The oracle of the dead at Acheron in Thesprotia was actually one of four main
oracles of the dead in antiquity, the other three being Avernus in Campania in Italy,
Heracleia Pontica on the south coast of the Black Sea, and Tainaron (Taenarum) in
southern Greece. The existence of such oracles and other, lesser, locations
for summoning the dead suggests that necromancy was practiced regularly, if not
frequently (Ogden 2001:265–6). Along with such sites there existed professional
practitioners of necromancy – evocators and so-called sorcerers who would
‘‘call forth’’ the dead; sometimes they were overtly fraudulent, using ventriloquism.
Evidently such specialists could be called on by anyone wishing to communicate with
the dead, so long as they could afford it (Ogden 2001:95–115).
As Ogden points out, overall ‘‘antiquity’s moral evaluation of necromancy is
particularly difficult to pin down,’’ and may have been considered as good or as
bad as the person practicing it. Those who consulted the dead via necromancy were
‘‘bold, desperate, or strange to turn to it,’’ as any type of contact with the dead was
inherently dangerous and undesirable (2001:263–4). Thus, quite unlike the heroic
stories ofkatabasis, which carried with them the hope of spiritual rebirth and
attainment of immortality through reputation, necromancy carried with it no glory
for those facing the dead. It was one thing to travel yourself to the land of the dead –
whether literally or metaphorically – and face your mortality, but quite another to
force the dead to come to you.
Contact from the Dead: Hauntings
Whereaskatabasisinvolved the living visiting the dead and necromancy forced the
dead to come to you, hauntings were (and are) cases of the dead visiting the living of
their own accord rather than being summoned by the living through magical means.
The dead may return for benign reasons, such as to warn the living of danger, to
prophesy, or to comfort the living. In Greek literature and folk-belief, however, most
of the dead who return do so for less altruistic reasons. The Greeks and Romans
identified three main types of dead whose restless spirits might haunt the living: the
ao ̄roi, those who had died before their time and whose spirits had to wander until the
span of their natural lives was completed; thebiaiothanatoi, those who had died
violently; and theataphoi, the unburied. These categories were not mutually exclu-
sive; a person could certainly be murderedandleft unburied. Thebiaiothanatoiand
the ataphoi were considered particularly dangerous and malevolent (Rohde
1925:594–5), and the Greeks had many tales of the vengeful dead.
Plutarch, for example, records a story ‘‘told by many people’’ about how the
Spartan Pausanias was haunted by the ghost of a girl named Cleonice, who was
from a distinguished family. Pausanias lusted after her, and her parents, fearing to
displease him, abandoned her to him. He summoned her to his bedroom, but as she
approached the bed she tripped in the dark and Pausanias, startled by the noise and
mistaking her for an assassin, stabbed her to death. Her phantom then kept appearing
to him in his sleep, accusing him of murder. As the harassment showed no signs of
abatement, the exhausted Pausanias went the oracle of the dead at Heracleia Pontica
and summoned the spirit of Cleonice, beseeching her to give up her anger against
him. She cryptically replied that his troubles would soon end when he came to Sparta,
96 D. Felton