Aeschylus' ὓμνος δέσμιος (Eum. 306) and Attic judicial curse tablets

Abstract

When the Erinyes catch up with Orestes in Athens they find him clutching the archaic wooden statue of Athena and invoking her aid along with that of Apollo (Eum. 235 ff.). The Erinyes scorn his prayers and bid him hear their ‘binding song’: ὕμνον δ’ ἀκούσῃ τόνδε δέσμιον (306). Wecklein in his 1888 edition of the play remarked ‘erinnert an magische Künste’ and quoted Laws 933a, where Plato, discussing murder by poison, makes brief mention of the popular belief in sorcerers, incantations and binding spells (καταδέσεις). Subsequent commentators repeat Wecklein's brief note nearly verbatim and then elaborate it along two different lines, either claiming some vague Orphic source (Thomson 1938) or citing Wuensch's Defixionum Tabellae Atticae (Blass 1907; Groeneboom 1952). More recently, Lebeck argued that the ostensible title (‘binding song’) is incompatible with the actual content of the stasimon (Apollo's encroachment on the Erinyes’ power); she concluded that the title is irrelevant or at best only of secondary importance.’ Thus on the whole, this ὕμνος δέσμιος has been treated as a remnant of magical or chthonic lore too obscure to have any real bearing on our understanding of the immediate dramatic situation in Eumenides. I shall argue to the contrary that the song is closely related to a specific kind of curse tablet used to affect the outcome of law cases in Athens as early as the 5th century bc, and as such it is important to the dramatic context of a tragedy which depicts the mythical foundation of Athens’ first homicide court.