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SIMAETHA GOT IT RIGHT, AFTER ALL: THEOCRITUS, IDYLL 2, A COURTESAN'S PANTRY AND A LOST GREEK TRADITION OF HEXAMETRICAL CURSES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2021

Christopher Athanasious Faraone
Christopher Athanasious Faraone*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
*
cf12@uchicago.edu
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Extract

Theocritus divides his second Idyll into two roughly equal sections, each punctuated by ten refrains: in the first half, a courtesan named Simaetha describes an ongoing erotic spell that she and her servant are performing and at the same time she enacts it by reciting a series of short similia-similibus incantations; in the second half, she speaks to Selene in the night sky and tells her the story of her brief affair with and betrayal by a handsome young athlete named Delphis. Literary scholars have written much about this poem, but they are more often concerned with the second, confessional half, with its complicated narrative layers and its charmingly naïve and unreliable narrator. Historians of religion and magic, on the other hand, have focussed most of their energies on the first half of the poem, using as comparanda the much later evidence of Roman-era curse tablets (katadesmoi) and late antique magical papyri to make sense of what Simaetha does and says during her long ritual, an approach that was enshrined by Gow in the middle of the last century, when he argued that, because of the conservative nature of these later magical spells, there was little risk of serious anachronism in using them for comparison.

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 650 - 663
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association.

Theocritus divides his second Idyll into two roughly equal sections, each punctuated by ten refrains: in the first half, a courtesanFootnote 1 named Simaetha describes an ongoing erotic spell that she and her servant are performing and at the same time she enacts it by reciting a series of short similia-similibus incantations; in the second half, she speaks to Selene in the night sky and tells her the story of her brief affair with and betrayal by a handsome young athlete named Delphis. Literary scholars have written much about this poem, but they are more often concerned with the second, confessional half, with its complicated narrative layers and its charmingly naïve and unreliable narrator.Footnote 2 Historians of religion and magic, on the other hand, have focussed most of their energies on the first half of the poem, using as comparanda the much later evidence of Roman-era curse tablets (katadesmoi) and late antique magical papyri to make sense of what Simaetha does and says during her long ritual, an approach that was enshrined by Gow in the middle of the last century, when he argued that, because of the conservative nature of these later magical spells, there was little risk of serious anachronism in using them for comparison.Footnote 3

In recent years, however, a number of scholars have questioned the grounds of this comparison and thus the wisdom of using the poem to reconstruct the magical rituals of the Hellenistic period. The criticism has taken two forms: (i) that the katadesmoi and papyrus recipes are too late to be reliable comparanda;Footnote 4 or (ii) that in the poem Theocritus depicts Simaetha as a comically incapable witch, whose ritual actions would have been recognizably foolhardy and ineffective.Footnote 5 In what follows, I will offer two intertwined counter-arguments: (i) that the criticisms about the use of late comparanda are well founded, but that much earlier evidence—some of it only recently published—confirms the conclusions of Gow and others about the reliable realism in the description of Simaetha's performance; and (ii) that the criticism of Simaetha as a comic or failed sorceress is misguided, because she should not be compared with a sorceress or a witch in the first place. Indeed, Theocritus takes care twice to distinguish her performance from those of the two professionals that she explicitly mentions in the poem, an ‘old woman’ (91), whom she consulted earlier in time, presumably to cure her lovesickness, and an ‘Assyrian stranger’ (162), whom she threatens to consult in the future about ‘evil pharmaka’, with which she will presumably try to harm Delphis, if she is not successful in getting him to return.

I will argue, in short, that Theocritus depicts Simaetha not as a failed witch but rather as a typical courtesan, who, like a number of Greek courtesans, was capable of casting a limited repertoire of spells at home in order to lure a new boyfriend or keep hold of an old one. And, in the process of saving Simaetha's reputation for ritual competence, I will assemble the hitherto scattered evidence for an earlier tradition of erotic magic in the Classical and Hellenistic periods, a tradition that made use of hexametrical incantations, similia-similibus formulas and small birds as effigies. We will begin in Section I by closely examining the materials and devices used by Simaetha and by noting that they are almost never found in the late antique magical handbooks, but that they would have been available in any woman's pantry or (in two cases) in the house of a courtesan. In Sections II and III, however, we turn from Simaetha's ritual actions to her speech-acts, primarily using as comparanda much earlier literary texts or curse tablets in order to show that in composing Idyll 2 Theocritus was, in fact, imitating the metrical form, vocabulary or syntax of two popular types of curses that were sometimes composed, like Simaetha's, in dactylic hexameters:

  1. (i) the ‘binding curse’ (katadesmos), which seeks to restrain victims and their body parts in competitive circumstances and which in erotic competition was used to bind the victims’ desire for their partner or their desire for their parents or children.Footnote 6 We shall see that, like Simaetha's curse, these early curses are sometimes composed as hexametrical charms, utilize the future tense in a rare deictic manner and involve chthonic gods as partners rather than as agents;

  2. (ii) the ‘erotic curse’ or ‘attraction spell’ (agôgê), which seeks to torture the victims with fire and other forms of discomfort, until they leave their homes and come to the practitioner for sex.Footnote 7 Here, we will turn again to evidence much earlier than the magical papyri, beginning with Pindar and Aristophanes, to show that these early incantations, although connected with Aphrodite, rather than Hecate, involve similar kinds of torture rituals and in some cases also the recitation of hexametrical verses.

In the end we will see that in composing the first half of Idyll 2, Theocritus does indeed model Simaetha's performance on these two types of hexametrical incantations and that he combines them with similia-similibus rituals that a courtesan of the Hellenistic period could easily perform in the privacy of her home.

I. SIMAETHA'S HOMESPUN PHARMACOPOEIA

There is no doubt, of course, that Theocritus in certain places lends a distinct literary quality to Simaetha's incantation, but, like the chit-chat of the two housewives in his other great mimetic poem, Idyll 15, he also includes much realistic and domestic detail. The question is how much can one identify as the latter? One way to start is by reminding ourselves of the various ingredients or materials that Simaetha deploys in her ritual activities, as well as the various similia-similibus formulas she uses in the nine steps of her performance, seven of which do seem to be simple words and gestures that a courtesan might say in such a situation without much training. In fact, as we shall see, only steps 6 and 7 seem to reflect the more literary or erudite touches of the Alexandrian poet:Footnote 8

  1. 1) First, barley grains melt (τάκεται) on the fire, and then Simaetha tells her servant Thestylis to continue to sprinkle (ἐπίπασσε and πάσσε) them on the fire and to say ‘I sprinkle (πάσσω) the bones of Delphis’ (18–21).

  2. 2) Simaetha says: ‘I myself burn (αἴθω) laurel for Delphis. As this laurel ignites (ἅφθη) and afterwards we see no ash—so may the flesh of Delphis waste (ἀμάθυνοι) in flame!’ (23–6).

  3. 3) Simaetha says: ‘Now I burn (θύσω) the bran’,Footnote 9 but no parallel wish follows (33–6).

  4. 4) Simaetha says: ‘As I myself melt (τάκω) this wax with the goddess’ aid—so may Mindian Delphis be melted (τάκοιθ’) by erôs’ (28–9).

  5. 5) Simaetha says: ‘As this bronze rhombus from Aphrodite is whirled (δινεῖθ’), so may that man be whirled (δινοῖτο) to my door!’ (30–1).

  6. 6) Simaetha says: ‘Three times I pour a libation and three times, lady, I utter these words: whether it is a woman who lies with him or a man, may he be as forgetful (τόσσον ἔχοι λάθας) of them, as they say Theseus was forgetful (λασθῆμεν) of Ariadne’ (43–6).

  7. 7) Simaetha says: ‘Hippomanes … grows among the Arcadians, and in the mountains all the foals and swift horses are mad (μαίνονται) for it—so, too, may I see (ἴδοιμι) Delphis run like a madman (περάσαι μαινομένῳ ἴκελος) to my house!’ (48–51).

  8. 8) Simaetha says: ‘This fringe from his cloak I now shred (τίλλοισα) and cast into the fire …’, but no parallel wish follows (53–6).Footnote 10

  9. 9) She tells Thestylis: ‘Now take these throna and knead them beneath (ὑπομάξον) his threshold, while whispering: “I knead (μάσσω) the bones of Delphis”’ (60–2).

A repeated refrain separates all but one of these steps from the otherFootnote 11 and at the same time adds urgency to the procedure by summarizing and reiterating its main goal: ‘O iunx, drag (ἕλκε) to my house that man of mine!’

First, the ritual actions performed by Simaetha differ in several important ways from those recorded in the late antique-period magical handbooks, most notably in the melting or incineration of a variety of easily available household items such as barley, laurel, bran,Footnote 12 waxFootnote 13 or a fringe from Delphis’ cloak.Footnote 14 Simaetha's pharmacopoeia, in short, is not to be compared with that of the professional users of the magical papyri, who instead burn expensive incenses, such as myrrh or storax, in their spells.Footnote 15 Indeed, even Simaetha's mysterious sounding hippomanes (‘horse-maddener’) in step 7 was a common weed called ‘coltsfoot’ that could be found not only in Arcadia, as Theocritus tells us, but all over Europe and Asia Minor.Footnote 16 The verbs used in the two attacks against Delphis’ bones (steps 1 and 9) also summon up homespun images, which indeed frame the entire sequence as a domestic affair: at the very beginning of the sequence, when Simaetha's servant Thestylis is commanded to sprinkle (πάσσειν) barley grains, while saying ‘I sprinkle (πάσσω) the bones of Delphis’, and again at the very end, when she is told to knead (μάσσειν) some kind of herbal material called throna into Delphis’ threshold, while saying ‘I knead (μάσσω) the bones of Delphis’.Footnote 17 Both of these actions have a curiously domestic feel, because πάσσειν is closely connected with cooking, for example the sprinkling of salt and herbs on food, and μάσσειν with the kneading of bread dough or the moulding of small cakes.Footnote 18 For the Greeks, I suggest, these actions would have recalled the work of women or their female servants rather than that of professional sorcerers.

There are, however, a few features of Simaetha's performance that are atypical. Most extraordinary is its great length and the repetition of so many similia-similibus formulas. As we shall see below in Section III, bona-fide curses seem to limit themselves to one or two similes of this type. Also included in Simaetha's equipment, we see two objects that would probably not be found in the average pantry: the bronze rhombus, which was apparently whirled about,Footnote 19 and the iunx that Simaetha invokes in the repeated refrain.Footnote 20 The latter is, in fact, extremely difficult to understand, as we can see in the unresolved debate between Gow and subsequent commentators, who have been unable to agree whether the iunx is a bird tied to a small wheel, a wheel itself or even a rhombus.Footnote 21 But, regardless of their precise shape or use, both the iunx and the rhombus seem to have had a special place in the house of a courtesan as a means of bringing in new clients or rekindling the desires of old ones, as we can see in some literary sources. In an anecdote from Xenophon, for example, the famous Athenian courtesan Theodote asks Socrates (tongue in cheek) if he can lend her his iunx, so she can draw (ἕλκειν) beautiful young men to herself, as easily as Socrates does, a joke that turns on the idea that it is usually a courtesan who owns such an effective device.Footnote 22 An epigram of Hellenistic date purports, moreover, to be a dedicatory poem by a courtesan on her retirement, who praises her iunx-wheel that had the power ‘to draw (ἕλκειν) men from across the sea and youngsters from the women's quarter’.Footnote 23 As for the rhombus, Lucian describes a courtesan who paid a ‘Syrian sorceress’ living near the Ceramicus to force a lost boyfriend to return to her by ‘sprinkling’ (the verb is πάττειν) salt on a fire and ‘whirling around’ a rhombus.Footnote 24 Most important, perhaps, is the fact that neither the iunx nor the rhombus ever appears as a practical implement in the numerous rituals described by the magical handbooks.Footnote 25

As was mentioned earlier, the speech-acts that Simaetha deploys in steps 7–8 above do, however, seem a bit out of place. Step 7 involves a triple libation, presumably to Hecate, but what Simaetha says each time she makes the libation has nothing to do with the ritual action: she simply uses a mythical exemplum of Dionysus abandoning Ariadne, as a model for Delphis to abandon his present partner. And step 8 refers to the power of hippomanes without any deictic reference to suggest that Simaetha or her servant is holding it in her hand or manipulating it. As was mentioned at the start of this section, both of these literary touches—one mythological and the other erudite—are to be expected in a Theocritean poem, but it is clear from the seven other listed earlier that the poet consistently frames and illustrates Simaetha's performance with domestic images of two women at home sprinkling, burning, melting and kneading various household ingredients.

This first pass through Simaetha's rituals, therefore, has revealed that there is almost no crossover between her ingredients and equipment and those used by the professional magician working half a millennium later with the extant papyrus handbooks. This disjunction should dissuade us, therefore, from calling her a ‘would-be’ sorcerer or a ‘failed’ witch, because, despite the inordinate length of her ritual, it is one that could for the most part be performed with easily available household items, which are burned or melted somewhere in the privacy of her home, while she is speaking easily formulated similes over the fire. From this perspective, then, it appears that the critics are correct and that the PGM recipes, at least, are not good comparanda, because, as we have seen, the items that Simaetha or her servant take in hand and the actions that they perform are quite different from those that we find in the papyrus recipes.

II. SIMAETHA'S INCANTATION AS A HEXAMETRICAL BINDING SPELL (KATADESMOS)

As far as we can tell, the katadesmos was a native Greek invention that was originally performed orally, as we see it performed near the beginning of Aeschylus’ Eumenides, where the chorus of Furies tell Orestes that he is about to hear their ‘binding song’ (ὕμνον δ’ ἀκούσῃ τόνδε δέσμιον, 306), a song they will use to bind his thoughts and thereby paralyse any legal defence that he is planning for his upcoming trial for matricide.Footnote 26 And as in the case of Simaetha's incantation, their binding spell has a refrain that gives us some sense of its ultimate goal (328–33, repeated at 341–8):

ἐπὶ δὲ τῷ τεθυμένῳ
τόδε μέλος, παρακοπά,
παραφορὰ φρενοδαλής,
ὕμνος ἐξ Ἐρινύων,
δέσμιος φρενῶν, ἀφόρ-
μικτος, αὑονὰ βροτοῖς.
Over our victim
we sing this song, maddening the brain,
carrying away the sense, destroying the mind,
a hymn that comes from the Furies,
fettering the mind, sung
without the lyre, withering to mortals.

But this practice is even older than Aeschylus. Indeed, beginning in the late sixth century b.c.e. we find a number of such binding curses inscribed on lead tablets, albeit in much simpler prosaic form, which first appear in Sicily, then in Attica and the Aegean, and eventually wherever the Greeks lived and colonized.Footnote 27

Theocritus, in fact, clearly invites us to draw a parallel between Simaetha's curse and this older tradition of katadesmoi, first and foremost, because she herself thrice uses the verb katadein (‘to bind down’) that is typically found on these lead tablets:Footnote 28

ὡς τὸν ἐμὸν βαρὺν εὖντα φίλον καταδήσομαι ἄνδρα (2.3)
… in order that I bind down my dear man, although he mistreats me.
νῦν δέ νιν ἐκ θυέων καταδήσομαι (2.10)
Now I shall bind him down with burnings!
νῦν μὰν τοῖς φίλτροις καταδήσομαι (2.159)
Now I shall bind him down with philtra!

Simaetha begins, then, by binding Delphis down ‘with burnings’ and she ends in ring-composition by binding him down with philtra, a word that in this context probably refers to the herbs that her servant Thestylis will be ‘kneading’ beneath Delphis’ door-jamb.Footnote 29 For a long time, scholars failed to see the parallels between these curse-tablets and Idyll 2, because the dominant manuscript tradition had καταθύσομαι (‘I shall burn him up!’) in all three passages. The discovery, however, of an early papyrus codex (c.500 c.e.) that read καταδήσομαι (‘I shall bind him down’) in the same three verses completely altered our understanding of the text, and, indeed, as was mentioned earlier, Gow and others were quick to see the parallels with many Roman-era binding curses on papyrus and lead.Footnote 30

But, at that time and henceforth, commentators have failed to appreciate a handful of much earlier katadesmoi that are composed in dactylic hexameters and even use the ‘performative future’ in the same way that Simaetha uses καταδήσομαι in the verses quoted above.Footnote 31 The first and longest is a curse from a grave of Hellenistic date found near Athens:Footnote 32

δήσω ἐγὼ Σωσικλείαν κα[ὶ κ]τήματα καὶ μέγα κῦδος
καὶ πρᾶξιν καὶ νοῦν. ἐχθρὰ δὲ φίλοισι γένοιτο.
δήσω ἐγὼ κείνην ὑπὸ Τάρταρον ἀερόεντ[α
δεσμοῖς ἀργαλέ{ι}οις …
σύν θ’ Ἑκάτ<η>ι χθονίαι καὶ Ἐριννύσιν ἡλιθιώναις.
I myself shall bind Sosiklea, her property, her great reputation,
her activity and her mind. May she be hateful to her friends!
I myself shall bind her under murky Tartarus in painful bonds …
with the Hekate Chthonia and the distracting Furies.Footnote 33

This curse twice deploys a performative utterance in the future tense (‘I myself shall bind’) at the start of the verse, emphatically suggesting that human speech alone will suffice. But it is clear from the final verse that the success of this curse in some vague manner depends as well on the presence of both Hecate and the Furies.

More recently, a cache of five lead tablets was excavated from a late classical grave in Attica which contain hexametrical verses that use similar expressions; for exampleFootnote 34

δήσω τόγ γ’ ἐμὸν ἐχθρὸν Δημήτριον καὶ Φαναγόραν
σὺμ πᾶσιμ φθιμένοις ἐν αἵματι καὶ κονίαισιν.
I shall bind my enemy Demetrios and Phanagora,
with all the dead in blood and in ashes.

Since this lead tablet was discovered in a tomb, one might, of course, understand the expression ‘with all the dead’ in a locative sense, or to paraphrase: ‘I shall bind my enemy here, where all the corpses are’, but ‘the dead’ might also refer to graveyard ghosts, who—like Chthonic Hecate or the Furies in the previous example—could also be of some use in the curse.Footnote 35 Both of these early curses from Attica, in short, use the ‘performative future’ (δήσω) similar to those that we saw earlier in Simaetha's incantation, but both refer as well to some kind of extra superhuman help.

Theocritus suggests a similar kind of divine partnership, as we saw earlier in step 4, when he has Simaetha say (28–9):Footnote 36 ‘As I with the goddess's aid (σὺν δαίμονι) melt this wax, so may Delphis of Myndus melt with erôs!’Footnote 37 And Simaetha, in fact, prefaces her entire performance with a similar request for help from Hecate (Id. 2.14–16):

χαῖρ’, Ἑκάτα δασπλῆτι, καὶ ἐς τέλος ἄμμιν ὀπάδει,
φάρμακα ταῦτ’ ἔρδοισα χερείονα μήτε τι Κίρκας
μήτε τι Μηδείας μήτε ξανθᾶς Περιμήδας.
Hail grim Hecate and to perfection accompany us
by making these pharmaka no less powerful than those of Circe,
and Medea and blond Perimede.

Here, of course, in another literary flourish Theocritus has Simaetha place herself on an honour roll of famous witches, but the traditional form of her request has been overlooked. In asking Hecate ‘to accompany us to perfection’ (ἐς τέλος ἄμμιν ὀπάδει, 14), Theocritus imitates a traditional hexametrical coda found, for example, at the end of a late antique curse that is, like the binding song of the Furies, against a legal adversary. That katadesmos begins with a series of performative verbs in the present tense (‘I strike, strike down and nail down the tongue, the eye, etc.’ of the victim), but then ends with a single dactylic hexameter: ‘Lady Persephone, bring to perfection a perfect incantation!’ (πότνια Φερϲεφόνεια, τέλει [τ]ελέαν ἐπαοιδήν).Footnote 38 And, in fact, this coda was being used as early as the first century c.e., when it probably appears, albeit imperfectly, at the end of a lacunose spell concerned with sleep or sleeplessness as Φερϲεφόνη τέλεϲον τ[ελέαν ἐπαοιδήν].Footnote 39

III. SIMAETHA'S INCANTATION AS AN EROTIC CURSE (AGÔGÊ)

Simaetha's incantation also reflects the second kind of curse described earlier, the usually violent, erotic curse or ‘spell of attraction’ (agôgê) that tortures its victims with physical abuse or burning in order to force them to come to the practitioner of the spell.Footnote 40 We saw this clearly in Section I, where five of the nine similia-similibus actions involved melting or burning.Footnote 41 Here, too, Gow and others cited as comparanda many examples from the Roman-period curse tablets and papyri, but there is equally solid evidence that such curses were being cast much earlier and again in hexametrical verses. We find the earliest description of such a spell in Pindar's brief and allusive report of how Aphrodite gave Jason a special ritual device and taught him the incantations that he needed to seduce Medea:Footnote 42

πότνια δ᾿ ὀξυτάτων βελέων
ποικίλαν ἴυγγα τετράκναμον Οὐλυμπόθεν
ἐν ἀλύτῳ ζεύξαισα κύκλῳ
μαινάδ᾿ ὄρνιν Κυπρογένεια φέρεν
πρῶτον ἀνθρώποισι λιτάς τ᾿ ἐπαοιδὰς
ἐκδιδάσκησεν σοφὸν Αἰσονίδαν,
ὄφρα Μηδείας τοκέων ἀφέλοιτ᾿ αἰ-
δῶ, ποθεινὰ δ᾿ Ἑλλὰς αὐτάν
ἐν φρασὶ καιομέναν δονέοι μάστιγι Πειθοῦς.
And the queen of sharpest arrows, Cyprogeneia,
brought down from Olympus the dappled iunx-bird
pinned to the four spokes of an inescapable wheel,
a mad bird, to mankind for the first time,
and she taught Jason to be skilful in supplicatory incantations,
in order that he might strip Medea of reverence for her parents,
and that desire for Greece might shake her
with the whip of Persuasion as she was burning in her heart.

The device that Aphrodite gives Jason is a special kind of bird tied to a wheel, a description that some commentators think lies behind Simaetha's iunx,Footnote 43 and, indeed, this entire ritual, like the ritual in Simaetha's home, clearly has a goal similar to the agôgê-curses described earlier, namely to force the victim to abandon their family—in Medea's case her ‘reverence for her parents’—and come to the person performing the curse. And here, as in the repeated analogies voiced throughout Simaetha's performance, we must imagine that what happens to the bird is to be projected upon Medea.

In this respect, the final sentence in the passage—‘that desire for Greece might shake her with the whip of Persuasion as she was burning in her heart’—evokes in somewhat abstract fashion two clear images of torture (burning and whipping),Footnote 44 and even the wheel itself points in this direction, because in the ancient Greek world the wheel was, in fact, a common frame for torture.Footnote 45 The treatment of a bird, moreover, reflects a classic form of ancient Greek effigy magic, in which the target of a curse is assimilated to a bound or transfixed bird, over which a similia-similibus formula was intoned,Footnote 46 for example formulas taken from the two different curse tablets that were apparently buried with roosters: ‘Just as this rooster has been bound down in its feet, hands and head, so, too, bind down the legs, hands, head and heart of Victoricus the charioteer!’Footnote 47 or ‘[Just] as I have ripped out the tongue of this rooster … and pierced it, so too may they [that is, the ghosts of the people buried in the tomb] silence the tongues of my enemies!’Footnote 48 There is, of course, a wide chronological gulf between Pindar's early fifth-century b.c.e. description of the bound iunx-bird and these first- and second-century c.e. curses that use roosters as effigies. This gap has, however, been narrowed considerably by the recent discovery of a strange ensemble in the Athenian Agora: a terracotta cooking pot buried in the floor of a Hellenistic workshop, which contained the skull and the leg bones of a young chicken.Footnote 49 An iron disk covered the mouth of the pot and had attached to its underside a large iron spike that had been driven down through the bottom of the pot, which had previously been inscribed with more than twenty names. Here, then, the severed head and feet, the spike and the inscribed names all suggest that someone in Hellenistic Athens performed an elaborate curse ritual in which the head and the legs of a young chicken or a chick served as an effigy for a large number of victims.

Finally, Pindar uses the phrase ‘supplicatory incantations’ (λιτάς τ᾿ ἐπαοιδάς) to describe the speech-acts that Aphrodite taught him, a phrase that most probably refers to a performance in dactylic hexameters, because, wherever a metrical text is referred to as an epaoidê, that text is usually in dactylic hexameters.Footnote 50 Pindar, in short, suggests that Jason successfully seduced Medea by binding and torturing a bird and by performing incantations which supplicate some divinity (presumably Aphrodite) and which were probably composed in dactylic hexameters.Footnote 51 This suggestion is strengthened, in fact, by a handful of erotic curses in dactylic hexameters that have come to light in the last thirty years. An early example is preserved in a fragment of a papyrus handbook in Berlin that dates palaeographically to the time of Augustus, although the corruption of the metre suggests an even earlier date for the incantation itself:Footnote 52

ἐπὶ μήλο[υ] ἐπῳδὴ τρὶς
βα[λ]ῶ μή[λ]οις [c.4] δώσω τόδε φάρμακ[ον] καίριον αἰεὶ
βρωτὸν θνητοῖς ἀνθρώποισι καὶ θεοῖσιν
ᾗ ἂν δῶ μήλῳ τε βάλω μήλῳ τε πατάξω
πάντα ὑπερθεμένη μαίνοιτ’ ἐπ’ ἐμῆι φιλότητι
εἴτ’ ἐν χειρὶ λαβο[ῦ]σα φάγοι …
ἢ ἐν κόλπωι καθίσαι ⟨καὶ⟩ μὴ παύσαιτο φιλῶν με.
⟨πότνια⟩ Κυπρογένεια τέλει τελέαν ἐπαοιδήν.
Incantation over an apple, three times:
I shall strike with apples … I shall give this pharmakon, always in season,
edible for mortal men and immortal gods.
To whatever woman I give (it) or I hit and strike with the apple
setting everything aside, may she be mad for my love,
whether she seizes it in her hand and eats (it) …
or sets it down in her bosom, may she not cease to love me.
O <Lady> Cyprogeneia bring to perfection this perfect spell.

Although the first two verses of the charm have lost their metrical shape, we can nevertheless see the parallels with the hexametrical katadesmoi discussed in the previous section: it begins with a pair of performative future verbs (βα[λ]ῶ and δώσω), like the verb δήσω in the binding curses, and ends by asking for perfection in a verse that is nearly identical to the appeals to Persephone that we also saw earlier.

All in all, there are about a half dozen extant spells, most of them erotic curses in prose, that end with versions of this same hexametrical coda, suggesting in each case that, although the originally hexametrical form of the curse had been almost entirely lost, it somehow persisted in the coda as a traditional mark of closure.Footnote 53 We saw earlier in Section II, moreover, that Simaetha ended the preface to her incantation with a similar appeal to Hecate ‘to accompany us to perfection’ (ἐς τέλος ἄμμιν ὀπάδει), where it was suggested that this kind of coda could, in fact, have been known to Theocritus. In the case of erotic curses, this suggestion is confirmed by a fragment of Aristophanes, who uses a similar triad of words in his parody of an erotic curse in dactylic hexameters:Footnote 54

ὀσφὺν δ’ ἐξ ἄκρων διακίγκλισον ἠΰτε κίγκλου
ἀνδρὸς πρεσβύτου τελέει δ’ ἀγαθὴν ἐπαοιδήν
Shake from its foundations the rear end of the old man,
just like a shake-bird, and bring to perfection an excellent incantation.

Since dactylic hexameters are alien to Aristophanes’ comic genre, it is clear that here, as he does in his parodies of oracles,Footnote 55 the poet has switched to dactylic hexameters in order to mimic the form, as well as the content, of a hexametrical incantation. The content of this fragment also confirms that it belonged to a parody of an erotic curse, because the ‘shake-bird’ (kigklos) seems to have been used as an effigy elsewhere in erotic curses, because, like the iunx-bird used by Jason, it apparently moved its body in a suggestive way: the iunx was notable for the obsessive twisting of its neck, whence its modern name ‘wryneck’, and the kigklos for the continual shaking of its rear-end, whence its modern name ‘wagtail’.Footnote 56 In both cases, the goal was to project onto the victim the salacious natural behaviour of the species.Footnote 57

IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

The broad formal similarities between Simaetha's erotic curse and all of these hexametrical comparanda can be summarized as follows:

PERFORMATIVE FUTURE

4th cent. b.c.e. Attic katadesmos (δήσω)

3rd cent. b.c.e. Theoc. Id. 2.10 (ἐκ θυέων καταδήσομαι)

1st cent. b.c.e. Berlin ‘Apple Spell’ (βα[λ]ῶ and δώσω)

PRESENCE, BUT NOT AGENCY, OF SUPERHUMAN ENTITIES

4th cent. b.c.e. Attica katadesmos (δήσω … σὺμ πᾶσιμ φθιμένοις)

Hellenistic Attica katadesmos (δήσω … σύν θ’ Ἑκάτ<η>ι χθονίαι καὶ Ἐριννύσιν ἡλιθιώναις)

3rd cent. b.c.e. Theoc. Id. 2.28 (σὺν δαίμονι τάκω)

CODA REQUESTING PERFECTION FOR EROTIC AND BINDING CURSES

5th cent. b.c.e. Aristophanic parody (τελέει δ’ ἀγαθὴν ἐπαοιδήν)

3rd cent. b.c.e. Theoc. Id. 2.14 (Ἑκάτα … ἐς τέλος ἄμμιν ὀπάδει)

1st cent. b.c.e. Berlin ‘Apple Spell’ (πότνια Κυπρογένεια τέλει τελέαν ἐπαοιδήν)

1st cent. c.e. Oxyrhynchus papyrus (πότνια Φερϲεφόνεια, τέλει [τ]ελέαν ἐπαοιδήν)

Taken together, these comparanda suggest that Theocritus would have been well aware of this early Greek tradition of hexametrical curses, which begin with an emphatic performative future, but which could also refer to the presence or help of gods or other superhuman entities (for example Hecate, the distracting Furies or Aphrodite) but not to their agency.

I would also suggest that this older tradition of erotic curses may have included couplets of incantatory similes, such as the similes discussed in Section I, for example in step 4 of her long incantation:

ὡς τοῦτον τὸν κηρὸν ἐγὼ σὺν δαίμονι τάκω,
ὣς τάκοιθ’ ὑπ’ ἔρωτος ὁ Μύνδιος αὐτίκα Δέλφις.
As I with the goddess’ aid melt this wax,
so may Mindian Delphis be melted at once by erôs.

The so-called ‘Curse against the Potters’ at one point has a couplet of similar form:Footnote 58

ὡς γνάθος ἱππείη βρύκει, βρύκοι δὲ κάμινος,
πάντ᾿ ἔντοσθ᾿ αὐτῆς κεραμήϊα λεπτὰ ποιοῦσα.
As a horse's jaw munches, so may the kiln munch,
grinding up in small pieces all of the pots inside.

Indeed, we saw earlier that the incantation uttered by Jason over the iunx-bird also probably contained a similia-similibus formula that assimilated Medea to the misfortunate bird. One final and perhaps most famous feature of Simaetha's spell may also reflect the early hexametrical incantations discussed above: the repeated refrain, which we saw earlier in the binding spell sung by the Furies in Aeschylus’ Eumenides, and which also appears in the recently published ‘Getty Hexameters’, a long set of protective incantations which date to the Classical period, were composed in dactylic hexameters and were divided up into four sections by nearly identical refrains that claim the god Paian as their source.Footnote 59

We have seen, finally, how Simaetha's ritual performance combines domestic grains and spices with two special devices of a courtesan and how her speech-act mimics two different traditions of hexametrical incantations, both of them attested quite early: a binding spell aimed at preventing Delphis from consorting with other women or men and an agôgê designed to force him to come back to her from the arms of another. Generally speaking, these were the same sort of comparanda that Gow and others used in the last century, but at the time the paucity of the earlier metrical examples led them to compare the first half of Idyll 2 with the prose versions of these same kinds of curses that proliferate in the Roman period and later. But their instincts were on target, and, in the end, it seems that Simaetha got it right after all. As described and quoted by Theocritus, she is, in fact, neither failed sorceress nor comic witch but rather a courtesan, who uses a traditional and fairly easy-to-perform hexametrical curse, while burning and melting various household items, in a last-ditch and ultimately failed effort to get Delphis to return to her.

References

1 Despite persistent scholarly belief that Simaetha is a down-on-her-heels daughter of a citizen, Dickie, M.W., Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World (London, 2001), 100–1Google Scholar has shown decisively—by drawing many parallels from Hellenistic and Roman literature—that she would have been easily recognizable to Theocritus’ readers as a courtesan living in her own home with a single servant financially dependent on arranging a series of hopefully long-term sexual relationships with men.

2 See e.g. Segal, C., ‘Simaetha and the iunx’, QUCC 15 (1973), 32–43Google Scholar; Segal, C., ‘Under-reading and intertextuality: Sappho, Simaetha and Odysseus in Theocritus’ Second Idyll’, Arethusa 17 (1984), 201–9Google Scholar; Segal, C., ‘Space, time and imagination in Theocritus’ Second Idyll’, CSCA 16 (1985), 103–19Google Scholar; F.T. Griffiths, ‘Poetry as pharmakon in Theocritus’ Idyll 2’, in G.W. Bowersock, W. Burkert, M.C.J. Putnam (edd.), Arktouros: Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M.W. Knox on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (Berlin, 1979), 81–8; Parry, H., ‘Magic and songstress: Theocritus Idyll 2’, ICS 13 (1988), 43–55Google Scholar; and S. Goldhill, The Poet's Voice: Essays on Poetics and Ancient Greek Literature (Cambridge, 1991), 261–72.

3 A.S.F. Gow, Theocritus, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1952), 36–7. His main argument was that the numerous agreements between the PGM, on the one hand, and Idyll 2 and the Roman poets, on the other, ‘show that much of the material that they [that is, the papyri handbooks] systematize is far older than themselves and some of it of immemorial antiquity’.

4 Lambert, M., ‘Desperate Simaetha: gender and power in Theocritus Idyll 2’, AClass 45 (2002), 71–88Google Scholar, at 74 and Hordern, J.H., ‘Love magic and purification in Sophron, PSI 1214a, and Theocritus’, CQ 52 (2002), 164–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 164, for example, argue that the PGM are not reliable comparanda, because they are ‘significantly later’. F. Graf, Magic in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA, 1997), 18 is more measured when he says that Theocritus ‘constructs a mosaic, a kind of super-ritual capable of activating in its readers all sorts of associations connected with magic, and he constructs it following ritual facts that are well-informed but, taken as a whole, would not work’. On the other hand, I. Petrovic, ‘ΦΑΡΜΑΚΕΥΤΡΙΑ ohne ΦΑΡΜΑΚΟΝ: Überlegungen zur Komposition des zweiten Idylls von Theokrit’, Mnemosyne 57 (2004), 421–44 has argued that Simaetha's incantations (and also her complaints to Selene in the second part of the poem) do in fact accurately recall the so-called ‘prayers for justice’ found on curse tablets of the Classical and Hellenistic periods.

5 R.W. Johnson, The Idea of Lyric: Lyric Modes in Ancient and Modern Poetry (Berkeley, 1982), 168 (‘not very skilled in magic’); Lambert (n. 4), 71 (‘a comic parody of a magic ritual in which the lovesick practitioner perpetrates ritual mayhem for the entertainment of Theocritus’ audience’) and 80–1 (‘would-be witch … who gets everything wrong’ and ‘comic send-up of a bungled magical ritual’); and J. Domány, ‘Magic and irony in Theocritus Idyll 2’, Hermes 141 (2013), 58–64, at 61 (‘she makes mistakes and therefore none of her charms can bring her love back to her’).

6 C.A. Faraone, ‘The agonistic context of early Greek binding spells’, in id. and D. Obbink (edd.), Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion (Oxford, 1991), 13–15.

7 Faraone, C.A., ‘The wheel, the whip and other implements of torture: erotic magic in Pindar Pythian 4. 213–9’, CJ 88 (1993), 1–19Google Scholar; id., Ancient Greek Love Magic (Harvard, 1999), 41–68.

8 Theoc. Id. 2.18–62. Throughout this essay I use the text and translation of N. Hopkinson, Theocritus Moschus Bion (Cambridge, MA, 2015), who follows Gow and most editors in placing verses 28–32 after verse 43 in order to produce a regular series of four-verse stanzas divided by a single-verse refrain.

9 For this use of the ‘performative future’ to refer to a present ritual action, see n. 31 below.

10 Here, we might imagine that the parallel wish would have been: ‘as this fringe is shredded and burns in the fire, so too Delphis’.

11 Steps 4–5 are the outliers; they appear in the same quatrain.

12 Barley, bran and laurel are never burned in the PGM recipes, although laurel crowns are worn and laurel sprigs are carried in divination spells that invoke Apollo, for which see C.A. Faraone, ‘The collapse of celestial and chthonic realms in a late-antique “Apollonian invocation” (PGM I 262–347)’, in R. Abusch, A.Y. Reed and P. Schäfer (edd.), Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (Cambridge, 2004), 213–32; PGM III 410–23, a spell for gaining a good memory, tells us to make a dough of barley meal and milk, shape it into twelve female figures and then eat them on an empty stomach. Two late antique texts (that is, roughly contemporary with the PGM) do mention the use of barley or dough. In the Orphic Argonautica, the narrator ‘Orpheus’, with the help of Medea, fashions figures from barley and throws them into a fire in a complex magical ritual; see D. Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Oxford, 2009), 92. Heliodorus mentions in a similar context a dough cake shaped in the form of a man and thrown into the fire (Aeth. 6.14).

13 Wax is sometimes used in the PGM to make images, but only two are used as effigies in curses, and these images are impaled, but (surprisingly) not burned (PGM IV 296–312 and CXXIV 10–15). Plato does indeed mention (Leg. 933b) that people could be frightened when they saw moulded wax figurines on doorsteps or tombs, but these were not melted. Wax, both melted and pierced by female practitioners, does appear more prominently in later Latin poetry, e.g. Verg. Ecl. 8.80–1 and Hor. Sat. 1.8.30–3, for which see C.A. Faraone, ‘Clay hardens and wax melts: magical role-reversal in Vergil's eighth Eclogue’, CPh 84 (1989), 294–300. Ovid twice mentions witches who make wax effigies and pierce their livers with needles (Her. 6.93–4 and Am. 3.7.30).

14 The PGM handbooks use the term ousia (‘stuff’) to refer generally to hair, fingernails and threads from garments. It is used thrice in recipes where ousia is attached to effigies—a bat (PGM IV 2950) or a pierced wax image (IV 296)—or placed with the victim's name in the mouth of a dead dog (XXXVI 370) or glued to the wall of a hot steam bath (XXXVI 74). But ousia is (again surprisingly) never burnt.

15 See e.g. L.R. LiDonnici, ‘Single-stemmed wormwood, pinecones and myrrh: expense and availability of recipe ingredients in the Greek Magical Papyri’, Kernos 14 (2001), 61–91 and ead., ‘Beans, fleawort, and the blood of a hamadryas baboon: recipe ingredients in Greco-Roman magical materials’, in M. Meyer and P. Mirecki (edd.), Ancient Magic and Ritual Power (Religions of the Graeco-Roman World 129) (Leiden, 2001), 359–77; myrrh was especially popular in erotic spells; see Faraone (n. 7 [1999]), 50–60.

16 D. Pralon, ‘Théocrite, La Magicienne’, in A. Moreau (ed.), La Magie (Montpellier, 2000), 1.315.

17 Theocritus further emphasizes this ring-composition by having the first and the last quatrains of Simaetha's incantation end with these similar-sounding verbs.

18 Pralon (n. 16), 316–17. See above at the end of note 12 for a dough cake in the shape of a man.

19 See Gow (n. 3), ad loc. and K.J. Dover, Theocritus: Selected Poems (London, 1971), ad loc. for surveys of the various opinions.

20 With the rhombus, Simaetha attempts ‘to whirl' or ‘twirl’ Delphis to her door, using the verb dinein and thereby presumably combining the over-the-head circular movement of the rhombus with the linear goal of forcing Delphis to come to her house. Scholars have suggested that Simaetha must have spun the iunx-wheel to a similar effect throughout the ritual, because it is invoked ten times in the refrain to draw Delphis to her home; see Pirenne-Delforge, V., ‘L'iynge dans le discours mythique et les procédures magiques’, Kernos 6 (1993), 277–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Johnston, S.I., ‘Song of the iunx: magic and rhetoric in Pythian 4’, TAPhA 125 (1995), 177–206Google Scholar. Simaetha does not, however, use the language of spinning in connection with the iunx, nor does Pindar in his description of a similar device, a passage that is discussed in detail below in Section III.

21 See e.g. Tavenner, E., ‘Iynx and rhombus’, TAPhA 64 (1933), 109–27Google Scholar; Gow, A.S.F., ‘ΙΥΓΞ, ΡΟΜΒΟΣ, rhombus, turbo’, JHS 54 (1934), 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Segal (n. 2 [1973]); F. Capponi, ‘Avifauna e magia’, Latomus 40 (1981), 292–301; Johnston (n. 20); and Pirenne-Delforge (n. 20).

22 Xen. Mem. 3.22.16–17; see Faraone (n. 7 [1999]), 1–2 and Dickie (n. 1), 82–3, who cites this passage as evidence that ‘erotic magic is integral to the equipment of a courtesan and that it is needed to make sure that lovers are drawn to her and remain faithful’.

23 Anth. Pal. 5.20, with the discussions of Faraone (n. 7 [1999]), 151–2 and Dickie (n. 1), 103–4.

24 Lucian, Dial. meret. 4.5.4 with Faraone (n. 7 [1999]), 150–1.

25 The rhombus appears once in the PGM, not as a device used in a recipe but rather as a kind of mystic symbol in a hymn addressed to Hecate; see L.M. Bortolani, Magical Hymns from Roman Egypt: A Study of Greek and Egyptian Traditions of Divinity (Cambridge, 2016), 256–7.

26 Aesch. Eum. 306–48 in the translation of H. Lloyd-Jones, Aeschylus: The Oresteia (Berkeley, 1979) and with the discussion of Faraone, C.A., ‘Aeschylus’ hymnos desmios (Eum. 306) and Attic judicial curse tablets’, JHS 105 (1985), 150–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Faraone (n. 6).

28 For the regular meaning of katadesmos (‘binding spell’) and katadein (‘to bind with a spell’), see Gow (n. 3), on line 2.3.

29 Gow (n. 3), ad loc. and Dover (n. 19), ad loc.

30 Gow (n. 3), 2.35–6.

31 For the use of the performative future on curse tablets, in other magical spells and in ritual utterances more generally, see C.A. Faraone, ‘The “performative future” in three Hellenistic incantations and Theocritus’ Second Idyll’, CPh 90 (1995), 1–15, who quotes other examples. Simaetha's use of the middle is appropriate in a spell performed jointly by herself and her slave.

32 See DTA 108 and Faraone (n. 31), 4–6 for full discussion. The metre of the first line is marred, as is often the case in e.g. funerary epigrams and dedicatory inscriptions, by the name of the victim Sosikleia, which cannot, of course, be omitted. The curse begins on the inner surface of the rolled-up tablet and the last three words spill over onto the outer surface. I give here the reconstruction of G. Kaibel, Epigrammata graeca ex lapidibus conlecta (Berlin, 1878), no. 1136, who dates the text to the third or second century b.c.e. and rightly assumes that the last half of line 4 was accidentally left out by the scribe.

33 The adjective ἡλιθιώναις is a hapax legomenon, which means something like ‘who makes [sc. another] foolish’ or ‘who distracts’. See LSJ s.v. and Wilamowitz apud Kaibel (n. 32), no. 1136, who compares similar words used to describe the binding song of the Erinyes quoted and discussed at the beginning of this section.

34 I give here the text of the only published example, for which see J.L. Lamont, ‘A new commercial curse tablet from classical Athens’, ZPE 196 (2015), 159–74, who will publish the others soon. The two halves of the second line are reversed on the tablet, but Lamont rightly inverts their order to correct the scansion, since the phrase ἐν αἵματι καὶ κονίαισιν appears at line end in Od. 22.383–6.

35 The evidence of the Classical period for ghosts as agents of curses is admittedly slim; see S.I. Johnston, Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece (Berkeley, 1999), 127–60 for the best argument.

36 I assume with Gow (n. 3), ad loc. that ‘the goddess’ in question is Hecate.

37 See e.g. Gow (n. 3), ad loc.

38 R. Daniel, D. Ben Ami and Y. Tcheckhanovets, ‘A juridical curse from a Roman mansion in the city of David’, ZPE 186 (2013), 227–36. The dactylic verse comes at the end of the comprehensible Greek text of the curse; there follow some symbols and then some nonsensical names.

39 P.Oxy. LXV 4468, col. i, 26.

40 Faraone (n. 7 [1999]), 44–95.

41 See above in Section I, steps 1 (melting), 2 (burning), 3 (burning), 4 (melting) and 7, where the fringe of his cloak is shredded and then thrown into the fire.

42 Pind. Pyth. 4.213–19 as translated by Race, W.H., Pindar Olympian and Pythian Odes (Cambridge, MA, 1997)Google Scholar. For full discussion see Faraone (n. 7 [1993]) and Faraone (n. 7 [1999]), 56–8.

43 Gow (n. 21).

44 Faraone (n. 7 [1999]), 41–68.

45 Vergote, J., ‘Folterwerkzeuge’, RAC 8 (1972), 112–41Google Scholar, at 113–15. The most common expression in Greek is ‘to be racked (streblousthai) upon the wheel’ (Hdt. 2.89; Dem. 29.40; Plut. Vit. Nic. 30; Ar. Plut. 875 and Ran. 620; and Antiph. 5.32). The basic meaning of streblousthai is ‘to be twisted’ or ‘to be strained tight’ as in the case of cables in a windlass (Hdt. 7.36) or strings on a musical instrument (Pl. Resp. 531b). The focus seems to be on the stretching or the tension of the victim's body, for example the simile in Ar. Lys. 845–6: ‘Such is the strain and the stretching that hold me—as if I were being racked (streblousthai) upon the wheel.’

46 See Faraone, C.A., ‘Animal-effigies in ancient curses: the role of gender, age and natural behavior in their selection’, Mediterraneo Antico 22 (2019), 307–34Google Scholar, at 323–6.

47 DT 241.15–20 (Carthage, second century c.e.). See also DT 111–12 (Aquitania, first century c.e.): ‘Just as this puppy is prone and unable to rise up, so, too, may they be unable to rise. May they be transfixed, just as the puppy has been transfixed.’

48 DT 222B1–5 (Carthage, first century c.e.)

49 Marcie Handler kindly made me aware of this interesting find and I thank her for the description I have used here; she gave a preliminary report at the 2009 APA Meetings in Philadelphia entitled: ‘Chicken soup for the soul: new evidence for the practice of magic in Hellenistic Athens’.

50 See especially the Berlin ‘Apple Spell’ (PGM CXXII 1–15), quoted and discussed in detail below.

51 The idea that in this passage Pindar is thinking about a specifically hexametrical charm might, in fact, be expected in a heavily dactylic poem such as Pythian 4, whose metrical scheme was apparently chosen to reflect the fact that the bulk of the text is said to be an oracle chanted by Medea herself. For the reflection of other hexametrical genres as well, see e.g. B. Gildersleeve, Pindar's Olympian and Pythian Odes (New York, 1897), 281: ‘this poem, among all the Pindaric odes, approaches epos most closely, so the rhythmical composition reminds one of a hexametrical hymn. Four times in succession we have precisely the same pentapody, the close of which reminds us of the hexameter.’ The poem also recalls epic verse in places, as Gildersleeve himself says a bit earlier (at 280).

52 PGM CXXII 1–15, with the commentary in the editio princeps of Brashear, W., ‘Ein Berliner Zauberpapyrus’, ZPE 33 (1979), 261–78Google Scholar, whose reconstruction of the hexameters I print here.

53 The second column of the same Berlin papyrus, for example, includes two other examples where the hexametrical coda appears at the end of an erotic curse in prose. The first of them replaces Aphrodite with Isis (δέσ[ποι]να Ἶσι, τέλει τελέαν ἐπαοιδήν) and the second retains Aphrodite: πότνια Κυπρογενεία τέλει τελέαν ἐπαοιδήν (PGM CXXII ii 7–8 and 24–5). There is yet another recipe for an agôgê that ends κ]αλῶς μο[ι τέλει ταύτην τὴν ἐπα]οιδήν (PGM VII 991–2) and a recently published erotic curse of a late first-century c.e. date to inflict insomnia (P.Oxy. LXV 4468, col. ii, 9–10): Κυπρο]γένεια τέλει τελέαν ἐπαοιδήν.

54 Fr. 29 K.–A. = Ael. NA 12.9; see Faraone, C.A., ‘Aristophanes Amphiaraus fr. 29 (K.–A.): oracular response or erotic incantation?’, CQ 42 (1992), 320–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 See Fontenrose, J.E., The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations with a Catalogue of Responses (Berkeley, 1978), 154–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar and C. Platter, Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres (Baltimore, 2007), 108–42.

56 See Tavenner (n. 21), 110–11 and Capponi (n. 21), 295–6, who quote and discuss all the relevant passages in the natural historians and the scholia to Pindar and Theocritus.

57 Faraone (n. 7 [1999]), 64–5.

58 Ps.-Hdt. Vit. Hom. 32 = Epigr. 14.13–14. This curse was probably composed in the late Classical or Hellenistic period; for a detailed discussion, see C.A. Faraone, ‘A collection of curses against kilns (Homeric Epigram 13.7–23)’, in A.Y. Collins and M.M. Mitchell (edd.), Antiquity and Humanity: Essays on Ancient Religion and Philosophy Presented to Hans Dieter Betz on his 70th Birthday (Tubingen, 2001), 435–50. The Life was composed in Ionic prose during 50–150 c.e. and embeds a number of much earlier hexametrical poems into a narrative frame that was itself probably based on the work of a sophistic contemporary of Plato's; see West, M.L., Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 304Google Scholar.

59 Rutherford, I., ‘The immortal words of Paean’, in Faraone, C.A. and Obbink, D. (edd.), The Getty Hexameters: Poetry, Magic and Mystery in Ancient Greek Selinous (Oxford, 2013), 157–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.