14 This is obviously Attic invention. Plato certainly mentions Triptolemos in addition to Minos and the other judges. But it seems that to the Athenians Minos was unacceptable as a type of justice (he was, especially on the stage, the object of bitter attacks as an enemy of the country; see Plu., Thes. 16). and they tried to substitute their own Triptolemos for him in the triad of judges. Thus we find Triptolemos not beside Minos but in his place in a picture of the underworld on a vase from Altamura (Tript. Aiak. Rhad.), and in an analogous picture on an amphora at Karlsruhe (Aiak. Tript., the left side is broken off but prob. represented Rhadamanthys not Minos). Cf. Winkler, Darst. d. Unterwelt auf unterital. Vasen, p. 37. For the rest, nothing suggests that the three judges on these vase-pictures pass judgment on the deeds of men done in their lifetime: in strictness nothing is implied about their giving judgments. What is certain is simply that they, as types of justice, ἐπὶ ταῖσι τοῦ Πλούτωνος οἰκοῦσιν θύραις (like the Mystai in Ar., Ra. 163): they enjoy the rights of πάρεδοι of the divine pair, and hence they are seated on θρόνοι or δίφροι.

15 Ar., Ra. 145 ff., 273 ff. “Darkness and mud,” σκότος καὶ βόρβορος, as manner and place of punishment for ἀμύητοι καὶ ἀτέλεστοι, are derived from Orphic teaching: Pl., Rp. 363 D; Olympiod. on Pl., Phd. 69 C. By an inaccurate extension of meaning this fate was said to threaten all ἀτέλεστοι without distinction: Plu. π. ψυχῆς ap. Stob. Fl. 120, 28 (4, 108, 2 Mein.); Aristid., Eleus., p. 421 D. = ii, 30 Keil; Plot., 1, 6, 6. Plotinos undoubtedly has the right interpretation of the reason for this strange form of punishment: the mud in which the uninitiated lie marks them out as μὴ κεκαθαρμένους who have not shared in the purifications such as were offered by the Orphic initiation ceremonies. Hence they remain fixed for ever in their original foulness (and in darkness because of their ignorance of the θεῖα). It is, in fact, an allegorical punishment which has no meaning outside the range of Orphic doctrines of katharsis and atonement. Aristoph. transfers it to those who have seriously transgressed the laws of city or religion, for whom it was unsuitable: this only shows that an appropriate penalty in Hades for crimes against civil society had not yet been invented. It had evidently been thought sufficient to say generally that the ἀσεβεῖς (or at least the more heinous offenders) would be punished in Hades. This commonplace form of the opinion is probably to be regarded as a final echo of some definite theological doctrine which had become vulgarized and emptied of distinct meaning among the general public of the profane. The author of the first speech against Aristogeiton ([D.] 25) who speaks of the εἰς τοὺς ἀσεβεῖς ὠσθῆναι in Hades (53), confesses himself an adherent of Orpheus (11).—The μεμυημένοι dwell in Hades next to the palace of Plouton himself: Ar., Ra. 162 f., where they have the privilege of προεδρία, D.L., vi, 39. When a distinction between a χῶρος εὐσεβῶν and a χῶρος ἀσεβῶν in Hades began to be made, the initiated, in order that they might not be deprived of their privileged position, were given προεδρία in the χ. εὐσεβῶν. In this way, e.g. the author of the Axioch. 371 D (who 249 can hardly have written before the third century) tries to reconcile the hopelessly contradictory pretensions of the εὐσεβεῖς and μεμυημένοι to reward in Hades.

16 Sex. Emp., M. ix, 53. Suid. Διαγόρας.

17 Descents to Hades occurred in the Κραπάταλοι of Pherecr. (i, p. 167 K.); the Βάτραχοι and Γηρυτάδης of Ar.; [Pherecr.] Μεταλλ. (i, p. 174 K.); and probably also in the Τροφώνιος of Cratin., etc.—On a vase from Eretria, fifth century, there is a representation of a repulsive scene of torture; an old woman, naked and tied to a tree, is being tortured by three satyrs. This, according to J. Zingerle, Archäol. epigr. Mittheil. a. Oesterreich, 18, 162 ff., is a parody of some incident from a comedy of the time, the plot of which was laid in Hades. But nothing in the picture suggests that the lower regions are the scene of this gruesome affair; and what would the satyrs be doing there?

18 Utopian existence in Hades; see in partic. [Pherecr.] Μεταλλ. (i, p. 174 K.). A pretext for such parodies was perhaps given by the Orphic promise of an everlasting carouse for the initiated at the συμπόσιον τῶν ὁσίων in Hades (Pl., Rp. ii, 263 C, μακάρῶν εὐωχία, Ar., Ra. 85). Many details were borrowed from the descriptions of the reign of bliss upon earth in the golden age under Kronos’ rule which had long been a familiar subject of comedy (cf. Pöschel, Das Märchen vom Schlaraffenland, 7 ff.). The golden age in the dim past and the land of Elysion in the future always had many features in common. (See above, chap. ii, n. 49.) From these traditional pictures of a spirit-world only to be met with in the long-vanished past or in the next world, the whole Greek literature of imaginary Utopias drew its sustenance (see my Griech. Roman, ii, § 2, 3). That literature was really an attempt to transpose those early fantasies of a land of spirits into real life and on to the inhabited world.

19 ἔστι γ’ εὐδαίμων πόλις παρὰ τὴν ἐρυθρὰν θάλατταν, Ar., Av. 144 f. (cf. Griech. Roman, 201 ff.).

20 λίμνη (the Acherousian lake: Eur., Alc. 443, and often afterwards). Charon: Ar., Ra. 137 ff., 182 ff., 185 ff.—σκότος καὶ βόρβορος 144 ff., 278 ff., 289 ff. Abode and life of the Mystai: 159, 163, 311 ff., 454 ff.

21 τὸ Λήθης πεδίον, l. 186. This is the earliest reference to Lethe of which we can be quite sure; but it is made so casually that it is obvious that Aristoph. is merely alluding to a story well known to his audience. Plato makes use of the Λήθης πεδίον together with the Ἀμέλης ποταμός (hence 621 C: Λήθης ποταμός) in the myth at the close of the Republic, x, 621 A, which is intended to illustrate and support the theory of palingenesia. Of course, this ingenious fancy was eminently suitable for use by adherents of the doctrine of metempsychosis; but there is nothing to show that it had been actually invented for the special benefit of this doctrine, i.e. by Orphics or Pythagoreans—as many have supposed. It is probable that it was nothing more originally but an attempt to explain symbolically the unconscious condition of the ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα. Does Theognis already (704, 705) refer to it?—Περσεφόνην . . . ἥτε βρότοις παρέχει λήθην, βλάπτουσα νόοιο. Other references to the Λήθης πύλαι, Λάθας δόμοι, Λήθης ὕδωρ are all later; the Λήθης θρόνος in the account of Theseus’ journey to Hades in [Apollod.] Epit. i, 24, is perhaps taken from older legendary material. (Bergk’s assertion, Opusc. ii, 716: “The conception of Lethe’s fountain and stream is certainly ancient and popular: the well of Lethe is nothing but the fountain of the gods: whoever drinks of it forgets all sorrows, etc.,” 250 is entirely devoid of foundation in fact.) The river of Lethe was in later times localized on earth like Acheron and Styx; in the R. Limia of Gallaecia—far away on the western sea—men rediscovered the Oblivionis flumen (account of the year 137 B.C.: Liv., Epit. 55; Flor. 1, 33, 12; App., Hisp. 72: Plu., QR. 34, p. 272 D; cf. Mela, 3, § 10; Plin., NH. 4, § 115. Absurd aetiology in Strabo, p. 153).

22 This is presumably the meaning of the words which Pausanias (10, 28, 5) uses: his absurd mannerism makes him talk round the incident instead of simply describing it. (Much too artificial explanation of the circumstance in Dümmler, Delphika, p. 15 [1894].)

23 Paus. 10, 28, 4.

24 See Appendix iii.

25 Eurynomos: dark-blue body like a bluebottle, with prominent teeth, sitting on a vulture’s skin, Paus. 10, 28, 7. There seems to be no mention of him in literature: whether the statement of Pausanias that he was a δαίμων τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου who eats the flesh of corpses off their bones, is anything more than a guess, we cannot tell. The vulture-skin indeed suggests that the nature of the Daimon who sits on it was related to the vulture. The fact that the vulture eats the flesh of corpses was often observed by the ancients (see Plu., Rom. 9, etc.: Leemans on Horapollo, p. 177). Welcker (Kl. Schr. v, 117) sees in Eurynomos nothing but the “corruption” of the body, in which case he would be a purely allegorical figure. On the contrary he is much more likely to be one of those very concretely imagined spirits of Hell (only with a euphemistic name), like the lesser spirits Lamia, Mormo, Gorgyra, Empousa, etc. (a word about them will be found below, Append. vi). The artist must have known him from some local tradition. He devours the flesh of the corpse: thus a late epigram (Epigr. Gr. 647, 16) calls the dead λυπρὴν δαῖτα Χάρωνι. Even in Soph., El. 542, we have; Ἅιδης ἵμερον τέκνων τῶν ἐκείνης ἔσχε δαίσασθαι (Welcker, Syll., p. 94).

26 Paus. 10, 28, 3. Cf. O. Jahn, Hermes, iii, 326.

27 The third century vase-paintings from Southern Italy also as a rule keep within the limits of the epic Nekyia. In addition to the few special types of the sinners undergoing punishment in Hades (Sisyphos, Tantalos, the Danaids) we have allusions to the journeys to Hades of Theseus, Peirithoos, Herakles, and Orpheus. All attempts to read mystical or edifying intentions into these (as in Baumeister’s Denkm. 1926–30) are now regarded as completely mistaken. (Orpheus appears there not as founder and prophet of his mysteries but simply as the mythical singer who goes down to the underworld to rescue Eurydike with his singing. This is rightly maintained by Milchhöfer, Philol. 53, 385 ff., 54, 750 f., against Kuhnert, Arch. Jahrb. viii, 104 ff.; Philol. 54, 193.) Nothing at all is suggested as to the fate of mankind in general. On a vase from Canosa a father and mother with a boy stand on the left of Orpheus: this, too, must belong to the region of mythology. (They cannot, however, be Dionysos and Ariadne as Winkler suggests, Darst. d. Unterw. auf unterit. Vasen, 49. But it is difficult to imagine that they can be a family of Mystai as Milchhöfer supposes.)