Graf, Fritz

OpenEdition

 Kernos
Revue internationale et pluridisciplinaire de religion
grecque antique 
12 | 1999
Varia
J. RABINOWITZ, The Rotting Goddess. The Origin of
the Witch in Classical Antiquity's Demonization of
Fertility Religion
Fritz Graf
Electronic version
URL: http://journals.openedition.org/kernos/746
ISSN: 2034-7871
Publisher
Centre international d'étude de la religion grecque antique
Printed version
Date of publication: 1 January 1999
Number of pages: 321-322
ISSN: 0776-3824
 
Electronic reference
Fritz Graf, « J. RABINOWITZ, The Rotting Goddess. The Origin of the Witch in Classical Antiquity's
Demonization of Fertility Religion », Kernos [Online], 12 | 1999, Online since 13 April 2011, connection
on 22 April 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/kernos/746 
Kernos
Revue des Livres 321
Jacob RABINOWITZ, 17Je Rofting Goddess. The Origin of the Witch in Classi-
cal Antiquity's Demonization of Fertility Religion, New York, Autonome-
dia, 1998. 1 vol. 15 X 22,5 cm, 153 p. ISBN: 1-57ü27-ü35-x.
This slender book makes a lofty daim: "Here you will find for the first time a
complete and comprehensive study of Hekate and the witches for the 1200 year
period from Homer to the Greek Magical Papyri" (13). And in its course, it pre-
sents several new theories. Most interesting is the daim that the actual cult of
Hekate originally had not much to do with witchcraft; this latter association was
a literary construct of the 5th century B.C. which much later on generated the
reality of witchcraft (59); the analysis of "the archetype of the witch" as dosely
related to the "archetype of the fertility goddess", especially in the ambivalence
which embraces both birth and death (800; and the view of an evolution of this
ambivalence - viewed positively in an archaic cultural background, it resulted in
the demonization of the witch from the dassical epoch onwards, resulting from
"changing Graeco-Roman attitudes to material existence" (121).
None of the daims can really be substantiated, and the book contains sorne
very basic flaws. One such flaw is the author's failure to darify what he means by
witchcraft in Greek and Roman culture: he uses the term as if it were a universal,
equally appropriate to the Homeric Circe and the Horatian Canidia, to pheno-
mena in Africa and early modern Europe: witchcraft seems to be any uncanny
ritual activity by women. As a corollary, there is no dear differentiation between
literary portraits and the description of actual rites: why should Horace or Lucan
be reliable witnesses to witchcraft? The differentiation is arbitrary: while Circe's
rites are literature, the rites of Theocritus' Simaitha or Horatius' Canidia are as
much actual witchcraft as the rites of the Papyri Graecae Magicae (which, inci-
dentally, misrepresents the PGM: they contain rites of sorcery, but not necessarily
witchcraft). A much more precise differentiation is needed, one through which it
becomes dear that ail female practitioners of sorcery - both of rites which can be
assumed as practiced because detailed in the PGM (like necromancy or ritual
binding) and of rites which have no such corroboration (like divinatory child
sacrifice) - are purely literary creations and, furthermore, do not antedate
Hellenistic literature; at least such testimonies for actual sorcery (inscriptions and
papyri) attest women very rarely as practitioners, and the generic prescriptions of
the papyri assume that ail practitioners are male. Thus, the most innovative thesis
- that the literary description antedates and causes the actual rite - cannot be
confirmed from the material. Looking at the problem from the point of view of
language, it should be noted that neither Greek nor Latin had a specific term for
witchcraft, while only Latin had such a term for the female practitioner of sor-
cery, namely saga; the Greek qJapllaKEu1:pta covers more than that. But with one
exception - an inscription which, typically enough, accuses a saga - ail texts
again are literary \ this one exception might suggest that the literary description
antedates and influenced not the practice of witchcraft, but the accusations. This,
at least, is what happened much later, in the witchcraft of early modern Europe.
Nor can another new daim be substantiated. That benign Hekate of archaic
Greece changed into infernal Hekate in the fifth century through the identifica-
tion with the Thessalian goddess Enodia may have Wilamowitz' authority - but it
is too mechanical to be true: even provided that such .a character of the Thessa-
lian goddess is correct (in my opinion, the earlier testimonies are too scarce to
CIL, VI, 19747 (Verona, Museo Maffeiano, from Rome; aet imp.).
322 Revue des Livres
allow such an assertion): what would have caused the Thessalian goddess to
become suddenly so important in ail of Greece?
Another flaw - at least in the eyes of this reviewer - is the use of problema-
tieal categories: vague concepts like axis mundi or fertility goddess are not really
helpful for the understanding of Graeco-Roman religion, and the resuscitation of
the distinction between chthonic-olympian in the face of modern deconstruction
of it is not convincing either 1. And even if one deems these categories useful,
their relevance should be demonstrated with less flimsy reasoning: if the column
in the centre of a Hekataion was the axis l1utndi, why is it absent in so many
examples2?
The superficial reasoning along generie and ahistorie concepts goes together
with a use of the scholarly literature whieh relies too much on the handbooks
and misses relevant recent work 3, and with a presentation whieh suffers from
mistakes in non-English names4 and from too many typos; it would be too much
to expect indexes. In short: there still is much to be done on the topie, and the
present volume is apt to mislead any serious non-specialist.
Fritz Graf
(Chicago/Base!)
Françoise FRONTISI-DuCROUX, Jean-Pierre VERNANT, Dans l'œil du miroir,
Paris, Éditions Odile Jacob, 1997. 1 vol. 14,5 x 22 cm, 298 p., 30 fig. ISBN: 2-
7381-0497-5.
« Ouvrage en trois parties et livre à deux voix. » Tel se définit d'emblée un
parcours qui porte en ses extrémités la reconquête progressive par Ulysse de son
identité et de son statut de roi, et en son centre une longue réflexion sur le miroir
comme objet culturel en Grèce ancienne.
Les deux chapitres dus à J.-P. Vernant, s'il n'y est pas question d'un miroir de
toute façon inexistant dans l'épopée, relisent l'Odyssée comme poème de la
mémoire. Sont analysées tour à tour les métamorphoses du héros, mendiant
loqueteux ou héros à l'éclat divin, la ruse autour de son nom dans la caverne de
Polyphème, la mise à l'épreuve de la fidélité à sa propre mémoire chez les
Lotophages, Circé ou Calypso. Mais c'est «' au miroir de Pénélope» que se re-
nouent définitivement les fils de l'identité du héros. C'est sa femme qui renvoie à
Ulysse l'image de celui qu'il est redevenu.
Especially since the polemic focusses entirely on Burkert and overlooks the more
recent and detailed work by Renate Schlesier, Olympian versus chthonian religion, in
Sci/pta Classica Israelica, 11 (1991192), p. 38-51, and Olympische Religion und chthonische
Religion, in U. BIANCHI (ed,), The Notion of "Religion" in Comparative Research. Selected
Proceedings of the XVlth Congress of the International Association for the Histo/y of
Religions, Rome, 3rd-8th September 1990, Roma, 1994, p. 301-310.
2 See the list in LIMC, VI (1995), p. 998-1000: at least with sorne Hekataia, the central
column served as support of something (nrs. 116. 127).
3 E.g. the article Hekate in LIMC VI, or the recent work on Enodia, P.A. PANTOS,
'Evvo8fa 'OŒ{a 8eŒŒaÂl1d/ mi ŒrT] Bépora, in Archaiognosia, 2 (1981), p. 96-106 and
P. CHRYSOSTOMOU, 'H f)eŒŒaÂl1d] 8eix 'Evvo8fa ii <Pepa{a 8ecx, Diss. Thessalonike 1991: or
E. WALLINGER, Hekates Tochter. Hexen in der romischen Antike, Wien, 1994, a book whose
existence already undermines sorne initial claims of Rabinowitz: or most of the more
recent work on ancient magic.
4 An anthology from chapter 1:1: Uesener instead of Usener, Rhode instead of Rohde,
Heckenback instead of Heckenbach.


J. Rabinowitz, The Rotting Goddess. The Origin of the Witch in Classical Antiquity's Demonization of Fertility Religion

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J. Rabinowitz, The Rotting Goddess. The Origin of the Witch in Classical Antiquity's Demonization of Fertility Religion

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