1 This paper was first presented at the conference Orfeo y el orfismo: Nuevas perspec- tives, held in Palma de Mallorca in February 2004. I would like to thank Alberto Bernabé, Gábor Betegh, Jan N. Bremmer, Luc Brisson, Sarah Burges Watson, Radcliffe Edmonds III, Ana Galjanic, Albert Henrichs, Miguel Herrero, Sarah Iles Johnston, Richard Janko, Nino Luraghi, Stephen Menn, Gregory Nagy, Dirk Obbink, Christoph Riedweg, and Martin L. West for their comments and criticism. 2 Aesch. Choeph. 486–489 κἀγὼ χοάς σοι τῆς ἐμῆς παγκληρίας / οἴσω πατρῴων ἐκ δόμων γαμηλίους· / πάντων δὲ πρῶτον τόνδε πρεσβεύσω τάφον. 3 Hippocrates Regimen 4.92 τοὺς δὲ ἀποθανόντας ὁρῆν καθαροὺς ἐν ἱματίοισι λευκοῖσιν ἀγαθόν, καὶ λαμβάνειν τι παρ’ αὐτῶν καθαρὸν ἀγαθόν· ὑγείην γὰρ σημαίνει καὶ τῶν σωμάτων καὶ τῶν ἐσιόντων· ἀπὸ γὰρ τῶν ἀποθανόντων αἱ τροφαὶ καὶ αὐξήσιες καὶ σπέρματα γίνονται· ταῦτα δὲ καθαρὰ ἐσέρπειν ἐς τὸ σῶμα ὑγείην σημαίνει. See also Plato Laws 729c. WINDS AND ANCESTORS: THE PHYSIKA OF ORPHEUS 1 RENAUD GAGNÉ I N A CRY FOR VENGEANCE, another moment in the curse of her polluted kin, the Electra of the Choephori promises her father’s tomb a wedding-day libation from her inheritance and her ancestral house. 2 Written about fifty years after the death of Aeschylus, the Hippocratic treatise Regimen 4 analyzes the significance of those episodes in which the sleeper sees the dead in his dreams. It is a good sign, the author says, if the dead are “pure” and dressed in white cloaks, while to receive something “pure” from them indicates good health—“for from the dead come nourishment, growth, and seed.” 3 These two passages, unre- lated in genre and context, both attest to the close interaction between ancestors, pollution, and procreation at different spectra of classical Greek popular culture. It is hardly a coincidence that we find the same three elements intertwined around those central figures of classical ancestor-cults: the Tritopatores. The Tritopatores were figures of ancestrality honored in cult throughout the Greek world—a collective name for the shared forefa-