Emilio Suárez, Miriam Blanco, Eleni Chronopoulou (eds.)

Los papiros mágicos griegos: entre lo sublime y lo cotidiano

MIRIAM BLANCO ALBERTO NODAR BLANCA BALLESTEROS MARIANNA SCAPINI ELENI CHRONOPOULOU EMILIO SUÁREZ DE LA TORRE ALEJANDRO GARCÍA MOLINOS SOFÍA TORALLAS MANUEL GARCÍA TEIJEIRO MICHELA ZAGO Mª TERESA MOLINOS TEJADA ATHANASSÍA ZOGRAFOU

Madrid 2015

WHIPPING IN MYTH, RITUAL AND MAGIC PRACTICE: A CASE OF CONVERGENCE

MARIANNA SCAPINI Università degli Studi di Verona-Universitat Pompeu Fabra

marianna.scapini@gmail.com Summary: With the following case study I will show how in antiquity the very same theme –whipping– appears in relation to different beliefs, and crosses the boundaries between magic practices stricto sensu and religious rituals. On the other hand, whip-ping manifests itself in very different chronological and geographical situations. This gesture often seems to convey analogous meanings and functions in so different con-texts, and therefore it can offer information on the ambiguous relationship between magic and religion across the Greek and Roman world.

Resumen: En el presente estudio analizaré la forma en que en la Antigüedad un mismo tema –la flagelación- aparece relacionado con diferentes creencias y traspasa los límites entre prácticas mágicas stricto sensu y ritos religiosos. Por otra parte, la flagelación aparece en situaciones cronológica y geográficamente distintas. Esta ac-ción transmite significados y funciones análogas en contextos muy diferentes y por tanto nos puede dar información de la ambigua relación entre magia y religión en el mundo griego y romano.

Key Words: Whipping, ritual and magic, agoge spells, whipping in amulets, Hekate’s top. Palabras clave: Flagelación, ritual y magia, hechizos de agogé, flagelación en amuletos, el “strophalos” de Hécate.

Contents: 1. Introduction, 2. Whipping in myth, 3. Whipping in Greek and Roman rituals, 4. Whipping in Greek and Roman magic, 5. Conclusions. Contenido: 1. Introducción, 2. Flagelación en el mito, 3. Flagelación en rituales griegos y romanos, 4. Flagelación en la magia griega y romana, 5. Conclusiones.

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1. INTRODUCTION A conspicuous number of documents, both literary and iconographical,

demonstrates that the whipping performed by gods was a widespread theme within the imagery of ancient Greeks and Romans1. Moreover, we have clear literary passages stating that ritual whipping was practiced in certain sanctu-aries and special occasions both in the Roman and Greek world. On the other hand, we have a few hints that this practice was performed in magic. As such, I believe that whipping is a particularly stimulating case study. An analysis of its use and representation in antiquity might well offer details concerning the ambiguous relationship between magic and religious ritual across the Greek and Roman world. To what extent different beliefs and practices involving ritual whipping influenced each other? Were the magic practices which bo-rrowed from the ritual or viceversa? No doubt, such questions require a tho-roughly and comparative analysis of whipping through the centuries, integra-ting literary with iconographical sources. Of course, I do not have enough room here to deal extensively with the problem. Therefore I will only single out a few examples of whipping in Greek and Roman myth, of ritual whipping and possible whipping practiced in magic, in order to show how interesting and fruitful a deeper analysis could be.

2. WHIPPING IN MYTH

Within Greek and Roman imagery –conveyed by both poetry and icono-

graphy– everyday instruments such as whips, goads and stings (μάστιγες, κέντρα, οἶστροι, stimuli, verbera, flagella, virgae) are depicted as very com-mon divine weapons basically aimed at conveying two meanings. Firstly, whipping is a frequent representation of divine punishment. Secondly, it often depicts a divine intervention aimed at compelling something or someone to react in a certain matter. Both functions are clearly modelled upon the main functions of whipping in the everyday life of these rural societies: to drive animals2, to compel or punish slaves and to punish criminals3.

First of all, in the Greek myth a common and ancient example of divine whipping aimed at forcing something to happen is ascribed to celestial deities, such as Helios and the Moon, who move their chariots and spheres by means

1 A recent definition of imagery is provided by Bonnet-Huet (2008) 197-202. 2 Regarding whips and goads for driving horses or cattle see, e. g., Il ., 5.748 and HDT. 4.3 (μάστιξ);

VERG., Aen. 5,579 (flagellum) and COLUM., De Re Rustica 2,2,26 (flagellum, verber and stimulus).

3 For example AR., Eq. 64-5, 67 and 1228 (μάστιξ and μαστίζω); PL., Per. 795 (stimulorum tritor).

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of a whip. The theme often occurs in iconography and also belongs to the Romans4.

As we learn from Greek texts, when the punitive or stimulating whipping is addressed to a person, its first effect is often a form of divine μᾰνία. On the very basis of such a supernatural possession the whipped person will suffer, in the case of a punitive whipping, or will react or be compelled according to the god’s will, in the case of a stimulating whipping. As illustrated by Jeanmaire in his old but still valid analysis5, Greek myths are rich of examples of such a divine punitive or stimulating whipping addressed to men and women and producing divine possession. The μᾰνία can be of different types on the basis of the god who causes it. Common statuses produced by a divine whip are erotic and Dionysiac possessions, and words indicating whips and goads often end up indicating metonymically precisely such psychological conditions6.

Whipping appears for instance in the well known description of the Dio-nysiac possession provided by Euripides in Bacchae, so as to metaphorically represent Dionysus’s impulse (Ba. 115-119):

Whoever Bromius leads the thiasoi, toward the mountain, here a group

of women stays, goaded (οἰστρηθεὶς) away from its weaving shuttles by Di-onysus.

In the Homeric myth of Lykourgos, too, the Bacchic madness is connected

to the stimulating action of a goad/rod/whip, called βουπλήξ: indeed, the king chases the maenads with this tool (Il . 6,135)7.

The same metaphor occurs in the field of erotic μᾰνία. Indeed Euripides speaks of the passion of Phaedra for Hippolytus –indicated metonymically as oἶστρος– as provoked precisely by the goads (κέντρα) of Aphrodite (Hipp. 1298-1303):

But I [Artemis] came for this, to demonstrate that the mind of your son

as righteous, so as he may die with a good reputation, and to explain the

4 See, for example, STAT., Thebais 8,271-274 (“It was the time when Phoebus’ [Helios the sun’s]

fiery sister [Eos the dawn], hearing the sound of his yoked steeds and the roar of Oceanus’ cavernous abode beneath the gathering dawn, collects her straying beams and with light flick of whip chases the stars away [fugat astra flagello]”) and Silvae 5.4.10 (“So oft hath Tithonia [Eos goddess of the dawn] passed by my groans [from lack of sleep], and pitying sprinkled me with her cool whip [gelido flagello]”): transl. by Mozley (1928): where not specified the translations are by the author.

5 Jeanmaire (1970) 105-56. 6 Oἶστρος as any vehement desire, insane passion: HDT. 2,93, E., Hipp. 1300. 7 On the meaning of βουπλήξ see Magnelli (2009) 125-138. Already De Cazanove (1983) 55-113.

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insane passion (oἶστρον) of your wife or, in a certain way, her nobility. In-deed, she fell in love with your son after being bitten by the goads (κέντροις) of the goddess who is the greatest enemy of us who love virginity.

From these examples we see how both Dionysiac and erotic possessions

frequently imply escaping from society or breaking the rules of civil life. Both in the case of the maenads in Bacchae and of Phaedra, we deal with women who leave their traditional role and duties.

As Olivier de Cazanove has accurately and extensively demonstrated8, the Romans, like the Greeks, also imagined and represented the input of divine possession –mostly Dionysiac and erotic– as a whipping act. They even con-ceived a goddess, Stimula, whose name was connected by Varro precisely with the stimuli used to drive cattle. Stimula clearly expressed the function of erotic stimulation, since she was the goddess of sexual desire and marriage9. More generally she embodied the idea of the ‘exaggerated act’10. According to De Cazanove, the Romans interpreted such a stimulating function as a di-vine possession which leads to the ritual action. At a certain point, demon-strates De Cazanove, this ancient typology of possession symbolized by the stimulus was reinterpreted in a Dionysiac form and the Roman stimulus was fully assimilated to the Dionysiac oἶστρος. At this point, the Greek κέντρα and οἶστροι fully converge with the Latin stimuli.

In Roman literature, an example of erotic stimulation described with the metaphor of the whip, in this case defined as flagellum, is provided by Horace, who speaks of the sublime flagellum of Venus (Carm. 3,26,11). A further Ro-man example of whipping –in this case the instrument is a virga– aimed at producing an erotic effect belongs to one variant of the myth of Faunus and Bona Dea mentioned by Macrobius (Sat. 1,12,20), although in this specific case the stimulation is unsuccessful. The goddess was whipped with a branch of an aphrodisiac plant, the myrtle, by her father Faunus who was in love with her:

They also call her [Bona Dea] daughter of Faunus and they say she re-

fused the father who had fallen in love with her, so that she was whipped by him with a branch of myrtle (ut et virga myrtea ab eo verberaretur), since she had refused him even when he made her drunk: it is said that he finally transformed himself into a snake and managed to rape his daughter.

In this case, too, we see the strict relationship between erotic and Dionysiac

madness, since the second stimulating tool used by Faunus is wine.

8 De Cazanove, ibid. 9 MART. CAPELLA 8,887. 10 VARRO, in Aug. Civ. Dei, 4,11.

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A topical representation of erotic madness, both in the Greek and Roman culture, are Eros’s darts which clearly symbolize the same stimulating func-tion embodied by Aphrodite/Venus’s goads and aphrodisiac virgae. Moreo-ver, Eros riding a dolphin is frequently represented holding a whip in Roman imperial iconography11.

As regards the divine punitive whipping which produces madness, in Greek and Roman literature this action is usually ascribed to infernal Furies, both in texts and iconography12. Indeed, as De Cazanove points out, the Furies, who embody precisely human madness, are the ‘déesses aguillonnantes’ par excellence. It must be observed that the boundary between stimulating and punitive whipping is often subtle, since in ancient myths a divine uncontrolled possession is frequently a punishment in itself. There are plenty of examples in Greek and Roman literature of negative Dionysiac possessions provoked by infernal Furies sent by Hera/Juno, who was typically connected to the μᾰνία, along with Bacchus, Cybele, Ares and other gods. The erotic μᾰνία, too, can be a form of divine punishment, as in the already quoted case of Hip-polytus and Phaedra.

No doubt, the most famous example of negative Dionysiac possession by frenzy provoked by Hera is that of Amata, described by Vergilius. Indeed, the poet claims that Amata’s Bacchic furor is induced by the fury Alecto through her stimuli (Aen. 7,404-5):

Allecto thus drives the queen mad in the woods and the wild, by means of the goads of Bacchus (agit stimulis Bacchi).

Elsewhere (Aen. 7,323-48 and 372-77) Vergil replaces the stimuli with

snakes in their function of instruments of the Furies13.

11 Giroire-Roger (2007) 129 (number 63), with bibliography. In this case, however, the tool may

simply be an attribute of the rider. 12 See, for example, the well known Apulian red figure krater depicting the punishment of Sisyphus,

ascribed to the so-called Underworld Painter and dated to ca. 330-310 BC, kept in the An-tikensammlungen of Munich (Catalogue Number: Munich 3297): naked Sisyphus is chased by a Fury with hunting dress and boots, a nebris and provided with a whip.

13 “ After she spoke, the terrible / goddess [Juno] descended to earth, where she summoned Alecto, creator / of sorrow, from the infernal darkness and seat of the dreaded / goddesses. Grim wars, treachery, anger and harmful crimes are / pleasing to her. (…) It is she whom Juno kindles with these words: / «Maiden born of Night, do me this service to strengthen my / honor and weakened reputation, and to prevent the / race of Aeneas from joining Latinus through marriage and settling / in Italian lands. You can incite concordant brothers to fight or overturn homes with hatred; by you are / lashes (verbera) and funeral torches inflicted on families; you have a / thousand names, a thousand skills for doing harm. / Find in your heart devious tricks, break the agreed-upon / treaty of peace, sow the crimes of war; let them long for, / let them cry out for, and let them seize arms». / Straightway Allecto, steeped in Gorgons’ poison, seeks out / Latium and the lofty dwell-ing of the Laurentine / king, and settles silently at the door of Amata, who / already seethes with anger and worries because of the Trojans’ / arrival and Turnus’ wedding. The goddess plucks

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Snakes are indeed common attributes of such Furies, an association con-firmed by iconography, exactly like whips. A famous Apulian loutrophorus, for example, depicts the punishment of Lykourgos by Dionysos14. The mad-ness is represented precisely by the image of a Fury, provided by both a snake and a goad. In this case Dionysos's punishment of Lykourgos by means of snakes and goads is a sort of retaliatory punishment, since Lykourgos, too, had hit the maenads with a rod/goad/whip (βουπλήξ), as we have seen. Ino’s madness is a further example of negative Dionysiac possession provoked by the goads/stabs (ictus) and snakes of Juno’s Furies: the girl was hated by the goddess for being the most important among Dionysus’s nur-ses15. There is a clear functional superimposition between snakes and stimuli.

In all these cases, it is evident, whips and whipping gods are symbolic re-presentations: they are depicted in order to evoke particular ideas (punishment and stimulation). The question arises as to whether such a theme had a corre-spondent within the ritual practice16.

3. WHIPPING IN GREEK AND ROMAN RITUALS

We have texts alluding to whipping practices in Greek and Roman rituals

of different epochs. Two examples are recorded by Pausanias (8,23), who speaks of whipped women in the Dionysos’s temple in Alea and Spartan boys whipped in honour of Artemis Orthia17:

from her hair and / hurls at the queen a dark serpent (anguem), shooting it deep in the / queen's bosom near her heart so that, stirred by this monster, her / rage will disrupt the entire household (7,323-48). / Seeing that Latinus, in spite of her words, stood firm, and as the serpent’s madden-ing poison (furentem vipeream animam) slid deeper / into her inmost being and wandered through the whole of her, / she raged with no restraint, truly unhappy” (7,372-77): transl. by Johnston (2012).

14 Munich, Antikensammlungen. 15 OV., Met. 4,481-499: “Waiting not, Tisiphone, revengeful, takes a torch; besmeared with blood,

and vested in a robe, dripping with crimson gore, and twisting-snakes engirdled, she departs her dire abode with twitching Madness, Terror, Fear and Woe: and when she had arrived the destined house, the door-posts shrank from her, the maple doors turned ashen grey: the Sun amazed fled. Affrighted, Athamas and Ino viewed and fled these prodigies; but suddenly that baneful Fury stood across the way, blocking the passage. There she stands with arms extended, and alive with twisting vipers. She shakes her hair; the moving serpents hiss; they cling upon her shoulders, and they glide around her temples, dart their fangs, and vomit corruption. Plucking from the midst two snakes, she hurls them with her pestilential hand upon her victims, Athamas and Ino, whom, although the vipers strike upon their breasts, no injury attacks their mortal parts; only their minds are stricken with wild rage (mens est, quae diros sentiat ictus), inciting to mad violence and crime”: transl. by More (1922).

16 On the lasting debate concerning the relationship between myth and ritual see the recent Parker

(2011) 22-9, with an up-to-date bibliography. 17 Regarding whipping in Sparta connected to the temple of Artemis Orthia see already X., Lac.

2,9.

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After Stymphalus comes Alea, which is also part of the Argive federation (…). In this place the sanctuaries of the gods here are those of Ephesian Ar-temis and Athena Alea, and there is a temple of Dionysus and a holy image. Every year they celebrate here a feast called Sciereia, and in this occasion, on the basis of an oracle from Delphi, women are whipped (μαστιγοῦνται), like the Spartan epheboi in front of the goddess Orthia.

The presence of whipping in Dionysiac contexts is also suggested by a pas-

sage of Plutarch (Quaes. Conv. 7,10)18:

The God puts into the hands of the drunken revelers a ferula (νάρθηκα), the lightest and softest weapon, so that the more quickly they strike the less they hurt.

We find a further hint in Hesychius, who calls θυρσοπλῆγες the people

involved in Bacchic ceremonies (οἱ ἐν τοῖς Βακχείοις ἐνθεαζόμενοι), that means ‘those who are beaten by the thyrsos’.

Further passages suggest that whipping or analogous performances were also included in rituals in honour of Demeter. In particular, Pausanias recalls a ritual performed at Pheneus in Peloponnese, where a priest of the goddess used to beat the earth with rods (8,15,2):

Wearing this mask [of Demeter Cidaria], the priest at the Greater Mys-

teries (ἐν τῇ μείζονι καλουμένῃ τελετῇ) beats with rods (ῥάβδοις) the Under-ground gods according to a certain logos.

Moreover, Hesychius (s. v. μόροττον) mentions a further ritual whipping

which involved people during certain ceremonies in honour of the goddess19. As regards the Roman world, ancient authors speak of the ritual of the Lu-

percalia, where noble youths ran up and down naked through the city, striking those they met with shaggy thongs and the hands of women in particular, in order to propitiate their fertility Plutarch, (Caes. 61) writes that:

Many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run about the city naked,

striking (παίοντες) for fun those they meet with shaggy thongs (σκύτεσιλασίοις). And many noble women come to them on purpose, and like with a teacher offer their hands to be struck (ταῖς πληγαῖς), believing that it would propitiate fertility and pregnancy.

What did all these ritual whippings mean and which was the relationship

with the divine whippings in myth?

18 See Tortorelli Ghidini (2000) 257. 19 Ἔτυπτον ἀλλήλους τοῖς Δημητρίοις.

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The old synthesis proposed by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in 1909 is still valid20. The scholar underlines that ritual whipping and beating may be either an instrument aimed at stimulation –which was frequently sex-ual– or an expiatory practice intended to expel an evil spirit or an impurity. More generally, as a number of studies have underlined, many societies of different epochs have ascribed to the whipping of both living beings and in-animate objects an effect of renovation, good health, happiness and fertility 21. No doubt we have to interpret in this sense the tradition of Pheneus, where the priest of Demeter hits the ground with a rod. In case of whipping aimed at propitiating rebirth and good health, the expiatory meaning is not necessarily excluded, since the good effects can be achieved only after a purification from evil influences. In other words, the stimulating and expiatory function of whipping are to some extent complementary. When whipping regards human beings, such a positive effect of renovation manifests itself as an improved fertility (as in the Lupercalia) or as an ecstatic status, as is the case with many practices, including several rituals of initiation of different epoch and socie-ties, from New Guinea to Africa, as underlined by Van Gennep.

In the first half of the Last century Vittorio Macchioro focused on whip-ping in Dionysiac rituals –such as the ritual of Alea– and suggested that through such a performance –a sort of replacement of a bloody sacrifice– the initiates experienced the passion of the god who, according to Orphic texts, was said to have been killed by the Titans22. As in other rites of passage, in this case the palingenesis and the renovation consisted in the new status of initiatus. The scholar23 ascribed an analogous function to the whipping per-formed in the Eleusinian cult, which is evoked by a scholion on a passage of Aristophanes’s Ranae (501). In this comedy Dionysus compares his slave Xanthias, disguised as Herakles, to the ‘rogue’, that is ‘the person who de-serves whipping’, from Melite (Μελίτης μαστιγίας), clearly alluding to the hero. The scholiast (in Ra. 501) explains this expression underlining that Her-akles was traditionally said to have been whipped in the minor Mysteries (τὰ μικρὰ μυστήρια).

The mystic value of whipping at Alea has been denied by Turcan, who has also observed that nothing in Pausanias’s passage suggests that maenads were involved in this ritual24. We may agree with Turcan, but Pausanias is suffi-ciently explicit in speaking of whipping in that context, and the phenomenon

20 Van Gennep (1909). 21 See, e. g., Scott (1938); Van Yelyr (1941). Many examples of the positive effects of whipping

have been recently provided in Glucklich (2001). 22 Paus. 8,37,5; Call. Fr. 643 (in Scarpi [2002] 377, A 13); Euph. Fr. 36 (in Scarpi [2002] 377, A

14); Clem. Al. Protr.17-18; Olymp. in Phd. 1,3,3-14. See Macchioro (1930) 124-7 (a first and shorter version of this book was published in Bari in 1920).

23 Macchioro (1930)137-8. 24 Turcan (1982).

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is also suggested by the already mentioned passage by Plutarch concerning the ferula which Dionysos gives to the komasts. Therefore, in case we refuse Macchioro’s mystic interpretation of the function of whipping, we should find an alternative explanation of the phenomenon. I believe it is evident that the Dionysiac whipping was aimed at stimulating the initiates and producing a Bacchic enthousiasmos. According to this interpretation, whipping in Dionys-iac rituals appears to be perfectly consistent with the traditional Greek and Roman symbolic representation of the μᾰνία as a divine stimulation by means of gods’ κέντρα, οἶστροι and stimuli, which we have analysed in the myths25.

As Van Gennep underlines, the mechanism of ritual stimulating whipping is often based upon the transfer into the body of the energy of the plant or animal whose parts are used as a whip. The scholar calls this particular type of stimulating whipping a ‘rite of incorporation’. It is the case, for example, of the fecundative whipping of the Lupercalia, where whipped women are given the vitality of the billy or nanny goats whose skin is used to fabricate the whip. The same mechanism occurs in the etiological myth of Faunus whip-ping Bona Dea proposed by the ancients in order to explain precisely the rite of the Lupercalia. Indeed, as we have seen, the god uses a scourge of aphro-disiac myrtle to seduce his daughter. An expiatory function, however, might also be ascribed to the ritual, as suggested by Piccaluga26, who connects the lashes addressed to Bona Dea to the fabrication of the passum, a syrupy ‘raisin wine’. Both Bona Dea –by means of whipping– and the passum –during its fabrication– are to be purified. Indeed the passum was the only type of wine which women were allowed to drink.The scholar supports her interpretation by observing that the goddess is whipped with myrtle: indeed, a non-inebriat-ing wine was prepared with this plant, as we learn from Pliny (Nat. 23,161). Again, we see how the interpretation of whipping as a stimulating practice does not exclude possible expiatory implications. Such a duplicity recalls to some extent the ambiguity which I have underlined within the myths concern-ing divine whipping. Here, too, whipping could be a stimulating or puni-tive/expiatory tool and often, as we have seen, the possession provoked by divine stimulation was a punishment in itself.

I would like to mention a further, possible example of ritual whipping in the Greek world. A jug connected to the Dionysiac Athenian festival of the Anthesteria depicts a man going back home after the revelries of Pithoigia and Choes. He carries a rod and his wife is waiting for him behind the door27. No doubt, it could be a generic representation of komos. Nevertheless I wonder whether the scene represents an unknown tradition where men whipped or hit their wives in order to awaken their passion, exactly as it is the case in the 25 See also Scapini (2015). 26 Piccaluga (1964) 217-9. 27 Richter (1939) 34, n°10.

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myth of Faunus and Bona Dea. It could be observed that, as I have demon-strated in my PHD thesis28, this feast has important points in common with the Roman rite of Bona Dea celebrated in December in the house of the first urban magistrate. In both cases we see how Dionysiac madness was strictly associ-ated with erotic passion, as I have already underlined.

To conclude, the function of whipping in Greek and Roman rituals seems to be consistent with the meaning of divine whipping in myths. As in myths gods and goddesses whip human beings in order to stimulate or/and drive them mad, whipping was performed in rituals so as to produce a stimulation which could arise erotic passion or/and fertility or/and produce a divine possession, a form of enthousiasmos.

4. WHIPPING IN GREEK AND ROMAN MAGIC

As underlined by Christopher Faraone, we also find the traditional image

of divine whips and goads and their effects in several imperial magic texts interpretable as agoge spells. In papyrus PGM XVIIa.17, in particular, a lo-ver explicitly asks that a victim be whipped so as to be driven to his em-brace:

Until she, as she is being whipped by you, comes yearning for me (ἕως

ἂν ὑπό σου μαστιζομένη ἔλθῃ ποθοῦσά με). And lead her to me under my feet melting with passionate desire at all hours, day and night, serving both my desire and her own, without hesitation or shame facedness, joining her thigh to my thigh, her belly to my belly, her ‘black’ to my ‘black’… quickly, quickly, now, now, driven by your whip (τῇ σῇ μάστιγι ἐλαυνομένην)29.

In another papyrus, PGM IV.2903-8, we find a similar idea. The magic

performer asks Aphrodite to compel his beloved to come to his door, “driven by frenzy, in anguish from forceful goads” (οἴστρῳ ἐλαυνομένην, κέντροισι βιαίοις ὑπ' ἀνάγκῃ). As observes Faraone30, the expression οἴστρῳ ἐλαυνομένην hints at the close cause-and-effect relationship between the tor-ture and the madness of the victim. The same idea also appears in a second century erotic defixio, where the woman should become ὐστρωμένη, driven mad, so as to fly in the air in search of her lover31. Therefore, imperial magic also adopts the conception of whipping as a representation of stimulation, in this case erotic. Whilst speaking of whipping, the semantic fields used in myth and in magic papyri are the same: in both we find μάστιγες, κέντρα and

28 Scapini, Riti dionisiaci tra la tarda repubblica e l'inizio dell'impero: forme e valori attraverso

l'iconografia, PhD Thesis defended in Verona, May 2012. 29 Transl. by C. Faraone, in Faraone (1999) 60-1. 30 Faraone (1993) 9-10. 31 Suppl. Mag. 38,10-11: see Faraone (1993) 10.

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οἶστροι. Moreover, as in myth the frenzy produced by whipping (and espe-cially the Dionysiac madness) often leads women, like the Bacchae or Phae-dra, to leave their homes and/or social role and duties –the result is an error, a ‘wandering’, either literal or metaphorical– so whipping in the agogé spells takes the woman from the house of her father or husband to the door –ἐν προθύροισιν32–of the performer. Accordingly, magic papyri ascribe to the be-loved women the participle μαινομένη (PGM IV. 2753), which in Greek liter-ature is typical of maenads driven mad (symbolically) by the μάστιγες and οἶστροι of Dionysus (or Hera/Juno)33. Consistently, Hekate, who is often ad-dressed agogé spells, is called in magic papyri οἰστροπλάνεια (PGM IV. 2868), ‘the one who causes the wanderings of madness’: such an epithet shows again that in magic, too, there is a strict connection between οἶστροι and wan-dering. Thirdly, like in myths and rituals, in imperial magic, too, the stimulat-ing power of whipping is often superimposed with the punitive function, and the stimulation itself is a form of punishment. This is the case of the so-called diabole or slander spells, where the practicant addresses a violent erotic pas-sion to his target as a punishment for some crime34. A spell known as Sword of Dardanos (PGM IV.1716-1870) instructs the performer to make a gem with Psyche dominated by Aphrodite and tormented by the burning torches of Eros on one side, and embraced Psyche and Eros on the other side.

It must also be considered that in magic documents whipping is not only mentioned, but also iconographically represented. In particular, as regards erotic stimulation, magic gems were found more or less directly connected to the Sword of Dardanos spell35. Further gems show Eros provided with a torch: in many cases the god is tormenting Psyche36. Moreover, Faraone recognises Aphrodite whipping Ares in gems, which represent the goddess dominating the god37, although Adrien Blanchet, the first scholar who studied this icono-graphy, did not describe any whip, and he believes Aphrodite is only touching her hair38.

We ask ourselves whether the mention or representation of whips and goads in these documents is only a metaphor or whether it alludes to an action actually performed. Christopher Faraone follows this second interpretation. He recognizes the echo of an erotic spell actually involving whipping in Pin-dar’s Pythian 4,213-20, where Aphrodite gives Jason the iynx, a charm to se-duce Medea: 32 PGM IV.2905. On this theme see Faraone (1999) 56. 33 Faraone (1999) 61-2. 34 Edmonds III (2014) 290. 35 Mouterde (1930) 54-136; Edmonds III (2014) 290. On a variant of this iconography see

Mastrocinque (2014) 131, n. 351. 36 Mastrocinque (2014), 164-5, nn. 442-448. 37 Faraone (2002) 339. 38 Blanchet (1923) 224. More recently, Bevilacqua (2002) 22-5.

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And the mistress of swiftest arrows, Cyprogenia,

bore from Olympus the dappled iynx, having yoked it, four-spoked, to an inescapable wheel, the bird of madness (μαινάδ' ὄρνιν), [giving it] to mortals for the first time. And prayers and charms did she teach to the wise son of Aeson, so that he might steal from Medea all respect for her parents, and so that Hellas, the longed-for might arouse her with the whip of Persuasion (μάστιγι Πειθοῦς) as she burned in her heart39.

According to the scholar, the practice mirrored by Pindar was a form of

persuasive magic in which a species of bird, the wryneck, –which the Greeks called precisely iynx– was bound to a stationary wheel and then probably whipped and burnt. The goal of such a torture spell was to transfer to the be-loved woman, by means of persuasive analogy, the pain of the torture along with the lubricity and madness traditionally ascribed to wrynecks –accordin-gly, the bird is called μαινὰς ὄρνις by Pindar– so as to compel her to flee from the house and custody of her family like a μαινάς maenad40. Faraone’s inter-pretation of Pindar’s passage is discussed by Sarah Iles Johnston41. She belie-ves that it is difficult to understand Peitho’s mastix as an allusion to magical practices, since the magical texts in which a lover asks that a victim is whipped are much later, as we have seen. She argues it is only in very broad terms that the yoking and whipping of the bird could be understood to align with love spells of any epoch, early or late. According to Johnston, the power of the spell evoked by Pindar did not lay in torture but in the sound produced by iynges, a word which from the late Hellenistic period onward the Greeks re-ferred not only to wrynecks but also to rotating tops and wheels. As such, Johnston believes, the torture mentioned by Pindar is only a metaphor of the compelling effects of the spell itself. As regards the expression ‘mastix of Peitho’, she recalls that the rotating tops and wheels called iynges were set in motion by means of whip/cords42. On the basis of this consideration, she claims that the formula is synecdotic. In saying that Peitho possessed the mas-tix by which the iynx was worked, Pindar signals that Peitho possessed the iynx itself. Such a statement is nothing but a metaphorical explanation of the persuasive power of the sound produced by the iynx.

Albeit Johnston excludes the whipping of the bird both in classical and later spells, she does not comment on the possible presence of a some kind of

39 Transl. by S. I. Johnston, in Johnston (1995) 177. 40 Faraone (1999) 55-69 and already Faraone (1993) 1-19. 41 Johnston (1995) 178-80. 42 As in Psellus, Opuscula psychologica, theologica, daemonologica: O’Meara (1989), 133, (18).

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whipping in later erotic spells. Personally I find it hard to believe that the me-taphor of the divine stimulation through whipping –which, as we have seen, was so widespread and common, and also appeared in the magical papyri, and which was replicated in certain rituals– did not have somewhat a counterpart in the magical practice. Should we refuse Faraone’s reconstruction which im-plies a tied and whipped bird, we may well think of a whipped fetiche, since torture of fetiches –linked to many practices described in magic papyri– is documented in the Roman imperial period43. Besides, the existence of magic practices including actual whipping in the imperial era is undoubtedly attested by a passage of Petronius’s Satyricon (105,4-5)44. Here Encolpius is whipped, along with Giton, in order to assure calm seas, and he bears such a torture with ‘Spartan pride’, Spartana nobilitas, a detail which makes me think of the Spar-tan epheboi similarly whipped in front of Artemis Orthia:

So it was decided that forty stripes should be inflicted on each of us

(placuit quadragenas utrique plagas imponi) to appease the guardian angel of the ship. Not a moment was lost; the angry sailors advanced upon us with ropes-ends, and tried to soften their guardian angel's heart with our miserable blood. For my part I bore three full blows with Spartan pride45.

We are in the first century of the Roman Empire but, of course, it is highly

likely that such a tradition is much more ancient. Here whipping has a clear expiatory and propitiatory function.

Moreover, we are sure that whipping in magic contexts was practiced at least in one more situation. It is the case of the later theurgic Chaldaean mag-ical ritual of the top of Hekate described in the already recalled passage by Psellus:

Hekate's top is a golden ball, formed around a sapphire, which is whirled

around by means of a rawhide thong (διὰ ταυρείου στρεφομένη ἱμάντος), and has charakteres all over it. While whirling it around, [the theurgists] used to make invocations. And they used to call these [tops] iynges, whether they were spherical or triangular or of some other shape. As they whirled them, uttered random sounds, or sounds like an animal, laughing and lashing the air (τὸν ἀέρα μαστίζοντες)46.

Here whipping is addressed to the top of Hekate itself and to the air. The

first whipping is aimed at setting the στρόφαλος in motion. Since, as suggested

43 Edmonds III (2014) 290 and Collins (2008) 91-6. 44 Glucklich (2001) 26. Already Scott (1938). 45 Transl. by Heseltine (1913). 46 Psellus, Opuscula psychologica, theologica, daemonologica: O’Meara (1989), 133, (18).

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by Lewy, when these tops were whirled they were supposed to affect the re-volving spheres (through the intermediation of the Supreme God) and, accord-ingly, to influence weather47, we can assume that the conception at the basis of this practice was the old Greek image of Helios and the Moon moving their chariots by means of a whip/goad. Moreover, Mastrocinque connects a group of magic gems to the beliefs implied by the Hekate's top48. These amulets de-pict a creator god with a whip, usually animal-headed and sometimes ithy-phallic. It is possible that in the magic ritual of the Hekate's top the theurgists identified themselves with such god and aimed at encouraging the sun-god and the moon-goddess who moved the spheres. Accordingly, the sun-god –in the anthropomorphic form of Helios– also appears frequently provided with a whip in Gnostic gems from the first century AD, which are often carved with magic inscriptions or symbols49. As concerns whipping of the air, it might be intended to frighten off the evil spirits, such as the sounds and laughter pro-duced by the theurgists, as suggested by Hans Lewy50.

No doubt, we are dealing with late and very sophisticate conceptions far from the (presumably) everyday and folk magic attested by the papyri men-tioned above. Nevertheless, the implications of whipping in the theurgic con-text –to set in motion/stimulate the celestial spheres, influence them and, when necessary, bring about favourable weather so as to promote soil’s fertility– bring us many centuries back, to the chariot of Helios who whips his horses and to the priest of Demeter who hits the ground with a rod recalled by Pau-sanias.

As such, we are allowed to claim that in magic whipping has exactly the same function which it has in myth and in the rituals. In other words, whipping has the same meanings in Greek and Roman magic and in Greek and Roman religion –I follow here Parker’s idea that myth has to be considered as ‘integral to religion’51– and in the Greek and Roman religious imagery conveyed by literature (poetry) and iconography52. It can be either a powerful stimulating instrument –as in the agoge erotic spells, but also in the theurgic rituals, where the motion of the planets is affected– or a punitive/expiatory device. This is the case of the slander spells, but also of the whipping propitiatory ceremony evoked by Petronius and, in a larger sense, of the apotropaic whipping of the air performed by theurgists. In many cases, of course, the stimulating and pu-nitive/expiatory functions are superimposed.

47 Lewy (1978) 249-52. On the Hekate’s top and its function see also Johnston (1990) 90-110. 48 Mastrocinque (2002) 173-187. 49 Lancellotti (2003) 119, see n.31. 50 Lewy (1978) 249. 51 Parker (2011) 29. 52 Regarding the ancient relationship between religion and poetry see Veyne (2003), who

effectively summarises the culture on the basis of the Roman religious imagery in art saying that in that world ‘religion was poetry’.

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5. CONCLUSIONS To conclude, what does whipping say regarding the interaction between

magic and religion (and religious imagery) in the Greek and Roman world? If we look at the chronology of our documents, whipping as a representation of divine stimulation and/or punishment seems to appear firstly in myth. On the other hand, many texts concerning whipping in rites, such as Pausanias’s pas-sages regarding Alea and Artemis Orthia, or Hesychius’s mention of the μόροττον in Demeter’s ceremonies, are relatively recent. Nevertheless, should we follow Macchioro’s interpretation of Aristophanes’s passage on the rogue from Melite, we would have at least one example of an actual rite including whipping during the Greek Classical period. Moreover, as concerns the Ro-man world, the antiquity of the ritual of the Lupercalia is generally recognised.

As regards magic, the examined hints to actual whipping in magic perfor-mances are rather late: in most cases we deal with documents dated to the Roman Imperial age and often to late antiquity. We have seen how Faraone believes that a spell implying the whipping of a bird existed in the Greek Clas-sical period. Should we follow Sarah Johnston and refuse Faraone’s interpre-tation of Jason’s iynx spell, we have to admit that it is hardly believable that a metaphor attested by very ancient myths –that is the representation of divine stimulation and compelling as a whipping– and which was materially repli-cated in very ancient rituals did not have a counterpart in contemporary magic. Given the high frequency of whipping in the Greek and Roman religious thought (and imagery and ritual) in order to represent and describe the per-formative power of the gods on the universe and the human beings, is it pos-sible that the ancients were tempted to adopt whipping in magic so as to take advantage of the same performative action? On the contrary, it might be the actual magic practice to be transmitted to the rituals and then mirrored by the ancient poetic-religious thought (myths and poetic texts) which describes di-vine whipping. It is not the case to deal here with the long-lasting diatribe, which opposed historians of ancient religion, anthropologists and ethnologists regarding the origin of magic and religion (was magic the predecessor of reli-gion, as though Frazer53, or viceversa, as believed Durkheim54?). Neverthe-less, if we ascribe (as I believe we should) the examined whipping in magic to Frazer’s category of sympathetic magic, and if we follow Frazer’s defini-tion of sympathetic magic –according to which magic forces and compels (whereas in religion men try to propitiate and conciliate the gods)– it is clear

53 Frazer (19002). 54 Durkheim (19685).

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that the idea of coercion55 also and inevitably characterises whipping in myth and ritual. This aspect makes me believe that sympathetic magic practices of whipping were the predecessor of whipping in religious myth and religious practice. No doubt, my argument may sound deductive. Nevertheless, I be-lieve it is consistent with common sense. We are dealing with rural societies and it appears to be most likely that the practice anticipated the metaphorical re-elaboration. Indeed, it must be recalled that the whipping of cattle, aimed at compelling the animals to move56, is undoubtedly at the basis of every re-elaboration of this action.

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