Chapter XLV: Appendix: III

~_amu/êtoi, a/gamoi_~ AND DANAÏDES IN THE UNDERWORLD

In Polygnotos' picture of the underworld were to be seen the figures ~tô=n ou memuême/ôn, tô=n ta\ drô/mena Eleusi=ni en oudeno\s theme/nôn lo/gô|~--an old man, a ~pai=s~, a young and an old woman, who bear water to a ~pi/thos~ in broken pitchers: Paus. 10, 31, 9-11. The myth is evidently founded upon an etymological play on words--those who have neglected the "completion" of the holy ~te/lê~ and are ~atelei=s hierô=n~ (_h. Cer._ 482) must perform the vain labour in the realm of Persephone of carrying water in broken vessels: the ~Danaï/dôn hudrei/as _atelei=s_~ (_Axioch._ 371 E). It can only have been an oversight that made Pausanias forget to say that the ~pi/thos~ is ~_tetrême/nos_~, for this is essential to the story (see Pl., _Gor._ 493 BC; Philetair. ap. Ath. 633 F, 18 [2, p. 235 K.]; Zenob., _Prov._ ii, 6, etc.), and certainly cannot, as Dieterich, _Nekyia_, 70, imagined, be replaced by the ~kateago/ta o/straka~. That the ~ou memuême/noi~, the ~amu/êtoi~, as the inscription on the picture called them (Paus. § 9), were in fact those who had neglected the Eleusinian mysteries is only a conclusion of Pausanias' (or of his authority), as we see from the way he speaks in § 11; but it is probably the right conclusion. The Orphics took over the Eleusinian fable, but exaggerated it to the point of absurdity: they ~tou\s anosi/ous kai\ adi/kous koski/nô| hu/dôr anagka/zousi phe/rein~ in Hades (Pl., _Rp._ 363 D; _Gor._ 493 BC). In this they followed a hint given by a popular proverb--representing one of the ~adu/nata--koski/nô| hu/dôr phe/rein~ (which is also Roman: cf. Plaut., {587} _Pseud._ 102; as an "ordeal": Plin., _NH._ 28, 12). It is not until later (nor in surviving literature before the _Axiochus_, 371 E: though perhaps a little earlier on vase paintings from South Italy) that the story occurs in which it is the _daughters of Danaos_ who are punished in Hades by having to fill the leaking vessel. The reason given for this punishment is their murder of the sons of Aigyptos in the marriage bed: but why did the punishment take this particular form? Clearly in the case of the Danaides their non-fulfilment of an important ~te/los~ is requited in the ever ~atelei=s hudrei=ai~. Their marriage union was uncompleted through their own choice (thus marriage itself was often called a ~te/los~ and the wedding was preceded by ~prote/leia~ and compared with the ~te/lê~ of the mysteries). In this it is certainly implied that their deed had not been expiated, and they themselves had not found other husbands, but had as it were immediately after their impious deed been sent down to Hades (cf. Sch. Eur., _Hec._ 886, p. 436, 14 Dind.). The daughters of Danaos came to the underworld as ~a/gamoi~. To die before marriage was regarded as the height of ill-luck by the common people (cf. Welcker, _Syll. ep._, p. 49): the essential reason being that those who die thus leave behind them nobody who is called upon to keep up the cult of their souls (E. _Tro._ 380). Other ideas may have been vaguely combined with this. Thus, on the graves of ~a/gamoi~ a ~loutropho/ros~ was set up--a figure of a ~pai=s~ or a ~ko/rê loutropho/ros~, or a vessel called the ~loutropho/ros~ which has been identified with certain _bottomless_ vases (see Furtwängler, _Samml. Sabouroff_, on Pl. lviii-lix; cf. Wolters, _Ath. Mitth._ xvi, 378 ff.). Can this have referred to a similar fate awaiting the ~a/gamoi~ after their death, a fate such as was imputed to the Danaides in particular as mythical types of those who are ~a/gamoi~ by their own fault?--an ever unsuccessful carrying of water for the ~loutro/n~ of the bridal bath. (Dieterich, _Nekyia_, 76, with some probability takes this as the reason for the water-carrying.)

Of these two myths, was the one which appears later in order of time--the story of the Danaids--merely a subsequent development out of the earlier one (even said to occur on a black-figured vase), which told of the vain water-carrying of the _~amu/êtoi~_? I cannot be so sure of this as I once was. I cannot indeed admit (with Dümmler, _Delphica_, 18 ff., who, however, fails to prove an earlier date for the story of the Danaids' jar) that it would be difficult to imagine how a special class of human beings came to be replaced later on by certain mythical representatives such as the Danaids were. But it is a very suspicious fact that the Danaids do _not_ as a matter of fact represent the particular class of mankind--the ~amu/êtoi~--whose place they are supposed to have taken as their mythological representatives. They are not ~amu/êtoi~ at all, but _~a/gamoi~_. The ~a/gamoi~ and their ~atelei=s hudrei=ai~ in Hades must have been familiar in popular belief: in addition to this the mystical fable of the similar behaviour of those who had neglected the ~te/los~ of initiation may have sprung up, but certainly not as the model of the ~a/gamoi~ story, more probably as a subsequent {588} rehandling of it for the purposes of mystical edification. (The story of the ~a/gamoi~ has a much more primitive and popular flavour; and it alone gives a definite relation between the special labour of water-carrying in Hades and the nature of their default on earth.) The mythical fate of the ~a/gamoi~ was then forgotten owing to the competing interest of the story of the **~amu/êtoi~, which, in fact, absorbed it, when a poet--for a poet it must have been--took up what still-surviving custom and its accompanying legend applied to the ~a/g.~ in general and transferred it to the _Danaides_. This version of the myth was then victorious in the general consciousness both over the popular tradition about the ~a/gamoi~ and the mystery-fable of the **~amu/êtoi~.--It remains to be said that the Danaids (and the **~amu/êtoi~ too in a lesser degree) were supposed to be _punished_ by their ~atelei=s hudrei=ai~, This, so long as it was a matter of the ~a/gamoi~ simply, cannot have been the meaning of that fate of purposeless toil in their case any more than it was in the case of Oknos. Even Xenophon, _Oec._ vii, 40, lets us see that the vain toilers are not as a matter of fact intended to inspire horror, as sinners, but rather pity. His words are: ~ouch hora=|s, hoi eis to\n tetrême/non pi/thon antlei=n lego/menoi hôs _oikti/rontai_, ho/ti ma/tên ponei=n dokou=si? nê\ Di/', e/phê hê gunê/, kai\ ga\r tlê/mone/s eisin, ei tou=to/ ge poiou=sin~. This gives us the attitude of mind from which the whole story originally grew up.

APPENDIX IV

THE TETRALOGIES OF ANTIPHON

I ought not to have admitted the doubt suggested in chap. v, n. 176, as to the genuineness of the Tetralogies traditionally ascribed to Antiphon. I have examined more carefully the well-known linguistic variations between the Tetralogies and speeches i, v, and vi of Antiphon, and also the recently noticed divergences (see Dittenberger, _Hermes_, 31; 32) of the Tetralogies from Athenian law (for which the author, like the declamation-writers of later times, substitutes occasionally a "_ius scholasticum_"--a purely fanciful creation but one more suited to pleading _in utramque partem_). All these objections seem to me, on maturer consideration, insufficient to make us reject the identity--otherwise so well established--of the author of the Tetralogies with the author of the Speeches.