THE WITCHES' THESSALY

OLIVER PHILLIPS University of Kansas

My title, "The Witches' Thessaly," should be taken in the sense of "the Thessaly of Witches," not "the Witches of Thessaly." The focus rests on the reputation for sorcery of the geographical region of Thessaly in ancient Greece rather than on the ritual of "drawing down the moon" with which I shall initially associate Thessaly. I propose to investigate why Thessaly acquired a reputation for sorcery and at the conclusion will offer a suggestion. As for specific detail about drawing down the moon, D. E. Hill, Anne-Marie Tupet, and P.]. Bicknell covered this subject thoroughly, so that I shall repeat their findings as little as possible. 1 Thessaly was, and is, a largely level area of northeastern Greece bounded on north, west, and south by mountains but with access to the sea on the east. Its significance in ancient Greek history began and petered out early. Ancient Greeks, however, remembered Thessaly for its legends and legendary characters: the Centaurs, par­ ticularly Chiron, part of the career of Heracles, Jason with his Argo, and Achilles. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans from the late Classical age on Thessalian women had the reputation of being able to draw down the moon from the sky. The first surviving mention among the Greeks of the feat we can establish firmly-occurs in a joke in the comedy 7he Clouds by the late fifth-century BCE writer Aristophanes.2 In the play the central character Strepsiades, "the twister," tries vari­ ous "twists" to avoid paying the debts, or even the interest on the

I La magie dans la poesie Latine: I, Des origines alafin du regne d'Auguste. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1976, and "Rites magiques dans l'Antiquite romaine," ANRW II.l6.3, pp. 2591-2675, especially 2616, 2622,2631-33, 2665-67. D. E. Hill, "The Thessalian Trick," Rheinisches Museumfiir Philologie, 116 (1973), pp. 221-238; P.J. Bicknell, "The Dark Side of the Moon," lvfAISTOR: Classical, Byzantine and Renaissance Studies for Robert Browning. Canberra: The Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 1984, pp. 67- 75. 2 JoAnn Scurlock of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago calls my attention to one Akkadian reference: Erica Reiner, Astral Magic in Babylonia. Transac­ tions of the American Philosophical Society 85,4. Philadelphia: American Philosophi­ cal Society, 1995, pp. 97-10 l. She cites much of the classical material paralleled in this paper. THE WITCHES' THESSALY 379 debts, that his wastrel son has accrued. 3 In desperation he goes to the "Phrontisterion," the "think shop" run by the Socrates, whom Aristophanes presents as a sophist who teaches devious behavior. Socrates orders him to engage in what we would call "brain storm­ ing," only poor Strepsiades is better at "storm" than at "brain." He tosses off a suggestion thus: 4

I would buy a witch woman ("medicine woman," ap11aKi8(a)), a Thessalian, and take down the moon at night. Then I'd shut it up in to a round box like a face mirror, and then I'd keep it there. Socrates, puzzled, asks his pupil what good that will do him. Strepsiades responds: If the moon doesn't rise at all, then I wouldn't pay the interest. When Socrates asks how that is, Strepsiades cites Athenian commer­ cial code: Because debts are paid by the month ("by the moon," literally). Both Strepsiades and Socrates would have been aware that the first of the month was marked by the new moon, and on that day a debt or interest on it was due. Here an ancient scholiast comes to our aid, not with more about interest payment dates but about Thessalians. The text of the note reads:5 The Thessalians (masculine plural, in Greek) are slandered as being wiz­ ards (y6ryt£<;), and even yet among us, Thessalians (feminine plural now!) are called <1Japf.1aKi8£<; ("medicine women"). A curious variant in one of the manuscripts has instead of "Thessalians are called ap)..talctO£~" rather "they call apaJ..LalCtOE~ 'Thessalians."'6 This inversion shows the first instance of something we shall note increasingly, that "Thessalian" acquires the more gen­ eral sense of "magical" and loses any geographical determination. The scholiast goes on to explain the origin of the materia medica of Thessalian sorcery:

3 Hill, p. 238, finds significance in Strepsiades' suggesting the disappearance of the moon as a way to evade debt: "Verrier Elwin (Myths qf Middle India, Madras, 1949, p. 69) reports a number oflndian myths in which the sun or moon are said to be held as sureties for a debt, so that it may not be coincidental that our earliest classical reference to the Thessalian trick (Aristophanes Clouds 749-5 2) is also associ­ ated with debt while our last classical reference (Nonnus Dionysiaca 36. 344-49) at­ tributes the trick to brahmins." I find this unlikely. 4 Clouds 749-56. The translation is mine. 5 Scholia vetera in Nubes, to 749. 6 Version E.