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Demeter, Baubo, Iacchus, and a Redactor

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Demeter, Baubo, Iacchus, and a Redactor DEMETER, BAUBO, IACCHUS, AND A REDACTOR BY M. MARCOVICH The mourning Demeter at Eleusis is persuaded to laugh, break her fast, and drink the cyceon either by the ritual jesting and jeering (aia- XPOÀO¡LOt, on the part of lambe, or by the equally ritual indecent exposure &vaJvpy6q) on the part of Baubo. The I main source for the former is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter 202-204,' and for the latter-Orphic Fr. 52 Kern. Baubo's anasyrma is preserved in two main sources: Clement, Protr. 20.1-21.1, and Arnobius, Adv. nat. 5.25-26. Now, in support of his words that Baubo avaa?El?E?a? -co ai8o?a xai &1tOOelXVúel Clement quotes an Orphic hymn consisting of five hexameters. Its text, in Stahlin's edition, reads as follows (Kern follows Stahlin's text): 1 &vecr6pecoP1M: &Vecr6pa.70P3Euseb. (Praep. ev. 2.3.34) / 8e7t?eEus. : 6CL?,xtP // 2 P ante corr. (ut vid.): P post corr. : flevM Eus. // 4 ?tei6rlaF-M Eus. : fJ.?tOr¡tcr?P ante corr. (ut vid.) : P post corr. Some one hundred years later (ca. A.D. 300), Arnobius translated Clement's text into Latin with some rhetorical embellishments of his own africitas.1 His text of the Orphic hymn, however, differs substan- tially from Clement's version, reading as follows :3 Sic effata simul vestem contraxit ab imo obiecitque oculis formatas inguinibus res: quas cava succutiens Baubo manu (nam puerilis ollis vultus erat) plaudit, contrectat amice. 295 5 Turn dea defigens augusti luminis orbes tristitias animi paulum mollita reponit: inde manu poclum sumit risuque sequenti perducit totum cyceonis laeta liquorem. 2 formatas inguinibusSabaeus (1543) :formata sanguinibus P / 4 ollis P : olli Sabaeus / amice Gelenius(1546) :amicae P / 7 poclum Sabaeus :poculum P / risuque Sabaeus :risu quem P The relationship between Clement's and Arnobius' version of Baubo's anasyrma is a quaestio vexata. Earlier scholarship is in Kern (ad Orph. Fr.52, p. 129). The most recent discussion is by Fritz Graf (1974).' He seems to reach a noncommittal non liquet conclusion: "So hatten denn Clemens und Arnobius jeder nur eine Facette der schillern- den Verse des Orpheus hervorgehoben. Von Bedeutung ist jedoch, dass sich Arnobius viel enger an das orphische Vorbild zu halten scheint, dass er mehr weiss, als er den Worten des Clemens entnehmen konnte..." (p. 199). Baubo's anasyrma in Clement and Arnobius deserves a closer look. In this paper, I shall argue the following points. (1) Clement's text as transmitted is corrupt, but can be emended: there are seven scribal er- rors in five Orphic hexameters. (2) Arnobius translates Clement's text into Latin, but he does not use the same text as Eusebius did: Arnobius' copy of Clement had a text altered by a redactor. (3) This redactor had misunderstood the sense of the word and he took 7)ev(both words in line 2) for a copula, thus understanding, -rÚ1tOç= As a conse- quence, he altered Clement's text in the second halves of lines 2 and 3, in order to eliminate the god Iacchus and make Baubo the sole subject of the sentence in line 3. (4) Since Arnobius' version is based on a distor- tion of Clement's text, its evidential value is null, leaving Clement as the only source. The relationship between Baubo's anasyrma, the Eleusi- 5 nian Mysteries and Thesmophoria is beyond the scope of this paper. (1) In my opinion, Clement's text should read as follows: .
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