Certain allusions in Plutarch and Lucian1 would lead us to suppose that the “mystery-drama” of Eleusis included also a visual exhibition of the underworld and its blest, or unblest, inhabitants. But these contemporaries of a final and luxuriant flowering of mystery-religions of every kind can serve as reliable witnesses only for their own period. In their day the Eleusinian festival, in competition it may be with other secret worships which were invading the Greco-Roman world in ever-increasing numbers, seems to have undergone a considerable alteration and extension of its primitive and traditional shape. We may doubt whether in earlier, classical times the Eleusinia can have attempted to bind the imagination with what were always petty details, or confine within formal limits what lay beyond all human experience. Still the solemn promise of future blessedness made in the mystic festival may, at any rate, have stimulated the imagination of its worshippers and given a more definite turn to their own natural efforts to picture the life to come. The ideas cultivated at Eleusis unmistakably contributed to the process by which the picture of Hades acquired colour and distinctness. Even without such stimulus, the natural instinct of the Greeks at all periods to give form even to what was essentially formless, worked in the same direction. The limits set by Homeric beliefs about the future world had made the Odyssean description of a descent to Hades seem a risky experiment only to be undertaken with the greatest caution. Now, however, since the re-establishment of the belief in a conscious after-life of the disembodied soul, such imaginative bodyings-forth of the invisible realm of shadows had become apparently the most natural and innocent employment of poetic fancy.
The story of Odysseus’ journey to Hades and its expansion in conformity with the gradually increasing distinctness with which the life after death was conceived, was followed at an early period in the development of Epic poetry by further accounts of such journeys undertaken by other heroes. A Hesiodic poem described the descent of Theseus and Peirithoös to the underworld.2 A Nekyia, the details of which are unknown, occurred in the poem of the Return of the heroes 237 from Troy. The epic which went by the name of the “Minyas” seems to have given considerable space to a descent to Hades.3 The ancient fable of Herakles’ descent to Hades and conflicts in the underworld received embellishment at more than one poet’s hand.4 As a result of such repeated and rival interpretations of the story the stock of characters and events associated with Hades was gradually and continually being enlarged. Accident has preserved to us the fact about the little-known Minyas that it, too, added to the details of the picture. To what extent popular imagination and mythology, on the one hand, and poetic inventiveness, on the other, may have been responsible for all this we can hardly say. It seems probable that here, as in the development of so many Greek myths, on the whole the balance of invention lay on the side of the poets. Purely poetic visions or pictures like that of the translation of individual heroes to Elysium may have gradually won their way to popular acceptance. “Dearest Harmodios,” said the Athenian Skolion, “thou art not dead indeed, but livest yet, men say, in the Islands of the Blest.” Not that there was anything fixed or dogmatic on the point. In a funeral oration Hyperides represents Leosthenes and his companions in battle as meeting in Hades, among the illustrious dead, the Tyrannicides, Harmodios and Aristogeiton.5
Much that may have been the invention of poets for the filling up or furnishing of the desert region so stamped itself upon the general mind that it almost seemed the natural growth of authentic popular belief. Everyone was familiar with the guardian of the gate of Plouton, the malignant hound of Hades who admits everyone but lets no one out again. He is the same creature, long known from the adventure of Herakles, which is already named Kerberos by Hesiod.6 Like the gate and the gate-keeper, the waters that divide Erebos from the world of the living are already known to Homer. Now they have a Ferryman added to them, the churlish old man Charon, who, like a second Kerberos, safely transports everyone across the water, but lets no one return.7 The Minyas is the first to mention him: that he became a real figure of popular belief (as he is still in Greece to this day, though with altered significance) is shown by pictures on the Attic vases that were put into the graves with the dead. These represent the soul as it stands upon the sedgy bank and meets the ferryman who will carry it over to the other side whence no man returns.8 The custom of burying the dead with a small coin fixed between the teeth was also explained as provision for the passage-money that would have to be paid to Charon.9 238
§ 2
The soul, then, being safely arrived on the other bank and Kerberos passed by—what awaited it there? Those who had been initiated into the mysteries now counted upon enjoying the glad future that their hopes had formerly pictured. In reality this blessed future, vouchsafed by the grace of the deities who rule below, was not very hard to obtain. So many were initiated and recommended to divine favour that the picture of Hades, once so gloomy, began to assume a more genial aspect. Quite early we meet with the general name of “Blessedness” as applied to the future life; while the dead without much distinction are called the “Blessed”.10
Of course, anyone who had been so foolish as to neglect or despise initiation has “not the same fate below”, as the Hymn to Demeter discreetly puts it. Only the initiated have life, says Sophokles: the uninitiated, with whom it goes ill in the land below, can hardly have been thought of otherwise than as floating in the glimmering half-life of the shadows in the Homeric Erebos. Well-meaning modern efforts to read a moral meaning into things Greek have sought to prove that the Greeks, too, had a genuine popular belief in a future judgment and recompense for the past deeds and character of the dead. Homer makes hardly the most distant allusion to such a belief. The perjurer alone suffers in Homer the punishment at the hands of the gods of the underworld which he had invoked upon himself in his oath. Even the “Sinners” and their punishment which later imitation added to the story of Odysseus’ Journey to Hades, considered without prejudice, do not support the opinion that Homeric poetry knew of a belief in retribution hereafter. Later poets were only following this model when they made other enemies of the gods endure eternal punishment in Hades—Thamyris, for example, or Amphion (as the Minyas related), and later Ixion in particular.11 All this does not, even in the slightest degree, suggest a general belief in future rewards and punishment. Of course, there is the judgment that is given in Hades by “One” according to Pindar (Ol. ii, 65), but this occurs in connexion with a description of the “last things” which the poet has borrowed from the teachings of mystic separatists. Aeschylus12 knows of a judgment pronounced by Hades himself; but his thoughts about divine retribution both on earth and hereafter are derived from his own religious temperament which was entirely opposed to the popular beliefs of his day and more inclined to accept the speculative doctrines of the theologians. The 239 first precise account of the three judges in Hades, Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aiakos, who judge the deeds of men done in their lifetime upon earth occurs in Plato in a description of the other world which reproduces anything rather than the popular beliefs of the time.13 Later on, the picture of the judges in Hades (to whom Triptolemos was also added),14 like many other details of the Platonic eschatological myths, became a real part of popular fancy, as allusions in later literature and even, perhaps, pictures of the underworld on vase-paintings from Southern Italy, bear witness. But the idea that in the supreme period of Greek culture the belief in a judgment and judges in Hades, who passed sentence on the deeds of men done on earth, had really any root in popular belief, is quite unproved and can be shown to be erroneous from the argument ex silentio. And where there are no judges no judgment can take place.
We often see it asserted that the belief in a future state of compensation for the good and evil deeds of this world was obtained by the Greeks from the Eleusinian mysteries. In reality the opposite is true; if and in so far as the Greeks ever received or entertained such a belief in future rewards and punishments the mysteries of Eleusis had nothing whatever to do with the matter. We have only to remember the simple fact that the Eleusinian mysteries admitted to initiation, with the single exception of those stained by the crime of murder, Greeks of all sorts without any inquiry into their past life and actions, or even their character. The initiated were promised a blessed life hereafter; a gloomy fate awaited the uninitiated. The difference was not made by goodness or badness; “Pataikion the thief will have a better fate after his death because he has been initiated at Eleusis than Agesilaos or Epameinondas” sneered Diogenes the Cynic. Not political or moral worth but “spiritual” merit alone is decisive. Nor will anyone be very surprised at that. It is so in most religions. But in any case, the idea of a sentence passed on virtue or vice in Hades had been forestalled by the system of rewards and punishments in the lower world which the mysteries had already formulated from quite a different point of view. Where the mysteries were seriously and conscientiously taken they would rather have thrown their weight into the scales against any such idea, if it began to make itself felt, of compensation for good and evil deeds in Hades; they certainly contained nothing that fostered such a belief.
No doubt in the long run, among a spiritually alert people, 240 the morality inculcated by religion allied itself freely and without reluctance to the morality of the citizen in its independent development. Only in this way could the former maintain its ascendancy. Thus, in the minds of many of the Greeks the idea of religious justification (through the mysteries) may have lent its support to the idea of civic just dealing; and, at the same time, the company of the unblest who had neglected the sacred mysteries and their future salvation as well, was increased by the not unimportant body of those who receive the wages of sin in Hades and expiate their crimes against the gods, the family, and the civil society of men. Those who have taken a false oath, parricides, violators of the laws of hospitality are made by Aristophanes (in the Frogs) to “lie in the mud”—a form of penalty originally anticipated for the uninitiated in some Orphic private mysteries, but now transferred by him to those guilty of moral misdemeanours.15 The inconsistency with the promises made in the mysteries themselves involved in such conceptions may have been the less observed just because the idea of a future system of compensation in accordance with the requirements of morality was never seriously or fully developed, but remained merely a matter of vague suggestion. In circumstances of real need that ideal never satisfied anyone in Greece. Men expected to see the retributive power of the gods visibly active upon earth; those in whom experience weakened this belief would not have derived much comfort from the idea of compensation hereafter. Everyone knows the typical case of Diagoras, the “Atheist”.16
§ 3
The picturing of the future life, however seriously it might be carried on by adherents of certain mystical sects, remained for the poets and the public at Athens in the fifth century little more than an amusement of idle fancy in which a man might indulge his own whim with perfect freedom. The comic poets from Pherekrates onwards regarded a Descent into the Unknown country as a suitable framework for a burlesque play.17 According to their fancy a Paradise, like that of the golden age on earth when Kronos still ruled, awaited the “Blessed” in the world below;18 a “City of Delight”19 such as men hoped to meet with at the ends of the world, or even somewhere upon the real world. It is from a comedy, the Frogs of Aristophanes, in connexion with the Descent to Hades of a typical commonplace Athenian citizen, who for the time being plays the part of Dionysos, that we get a clearer outline of the geography of the lower regions. Beyond 241 the Acherousian Sea with its cross-grained ferryman dwell snakes and monsters of all kinds. Having passed by the darkness and putrescence of the slough in which wallow perjurers and those who have committed crimes against father or stranger, the way leads to the palace of Plouton, near which lives the chorus of those who have been initiated into the mysteries. For them even in Hades the sun dispenses a brilliant light; they dance in myrtle groves and sing to the sound of the flute hymns of praise to the gods of the underworld.20 A separation of the inhabitants of the lower regions into two classes as taught by the mysteries, is here also carried through: at least clear consciousness is implied in the case of the Mystai which in itself marks clearly the change which has taken place since the Nekyia of the Odyssey. Then there are other regions in Hades besides the places where the initiated and the impious dwell. There is a reference to the plain of Lethe,21 and to the place where Oknos is plaiting the rope which his she-ass gnaws to pieces as fast as he plaits it. This is a parody, half humorous, half pathetic, of the Homeric figures of Sisyphos and Tantalos; a sort of bourgeois counterpart of that Homeric aristocracy of the enemies of heaven, whose punishment, as Goethe remarked, is a type of ever-unrewarded labour. But, we may ask, what had honest Oknos done to deserve this fate of eternally fruitless toil? He is only a man like other men, but he “typifies all human endeavour.” That anyone could have introduced such quaint inventions of innocent humour into the realm of Hades shows how far all this was from theological seriousness.
§ 4
We ought to be able to observe the change which had come over the conception of the future life since the days of Homer from a consideration of the picture of the Underworld which Polygnotos of Thasos painted on one of the walls of the Hall of the Knidians at Delphi. The details of this picture are precisely known to us from the account given by Pausanias. The first impression that we get from it is the extraordinary vagueness and undeveloped state of the mythology of the underworld at this period, about the middle of the fifth century. On the wall was represented the questioning of Teiresias by Odysseus; the companies of heroes, the men and women of poetry, occupied the greater part of the space. The divine judgment of heaven was illustrated by the figures of the Homeric “Sinners”, Tityos, Tantalos, and Sisyphos. Outside the ranks of the Heroic company is Oknos and his 242 she-ass. But where is the reward of virtue, the punishment of wickedness? In expiation of the worst excesses, those committed against gods and parents, a temple-robber receives a cup of poison from a sorceress,22 and an undutiful son is being choked by his own father.23 Apart from these evil-doers are the “uninitiated”, those who have made light of the Eleusinian mysteries. Because they have missed the “completion” of the initiation they are now forced, men and women, to pour water from broken pitchers into a (perforated) jar in ever-unavailing endeavour.24 There is no sign anywhere of a judge who should separate the souls into two classes; and of the monsters of the underworld there only appears the corpse-devouring daimon Eurynomos who must have been known to the artist from some local legend.25 Of the reward of the “virtuous” there is not a trace, and even the hopes of the initiated in the mysteries are only vaguely alluded to in the casket which Kleoboia, as she crosses the river in Charon’s boat with Tellis, is holding on her knee.26 This is a symbol of the sacred mysteries of Demeter which Kleoboia once brought from Paros to Thasos, the home of Polygnotos.
With this series of pictures, hardly altered at all from Homer,27 contrast for a moment the scenes of torment represented in Etruscan pictures of the Underworld, or the pedantic details of the trial of the dead on the day of judgment as the Egyptians elaborated them in picture and writing. From such gloomy severity, from the rigid and overpowering dogmatism that a people without imagination had constructed for itself out of religious speculations and visions won by much labour and thought, the Greeks were fortunately preserved by their own genius. Their fancy is a winged god whose nature it is to pass lightly over things—not to fall heavily to earth and there remain ponderously prostrate. Nor were they very susceptible during their best centuries to the infectious malady of a “sick conscience”. What had they to do with pictures of an underworld of purgatory and torment in expiation of all imaginary types and degrees of sin, as in Dante’s ghastly Hell? It is true that even such dark fancies of the Christian Hell are in part derived from Greek sources. But it was only the misguided fancy of particular isolated sects that could call forth such pictures as these, and recommend itself to a philosophic speculation which in its worst excesses violently contradicted all the most fundamental principles of Greek culture. The people and the religion of Greece, the mysteries which her cities organized and deemed holy, may be freely acquitted of all such aberrations.
NOTES TO CHAPTER VII
1 Plu. (the MSS. wrongly give Themistios) de An. fr. 6 ap. Stob., Fl. iv, 52 b, 48 H. = p. 107, 27 ff. Mein.; Luc., Catapl. 23.
2 Paus. 9, 31, 5.
3 The remains in Kinkel, Frag. Epic. i, 215 ff. This Μινυάς was identified by K. O. Müller, Orchom2., p. 12, with the Orphic κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου, and this suggestion has been followed, though with hesitation, even by Lobeck, Agl. 360, 373. It rests solely on the fact that the Orphic κατάβασις was very doubtfully ascribed according to Clemens to Prodikos of Samos, according to Suidas to Herodikos of Perinthos (or to Kerkops, or to Orpheus of Kamarina); while the Minyas, according to Paus. 4, 33, 7, was very doubtfully ascribed to Prodikos of Phokaia. Müller first identified Prodikos of Samos with Herodikos of Perinthos, and then both of them with Prodikos of Phokaia. The justification of such a procedure is by no means “self-evident” and the identification—entirely depending upon this quite arbitrary view—of the Orphic κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου with the Minyas is in the last degree hazardous. Such an alternative title to an ancient narrative poem can only be defended by fictitious and quite untenable parallels. The name Μινυάς has no parallel in Orphic literature, and suggests rather a poem dealing with heroic adventure in which the Nekyia would only be an episode. If we are to believe in the double title we require at least to be told how the name (Minyas) could possibly have been given to a poem whose contents as implied by the title κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου plainly consisted in a descent to Hades—made by Orpheus himself (as Lobeck also understands, p. 373). Besides, everything we learn about the Nekyia of the Minyas differs widely from the temper and doctrine of Orphism, which should have manifested themselves very distinctly in such a vision of the life to come. Nor is anything from the Minyas given elsewhere under the name of Orpheus, like so many of the details of underworld mythology. There is nothing to suggest that it was Orpheus who sought the atra atria Ditis: an unprejudiced interpretation of fr. 1 (ap. Paus. 10, 28, 2) would suggest that it was rather Theseus and Peirithoos whose descent to Hades supplied the framework for the Hades episode in the poem. There is then not the slightest justification for including the Minyas in the list of Orphic poems or for citing what is known of its contents as Orphic mythological doctrine (which last Lobeck himself did not do: he knew too well the real nature and meaning of Orphism). Cf. Dümmler, Delphika, p. 19 (Bas. 1894).
4 Allusions in the Iliad and Odyssey presuppose the existence of an old poem on the journey to Hades of Herakles: how he was commissioned by Eurystheus, conducted by Athene (and Hermes), went down below and wounded Hades himself and carried off the dog of Hades. Many hands must subsequently have taken part in filling in the details of the adventure: we cannot, however, definitely name the poet who gave its final form and character to the whole. As far as the individual features of the poem are known to us (esp. from the survey given in [Apollod.], 2, 12. Myth. Gr., 2, 122 ff. W., combining both early and late mythological characteristics), they are rather the features of a vigorous story of heroic adventure, full of movement and tending to the gruesome and the extravagant—not of a static or 244 tranquil narrative that would allow of the calm reception of pictures illustrating the quiet ordinary life and events of frequent occurrence in the mysterious world of darkness. In this respect the κατάβασις of Herakles in its traditional form must have differed noticeably from the Nekyia in λ, as well as from the Minyas. In fact, not one of the fabulous details current in later times about Hades can be traced back to a description in the Herakles adventure (even “Kerberos” seems to have got his name elsewhere).
5 Hyperides, Epit. § 35–9 = p. 92 f. (Blass3): Leosthenes will meet ἐν Ἅιδου the Heroes of the Trojan war, the Persian war, and also Harmodios and Aristogeiton. This is a stereotyped rhetorical idea: cf. Pl., Ap. 41 A-C. An epigram from Knossos on a Cretan who has distinguished himself in a cavalry battle (BCH. 1889, p. 60, ll. 1–2, after Simon., Ep. 99, 3–4 Bgk.), ll. 9–10: τοὔνεκά σε φθιμένων καθ’ ὁμήγυριν ὁ κλυτὸς Ἅδης ἴσε πολισσούχῳ σύνθρονον Ἰδομενεῖ.
6 Kerberos is first named in Hes., Th. 311, and he is the same hound of Hades which Homer knows and leaves unnamed, as Hesiod does, Th. 769 ff. According to this account he admits everyone, fawning about them and wagging his tail: but anyone who tries to slip out of Hades again he devours. That Kerberos inspires terror in those who enter Hades is therefore a conception of later ages (when his name was sometimes derived from the fact that he τὰς κῆρας, ὃ δηλοῖ τὰς ψυχάς, ἔχει βοράν: Porph. ap. Eus., PE. 3, 11, 11, p. 110 A, etc.): the superstitious are afraid τῷ Κερβέρῳ διαδάκνεσθαι (Plu., N.P. Suav. Ep. 1105 A; cf. Verg., A. vi, 401; Apul., Met. i, 15 fin.). The honey cakes given to those who enter Hades are intended to pacify him (Sch. Ar., Lys. 601; Verg., A. vi, 420; Ap., Met. vi, 19). It cannot be proved that this is an ancient conception (certainly not from the absurd invention of Philochoros, fr. 46, to which Dieterich, Nekyia, 49, appeals). Ar., Lys. 601, speaks of the μελιτοῦττα for the dead without suggesting any such purpose; and in fact honeycakes would hardly be a satisfactory bait to a dog: they rather suggest offerings for underworld snakes (as in the cave of Trophonios, Ar, Nu. 507; for the Asklepios-snake, Herond. iv, 90–1) and for spirits appearing as snakes (and hence customary at offerings for the dead, and even e.g. according to the precepts of the ῥιζοτόμοι when digging up medicinal plants, Thphr., HP. 9, 8, 7). In the lines of Sophokles, OC. 1574 ff., Löschcke, Aus der Unterwelt, p. 9 (Progr. Dorpat, 1888) finds an expression of the idea that there was need of pacifying Kerb. in his rage against souls entering Hades. In reality nothing of the kind is even suggested there. The traditional text is unintelligible, and is emended and interpreted with probable correctness by Nauck (δός instead of ὅν). Adopting this correction the words express a prayer of the Chorus addressed to a child of Tartaros and Ge, who is called ὁ αἰένυπνος, which must mean “who sends to everlasting sleep” (not “who sleeps for ever”)—(or to separate παῖς Γᾶς καὶ Ταρτάρου from αἰένυπνος as the Schol. would do, is impossible. The αἰένυπνος, as the Schol. has already noticed, can hardly be anyone else than Thanatos (it would be an unintelligible epithet for Hesychos, of whom L. thinks). Thanatos, however, is nowhere else called son of Tartaros and Ge (nor is Hesychos, while Typhon and Echidna are, though the adj. would not suit them; who else besides Soph., OC. 40, calls the Erinyes daughters of Ge and Skotos?). The Chorus pray to him (acc. to Nauck’s correction) to grant Oedipus a safe passage in his journey to Hades. Terrors of all kinds were to be met with on the way there, ὄφεις καὶ θηρία (Ar., Ra. 143 ff., 278 ff.; we may also remember Verg., 245 A. vi, 273 ff., 285 ff., etc.): that Kerberos is among these terrors is suggested by Soph. as little as it is by Aristoph. in the Frogs. In fact, Soph. had spoken of him a few lines before (1569 ff.) in words which suggest anything rather than danger to those who enter Hades. Sophokles, then, cannot be made to serve as witness for the view that the Greeks thought of Kerberos after the manner of the two piebald dogs of the Indian Yama that terrify and drive back the dead. Further, there is no good evidence for a Greek tradition of two hounds of Hell. Nor can it be proved by the case adduced by Löschcke: the picture on a sarcophagus from Klazomenai of a naked boy holding a cock in each hand and standing between two (female) dogs that leap round him (in a manner suggesting play rather than anger). The picture can hardly have a mythical sense. This cannot give support to the view (as old as Wilford) that Κέρβερος is no other than one of the two piebald (çabala) dogs of Yama and a creation of primitive Indo-Germanic times. In any case, the evidence is weak enough. See Gruppe, Gr. Culte u. Mythen, i, 113–14; Oldenberg, Rel. d. Veda, 538 [= 459 Fr. T.].
7 Agatharch. p. 115, 14 ff. Müll., says that it is a popular belief τῶν οὐκέτι ὄντων τοὺς τύπους ἐν πορθμίδι διαπλεῖν, ἔχοντας Χάρωνα ναύκληρον καὶ κυβερνήτην, ἵνα μὴ καταστραφέντες ἐκφορᾶς ἐπιδέωνται πάλιν.
8 Cf. v. Duhn, Arch. Zeit. 1885, 19 ff.; Jahrb. arch. Inst. ii, 240 ff.
9 Charon’s fare (2 obols instead of the otherwise usual one—the difference not satisfactorily explained) is first mentioned in Ar., Ran. 140, 270. That this is the purpose of the money that was inserted between the teeth of the dead is frequently asserted by later authors. The many different names which were given to this “Charon’s penny” (καρκάδων, cf. Lobeck, Prol. Path. 351; κατιτήριον, δανάκη and simply ναῦλον: see Hemsterh. Lucian, ii, 514 ff.) show that this idea and the symbolism underlying it was a favourite subject of speculation. In spite of this we may doubt whether the custom of supplying the dead with a small coin has really arisen out of the wish to give them the fare-penny for the underworld ferryman. It is extremely doubtful whether Charon and his boat can have been figures of such clear dogmatic fixity as to have given rise to such a remarkable custom expressing itself in such a literal fashion. The custom itself, now, it seems, attested in Greece only from graves of a late period (see Ross. Archäol. Aufs. i, 29, 32, 57 Anm.; Raoul Rochette, Mém. de l’Inst. de Fr., Ac. des Ins. xiii, p. 665 f.) must be ancient (though no older than the use of coined money in Greece), and has held its own with the most remarkable tenacity in many parts of the Roman Empire to a late age—even through the Middle Ages to our own time (cf. among others Maury, La magie et l’astrol. dans l’antiq. 158, 2). It is not very hard to understand that it might be ingeniously connected with the poetical story of the ferryman of the dead, and this plausible explanation of the strange custom might then become a part of popular belief. The custom itself ought rather to have been brought into connexion with the practice common in many lands of satisfying the requirements of the dead by the gift of some diminutive and all but symbolical object which is offered at burial and put in the grave (see something of the kind in Tylor, i, 193–4). Parva petunt Manes: pietas pro divite grata est munere; non avidos Styx habet ima deos. The obol may be the last symbolical vestige of the entire property of the dead which the ancient law of the dead required to be placed undiminished in their graves. τεθνήξῃ . . . ἐκ πολλῶν ὀβολὸν 246 μοῦνον ἐνεγκάμενος: the epigram of Antiphanes Maced. (AP. xi, 168) expresses more nearly perhaps, though in sentimental language, the original and primitive intention of the gift of an obol, than does the fable of Charon’s penny (cf. AP. xi, 171, 7; 209, 3). According to German superstition “money should be laid in the mouth of the dead man so that if he has buried a treasure he may not return”, Grimm, p. 1785, n. 207. Here the undoubtedly ancient conception is quite clearly betrayed: that by giving a coin the property of the dead was bought up. The evidence for this first and proper meaning of the custom has been preserved in the strangest fashion, together with the custom itself, even down to the eighteenth century, when J. Chr. Männlingen voices it, Albertäten 353 (summarized in A. Schultz, Alltagsleben e. d. Frau im 18 Jh., p. 232 f.): this custom, common both to heathendom and Christianity, of putting a penny in the coffin of the dead “means that men buy up the property of the dead, whereby they think they will have good luck in their life”.
10 Ar., Tagenist. fr. 488, 9: διὰ ταῦτα γάρ τοι καὶ καλοῦνται (οἱ νέκροὶ) μακάριοι· πᾶς γὰρ λέγει τις, ὁ μακαρίτης οἴχεται κτλ., μακαρίτης, then, was already, by that time, a common expression for the dead which had lost its full sense and value, just like the German “selig” (which is borrowed from Greek). Strictly speaking it means a condition approaching the existence of the μάκαρες θεοὶ αἰὲν ἐόντες. The full meaning still appears in the appeal to the heroized Persian monarch: μακαρίτας ἰσοδαίμων βασιλεύς, Aesch., Pers. 633 (νῦν δ’ ἐστὶ μάκαιρα δαίμων, E., Alc. 1003); cf. also Xen., Ages. xi, 8, νομίζων τοὺς εὐκλεῶς τετελευτηκότας μακαρίους. Such passages allow us to see that μακάριος, μακαρίτης were not used of the dead in any sense κατ’ ἀντίφρασιν, as χρηστός sometimes is (Plu., Q. Gr. v, p. 292 B; though on grave inscr. it is generally meant in its proper sense); cf. εὐκρινής, Phot. Suid. μακαρίτης frequently occurs as applied to one lately dead in late writers: see Ruhnken, Tim., p. 59. Lehrs, Popul. Aufs2., p. 344. Doric form ζαμερίτας: Phot. μακαρίτας. μακαρία “Blessedness”, the land of the Blessed, i.e. the dead, is only used in a humorous sense in such phrases as ἄπαγ’ ἐς μακαρίαν (Ar. Eq. 1151), βάλλ’ ἐς μακαρίαν. So, too, is ἐς ὀλβίαν. ὡς εἰς μακαρίαν· τὸ εἰς ᾅδου, Phot. (μακαρία, the name of a sacrificial cake—Harp. νεήλατα—occurs in modern Greek usage as a cake used at funerals, Lob., Agl. 879).
11 The punishment of Ixion for his ingratitude to Zeus consisted according to the older form of the story in his being fastened to a winged wheel and then being whirled through the air. That Zeus ἐταρτάρωσεν him (Sch. Eur., Ph. 1185) must then be a later story or one which did not become current till later: not until A.R. iii, 61 f., is there any mention of Ixion in Hades, though after him frequently; cf. Klügmann, Annali d. Inst., 1873, pp. 93–5. (The analogy with the punishment of Tantalos and its displacement from the upper world to Hades is obvious; see Comparetti, Philol. 32, 237.)
12 Aesch., Eum. 273 f.; cf. Supp. 230 f. The fact that in this passage the poet says ἐκεῖ δικάζει τὰμπλακήμαθ’, ὡς λόγος, Ζεὺς ἄλλος simply shows that he is not simply following his own ideas in this fancy of a judgment in the other world (οὐκ ἐμὸς ὁ μῦθος). It does not in the least suggest (as Dieterich, Nek. 126, seems to think) that he is reproducing popular tradition or could be so doing. Only theological doctrines, at that time at least, knew anything of such a judgment in the future life upon the deeds of this: it is their λόγος that Aesch. is following (in this one point). See below, p. 425.
13 Gorg. 523 A ff. (whence Axioch. 371 B ff., etc.). When Plato 247 keeps closer to popular belief, in Ap. 41 A, he speaks of the judges in Hades, Minos, Rhadamanthys, Aiakos καὶ Τριπτόλεμος καὶ ἄλλοι ὅσοι τῶν ἡμιθέων δίκαιοι ἐγένοντο ἐν τῷ ἑαυτῶν βίῳ. He says nothing of a judgment given on the deeds done in this life, and clearly does not imply any decision as to the good or evil deserts of those who have just left the upper world and come down to Hades. We should be much rather led to suppose that those ἀληθῶς δικασταί, οἵπερ καὶ λέγονται ἐκεῖ δικάζειν exercise their powers as judges among the dead, too, and decide between them in their disputes just as Minos does in the Nekyia of λ 568–71, and as Rhadamanthys still does in Pi., O. ii, 83 ff., on the μακάρων νᾶσος. Only the number of those who have this wide authority below is extended (in Plato) almost indefinitely. The process seems to have been as follows: the allusions in the Odyssey were taken up and in the course of the elaboration of the picture of Hades the number was enlarged of those who like Minos are patterns of justice among the dead and give judgment among them. Then philosophico-poetical speculation (perhaps not without Egyptian influence) about a judgment in the next world handed over to this increased number of judges in Hades the office of judging the conduct during their lifetime of those who have just entered Hades.—The selection of judges is not hard to understand. Aiakos, Rhadamanthys, and Minos are regarded as patterns of justice: Dem. 18, 127. Minos as judge in Hades was taken from λ 568 ff. Rhadamanthys is known to δ 564 as dwelling among those who have been translated alive to Elysion. There he is—not judge: there is nothing there to judge, but—πάρεδρος of Kronos, acc. to Pi., O. ii, 83. As soon as men began to transfer Elysion to Hades (of which more later) Rhad. also found his place there. His fame as the most just of judges (see Cratin., Χείρωνες, 231 [i, p. 83 K.]; Pl., Lg. 948 B, etc.; cf. also Plu., Thes. 16 ad fin.) allowed him easily to find his place next to Minos as judge over the dead. Aiakos, too, as a model of εὐσέβεια (Isoc. 9, 14, etc.), lawgiver to Aegina, arbitrator among the gods themselves (Pi., I. viii, 24 f.), seemed naturally called to be a judge among the dead. His position as judge, however, was never so secure as that of Minos and Rhadamanthys. Pindar, though he often speaks of Aiakos and the Aiakidai gives no hint of a special position held by Aiakos in the next world. Isoc. 9, 15, λέγεται παρὰ Πλούτωνι καὶ Κόρῃ μεγίστας τιμὰς ἔχων παρεδρεύειν ἐκείνοις where nothing is implied as to his office of judge but merely to the honour done to Aiakos in being given a seat near the ruling pair (cf. Pi., O. ii, 83, of Rhad.; Ar., Ra. 765, there is a rule in Hades that the best artist λαμβάνει θρόνον τοῦ Πλούτωνος ἑξῆς. Proedria of the Mystai in Hades, etc.). Aiakos is κλειδοῦχος of Hades; [Apollod.] 3, 12, 6, 10; Epigr. Gr., 646, 4; P. Mag. Par. 1264 ff.; πυλωρός (cf. Hades himself as πυλάρτης, Θ 368) in Luc., D. Mort. 13, 3; 20, 1, 6; 22, 3; De Luct. 4; Philops. 25 and Philostr., VA. 7, 31, p. 385 K. “Holder of the Key” is an office of high distinction (suggested in the case of Aiakos perhaps by the cult offered to him together with chthonic powers): keys belong to many of the gods—Plouton himself, Paus. 5, 20, 3, and others; see Tafel and Dissen on Pi., P. 8, 4; in P. Mag. Par. 1403 comes the trimeter, κλειδοῦχε Περσέφασσα Ταρτάρου κόρη. It is difficult to believe that the attribution of this remarkable office of distinction to Aiakos was a later invention than the apparently commonplace office of judge. It seems, in fact, that Eurip. in the Peirithoos (fr. 591 N.) made Aiakos the first to meet Herakles as he entered Hades, i.e. probably at the gate itself. It can hardly be anything but a 248 reminiscence of Eurip. that suggested (not to Aristoph. himself—see Hiller, Hermes viii, 455—but to a well-read grammaticus) the name “Aiakos” as that of the person who meets Herakles at the very gate of Plouton in the Frogs (l. 464). Just because the story of Aiakos’ position as holder of the key at the gate of Hades was an old one and mentioned by respected authorities, the belief in his position as judge never quite prevailed, in spite of Plato.