The Petelia Gold Tablet Author(s): Cecil Smith and D.

Comparetti Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 3 (1882), pp. 111-118 Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/623530 . Accessed: 15/06/2012 14:13
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THE PETELIA GOLDTABLET.

111

THE PETELIA GOLD TABLET.

THROUGHthe kindness of Mr. Newton I was 'informed that the British Museum is now the possessor of an inscribed gold tablet found on the site of the ancient Petelia, in Southern Italy, which had been considered as lost after the death of Millingen, to whom it first belonged. The inscription was puiblished by Franz in 1836,1 and after him by Gbttling ; afterwards it appeared in the third volume of the Corp.Inscr. Or. No. 5,772, and recently again in Kaibel's Epigrammata Graeca ex Lapid. No. 1,037. Franz's first reading, from the original, was not quite satisfactory, and the modified reading given by him afterwards, and by the others, was not founded on the inspection of the original, a fac-simile of which was never published. Recent discoveries having thrown a new light on this monument I was glad to hear of its existence in the British Museum, and Mr. Newton kindly favoured my wish of seeing it published again more completely and exactly, with a fac-simile. He entrusted this task to Mr. Cecil Smith, to whose skilful accuracy we are indebted for the fac-simile here published, representing the monument slightly larger than its real size, as well as for the following explanatory note on the reading of the inscription.
1 Bullettino dell' Institut~o di Corr. Arch., 1836, p. 149. 2 Narratio de Oraculo Trophonii, Jen. 1843, and Gesaemmele Abhandlungen, i. 166, sq.

112

THE PETELIA GOLD TABLET.

y AA YTH YIAIS VPA HPA>AP IAEY HEiIH Ni-or Hi HL SYPH HlrLrrOn!YP roY p pop <FiY THE F._,rd.ELTEPAi -LMLI lo3t JA
pIr1lE

NETE NEf'A PA KP P I YAjA. OA -M EypHlf .E

f tA Il?

1t)AI

TAP 9YPANIOYA T-Pa-JLTO,6AV

EfA

E/ rE i/ EAIA AEl lIoT

KA O T
AtrPA

EI fPA

r<-r

Elpja-a-et6 S' Aiao 86p&c dw' aptae-repd ICpprfv Ttp 8' arITt XevIc2)v Eao-TfIcvtaVKV7rapLo-o-oV
EVpo-e6v
8'
ETepaV,
7T?74

Mvrq/coC/

aIr &w

A ri XLpvt

6 ' dl7rhrpoa-Oev 5 *vXpbv 6'&op cfXaKce9 7rpopeov" &caov.

oipvov" icaL ToXXv/uat XXA8r' al"Ja t*' e 8' etL aas 4rvXPOVY ij8wp popeov" 74'r MvqZooV'lY9V' cao' Xlvv' 10 Kai[rol ao]& &8<ovao .TLeZv el1,f 6 a7r[o Kcp2rv]f, I ,) 3 3r 1 a L coal7T7 er a[XXoa-t /e4e'] lpCOea--tvavaieLt[
ryo av'rap 4polvo

r6p

8e 6'

or

caL avro ' '

e ........................... ............ 8,*se. (o)O[at ave. .. ................. ..... ..... ... ypaf[ev?]
ow ip b caXro'ao.

......................................o'c

[My facsimile differs from Kaibel as follows:Line 1.-Epjoa-a-etv. The double a- is quite plain; Kaibel reads evp?7'aet. Line 1.--cpjvrV. Kaibel reads [Kpcpv]nv. In line 5 the E and the 0 of wrpoo-9ev have been run together-- E p4. Line 6.--ryi v ata e4L. Kaibel reads ...el a-[], but the MI is quite clear. Gottling had already suggested EI1I. Line 6.-a-t7ep6evroq. Kaibel reads da-repdev'ro[9], but the r is plainly written beneath the A of aV'Trp. Line 7.--aOrAp tpot, not avTap yei~J]. Franz read ENI. as deyo. Kaibel suggests 'pyvor 'po', but reads as Franz.

THE PETELIA GOLD TABLET.

113

Lines 7-8.--ai-ol 8tqrt. The final t of athTo;lis written over the following A. Line 8.-etp& ai~. The Y is not very plain, but the A is quite clear. is more probable Line 10.-Kaibel's Ka7[Tol -o0 8(<]a-ovc than ical oo0 of the Franz; Ail is plain on the V-0rev80-ovt gold. Line not pa['e]o~a-v. 1l.--pteo'v, Line 12.-Kaibel's 0aveo-Oa[c] seems probable, but the &cis not at all clear. Line 13.-TOAEFPAY. reads here AAEIM. These letters are plain. Kaibel

No one seems hitherto to have noticed that there has been a thirteenth line, written from bottom to top of the right edge of the plate; the fact that this line frequently encroaches more or less on the space allotted to the main inscription, has been one cause of uncertain readings with Kaibel and others: I have been unable to reconstruct this line, owing to the crowded arrangement of some letters and the loss of others where the gold has been worn flat; but the final word seems tolerably certain.
CECIL SMITH.] e.g. line 6, av"rap d/loi; line 7,
el/U

ai}I;

line 10, 2)p'co-ao-v.

The inscription is not, as was generally supposed,1 the response of an oracle sending somebody to the cave of Trophonios, or giving an answer to a question on what is impending over human souls after death. It is an abstract from a poem containing the mystic belief of the ancient Orphics, and must be compared with other gold tablets of the same kind and epoch, which were found a few years ago in some tombs in the same region of Italy. They were published with my reading and interpretation in the Notizie degli Scavi di Antichitd for 1879 and 1880.2 This Italian publication not being commonly accessible in England, I think the readers of this Journal
1 I must except M. Bouch6-Leclercq (Histoire de la Divination dans l'Antiquite, iii. p. 381), who expresses a H. S.-VOL. III.

more correct opinion. 2 See also Lenormant, La Grande Grac, i. 321, 385. I

114

THE PETELIA GOLD TABLET.

may be not unwilling to see the contents of those tablets reproduced here. They were found in the territory of the ancient Sybaris, and are five in number; there is hope that many others may come to light in further excavations, from the very numerous yet unexplored sepulchral mounds still called by the Italian inhabitants of that country timponi (r'tflo;). Two of them were found in a single tomb, folded together, close to the skull of the skeleton. One of these bears an inscription written in Greek letters, which required for their interpretation a secret key which I was unable to find out. Still, some names of the orphic Pantheon can be recognised in that curious confusion of Greek writing, such as HIpor&yovo9, Frq rra.,rjorp, Kv/eX, K6p2q, T1;Xi7, (darv,1 though some of them are uncertain. The other tablet is perfectly intelligible, and runs as follows:qdo gdEXloto 'AXX'0orrwrav#vX" 7rrpoXrlly 8e3EyL' d[vv]oiac 8rtva teS 7re vXay/.t'voV ' e da'Xa 7rrdvra. Xa-pe, rraOcov rb'rdOl-

ta 7-0 ol7rw 'IpdoOe 6reI 7rIv0etv* 'e9E el ' ' q ydXa '(Xeet)voi cv60p 7rrov. 'p' o e7ireeS. Xaip(e), Xatpe 8eftav 6 otjrop(&'v) XetAuvd9 re EpovT car' lkXoea
Ie[ p]Oe[b]ovelac'.

The deceased is addressed by another person initiated in the same mysteries, who, together with his own speech in prose, quotes verses or portions of verses from a poem containing the principles of their common belief on what the soul of the initiated must expect after death. The judge of the souls (just as in Pindar,' where this poet alludes to mystic belief in his second Olympian ode) is not named, but only alluded to by the indeterminate pronoun The initiated dead is considered r-i. all his duties, and therefore as as having rightly performed deserving the beatitude which Persephone promises to purified souls. Earthly life, according to Orphic doctrine, being only a punishment to our soul whose origin is divine, and the human body being only a tomb to her (a&lta, oai5ya),death is
7

yatr

P Tr8e

ALbs KaT& &pXi&Xtp&

BuAcdCeL BIK~ l ris

fZ I&Pyycq.
Xe

6P

At07 opyov4pa'c acratspaac

THE PETELIA GOLD TABLET.

115

here contemplated as a happy occurrence,for which the deceased is congratulated; using a symbolic expression of their own mystic language, he is compared to a kid falling into milk, that is to say, obtaining plenty of the only thing he was longing for. The quotation at the beginning is interrupted at a certain point, as would be the case if one were recalling to another's mind a well-known text. The second verse is metrically disfigured by the interpolation of e Ttva, required by the sense, and evidently taken from a further verse. The extremely bad verse xatipe, ac.T.., is to be attributed to the writer of the wra&v Tobrad/da, who tablet, may have used some fragment of mystic verse. The metre of the last verse is lame; its original form was, I suppose,
XetL.kcovd90'iepo' rca'rh were found ?epare'ovela;. in three different tombs The other three tablets Their contents are partially hand. the skeleton's near right lying identical; but they are full of errors and omissions, to such an extent that one of them, which is written on both sides, would be almost totally unintelligible if the other two were not at hand for the restitution of letters, words,hemistiches, and whole verses which are wanting. I give here my reading and restoration of the whole contents of the three, distinguishing with the letters a, b, c, the parts which are peculiar to one or two:8alrXetLa, "EpXolpat Kaap(Jv, Kcaaph Xoviov EicKcXg,E'p3ovXed '7e [Oeot 7r'e68a/lIove9 iXXot] Kai yt p E7ryvlV/WEv ryeo4 o'Alp/ov e1i>Xoat elvat, ' Hotvav oi7t &Kicat(v, b, c. &v'arare'Tr' [TVr'r] 'pyCOv aXXoO ET6' d/6 Mop' Kcata0dvaTrot Geo dctparce 'e ical (ailaXoevrt) icepavvy. (/poV7f) 7'' oreporT K6KXOV S3' 'rav /3apv7e vEo9VapyaXEoto a. 8' edreav r-Tavov 7roT' KaprraXltpotct 'ItPepTov ~'8v Xgoov1a9Iao-tXhea9. C ,cdXwrov Aeorrolva o'w8roIv i i I' 8 (\epoeovetav Cw 7raph (Ni0v ,/rr; b.c. ~'S24 e 8pai (r( 7'po'Spbp0C rr'*,wry l.aaptrs) . E Earyaywv... 6"0" l yaKaptowT~ 9E&3' v'a f tpo7-o~o. Kca ("OX/3LE 8' a'Xoea

a.e

Here it is the deceased's soul who addresses Persephone and the other infernal gods. Two of these are mentioned with their 12

8l ~o?oT\

E-O,7.^

116

THE PETELIA GOLD TABLET.

this last is Aides; the mystic surnames, E'kcXiq, E/3jovuXev; other maybe supposed to be the infernal Dionysos or Zagreus of the Orphics. The soul declares in her first words that she comes from amongst the pure men, namely from the men whose souls were purified by the initiation, by the KaOappot' and by all the practices of the mystic life and ritual. She is purified from the original guilt which is alluded to in the following verses, where the main principles of the Orphic doctrine on psychogony and metempsychosis may be recognised. The human soul is of divine origin, but the gods from whom she most directly proceeds are the Titans. These having torn to pieces the sacred body of Zagreus, Zeus punished them with his thunderbolt and reduced them to ashes, from which human souls emerged. But, as the Titans had been eating from the flesh of Zagreus, a spark of good, pure divinity is in us mixed with Titanic evil and impurity. This Titanic element is the original guilt for which the human soul is excluded from the community of the other gods and from her blessed abode, and is condemned to a succession of births and deaths which the mystae called c1AXo( 7 ri yevYEoelo or alluded to in the inscription a. -rpoxbe,and which is the K6IeXoq This succession of mortal lives full of pains and sorrows can only find its end through initiation and performance of all the duties and rules for purification, of all the xaOappoi and the rEXeTra that the mystic religion imposes upon its adepts. Then, cleared of all impure elements, on leaving the unhappy and unworthy prison of the mortal body, our soul returns for ever to her godlike nature and existence. Seen in this light the Petelia tablet can be easily understood. Franz's supposition that it came from a tomb may be now considered as certain. It belongs evidently to the same epoch as the others, as may be seen from the forms of its letters. The case of two letters running into one another, making a single sign, is common to this and the others. As for the contents, they evidently belong to the same circle of mystic and especially Orphic ideas. The Titanic origin of the soul is here explicitly affirmed; it is well-known that the Titans were the sons of Uranos and Gaea. The spring whose name is not mentioned is evidently the Lethe of the common belief. The soul of the initiated must avoid this spring, leaving it, as I understand, to the crowd of souls who lived and must still

THE PETELIA GOLD TABLET.

117

live in oblivion of their divine nature. But there is another spring kept by watching guards and reserved for the privileged souls of the initiated. These obtain admission to it by pronouncing the prescribed words. In opposition to the other, this infernal spring peculiar to the Orphic doctrine (and mentioned here for the first time) is called the spring of Memory, I think because it renders the soul fully conscious of her divine nature, and opens to her the blessings of immortal existence. The nature of the verses contained in these tablets, and a comparison of what is common or different in them, show that they cannot be considered as made on purpose for the occasion, but are taken from the various books of the Orphic canon: they were, it seems, picked up here and there without any other rule than that of choosing verses more especially referring to the future life. We cannot say which exactly were the Orphic poems from which the verses of the other tablets were taken; but for the Petelia tablet, where we see directions given to the soul as to her descent to Hades, we may remark that in tenor it exactly corresponds to the title Ei'AiSov /caTdwhich was borne by one of the Orphic poems, comf/ao-s monly attributed to Prodikos of Samos; see Lobeck, Aglaoph. 360. These curious and important monuments reveal to us, I think, the work of those Orphic apostles called 4p6eoeXeo-Taai, so sharply stigmatised by Plato (Rep. ii. 364 B; see Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 643) who used to go about with a heap of books attributed to Musaeus and Orpheus, converting not only private men but whole towns (nrel'ovTEr o po'vov 18to7a9, Xa& tcaI teaching how the souls of the initiated could be absolved 7rdXetv), from all sins, in life as well as after death, promising every kind of happiness to their adepts, frightening the uninitiated with horrible prophecies. It is well-known how Orphism, as well as Pythagorism, was dominant in Magna Graecia, not only amongst intellectual men, but also amongst the common people, and in its most superstitious form and usages. To this popular spread of Orphism belong these gold tablets, so incompletely and incorrectly written as sometimes to look like a kind of amulet sold by mystic charlatans. That fever of Bacchic and Orphic mysticism lasted a long time in Magna Graecia; some Greek apostle communicated it to Etruria, and it invaded Rome too, where it

118

THE PETELIA GOLD TABLET.

took such proportionsas to necessitate the celebrated Senatusconsultum de Bacchanalibus. The execution of this act was carriedout with strict rigour and severity, not only in Rome, but in Magna Graecia also, where those mystic doctrines and secret associations had their principal seat. We still possess the well-known promulgation of that act of the Roman Senate to the Teuranians, found at Tiriolo, in the same region of Southern Italy as that in which these tablets were found. The Senatusconsultum de Bacchanalibus being of 186 B.C.,we may consider these tablets as anterior to that date. Some painted fictile vases, found in the same tombs, are of the kind commonly considered as not older than the third century before our era; and this is the presumptive age of the tablets. The writing is perfectly in accordance with this date; the lunated or circular forms of the letters e, a-, o, are still totally absent from all of them; Orphism appears in them still free from the Egyptian or Semitic elements which were intermingled with Greek mystic belief in later times. The production of apocryphal poems of that kind began at least as early as Onomakritos (sixth century) and continued during several centuries; it was in full bloom in the time of Aristophanes and Plato; it is therefore difficult to say to what time the poems from which the verses are taken belong, more especially as the usual criterion for such inquiries cannot be used for productions like these, which have no literary pretension or reputation, and which are handed down to us in a form so evidently corrupted. As far as I can judge from certain peculiarities, as fSe6tv 'vvola9, 7alVT rT71 Kcprvl, &c.,I think they cannot be older than the time of Euripides. They were, no doubt, all written in the Epic-Ionic dialect, certain Dorisms which occur here and there being only due to the Doric hand which wrote the tablets.
D. COMPARETTI.