SARAH ILES JOHNSTON

G ODDESSES WITH T ORCHES IN THE G ETTY H EXAMETERS AND A LCMAN FR . 94

aus: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 191 (2014) 32–35

© Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, Bonn

32

G ODDESSES WITH TORCH ES I N T H E G ET T Y H EX A M ET ERS

A N D A LCM A N F R . 94 1

in memory of
Kathryn Bosher,
who loved all things Sicilian

In col. i, lines 12 and 13 of the Getty Hexameters from fourth-century Selinus,2 we encounter ‘goddesses,
bright with torches’ whom a she-goat3 laden with an untiring stream of rich milk (line 11) is supposed to
trust and to follow:
11 αἶγ᾽ ἀκαμαντορόα νασμοῦ θαλεροῖο γάλακτος
12 βριθομένην· ἔπεται ⟨δὲ⟩ θεαῖς πεπιθοῦσα φαειναῖς
13 [λ]αμπάδας 4
Who are these ‘goddesses, bright with torches’? In their preliminary edition of the text (2011) David Jordan
and Roy Kotansky made no suggestion, conservatively translating the phrase θεαῖς πεπιθοῦσα φαειναῖς
[λ]αμπάδας as ‘trusting (?) in the bright goddesses … torches.’ More recently, Jan Bremmer, discussing
these lines, has noted that torches are ‘typical of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone’ (who are men-
tioned in lines 9 and 10 of the Getty Hexameters).5
A better avenue of interpretation lies by way of Alcman fr. 94 (Calame = PMG 63 = schol. min. ad Il.
6.21):
Ναΐδες τε Λαμπάδες τε Θυιάδες6 τε
The scholiast who quotes this line tells us that Alcman was describing different types of nymphs. Certain-
ly, the Naiad is a familiar type of nymph from early times7 and the scholiast himself explains that Naiads
are ‘nymphs of the waves (ναμάτων)’. We may know the Thyiades best as mortal women who celebrated
Dionysus, particularly at his cult site in Delphi, but Herodotus tells us that the Delphians also paid cult to a
certain Thyia, daughter of the river god Cephisus – in other words, a local nymph (Hdt. 7.178.7), and so it
is not surprising to encounter ‘Thyiades’ as a term for nymphs more generally.
The scholiast is surely right, then, to say that the Lampades (or ‘Torches’, to Anglicize their name) are
nymphs as well. As in the case of other nymphs, we should assume that their name bespeaks their envi-
ronment or function: these are nymphs that light the way. Such a function suits nymphs well, for we often

1 I thank Chris Faraone and Dirk Obbink for making available to me the proofs of their edited volume on the Hexameters,
and Fritz Graf, Richard Janko, Ludwig Koenen and Roy Kotansky for discussion of particular points.
2 For the editio princeps, see Jordan and Kotansky 2011. In this article, I use the edition and translation of Faraone and
Obbink 2014:10–13, except where noted.
3 The subject of ἔπεται and πεπιθοῦσα is clearly feminine; I choose, like Jordan and Kotansky 2011:58, to understand it
as the she-goat who has been mentioned in the immediately preceding line. Faraone and Obbink 2014:12 and Janko 2014:41n46
understand it as the child mentioned in line 9. For my arguments here, the choice makes little difference, given that the goat and
the child are travelling together – both of them, in effect, follow the torch-bearing goddesses.
4 I return here to the [λ]αμπάδας of Jordan and Kotansky 2011:57 (with which Janko 2014:40 agrees). Cf. Faraone and
Obbink 2014:10 who change it to [λ]αμπάσιν and translate ‘trusting in the bright goddesses with lamps’. Janko suggests in
his commentary that [λ]αμπάδας is an accusative of respect, and translates ‘obeying goddesses with torches ablaze’. Ludwig
Koenen, per litteras, suggests that the scribe may have used the accusative because he wished to avoid the ambiguity of two
datives. The meaning of the phrase changes little, whether we retain the accusative or accept the conjectured dative.
5 Bremmer 2014:27. Janko 2014:41n45 tentatively suggested that the torch-carrying goddesses are Persephone and Hecate.
6 Calame restores the Laconic Συιάδες.
7 Larson 2001:8 and see also her index s.v. ‘naiad’. But cf. for example E. Hel. 185–90, where Naiads are nymphs that run
in the mountains; Naiads need not always be associated with water. Cf. also Gantz 1993: 138–40.
 Goddesses with Torches in the Getty Hexameters and Alcman fr. 94 33

meet them in the processions of, or otherwise accompanying, greater deities such as Dionysus, Apollo
and Artemis.8 If we remember, too, that the terms ‘θεά’ and ‘νύμφη’ were often used interchangeably to
characterize one and the same figure,9 then the step from the Getty Hexameters’ ‘goddesses, bright with
torches’ to Alcman’s nymphs called Torches is a very short one indeed.
Understanding the phrase θεαῖς … φαειναῖς [λ]αμπάδας to refer to torch-bearing nymphs is more
satisfying than understanding it to refer to Demeter and Persephone. Although the names ‘Demeter’ and
‘Persephone’ have already appeared in the text, neither goddess has played an active role in the narration.
The she-goat is called the ‘servant of Demeter’ (line 10) and she is said to be led out from ‘Persephone’s
garden’ in order to be milked (line 9) – an action on which the historiola recorded on the tablet and its
ritual power are focused10 – but it is an unnamed child11 (line 9) who does the leading. It seems unlikely
that Demeter and Persephone would become active only for the sake of lighting the way from one place to
another, especially on behalf of a goat and a child. Nymphs, in contrast, as I have already noted, often serve
in attending or processional roles for both divinities and mortals.
With the help of Alcman and his scholiast, then, we have discovered excellent candidates for the Getty
Hexameters’ torch-carrying goddesses: they belong to a class of nymphs who can be called Lampades, or
Torches. But we can go a little further yet. The scholiast also tells us that ‘Lampades are those who carry
torches and participate in torch processions together with Hecate’.12 As it happens, Hecate appears in the
very next words of the Getty Hexameters:
12 βριθομένην· ἔπεται ⟨δὲ⟩ θεαῖς πεπιθοῦσα φαειναῖς
13 [λ]αμπάδας· Εἰνοδία δ’ Ἑκάτη φρικώδει φωνῆι
14 [βά]ρβαρον ἐκκλάζουσα θεὰ θεῶι ἡγεμονεύ[ει].13
… [the goat] follows, trusting in the goddesses bright with torches; and Hecate of the Roadside,
the goddess, shouting out something strange with a hair-raising voice, guides the god.
Further lines recorded what Hecate said. They are now fragmentary, but we know that she declared that she
had ‘come by her own command’, that she recounted something ‘divine’ and that she mentioned ‘splendid’
things of some kind, which apparently were being brought to mortals (lines 15–17).
The goat and the child who leads it, then, are themselves guided by figures who were known to serve
in the entourage of a goddess who appears immediately afterwards; all of these figures are participating in
a single procession. Or in other words, the text from line 8 to the beginning of line 12, which describes the
child, the goat to be milked, and the garden, and the text from the middle of line 12 through line 20, which
describes the torch-bearing goddesses, the arrival of Hecate and the words that she speaks, are constructed
as a continuous narrative. This may seem to be an obvious point, but it is by no means a small one: five oth-
er, briefer texts that share an origin with the Getty text include the goat, the child and/or the garden in some
combination, but do not mention Hecate or the torch-carrying goddesses. These include two fifth-century
tablets found in Selinus and another fifth-century tablet found in nearby Himera. From a time that predates
the Getty text by about a hundred years, then, and within the same geographic neighborhood, narrations
focusing on the child, the goat and the garden were viewed as ritually effective in their own right, apart
from the presence of the torch-carrying goddesses who guide the child and goat in the fuller version and

8 E.g., HHAphr. 256–75; HomH 19.19–23 and 34, HomH. 26.3–10; Anacr. fr. 357 PMG; Cf. Larson 2001:5.
9 E.g., Il. 24.615–16; Od. 1.14 and Od. 5 passim (Calypso, who is elsewhere in the Odyssey called a goddess, is here called
nymph); Od. 10.543 (ditto for Circe); Hes. Th. 129–30 and fr. 10a.17–19 MW. Cf. Larson 2008: e.g., 3, 7, 43, 107–9; and Gantz
1993:139–41.
10 Discussed in Johnston 2014. Please see addendum at the end of this essay.
11 Janko 2014:35, 41 reads the text differently and suggests that the child’s name is Ossa.
12 Λαμπάδες δὲ αἱ σὺν Ἑκάτηι δαιδοφοροῦσαι καὶ συλλαμπαδεύουσαι.
13 For the second half of line 13 and for line 14, I accept Janko’s reconstruction (2014:41), which follows Jordan and
Kotansky’s editio princeps except for changing the text’s dative, Εἰνοδίαι δ᾽ Ἑκάτει to a nominative. Faraone and Obbink
2014:10 propose changing βάρβαρον to βαρβάρωι but I see no reason for this.
34 S. I. Johnston

the presence of Hecate.14 Indeed, as Alberto Bernabé has shown, the lines describing the child, the goat and
the garden had begun to evolve into the Ephesia grammata already in the fifth-century Sicilian examples,
a long-term process in which Hecate and the torch-bearing goddesses took no part.15
Well-integrated though it may be, then, the passage running from the middle of line 12 through line
20 looks like the attempt of a local ritual specialist to supplement an existing historiola by adding Hecate
and her entourage to the original narration; the join was smoothed over by linking Hecate’s torch-bearing
entourage to the child and goat. But why add these figures at all? As I have shown in my earlier publication,
the main purpose of the spell – to ensure safety and health by guaranteeing protection against all manner
of ills, including war, sickness and dangerous animals on land and at sea (lines 4–6, 23–32, 46–50) – was
already well accomplished by narrating the story about how the goat would provide abundant milk, a sub-
stance that had powerful associations with protection, healing and more general well-being in many ancient
Mediterranean cultures, whether it issued from an animal or a human. To answer this question, we must
look more closely at what Hecate does.
In line 14, Hecate herself acts as a guide for an unnamed god while shouting out something now largely
lost, due to the fragmentary nature of our text (ἐκκλάζουσα θεὰ θεῶι ἡγεμονεύ[ει]). I lean towards iden-
tifying this god as Paean, who is mentioned earlier in the text as the original speaker of the historiola (line
6), and who appears several times later in the text as a ‘source of deliverance’ (ll. 23, 32, 49).16 This, of
course, fits in well with Paean’s well-known role as a healer to even the gods themselves. Whoever the god
is, however, both of the roles that Hecate plays here – guide and announcer of important information – are
typical for her, and usually associated with a positive turn of events. For instance, she gives information
to Demeter about Persephone’s disappearance and then, after Persephone’s return, promises to guide her
back and forth each year between the upper and lower worlds. In Pindar’s second paean, composed for the
Abderites, she comes to announce a war victory – a victory for which Pindar gives thanks to Paean, even
as he also prays to Paean for further blessings.17
In other words, Hecate’s typical activities as a guide and an announcer align well with the general
intentions recorded in the Getty text: to obtain or confirm protection against a variety of ills. If I am right
that the unnamed god whom she guides is Paean, then this makes her advent more positive still, as do the
fact that she has ‘come by her command’ and the fragment of her speech that indicates she is bringing
something splendid to mortals. The description of her voice as ‘hair-raising’ (φρικώδει φωνῆι, line 13) may
at first blush seem to undercut this positive impression, but φρικώδης could be used to convey a sense of
religious awe that, while frightening, in the long run portended good, as at the Eleusinian mysteries.18

14 The versions that include the child, the goat, the milk, the garden or some combination of these elements without Hec-
ate are (using the alphabetic notations of Bernabé 2014): C (a lead tablet from Phalasarna, fourth century BCE), E (a lead tablet
from the fourth century BCE, found in Locri), F (a lead tablet from Himera, fifth century BCE), G (a lead tablet from Selinus,
fifth century BCE), H (a lead tablet from Selinus, fifth century BCE). The only version that includes mention of Hecate is A
(a lead tablet from Egypt, 2nd–4th century CE), where she is described with φρεικῴδι φωνῇ; the fragmentary lines 68–70 also
include the words λαμπάδος, θεά, βαρβάρεον, and ἡγεμονεύεις. Jordan 1988:253 translates the phrase as ‘demanding torches
for Hecate Einodia (and?) with a terrible voice the shouting goddess leads the stranger (?) to the god’. Cf. also an unpublished
silver tablet from the first century BCE or CE, said to come from Rome and now in the Perkins Library of Duke University,
which is said to transliterate lines 8–15 of the Getty Hexameters into Latin, thus apparently including the goat, the garden,
the child, the ‘goddesses bright with torches’ and Hecate (as mentioned in Jordan 1988:256; non vidi). Perhaps compare also,
but more distantly, Bernabé B (PGM LXX.11–15, third or fourth century CE), a spell entitled ‘Charm of Hecate Ereschigal
against Fear of Punishment’. Hecate is not mentioned in the spell itself, nor are the child, the goat, the garden or the goddesses,
but Bernabé includes this text as a descendent of the Getty Hexameters because it uses phrases from the Ephesia grammata.
15 Bernabé 2014. See also Kotansky 1991:126n.22.
16 Janko 2014:41n6 suggests it is the child. On Paean, see Rutherford 2014, who argues that we should understand Paean in
the Getty text as another name for Apollo (it is from Rutherford’s essay, p. 167, that I borrow the phrase ‘source of deliverance’).
Faraone and Obbink 2014:12 translate the phrase completely differently, making it the child who leads Hecate.
17 HHDem. 24–8, 52–9 and 438–40; Call. Fr. 466 Pf.; ARV, 2nd edition, p. 1012 no. 1; Pi. Pa. 2.49; schol. Theocr. 2.12;
OF 317 Bernabé; and see discussion at Johnston 2011.
18 Ael. Arist. Eleus. 256.24; cf. Plu. TG 21.
 Goddesses with Torches in the Getty Hexameters and Alcman fr. 94 35

In my earlier publication, I argued that the core of the Getty historiola – the narrative of the child,
the goat and her milk – was adopted from Egyptian models and then adapted to Greek tastes. I now have
suggested that Hecate and the torch-bearing goddesses were added to that historiola at a later stage, which
would mark another step in its adaptation to Greek expectations, as would the frame narrative that attrib-
uted it to Paean. Ian Rutherford is surely right to emphasize, analogously, that the Getty text as we have it
represents a bricolage of different poetic or ritual genres – part paean-incantation, part historiola.19 Even
more clearly than before, we see that the text as we have it represents an experiment on several levels, and
that much still remains to be explained about the evolution of this puzzling document.

Addendum
During the final editorial process of Faraone and Obbink 2014, an entire page of extensive corrections was
omitted from my essay (Johnston 2014), which affects the sense of some of my arguments there. Future
printings of the volume will show the correct version of my essay; until then, a correct version can be found
on my academia.edu page.

Bibliography
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Oxford.
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Sarah Iles Johnston, The Ohio State University

johnston.2@osu.edu

19 Rutherford 2014:168–9.