Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece

CHAPTER 7. Purging the Polls

CHAPTER 7 Purging the Polls Erinyes, Eumenides, and Semnai Theai It is apparent that, given these adjectival names, the gods are as many as the moods of the worshipper, i.e., as his thoughts about his gods. If he is kind, they are Kindly Ones; when he feels vengeful, they are Vengeful Ones. Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1922) In two linear Btablets found in Knossos, the name Erinu—an early form of Erinys—appears along with early forms of the names Zeus, Athena, Enyalios, Paion, and Poseidon.1 That Erinu is a divinity of approximately equal stature to these others is hard to deny: not only is her name included alongside theirs without any apparent distinction, but on one tablet she is to receive an offering of oil, just like them. Cretan Erinu is, in a word, a goddess, a thea. The poet of the Odyssey still knew this centuries later, when he actually called Erinys a thea, and so did Aeschylus when he referred to the now pluralized Erinyes as theai.2 I chose to begin this chapter by emphasizing Erinys's original divinity because it compels us to recognize from the start that Erinys once was something quite different from the fearsome, demonic creature whom we tend to associate with her name in later centuries. Greek religion knows of no divinity who is completely negative, completely punitive , completely injurious.3 Nor, until very late times, does it envision any of its gods in forms that resemble the snakey-haired, pustulant, snaggle-toothed monsters into which Aeschylus converted the Erinyes for their stage debut in 458 B.C.E. Instead, the divinities of Greek reli250 1. Fh 390; Fp 1.8; V 52,. SeeNeumann; Heubeck, who transcribes the tablets. 2. Od. 15.2.34; A. Eu. e.g., 72.8, 82,5. 3. Although most contemporary scholars generally agree in understanding Erinys to have been something more complex than an utterly negative entity, there are still a few holdouts, e.g., Neumann 44-45. Purging the Polls 251 gion, like the humans whose personalities they mimic, have both positive and negative traits and behave now generously, now badly toward the mortals who depend upon them. They can be frightening upon occasion , but never appear in forms that are physically repulsive or grossly deformed. Such an appearance is rather the mark of creatures like those we discussed in chapter 5, or of such mythic monsters as gorgons and harpies. That Erinys was originally as complex as any other divinity is also suggested by the opacity of her name, for which, like most Greek gods' names, scholars can find no good, obvious etymology.4 As we have seen several times in this book, demonic creatures and monsters usually have transparent names that express their simple personalities: Mormo is literally the "Fearsome One"; Empousa is "She Who Impedes." Surely, if Erinys had never been anything more than a sort of moral bugbear, a demonic policewoman whose only mission in the divine order was to punish those who overstepped behavioral guidelines, her name would clearly reflect this role. In fact, there are several terms for divine or supernatural creatures that do convey such ideas: alastor ("avenger"), palamnaios ("long-remembering [of a crime]"), Praxidikai ("Workers of Justice"). The Erinyes occasionally are referred to by one of these terms, but they remain independent entities, which suggests that their identity was too complex to be completely subsumed within their role as remorseless avengers. Once we have examined Erinys's nature and functions fully, we shall be able to understand better both why Erinys did what she did in her most famous role as an agent and representative of the angry dead, and, by extension, how avenging the dead fit within the broader social code of the Greeks. ERINYES AND THE FAMILY In Homer, as we have already seen in chapter 4, Erinys and the Erinyes sometimes are associated with avenging the dead. At Althaea's request, for example, Erinys punishes Meleager for killing his uncle. It was this association that led Rohde and other scholars to conclude that the 4. Paus. 8.25.6 tells us that the word erinys is derived from the Arcadian verb erinuein, which means "to be angry" but this seems like a clear example of back formation. Further on etymologies, see Neumann; Burkert 1979, 127; Wiist, cols. 83-84; Harrison 1922, 213-14. 252...