A gold-clad bronze krater of the fourth century BC, excavated at Derveni in Macedonia, is reminiscent of the golden amphora of Thetis. Both were vessels for holding wine and both were used to collect ashes from cremation. The Macedonian krater is decorated with a continuous frieze of Dionysiac images in high relief. Scenes around the belly of the vase include Dionysus himself and Ariadne with satyrs and maenads in a wild dance. Two Bakkhai sit on the shoulder of the vase, both sunk in deep sleep, each paired with a vigilant satyr. The same Lykourgos who attacked Dionysus in the Iliad appears in the frieze, raving here with a terrible madness imposed by the god (Gioure 1978: pls 11-16). Completely out of his mind, Lykourgos prepares to dismember his own little son, held aloft by an ankle in the grasp of a frenzied BakkhO. The scene tells us that the punishment of Dionysus is terrible and that Lykourgos suffered what he deserved, but why would anyone choose to be buried in a vase decorated with a scene like this?
The answer to this question begins in Hipponion, a small Greek city in the very south of Italy, where a tiny gold tablet inscribed with instructions for reaching the world of the dead was found in the grave of a woman in 1969. The text, dated about 400 BC, only a little earlier than the Derveni krater, gives detailed instructions for a scripted performance by the soul when confronted by the guardians of the underworld:
This is the task of Memory; when you are about to die... [line missing?]
Into the broad halls of Hades, there is to the right a spring:
And standing next to it a white cypress tree;
Arriving down there, the souls of the dead grow cold.
Do not go near this spring at all.
But in front of it you will find the cold water flowing forth from the lake of Memory; and guardians pass above.
But they will surely ask you, with their crowded thoughts, for what reason you seek out the darkness of dank Hades.
Say: ‘‘I am the child of Earth and Starry Sky, and I am parched with thirst and I am perishing.
But give me quickly cold water to drink from the lake of Memory.’’
And above all, they will announce you to the king under the earth.
And above all, they will give you to drink from the lake of Memory.
And what is more, when you have drunk, you will travel a road, a sacred road, which other famous mustai and bahkhoi also tread.
(from Riedweg 1998:395-6)
More than forty related Greek texts inscribed on gold tablets are known. Two identical tablets recently found at Pelinna, cut in the shape of ivy leaves, speak of Dionysus Lusios, ‘‘Dionysus the Releaser’’:
Now you died and now you were born, thrice blessed one, on this day,
Tell Phersephona that the Bacchic one himself has released you.
A bull, you leapt into the milk;
Suddenly, you leapt into the milk;
A ram, you fell into the milk.
You shall have wine as your blessed honor.
And ritual celebrations await you under the earth, and all the other blessed ones too.
(from Riedweg 1998:392)
The tablets from Hipponion and Pelinna now confirm that the whole corpus should be considered together under a single Dionysiac umbrella. Dionysus is concerned with the soul’s last journey to the world of the dead because, as a god of transitions, he bridges life and death. For the soul after death Plato describes a journey with two possible routes (Gorgias 523a-524a; Republic 614b-621d). The route to the left leads down beneath the earth to suffering, the route to the right leads to up to light and a vision of beauty (Republic 614c-616a). In Plato’s accounts the soul must face judgment. The gold tablets prepare the soul for a decision by providing a script. The titles mustai and bakkhoi in the Hipponion tablet assume prior preparation through ritual. Plato’s description of ritual madness, telestike mania, suggests the components of that ritual:
Madness, springing up and making prophecies to those for whom it was necessary, secured release from the greatest diseases and sufferings at one time arising from ancient causes of wrath in some of the families, having recourse to prayers and worship of the gods, whence, encountering purifications and teletai, it made healthy the one who had it for the present and for the future, finding release from the present evils for the one who rightly rages and is possessed. (Phaedrus 244d)
Plato associates telestike mania with Dionysus (Phaedrus 265b), the god who also provides release. Induced by katharmoi, ‘‘purifications,’’ and teletai, ‘‘solemn and special rites,’’ telestike mania is a beneficial mania with long-lasting results for the one who ‘‘rightly raves and is possessed.’’ Telestike mania of those who rightly rave implies the other mania, the destructive madness inflicted by Dionysus on those who abuse him. At Cumae in southern Italy a chamber tomb was reserved for those who had experienced Bacchic rites (Sokolowski 1962: no. 120, perhaps as early as the fifth century BC). The posted inscription implies that those already in the tomb considered themselves to be in a special category and did not want to compromise the purity they had achieved through special Bacchic ritual.
The gold tablets, found throughout the Mediterranean from Macedonia to Crete and from the Aegean to Italy (Cole 2003:202-3), provide evidence for a widely scattered constituency of Bacchic worshipers who performed Dionysiac teletai in preparation for death. The texts on the tablets exhibit so much variation in formulae that content must have circulated orally. The rituals these texts assume seem to have been spread by freelance practitioners, people like Aeschines’ mother, who performed teletai of Dionysus Sabazios in her own home (Demosthenes 18.259-60) or like the Orpheotelestai, ‘‘those who perform rites of Orpheus,’’ mentioned by Theophrastus ( Characters 16.11). Plato criticizes independent purveyors of religious ritual (Republic 2.364c), but bone tablets found at Olbia, on the north shore of the Black Sea, indicate how far their message could reach. Three of the bone tablets are inscribed: ‘‘Life Death Life; Truth; Dio[nysos]; Orphikoi,’’ ‘‘Peace War; Truth Lie; Dion[ysos],’’ ‘‘Dion[ysos] Truth; Body Soul’’ (Dubois 1996:154-5 no. 96; fifth century BC).
Some modern commentators identify the content of the gold tablets as ‘‘Orphic’’ (for instance, Graf 1993a and N. Robertson 2003). The Orphikoi (‘‘followers of Orpheus’’) at Olbia, with their interest in the opposition of body and soul, suggest a more complex situation than we can now evaluate (Burkert 1993:259-60), but there is no reason to identify Bacchic teletai as ‘‘Orphic.’’ In his essay on the soul Aristotle is careful to refer to Orphic poetry as ‘‘the poetry called Orphic’’ (On the Soul 410b28). If anything could be called ‘‘Orphic,’’ it would be a particular type of myth concerned with cosmogony and theogony, but there is no hard evidence for Orphic ritual. Freelance practitioners (‘‘itinerant charismatics,’’ Burkert 1993:260), do not produce consistent or clearly stated doctrine, and even ancient commentators are wary of attaching labels to cult practice.
Bacchic teletai must have created bonds between participants, but we do not know how ties were maintained. The tiny gold tablets, found in graves of both males and females, are thickest in the fourth century and continue through the second century BC, with only a very few dated later. In the hellenistic and Roman periods, however, independent private organizations celebrating mysteries of Dionysus were springing up all around the Mediterranean. These Bacchic groups recognized no central ritual authority. Each local group handled its own organization, chose its own priests and officers, and managed its own budget. Individual status was based on a hierarchy of secret rites called musteeria or teletai, terms that should have implied serious and restricted rites. Inscriptions rank members according to categories with titles like bakkhoi or bakkhai, bakkheastai, iobakkhoi, arkhibakkhos, mustai, summustai, arkhi-mustai, neomustai, arkhaios mustes, thiaseitai, narthekophoroi (narthex-carriers), thur-sophoroi (thursos-bearers), or boukoloi (cowherds). Titles varied from place to place, and there were no rules about the actual content of local rites. Groups were called thiasos, speira, bakkheion, bakkhikos thiasos, or simply Dionysiastai. Some groups may even have claimed ceremonies that guaranteed protection after death, but we cannot vouch for such a claim because gold tablets and Bacchic groups attested epigraphically do not occur together.
The people who took gold tablets to the grave were discreet. They did not need to advertise their ritual status on their tombstones. Reference to Bacchic teletai in epitaphs, therefore, is rare and ambiguous (Cole 1993b). The person whose ashes were buried in the gold-covered krater at Derveni claimed no special Bacchic status. The scene on the krater depicting Lykourgos raving with the wrong kind of Bacchic mania did not have to be made public because the eyes for which the scene was intended were not mortal. The subject was chosen by one who understood that those who had experienced the telestike mania of Dionysus could expect to tread the road with the other bakkhoi and mustai. Having ‘‘rightly raved’’ in special ritual service to Dionysus, they ‘‘had been made healthy for the present and for the future.’’
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
Carpenter and Faraone 1993 introduce modern scholarship on Dionysus. For the problems of understanding Dionysiac ritual, Henrichs 1978 and 1982 are fundamental. Otto 1965 (original edition 1933) is still the most engaging single-volume study. Seaford 1996 publishes Diggle’s text (with modifications) of Euripides’ Bacchae together with English translation and commentary designed for students. Dodds 19602 should not be ignored, and readers of Seaford will find much to ponder in Rainer 2000. Versnel 1990 includes a long chapter on Dionysus.
Le Guen 2001 and Aneziri 2003 collect and comment on the inscriptions concerning the Dionysiac Technitai, and Jaccottet 2003 has collected inscriptions of local Bacchic associations and their members. The essays in L’Association dionysiaques 1986 cover Dionysiac issues in the hellenistic and Roman periods.
Dionysiac iconography has been well served by Carpenter 1986 and 1997a, Frontisi-Ducroux 1991 and 1995, Hedreen 1992, Isler-Kerenyi 2004, and Lissarague 1990b. Henrichs 1987 presents a well-balanced critical discussion of the problems of interpreting Dionysiac imagery.
For focused studies Casadio 1994 on the Argolid and Casadio 1999 on Corinth, Sicyon, and Troizen define local issues. R. Hamilton 1992 concentrates on the Anthesteria and collects the relevant the Greek texts.
Riedwig 1998 provides up-to-date, edited texts of ten of the gold tablets. For an introduction to the tablets, see Cole 2003 and Graf 1993a, and for the relation between Orphic mysteries and Dionysiac ritual, N. Robertson 2003. Lada-Richards 1999 argues that initiation ritual shaped Aristophanes’ Frogs, and Edmonds 2004 discusses the gold tablets as records of personal belief and Bacchic ritual as a means of achieving a new identity. Burkert 1987a is crucial for analysis of Dionysiac mysteries. Merkelbach 1988 covers these mysteries in the Imperial period, providing a collection of relevant reliefs and mosaics.
World History
