Light and darkness; a common enough contrast in daily life, and hence an elementary dichotomy in language; from here it is just a small metaphorical step to combining this language of opposition with the basic antinomy of life and death, and then extending the metaphor to encompass the dualism of truth and error.
As the present volume shows, however, the semiotics of light and darkness are nothing if not complex in Greek thought. The elemental antitheses mentioned do not admit of reduction to either simple dualism or unambiguous negativity; Nyx, for example, is not exclusively negative, although light is often, but not always, positive.
The concepts extend from cosmogonic spatial categories to states of the psyche; literary evidence, rituals, vase paintings, all contribute to enhancing and enlarging our understanding of the subtleties of this ambiguous polarity. Darkness may stand for ignorance, evil and the ominous, violence and barbarism, and the world beyond; light may denote vision, clairvoyance, the Olympian order, the salvation of the psyche, and the world we inhabit. However, this still leaves us with all the subtle nuances in between that the classical intellect endeavored to explore; thus eliciting transitions rather than finalities, questions rather than certainties.
At first sight color seems to signify a straightforward distinction between good and bad; black (melas) usually denoting evil, light colors (leukos, xan- thos) mainly standing for goodness. However, the polysemic diction of names and epithets either blurs distinctions or, alternatively, leads to subtle nuances and graduations.
Richard Buxton (The Significance (or Insignificance) of Blackness in Mythological Names) explores the significance of ‘black’ (melas) in personal names in Homer, elaborating the contrast between the clearly negative one of Melanthios and Melantho, the evil servants in the Odyssey, and the multiplicity of possible meanings encompassed within the seer’s name, Melampous, a name not obviously negative. It seems, depending on context, that the etymology of a name can either be active or become activated, while in another context, it can remain dormant. These semantics of blackness in literature are also discussed by Efimia D. Karakantza (Dark Skin and Dark Deeds: Danaids and Aigyptioi in a Culture of Light). In lexical contexts black (melas) connotes evil, sorrow and death, although it may also be applied to violent and non-Greek peoples, like the Aigyptioi of Aeschylus’s the Danaids. It is a signifier of loss, of disorder. Order may be restored in the culture of the polis (‘a culture of light’) through the celebration of festivals where rituals prevail in the end in weaving a synthesis of light and darkness, Greek and non-Greek, denial and acceptance, which leads to the very nature of classical myths and the construction of the Greek self-definition in a reconciliation (or simply coexistence) of opposites.
The shading of light and darkness in Pindar’s Pythian 3, is explored by Evanthia Tsitsibakou-Vasalos (Brightness and Darkness in Pindar’s Pythian 3: Aigla-Koronis-Arsinoe and Her Initiatory Experience); here the author investigates chiaroscuro imagery bordering on oxymoron as blurring the boundaries between brightness/life and darkness/death along with multiple polarities, deviations from religious and societal norms, transgression of natural laws and reversals of human fate . Spyros Syropoulos (S-light Anomaly: Dark Brightness in Euripides’ Medea) argues that Euripides’ Medea can be seen as an exploration of the anomaly, or rather antimony, of ‘dark brightness.’ The granddaughter of Helios (Sun) commits one of the most heinous crimes ever: premeditated infanticide; then escapes in the chariot of Helios, the ultimate image of light, leaving the spectator in the grip of ‘dark’ feelings, neither enlightened nor uplifted.
Light may represent an epiphany of a god, the radiance of a god, daylight, or an action carried out in the clarity of broad daylight; at the other end of the spectrum lies the need to conceal a person or an action, to shroud it in themy sterious or ominous cloak of darkness. Creatures of darkness, creatures of the pre-Olympian order need to surface or communicate their existence in the world of light.
This provides the framework for Soteroula Constantinidou (The Light Imagery of Divine Manifestation in Homer) to argue that Homeric gods have their epiphany in light, marking the superiority of divine power; their eyes gleam and their very presence is enveloped in an atmosphere of radiance. Hence even human heroes, such as Diomedes and Achilles, may be distinguished by such ‘light’ reflected in the ferocious glare of their battle stare. On the darker side, Ken Dowden (Trojan Night) explores night-battles in Homer, nyktomachiai, investigating the mythology of night fighting and drawing parallels with the role of the moon and its distinctive light. The capture of Troy, happening at night, yet illuminated by moonlight, becomes the archetypal night-battle. Night is the setting for the initiation/trickery as described in Doloneia.
Hephaistos, the only god to work, and still a god by virtue of his power over fire, presents us with a complicated case, as argued by Isabelle Ratinaud (Hephaistos: God of Light). His workshop is a place of fire, warmth, light and creation, not the ashes, smoke and dirt usually associated with his work. However, this is the god who forges the arms of Achilles, glittering instruments of death, thus linking creation and destruction. Avgi-Anna Maggel deals with Tithonus (Tithonus and Phaon. Mythical Allegories of Light and Darkness in Sappho’s Poetry), the hapless consort of Eos (Dawn), but throws the famous fragmentary verse about ‘love for Helios’ out of this context and leaves it as a riddle, while the love for Phaon remains legend alluding to the shading of impressions of light in Sappho’s poetic imagery and to a suggestive darkness lurking behind her poetic words.
Creatures of darkness often lurk in the cover of Night. Aeschylus puts the Erinyes, daughters of Night, on stage equipped with torches; does this mean that they operate at night? This is the question posed by Mercedes Aguirre (Erinyes as Creatures of Darkness) who teases out the literary evidence about the fearsome appearance of the black-garbed Erinyes, torch-bearing manifestations linked with the underworld, horror and madness.
Sebastian Anderson (Journey into Light and Honors in Darkness in Hesiod and Aeschylus) pursues another line of thought as he discusses night as a spatial realm of the cosmos in Hesiod and Aeschylus. Creatures of the deep, the Styx in Hesiod’s Theogony and the Erinyes in Aeschylus’s Eumenides mount an expedition into the realm of light, clash with creatures of light but return to their original abode when honored by Zeus.
Since Homer’s time light has been connected with the act of seeing and of being seen; it has also been linked with esoteric vision, the gift of insight, the ability to understand (to see internally), which characterizes the superhuman and also those divinely blessed or punished.
Françoise Létoublon’s literary journey of exploration (Blind People and Blindness in Ancient Greek Myth) concerns the theme of blindness and the role of the blind in Greek literature and myth from Homer, the archaic poetry and the mythographers, with arguments firmly anchored in linguistic data. As aoidoi, poets and seers, blind people seem to bear the mark of an ambiguous punishment, or compensation in the form of their exceptional gift for seeing; thus, blindness appears as a metaphor for real sight. Ariadni Gartziou-Tatti (Blindness as Punishment) takes a different perspective on blindness as a result of divine punishment. The cases of Phineus, Teiresias, Thamyris, Oedipus, etc., are examined so as to explore the correlation between the nature of their punishment and the extent of their transgression.
The fundamental question of being, and the beginning of being looms large in philosophy and religion. It also connects with the question of space: there is the world we inhabit, and the world beyond. Human beings visualize the world of beyond as having both darkness and light and remain mystified as to how it all began. Is chaos or darkness the beginning of beings? How do we find our way in the world of beyond?
Nanno Marinatos (Light and Darkness and Archaic Cosmogony) argues that primeval darkness (erebos) and light articulate spatial categories of the Homeric cosmos, which can be laid out in a visual map. The darkness of erebos coincides with Hades, and Hades is not exclusively below the earth but beyond it. The river ocean acts as a boundary, demarcating also the limits of the sun. In a yet bolder way Richard Seaford (Mystic Light and Near-Death Experience) traces the appearance of beatifying ‘light’ in texts of Euripides, the Bacchae, and Plutarch, and compares it to modern documentations of ‘Near Death Experience’, which speak about ‘a wonderful light that transforms ignorant anxiety into a sense of certainty and profound well-being’; Seaford suggests that this was ‘among the factors giving rise to mystery-cult.’
There is a seemingly strange idea in Greek thought, that darkness is the origin of all things. Menelaos Christopoulos (Dark-Winged Nyx and Bright-Winged Eros in Aristophanes’ “Orphic” Cosmogony: The Birds) shows that Nyx is the generator of the cosmic egg in the Birds of Aristophanes, and that this sequence is paralleled in Orphic cosmogonies, as confirmed by the Derveni papyrus. From the egg springs forth the bright-winged Eros, the equivalent to Orphic Phanes; hence, Light springs out of darkness
Radcliffe G. Edmonds (The Bright Cypress of the Orphic Gold Tablets: Direction and Illumination in Myths of the Underworld) insists on theory: ‘white’ or ‘dark’ are not natural signifiers but ‘arbitrary signs’ in the terms of de Saussure. His starting point is an apparent contradiction in the gold Bacchic tablets that give advice about how to find your way to the beyond: the ‘white cypress,’ markers of the ways of the beyond, which shift position and meaning in the different examples drawn from these texts.
In cult, the symbolism of light contrasted to darkness is especially obvious. Does light denote the salvation promised in antiquity by the divine in mystery cults? Or is it just a metaphysical Christian answer? Light in the imagery of ancient Greek texts, vase paintings or in testimonia for rituals may be a metaphor for the rites themselves, or allude to the blessed state of the participants or simply belong to the imagery of the god.
The use of torches in Bacchic cult is documented on the basis of vase paintings by Dimitris Paleothodoros (Light and Darkness in Dionysiac Rituals as Illustrated on Attic Vase Paintings of the 5th Century BCE). Dionysus, a god of bright shining light, is adored during nocturnal festivals by torch-bearing participants. However, ‘torches must be regarded as a metaphor for the rites of Dionysus, and not as an indication of the temporal sequence of ritual.’ On the other hand, the use of light and fire at Eleusis is commented upon, using as a basis the Homeric hymn, by Ioanna Patera (Light and Lighting Equipment in the Eleusinian Mysteries: Symbolism and Ritual Use), taking note also of the testimonies about ‘fire’ in the Telesterion, from Plutarch to Hippolytos and Himerios. The author reaches the conclusion that ‘light is an image of the happiness of the initiates and of their pious behaviour’.
Lastly, Athanassia Zografou (Magic Lamps, Luminous Dreams: Lamps in PGM Recipes) explores the use of lamps, this humble medium of lighting, in cultic as well as everyday contexts. The necessity of the presence of light is proved in the widespread use of lamps in the Magical Papyri from the Hellenistic down to Roman period in pagan and Christian rituals, bearing the mark of religious syncretism.
Walter Burkert argued many years ago (1969, “Das Prooemium des Parmenides und die Katabasis des Pythagoras,” Phronesis 14, pp. 1–30) that Parmenides made Nyx, darkness, the origin of truth. In his riddling proemoion, the philosopher explains how he was led in a chariot by the daughters of the sun, the Heliade, into the House of Night. This frightful place was located at the edge of the world, if we understand Hesiod correctly. The gates are guarded by Justice. As the philosopher enters, he is met by a goddess who must be no other than Night herself. She reveals the truth to the now initiated Parmenides.
The collection in this volume represents the variety of approaches available to scholars today. Some will want to look at the social parameters of Greek society; others at the semeiotic structures of Greek language and philosophy; yet others at cosmogonies. Riddles remain, but a collection of such diverse papers can only lead to a better understanding of the issue of light and darkness in Greek thought.