Mircea Eliade / Z ,4 L M 0 X I S In a celebrated passage Herodotus tells us what he had learned from the Greeks who lived beside the Hellespont and the Black Sea concerning the religious beliefs of the Getae and, more par- ticularly, concerning their god Zalmoxis. The Getae, says Hero- dotus, are "the bravest and most law-abiding of all Thracians" (4.93). They "claim to be immortal [and], this is how they show it : they believe that they do not die, but that he who perishes goes to the god [daimon]Salmoxis or Gebele'izis, as some of them call him" (4.94, trans. A. D. Godley, in Loeb Classical Library, vol. 11). Herodotus next describes two rituals consecrated to Zalmoxis : the sacrifice of a messenger, performed every five years, and the shooting of arrows during thunderstorms. JTe shall examine these rituals later. For the moment, let us read what else Herodotus had learned from his informants. "I have been told by the Greeks who dwell beside the Hellespont and Pontus that this Salmoxis was a man who was once a slave in Samos, his master being Pythagoras, son of Nnesarchus ; pre- sently, after being freed and gaining great wealth, he returned to his own country. Now the Thracians were a meanly-living and simple-witted folk, but this Salmoxis knew Ionian usages and a fuller way of life than the Thracians; for he had consorted with Greeks, and moreover with one of the greatest Greek teachers, This is a chapter from Zalmozis: The Vanishing God, translated from the French by Willard R. Trask and to be published by the University of Chicago Press in the spring of 1972. 257 Zalmoxis Pythagoras; wherefore he made himself a hall, where he enter- tained and feasted the chief among his countrymen, and taught them that neither he nor his guests nor any of their descendants should ever die, but that they should go to a place where they would live for ever and have all good things. m'hile he was doing as I have said and teaching this doctrine, he a-as all the while making him an underground chamber. IYhen this a-as finished, he vanished from the sight of the Thracians, and descended into the under- ground chamber, where he lived for three years, the Thracians wishing him back and mourning him for dead ; then in the fourth year he appeared to the Thracians, and thus they came to believe what Salmoxis had told them. Such is the Greek story about him. For myself, I neither disbelieve nor fully believe the tale about Salmoxis and his underground chamber; but I think that he lived many years before Pythagoras; and whether there was a man called Salmoxis, or this be the name among the Getae for a god of their country, I have done with him" (4.95-96, trans. A. D. Godley). As was only natural, this text made a great impression in the ancient world, from Herodotus's contemporaries to the last Neo- Pythagoreans and Neo-Platonists. It has been minutely com- mented upon and interpreted by scholars, and continues to be so in our day. Some of these interpretations will occupy us further on.1 For the moment let us single out the most important ele- ments : (a) Herodotus's informants especially emphasized the 1 The bibliography down to 1936, compiled by G. Icarazow, is given in his "Thrakische Religion," in Real-Encyclopuedie rler classischen dltertunlswissen- schuft, ed. Pauly-Wissowa, \'I, A I, zweite Reihe, XI Halbband (Stuttgart, 1936), esp. cols. 348 ff. See also Carl Clemen, "Zalmosis," Zalnlo.cis. Rewte des itudes religie~tses(Bucure~ti)2 (1939) :53-63 ;Jean Cornan, "Zalmosis. Un grand probleme ghte," ibid., pp. 79-110; I. I. Russu, "Religia Geto-Dacilor. Zei, credinte, practici religioase," dnuarul in~tit~ctuluide studii cltrsice (Cluj) 5 (1945):61-137, esp. pp. 81-10:! (pp. 66-74, bibliography, useful particularly for works published in Romanian); "Zalmosis," Real-Encgclopcce(iie, z~eiteReihe, XVIII (196i), cols. 2303-5 ; Friedrich Pfister, "Zalmoxis," in Stztrlies Presented to 11. ,V. Rohilz- son, ed. George JIylonas ancl Doris Raymond (Washington University, Saint Louis, 1953), 3: 1112-23. It would serve no purpose to repeat here the rich biblio- graphy on the protohistory ancl history of Dacia; we will list only a few inclispens- able books: \-asile Pkrvan, Geticu (Bucuregti, 1926); Dnciu: An Outline of the Early Cicrilizution of the Car)~atho-DunztI)ia~?Countries (Cambridge, 1938; see also the Romanian translation by Radu 17ulpe, 4th ed. [Bucuregti, 19671 with im- portant additions and critical bibliograpllics by the translator, pp. 169-"6): Istoria Rom&niei, vol. 1 (Bucuregti, 1961); D. Herciu and D. 31. Pippidi, Dirt istoria Dobrogei I: Geti pi Greci la 1)undren-de-jos rlin cele mai cechi timpuri pcind la c~ccerireu roman6 (Bucuregti, 1963); Hadrian Daicovici, Ducii (Bucuregti, 1965); R. 17ulpe, Aperciri getice in -1Izcntenicc (Bucuregti, 1966). It should be borne in mind that Herodotus gives us information only about the Getae ant1 the neighboring tribes (Terizoi, Crobyzi) of thc Pontic region. It is not until later, during the period of the Roman Empire, that authors begin to be interested in the Dacians who inhabited the Carpathians. 2-58 History of Religions fact that Zalmoxis had been Pythagoras's slave and that, after being freed, he devoted himself to acquainting the Getae with Greek civilization and his master's teachings; (b) the most essen- tial feature of Zalmoxis's "Pythagorean" doctrine was the idea of immortality, or more precisely of a blissful postexistence ; (c) Zal- moxis set forth this doctrine at banquets that he offered to the leading citizens in an andreon built for the purpose ; (d) during this time he had an underground chamber built, in which he hid for three years; thinking him dead, the Getae mourned him, but he reappeared in the fourth year, thus giving a startling proof that his teaching was true. Herodotus ends his account without com- mitting himself as to the reality of the underground chamber and without deciding if Zalmoxis was a man? or a divine being, but stating that, in his opinion, he lived many years before Pytha- goras. Except for one detail that seems incomprehensible-that is, the statement that the Getae mourned Zalmoxis after his disappear- ance (for how should they have concluded that he \% as dead if they did not find his body ?)-the account is consistent : the Hellespon- tine Greeks, or Herodotus himself, had integrated what they had learned about Zalmoxis, his doctrine, and his cult into a Pythago- rean spiritual horizon. That the Hellespontine Greeks, or Hero- dotus himself, had done this for patriotic reasons (how could such a doctrine possibly have been discovered by barbarians?) is not important. nThat is important is the fact that the Greeks were struck by the similarity between Pythagoras and Zalmoxis. And this in itself is enough to tell us of what type the doctrine and religious practices of the cult of Zalmoxis were. For the inter- pretatio graeca permitted a considerable number of homologa- tions with Greek gods or heroes. The fact that Pythagoras was named as the source of Zalmoxis's religious doctrine indicates that the cult of the Getic god involved belief in the immortality of the soul and certain rites of the initiatory type. Through the rational- ism and the euhemerism of Herodotus, or of his informants, we divine that the cult had the character of a JIystery religion. This may be the reason why Herodotus hesitates to give details (if- which is not certain-his sources had informed him); his discretion in regard to the Mysteries is well known. But Herodotus declares 2 The historical reality of a man who claimed to be Zalmoxis, who was a disciple of Pythagoras, and who tried to introduce "Pythagorean politics" into Dacia is maintained by Edward L. Minar, Jr., Earlg Pythagorean Politics in Practice and Theory (Baltimore, 1912), pp. 6 ff. The hypothesis is not convincing. 259 that he does not believe in the story of Zalmoxis as the slave of Pythagoras; on the contrary, he is convinced that the Getic daimon was by far the earlier of the two, and this detail is impor- tant. The andreon that Zalmoxis had built, and in which he received the principal citizens and discoursed on immortality, is reminiscent both of the chamber in which Pythagoras taught at Crotona3 and the rooms in which the ritual banquets of the secret religious socie- ties took place. Such scenes of ritual banquets are abundantly documented later on monuments found in Thrace and in the Danubian area.4 As for the underground chamber-if it was not an interpolation by Herodotus, who remembered a legend of Pythagoras5 that we shall now discuss-it is clear that its function was not understood. According to this legend, preserved in a satirical narrative by Hermippus that has come down to us only incompletely,6 Pythagoras retires for seven years (the seven-year period is given by Tertullian) into an underground hiding place. Following his instructions, his mother writes a letter (tablet), which he learns by heart before sealing. When he reappears, like a dead man returning from Hades, he goes before the assembly of the people and declares that he can read the tablet without break- ing the seal. After this miracle the people of Crotona are convinced that he had been in the underworld and believe all that he tells them about the fate of their relatives and friends. For Pythagoras, however, survival of the soul is only a consequence of the doctrine 3 Pierre BoyancB, Le czilte des Xuses chez les philosophes grecs (Paris, 1937), p.