 Miiller, M. 20
sacred 33, 34 Muller, M. see: Miiller, M.
Mars 289-313, 319-334 mundus 167, 169, 172-176, 178, 180,
ambiguity of 290, 298, 302, 310, 212
318, 327 patet 144, 147, 175, 176, 180, 243
apotropaeic/evil-averter 294, 295 munera (gladiatoria) 145, 146, 211-216,
300, 301, 310, 327 220-227
(controls) border/ division 301, Murray, G. 30
302, 310, 318, 327 Murray, M.A. 38
(in the) centre 302, 304, 310, 327 myrtle 261-264, 267, 268, 272-274
corning god 296, 297, 302, 304, Myth and Ritual school 32-41
318 'mythic ritual' 44, 45
350 INDEXES

mythology (Roman) 189 polyvalence (of ritual and ritual ele-

ments) 246-248, 254, 256, 257, 260,
navel of the world 91, 173-175 (see also: 262, 263, 268, 286, 287
omphalos) pomegranate 254-257
Nemesis 224 pomerium 304
netherworld 9 7, 98, 168, 169 Praeneste 174, 177, 179
New Year (festival/ritual) 23, 31, 33- precosmic/precultural era 112, 120,
35, 43, 47, 57, 70, 75,80-83,87, 113, 130, 135, 177, 178, 242-244, 268,
119-121, 129, 131, 134, 157, 158, 270, 281, 286
177, 185-188 primeval/primordial era 94, 95, 99,
Nilsson, M.P. 17 106, 120, 122, 123, 130, 134, 143,
Nonae Capratinae249 232
novel 71, 72 primitiae festival 120, 129, 170, 185,
Nymphs 251, 278 187, 188, 300, 302
primitivism 242, 243, 261, 286-288
Odysseus/Odyssey 59, 68-74, 87 promiscuity 283
Oedipus 59 Propp, V. 76, 77
Old Year (festival) 185, 186, 297 (see Propulaioi Theoi 299
also: New Year) prosperity see: abundance
Opalia!Opiconsivia165-1 71, 182, 188 punishment (in myth and ritual) 229,
Ops see: Opalia/Opiconsivia 248, 249, 273
oracle 174,177,309,310 purification 311, 314, 319, 320 (see
order see: cosmos also: lustration)
Orientalization (in myth) 92, 93 purity see: chastity
origin ~ meaning 233, 242 Pythia 283
Ortygia 298
Oschophoria56, 57 Quirinus 332
'Other'(ness) 107-109, 156, 242, 268 Quirites332
Otto, W. 48
outlaws 178-180, 309, 325, 330-332 rebellion/revolution 128, 132, 162, 163
(see also: slave revolt)
Pan 310 rituals of 115, 117, 128, 288
Panathenaea128, 129 redundancy (ritual) 268
Pandora 280 Regia 304
paradigm (shift) 11, 59, 86, 236, 237, regicide 44, 45, 113 (see also: king
240, 287 sacred)
Paris School 18 repetition (ritual) 78
parricide 94 retired gods 92, 94, 97, 99, 112, 133,
patternism 30, 33, 39, 43, 45, 59, 66, 138, 152, 154, 187
67, 70, 71 return of the dead 131
pax Augusta 194, 195, 209 reversal (festival/rite of) 55, 103, 104,
peace 194-198, 200, 201, 209 115-121, 130, 132, 155, 156, 179,
pederasty 56, 84 180, 240-245, 249, 268, 287, 288
Peloria 130, 142 of attire 155-158, 188, 240, 249,
Penelope 73 314, 327
Persephone 251 of role/status 55, 57, 62,103, 115-
Phaeacians 124, 125 121, 126, 132, 135, 149, 157,
Phersu 213 158, 163, 185, 187, 249, 287
Philoctetes 56 of sex 57, 60, 115, 120, 126, 129,
Phoibos 292 155, 188, 240-245, 249, 275,
pig 235, 236, 253, 256, 257, 261, 287 283-285, 287, 288, 314, 327
pine (twig) 237, 248, 268, 287 'rewiring' 117
pollution 31 riddle 148
 INDEXES 351

'rites de separation, de marge, d'agre- Scythes 108, 109

gation' 54, 82, 83,121,320,321,327 sectarians 108
(see also: marginal) self-sacrifice 217-221, 224-227 (see also:
ritual 77-79, 218-227 devotio)
ritus graecus139, 140, 142, 155, 156 shamanistic motifs 66, 72
Robertson Smith, W. 21, 42 sickle 94, 100, 114, 140, 164, 184
Robin Hood 59 'signifiant-signifie' 63-66
Romulus 172, 173, 178-180, 309,325, silo (opening of) 166, 168-171, 174-176,
332 183, 185, 186
ruler cult 196-205, 218-227 simplicity (Utopian motif) 96, 97
Skira 129, 235
Sacaea 210 slave revolt 118, 126-128
sacrariumMartis 304 slave festivals 103, 104, 113,-115, 178,
sacrifice (men's job) 241 (see also: 188 (see also: Saturnalia)
bloodless, child, human) slaves 277
'safety valve' (ritual) 115-117 sleeping gods 97 (see also: retired gods)
Salii 290,297,302,326,329 smith 304
Satricum inscription 297, 322-323, 326 snake 232, 235, 248, 261, 273, 287
Saturnalia103, 136, 138, 141, 142, 146- Snow White 59
150, 153-164, 169, 170, 176, 179, sociobiology 77, 85
180, 184-191, 200, 205-212, 216, solidarity see: cohesion
227, 243, 287 solstitium 167, 185
'Saturnalian' festivals 103, 104, 115, stagnation of agricultural/social life 75,
122, 124 129, 130, 170, 182, 184, 185, 300 (see
Saturnaliciusprinceps206 also: crisis, suspension)
Saturnus 136-227 Stepteria314
agriculture 143, 164-184 structuralism 76, 77
altar of 137,172,173, 179180 substantivism 7, 8
calendrical position 165-171 substantivistic interpretations of ritual
chthonic nature 144, 145, 164, 231-237, 292
184, 212 substitute kingship 210, 211
connections with netherworld 144, Sunoikia 129
212 survivals (search for) 210-227, 231,
cult 153-157 232, 242
culture bringer 143,151,152,178, suspension of political/judicial activity
189, 201 147, 238, 239, 243, 244, 288
etymology 138 Symplegades 59
first king 139, 151, 152, 179, 189 symposium 298
foreigner 139, 140, 142, 143, 152
Hellenization of 141, 142 Tables of the Sun 124
human sacrifice 210-227 Telemachos 69, 70
planet 145 temple closing 129, 130
'Sabine' nature 139, 164 Thargelia299, 300, 318
sacrifice for 139, 156, 186 Theseus 56-58
and sowing 164, 165 Thesmophoria 234-260, 274, 275,
statue 142, 156 284-288
temple 137, 141, 142, 171, 213 and Adonia 252, 259
topographical position 171-176 ambivalence 286
scapegoat (ritual) 100, 300, 301, 319 and death 255
(see also: pharmakos) Eretrian 242
scar (initiatory sign) 69-71 (festival of) exception 240-245,
scourging (in myth and ritual) 238, 267, 249, 252, 284
273 exclusion of hetairai246
352 INDEXES

exclusion of virgins 246, 253 and death 279

fertility rite 235-238, 241, 244, and fertility cult 258
245, 248, 254, 257 in the centre of the city 282, 286
functionalistic interpretation 240- V olcanal 172
245, 287 Volcanalia165, 166, 170, 184, 188
initiatory interpretation 253 vow 219, 220, 226, 304
meaning of 245-288 Vulcanus 166, 169, 172, 181-183, 271
Milesian 237, 248, 268
political connotations 251, 275, weapon dance 326, 327
288 wedding 255, 256, 263, 264, 269, 271,
Syracusan 242 279-281 (see also: marriage)
and wine 241 widow 277, 282, 283
'third function' 164 willow/withy see: lugos
Tiamat 33 wine 63, 228, 230-233, 241, 261, 264-
Titans 91, 92 268, 272-274
Tom Thumb 59 aphrodisiac effects 267, 273, 274
Tonaia 247, 264 wolf 305, 315, 330-332
transition (period/rite of) 68-74, 82-86, initiatory aspects 315, 316, 330-
119, 253, 310, 317 (see also: initia- 332
tion, marginal) women 276-288
Trinci 227 ambivalence of 281, 282, 285
'Troiaburgen' 325 in cult/religion/sacrifice 228, 229,
Turner, V.W. 60 241, 249, 250, 259, 261, 283,
Tylor, E.B. 20 288
tyranny 94 cultural/tamed 277-281
festivals of 228-288
uncovered head 139, 140, 186 independent functions 283, 284
'Urdummheit' 21 isolation 228
Usener, H. 17 lack of self-control 276-286
'utopia d' evasione' 125, 192 martial roles 239, 249, 282
'utopia di ricostruzione' 125 maternity 285
Utopia(n imagery) 63, 95-98, 106, 107, natural/wild 277-281, 284-286
109, 122-127, 132, 135, 150, 151, negative qualifications 276-286
179, 191, 193, 194, 196, 198, 201, as 'Other' 108
205, 206, 225 physical exercise 282
punishment 229, 273
Valerii 323, 324 in rebellion 129
V alesios (Poplios) 322, 323 sex/sensuousness 285, 286
vegetarian diet 108-110 stasis 250
Venus 262-264 and wine 228,231,232,241, 264-
ver sacrum 291, 304-309, 325, 329 268, 272-274, 288
Vesta 270 wreath 155, 263
Vestal Virgins 188, 230, 246, 266, 269-
272, 282, 283, 286 Year God 23, 26, 27, 113 (see also:
vicarious victims 215 eniautosdaimon)
virgins 245-258, 264, 269-275, 277-
280, 282-286 Zeus 91, 92
 INDEXES 353

II. GREEK WORDS

adunata 126, 127 humnos kletikos 297

aiei 203
Aionlaion 203, 204 kline 124
aionia diamone202, 203 kneoron237, 248, 254
aionios204 konuza 237
aionobios203 kosmos 195, 298
ankulometes94, 110 kouros57, 68, 152, 289, 312, 329, 334
antleriai235, 246, 248 krupteia 56, 314
apellai 57, 313, 314, 321
apolis 178 lugos 153,236,237,243, 246-248, 264,
apophoreta148 287
apopompe300, 308, 309
aposphendonetai308 mageiros241
archousai235 meta 255-25 7, 263
asulia 178 melissai 251-254
automaton122-124, 192 murtos 262, 264

basilai 99 numphe/numphai 245, 246, 251, 253,

basileus131, 195 254,256,257,277,278,280,283-286
bouphonia129 numphios bios 254, 263

Chalkidikon[apojdiogma 239, 240, 248, omphalos91, 142, 173-175

249, 282
choiros253, 256, 257 parthenos 247, 276, 279, 280, 282,
284-286
dekateusis306,307,309,316 pharmakos63, 64, 290, 300, 309, 317
polos 278, 282
eis aiona 205
ephebossee: ephebe Sardaniosgelos 101
epidbnia 297, 298 sekos321, 322
epipompe308 sphaktriai 250
107, 125, 131, 135, 310
eschatioileschatiai stibas 236, 243, 248
'eulali' 203 sunoikismos178

gune 254, 280, 282 truphe 121

heros59 zemia 239, 248, 249

hieros308, 309

III. LATIN WORDS

aerariumSatumi 137, 146, 213 caput velare305

aetemitasaugusta203 circumambulatio319-321
aetemitasimperii 202-204 condere166-168, 170
Ara Maxima 140 annum 167
aureasaecula191, 193, 194 coniuratio322, 323
conlucare186
capiteaperto134, 140, 153, 155, 186 consecratio202, 204, 205, 327
captio 269 consecratus306
354 INDEXES

devotio217-221, 224-227 picus 303

pilleus 147, 158
equus october294, 295, 304, 325 pomerium 304
evocatio141 populus 333
promere167, 168, 170
indigitamenta168 pubes 333
inter duos lucos 178
io Saturnalia 147, 163 ritus graecus139, 140, 142, 155, 156
~ustiti_um147, 185, 238, 239, 243
1uven1s223, 329 sacer308-311
sacratussee: consecratus,consecratio
latrones178-180, 309, 325
saepta321, 322
lectistemium141
Saliae virgines 158, 240, 327
Lexsacrata309
salus (principis) 226
liberalitas201
Satumia regna 150, 151, 191-193, 199-
libertas201 202, 205-209, 218
lucemfacere 186 return of 193-205
ludere230
Saturnia terra 139
luere 181, 183, 184
Saturnii versus 139
lues 144, 181, 183
sexagenarii322
lustratio290, 300, 301, 319-321 sigillaria 148
classis 300, 301 sodalitas323, 325
exercitus32O
sufjibulum 188
Lu.strum 301, 304, 319-321, 329, 330, 333 suodales322, 329
condere301, 321
suovetaurilia300, 319, 321
lusus Troiae 325, 326, 329

Mars vigila 312 tardus 203

mola salsa 266, 269 temetum265-267
mundus 167, 169, 172-176 178, 180, tru(i)a 326
212 '
patet 144, 147, 175, 176, 180, 243 ver sacrum 291, 304-309 325 329
vilica 228 ' '
pallium 156, 178 vindex libertatis201
 STUDIES IN
GREEK AND ROMAN RELIGION
ED. H.S. VERSNEL & F.T. VANSTRATEN

1. Wagenvoort, H. Pietas. Selected Studies in Roman Religion. 1980.

ISBN 90 04 06195 9
2. Versnel, H.S. (ed.). Faith, Hope and Worship. Aspects of Religious Mentality in
the Ancient World. 1981. ISBN 90 04 06425 7
3. Malkin, I. Religion and Colonization in Ancient Greece. 1987.
ISBN 90 04 07119 9
4. Marcovich, M. Studies in Graeco-Roman Religions and Gnosticism. 1988.
ISBN 90 04 08624 2
5. Majercik, R. (ed.). The Chaldean Oracles. Text, Translation, and Commentary.
1989. ISBN 90 04 09043 6
6,1. Versnel, H.S. Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion I. Ter Unus. Isis,
Dionysos, Hermes. Three Studies in Henotheism. 1990. ISBN 90 04 09266 8
6,11. Versnel, H.S. Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion II. Transition and
Reversal in Myth and Ritual. 1993. ISBN 90 04 09267 6 ISBN (set) 90 04 09268 4
7. Belier, W.W. Decayed Gods. Origin and Development of Georges Dumezil's
"Ideologie Tripartie". 1991. ISBN 90 04 09487 3