prayer preceded the immolation; a ritual cry or hymn accompanied the pouring of
lustral water over the victim’s head. The gods were called to attend the sacrifice.
Above all, sacrifice and prayer went hand in hand, combining words with actions to
dispatch an animal life while asking for ‘‘health and salvation’’ (878) for the congre-
gation. I think the poor sheep, which is described as nothing more than ‘‘chin and
horns’’ (902), is very much the means to an end rather than the end in itself.
I want this passage of Aristophanes to stand for state ritual generally, in the hope
that Aristophanic parody can instruct us about the real thing. But what of private
communication with the gods? Let us look for a prayer as diametrically opposed to
the public prayer for Nephelokokkygia as possible. Remember that I am still discuss-
ing prayer within its ritual context as a means of heightening, or framing, the
intended message and beguiling the recipient.
In Theocritus’ second idyll, called ‘‘the sorceress’’ (Pharmakeutria), a woman,
Simaitha, complains that her lover Daphnis is untrue; by the light of the moon she
utters an elaborate spell to various nocturnal deities – Selene, Artemis, Hecate –
accompanied by a variety of ritual actions, with a view to luring her lover back. The
poem is, of course, a literary fiction, but, again, like the Aristophanes passage, it can
only work if it’s ‘‘like’’ real life. For the poem is mimetic: the words are spoken by
Simaitha as if the actions she refers to were actually happening. The reader visualizes
her doing and saying the things she mentions in ‘‘real time,’’ as it were. So this text
represents, within the complex one might call religion, an opposite pole to the public
inaugural ceremony parodied by Aristophanes. We see a woman alone (except for her
slave woman, Thestylis, who carries out her orders) at night communing with ‘‘dark
powers’’ and trying, by magic, to make a man fall back in love with her. She had, by
the way, fallen in love with him during a chance encounter at a public holiday
involving a procession in honor of Artemis.
Despite the radical difference of this situation from the prayer for Nephelokokkygia,
we find the same interlacing of prayer and ritual offering with a view to charming
underworld powers into granting a request. Simaitha burns various substances in a fire
as she utters the wish: ‘‘as this substance burns in the fire, so should Daphnis burn with
love for me.’’ And, although her spells and incantations are directed at a human,
Daphnis, she invokes goddesses (the ones already mentioned) to hear her prayer: ‘‘I
will sing softly to you, goddess [Selene], and to chthonian Hecatechaire, dreadful
Hecate, and accompany us to the fulfillment’’ (11–14). Moreover, a refrain in the
poem refers to an object often used in love-magic, theiunx, a kind of spinning top
Figure 7.1 Aprosodionto Athene. Musicians and singers in arms. Vase in a private collection
Prayers and Hymns 121