Mystic Cults in Magna Graecia

Chapter 6. Imago Inferorum Orphica

Chapter 6 Imago Inferorum Orphica Alberto Bernabé Materials for an Analysis One of the features that most differentiates between Olympic religiosity and mystery cults in general (and particularly Orphic religiosity) is the image of the underworld. The religion of the polis is public and collective ; its rites, its sacrifices, its processions serve as an element of social cohesion, as a way of integrating the individual in the community. This “bent toward this world” of the Olympic religiosity is consistent with the negative appeal offered by its image of the underworld, a dark and sinister place, populated by ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα (Od. 10.521, etc.), ghosts without feelings. The Homeric image of Hades is so negative that a great hero like Achilles (Od. 11.489–491) says the following: I should choose, so I might live on earth, to serve as the hireling of another, of some portionless man whose livelihood was but small, rather than to be lord over all the dead that have perished. (Trans. G. Murray) Nobody, not even Achilles himself, is free of this dark and sad fate, common to all. Mystery cults, on the other hand, allow people a religious life, to which they gain access by free choice, through initiation and the celebration of certain rites (τελεταί).They present an underworld in which the believer can reach different states, better or worse, by performing certain acts during his or her lifetime. We have some data at our disposal that allow us to reconstruct a relatively coherent Orphic image of the underworld. Our information is both textual and iconographic. 96 Alberto Bernabé The textual information available is of three types: 1) the gold lamellae, which allude to the joyful fate of the initiates after death and present us with some of the characteristics of the underworld;1 2) other texts that attribute features of the afterlife, either to Orpheus or to anonymous τελεταί, and that complement the image offered by the golden lamellae, especially regarding the fate of the initiates or of those who fail in the journey of the soul to the meadow of the blessed; and 3) texts that talk about the underworld, without quoting the source of the expressed ideas, but that are fairly coincident with the scheme reconstructed from the texts of the other two types, and therefore seem to be related to the Orphic world or a very similar field. Iconographic information is problematic, and therefore it has been discussed whether there are parallels between the Orphic scheme of beliefs and the one shown by some pieces of Apulian pottery, specifically those that represent infernal scenes and some pinakes from Locri. For instance, Guthrie (1935: 187) denies the existence of such parallels, while Schmidt (1975: 129) considers that the Apulian vases representing Hades must be interpreted within an Orphic context, although she does not believe that they coincide with the world of the gold lamellae (cf. Schmidt 2000). Pensa (1977) dedicated a monograph to this topic with a well-balanced discussion of all relevant literature. Giangiulio (1994), for his part, has studied the relations between the religious and cultural thought of the gold lamellae , Apulian pottery, and the pinakes, as well as the Orphic-Pythagorean field. In this chapter I focus on the analysis of a concrete aspect: the reconstruction of the common features between the Orphic infernal imagery and the imagery presented by the quoted iconography (Apulian and Locrian ). However, it is not an iconographic analysis (which would be quite out of my professional expertise), but the attempt to reconstruct what we could call a common conceptual paradigm of the underworld expressed either in texts or in images, which has some points in common with the traditional Homeric one, but which differs from it in some fundamental features. In order to make the comparison easier, I itemize the different aspects. The Place and Its Characteristics We find in the text of the gold lamellae some verbs meaning “going down,” referring to the access of the soul to Hades, which obviously implies that Hades is situated in its traditional place, that is, beneath the earth.2 Some Imago Inferorum Orphica 97 passages also allude to its darkness.3 The iconography on its part presents Hekate or Persephone or the Erinyes bearing torches (almost always in the shape of a sail) and includes the infernal image of Cerberus and some mythical damned sinners, which tradition places beneath the earth (ex. gr. Ruvo 1094, Naples SA...