Thursday, September 05, 2024
A Prayer in Livy
Livy 5.18.11-12 (tr. B.O. Foster):
Richard Wünsch (1869-1915) first used the terms apopompē (ἀποπομπή) and epipompē (ἐπιπομπή) to describe two different ways of banishing evil. See his "Zur Geisterbannung im Altertum," Festschrift zur Jahrhundertfeier der Universität zu Breslau = Mitteilungen der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde 13/14 (1911) 9-32. Wünsch used apopompē to mean simply driving away evil, epipompē to mean driving away evil onto someone or something else or to some other specific location. A classic example of epipompē can be found in the Gospels (Matthew 8.30-32, Mark 5.11-13, Luke 8.32-33), when Jesus, in performing an exorcism, drove demons into a herd of pigs. All other exorcisms in the Gospels are examples of apopompē.
In the passage from Livy quoted above, the women don't just pray for panic to be driven away, but rather to be driven against a specific location, namely Veii. Hence epipompē, not apopompē.
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There was a rush to the walls, and the women, drawn from their houses by the general consternation, betook themselves to prayer in the temples, and besought the gods to ward off destruction from the houses and shrines of the City and from the walls of Rome, and to turn that panic against Veii, if the sacred rites had been duly renewed and the portents expiated.R.M. Ogilvie ad loc.:
concursumque in muros est et matronarum, quas ex domo conciverat publicus pavor, obsecrationes in templis factae, precibusque ab dis petitum, ut exitium ab urbis tectis templisque ac moenibus Romanis arcerent Veiosque eum averterent terrorem, si sacra renovata rite, si procurata prodigia essent.
Veiosque codd.: Veiisque Gronovius
The prayer is of a familiar type—an ἀποπομπή by which the supplicant prays that evil may be directed elsewhere; cf. Catullus 63.92 with Kroll's note; Orph. Hymn. 3.12, 11.21.Actually, the prayer is an example of ἐπιπομπή, not ἀποπομπή.
Richard Wünsch (1869-1915) first used the terms apopompē (ἀποπομπή) and epipompē (ἐπιπομπή) to describe two different ways of banishing evil. See his "Zur Geisterbannung im Altertum," Festschrift zur Jahrhundertfeier der Universität zu Breslau = Mitteilungen der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde 13/14 (1911) 9-32. Wünsch used apopompē to mean simply driving away evil, epipompē to mean driving away evil onto someone or something else or to some other specific location. A classic example of epipompē can be found in the Gospels (Matthew 8.30-32, Mark 5.11-13, Luke 8.32-33), when Jesus, in performing an exorcism, drove demons into a herd of pigs. All other exorcisms in the Gospels are examples of apopompē.
In the passage from Livy quoted above, the women don't just pray for panic to be driven away, but rather to be driven against a specific location, namely Veii. Hence epipompē, not apopompē.
