What is a bacchos?

[moonmoth]

This rather worn coin, an Eleusian festival issue, has what Sear calls a bacchos on the reverse.  It is what the boar is standing on.  But what IS a bacchos?  Another name for a thyrsos, perhaps? 

Coin Type: Bronze AE17 of Eleusis, 3rd Century BCE.
Size and Weight: 17mm, 3.89g
Obverse: Triptolemos seated left in a winged car drawn by serpents, holding corn ears.
Reverse: Boar standing right on bacchos, fly right beneath.
(E)ΛEYΣI above.
Ref: GCV 2576 var.

[Lloyd Taylor]

Usually this reverse type is described as a piglet standing on a “mystic staff”.  Is the latter called a bacchos in Greek?  I don’t know and I’ve never seen the reverse described in this term before. (Refer to this webpage for a few examples http://www.coinarchives.com/a/results.php?search=eleusis&s=0&results=100)

For the background and significance of the pig, the mystic staff and other items in the celebration of the Eleusian Mysteries refer to: http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/e/eleusinian_mysteries.html

[Lloyd Taylor]

In response to your last question, I forgot to add that The thrysos was a magical staff tipped with a pine cone carried by Dionysos and has no connection to the festival at Eleusis, so I think it is unlikely that a bacchos is the same thing. The mystic staff also is quite different physically than a thrysos, consisting of sheaf of grain (barley?) wound around a central core as portrayed on the best depictions on this type of coin (refer examples on CoinArchives page). This depiction fits with the agricultural signifiicance of the Eleusian Mysteries.

Following is the description of a similar Eleusian Festival coin I acquired from Harlan J Berk plus my collection notes on the same.

Attica, Athens/Eleusis, ca. 322/17-307 BC, AE 15 
Obv:            Triptolemos mounting winged chariot drawn left by two serpents, holding two ears of wheat in his right hand.
Rev:            Pig standing right on mystic staff within wreath of wheat ears; legend EΛEY (illegible) below.
Ref:            BMC Attica p. 113, 10; Svoronos pl. 103.26-28; SNG Copenhagen 421-423; Kroll, Agora, 49. (15mm, 2.22g, 8h)      Harlan J. Berk Buy; ex- John Twente Animal Collection
 
Eleusis, situated on the coast 22 km northwest of Athens, was the centre of an ancient cult of Demeter that annually celebrated in festival the renewal of life, symbolised by the return from Hades each spring of Demeter’s daughter Perspehone. The celebration of the Eleusian Mysteries was an elaborate affair that took place over a period of nine days in the month of Boedromion (late September). For each day, there was a prescribed series of ritual actions that initiates were expected to follow.  The details are obscure; initiates were sworn to secrecy on penalty of death.  Coins of this type are thought to be festival coinage, struck at the Athenian mint for use by visitors to the festival of the Eleusian Mysteries. In this context, the legend EΛEY found on most coins of this issue is understood not as an ethnic, but rather an indication of the location of the festival.  The elite of Athens were initiates of the Mysteries and part of the celebration involved a procession from the foot of the Acropolis of Athens to Eleusis. Unsurprisingly, coins of this type were found in abundance (576 specimens) in the excavations of the Athenian agora. Triptolemos, featured on the obverse of this coin, was a demi-god of the Eleusinian mysteries who presided over the sowing of grain-seed and the milling of wheat. In myth, Triptolemos was an Eleusinian prince who consoled Demeter when she was mourning the loss of her daughter Persephone. The young goddess was eventually returned to her from the Underworld. In gratitude Demeter instructed Triptolemos in the art of agriculture, and gave him a winged chariot drawn by serpents so that he might travel the world spreading her gift. Today Eleusis is an industrial suburb of modern day Athens. Ironically, oil refineries and associated industrial complex now occupy the site of what was the most sacred religious festival in the Greek world; one dedicated to the renewal of life.

[slokind]

The Lexikon (Liddell-Scott-Jones) says, first, a name of Dionysos.  It does not etymologize it.  Indeed, the name Dionysos itself, though its elements look plain enough, is not really plain--and what had he to do with the Nysai, and who were they, and what did their name mean.  Son of Semele, but which etymology of her name should we accept?  Were they both, as was thought a century ago, Thracian?  Or not?  Bakchos might, indeed, mean the staff itself, but then why is it also the god's own name?  Dionysos is very interesting, even fascinating.  Wherefore, I was taught to, and I still try to, remain open to any consideration of this cult and its myths that isn't manifest fantasy and balderdash.  He is, for me, because it made so great an impression on me when we read it in the Greek curriculum, the god of Euripides' Bacchae.
Pat L.

[moonmoth]

I thought of a thyrsos because of the name given to the object by Sear and its general shape, but the examples on Coin Archives show very clearly that this is not a thyrsos, but as Lloyd T says, is instead a sheaf of grain bound together. Here is one of the Coin Archives examples.

Thank you, Lloyd T and Pat.

[Jochen]

For the etymology of 'bacchos' some words:

I have never heard that it is related to something meaning 'staff' or similar. There is the Greek word baktron meaning staff, baton, post and so on. It's the origin of the word bakterium. May be that it was confused with it.

Several ancient scholars, f.e. Hesychios of Alexandria, suggest that it is derived from the common Semitic root bky (Akk. baku, Ugar. bky, Heb. baka, Greek bachein) "to weep, to wail". But may be this is from pre-scientific times.

Best regards

[justinopolitanus]

I heard at University (many many years ago) that βάκχος was a generic word for a branch with its berries in Greek, and that Dionisos took his name by that word.
So Bacchos could mean a sacred branch, similar to a tyrsos...

[slokind]

So did I, when we read Bacchae.  Simplest just to attach the entry from the big Lexikon.  The star by the word means, See Supplement, but there's nothing there for us.
Pat L.
S. is Sophocles, E. is Euripides

[Lloyd Taylor]

Here its called an "Eleusinian bacchos": [DEAD LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN]

Here its called an "Eleusinian mystic staff": [DEAD LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN]

Six of one and half a dozen of the other?  Or a case of lost in translation?

[slokind]

When LSJ can't find a core meaning for a word, it is not surprising when it gets used almost ad libitum.  The pig coin is certainly Eleusinian and not the Dionysian side of Eleusinian cult, either.  The terracotta figurines of young girls bearing piglets in their arms to Kore (the ones I know are those at the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore on the slope of Akrokorinthos) testify for centuries to that association.  I have never seen that ceremonially bundled grain so beautifully rendered on the coin posted out of CoinArchives, but however it was meant, exactly, it is perfectly consonant with all the piglets.
It is of course copyright (Corinth XVIII:4, pl. 24; Gloria S. Merker, The Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore: Terracotta Figurines of the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods), but strictly for fair use I post a scan of my favorite Early Hellenistic one and that of a later one, made in a plaster mold, that carries a short torch...
Pat L.

[Lloyd Taylor]

It may be a coincidence, but I cannot help but notice the similarity of the torch carried by Kore (in the second scanned image) to that of the mystic staff, or bacchos, as portrayed on the best of the  Coiarchives examples of the coin type.   

Could it be that the the mystic staff or bacchos portrayed on the coins is in reality an unlit torch prepared for the ceremony from bundled sheaves of grain?

[slokind]

That is what I invited by my ". . .".  I couldn't help thinking of it, either.  Now, Eleusis and Corinth aren't very far apart; it's not quite, perhaps, so iffy as comparisons with Sicily or Asia Minor, both of which may have had variant cult practices.  But Athens and Corinth may well have been quite in keeping with Eleusis, where we have that wonderful piglet coin.
I forbore posting images from the excavation report for as long as I could bear it, but I know that material quite well, and finally I just had to post a couple of them.  Please, don't scatter them all over the web!
Yes, it occurred to me that beautifully bound pig food could become illumination for the piglet sacrifices: I don't suppose these were holocausts.  And it was such a family cult; the figurines range from toddlers to little children to early adolescent girls to matrons looking like Demeter.  It is the girls of Early Hellenistic that carry piglets the most.  Merker says that the later Hellensitic ones (plaster molds; thin, brittle slip fabric, fired more reddish, and less tender style) may be priestesses.  Whatever they are, the great and particularized variety of votive figures does belong to that c. 300 or early 3rd c. context of the early adolescent child that I posted.
Oh well, I'm daft about Corinth.  Pigs are not limited to Corinth and Eleusis and Athens, of course.  They are for chthonic deities, though you'd never guess from what some modern writers imagine as 'chthonic' that they'd come so far from their Neolithic origins.
Pat L.
P.S. I still don't know what they called it.

[Lloyd Taylor]

The following is a small insight into the Eleusian Mysteries courtesy of the Triton V (16 January 2002) catalogue description of lot 367 (an AE of Eleusis) quoting Pausanias:

This statue of Triptolemos was presumably still in its temple when Pausanias (I. 38, 6) visited Eleusis in about AD 160: " The Eleusians have a temple to Triptolemos...... They say that the plain called Rharion was the first to be sown and the first to grow crops... Here is shown a threshing floor and altar. My dream forbade the description of the things within the wall of the sanctuary, and the uninitiated are of course not permitted to learn that which they are prevented from seeing."

My emphasis in bold. It highlights the agricultural, rather than Dionysian emphasis of the festival and hints at the role the bundled sheaves of grain (the so called mystic staff or bacchos) may have played. 

Were they threshed or burned, perhaps as torches? 

Either way, I doubt that the item on which the pig stands is a either a staff or a wand like device (analogous to a thrysos), as implied by the popular descriptions of the reverse of the coin. My personal suspicion is that the bundled sheaves of grain were purchased with Eleusian coinage (possibly the price of entry to the festival), to be carried by participants to the ceremony, then to be used as torches and/or fuel to roast the piglets, following sacrifice of the latter. Such festivals with a communal barbecue remain popular to this day! People being people, whether ancient or modern, there can be little  doubt as the festival progressed it became more Dionysian in nature....the "Let's party!" refrain rings across the ages!

[slokind]

That's exactly how I was thinking, too.  Can never prove it.  Lloyd must have attended a varity of ghiortés (saints' days festivals) himself.  Also, just as Easter thins out the kids and lambs, so such a festival would thin out the crop of piglets.  The combination of familiality, piety, commerce, and communality seems likely to have prevailed in many observances, with the figurines typifying every age group for the participation of everyone and strengthening identification with the daughter and the mother deities.  Of course, that is not all there was to Demeter and Kore.  Pat L.

[Lloyd Taylor]

Amazing, all this insight from consideration of moonmoth's simple question as to the nature of a bacchos. As is often the case, proof of the premise is impossible, but "connecting the dots" leads to a very plausible explanation of not just the bacchos but also the motivation behind the celebration of the Eleusian Mysteries. Yet again the coins speak across the ages! Pat will probably shudder in horror at this, but now I know for certain that the origin of the toga party precedes John Belushi in Animal House and even the Roman era!

[slokind]

I've never seen Animal House, but I've heard it's quite funny.  But I don't think that the festivals of Demeter and Kore were much like what I've seen spilling out of fraternity houses.  Pat L.

[Lloyd Taylor]

To close the loop on moonmoth's original questions: But what IS a bacchos?  Another name for a thyrsos, perhaps? ..............

Today I had occasion to refer to Newell's Coinage of the Western Seleucid Mints Chapter IV introductory text, in which he describes some Philip III issues of Aradus (now attributed to Babylon II mint) characterized by symbol that is a long torch, very similar to that on which the piglet stands on the reverse of the Eleusian coinage. This long torch is referred to by Newell in Greek text as a..... (bacchos?).  Newell  attaches a question mark to this Greek descriptor, indicating some uncertainty as to its validity. 

Sear (GCV 2574 - 2576) describes the reverse of the Eleusian coinage as a "boar standing on a bacchos" without any qualification as to the nature of the latter.

It appears that the current popular description of the Eleusis bronze reverse in terms of a pig standing on "mystic staff" is incorrect. The item on which the pig stands is a long torch, as identified in the preceding posts, and this was understood in the early-mid twentieth century. Its identity seems to have bee lost in many recent numismatic catalogs that usually describe the problematic element of the reverse of this coin type as a "mystic staff". In the early twentieth century this long torch appears to have been considered to be most likely, though not certainly, to be a "bacchos" in ancient Greek. As a descriptor of the item on the reverse of the coinage of Eleusis,  the term "bacchos" appears to generally have fallen out of use in the late twentieth century.

So to answer moonmoth's original questions: a bacchos is most likely a long torch and most definitely not a thrysos.

It looks like we've "re-invented the wheel" on this one.  The old hands of the nineteenth and early twentieth knew it all along.

[Jochen]

Hi Lloyd T!

That is the same what I found in Melville Jones' Dictionary of Ancient Greek Coins, and illustrated by the very coin of Eleusis.

Best regards

[Robert_Brenchley]

Apeulius mentions 'pleasant dinners and lively company' and 'a sacred breakfast' during his initiation into the rite of Isis. On the other hand, Porphyry maintains that the 'first and most learned class' of Mithras worshippers were vegetarian. If pigs were sufficiently conspicuous in the rituals of Eleusis to be included in a coin image, it's probably a safe bet that they featured in whatever feasting went on!

[hannibal2]

Hello,

Here is something that may lead to an answer to Moonmoth’s question. It is from an old periodical from 1980 that was originally kept for some recipes but lately saved from the recycling lot for a specific article. It is about Corn dollies. The author of the article, a Margaret Pearson, on the subject of ‘Corn Craft’ says that “Corn dollies have been made as good-luck charms and fertility symbols for centuries”. An edited pic from the article is attached.

The two objects in the centre, the ‘Suffolk spiral’ and the ‘Traditional neck’ are very similar to the bundle of corn stalks that appears on the coin. The corn dolls and the folklore that is attached to them are described at length by JGFraser in “The Golden Bough”, chapters 45,46. See especially 46 sec 4. (you may download the e-book from the net. It is then readily searchable. Highlighting interesting parts for later ref is an added advantage)

There appears to be a revival in the study of ancient customs and folklore. One may follow the matter in the SIEF, (society of ethnology and folklore). Some papers in the proceeding make interesting reading. Maybe this ancient lore that survived millennia would not be totally lost in decades.

I think the bundle of corn stalks as a fertility symbol would be ‘at home’ in Eleusis; but the implied meaning on the coin…..??