Greek and Roman Folklore: A Handbook Graham Anderson Greenwood Press Greek and Roman Folklore Recent Titles in Greenwood Folklore Handbooks Folk and Fairy Tales: A Handbook D. L. Ashliman Campus Legends: A Handbook Elizabeth Tucker Proverbs: A Handbook Wolfgang Mieder Myth: A Handbook William G. Doty Fairy Lore: A Handbook D. L. Ashliman South Asian Folklore: A Handbook Frank J. Korom Story: A Handbook Jacqueline S. Thursby Chicano Folklore: A Handbook María Herrera-Sobek German Folklore: A Handbook James R. Dow Greek and Roman Folklore Q A Handbook Graham Anderson Greenwood Folklore Handbooks GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Anderson, Graham. Greek and Roman folklore : a handbook / Graham Anderson. p. cm. —(Greenwood folklore handbooks, ISSN 1549–733X) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–313–33575–3 (alk. paper) 1. Folklore–Greece. 2. Folklore–Rome. I. Title. II. Series. GR170.A543 2006 398.20938—dc22 2006011151 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2006 by Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006011151 ISBN: 0–313–33575–3 ISSN: 1549–733X First published in 2006 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Jack Zipes Contents Preface ix Abbreviations xi One “Or So People Say”: Some Defi nitions and Approaches 1 Two Fountains of Tradition: Some Sources of Folklore in Antiquity 27 Three Passing It On: The Transmission of Folklore 45 Four Traditional Forms: Folktale, Myth, Fairy Tale, Legend 63 Five Folk Wit and Wisdom: From Fable to Anecdote 91 Six The Personnel of Folklore: From Nymphs to Bogeymen 117 Seven Folk Customs, Luck, Superstition 135 Eight Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: The Natural World in Popular Perception 157 Nine Medicine and Magic 175 Ten Conclusion 189 Glossary 195 Bibliography 201 Web Resources 219 Index 223 Preface t has been some 80 years since William Halliday produced a short account Ientitled Greek and Roman Folklore. To attempt to cover the same ground now has presented this author with a challenge of compression. The amount of material available to Halliday and to H. J. Rose in the early part of last cen- tury was intractable enough, but the increase since the 1920s in theory alone has made a further survey increasingly necessary and increasingly beyond the scope of any single volume. This is all the more evident because classicists, in particular, tend to classify folkloric materials in so many other ways and tend to avoid folklore as a subject in its own right. I have set out to offer some overview of defi nitions of folklore and some limitations, ancient and modern, in the way we tend to approach it. It is then possible to view the basis or bases on which we are able to understand ancient folklore, from both written accounts, literary and nonliterary, and from the material survivals themselves. It is necessary also to discuss the problems of transmission over time of materials much older than those normally consid- ered by folklorists and from societies considerably more remote than, say, the rural populations of nineteenth-century Europe. On the materials them- selves we can begin with transmitted myths, folktales, legends, both local and migratory, and fairy tales: here a great deal of selection is necessary as well as continuous discrimination over the classifi cation of items as myth or folktale in particular. Less problematic, but even more varied, is the repertoire of smaller popular forms—jokes, riddles, anecdotes, and fables—which offer the small change of ancient popular culture but are very patchily documented for antiquity. We can then go on to examine some of the most distinctively x Preface folkloric characters—tricksters, satyrs, nymphs, demons, and bogeymen— who populate the world of ancient folklore and make its operations possible. We must also attempt to construct a series of overlapping contexts for the narrative material: we shall examine a cross section of traditional customs and their relation to popular belief and superstition and look, in a limited way, at the people who believe in them, as often as not through the distorting mir- ror of fi ction. We need also to examine some of the concepts relating to the animal, vegetable, and mineral aspects of that world; this will lead us, in turn, into the overlap between popular medicine and magic. The whole enterprise has given rise to a series of interlinking questions that recur, whatever the precise topic: What underlying assumptions can we notice in ancient attitudes to folkloric material, however we defi ne it? How often do confl icting methodologies prove a hindrance rather than a help? What tendencies are inherent in popular material and the way it is passed on? Some such questions may be no more capable of defi nitive solutions than questions like “why do we read horoscopes?” But they are always worth bearing in mind. The present work owes a great deal to friends and colleagues, past and present, and to others farther afi eld. Thomas Williams and Alex Scobie fi rst harnessed me to the study of folklore, while colleagues at Kent have greatly assisted in a variety of ways. I have also benefi ted enormously from the pub- lished work of William Hansen, Daniel Ogden, John Scarborough, and Roger French, in particular, as I have felt myself trespassing into specialisms well beyond my own. I also owe a great deal to the students in several years of classes on tale-telling and storytelling. AHRB and Leverhulme Awards spe- cifi cally on Arthurian and ancient kingship projects have also helped on the fringes. I also owe a great debt to the courtesy and patience of George Butler at Greenwood Press, who commissioned the book and supported it through numerous delays; to my wife Margaret, who knew when to distract me; and to the dedicatee, Jack Zipes, who has encouraged my forays into folkloristics from an early stage. Graham Anderson School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent Abbreviations AT Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale , 2nd ed. (1961) EM Enkyklopaedie des Maerchens , ed. K. Ranke FGrH F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker IG Inscriptiones Graecae JFR Journal of Folklore Research JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies LCL Loeb Classical Library LIMC Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae OCD Oxford Classical Dictionary , 3rd ed. (1996) PGM Papyri Graecae Magicae, ed. K. Preisendanz and A. Henrichs RE Realenkyklopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft RIB The Roman Inscriptions of Britain Q One “Or So People Say”: Some Defi nitions and Approaches Before we even begin to attempt a defi nition of folklore, I should like to offer what I hope all readers of this book would regard as a clear example of it: Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.617–625, 719–724 Lelex spoke, mature in years and wisdom: “The power of heaven is immense and boundless, and whatever was the will of the gods has been accomplished. And to dispel any doubt, in the Phrygian uplands there stands an oak side by side with a linden tree, and surrounded by a little wall. I myself have seen the site, for Pittheus sent me once to the lands ruled by his father Pelops. Not far from this place is a marsh, though at one time a place where people lived, but now water. To this day the Bithynian peasants of the area point out neighbouring trees from twin trunks. Sober old men told me this (they had no reason for wishing to deceive). Indeed I myself have seen the garlands hanging on the branches; placing fresh ones there myself I said: ‘those the gods look after are gods themselves; and those who worship are objects of worship.’ ” Ovid’s account of a local fl ood in Phrygia is given to Lelex, the ancient friend of Theseus, who claims to have seen the sacred trees into which Philemon and Baucis, the sole survivors of the disaster, were claimed to have metamor- phosed. An almost identical story is told of a woman who survived a local fl ood in the folk tradition of Yorkshire as being the only inhabitant of the district who had shown piety to a divine visitor. 1 It should not take long to isolate what elements of this tale might qualify it as folklore: it is an ancient and anonymous traditional story, delivered by 2 Greek and Roman Folklore a revered elder whose very name was synonymous in later antiquity with “aboriginal,” and it was orally transmitted, according to its frame story, in the hearing of some very mythological fi gures, including Theseus and the personi- fi ed river god Achelous, as a tale of ancient piety rewarded; it was then com- memorated when the metamorphosed couple were honored in their own right with what amounts to a tree cult. An ancient wisdom tale, then: it might be diffi cult to fi nd an example that we could record as more “folkloric” than that. But how do we actually know it is folklore? Or how can we defi ne folklore in such a way that this example will be securely included and much else left out? TOWARD A DEFINITION To fi nd a foolproof defi nition of folklore is as frustrating as trying to defi ne such elastic concepts as myth or magic, both of which it is often taken to include.