Greek Myth and Religion

Anthropology and the classics currently enjoy a fairly good relationship, but one which has never been stable. In the 19th cent. the interest of evolutionary anthropology in a ‘savage’ period through which all societies must pass meant that studies of contemporary simple societies began to be used to illuminate the classical past. After the First World War, classicists reacted against what were perceived as the excesses of the work of Jane Harrison and the Cambridge school, in which it was claimed that knowledge of ‘things primitive’ gave a better understanding of the Greeks. Meanwhile, in social anthropology, the rise of the static structural-functional paradigm and an insistence on an identity as ‘the science of fieldwork’ combined to cause a rejection of history. In the last 50 years, the divorce between the subjects has been eroded from both sides, with comparative studies increasingly valued as enabling us to escape from our intellectual heritage and the specific—though, to us, self-evident—ways it has formulated questions and sought answers.

Baubo belongs to the main Orphic version of the Rape of *Persephone (Asclepiades of Tragilus, FGrH 12. 4; Orph. frs. 49–52 O. Kern; see orphism). She resembles *Iambe in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. She and her husband Dysaules receive *Demeter at Eleusis during her search for Persephone, and their children *Eubouleus and *Triptolemus give her information about the rape. Like Iambe Baubo gives Demeter a refreshing drink (the kykeōn), and when she refuses it Baubo by an indecent exposure makes her laugh and accept it. (Her name can be used of the female sexual organs.) The story may be an aition for a ritual at the *Thesmophoria. Her cult is found on *Naxos in the 4th cent. bce (SEG 16. 478) and *Paros in the 1st cent. bce (IG 12. 5. 227).

Half-male, half-female divinity, his cult first attested in the 4th cent. bce at Athens, where he provided *Posidippus(2) with the title of a comic play (lost) in the early 3rd. *Diodorus(3) (4. 6. 5) makes him the offspring of *Hermes and *Aphrodite; Ovid (Met. 4. 285 ff.) provides a lengthy aetiology (the prayers of the nymph Salmacis that she and her beloved might never be parted are dramatically granted). A favourite subject of Hellenistic and Roman artists, he is invariably depicted with developed breasts and male genitals, his physique soft and boyish. At republican Rome natural hermaphrodites (androgyni) were considered ill-omened prodigies (see portents) and were liable to ritual drowning at birth.