47. The Etymology of Gk. ῎Εμπουσα (OF 713–716)

Juan Antonio Álvarez-Pedrosa NúñezUniversidad Complutense de Madrid

In Aristophanes’ Frogs, Dionysus sets off on a comic katabasis to hell aimed at bringing back Euripides to the world of the living, in order to put an end to the crisis of contemporary literary panorama in Athens. All the encoun-ters Dionysus has in his journey through the Netherworld have a humoristic touch. One of the monsters he comes across, Empousa, has a polymorphic aspect, as Xanthias, Dionysus’ quick-witted slave, relates in the play: she first adopts the aspect of an oxen, next a mule, then an extraordinarily beau-tiful woman and, finally, a dog (Ra. 290–296).

Religious references in this section of Aristophanes’ play were clear to a contemporary Athenian audience. Graf (1974: 40 ff.) has pointed out that there are a significant number of details that would lead the audience to realise that the chorus was composed of initiates in the Eleusinian myster-ies. Furthermore, in the culmination of the katabasis, Aeschylus expressly declares that true poets are Orpheus, who taught Athenians the teletai and the avoidance of blood spilling, and Musaeus, who transmitted oracular practices and the healing of illnesses (OF 547 = Ra. 1032–1033). Bernabé (2008) has used this text, among others, to demonstrate that the Greeks, and Athenians in particular, considered Orpheus to be the transmitter of all the teletai, among which the Eleusinian mysteries were included.

The appearance of an infernal female being of terrific impression must have been also present in an epic work on Heracles katabasis, now lost, of which Aristophanes made a comic version (Lloyd-Jones 1967). The model would have been undoubtedly composed in an Eleusinian environment (Brown 1991: 49). Since it was probably attributed to Orpheus or to Musaeus, it was, in any case, Orphic lato sensu, and Bernabé has edited its fragments in OF 713–716.

Aristophanes’ reference and the lost work on Heracles katabasis would be corroborated by a fragment from a late fourth century historian, Idomeneus of Lampsacus (FGH 338 F 2). It is a lexicographical note on the well-known quote by Demosthenes 18.130 in which ῎Εμπουσα is used as an insult to Ae-schines’ mother.1 The ῎Εμπουσα is defined as φάσμα παντόμορφον, which

1 χθὲς μὲν οὖν καὶ πρώην ἃμ᾽ Ἀθηναῖος καὶ ῥήτωρ γέγονεν, καὶ δύο συλλαβὰς προσ-θεὶς τὸν μὲν πατέρ᾽ ἀντὶ Τρόμητος ἐποίησεν Ἀτρόμητον, τὴν δὲ μητέρα σεμνῶς

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294 Juan Antonio Álvarez-Pedrosa Núñez

coincides with the plurality of forms that Xanthias, the slave, reports to Dio-nysus in Aristophanes’ comedy; moreover, Idomeneus adds an important piece of data: the ῎Εμπουσα reveals herself to the initiates coming out from dark places (ἐπεὶ ἀπὸ σκοτεινῶν τόπων ἀνεφαίνετο τοῖς μυουμένοις). Graf (1974: 29, n. 36) has shown that, within an Attic context, a generic reference to the initiates has to be always understood as a reference to Eleu sinian mys-teries. If this is so, we could infer that Empousa is a character present in the unfolding of the Eleusinian mysteries2 and that, at some point during the ceremony, presented herself before the initiates emerging from a dark place (Brown 1991: 46).

The comic reference of Aristophanes to Empousa’s transformations presents an interesting parallel in another figure of the Netherworld in Ira-nian tradition, as I have already shown elsewhere (Álvarez-Pedrosa 2008: 1008). Indeed, the Iranian daēnā, who acts as a sort of reflection of the soul of the faithful Zoroastrian in the Netherworld is represented either as a beautiful maiden or a terrible old woman, depending on whether the soul of the deceased is blessed or wrongful (Hadōxt Nask 2.9–14, Vidēvdāt 19.30). In the Iranian Bundahišn 30.5–6, however, the daēnā is successively trans-formed in cow, maiden and garden (beautiful or hideous, according to the condition of the soul that makes the transit to the Netherworld). The paral-lel with Aristophanes’ transformations, cow, ass, beautiful woman, is self-evident. A fourth metamorphosis, in dog, seems to be in relation with the dogs that accompany the daēnā in Vidēvdāt 19.30. The daēnā, moreover, has the task of answering the questions of the souls of the appointed.

Independently of the relation between both characters, the Empousa of the Eleusinian mysteries and the daēnā of the Iranian tradition, whether it might be a cultural borrowing or the result of a common origin, they both share a very relevant function: they come up to the initiates,3 either in the transforming experience of the teleté, or in the definitive transit to life in the Netherworld. Such relevant function is what allows us to formulate a new hypothesis on the etymology of the given name of the Greek ̓́ Εμπουσα.

πάνυ Γλαυκοθέαν, ἣν ῎Εμπουσαν ἅπαντες ἴσασι καλουμένην, ἐκ τοῦ πάντα ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν δηλονότι ταύτης τῆς ἐπωνυμίας τυχοῦσαν, “Since yesterday or the day before he became at the same time Athenian and orator, and, adding two syllables, he transformed his father from Tromes into Atrometus and his mother with large solemnity into Glaukothea, who everybody knows was nicknamed Empousa, be-cause she did and endured everything”.

2 Clark (2009: 195) concludes, categorically, that Empousa is one of the variants of the terrifying female beings in the Netherworld deeply connected to the Eleusinian mysteries.

3 We understand that Zoroastrian believers are equivalent to Eleusinian initiates, since eschatological experiences, as described in the mentioned texts, whether they are from the Avestic or the Pahlavi traditions, are solely reserved to them.

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47. The Etymology of Gk. ῎Εμπουσα 295

The etymologies advanced so far are the following: the oldest, proposed by Solmsen (1897–1898: 552–554), reflected in Frisk’s etymological diction-ary (1960: 508), related the given name of ῎Εμπουσα to the verb κατεμπάζω ‘take’, which would be reflecting the original meaning of the verb ἐμπάζομαι ‘bear in mind, pay attention to’; it would be, therefore, a participle form *emp-ont-ya related to the root of an alleged verb *ἔμπω ‘take, grasp’, which would apply to the terrifying function of Empousa. Following the same line of reasoning, Dumézil (1938: 100) related ῎Εμπουσα to Arm. ambewt ‘mole’, a participle form in -ent- from the above-mentioned verbal root *emp-.4 The on-line etymological dictionary of Beekes suggests that it is probably a pre-Greek character and associates it with other names of similar suffix: αἴθουσα, ἄγχουσα, κάδουσα, νήθουσα, Ἀκίδουσα, Κηλοῦσα = Κήλωσσα. González Terriza (1996: 289) gives evidence of an etymology, which he qual-ifies as ‘popular’ (cf. Waser 1905: 2540–2543) that would explain the name of ῎Εμπουσα as *ἐνίπουσα ‘of a single foot’: in Aristophanes’ The Assembly-women, the youth accosted by the Third Lascivious Hag (identified, accord-ing to the author, with Empousa), asks to be punished by being coated alive in tar and having molten lead poured over her feet, to transform both feet into a single one (Ec. 1108–1111). Andrisano (2007) also considers Empousa to be a talking name related the above-mentioned popular etymology.

On the other hand, I have myself echoed the other possibility (Álvarez-Pedrosa 2008: 1008), suggested by Alberto Bernabé, according to which the name of ῎Εμπουσα would be related to the δαίμονες ἐμποδών, the daemons hindering the transit of souls to the Netherworld, as mentioned in the Der-veni Papyrus.

Nonetheless, as we have seen, neither the Eleusinian ῎Εμπουσα nor the Iranian daēnā ‘take’ or ‘hinder the path’, but rather come up to the soul or the initiate. The function of the daēnā is rather clearer than that of the Eleusinian ῎Εμπουσα: in the Iranian texts consulted, the daēnā answers the questions of the souls, foresees their destinies in the Netherworld and acts as their psychopomp. The Eleusinian ῎Εμπουσα would have been used rather to instil terror in the initiates and foretell them terrors of Hades. In any case, the function of ‘coming up’ seems relevant to me. Therefore, the etymology I propose for the ῎Εμπουσα is *en-pont-ya, understanding *pont- as ‘path’,5 cf. the well-known Indo-European root attested in Skt. pánthās,

4 The participle explanation is deemed improbable by Chantraine (1933: 269), who, commenting on the origin of ῎Εμπουσα, defends that not all stems in -nt- are easily explained as old participles.

5 In fact, as analysed by Bernabé and Jiménez (2001: 80) the ‘sacred way’ that ap-pears in the Hipponion lamella can be interpreted as “an iteration of the initiation path in this world or maybe as the projection of one or more earthly models, such as the royal path in Eleusis or Athens, through which the procession of initiates transited”.

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296 Juan Antonio Álvarez-Pedrosa Núñez

pathí, Av. paθā-, Lat. pons, pontis (with the meaning of ‘bridge’), Gk. πάτος, OCS pontь, OPruss. pintis ‘path’.

Consequently, the ῎Εμπουσα is “the one who is in the path (of the soul in the Netherworld)”. This proposal has the advantage of posing no difficul-ties from the phonetic point of view and of being directly supported by the function of the Eleusinian ῎Εμπουσα and the Iranian daēnā, understood as comparable figures in their activities in the Netherworld.

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