A Pausanias Commentary in Progress

1.27.3 subject heading(s): arrhēphoroi (Arrhephoroi); aetiology; drân ‘do, ritually-perform’; pherein ‘carry’; agein ‘lead’ Pausanias at 1.27.3 is engaged in correlating a ritual with a myth, thus pointing to a traditional aetiology. Unlike other interpreters of this passage, who are legion (there is a most helpful survey in Calame 2001:131–133), I argue that Pausanias here goes out of his way not only to say some things but also to leave other things unsaid. The leaving-out is just as intentional as the leaving-in. And I argue further that such leaving-out of some things is just as traditional as the leaving-in of other things. This further argument, which I present here only its barest outlines, is based on research I have done elsewhere, especially in an article on traditional wording in other Greek texts referring to other rituals, Nagy 2017, where I study the wording of the Linear B tablet Tn 316 from Pylos. In that article, I argue that the Greek word pherein ‘carry’, with reference to the carrying of ritual objects, is programmatically linked to the Greek word agein ‘lead’, with reference to leading or at least directing the carriers who carry such objects toward their proper ritual destination. The programmatic linking of such words, as I show in that article by analyzing not only Greek but also other Indo-European ritual texts, tends to be strictly controlled by ritual protocols concerning what can and cannot be spoken. In Pausanias 1.27.3, I now argue, we see a comparable linking of the words pherein ‘carry’ and agein ‘lead’. Even the element –phoros ‘carrying’ of the word arrhēphóros (I leave for another occasion my interpretation of the element arrhē-) shows the workings of a traditional interaction between pherein as a ‘carrying’ of a ritual object and agein as the ‘leading’ of the carriers by those who give the directions. In the case of the ritual described by Pausanias at 1.27.3, I note with special interest this detail: even the priestess of Athena who directs the Arrhephoroi to carry what they carry is unaware of the contents being carried—from the standpoint of ritual re-enactment. This ritualized unawareness corresponds to the mythologized unawareness of the daughters of Kekrops concerning the contents of the kibōtos ‘box’ entrusted to them by the goddess Athena. In the myth of the Kekropides as retold by Pausanias at 1.18.2 and as analyzed in Classical Inquiries 2018.01.25, the girl Pandrosos refrains from opening the box that contains what is not to be seen, not to be talked about, and so she remains unaware. By contrast, the girl Aglauros, together with her sister Hersē, opens the box out of curiosity and then, becoming aware by way of seeing what she sees, she plunges to her death from the top of the Acropolis. It has been argued that the sister Hersē is a later addition to an earlier mythological pair consisting of Pandrosos and Aglauros (Frame 2009:470–474). Perhaps, then, a new mythological pairing of Hersē and Aglauros may now be seen as matching the ritual pair of Arrhephoroi who descend from the top of the Acropolis to “ground zero”. In any case, the orderly ritual descent of the two Arrhephoroi matches the catastrophic mythological plunge experienced by two daughters of Kekrops. And, in the process of their descent, the Arrhephoroi pass through a natural underground kathodos ‘downward-pathway’ that corresponds to a Mycenaean passage from the Acropolis all the way down to a spring located at this same “ground zero” (details surveyed by Pirenne-Delforge 1994:50–59; following mostly Burkert 1966).

1.27.9 The tension here between Minos and Poseidon has to do with genealogy: Minos is son of Zeus, while his rival Theseus is son of Poseidon.