Following the Dead to the Underworld an Archaeological Approach to Graeco-Roman Death Oracles

Home , Acheron, Cocytus, Lake Avernus, Styx

Chapter 10 Following the Dead to the Underworld An Archaeological Approach to Graeco-Roman Death Oracles

Wiebke Friese

But when in thy ship thou hast now crossed the stream of Okeanos, where is a level shore and the groves of Persephone – tall poplars, and willows that shed their fruit – there do thou beach thy ship by the deep eddying Okeanos, but go thyself to the dank house of Hades. There into Acheron flow Periphlegethon and Cocytus, which is a branch of the water of the Styx; and there is a rock, and the meeting place of the two roaring rivers. Thither, prince, do thou draw nigh, as I bid thee, and dig a pit of a cubit's length this way and that, and around it pour a libation to all the dead, first with milk and honey, thereafter with sweet wine, and in the third place with water, and sprinkle thereon white barley meal. And do thou earnestly entreat the powerless heads of the dead, vowing that when thou comest to Ithaca thou wilt sacrifice in thy halls a barren heifer, the best thou hast, and wilt fill the altar with rich gifts; and that to Teiresias alone thou wilt sacrifice separately a ram, wholly black, the goodliest of thy flock. But when with prayers thou hast made supplication to the glorious tribes of the dead, then sacrifice a ram and a black ewe, turning their heads toward Erebos but thyself turning backward, and setting thy face towards the streams of the river. Then many ghosts of men that are dead will come forth. (Homer, Odyssey 10.509–30. Trans. Murray)

Odysseus’s journey to the gates of the Underworld to question the dead seer Teiresias is the earliest as well as the most impressive literary account of ancient Greek necromancy (Figure 10.1). In fact Homer’s description of its sequence and its topography – the rock at the junction of the three rivers Acheron, Periphlegethon and Kokytos – appears to be so explicit that scholars are con- tinuously reconstructing historical settings for the plot at various places all over the ancient Graeco-Roman world.1 The Greek term nekyomanteion (a place of necromancy) was first mentioned in the fifth century bce by Herodotos to

1 On necromancy generally (also referring to Homer), see Hopfner 1924, 148–63; Cumont 1949, 96–108 and mainly Ogden 2001 (with older bibliography); Bremmer 2015 (on rituals and the terminology). On ghosts especially and with older bibliography, Johnston 1999. The main focus of all research lies on the literary material.

Figure 10.1 Odysseus consulting the shade of Teiresias. Lucanian red-figure kalyx krater in the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris, by Dolon Painter, c. 400–375 bce. from a. furtwängler and k. reichhold, griechische vasenmalerei, vol. 1, munich 1900, pl. 60.1. describe an “oracle of the dead on the river Acheron in Thesprotia.”2 The term was further used by Sophocles for a “Tyrsenian lake,” probably Lake Avernus near Cumae in Campania.3 In Roman times, Pausanias’ Periegesis reported of the “Aornum in Thesprotis, where of old was an oracle of the dead” while talking about the myth of the Thracian hero Orpheus.4 Plutarch associated the term with a particular historical topography, the “oracle of death at Herakleia” on the Black Sea coast – the place where the tyrant Pausanias was said to have consulted the ghost of Kleonike.5 Similarly used were the terms psychoman- teion (a seeing-place of the dead) and psychopompeion (a sending-place of

2 Herodotos 5.92, trans. Godley. Herodotos, though, does not mention Odysseus in this con- text. For a more detailed explanation of the term, see Ogden, 2001, xix–xxi. 3 Sophocles fr. 748. Also Strabo 5.4.5 and Diodoros of Sicily 4.22. 4 Pausanias 9.30.6. Translation by W.H.S. Jones et al. 5 Plutarch, Life of Cimon 6.