Helen’s Pharmakon as a Disguised Incantation

This chapter argues that incantation was another shorter hexametrical genre and it is framed around the description of the powers of Helen’s pharmakon in Odyssey 4. It shows that the key to understanding this enigmatic passage is the realization that the word pharmakon can refer to both an herbal drug that harms or heals the human body and to a verbal incantation that harms or heals the human mind or soul. It argues that the six-line boast about the power of Helen’s pharmakon reflects and perhaps even quotes a hexametrical incantation originally chanted in dactylic hexameters over wine and it surveys the ancient evidence for verbal pharmaka from Empedocles to Plato as well as the evidence for early hexametrical charms. It closes with a discussion of Theocritus’ mimetic Idyll 2 and a series of contemporary Hellinistic curse tablets that display many of the same features.