Notes trophoniaques, V: Harpale, la courtisane Pythioniké, les mages et Trophonios

In his lost book On the descent to Trophonios (F 81 Mihrady), Dicaearchus alludes to the tomb of Harpalus’ courtesan, Pythionike. The contextualisation of the fragment cited by Athenaeus allows us to explain why the sophist made this allusion, considered trivial up to now : Harpalus, as it was believed, had evoked the soul of Pythionike in the East, thanks to the intervention of the Magoi. The oracle of Trophonius at Lebadeia implied a revelation quite close to nekyomancy, and Trophonius himself was associated with Magoi and their religious personality by Strabo and Lucian. Besides, this paper also comments on Python’s drama, Agên satyrikos (tgf 91 F 1 Snell), on the Greek mindset on the localities called ‘aornon’, and the difficulty of distinguishing facts of representation from real facts.

Publisher: Brill https://brill.com/view/journals/mnem/68/1/article-p28_3.xml