The study of the so-called Bacchic Gold Tablets (usually referred to as Orphic, with or without inverted commas) has burgeoned in the last decades, with several comprehensive books and numerous articles and chapters on specific points, usually focused on textual problems and interpretative issues. The book under review is a most welcome addition to these publications, since it focuses on somewhat neglected aspects of the tablets, which we may consider ‘peripheral,’ but which are by no means less relevant. In four long chapters, the author analyzes the engagement of the tablets with the poetic tradition (specifically exploring the central concept of memory), their relation to contemporary epitaphs, their materiality and its implications, and the symbology of gold.
The first part of the book is an introduction to the tablets with information about their number, origin, shape and features of the texts and contents, including some pictures. McClay claims that the tablets cannot be explained through, nor reduced to, a single myth or a specific belief system such as Orphism. He prefers to take them as reflecting Bacchic cults in general in which other gods are sometimes involved (9). The Orphic “myth of Zagreus,” even if it offers the best explanation for some of the tablets, has been given excessive prominence and cannot be considered central for all of them (9, 20). It is more suitable to see them as expressions of ritual practices with similar concerns and goals, such as purity and connection to the gods, but not necessarily based on the same myths, images. and beliefs. This approach is, in my view, judicious, since gold tablets could have been used by competing private ritual practitioners for different clients and in variable cultic contexts, as the sources attest, and the author emphasizes (11-12). Therefore, the methodological starting point are the tablets themselves, which show common features of practice, despite their geographical spread and differences in detail (21). This part ends with a summary of the chapters (21-23) and the text and translation of the tablets, excepting the brief ones from Crete and elsewhere (25-34).
Chapter 1, “Mapping memory: Bacchic Cults and Poetic Models,” reevaluates the key concept of memory in a group of tablets, an element which has not been fully explained. McClay argues that in this theme, as in others, the tablets reveal a debt and conscious engagement with the background of archaic poetry and its social context, usually formed by aristocratic audiences. This poetry offered multiple topics, images, patterns, and values that were echoed in the verses recorded in the tablets. The author questions previous attempts to connect memory with Orphic and Pythagorean beliefs and texts, such as the Platonic myth of Er, the descriptions of the Trophonius oracle, and the Orphic Hymn to Memory.
In an important section (“‘Famed Bacchants:’ Objective Memory and Mystic Group,” 55-75) the author examines the language of praise used by the tablets in comparison with archaic lyric. The main ideas are that:
- in some privileged circles (Theognis’ symposion or Sappho’s feminine group) immortality is connected with poetry and its ongoing performance in this world and even in Hades. These groups may have served as models for small private mysteries, as those portrayed in the tablets, which imagine immortality in the form of participation in the rituals celebrated by the initiates in the other world (55-65).
- in lyric poetry, the hope of long-lasting fame (social memory) and the belief in a happy individual existence (individual memory) are interwoven and not easily distinguished (Sappho, Pindar’s threnoi, and Ol. 2). This combination offers a useful model for the tablets, which present the deceased’s afterlife both from an individual and a social perspective (65-72).
- the specification of the initiate’s gender or proper name in some of the shorter leaves reveals the ways their makers interact with traditional ideas of memory?. Gender and names may be included or excluded according to the interests of the cult group (72-75). One of the most notable examples is the tablet from Rome, which mentions the name of its bearer, Caecilia Secundina (75). This tablet considers itself as “a gift of memory, object of song among mortals,” an expression remarkably similar to Theognis’ “splendid gifts of the Muses” for future men (vv. 250-252) (p. 65). The author could have mentioned the important precedent of Il. 6.358, where Helen imagines that Paris and she will be “objects of song” (ἀοίδιμοι) for future men. This Homeric passage seems to be the model for Theognis and a suggestive parallel for the Roman leaf.
The chapter has the great merit of demonstrating the strong affinities between the roles of memory in the tablets and in the poetic tradition. However, the analogy between both groups of texts is not always exact, and the claims of points in common is sometimes strained. For example, the deceased will be remembered by their peers in aristocratic circles thanks to the fact that poetry collects his or her name, and thus the deceased will obtain poetic immortality (objective—or social—memory); however, in the tablets the initiates have no interest in leaving a reminder of themselves among their fellow man, and their immortality does not depend on that (and consequently, the proper name is normally omitted), but on the grant of the netherworld deities. The gods will recognize them as initiates and integrate them into a new group, that of the blessed ones, but social memory has no role in this incorporation, even if they are called ‘glorious’ (κλε<ε>ινοί, OF 474.16), because they are present among the blessed dead and need not be remembered by the living to maintain that status. There is admittedly a social dimension in salvation, but memory remains subjective and individual, insofar as its main goal is that the deceased remembers what to do and say in Hades.
Chapter 2, “The Tomb of Memory: Epigrams and Funerary Context,” examines the multiple features shared by the gold tablets and verse epitaphs, such as themes, vocabulary, expressions, and linguistic devices, which draw on their common poetic tradition. Five common motifs are noteworthy: the self-referential deictic τόδε, the address to the deceased through χαῖρε, Moira as cause of death, relinquishing sunlight, and the position of the deceased beneath the bosom of Persephone (83-86). However, not many examples of epigrams with these elements are adduced, so the comparisons seem rather restricted. Besides, several communicative patterns or interactive speech forms are used to similar ends both in the leaves and in the epigrams: first-person statements by the deceased, direct address to them, commands, and dialogues (86-87, 100). Many observations and comparisons are suggestive, but in my view, the chapter is the weakest of the book since most common elements can be explained because both groups of texts refer to dead persons and to the afterlife. The thematic and ideological differences are more prominent since the tone of the epitaphs is usually pessimistic and mournful and that of the tablets optimistic and triumphant. Whereas the epitaphs focus on the good things of earthly life that have been lost, especially the family, the tablets envision the happiness in the netherworld among the other blessed ones (cf. 106).
Chapter 3, “Material Genres: Amulets and Incantations,” is a relevant contribution to the appropriate methodology for the study of gold tablets and similar inscriptions on metal. That the tablets are primarily objects, not texts is often overlooked. By consequence, the examination of the materiality of the tablets is essential and should incorporate developments of so-called “material religion.” This approach is concerned with the physical manifestation of religion (spaces, gestures, objects), rather than with the personal beliefs. McClay advocates using a neutral vocabulary and omitting some usual magical terms (amulet, talisman), which are misleading and pejoratively charged (115). This is the best way to overcome and banish the sharp distinction between religious and magical texts held by most scholars. A telling case is that of the Petelia tablet, whose magical use is only seen in the post-classical period, when it was put into a metal case in the second or third century AD to be worn as an amulet, but there is no reason to see a radical difference between this secondary use and its first function (112). An unbiased analysis demonstrates that the gold tablets are typologically identical to other objects usually labelled as “magical,” such as written spells (epodai) and lead curse tablets (defixiones) (120-135). Although all these texts are divergent because they aim at different purposes (healing, protection, harm), they were probably produced by the same individuals (private religious experts) and share motifs and resources, e.g, the use of hexameters, invocation of underworld deities, their location in tombs, and, above all, their inscription on a metallic surface. It can be guessed that the gold tablets were a development of the lead tablets in seeking to interact with the nether powers (132-133)[1].
Chapter 4, “Gold in the Grave: The Metal of the Tablets,” provides a fine conclusion to the book. The use of gold for the tablets may be due to its durability and incorruptibility, which symbolically convey the notion of immortality. For this reason, it is usually connected with the gods, whose objects and dwelling places were made of gold (137). Besides, just as the gold is associated with kings, priests or mythical peoples in archaic poetry and is therefore a sign of privileged status, the use of gold tablets present their bearers as members of a religious elite close to the divine sphere (139).
Considering the socioeconomic context of the tablets since the use of gold could suggest a comparison with money and arouse criticism for bringing rituals into mercantile exchange, their producers strove to emphasize the aristocratic exchange models, such as recompense (ποινή) and ransom (ἄποινα), on which the initiate’s salvation rested. The hapax ἄποινος in a tablet from Pherae (OF 493) has been interpreted as a compound of ποινή, “without penalty,” but the author proposes a derivation from ἄποινα “ransom,” in the sense of “ransomed” from the common fate of men (163-165). This is suggestive, but somewhat poetic and not obvious, and the presence of ποινή in another tablet makes the traditional interpretation preferable. In the last section of the chapter, the tablets are compared with objects of ritual origin, such as the metal spits from sacrifices and, especially, the bone tablets from Pontic Olbia and the iron rings distributed to initiates in Samothrace, which served as a permanent sign of their transitory mystic experience and reinforced the ties of the privileged group (167-168).
The bibliography is thorough (29 pp.), with a predominance of English.[2] An Index Locorum and a General Index complete the book.[3]
In sum, this book offers an innovative and stimulating reassessment of the Bacchic gold tablets from angles previously scarcely explored, furnishing crucial keys for a global understanding of their function and meaning(s). McClay successfully combines ample and complex evidence from archaic poetry, epigraphy, archaeology, religion, anthropology, and even economics and numismatics. Many of his insightful thoughts and analyses are relevant not only to the study of mystic cults in Greece, but also to the rich interaction of poetry, religion, society, and economy in archaic and classical times.
Notes
[1] A remarkable comparison of the gold tablets with spells and curses, within a broader study of orphism and magic, can be found in R. Martín Hernández, Orfeo y los magos. La literatura órfica, la magia y los misterios, Madrid 2010, 189-231, not cited.
[2] The are some missing titles, e.g., in chapter 4, A. S. Brown, “From the Golden Age to the Isles of the Blest,” Mnemosyne 51 (1998) 385-410 and essays collected in M. Tortorelli Ghidini (ed.), Aurum. Funzioni e simbologie dell’oro nelle culture del Mediterraneo antico, Roma, 2014.
[3] The typos are rare: Pythagorio for Pythagorico (41 n. 22), Hymnenaios for Hymenaios (102), Isobel for Isabel (111), Markon for Makron (134), Valentia for Valentina (173), unim for unum (187), a for à, Pythagora for Pitagora (189), stellate for stellate, and dinysiaque for dionysiaque (198).