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CHRISTOPHER A. FARAONE

Classical Antiquity. Vol. 23, Issue 2, pp. 209-245. ISSN 0278-6656(p); 1067-8344 (e).

Copyright © 2004 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct

all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of

California Press"s Rights and Permissions website at www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.Hipponax Fragment 128W:Epic Parody or Expulsive Incantation?

Scholars have traditionally interpreted Hipponax fragment 128 (West) as an epic parody designed to belittle the grand pretensions and gluttonous habits of his enemy. I suggest, however, that this traditional reading ultimately falls short because of two unexamined assumptions: (1) that the meter and diction of the fragment are exclusively meant to recall epic narrative and not any other early hexametrical genre, and (2) that the descriptive epithets in lines 2 and 3 are thead hoccomic creations of the poet and simply refer to the table manners of a glutton or a parasite. I argue instead that this fragment in several ways reXects the language, the meter and the performative goal of hexametrical chants or incantations designed to expel harmful famine demons or to escort human scapegoats from the city. I also suggest that the vivid and somewhat comic descriptions of the enemy in fragment 128 probably do not aim at his personal eating disorders, but rather they are drawn from two interrelated and generic features of archaicGreek thought: a tradition of describing famine-demons as insatiable eaters, and a popular theme in Greek invective which demonizes political enemies as rapacious pests who threaten to gobble up the commonwealth of the city and who therefore must be expelled from the community, precisely like a famine-demon. In the twelfth book of his lost treatise on the writers of parodies, the learned Hellenistic antiquarian Polemon of Ilium praised the poetsBoeotus and Euboeus Various sections and versions of this article were presented at the 1995 Meeting of the American Philological Association in San Diego, then again in 1998 atPrinceton University and at the University of Basel andWnally at a symposium on the ritual background to ostracism held at the University of Chicago in May of 2000. I would like to thank my hosts for their hospitality and my audiences for the many thoughtful comments and questionsthat I received at each venue. I am also indebted to Christopher Brown, Sara Forsdyke, Robert Fowler, Douglas Gerber, JeV Henderson, Doug Olson, Ralph Rosen and other anonymous referees for their comments, criticisms and encouragement on earlier drafts. The blemishes that remain are my own.

classical antiquityVolume 23/No. 2/October 2004210as the masters of the genre of parody,1but he named Hipponax as its inventor:2

1 Ε?ρυμεδοντι?δεωWilamowitz2 ?γγαστριμ?χαιρανlibri praeter E;?ν γαστρ?

μ?χαιρανWest3 ?κακ???Cobet;?κακ???Musurus;?κρυφε???West?ληταιcodd.;

?λε?ταιCobet To be sure, we must assert that Hipponax the iambic poet is theinventor of the genre, for he says in his hexameters: Tell me Muse of the oVspring of the One-Who-Rules-Widely, the Sea- Swallower, the Knife-in-the-Belly, who eats without limit-in order that ?the wretch?may lose his wretched life by stoning (chased) down to the shore

3of the fruitless sea, according to the wish of the people.

It is clear from what follows in Athenaeus (who is our ultimate source here) that he and probably Polemon himself believed fragment 128 to be a parody of an epic narrative, and modern scholars have almost universally followed suit,4 pointing out how each line ends with a "Homeric tag" and how the invocation

(Μο?σ? μοι...?ννεφ?) reXects the opening lines of a number of extant epic

poems.

5Indeed all modern interpreters argue or assume that the humor of the

piece lies in the contrast between the elevated "epic" meterand language of the opening and the subsequent content: the ponderous, "comic"epithets and the goal of the complete destruction of Hipponax"s enemy.

6Thus, instead of fulWlling the

1. Polemon fr. 76 [Preller]apudAthenaeus 698b. For the identiWcation of Polemon see

Deichgra¨berRE9 (1952) 1307-1308 andOCD3s.v.

2. Hipponax fr. 128W

2(= fr. 126 Degani2). I follow Gerber and others in rendering?πω?

...?ληταιas a purpose clause; see note 6 below.

3. For the translation ofπαρ? θ?ναas "(chased) down to the shore," see LSJ s.v., who discuss

the use ofπαρ?+ accus. to indicate position just after a motion towards theplace.

4. E.g. Brandt 1888: 31-36; Pianko 1951; Masson 1962: 168-70; de Sousa Medeiros 1969:

54-56; Gerber 1970: 300-302; Degani 1973/1974; Tedeschi 1979; Guida 1994; and Olson and Sens

1999: 6.

5. The "Homeric" language occurs at the end of the last three verses and is noted in all the

standard commentaries from Brandt 1888 onwards:ο? κατ? κ?σμον(cf.Od. 20.181); the curse atIl.

3.417 (σ? δ? κεν κακ?ν ο?τον ?ληαι)is very similar in sound and sense toκακ?ν ο?τον ?ληται.

Forπαρ? θ?ν? ?λ?? ?τρυγ?τοιοat line end see e.g.Il. 1.316. The parallels to the opening lines of

extant epic narratives have sometimes been "clariWed" by the process of scholarly emendation, e.g.,

Wilamowitz"Ε?ρυμεδοντι?δεωin line 1, based onΠηληι?δεωIl.1.1. West 1974: 148 points out,

however, that theWrst line is closer to the invocation in the HomericHymn to Aphroditeand the

Contest between Homer and Hesiod.

6. For death as the immediate goal of the song (my position), see Masson 1949. For death

as the ultimate purpose, see Gerber 1970: 301 ("i.e. make known his gluttony so that the public will faraone:Hipponax Fragment 128W211 audience"s expectation of an epic narrative of heroic exploits, the poet goes on to castigate his enemy for his gluttony and to predict or describe his destruction. Hipponax"svictimisidentiWedbypatronymicasEurymedontiades, butthealleged name of his father-Eurymedon or "The One-Who-Rules-Widely"-has a fairy- tale quality to it. It is a popular name for giants, serves in archaic poetry as an epithet of Kronos, Poseidon, Hermes and Perseus, and is (like "Creon" in Greek tragedy) a common name for legendary kings;

7thus it may simply be an abusive

moniker for the son of a rich and powerful man, who was perhapsnamed more explicitly later in the lost portion of the poem. In this traditional reading, then, Hipponax invokes the epic Muse to sing about a glutton, in order that he might perish by "a pebble"-a rather vague reference that can embrace both the public stoning of apharmakosand the public vote (by black or white pebbles) to destroy a man"s career by sending him into exile. 8 This is a rich and useful line of interpretation, and indeed Ishall retain some important parts of it in my own; but it does not explain why Hipponax should frame his attack as a parody of an epic narrative. Is hepoking fun at both the genre and the man? Indeed, if the goal is to equate an enemy with the hapless and often uglypharmakos, why not simply attack him in the usual iambic manner, as Hipponax apparently did in fragments 5-10 (all choliambics), which the Byzantine scholar Tzetzes quotes as evidence for one of the more bizarre and violentpharmakos-rites, during which the ugliest man in the city was loaded down with simple foodstuVs,Xogged on his genitals and then killed.9Most of the fragments he cites, in fact, seem to come from a poem in which Hipponax apparently exhorts the city to expel and kill someone (presumably a personal enemy of his) just as they would apharmakos. This is most clear in fragment

7,δε? δ? α?τ?ν ?? φαρμακ?ν ?κποι?σασθαι("It is necessary to make him into

apharmakos"), and it seems very likely that two of the other fragments with condemn him") and Degani 1973/1974: 199. West 1974: 148, on the other hand, defends emending the verb to the future and suggests that the Muse is asked to make "a prediction of misfortunes." For an explanation of the subjunctive in a construction other than a purpose clause, see: Campbell

1982: 376 ("has the force of a future indicative"), who also summarizes the explanations of Gulick

("borders on indirect discourse") and Hartung ("the equivalent ofε?θε...?λοιτοi.e. a curse)."

7. E.g. PindarOl. 8.31, Ap. Rh. 4.1514 and Hesychius s.v. "Eurymedon." SeeLIMCs.v.

"Eurymedon" for a fuller list. West 1966 adTh. 239 notes that compounds with the preWx Eury- are common epithets of maritime deities such as Triton and Poseidon.

8. See e.g. West 1974: 30 ("parody"); Gerber 1970: 300 ("In these four hexameters on a

glutton, Hipponax parodies Homer"); Knox 1989: 118 ("a hexameter passage satirizing a glutton ... a ludicrous travesty of Homeric style"); andOCD3712 ("one glutton is made the object of an epic parody") and 1114 ("four burlesque verses on a parasite"). Masson 1949: 315-19, followed by e.g. Koenen 1959: 112-14, suggests that the victim is actually a woman named Arete (a girlfriend of Hipponax"senemy Bupalus) and that the poem was speciWcally a parody of theOdyssey. See Roux

1964 for the double meaning of "pebble" and "vote," which Gerber 1970: 302 "Wnds attractive";

Rosivach 1987: 236 n. 14 interpretsψηφ?δι...?ληταιas "destroyed by a decree."

9. TzetzesChiliades5.737-39; for discussion, see Versnel 1978: 37-45 and Bremmer 1983:

300-301 and 317-18, who thinks that Hipponax"s nearly unique account of a very violent and fatal

ritual is exaggerated for poetic purposes.

κα? τυρ?ν, ο?ον ?σθ?ουσι φαρμακο?,"and to provide within his grasp driedWgs,

barley cake and cheese, such aspharmakoieat" (fr. 8), andπ?λιν καθα?ρειν κα?

κρ?δη?σι β?λλεσθαι, "(it is necessary for him) to purify the city and to be struck

withWg branches" (fr. 5).10The last fragment quoted by Tzetzes (fr. 10) contains a wish that "he be led as apharmakosandXogged seven times on his manhood" (?ν

δ? τ?? θυμ?? / φαρμακ?? ?χθε?? ?πτ?κι? ?απισθε?η).Thus Hipponax exhorts his

countrymen to treat the subject of his iambic poem as apharmakos, a demand that is-as we shall see at the end of this essay-also quite common in Attic oratory and comedy of the classical period. The goal is two-fold: to identify a fellow citizen as a scapegoat or a destructive demon, and then run him out of town and perhaps kill him. This fairly well documented iambic tradition, then, raisesthe question of genre: if-as fragments 5-10 suggest-Hipponax already had available to him an iambic tradition of urging his countrymen to expel a fellow citizen as a pharmakos, why in fragment 128 does he turn to hexameters to accomplishthe same goal? In the past, scholars have generally followed Polemon here and placed this fragmentatthe moment inliteraryhistory whenHipponax "invents" the genre of hexametric parodies. This is a plausible explanation andit has endured, but it goes against the general notion that parody mocks, sometimes even gently and lovingly, a literary genre, an author or a single work of art,but not necessarily the subject of a literary work. There is also the problem that a sixth-century poet like Hipponax seems too far removed from the genre of epic parody,whichXourishes a century later-indeed Aristotle identiWes Hegemone, aWfth-century poet from Thasos, as "theWrst to compose parodies" (Poetics1448a 12-14), not Hipponax.11 More importantly, perhaps, parody seems far too tame and distanced a genre for Hipponax, a scrappy poet with whom we usually associate violence, cruelty and unwaveringly frontal attacks. This scholarly idea that Hipponax casts his personal enemy as a comic hero, whose story he, with the help of his Muse, will narrate in mockepic fashion to its logical (and deadly) conclusion depends, like all readings of the fragment, on our interpretation of the crucial verb at the end of line three. Most editors prefer some form of indirect discourse, either "Tell me, Muse, how X is to be destroyed" (the subjunctive?ληταιin the manuscripts indicates a deliberative subjunctive in direct discourse) or "Tell me, Muse, how ... he will be destroyed" (the future?λε?ται, an emendation favored by West and others, predicts his fate). Gerber and a few others have argued rightly, however, that the MS reading-a subjunctive following?πω?-would most naturally be taken as a purpose clause (paraphrase): "Tell me, Muse, in order that ... he may be destroyed." But even

10. Here and below I use the new translations of Gerber 1999 adlocc., who warns, however, that

the translation of the inWnitive?κποι?σασθαιin fr. 7 is problematic.

11. Olson and Sens 1999: 5-8.

faraone:Hipponax Fragment 128W213 this minority who see a purpose clause here retain the idea that a narrative is requested; in their view Hipponax hopes his song (with the help of his peculiar Muse) will reveal, like some modern-day investigative reporter, the infamous deeds of the victim, which will in turn lead to his expulsion.

12This important

contrast between what we might call a "descriptive" or "narrative" mode, which reports the victim"s demise, and a "performative" one, which actually causes it, underscores the diVerence between my approach to fragment 128 and the traditional one: I seek to interpret these verses in a mannerthat both explains the apparent anomaly of their hexametrical form, and at the same time retains the violent performance that we usually associate with a Hipponactean assault. We expect this poet, in short, to cause or enact the destruction of his enemy as he does in fragments 1-5, rather then simply describe or predict his doom. In what follows I suggest that the traditional readings of this hexametrical fragment are on the right track, but that they ultimately fall short because of two unexamined assumptions: (1) that the meter and diction of the fragment are exclusively meant to recall epic narrative and not any otherearly hexametrical genre, and (2) that the descriptive epithets in lines 2 and 3 are thead hoccomic creations of the poet and simply refer to the table manners ofa glutton or a parasite. Both of these assumptions are, of course, understandable if we limit our comparanda solely to other literary texts. There are, however, several other kinds of texts (preserved mainly in inscriptions and papyri) that can broaden our understanding of the popular culture in which Hipponax lived and from which he drew much of his material. Many scholars have, for example, already noted that theWnal couplet of fragment 128 mirrors the content of a number ofancient Greek curses, such as Aphrodite"s threat to Helen atIliad3.417:σ? δ? κεν

κακ?ν ο?τον ?ληαι. In fact I will suggest that this fragment in several other ways

reXects the language, the meter and the performative goal of hexametrical chants or incantations designed to expel harmful famine demons or to help escort human scapegoats from the city. I will also argue that the vivid andsomewhat comic descriptions of the son of Eurymedon in fragment 128 probably do not aim at the personal eating disorders of Hipponax"s enemy, but rather they are drawn from two interrelated and generic features of archaic Greekthought: a tradition of describing famine-demons as insatiable eaters, and a popular theme in Greek invective which demonizes political enemies as rapacious pests, who threaten to gobble up the commonwealth of the city and who therefore mustbe expelled from the community, precisely like a famine-demon. By adducing hexametrical chants and incantations as alternate models for the meter and language of fragment 128, I will argue that, much as Aristophanes uses expulsive chantsas a model in his most vitriolic plays (e.g. theKnights), Hipponax takes up this same ritual genre (in its original hexametrical form) in order to equate his enemy with a dangerous demon

12. See note 6.

classical antiquityVolume 23/No. 2/October 2004214orpharmakos, who must be ejected from the city or perhaps even killed.13I will

also show that what we moderns wrongly perceive as parodic orcomic elements in this fragment arise from a misunderstanding of two generic features of these traditional ritual chants and incantations: their use of putatively comic names for demons and the admittedly paradoxical parallels between these ritual hexameters and hexametrical praise poetry, both of which single out an individual as "special" and then (depending on the genre) seek to provide him with everlasting fame or complete destruction. My essay falls into four sections. In theWrst I discuss expulsive incantations or scapegoat chants that are designed to identify hostile demons or enemies and then force them to depart from a house or a city, often down to or into the sea. In the second section I address the question of the allegedly incongruous combination of compound "comic" names like "The Sea-Swallower" and "The Knife-in-the-Belly" with serious "epic" meter and diction, by adducing a number of similar demon-names from bonaWde rituals and incantations. In the third section I reviewthe mounting evidence that Greeksin the classical and Hellenistic periods composed and used Homeric-sounding hexametrical charms for a number of purposes, and in the fourth I discuss the intersection in classical Athens of pharmakos-rituals, expulsive chants and political invective. In theWnal pages, I Athenaeus and the modern scholars who follow in their footsteps are wrong when they try to associate this puzzling fragment with the tradition of epic parodies sung two centuries later by Boeotus and Euboeus. I argue instead that important linguistic features of the fragment can be better and more fully explained as reXections of a traditional genre of expulsive hexametrical incantation designed rather performative, much like those used inpharmakosceremonies and similar scenes of Attic comedy, most notably those scenes in which a comic antagonist or obstructionist is driven from the stage with both insults and blows.

EXPULSIVE RITUALS, CHANTS AND INCANTATIONS

I begin my reading of fragment 128 by exploring the idea that Hipponax is casting the subject of his poem into the role of a famine-demon driven oVor

13. Masson1949: 314("Cen"estpasla` unesimplechargecomique,maisunemenaceve´ritable")

is nearly alone, I think, in his asserting that in this poem Hipponax seriously intended violence to

befall its subject. Guida 1994: 23-24 thinks the poet is serious, but acting more like an investigative

reporter: he uses Homeric language to ask the Muse to describe the behavior of a "super-glutton" in order that he be condemnedby a popular vote. Since it does not aVect my argumentor conclusions,

I leave aside in this essay the vexed question of whether Hipponax and his victims are real historical

Wgures or generic ones adopted by succeeding generations of singers. The generic approach is perhaps more amenable to my argument, but I would maintain that in either case the singer is seriously threatening an enemy with destruction. faraone:Hipponax Fragment 128W215 destroyed annually either in the guise of a humanpharmakosor more directly by some similar sort of expulsive rite. Indeed, beginning nearly a century and a half ago scholars have repeatedly suggested and argued that the scene described in the fragment-stoning near the water"s edge-recalls the abusive treatment of thepharmakosin Ionian cities like Ephesus and Clazomenae, cities with which Hipponax was closely associated.

14But no one, to my knowledge, has

suggested that Hipponax may have also got the idea for the metrical form of his these ceremonies. Parallels are few, but instructive. We hear, for example, of an expulsive ritual in Chaeronea, Plutarch"s hometown, where in the hope of preventing famine the people annually drive out (??ελα?νειν) from their houses one of their servants whom they designate as "Boulimos" ("Great-Hunger").15 During the ceremony, they strike him with twigs and chant (?πιλ?γειν) some

words that may constitute a corrupt dactylic hexameter:??ω Βο?λιμον, ?σω

δ? Πλο?τον κα? ?Υγ?ειαν("Out with Great-Hunger, and in with Wealth and

Health!").

16Here then we have a very simple ritual in which a human scapegoat

is annually equated with Boulimos, a famine demon with a signiWcant name: "Great Hunger." The chant, moreover, seems to do two things:itWrst identiWes an unlucky servant as "Boulimos" and then it forces him, withthe help of physical blows, out of the house. ritual, this one performed at Aenis: 17

14. See Masson 1949, Versnel 1978 and Bremmer 1983 for discussion and bibliography. In the

Ionian world the scapegoat is regularly called apharmakos, but elsewhere other terms are used, e.g.katharma("oVscouring") or-in later times-peripseˆma("something that has been wiped oV").

15. Plut.Quaest. conv.6.8.1 (=Mor.693f). Plutarch is a valuable eyewitness, for he says that he

himself performed the ceremony when he was archon. He reports that the rite was performed both at the public hearth by the archon and also by each person at home, presumably by the head of the household. See Rotolo 1980 for discussion.

16. Bergk1882:681ignoresWilamowitz"suggestionthatthenounsbecapitalizedaspersoniWed

divinitiesandrepairsthemeterasfollows:??ω ?τ?ν? βο?λιμον, ?σω ?τ?ν? πλουθυγ?ειαν.Lessradical

surgery yields a fairly good hexameter, but reduces "Boulimos" to "Limos":??ω {Βου}λιμ?ν, ?σω

δ? Πλο?τον κα? ?Υγ?ειαν. If Richardson 1961a and 1961b is correct in his hypothesis that theβου-

preWx (meaning "great") is a laterWfth-century development based on a popular (albeit incorrect)

etymology of the Homeric hapaxΒο?βρωστι?, then we may see here an early hexametrical chant

corrupted in part by the growing popularity of such words, which turn upWrst in Attic comedy and then appear soon thereafter in prose writers like Xenophon and Aristotle.

17. Plut.Quaestiones Graecae26 (=Mor. 297a), who probably excerpted it from some lost

local history such as the AristotelianConstitution of the Malians. Halliday 1928 ad loc. suspects the Aristotelian source here and in Question 13. The Aristotelian "Constitutions" were, in fact, a common source for theQuaestiones Graecae,as Giessen 1901 demonstrates. classical antiquityVolume 23/No. 2/October 2004216 What is the intent of the custom by which the maidens who serveas an escort for the men who lead the bull from Aenis to Kassiopeia incant until they reach the boundaries: "May you never return to your dear fatherland"? As in the Chaeronean ceremony, we have a ritual action (the driving out of the bull) and an incantation or chant (the verb is?π??δειν), although this is admittedly a rather complicated rite, as it would seem that both the men and the bull are being driven out aspharmakoi.18The chant itself is a well-composed dactylic hexameter similar to some lines from theOdyssey,19but we should not assume, as do some modern scholars, that thispharmakos-cry of the Aenians is an adaptation of a Homeric verse, for it is extremely diYcult to imagine a process whereby positive allusions to Odysseus" eventual return were taken up as an authoritative paradigm for an incantation used to insure that a scapegoat willneverreturn. Indeed, it is more likely that the inXuence is going in the opposite direction, that is: the Odysseypoet is manipulating a traditional curse for his own literary purposes.20 We should note that in neither text does Plutarch call the expelled person apharmakos. Indeed, in the description of the rite at Chaeronea he callsthe

ceremony a "traditional sacriWce" (θυσ?α π?τριο?) and he refers to the unlucky

servant as the "one who is pursued" (? διωκ?μενο?). Scapegoat ceremonies are,

in fact, merely a subset of a larger group of Greek rituals designed to expel or drive out evil demons or pollution.

21The notion of heroic individuals ritually

"chasing away" hostile demons is best known perhaps from Euripides"Alcestis, in which Herakles confronts Thanatos ("Death") when he comes to take the queen away, but similar situations also appear in the popular "Xee-formulas" on later magical gems and amulets, such as a gemstone which depicts Perseus holding

the Medusa"s head and carries the inscriptionφ?[γε] ποδ?γρα, [Π]ερσε?? σε

δι?κει("Flee Gout, for Perseus pursues you!"), or another which shows Herakles

18. I fully agree with modern scholars who see some form of a scapegoat rite here, but it is

nonetheless puzzling that Plutarch failed to recognize it as such. As it stands, the ritual is also uncommonly complicated, and I can fully sympathize with early editors who wished to add aκα?

beforeτ?? παρθ?νου?, for this would give us a more traditional sort of scapegoat ritual: a crowd

of males and females chanting together as they drive a singlebull out of their territory. The problem,

of course, is that the chant itself is addressed to a plural entity (νοστ?σαιτε): that is, to the men

who are driving the bull as well as the bull itself.

19. See for example:Od.18.148, where the disguised Odysseus warns a suitor of the dire

consequences when Odysseus returns (?ππ?τε νοστ?σειε φ?λην ?? πατρ?δα γα?αν) and 19.298,

where again the disguised Odysseus tells how he had heard that Odysseus had gone oVto consult

Zeus"oracleat Dodonato see howhe mightreturnhome(?ππω? νοστ?σειε φ?λην ?? πατρ?δα γα?αν).

20. For more detailed argument, see Faraone 1996: 86-87, whoargues that the chant originally

developed out of some form of curse, as in the conditional curse atIl. 13.232-34:μ? κε?νο? ?ν?ρ ?τι

suggests a third possibility: that both the epic and the religious traditions share the same formular

stock of hexametrical poetry.

21. For the best general discussions ofapopompeˆrites designed to chase away hostile demons,

see Wu¨nsch 1911: 13-15 and 25-28, and Herter 1950: 116-17. faraone:Hipponax Fragment 128W217

strangling the Nemean Lion:?ναχ?ρει χολ?, τ? δ??ν (=τ? θε??ν) σε δι?κει

("Withdraw Bile, for the divinity pursues you!").22In both cases, the disease is personiWed and to some degree demonized by its visual association with the

Medusa or the dangerous Nemean lion.

SuchXee-formulas were apparently very popular in the Greek worldand it is interesting to note that like the two scapegoat chants recorded by Plutarch in the Roman period, the earliest extant examples are composed in dactylic hexameters. The oldest appears on an early third-centurybcelead amulet from Crete:23 ... I bid youXee from these houses of ours.... I call on Zeus, the averter of ills, Herakles sacker of cities, Iatros, Nike and Apollo.... Flee at once, Xee, she-wolf,Xee, dog, at once, you, and PROKROPROSATE inmate.

Raving let them run, each to his own home.

There are many problems with this text, but we canmake out that it was chanted or sung in dactylic hexameters and that it imagined the same combative intervention that we saw in the inscribed gemstones discussed earlier; itinvokes various gods or heroes (presumably to chase away the demons, just as Herakles or Perseus seem to do on the gemstones), while at the same time it commands the demons, imagined in the form of an animal like the Nemean lion, toXee from the houses of a town and go back to their own homes in the wild. Similar hexametricalXee-formulas show up a few centuries later in other parts of the Greek-speaking world. Pliny the Elder preserves one used to cure

impetigo or eczema (HN27.75.100):φε?γετε κανθερ?δε?? λ?κο? ?γριο? ?μμε

δι?κει("Flee beetles, for aWerce wolf pursues you!"),24and a fragment of a papyrus anthology of hexametrical incantations (?παοιδα?)inscribed a century earlier than Pliny contains yet another example, this one used to cure headaches:25

22. Heim 1892: nos. 59 and 60, who collects a number of other examples, for example: a

stomach-ache charm to be engraved on an iron ring (no. 57):φε?γε φε?γ? , ?ο? χολ?? ? κορυδαλ??

sty to be spoken out loud (no. 58):φε?γε φε?γε? κρε?ττων σε δι?κει("Flee,Xee, a stronger one

[i.e. a god] pursues you!").

23. Guarducci 1939: 223-25 no. 7 gives brief comments and bibliography ad loc. Of the earlier

work, much valuable information can still be got from Wu¨nsch 1900: 73-85 and McCown 1923:

132-36. See Jordan 1992: 191-94 for a revised text, of which Igive lines A-D and F-H.

24. Edmonds 1959: 542-44 no. 38a. Kotansky 1991: 113 and 128-29 n. 40.

25.PGMXX andSupplementum Hellenisticumno. 900. See Maas 1942: 33-38 for discussion.

classical antiquityVolume 23/No. 2/October 2004218

26δ? [κ?ων] ?π? π?τ[ρα]?27

Flee headache! [A dog]Xees from a stone.

wolvesXee and single-hooved horsesXee [propelled] by blows from [my perfect incantation]. Although the syntax of this spell shifts oddly to the indicative after the initial imperative, one can make out a similar strategy, by which an illness (here a headache) is assimilated to wild animals or perhaps theriomorphic demons that Xee. There may be, moreover, an analogy between the expulsiveaction of the

charm (?π? [?μ?? τελ?α? ?παοιδ??]) and the chasing away of wild animals with

"a stone" (?π? π?τ[ρα]?).28This inference depends, of course, on the heavily reconstructedWnal line of the spell, but it doesWt the pattern of combining verbal chants and physical blows, just as we saw earlier in those scapegoat rites, during which townspeople chant hexameters as they strike the victim with sticks, and in those prayers or charms that invoke gods or heroes like Perseus to do battle with a demon and drive it away from a sick patient. In short, either the beating and the verbal chant are deployed in tandem to force the evil one away or (in the case of these curative charms) the speaker is able to inXict the same kind of physical abuse simply by singing or chanting. Onemightargue, ofcourse, thatthesehexametricalspellsforcuringheadache and gout are a far cry from the scapegoat rituals discussed earlier. But there are, in fact, examples of expulsion rites in which the illness or demon is represented by an image and then escorted from the city like apharmakos, as in the case of a Cyrenean rite used to banish ghosts from a haunted house:

29the house owner

makes a pair ofWgurines, treats them to a meal and then deposits them out in the wild. Other Greeks were not so polite. During a very old Delphic festival, a "humorous eYgy" of a plague- or famine-demoness called Charila ("She-Who- Glares") was struck in the face with a shoe, carried oVto a place full of ravines

26. Thescribewroteφε?γε (whichisunmetrical)apparentlyamistakeforφε?γει(whichcreates

awkward syntax).

27. Maas 1942 ad loc. suggestsφε?γ? ?Ιδα?[α?] ?π? π?τ[ρα]?, presumably to be translated as

"Xee under the Idaean crags," i.e. to far-oVcaves in the mountains, and Henrichs, in the second

edition ofPGM, printsφε?γει δ? [λ?ων] ?π? π?τ[ρα]ν. I follow Furley 1993: 93, who printsφε?γει

δ? [κ?ων] ?π? π?τ[ρα]?,rightly preferingκ?ωνbecause of the parallel in the Phalasarna amulet

(quoted above), and suggesting (p. 95) that the phrase?π? π?τ[ρα]?may refer to the act of stoning

(Steinwurf). Note the odd use of?π?+ the genitive singular here-"a dogXees undera stone(i.e. whena stoneis thrown)"-and the similarly odd use in Hipponax 128 of the singular dative of instrument ("that he may be destroyedby a pebble") also to allude to a stoning. For lapidation as a treatment especially reserved for dogs and dog-demons, see note 47 below.

28. Furley 1993: 95.

29. Faraone 1992a: 81-84.

faraone:Hipponax Fragment 128W219 and then buried with a rope around her neck.

30Aristotle, moreover, informs us

that a "Xee-formula" was used in public rites aimed at removing plague:31 Aristotle reports that when a plague had taken hold (sc. of Boeotia) and many crows arrived, the people caught the crows, puriWed them with incantations and released them alive, chanting to the plague; "Flee to the crows!"quotesdbs_dbs43.pdfusesText_43

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