1. […] oh gentlemen jurors, that one is not to sacrifice in the way Menesaichmos says, and if one does, it is sacrilege. He will read you the testimony of Theogenes, being the herald to Diodoros, who knows that some private person sacrificing without Diodoros present, and placing […]
2. […] When there was infertility for the Athenians, this was resolved according to an oracle about the suppliant branch for Apollo.
3. And in this way our ancestors are said to have each placed the suppliant branch for Apollo by his own door, which today is the eiresione.
4a. Eiresione [are] branches of olive and laurel that are placed in front of the homes, full of many tied-on seasonal [goods]. And these began to be made while a [famine] was happening after the god gave an oracle.
4b. And a large shoot adorned with everything that the season brings this time of year, they dedicated to Apollo in front of their doors, called an eiresione, giving first fruits of everything growing out of the earth, because the suppliant branch given to Apollo stopped the infertility of the country.
5. We call this festival Pyanopsia, but the other Greeks call it Panopsia because everyone has seen the fruits with his own eyes.
6. […] groats […]
7. As the famine was happening, when he came among the Hyperboreans, Abaris offered his services to Apollo. And when he learned oracles from him, he carried as a token the arrow of Apollo, and traveled around Hellas prophesying.
8. Τhe Deliasts [are] the envoys who travel to [the oracle of] Delos.
9. There is a certain little island before Delos [called] Hekate’s island.
10. Τhe net-watcher [is] the one who keeps watch on the net, that is the ropes.
11. […] sponge-divers […]
12. Τhis man Kephisodoros has been lampooned in comedy as dull.
13. For I now owe you many great honors, and I’m zealous for all the oracle-seeking Greeks to put on [the divine] Proerosia.
Author: Lykourgos of Athens
Title of Work: Against Menesaichmos
Date of Work: c. 330 BCE
Original Language: Greek (Attic)
Original Text:
1. ὦ ἄνδρες δικαστ[αί], ὅτι οὐδ᾿ οἷόν τέ ἐστι θῦσαι, ὡς Μενέσαιχμος λέγει, εἰ δὲ μ[ὴ], ἀσέβημα γίγνετα[ι]. ἀναγνώσεται ὑμῖν Θεογένους μαρτυρίαν τοῦ κηρυκεύσαντος Διοδώρῳ, ὃς οἶδεν θύσαντος ἰδιώτου [τιν]ὸς οὐ παρόντος [Διο]δώρου καὶ θέντος [...]
2. Λυκοῦργος δέ φησιν, ἀφορίας γενομένης Ἀθηναίοις, τοῦτο ἐπιτελεσθῆναι κατὰ χρησμόν, οἷον ἱκετηρίαν Ἀπόλλωνι.
3. είρεσιώνη ἡ ἱκετηρία ὡς παρὰ Λυκούργω καὶ οὕτως οἱ πρόγονοι ἡμῶν λέγονται ἕκαστος κατὰ τὴν ἰδίαν θύραν θεῖναι τὴν ἱκετηρίαν τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι, τὴν νῦν εἰρεσιώνην.
4. εἰρεσιώνη · κλάδοι ἐλαίας καὶ δάφνης πρὸ τῶν οἰκιῶν τιθέμενοι, πλήρεις πολλών ὡραίων ἀναδεδεμένων. τοῦτο δὲ [λιμοῦ] γενομένου και χρήσαντος τοῦ θεοῦ ἐποίουν· ἐν τῷ Δηλιακῷ· καὶ θαλλὸν μέγαν κοσμήσαντας ἁπάντων, ὧν κατ᾿ ἐκείνους τοὺς καιροὺς αἱ ὧραι φέρουσιν, ἀνατιθέναι τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι ἔμπροσθεν τῶν θυρῶν, εἰρεσιώνην ὀνομάσαντας, ἀπαρχὰς ποιησαμένους τῶν γινομένων πάντων ἐκ τῆς γῆς, ὅτι τὴν ἀφορίαν ἡμῶν τῆς χώρας ἱκετηρία ἡ παρὰ τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι τεθεῖσα ἔπαυσεν.
5. Πυανόψια· Λυκοῦργος ἐν τῷ Κατὰ Μενεσαίχμου· καὶ ἡμεῖς Πυανόψια ταύτην τὴν ἑορτὴν καλοῦμεν, οἱ δ᾿ ἄλλοι Ἕλληνες Πανόψια, ὅτι πάντας εἶδον τοὺς καρποὺς τῇ ὄψει.
6. προκώνια· Λυκοῦργος Κατὰ Μενεσαίχμου.
7. ὁ δὲ ῥήτωρ Λυκοῦργος ἐν τῷ Κατὰ Μενεσαίχμου λόγῳ φησιν ὅτι λιμοῦ γενομένου, ἐν τοῖς Ὑπερβορέοις ἐλθὼν, ὁ Ἄβαρις ἐμισθώτευσε τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι, και μαθὼν χρησμοὺς παρ’ αὐτοῦ, σύμβολον ἔχων τὸ βέλος τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος περιῄει ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι μαντευόμενος.
8. Δηλιασταί· οἱ εἰς Δῆλον ἐξελθόντες θεωροί· Λυκοῦργος κατὰ Μενεσαίχμου.
9. Ἑκάτης νῆσος· Λυκοῦργος Κατὰ Μενεσαίχμου· πρὸ τῆς Δήλου κεῖταί τι νησύδριον.
10. ἀρκυωρός· Λυκοῦργος ἐν τῇ Κατὰ Μενεσαίχμου εἰσαγγελίᾳ. ὁ τὰς ἄρκυς, τουτέστι τὰ λίνα, φυλάττων.
11. σπογγοκολυμβηταὶ· καὶ σπογγοκολυμβηταὶ δὲ Λυκοῦργος εἴρεκεν ἐν τῷ Κατα Μενεσαίχμου.
12. Κηφισόδωρος· Λυκοῦργος ἐν τῷ Κατὰ Μενεσαίχμου. κεκωμῴδηται δὲ οὗτος ὡς νωθής.
13. Προηρόσια· Λυκοῦργος φησιν ἐν τῷ Κατὰ Μενεσαίχμου. καὶ γὰρ νῦν πολλὰς καὶ μεγάλας ὑμῖν τιμὰς ὀφείλω καὶ ζηλῶ παρὰ πᾶσιν Ἕλλησι μαντευομένοις τ[ὴ]ν δία[ν] προηροσίαν ποιήσασθαι.
Reference Edition: Conomis, Lycurgi Fragmentis, XIV (114-118).
Edition Notes: In the second sentence of fragment 5a, the manuscript’s λοιμοῦ (‘plague’) is emended to λιμοῦ (‘famine’) to agree with λιμοῦ of fragment 2 and ἀφορία of fragments 3 and 5b, and is marked with brackets because the emendation might be unnecessary if fragment 5a does not belong to Lykourgos (see general commentary). Conomis’ emendation of fragment 2 from λιμοῦ to λοιμοῦ is rejected for the same reason.
In fragment 13 the manuscript’s τὸν δία προηροσίαν is emended to τ[ὴ]ν δία[ν] προηροσίαν, the nearest comprehensible and plausible phrase, marked with brackets to signify uncertainty.
Conomis’ fragment 14.5b (Harpokration s.v. Ἄβαρις) is included separately in this collection but excluded from Lykourgos’ fragments because it is not attributed to Lykourgos or to this speech, and because it is clearly more closely related to a text from the Aristophanes scholia on the same topic.
Source of Date of Work: Harris, Lycurgus, 156
Commentary:
This is a collection of fragments of a prosecution speech known as Against Menesaichmos, one of several prosecution speeches relating to sacrilege that Lykourgos of Athens made between his rise to prominence in Athenian politics in 338 BCE and his death in 324 (see Harris, Lycurgus, 155-158). This was the twilight period of independent Athens, after defeat in the battle of Chaironeia in 338 brought Athens under Macedonian domination but before the suppression of Athenian democracy in 322. During this period Athens clung to control of the temple of Apollo in Delos, a symbolic vestige of its former status as master of the Delian league.
Menesaichmos was apparently accused of acting outside his religious authority and conducting or preparing sacrifices in the wrong way, somehow in connection to Athens’ annual oracular mission to Delos and preparations for the Pyanopsia and Proerosia festivals of early autumn, the ideology of which had also become intertwined with Athens’ former imperial status. The details are unclear, but it was a delicate situation when Athenians were likely to be sensitive to perceived affronts to their post-imperial pride and at the same wary of creating any grounds for Macedon to humiliate them further.
The first fragment is an excerpt from a papyrus scrap, while the others are from Byzantine scholia and lexicons that drew from Hellenistic and Roman-era scholarly commentaries. The order of the fragments is a surmised reconstruction. Of particular importance for this collection is fragment 7, from a scholion, according to which Abaris traveled to Hyperborea during the famine and learned oracles that he then transmitted to the Greeks. The description of Abaris carrying the arrow as a token aligns with the earliest account of Abaris by Herodotos, and suggests that Lykourgos’ account did not derive from his contemporary Herakleides of Pontos, who appears to have introduced the story element common among later writers that Abaris flew riding on Apollo’s arrow. The mention of Abaris coming to Hyperborea during the famine appears to make this the earliest extant account of Abaris in which he was not a Hyperborean. In later texts by Iamblichosand in the Souda Abaris is said to have been a Skythian.
Since Lykourgos’ speech included both (1) a story of Abaris transmitting oracles during a famine, and (2) a story of an oracle that resolved that famine by prescribing a first-fruits offering with ἱκετηρία/εἰρεσιώνη, it might seem obvious that Abaris was credited with relaying the ἱκετηρία/εἰρεσιώνη oracle. But nowhere is that explicitly stated, neither in this text nor in another, later text about Abaris prophesying during the ancient famine. Moreover in that later text, which was likely based partly on Lykourgos, Abaris seems to arrive after the ἱκετηρία/εἰρεσιώνη oracle had already been fulfilled. Even if Abaris was credited with relaying the ἱκετηρία/εἰρεσιώνη oracle, that would probably have been only one of multiple versions of the story.
Fragments 2-4 describe the famine and the specific oracle about the ‘suppliant branch’ or ἱκετηρία, known more colloquially as εἰρεσιώνη. The latter name was understood to be derived from the wool (ἔριον) that was wound around such branches (Souda. s.v. εἰρεσιώνη) and used to tie on first-fruit offerings, as mentioned in fragment 5a. However the name probably actually derived from ἐρύω (to protect), as reflected in the name of the Athenian genos (clan) that an inscription suggests was responsible for carrying the branch in the Pyanopsia procession, the Erysichthonidai (Robertson, Erysichthon Story, 390-391; see also Constantakopoulou, commentary to BNJ 401c F1a). Erysichthon, the legendary founder of the genos, was believed to have died at Prasiai in eastern Attika on returning from an oracular mission to Delos (to come in this collection). It seems not unlikely that there could have been a version of the ἱκετηρία/εἰρεσιώνη founding myth in which Erysichthon received the oracle, although no such story has been preserved.
It’s likely that either fragment 4a or 4b, or perhaps both, derive from some other source besides Lykourgos’ Against Menesaichmos. Fragment 4 is a lexicon entry in which the attribution “in the Deliaka” was inserted into the middle of the entry in a way that might refer to the previous text (4a), or to the following text (4b), or both. The title "Deliaka" was used for three other speeches (by Aischines, Hypereides and possibly Deinarchos, BNJ/FGrH 401a, b and d), but those speeches appear to have had nothing to do with εἰρεσιώνη. So it has traditionally been assumed that in this single case "Deliaka" referred to Lykourgos’ Against Menesaichmos. Still it might refer to some other text.
Fragments 5-6 refer to the festival when the ἱκετηρία/εἰρεσιώνη were carried and placed, Pyanopsia or Pyanepsia. It was held on the 7th day of the month of the same name (Pyanopsion) in the Athenian calendar, roughly equivalent to October (Parke, Festivals, 73-82). The festival and its sacrifices were apparently the biggest and most expensive public activity of the month, as organizing sacrifices to Apollo usually topped the list of duties that citizens drafted into civic management for the month were thanked for in commemorative decrees (IG II3 1 900; Merritt, Inscriptions, no. 9; Dow, Prytaneis, nos. 4 and 64; Stanley, Prytany Decree). Attic and Ionian cities and Ionian colonies had the month of Pyanopsion in their calendars, and the month is also documented in some other parts of classical Greece and Greek colonies, whereas the Pyanopsia festival is attested in Athens, Delos, Smyrna, Thasos, Sinope, Mytilene and Aigina (Robertson, op. cit., 402). Lykourgos’ claims about the alternate name Panopsia and its alternate folk etymology appear to be spurious.
Fragments 8-11 refer to Athens’ annual sending of envoys to obtain oracles from the temple of Apollo in Delos. Stories of Hyperboreans were especially prominent in Delian religion and its founding myths, according to which a pair of Hyperborean maidens aided the birth of Apollo and Artemis on the island, as told by Herodotos. However Lykourgos’ inclusion of the topic of the Delian mission together with εἰρεσιώνη and Pyanopsia probably owes to Delos’ importance to Athens as the traditional center of the Delian league, and to the mingling that occurred during the Delian league’s height of Athenian imperialist ideology with the religious ideologies related to the Pyanopsia and the Eleusinian festival of Proerosia (see below).
The identity of Kephisodoros and his relevance in the speech are unknown.
Fragment 13 appears to preserve a nearly verbatim excerpt, but with some corruption in the final words (see edition notes). Proerosia (‘pre-ploughing’) was a festival dedicated to Demeter marking the approach of winter wheat planting. The festival began two days before the Pyanopsia festival with preliminary sacrifices in Athens, and the main festival was held in Eleusis the day before the Pyanopsia (Dow and Healey, Calendar of Eleusis, 14-17; Parker, Athenian Religion, 295). Joseph Fontenrose (Delphic Oracle, 295) thought Proerosia was an Athenian festival and that the ἱκετηρία oracle was “the cult myth of Demeter Proerosia in Athens,” but the epigraphic evidence makes clear the Proerosia was mainly celebrated in Eleusis and the ἱκετηρία/εἰρεσιώνη were carried on Pyanopsia.
Lykourgos’ mention of putting on Proerosia ‘for all ... Greeks’ alludes to the Classical Athenian practice of collecting a tithe of contributions of first fruits from the Delian league for the Proerosia, which was justified by a fresh Delphic oracle (Fontenrose, op. cit., H9, 247; IG I2 76) or multiple Delphic oracles (Isokrates 4.31) and by another version of the legend about the ancient ἱκετηρία/εἰρεσιώνη oracle preserved in the Aristophanes scholia in which Athenians were directed to sacrifice on behalf of all people (Ibid., Q79, 294-295). Thus Proerosia, took on a second role as a league-wide first-fruits sacrifice, and the ideology of Proerosia became mingled with that of Pyanopsia, which remained a first-fruits festival.
Similarly, the founding legends of two other festivals held at close to the same time – the Oschophoria, a wine-harvest festival held on the same day as the Pyanopsia, and the Theseia, a martial games festival held the day after Pyanopsia marking Theseus’ return from Crete – became mingled with each other and with the Pyanopsia and the Proerosia. Stories probably originating in the Hellenistic or Roman periods have Theseus visiting Delos on his way to or returning from Crete and initiating εἰρεσιώνη and the Pyanopsia’s bean stew (Plutarch, Lives: Theseus, 21-23; Souda s.v. εἰρεσιώνη).
Concordance: Conomis, Lycurgi Fragmentis, XIV (“C”); BNJ/FGrH 401c (“J”); Burtt, Against Menesaechmus (C1-2b and C3-4); Harris, Lycurgus 14 (English of C1-2b, C3-4, C5b and C7-8).
| 1 | C1 | J10 | BerlPap 11748 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | C3c | J1b | Etymologicon Magnum, 303.35-37 |
| 3 | C2b | - | Codex Darmstadt 2773, f. 250v (564) |
| 4 | C2a | J1a | Lexicon Patmense, s.v. εἰρεσιώνη, 149/159 |
| 5 | C3 | J4 | Harpokration, s.v. Πυανόψια |
| 6 | C10 | J9 | Harpokration, s.v. προκώνια |
| 7 | C5a | J2 | Nazianzeni Carmina Scholia, 51.2-5 |
| 8 | C7 | J6 | Harpokration, s.v. Δηλιασταί |
| 9 | C8 | J7 | Harpokration, s.v. Ἑκάτης νῆσος |
| 10 | C6 | J5 | Harpokration, s.v. ἁρκυωρός |
| 11 | C11 | J11 | Pollux, Onomastikon, v.2, 7.137 |
| 12 | C9 | J8 | Harpokration s.ν. Κηφισόδωρος |
| 13 | C4 | J3 | Souda, s.ν. Προηρόσια |