Baubo

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BAUBO

BAUBO figures in the myth of the ancient Greek goddess Demeter as the perpetrator of an obscene spectacle that causes the goddess to laugh and that marks the end of her long period of mourning. The myth of Demeter tells of her inconsolable grief at the loss of her daughter Persephone (or Kore) and of her wanderings in search of her. The aged Demeter finally comes out of mourning in the town of Eleusis, where she suddenly bursts into laughter. A double tradition relates how obscene words and gestures diverted and comforted this holy mother.

In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (192–211), it is the maiden Iambe who cheers up the goddess with dirty jokes. The hymn says nothing about the specific content of these obscenities, but the effectiveness of Iambe's words is certain. Indeed, Demeter laughs, comes out of mourning, and ends her fast by accepting and drinking kukeon (a beverage made of wheat, water, and pennyroyal), which is offered to her by her hostess, Metanir, the wife of King Keleos.

In the writings of the Church Fathers, Baubo plays a role comparable to Iambe's. But whereas Iambe succeeds in comforting the goddess by telling jokes, Baubo does so not by words but by an obscene gesture: she suddenly lifts her gown to reveal her genitals. This indecent unveiling provokes laughter in the grieving mother, who then accepts and drinks the kukeon that Baubo offers her. Christian polemicists, who attribute the story of the obscene gesture to the Orphics, preserve two versions of the incongruous scene. Clement of Alexandria (Protrepticus 2.20.1–1.21.2) and Eusebius of Caesarea (Praeparatio evangelica 2.3.31–35) relate that the young Iacchos was found beneath Baubo's raised garment, laughing and waving his hand. Arnobius (Adversus nationes 5.25–26) presents a different, more detailed version in which Baubo's unveiled genitals, because of a cosmetic operation, look like the face of a baby.

This "spectacle" (theama, spectaculum ) has given rise to numerous interpretations. In general, historians have understood it as an etiological myth justifying fertility rites, and certain specialists have recognized in Baubo the mythic memory of the manipulation of sexual articles at Eleusis. Baubo has also been associated, often confusedly, with anything obscene in the ancient world, particularly with obscene words and objects that evoke female sexuality.

Some earthenware figurines found at the beginning of the twentieth century in the temple of Demeter and Kore (fourth century bce at Priene, in Ionia, have been identified with Baubo. These "Baubos of Priene" merge the head, the belly, and the female sexual organ, with the genitals immediately below the mouth.

Bibliography

Devereux, Georges. Baubô: La vulve mythique. Paris, 1983. Ethnopsychiatric approach, carried on by Tobie Nathan, Psychanalyse païenne, Paris, 1988.

Graf, Fritz. Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenistischer Zeit. Berlin, 1974.

Olender, Maurice. "Aspects de Baubô: Textes et contextes antiques." Revue de l'histoire des religions 202 (January–March 1985): 3–55. English translation in Before Sexuality. The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, edited by David Halperin (Princeton, 1990).

Olender, Maurice. "Les manières de Baubô." In Masculin et féminin en Grèce ancienne, edited by Nicole Loraux. Paris, 1986.

Picard, Charles. "L'épisode de Baubô dans les mystères d'Éleusis." Revue de l'histoire des religions 95 (March–June 1927): 220–255.

For an interpretation from the religious-historical point of view and a full bibliography see further Giovanni Casadio, Vie gnostiche all'immortalità, Brescia, 1997, pp. 62–64, esp. n. 151.