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AESCHINES ΚΟΙΤΟΦΟΡΟΣ (DEM. 18.260)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2017

S. Douglas Olson
S. Douglas Olson*
Affiliation:
Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies/ University of Minnesota
*
sdolson@umn.edu
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Extract

According to the manuscripts of On the Crown (18.260), Demosthenes mockingly claims that, as the youthful Aeschines led processions in his mother's mystery-cult celebrations, he was hailed by various old women as ἔξαρχος καὶ προηγεμὼν καὶ κιττοφόρος καὶ λικνοφόρος καὶ τοιαῦθ’ (‘leader and guide and ivy-bearer and bearer-of-the-winnowing-fan and the like’). Τhese are clearly special titles—Aeschines is not just one celebrant among many but a leading figure in the train of worshippers—and recent editors accordingly note that κιττοφόρος seems weak and follow Albert Rubens (‘Rubenius’) in printing instead κιστοφόρος (‘basket-bearer’), which Harpocration reports was read by some authorities here. κιστοφόρος appears to be supported by ΣF2 18.260 (296 Dilts) ὁ φέρων τὰς κίστας (‘the man who carries the baskets’), which is easily taken to confirm that Demosthenes meant that Aeschines stood out in the crowd of celebrants inter alia because he carried containers within which must have been sacred implements of some sort.

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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , May 2017 , pp. 297 - 299
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2017 

According to the manuscripts of On the Crown (18.260), Demosthenes mockingly claims that, as the youthful Aeschines led processions in his mother's mystery-cult celebrations, he was hailed by various old women as ἔξαρχος καὶ προηγεμὼν καὶ κιττοφόρος καὶ λικνοφόρος καὶ τοιαῦθ’ (‘leader and guide and ivy-bearer and bearer-of-the-winnowing-fan and the like’).Footnote 1 Τhese are clearly special titles—Aeschines is not just one celebrant among many but a leading figure in the train of worshippers—and recent editors accordingly note that κιττοφόρος seems weak and follow Albert Rubens (‘Rubenius’) in printing instead κιστοφόρος (‘basket-bearer’),Footnote 2 which Harpocration reports was read by some authorities here.Footnote 3 κιστοφόρος appears to be supported by ΣF2 18.260 (296 Dilts) ὁ φέρων τὰς κίστας (‘the man who carries the baskets’), which is easily taken to confirm that Demosthenes meant that Aeschines stood out in the crowd of celebrants inter alia because he carried containers within which must have been sacred implements of some sort.

What ΣF2 18.260 (296 Dilts) actually offers, however, is ὁ φέρων τὰς κοίτας (‘the man who carries the koitai’), which Dilts has brought into conformity with Harpocration's report of a variant reading in the passage.Footnote 4 κοίτη is < κεῖμαι (‘be laid down, lie’) and normally means ‘bed’ in the sense ‘place in which a person is laid/lies down’.Footnote 5 But inscriptional and lexicographic evidence makes it clear that the word was also used, at least in fifth-century and fourth-century Athens, of a storage container of some sort (LSJ s.v. VI), i.e. ‘that in which an object is laid’:Footnote 6

  • • IG I3 387.14–15 = I.Eleusis 52B.14–15 χρυσίον | ἐν κοίτει χαλκε͂ι (‘gold money in a bronze koitê’; from the accounts of the Eleusinian epistatai, 407/6 b.c.e.)

  • • IG II2 120.37–40 κοῖται [χ]α[λκαῖ?] | [ἐ]ντελε͂ς Δ[Δ]ΔΔ· τούτων μία [κατάπ]τυκτος· ἕτεραι κ[ο]ῖτ[αι χ]- | [α]λκαῖ ἐπισκευῆς δε[ό]μεν[αι ․․]· τούτων μία ἐπίθημα ο[ὐκ ἔ]- | [χει]· καὶ μιᾶς κοίτης τὸ [πῶμα] (‘40 complete bronze(?) koitai; one of these is crushed; other bronze koitai needing repairs; one of these has no cover; also the lid of one koitê’; from a decree and inventory of the Chalcotheke, 362/1 b.c.e.)

  • • IG II2 1408.14–15 κοῖται κεναὶ χαλκαῖ ΔΔΔ | μία ἄνευ ἐπιθήματο[ς (‘30 empty bronze koitai, one without a cover’; from the accounts of the treasurers of Athena, shortly after 385/4 b.c.e.)

  • • Hesp. 7 (1938), 272 #7.4 ἀργυρο͂ς ἐν κοί[τηι (‘a silver [?] in a koitê’; from an inventory of the Opisthodomus, late fifth century b.c.e.)

  • • Poll. 7.79 εἰς ἃ δὲ κατετίθεντο τὰς ἐσθῆτας ταύτας, … κοῖται δὲ καὶ κιβωτοὶ καὶ κίσται (‘and the objects into which they deposited these items of clothing, … koitai and boxes and kistai’) ~ 10.136 ἵνα δὲ ἀποτίθενται αἱ ἐσθῆτες … κοῖται κοιτίδες (‘and where clothing is stored … koitai, koitides’); 7.159 (κοίτη in a brief catalogue of words for boxes, baskets and the like)

  • • Hesychius κ 3274 κοίτη· κίστη, ἐν ᾗ τὰ βρώματα ἔφερον (‘koitê: a hamper in which they transported food’) ~ Phot. κ 864, which calls a koitê a πλεκτὴ κίστη, i.e. something made of wickerwork rather than wood or metal, and specifies that it was used for storage rather than transport.

Compare Eup. fr. 86 ἀλλὰ τὰς κοίταςFootnote 7 γ’ ἔχουσι πλουσίως σεσαγμένας (‘but as for their koitai, they have them richly stuffed’, i.e. ‘full of expensive objects’), from Baptai (mid 410s b.c.e.), a play that seems to have had to do with exotic mystery cults (test. i–ii K.–A.); IG I3 421.184, 186 (from the lists of the household goods sold at public auction of the men caught up in the religious scandals of 415 b.c.e.), where the entry κοίτε [sic] occurs twice, once with a price of less than 5 drachmas, leaving little doubt that these are storage containers rather than beds;Footnote 8 Men. Dys. 448 κοίτας φέρονται (‘they bring koitai’; among the preparations for a sacrifice to the Nymphs);Footnote 9 and the diminutive κοιτίς (to be used to store birth-tokens) at Men. Epit. 381.Footnote 10 The enormous number of such objects dedicated to Athenian goddesses in IG II2 120.37–40 and 1408.14–15Footnote 11 suggests that they had a ritual purpose, and a connection to mystery cult is confirmed by Plut. Phoc. 28.2 τὰς μυστικὰς κοίτας (‘the mystic koitai’).Footnote 12

That Harpocration's κιστοφόρος is right cannot be entirely excluded.Footnote 13 It is none the less the case that κιττοφόρος would be an extremely easy error for κοιτοφόρος, particularly in an age when no one remembered that κοίτη at one point in the past had also meant ‘storage vessel, coffer’, and also that κοιτοφόρος appears to be confirmed by κοίτας at ΣF2, a reading that must otherwise be emended away. I therefore suggest that what Demosthenes said was that his mother's celebrants hailed Aeschines as κοιτοφόρος, ‘he who carries the storage container’ for the sacred implements.

References

1 Thanks are due Benjamin W. Millis and an anonymous referee for CQ for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

2 Thus in particular Wankel, H., Rede für Ktesipho über den Kranz (Wissenschaftliche Kommentare zu griechischen und lateinischen Schriftstellern) (Heidelberg, 1976), 1145–6Google Scholar in his commentary; Yunis, H. (ed.), Demosthenes On the Crown (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics) (Cambridge, 2001), 256 Google Scholar (mistakenly citing the authority of the scholium ad loc.; see below) and in his text; and M.R. Dilts in the new OCT (2001). κιττοφόρος was retained by a number of early twentieth-century editors, including S.H. Butcher in the old OCT (1903); C. Fuhr in the Teubner (1914); C.A. Vince and J.H. Vince in the Loeb (1926); and G. Mathieu in the Budé (1947).

3 κιττοφόρος· ἔνιοι μετὰ τοῦ σ γράφουσι κιστοφόρος· τὰς γὰρ λεγομένας κίστας ἱερὰς εἶναι ἔλεγον τοῦ Διονύσου καὶ ταῖν θεαῖν (‘kittophoros: some authorities write kistophoros with a sigma; for they used to say that so-called kistai were sacred to Dionysus and the Two Goddesses’, i.e. Demeter and Kore; p. 178.10–11 Dindorf = K 62 Keaney). The note is not specifically connected to Dem. 18.260, but the word in question is so rare, and the set of texts Harpocration is interested in so limited, that it can scarcely refer to anything else. This looks in any case to be a speculative emendation by someone unhappy with the reading κιττοφόρος rather than a simple report of a manuscript variant. Cf. Phot. κ 748 = Suda κ 1681 (from the Epitome of Harpocration, and thus not an independent witness). The error—if that is what it is—must be old and widespread, since κιττοφόρος is also found at [Aristid.] Rh. II.121 Patillon (quoting Demosthenes) and Lib. Vit. 4.3 (reworking Demosthenes; fourth century c.e.).

4 Note also that the lemma <κιστοφόρος> has been supplied by Dilts to match his version of the scholium, and should not be treated as independent evidence for what Demosthenes wrote.

5 LSJ s.v. I.1 (directing the reader to s.v. κοῖτος I ‘resting-place, bed’) is misleading inter alia because the first gloss offered after the citation of Od. 19.341 is ‘bedstead, IG I2 330.16, al.’, a reference to the Attic Stelae, where the word almost certainly means ‘storage container’; cf. below. Montanari s.v. ‘bed, couch’ appears to represent an incautious misunderstanding of the LSJ entry.

6 Cf. German Lager < legen, and contrast English lair (from the same root). For vessels of this sort generally, see Brümmer, E., ‘Griechische Truhenbehälter’, JdI 100 (1985), 16–22 Google Scholar, who does not attempt to discriminate between κίστη and κοίτη.

7 Emended to κίστας by T. Kock.

8 Thus Pritchett in Pritchett, W.K. and Pippin, A., ‘The Attic Stelai: part II’, Hesp. 25 (1956), 178–328 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 225–6. This section of the catalogue appears to be reserved for minor household goods; entries for [κι]βότια (‘chests’) appear in lines 188–9.

9 See Handley, E.W. (ed.), The Dyskolos of Menander (Cambridge, MA, 1965)Google Scholar, ad loc., who suggests as an alternative possibility that κοίτη here might mean ‘bed-frame’, as if the word were roughly equivalent to κλίνη (which it is not; see above). One would not in any case expect beds to be hauled out into the countryside for a rustic sacrifice of this sort, for which temporary στιβάδες (thin branches covered with green stuff or skins) were normally produced on the spot—as the cook at Dys. 420–1 says is going to be done for the party to come in the play.

10 See Furley, W.D., Menander Epitrepontes (BICS Supplement 106) (London, 2009)Google Scholar, ad loc.

11 Note also the κοίτε ℎυπόχσυλος κατάχρυσος (‘gilded koitê with wood beneath’) which appears repeatedly in the Parthenon accounts (e.g. IG I3 343.10) and which again seems more likely to be a container than a bed-frame. No kistai, by contrast, appear to be dedicated to Athenian goddesses.

12 Emended by K. Ziegler in his Teubner edition of the text to τὰς μυστικὰς κίστας, bringing the text into conformity with what is generally read in Demosthenes.

13 A κίστη is used at Ar. Thesm. 284–5 by a worshipper to bring a sacrificial cake to a ceremony in honour of Demeter and Kore, although not as part of a procession, as also at Theoc. Id. 26.7–8 (Dionysiac ritual), and Clement of Alexandria (second/third cent. c.e.) refers explicitly to αἱ κίσται αἱ μυστικαί (Protrept. II.19 P., i.22.18 Dindorf). As Jahn, O., ‘De cista mystica’, Hermes 3 (1869), 317–34, esp. 318–19Google Scholar (followed by Mau, A., ‘Cista’, RE 3 [1899], 2591–3, at 2591Google Scholar) makes clear, however, the now-commonplace association between the κίστη and mystic cult is based primarily on this passage from Demosthenes and then (far more convincingly) on literary and visual evidence from the late Hellenistic and Roman periods.