It has been suggested that the mass amount of curse tablets found throughout the Greek and Roman worlds stem from a far earlier oral tradition of magic (Eidinow 141; Faraone 82-83). Literary evidence, such as Aeschylus’ Eumenides and the Greek Magical Papyri, point to this oral tradition. Our earliest curse tablets for binding spells appear in Selinous, Sicily in either the late sixth or early fifth century BCE. However, earlier than this we have a few extant examples of written magic in the form of what are called ‘conditional curses’ (Eidinow 141).
‘Conditional curses’ “are intended to discourage those who are planning to do a crime” (Eidinow 140) often by stating that something (bad) will happen to the reader if they do something that the curser does not want them to do (e.g. “if you do X, then X”).
Possibly the earliest example of these conditional curses, as well as of Greek writing in general, is the so-called ‘Nestor’s Cup’ (Faraone 77). In 1954 during excavations of the late eighth century BCE necropolis in the Euboean colony of Pithekoussai, fragments of an unassuming proto-Corinthian cup with a three-line inscription were found in the grave of a cremated youth (Faraone 77).
This short verse is usually reconstructed as:
Νέστορός : ε[ίμ]ι : εὔποτ[ον] : ποτέριον :
hός δ’ άν τοδε πίεσι : ποτερί[ο] : αυτίκα κενον
hίμερος hαιρέσει : καλλιστε[φά]νου Ἀφροδίτες.
I am the cup of Nestor, good for drinking / Whoever drinks from this cup, desire for beautifully / crowned Aphrodite will seize him instantly (Faraone 78)
Upon first glance, these three lines may seem as unassuming as the cup itself. However, quite to the contrary, they have engrossed the minds of several scholars for decades (Faraone 77-79; Hansen 25- 26; West 9). I have chosen to write this blog post about this source because it is problematic for a few of reasons.
First, it is unclear whether or not the verse is in reference to the legendary cup of Nestor from the Iliad or if it is simply a cup belonging to a man named Nestor. This is significant because the answer could greatly affect the interpretation of the cup. Several early scholars did not put much credence in the classification of this verse as a curse, but rather preferred the interpretation of joke (West 9).
The cup of Nestor from the Iliad is described:
…δέπας περικαλλές, ὃ οἴκοθεν ἦγ᾽ ὁ γεραιός,
χρυσείοις ἥλοισι πεπαρμένον: οὔατα δ᾽ αὐτοῦ
τέσσαρ᾽ ἔσαν, δοιαὶ δὲ πελειάδες ἀμφὶς ἕκαστον
χρύσειαι νεμέθοντο, δύω δ᾽ ὑπὸ πυθμένες ἦσαν.
ἄλλος μὲν μογέων ἀποκινήσασκε τραπέζης
πλεῖον ἐόν, Νέστωρ δ᾽ ὁ γέρων ἀμογητὶ ἄειρεν.
…. and beside them a beauteous cup, that the old man had brought from home / studded with bosses of gold; four were the handles thereof, and about each / twain doves were feeding, while below were two supports. / Another man could scarce have availed to lift that cup from the table, / when it was full, but old Nestor would raise it right easily. (Iliad 11.632-7)
In this way, the Pithekoussain cup may be poking fun at the juxtaposition between itself (a fairly plain ceramic cup) and the grand golden cup of mythic Nestor. More than this, the phrase “I am Nestor’s cup, good to drink from” has also been considered humorous because Nestor’s cup from the Iliad is in fact very difficult (and therefore not good) to drink from (Hansen 42). I agree with Hansen in his argument that it would be a nearly unbearable coincidence for the cup to be merely a cup owned by a man named Nestor with no reference to the myth Nestor (Hansen 42). However, although it is quiet unusual for men to be named after heroes, which did not become a popular practice until the 4th century BCE, it is not without contemporary precedent and it is certainly possible that the name of the owner of the cup is Nestor (Hansen 34).
Because Hansen finds this first line humorous, he goes on to construe the following two lines to further this joke in the way that a curse upon the cup would “have offended against all rules of hospitality” by forbidding a guest to drink from their cup (41), which is perhaps similar to Nestor’s cup, which is too heavy for most besides him to lift.
Another important aspect of the verse is the meter in which it is written. The second two lines are in hexametrical couplets, which is important because our evidence for magical oaths, incantations and early conditional curses are written in this same meter and therefore, lends evidence to the stance that this is a more serious curse (Faraone 79). On the other hand, the meter of the first line is either lyric, iambic trimeter, something called “catalectic trochaic trimeter,” or perhaps not metrical at all and just prose (Faraone 97-98; Hansen 33). This first line and its categorization are problematic because it’s weird and therefore throws a wrench into our understanding of the verse and its purpose.
Therefore, I am left with the following questions:
What ‘Nestor(s)’ is/are the cup referring to?
Is the verse on the cup a joke, a conditional curse, or both?
How can we interpret the change in meter between the first line and the second two? Does the meter lend evidence to the inscription being a curse, as Faraone suggests?
To what extent can scholars put weight into the interpretations of these sorts of inscriptions?
Work Cited
Primary
Homer. The Iliad. Trans. A.T. Murray. Cambridge: Harvard University Press and London,
William Heinemann Ltd., 1924.
Homer. Homeri Opera in Five Volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1920
Secondary
Eidinow, Esther. Oracles, Curses and Risks Among the Ancient Greeks. Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press, 2007.
Faraone, Christopher. “Taking the ‘Nestor’s Cup Inscription’ Seriously: Erotic Magic and
Conditional Curses in the Earliest Inscribed Hexameters.” Classical Antiquity 15:1 (1996): 77-112.
Hansen, Peter. “Pithecusan Humour: The Interpretation of ‘Nestor’s Cup’ Reconsidered.” Glotta
54 (1976): 25-44.
West, Stephanie. “Nestor’s Bewitching Cup.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 101
(1994): 9-15.