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MYSTERY CULTS AND INCANTATIONS : Evidence for Orphic Charms in Euripides' Cyclops 646-48 ?

2008; Volume: 151; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

0035-449X

Christopher A. Faraone,

Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

The close connection between initiation into a mystery cult and acquisition of a special kind of post-mortem comfort or status has been thoroughly discussed by modern scholars, but in recent years this discussion has shifted to include the non-eschatological benefits that initiation was also thought to confer. Walter Burkert, for example, has stressed how some initiates claim to be protected in times of physical danger in this world, as well as in the next. His two clearest examples are Samothracian initiates, who were thought to enjoy special immunity from shipwreck and storms at sea, and Mithraic initiates, who were believed to have a similar advantage on the battlefield.1 I shall argue that a neglected passage from a Euripidean satyr-play reflects a similar tradition connected with Orphic-Dionysiac initiations. In the Cyclops, a play set on the island of Sicily, the chorus of satyrs, who strongly identify themselves as devotees of Dionysus, claim to know an incantation of Orpheus that will bring down a form of fiery destruction upon their enemy – in this case the eponymous ogre of the play. As we shall see, some of the language used to describe this spell echoes that used in traditional hexametrical incantations of the fifth-century. In their boast about the power of this Orphic spell, more-over, the satyrs diverge from the canonical Homeric version of the Cyclops’ story in ways that suggest they are recalling a popular Orphic myth about the Titans, who murdered and ate the young Dionysus, and their subsequent punishment at the hands of Zeus. As we shall see, this variation also fits into a wider pattern, in which theogonic or cosmogonic myths are used in protective incantations to recall a primordial moment in history when the forces of order, in this case Zeus, triumph over the forces of destruction and havoc. The satyrs’ boast about their Orphic charm, then, provides good evidence for both the linguistic form and the narrative content of Orphic incantations that were in use in ancient Athens in the fifth century.