special rites,’’telestike ̄maniais a beneficialmaniawith long-lasting results for the
one who ‘‘rightly raves and is possessed.’’Telestike ̄maniaof those who rightly rave
implies the othermania, the destructive madness inflicted by Dionysus on those who
abuse him. At Cumae in southern Italy a chamber tomb was reserved for those who
had experienced Bacchic rites (Sokolowski 1962: no. 120, perhaps as early as the fifth
century BC). The posted inscription implies that those already in the tomb consid-
ered themselves to be in a special category and did not want to compromise the purity
they had achieved through special Bacchic ritual.
The gold tablets, found throughout the Mediterranean from Macedonia to Crete
and from the Aegean to Italy (Cole 2003:202–3), provide evidence for a widely
scattered constituency of Bacchic worshipers who performed Dionysiacteletaiin
preparation for death. The texts on the tablets exhibit so much variation in formulae
that content must have circulated orally. The rituals these texts assume seem to have
been spread by freelance practitioners, people like Aeschines’ mother, who performed
teletaiof Dionysus Sabazios in her own home (Demosthenes 18.259–60) or like the
Orpheotelestai, ‘‘those who perform rites of Orpheus,’’ mentioned by Theophrastus
(Characters16.11). Plato criticizes independent purveyors of religious ritual (Republic
2.364c), but bone tablets found at Olbia, on the north shore of the Black Sea, indicate
how far their message could reach. Three of the bone tablets are inscribed: ‘‘Life Death
Life; Truth; Dio[nysos]; Orphikoi,’’ ‘‘Peace War; Truth Lie; Dion[ysos],’’ ‘‘Dion[ysos]
Truth; Body Soul’’ (Dubois 1996:154–5 no. 96; fifth century BC).
Some modern commentators identify the content of the gold tablets as ‘‘Orphic’’
(for instance, Graf 1993a and N. Robertson 2003). The Orphikoi (‘‘followers of
Orpheus’’) at Olbia, with their interest in the opposition of body and soul, suggest a
more complex situation than we can now evaluate (Burkert 1993:259–60), but there
is no reason to identify Bacchicteletaias ‘‘Orphic.’’ In his essay on the soul Aristotle
is careful to refer to Orphic poetry as ‘‘the poetrycalledOrphic’’ (On the Soul
410b28). If anything could be called ‘‘Orphic,’’ it would be a particular type of
myth concerned with cosmogony and theogony, but there is no hard evidence for
Orphic ritual. Freelance practitioners (‘‘itinerant charismatics,’’ Burkert 1993:260),
do not produce consistent or clearly stated doctrine, and even ancient commentators
are wary of attaching labels to cult practice.
Bacchicteletaimust have created bonds between participants, but we do not know
how ties were maintained. The tiny gold tablets, found in graves of both males and
females, are thickest in the fourth century and continue through the second century
BC, with only a very few dated later. In the hellenistic and Roman periods, however,
independent private organizations celebrating mysteries of Dionysus were springing
up all around the Mediterranean. These Bacchic groups recognized no central ritual
authority. Each local group handled its own organization, chose its own priests and
officers, and managed its own budget. Individual status was based on a hierarchy of
secret rites calledmuste ̄riaorteletai, terms that should have implied serious and
restricted rites. Inscriptions rank members according to categories with titles like
bakkhoiorbakkhai,bakkheastai,iobakkhoi,arkhibakkhos,mustai,summustai,arkhi-
mustai,neomustai,arkhaios muste ̄s,thiaseitai,narthe ̄kophoroi(narthex-carriers),thur-
sophoroi(thursos-bearers), orboukoloi(cowherds). Titles varied from place to place,
and there were no rules about the actual content of local rites. Groups were called
thiasos,speira,bakkheion,bakkhikos thiasos, or simplyDionysiastai.Some groups may
340 Susan Guettel Cole