Preface

Strangely enough, the birth of this book (or should we say its first concept?) has something in common with ancient Greek cosmogonies where usually Darkness or Chaos beget Light or Day through a complex, arbitrary and sometimes awesome procedure. It was a dark 2005 winter evening when a chaotic discussion started among the members of the newly founded Centre for the Study of Myth and Religion in Greek and Roman Antiquity at the Department of Philology of Patras University. The aim of the discussion was to detect various areas where recent scholarship appeared comparatively weak or left something to be desired in the study of Greek mythology and religion and where the newborn Centre could eventually utter a clear, fresh and fairly suggestive word. It then occurred to us that one relatively less explored area was the dependence of certain rites, cults, narratives and persons upon notions of light and darkness, night and day, brightness and obscurity. In the absence of such an approach in the study of myth and religion, we organized an International Conference on Light and Darkness in Greek and Roman Mythology and Religion held at the University of Patras in summer 2007. To our delight a number of specialists from Greece and abroad attended the conference, significant papers were presented and important issues were touched upon. The material collected, thanks to the quality of the contributions, constituted a multiple nucleus further enriched by few specific approaches not included in the conference and smoothly flowed into the present book whose main ambition is to partly remedy the lack of relevant studies in scholarship. Our wishes will indeed be totally fulfilled if this book becomes a useful tool for classicists, social anthropologists, historians of religion, archaeologists as well as for students in the respective fields. If, however, one wishes to recall some relevant links to previous scholarship then he would refer to the following publications:

• the Colloquium held in Luxemburg on “Symbolisme et expérience de la lumière dans les grandes religions” (1996), mainly dealing with religious phenomena only and covering a wide spectrum of religions (Islam, Christianity, etc.)
  
• The Light and the Dark: A Cultural History of Dualism by Petrus F. M. Fontaine (1986), who puts forward the light-dark antithesis as a tool to interpret cultural history in general, with a specific focus on political and social history of Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries (only in Vol. II, 153–170 and mainly in a metaphorical use)
  
• The book by H. Musurillo, The Light and the Darkness: Studies in the Dra- matic Poetry of Sophocles (1967), obviously focusing on Sophoclean drama
  
• The book by E. Parisinou, The Light of the Gods: The Role of Light in Ar- chaic and Classical Greece (2000), mainly exploring symbolism and cult related to light, but not to darkness
  
• And, last but not least, the book by E. Bernidaki-Aldous, Blindness in a Culture of Light (1990), who examines physical blindness (especially that of Oedipus in OC) in Greek culture with its supposed privileged relationship to light.
  

As for the present volume, we thought its contribution would be more tangible if the content was subordinated under some major axes corresponding to significant specifications of the ideas of light and darkness in Greek antiquity. It seemed to us that a possible classification of these major axes could follow five entities, which finally became the five constitutive parts of the book:

• Color semantics. By reading several Greek texts and, in particular, poetry, one realizes that the interplay between darkness and light becomes extremely intricate and pregnant with meaning in contextual realizations of color semantics. Ancient authors construct their meaning by deploying lexical categories that bear autonomous or dependent semantic affiliations. Poetry conveys the heavily colored wording of previous “mainstream” literature but at the same time creates novel meanings by embedding an already accepted meaning into new context. The interplay of differences, displacements, inversions and polarities (with chief reference to light and darkness) form a platform where the power of lexeis and their semantic fields help to realize the poet’s intentions—since what is intentional and what is not in poetry remains a matter of ongoing debate.
  
• Appearance and concealment. Sudden and selective appearing or vanishing are, by many aspects, exclusive privileges of the gods, still the capacity itself of appearing or vanishing depends to a large extent on light and darkness. Divine appearances often occur at daylight but they are not always perceived by everybody; those sharing with the gods the intimacy of such appearances may then also share the view of a special light within the light. In other cases, a specific brightness may indicate a divine manifestation, or a god may himself represent the idea of light or of darkness independently of his other attributes. On the other hand, appearances occurring at night usually create a light within the darkness unless they are embedded in a dream or a narrative. Divine appearances manifested only through sound (such as Dionysus’ in the Bacchae 576-603) are comparatively few and usually completed also by visual experience.
  
• Eye-sight/insight. Although Greek culture has always been considered a culture that worships light, already in archaic society the blind appear to posses a privileged position as gifted poet or venerable seer. At the other end of the spectrum, one cannot deny that blindness is a physical disability and it can be the result of a terrible punishment sent by an offended deity that saw his/her realm violated and transgressed. But even then, blindness can offer a privileged insight of metaphysical matters that mortals are not able to see and understand. Thus, the blind may possess the intermediate place between the divine and the mortal worlds. Is then the blind a disabled creature or does his disability function as a metaphor for real sight?
  
• Being and beyond. Mysticism is an important dimension of ancient Greek religion and is directly related to the idea of light and darkness. The more important streams of Greek religious mysticism, namely the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Dionysiac cult and the Orphic movement, are all the three and in various ways associated with the darkness of the Underworld, not to mention the light imagery connected to the idea of salvation, which remains a central aim pursued by the initiates through mystical rites and religious procedures. The Eleusinian Mysteries offered their initiates an insight to the realm of the superhuman and an opportunity to take part in the reenactment of the doings of the gods. The Dionysiac cult released a savage urge that it recognized as part of human nature and, at the same time, claimed its share to an ecstatic enlightment promised by Dionysus, hero of a famous descent to the Underworld in search of Semele. The Orphic movement regarded Orpheus as its founder; still Dionysus was the main god of Orphism as the Orphics had adopted a selective approach to the Dionysus myth. This was partly due to an important feature peculiar to Orphism, the fact that it was based on a sacred scripture, on canons, on dogma, whereas the rites associated with Dionysus amounted to a cult based on myth, not on dogma. This is, perhaps, why the Orphic religious movement made so much of the ritual dimension of Dionysus, since the Orpheus myth itself had no rite of its own. Orphic principles and practices, although framed with reference to life after death, led to a set of rules concerning the proper conduct in life, which in terms of historical evolution, might represent a keener awareness of the fact that what one does in life actually matters and that, therefore, one must have a moral point of his or her life. The Pythagoreans observed similar principles although they did not claim mythical/religious approval, since their views were more or less based on the teaching of a real historical figure; in that sense, their views were in a way more “political” or more “philosophical” than those of the Orphics. In accordance to the above preliminary remarks that explain the importance of mysticism not only as a parameter of the Greek religious system but also as a motive for the initiated citizen’s everyday priorities and actions, some major issues related to mysticism are explored in this chapter aiming to better elucidate the relation between the idea of light and darkness and mysticism as a social reality in Ancient Greece.
  
• Cult. Cult is always the indisputable mark, the undeniable evidence always pursued by historians, archaeologists, philologists, anthropologists in their anxious search for the exact depiction of the ancient world; still cult is very often partly or vaguely revealed within the frame of a specific society and in a specific place and time, sometimes creating more problems than it resolves. But it appears that in regard to light and darkness, cult may also become particularly eloquent by depicting the presence of light or by indicating the precise kind of light sought in accordance to the nature of the cult itself and by so doing it may witness the existence of qualities of cultic light.
  

The analytical structure and the exact way these five parts are dealt with by the contributors of this volume are presented by Walter Burkert and Nanno Marinatos in the introduction of this book. But what the editors would like to stress here is that several stages of preparation, editing, consulting and cooperation preceded the final publication of the present volume and sincere thanks are owed to various persons whose competence, work and generosity was crucial in carrying out the different tasks that made this book possible. We would first like to express our gratitude to the Senatorial Board of the University of Patras for its financial contribution to the editorial needs of this volume. The whole task of this book was strongly supported by the Department of Philology of the University of Patras and we graciously recognize our thankful debts. Special thanks are owed to our postgraduate students Sotirios Karambelas and Marios Valvis-Gerogiannis for copiously correcting and adapting the contributors’ manuscripts. The texts of the contributors earned further coherence and unity thanks to Jonathan Smith’s elegant linguistic and stylistic taste. Walter Burkert’s and Nanno Marinatos’ authority honored our task by giving this book a meaningful and learned Introduction. As for the book itself it would had never been published without Professor Gregory Nagy’s wise consulting and support; our deepest gratitude and warmest thanks are addressed to him.

Last but not least, we would like to mention two great scholars, Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who had accepted to participate in the conference, but their poor health betrayed their expressed wish. Their numerous insightful studies to Greek myth and religion have influenced profoundly modern perception of both areas; to their memory this book is dedicated, with gratitude for their didaskalia.