θυηπόλος thyepolos, subst.: poet. A ritual specialist; adj. sacrificial.
Etymology and morphology
Adjective composed of the noun subject thue-, 'sacrifice', and the verb subject pole-, 'to walk'. The noun subject thue- is a derivative from the verb θύω and forms the basis of the noun θύος, εος, n. "sacrifice" (Hom. Il. 6.270, Od. 15.261; Hes. Op. 338; A. Ag. 1409, Eu. 835). The verb πολέω "to move, to be somewhere" is deverbativum from ie. the subject *kwel-, "to turn" (Beekes 2010: 1168-1169 s.v. πέλομαι, 1462-1463 s.v. τέλομαι). In the compound semantics pole- gravitates towards 'to strive for something, to take care of something, to attend to something', cf. πυρπολέω, 'to take care of the fire', αἰπόλος 'goat herder'.
Testimonies
The occurrences indicate that the term θ. referred to people professionally involved in sacrificing, the so-called 'ritual specialists'. Euripides refers to the soothsayer Kalchas in this way (IA. 746 ➚) and Iphigenia in her role as a Scythian priestess (IT. 1359 ➚). In Aristophanes' The Room, an exasperated servant applies the term to the chresmologist (collector and interpreter of oracles, see Smith 1989, Flower 2008: 60-65) Hierocles, who intrusively interferes with the course of the sacrifice (→ Pax 1124 ➚). In the State 364e ➚ the verb θυηπολέω is used in the context of the activities of the Orpheotists, offering purification rituals to the people, and it is possible that the speaker took it from their own jargon. It seems, therefore, that for the Attic authors θ. was an umbrella term covering all sorts of ritual specialists.
To which register did the word θ. belong? An analysis of the occurrences leads us to suppose that it was a poetic, which in some Greek regions functioned as an official term for the priest of a given deity.
We do not find the term θ. in cult inscriptions, but Plutarch, who otherwise does not use the word, describes with it the priests of Zeus Soter and Aratos in Sykion (Plut. Arat. 53 ➚) - no doubt this must have been their official title. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1st century BC) consistently uses the term θ. to describe the Roman Vestalki (2.64 ➚, 2.65 ➚, 3.67 ➚; otherwise he does not use it) and within his work the term takes on a strictly technical character. The author of the dedication to the Supreme God of the 2nd/ 3rd century AD is also referred to as θ. (SEG 39:1555 ➚, Cyprus).
As a designation for a priest of the official cult, θ. also appears in two metrical tomb inscriptions: in the elegiac distich written IG II2 11674 ➚ (probably 2nd century AD) θ. is the designation for a priest of the Eumolpid family; in the iambic Lepsia 11 ➚ (Ionia) the deceased priestess describes herself as "θ. Demetry." The adjectivally used θ. still appears in the hexametric oracle of Apollo of Patara, probably given in the early 2nd century BC and recorded in an extremely retorified inscription TAM II 174 ➚ from the time of Commodus (see Papanikolaou's meticulous analysis, 2012). Pausanias (4.9.4 ➚), on the other hand, cites an iambic oracle of Pythia in which the verb → θυηπολέω ➚ falls.
It can therefore be assumed that θυηπόλος and θυηπολέω belonged to the poetic register and only regionally (e.g. in Sicyon, in Aphrodisia, where the altars of Aphrodite were called θυηπολεῖα, Aphrodisias 140 ➚, Aphrodisias 141 ➚, Aphrodisias 142 ➚) were used as technical terms. Their metrical features make them particularly suited to iambic poetry (this is also noted by Casabona, 1966: 121), in which we find them most frequently. Even if both terms belonged to the jargon of certain ritual types of specialists in the classical period, this must be linked to their dependence on poetry: Aristophanes refers to θ. Hierocles, who had a written collection of oracles at hand, while the Orpheoteleans of the State performed their rituals (θυηπολοῦσιν) in accordance with the writings of Orpheus and Musaeus. It is also worth noting that θ. Zeus Soter and Aratos at Sykion are functions established in connection with the foundation of the cult of the recently deceased leader of the Achaean League. It seems very likely that local ritual specialists had an important voice in establishing the details of the cult, and thus the nomenclature, echoes of which we find in Plutarch, may have reflected a poetic tradition close to them.