Abstract
This chapter examines the gold leaves that were deposited in the graves of Bacchic mystery initiates. In a number of these tablets, memory (μνημοσύνη) is thematically central: some of the deceased are guided to the underworld waters of memory and/or admonished to remember initiatory instruction at the moment of death. Using Harvey Whitehouse’s cognitive distinction between doctrinal and imagistic religious modes, I argue that the tablets’ language encodes two distinct discourses of memory with different emotional implications. On the one hand, they draw on the traditional poetic idea of memory as a part of didactic instruction. This discourse recalls features of Whitehouse’s doctrinal mode. At the same time, at least one tablet seems also to incorporate a pathogenic theorization of memory that accords more closely with the emotionally intense accounts of mystic experience in Aristotle and Plutarch. The language of memory in the tablets confirms that their cults drew eclectically on available ideas, fusing traditional themes with contemporary intellectual innovations.