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THEMIS
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All rights reserved
Δ THEMIS
A STUDY OF THE SOCIAL ORIGINS
OF GREEK RELIGION
BY
JANE ELLEN HARRISON
HON. LL.D, (ABERDEEN), HON. D.LITT. (DURHAM)
WITH
AN EXCURSUS ON THE RITUAL FORMS PRESERVED IN GREEK TRAGEDY
BY PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY
AND A CHAPTER ON THE ORIGIN OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES
BY MR F. M. CORNFORD
Cambridge:
at the University Press
[912
ΤΟ
GILBERT MURRAY
χαριστήριον
".- ~Cambritges
= PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
us AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
INTRODUCTION
THE title of this book and its relation to my Prolegomena may
call for a word of explanation.
In the Prolegomena I was chiefly concerned to show that the
religion of Homer was no more primitive than his language. The
Olympian gods—that is, the anthropomorphic gods of Homer and
Pheidias and the mythographers—seemed to me like a bouquet of
cut-flowers whose bloom is brief, because they have been severed
from their roots. To find those roots we must burrow deep into
a lower stratum of thought, into those chthonic cults which under-
lay their life and from which sprang all their brilliant blossoming.
So swift has been the advance in science or rather in historical
imagination, so complete the shift of standpoint, that it has
become difficult to conceive that, in 1903, any such protest was
needed. Since the appearance of Professor Murray’s Rise of the
Greek Epic we realize how late and how enlightened was the com-
promise represented by these Olympians. We can even picture to
ourselves the process by which their divinity was shorn of each
and every ‘mystical or monstrous’ attribute.
When in 1907 a second edition of my book was called for, its
theories seemed to me already belated. My sense of the super-
ficiality of Homer’s gods had deepened to a conviction that these
Olympians were not only non-primitive, but positively in a sense
non-religious. If they were not, for religion, starting-points, they
were certainly not satisfactory goals. On the other hand, the
cultus of Dionysos and Orpheus seemed to me, whatever its
errors and licenses, essentially religious. I was therefore compelled
reluctantly to face the question, what meaning did I attach to the
word religion? My instinct was to condemn the Olympians as
non-religious, because really the products of art and literature
Vill Introduction
though posing as divinities. Could this instinct stand the test
of examination, or was it merely a temperamental prejudice
masquerading as a reasoned principle ?
The problem might have continued ineffectively to haunt me,
and probably to paralyse my investigations, had not light come
rather suddenly from unexpected quarters, from philosophy and
social psychology. To France I owe a double debt, indirect but
profound, and first and foremost to Professor Henri Bergson.
It is characteristic always of a work of genius that it casts, as
it were, a great search light into dark places far beyond its own
immediate province. Things unseen before or insignificant shine
out in luminous projection. The sudden flash may dazzle, the
focus be misleading or even false; but the light is real. New
tracks open out before us, and we must needs set forth through
the long uncharted shadows.
It is no part of Professor Bergson’s present programme, so far
as I understand it, to analyse and define the nature and function
of religion. But when, four years ago, I first read his LZ’ Evolution
Créatrice, I saw, dimly at first, but with ever creasing clearness,
how deep was the gulf between Dionysos the mystery-god and
that Olympos he might never really enter. I knew the reason of
my own profound discontent. I saw in a word that Dionysos,
with every other mystery-god, was an instinctive attempt to
express what Professor Bergson calls durée, that life which is one,
indivisible and yet ceaselessly changing. I saw on the other hand
that the Olympians, amid all their atmosphere of romance and all
their redeeming vices, were really creations of what Professor
William James called ‘monarchical deism.’ Such deities are not
an instinctive expression, but a late and conscious representation,
a work of analysis, of reflection and intelligence. Primitive religion
was not, as I had drifted into thinking, a tissue of errors leading
to mistaken conduct; rather it was a web of practices emphasizing
particular parts of life, issuing necessarily in representations and
ultimately dying out into abstract conceptions. A statement like
this when condensed is necessarily somewhat cryptic. In the
concrete instances to be adduced from Greek religion, it will
become I hope abundantly clear. I may add that, save perhaps
for a few sentences in the last two chapters, every word of my
Introduction ΙΧ
book is, I hope, intelligible without any understanding of Professor
Bergson’s philosophy.
My second debt is to a thinker whose temperament, manner
and method are markedly different, and whose philosophy is, I
believe, in France, accounted as alien to that of Professor Bergson,
Professor Emile Durkheim.
In the light of L’Evolution Créatrice, Matiére et Mémoire and
Les Données Immédiates de la Conscience I had come to see the
real distinction between the mystery-god Dionysos and the
Olympians. In the light of Professor Durkheim’s De la Définition
des Phénoménes Religieux, Représentations Individuelles et Repré-
sentations Collectives and Sociologie Religieuse et Théorie de la
Connaissance, I saw why Dionysos, the mystery-god, who is the
expression and representation of durée, is, alone among Greek
divinities, constantly attended by a thiasos, a matter cardinal for
the understanding of his nature. The mystery-god arises out of
those instincts, emotions, desires which attend and express life;
but these emotions, desires, instincts, in so far as they are religious,
are at the outset rather of a group than of individual consciousness. «
The whole history of epistemology is the history of the evolu-
tion of clear, individual, rational thought, out of the haze of
collective and sometimes contradictory representations. It is a
necessary and most important corollary to this doctrine, that the
form taken by the divinity reflects the social structure of the
group to which the divinity belongs. Dionysos is the Son of his
Mother because he issues from a matrilinear-group.
These two ideas, (1) that the mystery-god and the Olympian |
express respectively, the one durée, life, and the other the action |
of conscious intelligence which reflects on and analyses life,
and (2) that, among primitive peoples, religion reflects collective |
feeling and collective thinking, underlie my whole argument and |
were indeed the cause and impulse of my book. I felt that these
two principles had altered my whole outlook on my own subject,
and that, in the light of them, I must needs reexamine the whole
material—a task at present only partially achieved.
I am however no philosopher and still more no sociologist.
x Introduction
All this intellectual stir and ferment might for me have re-
mained sterile or at least have taken no definite form, but for an
archaeological discovery, the finding at Palaikastro of the Hymn
of the Kouretes. In commenting on this Hymn, discovered in the
temple of Diktaean Zeus, I found to my delight that we had in
it a text that embodied this very group-thinking, or rather group-
emotion towards life, which I had begun to see must underlie
all primitive religious representations. The Hymn sung by the
Kouretes invoked a daimon, the greatest Kouros, who was clearly
the projection of a thiasos of his worshippers. It accompanied
a magical dance and was the vehicle of a primitive sacramental
cult. In the detailed analysis of the Hymn we should come, I
felt, to understand the essence of a mystery-religion and incident-
ally the reason also why the Olympians failed to satisfy the
religious instinct. The Hymn of the Kouretes furnished for my
book its natural and necessary plot.
In the pages that follow, subjects apparently unconnected will
come in for discussion. We shall have to consider, for example,
magic, mana, tabu, the Olympic games, the Drama, Sacramentalism,
Carnivals, Hero-worship, Initiation Ceremonies and the Platonic
doctrine of Anamnesis. All these matters, seemingly so disparate,
in reality cluster round the Hymn, and can really only be under-
stood in connection with the two principles already laid down.
If the reader will be good enough to hold these two clues firmly
in his hand, the windings of the labyrinth will be to him no
perplexity. The course is plain before us as follows.
Chapter I is devoted to the analysis of the Hymn. The
Kouretes are found to represent the initiated young men of a
matrilinear group. The Daimon they invoke is, not the Father
of Gods and Men, but the Greatest Kouros. He springs from the
social emphasis of the rite of initiation, the central ceremony of
which was a dromenon or enaction of the New Birth into the tribe.
Among primitive peoples the child, by his first natural birth,
belongs to his mother, his life is of her life. By his Second Birth
at Initiation, he is made one with the life of his group, his ‘soul
is congregationalized, he is received into his church, his thiasos.
The new life emphasized is group life. The unity of the group
is represented by the figure of the Daimon. The Kouros stands
Introduction xi
for the unity of the Kouretes, the Bacchos for the thiasos of
Bacchoi.
Since the religious conception of a Daimon arises from a
dromenon, it is of the first importance to be clear as to what
a dromenon is. The second chapter is devoted to its psychological
analysis. The dromenon in its sacral sense is, not merely a thing
done, but a thing re-done, or pre-done with magical intent. The
magical dance of the Kouretes is a primitive form of dromenon, it
commemorates or anticipates, in order magically to induce, a New
Birth. The Dithyramb, from which the drama arose, was also a
dromenon of the New Birth. In the drama then we may expect
to find survivals of a ritual akin to that of the Kouretes. Further,
the dromenon is a thing which, like the drama, is collectively
performed. Its basis or kernel is a thiasos or choros.
So far attention has been concentrated on Professor Durkheim’s
principle that religious representation arises from collective action
and emotion. This emotion necessarily has its objects, and they
prove to be such as occur in other primitive societies. I have
studied especially two rites: (1) the Rite of the Thunders and
(2) the Omophagia (Chapters III, IV, and V). The Thunder-
Rite emphasizes man’s reaction towards, and, in a sense, his
desire for union with, the most striking manifestation of force in
the universe around him. The emotions that arise out of similar
reactions are expressed in such savage terms and conceptions as
Mana, Orenda, Wa-kon’-da. In Greek religion this stage, owing
to the Greek tendency to swift impersonation, is much obscured,
but traces of it survive in such conceptions as Kratos and Bia,
Styx, Horkos, μένος, θυμός and the like. Such sanctities, such
foci of attention precede divinities and even daimones, and it is
the manipulation of such sanctities that issues in the notions and
practices of magic and tabu discussed in Chapter IV.
Magic, it is seen, though it may imply a large amount of |
mistaken science, arises primarily from a dromenon, a rite which |
emphasizes, and aims at inducing, man’s collective desire for union
with or dominion over outside powers. The kernel and essence
of magic is best seen in the second Kouretic rite of initiation, the
sacramental feast of the Omophagia. Sacraments lie at the heart
ΧΙ Introduction
of religion and sacraments can only be understood in the light of
totemistic thinking, which may long survive any definite totemistic
social structure. To the meaning of the word sacrament Chapter V
is devoted.
Totemism, it is found, is the utterance of two kinds of unity
and solidarity, that of man with his group of fellow men, and that
of the human group with some group of plants or animals. Sacra-
mentalism stands for the absorption by man of the mana of non-
man. Gift-sacrifice implies the severance of man from that
outside mana which man has externalized, objectified into a god.
Totemistic thinking knows no god; it creates sanctities but not
divinities. These animal and plant group-sanctities live on in the
plant and animal forms the mystery-god can assume at will.
The Omophagia was a dats or communal meal. Since food
is the main source or at least support of life, sacraments among
primitive peoples tend to take the form of meals, though other means
of contact, such as rubbing and washing, are in use. As food was
primitive man’s main focus of interest, it was soon observed that
most food-supplies were seasonal and therefore recurrent. Hence
arose the seasonal dromenon with its attendant sacrifice. In
Greece the chief seasonal dromenon seems to have been in the
spring; its object, the magical inducement of fresh life, for man,
for other animals and for plants. A particular form of this spring
rite was the Dithyramb. In Chapter VI this is discussed in
connection with the famous Hagia Triada sarcophagos.
From the spring dromenon with its magical intent of the
renewal of the year, arose two of the main factors in Greek
religious life and indeed in Greek civilization: (1) the agones
or athletic contests, and (2) that other contest significantly bearing
the same name, the agon of the drama. Different though they
seem, and different as in fact they became, they arose from the
same root, the spring dromenon conceived of as a conflict, a
dramatic setting forth of the natural happening of the spring.
This drama might with equal appropriateness be represented as a
Death followed by a Rebirth or as a contest followed by a victory.
Chapter VII, by Mr Cornford, deals with the greatest of the
athletic agones of Greece, the Olympic Games, as arising from
a race of the Kouretes. The victor in the race became the
Introduction ΧΙ
daimon of the year, or, to give him a Greek name, the Eniautos-
Daimon. In the victor is incarnate at once the daimon of the
group and the ‘luck’ of the year. It is this δαίμων yévyns who
is the real object of commemoration in Pindar’s Odes; hence the
prominence of mythical elements. The particular hero is com-
memorated rather as functionary than as individual personality.
And here I owe to the reader an apology, or at least an
explanation, for the introduction of a new term. I am well aware
that no such conjunction as Eniautos-Daimon exists in Greek. I
did not set out to invent any such word, nor did I even foresee its
employment; it simply grew on my hands from sheer necessity.
Dr Frazer, following Mannhardt, gave us‘Tree-Spirit, Corn-Spirit,
Vegetation Spirit,’ and the use of these terms has incalculably
enlarged our outlook. My own debt to Dr Frazer 15 immeasurable.
But even ‘ Vegetation Spirit’ is inadequate. A word was wanted
that should include not only vegetation, but the whole world-
process of decay, death, renewal. I prefer ‘Eniautos’ to ‘year’
because to us ‘year’ means something definitely chronological,
a precise segment as it were of spatialized time; whereas
Eniautos, as contrasted with etos, means a period in the etymo-
logical sense, a cycle of waxing and waning. This notion 1s,
I believe, implicitly though not always explicitly, a cardinal
factor in Greek religion. Beyond it, to anything like our modern
notion of non-recurrent evolution, the Greek never advanced. I
prefer the word daimon to ‘spirit’ because, as I try to show (in
Chapter VIII), daimon has connotations unknown to our English
‘ spirit.’
At this point, before passing to the second great development
from the spring-festival, the drama, recent controversy compelled
a halt. Euhemerists of all dates, and quite recently Professor
Ridgeway, have maintained that agonistic festivals and- drama
alike take their rise, not in magical ceremonial nor in the worship
of a god or daimon, but in funeral ceremonies at the grave of some
historical individual, a dead hero or chieftain. Totemism, vegeta-
tion spirits and the like are, according to Professor Ridgeway,
secondary phenomena; the primary principle is the existence of
the individual soul after death and the necessity for placating it.
Now it is indisputable that, at agonistic festivals and in the drama,
ΧΙν Introduction
heroes are commemorated. For his emphasis of this’ fact and its
relations to the origines of drama we all owe a deep debt to
Professor Ridgeway. But the analysis of the term hero goes
to show that the main factor in a hero is that very being whom
Professor Ridgeway would reject or ignore, the Eniautos-Daimon
himself. Chapter VIII is devoted to the analysis of the term
hero, with results as follows.
The hero on examination turns out to be, not a historical great
man who happens to be dead, but a dead ancestor performing his
due functions as such, who may in particular cases happen to have
been a historical great man. As hero he is a functionary; he
-wears the mask and absorbs the ritual of an Eniautos-Daimon.
The myths of the heroes of Athens, from Cecrops to Theseus, show
them as kings, that is as functionaries, and, in primitive times,
these functionaries assume snake-form. The daimon-functionary
represents the permanent life of the group. The individual dies,
but the group and its incarnation the king survive. Le γοῖ est
mort, vive le rov. From these two facts, of group permanency and
individual death, arose the notion of reincarnation, palingenesia.
Moreover, since the group included plants and animals as well as
human members, and these were linked by a common life, the
rebirth of ancestors and the renewed fertility of the earth went on
part passu. Hence the Intichiwma ceremonies of Central Aus-
tralians, hence the Revocation of ghosts at the Athenian
Anthesteria. Gradually, as the group focussed on its king, the
daimones of fertility, the collective ancestors, focussed on to an
Agathos Daimon, a spirit of fertility, again figured as a snake.
The later Attic heroes Ion and Theseus, unlike the earlier
Cecrops and Erechtheus, do not assume snake-form. None the
less they are functionaries rather than individual personalities—
Ion a mere eponym, a group projection of the Ionians, and Theseus
a hero because, as his mythology makes manifest, he took on the
ritual and functions of the Eniautos-Daimon. This is clearly
evidenced by his festival the Oschophoria, which can be recon-
structed, partly from the recorded mythos, partly from the dromena.
The principal factors are the agon or contest, the pathos a defeat or
death, the triumphant reappearance or rebirth, the Epiphany. In
a word the ritual of the Eniautos-Daimon is substantially the
Introduction XV
same as the ceremony of death and resurrection enacted as a rite
of tribal initiation. This ritual with its attendant mythos lives on
in the Mummers’ Play and Carnival festivals still performed at
spring time all over modern Kurope. At Athens, reinvigorated
by the Homeric saga, it issued in the splendid human diversity of
the Attic drama.
What then is the relation between the Homeric saga, which
furnishes obviously the plots of Attic dramas, and the ancient
ritual of the Eniautos-Daimon as embodied in the Dithyramb or
Spring-Dance? ‘The answer is given in Prof. Murray’s Excursus,
A detailed examination of the plays and fragments extant shows
that, while the content of the plots comes from the saga, the ritual
forms in which that content is cast derive straight from the
dromena of the Eniautos-Daimon. Such forms are the Prologue,
the Agon, the Pathos, the Messenger’s Speech, the Threnos, the
Anagnorisis and the final Theophany. Certain of these ritual
forms also survive in shadowy fashion in the Games, but here they
are well-nigh submerged by a growing athleticism. In the drama
literary art by some blind yet happy instinct felt their value and
held to them tenaciously.
Thus the ritual of the Eniautos-Daimon, who was at once the
| representation of the life of the group and the life of nature,
issued in agonistic festivals and in the drama. We have now to
watch another process, by which the daimon is transformed into a
god and finally, for the Greeks, into that form of godhead which
we call Olympian. To an analysis of this process the three
concluding chapters are devoted.
In Chapter IX the case of Herakles who tried and failed to be
a god is examined. ‘he reason of his failure is found to be
instructive. Spite of all efforts to make him athanatos he remains
an Eniautos-Daimon, doomed by function and attributes to a yearly
death and resurrection. He is also doomed to eternally recurrent
Labours and cannot join the Olympians who ‘dwell at ease.’ He
remains, like Asklepios, the typical half human Saviour. Asklepios,
from the extraordinary spread of his cult, took rank as a god, but
his snake-form enshrines his old daimon nature and prevents his
becoming an Olympian. His younger form, Telesphoros, marks
him clearly as Eniautos-Daimon.
ΧΥΪ Introduction
Having seen how and why two daimones failed to become
Olympians we have next to watch the transformation οὗ one who
succeeded, Apollo.
In the evolution of the Eniautos- Tateae we noted the
influence of periodicity ; the succession of the seasons was always
important because they brought food to man. So far man’s eyes
are bent on earth as the food-giver. In his social structure the
important features are Mother and Son, and, projecting his own
emotions into nature round him, he sees in the earth the Mother
as food-giver, and in the fruits of the earth her Son, her Kouros,
his symbol the blossoming branch of a tree. The first divinity
in the sequence of cults at Delphi is Gaia.
But before long he notices that Sky as well as Earth influences
his food supply. At first he notes the ‘weather,’ rain and wind
and storm. Next he finds out that the moon measures seasons,
and to her he attributes all growth, all waxing and waning, Then
his goddess is Phoibe. When later he discovers that the Sun
really dominates his food supply, Phoibe gives place to Phoibos,
the Moon to the Sun. The shift of attention, of religious focus,
from Earth to Sky, tended to remove the gods from man; they
were purged but at the price of remoteness. Apollo begins on
earth as Agueius and ends in heaven as Phoibos.
Ritual at Delphi, as elsewhere, lagged behind myth and
theology. Of the three great Ennaeteric Festivals, two, the
Charila and the Herots, are concerned with the death and resur-
rection, the Kathodos and Anodos, of the Earth ; they are essentially
Eniautos Festivals. The third festival, the Stepterion, speaks still
more clearly. It is the death of the Old Year envisaged as a snake,
followed by the birth of the New as a Kouros carrying a branch.
The same Kouros, representing Apollo in the Daphnephoria, carries
a pole from which are hung the moon and sun. The God is thus
manifestly a year-daimon. As the Son of his Father and as the
god to whom the epheboi offered the first-fruits of their hair, he
is also the Greatest Kouros. But unlike Dionysos, the other
Greatest Kouros, he is a complete Olympian. Wherein lies the
difference? An answer is attempted in Chapter X.
It is characteristic of an Olympian, as contrasted with a
‘mystery-god like Dionysos, that his form is rigidly fixed and always _
Introduction XVil
human. The Zeus of Pheidias or of Homer cannot readily shift
his shape and become a bird, a bull, a snake, a tree. The
Olympian has come out from the natural facts that begot him,
and has become ‘idealized.’ The mystery-god was called a bull
because he really was a bull—a bull full of vital mana, eaten at a
communal feast. He died and was re-born, because the world of
life which he embodies really dies and is re-born. But as the
reflecting worshipper began to idealize his god, it seemed a degra-
dation, if not an absurdity, to suppose that the god was a beast
with the brute vitality of a beast. He must have human form
and the most beautiful human form; human intellect and the
highest human intellect. He must not suffer and fail and die; he
must be ever blessed, ageless and deathless. It is only a step
further to the conscious philosophy which will deny to God any
human frailties, any emotions, any wrath or jealousy, and ulti-
mately any character whatever except dead, unmeaning perfection,
incapable of movement or change.
Then at last we know these gods for what they are, intellectual
conceptions merely, things of thought bearing but slight relation
to life lived. Broadly speaking, these Olympians represent that
tendency in thought which is towards reflection, differentiation,
clearness, while the Eniautos-Daimon represents that other
tendency in religion towards emotion, union, indivisibility. It
might almost be said that the Olympians stand for articulate
consciousness, the Eniautos-Daimon for the sub-conscious.
Chapter XI brings us back to the Hymn. Whatever the
difference between the religion of the Eniautos-Daimon and that
ot the Olympians, the forms of both these religions depend on, or
rather express and represent, the social structure of the worshippers.
Above the gods, supreme, eternally dominant, stands the figure
of Themis. She is social ordinance, the collective conscience
projected, the Law or Custom that is Right.
Una superstitio superis quae reddita divis.
The social structure represented by the Olympians is the same
as that of the modern family, it is patrilinear. The figure of
Dionysos, his thiasos, and his relation to bis mother and the
H. b
ΧΥΠΙ Introduction
Maenads, is only to be understood by reference to an earlier social
structure, that known as matrilinear. But the all-important
point is not which particular structure is represented, but the
general principle that social structure and the collective conscience
which utters itself in social structure, underlie all religion. Themis
conditions not only our social relations, but also our whole relation
with the outside world. The Kouretes bid their daimon come
‘for the Year’; they also bid him, that crops and flocks may
prosper, ‘leap for fair Themis.’ |
Ancient faith held, and in part modern religion still holds, Ὁ
that moral excellence and material prosperity must go together,
that man by obeying Themis, the Right, can control the Way
of Nature. This strange faith, daily disproved by reason, is in
part the survival of the old conviction, best seen in totemism,
that man and nature form one indivisible whole. A breach of
Themis would offend your neighbours and produce quarrels; quite
equally it would offend the river or the earth and produce floods —
or famine. His emotion towards this unity the Greek uttered at
first in the vague shape of a daimon, later, more intellectually, in
the clear-cut figure of an Olympian god. But behind Gaia the
Mother, and above even Zeus the Father, stands always the figure
of Themis.
Such in brief is the argument. And here it would be perhaps ~
discreet to pause. I have neither desire nor aptitude for con- |
fessional controversy. As my main object is to elucidate Greek
religion, it would be both safe and easy to shelter myself behind ~
the adjective ‘primitive’ and say that with modern religion
I have no concern. But I abhor obscurantism. It is to me
among the deadliest of spiritual sins. Moreover, the human mind
is not made in water-tight compartments. What we think about
Greek religion affects what we think about everything else.
So I cannot end a book on Greek religion without saying simply
how the writing of it has modified my own views.
I have come to see in the religious impulse a new value. It
is, I believe, an attempt, instinctive and unconscious, to do what
Professor Bergson bids modern philosophy do consciously and with
the whole apparatus of science behind it, namely to apprehend life —
as_one, as_ indivisible, yet as perennial movement and change.
:
eee eee 5.) eS
Introduction Xix
But, profoundly as I also feel the value of the religious impulse, so
keenly do I feel the danger and almost necessary disaster of each
and every creed and dogma. For the material of religion is
essentially the uncharted, the ungrasped, as Herbert Spencer
would say, though with a somewhat different connotation, the
‘unknowable.’ Further, every religious dogma errs in two ways.
First, it is a confident statement about something unknown and
therefore practically always untrustworthy; secondly, if it were
right and based on real knowledge, then its subject-matter would
no longer belong to the realm of religion; it would belong to
science or philosophy. To win new realms for knowledge out of
the unknown is part of the normal current of human effort; but
to force intellectual dogma upon material which belongs only to
the realm of dim aspiration is to steer for a backwater of death.
In that backwater lies stranded many an ancient galley, haunted
by fair figures of serene Olympians, and even, it must be said, by
the phantom of Him—the Desire of all nations—who is the same
yesterday, to-day and for ever. The stream of life flows on, .
a saecular mystery; but these, the evdola of man’s market-place,
are dead men, hollow ghosts.
As to religious ritual, we may by degrees find forms that are
free from intellectual error. The only intelligible meaning that
ritual has for me, is the keeping open of the individual soul—that
bit of the general life which life itself has fenced in by a separate
organism—to other souls, other separate lives, and to the apprehen-
sion of other forms of life. The avenues are never closed. Life
itself, physical and spiritual, is the keeping of them open. Whether
any systematized attempt to remind man, by ritual, of that whole
of life of which he is a specialized fragment can be made fruitful
or not, I am uncertain.
My other debts are many.
To Dr Verrall, who in a single sentence gave me material for
my second chapter. The reader will probably feel more grateful
for his single sentence—an inspired bit of translation—than for
the commentary that attends it.
To Mr Arthur Bernard Cook, who has spared time from his
own valuable work to read through the greater part of my proofs.
He has also, with a generosity as rare as it is characteristic, allowed
b2
---..
Σ Introduction
me to borrow many suggestions from his forthcoming book Zeus, —
the appearance of which will, I know, mark an epoch in the —
|
study of Greek Religion. My sense of Mr Cook’s great kind-
ness is the deeper, because on some fundamental points we see
differently.
Mr Francis Macdonald Cornford has again carried through for
me the tedious task of proof-correcting. My chief debt to him is
however for his chapter on The Origin of the Olympic Games. The
conclusions he had independently arrived at in a course of lectures
on Pindar, given at Trinity College during the Michaelmas Term
of 1910, came as a quite unlooked for confirmation of my own views.
This confirmation was the more valuable since it reached me at a
time when my own argument was still inchoate and my conviction
halting. My whole book—especially its last two chapters—owes
much to Mr Cornford’s constant help on points which will be
developed more fully in his forthcoming work, From Religion to
Philosophy.
My thanks are also offered to
Mrs Hugh Stewart and Miss Ruth Darwin for much kind help
in the drawing of illustrations and the making of the index;
My College, which, by releasing me from teaching work, has
given me the leisure necessary for writing ;
The British School of Athens for permission to republish some
part of my article on The Kouretes and Zeus Kouros, which appeared
in the Annual, 1908-1909 ;
The German Archaeological Institute, the Ecole Francaise
of Berlin and Athens, and the Hellenic Society for permission
to reproduce plates, and Messrs Macmillan for kindly allowing
me the use of blocks from my Mythology and Monuments of
Ancient Athens, now out of print;
The University Press for undertaking the publication of my
book, and especially their skilful proof-reader, whose care has
saved me from many errors.
And last I would thank my critics.
They have kindly warned me that, in the study of Alpha there
is danger lest I lose sight of Omega. Intent on origines, on the
roots of things, I fail to gather in, they tell me, the tree’s fair,
final fruit and blossom. I thank them for the warning, but I
Introduction Xxi
think they have not read my Prolegomena, or at least its preface.
I there confess, and still confess, that I have little natural love
for what an Elizabethan calls ‘ye Beastly Devices of ye Heathen.’
Savages, save for their reverent, totemistic attitude towards
animals, weary and disgust me, though perforce I spend long
hours in reading of their tedious doings. My good moments
are when, through the study of things primitive, I come to
the better understanding of some song of a Greek poet or some
saying of a Greek philosopher.
It is because he has taught me to perceive, however faintly,
this ‘aroma of mysterious and eternal things’ that I have asked
leave to dedicate my most unworthy book to a scholar who is
also a poet.
JANE ELLEN HARRISON,
NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
New Year's Eve, 1911.
ἀν, Dio ale pre ν
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Tue Hymn or THE KOURETES,
Birth of Zeus in Crete. Worship on Dikte and Ida. Discovery of Hymn
to the Kouretes. Its importance for the history of religion. Analysis of
Hymn, (1) The Invocation, (2) The Aetiological Myth, (3) The resultant
blessings. Zeus addressed as Kouros. Meaning of word Kowros. The
Kouros attended by daimones. Analogy of Dionysos and his thiasos.
The birth of Zeus. The attendant Kouretes. Mimic death and rebirth in
mysteries of Zagreus. The Titans. Ritual of death and rebirth explained
by primitive rites of tribal initiation. The social rebirth as a tribesman.
Initiation as a Rite de passage. Rite of rebirth among the Wiradthuri of
New South Wales, among the Akiktyu of British East Africa. The
Kouretes as paidotrophoi, as armed and orgiastic dancers, as daimones, as
seers, aS magicians and culture heroes. The Kouros a projection of the
Kouretes. The god a projection of the collective emotion of the group.
pp. 1—29.
CHAPTER II.
Tue DitHyrAMsB, THE Δρώμενον AND THE DRAMA.
The Kouretes on the ‘stage’ of Phaedrus in the Dionysiac theatre.
Dionysos Dithyrambos as Kouros. Meaning of Dithyramb. According to
Plato, Dithyramb is a Birth-song of Dionysos. Dithyrambos in the Bacchae.
Dithyrambos reflects the rite of Rebirth. The Bacchants reflect the Mothers
of a matriarchal society. Dionysos as babe and as Kouros. The Dithyramb
as origin of tragedy. The drama and the dromenon. Psychological analysis
of the dromenon. It is an act pre-done or re-done and done collectively.
The exarchos and the protokoures. The mystery-god as ‘ Kouros.’ Dionysos
reflects his thiasos as the Kouros reflects the Kouretes. pp. 30—49.
Xxiv Table of Contents
CHAPTER III.
THe Kovuretes, THE THUNDER-RITES AND Mana.
The Kouretes continued. Idaean Daktyls of Mt Ida as medicine men.
Idaean ritual later in character than Diktaean. Epimenides as the ‘new
Koures.’ His magic sleep is a sleep of initiation. Kouretes develop from
initiated tribesmen into magical fraternity. Rites of adolescence and rites of
ordination. The rite of the Thunders. The child and the thunder-stone.
Thunder and the Bull-Roarer. The rhombos. The ‘worship’ of the thunder-
bolt. Sanctities precede divinities. Le sacré Cest le pere du dieu. Analysis
of mana, orenda, wa-kon’-da. Greek analogies. ratos and Bia. Styx,
Horkos. pp. 50—74.
CHAPTER IV.
(a) Macic anp Tabu.
Meaning of mageia. Magic is the positive, tabu the negative attitude
towards mana. Mana is the manipulation of sanctities. The thunder- and
rain-maker on a fragment of a Dipylon vase. The shield and the gourd-
rattles. Salmoneus a weather-maker. Magical rain-making at Krannon.
Magical terms factura, krtya, zauber etc. express doing. Magic is a dromenon,
behind doing is desire. Kama, kratu and karma. Le deésir cest le pere de la
sorcellerie. Psychology of magic. The ‘worship’ of the shield. The tool as
extension of personality. Man as tool-maker : κῆλα and κεραυνός. Thunder-
bolts and celts. Thunder and tabu. Idea of religio. The Horkos, the
abaton and tabu. The hypaethral sanctuaries. The trident mark of the
Erechtheion. The abaton of Thebes and the Bacchae.
(6) Mepictne-Birp ΑΝ MEDICINE-KING.
Magic and tabu in Hesiod. The θεῖος ἀνήρ as man of sanctities. Contrast
of tone in Theogony and Works and Days. The weather-birds and beasts and
the heavenly signs. ‘Knowing in birds.’ Use of ὄρνις. The woodpecker as
mantic bird and Weather-King. Picus in Ovid and Vergil. Picus and Numa
Pompilius. Picus, Faunus, and Idaean Daktyls. Conflict of old order and
new. Weather-King and Olympian. The mana of birds. Bird-dances, bird-
priestesses, the bird-Artemis. The thunder-bird. Leda and Nemesis. The
swan of Delos. pp. 75—117.
Table of Contents XXV
CHAPTER V.
ToOTEMISM, SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE.
The Kouretic rite of the Omophagia. The Omophagia a communal,
sacramental feast. Nature of sacrament best understood in the light of
totemism. Psychology of totemism. The word totem means group. Totem-
istic thinking expresses unity of human members of group, and community with
non-human members. Totemistic thinking a stage in epistemology. Totem-
ism reflects group thinking. The Jntichiwma ceremonies. μέθεξις (participation)
precedes μίμησις (imitation). Idea of imitation supposes severance. Gradual
segregation of god from worshippers. Worship involves idea of segregation.
Totemistic thinking survives in Greek ritual and mythology. Instances.
Practice of tattooing among Thracians, theriomorphic gods. Sacrament
contrasted with gift-sacrifice. Sacrament necessarily precedes gift-sacrifice.
Eating the most effective form of sacrament. Food an early ‘focus of
attention.’ The Bouphonia as a primitive sacrament. The Year-Bull at
Magnesia. The Hosioter at Delphi. The dais or communal meal and the
thiasos or community. Dionysos Jsodaites. pp. 118—157.
CHAPTER VI.
Tue DitHyrRAMB, THE SPRING FESTIVAL AND THE HaaiA TRIADA
SARCOPHAGOS.
The bull-sacrifice on the Hagia Triada sarcophagos. Its object to bring
mana to fruit-trees. The Bird, the Axe and the Tree. The Bull-sacrament
of Atlantis, of Ilium. Sanctity of fruit-trees. Relation to Ge Karpophoros.
Sanctities of the Erechtheion analogous to those of the Hagia Triada sarco-
phagos. The Pandroseion and the Bouphonia and the Hersephoria. Sanctity
of Dew and Rain. The Moriae, Zeus Morios and Kataibates. The Hieros
Gamos of Ouranos and Gaia. ve. κύε. The Danaides. The Bird on the
Axe marks a Spring-Festival. Hera and the Cuckoo. Bird-Tree, Bull and
Maiden on Cretan Coins. The Bouphonia a Year-Festival. Meaning of
ἐνιαυτός. The Year and the Horae. The Spring as Hora. The Seasonal,
Lunar and Solar Years. The Charites as Horae. The Moon-Year and the
Salii. The Salii and Mars. Mamurius and Anna Perenna. The Kouretes
and the Sun. Satyrs and Helios. The Dithyramb as Spring-Song of the
Year-Festival. Dithyramb and Dithoramb. The ‘ Bull-Driving Dithyramb.’
Dithyramb and Tragedy. Song of Bull-Driving and Goat-Song. The
Epheboi and the Bull at the Great Dionysia at Athens.
Scene on the reverse of sarcophagos. Offering of bull-calves to youth.
Is he Dionysos or a dead hero or the Kouros? To answer question we must
consider another dromenon, the agonistic festival of Olympia. pp. 158—211.
ΧΧΥΪ Table of Contents
CHAPTER VII.
THE ORIGIN OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES.
Old theory that they were ad animos recreandos. Professor Ridgeway’s
funeral theory. Relation to Hero-Worship. [Pindar’s account in first
Olympic Ode. Ritual rites in Pelops’ legend. The contest with Oinomaos.
The victor as King. The King as Year-god. Date of Olympian festival.
Marriage of Sun and Moon. The Heraea. The Foot-race for the Bride. The
Foot-race of the Kouretes. The Olive-branch. The Mother and Child and
Kouretes at Olympia. Sosipolis at Olympia and in Magnesia. The Feast
of Tantalus. The Boiling of Pelops. The Kouretes at Ephesus. The origin
of rexvopayia. The δεύτεραι τράπεζαι. Festival of the Basilai. The Basileus.
The Victor and the Hero. General conclusion. The Olympic Games like
the drama rose out of a Year-Festival, and centre round a Year-daimon,
whose title and functions are taken over by the Hero. pp. 212—259.
CHAPTER VIII.
DaIMoN AND Hero.
What is a hero? Examination of Attic heroes. Cecrops as daimon-snake.
Erichthonios as daimon-snake. The snake king. The eponymous hero. Ion
as daimon-hero. The daimon-snake represents life not death. The snake
as symbol of palingenesia. Palingenesia is not ἀθανασία. Palingenesia as
Reincarnation, birth back again. Reincarnation as doctrine of totemistic
peoples. Reincarnation of ancestors among Central Australians. Jntichiwma
ceremonies commemorate ancestors. The Alcheringa as men of the Golden
Age. Pindar’s πλοῦτος, ἀρετὴ and the δαίμων γενέθλιοςς. Hesiod’s ancestors
as daimones. The dead as πλουτοδόται.
The Jntichiuma and the Anthesteria. Both involve notion of Reincarna-
tion. The Pithoigia and the Agathos Daimon. Agathos Daimon and Agathe
Tyche. Snake-shape of Agathos Daimon as fertility-daimon. Eumenides
and snakes. Kychreus the Snake-king.
The Choes. The Chytroi. The expulsion of the Keres. Ghosts as
fertility-daimones. The snake and the eidola. The thaimos and the eidolon.
Ghosts and seeds. The punspermia and its correlative the pankarpia. The
Kernophoria, Liknophoria and Thargelia.
Hermes Chthonios as Agathos Daimon. Zeus Ktesios as Agathos Daimon.
Ambrosia and Zeus Ktesios. The Penates and the Ktesioi. The Roman
Genius of the penus. The Genius is primarily of the group, later of the —
individual. The Dioscuri as Agathoi Daimones, as theoz.
Table of Contents ΧΧΥΪΪ
The ‘ Hero-Feasts.’ Snake and cornucopia as symbols of the Agathos
Daimon and the hero. The daimon proper is a functionary but gets
‘contaminated’ with the individual dead man.
Theseus as Hero-daimon. His ritual in the Oschophoria is that of a
Year-daimon. The Eiresione. The mythos of a Year-daimon. Analysis of
mythos. The Eniautos-mythos. Its elements. Its monotony. Its survival
in folk-plays to-day. Attic drama has the forms of an Eniautos-mythos but
the material of the Homeric saga. Hippolytos as Year-Daimon and Kouros.
pp. 260—363.
Execursus on the Ritual Forms preserved in Greek tragedy.
Tragedy in origin a Sacer Ludus of Dionysos as Eniautos-Daimon. Its
elements are an Agon, a Pathos, a Messenger, a Threnos, an Anagnorisis,
followed by a Theophany. The Satyrs and the Peripeteia. Necessary
sequence of these ritual forms. The 7heophany in schylus, Sophocles and
Euripides. The Prologue and the Prorrhésis. Reassertion in Euripides of
Sacer Ludus forms. The ‘fundamental paradox.’ pp. 341—363.
A
wy
> CHAPTER IX. Po κ᾿ A
il ee
From Daimon To OLYMPIAN. »
Herakles as transition figure between daimon and Olympian god.
Herakles as fertility- and year-daimon—as Herm—as Thallophoros. His
attributes the branch and the cornucopia. The Herakles of the 7rachiniae
as daimon of the Sun-year. Herakles as Idaean Daktyl. Ritual of Herakles
as Year-Daimon and as Olympian. Yearly sacrifice characteristic of heroes.
Herakles as Alexikakos of epheboi, as husband of Hebe. Asklepios and
Telesphoros as Year-daimones.
The sequence of cults at Delphi. Prologue to Humenides. Gaia and
Themis. Phoibe as Moon. Oracle of Night at Delphi. Worship of Earth
precedes worship of Metarsia and Meteora. schylus supposes a peaceful
evolution, Euripides a conflict of cults.
Ritual of Gaia. Omphalos as sacred stone, as grave-mound. Omphalos
and beehive tombs. ‘Tomb of Tantalos.’ ‘Daktyl’s Monument.’ Grave
mound and Aguieus-cone. Apollo Aguieus. Omphalos at Argos.
Ritual of Gaia in Ennaeteric Festivals at Delphi. The Charila and
Herois. Heroines as fertility-daimones. The ‘ Bringing up of Semele.’ The
Anodos on vases. Satyrs at the Anodos. The Stepterion. An Eniautos-
festival. The Python as snake-king. Kadmos and Jason as snake-slayers.
The snake as daimon of tree and well. The Spartoi and the dragon’s teeth.
The Apollo of the Daphnephoria as Phoibos. Apollo as Kouros. Apellon.
Apollo and Dionysos as Kouroi. Contrast between the two. Both are
Megistoi Kourot. Only Apollo becomes fully Olympianized. pp. 364—444.
XXviii Table of Contents
5 CHAPTER X.
THE OLYMPIANS.
Early nature-worship of the Greeks. Later complete anthropomorphism.
The Olympian sheds his plant or animal form. This causes loss as well as
gain. The Olympian refuses to be an Earth-daimon of snake form. The
Gigantomachia. Snake-form of giants as earth-born. The Olympian refuses
to be a daimon of air and sky. Titanomachia. Prometheus as Titan. The
Titans and Giants represent τὰ πελώρια. Okeanos as Titan. τέρας and
πέλωρ. The LPeloria. Orthodox Greek contempt of ra perapova and τὰ
μετέωρα. Possible reaction against Persian naturism. Ionian philosophy and
Persian theology. Iranian mysticism in Orphic religion. Orphic cosmogony.
Melanippe the Wise. Orpheus and Sun-worship.
The Olympians refuse the functions of the Eniautos-Daimon. Their τιμαί
are honours claimed, not functions performed. They claim immortality—and
feel φθόνος. They are highly individualized and personalized. Analogies
from language. The holophrase and the collective and selective plurals.
The Olympians as specialized Moirai, as objets dart. pp. 445—479.
CHAPTER XI.
THEMIS.
The Olympians are a social group formed by a social convention. Themis
is the social conscience on which depends social structure. Themis as
prophetic power of Gaia. Her cult at Delphi, Athens, Olympia. Functions
of Themis in Homer. She summons and presides over assemblies, and over
the common feast. Themis and Doom. The Cyclopes are athemistes. Themis
at first of the group, later of the polis. Religion based on Themis because it
is the representation of the collective conscience. Professor Durkheim’s
definition of religion. The social imperative and the sense of mystery.
Physis and Themis.
Knowledge of social structure essential to understanding of any particular
religion. Social structure of the Olympians is patriarchal and of the family.
Social structure of the Kouretes, the Mother and the Kouros is of the matri-
linear group. Kronos as King and Zeus as Father. Kronos as Year-daimon.
The Apatouria and the Tritopatores reflect patrilinear structure. Zeus,
Athena and Apollo as a trinity of Phratriot. Apollo and Artemis originally
Mother and Kouros.
The Eiresione as Korythalia belonged to Artemis as Kourotrophos. The
_ Kourotrophos as πότνια θηρῶν. Holocaust to the Kouretes and to Artemis
as πότνια θηρῶν. Artemis the matrilinear Mother becomes the patri-
archal Sister. Matrilinear structure survives also in the Hybristika. Rite
Table of Contents ΧΧΙΧ
de passage from sex to sex and age to age symbolized by interchange of
clothes. Initiation rites and the oracle of Trophonios. Mnemosyne and
Anamnesis. ite de passage from the profane to the sacred world and vice
versd. Mnemosyne as revelation rather than mere memory. Plato’s debt to
initiation ceremonies.
Themis, Dike and the Horai. Hymn to the Kouretes ends with Themis.
Themis as mother of the Horai. Themis as mother of Dike. Dike is the
Way of Nature, which is regarded as the Wheel of Life. Dike in Hades
because she is cycle of life. The Swastika, Rta and Tao. Primitive belief
that moral goodness and material prosperity go together. Themis has
_ power to affect Dike because notion of Dike originates in social order. The
Golden Lamb. Alpha not to be confused with Omega. pp. 480—535.
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ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA.
p. 3, 1.1. ‘But Palaikastro...is not Dikte.’ At the moment of going to press
I receive, by the kindness of Monsieur Toutain, a pre-print of his article, L’Antre
de Psychro et le Δικταῖον ἄντρον (Rev. de l'Histoire des Religions, uxrv. 1911, Nov.—
Dec.). The Diktaean cave of antiquity is not, according to M. Toutain, the cave
excavated by Mr Hogarth at Psychro, but has yet to be sought in the easternmost
part of Crete, near to the recently discovered temple at Palaikastro, I hope that
M. Toutain is right, as it would relieve my argument of some embarrassments, but,
till a cave comparable to that at Psychro comes to light near Palaikastro, nothing
can be certain.
p. 12, 1.12. ‘The Kouros, the young Zeus.’ The Etymologicum Magnum, s.v.
Δίκτη, says, “ἐνταῦθα δὲ Διὸς ἄγαλμα ἀγένειον ἵστατο. λέγεται καὶ Δίκταιον."
p. 82,1. 2. ‘Tragedy...originated with the leaders of the dithyramb.’ It is
worth noting that Solon in a lost elegy is reported to have connected the earliest
tragedies with Arion, the supposed originator of the dithyramb. τῆς δὲ τραγῳδίας
πρῶτον δρᾶμα ᾿Αρίων ὁ Μηθυμναῖος εἰσήγαγεν ὥσπερ Σόλων ἐν ταῖς ἐπιγραφομέναις
᾿Ελεγείαις ἐδίδασκε. See the commentary of John the Deacon on Hermogenes, Περὶ
μεθόδου δεινότητος, published by H. Rabe, dus Rhetoren-Handschriften, in Rhein.
Mus. vx. 1908, p. 150. Dr Nilsson in his valuable Der Ursprung d. Tragidie
(Neue Jahrbiicher, xxv. 1911, p. 611, note 1), which by his kindness has just
reached me, questions the tradition. For the historical relation of the Dithyramb to
hero-cults see Dr W. Schmid, Zur Geschichte des griechischen Dithyrambus, Tiibingen,
1901, a monograph which I regret to say has only just come to my knowledge.
p- ὅθ, note. To the bibliography of the thunder-stone must now be added
Dr Chr. Blinkenberg’s able monograph, The Thunder Weapon in Religion and
Folk-Lore, which has just appeared in the Cambridge Archaeological and Ethno-
graphical Series, 1911.
p. 69, note 1. Omaha initiations. By Miss Fletcher’s great kindness I have
now received her splendid monograph, The Omaha Tribe, which she publishes in
connection with Mr Francis la Flesche (himself a member of the tribe) in the
27th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 191i.
p. 82,1. 24. For krtya read krtya.
p. 93, 1. 6. ‘Behold God’s Son.’ This and all translations from Euripides
are by Professor Gilbert Murray. Other translations he has kindly made for me
are acknowledged in their place. For the remainder I am myself responsible.
p. 113, 1. 32. ‘The Persian Artemis.’ See Mr M. 5, Thompson’s article, The
Asiatic or Winged Artemis, J. H. S. xxtx. 1909, p. 286.
p. 206, 1. 12. ‘Tragedy, the Goat-Song.’ I wish entirely to withdraw my
explanation of τραγῳδία as ‘spelt-song’ first suggested in the Classical Review,
1902, p. 331, and further amplified in relation to Bromios and the supposed title
Braites in my Prolegomena, pp. 414—422. All three interpretations fall together.
Since my ill-starred attempt, two other etymologies of tragedy have appeared.
Mr Louis H. Gray, in the Classical Quarterly, v1. 1912, p. 60, proposes to derive
τραγῳδία from an Indo-Germanic base *tereg (of which rpayo would be the second
‘full grade’), with the meaning strong, terrible; tragedy would be the ‘singing of
bold or terrible things,’ comedy would be the ‘ singing of revelrous things.’ A weak
point of this suggestion is that *tereg appears to have left in Greek no other
cognates, and is the ‘bold or terrible one’ a fitting description of a goat? Professor
Margoliouth, The Poetics of Aristotle, 1911, p. 61, points out that, with reference
ΧΧΤΙΙ Addenda et Corrigenda
to the voice, the verb τραγίζειν means ‘ to be cracked,’ i.e. when at puberty the voice
changes to harshness and irregularity of pitch. A tragic song is then a song of
irregular pitch, full of—in the Greek sense—anomalies. This would suit Plutarch’s —
account of the Dithyramb (infra, p. 156). 1 would gladly avail myself of any
derivation that might connect tragedy with puberty and initiation-ceremonies, but
I fear τραγῳδία and τραγίζειν alike ultimately derive from the canonical τράγος, and
that it is to some ceremonial connected with a goat that we must look for the
origin of the word.
p. 214, 1. 18. ‘No material evidence.’ Dr Pfister in his Reliquienkult im
Altertum, 1909, p. 396 and passim, shows convincingly that the evidence of
excavation is dead against Euhemerism. ‘Im allgemeinen wird man behaupten
diirfen dass wenn die Griechen einmal die ‘‘Graber” ihrer Heroen aufgegraben
hitten, sie in den weitaus meisten Fallen keine Gebeine gefunden haben wiirden.
Die ‘‘ Graber” waren alte Kultstitten.’ Dr Pfister’s testimony is doubly valuable
as he has no theoretical axe to grind.
p- 271. ‘Reincarnation ’—‘ παλιγγενεσία. See now Dr Torgny Segerstedt’s
important article on metempsychosis, Sjdlavandringslirans ursprung, in Le
Monde Orientale, Archive pour |’Histoire et l’Ethnographie de Europe orientale
et de l’Asie, Uppsala, 1910, pp. 43—-87, known only to me at present through the
review in Rev. de l’Histoire des Religions, ux. 1911, p. 215. In the early
Upanishads the dead go the moon, which then waxes; when the moon wanes the
dead are reincarnated on the earth, a doctrine strangely akin to that of Plutarch,
noted infra, p. 511. The custom of carrying the bride over the threshold is,
according to Dr Segerstedt, connected with the burial of ancestors below the
threshold and also anthropophagy of dead kin. The dead here and in many other
customs are regarded as sources of fertility.
p. 333, note 1. ‘The death and resurrection mime.’ For analogies in the
Rig Veda see Dr L. von Schroeder’s illuminating Mysteriwm und Mimus im Rig Veda,
1908. For the analogy of the spring Zagmuk festival see Dr C. Fries, Das
Zagmukfest auf Scheria und der Ursprung des Dramas (Mitt. d. Vorderasiatischen
Gesellschaft, 1910), which contains much valuable material and many suggestions,
though I am not yet satisfied that his main contention is established.
p- 373, note 1. ‘How Prometheus tricked Zeus.’ See Ada Thomsen, Der Trug
des Prometheus, in Archiv f. Religionswiss. x11. 1909, p. 460.
p. 479, 1. 8. ‘M. Bergson has shown.’ See now L’Intuition Philosophique,
Revue de Métaphysique, x1x. 1911, pp. 809—827.
p. 486, note 3. ‘M. Durkheim’s views.’ See now G. Davy, La Sociologie de
M. Durkheim in Rey. Philosophique, xxxvi. pp. 42—71 and 160—185.
CHAPTER I.
THE HYMN OF THE KOURETES.
Ζεῦ TANTWN ἀρχά,
πάντων APHTWP,
Ζεῦ, COl πτέλλττω TAYTAN YMNWN ἀρχἄάν.
Zeus, the Father of Gods and Men, was_born, men fabled,
in the island of Crete. So far there was substantial agreement.
It may be that this uniformity reflects some half-unconscious
tradition that in Crete were the beginnings of that faith and
practice which if it cannot be called Hellenic religion was at least.
the substratum on which Hellenic religion was based. No one
now thinks he can have an adequate knowledge of Greek art with-
out a study of the Mycenaean and Minoan periods, and, since the
roots of religion strike as deep as or deeper than the roots of art,
no one now will approach the study of the Olympian Zeus without
7
seeking for the origin of the god in his reputed birth-place.
By the most fortunate of chances, at Palaikastro on the eastern
coast of Crete, just the very material needed for this study has come
to light, a ritual Hymn commemoratin 1
Zeus. The Hymn itself is, as will be seen, late, but it embodies
very early materia], material indeed so primitive that we seem at —
last to get back to the very beginnings of Greek religion, to a
way of thinking that is not in our sense religious at all, but that
demonstrably leads on to religious faith and practice. This
primitive mode of faith and practice it is, I believe, of the first
importance that we should grasp and as fully as may be realise.
It lets us see myth as well as ritual in the making, it will even
disclose certain elements that lie deep embedded in early
Greek philosophy. The new, or at least partially new, outlook
opened by the Hymn is easy to misconceive, and, in the first flush
Η. 1
2 The Hymn of the Kouretes [ CH.
of discovery, easy perhaps to over-emphasize. It needs patient
scrutiny and some effort of the historical imagination. To such
a scrutiny and to conclusions arising from it the following chapters
will be devoted.
Before the meaning of the Hymn is discussed the circumstances
of its finding must be made clear. This Hymn, about which our
main enquiry into the origins of Greek religion will centre, was
not found at Knossos nor even at Phaestos, places whose names °
are now in every man’s mouth, but at the remote seaport town of
Palaikastro, a name familiar only to archaeologists. If Palaikastro
should ever be a household word to classical scholars in general, it
will be as the place of the finding of this Hymn. The marshy
plain out of which Palaikastro rises is almost certainly the ancient
Heleia, known to us through inscriptions! as a tract of land over
which the dwellers in Itanos and Hierapytna disputed. Near to
Heleia these same inscriptions tell us lay the sanctuary of
Diktaean Zeus.
Qur_Fiymn bids ‘the god _come to _Dikte. The two great
_-mountain peaks of Crete, Ida and Dikte, both claimed to be the
birth-place of Zeus. Dikte, though less splendid and dominant,
has the earlier and better claim. Hesiod’, our earliest authority,
places the birth-story at Lyktos on the north-western spur of
Dikte.
To Lyktos first she came, bearing the child
As black night swiftly fell.
There is a shade of suspicious emphasis on the ‘first, as of one
whose orthodoxy is impeached. When the glory of Cnossos over-
shadowed and overwhelmed lesser and earlier sanctities, Ida was
necessarily supreme, and it required some courage to support the
claims of Dikte. Diodorus? with true theological tact combines
the two stories: the god was born indeed on Dikte but educated
by the Kouretes on Mount Ida.
1 Dittenberger, 11. 929, line 37 Ἰτάνιοι πόλιν οἰκοῦντες ἐπιθαλάσσιον χώραν ἔχοντες
προγονικὴν γειτονοῦσαν τῶι τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Δικταίου ἱερῶι, and see lines 45 and 65.
2 Hes. Theog. 481
ἔνθα μὲν ἵκτο φέρουσα θοὴν διὰ νύκτα μέλαιναν
πρώτην ἐς Λύκτον.
ὅν. 70 κατὰ δὲ τὴν Ἴδην, ἐν ἣ συνέβη τραφῆναι τὸν θεόν.. ἀνδρωθέντα δ᾽ αὐτόν
φασι πρῶτον πόλιν κτίσαι περὶ τὴν Δίκταν, ὅπου καὶ τὴν γένεσιν αὐτοῦ γενέσθαι
μυθολογοῦσιν...
7
BL
1 Discovery at Palaikastro 3
But Palaikastro, as a glance at the map! in Fig. 1 will show,
is not Dikte—not even near Dikte. All eastern Crete with its
towns of Itanos and Praisos, where dwelt the Eteokretans, and
the modern sites of Zakro and Palaikastro are cut off from the
mountain mass of Dikte by the low narrow isthmus? that joins
δή
200th, tury πες εἰ Γ Krasse8
“κι μεῖς BBR, 2 wd sp pte ian
Fic. 1. Map of Crete.
the trading towns of Minoa (Gournia) and Hierapytna (Hiera-
petra). How comes it then that in remote Palaikastro Diktaean
Zeus is worshipped, that in Palaikastro the ruins of his temple
have come to light? This brings us to the question of chronology.
(Strabo!) in discussing the origin of Cretan institutions makes
an interesting remark. ‘Among the Cretans,’ he says, ‘when
their warlike cities, and especially that of Knossos, were ravaged,
certain of their customs were kept up among the inhabitants of
Lyttos and Gortyna and other of the lesser towns rather than by
the Knossians. Here we have much history in a nutshell.
Conspicuous cities pay the toll of their splendour. Palaikastro is
but a lesser town (πολίχνιον): there we may hope to find customs
surviving that had died down at Knossos.
In the Hymn before us just such customs are enshrined. The
actual stele was engraved in the second or third century after
1 Reproduced with slight modifications from B.S.A. vii. p, 287, Fig. 1.
2 Strabo, x. 475 πλατυτάτη δὲ κατὰ τὸ μέσον ἐστί, πάλιν δ᾽ ἐντεῦθεν εἰς στενώτερον
τοῦ προτέρου συμπίπτουσιν ἰσθμὸν αἱ ἠόνες περὶ ἑξήκοντα σταδίων, τὸν ἀπὸ Μινῴας
τῆς Λυττίων els ἱΤἹεράπυτναν καὶ τὸ Λιβυκὸν πέλαγος.
3 Strabo, x. 481 κακωθεισῶν τῶν πόλεων καὶ μάλιστα τῆς Κνωσσίων, τῶν πολεμικῶν "
μεῖναι δέ τινα τῶν νομίμων παρὰ Λυττίοις καὶ Τορτυνίοις καὶ ἄλλοις τισὶ πολιχνίοις
μᾶλλον ἢ map ἐκείνοις. Clement, citing as his authority the Nostoi of Antikleides,
says that human sacrifice was offered by the Lyctii, a Cretan tribe (Book mr. 4).
1—2
4 The Hymn of the Kouretes [ OH.
Christ?; that is clear from the very cursive character of the letters.
But the poem inscribed is much earlier, probably about 300 B.c.
We have oddly enough two copies on the back and face of the
same stone. It seems to have presented serious difficulties to the
stone-mason. The first copy whether from another stone or from
a MS. was so faulty that it had to be redone. This looks as if
matter and language were unfamiliar. For some reason which
now escapes us, an old ritual hymn was revived. How far it was —
rewritten we cannot now say. Its material is, as will presently be
shown, primaeval ; we cannot date it, it is νόμιμον.
The cave on Dikte where Zeus was born has been identified
and_ thoroughly excavated’. It is a large double cavern about
500 feet above the modern village of Psychro in the upland of
Lasithi. Lyttos, of which the ruins still remain, lies on one spur
of the north-western peak of Dikte (Lasithi); on the opposite spur
is the Psychro cave. In the lowest stratum of the deposit in the
cave is found Kamares ware, above that Mycenaean ware, and so
on in regular sequence to the geometric period, 1.6. about the
eighth century B.c. After that, save in quite sporadic cases the
votive offerings cease. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion
that the cult in the cave came to anend. Dikte it is probable was
superseded by Ida. In a treaty* between Lyttos and Olous, Zeus
is sworn by, but his title is Βιδάτας ‘Zeus of Ida? not Δικταῖος.
On his own mountain ‘ He of Dikte’ was superseded.
Central Crete in her public documents swears by Zeus of Ida,
but a little group of cities in the remote eastern district held to
the earlier cult. Itanos, the northernmost of the towns on the
east coast, was said to have been founded by one of the Kouretes.
In an inscription‘ found on the modern site (Erimopolis) the
citizens swear first of all by Zeus Diktaios and Hera and the gods
in Dikte. At Eteokretan Praisos, Strabo*, quoting Staphylos,
says there was the sanctuary of Diktaean Zeus. Athenaeus®
1 See Prof. Bosanquet, B.S.A. xv. 1908—1909, p. 347, and Prof. Gilbert Murray,
. 864.
2 For full description see Mr Ὁ. G. Hogarth, The Dictaean Cave, B.S.A. v1.
p. 94 and especially p. 115.
3 C.I.A. τι. 549, and see R. C. Bosanquet, op. cit. p. 349.
4 Blass (in Collitz-Bechtel, m12.), 5058 [Ta]ée ὥμοσαν τοι Ἴτάνιοι πά[ντες] Δία
Δικταῖον καὶ Ἥραν καὶ θ[ εο]ὺς τοὺς ἐν Δίκται xal....
5 Strabo, x. 475... ὧν (τῶν ᾿Ετεοκρήτων) εἶναι πολίχνιον Ipacov ὅπου τὸ τοῦ Δικταίου
Διὸς ἱερόν. For an inscription of Praisos in which ‘ Diktaios’ may be with great
probability restored see Prof. Bosanquet, op. cit. p. 350.
6 Athen. 1x. 375, quoting Agathocles, Mu@evovow ἐν Κρήτῃ γενέσθαι τὴν Διὸς
1 Zeus of Dikte 5
notes that the Praisians sacrifice to a sow, and he connects the
custom with the ‘unspeakable sacrifice’ which took place on
Dikte in commemoration of the fact that Zeus was suckled by
a sow. Settlers from Hierapytna! take their oath by two Zeuses,
Zeus Oratrios and Zeus Diktaios.
It is clear then that though in classical days central Crete was
dominated by the Zeus of Ida, Zeus of Dikte?, whose worship went
on during the bronze and iron ages in the great cave at Lyttos,
was a living power in the eastern and especially the north-eastern
extremity of Crete.
Zeus of Ida might and did dominate central Crete, but in the
eastern and especially the north-eastern extremities Zeus of Dikte,
Zeus of the Birth-cave, lived on in classical and even post-classical
days. His was a name to swear by and at Palaikastro he had
a temple and a precinct. It is this temple that has been recovered
for us by the excavations of the British School* carried on in
1902—1905. These excavations have abundantly shown that in
the third Late-Minoan period (after 1500 B.c.) Palaikastro was the
seat of a ruling prince, after Knossos, Phaistos and Gournia had
been destroyed. Not a stone of the temple was standing, but
from architectural fragments found scattered on the site some
notion of its size and its decoration can be gleaned. The temenos
wall‘ can be traced for about thirty-six metres. The temple stood
not as the Hellenic temples of Troy and Mycenae at the summit of
the hill, but on a platform artificially levelled, about half-way
down. The bulk of the votive offerings belong to the archaic
period and show that the sanctuary was in full prosperity from the
seventh to the fifth century B.c. Bronze shields of the same style
and date as those found in the cave on Mt. Ida have also come to
light.
τέκνωσιν ἐπὶ τῆς Δίκτης ἐν 7 καὶ ἀπόῤῥητος γίνεται θυσία.. Πραίσιοι δὲ καὶ ἱερὰ ῥέζουσιν
bi καὶ αὕτη προτελὴς αὐτοῖς ἡ θυσία νενόμισται.
1 Blass, 5039 ᾿Ομνύω τὰν Ἑστίαν καὶ Ζῆνα ᾿᾽Οράτριον καὶ Ζῆνα Δικταῖον.
2 It is even probable that the name of Dikte was transferred to one of the peaks,
perhaps the cone of Modhi near Praisos and Palaikastro. Strabo expressly states
that Dikte is only 100 stadia from Salmonion, the north-east promontory of Crete,
and that it is not ‘as Aratus alleges’ near Ida, but distant from it 1000 stadia
towards the east. Aratus is probably describing the old Dikte of the cave. Strabo
must intend some more easterly peak. The conjecture is due to Prof. Bosanquet,
op. cit. p. 351.
3 See Excavations at Palaikastro, 1v. B.S.A. xt. p. 299, Pl. rx.—xv.
4 This temenos wall is mentioned in an inscription (Dittenberger, τι. 929, 1. 75)
τὸ δὲ ἱερὸν καὶ τὸν περίβολον αὐτοῦ ἰδίοις σημείοις Kal περιοικοδομήμασιν περιεχόμενον.
6 The Hymn of the Kouretes [ OH.
The three main fragments of the inscribed Hymn were found
a little to the south of the temple in a deep pocket of earth and
stones which had been dug right down into the Minoan strata,
probably in some recent search for building stones. The missing
pieces were carefully searched for over the whole field of excavation,
but they have either been destroyed or carried away as building
material. They may still come to light built into churches or
houses in the neighbourhood. More than half the stele is missing,
but, thanks to the fact that there are two copies of the text back
and front, not nearly half of the text. One of the fragments, that
which contains the opening lines in the fair copy, is reproduced in
Fig. 2.
ea
LWMELICTEKOYPEX AI PE MOIKPO
N ElETTA N KPATECTANOICBEBAKE C
AAIM ON WNATW MENOCAIKTANES
ENIAYTONEPTIE KAIFETASIMOANA
TAN T Olk PEK OME NTTAK TIGMEIZAN |
TECAMAYAOICINK AICTA NTE CAEIAOMEN
\EONAM IB WM ONOYEPKH = IWMErIC
ae eV EXAIPE MOIK PONE ΙΕ MA NKPA
“ WN Ar WME NOCAIKTANE(EN I
ENOATAPCE MAI L
EACAABON Te
Fic. 2. Fragment of Hymn of the Kouretes.
For what precise occasion our Hymn was written we shall
probably never know, but the fact that it was found near a temple
of Diktaean Zeus in a place remote from Dikte, the significant
fact too of the double copy, show clearly that the Hymn is
essentially a revival, and that we may expect to find in it fossilised
ways of thinking. This will emerge more clearly in the sequel.
We must first consider the general structure and character of the
Hymn. The text? is as follows.
1 As restored by Prof. Gilbert Murray. See B.S.A. xv. 1908—1909, p. 357.
1] Hymn of the Kouretes 7
RESTORED TEXT.
lo,
Méyiote Κοῦρε, χαῖρέ μοι,
Κρόνιε, παγκρωτὲς γάνους,
βέβακες
ὅ δαιμόνων ἁγώμενος"
Aixtay ἐς ἐνιαυτὸν ἕρ-
πε καὶ γέγαθι μολπᾷ,
Τάν τοι κρέκομεν πακτίσι aaa, CE ee a
μείξαντες ap’ αὐλοῖσιν, seo ΤΈΣ τς
10 καὶ στάντες ἀείδομεν τεὸν ΠΕ ΤῸ ΒΓ
ἀμφὶ βωμὸν εὐερκῆ. ee eS, ere
Ἰώ, κιτ.λ.
"EvOa yap σέ, maid auBpotov, εν —~ CG 4+-uVu
ἀσπιδ[ηφόροι τροφῆες] ἐπέχει es
1ὅ παρ Ῥέας λαβόντες πόδα ἄπ ΚΣ ΤΙ
κρούοντες ἀπέκρυψιαν). , ae
"Te, «TX.
TRANSLATION.
‘To, Kouros most Great, I give thee hail, Kronian, Lord of all
that is wet and gleaming, thou art come at the head of thy
Daimones. To Dikte for the Year, Oh, march, and rejoice in the
dance and song,
That we make to thee with harps and pipes mingled together,
and sing as we come to a stand at thy well-fenced altar.
To, ete.
For here the shielded Nurturers took thee, a child immortal,
from Rhea, and with noise of beating feet hid thee away.
To, ete.
8 The Hymn of the Kouretes [ CH.
See ae
RESTORED TEXT (continued).
20
. τᾶ])ς Karas *Ao(d)s vy ---
"To, KT.
[Ὧραι δὲ βρ]ύον κατῆτος —--vuv υ- 5
καὶ Bpoto(v)s Δίκα κατῆχε τ - --:
25 [πάντα τ᾽ ἄγρι᾽ ἄμφεπ]ε So τς ΞΕ -
a φίλολβος Εἰρήνα. σῷ BS =e
"Ilo, κ.τ.λ.
“A[ww θόρε, κἐς ctaluvia, το τὺ
καὶ Oop εὔποκ᾽ ἐΐς ποίμνια, Ζυ--ὦ :--᾿οὧῦυ
50. κἐς λήϊ]α καρπῶν θόρε, -οὦυ --οὐ
Kés τελεσ[φόύρους σιμβλοῦξι!. πὸ +-—
Ἴω, K.T.X.
Θόρε κἐς] πόληας ἁμῶν, κι 4-040
κἐς ποντοφύόρο(υ)ὴς νᾶας, +-uv + -¥
35 θόρε κἐς [veovs πολ]είτας, ώυπτξ +u-¥
θόρε Kes Θέμιν κ[αλαν]. Su-u +-=—
TRANSLATION (continued).
of fair dawn ?
To, ete.
And the Horai began to be fruitful year by year (?) and
Diké to possess mankind, and all wild living things were held
about by wealth-loving Peace.
lo, ete.
To us also leap for full jars, and leap for fleecy flocks, and leap
for fields of fruit, and for hives to bring increase.
To, ete.
Leap for our Cities, and leap for our sea-borne ships, and leap
for our young citizens and for goodly Themis.’
1 Ritual Structure of the Hymn 9
Our Hymn is obviously a Hymn of Invocation of a ritual type
fairly well known’, though the instances extant are unfortunately
rare. It opens with a refrain in ordinary lyric (di-iambic)? metre
and this refrain is repeated before each of the (di-trochaic) stanzas.
The structure of the Hymn is of importance and should be clearly
realised. It falls into three parts.
First we have in the refrain the actual invocation; the god
is addressed by his various titles and instructed how, where and
when to come—he is invoked as ‘Kouros most Great, as
‘Kronian’, as ‘Lord of all that is wet and gleaming*’—it is
1 Our earliest instance is the invocation of the Bull-god by the women of Elis;
the Delphic Paean to Dithyrambos presents a later and closer analogy. See p. 205
and also my Prolegomena, pp. 438 and 417.
2 I call the metre of the refrain iambic because this seems simplest. But of
course the difference between iambics and trochees is often only nominal.
Wilamowitz considers it more consonant with the rest of the hymn to scan
trochaically :
i-w, μέγιστε Koipe, Se το
χαῖρέ μοι, Kpovece, (sic lapis) Site ee ΒθῸ
παγκρατὲς γάνος, BéBakes See es SE
δαιμόνων ἁγώμενος, Ὡς -πὸς--
Δίκταν [ἐς] ἐνιαυτὸν ἕρπε ne a =
καὶ γέγαθι μολπᾷ, ae
This involves treating i~ ὦ as=a cretic, keeping the very questionable form Kpévece
(Kpovetov=temple of Kronos in Pap. Grenf. 1. 11 is of course different): and
deleting ἐς before ἐνιαυτόν. Otherwise it has great advantages. (G.M.)
5. The order of the words is, I think, conclusive against taking μέγιστε Κοῦρε
Κρόνιε together, ‘ greatest Kronian youth,’ ‘ greatest son of Kronos.’ (G.M.)
4 Both reading and translation are doubtful. Wilamowitz and Mr A. Β. Cook
independently suggest γάνος. The stone has γάνους three times, which is strong
evidence of what the stone-cutter meant to write, and is not really weakened by
the fact that in one case the Y is crowded in between the O and Σ, as if it had
been omitted and then inserted; παγκρατὲς γάνος, ‘Almighty Gleam’ or ‘ Radiance,’
would be simple and good: but παγκρατὲς γάνους seems to be quite good Greek for
‘Lord of all γάνος. Any compound of -κρατὴς would take the genitive, like
«ἐγκρατής, ἀκρατής. Cf. the gen. with παμμήτωρ, παναίτιος, πάνδοκος.
But what is the meaning of ydvos? The Etymologicum Magnum has a gloss:
γάνος: ὕδωρ χάρμα φῶς λίπος αὐγή λευκότης λαμπηδών. “γάνος: water joy light
grease gleam candor fulgor.’ (I am reduced to Latin for the last two equivalents.)
It starts with ‘water’ and it ends with ‘light’ or ‘gleam.’ I translate ‘wet and
gleaming.’
It has been suggested by Mr Cook that perhaps the Kouros is only Lord of the
Bright Sky, like a Sun God, and that ydvos is hoc sublime candens, The Aether.
Now it is quite true that γάνος never means simply water, without any ‘gleam,’
while instances can easily be found in which it means only ‘gleam’ or ‘glory’
with no sense of wetness, e.g. Aesch. dg. 579 λάφυρα---δόμοις ἐπασσάλευσαν ἀρχαῖον
γάνος. If the context required it we could certainly leave out the wetness. But
(1) the wetness is normally present: it is κρηναῖον γάνος, ᾿Ασωποῦ γάνος, βότρυος
or ἀμπέλου γάνος, ξουθῆς μελίσσης γάνος, γάνος ᾿Ηριδανοῖο and the like; and (2) the
context here seems to me not to reject but rather to welcome the connotation
of moisture. It is not mere sunlight that the Kouros brings; it is fruitful Spring
as a whole, with dew and showers and young sap as well as sunshine. T'dvos in its
ordinary sense exactly hits off the required meaning; see pp. 173—175. (G.M.)
΄
i
10 The Hymn of the Kouretes [08]
in these capacities he is wanted and expected. He is further —
bidden to come at the head of his Daimones, he is to come to —
Dikte and for the year, he is to come marching and rejoicing. So |
far for the god. :
Next by an easy transition we have a statement of the ritual ©
performed. The god is adjured to rejoice in the dance and song
which the worshippers make to him ‘ with harps and pipes mingled
together, and which they sing as they come to a stand at his
well-fenced altar. We have clearly a ritual dance accompanying
a song. The reason, or rather the occasion, of this dance and song
is next stated. We have in fact what would usually be called an
‘aetiological’ myth. The worshippers dance round the altar of
the Kouros because ‘ here the shielded Nurturers took the Kouros,
an immortal child from Rhea, and with noise of beating feet hid
him away.’
Next follows a lamentable gap. When the text re-emerges —
we are midway in the third factor, the statement of the benefits
which resulted from the events recounted in the myth, benefits
which clearly it is expected will be renewed in the annual restate- —
ment and ritual re-enactment of this myth. The coming Seasons
are to be fruitful, Diké is to possess mankind, the Kouros by
leaping in conjunction with his worshippers is to bring fertility
for flocks and fields, prosperity to cities and sea-borne ships, and
young citizens.
The full gist of the Hymn will not appear till all three factors ©
have been examined in detail, but already, at the first superficial
glance, we note certain characteristics of a Hymn of Invocation
that may help to its understanding. The god invoked is not —
Present, ποῦ there in 6. temple reads ΒΒ ΘΘϑϑιννι
later see his very existence, depends on the ritual that invokes
hima. —Moreover-the-words addressed to him are not, as we should ©
expect and find in the ordinary worship addressed to an Olympian,
a prayer, but an injunction, a command, ‘come, ‘leap.’ Strangest
of all, the god it would seem performs the same ritual as his
i
{
. worshippers, and it is y performing that ritual that he is a eto
confer his blessings. He leaps when his attendant worshippers
leap and the land is fertile. All this as will later appear lands
us in a region rather of magic than religion.
ey ee
| The Invocation 11
It will now be necessary to examine in detail the three? factors
of the Hymn—the introductory refrain, the aetiological? myth, and
what for convenience we may call ‘the resultant blessings.’ The
gist of the ritual will be found in the second factor, the aetiological
myth, but we begin with the first.
1. THE INVOCATION.
Μέγιστε Κοῦρε, xaipé μοι,
Κρόνιε.
The opening words are enough to startle the seven mytho-
logical sleepers. From the circumstances of the finding of the
Hymn in the temple of Diktaean Zeus and from the title Kronian,
it is clear that Zeus* the Father of gods and men, is addressed
as ‘Kouros most Great, greatest of grown-up youths. To our
unaccustomed ears the title sounds strange and barely reverent.
‘Father,’ still more ‘Mother, and even ‘Babe’ are to us holy
words, but a full-grown youth has to us no connotation of
sanctity. Moreover the words Full-grown Youth go ill with
‘Kronian, a title of reverend association. How these two
dissonant titles come to be unequally yoked together will appear
in the sequel.
When the Hymn was first discovered, the opening words as was
natural at once arrested attention, but—so crusted and stiffened
is the mind with traditional thinking—the full significance of
the title could not at first be seen. Zeus the Father was firmly
rooted in our minds, so it was natural at first to think, here we
have the young Zeus, Zeus the Divine Son. The Christian
religion has accustomed us to a god as Son. But it should at
once be noted, Kouros is not vids, not son, nor is it even παῖς,
child. Kouros connotes‘ no relationship to a parent, it is simply
1 The first two factors only will be examined at this point; the third factor, the
‘resultant blessings and their relation to Themis,’ is reserved for chapter x.
51 use the current term ‘aetiological’ provisionally, for convenience. Its
inadequacy will be shown later, p. 329.
3 Τὸ should, however, be definitely noted at the outset, for the fact is of cardinal
importance, that nowhere, neither in the refrain nor in the body of the poem, does
the actual name Zeus appear.
4 The word κοῦρος is of course often used as the rough equivalent of παῖς or vids,
ef. Eur. El. 463 τῷ Μαίας ἀγροτῆρι κούρῳ, but I suspect that in this and similar
passages it covers an earlier and different relation.
12 The Hymn of the Kouretes a
young man just come to maturity. Hence it is that Kouros with
a capital is in English practically untranslatable save by peri- —
phrasis. ‘Greatest of Youths’ is intolerably clumsy, ‘Prince of —
Youths, which perhaps might serve, introduces an alien association.
Nothing is more stimulating to enquiry than an untranslatable
word, since underlying it we may hope to find something new,
unknown. We have no sacred Kouros now, we have got to
rediscover what caused the sanctity of the Kouros'. We shall find
it in the aetiological myth, but before we examine this, another
statement in the Invocation yet remains and one scarcely less
surprising.
The Kouros, the young Zeus, is hailed as coming ‘at the head
of his davmones’ (δαιμόνων ayepevos). This brings us to a
curious and, for our investigation, cardinal point. Nowhere save
in this Hymn do we hear of Zeus with attendant davmones?. He
stands always alone, aloof, approached with awe, utterly delimited
from his worshippers. One god only, Dionysos, and he but ἃ
half-bred Olympian, is attended by daimones. We can scarcely
picture Dionysos without his attendant thiasos, be they holy
women, Maenads, be they the revel rout of Satyrs. We think of
this thiasos of daimones as attendants, inferior persons, pale
reflections, emanations as it were from the god himself. It seems
appropriate that he should be surrounded by attendants (προπό-
ov): superior persons, high officials, always are. If this be all, how
strange, how even unseemly is it that Zeus, the supreme god, —
Father of Gods and Men, should have no thiasos, no escort. The
Hymn brings us face to face with the fact that Zeus once had a
thiasos, once when he was a young man, a Kouros. When he
grew up to be the Father, it seems, he lost his thiasos and has
gone about unattended ever since. If we can once seize the
meaning of this thiasos and its relation to the god we shall have
gone far to understand the making of Greek theology.
1 Some survivals of initiation-rites and of the Kouros idea will be considered in
chapters rx. and x. ε
* Mr Cook kindly reminds me that this rule has one singular and beautiful
exception. In the Phaedrus of Plato (240 Ε) we read ὁ μὲν δὴ μέγας ἡγεμὼν ἐν οὐρανᾷ
Δεὺς.. πρῶτος πορεύεται...τῷ δ᾽ ἕπεται στρατιὰ θεῶν τε καὶ δαιμόνων....θείου χοροῦ.... The
passage reads almost like a reminiscence of a ritual-procession similar to that headed
by the greatest Kouros (δαιμόνων aydpevos).
'
;
Sse et ἐς
1] The Aetiological Myth 13
2. THE AETIOLOGICAL ΜΎΤΗ.
The presence of the Kouros is confidently claimed and with it
all the blessings to flocks and herds that attend his coming. The
god will come, 1s come, to Dikte for the year and the produce of
the year; and the reason is clearly stated. The worshippers ‘come
to a stand’ at the altar and there recite and probably enact the
myth.
For here the shielded Nurturers took thee, a child immortal,
and with noise of beating feet hid thee away.
The text at this point is unfortunately defective, but enough
remains to make it clear, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the
story told is the familiar myth of the birth of Zeus and his nurture
by the Kouretes2» The myth is obviously ‘aetiological.’ The
worshippers of the Kouros say they invoke the Kouros because of
the myth (ἔνθα yap). We may of course safely invert the order
of things, the myth arose out of or rather together with the ritual,
not the ritual out of the myth.
The myth ofthe birth of Zeus and its ritual enactment is
recounted by<Strabof as follows. After mentioning the mysteries
of Demeter and Dionysos, he says, ‘These things in general and
the sacred ceremonies of Zeus in particular, remap ἐξ τ ἢ
orgiastic rites and with assistance of attendants (προπόλοι) similar
to the Satyrs that attend Dionysos. These attendants they call
Kouretes ; they are certain young men who perform armed move-
ments accompanied by dancing. They allege as their reason the
myth about the birth of Zeus, in which eee Set ee
his habit of swallowing his children immediately a mth, and
Rhea trying to conceal her birth-pangs and to get the new-born
ch ont ohne Way and doing hor inost to save it. With a
view to this she enlists the help of the Kouretes. They surround
the goddess and with drums and with the din of other instruments
1 Prof. Murray writes, op. cit. Ὁ. 359 “““1,. 14 ἀσπιδ[ηφόροι Κούρητες] Bosanquet.’
The sense seems certain but the metrical license -- - - -- for -- ~ -- = is doubtful
and does not occur elsewhere in the hymn. Hence I prefer τροφῆες: domld[ecct |
Kov ~ pyres] however would correspond neatly with μείξαντες ἅμ᾽ | αὐ ~ Notow.”’
2 In the similar ritual at Ephesus as Prof. Murray points out (op. cit. p. 359)
the Kouretes in like fashion ‘come to a stand’ round the altar. See Strabo,
p- 640, init. ὄρος, ὅπου στάντας φασὶ τοὺς Κούρητας τῷ ψόφῳ τῶν ὅπλων ἐκπλῆξαι.... For
particulars of this ritual see p. 246.
3 x. 468... προστησάμενοι μῦθον τὸν περὶ τῆς τοῦ Διὸς γενέσεως, ἐν ᾧ τὸν μὲν Kpdvov
εἰσάγουσιν εἰθισμένον καταπίνειν τὰ τέκνα κ.τ.Δ.
14 The Hymn of the Kouretes [CH.
[
try to strike terror into Kronos and to escape notice whilst trying d
to filch away the child. The child is then given over to them to
be reared with the same care by which it was rescued.’
A little earlier in his discussion of the functions of the Kouretes
he says! they are ‘ daimones or attendants (προπόλοι) on the gods, —
similar to Satyroi, Seilenoi, Bacchoi and Tityroi, and this 15
expressly stated by those who hand down the tradition of Cretan
and Phrygian ceremonies, these being involved with certain sacred
rites, some of them mystical, others relating to the child-nurture
of Zeus and the oggiastic rites of the Mother of_the Gods in
Phrygia and in the region about the-Trajan Tae a ἢ
Strabo thought that the child reared and protected by the
Kouretes was Zeus, but our ritual Hymn knows him only as
Kouros. It need not therefore surprise us that the Kouros
appears elsewhere with other names. He is sometimes Dionysos, —
sometimes Zagreus.
The mysteries of Dionysos (Zagreus) are, says Clement of
Alexandria, ‘utterly inhuman. He then proceeds to recount
them. Utterly inhuman they are as Clement understood or
rather utterly misunderstood them: very human indeed, social and —
civilising through and through if my interpretation be correct, so
human and social that a very considerable portion of humanity
thinks it well to practise analogous rites to-day. |
Let Clement? tell his story:
‘The mysteries of Dionysos are wholly inhuman, for while he
was still a child and the Kouretes were dancing round him their —
armed dance the Titans came stealthily upon him and lured him
with childish toys and tore him limb from limb while he was yet
a babe. Thus does the Thracian Orpheus, the poet of the Rite
recount.
The cones, the rhombos and the limb-bending toys,
And the fair gold apples of the Hesperides.’
1 x, 466 ...rovovrous yap τινας δαίμονας ἢ προπόλους θεῶν τοὺς Κουρῆτας φασὶν oi
παραδόντες τὰ Κρητικὰ καὶ τὰ Φρύγια, ἱερουργίαις τισιν ἐμπεπλεγμένα ταῖς μὲν μυστικαῖς
ταῖς δ᾽ ἄλλαις περί τε τὴν τοῦ Διὸς παιδοτροφίαν τὴν ἐν Ἱζρήτῃ καὶ τοὺς τῆς μητρὸς τῶν
θεῶν ὀργιασμοὺς ἐν τῇ Φρυγίᾳ καὶ τοῖς περὶ τὴν Ἴδην τὴν Τρωικὴν τόποις.
2 Abel, Orphica, 196 τὰ γὰρ Διονύσου μυστήρια τέλεον ἀπάνθρωπα, ὃν εἰσέτι παῖδα
ὄντα, ἐνόπλῳ κινήσει περιχορευόντων ἹΚουρήτων, δόλῳ δὲ ὑποδύντων Τιτάνων, ἀπατήσαντες
παιδαριώδεσιν ἀθύρμασιν, οὗτοι δὴ οἱ Τιτᾶνες διέσπασαν, ἔτι νηπίαχον ὄντα, ὡς ὁ τῆς
τελετῆς ποιητὴς ᾿Ορφεύς φησιν ὁ Θρᾷκιος.
κῶνος καὶ ῥόμβος καὶ παίγνια καμπεσίγυια
μῆλά τε χρύσεα καλὰ παρ᾽ Ἑσπερίδων λιγυφώνων.
| The Mysteries of Zagreus 15
Other authorities add other details. The wicked Titans who
stole the child away were painted over with white clay, gypsum?
(ritavos). Moreover, and this is of cardinal importance, there is
a sequel to the story. After the child has been made away with
(ἀφανισμός), swallowed by his father (texvofayia) or torn to
pieces (διασπαραγμός), he comes back to life again: there is a
coming to life again (avaBiwous), a resurrection (πωλιγγενεσία)",
how and when we are not told. Some said* the child’s heart was
saved and then put back into a figure made of gypsum. In some
versions‘ the wicked giants or white-clay-men are struck® with
lightning by Zeus and burnt to ashes and from these ashes sprang
the human race.
The cardinal elements of the story whether told of the infant
Zeus, Dionysos, Zagreus or the Kouros are:
(1) A child is taken from his mother and carefully tended by
men called Kouretes. To guard him they dance over him an
armed dance (παιδοτροφία).
(2) The child is hidden, made away with, killed, dismembered
‘by men sometimes called Titans, ‘ white-clay-men’ (ἀφανισμός,
σπαραγμός).
(3) The child reappears, is brought to life again. Sometimes
this is effected by the white-clay-men, sometimes the child
reappears as a white-clay-man himself, his heart being put into
a figure of gypsum (ἀναβίωσις, παλυγγενεσία).
Of these elements only the first, the Child-Nurture, appears in
the Hymn. This need not surprise us. Literature, even hieratic
literature, tends to expurgate savage material, the death and
1 Harpocrat. s.v. ἀπομάττων : ws ἄρα οἱ Τιτᾶνες τὸν Διόνυσον ἐλυμήναντο γύψῳ
καταπλασάμενοι.
2 Plut. De Is. et Os. xxxv. and De Hi ap. Delph. 1x. Διόνυσον δὲ καὶ Zaypéa καὶ
Νυκτέλιον καὶ ᾿Ισοδαίτην αὐτὸν ὀνομάζουσι, καὶ φθοράς τινας καὶ ἀφανισμούς, καὶ τὰς
ἀναβιώσεις καὶ παλιγγενεσίας, οἰκεῖα ταῖς εἰρημέναις μεταβολαῖς αἰνίγματα καὶ μυθεύματα
παραίνουσι.
3. Firmicus Mat. De Err. Prof. Relig. 6 ...1maginem eius ex gypso plastico opere
perfecit et cor pueri, ex quo facinus fuerat sorore deferente detectum, in ea parte
plastae conlocat, qua pectoris fuerant lineamenta formata. Possibly the imago
may have been like the παίγνια καμπεσίγυια and similar in character to the jointed
terracotta dolls with movable arms and legs, found in Greek tombs. :
4 The sources for all these details are collected in Abel’s Orphica, pp. 224 ff. and
in Lobeck’s Aglaophamus, pp. 553 ff. The Zagreus story is told in minute detail in
the Dionysiaka of Nonnus, vi. 155 ff.
5 The thunder-element in the story and the myth of the swallowing of the
thunder-stone by Kronos will be discussed in chapter 111.
16 The Hymn of the Kouretes [ CH.
resurrection ritual was well enough as a mystery, but in the third ‘
century A.D. not for publication even in a ritual Hymn.
In the study of Greek religion it is all important that the —
clear distinction should be realized between the comparatively
permanent lemon’ ine ie ee ee
character of the myth. In the case before us we have a ut
Titual, the elements of which we have disentangled—the armed
dance over the child, the mimic death and rebirth; but the myth
shifts ; it is told variously of Zagreus, Dionysos, Zeus, and there is
every variety of detail as to how the child is mimetically killed ©
and how the resurrection is effected. To understand the religious
intent of the whole complex it is all important to seize on the
permanent ritual factors.
This does not, however, imply, as 1s sometimes supposed,
that ritual is prior to myth; they probably arose together.
Ritual is the utterance of an emotion, a thing felt, in action, myth
in words or thoughts. They arise parz passu. The myth is not
at first aetiological, it does not arise to give a reason; it is repre-
sentative, another form of utterance, of expression. When the
emotion that started the ritual has died down and the ritual
though hallowed by tradition seems unmeaning, a reason is sought
in the myth and it is regarded as aetiological’.
We have now to ask what is the meaning of this extraordinary
ritual. Why is a child or young man subjected to mimic rites of
death and resurrection ?
The orthodox explanation is that the child is a sort of vege-
tation spirit or corn-baby, torn to pieces in winter, revived in
spring. I do not deny that in the myth there is an element of
Corn- or rather Year-baby, but the explanation cannot be regarded
as satisfactory, as it fails to explain the Kouretes, and the Titans
disguised with white clay.
I offer a simpler and I think more complete explanation.
Every single element, however seemingly preposterous, in both the
ritual and myth of Zagreus can be explained I believe by the
analogy of primitive rites of tribal initiation.
1 This point will become clearer when (in chapter m1.) the psychology of the
δρώμενον, the ritual act, is examined. The general relation of myth to ritual is
reserved for chapter vi.
1| The Titanes as Initiators 17
This I had long suspected because of the white-clay-men.
These I have already fully discussed elsewhere! and I need now
only briefly resume what is necessary for the immediate argument.
The word ditanes (white-clay-men) comes of course from titdvos,
white earth or clay, gypsum. The Titanes, the white-clay-men,
were later, regardless of quantity, mythologized into Titanes,
Titans, giants. Harpocration?, explaining the word ἀπομάττων,
says that the Titans, when they tore Dionysos to pieces, were
covered with a coat of gypsum in order that they might not be
recognized. Later, people when they were initiated went on
doing the same thing and for the same reason that most people
do most things nowadays, because ‘it was the thing to do’
Nonnus?’ also says that the Titans were ‘whitened with mystic
gypsum.’
A coat of white paint was a means of making yourself up as a
bogey or ghost; by disguising your real character as a common
human man you reinforced your normal personality. A coat of
white or sometimes black paint is the frequent disguise of savages
to-day when in ceremonies of initiation for the edification of their
juniors they counterfeit their tribal ancestors.
The Titans then, the white-clay-men, are real men dressed up
as bogies to perform initiation rites. It is onl when their
meaning is forgotte ey are explained ag s, mytho-
logical giants. Thus much was clear to me years ago: Le. that
under the myth of Zagreus lay some form of initiation rite. What
I then did not see, though my blindness seems to me now almost
incredible, was the significance of the child and the toys‘ and
above all why the child was first killed and then brought back
_ to. life.
_ Again light came to me unexpectedly from a paper kindly sent
1 Prolegomena, p. 492.
2 ἐκμιμούμενοι τὰ μυθολογούμενα παρ᾽ ἐνίοις, ὡς ἄρα οἱ Τιτᾶνες τὸν Διόνυσον
ἐλυμήναντο γύψῳ καταπλασάμενοι ἐπὶ τῷ μὴ γνώριμοι γενέσθαι. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν τὸ
ἔθνος ἐκλιπεῖν, πηλῷ δὲ ὕστερον καταπλάττεσθαι νομίμου χάριν.
3. Nonn. Dionys. xxvii. 228
ἐλευκαίνοντο δὲ γύψῳ
μυστιπόλῳ.
4 A child’s ‘toys’ in antiquity were apt to be much more than mere playthings.,
They were charms inductive of good, prophylactic against evil, influences. Thus
crepundia, from crepere ‘to rattle,’ served to amuse the child but also to protect
him. For this whole subject see R. Wiinsch, Charms and Amulets, in Hastings’
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
H. 2
18 The Hymn of the Kouretes [ OH.
to me by Dr Frazer’ containing an account of certain initiation
ceremonies among the Wiradthuri tribe of New South Wales.
This account must be briefly resumed : Ye
‘At a certain stage in the initiation ceremonies of these tribes
the women and children huddled together and were securely
covered up with blankets and bushes. Then a number of men
came from the sacred ground where the initiation ceremonies were
performed. Some of them swung bull-roarers, and some of them
took up lighted sticks from a fire, and threw them over the women
and children “to make them believe that Mhuramoolan had tried
te burn them.” At a later period of the ceremonies the boys were,
similarly covered up with blankets, a large fire was kindled near
them, and when the roaring of the wood and the crackling of the
flames became audible, several old men began to swing bull-
roarers, and the lads were told that Dhuramoolan was about to
burn them. ‘These performances were explained by a legend that
Dhuramoolan, a powerful being, whose voice sounded like the
rumbling of distant thunder, had been charged by a still more
powerful being called Baiamai, with the duty of taking the boys
away into the bush and instructing them in all the laws, traditions,
and customs of the community. So Dhuramoolan pretended that
he always killed the boys, cut them up, and burnt them to ashes,
after which he moulded the ashes into human shape, and restored
them to life as new beings.’
With the Cretan ritual in our minds it is clear that the
Wiradthuri rites present more than an analogy; mutato nomine
the account might have been written of Zagreus.
I have chosen the account of the Wiradthuri out of countless
other instances, because in it we have the definite statement that
the boys were burnt to ashes and Zagreus-like remodelled again in
human shape. But everywhere, in Africa, in America, in Australia,
in the South Pacific Islands, we come upon what is practically the
same sequence of ceremonies. When a boy is initiated, that is _
when_he s from childhood to adolescence, thi ime
this terrifying (ἔκπληξις), this pretended killing of the child, this
==S00—0—0—0— OO eee
1 On some Ceremonies of the Central Australian Tribes, Melbourne, 1901.
Dr Frazer’s authority is R. H. Matthews, The Burbung of the Wiradthuri Tribes,
Journal of Anthropological Institute, xxv. (1896), pp. 297 f., 308, 311.
ee
a
ee
1] Savage Initiations 19
ainting him with clay and bringing him back to life again as.
2 YOunE ah ts everyw rere enacter. Till the boy has died and
me ifeagain, till he has utterly ‘put away childish things’ |
he cannot—be a full member of the tribe, he may not know the
tribal secrets or dance the tribal dances, he may not handle
bull-roarers, he cannot perform any of the functions of the full-
grown man.
At and through his initiation the boy is brought into close
“communion with his tribal ancestors: he becomes socialized, part
of the body politic. ceforth he belongs to something bigger,
more potent, more lasting, than his own individual existence: he
before and yet to_co
So vital, so crucial is the change that the savage exhausts his
imagination and his ingenuity in his emphasis of death and new
birth. It is not enough to be killed, you must be torn to pieces
or burnt to ashes. Above all you must utterly forget your past
life. The precautions taken to secure this completeness of death
and resurrection and consequent oblivion are sometimes disgusting
enough. Murder is carefully counterfeited with the help of
bladders of blood and the like. Sometimes the details are
amusing: not only does the boy forget his own name that in this
his social baptism he may receive a new one, but he does not
know his own mother, he has forgotten how to speak and can only
stammer, he cannot even swallow, he has to be artificially fed.
He cannot come in straight at the door but must stumble in
backwards. If he forgets and stupidly recognizes his mother or
eats his food like a Christian he is taken back and ‘ huskinawed’
again’. All this is of course much more than mere pretence, it is
a method of powerful suggestion.
The ritual, then, commemorated and perhaps in part enacted in
our Hymn is the ritual of tribal Initiation. The Kouretes are
Young Men who have been initiated themselves and will initiate
others, will instruct them in tribal duties and tribal dances, will
1 For details as to Death and Resurrection elements in Initiation Ceremonies see
H. Schurtz, Altersklassen wnd Miinnerbiinde, 1902; H. Webster, Primitive Secret
Societies, 1908 ; H. Hubert and M. Mauss, Mélanges d’ Histoire des Religions, 1909,
pp. 144ff.; A. van Gennep, Les Rites de Passage, 1909, pp. 93 Ε΄. ; L. Lévy-Bruhl,
Les fonctions mentales dans les Sociétés Infériewres, 1910, pp. 409 ff. ; and, especially,
Dr J.G. Frazer, Golden Bough’, 111. pp. 423 ff. and Totemism and Exogamy, tv. p. 228.
ο. 9
2—Z
20 The Hymn of the Kouretes [ CH.
steal them away from their mothers, conceal them, make away
with them by some pretended death and finally bring them back
as new-born, grown youths, full members of their tribe. The word
Koures is simply a specialized derivative of Kouros, as γυμνής of
γυμνός, and perhaps γόης of γόος. It is, like Kouros, a word
impossible to translate, because we have lost the social condition
expressed. Young Men (Kouroz) we know, but Initiated Young
Men (Kouretes) are gone for ever.
The Kouretes are young men full-grown, but it will have been
already noted that in the Hymn we have a child, and in the
~ Zagreus myth a babe’. This brings us to an important point. It
is not only the passage from childhood to adolescence that among
savages is marked by rites of initiation, of death and resurrection.
_As Monsieur van Gennep? has well shown in his suggestive book,
the ceremonies that ny each successive stage of life,
ceremonies, 1.e. of birth, of marriage, of ordination as a medicine-
nfan, and finally of death, are, no less than the ceremonies of
aggl escence, one = d all Rites de Passuge, ceremomesot transition,
of going out from the old and gomg in to The new if
Myths, then, which embody the hiding, slaying and bringing to
life again of a child or young man, may reflect almost any form of
initiation rite. It is not always possible to distinguish very clearly.
Later* we shall see that the Kouretes had to do with a rite of the
initiation of a sort of medicine-man, a rite nearer akin to our
Ordination than to either Baptism or Confirmation. When the
Greeks lost touch with the tribal customs which involved the rite
of adolescence, we may suspect that they imvented or at least
emphasized Infant-Initiation. Later theologians entirely forgot
the Kouros, and even the infant Zeus presented somewhat of a
difficulty if not a scandal. A babe is rather the attribute of the |
1 Thus Nonnus, Dionysiaka, v1. 179
ἄλλοτε ποικιλόμορφον ἔην βρέφος, ἄλλοτε κούρῳ
εἴκελος οἰστρηθέντι.,
whereas Lucretius, τι. 635
Dictaeos referunt Curetas...
Cum pueri circum puerum.
2 Les Rites de Passage, Paris, 1909.
3 For the psychology of initiation rites see Mr Marett’s very interesting analysis
in The Birth of Humility, Inaugural Lecture before the University of Oxford, 1910.
4 Chapter m1.
T| The Second Birth 21
divine Mother than the divine Father, and in patriarchal times,
once the cult of the Mother was overshadowed, the infant Zeus
needed apology. He was consigned to ‘local legend’ and was
held to be due to ‘contaminatio with the child Dionysos.’
A clear and striking instance of a Second Birth in early child-
hood is reported by Mr and Mrs Routledge as practised among
the Akikuyu of British East Africa. It is known as ‘To be Born
Again’ or ‘To be Born of a Goat,’ and takes place when the boy is
about ten years old or even younger if the father can afford the
necessary goat for sacrifice. The goat is killed, a piece of skin
cut in a circle and passed over one shoulder of the candidate and
under the other arm. No men are allowed inside the hut, but
women are present. The mother sits on a hide on the floor with
the boy between her knees, the goat’s gut is passed round the
woman and brought in front of the boy. The woman groans as in
_ labour, another woman cuts the gut, and the boy imitates the ἡ
ery of a new-born infant, the women present all applaud and
afterwards the assistant and the mother wash the boy. Thag
night the boy sleeps in the same hut as the mother. On te
second day the boy stays with his mother in the homestead. On
the third day food is brought, and the relatives and friends come
to a feast in the evening, but no native beer is drunk. After all
is over the hut is swept out. The boy again sleeps in the mother’s
hut, and that night the father sleeps in the hut also.’
The Akiktiyu rite presents one feature of great interest. The
boy is ‘Born of a Goat.’ It is nowhere stated that he is called ᾿
a Goat, but the child of a goat must surely in some sense have
been regarded as a Kid. We are irresistibly reminded of the
Kid-Dionysos (Eriphios)?, of the Horned Child* and of the Baby
Minotaur. The notion lingers on in the beautiful thought that
at Baptism a child becomes one of the lambs of Christ the Lamb
of God. At present among the Akiktyu the boy who is ‘ Born
1 With a Prehistoric Race, 1910, p. 151. Neither Mr nor Mrs Routledge could
obtain permission actually to witness the rite. The custom is one of the oldest
among the Akikuyu customs and universal among them. There is great reluctance
to talk of the ceremony, and the knowledge of it was only obtained from natives
who had broken with their own traditions and come under the infiuence of
Christianity. Till a boy has been born again he cannot assist at the burial rites
of his father. He is not part of the clan.
? Hesych. s.v. 3 See p. 130.
22 The Hymn of the Kouretes [ CH.
of a Goat’ is regarded as fit to tend goats, but behind a ceremony
so emphatic and so expensive must, it would seem, lie some
more serious significance!.
The Akikuyu rite contains no mimic death. Death indeed
seems scarcely an integral part of initiation, it is only a prepara-
tion for, an emphasis of, the new Life®. But an element like this
of a striking and dramatic nature tends in myth sometimes to
swamp the really integral factor. We hear more for example of
the sufferings (πάθη) of Dionysos than of his rebirth; the death
of the child in such myths as those of*Atreus and Thyestes,
Demeter and Demophon® obscures the element of Resurrection.
But there can be little doubt that originally the New Birth and
Resurrection lay behind. Lucian‘ in his account of the strange
solecisms committed by dancers says that he remembers how a
man who was supposed to be ‘dancing the Birth of Zeus and the
Child-Eating of Kronos actually danced by mistake the calamities
of Thyestes, deceived by their similarity. The mistake is at least
highly suggestive; the ritual dance of the two myths must have
been almost identical.
Anthropologists have been sometimes blamed’, and perhaps
with justice, for the fiendish glee with which, as though they were
Christian Fathers, they seize on barbarous survivals in Greek
religion or literature. Zagreus dismembered by the Titans, the
cannibal feasts of Thyestes and lLycaon, Demeter burning
Demophon—these and a host of other stories are ‘survivals of
human sacrifice®’ It is only a little anthropology that is a
dangerous thing. Men will kill and eat each other and especially
their enemies for many and diverse reasons, but actual Human
Gift-Sacrifice, and especially child-sacrifice, is rare among savages.
Many a cannibal is a kind and good father; adorned with a
1 For theriomorphs and the inclusion of the animal in the tribe see p. 125 ff.
2 The Orphic Hymn, xxxvit. 14, misunderstanding inverts the sequence. The
Kouretes are ...rpopées τε καὶ αὖτ᾽ ὀλετῆρες.
Ὁ Mr W. R. Halliday has shown clearly that the story of Demeter passing
Demophon through the fire is the survival of an infant initiation-rite. See p. 34,
note 2.
4 de Salt. 80 ras yap γονὰς ὀρχούμενός τις καὶ τὴν τοῦ Κρόνου τεκνοφαγίαν παρῳρχεῖτο
καὶ τὰς Θυέστου συμφορὰς τῷ ὑμοίῳ παρηγμένος.
® See Prof. Murray, Olympian Houses in Albany Review, 1907, p. 205.
® A like explanation is often given of the rites of the Luperecalia, but see
Warde-Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 316 ‘The youths were never actually killed but
were the figures in a kind of acted parable.’
1] The Kouretes as Guardians 23
necklace of skulls he will sit playing with the child on his knee,
But, rare though Human Sacrifice is, and rarer still its survivals,
the mock slaying of a boy in initiation rites is so common as to be ~
almost universal, and in a large number of instances it is the
memory of this mock slaying, misunderstood, that survives. By
way of placation, of palinode, we offer to the humanist the mysteries
of Zagreus made harmless, humanized by anthropology. Dhura-
moolan ‘pretended that he killed the boys.’
Primarily then the Kouretes are, in their capacity of Initiators, | ὁ
Child- Guardians {Παιδοτρόφοι, Φύλακες). Strabo! is
on this point emphatic. ‘In the Cretan discourses, he says, ‘the
Kouretes are called the nurses and guardians of Zeus,’ and again?
in trying to explain the word Kouretes he says, ‘they were so
called either because they were young and boys, or because of
their rearing of Zeus.’ They earned this title, he adds, through
being ‘as it were Satyrs attendant on Zeus....’ In the light of this
initiation nurture the other functions of the Kouretes fall easily
and naturally into place.
The Kouretes are armed and crgiastic dancers (ὀρχηστῆρες
ἀσπιδηφόροι). Strabo* says they are certain youths who execute | —
1 x, 472 ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἹΚρητικοῖς λόγοις of Κουρῆτες Διὸς τροφεῖς λέγονται καὶ φύλακες.
2 x. 408 ὥσθ᾽ οἱ ἹΚουρῆτες ἤτοι διὰ τὸ νέοι καὶ κόροι ὄντες ὑπουργεῖν ἢ διὰ τὸ κουρο-
τροφεῖν τὸν Δία (λέγεται γὰρ ἀμφοτέρως) ταύτης ἠξιώθησαν τῆς προσηγορίας, οἷον εἰ
Σάτυροί τινες ὄντες περὶ τὸν Δία.
ἘΠ. Cit.
΄
ei
24 The Hymn of the Kouretes [ CH.
‘movements in armour; it is especially as inspired dancers that
they fulfil their function as ministers in sacred rites. ‘They
inspire terror by armed dances accompanied by noise and hubbub
of timbrels and clashing arms and also by the sound of the flute
and shouting.” Nursing young children or even drilling young
boys are functions that seem to us scarcely congruous with the
dancing of armed dances. On the terracotta relief! in Fig. 3 we
see the Kouretes armed with shields and short spears dancing over
the infant Zeus, and if we try to realize the scene at all it seems
to us absurd, calculated rather to scare the child to death than
to defend him. But the Kouretes as Initiators continue their
/ incongruous functions. Pantomimic dancing is of the essence of
each and every mystery function. To disclose the mysteries is as
Lucian? puts it ‘to dance out the mysteries. Instruction among
savage peoples is always imparted in more or less mimetic dances’.
At initiation you learn certain dances which confer on you definite
social status. When a man is too old to dance, he hands over his
dance to another and a younger, and he then among some tribes
ceases to exist socially. His funeral when he dies is celebrated
with scanty and perfunctory rites; having lost his dance he is
~a negligible social unit*
The dances taught to boys at initiation are frequently if not
always armed dances. These are not necessarily warlike. The
accoutrement of spear and shield was in part decorative, in part a
provision for making the necessary hubbub. What a Koures ἴῃ
ancient days must have looked like may be gathered from Fig. 4°,
a photograph taken of the peculiar dance with song (worm) of
the neophytes among the Akiktyu prior to their initiation as
men. Conspicuous in their dancing gear are the great ceremonial
dancing shields and the long staves. They are painted in zigzag
with white paint, and wear tails and skins of monkey and wild
cat. To be allowed to dance it is essential that a boy be ‘ painted -
1 Annali d. Inst. x11. (1840), Τὰν. ἃ agg. K. Iam uncertain where the relief
now is. E. Braun, who publishes it, says it passed from the Palazzo Colonna to
royal castle of Aglié near Turin.
2 Pisce. 33 qv Twa καὶ τῶν μεμνημένων ἰδὼν ἐξαγορεύοντα τοῖν θεοῖν τὰ ἀπόρρητα καὶ
ἐξορχούμενον ἀγανακτήσω.....
3° Webster, op. cit. pp. 50, 51.
4 R. Hertz, Contribution @ une étude sur la représentation collective de la mort.
Année Sociologique, x. 1905-6.
5 W.S. and K. Routledge, With a Prehistoric People, 1910, Pl. cv. Repro-
duced by kind permission of Mr and Mrs Routledge.
3 4 de
1] The Kouretes as daimones 25
with a particular pattern’ of divine institution, ‘he must wear a
particular dress and carry certain articles!’
The ancient Kouretes were not merely young men; they were
half divine, Patmeres. The Kouros in the Hymn is bidden to
come at the head of his Daimones (δαιμόνων ἁγώμενος). As
daimones the Kouretes resembled, Strabo? says, Satyrs, Seilenoi,
Bacchoi, Tityroi. Divine but not quite gods, they are as we shall
Fic. 4.
presently see the stuff of which ancient gods are made. Hesiod’,
and Hesiod only, calls them actually gods. He tells of
...the worthless idle race of Satyrs
And the gods, Kouretes, lovers of sport and dancing.
1 op. cit. p. 156.
2 x. 466 ἔοικε δὲ μᾶλλον τῷ περὶ Σατύρων καὶ Σειλήνων καὶ Βακχῶν καὶ Τιτύρων
λόγῳ.
3 rg. CXxIx.
καὶ γένος οὐτιδανῶν Σατύρων καὶ ἀμηχανοεργῶν
Κουρῆτες τε Θεοί, φιλοπαίγμονες ὀρχηστῆρες.
/
26 The Hymn of the Kouretes [ CH.
In the light of initiation ceremonies we understand why the
Kouretes and Korybantes though they are real live youths are
yet regarded as δαίμονες, as half divine, as possessed (ἔνθεοι),
enthusiastic, ecstatic, and why their ceremonies are characterized
by Strabo’ as orgiastic. The precise meaning of orgies will
concern us later; for the present it is enough to note that in most —
savage mysteries it is a main part of the duty of initiators to
cipasoists κοῖς or denon, ihe πῖον ieee
ancestral ghosts Tibe, sometimes even wearing the actual
skulls? of their ancestors, and in this disguise dance round the
catechumens and terrify them half out of their senses. It is only
when fully initiated that the boys learn that these terrific figures
are not spirits at all but just their living uncles and cousins’. The
secret is never imparted to women and children. To do so would
be death.
As δαίμονες whether wholly or half divine the Kouretes have
all manner of magical capacities,_ These capacities are by Strabo
rather implied than expressly stated and are especially noticeable
in their Phrygian equivalents, Korybantes. The _Korybantes bind —
and release men from spells, they induce madness and heal it.
The chorus asks‘ the love-sick Phaedra
Is this some Spirit, O child of man?
Doth Hecat hold thee perchance, or Pan?
Doth She of the Mountains work her ban,
Or the dread Corybantes bind thee?
The Kouretes are also, as all primitive magicians are, seers
(μάντεις). When Minos in Crete lost his son Glaukos he sent for —
the Kouretes to discover where the child was hidden®. Closely
akin to this magical aspect is the fact that they are metal-workers®. —
Among primitive people metallurgy is an uncanny craft, and the
smith Bhalla en The metalworking side of these
X. 465 ὡς δὲ τύπῳ εἰπεῖν καὶ κατὰ τὸ πλέον ἐνθουσιαστικούς τινας Kal Βακχικούς.
H. Schurtz, Altersklassen und Miinnerbiinde, 1902, p. 38. For the functions
of ancestral ghosts see chapter 273. :
* H. Webster, Primitive Secret Societies, pp. 101 and 187.
4 Kur. Hip. 141
1
2
"Te
ce en ee
ἢ σύ γ᾽ ἔνθεος, ὦ κούρα,
εἴτ᾽ ἐκ Πανὸς εἴθ᾽ Ἕ κάτας
ἢ σεμνῶν Κορυβάντων φοι-
τᾷς ἢ ματρὸς ὀρείας ;
> Apollod. 3. 2. 2.
® Soph. ap. Strabo, x. 473 says of the Idaean Daktyls of σίδηρόν τε ἐξεῦρον Kal
εἰργάσαντο πρῶτοι καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ τῶν πρὸς τὸν βίον χρησίμων. ἶ
1] The Kouretes as Culture-Heroes 27
figures comes out best in the kindred Daktyls and Telchines..
A step more and the magicians become Culture-Heroes, inventors pl
qnd_the like.’ As culture-heroes they attend the Kouros in the
Hymn. This development of the daimon and the culture-hero will
be discussed later.
Just such functions are performed to-day among primitive
peoples by the Initiated Young Man. If the investigations of
recent anthropologists? are correct, it is not so much about the
family and the domestic hearth that the beginnings of the arts
‘cluster, as about the institution known as the Man’s House’.
Here, unencumbered by woman, man practises and develops his
diverse crafts, makes his weapons, his boats, his sacred images,
his dancing masks. Even after marriage when he counts as an
elderly man he returns to the Man’s House‘ to keep in touch with
civilization and the outside world. He is a Culture-Hero in the “
making.
To resume the results of our enquiry.
The worshippers in the Hymn invoke a Kouros who is obviously
but a reflection or impersonation of the body of Kouretes. They
‘allege as their reason’ an aetiological myth. This myth on
examination turns out to be but the mythical representation of a
rite of mimic death and resurrection practised at a ceremony of
initiation. Now the Kouros and the Kouretes? are figures that); ὁ.
belong to cultus; they are what would in common parlance be’
1 Diod. Sic. v. 64. Idaean Daktyls are described as γόητες who superintend
ἐπῳδὰς καὶ τελετὰς Kal μυστήρια. They invent fire and the use of iron. The magical
functions of the Kouretes and their aspect as medicine-men will be discussed in
chapter 111.
2 See especially H. Schurtz, Altersklassen und Méinnerbiinde, p. 48.
3H. Webster, Primitive Secret Societies, ch.1. The ancient Kouretes seem to
have had a sort of Man’s House at Messene; it was a megaron not a temple.
See Pausanias, tv. 31. 7 Ἰζουρήτων μέγαρον ἔνθα ζῷα τὰ πάντα ὁμοίως καθαγίζουσιν.
4 That institutions analogous to those of the Man’s House among savages lived
on in Crete we have abundant evidence in Strabo’s account (x. 483) of Cretan
institutions. The Ayé\a with their ἄρχοντες, the συσσίτια, the ἀνδρεῖα, clearly belong
to the same social morphology as the Minnerhaus. It is probable that the ἁρπαγή
and the custom ἀποκρύπτειν τὸν παῖδα (Strabo, 483) is a misunderstanding and in
part a corruption of primitive initiation ceremonies. For a discussion of some
part of these Cretan customs and their religious origin see Dr E. Bethe, Die dorische
Knabenliebe, ihre Ethik und ihre Idee in Rhein. Mus. uxt. p. 438.
° For the meagre survivals of the actual worship of the Kouretes in historical
times as attested by inscription see Prof. Bosanquet, op. cit. p. 353.
‘
28 The Hynn of the Kouretes [ CH.
called religious. We are face to face with the fact, startling
enough, that these religious figures arise, not from any ‘religious
instinct, not from any innate tendency to prayer and praise, but
straight out of a social custom. Themis and Dike, invoked
by the Kouretes, lie at the undifferentiated beginnings of things
when social spelt religious. They are not late abstractions, but
primitive realities and sanctities'.
This contradicts, it is clear, many preconceived notions. We
are Sena to regard religion as a matter inte i ]
Sen Ee π᾿
and* Such undoubtedly it tends to become, but_in its |
origin, 1 δ case under investigation, it 15 not_spir
individual, but_social and collective... But for the existence of a
tribe or group of some kind, a ceremony of initiation would be
impossible. The surprise is all the greater because the particular
doctrine in question, that of the New Birth, is usually held to be
Jate and due to ‘ Orphic,’ i.e. quasi Oriental influence. It is held
to have affinities with Christianity, and is a doctrine passionately
adhered to by many sects and establishments in the present day.
It may indeed—in some form or another—as Conversion or as
Regeneration—hbe said to be the religious doctrine par excellence.
Now it has of late been frequently pointed out that the god
in some sense always ‘reflects’ the worshipper, takes on the
colour of his habits and his thoughts. The morality of a god is
not often much in advance of that of his worshippers, and some-
times it lags considerably behind. The social structure is also, it
is allowed, in some sense reflected in the god: a matriarchal
society will worship a Mother and a Son, a patriarchal society will
tend to have a cult of the Father. All this 15 true, but the truth
lies much deeper. Not only does the god reflect the thoughts,
social conditions, morality and the like, but in its origin his
substance when analysed turns out to be just nothing but the
representation, the utterance, the emphasis of these imaginations,
these emotions, arising out of particular social conditions.
Long ago Robertson Smith? noted that among the ancient
Semites or indeed everywhere antique religion ‘was essentially an
affair of the community rather than of individuals’; the benefits
expected from the gods were of a public character, affecting the
1 For fuller discussion of this point see chapter x.
2 Religion of the Semites, 1889, pp. 211, 240.
1] Social origin of the Kouretes 29
whole community, especially fruitful seasons, increase of flocks
and herds, and success in war. The individual sufferer, who to us
is the special object of Divine protection, was more or less an out-
east’. ‘Hannah with her sad face and silent petition was a strange
figure at the sanctuary of Shiloh; the leper and the mourner alike
were unclean and shut out from the exercises of religion as well
as from the privileges of social life.’ But necessarily at the time
when Robertson Smith wrote he conceived of a god as something
existing independently of the commynity, though very clogely
related. This brings us to our last point.
So long as religion was defined by its object it was, to the
detriment of science, confused with theology. It was currently
supposed that religion was a kind of instinct of the soul after
some sort of god or spirit or—as the doctrine became more rarefied
—some innate power of apprehending the infinite. The blunder
here made was an elementary one, and took small account of facts.
The most widespread and perhaps potent of all religions, Buddhism,
knows no god. The error arose partly from ignorance or careless-
ness as to facts, and partly from the mistake in method common
to all pre-scientific enquiry, the mistake of starting with a general
term religion of which the enquirers had a preconceived idea, and
then trying to fit into it any facts that came to hand.
In the present enquiry we shall at the outset attempt no
definition of the term religion, but we shall collect the facts that
admittedly are religious and see from what human activities they
appear to have sprung. The Kouros and the Kouretes are such
facts. They sprang, we have just seen, from certain social interests
and activities. The worshippers, or rather the social agents, are
prior to the god. ‘The ritual act, what the Greeks called the
δρώμενον, is prior to the divinity. The psychological genesis of
the δρώμενον will be examined in the next chapter.
1 Tt is when the old tribal sanctions are broken down that Aidos and Nemesis
of and for the individual come into force. See Prof. Murray, Rise of the Greek
Epic”, p. 108.
2 This error, originated I believe by Max Miiller and adopted with various
modifications and extensions by M. Réville in his Prolégoménes τι Vhistoire des
religions, and by Morris Jastrow in his Study of Religions, has been well exposed
by Prof. Durkheim in his article De la définition des phénoménes religieux in Année
Sociologique, 1. (1898), pp. 4 ff.
CHAPTER 11.
THE DITHYRAMB, THE APOMENON AND THE DRAMA.
θιὰσεύετὰι WYXAN.
WE have seen the Kouros grow out of the band of his attend-
ants the Kouretes, yet the Kouretes and the Kouros remain
figures somewhat alien and remote, belonging to a bygone
civilization, only to be realized by comparison with barbarous
analogies. We have further seen or rather suspected that in the
thiasos of Dionysos, in his attendant Satyrs, the band of davmones
who attended the Kouros found its closest analogy. This clue if
followed leads to a conclusion as unlooked for as it is illuminating
—Dionysos is the Kouros,_ Th
the Thracian religion i anti
Anyone entering the theatre of Dionysos for the first time will
probably seat himself at once in the great chair of the high priest
of Dionysos, midway in the front row of the spectators’ seats.
Immediately opposite him, as his Baedeker will inform him, is
the logeion or ‘stage,’ as it is usually though incorrectly called,
of Phaedrus?. He will be told that this ‘stage’ is late, dating not
earlier than the time of Septimius Severus (193-211 A.D.), and, in
his haste to search for the traces of the ancient circular orchestra,
he may be inclined to pass it by; yet he will do well to give to
the sculptured frieze that decorates it a passing glance. On the
first slab to the right of the steps (Fig. 5) is represented as 15.
fitting the birth of the god to whom the theatre is consecrate,
Dionysos. The birth is just accomplished. Zeus is seated in the
1 For archaeological details see my Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, ᾿
p. 282. i
CH. IT] Dionysos and the Dithyramb 31
centre ; opposite him Hermes stands, holding the new-born child ;
to either side stands a nude guardian figure holding a shield.
Who are the armed guardians? Who but the Kouwretes?
The seated Zeus on the relief is full grown, no longer a Kouros ;
he is Father of the new-born child—he is the familiar Zeus of
classical theology, Father of Gods and men. Yet he is attended
by the Kouretes. Why this shift of functions, this transformation
of character? Why this blend of Cretan and Theban mythology ?
We shall find the answer it may be in the subject of the present
chapter, the myth and ritual of the Dithyramb.
‘Dithyramb, like ‘Kouros’ and ‘Kouretes, is a word of
somewhat remote and obscure association. We think of a Dithy-
ramb not as a god, but as a form of lyric, full of thrill in its very
Sy TOOT FIR κως.
Fre. 5.
name, but excited, exotic, apt to become licentious. It is with the
form rather than the content of the Dithyramb that the modern
commentator is mainly concerned. The very name might by now
have sunk into obscurity as a mere curiosity for specialists, but
for one fact which most intimately concerns us. We are told on’
the best authority’ that the Dithyramb gave birth to a literary
offspring greater, more vital than itself—to tragedy. The be-
ginnings of drama and of primitive magical rites are, we shall
xe : Θ᾽ very roots. It is then of the first
Importance tha ould grasp as far as may be the nature and
origin of the Dithyramb.
1 This authority has recently been called in question. See Prof. Ridgeway,
Origin of Tragedy, 1910, passim.
al
32 The Dithyramb, δρώμενον and Drama [0Π.
Aristotle in a famous sentence has left us his views as to the
origin of tragedy. ‘Tragedy—as also Comedy, he says m the
Poetics’, ‘was at first mere improvisation, The one originated
with the leaders of the dithyramb, the other with those of
the phallic songs which are still in use in many of our cities.’
Dithyramb and drama alike may seem for the moment alien
to the subject of our last chapter, but it will soon appear that
an enquiry into their origin and interaction will throw fresh
light on the relations between the Kouros and the Kouretes,
and will go far to illuminate the strange conjunction of the
stage of Phaedrus.
What then is the Dithyramb? What element im it caused
this parting of the ways between it and comedy? Something
there must have been that differentiated it out from the common
phallic mime, some seed of beauty and solemn significance that
was to blossom into tragedy, there to find what Aristotle? calls its
φύσις, and then to cease.
Plato* is our single and sufficient direct authority. In discussing
the various sorts of odes he says, ‘Some are prayers to the gods,
and these are called by the title hymns; others of an opposite
sort might best be called dirges, another sort are paeans, and
another—the birth of Dionysos I suppose—is called Dithyramb,’
Plato throws out this all-important statement with a touch of
indifterence (οἶμαι), as of a thing accredited, but too technical to
be interesting. Scholars‘, guiltless of any knowledge of initiation-
ceremonies, have usually assumed that Plato has been misled by
the false etymology of the Double Door. [5 it not at least as
possible that this false etymology arose, in part of course from
the form of an ancient ritual title misunderstood, but in greater
part from the fact that Plato’s statement is literally true, that the
Ditbyram ret the Song of the Birth?
1 ty.12 γενομένη (δ᾽ ) οὖν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς αὐτοσχεδιαστική, καὶ αὐτὴ! καὶ ἢ κωμῳδία, καὶ ἡ μὲν
ἀπὸ τῶν ἐξαρχόντων τὸν διθύραμβον, ἢ δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν τὰ φαλλικὰ a ἔτι καὶ νῦν ἐν πολλαῖς
τῶν πόλεων διαμένει νομιζόμενα.
2 op. cit. καὶ πολλὰς μεταβολὰς μεταβαλοῦσα ἡ τραγῳδία ἐπαύσατο ἐπεὶ ἔσχε τὴν
αὑτῆς φύσιν.
Ὁ Legg. 700 Β΄... καὶ παίωνες ἕτερον καὶ ἄλλο Διονύσου γένεσις, οἵμαι, διθύραμβος
λεγόμενος.
4 See especially Crusius in Pauly Wissowa, Real-Encyclopddie, s.v. Dithyrambos,
p. 1208. See also my Prolegomena, pp. 412 and 437—445, where the sources for
the Dithyramb as Birth-Song are collected but the connection with the New Birth
and Initiation Rites is not understood.
11] The Dithyramb in the Bacchae 33
Timotheos, tradition said, wrote a Dithyramb called the Birth-
pangs of Semele (Σεμέλης ὠδῖνες), and of a Dithyramb by Pindar
we possess a beautiful fragment (p. 203) which tells of the Birth of
Bromios from Semele in the spring-time. But the best evidence
of the truth of Plato’s statement comes to us from the Bacchae’*
of Euripides. The Bacchos has been bound and led off to the
dungeon; all seems lost; and the chorus makes its supreme
appeal to Thebes not to disallow the worship of the god. They
chant the story of his miraculous double birth, from which, they
think, his title of Dithyrambos, He-of-the-T wofold- Door, is derived.
Acheloiis’ roaming daughter,
Holy Dirce, virgin water,
Bathed he not of old in thee,
The Babe of God, the Mystery ?
When from out the fire immortal
To himself his God did take him,
To his own flesh, and bespake him :
‘Enter now life’s second portal,
Motherless Mystery; lo, I break
Mine own body for thy sake,
Thou of the Twofold Door, and seal thee
Mine, O Bromios’—thus he spake—
‘And to this thy land reveal thee.’
I have quoted Prof. Gilbert Murray’s version because it
renders so convincingly the stately, almost stiff, dogmatic, ritual
tone of the hymn, its formalism which suddenly at the end of the
strophe breaks into tender and delicate poetry. This strange and
beautiful song, we are asked to believe, arose not out of ancient
ritual, but from a grotesque fable based on a false etymology.
scholars are a race strangely credulous. Once the suggestion
made, it is surely evident that we have in the song the reflection,
the presentation, of rites of initiation seen or heard of by Euripides
among.the Bacchants of Macedonia. It is even probable, I think,
that actual pronouncements from actual ritual formularies are
quoted.
The child is snatched by its father Zeus from the immortal
1 y, 518 ff.
ὅτε μηρῷ πυρὸς ἐξ a-
θανάτου Ζεὺς ὁ τεκὼν ἥρ-
πασέ νιν τάδ᾽ dvaBodcas:
Ἴθι, Διθύραμβ᾽, ἐμὰν ἄρ-
ceva τάνδε βᾶθι νηδύν"
ἀναφαίνω σε τόδ᾽, ὦ Βάκ-
χιε, Θήβαις ὀνομάζειν.
84 The Dithyramb, δρώμενον and Drama [6Η.
fire—an allusion of course to the Epiphany of Zeus in the Thunder-
storm. But the ‘immortal fire’ also reflects an initiation-rite of
purgation by fire, a rite which, in weakened form, lasted on to
classical times in the ἀμφιδρόμια", or ‘Ruuning round the fire,
performed when the child was from five to seven days old. Such
a rite lies at the back of the story of Demeter and Demophon*.
The goddess would have made the child ‘deathless and ageless
for all his days’; by day she anointed him with ambrosia, by night —
she hid him in the strength of fire like a brand. The expression —
‘the strength of fire’ (πυρὸς μένος) explains the gist of the rite.
The child is weak and helpless, exposed to every kind of evil
chance and sorcery. In fire is a great_strength, and the child
must be put in contact with this strength to catch its contagion
aad grow strong THe water τς bap iain ie ἢ
ater too is full of sanctity, of force, of mana; t .
comes the birth into a new life. In the hymn of the Bacchae it
almost looks as if the water, the bathing in Dirke, might be for
the quenching of the burning child, but that is not the original
notion. The baptism of water and the baptism of fire are to the
same end, the magical acquisition of ghostly strength. In ancient
Christian ritual before the candidate was immersed a blazing
torch was thrust down into the font. The emphasis was rather
on regeneration than purification.
The child then is purified, or rather perhaps we should say
strengthened and revitalized, by fire and water; new and stronger
life is put into him. Yet another rite remains of singular signifi-
cance, and it is introduced with emphasis* The Father-god
‘eries aloud’ (ἀναβοάσας). This loud, clear, emphatic utterance —
makes us expect some weighty ritual pronouncement, and such a
pronouncement immediately follows: Come, O Dithyrambos, enter
a a EC al ll wr γε ro
,
1 For sources see Pauly-Wissowa, s.v.
2 Hom. Hymn τι. 239 νύκτας δὲ κρύπτεσκε πυρὸς μένει HUTe δαλόν. See Mr R. W.
Halliday, Note on Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 239 ff. in Class. Rey. 1911, p. 8. ᾿
35. Kur. Bacch. 526
ἴθι, Διθύραμβ᾽, ἐμὰν ἄρ-
ceva τάνδε Babe νηδύν"
ἀναφαίνω σφ τόδ᾽, ὦ Βάκ-
χιε, Θήβαις ὀνομάζειν.
4 βοή, originally Bory, the lowing of cattle, seems to be a regular ritual word,
Pindar (Ol. x11. 25) calls the Dithyramb βοηλάτας, and in the account in the
Philosophoumena, ed. Cruice, 1860, p. 170, of the mystic birth in the Eleusinian —
Mysteries it is said of the Hierophant βοᾷ καὶ κέκραγε λέγων, ἱερὸν ἔτεκε πότνια
κοῦρον, Βριμὼ Βριμόν.
π| Dithyramb reflects [nitiation-Rites 35
this my male womb. The child is to be born anew, not of his
mother Semele, but of his father Zeus, and—significant fact—his
Epiphany at Thebes is to be marked by the new name Dithy-
rambos, common to child and Birth-song alike. What does it all
mean ?
Taken at its face value it is of course nonsense. The God
Dithyrambos is born of his mother, well and good.‘ He was not,
could not be, born again of his father. Birth belongs to the
category of facts that cannot be repeated. How then is the second
birth explained by scholars? Until quite lately it was left at its
face value: it was nonsense, only it was ‘poetical’ nonsense.
Moreover it was a mystery, and into a mystery it was perhaps
as well not to look too closely. By an ancient mystery people
used to understand something enacted in secret, and probably
offensive. To the word mystery we now attach a perfectly definite
meaning. A mystery is a rite, a δρώμενον enacted with magical
intent. It is secret, not because it is indecent, but because it is
intensely social, decent and entirely sacred.
When the critical spirit awoke, and it was felt that some
definite meaning must be attached to the second birth of the
Dithyramb, the next suggestion was that it embodied a social
shift from matriarchy to patriarchy. This was a step in the right
direction because it was an attempt to see in a religious dogma
the utterance, the projection of a social fact; but the explanation,
though it has elements of truth, is, 1 now feel’, inadequate. The
shift from matriarchy to patriarchy never crystallized into a rite,
never burst into a ritual hymn.
The birth from the father cannot be real; it must therefore be
sham, or to speak more elegantly, it_must be mimetic. When we
examine later the nature and psychology of a δρώμενον it will be
seen that all rites quad rites are mimetic, but the rite of the
δι τἘΠπΠ ὺ ὸ λπὶὸλἸτ---ττπττττπτ- τ - τ
After our discussion of the Kouretes the gist of this mimetic rite
needs no further elucidation. The New Birth of the Dithyramb,
like the New Birth of the Kouros, reflects a tribal rite of initiatio
and in both cases we have a blend of two sorts of rites, the rites
hed?
1 As such I explained it in my Prolegomena, p. 411. The explanation was
I believe first offered by Bachofen in his Mutterrecht.
3—2
‘of infancy, the rites of adolescence. One point however requires
‘further emphasis.
36 The Dithyramb, δρώμενον and Drama (|CH.
In the case of the Kouros the child is taken from its mother,
τὰ the case of the Dithyramb it is actually re-born from the thigh
of its father. In both cases the intent is the same, but in the
case of the Dithyramb it is far more emphatically expressed. /The_
birth from the male womb is to rid t ἢ he infecta
τς mother—to turn him from a woman-thing into a man-thing.
“Woman to primitive man 15 ἃ thing at once weak and magical, to
be oppressed, yet feared. She is charged with powers of child-
bearing denied to man, powers only half understood, forces of
attraction, but also of danger and repulsion, forces that all over
the world seem to fill him with dim terror. The attitude of man
to woman, and, though perhaps in a less degree, of woman to man,
is still to-day essentially magical,
Man cannot_escape being born_o
he is wise, will, as soon as he comes to manhood,
ance and purgation Initiation rites teem with
if
man, bu
monies_of Τὶ
such ceremonies, and savage life is everywhere hampered by sex
taboos!. Among the tribes of Western Victoria if a boy is caught
eating a female opossum he is severely punished ; it will make
him ‘like a girl,’ that is peevish and discontented. Among the
Narrinyeri during initiation a boy may not eat any food that has
even belonged to a woman ; everything he possesses becomes like
himself—‘ narumbe, taboo to women, sacred from their touch. —
If he eats with a woman he will grow ugly and become grey. —
Among the Kugis a woman with child—who naturally at that ~
time is doubly a woman—may not even give food to her husband. —
If such a woman among the Indians of Guiana eat of game caught —
by hounds, the hounds will become so emasculate that they will j
never be able to hunt again. q
The Kouretes, it will be remembered?, take the child from the ©
mother, Rhea. At Sparta, Plutarch? tells us—and Dorian Sparta
1 The few examples I give are taken from the large collection made by
E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose, 4 study of primitive marriage, pp. 166-7. See also
Dr Frazer, Golden Bough2, vol. 1. 326, 111. 204 ff.
2 p. 19.
3 Vit. Lyc. xv1. The Lesche seems to be the Greek equivalent of the ‘Man’s ©
House.’ See p. 27. Fora similar Boeotian custom see Sophocles, Oed. T'yr. 1035.
π| Dithyramb reflects Initiation-Rites 37
is, as much as Crete, the home of primitive custom—at Sparta it
was not left even to the father, much less to the mother, to decide
what children he would rear; he was obliged to bring the child
to a place called the Lesche, there to be examined by the most
ancient men of the tribe to see if he was stout and strong and fit
to be a tribesman. If he was weakly he was thrown down a crag
of Taygetos. It must have been an anxious time for many a
- mother, and that anxiety is, it may be, in part reflected in the
many stories of mothers who hide their child directly after birth.
Rhea hides Zeus from Kronos. Auge! has a child by Heracles and
conceals him. Evadne? hid her child amid the reeds in a dim
thicket, and ‘his tender body was bedewed with the gleam of
pansy flowers purple and gold, and no man had seen him or heard
of him though he was now born five days.’ Stories of this type,
where the child is hid by the mother from fear of the father, have
hitherto been explained* by some story of a divine father and the
mother’s fear of the human father’s anger.
The child, whether concealed or acknowledged, might remain
with its mother for a time. She will practise on it her mother-
rites. She will, perhaps, like the Spartan‘ mother, wash her baby
with wine to strengthen it. She will certainly bathe or sprinkle
it with holy water and pass it through the fire. She may wean it
from her own breast and feed it with honey and alien milk, but,
sooner or later, the day of separation is at hand. The Kouretes
of the tribe will come and will take him away, will hide him for
weeks or months in the bush, will clothe him in strange clothes,
teach him strange dances and strange lore, and bring him back
all changed, with a new soul, the soul of his tribe, his mother’s
child no more, trained it may be henceforth to scorn or spit at
her. He belongs from henceforth to his father and to the Man’s
House.
Nowhere have I been able to find among savage tribes any
mimic birth from the father’, that is any strict parallel to the
1 Paus. vill. 4. 8.
3 Pind. Ol. νι. 52
τοὶ δ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ὧν ἀκοῦσαι
οὔτ᾽ ἰδεῖν εὔχοντο πεμπταῖον γεγεναμένον " ἀλλ᾽ ἐν
κέκρυπτο γὰρ σχοίνῳ βατίᾳ ἐν ἀπειράτῳ.
5. The new explanation offered here was suggested to me by Mr F. Μ. Cornford.
4 Plutarch, op. cit.
5 The customs of the Cowvade which might seem to belong here can I think be
otherwise better explained.
! VS ee ΄σα ee - ΒΥ τ: OS ee
(
)
͵
38 The Dithyramb, δρώμενον and Drama [6Η.
mimic birth of Dithyrambos from the thigh of Zeus, though, such
is the secrecy about initiation rites, that a ceremony of this kind
may well exist unrecorded and only wait observation. But at the
initiation rites kuown as the Bora! in New South Wales the
‘surrender of the boys by their mother is dramatically represented.
A circle is marked out, the mothers of those to be initiated stand
just outside it, the boys are bidden to enter the circle, and thus
magically pass from the women to the men of the tribe.
The δρώμενον then that underlies the ritual of the Dithyramb
and of the Kouros is one and the same, the rite of the New Birth.
This is the cardinal doctrine of the Bacchae. That is why in their
hour of supreme peril they invoke the Dithyramb. It is against
this rite of the New Birth that Pentheus blasphemes. It is to
that Rite personified as Purity, Sanctity, Holiness, that the
Bacchants raise their Hymn’:
Thou Immaculate on high,
Thou Recording Purity.
The Hymn of the New Birth becomes a god Dithyrambos,
the Rite of Purification becomes a goddess Purity—Hosia, and
Purity outraged is near akin to the Dike later (v. 1015) invoked.
\ Both are guardians of τὰ νόμιμα.
It has been seen that the Kouros is but the projection of the
Kouretes ; it is equally manifest that Dionysos is but his thiasos
incarnate. But here instantly a difficulty presents itself. Dionysos,
the Bacchos, has a thiasos of Bacchae. But how can a thiasos of
women project a young male god? They cannot and do not. Who
then do they worship, what divine figure is their utterance ? They
tell us themselves; they shout it at us in a splendid ritual song.
In the first chorus they chant the praise of Thebes, birthplace —
of the Dithyramb son of Semele:
All hail, O Thebes, thou nurse of Semelé!
With Semelé’s wild ivy crown thy towers’.
1 Webster, Primitive Secret Societies, p. 21, quoting Matthews.
2 v. 170 ‘Ocia πότνα θεῶν. For ὁσία with the meaning ‘rite of initiation,’ see
Hom. Hymn to Demeter, 211 δεξαμένη δ᾽ ὁσίης ἐπέβη πολυπότνια Anw. In offering this
interpretation, and in what follows as to the Bacchants, I do not mean to imply ©
that Euripides was always fully conscious of the primitive material which lay
behind his plot.
3 Eur. Bacch. 105 ὦ Σεμέλας τροφοὶ Θῆ-
Bat, στεφανοῦσθε κισσῷ.
CM ee
π| The Maenads as Mothers 39
Then in the antistrophe they turn and sing, of what? Of
Crete and the Kouretes, of Mother Rhea and the Child Zeus?
Hail thou, O Nurse of Zeus, O Caverned Haunt,
Where fierce arms clanged to guard God’s cradle rare.
For thee of old some crested Corybant
First woke in Cretan air,
The wild orb of our orgies,
Our Timbrel.
The chorus has neither sense nor antiphonal structure of
meaning, save that the worship of the Dithyramb was one with
the worship of the Kouros. The priest of Dionysos as he sat in
his great seat and looked across at the ‘stage of Phaedrus’ with
its seated Zeus, its new-born Dionysos, its attendant Kouretes,
would remember and understand.
And, that there may be no mistake, the chorus insist that the
ritual gear of Dionysos is the ritual gear of the Mother:
The timbrel, the timbrel was another’s,
And back to mother Rhea must it wend.
And to our holy singing from the Mother’s,
The mad Satyrs carried it to blend
In the dancing and the cheer
Of our third and perfect Year,
And it serves Dionysos in the end?.
The Bacchants are not indicating the analogy between two
cults as though they were a parcel of commentators making
marginal notes. Half mad with excitement they shout aloud the
dogmas of their most holy religion—the religion of the Mother
and the Child.
The Maenads are the mothers and therefore the nurses of the
holy child; only a decadent civilization separates the figures of
mother and nurse. As nurses they rear the holy child till the
armed, full-grown men take him away to their new Child-Rearing
1 Kur, Bacch. 119
ὦ θαλάμευμα Κουρή-
των ζάθεοί τε ἹΚρήτας
Διογενέτορες ἔναυλοι.
2 v, 130
παρὰ δὲ μαινόμενοι Σάτυροι
ματέρος ἐξανύσαντο θεᾶς,
ἐς δὲ χορεύματα
συνῆψαν τριετηρίδων,
αἷς χαίρει Διόνυσος.
40 The Dithyramb, δρώμενον and Drama [0Η.
(παιδοτροφία). As nurses they are thrice familiar. In Homer?
the god has his nurses (τεθῆναι), chased by Lykoérgos:
Through Nysa’s goodly land
He Dionysos’ Nursing Nymphs did chase.
Sophocles in the Oedipus at Colonos? knows of the Nurses:
Footless sacred shadowy thicket, where a myriad berries grow,
Where no heat of the sun may enter, neither wind of the winter blow,
Where the Reveller Dionysos with his Nursing Nymphs will go.
At Delphi, Plutarch? tells us, the Thyiades, nurses of Dionysos,
wake up the child Dionysos in the cradle.
The Bacchants are the Mothers; that is why at their coming
they have magical power to make the whole earth blossom:
Oh burst in bloom of wreathing bryony,
Berries and leaves and flowers‘.
It is not only the ‘wild white maids,’ but the young mothers
with babes at home who are out upon the mountains :
And one a young fawn held, and one a wild
Wolf cub, and fed them with white milk, and smiled
In love, young mothers with a mother’s heart,
And babes at home forgotten®!
At the touch of their wands, from the rocks break out streams of
wine and water, and milk and honey*.
It is at the great service of the Mothers on Mount Cithaeron
that the whole of creation moves and stirs and lives:
All the mountain felt
And worshipped with them, and the wild things knelt
And ramped, and gloried, and the wilderness
Was filled with moving voices and dim stress’.
It is against the religion of the Bacchants, as Nurses and
Mothers of all that is, that Pentheus rages, charging them, the
Mothers, with license, banning their great service of Aphrodite.
1 Tl. v1. 129
ὅς ποτε μαινομένοιο Διωνύσοιο τιθήνας
σεῦε κατ᾽ ἠγάθεον Νυσήϊον.
2 v. 679 ἵν᾿ ὁ βακχιώτας
ἀεὶ Διόνυσος ἐμβατεύει
θεαῖς ἀμφιπολῶν τιθήναις. Ξ
3 De Isid. et Os. .. ὅταν αἱ Θυίαδες ἐγείρωσι τὸν Λικνίτην. For Dionysos Liknites
see Prolegomena, p. 402. 4
4 Eur. Bacch. 107
βρύετε, βρύετε, χλοήρει
μίλακι καλλικάρπῳ κ.τ.λ.
5 y. 699. 6 y. 705. 7 vy, 726.
1] The Child and the Kouros 41
And, appealing to their most holy Rite of the New Birth, they
turn and answer his foul-mouthed blasphemy in that song of
increase and grace and peace unspeakable’:
Where is the Home for me?
O Cyprus set in the sea,
Aphrodite’s home in the soft sea-foam
Would I could wend to thee;
and, in the awful irony of the end, it is by his mother’s hand that
Pentheus is torn to pieces.
The attitude of Pentheus seems to us blasphemous, intolerable ;
yet if we reflect calmly it is not hard to see how it arose. The
divine figures of Mother and Child reflect the social conditions of ~
a matriarchal group with its rite of adolescent initiation; its
factors are the mother, the child and the tribe, the child as babe
and later as Kouros. But when, chiefly through the accumulation
of property, matriarchy passes and patriarchy takes its place, the
relation of mother to child is less prominent; the child is viewed
as part of the property of the father. Moreover with the decay of
matriarchy, initiation ceremonies lose their pristine significance.
It is not hard to see that, given women worshippers and a young
male god grown to adolescence, the relation of son to mother
might be misconceived as that of lover to bride. We find the
same misunderstanding of matriarchal conditions in the parallel
figures of Adonis and Aphrodite.
‘The memory of primitive matriarchal conditions often survives
rather curiously in mythology. Dionysos is not alone. Again
and again we have stories of this god or that who is ‘reared by
the Nymphs.’ Apollo tells Hermes how the Thriae, the bee-
maidens, reared him in a glade of Parnassos; they taught him
soothsaying while he tended his kine, and—he adds naively—
my father took no heed?.
So far then it has been established that behind the Dithyramb
lay a rite, a δρώμενον, Ὁ Πα ὑπὰῦ rite was one of group imitiation.
Further it has been seen that the group belonged to the social
1 Eur. Bacch. 402, adopting the Oxford text; for other readings and views see
Dr Verrall, The Bacchants of Euripides, p. 155.
2 Hom. Hymn to Hermes, 557
πατὴρ δ᾽ ἐμὸς οὐκ ἀλέγιζεν.
(
42 The Dithyramb, δρώμενον and Drama [0Η.
structure known as matriarchal, a structure reflected in th
fi
how the divine figure developed from the human institution; but
first it is all-important that we should examine and if possible
define the precise nature of a δρώμενον. We shall then be ina
position to see more clearly how from the particular δρώμενον
under consideration} the Dithyramb,|farose, on the one hand, for
theology, a god on the other, if Aristotle be mght, for art, the
drama).
twee
»
Etymologically δρώμενα are of course things done. It is,
however, at once evident that the word in its technical use as
meaning religious rites, sacra, does not apply to all things done.
The eating of your dinner, the digesting of your food, are assuredly
things done, and very important things, but they are not δρώμενα.
ures of Mother and e ros rather than 1 =:
Father and Son. We shall have later to consider more closely
Nor does a thing done become a δρώμενον simply because it is —
done socially, collectively ; a large number of persons may eat and
digest their dinner collectively, yet the act remains secular. What
is it that adds the sanctity’, that makes the act in our sense
religious ?
First the act must be strongly felt about, must cause or be
caused by a keen emotion. The great events of life, birth,
adolescence, marriage, death, do not incessantly repeat themselves ;
it is about these events that religion largely focuses. When the
getting of certain foods was irregular and’ precarious, a source οὗ.
anxiety and joy, the eating of such foods was apt to be religious
and protected by taboos. The regular rising and setting of sun
and moon and stars, because regular, cause little or no emotion ;
b Hi ely fi uings of tension and terror, the
δ᾽
thunderstorm and the monsoon. Such manifestations cause vivid
reactions. ‘Tension finds relief in excited movement; you dance —
and leap for fear, for joy, for sychological relief. It is this
1 In the present chapter the first only of these questions will be considered, the
πον συν
genesis of the god from the δρώμενον. The relation of drama to the Dithyramb 15...
reserved for chapters vir. and viit., and see Prof. Murray’s Excursus after chapter vii.
2 In the specialized sense of ‘rites’ δρώμενα consist of two factors (a) the thing
done, the δρώμενον proper, and (Ὁ) the thing said, τὸ λεγόμενον. The thing said,
which is the element of myth, will be considered later, p. 327.
3 The notion of sanctity will be further analysed in chapter mI.
| Psychology of the δρώμενον 43
excited doing, this dancing, that is the very kernel of both drama
eosin GaGa ρώμενον. Our Kouretes were dancers épynoripes).
A high emotional tension is best caused and maintained by a 4.
thing felt socially. The mdividual in a savage tribe has but
a thie ἐλ ΠΣ ΞΕᾺ personality. If he dances alone he will not
dance long; but if his whole tribe dances together he will dance
the live-long night and his emotion will mount to passion, to
ecstasy. Save for the yopos, the band, there would be no drama
and no δρώμενον. Emotion socialized, felt collectively, is emotion
intensified and rendered permanent. Intellectually the group is
weak ; everyone knows this who has ever sat on a committee and
arrived at a confused compromise. Emotionally the group is
strong; everyone knows this who has felt the thrill of speaking
to or acting with a great multitude.
The next step or rather notion implied is all important. A
δρώμενον is as we said not simply a thing done, not even a thing
excitedly and socially done. What is it then? It is a thing
re-done or pre-done, a thing enacted or represented. It is some-
times re-done, commemorative, sometimes pre-done, anticipatory,
and both elements seem to go to its religiousness. When a tribe
comes back from war or from hunting, or even from a journey,
from any experience in fact that from novelty or intensity causes
strong emotion, the men will, if successful, recount and dance their
experiences to the women and children at home. Such a dance
we should perhaps scarcely call religious, but when the doings of
dead chiefs in the past or ancestors are commemorated, when the
dance is made public and social, and causes strong emotion, it
takes on a religious colour’. The important point to note is that
the hunting, fighting, or what not, the thing done, is never
religious ; the thing re-done with heightened emotion is on the
way to become so. The element of action re-done, imitated, the
element of μίμησις, is, 1 think, essential. In all religion, as in all” ---
art, there is this element of make-believe. Not the attempt ἴο
deceive, but a desire to re-live, to re-present.
Why do we ‘represent’ things at all; why do we not just do
them and have done with it? This is a curious point. The
1 This element of commemoration in the δρώμενον will be more fully examined
when we reach the question of the relation of hero-worship to the drama
(chapter v1t.).
44 The Dithyramb, δρώμενον and Drama a
occasion, though scarcely the cause, of these representations 15
fairly clear. Psychologists tell us that representations, ideas,
imaginations, all the intellectual, conceptual factors in our life
Ν are mainly due to deferred reactions. If an impulse finds instantly
its appropriate satisfaction, there is no representation. It is out
of the delay, just the space between the impulse and the reaction,
that all our mental life, our images, ideas, our consciousness, our
will, most of all our religion, arise. If we were utterly, instantly
satisfied, if we were a mass of well contrived instincts, we
should have no representations, no memory, no μίμησις, no
δρώμενα, no drama. Art and religion alike spring from un-
' satisfied desire’. Tt eT aco or
Remeber point should be noted. When the men return from —
_4 the war, the hunt, the journey, and re-enact their doings, they
".y are at first undoubtedly representing a particular action that
actually has taken place. Their drama is history or at least
a narrative; they say in effect, such and such a thing did happen
a in the past. Everything with the savage begins in this particular
Ζ e way. But, it is easy to see that, if the dramatic commemoration
be often repeated, the action tends to cut itself loose from the
particular in which it arose and become generalized, abstracted as
it were. The particular hunt, journey, battle, is in the lapse of
‘ , time forgotten or supplanted by a succession of similar hunts,
er journeys, battles, and the dance comes to commemorate and
embody hunting, journeying, fighting. Like children they play
twat “ not at a funeral, but at ‘funerals, births, battles, what not. To
put it grammatically, the singular comes first, but the singular
gets you no further. The plural detaches you from the single
concrete fact; and all the world over, the plural, the neuter plural
as we call it, begets the abstract. Moreover, the time is no longer
particular, it is undefined, not what happened but what happens.
Such a dance generalized, universalized, is material for the next
stage, the dance pre-done.
i
The religious character of μίμησις comes out perhaps more
clearly when the action is pre-done, for here we are closely neigh-
bonred by magic. A tribe about to go to war will dance a war
1 For the function of imitation in the development of religious rites see Dr P.
Beck, Die Nachahmung und ihre Bedeutung fiir Psychologie und Volkerkunde,
Leipzig, 1904.
εἰ
͵
11] Collective Emotion 45
dance, men about to start out hunting will catch their game in
pantomime. Such cases are specially instructive because it is
fairly clear that the drama or δρώμενον here is a sort of pre-
cipitated desire, a discharge of pent-up emotion. The thought of
the hunt, the desire to catch the game or kill the enemy cannot
find expression yet in the actual act; it grows and accumulates by
inhibition till at last the exasperated nerves and muscles can bear
it no longer and it breaks out into mimetic, anticipatory action.
Mimetic, not of what you see done by another, but of what you -
desire to do yourself.
Now so far in these mimetic rites, whether commemorative or
anticipatory or magical, though they cover a large portion of the
ceremonies that when practised by savage peoples we call religious,
there is certainly nothing present that by any straining of language
can be called a god, nothing equivalent to what we mean now-a-
days by worship. In the Hymn of the Kouretes, as has already
been noted, though the god is there as Kouros, he is not wor-
shipped ; there is no praise, nor prayer, nor sacrifice, he is simply
bidden to come and to ‘leap, he and his attendants. The all-
important question must now be asked, how did this figure of the
god arise? The answer has been in part anticipated in the
account of the Kouros.
The Dithyramb, we are always told, was not the outpouring ars,
an individual inspired singer, but rather a choric dance, the dance
and song of a band. As singing a Birth-Song the band must have
been a band of youths just initiated or about to be initiated, dancing
an excited mimetic dance; but in less specialized rites it might be
a war-dance, a rain-dance, a thunder-dance. The dancers dancing
together utter their conjoint desire, their delight, their terror, in
steps and gestures, in cries of fear or joy or lamentation, in shrieks
of war. In so uttering they inevitably emphasize and intensify
it. Moreover being a collective emotion it is necessarily felt as
something more than the experience of the individual, as some-
thing dominant and external. The dancers themselves by every
means in their power seek to heighten this effect. They sink
their own personality and by the wearing of masks and disguises,
by dancing to a common rhythm, above all by the common
excitement, they become emotionally one, a true congregation, not
ἊΣ - τ θὰ το aI sc RE
"
40 The Dithyramb, δρώμενον and Drama [on. —
a collection of individuals. The emotion they feel collectively, the
thing that is more than any individual emotion, they externalize,
roject ; it is the raw material of god-head. Primitive gods are to
a large extent collective enthusiasms, uttered, formulated. Le diew
Cest le désir eatériorisé, personnifié?.
Strong and dominant though this collective emotion is, it
might never crystallize into anything like a personality but for
a nucleus of actual fact. Democratic or oligarchie though
primitive peoples tend to be, the band of dancers, the yopashas_
for_practical convenience a leader, an ἔξαρχος". The Kouretes
have a ‘greatest Kourés’; an inscription® from Ephesos mentions
not only a college of Kouretes, but an official known as a Chief
Koures (πρωτοκούρης). Among the officials of the thiasos. of
Iobacchoi! at Athens, whose club-rules have come down to us
intact, is an archbacchos (ἀρχίβακχος).
Having chosen as spokesman, leader and_representative a
προτοξούρης; α΄ Pama oF chtet hance, Tie cea
fo_the utmost, make him their vicar, and then ahi 2a)
attitude becomes gradually one of contemplation and respect;
-community of emotion ceases. More and more the chorus become
interested ae at first wholly sympathetic, later critical.
g they become an audience, religiously, the
erat pail ‘he process of severance between god an
worshipper, actor and audience, is slow. Actual worship, of prayer
and praise and sacrifice, denotes that the severance is complete;
ritual such as that of the Kouretes, in which the god is ‘summoned’
and bidden to leap, denotes an intermediate stage when he is ~
merely representative and felt to be of like passions though of
higher potency than his summoner. Gradually the chorus loses
all sense that the god is themselves, he is utterly projected, no
longer chief daemon (δαιμόνων ἁγούμενος), but unique and aloof,
a perfected θεός. Strong emotion collectively experienced begets —
this illusion of objective reality; each worshipper is conscious of
something in his emotion not himself, stronger than himself. He —
1 See E. Doutté, Magie et Religion, 1909, p. 601; for other elements that go to
the making of a god see chapter 11.
2 Cf. Aristotle, loc. cit., ἀπὸ τῶν ἐξαρχόντων τοῦ Διθυράμβου, and Huripides,
Bacch. 140 ὁ δ᾽ ἔξαρχος Βρόμιος.
ἕ
3 Dittenberger, Syll. 1.* 1861, 1.
4 See my Prolegomena, pp. 656 and 475.
11] The god a projection from the group 47
does not know it is the force of collective suggestion, he calls it a
god. As Philo’ puts it,‘ Bacchic and Korybantic worshippers rave
until they actually see what they desire.’
This process of projection, of deification, is much helped by what
we may perhaps call the story-telling instinct. The god like his
worshipper must have a life-history. We hear much of the suffer-
ings (πάθη) of Dionysos. They are of course primarily the projected
πάθη of his worshippers; the worshippers have passed through
resurrectrorr; 15 I'wice-Born. but once the life-
history projected, it tends to consolidate the figure of the god and
to define his personality, to crystallize and clear it of all demonic
vagueness. Even in the time of the Christian fathers? it was
realized that the great festivals of the gods were commemorations
of the events of a god’s life—his birth, his marriage, his exploits,
sufferings, death. They used this undoubted fact as an argument
to show that the gods were but divinized men, whose deeds
(a0Xa) were solemnly commemorated. What the Christian fathers
necessarily could not realize was that it was the social life of the
group rather than the individual that became the object of
religious representation.
"Nowhere so clearly as in the religion of Dionysos do we see
the steps of the making of the god, and nowhere is this religion
so vividly presented to the imagination as in the Bacchae of
Euripides. The very vividness, the oneness of the perception,
seen with the single intention of the poet, makes it to us hard of
apprehension and has rendered necessary the cold psychological
analysis just attempted.
The question is often raised—is the Bacchos the god Dionysos
himself or merely a human leader, an adept, an impostor, as
Pentheus held? He is one and both, human and divine, because, as
we have seen, divinity at its very source is human. In the Bacchae
ἢ de vit. contemplat. 2, p. 473 M. οἱ βακχευόμενοι καὶ κορυβαντῶντες ἐνθουσιάζουσι
μέχρις ἂν τὸ ποθούμενον ἴδωσιν. See Rohde, Psyche, p. 304.
2 See S. August. de civitat. dei, vir. 18 Unicuique eorum...ex ejus ingenio,
moribus, actibus, casibus, sacra et solennia constituta. Lactantius, Divin. instit.
y. 20 Ipsos ritus...vel ex rebus gestis hominum, vel ex casibus, vel etiam ex
mortibus natos. Ludorum celebrationes deorum festa sunt, siquidem ob natales
eorum vel templorum novorum dedicationes sunt constituti, and see vr. 20. The
question of the life-history of the god, that is the orderly sequence of his festivals,
will be discussed when we come to the ἐνιαυτός, p. 331.
the emotion of the thiasos, they desiccate and die. Dionysos with
48 The Dithyramb, δρώμενον and Drama [cn.
we catch the god in the three stages of his making, stages that
shift with the changing scenes. He is a human leader, an ἔξαρχος,
ὁ δ᾽ ἔξαρχος Βρόμιος" ; he is half divinized, a daimon more than
mortal, ὁ δαίμων ὁ Διὸς παῖς". In the prologue he has no thiasos,
he is alone, cut loose from the yopos that projected him, a full-
blown Olympian Θεός.
Full-blown but never full-grown. Unlike Zeus he rarely quite
grows up; Father-hood is never of his essence. Always through
the Bacchae he is the young male god with tender face and fair
curled hair. What seemed to Pentheus in his ignorance a base
effeminacy is but the young bloom and glory of the Kouros. His
name, of which philologists seem at last to have reached the
interpretation, tells the same tale; he is Dionysos*, Zeus-Young-
Man, Zeus Kouros. As Bacchos he is but the incarnate ery of
his thiasos, Iacchos*. So the god Paean is but the paean, the song
projected.
We have been told perhaps too often that the essence of the.
Bacchic as contrasted with the Olympian religion is the doctrine
of union and communion with the god. Now at last we see why:
Bacchic religion is based on the collective emotion of the thiasos.
Its god is a projection of group-unity. Dr Verrall in his essay
on the Bacchants of Euripides® hits the mark in one trenchant,
illuminating bit of translation, ‘The rapture of the initiated, he
says, ‘lies essentially in this: “his soul is congregationalized,”
/
Θιασεύεται Wuxav.’
The Olympians are, as will later® appear, the last product οἵ
rationalism, of individualistic thinking; the thiasos has projected —
them utterly. Cut off from the very source of their life and being,
his thiasos is still—Comus, still trails behind him the glory of
the old group ecstasy.
1 Kur. Bacch. 140.
2 vy. 416.
3 See Kretschmer, Aus der Anomia, 1890, p. 25 thess. Διόννυσος *Avd(o)vucos,
sk. snus-d, ahd. snura, lat. nurus, gr. νυός (*cvveds). The notion that Dionysos
was a young Zeus survived into late days. Thus the scholiast on Apollonius
Rhodius (τ. 917) says οἱ δὲ δύο πρότερον εἶναι τοὺς Καβείρους, Δία re πρεσβύτερον καὶ
Διόνυσον νεώτερον.
4 Bacchos =Iacchos= fifaxxos, see Prellwitz, Htymologisches Worterbuch, p. 1015
for Hevechos see my Prolegomena, p. 541. °
5 p. 39. 6 Chapter x. ‘
PrN Is
1] feligion reflects group emotion 49
To resume. So far we have seen that the religion of the
Kouros and the Kouretes, and of Dionysos and his thiasos are
substantially the same. Both are the reflection of a group religion
and of social conditions which are matriarchal and emphasize the
figures of Mother and Child. The cardinal doctrine of both
religions is the doctrine of the New Birth, and this doctrine is the _
reflection of the rite of social initiation. One element in the
making of a god we have seen to be the projection of collective
emotion, the reaction of man on his fellow man. But man does
not sit in the void reacting on his fellow man; we have now to
consider his reaction on the world of nature that surrounds him.
CHAPTER III.
THE KOURETES, THE THUNDER-RITES AND MANA.
τὰ λὲ πάντὰ οἰδκίΖει κερὰγνόο.
Σὴ γὰρ ἡ Βδοιλείὰ Kal ἡ λύνδμιο Kal H AOZa εἰς τοὺς ἀἰώνδο.
We have not yet done with the Kouretes. A fragment of the
Cretans of Euripides preserved for us by Porphyry? in his treatise
on Vegetarianism contains a somewhat detailed account of a
ceremonial conducted by them which is of high importance for
our argument. It has certain analogies to the rites of New Birth
already described, but presents also certain notable differences.
It is of peculiar interest because in it are described rites of the
Kouretes which culminate in the initiation of a Bacchos. This
confirms the substantial identity of Bacchic and Kouretic rites
which has been established in the last two chapters.
_ For a moment let us see where the fragment must have stood
in the lost play. The evidence is in part drawn from another
recently discovered fragment’.
We are.in the palace of Minos in Orete. A child has been
born to the royal house, a portent, the monstrous Minotaur.
Minos is troubled, he will purify the palace, will ask the meaning
of the portent. The whole scene reminds us of another lost play
of Euripides, Melanippe the Wise’*, where the portentous twins are
born and Melanippe in her famous, rationalizing, truly Euripidean
1 de Abst.1v. 19; Nauck, Frg. 472. For the whole fragment see my Prolegomena,
chapter x. 3
2 Berliner Klassikertecte, V. 2 Gr. Dichterfragmente (2), 1907, p. 73. See also
G. Korte, Die Kreter des Euripides, in Hist. u. Phil. Aufsatze; BE. Curtius, Berlin,
1884, p. 195; and A. Kappelmacher, Zu den Kreten des Euripides, Wiener Eranos,
50 Vers. Graz, 1909.
3 Nauck, Frg. 484. :
»
|
CH. 11] The Kouretes as Medicine-Men 51
speech, explains that the order of the cosmos is fixed and that
such things as portents cannot be. Minos then sends for the
priests and medicine men, the Idaean Daktyls, presumably to
purify the palace and bring peace and understanding. They leave
their secret sanctuary on Ida—the strange manner of its building
they describe, they come in white robes to the terror-stricken
palace and in solemn anapaests tell of the manner of their life
on Mount Ida and of the initiation ceremonies that have made
them what they are and have given them authority to cleanse and
interpret.
Their avowal of ritual acts performed on Mount Ida is as
follows :
There in one pure stream
My days have run, the servant I
Initiate of Idaean Jove;
Where midnight Zagreus roves, I rove.
I have endured his thunder-cry,
Fulfilled his red and bleeding feasts;
Held the Great Mother’s mountain flame;
Enhallowed I and named by name
A Bacchos of the Mailed Priests.
Robed in pure white I have borne me clean
From man’s vile birth and coffined clay
And exiled from my lips alway
Touch of all meat where Life hath been!
The analogies between these rites and the initiation rites
discussed in the last chapter are obvious. We have here as there
to do with mysteries performed by the ‘mailed priests, the
Kouretes, and these mysteries are mysteries of Zagreus, and of
‘the Great Mother, and of Zeus. But, be it noted, it is Idaean,
not Diktaean Zeus whom the Kouretes now serve. This leads us
to suspect—what is indeed I believe the fact—that we have to do
with initiation ceremonies of a later and more highly developed
type, initiation ceremonies not merely tribal and social, whether
u ἁγνὸν δὲ βίον τείνων ἐξ οὗ
Διὸς ᾿Ιδαίου μύστης γενόμην
καὶ νυκτιπόλου ZLaypéws βροντὰς
τούς τ᾽ ὠμοφάγους δαῖτας τελέσας
μητρί τ᾽ ὀρείῳ δᾷδας ἀνασχὼν
καὶ κουρήτων
βάκχος ἐκλήθην ὁσιωθείς.
The text is Nauck’s, save for the addition of τε in line 4---τούς τ᾽ ὠμοφάγους. The
translation is by Prof. Murray. With his sanction I have substituted the word
‘enhallowed’ for ‘I am set free’ in stanza two.
4. 2
52 The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana _ |cu.
of infancy or adolescence, but ceremonies that have become in the
later sense mysteries, rites to which only a chosen few were
admitted. This seems clear from the asceticism of the avowal
in the last lines. It is obvious that the whole of the initiated
youth of a tribe would not be vegetarians, nor could they preserve
life-long ceremonial purity from the contagion of child-birth and
funerals. Moreover the initiated man in these rites was, when
fully consecrated, called a Bacchos, and the Bacchoi were always
a select congregation. Plato’ tells us that those concerned with
rites of initiation used to say
Few are the Bacchoi, many bear the Wand.
It may be conjectured that the rite here administered by the
Kouretes was some sort of rite of ordination of a medicine-man.
In this connection it is interesting to note that Epimenides of
Crete, the typical medicine-man of antiquity, was called by his
contemporaries the ‘new Koures.’ Plutarch? in his account of the
purification of Athens in the days of Solon says of Epimenides
that he was a man of Phaistos, son of the.nymph Balte, ‘beloved
of the gods, and ‘an adept in religious matters dealing with the
lore of orgiastic and initiation rites.’ It was because of this that
he was reputed to be son of a nymph and gained his title of
Koures. Koures, as has already been noted, can only mean Young
Man in a specialized sense. We may conjecture—though it is only
a conjecture—that the Kouretes were Young Men selected from
the general band of initiated youths. One of their functions was,
it appears, the consecration of the Bacchoi.
Plutarch naturally regards Epimenides as ‘dear to the gods,
and an adept in matters religious, but the traditions that gathered
round his name are those of magic and medicine rather than of
religion. He is credited* indeed, and perhaps rightly, with the
authorship of a Theogony as well as an Argonautika, a Kretika,
1 Phaed. 69 ὁ εἰσὶ yap δὴ φασὶν οἱ περὶ Tas τελετὰς ναρθηκοφόροι μὲν πολλοί, Βάκχαι
δέ τε παῦροι. Olympiodorus ad loc. attributes a hexameter to this effect to Orpheus.
See my Prolegomena, p. 474.
2 Vit. Solon. x11. . «ἧκεν ἐκ Κρήτης "Ἐπιμενίδης ὁ Φαίστιος.... Εδόκει δέ τις εἶναι
θεοφιλὴς καὶ σοφὸς περὶ τὰ θεῖα τὴν ἐνθουσιαστικὴν καὶ τελεστικὴν σοφίαν, διὸ καὶ παῖδα
νύμφης ὄνομα Βάλτης καὶ Κούρητα νέον αὐτὸν οἱ τότε ἄνθρωποι προσηγόρευον. Diogenes”
cites the Ὅμοια of Myronianos as authority for the title of Koures: φησὶν ὅτι
Κούρητα αὐτὸν ἐκάλουν Κρῆτες. - For the name of the nymph Balte or Blaste see
Pauly Wissowa, s.v. :
3 Diog. Laert. Vit. Epim. τ. 111, α
mt | ) Epimenides as Kouros 53
Purvfications, Sacrifices, and Oracles, and, notable fact, a Birth of
the Kouretes and Korybantes; but when we come to his life and
acts his true inwardness as a medicine-man emerges. His career
begins, in orthodox fashion, with a long magical sleep!. He was
tending sheep, and turning aside to rest in the shade of a cave he
fell asleep; after fifty-seven years he woke, looked for his sheep,
met his younger brother, now a grey-haired man, and learnt the
truth.
The long sleep is usually taken as just one of the marvels
of the life of Epimenides. The real significance lies deeper. The
cave in which he went to sleep was no chance cave; it was the
cave of Diktaean Zeus. The sleep was no chance sleep; it was
the sleep of initiation. We gather this from the account left. us
by Maximus of Tyre. He tells us that Epimenides was not only
a marvellous adept in religious matters, but also that he got his
skill not by learning, and described a long sleep in which he had
a dreum for his teacher. The same authority tells us? that
Epimenides said when he was lying at mid-day in the cave of
Diktaean Zeus a deep sleep of many years befell him, and he met
with the gods and divine intercourse and Truth and Justice.
Maximus found this a hard saying (λόγον πιστεύεσθαι
χαλεπόν), but in the light of savage parallels the difficulty
disappears. Round the figure of Epimenides the new Koures
are crystallized the ordinary initiation-experiences of a medicine-
man to-day. Among the tribes of Alice Springs, in Central
Australia‘, if a man will become a medicine-man he must sleep,
and must sleep in a special sacred cave. When he feels a call he
leaves the camp and goes alone till he comes to the mouth of the
cave. Here with considerable trepidation he lies down to sleep,
not venturing to go inside lest he should be spirited away for ever.
Next morning the Jruntarinia or spirit-people are supposed to
come, make a hole in his tongue, pierce his head from ear to ear,
carry him into the depths of the cave and there remove his internal
organs and provide him with a new set. The hole is actually there
1 Joe. cit. 109. The sources for Epimenides are collected by Diels, Fragmente
ad. Vorsokratiker, 11. pp. 489 ff. See also Pauly Wissowa, s.v.
2 c, 22, p. 224. Diels, Fragmente, τι. p. 494 δεινὸς δὲ ἣν ταῦτα (τὰ θεῖα) od μαθών,
ἀλλ᾽ ὕπνον αὑτῶι διηγεῖτο μακρὸν καὶ ὄνειρον διδάσκαλον.
3 ¢. 28, p. 286... (μέσης γὰρ) ἡμέρας ἐν Δικταίου Διὸς τῶι ἄντρωι κείμενος ὕπνωι
βαθεῖ ἔτη συχνὰ ὄναρ ἔφη ἐντυχεῖν αὐτὸς θεοῖς καὶ θεῶν λόγοις καὶ ᾿Αληθείαι καὶ Δίκηι.
4 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 523.
δ4 The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana [0Η.
when the man emerges from the cave. The rest of course happens
in the man’s dream or trance. Among some peoples! the necessary
initiation-sleep is induced by a sleeping draught.
The rites we are about to examine are then not rites of simple
tribal initiation, but rather rites of initiation practised by the
Kouretes in perbaps a later stage of their development as a
magical fraternity. The Kouretes are now well on their way
to become daimones; they will presently become actual gods
(θεοί), as in Hesiod?. Diogenes® says that some reported that the
Kretans ‘sacrificed to Epimenides as to a god.’ In historical
times both Crete and Thera had a cult of the Kouretes. The
colonists of Hierapytna* swear not only by a long list of Olympians,
but by the Kouretes, the Nymphs, and the Korybantes. From
the mountain village of Hagia Barbaria, on the way to Gortys, has
come an inscription® in which ‘Ertaios, son of Amnatos, to the
Kouretes, guardians of kine, fulfils his word and makes a thank-
offering. Much earlier are the rock inscriptions in Thera‘, where
the Koures, to whom dedication is made, has his name spelt with
the ancient Koppa. From medicine-man to god was not, as will
later be seen, a far cry.
Before we proceed to examine the rites of the medicine-man,
the Bacchos, a passage in Diodorus’ must be examined, which
bears on the relation between adolescence and ordination rites.
After a long discussion of Cretan mythology he says
The Cretans, in alleging that they handed on from Crete to other peoples
the dues of the gods, their sacrifices, and the rites appertaining to mysteries,
bring forward this point as being to their thinking the chief piece of evidence.
The rite of initiation at Eleusis, which is perhaps the most celebrated of all,
and the rite of Samothrace, among the Cicones, whence came Orpheus, its
inventor, are all imparted as mysteries; whereas in Crete, at Knossos, from
1 Webster, Primitive Secret Societies, p.174: among the tribes of the Lower Congo.
2 See supra, p. 25. 5. op. cit. 20. 4 Blass in Collitz-Bechtel, 5039.
5 ᾿Ε]ρταῖος᾽ Auvdrov Κ ώρησι τοῖς πρὸ καρταιπόδων (ἀ)ρὰν καὶ (χα)ρι(σ)τηίον, de Sanctis,
Mon. dei Lincei, xv111. (1908), p. 178. For the cult of the Kouretes see Prof. Bosan-
quet, B.S.A, xv. (1908-1909), p. 351 and H. v. Gaertingen, Inschriften von Priene
1906, p. 136, no. 186, where an inscribed basis commemorates a certain Apollodorus
as ἱερητεύοντα βασιλεῖ καὶ Kovpyow. For the worship of Zeus Kretagenes and the
Kouretes in Karian towns, see Le Bas, Inschriften, m1, 338, 394, 406.
§ T.G.1.M.A, ut. 354 ff.
τιν, ΠΤ. τοῦτο φέρουσιν, ws οἴονται, μέγιστον τεκμήριον " τήν. τε γὰρ παρ᾽ ᾿Αθηναίοις
ἐν ᾿Ελευσῖνι γινομένην τελετήν, ἐπιφανεστάτην σχεδὸν οὖσαν ἁπασῶν καὶ τὴν ἐν ΣαμοθρᾷκῃἩ
καὶ τὴν ἐν Θράκῃ ἐν τοῖς Κίκοσιν, ὅθεν ὁ καταδείξας Ὀρφεὺς ἦν, μυστικῶς παραδίδοσθαι,
κατὰ δὲ τὴν Κρήτην ἐν Κνωσῷ νόμιμον ἐξ ἀρχαίων εἶναι φανερῶς τὰς τελετὰς ταύτας
πᾶσι παραδίδοσθαι, καὶ τὰ παρὰ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐν ἀπορρήτῳ παραδιδόμενα παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς μηδένα
κρύπτειν τῶν βουλομένων τὰ τοιαῦτα γινώσκειν.
m1 | Magical Secret Societies 55
ancient days it was the custom that these rites should be imparted openly to
all, and things that among other people were communicated in dead secrecy
(ἐν ἀπορρήτῳ) among the Cretans, they said, no one concealed from anyone
who wished to know such matters.
What seems to be behind this rather obscure statement is
this, Initiation-rites of adolescence, as contrasted with initiation-
rites of a magical fraternity, are comparatively public and open.
Every tribesman has a right to be initiated; nearly every tribes-
man is initiated and knows the secrets of initiation. A magical
fraternity on the other hand is always more or less of a secret
society. The rites of both sets of initiation are closely analogous’,
They centre round the new birth, that is the new set of social
relations, the new soul, and are figured by real sleep or mimic
death. The rites of adolescence, and probably what we have
called mother-rites, are primary, the magical fraternity-rites a
later development. Crete, the mother of initiation-rites in the
Agean, kept the memory of her adolescence-rites and their com-
parative publicity, but when her initiation-rites passed to Greece
proper and to Thrace, they had reached the magical fraternity
stage. They were not only mysteries, but mysterious.
In the rites described by Euripides we have no mention of a
new birth, though perhaps this is implied by the new name given,
‘Bacchos.’ The candidate has to hold aloft the torches of the
Mountain Mother, and he has to accomplish two things, the Feasts
of Raw Flesh and the Thunders of night-wandering Zagreus.
The torch-light dance or procession upon the mountains (opev-
Baova) is sufficiently known from the Bacchae. The Feasts of
Raw Flesh (@podayia) will be later discussed*. It is the first-
named rite, the rite of the Thunders (βρονταί), which has long
been held to be unintelligible, and on which we must now focus
our attention. It will provide us with material for a sensible
advance in the understanding of the origins of Greek and any
other religion.
1 This has been clearly brought out by M. Lévy-Bruhl in his Fonctions Mentales
dans les Sociétés Inférieures, Ὁ. 417, entirely without reference to the passage of
Diodorus, ‘l’initiation des novices en général est imposée a tous, elle est relativement
publique...’
2 Lévy-Bruhl, op. cit. p. 417 ‘la ressemblance entre les épreuves de l’initiation
des sorciers ou shamans et celles de l’initiation des novices de la tribu en général
est frappante.’
3 Prolegomena, pp. 479—497. A full discussion of the ὠμοφαγία will come best
w hen we reach the question of sacrifice in chapter v.
ὅδ The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana [6Η.
THE RITE OF THE ‘ THUNDERS.’
A , , ‘A
καὶ νυκτιπόλου Zaypéws βροντὰς
: τελέσας.
‘Having accomplished the Thunders of night-wandering
Zagreus. What are the Thunders, and how can they be
accomplished? No answer was forthcoming, so not unnaturally
scholars proceeded to emend βροντάς". Following Prof. Gilbert
Murray’s advice I kept the text? and waited for further evidence
as to its interpretation.
Light came from an unexpected quarter. In investigating
thunderbolts I was referred to a passage, again, oddly enough, in
Porphyry. Pythagoras, Porphyry® tells us, in the course of his
journey from Asia Minor to Italy came to Crete. There he met
on landing some of the Mystae of Morgos, one of the Idaean
Daktyls, by whom he was initiated into their rites. The first rite
he underwent at their hands was purification, and this purification
was effected by—the thunderbolt or thunder-stone.
A thunder-stone! is not so strange an implement of purification
as it might at first sight appear. Celts or stone-axes over a large
portion of the civilized world are, by a strange blunder, taken to
be thunderbolts—weapons shot down by the sky-god. Such
1 Porphyry (De Abst. 1v. 19), who preserves the fragment for us—as a text on
which to preach vegetarianism—has βροντάς. The MSS. follow him with the
exception of the Leipzig MS., which has Bpords. Lobeck (see Nauck, ad loc.)
suggests σπονδάς, which may be rejected as of impossible violence. Valens reads
βιοτάς, which is feeble in sense. The most plausible suggestion is Diels’ βούτας --
ox-herd. Dieterich (De Hymnis Orphicis, p. 11) accepts βούτας, holding βροντάς
to be hopeless: ‘perperam traditur βροντάς praeclare emendavit Dielesius.’ The
praeclare is juster than the perperam. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Griechische
Dichterfragmente, p. 77, note 1) follows Diels, interpreting βούτας as βουκόλος.
The temptation to adopt βούτας is severe. In the omophagia a wild bull was
hunted and eaten; the bull-forms of Dionysos are familiar, his followers are known
to have been called βουκόλοι, at Athens we have a βουκολεῖον, and indeed an actual
βούτης (Butes) worshipped in the Erechtheion. But had the original reading been
Bovras it is hard to see why the unintelligible βροντάς should have been substituted.
2 Prolegomena, p. 480, note 1.
ὅ Vit. Pyth. 17 ἹΚρήτης δ᾽ ἐπιβὰς τοῖς Mépyou μύσταις ἑνὸς τῶν ᾿Ιδαίων Δακτύλων, ὑφ᾽
ὧν καὶ ἐκαθάρθη τῇ κεραυνίᾳ λίθῳ.
4 For the superstitions that gather round thunder-stones, and for celts as supposed
thunder-stones, see H. Martin’s La Foudre dans l Antiquité, 1866, and Ῥ, Saint Yve’s
Talismans et reliques tombés du ciel, in Revue des Etudes Ethnographiques et
Sociologiques, 1909, p. 1. See also Sir John Evans, Ancient Stone Implements,
p. 59, E. B. Tylor, Early History of Man, 2nd edit. p. 226, and Cartailhac, Γ᾽ σε de
nierre dans les souvenirs et superstitions populaires.
1ππ] The Thunder-Rites 57
stones are called to-day by the modern Greek peasant ‘lightning-
axes’ (ἀστροπελέκια, a shortened form of ἀστραποπελέκια").
Great is their value as charms against thunder, similia similibus,
to keep milk sweet, to cure rheumatism and the like.
The celt reproduced in Fig. 6 is a curious illustration of the
use of these supposed thunder-stones in
mysteries. It was found in the Argolid,
and is now in the Central Museum at
Athens. The inscription? cannot be in-
terpreted, and is probably of the Abraxas
order, but it is clear that the scene repre-
sented has to do with Mithraic mysteries.
We have the slaying of the holy bull, and,
below, a figure that looks like a Roman
soldier bearing a rod surmounted by an
eagle, is received by a priest: the soidier
is probably qualifying to become an ‘ Eagle.’
Porphyry* then goes on to enumerate
the various ceremonies gone through during
initiation. Pythagoras had to wear a wreath
of black wool, to lie face foremost near the sea for a whole night
and, finally, like Epimenides, to go down into the cave of Idaean
Zeus, probably a great underground cavern on Mount Dikte.
There he had to spend thrice nine days, and then at last he was
allowed to gaze on the throne which year by year was draped for
Zeus. There was on Dikte a tomb as well as a throne, since
Porphyry tells us that Pythagoras engraved an inscription on it
as follows: ‘Pythagoras to Zeus’—and the beginning of what he
wrote was:
Here died Zan and lies buried, whom they call Zeus,
1 Prof. Bosanquet kindly tells me that in Crete stone-axes are specially abundant
on the mountains. Near Palaikastro many are picked up on the now denuded
limestone.
* This inscription is inaccurately reproduced by Perrot and Chipiez, Grece
Primitive, vol. v1. p. 119, Fig. 5. The first four letters as given by them are Βάκχ,
which led me to hope that the word inscribed was Βάκχος, but Mr R. M. Dawkins
Was good enough to examine the actual stone and to send me the inscription
corrected. The drawing in Fig. 6, with the correct inscription, I owe to the kind-
ness of Mrs Hugh Stewart.
_ § Loe. cit. supra ἕωθεν μὲν παρὰ θαλάττῃ πρηνὴς ἐκταθείς, νύκτωρ δὲ mapa ποταμῷ
ἀρνειοῦ μέλανος μαλλοῖς ἐστεφανωμένος. εἰς δὲ τὸ Ldatov καλούμενον ἄντρον καταβὰς ἔρια
ἔχων μέλανα τὰς νομιζομένας τρὶς ἐννέα ἡμέρας ἐκεῖ διέτριψεν καὶ καθήγισεν τῷ Διὶ τόν
58 The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana _ {cu.
an inscription which reminds us of another divine being whose
tomb Zeus took over:
Here died Pikos and lies buried, who is also Zeus!
After all these solemnities the final apocalypse of an empty
throne falls rather flat. Why is the throne draped if it is to
remain empty? Was the throne really empty? Probably not.
Zeus in human shape was not seated thereon, otherwise we should
have been told, but his throne may on certain occasions have been
tenanted by a symbol as awe-inspiring as, or even more than,
himself,—his thunderbolt.
The two coins in Fig. 7 suggest this The first is from
Seleukeia Pieria*®, the date probably early in the first century B.C.
Silver Tetradrachm of Seleukeia Denarius of Antoninus
Pieria. Pius. Rev.
Fic. 7.
The reverse shows a large thunderbolt with fillet attached, lying
on a cushion on a throne; the legend is ZEAEVKEQN ΤΗΣ
IEPA ΚΑΙ AVTONOMOV. The turreted head on the obverse is
supposed to be the Tyche of Seleukeia. The second coin figured
is a denarius of Antoninus Pius, and also shows a thunderbolt
resting on a spread throne. Closely analogous in idea, though
τε στορνύμενον αὐτῷ κατ᾽ ἔτος θρόνον ἐθεάσατο, ἐπίγραμμά τ᾽ ἐνεχάραξεν ἐπὶ τῷ τάφῳ
ἐπιγράψας “Πυθαγόρας τῷ Aci,’ οὗ ἡ ἀρχή: Ὧδε θανὼν κεῖται Lav, ὃν Δία κικλήσκουσιν.
1 Suidas, 8.0. Πῆκος" ἐνθάδε κεῖται θανὼν... Πῖκος ὁ καὶ Ζεύς. See p. 109.
* The coins reproduced are in the possession of Mr A. Β. Cook, and will be
discussed in his forthcoming book on Zeus. He very kindly allows me to anticipate
their publication.
3 Cf. Brit. Mus. Cat. Gk. Coins, Syria, pp. 270 f. Pl. xxxir. 6 and 8. The
thunder-cult of Seleukeia Pieria is well known. Appian in his History of Syria
(c. 56) says of the inhabitants of Scleukeia θρήσκουσι καὶ ὑμνοῦσι καὶ νῦν Κεραυνόν.
Keraunos had annually appointed priests, κεραυνοφόροι, with whom may perhaps be
compared the λιθοφόρος, who had a seat in the Dionysiac theatre at Athens. See
my Myth. and Mon. Ancient Athens, p, 274.
| m1 | Child and Thunder-stone 59
not in style, is a Graeco-Roman relief (Fig. 8), now in the museum
at Mantua’ Here again we have the spread throne, the thunder-
bolt ; the only addition is an eagle.
The thunderbolt was to the primitive Greek not the symbol
or attribute of the god, but itself the divine thing, the embodi-
ment and vehicle of the god. As such, long after Zeus had taken
on full human form in literature, it held its place in cultus, not
as a weapon in the hand of the human god, but actually occupying
his throne. This identity of the two is specially manifest in the
Fic. 8.
figure of the infant Zagreus. In the terracotta relief from the
Palazzo Colonna, reproduced in Fig. 3, we have seen three dancing
Kouretes or Korybantes who clash their shields over the infant
Zeus. Near him, lying on the ground, isa thunderbolt, his vehicle,
his equivalent rather than his attribute.
The human child completely replaces the thunderbolt. On
the ivory relief? from Milan (Fig. 9) the child is seated on the
throne once held by the thunderbolt. This relief though late
embodies a primitive form of the myth. It is matriarchal and
tribal in sentiment. We have the Mother and Child, the Kouretes
and their correlatives the Satyrs, but the Father is nowhere
represented.
The fact that child and thunder-stone were one and the same
was deep-rooted in myth as well as ritual. Hesiod® knew it,
1K. Braun, Kunstmythologie, Taf. 6.
2 Arch. Zeit. 1846, Taf. 38 ; with this relief may be compared the child on the
throne in the coin of Magnesia, p. 241.
3 Hes. Theog. 485 τῷ δὲ crapyavicaca μέγαν λίθον ἐγγυάλιξεν.
β
60 The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana _ [0Η.
at least subconsciously. When Ἵ
Kronos was about to swallow —
Zeus, what is it that Rhea gives
him and that he really swallowed ?
A stone in swaddling clothes. On
the well-known relief! on the
Capitoline altar Rhea is figured
with the swaddled stone in her
hands, offering it to Kronos.
When the appointed time came
‘that stone which he had swal-
lowed last he vomited forth first
and Zeus set it up in goodly
Pytho as a sign and a marvel?®.’
In goodly Pytho it was seen by ©
Pausanias?; it was anointed with ~
oil day by day, and had a yearly ©
festival. It was not till the stone
was vomited up that the thunder
and lightning were let loose’.
Long before Zeus was Zeus,
thunder and lightning were, in a
sense to be considered presently,
divine potencies, their vehicle
was a thunder-stone; by such a
thunder-stone was Pythagoras
purified, on such a thunder-stone ©
did he gaze in the Diktaean
cave.
ages:
iii hea
coe) eS
Ivory relief from Milan.
Fia, 9.
1 Overbeck, Kunstmythologie, Atlas iii.
24.
2 Hes. Theog. 496
πρῶτον δ᾽ ἐξείμεσσε λίθον, πύματον κατα-
πίνων"
τὸν μὲν Ζεὺς στήριξε κατὰ χθονὸς εὐρυ-
οδείης
Πυθοῖ ἐν ἀγαθέῃ γυάλοις ὕπο ἸΠαρνησοῖο
one ἔμεν ἐξοπίσω θαῦμα θνητοῖσι βρο-
τοῖσιν. ;
Six 2A |
+ See Prof. Gilbert Murray’s illumi- —
nating analysis and interpretation of the —
confused Hesiodic account in Anthropology
and the Classics, p. 86.
11 | The Bull-Roarer 61
Given then a rite in which the catechumen 15 purified by a
thunder-stone and which has for its culmination the probable, if
not certain, ἀνακάλυψις of a thunderbolt on a throne, was it in
human nature not to heighten the dramatic effect by adding the
sound of simulated thunder ?
Here again we are not left to conjecture: we have definite
evidence that im certain mystery-rites thunder was actually
imitated by bull-voiced mimes, by drums and other apparatus.
Strabo! in his account of the Kouretes mentions that Aeschylus?
in the lost Hdoni says that the instruments of Kotys were used
by the Thracians in their orgies of Dionysos. Kotys is but a
Thraco-Phrygian form of the Mountain Mother to whom the
Cretan mystic expressly states he held aloft the torches. She was
variously called Kotys, Bendis, Rhea, Kybele. After describing
the din made by the ‘mountain gear’ of Kotyto, the maddening
hum of the bombykes, the clash of the bronze cymbals and the
swang of strings, Aeschylus goes on ‘ And bull-voices roar thereto
from somewhere out of the unseen, fearful semblances, and from
a drum an image as it were of thunder underground is borne on the
air heavy with dread.’
Real thunder cannot be had to order; mimic thunder can, and
we know was. Nor is it easy to imagine a more efficient instru-
ment of ἔκπληξις. We know the very instrument with which
in ancient days mimic thunder was manufactured, the famous
Bull-roarer or ῥόμβος, the sound of whose whirring is mystical,
awe-inspiring, and truly religious. It is like nothing in the world
but itself, perhaps the nearest approach is the ominous sound of
a rising storm-wind or angry imminent thunder. The rhombos is
carefully described by the scholiast? on Clement of Alexandria in
commenting on the passage quoted above, in which he describes
‘the wholly inhuman mysteries of Dionysos Zagreus. The
rhombos, says the scholiast, is ‘a bit of wood to which a string
1 x. 470.
2 Nauck, Frg. 57
ταυρόφθογγοι δ᾽ ὑπομυκῶνταί
ποθεν ἐξ ἀφανοῦς φοβεροὶ μῖμοι
τυπάνου δ᾽ εἰκὼν ὥσθ᾽ ὑπογαίου
βροντῆς φέρεται βαρυταρβής.
3 Ad Clemens Alex. Cohort. p. 5 " Κῶνος καὶ ῥόμβος᾽ ξυλάριον οὗ ἐξῆπται τὸ
σπαρτίον καὶ ἐν ταῖς τελεταῖς ἐδονεῖτο ἵνα pouty. See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 100. The
scholiast professes to explain κῶνος but as Mr A. B. Cook kindly pointed out to me
κῶνος is obviously some form of spinning top. The object described as a bit of
wood with a string through it is obviously a rhombos or Bull-Roarer. The
62. The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana coal
is tied, and it is whirled round and round at initiation-rites to
make a whirring sound.’
In the mysteries of Zagreus, then, as practised by the Kouretes
and Idaean Daktyls, the initiated man (1) was purified by a
thunderbolt, (2) heard mimic thunder, (3) probably beheld a
thunderbolt on a throne. After these experiences, he may, I think,
fairly be said to have ‘accomplished the Thunders.’
To elucidate the general principle of man’s reaction on the |
outside world, which is the main object of the present chapter, we —
could examine no better instance than the Thunder-Rites.
The Thunder-Rites of Zagreus occur, it has been seen, in the
initiation of a Bacchos or medicine-man. It will be remembered
that among the Wiradthuri they occur during rites of adolescence.
After what has been said of the analogy between the two this is
not surprising. When the gist of the Thunder-Rite has been
once grasped it will be abundantly clear that at any and every
ceremony of initiation a Thunder-Rite is appropriate.
What purpose do they serve? What is their religious function ?
The Greeks, says a Christian Father, worship (θεραπεύουσι)
the thunderbolt. The statement causes us something of a shock.
The Greeks of classical days regarded the thunderbolt as the
weapon of Zeus the Sky-God, as his attribute, but assuredly they
did not regard the thunder as itself a full-blown personal god’.
Nor does the Christian Father say they did. All he states is that
they ‘ worshipped’ the thunderbolt, that is, had a cult of it, tended
it, attended to it, made it the object of ‘religious’ care. |
Religion has been defined as ‘l'ensemble des pratiques qui
concernent les choses sacrées’; so far as it goes the definition is
excellent, but it only pushes the difficulty a step further back.
bibliography of the Bull-Roarer is fully given by Dr Frazer, Golden Bough?,
vol. m1. note 1. The first to draw attention to the importance of the savage Bull-
Roarer in connection with Greek initiation-rites was Mr Andrew Lang, Custom and
Myth, 1884, pp. 39—41, 51—55. To the authorities here given must now be added
the valuable papers by Mr R. R. Marett, Savage Supreme Beings and the Bull-
Roarer in Hibbert Journal, Jan. 1910, and M. van Gennep, Mythes et Légendes
d’ Australie, Introduction, pp. Ixviii ff.
1 In imperial days a personal Keraunos was made the object of a definite cult
in our sense. In remote Arcadia Pausanias notes (vu. 29. 1) that on the Alpheios
they offered sacrifice to Lightnings, Storms and Thunders (θύουσιν ᾿Αστραπαῖς καὶ
Θυέλλαις καὶ Bpovrais). Appian (Syr. 58) writes φασὶ δὲ αὐτῷ (Seleukos Nikator)
τὰς Σελευκείας οἰκίζοντι τὴν μὲν ἐπὶ TH θαλάσσῃ διοσημίαν ἡγήσασθαι κεραυνοῦ Kal διὰ
τοῦτο θεὸν αὐτοῖς Κεραυνὸν ἔθετο, καὶ θρησκεύουσι καὶ ὕμνουσι καὶ νῦν Κεραυνόν.
4
π|| Sanctity is pre-theological 63
The cardinal question remains, what do we mean by the word
sacred? ?
In bygone days the answer would have been prompt and
simple, the thunderbolt is sacred because it belonged to a god.
The god is presupposed and from him comes the sanctity. We
now know, from a study of the customs and representations of
primitive peoples, that, broadly speaking, the reverse is true, a \
thing is regarded as sacred, and out of that sanctity, given certain
conditions, emerges a daimon and ultimately a god. Le sacré,
cest le pére du dieu. This comes out very clearly in the attitude
of the Wiradthuri towards the Bull-Roarer.
Before initiation no boy may behold a Bull-Roarer. He and
the women hear from a distance the awful unearthly whirring
sound. At the moment of initiation the novices are closely
covered with blankets and the fearsome din breaks upon them in
complete darkness. The roaring, boys and women are told,
represents the muttering of thunder, and the thunder—this is the
important point—is the voice of Dhuramoolan. ‘Thunder,’ said
Umbara headman of the Yuin tribe*, ‘is the voice of Him (and
he pointed upwards to the sky) calling on the rain to fall and
everything to grow up new.
Now here we have the Bull-Roarer explained, for the edifica-
tion of the women and children, as a more or less anthropomorphic
being, a kind of Sky-God; but note this important point. When
the boy is actually initiated the central mystery takes the form of
a revelation (ἀποκάλυψις) of the Bull-Roarer, the boy sees and
handles it, and learns to twirl it; it is not, he finds, the voice of
Dhuramoolan the Sky-God, it is a Bull-Roarer. Women and
children must be told the myth of Dhuramoolan, but the grown
man has done with theology. Now we should expect that with
the god will go the sanctity. Not at all; the sanctity did not
arise from the god, and it survives him. Wherein resides the
sanctity ?
The sanctity of the Bull-Roarer and of all sacred things will
be found I think at the outset to contain two factors, the sense
1 EB. Durkheim, Définition des phénoménes religieux, p. 17, in Année Sociologique,
τι, (1898).
2 Here and throughout my discussion of the Bull-Roarer I am much indebted
to Mr R. R. Marett’s Savage Supreme Beings and the Bull-Roarer, Hibbert Journal,
Jan. 1910.
64 The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana [6Η.
of fear or perhaps it would be better called awe, and the sense of
force, power, effectiveness. The awesomeness of the Bull-Roarer
is known to all who have heard it; it possesses in a high degree
the quality of uncanniness. Heard in the open sunlight it sends
a shudder through even modern nerves; on temperaments more
primitive, more excitable, more suggestible, heard in the darkness
of the rites of ‘night-haunting Zagreus’ its effect might well be
one of frenzy’.
», ‘The feare of things invisible is the naturall seed of Religion,’
said Hobbes, and he spoke truly, but his statement requires some
modification or rather amplification. It is not the fear of the
individual savage that begets religion, it is fear felt together, fear
emphasized, qualified, by a sort of social sanction. Moreover fear
does not quite express the emotion felt. It is rather awe, and awe
contains in it the element of wonder as well as fear?; awe is on the
way to be reverence, and reverence is essentially religious. It is
remote entirely from mere blind panic, it is of the nature of
~ attraction rather than repulsion. The Point Barrow natives® are
afraid of the Aurora Borealis, they think it may strike them in
the back of the neck. So they brandish knives and throw filth to
drive it away. It is a little difficult to call the act religious. The
famous Primus in orbe deos fecit timor of Lucretius is the truth,
but not the whole truth. Moreover the fear which has gone to
the making of religion is at least as much social as physical‘.
» This brings us to the second factor in sanctity, the factor
cea
which I think differentiates awe from mere fear, the recognition —
of force, power, effectiveness. This comes out very clearly in the
‘case of the Bull-Roarer. The Bull-Roarer has of course in itself
‘no power, but its roaring is like the roaring of thunder, and to this
day a Bull-Roarer is called in Scotland a ‘thunner spell.’ Because
‘the Bull-Roarer makes the sound of thunder, has the same quality
: Asch. Frg. Edoni, Nauck, Frg. 57 μανίας ἐπαγωγὸν ὁμοκλάν.
2 As to the individual psychology of religion I follow mainly Mr W. McDougall,
An Introduction to Social Psychology; see especially the excellent chapter (xizI.) on
The Instinctive Bases of Religion.
3 Marett, Threshold of Religion, p. 15, from Murdoch, Point Barrow Expedition,
p. 432.
4 For this religion of fear and wonder Mr Marett (op. cit. p. 18) suggests the
name teratism, which would be excellent but that it leaves no place for the gentler
forces of fertility.
4
m|] The Thunderstorm and the Bull-Roarer 65
as thunder, that is, psychologically produces the same reactions, it |
as thunder.
To us a thunderstorm is mainly a thing of terror, a thing to
be avoided, a thing ‘not to go out in. We get abundant and
superabundant rain without thunderstorms. But an occasional
drought broken up by thunderstorms helps us to realize what
thunder and the Bull-Roarer which makes thunder mean to the
Central Australian, where ‘a thunderstorm causes the desert to
blossom as a rose truly as if by magic?’ ‘The thunder, as the
headman said, ‘caused the rain to fall and everything to grow up
new. Now we realize its virtue in the adolescence rite; it gives
the boys ‘more power, they not only grow up, but grow up new.
The Bull-Roarer is as it were the rite incarnate. The Bull-Roarer
is the vehicle not of a god or even of a spirit, but of unformulated |
uncanny force, what Mr Lang? calls a ‘ Powerful Awful.’ “ἃ
The awful, the ay, the unknown, is within man rather
than without. In all excited states, whatever be the stimulant,
whether of sex or intoxication, or vehement motion as in dancing,
man is conscious of a potency beyond himself, yet within himself,
he feels himself possessed, not by a personal god—he is not yet
év@eos—but by an exalted power. The power within him he does
not, cannot, at first clearly distinguish from the power without,
and the fusion and confusion is naturally helped when the emotion
is felt collectively in the group. This fusion of internal will and
energy with external power is of the very essence of the notion of
sanctity and is admirably seen in the Bull-Roarer. The initiated
boy when taught to twirl the Bull-Roarer feels himself actually
making the Thunder, his will and energy and action conspire
with its uncanny potency. There is no clear severance; he is
conscious of control, he can alter the pace and thereby the
weird sounds, he is a Thunder-maker and we are landed straight
into Magic.
1 Mr R. R. Marett, op. cit. p. 406, and Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East
Australia, 1904, p. 538.
2 See Preanimistic Religion, The Contemporary Review, 1909, p. 589. Mr Lang
denies a pre-Animistic stage of religion. The case for pre-Animism is well stated
by Mr Εἰ. Clodd in his Pre-Animistie Stages in Religion, a paper read before the
Third International Congress for the History of Religions at Oxford, 1908.
% It will be seen in chapter v., when we come to discuss totemism and sacrifice,
that primitive man’s lack of power to draw intellectual distinctions lies at the back
of many religious phenomena.
~
Η. 9
66 The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana _ [CH.
But before examining Magic it is interesting to note that this
notion of the ‘sacred’ which we have resolved into the fearful and
the effective, and have seen to be the result of man’s emotion
projected into external nature, is wide-spread among primitive
peoples and has given rise to an instructive terminology. It is
indeed in examining this terminology that we best seize and fix
the Protean shape of the ‘sacred. We have so far focused
attention on the Bull-Roarer because it is a singularly illumi-
nating instance of sanctity, and of a sanctity actually observable
in Greece, but we must now extend the field of vision to a more
comprehensive sanctity as expressed in savage languages. Almost
all savages have some word by which they express 8 force or
power which seems to them uncanny, something which arrests
their attention and rouses in them a feeling of awe. One or two
of these words will repay a closer investigation.
We begin with the word orenda} in use among the Iroquois of
North America, which in some ways seems least mysterious,
“ nearest to ordinary natural power. A man’s orenda is his power
to do things, almost his personality, yet remaining impersonal.
A man who hunts well has much orenda ; when a man is in a
rage great is his orenda. A man’s orenda is very like the Greek
θυμός and μένος, bodily life, vigour, passion, power, the virtue that
is in you to feel and do, also to know, for it is by his orenda that
the medicine-man learns the secrets of the future. Orenda is
nowise confined to man. It is further the material of magical
action. When a storm is brewing the rain-maker is preparing its
orenda. Orenda is ἴῃ the notes of birds. A shy bird hard to
catch has fine orenda. The orenda of man is pitted against the
orenda of his prey; the orenda of one man in battle or in games
is pitted against that of another. The orenda of the rabbit
controls the snow and fixes the depth to which it is to fall. Orenda
is often, as already seen, like a mere natural force, but here we see
its non-natural side. Again when the maize is ripening the
Iroquois knows the real, natural cause, the sun’s heat. But he
knows more; it is the cigala makes the sun to shine and the
1 —. 5. Hartland, Presidential Address to Anthropological Section of British
Association, York, 1906, p. 5, quoting J. N. B. Hewitt in American Anthropologist,
N.S. rv. p. 38. ᾿
v
|
1Π| Orenda and Mana 67
cigala does it by chirping, by uttering his orenda. Generally
orenda seems to be good, but if a man has died from witchcraft,
‘an evil orenda has struck him.’
The mana’ of the Melanesians is very like orenda, but seems
to be somewhat more specialized?» All men do not possess
mana, though it seems mainly to originate in personal human
beings. Spirits and ghosts are apt to possess mana, but all ghosts
do not possess it, only ghosts that are specially potent, Tindalos.
The word mana is adjective as well as substantive, it is indeed
very adjectival in its nature, qualities seem almost like specialized
forms of mana*. A man’s social position depends mainly on the
amount of mana he has, either naturally or by virtue‘ of cere-
monies of initiation. All this sounds rather abstract, yet on the
other hand mana has a certain fluid substantiveness. It can be
communicated from stone to stone. Asked to describe mana one
savage will say it is ‘heavy,’ another that it is ‘hot, a third that
it is ‘strange, uncommon. A man finds a queer looking stone,
puts it near his yams or in his pig-sty, pigs and yams prosper,
clearly the stone had mana for pigs and yams. Sometimes it
seems to stand for mere vague greatness. In Mangarevan any
number over forty is mana mana mana, aptly rendered by
Mr Marett® as an ‘awful’ lot. Here we have the unknown
bordering on the supernatural, though as has been well remarked
nothing to the savage is so natural as the ‘supernatural.’ Perhaps
the term super-usual would be safer as having no connotation of
‘natural law.’
This vague force in man and in almost everything is constantly
trembling on the verge of personality. The medicine-men of the
Australian Dieri® are Kutchi; when one of the Dieri sees a circling
dust-storm near the camp great is his terror, for there is Kutch.
He hurls his boomerang and kills Autchi and flies for terror after-
wards. ‘ Kutchi growl along a me, by and by me tumble down.’
1 Codrington, The Melanesians, 1891, pp. 118—120 and p. 192.
2 Any attempt to distinguish between the mana, orenda and the like is evidently
precarious, since we are liable to be misled by the emphasis on special usages of
the word as noted by particular observers.
3 W. R. Halliday, The Force of Initiative in Magical Conflict, in Folk-Lore xxt.
(1910), p. 148.
4 Miss Hope Mirrlees calls my attention to Chaucer’s use of the word vertu, with
meanings closely analogous to those of mana and almost as various.
5 Threshold of Religion, p. 122.
ὁ Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 446.
68 The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana [(Η.
Here is a self-projected terror on the way to become a god. Yet
we cannot, even though we supply him with a capital letter and a
personal pronoun, call Kutchi really a god; Kutchi is a general
term for the ‘superusual.’ So the Kaffir unkulunkulu 15 translated
as ‘the old, old one’ or ‘the great, great one’ and the heart
of the orthodox anthropologist leaps up to meet a primitive,
personal god, an All-Father, ‘Savage Supreme Being’; yet
we are assured by those most at home in the language and
thought of the Kaffirs that unkulunkulu in its native form implies
no personality.
The savage, like the child, passes from the particular to the
general; the mature and civilized mind well supplied with ready-
made abstractions is apt to start from generalities. To the savage
this stone or tree or yam has mana or orenda, that is what
concerns him; but gradually,—and this is another high road to
impersonation—from the multitude of things that have mana,
there arises the notion of a sort of continuum of mana, a world of
unseen power lying behind the visible universe, a world which is
the sphere, as will be seen, of magical activity and the medium of
mysticism. The mystical element, the oneness and continuousness
comes out very clearly in the notion of Wa-kon’-da among the
Sioux Indians. This continuum, rather felt than formulated, is
perhaps primitive man’s first effort at generalization’.
The conception of Wa-kon’-da has been so carefully observed
and the rites connected with it recorded in detail by Miss Alice
Fletcher during thirty years’ residence among the Omaha Indians
that it will be best briefly to resume her account. The Wa-kon’-da
rites and beliefs are specially instructive to us because thunder,
from the sanctity of which our enquiry began, is one of the most
usual and significant manifestations of Wa-kon’-da. ‘The Omahas
regard all animate and inanimate forms, all phenomena, as pervaded
by a common life, which was continuous and similar to the will-
power they were conscious of in themselves. This mysterious
power in all things they called Wa-kon’-da, and through it all
things were related to man, and to each other. In the idea of the
continuity of life, a relation was maintained between the seen
1 It does not follow that the conception of mana belonged to the most primitive
stratum of Melanesian culture; see Dr Rivers in his presidential address to the
Anthropological Section of the British Association, 1911, p. 5.
4
i
ΟἹ
Tt | Wa-kon’-da 69
o, and also between the
δ᾽
and the unseen, the dead and the livin
fragment of anything and its entirety’
Any man may at any time seek to obtain Wa-kon’-da by the
‘rite of the vision.’ He will go out alone, will fast, chant incanta-
tions, seek to fall into a trance, till finally he sees some object,
a feather, a tuft of hair, a small black stone—the symbol of thunder,
or a pebble which represents water. This object henceforward he
will carry about with him. To him it is henceforth, not an object
of worship, but a sort of credential, a pledge, a fragment as it
were of Wa-kon’-da, connecting him with the whole power
represented by whatever form appeared to him in his vision.
Certain religious societies were based on these visions. The
men to whom a bear had appeared formed the Bear society,
those to whom the black stone appeared became the Thunder
society.
Miss Fletcher constantly insists that Wa-kon’-da is not a person.
Yet Wakon’-da is very human; it can pity, man can appeal to it,
adjure its help. Wa-kon’-da is invisible. ‘No man,’ said the
tribal elder, ‘has ever seen Wa-kon’-da. Perhaps the nearest we
can get to understanding Wa-kon’-da is to think of it as life—
invisible life—too all-pervading ever to be personal. This comes
out very clearly in the initiation-rites of the Omaha. It has
already been noted that in examining religious facts we have to
take account not only of man’s reactions to and relations with his
fellow-men, but also of his reactions to and relations with the
non-human world, the external universe. It is to induce and safe-
guard these relations that the Omaha initiations to be now
considered are largely devised.
The first initiation takes place on the fourth day after birth.
Before it takes place the child is regarded as part of its mother, it
has no separate existence, no personal name. The rite is one of
introduction to the cosmos. To the sun and moon, the thunder
and the clouds, the hills, the earth, the beasts, the water, the
1 A. C, Fletcher, The Significance of the Scalp-Lock, Journal of Anthropological
Studies, xxvir. (1897-8), p. 436. It is Miss Fletcher’s admirable practice to have
her accounts of ritual, etc., retranslated into Omaha and to submit them for
criticism to some elder among the natives; the danger of misconception is thereby
minimized.
70 The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana [6Η.
formal announcement is made that a new life is among them; they
are asked, or rather adjured, to accept and cherish it. The refrain
after each clause comes :
Consent ye, consent ye all, I implore.
The second rite comes when the child is between two and
three years old. It is specially significant in relation to the
notion of Wa-kon’-da. When the child first speaks, first walks, it
is regarded as a manifestation of life, of Wa-kon’-da. The speaking
and walking are in fact called Wa-kon’-da. It is only these first
manifestations that are so called. If later a child falls sick
and gets better the restored life is never called Wa-kon-da.
This second ceremony differs from the first in that it is also
an initiation into the tribe. It takes place ‘after the first
thunder in the spring-time, when the grass is well up and the
birds singing.’
The only ritual necessary for the child, boy or girl, is a pair
of new moccasins, now to be worn for the first time. Great sanctity
attaches to these moccasins, they cannot be given away or ex-
changed. The mother comes with her child to the sacred hut set
up for the purpose, but the child must enter it alone, bearing his
moccasins. Then follow six incantations, each ending with a roll
of mimic thunder in a minor key. During the first song powers
are invoked to come from the four cardinal points. During the
second song a tuft of hair is shorn from the crown of the child’s
head and laid by the priest in a sacred case: but as we learn from
the words of the song addressed to the Thunder as Grandfather,
the lock and with it the life of the child pass into the keeping
of the Thunder :
Grandfather! there far above, on high,
The hair like a shadow dark flashes before you.
In the third song it is proclaimed that the power of death as
well as life lies with Wa-kon’-da:
What time I will, then only then,
A man lies dead a gruesome thing,
What time I will, then, suddenly,
A man lies dead a gruesome thing.
(The Thunder rolls.)
1Π| Omaha Initiation-Rites 71
The fourth song accompanies the putting on of the moccasins;
its gist is:
In this place has the truth been declared to you,
Now therefore arise! go forth in its strength.
So far the main element of the rite is consecration to the
thunder-god, the supreme Wa-kon’-da. Next comes a ceremony
the gist of which, like the earlier ceremony, is to naturalize the
child in the universe. Boys only are consecrated to the thunder-
spirit, who is also the war-spirit ; but the next ceremony is open to
girls. It is called Dhi-ku-win-he, ‘Turning the child. The priest
takes the child to the east of the fire in the hut, then lifting it by
the shoulders carries it to the south, lets its feet rest on a stone or
buffalo skull, a sort of omphalos placed there for the purpose.
There the priest turns the child completely round, then carries it
to the west, the north, the east again, turning it upon the stone at
each point while the fifth song is sung :
Turned by the winds goes the one I send yonder,
Yonder he goes who is whirled by the wind,
Goes where the four hills of life and the four winds are standing,
There in the midst of the winds do I send him,
Into the midst of the winds, standing there.
(The Thunder rolls.)
The stone and grass laid on it and the buffalo skull stand for
earth ; the four hills are the four stages of life. Up till now the
child bore its cradle name. It now takes its nt-ki-e name which
relates it to its gens. After the turning of the child its nt-ki-e
name is announced by the priest with a kind of primitive Benedicite
omnia opera:
Ye hills, grass, trees—ye creeping things both great and small—I bid you
hear! This child has thrown away its cradle name. Hi-e.
The ceremony ends with a fire invocation. The priest picks
up the bunches of grass, dashes them to the ground, where they
burst into flames, and as the flames light up the sacred lodge
the child is dismissed, while the priest sings:
O hot red fire hasten,
O haste ye flames to come,
Come speedily to help me.
The whole gist of this ‘Turning ceremony’ is the placing of
the child ‘in the midst of’ those elements that bring life, health,
72 The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana 7
fruitfulness, success, in a word Wa-kon’-da. Very early in life the
child has ‘accomplished the Thunders.’
An examination of the words orenda, mana and Wa-kon’-da
has helped -us to realize what is meant by the word ‘sacred’ and
also in what sense it is possible to ‘worship’ or rather to ‘attend
to’ the thunder without any presupposition of a personal thunder-
god. It remains to ask—Is this notion of ‘sacred’ as something
charged with force and fear confined to primitive terminology or
does it survive in the speech of civilized peoples? The Sanscrit
word Brahman! means to us a holy man of high caste, but if we
go back to Vedic texts we find that bréhman in the neuter means
‘charm, rite, formulary, prayer.’ The caste of the Brahmans is
nothing but the men who have bréhman, and this is the force, the
inside power, by which both men and gods act. Certain texts
further define brdhman as the substance, the heart, the great
essence of things (pratyantam), that which is most inward. This
essence of things is the god Brahma. In a word the brdéhman of
ritual, the power or efficacity felt by the worshipper is transformed
by the Hindu, if he is a theologian, into a god, if he is a philo-
sopher, into a metaphysical entity. The mystic by the practice of
yoga, union, becomes brdhman and has thereby attained a magical
omnipotence.
Where the Indian loses himself in metaphysics, the Greek,
being an artist, delights himself with an agalma, the image, the
imagination of a personal god. But he too starts from Wa-kon’-da
of the crudest kind, from strength and force. Hesiod? in his
conscious self is thoroughly orthodox, his theology is emphatically
and even noisily Olympian. Zeus is to him human-shaped, Father
of gods and men, Zeus who knoweth imperishable counsels. But
the theology of Hesiod® is all confused and tangled with the
flotsam and jetsam of earlier ages, weltering up unawares from
subconscious depths:
Styx, Ocean’s daughter did with Pallas wed ;
Zelos, fair-ankled Nike did she bear
Within his halls, and next the glorious twain,
1 See Hubert et Mauss, Théorie générale de la Magie, in Année Sociologique,
vu. (1902-3), p. 117.
2 For the κράτος τε βία re of Hesiod see Professor Gilbert Murray’s illuminating
account in Anthropology and the Classics, p. 74.
2 raed 383.
1 | Kratos and Bia 73
Power and Force. Not any house of Zeus
Is reft of them, nor seat. When he goes forth
They follow, hard behind, and by the throne
Of Zeus, Loud-thunderer, stablish they their seat.
Kratos and Bia, Power and Force, are shadow-figures in a
mature, flesh and blood theology. They affect us as strange or
superfluous. Once more they meet us in the Prometheus Bound,
and, though now completely humanized, they strike the same
strange chill. Hesiod, we are told, abounds in ‘abstractions,’
‘personifications’ of qualities. Rather his verse is full of reminis-
cences, resurgences of early pre-anthropomorphic faith; he is
haunted by the spirits of ghostly mana and orenda and Wa-kon’-da
and brdhman. Styx, Cold Shudder, Petrifaction, is married to
Pallas, who, as we shall later! find, began life as a thunderbolt.
Cold Shudder, Fear of the Uncanny, almost Tabu, brings forth
Eager Effort (Zndos) and Achievement; Dominance (Nike),
and Power and Force are added to the strange phantom crew.
We seem to have the confused, half forgotten psychology of a
thunderstorm.
In this connection it is interesting to note that Kratos, Force,
is sometimes almost specialized into thunder. It is the strength
of Zeus. The process of specialization can be watched. When in
the Oedipus Rex? the chorus adjures Zeus to blast the Plague-God
they pray, “Ὁ Thou who wieldest the forces (κράτη) of the fire-
bearing Lightnings, O Father Zeus.’ In the later writer, Cornutus’,
Kratos is used as the actual equivalent of the thunderbolt: ‘and
the Kratos which he holds in his right hand.’
In the first two chapters we established as a main element in
religion collective emotion, man’s reaction on his fellow-man. In
the present chapter we have dwelt chiefly on man’s reaction to
the universe. We have seen his emotion extend itself, project
itself into natural phenomena, and noted how this projection
ΦΉΣ ΘΝ,
2 v, 200 ὦ τἂν πυρφόρων
ἀστραπᾶν κράτη νέμων,
ὦ Ζεῦ πάτερ, ὑπὸ σῷ φθίσον κεραυνῷ.
3 Cornut. 10. 18 τὸ δὲ κράτος ὃ ἐν δεξιᾷ χειρὶ κατέχει. I am indebted for this
reference to Dr Usener’s Keraunos in Rhein. Mus. ux. (1905), p. 12.
74 The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana _ [6Η. Tm
begets in him such conceptions as mana, orenda, Wa-kon’-da,
Kratos and Bia. We now pass to man’s attempt, at first collec-
tive, then individual, to control these forces, to what we might
conveniently call the manipulation of mana, or, to use current
phraseology, we pass to the consideration of magic and its negative
social counterpart tabu.
1 T have adopted mana rather than Wa-kon’-da as a general term for impersonal
force because it is already current and also because its content is perhaps somewhat
less specialized and mystical.
CHAPTER IV.
MAGIC,
εὐλδίλλων TE Kal ὄλβιος Oc TAAE TIANTA
εἰλὼς EprazHTal ANA{TIOC ABANATOICIN,
ἄρνιθὰς κρίνων Kal ὑπερβδοίὰς ἀλεείνων.
(a) Maaic AND TaBU.
THE word μαγεία from which our word magic is derived,
was, among the Greeks of classical days, never really at home.
Plato’ on the one occasion that he uses it thinks it necessary
to add a definition, and this definition, we shall see, is highly
significant. In the first dialogue that bears the name of
Alcibiades Socrates is urging on Alcibiades to an exceptionally
high standard of conduct and education. Such a standard is best
(he says) exemplified by the training of the Spartan and Persian
kings. ‘When the young prince is fourteen years old he is given
into the charge of certain persons who are called the “Royal
paedagogues.” These are four Persians in the flower of their age
who are selected as being reputed foremost in certain virtues: one
is the wisest, one the most just, one the most prudent, one the
bravest. Of these the one who is wisest teaches the magic
(uayeiav) of Zoroaster the son of Horomazos’; and then to our
surprise Socrates adds by way of explanation, ‘the art of the)
magician is the service (θεραπεία) of the gods. The same man
gives instruction in kingly duties’ (τὰ βασιλικά).
1 Or the author of the Alcibiades, 1228 ὧν ὁ μὲν (ὁ σοφώτατος) μαγείαν τε
διδάσκει τὴν Zwpoderpov τοῦ Ὡρομάζου" ἔστι δὲ τοῦτο θεῶν θεραπεία" διδάσκει δὲ καὶ τὰ
βασιλικά.
76 Magic [ CH.
‘Mageia’ is the service of the gods, and the same man who
teaches ‘mageia’ teaches kingly duties. No statement could well be
more contrary to current feeling about magic. We associate magic
rather with demons than with gods, and we picture it as practised
by ignorant old women, hole and corner charlatans, or lovers
insane through passion. We know that certain ‘magical practices’
survived among the Greeks, but when asked for instances we do
not call to mind kings and potentates, we think of Phaedra’s old
nurse in the Hippolytus, of Simaetha desolate and desperate, of
Thessalian witches dragging down the moon, of things and people
outside the pale, at war with the powers that be, whether of earth
‘or heaven. Yet in primitive days in Greece, as in Persia, magic
‘had to do, if not with divinities (θεοί), yet at least with things
divine, with sanctities (τὰ θεῖα), and not less certainly a knowledge
of magic was assuredly part of the necessary equipment of a king
(τὰ βασιλικά). The king as magician will be considered in the
next section. For the present we have to deal with the manipu-
lation of sanctities by the tribe or by its representative, the
medicine-man. We shall find that the attitude towards mana
is a two-fold one, the positive attitude which is magic, the nega-
tive which is tabu'.
The design in Fig. 10 is from the fragment of a ‘ Dipylon’
amphora® found in the excavations on the site of the Kynosarges
gymnasium on the left bank of the Ilissos below the spring of
Kallirrhoé. Most of the vases found in the ‘Dipylon’ tombs on
this site were claimed by the owner of the land and are now
inaccessible, but by great good fortune this fragment fell to the
excavators, and is now preserved in the British School at
Athens.
Happily the class of vases known from the first place of their
finding as ‘Dipylon’ can be dated within narrow limits. Their
ornamentation is characteristically geometric, and they belong to
a period extending from circ. 900—700 B.c. Our fragment is a
1 Mr Marett, Threshold of Religion, p. 114, prefers to call tabu a negative mana.
2 J. P. Droop, ‘Dipylon vases from the Kynosarges site,’ B.S.A. x1. (1905-6),
p. 81, Figs. 1 and 2. The fragment has been discussed by M. Th. Reinach,
Itanos et ?’Inventio Scuti, Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, ux. (1909), p. 324,
in relation to the shield and thunder-ceremonies, but not, I think, quite rightly
interpreted.
en
Iv | Magical Rain-making 17
specimen of somewhat advanced style’, and we may safely place
it at about 800—700 B.c.
The centre of the design is occupied by a rectangular table or
altar; on it is a large indented Mycenaean shield, apparently
made of some sort of wicker-work. To the right is a seated man
holding in either hand an implement? for which hitherto archaeo-
logists have found no name. From the implement in the man’s
right hand comes a zigzag pattern. A similar pattern also seems
to issue from his right thigh. It is probable that to the left of
the table or altar another man was seated, as the remains of a
latticed seat are clearly visible, and also the remains of a
zigzag pattern corresponding to that issuing from the topmost
implement.
Fic. 10.
It has been conjectured that the man is ‘worshipping’ the
shield. The shield is undoubtedly sacred, its prominent position
on the altar shows that, and it confers sanctity on the place where
it is set up. Its full significance will be shown later. But the
man is not ‘worshipping’ it. If he were, common reverence would
demand that he should stand up, and somehow salute the object
1 For the chronology of Dipylon vases see Εἰ. Poulsen, Die Dipylon-Gréber und
die Dipylonvasen, Leipzig, 1905, and S. Wide, Geometrische Vasen, Jahrb, d. Arch.
Inst. x11. (1897), 195. Our fragment is placed by Mr Droop in Dr Wide’s Class II (a).
2 There is a crack in the vase between the two hands, but Mr Woodward of the
British School, who has kindly re-examined the original of the fragment for me,
thinks it improbable that the two objects formed one implement.
78 Magic [CH.
of his worship. But here he is complacently seated, manipulating
the odd implements in his hands. Odd to us they are, and no
classical archaeologist offered any explanation; but to an anthropo-
logist? skilled in the knowledge of savage gear they are thrice
familiar. They are primitive musical instruments, part of the
normal equipment of the medicine-man. They are gourd-rattles.
A glance at the series of gourd-rattles in Fig. 11 brings
immediate conviction. ΤῸ the right (a) is a natural pear-shaped
gourd from W. Africa, simply dried with the seeds inside acting as
pellets. The middle design (0) is from a gourd pierced through
(c) Pottery-rattle. Moki (b) Gourd-rattle with (a) Natural Gourd-rattle.
of Arizona. stick. Zuni of New Mexico. W. Africa.
Fig. 11.
with a wooden handle. It is from the Zufii tribe in New Mexico.
In the third design (c) the rattle has been copied in pottery, the |
protuberance at the top being copied from the stick handle in the
1 T sent a photograph of the Dipylon fragment to Mr Balfour at the Pitt Rivers
Museum, Oxford, asking if he could explain the implements, and he at once wrote,
‘I think they must be a pair of hollow rattles, perhaps of gourd, a very common
form over the world, and one surviving in modern Sudan.’ I publish drawings of
the three instances in Fig. 11 by his kind permission. Mr R. W. Halliday kindly
tells me that in the Anthropological Museum at Berlin are a number of these ritual
rattles, some gourds, some made of wood, some double, some and more frequently
single.
Iv | Salmoneus the Weather-king 79
conservative fashion usual in the making of such implements.
This third example is from the Moki tribe in Arizona’.
Our babies still play with rattles; our priests no longer use
them in their ritual, and it surprises us a little to see a grown
man ceremonially seated before an altar enthusiastically working
two rattles. Why does he work them? Not, as might be thought,
to make thunder; they are not Bull-Roarers. The shake of an
actual gourd-rattle tells us instantly what the man is doing. The
soft plash is unmistakable. He is making rain; making it in the
simplest yet most magical fashion. The rain may come accom-
panied by thunder and lightning. A zigzag of lightning comes
from the topmost rattle? and from the man’s thigh, but what he is
actually making is rain—you can hear it falling.
Our medicine-man’s method of rain-making is simple and
handy—yjust a pair of rattles. We know of another rain-maker—
this time a king—whose apparatus was more complex. ‘Salmoneus,
Apollodorus tells us, ‘said that he himself was Zeus, and he took
away from Zeus his sacrifices and ordered men to sacrifice to him.’
Of course he did nothing of the sort: there was no Zeus, there
were no sacrifices. What he really did, Apollodorus? tells us in
the next sentence, he made the weather: ‘he fastened bronze
cauldrons by straps of hide to his chariot and dragged them after
him and said that he was thundering, and threw up blazing torches
into the sky and said that he was lightening.’
Orthodox theology by the mouth of Vergil* proclaims Salmoneus
a half mad criminal, a blasphemous king who counterfeits the
1 Τὴ Arizona magical rain-making still goes on. By the kindness of Miss H. E.
Allen, of Bryn Mawr College, I am possessed of a pottery figure of a rain-maker. He
holds in front of him a vase to receive the rain about to fall. Figures of this kind
are still in use, Miss Allen tells me, as rain-makers, but in the neighbouring towns
‘they are already sold as chimney-piece ornaments.’
2 These zigzags occur on ‘Dipylon’ vases where no rain-making ceremony is
depicted. It is not therefore absolutely certain that they represent lightning, but
it is highly probable. A zigzag pattern is used to decorate a votive double-axe on
‘palace’ pottery, and the connection of the double-axe with lightning is well known.
See B.S.A. vu. (1900-1), Fig. 15, p. 53, and Mr A. B. Cook, Class. Rev. 1903,
p. 406. It has been suggested to me by Miss Gertrude Elles that the zigzag pattern
may represent simply rain. A zigzag line is the Egyptian hieroglyph for water.
If so the rain issuing from the body of the rain-maker is illustrated by Aristophanes,
Nubes, 372,
33.9. 7 ἔλεγε yap ἑαυτὸν εἶναι Ala καὶ τὰς ἐκείνου θυσίας ἀφελόμενος ἑαυτῷ
προσέτασσε θύειν, καὶ βύρσας μὲν ἐξηραμμένας ἐξ ἅρματος μετὰ λεβήτων χαλκῶν σύρων,
ἔλεγε βροντᾶν, βάλλων δὲ εἰς οὐρανὸν αἰθομένας λαμπάδας ἔλεγεν ἀστράπτειν.
4 Ain. νι. 585.
80 Magic [ CH.
thunder of Zeus, and as such condemned to eternal blasting in
Hades.
Salmoneus saw I cruel payment making
For that he mocked the lightning and the thunder
Of Jove in high Olympus. His four steeds
Bore him aloft: shaking a fiery torch
Through the Greek folk, midway in Elis town
In triumph went he—for himself, mad man,
He claimed God’s rights. The inimitable bolt
He mimicked and the storm cloud with the beat
Of brass and clashing horse hooves.
Even the kindly Plutarch? feels that on such as imitate
thunder and lightning God justly looks askance, but he adds,
e
e
e
e
Φ
ΓΣ
Φ
e
e
e
e
e
.
.Φ
Φ
e
e
e
e
Φ
φΦ
e
e
e
e
e
.
e
a
e
e
.Φ
e
e
e
Φ
pleasantly, ‘to those who imitate him in virtue, God gives a share
of his Eunomia and Dike.’
Vergil describes the mad and blasphemous king as though he
was an Olympian victor, and as such Salmoneus is depicted on the |
vase-painting from the fifth century krater? in Fig. 12. The central
figure, Salmoneus, both holds and wears a wreath, and is all
decked about with olive sprigs and fillets. In his right hand is
1 Ad princip. inerud. 780 F νεμεσᾷ yap ὁ θεὸς τοῖς ἀπομιμουμένοις βροντὰς καὶ
κεραυνοὺς καὶ ἀκτινοβολίας. ἀκτινοβολία probably means ‘sunshine.’
2 Now in Chicago, published by Prof. Ernest Gardner in the American Journal
of Archeology, 111. (1899), 331, pl. 4, and wrongly, I think, interpreted as the madness
of Athamas.
Iv Rainmakers in Thessaly 81
a thunderbolt, in his left he uplifts a sword as though threatening
the sky, which is about to discharge its thunderbolts. That he is
a victor! is made certain by the figure of Nike behind him. She
raises her hand as though in deprecation. Even for an Olympic
victor Salmoneus goes rather far.
Vergil and the vase-painter alike think of Salmoneus as at
Olympia in Elis; there it was fabled he perished, he and his
people, blasted by the thunderbolt. But we learn from Apollo-
dorus that before he ruled in Elis he dwelt in a country more
primitive and always the home of magic, Pelasgian Thessaly.
From Thessaly comes to us an account of a curious rain-making
ceremony not attributed to Salmoneus but well in line with his
method of making the thunder. Antigonos of Karystos*, in his
Account of Marvellous Things, says that at Krannon there was
kept a bronze waggon, and ‘ when the land suffered from drought
they shook it by way of praying the god for rain, and it was said
rain came.’
Fic, 13,
Antigonos is rather vague as to what was actually done. They
‘shook or agitated the waggon (ἣν σείοντες). The type of some
bronze coins‘ of Krannon (Κρανουνίων) of which two specimens
1 This point has been very clearly brought out by Mr A. B. Cook in his dis-
cussion of the vase in the Class. Rev. χντι. (1903), p. 275.
2 At some time or other the kingdom and cult of Salmoneus must have passed
to Crete and settled on the N.W. promontory of Salmonium or Sammonium. An
Athena Salmonia occurs in an inscription dealing with Hierapytna. See Th. Reinach,
Rev. de Hist. des Religions, ux. (1909), p. 177°.
3 Hist. Mirab. xv. Ev δὲ Κράννωνι τῆς Θετταλίας δύο φασὶν μόνον εἶναι κόρακας" διὸ
καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν προξενιῶν τῶν ἀναγραφομένων τὸ παράσημον τῆς πόλεως.. ὑπογράφονται δύο
κόρακες ἐφ᾽ ἁμαξίου χαλκοῦ, διὰ τὸ μηδέποτε πλείους τούτων ὥφθαι. ἡ δὲ ἅμαξα προσπαρα-
κεῖται διὰ τοιαύτην αἰτίαν: ξένον γὰρ ἴσως ἂν καὶ τοῦτο φανείη. ἔστιν αὐτοῖς ἀνακειμένη
χαλκῆ, ἣν ὅταν αὐχμὸς 7 σείοντες ὕδωρ αἰτοῦνται τὸν θεὸν καί φασι γίνεσθαι.
4 Reproduced Meisterwerken, p. 259, by Dr Furtwiingler, to whom I owe the
reference. In the English edition of the book, the very interesting excursus on Ge
praying for rain is unfortunately omitted.
Η. 6
82 Magic [cH.
are reproduced in Fig. 13 makes τὰ all clear. In (a) we have 8
primitive waggon, just two wheels with a cross pole—on it an
amphora, doubtless filled with water. The coin is not earlier than
400 5.6.1, and the shape of the high-handled amphora is late, but
the primitive wheels show that an old type is revived. In coin (6)
the wheels are just rude pierced disks on which are perched the
rain-birds, the crows or ravens.
On these coins of Krannon we have then as the device of the
city (παράσημον), as a traditional ceremony, public, honourable,
a magical ceremony for the making of rain. This is a fact of
paramount importance. Magic was no hole and corner practice*
but an affair of public ritual, performed with full social sanction.
We have in fact a state of things like that which Socrates
attributed to the Persians, a social phase in which magic was the
- service (θεραπεία) of the gods ; instruction about it might well be
given as part of the duties of a king (τὰ βασιλικάν); In a word
magic was of the state, not of the individual. What exactly is this
public social magic 7
In the light of the three last chapters the nature and origin
of magic 15 not hard to realize. First and foremost magic is a
δρώμενον, a thing predone. The rain-maker jingles his rattle and
shakes his water-cart, he does something. Language® here speaks
clearly enough. The Latin factura 15 magical ‘making, witchcraft;
the Sanskrit krtya is doing and magic; the Greek ἐργάζεσθαι is
used of ritual operations of a magical character. The German —
zauber is connected with O.H.G. zouwwan, Gothic tanyan, to do.
The doing is sometimes that form of doing which we call speaking;
yons the Greek enchanter, is but a specialized howler; the Hebrew
dabar does not distinguish between word and deed. Of whatever
kind the action, the essence of magic 15
Pll do, and Pll do, and ΤΊ] do.
1 See Head, Historia Nummorum, Ῥ- 250.
2 T do not for a moment deny that magic came to bea matter of hole and corner
rites, nor that, broadly speaking, one distinction between religion and magic is that
magic concerns itself with the weal of the individual, religion with that of the
community, but I am here dealing with a stage prior to this differentiation.
3H. Osthoff, Allerhand Ζ auber etymologisch beleuchtet in Bezzenberger’s
Beitriige, xxtv. 109, and H. Osthoff in Archiv f. Relig. 1908, Ρ. 60, for ἐργάζεσθαι:
see also Tylor, Early History of Mankind, 1878, p. 135. |
Iv | Psychology of Magic 83
But this deed, this thing done, is not the beginning. Behind
it lies desire, hope, if we like to call it so, faith. Our word ‘credo’
is, sound for sound, the Vedic! craddh@, and craddha@ means to ‘set
one’s heart on.’ Le désir cest le pere du dieu is true in part, but
the god has other ancestors ; le désir c’est le pere de la sorcellerie
might be taken without qualification. Man, say the wise Upani-
shads, is altogether desire (kama): as is his desire so is his insight
(kratw), as is his insight so is his deed (karma).
This oneness of desire and deed, which the Indian mystic
emphasizes, comes out very clearly in the simplest forms of magic
when the magical act is only an uttered desire. You are becalmed,
you can do nothing, think of nothing but the wind that will not
come. The thought of it possesses you, obsesses you, till the tension
on your nerves is too much, your longing will out; the wind will
not whistle for you, you whistle for the wind. Your first whistle
is sheer, incarnate longing, but, as it came after long waiting,
perhaps the wind really does rise. Next time the nerve paths are
ready prepared, a habit is set up, a private, it may be public, ritual
is inaugurated.
In the case of whistling for the wind we have an element of
Hipnows; you long for, you think intensely of, the wind, and you
make a wind-sound; but some other cases are simpler, their
content is nothing but the one element of emotional discharge.
You get a letter that hurts you, you tear it up instantly. You do
this not because you think you are tearing up the writer, but just
because you are hurt, and hurt nerves seek muscular discharge.
You get a letter that heals you and you keep it, you hold it tight
in your hand, you even, if you are a real savage, put it to your
lips, simply because you act on the instinct to clutch what is life
to you. The simplest case of all is Mr Marett’s famous bull®.
A man escapes from an enraged bull leaving his coat, the bull
goes on goring the coat. Of course, as Mr Marett prudently
observes, ‘it is very hard to know what is going on in the bull’s
mind, but one may guess that the bull does not act in obedience
to a mistaken application of the laws of association; he is
simply letting loose his rage on something that happens to be
goreable.
1 See Maurice Bloomfield, Religion of the Veda, 1908, pp. 186 and 261.
2 Threshold of Religion, p. 44.
6—-2
84 Magic (CH.
The mainspring then of magic is emotion, desire—whether
constructive or destructive—emotion, however, essentially not
passive but active. But though any theory of magic which starts
rather from the intellect than from the will, which thinks to find
its roots in the ‘mental framework and constitution’ of man is
doomed to failure, it would be a great mistake to suppose that
_ magic contains nothing of intellectual effort, no theory whatever.
The last chapter was devoted to this theory, or perhaps we might
almost call it category of thought, to that notion of awfulness and
force informed by collective emotion, variously called Wakon’-da,
orenda, mana. Mana, orenda, Wakon’-da are not the origin of magic
—that lies as we have seen in will and emotion—but they are the
medium in which as it were magic acts and its vehicle. As we saw
in the case of Wakon’-da, this medium makes a sort of spiritualized
unity behind the visible differentiation of thought, it joins not only
man and man, but man and all living things, all material things pos-
sessed by it, it is the link between the whole and its severed part.
Things can affect each other not by analogy, because like affects
like, but by that deeper thing participation’, in a common life that
serves for link. A deer and a feather and the plant kikuli are all
one, says the Huichol Indian. Absurd, says the civilized rationalist,
they belong to different classes, concepts utterly differentiated by
difference in qualities. But the wise savage knows better, they
have all one quintessence, one life, and that mystical life produces
sin him the same reactions of awe and hope; they are to him one.
The fundamental presupposition of magic, says Dr Frazer, is
identical with that of science, and it consists of a ‘faith, implicit,
but real and firm, in the order and uniformity of nature?’ The
fundamental presupposition of all but the most rudimentary magic,
that in which the action is almost purely a reaction, as in the
case of the torn letter, an action rather bordering on magic than
actually magical—the fundamental presupposition is, not the
order and uniformity of nature, not a thing mechanical, but a
belief in something like the omnipresence of life, of power, some-
thing analogous to the Stoic conception of the world as a living
animal, a thing not to be coerced and restrained, but reverently
wooed, a thing not immutable at all, but waxing and waning,
1 Lévy-Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales, 1910, p. 69.
9. The Golden Bough?, 1. p. 61.
Iv | Psychology of Magic 85
above all not calculable and observable, but wilful and mysterious,
a thing a man learns to know not by experiment but by initiation,
a thing not of ‘a natural law’ but mystical entirely, halting always
between an essence and a personality. Without this belief in mana,
Wa-kon’-da, there would be acts of psychological discharge, but |
there could scarcely be a system of magic’.
This notion of the continuous medium in which magic can act,
and which anything like advanced magic seems to presuppose, is in
a sense an abstraction or at least a pluralization, and must have
been a gradual growth. One of the means and methods of its
growth it is possible to trace. This brings us back to our medicine-
man on the Dipylon fragment.
In the centre of the design, as already noted, is a great
‘Mycenaean’ shield, not worshipped, for the medicine-man, as we
have seen, is making rain on his own account, but manifestly, from
its place on the altar, ‘sacred.’ Why is the shield sacred? The
prompt answer will probably be returned, ‘ because it is the shield
of a god’—perhaps of the sky-god. We have the usual ὦ priori
anthropomorphism. Man conceives of god in his own image.
Savage man is a warrior, so his god is a warrior. He has a
battle-axe, a shield. The battle-axe, the shield are sacred, divine,
because they are the weapons, the attributes, of a war-god.
Because in our theology we have borrowed from the Semites the
Lord is a Man of War, because to us, ‘there is none other that
fighteth for us, we straightway impose a war-god on the savage
and the primitive Greek. Let us look at facts—savage facts first.
The Omaha, arch-spiritualists as they are, believe they can act
on, they can direct, such Wa-kon’-da as they have by a sort of
immediate telepathy on their fellows. They have a word for this
— Wa-zhiii-dhe-dhe, wazhin, directive energy, dhe-dhe, to send’; by
1 See especially MM. Hubert et Mauss, Theorie Générale de la Magie, Année
Sociologique, 1902-3, p. 108.
2 Miss Alice Fletcher, On the import of the totem among the Omahas, Pro-
ceedings of the American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science, 1897, p. 326.
See also Notes on certain beliefs concerning Will-Power among the Siouan tribes, a
paper read by Miss Fletcher before the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, Buffalo Meeting, Aug. 1896. For.my knowledge of this interesting paper
I am indebted to the kindness of Dr A. C. Haddon.
~
86 Magic . [ cH.
| singing certain songs you can send will and power to a friend to
help him in a race or a game, or strength and courage to a warrior
in battle. But peoples less spiritualized cling to the outward and
visible sign. An Arunta native ‘sings’ over a stick or a stone or
a spear, and thereby gives it what he calls Arungquiltha, a magical
dangerous evil power. The object itself, a thin flake of flint attached
to a spear thrower and carefully painted, is called Arungquiltha ;
the property is not distinguished from the vehicle, It is left in the
sun for some days, and the men visit it daily and sing over it a
request to kill the intended victim, ‘Go straight, go straight, kill
him. By and by, if the Arungquiltha is successful, they hear a
noise like a crash of thunder, and then they know that, in the
form of a great spear the Arungquiltha has gone straight to the
man, mutilating and thus killing him’.
| A tool is but an extension, an amplification, of a man’s person-
ality. Ifthe savage feels that he can get Wa-kon’-da, surely that
Wa-kon’-da can pass into that outer personality which is his tool,
his weapon. We hear it passing as he ‘sings’ the Arungquiltha.
it is, M. Bergson? has taught us, characteristic of man as intelligent
rather than instinctive that he is a tool-user, Homo faber. The
other animals have tools indeed, beaks and paws of which they
make marvellous use, but these instruments are parts of the
animal who uses them, they are organic. A very intelligent
~ animal like an elephant can use a tool, he cannot make one. It
is the fabricated tool, inorganic, separate, adaptable, apt to serve
the remoter rather than the immediate end, that marks the
intelligence of man. This separation, this adaptability, this
superiority of function in the tool, primitive man did not analyse,
but he found that with his tool he had more mana than without ;
he could send his mana out further, he was bigger and more
splendid; so the tool, the weapon, became per se sacred, not
because it was the instrument of a god, but because it was the
extension and emphasis of a man.
We must then clear our minds of all notion that the hoplo-
latry of the Greeks implies anthropomorphism. The shield on
‘the altar is sacred because it is a shield, a tool, a defensive weapon,
1 Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, 1899, p. 548.
2 L’ Evolution Créatrice, p. 151, ‘L’intelligence, envisagée dans ce qui en parait
étre la démarche originelle, est la faculté de fabriquer des objets artificiels, en
particulier des outils a faire des outils et d’en varier indéfiniment la fabrication.’
ΤΥ] The Tool as extension of Personality 87
part of a man’s personality, charged with magical force, spreading |
the contagion of its mana by its very presence. Not less sacred |
are the tools of the medicine-man, the rain-rattles. τὸ
In the light of this notion of the tool, the weapon as part
of a man’s personality, many a funeral custom becomes clear’. A
warriors weapons, a medicine-man’s gear, a woman’s cooking
utensils and her baskets, are buried with them. We think it is
because they will want them in the next world. It is not quite
that; we are nearer the truth when we say it is from sentiment.
The tools a man used are part of him, of his life, of his mana.
What life, what mana, have joined together, let not man nor death
put asunder.
Fic. 14.
A weapon then does not of necessity owe its sanctity to a god;
rather in one case, the actual case before us, we can see before
our very eyes a god grow up out of a weapon. Pallas Athena,
Guardian, Promachos, of her city, is altogether human; but what
of the Palladion? The Palladia have always one characteristic,
they are sky-fallen (διοπετεῖς)". They are πάλτα, things hurled,
1 See Lévy-Bruhl, ‘Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieures,’
p. 384, and R. Hertz, La Représentation collective de la Mort in Année Socio-
logique, x. 1905-6. In the matter of tools, etc. as part of the personality of a
man I am glad to find my view has been anticipated by Mr A. B. Cook in a paper
on Greek Votive Offering in Folk-Lore xtv. 1903, p. 278. Mr Cook quotes as his
psychological authority Lotze in the Microcusmus τ. 136. My view is only an
application to the savage of William James’s view of personality in general; see
his Principles of Psychology τ. p. 292.
2 See M. Theodor Reinach’s brilliant articles Itanos et l’Inventio Scuti.no τα
p. 331, in Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, tx. 1909.
Ϊ
88 Magic [cH.
cast down; the lightning is the hurled fire (παλτὸν πῦρ). Pallas
then is but another form of Kerauwnos—the thunderbolt hurled. —
According to ancient thinking, that which slays can save; so the
Palladion which was the slayer became the Saviour, the Shield.
In the well-known fresco from Mycenae! in Fig. 14 we see the
Shield, half humanized, as the object of an actual cult; before it is
a portable altar, to either side a woman worshipper. But it is not
the goddess Pallas Athena who lends sanctity to the Palladion, it
is the sanctity of the Palladion that begets the godhead of Pallas
Athena.
This question of the sanctity of the weapon itself as a vehicle
of mana and an extension of man’s personality 15 important for
our adequate understanding of the thunder-cult among the Greeks.
The Greek of classical days normally conceived of thunder not as
a vague force but as a definite weapon, a bolt wielded by Zeus.
Hesiod’s great account of a thunderstorm finishes thus?:
Turmoil and dust the winds belched out and thunder
And lightning and the smoking thunderbolt,
Shafts of great Zeus.
Here and elsewhere we have three factors in a thunderstorm,
thunder itself, the noise heard (βροντή), lightning, the flash seen
(στεροπή), and a third thing, κεραυνός, which we translate
‘thunderbolt. All three are shafts, κῆλα, of mighty Zeus. Mighty
Zeus we may dismiss. He is the product of a late anthropo-
morphism, but the three sorts of ‘shaft’ mentioned are interesting.
Thunder is a reality, a sound actually heard, lightning no less a
reality, actually seen, but the third shaft—the thunderbolt ? There
is no such thing. Yet by a sort of irony if is the non-existent
thunderbolt that Greek art most frequently depicts’.
The word translated ‘shafts, «Xa, is an interesting one. It
is used only in the plural and of the weapons of a god, and twice
it occurs in descriptions of the weather. In the Hesiod passage
1 -Eqypepts "Apx. 1887, Pl. x. 2.
2 Hes. Theog. 708
σὺν δ᾽ ἄνεμοι ἔνοσίν τε κονίην τ᾽ ἐσφαράγιζον,
βροντήν τε στεροπήν τε καὶ αἰθαλόεντα κεραυνὸν
κῆλα Διὸς μεγάλοιο.
5. For the various forms, bird, flower, etc., in which Greek art depicts the thunder-
bolt, see P. Jacobsthal, Der Blitz in der Orientalischen und Griechischen Kunst, 1906.
1γ] Keraunos as Weapon 89
we have seen it used of thunder and lightning; in the Ziad’, when
Zeus the Counsellor hath begun to snow he shows forth there his
shafts, his κῆλα to men. The shafts of Apollo? when he rains the
plague nine days long upon the Greek host are κῆλα, which makes
it probable that they were originally the avenging darts of the
outraged Sun. When Hesiod numbers κεραυνός among the κῆλα,
he is of course quite unaware that they are practically the same
word, κῆλα and κεραυνός both from a root? meaning to ‘smash.’
Neither word commits us definitely to any notion of a particular
missile; both simply mean ‘destroyers, smashers.’
We know now-a-days, though most of us vaguely enough, that
a thunderstorm is somehow due to a ‘discharge of electricity.’
When a man is ‘struck by lightning’ he ‘dies of an electric
shock.’ But how should primitive man know that? Meteorology
is the last of the sciences. He sees the black cloud rising, he feels
a horrible oppression in the sultry air, he hears unearthly rumblings
and watches flashes of lightning play across the sky. Finally he
hears a noise over his head like a cart-load of bricks; earth and
sky, as Hesiod describes it, are jumbled together with an un-
speakable din and he gives up all for lost. Presently it is all over,
the sun is shining, the trees glistening, the earth refreshed and
glad. If that were all, he might think there had been ‘plenty
devil about,’ or if he was an optimist much mana and Wa-kon’-da.
But when he goes into the bush he finds a great tree split and
charred, or the body of his best friend lying on the road dead,
distorted. Something has struck the tree and the man and
smashed them; there have been «Xa, destroying weapons, about,
clubs or battle-axes or sharp pointed arrows that slay.
This notion of the thunderbolt, the weapon, was fostered but
not I think started by a popular and widespread error. We have
seen that in the mysteries of the Idaean Daktyls, Pythagoras was
1 x11. 280
ὦρετο μητίετα Ζεὺς
νιφέμεν ἀνθρώποισι πιφαυσκόμενος τὰ fa κῆλα.
eel se Tere
| ἐννῆμαρ μὲν ἀνὰ στρατὸν ᾧχετο κῆλα θεοῖο.
Βα θΘδ 15 in the Anthology (Anth. Pal. χτν. 139) are χρύσεα κῆλα.
3 The root car, which gives Sanskrit crna‘ti, he breaks, destroys, and ¢aljd-s,
arrow-point, Gk. κῆλον and κεραΐζειν (κεραρίζειν), to destroy, where the primitive
Meaning comes out. See for κῆλον, Meyer, Handbuch d. Gr. Etymologie, τι, p. 440 ;
for κεραυνός, τι. p. 362. Pindar, Mr Cornford points out to me, plays on the diverse
meanings of κῆλα and κηλεῖν in his κῆλα δὲ Kal | δαιμόνων θέλγει φρένας (Pyth. τ. 20).
The weapons of the gods are magical to hurt and heal.
90 Magic [ CH
purified by a thunder-stone and that this thunder-stone was
in all probability nothing but a black stone celt, the simplest
form of stone-age axe. The wide-spread delusion that these celts
were thunderbolts cannot have taken hold of men’s minds till
a time when their real use as ordinary axes was forgotten. It
cannot therefore have been very primitive, though it is almost
world-wide. The double axe, πέλεκυς, as will later be seen, was
assuredly in Crete and other parts of the Aigean a sacred object,
but the normal weapon which is the normal art-form of the
thunderbolt is not a double axe. It is more of the nature of
a double pointed dart, a bidens. The special form of weapon taken
to represent the thunderbolt is however a matter of secondary
importance. The essential fact is that thunder was regarded not
only as a force (κράτος), a sort of incarnate mana or Wa-kon’-da,
but as that extension of human force which is a destructive
weapon (κεραυνός).
So far then we have considered magic as the manipulation of
manda. Man tries to handle this mysterious force, a force partly
within him, partly without, for his own ends—he tries to make
thunder, mainly that it may rain and the earth may bring
forth her fruits. But the thunder as destructive weapon has
brought us face to face with another aspect of, or rather perhaps
attitude towards, mana, that attitude towards things that is
summed up in the word tabu. Tabu, avoidance, scruple, some
authorities would have us think, is of the very essence of religion.
M. Salomon Reinach' proposes to define religion as un ensemble de
scrupules qui font obstacle au libre exercice de nos facultés. This
seems to me a somewhat serious misconception. It is to put tabu
before mana, a negative aspect before a positive conviction. It is
true that the Latin word religio*, from which our word comes,
means ‘to consider, to be careful about, to attend to, it is the
opposite of negligere, but attention is not tabu. We shall get a
clearer notion of the real gist of tabu and its intimate inextricable
relation with mana if we study a certain special form of Greek
thunder-cult.
' Orpheus, p. 4. Μ. Reinach does not of course ignore the mana element, but
his emphasis on the negative, tabu, side, is, I think, misleading.
2 For an excellent analysis of religio see W. Otto, Religio und Superstitio, in
Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft xu. (1909), p. 533, and xrv. (1911), p. 406.
Iv | The Horkos, the abaton and tabu 91
In Greece a place that was struck by lightning became an
ἄβατον, a spot not to be trodden on, unapproachable. On the
Acropolis at Thebes were to be seen, Pausanias!? tells us, the bridal
chambers of Harmonia and Semele—and even to his day, Pausanias
adds, no one was allowed to set foot in the chamber of Semele.
And why? The other name for these tabu-ed places speaks
-clearly—they were ἐνηλύσια, places of coming. This Pollux tells
us, is the name given to places on which a bolt from heaven has
descended. The Htymologicum Magnum adds that such places
were dedicated to Zeus the Descender (Kata:Batn), and were
called ἄβατα and ἄδυτα. In the ἄβατον at Thebes, ‘along with
the thunderbolt which was hurled on the bridal chamber of
Semele, there fell a log from heaven, and they say that Polydorus
adorned this log with bronze and called it Dionysos’ Kadmos.’
Here we see unmistakeably the meaning of tabu: it is an
attitude towards mana; something full of mana, instinct, alive with
Wa-kon’-da, has fallen from heaven to earth and that spot of earth
becomes charged as it were with an electric potency, that spot of
earth must in common prudence for the common good be fenced
about. It becomes a Horkos, an enclosed sanctity’. When theo-
logians, busy with their full-blown Olympians, forgot the old
notion of mana, the double-edged sanctity, they invented the
vulgar story that Semele was blasted for impiety, for idle curiosity ;
but the old local legend remembered that the thunderstorm was
the bridal of Earth and Sky, of Gaia-Semele and Ouranos-
Keraunos, and that from that wedding sprang the thunder-child
Bromios.
On the Acropolis of Athens as on the Acropolis at Thebes,
and probably in early days on every high place, there was a Place
of Coming—and it shows us a new characteristic of these ἄβατα.
They were not only fenced in as tabu, but they were left open to
the sky, ‘hypaethral,’ left in communication as it were with the
source of their mana, their sanctity, which might pour in upon
them anew any time. In the north porch of the Erechtheion are
the marks of a trident®. In examining the roof of this north
1 rx. 12. 8... «καὶ és ἡμᾶς ἔτι ἄβατον φυλάσσουσιν ἀνθρώποις.
2 See Professor Gilbert Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 265 ‘The word
Horkos which we translate an oath, really means ‘‘a fence,” or ‘‘something that
shuts you in.”’
8 See my Primitive Athens, 1906, p. 59.
92 Magic [oH.
porch it has been found that immediately above the trident-mark —
an opening in the roof had been purposely left: the architectural —
traces are clear. But what does Poseidon want with a hole in the
roof? It is no good to a sea-god. It is every good to a lightning-
god, and before Poseidon took to the sea he was Erechtheus the
Smiter, the Earth-shaker; this trident was the weapon of his
striking, his fulmen trisulcwm. Lightning-struck places are to
the Latins bidentalia’, consecrated by the bidens, the two-bladed
thunderbolt, a sanctity more potent than any tender two-toothed
lamb.
Rome gives us not only the bidentalia, but a clear case of the
hypaethral ἄβατον in the shrine of old Terminus. Ovid? tells us
that, when the new Capitol was being built, a whole multitude of
divinities were consulted by augury as to whether they would
withdraw to make place for Jupiter. They tactfully consented,
all but old Terminus, the sacred boundary-stone. He stood fast,
remaining in his shrine, and ‘still possesses a temple in common
with mighty Jupiter.’ |
And still, that he may see only heaven’s signs,
In the roof above him is a little hole. —
Servius’ in commenting on a passage in Vergil says, in the
Capitoline temple the part of the roof immediately above the very
stone of Terminus was open, for to Terminus it is not allowable to
sacrifice save in the open air. The reason lies a little deeper.
Terminus was just an old thunder-stone, a διοπετὲς ἄγαλμα, a
Palladion; he had come down from the sky and naturally he
liked to look up at it, more mana to him! All sky-gods felt the
same, Fulgur, Caelum, Sol and Luna were, Vitruvius‘ tells us,
worshipped in hypaethral temples.
Thebes, we have seen, had its ἄβατον, its place of mana and
tabu; at Thebes was born the thunder-child Bromios. The
Bacchae of Euripides is hard enough to understand anyhow, but
we cannot even begin its understanding till we realize that the
roots of its plot lie deep in things primitive, in the terror and
1 See H. Usener, Keraunos, Rhein. Mus. ix. 1905, p. 22.
2 Fast. τι. 667
Nune quoque, se supra ne quid nisi sidera cernat,
Exiguum templi tecta foramen habent.
3 ad Ain, 1x, 448. 4 τ 2. δ.
Ὶ ᾿
Iv] Thunder-elements in the Bacchae 93
beauty, the blasting and the blessing of the thunderstorm, the
magic of mana, the sanctity of tabu.
The keynote is struck in the first words of the prologue.
Dionysos enters, so quietly, yet against a background of thunder
and lightning.
Behold God’s son is come unto this land
Of Thebes-——even I, Dionysos, whom the brand
Of heaven’s hot splendour lit to life—when she
Who bore me, Cadmus’ daughter, Semele,
Died here.
He sees the ἄβατον of his mother, from which is rising faint smoke
through the vine leaves.
There by the castle’s side
I see the place, the Tomb of the Lightning’s Bride,
The wreck of smouldering chambers, and the great
Faint wreaths of fire undying’.
The god knows this ἄβατον, though unapproachable, is no monu-
ment of shame, but of grace, of glory unspeakable.
Aye, Cadmus hath done well, in purity
He keeps the place apart, inviolate,
His daughter’s sanctuary, and I have set
My green and clustered vines to robe it round,
The sacrilege of the later version of the story is horrible to
think of.
All through the play there are hauntings of lightning and
thunder. The sudden fiery apparitions are not merely ‘ poetical,
in honour of any and every god; they are primitive, and of the
actual lightning-cultus of the land. And above all, the great
Epiphany of the Lightning is but the leaping forth afresh of the
fire from Semele’s Tomb.
Unveil the Lightning’s eye; arouse
The Fire that sleeps, against this house,
and then the measure changes, and to arrest attention come the
two solemn emphatic syllables ὦ, ὦ.
O saw ye, marked ye there the flame
From Semele’s enhallowed sod
Awakened? Yea, the Death that came
Ablaze from heaven of old, the same
Hot splendour of the shaft of Godt‘.
1 Kur. Bacch. 1. te
3 v. 10, -
oro
94 Magic (cH.
And again on Cithaeron we have the awful stillness before the
storm, the mysterious voice and then the Epiphany of the pillar
of fire,
So spake he and there came
’Twixt earth and sky a pillar of high flame
And silence took the air—and no leaf stirred
In all the dell?.
Euripides is a realist, but he is a poet, and the stuff he is
dealing with is very primitive. His persons are also personae,
masks*. Behind his very human and vividly conceived realities are
shadowy shapes of earlier days, powers and portents (teipea) of
earth and heaven, Pentheus tne dragon’s seed and Bromios the
thunder and lightning. It is in part this strange blend of two
worlds, two ways of thinking, that lends to the Bacchae its amazing
beauty.
The Thunder-Rites have made clear to us the two-fold attitude
of man towards mana, his active attitude in magic, his negative
attitude in tabu. We have further seen how in the thunder
as weapon, we have an extension of man’s personality, a bridge,
as it were, between the emotion and desire within a man, his own
internal mana and that mana of the outside world he is trying
_ to manipulate. We have now to consider other developments
of magic which have left clear traces of their influence on Greek
mythology and cultus, especially the magic of birds and ‘its rela-
tion to the medicine-king, and the control of both over not only
thunder but the weather generally.
(b) MEDICINE-BIRD AND MEDICINE KING.
From Homer magic has been expurgated*; that does not
surprise us. It is to Hesiod that we look for primitive super-
stitions, for it is Hesiod who deals with those ‘ Works, those
doings of man that are, we have seen, so closely intertwined with
the beginnings of magic. Of magic in Hesiod there is no express
ie)
1 Eur. Bacch. 1082.
2 See Mr F. M. Cornford, Thucydides Mythistoricus, p. 141.
3 For the absence of magic and other ‘ Beastly Devices of the Heathen,’ from
Homer, see Mr Andrew Lang, ‘Homer and Anthropology,’ in Anthropology and-
4
1] Magic and tabu in Hesiod - 96
mention’, and of actual magical rites we hear nothing, though
‘tabus abound; but of magical ways of thinking, thinly veiled by
Olympian orthodoxy, the Works and Days are full, and for the
understanding of the magical attitude we can have no better
helper than Hesiod.
Hesiod ends his Works and Days? with the words that stand
at the head of this Chapter:
Lucky and bless’d is he, who, knowing all these things,
Toils in the fields, blameless before the Immortals,
Knowing in birds and not overstepping tabus.
Here we have the Whole Duty of Man, positive and negative, at
least of Hesiod’s holy or pious man, his θεῖος ἀνήρ, which might
perhaps be translated man of sanctities*. His θεῖος ἀνήρ Hesiod
characterizes as πεπνυμένα εἰδώς, ‘Knowing the things of the
spirit, the man who is good about mana‘.
Hesiod is of course a convinced and most conscientious
theologian of the Olympian school. Tradition says he was born
at Kyme in Afolis, and his father migrated to Askra on the slopes
of Mt Helikon. Anyhow his ‘epos of plain teaching’, like the
Homeric epos of romance and war, moves formally and consciously
in front of a background of Ionian Olympian gods, whom every-
where he is concerned to glorify and defend. But far more clearly
than in Homer these gods are seen to be, however much revered,
an artificial background. Thus in the lines before us the pious
man is to be ‘blameless before the immortals, but, when it came
the Classics, edited by Εἰ. Marett, 1908, p. 44. For its emergence in Hesiod and
the Rejected Epics, see Prof. Gilbert Murray, ‘Anthropology in the Greek Epic
Tradition outside Homer,’ in the same volume, p. 66.
1 My attention was drawn to this curious fact by Mr D. 8. Robertson. It may
be that magic by the time of Hesiod was too uncanny for discussion.
v, 825
εὐδαίμων τε kal ὄλβιος ὃς τάδε πάντα
εἰδὼς ἐργάζηται ἀναίτιος ἀθανάτοισιν
ὄρνιθας κρίνων καὶ ὑπερβασίας ἀλεεΐνων.
3 Op. 731
...P€tos ἀνήρ, πεπνυμένα εἰδώς,
for the meaning of θεῖος as ‘magical’ and θεός as primarily ‘ medicine-man,’ see
Prof. Gilbert Murray, Anthropology and the Classics, p. 79, and for the connection
of ae and other words with magic and the root θεσ, see my Pralegomena, pp. 49
and 137.
4 The definition of the ὄλβιος in Hesiod contrasts strangely with that of Pindar
(frag. 137) with its other-worldliness,
Ολβιος ὅστις ἰδὼν κεῖν᾽ cic’ ὑπὸ χθόν᾽" olde μὲν βίου τελευτάν,
oldev δὲ διόσδοτον ἀρχάν.
® See Prof. Gilbert Murray, Literature of Ancient Greece, 1897, p. 53.
96 Magic [ CH.
to real definition of his duties, these duties are, not to glorify
Athena or to offer burnt sacrifice to Zeus, they are not prayer or
praise or sacrifice in any form, but simply the observance of
sanctities, attentions, positive and negative. He is to be ee
in birds and not overstepping tabus.’
In the Theogony Hesiod is learned and theological, in the
Works and Days he is practical and religious. He is the small
Boeotian farmer, and the small Boeotian farmer had his living to
earn and enough to do to earn it, without greatly concerning
himself with theogonies and the like, which must have seemed to
him but ‘genealogies and foolish questions’ or at best matter for
the learned, leisured subjects for ‘Sunday reading.’ The small
Boeotian farmer is not a sceptic but a man hard pressed by
practical necessities. What really concerns him is the weather
and the crops and the season; how he must till the earth and
when, that is the Works and the Days. With all this to know,
with the weather to watch and tabus to attend to, with all the
lucky and unlucky things to be done and not done, a man had
his hands full and had not much time for brooding over Athena,
goddess of light and reason, or Apollo with his silver bow.
We think of Helicon as the fountain of inspiration, as the
mountain of the Muses, where, circling and surging, ‘they bathe
their shining limbs in Hippocrene and dance ever with soft feet.
around the violet spring.’ So does Hesiod in the prooemium to
the Theogony which is at once local and Homeric, Boeotian and
Ionian. But the real Helicon of Hesiod’s father! ‘He made his
dwelling near Helicon in a sorry township, even Askra bad in—
winter, insufferable in summer, never good’. In Helicon it was
all you could do to keep body and soul together by ceaseless
industry and thrift, by endless ‘watching out, by tireless ob-
servance of the signs of earth and heaven. Year in, year out, the
Boeotian farmer must keep his weather eye open.
You must watch the House-carrier?, the snail, because, when
he crawls up the plants from the ground, fleeing from the Pleiades,
1 Hes. Op. 640
“Aokpy χεῖμα κακῇ θέρει ἀργαλέῃ οὐδέ ποτ᾽ ἐσθλῇ.
2 uv. 572
ἀλλ᾽ ὁπότ᾽ ἂν φερέοικος ἀπὸ χθονὸς ἂμ φυτὰ βαίνῃ
ΠΠληιάδας φεύγων, τότε δὴ σκάφος οὐκέτι οἰνέων.
Mr A. B. Cook has pointed out (Class. Rev. vu. p. 381) that these descriptive
names, such as ‘House-Carrier,’ ‘Boneless One,’ ‘No-Hair,’ are comparable to the
tabu on the proper name of some totem- animals.
=e 5
Iv | The Weather-birds and the teirea 97
it is no longer seasonable to dig about the vines. The snail ‘fleeing
from the Pleiades ’—a strange conjunction of earth and heaven.
We are in a world truly magical where anything can ‘ participate
with’ and, in a sense, be the cause of anything else. If you are
a woman, you must watch to see ‘when the soaring spider weaveth
her web in the full day,’ and when ‘the Wise One, the ant,
_gathereth her heap.’ You will find that it is on the 12th day
of the waxing moon and then is it well that a woman should set
up her loom and lay the beginning of her work’. But first and
foremost you should watch the birds who are so near the heavenly
signs, the τείρεα, and who must know more than man. This
watching of the birds we are accustomed to call the ‘science of
augury’; we shall presently see that in its origin it is pure magic,
‘pure doing; the magical birds make the weather before they
portend it?’
Take heed what time thou hearest the voice of the crane
Who, year by year, from out the clouds on high
Clangs shrilly, for her voice bringeth the sign
For ploughing and the time of winter’s rain,
And bites the heart of him that hath no ox’.
If the warning of the crane be neglected there is yet for the
late plougher another chance of which already we have learnt :
And if thou ploughest late, this be thy charm:
When first the cuckoo cuckoos in the oak,
Gladdening men’s hearts over the boundless earth,
Then may Zeus rain‘.
Again the advice to the Vine-grower :
But when Zeus hath accomplished sixty days
After the solstice, then Arkturos leaves
Okeanos’ holy stream, and first doth rise
In radiance at the twilight. After him
Comes the shrill swallow, daughter of Pandion,
Uprising with the rising of the spring.
Before she comes, prune thou thy vines. ’Tis best®.
The short practical mandates cut sharply in through the poetry
and all the lovely blend of bird and constellation, which are alike
τείρεα, heavenly signs.
On a black-figured vase in the Vatican® (Fig. 15) we have the
scene of the coming of the swallow. We have a group of men and
1 Hes. Op. 776.
2 I owe this suggestion and much help in the matter of bird-magie to the
kindness of Mr Halliday.
3 τ 450. 4 y, 486. 5 ἢ, 564.
6 From a photograph. See Baumeister, Denkmiiler, ur. Fig. 2128, p. 1985.
H. 7
98 Magic [CH.
boys all glad and eager to welcome her. The first boy says ‘ Look,
there’s a swallow’ (ἰδοὺ χελιδών); a man answers ‘by Herakles,
so there is’ (νὴ τὸν Ἡρακλέα); another boy exclaims ‘There she
goes’ (αὑτηὶ); and then ‘Spring has come’ (ἔαρ ἤδη).
I have advisedly translated ὄρνιθας κρίνων ‘ knowing in birds,
rather than ‘reading or discriminating omens. A convention in
construing and even in literary translation prevails, that the word
ὄρνις, Whenever it has anything to do with presage, is to be
translated omen. The habit seems to me at once ugly and
slipshod. All the colour and atmosphere of the word ὄρνις is
thereby lost ; lost because with us the word omen is no more a
_ wingéd word. It is safer, I think, to translate dpvus as bird, and
realise by a slight mental effort that to the Greek .a ‘bird’ is
᾿ς ominous.
Iv] The mantic Weather-bird Ὁ 99
The classical scholar is in no danger of forgetting the wider
and derived meaning of ὄρνις. Aristophanes! is always at hand
to remind him :
An ox or an ass that may happen to pass,
A voice in the street or a slave that you meet,
A name or a word by chance over-heard,
If you deem it an omen, you call it a bird.
The danger is that we should forget the simple fact to which
the use of ὄρνις, and οἰωνός, and the Latin aves bears such over-
whelming testimony, namely that among Greeks and Romans |
alike the watching of birds, their flight, their notes, their habits,
their migrations were in all mantic art a primary factor.
The mantic weather-bird precedes the prophetic god. The
claim put forward by the chorus of Birds? is just:
We are Delphi, Ammon, Dodona, in fine
We are every oracular temple and shrine...
If birds are your omens, it clearly will follow
That birds are the proper prophetic Apollo.
Nor is this mere comedy. In a primitive religion to introduce
new gods is to introduce new birds. When Pentheus is raging |
against Teiresias, the ancient mantic priest, who will support the
new Bacchic religion, he says
’Tis thou hast planned
This work, Teiresias, ’tis thou must set
Another altar and another yet
Amongst us, watch new birds®.
The remembrance of the mantic birds was never lost at Delphi.
The vase-painting in Fig. 164 shows us the Delphic omphalos
decked with sprays and fillets, Apollo to the right with his staff
of mantic bay, Artemis to the left with blazing torch. Between
them, perched on the oracular stone itself, a holy bird.
If Hesiod had been pressed as to why birds were ominous,
why they could help man by foretelling to him the coming of
spring or the falling of rain, he would no doubt have fallen back
on his Olympian gods. The gods had given the birds this power,
the eagle was the messenger of Zeus, the raven of Apollo, the owl
of Athena. He would not quite have called them as we do now
attributes, but he would have thought of them, if pressed, as
1 Aves, 719, trans. Rogers. 2a. 110.
8. Hur. Bacch. 256. 4 Annali delV Arch. Inst. 1865, Tav. d@’ agg.
72
100 Magic | [ CH. 4
heralds of his immortals. This view is almost inevitable as long
as the bird is regarded as an omen pure and simple, as merely
portending the weather, the said weather being made or at least
arranged by some one else. There are not wanting signs however
that, beneath this notion of birds as portents, there lies an earlier
stratum of thought in which birds were regarded not merely as
Fic. 16.
portending the weather but as potencies who actually make it,
not, that is, as messengers but as magicians. This early way of
thinking comes out most clearly in the case of a bird who never
became the ‘attribute’ of any Olympian, the homely woodpecker.
In the Birds of Aristophanes the Hoopoe asks KEuelpides if
the birds ought not by rights to have the kingdom, since, as he
has admitted, they were there before Kronos and the Titans, yes,
and before Earth herself. Yes! by Apollo, says Euelpides, they
certainly ought and you had better be trimming up your beaks,
for you can’t expect that
Zeus the pretender
‘ll make haste to surrender
The Woodpecker’s sceptre he stole?.
1 Ar, Aves, 468
ἀρχαιότεροι πρότεροί τε Κρόνου καὶ Τιτάνων ἐγένεσθε
καὶ γῆς.
2 Ar. Aves, 478
πάνυ τοίνυν χρὴ ῥύγχος βόσκειν"
οὐκ ἀποδώσει ταχέως ὁ Ζεὺς τὸ σκῆπτρον τῷ δρυκολάπτῃ.
Peisthetairos and Euelpides go on to explain how divers birds were kings in divers”
j
ὁ
Iv] | The Woodpecker-king 101
Zeus stole the sceptre from the woodpecker in Greece but too
effectively. The tradition of Keleos the old king of Eleusis' lived
on; but who remembers that he was the rain-bird, the green wood-
pecker living at Woodpecker-town (Keleai), the woodpecker who
yaffles in our copses to-day? In German mythology? he survives,
but as miscreant not as king. The woodpecker was ordered by
God to dig a well. He refused, fearing to soil his fine clothes.
God cursed him for his idleness. He was never again to drink
from a pond and must always cry giet, giet (giess) for rain. The
many thirst-stories found in folk-lore all point to rain-birds.
It was in Italy not Greece that the royal woodpecker lived on,
and it is there that we shall find him realize his function not as |
omen-bird but as magician-king, not portending the weather but
actually making it.
The design in Fig. 17 is from a gem, a carnelian now in the
Berlin Museum?*. A bird, who for the
moment shall be nameless, is perched
on a post round which is coiled a snake‘.
At the foot is a ram slain in sacrifice.
A young warrior carrying ἃ shield
stands before the bird with upraised
hand as though saluting it or asking
a question. The interpretation of the
gem, though it has analogies to the
scene on the Hagia Triada sarcophagos
to be later discussed®, must have re-
mained pure conjecture, but for a
passage in Denys of Halicarnassos as
follows:
Three hundred stadia further (in the country of the Apennines) is Tiora,
called Matiene. Here there is said to have been an oracle of Mars of great
antiquity. It is reported to have been similar in character to the fabled
oracle at Dodona, except that, whereas at Dodona it was said that a dove
lands: the cock in Persia, the kite among certain Greeks, the cuckoo among the
Phenicians; and this is why birds are wont to sit upon their sceptres.
1 Paus. τι. 14. 2. Another mystery-priest is Trochilus, the wren, P. 1. 14. 2.
For classical references to birds here and elsewhere see D’Arcy Thompson, 4
Glossary of Greek Birds.
2 Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, 11. p. 674.
3 Furtwingler, Ant. Gem, pl. xxtv. 10, p. 119. J
+ The snake, I think, marks the post as, like the tree, belonging to earth,
springing from the under-ground, ‘ chthonic.’
5 p. 159
102 Magic [cH §
perched on a sacred oak gave oracles, among the Aborigines the oracles were
given in like fashion by a god-sent bird called by them Picus (the Greeks
name it Dryokolaptes) which appears on a wooden pillar}.
Denys of Halicarnassos, a Greek by birth, and. one to whom
Latin was an acquired language, saw the Roman Antiquities, to
the study of which he devoted so much of his life, through Greek
eyes, and again and again in dealing with things primitive he
divines the substantial identity behind the superficial difference?.
Dodona, her sacred oak, her sacred doves, her human god-king
Zeus; Tiora, her tree-pillar, her woodpecker, her human god-king
Mars.
So far Picus is just a pie, an oracular bird. The term picus
or pie, covered, it would seem, in Latin the genus woodpecker,
called by the Greeks the wood-tapper (δρυοκολάπτης), and also
from his carpentering habits the axe-bird (πελεκᾶς). The modern
mag-pie has fallen on evil days. Mag is Meg, a common woman’s
name and one that stands for woman. Women from Hesiod’s
days downwards have always chattered; the social silences of man
are, in truth, compared to those of woman, more spacious and
monumental. The magpie is now a thief, and worse, she is a
spotted she-chatter-box. But the old folk-rhyme remembers when
man listened reverently to the magpie’s uncouth chatter and
marked her ominous coming and knew that for him the more
magpies the merrier.
One for sorrow,
Two for mirth,
Three for a wedding,
And four for a birth.
We have seen the woodpecker Picus perched upon the tree-
post, and when we meet him next he is not only associated with
a tree but closely bound up with its life. The Latins, Plutarch?
tells us, gave special honour and worship to the woodpecker, the
bird of Mars. And well they might. Twice did the woodpecker
1 Dion. Hal. Antiq. 1. 14 Tidpa δὲ ἀπὸ τριακοσίων, ἡ καλουμένη “Ματιήνη. ἐν
ταύτῃ λέγεται. χρηστήριον ἤΑρεος γενέσθαι πάνυ ἀρχαῖον" ὁ δὲ τρόπος αὐτοῦ παραπλήσιος
ἦν ὡς φασι τῷ παρὰ Δωδωναίοις μυθολογουμένῳ ποτὲ γενέσθαι" πλὴν ὅσον ἐκεῖ μὲν ἐπὶ
δρυὸς ἱερᾶς (πελεία) καθεζομένη θεσπιῳδεῖν ἐλέγετο, παρὰ δὲ τοῖς ᾿Αβοριγῖσι θεόπεμπτος
ὄρνις ὃν αὐτοὶ μὲν πῖκον, “Ἕλληνες δὲ δρυοκολάπτην καλοῦσιν, ἐπὶ κίονος ξυλίνου φαινό-
μενος τὸ αὐτὸ ἔδρα.
2 As will later (p. 194) be seen, he was the first to see the substantial identity
of the Roman Salii and the Greek Kouretes.
3 Vit. Rom. tv. τὸν δὲ δρυοκολάπτην καὶ διαφερόντως Λατῖνοι σέβονται καὶ τιμῶσιν.
1] The Woodpecker-king 108
interfere to save the divine twins Romulus and Remus; once to
save the holy trees with which their life was bound up, once to
feed and protect them when they were exposed by the wicked
uncle. It is obvious, I think, that the two versions are sub-
stantially the same; the life of the two trees and of the two royal
children is really one.
Before the birth of the royal twins, Silvia their mother dreamt
a well-omened dream. She saw, wondrous to behold, two palm-
trees shoot up together, the one taller than the other, The tall
one with its heavy branches overshadowed the whole earth and
with its topmost tresses touched the uttermost stars. She saw
too her father’s brother, the wicked uncle, brandish an axe against
the trees, and her heart trembled within her. But a woodpecker,
Fic. 18.
bird of Mars, and a she-wolf, delightful companions in arms, fought
for the trees and by their aid both palm-trees were unharmed.
Martia picus avis gemino pro stipite pugnant
Et lupa. Tuta per hos utraque palma fuit}.
In her dream Silvia sees her children in tree-shape ; so Althaea
dreamed of the blazing log that held Meleager’s life; so Clytem-
naestra dreamed of the snake that was her fatal son. Then we
have the humanized form of the story. The wicked uncle is
routed by the comrades in arms, the wolf and woodpecker of Mars.
The twins are born, and in canonical fashion the order is given
1 Ovid, Fasti, m1. 37.
104 Magic [ CH.
that they should be drowned. The Tiber shrinks back from
contact with so much royal mana and leaves the twins on dry
ground. There they are suckled by—a she-wolf.
Ovid in his polite way assumes that we shall know a little more
elementary mythology; that we shall not forget that the wood-
pecker too was their foster-nurse, who, though he might not suckle
them, yet raven-like brought them their daily bread.
Lacte quis infantes nescit crevisse ferino,
Et picum expositis saepe tulisse cibos!.
On a denarius? of Sextus Pompeius Faustulus (Fig. 18) the scene
is depicted in full. The she-wolf and the twins; above them the
sacred fig-tree (icus rwminalis), and perched upon it the sacred
birds.
In Rome to-day an old she-wolf still howls in desolation on the
Capitoline hill; but there is no woodpecker to make lamentation.
Picus was an oracular bird, a tree-guardian, a guardian of
kings; he was also himself a king, king over a kingdom ancient
and august. Vergil® tells how when Aineas sent his messengers
to interview the aged Latinus they found him in his house ‘stately
and vast, upreared on an hundred columns, once the palace of
Laurentian Picus, amid awful groves of ancestral sanctity. It
was a place at once palace and temple, befitting the old divine
king. There each successive king received the inaugural sceptre.
There was the sacred banqueting hall, where after the sacrifice of
rams the elders were wont to sit at the long tables. ‘There stood
around in the entry the images of the forefathers of old in ancient
cedar ’—figures some of them faint and impersonal, Italus and
Sabinus, mere eponyms, but among them figures of flesh and
blood, primal god-kings, ‘gray Saturn and the likeness of Janus
double-facing, and—for us most important of all—holding the
divining rod of Quirinus, girt in the short augural gown, carrying
on his left arm the sacred shield, Picus the tamer of horses. —
Picus equum domitor, a splendid climax; but Picus, the poet
1 Ovid, Fasti, 11. 53.
2 Babelon, τι. 336. The same scene—except that the treeis, oddly, a vine—occurs
on an antique violet paste at Berlin, published by Imhoof Blumner and Otto
Keller, Tier- und Pflanzen-bilder, Pl. 21, 15, ef. Furtwangler, Geschnittene Steine
im Antig. No. 4879. My attention was drawn to these monuments by the kind-
ness of Mr A. B. Cook.
3 in. vu. 170 ff.
il
Iv Picus and Faunus 105
knows, is also a spotted pie, a woodpecker. Vergil is past-master
in the art of gliding over these preposterous orthodoxies. He
sails serenely on through the story’s absurd sequel, the love of
Circe, her potions, the metamorphosis! of the tamer of horses into
a spotted pie,
Picus equum domitor, quem capta cupidine conjunx
Aurea percussum virga, versumque venenis
Fecit avem Circe, sparsitque coloribus alas,
and in the solemn splendour of the verbiage one forgets how
childish is the content.
Picus holds the litwus, the augur’s curved staff; he is girt with
the short trabea, the augur’s robe of purple and scarlet, and he
carries on his left arm the ancile, the sacred shield borne by the
Sali. He is a bird, an augur and a king. In Vergil, spite of
the inevitable bird-end and the augur’s dress, Picus is more king
than bird or even augur; he remains remote and splendid. Ovid
however tells us more of what manner of king he was, and the
revelation is a strange one. In the third book of the Fasti? he
tells us an odd story about Picus, and tells it with his usual output
of detailed trivialities, significant and insignificant, which must
here be briefly resumed.
Numa, Numa Pompilius be it noted (to the importance of
the name we shall return later), with the help of Egeria has
been carrying out his admirable religious reforms. In the grove
of Aricia, he has been teaching his people the fear of the gods,
and the rites of sacrifice and libation, and in general he has
been softening their rude manners. In the midst of all this
very satisfactory piety down came a fearful thunderstorm, the
lightning flashed, the rain fell in torrents, fear took possession
of the hearts of the multitude. Numa consulted Egeria. She
was no good on her own account, she could not stop the storm,
but being a wood nymph, and of the old order of things, she knew
1 The story of how Picus spurned the love of Circe and was turned into a
woodpecker is told with his customary detail by Ovid, Met. χτν. 6.
2 νυ. 285—348. The story forms part of the whole account of the ceremonies of
the Salii in March and especially of the origin of the ancilia, the original of which,
worn by Picus on his left arm, had descended from the sky at sunrise in a thunder-
storm. The ancilia will be discussed later, p. 196.
106 Magic [ CH.
it could be stopped, and better still who could do it—Picus and :
Faunus, ancient divinities of the soil.
piabile fulmen
Est ait et saevi flectitur ira Jovis.
Sed poterunt ritum Picus Faunusque piandi
Prodere, Romani numen uterque soli}.
Ovid swings neatly balanced between two orders, the old and
the new. The old story is of the thunder (fulmen), a sanctity
in itself, the vehicle of mana. This fulmen is piabile, you can
manipulate it magically for your own ends. The new order tells of
a human-shaped Jove whose weapon is the thunder which he hurls
in his anger. Clearly he is not wanted here. Numa has just
been teaching his people those rites of fire-sacrifice and libation
dear to the full-blown anthropomorphic god. The most un-
reasonable and ungovernable of the Olympians could scarcely have
chosen such a moment to manifest his ire. Ovid is caught in the
trap set by his own up-to-date orthodoxy.
The necessity of dragging in the Olympian Jupiter constantly
complicates and encumbers the story. Picus and Faunus really
make the weather, but by Ovid’s time Jupiter has got full
possession of the thunderbolt as his ‘attribute.’ Old Faunus was
embarrassed and shook his horns in perplexity as to the etiquette
of the matter; he and Picus had their own province, they were
gods of the fields and the high mountains, but Jupiter must decide
about his own weapons :
Di sumus agrestes, et qui dominemur in altis
Montibus. Arbitrium est in sua tela Jovi?
Finally they arrive at a sort of pious, obscurantist compromise :
they must not meddle with the thunder, but by their spells they
will induce Jupiter himself to allow himself to be dragged down
from the sky. He is worshipped as Elicius, he will allow himself
to be elicited :
Eliciunt caelo te, Jupiter; unde minores
Nune quoque te celebrant, Eliciumque vocant?.
Picus and Faunus are not regular dei like Jove, they are
numind, spirits, genil, a bird-spirit and a wood-spirit; like the
1 Fasti, 111. 289. 2 Fasti, 1. 315.
3 Fasti, ut. 327. In all probability as Mr A. B. Cook suggests (Class. Rev. xvit.
1904, p. 270) Jupiter Elicius is really Jupiter of the ilex-tree: but this question
does not here concern us.
ΕῚ
1] Picus, Faunus and Idaean Daktyls 107
Tree-King who watched over the Golden Bough, they haunt
the dark groves. At the foot of the Aventine was a grove so dim
it seemed a spirit must dwell there.
Lucus Aventino suberat niger ilicis umbra
Quo posses viso dicere, Numen inest}.
Here Picus and Faunus were run to earth, but like the genuine
‘old bogey-magicians they were, like Proteus himself, they had to
be caught and manacled before they would speak. In the best
accredited fashion, they changed themselves, Plutarch tells us,
into all manner of monstrous shapes*. But caught and bound
at last they were, and they handed over to Numa the whole
magician’s bag of tricks; they taught him to foretell the future,
and most important of all, they taught him the charm, a purifica-
tion (καθαρμόν), against thunderboits. The charm was in use in
Plutarch’s days; it was pleasantly compounded of onions, hairs,
and pilchards.
Picus and Faunus are magicians, medicine-men, and medicine-
men of a class with which we are already familiar. On this point
Plutarch® is explicit. ‘The daemons, Picus and Faunus,’ he says,
“were in some respects (i.e. in appearance) like Satyrs and Panes,
but in their skill in spells and their magical potency in matters
divine they are said to have gone about Italy practising the same
arts as those who in Greece bore the name of Idaean Daktyls.’
Now at last we are on firm familiar ground. The Daktyls of
Crete, the initiates of Idaean Zeus we know, they were the men
ho purified Pythagoras with the thunder-stone‘ and initiated him
into the thunder-rites of the Idaean cave. If Picus the Bird-King
as of their company, small wonder that he could make and
nmake the thunder. As we have already seen they were, com-
ared to the Kouretes, a specialized society of sorcerers. Of
ike nature were the Telchines in Rhodes, of whom Diodorus®
ys in an instructive passage, ‘they are also said to have been
1 Fasti, 11. 295,
2 Vit. Num. xv. .. ἀλλόκοτα φάσματα καὶ φοβερὰ τῆς ὄψεως προβαλλομένους.. «ἀλλὰ
€ προσθεσπίσαι πολλὰ τῶν μελλόντων καὶ τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς κεραυνοῖς ἐκδιδάξαι καθαρμὸν ὃς
οἰεῖται μεχρὶ νῦν διὰ κρομμύων καὶ τριχῶν καὶ μαινάδων.
3 Vit. Num. xv. ...poirav δύο δαίμονας Πῖκον καὶ Φαῦνον " ods τὰ μὲν ἄλλα Σατύρων
ν τις ἢ Ilavav γένει προσεικάσειε, δυνάμει δὲ φαρμάκων καὶ δεινότητι τῆς περὶ τὰ θεῖα
Ὀητείας λέγονται ταὐτὰ τοῖς ὑφ᾽ Ελλήνων προσαγορευθεῖσιν ᾿Ιδαίοις Δακτύλοις σοφιζό-
evo. περιϊέναι τὴν ᾿Ιταλίαν.
4 See supra, p. 56. 5 vy. 55. 3.
Ψ»
χ΄
4
σ
108 Magie [ CH.
magicians (γόητες), and to have had the power of inducing at their
will clouds and rain-showers and hail, and they could also draw
down snow, and it is said that they could do these things just lke
the magi. And they could change their shapes and they were
jealous in the matter of teaching their arts.’ In this ‘jealousy’
we see the note of a secret society. |
In the story of Numa’s dealings with Picus and Faunus we.
have the clearest possible reflection and expression of the conflict
of new and old, and further of the inextricable confusion caused
by obscurantist attempts at reconciling the irreconcilable. In
the old order you, or rather your medicine-king, made the weather
magically by spells; in the new order you prayed or offered gift-
sacrifice to an anthropoid god, a sky-god, Zeus or Jupiter, and lett
the issue confidently in his hands. Plutarch? is loud in his praises
of the way that Numa hung all his hopes on ‘the divine’ When
news was brought that the enemy was upon him, Numa smiled
and said, ‘But I am offering burnt sacrifice. Plutarch is no
exception. For some reason not easy to divine, mankind hall
always been apt to regard this attitude of serene and helpless
dependence as peculiarly commendable.
Numa is Numa Pompilius and his gentile uname tells us that
he was not only an innovator, but an interloper, a conqueror.
Umbrians, Sabellians and Oscans, tribes who came in upon the
indigenous people of Italy from the north are labializers?; their
king is not Numa Quinquilius, but Numa Pompilius. The wor=
shippers of Picus, the Woodpecker medicine-king, were, as Denys
tells us, aborigines. These northerners, though originally of the
same stock, had passed into a different and it may be a higher
phase of development, they had passed from spell to prayer, from
sacrament to gift-sacrifice. They came back again into the plains
of Italy as the Achaeans came into Aigean Greece, bringing a full-
blown anthropoid sky-god, Jupiter. They found a people still in
the magical stage ruled over by a medicine-king®, Picus.
1 Vit. Num. xv. αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν Νομᾶν οὕτω φασὶν eis τὸ θεῖον ἀνηρτῆσθαι ταῖς ἐλπίσιψ,
ὥστε καὶ προσαγγελίας αὐτῷ ποτε γενομένης ὡς ἐπέρχονται πολέμιοι μειδιᾶσαι καὶ εἰπεῖ
᾿Εγὼ δὲ θύω. |
2 I follow Prof. Ridgeway, Who were the Romans? Proceedings of the British
Academy, vol. 111. 1907.
* I borrow the term from Professor Gilbert Murray. The expression ‘ divi
king’ is as he has clearly shown (Anthropology and the Classics, p. 77) misleadi
Iv | Weather-daemon and Olympian 109
The indigenous weather-daemon Picus and the incoming
thunderer Jupiter have similar and therefore somewhat incom-
patible functions; it is inevitable that their relations will be
somewhat strained, a modus vivendi has to be found. One of two
things will happen. If you are a mild, peace-loving Pelasgian with
a somewhat obscurantist mind, you will say, ‘Ab! here are two
great powers, Picus and Jupiter or Zeus, doing the same great
work, making the rain to fall, the sun to shine, commanding the
thunder; Picus' has ‘entered the service of Zeus,’ Picus is ‘the son
of Zeus,’ Picus is ‘a title of Zeus’, or best of all, are they not both
ene and the same?’ Picus himself, according to the Byzantine
syncretizers, knew that he was really Zeus. ‘When he had handed
over the western part of his kingdom he died at the age of 120,
and when he was dying he gave orders that his body should be
deposited in the island of Crete, and that there should be an
inscription :
Here lies dead the Woodpecker who also is Zeus®.’
But it may be that you are of sterner mould and of conquering
race, that you are an incoming intransigent Achaean; you come
down into Thessaly and find the indigenous Salmoneus or it may be
Kapaneus at Thebes making thunder and lightning with his rain-
birds and water-pails and torches. What! An earthly king, a
mortal man, presume to mock Zeus’ thunder! Impious wretch,
let him perish, blasted by the divine inimitable bolt:
Demens ! qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen
Aere et cornipedum pulsu simularet equorum®,
The racial clash and conflict is interesting, and in dealing
with the story of Picus as told by Ovid some mention of it was
inevitable, but our business for the present lies solely with the
development of the lower indigenous stratum. In the figure of
Picus are united, or rather as yet undifferentiated, notions, to us
incompatible, of bird, seer-magician, king and daimon, if not god.
The daimon as we have already seen with respect to the Kouros
Kings were not deified because there were as yet no dei. The medicine-king is
predeistic, but possessed of those powers which later and more cultured ages have
relegated to the ‘ gods.’
1 Cf. such titles as Zeus Amphiaraos.
2 Suidas, s.v. Πῆκος"
ἐνθάδε κεῖται θανὼν... Πῆκος ὁ καὶ Ζεύς.
3 Verg. Ain. νι. 590.
110 Magic [CH.
and the Bacchos is but the reflection, the collective emphasis, of
a social emotion. The Kouretes utter themselves in their Greatest
Kouros, the Woodpecker-Magicians in the Woodpecker, Picus.
When the group dissolves and the links that bound leader and
group together are severed, then Picus will become a god, unless”
his figure be effaced by some conquering divinity.
— Finally Picus enshrines a beautiful lost faith, the faith that —
birds and beasts had mana other and sometimes stronger than
the mana of man. The notion that by watching a bird you
can divine the weather is preceded by the far more primitive
notion that the bird by his mana actually makes the weather,
makes and brings the rain, the thunder, the sunshine and the
spring. Beasts and birds in their silent, aloof, goings, in the
perfection of their limited doings are mysterious still and wonder-
ful. We speak of zoomorphic or theriomorphic or ornithomorphic —
gods, but again we misuse language. Birds are not, never were, |
gods; there is no definite bird-cult, but there are an infinite
number of bird-sanctities. Man in early days tries - to bri
himself into touch with bird-mana, he handles reverently bird-
sanctities.
There are many ways in which man could participate in
bird-mana. He could, and also ruthlessly did, eat the bird.
Porphyry? says those who wish to take unto themselves the spirits |
of prophetic animals swallow the most effective parts of them,
such as the hearts of crows and moles and hawks. It is not that
you eat a god-bird, it is that you participate in a substance fully
of a special quality or mana.
*~ Searcely less efficacious, you can wear the skin of the animal
whose mana you want, and notably the feathers of a bird. The
~Carthaginian priestess?, whose image sculptured on a sarcophagos
is reproduced in Fig. 19, wore a bird-robe, the robe of the
Egyptian goddess Isis-Nephthys. The goddess was but the
humanized, deified form of the holy bird. The body of the
priestess is enfolded by the bird’s two wings. The bird-head
appears above the headdress, and in her right hand she holds
anna een
1 de Abst. τι. 48. See my Prolegomena, p. 487.
* First published by Miss M. Moore, Car tig of the Phenicians, 1905, frontispicall
in colour, and reproduced here by kind permission of Mr W. Heinemann.
ὁ
|
Iv] Bird-magic 111
a bird. She is all bird. The colouring of the feathers is
a dark vivid blue and the
colourless reproduction gives
but a slight idea of the
beauty of the bluebird-
priestess.
The wearing of bird-
robes and _ bird-headdresses
with magical intent goes
on to-day among primitive
peoples. Among the Tara-
humares now-a-days a sha-
man may be seen at feasts
wearing the plumes of birds,
and through these plumes
it is thought the wise birds
impart all they know! Like
Teiresias, like Mopsos, like
Melampos, like Kassandra,
these shamans understand
the speech of birds. A little
bird tells them.
Further you can secure
much bird-mana by a bird-
dance. These same Tarahu-
mares assert that their
dances have been taught
them by animals. Animals
they hold are not inferior
creatures; they practise
magic. The deer and the
turkey dance in spring, the
birds sing and the frogs
croak to induce the gods
to let. it rain. Here it is
evident we are in a transi-
tion stage; gods are already Fic, 19.
1 Ὁ. Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, vol. 1. p. 313. For the general attitude of
primitive man towards birds, see Εἰ. J. Payne, History of America, τι. p. 161, and
especially M*Dougall, Journ. Anthrop. Inst. 1901, xxx1. pp. 173—213.
\
112 Magic [ CH.
developed, but it is the turkey and the deer who do the real
work, the dancing, for, among the Tarahumares, dancing, noldova,
means literally to ‘work.’ Their two principal dances are the
Yumari and the Rutuburi. The Yumari, which was older, was
taught to the people by the deer. The words sung at the
Rutuburi dance show clearly the magical intent. After a.short
prelude the song begins?:
The water is near;
Fog is resting on the mountain and on the mesa,
The Blue bird sings and whirs in the trees, and
The Male Woodpecker is calling on the Uano;
Where the fog is rising.
The large Swift is making his dashes through the evening air;
The rains are close at hand.
When the Swift is darting through the air he makes his whizzing
humming noise.
The Blue Squirrel ascends the tree and whistles.
The plants will be growing and the fruit will be ripening,
And when it is ripe it falls to the ground.
It falls because it is so ripe.
The flowers are standing up, waving in the wind.
The Turkey is playing, and the Eagle is calling;
Therefore, the time of rains will soon set in.
The dance goes on for hours. It is danced on one of the patios
or level dancing-places where the Tarahumare performs all his
religious exercises. The dance is performed in the open air
ostensibly that the principal divinities of the people, Father-Sun
and Mother-Moon, may see it and be induced to send rain; but, as
there is no mention whatever of either Father-Sun or Mother-.
Moon, it is probable that the service of the magical birds preceded
that of these Tarahumaran Olympians.
It is of course not only birds who teach man to dance, there
are sterner potencies whose gait and gestures it is well to imitate.
The Grizzly Bear dance of the North American Indians is thus
described*. The drummers assemble and chant ‘I begin to grow
restless in the spring, and they represent the bear making ready
to come from his winter den, Then ‘Lone Chief’ drew his-robe
1 Carl Lumholtz, Unknown Mewico, vol. τ. p. 330.
2 It is probable that the various bird-dances of the ancients had the like magical
intent, e.g. the dances called γλαῦξ (Athen. x1v. 629) and σκώψ (Athen. rx. 391) and
the famous γέρανος (Plut. Tes. xx1.). Mr D’Arcy Thompson says (s.v.) that the
dancing of cranes may be seen in the opening of the year in any zoological
garden,
3 W. McClintock, The Old North Trail, p. 264.
Iv | Mana of Birds 113
about him and arose to dance imitating the bear going from his
den and chanting:
I take my robe,
My robe is sacred,
I wander in the summer,
‘Lone Chief’ imitated with his hands a bear holding up its paws
and placing his feet together he moved backward and forward
with short jumps, making the lumbering movements of a bear,
running, breathing heavily and imitating his digging and turning
over stones for insects.
Any bird or beast or fish, if he be good for food, or if in any
way he arrest man’s attention as fearful or wonderful, may become
sacred, that is, may be held to be charged with special mana; but,
of all living creatures, birds longest keep their sanctity. They
come and go where man and beast cannot go, up to the sun, high
among the rain clouds; their flight is swift, their cries are strange
and ominous, yet they are near to man; they perch on trees, yet
they feed on earth-worms; they are creatures half of Gaia, half of
Ouranos. Long after men thought of and worshipped the gods
in human shape they still remembered the ancient Kingdom of
the Birds. On the archaic patera! in Fig. 53, p. 207, is depicted the
sacrifice of a bull—it may be at the Bouphonia, Athena is present
as Promachos with shield and uplifted spear. Behind her is the
great snake of Mother Earth which she took over, in front on a
stepped altar where the fire blazes is a holy bird. What bird is
intended is uncertain; assuredly no owl, but perhaps a crow,
though Aristotle? says no crow ever entered the Acropolis at
jAthens. At Korone, Crow Town, there was a bronze statue of
) Athena holding a crow in her hand’*.
We do not associate Artemis with any special bird, still less
do we imagine her in bird-form ; she is altogether to us the human
maiden. Yet we know of the winged, or, as she used to be called,
the ‘Persian’ Artemis, with her high curved wings. The recent
excavations of the British School at Sparta have taught us that
1 Brit. Mus. Cat. 405, C. Smith, J.H.S. 1. p. 202, Pl. m1., and see my Ancient
Athens, p. 289, Fig. 30.
arg. 324.
3 Paus. 1v. 34. 6; for the relation of Athens to the crow and the enmity of crow
nd owl see Dr Frazer’s note on Paus. τι. 11. 7, and for crow superstitions, κορωνίσ-
τα, etc., see D’Arcy Thompson, op. cit., s.v. ἹΚορώνη.
H. 8
Ἶ
be
114 Magic (CH.
these wings are not oriental, and not even mere attributes of
swiftness, they are just survivals of an old bird-form. On the
carved ivory fibula in Fig. 20’, from the sanctuary of Orthia, we
see the primitive goddess who went to the making of Artemis. ”
She has high curved wings, and she grasps by the neck two water- —
birds who dwelt in her Limnae. On one of the fibulae two birds
are also perched on her shoulders; she is all bird.
᾿Ξ Ξε
τος.
ms Wt
λας;
=
=
ee
OO x Ox Ont DOM ‘
thas a
WOLD
Fic. 20.
The Greeks early shrank from monstrosities, and our παπᾶς,
books tell us it is because of the sureness and delicacy of their
instinctive taste. But a hybrid form is not necessarily ugly; it
may be of great imaginative beauty. There are Egyptian statu
of the ram-headed Knum, more solemn, more religious than any
human Zeus the Greeks have left us. In Fig. 212 we have th
Chinese Thunder-God Zin-Shin, half bird half man as the Greeks
1 Reproduced by kind permission from R. M. Dawkins’ Laconia, Sparta it
B.8.A. xu. 1906-7, p- 78, Fig. 17 b.
2 Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs Macmillan from W. Simpson,
Buddhist Praying Wheel, 1896, Fig. 41.
Iv | Sanctity of Birds 115
themselves imagined but feared to picture Zeus. He 1s fantastic
and beautiful with his wings and eagle beak and claws, riding the
clouds in his circle of heavenly thunder-drums. The Greeks had
just the same picture in their minds—a bird-god, a cloud-god,
a thunder-god—but they dare not adventure it all together, so
they separate off the ‘attributes’; rationalists as they are they
divide and distinguish, and give us pictures like the lovely coins
of Elis (Fig. 22). But there is loss as well as gain.
ra. 22.
With this primitive sanctity of birds rather than their definite
divinity in our minds, much that is otherwise grotesque becomes
simple and beautiful—Bird-bridegrooms, Bird-parentages, Egg-
cosmogonies, Bird-metamorphoses. We no longer wonder that
g—2
116 Magie [oH
Trochilos the Wren is father of Triptolemos, that Ion is son of
Xouthos the twitterer, himself the son of Aiolos the Lightning, nor
that the Kouretes have for their mother Kombe the Crow. Bird-
metamorphoses cease to be grotesque because they are seen not
to be metamorphoses at all—only survivals misunderstood of the
old Bird-sanctities.
The heavenly swan woos Leda, and Nemesis in the form of a
swan flies before the swan-god?. When Aidos and Nemesis leave
miserable mortals to their sins and sorrows, they do on their
swan bodies? once again and fly up to Olympus, their fair flesh
hidden in white and feathery raiment, to the kingdom of the
deathless ones—the birds. To that same quiet kingdom the
chorus of the Hippolytus*, strained to breaking-point by the
passion of Phaedra, will escape.
Could I take me to some cavern for mine hiding
In the hill-tops where the Sun scarce hath trod,
Or a cloud make the home of mine abiding
As a bird among the bird-droves of God!
In far-off savage Tauri the leader of the chorus of Greek
maidens, bird-haunted, remembers the bird and tree-sanctuary at
Delos, where dwells the sacred swan-bird of the sun-god, and,
halcyon-like, she sings? :
Sister, I too beside the sea complain,
A bird that hath no wing.
Oh for a kind Greek market-place again,
For Artemis that healeth woman’s pain ;
Here I stand hungering.
Give me the little hill above the sea,
The palm of Delos fringéd delicately,
The young sweet laurel and the olive-tree
Grey-leaved and glimmering;
O Isle of Leto, Isle of pain and love,
The Orbéed Water and the spell thereof,
Where still the Swan, minstrel of things to be,
Doth serve the Muse and sing.
1 See Roscher, s.v. Nemesis.
2 This, considering the swan-form of Nemesis, must, I think, be the meaning of
Hesiod, Op. 200
λευκοῖσιν φαρέεσσι καλυψαμένω χρόα καλόν.
For these ‘femmes cygnes’ and the way they doff and do on their ‘chemises de
cygne’ see S. Reinach, ‘Les Theoxenies et le vol des Dioscures,’ in Cultes, Mythes
et Religions, u. p. ὅδ, though M. Reinach is not responsible for my interpretation
of Hesiod.
3 Eur. Hipp. 732. |
4 Eur. Iph. in T. 1095. el
Iv] Sanctity of Birds 117
In the last two chapters we have seen that magic takes its
rise, not only or chiefly in any mistaken theory, but in a thing
done, a δρώμενον, predone. We have further passed in review, in
unavoidable fusion and confusion, three stages of magical develop-
ment ; we have seen magic as open and public, an affair of the
tribe, we have seen it as the work of a specialized group, and last,
as the work of an individual medicine-man or medicine-king.
Further, we have seen the magical efficacy of birds, as first making,
and then foretelling, the weather. Finally we have seen, in the
figure of Picus, the strange blend of bird-magician and human
king. The cause of these various stages of magic, and the social
conditions underlying the fusion of man and bird or beast will be
examined in the next chapter, when we come to the question of
sacrifice and the social, totemistic conditions that underlay it.
This brings us to the second rite in the Kouretic initiation of
a Bacchos, the omophagia.
Picus Martius.
CHAPTER V.
TOTEMISM, SACRAMENT AND SACRIFICE.
‘WHAT MEANEST THOU BY THIS WORD SACRAMENT 2?’
WE have seen how the mystic, at his initiation by the
Kouretes, ‘accomplished the Thunders. Another rite remains,
more dread and, to our modern thinking?, utterly repugnant.
Before he can become a Bacchos, the candidate must have
Fulfilled his red and bleeding feasts”.
The omophagia or Eating of Raw Flesh was a rite not confined
to the Kouretic initiation of a Bacchos. We meet it again in the
Thracian worship of Dionysos. The Bacchae when they recount
“τὰ νομισθέντα, their accustomed rites, sing the glory and
joy of the quick red fountains,
The blood of the hill-goat torn®.
The Bacchoi in Crete eat of a bull, the Bacchae in Thrace and
Macedon of a hill-goat; the particular animal matters little, the |
essential is that there should be a communal feast of Raw Flesh,
a dais ὠμοφάγος.
Physically repugnant the rite must always be to our modern
taste, which prefers to cook its goats and bulls before eating them ;
but our moral repugnance disappears, or at least suffers profound
modification, when the gist of the rite is understood. What
specially revolts us is that the tearing and eating of bulls and
1 Plutarch in his de defect. oracul. raises a horrified protest. See my Prolegomena,
p. 484.
2 τάς τ᾽ ὠμοφάγους δαῖτας τελέσας.
3 Eur. Bacch. 135
ἡδὺς ἐν ὄρεσιν...
.. Aypevov
αἷμα τραγοκτόνον, ὠμοφάγον χάριν.
δ
CH. ΥἹ The Group and the Totem 119
goats should be supposed to be a sacrifice pleasing to a god. We
naturally feel that from the point of view of edification the less
said about the worship of such gods the better. Nor is our moral
sense appeased if we are told that the sacrifice is a sacrament,
that the bull or goat torn and eaten is the god himself, of whose
life the worshippers partake in sacramental communion, In thus
Interpreting ancient rites we bring our own revolting horrors with
us. The omophagia was part of a religion, that is a system of Y
sanctities, that knew no gods; it belongs to a social organization
that preceded theology. The origin of sacrifice and sacrament
alike can only be understood in relation to the social structure
and its attendant mode of thinking from whence it sprang—
totemism. Only in the light of totemistic thinking can it be
made clear why, to become a Bacchos, the candidate must partake y
of a sacrament of Raw Flesh.
definition—‘is an intimate relation which is supposed to exist between a
group of kindred people on the one side and a species of natural or artificial
objects on the other side, which objects are called the totems of the ΠΌΡΕΝ
group.’
‘Totemism, Dr Frazer! says—and we cannot do better than adopt "ἢ
We observe at the outset that totemism has two notes or
characteristics: it has to do with a group not an individual, and
that group is in a peculiar relation to another group of natural
and occasionally of artificial objects.
It is of the utmost importance that we should be clear as to
the first note or characteristic, i.e. that totemism has to do with a
group. In Dr Frazer’s earlier work on totemism, published in
1887, his definition ignored the human group. It reads as follows?:
A totem is a class of material objects which a savage regards with super-
stitious respect, believing that there exists between Aim and every member of
the class an intimate and altogether special relation.
In this earlier definition, it will be noted, a class of objects is
regarded as in relation to an individual savage: in the later to
a group of men.
As to the importance of the group, the word totem, it would
seem, speaks for itself. It means, not plant or animal, but simply
1 Totemism and Exogamy, 1910, vol. tv. p. 3.
2 J. G. Frazer, Totemism, 1887, p.1. The italics are our own. This mono-
graph is reprinted without alteration in vol. 1. of Dr Frazer’s great work Totemism
and Exogamy.
τὸ,
Re
120 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice (cH.
ra
tribe. Various forms of the word are given by various authorities, —
The Rev. Peter Jones, himself an Ojibway, gives toodavm. Francis
Assikinack, an Ottawa Indian, gives ododam. The Abbé Thavenal
says the word is properly ote in the sense of ‘ family or tribe,’ the
possessive of which is otem. He adds that the Indians use ote in
the sense of ‘mark’ (limited, Dr Frazer’ says, apparently to family
mark), but he argues that the word must mean ‘family or tribe,’ in
some sense ‘ group.’
This simple, familiar and, we believe, undisputed fact that
totem means ‘tribe or group’ has not we think been sufficiently
emphasized. The totem-animal, it has long been admitted, is
not an individual animal, it is the whole species. This at once
delimits the totem, even when it is an artificial object, from the
fetich. The fetich is never a class. But, though the group-
character of the totem-animal is admitted, the correlative truth,
that it is the human group, not the human individual that is
related to the totem, has been left vague. Hence all the con-
troversy as to whether the individual totem is prior to the group-
totem or vice versd, whether or not the guardian animal or spirit
of the individual precedes the totem-animal. Hence also the
significance of Dr Frazer’s? modification of his original definition,
his substitution of the words ‘group of kindred people’ for ‘a
savage.’
First and foremost then in totemism is the idea of the unity of
a group. Next comes the second note or characteristic; this
human group is in a special relation to another group—this time
of non-human objects. In far the greater number of cases these
non-human objects are animals and plants, occasionally meteoric
objects, sun, moon, rain, stars, and still more rarely artificial —
objects, nets or spears’.
This relation between the human and the non-human group is
so close as to be best figured by kinship, unity of blood, and is —
1 Totemism, 1887, p. 1, note 6.
2 Facts have forced upon Dr Frazer this modification—and to facts he always
yields ungrudging obedience—but I cannot help thinking that, as he nowhere.calls
attention to this modification, the full significance of these facts escapes him,
otherwise he would not base his new theory of totemism on the chance error of
individual women. See Totemism and Exogamy, iv. p. 57.
3 Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, τ. p. 4.
Vv] Psychology of Totemism — 131
expressed in terms of actual identity. A Central Australian |
pointing to a photograph of himself will say, ‘That one is just the
same as me, so is a kangaroo (his totem). We say the Ceniral
Australian ‘ belongs to the kangaroo tribe’; he knows better, he zs
kangaroo. Now it is this persistent affirmation of primitive man
in the totemistic stage that he 18 an animal or a plant, that he 18
a kangaroo or an opossum or a witchetty grub or a plum tree,
that instantly arrests our attention, and that has in fact obscured
the other and main factor in totemism, the unity of the human
group. The human group we understand and realize to a certain
extent. Man, we know, is gregarious, he thinks and feels as a
group. So much our latter-day parochialism or patriotism or
socialism may help us to imagine. It is the extension of the
group to include those strange tribesmen, plants, animals and
stones, that staggers us. ‘ What,’ we ask, ‘does the savage mean by
being one, identical with them? Why does he persistently affirm
and reaffirm that he 7s a bear, an opossum, a witchetty grub, when
he quite well knows that he is not ?’
Because to know is one thing, to feel is another. Because to
know is first and foremost to distinguish, to note differences, to.
discern qualities, and thereby to classify. Above all things it is
to realize the distinction between me and not-me. We all
remember Tennyson’s ‘Baby new to earth and sky.’ He and
the savage have never clearly said that ‘this is I’ Man in the
totemistic stage rarely sets himself as individual over against his |
tribe ; he rarely sets himself as man over against the world around |
him*.. He has not yet fully captured his individual or his
human soul, not yet drawn a circle round his separate self.
It is not that he confuses between himself and a kangaroo;
it is that he has not yet drawn the clear-cut outline that
defines the conception kangaroo from that of man and eternally
separates them. His mental life is as yet mainly emotional, one |
of felt relations.
Be Lévy-Bruhl, Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieures, 1910,
p. 25.
2 But not if we become ‘as little children.’ Mr 5. Reinach in his delightful
Orpheus says of totemism (p. 22), ‘Ce respect de la vie d’un animal, d’un végétal,
n’est autre chose qu’une exagération, une hypertrophie de l’instinct social. 1] suffit
de mener un jeune enfant dans un jardin zoologique pour s’assurer que cette
hypertrophie est trés naturelle 4 homme.’
5 For an illuminating account of the psychology of this process see the chapter
on ‘ Wahrnehmung’ (Perception) in Dr P. Beck’s Die Nachahmung, 1904.
122 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [ CH.
Γ᾽ _ If we can once think ourselves back into totemistic days we
shall be rid for ever of an ancient and most pernicious orthodoxy,
the old doctrine that the religion of primitive man was anthropo-
\ morphic. Facts tell us that it was not; that theriomorphism and
__phytomorphism came first. Yet the ancient dogma flourishes.
‘Again and again we find the unqualified statement that man
projects his own image on the universe, sees in it his own human
will, peoples all nature with human souls. Totemism teaches us
just the contrary; 16 18 as τὸ were the fossil form’ of quite another
1 creed. It stands for fusion, for non-differentiation. Man cannot
project his individual self, because that individual self is as yet
in part undivided ; he cannot project his individual human will,
because that human will is felt chiefly as one with the un-
differentiated mana of the world; he cannot project his individual —
soul because that complex thing is as yet not completely —
compounded’. ;
Totemism, then, is not so much a special social structure as ἃ
stage in epistemology. It is the reflexion of a very primitive —
‘fashion in thinking, or rather feeling, the universe, 8 feeling the
realization of which is essential to any understanding of primitive
religion. It is not a particular blunder and confusion made by
certain ignorant savages, but a phase or stage of collective think-
ing through which the human mind is bound to pass. Its basis 15.
group-unity, aggregation, similarity, sympathy, a sense of common
group life, and this sense of common life, this participation’, this
unity, is extended to the non-human world in a way which our
modern, individualistic reason, based on observed distinctions, finds
almost unthinkable.
We find totemism unthinkable because it is non-rational. We
are inclined to make the quite unauthorized assumption that true
judgments, ie. judgments which correspond to observed fact, are
natural to man. False judgments like totemism we feel are
anomalous and need explanation. Man’s opinions, his judgments,
we fondly imagine, are based on observation and reason. Just the
contrary is the case; beliefs of every kind, at least im man’s early
1 The late character of the individual ‘soul’ will be discussed when we come to
the question of Hero-Worship in chapter vit. i
2 For a full analysis of the primitive idea of participation see Lévy-Bruhl, op. cit,
chapter τι. La loi de participation. ΝΕ
v| Totemistic Thinking a Stage in Epistemology 123
stages of development are prior to experience and observation,
they are due to suggestion. Anything suggested is received
unless there is strong reason, or rather emotion, to the contrary’.
It is not the acceptance of an opinion, however absurd, that needs
explanation ; it is its criticism and rejection®. Suggest to a savage
that he has eaten tabooed food, he accepts the suggestion and—
dies. The strongest form of suggestion is of course the collective |
suggestion of his whole universe, his group, his public opinion.
Such suggestion will certainly be accepted without question, if it
appeal to a powerful or pleasing emotion.
That outlook on the universe, that stage in epistemology which
we call totemism has its source then not in any mere blunder of
the individual intellect, but in a strong collective emotion. The
next question that lies before us is naturally—What is the
emotion that finds its utterance, its expression, its representation,
in totemism? To answer this question we must look at the
relations of primitive man to his totem. These relations are most
clearly marked and will be best understood in that large majority
of cases where the totem is an edible plant or animal.
As a rule a savage abstains from eating his totem, whether
plant or animal: his totem is tabu to him; to eat it would be
disrespectful, even dangerous. An Ojibway who had unwittingly
killed a bear (his totem) described how, on his way home after
the accident, he was attacked by a large bear who asked him why
he had killed his totem. The man explained, apologised, and
was dismissed with a caution®. This tabu on the eating of a totem
is natural enough. The man is spiritually, mystically, akin to his
totem, and as a rule you do not eat your relations. But this tabu
is in some parts of the world qualified by a particular and very
interesting injunction. A man may not as a rule eat of his totem,
but at certain times and under certain restrictions a man not only
1 W. James, Principles of Psychology, τε. p. 319, ‘the primitive impulse is to
affirm immediately the reality of all that is conceived,’ ‘we acquire disbelief,’ and
p. 299, ‘we believe as much as we can.’
2 This important point has been well brought out in an article in the Edinburgh
Review (vol. cox. p. 106) on Fallacies and Superstitions. The anonymous writer
reminds us that the writer of the Problems attributed to Aristotle (Θ, p. 891, a. 7),
raised the question ‘ why do men cough and cows do not?’ a difficulty he might have
spared himself had his judgments been based on observation.
° Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, τ. p. 10.
124 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice 7
may, but must, eat of his totem, though only sparingly, as of a
thing sacro-sanct. This eating of the totem is closely connected
with its ceremonial multiplication. You abstain from your totem
as a rule because of its sanctity, 1.6. because it is a great focus of
mana; you eat a little with infinite precautions because you want
that mana and seek its multiplication. This double-edged atti-
tude towards things sacred lies, as we shall later see, at the very
foundation of the ideas both of sacrament and sacrifice.
The totem-animal is in general the guardian and protector of
its human counterpart, but the relation is strictly mutual; the
animal depends on the man as the man on the animal. This
comes out very clearly in the Jntichiwma ceremonies performed
by the Central Australian tribes? By Intichiwma are meant
magical ceremonies performed by members of a totem-group to
induce the multiplication of the totem. As a typical instance we
may take the ceremonies of the Emu totem.
When men of the Emu totem desire to multiply emus they set about it
as follows. Several of the men open veins in their arms and allow the blood
to stream on the ground till a patch about three yards square is saturated
with it. When the blood is dry it forms a hard surface on which the men of
the totem paint in white, red, yellow and black a design intended to represent
various parts of the emu, such as the fat, of which the natives are very fond,
the eggs in various stages of development, the intestines, and the feathers.
Further, several men of the totem, acting the part of ancestors of the Emu
clan, dress themselves up to resemble emus and imitate the movements and
aimless gazing about of the bird; on their heads are fastened sacred sticks
(churinga) about four feet long, and tipped with emu feathers, to represent
the long neck and small head of the emu®, |
“The ceremony has really, like all Zntichiwma ceremonies, two
main elements: (1) the shedding of the blood of the human Emu,
and (2) his counterfeit presentment of the bird-Emu. The human
blood helps out the animal life, renews, invigorates it; the man,
by dressing up as the Emu and making pictures of it, increases
his mystic sympathy and communion. In the ceremony for pro-
moting the Witchetty Grub a long narrow structure of boughs is
got ready. It represents the chrysalis from which the full-grown
insect emerges. Into this structure the men of the Witchetty
Grub totem, painted over with the device of the totem in red
ochre and pipe clay, each in turn enter and sing of the grub in its
1 Frazer, op. cit. 1v. p. 6.
2 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, chapter v1., Intichiuma
ceremonies,
3 Frazer, op. cit. 1. p. 106.
i
v| Totemistic Thinking based on Group-unity 125
various stages of development. They then shuffle out one by one
with a gliding motion to indicate the emergence of the insect’.
They enact, they represent their own union and communion, their
identity with their totem, and thereby somehow intensify its life
and productiveness. At the back of the whole grotesque perform-
ance lies, not so much a mistaken ratiocination, but an intense
desire for food, issuing in a vivid representation.
Totemism and totemistic ceremonies and ways of thinking are
based, we have seen, on group-emotion, on a sense of solidarity, of
oneness. No distinction is felt between the human and non-
human members of the totem-group, or rather, to be more exact,
the beginning of a distinction is just dawning. The magical
ceremonies, the shedding of the human blood, the counterfeiting
of the animal, have for their object to bridge the gulf that is just
opening, to restore by communion that complete unity which is
just becoming conscious of possible division. The ceremonies are
however still intensely sympathetic and cooperative ; they are, as
the Greeks would say, rather methektic than mimetic, the expres-
sion, the utterance, of a common nature participated in, rather
than the imitation of alien characteristics. The Emu man still
feels he 7s an Emu; the feathers he puts on, the gait he emulates,
are his own, not another’s.
But, strong though the sense of group-unity is in Totemism,
the rift has begun. Totemism means not only unity of one group,
but also disparity from other groups. The Emu men are one
among themselves, and one with the Emu birds, but they are
alien to the Witchetty Grub men, and have no power to multiply
Witchetty Grubs—or Kangaroos. Behind the totemistic system
may lie a pre-totemistic social state”, when the tribe was all one, not
yet broken into totemistic groups. The cause of the severance we
can only conjecture. Probably it was due to the merely mechanical
cause of pressure of population. The tribe growing over-populous
loses coherence and falls asunder by simple segmentation. Once
that segmentation occurs each half gathers round a nucleus.
1 Frazer, op. cit. 1. p. 106, of how food comes to be.
2 I am indebted for this idea to views expressed by Mr A. R. Brown in a course
of lectures delivered in 1909 at Trinity College, Cambridge. Mr Brown suggested
that the Andaman Islanders and the Esquimaux were perhaps instances of pre-
totemistic peoples.
4q
126 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [CH.
We then have forces at work not only of attraction, but of repul-
sion; union is intensified through disunion. This double force
which makes and remakes society Empedocles! saw reflected in
his cosmos:
A two-fold tale I tell thee. At one time
The One grew from the many. Yet again
Division was—the many from the one.
‘And these things never cease, but change for ever.
At one time all are joined and all is Love,
And next they fly asunder, all is Strife.
Now that we realize a little what totemism is, we are able to
understand much better the various stages and developments of
magic and also something of the relation of magic to religion,
The totem-group when it performs its rites of multiplication has
indeed some dawning sense of differentiation, but its main emotion
and conviction is of unity, emotional unity with its totem, a unity
which it emphasizes and enhances and reintegrates by its cere-
monies of sympathy. The whole human group acts and reacts on
the whole plant or animal group, the mana of the human and the
animal group is felt as continuous. This is the first stage. But
_as intelligence advances and as actual individual observation tends
to take the place of collective suggestion, the sense of unity is
obscured. Little by little the attention is focused on distinctions.
Man, though he is dressed up as an emu, becomes more and more
conscious that he is not an emu, but that he is imitating an emu,
a thing in some respects alien to himself, a thing possessed of
much mana, but whose mana is separate, a thing to be acted on,
‘controlled, rather than sympathetically reinforced. Then, as the
|Greek would say, μέθεξις gives place to μέμησις, participation to
‘imitation’.
Any dawning sense of distinction between the human and the
animal member of the group is like a traitor in the very heart of
the citadel. But custom is strong, and totemistic rites go on long
1 Diels, Frg. 17, p. 177
δίπλ᾽ ἘΣ; τοτὲ μὲν γὰρ ὃν ηὐξήθη μόνον εἶναι
ἐκ πλεόνων, τοτὲ δ᾽ αὖ διέφυ πλέον᾽ ἐξ ἑνὸς εἶναι
καὶ ταῦτ᾽ ἀλλάσσοντα διαμπερὲς οὐδαμὰ λήγει,
ἄλλοτε μὲν Φιλότητι συνερχόμεν᾽ εἰς ἕν ἅπαντα,
ἄλλοτε δ᾽ αὖ δίχ᾽ ἕκαστα φορεύμενα Νείκεος ἔχθει.
2 The analogy of the Greek μέθεξις was pointed out to me by Mr F. M. Cornford..
: V| Gradual Segregation of God and Worshipper 127
after that faith in unity, in consubstantiality, which is of its essence,
is dying or even dead. The stages of its death are gradual. The
whole group ceases to carry on the magical rite, which becomes
the province of a class of medicine-men ; the specialized Kouretes,
as we have seen, supplant the whole body of Kouroi. Finally the
power is lodged in an individual, a head medicine-man, a king
whose functions are at first rather magical than political.
As the wielder of the power becomes specialized and indi-
vidualized, his power becomes generalized. In primitive totemistic
conditions the Emu man, by virtue of his common life, his common
mana, controlled, or rather sympathetically invigorated, Emus;
but his power was limited to Emus. Once the totemistic system
begins to break down, this rigid departmentalism cannot be kept
up. The band of magicians, and later the individual medicine-
man or medicine-king began to claim control over the food
supply and over fertility in general, and also over the weather, on
which, bit by bit, it is seen that the food supply depends. The
medicine-king tends towards, though he never attains, complete
omnipotence.
One other point remains to be observed.
‘It is a serious though apparently a common mistake,’ says Dr Frazer],
‘to speak of a totem as a god and say that it is worshipped by the clan. In
pure totemism, such as we find it among the Australian aborigines, the totem
_ 1s never a god, and is never worshipped. A man no more worships his totem
and regards it as his god than he worships his father and mother, his brother
and his sister, and regards them as gods.’
The reason why pure totemism cannot be a system of worship
is now abundantly clear. Worship involves conscious segregation
of god and worshipper. The very idea of a god, as we have seen
in the case of the Kouros and the Bacchos, belongs to a later stage
of epistemology, a stage in which a man stands off from his own
imagination, looks at it, takes an attitude towards it, sees it as
object. Worship connotes an object of worship. Between totemism
and worship stands the midway stage of magic. Magic in its
more elementary forms we have already seen in considering the
Thunder-Rites. Two later developments have now to be examined,
developments closely analogous, Sacramental Communion and
Sacrifice.
1 Totemism and Exogamy, 1910, vol. tv. p. 5.
128 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [CH.
Before entering on this enquiry we must however pause for a
moment. We have assumed so far that totemism lies behind Greek
religion, and that Greek religion can only be rightly understood
on this assumption. The assumption is not so bold as it may
seem. We do not claim for Greece a fully developed totemistic
social system, but rather that totemistic habit of thought, which.
is, we believe, common to all peoples in an early phase of their
epistemology’. Totemism, we have tried to show, is to our mind
a habit of collective thinking based on collective emotion. The
main characteristic of such thinking is union, or rather lack of
differentiation, of subject and object. This lack of differentiation,
this felt union, shows itself in many ways, and chiefly in one
salient example, the belief in the identity of groups of human
beings with groups of animals or plants. In practice, that is in
ritual, totemism finds its natural development in the manipulation
of the spiritual continuum, in magic.
This habit of collective thinking, this lack of differentiation?
is, we believe, characteristic not of one race, but of all races at a
given stage of their mental development. It is further, I believe,
the characteristic of Greek religion that it emerged early from the
totemistic magical stage. The Greeks were a people who drew
clear-cut outlines and sharp distinctions. But we cannot under-
stand this rapid emergence unless we understand from what they
emerged. Very early the Greeks shed their phytomorphic and
theriomorphic gods. With strong emphasis by the mouth οὗ
Pindar® they insist that a god be clearly and impassably delimited —
from man. Have we any evidence of the earlier stage of thought
against which the protest is raised ? Are there in Greek mythology
or Greek cultus definite traces of totemistic unification ?
1 Such a system probably only occurs sporadically where man’s progress in
epistemology has been arrested and the social structure crystallizes. Since writing
the above I am delighted to find that my conjecture, which might appear hazardous,
has been anticipated by Mr A.B. Cook. He writes (J.H.S. x1v. 1894, 157) ‘On the
whole I gather that the Mycenaean worshippers were not totemists pure and simple
but that the mode of their worship points to its having been developed out of still
earlier totemism.’
2 For an analysis of primitive mentality, see Lévy-Bruhl, Les Fonctions Mentales
dans les Sociétés Inférieures, 1910.
3 Ol. v. 58 μὴ ματεύ-
σῃ θεὸς γενέσθαι,
and Isth. v. 20
θνατὰ θνατοῖσι πρέπει.
See my Prolegomena, p. 477.
ἡ
3 v| Survivals of Totemistic Thinking in Greece 129
The people of the island of Seriphos would not for the most
part use lobsters for food, accounting them sacred. lian! was
told that if they found one dead they would bury it and lament
for it. If they took one alive in their nets they cast it back into
the sea. The dead totem is often mourned for as a clansman.
In Samoa, if an Owl man finds a dead owl, he will sit down by
it and weep over it and beat his forehead with stones till the
blood flows, In Phrygia there was a clan called the Snake-born
(Odguoyevets), reputed to be descended from a sacred snake of
great size who had once lived in a grove*. At Parium was
another group of Snake-born men. The males of the group had
the power, Strabo‘ tells us, of curing the bite of serpents by
touching the patient. The Psylli, a Snake clan of Africa, exposed
their new-born children to the bite of snakes. If bitten they
were bastards, if left untouched legitimate®. If stories such as
these are not survivals of totemistic thinking, it is hard to know
what is.
In poetry more even than in prose or than in the practice of
actual rites, primitive ways of thinking, totemistic unifications
of man and animal are sure to survive. In the Bacchae of
Euripides, in that very religion of the Kouros which we have
seen to be so elemental, we have an instance of strange beauty
and significance.
One secret of the thrill of the Bacchae is that the god is always
shifting his shape. Dionysos is a human youth, lovely, with curled
hair, but in a moment he is a Snake, a Lion, a Wild Bull, a
Burning Flame. The leader of the chorus cries®
Appear, appear whatso thy shape or name,
O Mountain Bull, Snake of the Hundred Heads,
Lion of Burning Flame,
O God, Beast, Mystery, come!
When Pentheus comes out from the palace, hypnotised, intoxi-
cated, seeing two suns, two walls with seven gates, the most
1 24]. N.A. xt. 26 on the τέττιξ ἐνάλιος. Οὐ σιτοῦνται δὲ αὐτὸν οἱ πολλοί, νομίζοντες
ἱερόν. Σεριφίους δὲ ἀκούω καὶ θάπτειν νεκρὸν ἑαλωκότα ζῶντα δὲ εἰς δίκτυον ἐμπεσόντα
οὐ κατέχουσιν, ἀλλὰ ἀποδιδόασι τῇ θαλάττῃ αὖθις. Θρηνοῦσι δὲ ἄρα τοὺς ἀποθανόντας.
2. Dr Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, 1910, 1v. p. 15.
3 Ml. N.A. xu. 89. Axa 14
5 Varro, ad Prisc. x. 32. € y. 1017.
Η. ᾿ 9
180 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [cH.
frightening thing of all is that he sees the Bacchos not as man,
but bull:
And is it a Wild Bull this, that walks and waits
Before me? There are horns upon thy brow!
What art thou, man or beast? For surely now
The Bull is on thee! ν
Now all this is usually? explained as a ‘late’ mysticism, a sort —
of pantheism, the god in all nature. In reality it goes back to
things simpler and deeper. It is important to note that this shift —
to animal shape is not a power of transformation due to the mature
omnipotence of the god; it is with the Dithyrambos from his —
birth; it is part of his essence as the Twice-Born. The first
chorus®, as well as the third already analysed, is in part a Birth-
song,a Dithyramb. The chorus sing of the coming of Bromios —
from Phrygia, of the Thunder Epiphany, the smiting of Semele
the Mother, and the second birth from the Father:
And the Queen knew not beside him |
Till the perfect hour was there.
Then a hornéd God was found.
The Dithyramb is a bull-god, reborn into his tribe not only as —
a full-grown male but as a sacred beast*.
Thus, in the very kernel of our subject, in the Rite of the’
New Birth, we find the totemistic way of thinking. The boy to—
be initiated is reborn as his totem-animal.
In describing the ceremony of the Second Birth among the
Kikfayus we have seen’ that the rite was called either To be born”
again or To be born of a goat. As the Kikayu have no goat totem
we cannot certainly connect the ceremony with totemism, but
among other peoples the connection is clear. Thus, when a South
Slavonian® woman has given birth to a child, an old woman runs
out of the house and calls out, ‘A she-wolf has littered a he-wolf”
To make assurance doubly sure, the child is drawn through a
1 y, 920,
2 Again I find that what I believe to be the right explanation is given by
Mr A. Β. Cook (J.H.S. χτν. 108).
3 Bacch. 99. Ἢ
4 It is scarcely necessary to say that Euripides was all unconscious of that sub-
stratum of totemism of which he makes such splendid poetical use.
oop. 2.
6 J, G. Frazer, Totemism, 1887, pp. 32 and 33.
v] Second Birth as an Animal 131
wolf-skin so as to simulate actual birth from a wolf. The reason
now assigned for these customs is that by making a wolf of the
child you cheat the witches of their prey, for they will not attack
a wolf. But the origin of the custom must surely be the simpler
notion that you mean what you do to the child—you make a wolf
of him.
Very instructive in this respect is a Hindu custom’. When a
Hindu child’s horoscope looks bad, he has to be born again of
a cow. He is dressed in scarlet, tied on a new sieve and passed
between the hind legs of a cow forward through the forelegs to
the mouth and again in the reverse direction to simulate birth;
the ordinary birth-ceremonies, aspersion and the like are then
gone through. The child is new born as a holy calf. This is
certain, for the father sniffs at his son as a cow smells her calf.
A like ceremony of new birth as a beast may be gone through
merely with a view to purification. If in India a grown person
has polluted himself by contact with unbelievers, he can be purified
by being passed through a golden cow. This brings out very
clearly the sense in which new birth and purification are sub-
stantially the same: both are rites de passage, the spirit of both
is expressed by the initiation formulary, ἔφυγον κακὸν εὗρον
ἄμεινον.
The second birth then of the infant Dionysos as a ‘horned
child’ is best explained by totemistic ways of thinking. If the
view” here taken be correct, totemism arises, not from any intel-
lectual blunder of the individual savage, but rather from a certain
mental state common to all primitive peoples, a state in which
the group dominates the individual and in which the group seeks
to utter its unity, to emphasize its emotion about that unity by
the avowal of a common kinship with animal or plant. If this be
so, the Greeks will be no exception to the general rule. They
must have passed through the stage of undifferentiated thinking
and group-emotion from which totemism, magic and the notion of
mana sprang*, and we may safely look for survivals of a totemistic
1 Frazer, op. cit. p. 33.
2 The view taken is substantially that of Prof. Durkheim or at least arises out
of it. See E. Durkheim, Sur le totémisme, in L’Année Sociologique, 1902 (v.),
p. 82.
% Dr Frazer in his great work, Totemism and Exogamy, vol. tv. p. 13, says that
the evidence adduced in support of the existence of totemism among the Semites
and among the Aryans, notably among the ancient Greeks and Celts, leaves him
9—2
132 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [ cH. g
habit of thought. That these survivals abound among primitive
red-skins and black-skins rather than among Semites and Aryans
need surprise no one.
Another totemistic relic remains to be considered; it is again
enshrined with singular beauty in the Bacchae. Among totemistic
peoples it is frequently the custom to tattoo the member of the
totem-group with the figure of the sacred plant or animal. That
Fic. 23.
this custom was in use among the Thracian worshippers of
Dionysos we have clear evidence in Fig. 23. The design is from
a beautiful cylix with white ground in the National Museum at
Athens. The scene is the slaying of Orpheus by a Maenad.
Only the Maenad is figured here. On her right arm 1s distinctly
tattooed a fawn, on her left some object not yet explained.
‘doubtful or unconvinced. To a great extent it consists of myths, legends and
superstitions about plants and animals which, though they bear a certain resem-
blance to totemism, may have originated quite independently of it.’
1 See my paper on Some Fragments of a Vase presumably by a '
in J.H.S. 1x. 1888, p. 148.
v| ᾿ς Totemistic Tattoo-marks 133
The female worshippers of Dionysos were it would seem
tattooed with the figure of a fawn; the male worshippers were
stamped with an ivy leaf. The ivy, rather than the vine, was in
early days the sacred plant of Dionysos. The Bacchic women
chewed ivy in their ecstasy, possibly as a sort of sacrament’.
Pliny* was surprised at the veneration paid to ivy because it is
hurtful to trees and buildings. The reason of its sanctity is
simple if mystical. Ivy lives on when other plants die down. It
is the vehicle of the external, undying, totem-soul, the vehicle of
Dionysos, god of the perennial new birth. When Ptolemy Philo-
pator converted the Egyptian Jews to the religion of Dionysos he
had them branded with the ivy leaf*.
The ivy then was the primitive phytomorph, the fawn the}
theriomorph. You want to identify yourself with your totem,
who by now has developed into your god. To effect this union,
this consubstantiality, it is well to carry his symbols and to dance
his dances, on occasion it is well to eat him; but, best and
simplest, be stamped indelibly with his image. The Bacchant
wore the nebris, the fawn-skin, on her feet were sandals of
fawn-skin ; stamped with the figure of a fawn, she is a fawn
and fleeing from the human hounds to the shelter of the
woodland she sings:
O feet of a fawn to the greenwood fled,
Alone in the grass and the loveliness’.
We have then in Greek and especially in Bacchic religion
traces slight but sufficient, not of a regular totemistic social
system, but of totemistic ways of thinking. We pass on now to
show how these totemistic ways of thinking explain the gist of
the Feast of Raw Flesh (Sais ὠμοφάγος) which was part of the
rite of Bacchic initiation. We shall find that this Feast is as it
were the prototype of all sacrament and sacrifice.
ΤΡ, Perdrizet, Le Fragment de Satyros, in Revue des Ktudes Anciennes, xII.
1910, p. 235.
2 Plut. Q. R. 112 ai ἔνοχοι τοῖς βακχικοῖς πάθεσι γυναῖκες εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὸν κιττὸν
φέρονται, καὶ σπαράττουσι δραττόμεναι ταῖς χερσὶ καὶ διέσθουσαι τοῖς στόμασιν.
3 H. N. xvi. 144.
4 Perdrizet, op. cit. p. 235.
> Eur. Bacch. 866
ws νεβρὸς χλοεραῖς ἐμπαί-
ζουσα λείμακος ἡδοναῖς.
184 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [ CH.
That sacrifice and sacrament are near akin the similarity οὗ
the two words would lead us to suspect. One obvious distinction
is, however, worth noting at the outset. Sacrifice, as part of our ἢ
normal religious ritual, is now-a-days dead and gone. Sacraments —
show no sign of dying, but rather of renewed life and vigour.
This need not surprise us. It will shortly appear that sacrifice is
but a specialized form of sacrament, both sacrament and sacrifice
being themselves only special forms of that manipulation of mana
which we have agreed to call magic. Of the two, sacrifice and sacra-
ment, sacrament is the more primitive ; sacrifice contains elements
that are plainly of late development. The oldest things lie deepest
and live longest’; it is the specializations, the differentiations, that
dwindle and die. We begin then by asking—What is sacrifice ?
What is the late element in it as compared with sacrament?
And, incidentally, why was it doomed to a relatively early death ?
The current common-sense view of sacrifice is the gift-theory?, ©
do ut des, I give, at some personal ‘sacrifice,’ to you, the god, in
order that you may give me a quid pro quo. I bring a gift to
a god as I might to an oriental potentate to ‘smooth his face.’
This theory presupposes a personality, not to say a personage, to
whom the gift may be offered. It further supposes that the
personality is fairly benevolent and open toa bribe. An important
modification of the do ut des theory of sacrifice is the do ut abeas
variety, ‘I give that you may keep away. It only differs in
supposing malevolence in the person approached. When we come
to consider animism it will be seen that do ut abeas probably
precedes do ut des.
The gift-theory of sacrifice was unquestionably held by the
Greeks of classical times, though with an increasing sense of its
‘inadequacy. ‘Holiness, says Socrates? to Euthyphron, ‘is a sort
_of science of praying and sacrificing’; further he adds, ‘sacrifice is
giving to the gods, prayer is ane of them; holiness then is
‘a science of asking and giving.’ If we give to the gods they also
want to ‘do business with us. Euthyphron, with his orthodox
mind, is made very uncomfortable by this plainness of speech, but
has nothing he can urge against it. 3
1 See my Prolegomena, pp. 3—7, where I accept this theory which I now see to
be, as regards primitive sacrifice, wholly inadequate.
2 Plat. Euthyphro, 15 ν.
v| Sacrament and Gift-sacrifice 135
The gift-element in sacrifice is real, though as we shall |
immediately see it is a late accretion, and it is this gift-element
that has killed sacrifice as distinct from sacrament. The gift-
element was bound to die with the advance of civilization. We
have ceased to tremble before those stronger and older than
ourselves, we therefore no longer try to placate our god, we have
ceased to say to him, do ut abeas. We have come to see that to
bribe a ruler does not conduce to good government; so to the giver
of all good things we no longer say, do ut des. ‘To this cause of
the decay of sacrifice is added, in the matter of animal sacrifice,
the increase of physical sensitiveness. Physically the slaying of
innocent animals is beginning to be repulsive to us. Some of us
still do it for sport; many of us allow others to do it for us to
procure flesh food; but we no longer associate slaughter with our
highest moral and religious values’.
Sacrifice then in the sense of gift-sacrifice is dead. It is worth
noting that an element which has been essential and universal in
religion can drop out and leave religion integral. Instead of quod
semper quod ubique, we must now adopt as our motto, tout passe,
tout lasse, tout casse.
The lateness of this somewhat ephemeral gift-element in
sacrifice is apparent. It presupposes the existence of a well-
defined personality with whom man can ‘carry on business.’ Ina
word the gift-theory of sacrifice is closely bound up with the mis-
taken psychology that assumes the primitiveness of animism and
anthropomorphism. As Dr Tylor? says with his wonted trenchancy :
Sacrifice has its apparent origin in the same early period of culture and
its place in the same animistic scheme as prayer, with which through so long
a range of history it has been carried on in the closest connection. As prayer
is a request made to a deity as if he were a man, so a sacrifice is a gift made
to a deity as if he were a man.
Dr Tylor, the great exponent of the ‘gift-theory, operates, it is
clear, from the beginning with a full-blown anthropomorphic god.
But the totemistic stage of thinking, we have seen, knew no god,
only a consciousness felt collectively of common mana. Was there
sacrifice in days of totemistic thinking before a god had been
fashioned in man’s image, and if so, what was its nature ?
1 Tt will later be seen that killing is not an essential part of sacrifice.
2 Primitive Culture®, 1873, p. 375.
180 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [ OH.
Robertson Smith! was the first to see that Dr Tylor’s gift- —
theory, apparently so simple and satisfactory, did not cover the
whoie of the facts. He noted that, when you sacrificed, when you
gave, as it was thought, a gift to your god, you seldom gave him all
of it. You ate some of it, most of it yourself, and gave the god —
bones and specimen bits. Now with a jealous god—and the god
of the Hebrews with whom Robertson Smith was chiefly concerned
was a jealous god—this method of carrying out your sacrifice
would clearly, if the gift-theory were true, not work. A ‘jealous
god’ must be either a fool or a saint to stand it. The sacrificer
would surely share the just fate of Ananias and Sapphira who
‘kept back part. In a word Robertson Smith, fired by the
recent discoveries of totemism, saw what had necessarily escaped
Dr Tylor, that the basis of primitive sacrifice was, not the giving —
a gift, but the eating of a tribal communal meal. In a splendid
blaze of imagination his mind flashed down the ages from the
Arabian communal camel to the sacrifice of the Roman mass.
Even Robertson Smith, great genius though he was, could not
rid himself wholly of animism and anthropomorphism. To him
primitive sacrifice was a commensal meal, but shared with the god ;
by the common meal the common life of god and group was alike
renewed. Still hampered as he was with full-fledged divinity as
contrasted with sanctity, he could not quite see that in sacrifice
the factors were only two, the eater and the eaten, the ‘ worshipper,
that is the eater, and the sacred animal consumed. Once the
sacred animal consumed, his mana passes to the eater, the wor-
shipper, and the circuit is complete. There is no third factor, no
god mysteriously present at the banquet and conferring his
sanctity on the sacred animal. As will later be seen this third
factor, this god, arose partly out of the sacrifice itself. From
Robertson Smith’s famous camel’, devoured raw, body and bones,
before the rising of the sun, no god developed; from the ὠμοφαγία
of the more imaginative Greek arose, we shall presently see, the
bull-Dionysos.
The word sacrifice, like sacrament, tells the same tale. Etymo-
logically there is nothing in either word that tells of a gift, nor
1 Religion of the Semites, 1889.
* Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 320. I have previously, Prolego-
mena, pp. 486 ff., discussed in full this important instance of duodayla. .
y] Sacrifice originally sacramental 137
yet of a god, no notion of renouncing, giving up to another and
a greater. Sacrifice is simply either ‘holy doing’ or ‘holy making,
ἱερὰ ῥέζειν, just sanctification, or, to put it in primitive language,
it is handling, manipulating mana. When you sacrifice you build
as it were a bridge’ between your mana, your will, your desire,
which is weak and impotent, and that unseen outside mana which
you believe to be strong and efficacious. In the fruits of the
earth which grow by some unseen power there is much mana; you
want that mana. In the loud-roaring bull and the thunder is
much mana; you want that mana. It would be well to get some,
to eat a piece of that bull raw, but it is dangerous, not a thing
to do unawares alone; so you consecrate the first-fruits, you
sacrifice the bull, and then in safety you—communicate.
We are accustomed to the very human gift-theory of sacrifice,
it appeals to us by its rather misleading common-sense. Com-
pared with it this theory of sacrifice as a medium, a bridge built,
a lightning-conductor interposed, may seem vague and abstract.
It is not really abstract ; it belongs to a way of thinking that was
inchoate rather than abstract. When they began to theorize about
sacrifice, it was familiar to the ancients themselves. Sallust? the
Neo-Platonist, the intimate friend of Julian, wrote, at Julian’s
request, a tract About the Gods and the World. He devotes two
chapters to Sacrifice. Why does man give gifts to the gods who
do not need them? Sacrifice is for the profit of man not the gods.
Man needs to be in contact (συναφθῆναι) with the gods. For this
he needs a medium (μεσότης) between his life and the divine life.
That medium is the life of the sacrificed animal. Sallust is as
much—and more—obsessed by full-blown gods as Dr Tylor, but
he comes very near to the notion of mana-communion.
It should be noted at this point that eating is not the only
means of communicating, though perhaps it is among the most
effective. What you want is contact, in order that mana may
work unimpeded. When you hang a garment on a holy tree or
1 This idea has been very fully developed by MM. Hubert et Mauss in their
illuminating Essai sur la Nature et la Fonction du Sacrifice which first appeared
in the Année Sociologique, τι. 1897-8, and has since been republished by them
in the Mélanges d’Histoire des Religions, 1909.
* I owe my knowledge of Sallust’s Περὲ θεῶν καὶ κόσμου to Professor Gilbert
Murray. See his article 4 Pagan Creed—Sallustius’s ‘De Diis et Mundo’ in
the English Review, December, 1909, p. 7.
188 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice {Ὁ
drop a pin into a holy well, you are not making an offering. Such —
an offering would be senseless; a well has no use for pins, nor a
tree for raiment. What you do is to establish connection, build —
a sacramental bridge, a lightning-conductor. So Kylon!, by way
of safeguard, tied himself by a thread to the holy xoanon of
Athens, thereby establishing sacramental communion. Some-
times you need no bridge, you have only to lie open to spiritual
influences. Thus among the Algonkins in North America, a Fox
man in telling a missionary of his experiences in the sweat
lodge said:
Often one will cut oneself over the arms and legs, slitting oneself through
the skin. This is done to open up many passages that the manitow (the
Algonkin equivalent of mana) may get through. The manitow comes out
of its place of abode in the stone. It becomes raised by the heat of the fire
and proceeds out of the stone when the water is sprinkled on it. It comes
out in the steam, and in the steam it enters the body wherever it can find —
entrance. It moves up and down and all over inside the body, driving out
everything that inflicts pain. Before the manitow returns to the stone, it
imparts some of its nature to the body. That is why one feels so well after
having been in the sweat lodge”.
Magic, sacrament and sacrifice are fundamentally all one ; they
are all the handling of the sacred, the manipulation of mana, but
usage has differentiated the three terms. Magic is the more
general term. Sacrament is usually confined to cases where the
ceremonial contact is by eating ; sacrifice has come to be associated —
with the killing of an animal or the making over of any object by
a gift. Sacrament is concerned rather with the absorbing of
mana into oneself, magic deals rather with the using of that
mana for an outside end. Moreover sacrifice and sacrament
tend to go over to the public, ceremonial, recurrent contacts
effected collectively ; whereas individual, private, isolated efforts
after contact tend to be classed as magic.
It is sometimes felt that whereas the gift-theory of sacrifice
is simple, straight-forward, common-sensical, the medium, or
contact or communion theory is ‘mystical, and therefore to be
regarded with suspicion by the plain man. ‘ Mystical’ assuredly
it is in the sense that it deals with the unseen, unknown mana;
De
1 Plut. Vit. Sol. x11. ἐξάψαντας δὲ τοῦ Edous κρόκην κλωστὴν καὶ ταύτης ἐχομένους,
K.T.A.
2 William Jones, The Algonkin Manitou from the Journal of American Folklore
xvi. p. 190, quoted by I. King, The Development of Religion, 1910, p. 137.
Vv] Good and Good to eat 139
but, once the primitive mind 15 realized, it is more and not less
common-sensical. Religion focuses round the needs and cir-
cumstances of life. Religion is indeed but a representation,
an emphasis of these needs and circumstances collectively and
repeatedly felt, The primary need, more primary, more pressing
than any other, is Food’. Man focuses attention on it, feels acutely
about it, organizes his social life in relation to it; it is his primary
value, it and its pursuit necessarily become the subject-matter of
his simplest religion, his δρώμενα, his rites.
When Elohim beheld the world he had created he ‘saw that
it was very good. The Hebrew word for ‘good’ (35%) seems
primarily to have been applied to ripe fruits; it means ‘ luscious,
succulent, good to eat?’ The same odd bit of human history
comes out in the Mexican word gualli, which though it means
‘good’ in general is undoubtedly formed from gua ‘ to eat’—the
form gualoni, ‘eatable, keeps its original limited sense. ‘Evil’ in
Mexican is am ogualli or a guall, 1.6. ‘not good to eat’; gua gualla,
‘good, good, ‘extremely good,’ is really ‘superlatively eatable.’
The word wochill means ‘flower’; the word for ‘ fruit’ is ‘ good, Le.
eatable flower, wochigualli. Most instructive of all, the act of
making a meal is ‘I do myself good, Nigualtia®.
Food then, what is good to eat, may well have been the initial,
and was for long the supreme, good. For primitive man it was
a constant focus of attention, and hence it was what psychologists
call a ‘value centre.’ The individual who ate a meal, especially a
flesh meal, felt the better for it, he was conscious of increased
mana, of general elation and well being. Meat to those who eat
it rarely has the effect of a mild intoxicant. This stimulus felt
by the individual would constitute in itself a vague sanctity. It
needed however reinforcement from collective emotion. This
brings us to the communal meal, the dais, a meal normally of
flesh-food.
1 See Professor E. 8. Ames, The Psychology of Religious Experience, 1910,
chapter 111., On Impulses in Primitive Religion. The social values that centre
round sex and that find representation in the system of exogamy do not im-
mediately concern us. Dr Frazer’s view that totemism and exogamy are not
necessarily related will be found in his Totemism and Exogamy, 1910, tv. p. 120.
Professor Durkheim’s view that the two are necessarily related is stated in
his Prohibition de UInceste et ses Origines in L’Année Sociologique, 1898,
pp. 1—70.
2 Schultens ad Prov. Sal. x11. 2 tob: succosum, uber, uberi succo vigens.
3 KE. J. Payne, History of the New World called America, 1892, 1. p. 546 note.
140 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [CH.
THE CoMMUNAL MEAL (éais).
In the light of totemistic ways of thinking we see plainly
enough the relation of man to food-animals, a relation strangely
compounded of mana and tabu. You need or at least desire flesh
food, yet you shrink from slaughtering ‘your brother the ox!’; you
desire his mana, yet you respect his tabu, for in you and him alike
runs the common life-blood. On your own individual responsibility
you would never kill him; but for the common weal, on great
occasions, and in a fashion conducted with scrupulous care, it is
expedient that he die for his people, and that they feast upon his
flesh.
Among many primitive peoples the eating of meat is always
communal. Among the Zulus, when a man kills a cow, which is
done rarely, with reluctance, the whole hamlet assembles, uninvited
but expected as a matter of course, to eat it. The Damaras of
South Africa look upon meat as common property. They have great
reverence for the ox, only slaughter it on great occasions, and every
slaughter is regarded as a common festival. When the Patagonians
sacrifice a mare, the feast on her flesh is open to all the tribe.
This sanctity of the food-animal and the ordinance that the
meal should be communal is not confined to domestic animals, in
whose case it might be thought that such sanctity arose from daily
contact and usage. Among the Ottawas the Bear clan ascribe
their origin to a bear’s paw and call themselves Big Feet. When-
ever they killed a bear they used to offer the animal a part of his
own flesh and spoke to him thus:
Do not bear us a grudge because we have killed you. You are sensible,
you see that our children are hungry. They love you, they wish to put you
into their body. Is it not glorious to be eaten by the sons of a chief? ἢ
This strange and thoroughly mystical attitude towards the
sacrificed food-animal comes out very beautifully in the Finnish
Kalevalat, where a whole canto is devoted to recounting the
1 See Professor Murray’s beautiful account of the relation between man and
beast in the normal condition of Greece and the contrast of this with the Homeric
scenes of animal slaughter, Rise of the Epic, pp. 59 ff.
2 These instances are taken from the collection in Dr Jevons’s Introduction to
the History of Religion, p. 158. 4
3 Frazer, Votemism and Exogamy, ut. p. 67, and see also the pathetic account
of the bear-festival among the Ainos, too long for quotation here, in Dr Frazer’s
Golden Bough?, τι. pp. 375 ff.
4 Kalevala, translated by W. F. Kirby, Rune xty1., Vainonimdéinen and the Bear.
a (, ΛΟ ΟΙ
γ᾿ Otso the Bear 141
sacrificial feast to and of Otso the mountain bear. They chant
the praises of the Holy Bear, they tell of his great strength and
majesty, the splendour. of his rich fur, the glory and the beauty of
his ‘honey-soft’ paws. They lead him in festal procession, slay
and cook and eat him and then, as though he were not dead, they
dismiss him with valedictions to go back and live for ever, the
glory of the forest’. In the litany addressed to him the sacra-
mental use of his flesh comes out very clearly. Limb by limb he
is addressed :
Now I take the nose from Otso
That my own nose may be lengthened,
But I take it not completely,
And I do not take it only.
Now I take the ears of Otso
That my-own ears I may lengthen.
The notion that the slaying of a food-animal involves a
communal dais, ἃ distribution, comes out very clearly among
the Kurnai, a tribe of South-East Australia®. The ‘native bear’
when slain is thus divided. The slayer has the left ribs: the
father the right hind Jeg, the mother the left hind leg, the elder
brother the right fore-arm, the younger brother the left fore-arm,
the elder sister the backbone, the younger the liver, the father’s
brother the right ribs, the mother’s brother of the hunter a piece
of the flank. Most honourable of all, the head goes to the camp
of the young men, the κοῦροι.
A somewhat detailed account of savage ceremonial has been
“necessary in order that the gist of sacramental sacrifice should be
made clear. We have now to ask—Had Greece herself, besides her
burnt-offerings to Olympian gods, any survival of the communal
feast ?
On the 14th day of Skirophorion (June—July), the day of the
full moon of the last month of the Athenian year, when the
threshing was ended and the new corn gathered in, on the
Acropolis at Athens, a strange ritual was accomplished. Cakes
of barley mixed with wheat were laid on the bronze altar of Zeus
Polieus. Oxen were driven round it, and the ox which went up
to the altar and ate of the cakes, was by that token chosen as
1 In the bear-sacrifice of the Ainos the bear is thus addressed: ‘ We kill you
O bear! come back soon into an Aino’; Frazer, Golden Bough’, 12. p. 379.
2 A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 759.
142 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [ CH.
victim for the sacrifice. Two men performed the sacrifice; the —
_ one, the Boutypos, felled the ox with an axe, another, presumably —
the Bouphonos, cut its throat with a knife. Both the murderers —
threw down their weapons and fled. The weapons were sub-
sequently brought to trial. The celebrants feasted on the flesh,
and the ox itself was restored to life in mimic pantomime}.
The uncouth ritual of the Bouphonia went on as late as the
days of Theophrastos, but, by the time of Aristophanes? it stood
for all that was archaic and well-nigh obsolete. The Unjust Logos
when told about the old educational system at Athens says :
Bless me, that’s quite the ancient lot, so Diipolia-like,
Of crickets and Bouphonia full.
What struck Pausanias* when he was told about the ritual, was
that when the ox-striker had flung away the axe and himself had
fled, ‘as though in ignorance of the man who did the deed’ they
bring the axe to judgment. It is just this one detail and all the
elaborate House-that-Jack-built shifting of the blame from one
celebrant to another till it rested on the lifeless axe which has
diverted the attention of modern commentators from what is, I~
ΠΟΥ͂ feel, the all-important factor or rather factors. The Bouphonia
was (1) a communal feast, (2) the death of the ox was only
incidental to the feast, and it was followed by a mimic Re-
surrection.
(1) The Bouphoma was a communal feast. Our fullest
account is given by Porphyry® who borrows it from Theophrastos.
Porphyry is explicit. The Bouphonia is a communal sacrifice
(κοινὴ θυσία). In the aetiological myth it is related that the
ox was first smitten by a stranger, either Sopatros® or Dromos,
11 thave elsewhere, Ancient Athens, pp. 424-6, and Prolegomena, Ὁ. 111,
discussed the Bouphonia in detail. I can here only examine such elements as
are important for my immediate argument. Attention was, I believe, first drawn
to the great significance of the Bouphonia by Professor Robertson Smith, Religion
of the Semites, pp. 286 ff. The literary sources are collected and discussed by
Dr Frazer, Golden Bough, τι. pp. 294 ff. See also H. συ. Gaertringen, Zeus
Thaulios in Hermes, 1911, Miscellen, p. 154.
2 Nub. 984
ἀρχαῖά γε καὶ Διπολιώδη καὶ τεττίγων ἀνάμεστα
καὶ Κηκείδου καὶ Βουφονίων.
3 7, 24.4. As Professor Robertson Smith observes, ad loc., in Pausanias’ time
the rite had undergone some simplification, otherwise his account is inadequate.
4 In my previous discussions of the Bouphonia, through ignorance of the magical
character of sacrifice, I fell into the usual error of emphasis.
5 de Abst. 11. 28 ff. i
6 So-patros may be the Saviour of the πάτρα as Sosi-polis is Saviour of the state.
Ψ.
y] The Bouphonia at Athens 143
-aCretan. He happened to be present at the ‘communal sacrifice’
at Athens, and seeing the ox touch the sacred cakes, was seized
with indignation and slew it. He then fled to Crete. The usual
pestilence followed. Sopatros was discovered and then thought
he could escape the pollution he had incurred ‘if they would
all do the deed in common’ and if the ox was smitten ‘by the
city. In order to effect this the Athenians were to make him
a citizen, and thus make themselves sharers in the murder’. That
the Bouphonia was not merely a ‘common sacrifice’ but also a
communal feast is certain from the name given to a family who
shared it. Theophrastos mentions in this connection, not only
families of Ox-smiters (Βουτύποι) and Goaders (Kevtpsadav), but
also a family of Dividers (Δαιτροί), so called, he says, from the
‘divided feast’ (Aais) which followed the partition of the flesh®.
Moreover we have the actual ritual prescription. After the axe
and the knife had been sharpened, one celebrant struck the ox,
another slew him, and of those who afterwards flayed the oz, all
tasted his flesh’.
(2) The death of the ox was followed by a mimic Resurrection.
When the ox had been flayed and all the flayers had tasted his
flesh, Porphyry‘ tells us ‘they sewed up the hide and stuffed it out
with hay and set it up just as it was when it was alive, and they
yoked a plough to it as though it were ploughing. Such a ritual
in the heart of civilized Athens was more surprising than any
trial of a double axe. The scholiast on the Peace’ tells us that
the Diipolia was a ‘mimetic representation’ (ἀπομίμημα). He
exactly hits the mark, though he certainly does not know it. The
ox is brought to life again, not because they want to pretend that
he has never died and so to escape the guilt of his murder (though
later that element may have entered), but because his resurrection
is the mimetic representation of the new life of the new year® and
1 op. cit. τι. 29 Σώπατρος νομίσας τῆς περὶ αὑτὸν δυσκολίας ἀπαλλαγήσεσθαι ws
ἐναγοῦς ὄντος, εἰ κοινῇ τοῦτο πράξειαν πάντες ἔφη...δεῖν κατακοπῆναι βοῦν ὑπὸ τῆς
πόλεως, ἀπορούντων δὲ τίς ὁ πατάξων ἔσται, παρασχεῖν αὐτοῖς τοῦτο εἰ πολίτην αὐτὸν
ποιησάμενοι κοινωνήσουσι τοῦ φόνου.
2 op. cit. 11. 80 τοὺς δ᾽ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐπισφάξαντος δαιτροὺς ὀνομάζουσιν διὰ τὴν ἐκ τῆς
κρεονομίας γιγνομένην δαῖτα.
3 op. cit. ττ. 80 τῶν δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα δειράντων, ἐγεύσαντο τοῦ βοὸς πάντες.
4 op. cit. 11. 80 τῶν δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα δειράντων ἔγεύσαντο τοῦ βοὸς πάντες, τούτων δὲ
πραχθέντων τὴν μὲν δορὰν τοῦ βοὸς ῥάψαντες καὶ χορτῷ ἐπογκώσαντες ἐξανέστησαν,
ἔχοντα ταὐτὸν ὅπερ καὶ ζῶν ἔσχεν σχῆμα, καὶ προσέζευξαν ἄροτρον ὡς ἐργαζομένῳ.
> ad v. 50 ἐστι δὲ ἀπομίμημα τῶν περὶ τῶν πελάνων καὶ τὰς βοῦς συμβάντων.
ὁ The New Birth in the spring will be discussed in the next chapter.
144 Totenism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [ CH.
this resurrection is meant to act magically. The worshippers —
taste the flesh to get the mana of the ox, and to do that they
must slay him. To taste the flesh is good, but best of all is it
that the ox himself should on his resurrection renew his life and
strength.
It is not a little remarkable that in the detailed accounts we
have of the Bouphonia, all mention of Zeus, to whom it 15 supposed
the sacrifice is made, is conspicuously absent. The ox is indeed
said to have been driven up to the table of Zeus Polieus, but on
that table the offering of cakes and the like is already complete.
It is clear that the Bouphonia is just what its name says, an
ox-murder that might be connected with any and every god. It is
the sacrifice itself, not the service of the god, that is significant ;
the ox bulks larger than Zeus.
Fie. 24.
In this connection it is worth noting that in the calendar-
frieze!, now built into the small Metropolitan Church at Athens,
the month Skirophorion is marked, not by any image of Zeus
Polieus, but by the figure of the Boutypos, the Ox-smiter and his.
ox (Fig. 24). Above the diminutive ox is the sign of the Crab.
To the right of the Boutypos is seen the Panathenaic ship,
effaced and sanctified by the Christian symbo! of the wheel and
cross. The next great festival after the Bouphonia, which closed
the old year, was the Panathenaia in Hecatombaion, which opened.
the new. The Panathenaia itself was superimposed upon the
ancient Kronia’.
|
|
|
|
See my Ancient Athens, p. 153. For full discussion of this calendar-frieze see.
J. N. Svoronos, Der athenische Volkskalendar in Journal Internationale d’Archéo-
logie numismatique, 1899, 11. 1.
2 A, Mommsen, Heortologie, p. 108.
Soe
v| The Bouphonia at Athens 145
This point—the supremacy of the ox and the nullity of the
god—is well illustrated by the design in Fig. 25 from a black-
figured hydria! in Berlin. In a small Doric shrine stands an ox ;
in front of him a blazing altar. To the left is Athena seated, her
sacred snake by her side. She extends her right hand holding
a phiale; she is waiting for libation. She may wait, it would seem,
for the priestess raises her hand in adoration or consecration of—
the ox. The ox is within the sanctuary, the goddess outside. Now
it is of course impossible to be certain that we have here the ox of
the Bouphonia. What is certain is that we have a holy ox, holy
on his own account, with a sanctuary of his own, and that this holy
Fic, 25.
ox is associated with not Zeus, but Athena. Whatever Olympian
jwas dominant at the moment would take over the intrinsically
holy beast.
The simple fact is that the holy ox is before the anthropo-
morphic god, the communal feast (dais) before the gift-burnt
sacrifice (θυσία). The Bouphonia belongs to the stage of the
communal feast followed by the resurrection. Of this its name
bears witness. The word to ‘ox-slay, βουφονέω, occurs in Homer?
1 See my Myth. and Mon. Ancient Athens, p. 428, Fig. 37.
2 Il. vit. 465 δύσετο δ᾽ ἠέλιος, τετέλεστο δὲ ἔργον ᾿Αχαιῶν
βουφόνεον δὲ κατὰ κλισίας καὶ δόρπον ἕλοντο.
Schol. ad loc. βουφονεῖν ἐστὶν οὐ τὸ θύειν θεοῖς (ἄτοπον γὰρ ἐπὶ θυσίας φόνον λεγεῖν)
ἀλλὰ τὸ φονεύειν βοῦς εἰς δείπνου κατασκευήν.
Η. 10
\ provide him with your own life-history, and then, if you are an ortho-
146 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [CH.
with the simple meaning to kill an ox for eating purposes. ‘The
sun went down and the work of the Achaeans was finished’—they
had been burning their dead—‘and they slaughtered oxen amid —
the huts and took their supper.’ The scholiast on the passage,
with probably the Bouphonia in his mind, says explicitly, ‘Gougoveiv,
to slay or murder oxen, is not sacrificing to the gods (for it would ©
be absurd to apply the term of murder to a sacrifice) but it is
slaying oxen as a preparation for a meal.’
The scholiast rightly notes that the ‘ ox-slaying’ concerned the -
ox as food, not the god as eater. What he could not know was
that a Bouphonia, a slaying for a Banquet, though it need have ©
nothing to do with gods, could yet be of supreme sanctity—a
sanctity preceding the gods and even begetting them. The
speaker in a fragment of the 7’riptolemos of Sophocles says more
truly than he knows, |
‘Then came fair Dazs, the eldest of the Gods}
You eat your sacred animal to get his mana; you then personify
that mana, informing it with the life-blood of your own desire,
dox ritualist, you land yourself in the uncouth predicament that
you must eat your personal god. From such relentless logic all
but the most convicted of conservatives are apt to shrink. There
are side ways, down which you may go, softenings and obscurantis
confusions by which you may blunt the horns of your dilemma.
Ritual says you must eat the holy ox; imagination has conceived
_ for you a personal Zeus, Father of Gods and men. You slay your
ox, partake of his flesh, sew up his skin and yoke it to a plough.
Yet all is well, for the whole holy and incompatible hocus-pocus”
_is a ‘sacrifice to Zeus Polieus.’
Such strange blendings of new and old, such snowball-like
accumulations, are sometimes caused, or rather precipitated, by
definite political action. Peisistratos, feeling no doubt tha
Olympia might be a dangerous religious and social rival to Athens,
conscious too that, at a time when the Homeric pantheon was
rapidly being domesticated in Greece, the fact that Athens should
have no important local worship of Zeus stamped Athens
1 Hesych., s.v. dais* Σοφοκλῆς
ἦλθεν δὲ Aais θάλεια πρεσβίστη θεῶν,
ἡ δι᾽ ἐράνων εὐωχία.
Vv] The Bouphonia at Athens 147
provincial, introduced in the lower town near the [lissos the
worship of Zeus Olympios, and with it he wisely transplanted a
whole complex of primitive Olympian cults, making a sanctuary
for Kronos and Rhea, and a precinct containing a chasm and
dedicated to Gaia, with the title Olympian. It may be suspected,
though it cannot be proved, that at the same time, though Zeus
never got any substantial footing on the Acropolis, it was arranged
that he should take under his patronage the ancient festival of
the Ox-slaying’.
Some such arrangement is reflected in the story told by
Hesychius? in his explanation of the proverbial saying ‘ Zeus’ seats
and voting pebbles’ (Διὸς θᾶκοι καὶ πεσ(σ)οί). ‘They say that,
in the ballot of the Athenians, when Athena and Poseidon were
contending, Athena entreated Zeus to give his vote for her and
she promised in return that she would have the sacrificial victim
of Polieus sacrificed for the first time on an altar. The victim,
that is the bull, was called, according to Hesychius, the victim of
Polieus (τὸ τοῦ Πολιέως ἱερεῖον). I suspect that an « has been
interpolated and that the earlier term was τὸ τοῦ πόλεως ἱερεῖον,
the communal victim (cf. κοινὴ θυσία) which preceded the personal
god. Anyhow, though Hesychius probably means by his state-
ment πρῶτον θύεσθαι ἐπὶ βωμοῦ, that Athena promised she
would first sacrifice on the altar of Zeus, what he really says is
that she promised first to sacrifice on an altar, that in a word the
slaying of the ox for a feast should become the offering of an ox
on an altar, the dais should be a θυσία, a burnt sacrifice offered
on the altar of an Olympian.
A sacrifice brings to our modern minds an altar as inevitably
as it brings a god; both, in the sense we understand them, are late
and superfluous. To sacrifice is, as the word implies, and as has
been previously shown, to sanctify, to make sacred; and to make
sacred is to bring into contact with any source of force and fear,
with any vehicle of mana. In one version of the story the slain
1 See my Ancient Athens, p. 192. That the Bouphonia was primarily associated
with the cult of Erechtheus in the Erechtheion rather than with that of Zeus, will
appear in the next chapter.
2 s.v. Διὸς Θᾶκοι.. φασὶ δὲ τὴν ᾿Αθηνᾶν Διὸς δεηθῆναι ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς τὴν ψῆφον ἐνεγκεῖν
καὶ ὑποσχέσθαι ἀντὶ τούτου τὸ τοῦ Πολιέως ἱερεῖον πρῶτον θύεσθαι ἐπὶ βωμοῦ. ΟΥ̓.
Pausanias 1. 28, 10.
10—2
148 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [ CH.
bull of the Bouphonia is buried. If this statement be correct, the
mana of the bull is put into direct contact with the earth it is to fer-
tilize®, a practice known in sacrifice among many primitive peoples.
We have seen in a previous chapter how the god, the Kouros,
arose out of the collective emotion of his worshippers; we now
realize another source of divinity, none other than the sacrifice
itself. The victim is first sanctified, sacrificed, then divinized.
Le dieu, cest le sacré personnifié.
On the votive relief* in Fig. 26 we see the process of diviniza-
tion go on as it were under our very eyes. The relief falls into
1 Theophrastus in Porph. de Abst, τι. 29... τὸν μὲν βοῦν θάπτει (Zwrarpos). The
motive given by Theophrastus is fear, but burial of the remainder of the ox after
all had tasted may well have been part of the ritual, either for the purpose of
fertilizing the earth by contact with the bull’s mana, or to secure the unwary from
chance contact with a sanctity so terrific.
2 Compare the well known custom of the Khonds who scatter the flesh of human
victims over their fields to ensure fertility. In civilized Europe to-day the bones of
animals killed at Easter and other festivals are sometimes scattered on the fields
‘for luck.’ See Hubert et Mauss, Essai sur le Sacrifice, Année Sociologique ~
1898, p. 112.
% Imperial Museum, Constantinople, Iny. 1909. See Edhem Bey, Relief votif-
du Musée Impérial Ottoman in Bull. de Corr. Hell. xxxu. (1908). Pl. v. reproduced
by kind permission of the Director of the Ecole Francaise 4 Athénes.
v] The bull-headed Zeus Olbios 149
three portions. In the gable at the top is a bull’s head. In the
centre is the figure of the god to whom the relief is dedicated,
Zeus Olbios’, Zeus of Wealth or Prosperity: he pours libation on
an altar, near him is his eagle. Below, the scene represented is a
Bouphonia. An ox is tethered by a ring to the ground near the
blazing altar. Behind him is an Ox-Smiter (Boutypos) with
_ axe uplifted ready to strike. To the left behind the ox a girl
approaches, holding in her left hand a plate of fruit and flowers.
The woman behind holds infulae in her left hand. To the right
are a man and boy holding objects that cannot certainly be made
out.
So far all seems well in order. The bull is sacrificed to the
Olympian Zeus, who stands there dominant with his attribute, the
ν᾿ ἃ ς τ
ee I πον: DvLCHnetno
αν uciliv§ 3 «0»!
eagle, by his side. But if we look at the god’s figure more closely
we see that, if Zeus he be, it is in strange form®. On his head are
horns: he is ταυροκέρως, bull-horned, like Iacchos ; he is bull-faced,
βούπρῳρος, like the infant Dithyrambos. Now, when these animal
gods come to light, it is usual to say the god assumes the shape
of a bull, or is incarnate in the form of a bull. The reverse is
1 The dedication is as follows:
Εὐοδίων ἱερεὺς Διὸς ᾿Ολβίου
ὑπὲρ τῶν ἰδίων πάντων καθὼς ἐκέλευ-
σεν ἀνέθηκα εὐχαριστήριον.
2 Miss M. Hardie, of Newnham College, kindly examined the original of the
relief and writes to me that, so far as it can be made out, there is all the appearance
of a bull-mask worn by a human head. If this were certain we should have the
figure of a priest impersonating a bull-god, which would be of singular interest.
150 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [ CH.
manifestly the case. The lower end of the ladder is on earth, —
planted in the reality of sacrifice. The sanctified, sacrificed animal —
becomes a god. He then sheds his animal form, or keeps it as an
attribute or a beast of burden, or, as in the case of Jupiter
Dolichenus in Fig. 27, he stands upon the animal he once was,
stands in all the glory of a deified Roman Emperor with double
‘axe and thunderbolt. Any animal in close relation to man,
whether as food or foe, may rise to be a god, but he must first
become sacred, sanctified, must first be sacrificed. The fact that
the sacrifice is, for reasons to be discussed later, renewed year by
\year, makes the personality of the god durable.
The Bouphonia, it was acknowledged on all hands, was a
ceremonial primitive and tending to be obsolete. It may be
instructive to examine another instance of bull-sacrifice, where
some of the more archaic and uncouth details have dropped away,
yet where the intent remains the same, and where even more
clearly than in the case of the Bouphonia we have gift-sacrifice to
an Olympian appearing as an idea clearly superimposed on a
primitive communal feast, a sacrament or sanctification of intent
purely magical. Such an instance we have in the yearly sacrifice
of a bull to Zeus Sosipolis’, of Magnesia on the Maeander. The
full details of this sacrifice are happily known to us from an
inscription found on one of the antae of the temple of Zeus in the
agora at Magnesia, and dating about the middle of the third
century B.C.’
At the annual fair (πανήγυρις) held in the month Heraion,
a bull, the finest that could be got, was to be bought each year
by the city stewards, and at the new moon of the month
Kronion, at the beginning of seed-time, they were to ‘dedicate’ it
to Zeus*. Uncertain as the dating of months in local calendars
1 Seidl, Dolichenuskult, Taf. ut. 1.
2 For the (Zeus) Sosipolis of Olympia in his snake form and his analogies with
the Cretan infant Zeus see C. Robert, Witt. Arch. Inst. Athen xvi. 1893, p. 37, and
Frazer ad Pausanias vi. 20. 2—5, and infra, p. 241.
3 Q. Kern, Inschriften v. Magnesia, No. 98, discussed by O. Kern, Arch. Anz.
1894, p. 78, and Nilsson, Griechische Feste, 1906, p. 23.
4 ταῦρον ὡς κάλλιστον τοῦ μηνὸς Ἡραιῶνος ἐν τῆι πανηγύρει ἑκάστου ἔτους καὶ
ἀναδεικνύωσι τῶι Διὲ ἀρχομένου σπόρου μηνὸς Κρονιῶνος ἐν τῆι νουμηνίαι.
v] The Year-Bull at Magnesia 151
sometimes is, it is a relief to find ourselves here on safe ground,
the dedication (ἀνάδειξις) of the bull takes place at the beginning
of the agricultural year; the bull’s sanctified, though not his actual,
life and that of the new year begin together.
The dedication, or rather indication, of the bull was an affair to
be conducted with the utmost official solemnity. The bull was
led in procession, at the head of which were the priest and
priestess of the chief and eponymous goddess of the place, Artemis
Leucophryne, and the Stephanephoros. With them also went the
Hierokeryx, the Sacrificer and two bands of youths and of maidens
whose parents were still alive (ἀμφιθαλεῖς). The Hierokeryx,
together with the rest of the officials named, pronounces a prayer
on behalf of the ‘safety of the city, and the land, and the citizens,
and the women and children, for peace and wealth, and for the
bringing forth of grain, and of all the other fruits, and of cattle?’
We are back with the Kouretes at Palaikastro, before the altar
of Diktaean Zeus*. The sober citizens of Magnesia in the second
-century B.C. do not bid their Sosipolis ‘leap,’ but their prayer is of
the same intent—for peace and wealth, for flocks and fruits, for
women, for children, and first and foremost it is, like the invoca-
tion of the Kouros, εἰς éviavrov—for the Year-Feast. The
Kouretes, the young men, leap alone to their Kouros; in the
Magnesian procession nine maidens also walked and sang. Both
youths and maidens alike must have both parents alive*, because
where fertility is magically invoked there must be no contagion of
death.
On the reverse of the coins of Magnesia a frequent device is
the figure of a ‘butting bull.’ A good instance is given in
Fig. 28 α΄. The bull stands, or rather kneels, on a Maeander
pattern, behind him is a constant symbol, an ear of grain, which
characterises significantly enough the bull’s function as a fertility
daemon. The bull is, I think, kneeling, not butting. This is
1 καὶ ἐν τῶι ἀναδείκνυσθαι τὸν ταῦρον κατευχέσθω ὁ ἱεροκῆρυξ.. ὑπέρ τε σωτηρίας
τῆς τε πόλεως καὶ τῆς χώρας καὶ τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ γυναικῶν καὶ τέκνων καὶ ὑπὲρ εἰρήνης καὶ
πλούτου καὶ σίτου φορᾶς καὶ τῶν ἄλλων καρπῶν καὶ τῶν κτηνῶν.
2p. 9. The full force of the words εἰς ἐνιαυτόν will be considered in the next
chapter.
® For the ἀμφιθαλὴς παῖς who carried the Hiresione see Eustath. ad 11. χχτι. 496,
p. 1283, and my Prolegomena, p. 79. The ritual prescription that a young celebrant
should be ἀμφιθαλὴς occurs frequently.
4 Brit. Mus. Cat. Ionia xvut. 4 enlarged.
152 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [ OH.
certainly clear in the second coin figured ὁ". Here the bull 15.
being driven by a youth to the mouth of what seems to be a cave.
In front of it he kneels down as though in willing acceptance of
his fate.
The sacred animal, already half divinized, had to be free, had
to choose, designate itself. We are not told that the bull of
Magnesia designated itself either by kneeling or bowing its head,
though the coins figured make it probable. But, in the sacrifice
of a bull to Zeus Polieus at Kos*—a sacrifice which has many
analogies to the Bouphonia—the ritual prescription is clear. Each
ninth part of the tbree Dorian tribes drove up a bull to the
sacrificial table of Zeus Polieus, at which the officials were seated,
Fic. 28a.
and that bull was chosen ‘who bent himself” Possibly he bent
down to taste corn on the sacred table like the ox at the Bouphonia,
possibly he was induced to kneel. Anyhow he gave some sign
that he was a freewill offering.
The bull has been solemnly designated, set apart. He is
sacred now, charged with the mana of the coming year, and his
nurture is matter of scrupulous religion. The feeding of the holy
1 Brit. Mus. Cat. x1x. 9. For the Bull-God and the cave and the periodical
sacrifice in relation to Minos and the period of nine horai (évvéwpos βασίλευε, τ 179)
see Prof. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic?, Ὁ. 156}.
2 Paton and Hicks, Inscriptions of Kos, No. 37, S.I.G.? 616. See Nilsson,
Griechische Feste, p. 17. Similarly at Halicarnassos, the goat chosen for sacrifice
issued from the herd of his own free will and went up to the altar. See Apollonios,
Paradoxogr. ο. 13, p. 107, and at Pedasa in Karia a goat led the procession for
seventy stadia. Hence the notion of Bods ἡγεμὼν and Καθηγεμών.
3 There is unfortunately a lacuna at the exact word describing the action
ai μέγ xa TIIO...EI, but the ὑπο is certain and the restoration ὑποκύψει almost
certain. V. Prott, Leges Graecorum Sacrae, p. 19, note 3 ad v. 20, says of Hicks,
postea ipse in ectypo TIIOKYTWEI legere sibi visus est. ὑποκύπτειν is said of an
animal drinking.
γ] The Year-Bull at Magnesia 153
bull is in the inscription given over to a contractor (ὁ ἐργολαβήσας).
This is probably a late arrangement ; anyhow, though this official
buys food, he has to drive the bull to the market, and ‘it is good’
for those corn-merchants who give the bull grain as a gift. This
probably looks back to the time when the bull was maintained
by free contributions from each member of
the tribe. The communal character of
these bull-sacrifices comes out very vividly
in the coin of Kolophon in Fig. 29% In
the background is the temple of Apollo
Klarios with its seated god. But in the
foreground is the real focus of attention, a
bull and an altar. Around it stand the
thirteen representatives of the thirteen
cities of the Ionian league.
On the 12th of Artemision, the month of Artemis—who is, at
least in Asia Minor, but a form of the Great Mother—the bull
was sacrificed. The month Artemision is in Sparta equated by
Thucydides* (quoting a decree) with the Attic Elaphebolion—
i.e. cwrc. March 24 to April 23—so that we may fix the festival as
about the 6th of April, ie. for Greece the time of the late spring
or early summer.
On the day of the sacrifice there was again a great procession,
again led by the priest and priestess of Artemis Leucophryne.
Behind them came the senate, priests and various officials, and also
certain chosen epheboi, youths (νέοι) and children (παῖδες), also
the victors in the games of the goddess, and other victorious
competitors‘, The Stephanephorus, who with the priest and
priestess led the procession, had to bring with him the images of
the twelve gods in their best clothes. A circular hut was to be
set up, evidently to shelter the images, and three couches were to
be strewn. This hut or tholos was to be near the altar of the
twelve gods in the agora.
Fic. 29.
11. 60 ff. This enactment comes at the end of the inscription as a sort of codicil
after the account of the sacrifice.
2 Brit. Mus. Cat. Ionia vi. 15. The coin, of imperial date, bears the inscription
under the god’s temple TO KOINON ἸΏΝΩΝ.
3 vy. 19. 1 quoting a decree of 42 B.c. ᾿Αρτεμισίου μηνὸς τετάρτῃ φθίνοντος, ἐν δὲ
᾿Αθήναις... Ελαφηβολιῶνος μηνὸς ἕκτῃ φθίνοντος. See Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Artemisia.
4 συμπομπεύειν.. καὶ τοὺς ἐφήβους καὶ τοὺς νέους καὶ τοὺς παῖδας καὶ τοὺς τὰ
Λευκοφρύηνα νικῶντας καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους τοὺς νικῶντας τοὺς στεφανίτας ἀγῶνας.
154 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice (oH,
Here we find ourselves in full Olympianism. The twelve gods,
primitive wooden images though they be, and decked in fine
raiment, are to be present at the festival. Themistocles, we
remember, was the founder of Magnesia, and these twelve ancient
xoana are the counterpart of the twelve Olympians of the east
Parthenon frieze. But again it is clear that, honoured though
they are as guests, they are not integral to the ceremony. It is
expressly ordered indeed that Zeus Sosipolis should have a ram
sacrificed to him, Artemis a she-goat, and Apollo a young he-goat
(ἄττηγος), but for the rest of the twelve no manner of provision is
made.
The added sacrifice of a ram to Zeus is, I think, highly signifi-
cant. The bull, one would have thought, might have sufficed.
But the reason is clear. The bull-sacrifice was at first no gift-
sacrifice to Zeus or to any Olympian: it was, as immediately
appears, a davs—a communal meal. When they shall have sacrificed
the bull let them dwide it up among those who took part in the
procession’. The mandate is clear. The bull is not a gift to Zeus,
but a vehicle of mana for distribution among the people. In him is
concentrated as it were the life of the year: he is the incarnate
ideal of the year; his life begins with the sowing, is cherished
through the winter, and when it comes to full maturity in the
early summer dies to live again in the people through the medium
of the sacrificial banquet. He is sacred rather than divine; but
divinity is, we have seen, born of sanctification, and sacrifice is but
a sanctification to the uttermost. The bull is Sosipolis, Saviour of
the city, in the making®.
The bull-ceremony then had two acts, the ἀνάδειξις or indica-
tion, and the éais or communal, magical feast. As regards the
first, one point remains to be noted. Commentators in explaining
the festival have usually translated ἀνάδειξις as dedication, and
held that the ceremony meant a solemn consecration of the bull
1 τὸν δὲ βοῦν ὅταν θύσωσιν [δ]ιανεμέτωσαν τοῖς συμπομπεύσασιν.
2 Sosipolis at Olympia was a chthonic δαίμων rather than a θεός; he was a
snake-child like Erichthonios. At Magnesia he is a bull and, as Mr Cook suggests
to me, when Themistocles (Plut. Vit. Them. xxx1. sub fin.) drank bull’s blood, he
identified himself with Sosipolis in his bull-form. A coin of Magnesia shows him
with phiale in hand, standing beside a lighted altar with a slain bull at his feet
(Ath. Mitt. xx1. 1896, p. 22; P. Gardner, Corolla Numismatica, 1906, p.109). This
coin represents the μνημεῖον in the market-place at Magnesia (Thue. 1.138). At
the Peiraeos Themistocles had a βωμοειδὴς τάφος (Plut. Vit. Them. xxx).
γ] The Ποϑβίοίο" 155
to the service of Zeus. As such undoubtedly it would have been,
at least in part, understood in the time, say, of Themistocles. The
bull would have been supposed to get his sanctity from Zeus rather
than Zeus his divinity from the bull. This was, I am sure, not the
original sense of ἀνάδειξις. Another holy bull makes this certain.
Plutarch in his 1xth Greek Question! asks ‘ Who is the Hosioter
among the Delphians?’ The answer is, ‘They call Hosioter the
animal sacrificed when a Hosios is designated.’ It is at first sight
astonishing to find the name Hosioter—He who consecrates, the
Consecrator—applied to the victim rather than the priest. But in
the light of the primitive notion of sacrifice explained above
(p. 137 ff.) all is clear—the Holy Bull is the source of mana. In
him mana is as it were incarnate. He it is who consecrates. At
Delphi he became and was a god—the Bull-Dionysos. Lycophron*
tells us that at Delphi Agamemnon before he sailed
Secret lustrations to the Bull did make,
Beside the caves of him, the God of Gain
Delphinian.
Plutarch adds to his enquiry, ‘ Who is the Hosioter?’ a second
question, ‘and why do they call one of their months Bysios ?’
Evidently the two are connected. The month Bysios was, Plutarch
tells us, at the beginning of spring, the time of the blossoming of
many plants. The 8th of Bysios was the birthday of the god, and
in olden times on this day only did the oracle give answers. At
Magnesia the new daimon comes in at the time of sowing; at
Delphi the Thyiades ‘wake up’ the infant god Liknites at the
time when the Hosioi offer their secret sacrifice, presumably first
of and then to the Hosioter, the Bull. The death of the old-year
daimon may be followed immediately by his resurrection as the
spirit of the new year. The death of the Old Year and the New
Birth or Resurrection of the New, will form the subject of the
next chapter.
The ἀνάδειξις of the Magnesian bull is not then its consecra-
tion to Zeus, but simply its indication, its exhibition, its designation
1 For full discussion of this passage see my Prolegomena, p. 501. Plutarch says
“Ociwripa μὲν καλοῦσι τὸ θυόμενον ἱερεῖον, where τὸ θυόμενον must be passive.
5.41.207 - δελφινίων rap ἄντρα Κερδῴου θεοῦ
Ταύρῳ κρυφαίας χέρνιβας κατάρξεται,
and the scholiast ad loc. says ταῦρος δὲ ὁ Διόνυσος... ὅτι ἐν παραβύστῳ τὰ μυστήρια
ἐτελεῖτο τῷ Διονύσῳ.
156 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [o
as best and fairest of the year, fittest vehicle of the life and mona
of the people and the crops, like to a corn spirit, but of wider
content. This holy vehicle of the year’s mana, this ἐνεαωυτός-
daimon who died for the people, became at Delphi and in many
other places a bull-god, a divinity born of his own sacrifice,
i.e. of his own sanctification. At Magnesia he remains supremely
sanctified indeed, but mainly the material of a dais, a.sacramental
Feast. To us the sacrifice of a god seems a miracle or a blasphemy,
but when the god is seen to be begotten of the sacrifice the
anomaly is softened.
It remains to resume our argument as to the sacrifice of the
bull.
The bull is slain, not because his death has value to bribe or to
appease, but in order that he may be eaten. He is eaten because
he is holy; he is holy because of the magical mana within him,
what Homer would call his ἱερὸν μένος. You would eat the bull
alive if you could, but eating a bull alive is beset with difficulties.
So you kill him first and have a feast of raw flesh, an ὠμοφάγος
dais. If you become a Bacchos you will partake of that feast but
once in your life, and henceforth will observe the tabu on flesh
food—the flesh of ‘your brother the ox.’ |
And because you belong to a group, a thiasos, you do not sit
alone eating raw bull; you have a communal feast, a dais.
You have at first no thought of worshipping or even holding
communion with any god. All you desire is to absorb the mana
of the holy bull’s raw flesh. But bit by bit out of your sacrifice —
of that bull grew up a divine figure of the Feast, imagined,
incarnate. You may call the figure by many names, Zeus Olbios,
or the ‘horned Iacchos,’ or Zagreus, or Dionysos Tauromorphos.
One name the Initiated gave him, which reveals his origin and
shows how the ancient mind naturally focused on sacramental
communion. In his account of the contrast between Apollo and
Dionysos, Plutarch’ tells of the ‘manifold changes’ that Dionysos
1 de Hi ap. Delph. 1x. Διόνυσον δὲ καὶ Zaypéa καὶ Νυκτέλιον καὶ ᾿Ισοδαίτην αὐτὸν
ὀνομάζουσι καὶ φθοράς τινας καὶ ἀφανισμοὺς καὶ τὰς ἀναβιώσεις καὶ παλιγγενεσίας οἰκεῖα
ταῖς εἰρημέναις μεταβολαῖς αἰνίγματα καὶ μυθεύματα περαίνουσι. I have elsewhere
(Prole gomena, Ὁ. 482, note 1) conjectured that the curious and hitherto unexplained ~
title ᾿Ισοδαίτης was connected with the ὠμοφάγοι datres, but I did not then nnderstan ,
the importance of the communal meal.
v| Lsodaites and the Communal Feast 157
suffers into winds and water, and earth and stars, and how the
births of plants and animals are enigmatically termed ‘rending
asunder’ and ‘tearing limb from limb’; and he adds, ‘ when they tell
of certain Destructions and Disappearances, and Resurrections and
New Births, which are fables and riddles appertaining to the
aforesaid changes—then they call the god Dionysos and Zagreus,
and Nuktelios and Isodaites’ —Him of the equal Feast.
So far our attention has been focused on sacrifice considered
as a sacramental communion, as a means by which the com-
municant might secure for himself and manipulate for his own
ends the mana of the sacrificed animal. We have now to consider
more in detail these ends to which the mana is applied. They
will be found to be very simple and rather what we should call
material than spiritual. In the Magnesian sacrifice, it will be
remembered (p. 151), the Hierokeryx prayed year by year for the
land and the citizens and the women, for peace and wealth, and
for the bringing forth of the other ‘fruits and of cattle. We
shall see this annual prayer embodied, represented as it were, on
a monument of great importance to be considered in the next
chapter, the famous Hagia Triada sarcophagos.
CHAPTER Vi
THE DITHYRAMB, THE SPRING-FESTIVAL AND THE
HAGIA TRIADA SARCOPHAGOS.
ἦλθ᾽ ἦλθε χελιλών,
κἀλὰς Wpac ἄγογοὰ,
KAAOYC ENIAYTOYC.
a a ee ee a οοϑνς ἐν ὁ
Vere concordant amores, vere nubunt alites,
Et nemus comam resolvit de maritis imbribus.
EL EIR OE,
THE painted stone sarcophagos' which forms in a sense the
text of the present chapter is now in the museum of Candia,
but it was found, in 1903, not at Knossos but close to the palace
of Hagia Triada at Phaistos, on the southern coast of Crete.
Immediately on its discovery its great importance was recognized,
and, as there was fear of the frescoes fading, it was promptl
carried, on the shoulders of men, a three days’ journey across the
island to the museum at Candia, where it could be safely housed.
The tomb in which the sarcophagos was found is of a type
familiar in Lycia but not in Crete. It consisted of a walled,
square chamber with a door at the north-west corner, somewhat
after the fashion of the Harpy-Tomb now in the British Museum.
This analogy is not without its importance, as the scenes repre-
sented, if we rightly interpret them, embody conceptions familiar
1 First published with full commentary and illustration by R. Paribeni, ID
Sarcofago dipinto di Hagia Triada in Monumenti Antichi della R. Accademia dei
Lincei, x1x. 1908, p. 6, T. 1—m. and reproduced here by kind permission of the
Accademia. See also F. von Duhn, Der Sarkophag aus Hagia Triada in Archiy
f. Religionswissenschaft, xm. 1909, 161, and E. Petersen, Der Kretische Bildersarg
in Jahrbuch Arch. Inst. xxtv. 1909, p. 162, and René Dussaud, Les Civilisations
Pré-Helléniques dans le bassin de la mer ’ Egée, 1910, p. 261. I follow in the
main Dr Petersen’s interpretation, though, in the matter of the bull-sacrifice, my
view is independent. δὶ
2 Paribeni, op. cit. p.9; for the Lycian tombs see Perrot-Chipiez, Hist. de DArt, ᾿
γ. p. 361 ff.
CH. VI| The Hagia Triada Sarcophagos 159
in Asia Minor. Inside the tomb-enclosure were found two
sarcophagoi, the large painted stone sarcophagos now before us,
and a smaller one in terra-cotta. The discoverer, Dr Halbherr,
dates the tomb and its contents at from 1500—1300 B.c.
We begin with the principal scenes depicted on the two long
sides of the sarcophagos, and first with the scene in Fig. 30.
In the centre we have the sacrifice of a bull, of the kind, with
large, curved horns, once common in the Aegean, now extinct.
He is dying, not dead; his tail is still alive and his pathetic eyes
wide open, but the flute-player is playing and the blood flows from
the bull’s neck into the situla below. Two Cretan goats with
twisted horns lie beneath the sacrificial table on which the bull
is bound. They will come next. A procession of five women
comes up to the table; the foremost places her hands on or
towards the bull, as though she would be in touch with him and
<
/mana. But on the sarcophagos we have no communal feast ; nor
pathetic figure of the slain bull, huddled up with sad despairing
face. Very literally he dies for the people, that they may have
160 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [ CH.
his mana. She will consecrate, I think, not him but herself, put
herself in touch with his great life which ebbs with the flowing
blood. 4
Why does he die? In the light of the last chapter we might
safely assume that he died because his sacrificers desired his
is there present the figure of any Olympian to receive the bull’s
blood as a gift-offering. How then is it to be made effective?
A clue will be found in the scene immediately to the right of
the bull, a scene not a little surprising. But before we pass to
this scene some details of the bull-sacrifice must be noted.
After what has been said about sacrifice we understand the
new life, new mana, new μένος, his life and his life-blood. We
are reminded of the scene in the Odyssey* where the heifer is
sacrificed to Athene,
Then, straightway, Nestor’s son
Stood near and struck. The tendons of the neck
The axe cut through, and loosed the heifer’s might.
And, as the life is let loose, the women raise their cry of
apotropaic lamentation, their oAoAvy7. It is a moment of high -
tension, for the life with all its might and sanctity is abroad.
Then, to make assurance doubly sure and to get the actual vehicle
of the life, the blood, they cut the victim’s throat:
The black blood gushed, the life had left the bones?.
We come now to the object of the sacrifice. On the extreme
right of the design is a ‘Mycenaean’ shrine with ‘horns of con-
secration.’ Growing out from the middle of it, probably actually
’
1 Od. m1. 448
αὐτίκα Νέστορος vids, ὑπέρθυμος Θρασυμήδης,
ἤλασεν ἄγχι στάς" πέλεκυς δ᾽ ἀπέκοψε τένοντας
αὐχενίους, λῦσεν δὲ βοὸς μένος" αἱ δ᾽ ὀλόλυξαν
θυγατέρες τε νυοί τε καὶ αἰδοίη παράκοιτις
Νέστορος.
Here undoubtedly λῦσεν δὲ βοὸς μένος means that the strength of the heifer collapsed, —
she fell in a heap on the ground. But the idea was originally that something holy
and perilous escaped ; this is clear from the instant raising of the ὀλολυγμός. That
the ὀλολυγμός Was a γυναικεῖος νόμος is plain from Aesch. Ag. 572. I believe its ἱ
primary use to have been apotropaic. For the ὀλολυγμός see Stengel, Hermes, 1908,
pp. 43—44, and Kultusalterthiimer, p. 101.
2 v. 455 τῆς δ᾽ ἐπεὶ ἐκ μέλαν αἷμα ῥύη, λίπε δ᾽ ὀστέα θυμός.
γι] The Bird and the Axe and the Tree 161
surrounded by it, is an unmistakable olive-tree. On a step in
front of the shrine is a slender obelisk, and on, or rather hafted
into, the obelisk, to our delight and amazement, a sacred object
now thrice familiar, a double axe, and, perched on the double
axe, a great black mottled bird. The conjunction rather takes
our breath away. Sacred obelisks we know, of double axes as
thunder-symbols we have lately heard perhaps enough’; birds are
the familiar ‘attributes’ of many an Olympian; but an obelisk
and a battle-axe and a bird with a sacrificial bull and a
EL eT
SPT
ΠΤ ΓΤ i ig) eek
3
a:
Sees eS
G 4 NS me
race eos: 1a tat te a τ Cn (NL AOA A AAR A AA ταὶ Bc
Bredeoscexeceresvesr etek eter ex erelio 6 ὑφ}
ΝΠ Ν LID YT 1| )Νὲ 1
hh Ni ἢ Exe Syste Oe se ei PI aR em sae” :
Ere. 531.
‘Mycenaean’ tree-shrine—who would have dared to forecast it,
and what does it all mean ?
Before this question can be answered we must turn to the
other side of the sarcophagos in Fig. 31 and learn what is the
1 The most illuminating study on the double-axe, its cult and significance, is
a paper by Mr A. B. Cook, The Cretan Axe-Cult outside Crete, published in the
Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions.
Oxford, 1908, m. p. 184. A further discussion by Mr Cook may be looked for
in his forthcoming book Zeus, chapter τι., section 3, paragraph (c), division i, ‘ The
double axe in Minoan cult.’ For the bird and the axe see also A Bird Cult of the
Old Kingdom by P. E. Newbery in the Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and
Anthropology, τι. p. 49, and Two Cults of the Old Kingdom, op. cit. 1. p. 24, and
0. Montelius, The Sun-God’s Axe and Thor’s Hammer, in Folk-Lore, 1910, p. 60.
H. 13
162 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [ CH.
sequel of the sacrifice. There is, as before said, no hint of a —
sacramental banquet ; but there are other means of contact, of —
sacramental communion, besides eating and drinking. The blood
of the bull is not drunk by the worshippers; it is brought and
poured—the liquid is red—by a woman dressed in sacramental —
raiment, from a situla into a great two-handled krater which
stands between two obelisks again surmounted by double axe and
bird. The woman celebrant is followed by another woman bearing
two situlae on a pole over her shoulders, and by a man playing
on alyre. At this point the scene clearly ends. The next figure,
carrying a calf, turns his back and walks in the contrary direction.
The distinction between the two scenes is, in the original, made
clearer by the differing colours of the background’.
As to the double cultus-objects, two points must be carefully
noted. The two sets of double axes, or rather double-double axes, —
are not quite the same. The one to the right is decorated with
cross stripes, that to the left is plain. The double axe on the
red obelisk on the other side of the sarcophagos has similar cross —
markings. Further the obelisk to the right is considerably taller
than the obelisk to the left. This is I think intentional, not due —
to either accident or perspective, but to the fact that they stand for
male and female potencies. The most surprising and significant
difference in the cultus-objects of the two sides yet remains.
The obelisk in Fig. 30 is merely an obelisk painted red; the
two obelisks in Fig. 31 are burgeoning out into leaves, and~
they are painted green; they are trees alive and blossoming.
They are not indeed actual trees’, but mimic trees, obelisks decked
for ritual purposes with cypress leaves.
The blood, the μένος of the bull, is brought to the two obelisks.
It is abundantly clear that we have no gift-offering to a divinity.
Birds and thunder-axes and trees have no normal, natural use
for warm blood. The blood, the mana, must be brought with
magical intent. Contact is to be effected between the unseen’
mystical mana of the bull and the mana of the tree. But, on
the sarcophagos, we do not see the actual contact, the actual
communion effected. The priestess does not apply the blood,
does not asperge the obelisks. The evidence of the sarcophagos
1 The significance of the scene to the right will be considered later, p. 209. [
2 This was, I think, first pointed out by Professor yon Duhn, op. cit. p. 173.
γι] The Bull-Sacrament of Atlantis 163
can here be supplemented by other sacrifices in which bulls and
trees and tree-posts are involved.
In the island of Atlantis Plato! describes a strange bull-
sacrifice, evidently founded on some actual primitive ritual.
The essential feature of this sacrifice was the actual contact of
the victim’s blood with a pillar or post on which laws were
engraved. Here we have direct contact with the object to be
sanctified; no altar or even table intervenes. It is sacrifice, ie.
magical contact, in its most primitive form. Kritias in his
description of the sunk island says that in the centre of it was
a sanctuary to Poseidon within which certain sacred bulls ranged
freely. Poseidon it may be noted in passing is one of the gods
who grew out of a bull; his wine-bearers at Ephesus? were Bulls,
and, in answer to the imprecation of Theseus, as a Bull he appears
out of his own flood to wreck the chariot of Hippolytus*. It is
to the Cretan Poseidon not to Zeus that Minos‘ promised the
sacrifice of his finest bull.
In this sanctuary of Poseidon was a column of orichalcum on
which were inscribed the injunctions of Poseidon, which seem to
have constituted the laws of the country. On the column, beside
the law, was a Curse (Ὅρκος) invoking great maledictions on the
disobedient. Now there were bulls who ranged free (€derov) in
the sanctuary of Poseidon, and the ten kings who were alone in
the sanctuary prayed to the god that they might take for victim
the bull that was pleasing to him, and they hunted the bull
without iron, with staves or snares. The bull, be it noted, is
free because divine; he is not smitten with a weapon lest his
μένος should prematurely escape. They then led the bull to the
column and slew him against the top of the column over the
writing’. The whole strength and mana of the bull is thus
actually applied to, tied up with, the ὅρκος. To make assurance
1 Krit. 119 p and x.
2 Hesych. s.v. Ταῦροι: of παρὰ ᾿Εφεσίοις οἰνοχόοι and s.v. Tavpla* ἑορτή τις
ἀγομένη ἸΠοσειδῶνος. Athen. x. 25 παρὰ ᾿Εφεσίοις οἱ οἰνοχοοῦντες ἤθεοι τῇ τοῦ Ποσει-
δῶνος ἑορτῇ ταῦροι ἐκαλοῦντο.
3 Kur. Hipp. 1214 κῦμ’ ἐξέθηκε ταῦρον, ἄγριον τέρας. Cf. Hesiod, Scut. 104 ταύρεος
ἐννοσίγαιος.
4 Apollod. 2. 5. 7.
5 Plat. Krit. 1198 .,.dv δὲ ἕλοιεν τῶν ταύρων, πρὸς THY στήλην προσαγαγόντες κατὰ
κορυφὴν αὐτῆς ἔσφαττον κατὰ τῶν γραμμάτων.
11--
164 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [ OH.
doubly sure they afterwards filled a bowl with wine, dropped into ©
it a clot of blood for each of the kings, and then drank, swearing
that they would judge according to the laws on the column. Such
a sacrifice is pure magic; it has primarily nothing to do with a
god, everything to do with the magical conjunction of the mana
of victim and sacrificer.
It has been happily suggested that the lost island of Atlantis
reflects the manners and customs, the civili-
zation generally, of Crete’, which after its
great Minoan supremacy sank, for the rest of
Greece, into a long oblivion. It is also very
unlikely that Plato would invent ritual details
which in- his day would have but little
significance. But we have definite evidence
that the ritual described is actual, not
imaginary, though this evidence comes not
from Crete but from another region of: the ‘Mycenaean’ world.
The coin of Ilium? reproduced in Fig. 32 shows, I think, very
clearly, how the bull was sacrificed. The human-shaped goddess
Athena Ilias is there with her fillet-twined spear and her owl;
but to the right is an older sanctity, a pillar on to which is hung
a bull. He will be sacrificed, not on the pillar’s top, which would
be extremely awkward, but with his head and his throat to be
cut against the top, alongside of it, down over it (κατὰ κορυφὴν). Ὁ
That the divine or rather the chief sanctity of Ilium was a
pillar is clear, I think, from the representation in Fig. 33 a.
The ox, or rather cow’, is still free and stands before the goddess.
She has human shape, but she is standing on the pillar she once
was. On the obverse of another coin (Ὁ) she has left her pillar.
Most remarkable and to us instructive of all, is the design on a
third coin of Ilium in Fig. 83c. The goddess is present, as:
1 See an interesting article The Lost Continent in the Times for Feb. 19, 1911.
2 The four coins reproduced in Figs. 32 and 33 are published and discussed
by Dr H. v. Fritze in the section Die Miinzen von Ilion of Prof. Dérpfeld’s Troja
und Ilion, τι. p. 514, Beilage, Pl. 61, No. 19, Pl. 63, Nos. 67, 68 and 69,
and are here represented by Prof. Dérpfeld’s kind permission. Dr Fritze in his
interesting commentary does not note the Atlantis parallel, but he draws attention -
to the fact that the suspended bull explains the formulary that often occurs in
ephebic inscriptions αἴρεσθαι τοὺς βοῦς. Thus CIA π|. 467 ἤραντο δὲ καὶ τοῖς
Μυστηρίοις τοὺς βοῦς ἐν ᾿Ελευσῖνι τῇ θυσίᾳ and CIA im. 471, 78f. ἐπο[ιήσΊατο δὲ καὶ τὰς
ἄρσεις τῶν βοῶν ἐπάνδρως ἐν 77 Βλευ[σῖνι τῇ θυ]σίᾳ καὶ τοῖς πρ[οηροσίοις].
3 That the animal sacrificed before the Palladion is female is certain from the
ἡ βοῦς of the inscription of Ilium.
γι] Bull and Tree at Ilium 165
before, mounted on her pillar. Before her is the cow suspended
head uppermost on a tree. Behind the cow and apparently
seated on the tree is the sacrificer, known by his short sleeveless
chiton. He has seized the horn of the cow in his left hand and
with his right he is about to cut her throat. The goddess may
be present as much as she likes, but she was not the original
object of the cow-slaying. The intent is clear, the blood of the
cow is to fall on the sacred tree and will bring it new mana. No
other explanation can account for a method of sacrifice at once
so difficult and so dangerous.
The gist of bringing the bull’s blood to the obelisks on the
sarcophagos is then, in the light of the coins of Ilium, clear. It
is to bring the mana of the bull in contact with the mimic trees.
Tree and pillar and obelisk are all substantially one; the living
tree once cut down becomes a pillar or an obelisk at will,
and, dead though it may be, does not lose its sanctity. All trees
tend to be sacred or possessed by an unseen life, but above all
fruit-trees are sacred!, they are foci of eager collective attention.
Long before agricultural days and the sanctity of grain came the
sanctity of natural fruit-trees. On the sarcophagos it is clear
that we have, not as in the Bouphonia an agricultural, but what
we might call a vegetation, a tree and fruit ceremony.
The importance of the fruit-tree and the religious reverence
paid it come out very clearly in Mycenaean gems*. Not only are
the shrine and the sacred Tree constantly and closely associated,
but we have scenes of fruit-gathering accompanied by ritual
1 Prof. Myres (Proceedings of Class. Assoc. 1910) remarks that Greeks have no
word for tree in general. dévépov=fruit tree. 2
2 A. J. Evans, Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult, J.H.S. xx1. (1901), Fig. 53,
166 The Dithyramb, Spring- Festival, ete. [ OH.
dances and gestures. Such a scene is depicted on the gold signet-
ring from Mycenae in Fig. 34. To the right we have a shrine
with a pillar and a sacred Tree. A male worshipper pulls the
fruit-laden tree downwards, as though to shake off its fruit or
possibly to uproot it for ritual purposes. A woman figure, perhaps
a goddess, more likely a priestess, makes ritual gestures with her
hands, it may be to indicate hunger; a second woman leans over
an altar table beneath which is a betyl. A similar scene is
represented on a gold signet-ring from Vapheio?. Here the tree is
planted in a pithos, and the so-called priestess is evidently dancing.
Fie. 34.
_ Primitive man then in general, and assuredly the ancient
Cretan, is intensely concerned with the fruits of the Earth—not
at first with the worship of Earth in the abstract, but with the
food? that comes to him out of the Earth. It is mainly because
_she feeds him that he learns to think of Earth as the Mother.
Rightly did the ancient Dove-Priestesses of Dodona sing‘:
Earth sends up fruits—call ye on Earth the Mother.
1 Dr Evans in commenting on the ring, op. cit. p. 177, says, ‘a gesture for
hunger common among the American Indians may supply a useful parallel. It is
made by passing the hands towards and backward from the sides of the body,
denoting a gnawing sensation.’ See Garrick Mallery, Pictographs of the North
American Indians, in Fourth Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1886, p. 236,
and Fig. 155, p. 235.
2 Evans, op. cit., Fig. 52.
3 The importance of food as a factor in civilization and the successive quest of
roots, fruits, cereals, etc., has been well discussed by Mr E. J. Payne in his History
of the New World called America, vol. 1. pp. 276 if.
4 Paus. x. 12. 10
TG καρποὺς ἀνίει, διὸ κλήζετε μητέρα γαῖαν.
v1] Sanctity of Fruit-Trees 167,
And of these fruits, before cereals came in with settled agri-
culture, most conspicuous and arresting would be the fruits of
wild trees. The fruit-growing tree would be sacred, and its
sanctity would quickly pass to other trees. There was the like
sanctity, the like mana in all edible plants and roots, but the tree
would stand foremost.
Earth as the Mother because the fruit-bearer is very clearly
shown in Fig. 35, a design from a hydria in the Museum at
Constantinople’. The scene is at Eleusis, marked by the presence
of Triptolemos in his winged car. From the earth rises Ge. In
her hand she bears a cornucopia, full of the fruits of the earth
From the cornucopia rises a child. Art could not speak more
plainly. Ge is mother because fruit-bearer. Earth then 1s fitly
embodied by the primaeval fruit-bearer, the tree.
Earth sent up fruits, but not without help from heaven. In
the scenes of fruit-gathering this is not forgotten. On the signet-
ring in Fig. 34 above the tree and the priestess is a rather rudi-
mentary indication of the sky, a dotted line and what is probably
1§. Reinach, Rev. Arch. 1900, p. 87; and see also Dr Svyoronos, Journal
@ Archéologie et Numismatique, 1901, p. 387.
168 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [ CH.
a crescent moon. If there is any doubt what is meant we have
only to turn to the gold signet-ring from the Acropolis treasure of
Mycenae in Fig. 361. Here we have the Earth-goddess or her
priestess under her great fruit-bearing tree; she holds poppies in
her hand; worshippers approach her bearing flowers and leaf-
sprays; behind her a woman gathers fruit, while above her is all
the glory of Ouranos, Sun and Moon and Milky Way, and down
from the sky come the powers of the sky, the thunder in its
double manifestation of shield-demon and battle-axe. The Earth
is barren till the Thunder and the Rainstorm smite her in the
springtime—till in his Epiphany of Thunder and Lightning
Keraunos comes to Keraunia, the Sky-god weds Semele the Earth,
the
Bride of the bladed Thunder?.
In the light of the scene on the signet-ring we do not need to
ask the significance of the axe hafted into the obelisk*. It is the
1 J.H.S. 1901.
2 Eur. Hipp. 559 βροντῇ ἀμφιπύρῳ τοκάδα. Cf. Eur. Bacch. 3 Σεμέλη λοχευθεῖσ᾽
ἀστραπηφόρῳ πυρί. Other instances of thunder-Brides are Alkmene, wife of Am-
phitryon, the double-borer, the bidens, Dido wedded to Aeneas in a thunderstorm.
3 First rightly explained by Mr A. B. Cook, Cretan Asxe-Cult outside Crete,
Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions,
Oxford, 1908, τι. 193.
Ἄ
γι] ο ὐγοοϊέμοιβ and the Bull-Sacrifice 169
symbol, or rather I should prefer to say the representation, the
emphasis of the union of the mana of Earth and Sky, of what a
more formal, anthropoid theology would call the Sacred Marriage
(ἱερὸς γάμος) of Ouranos and Gaia. This union, this marriage is
further symbolized by the bird. But before we pass to the bird,
it remains to note a curious and instructive parallel to this cult of
axe and tree and bull, a parallel which takes us back for a moment
to the ritual of the Bouphonia. We shall find this parallel in a
place where we little expect it, in the Erechtheion on the Athenian
Acropolis.
Pausanias!, when he is discussing the Court of the Prytaneum
where iron and all lifeless things were brought to trial, naturally
thinks of the classical instance of the axe at the Bouphonia. He
makes incidentally a statement that has not, I think, received the
attention it deserves. ‘When Hrechtheus was king of the Athenians,
the Ox-Slayer slew an ox for the first time on the altar of Zeus
Polieus.’ The Bouphonia was then traditionally connected, not
only, nor I think primarily, with Zeus, but with Erechtheus.
This connection of Erechtheus with the bull-sacrifice is con-
firmed by a famous passage in the Iliad. In the Catalogue of the
Ships* the contingent of the Athenians is thus described :
Athens they held, her goodly citadel,
Realm of Erechtheus, high of heart, whom erst
Athene reared, daughter of Zeus, what time
The grain-giver did bear him, and she set
Erechtheus there in Athens, in her own
Rich temple. There, as each Year’s Feast goes round,
The young men worship him with bulls and lambs.
Earth is his mother, or rather the ploughed field, the tilth, the
grain-land (ἄρουρα). Athena, the humanized form of this earth-
daimon, is but his foster-mother. The young men (κοῦροι), like
the kouroi on the sarcophagos, worship him with bulls and lambs
1 ας 285,10,
5. Il. τι. δὅ46 of δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ᾿Αθήνας εἶχον, ἐϊκτίμενον πτολίεθρον,
δῆμον ᾿Ερεχθῆος μεγαλήτορος, ὅν ποτ᾽ ᾿Αθήνη
θρέψε Διὸς θυγάτηρ, τέκε δὲ ζείδωρος ἄρουρα"
κὰδ δ᾽ ἐν ᾿Αθήνῃς εἷσεν, ἑῷ ἐνὶ πίονι νηῷ.
ἔνθα δέ μιν ταύροισι καὶ ἀρνειοῖς ἱλάονται
κοῦροι ᾿Αθηναίων περιτελλομένων ἐνιαυτῶν.
For the present purpose it is of no consequence whether the passage is inter-
polated or not, nor does the archaeological question of the various rol concern us.
170 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [ OH.
‘as each Year’s Feast goes round.’ It is a yearly sacrifice, a year-
sacrifice. For Athenian κοῦροι, he, Erechtheus, is their μέγιστος
κοῦρος.
The whole atmosphere of the passage is agricultural; but,
when we ask what natural and social facts lie behind the figure
of Erechtheus, we find ourselves surrounded by sanctities more
primitive. The cult and character of Erechtheus must be sought,
if anywhere, in the Erechtheion, the sanctuary which stands on the
site of the old kings’ palace of the Acropolis and which still bears
his name, The present temple is of course a building of the end
of the fifth century B.c. All we know certainly of its date is that
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it was unfinished in P.c. 408. What concerns us are the ancient
sanctities that the comparatively modern structure was built to
enshrine and safeguard'. Of these for our purpose we need only
consider three, the famous σημεῖα or tokens:
A sacred olive tree,
A ‘sea’ or well called after Erechtheus (’Epey@nis),
A ‘trident’ mark.
The disposition of trident-mark and olive tree is seen in Fig. 37.
The well must have been close to the holy tree.
1 A discussion of the topography of the Erechtheion will be found in my Ancient
Athens, 1890, p. 481, and my more recent views as to the disposition of the σημεῖα
one
γι] Cults of the Pandroseion 171
When we hear of the trident-mark, the salt sea-well and the
olive tree, we think instinctively of the west pediment of the
Parthenon, of the great strife between Athena and Poseidon for
the land of Attica. The salt sea-well and the trident-mark are
‘tokens,’ we are told, of the defeat of Poseidon; the olive is the
‘token’ of the triumph of Athena. An awkward story for theology
and one that required much adjustment and subsequent peace-
making, as the rivals Athena and Poseidon had to share a sanctuary.
The story is as untrue as it is awkward. If we would understand
the ‘tokens,’ we must get back behind these intrusive, grasping
Olympians and see what the sanctities themselves signify before
they were anyone’s ‘ tokens.’
The olive grew in the Pandroseion!; it also grew in the older
Erechtheion, in its precinct at least, if not in the actual building.
Herodotus? says, ‘ There is on this Acropolis a temple of Erechtheus
who is called Earth-born, and in it are an olive tree and a sea
which according to current tradition among the Athenians Poseidon
and Athena planted as tokens when they contended for the
country. What has the olive to do with Erechtheus? Again the
Hagia Triada sarcophagos explains. In the obelisks, the artificial
tree-posts, are planted the thunder-axes that bring the rain-storm
to fertilize the earth. From that marriage springs the tree.
The trident-mark, we have already seen (p. 92), was no symbol of
the sea-god, but, as was shown by the hole in the roof, it was the
token of Kataibates, the Descender from the sky. According to
Hyginus® Erechtheus was smitten not by the trident of Poseidon,
but by the lightning of Zeus, at the request of Poseidon. The
well too we may conjecture only became brackish when Erechtheus
the Earth-shaker, Phytalmios, Nurturer of plants, took on a sea-
god’s attributes.
in Primitive Athens, 1906, p. 39, from which Fig. 37 is taken. The view here taken
of Erechtheus as Thunder-god was first proposed by Ὁ. Gilbert, Gr. Gétterlehre,
τ p- τ and is adopted by Dr E. Petersen in Die Burgtempel der Athenaia,
Yi leas analogy to the Pandroseion at Athens is offered by the Pantheion at
Olympia, in which grew the sacred olive-tree (Aristotle, Θαυμάσια ἀκούσματα, 51,
and Schol. ad Ar. Plut. 586). This Pantheion had obviously nothing to do with
‘all the gods.’ It was simply the ‘altogether holy place.’ Cf. the πάνθειος τελετή of the
Orphic Hymns. For the Pantheion see L. Weniger, Der heilige Oelbaum in Olympia,
Weimar Programm No. 701, 1895, but unhappily Dr Weniger, spite of the evidence
he brings together, clings to the old view that the Pantheion was in our modern
Sense a Pantheon.
2iviTt. δῦ. 3 Fab. 46 ab Iove, Neptuni rogatu, fulmine est ictus.
172 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [ CH.
In the light of the Hagia Triada sarcophagos it is all quite
simple and clear. As there, so here, we have an olive tree:
The holy bloom of the olive, whose hoar leaf
High on the shadowy shrine of Pandrosos
Hath honour of us all.
made Kekrops witness of her seizure (καταλήψεως), planted the
’
4
Apollodorus! says that Athena came after Poseidon and having
olive which now is shown in the Pandroseion. Athena is mani-_
festly a superfluous interloper. There is a holy tree whose name
we may conjecture was the ‘All Dewy One.’ It was tended by —
maidens who did the service of the Hersephoria; the Dew-carrying —
Maidens to this day go out before the dawn to catch the dew of i
May Day which is magical for bloom and health. The Hersephoria, —
the Dew Service, took place on the 13th of Skirophorion, the night
before the Bouphonia® It is natural to ask, Was there any
possible connection between the two? :
Not far from the statue and altar of Zeus Polieus on the Acro-
polis, where the Bouphonia was enacted, there was, Pausanias tells ‘
us, an image of Ge praying to Zeus for rain*. Cut in the living rock
about a dozen yards north of the Parthenon is an inscription near
to a basis that once held a votive statue ‘Of Ge the Fruit-bearer
according to the oracle‘ Possibly the lost statue was the very
image seen by Pausanias. Ge prayed to Zeus in his capacity of
Hyetios, the Rainy. A contemporary of Lucian, Alciphron by
name, has left us in his imaginary letters? some details of the
cult of Zeus Hyetios. A certain Thalliskos writes as follows to
Petraios :
A drought is upon us. Not a cloud is to be seen in the sky, and we
want a regular downpour. You have only to look at the ploughed land to
see how dreadfully parched the soil is. I am afraid all our sacrifices to
1 sir. 14. 2.
2 For the evidence see Mommsen, Heortologie, p.44. The month Skirophorion |
is certain, for the Etymologicum Magnum says of the dppnpopia: ἑορτὴ ἐπιτελουμένη.
τῇ ᾿Αθηνᾷ ἐν Te Σκιροφοριῶνι μηνί. The exact day, the 13th, is not certain, but
highly probable. Suidas says of the Bouphonia, ἑορτὴ παλαιὰ ἣν φασιν ἄγεσθαι,
μετὰ τὰ μυστήρια. The μυστήρια cannot be the Eleusinian mysteries which were
celebrated in Boedromion (September), they may well be the Arrephoria, which
were certainly mysterious. The Etym. Mag. explains the word as applied παρὰ τὸ
ἄρρητα καὶ μυστήρια φέρειν.
3 ῬΣ I. 24, ae ᾿
4 For facsimile of inscription see my Mythology and Monuments of Ancien
Athens, p. 415. ;
° Alk. Epist. m1. 35. For the βοηγία of Zeus Hyetios at Didymoi s
B. Haussoullier, Le Culte de Zeus ἃ Didymes in Mélanges Weil, 1898, p. 147.
γι] The Bouphonia as Rain-Charm 173
Jupiter Pluvius have gone for nothing, and yet all we villagers outdid each
other to make a good sacrificial show. Each man brought what he could
according to his means and ability. One brought a ram, another a goat,
another some fruit, the poor man brought a cake, and the positive pauper
some lumps of decidedly mouldy incense. No one could run to a bull, for
our Attic soil is thin and cattle are scarce. But we might have saved our
expense. Zeus it would seem is ‘on a journey’ and cannot attend to us.
We begin to suspect that the sacrifice of the bull in the
Bouphonia was a rain ‘charm,’ later a ‘sacrifice to Zeus Hyetios,
and this, it may be, explains a strange detail in the ritual. Among
the attendants at the sacrifice were certain maidens called Water-
Carriers (ὑδροφόροι). They brought the water, Porphyry? says, to
sharpen the knife and the axe. But for such a function was it
necessary that maidens should be carefully selected? Is it not at
least possible that the water poured on the holy axe was to act as
arain ‘charm’? ‘The axe was the symbol, the presentation of the
Sky-Zeus ; what acted prayer could be more potent, more magical,
than to sprinkle the axe with water? ?
Be this as it may, we can scarcely avoid the conclusion that
the Bouphonia and the Hersephoria, widely different in character
though they were, had the same intent, to induce the sky to let
fall upon the parched earth its rain or dew, that so the sacred
olive, and with it all other plants and crops, might blossom and
bear fruit. The Hersephoria was to induce the fall of fertilizing
dew’. According to a wide-spread belief, the dew gathered on
Midsummer Night had special potency to beautify and_ bless‘.
Dew, according to common credence, falls thickest on the night of
the full moon, and the Hersephoria took place on the night of the
1 de Abst. τε. 30 ὑδροφόρους παρθένους κατέλεξαν" al δ᾽ ὕδωρ κομίζουσιν, ὅπως τὸν
πέλεκυν καὶ τὴν μάχαιραν ἀκονήσωσιν.
2 This delightful suggestion is entirely due to Mr A. B. Cook, by whose
permission I mention it.
3 See my Prolegomena, p. 122, note 2. The dew was unquestionably regarded
as the fertilizing seed of the Sky-God. Mr A. B. Cook draws my attention to
a passage in the Dionysiaka of Nonnus (v1. 144 ff.), where Semele in a dream sees
the fate to come upon her (her bridal with Zeus), in the vision of a tree, watered by
the eternal dew of the son of Kronos:
ἔλπετο καλλιπέτηλον ἰδεῖν φυτὸν ἔνδοθι κήπου
ἔγχλοον, οἰδαλέῳ βεβαρημένον ὄμφακι καρπῷ
kal Pepe: ae ae
A bird carries the fruit of the tree to the lap of Zeus, and from him a full-grown
bull-man is born. t
4 Brand H. Ellis, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, 1849, 1. 218; P. Sebillot,
Folk-Lore de France, 1904, 1. 94.
174 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. (oH.
last full moon of the Attic year. The maidens gathered their
dew in the precinct of Ourania in the Gardens. The Bouphonia
. was an appeal to the sterner powers of the sky, to thunder, and
lightning, and the rain-storm.
It is worth noting that an invocation of dew for the fertilization
of man and plants Ae cattle forms part of an Epiphany δρώμενον
that goes on in the island of Imbros? to-day. A sort of ‘aetio-
logical myth’ is chanted, telling of the ‘ Baptism of Christ’ Our
Lady goes down to Jordan, takes water, washes and then entreats
S. John Baptist to baptize the Holy Child. 5. John makes ~
]
‘
d
.
4
ὃ
:
᾿
answer :
Let him wait till the morn
That I may ascend into heaven,
To send down dew upon earth,
That the master and his lady may be bedewed,
That the mothers and their children be bedewed, ‘
That the plains with the trees be bedewed,
That the springs and the waters be bedewed, i
That the cattle may be tame, ;
And the idols may fall down.
We find ourselves in full magic, S. John the Baptist and the
Baptism of life-giving dew—the New Birth. 8S. John must
ascend, must become a ‘sky-god, before he can descend.
μ
If, spite of the conjunction of thunder-axe and tree on the —
sarcophagos, the thunder-god Erechtheus and the olive tree strike
us still as dissonant, we may find conviction when it appears that
the same strange marriage is found in the lower city. In the
Academy Pausanias* saw an olive plant, said to have been the —
second to appear. It was doubiless fabled to have been a graft
from the sacred olive of the Acropolis. All olive trees throughout —
Attica which could claim this high descent were called Moriae —
(propagated, μεμορημέναι) and were protected by special sanctions —
under the immediate care of the Areopagos*, They were also
1 Gruppe, Gr. Mytholpgie und Religion, p. 34. The whole question of the dew sf
and rain aspects of the τ god will be fully discussed by Mr A. B. Cook in his
forthcoming work ‘Zeus,’ chapter τι. ὃ 8, ‘Zeus and the Dew,’ ὃ g ‘Zeus and the ©
Rain,’ ὃ h Zeus Hyetios τι. Diipoleia. Since the above was written it has been —
shown by Dr Εἰ. Maass (A. Mitt. xxxv. 3, p. 337, Aglaurion) that Aglauros is a well-—
nymph, goddess of the clear shining water, of ἀγλαὸν ὕδωρ. She and her sisters —
are therefore a trinity of water and dew.
2 I owe my knowledge of this interesting song to the kindness of Mr A. Wace, ~
who allowed me to see a proof of his forthcoming article on North Greek Festivals.
3 1. 30. 2 καὶ φυτόν ἐστιν ἐλαίας, δεύτερον τοῦτο λεγόμενον φανῆναι.
4 See Lysias, Orat. 7.
γι] Zeus Kataibates and the Olive 175
under the special charge of Zeus Morios. His altar was in the
Academy and he was worshipped, we learn to our delight, not
only as Morios but as Kataibates'. Later moralists would explain .
that this was because he avenged sacrilege by lightning; the real
truth lies deeper and is benignant; he, the rain and thunder-god,
fertilized the earth and brought forth the sacred olives.
The scholiast who gives us this welcome information about
Zeus, who is both Morios and Kataibates, is commenting on the
famous chorus in praise of Athens in the Oedipus Coloneus?:
And this country for her own has what no Asian land has known,
Nor ever yet in the great Dorian Pelops’ island has it grown,
The untended, the self-planted, self-defended from the foe,
Sea-gray children-nurturing olive tree that here delights to grow.
None may take nor touch nor harm it, headstrong youth nor age grown
bold
For the round of heaven of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of
old.
He beholds it and, Athene, thy own sea-gray eyes behold.
Athena with her sea-gray eyes we expect: watching her olive
tree she is canonical; but, to most readers, the round eye of
Morian Zeus comes as something of a surprise. If we remember
the ἄβατον on the Acropolis, with the lightning trident-mark and
the hole in the roof, we wonder no longer that the old sky-god,
with his round eye, should be looking down on his own olive tree.
What was a mere poetical image becomes a ritual reality and
gathers the fresh bloom of a new if somewhat homely beauty.
Nor is it only a poet praising his own city who remembers such
local sanctities. Aeschylus in the Danaides* told of the sacred
1 Apollodorus, ap. Schol. ad Soph. Oed. Col. 705 περὶ ᾿Ακαδημίαν ἐστὶν ὅ τε τοῦ
Καταιβάτου Διὸς βωμὸς ὃν καὶ Μόριον καλοῦσι [ἀπὸ] τῶν ἐκεῖ μοριῶν.
2 Soph. Oed. Col. 704
ὁ yap αἰὲν ὁρῶν κύκλος
λεύσσει νιν Μορίου Διὸς
Xa γλαυκῶπις ᾿Αθάνα.
The translation in the text is by Mr Ὁ. S. MacColl.
® Nauck, frg. 44, ap. Athen. x1r. 600 καὶ ὁ σεμνότατος δ᾽ Αἰσχύλος ἐν ταῖς
Aavatow αὐτὴν παράγει thy’ Appodirny λέγουσαν
ἐρᾷ μὲν ἁγνὸς οὐρανὸς τρῶσαι χθόνα,
ἔρως δὲ γαῖαν λαμβάνει γάμου τυχεῖν
ὄμβρος δ᾽ ἀπ᾽ εὐνατῆρος οὐρανοῦ πεσὼν
ἔδυσε γαῖαν" ἣ δὲ τίκτεται βροτοῖς
μήλων τε βοσκὰς καὶ βίον Δημήτριον
δένδρων τις ὥρα δ᾽ ἐκ νοτίζοντος γάνους
τέλειός ἐστι τῶνδ᾽ ἐγὼ παραίτιος.
Trans. Murray. The γάνος of the fragment recalls the παγκρατὴς γάνους of the
Hymn of the Kouretes, see p. 7.
176 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festial, ete. [ CH.
marriage of Earth and Sky. He puts the words into the mouth
of Aphrodite, goddess in later days of human passion, but we seem —
to stand in the ancient Cretan shrine, with about us the symbols —
of Ouranos, the lightning-axe and the bird, and Gaia, the up-
springing tree dew-watered, and we hear words august and —
venerable which tell of things that were before man and may
outlast him:
Lo, there is hunger in the holy Sky
To pierce the body of Earth, and in Earth too
Hunger to meet his arms. So falls the rain
From Heaven that is her lover, making moist
The bosom of Earth; and she brings forth to man
The flocks he feeds, the corn that is his life.
To trees no less there cometh their own hour
Of marriage which the gleam of watery things
Makes fruitful—Of all these the cause am I.
By the time of Aeschylus most men had probably forgotten
that the Danaides, the heroines of the play, were the water-
bearers, the well-nymphs who watered thirsty Argos'; but, —
when Aphrodite made her great speech, there was not an
initiated man in the theatre but would remember the final
ceremonial of the Eleusinian mysteries—how, looking up to
heaven, they cried aloud, ve, ‘rain, and looking down to earth,
«ve, ‘be fruitful.’
We return now to the other side of the sarcophagos, on which
the sacrifice of the bull is depicted. The remainder of the scene —
towards the right is given somewhat enlarged in Fig. 38. Here
we have what, with the Acropolis of Athens in our minds?,
we might call a Pandroseion: an olive tree in a sanctuary,
surmounted by bulls’ horns, and the thunder-axe on the bare —
obelisk standing for Erechtheus. Upon the thunder-axe 158
perched a bird®.
1 Prolegomena, p. 620.
2 Prolegomena, p. 161.
3 I conjecture that the Bouphonia on the Acropolis and its relation to the
Erechtheion and the olive tree date back to the days when Athens was but
a tributary of the great Minoan thalassocracy. Sopatros, we remember (p. 142),
was ἃ native of Crete. The religious dependence of Athens on Crete outlasted the —
political strife, as Solon witnessed when he sent for Epimenides to purify Athens,
see p. 52. For the Cretan origin of the Bouphonia see Mr Cook, J.H.S. χτν. 151.
Gee at
v1] The Cuckoo as Spring-Bird 177
Upon the thunder-axe we expect to see the thunder-bird of
Zeus, the eagle, but this is assuredly no eagle, however ‘con-
ventionally treated.’ It is the bird of spring, with heavy flight
and mottled plumage, the cuckoo’.
When first the cuckoo cuckoos in the oak,
Gladdening men’s hearts over the boundless earth,
Then may ; Zeus rain.
Ὥς eS eer 7m
Fic. 38.
1 Many birds have been suggested. The raven has the high authority of
Mr Warde Fowler; Dr Hans Gadow suggested to me the magpie. The woodpecker
was tempting, because of the analogy between πέλεκυς and πελεκάν, but as
Dr Petersen (op. cit. p. 163) points out, the pose of the bird, with wings open, not
closed, when perching, is characteristic of the cuckoo, though here it may be
depicted to show the bird has just alighted. The particular bird intended is not
of great moment. The idea, the coming of a life-spirit from the sky, is the same
whatever bird be the vehicle. I have elsewhere (Bird and Piilar-Worship in
connexion with Ouranian divinities, in Transactions of the Third International
Congress for the History of Religions, Oxford, 1908, 1. p. 154) hazarded the
conjecture, suggested by Mr Cook, that the ritual robe of the celebrant and other
worshippers on the sarcophagos is a feather dress ending in a bird-tail—but Sig.
Paribeni has brought evidence, op. cit. p. 17, to show that the feather-like drawing
on the robe is used to indicate a bull’s skin.
2 Hesiod, Op. 486; see p. 97.
H. 12
178 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [cH
That is the prayer in the heart of the priestess, and she utters
it, emphasizes it, by her offering of water which she has poured
out of the high jug into the basin before her, over which she lays —
her hands, perhaps in token that the water is the rain-bath (λουτρά)
of the earth’s bridal. Above are the fruit-shaped cakes (yaar), —
for it is food that the cuckoo of spring is to bring her.
The picture speaks for itself; it is the passing of winter and —
the coming of spring, the passing of the Old Year, the incoming
of the New, it is the Death and Resurrection of Nature, her New
Birth. Clearly though this is represented, it confuses us a little
at first by its fulness and by its blend of animal and vegetable —
and atmospheric life, of tree and bull and bird and thunder-axe1.
All this, so natural, so inevitable to the primitive mind, to us, who
have lost the sense of common kinship and common mana, seems —
artificial, metaphorical. We need first to meditate over it, to
disentangle its various strands, before, by an effort of imagination,
we can do what, if we would understand aright, is supremely
necessary, think ourselves back into the primaeval fusion of things, —
a fusion always unconsciously present in the mind of poet and
primitive.
It is the springtime of man and bird and flower:
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth ;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs,
And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away”.
Again in the thirteenth-century roundel’:
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med,
And springth the wdé nu,
Sing cuccu!
Awé bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calvé cu,
Bulloc sterteth, bucké verteth,
Murie sing cuccu !
1 Just such a blend of tree, bird, bull, thunder, dew and humanity,
in Semele’s tree, see p. 173, note 3.
2 Song of Solomon, ii. 10.
3 See E. K. Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, 1903, 1. 168.
VI] Bridal of Earth and Sky 179
It is the bridal of the Earth and Sky, the New Birth of the
World:
Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet,
Ver novum, ver jam canorum ver renatus orbis est,
Vere concordant amores, vere nubunt alites,
Et nemus comam resolvit de maritis imbribus!.
So the poet, but the common man who has no words with
which to speak is yet a poet in his own way, and the drama of
winter and spring, death and life, he feels, and makes of it
a δρώμενον, a ritual. Theopompos, according to Plutarch’, relates
that
Those who dwell in the west account and call the Winter Kronos and
the Summer Aphrodite, the Spring Persephone, and from Kronos and
Aphrodite all things take their birth. And the Phrygians think that in the
Winter the god is asleep, and that in the Summer he is awake, and they
celebrate to him Bacchic revels, which in winter are Goings to Sleep, and in
summer Wakings-up. And the Paphlagonians allege that in winter the god is
bound down and imprisoned, and in spring aroused and set free again.
Such rites are not only for the outlet of man’s emotion, not
only for the emphasis of that emotion by representation, they are,
as we have seen all rites tend to be, the utterance of his desire
and will, they are pre-presentations of practical magical intent
And this in very definite fashion; for, though man does not live
by bread alone, without his daily bread he cannot live.
The cuckoo is summoned to bring new life to the tree, dead in
the winter, to bring the rain that will bring the food-fruits. The
water and cakes are as it were a visualized prayer, they are εὐχαί.
But when the gods are formulated and become men and women,
when Zeus and Hera have supplanted Ouranos and Gaia, then the
coming of the cuckoo takes on the shape of human wedlock.
‘Women, says Praxinoé to Gorgo, in the famous Syracusan Idyll
of Theocritus’, ‘ Women know everything,
.
Yes, and how Zeus married Hera,’
1 Pervigilium Veneris.
2 de Isid. et Osir. τιχτχ. Φρύγες δὲ τὸν θεὸν οἰόμενοι χειμῶνος καθεύδειν θέρους
δ᾽ ἐγρηγορέναι, τότε μὲν κατευνασμούς, τότε δ᾽ ἀνεγέρσεις βακχεύοντες αὐτῷ τελοῦσι.
Παφλαγόνες δὲ καταδεῖσθαι καὶ καθείργνυσθαι χειμῶνος, ἦρος δὲ κινεῖσθαι καὶ ἀναλύεσθαι
φάσκουσι. See my Prolegomena, p. 128.
3 xv. 64
πάντα γυναῖκες ἴσαντι, καὶ ws Ζεὺς ἀγάγεθ᾽ Ἥραν.
The expression is clearly proverbial, and no doubt arose not from the secrecy of the
marriage, but—when the meaning of the cuckoo myth was forgotten—from its
strangeness, It is one of the stories which Pausanias (11. 17. 5) says he (fortunately
for us) ‘records but does not accept.’
180 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [ CH.
and the scholiast on the passage, quoting, he says, from Aristotle’s
treatise on the sanctuary of Hermione, thus tells the tale: ᾿
Zeus planned to marry Hera and wishing to be invisible and not to be ©
seen by her he changed his shape into that of a cuckoo and perched on —
a mountain, which, to begin with, was called Thronax, but now is called ©
Cuckoo. And on that day Zeus made a mighty storm. Now Hera was
walking alone and she came to the mountain and sat down on it, where now
there is the sanctuary of Hera Teleia. And the cuckoo was frozen and
shivering from the storm, so it flew down and settled on her knees. And
Hera, seeing it, had pity and covered it with her cloak. And Zeus straightway
changed his shape and caught hold of Hera....The image of Hera in the
temple (at Argos) is seated on a throne, and she holds in her hand a sceptre,
and on the sceptre is a cuckoo,
Pausanias confirms or perhaps quotes Aristotle. In one detail
he corrects him. Aristotle mentions a statue of Full-grown or
Married! (τελεία) Hera on the Cuckoo-Mountain, but Pausanias in
describing the site says, ‘there are two mountains, and on the top —
of each is a sanctuary, on Cuckoo-mountain 15 a sanctuary of Zeus
and on the other mountain called Pron there is a sanctuary of
Hera.’ Be that as it may, behind the figure of Father Zeus
we have the Bridegroom-Bird and the wedding that is a rain-
storm’,
Fie. 39a.
The Bird-Lover lives on in a beautiful series of coin-types from
Gortyna in Crete*. In the first of these (Fig. 39 a), we have a
1 That the surname Teleia, ‘complete,’ practically means ‘married’ is certain ©
from another passage in Pausanias (vi. 22. 2). Temenos, the son of Pelasgos, he —
says, who dwelt in old Stymphalos, founded three sanctuaries in honour of the
goddess and gave her three surnames: while she was yet a girl he called her Child
(rais), when she married Zeus he called her Teleia, when she quarrelled with Zeus
he called her Widow (χήρα).
* Cf. the wedding of Dido and Aeneas in the thunderstorm (Verg. Zn. rv. 160),
where the background of the elemental wedding of earth and sky is manifest. ’
3. Svoronos, Numismatique de la Crete, vol. τ. x11. 2219, xtv. 16 and 18, xv. 7.
Mr Cook, to whom I owe my knowledge of these coins, favours M. Svoronos’s
explanation, that the nymph is Britomartis. The evidence scarcely seems to me
sufficient ; see Zeus, Jupiter and the Oak, Class. Rev. 1903, p. 405.
γι] Bird, Bull and Tree in Crete 181
maiden seated disconsolate in a barren, leafless tree. In the second
(Fig. 39 b), the same maiden is seated, but the pose is less desolate ;
she lifts her head and the tree is breaking out into leaf. In the
third (Fig. 40 a) a bird comes, perching timidly, the tree blossoms
and fruits. In the fourth (Fig. 40b) the maiden is a bride, a
Fie. 400.
nymph; she raises her head with the gesture characteristic of Hera.
In the fifth (Fig. 41 a) the maiden cherishes the bird, as Hera, in
the myth, cherished the Bridegroom-Cuckoo in the rainstorm.
She is a royal bride with a sceptre, and on the sceptre is a bird.
Fie. 41a. Fic. 41.
In the sixth (Fig. 41 ὃ) the bird is a royal bird, an eagle, and
with his great sanctity he overshadows both tree and maid. And,
delightful thing, amid all this beauty of bird and spring and maid
and tree, the old bull is not forgotten. His irrelevant head is
seen peering through the branches.
Fic. 42a, Fie. 42}.
The seventh coin (Fig. 42 a) offers us a riddle as yet unread.
We have the nymph seated on the tree as usual, but between the
1822. The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. (on.
upper branches of the tree, and continuing down actually on the
leftmost branch, is an inscription? in early Corinthian letters,
TSMVPO$S, Τισυροι. The word is in the nominative plural, ποῦς
the ordinary genitive of place. Does “Τισυροι᾽ stand for ‘Tityroi’?
And does Tityroi stand for ‘play of the Tityroi, as Satyrot stands
for ‘play of the Satyrs’? Can the inscription refer to a δρώ-
μενον, a Satyr-play of the return of spring, the blossoming of the
tree, and the marriage of the maiden? On the reverse of all
these coins the type is a bull (Fig. 42 δ. Was the δρώμενον
accompanied, as on the sarcophagos, by a bull-sacrifice ?
In Athens, then, we have the uncouth δρώμενον of the Bou-
phonia with its mimic resurrection of the ox; in Crete, on the
sarcophagos, we have the new life of spring represented and
induced by a δρώμενον of obelisks leaf-covered, with thunder-axes
and spring birds. Now the Bouphonia was celebrated, as has
been seen, at the last full moon of the Attic year, in midsummer,
when the land was parched. Its object was to induce dew; the
Cretan δρώμενον was manifestly, like the sacrifice of the bull at
Magnesia, celebrated in spring. This brings us straight to the
question of seasonal festivals, and takes us back to the Hymn of
the Kouretes.
In the refrain, it will be remembered (p. 8), the Kouros is
bidden to come to Dikte ‘for the Year’ (és ἐνιαυτόν), and, when
the aetiological myth has been recounted, it is said ‘the Horae
began to be fruitful year by year) [Ὧραι δὲ βρ]ύον κατῆτος.
Not only was the Kouros bidden to come for the Year, but if
we may credit Aratus?, the Kouretes of Dikte, when they deceived
Kronos, hid Zeus in the cave and reared him for the Year (eis
ἐνιαυτόν).
1 The inscription was read as Τίσυροι by Dr von Sallet, who first published the
coin in the Zeitschrift f. Numismatik, vi. p. 263. See also W. W. Wroth, Cretan
Coins in Numismatic Chronicle, tv. 1884, p. 35. The suggestion that Τίσυροι may
indicate a δρώμενον of Tityroi is due to Mr A. B. Cook. For Tityros as goat-daemon
see Paul Baur, Tityros in American Journal of Archaeology, rx. 1905, Pl. v. p. 157.
The goat-daemon here published holds a cornucopia.
2 Phaen. 163, 164
ὅ μιν τότε κουρίζοντα,
Δίκτωι ἐν εὐώδει, ὄρεος σχεδὸν ᾿Ἰδαίοιο,
ἄντρωι ἐγκατέθεντο καὶ ἔτρεφον εἰς ἐνιαυτόν,
Δικταῖοι Κούρητες ὅτε Κρόνον ἐψεύδοντο. |
For Δίκτωι should probably be read Λύκτωι. Diels, Fig. d. Vors. τι. p. 497, attributes —
this legend to the Kretika of Epimenides.
γι] The Year- Festival 183
The expression ‘for the Year’ is somewhat enigmatic. It
should be carefully noted that the ‘Year’ for which the Kouros
is ‘summoned’ and ‘reared’ is not an ἔτος but an ἐνιαυτός!. The
two words are in Homer frequently juxtaposed’, and the mere
fact of the juxtaposition shows that they are distinguished.
What then exactly is an ἐνιαυτός", how does it differ from an ἔτος,
and why is the Kouros summoned for an ἐνιαυτός rather than
an ἔτος 7
The gist of the ἐνιαυτός as distinguished from the ἔτος comes
out in the epithet τελεσφόρος ‘end bringing, which is frequently
applied to ἐνιαυτός. The ἔτος or year proper is conceived of as
a circle or period that turns round’. This ἔτος varies, as will
presently be seen, from a month to nine years or even longer.
The ἐνιαυτός is not a whole circke or period but just the point
at which the revolution is completed, the end of the old ἔτος",
the beginning of the new. It is easy to see that this significant
point might later be confused with the whole revolution’.
1 The distinction is marked in the translation (p. 9) by a capital letter, and
throughout, whenever Year is a rendering of ἐνιαυτός.
2 H.g. Od, xiv. 292
ἔνθα παρ᾽ aire μεῖνα τελεσφόρον εἰς ἐνιαυτόν.
ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε δὴ μῆνές τε καὶ ἡμέραι ἐξετελεῦντο,
ay περιτελλομένου ἔτεος καὶ ἐπήλυθον ὧραι.
’ The view of the ἐνιαυτός given here is entirely due to Dr Prellwitz, Hine
griechische Etymologie, in Festschrift fiir Friedlander (1895), p. 382. Dr Prellwitz
is concerned only with the etymology and literary interpretation of ἐνιαυτός and is
of course in no way responsible for the conclusions I draw as to ritual.
+ See Od. χιν. 240.
° The participle naturally associated with ἔτος as well as with ἐνιαυτός is
περιτελλόμενος, Of which the aorist, in form as well as in use, has been shown by
Dr Prellwitz (op. cit.) to be περιπλόμενος. The word πόλος means axis, point
round which you turn, and its root πολ, reduplicated and in guttural form, appears
in κύκλος. The original qg-sound appears in Greek before e as a dental, before
a liquid followed by weak o as π.
6 ἔτος is of course a cognate of the Latin vetus and means the completed
revolution of the old year, cf. also ai vatsa ‘year,’ ksl vétichi% ‘old,’ and Albanian
viet ‘year.’ Though ἔτος has many cognates, ἐνιαυτός has none. All attempts to
connect it with ἔτος fail because the a remains unexplained. This inclines us
to accept Dr Prellwitz’s derivation, which at first sight—perhaps because Plato
makes an analogous guess—seems grotesque. Dr Prellwitz makes ἐνιαυτός a
nominative formed from a prepositional clause ἐνι-αὐτῴ, originally évl-ad τῷ
‘at-again-the point.’ This admirably suits the new meaning. ᾿Ἐνιαυτός on this
showing is ‘Here we are again’ incarnate.
7 The scholiast on Ar. Ran. 347
ἀποσείονται δὲ λύπας
χρονίους [ἐτῶν] παλαίους τ᾽ ἐνιαυτοὺς
Says: ζητεῖται πῶς εἶπεν ἐνιαυτοὺς ἐτῶν, ἐπεὶ ἔτος καὶ ἐνιαυτὸς ταὐτόν ; but the Etymo-
logicum Magnum carefully defines ἐνιαυτός thus: ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐν ἑαυτῴ ἰέναι" ἀπὸ γὰρ
τοῦ κέντρου καὶ τοῦ ὁρίζοντος οὗ ἣν ὁ ἥλιος κατὰ τὸν Μάρτιον μῆνα, dv’ ὅλου κινούμενος τοῦ
χρόνου ἐν ἐκείνῳ πάλιν ἔρχεται ὡς καὶ ὁ Χριστὸς ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρός.
184 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [CH
The ἐνιαυτός then was the cardinal turning-point of the year,
it was ἕνη καὶ νέα in one. Such a day to ancient thinking must
be marked out by rites de passage, for the issues were perilous.
Such rites de passage are those of Closing and Opening, of Going”
to sleep and Waking up again, of Death and Resurrection, of
killing or carrying out the Old Year and bringing in the New.
To such rites it was natural, nay, 1t was necessary, to summon the
Kouros. ¥
We have now briefly to consider the ἔτος or period of
revolution with its varying lengths and various seasons.
We think of the ‘year’ as a period of twelve months, beginning —
in January and ending in December, and we think of the Horae }
or Seasons as four in number—Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.
Clearly the year for which the Kouros is bidden to come. begins, —
not in Hecatombaion, at Midsummer, as at Athens, nor in mid-—
winter as with us, but in the springtime. Our year with its
four seasons is a sun-year, beginning about the winter solstice.
It has four seasons because the four cardinal sun-periods .are
the two solstices, winter and summer, the two equinoxes, spring
oul! σι pete
and autumn.
The important point about a year proper or ἔτος is that it 15
a recurrent period of a length that varies with man’s particular —
methods of counting time. It is, in fact, a recurrence or cycle of |
times of special tension and interest, a calendar of festivals’
connected mainly with man’s food-supply. Broadly speaking, the :
distinction between a cult and a rite is that a rite is occasional, —
a cult is recurrent. Seasonal recurrence has been one great, if
not the principal, factor in religious stability.
It is obvious that primitive man would not base his calendar —
on solstices and equinoxes which are only observed late; his year —
would be based not on astronomy, but on the seasons of his food-
supply. Among the early inhabitants of Europe? there were two —
seasons only—winter and summer. The people being mainly
pastoral, winter began in November with the driving home of
1 Hubert et Mauss, La Représentation du Temps dans la Religion et la Magie in
Mélanges d’Histoire des Religions, 1909, p. 189; see also the interesting chapter on
‘Periodicity in Nature’ in Dr Whitehead’s Introduction to Mathematics in the
Home University Library.
2 B. K. Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, τ. pp. 110ff.
yr] The Year and the Seasons 185
cattle from the pastures, and summer when they were driven up
again to the hills somewhere about March. When and where
agriculture is important, the year opens with the season of
ploughing and sowing. The Greeks themselves had at first two,
not three, Horae. In early days it is not realized that the Seasons,
and with them the food-supply, depend on the Sun. The Seasons,
the Horae, are potencies, divinities in themselves, and there are
but two Seasons, the fruitful and the fruitless.
The year and the seasons derive then their value, as was
natural, from the food they bring. They are not abstractions,
divisions of time; they are the substance, the content of time.
To make of ἐνιαυτός a god, or even a daimon, seems to us, even
when he is seen to be not a year but a Year-Feast, a chilly
abstraction, and even the Horae as goddesses seem a little remote.
But to the Greeks, as we see abundantly on vase-paintings, their
virtue, their very being, was in the flowers and fruits they always
carry in their hands; they are indistinguishable from the Charites,
the Gift- and Grace-Givers. The word Hora, it is interesting to
note!, seems at first to have been almost equivalent to Weather.
In a drought the Athenians, Philochoros? tells us, sacrificed to the
Horae, and on this occasion they boiled their meat and did not
roast it, thereby inducing the goddesses to give increase to their
crops by means of moderate warmth and seasonable rains. As
warders of Olympos it is theirs to ‘throw open the thick cloud or
set it ὑοῦ
Athenaeus‘ has preserved for us a fragment of the fourth book
of the History of Alexandria by Kallixenos the Rhodian. In it
is described a great spectacle and procession exhibited by Ptolemy
Philadelphos in honour of Dionysos*. One group in the procession
‘is of interest to us. The procession was headed by Silenoi clad,
1 O. Gruppe, Gr. Myth. 11. 1063, note 3. Dr Gruppe compares the Latin tempus,
tempestas, which again shows clearly the focus of the primitive mind on the
practical side of times and seasons.
2 Ap. Athen. χιν. 78 ᾿Αθηναῖοι δ᾽, ὥς φησι Φιλόχορος, ταῖς Ὥραις θύοντες οὐκ ὀπτῶσιν,
ἀλλ᾽ ἕψουσι τὰ κρέα.
3 Hom. Il. v. 751
ἠμὲν ἀνακλῖναι πυκινὸν νέφος ἠδ᾽ ἐπιθεῖναι.
4 vy. 27. 198.
5 As Macedonians all the Ptolemies were addicted to the worship of Dionysos.
The ceremonies to which they were addicted probably enshrined and revived
many primitive traits. See the interesting monograph by M. Paul Perdrizet, Le
Fragment de Satyros in Rev. des Etudes Anciennes, 1910.
7
186 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [on.
some in purple, some in scarlet, to keep off the multitude; next —
followed twenty Satyrs bearing lamps; next figures of Nike with ©
golden wings; then Satyrs again, forty of them, ivy-crowned, their
bodies painted, some purple, some vermilion. So far it is clear —
we have only the ministrants, the heralds of the god to come.
After these heralds comes the first real personage of the procession,
escorted by two attendants. His figure will not now surprise us.
After the Satyrs came two Sileni, the one with petasos and caduceus as
herald, the other with trumpet to make proclamation. And between them
walked a man great of stature, four cubits tall, in the dress and mask of a
tragic actor and carrying the gold horn of Amaltheia. His name was Eniautos.
A woman followed him, of great beauty and stature, decked out with much
and goodly gold ; in one of her hands she held a wreath of peach-blossom, in
the other a palm-staff, and she was called Penteteris. She was followed by
four Horai dressed in character and each carrying her own fruits.
The human Dionysos came later, but surely the procession is
for the Year-Feast, εἰς "Eviavtov.
Eniautos held in his hands the horn of Amaltheia, the cornu- —
copia of the Year’s fruits. He is his own content. Athenaeus?
in his discussion of the various shapes and uses of cups, makes ~
a statement that, but for this processional figure, would be some-
what startling. ‘There is a cup, he says, ‘called The Horn of
Amaltheia and Eniautos. The Horae too carry each her own
fruits. This notion that the year is its own content, or rather
perhaps we should say that the figure of the divine Year arises
out of the food-content, haunted the Greek imagination. Plato’,
following the Herakleiteans, derives ἐνιαυτός from ἐν ἑαυτῷ, he
who has all things in himself, and the doctrine was popular
among Orphics. Kronos was identified with Chronos, Time,
and hence with Eniautos; for Time, with the recurrent circling
Seasons, has all things in Himself.
The Seasons, the Horae, in late Roman art are four in number. —
As such they are shown in the two medallions of Commodus? in
Fig. 43. In the first (a) Earth herself reclines beneath her tree.
1x1. 25, p. 783.
2 Kratyl. 410 ν τὸ yap τὰ φυόμενα καὶ τὰ γιγνόμενα προάγον eis φῶς καὶ αὐτὸ ἐν ἑαυτῷ
ἐξετάζον.. οἱ μὲν ἐνιαυτόν, ὅτι ἐν ἑαυτῷ κιτ.λ. See Mr F. Μ. Cornford, Hermes, Pan,
Logos in Classical Quarterly, m1. 1909, p. 282. For the connection of Kronos and —
᾿Ἐνιαυτός see W. Schulz, ᾿Αὐτός in Memnon 1v. 1910. The identity of Kronos with ©
Chronos is as old as Pherekydes.
3 Cat. of Roman Medallions in British Museum, Pl. xxx. 1 (a), 2 (b).
γῇ The Year and the Seasons 187
Under her hand is the globe of heaven studded with stars. Over
it in procession pass the four seasons. On the second medallion (ὁ)
the four seasons are issuing from an arch. The figure of a boy
bearing a cornucopia comes to meet them. He is the Young Year
bearing the year’s fruits. In late art four seasons are the rule,
but the notion of fourness had crept in as early as Alkman'. He,
it would seem, had not quite made up his mind whether they were
three or four.
Three Seasons set he; summer is the first,
And winter next, and then comes autumn third,
And fourth is spring, when the trees blossom, but
Man may not eat his fill.
Possibly in Alkman we have a mixture of two systems (1) two
parts of the year: χειμών and θέρος; (2) two or three Horae (Spring
Fia. 485}.
and Summer (and Autumn)). The two-part system may have
belonged to the North, where winter is emphatic and important,
the two or three Horae may have been the fruitful seasons of the
indigenous southerners, where winter is but negative. Auxo,
Thallo and Karpo obviously do not cover the whole year. Winter
is no true Hora. Theognis? knew that
‘Love comes at his Hour, comes with the flowers in spring.’
1 Frg. Bergk 76
Ὥρας δ᾽ ἔσηκε τρεῖς, θέρος
καὶ χεῖμα κὠπώραν τρίταν,
καὶ τέτρατον τὸ ῆρ, ὅκα
σάλλει μέν, ἐσθίεν δ᾽ ἄδαν
οὐκ ἔστιν.
2 1275 ‘Qpatos καὶ "Ἔρως ἐπιτέλλεται. See my Prolegomena, p. 634. The blend
of the two systems in Alkman was suggested to me by Mr Cornford.
188 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, etc. [oH
But when we come to early works of art where tradition rules
we find the Horae are steadfastly three. On the archaic relief 1
Fig. 441, found on the Acropolis at Athens, they dance hand in
hand to the sound of the pipe played by Hermes, and with them
comes joyfully a smaller, human dancer. This human figure has
been usually explained as a worshipper, perhaps the dedicator of
the relief; but surely in the light of the medallion of Commodus a
simpler and more significant explanation lies to hand. He is the
young Eniautos, the happy New Year.
The four Horae are sufficiently explained by the two solstices
and the two equinoxes. We have now to consider why in earlie
days the Horae were three.
1 From a photograph. For other interpretations see Lechat, Bulletin de Corr.
Hell. 1889, xm. pl. xiv. pp. 467—476; see also Lechat, Au Musée de UV Acropole
d’Athenes, p. 443, and G. C. Richards, J. H. S. x1. 1890, p. 288.
νὸν
v1] Inmar and Solar Years 189
In Athens, in the days of Porphyry, and it may be long before,
the Horae and Helios had a procession together in which was
carried the Hiresione, the branch decked with wool and hung with
eakes and fruits. By that time men knew that the Sun had
power over the Seasons; but at first the Horae were linked with
an earlier potency, and it is to this earlier potency that they owe
their three-ness. The three Horae are the three phases of the
Moon, the Moon waxing, full and waning. After the simple
seasonal year with its two divisions came the Moon-Year with
three, and last the Sun-Year with four Horae’.
In the third #neid, when Mneas and his men are weather-
bound at Actium, they have as usual athletic contests to pass the
time. Vergil? says
Interea magnum sol circumvolvitur annum.
Scholars translate the passage ‘meantime the sun rounds the
great circle of the year’; but if we take the words literally it is
the year that is qualified as great, and we are justified in supposing
that if there is a great year there is also a small one, a parvus
annus. Such in fact there is, and so Servius in commenting
understands the passage. ‘ He (i.e. Vergil) says magnus in addition
lest we should think he means a lunar year. For the ancients
computed their times by the heavenly bodies, and at first they
called a period of 30 days a lunar year. ‘Year, annus, is of
course only a ring, a revolution. ‘Later, Servius goes on, ‘the
year of the solstices was discovered, which contains twelve
months.’
The great calendar crux of antiquity was the fitting together
of this old Moon-Year with the new Sun-Year. Into this problem
and the various solutions of trieteric and pentaeteric ‘years’ we
need not enter*. It is enough for our purpose to realize that the
Moon is the true mother of the triple Horae, who are themselves
Moirae, and the Moirae, as Orpheus? tells us, are but the three
1 See Abst. τι. 7 οἷς μαρτυρεῖν ἔοικεν καὶ ἡ ᾿Αθήνῃσιν ἔτι καὶ νῦν δρωμένη πομπὴ
Ἡλίου τε καὶ Ὡρῶν. '
3 v. 284 Servius, ad loc. Magnum, ne putemus lunarem esse, propterea dixit :
antiqui enim tempora sideribus computabant, et dixerunt primo lunarem annum
triginta dierum...Postea solstitialis annus repertus est qui xr. continet menses.
For further discussion of this interesting point see Mr F. M. Cornford in
chapter vir.
* Clement of Alexandria in the Stromata quotes a book in which Epigenes
noted a number of peculiarities (τὰ ἰδιάζοντα) of Orpheus, φησὶ... Μοίρας τε αὖ μέρη
τῆς σελήνης τριακάδα καὶ πεντεκαιδεκάτην καὶ νουμηνίαν (Abel, frg. 253).
190 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [ CH.
motrae or divisions (μέρη) of the Moon herself, the three divisions -
of the old Year. And these three Moirae or Horae are also
Charites?. .
The cult of the Moon in Crete, in Minoan days, is a fact clearly
established. On the lentoid gem? in Fig. 45 a worshipper ap-
proaches a sanctuary of the usual Mycenaean type, a walled
enclosure within which grows an olive tree. Actually within the
sanctuary is a large crescent moon. The conjunction of moon and
olive tree takes us back to the Pandroseion (p. 170), itself in all
Fic. 45.
probability a moon-shrine, with its Dew-Service, its Hersephoria.
Minoan mythology knows of the Moon-Queen, Pasiphaé, She who
shines for all, mother of the holy, horned Bull-Child.
With respect to the Pandroseion it may be felt that, though
we have the Dew-Service at the full moon in the shrine of the
1 Hymn. Magic. v. Πρὸς Σελήνην, 6
ἡ Χαρίτων τρισσῶν τρίσσαις μορφαῖσι xopevers, .
and οὗ, the triple Charites who dance round Hekate the Moon. See my Myth.
and Mon. Ancient Athens, p. 378, Figs. 15 and 16. J
2 A. Evans, Tree and Pillar Cult, 1901, p. 185, Fig. 59. This lentoid gem does
not stand alone. The same scene, a Mycenean shrine with tree and crescent moon,
before it a female worshipper, appears on a steatite gem found at Ligortyno in
Crete. See René Dussaud, Les Civilisations préhelléniques, p. 273, Fig. 196.
v1] The Moon and the Olive 191
All-dewy-One, we have no direct evidence of a moon-cuit! in the
Erechtheion, no Athenian gem with a crescent moon, shining in
a sanctuary. This is true, but the coinage of Athens reminds us
that the olive is clearly associated with the moon. On the reverse
of an Athenian tetradrachm in Fig. 46 is the owl of Athena, the
owl she once was, and in the field is not only an olive spray, but a
crescent moon. Athena and the moon shared a name in common—
Glaukopis*. The ancient statues of Athena’s ‘maidens’ carry
moon-haloes (unvicKxor)*. She herself on her shield carries for
blazon the full moon‘.
Fic. 46.
Yet another shrine not far from Crete, of early sanctity, with
holy olive tree and moon-goddess, cannot in this connection be
forgotten.
Give me the little hill above the sea,
The palm of Delos fringéd delicately,
The young sweet laurel and the olive tree,
Grey-leaved and glimmering®.
Here we have a succession of holy trees brought one by one
by successive advances in civilization, but over them watched
always one goddess, though she had many names, Artemis, Oupis,
Hekaerge, Loxo. Behind her humanized figure shines the old
moon-goddess,
Oupis the Queen, fair-faced, the Light-Bearer®,
1 Τὴ the Clouds of Aristophanes (610) the Moon complains bitterly of the
neglect into which she has fallen, δεῖνα yap πεπονθέναι.
2 Kur. frg. (Nauck 997)
γλαυκῶπίς Te στρέφεται μήνη.
In the old days the Acropolis of Athens was called the Glaukopion. E. Maass,
Der alte Name der Akropolis in Jahrb. d. Inst. 1907, p. 143.
3 Ar. Av. 1114, and schol. ad loc., but see H. Lechat, Au Musée de VAcropole
d Athénes, 1903, p. 215, Le ‘ Meniscos.’
+ On a vase, see Mon. d. Inst., xx1t. θᾶ,
5 Kur. Iph. in T. 1098, trans. Prof. Murray.
6 Callim. Hymn. ad Dianam, 204
Οὗπι dvaco’ εὐῶπι, φαεσφόρε.
192 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [CH
When the Delians, fearing the Persian onset, fled to Tenos,
Datis, the Persian general, would not so much as anchor off the
holy island, but sent a herald to bid the Delians return and fear
nothing, for ‘in the island where were born the two gods no harm
should be done?’ The Persians saw in Artemis and Apollo, though
the Greeks had in part forgotten it, the ancient divinities they
themselves worshipped, the Moon and the Sun’.
That the moon was worshipped in Crete in her triple phases
is at least probable. Minos, Apollodorus® tells us, sacrificed ἴῃ
Paros to the Charites, and the Charites are in function indis-
tinguishable from the Horae. Like the Horae they are at first
Fic. 47.
two, then three‘. In Athens two Charites were worshipped
under the names Auxo (Increaser) and Hegemone (Leader), and
these were invoked, Pausanias says, together with the Horae of
Athens, Thallo (Sprouting) and Karpo (Fruit), and the Dew-
Goddess, Pandrosos. Among many primitive peoples the waxing
and waning of the moon is supposed to bring increase and decrease
to all living things. Only the lawless onion sprouts in the wane |
and withers in the waxing of the moon’.
1 Herod. νι. 97. 2 Herod. 1. 131. 3 3.15.7. |
4 For the whole question of the double and triple Charites at Athens and else- A
where, and for their connection with the Horae, see my Myth. and Mon. of Ancient ΐ
Athens, 1890, p. 382, and my Prolegomena, p. 286, The Maiden Trinities. I did not
then see that the triple form had any relation to the Moon.
> Aulus Gellius, xx. 8. See Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris?, 1907, p. 362.
v1] The Charites in Crete 193
The Charites at Orchomenos! were unhewn stones which had
fallen from heaven. Small wonder, if they_were phases of the
moon. On the Phoenician stelae in Fig. 48% we see the moon
figured as three pillars, a taller between two shorter ones,
indicating no doubt the waxing, full and waning moon. The cult
of the triple pillars is familiar in Crete. In Fig. 485 we have the
well-known triple columns surmounted by the life-spirit, the dove.
[Ὁ is probable, though by no means certain, that we have in them
primitive pillar-forms of the Charites.
Fie. 48.
The Kouretes, we have noted (p. 182), according to Cretan
tradition nourished the infant Zeus ‘for the year. The Kouretes
bid the Kouros leap ‘for the year.’ Did they ever leap and dance
for the old Moon-Year? When we remember the Moon-cult of
Crete, it seems probable; we have, however, no definite evidence.
But, when we come to the Roman brothers of the Kouretes, the
Leapers or Sali, we can speak with certainty. It often happens
that Roman ritual and Roman mythology, from its more con-
servative and less imaginative character, makes clear what the
poetry of the Greeks obscures. The Salii will help us to under-
stand more intimately the nature of the Kouretes, and may even
throw light on the nature and name of the Dithyramb. They must
therefore be considered at this point in some detail.
1 Paus. rx. 35. 1.
2 Monimenti Ant. dei Lincei, x1v. 1905; Taf. xxt. 25 and xxv. 2.
3 A. Evans, B.S.A. vir. 1901-2, p. 29, Fig. 14. I owe the suggestion that in
these triple pillars we may have the Cretan Charites worshipped by Minos to
Mr Cook’s kindness.
H. 13
194 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. (OH.
THE SALII. a
Denys of Halicarnassos? in his full and interesting account of y
the Salii saw that Kouretes and Salii were substantially the —
same: ‘In my opinion, he says, ‘the Salii are what in the Greek
language are called Kouretes. We (i.e. the Greeks) give them their
name from their age, from the word κοῦροι, the Romans from their
strenuous movements, for jumping and leaping is called by the
Romans salire. Denys exactly hits the mark: the term Kouretes
expresses the essential fact common to Salii, Korybantes, etc., that
all are youths; the various special names, the meanings of some
of which are lost, emphasize particular functions.
a)
| pp ie
ie ΕΞ
Yay 2
BZ
»» LEZ Ze GEE GE
Fic. 49.
Ay
ἷ
[
WAA
Kei He
“ἡ
Denys? describes in detail the accoutrement of the Sali, which
reminds us rather of priest than warrior. He notes the purple
chitons and bronze girdles, the short cloaks and the conical caps*
(apices) called, he says, by the Greeks κυρβασίαι, a name with
which very possibly the word Kurbas, a by-form of Korybas, was
connected. One point in his description is of special interest:
1 Ant. Rom. τι. 70, 71 καί εἰσιν οἱ Σάλιοι κατὰ γοῦν τὴν ἐμὴν γνώμην Ἑλληνικῷ
μεθερμηνευθέντες ὀνόματι Κουρῆτες, ὑφ᾽ ἡμῶν μὲν ἐπὶ τῆς ἡλικίας οὕτως ὠνομασμένοι παρὰ
τοὺς κούρους, ὑπὸ δὲ Ρωμαίων ἐπὶ τῆς συντόνου κινήσεως. τὸ γὰρ ἐξάλλεσθαί τε καὶ
πηδᾶν σαλῖρε ὑπ᾽ αὐτῶν λέγεται. ;
2 Loc. cit. καὶ τὰς καλουμένας ἀπίκας ἐπικείμενοι ταῖς κεφαλαῖς, πίλους ὑψηλοὺς εἰς
σχῆμα συναγομένους κωνοειδές, ἃς “Ελληνες προσαγορεύουσι κυρβασίας.
3. Among savages a conical cap of striking appearance is a frequent element in
the disguise of the initiator or medicine-man. See Schurtz, Altersklassen und —
Mannerbiinde, 1902, pp. 336, 370, 384, and L. v. Schroeder, Mimus und Mysterium, ὦ
p. 476, and Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 78. ‘
VI] . The Salii and the Kouretes 195
each man, he says, is girt with a sword, and in his right hand
wields ‘a spear or a staff or something of that sort’, in his left is
a Thracian shield. We think of the Salii as clashing their swords
on their shields, but the Salii seen by Denys seem to have had
some implement as to the exact nature of which Denys is uncer-
tain.
The design in Fig. 49 from a relief found at Anagni? may throw
some light on this uncertainty. The Salii are shown in long
priestly robes with shields in their left hands. In their right is
not, as we should expect, a spear or a sword, but an unmistakable
drumstick. Some such implements Denys must have seen. It
looks back to the old days when the shield was not of metal but
of skin. Euripides*, speaking of Crete, says that there the triple-
crested Korybantes found for Dionysos and his Bacchants their
‘skin-stretched orb.’ In a word timbrel and shield were one and
the same, a skin stretched on a circular or oval frame and played
on with a drumstick ; the gear of Sali and Korybantes alike was,
to begin with, musical as well as military.
The helmets worn by the Salii on the relief may also be noted.
They are not of the form we should expect as representing the
canonical apex. They have three projections, and in this respect
recall the ‘triple-crested’ Korybants of Euripides. Possibly the
central knob may have been originally of greater length and
prominence and may have given its name to the apex. The shields
carried on the Anagni relief are slightly oblong but not indented.
1 Loc. cit. παρέζωσται δ᾽ ἕκαστος αὐτῶν ξίφος καὶ TH μὲν δεξιᾷ χειρὶ λόγχην ἢ ῥάβδον
9 τι τοιοῦθ᾽ ἕτερον κρατεῖ, τῇ δ᾽ εὐωνύμῳ κατέχει πέλτην Θρᾳκίαν.
2 Annali d. Inst. 1869, Tay. d’ agg. E. Benndorf, who publishes the relief, does
not say where it now is. That the relief should have been found at Anagni (the
ancient Anagnia) is a fact of singular interest. Marcus Aurelius, in going through
Anagnia on his way to his Signian villa writes thus to Fronto (Frontonis et Aurelii
Epistulae, Naber 1867, pp. 66, 67):
Priusquam ad villam venimus Anagniam devertimus mille fere passus a via.
Deinde id oppidum anticum vidimus, minutulum quidem sed multas res in se
antiquas habet, aedes sanctasque caerimonias supra modum. Nullus angulus fuit,
ubi delubrum aut fanum aut templum non sit. Praeterea multi libri linitei, quod
ad sacra adtinet. Deinde in porta cum eximus ibi scriptum erat bifariam sic:
flamen sume samentum. Rogavi aliquem ex popularibus quid illum verbum esset?
Ait lingua hernica pelliculam de hostia quam in apicem suum flamen cum in
urbem introeat inponit.
I owe this interesting reference to the kindness of Mr Spenser Farquharson.
> Bacch, 123
ἔνθα τρικόρυθες ἄντροις
βυρσότονον κύκλωμα τόδε
μοι Ἱζορύβαντες ηὗρον.
13—2
190 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [ CH.
The regular indented ‘Mycenaean’ shape is well seen on an
Etruscan gem in the Museum at Florence’.
The first month of the old Roman year, March, the month of
Mars, was given up to the activities of the Sali. We have no
evidence that they took any part in initiation ceremonies, but it is
worth noting that it was in the month of March (17th) at the
Liberalia, that, according to Ovid?, the Roman boy assumed the
toga. This assumption qualified him for military service and may
have been the last survival of a tribal initiation-ceremony. On
the first day of the year, the birthday of Mars, it was fabled, the
original ancile fell from heaven®, and through the greater part of
the month the holy shields were kept ‘moving.’ Of the various
and complex ceremonials conducted by the Salii we need only
examine two‘ which throw light, I think, on the Palaikastro
hymn :—
(a) the Mamuralia (March 14).
(b) the festival of Anna Perenna (March 15).
Both have substantially the same content.
(a) Ovid® asks
Quis mihi nunc dicat, quare caelestia Martis
Arma ferant Salii, Mamuriumque canant ?
The question has been long ago answered by Mannhardt,
Usener, and Dr Frazer®. Ovid will have it that Mamurius is
1 See Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, p. 455, Fig. 83. Denys states that the
shield carried on the left arm was a Thracian pelta. Prof. Ridgeway concludes
(op. cit. p. 465) that it was the shield of the true Thracians, the kindred of the
Mycenaean people, and that it survived in the rites of the Kouretes. According to
Clement (Strom. 1. 16 sub init.) the pelta was invented by the Illyrians, who, if
Prof. Ridgeway is right, belong to the primitive Aegean stock. A curious double
ancile appears on a denarius of P. Licinius Stolo, figured by Mr W. Warde Fowler,
Roman Festivals, p. 350. On the same coin the apex is very clearly shown.
2 Ovid, Fasti, 11. 771
Restat ut inveniam quare toga libera detur
Lucifero pueris, candide Bacche, tuo.
We should like of course to have definite evidence that rites of tribal initiation
were practised among the Greeks and Romans in the spring, but such evidence
is not forthcoming. As regards the Mithraic mysteries we are better informed.
Ἐς Cumont, Monuments figurés relatifs aux mystéres de Mithras, τ. p. 336, writes:
‘Les initiations avaient lieu de préférence vers le début du printemps en mars
et en avril.’
3 Ovid, Fasti, 11. 259—273,
4 The sources for both festivals are fully given in Roscher’s Lezicon, 5.0. Mars,
and in Mr Warde Fowler’s Roman Festivals, pp. 44—54.
5 Fasti, 11. 259.
6 Mannhardt, Bawmkultus, 266, 297; Usener, Italische Mythen in Rhein. Mus.
1875, p. 183; Frazer, Golden Bough’, vol. 1. pp. 122 ff.
v1] Mamurius and Anna Perenna 197
commemorated because he was the skilful smith who made the
eleven counterfeit ancilia, but Lydus? lets out the truth. On
March 14, the day before the first full moon of the new year, a man
dressed in goat-skins was led in procession through the streets of
Rome, beaten with long white rods, and driven out of the city.
His name was, Lydus says, Mamurius, and Mamurius we know
was also called Veturius?. He is the old Year, the Old Mars, the
Death, Winter, driven out before the incoming of the New Mars,
the spring®. mt
(b) Not less transparent as a year-god is Anna Perenna, ‘ year-in
year-out. The details of her festival have no special significance.
Ovid‘ describes it as a rude drinking bout of the plebs; men and
women revelled together, some in the open Campus Martius, others
in rough huts made of stakes and branches; they sang and danced
and prayed for as many years of life as they could drink cups of
wine. It was just an ordinary New Year’s festival. Lydus® gives
us the gist of it, though he does not mention Anna Perenna. On
the Ides of March he says there were public prayers that the
coming year might be healthy. The name Anna Perenna speaks
for itself. Obviously Anna is the year, presumably the New Year.
Perenna‘, Peranna is the year just passed through, the Old Year—
perannare is ‘to live the year through.’ Anna Perenna was not two
divinities, but as it were a Janus with two faces, one looking back,
one forward, Prorsa, Postverta. This comes out very clearly in a
story told by Ovid’, a story that may reflect a bit of rustic ritual.
Mars is about to marry; the wedding-day is come, he seeks his
bride. Instead he finds old Anna (Anna Perenna) who has veiled
her face and counterfeits the bride’. The young Year-god will wed
1 De Mens. tv. 49 ἤγετο δὲ καὶ ἄνθρωπος περιβεβλημένος δοραῖς, καὶ τοῦτον ἔπαιον
ῥάβδοις λεπταῖς ἐπιμήκεσι Μαμούριον αὐτὸν καλοῦντες.
2 The reduplicated form Marmar occurs in the Carmen Arvale and from it
Mamurius is probably formed, see Wald, Lat. Etym. Worterbuch, s.v. For Veturius
as the old year cf. Gk. féros.
3 Roscher, Lexicon, s.v. Mars, pp. 283—99.
4 Fasti, 111. 523 ff.
5 De Mens. iv. 49 καὶ εὐχαὶ δημόσιαι ὑπὲρ τοῦ ὑγιεινὸν γενέσθαι τὸν ἐνιαυτόν.
6 Varro, Sat. Menipp. p. 506 te Anna ac Peranna, and Macrob. 1. 12. 6
publice et privatim ad Annam Perennam sacrificatum itur ut annare et perannare
commode liceat.
7 Fasti, ut. 695. Ovid recounts the story as aetiological,
Inde ioci veteres obscenaque dicta canuntur.
8 For the whole subject of May Brides and the False Bride see Miss G. M.
Godden, Folk-Lore, tv. 1893, pp. 142 ff.
198 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festiwal, etc. [ OH.
the young Year-goddess, Anna; the old Year-goddess he cannot
and will not wed. Anna Perenna is the feminine equivalent of —
Mamurius Veturius.
Ovid? piles up conjectures as to who and what Anna was. Out
of his rubbish heap we may pick up one priceless jewel.
Sunt quibus haec Luna est, quia mensibus impleat annum :
Pars Themin, Inachiam pars putat esse bovem.
Luna, Themis (order), and the Inachian cow are of course all
one and the same, the Moon as the Measurer and as the Horned
Wanderer through the sky. Man measures time, we have seen,
“8 AG
uP
first by recurrent days and nights, then by recurrent Moons, then
by the circle of the Sun’s year and its seasous; finally he tries to
adjust his Sun Year to twelve Moon-months*. The original ancile
or moon-shield fell from heaven into the palace of Numa; that
was the one sacred month in the spring in which so many ancient
festivals were concentrated. When the solar year came in, eleven
Moon-shields are made by the smith Mamurius to counterfeit the
7 |
1 Ovid, Fasti, m1. 657. 7,
2 The development among primitive peoples from weather gods (e.g. thunder) to ©
moon and sun gods, a sequence which appears to be regular, is well explained by 4
E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America, vol. τ. pp. 491 ff., and see —
infra, chapter 1x.
γι] Mars as Year-God 199
one actual Moon-month. Broadly speaking, Anna, though she
cannot be said to be the Moon, stands for the Moon-Year, Mamurius
for the Sun-Year, and Anna is the earlier figure of the two.
This idea of Anna and Mamurius as Moon-Year and Sun-Year
throws light on a curious Etruscan monument that has hitherto
_ baffled explanation. In Fig. 50 we have a portion of the design
from a Praenestine cista' now in the Berlin Museum. Menerva
holds a young boy over a vessel full of flaming fire; she seems to
be anointing his lips. The boy is armed with spear and shield,
and his name is inscribed Mars: the scene is one of triumph, for
over Menerva floats a small winged Victory holding a taenia. The
scene is one of great solemnity and significance, for on the
rest of the design, not figured here, we have an influential assembly
of gods, Juno, Jovos, Mercuris, Hercle, Apolo, Leiber.
Mars is, of course, the new fighting-season which opens in
spring, as well as the new agricultural season. But if Mars were
only the War-God, what sense is there in this baptism of fire ?
For the young Sun what could be more significant? At the
Sun-festivals of the solstice’ to-day, to feed the sun and kindle
him anew and speed his going, the Johannisfeuer is lighted year
by year and the blazing wheel rolled down the hill.
The band of honeysuckle ornament that runs round the cista
is oddly broken : just at the point above the young Sun-god’s head
is the figure of the triple Cerberus. A strange apparition; but he
ceases to be irrelevant when we remember that Hecate the Moon,
to whom dogs were offered* at the crossways, was once a three-
headed dog herself. ;
From the Salii we have learnt that the function of the armed
dancers of Rome was to drive out the Old Year, the Old Mars,
and bring in the New. Mars as a Year-God, like the Greek Ares,
and indeed like almost every other male God, took on aspects
of the Sun, Anna Perenna of the Moon. Can we trace in the
Kouretes any like function ?
1 Mon. dell Inst. 1x. Tav. 58. See Marx, Hin neuer Ares Mythus, A.Z. xt.
1885, p. 169.
* H. Gaidoz, Le Dieu Gaulois du Soleil et le Symbolisme de la Roue, Rey. Arch.
1884, 32 ff.
3. Maurice Blomfield, Cerberus the Dog of Hades, 1905. Cerberus, gabalas, the
heavenly dog of the Veda, was later translated to Hades. Cf. the fate of Ixion. For
Hekate as dog cf. Porph. de Abstin. m1. 17 ἡ δ᾽ ‘Exdrn ταῦρος, κύων, λέαινα.
200 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. εὖ
The design in Fig. 51! is from a red-figured krater in the
Louvre: Helios is rising from the sea. By an odd conjunction he
has, to bear him on his way, both boat and quadriga. His horses
are guided by Pan holding a quadruple torch. To the night hand
stands a dancing Korybant or Koures, with shield and. uplifted
sword. In the chariot with Helios, stands the horned Selene:
clearly the vase-painter recognised that one function of the
Koures was to clash his shield at the rising of the Sun, and, it
would seem, at the marriage of the Sun and Moon.
The Moon was married to the Sun? and in patriarchal fashion
sank into wifely subjection. As soon as it was understood that
the Sun was the source of the Seasons, the Food-bringers, and
that increase came from his light and heat, not from the waxing
and waning of the Moon, he rose to complete and permanent
supremacy. In the vase-painting* in Fig. 52 we see the Sun
figured as greatest Kouros; the laurel spray reminds us that
Helios is Apollo in the making. His uprising is greeted by a
dance of Satyrs, those daimones of fertility who were, as Strabo‘
reminds us, own brothers to the Kouretes.
1 Annali d. Inst. 1852, Pl. F. 3. Nonnus also makes the Korybantes dance at
Knossos at dawn, Dionysiaka, 361
ἤδη δ᾽ ἔκλαγεν ὄρνις ἑώιος ἠέρα τέμνων,
καὶ στίχες εὐπήληκες ἐρημονόμων Κορυβάντων
Κνώσσιον ἐκρούσαντο σακέσπαλον ἅλμα χορείης
ἴχνεσι μετρητοῖσιν.
2 The marriage of Sun and Moon and its religious content in relation to the
Eniautos will be discussed in the next chapter, p. 227.
3 KE. Gerhard Ueber die Lichtgottheiten auf Kunstdenkmédlern 1840. The vase,
a krater, is now in the Louvre Museum.
4+ Supra, p. 25.
γι] Helios, Kouretes and Satyrs 201
The custom of greeting the rising sun with dances and the
clash of instruments is world-wide. Lucian! says that the Indians,
when they rise at dawn, worship Helios, and he adds that they do
not, like the Greeks, account their devotion complete when they
have kissed their hands, but they stand facing the east and
greet Helios by dancing, assuming certain attitudes in silence
-and imitating the dance of the god. The intent is obviously
magical; man dances to reinforce his own emotion and activity ;
so does the sun; and man’s dance has power to reinforce the
strength of the rising sun. In Germany, Scandinavia, and England
the belief is still current that on Easter Morning the sun dances
and leaps three times for joy?» The Dawn with the Greeks had
her dancing places*. In the light of such representations it is not
surprising that the Korybantes should be called the children of
Helios‘, and we understand why Julian® says ‘Great Helios who is
enthroned with the Mother is Korybas,’ and again, ‘the Mother of
the gods allowed this minion of hers to leap about, that he might
resemble the sunbeams.’ Rites often die down into children’s
1 De Salt. 17 . «ἀλλ᾽ ἐκεῖνοι πρὸς τὴν ἀνατολὴν στάντες ὀρχήσει τὸν Ἡλιον
ἀσπάζονται σχηματίζοντες ἑαυτοὺς σιωπῇ καὶ μιμούμενοι τὴν χορείαν τοῦ θεοῦ.
2 See L. v. Schroeder, Mimus und Mysterium, p. 45, and Usener, Pasparios in
Rhein. Mus. 1894, p. 464.
* Od. χιι. 4
ὅθι τ᾽ ᾿Ηοῦς ἠριγενείης
͵ " ᾽ . ᾿ ys? f
οἰκία καὶ χοροί εἰσι καὶ ἀντολαὶ ᾿Ηελίοιο.
4 Strabo, 202 ὡς εἶεν Κορύβαντες δαίμονές τινες ᾿Αθηνᾶς καὶ Ἡλίου παῖδες.
ὅ Or. v. 167 Κορύβας ὁ μέγας ἥλιος ὁ σύνθρονος τῇ Μητρί, and 168.
202 The Dithyramb, Spring- Festival, ete. [CH.
games, and Pollux? tells us that there was a game called ‘Shine
out, Sun, in which children made a din when a cloud covered the
sun.
With the Salii in our minds leaping in March, the first month
of the New Year, with the Kouretes clashing their shields and
dancing over the child they had reared to be a Kouros for the
Year-Feast (εἰς ἐνεαυτόν), we come back to a clearer understanding
of the Dithyramb; we may even hazard a conjecture as to the
etymology of the word. But first, one point remains to be
established. The Dithyramb, like the Hymn of the Kouretes,
is not only a song of human rebirth, it is the song of the
rebirth of all nature, all living things®; it is a Spring Song
‘for the Year-Feast*.’
This is definitely stated in the dithyrambic Paean‘* to Dionysos
1 tx. 123 ‘H δὲ ἔξεχ᾽ ὦ φίλ᾽ ἥλιε παιδιά, κρότον ἔχει τῶν παιδίων σὺν τῷ ἐπιβοή-
ματι τούτῳ, ὁπόταν νέφος ἐπιδράμῃ τὸν θεόν" ὅθεν καὶ Στράττις ἐν Φοινίσσαις,
εἶθ᾽ ἥλιος μὲν πείθεται τοῖς παιδίοις,
ὅταν λέγωσιν, ἔξεχ᾽, ὦ φίλ᾽ ἥλιε.
2 It is curious how this notion, that on the resurrection or Epiphany of a god
depends the fertility of the year, lasts on in the mind of the peasant to-day.
Mr Lawson in his interesting book on Modern Greek Folklore (p. 573) tells us that
a stranger, happening to be in a village in Euboea during Holy Week, noticed the
general depression of the villagers. On Easter Eve he asked an old woman why she
was so gloomy, and she at once answered, ‘Of course I am anxious, for if Christ
does not rise to-morrow, we shall have no corn this year.’ Her words come to us
with a shock as of profanity, but a worshipper of the μέγιστος Κοῦρος would have
felt them to be deeply, integrally religious.
3 It is worth noting that even now to the farmer a good year means a good
harvest; Time’s content is set for a period of time, with which may be compared
the popular use of the German Jahr. Hither spring or autumn as season of fruits
often stands for the whole year; thus in the Lex Bajuvariorum dates are reckoned by
autumni. Our word ‘year’ is etymologically the same as the Greek wpa the spring.
Much interesting material on this question is collected by Schrader Reallexicon s.v.
‘Jahr und Jahreszeiten.’
3. Ἡ. Weil, Bull. de Corr. Hell. xtx. p. 401. Dr Weil reads
[Acip’ ἄνα Διθ]ύραμβε, Baxx’,
e[vle θυρσῆ]ρες, Bpat-
τά, Βρόμι(ε), ἠρινα[ῖς ἱκοῦ
ταῖσδ(ε) ἱεραῖς ἐν ὥραις.
Evo? ὦ ἰὸ [Βάκχ᾽ ὦ ἰὲ Παιὰ]ν
[δ]ν Θήβαις ποτ᾽ ἐν εὐίαις
Ζηνὶ γείνατο] καλλίπαις Θνυώνα.
πάντες δ᾽ [ἀστέρες ἀγχ]όρευ-
σαν πάντες δὲ βροτοὶ χ[αρή-
σαν σαῖς] Βάκχιε γένναις.
In my Prolegomena pp. 417 and 439 I followed Dr Weil, but Dr Vollgraff
(Mnemosyne, 905, p. 379) has shown that in the second line BPAITA has been
misread for XAITA; he proposes to restore ε[ὔιε, ταῦρε κισσο]χαί-, but as the reading
is problematical—though I should welcome ‘7aipe’—I leave the 3rd line un-
translated.
vI| Dithyramb and Spring-Song 203
recently discovered at Delphi. Like the Hymn of the Kouretes it
is an Invocation Hymn. It opens thus:
Come, O Dithyrambos, Bacchos, come
* % * * * %
Bromios come, and coming with thee bring
Holy hours of thine own holy spring.
νοῦ, Bacchus hail, Paean hail,
Whom, in sacred Thebes, the Mother fair
She, Thyone, once to Zeus did bear.
All the stars danced for joy. Mirth
Of mortals hailed thee, Bacchos, at thy birth.
The new-born god is Dithyrambos, born at the resurrection of
earth in the springtime.
The Delphic Paean is later in sentiment than the Hymn of
the Kouretes. We have the old matriarchal divine pair, the
Mother and the Child, but Thyone the mother is married to Zeus.
Next and most beautiful of the Spring Dithyrambs left us is
Pindar’s fragment, written to be sung at Athens, in the agora in
or near to the most ancient sanctuary of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes
and like the Delphic Paean it celebrates, as though they were
one and the same, the coming of spring, the birth of the child
Bromios.
Look upon the dance, Olympians, send us the grace of Victory, ye gods,
who come to the heart of our city where many feet are treading and incense
steams : in sacred Athens come to the Market-place, by every art enriched
and of bless¢d name. Take your portion of garlands pansy-twined, libations
poured from the culling of spring, and look upon me as, starting from Zeus,
I set forth upon my song with rejoicing.
Come hither to the god with ivy bound ; Bromios we mortals name Him
and Him of the mighty Voice. I come to dance and sing, the child of a father
most high and a woman of Cadmus’ race. The clear signs of his Fulfilment
are not hidden, whensoever the chamber of the purple-robed Hours is opened
and nectarous flowers lead in the fragrant Spring. Then, then, are flung over
the immortal Earth lovely petals of pansies, and roses are amid our hair; and
voices of song are loud among the pipes, the dancing-floors are loud with the
calling of crownéd Semele},
To resume: the Dithyramb, we have seen, is a Birth-Song, a
δρώμενον giving rise to the divine figures of Mother, Full-grown
Son and Child; it is a spring-song of magical fertility for the
new year; it is a group-song, a κύκλιος χόρος, later sung by a
thiasos, a song of those who leap and dance rhythmically
together.
1 Pindar, Dithyramb 75. The ‘calling of crownéd Semele’ will be further dis-
cussed in chapter rx.
204 The Dithyramb, δργίηρ- Festival, ete. [ CH.
The word Dithyramb now speaks for itself. The first syllable
Ai for Avi is from the root that gives us Ζεύς and Διός. The
termination ἄμβος is probably the same as that in tapBos,
σήραμβος. We are left with the syllable θυρ, which has always”
been the crux. But the difficulty disappears if we remember
that, as Hoffmann has pointed out, the northern peoples of Greece
tend, under certain conditions, to substitute for 6, which gives
us for Δι-θύρταμβος At-Gop-ayBos—Zeus-leap-song, the song
that makes Zeus leap or beget’. Our Hymn of the Kouretes
is the Di-thor-amb’.
We seem to have left the Bull far behind, for the Delphic
Paean and Pindar’s Dithyramb and even our Hymn of the
Kouretes know nothing of the bull-sacrifice ; they tell only of the
human child, not the theriomorph. Only on the sarcophagos do
we get the bull-sacrifice and the Spring δρώμενον together. But
Pindar knew that the Dithyramb was the song of the Bull as well
as of the Child and the Spring. In the x1mth Olympian? he is
chanting the praises of Corinth, home of the Dithyramb, Corinth,
the home of splendid youths (ἀγλαόκουρον), Corinth, where dwelt
as in ancient Crete, the Horae, Eunomia and Dike and Eirene,
givers of Wealth, golden daughters of Themis. These golden
Horae had brought to Corinth from of old subtleties of invention ;
for ‘whence, asks Pindar, in words that are all but untranslat-
able,
“Whence did appear the Charites of Dionysos
With the Bull-driving Dithyramb?’
1 I owe this brilliant suggestion to Mr A. B. Cook and publish it by his kind
permission. Previous attempted derivations will be found in Pauly-Wissowa, s. v.
Dithyramb. To these may be added the recent Studies in Greek Noun-Formation
by E. H. Sturtevant in Classical Philology, Chicago, 1910, v. p. 329. For the
interchange of ὕ and o see Hoffmann, Die Makedonen, p. 242.
* Mr Cook also kindly draws my attention to a gloss of Hesychius which presents a
very instructive parallel: Aecrdrupos* Θεὸς mapa [Σ]τυμφαίοις. This important note
preserves the name of ‘ Zeus the Father’ as used in the district of Mt Stymphe, not
far from Dodona on the frontier of Epirus, Macedonia and Thessaly. It furnishes
a precise parallel both for the compound Az and for the weakening of ὅ into ὕ, in
short for both the disputable elements in Διθύραμβος. Moreover—a still more
interesting point—the meaning as well as the form is parallel: Zeus the Father,
Zeus the begetter, cf. Asch. Eum. 663 τίκτει δ᾽ ὁ θρῴσκων. As initiated Kouros the
young god has come to maturity of his functions.
3 y. 16 πολλὰ δ᾽ ἐν καρδίαις ἀνδρῶν ἔβαλον
“Qpat πολυάνθεμοι ἀρ-
χαῖα σοφίσματα" πᾶν δ᾽ εὑρόντος ἔργον.
ταὶ Διωνύσου πόθεν ἐξέφανεν 4
σὺν βοηλάτᾳ Χάριτες διθυράμβῳ; ΐ
γι] The Bull-driving Dithyramb 205
Why is the Dithyramb Bull-driving? Why does the Bull-
driving Dithyramb come with the Charites ?
Pindar no doubt was thinking of the new Graces of tragedy ;
but behind them come the figures of the older Charites, the
Givers of all Increase, the Horae who bring back the god in the
Spring, be he Bull or human Kouros. In our oldest Dithyramb
they bring him as a Bull.
In his XxXxXvith Greek Question Plutarch asks, ‘Why do the
women of Elis summon Dionysos in their hymns to be present
with them with his bull-foot ?? Happily Plutarch preserves for us
the very words of the little early ritual hymn—
In Springtime, O Dionysos,
To thy holy temple come,
To Elis with thy Graces,
Rushing with thy bull-foot, come,
Noble Bull, Noble Bull?.
ies 59.
Plutarch? tries as usual to answer his own question and at
last half succeeds. ‘Is it, he suggests, ‘that some entitle the god
as born of a bull and as a bull himself,...... or 1s it that many hold
that the god is the beginner of sowing and ploughing?’ We have
seen how at Magnesia the holy Bull was the beginner (apynyos)
of ploughing and sowing.
z ᾿Ελθεῖν 7p ὦ Διόνυσε
᾿Αλείων ἐς ναὸν
ἁγνὸν σὺν χαρίτεσσιν,
ἐς ναὸν τῷ βοέῳ ποδὶ θύων.
ἤΛξιε ταῦρε, ἄξιε ταῦρε.
I adopt in the first line Mr A. B. Cook’s simple and convincing emendation
np for ἥρω. The vocative ἥρω does not exist. Schneidewin emends ἥρως.
Bergk (ed. 4) keeps ἥρω, observing ‘non ausus sum ἥρως substituere.’ For elision of
the dative see Monro, Homeric Grammar, ed. 2, 88. 376.
2 op. cit. note 1 πότερον ὅτι καὶ βουγενῆ προσαγορεύουσι καὶ ταῦρον ἔνιοι τὸν θεόν;
...9) ὅτι καὶ ἀρότρου καὶ σπόρου πολλοὶ τὸν θεὸν ἀρχηγὸν γεγονέναι νομίζουσι.
200 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [σ
On a cameo in the Hermitage at St Petersburg in Fig. 531
we see the ‘noble Bull’ rushing ‘with his bull-foot’ and he 1
coming ‘with the Charites’: they are perched, a group of three,
oddly enough between his horns. Above the holy Bull are the
Pleiades’; their rising twenty-seven days after the vernal equinox
was the signal in Greece for the early harvest. The women
of Elis ‘summon’ the Bull, sing to him, praise him; but after all
if you want a Bull to come to his holy temple, it is no use
standing and ‘summoning’ him, you must drive him, drive him
with a ‘Bull-driving Dithyramb.’
From the leaders of the Dithyramb Aristotle has told us arose
tragedy, the Goat-Song. Yet the Dithyramb is a song of Bull-
driving. The difficulty is not so great as it seems. Any young
full-grown creature can be the animal form of the Kouros, can be
sacrificed, sanctified, divinized, and become the Agathos Daimon,
the ‘vegetation spirit, the luck of the year. All over Europe we
find, as Dr Frazer* has abundantly shown, goats, pigs, horses,
even cats can play the part. Best of all perhaps is a bear, because
he is strongest; this the Athenian maidens remembered in their
Bear-Service (ἀρκτεία). But bears, alas! retreat before advancing
civilization. Almost equally good is a bull, if you can afford him.
But in Attica, as Alciphron has told us (p. 173), a bull was too
expensive. A goat is not a bad life-spirit, as anyone will quickly
discover who tries to turn him back against his will. Crete, the
coast-land of Asia Minor, and Thrace, as we know from their coins,
were bull-lands with abundant pastures. Attica, stony Attica
is a goat-land. If you go to Athens to-day, your morning coffe
is ruined because, even in the capital, it is hard to get a drop o
cow's milk. Instead you have, as an abundant and delicious food
sour goat’s milk, γιαοῦρτι.
On the archaic patera in Fig. 544 in the British Museum*® w
1 Baumeister, Denkmiler, Fig. 413, p. 377.
2 For the Pleiades and their importance in the farmer’s year cf. Hesiod 615 an
619. See A. W. Mair’s Hesiod, Poems and Fragments, 1908, Addenda, p. 136. Prof.
Mair quotes the scholiast on the Phaenomena of Aratos, 264 ff., who says the Pleiades
rise with the sun at dawn when he is in Taurus, which with the Romans is in April.
The bull on the gem may have some reference to the constellation Taurus.
3 The Golden Bough”, τι. 261—269. For the Bear-Service see my Myth. a
Mon. of Ancient Athens, p. 410.
4 Myth. and Mon. of Ancient Athens, p. 289, Fig. 30.
5 Cat. B, 80, published by C. H. Smith, J.H.S.1. Pl. 7, p. 202. See also Class
Rev. τ. (1887), p. 315.
v1] Dithyramb and Tragoedia 207
see depicted two scenes: one to the left the sacrifice of an ox, a
Bouphonia, the other to the right a festival that ceutres round
a goat, which perhaps we may venture to associate with a tragoedia.
Some of the figures round the goat hold wreaths, and it may be
that the splendid animal in the midst of them is the tragic prize.
Behind the goat-scene, and evidently part of it, is a primitive
mule-car, This recalls Thespis and his cart, and the canonical
jests ‘from the cart. The scene to the left is in honour of
Athena. She and her great snake and her holy bird await the
sacrificial procession. A flute-player leads the Bull-driving Dithy-
ramb. The Bull is led or rather driven by a cord attached to one of
his hind legs ; the other men hold wreaths, a staff, and an oinochoé.
On another and much later red-figured vase, in the Naples
Museum}, reproduced in Fig. 55%, we have another scene of
goat-sacrifice. This time the god Dionysos himself is present.
His stiff xoanon stands close to the altar and table at which
1 Heydemann, Cat. 2411.
* Mon. dell’ Inst. νι. 37. See also Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, v. p. 256.
208 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, ete. [ CH.
the offerings are to be made. Α priestess is about to slay a very
lively looking goat. About are dancing Maenads with their
timbrels. But though a goat is sacrificed, the old bull-service is
not forgotten. The altar is decorated with a bowkranion, the holy —
filleted head of a bull.
. Toresume. In Crete we have the worship of the Mother and
the Child, the Kouros; without the Child the worship of the
Mother is not; we have also the theriomorph, the holy Bull, the
‘horns of consecration’; we cease to wonder that the Cretan
Fie, 5d.
palace is full of bulls and horns, we cease to wonder at the story
of Pasiphae and the Minotaur. In Asia Minor, in Phrygia, the
same conjunction, the Mother and the Child and the Bull; in
Thrace, in Macedon, in Delphi, in Thracianized Thebes again
the same. It was this religion of the Mother and the holy Bull-
Child and the spring δρώμενον that came down afresh, resurging ἢ
from Macedon to startle and enthrall civilized, Olympianized, ἢ
patriarchalized, intellectualized Athens, that Athens which, cen- ἢ
turies before, under the sea-supremacy of Minos, had had her
legend of the Cretan Bull, her Cretan ritual of the Bouphonia.
Matriarchy died out; Athena was ‘all for the father’; hence ἢ
the scandal caused by the Bacchants. But the Bull and ἐπ
spring δρώμενον went on, to be the seed of the drama.
VI]. The Kouros and the Dionysia 209
The most ancient Dionysia at Athens were, Thucydides? tells
us, in the month Anthesterion, the month of the rising of the
dead and the blossoming of flowers. At the Anthesteria were
dramatic contests known as Pot Contests?, but we know of no
Dithyramb, and no Bull-sacrifice. On the eve of the great Dionysiac
festival, the Epheboi of Athens, the Kouroi, brought the image of
Dionysos by torch-light into the theatre. They brought him by
night—for. was he not νυκτέλιος, νυκτίπολος ? They brought their
Greatest Kouros in human shape, an image such as we have seen
on the vase, but, in the same procession, they brought their
god, their Kouros, in animal shape—a splendid bull. Surely
as they went they sang their Bull-driving Dithyramb.
It was expressly ordained, an inscription® testifies to it, that
this bull should be ‘worthy of the god. Worthy of the god
forsooth! Why, he was the god.
” a ” a
ἄξιε ταῦρε, ἄξιε Tavpe.
It will not have escaped the reader’s attention that one, and
perhaps the most important, portion of the scene on the sarcophagos
has been left undescribed. To the extreme right (Fig. 31, p. 161) is
a small building variously interpreted as tomb or sanctuary; it is
richly decorated. In front of it stands the closely draped figure
of a youth, by his side a tree, and in front of him a stepped altar.
To him approach three youths bearing offerings. The foremost
brings a moon-shaped boat, the two last bring, not the blood of the
dead bull, but young bull-calves, leaping and prancing; the some-
what irrelevant pose of the calves reminds us of the bull on the
fresco of Tiryns. All three youths wear strange beast-skin robes‘
1 τι. 15 καὶ τὸ ἐν Λίμναις Διονύσου (ᾧ τὰ ἀρχαιότερα Διονύσια τῇ δωδεκάτῃ ποιεῖται
Dev μηνὶ ᾿Ανθεστηριῶνι). For the whole question of the various Dionysia see my
Primitive Athens, p. 85. The significance of the Anthesteria in relation to the
Dithyramb and the drama will be further discussed in chapter vu.
2 Schol. ad Ar. Ran. 218° ἤγοντο ἀγῶνες αὐτόθι of χυτρινοὶ καλούμενοι. See
Primitive Athens, p. 87, note 6.
ὃ Ἔφημ. 4098, 1. 11 εἰσήγαγον δὲ καὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ἀπὸ τῆς ἐσχάρας εἰς τὸ θέατρόν
μετὰ φωτὸς καὶ ἔπεμψαν τοῖς Διονυσίοις ταῦρον ἄξιον τοῦ θεοῦ, ὃν καὶ ἔθυσαν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τῇ
πομπῇ.
᾿ 4 Signor Paribeni has shown (op. cit.) that these celebrants, male and female,
wearing beast robes, are ‘girded with sackcloth.’ Our word ‘sackcloth’ is the
‘Hebrew pe, Assyrian sakku, Coptic sok, which gave the Greeks their σάκκος. It
means simply rough, hairy beast-skin. In the familiar Bible passages, it will be
noted that when sackcloth is worn it is not a complete dress, it is an extended
H. 14
210 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, etc. [ CH.
like that of the woman celebrant, but their procession seems to
have nothing to do with hers, for they are turned back to back.
Two interpretations of thescene have been offered. Dr Petersen’,
whose theory as to the meaning I have, in the main, followed, —
holds that the building to the right 1s a sanctuary, the figure in
front of it a god, Dionysos, closely draped because phallic.
Dionysos is here as god of fertility, worshipped in spring ; the
tree beside him marks one of his aspects, as Dendrites. A more
widely current interpretation, offered by the first publisher
of the sarcophagos, Sig. Paribeni?, is that the building is a
tomb, the figure in front a dead man, a hero. The boat and
calves are offerings to the dead man, the boat in Egyptian fashion
provided for his journey, the young bulls to revive his life and —
strength.
We are now brought face to face with an all-important
question, Is the spring δρώμενον on the sarcophagos conceived as
celebrated in honour of, ἸΏ relation to, a god or a mortal, Dionysos
or a dead hero? Further, since, as we have seen, drama and
δρώμενον are closely connected, this question leads straight on to
another problem, ‘ Does Greek drama arise from the worship of
Dionysos, or, as has been recently maintained, from the worship of |
the dead?’ This question is not a mere curiosity of literary
history, still less is its importance to be measured by the
heat of a passing controversy. The answer lies, I believe,
deep down in the very nature of religion, and in that peculiar
quality of the Greek mind on which the differentiation οἱ
their religion from that of other peoples depended. ‘The
solution can only be attempted after a very careful analysis
of the meaning of the terms employed and especially the
term hero.
loin-cloth, girt on as in the case of the celebrants on the sarcophagos, e.8- Isaiah iil
24, describing the mourning of Zion, says, ἡ Instead of well set hair there shall b
baldness, and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth,’ and again in Psalu
KKK 12:
‘Thou hast turned my heaviness into joy:
Thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness.’
The wearing of sackcloth was in all likelihood originally not merely a sign ¢
mourning, but a means of magical identification with the holy, sacrificed beas
1 Jahrb. d. Arch, Inst. 1909, Ῥ. 162.
2 Supra, p. 158, note 1.
γι] The Olympic Games 211
But, before that analysis is attempted, we have to consider
another series of δρώμενα, which present interesting analogies to
the δρώμενα of the Dithyramb. Like these they are magical and
recurrent, having for their object to influence and induce a good
year. Like them, they became closely intertwined with the
worship of heroes. We mean the contests (ἀγῶνες) celebrated
widely and periodically in Greece, and first and foremost those
contests which set the clock for Hellas—the great Olympic
Games.
14—2
CHAPTER VII.
THE ORIGIN OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES,
By F. M. CornForp.
More than one theory has recently been put forward by
English scholars, to account for the origin of the Olympic Games.
It has been felt that the naive view! which sees in these athletic
contests no more than the survival of an expedient, comparable
to the whisky-drinking at an Irish wake, for cheering up the
mourners after the funeral of a chieftain, clearly leaves something
to be desired; for it entails the rejection of the whole ancient
tradition recorded by Pindar, Pausanias, and others. Some part
of this tradition is, indeed, undoubtedly fictitious—the deliberate
invention of incoming peoples who wished to derive their claims
from a spurious antiquity. Nothing is easier than to detect these
genealogical forgeries; but when we have put them aside, there
remains much that 15 of a totally different character—the myths,
for instance, used by Pindar in his first Olympian. This residuum
calls for some explanation; and no theory which dismisses it
bodily as so much motiveless ‘poetic fiction’ can be accepted as
satisfactory.
The first hypothesis that claims serious consideration is the
current view, lately defended by Professor Ridgeway?. Games
were held, he says, in honour of heroes, beside the tomb, ‘in order
doubtless to please the spirit of the dead man within.’ ‘Athletic
feats, contests of horsemanship, and tragic dances are all part of
the same principle—the honouring and appeasing of the dead.’
1 Stated, e.g., by Christ (Pindari Carmina, 1896, p. xii ff.): ludos instituebant
ad animos recreandos atque post luctum exhilarandos...Aliam opportunitatem ludos —
faciendi faustus eventus belli obtulit. Namque et hominum animi libenter post
atroces belli casus laboresque reficiebantur, etc.
2 Origin of Tragedy, pp. 36, 38.
CH. vil] « The Funeral Theory". 213
It will be noted that this hypothesis marks an advance upon
what we call the naive view, in that it recognises the religious
character of the games. Athletic feats were performed, not solely
to cheer the spirits of the performers, but as an act of worship, to
‘honour and appease’ the spirit of a hero. The theory holds that
the performance originates in funeral games at the barrow of
a dead chief—in the case of Olympia, at the Pelopium—and is
perpetuated because dead warriors like to be remembered by their
survivors and can visit neglect with unpleasant consequences.
Hence it is prudent to honour and appease them.
Dr Frazer brings forward evidence in support of this theory
of the funeral origin. It consists chiefly? of instances of games
celebrated at funerals or founded in historic times, either in
Greece or elsewhere, to do honour to famous men, such as
Miltiades, Brasidas, Timoleon, who were worshipped as heroes
with annual sacrifices and games. Dr Frazer concludes that ‘we
cannot dismiss as improbable the tradition that the Olympic
Games and perhaps other great Greek games were instituted to
commemorate real men who once lived, died, and were buried on
the spot where the festivals were afterwards held.’
The objection to this apparently simple theory is stated by
Dr Frazer himself, and he feels its force so strongly that he
propounds another hypothesis of his own, which, as we shall later
see (p. 259), is actually inconsistent with the funeral origin. He
remarks that the funeral theory does not explain all the legends
connected with the origin of the Olympic Games. We might
almost go so far as to say that it does not explain any of the more
ancient legends. The earliest, indeed the only, authority cited by
Dr Frazer for the statement that the games were founded ‘in
honour of Pelops’ is Clement of Alexandria*. Our older author-
ities, Pindar, for instance, and the sources used by Pausanias, tell
a quite different story. About the death and obsequies of Pelops,
1 Part m1. of the Golden Bough, ed. 3, p. 92 ff.
2 The lashing of all the youths in the Peloponnese on the grave of Pelops till
the blood streamed down as a libation to the departed hero, to which Dr Frazer
adduces parallels from savage mourning customs, may perhaps be dismissed as an
unfortunate attempt of the Scholiast on Pindar Οἱ. 1. 146 to derive αἱμακουρίαι from
αἷμα κούρων.
3 Protrept. τι. 34, p. 29, ed. Potter. It should be noted that Clement is
advocating a theory of his own, that Games held for the dead, like oracles, were
“mysteries.”
214 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ CH.
which ought to be the centre and core of the Olympian tradition, —
that tradition is absolutely silent. Pindar’ dates the Games from
af <i,
the victory of Pelops over Oimomaos in the chariot-race, which —
ended in the death of Oinomaos, not of Pelops. The Elean in-
formants of Pausanias? had no tradition of any funeral games in
honour of that hero; they traced the origin of the festival to a
higher antiquity, and said that ‘Pelops celebrated the Games in
honour of Olympian Zeus in a grander way than all who had gone
before him.’
It is true that Pausanias says, ‘the Eleans honour Pelops as
much above all the heroes of Olympia as they honour Zeus above
the rest of the gods’; and that a black ram was annually sacrificed
at his precinct®. Pausanias calls the enclosure a ‘precinct’ (τέμε-
vos), not a grave’, The German excavators have dug down to the
neolithic stratum, and no trace of any real interment, except a
neolithic baby, has been found®. Thus, although the mound in this
precinct was, as early as Pindar’s time, regarded as the barrow of
Pelops, there is no material evidence that any real chieftain was
ever buried there at all. The case of Pelops at Olympia is, more-
over, exceptionally favourable to the funeral theory. The ‘dead’
who were connected with the festivals at the other three centres of
panhellenic games* were not chieftains whose warlike deeds could
be commemorated. At Nemea the ‘dead’ who was honoured was
Archemoros, an infant; at the Isthmus, Glaukos, a sea-daemon ;
at Pytho, a snake.
Further, whereas the games were held once in every four
years, the hero-sacrifices at the supposed tomb of Pelops were
annual, and we have no reason to believe that they were even held
at the same time of year.
It thus appears that the funeral theory, which would have the
whole Olympic festival originate in the obsequies of an actual
man called Pelops, is contradicted by the more ancient traditions
of Elis and unsupported by any monumental evidence. The field
is clear for an alternative theory which will take account of the
fact that the Games were believed to be older than the time of
1 Ol, 1. 2; Pans: ν. 9: ee
3 Paus. v. 13. 1. i
4 Cf. Schol. ad Pind. Οἱ, 1. 149, τινές φασι μὴ μνῆμα ἀλλ᾽ ἱερὸν τοῦ Πέλοπος.
5 Dorpfeld, Olympia in prihistorischer Zeit, Mitth. Ath, xxxiii. (1908) p. 185 ff. —
6 The four Great Games—Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian, seem to —
be distinguished from others more than once in Pindar by the epithet ἱεροί. ἢ
vit] Relation to Hero-worship 215
Pelops, who was associated with a reconstitution of them on a
grander scale, and will also interpret, instead of rejecting, the
legends about their origin.
The point of general and fundamental interest involved in this
controversy is the significance of hero-worship and its place in the
development of Greek religion—a question which, as has been
remarked already (p. 210), is vital also for the history of the
drama. For the drama and for the games alike the modern
Euhemerist lke Professor Ridgeway supposes a funeral origin.
In other words, wherever we find hero-worship or ceremonies more
or less connected with the commemoration of ‘heroes, we are to
suppose that they originated in memorial rites dating from the
actual obsequies of some man or men who died and were buried
(or at least had a cenotaph) on the spot. This view has led
Professor Ridgeway to take up an extreme position with regard to
the whole order of religious development.
‘A great principle,’ he says!, ‘is involved in this discussion, since the
_ evidence shows that whereas it is commonly held that the phenomena of
vegetation spirits and totemism are primary, they are rather to be regarded
as secondary phenomena arising from the great primary principle of the
belief in the existence of the soul after death, and the desirability of
honouring it.
‘Scholars had begun at the wrong end, taking as primary the phenomena
of vegetation spirits, totemism etc., which really were but secondary, arising
almost wholly from the primary element, the belief in the existence of the
soul after the death of the body. As prayer, religion proper, was made to the
dead, religion must be considered antecedent to magic, which is especially
connected with the secondary elements?.’
Of the extreme view stated in the last sentence the whole of
this book may be taken as a refutation. Prof. Ridgeway’s view
was instantly challenged by Dr Frazer’, who ‘contended that
totemism, the worship of the dead, and the phenomena of vegeta-
tion spirits should be considered as independent factors, and that
none of the three should be held to be the origin of the others.’
With this denial that ‘religion proper, identified with prayers
to the dead, is prior to magic—the immediate manipulation of
mana—our whole argument is, of course, in agreement. Where
1 Summary of a paper on The Origin of the Great Games of Greece, delivered
before the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, May 9, 1911.
* Report of the same paper in the Athenaeum, May 20, 1911.
3 Athenaeum, loe. cit.
216 The Origin of the Olympic Games [cH
we go beyond Dr Frazer’s pronouncement is in attempting to
show how the three factors he calls ‘independent’ are related to
one another.
What is now clear is that behind the theory of the funeral
origin of the Games and of the drama, as advocated by Professor
Ridgeway, lies the view that the primary religious phenomenon is
prayer, or other rites, addressed to one or more individuals, whether
dead men or gods, with the purpose of ‘honouring and appeasing’
them, and thereby securing the benefits, especially the food-supply,
which they can give or withold. The do ut des principle is taken
as primary and ultimate. Further, since dead men are most
suitably appeased by commemoration of their exploits, the
primitive rite is essentially commemorative, only secondarily
designed to secure tangible benefits.
Against this general view of religious development it has
already been argued (p. 134) that the do ut des principle is not
early, but late; and that magic—the magic which immediately
controls the food-supply and the natural phenomena on which it
depends—was carried on before there were any gods at all, and
can be carried on by direct mimetic methods, without any prayerful
appeals to dead ancestors. The special topic of hero-worship and
the detailed analysis of the term ‘hero’ are reserved for the next
chapter. Our object here is to state a theory of the origin of the
Great Games which will not rest on the foundations, in our
opinion false, which support Professor Ridgeway’s funeral hypo-
thesis.
According to the view which we shall put forward, the Games
are to be regarded as originally and essentially a New Year's
festival—the inauguration of a‘ Year.’ If it can be shown that
the legends can be interpreted as reflecting rites appropriate
to such a festival, the hypothesis will have some claim to
acceptance,
Our simplest course will be to examine the myths about the
origin of the Games, contained in Pindar’s first Olympian, and to
disentangle the separable factors in this complex legend. We
shall begin with the story of the so-called chariot-race, in which
Pelops defeated the wicked king Oinomaos, and won the hand
. of his daughter Hippodameia and with it the succession to the
»»..
vir | Ritual Myths in Pelops legend 217
kingdom. We shall then examine the dark and disreputable story
{as it seemed to Pindar) of the Feast of Tantalus and offer an
explanation which will connect it with the institution of the
Games in their earliest form.
Our enquiry will proceed on the assumption that these myths
are not saga-episodes, but belong to the class of ritual myths. In
other words, they are not poeticised versions of unique historical
events in the life of any individual ‘hero’; but reflect recurrent
ritual practices, or δρώμενα". The failure to distinguish these two
classes of myths leads the Euhemerist into his worst errors; and in
this particular case it puts the advocate of the funeral theory
into a serious difficulty. For on that theory these stories must
represent those exploits of the dead chieftain, of which his
ghost will most like to be reminded; and it is difficult to under-
stand what satisfaction the departed Pelops could find in having
his attention periodically drawn to the fact that his father had
been damned in Hell for cooking him and trying to make the gods
eat him at dinner. If, on the other hand, we recognise that all
these myths are of the ritual type, it must be observed that
‘Pelops’ is stripped of every vestige of historic personality. He
becomes an empty name, an eponym. The only semblance of
historic fact that remains about him is the statement that he came
from Lydia to his own island, the Peloponnese ; and, as Gruppe?
shows, it is probable that this is the reverse of the truth, and that
his legend was first carried to Asia Minor at a comparatively late
date by settlers from central Greece. The funeral theory is thus
reduced to deriving the most important of Hellenic festivals from
the unrecorded obsequies of a person of whom nothing whatever
is known, and who, in all probability, never existed.
But it is time to put controversy aside and reconstruct the
meaning of Pindar’s myths.
1 For the relation of myth to ritual see infra, p. 327.
2 Griech. Myth. und Rel. 1. 653. Gruppe holds that the ancestors of the
Atreidae, Tantalus and Pelops, were transplanted to Lydia with the rest of the
wee Saga early in the sixth century, especially in the reigns of Alyattes and
roesus.
218 The Origin of the Olympic Games (OH.
THE CONTEST WITH OINOMAOS.
Pindar! thus describes the contest:
When, towards the fair flowering of his growing age, the down began
to shade his darkening cheek, Pelops turned his thoughts to a marriage that
lay ready for him—to win trom her father of Pisa famed Hippodameia.
He came near to the hoary sea, alone in the darkness, and cried aloud to
the Lord of the Trident in the low-thundering waves. And he appeared to —
him, close at his foot. And Pelops spoke to him: Come now, Ὁ Poseidon, if —
the kindly gifts of the Cyprian in any wise find favour with thee, do thou
trammel the bronze spear of Oinomaos, speed me on swiftest chariot to Elis,
and bring victory to my embrace. For thirteen men that sued for her he hath
overthrown, in putting off the marriage of his daughter....
So he said, and he attained his prayer, which went not unfulfilled. The
God glorified him with the gift of a golden car and horses with wings
unwearied. And he overcame mighty Oinomaos, and won the maiden to
share his bed ; and she bore him six sons, chieftains eager in prowess.
Thus indirectly and allusively Pindar tells the story which
forms the subject of the Eastern pediment of the temple of Zeus
at Olympia. Probably most readers of the First Olympian think
of the contest between Pelops and Oinomaos as a chariot-race—
the mythical prototype of the chariot-races of the historic Games.
Fie. 56.
So too it may have been regarded by Pindar. But if we examine
the story as known to us from other sources, it becomes plain that
this was not its original meaning.
The scene is represented in the design (Fig. 56) on a polychrome |
bell-shaped krater in the Naples Museum? In the right fore-
ground Pelops and the bride Hippodameia are driving off in the
same chariot; for it was Oinomaos’ custom to make the suitors
LOL 1..69 fi.
2 Arch. Zeit. 1853, Taf. Ly.
vit | Contest with Oinomaos 219
drive with her from Elis to the altar of Poseidon at the Corinthian
Isthmus’. Meanwhile the king himself, who is armed with spear
and helmet, stays behind to sacrifice, before a column surmounted
by a female divinity’, the ram which an attendant is bringing up
on the left. Then Oinomaos will mount the chariot held in
readiness by his charioteer Myrtilus, and drive in pursuit of the
flying pair. On overtaking them, he intends to stab Pelops in
the back with his bronze spear. He has already disposed of
thirteen suitors in this questionable way. But Pelops will escape ;
for Hippodameia has persuaded Myrtilus to remove the linchpins
of the king’s chariot. Oinomaos will be tumbled out and killed
by Pelops with his own spear. His grave—a mound of earth
enclosed by a retaining wall of stones—was shown on the far side
of the Kladeos. Above it stood the remains of buildings where
he was said to have stabled his mares’.
It is obvious that this story does not describe a primitive form
of mere sport. It is made up of at least two distinct factors.
(a) There is, first, the contest between the young and the old
king, ending in the death of the elder and the succession of the
younger to the kingdom. (b) Second, there is the carrying off
(ἁρπαγή) of the bride; for Pelops and Hippodameia drive off
in the same chariot, with the chance of altogether escaping the
pursuing father. This is not a chariot-race, but a flight, such as
often occurs in marriage by capture’.
These two factors must be briefly examined. We shall see
that both can be interpreted on the hypothesis that the rites
reflected in these myths are appropriate to a New Year's festival.
(a) The Contest between the Young and the Old King. This
feature of the story is taken by Mr A. B. Cook? as the basis of his
theory of the origin of the Great Games. The parallel story of
1 Weizsacker in Roscher’s Lez., s.v. Oinomaos, col. 768, holds that this trait
must belong to a Phliasian legend of Oinomaos, and that Oinomaos was transferred
from Phlius to Olympia.
* The sacritice is said to have been made to Zeus Areios (Paus. v. 14. 6) or
to Ares (Philostr. Imag. 10). Earlier vases show Oinomaos and Pelops taking
the oath before a pillar, in one case inscribed AIO, in another surmounted by
a male divinity. See A. B. Cook, Class. Rev. xv. p. 271.
3 Apollod. 1.4; Paus. v.17. 7; Diod. 1v. 73; Paus. vi. 21. 3.
4 See Weizsicker in Roscher’s Lex., s.v. Oinomaos.
> Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak, Class. Rev, xvu. 268 ff., and The European Sky-
God, Folk-Lore 1904. To the learning and ingenuity displayed in these articles,
as well as to other help from Mr Cook, I am deeply indebted.
220 The Origin of the Olympic Games [cH
Phorbas, king of the Phlegyae, shows that we are justified in
regarding the contest for the kingship as a separable factor; for —
in that story we have the contest alone, without either the
chariot-driving or the flight with the bride. Phorbas dwelt
under an oak; called his ‘palace, on the road to Delphi, and
challenged the pilgrims to various athletic feats. When he had
defeated them, he cut off their heads and hung them on his oak.
Apollo came as a boxer and overthrew Phorbas, while his oak was _
blasted by a thunderbolt from the sky.
The sacred tree and the thunderbolt reappear in the case of
Oinomaos. Between the Great Altar and the sanctuary of Zeus
in the Altis stood a wooden pillar or post, decayed by time and
held together by metal bands. It was further protected by a roof
supported on four columns. This pillar, it was said, alone escaped
when the house of Oinomaos was blasted by lightning’. Near it
stood an altar of Zeus Keraunios, said to have been erected when —
Zeus smote the house». The place was, in fact, sanctified by being
struck by lightning. Oinomaos, whom legend made both husband
and son of Sterope, the ightning-flash, was one of those weather-
kings with whom we are already familiar (p. 105), who claimed to —
control the thunder and the rain, and like Salmoneus who; as we ©
have seen (p. 81), migrated from Thessaly to Elis, were liable to
be blasted by the later thunder-god of Olympus. _Omomaos with
his bronze spear was éyyetxépavvos*. He too, like Phorbas, hung
up the heads of the defeated suitors on his house. Again we
encounter the same complex as we found in the Erechtheion (pp.
92 and 171)—a sacred tree or pillar, and the token of the thunderer. —
The Pandroseion of the Athenian Acropolis has its analogue in —
the Pantheion—the all-holy or all-magical place—which contained
the sacred olive tree at Olympia‘.
On the basis of this conjunction of weather king and sacred
tree, Mr Cook suggests that ‘in mythical times the Olympic
contest was a means of determining who should be king of the ~
district and champion of the local tree-Zeus. The holder of the
office for the time being was analogous to the Rex Nemorensis —
of the Golden Bough—an incarnation of the Tree and Sky God,
1 Paus. v. 20. 6. 2 Paus. v. 14. 6. .
* An epithet applied by Pindar to Zeus (Pyth. 1v. 194; Ol. xm. 77). Athena is —
ἐγχειβρόμος, Ol. vu. 43.
4 Supra, p. 171, note 1.
vit | » The Victor as King 221
and, like his Italian parallel, defended his office against all comers,
until he was finally defeated and superseded by the successful
combatant.
The Olympic victor, he points out, was treated with honours
both regal and divine; feasted in the prytaneum; crowned with
a spray of olive like the wreath of Zeus himself; pelted, like
a tree-spirit or Jack-in-the-Green, with leaves’. As such he is
represented in the vase-painting in Fig. 57”.
Finally, on his return to his native city, the victor was dressed
in royal purple and drawn by white horses through a breach in
the walls. In many cases he was worshipped after death, as a
hero; not because he was a successful athlete, but because he had
once been an incarnate god.
This hypothesis of Mr Cook’s we believe to be fundamentally
correct. Plutarch in his Symposiac Questions*, after remarking
that the foot-race was the sole original contest at Olympia, all the
other competitions having been added later, proceeds :
1 Porphyry, Vit. Pyth. 15, says that Pythagoras advised men to compete, but
not to win, at Olympia, συμβαίνει yap Kal ἄλλως μηδ᾽ εὐαγεῖς εἶναι τοὺς νικῶντας Kal
φυλλοβολουμένους. Why had the φυλλοβολία this effect ?
2 A kylix from Vulci now in the Bibl. Nat. Paris; Arch. Zeit. 1853, Taf. u11.,
Li1.; figured and discussed by Mr Cook, C.R. xvu. p. 274.
3 y. 2, p. 675 ο τοῖς δ΄. ᾿Ολυμπίοις πάντα προσθήκη πλὴν τοῦ δρόμου γέγονε... δέδια
δ᾽ εἰπεῖν ὅτι πάλαι καὶ μονομαχίας ἀγὼν περὶ Πίσαν ἤγετο μέχρι φόνου καὶ σφαγῆς τῶν
ἡττωμένων καὶ ὑποπιπτόντων.
222 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ou
I hesitate to mention that in ancient times there was also held at Pisa a :
contest consisting of a single combat, which ended only with the slaughter and —
death of the vanquished. :
Plutarch rightly feels that this was not a form of athletic sport. —
This single combat is again reflected in myth as a wrestling match
between Zeus and Kronos for the kingdom, from which some dated —
the institution of the games.
But although we accept the essence of Mr Cook’s theory of
this single combat, we prefer to avoid some of the terms in which
he describes its significance: The words ‘king, ‘ god,’ ‘ incarnation
of the tree-Zeus’ may all be somewhat misleading. In the light
of the preceding chapters, we see that a weather-magician like
Oinomaos, though a late theology may see in him the temporary
incarnation of a god, goes back to a time when there was no god
to be incarnated: on the contrary the sky god is only a projected
reflex of this human figure of the magician, who claims to com-_
mand the powers of the sky and to call down its rain and thunder
by virtue of his own mana. We shall be on safer ground if we
restrict ourselves to the simple primitive group, consisting of the —
weather-magician who wields the fertilising influences of Heaven, —
and the tree which embodies the powers of the Earth—the
vegetation which springs up when the thunder shower has burst, —
and Heaven and Earth are married in the life-giving rain*.
To this we must add the conception, with which Dr Frazer —
has made us familiar‘, of the limited period of office enjoyed by —
such a personage. The individual on whose vigour and excep-
tional powers the fertility of earth depends, cannot be allowed to —
continue in office when his natural forces fall into decay. Hence —
the single combat, in which he has to make good his right to
a renewed period or else to die at the hands of his more vigorous
antagonist.
Now, in some cases at least, this period of office was ποῦ
limited merely by the duration of its holders’ natural strength:
1 Paus, v. 7 Ala δὴ οἱ μὲν ἐνταῦθα παλαῖσαι καὶ αὐτῷ τῷ Κρόνῳ περὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς, ol
δὲ ἐπὶ κατειργασμένοις ἀγωνοθετῆσαί φασιν αὐτόν.
2 See supra, p. 149. Mr Cook kindly tells me that in his forthcoming Zeus he
has restated his view in terms not open to the above objections.
% See supra, p. 176. ἢ
4 Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship, p. 264. See also for πθ΄
periodicity of the rule of Minos (τ 179 évvéwpos βασίλευε) Prof. Murray, Rise of —
the Greek Epic*, 127 note.
vii] The King as Year-God 223
it bore some fixed relation to the year, and to the seasonal cycle
of vegetable life in nature. In other words the term of office was
a ‘year’—a term which, as we have seen (p. 189), may denote
a lunar or solar year or a longer period of two, four, or eight solar
years—a trieteris, penteteris, or ennaeteris. During this period,
long or short as it might be, the tenant of the office represented,
or rather was, the power which governed the rains of heaven and
the fruits of earth; at the end of it he was either continued for
a new entautos, or violently dispossessed by a successor. Further,
since the eniautos itself could be concretely conceived as a daimon
carrying the horn of plenty!—the contents and fruits of the ‘ year’
in the more abstract sense—we may think of the temporary ‘king’
as actually being the eniawtos-daimon or fertility spirit of his
‘year. When the year is fixed by the solar period, we get
festivals of the type of the Roman Saturnalia or the Greek
Kpova (with which the Saturnalia were regularly equated in
ancient times), and the single combat appears as the driving
out of winter or of the dying year by the vigorous young spirit
of the New Year that is to come. It is as eniautos-daimon, not
at first as ‘incarnate god’ or as king in the later political sense,
that the representative of the fertility powers of nature dies at
the hands of the New Year. In this combat we may see, in a
word, the essential feature of a Saturnalian or Kronian festival.
This view is supported by a curious feature, to which Mr Cook _
calls attention, in the vase-painting of Salmoneus figured above on
Ῥ. 80. Salmoneus, the weather-king, arrayed, as we have seen,
with the attributes of the Olympic victor, wears on his left ankle
an unmistakable fetter. We may suspect, as Mr Cook remarks,
that this is part of his disguise as a would-be god, and it shows
that the god imitated is not Zeus, but the fettered Kronos, Κρόνος
πεδήτης. Once a year, at the Saturnalia, the statue of Saturn
slipped the woollen fetter with which it was bound throughout
the rest of the year’.
Hesiod? tells us that, after Kronos had vomited forth the
stone which he swallowed instead of his son, Zeus entering on his
1 See supra, p. 186, and infra, p. 285.
2 Macrob. Sat. 1. vu. 5, Saturnum Apollodorus alligari ait per annum laneo
vineulo et solvi ad diem sibi festum, id est mense hoc Decembri. For the fettered
Kronos see Roscher, Lez., s.v. Kronos, col. 1467.
3 Theog. 501. The lines are regarded by some editors as interpolated. For the
release of Kronos see Hesiod, Erga, 169" (ed. Rz. 1902).
224 The Origin of thé Olympic Games [cH.
reign, released from their bonds the brothers of Kronos, the Titans, —
who then gave Zeus the thunder and lightning. The unfettermg
of Kronos or Saturn appears to be a reflection of the custom
at Saturnalian festivals of releasing prisoners and slaves—the
mock subjects of the mock king of the feast, himself a prisoner
or a slave. It may have symbolised a brief return of the older
reign of Kronos, or the Golden Age, lasting over the interealary
days between two years of the reign of Zeus. At any rate in this
design are united the attributes of the old Thunderer and
Vegetation Spirit, of the Olympic victor, and of the unfettered
Kronos—a combination which strongly confirms our suggestion
that the Games were connected with a Saturnalian feast.
Against the view here suggested an objection might be urged
on the score of the date of the Olympic Festival. Saturnalian
feasts fall usually in the neighbourhood of Christmas (the winter
solstice) or of Easter (the vernal equinox) or at some season of
carnival between these two dates. The Olympic Games, on the
other hand, were held in the late summer. The earliest date
on which they could fall was August 6; the latest, September 29.
Moreover they were not annual, but penteteric; that is to say
they were celebrated once in every four years. How then can
they be connected with Saturnalian rites ?
The answer to this objection will throw light on the second
factor in the myth of Pelops and Oinomaos—the capture of the
bride, Hippodameia.
(Ὁ) The Marriage of Pelops and Hippodameia. The date at
which a celebration of the Games fell due was reckoned by
a singularly complicated process, comparable with the mysterious
method laid down by the Christian churches for the calculation
of Easter; for, like Easter, the Games were a moveable feast,
determined by astronomical considerations. The Scholiast on
Pindar? quotes from Comarchos what appears to be the official
prescription for fixing the dates, copied possibly from some inscrip-
tion in the Prytaneum at Olympia.
1 Ad Ol. τι. 33 restored as follows by Weniger, Das Hochfest des Zeus in
Olympia, Klio, 1905, p. 1 ff.: Κώμαρχος ὁ τὰ περὶ ᾿Ηλείων συντάξας φησὶν οὕτως"
πρῶτον μὲν οὖν παντὸς περίοδον συνέθηκε πεντετηρίδα" ἄρχειν (note the official jussive
««ἘπῈ
γπ] Date of Olympic Festival 225
The Games were held alternately in the Elean months
Apollonios and Parthenios—probably the second and third months
of the Elean year, if we may suppose that this, like the Delphic
and Attic years, began about midsummer. The interval between
two celebrations was alternately 49 and 50 months. This fact
shows that the festival cycle is really an octennial period (ennae-
teris) divided into two halves—a period which reconciles the
Hellenic moon year of 354 days with the solar year of 3654. Ac-
cording to the document preserved by Comarchos, the reckoning
is made in a peculiar way, which seenis to call for explanation. It
starts from the winter solstice. Take the first full moon after the
solstice—this will fall on January (Thosuthias) 13*—and count
8 months. This will give the full moon (Aug. 22, 776 = OL. 1.) of
Apollonios (Aug. 8—Sept. 5) as the central day for the first
celebration. The next will fall four years later, after fifty months,
at the full moon (Sept. 6, 772 = OL. 11.) of the month Parthenios
(Aug. 23—Sept. 21). Forty-nine months later we shall be again at
the full moon of Apollonios (Aug. 23, 768=OL. 111.}, and so the
cycle recurs.
The singular plan of starting the whole reckoning from the
winter solstice seems to indicate that the year at Elis, as at Delos
and in Boeotia and probably also at Delphi and Athens, formerly
began in winter; and this circumstance at once suggests that the
single combat of the young and old eniautos-daimons may have
originally belonged to the season of midwinter—the season at
which the Roman Saturnalia were ultimately fixed®.
infinitive) νουμηνίαν μηνὸς ὃς Θωσυθιὰς (?) ἐν Ἤλιδι ὀνομάζεται, περὶ ὃν τροπαὶ ἡλίου
γίνονται χειμεριναί" καὶ πρῶτα ᾿Ολύμπια ἄγεται 7’ μηνί" ἑνὸς δέοντος διαφερόντων τῇ
ὥρᾳ, τὰ μὲν ἀρχομένης τῆς ὀπώρας, τὰ δὲ ὑπ’ αὐτὸν τὸν ἀρκτοῦρον. ὅτι δὲ κατὰ πεντετη-
ρίδα ἄγεται ὁ ἀγών, καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ Πίνδαρος μαρτυρεῖ. Schol. ad Ol. v. 35 γίνεται δὲ ὁ
ἀγὼν ποτὲ μὲν διὰ μθ΄ μηνῶν, ποτὲ δὲ διὰ ν΄, ὅθεν καὶ ποτὲ μὲν τῷ ᾿Απολλωνίῳ μηνί,
ποτὲ δὲ τῷ Παρθενίῳ ἐπιτελεῖται. The account in the text is based on Weniger’s
admirable analysis in the above-mentioned article.
1 The 11} days by which the lunar falls short of the solar year amount in
8 years to 90 days, which were distributed over the period in 3 months intercalated
in winter. The 8-year period thus=96+3 months=99=49 + 50.
2 The dates given exempli gratia are those for the first Olympiad, starting from
Decr. 25, 777. See Weniger, loc. cit.
3 This may also throw light on an unexplained obscurity in Pindar, who,
describing the institution of the Games by Herakles, says (Ol. x. 49) that Herakles
first gave its name to the Hill of Kronos, ‘which before was nameless, while
Oinomaos ruled, and was wetted with much snow’—mpbabe yap νώνυμνος, Gs Οἰνόμαος
ἄρχε, Bpéxero πολλᾷ νιφάδι. What can this possibly mean, if not that a tradition
survived connecting the hill with some mid-winter festival? It suggests that
the defeat of ‘Oinomaos’ and the termination of his ‘rule’ coincided with the
introduction of the new octennial eniawtos and the shift to August.
H. 15
220 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ CH.
A cycle such as this is obviously a late and very artificial
invention, implying fairly exact astronomical knowledge. It is
independent of the seasons and concerned solely with the motions of
the sun and moon. There is no reason why it should begin at the
same season as the pastoral or the agricultural year. The most
propitious moment would be the summer, as near as can con-
veniently be managed? to the summer solstice, when the sun is at
the height of his power. The moon too is taken at the full. The
union of the full moon and the full-grown Sun is one form—the
astronomical—of that sacred marriage which in many parts of the
ancient world was celebrated at midsummer. This union, we
suggest, is symbolised by the marriage of Pelops and Hippodameia.
The suggestion has the support of Dr Frazer’s high authority.
He gives reason for holding that ‘under the names of Zeus and
Hera the pair of Olympic victors’ (that 15, the victor in the chariot-
race and the girl who won the virgin’s race at the Heraea, which
we shall discuss later) ‘would seem to have really personated the
sun and moon, who were the true heavenly bridegroom and bride
of the ancient octennial festival?’
Thus the second factor under consideration—the marriage of
Pelops and Hippodameia—is explained. It was symbolised, as we
saw, by the flight of bride and bridegroom in the same chariot.
As such it appears in the design (Fig. 58) of a red-figured
amphora’ with twisted handles. Hippodameia stands erect,
1 Some mention will be made later (p. 230) of the difficulties which seem to
have forced the founders of the cycle to choose just this part of the summer. The
month Apollonios corresponded with the Delphic Bukatios (Pythian Games) and
the Laconian Karneios (festival of the Karneia). It was clearly convenient to fix
these greater festivals at a time when the labours of harvest were well over and
agricultural work was at a standstill. Earlier writers, for instance Boeckh and
Ideler, believed that the Games were held at the first full moon after the summer
solstice.
2 See Part 1. of the Golden Bough, ed. 3, p. 91. Dr Frazer arrived at this
conclusion some years ago, and, after hearing that I had reached it also, kindly -
allowed me to see the proofs from which the above sentence is quoted. I believe
the explanation was first suggested to me by one of Mr A. B. Cook’s articles on
The European Sky-God in Folk-Lore xv. p. 377 ff. :
3 Now in the Museo Pubblico at Arezzo. First published in the Monimenti
(vu. 3) of the German Archaeological Institute. I am glad to find that Prof.
Furtwingler in commenting on this vase has pointed out that the scene here and
on the other Oinomaos vases is a rape rather than a race. He writes (Griechische
Vasenmalerei, Serie τι. Taf. 67, Text p. 34) ‘Dass die Fahrten der Freier der Hippo-
dameia und damit die des Pelops urspriinglich nicht als Wettrennen sondern als—
Entfiihrung, als Brautraub gemeint und Oinomaos der Verfolger war, dies ist in
den verschiedenen Sagenvarianten, und in den Kunstdenkmilern immer deutlich
geblieben.’ Prof. Furtwiingler makes the interesting suggestion that this vase 1
from the hand of the same master as the famous Talos vase in Ruvo.
Vit | Marriage of Sun and Moon 227
looking much more like a goddess than a ravished bride. The
olive trees and the two doves flying close together to perch on one
of them seem to take us back to the trees and birds of the
marriage of Sky and Earth on the Hagia Triada sarcophagos’.
The chariot of Pelops is the four-horsed chariot of the sun,
which Erichthonios the mythical founder of the Panathenaea also
imitated. That the Sun and Moon should drive in the same
chariot may seem strange, since of course they never rise together
in the same quarter of the sky. But we have already seen them
WMO
Fia. 58.
so represented on the Louvre krater (Fig. 51)"; and the same
conjunction appears in literature. At the marriage of Kapaneus,
Helios and Selene drove their chariot together over the sky*. At
the two ends of the pedestal of the great statue of Zeus at
1 Supra, p. 176.
2 Verg. Georg. ut. 113 Primus Erichthonius currus et quatuor ausus | iungere
equos. Eratosth. catast. 13 τῇ τοῦ ᾿ Ἡλίου ἀντίμιμον ἐποιήσατο διφρείαν. Hyg. Astr.
m. 13 Heniochus, Erichthonium...quem Jupiter, cum vidisset primum inter
homines equos quadrigis iunxisse, admiratus est ingenium hominis ad Solis inventa
accessisse, quod is princeps quadrigis inter deos est usus. Others identified the
celestial Charioteer with Myrtilus, Hyg. ibid.
3 Compare also the coin of Gellia, figured in Roscher, Lex., s.v. Mars, col. 2410,
which shows Mars as a warrior and Nerine—the Roman Sun or Year God with his
bride—standing in a quadriga.
4 Kur. Suppl. 990 τί φέγγος, τίν᾽ αἴγλαν
ἐδιφρεύετον “Αλιος
Σελάνα τε κατ᾽ αἰθέρα
ἜἘλαμπάδ᾽ ἵν᾿ ὠκυθόαι viudact...
My attention was drawn to this passage by Prof. Murray.
7
228 The Origin of the Olympic Games [απ Ὁ
Olympia, the sun drove in his chariot and the moon rode her
horse: she is Hippodameia, the horse-rider’.
The chariot-drive of Pelops and Hippodameia, itself a flight
rather than a race, was however connected by tradition with the
historic chariot-races at Olympia. We have evidence too that the
chariot-races of the Roman circus were associated with the courses
of the heavenly bodies.
Cassiodorus?, a sixth century writer, tells us that the Roman
Circus represented the change of seasons, and the courses of the
Sun and Moon. The two-horse chariot-race represented the
course of the moon, the four-horse chariot-race that of the sun.
Lydus* mentions that the Circus Maximus at Rome contained
altars of the planet gods. Below the pyramid of the Sun stood
altars of the Moon, Mercury and Venus; above it, altars of Saturn,
Jupiter, and Mars. Tertullian* says that the whole circus was
dedicated to the Sun. .
So, at Olympia itself, the twelve rounds of the chariot-race
-- δωδεκάγναμπτος as Pindar’ calls it—may well have represented
the course of the Sun through the twelve signs. In the hippo-
drome the pillar which marked the starting-point had beside it an
altar of the Heavenly Twins®. At the starting-point of the foot-
races in the Stadium stood the tomb of Endymion, the sinking
Sun who married Selene the Moon’. The most cautious scholars
accept Boeckh’s view that the fifty daughters of this marriage are
the fifty moon months of the Olympiad.
We have thus disentangled two elements in the complex story
of Pelops and Oinomaos, as told by Pindar. The marriage of the
sun and moon must clearly be coeval with the reconstitution of the
Games ‘on a grander scale’ associated with ‘Pelops’; and pre-
sumably this reconstitution meant the reform of the calendar by
i Paus, v.11. 8. Stone images of the Sun with rays and the Moon with horns
stood in the market-place of Elis, Paus. v1. 24. 6.
2 Var. Ep. ii. 51 Biga quasi lunae, quadriga solis imitatione reperta est...
Obeliscorum quoque prolixitates ad caeli altitudinem sublevantur; sed potior soli,
inferior lunae dicatus est.
3 De mensibus 1, pp. 4 and 12.
4 De spect. 8 Circus Soli principaliter consecratur, cuius aedes in medio spatio
et effigies de fastigio aedis emicat...quadrigas Soli, bigas Lunae sanxerunt. See
Roscher, Lexz., s.v. Mondgéttin, col. 3182.
2" Ol, τι. 00!
6 Pind. Ol. τῆ 36. Paus. vy. 15. 7 Paus. vi. 20, 9.
vit | The Heraea 229
the introduction of the octennial period which is symbolised by
this particular form of the sacred marriage. The case of the
Panathenaea, deliberately modelled on the Olympic Festival, is
precisely similar. The Great Panathenaea of Peisistratos were
penteteric; but they were only an enlargement of the ancient
Lesser Panathenaea, founded by Erichthonios, which were annual.
In the same way at Olympia itself, as we shall see (p. 231), the
Heraea were probably at first annual, and later came to be
celebrated with especial grandeur and additional rites in every
fourth year. We may be fairly sure that the Olympic Games
themselves had similarly been at first an annual feast; and there
is no reason to suppose that this annual feast was held in the late
summer, since that date is due solely to the conjunction of sun
and moon.
Before we pass on to the Elean tradition of the origin of the
Games, we must discuss the, probably older, Women’s Games,
which seem to date from the earlier system of time-reckoning by
the moon.
THE HERAEA.
We have seen that the Olympic festival was a moveable feast,
and occurred alternately in Apollonios and Parthenios, which were
probably the second and third months of the Elean year. This
variation of the month is a strange and inconvenient arrangement’.
Moreover it is unique. The Pythia also were held at intervals of
50 and 49 months, but the incidence of the intercalated months of
the octennial period was so arranged that the festival itself always
fell in the same month (Bukatios) of the Delphic year. In the
same way the Panathenaea, though penteteric, always fell in
Hekatombaion. There must have been some very strong reason
for the troublesome variation of months in the sole case of the
most important of panhellenic gatherings.
Weniger finds the reason in the existence of an older im-
movable festival at the very season at which the reconstituted
Games were to be fixed. Every fourth year a college called the
Sixteen Women wove a robe for Hera and held games called the
1 The following argument as to the month of the festival and its relation to the
Heraea is taken from the penetrating analysis of Weniger, loc. cit., supra, p. 224.
q
230 The Origin of the Olympic Games [CH.
Heraea*. The games consisted of a race between virgins’, who
ran in order of age, the youngest first, and the eldest last. The
course was the Olympic stadium, less about one-sixth of its length
(ae. 500 instead of 600 Olympic feet). The winners received
crowns of olive and a share of the cow sacrificed to Hera. ‘They
trace the origin of the games of the virgins, like those of the men,
to antiquity, saying that Hippodameia, out of gratitude to Hera
for her marriage with Pelops, assembled the Sixteen Women,
and along with them arranged the Heraean games for the
first time.’
It is highly probable that these games of virgins (Parthenia)
gave its name to the month Parthenios, and were in honour of
Hera Parthenos—Hera, whose virginity was perpetually renewed
after her sacred marriage with Zeus. It is also probable that
they were held at the new moon, that is, on the first day of
Parthenios*. Further, if these games gave the month its name, ©
in that month they must always have fallen. Thus the octennial
period of the Heraea is of the usual straightforward type, which
keeps always to the same month. The natural inference is that
the Heraea were first in the field, and that, when the men’s games
were fixed at the same season, it was necessary to avoid this older
fixed festival. At the same time, if the games of Zeus were
allowed to be established regularly in the middle of the previous
month Apollonios, it was obvious that the Heraea would sink into
a mere appendage. Zeus, on the other hand, was not inclined to
yield permanent precedence to Hera. The deadlock was solved by
a characteristic compromise. The octennial period for the Games
of Zeus was so arranged that in alternate Olympiads they should
fall fourteen days before, and fourteen days after, the Heraea
(on Apollonios 14/15 and Parthenios 14/15). By this device of
priestly ingenuity the honour of both divinities was satisfied, and
so the inconvenient variation of months for the Olympic festival is
explained.
1 Paus..v. 16. 2.
2 The winners were allowed to dedicate statues of themselves (Paus. v. 16. 3).
The girl-runner in the Vatican is probably one of these votive statues. Beside the
girl, in this marble copy of the bronze original, is a palm branch on a stump as
symbol of victory.
’ Cf. Lydus, de mens. 111. 10 ai Καλένδαι Ἥρας ἑορτὴ ἐτύγχανον, τουτέστι Σελήνης.
The Heraea cannot in any case have fallen between the 10th and 16th of Parthenios, —
when the men’s games were held in alternate Olympiads.
Vir The Foot-race for the Bride 231
The Heraea, then, were probably older than the reconstituted
Olympia; and if they gave its name to the month Parthenios,
they must have been annual before they were octennial or
penteteric. They carry us back to the old lunar year, which
preceded the combined sun-and-moon penteteris. Here again, as
at Athens (p. 191), we find the moon associated with the olive
tree ; she has also her horned cow, a portion of whose flesh fell to
the victor in the virgin’s race. The eating of this portion and the
wearing of the olive crown symbolised that the victorious virgin
was, In an especial sense, identified with the moon. She became
the Hippodameia of her year’, and the chosen bride of the sacred
marriage. It was not, at first, that she impersonated Hera
Parthenos?: on the contrary, Hera Parthenos is the divinised
projection and reflex of the Moon-maiden, the queen of the
virgins that bore her company and, in all probability, went down
_ to the river Parthenias, a tributary of the Alpheus, to draw the
water for her nuptial bath’*.
THE FOOT-RACE FOR THE BRIDE.
If the moon-bride was chosen by a foot-race, so also, it would
seem, was the sun-bridegroom. We have already seen that the
fifty daughters whom the moon bore to Endymion were the fifty
1 The accusation against Oinomaos of incest with his daughter Hippodameia
simply means that Hippodameia was the title of his ‘wife’ and also of her
successor, the wife of his successor, represented in myth as his ‘daughter.’
The Sixteen Women ‘ get up two choruses’ (χόρους δύο ἱστᾶσι), one for Physcoa,
and one for Hippodameia. Weniger, loc. cit., holds that this marks the union
of two colleges—the Thyiads of Elis who honoured Physcoa and Dionysus, and
a college in Pisatis who worshipped Hera and Hippodameia. It looks as if Oinomaos
and Hippodameia were the Olympian doubles of Dionysus and Physcoa. For the
equation Oinomaos = Dionysus cf. Athenaeus x. 426 F who cites Nicochares,
Amymone (Kock τ. 770) Οἰνόμαος οὗτος χαῖρε πέντε καὶ δύο (the mixture of two parts
wine with five water) and Eupolis, dix (Kock 1. 260), Διόνυσε χαῖρε: μή τι πέντε
καὶ δύο. Gruppe, Gr. Myth. u. Rel. 1. 150, notes that Physcoa and Dionysus were
worshipped at Oinoe (north of Olympia) and connects the name Oinomaos with
Oince.
2 Dr Frazer, G. B.*, Part mr. p. 91, writes: ‘If the olive-crowned victor in the
men’s race at Olympia represented Zeus, it becomes probable that the olive-crowned
victor in the girls’ race, which was held every fourth year in honour of Hera
represented in like manner the god’s wife....But under the names of Zeus and Hera
the pair of Olympic victors would seem to have really personated the Sun and
Moon, who were the true heavenly bridegroom and bride of the ancient octennial
festival.’
3 Parthenias (Strabo vii. 357) or Parthenia, beside which was the grave of the
mares (Parthenia and Eripha) of Marmax, first of Hippodameia’s suitors (Paus. vr.
21. 7). Hesych. Ἢρεσίδες: κόραι ai λουτρὰ κομίζουσαι τῇ Ἥρᾳ. Etym. Mag. p. 436
Ἤρεσίδες ai ἱέρειαι τῆς ἐν "Ἄργει Ἥρας: ἀπὸ τῆς “Ἥρας: ἢ παρὰ τὸν ἀρύσω μέλλοντα,
ἀρυσίτιδες, αἱ ἀρυόμεναι τὰ λουτρά. Cf. Paus. ττ. 17.1; Weniger, loc. cit.
282 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ CH.
moon months of the penteteris, and we are also told of Endymion,
that he set his sons to race at Olympia for the kingdom’. This is
a variant of the race of suitors for the hand of the princess, which
in other similar stories carries the kingdom with it.
Now we know of another family of fifty daughters whose hands
were disposed of by competition in a foot-race—the Danaids. In
the Ninth Pythian Pindar tells how the Libyan king Antaeus,
desiring to compass a famous marriage for his daughter, followed
the example of Danaus in Argos, who
contrived for the forty and eight maidens a wedding most swift, before
midday should be upon them. He presently made the whole company stand
at the goal of the race-course and bade determine by a foot-race which
maiden each hero should have, of all that came to be his sons-in-law.
But, whereas Antaeus offered only one daughter as the prize for
one out of many suitors, Danaus offered a bunch of forty-eight ;
and another authority lets out the truth that some, if not all,
of these eight and forty got no husbands.
Pausanias? telling how Icarius set the wooers of Penelope to
run the race in which of course Odysseus was successful, adds that
Icarius (like Antaeus) imitated Danaus, who set the suitors to run
for his daughters. The first man home had first choice of a
Danaid, the second, the second choice, and so on. ‘The daughters
that were left had to wait till other wooers came and had run
another race. Now in Pindar’s version forty-eight Danaids are
offered. Why this number? Because, we are told, two were
already married—Hypermnestra and Amymone. Who are the
forty-eight who cannot get husbands ?
If the fifty daughters of Danaus are doubles of the fifty
daughters of Endymion and the Moon, the answer is clear. The
two who are married must be the first and last months of the
penteteric cycle—the moons who are paired in sacred marriage
with the midsummer sun’*.
The Danaids are also well-maidens, with functions, perhaps,
like those of the Athenian Dew-Carriers (p. 173). To the moon-
bride may have fallen the duty of bringing water for rain-charms,
1 Paus. v. 1. 3: 2 rl Deets
3 Note that Pindar says (v. 113) the race was to be run ‘before midday should
overtake them’ (πρὶν μέσον ἅμαρ ἑλεῖν) ; before, that is to say, the sun at his height
of noon or of midsummer carries off the one who is married. It may be observed
that 48=16+16+416; does this account for the number of the Sixteen Women—
sixteen for each of the remaining three years of the penteteris ?
vit] The Foot-race for the Bride 233
while the sun-bridegroom was charged with the maintenance of
the solar fire’. ᾿
Now, the Elean antiquaries said that for the first thirteen
Olympiads from the beginning of the unbroken tradition, the only
competition was the foot-race?. This is the race which we have
seen reflected in myth as the race for the kingdom and the hand
of the princess. In literal fact it seems to have been a contest to
determine who should represent the male partner in the sacred
marriage with the victor of the virgin’s race. It has already been
suggested that this personage could be regarded as, in a certain
sense, the daimon of his ‘year, the ‘king’ for a limited period,
on whom the rains of heaven and the fruits of earth would
depend.
Modern analogies support this view of the significance of the
foot-race. ‘Games, says Mr Chambers’, ‘were a feature of
seasonal, no less than of funeral feasts....A bit of wrestling or
a bout of quarter-staff is still de rigueur at many a wake or rush-
bearing, while in parts of Germany the winner of a race or of a
shooting-match at the popinjay is entitled to light the festival
fire, or to hold the desired office of May-King.’
The suggestion is further confirmed by an interesting ancient
analogy. The Laconian Karneia were celebrated in the month
Karneios, which corresponds to the Elean Apollonios. Their date,
moreover, like that of the Olympian festival, with which they
sometimes coincided‘, seems to have been fixed with reference
1 Cf. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 1.122. In modern agricultural festivals
‘water is thrown on the fields and on the plough, while the worshippers them-
selv@s, or a representative chosen from among them, are sprinkled or immersed.
To this practice many survivals bear evidence; the virtues persistently ascribed to
dew gathered on May morning, the ceremonial bathing of women annually or in
times of drought with the expressed purpose of bringing fruitfulness on man or
beast or crop, the ‘‘ ducking” customs...,’ etc. The interpretation of the Danaids
as rain-makers is due to Mr A. B. Cook and will be discussed by him in his forth-
coming book Zeus.
2 Paus. v. 8. 6. Cf. Plut. Symp. Qu. v. 2. 675 c (above, p. 221).
3 The Mediaeval Stage, 1.148. Mr Chambers refers to Frazer, G. B.* 1. 217;
πι. 258. Cf. Mannhardt, Ant. Wald- und Feldkulte, p. 254, ‘Jene deutschen
Maitags- und Ernteumgiinge nehmen mehrfach auch die Form eines Wettlaufs an,
bei welchem entweder die letzte, den Korndimon darstellende Garbe oder der
Maibaum das Ziel ist, oder durch welchen die Rollen bei dem Umganye mit dem
Laubmann, Pfingstbutz u.s.w. entschieden werden. Der Wettlauf bildet den ersten
Akt, die Prozession mit dem durch den Sieger in demselben dargestellten Vege-
tationsdémon den zweiten Akt der Festbegehungen.’
4 For instance in the year 480 B.c., Herod. vu. 206; vutt. 72.
234 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ CH.
to the full moon?. The festival was conducted by a college of
Karneatai, young, unmarried men, who were chosen, five from
each tribe (?), and held office for four years?—a period which
seems to indicate that this annual festival was held with especial
splendour once in each penteteris.
The rite which specially concerns us is the race of the
Staphylodromoi*. These were young men, chosen from among
the Karneatai; their title was derived from the clustered vine-
branches which they carried in their hands. One of their number
decked himself with garlands and ran, ‘ praying for a blessing on
the city’; the rest pursued him. If he was overtaken, it was
supposed to bring good luck; if not, the reverse.
The race here takes a different form from those we have been
concerned with—probably an older form‘, which did not degenerate
into a mere athletic competition. The young man, decked with
garlands and perhaps also disguised with the skin of a beast so as
to be the ‘mumming representative of a davmon®, embodies the
luck of the year, which will be captured or lost, according as
the youth is overtaken or escapes. His connection with the fruits
of the year is marked by the vine-clusters; and it does not
surprise us to find that at Cyrene the festival of Apollo Karneios
was celebrated with the slaughter of many bulls, and that his
altars were decorated ‘in spring with all the flowers the Horae
bring when the west wind blows laden with dew, and in winter
*
1 Eur. Alk, 448,
Σπάρτᾳ κύκλος ἁνίκα Καρνείου περινίσσεται ὥρας
μηνός, ἀειρομένας παννύχου σελάνας.
For the Karneia see 5. Wide, Lakonische Kulte, p. 73 ff., Nilsson, Gr. Age
p- 118 ff:
2 Hesych. καρνεᾶται" οἱ ἄγαμοι᾽" κεκληρωμένοι δὲ ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ Καρνείου ἘΝ
πέντε δὲ ad’ ἑκάστης -- φυλῆς Castellanus> ἐπὶ τετραετίαν ἐλειτούργουν.
5. Bekk. Anecd. τ. p. 305 σταφυλοδρόμοι" κατὰ τὴν τῶν Καρνείων ἑορτὴν στέμματά
τις περιθέμενος τρέχει ἐπευχόμενός τι τῇ πόλει χρηστόν, ἐπιδιώκουσι δὲ αὐτὸν νέοι,
σταφυλοδρόμοι καλούμενοι. καὶ ἐὰν μὲν καταλάβωσι αὐτόν, ἀγαθόν τι προσδοκῶσιν κατὰ
τὰ ἐπιχώρια τῇ πόλει, εἰ δὲ μή, τοὐναντίον. The Oschophoria at Athens was a similar
festival, see Athenaeus x1. 62, p. 496. It began with a race of epheboi carrying
ὄσχοι and they διημιλλῶντο πρὸς ἀλλήλους δρόμῳ. The victor (ὁ πρότερος) went in
procession with his band, κωμάζει μετὰ χοροῦ. For the Oschophoria see infra,
p. 320.
4 Compare the Regifugium on Feb. 24, four days from the end of the old Roman
year, discussed by Dr Frazer (G.B.* Part 1. vol. ii. pp. 308—312), who compares
this ‘ flight’ to races for the kingdom. 4
5 Hesych. στεμματιαῖον " δίκηλόν τι ἐν ἑορτῇ πομπεῦον (codd. πομπέων) δαίμονος.
Δίκηλον is glossed as φάσμα, μίμημα, εἴδωλον, ζῴδιον, etc.; δικηλικταί are Mummers.
See S. Wide, loc. cit. i
vit] The Foot-race of the Kouretes 235
with the sweet crocus. The slain bulls were eaten at a dais or
eranos*. The Karneia are an instructive instance, because they
show us the complete series: first the animal—xapvos means
a ram; next the human youth with animal disguise; then
the daimon Karneios, or Kranios Stemmatios*; finally the
Olympian Apollo, surnamed Karneios and Dromaios to remind
him that he had taken the place of a ram-racer.
THE FOOT-RACE OF THE KOURETES.
We are now in a position to interpret the Elean legend of
the origin of the Games—a legend which has been persistently
rejected, merely because the facts which have been thrown into
relief in the preceding chapters of this book were unknown or not
understood,
With regard to the Olympic games, the Elean antiquaries say that
Kronos first reigned in Heaven, and that a temple was made for him by the
men of that age, who were named the Golden Race; that when Zeus was
born, Rhea committed the safe-keeping of the child to the Idaean Daktyls or
Kouretes, as they are also called ; that the Daktyls came from Ida in Crete,
and their names were Herakles, Paeonaeus, Epimedes, Jasios, and Idas ; and
that in sport Herakles, the eldest, set his brethren to run a race, and crowned
the victor with a branch of wild olive, of which they had such an abundance
that they slept on heaps of its fresh green leaves?.
After what has gone before, no lengthy comment is needed.
The Games are traced back to an original foot-race, held by young
men, Kouretes, from Crete*®, presumably analogous to the young,
unmarried Karneatai of Sparta. The race, we may suppose, deter-
mined who should be the Kouros—the Greatest Kouros—of his
year. The winner received, not a prize of commercial value such
1 Kallim. in Apoll. 77 ff.
2 Pind. Pyth. ν. 77 πολύθυτον ἔρανον ἔνθεν ἀναδεξαμέναν," Απολλον, τεᾷ, ΚΚαρνήι᾽, ἐν
δαιτὶ σεβίζομεν Κυράνας ἀγακτιμέναν πόλιν.
3 Paus. ur. 20. 9, Kranios Stemmatios had a temenos on the road from Arcadia
to Sparta.
4 The Elean tradition reported by Pausanias is not to be despised; for it must
be remembered that its natural custodians, the two priestly houses of the Iamidae
and Klytiadae, held office at Olympia with unbroken continuity down to the third
century a.p. (cf. Weniger, Der heilige Olbawm in Olympia, Weimar, 1895, p. 2).
oy Pansies, 7.10:
ὁ Plato, Laws, 625: Crete is uneven and specially suited to foot-racing. The
social importance of foot-races is marked at Gortyn, where the ephebi not yet
admitted to full rights were called ἀπόδρομοι, διὰ τὸ μηδέπω τῶν κοινῶν δρόμων
μετέχειν (Ar. Byz.); whereas δρομεῖς possessed rights of mature years, see Busolt,
Gr. Gesch. 1.344. At the Panathenaea there was a ‘long foot-race’ (μακρὸς δρόμος)
of the ephebi from the altar of Eros, where they lighted torches; the πυρά of the
Goddess’ victims was lighted with the victor’s torch, Schol. ad Plat. Phaedr. 2318.
Philostratus, 7. γυμν. 5, describes the stadion race at Olympia as a race for the
honour of lighting the fire on the altar.
286 The Origin of the Olympic Games [cH
as were usual in funeral games, but a symbol of his office as
vegetation-daimon—the branch of the sacred tree. ‘This branch
reminds us of the golden bough, and perhaps, links the foot-race
of the young men to the contest between the young and the old
king. For in the famous wood at Nemi, it was he who succeeded
in tearing a bough from the sacred tree, who had a right to con-
tend in single combat with the King of the Wood for succession
to his office?.
It is possible that the sacred tree from which the victor’s
wreath or branch was plucked was not at first the olive-tree, which
may have belonged rather to the moon and the virgin victor of
the Heraea. One curious tradition points to another fruit-tree—
the apple. Phlegon of Tralles?, a contemporary of Pausanias, tells
how in the sixth Olympiad, Iphitus consulted the Delphic oracle
as to how the victors should be crowned. The God told him not
to make the fruit of the apple the prize of victory, but to take the
wild olive, ‘now wreathed in the light web of the spider. Iphitus
found among the many wild olives of the temenos one which was
covered with spider's webs, and he built a wall round it. The first
victor to be crowned with olive was Daikles of Messene, who won
the footrace in the seventh Olympiad. If this tradition has any
truth in it, we may suppose that the original apple-bough was
superseded by the olive borrowed from the moon-goddess’, possibly
when the race of the young men was combined with that of the
virgins, at the introduction of the sun-and-moon calendar, and
the men’s games were assimilated as closely as possible to the
women’s.
Even before it became the moon-tree, the holy olive probably
belonged to Earth. We have seen how the Kouretes ‘slept on
heaps of its fresh green leaves. They were like the Selloi of
Dodona who slept upon the ground (χαμαιεῦναι), in order that
1 Servius ad Zn. vi. 136 Dabatur autem fugitivis potestas ut si quis exinde
ramum potuisset auferre, monomachia cum fugitivo templi sacerdote dimicaret.
* F.H.G. ut. p. 604
Ἴφιτε, μήλειον καρπὸν μὴ Ons ἐπὶ νίκῃ,
ἀλλὰ τὸν ἄγριον ἀμφιτίθει καρπώδη ἔλαιον,
ὃς νῦν ἀμφέχεται λεπτοῖσιν ὑφάσμασ᾽ ἀράχνης.
8. According to the legend told in Pind. Ol. 111. Herakles went to the land of the
Hyperboreans to fetch the wild olive. On his former visit, in quest of the golden-
horned hind, he was welcomed there, not by Apollo, but by Artemis, the horse-
rider (ἱπποσόα, cf. Hippodameia), and then it was that he ‘stood and marvelled at
the trees.’
vii] The Olive-branch 237
in their dreams they might draw oracular wisdom from the Earth’.
Olympia also had its Earth oracle and its cult of Demeter
Chamyne?, whose priestess sat enthroned in a place of honour and
witnessed the Games of Zeus.
The theory, of course, presupposes that the Olympic Games,
like the Karneia, the Panathenaea, the Heraea, and others, were
annual before they were penteteric; for the penteteris, as we have
remarked, is an astronomical cycle independent of the yearly
upspringing and decay of vegetation®. The supposition is very
probable, when we consider the late and artificial character of
periods which combine the sun calendar with the older reckoning
by the moon. In discussing that combination we agreed with
Dr Frazer that from its introduction the Olympic victor repre-
sented the Sun united in marriage with the Moon. Even if there
were no further evidence, it would still be a reasonable conjecture
that in earlier days, the sacred marriage, here as elsewhere, had
been an annual feast, and its protagonists instead of being related
to the celestial bridegroom and bride, had embodied the powers
of fertility in a more primitive form directly associated with the
seasonal life of nature. If that is so, the new penteteric festival in
the late summer may have attracted to itself features, such as the
single combat and the foot-race for the olive branch, from feasts
which under the older systems of time-reckoning would naturally
belong to winter or to spring. We are therefore untouched by
objections based on the time of year of the historic Games—a
time fixed solely with reference to the Sun and Moon. We are at
hberty to suppose that the winner of the foot-race represented the
fertility-daimon, before he represented the Sun. As one mode of
time-reckoning supersedes another, so in the sphere of religion
emphasis is successively laid on Earth, with her changing seasons
and meteoric phenomena, on the Moon, and on the Sun. ‘This
line of enquiry may set at rest many old-standing controversies.
. 1 Hom. Il. xvi. 234. This analogy is pointed out by Weniger, Der heilige
Olbaum, p. 19.
2 Gruppe, Gr. Myth. τι. Rel. τ. 142, calls attention to the probable identity
of Iasios, one of the Idaean Daktyls called the brothers of Herakles in the Elean
legend, with Iasion who lay with Demeter on the ground (Hes. Theog. 969,
Od. ν. 125).
3 We fe welcome the support of Professor Ridgeway, who, as reported in the
Athenaeum, May 20, 1911, ‘ pointed out that the astronomical cycles, such as the
Metonic, were late, and may have come in with the remaking of the games, which
must have existed long before B.c. 776 at Olympia.’
288 The Origin of the Olympic Games
Take such a divinity as Osiris, who began life as a vegetation-
spirit, manifest in trees or in the corn. Ancient theologians and
modern students have again and again upheld or refuted the
propositions that ‘ Osiris is the Moon, ‘Osiris is the Sun, or that
he is neither. The truth will, we believe, prove to be more
complex. These vegetation-spirits or Year Gods successively take
on moon and sun attributes, when the lunar calendar superset
the agricultural, and again when the lunar calendar is first com=_
faba with, then superseded by, the solar. There is no simple |
answer to the question: ‘Is Osiris the Moon, or is he the Sun 2?
He began as neither, and has passed through both phases. ᾿
As each new stage succeeds, the older festivals are not abolished. |
Some are adapted, with necessary shifts to a different season of
the year. Others survive in a degenerate form, as holidays. So, —
and so only, can we account for the extraordinary duplication of _
festivals in ancient calendars, and for the occurrence, at different
times of the year and attached to different divinities, of rites which
are obviously identical in content. ij
If we may assume the same succession of calendars at Olympia, —
the several stages would correspond to the succession we have
made out for the sacred Tree. In the earliest, seasonal or agri-
cultural, stage the olive belonged to Earth, to Demeter Chamyne.
Then it passed to Hera the moon-goddess and became the prize
of the moon-virgin’s race. Finally, when sun and moon were
united in the ennaeteris, the olive-branch supplanted the original
apple-bough, and became the prize also for the foot-race of the
Sun-bridegroom. |
THE MOTHER AND CHILD AND KOURETES AT OLYMPIA.
Further evidence is not wanting in support of the tradition
at Olympia of the Idaean Daktyls or Kouretes, to whose foot-race
for the olive-branch the Games were traced back. This tradition
is firmly rooted in the monuments and cults of Olympia. The
legend, as we have seen, says that ‘when Zeus was born, Rhea
committed the safe-keeping of the child to the Idaean Daktyls
or Kouretes, who came from Ida in Crete. Pindar! himself is
LOLS LT Σωτὴρ ὑψινεφὲς Ζεῦ, Κρόνιόν τε ναίων λόφον
τιμῶν 3 ᾿Αλφεὸν εὐρὺ ῥέοντα "ldatéy τε σεμνὸν ἄντρον.
Schol. ad v. 42 ᾽Ἰδαῖον ἄντρον ἐν Ἤλιδι Δημήτριος ὁ Σκήψιος.. ἱερὸν Διός. ἔν
δὲ “ss glad μὴ τῶν ἐν Ἤλιδι χωρίων αὐτὸν μεμνῆσθαι ὑπέλαβον μνημονεύειν Ἴδης 7H
ἐν Κρήτῃ...
,
vir | Sosipolis 239
our witness that on the hill of Kronos Olympia had a Cave which
was called Idaean, manifestly because 1t was a counterpart of the
Cave of the Birthplace on Cretan Ida. To this Cave the legend
of the covpotpodia belongs. We must look for it among a small
group of sanctuaries, whose high antiquity is marked, among other
things, by their close neighbourhood to the foot of the sacred hill
of Kronos. The later shrines and precincts of Pelops and the
Olympian Father Zeus had to find room further out towards
the river.
)
y
\\l
HILL OF KRONOS
Ee
2-35 ΕΣ Py μι Fe Bee
— = xv ‘ { eae
> ah" RZ Cen: Wei? τς κει τ > (Ὁ 2
2 RS ~ ~ WHYS % cd ey iy aa tb VOC ae
We. 2 SN"! Legh. Gi it τὰν ἀλλα νι
EN TRANS We SF TIN Nui My Gy ue Ow ὸ
= 2 OF Ν
Se INAS Νὰ ΤΕ ΟΣ,
ς- Ἁ
2 ta wry ἐν ἢ ΚΝ aes 2
Ὁ oo g Dak:
Treasuries
PhiliPpeion
North Terrace Wall
Temple of Zeus = aes
Fia. 59.
In this group (Figs. 59 and 60) we find, first, the Metroon,
marking the site of a very ancient cult of the Mother Goddess ;
and close by it an altar of the Kouretes'. Right on the skirts of
the hill, behind the line of the later treasuries, stood a small
shrine of the Mother and Infant—Eileithyia and Sosipolis*. This
little temple moreover did not stand clear of the hillside; the
back wall appears to have been actually engaged in it. This
circumstance, observed by Dérpfeld, has led to the identification
1 Paus, v. 8. 1. 2 Paus. vi. 20. 2.
240 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ CH.
of the shrine with the Idaean Cave, and of ‘Zeus the Saviour,
who as Pindar says honoured it, with the Saviour of the City,
Sosipolis?.
So we find among the most ancient monuments of the Altis
a complex of shrines dedicated to the Mother and Child, and
the attendant Kouretes—a group whose significance has already
been made clear. It represents the three essential factors of a
matrilinear society®.
The ritual of this shrine of Eileithyia and Sosipolis was simple‘.
The priestess, an old woman annually chosen, brought water to
wash the infant god, and set out barley cakes kneaded with honey.
These honey-cakes were food for the serpent—the animal form
Hieron or
Ejleithyia
ALTAR 1G Tr
ALTAR ° iT
Fic. 60.
of the god. For legend said that once, when the Arcadians in-
vaded Elis, the baby Sosipolis was set naked before the Elean
army; and he changed into a snake and the Arcadians ran away.
Then the snake vanished into the earth, no doubt at the very
spot where this cave-shrine was afterwards built.
Only the aged priestess might enter the inner shrine. Outside,
the maids and matrons waited, smgimg a hymn, and offering
incense of al] sorts, but with no libations of wine. These offerimngs—
incense and wineless libations—are, as we know, characteristic of
1 See Carl Robert, Sosipolis in Olympia, Mitth. d. Arch. Inst. Athen, Abth.
xvi. 1893, p. 37 ff.
2 It may be observed that the next stage of the Elean tradition is the arrival
from Crete of Klymenos, a descendant of the Idaean Herakles, who erects an altar
of ashes to Olympian Hera, and an altar to Herakles surnamed Parastates, and
the other Kouretes (Paus. v. 8. 1 and 14. 8).
3 See supra, p. 39, and infra, chapter σι.
4 Paus. vi. 20. 2.
Vit} Sosipolis in Magnesia 241
pre-Olympian divinities—the elder gods of the Earth or of the
_ Sky. Sosipolis, the snake-child, hike Erichthonios, was of the
_ Earth. The Earth was his mother; for ‘Eileithyia’ is only one
name of the Mother Goddess, Rhea, Demeter, Gaia.
In Magnesia, as we have seen
(p. 154), Sosipolis has become Zeus Sosi-
polis. Nevertheless, right down into
Imperial times the tradition survived
of his infant form and of his therio-
morph, the snake. Fig. 61 shows one
of a series of bronze coins of Magnesia
of the time of Caracalla*, On it
appears the infant Saviour seated on
a table or throne with legs of thunder-
bolt pattern. Round him are his
Kouretes, clashing their shields; and, underneath, the snake
emerges from a cista.
Who was the child Sosipolis? Not far from Olympia, at Elis
itself, Sosipolis had a sanctuary in common with Tyche. ° There he
was represented not as an infant, but as a boy, clad in a star-
spangled robe and holding the horn of Amaltheia, the goat who
suckled the infant Zeus in Crete*—the cornucopia with the fruits
of the year’. Tyche and Sosipolis are the same as Hirene and
the child Ploutos—the Hora‘ carrying the Wealth of the year.
The festival of Magnesian Sosipolis has already been discussed
(p. 150); and it has been argued that the bull, who was designated
at the full moon of the month Kronion—the month of seed-time—
fed up all through the winter, and eaten at a communal meal in
spring or early summer, embodied the life of the year, was the
Fie. 61.
1 See J. EH. Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 89.
2 Compare the snake-child Opheltes-Archemoros associated with the founding
of the Nemean Games (Apollod. m1. 6. 4; Bacchyl. vi. 10) and the child Aix which
tended its father the Python slain by Apollo, connected with the origin of the
Pythia (Plut. Qu. Gr. p. 293c; see Nilsson, Gr. Feste, p. 151). Another
Olympian hero, Iamos, is nursed by snakes, Pind. Ol. v1. 45.
3 From Rayet, Milet et le golfe Latinique, Fig. 36, p. 139. The obverse has the
i alee head of Caracalla. See also Imhoof-Blumer, Gr. Miinzen, 1890,
pl. 8. 33.
4 The Cretan Zeus also has his snake form, Schol. Arat. 46; Eratosth. catast.
25. 62; cf. C. Robert, loc. cit. supra.
®> Compare also the Eniautos with Amaltheia’s horn in Ptolemy’s procession,
p. 186, supra.
ὁ Hesiod, Theog. 903; Pind. Ol. x11. 6 Εὐνομία.. Δίκα... Ἑἰρήνα, ταμίαι ἀνδράσι
πλούτου.
Η. 16
242 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ OH.
daimon of the eniautos. He is identical with the Kouros of the
Cretan hymn, who comes ‘for the Year, and brings with him the
blossoming of the Seasons?.
Before we leave the Kouretes and their foot-race, we must
mention a curious parallel from Hebrew tradition®, which gives us
a combination of moon and sun races, and also seems to confirm
the identification, already mentioned (p. 193), of the Kouretes
with the Roman Sali.
The Jewish Agada contains a dialogue between certain Rabbis
and their disciples concerning the hippodrome of Solomon.
Solomon held twelve horse-races in each year, one in every month.
‘Why not thirteen?’ says a disciple, for there were thirteen
months. One race, replies the Rabbi, was not a horse-race, but
a foot-race of young men of the tribe of Gad, as it is written?:
‘ And of the Gadites there separated themselves unto David into the
hold to the wilderness, mighty men of valour, men trained for war,
that could handle shield and spear; whose faces were like the faces
of lions, and they were swift as the roes upon the mountains. This
race of youths was run in the intercalary month Tebeth which
contains the winter solstice. They also carned golden shields.
It is written of them?: ‘As oft as the king went into the House
of the Lord, the Runners bare them (the golden shields), and
brought them back to their chamber.’
These young men called ‘Runners’ (ΝΠ) seem strangely
analogous to the Roman ‘ Leapers’ (the Salii), who also kept shields
(ancilia) in a chamber and brought them out in solemn procession
in the month of Mars—the first month of the old Roman year.
The interesting point about Solomon’s Kouretes-Salii is that their
race, falling in the intercalary month, seems to be a moon-race on
foot, as contrasted with the horse-races of the sun in the other
twelve months. Such may originally have been the foot-race of
the Idaean Kouretes at Olympia, becoming a sun-race when
the Kouros was identified with the sun. |
1 Does this conception throw light on the obscure figure of the ‘Saviour Yea’
(Λυκάβας Σώζων) in Asia Minor? Cf. Roscher, Lez., s.v. Orthopolis. Λυκάβας,
according to Stengel (Hermes, xvit., p. 304) is the moon.
2 See Wiinsche, Salomos Hippodrom als Abbild des babylonischen Himmelsbildes,
Leipzig, 1906. Cf. Hisler, Arch. f. Religionswiss. x1. (1907) 150.
3 1 Chron. xii. 8.
41 Kings xiv. 28. The Authorised Version not understanding the Runners —
translates Ds by ‘the guard.’ Ἷ
vit | The Feast of Tantalus 243
The Saviour of the City may, then, be represented either as an
animal—a bull among a pastoral people, or a snake when he is
a ‘local daimon'’ or hero—or as a human infant, boy, or youth.
We need not be disturbed by the differences of age. The change
from the old year to the new may be symbolised in various ways.
We are familiar with the venerable Father Christmas on the verge
of the grave, and with the New Year as an infant.
At Olympia Sosipolis became fixed in his infant shape beside
his mother Hileithyia. Every year he must be born anew and
washed with the holy water by his venerable nursing-mother.
But another type is well-known—the youth (Adonis, Attis, Osiris),
who dies and rises again in spring.
This Easter death and resurrection of the same individual
is evidently at first distinct from the death of the Old Year at the
hands of the New, where the two individuals are necessarily
different and the death might be a real death. The death, on the
other hand, which is followed by a resurrection, cannot be real ; it
must always have been a mimetic rite. Does the Olympian
legend of Pelops preserve traces of a δρώμενον of this type? We
shall attempt to show that it does.
THE FEAST OF TANTALUS.
One element in the legend of Pelops, as told by Pindar in the
first Olympian, still waits to be explained—the banquet of Tantalus.
We have remarked that it constitutes a crux for the theory of the
funeral origin of the Games. If the Games merely commemorated
the achievements of Pelops, why had this dark and monstrous
story lasted down to Pindar’s time as part of the Olympian
legend of the hero? To ignore or to suppress it would have been
simpler than to keep it and explain it away.
1 Paus. v. 20. 2 Σωσίπολις ᾿Ηλείοις ἐπιχώριος δαίμων.
2 Cf. the various ages of Dionysos, p. 41, and Macrob. Sat. τ. xviii. 9 on the
various ages of the Sun: item Liberi Patris (=Solis in inferno hemisphaerio)
simulacra partim puerili aetate, partim iuvenis fingunt. Praeterea barbata specie,
senili quoque...hae autem aetatum diversitates ad solem referuntur, ut parvulus
videatur hiemali solstitio, qualem Aegyptii proferunt ex adyto die certa, quod
tunc brevissimo die veluti parvus et infans videatur. Exinde autem procedentibus
augmentis aequinoctio vernali similiter atque adulescentis adipiscitur vires figuraque
iuvenis ornatur. Postea statuitur eius aetas plenissima eftigie barbae solstitio
aestivo, quo tempore summum sui consequitur augmentum, LExinde per dimi-
nutiones veluti senescenti quarta forma deus figuratur.
16—2
244 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ CH.
We shall proceed, as before, on the supposition that this
incident, like the other factors in the myth already explained,
is not an event in the real history of an individual called Pelops,
but reflects a rite or δρώμενον. It may have escaped suppression
because the ritual was more important than the reputation of the
hero and his father. We hope to show further that this rite was
of a nature which enables us to relate it to the New Year rites we
have already found embedded in other parts of the legend.
The story of the Feast of Tantalus, with the primitive and
horrible features which so shocked the conventional piety of
Pindar, is as follows. Invited by the gods to eat nectar and
ambrosia at their table, Tantalus asked them in return to a banquet
on the summit of Mount Sipylos. The feast was an eranos; that
is to say, each guest brought a contribution. Tantalus, at the last
course, served the flesh of his son Pelops, whom he had cut in
pieces and boiled in a cauldron. The deities were taken at
unawares, and one of them, Demeter, ate of the horrible dish.
Then Zeus, seeing what had been done, ordered that the flesh
should be put back into the cauldron and the child restored whole
and sound. According to Bacchylides}, it was Rhea, the mother
goddess, who revived Pelops by passing him through the cauldron.
In Pindar’s revised and expurgated version, the infant is taken out
of a ‘pure cauldron’ by Klotho, the Birth Fate—xa@apod λέβητος
ἔξελε Κλώθω. Finally, Zeus blasted Mount Sipylos with thunder
and earthquake, to punish Tantalus for his impiety, or else (as
some have held) for carrying piety to an indiscreet excess. One
reason why it is so hard to please the gods is that it is so hard to
know beforehand at what moment they will have outgrown the
sort of things which used to please them.
Now, what was the essential purport of the ritual described in
this myth? What was actually done to the infant, and with what
intent? In the right answer to this question lies our hope of con-
necting the Feast of Tantalus with the institution of the Games.
Is it a human sacrifice, counteracted by a miracle? Such is
the common view’, which sees a parallel to the more famous
1 Bacch. frag. 54 (Jebb) ap. Schol. Pind. Ol. 1. 40 ὁ δὲ Βακχυλίδης τὸν Πέλοπα
τὴν Ῥέαν λέγει ὑγιάσαι καθεῖσαν διὰ λέβητος. I suspect that Bacchylides is meant by
the πρότεροι whom Pindar controverts, Ol. 1. 37. é
2 See Roscher, Lew., s.v. Pelops.
VII] ' The Boiling of Pelops 245
sacrifice of Isaac on the mountain top. But in such stories do we
not always find a vicarious victim? Something at least is really
made over to the gods—if not Isaac, then a ram caught in a thicket;
and the original human victim escapes. Here, on the contrary,
there is no substitute; the gods get no equivalent for the victim.
A sacrifice in which nothing is really made over to the gods is not
a sacrifice in the usual sense.
If we put aside this explanation, what remains? Nothing is
more certain than that if you cut a child to pieces and boil it, you
cannot afterwards restore it to life by boiling it a second time. If
the child was really killed, the restoration to life was miraculous ;
in other words, it did not happen. But suppose that the restoration
to life was, not a miraculous interruption of the rite, but the
central core of the rite itself. Suppose, in fact, that it was
a ritual, not of sacrifice, but of regeneration, of New Birth?
Then, as in countless other such ceremonies, the symbolic re-
surrection is preceded by a symbolic and counterfeit death. A
pretence is made of killing the child in order that it may be born
again to a new life. Pindar writes more wisely than he knows
when he says the child Pelops was taken out of a ‘pure’ or
‘purifying’ cauldron by Klotho, a Birth-Fate. The ritual was of
Birth—of that Second Birth which, sooner or later, comes to be
conceived as ‘purification’.’
To prove that it is so, the other features of the narrative must
be explained. Why does this rite of new birth take place at the
conclusion of a feast on a mountain-top? Why does the mimic
death of the child take the form of his being dismembered,
cooked, and eaten? Why is the mountain riven with thunder
at the close ?
First, what mountain was the scene of this banquet of the gods ?
Pindar accepts the tradition that Pelops came from Lydia,
and that the mountain was Sipylos in Magnesia. There, on the
very summit of an isolated crag is still to be seen the rock-cut seat
1 Rejuvenation by cooking occurs in the legend of Medea, who persuaded
the daughters οὗ Pelias (whom Gruppe, Gr. Rel. u. Myth. τ. 145, regards as
a double of Pelops) to dismember and boil him. To convince them, Medea made
a ram into a lamb by the same process (Apollod. 1. 9. 27). This, I suspect, was the
Golden Ram or Lamb, that is the Sun, whose daughter Medea was. Compare
Menerva cooking the young Mars on the Praenestine cistia in Fig. 50, p. 198. Cf.
Roscher, Lez., s.v. Mars.
246 The Origin of the Olympic Games (CH.
called the Throne of Pelops; and, lower down on the face of the
cliff, the sanctuary of the Mountain Mother, here worshipped
under the name of Mother Plastene!. But this was not the only
home of the legend of Tantalus. There is also a Mount Tantalus
in Lesbos, where some traits of the story reappear. And not only
so; but no less an authority than Aeschylus makes King Tantalus
reign on Mount Ida in Phrygia. The poet even transfers Sipylos
to the neighbourhood of Ida*.
Strabo complains of Aeschylus for making (as he says) this
‘confusion’; but in another passage* Strabo himself tells us how
the confusion came about. It was due to identity of cults in the
two places. The Great Mother of Mount Sipylos was also the
Lady of Ida. ‘The Berekyntes, he says, ‘and the Phrygians in
general, and the Trojans living at Jda worship Rhea with mystical
rites...and after the various places of her cult, they call her Idaea,
Dindymene, Sipylene, Pessinuntis, Kybele. ‘The Greeks,’ he adds,
‘call her attendants HKouretes.’
This gives usa clue. It suggests a form of cult to which we
can refer the ritual of Tantalus’ Feast—the cult, namely, which
prevailed all down the coast of Asia Minor, of the Great Mother
and her Child, with her attendant Kouretes or Korybantes—the
very cult which we have found established at the foot of the hill of
Kronos at Olympia.
Following this clue let us move southward again from Mount
Ida to Ephesus. Here we shall find an Olympianised form of this
same cult of the Mother and Child, flourishing throughout
historical antiquity’. This instance is specially important for us,
because here, at Ephesus, we have as a constituent part of the
cult, a banquet, a eranos feast, on the top of a mountain. Strabo’s
account’ is as follows:
On the coast near Ephesus, a little above the sea, lies Ortygia, a splendid
grove (ἄλσος) of trees of all sorts, mostly cypress. Through it flows the river
Kenchrios where they say Leto washed after her travail. For here legend
tells of the Birth, of the nurse Ortygia, of the Birth-place, where no one may
enter, and of the olive-tree close by where the goddess is said to have rested
after her travail.
1 Paus. v. 13. 7, and Frazer, ad loc.
* In Lesbos we hear also of Thyestes (whose homonym in Argive legend was,
like Tantalus, concerned in a rexvogayia) and Daito, who must be connected with
some ritual dais. See schol. and Tzetzes ad Lyk. Al. 212.
3 Strabo xm. 580, Aesch. frag. 156. 4 Strabo x. 469.
> See Tac. Ann. 111. 61. ὁ xiv. 639.
vir] The Kouretes at Ephesus 247
Above this grove is ‘a mountain, Solmissos, where they say the Kouretes
took their stand and with the clash of their arms frightened the jealous Hera
who was lying in wait, and helped Leto to conceal the birth. (There are
ancient temples with ancient images of wood, as well as later temples with
statues by Scopas and others.)
Here, every year, the people assemble to celebrate a festival, at which it
is the custom for the young men to vie with one another in the magnificence
of their contributions to the entertainment. At the same season a college of
the Kouretes holds banquets and performs certain mystical sacrifices.
There is little doubt that the ancient wooden images in these
mountain shrines had represented a Mother and Infant of an older
type than Leto and her children. The presence of the Kouretes,
the attendant ministers of Rhea, is proof enough. Leto has
superseded Rhea, just as in later times Leto’s daughter, ‘Great
Artemis of the Ephesians, whom all Asia and the world wor-
shippeth,’ gave place in her turn to yet another Asiatic mother
with her divine child.
On Mount Solmissos, above the cypress grove of the Birth-place,
the tradition at least, if not the practice, survived, of a dance of
young men in arms to conceal the divine birth. Certainly, the
young men played a prominent part in the banquet on the
mountain top, held by the college of Kouretes and their president,
the Protokoures', with certain sacrifices called ‘mystical’ (uvotixat
θυσίαι), to mark that they were not ordinary Olympian sacrifices,
such as would naturally belong to the cult of Leto and her twins.
Of what nature were the mystical rites of this mountain-banquet ?
To answer that question we must go southward again to a still
more famous seat of the same cult, where we shall find the
remaining features of the Feast of Tantalus, and an explanation of
their significance.
In Crete?, as we have already seen (p. 13), the birth of a divine
child, called Zeus, was concealed from his father Kronos, who had
eaten his other children immediately after their birth. Here too
the concealment was aided by a dance of young men in arms,
called Kouretes.
The myth and ritual of Zagreus have already (p. 14) been
examined. It has been shown that the ceremonies, in a compara-
tively late and civilised form, including a banquet, a procession with
1 See Pauly-Wiss. s.v. Ephesia, col. 2756, and supra, p. 46, and R. Heberdey,
Jahreshefte Oestr. Inst. vu. 1905, Beiblatt, p..77, for recent discoveries of
inscribed drums with names of Kouretic officials.
2 Strabo x. 468.
248 The Origin of the Olympic Games [CH.
torches of the mountain mother, and certain thunder-rites, formed
a rite of ordination held by a sacred college of Kouretes, analogous
to the Kouretes at Ephesus. We may presume that the banquet
was held, in Crete as at Ephesus, on the sacred mountain. We
have seen too that the myth of Zagreus retains certain primitive,
and even disgusting, traits which carry us back to very early rites
of tribal initiation. This myth supplies the remaining details of
the Feast of Tantalus. We are told that the wicked Titans tore
the child in pieces, put a cauldron on a tripod, and boiled his
limbs, piercing them with spits’. The horrid repast ends with an
epiphany of the Thunderer®. Zeus was invited to the feast, but
discovering what had been done, blasted the Titans with his bolt*.
The child was restored to life; his torn limbs were collected, and
he ‘emerged whole and entire*’
The analogy, or rather identity, of this rite with the death and
resurrection of Pelops can hardly leave a doubt that the Feast of
Tantalus was in essence a ceremony of New Birth, of mock death
and resurrection, and also, in some sense, of Initiation. It gives
us the ritual which is needed to complete the religion of the
Mother and Child and the Kouretes at the Idaean Cave beneath
the hill of Kronos.
The next point to be considered is, what connection can there
be between an initiation ceremony, such as we have found in the
legend of Pelops, and the imauguration of a New Year? We
may note, in the first place, that the Eating of Children {(τεκνο-
gayia) which persistently recurs in the lineage of the house of
Tantalus, is connected with the succession to the kingdom.
Thyestes, son of Pelops, in the course of a strife for the kingdom
with his brother Atreus, is given the flesh of his own children to
eat. Zeus, the father of Tantalus, does not indeed eat his son
Dionysus, but he caused the Dithyrambos to ‘enter his male womb’
and be born again from it. Kronos swallowed Zeus in the form of
1 Clem. Alex. Cohort, p. 5=Abel, Orph. frag. 200.
2 Was the Thunderer present as a visible thunderbolt on a draped throne such
as those figured above on p. 58? We are reminded of the famous Throne of
Pelops on the Magnesian mountain-top and the equally famous Sceptre of Pelops
worshipped at Chaeronea, Paus. 1x. 40. 11.
5. Arnob. adv. nat. v. 19=Abel, Orph. frag. 196.
+ Macrob. Somn. Scip. 1. 12=Abel, Orph. frag. 206.
| Vit | Texvodayiar and the Kingdom 249
a stone and vomited him forth again’. Ouranos, father of Kronos,
hid his children in the earth. The motive in the case of these
oldest τεκνοφαγίαι is the fear of being superseded by the heir to
the kmgdom* This same lineage is also the line of transmission
of the famous sceptre of Pelops, worshipped at Chaeronea, which
ds probably nothing but the thunderbolt, marking that the holder
_ of it for the time being is king over the elements*. There was no
public temple for this sceptre, ‘but the man who acts as priest
keeps the sceptre in his house for the year; and sacrifices are
offered to it daily, and a table is set beside it covered with all
sorts of flesh and cakes.’ The priest was evidently an annual
‘king,’ whose mana was derived from the sceptre. As Pausanias
says, ‘that there is something divine about it 1s proved by the
distinction it confers on its owners.’
The parallelism of these two series of facts—the recurrent
τεκνοφαγίαι and the transmission of the sceptre—warrants us in
connecting the ritual of the Feast of Tantalus with the succession
to an annual or periodic ‘ kingdom‘,
These facts suggest that this ritual of New Birth or inaugura-
tion at the Mountain Feast can be related to our conception of
‘Pelops’ as the young Year-God, whose marriage was celebrated in
the summer. The ritual would be appropriate to a seasonal feast
of a Kronian (Saturnalian) character, at which the youthful year-
god, standing for all young and growing things in nature, was
initiated or inaugurated, as ‘King’ for his Year, under the
form of death and resurrection.
In the first place, for the Kronian character of the Feast we
have a curious piece of evidence in the text of Pindar itself.
1 See above p. 22 for practical identity of the Κρόνου τεκνοφαγία to the συμφοραὶ
Θυέστου as represented in mimetic dance.
2 See Prof. Gilbert Murray, Anthropology and the Classics, p. 84.
3 Paus. 1x, 40. 11. The transmission of the sceptre remains an important
motive in the Orphic Theogony. Abel, Orph. frag. 85.
4 Another trait in Pelops’ story which may survive from an initiation ceremony
is the going down into the sea at night under the open sky to invoke Poseidon
(Ol. τ. 73). The reason for supposing that this was a piece of ritual is its
recurrence in the story of another Olympic hero, Iamos, who goes down. into the
Alpheus at night to call on Poseidon and Apollo, and is subsequently inaugurated
as seer in charge of the oracle (Ol. νι. 58). Pythagoras, when initiated by the
Idaean Daktyls, before being purified by the thunderstone, ‘lay stretched out on his
face by the sea at dawn, and at night by a river’; see above, p. 57. This ritual
contact with water must have been as essential as contact with fire (thunder): the
mana of both elements was needed by the king of thunder and of rain.
250 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ oH.
At line 48 of the First Olympian, Pindar describes the cutting
up, boiling, and eating of Pelops. He says this shocking incident
was invented by the envious neighbours, who secretly spread the
report,
that into bubbling water boiling with fire they had cut him limb by limb
with a knife, :
τραπέζαισί τ᾽ ἀμφὶ δεύτατα κρεῶν
σέθεν διεδάσαντο καὶ φάγον.
Such is the reading of our Mss. But what sense can be made
of it? Why should Pindar say they distributed and ate the last
morsels of the flesh (if we take δεύτατα κρεῶν together), when
legend said that only one morsel—the shoulder—was eaten? Or
(taking audi δεύτατα together’), that they ate of the flesh at the
end of the feast, whereas flesh was usually served first? Why,
again, are the tables mentioned at all? We shall not discuss the
various editorial emendations, because we believe that the true
reading and interpretation are preserved by Athenaeus?.
The text of Pindar used by Athenaeus read not ἀμφὶ devtata
but ἀμφὶ δεύτερα. This is certain from the interpretation put
upon the passage by Athenaeus, which turns on this very word ;
for he quotes the lines as proof that ‘among the ancients much
care and expense were lavished on the “second course” (δεύτεραι
τράπεζαι). It appears, then, that for some reason Pindar wished
to mention the ‘second tables ’—dessert, in fact—and to avoid the
banality of the actual phrase δεύτεραι τράπεζαι, he introduced
both words in a different construction—rtparéfaici τ᾽, ἀμφὶ
δεύτερα, ‘and at the tables, at the second (course), they divided
and ate of thy flesh®’
But what is the point of mentioning that Pelops was served
up at dessert? Athenaeus again supplies the answer. He is
reporting a dinner-party conversation, occasioned by the appearance
at table of the δεύτεραι τράπεζαι".
1 Schréder (1908) prints ἀμφὶ δεύτατα between commas.
* Athen. xiv. 641 Ὁ ὅτι yap ἦσαν καὶ παρὰ τοῖς ἀρχαίοις ai δεύτεραι τράπεζαι
πολυτελῶς μεμεριμνημέναι, παρίστησιν Πίνδαρος ἐν ᾿Ολυμπιονίκαις περὶ τῆς Πέλοπος
κρεουργίας διηγούμενος" τραπέζαισί τ᾽ ἀμφὶ δεύτερα (ἀμφίδευρα A. corr. Schweigh.)
κρεῶν κ.τ.λ.
ὅ. The wrong correction of δεύτερα to δεύτατα was inevitable; the converse
error, except as a sheer blunder, is inconceivable.
4 Athen. xiv. 639B περιηνέχθησαν ἡμῖν καὶ αἱ δεύτεραι καλούμεναι τράπεζαι, ποὶλ-
λάκις ἡμῖν διδόμεναι οὐ μόνον ταῖς τῶν Kpoviwy ἡμέραις, ἐν αἷς Ῥωμαίων παισὶν (? Ῥωμαίοις
πάτριόν ἐστιν) ἑστιᾶν τοὺς οἰκέτας, αὐτοὺς τὰς τῶν οἰκετῶν ἀναδεχομένους λειτουργίας.
Ἑλληνικὸν δὲ τοῦτο τὸ ἔθος....
ὙΠ] The δεύτεραι τράπεζαι 251:
When Masurius had finished speaking, the ‘second tables,’ as they are
alled, were handed round. These are often served, not only on the days of
he festival of Kronos, on which it is the Roman custom! to feast the slaves,
he masters themselves undertaking for the nonce the office of servants. The
ustom is also Greek. Thus a similar practice prevails in Crete at the
dermaia: the slaves are feasted and make merry, while their masters
erform the menial offices.
He goes on to mention similar festivals at which this
‘aturnalian custom was observed—the Babylonian Sakaea, at
vhich a slave was dressed as king; the Thessalian Peloria
vhere the sacrifice to Zeus Pelorios was attended by the dressing
f tables with a splendid feast to which slaves were admitted and
erved by their masters, including the king himself*.
The vegetables, fruits, and cakes served at the ‘second tables’
vere especially associated with the supposed simplicity of the
rolden Age of Kronos, and so were characteristic of Kronian or
aturnalian feasts*. So this phrase τραπέζαισί τ᾽ ἀμφὶ δεύτερα
onfirms our suggestion that the Feast of Tantalus was Kronian
n character‘,
1 Lydus de mens. ut. 22 (March 1) ὅτι δὲ πάτριον ἀρχὴν ἐνιαυτοῦ τὸν Μάρτιον οἱ
Ῥωμαῖοι παρέλαβον, δῆλον καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ τὰς... Ματρώνας, τουτέστι Tas evyevidas, τοὺς
ἱκέτας ἑστιᾶν, καθάπερ ἐν τοῖς Κρονίοις τουτὶ πράττειν ἔθος ἦν τοῖς δούλους κεκτημένοις
of. Iv. 42).
2 Another of Athenaeus’ instances is the following from Euripides, Cretan
Vomen, frag. 467 N.:
τί yap ποθεῖ τράπεζα ; τῷ δ᾽ οὐ βρίθεται ;
πλήρης μὲν ὄψων ποντίων, πάρεισι δὲ
μόσχων τέρειναι σάρκες ἀρνεία τε δαὶς
καὶ πεπτὰ καὶ κροτητὰ τῆς ξουθοπτέρου
πελάνῳ μελίσσης ἀφθόνως δεδευμένα.
This must describe some important banquet; if it was that οἵ Thyestes, who
as a character in the play (Schol. ad Ar. Ach. 433), we should again have the
εὔτεραι τράπεζαι connected with a rTexvodayia. Athenaeus also quotes the
popuviov KardBaois of Dikaiarchos, 7 ye τὴν πολλὴν δαπάνην ἐν Tots δείπνοις
ἀρέχουσα δευτέρα τράπεζα mpoceyeévero— an instance which may be significant for
s, since the Trophoniads are equated with the Idaean Daktyls and Korybants.
lut. fac. in orb. lun. xxx., J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 579, and infra,
hapter x1.
5. They were also called the Horn of Amaltheia, Athen. xiv. 6434. See above,
. 186. Compare Plato’s description of the vegetarian diet of the City of Pigs (Rep.
72). His citizens lie on leaves, reeds, bryony and myrtle boughs as the Idaean
.ouretes at Olympia lie on leaves of the wild olive (Paus. v. 7. 7).
4 Mr Cook draws my attention to the importance in this connection of the
gonistic table. On Athenian coins of Imperial date occurs the type of a sacred
able on which are an owl, a wreath, and a bust of Athena, and beneath the table
he amphora containing presumably the prize oil (Head, Hist. Num. p. 326).
ome Imperial bronze coins of Delphi (Svoronos, Bull. Corr. Hell. (1896), Pl. xxx.
os. 18) which clearly refer to the Pythian, as the Athenian to the Panathenaic,
rames, show on the reverse a table with wreath, fruits, amphora, and perched
ear them a crow or raven. The bird, like the bust of Athena, indicates the
tesence of the god at the vegetarian dais. Mr Cook holds that this was originally
252 The Origin of the Olympic Games [oH.
THE KRONIAN FESTIVAL OF THE BASILAI.
We are now, perhaps, in a position to identify this mountain
Feast with an actual New Year's Festival observed throughout
historic antiquity at Olympia—the only Olympic festival we know
which was held on the top of a mountain.
Immediately before his description of the shrine of the Mother
and child Sosipolis, Pausanias tells us that on the top of the
mountain of Kronos, ‘the Basilai, as they are called, sacrifice to
Kronos at the spring equinox, in the Elean month Elaphios?’ |
With this festival Dr Frazer? compares a feast ‘not only
observed by the Parsis in India and elsewhere, but common to
Persians, Arabs, and Turks, it being the day fixed for the
computation of the incoming solar year. It corresponds with
the vernal equinox and falls about the third week in March. It
is called Jamshedi Naoroz, and strictly speaking is “New Year's
Day,” but in India it is simply a day of rejoicing, and is observed
in honour of a Persian king named Jamshed, who first introduced
the principles of cultivation, and the proper method of reckoning
time on the solar system.’ We are reminded of Diodorus’ state-
ment that the festivals and sacrifices of Kronos among the Romans
commemorated how Kronos became king and introduced among
mankind the civilised manner of life.
Everything we know of the sacrifice of the Basilai thus fits the
requirements of the Feast of Tantalus. It is a festival of Kronos;
it is held on the top of a mountain ; its date—the vernal equinox—
is the appropriate time for the inauguration of the Year or Sun
God under the form of death and resurrection’, If we are right im
seeing a ritual myth in the story of the mountain banquet, and im
a communion table, at which the victor sat and ate the fruit of the God, later
degraded into a mere table for prizes.
1 Paus. vi. 20. 1 ἐπὶ δὲ τοῦ ὄρους (τοῦ _Kpoviov) TH κορυφῇ θύουσιν oi Bacthail
καλούμενοι τῴ Κρόνῳ κατὰ ἰσημερίαν τὴν ἐν τῷ ἦρι ᾿Ελαφίῳ μηνὶ παρὰ ᾿Ηλείοις. (Ch
Dion. H. τ. 34.)
5 Pausanias, Vol. iv. p. 75, quoting A. F. Baillie, Kurrachee (Karachi), past,
present, and future, Calcutta, 1890, p. 190.
> v. 66.
4 Lydus tells us that Oinomaos, king of Pisa, held the contest of horse-driving
on the twenty-fourth of March—close to the vernal equinox; but, in the absence of
older authority, this statement does not carry much weight. De mens. τ. 12 οὗτος,
δὲ (ΟἰνόμαοΞ) ἦν βασιλεὺς Πισαίων, ἦγε δὲ τὸν ἱππικὸν ἀγῶνα μηνὶ Μαρτίῳ εἰκοστ' ῇ
τετάρτῃ ὑψουμένου τοῦ Ἡλίου. Cf. J. Malalas, Chronogr. 173—6.
nT] Festival of the Basilai 253
upposing that this myth, as part of the Olympian legend of
fantalus, reflected some local rite, the Kronian festival of the
3asilai is the only one which meets the needs of the case.
It is not improbable that this Kronian feast represents a very
mcient seasonal festival of spring, which became attached to the
ernal equinox when the sun and the critical dates of his annual
ourse became important. In discussing Salmoneus, we connected
us attribute of the slipped fetter (p. 223) with the Kronian custom
f releasing slaves and prisoners at new year festivals. We saw
oo that this custom at Rome, which originally belonged to the
<alends of March, was borrowed by the later Saturnalia of mid-
vinter, and yet retained also at its old date in March. The Attic
<ronia show an instructive parallel. At Athens the same
saturnalian custom of feasting slaves and releasing prisoners
ppears both at the Panathenaea in Hekatombaion—a. festival
pparently superimposed on the older Kronia\—and at the spring
estival of Dionysus, the Anthesteria”.
Proclus’, more definitely, records the admission of slaves to the
estival at the Pithoigia—the first day (Anthesterion 11) of the
\nthesteria. This observance is of peculiar interest to us because
mong the Boeotians, as we know from Plutarch*, this day was
alled the day of the Good Spirit, the Agathos Daimon. It was
Iso a day when the souls of the dead were evoked from the
rave-jars (pithor); the Opening of the Jars was at once a spring-
estival of first-fruits—on that day they broached the new wine—
nd a temporary release of the spirits of the dead from the prison
f the grave’.
1 Dem. xxiv. 26 εὐθὺς τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ, καὶ ταῦτ᾽ ὄντων Kpoviwy καὶ διὰ ταῦτ᾽ ἀφειμένης
ἧς βούλης, διαπραξάμενος... καθίζεσθαι νομοθέτας διὰ ψηφίσματος ἐπὶ τῇ τῶν Παναθηναίων
ροφάσει. Plut. vit. Thes. 12 Kpoviov μηνός, ὃν νῦν “ΕΞκατομβαιῶνα καλοῦσι. Schol,
d Dem. 111. p. 29 ἣν ΕΞ κατομβαιὼν ὁ καὶ Κρρόνιος παρ᾽ “Ἕλλησι.
Macrobius, Sat. 1. 10. 22, following Philochorus, records the practice of the
ttic Kronia: Philochorus Saturno et Opi primum in Attica statuisse aram
yecropem dicit, eosque deos pro Jove Terraque coluisse, instituisseque ut patres
amiliarum et frugibus et fructibus iam coactis passim cum servis vescerentur.
2 Dem. xxit. 68 ἐρωτῶν εἰ μάτην τὸ δεσμωτήριον @Kodoundn. καταφαίην av ἔγωγε,
ly ὁ πατὴρ ὁ σὸς ᾧχετο αὐτόθεν αὐταῖς πέδαις ἐξορχησάμενος Διονυσίων τῇ πομπῇ.
schol. ad loc., ἔθος ἣν παρὰ τοῖς ᾿Αθηναίοις ἐν τοῖς Διονυσίοις καὶ ἐν τοῖς Ταναθηναίοις
ovs δεσμώτας ἀφίεσθαι τοῦ δεσμοῦ ἐν ἐκείναις ταῖς ἡμέραις.
3 Ad Hes. Op. 366 ἐν τοῖς πατρίοις ἐστὶν ἑορτὴ Πιθοιγία Kad’ ἣν οὔτε οἰκέτην οὔτε
ισθωτὸν εἴργειν τῆς ἀπολαύσεως θεμιτὸν nv.
4 Q. Symp. vut. 3. For the Pithoigia see J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 32 ff.
5 For the conjunction of the worship of the Good Daimon and the souls of the
ead see next chapter.
254 The Origin of the Olympic Games cal
When we put these scattered indications together, we con- 4
jecture that the Kronian sacrifice of the Basilai at Olympia was_
one of those old spring festivals of the New Year, at which the
resurrection of life in nature was symbolised in various ways’.
To resume this part of our argument. We find that the story”
of the eating and resurrection of Pelops at the mountain banquet
hangs together with the presence at Olympia, both in legend and—
in cult, of the Kouretes, attendant on the Mother and Child.
Pindar’s description preserves a trait which, with the evidence of
Athenaeus, points to the Kronian character of the rite. On the
hill of Kronos we know of a festival connected with Kronos, which
was celebrated at the spring equinox, when the youthful sun comes
of age. The sacrifice is conducted by priests called Basilai, or
Kings: and the τεκνοφαγίαι characteristic of the house of Pelops”
are associated with the succession to the kingdom. From these —
indications we conclude that, while the birth of the new Year God
was celebrated in the cult of the infant Sosipolis, his Easter death
and resurrection—his initiation or mauguration when he passes”
from childhood to youth—was marked in ritual by the Kronian
festival of the Basilai in March, and in myth by the death and
rebirth of the youth Pelops at the mountain banquet of Tantalus.
In the Third Olympian Pelops is actually called ‘ Kronios’—
the very epithet by which the Kouros is invoked in the Cretan”
hymn :—
Ἰώ,
Μέγιστε Κοῦρε, χαῖρέ μοι,
Κρόνιε.
It is to be wished that Pausanias had recorded more details of
the vernal sacrifice of the Basilai on the hill of Kronos. The title
Basileus is constantly given to Kronos; at Olympia he seems to
have been the arch-basileus of a college of Basilai. Possibly some
light may be thrown upon his obscure figure by the Basileus a
Priene?.
An inscription has come to light upon the basis of a statue
1 An Attic spring sacrifice (in Elaphebolion) to Kronos is attested by ἃ ᾿
inscription I. G. 3. 77. 28. Wissowa in Roscher, Lew., 5.0. Saturnus, col. 458,
rejects von Prott’s view (Leges graec. sacrae, τ. 12) that this was borrowed from
Rome.
2 H. vy. Giirtringen, Inschr. v. Priene, 1906, p. 136, No. 186, gives an inscription
from the base of a bronze statue of the second century B.c. found in situ at the N.W
corner of the Agora at the entrance to a temple: Βασιλείδης καὶ Καλλνίκη | τὸ
Vit] The. Basileus ι 255
erected to a priest of ‘the Basileus and the Kouretes.’ Once more
we encounter the Kouretes, this time with a Basileus at their head.
Further, we learn from Strabo, that Basileus was the title of
a ‘young man’ of Priene chosen to take charge of the rites. This
young man is manifestly the human Kouros,—related to his
Kouretes as the Protokoures is related to the college of Kouretes
at Ephesus, and (may we not add?) as the Kronos Basileus at
Olympia is related to his Basilai.
The Olympic Games began with a foot-race ‘for the kingdom’ ;
the youth who won the race was the Basileus. What does this
title mean ?
The priest at the Laconian Karneia was called Agetes, the
Leader, and the festival itself, Agetoria. At Argos, Karnos the
Ram was called Zeus and Hegetor. We are reminded how in
ancient days the leader of the annual procession might be a holy
Bull or a Goat, and how at Athens the Kouros in Bull form and
human form came in procession to the theatre. The young
man pursued by the Staphylodromoi, with his wreaths and
beast-disguise, was a ‘mumming representative of the daimon,
who went in procession at the festival’. We have already seen
the Kouros of the Cretan hymn as Leader of his daimones
(δαιμόνων ayopevos). Was the Basileus simply the βασι-λεύς---
“leader of the march’ or ‘leader of the step, that is of the
dance of the young men‘*? And is not this dance or march
nothing but the komos, the procession in which the Olympian victor,
attended by his friends and hymned with songs of triumph, visited
the altars of the gods ? We now understand—what otherwise
seems surprising—the fact, implied by Pindar and_ explicitly
αὑτῶν πάτερα | ᾿Απολλόδωρον ἸΤοσειδωνίου | ἱερητεύοντα Βασιλεῖ | καὶ Kovpnow. Strabo,
vill. 984 καὶ δὴ πρὸς τὴν θυσίαν ταύτην καθίστασι βασιλέα ἄνδρα νέον Ipinvéa τὸν τῶν
ἱερῶν ἐπιμελησόμενον. We owe this reference to Mr A. B. Cook. The important
word βασιλέα, though found in the mss. and in editions before Kramer, is now
omitted by editors !
1 Hesych. ἀγητής"...ἐν δὲ τοῖς Καρνείοις ὁ ἱερώμενος τοῦ (τῆς, Mss. corr. Meursius)
θεοῦ καὶ 7 ἑορτὴ ᾿Αγητόρια. See Nilsson, Gr. Feste, p. 121.
* See supra, p. 209. 3 See supra, p. 234, note 5.
4 For the derivation of βασιλεύς see Εἰ. W. Fays, Greek ΒΑΣΙ- ΛΕΥ͂Σ, in Classical
Quarterly, v. 1911, p. 117. Prellwitz (Etym. Wérterb.) suggests: βασι-: altbak-
trisch jaiti, Haus, Geschlecht, lit. gimtis, natiirl. Geschlecht; ἐβάθη" ἐγεννήθη,
Hes. Dann βασιλεύς, Geschlechtsherr, wie ahd. chuning.
Paus. vi. 22, Near the grave of the suitors of Hippodameia was a sanctuary of
Artemis Kordax, so named because the attendants (ἀκόλουθοι) of Pelops, after his
victory, τὰ ἐπινίκια ἤγαγον mapa τῇ θεῷ ταύτῃ Kal ὠρχήσαντο ἐπιχώριον τοῖς περὶ τὸν
Σίπυλον κόρδακα ὄρχησιν.
©
256 The Origin of the Olympic Games [oH.
stated by the Scholiast’, that the victor himself led the procession —
and acted as ἔξαρχος or precentor of the ancient hymn of Archi-
lochos, which was addressed, not to the victor himself, but to the
hero who was his mythical prototype, Herakles.
The Komos or triumphal procession of the victor resembles the
Ovation described by Lydus? as a most venerable festival among
the Romans. It was held on new year’s day (January 1). The
consul, dressed in white and riding a white horse, led the procession
up the Capitoline hill. Both the dress and the horse assimilated
him to Jupiter, whose victory over the Giants symbolised, in
Lydus’ opinion, the victory of the sun over the colds of winter’.
THE VICTOR AND THE HERO.
Had we begun this chapter with the statement that the
triumphal procession, or komos, was the original kernel of the
Olympic Games, it would have seemed, in the strict sense of the
word, preposterous. But in view of the facts we have analysed
and of the previous discussion of the Dithyramb (p. 205), it will
not perhaps now seem paradoxical to suggest that this procession,
with its sacrifice and eating of a bull‘, its hymn to the hero, and
the concluding feast in the banqueting chamber’, was the central
rite, to which the foot-race of the Kouretes was a mere preliminary.
The race, whose original purpose was simply to determine who
should be the greatest Kouros or King of his year, developed by
successive accretions into the elaborate athletic sports, which in
later times came to be the central feature of the whole festival.
1 Pind, Ol. rx. 1 τὸ μὲν ᾿Αρχιλόχου μέλος φωνᾶεν ᾿Ολυμπίᾳ, καλλίνικος ὁ τριπλόος
κεχλαδώς, ἄρκεσε Κρόνιον παρ᾽ ὄχθον ἁγεμονεῦσαι κωμάζοντι φίλοις ᾿Εφαρμόστῳ σὺν
ἑταίροις. Christ, ad loc. Victor vero ipse vice praecentoris (ἐξάρχου) fungebatur
sodalibus praeeuntis, id quod Pindarus verbo ἁγεμονεῦσαι significavit et scholiasta
hac adnotatione confirmat: κωμάζει δὲ πρὸς τὸν τοῦ Διὸς βωμὸν ὁ νικήσας μετὰ τῶν
φίλων, αὐτὸς τῆς ὠδῆς ἐξηγούμενος.
2 De mens. ut. 3.
3 The ancient custom was to exchange gifts (στρήνα) of dried figs and laurel —
leaves which were useful for driving away spirits. Ibid. 4. ἔνθεν ἂν εἴη δάφνη,
ἐκποδὼν daluwoves—a phrase which recalls the θύραζε Κῆρες of the Anthesteria, ~
J. Ε΄. Harrison, Prolegomena, Ὁ. 35.
4 Schol. ad Pind. Ol. v. 7 οἱ yap νικῶντες ἔθυον ἐν τοῖς ἐξ βωμοῖς. Cf. Nem. v1. 40
ταυροφόνῳ τριετηρίδι (the Isthmia) ; frag. ap. vit. Pind. ex schol. Ambros, (Christ,
Ῥ. 6) πενταετηρὶς ἑορτὰ βουπομπός (the Pythia), That the bull at Olympia was not
only sacrificed but ‘distributed’ to be eaten (dais) appears from Athenaeus 1. 55:
Empedocles, victorious in the chariot race, disapproving as a Pythagorean of flesh- —
eating, made a confectionary bull and διένειμε τοῖς εἰς τὴν πανήγυριν ἀπαντήσασιν.
> Paus. v. 15, 12 ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἑστιατόριον ᾿Ηλείοις... τοὺς δὲ τὰ ᾿Ολύμπια νικῶντας
ἑστιῶσιν ἐν τούτῳ τῷ οἰκήματι.
Ὁ... "ὦ
Vit | The Komos 257
The Komos, which thus sank to be a mere appendage, retained
even in historic times features which show that the personality of
the victor was not of primary importance. The elaborate Epinikian
ode of the Pindaric type was a late institution. The earlier
victors, like Epharmostos, were content with the threefold ringing
ery which began, ‘Hail, King Herakles\’ Even when Pindar
brought the Ode of Victory to its perfection, the victor had still to
be satisfied with a personal reference at the beginning and the
end. The central portion of the typical Epinikion is occupied, not
with the victor’s personality and achievements, but with the deeds
of his ancestors, those earlier manifestations of the Genius of his
house (δαίμων γενέθλιος) who is reimbodied in each successive
generation. It is the daimon, incarnate for the moment in the
victor, who in a great number of Pindar’s odes, 15 really the object
of praise and commemoration. In other odes the myth is devoted
to the institution or ordinance (te@uds) of the rite itself. This, as
we shall see (p. 327), is the proper and original topic of the myth
in a hymn associated with ritual. In the development of the
Epinikian ode we may perhaps see an analogy to the development
of the drama, which starts from a ritual dithyramb contaming
an ‘aetiological’ myth, and later is infused with a new element of
saga-history borrowed from epic tradition. In both cases the
hymn and the ritual myth come first; the commemoration of
ancestors is a secondary importation.
We have spoken of the Olympic victor as the daimon of his
Year; we have seen him wreathed, and pelted with leaves®,
leading the song and dance of his attendants in the Komos—
a Kouros at the head of his Kouretes. We have also found him
conceived as the reincarnation of the daimon of his house—the
Spirit of his dead ancestors, who, as Pindar‘ says, ‘listening with
such consciousness as the dead may have, hear of his great
prowess, on which the delicate dew of song is shed, as of a glory
which is their own and which they share with their son.’ Finally,
we may regard him also as representing the ‘local hero, be he
1 Pind. Ol. rx. 1. Hesych. rerpdxwuos: μέλος τι σὺν ὀρχήσει πεποιημένον εἰς
Ἡρακλέα ἐπινίκιον.
2. See infra, p. 334.
3 Victors were also pelted with flowers and fruits, Plut. Symp. Qu. vut. 4. 723 ὁ
kal ῥόδοις καὶ λυχνίσιν, ἔνιοι δὲ Kal μήλοις Kal ῥοιαῖς ἔβαλλον ws καλοῖς γεραίροντες ἀεὶ
τοὺς νικηφόρους.
4 Pyth. v. 98; cf. Ol. vi. 14, Nem. tv, 88.
Η, 17
258 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ CH.
Sosipolis, or Herakles’, or Pelops. Sosipolis with his cornucopia
bears traces of his function as Agathos Daimon, giver of the fruits
of earth. The Idaean Herakles has his olive-branch, or apple-
bough. Pelops is a figure of saga; yet his legend shows that he
slipped into the place of a Year-God, the Sun King of the octennial
period.
— Ll fe
bi ἢ
Why χ hh, if
4 2 Li
ΖΡ. ὦ LE cel
Ξ ἃ
Bre. 62:
Older than any of these, perhaps, was that nameless Hero, or
Heroes, whose altar, painted with a leafy branch, of olive or of
bay, was discovered in a round chamber, identified by Curtius with
the Gaeum, or sanctuary of Earth, mentioned by Pausanias*. The —
1 Milo, the athlete six times victorious at Olympia, led the Krotoniates into
battle, wearing his Olympic wreaths and the lion-skin and club of Herakles, Diod.
xa Ὁ. δὲ
2 y. 14. 8, See Frazer on y. 15.8. No less than twelve coats of plaster were
stripped off this altar. Almost every one showed the branch; and on each, as 1s
seen in Fig. 62, was inscribed HPQOP or HPQO® or, in one case, HPQQN. It may
be a significant fact that the floor of this round chamber is of earth of a clayey —
texture, quite different from the sandy soil of the Altis, which has clearly been
vil | The Victor and the Hero 259
worshippers who painted and repainted this altar did not know
whether it belonged to one ‘hero’ or to many: they inscribed
it now ‘Of the Hero, now ‘Of the Heroes. Their doubt is
instructive. The ‘Hero’ is not a dead man with a known name
and history commemorated by funeral games. His title stands
not for a personality, but for an office, defined by its functions and
capable of being filled by a series of representatives’. At one
time Sosipolis might be ‘the hero’; at another Pelops, the
mythical ancestor of an incoming people; at another the Idaean
Herakles or his Dorian homonym. Even as late as Macedonian
times, a Philip could build a round shrine—the Philippeum—in
deliberate imitation of the old round chamber with the Hero altar,
and thus pose as ‘the Hero’ of Olympia for the time being? In
view of these considerations, the establishment of Games and
‘hero-worship’ in honour of historic personages, like Miltiades or
Brasidas, lends no support to the funeral theory of the origin
of the Olympic Games. Before any one of these individuals could
be worshipped as the Hero of a city, the conception of what the
Hero or Saviour of the City is, must first have been clearly
defined. The title and functions of a Hero are a blank frame,
which may be filled by a succession of representatives, chosen each
for his ‘year, or by this or that historic personality, as the changes
and chances of time and of politics may determine.
To the analysis of the idea of a Hero the next chapter will be
devoted.
brought from Mount Kronios where a similar soil is found. It has been inferred
that the sanctuary was transferred from the hill, with some of the sacred soil,
to its present site. Dr Frazer regards this inference as uncertain.
1 The same holds of the octennial kingship—the office to which the winner
of the race, according to Dr Frazer’s final theory (G. B.’, Part 11. p. 104), became
entitled. Dr Frazer speaks of combining this view with the funeral theory by
supposing that ‘the spirits of these divine kings...were worshipped with sacrifices
at their graves, and were thought to delight in the spectacle of the games which
reminded them of the laurels which they had themselves won long ago....’ But it
must be clearly pointed out that this is not the funeral theory as advocated by
Prof. Ridgeway, who will have the whole festival start from the obsequies of one
individual chief—a historic or quasi-historic personality—whereas Dr Frazer’s view
(rightly, as we think) makes the office and its functions, not any individual holder
of it and his personal exploits, the central factor. This is an essential point of
difference between the two theories.
2 I owe this to Mr Cook, who points out that the Philippeum is built of stone,
painted to look like brick, because the old chamber in the Gaeum was of brick.
17—2
CHAPTER VIIL
DAIMON AND HERO.
‘INCERTUS GENIUMNE LOCI, FAMULUMNE PARENTIS
ESSE PUTET.’ ᾿
In the last two chapters we have examined in some detail
two great festivals of the Greeks, the spring Dithyramb, which
according to Aristotle gave birth to the drama, and the Olympic
Games celebrated every fifth year at or after the summer solstice.
We have seen that the primary gist of both these festivals was the
promotion of fertility and that each of them alike gave birth to a
daimon of fertility who took on various names and shapes. The
Dithyramb gave birth to the Greatest Kouros whose matured
form in Crete was that of Father Zeus, but elsewhere he crystal-
lized as Kouros into the figure of Dionysos. At Olympia,
starting again from the Kouretes the daimon of fertility took
various heroic shapes as Oinomaos, as Pelops, and finally again
bequeathed something of his nature and functions to the Olympic
Zeus himself.
We have by this time a fairly clear notion of one element in
the nature of a daimon. We have seen him to be the product,
the projection, the representation of collective emotion. Normally
and naturally he is attended by the group or thiasos that begets
him, but gradually he attains independent personality. We have
also seen that in primitive communities this collective emotion
focuses around and includes food interests and especially food-
animals and fruit-trees. In consequence of this the daimon is
ἢ conceived in animal and plant-form, as theriomorph or phyto-
morph. Dionysos is a bull or a goat, or a tree, or rather the
human Dionysos grows out of the sacrifice of the bull or the
goat, or out of the sanctification of the tree.
CH. VII] Daimon and Hero 261
But in the case of the Dithyramb and still more vividly in
the case of the Olympic games we have been all along conscious
of another element as yet not completely analysed, the hero. ,
The Dithyramb has to do with the fertility-daimon but the .)
drama which sprang out of it sets before us not the πάθη, the
sufferings, the life-history of Dionysos, but the πάθη, the life-
histories of a host of heroes, of Agamemnon, of Orestes, of!
Prometheus, of Herakles, of Hippolytos. Pindar the poet of the
Games salutes no daimon by name. He asks!
‘What god, what hero, or what man shall we sing?’
If then at one stage of their development in both the drama and
the Olympic games the hero-element was dominant, it is all
important that we should ask and answer the question,—‘ what
exactly is a hero?’ |
The question may seem at the first glance superfluous. A |
hero is surely simple enough. He is just a dead man revered
in life, honoured with a mild and modified form of divine honours \
after death. We have surely done with difficult and dubious con-(
ceptions like ‘collective representations.’ We have got to facts at)
last, simple, historical facts. All now is plain, concrete, a posteriori.
‘You must not say that “Minos” represents a dynasty; Minos was a
particular man and Dr Ridgeway can discuss his dates and doings.
You must not say that Menelaos is a tribal hero; Menelaos was
a well-known infantry officer with auburn whiskers” Let us
look at facts. It happens that at Athens the record of a
succession of hero-kings is unusually full and complete; so to
Athens let us turn.
The oldest hero reverenced by Athens was Cecrops. Who %
was Cecrops? The old Euhemerism knows many things about
Cecrops. He was the first king of Athens, a native of Egypt,
who led a colony to Athens about 1556 B.c. He was a typical
culture hero, he softened and polished the rude manners of the
inhabitants and, as an earlier Theseus, drew them from their
1 OL. τι. 2 τίνα θεόν, τίν᾽ ἥρωα, τίνα δ᾽ ἄνδρα κελαδήσομεν;
2 See the review of Professor Ridgeway’s Origin of Tragedy in the Times
Literary Supplement, Jan. 26, 1911.
3 For the classical sources on which the account current in handbooks is based
and for monumental evidence see my Myth. and Mon. Ancient Athens, p. xxv.
202 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
scattered habitations to dwell in twelve small villages. He gave
them laws and customs and taught them to cultivate the olive.
He introduced the worship of Zeus Hypatos and forbade the
sacrifice of living things. ‘After a reign of fifty years spent in
regulating his newly formed kingdom and in polishing the minds
of his subjects, Cecrops died, leaving three daughters Aglauros,
Herse and Pandrosos'.’ But in this unblemished career there is
one blot, one skeleton in the well-furnished cupboard that even
the most skilled Euhemerism cannot conceal. Cecrops the hero-
( king, the author of all these social reforms, Cecrops the humane,
the benevolent, has a serpent’s tail.
A serpent’s tail is an awkward stumbling-block, but Euhe-
merism early and late is equal to the occasion. The fact of the
snake tail may be damaging, but it is symbolic. Cecrops was
twy-formed (διφυής) because, some said, he knew two languages,
Greek and Egyptian. Deeper thinkers divined that Cecrops was
twy-formed, because he instituted marriage, the union of two
sexes. He was arbitrator at the ‘strife’ of Athena and Poseidon.
The women, who exceeded the men by one, voted for Athena,
and to appease the wrath of Poseidon they were henceforth dis-
enfranchized? and their children were no longer to be called by
their mother’s name. The women’s decision came as a shock to
old Cecrops and he forthwith instituted patriarchal marriage.
‘At Athens, says Athenaeus*, quoting Clearchus the disciple of
Aristotle :
‘Cecrops was the first to join one woman to one man. Before, connections
had taken place at random and marriages were in common. Hence as some
think Cecrops was called “Twy-formed” (dius) since before his time people
did not know who their fathers were, on account of the number of possible
parents.’
Scandal and stumbling-block though it was, the serpent’s tail
was integral and never forgotten. In the Wasps* old Philocleon,
1 Lempriére, Classical Dictionary, 1827. I quote Lempriére as a typical instance
of Euhemerism unabashed, but between him and the less picturesque statements in
later Dictionaries, e.g. Seyffert (1908), revised by Prof. Nettleship and Dr Sandys,
there is as regards any real understanding of Cecrops little to choose.
2 §. Aug. de civit. Dei 18. 9 ...ut nulla ulterius ferrent suffragia, ut nullus nas-
centium maternum nomen acciperet.
3 xr. 2, 88 555, and Tzetzes, Chil. v. 19. 650. Clearchus like so many of his
successors misinterpreted the rigid matriarchal system as licence. See my Prole-
gomena, p. 262.
4 Ar. Vesp. 438
ὦ Κέκροψ ἥρως ἄναξ, τὰ πρὸς ποδῶν δρακοντίδη.
vir] Cecrops as Daimon-Hero 263
longing to join his dear dikasts and violently held back by the
chorus, cries aloud:
Cecrops, hero, King, O thou who at thy feet art serpent-shaped.
The scholiast apologizes and explains, but every Athenian knew
that in his serpent’s tail was the true nature and glory of the
hero.
As serpent-tailed the artist of the delightful archaic terra- >
cotta! in Fig. 63 shows him to us. Half of him is a decorous ?
Fic. 63.
and civilized statesman. He is bearded, and wears a neat chiton; ,
he holds an olive spray in one human hand, he is thallophoros?; )
with the forefinger of the other he touches his lips to enjoin a |
sacred silence at the birth of a holy child. He stands erect and δ
solemn but he has no feet, only a coiling snake’s-tail. So he (
appears on many a vase-painting and relief; so Euripides? figured )
him at the door of Ion’s tent at Delphi: there
Cecrops with his daughters
Rolled up his spiral coils, the votive gift
Of some Athenian.
1 Berlin Cat. 2537.
2 See infra, p. 366.
5. Ton 1163
κατ᾽ εἰσόδους δὲ Kéxpora θυγατέρων πέλας
σπείρας συνειλίσσοντ᾽, ᾿Αθηναίων τινὸς
ἀνάθημα.
The daughters of Cecrops, unlike their father, are never figured with snakes’ tails,
For female snake-tailed daimones see infra, p. 280, Fig. 71.
264 Daimon and Hero [OH.
It is at the birth of Erichthonios, the second great Athenian
hero, that Cecrops is mostly represented in art, as on the terra-
cotta in Fig. 63. Gaia herself rises in human shape from the
earth; she is a massive figure with long heavy hair. She holds
the child in her arms, handing him to Athena his foster-mother,
to whom he stretches out his eager hands. This birth of the
child from the earth symbolizes, we are told, that the race of
Erechtheus, the Erechtheidae, ancestors of the Athenians, are
autochthonous, home-grown; so it does, but it ‘symbolizes,’ or
rather we prefer to say represents, something much more. ‘This
we shall see in the sequel shown in Figs. 64a and ὁ.
When the child is born from Earth, Athena his foster-mother
gives him into the care of the three daughters of Cecrops.
Strange daughters these for a human king, the Dew-Sisters and
the bright Spring Water, three reflections as we have seen’ of
the maidens of the Hersephoria. They hide the child in a sacred
cista. Two of the sisters in disobedience open the cista. The
scene is given in Fig. 64a from a red-figured pelike*. The cista
Fic. 64.
stands on piled rocks indicating no doubt the Acropolis. The
deed is done, the sacred cista is open. Its lid, it should be noted,
is olive-wreathed. From the cista springs up a human child,
Athena approaches and the two disobedient sisters* hurry away.
1 Supra, p. 174, note 1.
2 British Museum Cat. E. 418, and see my Prolegomena, p. 133.
3 The figures on the reverse are actually those of two epheboi, but the vase is
almost certainly a copy from some drawing in which Herse and Aglauros are
represented.
VIII | Erichthonios as Daimon-Hero 265
They have cause for haste, cause more imminent than a guilty
conscience. The design in Fig. 64a shows two guardian snakes,
but rooted to the rocks. The child Erichthonios himself is a
human child. But the design in Fig. 65 from a cylix by Brygos!
47
Hh
NSS
Fic. 65.
tells us another and a more instructive tale. The scene, of
which only a part is given here, takes place just after the opening
of the chest. The two terrified sisters are pursued by a huge
snake, a snake so huge that his tail coils round to the other side
of the cylix not figured here. He is not one of the guardian
snakes, he is the actual dweller in the chest. Cecrops is a snake,
Erichthonios is a snake, the old snake-king is succeeded by a new
snake-king.
There are no such things as snake-kings. What the myths of
Cecrops and Erichthonios tell us is that, for some reason or
another, each and every traditional Athenian king was regarded
as being also in some sense a snake. How this came to be
we might never have guessed but for the story of the cista. In
Dionysiac rites the snake in the cista was a constant factor. A
whole class of coins of Ephesus known as cistophoroi? show us
1 Frankfort. In the Stidel-Institut; see W. Klein, Meistersignaturen, p. 179,
and Wiener-Vorlegeblitter, Serie vin. Taf. 2. On the reverse is the sending forth
of the Eleusinian ‘hero,’ Triptolemos, the correlative of Erichthonios.
2 See Head, Hist. Num. p. 461. For cistae and snakes on coins see L. Anson,
Numismata Graeca, Part τ. Cista x11. 936, where all the known instances are
collected.
266 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
the sacred cista, its lid half-opened, a snake emerging. A
specimen is given in Fig. 64 b. The cista of the coin and the
cista of Erichthonios are one and the same; the myth arose
from a rite.
The carrying of sacred snakes or the figures of snakes was
not confined to the worship. of Dionysos. It was part of the
ceremonial both of the Arrephoria and the Thesmophoria. The
scholiast on Lucian? tells us that the Arretophoria were the same
as the Thesmophoria and
are performed with the same intent concerning the growth of crops and of
human offspring. In the case of the Arretophoria, too, sacred things that
may not be named and that are made of cereal paste are carried about, 1.6.
images of snakes and of the forms of men”. They employ also fircones on
account of the fertility of the tree, and into the sanctuaries called megara
these are cast and also as we have already said, swine,—the swine, too, on
account of their prolific character—in token of the growth of fruit and of
human beings.
The carrying of snakes is, like the carrying of phallow and the
carrying of the life-giving dew, a fertility charm.
In the ‘temple of Polias’ on the Acropolis there was according
to Pausanias? besides the image of Athena and the lamp that
was always burning another sacred thing, a Hermes of wood said
to be the votive-offering of Cecrops; 1t was covered from sight by
branches of myrtle. It has long been conjectured that this
‘Hermes’ was ithyphallic and so reverently veiled. But a simpler
explanation is probably right. The ‘Hermes’ of the old temple
was, like the Hermes of Kyllene*, an αἰδοῖον, possibly snake-_
shaped. The covering with myrtle boughs recalls the leafage and
sprays that so oddly surround the great snake on the Brygos vase,
they also recall the olive crown on the cista in Fig. 64a. The
notion of these leaf and branch crowned cistae and Hermae is
not, I think, concealment, it is rather that the image of the
1 Dial. Meretr. τι. 1. The scholion is given in full and discussed in my
Prolegomena, p. 121.
2 μιμήματα δρακόντων Kal ἀνδρῶν σχημάτων. The μιμήματα ἀνδρῶν σχημάτων are
undoubtedly φάλλοι, ct. Septuagint, Is. iii. 17. Probably at first the snake was the
totemistic vehicle of reincarnation and only later, when the true nature of parent-
age was known, identified with the φάλλος.
3 7, 27.1 κεῖται δὲ ἐν τῷ ναῷ τῆς Πολιάδος Ἑρμῆς ξύλου, Κέκροπος εἶναι λεγόμενον
ἀνάθημα ὑπὸ κλάδων μυρσίνης οὐ σύνοπτον.
4 Due to Dr Frickenhaus, Hrechtheus in A. Mitt. xxx. 1908, p. 171. See also
for the whole subject and the analogy to Daktyl cults, Kaibel, Géttinger Gelehrte
Nachrichten, 1901, 499. It will later (p. 294) appear that Hermes is but a humanized
form of the snake life -daimon.
γΠΠ]| Ton as Daimon-Hero 267
life-daimon should be brought into magical contact with the
vegetation he is to revivify.
Once we realise that the traditional kings of Athens were
conceived of as snake-daimons, the ‘household-snake’ (οἰκουρὸς
ὄφις) of the Acropolis became instantly clear. Herodotus! writes
somewhat sceptically :
the Athenians say that they have a great snake which lives in the sanctuary
as the guardian of the Acropolis. They both say this and as if it were really
existing they place monthly offerings before it and the monthly offering is a
honey-cake. And always before, the honey-cake was consumed, but then
(at the Persian invasion) untouched. And when the priestess announced
this the Athenians deserted the city the more readily because the goddess
herself had forsaken the Acropolis. [
In the days of the old month-year the goddess herself was a
snake. When she took human form the snake became her
‘attribute’; it was the ‘symbol of wisdom.’ When Pausanias?
saw the great image of Athena in the Parthenon he noted ‘at
her feet lies. a shield and near the shield is a serpent.’ Who
was the serpent? Pausanias hits the mark, if but tentatively,
“it may be Erichthonios’; it 15 he—the lord and the luck of the
state.
Before we leave the Athenian kings one point remains to be
noted. They are snakes or at least take on the form of snakes,
but they are also ‘eponymous heroes. Cecrops ‘gives his name’
to the Cecropidae, Erechtheus to the Erechtheidae. After what
has been said? about the Kouros and the Kouroi, Bacchos and
the Bacchoi, it is scarcely necessary to point out that the reverse
is the case : an ‘eponymous hero’ never ‘gives’ his name, he always
receives it. Cecrops is the projection of the Cecropidae, Erech-
theus of the Erechtheidae; neither is a real actual man, only an
ancestor invented to express the unity of a group.
This comes out very clearly in the case of Ion the ‘eponymous
hero’ of the Ionians. When we have said ‘eponymous hero’ we
have exhausted the content of Ion. Save for his birth and child-
ood, which Euripides makes alive, Ion is for us a shadow-figure.
e is not robust and living like old Cecrops. He never appears
sasnake; the Ionians whom he represented had passed beyond
1 vii. 41. δ τι 94. ἡ. 3 Supra, p. 48.
268 ᾿ Daimon and Hero [ CH.
the stage of snake-daimons. Moreover when we come to examine
the birth-story it is but a weak version of the Erichthonios
myth. Jon takes on the chest and the guardian snakes; they
are canonical. Ion is a hero, he must wear a hero’s swaddling
clothes; as though appropriating the myth he piously recites it
though for dramatic purposes in question form’.
Jon. And did Athena take the child from Earth ?
Cre. Yes, to her maiden arms, she did not bear him.
Zon. And did she give him as the pictures tell us?
Cre. To Cecrops’ daughters, to be kept not seen.
Jon. And they methinks opened the goddess’ chest ?
Ion, like Cecrops, like Erechtheus, is the μέγιστος κοῦρος of hi:
tribe, but, expressing as he does an artificial rather than natura
group, he is emptied of all vital content.
To resume, the form taken by the traditional hero and als
the king is unquestionably that of a snake, and the snake is usec
in phallic ceremonies for the promotion of fertility. But are we
justified in calling the snake a ‘daimon of fertility’ ?
It is important to be clear on this point. Such a notio1
contradicts traditional opinion. The snake we are constantly tol
is the vehicle of the dead man, the form in which he is apt t
appear. The evidence for this death-aspect seems clear an
abundant. On tombs and funeral ‘hero-reliefs’ the snake 1
constantly present. On the familiar Sparta hero-reliefs? a hug
bearded snake is erect behind the seated heroized pair; on relief
of the funeral banquet type* a snake appears twined about a tre
or drinks from a cup in the reclining ‘ hero’s’ hand.
It is not hard to see reasons why a snake should be associates
with a dead man. The snake is an uncanny beast gliding in an
out of holes in the earth. He may well have been seen hauntin;
old tombs. It is even possible that, as Plutarch‘ says, the appear
ance of the spinal cord of a dead man suggested snakes. Nor 1
the association of snake and dead man’s soul confined to th
1 Hur. Ion 269, cf. vv. 21—27.
2 See Fig. 88 and Prolegomena, p. 327.
3 A number of these monuments are reproduced op. cit. in Figs. 97—100, 108
106, 112, and in connection with these the death-aspect of the snake is discussec
My present view as to the interpretation of these ‘hero-reliefs’ will be give
later, p. 307.
4 Vit. Cleom. 39.
Vil | The Daimon-Snake 269
Greeks. It is, Dr Frazer! says, a common belief among the Zulus ἡ
and other Caffre tribes that the dead come to life and revisit their
old homes in the shape of serpents. Such semi-human serpents
are treated with great respect and often fed with milk. Among
the Ba-Ronga? the snake is regarded as a sort of incarnation of an
ancestor and is dreaded though never worshipped. A native
pursuing a snake that had got into the kitchen of a missionary
station accidentally set the building on fire. All the neighbours
exclaimed that the fire was due to the snake, and the snake was
the chiko-nembo or ghost of a man who was buried close at hand
and had come out of the earth to avenge himself. If a dead man
wants to frighten his wife, he is apt in’East Central Africa to
present himself in the form of a snake. Among the Bahima of
Kukole*, in Uganda, dead chiefs turn into snakes, but dead kings
into lions.
If the snake then is the symbol or vehicle of the dead man
how can he also be a ‘damon of fertility’? The two aspects are
incompatible, even contradictory—death and life are not the
same, though mysticism constantly seeks to blend them. Which
then does the snake represent, death or life? Is he a good
daimon of life and fertility or an evil daimon of mortality and
corruption ?
Fortunately, a story told us by Plutarch‘ leaves us in no doubt
as to the significance of the snake and its relation to the dead
man. After Cleomenes of Sparta had fled to Egypt and there
died by his own orders, Ptolemy, fearing an insurrection, wished to
dishonour the king’s body and ordered it to be impaled and
hung up.
A few days after, those who were guarding the impaled body saw a huge
snake (δράκοντα) wound about the head and hiding the face so that no bird of
prey should light on it. Thereupon a superstitious fear fell on the king and
such a dread that it started the women on various purification ceremonies,
inasmuch as a man had been put to death who was dear to the gods and of
more than mortal nature. The Alexandrians came thronging to the place
and saluted Cleomenes as a hero and the child of the gods, till the learned
men put a stop to it by explaining that as oxen when they putrefy breed bees,
1 Adonis Attis Osiris?, p. 73.
2 H. Jumod, Les Ba-Ronga, 1898.
3 J. Roscoe, The Bahima, Journal of Anthrop. Inst. xxxvrr. (1907).
4 Vit. Cleom. xxxix. ... οἱ παλαῖοι μάλιστα τῶν ἑῴων τὸν δράκοντα τοῖς ἥρωσιν
συνῳκείωσαν.
270 Daimon and Hero [cH.
and horses wasps, and beetles come to life from decaying asses, so human
carcasses when some of the juices about the marrow congeal and thicken
substantially give rise to serpents. ‘And it was because they knew this that
the men of old time associated the snake more than any other animal with
heroes.
The ‘men of old time’ were content with no such pseudo-
science. They believed, with the pious Alexandrians, not that
) the snake was the sign and result of putrefaction, but that it was
evidence, clear and indefeasible, that the man was of more than
᾿ mortal nature (κρείττονος τὴν φύσιν). Cleomenes had been ἃ
hero in our sense in his life, but no one knew that in the religious
sense he was a ‘hero’ till the snake appeared. The snake then is —
the symbol and the vehicle not of mortality but immortality—
of something sacred, something in the vaguer sense divine. .
The word κρείττων, better, stronger, used by Plutarch is Ὶ
instructive. κρείττονες, Hesychius tells us, is a general term for —
heroes and for gods, but not all dead men were κρείττονες. This®
reminds us that the meaning of the word ‘hero’ is actually not —
‘dead man,’ but, if we may trust Hesychius’, it means simply
‘powerful, ‘strong,’ ‘noble, ‘venerable.’
The snake then stands for life and mana, not for death. In
the light of the snake as life-daimon, as ‘more than mortal, we
understand many birth-stories current in antiquity. A snake was |
seen lying outstretched by the side of Olympias, mother of
Alexander, and Philip from that time on deserted his bride. —
It may have been, Plutarch? concludes, from fear of her enchant-—
ments or because ‘he dared not violate the sanctity of one
wedded to a greater than he’ In like fashion, says Pausanias’,
was Aristomenes the Messenian born, ‘for his mother, Nicoteleia, —
they say, was visited by a daimon or a god in the likeness of
a serpent. The same story was told of Aristodama by the
Sicyonians.
We have already (p. 148) seen how out of a sacrificed animal, a
bull or goat, could arise a god. The case however of the snake is”
quite ditferent from that of the food animals. So far as we know,
the snake was never killed that his mana might be eaten. It is.
well to note that sanctity does not always issue in sacramental |
1 Sub voce. ἥρως" δυνατός, ἰσχυρός, γενναῖος, σεμνός.
2 Vit. Alex. 2. |
3 ry. 14. 7, and Dr Frazer ad loc. For other instances of the fatherhood of
snakes see Adonis Attis Osiris, p. 70. |
γ1Π]| Palingenesia and Totemism 271
sacrifice. The snake among the Greeks was full of muna, was
intensely sacred, not because as food he supported life, but
because he is himself a life-daivmon, a spirit of generation,
even of immortality. But—and this is all important—it is im-
mortality of quite a peculiar kind. The individual members of
the group of the Cecropidae die, man after man, generation after
generation ; Cecrops, who never lived at all, lives for ever, as
a snake. He is the δαίμων γέννης, the spirit, the genius of the
race, he stands not for personal immortality in our modern
sense, not’ for the negation of death, ἀθανασία, but for the
perennial renewal of life through death, for Reincarnation, for .
παλιυγγενεσία. ᾿ ΟΣ
The word traduyyevecia, ‘birth back again,’ speaks for itself.
It is a much simpler, more primitive thing than we are apt to
imagine. We think of Reincarnation as belonging to an elaborate
and somewhat stereotyped mysticism, whether Indian or Pytha-
gorean. It is associated in our minds with a grotesque system of
purification for the individual soul. Our common sense and the
common sense of the normal enlightened Greek rebels against
such a doctrine, just as we mentally rebel against the totemist’s
claim of kinship with beast and plant. The average Athenian,
when he was told by Empedokles that he had once been a bird or
a tree, was probably as much surprised and disgusted as the
theologian of the last century when it was hinted to him that his
remoter ancestors were apes.
Reincarnation is, I venture to think, no mystical doctrine
propounded by a particular and eccentric sage, nor yet is it
a chance even if widespread error into which independently in
various parts of the world men have fallen. Rather it is, I \
believe, a stage in the development of thinking through which \
men naturally and necessarily pass, it 1s a form of collective or (
group thought, and, as such, it is a usual and almost necessary
concomitant of totemism. Whether my view in this matter be (
true or false, thus much stands certain, a belief in Reincarnation
is characteristic of totemistic peoples. It is these simple, deep
down things that last so long. Reincarnation long held under by
Nationalism and Olympianism, reemerged to blossom in Orphism,
and constantly to haunt the imagination of a Pindar and a
272 Daimon and Hero [ OH.
Plato; to understand this reincarnation we must go back to our
savages.
‘The theory of conception as a reincarnation of the dead,
writes Dr Frazer’,
is universally held by all the Central Australian tribes which have been
investigated by Messrs Spencer and Gillen ; every man, woman and child
is supposed by them to be a reembodiment of an ancestral spirit.
Messrs Spencer and Gillen, in the preface to their volume, the
Northern Tribes of Central Australia, themselves write?:
Perhaps the most interesting result of our work is the demonstration
of the fact that, in the whole of this wide area, the belief that every living
member of the tribe is the reincarnation of a spirit ancestor is universal.
This belief is just as firmly held by the Urabunna people, who count descent
in the female line, as it is by the Arunta and Warramunga, who count
descent in the male line.
And again’ :
The natives one and all in these tribes believe that the child is the direct
result of the entrance into the mother of an ancestral spirit individual.
How the Central Australian came to believe in reincarnation
we cannot certainly say, but it is not hard to imagine how such a
faith might arise. New young emus, new young kangaroos are
born; the savage has no notion of creation, no theory of pro-
creation; he sees the young kangaroo come from the body of its
mother, the emu from the emu’s egg; the old kangaroos, the old
‘emus, are born back again, there has been a maduyyeveoia.
His rites of initiation constantly obsess him with the notion of
re-birth, with a death and resurrection that are of one and the
same life. These ceremonies: may indeed, it has been well
conjectured‘, have for one of their main objects to secure rein-
carnation. Such rites as circumcision and the knocking out of
teeth would thus find a new and simpler meaning. Bones and
sinews decay, but a tooth lasts on and would serve, if carefully
guarded, as an imperishable bit. of the old body, as a focus for
1 Totemism and Exogamy, τ. p. 191.
2 Northern Tribes, Introd. p. xi.
8 Northern Tribes, p. 330.
4+ By Dr Frazer, The Magic Art, τ. 106.
Vit] Reincarnation of Ancestors 273
reincarnation, a ‘stock of vital energy for the use of the dis-
embodied spirit after death!’
It is easy to see how such a belief goes with group-life and
group-thinking. The individual dies, but, as a matter of actual
fact, the group goes on, the totem animal is never extinct. This
totem animal, conceived of as the common life of the tribe, is
projected as it were into the past, the ‘Alcheringa’ time, and
is there thought of as half man half animal, a figure, if the clan
be a snake clan, strangely like old Cecrops. When a man dies he
goes back to his totem. He does not cease to be, but he ceases
functionally for a time, goes out of sight, by and by to reappear
as a new tribesman. Generation is not, as Plato? reminds us,
a straight line stretching after death into an interminable remote
immortality, it is a circle, a κύκλος, always returning upon itself.
Just such was the ‘ancient doctrine’ of which Socrates? reminded
Cebes, which affirmed that ‘they who are here go thither and they
come back here and are born again from the dead.’
We have seen‘ how in the Jntichiwma ceremonies the totem-
group magically secures the multiplication of the totem. The
human-emu sheds his blood, dresses and dances as an emu, that
he may increase and invigorate the supply of bird-emus. If we
bear in mind that recurrent cycle of human life which is
Reincarnation, and if we also bear in mind that to the totemist
the two cycles of life, human and animal or plant, are indissolubly
linked, then we understand without difficulty what otherwise is
so strange and disconcerting, the fact that Jntichiwma ceremonies
are commemorative as well as magical. The emu man when he/
dances as an emu commemorates the deeds of his emu ancestor.
He needs must, because those heroic deeds done in the ‘ Alcheringa
1 Dr Frazer, op. cit. p.96. Mr Cornford calls my attention to the curious notice
in Lydus (de mens. 1v. 40), τοὺς μέντοι ὀδόντας οὐκ ἔχοντας φύσεως ἢ πυρὶ ἢ χρόνῳ γοῦν
μακρῷ καταναλίσκεσθαι κατελίμπανον (οἱ παλαιοὶ) ἐπ᾽ αὐτῆς τῆς πυρὰς ὡς τὸ λοιπὸν
ἀχρήστους πρὸς τὸν τῆς παλιγγενεσίας λόγον ἀποβλέποντες * σφόδρα γὰρ καὶ αὐτοὶ τὸν περὶ
αὐτῆς παρεδέχοντο λόγον διὰ τὸ αὖθις ὡς ἐδόκει παλιγγενησόμενον ἄνθρωπον μὴ χρήζειν
ἐπὶ τῆς μητρῴας γαστρὸς ὀδόντων.
2 Plat. Phaed. 128 εἰ yap μὴ ἀεὶ ἀνταποδιδοίη τὰ ἕτερα τοῖς ἑτέροις γιγνόμενα
ὡσπερεὶ κύκλῳ περιιόντα, ἀλλ᾽ εὐθεῖά τις εἴη ἡ γένεσις ἐκ τοῦ ἑτέρου μόνον εἰς τὸ
καταντικρὺ καὶ μὴ ἀνακάμπτοι πάλιν ἐπὶ τὸ ἕτερον μηδὲ καμπὴν ποιοῖτο, οἶσθα ὅτι, K.T.X.
3 Plat. Phaed. 70 ο παλαιὸς μὲν οὖν ἔστι τις λόγος, οὗ μεμνήμεθα, ὡς εἰσὶν ἐνθένδε
ἀφικόμεναι ἐκεῖ, καὶ πάλιν γε δεῦρο ἀφικνοῦνται καὶ γίγνονται ἐκ τῶν τεθνεώτων.
4 Supra, p. 124.
H. 18
274 Daimon and Hero [ OH.
time’ are but the projection of his own most vital needs, his need
of food, his need of offspring. At his great Eniautos-festival he
enacts his ancestors who are his food-animals and thereby brings
them back to birth.
—_
To the Central Australian then it is his ancestor who gives
him food and offspring and all the wealth he craves. His way of
thinking is not far from the mind of Pindar. Pindar offends our
moral sense, even our taste sometimes, because to him, in the
glory of life, Wealth and Plenitude bulk so large. and still worse,
as 1t seems to us, it is inherited wealth which with him seems
married to virtue—an alliance unknown to Christianity. But his
view of life, though never quite inspiring, takes on another
complexion when we see how deep-rooted it is in things primitive.
Any Central Australian at his Intichiuma ceremonies would have
* felt in his bones the nearness of πλοῦτος as well as ἀρετή to the
eet
δαίμων γενέθλιος".
Theban Pindar may have borrowed his thought from Boeotian
Hesiod; both came of a tenacious stock. Hesiod? tells of the men
of the Golden Age, the Alcheringa of the Greek, and how after
a life of endless feast they fell asleep, and Earth hid them, and
thereupon they became δαίμονες, spirits, watchers over men,
haunting the land mist-clad,
Givers of wealth, this kingly guerdon theirs.
| Tn life the king is lord of the Eniautos*, in death he is the daimon-
\ hero.
It may still perhaps be felt that, at least with the Greeks,
this totemistic notion of reincarnation, with its corollary that
“the cycle of man’s reincarnation brings with it the renewal
of animal and plant life, is matter only of poetry and a vague
philosophy. It is time to enquire whether in actual practice, in
definite ritual acts, we have any evidence of the same notion. —
1 Cf. such passages as Ol. 11. 96,
ὁ μὰν πλοῦτος ἀρεταῖς δεδαιδαλμένος,
and the whole of the fifth Pythian.
2 Op. 125,
ἠέρα ἑσσάμενοι πάντῃ φοιτῶντες ἐπ᾽ alav
πλουτοδόται᾽ καὶ τοῦτο γέρας βασιλήϊον ἔσχον. .
3 It is not a little curious that the scholiast on Hesiod, Theog. 112, ὡς τ᾽ ἄφενος
δάσσαντο, says ᾿Αφενός ἐστι κυρίως μὲν ὁ ἀπὸ ἐνιαυτοῦ x hour
vit] The Anthesteria- 275
Are the actual dead, as well as the daimones of Hesiod, appealed ὃ
to as πλουτοδόται, as, like the Olympians, δωτῆρες ἐάων ? Cecrops
and Erichthonios, we have seen, are connected with ritual snakes, .
but is the ritual snake connected with the dead? Neither
Arrephoria nor Thesmophoria, both ceremonies extremely primi-
tive and both concerned with fertility, have any word to say of
ancestors, any hint of a cycle of human reincarnation. We shall
find what we seek and more even than we expect in the great /
Athenian festival of the blossoming of flowers and the revocation
of souls, the Anthesteria.
- THE ANTHESTERIA.
The Anthesteria was a three days’ festival celebrated from the
11th to the 13th of Anthesterion, falling therefore at the end of our
February, when the Greek spring is well begun. The three days
were called respectively Pithoigia ‘Jar-opening, Choes ‘ Drinking
Cups, Chytroti ‘Pots. Each day had its different form of pot
or jar and its varying ceremonial, but the whole festival was,
if we may judge from the names of the several days, essentially
a Pot-Feast. On the first day, the Pithoigia, the wine-jars were
opened, on the second the wine was solemnly drunk, on the third
a pot full of grain and seeds, a panspermia, was solemnly offered.
I have elsewhere! shown, and my view has, I believe, been
universally accepted, that beneath the festivities of a Wine-
Festival to Dionysos there lay a festival of All-Souls, that in
the spring month of February the Athenians, like the Romans \
at their Feralia, performed ceremonies for the placation of the )
dead. I was right, I believe, in detecting the All-Souls feast;
wrong, however, in supposing that it belonged to a different
and lower religious stratum. This mistake I shall now attempt
to rectify. I shall try,in the light of the doctrine of reincarnation
and the Jntichiwma ceremonies, to show that the ghost element
and the fertility element belong to one and the same stratum
of thought, and are, in fact, mutually interdependent.
We begin with the Pithoigia. The pithos or great stone jar, <
frequently half buried in the earth, was the main storehouse of ἡ
1 Prolegomena, pp. 32—55, to which I must refer for a full statement of sources
and for the literature of the Anthesteria.
18—2
276 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
_the ancients both for food and drink, for grain, for oil, for wine.
The cellars of the palace of Knossos have disclosed rows of these
pithoi. I have elsewhere! shown that the pithoi are also grave-
jars, out of which the ghosts of dead men might flutter forth and
to which they could return as to their homes. But for the
present it is as storehouses of food and especially wine that the
pithoi concern us. At the Pithoigia these wine-jars were opened
for the first time, as the wine made in the autumn would
then just be drinkable. Proklos on Hesiod? tells us that ‘the
festival was an ancestral one, and that it was not allowable to
prevent either household slaves or hired servants from partaking
of the wine.’ By this time no doubt it was a family rather than
a gentile festival; anyhow it was collective, of the whole house’,
and it was ancient. It was, Proklos says, ‘in honour of Dionysos’;
he prudently adds ‘that is, of his wine.’
Food and drink, and the desire magically to increase and safe-
guard food and drink, are earlier than the gods. Plutarch‘ in his
account of the Pithoigia lets us watch the transit from one to the
other. He is speaking of the local Theban Pithoigia over which
his father had presided and at which he had been present as a
boy.
On the eleventh day of the month (Anthesterion) they broached the new
wine at Athens, calling the day Pithoigia. And from of old it seems it was
their custom to offer some of it as a libation before drinking of it, with the
prayer that the use of the drug might be rendered harmless and beneficial to
them. But by us (Boeotians) the month is called Prostaterios, and it is our
custom on the sixth day of the month to sacrifice to the Agathos Daimon and
then taste the new wine after the West Wind has done blowing.
And again later® he says those who are the first to drink of the
new wine drink it in Anthesterion after the winter, and we call
that day by the name of the Agathos Daimon but the Athenians
call it Pithoigia.
The nature of the ‘sacrifice’ is clear. Plutarch uses the
l Proleg. p. 43.
2 Op. 368’ Apyopuévou δὲ πίθου. “Ev ταῖς πατρίοις τῶν Ελλήνων ἑορταῖς ἐτελεῖτο καὶ
τὰ ἀσκώλια καὶ ἡ πιθοιγία εἰς τίμην Διονύσου. τουτέστι τοῦ οἴνου αὐτοῦ.
3 Tzetzes ad Hes. Op. 366 says ἡ πιθοιγία δὲ κοινὸν ἣν συμπόσιον: ἀνοίξαντες γὰρ
τοὺς πίθους πᾶσι μετεδίδουν τοῦ Διονύσου δωρήματος.
4+ Quaest. Symp. 11. 7.1 καὶ πάλαι γε (ὡς ἔοικεν) εὔχοντο τοῦ οἴνου πρὶν ἢ πίειν,
ἀποσπένδοντες ἀβλαβῆ καὶ σωτήριον αὐτοῖς τοῦ φαρμάκου τὴν χρῆσιν γενέσθαι. . ἕκτῃ
δ᾽ ἱσταμένου νομίζεται θύσαντας ἀγαθῴ δαίμονι γεύεσθαι τοῦ οἴνου μετὰ ζέφυρον.
> Quaest. Symp. vu. 3.
vim | The Agathos Daimon, the Pithoigia 277 *
word proper to burnt sacrifice (θύειν);, but this is no offering
to an Olympian, it is simply the solemn pouring out of a
little of the new wine, that so the whole may be released from
tabu. This ‘sacrifice’ of the new wine is, to begin with, made
to nothing and nobody, but bit by bit a daimon of the act emerges,
and he is the Agathos Daimon. In what shape and similitude
shall we find the Agathos Daimon? Is he a wholly new apparition
or an old familiar friend ?
The Agathos Daimon. Classical scholars are apt to remember
the Good Spirit, the Agathos Daimon or Agathodaimon as he is
later called, as a vague ‘genius’ of some sort invoked at the
close of banquets when a little pure wine was drunk, or as a late
abstraction appearing like Agathe Tyche in the preamble of
decrees. The view I now hope to make clear is that the Agathos
Daimon is a very primitive fertility-spirit, a conception that long
preceded any of the Olympians. He is indeed the inchoate
material out of which, as we shall presently see, more than one |
Olympian is in part made. But for the present we are interested (
in him chiefly as the mask or functional form which each
individual hero is compelled to wear.
We have first to ask what shape he assumes.
The coin in Fig. 66? gives us the clearest possible answer.
Here we have a great coiled snake sur-
rounded by emblems of fertility, ears of
corn and the poppyhead with its multitude
of seeds. The snake’s name is clearly in-
scribed; he is the New Agathos Daimon
(NEO. ΑΓΑΘ. AAIM.). On the obverse,
not figured here, is the head of Nero; it
is he who claims to be the New Agathos
Daimon. Cecrops the hero-king was a
snake, Nero the Emperor is the new snake: it is not as private
individuals that they claim to be fertility-daimons, it is as
functionaries. Cecrops the modest old tribal king was content
to bring fertility to the Cecropidae, Nero as imperialist claims
to be the ‘Good Daimon of the whole habitable νου!
1 For the use of θύειν as distinguished from ἐναγίζειν see Prolegomena, Ὁ. 53 fi.
2 Head, Hist. Num. p. 720.
3 C. 1. G. m1. 4699 δαίμων ἀγαθὸς τῆς οἰκουμένης.
278 Daimon and Hero . [ CH.
It has long been known of course that the Agathodaimon
of Hellenistic days was, as it is generally
expressed, ‘worshipped in the form of a
snake, but, because his figure appears on
late Roman coins of Alexandria and often
crowned by the Egyptian Shent, it is assumed
that the snake-form was late or borrowed
from the East. This is true of course of the
Shent, false of the snake. We shall find
abundant evidence of the Agathos Daimon as snake at home in
Greece. The special value of the Alexandrian coin-types is that
they so clearly emphasize the fertility-aspect of the snake. In
Fig. 67 a coin of Nerva', better preserved than the coin of Nero,
we have the same great fertility-snake, whom but for Nero’s coin
we should not have certainly known to be the Agathos Daimon ;
he wears the Shent and has ears of corn and somewhat to our
surprise he holds in his coils a caduceus.
The snakes are sometimes two in number, a male and female
genius who later crystallized into the half-human figures of
Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche. A marriage was needed
magically to compel fertility. In Fig. 68 we have a great
modius or corn basket placed on the top of an Ionic column.
In the basket are ears of corn and poppyheads. To either side
is a snake; that on the right wears a poppyhead, that on the
left a Shent. Probably the Shent-wearer is the royal or male
snake, the bride being poppy-crowned, an earth-daimon. On the
obverse is the head of Hadrian.
1 The coins in Figs. 67 to 70 are reproduced by kind permission of Dr George
Macdonald from his Catalogue of Greek Coins in the Hunterian Collection, Vol. 11.
Pl. LxXxxvi. and LXxxvIt.
rg
vir] Agathos Daimon in Egypt 279
The modius marks very clearly the function of. the snakes ᾿
as fertility-daimons. The same idea comes out in the manifold
attributes of the pair in Fig. 69. That they are regarded
here as male and female is doubtful; rather they are the
Egyptian and Greek incarnations of the same notion. The
snake to the right is all Egyptian. He wears the disk and
plumes and carries in his coils the sistrum as well as a poppy-
head, he is in fact a wraeus. The snake to the left is partly
Egyptianized; he wears the shent, but in his coils is the
kerykeion of the Greek Hermes.
It would almost seem as though the kerykeion had like power
in itself with the snakes, and indeed what
was it but a statf with a pair of snakes inter-
twined? On the coin of Claudius in Fig. 70
we have no snakes but a great winged
kerykeion, to either side of it ears of corn,
the whole tied together in a bunch. Later
when we come to the ceremonies of the
Chytroi'! we shall understand why the kery-
keion, the ‘attribute’ of Hermes, had power to compel fertility. ᾿
From these imperial coins with the figure of the Agathos
Daimon two points emerge, both of paramount importance. }
First, as already noted, the snake-daimon is a collective repre-
sentation: he stands for a king or emperor, a functionary of some
kind, not a personality. Second, his function is the promotion of
fertility. The regular adjective attached to the daimon is |
ἀγαθός, good’, and the kind of ‘ goodness’ one needs in a Daimon |
is in the first instance fertility.
So much indeed we might have already guessed from the
name, but it was better to have clear monumental evidence.»
The word ἀγαθός has like δῖῆος no superlative because it is in
itself a superlative, meaning something ἄγαν, something very
much’. Later of course it was moralized, but to begin with it
1 Infra, p. 289.
2 Menander (Kock 550 ap. Clem. Al. Strom. v. 727) was wiser than he knew
when he said
ἅπαντι δαίμων ἀνδρὶ συμπαρίσταται
εὐθὺς γενομένῳ, μυστάγωγος τοῦ βίου
ἀγαθός: κακὸν γὰρ δαίμον᾽ οὐ νομιστέον
εἶναι βίον βλάπτοντα χρηστόν.
3 Stephanos, Lez. s.v.
280 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
just means as with us ‘good’ in the sense of ‘abundant,’ a ‘good’
lot, ἀγαθὴ dais! a good dinner, ἀγαθὰ πράγματα, not matters morally
excellent, but ‘good’ circumstances in peaceful days’, res secundae.
We have already* seen how in early Hebrew or in Mexican ‘good’
means ‘good to eat. It is over things ‘good to eat’ that the
Agathos Daimon has his sway. All this, familiar to the student
of language, is apt to be forgotten when we come to analyse a
religious conception like that of the Agathos Daimon, yet is
essential to its realization. This abundance, this ‘muchness’ of
the Agathos Daimon will come out even more clearly when we
come to his attribute the cornucopia.
The Shent-crowned snakes of Alexandria are late and foreign,
can we point to earlier and home-grown snake-daimons of
fertility ?
On the black-figured cylixt in Fig. 71 we find them repre-
sented in lovely and quite unlooked-for fashion. The scene is a
1 Hom. 1]. xxttt. 810 καί oquv δαῖτ᾽ ἀγαθὴν παραθήσομαι.
2 Thucyd. 11. 82 ἐν μὲν yap εἰρήνῃ καὶ ἀγαθοῖς πράγμασιν.
3 Supra, p. 139.
4 In Munich, Alte Pinakothek. First published and discussed by Dr Béhlau,
Schlangenleibige Nymphen. Philologus, N. F. x1. 1. One half of the vase is re-
produced and discussed in my Prolegomena, p. 259. See also Delphika in J. H. S.
xix. 1899, p. 216. But I did not then see the connection with the Agathos
Daimon.
vit] Charites and Eumenides with Snakes 281
vineyard. On the one side, heraldically grouped, are a herd of
mischievous goats, the enemies of the vine, bent on destruction,
nibbling at the vines. On the other, as though to mark the
contrast, under a great spreading vine, are four maiden-snakes.
Two hold a basket of net or wicker in which the grapes will be
gathered ; a third holds a great cup for the grape juice, a fourth
_ plays gladly on the double flute.
It might perhaps be rash to name these gentle snake-bodied
vintage nymphs Agathoi Daimones, though Agathoi Daimones
they are in form and function. Any Athenian child would have
_known by what name they best loved to be called. Old Cecrops
would not have blushed to own them for his daughters. The
ΚΓ ἘΓΙΥΝ
ΕὙΜ 'E NI SIN
HY XA N
~~
Fie. 72.
Charites so early got them wholly human form they might have
looked askance. Anyhow the snake-maidens are own sisters to
the three staid matronly women figures on the relief in Fig. 72,
the Eumenides of Argos!, who hold pomegranates in one hand
! For the Eumenides and their relation to the Semnae and to the Erinyes see
Prolegomena, pp. 217—256. I have there fully discussed the snake form of the
angry ghost, the Erinys, pp. 232—237. See Delphika, J. H. S. x1x. 1899, p. 230.
Ji
282 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
and in the other snakes—own sisters too to the ancient fertility
goddesses of the Areopagos, the Semnae.
ae The Agathos Daimon was, like the Roman nuwmen, what
Dr Warde Fowler? has well called a ‘functional spirit with will
\ : sc 3 -
) power, the function being indicated by the adjectival name. As
such he was, no doubt, to begin with, sex-less. When sex is
later attributed to him he is—perhaps under the influence of
patriarchalism—like the Roman genius, always male, a daimon
of generation, but on the whole he resists complete personalization.
He gets, it is true, as will be seen, a sort of shadowy mother
or wife in Agathe Tyche, yet, save for these grape-gathermg nymphs
and the Eumenides of Argos, we should never have known that
the snake fertility-daimon took female form.
The Agathos Daimon appears again with Tyche at Lebadeia in
Boeotia, associated with the strange and almost grotesquely primi-
tive ceremonial of the oracle of Trophonios?. When a man would
consult the oracle he first of all had to lodge a fixed number
of days in a ‘certain building’ which was sacred to the Agathos
Daimon and to Agathe Tyche: when he came back senseless from
the oracle he was carried to this same house where he recovered
his wits. I suspect that in that house or building dwelt a holy
snake, an οἰκουρὸς ὄφις. Pausanias saw in the grotto images with
snakes curled about their sceptres, he did not know whether to
call them Asklepios and Hygieia or Trophonios and Eileithyia, for
he adds, ‘they think that snakes are as sacred to Trophonios as to
Asklepios. The suppliant to the oracle when he went down into the
\ dreadful chasm took with him in either hand a honey-cake, surely
(for a snake’s appeasement. Behind all these snake-divinities is
‘the snake-daimon, the snake himself, male and female*.
Boeotia was assuredly a land of snake-cults. The relief* in
Fig. 73, which is good Attic work of the fourth century B.c., found
at Eteonos, attests this. A man carrying a cake, probably a
honey-cake, in his uplifted hand approaches a grotto cave; he leads
by the hand his little son who hangs back. No wonder, for from
the grotto rears out his head a huge snake. A good daimon he
probably is, but somewhat fearsome.
1 The Religious Experience of the Roman People, 1911, p. 119.
2 Paus, 1x. 39. 3,5 and 13. See infra, chapter x1.
3 Infra, pp. 429—436. + Berlin Museum Cat, 724,
om Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche 283
᾿. Agathe Tyche we meet again at Elis and with her Agathos §
Daimon, only he bears another and a now thrice familiar name Ὧ
Fic. 79:
Sosipolis'. The people of Elis, Pausanias? tells us, had a sanctuary (
of Tyche with a colossal image on its colonnade.
Here too Sosipolis has honours (τιμαί) in a small building to the left of
Tyche. The god is painted in the shape in which he appeared in a dream,
as a child, dressed in a chlamys spangled with stars, and in one hand he
holds the horn of Amaltheia.
But what has a child in a spangled chlamys holding « cornu- /
copia to do with our snake-daimon? Much, indeed everything; he )
is the ‘good’ snake-daimon. We remember* that when the child ;
was placed in the forefront of the Elean army, he changed into a
serpent, and fear fell on the Arcadians and they fled. The Eleans
won a great victory and called the god Sosipolis.
And where the serpent appeared to go down into the ground after the
battle, there they made the sanctuary*.
Sosipolis at Olympia, it will be remembered, had like Erech-
theus and Trophonios the snake’s service of the honey-cake.
\
The Agathos Daimon and Sosipolis are one and the same, and ᾿
Sosipolis, it will be remembered, is but another name for Zeus
Soter, Saviour of the city. Now we understand—though this is
of but trifling interest save as a confirmation—the confusion in
1 Supra, p. 240, note 4. 2 γι. 25. 4.
3 Loe. cit., supra, p. 240. 4 Paus. vi. 20. 3 and 5.
ἱ
284 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
Greek drinking customs of Zeus Soter with the Agathos Daimon.
Suidas’, in his valuable gloss, says:
The ancients had the custom after dinner of drinking to the Good
Daimon. They gulped down some unmixed wine and said this was to the
Good Daimon, but when they were about to separate it was to Zeus the
Saviour?
‘ The familiar Sosipolis is then in form and function, though
not in name, an Agathos Dai-
mon. He is to us especially
instructive, because he shows the
transition from snake to animal
form. Sosipolis changes into a
snake. It is a safe mythological
rule that a metamorphosis of this
kind may always be inverted;
/the snake takes on the form of a
_human child. Another point to
be noted is, that at Elis and
Olympia, when the snake-daimon
jtakes on human form, he*® and
\his female correlative, Tyche or
Eileithyia, appear in the matri-
archal relation, as Mother and
Son.
iss
HOSS
SONA iy yaw
“Δι ΝΣ" =
“uit TOT Ve, ΧΩ
δὶ =
~> narung
“.
Ἂ
f μιν
Hs
]
-
'
\
δ
me / On the relief in Fig. 74 we
᾿“ ΞΕ -τ τ - _—) see Agathe Tyche holding a child
“Fie. 74. ,in her arms. The design is
- carved in low relief on a column
in the Hall of the Mystae of Dionysos recently excavated at
Melos‘. Agathe Tyche is clearly here the Good Luck of Melos;
1 s.v. ᾿Αγαθοῦ Aaiuovos. ἜἜθος εἶχον of παλαιοὶ μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον πίνειν ᾿Αγαθοῦ
Δαίμονος, ἐπιῤῥοφοῦντες ἄκρατον, καὶ τοῦτο λέγειν ᾿Αγαθοῦ Δαίμονος" χωρίζεσθαι δὲ
μέλλοντες Διὸς Σωτῆρος. Suidas adds that the second day of the month was called
the day of the Agathos Daimon. The second is one of the few days that are
not mentioned as either lucky or unlucky by Hesiod in his calendar.
2 For the whole discussion of the subject of the final libations at a feast to
Agathos Daimon, Agathe Tyche and Zeus Soter see Athenaeus xv. 47, 48, 692, 693.
He gives as his authorities Philochoros and Theophrastos, and various poets of the
Old and Middle Comedy.
3 The nominal correlative of Tyche is Tychon, a daimon who is but a form of |
Priapus, see Kaibel, Daktyloi Idaioi, in Nachrichten d. k. Gesellschaft d. Wissen-
schaften zu Géttingen, Phil.-Hist.-Kl. 1901, p. 503.
4 J.H.S. xvi. 1898, p. 60, Fig. 1, and A. Mitth. xv. 1890, p. 248. For Hirene
carrying the child Ploutos see my Mythology and Monuments, pp. 65—8.
}
VIII | Agathe Tyche and Cornucopia ‘ — 285 |
she is the personification or projection, the genius loci. The
style of the relief is of course late, but it goes back to an,
earlier prototype and one that to us is instructive. Pausanias!
saw at Thebes, near to the observatory of Teiresias, a sanc- /
tuary of Tyche, and she was carrying the child Ploutos. As
he naively observes:
It was a clever plan of the artists to put Ploutos in the arms of Tyche |
as his mother or nurse, and Kephisodotos was no less clever; he made for |
the Athenians the image of Eirene holding Ploutos.
Tyche at Elis has lost, or never had, her prefix Agathe. When
the child Ploutos is in her arms the adjective
is superfluous, he is her ‘ Wealth,’ her ‘Good-
ness. When the snake-daimon Sosipolis
takes human form, he holds the ‘horn of
Amaltheia, the cornucopia. The child and +
the cornucopia of earth’s fruits are one ,
and the same. That is clear on the vase- |
painting? in Fig. 35, where Ge rises from
the earth, holding in her hands the great
cornucopia, out of which uprises the child.
The cornucopia is sometimes explained: as
the ‘horn of Amaltheia,” the goat-mother f{TPKAZENOKAH2
who nursed the infant Zeus. Sometimes ΤΥΪΟΦΟΪῊΣ AND
it is the horn of the river-bull Achelods, —TO A KAI PETES |
the great source of fertility®. Its symbolism
is always the same; fertility, whatever the
source. But most of all it stands for the
gathered fruits of the year‘. There was
a certain cup, we remember’*, ‘called the Horn of Amaltheia and
also Hniautos.’
The relief in Fig. 75° may serve to remind us of the snake and
human forms of the Agathos Daimon. It is the only instance;
known to me where they occur together. The monument was!
found at Epidauros. It is of Roman date’, a votive offering of
Fie. 75.
EEX Us 2.07 2 Supra, p. 167. ° See Prolegomena, p. 435, Fig, 135.
4 Diodorus tv. 35. 4 ὃ προσαγορεῦσαι κέρας ᾿Αμαλθείας, ἐν ᾧ πλάττουσι πλῆθος
ὑπάρχειν πάσης ὀπωρινῆς ὥρας, βοτρύων τε καὶ μήλων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τοιούτων.
Pipa 186: 6 Kabbadias, Fouilles d’Epidaure, τ. p. 45.
7 The date is given in the inscription but not the era used. As three eras are
in use at Epidauros the exact year cannot be fixed. The lettering is of the
2nd cent. a.p.
286 Daimon and Hero (cH.
a certain priest, a Fire-Bearer, by name Tiberius Claudius —
a Xenokles. The god is represented holding a sceptre in his right
hand, a cornucopia in his left. A god we must call him, for the
) dedication is ἀγαθοῦ θεοῦ, of the Good God. Near Megalopolis
Pausanias! saw a temple of the Good God; he remarks that ‘if
the gods are givers of good things to men and Zeus is the
supreme god, it may logically be inferred that the term is applied
/to Zeus. The inference is somewhat rash. As the relief was
found at Epidaurus the epithet is usually explained as a ‘title
of Asklepios, but surely the Agathos Theos is only an Olympianized
form of the old Agathos Daimon. Over his body still crawls the
snake he once was. We follow the snake.
The association of mother, snake, child, and the wealth of
harvest fruits comes out strikingly in the Graeco-Roman relief? in
Fig. 76. We have purposely kept it to the end because it
i WTA
3 ΑΝ
res) 70: Ι
admirably embodies and summarizes the relation of snake, hero
and daimon. The seated figure is Demeter, and we are tempted
) to call the young boy who brings the fruits to her 'Triptolemos,
It is, I think, safer to think of him as the child Ploutos. In Crete
Hesiod* tells us: $
Demeter brought forth Ploutos...and kindly was the birth
Of him whose way is on the sea and over all the Earth..
Happy, happy is the mortal who doth meet him as he goes,
For his hands are full of blessings and his treasure overflows,
pagers
1 yur. 36. 5.
2 Overbeck, Kunst-Mythologie, Atlas Taf. ξ
3 Theog. 969, schol. ad loc. καὶ γὰρ ἡ παροιμία " πυρῶν καὶ κριθῶν, ὦ νήπιε Πλοῦτε
Vr | Kychreus the Snake-King 287
and the scholiast preserves for us the tag:
Ah for the wheat and barley, Ὁ child Ploutos.
The snake behind Demeter is of special interest. In function
he was of course an Agathos Daimon, but as to his actual name
people were not so sure. Tradition associated him with the hero
Kychreus of Salamis.
‘At Salamis,’ Pausanias! tells us, ‘there was a sanctuary of Kychreus,
It is said that, while the Athenians were engaged in the sea-fight with the
Medes, a snake appeared among the ships and God announced that this snake
was the hero Kychreus,’
To this sanctuary, when Athens and Megara were fighting for
Salamis, Solon went by night and offered to Periphemos and
Kychreus sphagia, the sacrifice proper to heroes’.
Kychreus is, perhaps, a somewhat shadowy figure to many of
us, but he was in ancient days a hero of high repute. Plutarch
solemnly argues that the robber Skiron cannot have been such
a very disreputable villain, as he was son-in-law to Kychreus, who
had divine honours at Athens. His real home was of course the
coast country of the bay, opposite Salamis, of Kychreia, whose
other name was Skiros. Of Kychreia and its clansmen Kychreus
was eponymous hero, as Cecrops of Cecropia and the Cecropidae.
Strabo* knew this, and he tells us, on the authority of Hesiod,
that
From Kychreia the snake Kychreides had its name, which Kychreus bred,
and Eurylochos drove it out because it ravaged the island, but Demeter
received it into Eleusis, and it became her attendant.
Others said that Kychreus himself was surnamed Serpent
(“Odus)*.
All this aetiology is transparent. There was at Kychreia or
Salamis, as at Athens, a local ‘household’ snake (οἰκουρὸς ὄφις).
With it, as at Athens, was associated the eponymous hero of the
place. The cult of the snake fell into disrepute, the human form
of the eponymous hero was preferred. At Eleusis also there was
behind the figure of Demeter an old local snake; in the mysteries
1 τ, 36. 1; for the various forms of the Kychreus legend see Dr Frazer, ad loc.
2 Plut. Vit. Thes. 10: for sphagia see Prolegomena, pp. 63—73.
3 Ix. §§ 5995. ὑποδέξασθαι δὲ αὐτὸν τὴν Δήμητρα εἰς ᾿Ελευσῖνα καὶ γενέσθαι ταύτης
ἀμφίπολον. The gist of the killing of the snake by the hero or god will be
considered when we come to the Olympians.
4 Steph. Byz. s. v. Kuxpetos πάγος.
288 Daimon and Hero (CH.
’ the marriage! of Demeter with Zeus, who ‘took the form of a
snake, was still known, but again the human form of the goddess
obtains. As in Fig. 76, the snake is well behind her; but he is
there for all that, and his old fertility functions are shown in the
fruit-bearing child, Ploutos. The little shrine out of which the
snake peers is a heroon, but the hero is a functionary-daimon, not
a historic personality. At Thebes, too, Suidas? tells us, ‘there is a
heroon of the Agathos Daimon.’
We have dwelt at length on the Agathos Daimon because
without a clear notion of him in his twofold aspect as collective
representative and as fertility-daimon the ceremonies of the
Anthesteria lose half their meaning. Later we shall be able ἴο
demonstrate from monumental evidence that 1t was the form and
function of the Agathos Daimon that, not only the mythical kings
Cecrops and Erechtheus and Kychreus, but also each and every
local hero put on, and that it was only as and because they assumed
this guise that they became ‘heroes’ and won for themselves
acultus. For the present we must return to the Anthesteria.
The Choes. The first day of the Anthesteria, the Pithoigia,
we have seen, was given to the ‘sacrifice, that is to libations of
the new wine to the Agathos Daimon at the broaching of the
casks. The second day, the Choes or drinking cups, need not long
detain us*. It was the natural sequel of the first. The taboo
having been removed from the new wine, a revel set in. Each
man, or at least each householder, was given a Chous, a measure
of wine: there was a drinking contest (ἀγών), the exact arrange-
ments of which are not clear. Each man or boy crowned his cup
with a garland and brought it to the priestess of the temple of
Dionysos in the Marshes‘.
1 See Prolegomena, p. 535, and see the great snake coiled round Demeter on the
vase in the Museo delle Terme, p. 547, Fig. 156.
2 s.v.’Ayabod Δαίμονος... Καὶ ἐν Θήβαις δὲ Av‘ Hp@ov ᾿Αγαθοῦ Δαίμονος.
3 Most authorities have held that the marriage of the Queen Archon to Dionysos
took place on the day of the Choes. But Dr Frazer (The Magic Artt. p. 137) says that
the assumption rests on insufficient evidence ; he conjectures that it may have taken
place in the month Gamelion. The ceremony was of cardinal importance as a
fertility charm, but because of the uncertainty of date I omit all discussion of it in
relation to the Anthesteria.
+ For sources see the Lexica and Dr Martin Nilsson’s Studia de Dionysiis
Atticis, 1900.
vit | The Choes and the Chytroi 289
The main fact that concerns us as to the Choes is that, spite
of the revel and the wine-drinking and the flower-wreathed
cups, the day of the Choes was nefastus. Photius? tells us it
was a ‘day of pollution, in which they believed that the spirits
of the dead rose up: by way of precaution against these spirits
from early dawn they chewed buckthorn, a plant of purgative
properties, and they anointed their doors with pitch. A new
element is here introduced; there are ghosts about and they
are feared.
The Chytrot. This coming and going of the ghosts about the /
city at the Anthesteria is clearly evidenced by the concluding
ritual of the third day, the Chytrot. The Greeks, Zenodotus? tells
us, had a proverbial expression said ‘of those who on all
occasions demand a repetition of favours received.’ It was as /
follows τ:
Out of the doors! ye Keres; it is no longer Anthesteria.
And it was spoken, Suidas? said,
inasmuch as there were ghosts going about the city at the Anthesteria.
Year by year, in ever returning cycle as the Anthesteria came
round, the ghosts were let loose at the Pithoigia. For three days
they fluttered through the city, filling men’s hearts with nameless
dread, causing them to chew buckthorn and anoint their doors
with pitch and close their sanctuaries; then, on the third day, by
solemn mandate, they were bidden to depart.
Before we come to the reason of their uprising two points
must be noted. First, the ghosts are many, a fluttering crowd;
they are collective, addressed in the plural; it is not an individual )
ancestor of great fame and name who rises from the dead, but
ancestors. Second, they are feared as well as reverenced. The/
name Keres, applied to them, is not the equivalent of ψυχαΐ
1 s.v. μιαρὰ ἡμέρα’ ἐν τοῖς Χουσὶν ᾿Ανθεστηριῶνος μηνός, ἐν ᾧ δοκοῦσιν ai ψυχαὶ τών
τελευτησάντων ἀνιέναι, ῥάμνων ἕωθεν ἐμασώντο καὶ πίττῃ τὰς θύρας ἔχριον. ‘
2 Cent. Paroim. s.v. Εἴρηται δὲ ἡ παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν τὰ αὐτὰ ἐπιζητούντων πάντοτε
λαμβάνειν. The use of the proverb seems to emphasize the insistent, periodic
return of the ghosts.
3 s.v. θύραζε
θύραζε κῆρες, οὐκ ἔτι ᾿Ανθεστήρια.
ὡς κατὰ τὴν πόλιν τοῖς ᾿Ανθεστηρίοις τῶν ψυχῶν περιερχομένων.
Η. 19
290 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
‘souls’; ‘ghosts’ is perhaps as close a translation as we can get, for
ὶ the word carries with it a sense of dread. The word Keres is
ait
--.ι
obscure in origin and its career is a downward one, tending always
‘towards evil, disease and death’. Among the Greeks, as, it would
seem, among many primitive peoples, the fear of the dead seems to
precede their worship?. The ‘feare of things invisible’ is, as we
have already 566}, in part ‘the naturall seed of Religion.’
This fear of ghosts is natural enough and needs no emphasis.
It is not indeed at first a disembodied soul that is dreaded, but
rather the whole condition of death, which involves the immediate
family and often the whole tribe in a state of contagious infection.
But, to totemistic thinkers, the fear is always mixed with a sure
and certain hope, the hope of reincarnation. Once the body
fairly decayed and the death ceremonies complete, the dead man
is free to go back to his totem ancestors and begin again the
cycle of life as a new tribesman or a totem animal. This is
often clearly indicated by funeral rites? Thus among the Bororo,
the dead man is trimmed up with feathers of the parroquet, in
order that he may take the form of the parroquet totem. ‘Till
the second funeral is over, the dead man among the Hindoos is a
preta, that is a fearful revenant: after that he can enter the world
of Pitaras or fathers, the equivalents of the Alcheringa totem-
ancestors. For this entry, rites of initiation, rites de pussage, are
necessary.
This double nature of the Greek attitude towards the dead is
very simply and clearly expressed in the vase-painting in Fig. 77.
The design comes from an archaic vase® of the ‘ prothesis’ type, a
vase used in funeral ceremonies and decorated with funeral subjects.
Two mourners stand in attitudes of grief on either side of a
1 T have discussed the development and degradation of the idea of the Keres
fully in Prolegomena, chapter v.
2 This was very fully exemplified by Dr Frazer in a series of lectures delivered
at Trinity College during the Lent and May terms of 1911 on the ‘ Fear and Worship
of the Dead.’
3 Supra, p. 64.
4 The social attitude of savages towards death as expressed in funeral rites has
been very ably and fully analysed by R. Hertz, Représentation collective de la
Mori, in Année Sociologique, x. 1905-6, p. 48.
5 In the Museum at Athens, see J. H. S. x1x. 1899, p. 219, fig. 4. In discussing
this vase before (Prolegomena, p. 235) I made the mistake of saying ‘Snake and,
cidolon are but two ways of saying the same thing.’ I now realize that the two
forms express ideas of widely different, almost contradictory import. The ghosts
of dead men constantly pass over into the good daimon, the collective ancestor, but
the ideas are disparate.
|
vit | The Chytroi and the Panspernia 291
grave-mound, itself surmounted by a tall vase. Within the grave-
mound the vase-painter has drawn
what he believes to be there, two
things—in the upper part of the
mound a crowd of little fluttering
Keres, and below the single figure
of asnake. The Keres are figured
as what the Greeks called εἴδωλα,
little images, shrunken men, only
winged. They represent the shadow
soul, strengthless and vain ; but the
θυμίς of the man, his strength, his
life, his μένος, his mana, has passed
carnation, the snake. An εἴδωλον,
“an image, informed by θυμός makes
up something approximately not
unlike that complex, psychological conception, our modern ‘ im-
mortal soul.’
The central ceremony of the Chytroi, the ceremony that gave
its name to the day, still remains, and it will bring indefeasible
evidence to show that the focus of attention at the Anthesteria Ὁ
was not on death, not on the εἴδωλον, but on the θυμός, not on .
the ‘strengthless heads of the dead’ but on life through death,
on reincarnation, on the life-daimon. This central ceremony was
the boiling but—significantly—not the eating of a pot (χύτρος or
χύτρα) of all kinds of seeds, a panspermia. The scholiast on the
Frogs’ in commenting on the words ‘with the holy Pots’ says
expressly, quoting Theopompos,
And of the pot which all the citizens cook, no priest tastes.
And again the scholiast on the Acharnians?, also quoting Theo- ἡ
pompos, says
they cooked pots of panspermia whence the feast got its name, but of the
pot no one tasted.
1 Ad Ar. Ran. 218 καὶ τῆς χύτρας ἣν ἕψουσι πάντες οἱ κατὰ τὴν πόλιν οὐδεὶς γεύεται
τῶν ἱερέων. The reading ἱερέων is uncertain.
* Ad Ar. Ach. 1076 Χύτρους: Θεόπομπος τοὺς διασωθέντας ἐκ τοῦ κατακλυσμοῦ
ἑψῆσαί φησι χύτρας πανσπερμίας ὅθεν οὕτω κληθῆναι τὴν ἑορτήν...τῆς δὲ χύτρας οὐδένα
γεύσασθαι.
19—2
Pn,
292 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
The panspermia has not, I think, been rightly understood. In
commenting on it before!, misled by the gift-theory of sacrifice,
I took it to be merely a ‘supper for the souls. No doubt as
such it was in later days regarded, when primitive magical rites
had to be explained on Olympian principles. But it was, to begin
with, much more. The ghosts had other work to do than to eat
their supper and go. They took that ‘supper, that pansperma,
with them down to the world below and brought it back in the
autumn a pankarpia. The dead are Chthontoi, ‘ earth-people,
Demetreioi, ‘ Demeter’s people?, and they do Demeter’s work, her
work and that of Kore the Maiden, with her Kathodos and Anodos*.
An Athenian at the Anthesteria would never have needed S. Paul’s*
angry objurgation :
Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: and
that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare
grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain.
It is sown a panspermaa, it is reaped a pankarpia.
The lexica regularly define panspermia and pankarpia by
each other, and they are right, for fruit 7s seed, but a distinction
must be observed. The living and the dead seem to have as it
were a sort of counter-claim on the fruits of the earth. The live
man wants the fruits of the earth that he may eat them and so
live; the dead man wants them as seed that he may take it with
him down below and tend it and give it a ‘body’ and send it
back, bring it back as fruit. The autumn is the living man’s
great time. Then he takes most of the fruit and grain, eats
it and stores it for himself, but even then he saves a little for the
dead, offering them ἀπαρχαί, because only so can his seed grow
and prosper. The spring, the Anthesteria, is the dead man’s
time, for the seeds belong mainly to him. It is this cycle that
haunted the mind of Aeschylus’, only he abstracts it somewhat,
1 Prolegomena, p. 37. If my present theory, suggested to me in part by Mr
Cornford, be right, the cooking of the panspermia must be a late invention added
when it came to be regarded as a food.
2 Plut. de facie in orb. lunae 28 καὶ τοὺς νεκροὺς ᾿Αθηναῖοι Δημητρείους ὠνόμαζον τὸ
beefs the δρώμενα of the Kathodos and Anodos see Prolegomena, p. 123, and for
the Anodos of the Maiden, p. 276. See also infra, chapter Ix.
4 1 Cor. xv. 20 ff.
> Choeph. 127
καὶ γαῖαν αὐτήν, 4 τὰ πάντα τίκτεται
θρέψασά 7 αὖθις τῶνδε κῦμα λαμβάνει
and Dr Verrall ad loc. For the whole symbolism and for the Roman custom of
vim | Kernophoria and Pankarpia 293
making it of Earth the Mother rather than of dead men and
seeds:
Yea summon Earth, who brings all things to life
And rears and takes again into her womb.
It is this cycle of reincarnation that makes of the panspernua
a thing more solemn and significant than any ‘supper of the
souls, kindly and venerable though that notion be.
The panspermia and pankarpia appear in many forms and (
under other names, as Kernophoria, as Liknophoria, as Thargelia.
The Thargelia are of the first harvest in June. Hesychius' defines
thargelos as a ‘pot full of seeds. A Liknophoria, the carrying of a
winnowing-basket full of fruits, to which often on monuments a
phailos is added, might take place at any rite when fertility was
desired. It was part of the Eleusinian and other mysteries, it was _
practised at marriage ceremonies”. Of the Kernophoria we have
unusually full particulars. It is specially interesting as showing
the care taken that in a panspermia each and every form of seed
should be represented. Athenaeus says of the Kernos:
A vessel made of earthenware, with many little cups fastened on to it in
which are white poppies, barley, pulse, ochroi, lentils, and he who carries
it after the fashion of the carrier of the liknon tastes of these things, as
Ammonius relates in his third book ‘On Altars and Sacrifices.’
The Kernophoria was in the autumn, living man’s time; he
tastes of the fruits to get their mana.
In previously discussing the pankarpia and kindred matters
I was led astray by Porphyry’s charming vegetarianism. He
quotes again and again such offerings as these as examples of the
simple life dear to the gods, in the golden days before man tasted
flesh food. Thus Sophocles*® in the lost Polyidos, which must
have dealt with the primitive rites of Crete, says:
planting corn on grayes, manifestly to secure the magic of the dead, see Prolegomena,
p. 267.
1 s.v. θάργηλος᾽ χύτρα ἐστὶν ἀνάπλεως σπερμάτων.
2 Both the Kernophoria and the Liknophoria are fully discussed and illustrated
in my Prolegomena, pp. 160 and 599 and 518—535, 549, and a Kernos of which
many specimens have come to light is there reproduced in Fig. 16: the scene of the
Kernophoria appears on the ‘ Ninnion’ pinax in Fig. 160.
® Porphyr. de Abst. τι, 19 καὶ Σοφοκλῆς διαγράφων τὴν θεοφιλῆ θυσίαν φησὶν ev τῷ
ἸΠολυίδῳ
ἣν μὲν γὰρ olds μαλλός, ἦν δὲ κἀμπέλου
σπονδή τε καὶ ῥὰξ εὖ τεθησαυρισμένη "
ἐνῆν δὲ παγκάρπεια συμμιγὴς ὀλαῖς
λίπος τ᾽ ἐλαίας καὶ τὸ ποικιλώτατον
ξουθῆς μελίσσης κηρόπλαστον ὄργανον.
294 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
Wool of the sheep was there, fruit of the vine,
Libations and the treasured store of grapes
And manifold fruits were there, mingled with grain
And oil of olive and fair, curious combs
Of wax, compacted by the murmuring bee.
Following Porphyry, I explained the pankarpia and the
panspermia, as simple fare for simple-hearted gods. But its gist
is really magical, and the rite long preceded any god however
primitive and gentle, it preceded even the Agathos Daimon.
The Anthesteria was then a feast of the revocation of souls
“and the blossoming of plants, a feast of the great reincarnation
a,
cycle of man and nature. One final point of cardinal importance
remains to be noted—the god in whose honour the panspermia
was offered.
Y
Hermes ΟἩΤΗΟΝΙΟΒ as AcaTHos Datmoy,
The scholiast on the Frogs’, already quoted, makes, in com-
menting on the Chytrci, a second statement of scarcely less interest
than the first. Not only does ‘no one taste of the Pot’ but
They have the custom of sacrificing at this feast, not to any of the
Olympian gods at all, but to Hermes Chthonios.
We are thankful to find the Olympians refraining for once; as
a rule they are only too ready to lay greedy hands on a magical
rite, pervert its meaning and turn it into a ‘gift-sacrifice’ for
themselves. Had Hermes Chthonios been an Olympian we must
have postponed the consideration of him to the next chapter, but
Hermes Chthonios, it is expressly said, is no Olympian, he is—it
is perhaps by now scarcely necessary to state it—our ancient
friend, the Agathos Daimon.
Photius? tells us in so many words: ‘Hermes a kind of drink—
as of the good Daimon and Zeus Soter’; but evidence abounds
more deep-seated than this hitherto enigmatic yet curiously
explicit gloss. ὃ
It was the Agathos Daimon who presided over the Pithoigia
of the wine-casks; it is Hermes who with magic rhabdos and
1 Ad Ar. Ran. 218... θύειν αὐτοῖς ἔθος ἔχουσι τῶν μὲν θεῶν οὐδενὶ τὸ παράπαν, ‘Epuy
δὲ χθονίῳ.
2 s.v. Ἑρμῆς πόσεως εἶδος" ὡς ἀγαθοῦ δαίμονος καὶ Διὸς σωτῆρος. I owe this
evidence to Professor Murray.
vir | Hermes as Agathos Daimon 295
with kerykeion summons the souls from the great grave-pithos<
on the Jena lekythos! in Fig. 78. It is Hermes always who oo
Pandora-Anesidora, she of the
pithos, when she rises from the
earth. Always he carries his i
kerykeion with the twin twisted
snakes, that kerykeion which
we saw gathered in the coils ΓΝ π᾿
νὰ Ζῶ
of the Agathodaimon on the
coins of Alexandria’, a conjunc- Waa | Ζ
tion now easily understood. We \ Cw
understand now why Hermes, |
as phallic herm, is god of fer- |
tility of flocks and herds, but
also, as Psychopompos, god of
ghosts and the underworld.
He, a snake to begin with and
"δι
=
ΓΞ
la
carrying always the snake-staff,
is the very davmon of reincar-
nation. Homer, who contrives Fic. 78.
to forget nearly everything of
any religious interest, cannot quite forget thut; only, for death and \
life, he, in his beautiful way, puts sleep and waking. When
Hermes led the ghosts of the slain suitors to Hades, he held (,
in his hand
His rhabdos fair and golden wherewith he lulls to rest
The eyes of men whoso he will, and others by his hest
He wakens.
|
Under the influence of the epic Hermes is eclipsed; he Ἢ
never allowed into Olympos save as a half outsider, a messenger ;'
probably, but for the Athenian cult of the Hermae, he could never
have forced an entrance at all and his functions would have gone
on being filled by the more pliable, upper-air Iris. Even though¢
‘expurgated’ by Homer, it.is curious to note how as ‘messenger’ )
he is almost omnipresent in popular art and literature in many a ἃ
ΤΡ, Schadow, Hine attische Grablekythos 1897. See also Prolegomena, p. 43.
2 Supra, p. 278, Fig. 67.
3 Od. xxiv, 1—4
οὐ τῇ τ᾿ ἀνδρῶν ὄμματα θέλγει
ὧν ἐθέλει, τοὺς δ᾽ αὖτε καὶ ὑπνώοντας ἐγείρει.
/
\
296 Daimon and Hero (OH.
situation, as e.g. the Judgment of Paris, where no ‘ messenger’ is
really wanted. He was really there from the beginning as daimon
or ‘luck’ of the place or the situation, there long before the gods
who made him their ‘messenger.’ If he was only a ‘ messenger,
why did men cry κοινὸς ἑρμῆς ‘shares in the Luck, why does
he always ‘lead’ the Charites, even when they are going no-
whither? In later literature which bears his name, in the
Hermetic writings and in the magic papyri, he comes to his own
again.
In the magic papyri? Hermes and the Agathos Daimon are
sometimes closely associated, sometimes placed in the relation of
father and son, or teacher and disciple, sometimes actually identi-
fied. Thus, in one prayer, the Lord Hermes is addressed as ‘he
who brings together food for gods and men,’ and he is employed to
bring about all things for me and guide them by Agathe Tyche and Agathos
Daimon’.
One of the titles of Hermes is Agathopoios, and it is said of him
as Agathos Daimon that
when he shines forth the earth blossoms. and when he laughs the plants
bear fruit, and at his bidding the herds bring forth young?.
Another prayer runs as follows:
Give me every grace, all accomplishment, for with thee is the bringer
of good, the angel standing by the side for Tyche. Therefore give thou
means and accomplishment to this house, thou who rulest over hope, wealth-
giving Aion, O holy good Daimon. Bring to accomplishment and incline to
ine all the graces and divine utterances?.
It is a grave mistake to think that all this is mere late
demonology. The magic papyri contain, it is now acknowledged
1 Tt is, I think, possible that the ‘messencer’ may really be a survival of the
‘representative’ or προστάτης, that is the winner in an agon, the πρῶτος Koipos—
the individual who stood for the group. When his function was forgotten he might
easily lapse into the deputy messenger. Mr Cornford draws my attention in this
connection to the fact noted above (p. 276) that the month Anthesterion was in
Boeotia called Προστατήριος. possibly it got its name from a festival of Προστατήρια.
2 Wessely, Griech. Zauberpapyrus von London und Paris and Neue griech.
Zauberpapyri in Denkscbr. ἃ. k. Akad., phil.-hist. xxxvi. Wien, 1888 and x11.
1893.
3 Ἰηρᾶξόν μοι πάντα καὶ cuvpéras σὺν ᾿Αγαθῇ Τύχῃ Kai’ Aya Δαίμονι. Reitzenstein,
Poimandres, p. 21.
+ ἀνέθαλεν ἣ γῆ σοῦ ἐπιλάμψαντος Kai ἑκαρποφόρησεν Ta φυτὰ σοῦ γελάσαντος,
ἐζῳογόνησε τὰ ζῷα σοῦ émirpéyavros—Reitzenstein, op. cit. p. 29.
5. δός μοι πᾶσαν χάριν, πᾶσαν πρᾶξιν, μετὰ σοῦ yap ἐστιν ὁ ἀγαθοφόρος ἄγγελος
παρεστὼς Τύχῃ. διὸ δὸς πόρον καὶ πρᾶξιν τούτῳ τῷ οἴκῳ κυριεύων ἐλπίδος πλουτοδότα
αἰών, ἱερὲ ᾿Αγαθὲ δαῖμον " τέλει πάσας χάριτας καὶ τὰς εὐθείας φήμας. op. cit. p. 29.
For φύρος and πρᾶξις in connection with Hermes οἷ. Aesch. Choeph. 808
mais ὁ Malas ἐπεὶ popwraros
πρᾶξιν οὐρίαν θέλων.
Vir | Zeus Ktesios as Agathos Daimon 297
on all hands, very primitive stuff'. It is noticeable that when
Agathe Tyche and Agathos Daimon come together the woman
figure in matriarchal fashion precedes the male daimon. Indeed
in the prayer just quoted the (
good Daimon is conceived of as /
ap angel or messenger standing
as attendant by the side of
Tyche. This possibly helps to ex- ,
plain the subordinate function of WY
Hermes as propolos or attendant oy
on the greater gods—it is anyhow "YY }
a mark of early thinking.
Hermes, as Agathos Daimon,
was once merely a phallos; that
he was also once merely a snake, Gy. Af
is, I think, a safe conjecture. [793 } ™ MS
But it is merely a conjecture: +“
I can point to no actual monu-
ment where Hermes is figured (
as a snake. It is otherwise
with another and ἃ greater
than Hermes, in whose form the
Agathos Daimon chose to mas-
querade— Zeus.
͵
Zeus Kresios as AGaTHos
DaImMon. lynith
Of singular interest is the
relief in Fig. 79 found at Thespiae
ἢ Boeotia and now in the local
museum at Thebes. It dates
vbout the 3rd century B.c. and
s clearly inscribed Διὸς Κτησίου, ‘Zeus’—we might perhaps trans-
ate it—‘of household property, Zeus, not so much of fertility as
1 Reitzenstein, op. cit. p. 28, 129, and R. Foerster, Hermes in einer Doppelherme
wus Cypern. Jahrbuch ἃ. Inst. 1904, p. 140. ‘In diesen Gebeten und Anrufungen
liirfen wir nicht so wohl Ergebnisse philosophischer Spekulation als Ausserungen
virklichen Volksglaubens erwarten.’
2 Inv. No. 330. I owe to the kindness of Dr M. P. Nilsson a photograph of this
nteresting monument which he has published and fully discussed in the Ath.
Mittheilungen, xxxi11. 1908, p. 279, Schlangenstele des Zeus Ktesios.
~
:
298 Daimon and Hero [oH
of its stored produce. Ktesios, Epikarpios and Charitodotes are
titles applied to Zeus in his capacity as the giver of increase’.
To these might be added Ploutos, Olbios, Meilichios, Philios,
Teleios. All these are daimons of fertility? and like the Agathos
Daimon might naturally be thought of in snake shape. It was
long ago conjectured by Gerhard* that Zeus Ktesios was a snake;
‘the Thespiae relief brings to his view welcome confirmation.
_ Snake though he was, to him as to Zeus Olbios (p. 148) a bull was
ee a
j
~
sacrificed +,
Zeus Ktesios is not only a snake; to our great delight we
find him also well furnished with Pots. He was essentially
domestic. Harpocration®, quoting Hyperides, says
They used to set up Zeus Ktesios in storerooms.
In the temple of Zeus at Panamara a votive inscription® was
found
To the household gods, Zeus Ktesios and Tyche and Asklepios.
It is to such primitive daimones of the penetralia that the Chorus
in the Choephorot of Aeschylus’ appeal. It is at the altar of
Ktesios that Cassandra as chattel of the house is bidden to take
her place*. Homer® must in his queer subconscious way be
thinking of Zeus Ktesios, with perhaps some associations of
Pandora, when he says’,
Jars twain upon Zeus’ threshold ever stood,
One holds his gifts of evil, one of good.
1 Plut. Stoic. Repug. 30 ὁ Ζεὺς γελοῖος εἰ Κτήσιος χαίρει καὶ ᾿Επικάρπιος καὶ
OPEL προσαγορευόμενος...
* Prolegomena, p. 356.
* In his brilliant but too little read monograph on Agathos Daimon and Bona
Dea, Akad. Abhandl. 1847, 11. 45, Anm. 28.
4 See the decree in Dem. 21. 53 Ad κτησίῳ βοῦν λευκόν. 1
° s.v. Κτησίου Διός. Ὑπερίδης ἐν τῷ πρὸς AmeANalov: Κτήσιον Ata ἐν τοῖς ταμιείοις.
ἱδρύοντο.
ὁ Bull. de Corr. Hell. x11. 1888, p. 269, No. 54 καὶ τοῖς ἐνοικιδίοις θεοῖς Διὶ Κτησίῳ,
καὶ Τύχῃ καὶ ᾿Ασκληπίῳ.
7 v. 186
οἵ τ᾽ ἔσωθε δωμάτων
πλουτογαθῆ μυχὸν νομίζετε,
κλύετε, σύμῴφρονες θεοί.
8 Aesch. Ag. 1020 :
ἐπεί σ᾽ ἔθηκε Leds ἀμηνίτως δόμοις "
κοινωνὸν εἷναι χερνίβων, πολλῶν μετὰ ,
δούλων σταθεῖσαν κτησίου βωμοῦ πέλας.
9 Tl. xxiv. 527
δοιοὶ γάρ τε πίθοι κατακείαται ἐν Διὸς οὐδᾷ
δώρων οἷα δίδωσι κακῶν ἕτερος δὲ ἑάων.
IT | Zeus Ktesios and Ambrosia 299
It was indeed side by side with Demeter Anesidora at ancient
hlya' that Zeus was worshipped, a fitting conjunction. At
*hlya were worshipped also Dionysos Anthios and the Semnae,
nd at Phlya were inysteries of Eros. In the list of divinities
emeter Anesidora comes first, as was fitting; the Earth sends up
er gifts and then man harvests and stores them for his use. It
s interesting to find that the actual cult of Zeus Ktesios as well
s his name lands us in the storeroom—though to speak of his
cult’ is really a misnomer, as we shall immediately see.
Athenaeus’, quoting Philemon, makes the following statement:
The Kadiskos is the vessel in which they set up Ktesian Zeuses.
e goes on to quote from the Hawegetikon of Antikleides, a post-
lexandrian writer, some ritual prescriptions for the carrying out
f the ‘cult’ or rather installation.
Put the lid on a new two-eared Kadiskos, crown the ears with white wool
and let down the ends of...the thread from the right shoulder and the
forehead and place in it whatever you can find and pour into it ambrosia.
Now ambrosia is pure water and olive oil and pankarpia. Pour in these.
The text is corrupt and therefore it is not quite clear how the
wool or thread was arranged on the vase. The vase with its
‘ears, ‘right shoulder’ and ‘forehead’ reminds us of the anthropoid
vases of the Troad.
But it is the ambrosia that delights and amazes us. Why in
the world should ambrosia be defined as pure water, olive oil, and
pankarpia? Why, but because in the pankarpia and the oil and
the pure living water are the seeds for immortality, for next year’s
reincarnation? The Olympians took ambrosia for their food, but
its ancient immortality was of earth’s recurrent cycle of growth,
not of heaven’s* brazen and sterile immutability.
Athenaeus* has yet another small and pleasant surprise in
1 For the mysteries at Phlya see Prolegomena, p. 642, and for Eros as Herm and
his close analogies with Hermes see p. 631.
2 x1. 46. 473 Καδίσκος. Φιλήμων ἐν τῷ προειρημένῳ συγγράμματι ποτηρίου εἶδος.
᾿Αγγεῖον δ᾽ ἐστὶν ἐν ᾧ τοὺς κτησίους Δίας ἐγκαθιδρύουσιν, ὡς ᾿Αντικλείδης φησὶν ἐν τῷ
᾿ξηγητικῷ, γράφων οὕτως" Διὸς κτησίου σημεῖα ἱδρύεσθαι χρὴ ὧδε. Καδίσκον καινὸν
δίωτον ἐπιθηματοῦντα, στέψαντα τὰ ὦτα ἐρίῳ λευκῷ καὶ ἐκ τοῦ μου τοῦ δεξιοῦ καὶ
ἐκ τοῦ μετώπου τοῦ κροκίου, καὶ ἐσθεῖναι ὅ τι ἂν εὕρῃς καὶ ἐσχέαι ἀμβροσίαν. Ἢ δ᾽
ἀμβροσία ὕδωρ ἀκραιφνές, ἔλαιον, παγκαρπία. ἽἈπερ ἔμβαλε. Kaibel, swpplendum fere
(καθέσθαι τὰ ἄκρα) τοῦ κροκίου.
3 For the Olympian notion of immortality which is the very contradiction of the
old reincarnation, see infra, chapter x.
4 loc: cit. Ἑρμῆς, ὃν ἕλκουσ᾽ οἱ μὲν ἐκ προχοιδίου,
οἱ δ᾽ ἐκ καδίσκου σ᾽ ἴσον ἴσῳ κεκραμένον.
i~
Yof storehouse jars for his chief sanctity. That acute observer
poet Strattis. Hermes is the daimon of ambrosia and of im-
, mortality.
:
300 Daimon and Hero [cH.
store for us. ‘The comic poet Strattis, he says, in his Lemnomeda
makes mention of the Kadiskos, thus: }
Hermes, whom some draw from a prochoidion,
Others, mixed half and half from a Kadiskos.
By the help of the Agathos Daimon we understand the comic
Zeus Ktesios then like Hermes is simply a daimon of fertility,
taking snake form—he was not yet a theos. His aspect as Ktesios
embarrassed the orthodox theologian and delighted the mystic and
the monotheist. It is pleasant to find? that even when translated
to the uttermost heavens he did not disdain the primitive service
of the pankarpia.
Ruler of all, to thee I bring libation
And honey- cake, by whatso appellation
Thou wouldst be called, or Zeus, or Hades thou
A tireless offering I bear thee now
Of all earth’s fruit, take Thou its plenitude.
For thou amongst the Heavenly Ones art god,
Dost share Zeus’ sceptre, and art ruling found
With Hades in the kingdoms underground.
Zeus Ktesios was to the Greeks a house-snake, with a service
of analogies between Greek and Roman religion, Denys of
Halicarnassos?, confirms our view and illuminates it further by
Latin custom. Speaking of the Penates brought by Aeneas from —
the Troad, he says
Now these gods are called by the Romans Penates. But those who ©
translate the word into Greek render it, some as * Patrooi,’ some as
‘Genethlioi, some again as ‘ Ktesioi,’ others as ‘Mychioi, others as_
‘Herkeioi’ Each and all of these translators seem to adopt a word
according to what has occurred to themselves, and they all mean pretty
1 Eur. Nauck frg. (incert.), 912:
σοὶ τῷ πάντων μεδέοντι χοὴν
πέλανόν τε φέρω, Ζεὺς εἴτ᾽ ᾿Αίδης
ὀνομαζόμενος στέργεις" σὺ δέ μοι
θυσίαν ἄπυρον παγκαρπείας
δέξαι πλήρη προχυθεῖσαν.
2 Ant. Ron. 1. ἴχν]. 3 τοὺς δὲ θεοὺς τούτους Ρωμαῖοι μὲν Πενάτας καλοῦσιν oi δ᾽
ἐξερμηνεύοντες εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα γλῶσσαν τοὔνομα οἱ μὲν Ilarpwous ἀποφαίνουσιν, οἱ δὲ
Γενεθλίους, εἰσὶ δ᾽ of Κτησίους, ἄλλοι δὲ Μυχίους, οἱ δὲ Ἑρκείους. ἔοικε δὲ τούτων
ἕκαστος κατά τινος τῶν συμβεβηκότων αὐτοῖς ποιεῖσθαι τὴν ἐπίκλησιν, κινδυνεύουσί τε, ᾿
πάντες ἁμωσγέπως τὸ αὐτὸ λέγειν. σχήματος δὲ καὶ μορφῆς αὐτῶν πέρι Τίμαιος μὲν ὃ
συγγραφεὺς ὧδε ἀποφαίνεται" κηρύκια σιδηρᾶ καὶ χαλκᾶ καὶ κέραμον Τρωικὸν εἶναι τὰ ἐν "
τοῖς ἀδύτοις τοῖς ἐν Λαουϊνίῳ ἱερά, πυθέσθαι δὲ αὐτὸς ταῦτα παρὰ τῶν ἐπιχωρίων.
VIII | Roman Genius of the Penus 301
much the same. Timaios the historian expresses himself thus as to their
form and appearance. The sacred things deposited in the adyta at Lavinium
are Kerykeia of iron and bronze and Trojan pottery, and he said that he
learnt this from the natives of the place.
The house-snake of the Romans as guardian of the penus is far
more familiar to us than the Agathos Daimon or Zeus Ktesios
of the Greek storeroom. He appears on countless Graeco-Roman
wall-paintings. A good instance is given in Fig. 801. We have
ae Τ
ἩΜΩ͂Ν
te
z eed
γὰρ.» WIM"
ee
the fagade of a house in temple-form—the pediment decorated
᾿
with sacrificial gear, a boucranium, a patera, a sacrificial knife. ὃ
Within, supposed no doubt to be within the penetralia, are the
1 From the photograph of a Pompeian wall-painting.
)
᾿ f
f κα ΟΝ fHMALL
302 | Daimon and Hero [ CH.
family sanctities. The great fertility-snake in front, all sur-)
rounded by herbage and ap-
proaching a small altar, is the
genius of the house in animal
form'. Above is the head of the
house himself, the human genius,
to either side of him a dancing
Lar holding ἃ cornucopia.
Similar in feeling is the design
in Fig. 81, from a relief in the
Villa Medici. The snake genius
this time is twined actually
round the household altar and
the head of the house himself
holds the cornucopia. The snake
Ὁ is omnipresent. It is not till Rome falls under Greek influence
) that we get the family daimon abstracted from the hearth and
fully anthropomorphic. The Bonus Hventus of the blue glass
cameo plaque® in Fig. 82 is a Greek for all his name‘, a goodly
human youth with no hint of divinity but his patera and corn
Fie. 81.
ears, a μέγιστος ΚΚοῦρος.
It is of the first importance to note that in Denys’s account of
the Greek equivalents of the Penates the renderings are all in the
plural. The Greek mind, intensely personal, individual, clear cut
as it was, tended to the singular, to Zeus Ktesios, who is a
personality, rather than to Ktesioi, who are vague dazmones.
It is indeed through the Latin genii that we best understand
the Greek daimones. They are at once more impersonal and,
which is almost the same thing, more collective, more generalized,
or rather less specialized. The genius is essentially as its name
shows the spirit of life, birth, generation®; to live a full hfe is
1 Cf. Servius ad Verg. Georg. m1. 417 (serpens) gaudet tectis ut sunt ἀγαθοὶ
δαίμονες quos Latini genios vocant.
2 Annali dell’ Inst. 1862, Taf. R. 4.
3 In the British Museum, reproduced from Mr Cyril Davenport’s Cameos, 1900,
pl. 3, by kind permission of Messrs Seeley.
4 The cameo seems to reflect the art type adopted by Euphranor ; see Pliny N.H.
34. 77 Euphranoris simulacrum Boni Eventus dextraé pateram, sinistra spicam 86.
papaverem tenens.
5 Cf. the lectus genialis. Paul the Deacon says (p. 94), Lectus genialis qui
nuptiis sternitur in honorem genii, unde et appellatus, a statement which,
reversed, just hits the mark. 4
vii | Genius of the Group 303
indulgere genio, to live ascetically is defraudare genium. But
though each man had his individual genius, his life-spirit, the
genius is essentially of the group; it is as it were incarnate in the
Bre. 82:
father of the family! or in the emperor as head of the state.
Every department of social life, every curia, every vicus, every
pagus had its genius, its utterance of a common life; not only >
the city of Rome had its Genius Urbis Romae but the whole
Roman people had its Genius Publicus Populi Romani’.
1 For the family as representing an economic unit and as contrasted with the
gens which is a kinship unit, see Mr Warde Fowler’s most interesting account in
his Religious Experience of the Roman People, 1911, p. 70.
2 This point is well brought out in the article s.v. Genius in Daremberg and
Saglio’s Dictionnaire des Antiquités, ‘il (le génius) était une divinité toute trouvée
pour les collectivités de tout ordre.’ ν᾿
304 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
a
r
; .
THE DioscurI As AGATHOI DAIMONES.
We have not yet done with the singular account by Denys.
The mention of Kerukeza recalls to us Hermes as Agathos Daimon
and the fertility-kerukeia of the Alexandrian coins’. The Trojan
‘pottery’ takes us back to the Kadiskoi®» Snakes and jars seem
indeed to be the natural and characteristic sacra of these house-
hold numina whether Greek or Latin. I have long suspected that
the so-called funeral snakes and funeral jars that appear on
sepulchral and other monuments have more to do with fertility-
daimons than with the dead. On coins of Laconia, Fig. 83,
one frequent symbol of the Dioscuri is a
snake-twined amphora. Twins all over the
world, as Dr Rendel Harris? has abundantly
shown, are apt, not unnaturally, to play the
part of fertility-duimones: they are not only,
as the coin shows them, lucida sidera but they
are gods of all manner of increase; they can
Fic. 83. make rain, they cause the dew to fall.
In connection with the Penates, the Ktesioi
and the Kadiskoi, the well-known votive-relief* of Argenidas in
Fig. 84 is of singular interest. Argenidas has returned from a
voyage; his ship is figured in a kind of rocky bay to the right.
Argenidas the dedicator stands safe and sound on a plinth in
front of his ship. The inscription reads:
Argenidas son of Aristogenidas to the Dioscuri, a vow.
To the left are the twins in human form. In the right hand
corner are their earliest ἀφιδρύματα or images, the δόκανα, beams
with crossbeams, railings, which to Plutarch’s® kindly mind repre-
sented their brotherly love. Beneath them is written ‘(Ana)keion.’
1 1 Supra, p- 299.
2 It is, 1 think, very probable that the ‘Duenos vase,’ as suggested by Miss
Bennett in an article as yet unpublished, was made like the Kernos to contain
in its several compartments different seeds, etc. See also Daremberg and Saglio,
s.v. Kernos.
3. The Cult of the Heavenly Twins, 1906, p. 26.
4 Verona Museo Lapidario 555, from a photograph kindly lent me by Dr Rendel
Harris.
5 De Fratern. amor. init. τὰ παλαιὰ τῶν Διοσκούρων ἀφιδρύματα ot Σπαρτιᾶται
δόκανα καλοῦσι. ἔστι δὲ δύο ξύλα παράλληλα δυσὶ “πλαγίοις ἐπεζευγμένα καὶ δοκεῖ τῷ
φιλαδέλφῳ τῶν θεῶν οἰκεῖον εἶναι τοῦ ἀναθήματος τὸ κοινὸν καὶ ἀδιαίρετον---ἴ 8 word
ἀφίδρυμα is untranslatable, it seems to mean anything set up apart, a dedication.
4 obs
j
VII | The Dioscuri as Agathoi Daimones 305
They form as it were a double sanctuary of the ‘ Lords,’ the Anakes,
a title they share with Cecrops and many another hero. Between
YY τῇ
Z y 73
ζΖ225
WY I ff 7
Wi Uy, 795
κ᾿,
7)
777) By 5
ἤ WG Y) AOS
Hf, Y 72 } (7, U, Gj
yy yy ;ὔ
+f
7
See ἣ
SS
εξ Ὁ
Q 5:
Yi fyi 7 LY oe INI GA Ty
Ui, AN ML: Ne hal ἤ
Fie. 84.
Argenidas and the Dioscuri is a table, on it two tall amphorae.
Are they funeral urns containing the ashes of the Dioscuri? I
think not. They perform, I believe, the
function of the Kadiskoi of Zeus Ktesios,
and I suspect they contain ambrosia, a
pankarpia or a panspermia, for to the right
of them is coiled in the air a daimon, a
snake. On another relief, in Fig. 851, the
dokana have snakes. This shows, I think,
not that the Dioscuri are dead men, but
that they are daimonic; they are, in the
strict sense of the word, ‘heroes.’
The Dioscuri are heroes or daimones full of instruction, as (
another monument? in Fig. 86 will show. The design is from §
a votive-relief found in Thessaly, of late date and somewhat rough $
though vigorous workmanship. It represents the scene familiar ?
—
1 Sparta Cat. 588, from a photograph kindly sent me by Mr Wace.
2 In the Louvre Museum. W. Fréhner, Deux Peintures de Vases Grecs, 1871,
Pl. τι., and see my Mythology and Monuments, 1890, p. 159, for the simple meal
provided in the Prytaneion at Athens for the Dioscuri.
H. 20
906 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
to us as the Theorenia, ‘Banquet of the gods.’ A couch is set
with cushions and coverlet, a table spread with fruit and cakes;
below it an altar on which the male worshipper is placing some
object. The guests are arriving. The woman lifts her hand to
welcome the great Epiphany. The guests are the ‘Great Gods,’
magnificently galloping down from high heaven on their prancing
horses, preceded by Nike with a garland. Above them in
the pediment Helios is rising. The inscription reads Θεοῖς
μεγάλοις Δανάα ᾿Ατθονειτει[α«(] ‘To the Great Gods Danaa
daughter of...’; the reading of the second name is uncertain.
What is the meaning of this absurd, incompatible representa-
tion? Simply this. In the Theoxenia we have the old magical
service of the panspermia and the pankarpia Olympianized. In
the old order the pot of seeds or the liknon full of fruits were in |
themselves sanctities; they were themselves carried and conse-
crated as ἀπαρχαί or first-fruits; they were tabooed from man’s
use that they might be the seed and source of fertility for the
coming year. There are as yet no human gods, there is no gift-
sacrifice. There are only vague shapes of daimones that crystallize
ἅ
vut] Daimones and Theor 307
gradually into the shape of the Good and Wealthy Daimon who
year by year renews himself and refills his cornucopia with earth’s
produce. But, when the davmones take shape as theov, the old
service must fit itself to the new conceptions. The ἀπαρχαί and,
the communal vegetarian dais that followed on the release from
taboo became feasts held in honour of these theot. These non-
existent Olympian magnificences have couches and tables, and
oddly combined with the table for the old offermg of the
pankarpia is an altar for burnt sacrifice. To crown the absurdity,
the Anakes, ‘Lords’ of man’s life on earth, they who were snake-
daimones of fertility, are changed into human horsemen who gallop |
proudly down from the sky to honour a mortal banquet. Mytho- \
logy makes of them the personal ‘sons of Zeus, but to ritual ey
are still functionaries, Anakes.
We have purposely brought together the two representations
of the Dioscuri (a) the snake-twined amphorae, (0) the Horsemen |
descending to the Theoxenia, because they bring into sharp contrast
the two poles as it were of religious thinking. On the one hand
we have daimones, collective representations of purely functional
import, with their ritual of magic; on the other full-blown anthro- |
poid theoi, descending from heaven to their service of do ut des.
But the Theoxenia' is by anticipation; the Olympians, their |
nature and their ritual, are reserved for the next chapter; we,
have now to establish finally, not the relation of god to daimon but.
of daimon to dead man. This relation, and with it the true nature ἡ
of a ‘hero,’ comes out with almost startling clearness in a class of /
monuments which have puzzled generations of archaeologists, and’
which I venture to think can only be understood in the light of
the Agathos Daimon—I mean the monuments variously and in-
structively known as ‘Sepulchral Tablets, ‘Funeral Banquets, and
‘Hero Feasts.’
THE ‘HERO FEASTS.’
Over three hundred of these ‘Hero Feasts’ are preserved, so
we may be sure they represent a deep-seated and widespread
1 Analogous to the Theoxenia of ‘the Dioseuri are the stories of Tantalos
(see supra, p. 244) and Lycaon who ‘entertain the gods.’ Behind such myths lies
always the old magical dats.
20—2
|
308 Daimon and Hero [ OH.
popular tradition. A good typical instance’ is given in
Fig. 87.
A man reclines at a banquet; his wife, according to Athenian
custom, is seated by his side. In front is a table loaded with cake
y and fruits. So far we might well suppose that we had, as on
τ Athenian grave-reliefs, a scene from daily life, just touched with a
certain solemnity, because that life is over. But other elements
in the design forbid this simple interpretation. A boy-attendant
to the right pours out wine; that is consistent with the human
2 5a en SI co
feast, but a boy to the left brings, not only a basket of ritual
| shape, but a pig that must be for sacrifice.
/ Pindar’s question is again much in place:
Ι What god, what hero, what man shall we sing ?
The answer is given, I think, by the snake, who with seeming ir-
relevance uprears himself beneath the table. The banqueter is a
man; the horse’s head like a coat of arms marks him as of knightly
rank. He is in some sense divine; else why should he have
sacrifice and libation? And yet he is no real god, no Olympian;
rather he is a man masked to his descendants as a daimon, as the
Agathos Daimon. The dead individual grasps a perennial function
and thereby wins immortality, he is heroized.
1 Berlin, Sabouroff Coll.
~
[ vu] The ‘ Hero-Feasts’ 309
On past interpretations, beginning with Winckelmann and
probably not yet ended with Prof. Gardner’, it is not necessary
long to dwell. All early interpretations fall under four heads.
The scenes on the reliefs are explained either as
(a) Mythological, e.g. Winckelmann interprets the banqueting
scene as the loves of Demeter-Erinys and Poseidon. These
mythological interpretations are now completely discredited.
Fie. 88.
(b) Retrospective and commemorative. They represent domestic
scenes in the daily life of the dead man, and thus are in line with
the scenes on ordinary Athenian grave-reliefs. The snake is
supposed to be a ‘household snake.’
(c) Representative of the bliss of Elysium where the dead
Shall sit at endless feast.
1 I borrow my summary of these views from Prof. Gardner’s admirable paper.
A Sepulchral Relief from Tarentum, in J. H. 8., 1884, v. p. 105, where a full
bibliography of the subject will be found.
510 Daimon and Hero [ OH.
(d) Commemorative, but of ritual facts, 1.6. of the offerings of
meat and drink brought by survivors to the grave of the dead
man. ‘This interpretation brings the ‘Hero Feasts’ almost into
line with the well-known Sparta reliefs, where the heroized dead
are ‘worshipped’ by diminutive descendants?.
Almost but not quite. To bring food and drink to your dead
relations, whether from fear or love, is to treat them as though
they were the same as when they were alive, creatures of like
passions and lke potency or impotency with yourself. On the
Sparta relief? in Fig. 88, they are, like Cleomenes?, κρείττονες τὴν
φύσιν, stronger, greater in their nature, quite other than the
humble descendants who bring them cock and pomegranate.
Fic. 89.
How has it come to pass? The relief speaks clearly. They too
have taken on the form and function of the Agathos Daimon. A
great snake is coiled behind their chair, and the male figure holds
in his right hand a huge kantharos, not ‘in honour of Dionysos’
1 See Mr A. J. B. Wace, Sparta Museum Catalogue, 1906, p. 102, for a full
analysis of the ‘ Totenmahlrelief,’ and Dr Rouse’s instructive chapter on ‘The Dead,
the Heroes and the Chthonian Deities,’ in his Greek Votive Offerings, 1902.
2 4, Mitth. 1877, τι. pl. xxir. For the snake’s beard which marks him as a half-
human daimon not a real snake see Prolegomena, p. 327.
3 Supra, p. 269.
vur | Snake and Cornucopia 311
but because to him as Agathos Daimon libation of the new wine
will be made. In his left he holds a pomegranate, the symbol,
with its bursting seeds, of perennial fertility.
The relief in Fig. 89! shows us another instructive element
We have the accustomed banquet scene made very human by the
crouching dog under the table. In the background, close to the
horse’s head, is a tree, and round it is coiled a snake. The tree
and the snake wound round it are the immemorial ‘symbol’ of
life. The snake, the Agathos Daimon, is the genius of growing
things, guardian of the Tree of Life, from the garden of Eden to
the garden of the Hesperides.
In Fig. 89 the foremost of the three banqueting men holds
a great horn from which the snake seems about to drink. Is the
horn just a drinking-cup, a rhyton, used by the dead man, or has
it some more solemn significance, some real connection with the
snake? A chance notice in Athenaeus? gives us the needful clue.
Chamaileon, a disciple of Aristotle, in his treatise ‘On Drunkenness’
noted that large cups were a characteristic of barbarians and not
in use among the Greeks. But he is aware of one exception.
In the various parts of Greece nowhere shall we find, either in paintings
or in historical records, any large-sized cup except those used in hero-cere-
monies. For example, they assign the cup called rhyton only to heroes.
Chamaileon feels that there is a difficulty somewhere, but he
explains that the cups of heroes are large because heroes are of
‘difficult’ temper and dangerous τ The reason I would
suggest is simpler. They ‘assign’ the rhyton, the great horn,
as appropriate to a hero, because the hero as daimon had it from
the beginning—the rhyton is the cornucopia.
The snake and the great cornucopia, the ‘ Horn of Amaltheia,’
the ‘Eniautos’ cup’ are, I think, evidence enough that the ban-
queting man is conceived of as an Agathos Daimon. It is not
necessary to suppose that everywhere he was locally known by
1 From a relief in the local museum at Samos. Iny. 55. See Wiegand, Antike
Skulpturen in Samos, A. Mitth. 1900, p. 176.
2 xt. 4. 461 ἐν δὲ τοῖς περὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα τόποις, οὔτ᾽ ἐν γραφαῖς, οὔτ᾽ ἐπὶ τῶν
πρότερον, εὑρήσομεν ποτήριον εὐμέγεθες εἰργασμένον, πλὴν τῶν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἡρωικοῖς. Τὸ
γὰρ ῥυτὸν ὀνομαζόμενον μόνοις τοῖς ἥρωσιν ἀπεδίδοσαν. Ὃ καὶ δόξει τισὶν ἔχειν ἀπορίαν,
εἰ μή τις dpa φήσειε.... In previously discussing this passage (Proleg. p. 448) I
understood as little as Chamaileon the real significance of the rhyton in the
‘ Hero-Feasts.’
3 Supra, p. 186.
Ἂς.
518 ᾿ Daimon and Hero [ CH.
that exact title. The name matters little; the functions, as
expressed in the attributes snake and horn, are all important.
Yet in one instance’, the design in Fig. 90, we have direct evidence
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Fic. 90.
of actual names, which, but for the inscription, we should never
have dared to supply.
Aristomache and Theoris dedicated (it) to Zeus Epiteleios, Philios, and to
Philia, the mother of the god and to Tyche Agathe the wife of the god.
Aristomache and Theoris we may see in the two women wor-
shippers. Probably they are mother and wife of the man who
walks between them. The inscription teems with suggestion. It
is Olympian in spirit; the two women pray first and foremost to
) Zeus the Accomplisher, no doubt that the wife’s marriage may be
fruitful and the mother may see her children’s children. It is
patriarchal, for Zeus has a wife; it is matrilinear, for his mother
is invoked.
But it is the names that most amaze and delight us. Zeus
Jacobsen Coll. Ny Carlsberg, Copenhagen Cat. 95, first published and discussed
by A. Furtwingler, Hin sogenanntes Todtenmahlrelief mit Inschrift in Sitzungs-
berichte d. k. Bay. Akad. ἃ. Wissenschaften, philos.-philolog. Kl. 1897, p. 401.
Γ᾽ Dead Man as Hero 313
is not only Epiteleios, he is also Philios'. Philios the friendly,
sociable one, is the very incarnation of the dais, the communal _
meal, he is always ready for the Theoxenia, based as it was on
the old service of the Agathos Daimon. His mother Philia is but
the feminine counterpart of his name. It is his wife who unmasks
his Olympian pretensions, and shows him for the earth-born divinity
that he is, his wife and his great cornucopia, for, if his wife be
Agathe Tyche, who is he but the ancient Agathos Daimon ?
We have dwelt long on the daimon character of the banqueter,
because that is apt to be neglected, but it must not be forgotten
that he has another aspect, that of actual dead man. On one? of
the Sparta grave-reliefs, in Fig. 91 this is certain. A seated man
holds in the mght hand a great
kantharos, in the left a pomegranate.
A large snake in the left-hand corner
marks his daimon character, but he
is an actual dead man; against him
his name is clearly written, Tvmokles.
These Sparta reliefs were actual
tomb-stones over particular graves:
the later ‘Hero-feast’ type with
the reclining banqueter were rather
adjuncts to tomb-stones, set up in
family precincts. They are how-
ever frequently inscribed, sometimes Fa. ΟἹ.
simply with the name of the dead
man or dead woman, sometimes with the additional statement
that he or she is hero or heroine. Thus a hero-feast in Leyden’
is dedicated ‘to Kudrogenes, Hero’ (Kudpoyéver” Hpwe). On another
in Samos‘ is inscribed ‘ Lais daughter of Phoenix, Heroine, hail!’
(Λαὶς Φοίνικος “Hpoivn χαῖρε). It is as though we heard the
Chorus chant to the dead Alkestis®
Lend > 2 A , ,
νῦν δ᾽ ἐστὶ μάκαιρα δαίμων -
mf 3 rele
χαῖρ᾽, ὦ πότνι᾽, εὖ δὲ Soins.
1 For Zeus Philios see Prolegomena, p. 359. To the comedian Zeus Philios was
the ‘ diner-out’ par excellence.
2 A. Mitth. 1879, 1v. Taf. vir. p. 292. Other inscribed instances are figured in
Mr Wace’s Introduction to Sculpture in the Sparta Museum Catalogue, p. 105.
® No. 15; see Prof. Gardner, op. cit. p. 116.
4 No. 60, Prolegomena, p. 352, Fig. 106. > Kur. Alk. 1003.
814 Daimon and Hero [ OH.
In the archaic grave-reliefs of Sparta the dead man is figured
as a hero, that is, as we now understand it, he has put on the garb
and assumed the functions of an Agathos Daimon. In the ‘ Hero
/ Feasts’ of the fourth and succeeding centuries right down through
, Roman times, the dead man is also heroized, is figured as we have
‘/seen with snake and cornucopia. But Athenian grave-reliefs of
the fine-period, of the fifth and early fourth centuries B.c., know
of no snake no cornucopia! no daimon-hero. The dead man is
| simply figured as he was in life; he assumes no daimonic function
whether to ban or to bless; he is idealized it may be but not
divinized. The cause of this remarkable fact, this submergence
of the daimon-aspect of the dead man will concern us later. One
\ last form of the Hero-Feast, of special Bigmilicanee for our argument,
yet remains to be considered.
The design in Fig. 92 is the earliest known specimen? of the
Fic. 92.
so-called ‘Ikarios reliefs.’ The main part of the composition 15
the familiar ‘Hero Feast, the reclining banqueter, the attendant
1 This is the more remarkable as the Athenian grave-reliefs take over, as I have —
tried to show elsewhere (Myth. and Mon. Anc. Athens, p. 590), the art-type of the —
earlier Spartan monuments. It seems as though, while the art- type is preserved, _ ;
the snake and cornucopia, the daimonic attributes were advisedly expurgated.
2 Found at the Peiraeus, now in the Louvre. F.Dehneken, Hinkehr des Dionysos,
Arch. Zeit. 1881, p. 272. |
vit | The ‘ Ikarios’ Reliefs 315
cup-bearer, the seated wife, the table laden with fruits and cakes,
the rampant snake. But on the left, instead of approaching wor-
shippers, the hero’s descendants, we have the Epiphany of a god.
A daimon-hero receives the daimon, the god Dionysos—o δαίμων
ὁ Διὸς παῖς".
There were many legends of heroes who ‘received’ Dionysos.
Pegasos received the god at Eleutherae in Boeotia, Ikarios the
eponymous hero of the deme Ikaria received him in Attica,
Amphictyon at Athens?» We cannot say that the banqueter on
the relief is Ikarios or Pegasos, nor is it important to give him
aname. The cardinal point is that, as the relief shows us, a local,
daimonic, hero-cult could and did blend with the worship of the
incoming Thracian Dionysos. In the light of the Agathos Daimon
of the Pithoigia we see how easy was the fusion. Daimon and
divinity alike had their wine-jars, their fruitful trees and blossom-
ing flowers, and, best of all, their common animal-form, the holy
snake. One daimon receives another and a greater than himself—
that is all; but we understand now why Cleisthenes could so lightly
take from the hero Adrastos his tragic choroi and ‘ give them as
his due* to Dionysos.’ From one daimon to another they had not
far to go.
We have now established the nature of a ‘hero’ and seen that
the two factors, dead man and daimon, that go to his making, are,
in the light of the primitive doctrine of reincarnation, inextricably
intertwined. The daimon proper, we have seen, was a collective
representation expressing not a personality so much as a function, |
or at least a functionary, the eponym of a gens, the basileus of
a state. As each individual man dies, though for a while he may
be dreaded as a ghost, his tomb being tended by way of placation,
he passes finally to join the throng of vague ‘ancestors’ who year
1 Hur. Bacch. 416. The god’s traits as Agathos Daimon, as feaster and as near
akin to Eirene who nurtured the child Ploutos, come out very clearly in this chorus.
χαίρει μὲν θαλίαισιν,
φιλεῖ δ᾽ ὀλβοδότειραν Hi-
ρήναν, κουροτρόφον θεάν.
Θαλία and Δαίς are figures near akin, ritual communal banquets, and Δαίς we
remember (p. 146) was πρεσβίστη θεῶν.
2 Paus. 1. 2.5, and Dr Frazer, ad loc.
3 Herod. v. 67 Κλεισθένης δὲ χοροὺς μὲν τῷ Διονύσῳ ἀπέδωκε. I advisedly translate
ἀπέδωκε ‘gave them as his due.’ The regular meaning of ἀποδίδωμι is to give to
some one what is appropriate to him, to which he has some claim, hence its
frequent use in the sense of to ‘restore,’ ‘ repay.’
810 Daimon and Hero [ cH.
( by year at the Anthesteria reemerge themselves and send or rather
\bring back as flowers and fruit the buried seed. A writer in the
‘Hippocratic Corpus’ tells us, if any one saw the dead in a dream
dressed in white and giving something, it was a good omen, for
‘from the dead come food and increase and seeds.’
And as Aristophanes? has 1:
When a man dies, we all begin to say
The sainted one has ‘passed away,’ has ‘fallen asleep,’
Blessed therein that he is vexed no more ;
Yes, and with holy offerings we sacrifice
To them as to the gods—and pour libations,
Bidding them send good things up from below.
We have next to establish a further step in our argument.
The ‘hero’ takes on not only the form and general function of
the daimon but also his actual life-history as expressed and
represented in his ritual. This further step is, as will presently be
seen, for the understanding of the origin of the drama of para-
mount importance. We shall best understand its significance by
taking a single concrete case that occurs in the mythology and
cultus of the quasi-historical hero, Theseus. Theseus is an
example to us specially instructive because his cult took on
elements from that of Dionysos. He too not only absorbed the
functions of an Agathos Daimon but like Pegasos, like Ikarios,
like the nameless hero in Fig. 92 ‘received’ the god.
THESEUS AS HERO-DAIMON.
To pass from Cecrops or even Erichthonios to Theseus is to
breathe another air. Cecrops is the eponymous hero of the
Cecropidae, the Basileus, the imagined head of a Gens*, later mis-
understood as a constitutional monarch. He is also a being on
whom as medicine-king the fertility of people and crops depended,
a snake-daimon. Theseus lays no claim to be autochthonous. -
1 De Somn. τι. p. 14 ...«ἀπὸ yap τῶν ἀποθανόντων ai τροφαὶ καὶ αὐξήσεις καὶ
σπέρματα γίνονται.
* Tagenist. frg. 1 καὶ θύομέν γ᾽ αὐτοῖσι τοῖς ἐναγίσμασιν
ὥσπερ θεοῖσι καὶ χοάς γε χεόμενοι
αἰτούμεθ᾽ αὐτοὺς τὰ καλὰ δεῦρο ἀνιέναι.
5.1 follow Prellwitz in understanding Basileus as ‘Geschlechtsherr,’ 8560
Etymologisches Worterbuch, 1905, s.v.
a Theseus as Hero-Daimon 317
A chance poet’ concerned to glorify the hero may call the Athe-
nians ‘Theseidae,’ but Theseus is no real eponym. He comes
from without; he represents the break with the gentile system,
with the gens and its Basileus; he stands for democracy. His was
the synoikia. Before his days the people of Attica had lived
in scattered burghs (κατὰ πόλεις), citadel communities with each
a Basileus or archon—a Pandion on the burgh of Megara, a Cecrops
on the Athenian Acropolis—with each a city hearth, a Prytaneion.
Theseus broke down the old divisions, the ancient Moirai, confusing
doubtless many an archaic sanctity. He made one community
with one goddess, and in her honour he instituted the festival of
the Synoikia, the Feast of Dwelling together’.
From the mythology of Theseus as representative of the
democracy the supernatural has as far as possible been expurgated.
The snake, the daimon double of the ‘hero, has ceased to haunt
him. Plutarch in his delightful way says at the beginning of his |
Life of Theseus? :
‘T desire that the fabulous material I deal in may be subservient to my
endeavours, and, being moulded by reason, may accept the form of history,
and, when it obstinately declines probability and will not blend appropriately
with what is credible I shall pray my readers may be indulgent and receive
with kindness the fables of antiquity.’
So forewarned, we may be sure that ancient tradition has been [
freely tampered with by Plutarch as well as by his predecessors. \
It is the more delightful to find that, though the heroic snake- ,
form is abolished—doubtless as unworthy of the quasi-historical )
Theseus—his cult preserves intact the life-history of a fertility —
daimon. One festival only of those associated with him can be
considered, but this will repay somewhat detailed examination—
the famous Oschophoria.
The Oschophoria. Plutarch‘ is our best authority for the
Oschophoria and his narrative must be given in full. Theseus has
slain the Minotaur, has deserted Ariadne on Naxos, has put in at
1 Soph. Oed. Col. 1065 δεινὸς ὁ προσχώρων “Apns,
δεινὰ δὲ Θησειδᾶν ἀκμά.
2 Thucyd. τι. 15 ἐπὶ γὰρ Κέκροπος καὶ τῶν πρώτων βασιλέων ἡ ᾿Αττικὴ ἐς Θησέα ἀεὶ
κατὰ πόλεις φκεῖτο πρυτανεῖά τε ἔχουσα καὶ ἄρχοντα-....
3 Sub init.
4 Vit. Thes. xxu. Plutarch’s account is very likely drawn from Krates περὶ
θυσιῶν (circ. 200 B.c.).
μα
ἔπι
pA
318 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
Delos and there, parenthetically, instituted the Crane-dance; he
turns his ship at last homewards.
| ‘When their course brought them near to Attica both Theseus and the
pilot were so overjoyed that they forgot to hoist the sail which was to be the
signal to Aigeus of their safe return and he, despairing of it, threw himself
from the rock and was killed. But Theseus, on landing, himself performed
the sacrifices he had vowed to the gods at Phaleron when he aot sail, and
meant 5: r essenger to the city with news of his safe return.
The messenger met ὩΣ the death of the king and
others who rejoiced as was mee mere ready to receive _him (Theseus) with
kindness and to crown him on his safe return. He recetved the crowns an
wound them about his kerykeion and coming back to the shore, as Theseus had
not yet finished his Tibations, he stopped outside, being unwilling to disturb
the sacrifice. When the libations were accomplished he announced the end of —
Aigeus, and they with weepings and lamentations hastened up to the city)? |
‘Hence even now they say, αὖ the Oschophoria, the herald does not crown —
himself but his kerykeion, and those who assist at the libations utter at the
moment of the libations the words Eleleu, Iou, Jou, of which the one is a cry used —
by people when they pour libation and chant the paean, the other expresses _
terror and confusion*. Theseus having buried his father redeemed the vow
he had made to Apollo on the seventh day of Pyanepsion; for it was on this
day that they came back in safety and went up to the city. The boiling of
all sorts of pulse is said to take place because, when they returned in safety,
yw they mixe together what was left of 11 provisions in one pot in common
- and consumed them feasting in common together. And they carry out the
ok
rtd
uf
)
Eiresione, a branch of olive wound about with wool like the suppliant branch,
on that occasion, and laden with all sorts of first-fruits that scarcity may
cease, and they sing over it
Eiresione brings
Figs and fat cakes,
And a pot of honey and oil to mix,
And a wine cup strong and deep,
That she may drink and sleep.
Some say that these things began to be done on account of the Heracleidae
who were thus nurtured by the Athenians, but the greater number agree with -
the above®....And they also celebrate the festival of the Oschophoria which
was instituted by Theseus.’ /
Ξ af oye
* Plutarch begins his account of the actual ΠΤ ἀξε the-
schophoria with the statement that two of the seven maidens”
taken by Theseus to Crete were really young men dressed to look”
like women. On his return to Athens these two young men
walked in the procession dressed, he says, like those who now (in
the Oschophoria) carry the branches. ;
1 The passages in italics are those which, if my interpretation be right, have
ritual significance, though supposed to be merely historical. 5
2 ἐπιφωνεῖν δὲ ἐν ταῖς σπονδαῖς ᾿Ελελεῦ, lod lov, τοὺς παρόντας" ὧν τὸ μὲν σπένδοντες
(σπεύδοντες codd. corr. F. M. C.) ἀναφωνεῖν καὶ παιωνίζοντες εἰώθασι, τὸ δὲ ἐκπλήξεως
καὶ ταραχῆς ἐστι.
ἰ 3 At this point is a digression (xx111.) in which the ship of Theseus is described,
It was preserved by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrios of Phalerum an
was probably an old ritual car. See Nilsson, Archiv f. Religionswiss. x1. 402, an
Griechische Feste, 1906, p. 268, note 5.
VIII | Ritual of the Oschophoria 319
‘These they carry to do honour to Dionysos and Ariadne on account of
the Tegend, or rather because they came back when the fruit-harvest was
being gathered in. The Deipnophoroi (carriers of the meal) take part and
have a share in the sacrifice, and play the part of the mothers of those on
whom the lot fell, for they kept coming to them with provisions, and tales
(μῦθοι) are recited because those mothers used to recount tales to cheer up
their children and comfort them. Demon also gives the same particulars. /
And a temenos was set apart to Theseus, and the Phytalidae superintended
the sacrifice, Theseus having handed it over to them in return for their
hospitality.’
Before discussing this remarkable hodge-podge of ritual and
pseudo-history our account of the Oschophoria must be Saves)
from other sources.
Athenaeus! in describing the various shapes of vases mentions
one called pentaploa (the fivefold),
‘Philochoros mentions it in the second book of his Attica. And Aristo-
demos in the third book of his Concerning Pindar says that during the Skira
a contest took place at Athens consisting of a race of epheboi. And that they
run holding a fruit-laden vine-branch, which is what is called an éschos. And
they run from the sanctuary of Dionysos as far as the sanctuary of Athena
Skiras, and he who wins receives the kylix called pentaploa, and he feasts with
a choros. And the kylix is called pentaploa inasmuch as it holds wine and
honey and cheese and meal and a little oil.’
Proklos also in his Chrestomathia? has a valuable notice as
follows:
‘Songs belonging to the Oschophoria are sung among the Athenians. Two
youths of the chorus are dressed like women and carry branches of vine laden
with fine bunches of grapes, they call such a branch an osché, and from this
the songs get their name, and these two lead the festival.’
After repeating some of the details and the pseudo-history already
known to us from Plutarch, Proklos goes on:
‘The chorus follows the two youths and sings the songs. Epheboi from
each tribe contend with each other in the race, and of these the one who is
first tastes of the phiale called pentaple, the ingredients of which are oil, wine,
honey, cheese and meal.’
1 xr. 62, §§ 495, 400... ᾿Αριστόδημος δ᾽ ἐν τρίτῳ περὶ Πινδάρου τοῖς Σκίροις φησὶν
᾿Αθήναζε (Αθήνησι Mein.) ἀγῶνα ἐπιτελεῖσθαι τῶν ἐφήβων δρόμου" τρέχειν δ᾽ αὐτοὺς
ἔχοντας ἀμπέλου κλάδον κατάκαρπον, τὸν καλούμενον ὦσχον. Τρέχουσι δ᾽ ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ τοῦ
Διονύσου μέχρι τοῦ τῆς Σκιράδος ᾿Αθηνᾶς ἱεροῦ, καὶ ὁ νικήσας λαμβάνει κύλικα τὴν λεγομένην
πενταπλόαν καὶ κωμάζει μετὰ χοροῦ. Πενταπλόα δ᾽ ἡ κύλιξ καλεῖται, καθ᾽ ὅσον οἶνον ἔχει
καὶ μέλι καὶ τυρὸν καὶ ἄλφιτον καὶ ἐλαίου βραχύ.
3. Chrestomath. 28 ὀσχοφορικὰ δὲ μέλη παρὰ ᾿Αθηναίοις ἤδετο᾽ τοῦ δὲ χοροῦ δὲ δύο
νεανίαι κατὰ γυναῖκας ἐστολισμένοι κλήματα ἀμπέλου κομίζοντες μεστῶν (sic) εὐθάλων
βοτρύων (ἐκάλουν δὲ αὐτὸ ὄσχην, ἀφ᾽ οὗ καὶ τοῖς μέλεσιν 7 ἐπωνυμία) τῆς ἑορτῆς καθηγοῦντο.
ἄρξαι δὲ Θησέα πρῶτον τοῦ ἔργου" κ.τ.λ.... εἵπετο τοῖς νεανίαις ὁ χορὸς καὶ ἧδε τὰ μέλη: ἐξ
ἑκάστης δὲ φυλῆς ἔφηβοι διημιλλῶντο πρὸς ἀλλήλους δρόμῳ καὶ τούτων ὁ πρότερος ἐγεύετο
ἐκ τῆς πενταπλῆς λεγομένης φιάλης, ἣ συνεκιρνᾶτο ἐλαίῳ καὶ οἴνῳ καὶ μέλιτι καὶ τυρῷ καὶ
ἀλφίτοις.
°
320 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
Probably most of the ritual details in Plutarch, Athenaeus and
Proklos come from Philochoros. Istros1, who was nearly his con-
temporary, wrote an account of Theseus in the thirteenth book of
his History, and adds the somewhat important detail that the two
oschophoroi had to be ‘conspicuous both for race and wealth.
The scholiast on Nikander’s Alexipharmaka says? that they had
to have both parents alive, and Hesychius* adds that they were in
the flower of their age.
Amid much uncertainty as to detail the main features of the
) festival stand out clearly. First and foremost the Oschophoria is
an autumn festival, marking and crowning the end of all the
harvests. It is one feature in the great Pyanepsia which gave
its name to the fourth month of the Attic year, Pyanepsion (Oct.
Noy.). Pyanepsia meant bean-cooking, and one element in the
feast was the common meal out of the common pot, a bean-feast
or πανσπέρμια", such as that which was eaten, as we saw, in
Athens at the Anthesteria on the day of the Chytroi. It required
some ingenuity to fit the Bean-Feast on to the slaying of the
Minotaur, but Plutarch, or his authority’, is equal to the occasion.
Theseus and his companions, on their return from Crete, being
short of provisions, ‘mixed together what was left of everything
and ate it from a common pot.
Besides the pyanepsia proper, the Bean-Feast, we have two
other elements whose gist is clearly analogous, and which are
therefore best taken together:
\ a. The Eiresione.
b. The Oschophoria.
The Eiresione® was carried also at the earlier harvest-festival
1 Ap. Harpocrat. s.v. ὀσχοφόροι...ὁ δὲ Ἴστρος ἐν τῇ vy’ περὶ Θησέως λέγων γράφει
οὕτως, ἕνεκα τῆς κοινῆς σωτηρίας νομίσαι τοὺς καλουμένους ὀσχοφόρους καταλέγειν PB’ τῶν
γένει καὶ πλούτῳ κρατούντων. Harpocration defines ὄσχη as κλῆμα βότρυς ἐξηρτημένους
ἔχον.
2 Schol. ad Alexipharm. 109 ὀσχοφόροι δὲ λέγονται ᾿Αθήνησι παῖδες ἀμφιθαλεῖς
ἁμιλλώμενοι κατὰ φυλὰς οἱ kK.T-r.
3 s.v. ὠσχοφορία. παῖδες εὐγενεῖς ἡβῶντες καταλέγονται οἱ κ.τ.λ.
4 Athen, χιν. 58, 88 648 "Hori δὲ τὸ πυάνιον, ὡς φησι Σωσίβιος πανσπερμία ἐν
γλυκεῖ ἡψημένη. Probably this was the exact mess eaten at the Pyanepsia. The
word πύανον was old-fashioned. Heliodorus (ap. Athen. rx. 71, §§ 406) says, τῆς
τῶν πυρῶν ἑψήσεως ἐπινοηθείσης, οἱ μὲν παλαιοὶ πύανον, oi δὲ viv ὁλόπυρον προσ-
αγορεύουσιν. The most ancient mess was probably of pulse, the more modern of
various sorts of grain.
5 Possibly Krates the friend of Polemon.
6 1 have discussed the Hiresione in detail in connection with the Thargelia,
Prolegomena, p. 77, chapter τπ., Harvest Festivals. I did not then understand the
Vir | The Hiresione 321
of the summer first-fruits, the Thargelia, which also gave their
name to a month Thargelion, May—June. The Eiresione is of
course simply a portable May-pole, a branch hung about with
wool, acorns, figs, cakes, fruits of all sorts and sometimes wine-jars.
It was appropriate alike to the early and the late harvest-festival,
but for the late harvest after the vintage was over it had naturally
to be supplemented by the carrying of other branches, vine-boughs
laden with bunches of grapes, an Oschophoria.
This blend of Eiresione and Oschophoria was evidently
characteristic of the ceremonies of Pyanepsion. The two cere-
monies are represented on the Calendar-frieze! of the old
Metropolitan Church of Athens (Fig. 93) to mark the month
paren = nner Rae te af et ee ty ... SSL “nee Ts Re
Bead D>,
Wie
Fic. 93.
Pyanepsion. A boy carrying the Eiresione is followed by a
magistrate, and immediately in front of him is a youth treading
grapes and holding in his hand an dschos, a branch laden with
bunches of grapes. To the right of him is a kanephoros carrying
no doubt a pankarpia.
With the Staphylodromoi of the Karneia? in our minds the
main gist of the Oschophoria is clear. It is like the race of
Olympia, a race of youths, epheboi, kouroi, with boughs. It has
similar content of the Oschophoria. See also Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte,
1877, pp. 214—58, which, spite of its early date, is far the best account both as
regards the collection of facts and their interpretation.
1 J. N. Svoronos, Der Athenische Volkskalendar, Sonderabdruck aus Journal
Internationale d’archéologie numismatique, 1899, τι. 1.
2 See supra, p. 234.
Η. 2]
—
322 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
two elements, the actual agon the contest, in this case a race, and
then, second in time but first in importance, the procession and the
komos. The somewhat complicated details of the race seem to
have been as follows’. Two epheboi chosen from each of the ten
tribes raced against one another. The ten victors, after being
feasted, formed into procession, one of them leading the way as
keryx, two following, dressed as women and carrying branches, the
remaining seven forming, as at Delphi, the choros. T he prize 18,
in the Oschophoria, a cup of mingled drinks, manifestly not a
thing of money value but of magical intent, a sort of liquid
panspermia, or pankarpia, meet for a vintage feast. The blend
of cheese and wine and honey may not commend itself to our
modern palates, but Demeter, save for the wine, drank the same in
her holy kykeon.
The branches were carried, Plutarch conjectures, to do honour
to Dionysos ‘on account of the myth’ (διὰ τὸν μῦθον). The myth
of Naxos may have done honour to Dionysos; how it could reflect
credit on Theseus or form a suitable element in his cult it is not
easy to see The μῦθος proper?, the word or tale spoken at a
vintage ceremony, would no doubt—when a god had once been
projected—do honour to the vintage god and his bride; but
Plutarch, or his authorities’, must of necessity connect it with
his hero, so the disreputable legend of Naxos has to be tolerated+
But Plutarch suspects the real truth. No Greek as keen about
ritual and religion as he was could fail to know that the Oschophoria
was part of a vintage festival, but again the awkward hero has to
be dragged in, so we have ‘or rather because they came back when
the fruit harvest was being gathered in.’
In his account of the origin of the Olympic games Mr Cornford?
has made it abundantly clear that the winner issued in the king,
who, in one aspect, was but the leader of the choros, the head of
1 See Mommsen, Feste d. Stadt Athen (1898), p. 285; and for the number seven”
in the Theseus legend cf. Verg. dn. v1, 21 septena quotannis Corpora i.atorum.
2 For the precise nature of a primitive μῦθος see infra, p. 327.
3 Momnisen thinks that the Oschophoria and the Dionysos myths were attached
to Theseus quite late, i.e. after the Persian war. The date of the contaminatio is of
little importance to my argument.
4 The mythology of Ariadne cannot here be examined, but it is interesting to —
note in passing that in the legend of the desertion Theseus and Dionysos are —
obvious doubles.
5 See supra, chapter vii.
γΠΠ| Eniautos-Daimon and King 323
the revelling komos. We are never told that the winner in the
Oschophoria was called basileus, but in Plutarch’s pseudo-history
the truth comes out. The messenger meets ‘many who were
lamenting the death of the king and others who rejoiced as was
meet and were ready to receive him with kindness and to crown him
on his safe return.’ The words are in our ears: Le Roi est mort;
Vive le Roi. geus the old king dies; Theseus the new king
reigns. The old Year is over, the new Year is begun. The
festival looks back to a time and a place when and where the year
ended with the final harvest and the new yea began in academic
fashion in the autumn! or early winter.
In the Oschophoria the winner of the race is, as at Olympia, an
Eniautos-daimon and a basileus in one. Η dies as an individual
and revives as an eternally recurrent functionary. The contra- ,
dictory cries Hlelew Iow Tow are now clear enough? There is |
‘terror and confusion’ when the old Year, the old King, dies; there |
is libation, a paean, and a joyful cry when the new Year, the new/
King, is crowned. One curious detail looks back to still earlier)
days. At the Oschophoria the herald (ἄγγελος) does not crown
himself, he crowns his Kerykeion and his herald’s staff with the two
snakes entwined. his surely looks back to the time when the
Eniwutos-daimon was a snake or a pair of snakes, and the crown
was for the symbol of the snake-davmon not for his human
correlative.
Another ritual element points to early days—the Deipnophoroi
or foodbearers who supplied the chosen epheboi with provisions,
took part in the ceremony, and then ‘played the part of the |
mothers’ of the youths on whom the lot fell (ἀπομιμούμεναι τὰς
μητέρας ἐκείνων τῶν λαχόντων). They also recited myths to
encourage the youths. We have then as an integral part of the
ritual just the two factors always present in matriarchal mytho-
logy, the Mother and the Son. The mother brings food, because
like Mother-Earth she is essentially the feeder, the Nurturer; the
mother speaks words (μῦθοι) of exhortation and consolation such
1 Mr Chambers has shown that this was the case in the bi-seasonal year of
central Europe. The winter season began in mid-November, the summer in mid-
March. See The Mediaeval Stage, vol. 1. 110.
2 It seems impossible to decide that one of these cries definitely expresses joy
and the other sorrow. Both vary according to their context.
21—2
|
δ».
824 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
as many a mother must have spoken in ancient days to a son
about to undergo initiation. Such words spoken aloud may have
actually been a feature in initiation ritual.
Yet another curious element in the ritual remains. Plutarch
and Proklos both tell us that two of the young men who carried
the Branches were dressed as women. Plutarch, as we have seen,
explains the custom by an aetiological myth of more than usual
foolishness. Modern commentators are not much more successful.
The common sense or naive school sees in the interchange of
dress between the sexes a prolepsis of the ‘Arry and Arriet’
hilarity of Hampstead Heath. Others think that in the supposed
women’s dress we may see simply a survival of Ionian priestly
vestments. Dr Frazer! justly observes that, in an obscure and
complex problem like that of the religious interchange of dress
between men and women, it is unlikely that any single solution
would apply to all the cases’.
Such a figure of an Oschophoros disguised probably as a
/ woman is, I think, preserved for us in the design in Fig. 94 from the
interior of a red-figured cylix? of the fine period. The scene takes
place before a temple, indicated by the column to the right. A
youth or maiden—the doubt is instructive—stands near to a great
lekane or laver which, as often, stands on a short pillar supported
by a basis. The horned object on the basis is probably part of a
basket of a type not uncommon in ritual use. The same shape of
basket is carried by the boy on the relief in Fig. 87. The youth
or maiden has hair elaborately long, and on the head is a diadem
1 Adonis, Attis and Osiris, Appendix tv., on Priests dressed as Women. See also
Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte, p. 253, and Baumkultus, 203. Prof. Murray
reminds me that Pentheus in his woman’s robe imitated ‘the gait of Ino or of
Agave my mother,” Eur. Bacch. 925.
2 Of the general problem of interchange of dress a solution is offered in chapter
x1. In the particular case before us it seems to me just possible that the two youths
disguised as women may represent really a woman and a youth, a mother and a
young son. The parts of women in rural mimes are still to-day taken in Greece by
men disguised. Men assumed women’s parts in the classical theatre: the reason
for this, to our minds, ugly practice is obscure, but the facts remain. If we
suppose the two first figures of the procession of Branch-Bearers (preceded only
by the herald) to have been Mother and Son, their dress might not be clearly
distinguishable. Dionysos the son par excellence was effeminate in guise and gait.
The Son before he leaves his Mother is a woman-thing. The racers would race
either naked or but lightly clad, but the two who became personae might, once the
contest over, assume ritual garb as Mother and Son.
3 See Hauser, Philologus, ταν. (1895), p. 385.
vim | The Oschophorot 325
with leaf-sprays. The robe is manifestly a ritual vestment: its
elaborate decoration reminds us of the robe worn by Demeter at
Eleusis on the Hieron vase!. The lekane is filled with water. The
youth (or maiden) is, it may be, about to plunge the great bough
into the water. Is it for a rain-charm, or will he asperge the
people? We cannot say. One thing, and perhaps only one, is
certain: the figure, be it maid or man, is a Thallophoros, possibly
an Oschophoros, though no grape-bunches are depicted.
The moral of Plutarch’s clumsy aetiological tale is clear; had
it been made for our purpose it could scarcely have been clearer.
Fic. 94.
It embodies the very act of transition from the periodic festival
with its Hniautos-daimon to the cult of the individual hero; from,
in a word, the functionary to the personality. It is along this
well-trodden road that each and every hero, each and every god,
must travel before the parting of their ways.
There is competition among the saga-heroes as to who shall
seize the function-festival for his own. Plutarch, as usual, is
instructive through his very naiveté. Some said that the cere-
monies of Pyanepsion ‘began to be done on account of the
1 Prolegomena, p. 556, Fig. 158.
826 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
| Heracleidae’ who were thus nurtured by the Athenians, but
the greater number agree with the above.’
Theseus, the individual hero, for reasons political now lost to
us, won and survived, though when we read the shifts to which
Plutarch is put to ‘do him honour’ we feel his triumph is a sorry
one. But honest Plutarch? knew and cannot conceal that the
rites were really in the hands not of an individual hero, but a
group, a gens, the Phytalidae, the ‘Plant-Men. Very fitly did
such a group hold presidency over harvest ceremonies: their
function was to promote the fertility of all growths fit for human
food. The group of the Phytalidae project of course an eponymous
hero Phytalos, Plant Man. Phytalos received Demeter into his
-house, as Ikarios ‘received’ Dionysos; she gave him for guerdon
the gift of the fig-tree*. Translated into the language of fact,
this means that the group of the Plant-Men at one time or
another began cultivating the fig, a tree which seems long to
have preceded in Greece the culture of the vine.
Pausanias? saw—and the sight is for us instructive—the
sepulchre of Phytalos, and on it was an inscription:
Here the lordly hero Phytalos once received the august
Demeter, when she first revealed the autumnal fruit
Which the race of mortals names the sacred fig ;
Since when the race of Phytalos hath received honours that wax not old.
Phytalos is lord (ἄναξ) and hero (ἥρως), and he has a tomb
(τάφος), but does even the wildest Euhemerist dream that he ever
existed ? The writer of the epitaph knew that he was the merest
eponym ; it is the race (γένος) of Phytalos, not the individual hero,
that has deathless honours.
The climax of a preposterous aetiology is reached by Plutarch®
in commenting on the Phytalidae. He knows of them and their
local presidency ; knows of their tribal contribution to the cere-
monial house by house feast which Theseus took to himself; and
what does he say? ‘The Phytalidae superintended the sacrifice,
Theseus having handed tt over to them in return for their hospitality.’
Very handsome of him, for it was the gens of the Phytalidae who
1 For Herakles as arch-hero see infra, p. 364. 2 Op. cit. xx. sub jin.
3 Pauseet. 37. 2: 4 7, 37. 2, trans, Frazer.
ῳ Βξῃρέθη | δὲ καὶ τέμενος αὐτῷ καὶ τοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν παρασχόντων" τὸν δασμὸν οἴκων ἔταξεν
εἰς θυσίαν αὑτῷ τελεῖν ἀποφοράς " καὶ τῆς θυσίας ἐπεμελοῦντο Φυταλίδαι, Θησέως ἀποδόντος
αὐτοῖς ἀμοιβὴν τῆς φιλοξενίας.
VIII | Analysis of Term ‘ Mythos’ 927
first received or purified him on his entry into Athens. The real
functional tribal eponym, Phytalos, fades before the saga-personality
Theseus.
Theseus indeed marks, as already noted, the period of transi- —
tion between the group and the individual, the functionary, the
basileus and the individual historic or saga-chief. Theseus is a
king’s son, but he lets go the kingship (βασιλείαν ἀφείς). He is
the hero of the new democracy whose basis is individuality. It
is this swift transit from the group to the individual, from the
function to the person, that is, as will later become clear, at once
the weakness and the strength of the religion of the Greek. The
individual is a frail light bark to launch upon a perilous sea.
But the Sibyl bade the Athenian, who let the kingship slip, take
courage :
The wine-skin wins its way upon the waves}.
Theseus, then, the saga-hero, the quasi-historical personality,
took on the life-history, the year-history of a fertility-daimon, that
daimon himself, figured by the youth with the Eiresione, having as-
similated another davmon, him of the grape—Dionysos. It remains
to ask—What are the factors, the actual elements, the events in
the life-history of an Eniautos-daimon*?? What is his mythos ?
And first, what precisely do we mean by a mythos ?
THE MytTHos.
A myth is to us now-a-days a ‘purely fictitious narrative’.
When we say a thing is ‘mythical’ we mean it is non-existent.
We have travelled in this matter far from ancient thinking and
1 Plut. Vit. Thes. xxv.
ἀσκὸς yap ἐν οἴδματι ποντοπορεύσαι.
Τοῦτο δὲ καὶ Σίβυλλαν ὕστερον ἀποστοματίσαι πρὸς τὴν πόλιν ἱστοροῦσιν ἀναφθεγξαμένην"
᾿Ασκὸς βαπτίζῃ δῦναι δέ τοι οὐ θέμις ἐστίν.
* To avoid misunderstanding I ought perhaps to state clearly at this point that
the phrase ἐνιαυτὸς δαίμων is so far as I. know never used by the Greeks. They
called their year-daimones by different names in different places. In Boeotia he
was Agathos Daimon, in Crete Megistos Kouros, at Eleusis Plouton. Our earliest
literary evidence for Eniautos as a definite personality is probably Pindar, Paean,
1. 5'O παντελὴς ᾿Ενιαυτός, Ὧραί τε Θεμιγόνοι. See infra, chapter xt.
3 See the excellent. definition in Murrav’s English Dictionary. ‘A purely
fictitious narrative usually involving supernatural persons, actions or events,
and embodying some popular idea concerning natural or historical phenomena.’
A myth is essentially ‘popular,’ 1.6. collective, not the product of an individual
brain, it has to do with daimones, i.e. involves tlie ‘supernatural,’ it blends the
historical and the natural in a way to be observed later.
828 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
. feeling. A mythos to the Greek was primarily just a thing spoken,
_ uttered by the mouth’. Its antithesis or rather correlative is the
y
thing done, enacted, the ergon or work. Old Phoinix says to
Achilles ‘Thy father Peleus sent me to thee to teach thee to be
both
Of words the speaker and of deeds the doer?.’
From sounds made by the mouth, to words spoken and thence
to tale or story told the transition is easy. Always there is the
same antithesis of speech and action which are but two different
ways of expressing emotion, two forms of reaction; the mythos, the
/ tale told, the action recounted, is contrasted with the action actually
) done. It is from this antithesis that the sense of unreality, non-
existence gradually arises.
This primary sense of mythos as simply the thing uttered,
expressed by speech rather than action, can never, so long as he
reads his Homer, be forgotten by the literary student. But when
we come to myth in relation to religion, myth contrasted with
ritual, we are apt to forget this primary and persistent meaning,
and much confused thinking is the result. .The primary meaning
_ of myth in religion is just the same as in early literature; it is
the spoken correlative of the acted rite, the thing done; it is τὸ
λεγόμενον as contrasted with or rather as related to τὸ δρώμενον".
Let us take the simplest possible instance in a rite already
described*, in which—the instances are rare—we have recorded
both act and myth. In the Grizzly Bear Dance of the North
American Indians the performers shuffle and shamble about like
a bear in his cave waking from his winter sleep. That is the
1 Our word mouth and μῦθος are connected, cf. also wifw—all come from the
root uv, lat. mu—to make an audible sound by opening or closing the lips, ef.
n.h.d. Miicke, μυῖα, a ‘hummer,’ and μύω, μύστης; see Prellwitz, Etymologisches
Worterbuch, 1905, s.v.
3.11. 1x. 443
μύθων τε ῥητῆρ᾽ ἔμεναι πρηκτῆρά τε ἔργων.
3 Passages dealing with δρώμενα and λεγόμενα are collected by Bergk, Griechische
Literaturgeschichte, 1884, vol. m1. p. 4, but he does not distinguish between the
myth proper and the aetiological myth. Thus in Paus. τι. 37. 2 τὰ λεγόμενα ἐπὶ
τοῖς δρωμένοις means clearly the story current to account for the rites, whereas in
Galen, de usu part. v1. 14 ὅλος ἦσθα πρὸς τοῖς δρωμένοις τε καὶ λεγομένοις ὑπὸ τῶν
ἱεροφάντων, the λεγόμενα are clearly the myth proper, spoken at the moment of the
performance. Bergk well remarks that the word drama is never used of these
δρώμενα but that Aristotle connects the two in the Poetics (3. 3) ὅθεν καὶ δράματα
καλεῖσθαί τινες αὐτά φασιν ὅτι μιμοῦνται δρῶντες.
4 Supra, p. 112.
ee
vil | The Mythos in the Dromenon 329
action, the δρώμενον. They also at the same time chant the
words :
I begin to grow restless in the spring.
I take my robe,
My robe is sacred,
I wander in the summer.
These are the λεγόμενα, the things uttered by the mouth, the
myths. As man is a speaking as well as a motor animal, any
complete human ceremony usually contains both elements, speech
and action, or as the Greeks would put it, we have in a rite τὰ
δρώμενα and also τὰ ἐπὶ τοῖς δρωμένοις λεγόμενα.
It is necessary to emphasize this point because that great
genius Robertson Smith has here led many of us his weaker
followers astray.
‘Strictly speaking,’ he says1, ‘mythology was no essential part of ancient
religion for it had no sacred sanction and no binding force on the worshippers.’
To Robertson Smith a myth was the ancient equivalent of
that hated thing, a dogma, only unguarded by sanctions. Had
it been granted him to tarry awhile among the Iowa Indians or
among the Zufiis he would have told another tale. An Iowa
Indian when asked about the myths and traditions of his tribe
said?:
These are sacred things and I do not like to speak about them, and it is
not our custom to do so except when we make a feast and collect the people
and use the sacred pipe.
A pious man would no more tell out his myths than he would
dance out his mysteries. Only when the tribe is assembled after
solemn fasting, and holy smoking, only sometimes in a strange
archaic tongue and to initiate men or novices after long and
arduous preparation, can the myth with safety be uttered from
the mouth; such is its sanctity, its mana.
In discussing the ‘ Aetiological Myth*’ of the Hymn to the 5
Kouretes we noted briefly that a myth is not to begin with and >
necessarily ‘aetiological.’ Its object is not at first to give a reason; )
that notion is part of the old rationalist fallacy that saw in primi-
tive man the leisured and eager enquirer bent on research, all
alive rerwm cognoscere causas. When the Grizzly Bear dancer
1 Religion of the Semites, 1889, p. 19.
2 Dorsey, Eleventh Annual Report of the American Bureau of Ethnology, 1889-90.
p. 430. I owe this reference to the admirable chapter on ‘Mythology’ in Prof.
Ames’s Psychology of Religious Experience, 1910.
3 Supra, p. 13.
παν
330 | Daimon and Hero [ cH.
utters his myth, says the words, ‘I begin to grow restless in the
spring, he is not explaining his action—that, if he has any gift
of observation and mimicry should be clear enough—he only utters
with his mouth what he enacts with his shambling, shuffling
feet, the emotions and sénsations he feels in relation to the ‘most
Honourable One, the Bear. It is not until he becomes shy and
shamefaced instead of proud and confident in his pantomime,
that, seeking an excuse, he finds it in his myth turned aetiological.
When the Kouretes lose faith in their power to rear a child εἰς
ἐνιαυτόν they go on uttering their myth, but they put it in the
‘past tense and interpolate an explanatory conjunction marking the
‘decay of faith :
For here the shielded Nurturers took thee a child immortal.
We have previously! analysed in detail the motor or active
‘factor in a rite, the δρώμενον", we have seen that in its religious
sense it was not simply a thing done but a thing re-done or pre-
/done; it was commemorative or magical or both. We have also
noted that it was a thing done under strong emotional excitement
Jand done collectively. All this applies equally to the other factor
\in arite, the myth. In the religious sense a myth is not merely
ja word spoken; it is a re-utterance or pre-utterance, it is a focus
‘of emotion, and uttered as we have seen collectively or at least
with collective sanction. It is this collective sanction and solemn
purpose that differentiate the myth alike from the historical
narrative and the mere conte or fairy-tale: a myth becomes
practically a story of magical intent and potency.
Possibly the first muthos was simply the interjectional
utterance mu; but it is easy to see how rapid the development
would be from interjection to narrative. Each step in the ritual
action is shadowed as it were by a fresh interjection, till the
whole combines into a consecutive tale. Thus to take again a
simple instance ; in the Rutuburi dance described above* we have
a sequence,
The Blue Squirrel ascends the tree and whistles.
The plants will be growing and the fruit will be ripening,
And when it is ripe it falls to the ground,
1 Supra, p. 42.
2 It is worth noting that the actual word δρώμενον when it becomes the equiva-
lent of ‘rite’ shows that the tendency must have been to emphasize the motor
element.
3 Supra, p. 112.
γ᾽
vii | The Eniautos-Mythos 331
and this sequence is as it were the life-history of the plant or ζ΄
the animal to be magically affected; it is the plot of the δρώμενον, ,
for, says Aristotle?, in a most instructive definition,
by myth I mean the arrangement of the incidents.
When we realize that the myth is the plot of the δρώμενον we
no longer wonder that the plot of a drama is called its ‘myth.’
“Tt would be convenient if the use of the word myth could
be confined? to such sequences, such stories as are involved in
rites. Anyhow the primitive myth, the myth proper, is of this
nature, and it is one form of the myth proper that we have now
to consider, the plot or life-history of the Hniautos-daimon.
What are its elements and its characteristics? What if anything
did it contribute to the plots (μῦθοι) of the dramas enacted at
the Great Dionysia? If these dramas arose from the Spring
δρώμενα some analogies between their respective ‘myths’ must
surely be observable.
THE ENTAUTOS-MUTHOs.
The elements of the Eniautos myth are few and simple*; its
main characteristic is its inevitable, periodic monotony. This’
comes out clearly in the δρώμενα of the Oschophoria. The
principal factors are;
(a) A contest (ἀγών). In this case and also in the Karneia
and in the Olympic Games the contest is a race to decide who
shall carry the boughs and wear the crown.
(b) <A pathos, a death or defeat. In the Theseus myth this
appears in the death of the old king. The pathos is formally ““
announced by a messenger (ἄγγελος) and it is followed or accom- \
panied by a lamentation (θρῆνος).
(c) A triumphant Epiphany, an appearance or crowning of
the victor or the new king, with an abrupt change (περιπέτεια)
1 Poet. vi. 6 λέγω yap μῦθον τοῦτον τὴν σύνθεσιν τῶν πραγμάτων.
* Mr van Gennep proposes this in his interesting paper Was ist Mythus? (Inter-
nationale Wochenschrift fiir Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik, Sept. 1910, p. 1167).
His definition of myth is as follows: ‘Der Mythus ist eine Erzahlung, die allge-
meine und regelmassig wechselnde und sich wiederholende Erscheinungen darstellt
und deren Bestandteile sich in gleicher Sequenz durch religidsmagische Handlungen
(Riten) aussern.’
5.1 omit the presentation or prologue introducing the plays as not ritually
essential and as not noted in the Oschophoria, but it is interesting to find that in
Mr Chambers’ analysis of the Mummers’ play (op. cit. 1. p. 211) he divides it into
three parts: the Presentation, the Drama, the Quéte. See also Prof. Murray, infra,
p. 359.
382 Daimon and Hero [ CH.
from lamentation to rejoicing. In the Theseus rite, we have the
actual mithoi which marked this shift, Hleleu Tou Tou?.
The δρώμενον may of course take a somewhat simplified form.
Thus the Kathodos and Anodos of Kore? omits the agon, but
probably in all cases where a human representative had to be
chosen, a leader or king, the contest element was present.
ΤῸ is surely a fact of the highest significance that the Greek word
| for actor is agonistes, contester. The shift from sorrow to joy was
integral because it was the mimetic presentation of the death of
‘the Old Year, the birth of the New. To seek for a threnos we
need not go to a hero’s tomb.
To have a fixed ritual form imposed is, like the using of a
beautiful, difficult rhythm—an impediment to the weak, a great
and golden opportunity to the strong. But a ritual form, how-
ever solemn and significant, does not, and did not make great
/drama. We see that clearly enough in the folk-plays, that, as
they were before the drama, so have long out-lasted it. With
/ extraordinary tenacity the old form maintains itself as in the
Carnival plays observed by Mr Dawkins* in Thrace and by
Mr Wace‘ in Thessaly and Macedonia. They are nothing but
) the life-history of a fertility-daimon; the story is more complete
‘than in the Oschophoria; it takes the daimon from the cradle to
the: grave and back again, to life and marriage. Mr Wace from
many scattered and fragmentary festivals constructs the full
original somewhat as follows:
An old woman first appears nursing her baby in her arms, and this child
is in some way or other peculiar. He grows up quickly and demands a bride.
A bride is found for him, and the wedding is celebrated, but during the wedding
festivities he quarrels with one of his companions, who attempts to molest the
bride, and is killed. He is then lamented by his bride, and miraculously
restored to life. The interrupted festivities are resumed, and the marriage is
consummated.
1 Supra, p. 318.
2 Such simplified δρώμενα are the Thesmophoria, where we hear of no agon, the
Charila at Delphi (infra, p. 416), the summoning of Dionysos by trumpets from the
abyss at Lerna. Sometimes the agon is apparently the chief element in the rite as
at the Lithobolia at Eleusis. Sometimes it is softened to a mere λοιδορία, as in the
Stenia.
3 R. M. Dawkins, The Modern Carnival in Thrace and the Cult of Dionysos,
J. H. 8. xxvr. 1906, p. 191. Mr Dawkins’ attention was drawn to this festival by
Mr G. M. Vizyenos, a native of Viza (the ancient Βιζύη), which is about two hours
west of Haghios Gheorghios, where the festival is now celebrated. Mr Vizyenos
had seen the festival as a boy some forty years before it was observed by
Mr Dawkins.
4 In a paper to be published in the forthcoming Annual of the British School,
of which Mr Wace has very kindly allowed me to see a proof.
᾿ς ΤῊ Ψ
Qu
VIIr | Carnival Plays 333
j ,
, Le
iDb-aveltm γυναι;
To attempt a close parallel with the ancient cult of Dionysos )
is, I think, scarcely worth while, though analogies like the baby |
in arms or in the cradle to Laknites are obvious. We are dealing
with material that long preceded and long outlasts the worship of
any Olympian, the disyecta membra of the life-history of a year-god
or fertility-daimon. Heisa babe; he has, probably at his initiation,
2 death and resurrection; he is married. The cycle of his life is
eternally monotonous, perennially magical. 4
The monotony of these folk-plays is almost τὶ πϑουβδίοι sag
f we were asked to see in them the germ of all the life and -
splendour and variety of Attic drama we might rightly rebel;
out we are not. What the δρώμενα of the Hniautos-daimon gave
Ὁ Attic drama was, not its content, but its ritual form, a form
which may be informed by beauty or by ugliness, according as it
s used by an imagination clean or coarse.
That the form is really the life-history of a fertility-daimon,
und its intent, like the ritual of the damon, strictly magical
is shown beyond doubt by the concluding words of the Thracian
ceremony :
Barley three piastres the bushel. Amen, O God, that the poor may eat!
Yea, O God, that poor folk may be filled.
That the daimon impersonated is the Eniautos-daimon is no
ess clear. At one point in the concluding ceremonies Mr Dawkins
ells us:
All the implements used were thrown high into the air with cries ‘ Kai
rou χρόνου, ‘ Next year also.’
It would be tedious and unprofitable for our argument to
multiply instances of these folk-plays which last on in the remoter
sorners of Europe to-day'. They are tenacious of life because
they are still held to be magical—the playing of them brings
1 They have been collected and discussed by Mr E. K. Chambers in his in- |
valuable book The Mediaeval Stage, 1903, νο]. τ. Book 11. Folk Drama. Everywhere,
he points out, we have the contest, our agon, which in the eighth century crystallized
into the Conjflictus Veris et Hiemis, and the death and resurrection mime from
which, in the form of the Easter trope Quem Quaeritis, mediaeval drama sprang.
The subject has been so fully and admirably treated by Mr Chambers that I will
only note here that we could have no simpler or more significant instance of a
death and resurrection δρώμενον than the Quem Quaeritis with its mythos in dialogue }
Quem quaeritis in sepulchro, [0] Christicolae?
Iesum Nazarenum crucifixum, ὁ caelicolae.
Non est hic, surrexit sicut praedixerat.
Ite, nuntiate, quia surrexit de sepulchro.
The function of the ἄγγελος is here specially clear. The agon is absent.
pesaeegr:
~
_—
334 Daimon and Here [ OH.
luck to the village for the season, and they are popular because
they invariably end with a quéte. They are intolerant of develop-
ment because of their periodic nature, and fixed factors—the fight,
the death, the resurrection, on which this ‘luck’ inherently and
essentially depends.
The mythos, the plot which is the life-history of an Eniautos-
daimon, whether performed in winter, spring, summer or autumn,
is thus doomed by its monotony to sterility. What is wanted
is material cast in less rigid mould; in a word λεγόμενα not
bound by δρώμενα, plots that have cut themselves loose from
rites. The dithyramb, which was but the periodic festival of the —
spring renouveau, broke and blossomed so swiftly into the Attic
drama because it found such plots to hand; in a word—the forms
of Attic drama are the forms of the life-history of an Eniautos-
daimon; the content is the infinite variety of free and individualized |
EOE sagan the forsee sense of the word ‘ Homer’
THE fate were.
We are perhaps tired of being told that A%schylus® said his —
tragedies were ‘slices from the great banquets of Homer, and we
feel the ugly metaphor is worthier of the learned and ingenious
Diners who record it than of the poet on whom it is fathered.
Yet the metaphor is instructive. The plots of Attic drama are —
things cut off (τεμάχη). They are mythoi that have worked
themselves loose from the cults of which they were once the
spoken utterance’, and are thereby material to be freely moulded
at the artist’s will.
1 Following Dieterich rather than Prof. Ridgeway, I had long vaguely held that
the threnos and peripeteia of Greek tragedy arose from mysteries based on the death —
and resurrection of the year rather than from the tomb-ritual of any mere. historical
hero. But I date my definite enquiry into the daimonic origin of these forms from a
lecture On the Form and Technique of Greek Tragedy delivered by Prof. Murray at
Oxford in the Easter term of 1910. For detailed and to me conclusive evidence Iam
now able to refer to the Excursus which Prof. Murray has with great kindness
appended to this chapter and which embodies the result of his independent
investigations. By the kindness of Dr M. P. Nilsson I have just received a pre-
print of his valuable monograph, Der Ursprung der Tragidie, which appears in
Ilberg’s Neue Jahrbiicher fiir das klassische Altertumsgeschichte und deutsche
Literatur, xxv. 9, p. 609. ;
2 Athen. vit. 39. 347 οὐδ᾽ ἐπὶ νοῦν βαλλόμενος τὰ τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ λαμπροῦ Αἰσχύλου,
ὃς τὰς αὑτοῦ τραγωδίας τεμάχη εἶναι ἔλεγε τῶν ‘Ounpou μεγάλων δείπνων.
5.1 am aware of course that these ‘tied’ mythoi, even while they were tied,
attached to themselves a certain amount of floating historical legend. This has
been very well shown by Mr Chambers (op. cit.) in his account of the various local
elements of folk story attracted by the Mummers’ play, vol. 1. p. 211.
Vit | The Homeric Saga 335
It may have surprised some readers that in our long discussion
of ‘heroes’ there has been no mention of Homer, who sings heroic
deeds. The reason is clear. If my contention be right that the cult /
of the collective daimon, the king and the fertility-spirit is primary, }
Homer's conception of the hero as the gallant individual, the soldier, 7
of fortune or the gentleman of property, is secondary and late,—
It has again and again been observed that in Homer we have no
magic and no cult of the dead. Our examination of the Anthesteria
has shown us that, for Greece as for Central Australia, the two were
indissolubly connected. Homer marks a stage when collective,
thinking! and magical ritual are, if not dead, at least dying, when/
rationalism and the individualistic th thinking to which it belongs are)
developed to a point not far behind that of the days of Perikles.
Homer's attitude towards religion is sceptical, Ionian®,
What is meant by the ‘individualism’ of Homer is seen
very clearly in the case of the androktasiai or ‘man-slayings.”
Dr Bethe* has shown beyond the possibility of a doubt that the
somewhat superabundant androktasiat which appear as single,
combats in the liad really reflect not the fights of individual
heroes at Troy, but the conflicts of tribes on the mainland οὗ
Greece. When the tribes who waged this warfare on the mainland
pass in the long series of Migrations to Asia Minor and the islands,
the local sanctities from which they are cut loose are forgotten,
and local daimones, eponymous heroes and the like become indi-
vidualized Saga-heroes. Achilles and Alexandros are tribal heroes,
that is collective conceptions, of conflicting tribes in Thessaly.
Hector before, not after, he went to Troy was a hero-daimon in }
Boeotian Thebes; his comrade Melanippos had a cult in Thebes,
Patroklos whom he slew was his near neighbour, like him a local
daimon. It is the life-stories of heroes such as these, cut loose by
the Migrations from their local cults, freed from their monotonous
periodicity, that are the material of Attic drama, that form its\
free and plastic plots.
1 The connection of collective thinking with magic and of individualism with
the Olympian system will be discussed in the next chapter.
2 For this whole subject and the contrast of Homer’s attitude with that of
Aschylus see Prof. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic, Ionia and Attica.
® Homer und die Heldensage. Die Sage vom Troischen Kriege, in Sitzungs-
berichte ἃ. k. Pr. Ak. ἃ. Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Kl., 1902. English readers will
find the ἀνδροκτάσιαι fully discussed on the basis of Dr Bethe’s researches in
Prof. Murray’s Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 195. Prof. Murray accepts Dr Bethe’s
conclusions and adds much to their significance.
336 Daimon and Hero [ OH.
The enquiry of the date of this influx of heroic saga belongs to
the Homeric Question and is beyond alike my scope and my com-
petence. When and how the old forms of the daimon-drama were
replenished by the newly imported Ionic epos can only be
conjectured. If conjecture be permissible I should imagine that
the Pot-Contests (yvtpivor ἀγῶνες) of the Anthesteria were, from
time immemorial, of the old daimon type. When Peisistratos
ordained the recitation of “Homer” at the Panathenaea, the influ-
ence of the epos on the rude dramatic art of the time must have
been immediately felt, and it only needed the birth of an A’schylus
to make him seize on the τεμάχη that lay so close to hand. He
or his predecessors took of necessity the preseribed form, the life-
history of the daimon, and filled it with a new content, the story of
a daimon de-daimonized; an Agamemnon who though he was a
tribal daimon at home was an individual hero before the walls
of Troy.
The local daimons of Thessaly and Boeotia and the Peloponnese
were de-daimonized by the Migrations; that is easily understood.
But once the fashion set, once the rationalizing story-telling
tendency started, once the interest in the local daimon and his
magical efficacy diminished, and even those stationary daimons
whose tribes never migrated, became de-daimonized, individualized.
Hippolytos, son of Theseus, is a clear and very instructive case.
He has a local cult at Trozen, later by some shift of population
taken in at Athens, but to the drama he is wholly human, the
hero of a widespread folk-tale. Yet even drama cannot wholly
forget the daimon-functionary, and Euripides’, by the mouth of
Artemis, tells us the manner of his cult.
Yea and to thee, for this sore travail’s sake,
Honours most high in Trozen will I make,
For yokeless maids before their bridal night
Shall shear for thee their tresses.
Pausanias? confirms Euripides; he tells us that at Trozen
A precinct of great renown is consecrated to Hippolytos son of Theseus ;
it contains a temple and an ancient image....There is a priest of Hippolytos
1 Hipp. 1424:
τιμὰς μεγίστας ἐν πόλει Τροζηνίᾳ
δώσω" κόραι γὰρ ἄζυγες γάμων πάρος
κόμας κεροῦνταί σοι, δι᾿ αἰῶνος μακροῦ
πένθη μέγιστα δακρύων καρπουμένῳ.
5. τ 32. 1, Frazer.
Vu | Hippolytos as Kouros 337
at Trozen who holds office for life; and there are annual sacrifices, Further, i
they observe the following custom. Every maiden before marriage shears
a lock of her hair for Hippolytos, and takes the shorn lock and dedicates
it in the temple. —
Hippolytos is indeed, in a sense that has hitherto escaped us,
the Megistos Kouros, ‘He of the Shorn-Hajr! ‘“—the daimon of
Initiation ceremonies, of the rite de passage from virginity to
virility. The plot, the mythos of the Hippolytos utters things
older and deeper than any ugly tale, however ancient, of )
. ᾽ - : LA ἢ Nee end ( Ὁ
Potiphar’s wife. ὅπλοις ag ERY cael hd ὍΣ
In the relief? in Fig. 95 we have a monument of Hippolytos.
Fie. 95.
He is figured as a young hero with a horse, a knight like the
daimones of the Hero-Feasts, His dog is with him to mark him
as a human huntsman. But the hero-daimon is not forgotten.
! With his accustomed generosity Mr Cook allows me to cite in advance his view
that κόρος κόρη are from the same root as keipw. This had of course been guessed
by the ancients, see Et. Mag. kovpi* ἀπὸ τοῦ kelpw κέκαρμαι κορὰ καὶ κουρά, and for
modern supporters of the view see Collitz-Bechtel, Gr. Dial. Inschr. t. 143, No. 373
Tat κόραι, and F. Solmsen in the Zeitschrift f. vergleich. Sprachforschung, 1888, xx1x.
128f. This derivation I had known and from cowardice rejected. It strongly
Supports, as Mr Cook kindly points out, my contention that the Kouretes were the
| young initiates of the tribe. On the third day of the Apatouria, called κουρεῶτις, the
κοῦροι had their hair cut and were enrolled in the phratries. Full references will be
found in Mr Cook’s forthcoming book in section 1 of chapter τ. in connection with
the ‘hair festival’ of the Komyria. I venture to apply Mr Cook’s argument in the
case of Hippolytos as Meyistos Kouros of Trozen. For Herakles and his connection
with hair-cutting see infra, p. 379,
* Found at Aricia but of Attic workmanship, now in the Torlonia Museum.
See Blenkenberg, Ht Attisk Votiv-relief, Festskrift til J. ΤΙ, Ussing, 1900,
H. 22
338 Daimon and Hero 68.
Just in front of the horse is a low altar, an eschara, the kind in
use for ‘heroes’; a worshipper approaches. Moreover the figures
in the background show clearly to what company Hippolytos
belongs. Asklepios who, as we shall see in the next chapter, was
but a daimon half crystallized into a god, Aphrodite Pandemos
to the left, and between them the temple of Themis’.
In the case of Hippolytos we know precisely where was his
loeal cult, and from his ritual we can partly see how the tragedy
of Euripides arose from his annual muthos. More often the con-
Fic. 96.
nection escapes us. We have the record of a local cult and we
have the finished dramatic figure but the links are lost. The
relief in Fig. 96 presents us with the two factors baldly and
blankly juxtaposed without attempt αὖ reconciliation. To the
left we have a warrior like Hippolytos leading a horse, to the
right the daimon-snake. The artist himself was probably at
a loss to establish a connection ; anyhow he does not attempt it.
The horseman takes no notice of the snake; the snake, serenely
1 For these local divinities of the south slope of the Acropolis see Prolegomena,
φ. 354.
Vill | Daimon-Ritual and Homeric-Saga 339
coiled, is indifferent to the horseman. They are of two alien
worlds.
If with this relief to help us we bear in mind these two factors, "
the old daimonic, magical ritual which lent the forms, the new!
‘Homeric’ saga which lent the heroic content, the relation of the
drama to the worship of Dionysos and also to the worship of the
dead becomes, I think, fairly clear. The plays were performed in
the theatre of Dionysos, in the precinct of the god, his image
was present in the theatre, the chorus danced round his altar,
his priest sat in the front and central seat among the spectators. |
In the face of facts so plain it seems to me impossible that the
drama had its roots elsewhere than in the worship of Dionysos’. |“
Aristotle is right, ‘ tragedy arose from leaders of the Dithyramb?.’
Of any connection with the tomb and obsequies of an actual dead ,
Athenian hero there is not a particle of evidence. But, Dionysos |
is a daimon, he is the daimon, of death and resurrection, of re- |
}
incarnation, of the renowveau of the spring, and that renowveau, ὦ
that reincarnation, was of man as well as nature. In the Anthesteria,
the Biossoming of Plants and the Revocation of Ghosts are one
\
λ
]
and the same, but they are universal, of ancestors, not of one /
particular dead ancestor.
We left the problem of one scene (Fig. 31) on the Hagia
Triada sarcophagos unsolved and the solution now comes of itself.
The figure standing in front of the building is not, I think,
a god, not Dionysos Dendrites, nor is he a man, a particular dead
individual who is having a funeral at the moment. Rather he is
a daimon-hero, and the building before which he stands is a
heroon, like the heroon of the Agathos Daimon at Thebes. He
may be a dead king, if so he is worshipped as a functionary,
a fertility-daimon not as an individual; he is like Cecrops, like
Erichthonios. He is certainly I think a kouros like in youth and
1 For a full statement of this, Prof. Ridgeway’s view, see his Origin of Tragedy,
1910.
' 2 Supra, p. 32. The difficult question of when and how the incoming Thracian
daimon Dionysos came to dominate the local Agathos Daimon I leave here un-
answered. I have elsewhere (Proleg. pp. 557 and 571) suggested that Dionysos
may have come to Athens by way of Delphi and Eleusis. For the possible influence
of the Mysteries on drama see A. Dieterich’s ‘epoch-making’ Die Entstehung der
Tragédie in Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, 1908, p. 164.
22—2
340 Daimon and Hero [CH. VII
{strength to the kowroi who approach him with offerings, only stiff
‘and somewhat xoanon-like as becomes one who is a daimon not
(a man. Over his forehead hangs a long single curl which may
) well characterize him as ephebos!. Near him is his holy tree, sign
and symbol of the life and function of an Agathos Daimon. To
him, as Eniautos-daimon, are brought offerings of young bulls
and a new-moon boat, not a service of do ut des, not as gifts to
persuade, but rather magically to znduce* him: and, in his honour
with like intent, is played out the renowveau of bird and tree,
the mimic drama of the Dithyramb.
We have watched the making of a daimon-hero out of vaguer
sanctities; in the next chapter we shall see the daimon-hero
crystallize, individualize into a god.
i See supra, p. 337, note 1.
2 Even, perhaps, magically to bring him to life. The figure of the Kouros, as
noted above, has a stiff, half-lifeless look. We may compare the figure of Pandora
the Earth-Goddess as she appears on the Bayle cylix in the British Museum (see
my Myth. and Mons. of Anc. Athens, p. 450, Fig. 50). The ‘Birth’ and ‘Making’
of Pandora are but mythological presentations of the renowveaw of earth in the
spring. For the analogous Anodos vases see infra, p. 418.
EXCURSUS ON THE RITUAL FORMS PRESERVED IN
GREEK TRAGEDY.
THE following note presupposes certain general views about
the origin and essential nature of Greek Tragedy. It assumes
that Tragedy | is in origin ἃ a Ritual Dance, a Sacer Ludus, repre-
some “current ἢ ritual practice : ae the H: ΤΣ se δὲτ ae |
legendary death of that hero, regarded as the Aition of a certain,
ritual lamentation practised by the maidens of Trozén. Further, it ἰ
assumes, in accord with the overwhelming weight of ancient /
tradition, that the! 'Dance in question 15. originally or centrally |
that of Dionysus ; and it regards Dionysus, in this connection, |
as the spirit of the Dithyramb or Spring Drémenon (see above,
Chapter vi.), an ‘Eniautos-Daimon, who represents the. cyclic
death and rebirth of the world, including the rebirth of the
tribe | by “the réturn of the heroes or dead ancestors.
These conceptions, it will be seen, are in general agreement with
the recent work of Dieterich (Archiv fiir Religionswissenschaft,
XI. pp. 163—196), also with that of Usener (7b. vu. pp. 8303—313),
as developed by Dr Farnell (Cults, vol. v. p. 235, note a),
and the indications of the Macedonian mummeries described by
Mr Dawkins and others. I must also acknowledge a large debt to
Prof. Ridgeway’s Tomb-theory, the more so since I ultimately
differ from him on the main question, and seek to show that
certain features in tragedy which he regards as markedly foreign
to Dionysus-worship are in reality natural expressions of it.
It is of course clear that Tragedy, as we possess it, contains
many non-Dionysiac elements. The ancients themselves have
warned us of that. It has been influenced by the epic, by hero
cults, and by various ceremonies not connected with Dionysus.
Indeed the actual Aition treated in tragedy is seldom confessedly
and obviously Dionysiac. It is so sometimes, as sometimes it is
the founding of a torch-race or the original reception of sup-
pliants at some altar of sanctuary. But it is much more often
342 Ritual Forms in Greek Tragedy
the death or Pathos of some hero. Indeed I think it can be
shown that every extant tragedy contains somewhere towards
the end the celebration of a tabu tomb. This point we must
gladly concede to Professor Ridgeway. I wish to suggest, how-
ever, that while the content has strayed far from Dionysus, the
‘forms of tragedy retain clear traces of the original drama of the
/Death and Rebirth of the Year Spirit.
Dieterich has already shown that a characteristic of the Sacer
Ludus in the mysteries was a Peripeteia, or Reversal. It was a
change from sorrow to joy, from darkness and sights of inexplicable
terror to light and the discovery of the reborn God. Such a
Peripeteia is clearly associated with an Anagnorisis, a ν Recognition
or Discovery. Such formulae from the mysteries as ge τε;
Μύσται, τοῦ θεοῦ σεσωσμένου---Ηὑρήκαμεν, συγχαίρομεν---
"Eduyov κακόν, ηὗρον ἄμεινον, imply a close connection between
the Peripeteia and the Anagnorisis, and enable us to understand
why these two elements are regarded by Aristotle as normally
belonging to Tragedy. Now Peripeteia of some kind is perhaps
in itself a necessary or normal part of any dramatic story. But no
one could say the same of Anagnorisis. It must come into Greek
tragedy from the Sacer Ludus, in which the dead God is Recognized
or Discovered.
So far Dieterich. But we may go much further than this. If
we examine the kind of myth which seems to underly the various
‘Eniautos’ celebrations we shall find:
1. An Agon or Contest, the Year against its enemy, Light
against Darkness, Summer against Winter.
2. A Pathos of the Year-Daimon, generally a ritual or
sacrificial death, in which Adonis or Attis is slain by the tabu
animal, the Pharmakos stoned, Osiris, Dionysus, Pentheus, Orpheus,
Hippolytus torn to pieces (σπαραγμός).
3. A Messenger. For this Pathos seems seldom or never to
be actually performed under the eyes of the audience. (The
reason of this is not hard to suggest.) It is announced by a~
messenger. ‘The news comes’ that Pan the Great, Thammuz, :
Adonis, Osiris is dead, and the dead body is often brought in on a
bier, This leads to > Da
4. A Threnos or Lamentation. Specially characteristic, how- —
ever, is a clash of contrary emotions, the death of the old being
The Satyrs and the Peripeteia
also the triumph of the new: see p. 318 f., on Plutare
of the Oschophoria.
5 and 6. An Anagnorisis—discovery or recogniti,
slain and mutilated Daimon, followed by his Resurrection or
Apotheosis or, in some sense, his Epiphany in glory. This I shall
eall by the general name Theophany. It naturally goes with a
Peripeteia or extreme change of feeling from grief to joy.
Observe the sequence in which these should normally occur :
Agon, Pathos, Messenger, Threnos, Theophany, or, we might say,
Anagnorisis and Theophany.
First, however, there is a difficulty to clear away. The
Peripeteia which occurs in tragedy, as we have it, is not usually
from grief to joy but, on the contrary, from joy to grief, which ,
seems wrong. Our tragedies normally end with a comforting
theophany but not with an outburst of joy.—No, but it looks as if
they once did. We know that they were in early times composed
in tetralogies consisting of three tragedies and a Satyr-play.
This is no place to discuss the Satyr-play at length. But
those who have read Miss Harrison’s article on the Kouretes
(B.S.A. xv. and Chapter 1. above) will recognize that the Satyrs
are the πρόπολοι δαίμονες in the rout of Dionysus, especially
associated with his ‘initiations and hierourgiai’—that is, exactly
with our Sacer Ludus of Dionysus. Strabo, pp. 466—8, makes
this pretty clear. Hence comes their connection with the dead
-and with the anodos of Koré. The subject could easily be
illustrated at length, but probably the above point, as it stands,
will hardly be disputed. The Satyr-play, coming at the end of
the tetralogy, represented the joyous arrival of the Reliving
Dionysus and his rout of attendant daimones at the end of the
Sacer Ludus.
It has however been argued, and by so high an authority as
Mr Pickard-Cambridge'!, that the Satyr-play though very early
associated with tragedy was not so in its first origin. He points
- out that no Satyr-plays are attributed to Thespis, that it 15
difficult to make out tetralogies for any writer before Aeschylus,
and that it was Pratinas who πρῶτος ἔγραψε Σατύρους (Suidas).
1 In a public lecture at Oxford in 1910. It may be worth mentioning that
the new fragments of Sophocles’ Ichneutae (Oxyrhyneus Papyri, vol. Ix.) are
markedly tragic in metre and diction.
844 Ritual Forms in Greek Tragedy
I take this to mean that Pratinas was the first person to write
words for the rout of revelling masquers to learn by heart.
Thespis, ike many early Elizabethans, had been content with a
general direction: ‘ Enter Satyrs, in revel, saying anything.’ I do
not, however, wish to combat this view. It would suit my general
purpose equally well to suppose that the Dionysus-ritual had
developed into two divergent forms, the satyr-play of Pratinas and
the tragedy of Thespis, which were at a certain date artificially
combined by a law. In any case there must have been close
kindred between the two. The few titles of tragedies by Thespis
which are preserved, ἱερεῖς, HiOeor, Πενθεύς, PopBas ἢ Αθλα ἐπὶ
[Πελίᾳ, all bear the mark of the initiation drémenon or Sacer
Ludus. The Priests; The Youths, or Kouroi; Pentheus, the torn
Dionysus; Phorbas, the battling King who slew or was slain—
to a reader of the present volume these tell their own tale. And
after all Aristotle has told us that Tragedy ἐκ τοῦ Σατυρικοῦ
μετέβαλεν (Poet. 4). It ‘developed out of the Satyric’—at the
very least, from something akin to the Satyrs. I therefore con-
tinue—provisionally—to accept as a starting-point some tragic
performance ending in a satyr-play.
| Now we know that in the historical development of Tragedy
/ a process of differentiation occurred. The Satyr-play became more
distinct and separate from the tragedies and was eventually
dropped altogether; and, secondly, the separate Tragedies became
independent artistic wholes.
This process produced, I conceive, two results. First, the
cutting-off of the Satyr-play left the tragic trilogy without its
proper close. What was it to do? Should it end with a threnos
and trust for its theophany to the distinct and irrelevant Satyr-
play which happened to follow? or should it ignore the Satyr-play
and make a theophany of its own? Both types of tragedy occur,
but gradually the second tends to predominate.
Secondly, what is to happen to the Anagnorisis and Peri-
peteia? Their proper place is, as it were, transitional from the
Threnos of tragedy to the Theophany of the Satyr-play; if any-
thing, they go rather with the Satyrs. Hence these two elements - |
are set loose. Quite often, even in the tragedies which have a full
Theophany, they do not occur in their proper place just before the
Theophany, yet they always continue to haunt the atmosphere.
ee eke
Sequence of Ritual 345
The poets find it hard to write without bri
somewhere.
Before tracing the Forms in detail, let us take some clear and
typical instances of the sequence of all the five elements together,
Agon, Pathos, Messenger, Threnos, Theophany. I take three plays
which, though not early, are very strict in structure, and I begin with
the Bacchae. For, if there is any truth in this theory at all, our one
confessedly Dionysiac play ought to afford the most crucial test of it.
The latter half of the Bacchae divides itself thus:
787—976. <A long Agon, divided by a Choric dance, 862—911.
Dionysus pleads with Pentheus in vain, then at 819 begins to
exert the Bacchic influence upon him till Pentheus follows him
into the house, already half-conquered: after the Chorus, the two
come out, the Contest already decided and Pentheus in his
conqueror’s power; they go out to the mountain.
Chorus, then 1024--1152 Pathos, Σππαραγμὸς of Pentheus, nar-
rated by a Messenger and received with violent clash of emotion.
1153—1329. Elaborate Threnos, which consists first of a mad/
dance of triumph ἀντὶ θρήνου, then of a long Threnos proper, and |
contains in the midst of it—exactly in the proper place—the\
collection of the fragments of Pentheus’ body and the Anagnorisis/
of him by Agave.
1330, or rather in the gap before 1330. Epiphany of Dionysus.
Now, when we remember that Pentheus is only another form
of Dionysus himself—like Zagreus, Orpheus, Osiris and the other,
daimons who are torn in pieces and put together again—we can,
see that the Bacchae is simply the old Sacer Ludus itself, scarcely,
changed at all, except for the doubling of the hero into himself
and his enemy. We have the whole sequence: Agon, Pathos and?
Messenger, Threnos, Anagnorisis and Peripeteia, and Epiphany.
The daimon is fought against, torn to pieces, announced as dead,
wept for, collected and recognized, and revealed in his new divine
life. The Bacchae is a most instructive instance of the formation
of drama out of ritual. It shows us how slight a step was necessary
for Thespis or another to turn the Year-Ritual into real drama.
Anagnorisis
Hippolytus.
902—1101. Clear and fierce Agon between Theseus and
Hippolytus.
346 Ritual Forms in Greek Tragedy
Short Chorus, Threnos-like.
1153—1267. Σπαραγμὸς of the Hero by his own horses:
Pathos, narrated by a Messenger.
Short Chorus, hymn to Cypris ἀντὶ θρήνου.
1283—end. Epiphany of Artemis, curiously mixed with the
Threnos, and bringing with it the Anagnorisis (1296—1341).
We are just one step further from the original ritual. For
who was Hippolytus? He was, ritually, just another form of the
same Year-daimon, who is torn to pieces and born again. When
we remember the resurrection of Hippolytus in legend, we shall
strongly suspect that in an earlier form of the Hippolytus-
drémenon there was a resurrection or apotheosis of the hero
himself together with his protectress Artemis. Drama has gained
ground upon ritual. Hippolytus has been made a mortal man.
And we now have a Theophany with Artemis immortal in the air
and Hippolytus dying on the earth.
Andromache.
547—765. Agon between Peleus and Menelaus.
An interrupting scene containing the appearance of Orestes
and flight of Hermione; Chorus.
1070—1165. Pathos—stoning—narrated by Messenger.
1166—1225. Threnos.
1226. Theophany of Thetis, bringing comfort.
The Theophanies of Euripides almost always bring comfort,
and thus conserve an element of the old Peripeteia from grief to —
joy. The sequence in the Andromache is very clear, but has one
interrupting scene. This interrupting scene will find its explana- —
tion later. For the present we merely notice that it is concerned
with Orestes and that it falls naturally into the following divisions :
802—819, Nurse as Exangelos or Messenger from within; 825—
865, Threnos of Hermione; 879—1008, Appearance of Orestes, ©
who saves and comforts Hermione, and expounds the death οἵ
Neoptolemus, which is the Aition of the play. See below p. 356. —
The above cases are merely illustrations of the way in which
the Dionysus ritual has adapted itself to the reception of heroic
myths. The chief modification is that other persons and events —
are put into the forms which originally belonged to the Daimon. —
In the Bacchae it is Pentheus who is torn, but Dionysus who —
Theophany 347
appears as god. In the Hippolytus, it is not Hippolytus who
appears as god but Artemis, his patroness. In the Andromache
the persons are all varied: it is Peleus and Menelaus who have
the contest; it is Neoptolemus who is slain and mourned; it is
Thetis who appears as divine.
We will now consider the various Forms, and see how far they
are constant or usual, and what modifications they undergo. And
first for the most crucial of them, the Theophany. This subject
has been excellently treated by Eric Miiller, De Deoruwm
Graecorum Partibus Tragicis, Giessen 1910.
THEOPHANY.
We all know that most of the extant plays of Euripides end (
with the appearance of a god (Hipp., Andr., Suppl., Ion, ΕἸ, I. T.,
Hel., Or., Bac., I. A., Rhes.). But it has not been observed that
a
in this, as in so many of his supposed novelties, Euripides is —
following the tradition of Aeschylus. The reason of this is, first,
that the technique of Aeschylus is not so clear-cut and formal as
that of Euripides. His gods do not so definitely proclaim them-
selves as such, and probably did not appear from quite so effective
a μηχανή. Second, and more important, Aeschylus was still
operating with trilogies, not with single plays, so that his
Theophanies are normally saved up to the end of the trilogy and
then occur on a grand scale.
To take the extant plays first :
The Oresteia has no gods till the Humenides (unless we count
a vision of the Furies at the end of the Choephoroz), but then we
have a great Theophany of Apollo, Athena and the Furies in
procession together.
The Supplices trilogy, Supplices, Aegyptu, Danaides: we
know that this ended with an epiphany of Aphrodite, whose
speech, founding the institution of marriage based on consent, is
preserved (Nauck, fr. 44). This is evidently a full-dress Theo-
phany in the style afterwards followed by Euripides, in which the
god solemnly founds an institution and gives the Aition of the
performance.
The Persae trilogy consisted of the Phineus, Persae, Glaucus
(Pontius ?), that is, it seems not to have been a continuous treat-
ment of one subject leading up to one final Epiphany, like the
348 Ritual Forms in Greek Tragedy
Oresteia and the Danaid-trilogy. It falls apart into separate
plays, and each play will be found to have in it some divine or
supernatural apparition.
Persae: the Hero or, as he is called, the God (θεός 644, &c.,
δαίμων 642) Darius is evoked from his sacred tomb.
Phineus: the end, or at any rate the dénouement, of the play
consisted in the chasing away of the Harpies by the Sons of the
North-wind—that is, in a great apparition of winged supernatural
shapes.
Glaucus Pontius: it contained, probably at the end, a prophecy
spoken by Glaucus; and in it Glaucus, half-man, half-beast,
appeared rising from the sea. (N. 26.) This seems like a regular
Theophany with a prophecy. (If the third play was the other
Glaucus, called Potnieus, then we have no evidence.)
Prometheia Trilogy. This stands somewhat apart for two
reasons. First. its Aition is not any Year-ritual or Tomb-ritual
but definitely the institution of the Torch-race at the Prometheia.
Secondly, all the characters are divine, so that there can hardly
be question of an epiphany in the ordinary sense. The recon-
struction of the trilogy is still doubtful, but it seems unlikely that
the ultimate reconciliation of Prometheus and Zeus can have been
dramatically carried out without some appearance of Zeus in his
glory.
Theban Trilogy. Laius, Oedipus, Septem. Here we possess
the third play and it ends not in a Theophany but in a Threnos’.
That is, it belongs to the first type mentioned on p. 344 above.
The satyr-play belonged to the same cycle of saga. It was called
Sphinx. It would be interesting to know how Dionysus and his
train were brought into connexion with the Sphinx and Oedipus
and whether there was any appearance of the God as deliverer or
bringer of new life. In any case the same conjunction appears
on the Vagnonville Crater; a Sphinx is sitting on a χῶμα γῆς
which Satyrs are hammering at with picks, as though for the
Anodos of Koré. (See J. E. Harrison, Delphika, J.H.S. xrx. 1899,
p. 235, and Prolegomena, p. 211, fig. 45; cf. also the krater in
Monumenti dell’ Inst. 11. pl. Lv.)
1 I do not mean by this to suggest that the final scene is spurious. On the
contrary. The Aition is the grave-ritual of Eteocles and Polynices, and the last
scene is quite correct and normal in stating that Aition.
Epiphanies in Aeschylus 349
Thus we find that of the five trilogies of Aeschylus which are
represented in our extant plays, two end with a final epiphany,
one has an epiphany in each play, one is uncertain but most
likely had a grand final appearance of Zeus in state; one ends
with a Threnos.
What of the fragmentary plays? I will not attempt to discuss
them at length, but will merely mention those which prima Jacie
seem to have contained an epiphany. I refer throughout to
Nauck’s Fragmenta.
Amyméne: the heroine attacked by satyrs Ποσειδῶνος δὲ ἐπιφανέντος ὁ
Σάτυρος μὲν ἔφυγεν. Epiphany of Poseidon.
Bassarai: 2nd of the Lycurgus trilogy, Edon/, Bassarai, Neaniskoi. The
Neaniskoi I take to be the converted Edoni ; they form a band of Kouroi
initiated into the worship of Dionysus. Thus the whole trilogy had probably
an epiphany at the end, with Dionysus instituting his own ritual worship.
But also the separate plays seem to have had epiphanies,
Hdéni: king Lycurgus acts the part of Pentheus: Dionysus is on the
stage, as in the Bacchae, fr. 61: he makes an earthquake, as in the Bacchae,
fr. 58: and, since his enemy Lycurgus was ultimately confounded, it is
practically certain that in the end, as in the Bacchae, he appeared in
glory.
Bassarai : Orpheus, a rebel of a different sort, was torn to pieces by the
Maenads (Bassarids) for worshipping the Sun, ai δὲ Μοῦσαι συναγαγοῦσαι
ἔθαψαν Eratosth. Catast. 94. This suggests a great epiphany of the Muses.
The play must have been very close to the original Dionysiac ritual, like the
Bacchae. The Daimon (Dionysus-Orpheus) is torn to pieces, collected and
recognized, mourned for, and then revealed in glory.
Other Dionysiac plays are Pentheus, of which we are definitely told that
its plot was the same as that of Euripides’ Bacchae ; Dionusou Trophoi, plot
not known : evidently the nursing of the young Year-daemon in some form
(see above, p. 13) ; and lastly, Bacchae.
See also, for other Year-daimon plays, the Avréssai, and the Nemea-
Hypsipyle trilogy below.
Lzion: perhaps the third play of the same trilogy as the Perrhaebides.
The last scene seems to have shown Ixton bound by Zeus to the burning
wheel in the sky. See Diod. Sic. 4. 69. 3, ap. N. This would give a great
epiphany of Zeus and the gods.
Eurépé or Kdres: see N. The play seems to have ended by the arrival
through the air of the gods Sleep and Death, bearing the body of Europa’s
son, Sarpéddn, for burial in his native land.
Aabiri: plot uncertain, but we know that the Kabiri themselves made an
appearance. Plutarch, ap. N. 97.
Memnon : at the end Memnon is slain by Achilles. His goddess mother,
Eds, goes to Zeus and obtains the gift of immortality which she brings to
him. Epiphany of Eés, Proclus, ap. N.
Niobé: no direct evidence, but it is difficult to see how this plot can have
been completed without the appearance of a god.
Pentheus: same plot as the Bacchae. Epiphany of Dionysus. See above.
Aantriai, ‘The Rending Women’ : possibly another name for the Pentheus:
in any case it seems to have dealt with the same story.
Semele or Hydrophorot. The ‘ Water-bearers’ are those who try to put
out the conflagration of the palace owing to the epiphany of Zeus.
350 Ritual Forms in Greek Tragedy
Toxotides: Actaeon transformed into a stag. Probably epiphany οὗ
Artemis. i
Phineus : see above, p. 348.
Psychostasia: the epiphany here was famous and elaborate. Zeus
appeared on the ‘theologeion,’ Thetis on one side of him and Eos on the
other, weighing the souls of Achilles and Memnon. Pollux, 4. 130. Eos, we
are told, came down on a yépavos.
Oreithua: she was carried off by Boreas. The passages from Longinus
and John of Sicily about the extravagance or ἀτοπία of the poet suggest that
Boreas appeared in person when he ‘stirred the sea by blowing with his two
cheeks.’
The following are less clear.
Heliades: their transformation into poplars was foretold or explained.
This suggests an epiphany. Such things are usually done by a divine being.
The Achilles trilogy, Myrmidones, Nereides, Phryges or Hector’s Ransom.
In the first Thetis seems to have appeared to provide the arms, in the second
the Chorus consists of Nereids and it is difficult to imagine the play without
Thetis. In the third we know that Hermes appeared at the beginning.
It seems possible that the council of the gods described in //. XXIV. as insisting
on the ransoming of Hector made an appearance.
Hoplén Krisis, the Adjudgement of the Arms of Achilles : it appears from
N. 174 that Thetis was summoned to come with her attendants to preside
over the trial. No doubt she came.
Lastly, there are some plays in which our supposed Year-daimon
makes his epiphany not as a celestial god but as a ghost or a hero returned
from the grave. It is obvious that he is quite within his rights in so
appearing : he is essentially a being returned from the dead, and his original
ritual epiphany was a resurrection.
Persae: after the Pathos narrated by the Messenger comes a Thrénos and
an evocation of the dead king or god, Darius, see p. 348.
Kréssai : the subject seems to have been the restoration to life of Glaucus,
son of Minos, by Polyidus. (This Glaucus, restored to life by snakes, may
well have been a form of Year-daimon.)
Psychagégoi: the plot is unknown, except that the title is said to have
denoted ‘persons who by charms of some sort resurrect the souls of the
dead’ Bekk. Phryn. p. 73, 13.
Nemea and Hypsipyle probably belong to a trilogy on the death and
heroization of Archemorus-Opheltes, who is a typical Year-daimon, appearing
as a Snake or a Baby. (See p. 214.)
We do not know whether there was an appearance of Heracles at the end
of Aeschylus’ Philoctetes, as there was in that of Sophocles. But it is perhaps —
worth remembering that Aeschylus was supposed to have revealed ‘certain
lore of the mysteries’ in the Towxotides, Hiereia, Sisyphus Petrocylistes,
Iphigenia and Vedipus. The extremely close connection between the mysteries
and the Year-daimon will be in the minds of all who have read the present
volume.
A numerical tabulation of the above results would be mislead- —
ing, both because most of the conclusions are only probabilities, —
and still more because we cannot generally constitute the trilogies
to which the various lost tragedies belong. If we could, the final
Theophanies would probably be still more numerous. There
remain outside the above plays some 23 of which our knowledge is —
so scanty that no prima facie conclusions can, as far as I can see, be —
Epiphanies in Euripides 351
drawn. But it can hardly be disputed that in a surprising number
of Aeschylus’ tragedies we have found signs of either a definite
epiphany of a god or the resurrection of a dead hero, or lastly the
direct worship of a Year-daimon. We cannot be certain, but we
may surmise that some such epiphany or resurrection was quite as
common in Aeschylus as in Euripides.
I will leave out the question of such Epiphanies in the
fragments of Sophocles: the evidence would take very long to
state. His extant plays will be briefly treated below. In general the
result is that in this, as in so many other particulars, Sophocles is
influenced more by the Ionian Epic and less by the Attic Sacer
Ludus than the other two tragedians. It is just the same with the
other Forms. Sophocles deliberately blurs his outlines and breaks /
up his Agon and Messenger and Prologue into what we may almost
call continuous dramatic conversation; Euripides returns to an
extreme clarity and articulateness and stiffness of form in all
three. The discussion of Euripides’ technique is of course another
story, but so much will, I think, hardly be denied either by his
friends or his enemies.
Passing on, then, to Euripides, what is it that he did about his
epiphanies? In especial, why is he ridiculed by comedy for his
use of the Deus ex machina, if Aeschylus really used such
epiphanies as much or more ?
The answer, I think, is not that he invented the introduction
of gods: he clearly did not: but that, more suo, he introduced
them in a sharply defined manner, always at the end of the play,
and, it would seem, with some particularly smooth and effective
machinery. (Perhaps an invention made about the year 428, see
Bethe, Prolegomena, pp. 130—141.) The general purpose for which
he used them—(1) to console griefs and reconcile enmities and
justify tant bien que mal the ways of the gods, and (2) to expound
the Aition of the play, and the future fates of the characters—was,
I believe, part of the tradition. In these respects his gods play
exactly the parts of Athena in the Hwmenides or Aphrodite in the
Danaides, probably even of Zeus in the Prometheus Unbound.
The Theophanies in the extant plays of Euripides are as follows :
Hippolytus : Artemis appears, (1) comforts and reconciles Theseus and
Hippolytus, and (2) founds the ritual of Hippolytus at Trozén.
352 Ritual Forms in Greek Tragedy
Andromache: Thetis appears, (1) sheds comfort on the suffering Peleus
and Andromache, and (2) orders that Neoptolemus be laid in his tabu tomb
at Delphi.
Supplices: Athena appears, (1) comforts the Argives by foretelling the
expedition of the Epigoni to conquer Thebes, and (2) bids Theseus consecrate
the brazen tripod at Delphi which is witness to the oath of eternal friendship
to Athens sworn by the Argives.
Jon: Athena appears, (1) comforts Ion and Creusa, and (2) ordains the
founding of the four Attic tribes.
Electra: the Dioscoroi appear, (1) condemn the law of vengeance, comfort
Electra and Orestes, and (2) expound the origin of the Areopagus, of the
Oresteion in Arcadia, and of the tabu tombs of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra
(ci, Paus. τι. 16.7),
Iphigenia Taurica: Athena appears, (1) appeases Thoas, promises comfort
to Orestes, and (2) founds the worship of Artemis-Iphigenia at Halae and
Brauron.
Helena: the Dioscoroi appear, (1) appease Theoclymenus, (2) found the
worship of Helen (in conjunction with their own), explain the name of the
island Helene, and promise immortality to Menelaus.
Orestes: Apollo appears, striking (as I hope to show elsewhere) his hearers
into a trance; (1) makes peace between Menelaus and Orestes, (2) explains
the origin of the Oresteion in Arcadia and of the Areopagus and proclaims
the worship of Helen.
Bacchae : Dionysus appears, (1) judges his enemies, consoles Cadmus and
(2) establishes his worship. See above.
Iph. Aul.: end lost : Artemis seems to have appeared, (1) saved Iphigenia,
comforted Agamemnon, and (2) doubtless ordained the Brauron rite.
Rhesus: the Muse, mother of Rhesus, appears, (1) laments her son, and
(2) establishes his worship as an ‘anthropodaimon.’
If this were free and original composition the monotony would
be intolerable and incomprehensible: we can understand it only
when we realize that the poet is working under the spell of a set
traditional form.
The Euripidean plays which do not end with a god are the
following: Cyclops, Alcestis, Medea, Heracleidae, Hecuba, Heracles,
Troades, Phoenissae.
These require special consideration. It is no part of my case
to argue that all plays necessarily conform to the same type. The
sacer ludus of a Torch-race, like the Prometheia, or the sacer ludus
of some Altar of Sanctuary like the various Suppliant Plays, has
no particular reason for conforming to the scheme of the Dionysus-
play, except the influence of custom and analogy. But we shall
find even in these plays which have no obvious Theophanies some
curious traces of the Theophany-form.
The Cyclops is a Satyr-play, and does not come into question.
The Alcestis is, 1 think, also in form a Satyr-play. (See Argument, also
Dieterich, Pulcinella, p. 69.) Yet we must note that it ends with a Resur-
rection.
Theophanies and Theophany-Forms 353
Medea: it ends with a scene in which Medea appears on a height
(Schol. ad 1317), and then rides through the air uttering prophecies and
founding the rite of her children’s worship. When we remember that Medea
was really a goddess, and that she and her children received worship in
Greece, we can see that this scene is really a faded or half-humanized
Theophany. Cf. the treatment of Hippolytus.
Heracleidae : who is, in the ritual sense, the ‘hero’ of the Heracleidae?
Without doubt Eurystheus ; ; it is the “Ayos of his death and his sacred grave
or ‘place of burial’ (1040 ff.) that constitute the Aition of the play. The end
in our MSS. seems to be incomplete, but it clearly contains the foundation by
the Hero himself of his own tabu ritual. This is not far removed from the
original daimon-rite or theophany.
Heeuba: it ends with the prophecies of the fey and dying Thracian hero,
and his announcement of the Aition of the Aunos Séma (1273).
Heracles: Theseus is of course not a god, but he is a worshipped hero ;
and his function in this play is just that of the ordinary Deus. He
comforts Heracles, sends him away from Thebes, describes his future life, and
lastly ordains his worship with its proper honours and ritual. (See esp.
1322—1340 : just like a speech ex machina.)
Troades: it ends with a pure Threnos. See above. It is interesting to
note that the Theophany, omitted here, comes by its rights at the beginning
of the play.
Phoenissae: a curious question arises. The play apparently ends with a
Threnos, which is legitimate enough. But the last scene also contains the
driving out of Oedipus to Mt Kithairon. Now Oedipus was a daimon who
haunted Mt Kithairon. (See Roscher; also my Introd. to Sophocles’ Qed.
ftex.) He goes out to Kithairon in this play, 1751f Also in δα. Rex,
1451 ff. he expresses his wish to go out to ‘yonder Kithairon that is called
mine own.’ When we remember that the connection of Oedipus with the
Attic Colénus is probably a late Attic invention (Phoen. 1704 ft.) and reflect
on the curious ‘passing’ of Oedipus in the Coloneus, a suspicion occurs that
the true ritual end of the Oedipus-dromenon was the supernatural departure
- of the hero-daimon to his unknown haunt on the mountain. In this case the
sending forth to Kithaeron—otherwise almost unmotived—is again a faded
remnant of what we have called the Theophany-form. This argument is
strengthened by the generally admitted fact that the pair Oedipus-Jocasta are
a vegetation pair, like Adonis-Aphrodite, Hippolytus-Artemis, etc. But it
cannot be pursued further here. :
To sum up, we find that the tragedies of Euripides usually
end with a Theophany of a markedly formal and ritual character,
closely suiting our conception of the Sacer Ludus of Dionysus, as /
daimon of the Year-cycle of death and rebirth; further, that in those ᾿
Ἢ tragedies which do not end in a confessed Theophany there are at’
any rate curious resemblances to the typical Theophany-form ;
furthermore, the evidence of the extant and fragmentary plays of
Aeschylus, though often uncertain, seems to show that a Theophany
of a similar sort was also usual in them, either at the end of a
trilogy or in the separate plays. About Sophocles we shall say
something later: the evidence is not very conclusive, but the
indications are not at all inconsistent with the above results.
H. 23
354 Ritual Forms in Greek Tragedy ᾿.
Let us now consider the other forms, especially the group
AGoN, PaTHos, MESSENGER, THRENOS.
Pathos and Messenger almost always go together; the Agon
is doubtless less characteristically ritual than the other parts, as
arguments and spirited dialogue scenes naturally tend to occur in
any drama. With respect to the Agon and .Threnos we will
chiefly notice how they stand in relation to the Messenger, and
how far the supposed original order of sequence is preserved in
each play.
Euripides being the clearest and most definite in his ritual
forms, we will take him first.
Alcestis: being a Satyr-play it need not conform to the tragic type. It
has, however, in the proper place the Agon (Heracles and Death), Threnos
and Resurrection.
Medea: typical, with the necessary modifications. Agon, Medea against
herself 1020—1080. (The scene before has also been an Agon, Medea out-
witting Jason.) Pathos and Messenger 1121—1230; quasi-Threnos in the
frightful scene (1251—1292) where the children are murdered behind the
barred door: quasi-Theophany, as explained above. (There cannot be a
real Threnos because that is definitely forbidden by Medea 1378 ff We
may conjecture that there was no θρῆνος in the Corinthian rite: ef. Paus.
τι. 3. 6 and Schol. Med. 273. If it was intended to mitigate infant mortality,
this would be natural.)
Heracleidae: see above on Eurystheus. The Pathos-Messenger (799—866)
announces the battle and the capture of Eurystheus; there then follows an
Agon-scene, apparently out of its order; the end is incomplete, but it
contained the establishment of the funeral rite by Eurystheus himself, as
Hero.
Hippolytus : typical. Agon, Messenger with Pathos, Threnos, Anagnorisis,
Theophany. See above.
Andromache: typical: same order. See above.
Hecuba: the Messenger comes early in the play, hence we cannot have a
Theophany immediately following it. In compensation a Ghost appears at
the beginning. We have Agon between Odysseus and Hecuba-Polyxena
(218—440): Messenger with Pathos 484—582: then Threnos in Hecuba’s
speech. Then the course of the play interrupts. On the end see above,
0. 353.
: Supplices: clear sequence. Agon between Herald and Theseus-Adrastus
(399—597) ; Messenger announcing the Battle 634—777; then Threnos. This
Threnos is enormously developed and practically includes the rest of the
play up to the Theophany, except that it is interrupted by the Euadne scene.
(That scene is evidently put in, and very skilfully, to fill up the interval
while the slain men are cremated and their bones made ready for burial.
But it must, no doubt, have some ritual explanation also.)
Heracles: the sequence is peculiar. The Messenger bursts out from the
ruined house at 909. The scene before has been the divine apparition of
Lyssa, which, however, is quite different in character from the regular
Theophanies. I am inclined to think that technically the attack of Lyssa
upon Heracles is an Agon; see below on the Jph. Aul., Persae and Septem.
. Agon, Pathos, Messenger, Threnos 355
The scene before has certainly been an Agon between Heracles and Lycus
(cf. 789, 812). Thus we get the sequence Agon (Agon), Pathos and Messenger,
Threnos, and, clearly, Anagnorisis 1089—1145: then, instead of a god,
Theseus appears, ex machina as it were: see above.
fon: typical. Great Agon scene, Creusa against Apollo 859—922, or one
may perhaps count it as lasting till 1047; then Pathos-Messenger 1106—1228,
brief Threnos 1229—1250; then second Agon 1250—1394 and Anagnorisis
1395—1549 (with Peripeteia); then Theophany.
Troades: the form in many ways peculiar, but the latter part has the
sequence: Agon of Helen against Hecuba-Menelaus 860—1060; Choric ode,
then Messenger 1123—1155, then great Threnos to the end.
Electra: Agon of Electra and Clytemnestra 997—1146: then the
Messenger is omitted, the Pathos is αὐτάγγελον, announced by the shriek of
Clytemnestra and the return of the murderers with bloody swords, 1147—
1176: then Threnos (with a kind of spiritual Anagnorisis and Peripeteia),
then Theophany. The Messenger-form, omitted here, has occurred earlier
in the play, 761—858.
Iphigenia Taurica: the end is clear: Agon, Thoas and Iphigenia 1152—
1233: Messenger (with a kind of Anagnorisis 1318, 1361): no Threnos,
unless we may take the Chorus’s two lines of lamentation, 1420, 1421, as an
atrophied Threnos; Theophany. The real Threnos of the play has come
earlier, as it tends to come in plays about Orestes.
Helena: Agon with Theoclymenus (I take the diplomatic contest with
these dangerous barbarians to be a clear form of Agon) 1186—1300: con-
tinued in 1369—1450: then Messenger 1512—1618 : no Threnos is possible ;
instead we have a brief Agon, Theoclymenus against the Servant at the door
1621—1641 : then Theophany.
Phoenissae: there are two Messengers, each with a double speech. We
take at present only the second. The great Agon of the play has occurred
much earlier, 446—637, between Eteocles and Polynices. The sequence at
the end is merely Messenger 1356—1479, Threnos 1485—1580, and 1710—
end, interrupted by an Agon between Creon and Antigone. As Aitia we
have the burial arrangements of Eteocles and Polynices and the expulsion
of Oedipus to Mt Kithairon—perhaps a faded Theophany, see above. The
tabu tombs of the two princes form also the end of the Septem. The general
structure of the Phoenissae is highly formal under its cover of Epic expansion,
but we will not discuss it here.
Orestes: in the conclusion of the play I think we must recognize the
Phrygian as an Exangelos. That is, his dramatic function is to relate what
has taken place inside the house. The lyrical form is merely chosen for
variety’s sake. This gives us the sequence: Messenger combined with
Threnos: Agon between Orestes and Menelaus: Theophany of Apollo.
There has been an ordinary Messenger earlier 852—956: also a Threnos
960—1012. Also an Evocation of the dead Agamemnon, much atrophied
1225—1240. (These atrophied evocations of Agamemnon are of course de-
rived from the great evocation in the Choephori: one would like to know if
that scene itself is softened down from some still more complete predecessor,
in which Agamemnon actually rose from the tomb.)
Bacchae: absolutely typical: see above.
Iphigenia Aulidensis: the end is lost, but the present traces suggest a
pretty typical sequence: Agon, Achilles pelted by the troops, argument
between Achilles and Clytaemnestra, 13371432: Threnos of Iphigenia, 1475
—1531: Messenger 1532—? Then perhaps Threnos, certainly Theophany.
Rhesus: the Héniochos is clearly a Messenger. So we end with the
sequence Agon 675—727, fight of Diomedes and Odysseus with the Guards:
Messenger 728—819, continuing into a short Agon between Heniochos and
Hector, 820—881: then Theophany combined with Threnos.
23—2
356 Ritual Forms in Greek Tragedy
But let us consider one particular point more closely. If we
notice the plays in which Orestes occurs we shall find that that
hero always produces a peculiar disturbance in the Forms. Now
Orestes is traditionally a figure of strongly marked type—the
beloved hero who is reported dead and then returns in triumph.
I strongly suspect that his reported death, lamentation and
re-appearance alive were in origin exactly parallel to the reported
death, lamentation and re-appearance alive of the Daimon,
Dionysus, Osiris, etc. In Sophocles the false death is described in
detail: it is a σπαραγμός, like that of Hippolytus, and at the
Pythian games! As Orestes became thoroughly humanized, the
supernatural element dwindled away. But we shall see that his
appearance, though it mostly comes early m the play and does
not count—so to speak—as a real final Theophany, is apt to come
in conjunction with Messenger and Threnos and Invocation of the —
Dead. It bears traces of its original theophanous glory.
Usener has argued on other grounds (Archiv, Lc. pp. 332 ff.)
that Orestes at Delphi was a winter daimon and ‘ Doppelganger’
to Dionysus, as Neoptolemus was to Apollo. And it is worth
noting that the same line of thought possibly supplies a clue to
a puzzling and tiresome scene in Kuripides’ Electra, 771—858.
The ritual described in the messenger’s speech seems extra-
ordinarily like a reflection of a Bouphonia at an Eniautos festival.
Orestes is made to act as Daitros for the communal Dats (see
Ῥ. 142)—one might say, as some reminiscence of a daimon of the
New Year who in human form slays the Old Year in bull form.
As such he is recognized (v. 852, ἐγνώσθη δ᾽ ὑπὸ | γέροντος...)
and they crown and lead him with acclamation (v. 854, στέφουσι
δ᾽ εὐθὺς σοῦ κασιγνήτου Kapa | χαίροντες ἀλαλάζοντες).
Iph. Taur.: besides the final sequence we have an opening
Orestes-sequence: Threnos for Orestes 136—235: Messenger
announcing Pathos (Stoning) of Orestes: then Appearance of
Orestes, in a great scene 472—900, involving an Agon and an
Anagnorisis and Peripeteia.
Eur. Electra: after Prologue, we have Threnos 112—212 (on
Orestes and Agamemnon): then Appearance of Orestes, with
Agon leading to Anagnorisis 487—595. Oddly enough this is
followed by an Evocation of the Dead, and a Messenger. The
various elements of the death and resurrection of the Daimon are
vo"
Agon, Pathos, Messenger, Threnos 357
all there, but scattered and broken since the conception which
held them together has been lost.
We noticed above in the Andromache (p. 6) that the inter-
rupting Orestes-scene came with a sequence Messenger, Threnos,
Epiphany of Orestes, and that, much in the manner of a deus ex
machina he (1) saved and consoled Hermione, and (2) announced
the Aition of the play.
In the Orestes the hero does not return from the dead, and the
sequence is quite confused, but our supposed original Daimon-
Orestes appears possibly to have left two rather curious traces.
1. He is shown at the beginning of the play lying like a dead
man (83 ἀθλίωι νεκρῶι" νεκρὸς yap οὗτος KTA., 385 τίνα δέδορκα
νερτέρων ;), 15 roused by the women wailing round him and rises.
2. At the end, just before the full-blooded Theophany of Apollo,
we see Orestes appearing on the roof of the Palace, a place
generally appropriated to divine beings. See also below on the
Choephori and Soph. Electra.
Turning from Euripides to the less formal tragedians, we shall
not of course expect to find in them the same clear-cut sequences
of unmistakable Agon, Messenger-Pathos, Threnos, Anagnorisis,
Theophany. But I think we shall find that these Forms, a little
less stark and emphatic, a little more artistically modified, are
usually present in both Aeschylus and Sophocles.
Aeschylus:
Supplices: we have seen that the whole trilogy ended in a typical Theo-
phany, so we need not expect one here. But we have a clear Agon (Maidens
against Herald) 826—910, followed by arrival of the Basileus with a Peripeteia ;
then Messenger (Danaus as Messenger 980—1014); then not exactly a
Threnos, but a song of prayer (1018—end).
Persae: the Forms come early. Messenger 249—514, Threnos 515—597,
Evocation of dead ‘god’ 598—680: epiphany 681—842. The rest to the
end is Threnos. This gives us a perfect typical sequence, except that the
Agon seems to be absent. If we look for it in its proper place we shall find
it, not acted indeed but described. In 176—214 we have Atossa’s dream of
the Agon between Europe and Asia, the Agon which was actually taking
place but could not be represented on the stage. Cf. Ale. Heracles, Iph. Aul.
Septem: here also the Agon takes place ‘off, after 718. Then Messenger
792—822: then Threnos 831—1009, and, instead of a Theophany, an enact-
ment of the Aition of the ritual. (Grave-worship of Eteocles and Polynices.)
Prometheus: a passionate little scene between Prometheus and the
Chorus just before 940 might possibly be described as an Agon, though the
greater Agon comes earlier: then 944—1035 Messenger (Hermes, cf. 943)
mixed with Agon: then, as substitute for the Theophany, a supernatural
earthquake involving the cleaving of Earth and the revealing of Hell.
358 Ritual Forms in Greek Tragedy
Agamemnon: in this trilogy the full Theophany is reserved for the last
play and consequently the sequence in the individual plays is upset and
confused. We have, however, Messenger 550—680: Agon of Clytemnestra
and Agamemnon 810—975: then the Cassandra scene, foretelling the Pathos ;
then Pathos αὐτάγγελον, another Agon and Threnos.
Choephori: as in other Orestes-plays we have a Threnos and Anagnorisis
quite early 165—244: Evocation of dead 315—510: Agon (Orestes and
Clytemnestra) 674—930, with a Messenger (Exangelos) in the midst of it
875—886, combined with Pathos αὐτάγγελον : Threnos, consisting of mixed
joy and woe and culminating in long speeches over the dead bodies 935—
1047: lastly a Vision of the Furies, which may possibly have involved a real
epiphany.
Eumenides: Agon 566—680, or perhaps to 750, with Athena making an
Aition-speech in the style of a Deus ex machina in the middle 681—710: then
new Agon with a reconciliation (886 ff.) and Peripeteia ; then great Procession
of gods. No Messenger. The whole play is really the Theophany of the
Oresteia trilogy.
Sophocles: :
It is especially interesting to see how Sophocles has broken
down the stiff lines of the ritual Theophany into scenes of vague
supernatural grandeur.
Oedipus Rex: fairly clear end. Agon (short but involving Anagnorisis
and Peripeteia) between Oedipus and the Herdsman 1123—1185: Exangelos
or Messenger with Pathos 1223—1296: then Threnos with suggestion of
Oedipus’s flight to Kithairon to become ἃ Daimon (1451 ff.).
Oedipus Coloneus: Agon between Oedipus and Polynices 1254—1396 :
slight Threnos and last speech of Oedipus. This last speech is very super-
natural ; it consists of prophecies and Aitia, and is spoken amid continuous
lightning and thunder (1514f.) : then Messenger 1579—1666, and final Threnos
over Oedipus’s passing. A faded Theophany is pretty visible here.
Antigone: enormous Agon scene, Creon v. Antigone, then vy. Haemon,
then v. Antigone again 384—943: Tiresias bringing a kind of Discovery (?)
and Peripeteia 988—1114: Messenger with Pathos 1155—1256, small Threnos:
Second Messenger (Exangelos) 1278 and greater Threnos. The Aition is
the same as that of the Septem, some Theban hero-ritual commemorating the
children of Oedipus and their unhallowed ends—the buried living and the
unburied dead.
Ajax: a curious question suggests itself. All the latter part of the play,
1046— 1401, is occupied with an Agon (in three stages, ending in a reconcilia-
tion) about the burial of Ajax. It is triumphantly decided that he is to be
buried. Is that the end? Or was he really buried? Was there not some
great final pomp representing the burial ’—In considering the prolonged
emphasis laid on this burial question in the Ajax, we should remember that
among the\dromena of the Aianteia was a πομπή and that the funeral bier of
Ajax μετὰ πανοπλίας κατεκοσμεῖτο. (Hesych., vid. Pauly 5. Aianteia.) The
play is close to the old hero-cult ; and perhaps the hero-cult itself not quite
unrelated to some “ Year-ritual,” if the dead hero re-appeared in the spring
flower that was marked with his name.
In any case the sequence is rather curious: Theophany at beginning
1—133. Later on we get a much atrophied Messenger 719—783, who fore-
tells the Pathos which then proceeds to follow, 815—865. Then a scene of
δὰ
search and Anagnorisis 866—890: then Threnos 891—1040: then the great —
Agon, Reconciliation and—on some scale or other—Funeral.
Electra: an Orestes-play, with the usual special characteristics. It begins,
The Prologue 359
after the Prologue, with a Threnos 86—250, then an Agon 328-471 (Chryso-
themis) and a greater Agon 516 —633 (Clytemnestra) : then an Invocation of
the dead Agamemnon 634—659: this is answered by the arrival of the
Messenger announcing the death of Orestes 660—763, short Agon and Threnos
822—870: then, after Agon which is almost part of the Threnos, 871—1057,
Appearance of Orestes, with Anagnorisis, Peripeteia and final settlement of
the play. On the death, lamentation, and discovery alive of Orestes, see p. 356.
Trachiniae: the same question arises here as in the Ajax. The burning
of Heracles on Mt Oeta was in ancient tradition and art closely associated
with his Apotheosis. Was this burning and apotheosis represented on the
stage? It definitely is so in Seneca’s imitation, Here. Oet. ad fin. In any
case, whether represented or not, I think it must have been sug ggested to the
minds of all spectators. The sequence is fairly typical: Agon of Hyllus
and Deianira 734—820, Messenger (Exangelos) 870—946, Threnos, interrupted
by the Appearance of Heracles, his Self- Lamentation and Burning—i.e.
Apotheosis,
Philoctetes: this play has a definite Theophany at the end, but otherwise
its sequence is rather far from any type. One might divide it thus: Agon
865 —1080, including an Anagnorisis 895—926 : Threnos 1081—1217: fiercer
Agon (Odysseus v. Neoptolemus and Philoctetes) 1222—1302; Reconciliation
1308—1408: Theophany 1409—1471.
PROLOGUES.
We have hitherto considered the Forms that come towards , |
the end and build up the conclusion of a tragedy. In any true
work of art the end is always specially important and significant.
It is the last act that chiefly determines the character of a play.
It is the end of the verse that best indicates the metre. But _
there is one important form which belongs necessarily to the ἡ
beginning.
Dieterich is doubtless right im comparing the Prologue of ~
tragedy with the Prorrhésis of the hierophant before a sacred
Drémenon. What such a prorrhésis was like we can only guess.
There are a few small phrases of ritual preserved: there is the
parody of a prorrhesis given by the Hierophant in the Frogs,
354 ff.; there are a few lines spoken by Iphigenia as priestess
before δε tabu procession starts (J. 7. 1226 ff). It certainly
gave orders for EKuphemia, or solemn silence: it probably also
said something about the sacred dance which was to follow.
‘Make room for a Dance of Mystae! And do you begin the singing
and the all-night dances that are meet for this festival’ (Ar. Frogs,
370 f.). When the nature of the dance was something obviously
dictated by the occasion—e.g. when it was the celebration of
a particular Festival on the proper day—there was no need for
any further explanation. But as soon as anything like tragedy
960 Ritual Forms in Greek Tragedy
began, the case was different. The sacred dance of f_ Dionysus
might be about Agamemnon, or Oedipus, or the Daughters of
Danaus, or what not. Consequently there was need of a Pro-logos,
of something spoken before. The word suggests prose rather than
verse. We know that the sacred Herald proclaimed—in an
audience which had no knowledge of what play or what poet
was coming—‘O Theognis, lead on your Chorus!’ (Ar. Ach. 11).
We know that—in a certain Proagon, whatever that was—
Sophocles led on his Chorus in black. What was the poet
supposed to do when he ‘led on’ his Chorus? Did he just_bow
and retire, leaving the audience to guess as best they could from
the play itself what it was all about? Or did he use this oppor-
tunity and tell them ? Anyhow the τ τ᾿ 15 defined as_‘all
the part before the dancers come on, and it seems quite likely
that originally it was not regarded as part of the sacred dance at
all, but was something informal spoken by the poet. If our
knowledge were a little fuller we should very likely be told who
πρῶτος ἔγραψε προλόγους, and be able to assume that when
Aeschylus ‘led on’ his Chorus for the Persae and the Suppliant
Women he told the audience what the play was to be. Then the
development would be lke that of the Dithyramb, of Comedy, of
the Satyr-play, perhaps of the Apotheosis-scenes at the end:
a Form that was first merely improvised or built up by scenic
effects without written verses, grew gradually to be ‘ written’ and
regarded as an integral part of an artistic whole. Mediaeval
prologues and clown-scenes would afford good parallels, and we
should understand why Euripides was so proud that οὑξιὼν
πρώτιστά μοι TO γένος ἂν εἶπεν εὐθὺς τοῦ δράματος. He, more
than either of his predecessors, made a character in the play do
all the Prologue for him, and that in a thorough and clear manner.
For clearness, σαφηνεία, was to the age of the Sophists the first
virtue of λέξις.
But this is conjectural: what development is traceable in our
extant remains? I think we can see that the Prologue, still
rather fluid in the hands of Aeschylus, grew first in the direction
of mere drama, and then turned aside towards a definite religious
form.
For instance, in Aeschylus we have the stages:
1. No written Prologue: Swpplices and Persae.
The Prologue 361
2. Simple Prologue of one speaker: Agamemnon, Choephori
(with Pylades dumb).
3. Complete exposition-scene with two or more characters:
Septem: Eteocles and Messenger.
Eumenides: Pythia: change of Scene: Apollo, Orestes and
Ghost. (Unless indeed the Dance in the strict sense begins by
the Chorus being seen within about v. 35.)
Prometheus: the elaborate scene with Kratos and Bia has
apparently been introduced to meet the need of nailing the
gigantic figure on the rock.
In Sophocles stage (1) disappears altogether, and so practically
does (2). All the plays without exception begin with regular
exposition-scenes involving two or more characters. It is notice-
able, however, that two of the latest plays, Trachiniae and
Philoctetes, start this exposition-scene with a quasi-Euripidean
Prologue, addressed confessedly or half-confessedly to the audience.
That is, Sophocles regularly works in stage (3), but in his latest
work begins to be influenced by a further stage. What this is we
shall find in Euripides.
Euripides has practically always an exposition-scene—so
much is a natural concession to the growing complexity of
drama—but in front of the exposition-scene he has a formal
speech addressed to the audience by one quiet and solitary
figure; a figure, also—and this is what I wish to emphasize—
which is either confessedly supernatural or at least somehow
charged with religious emotion.
Let us take first the plays which happen to omit the ex-
position-scene altogether. To do so is, of course, a kind of
archaism: a return to a less complex kind of drama, in which
the sacred dance followed immediately on the Prologue-speech.
It occurs, if we disregard the Cyclops as not being a tragedy, in
only two dramas, and those naturally enough the very two that
are most formal and nearest to their respective forms of Sacer
Ludus, the Bacchae and the Supplices. The Bacchae has been
already dealt with: the Sacer Ludus behind all the Suppliant
Plays seems to me to have been a ritual only second in its
influence on tragedy to that of the Year-cycle itself. I will not
now discuss the subject at length, but I can understand the origin
of the Suppliant Plays best as a ritual intended to keep alive
362 Ritual Forms in Greek Tragedy
the right of sanctuary attached to some particular altar or tomb
or the like, very much as we keep alive the control over a right
of way. On one day in the year some fugitives take refuge at
the altar, some pursuer tries to drag them away, and some high
authority, god or king or people, forbids him. This is notoriously
avery common motive in Greek tragedy, and was used, as recent
finds have shown us, in the romantic comedy of the fourth
century. (Pap. Ox. νι. 855, a scene which I should now explain
differently.) I suspect that this ritual is also at the back of
various rites which have generally been interpreted as survivals of
human sacrifice, rites in which some one is pursued with weapons
and is supposed to be killed unless he reaches a certain place
of refuge.
However that may be, let us consider the actual Prologue-
speakers. We may start with Alcestis, Apollo (and Death):
Hippolytus, Aphrodite: Hecuba, the Ghost of Polydorus: Jon,
Hermes: Troades, Poseidon (and Athena): Bacchae, Dionysus:
all these are supernatural. Next observe Heracleidae, Iolaus
suppliant at an altar: Andromache, the heroine supplant at an
altar: Supplices, Aithra, surrounded by a band of women sup-
pliant at an altar: Heracles, Amphitryon and Megara, suppliants
at an altar: Helena, the heroine supplant at an altar: [ph. Taur.,
the half-divine priestess of a strange and bloodstained Temple
rising from a dream of death. The religious half-supernatural
atmosphere is unmistakable.
The only exceptions are Medea, Phoenissae, Electra, Orestes, though in
the two last the exception is more apparent than real. We must remember
the curious traces of the daimon that cling about Orestes. In any case,
both openings produce a decidedly uncanny atmosphere—the lonely woman
in the night uttering curses against her mother, and the woman sitting alone
by her brother who is mad and perhaps dead.
There remain two peculiar cases, the Rhesus and Iphigenia in Aulis. We
know that the /hesus had in Alexandrian times three different Prologues,
while the Jphigenia has two in our present MSS. I will not discuss them
further than to point out that they seem to represent a new form of Prologue,
which starts with a lyric scene. The lyric Prologues of both are very similar
and exceedingly beautiful, and I may say in passing that I have long been
inclined to think that we have in them the hand of the original producer of
the Iphigenia, Euripides the younger.
What is the explanation of these facts? It seems to me that
the old Sacer Ludus has reasserted itself: the Prologue, after
passing into a mere dramatic exposition-scene between ordinary
Form and Content of Greek Tragedy 363
people, returns again to be a solemn address spoken to the \
audience by a sacred or mysterious figure. The differences are, ὦ
first, that it is now integral in the whole play as a work of art,
and secondly that it has been markedly influenced by the speech
of the god at the end. It is the same story with other elements
of the drama. The language and metre gets freer in Sophocles,
and returns to formality in Euripides. The dialogue becomes
irregular and almost ‘natural’ in Sophocles, and then returns to
a kind of formal antiphony of symmetrical speeches or equally
symmetrical stichomythiae. The Chorus itself first dwindles to
a thing of little account and then increases again till it begins
once more to bear the chief weight of the tragedy. Something
like the old hierophant reappears at the beginning, something
like the old re-risen god at the end; and, as we have seen, it
is in plays of Euripides, and most of all in the very latest of
his plays, that we find in most perfect and clear-cut outline the
whole sequence of Contest, Tearing-asunder, Messenger, Lamenta-
tion, Discovery, Recognition, and Resurrection which constituted
the original Dionysus-mystery.
An outer shape dominated by tough and undying tradition,
an inner life fiery with sincerity and spiritual freedom; the
vessels of a very ancient religion overfilled and broken by the
new wine of reasoning and rebellious humanity, and still, in
their rejection, shedding abroad the old aroma, as of eternal and
mysterious things: these are the fundamental paradoxes presented
to us by Greek Tragedy. The contrasts have their significance
for other art also, perhaps for all great art. But aesthetic
criticism is not the business of the present note.
G. M.
CHAPTER IX.
FROM DAIMON TO OLYMPIAN.
(HeRAKLES. ASKLEPIOS. Gata TO APOLLO AT DELPHI.)
“ATTOAAON, Ἄπολλον,
ἀγγιᾶτ᾽, ATTOAAWN EMOC.
ON the very threshold of Olympos, one foot within the portals
yet never quite inside, stands the hero of all heroes, the ‘ young
dear hero, Herakles'. The reason of his tarrying there is simple
and instructive. It is not that in his labours and his banquetings
he is too human, too ‘heroic’ in the saga sense; it is that he is a
daimon, and a daimon-hero has much ado to fit his positive
functions and yet shadowy shape into the clear-cut inert crystal of
the Olympian.
HERAKLES AS FERTILITY AND YEAR-DAIMON.
Homeric saga did for Herakles all it could.
‘And as to Hermes and Herakles,’ says Pausanias?, ‘the poems of Homer
have given currency to the report that the first is a servant of Zeus and leads
down the spirits of the departed to Hades, and that Herakles performed many
hard tasks.’
Why should Hermes and Herakles be linked together? What
has the young messenger with golden rod and winged sandals to
do with the lusty athlete? A second question brings an answer
to the first. What were Hermes and Herakles before ‘Homer’
made of one the ‘servant of Zeus’ and of the other the ‘hero’
of the labours? Pausanias himself tells us; they were both
‘Herms.’
1 Usener, Sintflutsagen, p. 58, supposes an old Greek diminutive cahos=Latin
culus, and adduces the hypokoristic form ‘Hpuxados. See Hesych. s.v. τὸν Ἡρακλέα
Σώφρων ὑποκοριστικῶς, cf. Hercules.
2 vill. 82, 4.
OH. 1x | Herakles as Herm 365
The Athenians, he says?, zealous in all matters of religion,
were ‘the first to use the square-shaped images of Hermes. The
Arcadians were ‘specially partial’’ to the square form of Hermes.
Hermes was a Herm, but not only Hermes, also Apollo Aguieus
and Poseidon and Athena Ergane and Helios and—which concerns
us most for the moment—Herakles. Art too bears out the testi-
Fic. 97.
mony of Pausanias. In the vase-painting, Fig. 97, we have
Hermes in Herm form*. The Herm is marked by the kerykeion,
the staff with double snakes. Behind the Herm is a little
tree, for Hermes is a fertility-daimon; in front an altar and,
suspended on the wall, a votive pinax. Side by side with the
Herm of Hermes we figure a Herm of Herakles‘, from a bronze coin
of Athens. More human than the Hermes, Herakles has arms; in
one he holds a great cornucopia which marks him as Agathos
Daimon, in the other his characteristic club.
We talk and write glibly of the ‘club’ of Herakles as his
‘characteristic attribute’ and thereby miss the real point. The
‘club’ of Herakles is not to begin with a thing characteristic of
Herakles, a ῥόπαλον, the rude massive weapon of a half-barbarian
hero; it is a magical bough, a κλάδος" rent from a living tree.
1 tv. 88. 4.
2 vii. 48. 6.
3 Conze, Heroen und Géttergestalten, Taf. 69. 2. The Herm on the original is
ithyphallic.
4 See Roscher, s.v. Herakles, 2157, and see Overbeck, Gr. Plastik+, 11. 25.
> This was long ago pointed out to me in a letter from Dr Walter Headlam, but
neither he nor I then saw its full significance. It was also observed by Mr A. B.
Cook in J.H.S. 1894, χιν. p. 115.
366 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
The Orphic Hymn‘ going back, as so often, to things primitive
thus addresses Herakles:
‘Come, Blessed One, bring spells for all diseases,
Drive out ill fates, wave in thy hand thy branch ;
With magic shafts banish the noisome Keres.’
Herakles is, like Theseus, Thallophoros. Hermes as Herm has a
tree in his sanctuary; Herakles as Herm carries a bough.
The people of Trozen knew the truth about the ‘club of
Herakles? and their simple faith seemed over credulous to
Pausanias’. He says:
And there is here a Hermes called Polygios. They allege that Herakles
placed his club against this image and this club, which was of wild olive,
took root in the earth, if anyone likes to believe it, and sprouted up
afresh, and the wild olive tree is still growing. They say that Herakles found
the wild olive at the bay of Saron and cut the club from it.
Hermes Polygios® seems to be some old xoanon about which grew
a wild olive stunted and club-like in some part of its shape. One
thing is clear, the ‘club’ of Herakles was connected, though after
the inverted fashion of an ‘aetiological’ myth, with the living
growth of a tree.
The bough in the right hand tells then the same story of
fertility as the cornucopia in the left. The cornucopia and its
significance are now familiar? and need not detain us. Only one
point is important, the Athenian coin is of high evidential value
because it shows the cornucopia as a cultus attribute. Later when
‘Homer’ and his saga had completely humanized Herakles, when
the saga-individuality of the hero became articulate and his
1 χα 14 ἔλθε μάκαρ, νούσων θελκτήρια πάντα κομίζων,
ἐξέλασον δὲ κακὰς ἄτας, κλάδον ἐν χερὶ πάλλων,
πτηνοῖς τ᾽ ἰοβόλοις κῆρας χαλεπὰς ἀπόπεμπε.
2 1.31.10 ...kal ἣν γὰρ κοτίνου τοῦτο μὲν (τὸ ῥόπαλον) ὅτῳ πιστά, ἐνέφυ τῇ YD
καὶ ἀνεβλάστησεν αὖθις, καὶ ἔστιν ὁ κότινος πεφυκὼς ἔτι,..
3 The etymology of Polygios is uncertain. Usener (Rhein. Mus. τ τα. 167)
suggests Πολύγυιος, and would make of the Hermes a τετράχειρ. Maass (De Aeschyli
Supplicibus commentatio, 1890, p. xili, note 1) explains as Πολ-ύγιος ‘sanitate
pollens,’ and compares ᾿Ἀκακήσιος. 8. Hitrem (Rhein. Mus. uxt. 1909, p. 333),
quoting Prof. Torp, derives Πολύγιος from Πολυλύγιος, and compares Asklepios
Agnitas, Artemis Lygodesma, and the Hermes of the Hymn (v. 410) and the
miracle of the withies. I dare not build upon this most interesting but unproved
suggestion.
4] may add to what was said above pp. 311, 312 about the cornucopia on
grave-reliefs, an interesting fact that had escaped me. Dr Pfuhl, in his article
Das Beiwerk auf den ost-griechischen Grabreliefs. in Jahrb. d. Inst. xxi. 1905,
section vi. das Fiillhorn, points out that in no less than five instances on grave-
reliefs the cornucopia appears erected on a pillar as an adjunct to the ordinary
parting scenes. The specimen is in the British Museum, Cat. 704, from Smyrna.
'
1
\
IX | Herakles with Cornucopia and Klados 861
functions as a daimon were forgotten, the cornucopia became
cumbersome. Tradition held to
it as we see in the design in
Fig. 98. It could not, like the
branch, be transformed from a
fertility-emblem into a weapon ;
it had to be accounted for; it
called aloud in fact for an aetio-
logical myth. The cornucopia,
men said, did not originally
belong to Herakles, it was the
guerdon of one of his great
labours; he broke it off from
the bull-headed river Achelods.
Dejaneira speaks.
‘A river was my lover, him I mean
Great Achelods, and in threefold form
Wooed me, and wooed again. ,A visible bull
Sometimes, and sometimes a coiléd, gleaming snake,
And sometimes partly man, a monstrous shape
Bull-fronted, and adown his shaggy beard
Fountains of clear spring water glistening flowed!’
The vase-painting? in Fig. 99 reads like a commentary on
Dejaneira’s words. It just gives us the needful clue. Here is the
great daimon of fertility in his familiar form, half man, half bull.
And, as on countless coins the bull-man is the local river-god, so
from his mouth flow the fertilizing streams, for is he not παγκρατὴς
yavous, ‘ Lord of all that is wet and gleaming®’? And, that there
be no mistake, a great cornucopia lies parallel above the life-giving
waters*.
Nowhere perhaps does the fertility-daimon come so vividly
before us as in the words of Dejaneira. We see him shifting from
1 Soph. Trach. 9 ff. 2 Arch. Zeit. xvi. (1883), Taf. 11.
3 Such are the θεοὶ γανάεντες invoked by the Danaid chorus at the close of the
Supplices of Aeschylus (v. 993). They leave the praises of the Nile and implore the
local gods
ποταμοὺς οἱ dua χώρας
θελεμὸν πῶμα χέουσιν
πολύτεκνοι.
4 Life-giving and also land-making. For the story of Alkmaion and the new
alluvial earth deposited at the mouth of the Achelods see Prolegomena, pp. 220, 221.
368 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
one familiar shape to another; he is now, like Agathos Daimon,
like Zeus Ktesios, a ‘gleaming snake,’ now a ‘visible bull’, as he
appeared to the women of Elis who wooed him to come to them
‘with his bull-foot, and now a monstrous shape bull-fronted
(Bovmpwpos) like Zeus Olbios*. Nowhere else moreover is he, the
fertility-daimon, so clearly the bridegroom, rejected indeed for
saga purposes, but rejected only for his fully humanized form, for
another fertility-daimon, Herakles. Herakles breaks off the horn
of the fertility-daimon and carries away his bride. So understood
the monstrosities of the story become real and even beautiful.
In the wooing of Dejaneira, whether by Acheloés the river-god
or by Herakles the hero-daimon, we have a mythos that embodies
the marriage, the ἱερὸς γάμος, of the queen of the land with the
fertility-daimon, reflecting a ritual like that of the marriage of the
Queen Archon at Athens with Dionysos. It is the old wedlock of
the Earth and Sky, of thirsty Argos and the rain of heaven which
fills the wells and rivers of earth. We wonder no longer that the
Dithyramb, the spring mystery babe, is laid at his birth in the
stream of
Acheloés’ roaming daughter,
Holy Dirke, virgin water®.
1 In some places naturally the fertility-daimon was not a goat, but a bull. See
supra, p. 165. The goat, like the bull, might be associated with the cornucopia.
Amaltheia, whose horn was the original cornucopia, was of course a goat. Below
the reclining figure of a goat-headed ‘Tityros’ in the Museum of Fine Arts at
Boston is a cornucopia. See P. Baur, Tityros, in American Journal of Archaeology,
1x. 1905, Pl. v.
2 Supra, p. 148, Fig. 26. 3 Eur. Bacch. 519.
;
i
d
Ix] Herakles in the Trachiniae 369
But if this wedlock of earth and living water be the first stage,
there is in the Herakles-myth as told in the Trachiniae a second
stage. Herakles is not only a seasonal fertility-daimon; he is
manifestly! a daimon of the Sun-Year. His Twelve Labours
occupy a Great Year, μέγας ἐνιαυτός. The divisions of this cycle
were somehow set forth in the ‘ancient tablet’ from Dodona which
he gave to Dejaneira before he set forth on his last Labour, in the
twelfth year. This twelfth year was not 12 months but 14, that
is, it had the two intercalary months necessary to equalize approxi-
mately the moon and sun cycles. The sacrifice that, together with
the death of Herakles on the pyre, crowned the great calendar
festival, the Eniautos-festival, had a like symbolism. Twelve
‘perfect bulls’ stood for the twelve years, but in all the victims
were a hundred, to save the face of the hundred moons in the
octennial moon-cycle.
It may be that neither Sophocles nor his predecessors in
shaping the legend, Peisander and Panyasis, were actually aware
that Herakles was a daimon of the Sun-Year, but more, much
more, than conscious knowledge goes to the making of poetry.
Anyhow, the chorus, the maidens of Trachis at their first entry’,
strike a note strangely appropriate. They would fain know where
tarries the son of Alkmena. ‘To whom do they appeal ?
‘Thou whom Night as the stars die bringeth to birth
And layeth to bed all ablaze,
Helios, Helios, speak: where over the earth
Move his wandering ways ?’
In orthodox fashion the maidens explain that their appeal is to
Helios because he is all-seeing.
‘Speak, O thou of the seeing eye®.’
But the real reason lies deeper; the Sun and only the Sun knows
where Herakles is, for Herakles is a daimon of the Sun- Year‘.
1 See Dr Verrall, The Calendar in the Trachiniae of Sophocles, Class. Rev. x.
1896, p. 85, to which I must refer for details of a somewhat complicated argument.
_ No one will tax Dr Verrall with a parti pris for Sun-Myths. He says expressly
‘Our proposition is simply that, in respect of the chronological framework, the
story presented in the Trachiniae exhibits, and is founded upon, a certain calendar
and certain institutions relating to the calendar which existed when the story was
first thrown into this shape.’
δ. 94. 3 vy. 101.
4 In just the same fashion, as I have tried to show elsewhere (Helios-Hades,
Class. Rev. xx11. (1908), p. 15), Demeter appeals to Helios to know who has rayished
her daughter, and Helios himself is the ravisher as Helios-Hades.
H. 24
370 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
In much of his mythology that cannot be examined here,
Herakles is but the humanized double of Helios. It is from the
sun he borrows his tireless energy. As the young sun he fights
with Hades the setting sun at Pylos. As again the rising sun he
rescues Alcestis from the shades. If such cases seem to any to be
dubious, there is one adventure that admits of no alternative
interpretation. Helios, Apollodorus tells us, so admired the cour-
age of Herakles in shooting at him, that he gave to the hero a
golden cup in which he might cross the ocean. Helios had but
one cup to give, the golden cup in which he himself sailed and
slept at sunset.
Surely the Sun has labour all his days,
And never any respite, steeds nor god,
Since Eos first, whose hands are rosy rays,
Ocean forsook, and Heaven’s high pathway trod ;
All night across the sea that wondrous bed
Shell-hollow, beaten by Hephaistos’ hand,
Of wingéd gold and gorgeous, bears his head
Half-waking on the wave from eve’s red strand
To the Ethiop shore, where steeds and chariot are,
Keen hearted, waiting for the morning star?.
After the magical words the vase-painting in Fig. 100 is more
like a blasphemy than an illustration. Yet it is instructive. The
human Herakles was never meant to sail in the sun’s boat, but
orthodox anthropomorphism demands it; room or no room, in he
must go, to sail but not to sleep.
HERAKLES AS IDAEAN DAKTYL.
The Herakles of the Trachiniae as fertility and Year-daimon
helps us to understand another aspect of the hero that much
embarrassed the piety of Pausanias*. At Thespiae he visited the
1 J would guard against misunderstanding. Herakles takes on the form of an
Eniautos-daimon, and therefore has solar elements, but these do not exhaust his
content. The same is true of Apollo, Odysseus, Orpheus and Dionysos, and indeed
of almost all gods and daimones. The reaction against certain erroneous deyelop-
ments of solar mythology has led, as I have long pointed out, to the neglect of
these elements.
2 Mimnermos, frg. of Nanno. I borrow this translation from Prof. Murray’s
History of Greek Literature, p. 81.
3 1x,27.6. The nature of the Thespian cult of Herakles and his character as an
Idaean Daktyl have been convincingly demonstrated by Dr Kaibel in his brilliant
monograph, Daktyloi Idaioi in Nachrichten d. k. Ges. d. Wiss. zu Géttingen,
phil.-hist. Kl. 1901, p. 506 ff. For Herakles as Eniautos-daimon the responsibility
is mine. The phallic daimon is long-lived. Dr Usener has convincingly shown in
his Der heilige Tychon, 1907, that Priapos may survive in the hagiology of a
Christian Saint.
ΙΧ] Herakles as Idaean Daktyl 371
sanctuary of Herakles and heard the story of the fifty daughters
of Thestios. Pausanias cannot reconcile a
legend so discreditable with what he knows
of Herakles son of Amphitryon, so he
suggests another and an earlier Herakles.
‘I judged the sanctuary to belong to the
Herakles who is called one of the Idaean Daktyls,
the same of whom I found sanctuaries at Erythrae
in [onia and at Tyre. Nor are the Boeotians
ignorant of this name of Herakles, for they say
themselves that the sanctuary of Mycalessian
Demeter is entrusted to the Idaean Herakles.’
What manner of daimon this Herakles,
this Daktyl, was is made abundantly clear
from this very cult of Mycalessian Demeter
to which Pausanias refers. At Mycalessos
close to the Euripos Demeter had a
sanctuary. Fre. 100.
They say that it is closed every night and opened again by Herakles, who
is said to be one of the so-called Idaean Daktyls. Here a miracle is exhibited.
Before the feet of the image they place whatever fruits the earth bears in
autumn and these keep the bloom upon them the whole year round!.
It is a pankarpia. Such magical fruits, with upon them a bloom
that is perennial rather than immortal, does the Eniautos-daimon
carry in his Eiresione and hold for ever in his cornucopia.
Herakles, the Idaean Daktyl, brought fertility to plants but
also to man. His cornucopia is for fruits, but sometimes it holds
phallow?. That is why his cult is at Thespiae: he and every
fertility-daimon is but another Eros*. Because Eros is human
there is excess and ugliness waiting to shadow and distort nature’s
lovely temperance. The saga of the daughters of Thestios was
ugly and polygamous, but the cult was magical and austere. At
the sanctuary of Herakles at Thespiae Pausanias*‘ tells us
A virgin acts as his priestess till her death.
1 Paus. 1x. 19. 5 ...d0a ἐν ὀπώρᾳ πέφυκεν ἡ γῆ φέρειν ἃ διὰ παντὸς μένει τεθηλότα
ἔτους.
2 See the bronze Gallo-Greek statuette in Dr A. Coulson’s collection at Noyon.
Gazette published by him, Hermes Phallophore, Gazette Arch. 1877, pl. 26. The
liknon, whose function is the same as that of the cornucopia, often contains a phallos
as well as fruits. See Prolegomena, Figs. 148 and 149.
° For Eros as Herm and his kinship with Priapos see Prolegomena, Ὁ. 631.
ἄτας 9η.. 6;
24—2
572 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
Herakles then, till saga caught and transformed him, was an
Idaean Daktyl and as such own brother to the Kouretes, the
Korybantes and the Satyrs'. We wonder no longer that it was
Herakles the eldest of the Idaean Daktyls who founded the
Olympic games. It is not merely that there may have been
early immigrants from Crete, it is certainly not because Herakles
was the strong man of the Twelve Labours, it is because Herakles,
the Idaean Daktyl, was as Megistos Kouros the fertility-daimon
of the year. Therefore he was Kladophoros, Thallophoros®. Hero-
daimon though he be, with branch and cornucopia, with Twelve
Labours like the Sun and, Sun-like, sailing in a golden cup, yet
no effort is spared to make of Herakles a regular Olympian. In
literature he has his apotheosis, on vase-paintings he is formally
‘received into Olympos, brought by Athena his patron up to the
very throne of Zeus*. Tradition even said that Hera passed him
through her robe to make him by adoption her real son*. Yet
though he is always being ‘received’ and ‘adopted’ he never
attains real godhead’.
Why is this? What is it that eternally bars the gate of
Olympos? We shall find the answer in a study of his twofold
ritual.
RITUAL OF HERAKLES AS YEAR-DAIMON.
The failure of Herakles to gain admission to Olympos is the
more remarkable because we have clear evidence that he was
worshipped in part with the same ritual as the Olympians them-
selves. Pausanias® when visiting the sanctuary of Herakles at
Sekyon observes as follows.
They say that Phaistos when he came to Sekyon found them devoting
offerings (évayi¢ovras) to Herakles as to a hero. But Phaistos would do
nothing of the kind but would offer burnt offering (θύειν) to him as to a god.
And even now the Sekyonians, when they slay a lamb and burn the thighs
upon the altar, eat a portion of the flesh as though it were a sacrificial victim,
and another part of the flesh they devote (ἐναγίζουσι) as though to a hero,
1 For the Satyrs see infra, p. 423.
2 Paus. v. 7. 7. See supra, p. 366. Therefore, too, I think he was Epitrapezios,
for the winner in the agon was regularly feasted. The ugly saga-figure of Herakles
as glutton and wine-bibber, so popular in comedy and Satyric plays, and not wholly
absent from tragedy, has probably this beautiful origin. Thus hardly did saga deal
with cultus. Like Dais (supra, p. 146), Thaleia is no mere goddess of banqueting
and revels, she is the daimon of the magical fertility-feast.
3 For instances see Roscher, Herakles, 2239.
4 Diod. Sic. rv. 40. 5 See Prolegomena, p. 347.
6 τι, 10.1. For details as to the ritual of ἐναγίζειν see Prolegomena, p. 5d ff.
=" =
ΙΧ] Yearly kitual of Herakles 373
Phaistos it may be was the eponymous hero of Phaistos in
Crete, and from Crete he may have brought to Sekyon! the ritual
of an Ouranian Zeus. That ritual common to all Olympians was
of course burnt sacrifice; the worshipper ate part, the rest was
a gift-sacrifice, etherialized by burning, that so in the form of
a sweet savour it might reach the gods of the upper air. We
have seen? in the rite of the panspernua practised on the day of
the Chytroi that of the panspermia no man tasted, it was made
over, tabued to Hermes Chthonios, it was an ἐναγισμός, a thing
tabu. The reason in the case of the vegetarian sacrifice is clear,
the seeds are wanted as seeds, that they may reappear as fruits in
autumn. The same applies in the case of animal sacrifice, though
to us the reasoning is less obvious. The flesh is made over, buried,
or wholly burnt; it is tabu, because it 15 wanted to fertilize the
ground, like the pigs buried with the snakes and fir-cones at the
Thesmophoria’.
Herodotus! was evidently puzzled by the two-fold nature of
Herakles. Finally he comes to the conclusion that
Those of the Greeks do most wisely who have set up a double worship
of Herakles and who offer burnt sacrifice to the one as an immortal and with
the title Olympian, and to the other devote offerings as to a hero.
The first of these wise Greeks who set up the double worship of
Herakles were the Athenians. Diodorus Siculus’? draws an
instructive contrast between the practice at Athens and that of
Opous and of Thebes: he says
Menoitios, having sacrificed a boar and a bull and a ram, ordered them
to make a yearly sacrifice at Opous and to do honour to Herakles as a hero.
The Thebans did much the same, but the Athenians were the first to honour
Herakles as a god with burnt sacrifices.
To give Herakles his fitting honours (τιμαί) as a hero
Menoitios ordered a yearly sacrifice. The fact is cardinal; and
1 In Hesiod’s days Sekyon was called Mekone. A change of name implies
usually some change in population. Such may lie at the back of Hesiod’s strange
story about how Prometheus tricked Zeus. The ethnology of the ritual shift from
ἐναγίζειν to θύειν I must leave to others of wider competence.
2 Supra, p. 291.
3 Supra, p. 266.
411. 44 καὶ δοκέουσι δέ μοι οὗτοι ὀρθότατα Ἑλλήνων ποιέειν, of διξὰ ᾿Ηράκλεια
ἱδρυσάμενοι ἔκτηνται, καὶ τῷ μὲν ὡς ἀθανάτῳ Οὐλυμπίῳ δὲ ἐπωνυμίην θύουσι, τῴ δὲ ἑτέρῳ
ὡς ἥρωϊ ἐναγίζουσι.
> 1v. 30 κάπρον καὶ ταῦρον καὶ κριὸν θύσας ὡς ἥρωι κατέδειξε κατ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν ἐν ᾿᾽Οποῦντι
θύειν καὶ τιμᾶν ὡς ἥρωα τὸν Ἡ ρακλέα---τὸ παραπλήσιον δὲ ποιησάντων καὶ τῶν Θηβαίων,
᾿Αθηναῖοι πρῶτοι τῶν ἄλλων ὡς θεὸν ἐτίμησαν θυσίαις τὸν Ηρακλέα.
514 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
yet, because the notion of the Eniautos-daimon lay undetected,
its true significance is never seen. Here and there a careful
writer! will note that the hero-sacrifice is yearly, but in per-
functory fashion for completeness sake. The reason for the yearly
recurrence is never given, it 1s not even asked. Once the Eniautos-
daimon comes to his own, and once it is recognized that it is his
mask which each and every individual dead man eventually puts
on, once it is seen that he, not the individual dead man, is the
real ‘Strong One, ‘ Venerable One, the essential ‘ Hero,’ on whom
the luck and life of the year depend, then the need for honours
that shall be yearly is instantly evident.
We need not multiply instances. Not only to Herakles are
the yearly dues paid but to a host of others whom we think of
merely or mainly as the heroes of saga, to Tereus?, Melampous’,
Neoptolemos*, Achilles, Tleptolemos. Tleptolemos is specially
interesting. From Pindar® we should never guess that Tleptole-
mos had yearly dues or indeed that he was anything but a
magnificent ancestor of Diagoras to whom sacrifice was done ‘as
to a god. But the scholiast lets out a fact imstructive to us if
somewhat compromising to Pindar. He tells that there was a
yearly panegyris and agon in honour of Tleptolemos and called by
his name, but he adds
It was by way of compliment that Pindar transferred to Tleptolemos the
ἀφοῦ performed in honour of Helios.
i Dr Nilsson in his Griechische Feste, 1906, p. 454, quotes Stengel as observing
that ‘wohl alle Heroenopfer jiihrlich wiederkehrten,’ but so little does he see the
importance of the fact or the real gist of a ‘hero’ that in the preceding sentence
he says ‘eine vollstandige Behandlung (der Heroen-Kulte) gehért nicht in die
Heortologie.’ Rohde in his brilliant Psyche, 1894, deals in detail with the yearly
agones for the dead, but with no hint of why they are yearly. Deneken in his
admirable article, Heros, in Roscher’s Lexicon, does‘not, I think, even mention
the fact. In this matter I have been myself an equal offender. In discussing
(Prolegomena, pp. 55—76 and 326—359) the ritual of the dead and of heroes and its
chthonic character, I never even observed, much less understood, the fact that this
ritual was annual.
2 Paus. 1. 41. 9 θύουσιν ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτος.
3 Paus. 1. 44. 5 καὶ θύουσι τῷ Μελάμποδι καὶ ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτος ἑορτὴν ἄγουσι.
4 καί οἱ (Νεοπτολέμῳ) κατὰ ἔτος ἐναγίζουσιν οἱ Δελφοί.
OG στ (1
τόθι λύτρον συμφορᾶς οἰκτρᾶς γλυκὺ TaTroAgu@
ἵσταται Τιρυνθίων ἀρχαγέτᾳ
ὥσπερ θεῷ
μήλων τε κνισάεσσα πομπὰ καὶ κρίσις ἀμφ᾽ ἀέθλοις.
Schol. ad loc. ἐἔγκωμιαστικῶς δὲ ὁ Πίνδαρος τὸν ἀγῶνα Ἡλίῳ τελούμενον eis τὸν
Τληπόλεμον μετήγαγε; and again more forcibly ἐψεύσατο δὲ ὁ Πίνδαρος" οὐ γὰρ
Τληπολέμῳ ὁ ἀγὼν ἐπιτελεῖται, τῷ δὲ Ἡλίῳ τιθέασι τὸν ἀγῶνα, ὡς Ἴστρος φησὶν ἐν τῇ
περὶ τῶν ᾿Ηλίου ἀγώνων Ῥόδιοι τιθέασιν ᾿Ηλίου ἐν Ῥόδῳ γυμνικὸν στεφανίτην ἀγῶνα.
le διῶ ων
ΙΧ] Yearly Ritual of Heroes 375
The ritual of a hero was that of a year-daimon and hence often
of a sun-daimon, and this explains why heroes were worshipped
at sunset. This was much more than a mere poetical way of
expressing that the hero’s life was westering. It was magical.
You emphasize death that you may ensure resurrection. At Elis
Pausanias! tells us
Achilles had not an altar but a cenotaph erected in consequence of an
oracle. At the beginning of the festival on a fixed day about the setting of the
sun the women of Elis perform other ceremonies in honour of Achilles and it
is their custom to bewail him.
The women of Elis we remember? ‘summoned’ the bull-daimon
in the spring. Here we have them raising a threnos over the
dead day and the dead year’.
The notion that to the hero the sacrifice must be yearly went
on into historical times. It is this yearly character and this only
that explains the nature of the offerings. Thucydides is evidence
of both. Hard pressed in the Peloponnesian War, the Plataeans
thus appeal to the Lacedaemonians :
‘Cast your eyes upon the tombs of your fathers slain by the Persians and
buried in our land. Them do we honour year by year with a public gift of
raiment and other wonted offerings and of whatsoever the earth brings forth in
its season, of all these things we bring to them the firstfruits*?
The Plataeans themselves—or at least Thucydides—do not
really understand. He thinks it is because the earth is just
a ‘friendly land’ to the dead heroes. It really is that they,
the ancestors, have a pankarpia which they, like the Australian
ancestors of the Alcheringa time, may turn into a panspermia.
This is their perennial function as Year-daimones.
Much that remains valid has been written as to the distinction
between a chthonic and Olympian ritual, between the consecrations
(€vaytopot) of heroes, chthonic divinities and the burnt offerings
(θύματα) of the Olympians, between the low-lying eschara and the
high stone bomos. It has been seen and rightly that heroes
and chthonic divinities have a common ritual, save that to heroes
1 yr. 23. 3. 2 Supra, p. 205.
3 For the relation of the setting-sun to Hades see my Helivs-Hades, Class. Rey.
xxir. 1908, p. 12, and for sun-aspects of Achilles see Otto Seeck, Geschichte des
Untergangs der antiken Welt, 1902, vol. 11. p. 579.
4 Thucyd, 11. 58 ...o0s ἐτιμῶμεν κατὰ ἔτος ἕκαστον δημοσίᾳ ἐσθήμασί τε Kal τοῖς
ἄλλοις νομίμοις, ὅσα τε ἣ γῆ ἡμῶν ἀνεδίδου ὡραῖα πάντων ἀπαρχὰς ἐπιφέροντες εὖνοι μὲν
ἐκ φιλίας χώρας. See also Porphyry (de Abst. τν. 22) who says that Draco laid it
down as an eternal ordinance that heroes as well as gods should receive offerings of
‘yearly pelanoi.’
376 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
as being more recent in sanctity wine is offered. All this is true,
but not the whole, nor even I think the main truth. The real
distinction is that heroes and chthonic divinities are Year-daimones
who die to rise again. The Olympians are, and, as will presently’
be seen, it is nowise to their credit, Immortals (ἀθάνατοι). It is
as Year-daimones that Heroes have chthonic ritual with all its
characteristic apparatus of low-lying altars, of sunset sacrifices, and
above all of the pankarpua.
HERAKLES AS ALEXIKAKOS OF EPHEBOI.
We return to Herakles whose content is not yet exhausted.
The relief? on Fig. 101 shows
us the Hero in front of his
own Heroon, a small shrine on
a stepped basis and consisting
only of four pillars and a roof.
The shrine is not large enough
to hold the great humanized
hero, and probably at first it
held no figure at all, only a
sacred pot, a kadiskos, with a
panspermia, or perhaps again
a slab with a holy snake.
Around the shrine is a sacred
grove as befits a daimon of fertility. The worshippers approach
bringing a bull. The bull will be sacrificed to the hero whose
animal shape he once was*. The character of a Herakleion is
shown very clearly in Fig. 102, from a Lower Italy amphora*. The
design also emphasizes in singular fashion the somewhat strained
relations between saga and daimon-cult. The scene is from a lost
tragedy the plot of which is preserved for us by Hyginus’.
Haemon is bidden to kill Antigone; he saves her and she bears
Fic. 101.
1 Infra, chapter x.
2 A. Frickenhaus, Das Herakleion von Melite, A. Mitt. xxxvr. 1911, Taf. 11. 2.
The reliefs in Figs. 101 and 104 are reproduced by kind permission of Dr Frickenhaus.
3 Cf. 6.1.6. 1688, 32 τοῦ βοὸς τιμὰ τοῦ ἥρωος ἑκατὸν στατῆρες Αἰγιναῖοι. I do not
feel certain whether this is to be construed ‘the price of the Hero-Ox’ or ‘the price
of the ox of the hero,’ but in any case hero and ox are intimately linked.
4 In the Ruvo coll., Mon. d. Inst. x. 1848, Τὰν. xxv1., and Klugmann, Annali,
1848, p. 177.
5 Fab. uxxm. ...hune Creon rex, quod ex draconteo genere omnes in corpore
insigne habebant, cognoyit. cum Hercules pro Haemone deprecatur ut ei ignosceret
non impetravit.
ΕΠ. Herakles as Alexikakos 377
a child to him. The child grown to manhood comes to the games
at Thebes and is recognized as of royal race by the mark on his
body. Herakles begs Creon to pardon Haemon but his prayer is
refused. Haemon kills himself and Antigone.
Ley
at) a me ih
ane
ve =i? ἐν τ δι: oe
Fre. 102.
The story is of great interest because of the recognition by
some body-mark of the child as belonging to the ‘dragon’s seed.’
To this we shall later’ return, but for the present it is the figure of
Herakles that concerns us. In the saga he, for some reason not
given, asks Creon a favour. He is no daimon; he is just one mortal
of royal race asking a boon of another. But art is more conserva-
tive. Herakles was the hero of Thebes and on the amphora his
heroon, marked by his name’, bulks proportionately large. He,
not Creon, for all Creon’s kingly sceptre, is the Hero to be
intreated. It is a strange instructive fusion and confusion of two
strata of thinking.
On the reverse of the Ruvo amphora in Fig. 103 we have the
same heroon. In it is seated the figure of a woman with mirror
and toilet-box after the fashion of an Attic grave-relief. She is
the correlative of the Herakles on the other side; she by dying
is heroized. By that time any individual dead man or woman
might be heroized. The two sides of the vase give us a strange
blend of daimon-cult, of saga, and of daily life.
1 Infra, p. 434.
5 Haemon, Antigone, Creon, and the local nymph Ismene are also all clearly
inscribed. The other figures are uncertain and unimportant.
378 From Daimon to Olympian (cH. ¥
The relief! in Fig. 104 enables us to give to the figure of
Herakles a local habitation and a
name. The inscription on the basis
of the little shrine is clear— Of
Herakles Alexikakos®.” As ‘ Defender
from Evil’ Herakles was worshipped
in the deme of Melite, the Pnyx
region of Athens. Again the hero
stands close to and overtopping his
little shrine. The shrine 15 sur-
mounted by a great krater on a
pedestal. Krater and pedestal to-
gether are about half the height of
the shrine itself. Whom is Herakles
to defend from evil? The worshipper
only approaches; an ephebos, like in
age and stature to Herakles himself,
save that he wears cloak and petasos.
Is there any link between the great
krater and the youth and Herakles
‘Defender from Evil’? It happens
Fic. 103. that, in very singular and instructive
fashion there is, and by a happy
chance we know it.
Photius* in a priceless gloss thus explains the word οἰνι[α]στήρια
‘wine-doings’:
A libation to Herakles performed by the epheboi before the cutting of their
hair.
Photius gives as his authority a play of Eupolis, the Demoz.
We should guess therefore that the custom was Athenian, but
1 A. Mitt. xxxvi1. 1911, Taf. 1.
2 For Herakles in Melite, see my Primitive Athens, pp.146—152. Dr Frickenhaus
holds that the triangular precinct with the wine-press, excavated by Dr Dorpfeld,
and by him explained as the old sanctuary of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes, is the ~
Herakleion in Melite. I followed Dr Dérpfeld, and this is not the place to re-examine
a question mainly topographical, but if Dr Frickenhaus’s most interesting theory
be true, and we have a Herakleion close to the old orchestra, it may, as Prof. Murray
suggested to me, throw an odd light on the Herakles disguise assumed by the
Dionysos of the Frogs. Both are Kouroi; both, as will immediately be seen, have
a wine-service. So the shift from one to another is not as great as it seems.
3 sv. οἱνι[[αἹστήρια: σπονδὴ τᾷ Ἡρακλεῖ ἐπιτελουμένη ὑπὸ τῶν ἐφήβων πρὶν
ἀποκείρασθαι. Ἐδπολις Δήμοις.
Ἔ ῃ
Pax | Herakles as Greatest Kouros 379
fortunately we know it for certain. Hesychius', explaining the
same word ovnisteria, says:
At Athens those who are about to become epheboi before the lock of
hair is cut bring to Herakles a measure of wine and when they have poured
libation they give to drink to those who come with them. And the libation is
called otnisteria.
Athenaeus? adds the authority of Pamphilos and says that
the great cup of wine offered was called an oinisteria.
Fic. 104.
To Herakles as to the Agathos Daimon at the Pithoigia* is
offered a libation of wine. To Herakles as to Hippolytos‘ is
offered the shorn lock, because he is the Greatest Kouros,
Herakulos ‘the young, dear hero. In the light of the offering
of the lock, the sign and the vehicle of the bloom of youth, some
- of the athla of Herakles which have seemed insignificant, not to say
ignoble, are instantly understood. He the Greatest Kouros swings
his klados, his branch from the tree of life, against a pygmy ker,
with shrunken body and distorted face. It is youth against
noisome disease and death. He the Greatest Kouros lifts his
1 s.v. οἰνιστήρια" ᾿Αθήνησι οἱ μέλλοντες ἐφηβεύειν πρὶν ἀποκείρασθαι τὸν μαλλὸν
εἰσφέρουσιν (eww MS.) Ἡρακλεῖ μέτρον οἴνου καὶ σπείσαντες τοῖς συνελθοῦσιν ἐπεδίδουν
πίνειν * ἡ δὲ σπονδὴ ἐκαλεῖτο οἰνιστήρια.
2 xt. 494 οἰνιστήρια " οἱ μέλλοντες ἀποκείρειν τὸν σκολλὸν ἔφηβοι φησὶ ἸΠάμφιλος
εἰσφέρουσι τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ μέγα ποτήριον οἴνου ὃ καλοῦσιν οἰνιστηρίαν καὶ σπείσαντες τοῖς
συνελθοῦσι διδόασι πίνειν.
3 Supra, p. 288. 4 Supra, p. 337.
|
380 From Daimon to Olympian [cH
klados to slay the shrivelled ugly figure leaning on his stick and
inscribed γῆρας, Old Age?.
We blossom like the leaves that come in spring,
What time the sun begins to flame and glow,
And in the brief span of youth’s gladdening
Nor good nor evil from the gods we know,
But always at the goal black Keres stand
Holding, one grievous Age, one Death within her hand2.
We understand also now why constant emphasis is laid on
the fact that Herakles was initiated. On a cinerary urn in the
Museo delle Terme*® Herakles leaning on his club stands in the
presence of Demeter and fondles the sacred snake that is twined
about her. The scholiast on the Plowtos+ of Aristophanes tells
us that the mysteries at Agrae were founded in order that
Herakles might be initiated. He is the prototype, the pro-
jection, of the initiate youth, he as Alexikakos defends the boy
in his rite de passage to and through the perils of manhood’.
Later the initiation into the tribe is viewed as initiation into a
‘mystery.’
And, finally, we see the reality and significance of what has
hitherto seemed a somewhat frigid conceit, the marriage of
Herakles and Hebe. In the Nekuia® Odysseus sees Herakles
in Hades and is perplexed, for orthodoxy demanded that Herakles
should be in Olympos feasting with his bride Hebe. Odysseus,
or rather the poet, betrays his embarrassment :
Next Herakles’ great strength I looked upon—
His shadow—for the man himself is gone
To join him with the gods immortal; there
He feasts and hath for bride Hebe the fair.
Herakles the Hphebos, the Kouros, is fitly wedded to Hebe,
1 See the two vases reproduced in Prolegomena, Figs. 17 and 18. When I
discussed them (op. cit. pp. 166, 174) I did not at all understand the significance of
Herakles as Greatest Kouros.
2 Mimnermos, 2.
3 Helbig Cat. 1168. Lovatelli, Ant. Mon. illustr. p. 25 ff. tav. 1.—1y. Repro-
duced Prolegomena, p. 547, Figs. 155, 156.
4 Ad v. 845.
5. In previously discussing the initiation of Herakles (Primitive Athens, 1906,
p. 147) I have, I think, over-emphasized the fact that he was always regarded as an
immigrant; foreign elements entered undoubtedly into his cult, but I now believe
him to be in the main home-grown. |
6 Hom. Od. x1. 601.
'
|
"πὶ
1x] Asklepios as Year-Daimon 381
maiden-youth in its first bloom, who is but the young form of
Hera Teleia!, the Kore.
Herakles, it is abundantly clear from his cornucopia, is Agathos
Daimon; but if so, we naturally ask where is his characteristic
snake? He has no kerykeion, no snake-twined staff; his body
never ends, like that of Cecrops, in a snake’s tail. Olympos did
not gladly suffer snakes, and Herakles, aiming at Olympos, wisely
sloughed off his snake-nature. While yet in his cradle he slew
the two snakes that attacked him and his twin brother Iphikles®.
We shall later* see the significance of this snake-slaying which
is common to many heroes and which culminates as it were in
the myth of the slaying of the Python of Apollo.
Another hero-daimon Saviour and Defender like Herakles was
less prudent ; he kept his snake and stayed outside Olympos, the
great Hero-Healer with the snake-twined staff, Asklepios.
ASKLEPIOS AND TELESPHOROS.
Asklepios is a god but no Olympian; his art-type is modelled
on that of Zeus; he is bearded, benign, venerable; he is, in fact,
the Zeus of daimon-heroes. He never becomes an Olympian
because he remains functional rather than personal, he is always
the Saviour-Healer.
On the snake-aspect of Asklepios it is needless to dwell, it is
manifest‘, When it was desired to introduce the cult of the god
from Epidauros’, a sacred snake was sent for whether to Rome or
Athens. In art as a rule the snake is twined about his staff, but
1 For Hebe as Ganymeda and her ancient cult at Phlius see Prolegomena
p. 325. For the relations of Hebe to Hera, and of both to Herakles, I may refer
forward to Mr Cook’s Zeus.
2 Herakles slaying the snakes appears on silver coins of Thebes and on red-
ficured vases. See Roscher, Lexicon, s.v. Herakles. The origin of the twin nature
of so many ‘heroes’ of Daktyl type has been explained by Dr Kaibel, op. cit., and
does not here concern us.
® Infra, pp. 429—436.
4 For details as to the snake-origin of Asklepios see my Prolegomena, Ὁ. 342.
Fick, in Bezzenberger’s Beitriige, 1901, p. 313, suggests that the difficult name
Asklepios is connected with σκαλαπάζω, to turn round and round. Hesychius
explains σκαλαπάζει as péuBerac—he coils or rolls round.
ΒΕ ΠΗ͂. vink. 8: 4, τι: 10. 3, m0. 23. 7.
882 From Daimon to Olympian [CH.
in the relief! in Fig. 105 the simple truth is patent: the god in
i! Saad! τὸς ἀδιτωνς Sa Ale
Fie. 105.
human form leans on his staff awaiting his worshippers, the holy
snake behind him is his equal in stature and in majesty. It was
in the precinct of Asklepios at Epidauros that the relief in Fig. 75
was found, dedicated to the Agathos Theos? with his cornucopia —
and sacred snake. i
But if the snake-aspect of Asklepios is evident and, I believe, |
now accepted, there are two other elements in his cult that show ©
him to be a fertility-daimon and that have hitherto not I think —
been rightly understood, the figure of Telesphoros and the snake-
twined omphalos. :
On many coins of Asia Minor of Roman date, and especially —
on those of Pergamos there appears in connection with Asklepios
1 Athens, Central Museum Cat. 1407. In previously publishing this relief
(Prolegomena, p. 342) I did not understand the relation of the snake to the Agathos
Daimon.
2 Supra, p. 285.
ΙΧ] Telesphoros as Year-Daimon 383
types the figure of a child or dwarf wearing a cloak and high
peaked hat. The three coins! in Fig. 106 are typical. In the
central coin of the three we have a sacred tree and round it is
coiled a snake. An emperor salutes the holy beast. Between
the snake and the emperor is the figure of the child Telesphoros.
To the right, on a coin of Pergamos, the same child occupies the
whole field; on the left, again a coin of Pergamos, he stands in a
shrine of the same type as the Herakleion in Fig. 102.
Fic. 106.
Numismatists have long ago found for the child daimon the
right name: he is Telesphoros?, but just because the needful clue
was missing, the name lacked its true meaning. Telesphoros, we
are told, was the ‘daimon of convalescence. Telesphoros is
wrapped in a cloak because invalids when convalescent wear
shawls. For his peaked hat as yet no such satisfactory explanation
has been found. The blunder is an odd one, for to pronounce the
adjective telesphoros is to call up the missing noun:
ἔνθα παρ᾽ αὐτῷ μεῖν λεσφό is e ἦν 3
é ρ Ὁ μεῖνα τελεσφόρον εἰς ἐνιαυτόν ἃ.
Asklepios, with his staff and venerable beard, is Old Father
Christmas, Telesphoros is the Happy New Year+. Under the
influence of patriarchy and Zeus the venerable type of the
Eniautos-daimon obtains, and, save in remote Asia Minor, the
Kouros form is forgotten. At Pergamos he lives on clad like the
infant Dioscuri> in pointed cap and hooded cloak.
1 Num. Chron. Serie 111. Vol. 11. Pl. 1.
2 Warwick Wroth, Telesphoros, J.H.S. 1882. See especially p. 297 for the
curious bronze statuette of Telesphoros with peaked hood. The upper part when
lifted off discloses a phallos, symbol of regeneration.
3 Hom. Od. xiv. 292. For ἐνιαυτός and τελεσφόρος see supra, p. 183.
4 For similar child-figures see swpra, pp. 187 and 188.
5 Cf. the children wearing peaked hats in votive terra cottas to the Anakes. See
my Myth. and Mon. Anc. Athens, p. 154, Fig. 32.
384 From Daimon to Olympian | coal
The snake-twined omphalos. We connect Asklepios with the |
snake but not with the omphalos, yet on the coin! of Pergamos in
Fig. 107 the association is clear. On the obverse we have the
head of the god, of the usual bearded benevolent Zeus-like type,
on the reverse a netted omphalos round which coils a great snake
with upreared head. The mention of the omphalos brings Delphi
instantly to our minds, but it must be clearly noted that the
omphalos is not at Delphi only. The omphalos is of Ge rather
than of Apollo, and wherever there is worship of Mother-Earth
there we may expect the omphalos. We find it at Eleusis,
clearly figured on the Ninnion pinax®, the centre of the whole
design. We meet it again at Phlus* Asklepios himself then
is a snake-daimon, twined round the omphalos of Ge. He is but
the daimon of the fertility of the Earth. As such he never
passes wholly to the upper air of the Olympians. He remains a
Saviour and a Healer, loved of the dream-oracle, very near to
earth and to man.
Herakles then and Asklepios, though as Saviours and Healers
they are greater than any Olympians, never became really
Olympianized. Their function is to make us feel how thin and
chill, for all their painted splendour, are these gods who live at
ease in the upper air, how much they lose when they shake off
mortality and their feet leave the earth who was their mother.
We now pass to the examination of a god who was perhaps
more Olympian than any Olympian, more serene, more radiantly
splendid, more aloof, more utterly in the fullest sense of the word
superior. By a fortunate chance we shall study him where his
cult and figure are brought into direct contrast and even conflict
1 Num. Chron. ται. vol. τι. Pl. 1, p. 23.
2 See Prolegomena, p. 559, Fig. 160. 3 Paus: πες 13: 7.
y
ΙΧ] Prologue to the Eumenides 385
with the old sanctities of Earth and her daimones at Delphi,
where
Phoibos, on Earth’s mid navel oer the world
Enthronéd, weaveth in eternal song
The sooth of all that is or is to be}.
THE SEQUENCE OF CULTS AT DELPHI FROM GAIA TO APOLLO.
It happens that, as to the cults of Delphi, we have a document
of quite singular interest, no less a thing than an official state-
ment from the mouth of the local priestess of the various
divinities worshipped at Delphi, and—a matter of supreme
importance—the traditional order of their succession. Delphi
was the acknowledged religious centre of Greece, and nowhere
else have we anything at all comparable in definiteness to this
statement. Thrice familiar though the passage is, it has not
I think been quite fully understood. It must therefore be
examined somewhat in detail. The prologue of the Hwmenides
spoken by the priestess of Apollo opens thus:
First in my prayer before all other gods
I call on Earth, primaeval prophetess.
Next Themis on her mother’s mantic throne
Sat, so men say. Third by unforced consent
Another Titan, daughter too of earth,
Phoibe possessed it. She for birthday gift
Gave it to Phoibos, and he took her name.
With divination Zeus inspired his soul,
And stablished him as seer, the fourth in time,
But Loxias speaks the mind of Zeus his sire”.
Such are the opening words of the prologue to the Humenides,
and they are more truly of prologue® character than perhaps at
first appears. They set forth or rather conceal the real agon of
1 Eur. Jon, 5.
2 Asch. Eum. 1—8 and 17—19
IIpGrov μὲν εὐχῇ τῆδε πρεσβεύω θεῶν
τὴν πρωτόμαντιν Τιαῖαν" ἐκ δὲ τῆς Θέμιν,
ἣ δὴ τὸ μητρὸς δευτέρα τόδ᾽ ἕζετο
μαντεῖον, ὡς λόγος Tis: ἐν δὲ τῷ τρίτῳ
λάχει θελούσης οὐδὲ πρὸς βίαν τινός,
Τιτανὶς ἄλλη παῖς χθονὸς καθέζετο
Φοίβη: δίδωσιν δ᾽ ἣ γενέθλιον δόσιν
Φοίβῳ: τὸ Φοίβης δ᾽ ὄνομ᾽ ἔχει παρώνυμον.
τέχνης δέ νιν Leds ἔνθεον κτίσας φρένα,
ἵζει τέταρτον τόνδε μάντιν ἐν χρόνοις
Διὸς προφήτης δ᾽ ἐστὶ Λοξίας πατρός.
5. For function of Prologue see Prof. Murray, supra, p. 359.
H. 25
386 From Daimon to Olympian [CH.
the play, the conflict between the new order and the old, the
daimones of Earth, the Erinyes, and the theoi of Olympos, Apollo
and his father Zeus, and further necessarily and inherently the
conflict of the two social orders of which these daimones and
theoi are in part the projections—matriarchy or, as it is better
called, the matrilinear system and patriarchy. The conflict
between the daimones of Earth and the Olympian Apollo will
be discussed in the present chapter; the conflict of the two
social orders as reflected in mythology must be reserved for
the next.
The statement of Aischylus is necessarily somewhat ex parte.
He is a monotheist and moreover he is ‘all for the Father. In
dealing with the religion of Delphi he is confronted with the
awkward fact that Zeus at Delphi had no official cult, the oracle
was in the hands of Apollo. Moreover that oracle was actually
delivered by a woman seated over a cleft in the Earth and
inspired not only by the laurel she chewed but by mephitic
vapours that rose from the earth. In all this Zeus was—nowhere.
Yet the supremacy of Zeus was to Aischylus the keystone of
his beautiful faith in a right that was beyond might, a thing
to be preserved even in the face of seeming facts. A lesser soul
would have turned obscurantist, would have juggled with facts;
a more conventional mind would have accepted orthodox tradition
4
and claimed that Apollo conquered by force. That to Aschylus ἡ
was no conquest at all. The solution he gives us in the prologue
is utterly Aischylean and in a sense strangely modern. There
has been not a fight but a development’, not even, as in the agon
of the play, a reconciliation and sudden conversion, but a gradual
emergence and epiphany of godhead from strength to strength,
from Gaia to Zeus. And, an interesting thing, A‘schylus, as will
shortly appear, was right. He gives us by the mouth of his
priestess a sequence of cults which not only existed at Delphi
1 The same notion of development comes out in the Prometheus, as has been
well observed by Miss Janet Case (Class. Rev. 1902, p. 195). It has not, I think,
been recognized in the Supplices, but Prof. Murray points out to me that the key-
note of the play is the transition from violence to persuasion. Ares, who is βλάβη
—violence and hurt personified—must give way to Aphrodite as Peitho. So only
can the Danaides, fertility-nymphs like the Semnae, bring peace and prosperity to
the barren land. See also for the same idea in the story of lo, Rise of the Greek
Epic”, p. 291.
1x] Gaia and Themis 387
but is found as a regular religious development over a great
part of the civilized world.
The chronological sequence at Delphi was as follows:
(1) Gaia,
(2) Themis,
(3) Phoibe,
(4) Phoibos.
Zeus is not given as fifth, he is the crown and climax of all.
Phoibos reigns, fourth in time but only as vice-gerent, as “Διὸς
προφήτης, not of course prophet in our sense, but utterer, exponent
of his father’s will’.
Gaia is transparent. She stands for Earth and the powers of
the Earth; her sanctuary, the omphalos, will have to be considered
in detail later. Themis is a conception so dominant, so integral
to religion that her full consideration is reserved for our final
chapter. In the figure of Themis, if we are right, we have
the utterance, the projection and personification, of the religious
principle itself. She will not be considered now because she is
not really a link in the chain. Rather she is a figure who
shadows and attends each of the others. She is the daughter
and bye-form of Gaia. She delivers oracles, θέμιστες, ordinances,
rather than prophecies in our sense, for both Phoibe and Phoibos;
she even ultimately ascends to high heaven and becomes the
counsellor and wedded wife of Zeus himself. This will I hope be
made clear in the final chapter; for the present the reader is
asked to substitute provisionally for the order:
(1) Gaia, (1) Gaia and Themis,
(2) Themis, this shortened succession (2) Phoibe and Themis,
(3) Phoibe, (3) Phoibos and Themis.
(4) Phoibos,
Gaia then is the Earth and Phoibos is of course Phoibos-
Apollo, The reason of his double title will appear later. But
who is Phoibe? Phoibos and Phoibe are seen, from the practical
identity of name, to be beings of the same order, beings of
brightness and purity”. It is odd that their real nature should
have escaped commentators. Once stated it is simple and so
1 See Dr Verrall’s Eumenides, note to vv. 17—19; and for the prologue generally,
his Introduction, p. xii.
2 Cf. φοιβονομεῖσθαι to live in ritual purity ; see Prolegemena, Ὁ. 894,
25—2
888 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
obvious. It has only lain so long concealed because of a dominant
anthropomorphism. Phoebus is still to-day the Sun’.
Hark, hark, the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phoebus ’gins arise.
And if Phoibos be the Sun, who is Phoibe but the Moon ?
fschylus gives no hint of the Moon nature of Phoibe. To
him and to his commentators she seems simply a Titaness, one
of the old order used as a bridge between Gaia and Phoibos-
Apollo. But Latin poets, unconfused by anthropomorphism, never
forget. Vergil? writes
Iamque dies caelo concesserat: almaque curru
Noctivago Phoebe medium pulsabat Olympum,
and again Ovid* with an eye on the mantic Apollo,
Auguribus Phoebus, Phoebe venantibus adsit.
But we are not left to Latin poets for evidence. We have
the direct statement of Plutarch+—no better authority could be
desired—that, according to Orphic tradition, the oracle at Delphi
was held by Night and the Moon. This point is important for
our sequence and must be clearly established. The statement
occurs in the curious account given of one Thespesios*—an
oddly magical name—and his spiritual adventures in the under-
world.
Thespesios and his guide arrive at a certain place—the topo-
graphy is necessarily vague, where three daimones are seated at
the angles of a triangle, and then
The guide of the soul of Thespesios told him that Orpheus got as far as
here, when he went to fetch the soul of his wife, and, from not clearly
remembering, he published to mortals a false report that the oracle at Delphi
was shared by Apollo and Night, whereas in no respect was there community
between Night and Apollo. ‘But this oracle,’ said the guide, ‘is held in
common by Night and the Moon, not issuing out of the earth at any one
place, nor having one particular seat, but it wanders everywhere among men
in dreams and visions. Hence dreams receive and spread abroad a blend, as
you see, of what is simple and true with what is complex and misleading.’
‘But the oracle,’ he continued, ‘of Apollo you cannot see clearly. For the
1 The sense in which Phoibos may be said to ‘be’ the Sun will be explained
later (p. 392). To avoid misunderstanding it may be stated in advance that
equivalence is not meant. Phoibos stands for the Sun-aspect of Apollo; and
Apollo has other aspects. Hence Phoibos is not the equivalent of Helios, still less
is Apollo. The same applies to Phoibe, Artemis and the Moon.
2 Ain. x. 215. > Amores, 1. 2. 51.
4 De ser. num. vindict. xxi.
5 His real name was Aridaeus. Thespesios was a new name given him. The
whole account reads strongly like the account of an initiation ceremony.
ΙΧ] Moon-oracle αὐ Delphi 389
earthiness of the soul will not relax nor permit it to soar upwards but keeps
it down tight, held by the body.’ Thereon leading him up to it, the guide
sought to show Thespesios the light from the tripod which as he said shone
through the bosom of Themis on to Parnassos. But much desiring to see it
he could not for its brightness, but as he went by he heard the shrill voice
of a woman uttering in verse, both other things and, as it seemed, the day of
Thespesios’ death. And the daimon said that that was the voice of the Sibyl who
sang of what was to be as she was borne round in the face of the moon. And
though he desired to hear more he was pushed away in the contrary direction
by the swirl of the moon as though in a whirlpool, so that he only heard
distinctly a little.
The story of Thespesios is instructive. It reflects theological
embarrassment. Local primitive tradition knew that the oracle
at Delphi was of Earth and Night. Like the oracles of Amphia-
raos, of Asklepios, and of the Panagia of Tenos to-day, it was
a dream-oracle, that came to you while sleeping on holy ground.
The suppliants were probably like the Selloi at Dodona ῦ
Ρ a ¥ : χαμαιευναιύ;
Couchers-on-the-ground. But an overdone orthodoxy demanded
that about Apollo there should be nothing ‘earthy’ and no deed
or dream of darkness. A bridge, as with Aischylus, was built
by way of Phoibe, who is always half of earth and half of heaven.
To save the face of the resplendent Sun-God the Sibyl is set in
the Face of the Moon!.
Such mild obscurantism was dear to the gentle Plutarch but
it would scarcely have availed but for a clear tradition of the
Moon’s sometime dominance at Delphi. And it would seem at
Delos also. A bronze coin of Athens shows us in the field
a copy of the cultus statue of Apollo made by Tektaios and
Angelion for the sanctuary at Delos. Apollo holds on his out-
stretched hand three figures whom we may call Moirae, Horae,
Charites, as we will*. They are, like all these triple figures,
moon-phases, for, as we remember, according to Orpheus‘ ‘the
Motrae are the divisions (τὰ μέρη) of the Moon*®’ On Delos
dwelt Artemis and Apollo, in whom the Persians recognized their
own Sun and Moon. Apollo as the Sun, on Delos as at Delphi,
1 Plut. loc. cit. ...€v τῷ προσώπῳ τῆς σελήνης περιφερομένην. Plutarch says (de
defect. orac. x111.) that some called the moon an ἄστρον γεῶδες, others ὀλυμπίαν γῆν,
so that she was well adapted as a transition from earth to heaven.
2 Paus. 1x. 35. 3.
3 Pausanias, loc. cit., says the Apollo of Delos held Charites in his left hand.
See the Athenian coin with Apollo and Charites on p. 444, For the shift between
Moirae, Horae and Charites, see supra, pp. 189—192.
4 Supra, p. 189, note 4.
> Hence they are children of Night, as in the Orphic Hymn to the Moirae,
which begins Μοῖραι ἀπειρέσιοι Νυκτὸς φίλα τέκνα μελαίνης.
390 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH..
succeeded to, took over, a service of the Moon. We no longer
wonder why Thespesios at the place of the oracle found ‘three
daimones seated in triangular pattern’, nor why the light and
Fate of the Moon ‘shone through the bosom of Themis on to
Parnassos®.’
We have dwelt on the moon-character of Phoibe because, as
in the sequence of cults enumerated by the priestess it has not
been recognized, some insistence was needed. This sequence is
now clearly before us, Earth, Moon, Sun. To our delight, though
it should not be to our surprise, the same sequence that we met
at Olympia* we now meet at Delphi, and this sequence it would
appear is, for agricultural peoples, world-wide.
For long, perhaps too long‘, scholars have reacted against
sun-mythology and moon-mythology. The reaction was of course
brought about by the learned absurdities perpetrated in the name
of these two great lights. The old error of Naturism® was to
suppose that sun or moon or dawn or wind exhausted the content
of a god. The new truth, born of psychology and sociology, is to
recognize that, into the content of every man’s experience and
hence of every man’s divinities, enter elements drawn not only
from earth but from sun and moon.
Mr Payne, in his remarkable, and to me most illuminating,
History of the New World, called America’, was, I believe, the first
to call attention to this sequence of the gods. His testimony is
specially valuable as arising out of a study of the religious facts
of the New World, not the Old. After a long and interesting
account of the great Earth Goddess of Mexico, he thus continues :
Having thus surveyed the principal objects of worship belonging to the
region of earth we pass on to consider next those belonging to the upper air
1 Plut. loc. cit. ἕωρα δὲ τρεῖς δαίμονας ὁμοῦ καθημένους ἐν σχήματι τριγώνου. Weare
reminded of Hekate and the crossways.
2 Plut. loc. cit. 3 Supra, p. 237.
4 T have long protested against the excesses of this reaction. See Athenaeum
(No. 4301), April 2, 1910, p. 404, in which I tried to indicate that each god, ‘each
and every divine name, is but as it were a focus round which conceptions cluster
from heaven above as well as earth below.’ The sequence of these theological
conceptions I owe to Mr Payne, and their special relation to the calendar largely
to Mr Cornford.
5 The errors of the old Naturism have been admirably exposed by Prof. Durkheim
in his Examen critique des systémes classiques sur les origines de la pensée religieuse,
2nd article in Revue Philosophique, 1909, p. 142. 6 Vol. 1. p. 474.
1Χ] Sequence of Earth, Metarsia and Meteora 391
or firmament; and lastly the heavenly bodics. If our conclusions are correct,
the cultivator has universally followed the same order in his theological
speculations. Beginning with the gods of the earth, he has advanced to the
atmospheric powers or gods of the weather, powers which are at first conceived
as dwelling on particular mountains, but are ultimately disengaged from the
earth, and formed into a distinct class. He next infers that these important
powers are subject to powers higher still, powers which regulate the winds
and the rains, compelling them to recur at regular intervals, and through
them exercising an ultimate control over the production of food and whatever
else affects human life and fortune on earth. These powers are the sun, the
moon and the stars. When this point has been reached the cycle is complete.
No further progress, none at least on the old lines, is possible.
Mr Payne carefully guards his statement against all excess :
When it is said that man has begun by worshipping the terrestrial
powers and has advanced successively to the worship of the atmospheric and
the celestial, it is by no means meant that he does not, in the very earliest
stages of advancement, recognize the wind and the rain, the sun and the
moon, as objects exercising influence over his fortunes; for such objects
naturally awaken even in the savage mind the instincts of fear and veneration.
What is meant is that the atmospheric and stellar powers take a prominent
place in the incorporated family of men and gods, bound together by the
covenant of sacrifice at a later period than the gods of the earth. The
recognition of these powers as benevolent ones belongs to the stage of
artificial food-production.
As to the sequence moon and sun rather than sun and moon
and the cause of this sequence Mr Payne is equally explicit!:
The worship of the moon naturally precedes that of the sun, because a
connection is traced between the lunar phenomena and the food-supply in an
earlier stage than that in which a connection is traced between the food-supply
and the solar phenomena. The different seasons of the year bring with them
different supplies of natural force....The approach and duration of the periods
in which these different supplies are provided is measured by the successive
re-appearances and gradual changes of the moon. Hence apparently the savage
naturally regards the moon as the cause of these successive supplies of food.
To all the beneficent aspects and relations of the moon as
insisted on by all authorities we may add perhaps, in the making
of man’s early religion, some touch of spectral terror of the remote
dull staring thing:
Setebos, Setebos, Setebos,
Thinketh he dwelleth in the cold of the moon.
In Mr Payne’s sequence one step on the ladder from earth to
heaven is what may be called the ‘weather. He adopts in fact
without knowing it a distinction at whick the Stoic philosophers
arrived and which is very convenient for religion, the distinction
1 Op. cit. τ. p. 493.
2 In some parts of the world the successive moons or months are called by a
name of the plants that appear in them.
392 From Daimon to Olympian [cH
between τὰ μετάρσια and τὰ μετέωρα. The Stoic writer Achilles},
going back probably to Poseidonios, writes thus:
Ta μετέωρα are distinguished from τὰ μετάρσια thus: τὰ μετέωρα are the
things in heaven and the ether, as e.g. the sun and the other heavenly bodies
and ouranos and ether: τὰ perdpova are the things between the air and the
earth, such as winds.
The gist of the distinction lies in the difference between aer
and aither; ta μετέωρα are the holy blaze of atther which 15
uppermost, τὰ petapova, thunder, rain, clouds, wind, are of the
damp cold aer, the lower region of earthy mist. Of all the
heavenly bodies the moon with her dew and mists is most akin
to Ta μετάρσια.
From the sequence of Alschylus ta μετάρσια are missing.
He was probably only half conscious of the moon and sun elements
in Phoibe and Phoibos, and of the disorderly phenomena of the
weather as sanctities he took no account. In our previous chapters
on the Yhunder-Rites and on Bird-Magic we have seen how
early and large a place τὰ μετάρσια held in Greek religion, but
Ta μετάρσια were among the elements that Olympian religion
tried, though somewhat vainly, to discard. Even however at
Delphi traces remain, for we find the weather birds perching at
either side of the omphalos of Gaia, and Zeus is obliged to
acknowledge them as his eagles.
In the light then of comparative religion Aischylus is seen
to be right. At Delphi, as elsewhere, broadly speaking man’s
reactions and hence his interests or emotions focus first on earth
as a source of food, then successively on the moon and sun as
fertilizers and regents of the season. In every rite and every
mythological figure these elements must be reckoned with. In
analysing a god we must look ‘for traits from earth, from
‘weather, from moon, from sun. The earth stage will show him
as a snake or a bull or a tree or in human form as Megistos
Kouros or Thallophoros. The moon? will give him horns afresh,
1 περὶ cpatpas. The fragment is printed in the Uranologie of Petavius, Paris,
1680. My quotation is borrowed from O. Gilbert’s valuable work, Die Meteorologischen
Theorien d. Gr. Altertums, 1907, p. 8.
2 Moon-elements are found in nearly all goddesses and many heroines: in
Athena, Artemis, Hekate, Persephone, Bendis; in Antiope, Europa, Pasiphaé,
Auge, and a host of others. Sun-elements in Odysseus, Bellerophon, Perseus,
Talos, Ixion, Phaethon. Sun and moon symbols are the bull, the golden dog, the
Golden Fleece, the Golden Lamb, etc., etc. In fact, if our contention be true,
there is scarcely any mythological figure that does not contain sun and moon
elements, and scarcely any of which the content is exhausted by sun and moon.
Ix] The Slaying of the Python 393
the sun will lend him a wheel or a chariot or a golden cup.
Such a view is not sun-mythology or moon-mythology, it is
common human psychology. What a man attends to, feels about,
provided it be socially enforced and perpetuated, that is his
religion, thence are his gods.
But what Aischylus envisaged as a divine sequence, and what
modern psychology and anthropology know to be a necessary
development, looked quite otherwise to the popular mind. A
gradual evolution seen from beginning and end only is apt to be
conceived as a fight between the two poles. So it was at Delphi.
The natural sequence of cults from Gaia to Apollo was seen by
the man in the street as a fight between Earth and the Sun,
between Darkness and Light, between the dream-oracle and the
truth of heaven. All this for ritual reasons that will appear later
crystallized in the form of a myth, the slaying of the Python by
Apollo.
Aischylus has given us the peaceful evolution. The fight,
though probably a fiction, is of great importance to us because it
helps us to realize one cardinal factor in the making of an
Olympian. Euripides! gives us the fight in two traditional forms :
first the slaying of the snake, and second the dream-oracle of
Earth and Night as against Phoibos the Sun. The chorus of
captive maidens, handmaidens to Iphigeneia, think with longing
of Delos and tell of Apollo’s birth there and his passing to
Delphi. Euripides as was natural in an Athenian, accepts the
version that Apollo came from Delos, not from Crete.
Oh fair the fruits of Leto blow ; Strophe.
A Virgin, one, with joyous bow,
And one a Lord of flashing locks,
/ Wise in the harp, Apollo:
She bore them amid Delian rocks,
Hid in a fruited hollow.
But forth she fared from that low reef,
Sea-cradle of her joy and grief,
A crag she knew more near the skies
And lit with wilder water,
That leaps with joy of Dionyse:
There brought she son and daughter.
1 T, in T. 1235.
394 From Daimon to Olympian [πὲ
Then comes the slaying of the snake, as in some way ΠΘΟΘΒΒΔΙῪ ----
Euripides does not say why—if Apollo is to come to his own.
The snake, the guardian of the old Earth oracle, is killed, but the
general apparatus of the cult, the cleft in the earth, the tripod
and the omphalos, is kept.
And there, behold, an ancient Snake, Strophe 1245.
Wine-eyed, bronze-gleaming, in the brake
Of deep-leaved laurel, ruled the dell,
Sent by old Earth from under
Strange caves to guard her oracle,
A thing of fear and wonder.
Thou, Phoebus, still a new-born thing,
Meet in thy mother’s arms to lie,
Didst kill the Snake, and crown thee King
In Pytho’s land of prophecy ;
Thine was the tripod and the chair
Of golden truth; and throned there,
Hard by the streams of Castaly,
Beneath the untrodden portal
Of Earth’s mid-stone there flows from thee
Wisdom for all things mortal.
Phoibos as a new-born child slays the snake. We are reminded
inevitably of the young New Year, of Telesphoros; we remember
also that the hero-kings of Athens were thought of as snakes.
But these questions must wait. For the death of her snake and
the banishment of Themis which goes with it, Earth takes revenge,
she sends up dream-oracles.
He slew the Snake; he cast, men say, Antistrophe.
Themis, the child of Earth, away
From Pytho and her hallowed stream ;
Then Earth, in dark derision,
Brought forth the Peoples of the Dream
And all the tribes of Vision.
And men besought them; and from deep
Confuséd underworlds of sleep
They showed blind things that erst had been
And are, and yet shall follow.
So did avenge that old Earth Queen
Her child’s wrong on Apollo.
Clearly the oracle abolished by Apollo, the particular Themis
banished by the god, was just the sort that Orpheus attributed
to Delphi and the existence of which at Delphi was denied by
the orthodox guide of Thespesios'; it was of Earth and Night; like
that of Asklepios it was of dream and snakes. The chorus puts
1 Supra, p. 388.
1x] The Sun-God as Babe 395
it as though this kind of oracle was started by Earth in revenge
to ‘spoil the trade of Delphi?’ It was of course there from the
beginning, and the snake is its representative.
Then swiftly flew that conquering one
To Zeus on high and round the throne
Twining a small indignant hand,
Praved him to send redeeming
To Pytho, from that troublous band
Sprung from the darks of dreaming.
Zeus laughed to see the babe, I trow,
So swift to claim his golden rite;
He laughed and bowed his head, in vow
To still those voices of the night.
And so from out the eyes of men
That dark dream-truth was lost again;
And Phoebus, thronéd where the throng
Prays at the golden portal,
Again doth shed in sunlit song?
Hope unto all things mortal.
It is a strange hymn, its gods concerned with hope and
petty jealousy. It reflects the Delphi of the day which stood for
greed and lying and time-serving and obscurantism. But because .
Euripides is poet more even than moralist, it is redeemed and
made beautiful by the background in which move the two ancient
protagonists Night and Day. Still, Euripides the mystic did not,
could not, wholly love Apollo, who stood more and more for clear
light and truth and reason and order and symmetry and the
harmony of the heavenly bodies and all the supposed Greek
virtues. He knew of a god whose rites and whose beauty were
of darkness; when Pentheus asks Dionysos:
How is thy worship held, by night or day ?
the god makes answer:
Most often night: ‘tis a majestic thing
The darkness’.
Literary tradition then is unanimous as to the sequence of
cults from Gaia to Apollo. Aischylus explains it as a peaceful
and orderly development, Euripides as a fight. We have now to
1 See Prof. Murray, Iphigeneia in Tauris, p. 103.
4°y. 1279 ἀπὸ δ᾽ ἀλαθοσύναν νυκτωπὸν ἐξεῖλεν βροτῶν,
καὶ τιμὰς πάλιν θῆκε Λοξίᾳ,
πολυάνορι δ᾽ ἐν ξενόεντι θρόνῳ θάρση βροτοῖς
θεσφάτων ἀοιδαῖς.
There is no ‘sunlit’ in the original, but Prof. Murray divines that it is the young
Sun-God who climbs to his father’s throne.
3 Hur. Bacch. 485.
396 From Daimon to Olympian he
see what light is thrown on the situation and on the character |
of the ultimately dominant Olympian by an examination of the
actual ritual at Delphi and the evidence of monuments. We
begin with the cultus of Gaia.
Of a ritual of Gaia under that name we have, it must be
clearly understood at the outset, no evidence. But of her chief
sanctity, the omphalos, we know much, and it is through our
understanding of the omphalos that we shall come to realize the
relation between Earth and Apollo and their ultimate hostility, as
figured in the slaying of the Python. It is of the first importance
to be clear about the omphalos, but it is not from Aischylus that
we shall learn its real nature, though it is only when that nature
is understood that we can feel the full beauty and reality of the
agon in his Humenides.
THE OMPHALOS.
By the time of Aschylus the omphalos was regarded as simply
a holy Stone which, by pious consent, was held to be the centre
of the earth; it was a fetich-thing, supremely sacred, to which the
.suppliant clings. This holy Stone is naturally in the imnermost
shrine. Thither, when the priestess! has ended her ordering and
invocation of the Delphian divinities, she goes, and there she finds
Orestes, clinging to the omphalos, horribly polluting its sanctity
by his touch. The scene, mutatis mutandis, is figured on many
vase-paintings, one of which is given in Fig. 1085, It brings the
conical holy Stone clearly before us; it is covered with fillets,
a refuge for the suppliant. Its sanctity is clearly established,
but what was the cause of this sanctity? In a word what did
the omphalos really stand for, really mean ?
The name omplalos is little or no help. Like its correlative
umbilicus it came to mean navel, but originally it only meant any
sort of boss or thing that bulged, the boss of a shield or a phiale,
an island that stands up on the ‘nombril’ of the sea*. Fortunately
1 Asch. Eum. 39
ἐγὼ μὲν ἕρπω πρὸς πολυστεφῆ μυχόν᾽"
ὁρῶ δ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ὀμφαλῴ μὲν ἄνδρα θεομυσῆ,
ἕδραν ἔχοντα προστρόπαιον.
2 O. Jahn, Vasenbilder, Orestes in Delphi, 1839, Taf.1. The vase was formerly
in the Lamberti collection.
8. Later it may have been connected with ὀμφή, as the place of sacred utterance.
1Χ] The Omphalos at Delphi 397
we are not left to philology. We know what an omphalos actually
was, and we have traditions as to what it was believed to be,
These traditions seem at first to contradict the monumental
Fic. 108.
evidence, but, as we shall see immediately, both tradition and
monumental facts, are equally true and equally essential to any
right understanding. We begin with the monumental facts.
Few, Pausanias? tells us, ever entered the adyton ; few therefore
saw the real omphalos. Pausanias himself does not seem to have
seen it, for, in enumerating the contents of the adyton, he makes
no mention of the omphalos. But, outside the temple near the
altar of the Chians and the famous stand of the krater of Alyattes,
king of Lydia, there was another omphalos which Pausanias? did
see and thus describes :
What the people of Delphi call the omphalos is made of white stone and
is said by them to be at the centre of the whole earth, and Pindar in one of
his odes agrees with this.
Pausanias it would seem, before he entered the temple, saw
an omphalos and ὦ propos of it gives the current tradition about
the omphalos which he did not see. On the vase-painting® in
Fig. 109 which represents the slaying of Neoptolemos, an egg-
shaped omphalos is seen in the open air under a palm tree.
1 x, 24. 5.
2 x. 16.2 τὸν δὲ ὑπὸ Δελφῶν καλούμενον ὀμφαλόν, λίθου πεποιημένον» λευκοῦ τοῦτο
εἶναι τὸ ἐν μέσῳ γῆς πάσης κ.τ.λ.
3 Annali ἃ. Inst. 1868, Τὰν. d’ Agg. E.
898 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
Fic, 109.
just on the very spot where Pausanias sawit, and is shown in Fig. 110.
As he described it, it is not a stone but ‘made of white stone.” It
Fie. 110.
is covered with an agrenon, a net o
fillets copied here in stone. We have
then simply a holy Stone, and the
evidence of Pausanias and the vases
is confirmed. The discovery of an
actual omphalos, we are told, is ‘ ex-
ceedingly interesting, but we are not
one jot better off than we were as to
its meaning, The old question faces
us. What is the reason of its
sanctity ?
We turn to literary tradition and
literary tradition comes as a salutary
shock. It is to Varro we owe a
tradition as to the omphalos that is
of capital importance. Epimenides
1 By kind permission of the Director of the Ecole Francaise I was allowed to
publish it in the Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 1900, p. 254, Fig. 2. Bu
as the title of my article—Aegis-Agrenon—shows, its object was only to discuss the
decoration. I had previously (Delphika, J. H. S. xix. 1899, p. 225) discussed the
value of the omphalos itself, and to this article I must refer for many details. A
number of illustrations of omphaloi will be found in Prof. Middleton’s article i
J. H. S. 1888, p. 296 ff. By far the best account of the omphalos known to me i
that by Dr G. Karo in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecque
et Romaines, s.v. omphalos.
By the kindness of Prof. Svoronos I have just receiv
his monograph on οἱ ὀμφαλοὶ τῶν Πυθίων, but not in time to utilize his researches.
ΙΧ] Omphalos as Grave-mound 399
of Phaistos—having an omphalos of his own in Crete, though
he did not assign this as the reason—impiously denied that the
omphalos at Delphi was the centre of the earth’. Varro? agrees
with him, and not only, he says, is the omphalos at Delphi not
the centre of the earth but the human navel is not the centre
of the human body. He then goes on to say that
What the Greeks call the omphalos is something at the side of the temple
_ at Delphi, of the shape of a thesawrus, and they say it is the tumulus of Python.
The omphalos then according to literary tradition is not a fetich-
stone but a grave-mound, and moreover, for this is cardinal, it is
not a grave-mound commemorating a particular dead man, it is
the grave-mound of a sacred snake, the sacred snake of Delphi.
The testimony of Varro does not stand alone, Hesychios* in
explaining the words Τοξίου Bovvos, ‘ Archer’s Mound,’ says:
It is of Apollo in Sikyon, but according to a better tradition it is the
place in Delphi called WVape (ravine). For there the snake was shot down.
And the omphalos of Earth is the tomb (τάφος) of the Python.
Monumental fact then says that the omphalos is a holy Stone,
tradition says it is the grave of a daimon-snake. Which is right ?
Happily both. The question once fairly stated almost answers
itself. A holy Stone is not a grave, but a holy Stone may stand
upon a grave, and such a complex of tomb and tombstone is the
omphalos.
Tomb and tombstone, grave-mound and stele are known to us,
of course, from Homer. When Sarpedon was carried to the rich
land of wide Lycia his kinsmen and clansmen buried him
With mound and stele—such are dead men’s dues’,
Grave-mounds are found all over the world. They are, when
the ground is soft, the simplest form of sepulture; you dig a hole,
heap a mound, plant a stone or memorial pillar to mark the spot.
You may have the mound without the stone, or the stone without
the mound, but for a complete conspicuous tomb you want both.
1 Plut. de defect. orac.1. The myth here related is purely aetiological to account
for the birds on the omphalos. It does not here concern us.
2 De ling. Lat. vit. 17 Praeterea si quod medium id est umbilicus, ut pilae, terrae,
non Delphi medium. Sed terrae medium non hoc sed quod yocant Delphis in
aede ad latus est quiddam ut thesauri specie, quod Graeci vocant ὀμφαλόν, quem
Pythonos aiunt tumulum.
3 s.v. Τοξίου βουνός.
4 Tl. xvi. 675 τύμβῳ τε στήλῃ τε" TO γὰρ γέρας ἐστὶ θανόντων.
400 From Daimon to Olympian [CH.
Is this then all? Is the omphalos simply the heaped-up grave —
of a local hero marked by a commemorative pillar? Are we driven —
at last by facts, back to common-sense and Kuhemerism? ἃ
thousand times ‘No.’ The omphalos is a grave compounded of —
mound and stele; yet the grave contains no dead man but ἃ
daimon-snake ; the stele is, as we shall immediately see, a thing ©
not commemorative but magical.
Varro tells us the omphalos is like in shape to a thesaurus or
treasury. It is now recognized that the ‘treasury’ of which Varro
is speaking is not, as was formerly supposed, a beehive tomb, ἃ
thing like the ‘Treasury’ of Atreus, but merely a money-box of
the beehive tomb shape’. Two of these are reproduced in Fig. —
111 a@andb. Their shape is that of a blunt cone, and their likeness
Fie. 111.
to the omphalos is clear. On the one (a) just below the hole for
the money, is a shrine with Hermes holding purse and kerykeion ;
near him his cock. On the other (b) stands:a figure of Fortuna
or Agathe Tyche with cornucopia and rudder. They are there, as
the god and goddess of money, but it will not be forgotten? that
in early days they were daimones of the fertility of the earth.
1 H. Graeven, Die thinerne Sparbiichse in Altertum in Jahrbuch d. Inst. xvi.
1901, p. 160, Figs. 27, 29. Specimen (a) was formerly in the Castellani collection ;
(b) is in the Cabinet de médailles of the Bibliothéque Nationale, No. 5230.
2 pp. 284 and 296.
1x | Omphalos and Beehive-Tomb 401
But, though Varro is probably only thinking of money-boxes,
these money-boxes reflect the shape and to some extent the
function of other and earlier ‘Treasuries, the familiar beehive
tombs. Pausanias! thus describes the ‘Treasury’ of Minyas, to
him the great wonder of the world:
It is made of stone; its shape is round, rising up to a rather blunt top,
and they say that the topmost stone is the keystone of the whole building.
We are reminded of the omphalos-form, and it seems others
saw the analogy too, for Aristotle? tells us that
What are called omphaloi are the midmost stones in vaulted buildings.
A beehive tomb must of necessity have a central keystone, but
the ‘Treasuries’ which abound in Greece proper have no keystone
that is in any way like an omphalos. Fora real and instantly con-
vincing analogy we must go to Asia Minor. In Fig. 112 we have
‘
τὶ
Ne =-J
weak
vf ‘
(so,
YY 7 Yj; 7 75
Ρ 4) MY fh fh fy “ “ Uff
WM M fle hy 7 YM WY fy MMMM by, 7»
4
Fre. 112.
a view of the so-called ‘Tomb of Tantalos’ on Mt. Sipylos, before
it was excavated’, The dotted lines indicate of course a restoration
1 ix. 58. 8... σχῆμα δὲ περιφερές ἐστιν αὐτῷ, κορυφὴ δὲ οὐκ ἐς ἄγαν ὀξὺ avnyuern...
τῶν δὲ ἀνωτάτω τῶν λίθων φασὶν ἁρμονίαν παντὶ εἶναι τῷ οἰκοδομήματι.
2 De mund. vi. 28 οἱ ὀμφαλοὶ δὲ λεγόμενοι οἱ ἐν ταῖς ψαλίσι λίθοι, οἱ μέσοι κείμενοι.
3 Texier, Description de V’Asie Mineure, vol. τι. pp. 253, 254, Plate cxxx.,
Fig. 14. For evidence as to the restoration see the text. Numerous phalloi were
found round the tombs, of just the right size to serve as keystones. They are
omphalos-shaped.
H. 26
a
402 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
<<
but a certain one—the keystone of the great vault is a terminal
cone like the Delphic omphalos. the chamber of death was crowned
by the primitive symbol of life. It is no stele commemorating an
individual man, still less is it a mere architectural or decorative
feature; it is there with solemn magical intent to, ensure, to induce,
the renewal of life, reincarnation.
The ‘Tomb of Tantalos’ is of great importance because it fixes
beyond a doubt the nature of an omphalos stone. But if Asia
Minor is felt to be too remote we have evidence, though somewhat
less explicit, nearer home. On the road from Megalopolis to
Messene, Pausanias! saw a sanctuary of certain goddesses called
Maniae, which name he believed to be a title of the Eumenides.
With the sanctuary was associated the story of the madness of
Orestes.
Not far from the sanctuary is a mound of earth of no great size and set
up upon it is a finger made of stone. And indeed the name of the mound is
Finger’s Tomb.
δϑοδδοριϑοοω
SEO BBLS QAS
ee soar GI τῷ “Ὁ «Ὁ τ τῷ τ᾿“ ες τ SSeS
Co 52. “2.52 2S QS
72 AS ° e —OS =
v
3 Y ΓΕ 4 Ἂν <I> a)
7 9
a κι Ὁ»
- 3
z 93
Sia
=)
U 7;
/, Lf ἔΖ2259595
ines 115:
Pausanias goes on to recount a purely aetiological myth about
Orestes in his madness biting off one of his fingers.
What ‘Finger’s Tomb’ must have looked like may be seen in
Fig. 115 the design from a black-figured lekythos*. We have the
1 yin. 34. 2 ...00 πόῤῥω δὲ τοῦ ἱεροῦ γῆς χῶμά ἐστιν οὐ μέγα, ἐπίθημα ἔχον λίθου
πεποιημένον δάκτυλον, καὶ δὴ καὶ ὄνομα τῷ χώματί ἐστι Δακτύλου μνῆμα.
* In the Naples Museum. For full details see my Delphika in J.H.S. xrx. 1889,
p- 229.
1x | ‘ Daktyl’s Monument’ 403
mound of earth covered in this case by leukoma. The mound is
surmounted by a conical stone painted black and, roughly, finger-
shaped. It stands on a basis of black stone. Bury the mound
out of sight in earth, and you have an omphalos on a basis like
those in the vase-paintings. The figures on either side approach
as though for some solemn ritual; probably of oath-taking.
We have translated the words Δακτύλου μνῆμα as ‘ Finger’s
Tomb’ because they were undoubtedly so understood by Pausanias
and the people who told the aetiological myth about Orestes. But
the true gist of the monument is better realized if we translate
‘Daktyl’s monument.’ In discussing Herakles the nature of the
Daktyls1 became evident. They are fertility-daimones. Daktyl’s
monument is mutatis mutandis the same as the ‘Tomb of Tantalos.’
The funeral mound in Fig. 113 is marked by a great black snake.
A white mound marked by a snake is indeed on vase-paintings
the normal form of a hero’s tomb. A good instance is shown in
Fie. 114.
Fig. 114 from a black-figured amphora”. Here we have the funeral
mound of Patroklos. Above the mound is a pigmy edolon, the
hero’s ghost; on the mound is the hero-snake whose meaning is
now® to us amply clear. To its special significance in relation to
the omphalos we shall return when we come to the myth of the
slaying of Python.
The covering of white stucco served a double purpose. It
preserved the mound from the weather and also made it con-
spicuous. A tomb was necessarily tabu, and the more conspicuous
it was, the safer for the chance passer-by. In Fig. 115 from an Attic
1 Supra, p. 370.
2 Gerhard, Auserlesene Vasenbilder, 11. Taf. 199, Berlin, Cat. 1867, No. 1902.
3 Supra, chapter vii.
26—2
404 From Daimon to Olympian [CH.
᾿
lekythos! the mound is covered with leukoma but the precaution
has failed. A passer-by has transgressed the tabu. Out from the
SEES EEE
a is, oo inboy ‘ Ὁ
= \ 7 a
am ‘a Ὁ
᾿ ᾿ = NS
<—\) £ x abe
‘\; |
”
-
res 115.
grave-mound darts a huge snake, the offended daimon, the Erinys
of the tomb.
The ordinary grave-mound, as seen in Figs. 113, 114, is
covered with leukoma on which is painted a snake, but it has as a
rule no surmounting cone. It is not a complete omphalos-tomb.
On many Athenian lekythoi we have a representation of the
mound and the stele. A fine example’ is given in Fig. 116. The
ΤΠ)
τ
re
Vv Dy
Fe .)
ra
| ἢ
i
Fic. 116.
1 Remains of actual tombs covered with λεύκωμα have come to light. That it
was in use in Athens we know from Solon’s prescription of it (Cicero, de leg. 11. 26).
For the whole question see Winnefeld, Jahrbuch d. Inst. 1891, p. 197, Taf. 1v., by
whom the vase in Fig. 115 was first published.
2 Now in the National Museum, Athens. See Prof. Bosanquet, Some early
Funeral Lekythoi, J. H. 8. xrx. 1899, Pl. 11. p. 169.
1Χ] Mound and Cone 405
commemorative stele stands on a high stepped basis. Apparently
behind it is a large egg-shaped grave-mound.
It is tempting to see in the stele a survival or transformation
of the surmounting cone, but the vase-painting in Fig. 117? forbids
Eras, 1175
this supposition. When a vase-painter wanted to draw a cone he
was well able to do so. It is not clear from the drawing whether
the cone stood by the side of the mound or passed through it
emerging into sight at the top, but in any case we have a well-
defined cone not a stele. The intent is therefore magical not
commemorative, though as we saw in considering the Jntichiuma
ceremonies the two are to the primitive mind not wholly sundered?®.
The sceptical reader will probably by this time demand a plain
answer to a long-suppressed question. By collecting and com-
bining scattered evidence, literary and monumental, it has been
made possible and indeed practically certain that the omphalos
was a cone surmounting a grave. We have further had abundant
evidence that cones did surmount graves. Well and good. But
such monuments, we found, were called the ‘Tomb of Tantalos’
or ‘ Finger’s Tomb.’ Can we point to any grave-mound surmounted
by a cone which we can fairly associate with an omphalos? Happily
1 From an Athenian white lekythos in the possession of Mr Cook, by whose
most kind permission it is figured here. The drawing was made for me by
Mrs Hugh Stewart.
2 Supra, p. 124.
406 From Daimon to Olympian [ OH.
we can, and this final evidence clinches our whole argument. It ᾿
also casts new light on the relations between Gaia and Apollo.
APOLLO AGUIEUS.
The bronze coin? in Fig. 118 is from Byzantium. On the obverse
is the head of Apollo; on the reverse an object
which, in the light of what has been already
seen, is not hard to explain. It is a mound
surmounted by a tall narrow cone-shaped
pillar, round which near the top is a wreath.
The cone with the wreath looks somewhat like
a cross, and might be mistaken for this
Christian symbol. We are however able to trace the type back
to earlier coins where all likeness to the cross disappears.
In Fig. 119 we have placed side by side for comparison (a) a
a b 6
Fic. 119.
coin of Megara, (b) a coin of Apollonia in Illyria, (6) a coin of
Ambrakia in Epiros. All three show the slender obelisk or cone
of our Byzantium coin, but it stands on a basis not a mound, and
has slightly variant adjuncts. The Megara coin (a) is of special
interest, for Byzantium was a colony of Megara and doubtless
derived its coin-types from the mother-city. The obelisk here is
decorated with two dependent fillets and what seems to be a wreath
seen sideways, 1t is certainly not a cross; to either side in the field
is a dolphin. On the coin of Apollonia (0) the pillar tapers slightly
to either end and has a wreath only. The coin of Ambrakia (c)
has two fillets dependent from the point of the obelisk, and here
a surprise awaits us.
The filleted obelisk on the coins of Ambrakia is the symbol
1 In the possession of Mr Cook, and published by his kind permission from a
drawing made for me by Mrs H. Stewart. For previous discussion of the type
see Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Aguieus, p. 912.
1x] The Aguieus-Cone 407
and vehicle of a god thrice familiar, Apollo Aguieus, ‘He of the
Ways. Harpocration! thus describes him:
Aguieus is a pillar tapering to the end, which they set up before the doors,
And some say they are proper to Apollo, others to Dionysos, others to both.
It is usually thought that Harpocration is blundering when
he attributes the Aguieus pillar
to Dionysos. Now that its real
nature as a fertility-symbol is
understood he is seen to be
right. The pillar was neither
Apollo nor Dionysos, it preceded
and entered into the nature of
both.
A good specimen of an actual
Aguieus-pillar? is still extant
and is given in Fig. 120. It is
cone-shaped, and on it are a
number of pegs on some of which
hang votive wreaths. About
two-thirds of the way up as on
the coin of Megara a fillet is
twined round the pillar. Round
the vase are sculptured figures
of Apollo himself in human form
dancing round his own Aguieus
pillar. Opposite him is Pan play-
ing on the syrinx. ‘To their
piping dance the three Horae.
It is a strange conjunction of
old and new, the human-shaped
Fic. 120.
1 s.v. ᾿Αγυιᾶς ἀγυιεὺς δέ ἐστι κίων els ὀξὺ λήγων, ὃν ἱστᾶσι πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν" ἰδίους δὲ
εἶναί φασιν αὐτοὺς ᾿Απόλλωνος, οἱ δὲ Διονύσου, οἱ δὲ ἀμφοῖν.
2 Now in the Villa Albani. See Panofka, Dionysos und die Thyiaden, 1852,
Taf. m1. No. 9. Panofka explains the pillar as Dionysos, and refers to the
Dionysos Stylos of Thebes (Clem. Alex. Strom. 1. 346). But the cones were before
the human-shaped god, and it is only by their monumental context that they can
be assigned to one or another. In the present case the lyre-playing Apollo points
to Aguieus. Further, we know from Clement (Strom. 1. 348) that according to the
author of the Europia, in the temple of Apollo at Delphi there was a high pillar on
which were hung tithes and spoils votive to him.
“Odpa θεῷ δεκάτην ἀκροθίνιά τε κρεμάσαιμεν
σταθμῶν ἐκ ζαθέων καὶ κίονος ὑψήλοιο.
But the description is too vague to be decisive evidence.
408 From Daimon to Olympian [CH.
divinities still as it were adhering to the old sanctity from which ~
they sprang.
The cone with the dancing Horae throws light I think on one
form of the triple Hekate, as shown in Fig. 121. Three maidens
dance round a central half-humanized column. The type which
occurs frequently is usually and rightly explained as Hekate, and the
triple Charites who dance round the column are triple because of
the three phases of the Moon. As such they are clearly shown
in another Hekateion relief at. Budapest, where on the head
of the midmost figure is a great crescent.
Further this relief shows clearly that the
triple maidens were, to begin with, of
earth. One of them like the Semnae, like
the Erinyes, holds a coiled snake. The
Horae or Seasons of the Moon, her
Moirae, are preceded by the earlier Horae,
the Seasons of Earth’s fertility, at first
two, spring for blossoming, autumn for ~
fruit, then under the influence of a moon-
calendar three. These earliest Horae dance
as was meet round the old fertility-pillar.
The scholiast on the Wasps* as well as
Suidas* both state that the cone-shaped
Aguieus is Dorian, and the statement ac-
cording to the scholiast has the authority
of Dieuchidas of the fourth century B.c.
who wrote chronicles of Megara. The
point is interesting because the coins cited
all come from Dorian colonies, and since
Prof. Ridgeway’s® investigations Dorian
now spells for us not late Hellenic but primitive ‘ Pelasgian.’
Fic, 121.
1 In the Museum at Prague. For these Hekateia see my Mythol. and Mon.
of Ane. Athens, p. 379.
2 Archdol. epigr. Mitt. aus Oestr. 1v. Taf. v1.
3 vy. 875 ὦ δέσποτ᾽ ἄναξ γεῖτον ᾿Αγυιεῦ τοὐμοῦ προθύρου προπύλαιε.
4 s.v. ᾿Αγυιαί.. ἀγυιεὺς δέ ἐστι κίων...85 in Harpocration. He adds ἔστι δὲ ἔδιον
Δωρίεων elev δ᾽ ἂν οἱ παρὰ τοῖς ᾿Αττικοῖς λεγόμενοι ἀγυιεῖς οἱ πρὸ τῶν οἰκιῶν βωμοί" ὡς
Σοφοκλῆς μετάγων τὰ ᾿Αθηναίων ἔθη εἰς Τροίαν φησὶ
Λάμπει δ᾽ ἀγυιεὺς βωμὸς ἀτμίζων πυρὶ
σμύρνης σταλαγμούς, βαρβάρους εὐοσμίας.
καὶ ἀγυιεὺς ὁ πρὸ τῶν αὐλείων θυρῶν κωνοειδὴς κίων ἱερὸς ᾿Απόλλωνος καὶ αὐτὸς θεός.
> Who were the Dorians? in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor,
1907, p. 295, but for another view see Mr C. Hawes, B.S.A. xv1. 1909-10, p. 265.
1Χ] The Aguieus-Cone as Altar 409
Suidas speaks of the Aguieus pillars as ‘altars’ (βωμοί). As
an altar in our sense, as a place for burnt-offering, the obelisk could
scarcely serve, but, when it stood on a grave-mound or on a basis,
mound or basis would serve as altar while wreaths and stemmata
as on the coins would be hung on the obelisk. In this connection
it 1s instructive to note that on a black-figured vase-painting?!
Fig. 122 we have an omphalos-like structure decorated with diaper
pattern, and against it is clearly written ‘Bawyos.’ The primitive
altar was not a stone structure raised high above the earth but
rather a low mound of earth, a grave-mound. This is shown very
clearly in the vase-painting on another vase*, where there is no
doubt that the omphalos-like structure is a grave-mound. The
scene is the slaying of Polyxena over the very tomb of Achilles
into which her blood is seen flowing. Near the omphalos-altar is a
low hearth, an eschara.
The pillar of Aguieus stood before the entrance of the Athenian
house*. This comes out very clearly in the absurd scene of the
sacralization of the Court in the Wasps‘ The chorus of old
dikasts solemnly invoke the god of the place:
“Ὁ Pythian Phoebus, and Good Fortune,
O speed this youth’s design
Wrought here, these gates before ;
Give us from wanderings rest
And peace for evermore,
Ieie Paian.’
1 Munich Cat. 124; Gerhard, Auserlesene Vasenbilder, 223.
2 A ‘Tyrrhenian’ amphora in the British Museum. H. B. Walters, J. H. S.
xvint. 1898, Pl. xv. p. 284.
3. Three examples of Aguieus-pillars are still im situ beside house-doors at
Pompeii. Another, inscribed Mis με ἵσατο, is in the Corfu Museum. See J. Six in
A. Mitt. x1x. 1894, 340—3845.
4 v. 869. Ihave ventured to interpolate ‘Good Fortune’ in Mr Rogers’ trans-
lation, of which I make use. Apollo as Aguieus is essentially Agathos-Daimon.
He probably had the old honey-service instead of wine, and this I think is referred
to in the words (v. 878) ἀντὶ σιραίου μέλιτος μικρὸν τῷ θυμιδίῳ παραμίξας.
410 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
And Bdelycleon, while the Paean is sung, looks up to the
conical pillar of Aguieus who was also Patroos and prays for
his father:
‘Aguieus, my neighbour, my hero, my lord! who dwellest in front of my
vestibule gate,
I pray thee be graciously pleased to accept the rite that we new for my
father create.’
Apollo Aguieus is often interpreted as a sun-pillar and with
some measure of truth. In front of the ordinary Athenian house ~
there stood not only an Aguieus but a Hekateion. Philocleon? is ©
filled with the bright hope that the oracles will come true and
each Athenian will someday build
Before his own door in the porch a Courtlet,
A dear little Courtlet like a Hekateion.
Aguieus the sun will guard and guide him by day, Hekate the
Moon by night. So the scholiast on Plato? understands Apollo
and Hekate. They are both ἐνόδιοι δαίμονες ‘ Way-Gods, lighting -
the wayfarer, the first business of moon and sun to primitive man.
By ‘daimon of the ways’ he means Artemis or Selene; Apollo also is called
Of the Ways (Aguieus), because they both fill the ways with light, the one,
the Sun, by day, the other by night. Therefore they set them up in the
roads.
The triple Hekateia as we have seen show a pillar surrounded
by three dancing figures*. The pillar of life has become a pillar
of hght. Aguieus is Phoibos.
Aguieus the pillar is often confused with the Herm. The wife
of Mnesilochos goes out to met her lover and talks to him, near
the Aguias, under a bay-tree. The scholiast* explains Aguieus
as aherm. ‘They give this name to a four-square Apollo. In
intent there is obviously no difference, but the form was unlike
and they were probably developed by different peoples. Hermes
remained in cultus phallic to the end; Aguieus, at least at Delphi,
was by historical times expurgated, possibly because he early took
1 Ar. Vesp. 804.
2 Legg. 9148 évodlay δαίμονα τὴν "Αρτεμιν ἤτοι τὴν Σελήνην φησίν, ἐπεὶ καὶ ὁ
᾿Απόλλων ᾿Αγυιεύς, καὶ γὰρ ἄμφω τὰς ὁδοὺς πληροῦσι φωτός, ὁ μὲν ἡμέρας ὁ ἥλιος ἡ δὲ
νυκτός. διὸ καὶ ἱδρύουσι τούτους ἐν αὐταῖς.
3 Supra, p. 408.
+ Ar. Thesm. 489 παρὰ τὸν ᾿Αγυιᾶ, Schol. dyueds οὕτω καλούμενος ᾿Απόλλων
τετράγωνος.
«a
IX | Apollo and the Omphalos 411
on as ‘birthday gift’ from Phoibe the fertility of the moon rather
than the earth.
On the red-figured vase-painting in Fig. 1231 we see the
SA
ττς----
ὺ
Olympian Apollo seated on the omphalos*. The scene is certainly
at Delphi, for the figure approaching on the left and holding a
sheathed sword is Orestes balanced to the right by Pylades. Apollo
looks triumphant holding lyre and laurel branch, and if we think
of him as dethroning Gaia from her ancient seat we find his
intrusion hard to bear, but, remembering Aguieus, it may be that
the seated Olympian is no parvenu but only the fully humanized
form of the ancient fertility cone, surmounting the grave-mound.
The grave-cone took shape in Aguieus, but naturally the
omphalos-cult was not confined to Delphi or associated only with
Apollo. It might arise anywhere where there was a hero-grave
or a worship of Earth-Spirits*. We have seen that Asklepios had
1 Raoul Rochette, Mon. Méd. pl. 37. Naples Museum, Heydemann Cat. 108.
2 For the type in sculpture see Mr Wace’s article in B.S.A. 1902-3 (ix.), p. 211.
3 An instructive parallel to the omphalos-cult I believe to be the ceremonial of
the Latin mundus, covered by the lapis manalis. But the examination of this
would take me too far for present limits. I will only note that the two elements of
the omphalos-cult, ghosts or fertility, are very clearly present, though their connection
is not expressly stated. Varro (ap. Macrob. 1. 16. 18) says ‘Mundus cum patet,
deorum tristium atque inferum ianua patet.’ Plutarch, Vit. Rom. 11, notes that
the mundus was, as it were, the penus or storehouse of the new city, ἀπαρχαί τε
πάντων ὅσοις νόμῳ μὲν ws καλοῖς ἐχρῶντο, φύσει δὲ ὡς ἀναγκαίοις, ἀπετέθησαν ἐνταῦθα.
As often with the Latins, we have the social fact presented clearly because unmytho-
logized. For ‘Mundus patet’ see Mr Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 211,
and for Tellus and the Manes see his Religious Experience of the Roman People,
LOL Np. 1921.
412 From Deimon to Olympian [ CH.
a snake-twined omphalos'; there was probably an omphalos in ~
Cyprus“; we shall meet another in Athens. At Phlius*,that home —
of archaic cults, there was an omphalos which, in emulation of —
Delphi, was reputed to be the midmost point of the whole Pelo-
ponnese, a pretension obviously absurd. It stood near the ancient
house of divination of Amphiaraos, where was a dream-oracle.
At Argos an inscription? has come to light which tells how
the προμάντιες and προφῆται of Apollo Pythios
established, in accordance with an oracle, the omphalos of Ga and the
colonnade and the altar...and they arranged a thesauros in the oracular
shrine.
Obviously this complex was a correct copy of the Delphic
installation and would have no interest for us, but that it probably
supplanted or somehow rearranged a more ancient sanctuary.
When the Danaides in the Supplices of Aischylus land at Argos
they betake themselves as suppliants to a hill (πάγος)" whereon
was an altar and about it somewhere the symbols of the gods, or
rather, as we should put it, the sanctities that preceded any
definite divinities. They are called by Danaos the ἀγώνιοι θεοΐ,
gods of the agon or assembly. The chorus, more justly, alludes to
them as daimones.
The chorus, holding their supplant branches, which are,
Danaos says, ‘images of holy Zeus®, that is of Zeus Aphiktor’,
Zeus the ‘Suppliant, pray, as they needs must, and as Aischylus
would himself desire, first and foremost to Zeus. But, seated as
they are,on the holy mound, they have to get into touch with
the local sanctities. Hence a sort of sacramental litany follows,
expounding and emphasizing, and as it were displaying, their
forms and functions.
1 Supra, p. 384.
2 Hesych. γῆς ὀμφαλός: ἡ Πάφος καὶ Δελφοί.
3 Paus. 11. 13. 7.
4 Voligraff, Bull. Corr. Hell. 1903, p. 274 “Eocavro [τὸν] ἐκ μαντήας Tas ὀμφαλὸν
καὶ τ[ὰ]ν περίστασιν καὶ τὸ φράγμα καὶ τὸν βωμόν... καὶ θησαυρὸν ἐν τῷ μαντήῳ
κατεσκεύασσαν.
5 Asch. Supp. 179
ἄμεινόν ἐστι παντὸς εἵνεκ᾽, ὦ κόραι,
πάγον προσίζειν τῶνδ᾽ ἀγωνίων θεῶν.
θυ. 181 ἀλλ᾽ ὡς τάχιστα βᾶτε, καὶ λευκοστεφεῖς
ἱκετηρίας ἀγάλματ᾽ αἰδοίου Διός...
7 Prof. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic”, p. 291, has shown that Zeus Aphiktor
is a ‘projection’ of the rite of Supplication.
Ix | The Omphalos at Argos 413
Zeus duly invoked, Danaos continues, pointing to some symbol :
Da. Next call ye upon yonder son of Zeus.
Cho. We call upon the saving rays of the Sun.
Da. And pure Apollo banished, a god, from heaven},
Unless we realize the background the passage is not easy to
understand, but, if we suppose an omphalos-sanctuary, all is clear.
Danaos at the word ‘yonder’ (τόνδε) points to the Aguieus-pillar
that marks the top of the mound. It is the symbol of the young
son (ivis), the kouros of Zeus®. But the chorus do not quite catch
his point. They answer conventionally, and perhaps with a trace
of Egyptian reminiscence, ‘ Yes, of course, Apollo the Sun with
his saving rays. Well and good, says Danaos, but the point just
now is that you appeal to a god who was, like yourselves, banished,
and who, though counted as impure, was intensely, savingly pure,
and the source of life, health and salvation. The holy stone he
points to is, like the omphalos, like the stone on which Orestes sat
at Gythion’, like the black stone of the Mother‘, kathartic and
apotropaic. It is an earliex sanctity and purity than the purity
of the Sun.
Among the local sanctities precedence is given to the Apollo-
stone which, if we are right, crowns the mound. Other sanctities
appropriate to the circumstances of the Danaides are, the trident®
of the sea-god who has brought them hither, and the kerykeion
of the herald-god who is the protector and vehicle of all suppliants®,
We seem to see before us the social sanctities on their way to be
divinities. Supreme among them is the relation to Ga, Ga Bounis’,
1 Asch. Supp. 202
Aa. καὶ Ζηνὸς vw τόνδε viv κικλήσκετε.
Χο. καλοῦμεν αὐγὰς ἡλίου σωτηρίους.
Δα. ἁγνόν 7 ᾿Απόλλω φυγάδ᾽ ἀπ᾽ οὐρανοῦ θεόν.
The MSS. have ὄρνιν. Following Kiehl (Bamberger) and Prof. Tucker and
Dr Headliam I read iv. If the reading ὄρνιν be correct, the reference must be to
an eagle.
2 For Apollo as Kouros see end of chapter.
3 Paus. m1. 22. 1.
4 The scholiast on Pind. 11. 77 tells of the Mother-stone for which Pindar
founded a shrine. For the prophetic, kathartic and prophylactic properties of these
holy stones in connection with the omphalos see my Delphika, J.H.S. xix. p. 237,
The phallos-stone being specially the vehicle of life was specially able to revivify
and heal all sickness and misfortune.
ὅν, 208 ὁρῶ τρίαιναν τήνδε σημεῖον θεοῦ.
Probably (see supra, p. 171) an ancient bidens-mark—as in the Erechtheion.
6 Asch. Supp. 210 Aa. “Epuns ὅδ᾽ ἄλλος τοῖσιν Ἑλλήνων νόμοις.
Χο. ἐλευθέροις νῦν ἐσθλὰ κηρυκευέτω.
7 vy, 742 ἰὼ γᾷ βουνῖτι, ἔνδικον σέβας.
414 From Daimon to Olympian [CH.
‘Earth of the Mound, to whom the Danaides, the Well-Nymphs,
ever appeal. Even Zeus is to them ‘Child of Earth,’ hence Olbios —
and Ktesios!?. It is scarcely possible to breathe the religious
atmosphere of the play save as we see it enacted against the
background of the omphalos-sanctuary.
We go back to Delphi and view the omphalos with new eyes.
When the priestess passes into the inmost sanctuary of Gaia, she
finds Orestes clinging to the life-stone and about him the aveng-
ing ghosts, the fell Erinyes. They have come, it seemed to
Aischylus—his mind all out of focus through his beautiful mono-
theism and his faith in God the father—from afar, hunting the
fugitive. But of course they, the ghosts, were there in the grave-
sanctuary from the first. Like the Semnae they dwell in a chasm
of the earth, and over the chasm stood, it may be, the life-stone, for
they, the ghosts, year by year, bring, in the cycle of reincarnation,
new-old life to man and to the earth, from which they spring and to
which they return. They are from the beginning what A‘schylus
makes them ultimately become, spirits of life, fertility-ghosts.
By the mouth of Clytemnestra? he blackens their ritual:
‘How oft have ye from out my hands licked up
Wineless libations, sober offerings,
On the low hearth of fire, banquets grim
By night, an hour unshared of any god.’
Yet these same wineless libations, these sober offerings, were
the due of the Eumenides at Argos, the snake-maidens, and of the
Semnae at Athens:
The firstfruits offered for accomplishment
Of marriage and for children®.
fEschylus seems to have seen only the evil of the Earth-Spirits,
only the perennial damnation of the blood-feud. It is impossible
to avoid regret that he did not see that these Earth-Spirits were
for blessing as for cursing, and that he stooped to the cheap
1 y, 859 ὦ Ba, Tas παῖ, Zed; v. 509 τελειότατον κράτος, ὄλβιε Zed; for Zeus Olbios
see supra, p. 148, νυ. 428 γένοιτ᾽ ἂν ἄλλα κτησίου Διὸς xdpw; for Zeus Ktesios see
supra, p. 297.
2 Asch. Hum. 106.
3 vy. 837. For the practical identity of the ritual of the Erinyes, the Eumenides,
and the Semnae, see Prolegomena, pp. 239—256. That the Semnae were ghosts as
well as fertility spirits is quite clearly shown by the customs connected with the
δευτεροπότμοι. Op. cit. p. 244.
1Χ] The Ennaeteric Festivals at Delphi 415
expedient of maligning his spiritual foes. What in his inspired
way he did see, both in the Supplices and the Hwmenides, was
that the old forces of the Earth must be purged from forcefulness,
from violence and vengeance, before Earth could in plenitude
bring forth her increase.
It remains to ask, ‘What do we know of the ritual of Gaia at
Delphi?’ Of ritual to Gaia under that name and definitely stated
to have been carried on at the omphalos-sanctuary, the answer, as
previously indicated, is,‘ Nothing.’ But it happens that we have
from Plutarch a fairly full account of three manifestly primitive
festivals which took place at Delphi every nine years, and these
festivals, on examination, turn out to be three acts in one dramatic
or rather magical ceremony, whose whole gist is to promote the
fertility of Earth. They are in short three factors in, or forms of,
a great Eniautos-Festival.
THE ENNAETERIC FESTIVALS AT DELPHI.
In his Greek Questions Plutarch! asks, ‘What is Charila among
the Delphians?’ His answer begins as follows:
There are three Nine-Year Festivals that the Delphians keep in the
following order. One they call Stepterion, the next Herois, the third
Charila.
All that Plutarch states is that these three festivals were each
celebrated every nine years and that their sequence was as given.
Whether they were all enacted at the same time—on, e.g. three
successive days, or at successive periods in the year, cannot be
decided certainly. The order is not of great importance, as in the
cyclic monotony of the life of an Eniautos-daimon it matters little
whether death follows resurrection or resurrection death. We
shall begin therefore with the festival, the intent of which is
clearest and to us most instructive, the second in order, the
Herois or ‘ Heroine, reserving for the end the festival with which
Plutarch begins, the Stepterion.
The Herois. This is a delightful festival to investigate, because
1 Q. Gr. x11. Tis ἡ παρὰ Δελφοῖς Χαρίλα ; τρεῖς ἄγουσι Δελφοὶ ἐνναετηρίδας κατὰ τὸ
ἑξῆς, ὧν τὴν μὲν Στεπτήριον καλοῦσι, τὴν δ᾽ ἩΗρωΐδα, τὴν δὲ Χαρίλαν.
416 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
we have only one source for it, Plutarch’ himself. And he, though ~
it is but little, tells us just enough for its understanding.
Most of the ceremonies of the Herois have a mystical reason which is
known to the Thyiades, but, from the rites that are done in public, one may
conjecture it to be a ‘ Bringing up of Semele.’
The Herois was a woman’s festival. Plutarch of course could
not be present at the secret ceremonies of the Thyiades, but his
friend Thyia, their president, would tell him all a man might know.
Part of the ceremonial he says was public.
Charila. The third of the ennaeteric festivals, the Charila, is
the manifest counterpart of the Herovs, and again Plutarch is our
sole but sufficient source. After recounting the aetiological myth
he gives us the ritual facts*.
The king presided and made a distribution in public of grain and pulse
to all, both strangers and citizens. And the child-image of Charila is brought
in. When they had all received their share, the king struck the image with
his sandal, and the leader of the Thyiades lifted the image and took it away
to a precipitous place and there tied a rope round the neck of the image and
buried it, where they buried Charila when she hanged herself.
Charila is manifestly, whether enacted in spring or autumn, a
festival of the type of ‘Carrying out the Death.’ Charila is beaten
and hanged and buried in some chasm. The nearest analogies in
Greece are the pharmakos ceremonies and the ‘Driving out of
Hunger®. Like the Herois the Charila was managed by the
Thyiades and was therefore a woman’s festival.
It is however the Herois that most instructs us. It never
seems to have occurred to Plutarch, as it would to a modern
mythologist, that, because a festival was called Herois, it must
have to do with a mortal ‘heroine.’ From the rites known to him
he promptly conjectured that it was a ‘Bringing up of Semele.’
Semele, it is acknowledged, is but a Thraco-Phrygian form of
Gaia. The ‘Bringing up of Semele’ is but the Anodos of Gaia
or of Kore the Earth-Maiden. It is the return of the vegetation
or Year-spirit in the spring.
1 Qu. Gr. x11. τῆς δὲ “Hpwtdos ra πλεῖστα μυστικὸν ἔχει λόγον ὃν ἴσασιν ai Θυιάδες,
ἐκ δὲ τῶν δρωμένων φανερῶς Σεμέλης ἄν τις ἀναγωγὴν εἰκάσειε.
2 Loc. cit. προκάθηται μὲν γὰρ ὁ βασιλεύς, τῶν ἀλφίτων καὶ τῶν χεδρόπων ἐπιδιδοὺς
πᾶσι καὶ ξένοις καὶ πολίταις, κομίζεται δὲ τῆς Χαρίλας παιδικὸν εἴδωλον...
3 Prolegomena, p. 106.
ΙΧ] Heroines as Fertility-Daimones 417
Why then is the festival called Herows? Because Herois is
but the feminine of Hero, Strong One, Venerable One, and as it
was the business of all Heroes to be Good Daimones and to bring
fertility, so, and much more, was it the business of all Heroines.
Again we have the ancestral dead, the collective dead women at
their work of fertilization by way of reincarnation, and again they
crystallize into one figure, Herois.
That fertilization was indeed the business of Heroines and
that they were expected to-do it regularly for the Eniautos-
festival is plainly evidenced by an inscription! of about the third
century B.c. It was found in the precinct of Artemidoros in
Thera, cut into a small basis or rock-altar on which statues seem
to have stood. It runs as follows in two hexameter lines:
Heroines they are who bring the new fruit to the Year-Feast,
Come then to Thera’s land and accomplish increase for all things,
We remember well enough that the spirits of the Earth, the
ghosts, can be summoned for cursing. The ghost of Clytemnestra?
hounds up her Erinyes, herself the leader of the pack. Althaea*
beats upon the Earth with her hands to rouse the Curse; the
priest of Demeter‘ at Pheneus in Arcadia smites the Earth with
rods to summon the underground folk when there is swearing to
be done by the holy Stones. But we are apt to forget, perhaps
because Homer and sometimes Aischylus forgot, that there was a
ritual which summoned these underground folk to bless and not
to curse.
At Megara, near the Prytaneion, Pausanias* saw
a rock which they name Anaklethra, ‘ Place of Calling up,’ because Demeter,
if anyone believe it, when she was wandering in search of her daughter called
her up there.
1.1.6. vol, x11. (1904) fase. 11, Supp. Thera, Res Sacrae, No. 1340.
[[ρῶισ]σαι καρπὸν νέον
[e]és ἐνιαυτὸν ἄγουσιν,
δεῦτε [κ]αὲ ἐν Θήρας χθονὶ
bell ξ]οίνα [ πάντα τελοῦσαι.
The text is restored by Wilamowitz. For ἡρῶισσαι, an emendation that seems
practically certain, he compares Anth. Pal. v1. 225, and Ap. Rhod. rv. 1309. Both
are references to Libyan heroines, and the relations of Thera to Cyrene in Libya
were of course close. In the epigram a tithe of the winnowed harvest is offered to
the heroines. I have again to thank Mr Cook for referring me to the important
evidence of this Thera inscription.
2 Aisch. Hum. 115. Se Ti ταὶ D295
4 Paus, vit. 15. 2 ...reXern ῥάβδοις κατὰ λόγον δή τινα τοὺς ὑποχθονίους παίει.
δ, 48, 2, ᾿Ανακλήθραν τὴν πέτραν ὀνομάζουσι...ἐοικότα δὲ τῷ λόγῳ δρῶσιν ἐς ἡμᾶς
ἔτι αἱ Μεγαρέων.
Η. 27
418 From Daimon to Olympian [CH. Ὶ
As to the aetiological myth Pausanias is rightly sceptical. —
Happily he adds: |
.
The women of Megara to this day perform rites that are analogous to the
story told.
Did the ‘Bringing up of Semele’ take place at an omphalos- —
sanctuary? At Delphi we cannot say for certain. It is possible
that in the fragmentary Paean, ‘ For the Delphians, Pindar* may
allude to some such ceremonial. He goes gladly to Pytho we
are told:
to Apollo’s grove, nurse of wreaths and feasts, where oft by the shadowed
omphalos of Earth the maidens of Delphi beat the ground with swift feet, as —
they sing of the son of Leto.
But the reference is too vague to be of much use as evidence.
At Athens we are more fortunate. Pindar we remember?, in
his spring Dithyramb, bids the very Olympians come to the
omphalos* of Athens, where, as on an altar, incense smokes and
where many feet are treading. So insistent is he on the flowers
and the ‘fragrant spring’ that we can scarcely doubt that his
song was written for the Anthesteria. We are sure it was written
for a ‘ Bringing up of Semele,’ for:
Then, then are flung over the immortal Earth lovely petals of pansies,
and roses are amid our hair; and voices of song are loud among the pipes,
the dancing-floors are loud with the calling of crowned Semele*.
On Gaia worship as seen in ‘The Bringing up of Semele’
much light is thrown by the familiar ‘Anodos’ vases*. The
design in Fig. 124° shows the Anodos. We have a great mound
of earth artificially covered in with a thick coat of white. On it
1 Paeans, frg. vi. 15, Grenfell and Hunt, Oxyrhynch. Pap. Part v. p. 41.
κατέβαν στεφάνων
καὶ θαλιᾶν τρόφον ἄλσος ᾿Απόλ-
λωνος, τόθι Λατοΐδαν
θαμινὰ Δελφῶν κόραι
Χθονὸς ὀμφαλὸν παρὰ
σκιόεντα μελπίό ὀγμεναι
ποδὶ κροτέο(ντι γᾶν Gow).
2 Supra, p. 203.
3 Pind. frg. 75. 3 πολύβατον οἴτ᾽ ἄστεος
ὀμφαλὸν θυόεντα....
4 ν. 20 ἀχεῖ T ὀμφαὶ μελέων σὺν αὐλοῖς,
ἀχεῖ τε Σεμέλαν ἑλικάμπυκα χοροί. '
® For the ‘Anodos’ type of vases see my Prolegomena, pp. 276—285 and p, 640.
where most of the important specimens are figured. The subject can only here
briefly resumed, so far as it affects the immediate argument.
6 Krater, Berlin, 2646. Mon. d. Inst. x1. tav. 4.
ΙΧ] Anodos of Harth-Mother 419
are painted a tree, leaf-sprays and a tortoise. From the top of
the mound rises a tree. In the midst rises up the figure of a
woman. It is a grave-mound, an omphalos-sanctuary, and she
who is the spirit of the earth incarnate rises up to bring and be
new life. The tree that springs from the mound is, like the cone,
a symbol and vehicle of life. Probably it marked the earlier stage
NAG
ees: Minas =
Fie. 124.
in which the earth as mother was all-sufficing. On another Anodos |
vase! the uprising woman is inscribed (Phe)rophatta, but in most |
instances of the type she is nameless, she is the Earth-Kore reborn |
in spring. On the Pherophatta vase Hermes Psychopompos, he —
who summoned the Keres from the pithos, stands near with
uplifted rhabdos. On the vase in Fig. 124 the Earth-Mother
clearly rises from an artificial mound, and this is doubtless a
grave. On yet another vase, a black-figured lekythos?, she rises,
not out of a mound but within the precinct of a sanctuary marked
by two columns, and from her head are branching trees. The
grave is a sanctuary.
On the Pherophatta vase we have clearly the influence of
1 Krater, Albertinum Mus: Dresden. Jahrb. d. Inst. 1893, p. 166.
2 Bibliothéque Nat. Paris, Cat. 298, Milliet et Giraudon, Pl. 1118.
27—2
420 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
Eleusis; Pherophatta is the Eleusinian Kore, not the Thraco-
Phrygian Semele, though their nature is one and the same. The
uprising we note is here eagerly greeted by a choros of goat-
daimones with hoofs and high pointed horns. Tityroi we might
call them, though perhaps it is safest they should be nameless’.
But on the vase in Fig. 124 it is horse-daimones, Satyrs, with
but one goat-daimon, who attend the uprising. Moreover seated
near the hill is Dionysos himself with his thyrsos waiting for
his Mother to rise up. We have before us unquestionably the
‘Bringing up of Semele.’
Tradition said that Dionysos fetched his mother up from the
underworld. Apollodorus? sketching the history of the worship
of Dionysos ends it thus:
Finding that he was a god, men paid him worship, but he went and
fetched his mother up out of Hades, gave her the title of Thyone and went
up with her into heaven.
The hasty Assumption of the mother, viewed as history,
strikes us as abrupt and unmeaning. It is of course simply an
Olympianized saga-mythos of the old ritual of the ‘ Bringing up
of Semele.’ Semele, Earth, never could or did go to heaven, but
she rose up out of earth. She needed no son to bring her, her
son was indeed the fruits of the earth, the child Ploutos*. But,
_when patriarchy came in, and the Mother takes the lower place,
someone has to ‘fetch her up. Moreover she must rise not only
up from earth but up to high heaven. There is no one but her
son to do all this. Later, Orpheus as lover ‘fetches up’ Eurydike,
Earth, the ‘wide-ruler, the ‘broad-bosomed. He fails, because
she must perennially return to Hades that she may rise again
next spring.
In actual ritual at Athens the Son as well as the Mother is
summoned. And the Mother is summoned in her two-fold aspect
of Mother and Maid rather than Mother and Daughter. In the
ritual scene in the Frogs‘, at the bidding of the Hierophant, the -
chorus chant the Saviour Maid who—be it noted—comes first
1 Goat-daimones are also figured on the krater published by Dr Harting, Rom.
Mitt. x11. 1899, p. 88, ‘Die Wiederkehr d. Kore.’ The figure of Kore rises on this
vase straight from the ground. There is no omphalos-mound, The throng of
ithyphallic goat-daimones seem to be dancing a regular dance. The focus of
interest is clearly on them rather than on the figure of Kore.
2 Tit. Di Ὡς Θὲ
δ Supra, p. 167. 4 vv. 373—396.
ΙΧ] Lacchos as Spring-Daimon 421
and hence is not daughter—and then, with changed measure, the
Fruit-bearing Mother’. Next the Hierophant says:
Now call Him hither, the Spirit of Spring”.
And then follows the hymn to Iacchos, the young Dionysos of the
mysteries :
Iacchos, O Iacchos.
The scholiast® on the passage gives valuable information.
‘Some,’ he says, ‘account for the words κάλει θεόν thus. In the agones at
the Lenaia of Dionysos, the Torchbearer, holding the torch, says, “Call ye
the god,” and those present call aloud in answer, “Son of Semele, Iacchos,
Wealth-Giver.”’
The ceremony of calling the god at Athens went on at the
Lenaia, probably on the ancient orchestra, the round dancing-
place close to the agora. Its central altar may well have been the
omphalos, though of this there is no certain evidence. Manifestly
the Son of Semele, the Earth-goddess, is but the impersonation,
the projection of the fruits of the Earth. Like the child in the
cornucopia he 7s Wealth, Plowtos. Beginning as a child in the
religion of Mother and Son, he ends in later patriarchal days as
a white-haired old man‘.
The functional identity of and the easy shift between Mother
and Son, Earth and He of the Earth, Semele and Semeleios, is
shown in vase-paintings. On far the greater number Semele
herself rises through the mound or out of the level earth, but
sometimes the heads of both Mother and Son are seen rising side
by side®. Two instances are known to me in which the Son rises
alone through the mound. One of these is reproduced in Fig. 125°.
1 y, 383 ἄγε viv ἑτέραν ὕμνων ἰδέαν, τὴν καρποφόρον βασίλειαν,
Δήμητρα θεάν.
2 v. 395 viv καὶ τὸν ὡραῖον θεὸν παρακαλεῖτε δεῦρο.
The adjective ὡραῖος is quite untranslateable. It means blooming in spring. As
the word ὥρα is primarily the season of spring, my translation may perhaps pass.
Eros too is ὡραῖος as the life-spirit (see supra, p. 187). The ritual instruction
κάλει τὸν θεόν is good comic material later in the play (v. 479).
3 Adv. 479 τό τε “κάλει θεὸν᾽ τινὲς οὕτως ἀποδεδώκασιν " ἐν τοῖς Ληναϊκοῖς ἀγῶσι τοῦ
Διονύσου ὁ δαδοῦχος κατέχων λάμπαδα λέγει, καλεῖτε θεόν" καὶ οἱ ὑπακούοντες βοῶσι
Σεμελήϊε Ἴακχε πλουτοδότα. Later when people did not understand the ‘summon-
ing’ of the Spring-Spirit they thought the Olympian was called “πρὸς ἀρωγήν."
Σεμελήϊε probably meant to begin with just ‘Earth-One,’ not Son of Semele.
4 As on a kalpis in the British Museum, Cat. E. 229, where, absurdly enough,
the white-haired Hades-Plouton holds a huge cornucopia.
5 Prolegomena, p. 407, Fig. 130.
6 In the Hope collection at Deep-dene. See Jahrbuch d. Inst. 1890, p. 120,
note 17. In the collection of Greek Antiquities at Stockholm I saw a late red-
figured vase, the design of which seemed, as far as memory served me, almost
identical with this. There may be others of the same type as yet unnoted.
422 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
The Son uprising is attended by a figure of Nike. Maenads as
well as Satyrs await his rising. From the artificial mound a
leafed spray is blossoming.
Fia.- 125.
The attendants that wait on the rising figure are of high
importance. They not only await but often actively aid the
uprising. On the vase! in Fig. 124 they are idle though keenly
interested spectators. In the Pherophatta vase they dance,
tS
Cw2 TP ,
Uh a eee
TUTE
Fie. 126.
probably by way of magical induction. On the vase in Fig. 126
they are drastic. Each of the two Satyrs holds a great pick.
1 Hydria, now, M. Hébert kindly informs me, in the Musée Cinquanténaire at
Brussels. Fréhner, Choir de Vases Grecs, Pl. νι. 24.
ΙΧ] The Satyrs as Fertility- Daimones 423
They have hacked open the ground to help the Earth-Maiden to
rise. It is impossible to say for certain that the dromena of the
‘Bringing up of Semele’ included the hacking of the earth with
picks, but some action of the sort may well have been part of the
ritual of an agricultural people. The earth in some few favoured
regions brings forth her fruit in due season without man’s help,
but in Greece, with its thin stony soil, man must help her. Long !
before he invented the plough, and long after in places where no
plough could go, he used the pick’.
But these horse-tailed daimones are no mere mortal agri-
culturists. They are Satyrs; their function is magical rather
than actual. That function is clearly shown by the two figures of
Erotes, one to either side, that balance and complete them. In
bygone days, before the facts of parentage were known, the Earth
was thought of as mother and husbandless, sufficient herself for all
her child-bearing, or vaguely fertilized by the dead spirits of men
buried in her bosom. But, when she first appears in mythology,
she is attended by a throng of male daimones, and they are
Daktyls, Tityroi, Satyroi, Korybantes, all, according to Strabo, we
remember?, substantially the same, all the projection of marriage-
able youth, of the band of Kouroi. Their earliest cultus-shape is
the Daktyl fertility-cone. Their last and loveliest form is that of
the winged spirits, the Erotes, who on the vase before us wait
the uprising of the Mother, and who on the great Hieron vase*
cluster about the goddess of growth and increase, Aphrodite. But
the form of fertility-daimones known to the early dromenon was
probably that of Satyrs, and down to late days it is Satyrs in the
Satyr play? who attend the Theophany of the god.
In the cults of Delphi there is not a word of Satyrs. The
Herois festival is conducted by women. It is Maenads not Satyrs
who on the peaks of Parnassos dance round Dionysos. This may
well be mainly because the religion of the Thracian Dionysos
came to Delphi in a form in which, as already noted’, the Maenads,
the Mothers, were most emphasized, and the child was a babe and
only potentially a Kouros. But I would conjecture that at Delphi
expurgation was at work; the old meaning of the omphalos
1K. Hahn, Die Entstehung d. Pflugkultur, 1909, p. 9, Der Hackbau.
2 Supra, p. 14. 3 Prolegomena, p. 634, Fig. 170.
4 See Prof. Murray, supra, p. 343. > Supra, p. 40.
ζ....
424 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
was at first advisedly ignored, then forgotten. The religion of
Apollo with its ‘Nothing too much’ may well have protested
against the religion of Dionysos with its inherent ecstasy and
possible licence.
We have seen Aguieus as the symbol of life standing on
the earth-mound. It is to the cult of Apollo as emerging from
that of Gaia and more and more sharply differentiated from
hers that we must now turn. We shall best understand it by
examining the myth of the slaying of the Python, and this
brings us to our third ennaeteric festival, the Stepterion.
THE SLAYING OF THE PYTHON.
AKschylus, as already observed, will have none of the slaying
of the snake. Our chief literary source is the Homeric Hymn to
the Pythian Apollo. Art adds very little to our knowledge,
though coins frequently represent the slaying of the Python near
the tripod, and vases, though rarely, show the infant Apollo
shooting from his mother’s arms at the huge monster issuing
from a rocky cave. One monument, however, the Pompeian fresco
in Fig. 1271, is of some religious interest because it shows us the
Python in relation to the omphalos. The beast, wounded and
bleeding, is still coiled round it. Moreover behind the omphalos
is a high pillar which gives a grave-like look to the whole complex.
On the pillar are hung, not wreaths, but the bow and quiver of the
1 From a photograph.
ΙΧ] The Stepterion 425
god. To celebrate the Python’s death there is to be a Bouphoma.
The priestess with the sacred double-axe in her hand brings up
the bull. Apollo has cast aside his laurel-branch and is preparing
to chant a Paean to himself. Artemis looks on in the background.
Of much more importance than any monument of art is the
account we have from Plutarch of the ritual of the Stepterion.
The Stepterion’. In the Greek Questions! Plutarch does not
state the actual ritual of the Stepterion. He makes allusive
mention of it and attempts a rather confused and feeble explana-
tion. He has evidently not made up his mind as to what the real
gist of the festival is.
Now the Stepterion would seem to be an imitation of the fight of the
god against the Python and of his flight to Tempe after the fight, and of his
banishment. Some say that he took flight, being in need of purification after
the murder, others say that he was following hard on the Python who was
wounded and escaping, and that he failed by a little to be in at the death. For
he came up with the Python when he was just dead of his wound, and his son,
whose name they say was Aix, had just performed for him his funeral rites.
Of such events or of something of this sort is the Stepterion an imitation.
Plutarch, confused in his mind though he seems to be, is
about right. The Stepterion was not exactly an ‘imitation’ of an
actual fight with a particular monster the Python, but it was an
imitation or rather a perpetual reenactment of ‘something of this
sort.’ In another passage, though half unconsciously, he himself
lets out the truth.
In his discourse on the Cessation of the Oracles? Plutarch
gives vent to his distress about the unworthy stories that are
told of the gods, their rapes, their wanderings, their hidings,
their banishments, their servitudes.
‘These,’ he says, ‘are not of the gods, but they are the sufferings of
daimones and their changes and chances which are commemorated on
account of their virtue and force.’
It may be incidentally observed that no one of Plutarch’s day
1 The sources for the Stepterion are given in Nilsson’s Griechische Feste, 1906,
p. 150. Dr Nilsson rightly criticizes my previous explanation of the rite as based
on the slaying of the snake, but his own explanation is not to me satisfactory. By
far the best account of the Stepterion is given by Dr H. Usener, Heilige Handlung.
Ilion’s Fall, in Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, 1904, pp. 317—328, to which
I refer for all details, e.g. the Doloneia and the figure of Aix, which do not affect
my present argument. I owe much to Dr Usener’s argument, though I cannot
accept all his conclusions.
2 xvr. ...00 θεῶν εἰσιν, ἀλλὰ δαιμόνων παθήματα καὶ τύχαι μνημονευόμεναι δι᾿ ἀρετὴν
καὶ δύναμιν αὐτῶν.
420 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
could well have put the matter more clearly and truly. These
‘wanderings’ and ‘hidings’ and the like are not of the θεοί, not —
of the fixed Olympian personalities, but of the recurrent cycles
of the daimones, and they are commemorated just because of
their magical ‘virtue and force. In another moment we feel ὲ
Plutarch will be using the expression ‘functional daimon.’ |
Being himself a priest at Delphi Plutarch takes, as an i
instance of how things are misunderstood, the festival of the
Stepterion, according to him an extreme case, Aischylus, we are —
told, is utterly wrong when he says ‘
‘And pure Apollo, banished, a god, from Heaven}.’
3 } [9] 3
And furthest of all from the truth are the theologians at Delphi who hold
that once a fight took place there between the god and a serpent about the
oracle, and who allowed poets and story-writers to present this at dramatic
performances in the theatres, as though they were bent on contradicting what —
is actually done in the most sacred rites.
Here he is interrupted, most fortunately for us, by a question
from one of his audience, a certain Philip, who wants to know ~
exactly what these ‘most sacred rites’ are, which dramatic |
authors, when they represent a fight as taking place between —
Apollo and the snake, contradict. Plutarch answers:
Those rites I mean which are in connection with the oracular shrine,
which quite recently the state (Delphi) celebrated, admitting into them all
the Hellenes beyond Pylae and going in procession as far as Tempe.
It is these rites that contradict the notion of a fight with a
serpent.
For the hut that is set up here, over the threshing-floor, every nine years,
is not just some hole like the lair of a serpent, but zs the imitation of the
dwelling of a tyrant or king, and the attack made in silence upon it along
what is called the Doloneia...they accompany the youth, both of whose
parents are alive, with lighted torches, and when they have set fire to the hut
and overturned the table they fly without looking back through the doors of
the sanctuary. Finally the wanderings and the servitude of the boy and the
purifications that take place at Tempe make one suspect that there has been
some great pollution and some daring deed”.
1 Supra, p. 413.
2 De def. orac. 15 ...4 τε yap ἱσταμένη καλιὰς ἐνταῦθα περὶ τὴν ἅλω Oi ἐννέα ἐτῶν,
οὐ φωλεώδης τις δράκοντος χειά, ἀλλὰ μίμημα τυραννικῆς ἢ βασιλικῆς ἐστιν οἰκήσεως, TE
μετὰ σιγῆς ἐπ᾽ αὐτὴν διὰ τῆς ὀνομαζομένης Δολωνείας ἔφοδος Τ ev 7 (Reiske, μή MSS.)
Αἰολάδαι Ὁ (αἰολὰ MSS.) τὸν ἀμφιθαλῆ κόρον ἡμμέναις δᾳσὶν ἄγουσι καὶ προσβαλόντες τὸ
πῦρ τῇ καλιάδι καὶ τὴν τράπεζαν ἀναστρέψαντες ἀνεπιστρεπτὶ φεύγουσι διὲκ θυρῶν τοῦ
ἱεροῦ" καὶ τελευταῖον αἵ τε πλάναι καὶ ἡ λατρεία τοῦ παιδὸς οἵ τε γιγνόμενοι περὶ τὰ Τέμπη
καθαρμοὶ μεγάλου τινὸς ἄγους καὶ τολμήματος ὑποψίαν ἔχουσι. After ἔφοδος is a lament-
able lacuna. It has not been successfully filled, so I attempt no translation.
Fortunately the loss does not affect the main argument, i.e. that the Stepterion
was no imitation of the slaying of the Python. :
1x] The Stepteria an Eniautos-Festival 427
Clearly Plutarch has here no belief in the aetiological myth
which in the Quaestiones he doubtfully accepts. It is often
assumed that the hut which was burned contained a serpent?,
but of this there is no evidence. Had Plutarch known of any
such serpent he would never have argued as he did, and no one
was better acquainted than Plutarch with the details of Delphic
ritual. We must give up the serpent. The Stepterion consisted
of a secret attack with lighted torches on a hut?, which though
apparently it is made of wood or reeds had somehow—a piece of
purple drapery and a wreath would do it—the semblance of a
king’s palace. The boy who lit the fire fled to Tempe, was
purified and feasted there, and returned in triumph crowned and
carrying a laurel branch.
_ We know that boy with both his parents alive. He carries
the Eiresione; he is the young New Year. But the burning of
the hut? It is the old, old Eniautos-festival, but enacted here
at the end of a Nine-Years Year, one of the periods arranged to
fit together the course of Sun and Moon*. Le Roz est mort, so
his kingly palace is burnt, the table of his first-fruits overturned*;
and the celebrants fly as the slayers of the holy ox fled at the
Bouphonia’, They have incurred an agos. The cry of Ie Paian
is heard’, Vive le rov; the new, young king appears from Tempe
or from anywhere’, crowned and bearing his branch.
It is from lian’, in his account of the ceremonies at Tempe,
that we get the fullest details of the carrying of the laurel
branch, and it is through lian that we realize that this bringing
in of the new laurel, this carrying it and wearing it in wreaths,
gave to the Festival its name ‘Stepterion, Festival of Wreathers*’
11 was misled by this myself in treating of the Stepterion before, Prolego-
mena, p. 113.
2 The hut at Delphi does not of course stand alone. The burning of the booths
at the Tithorea festival, followed by departure in haste, is a close parallel. See
Paus. x. 32.17. At Tithorea the festival was held twice a year—once in the spring,
once in the autumn.
3 Supra, p. 223. 4 Supra, p. 426. 5 Supra, p. 142.
6 Ephoros (F.H.G. τ. 225, p. 70, quoted by Strabo rx. p. 422) the Euhemerist
says that Python was a χαλεπὸς ἀνήρ; it is he who speaks of the σκηνὴ τοῦ Πύθωνος,
and he says that when the man called Drako was shot down they cried te παιάν.
7 The appearance from Tempe is probably due to some local shift of cults, and
does not concern us.
8 Var. Hist. ut. 1.
9 I was quite wrong (Prolegomena, Ὁ. 113, note 4) in my previous adoption of
the form Σεπτήριον, but I still think there may be connection with the enigmatic
στέφη and στέφειν of Asch. Choeph. 94, Soph. Ant. 431, Elek, 52, 458.
428 From Daimon to Olympian [ OH.
After a long account of the beauties of Tempe lian thus
writes :
And it was here the Thessalians say that Apollo Pythios by command
of Zeus purified himself after he had shot down the snake of Pytho who
guarded Delphi while he still held the oracle. So Apollo made himself a
crown of the laurel of Tempe, and taking in his right hand a branch of this
same laurel came to Delphi and took over the oracle, he who was son of Zeus
and Leto. And there is an altar in the very place where he wreathed himself
and bore away the branch, And to this day the Delphians send high-born
boys in procession there, and one of them is architheoros. And they, when
they have reached Tempe and made a splendid sacrifice, return back, after
weaving themselves wreaths from the very laurel from which the god made
himself a wreath....And at the Pythian games the wreaths given to the
actors are made of the same laurel.
Apollo on vases and coins carries the bough, he is thallophoros.
A good example is shown in the design in Fig. 128 from an
Fie. 128.
Etruscan Cista'. Apollo is seated close to his omphalos on which
is perched a mantic bird. He holds a huge bough, A warrior
approaches to consult the oracle.
But if there was no snake, how did the story of the snake
get in? Very simply I think. At Pytho there were holy snakes,
or a snake used for mantic purposes. The tradition as to this
that the snake guarded the oracle for Gaia, is very strong. The
1 Monimenti dell’ Inst. vin. Tay. xXv.—XxXx.
:
ΕΙΧ] The Python as Snake-King 429
people of Epiros had a snake-cult which they believed to be
derived from Delphi, and which we may suppose was, if not
actually derived, at least analogous. Ailian’ thus describes it:
The people of Epiros sacrifice in general to Apollo, and to him they
celebrate their greatest feast on one day of the year, a feast of great
magnificence and much reputed. There is a grove dedicated to the god,
and it has a circular enclosure and within are snakes, playthings surely for
the god. Now only the maiden priestess approaches them, and she is naked
(γυμνὴ), and she brings the snakes their food. These snakes are said by the
people of Epiros to be descended from the Python at Delphi. Now if when the
priestess comes near them the snakes are seen to be gentle, and if they take
to their food kindly, that is taken to mean that there will be a plentiful year
and free from disease ; but if they frighten her, and do not take the honey-
cakes she offers them, then they portend the reverse.
The snake here is not slain by Apollo, it is taken on peaceably
as a plaything (ἄθυρμα). The snake has a maiden priestess.
The omen, as at Athens, is by food. When the snake of Pytho,
feminine of course at first, as guardian of Gaia, had to be killed,
he became a male serpent, a foeman worthy of Apollo’s steel”.
But all this goes to show the harmlessness of the local genius
loci, and does not explain how men came to think he had to die.
The clue is given by the ‘kingly palace’ at the nine-years Festival,
the Stepteria. Minos reigned for nine years*. The king as
daimon incarnate of the Year reigned at Delphi for nine years.
At the end he is killed or deposed. And—this is the important
point—the king as hero-daimon is envisaged as a snake. Cecrops
was a snake, Kychreus was a snake‘, ‘The old snake dies, the
young snake lives.
KADMOS AND JASON AS SNAKE-SLAYERS,
The myth of the slaying of the snake is not of course confined
to Delphi, though only at Delphi is it the deed of a god. Kadmos
slays the snake of Ares, and his snake-slaying is singularly in-
structive.
The chorus in the Phoenissae® tell the story of how Kadmos
1 De Nat. An. xt. 2.
2 The Homeric Hymn has, however (v. 300), dpdxawa. Euripides (1. in T. 1245)
has δράκων.
3 Od. x1x. 179 ἐννέωρος βασίλευε Διὸς μεγάλου ὀαριστής. See Prof. Murray, Rise
of the Greek Epic, p. 156, note 1.
4 Supra, p. 287. 5 Kur. Phoen, 638.
480 From Daimon to Olympian [on.
followed the heifer, and guided by her came to the fertile Aonian”
land, to the fount of Dirke. i
There the snake of Ares, savage guard,
O’er the flowing fount kept watch and ward,
There the beast his bloody eyeballs rolled,
Thither on a time came Kadmos bold
Seeking lustral water. By the might
Of maiden Pallas he the snake did smite,
With a rock upon its head
Bloody stained, and straight he shed
All its teeth upon the earth,
Up there sprang an armed birth.
Not for long were they. Bloody strife
Sent them back to earth that gave them life.
The snake, though the chorus regard him as a terrible
monster, is the guardian of the well, is really the genius loci,
the Agathos Daimon of the place. As such he appears on the
vase! by Assteas reproduced in Fig. 129. Kadmos has come up
Fic. 129.
to the well, the snake ramps out at him, and in terror he drops
his water-jar and picks up a great stone. With the help of the
stone and the goddess Athene who stands near he will presently
1 Naples Museum, Cat. 3226. From a photograph. 4
IX | The Snake as Well and Tree-Daimon 431
slay the snake. Above is seated to the right Thebe; above
Kadmos, and rather inappropriately remote behind a hill, is
Krenaie the well-nymph; above
Athene the old river-god [smenos
stands holding his sceptre. All
about the snake are blossoming
trees and plants. This is not I
think mere landscape painting, it
marks the snake as a fertility-
daimon.
But the fertility character
of the snake comes out most "
clearly in the snake who guards
the golden fruit of the Hesperides.
On the vase-painting" in Fig. 130
we have the tree and the great
snake coiled round it, and at the
foot wells out from a cave in
the earth a spring with double
mouths. Here we have the real
old cultus-complex, tree and well
and snake-daimon guarding both.
The tree and all green things come from the earth bedewed
by living water. So on the Acropolis at
Athens there was an olive tree, a holy snake,
a well. Snake and tree are seen on the
familiar Athenian coin in Fig. 131. The well
is not yet there, for when Poseidon took it
over he had to create it with his trident and
to salt it. ΤῸ “5
Another vase-painting in Fig. 132 is in- Fic. 131.
structive, because it shows how easily, once
the story-telling instinct is at work, the meaning and the
conjunction of the old sanctities is forgotten. We have the
garden and the Hesperid nymphs, the great tree with the golden
fruit, and the snake twined about it. But the holy well is sun-
dered from the tree and the snake, the Hesperids are just
1 I regret that I am unable to trace the sources of the vases in Figs. 130
and 132. They are reproduced from lantern slides long in my possession.
482 From Daimon to Olympian (cH.
water-carrying maidens, and the whole scene, charming though it
is, has lost its daimon-glamour. It is just that daimon-glamour,
Fic. 132.
that haunting remembrance of things ancient, felt rather than
understood, that a poet? keeps, when he is gone
To the strand of the Daughters of the Sunset,
The Apple-tree, the singing and the gold ;
Where the mariner must stay him from his onset,
And the red wave is tranquil as of old: °
Yea, beyond that Pillar of the End
That Atlas guardeth, would I wend ;
Where a voice of living waters never ceaseth
In God’s quiet garden by the sea,
And Earth, the ancient life-giver, increaseth
Joy among the meadows, like a tree.
Now a snake, like the daimon of the tree and well is not a
monster to be slain, he is a genius to be cherished. Only a
total misunderstanding of his nature, or rather his functions, could
make him a curse to be killed. But there are two things to be
remembered. He, the fertility-daimon, if angered had his evil
side, which comes out clearly in the Erinyes®. He, or rather at
Delphi she, the angry Earth, could blast as well as bless. More-
over, as we have seen, the snake-daimon king was in all probability
supposed to die each nine years. So that there was both the
notion of an evil, hostile snake, and also probably a dead king-
snake, to start the myth of the slaying of Python.
On a Kyrenaic vase*’—a class in which things primitive are
apt to survive—in Fig. 133 there is, I think, some reminiscence of
the snake-king. The scene is probably Kadmos slaying the snake,
but it might be any hero slaying any snake without local determi-
nation. The building from which the snake issues is usually
Eur. Hipp. 742.
For the angry snake as Erinys or avenging ghost see Prolegomena, pp. 232 ff.
Puchstein, Arch. Zeit. 1881, p. 238.
won
IX | The King as Snake 433
interpreted as a well-house and may be such, but it is, I think,
more like ‘the imitation of the dwelling of a tyrant or king?’
Fig. 133.
It will be remembered that on grave reliefs we have the hero
in human form standing with or without his
horse—a saga-figure drawn from reality—and
by his side his daimon-form, a coiled snake.
Now it is not a little curious that in a few
grave reliefs, an instance? of which is given in
Fig. 134, we have a man killing a snake. This
does not, I think, refer to any actual incident
in the man’s life, does not imply that a man
died of the bite of a snake. It is simply the
old type misunderstood and made into a
pseudo-fact. A man and a snake side by
side on a tombstone. What does it mean? We do not really
know, we have forgotten. It must mean something. Well then
the man must be killing the snake. Something like this happened
in mythology. There was a snake at Delphi probably painted on
the omphalos, and, it may be, a real snake used for divination.
There came to be a human god Apollo, side by side with the
snake. What was Apollo the bright and beautiful doing with
Fie. 134.
1 Supra, p. 426. 2 Sparta Cat. 565.
Η. 28
434 From Daimon to Olympian [CH. ἢ
the old snake? Well, he had better be killing it. So he was. ©
He was Pythoktonos as he was Sauroktonos. :
The Kadmos myth tempts to another conjecture. It must ©
frankly be admitted that it is only a conjecture—but I hope
a probable one—that Kadmos who is a snake-slayer is also
himself a snake. When, at the close of the Bacchae!, Dionysos
bids Kadmos depart from Thebes, he says to him:
‘For thou must change and be a Serpent Thing
Strange, and beside thee she whom thou didst bring
Of old to be thy bride from Heaven afar,
Harmonia, daughter of the Lord of War,’
and Kadmos knows that the dragon-shape is upon him; he says
to Agave, ‘I must
lead my spouse, mine own
Harmonia, Ares’ child, discorporate
And haunting forms, dragon and dragon mate.’
We know now what lies behind these metamorphoses. A
man is turned into what he really was. Kadmos is turned into
a snake because he was a Snake-man, the snake-man, head and
king of a Snake-group. The snake was the blazon of the Spartoi.
Pausanias? saw the grave of Epaminondas at Mantinea, and thus
describes it :
Over his tomb stands a pillar and there is a shield on it upon which is
wrought a dragon.
The Spartoi of Thebes were the ‘sown men, that earth-born
dragon’s brood from which Pentheus sprang, set always, as we
shall later see, when moralized, in some sort of antithesis to the
Olympians. So in the Bacchae’*
Dark and of the dark impassioned
Is this Pentheus’ blood: yea fashioned
Of the Dragon, and his birth
From Echion child of Earth.
He is no man, but a wonder ;
Did the Earth-Child not beget him
As a red Giant to set him
Against God, against the Thunder ?
And now we see that the mysterious sequel to the dragon-
slaying is quite simply explained. Both Kadmos and Jason, when
they have slain the dragon, sow his teeth, and up from the earth
springs a crop of armed men. The Spartoi had the snake for
1 y, 1330 ff. 5 Ὑπὸ ail, tsp 3 y, 537 ff.
ΙΧ] The Dragons Teeth 435
their blazon; they had also marked, probably tattooed on their
bodies from childhood, a lance. Whether the two-fold symbols
of snake and lance were owing to the fusion of two groups or
not we cannot determine, but the fact is certain; hence the
alternative of dragon or armed man. Aristotle’ in dealing with
anagnorisis speaks of ‘the lance which the earth-born bear,’
Dio Chrysostom? writes of ‘the lance which is said to be the
sign of their race among the Spartoi at Thebes’; and Julian®
even more explicitly says:
The lance is said to be imprinted on the Spartoi by their mother.
But why the teeth? Ina previous chapter* we have noted
the savage custom of knocking out a boy’s tooth at puberty
ceremonies and its possible significance. We have seen the
tooth preserved on the Roman pyre. The tooth because it is
practically indestructible, and perhaps also because it looks like
a gleaming white seed-corn, is the symbol and supposed vehicle
of reincarnation.
Jason, as well as Kadmos and Apollo, slew a dragon and sowed
the dragon’s teeth. The scene is set before us with a strange and
magical splendour by Apollonios Rhodios®. On it a curious light is
cast by the vase-painting® in Fig. 135. In the background is the
tree with the golden fleece. Near at hand Athena with her owl,
as guardian of the hero. She should of course be Hera, but the
vase-painter is a good Athenian patriot. A magnificent dragon
ramps up to the left—there will be splendid sowing with that
dragon’s teeth. So far all is on sound conventional saga lines,
but where is the dragon-slaying hero?) Where indeed? The vase-
painter seems to have remembered in some odd haunting way
that the dragon-slayer is of the dragon’s seed. He is being born
anew from his jaws.
The slaying of the snake then, based on the ritual death of the
old snake king, gradually got moralized. It came to symbolize
1 Poet. 16 λόγχην ἣν φέρουσι γηγενεῖς. Aristotle instances the lance as one of
the ‘congenital’ (σύμφυτα) tokens. It is more probable that it was a tattoo-mark
imprinted in infancy. ν
2 4, 23. δ ἢ 8:1 Ὁ. 4 pp. 272, 273. Sar, TSH.
6 In the Vatican collection; from a photograph. The swallowing of the hero
has so far as I know never been explained. There is no literary tradition, and the
vase is a ἅπαξ λεγόμενον among monuments. For the myth of Jonah and the
whale which is clearly analogous see W. Simpson, The Jonah Legend, 1899.
28—2
436 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
and re-emphasize as a fight what Aischylus saw to be a develop-
ment and succession, the passage from the old Earth-cult to the
later completely humanized Apollo-worship. Whether behind the
story of the fight there lay also some historical fact such as the
incursion of a new tribe either from North or South bringing
a more advanced form of worship I cannot determine’. Tradition
pointed on the one hand to the coming of Apollo from Crete, on
the other from Delos.
The snake-killing is but one aspect of Apollo’s content; we must
now pass to another, closely connected indeed but which adds
fresh elements to our conception.
1 No critic can be more deeply conscious of the ethnographical weakness of this
book than is the writer. I have attempted to get light from ethnography, but
have not so far succeeded; I look forward to the achievements of others better
equipped.
OO ψυν»"νὐ
ΙΧ] Phoibos and the Daphnephoria 437
APOLLO AS PHOIBOS.
We have seen Apollo as Aguieus, the old fertility-cone. But
it is not as Aguieus that he conquers the Earth-snake and sub-
merges the ancient Themis of the dream-oracle. It is not as
Aguieus that he stands for light and reason, for justice and
moderation. As Aguieus he is indeed in some sense Phoibos the
Pure or the Purifier, for the conical stone, as a life-stone, was
kathartic: what gives life heals from disease’. It is however, as
will immediately be seen, the second stage in the succession, the
passage from Earth to Sun by way of Moon, from Gaia to Phoibos
by way of Phoibe, that lifts Apollo to Olympos. What definite
ritual evidence have we of this? If the Herois, the Charila, the
Stepterion all find their utterance, their projection, in Gaia and
her Snake, what is the festival, the ritual, that tinds its utterance,
its projection, in the name and nature of Phoibos? It is the
Daphnephoria.
The Daphnephoria. We have seen that under the name Step-
terion there was a Daphnephoria at Delphi, but our fullest
evidence as to the festival comes to us not from Delphi but from
Thebes. When Pausanias? visited Thebes, he saw the dragon’s
well and the field where Kadmos sowed the teeth. He saw also
a hill sacred to Apollo, who bore the title of Ismenian from the
river Ismenos which, as we have already seen*, was near at hand.
After describing the temple of Apollo Ismenios he says:
The following custom is, I know, still observed at Thebes. A boy of
distinguished family and himself well-looking and strong is made the priest
of Ismenian Apollo for the space of a year (ἐνιαύσιος). The title given him is
Laurel-bearer, Daphnephoros, for these boys wear wreaths made of laurel
leaves.
Now if this were all we should naturally say—Here, as in the
Stepterion, is the same old fertility-spirit who belongs to the
seasonal service of Gaia; the boy carries a laurel Eiresione, and
1 For the connection between life and resurrection gods, i.e. what I should call
Eniautos-daimones, and gods of healing, I can now refer to Baudissin’s interesting
book, Adonis und Esmun. Eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte des Glaubens an
Auferstehungsgitter und an Heilgotter, 1911. The book deals largely with Semitic
religion, and specially with Jahwe as the ‘living’ God, and because living, the
Healer of diseases. Asklepios, who raises from the dead, is a close parallel.
δ τς 10): 4: 3p. 431.
438 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH.
we are not a step the further. Fortunately we know more
particulars of the Daphnephoria and they take us straight from
earth to heaven, from Gaia to Phoibos.
Proklos quoted by Photius? gives us the ritual of the Daphne-
phoria in quite exceptional detail, as follows. After telling us that
it was an enneateric festival and of the same order as the Parthenia,
and after giving its aetiological myth, he proceeds to enumerate
the ritual facts.
They wreathe a pole of olive wood with laurel and various flowers. On
the top is fitted a bronze globe, from which they suspend smaller ones. Mid-
way round the pole~they place a lesser globe binding it with purple fillets—
but the end of the pole is decked with saffron. By the topmost globe they
mean the sun to which they actually compare Apollo. The globe beneath
this is the moon; the smaller globes hung on are the stars and constellations,
and the fillets are the course of the year—for they make them 365 in number.
The Daphnephoria is headed by a boy, both whose parents are alive, and his
nearest male relation carries the filleted pole to which they give the name
Kopo. The Daphnephoros himself, who follows next, holds on to the laurel, he
has his hair hanging loose, he wears a golden wreath and he is dressed out in
a splendid robe to his feet and he wears light shoes. There follows him a
choros of maidens holding out boughs before them to enforce the supplication
of the hymns, The procession of the Daphnephoria is to the sanctuary of
Apollo Ismenios and Him-of-the- Hail.
Our sequence of cults is uttered in visible ritual form with a
clearness, an actuality, beyond anything we might have dared to
hope. We have an Eiresione of the Earth, the flowers of the Earth,
and it is carried to the sanctuary of a Weather-God, Him-of-
the-Hail, probably in this case with a view to magical aver-
sion rather than induction. We have the Moon with her purple
fillets half-way up the pole, and at the top the saffron-decked
globe of the golden Sun Phoibos himself. The ladder from Earth
to Heaven is complete.
1 Bibl. cod. 239, p. 321 (=Schol. ad Clem. Alex. Protrept. p. 9) καὶ ἡ airia...7 δὲ
δαφνηφορία" ξύλον ἐλαΐας καταστέφουσι δάφναις καὶ ποικίλοις ἄνθεσι" καὶ ἐπ᾽ ἄκρου μὲν
χαλκῆ ἐφαρμόζεται σφαῖρα, ἐκ δὲ ταύτης μικροτέρας ἐξαρτῶσι᾽ κατὰ δὲ τὸ μέσον τοῦ
ξύλου περιθέντες ἐλάσσονα τῆς ἐπ᾿ ἄκρῳ σφαίρας καθάπτουσι πορφυρᾶ στέμματα" τὰ δὲ
τελευταῖα τοῦ ξύλου. περιστέλλουσι κροκωτῷ. βούλεται δ᾽ αὐτοῖς 7 μὲν ἀνωτάτω σφαῖρα
τὸν ἥλιον, ᾧ καὶ τὸν ᾿Απόλλωνα ἀναφέρουσιν, ἡ δὲ ὑποκειμένη τὴν σελήνην, τὰ δὲ
προσηρτημένα τῶν σφαιρίων ἄστρα τε καὶ ἀστέρας, τὰ δέ γε στέμματα τὸν ἐνιαύσιον
δρόμον" καὶ γὰρ καὶ T&€ ποιοῦσιν αὐτά. ἄρχει δὲ τῆς δαφνηφορίας παῖς ἀμφιθαλής, καὶ
ὁ μάλιστα αὐτῷ οἰκεῖος βαστάζει τὸ κατεστεμμένον ὃ ξύλον, ὃ κωπὼ καλοῦσιν. αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ
δαφνηφόρος ἐ ἐπόμενος τῆς δάφνης ἐφάπτεται, τὰς μὲν πες καθείμενος, χρυσοῦν δὲ στέφανον
φέρων καὶ λαμπρὰν ἐσθῆτα ποδήρη ἐστολισμένος, ἰφικρατίδας τε ὑποδεδεμένος " ᾧ χορὸς
παρθένων ἐπακολουθεῖ προτείνων κλῶνας πρὸς ἱκετηρίαν τῶν ὕμνων " παρέπεμπον δὲ τὴν
δαφνηφορίαν εἰς ᾿Απόλλωνος ᾿Ισμηνίου καὶ Χαλαζίου.
ἰ
ΙΧ] Apollo and the Αρεοίϊαϊω 439
It is difficult for us perhaps to realize how pregnant was to the
ancient world this shift from Gaia to Phoibos, from a focus of
attention that was on the coming and going of the fruits of the
earth and the disorderly and fearful phenomena of the weather, to
a contemplation of the fixed and orderly procession of the
heavenly bodies. Time was to primitive man always a coloured
various thing, with festivals of spring and harvest for purple
patches, but, through the calendars of moon and sun, it became
also a recurrent rhythmical pattern’.
Aguieus is the fertility of the Earth; the gist of Phozbos is the
Sun-calendar with all its attendant moralities of law and order
and symmetry and rhythm and light and reason, the qualities we
are apt too readily to lump together as ‘Greek.’ But what of
Apollo ?
We have seen that Apollo Aguieus, who by a strange and
terrible irony became to Cassandra her ‘Destroyer, was in reality
the Lord of Life. Can we more closely determine what kind of
life ? For once philology may, I think, safely guide us—to a goal
desired but unlooked for.
APOLLO AS KouROs.
Apollo’s name has an earlier form Apellon®. From this rather
than the form in ὁ we must start. The Doric month Apellaios
frequently occurs at Delphi where it begins the year and can
safely be equated with the Attic Hekatombaion. Now seasonal
festivals, it would seem, were before months and frequently lent to
the months their names. The month of Apellaios is the month
in which the festival of the Apellaia occurred. But what are the
Apellaia? The word ἀπελλάζειν is, Hesychius tells, Laconian for
ἐκκλησιάζειν. It means therefore to ‘hold’ or ‘summon’ or ‘be
1 See supra, p. 184, for the importance of ‘periodicity’ in the development of
civilization. Dr Troels-Lund (trans. by Leo Bloch) in his Himmelsbild und Weltan-
schauung im Wandel der Zeiten, 1908°—a book too little known in England probably
because of its popular form—has shown in very interesting fashion that a period
of enlightenment goes pari passu with an increased interest in astronomy. See
also Otto Seeck, Geschichte d. antiker Welt, 1902, Band 11. Anhang, Der Sonnen-
glaube.
2 For the form Apellon see Pauly-Wissowa s.v. Apollo, and Usener, Gétternamen,
p. 305. The short e for o is, according to Herodian, ap. Kustath. 183. 10, ad II.
τι. 103, characteristically ‘Doric.’
440 From Daimon to Olympian μαῇ
member of’ an assembly. Most significant of all Hesychius has ἰ
the gloss
ἀπελλάκας" ἱερῶν κοινωνούς, sharers of sacred rites:
and again
ἀπελλαί: σηκοί, ἐκκλησίαι, ἀρχαιρεσίαι, folds, assemblies, elections.
Is Apollo the god of the fold and those within the fold? Is he
the Good Shepherd ? or the arch-politician ?
It has long been conjectured, partly from the evidence adduced
and partly from the supposed nature of Apollo Karneios, that
Apollo was the god of flocks and herds. But Apollo is surely not
more, nor indeed half so much, god of flocks and herds as Hermes.
We have no Apollo Kriophoros nor Moschophoros. Apollo will
prove, I think, to be the god of the fold (σηκός), but it is a fold of
human sheep. The nature of the fold and the sheep shepherded
by Apollo will be found, I believe, in an inscription’ found in the
French excavations at Delphi dealing with the organization and
regulations of the phratria of the Labyadae. an
The inscription gives us a rare glimpse into the inner life of
an ancient group. It records regulations for the various initiation
ceremonies, the successive rites de pussage through which a member
of the group must pass, and the offerings that must be made by
him or on his behalf, ‘from the cradle to the grave.’
Among the ceremonies prescribed? occur certain offerings
called respectively ἀπελλαῖα and δάραται". We know from
Athenaeus? that dapatos is a kind of unleavened bread made in
Thessaly. The δάραται then are offerings of cakes. The inscrip-
tion further divides these δάραται into two kinds, γάμελα and
παιδῆια, that is obviously what we should call wedding-cakes and
christening-cakes. So much for the δάραται, but what of the
atreAXaia? On what occasion are they offered ? :
Ε Homolle, Inscriptions de Delphes, in Bull. de Corr. Hell. χιχ. 1895, p. 5,
Réglements de la Phratrie des Λαβύαδαι.
2 The inscription at the end of the fifth century B.c. begins ταγε[ υ]Ἱσέω δι[ καίως
κ]ατὰ τοὺς νόμους τᾶς [π]ό[λ]7ιος καὶ τοὺς τῶν AaBvadlay] πὲρ τῶν ἀπελλαίων kal τᾶν
δαρατᾶν, I will perform aright the office of tagos in accordance with laws of the
state and of the Labyades with respect to the apellaia and the daratai. Both city
(πόλις) and group (Labyadae) are concerned in the enactments. We stand as it
were on a bridge between old and new.
3 i. p. 110p Νίκανδρος δὲ ὁ Κολοφώνιος ἐν ταῖς Γλώσσαις τὸν ἄζυμον ἄρτον καλεῖ
δάρατον. 1148 Σέλευκος μὲν δράμιν ὑπὸ Μακεδόνων οὕτως καλούμενον, δάρατον δ᾽ ὑπὸ
Θεσσαλῶν. Hesych. s.v. δαράτῳ᾽ ἀζύμῳ.
|
|
ΕΣ] Apollo as Megistos Kouros 441
Among the ancients, as among ourselves, a man’s christening,
his reception as a child into the congregation, was a family festival.
So also was his marriage. Neither concerned the state. But
there was another occasion, more solemn, charged with a civic im-
portance beyond that of either christening or marriage, and that
was his reception into the body of grown men as a full-grown
kouros. Then and not till then the youth became ὠπελλάξ, a
‘sharer in sacred rites’; then and not till then could he enter the
ἀπέλλαι, the ‘folds, the ‘assemblies, the ‘elections. The
ἀπελλαῖα I believe’ to be the offerings made at puberty initiation.
Apellaios is the month of these rites and these offerings, Apellon
is the projection of these rites; he, like Dionysos, like Herakles, is
the arch-ephebos, the Megistos Kouros.
Apollo was Phoibos of the unshorn hair’, and now remembering
his double Herakles Alexikakos we understand why. Plutarch®
tells us that in the days of Theseus
It was the custom for those who were passing from childhood to manhood
to go to Delphi and offer there the firstfruits of their hair to the god.
Theseus went there, and there is, they say, a place at Delphi that is called the
Theseion after him. He only shaved the forepart of his head, as Homer says
was the practice of the Abantes, and this sort of tonsure was called Thesezs
after him.
The tonsure may have varied with each group. All that concerns
us is that He-of-the-Unshorn-Hair is youth incarnate, youth just
about to be initiated.
When Pentheus will insult the Bacchos what outrage does he
choose*?
First shear that delicate curl that tangles there,
and the daimon, the Greatest Kouros, makes answer,
I have vowed it to my God; ’tis holy hair.
11 follow here Mr Homolle, op. cit. p. 45. The Apellaia are equated by
Mr Homolle with the Ionian Apatouria. ‘C’est ’hommage de la majorité, et
Poffrande recue fait de l’enfant un homme et de l’incapable un citoyen.’ This view
of the Apellaia is accepted by Dr Nilsson, Griechische Feste, p. 465, note 2. But
for the view that Apollo-Apellon is the projection of the ceremonial I am alone
responsible. For the Apatouria and other festivals in which traces of puberty-
initiation survive, see the concluding chapter.
2 Tl. xx. 39 Φοῖβος ἀκερσεκόμης.
3 Vit. Thes. v. ἔθους δὲ ὄντος ἔτι τότε τοὺς μεταβαίνοντας ἐκ παίδων ἐλθόντας els
Δελφοὺς ἀπάρχεσθαι τῷ θεῷ τῆς κόμης. The word μεταβαίνειν marks the rite de
passage.
4 Kur. Bacch. 493 Ile. πρῶτον μὲν ἁβρὸν βόστρυχον τεμῶ σέθεν.
Δι. ἱερὸς ὁ πλόκαμος" τῷ θεῷ δ᾽ αὐτὸν τρέφω.
q
442 From Daimon to Olympian (cH.
It is youth incarnate, youth with the unshorn hair’, who leads the
Bacchants to the mountains,
And sets them leaping, as he sings,
His tresses rippling to the sky.
And deep beneath the Maenad cry
His proud voice rings:
‘Come, O ye Bacchae, come.’
RG
Fig. 136.,
1 150 τρυφερόν <te> πλόκαμον els αἰθέρα ῥίπτων.
a
ir
EX | Apollo and Dionysos as Kouroi 443
On a curious and beautiful early Greek mirror’, in Fig. 136,
we see the two gods standing, each on a basis, face to face. Apollo
holds his laurel spray. He is a typical ephebos, wearing but a
chlamys and with his unshorn hair coiled in a krobylos. Dionysos,
always more effeminate, less remote from the Mother, wears a long
chiton. They are both calendar gods; the sun, a disk with the
head of an ephebos, shines impartially between them. But the
place seems to belong to Dionysos. A great vine is to either side
of the bases and above isa panther. Perhaps Apollo as Delphinios
may claim the dolphins.
There came then to Delphi, tradition tells us, two Kouroi, the
greatest Kouroi the world has ever seen, Apollo and Dionysos.
Were they, who seem so disparate, really the same? So far as
Fie. 137.
they are Kouroi and Year-Gods, yes. But they are Kouroi and
Year-Gods caught and in part crystallized at different stages of
development. Apollo has more in him of the Sun and the day,
of order and light and reason, Dionysos more of the Earth and the
Moon, of the divinity of Night and Dreams. Moreover, Apollo is
of man’s life, separate from the rest of nature, a purely human
accomplishment; Dionysos is of man’s life as one with nature, a
communion not a segregation.
The vase-painting? in Fig. 137 may serve as the résumé of a
1 Gerhard, Etruskische Spiegel, ccxctt.
2 Hermitage Cat. 1807. See Prolegomena, p. 391, Fig, 124.
444 From Daimon to Olympian [ CH. IX.
long and complex chapter. We are at Delphi, and Dionysos the
elder Kouros holds the place. About him are his Maenads and his
Satyrs. He welcomes the younger Kouros with his laurel bough,
grasping him by the hand. Between them stands the holy tree,
for they are both branch-bearers, and beneath them is the
omphalos of Gaia, mother of both.
We have watched Apollo in his transit from earth to heaven,
We have seen that he like Dionysos was an Eniautos-daimon and
a Megistos Kouros. But Apollo, unlike Dionysos, is a genuine,
unmistakable Olympian. Wherein lies the difference? In a
word, what is it to be an Olympian? The enquiry will be
attempted in the next chapter. |
ApoLtuto oF DELOs.
δ.
CHAPTER. ἐχὶ
THE OLYMPIANS.
ἄτοπον δ᾽ ἂν εἴη εἴ TIC afH φιλεῖν TON Δία.
ΟΥ̓ γὰρ Toye Τγφῶναδο ἐκείνογο οὐλὲ Toye Firantac ἄρχειν ἀλλὰ τὸν
πὰτέρὰ θεῶν KAl ἀνθρώττων.
In the Peace! of Aristophanes, when Trygaeus is trying to win
Hermes to his side, he tells him that there is a most serious and
alarming plot being hatched against all the gods. Hermes asks
what it is all about and Trygaeus answers
‘Why there’s Selene and that old villain Helios
Have been plotting away against you for ever such a time,
To betray Hellas into the hands of the barbarians.’
Hermes asks why they should do that and Trygaeus explains
‘Why, by Zeus, it’s because
We sacrifice to you, but those barbarians
To them, and of course that’s why they’d like
To ruin us altogether, that they may get
For themselves the feasts that ought to belong to the gods.’
The ‘barbarians’ on whose behalf the Moon and Sun are
plotting are, of course, the Persians. Herodotus” in an instructive
passage tells us of the manner of their worship.
The Persians to my knowledge observe the following customs.
It is not their habit to set up images, temples and altars; rather they
charge them who do so with folly, and this, I think, is because they do not
hold like the Greeks that the gods are of human natures. It is their practice
to ascend to the tops of mountains, and there they do sacrifice to Zeus, and
they call the whole circle of heaven Zeus (Aia). They sacrifice to the sun
and the moon, to the earth and to fire and water and the winds. To these
and these only have they sacrificed from the beginning.
Herodotus, like Trygaeus, clearly thought that the nature-gods
of the Persians were quite distinct from the human-nature gods of
the Greeks. He could not possibly, at his stage of thinking,
realize that all gods are, in the sense explained in the last chapter,
| 1 vy, 403 ff.
2.1, 181, ὅτι οὐκ ἀνθρωποφυέας ἐνόμισαν τοὺς θεοὺς κατά περ οἱ Ἕλληνες εἶναι...
446 The Olympians [CH.
nature-gods, and all, because they are born of man’s reaction towards
the outside world, are by equal necessity human-nature gods; that
it is in fact a question of degree, of stage of development rather
than of definite distinction. Apollo the typical Olympian was, as
we have just seen in the last chapter, of Earth and of the Sun, as
well as of that human-nature which in him, as Kouros, as Ephebos,
emerged resplendent. A detailed examination would probably
show that the same was true in great part of each and every
Olympian.
The Greek Gods, in their triumphant humanity, kicked down
that ladder from earth to heaven by which they rose. They
reflected, they represented the mood of their worshippers, which
tended always to focus itself rather on what was proper to
humanity than on what was common to man and the rest of
the universe. The Greek of the time of Aristophanes or even of
Herodotus had probably no very clear idea that the Apollo he
worshipped was a Sun-god. But the Persians as outside observers
were more acute. The scholiast on the passage from the Peace!
just quoted observes,
The barbarians honour the sun and the moon as Herodotus relates. And
probably they reverence both sun and moon more than all the other gods.
On this account they refrained from ravaging both Delos and Ephesos. For
the sun is held to be Apollo and Artemis to be the moon. |
Whatever may have been the view of the unthinking public,
the educated man, as well as the barbarous Persian, knew that in
past days the Greeks themselves had worshipped Nature-powers.
Plato in the Kratylos* makes Sokrates say :
‘The earliest inhabitants of Greece accounted those only to be gods whom
the barbarians now worship, the sun and moon and earth and the constella-
tions and heaven.’ 1
And again in the Laws?, when the Athenian asks the Cretan
Kleinias how he could show that the gods existed, cing
answers,
‘Why first of all there is the earth and the sun and the ce
and the whole universe and the fair order of the seasons and the division of
them into years and months. And then there is the fact that all me
Hellenes and barbarians alike, account them to be gods.’
1 Ad v. 410 ...6 μὲν yap ἥλιος ᾿Απόλλων ἐνενόμιστο ἡ δὲ "Άρτεμις σελήνη. See supra.
p. 192.
“ 397 Ὁ. 3 886 a.
Χ] The Olympians are anthropomorphic 447
Here we seem to be in a midway position. The Nature-
powers, earth and sun and stars, are gods, but they are also
evidence that there are gods. Divinity is in process of extrusion
from nature.
The Pythagorean writer of the Hpinomis' speaks very clearly
as to the precedence due to the Nature-powers.
As to the gods, Zeus and Hera and all the rest, let each man lay down
a law for himself as he will, and let this be binding, but as to the visible
_ gods, who are greatest and most to be honoured...these must be reverenced
with due rites and sacrifices and festivals.
To doubt the existence of these is the wildest impiety.
Everywhere then we find among thinking men the conscious-
ness that behind the recognized Olympians were Nature-powers.
It was, of course, as already observed, impossible for a Greek of
that day to recognize the simple psychological fact that a god was
neither of the two, neither a man nor a nature-power but rather
the outcome of both, the expression of man’s focus of attention
on nature.
We think and write of the gods of the Greeks as anthropo-
morphic, ‘of human form’ or ‘shape.’ The clumsy word is too narrow;
its associations are rather of art than religion. The word used by
Herodotus ἀνθρωποφύης ‘of human growth’ or ‘nature’ is wider
and better. It has more life-blood about it, more of the real
nature and function of the god, less of the outer semblance. Yet
even the wider word must not be glibly used. Still less must we
assume off-hand that the shift from nature-god to human-nature
god is necessarily an advance. The process needs careful scrutiny
and the result some detailed analysis. We shall find that the
complete human-nature god is, roughly speaking, what we call an
Olympian. What then are his characteristics? It will be seen in
the sequel that they are strangely, significantly negative, that
an Olympian is in fact in the main the negation of an Eniautos-
daimon.
(1) The Olympian sheds his plant or animal form. Of this
we have already had abundant evidence. Zeus Ktesios was once
asnake?. Zeus Olbios in local worship long preserved his bull’s
1 984 p—985 p. The close of the long passage is resumed rather than
translated.
2 Supra, p. 297.
|
3
448 The Olympians [ CH.
head. But imagination boggles at a bull-headed Zeus seated in
Olympos. Yet for all that the remembrance of the bull-nature |
never dies out. It lives on in mythology.
at al tt αν
Tas Sei A a
Ere. 138.
ee ee
On the beautiful archaic metope of Selinus? in Fig. 138 we
have Europa seated on the bull.
No whit like other bulls is he, but mild and dear and meek ;
He has a wise heart like a man’s, only he cannot speak.
1 Supra, p. 148. * From a photograph.
ae] Olympians reject Animal-form 449
Moschos! of course, in his lovely idyll, thinks that Zeus took
upon him the form of a bull, but, in the light of Zeus Ktesios
and the Bull Dionysos, we know this to be a mere late aetiological
inversion. The Sun-God of Crete in Bull-form wooed the moon-
goddess, herself a cow; their child is the young bull-god the
Minos-Bull, the Minotaur. Kadmos sought Europa in Boeotia, in
Cowland—and what did he find ?
Kadmos hither came from Tyrian town;
Lo! untired before him laid her down
The heifer, that made clear the god’s command
And bade him dwell there in the fertile land”.
And, that there may be no mistake, Mnaseas?® tells us that on
either flank of the heifer was
‘a white sign like the circle of the moon.’
Sometimes the animal form of the god lives on as in mytho-
logy ; more often perhaps it survives in the supposed ‘attribute’ of
the god. Thus on the familiar coin of
Kaulonia in Fig. 139 we have Apollo in
full human form. Standing beside him
is a stag, an animal ‘sacred to’ him as to
his sister Artemis. Such sanctities are
not lightly forgotten. On the outstretched
arm of the god is a little winged figure,
usually interpreted as a wind. It is, I
think, more probably the daimon of the Fre. 139.
god, his Kratos, his power, his mana
made visible. In his other hand the god as Thallophoros holds
a sacred bough. In high Olympos the gods cease to carry
boughs, instead they carry wine-cups. They feast more freely
than they function.
The shedding of plant and animal form marks of course the
complete close of anything like totemistic thinking and feeling.
It is in many ways pure loss. The totemistic attitude towards
animals may, as based on ignorance, beget superstition, but it is
1 Td. 1. 105.
2 Eur. Phoen. 638.
> Schol, Eur, Phoen. 638
ἔνθα δὲ προσπελάσας συλλάμβανε βοῦν ἐρίμυκον
τὴν ἤ κεν νώτοισιν ἐπ᾽ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἔχησι
λευκὸν σῆμ᾽ ἑκάτερθε περίτροχον ἠύτε μήνης.
450 The Olympians [om
full of beautiful courtesies. There are few things uglier than
a lack of reverence for animals. The well-born, well-bred little
Athenian girls who danced as Bears to Artemis of Brauronia, the —
Bear-Goddess, could not but think reverently of the great might —
of the Bear. Among the Apaches to-day, Bourke? states, ‘only
ill-bred Americans, or Europeans who have never had any “raising,”
would think of speaking of the Bear or indeed of the snake, the
lightning or the mule, without employing the reverential prefix
“QOstin,” meaning “old man,” and equivalent to the Roman title —
999
“Senator.
In art this exclusion of animal and plant life from the cycle |
of the divine is sometimes claimed as a gain. Rather it leaves
a sense of chill and loneliness. Anyone who turns from Minoan ~
pottery with its blossoming flowers, its crocuses and lilies, its
plenitude of sea life, its shells and octopuses and flying fish,
anyone who turns from all this life and colour to the mono-
tonous perfection of the purely human subjects of the best red-
figured pottery, must be strangely constituted if he feels no loss.
He will turn eagerly for refreshment from these finished athletes —
and these no less accomplished gods, to the bits of mythology
wherein animals still play a part, to Europa and her bull, to
Phrixos and his ram, to Kadmos and his snake, and he will turn —
also to the ‘attributes’ of the humanized Olympian, he will be
gladdened by Athena’s owl and by the woodpecker of Zeus; glad —
too that Dionysos’ Dendrites still deigns to be a tree and Apollo
to carry his living branch. The mystery gods it should be noted
here, though it has been observed before*, are never free ot
totemistic hauntings, never quite shed their plant and animal
shapes. That lies in the very nature of their sacramental worship.
They are still alive with the life-blood of all living things from
which they sprang.
(2) The Olympian refuses to be an Karth-daimon. In dis-
cussing the sequence of cults from Gaia to Apollo it has been
seen that, even when he has left totemistic ways of thinking
behind him, when he has ceased to base his social structure on
1 On the Border with Crook, p. 132. I borrow this quotation from Mr Cook’s
delightful article on Descriptive Animal Names in Greece, Class. Rev. vim. (1904),
Ῥ. 984. Pa
2 Supra, p. 129.
x] The Olympians reject Snake-form 451
supposed kinship with animals and plants, man tends, in his
search after food, to focus his attention first on earth! and only
later on heaven. His calendar is at first seasonal, based not
on observation of the heavenly bodies but on the waxing and
waning of plants, of the fruits of the earth. The worship of
Earth in a word comes before the worship of Heaven.
This worship of Earth and the daimonic powers of the earth
_ 1s, we have also seen, closely and even inextricably mixed with
_the cult of the dead. The daimonic power of the dead is figured
under the form of a snake. The situla in Fig. 140 from Daphnae?
recalls this earth-snake to our minds. He is clearly a daimon of
fertility; to his right hand springs upa tree. He is winged, for
he is in part a daimon of the powers of the air, but he is
emphatically a snake. That there may be no mistake not only
Fia. 140.
has he, like Cecrops, a snake’s body, but in either hand he holds
a snake.
When the Olympians mounted from Olympos to the upper
air they were, it seems, ashamed of their earth-origin and resolved
to repudiate their snake-tails. This is very clearly seen on the
vase-painting® in Fig. 141. To the mght is an old Earth-daimon
just like the daimon on the Daphnae situla. He is winged, and
his body ends in two snake-coils. He is obviously as benevolent
and as civilized as Cecrops himself. But he is earth-born, and
Zeus of the upper air, the completely human Zeus, will have none
1 For a full examination of the religion of Earth and its relation to phallic
cults see A. Dieterich, Mutter Erde, 1905; and for the transition from Earth- to
Heaven-worship, 5. Wide, Chthonische und Himmlische Gétter, in Archiv ἢ,
Religionswiss. 1907, p. 257.
2 Brit. Mus. Cat. B. 104.
® Gerhard, Auserlesene Vasenbilder, 111. 237.
452 The Olympians [ cH.
of him, will blast him with his thunder-bolt. We seem to hear
the kindly, courteous old earth-daimon cry, and ery in vain,
38 ‘ ,
t@ θεοὶ νεώτεροι.
The animosity of the wholly human Olympians against the
earth-born daimones takes definite and instructive form in the
myth of the Gigantomachia. The word giant brings to our minds
the picture of a man of monstrous size and probably cannibal
habits, but the ‘giants’ of the Greeks are nowise in this sense
‘gigantic. Pentheus is a ‘bloody giant’, but his stature is like
that of other mortals. He is the typical ‘giant, earth-born, seed
of Echion. The Greek giants have one characteristic mark and
even this scarcely separates them from ordinary mortal men: they
Fic. 141.
are Earth-born, γηγενεῖς, and as such they fight with primitive
weapons wrested from earth, with huge blocks of stone and trees
uptorn by their roots. They are the actual and special children
of Earth herself. Again and again on vases and reliefs when in
the great fight with the Olympians the earth-born ones are in
danger, the figure of Gaia rises up from the ground to implore
mercy for her sons”.
In this connection it is important to note the form given
to them in αὐ. On black-figured vases and early reliefs, such
as the pediment of the Megara Treasure-house at Olympia, they
1 Bur. Bacch. 573; see supra, p. 434.
2 See Roscher, Lexicon, s.v. Gaia.
3 For the whole subject of the Giants see Dr Maximilian Mayer’s brilliant
Die Giganten und Titanen, 1887. Following the Etymologicum Magnum, s.v.
γίγαντες. he holds that γῆ and γίγας are from the same root. I follow in the
_—
main his view of the contrast between Giants and Titans, but he is in no way
responsible for the views I deduce from this contrast.
Χ] The Olympians reject Ouranian Aspect 458
are simply armed men, hoplites, like the crop of men who sprang
at Thebes from the dragon’s teeth. On later and more learned
monuments, as for example red-figured vases and the great Altar
of Pergamos, they are men with bodies ending in serpents’ tails.
They are, even to the detail of the added wings, creatures just
like the opponent of Zeus in Fig. 141. They prove to be in fact
nothing but the gods, or rather the snake-tailed daimones, of the
early population. They began like the daimon on the Daphnae
vase and like Cecrops and Kadmos as fertility-daimones, as Agathoi
Daimones. When the human-shaped Olympians triumph they
become evil monsters to be overthrown. ‘Their kingdom is of
this earth.
(3) The Olympian refuses to be a daimon of air and sky.
Mythology tells us not only of a Gigantomachia but of a Titano-
machia. The Titans cannot be very precisely delimited from the
*Giants. They too are in some sense Earth-born’. Titaia was a
title of Earth, Titias was own brother to Kyllenos, and the nature
of Hermes Kyllenios we know, and both were paredroi of the
Mother and both were Idaean Daktyls*. The Earth-born Tityos
is a figure that needs no comment, Priapos, Lucian? tells us, was
either ‘one of the Titans or of the Idaean Daktyls*’ Picus and
Faunus, says Plutarch, ‘either Satyrs or Titanes.’
But, and this is the interesting point, the Titans, unlike the
Giants, seem early to have left their earth-nature behind them
and climbed one step up the ladder to heaven. Fertility-daimones
they remain, but rather as potencies of sky than earth. A little
south of Sikyon Pausanias® saw the town of Titane, the town,
according to the natives, where Titan first dwelt.
They say that he was brother to the Sun, that the place took its name
Titane from him. I think that Titan was great at marking the seasons of
the year and the time when the sun gives increase to and ripens the fruit
of trees.
1 For the primitive Daktyl and phallic nature of the Titans see Kaibel, Daktyloi
Idaioi, 1902.
2 See Kaibel, op. cit., pp. 489—492.
3 De Salt. 21, speaking of the invention of the armed dance by Priapos, τῶν
Τιτάνων οἶμαι ἕνα ἢ τῶν ᾿Ιδαίων Δακτύλων.
4 Vit. Num. 15 ods τὰ μὲν ἄλλα Σατύρων ἄν τις ἢ Τιτάνων γένει προσεικάσειε. From
lack of understanding of the nature of the Titanes Τιτάνων has been emended into
ἹΤανῶν.
δ τὰ ΤΠ, 9
:
ἮὟ
νὴ
td
454 The Olympians [CH.
The notion that Titan is a Sun-power lives on, like Phoebus,
in English poetry.
And Titan, tired in the mid-day heat,
With burning eye did hotly over-look them}.
But it would be a mistake to suppose that Titan is always and
merely the Sun. Empedokles? is nearer the truth because less
specialized. ΤῸ him Titan is the azther, the whole region of the
meteora.
Gaia and billowy ocean and air with its moisture,
And Aither, the Titan, embracing the All in a circle.
Special Titans specialize into Sun-Gods. The Titan Sisyphos
who climbs the steep of heaven rolling his stone before him, only
to fall adown the steep and climb it again next morning, is the
Sun, the Titan Phaethon is the Sun, the Titaness Phoebe is the
Moon, but Titan himself is rather Ouranos, the whole might of
the upper air.
Art has left us no representations of the Titanomachia as
distinguished from the Gigantomachia—but in literature it is
abundantly clear that the Titans are Ouraniones. In Homer
and Hesiod they, unlike the Giants, are always gods, Τιτῆνες θεοί *.
They are constantly being driven down below the earth to nether-
most Tartarus and always re-emerging. The very violence and
persistence with which they are sent down below shows that they
belong up above. They rebound like divine india-rubber balls.
Their great offence in Olympian eyes is that they will climb up to
high heaven, which the human-shaped Olympians had arrogated to
themselves. The fight between Titans and Olympians always
takes place in mid air. In the Theogony* the Titanomachia is
but a half-humanized thunderstorm, where Zeus as much and
perhaps more manifestly than his opponents is but a Nature-
Power.
1 Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, 177. |
2 Diels, F.V.S. 38 |
yaid τε καὶ πόντος πολύκυμων ἠδ᾽ ὑγρὸς ἀήρ
Τιτὰν ἠδ᾽ αἰθὴρ σφίγγων περὶ κύκλον ἅπαντα.
A kindred figure to Titan is Akmon (Sk. agman), the personified vault of heaven. |
3 Hes. Theog. 630 é
Τιτῆνές τε θεοὶ καὶ ὅσοι Kpdvov ἐξεγένοντο.
Hom. Il. x1v. 278 θεοὺς ὀνόμηνεν ἅπαντας. Hi
ἄν, 675 ff., trans. Prof. Murray, τοὺς ὑποταρταρίους, of Τιτῆνες καλέονται.
x] The Titanomachia 455
The new gods stood on Olympos and the Titans on the older
religious seat, Thessalian Othrys.
And the Titans opposite had made strong their lines and both sides put
forth their might. And there was a terrible cry from the boundless sea, and
shattering of the earth, aud the broad sky groaned and high Olympos was
shaken from his foundations with the rush of immortal things, and the quak-
ing and the noise of feet upon the steeps came down unto cloudy Tartaros....
And the armies met with a great shout and Zeus held back his fury no more,
Down from Olympos and heaven he came in one sweep of thunders that ceased
not; and the bolts went winged from his mighty hand and the life-bearing
Earth cracked with the burning and around him the fathomless forest roared
in fire and all Earth seethed and the streams of Okeanos and the unharvested
sea, and a hot blast beset the earth-born Titans, a flame unspeakable blazed
in holy aether and the flash of thunderbolt and lightning blinded their eyes
mighty though their strength was, and a wondrous heat laid hold of Chaos},
And it seemed, to see with the eyes and to hear the great din with the ears,
that Earth and broad heaven crashed together. For such a mighty din had
been if earth were in ruin and heaven hurtling above her. Such was the din
what time the gods met in battle.
The stuff of which Zeus is made is clear enough. He too was
a Titan, he too was Ouranos and Aither, and his nature retains
more of τὰ wetapova than of ta μετέωρα. But he has emerged
into humanized form, and his old form is made to appear, not like
the chrysalis from which he evolved himself, but rather as an
alien foe opposed. It is strange and interesting that Zeus, king
and father of all the other Olympians, should be the last to shed
his elemental nature. He who is always boasting that he is Father
and Councillor remains to the end an automatically explosive
_ thunderstorm?. He has none of the achieved serenity of the
Sun-god Apollo.
We are accustomed to think of the Titans as criminals, rebels
against high heaven condemned for their sin of ὕβρις to languish
in Tartarus. It is well to look at things from the other side, the
side set before us in the Prometheus of Aischylus.
1 Chaos is the space between Earth and Heaven. See schol. ad Theog. 116
... ἤγουν Tov κεχυμένον ἐν τῷ μεταξὺ γῆς καὶ οὐρανοῦ.
2 Μ. Salomon Reinach in his Orpheus, 1909, p. 5, has well pointed out that the
same explosiveness attaches to the Hebrew Father-God, Jahveh. It is difficult to
do justice to Jahveh unless we remember the primitive elements his figure absorbs.
The account of Uzzah and the ark in 2 Samuel vi. 4—7 shocks our moral sense.
Uzzah caught hold of the Ark to prevent it falling—‘for the oxen shook it.’ The
intent was innocent, even praiseworthy, but ‘the anger of the Lord was kindled
against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error: and there he died by the
ark of God.’ Such a God makes worship difticult. But if we remember that
the ark was itself a centre of tabu, automatically explosive, like a thunderstorm,
and that the human Jahveh is a later addition, our antipathy in part disappears.
456 The Olympians ᾿ | [ CH.
Prometheus is the arch-Titan and he is son of Gaia. The
chorus who sympathize with him are nature-powers, Okeanids of
the old order. There is perhaps nothing in all ancient poetry
more lovely than the coming of the Okeanid chorus. Prometheus,
hurt and bitter of heart, hears in the air a flutter of bird- wings.
He is afraid. He is so badly hurt that all the world is pain and
fear to him—
πᾶν μοι φοβερὸν τὸ προσέρπον".
The Okeanids sing softly to him their song of sympathy and
gentleness, in that measure which in itself is a healing—
μηδὲν φοβηθῆς: φιλία yap ἅδε τάξις πτερύγων θοαῖς
ἁμίλλαις προσέβα τόνδε πάγον.
It is the eternal healing of dispassionate nature as against the
angry clash of irreconcilable human wills and egotisms.
The chorus laments the new rulers, the new helmsmen of the
world’s ship, just as the Erinyes bemoan the coming of the νεώτεροι
θεοί---
νέοι γὰρ οἰακονόμοι κρατοῦσ᾽ ᾽Ολύμπου, νεοχμοῖς δὲ δὴ νόμοις
Ζεὺς ἀθέτως κρατύνει,
τὰ πρὶν δὲ πελώρια νῦν ἀϊστοῖ".
‘He has destroyed the old portentous ones.’ The expression ‘ por-
tentous ones,’ πελώρια, is noticeable and repays investigation.
We think of the Okeanids as Ocean-nymphs, sea-nymphs, but
we do not think quite rightly, nor does the notion sea-nymph at
all exhaust their content. Okeanos is much more than Ocean
and of other birth.
This comes out clearly in the unforgettable scene at the
beginning of the 20th Jliad*. Zeus summons all the gods to
his council on Olympos and Themis ranges round to collect
them. She fetches the rivers and they all hurry up and do on
their human shapes and sit them down inthe polished colon-
nades.
There was no River came not up, save only Ocean, nor any nymph, of all
that haunt fair thickets and springs of rivers and grassy water-meadows.
Why did not Ocean come? The sea-god came’,
Nor was the Earth-shaker heedless of the goddess’ call, but from the salt
sea came up after the rest and set him in the midst.
1 Asch. Prom. Vinct. 128 ff. 2 y. 150 ff.
3 Hom. 7: xx: 4 ff. ay Va:
x] Okeanos as Sky-God 457
Homer! is loud and instant to tell us that no river might rank
with Zeus.
Not even King Acheloios is match, nor yet the great strength of deep-
flowing Ocean, from whom all rivers flow and every sea, and all springs and
deep wells: yet even he hath fear of the lightning of great Zeus and his dread
thunder, when it pealeth out of heaven.
Homer here, as often, doth protest too much. Okeanos fears
no Zeus and will not attend his councils—and why? Because he
himself is not Ocean but the stream of Ouranos, high heaven itself,
an earlier unhumanized Zeus. Okeanos, says the Htymologicum
Magnum’, is a title of Ouranos.
As a potency of the old order he is the enemy of Zeus, the
friend of Prometheus. And he comes, not like a sea-god mounted
on a dolphin but on a four-legged bird with winnowing wings.
The bird comes in so clumsily that he must be integral. It beats
the air with its pinions eager to be back in its heavenly home.
And again, the Okeanids come, not swimming and floating
through the waves but borne on the breeze, for they too are
daimones of the upper air—
κραιπνοφόροι δέ μ᾽ ἔπεμψαν αὖραιϑ.
The gods who came to Prometheus in his sorrow are the old
nature-gods whom he as Titan invoked, aither, the swift-winged
winds, the springs of heaven-born rivers—
ὦ δῖος αἰθὴρ καὶ ταχύπτεροι πνοαὶ
ποταμῶν τε πηγαὶ ποντίων τε κυμάτων
ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα, παμμῆτόρ τε γῆ.
That is poetry, but it is also theology, sound if obsolete, but
obsolete only to revive in philosophy, the philosophy of Sokrates
hung in mid-air; the philosophy of those Ionians who, borrowing
it may be their doctrine from the βάρβαροι, the Persians, saw in
the elemental nature-powers the beginning of things. Most of all
the sun is not forgotten by the old Titan-god:
‘ ‘ , , « , ~
καὶ τὸν πανόπτην κύκλον ἡλίου καλῶ"
ἴδ ΄ > "Ὁ ‘ ΄- ΄ 6 ΄.5
ἴδεσθέ μ᾽ οἷα πρὸς θεῶν πάσχω θεός.
1 Tl. στ. 195.
2 s.v. ‘Qxeavés* ὁ οὐρανὸς νενόμισται. ᾿Ωκεανός is connected with ai, ag¢ayanas—
surrounding; it is the stream of ether engirdling the universe; it is ceaseless,
recurrent (ἀψόρροος), unwearied (ἀκάματος), essentially Titanic. See EH. H. Berger,
Mythische Kosmographie der Griechen, 1904, pp. 1 and 2.
3 Asch. Prom. Vinct. 132.
4 vu. 88. 5 y. 92.
458 The Olympians [cH
The Gigantes are children of Earth, the Titanes are children
of Earth and Heaven, with a leaning towards Heaven. The
Gigantomachia stands for the triumph of the humanized Olym-
plan over the powers’ of Earth, over the snake-tailed monster ;
the Titanomachia stands for the triumph, partial only, of Olym-
planism over that higher form of Naturism which is Ouranianism?.
It would scarcely have been possible to figure Sun and Moon as
lawless monsters, but Ouranos included in his compass τὰ μετάρ-
ova as well as τὰ μετέωρα, and in the conduct of τὰ μετάρσια and
the weather-daimones generally there was much that might cause
a willing enemy to blaspheme. Thunder and lightning, wind
and rain, storm and tempest might fitly be classed as peloria,
portents.
The chorus of Okeanids, we have seen, lament that
He has destroyed the old portentous ones.
powers, both Giants and Titans; but it is not a little interesting
to find that quite early the word differentiated itself into two
forms. Dr Osthoff? has shown that πέλωρ and tépas—monster
and portent—are one and the same. An examination of the uses
of the two words shows that they are practically identical, only
that—and this is for us the important point—zréAwp tends to
specialize towards what is earth-born, and τέρας in the form
teipea tends to be used of heavenly signs.
Thus πέλωρ is one regular term for an earth-born monster
and specially for a snake. Gaia herself in Hesiod? is Tata
πελώρη, the Python in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo* is πέλωρ,
1 The chorus of Okeanids say emphatically (v. 164)
ὁ δ᾽ ἐπικότως ἀεὶ
θέμενος ἄγναμπτον νόον,
δάμναται οὐρανίαν
γένναν.
2 Etymologische Beitrége zur Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, in Archiv f.
Religionswiss. 1904, p.51. Both πέλωρ and τέρας go back to a guttural form *qepas.
Hesychius has the form τέλωρ᾽ πελώριον, μακρόν, μέγα and τελώριος, μέγας, πελώριος.
Euripides (Androm. 1033) uses the form κέλωρ,
ὅτε νιν ᾿Αργόθεν πορευθεὶς
᾿Αγαμεμνόνιος κέλωρ, ἀδύτων ἐπιβὰς
κτεάνων ματρός,
where κέλωρ is obviously not ‘a poetic word’ for son. Orestes is the daimon
household snake, the Ktesios turned Hrinys.
® Theog. 159. 4 vy. 374.
ΠΧ] The Peloria 459
but to Euripides! he is γᾶς πελώριον τέρας. The portent sent by
Persephone from below the earth is Γοργείη κεφαλὴ δεινοῖο
πελώρου, but it is also Διὸς τέρας, as though by afterthought.
Hades himself is Pelorios. One of the earth-born men sprung
of the dragon’s seed was, according to Hellanikos?, called Pelor.
The rest of the five were Oudaios, He of the Soil, Hyperenor, the
Overweening, Echion, Snakeman, and Chthonios, Karthman, surely
a significant company.
Finally, what is very interesting for us, we know of an ancient
festival celebrated in honour of these primitive earth-potencies
and called by their name Peloria. Athenaeus*, in discussing
the ancient rites to which it was the custom to admit slaves,
writes thus:
Baton of Sinope, the orator, in his work on Thessaly and Haemonia, says
plainly that the Roman Saturnalia was essentially a Greek festival and alleges
that it was called by the Thessalians Peloria.
Baton then goes on to give an aetiological myth to the effect
that the festival, which was a sacrifice held in common by the
Pelasgians, was instituted in honour of one Peloros who brought
the news of the sudden emergence, owing to an earthquake, of the
vale of Tempe. A table spread with all manner of delicacies was
set for Peloros, hence the name of the feast—to which strangers
and slaves were made welcome—and
Even to this day the Thessalians celebrate this as their chief festival and
call it Peloria‘.
The primitive character of the Peloria has been already? dis-
cussed. What concerns us now is the name. It is abundantly
clear that by the time of Athenaeus, and probably long before,
the meaning of the word Peloria had been lost—the feast was
said to be held in honour of Zeus Peloros. No one knew that the
festival was in honour of just those old earth-portents whom Zeus
destroyed. If we want to realize the sanctities reverenced at the
old Thessalian festival we must go back not to Zeus but to the old
Earth-daimon, winged and snake-tailed, who on the vase-painting
in Fig. 141 smiles as he confronts the thunderbolt of Zeus.
The Olympians then stand first and foremost as a protest λᾶς
τὰ vl. 1.248. 2 Schol. Apoll. Rhod. mz. 1178.
3 xy. 45. 639. + 640. 5 Supra, p. 251.
460 The Olympians [cH. ἢ
~ against the worship of Earth and the daimones of the fertility —
of Earth. So far they command our respect and even our —
sympathy. As long as man is engaged in a hand to hand struggle
for bare existence, his principal focus of attention must be on food. —
The magical inducement of the recurrent fertility of the earth is
his first and well-nigh his last religious duty. But, as civilization
advances, and he is freed from the more urgent necessities, his
circle of needs enlarges and the focus of his attention widens.
The old intense interest in food and fertility slackens. Moreover
a worship of the powers of fertility, which includes all plant and —
animal life, is broad enough to be sound and healthy, but, as man’s
attention centres more and more intently on his own humanity,
such a worship is an obvious source of danger and disease. In-
stinctively a healthy stock will purge its religion from elements
exclusively phallic. This expurgation ranks first and foremost
among the services Olympianism rendered to Greecet. The fight
of the Gods against the Giants had right as well as might on
its side.
But, if the fight of the Gods against the Earth-born Giants be
just and right, the same can scarcely be said of the fight against
the Titans. These powers of the upper air, these gods of storm
and lightning, these μετάρσια may be, because not understood,
lawless, but they are nowise impure and their worship can scarcely
degrade. Moreover, though the μετάρσια were, as being wholly
unintelligible and apparently irresponsible, the appropriate objects
of magic, the μετέωρα with their ordered comings and goings,
risings and settings, waxings and wanings, tempted man up the
steep road of exact observation. Measurements led him to mathe-
| matics, in a word, to science. The Olympians would have done well
had they, while renouncing or at least reforming Earth and τὰ
μετάρσια, clung to and developed the worship of τὰ μετέωρα.
It has already been observed? that, in the course of the advance
of European civilization, each new period of enlightenment has
1 See Kaibel, Daktyloi Idaioi, 1902, p. 512, for expurgation in Homer, and
Prof. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic*, 1911, pp. 143 ff. The process of expurgation
probably long preceded its literary expression. For the general moral gain and the
softening of manners see Greek Hpic*, p. 257, where Prof. Murray quotes Plutarch’s
significant words which head this chapter as motto, Vit. Pelop. xx1., a human
sacrifice is opposed on the grounds ὡς οὐδενὶ τῶν κρειττόνων καὶ ὑπὲρ ἡμᾶς ἀρετὴν —
ῃ - Ἶ ‘\
οὖσαν οὕτω βάρβαρον καὶ παράνομον θυσίαν" οὐ yap τοὺς Τυφῶνας ἐκείνους οὐδὲ τοὺς
Τίγαντας ἄρχειν ἀλλὰ τὸν πατέρα θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων.
2 Supra, p. 439.
ἢ
ΙΧ] Persian Religion and Ionian Philosophy 461
been accompanied or rather expressed by new progress in the
study of astronomy.
Why then did the orthodox Olympian religion, spite of the
protests of philosophers, renounce ta μετέωρα I would hazard
a conjecture, distinctly marking the fact that it is at present little
more than a conjecture, of which confirmation, however, seems to
grow apace. By the mouth of Herodotus and Aristophanes we
_ have seen that, to the popular mind, the worship of nature-powers,
the elements and the heavenly bodies, earth, air, water, fire, Sun
and Moon, was characteristic of ‘the barbarians,’ and in the sixth
century B.C. barbarian of course spelt Persian. ‘That old villain
Helios’ is intent on betraying the Olympians; he is caught
Medizing. Is it not possible that some, indeed much of the
acrimony felt, the contumely heaped on meteoric philosophy is
due, not to the rage of the common man against the thinker, but
to the natural resentment of the patriot? Sokrates in his basket
contemplating τὰ μετέωρα is not only, or chiefly, the fantastic
philosopher, he is the pilloried Persian.
We may take it as an axiom! that philosophy arises out of
religion. Greek philosophy arose, we are told, in Ionian Naturism.
Starting from our axiom we are bound to ask, ‘Out of what religion
was it that Ionian Naturism arose?’ Not from Olympianism. ‘\
The doctrines of Thales, of Herakleitos, of Anaximenes, of Anaxi-
mander, given that they arose from a religion at all, must have
arisen from a religion concerned with the elements, Water, Fire,
Air, Earth. For such a religion we look in vain to Greece. ©
That philosophy arose in the sixth century B.c., just the century
when Asia Minor was riddled through and through with Persian
infiltrations.
The history of art tells, I think, the same tale. Up to the
time of the Persian wars Greek art was all that we call archaic.
It was traditional and hieratic. Then comes the sudden awaken-
ing to an almost complete naturism. We write and lecture on the
outburst of new life that followed on the struggle with a great
Oriental potency. Is it not at least as. likely that in art as in
1 For a full exposition and analysis of this principle, to me indisputable and
axiomatic, I may be allowed to refer to Mr F. M. Cornford’s forthcoming work,
From Religion to Philosophy.
462 The Olympians [ CH.
philosophy ‘Naturism’ received a fresh impulse from Persia! and —
both had a common source, Persian religion 7. The Olympians are, —
9
as will presently be shown’, essentially objets d'art.
We shall find confirmation of this view if we look at another
movement of the sixth century B.c., the movement known as
ν Orphic®. Orphic religion contains within itself much that is indi-
genous. Its main fond is primitive Aigean religion, with all those
factors of naturism and magic already described in detail. But
what differentiates it out from the rest of the popular religion
of Greece is, I have long believed, certain imported elements of
Oriental and mainly Iranian nature-worship and formal mysticism *.
The Greek spirit always tended to humanize and individualize
its daimones into personal gods, Iranian mysticism kept them
disintegrated and dispersed in the medium of nature from which
they sprang. Divinities so dispersed are the natural medium
and vehicle of magic, of sacramentalism, of each and every form
of mysticism.
Orphism did just what the Olympian religion failed or refused
to do. It reformed the religion of Earth, but by strengthening
the powers of Heaven, not by disallowing them; it fought the
Giants but joined forces with the Titans®. This it was, I think,
enabled to do through its reinforcement by Iranian naturism and
mysticism. To confirm this view the main position of Orphic
1 This is not the place to discuss the character of Persian art. Its characteristic
naturalism may be well studied in the sculptures from Persepolis, excavated by
M. and Mme Dieulafoy, and now in the Louvre. The possible influence of Persia
in producing Pheidian and post-Pheidian naturalism in art was first suggested to
me ὦ propos of his discoveries at Memphis by Prof. Flinders Petrie. It was a
conversation with him that first led me to the idea that Persian nature-worship
might underlie Ionian philosophy.
2 Infra, p. 478.
3 Orphism as a whole is advisedly excluded from the present book, which aims
only at an examination of certain social origins of Greek religion.
4 For these foreign elements in Orphism see especially Dr Hisler, Welten-
mantel und Himmelszelt, 1910. For Persian influence in Egypt in the sixth and
fifth centuries B.c. see W. Flinders Petrie, Personal Religion in Egypt, p. 40 ff.
For prehistoric relations between Iran and Asia Minor as evidenced by the Boghazkoi
excavations see Winckler in Mitteilungen d. deut. Orient.-Gesellschaft, 1907,
No. 35, pp. 1—71, and Garstang, Land of the Hittites, 1910. For a good résumé
of the Persian elements in Orphism see Dr Wiinsch’s review of Dr Hisler’s book in
Archiv f. Religionswiss. 1911, p. 536.
5 Persian religion laid, as is well known, special stress on Fire-worship, and
along with this went a minute attention to ritual purity, and a sharp distinction
drawn between light and darkness, good and evil—a distinction foreign to the
primitive Greek mind. We owe our devil to the Persians,
᾿
a4 Persian Religion and Orphism 463
religion must briefly be resumed. Only so can we feel to the
full the weakness and deadness of Olympian negations.
The broad foundation of Orphic religion, as of all mysticism,
was a pantheistic naturism. All things are sprung from Earth and
Heaven. This doctrine is best voiced in the priceless fragment of
the Melanippe the Wise of Euripides'. Melanippe has borne two
children to the god Poseidon. They are exposed, by the god’s
command, but saved by divine interposition and found, in the
usual fashion, suckled by wild kine. They are brought to the
king. He calls a seer who pronounces it to be a portent, and
orders expiation by the burning of the children. Melanippe is
called and ordered to carry out the sentence. She recognizes and
pleads for them, an odd, advanced plea. She urges that there are
no such things as portents and then, while her children are still
under sentence of burning, in strange Euripidean fashion, expounds
the immutable order of nature—a tradition received by her from
her half divine mother, Hippo, the daughter of the wise old
Cheiron on Mt Pelion.
This is the statement:
It is not my word, but my mother’s word?
How Heaven and Earth were once one form, but stirred
And strove and dwelt asunder far away :
And then, rewedding, bore unto the day
And light of life all things that are, the trees,,
Flowers, birds and beasts and them that breathe the seas,
And mortal Man, each in his kind and law.
A primitive and beautiful cosmogony, meet material for
mysticism, but why, it may be asked, claim it as Orphic? Such
it was held by tradition to be, at least in Alexandrian times.
Apollonius Rhodius* tells how, just before the Argo sailed, the
heroes fell to quarrelling, and Jason sought to stay them from their
strife, and Orpheus lifted up his voice and essayed to sing.
He sang how Earth and Heaven and Sea were joined
Of old together in one form, and next
How that they parted after deadly strife
Asunder. How, in ether, Sun and Moon
And stars keep each their ever steadfast course,
And how uprose the mountains, and the rivers
Rippled and rushed, and creeping things were born.
1 Nauck, F'rg. 484, trans. Murray.
2 A much-quoted line. Cf. Plato, Symp. 1774, and Eur. Hel. 513. It is used
of something having the force of ancient tradition. As a preface it makes us
expect some weighty pronouncement.
31, 494.
464 The Olympians δι
Different though the style is, vaguer and more Ouranian the
outlook, it is clear that here, as in Melanippe, we have the old
Orphic cosmogony which lent to Empedokles his Neikos and
Philia, and to philosophy in general τὸ ποιοῦν and τὸ πάσχον.
It is a cosmogony that knows no Olympians. To Melanippe
Earth and Sky are the causes, the beginnings, of all things. The
Olympians are there; they may be, as Helen said, ‘to blame’
(αἴτιοι), but they are only spokes in the great wheel’ of nature, not
the driving force that sets and keeps her going, not αἰτίαι",
Varro® tells us expressly that
Earth and Sky, as the mysteries of Samothrace teach, are the Great Gods,
and Samothrace was the natural bridge between Orientalized
Asia Minor and the mainland. Most conclusive of all is the
avowal of the Orphic mystic, his avowal of race and parentage.
He claims to be the child of no Olympian, he goes back to
potencies earlier, more venerable:
I am the child of Earth and of Starry Heaven?.
The avowal of the initiate Orphic does not end here. A second
clause is added, not wholly untinged, I think, by protest:
But my race is of Heaven (alone).
The creed he adopts is definitely opposed to that of Xeno-
phanes®:
From earth all things rise, and all things in earth have their ending.
Again Xenophanes says :
All things are earth and water that grow and come into being ;
and again:
For we all are born of earth and are born of water,
where the fire element is intentionally disallowed.
1 Infra, p. 523.
2 Tl. 11. 164 οὔ τί μοι αἰτίη ἐσσί, θεοί νύ μοι αἴτιοί εἰσιν.
3 De Ling. Lat. ν. 58 Terra enim et Caelum ut Samothracum initia docent,
sunt Dei Magni.
4 Petelia Tablet. See Prolegomena, p . 574.
5 αὐτὰρ ἐμὸν γένος οὐράνιον. HKven if we take the αὐτάρ as having but slight —
adversative force and translate ‘moreover’ the emphasis is the same.
6 Diels, Frg. 27, 29 and 33. Prof. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy”, p. 135,
thinks that certain expressions used by Xenophanes ‘can only be meant to make ©
the heavenly bodies ridiculous.’ But though Xenophanes may have distrusted the —
worship of the heavenly bodies, he revered Ouranos as a whole. |
ἢ
Ww
x] Orphism and the Ouranians 465
It is almost as though the initiate Orphic would say, By nature,
by birth, I spring from my mother Earth, but by adoption and
grace I am made the child of Heaven. Manifestly a distinction is
drawn between the two great cosmic powers, and preference given
to Ouranos.
But we have other definite evidence that the religion of
Orpheus emphasized just what the Olympian religion disallowed,
the worship of the heavenly bodies. Tradition accounted Orpheus
a Sun-worshipper. Eratosthenes! thus writes:
He (Orpheus) did not honour Dionysos but accounted Helios the greatest
of the gods, whom also he called Apollo. And rising up early in the morning
he climbed the mountain called Pangaion and waited for the rising of the
sun, that he might first catch sight of it. Therefore Dionysos was enraged
and sent against him his Bassarids, as A’schylus the poet says.
In worshipping Helios, Orpheus only followed the custom of
his native Thrace. Sophocles in the Tereus? makes one of his
characters say :
O Helios, name
To Thracian horsemen dear, O eldest Flame!
Maximus of Tyre* said that the Paeonians reverenced Helios,
and the Paeonian image of Helios is a small disk on a long pole.
Orpheus, Eratosthenes tells us, called Helios also Apollo, and
the later Orphics who went by the name of Pythagoreans always
worshipped Apollo. It was revealed in the mysteries that Apollo
and Helios were the same. That is clear from a passage in the
lost Phaethon of Euripides‘. The rash Phaethon has fallen, killed
by a lightning flash from the Sun, and his bride thus reproaches
the slayer :
Thou hast destroyed me, O bright Helios,
Me and this man. O rightly among mortals
Apollo, yea, Destroyer, art thou called
By such as know the Silent Names of spirits.
Side by side with the Olympian movement which tended
entirely to humanize the gods, we have then a movement of return
to Nature-Worship. This movement arose in the sixth century,
and was, broadly speaking, contemporary with the rise of Ionian
philosophy, itself, if our contention be just, based in part on
1 Catast. 24. p. 140. 2 Soph. Frg. 523.
38.8 ...dicxos βραχὺς ὑπὲρ μακροῦ ξύλου, something like, no doubt, the pole and
globe carried in the Daphnephoria. See supra, p. 438.
4 Nauck, Frg. 781 ὅστις τὰ σιγῶντ᾽ ὀνόματ᾽ οἷδε δαιμόνων.
Η. 90
Ἶ
466 τος The Olympians [cH. ἢ
Persian naturism. Is it rash to suppose that Orphism owed its
main impulse to the infiltration of Persian religious doctrine ?
that in religion as in politics there was ‘Medizing’? Tradition
said, and it is a tradition that has been too long forgotten, that
when Cyrus consulted the oracle of the head of Orpheus at Lesbos,
there came to him in answer words as singular as significant.
‘Mine, said the oracle to the Persian, ‘O Cyrus, are also thine’’
Moreover, and this I think is an important point, Orphism was
always discredited at Athens. Spite of its high moral tone, spite
of the fact that it was recognized as a purer and reformed phase of
Dionysiac religion’, it was never popular in high places. Is it not
at least possible that some of its discredit arose from political,
racial prejudice 7
To resume. In discrediting certain elements of Earth- Worship
Olympianism did well. In disallowing the worship of the Heavenly
bodies Olympianism did ill. Save for the Persian War, or rather
the Persian infiltration, this backward step need perhaps never —
have been taken.
(4) The Olympians refuse the functions of the Eniautos-davmon.
As to the making of Greek theology, Herodotus*® has left us a
notable statement, much discussed but not as yet, I think, fully
elucidated.
But as to the origin of each particular god, whether they all existed from —
the beginning, what were their individual forms, the knowledge of these —
things is, so to speak, but of to-day and yesterday, For Hesiod and Homer
are my seniors, | think, by some four hundred years and not more. And it
is they who have composed for the Greeks the generations of the gods, and —
have given to the gods their titles and distinguished their several provinces
and special powers and marked their forms.
There were gods before the Olympians of Homer and Hesiod,
but they were without titles, they were undistinguished in their_
1 Philostr. Heroic. v. 3. 704 τὰ ἐμὰ ὦ Κῦρε καὶ σά. See Prolegomena, Ὁ. 466. —
A commentator on Statius also notes the analogy between the Persian and the
Pythagorean nature-gods as contrasted with the anthropomorphic Greek divinities.
See Lutatius Plac. ad Stat. Theb. 1v. 516 (Abel, Fig. 282). He contrasts ‘hos deos
cognitos qui coluntur in templis’ with ‘alium principem...de cujus genere sunt sol —
et luna.’ Of this last he says ‘ Persae etiam confirmant,..maximis in hoe auctoribus
Pythagora et Platone.’
2 See Prolegomena, p. 456, and especially Diodorus, 111. 65, where it is said of
Orpheus πολλὰ μεταθεῖναι τῶν ἐν τοῖς ὀργίοις.
5. τὰ ὅ9. «οὗτοι δέ εἰσι οἱ ποιήσαντες θεογονίην “Ελλησι καὶ τοῖσι θεοῖσι τὰς ἐπωνυμίας,
δόντες καὶ τιμάς τε καὶ τέχνας διέλοντες καὶ εἴδεα αὐτῶν σημήναντες.
Χ] Olympians contrasted with Eniautos-Daimones 467
functions, undiscriminated in their forms. We know now what
manner of beings these pre-Olympian potencies were; they were
Year-daimones, all alike in shape and function, all apt to take on
plant or animal shape, the business of each and all monotonously
one, to give food and increase to man and make the year go round.
But the Olympian will have none of this, he shakes himself loose
of the year and the produce of the year. In place of his old
function, his τιμή, his γέρας, he demands a new honour, a service
done to him, himself as a personality. Instead of being himself a
sacrament he demands a sacrifice.
This shift of meaning in tzu! from function that must be per-
formed to honour claimed marks the whole degradation of the
Olympian. The god like the man who substitutes privilege for
function, for duty done, is self-doomed and goes to his own place.
‘If any will not work neither let him eat.’ Sentiment, tradition,
may keep up the custom of gift-sacrifice for a while, but the gods
to whom the worshipper’s real heart and life goes out are the gods
who work and live, not those who dwell at ease in Olympos. They
are Year-daimones, and the type and model of them all is the
old hard-working Helios, the unwearied one, whether he toils to
mount the heavens day by day or, in human form as Herakles, to
cleanse the earth for man from monsters.
Surely the Sun has labour all his days,
And never any respite, steeds nor god?.
The real true god, the Eniautos-daimon, lives and works for
his people; he does more, he dies for them. The crowning dis-
ability and curse of the new theological order is that the Olympian
claims to be tmmortal (ἀθάνατος). In examining sacrament and
sacrifice we have seen that the Year-daimon in the form of a
Bull lived his year-long life that he might die, and died that he
might live again. His whole gist and nature was absorbed and
expressed by the cycle of periodic reincarnation. Out of this
cycle came all his manifold, yet monotonous life-history, his Births,
his Re-births, his Appearances and Disappearances, his Processions
1 For this observation on the shifting use of τιμή I am indebted to Mr Cornford,
and may refer to his forthcoming book From Religion to Philosophy. Mr Cook
points out to me that Zeus never quite shook off his year-aspect, see Iliad τι. 134
ἐννέα δὴ βεβάασι Διὸς μεγάλου ἐνιαυτοί. Zeus indeed, alone among the Olympians, is
a Sky and Weather-god to the end.
2 See supra, p. 370.
30—2
408 The Olympians [ cH.
and Recessions, his Epiphanies, his Deaths, his Burials, his Resur-
rections, his endless Changes and Chances’.
All this, all life and that which is life and reality—Change
and Movement?—the Olympian renounces. Instead he chooses
Deathlessness and Immutability—a seeming Immortality which
is really the denial of life, for life is change. This brazen lifeless
immutability impressed the imagination of Pindar®. Tinged with
Orphism though he was, he did not hear how hollow it rang:
Of one race, one only are men and gods ; both of one mother’s womb, we
draw our breath: but far asunder is all our power divided, and parts us—
here there is nought and there in strength of bronze, a seat unshaken, eternal,
abides the heaven above.
He sees the beauty and the fertility of Earth’s recurrent cycle
mirrored in man:
Even so, for a sign thereof, Alcimidas shows clear the mark of his race,
close kin to the fruitful cornlands: whose alternation now gives from the
soil life in abundance to man and now again takes rest to lay hold upon
strength.
But he cannot see that the Olympian who will not die to live
renounces life, he desiccates and dies. Such is the very nature of
life that only through the ceaseless movement and rhythm of
palingenesia is immortality possible. Athanasia, eternity through
not dying, is almost a contradiction in words.
Together with this conception of a dead and barren im-
mortality there grew up the disastrous notion that between god
and man there was a great gulf fixed, that communion was no
more possible. To attempt to pass this gulf was hybris, it was
the sin against the gods. Pindar again lends himself to this
pitiless, fruitless doctrine. The dull, melancholy mandate runs
through his odes:
Seek not thou to become a god‘.
In this mandate we see the door closed finally on the last remnants
of totemistic thinking; it 15 the death warrant of sacramentalism.
The only possible service now is gift-sacrifice ; and by that service —
alone, history has shown, the soul of man cannot live.
1 See supra, pp. 425, 426.
2 H. Bergson, La Perception du Changement, Conférences faites ἃ Oxford 1911,
p. 28 ‘si le changement est réel et méme constitutif de toute realité....’
3 Nem. Vi. sub init.
4 Supra, p. 128.
πε The Olympians as jealous Gods 469
In a fashion more sad and dreary and degraded still the
complete separation of man and god utters itself in another and,
to sacramentalism, a blasphemous thought. The gods are jealous
gods; there is φθόνος. The gods begrudge a man a glory that
may pale their own splendour. To the mystery-god Dionysos
φθόνος is unknown:
No grudge hath he of the great,
No scorn of the mean estate ;
But to all that liveth, his wine he giveth,
Griefless, immaculate}.
So too Plato”, by a beautiful instinct, when he tells of the great
procession of the gods and daimones through high heaven, will
exclude no one save only φθόνος himself :
And any one may follow who can and will, for jealousy stands ever
without the heavenly choir.
Zeus is but the great leader of an equal band, but the Megistos
Kouros®, he is no jealous god.
So far then our conception of the Olympian is mainly negative.
He refuses the functions of the totemistic daimon, he sheds his
animal or plant form. He will not be a daimon of Earth, nor yet
even of the Sky; above all he refuses to be a Year-daimon with
his function of ceaseless toil. He will not die to rise again, but
chooses instead a barren immortality. He withdraws himself
from man and lives remote, a ‘jealous god.’
But these negations, instructive though they are, do not
exhaust the content of the Olympian. We feel instinctively that
in some ways an Olympian is more vivid, more real than any
shapeless, shifting nature-daimon. If we met Zeus or Apollo in
the street we should know them and greet them. To put it
simply, the Olympian, for all his negations, has personality, in-
dividuality. It will repay us to investigate rather closely what
we mean by personality and individuality.
It has been from the outset a cardinal principle of this book
that the god is the reflection, the projection of man’s emotions
socially reinforced. We saw in the first chapter that the divine
1 Kur. Bacch. 421.
2 Phaedr.247B8 ...p0dvos γὰρ ἔξω θείου χοροῦ ἵσταται and again, in the Timaeus (298),
Plato, aristocrat though he is, knows that in the sphere of the good there are no
class distinctions, ἀγαθῷ δὲ οὐδεὶς περὶ οὐδενὸς οὐδέποτε ἐγγίγνεται φθόνος.
3 Supra, p. 12, note 1.
470 The Olympians | [ OH.
figures of the Kouros and the Mother were but the projections
of social conditions essential to a Matrilinear group’. Further,
in considering totemistic societies?, we have seen that their main
characteristic was solidarity, lack of differentiation. Man had
not yet separated himself out from nature, and the individual
man has but slight consciousness of himself as distinguished from
his group. Such a social state of things has its religious counter-
part, its religious projection, in undifferentiated forms like the
daimon of the group, the functionary, uttering and embodying the
collective life of the group’.
But as the group system disintegrates, the individual emerges,
and further, not only does the individual emerge from the group,
but the human individual is more and more conscious of his sharp
distinction from animals and plants, from the whole of nature
that surrounds him. This twofold emergence of the individual
from the group, of the human individual from the nature-world
around him, is inevitably mirrored in the personality, in the
individuality of the Olympian gods.
We are still too apt to put the cart before the horse, to think
of the group as made up of an aggregate of individuals rather
than of the individuals as a gradual segregation of the group. It
is only by an effort of imagination that we realize that plurality,
the group, comes first. A simple illustration from language may
serve to make clear this point.
In many North American, Central Asian, and Pacific languages
two plurals are in use, the Inclusive and Exclusive, or, as they
are perhaps better called, the Collective and Selective Plurals.
The Collective ‘we’ includes all persons present, the ‘Selective’
a smaller selected group, to which the speaker belongs. The
proper use of this plural is essential to the successful missionary,
otherwise doctrinal scandal may ensue:
When the formula ‘We have sinned’ occurs in prayer, the exclusive form
must be employed, for the supplicant would otherwise be including the
Almighty among those to whom sin is imputed. The same expression
occurring in a sermon, takes the inclusive form; for the audience would
otherwise be excluded from the category of sinners and would understand
the preacher’s meaning to be ‘We, the clergy, have sinned but not you, the
people*’
1 pp. 38—42. 2 pp. 118—127. 3 pp. 271—273.
4 Payne, op. cit. 188.
Rls Ey.
!
Χ] The Olympians are individualized 471
Again, and still more instructively, we have among the Apache
Indians and the British Columbian tribes a collective as well as a
selective singular. The collective singular denotes the person as
a member of the group. Thus if the question be asked ‘ Who will
help?’ the answer would be the collective ‘I, that is ‘I for one’ or
‘I among others.’ But if the question be ‘Who is the mother of
this child?’ the answer will be the selective ‘I, that is I and
nobody else.
Now ‘this sharp distinction occurs,’ Mr Payne! observes, ‘with a
frequency which indicates it as answering to a substantial need of daily life.
The Apache Indians for example, one of the wildest peoples in America,
would scarcely have invented and rigorously preserved this idiom unless it
were indispensable to their intercourse: and the same may be said of the
British Columbian tribes in whose languages it is even more conspicuous.
The collective, it should be noted, 7s the ordinary form, and the selective the
exception.’
No more interesting illustration could be adduced of the sense
of solidarity naturally pervading the food-group and of the weak
sense of individuality in separate members.
It will be apparent whither the argument is tending. Now-
a-days we think of the plural number in language as made up
of a number of singular units, as a complexity rather than a
simplicity. That is because we reason back from a segregation
already accomplished and that seems to us instinctive. But the
facts of language show that the plural and all other forms of
number in grammar arise not by multiplication of an original ‘I’
but by selection and gradual exclusion from an original collective
‘we. This ‘we’ represents the aggregate personality of the food-
group, and therefore includes the undifferentiated ‘I’ of the speaker
of the time being’. The procedure is from synthesis to analysis,
from the group to the individual.
Dr Tylor, the great exponent of Animism, sees in the conception
of the human soul ‘the very fons et origo® of the conception of
spirit and deity in general’:
‘Spiritual beings,’ he says, ‘are modelled by man on his primary conception
of his own human soul*,’
1 History of the New World, τι. p. 188.
2 Mr Payne, from whom (op. cit. vol. τι. p. 186) I borrow this interesting
observation, adds, ‘to borrow terms from the philosophy of Quantity, if thought
and language are regarded as two related variables, the ‘‘ 1” does not represent their
prime ratio but their ultimate one.’ I am no mathematician but I append the
illustration in case it may be significant.
3 Primitive Culture®, τι. 247. 4 Op. cit. χες p. 184.
472 The Olympians [ CH.
Broadly speaking this remains true, but, in the light of modern
psychology and sociology, it needs some restatement. For the
individual human soul we must substitute that thing at once
more primitive and perhaps therefore more complex—the group-
soul. The god is projected, not by the thinking or the feeling of
one man, but by such part of his thinking and feeling as he has
in common with other men, such emotions and ideas as are
represented by his customs and enshrined in his language:
‘It seems,’ again says Prof. Tylor!, ‘as though the conception of a human
soul when once attained to by man served as a type or model on which he
framed not only his ideas of other souls of lower grade, but also his ideas of
spiritual beings in general, from the tiniest elf that sports in the long grass
up to the heavenly Creator and Ruler of the world, the Great Spirit.’
Profoundly true if only the words italicized ‘when once
attained to by man’ be carefully borne in mind. A more intimate
knowledge of savage thinking has brought to light a stage of
thinking more primitive, more inchoate, than animism, a stage
which we may call Animatism, or better 1 think Zoism?, a stage
in which man has not yet got his own individuality clear, but
s intensely conscious of life lived, of power felt, though not yet
f isolated personality. This state of group-thinking or rather
group-living is reflected in totemism and in the vague daimones
that emerge from totemistic thinking*.
Until man learns to think of himself sharply as an individual,
that is until the hold of the group is weakened, he will not
sharply individualize his gods. They will be not clear cut
personalities but functional daimones. Now it would seem at
first that a clear cut personality is a higher and better thing
than a vague impersonal daimon or functionary. So he is from
the point of view of art and intellect, but all experience goes to
show that his emotional appeal, save to the very highly educated,
is feebler. The sight of a great discoverer or great thinker will
touch the imagination of a few, but, if you want to move the
great heart of the people to hysteria, to almost frenzy, you must
1 Op. cit. τι. p.110. The italics are my own.
2 I borrow this term—and welcome it is a substitute for the inelegant form
‘ Animatism ’—from Mr Cook.
3 For the indeterminate stage preceding Animism see especially A. C. Kruijt, Het
Animisme in den Indischen Archipel, 1906, a book I unfortunately know only
through the analysis in the Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, by R. Hertz, 1909,
p. 952. Mr W. McDougall’s ‘ Defence of Animism’ (Body and Mind, 1911) appeared
after this section of my book was written, and I have not had leisure to study it with
the needful attention. '
δ»...
Χ] Holophrase and Holopsychosis 473
produce a daimon-functionary, as little individualized as may be,
you must crown a king. The reason is clear, the king, the
daimon-functionary, is the utterance of the group and each
individual in the group claims him as in part himself.
The highly personalized, individualized god is fashioned on
the highly personalized, individualized self, and the essence of the
sense of self is separateness!, or consciousness of the severance of
one self from other selves”, and of that self as subject and distinct
from objects. Now primitive consciousness for the most part lacks
this sense of segregation, because it is mainly absorbed in activities,
in ‘doing things. The things of which the savage is mainly
conscious are not envisaged as external objects, they are parts of
his doing, of his ‘warm stream of human consciousness. We
have already* seen this in the case of weapons and tools which
are felt as extensions of personality. Your stick is part of your
act of brandishing, or of your sense of walking. You are not
conscious of it as a stick till you let it fall. The sense of action,
of relation, is vivid and submerges subject and object. This comes
out very clearly in certain aspects of primitive language.
It used to be thought that language began with nouns, the
names of things, to which later were added qualifying adjectives.
Still later, it was held, these separate nouns were joined by verbs
expressing relations between subject and object, and these again
were qualified by adverbs. Modern linguistic tells quite another
and, for psychology and primitive religion, a very instructive
tale. Language, after the purely emotional interjection, began
with whole sentences, holophrases‘, utterances of a relation in
1 See supra, p. 86. Separateness, individuality, is a characteristic of life, but it
is eternally combated by the tendency to reproduce other life which prevents com-
plete individuality. See Prof. Bergson, L’ Evolution Créatrice, Ρ. 14, ‘on peut dire
que si la tendance a s’individuer est partout présente dans le monde organisé, elle
est partout combattue par la tendance a se réproduire.’ Hence the Eniautos-daimon
resisted complete individualization.
* The correlative of this, the process of individualizing the soul, is very clearly
stated by M. Lévy-Bruhl in his Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieures,
p. 430, ‘Quand Vindividu humain prend une conscience claire de lui-méme en tant
quw’individu, quand il se distingue formellement du groupe auquel il se sent appar-
tenir, alors les étres et les objets extérieurs commencent aussi ἃ lui apparaitre
comme pourvus d’ames ou d’esprits individuels, durant cette vie et aprés la mort.’
3 Supra, p. 86.
4 For this illustration from language I am indebted to Mr E. J. Payne’s sections
on language in his History of the New World, 1899, vol. τι. p. 114 ff. In the dis-
cussion of personalization that follows from it I owe much to Mr Crawley’s Idea
of the Soul, 1909, p. 35.
474 The Olympians [CH. Ὁ
which subject and object have not yet got their heads above ~
water but are submerged in a situation. A holophrase utters a
holopsychosis. Out of these holophrases at a later stage emerge
our familiar ‘Parts of Speech, rightly so called, for speech was
before its partition. A simple instance will make this clear.
The Fuegians! have a word, or rather holophrase, mamthlapi-
natapat, which means ‘looking-at-each-other,-hoping-that-either-
will-offer-to-do-something-which-both-parties-desire - but -are-unwill-
ing-to-do. This holophrase contains no nouns and no separate —
verbs, it simply expresses a tense relation—not unknown to some
of us, and applicable to any and every one. Uneducated and
impulsive people even to-day tend to show a certain holophrastic
savagery. They not unfrequently plunge into a statement of
relations before they tell you who they are talking about. As
civilization advances, the holophrase, overcharged, disintegrates,
and, bit by bit, object, subject and verb, and the other ‘Parts of
Speech’ are abstracted from the stream of warm conscious human
activity in which they were once submerged.
‘The analogy,’ as Mr Crawley observes, ‘between the holophrase and the
primitive percept and concept is close. In both we start with masses which
are gradually divided in the one case by perception becoming analytical, in
the other by an attempt on the part of the articulating muscles to keep pace
with this mental analysis.’
The holophrase shows us man entangled as it were in his own
activities, he and his environment utterly involved. He has as
yet no ‘soul,’ but he has life, and has it more abundantly.
Is the savage then impersonal? Does he tend to employ only
generalized abstract terms denoting that indefinable though wholly
palpable thing ‘relation’? Far from it. He is intensely personal.
Language again is the best evidence.
A New Caledonian expressing the fact that some fruit was not high enough
for the native palate, said not ‘it-not-yet-eatable,’ but ‘ we-not-yet-eatable2.’
Egotism could scarcely go further. The thing eaten is regarded
as a mere appendage to, as in fact part of, the personality of the
eater. It is indeed actually an essential factor in that activity,
that eating or not-eating of which he is intensely conscious. A
faint survival of this egotistic plural is observable in the ‘we’ of
the modern writer, which absorbs the reader’s personality ; when
1 Crawley, op. cit. p. 34. 2 Crawley, op. cit. p. 37.
.
)
νῷ
Χ] Group-Consciousness and Individualism 47
the writer becomes doubtful of a sympathetic union he naturally
lapses into the exclusive ‘I.’
Language then would seem to throw light on two points.
First, primitive man, submerged in his own reactions and activities,
does not clearly distinguish himself as subject from the objects to
which he reacts, and therefore has but slight consciousness of his
own separate soul and hence no power to project it into ‘animated
nature. He is conscious of life, of mana, but not of individual
spirits ; his faith may be described as Animatism or Zoism! rather
than as Animism, his ritual will be that of magic, which is, as we
have seen, but the manipulation of mana. His sacrifice, if sacrifice
he performs, will be a sacrament partaken of, not a gift offered to
a person. Second, man felt himself at first not as a personality
separate from other persons, but as the warm excited centre of a
group; language tells us what we have already learnt from ritual,
that the ‘soul’ of primitive man is ‘congregationalized”, the col-
lective daimon is before the individual ghost, and still more he is
before the Olympian god.
The savage we have seen is never impersonal, never abstract.
His whole being, his whole personality, is as it were involved,
submerged in action, but he does not personify. The act of
personifying involves the realization of subject and object, the
vivid consciousness of the subject as an individual, a person, and
then the projection of that personality over into an object realized
as distinct. It is as far as possible from that holopsychosis, that
symbiosis of which the holophrase is the expression. The one is
emotional, the other highly intellectual. As M. Lévy-Bruhl* has
well said :
Connaitre en general c’est objectiver; objectiver, c’est projeter hors de soi,
comme quelque chose d’étranger, ce qui est a connaitre.
To know, it would seem, is at least in part to purge perception
from egoistic emotion, from sympathy ; it is to view dispassionately.
1 Some new termis much needed. I prefer Mr Cook’s Zoism; see supra, p. 472.
Animatism is suggested by Mr Marett (Threshold of Religion, p. 15), ‘It (the attitude
of a Kaffir towards a thunderstorm) is Animism in the loose sense of some writers,
or, as I propose to call it, Animatism, but it is not Animism in the strict scientific
sense that implies the attribution, not merely of personality and will but of
“soul” or ‘‘ spirit” to the storm.’ Mr Clodd in his Pre-animistic Stages in Religion,
Fortnightly Review, 1909, p. 1133, suggests Naturism.
2 p. 48
® Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieures, Ὁ. 452.
410 The Olympians [ΟῊ
Here we seem to trace one cause of the chill remoteness of the
Olympians. They are objects to a subject, they are concepts thrown
out of the human mind, looked at from a distance, things known,
not like the mystery gods felt and lived. The more clearly they
are envisaged the more reasonable and thinkable they are, the
less are they the sources, the expression, of emotion.
We touch here on the very heart and secret of the diference
between the Olympian and the mystery-god, between Apollo and
Zeus on the one hand and Dionysos on the other: a difference, the
real significance of which was long ago, with the instinct of genius,
divined by Nietzsche. The Olympian has clear form, he is the
‘principium individuationis’ incarnate; he can be thought, hence
his calm, his sophrosyne. The mystery-god is the life of the whole
of things, he can only be felt—as soon as he is thought and in-
dividualized he passes, as Dionysos had to pass, into the thin,
rare ether of the Olympian. The Olympians are of conscious”
thinking, divided, distinct, departmental; the mystery-god is the
impulse of life through all things, perennial, indivisible.
Above the intellectualized Olympians was set, by Homer and
by Aschylus alike, the dominant figure of Moira?, division, —
partition, allotment, and rightly, for it is by dividing, by dis-—
tinguishing, by classifying, that we know. This impulse to
divide is reflected in Moira, and the departmental Olympians
are, so far as they are thought, but specialized Moirai. As has
been well said:
Chaque mythologie est, au fond, une classification, mais qui emprunte ses
principes a des croyances religieuses, et non pas ἃ des notions scientifiques.
1 Die Geburt der Tragidie, p. 116, ‘erste aus dem Geiste der Musik heraus
verstehen wir eine Freude an der Vernichtung des Individuums. Denn, an den
einzelnen Beispielen einer solechen Vernichtung, wird uns nur das ewige Phanomen —
der dionysischen Kunst deutlich gemacht, die den Willen in seiner Allmacht
gleichsam hinter dem principio individuationis, das ewige Leben jenseit aller —
Erscheinung und trotz aller Vernichtung, zum Ausdruck bringt,’ and again, p. 23, ©
‘man mochte selbst Apollo als das herrliche Gotterbild des principii individuationis |
bezeichnen’; for the emotional, unifying tendency of Dionysos see p. 24.
2 The meaning of this figure of Moira and the inherent scepticism of the
Olympians was also in his inspired way divined by Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 69,
‘...dies alles erinnert auf das stirkste an dem Mittelpunkt und Hauptsatz der
aschyleischen Weltbetrachtung, die iiber Godttern und Menschen die Moira als
ewige Gerechtigkeit thronen sieht. Bei der erstaunlichen Kiihnheit, mit der
Aschylus die olympische Welt auf seine Gerechtigkeitswagschalen stellt, miissen
wir uns vergegenwartigen, dass der tiefsinnige Grieche einen unverriickbar festen
Untergrund des metaphy sischen Denkens in seinen Mysterien hatte, und dass sich an
den Olympiern alle seine skeptischen Anwandelungen entladen konnten.’
:
ἔχ] Dike and Durée ATT
Les panthéons bien organisés se partagent la nature, tout comme ailleurs les
clans se partagent l’univers!.
The Olympians are then but highly diversified Moirai and the
Moirai are departments, they are the spatial correlatives of the
temporal Horai. The wheel of Dike moves through time, Moira
operates in space. The distinction is of cardinal importance.
Prof. Bergson? has shown us that durée, true time, is ceaseless
change, which is the very essence of life—which is in fact ‘1’ Evolu-
tion Créatrice, and this is in its very essence one and indivisible.
La durée réelle est ce que l’on a toujours appelé le temps, mais le temps
per¢u comme indivisible.
We cannot understand this perhaps through the eye, trained
to spatial perception, but we can imagine it through the ear.
Quand nous écoutons une mélodie, nous avons la plus pure impression de
succession que nous puissions avoir—une impression aussi ¢loignée que
possible de la simultanéité—et pourtant c’est la continuité méme de la
mélodie et ’impossibilité de la décomposer qui font sur nous cette impression.
Si nous la découpons en notes distinctes, en autant ‘d’avant’ et ‘d’aprés’
41] nous plait, c’est que nous y mélons des images spatiales et que nous
imprégnons la succession de simultanéité ; dans espace seulement, il y a
distinction nette de parties extérieures les unes aux autres.
It is this ‘durée,’ figured by the Greek as Dike, the Way?, that
the mystic apprehends; in the main stream and current of that
life of duration, he lives and has his being. Moira and all the
spatial splendours of her Olympians are to him but an intellectual
backwater.
Finally, the Olympians not only cease to be sources of emotion
but they positively offend that very intellect that fashioned them.
They are really so many clear-cut concepts, but they claim to have
objective reality. This is the rock on which successive genera-
tions of gods have shattered. Man feels rightly and instinctively
1 MM. Durkheim et M. Mauss, De quelques Formes Primitives de Classification—
Contribution a Vv Etude des Représentations Collectives. L’Année Sociologique, 1901—
1902, p. 1. In this monograph, which in its relation to the study of religious
origins is simply ‘epoch-making,’ the authors seek to establish that logical
classification arises from social. This is analogous to the philosophical position
of Prof. Durkheim, who holds that the ‘ categories’ are modes of collective rather
than individual thinking ; see his Sociologie Religieuse et Théorie de la Connaissance
in Rey. de Métaphysique, xvi. 1909, p. 733. For Moira as the principle of classi-
fication I am entirely indebted to Mr Cornford, and, for the full analysis and
significance of the conception, may refer to his forthcoming From Religion to
Philosophy, chapter 1.
2 La Perception du Changement, 1911, p. 27.
3 For the significance of Dike see infra, pp. 516—528.
that a god is areal thing—a real thing because he is the αὐύθναποθ.
of a real collective emotion, but, in progress of time, man desiccates
his god, intellectualizes him, till he is a mere concept, an ezdolon.
Having got his edolon, that eidolon fails to satisfy his need, and
he tries to supply the place of the vanished thymos, the real life-
blood of emotion, by claiming objective reality.
There is another submerged reef waiting to wreck the perilous
bark of divinity. Man’s first dream of a god began, as we saw, in
his reaction towards life-forces not understood. Here again we
begin with the recognition of, or rather the emotion towards, a truth.
There is a mystery in life, life itself which we do not understand,
and we may, if we choose, call that mystery by the name of god,
but at the other end of the chain of evolution there is another
thing, a late human product which we call goodness. By a
desperate effort of imagination we try to link the two; we deny
evolution and say that the elementary push of life is from the
beginning ‘good?, that God through all his chequered career”
is immutably moral, and we land ourselves in a quagmire of
determinism and teleology’. Or, if we are Greeks, we invent 8
Zeus, who is Father and Councillor and yet remains an auto-_
matic, explosive Thunderstorm’.
Such in general is the progress of a god—from emotion to |
concept, from totem-animal to mystery-god, from mystery-god —
to Olympian. But the Greek, and perhaps only the Greek, went
one step further, and that step brought a certain provisional
salvation. It is a step, at all events, so characteristic of the Greek —
mind, that it claims our attention.
This brings us to our last point.
(5) The Olympian became an objet dart. We have been told
to satiety that the Greeks are a people of artists. Something we
mean by this, but what? It is manifest that their gods, Apollo,
Artemis and Athene, are works of art in a sense that our own are
1 So, as Mr Cornford points out to me, the Greeks themselves came to identify —
φύσις which is life, nature, with a moral ideal; they confused what ought to exist
with what does. See Ar. Pol. a5, 1255 ", 2.
2 See G. Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905, p. 169, on ‘the mythical identifi- —
cation of the God which meant the ideal of life, with the God which meant the
forces of nature.’ This was one element in the mistake made by Plato when he
equated τὸ ἕν with τἀγαθόν.
3 See supra, p. 400.
1
478 The Olympians (cH. :
Px] The Olympians as Objets d Art 479
not. We feel instinctively that, however much we may quarry for
the origin of Greek religion, and strive to reconstruct it, and see
its influence on life and on literature, the broad fact remains that
the strength of the Greek temperament lay rather in art than in
religion. The full gist of this fact cannot appear till, in the last
chapter, we have examined the figure of Themis, but one point is
immediately clear and immediately relevant.
M. Bergson! has shown us that the function of science is to aid
and direct action to provide tools for life. It begins with and only
very slowly emerges from practice. Man acts that he may live, by
adjusting himself to his environment. Man thinks that he may
the better act. But here and there arises an individual, and once
there has arisen a race, in whom nature has linked less clearly the
faculty of perception with the faculty of action. We all know that
the artist is ‘unpractical?,” and that is what we mean. When an
artist looks at a thing, it is at that thing whole, that he may see
it for the love of it. When the man of action looks at a thing he
analyses it, classifies it, sees it dismembered; he sees the joints
carved for his eating, not the whole live animal—he sees what he
can use and eat.
_ Therefore to the Greek his god, however remote and detached,
is never quite a mere cold concept. His Olympian is alive, seen
whole, and seen with keen emotion, loved for himself not for the
work he does, not merely as a means of living. But it was only
to the Greek that the Olympian lived, a great and beautiful
reality. Seen through Roman eyes, focussed always on action,
he became the prettiest and emptiest of toys.
So far we have looked at the Olympians as individuals, as
luminously distinct personalities. But they are not only indivi-
duals; they form a group, and as a group they claim to be
considered. This brings us to our last consideration, to the figure
of Themis.
1 p. 47 ‘Originellement, nous ne pensons que pour agir. C’est dans le monde
de laction que notre intelligence a été coulée,’ and see supra, p. 473.
2 H. Bergson, La Perception du Changement, Conférences faites ἃ l'Université
d’Oxford, 1911, p. 11, ‘L’artiste est, au sens propre du mot, un “‘ distrait,”’ and see
op. cit. p. 13. See also Prof. J. A. Stewart’s beautiful section on ‘The doctrine of
Ideas as expressing aesthetic experience’ in Plato’s Doctrine of Ideas, 1909, p. 135.
‘Aesthetic experience is a condition in which concentration, often momentary,
never long maintained, isolates an object of consciousness: the object stands there
itself, alone, peerless,’ and for a suggested psychological explanation, the temporary
inhibition of ‘ synapses,’ see op. cit. p. 142, note.
CHAPTER XI.
THEMIS.
Θόρε K éc Θέμιν KAAAN.
In discussing the sequence of the gods at Delphi, we left,
it will be remembered’, the figure of Themis unformulated. Before —
we can consider the Olympians as a group, her significance must
be examined.
At Delphi Themis comes next in order after Gaia, and in the
Prometheus Bound Aischylus? makes her but another form of Gaia.
Prometheus says that the future was foretold to him by ‘his
mother,
Themis,
And Gaia, one in nature, many-named.
By Aschylus, in both plays, Themis is in fact envisaged as the
oracular power of Earth. As such she is figured in the design in
Fig. 142 from a red-figured cylix*.
Aigeus, the childless king, comes to the oracle at Delphi to ask
how he may have a son. Within the temple is the tripod and
seated on it is not any one particular Pythia, but Themis herself,
the spirit, the projection of the oracle. Gods might come and go,
Gaia and Phoibe and Phoibos, but Themis who, as we shall presently
see, is below and above all gods abides there seated. She holds in
one hand a phiale of it may be holy water, and in the other ~
a spray of laurel. She is thallophoros.
At Athens‘ the priestess of Themis had a seat in the Dionysiac
theatre and another seat bears the inscription ‘Two Hersephoroi
1 Supra, p. 387. 2 Prom. Vinet, 209.
* Berlin Cat. Gerhard, Auserlesene Vasenbilder, cccxxvit.
4 C.I.A. m1. 318, 350, See Myth. and Mon. Ancient Athens, p. 274.
CH. ΧΙ] Themis as Gaia 481
of Ge Themis. Themis had a sanctuary on the south slope of the
Acropolis near to that of Ge Kourotrophos and Demeter Chloe’.
At Rhamnus? she was worshipped by the side of Nemesis. At
Trozen, whence her cult may have come to Athens with Aigeus,
there was an altar to the Themides*. In Thessaly‘ there was
a worship of Themis with the title Ichnatos, the ‘ Tracker, which
links her with Nemesis and Erinys. At none of these places
is there any mention. of her prophetic function ; but at Olympia
Pausanias’ tells us of a Gaion or sanctuary of Ge, at which there
was an altar of Themis.
In olden days they say that there was also an oracle of Ge here. On what
is called the Stomion (opening or mouth) there is an altar to Themis.
But if Themis be but the projection, the impersonation of
Earth and of the prophetic powers of Earth, why should she be
above and beyond all other gods? First a minor point must be
made clear. Themis is in a sense prophecy incarnate, but it is
1 Pans. 1, 22: 1. 2 C.I.A. 11. 1570.
3 Paus, 11. 31. 5. It is probable that, as O. Gruppe, Gr. Mythologie, 11. p. 585,
conjectures, Theseus and Themis were connected, and both came together from
Trozen. Themis may have been the goddess of the old Kalaureia Amphictyons.
4 Strabo, rx. 435. ὅν, 14.10.
Η. 91
482 ἀν γ,,..,.}. | (OH:
only in the old sense of prophecy, utterance, ordinance, not in the
later sense of a forecast of the future’. A closer examination of
the word Themis and its cognates will show that in her nature is
more even of ordinance than of utterance. It will repay us at
the outset to examine her functions in Homer, though Homer has
but dim consciousness of their significance.
In Homer Themis has two functions. She convenes and
dissolves the assembly; she presides over the feast. Telemachos?
adjures the assembly at Ithaka
By Olympian Zeus, and by Themis, who looseth and gathereth the
meetings of men.
Zeus himself cannot summon his own assembly. He must
bid Themis call the gods to council from many-folded Olympos’ brow.
And she ranged all about and bade them to the house of Zeus®.
Themis presides over the banquet. When Hera enters
Olympos, the gods rise up to greet her and hold out their cups in
welcome, and she takes the cup of Themis who is first. And,
when Themis would ask what troubled her, Hera makes answer,
‘ Ask me not concerning this, Ὁ goddess Themis ; thyself knowest it, how
unweening is his heart and unyielding. But do thou begin the equal banquet
of the gods in the halls*’
It is the meed of Themis to convene and dissolve the agora’ ;
it is hers too to preside over the equal, sacramental feast.
We think of Themis as an abstraction, as Law, Justice, Right,
and, naturally, we are surprised that she who is above Zeus himself
should be set to do the service of a herald, an office surely meeter
for Hermes or Iris. Why, we ask, with Hermes and Iris at hand,
ready to speed over earth and sea with messages and mandates,
should Themis have to execute just this one office of convening
the assembly? ΤῸ preside over the banquet may be an honourable
1 Supra, p. 387.
2 Hom. Od. τι. 68
λίσσομαι ἠμὲν Ζηνὸς ᾿Ολυμπίου ἠδὲ Θέμιστος,
ἡ T ἀνδρῶν ἀγορὰς ἠμὲν λύει ἠδὲ καθίζει.
3 Hom. Il. xx. 4—6.
4 Hom. Il. xv. 87—95
ἀλλὰ σύ γ᾽ ἄρχε θεοῖσι δόμοις ἔνι δαιτὸς ἐΐσης.
For the Equal Feast see supra, pp. 145 and 157.
5 Aristides (1. p. 837) doubtless referring to Homer says, ἐκκλησίαι καὶ βουλευτήρια
ἃ θεῶν ἡ πρεσβυτάτη συνάγει Θέμις. Hesychius gives Themis the title of ᾿Αγοραία.
x1] Themis and Doom 483
function, but to ‘range about all over, fetching up gods and demi-
gods, is no more a mark of supremacy. The solution of this
obvious difficulty will give us a clue not only to the nature of
Themis herself but to the source and mainspring of Greek, and
incidentally of every other, primitive religion.
The Greek word Themis and the English word Doom are,
philology tells us, one and the same; and it is curious to note that
their development moves on exactly parallel lines. Doom is the
thing set, fixed, settled; it begins in convention, the stress of
public opinion ; it ends in statutory judgment. Your private doom
15 your private opinion, but that is weak and ineffective. It is the
collective doom, public opinion, that, for man’s common convenience,
crystallizes into Law. Themis like Doom begins on earth and ends
in heaven. On earth we have our Doomsday, which, projected
into high heaven, becomes the Crack of Doom, the Last Judgment.
We have seen that Themis at Trozen was worshipped in the
plural, that there was an altar to the Themides. Out of many
dooms, many public opinions, many judgments, arose the figure
of the one goddess. Out of many themistes arose Themis.
These themistes, these fixed conventions, stood to the Greek for all
he held civilized. They were the bases alike of his kingship and of
his democracy. These themistes are the ordinances of what must
be done, what society compels; they are also, because what must
be will be, the prophecies of what shall be in the future; they are
also the dues, the rites, the prerogatives of a king, whatever
custom assigns to him or any official.
The Greek attitude towards Themis and the themistes comes
out very vividly in the account of the Cyclopes'. The Cyclopes are
the typical barbarians, and how do they show it? They are not
irreligious, far from it, they are notably pious, trusting entirely in
the divine mercy and not tilling the earth.
A people proud to whom no law is known,
And, trusting to the deathless Gods alone,
They plant not and they plough not, but the earth
Bears all they need, unfurrowed and unsown :
1 Hom. Od. 1x. 106
Κυκλώπων δ᾽ és γαῖαν ὑπερφιάλων, ἀθεμίστων,
ἱκόμεθ᾽......
τοῖσιν δ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ἀγοραὶ βουληφόροι οὔτε θέμιστες,
trans. Mackail.
31—2
484 Themis [cH.
Barley and wheat, and vines whose mighty juice
Swells the rich clusters when the rain of Zeus
Gives increase ; and among that race are kept
No common councils nor are laws in use.
That is what is wrong with the Cyclopes: they reverence the
gods, they are earth-worshippers, and earth for them brings forth
her increase, but they are ἀθέμιστες, they have no customs, no
conventions, binding by common consent, they have no agora.
’ That for the Greek was the last desolation. We hear the chorus
in remote barbarian Tauri cry'
O for a kind Greek market-place again !
Not only were the Cyclopes god-fearing and god-trusting
exceedingly, but they excelled in family life. To each Cyclops
his house was his castle, each Cyclops was master in his own
patriarchal home.
For on the high peaks and the hillsides bare
In hollow caves they live, and each one there
To his own wife and children deals the law,
Neither has one of other any care.
The only Themis was of the hearth and home, and to the Greek
that was no Themis at all. Themis was the use and wont of full-
grown men, citizens, made effective in the councils of the agora.
Themis was of course at first of the tribe, and then she was
all powerful. Later when the tribal system, through wars and
incursions and migrations, broke up, its place was taken less
dominantly, more effectively, by the polis. The polis set itself
to modify and inform all those primitive impulses and instincts
that are resumed in Earth-worship. It also set itself, if un-
consciously, as a counterbalance to the dominance of ties of near
kinship. Antigone® stands for kinship and the dues of Earth,
Creon for patriarchalism incarnate in the Tyrant and for the Zeus
religion that by that time had become its expression.
We no longer wonder why in Homer Themis convenes the
assembly. She is no herald hike Hermes, no messenger lke Iris,
1 Supra, p. 116.
2 For the emergence of the polis from the débris of the shattered group-system
see Prof. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic”, pp. 31, 37.
3 This has been very ably worked out by Dr Zielinski in his Der Gedanken-
fortschritt in den Chorliedern der Antigone in Festschrift fir Theodor Gomperz,
1901. See also his Exkurse zu den Trachinierinnen, Philologus ty. 1896, pp. 491,
577.
ΧΙ] Themis as the Collective Conscience 485
she is the very spirit of the assembly incarnate. Themis and the
actual concrete agora are barely distinguishable. Patroklos comes
running to the ships of godlike Odysseus,
Where were their agora and themis! ?
Here the social fact is trembling on the very verge of godhead.
She is the force that brings and binds men together, she is
‘herd instinct,’ the collective conscience, the social sanction. She
is fas, the social imperative. This social imperative is among a
primitive group diffuse, vague, inchoate, yet absolutely binding.
Later it crystallizes into fixed conventions, regular tribal customs ;
finally in the polis it takes shape as Law and Justice. Themis
was before the particular shapes of gods; she is not religion, but
she is the stuff of which religion is made. It is the emphasis and
representation of herd instinct, of the collective conscience, that
constitutes religion.
But it will immediately and most justly be asked, What is
this? If Themis be the source and well-spring of religion, are
we not turning religion into mere morality? Themis is herd-
instinct, custom, convention slowly crystallized into Law and y
abstract Right ; well and good. We all acknowledge that custom,
manners, mores, are the basis of morals, that ἤθεα, haunts and
habits, are the material of ethics. If we doubted it language is
at hand with proof irrefragable. But surely religion and ethics
are not, cannot be, the same. There is about the very word
religion an atmosphere, a warmth, an emotional lift quite other
and even alien to the chill levels of ethics. An Ethical Society
is not a Salvation Army.
The protest is entirely just. But mark our definition. It is
not herd instinct, not the collective conscience, not the social
imperative that constitutes religion; it is the emphasis and
representation of this collective conscience, this social imperative.
In a word Themis is not religion, she is the stuff of which
religious representations are made, That is why in the ordered |
sequence of the gods at Delphi we gave Themis no place. She is |
the substratum of each and every god, she is in a sense above |
as well as below each and every god, but herself never quite a
1 Hom. Il. x1. 807 ἵνα σφ᾽ ἀγορή τε θέμις τε.
|
|
|
Ι
ῖ
‘
486 Themis | [ou.
full-fledged divinity. In the passage already quoted’. when
Patroklos runs to the ships, we have seen her hover on the verge
of divinity, and it is not a little curious that Homer here, in
his odd semi-conscious way, seems to feel that the gods grow out
of the assembly. Patroklos comes to the place
where was their assembly and their themis, whereby also were the altars of
their gods established.
These are the θεοὶ ἀγοραῖοι, ἀγώνιοι.
/ Religion has in it then two elements, social custom, the
collective conscience, and the emphasis and representation of that
collective conscience. It has in a word within it two factors in-
dissolubly linked: ritual, that is custom, collective action, and
myth or theology, the representation of the collective emotion,
the collective conscience. And—a point of supreme importance—
both are incumbent, binding, and interdependent.
Now it is in this twofold character and incumbency of religion
that its essence lies, and here too are found the characteristics that
delimit it from its near neighbours, morality and art. Morality is
the social conscience made imperative upon our actions, but
morality unlike religion, save on questions involving conduct,
leaves our thoughts free. Art, which is also, like religion, a
representation of the social conscience®, has no incumbencies.
She imposes no obligation on either action or thought. Her
goddess is Peitho not Themis.
We accept then Prof. Durkheim’s’ illuminating definition :—
Les phénoménes dits religieux consistent en croyances obligatoires
connexes de pratiques définies qui se rapportent a des objets donnés
dans les croyances.
It is of interest to note that Prof. Durkheim in his definition
never overtly says the word collective. The note and characteristic
1 Hom. Il. loc. cit.
iva of ἀγορή τε θέμις τε
ἤην, τῇ δὴ καί σῴφι θεῶν ἐτετεύχατο βωμοί.
2 This subject I hope to discuss later in another connection.
3K. Durkheim, De la Déjinition des Phénomeénes Religieux in L’Année Socio-
logique, 11. 1898, p. 1, and see also Représentations Individuelles et Représentations
Collectives in Revue de Métaphysique et Morale, νι. 1898, p. 273, and Sociologie
Religieuse et Théorie de la Connaissance in the same review, xvu. 1909, p. 733.
This last paper is the Introduction to M. Durkheim’s forthcoming book on Les
Formes Elémentaires de la Pensée et de la Vie Religieuse. M. Durkheim’s views as
to the origin of religion have been sympathetically stated by M. Henri Hubert
in his preface to the French translation of Chantepie de la Saussaye’s Manuel
d@ Histoire des Religions, 1904. For English readers there is a short account of
M. Durkheim’s position in the last chapter of Mr Marett’s Threshold of Religion.
χ
Se
ΧΙ] Definition of Religion 487
of what is religious is that it is ‘obligatoire. But when we come
to analyse ‘obligatoire’ there is for man qua his humanity only
one source of what is ‘obligatoire, and that is the social con-
science. His body obeys natural law and his spirit is bound by
the social imperative. The moral constraint upon him is of
Themis not of Physis, and, because of this constraint, man is a
religious animal.
In the early days of group civilization man is altogether a
religious animal, altogether under the sway of Themis, of the
collective conscience. His religion, his representation, is that of
a totem animal or plant, a mere projection of his sense of unity
with his group and with the outside world. The obligation is so
complete, so utterly dominant, that he is scarcely conscious of it.
As the hold of the group slackens and the individual emerges, the
field of religion is bit by bit narrowed. Man’s latest religious
representation is of that all but impossible conception, the god
as individual. The god as individual passes over, as we have seen
in the last chapter, into the objet dart.
A definition however illuminating always desiccates its object.
To think of religion as consisting in ‘des croyances obliga-
toires connexes de pratiques définies’ chills its very life-blood.
Religious faith and practice is intensely obligatory, but it is
also eagerly, vividly, chosen, it is a great collective hairesis.
Religion sums up and embodies what we feel together, what
we care for together, what we imagine together, and the price of
that feeling together, that imagining together, the concessions,
the mutual compromises, are at first gladly paid.
It is when religion ceases to be a matter of feeling together,
when it becomes individualized and intellectualized, that clouds
gather on the horizon. It is because religion has been regarded
as a tissue of false hypotheses that it has commanded, will always
command, the animosity of the rational thinker. When the religious
man, instead of becoming in ecstasy and sacramental communion
one with Bacchos, descends to the ehill levels of intellectualism
and asserts that there is an objective reality external to himself
called Bacchos, then comes a parting of the ways. Still wider is
the breach if he asserts that this objective reality is one with the
mystery of life, and also with man’s last projection, his ideal of
_ the good.
488 Thenis [ CH.
In the light of the new definition it is instructive to examine
the old. Until recent times definitions of religion have usually
included some notion of a relation of the human soul to a god;
they have been in some sense theological. Thus M. Reville’:
La religion est la détermination de‘la vie humaine par le sentiment d’un
lien unissant l’ésprit humain ἃ l’ésprit mystérieux dont il recopnait la domi-
nation sur le monde et sur lui-méme, et auquel il aime a se sentir uni.
Here, though the word God is cautiously avoided, the idea of
a god, and even a personal god, the object of love, is present.
This idea that religion may be defined as a relation to a god
is sufficiently refuted by the simple fact that one of the most
important and widespread of religions, Buddhism, knows no god.
Religion is to the Buddhist not prayer, the worship of an external
being, but the turning in upon himself, the escape from the
sorrow that comes of desire, the gradual attainment of Nirvana.
Yet no one will deny to Buddhism the name of religion.
But if it be felt that Buddhism is a strange exception, it is
important to note that theology is in all other religions not
essential and integral, but rather a phase, a stage marking a
particular moment in development. At the outset of the present
book advisedly no definition of religion was attempted. The aim
was to examine actual religious facts. It was seen in the early
chapters that such religious facts were, collective emotion, mana,
magic, sacramentalism. All these existed long before they blos-
somed into the figure of a god. That vague and inchoate thing
‘sanctity’ was there long before it did on shape and personality.
As Prof. Durkheim? well says :
La notion de la divinité, loin d’étre ce qu’il y a de fondamental dans la vie
religieuse, n’en est en realité qu’un épisode secondaire. C’est le produit d’un
processus spécial en vertu duquel un ou deux des caractéres religieux se con-
centrent et se concrétisent sous la forme d’une individualité plus ou moins
définie.
Feeling the futility of defining religion in terms of theology,
scholars have resorted to things vague,—to a ‘sense of the super-
natural,’ or to an ‘instinct for mystery, the apprehension of a sort
of nescio quid, an unknown ‘infinite, behind the visible world.
Such were the definitions of Max Miiller, which, to the modern
psychologist and anthropologist, seem unreal to the point of
1 Prolégoménes ἵν V Histoire des Religions, p. 34. ; ᾿
2 Définition des Phénoménes Religieux. Τι Année Sociologique, 1898; p. 18.
᾿ χα] Religion and ‘the Infinite’ 489
grotesqueness. We may take Max Miiller’s' definition as
typical :
Religion is a mental faculty or disposition which, independent of, nay in
spite of sense and reason, enables man to apprehend the Infinite under different
names and under varying disguises.
Here we have the old Intellectualist fallacy in full force. The
protests of a host of scholars who felt the inadequacy and frigidity
and unreality of this Intellectualism induced Max Miiller? to
modify his definition as follows :
Religion consists in the perception of the infinite under such manifestations
as are able to influence the moral character of man.
Here we have a dim inkling of the truth. The notion of
social obligation as an element in religion begins to creep in.
Max Miiller’s ‘infinite’ was re-stated and re-emphasized by
Herbert Spencer*, but with a characteristic rationalist corollary.
According to him the essence and kernel of all religions was not
only the sense of mystery, but an instinctive desire and demand
to penetrate this mystery; man desired to know the unknown, the
unknowable.
Here is an element which all creeds have in common. Religions diametri-
cally opposed in their overt dogmas are yet perfectly at one in the tacit
conviction that the existence of the world with all it contains and all which
surrounds it is a mystery ever pressing for interpretation.
In the light of present anthropological knowledge the picture
called up for us by Herbert Spencer of the lonely individualistic
savage lost in contemplation of the All, and waking from his trance
eager to start on his career of elementary science, ‘rerum cog-
noscere causas, 1s, if natural and illuminating at the time it was
written, now, in the light of a more familiar intimacy with the
savage mind, inadequate and even misleading. Wonder and awe,
as we have seen in discussing the Thunder-god‘, were elements that
went to the making of religion, but the main objects of his cult,
ie. the main foci of his attention, were his food-plants and his food-
animals; if he was an Australian his witchetty grubs, his emus,
his kangaroos. If he was a North American Apache, his bears.
1 Introduction to the Science of Religion, 1882, p. 13. The definition was put
forward verbally in 1873.
2 Natural Religion (Gifford Lectures, 1888), pp. 188, 193.
3 First Principles, 1875, p. 44.
4 Supra, p. 64,
490 Themis [ OH.
He was concerned, not to lie prostrate in wonder before the
mystery of their life, still less to embark on scientific enquiry
into the causes of that life, but to make them grow and multiply
that he might eat them and grow and multiply himself.
Has man then no sense of mystery, no consciousness of some-
thing greater than himself to which he owes obedience, to which
he pays reverence? Yes. The instinct of those who, in framing
the old definitions of religion, included ‘mystery’ and ‘the in-
finite, was right—though their explanations wrong. The mystery,
the thing greater than man, is potent, not only or chiefly because
it is unintelligible and calls for explanation, not because it stimu-
lates a battled understanding, but because it 15 felt as an obligation.
The thing greater than man, the ‘ power not himself that makes for
righteousness,’ is, in the main, not the mystery of the universe to
which as yet he is not awake, but the pressure of that unknown
ever incumbent force, herd instinct, the social conscience. The
mysterious dominant figure is not Physis, but Themis‘.
If then we would understand religion, we must get behind
theology, behind, for the Greeks, the figures of the Olympians, and
even the shadowy shapes of the daimones, and penetrate to the
social conscience, and first and foremost to its earliest and perhaps
most permanent expression”, to social structure—the organized
system of relationships.
This brings us back to the Olympians. Of what social
structure are they the projection ?
Undoubtedly they represent that form of society with which
we are ourselves most familiar, the patriarchal family. Zeus is
the father and head: though Hera and he are in constant unseemly
conflict, there is no doubt about his ultimate supremacy. Hera
1 Tt will later (p. 516) be seen that Themis casts her shadow over Physis till the
two are scarcely distinguishable.
* For the importance of social structure I may refer to the Presidential address
of Dr W. H. R. Rivers to the Anthropological Section of the British Association,
1911, p. 9. His words are a landmark in the history of anthropological study, and
are specially relevant to all enquiries as to the origin of religious forms. ‘If then
social structure has this fundamental and deeply seated character, if it is the least
easily changed and only changed as the result either of actual blending of peoples
or of the most profound political changes, the obvious inference is that it is with
social structure that we must begin the attempt to analyse culture.’
eo
᾿ ΧΙ] The Olympians and Social Structure 491
is jealous, Zeus in frequent exasperation, but none the less finally
dominant. The picture is intensely modern, down to the ill-
assorted, incongruous aggregate of grown-up sons and daughters
living idly at ease at home and constantly quarrelling. The
family comes before us as the last forlorn hope of collectivism.
Its real original bond is a sex-tie between husband and wife; its
real function the rearing of helpless children. For this rearing the
husband is, save for the highest forms of civilization, useless at
home, his function is to be a food-seeker abroad and to come back
with his beak full of worms. Once the children grown up, and the
sex-tie grown weak, the family falls asunder for sheer lack of moral
molecular cohesion.
Olympos is in Northern Thessaly. We are so obsessed by the
literary Homeric Olympos that we are apt to forget that Olympos ᾿
was, to begin with, an actual northern mountain. Zeus, father of
gods and men, Zeus the sky-god, with all the heavy fatherhood
of Wuotan, is a Northerner, or at least has been profoundly
modified by Northern racial influence. As the Father, though
perhaps not wholly as the Sky-God, he is the projection of northern
fatherhood. He, or rather his fatherhood, came down from the
north with some tribe, or tribes, whose social system was patri-
linear’. Hera was indigenous and represents a matrilinear system ;
she reigned alone at Argos, at Samos, her temple at Olympia is
distinct from and far earlier than that of Zeus. Her first husband
or rather consort, was Herakles. The conquering Northerners pass
from Dodona to Thessaly. Zeus drops his real shadow-wife, Dione
at Dodona, in passing from Thessaly to Olympia, and at Olympia
Zeus, after the fashion of a conquering chieftain, marries Hera, a
daughter of the land*. In Olympos Hera seems merely the jealous
and quarrelsome wife. In reality she reflects the turbulent native
princess, coerced, but never really subdued, by an alien conqueror.
1 To discuss the racial question I have not the necessary equipment nor is the
archaeological material as yet adequate. But, following Dr Rivers, supra, p. 490, note”,
I believe that a change of social structure indicates either racial change or some
profound political upheaval. It is, I think, probable that the indigenous population
whose social structure was matrilinear was not Indo-European at all but belonged to
the same race as the Hittites of Asia Minor and that the memory of them survives
in the mythological Amazons. To this question I hope to return on another
occasion. The subject has been already discussed in Dr Walther Leonhard’s
Hittites und Amazonen, 1911.
2 For a full discussion of this question we may look to Mr Cook’s forthcoming
Zeus,
492 ον ἔτ Themis AO ohh [cH.
Now in Homer, once alive to the fact of an earlier background
against which is set the Northern patrilinear family, traces of
primaeval sanctities are not hard to find. When Themis summons
the Olympian agora, we remember? that she not only summons
the Olympian family, but she has to ‘range round’ to find the
earlier nature-potencies, the gods of spring and stream. Hastily
they do on their human shapes; we catch them at the very
moment of hurried, uneasy metamorphosis. But, though they do
on human shapes, they are no part of the great human, patrilinear,
family.
Again, ritual is always conservative. In the archaic ritual of
the oath we see the contrast between new and old. When Menelaos
is about to engage with Paris, he says? to the Trojans
Bring ye two lambs, one white ram and one black ewe for Earth and Sun,
and we will bring one for Zeus.
The Trojans, Southerners of Asia Minor, use the old sym-
pathetic ritual of the Horkos. The primitive Horkos or barrier
or division is between Earth and Sky, and Earth the Mother is,
as we shall presently see, before Sky, the Father. The Achaeans,
the Northerners, have no Horkos proper, but they bring a ram for
the anthropomorphic Zeus.
If then we would understand the contrast between the Olym-
pians and their predecessors we must get back to the earlier
Themis, to the social structure that was before the patriarchal
family, to the matrilinear system, to the Mother and the Tribe,
the Mother and the Child and the Initiated young men, the
Kouretes.
MATRILINEAR STRUCTURE.
We are back where we began. It may be well to recall what
has been so long out of sight. The relief in Fig. 143 from the
Capitoline altar? sets the old matrilinear social structure very
clearly before us.
To the left the Mother is seated. Her child has been taken
away from her. Seated on a rock in the middle of the picture he
1 Supra, p. 482. 2 Hom. Jl. 111. 104,
5 Overbeck, Kunstmythologie, Atlas m1. 24.
4 The Matrilinear Group 493
is suckled by the goat Amaltheia. Over him, dominating the
whole scene, two Kouretes clash their shields. Mother, Child,
Initiated youths, these are the factors of the old social group.
The father, Kronos, is... nowhere. We hear the words of the Hymn:
‘For here the shielded Nurturers took thee, a child immortal, from Rhea,
and, with noise of beating feet, hid thee away.’
From art-representations Kronos the father is singularly,
saliently, absent. We remember the detailed representation of
the birth of the child, on the Milan relief*; the mother giving
birth to the child, the child set on the throne, the child on the
᾿
back of the prancing goat; always the mother and child, and the
animal form of the mother with its totemistic remembrance, but
never the father. The conclusion is very clear. The myth is a
presentation, a projection of the days when, at first, the facts of
fatherhood were unknown, and later, but little emphasized; when
the Themis of the group was the mother, as mother of the initiate
youth to be. Themis as abstract Right, or as statutory Law,
sanctioned by force, would surely never have taken shape as a
1 Supra, p. 7. ὅ 2 Supra, p. 60. Fig. 9.
494 Themis | [on.
woman; but Themis as the Mother, the supreme social fact and
focus, she is intelligible. sfG
It may seem strange that woman, always the weaker, should
be thus dominant and central. But it must always be observed
that this primitive form of society is matrilinear not matriarchal.
Woman is the social centre not the dominant force. So long as
force is supreme, physical force of the individual, society is im-
possible, because society is by cooperation, by mutual concession,
not by antagonism.
—— . -- -...ὦὁ
Fig. 144.
Moreover, there is another point of supreme importance. In
primitive matrilinear societies woman is the great social force or
rather central focus, not as woman, or at least not as sex, but as
mother, the mother of tribesmen to be. This social fact finds its
projection in the first of divine figures, in Kourotrophos— Rearer
of Sons.’ The male child nursed by the mother is potentially
‘a kouros, hence her great value and his. When Agamemnon bids
Menelaos slay all his foes root and branch, he says
‘Let not one escape sheer destruction, spare not even that which a mother
bears in her womb, for it is a kowros!?
1 Hom. Il, νι. 58
ὅν τινα γαστέρι μήτηρ
κοῦρον ἐόντα φέροι.
Prof. Murray kindly drew my attention to this passage. Hence the custom,
common to many lands, of placing a male child in the bride’s lap that she may
become Kourotrophos. See D. 8. Stuart, The Prenuptial Rite in the New Calli-
machos, Journal of Classical Philology, νι. 1911.
ἱ
xi] Kronos as Matrilinear King 495
Kronos the Father emerges into prominence when patriarchy
becomes dominant. He then is figured as a sort of elder Zeus.
He appears on another face of the Capitoline altar! reproduced
in Fig. 144. Like Zeus he is seated on a chair with arms. Unlike
Zeus he is veiled. Rhea approaches bearing the swaddled stone.
It is a strange, almost grotesque, blend of old and new.
Kronos as a father is respectable, even venerable. But patri-
archy, once fully established, would fain dominate all things, would
invade even the ancient prerogative of the mother, the right to
rear the child she bore. Standing before the Hermes of Praxiteles
I have often wondered why a figure so beautiful should leave the
imagination unsatisfied, even irritated. It is not merely that the
execution is late and touched with an over facility; it is, I think,
that the whole conception, the motive, is false. Hermes, the young
male, usurps the function of the mother, he poses as Brephotrophos.
He is really Kourotrophos. The man doing woman’s work has all
the inherent futility and something of the ugly dissonance of the
man masquerading in woman’s clothes.
Kronos stands always for the old order, before Zeus and the
Olympians; he hates his father Ouranos but reverences and takes
counsel with Earth his mother. Another trait links him with the
earlier pre-patriarchal order. Unlike Zeus, Kronos is not addressed
as father. He is not father but ‘king, king upon earth in the
older Golden Age.
O king Kronos and Zeus the Father?.
It is not a heavenly kingdom imagined, it is a definite reign
upon earth. Kronos is never, never could be, translated to the
skies. The reason is, I think, clear: Kronos is the king, he is the
projection of the old medicine king. He is like Picus, like Sal-
moneus. He reigns as τύραννος in an ancient fortress, a τύρσις",
not as Father in the open δώματ᾽ Ὀλύμπου. It is as king that
he is constantly confused with Moloch who is Melek, the King‘.
Kronos the king represents the old matrilinear days and is
1 Overbeck, Kunstmythologie, Atlas 111. 24.
2 Julian, Conviv. 317d, ᾧ βασιλεῦ Kpove καὶ Ζεῦ πάτερ.
3 Pind. Ol. τι. 124 ἔτειλαν Διὸς ὁδὸν παρὰ Κρόνου τύρσιν. For turris, τύρσις and
τύραννος and their possibly Mongolian origin see Rev. Arch. 1904, p. 414,
4 This illuminating suggestion, which immediately commends itself, was made to
Dr Frazer by Professor Kennett. See Adonis, Attis and Osiris, Appendix, p. 401.
496 Themis ity [ CH.
therefore closely linked with Gaia. It has been already’ shown
how on the slopes of the hill Kronion at Olympia was the sanctuary
of the Mother and Child, Sosipolis and Eileithyia. The same
conjunction obtains at Athens. When the cult of Olympian Zeus
was brought by Peisistratos to Athens, with him came Kronos and
Rhea, and with him came Gaia’, for Rhea is but the Mountain
Mother, the Asia Minor wilder form of Gaia.
As king, Kronos is also daimon of the year. He stands for
the cycle of reincarnation. Plato, in the Politicus*, makes a most
instructive comparison between the Age of Kronos and his own
age, the Age of Zeus. His account of the Age of Kronos seems
haunted by reminiscences not only of totemism but of matrilinear
social structure. Above all things, it is the age of the Earth-Men,
sown and re-sown‘.
‘ There were divine daimones who were the shepherds of the various species
and herds of animals, and each was entirely sufficient for those whom he
shepherded. So that there was no wildness nor eating of each other, nor
any war, nor revolt amongst them....In those days God himself was their
shepherd....Under him there were no governments nor separate possessions
of women and children. For all men rose again from the earth remembering
nothing of their past. And such things as private property and families did
not exist, but Earth herself gave them abundance of fruits from trees and
other green things, spontaneously, and not through husbandry. And they
dwelt naked in the open air, for the temperature of the seasons was mild.
And they had no beds, but lay on soft couches of herb which grew abun-
dantly out of the earth. Such, Socrates, was the life of men in the days of
Kronos.’ ἢ
Plato seems conscious that, in the days of Kronos, the ruler of
each department was more herdsman or shepherd than king. The
ancient Basileus was indeed, as already has been hinted, a person
half daimon, half man, essentially a functionary, and almost wholly
alien to our modern, individualistic notion of king. Given that
Kronos was such a daimon king, it is clear that he rules over the
early earth-born race, that his kingdom is in quite a special way
of this earth. He stands for the Earth and her seasonal year
rather than for any cycle of Sun and Moon.
The etymology of his name is not quite certain, but the ancient
guess which connects it with the verb xpaivw is probably right.
1 Supra, p. 240. 2 Paus. 1. 18. 7.
3 971 π, 272 A.
4 Plato, op. cit. 272 EB καὶ τὸ γήινον ἤδη πᾶν ἀνήλωτο γένος, πάσας ἑκάστης τῆς
ψυχῆς τὰς γενέσεις ἀποδεδωκυίας, ὅσα ἦν ἑκάστῃ προσταχθέντα;, τοσαῦτα εἰς γῆν σπέρματα
πεσούσης...» and see also Timaeus 42 p, 88 "Ὁ. The whole thought is that expressed
in ritual by the Anthesteria. Supra, p. 292.
ΧΙ] Kronos as Year-G'od 497
Kronos is the Fulfiller, the Accomplisher. In what sense he is
the Accomplisher is clear from the words of the Chorus in the
Trachiniae’ :
ἀνάλγητα yap οὐδ᾽ ὁ πάντα κραίνων βασιλεὺς
ἐπέβαλε θνατοῖς Kpovidas: ϊ
ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ πῆμα καὶ χαρὰ πᾶσι κυκλοῦσιν οἷον "Αρκτου
στροφάδες κέλευθοι.
Kronos is the Accomplisher of the full circle of the year. His
nature and his name alike make easy his identification with
Chronos2. He is not the Sun or the Moon, but the circle of the
Heavens, of Ouranos, husband of Ge; of Ouranos, in whose great
dancing-place the planets move,
And God leads round his starry Bear’.
Kronos indeed, so far as he is a Year-god, marks and expresses
that earlier calendar of Hesiod, in which Works and Days are
governed by the rising and setting of certain stars and constella-
tions, Sirius, Orion, the Pleiades, and by the comings and goings
of migratory birds, the swallow, the cuckoo, and the crane*. But
though man looks to these heavenly and atmospheric terata to
guide his sowings and reapings, his real focus of attention is still
earth. And inasmuch as his social structure is matrilinear, she
is Mother-Earth; Father-Heaven takes as yet but a subordinate
place. When, nowadays, we speak of God as ‘Father’ we mean
of course no irreverence, but we strangely delimit the sources
of life. The Roman Church, with her wider humanity, though
she cherishes the monastic ideal, yet feels instinctively that a
male Trinity is non-natural, and keeps always the figure of the
divine Mother.
1, 126.
2 Thus Proklos on Plato, Kratylos, 61 νοῦς γάρ ἐστιν ὁ βασιλεὺς ΚΚρόνος.. αὐτὸς εἰς
ἑαυτὸν ἐπεστραμμένος, ὅς γε καὶ τοὺς ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ προκύψαντας εἰς ἑαυτὸν αὖθις ἐπέστρεψεν
καὶ ἐνεκολπίσατο καὶ ἐν ἑαυτῷ σταθερῶς ἵδρυσεν, and the fragment of Kritias (Diels,
Ε.Υ..5.3, p. 618. 21) ἢ
, ἀκάμας τε Χρόνος περί τ᾽ ἀενάῳ
ῥεύματι πλήρης φοιτᾷ τίκτων
αὐτὸς éavrév.
Kronos and Chronos were of course in meaning, as in form, entirely distinct to
begin with. Chronos is an Orphiec figure derived from the Iranian Time-God
Zrvan. His figure cannot be discussed here. See R. Hisler, Weltenmantel und
Himmelszelt, 1910, index s.v. Kronos, Chronos, and Zrvan, and also for Kronos
and Eniautos, W. Schultz,”Aiiros in Memnon, 1910, p. 47.
3 W. Raleigh.
4 Supra, p.97. Since I wrote the chapter on bird magic and the τείρεα there has
appeared an interesting paper dealing in part with the association of constellations
and birds by Dr M. P. Nilsson, Die dlteste Zeitrechnung. Apollo und der Orient in
Archiv f. Religionswiss., 1911, x1v. p. 423.
H. 32
498 Themis [CH.
The particular forms taken by a people’s mythology or
theology can, as before said, only be understood in the lght of
its social structure. The matrilinear stage had long been buried
and forgotten, and hence the figures of Dionysos and his mother
Semele, and his attendant Satyrs, the figures of Rhea with her
effaced husband Kronos and the band of the Kouretes, had. lost
their real significance. To the mythologist it is sufficient evidence
of a matrilinear state of society in Greece, with its attendant tribal
initiations, that such a social structure is seen thus clearly reflected
in mythology. But, to a mind trained rather in historical than
mythological method, such evidence may seem less convincing.
We have therefore now to ask: what evidence is there, apart from
mythological representations, of the existence of a social structure
in which the mother, the male-child, and the tribe were the main
factors ?
We turn, of course, first and foremost to the Apatouria, the
festival of enrolment in the phratriai, but we turn only to be at
the outset disappointed. The name itself is manifestly patriarchal.
Apatouria is Homopatoria’, the festival of those who have the
same fathers. It is celebrated κατὰ τὰ πάτρια, according to
paternal usage. On the third day was celebrated the- festival
of the κουρεῶτις, of the shearing of the hair, the significance of
which has been already? noted in connection with Herakles and
Apellaios. But here again we can detect no special relation to
the Mother. A chance biographical notice in one of the ‘Lives*’
of Homer gives us the needful clue, and makes us suspect and
indeed feel practically certain that the festival of The Same
Fathers originally belonged to the Mothers‘.
When Homer was sailing to Greece, he put in at Samos. And the people
there chanced at the moment to be celebrating the Apatouria. And one of
the Samians, who had seen him before in Chios, when they beheld Homer
1 So definitely the scholiast to Aristoph. Acharn. 146 οἱ δέ φασιν ὅτι τῶν πατέρων
ὑμοῦ συνερχομένων διὰ Tas τῶν παίδων ἔγγραφὰς οἷον ὁμοπατόρα λέγεσθαι τὴν ἑορτήν ~
ὁποίῳ τρόπῳ λέγομεν ἄλοχον τὴν ὁμολέκτρον καὶ ἄκοιτιν τὴν ὁμόκοιτιν οὕτω καὶ Ὅμο-
πατόρια ᾿Απατόρια.
2 Supra, pp. 378 and 441; for hair shearing in general see Dr Frazer, Pausanias,
vol. m1. p. 279.
3 Westermann, ps.-Herod. Biogr. 29, p. 15.
4 The connection of Athena with the ἐφῆβοι, her κοῦροι, and their relation to ini-
tiation ceremonies have been ably examined by Miss Dorothy Lamb, of Newnham
College, in an essay as yet unpublished. See also Addenda.
ΧΙ] The Apatouria and the Tritopatores 499
arriving at Samos, went and told the clansmen, and made a panegyric about
Homer. And the clansmen ordered him to bring Homer. And the man
who had met him said to Homer—‘Stranger, the city is celebrating the
Apatouria, and the clansmen bid you come and feast with them.’ And
Homer said he would, and he went along with his host. And, as he went,
he lighted on the women who were sacrificing at the crossways to Kouro-
trophos. And the priestess looked at him in anger, and said to him, ‘ Man,
begone from the sanctities!.’
The festival has become that of the ‘Same Fathers, but the
sacrifice is by women and to the Mother, the Rearer of Children.
It is by the Crossways, for the Mother has taken on her Moon-
Aspect, as Eileithyia, as Hekate. It is strange indeed, at the
sacrifice for the ‘Same Fathers, that no man might be present,
but if the festival were once of the Same Mothers all is clear.
The Apatouria, the festival of the ‘Same Fathers,’ is late and
patriarchal. It is interesting to find that, late though it is, the
Apatouria finds—as in early days all social structure must—its
mythological reflection and representation in a myth, that of the
Tritopatores*; figures the interpretation of which, because they
neglect to examine social structure, has caused mythologists
much trouble and perplexity.
Of the Tritopatores Suidas*, quoting Phanodemos, says :
The Athenians only both sacrifice and pray to them for the birth of
children when they are about to marry.
The scholiast*, commenting on the word 7'ritogeneva, recalls a
phrase that sounds like an echo of this prayer, and throws new
light on it:
‘May my child be τριτογενής."
The father prays to the Tritopatores that his child may be
1 ἐἄνερ, ἀπὸ τῶν ἱερῶν.᾽
5.1 follow the explanation of Dr G. Lippold in his Tritopatreis, A. Mitt. χχχνι.
1911, p. 105. Dr Lippold scarcely seems to see the great importance in relation to
Athenian social structure of his own convincing interpretation.
3 s.v. Tprromdropes. For the older explanation of Tritopatores see Prolegomena,
p. 179:
4 Schol. BT ad Hom. Il. vit. 39
καὶ παροίμια
παῖς μοι τριτογενὴς εἴη, μὴ τριτογένεια.
It is very likely, as Dr Lippold points out, that the two concluding words are not
original, but have been added, as often in similar cases, to make up a desired
hexameter.
32—2
500 Themis. [cH.
τριτογενής. Tritogeneia, we remember, was the Athena who
sprang from her father’s head:
Tritogeneia, the daughter of Zeus the Counsellor,
Born from his sacred head, in battle-array ready dight,
Golden all glistering!.
Tritogeneia is not ‘she who is born on the third day,’ nor yet
‘she who was born from the head of her father, nor yet ‘she who
was born of the water of the brook Triton’ ; she is she who was true
born, and [to be true born is in patrilinear days to be born in
wedlock of your lawful father. | Hesychius’, defining the word
Τριτοκούρη, says:
She for whom everything has been accomplished as to marriage. Some
define it as ‘a true virgin.’
The outrageous myth of the birth of Athena from the head of
Zeus is but the religious representation, the emphasis, and over
emphasis, οἰ patrilinear social structure) When an Athenian
prayed to the Tritopatores, it was not for children merely, but for
true born children, children born with him for their father.
The Apatouria, then, is the festival of those who have the .
same father, and of these the Tritopatores and Tritogeneia are
the mythical expression. Now we realize why the god and
goddess, who presided over the Apatouria, were Zeus and Athena,
Father and Father-born daughter. As, in the old matrilinear
days, Kronos the father was ignored, so, by the turn of the wheel,
the motherhood of the mother is obscured, even denied; but with
far less justice, for the facts of motherhood have been always
patent. Athena is the real Kourotrophos, but for patrilinear
purposes she is turned into a diagram of motherless birth.
gy
(
As patrons of the Apatouria, Zeus and Athena bear the titles
Phratrios and Phratria. The phratria is the brotherhood of those
who have the same father. It has nothing to do with the ἀδελφοί,
those who have the same mother, the ὁμογάστριοι"; it is of the
1 Hom. Hym. xxvii. 4
Τριτογενῆ, τὴν αὐτὸς ἐγείνατο μητίετα Ζεὺς
σεμνῆς ἐκ κεφαλῆς πολεμήϊα τεύχε᾽ ἔχουσαν.
s.v. Τριτοκούρη: ἣ πάντα συν(τε)τέλεσται τὰ εἰς τοὺς γάμους" τινὲς δὲ γνησία
παρθένος. The origin of the stem τρῖτο is not known; all that is clear is that it
must mean ‘true,’ ‘genuine,’
3 Gaius (Inst. 111. 10), in true patrilinear fashion, thus defines agnatus and con-
sanguineus: ‘legitima cognatio est ea quae per virilis sexus personas coniungitur.
2
ΧΙ] Zeus, Apollo, and Athena 501
patrilinear, not the matrilinear structure. When, in the Eume-
nides', the Erinyes ask of Orestes, slayer of his mother,
What brotherhood will give him holy water ?
Apollo is ready with his answer:
This too I tell you, mark how plain my speech,
The mother is no parent of her ‘child,’
Only the nurse of the young seed within her.
The male is parent, she as outside friend
Cherishes the plant, if fate allows its bloom.
Proof will I bring of this mine argument.
A father needs no mother’s help. She stands,
Child of Olympian Zeus, to be my witness,
Reared never in the darkness of the womb,
Yet fairer plant than any heaven begot.
This alliance of the three Olympians of the Humenides, Zeus,
Apollo, Athena, brings us to a curious point. The bond, we feel, is
non-natural; the three gods stand together not because there is
any primitive link, any common cultus, but as projections, repre-
sentations of patriarchy, pushed to the utmost. They are a trinity
of Phratriot, Patréoi. Where else, we ask, are these three dis-
parate divinities thus unequally yoked together? The answer
is clear and brings immediate light; in Homer and in Homer
only. .
Achilles, sending forth Patroklos in his armour, prays*
Would, O father Zeus and Athene, and Apollo, would that not one of all
the Trojans might escape death, nor one of the Argives.
Hector names Apollo and Athene as linked together for special
adoration? :
Would that I were immortal and ageless all my days, and honoured, like
as Athene is honoured and Apollo ;
Itaque eodem patre nati fratres agnati sibi sunt, qui etiam consanguinei vocantur,
nec requiritur an etiam matrem eandem habuerint.’ So subtle and persistent is the
suggestion of name that there are persons even to-day who think that in some
mysterious way they are more descended from their father than their mother.
For the whole question see P. Kretschmer, Die Griechische Benennung des Bruders,
Glotta τι. p. 210.
1559 ποία δὲ χέρνιψ φρατέρων προσδέξεται; and see also Eur. Or. 552, and
Frg. 1048.
2 As long ago remarked by Mr Gladstone, who brought together all the evidence
in a book too little read now-a-days, his Juventus Mundi, 1869, p. 266 (Section viii.
Athene and Apollo). We cannot of course adopt Mr Gladstone’s solution. He
held that Apollo and Athene were each in a special way the Logos of Zeus. The
question is also raised by Prof. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic”, p. 69, note 3.
3 Hom. 1]. xvi. 97.
4 Hom. Jl, viii. 540.
502 Themis [ OH.
and again}, even more significantly, he links Zeus, Athene, and
Apollo together as the typical happy family :
Would that indeed I were for ever as surely the son of aegis-bearing Zeus,
ard that my mother were lady Hera, and that I were held in such honour as
Apollo and Athene, as verily this day is to bring utter evil on all the Argives!
Apollo and Athena then are linked together as Phratriot and
this conjunction is found in the patrilinear Homer and in the
Eumenides where all the emphasis is patriarchal. Elsewhere
Apollo is linked with quite another goddess, with Artemis, and in
this conjunction we see a survival, though altered and disfigured,
of matriarchal structure. In Homer a great effort is made to
affiliate Artemis as one of the patriarchal family, but, in her
ancient aspect as Πότνια θηρῶν, she is manifestly but a form
of the Great Mother: at Delphi, where Apollo reigns supreme, his
‘sister’ Artemis is strangely, significantly absent. What has
happened is fairly obvious. Artemis, as Mother, had a male-god
as son or subordinate consort, just as Aphrodite had Adonis. When
patriarchy ousted matriarchy, the relationship between the pair is
first spiritualized as we find it in Artemis and Hippolytos; next
the pair are conceived of in the barren relation of sister and
brother. Finally the female figure dwindles altogether and the
male-consort emerges as merely son of his father or utterer of his
father’s will—Avos προφήτης.
This is curiously and instructively shown in the history of the
Eiresione. Originally of course the Eiresione was, as we have
seen’, a sanctity per se, a branch carried magically to promote
fertility. In historical times, in the Thargelia, Daphnephoria, ete.
it was associated with the worship of, it was ‘sacred to, Apollo*.
This is natural enough for Apollo, as Aguieus and as Kouros, was
the young male divinity, the source of fertility. In the Thargeha
1 Hom. Il. x11. 827.
2 Supra, p. 220.
3 Also at the Eiresione of Samos, which was associated with the primitive swallow
song. See (Hdt.), Vit. Hom. p.17 f. ap. Suidam, 5.ν. Ὅμηρος... ἤδετο δὲ τὰ ἔπεα τάδε
(ἃ καλεῖται Εἰρεσιώνη) ἐν τῇ Σάμῳ ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον ὑπὸ τῶν παίδων, ὅτ᾽ ἀγείροιεν ἐν TH
ἑορτῇ τοῦ ᾿Απόλλωνος. In the song given by Suidas occur the lines
νεῦμαί τοι νεῦμαι ἐνιαύσιος ὥστε χελιδών
ἕστηκ᾽ ἐν προθύροις ψιλὴ πόδας: ἀλλὰ φέρ᾽ αἶψα
Ἰπέρσαι τῷ ᾿Απόλλωνος γυιατιδος
εἰ μέν τι δώσεις"
but the ceremony was really to Kourotrophos. See Suidas, loc. cit. .. εἶτα ἀφίκετο
(Ὅμηρος) εἰς Σᾶμον καὶ εὗρε γυναῖκα Κουροτρόφῳ θύουσαν k.T.X.
ΧΙ] The Korythalia 503
and the Daphnephoria the figure of the Mother is effaced, though
_ it may be that im the two pharmakoi, female as well as male,
__as in the two Oschophoroi' and the Daphnephoroi, her figure really
_ survives. But in another service of the Eiresione the Mother
holds her own, even to the exclusion of the Son, the ceremony of
the Korythalia.
Hesychius? defining Korythalia says,
A laurel wreathed : some call it Hiresione.
The Etymologicum Magnum? gives further and most instructive
particulars. It thus defines the word Korythale:
The laurel-bough placed before the doors. Because branches which the
call korot blossom.
So too Chrysippos :
Let some one from within give me lighted torches and woven foroz
unmixed with myrtle. For poets call branches, diversely, shoots and saplings
and korot. And others when their sons and daughters come to maturity, place
laurel-boughs before the doors in ceremonies of puberty and marriage.
The Korythalia, ‘Youth Bloom, expresses just that oneness of
man and nature that is so beautiful and so characteristic of
primitive totemistic thinking. For them it was expressed in
ceremonial, in the carrying of branches, for us it survives in
‘ poetry.’
Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine, upon the walls of thine house.
Thy children like the olive-branches, round about thy table+.
And at Athens in prose, for Demades’, the orator, is reported to
have said
| The epheboi are the spring of the demos.
But the Korythalia tells us more, it is the matriarchal form of
the Kiresione. We know the divinity projected, represented by
the Korythalia. She was no Kouros, she was Artemis Korythala.
Supra, p. 324.
5.0. κορυθαλία" δάφνη ἐστεμμένη τινὲς τὴν εἰρεσιώνην.
3 s.v. κορυθάλη" ἡ πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν τιθεμένη δάφνη" ὅτι οἱ κλάδοι (ods κόρους καλοῦσι)
θάλλουσιν ὡς καὶ Χρύσιππος" ᾿Αλλὰ δᾷδας ἡμμένας μοι δότω τὶς ἔνδοθεν, καὶ κόρους
πλεκτοὺς ἀκραιφνεῖς μυῤῥίνης---οἱ γὰρ ποιηταὶ ἀνάπαλιν τοὺς κλάδους καὶ ὄξους καὶ
ὅρπηκας λέγουσι. τινὲς δὲ ὅτι ἡβησάντων τῶν νέων καὶ θυγατέρων, δάφνας προετίθουν
ἐφηβίοις καὶ γάμοις εἰς τὸ δίκρον.
4 Psalm exxviii. 3, 4.
> ap. Athen. ur. 55. 99 καὶ Δημάδης dé ὁ ῥήτωρ ἔλεγε... ἔαρ δὲ τοῦ δήμου τοὺς
ἐφήβους ; cf. the ver sacrum of the Latins.
1
2
504 Themis [cH.
And, if as to her nature there was any doubt, she had another
festival which marks her function, the Tithenidia, the festival
of nurses and nurslings. Call her Orthia?, or Korythalia, or
Hyakinthotrophos?, or Philomeirax?, it is all one; she is Kouro- —
trophos, the Rearing Mother, nurse of the Kouroi to be‘.
Kourotrophos and the Lady of the Wild Things are but the
forms of the ancient mother served by the Kouretes and she
survives in the figure of Artemis, the Huntress sister of Apollo.
Of this we have curious ritual evidence.
At Messene, near to a temple of Eileithyia, Pausanias® saw
a hall of the Kouretes, where they sacrifice without distinction all animals,
beginning with oxen and goats and ending with birds: they throw them all
into the fire.
Why this singular service to the Kouretes ? Why indeed,
unless we remember that they were the ministrants, the correlatives
of the Great Mother, the ‘Lady of the Wild Things. To her the
sacrifice of all living things is manifestly, if hideously, appropriate.
And to her it was offered. Lucian*, in his account of the
Syrian goddess at Hieropolis—manifestly but a form of the Great
Mother—tells how, in the court of the sanctuary, were kept all
manner of beasts and birds.
Consecrated oxen, horses, eagles, bears and lions, who never hurt anyone,
but are holy and tame to handle.
But of these tame beasts and birds in one day in the year there
is a holocaust. |
‘Of all the festivals,’ Lucian? says, ‘the greatest that I know of they hold
in the beginning of the spring. Some call it the Pyre, some the Torch. At
this festival they do as follows. They cut down great trees and set them up
in the courtyard. Then they bring in goats and sheep and other live beasts,
and hang them up on the trees. They also bring birds and clothes and
vessels of gold and silver. When they have made all ready, they carry the
victims round the trees and set fire to them and straightway they are all
burned,’
By a fortunate chance we know that this sacrifice of all living
things, so appropriate to the Mother, was also made to Artemis
1 The etymology of Orthia is still uncertain, but the scholiast on Pindar,
Ol. m1. 54, is probably right in his guess as to the meaning: ὅτι ὀρθοῖ εἰς σωτηρίαν ἢ
ὀρθοῖ τοὺς γεννωμένους.
2 For ὑακινθοτρόφος see Collitz-Bechtel, Samm. Gr. Dialekt. 3501, 3502, 3512;
the title occurs in Knidos. For Hyakinthos as juvencus=adulescentulus, see
Dr 5. Wide, Lakonische Kulte, p. 290.
Ὁ Paus. v1. 23. 8. 4 Supra, p. 494. 5. χγ;.82. 9,
δ De Syria Dea, 41. 7 Op. cit. 49.
i ΧΙ] Kourotrophos and the Kouretes 505
ed
with the title of Laphria, who was, Pausanias’ tells us, substantially
the same as the Ephesian Mother. At Patrae, which was in-
habited by dispossessed Calydonians, a yearly sacrifice to Artemis
was celebrated. After describing the altar surrounded by a circle
of green logs of wood ‘and approached by an inclined plane of
earth, and also the procession of the virgin priestess in a car
drawn by deer, Pausanias comes to the sacrifice itself, which, he
says, is not merely a state affair, but popular also among private
persons. It is sad reading.
For they bring and cast upon the altar living things of all sorts, both
edible birds and all manner of victims, also wild boars and deer and fawns
and some even bring the cubs of wolves and bears, and others full grown
beasts. And they lay on the altar also the fruits of cultivated trees. Then
they set fire to the wood. I saw indeed a bear and other beasts struggling to
get out of the first force of the flames and escaping by sheer strength. But
those who threw them in drag them up again on to the fire. I never heard
of anyone being wounded by the wild beasts2,
Such was the savage service of the Kouretes and of the
Mother and of that last survival of the Mother, the maiden ‘sister’
of Apollo the Kouros.
Of matrilinear structure there is evidence stronger still and
better concealed in an obscure ceremony, the significance of which
has only lately been made out?, the festival of Things Insolent or
Things Unwonted, Things beyond and outside their Moira,. the
Hybristika.
THE HYBRISTIKA.
Plutarch, in his treatise on the Virtues of Women, tells of
the brave fight made by the women of Argos against Cleomenes,
under the leadership of the poetess Telesilla. This fight was the
alleged aztion of a curious festival.
Some said the fight was on the seventh day of the month, others that it
was on the day of the new moon of the month which is now called the fourth,
but which was formerly called Hermazos, on which day they still celebrate the
Hybristika, and clothe women in men’s chitons and chlamydes and men in
the peploi and veils of women.
The learned Plutarch realises that this festival belonged to a
whole class in which women counterfeited men and vice versa.
He cites as a further instance the Argive law that women who.
1 3v..32..6. Nance oe
3 By Mr W. R. Halliday in his illuminating monograph, 4 Note on Herodotos
vi. 83 and the Hybristika, in B.S.A. xvt. 1909-10, p. 212.
4 De Mulier. Virt. 4.
506 Themis [ CH.
were brides should wear beards. The aztion he gives was that the
scarcity of males caused the women to admit slaves as husbands.
The singular customs of the Hybristika marked, he thinks, the
contempt of the freeborn bride.
The name τὰ ὑβριστικά means things outrageous, insolent in
the etymological sense, things against use and wont. Now why,
in a primitive society, should Themis who rules over all things be
wantonly and yet systematically outraged? What lies behind this
world-wide outrage of the exchange of clothes between the sexes,
which survives to-day among the ’Arries and ’Arriets of Hamp-
stead Heath ?
The answer that till quite lately has been accepted as most
satisfactory is, that the transfer of clothing marks the shift from
matriarchy to patriarchy. The priest of Herakles at Cos? had to
wear woman’s clothes when he sacrificed. It is tempting to
suppose that once there had been a woman priestess of some
native goddess Omphale, and that when patriarchy obtained a
priest usurped the office of the priestess but still wore her ritual
gear. The theory is ingenious and indeed points the way to the
more satisfactory solution suggested by Mr Halliday. That
solution he arrived at by the only safe road, by examining in
their entirety all the various occasions on which the change of
clothes takes place.
The rite of the change of clothes—for a formal rite it is, not a
wanton eccentricity—is observed on occasions seemingly the most
dissimilar, at circumcision, at marriage, at mourning after a death.
At circumcision Egyptian boys are dressed as girls. Among the
Nandi, before boys are circumcised, the young girls pay them a
visit and give them some of their own garments and ornaments,
and similarly the girls are given the clothes and ornaments of
boys on a like occasion.
The borrowed plumage is returned when the girls and boys are re-
spectively admitted into the new social status for which circumcision has
qualified them.
Achilles on Skyros was disguised as a girl*, Dionysos was
brought up by Ino and Athamas as a maiden‘.
1 Plut. Quaest. Gr. tymt. Διὰ τί παρὰ Κῴοις ὁ τοῦ Ἡρακλέους ἱερεὺς ἐν ᾿Αντιμαχίᾳ
γυναικείαν ἐνδεδυμένος ἐσθῆτα καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀναδούμενος μίτρᾳ κατάρχεται τῆς
θυσίας;
2 Mr Halliday, op. cit. p. 214. 3 Apollod. 1. 13. 8. 4 Apollod. mt. 4. 3.
|
ΧΙ] The Hybristika as Rite de Passage 507
The rites of puberty, the rites of marriage, are, like all other
primitive rites, rites de passage: their object is to afford a
safe passage in the perilous transit from one age or condition to
another. Man feels, though he does not yet know, that life is
change, and change is beset with dangers. ‘The first crisis of life 15
the change of puberty, from boyhood to manhood. Manhood, among
primitive peoples, seems to be envisaged as ceasing to be a woman:
the notion is quite natural. Man is born of woman, reared of
woman. When he passes to manhood, he ceases to be a woman-
thing! and begins to exercise functions other and alien. That
moment is one naturally of extreme peril; he at once emphasizes
and disguises it. He wears woman’s clothes. The same applies
at marriage.
The focus of attention at puberty and in marriage is on sex.
The rite de passage is from one sex to another. Hence the change
of clothes. But what is effective and salutary for one crisis may
be effective and salutary for another. Hence the fact, perplexing
at first, that at mourning for death—another rite de passage—the
Lycians changed clothes with the opposite sex. In fact the
ceremony of change of clothes might easily come to be observed
whenever it was desirable to ‘change the luck. Among the
Nandi
Once every seven-and-a-half years, some say four years after the circum-
cision festival, the Saket-ap-eito ceremony takes place. The country is
handed over from one age to another. At the conclusion of the ceremonies,
the men of the preceding age take off their warriors’ garments and put on
those of old age. The defence and well-being of the community are thereby
handed over to their successors.
Here the rite de passage is not from sex to sex but from age to
age. The general characteristics of each periodic festival, such as
the Carnival, the Saturnalia, are always the same, a complete
upset of the old order, a period of licence and mutual hilarity,
and then the institution of the new. As Mr Halliday points
out, the last survival is the servants’ ball of the old-fashioned
country Christmas.
Behind the Hybristika and many another primitive Greek rite
there lies a rite of initiation, the rite of the making of a Kouros.
When tribal conditions are broken up, the family takes the place
1 See supra, p. 36.
508 Themis [ CH.
of the group. What were once puberty rites change, as we have
already seen?, into other forms of initiation, as medicine or seer or
member of some secret society. A very singular instance of this
is preserved to us in the rites of Trophonios at Lebadeia which
are known to us in exceptional detail, and which cast considerable
light on the figure of Themis as she shifts from being a projection
of the social structure to her final form as a divinity of prophecy.
THE ORACLE OF TROPHONIOS.
The sources of our knowledge of the ritual of Trophonios are
three :
1. The account of Pausanias when he visited Lebadeia.
2. The treatise of Plutarch on the Daimon of Sokrates, in
which he recounts the experiences of a young philosopher who
went down into the chasm of Trophonios to find out what the
Daimon of Sokrates was.
3. Plutarch’s treatise on the Face in the Orb of the Moon, in
which he relates the rite of Trophonios to other ceremonies, and
thereby lets out their real nature.
(1) The account of Pausanias®* is familiar, and also too long to
be quoted in extenso; it must for the most part be resumed. After
a description of the city of Lebadeia, which in splendour equalled
the most flourishing cities of Greece, and after stating that
Trophonios was in form and function analogous to Asklepios,
Pausanias describes the procedure of consulting the oracle. The
consultation is preceded by various rites of purification and
sacralization. The applicant lodges for a stated number of
days in a certain building sacred to the Agathos Daimon and
to Agathe Tyche. He bathes only in the river Herkyna, he
sacrifices to various divinities, among them of course Trophonios
and Demeter with the title Europa, whom they call the nurse of
Trophonios, obviously a divinity of the Ge-Kourotrophos type.
He feeds on sacrificial flesh, and omens are taken from the
victims, especially from the flesh of a ram sacrificed over a pit
to Agamedes.
Next comes the actual descent:
The way in which he goes down is this. First, during the night two citizen
boys about thirteen years old lead him to the river Herkyna and anoint him
1 Supra, p. 52. 2 1x. 89. 1—14.
ΧΙ] The Oracle of Trophonios 509
with oil and bathe him. The boys are called Hermai, and they wash him
and do all necessary things for him. Then the priests take him not straight
to the oracle, but to certain springs of water which are close to each other.
Here he must drink what is called the water of Lethe, that he may forget all
he has hitherto had in mind. Next he drinks of another water, the water of
Memory, and by it he remembers again what he sees down below. Then
having seen it and worshipped and prayed he comes to the oracle itself
dressed in a tunic of linen, girded with fillets and wearing the boots of the
country.
Then follows a detailed account of the actual structure of the
oracular chasm. It is artificial and shaped lke a pot for baking
bread in. It is about eight ells deep. The consultant goes down
by a ladder.
When he has gone down he sees a hole between the ground and the stone-
work. Its breadth seems to be two spans and its height one. He then lays
himself down on his back, and holding in either hand barley-cakes mixed
with honey, he pushes his feet through the hole first and then follows himself,
trying to squeeze his knees through the hole. When he has got his knees
through the rest of his body is immediately pulled in, and shoots along as a
man might be caught and dragged along by the swirl of a mighty and swift
stream. The future is not revealed to all in the same way. To one it is
given by sight, to another by hearing. They return through the hole feet
foremost.
Next comes a story of the sad and instructive fate of a
sacrilegious consultant, and then Pausanias concludes :
When a man has come up from Trophonios, the priests again take him
and set him on what they call the throne of Memory, which stands not far
from the shrine, and when he is seated there they ask him as to what he has
seen and heard. When he has told them they give him over to his friends,
and they carry him, still overwhelmed with fear and unconscious of himself
and where he is, to the same building where he stayed before, the house of
Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche. Later on his wits return to him and
the power to laugh will come back again. 1 do not write from hearsay. I
have myself consulted Trophonios, and have seen others who have done it.
It is important that Pausanias states what he knows from
personal experience. No one who has read Pausanias will incline
to credit him with hysteria.
(2) Plutarch’s account of the experiences of Timarchos! adds
certain details to the picture, and greatly emphasizes the im-
portance of the revelations imparted. When Timarchos after
the accustomed preliminaries entered the chasm,
thick darkness was about him. He prayed and lay a long while upon the
ground uncertain whether he was waking or dreaming. But it seemed to him
that he felt a sharp blow on his head with a great noise, and that through the
1 De Genio Socr. xxit.
510 Themis [ CH.
sutures of his skull his soul was let loose. And, as his soul went forth, it.
was mixed with pure and pleasant and lightsome air, and it seemed for the
first time to take breath, and seemed to expand and be more spacious than
before, like a sail swollen with the wind.
Then follows a long account of the revelation vouchsafed to
Timarchos, which included the whole cosmos and the daimones
pervading the cosmos, all of which was explained by an invisible
voice. Finally,
The voice ceased speaking, and Timarchos turned round to see who was
the speaker. But a sharp pain seized his head, as though his skull were
being pressed together, so that he lost all sense and understanding. In a
little while he recovered and found himself in the mouth of the cave of
Trophonios, where he had first lain down!.
Sokrates, when he was told all this, was much annoyed that he
had not heard about it before Timarchos died, so that he might
have questioned him on his experiences. We share the annoyance
of Sokrates.
In the Hybristika we saw that the te de passage was
emphasized, expressed, represented by a change of clothes. In
the rites of Trophonios the transit from one state to another is
still more drastically enacted. After purification the suppliant
goes down into a chasm, slips through a hole feet foremost, is
swirled away, has a vision, comes back through the-hole reversed.
Without exaggeration, he may surely be said to have accomplished
a rite de passage. In the rites of Trophonios we seem to see the
thing presented pictorially, physically, geographically; the rites
are, as M. van Gennep? would say, preliminal, liminal, postliminal.
But it may fairly be asked, Are we justified in comparing
the rites of Trophonios to rites of initiation? Are they not
expressly and merely certain curious ceremonies in relation to
the consultation of a primitive oracle ?
It may be noted in passing that the suppliant was attended
by boys who were citizens, and that they were about thirteen
years of age, that is they had just attained puberty. But happily
we have evidence more definite.
(3) In his treatise on the Face in the Orb of the Moon,
1 Plut. de Genio Socr. xxi1. sub fin.
2 Les Rites de Passage, 1909, p. 14 ‘le schéma complet des rites de passage
comporte en théorie des rites préliminaires (séparation), liminaires (marge) et post-
liminaires (agrégation).’
ΧΙ] Mnemosyne and Anamnesis 511
Plutarch! tells us that the moon is daimon-haunted, but that
certain of the better sort of daimones do not always stay in the
moon.
They come down hither in order to take charge of oracles, and they are
present at, and take part in, the highest of orgiastic initiatory rites, and they
are chasteners and watchers over wrong doings and they shine as saviours in
battle and at sea.... Of the best of these daimones those of the age of Kronos
said they themselves were. And the same of old were the Idaean Daktyls in Crete
and the Korybantes in Phrygia and the Trophoniads in Lebadeia of Boeotia
and countless others in various places all over the habitable world, of whom
the sacred rites and honours and titles remain.
Plutarch could not put the matter more plainly. The same
daimones preside over oracles and over rites of initiation; Tro-
phoniads, Idaean Daktyls and those of the age of Kronos are all
substantially the same. The statement is for us ἃ priceless
illumination. But we ask what is really meant by this bringing
together of things apparently so remote and alien, oracles, institu-
tions for looking into the future, and rites of initiation, purely
social institutions 7
MNEMOSYNE AND ANAMNESIS.
At the outset, it must be remembered that oracles were, down
to late days, places to be consulted for advice as to the present as
much and more than for knowledge of the future; they were
essentially places of counsel for practical purposes. But even
so there remains a certain gulf to be bridged between the social
and the oracular. The bridge is easily crossed if we examine the
analogy of primitive initiation rites.
We saw in the first chapter? that the cardinal rite of tribal
initiation was a mimetic Death and Resurrection. By every sort
of pantomime the notion was enforced that the boy had died to
his old life, had put away childish things, had in a word a new
social status and soul. We also saw that tribal initiation was the
prototype of all social rites, that the rites at birth, marriage, the
1 De fac. in orb. lun. xxx. οὐκ ἀεὶ δὲ διατρίβουσιν ἐπ᾽ αὐτῇ οἱ δαίμονες ἀλλὰ χρηστηρίων
δεῦρο κατίασιν ἐπιμελησόμενοι, καὶ ταῖς ἀνωτάτω συμπάρεισι καὶ συνοργιάζουσι τῶν
τελετῶν, κολασταί τε γίνονται καὶ φύλακες ἀδικημάτων καὶ σωτῆρες ἔν τε πολέμοις καὶ
κατὰ θάλατταν ἐπιλάμπουσιν...ἐκ δὲ τῶν βελτιόνων ἐκείνων οἵ τε περὶ τὸν ἹΚρόνον ὄντες
ἔφασαν αὐτοὺς εἶναι, καὶ πρότερον ἐν τῇ Κρήτῃ τοὺς ᾿Ιδαίους Δακτύλους, ἔν τε Φρυγίᾳ τοὺς
Κορύβαντας γενέσθαι, καὶ τοὺς περὶ Βοιωτίαν ἐν Λεβαδείᾳ Τροφωνιάδας, καὶ μυρίους ἄλλους
πολλαχόθι τῆς οἰκουμένης " ὧν ἱερὰ καὶ τιμαὶ καὶ προσηγορίαι διαμένουσιν.
2 Supra, p. 18.
512 Themis [on.
making of a medicine man, death itself, were only rites de passage,
the transit from one state to another. Change which is life itself
is emphasized, represented. To consult an oracle you need a rite
de passage just as much as to be made a member of a tribe. To
know is to be in touch with mana, not to be entheos, for the theos
is not yet formulated and projected, but to be sanctified, to pass
inside the region of tabu; hence the preliminary purification.
Lethe is but an attenuated Death; Mnemosyne, renewed con-
sciousness, is a new Life.
We distinguish between the objective and the subjective. So
did primitive man; indeed a creature who did not for practical
purposes make some such distinction would not long survive.
But we know definitely that the subjective world, though it can
influence our actions as strongly as the objective, has its only
reality within us. The savage gives to the world of his imagina-
tion, of his feelings, emotions, dreams, a certain outside reality.
He cannot quite distinguish between a conception and a perception.
He makes another world with a sort of secondary reality, super-
‘sensuous but quite real. To this supersensuous world go all his
remembrances of the past, all his hopes and imaginings for the
future.
And so the supersensuous world grows big with the invisible present and
big also with the past and the future, crowded with the ghosts of the dead
and shadowed with oracles and portents of the future. It is this super-
sensuous, supernatural world which is the eternity, the other world, of
primitive religion; not an endlessness of time but a state removed from
full sensuous reality, a world in which anything and everything may happen,
a fairyland of heaven and hell, a world too peopled with demonic ancestors
and liable to a ‘once upon a time-ness’ denied to the present}.
Thus, to consult an oracle, a veritable, almost physical, rite de
passage is indispensable. The suppliant must pass out of the
actual, sensible, ‘ objective’ world, into that other world of dream,
of ecstasy, of trance, with its secondary reality, the world in which
emotions, hope and fear, and imaginations, are blended with what
we should call subjective hallucinations. He needs a rite d’agré-
gation to assimilate him, and when he would return to the normal
1 See my paper on The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religions,
pp. 499—501 in the Darwin Memorial Volume, 1909. The view there expressed
as to the content of the primitive supersensuous world is entirely based on
Dr P. Beck’s Erkenntnisstheorie des primitiven Denkens in Zeitschrift f. Philosophie
und philos. Kritik, 1903, p. 172, and 1904, p. 9.
ΥΎ. ΨΥ
ΧΙ] Mnemosyne and Anamnesis 513
sensuous world with its other and almost alien reality he needs
a rite de ségrégation. .
That Memory, the mere remembering of facts, should be the
Mother of the Muses is a frigid genealogy. The usual explana- |
tion offered is that memory is the faculty which enables you to
remember and repeat long epic poems. But the Mnemosyne of
initiation rites, the remembering again, the ἀνάμνησις, of things
seen in ecstasy when the soul is rapt to heavenly places, she is
surely now, as ever, the fitting Mother of all things musical. We
are told again and again that Plato ‘borrowed much of his imagery’
from the mysteries, but it is no external borrowing of a mere ,
illustration. Plato’s whole scheme alike of education and philo-
sophy is but an attempted rationalization of the primitive mysticism
of initiation, and most of all of that profound and perennial mysticism
of the central rite de passage, the death and the new birth, social,
moral, intellectual. His borrowings of terminology, his φύλακες,
his ἀνδρεία, his κάθαρσις, ἔκπληξις, ἀνακάλυψεις, even his μελετᾶν
ἀποθνήσκειν, are but the outer signs of a deep inward and spiritual
debt.
Plato, in his accustomed way, just slightly alters the word, giving
us a more strictly accurate term Anammnesis for the mythological
Mnemosyne, but with no intention of concealing his borrowing.
What has so long lain hidden from us must have been patent to
every initiated Greek, and especially to every Orphic. On the
tablet? hung round the neck of the dead initiated man, was
inscribed an instruction that reflects, though in slightly different
form, the ritual of Trophonios :
Thou shalt find to the left of the House of Hades a Well-spring,
And by the side thereof standing a white cypress.
To this Well-spring approach not near.
But thou shalt find another by the Lake of Memory,
Cold water flowing forth, and there are guardians before it.
At Lebadeia the supplicant must drink of Lethe, he must
present a clean sheet for the revelation to come. But Lethe was
only Katharsis*, the negative side, and gradually this negative
1 Prolegomena, pp. 574 and 660. I have there fully discussed the Mnemosyne
of the Orphic tablets and drawn attention to the analogy of the rites of Trophonios,
but I did not then understand their relation to rites of social initiation.
° For another view of Katharsis as the restoration of equilibrium see Prof.
Margoliouth’s Poetics of Aristotle, 1911, p. 59.
Η. 33
δ14 Themis [ OH.
side fell away and came even to be regarded as a forbidden evil,
a denial of the new life of Mnemosyne!. .
The evidence then, not only of the rites of the Kouretes but
also of such rites as the Hybristika and the oracular rites of
Trophonios, shows us clearly that some primitive conceptions of
Greek religion, and hence inevitably of Greek philosophy, were
based on group-institutions, the social structure of which was of the
_matrilinear type. We return to the point from which we set out,
the rites and representation of the Palaiokastro Hymn. We shall
find there to our surprise and satisfaction that this dominance of
social structure is not only evident but even strongly emphasized.
THEMIS, DIKE AND THE HORAE.
Our first chapter was devoted to the consideration of the
Hymn of the Kouretes. We noted then that in subject as in
structure the Hymn fell into three parts, (1) The Invocation,
(2) the Aetiological Myth, (3) the Resultant Blessings. The first
and second parts we considered in detail. We saw how the
Kouros invoked was a projection of his worshippers the Kouretes,
and we noted that he was invoked for the year, that he was in
fact the vehicle and incarnation of the fruits and blessings of the
year. His growth to maturity, his entry on the status of ephebos’,
caused the growth and maturity of the natural year.
We then passed to the consideration of the aetiological myth
and saw that in it was reflected and projected that matrilinear
structure of society in which the Mother and the Son, the Son
grown to maturity, were the prominent facts. The third factor,
the Resultant Blessings, had to be held over till the figure of
Themis had been discussed, and now awaits consideration.
After the birth of the Kouros and that yearly coming which
reflects his yearly re-birth the Hymn tells us*
1 This notion of Mnemosyne, of Death and Resurrection, is almost like a dim
imaginative forecast of modern philosophical speculation. Prof. Bergson has
shown us that Consciousness ‘signifies above all memory,’ ‘all consciousness is
memory; all consciousness (what he elsewhere calls durée) is a preservation and
accumulation of the past in the present,’ and again ‘all consciousness is an
anticipation of the future,’ ‘consciousness is above all a hyphen, a tie between the
past and future.’ See Life and Consciousness in Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1911,
pp. 27 and 28.
2 Too late for incorporation in chapter 1., I find that, if we may trust the
Etymologicum Magnum (s.v. Alxrn), there was at Dikte a Διὸς ἄγαλμα ἀγένειον,
obviously the image of Zeus as Kouros.
% Supra, p. 8.
πελσι oe χος
= ἘΞ
ΧΙ] Themis, Dike and the Horai 515
The Horai began to be fruitful year by year and Dike to possess mankind,
and all wild living things were held about by wealth-loving Peace.
Then the Invocation is repeated, the Kouretes bid their Kouros,
who is but themselves,
‘ Leap for full jars, and leap for fleecy flocks, and leap for fields of fruit, and
for hives to bring increase.’
And
‘Leap for our Cities, and leap for our sea-borne ships, and leap for our
young citizens and for goodly Themis.’
In the light of ancient magic we understand leaping for flocks,
fields and beehives. In the light of the Eniautos-daimon we
understand leaping for the Horai, the Seasons, who bring the
great Year-Festival. In the light of the Greatest Kouros and
rites of initiation we even understand leaping for young citizens,
but when it comes to the last leap of all, high in the air, for
goodly Themis, we stand amazed. If we examine the figures of
Dike and the Horai our surprise may change to understanding
and even admiration.
Themis is the mother of the Horai. Speaking of the weddings
of Zeus, Hesiod? says,
Next led he goodly Themis, and she bore
The Hours, Eunomia, Dike, blooming Peace.
It is then two of the Horai, the Seasons, who, at the birth of
the Kouros, bring the new and splendid order to the earth’.
Pindar? gives the same genealogy when he tells of the glories
of Corinth :
Where doth Eunomia reign and her sister, secure foundation of cities,
Dike and her foster sister Eirene, guardians of wealth for men, golden
daughters of Themis of the Fair-Counsels.
And again in the fragment of the first Paean®, written for
Thebes for the festival of the Daphnephoria :
1.
Lo the Year in its accomplishment and the Horai born of Themis have
come to the horse-loving city of Thebes, bringing Apollo’s garland-loving
feast. May he long time crown the race of the citizens with the flowers of
temperate Eunomia.’
1 Theog. 901.
3 For the Horai and the Age of Innocence see Prof. Bosanquet, B.S.A. yur.
p- 354: but, as Mr Cornford suggests to me, the notion may be that of the in-
auguration of a new Great Year, like Empedocles’ world-periods, beginning with
a reign of Philia and Justice; cf. Plato, Politicus, 270.
8. Grenfell and Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. v. p. 25; and for connection with
Daphnephoria see p. 16.
33—2
516 Themis [ CH.
The sentiment is strangely like the Hymn of the Kouretes.
Apollo takes the place, as well he might’, of the Greatest Kouros.
The Dike then of the Hymn is one of the Horai and is the
daughter of Themis. To us she seems like a slightly more
abstracted Themis. In her other form she is Justice, that is,
she is Convention, public usage, the social conscience, Themis
regarded as an abstraction. But to regard Dike thus is to lose
sight of her aspect as one of the Seasons, and indeed to mis-
conceive her origin and very essence.
Dike in her origin is very like Themis, only always a little
more alive, less stationary. In common Greek parlance, preserved
chiefly in the normal use of the accusative, she is the ‘way of life,
normal habit.
βρέμει δ᾽
> , ͵ “ > ΄ 2
ἀμαχέτου δίκαν ὕδατος ὀροκτύπου".
‘The elatter of horse’s hooves roars in the way of, after the fashion of, an
unconquerable mountain-beating torrent.’
κόμης δὲ πένθος λαγχάνω πώλου δίκην ",
My hair dishevelled like a colt’s wild mane.
Again, Pindar* says he will have no share in the loud boast of
the guileful citizen :
φίλον εἴη φιλεῖν -
‘ . τι A a” > > \ dA , , ig ΄
- ποτὶ δ᾽ ἐχθρὸν ἅτ᾽ ἐχθρὸς ἐὼν λύκοιο δίκαν ὑποθεύσομαι,
+ > 2 , ἘΝ - “ΩΣ
ἄλλ᾽ ἄλλοτε πατέων ὁδοῖς σκολιαῖς.
‘A friend to a friend, a foe to a foe, like a wolf will I leap upon him,
heading now here, now there.’ :
Like a wolf, like a foal, like water. Here we have the difference
between θέμις and δίκη. The one, θέμις, is specialized to man,
the social conscience, the other is the way of the whole world of
nature, of the universe of all live things. The word dé«cn* has in
it more life-blood, more of living and doing; the word θέμις has
more of permission to do, human sanction shadowed always by
tabu; fas is unthinkable without nefas.
1 Supra, p. 439. 2 Asch. Septem, 84.
3 Soph., Nauck, Frg. 598. 4 Pyth. τι. 155.
5 Mr Cornford points out to me that in some compounds, e.g. ἔνδικος, δίκη keeps
the notion of ‘way’ after she has, as a personality, submerged it in retribution
and vengeance. Aristotle (Pol. B. 3. 1262 a 24), Mr Cook reminds me, uses
δίκαιος of Pharsalian horses who, apparently, breed true. The commentators,
ad loc., note that in the land of the just, rikrovow...yuvatkes ἐοικότα τέκνα τοκεῦσι.
Xenophon (Cyr. vu. 3. 38) uses δίκαιος of a soil that repays cultivation.
ΧΙ] Dike and Themis 517
We speak of the δίκη of a wolf, a foal, a torrent, not of its
θέμις ; but man, as well as nature, has his ways, his habits, so we
speak of the δίκη of men; and with this human use a notion not
merely of habit but of right, due habit, comes in. “Τὸ lie soft’ is
the δίκη, not merely the habit, but the due of old men!. Odysseus,
Penelope? says to Medon, was
‘One that wrought no iniquity toward any man, nor spake aught unright
cous in the township, as is the way of divine kings.’
Dike then is the way of the world, the way things happen,
and Themis is that specialized way for human beings which is
sanctioned by the collective conscience, by herd instinct. A lonely
beast in the valley, a fish in the sea, has his Dike, but it is not we
man congregates together that he has his Themis.
And now we begin to understand the link between Dike and
the Horai. Dike we have seen is the way of life of each natural
thing, each plant, each animal, each man. It is also the way, the
usage, the regular course of that great animal the Universe, the
way that is made manifest in the Seasons, in the life and death of
vegetation ; and when it comes to be seen that these depend on
the heavenly bodies, Dike is manifest in the changes of the rising
and setting of constellations, in the waxing and waning of the
Moon and in the daily and yearly courses of the Sun.
In one passage at least, in the Medea* of Euripides Dike ~
stands for the course, even the circular course of the whole
cosmos. In the general reversal of all things
Upward go the streams of the living rivers,
Dike and all things are turned about.
Only so do we understand how Dike seems sometimes to take
on the semblance of the Moon, sometimes of the Sun. In the
Hymn to the Moon in the Magic Papyri‘, where so much that is
1 Hom. Od. xxiv. 255
εὑδέμεναι μαλακῶς" ἡ γὰρ δίκη ἐστὶ γερόντων.
2 Od. rv. 690
οὔτε τινὰ ῥέξας ἐξαίσιον οὔτε τι εἰπὼν
ἐν δήμῳ ἥτ᾽ ἐστὶ δίκη θείων βασιλήων.
3 y, 410 ἄνω ποταμῶν ἱερῶν χωροῦσι παγαὶ
: καὶ δίκα καὶ πάντα πάλιν στρέφεται.
+ Par. Pap. Abel, 292, verses 7 and 49. For the moon-aspect of Moira, Dike,
T'yche, Ananke, etc., see Dieterich, Abraxas, p. 102.
518 Themis [CH.
ancient is enshrined, the Moon is addressed not only as Moira, but
as Dike.
ἄστρασι κωμάζουσα Δίκη καὶ νήματα Μοιρῶν,
Κλώθω καὶ Λάχεσις 78 "Ἄτροπος εἶ τρικάρανε,
and again,
«σὺ yap δυσάλυκτος ᾿Ανάγκη
Μοῖρά τ᾽ ἔφυς... Δίκη σύ,
and in the prooemium of Parmenides' the Ways of Day and
Night are closed by mighty doors, and of these
Dike Avenging keeps the keys that fit them.
In Homer the Gates of Heaven are turned on their hinges by
the Horai. The Ways, the Paths, the Goings of Day and Night
could never have been guarded by Themis.
We have yet to note another distinction between Themis and
Dike. Iamblichus in his Life of Pythagoras” makes an instructive
statement as to their relative positions.
‘Men, he says, ‘knowing that all places alike have need of justice, fable that
Themis occupies the same position in the realm of Zeus as Dike in that of
Plouton and as Law occupies in cities, so that he who does not act aright with
respect to what is ordained should seem to be thereby committing injustice
at one and the same time against the whole universe.’
Iamblichus* seems to have discerned, if rather dimly and con-
fusedly, the real state of the case. Human custom and law, Nomos,
was a fact of this actual world. Themis in Heaven and Dike in
Hades were fictions, mythological projections. He gives no hint
why Themis should be in Heaven, Dike in Hades. An enquiry
into the cause will repay us. But first we must establish the fact.
Themis is constantly associated with Zeus; she hangs about
1 Diels, F.V.S. p. 114, v. 11
ἔνθα πύλαι Νυκτός te καὶ Ἤματος εἰσὶ κελεύθων
αὐταὶ δ᾽ αἰθέριαι πλῆνται μεγάλοισι θυρέτροις,
τῶν δὲ Δίκη πολύποινος ἔχει κληῖδας ἀμοιβούς.
Dr Otto Gilbert in his Die Daimon des Parmenides, Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philosophie,
xx. p. 25, has conclusively shown that the vision of Parmenides is a Hades-journey.
The poet goes with the Sun-chariot through the gates of the West (κάθοδος) and
passes through the house of Night to the gate of the ἄνοδος where Dike is. The
Heliads go to the upper world. Parmenides stays with Dike below.
2 1x. 46 ...rovs yap ἀνθρώπους...μυθοποιεῖν τὴν αὐτὴν τάξιν ἔχειν παρὰ τῷ Διὶ τὴν
Θέμιν καὶ παρὰ τῷ Πλούτωνι τὴν Δίκην καὶ κατὰ τὰς πόλεις τὸν Νόμον, ἵνα ὁ μὴ δικαίως
ἐφ᾽ ἃ τέτακται ποιῶν ἅμα φαίνηται πάντα τὸν κόσμον συναδικῶν.
9. He may be quoting a dictum of Pythagoras.
x1] Dike in Hades 519
him like a sort of moralized Kratos and Bia. The nurse says of
Medea!,
‘Did ye hear her cry
To them that guard man’s faith forsworn,
Themis and Zeus ?’
It was the boast of Aigina that more than any other city she
honoured
Saviour Themis who sitteth by Zeus, God of Strangers?.
Hesiod as we have seen makes her succeed Thetis as second
wife of Zeus.
The real truth comes out in the fragment of a hymn of
Pindar’s® in which he describes this Olympian wedding.
And first did the Moirait lead Heavenly Themis of the Good Counsels
with golden horses along the springs of Okeanos, up the holy ladder of
Olympos, along the shining way.
She who was of earth, she who was Earth herself, leaves her
home and goes the way of all things divine, up to Olympos. But,
in the véry pomp and pageant of her going, we feel she is entering
on-an alien kingdom. Hers are human conventions, and it is only
by constraint of the Moirai that she goes skyward, there to wed
Zeus and to summon his councils.
Not less clearly and with more inherent propriety does Dike
belong to Hades, the kingdom of Plouton. When Antigone? is
1 Eur, Med. 169
ἐπιβοᾶται
Θέμιν εὐκταίαν Ζῆνά θ᾽.
And again, 208
τὰν Ζηνὸς ὁρκίαν Θέμιν.
3. Pind. Ol. vur. 21
ἔνθα Σῴτειρα Διὸς Eeviov
πάρεδρος ἀσκεῖται Θέμις.
5. Christ, Frg. 29, 30,v. 7. This hymn, like the Paean quoted above, may very
probably have been written for the Daphnephoria to accompany the procession of
the Kopo. See supra, p. 438.
4 In a lyric fragment (Bergk, adesp. 139) the Fates are made to escort the three
Horai, Eunomia, Dike and Hirene.
Κλωθὼ Λάχεσίς τ᾽ εὐώλενοι
κοῦραι Νυκτός,
εὐχομένων ἐπακούσατ᾽, οὐράνιαι χθόνιαί τε δαίμονες"
ὦ πανδείμαντοι, πέμπετ᾽ ἄμμιν
ῥοδόκολπον ἙΕὐνομίαν λιπαροθρόνους τ᾽ ἀδελφάς, Δίκαν
καὶ στεφανηφόρον Εἰράναν.
5 Soph. Ant. 450.
520 Themis [ CH.
charged with transgression she thus contrasts the law of Zeus and
that of the underworld gods.
‘Yes, for it was not Zeus who heralded
That edict, no nor she who dwells below,
Dike, who gave such laws for mortal men.’
Of course, at the time of the general migration to Olympos, a
great effort is made to assure the assumption into heaven of Dike
as well as Themis. The notion obtained to a certain extent in
Olympianized Orphic circles. Dike becomes as a double of Themis
assessor of Zeus. So the Orphic Hymn!,
Sing the all-seeing eye of Dike fair
Who sits upon the holy throne of Zeus.
Demosthenes? pleads with his citizens to honour Eunomia and
Dike holy and unswerving, ᾿
Whom Orpheus, who instituted our most sacred mysteries, declares to be
seated by the throne of Zeus.
Orphic literature might proclaim Dike as assessor of Zeus in
the highest heavens, but Orphic popular art, like primitive philo-
sophy, knew that her real home was in Hades, by the side of
Plouton. On the well-known underworld vases of Lower Italy of
which ἃ specimen® is given in Fig. 145 a group of figures occurs in
the right-hand corner, of which the interpretation is fortunately
certain. A seated youth bids farewell to another youth about to
start on his journey to the upper world. The seated youth is
Theseus.
...Sedet aeternumque sedebit
Infelix Theseus 4.
The youth about to return to the upper world bears a signifi-
cant name, ‘He who runs round, Peirithods. His periodic cycle
leads him inevitably upwards.
By the side of Theseus a woman is seated holding a drawn
sword. She is Dike in her later Orphic aspect of Vengeance. Of
this happily there is no doubt, as on the fragment of a vase® with
1 LXxit, 2 ¢. Aristogeit. xxv. 11, and see Prolegomena, p. 507.
* Munich, Jahn Cat. 849. Wiener Vorlegebliitter, Serie Εἰ, Taf. 1. For the
whole series see Prolegomena, p. 601.
4 Verg. Zin. vi. 617.
> Carlsruhe, Cat. 258, Hartung, Arch. Zeit. p. 263, Taf. x1x., and Wiener
Vorlegebliitter EK, Taf. v1. 3. See also my Myth. and Mon. Ancient Athens,
p. cxlviii., Fig. 39. ᾿
ΧΙ] Dike and FEurydike 521
similar design the figure is inscribed AIKH. What has this Dike
with the drawn sword, this Vengeance incarnate, this denizen of
Hades, to do with that Dike we already know, the fixed order of
the world, the Way of Nature? The fragment of another vase-
painting’ may help us to understand. It is reproduced in Fig. 146,
and is obviously a portion of a design similar to that in Fig. 144,
though of earlier and much finer workmanship.
To the right is the palace of Hades and in it is seated
Persephone. ΤῸ her left we may safely restore Plouton. To her
Fie. 145.
right stands ‘Hekata’ with two blazing torches. Close to the
palace, as usual, is the figure of Orpheus as Thracian musician or
priest. Above him to the left a door, just ajar, leading evidently
to the upper air. Close to the door, with her hand upon it, is a
winged figure. Above the right wing are letters read variously
AIKA and AIKA. Dr Dieterich? would read AIKA, and sees in
the winged figure Dike warding the gates of Hades a reminiscence
1 Jalta, Coll. Ruvo, Monumenti Antichi d. Accademia dei Lincei, vol. xvt.
Τὰν. m1,
2 Archiv f. Religionswiss. x1. 1908, p. 159.
522 Themis [ CH.
of the Dike who appears as gate-warden of Hades in the prooemium
of Parmenides!.
But to this interesting suggestion there is one obvious objec-
tion. If the winged figure be Dike, she is a duplication. Below,
in the left-hand corner, is a seated figure with hand upraised,
attentive to what goes on above her. Against her is her name
AIKA, Dike. Of the winged figure a simple explanation lies to
hand. The inscription AIKA is close to a fracture. By supplying
Fic. 146.
the letters evpu we get Eurydike. The figure who turns at the
door is Eurydike herself. Her wings present no difficulty. She
is in Hades and hence is conceived of as an ezdolon.
Moreover—and this is for us the important point—in the light
of Eury-dike we understand Dike herself. Eurydike, She of the
Wide-Way, is, like Eurysternos, but the ordered form of Earth
herself, in her cyclic? movement of life and death, her eternal wheel
1 Supra, p. 518, note 1.
2 I offered this explanation in the Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, 1909, p. 411,
in a note entitled Dike oder Eurydike. Before his lamented death, Dr Dieterich
wrote acknowledging my suggestion with the utmost courtesy and kindness, but he
pronounced it to his mind ‘unwahrscheinlich.’
3 It is perhaps scarcely needful to note that the Greek philosopher never
‘escaped from the wheel’; revolution was as near as he could get to Evolution
Créatrice.
| ΧΙ] Wheel of Dike 523
of palingenesia. She, the young green Earth, has, as we have
seen’, her yearly Anodos, as Kore, as Semele, as Eurydike. At
first she rises of her own motion and alone, as we have seen on
many a vase-painting”. Later, when the physical significance of
her rising is no longer understood, when patriarchy has supplanted
matrilinear earth-worship, a human and patrilinear motive is
provided. She needs a son or a lover to fetch her up, to carry her
down. So we get the rape of Persephone by Hades, of Basile
by Echelos, of Helen by Theseus and Peirithods, the descent
of Dionysos to fetch his mother Semele, and, latest and loveliest,
the love-story of Orpheus and Eurydike. Here on the Orphic
vase-painting we have a reminiscence of the fact that Eurydike
really and primarily returned to the upper world alone. Orpheus
is there, but he sings on, untouched by, irrelevant to, her going.
Dike then, like her prototype Eurydike, represents the eternal
cycle of the life of the earth, the temporal sequence of the Horai.
In the light of Dike we understand another element in the
underworld vases which has long puzzled scholars. In the palace
of Plouton (Fig. 145), above alike the figure of Plouton and
Persephone, is suspended a wheel. This wheel has been strangely
misunderstood.
We think instinctively of the Wheel of Fortune, and we think
rightly. Fortune (Tyche) is the goddess who brings—brings
forth, brings to accomplishment. But we add to this notion the
notion of retribution.
Turn Fortune, turn thy Wheel, and lower the proud,
or again,
He hath put down the mighty from their seat.
Just such a degradation awaited Dike. From being the order
of the world, the way of the world, she became the Avenger of.
those who outstep and overpass the order of the world. But this
notion of Vengeance is secondary, not primitive; the wheel to the
early Greek would carry no such suggestion.
The powers of the sky were divided in antiquity as we have
seen® into Ta μετάρσια and τὰ μετέωρα, the ‘weather’ and the
heavenly bodies. The two are well shown side by side on the
1 Supra, p. 418. 2 Supra, pp. 419 and 422.
3 Supra, p. 392.
Themis [CH.
Gallic altar! in Fig. 147. The thunder and the thunder-god have
has six wheels and
solar disk itself. It
everything to do with Kratos and Bia, but
have no lot or part in Dike; hers is the
regular course of the heavenly bodies
symbolized by the rotation of the wheel.
The Paeonians we remember? worshipped
the sun in the form of a disk. At the
Daphnephoria®, sun and moon and stars
were represented by globes. On the archaic
Greek mirror in Fig. 136 the sun is a rayed
disk with the head of a Kouros. But these
represent rather the stationary aspect of
the sun than his perennial motion, his
ceaseless way. The going of the sun is
drastically represented by the little votive
solar chariot* in Fig. 148. The chariot
is drawn by one horse. It contains the
is of course the wheel in motion that has
power magically to
Fie, 148.
compel the sun to rise. The wheels in
sanctuaries’ were turned by ropes with the like intent.
1 In the Maison Carrée at Nismes. See Gaidoz, Le Dieu Gaulois du Soleil,
Rev. Arch. νι. 1885, p. 187, Fig. 26.
2 Supra, p. 465.
4 Found at Trundholm.
° Supra, p. 438.
Sophus Miller, La Représentation solaire de Trundholm,
Antiquités Scandinaves, Copenhague, 1903, pp. 303—321; and J. Dechelette, Le
Culte du Soleil aux Temps Préhistoriques, in Rev. Arch. 1909, xtv. p. 94. For the
whole subject see Gaidoz, Le Diew Gaulois du Soleil, in —— Arch. 1884, p. 33.
5 See Prolegomena, Ὁ. 591.
;
XT] Symbolism of the Swastika 525
And here in Greek art representations a curious point may be
noticed. The actual wheel, whether solid or spoked, does not
appear in Greek symbolism till late. But what we may call the
spokes of the wheel and the indication of its going are represented
very early in the ornament known as the Swastika’. The Swas-
tika has been variously interpreted as a ‘croix gammée’ and as a
reduced simplified kind of wheel. It is really not quite either; it
is a symbol combining motion and direction. It is the four points
of the compass in motion.
To the Greeks it undoubtedly stood at one time for the Sun.
On coins of Thrace we find Mesembria thus written ME2rfL,
Mid-Sun or Mid-Day-town’. But on other coins we may with
equal probability conjecture that the swastika, or rather triskeles,
represents the Moon. In Fig. 149 we have two Syracusan coins.
The three winged legs indicate swift motion. In the coin to the
right the rudimentary body, or belly, from which the legs spread
has become a human face, a Gorgoneion which symbolizes rather
Moon than Sun’.
The origin of the Swastika is still much disputed. It is found
at Hissarlik in the remains of the Second City; it abounds on
geometric ware and on the archaic pottery of Cyprus, Rhodes, and
Athens. The name we give it is of course Sanskrit: swastika is
from su, well, and asti, it is. When the direction of the croix
1 The literature of the ritual wheel and the Swastika isimmense. See especially
W. Simpson, The Buddhist Praying Wheel, 1896, in which the results of most of
the earlier literature are collected. Also Goblet d’Alviella, La Migration des
Symboles, 1891; and M. Goblet d’Alviella’s recent work, Croyances, Rites,
Institutions, 1911, vol. 1. chapter 1, Moulins ἃ priéres, Rowes magiques et cir-
cumambulations. On p. 80 of the same book is given a very full bibliography of
the literature of the Swastika and the cross.
2 See Prof. Percy Gardner’s ‘Ares as a Sun-God,’ and ‘Solar Symbols,’ in
Num. Chron. N.S. vol. xx. p. 12.
3 For the triskeles and tetraskeles on coins see Mr Anson’s Numismata Graeca,
partijiv. Religion, Pl. xv.—x1x. The triskeles occurs with special frequency on the
coins of Lycia, land of sun-worship.
526 Themis [ CH.
gammée is to the right it 15 swasteka, all is well; when, as much
more rarely, the direction is to the left, UL, it 1s sauvastika, and
all is evil. The idea is of course not confined to the East. It
lives on to-day in Scotland, as deisul, ‘sunwise, and widershins.
In college Combination Rooms port wine is still passed round
according to the way of the Sun.
The notion of following the course of the sun is world-wide.
Starting no doubt in practical magic, it ended in a vague feeling
of ‘luck. But it is in India and China that the idea most
developed on the moral side, and India and China best help us
to the understanding of Dike as the way of the world and also
as Right and Justice.
The Praying Wheels of the Lamas and of Buddhism generally
have long been the butt of missionaries and of ignorant Anglo-
Indians. But they enshrine a beautiful and deeply religious
thought. When the Lama sets his wheel a-going, it is not merely
that he gets the prayers printed upon it mechanically said. He
finds himself in sympathetic touch with the Wheel of the Uni-
verse; he performs the act Dharma-chakra-pravartana, ‘ Justice-
Wheel-Setting in motion. He dare not turn the wheel contrari-
wise; that were to upset the whole order of Nature. The wheel
moves along and indeed symbolizes the course of rta. This rta
rules all the periodic events of nature. It is indeed periodicity
incarnate. The Dawn-Maidens shine in harmony with rta. The
sun is called the wheel of γέα with twelve spokes, for the year’s
course has twelve months. The fire of sacrifice is kindled ‘ under
the yoking of rta, which means under the world order’.
In man’s activity rta is moral law. In things intellectual it is
satya, truth. Untruth, it is instructive to find, though it 1s some-
times asatya, is more often expressed by anrta. Among the Greeks
too Dike was closely companioned by Aletheia. We remember?
that, when Epimenides slept his initiation sleep in the cave of
Diktaean Zeus,
he met with the gods, and with divine intercourse, and with Aletheia
and Dike.
1 Maurice Bloomfield, The Religion of the Veda, 1908, pp. 126, 127.
2 Supra, p. 53.
ΧΙ] Ria, Asha and Tao 527
Parmenides! makes Dike reveal
the unshaken heart of fair-rounded Truth.
Greeks and Indians alike seem to have discerned that the divine
Way was also the Truth and the Life.
This notion of the Way, which is also the Right, seems to have
existed before the separation of Indian from Iranian. The Vedic
rta is the same word as the Avestan asha (areta) and the Cunei-
form Persian arta. Varuna of the Veda, and Ahura Mazda of the
Avesta, are divinities closely akin, and
One of the most interesting parallels between Veda and Avesta is that
both gods are described as ‘ the spring of the rta, or righteousness.’ Varuna
is khartasya (Rig-Veda, 2. 28. 5); Ahura Mazda is ashahe khdo (Yasna,
10, 4). The words are sound for sound the same”.
The emphasis of Iranian religion was always strongly on the
moral conflict between right and wrong, as figured by the struggle
between light and darkness. Dike, who was the way of the world,
became in Orphic hands Vengeance on the wrong doer, on him
who overstepped the way. I would again suggest that it is pos-
sible that this moral emphasis was due to Persian influence®.
Closely analogous to Dike and to rta is the Chinese tao, only
it seems less moralized and more magical. Tao is like Dike the
way, the way of nature; and man’s whole religion, his whole moral
effort, is to bring himself into accordance with tao. By so doing
he becomes a microcosm, and by sympathetic magic can control
the world. The calendar not only indicates natural facts, but it
prescribes moral doings. Yao, like rta, is potent in all three spheres,
in outside nature, in the relation of man to his gods, in the relation
of man to man or morality proper; but Tao, unlike rta and Dike,
does not seem to include intellectual truth, a matter which does
not much concern the magic-ridden Chinaman.
If Dike is the way, the order of the going of life, it is not hard
to see how she should-develop into Vengeance, how her figure
1 Diels, F.V.S.2, p. 115. v. 10
xpéw δέ σε πάντα πυθέσθαι,
ἠμὲν ᾿Αληθείης εὐκύκλεος ἀτρεμὲς ἦτορ
ἠδὲ βροτῶν δόξας.
3 Maurice Bloomfield, The Religion of the Veda, 1908, p. 126.
9. The cuneiform tablets discovered at Pterium (Boghazkoi) show that the
syllables arta=rta=asha were known as elements in personal names, e.g. Arta-
shavara, Artatama, as early as 1600 B.c.
528 Themis [ CH.
should be hard to distinguish from that of Nemesis and even
Adrasteia, she from whom none may run away. On coin types
the figures of Dike, Nemesis, Tyche, Adrasteia, are only distin-
guishable by the places at which they are minted, and that only in
cases where it is known from literature or inscriptions that parti-
cular cults existed. In Fig. 150 a a coin of Alexandria’, struck by
Antoninus Pius (a4.D. 189—140), we have a seated figure holding
in her right hand the scales, in her left the cornucopia. Because
she holds the scales she is usually called Dikaiosyne, but the
cornucopia is more appropriate to Agathe Tyche, or Fortune.
In Fig. 1506, a coin of Markianopolis? in Moesia, struck by
Fie. 150.
Heliogabalus, we have a standing figure again holding the scales
in her right. In her left is a measuring-rod, at her feet a wheel.
Numismatists call her inelegantly ‘Nemesis Hquitas, but why not
Dike or Tyche? It is not that there is a late ‘syncretism’ of these
divine figures; they start from one conception and differentiate.
With the Way and the Wheel in our minds we return to Dike
in Hades. She sheds a new light on certain other denizens. All
the noted criminals are victims of the wheel, they are all of the
old order of palingenesia. It is not so much that Olympian,
patriarchal malice, condemns these elder potencies of mother-
Earth to eternal Hell*, as that they are forced by their own cyclic
nature to die, to go below the bosom of earth, that they may
1 G. Macdonald, Cat. Hunterian Coll. 1905, vol. m1. pl. Lxxxvn1. 28, p. 459.
Reproduced by Dr Macdonald’s kind permission.
2 H. Posnansky, Nemesis and Adrasteia, 1890, pl. 1. No. 15. For Tyche
with the scales see Bergk, Adespot. 139 Τύχα μερόπων ἀρχά...καὶ τὸ τεᾷ πλάστιγγι
δοθέν...
3 A view I have previously expressed (see Prolegomena, p. 607), but which I now
see requires restatement.
it ee el «ῳ« ᾳ ὦ
XI | Peirithoos, Sisyphos, the Danaids 529
rise again. Each and all of them must say with the initiated
Orphic :
‘I have sunk beneath the bosom of Despoina, Queen of the Underworld,’
Each and all must be born anew with the New Birth of the
world. Such is the Way.
In Fig. 146, beneath the palace of Plouton, are the Erinyes
with snakes in their hair. But they are not ministers of Ven-
geance. The inscription calls them (Eu)menides, and near them,
the goddesses of new life, is a little upspringing tree. Plouton
himself is not the sullen terror of the underworld, he is the
Wealth that rises up from the Earth in spring. Hekate, with
her torches, is not the spectre of the night, she is the life-giving
moon that waxes and wanes, the very spirit of palingenesia.
Theseus is made by the orthodox to sit for ever on the rock, but
Dike, the Way, lets Peirithois, the Wheel, return to the upper air.
Ixion on his wheel is not tormented ; by the might of Dike he,
the Sun-God, is ceaselessly turning. It is his function, not his
fate. Herakles goes down to Hades, not once to fetch up
Cerberus, but day by day at sunset, that he may rise again on
the morrow?.
This notion of Dike explains sometimes a grouping of criminals
that might otherwise be unmeaning. In Fig. 151 we have a design
from a black-figured amphora’. The Danaides are filling their
cask, and by their side is Sisyphos rolling his pitiless stone up
1 Δέσποινας δ᾽ ὑπὸ κόλπον ἔδυν χθονίας βασιλείας. See Prolegomena, p. 594.
* So Orpheus must always return that he may reemerge. When the real function
of Eurydike is forgotten, the story of her looking back is invented to account for
her return,
5. Munich, Jahn Cat. 153. See Prolegomena, p. 617.
H. 34 :
530 Themis [ CH.
the hill. Sisyphos is the ancient Titan, the Sun himself. His
labour is no penalty, it is the course of Dike, it is periodic,
eternally incumbent. So too with the Danaides; they are well-
nymphs, but also projections of the ancient rain-making ceremonies,
they carry water to make rain’. Their labour too is ceaseless,
periodic. They are part of the eternal dike of nature.
The design in Fig. 152 is from the Castle Howard? krater
aAnmerTeyan
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Fie. 152.
signed by Python. It shows in striking contrast the Olympian
order of things. Zeus is there, Zeus of the sky, but unlike the
old Titan Sisyphos who ‘has labour all his days’ Zeus lives at
ease, remote. He has ceased to be a thunderstorm, instead he
orders one. The Danaides are now Hyades, Rain-nymphs. They
still pour water from their hydriae, but they have mounted to
high heaven, and they have ceased to be recurrent, periodic; they
no longer ceaselessly pour water into leaky vessels. To Olympian
theology, in its ignorance and ineptitude, ‘recurrent’ had come to
spell ‘fruitless’; the way of life was envisaged as an immutable
sterility and therefore rejected.
1 T owe this interpretation to Mr A. B. Cook; it is a marked advance on my
old view (Prolegomena, p. 621) that the Danaides were merely well-nymphs.
2 Now in the British Museum, Cat. F. 149. For details of the subject, the
quenching of the great pyre of Alkmena, see J. H. S. x1. p. 225.
—a
XT] Moral Right and Natural Law 531
Dike then, the Way, rules in the underworld, she and her
subjects, the year and day daimones. She is there of necessity, as
the Living Way, the course of Nature, before Orphic theology
placed her there as the spirit of Vengeance. Regarding Dike as
the Way, the order of living, of Nature, we see at once that she,
eldest and chief of the Horai, might well be invoked by the
Kouretes to welcome the Year. But here we come straight up
against our final difficulty, a difficulty we have ignored in con-
sidering rtu and asha and tao, but that has all the time been
dogging our steps. Why does man make this strange confusion
between moral right and natural law? Why is Themis the mother
of Dike, and why must the Kouretes, if they want a good
harvest, ‘leap’ not only for Dike and the Horai but for ‘goodly
Themis’?
Deep-rooted in man’s heart is the pathetic conviction that moral
goodness and material prosperity go together, that, if man keep
the rta, he can magically affect for good nature’s ordered going.
When the Olympians became fully humanized, and sacramentalism
was replaced by gift-sacrifice, the notion slightly altered its form.
The gods it was now felt were bound in honour to bestow on their
faithful worshippers a quid pro quo. The idea is no-wise confined
to the Greeks. The Psalmist, whose sheltered outlook on life was
traditional and religious rather than realistic, says confidently,
‘I have been young, and now am old,
And yet saw I never the righteous forsaken,
Nor his seed begging their bread!.’
Hesiod? mutatis mutandis cherishes the same conviction,
Whoso to stranger and to kinsmen deal
Straight judgments, ne’er o’erpassing Justice’ bounds,
Their city flowers, and their folk blossometh,
And in their land is Peace the Nurse of children.
Never on them doth Zeus bring grievous war.
Famine and strife are far from men who deal
Straight judgments, feast and song are all their toil.
For them earth bears rich food; the mountain oak
Rears high her acorns, midway holds her bees.
The fleecy sheep go heavy with thick wool,
And wives bear children like unto their sires.
All good things blossom; never need they tempt
The barren sea, for them earth bears her grain.
APs, ΧΈΧΥΙ, 25. 2 Op. 225.
34—2
ὅ82 Themis [ CH.
The hymn to the Kouretes echoes the sentiments of Hesiod, save
that the sea-going Cretans have learnt to ‘leap for their ships.’
Then, when the social life finds its focus in the figure of a king,
on his goodness and the justice of his ruling, on his Dike, his Way,
the prosperity of his people depends. He himself must be free
from blemish, morally and physically (ἀμύμων), and he must
uphold right judgments (εὐδικίας). Odysseus! tells Penelope that
she need fear no breath of blame, her fame goes up to wide
heaven.
‘As doth the fame of a blameless king, one that fears the gods and reigns
among men, many and mighty, maintaining right, and the black earth bears
wheat and barley, and the trees are laden with fruit, and the sheep bring
forth and fail not, and the sea gives store of fish, and all out of his good
guidance, and the people prosper under hin.’
This sympathy, this almost identity of the Way of Man and
the Way of Nature, comes out very beautifully in the Golden
Lamb chorus of the Electra of Euripides. The chorus goes back
in spirit to the First Sin, the bloodfeud of the drama. This was
to them, in their tribal way of thinking, the First Sin of the entire
world; and after it, the whole order of the universe was changed.
Atreus, as king, had a mascot, a Golden. Lamb, on which the luck
of the tribe depended. Thyestes stole the Lamb and thereby
claimed and won the kingship.
Then, then the world was changed, [Strophe 2
And the Father, where they ranged,
Shook the golden stars and glowing,
And the great Sun stood deranged
In the glory of his going.
Lo from that day forth, the East
Bears the sunrise on his breast,
And the flaming Day in heaven
Down the dim ways of the west
Driveth, to be lost at even.
The wet clouds to Northward beat;
And Lord Ammon’s desert seat
Crieth from the South, unslaken
For the dews that once were sweet,
For the rain that God hath taken.
1 Hom. Od. xx. 111
εὐδικίας ἀνέχησι, φέρῃσι δὲ γαῖα μέλαινα
πυροὺς καὶ κριθάς κ-.τ.λ. (trans. Butcher and Lang.)
For the whole subject of the king as source of medicine see Dr Frazer, Lectures on
the Early History of the Kingship, 1905, passim. For Oedipus as medicine king
see Professor Murray’s translation of Oedipus, King of Thebes, p. 88, note to verse 21.
> vv. 699—746. For the origin of the myth see Professor Murray’s note to his
translation of the Electra, p. 94. For the Lamb as mascot see Mr A. B. Cook,
Zeus, ch. i. 8 6 (ἢ), Iv.
XI] The Golden Lamb 533
The reversal of nature is complete. Not only τὰ μετέωρα in
their ordered goings, but even ta μετάρσια, the ‘ weather,’ is upset.
Then in the Antistrophe comes a note, surely Euripidean, of
scepticism. Can man really affect nature, is Themis really potent
over Physis ?
Tis a children’s tale, that old [Antistrophe 2
Shepherds on far hills have told;
And we reck not of their telling,
Deem not that the Sun of gold
Ever turned his fiery dwelling,
Or beat backward in the sky,
For the wrongs of man, the cry
Of his ailing tribes assembled,
To do justly, ere they die.
Once, men told the tale, and trembled ;
Fearing God, O Queen: whom thou
Hast forgotten, till thy brow
With old blood is dark and haunted.
And thy brethren, even now,
Walk among the stars, enchanted.
Because Electra slew her mother, will the moon change her
course or veil her face? The chorus refuse to believe it. Such
a doctrine is contrary to all experience, though it accords, it would
seem, with common sense, that is with accepted tradition. Whv
did men ever accept a doctrine disproved day by day, and from
the outset preposterous? For a reason put very simply by the
Greeks. Because Themis was the mother of Dike; the social con-
science, the social structure, gave birth, not of course to the order
of nature, but to man’s conception, his representation, of that
order}.
To man in the totemistic stage of thinking, Dike and
Themis, natural order and social order, are not distinguished, not
even distinguishable. Plants and animals are part of his group?,
factors in his social structure. It is not that he takes them under
his protection ; they are his equals, his fellow-tribesmen ; naturally
they obey the same law, or rather, for definite law is not yet, they
are part of the same social structure, they follow the same social
custom. If one member of that body suffer, or prosper, all the
1 This position will be more fully established in Mr F. M. Cornford’s From
Religion to Philosophy.
2 Supra, p. 120.
534 Themis [ OH.
other members suffer or prosper with him. The oneness of group
life and collective consciousness makes this axiomatic.
When a man, living in a totemistic social structure, believes
that, by observing his group-customs, he can help the crops to
grow, this nowise requires explanation. Such a faith, indeed, is of
the essence of totemistic thimking. What does seem strange 15
that, when group-thinking or emotion makes way for individual
reason, a faith disproved by even the most superficial observation
should still be upheld. The reason is of course simple. Religious
beliefs, as we have seen, are but presentations, projections, of
θέμιστες, of utterances, ordinances, of the social conscience. Be-
gotten by one social structure, they long survive its dissolution.
We believe that a pestilence or a famine is consequent on some
national wrong-doing, not because we have observed facts and
noted such a sequence, but because we once thought and lived
totemistically and the habits of totemistic thinking still cling.
Moreover they take shape in dogmas and in ritual, faithfully and
blindly? handed down from generation to generation.
To any rational thinker it is at once clear that Dike, Natural
Order, and Themis, Social Order, are not the same, nay even they
are not mother and daughter; they stand at the two poles remote
and even alien. Natural Law is from the beginning; from the
first pulse of life, nay even before the beginning of that specialized
movement which we know as life, it rules over what we call the
inorganic. Social Order, morality, ‘goodness’ is not in nature at
the outset; it only appears with ‘man her last work.’
A strange mystery it is that Nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolu-
tions of her secular hurryings through the abysses of space, has brought forth
at last a child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight, with knowledge
of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking
Mother’.
The mystic will claim that life is one indivisible movement’,
1 So remote is ritual from reason that Dr Beck (Nachahmung, p. 165) gives the
following suggestive, though I think inadequate, definition of ritual: ‘So entstand
der Kultus und die Mythologie nach meiner Theorie aus gedeuteten Gewohnheits-
handlungen. Kultisch nennen wir aber nur Handlungen die ihrem Erfolg nach
unzweckmassig waren.’
* Bertrand Russell, ‘The Free Man’s Worship,’ Independent Review, 1903.
Reprinted in Philosophical Essays, 1910, p. 59.
3-H. Bergson, La Perception du Changement, Conférences faites ἃ Oxford,
p- 18, ‘Nous devons nous représenter tout changement, tout mouvement, comme
absolument indivisibles.’ Op. cit. p. 2, ‘Mon état d’4me en avan¢ant sur la route
du temps s’enfle continuellement de la durée qu’il ramasse; il fait, pour ainsi dire,
boule de neige avec lui-méme.’
in a ar ὦ..»......
XI] Alpha not Omega 535
one, if he prefers it, ever accumulating snowball. We gladly
agree. But to say that Alpha is Omega, the end is as the
beginning, that life and force are the same as moral good, and
to label the mystical marriage of the two ‘God, is to darken
counsel. It is to deny that very change and movement which
is life, it is to banish from a unified and sterilized universe
‘Evolution Créatrice.’
The religious man who in the supposed interests of morality
maintains this creed is, it may be, splendide mendaz. He is more ;
he is one in heart and soul with-his brother the antique medicine
priest, the Koures. With him he leaps on high, crowning his
magical invocation of Spring and the Seasons with the cry
θόρε κ᾽ ἐς Θέμιν καλάν.
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.
ἄβατον 91, 92, 17ὅ
ἀγαθός, meaning of 279
ἄγγελος 323, 333
ἀγών 288
ἀγώνιοι θεοί 412
ἄδυτα 91
ἀθανασία 271
ἀθάνατοι 376
ἄθλα 47
Αἰδώς 291
ἀμύμων 532
ἀμφιδρομία 44
ἀμφιθαλεῖς 151
ἀμφιθαλὴς παῖς 151°
ἀναβίωσις 15
ἀνάδειξις 151, 154, 155
ἀνακάλυψις 51
ἀνθρωποφυής 447
ἀπαρχαί 292, 306, 307
ἀπελλάζειν 439
ἀπελλαί 440, 441
ἀπελλαῖα 439, 440, 441
ἀπελλάκας 440
ἀπελλάξ 441
ἀποδίδωμι 315%
ἀποκάλυψις 63
ἀρχίβαγχος 46
ἀσπιδηφόροι 23
ἀστροπελέκια 57
Αὐτάγγελον 342
*Aiirés 186?
ἀφανισμός 15
ἀφιδρύματα 304
Bia 72
Βιζύη 332°
βούπρῳρος 368
βουτύποι 143, 144
Bovgovéw 145
Βριμόν 34
Βριμώ 34
βρονταί 55, 88
βωμοί 409
γάμελα 440
γανάεντες θεοί 367°
i
INDEXES
GREEK WORDS.
yavos 74, 175
— παγκράτης 367
γέρανος 112?
γέρας 467, 4671
ynyevets 452
γῆρας 380
γιαοῦρτι 206
γλαῦξ 112?
γόης 20, 82
Topyein κεφαλή 459
δαίμονες 26, 30, 274, 343
δαίμων γενέθλιος 257, 274
— γένης 271
dais 189, 143, 145, 147, 156, 315
— of Bear 141
— ὠμοφάγος 118, 133, 156
δαιτροί 143
Δακτύλου μνῆμα 403
δαράται 440
δεύτεραι τράπεζαι 250
δευτεροπότμοι 4145
διασπαραγμός 15
δίκη 516, 517
διοπέτεις 87
Διὸς θᾶκοι 147
-- προφήτης 502
δόκανα 304
δρυοκολάπτης 102
δρώμενα 44, 328%, 334
— a drama 3283
δρώμενον 29, 35, 38, 41, 42, 43, 45, 82,
ἘΠῚ. 179. 182
δωτῆρες ἐάων 275
εἴδωλα 291
εἰς ἐνιαυτόν 182, 186, 202
ἔκπληξις 18, 61
ἐναγίζειν 372°
ἐναγισμός 373, 375
ἔνδικος 5164
ἐνηλύσια 91
ἔνθεος 65
ἐνιαυτός 183, 184, 185, 472
— etymology of 183°
évvéwpos 1521
538
ΘΕ
ἐνόδιοι δαίμονες 410
— etymology of 183°
εὐχαί 179
ἐφῆβοι 498+
ζηλός 73
ἤθεα 485
ἡρῶισσαι 417!
Θαλία 315}
θεῖος 95
— ἀνήρ 95"
θέμιστες 534
θεοί 54, 76
— ἀγοραῖοι 486
— Οἀγώνιοι 486
θεός 46, 48, 952
θεραπεία 75, 82
θύματα 375
θυμός 66, 291
θυσία 145, 147
ἱερὰ ῥέζειν 137
ἱερὸν μένος 156
ἱερὸς γάμος 169, 368
καθαρμός 107
κάλει θεόν 421
καταιβάτης 91
κέλωρ 158?
Κεντριάδαι 143
κεραυνός 90
κῆλα 88, 89
κλάδος 365
κοινὸς ἑρμῆς 290
κουρεῶτις 3371, 498
κουρής 20
κοῦρος, μέγιστος 502
κραίνω 496, 497
κράτος 727, 90
κρείττονες 270
κύκλος 273
— Socrates on 273
κυρβάσιαι 194
κῶνος 61°
λεγόμενα 328°, 334
λουτρά 178
μαγεία T5
μάντεις 26
μέθεξις 126
μένος 66, 160, 162, 291
μετάρσια 392, 458, 460, 461, 523
μετέωρα 392, 458, 460,
533
μηνίσκοι 191
μηχανή 347
Index
μίμησις 43, 44, 83
— and μέθεξις 126
μῦθοι 319
μῦθος 322
οἰνιστηρία 378, 379
οἰωνός 99
ὄλβιος 954
ὀλολυγή 160
ὁμογάστριοι 500
ὀρειβασίαι 5d
ὅρκος on Atlantis 163
ὄρνις 98, 99
ὀρχηστῆρες 23
ὄφις οἰκουρός 267, 282, 287
πάθη 47, 261
παιδήϊα 440
παιδοτροφία 15, 40
παιδοτρόφοι 23
παλιγγενεσία 15, 271
παλτά 87
πανήγυρις at Magnesia 150
πελεκάν 177
πελεκᾶς 102
πέλεκυς 90, 177
πέλωρ 458
— derivation of 4585
πελώρια 452-9
mikos 581
πλουτοδόται 275
πλοῦτος 274
Πότνια θηρῶν 502
πρόπολοι 12, 343
προστατήριος 290
προστάτης 296!
πρωτοκούρης 40
πυρὸς μένος 34
ῥόπαλον 365
σαφηνεία 360
σήμεια 170
σκώψ 1125
στεροπή 88
στέφειν, στέφη 427°
τείρεα 94, 97, 497°
τεκνοφαγία 15, 248, 251?
τεμάχη, plots as 334, 336
τέρας 458
— derivation of 458?
Τιθῆναι 40
τιμή 467
Τιτῆνες θεοί 454
Τοξίου βοῦνος 399
τριτογενής 499
τύρσις 495°
ὕβρις of Titans 455
ὑβριστικά, τά 506
te κύε 176
Ἵ
"
ἢ
5
4
Ss
Index
φθόνος 469
φύλακες 23
φύσις 32
χαμαιεῦναι at Dodona 389
χορός 43, 46, 48
χύτρινοι ἀγῶνες 336
χῶμα γῆς 848
ὠμοφαγία 55, 136
Ὡραῖος, meaning of 421°
II, LATIN WORDS.
Ancile 105
Ancilia 197, 198
Apices 194
Aves 99
Bidens 90, 92
Bidentalia 92
Bonus Eventus 302
“ Credo’ 83
Dei 106
Do ut des 216
Factura 82
Fibulae (from Sanctuary of Orthia) 114
Ficus ruminalis 104
Fulmen 106
— trisulcwm 92
Genii, collective 302
Genius Urbis Romae 303
Homo faber 86
Hora as ‘weather’ 185
Horae 184, 185, 192
Horae and Helios 189
Lapis manalis 411°
Lituus 105
Modius, snake with 279
Mores 485
Mundus 411?
— petit 411°
Penetralia 301
Penus 301
Personae 94
Praesul 46
‘Quem Quaeritis’ 333
Religio 90
Sacer Ludus 341, 342, 343, 362
Tempestas 185}
Tempus 1851
Trabea 105
Umbilicus 396
Uraeus, snake with 279
III. PASSAGES QUOTED.
Aelian : PAGE |
De Nat. An. πεῖς ὦ 4291
xii. 89 129°
xiii, 26 1291
Var. Hist. 11 4978
Aeschylus:
Ag. 579 |
1020 2988
Choeph. 94 4279
127 2925
786 2987
808 296°
Dan., Frg. 44 (Nauck) 175°
Eum. 1—8 3852
1.153 19 3852
39 3961
106 4148
115 417?
- 559 5011
837 414°
Aeschylus (cont.):
Pr. V. 88
Septemc. Thebas 84
Suppl. 179
Frag. 57
Alkiphron :
Epist. iii. 35
539
δ40
Alkman:
Frg. (Bergk) 76
Antigonus of Karystos :
Hist. Mirab. 15
Apollodorus : 19... 7
ii. 4
5.7
11. 2. 2
4.3
5. 3. 3
6.4
13. 3
15.7
Fragm. ap. schol. a
Soph. Oed. Col. 705
Apollonius:
Paradoxogr. c. 13, p. 107
Apollonius Rhodius:
i. 494
ili. 1178
Appian:
Hist. Syr. 56
58
Aratus:
Phaen. 163, 164
Aristophanes:
Ach. 1076 (schol. ad loc.)
146 (schol. ad loc.)
Av. 468
478
716
719
1114
Nub. 372
984
Pax 403 (and schol.
ad loc.
Plut. 586 (schol. ad loc.)
435°,
Ran, 218 (and schol. ad loc.)
2095, 2911,
347
383
395
420
479
Tagenist. frg. 1
Thesm. 489 (schol. ad loc.)
438
804
869
875
878
Vesp.
Index
PAGE | Aristotle: PAGE
1871 De Mund. vi. 28 4012
Poet. lil. 4 328+
iv. 344
; 12 321
81° | xvi. 4351
Pol. A 5. 1255 b 2 478}
798 Thaum. Akous. 51 171:
2193 Frag. 324 1132
163°
265 | Arnobius:
506° Adv. nat. v. 19 9485
420?
241” | Athenaeus: iii. 55 99
τοὺς viii. 39. 347 334
192 ix. 375 46
391 112?
175? x. 25 1633
426F 2311
xi. 25, 494 3792
1522 496 234°, 319!
| 783 186
| xiii. 2. 555 262°
Recall xiv. 45.639 2504, 459°
4592 641 250?
643 2515
xv. 47, 48, 692,693 2842
58. 648 3204
58?
62' | Augustine:
De Civ. Dei vii. 18 472
xviii. 9 262?
182
' Aulus Gellius: xx. 8 1925
2915 | Bacchylides :
498! | Od. viii. 10 2415
1002 Frag. 54 2441
100?
τ | Bekker: ; ᾿
1913 Anec. 1. 305 234
es | Callimachus:
Hymn. ad Dian. 204 1916
4461 | In Apoll. 77 2351
1 ἢ
| Cassiodorus :
2941 Var. ep. iii. 51 228?
1837 |
4211 Clemens Alexandrinus:
421? Cohort. 5 61°, 248!
4204 Ργοϊγορί. li. p. 34 2133
4213 | Strom. i. 348 407?
316?
4104 1 Corinthians: xv. 20 2924
2624 |
410! | Cornutus: 5-118} 73%
4094
408° | Demosthenes:
409: iil. p. 29 (schol. ad loc.) 253
:
|
Demosthenes (cont.) :
: Xxil. 68
xxiv. 26
Ἔχν. 11
Diodorus Siculus:
Dionysius of Halicarnassus:
1. 14
34
67.3
m1; 70; 71
Ant. Rom.
Empedocles:
Frag. (Diels) 17
38
Ephoros:
F. H, G. i. 225, p. 70
Epimenides :
Kretica
Eratosthenes:
Catast. 13
24. 140
25. 62
Etymologicum Magnum:
5.0. ᾿Αρρηφορία
γάνος
ἐνιαυτός
᾿ἬἪρεσίδες
κορυθάλη
Ὦκεανός
Eupolis:
Frag. (Kock i. 260)
Euripides: ‘
Alk. 448
1003
Androm. 1033
Bacch. 1
6
10
99
105
107
119
123.
135
Index
PAGE
253?
253}
520?
4667
285? |
373°
3723
2193 |
107° |
27:
252
93
54? |
102!
252!
3002
194!
126!
454:
4275
182?
227°
4651
2414
Euripides (cont.):
Bacch. (cont.) 140
256
402
416
421
485
493
519
537
596
866
920
1017
1082
Cret., frag. 484
El. 463
699-746
Hel. 513
Hipp. 141
732
742
1214
1424
Ion 5
269
1163
1095
1098
1235
1245
1248
Medea 169
268
410
Phoen. 638 (and schol.
ad loc.)
Suppl. 990
Frag. (Nauck) 467
484
781
912
997
ban 8:
| Firmicus Maternus:
De Err. Prof. Relig. iv.
| Gaius:
Inst. 111. 10
| Harpokration :
5.0. ayulas
ἀπομάττων
Κτησίου Διός
ὀσχοφόροι
Herodotus : i, 131
li. 44
v. 37
vi. 97
191
vii. 206
4295,
Index
542
Herodotus (cont.) : PAGE
vii. 41 267}
72 2334
Herod., ps.- :
Biogr. 29 4983
Hesiod:
Op. 112 2142
168 116?
225 531
366 (schol. ad loc.) 253%, 276%
368 2767
450 978
486 Sis Ure
564 97°
640 961
731 95°
776 97}
825 95?
Scut. 104 1634
Theog. 112 274°
116 (schol. ad loc.) 4551
159 4583
481
485 59
496 60?
501 223%
630 4548
708 88?
901 5151
903 2416
969 (and schol. " loc.) 2377, 286%
Frag. 129 253
Hesychius :
S.V. ἀγητής 255) |
dais 1461 |
*Hpecides _ 2318
Θάργηλος 293! |
Κορυθαλία 5037 |
Kwpvearat 234?
οἰνιστήρια 3791 |
ὀμφαλός 412?
στεμματιαῖον 234° |
ταύρια 163°
ταῦροι 1633 |
τετράκωμος 2571
τοξίου βουνός 399°
ὠσχοφορία 9205
Homer:
Hymn to Apollo 300 4292
574 4584
sont 9 LLermes: 1507 41°
ast 55. ΗΕ 211 38?
os ii. 239 34°
‘5 xxvili. 4 5001
11. ii. 134 467}
546 169?
iii. 104 4922
164 464?
Homer (cont.): PAGE
Il. (cont.) v. 751 185*
vi. 58 4941
129 401
vii. 465 1452
viii. 39 (schol. ad loc.) 499+
540 5014
ix. 443 3282
529 4178
xi. 809 485!
xiii. 827 5021
xiv. 278 454+
675 4544
xv. 85—95 482+
xvi. 97 501°
234 2371
675 3994
xx. 4 4509
46 4823
13 456:
39 441"
xxi. 195 4571
xxiii. 810 2801
xxiv. 527 2989
Od. ii. 68 482?
111, 452 1601
iv. 690 517?
v. 125 2372
ix. 106 4831
xi. 301 3807
xii. 4 2013
xiv. 240 1834
292 1882, 8889
xix. 106 532)
179 4293
xxiv. 1—4 295*
255 5171
Hyginus:
Astr. 1. 15 2277
Fab. xxii. 376°
Hymn, Magic: v. 6 1901
Iamblichus: ix. 46 5182
Isaiah : lil. 24 209+
Julian:
Conviv. 317D 495°
Or. ν. 167 2015
Lactantius :
Divin. Instit. v. 20 47>
Lucian:
De Salt. iby 2011
21 4585
80 224
De Syr. dea 41 504°
49 5047
Dial. Meretr. 1.1 2661
Pisce. 33 245
4
~4
ἢ
]
Ἷ
Lydus:
De mens. i. 4, 12
12
rine, 1B!
10
22
iv. 42
49
Lysias :
Orat, vii.
Macrobius:
Sat. 1. 8. 5
10. 22
18. 9
Somn. Scip. i. 12
Malalas:
Chronogr. 179
Mareus Aurelius:
Epist. pp. 66-7
Maximus Tyr. : 8. 8
Menander:
Ap. Clem. Al. Strom. v. 727
Mimnermus:
Frg., Nanno
Moschus:
Id. ii. 105
Nicochares :
Frag. (Kock i. 770)
Nikander:
Schol. ad Alexipharm. 109
Nonnus:
Dion. vi. 155
vii. 144
xxvii. 228
Orphic
Hymn xii.
Frag. 85
196
200
206
Ovid:
Amor. 1, 2. 51
Fast. li. 667
111: 57
53
257-73
523
Index
PAGE
228%
2524
256?
230°
2511
2511
197}
174:
223?
2531 |
243?
2483
2524
195°
465% |
279?
370?
4491
231}
3207 |
154, 20
1733
yes
3661
249%
2483
2481
2484
3883
92?
1031
104!
196°
1974
Ovid (cont.) :
Fast. (cont.) [1], 695
771
v. 285—348
Met. xiv. 6
Parmenides:
Frg., Diels, F.V.S.
p. 114, v. 11
p. 115, v. 10
Pausanias: 1} we
bo
IP μα IVD
ii. 10.
i
ESCs ξ
Φι μα τῷ ὦ Φι μὶ Φι τῷ τ HRD
w
pear
oO
111.
μι μὰ
He bo
© bo
τῷ ὦ»
iv.
wo Ww
ὉΠ ae
ὩΣ
μ᾿
μαι
μι
oe oe .
ee ae =
NODA HDAANRKAMUBEHOMNONH OS
14,
543
PAGE
1977
1967
105?
105+
5181
527)
3152
101!
4962
4811
1728
1423
2672
2663
1472, 169!
1743
3362
2871
326%
3742
4175
3742
3726
3815
4535
113°
101:
2318
2834
4812
3662
2322
172!
2358
3815
5051
5045
365}
113
2991
235°
246}, 2513, 3722
2391
2142
2332
2281
2143
2192, 2202
2402, 2581
4815
2288
2565
230!
2302
2193
243}
δ44 Index
Pausanias (cont.) : paGE | Pindar (cont.): - PAGE
y. 20. 6 2201 Ol. (cont.) i. 73 2494
vi. 20. 1 2521 149 (schol. ad loc.) 214°
2 239? ii. 2 2611
9 2287 | 50 228°
Pala 2193 | 96 274"
7 2313 124 495%
22 2554 111. 2363
23. 8 5043 | 33 (schol. ad loc.) 2241
24. 6 2281 | 36 2286
25. 4 2832 | 54 (schol. ad loc.) 504!
vii. 18. 12 505° v. 7 (schol. ad loc.) 2564
viii. 4. 8 37 17 2381
8.4 381° 58 1283
11.8 4342 vi. 2 915:
15. 2 4174 45 24127
32. 4 3642 58 2494
48. 6 3657 | vii. 43 2205
ix. 10. 4 437? UH 374°
19. 5 371! | viii. 14 2574
27.6 3704 | 21 519?
35. 1 193! ix. Εἴ 2561, 257!
3 389? x. 49 2255
38. 3 401: xiii. 6 2416
39. 1—14 508! 21 204"
3, 5, 18 282? 25 343
40. 11 2482 77 2203
x. 12.10 1664 Paeans vi. 15 4181
24.7 603 Pyth. i. 20 899
32. 17 4272 ii, 84 5163
bi 1 4134
Pervigilium Veneris: 1 179} | iv. 194 2203
v. 77 235°
Philo: 98 257+
De Vit. Cont. ii. p. 473 M. 47} viii. 137 95:
ix. "232
Philochorus: Frag. 29 and 30 519%
Ap. Athen. xiv. 73 1855 75 418°
: Plato:
Philostratus : :
Heroic. v: 3. 704 AGE π 6 {5:8 ΤΣ
Imag. 10 219? Epin. 984 p—985 D 447
Euthyphro 15D 134°
τ 2
Phlegon of Tralles: Krat. 61 (schol. ad loc.) ei
Hist. Graec. Frag. iii. 604 236? erie ἘΠῚ
et Ἔα: a 410 1862
; Krito 119p, E 163!
Photius β 1198 1636
5. Ὁ. Epis 294. Legg. 625 p 235°
μιαρὰ ἡμέρα 2891 ὡς 7008 393
οἰνι[αἸστήρια 9183 886 4 4463
9145 4103
Pindar: Phaedo 69 ¢ 521
Dithyramb 75 203! 70¢ 2738
Isth. v. 20 1283 128 273
Nem. iv. 85 2574 Phaedr. 2318 (schol. ad loc.) _ 235°
vi. sub init. 4682 2465 12?
2564 2478 469?
Ol. i. 214, 216 Polit. 271 x, 2724 496?
37 244! 2725 496?
48 250 Rep. _ 872 251°
69 ff. 218! ϑψηιν. 177A 4632
Plato (cont.) : PAGE
Tim. 29 5 4692
42D 4964
Pliny:
Hist. Nat. xvi. 144 133%
xxxiv. 77 3024
Plutarch:
Ad Princip. inerud. 780 F 80!
De Defect. Orac. 1. 3991 |
Xv. 4262 |
xvi. 4252
De Hi ap. Delph. ix. 152, 1561
De Fac. in Orb. Lun. xxviii. 2922
XXX. 2517, 5112
De Fratern. Amor., init. 304°
De Gen. Socr. xxii. 5091, 510!
De Is. et Os. 403
XXXV. 152
lxix. 179?
De Mulier. Virt. 4 5054
De Ser. Num. Vind. xxii. 3884
Qu. Graec. ix. 155!
xii. 2412, 4151, 4161
XXXvVi. 205}
lviii. 506!
Qu. Rom. xii. 1332
Qu. Symp. i. 7, 1 2764
v.2 2213, 233
viii, 3 253%, 276°
4 2573
Stoic. repug. ΧΧΧ, 2981
Vit. Alex. ii. 270?
Vit. Cleom. ΧΧΧΙΧ. 268’, 2694
Vit. Lye. Xvi. 36°
Vit. Num. xv. 1072, 1081, 4534
Vit. Pelop. xxi 460! |
Vit. Rom. iv. 102°
ΧΙ 4113
Vit. Sol. ΧΙ, 522
Vit. Them. 9.2.6.4, 154?
Vit. Thes. Vv. 4413
ΣΧ; 287?
xii. 253!
ΧΧΙ, 1192
Xxii 317°
XXili 3264
XxXiv 3273
Pollux :
On. ix, 123 2021
Porphyry :
De Abst. li, 19 2933
28 ff 1423
29 148!
30 1731
48 110!
iv. 19 561
Vit. Pyth. 15 2911
17 56°
H.
Index
545
Proklos: PAGE
Ap. Phot. Bibl. Cod, 239, p. 321 438!
Chrestomath. 28 319?
Psalm: ΧΧΣ, 11 2094
XXXVli. 25 5311
CXxXvlii. 3, 4 5034
2 Samuel: vi. 4—7 455?
Servius:
Ad Aen. vi. 136 236!
ix. 448 929
Solomon, Song of:
ii. 10 178?
Sophocles:
Ant. 431 4279
450 5195
Elektra 52 4279
458 4279
Oed. Col. 679 40?
704 1755
1065 3171
Oed. Rex 200 13?
Polyidos 293
Trach. 9 367!
Frg. 523 4652
598 5164
Ap. Strabo x. 473 266
Statius:
Schol. ad Theb. iv. 516 4661
Stephanus Byzantinus:
5.0. Κυχρεῖος πάγος 2874
Strabo: vill. 357 2313
384 254?
ix. 393 287°
422 4276
435 481+
x. 466 142, 25?
466—8 343
468 133, 231, 2472
469 246+
470 611
472 23}
475 32, 45
481 33
483 274
xil. 580 2463
xiii. 1. 14 1294
xiv. 639 2466
Suidas:
s.v. ᾿Αγαθοῦ Δαίμονος 2841, 2882
᾿Αγυιαί 4085
θύραζε κῆρες 2893
Ὅμηρος 5023
90
δ40
Tacitus : PAGE
Ann. lii. 61 246°
Theocritus: xv. 64 179°
Theognis: 1275 187?
Thucydides: 11. 15 2091, 3172
iii. 82 280?
Tzetzes :
Chil. y. 19. 650 2623
Varro:
Ad Prise. x. 32 129°
Apud Macrob. i. 16, 18 4113
De ling. Lat. v. 58 4643
vii. 17 399?
Index
Vergil: PAGE
Ain. iii, 284 (and Servius ; ‘
ad loc.) 1892 ἢ
Vis 21 3221
585 koe
617
vii. 170 1048 ΚΑ
x. 215 388?
eorg. iii. 113 2272
417 (Servius ad loc.) 302!
Vitruvius : i. 2.5 924
Zenodotus:
Cent. Paroim. 289°
IV. GENERAL INDEX.
Abantes, tonsure of 441
Abraxas 57
Acheloés 367, 368
— as bull 285
Achilles, on Skyros 506
— worshipped at sunset 375
— yearly sacrifice to 374
Adonis 41
— and Esmun as healers 437
AGrasteia 528
Adrastus and tragic Choroi 315
7Aschylus’ extant plays, ritual form in
357
Aetiological myth 257, 329
Agathé Tyché 278, 282, 283, 296, 297
at Melos 284
holding cornucopia 400
Agathos Daimon 253, 258, 277-316, 339,
365, 368, 379, 381
— Theos 286
— and Agathe Tyche 508
— and Dioscuri 304
— and Hermes Chthonios 294-300
— as Zeus Ktesios 297
— Heroon of 288
— in magic papyri 296
— Nero as 277
— new 277
Aglauros, as well-nymph 174!
Agon 342, 351
— as race 322
— of Eumenides 385, 386, 396
Agones at Lenaia 421
Agonistic Table 2514
Agrae, mysteries at 380
Agrenon 398
Aguieus 406-15, 424, 437, 439
— Pillar 407
Aidos and Nemesis 116
Aigeus 318, 323
Aiolos 116
Aition 341
Akiktiyu 20, 24
Alcestis 370 ;
Alcheringa 273, 290
Alcibiades 75
Alexandria, coins of 278 ἱ
Algonkin Manitou 138
Alkmaion 3674
Alkmena 369, 530
Auten, H. H. 791
All-Father 68 3
All Souls, feast of 215 ]
Alpha and Omega 535 ᾿
Alphaeos 621
Althaea 103, 417
Amaltheia, horn of 186, 251°, 283, 311,
3681
Amazons and Hittites 491
Ambrakia, coins of 406
Ambrosia defined 299
Ames, Εἰ. 5. 1391
Ammonius 293
Amphiaraus, dream oracle of 412
Anagnorisis 342, 343, 344, 345, 435
dAnakes 305, 307
Anaklethra 417
Anamnesis 511-4
Ancestors, collective 289
— totem 290
Androktasiai 335
Andromache 346
Anesidora 295, 299
Animatism 472, 475}
Animism, Dr Tylor on 471-2
— W. McDougall on 472
— R. Hertz on 472°
— A. Ὁ. Kruijt on 472%
Anna Perenna 197, 198, 199
Anodos of Eurydike 523
Index
Anodos of Gaia 416
— vases 418-24
Anthesteria 253, 275-94, 336, 339, 418,
4964
— pot contests at 209
Anthesterion, month of 275
Anthropomorphic gods 447
Antigone 376, 377
Antoninus Pius 58
Apatouria 441, 498-501
Apellaios 439
Apellon, meaning of 439?
Aphrodite 40, 41, 176, 179
Apollo 41
— Aguieus 365, 406-15
— ἀκερσεκόμης 441?
— Delphinios 443
— Ismenios 437, 438
— Karnaios 440
— Klarios 153
— Pythoktonos 434
— Sauroktonos 434
— thallophoros 428
— and Artemis as Sun and Moon
446
— and Dionysos as Kouroi 443
— as Kouros 439-44
— as Megistos Kouros 441
— as Phoibos 437
— as son of Zeus 386
— as Weather-god 438
— of the Hail 438
—— on omphalos 411
— statue by Tektaios and Angelion
389
Apotheosis-scenes 360
Apple-bough at Olympia 236
Archilochos, Hymn of 256
Architheoros 428
Arcturus 97
Ares, as βλάβη 386
— as Sun-god 525
— snake of 429
Areté 274
.Argenidas, Relief of 304
Argos, omphalos at 412
Ariadne 319, 3224
Aricia 105
Aristodama 270
Aristodemos 319
Aristomenes 270
Arizona 79
Arrephoria 172°, 266, 275
Arretophoria 266
Arta, asha 527
Artemis, as Hyakinthotrophos 504
— as Kourotrophos 504
— as Laphria 505
— as Orthia 504
— 88 Πότνια θηρῶν 502
— Hekaerge, Oupis, Loxo 191
— lLeucophrene 153
547
Arungquiltha 86
Asklepios 298, 381-4, 437
— and Hygieia 282
— and Trophonios 508
— as Agathos Theos 382
— as snake 382
— derivation 3814
Assteas, vase by 430
Athanasia contrasted with palingenesia
467-8
Athena Ilias 164 ν΄
— ratria
— and Apollo 501
— and epheboi 4984
— and olive 175
— at ox-shrine 145
— birth of 500
contest with Poseidon 171
Atlan antis, Island of 163
— Bull sacrifice in 163, 164
Atlas 432
Attributes 99, 100
Atreus 22
Auge 37
Aurora borealis 64
Bacchae 33!-4, 38, 47, 48, 92, 132,
345, 518
Bacchants 39
Bacchoi 25
Bacchos 33, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 54, 61,
127, 130
BacHoFren 35!
Baiamai 18
Bautrovur, H. 78!
Balte 52?
Baptism 20, 34
— at Jordan 174
Baptist, St John 174
— as sky god 174
Barbarians, sacrifice of 445
— nature-worship of 445
Ba-Ronga 269
Basilai, festival of 252
Basileus, as medicine king 316, 323
— at Priene 254
— meaning of 3163
Bean-Feast 320
Bear, among Apaches 450
— as totem 123
— dance of grizzly 112, 113, 328
— festival among Ainos 1408
— goddess of Brauronia 450
— mythos of 329
— sacramental feast 141
— sacrifice of 140
service 206
Bendis 61
Bereson, H. 86
— on artist 479
— on changement as reality 4683,
5348
35.—
bo
δ48
ΒΈΒΟΒΟΝ, H. on durée as change 477,
5343
— on individualization 473?
— on tools 479
ΒΕΤΗΕ, Εἰ. 274, 335
Bird, and constellations 497, 4972
— as bridegroom 115, 180
— as life-spirit 1771
— king 107
— mana 110
— mantic 99
— metamorphoses 115
— on battle-axe 161
— parentages 115
— priestess 111
— rain 101
— robe 110, 177
— sanctities 110
Birth Song 45; new 178
Blaste 52
BioomFIELD, M. 83
Boat, of new moon 340
— votive 210
Boghazkoi, discoveries at 462+, 5273
Bombykes 61
Bomos 375
Bona dea 298%
Bora 38
Bosanquet, R. C. 41, 275, 54%, 57}
Boukranion 208
Bouphonia 113, 142-50, 169, 172, 174,
176%, 182, 207, 356
— at Python’s death 425, 427
Bouphonos 142, 144
Boutypos 142
Brawn, Εἰ. 241, 59}
Brauronia, Bear-goddess of 450
Bride, False 1978; May 1978
Brahman 72, 73
Bromios 92
Buckthorn 288
Buddhism 29
Bull, ‘Butting’ 151
— child 190
— Dionysos 155
— god 152
— hide as ritual robe 177!
— of Hippolytos 163
— of Minos 163
— of Sosipolis 241
— sacrifice of 159
— wild 130
Bull-roarer 61-6, 79
Bulls at Ephesus 163
Bysios, month 155
Caelum 92
Calendar, at Olympia 224, 229, 237
— old metrop. church 321
Calendars, succession of 238
Capitoline Altar 60
Carnival as rite de passage 507
Index
CartTatnHac 564
Casr, Miss J. 386!
Cassandra 298, 439
Cecropia 287
Cecropidae 267, 287
Cecrops 261-73, 287, 288, 315
— as thallophoros 263 ᾿
— daughters of 263%, 268, 281
— twy-formed 262
Celts 56
Cerberus 199
Chamaileon 311
CuampBers, Εἰ. K. 1783, 1843, 333
Chamyne 237
Chaos, meaning of 455}
Charila 415
Chariot-race 218 ff., 228
Charites 185, 192, 281
— at Orchomenos 193, 206
— on hand of Apollo 389
Chaucer 674
Cheiron 463
Choes 288-9
Chronos 1865
Chthonioi 292
Chytroi 289-94, 373
Circe 105
Circumcision 272
Circus, Roman 228
Cistae and snakes 265?
Cistophoroi 265
Cithaeron 40, 94
Cleomenes 269, 270
Cuopp, Εἰ. 657, 4751
Clothes, ritual change of 506-8
Clytemnestra 103, 414
— ghost of 417
Coprincton 67}
Comedy 32
Communion, Sacramental 127
Confirmation 20
Contest of Young and Old King 219,
222, 236
Coox, A. Β. 74; 127, 585, ΠΥ"
811, 871, 962, 106%, 1302, 1732, 173% ,
1763, 1803, 219 ff., 2514, 255°, 2592,
3371, 4171, 4501
Corn Baby 16
Cornrorp, F. M. 37%, 893%, 942, 1862,
1872, 189%, 2731, 2961, 322,
4611, 5331
— on τιμή 4671
Cornucopia 280, 302
— as tomb-adjunct 3664, 371
— child in 167
— of Herakles 366, 367
Cosmogony of Orpheus 463
Couvade 37°
Craw.ey, F. 361
Cretans 54, 55
Crete 39, 164
Crusius, O. 324
|
ee » ee ρώνωΣ
Index
Cuckoo 177, 179, 180
— mountain 180
Culture heroes 27
Curtius, E. 502
Cyclopes 484
Cyprus 41
Cyrus and oracle of Orpheus 466
Dabar 82
Daimon 9, 12, 14, 27, 63, 109, 364
— as basileus 315
— as eponym 315
— as functionary 315, 336, 426
— collective 335
— hero 340
—- individualized 336
— of fertility 260, 261
— snake-tailed 338, 451
— wealthy 307
Daimones and theoi 307, 386
Dais 146, 154, 235, 313, 356, 372°
Daktyls, Idaean 26°, 271, 51, 56, 62,
90, 107, 372
— ‘monument’ 403
Danaides 232, 367
— and Hyades 530
— and Sisyphos 529, 530
— as fertility-nymphs 3861, 412
_. — as well-nymphs 176, 413
Danaus 232
Dances, armed 24
Dancing, pantomimic 24
Daphnae vase 453
Daphnephoria 437-9
Daphnephoros 437
Dawstns, R. M. 572, 332%, 341
Dead, fear of 290 ~
Deipnophorot 319, 323
Dejaneira 367, 368, 369
Delos 116
— Olive of 191
— Persians in 192
— Sun and Moon at 389
Delphi, sequence of cults 390
— worship of Gaia at 398-444
Demeter 22, 34, 286, 287, 288
— Anesidora 299
— at Pheneus 417
— kykaon of 322
— Myealessian 371
Demetrioi 292
Demophon 34
Denys of Halicarnassos 102
Deus ex Machina 351
Dew-carrying 172
— festival to promote 174
— on Midsummer Night 173
Dhuramoolan 18, 64
Dictaean cave 60
Dido, wedding of 168
— and Aeneas
180?
in thunderstorm
549
Diets, ἘΠ 532
DierericH, Dr 561, 3341, 341, 342
— on mysteries 3392
Diipolia 142
Dikaiosyne 528
Dike, 9 28, 38
— and Aletheia 526
— and Kurydike 521-3
— and Vengeance 527
— and Wheel 523-7
— as durée 477
— as the Way 516-8
— in Hades 518-21
— in Parmenides 518, 522
Dikte, Mt 2; 4, 5, 6,9, 10; 13, 57
Dionysos 30, 38, 40, 41, 47, 48, 49,
129, 260, 261, 341, 342, 395
— Dendritis 210, 339
— Isodaites 157
— Nuktelios 157
— Tauromorphos 156
— and Ariadne 319
— and queen archon 368
— as bull 449
— as daimon 315
— brings up Semele 420
— epiphany of 94
— Hall of Mystae of 244
— in marshes 288
— theatre of 339
— thiasos of 12, 14, 16
Dioscuri 305
— as Agath. Daim. 304-7
Dipylon, fragment of vase 76, 771
Dirke 34, 368, 430
Dithyramb 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38,
39, 41, 42, 45, 158-211, 248,
256, 261, 339, 368
— derivation of 204
— in spring 418
Dithyrambos as Bull-god 130
DITTENBERGER, W. 46°
Dodona 102, 389
— dove-priestesses of 166
— tablet of 369
Doloneia 4251
Double Axe 161, 161!
Dourtt, Εἰ. 461
Dragon, teeth of 434, 453
Drama and hero-worship 215
Dress, rites with change
3242
Drémenon 341, 344
Droop, J. P. 762, 77!
Dryokolaptes 102
‘Duenos’ vase 304
DurxHemm, Εἰ. 297, 631, 1391, 486°
— on categories 477!
of 324,
‘ Eaglé* 57
Earth 100
— as fruit-bearer 166
δδ0
Earth, marriage of, and sky 91, 176,
179, 368, 464
— religion and phallic cults 451
— smiting of 417
Earth-spirits, worship of 411, 414
Echion 434
Edoni 61
Egeria 105
Egg cosmogonies 115
Eidolon 403
— and thymos 478
Hileithyia and Sosipolis 239
HKirene carrying Ploutos 241, 2844
Eiresione 189, 318-21, 371, 502
— at Samos 5023
— at Stepterion 427
— of laurel-branch 437
E1ster, Dr R. 497?
Elaphebolion, month of 153
Eleleu Iow Iow 318, 323, 332
Elements, worship of 461
Elephant, as tool-user 86
Eleusis, omphalos at 384
Elicius 106
Elis, coins of 115
— Tyche at 283
Ess, G. 79?
Emotion, collective 123
Emu man 127
— totem 124
Endymion 228, 231, 232
Eniautos 156, 186, 188, 323, 325, 3272,
342, 369, 429
— cup 285, 311
— festival 274, 415, 417, 427
Eniautos-daimon 225, 257, 333, 341,
371, 374, 515
— life-history of 334, 340, 415
Ennaeteric festivals at Delphi 415-39
Ennaeteris 223, 225, 229, 237
Epiros, snake-cult at 429
Epheboi at Athens 209
— characteristic curl of 340
— cult of Herakles by 376
— race of 315, 321
Ephesus, Kouretes at 246
Epic 257
— Ionian 351
Epidauros 285
Epimenides 52, ὅθ, 54, 57, 176°
Epinikian Ode 257
Epiphanies in fragmentary plays 349,
350
Epiphany, Dromenon at 174
Erechtheidae 267
Erechtheion 91, 169, 220
cults in 110
Bieochtions 92, 283, 288
— as thunder- god 170}
— sacrifice to 169
—" sea of 170
Erichthonios 264-8, 315
Index
Erinys 414
— as angry snake 2811, 432
Eriphios 20
Eros as Herm 299
— at Thespiae 371
Eschara 338, 409
Euhemerism 261, 262
Eumenides 281, 2811, 529
— agon in 396, 414
— Dr Verrall on 387!
— of Argos 282
— Prologue to 385
Euphemia 359
Euphronios, vase by 132
Europa on bull 449, 450
Evadne 37
Evans, A. 190?
— Sir J. 564
Exangelos 346
Farnevyu, Dr 341
FarQuHarson, S. 195?
Father, Heaven as 497
Feralia 275
‘Finger’s tomb’ 402, 403
Fire-bearer 286
Fuercuer, A. C. 69, 85?
Fuinpers Perriz, Prof. W. M., dis-
coveries at Memphis 462!
Folk-plays 332
Food, animal-sanctity of 140
— attention focussed on 139
— as religious focus 489
Foot-race, at Olympia 233, 235
— for Bride 231, 232
— of Kouretes 235, 242, 256
Fortune, wheel of 523
Frazer, Dr J. G. 18, 181, 192, 361, 39,
842, 213; 215, 2225 σο0. 581.
237, 252
— on totemism 120, 130°
Fulgur 92
Funeral Banquets 307-14
— games 213, 259
FurtwAnGuer 814
Ga Bounis 413
Gapow, Dr Hans 177!
GAERTRINGEN, H. v. 54°
Gaeum at Olympia 258
Gaia 385
Ganymeda 381
Garpner, E. 80?
—- Prof. Percy 309
Ge Karpophoros 172
Genius, sexless 282
Grnnep, M. van, on Rites de Passage,
5102
Giants as earth-born men 452
— etymology of 4522, 458
Gigantes and Titanes 459
Gigantomachia 452
λιν δα... oe
Se ene
Index
Guapstone 5012
Glaukos 26
Goat-daimones 1821, 4201
Goats, Cretan 159
— song 206
Goings to Sleep 179
Golden Age 274
— Bough 107
— Lamb 3922, 532
Good to eat 139, 280
Gorgoneion and Swastika 525
Gortyna 3
— coins of 180, 182
Gournia 3, 5
Grave-mound 419
Great Mother 246
Group a Totem 119
Group-life 273
Group-thinking 273
Gypsum 15, 17
Happon, Dr A. C. 85?
Hades and Zeus 300
Haemon 376, 377
Hagia Triada Sarcophagos 158-211,
227, 339
Hair festival 3371
— shearing of 498
Harpuerr, Dr 159
ΕΓ ταν. W. R. 22%, 342, 673, 781,
505°
Hannah 29
Harvie, M. 1492
Harmonia 91
— as snake 434
Harrianp, Εἰ. 5. 661
Heap, Barcuay 82!
Heapiam, Dr Water 365°, 413!
Hebe 380
— as Ganymeda 381
Hector as Hero-daimon 335
Hekate 408
Hekateion 408, 410
Hekatombeion 144
Helicon 96
Helios 189, 200, 201, 369, (Hades) 3692,
370
— and Selene 445
— as disk 465
— worship of, by Thracians 465
Hera 179, 491
— Teleia 180, 381
— as Child 180}
— as Cuckoo 180
— as Widow 1801
Heraea 226, 229, 236, 237
Herakleion 376
Herakles 37, 98, 364-81
— adoption of 372
— apotheosis of 372
— as Agathos Daimon 379, 381
— as dAlexikakos 376-80
551
Herakles as Daktyi 235, 2403, 258
— as ephebos 380
— as fertility-daimon 364-70
— as Helios 370
— as Herm 364-5
— as Idaean Daktyl 371-2
— as Kouros 376-80
— as sun-year daimon 369
— as thallophoros 366
— as year-daimon 372-81
— club of 365
— Epitrapezios 372?
— in sun-boat 371
— initiation of 380
— marries Hebe 380
— Megistos Kouros 379
— ritual of, at Sikyon 372
— slays snakes 381
Herm, worship of, by Arcadians 365
— worship of, by Athenians 365
Hermae 509
— at Athens 295
Hermes 31, 41
— ἀγαθοποιός 296
— Chthonios as Agathos Daimon
294-300
— Kyllenios 453
— Polygios 366
— as drink 294, 300
— as messenger 295
— as Phallos 297
— as propolos 297
— as Psychopompos 295, 419
— holding purse 400
— in Epic 295
— in magic papyri 296
— of Kyllene 266
— rhabdos of 295
e— Hero 210, 313, 316-27, 417
— as sun-daimon 375
— as year-daimon 375
— daimon 260-340
— feasts 307-16
— Homer’s conception of 335
— ox 3763
— tribal 335
Heroes and funeral games 212, 259
Heroines 313, 417
— Libyan 417}
Herois 415, 416, 417, 423
Hersephoria 172, 173, 190
Hersephoroi 232
Hertz, R. 24, 871
Hesiod as theologian 95, 96
— on daimones 274
Hesperides, apples of 14, 431
— garden of 311
Hewitt, J. N. B. 66}
Hierapytna 54
Hierophant 34, 343, 359
— in Frogs 420, 421
Hierourgiai 343
552
Hippodameia 224, 226, 228, 230
Hippolytos 341, 345
— as daimon 336
— as Megistos Kouros 337
— mythos of 337, 338
Hospes 64
HocartH, D. G. 4?
Holophrase 473-5
Homer, at Panathenaic festival 336
— attitude towards religion 335
— individualism of 335
Homopatoria 498
Honey cake 282, 283
Horai 9
— dancing round cave 408
Horkos 91
Horns of Consecration 160
Hosia 38
Hosios 155
Hosioter 155
House-carrier 96
Howirr 651, 67%
Husert et Mauss 192, 721, 851, 1487,
184!
Hut of Snake 427
Hybris 468
Hybristika 505-7
Tacchos 48, 421
Jamos 2494
Icarios 232
— reliefs 314
Ida, Mount 2, 4, 5, 51
Idaean Cave at Olympia 239, 248
— Daktyls 235, 238
Ilium, coins of 164
Imbros, festival on 174
Infant initiation 20
‘Infinite,’ the, Herbert Spencer on 489
— Max Miiller on 489
Intichiuma ceremonies 124
— commemorative and magical 273
Io Bacchoi 46
Jon 267-8
— as Megistos Kouros 268
Ionian philosophy, Iranian elements in
65
Iphikles 381
Iphitos 236
Iranian Mysticism, element of, in Or-
phism 462
Truntarinia 53
Isis Nephthys 110
Itanos 2, 3
Jacobsthal 885
Jahwe as ‘Living God’ and Healer
437}
— primitive elements in 455”
James, ὝὟὼπαχαμ 87!
Janus 104
Jason as Snake-slayer 429-36
Index
Jastrow, M. 292
Jonah, myth of 435°
Jones, Rey. Peter 120
Jove, Idaean 51
Jupiter Dolichenus 150
— Pluvius 173
Justice 53
Kadiskos 299, 300, 304
Kadmos and Europa 449
— as snake-slayer 429-36
Kalevala 140
Kama 83
Kamares ware 4
Kangaroo 121
— reincarnation of 272
Kapaneus 109, 227
KappreLMACHER, A. 50?
Karma 83
Karneia 233, 237, 255
Kassandra 111
Kataibates 171
Katharsis 513
Kathodos and Anodos 292, 332
Kaulonia, coin of 449
Keleos, Keleai 100
Keraunia 168
Keraunios 220
Keraunos 621, 73°, 88, 89, 168
Keres 289, 291
Kernophoria 293
Kernos 293, 304?
Kerychia 301, 304
Kerykeion 295, 323
— with snake 279
Kikuyus 130
King 138?
— as magician 222
— Dike of 532
— medicine 109
Klados 379, 380
Kleisthenes 315
Knossos 2, 3, 5, 54
— pithoi at 276
Kombe 110
Komos 234°, 255, 322, 323
Komyria 337+
Kopo 438
Kore, anodos of 343, 348, 4201
Korot 503
Korte, G. 50°
Korybantes 26, 54, 59, 194, 195, 200,
372
Korythalia 503
Kotys 61
Kotyto 61
Koures 20, 24, 53, 535
Kouretes 26, 29, 30, 31, 36, 37, 39, 43,
45,.46, 49, 50, 51, 54, 59, 61,
62, 107, 110, 116, 241, 246
— and Basileus 255
— and moon year 193
Index
Kouretes and the Mother 504
— at Ephesus 246
— at Olympia 235, 238, 246
— holocaust to 504
— Hymn of 6, 372, 514, 515?
— of Dikte 182
Kouros 10, 27, 29, 30, 35, 36, 38, 39,
41, 42, 48, 49, 169, 255
— derivation of 3371, 339
—— greatest 7, 9, 11, 110, 127, 151
— meaning of 12
Kourotrophos 4941
— KEiresione to 502*
Krannon 81, 82
Kratos and Bia 519
—- contrasted with Dike 524
Kratu 83
Kreon 377
KRETSCHMER 48?
Kronia 144, 223, 249, 252, 253
Kronion (month) 150
Kronos 13, 37, 60, 100, 179, 186, 223,
248, 253, 493, 4972
— as “Auros 497?
— as Chronos 497?
— as King 495
— as matrilinear son 495
— as year-daimon 496, 497
— Basileus 254
— fettered 223
Krtya 82
Ktesioi 302
Kugis 36
Kutchi 67
Kybele 61
Kychreus 287, 288
Kylon 138
Kynosarges 76
La Bas 54°
Labyadae, phratria of 440
Lamps, D. 4984
Lance as tattoo-mark 435
Lane, A. 61%, 65?
Latinus 104
Law, natural 534
Lawson, J. C. 202?
Lebadeia 282, 513
Leda 116
Lekane 324, 325
Lenaia 421
Lesche 36%, 37
Lethe 512-3
— as Katharsis 513
Leukoma 403, 404
Livy-Bruut 193, 551.7, 841, 871
— on individual soul 4732
— on symbiosis 475
Life-stone as cathartic 437
Liknites 403, 155, 333
Liknophoria 293
Loxias 385
553
Lucian 22
Lumuo.trz, Caru 111, 112!
Luna 92
Lupercalia 22
Lycaon 307!
Lykoérgos 40
Lyktos 2, 3, 4, 5
McCrinrock, W. 112
MacCoun, Ὁ. 5. 175?
McDovueaut, W., on Animism 472*
Macedonia 33
Maenads 39
— as mothers 423
— at Anodos 422
— slaying Orpheus 132
— tattooed 132
Mageia 76
Magic, as manipulation of mana 138
— of bird 97
Magnesia 59”
— coins of 151, 152
Magpie 102
Mamuralia 196
Mamurius Veturius 196, 197-9
Mana 67, 68, 741, 76, 84, 85, 89, 94,
113, 137, 138, 146, 152, 154, 155,
156, 157, 160, 162, 163, 165, 222,
449
— and tabu 140
Maniae, tomb of 402
Man’s House 27, 363, 37
Mantua 59
Marertt, R. R. 20°, 613, 632, 651, 67°,
101, 83, 4752
Marriage of Sky and Earth 222, 227
Mars, Bird of 103
— birthday of 196
Martin, H. 564
Matrilinear structure, mythological re-
presentation of 498
— system 386
Marruews, R. H. 18}
Max Miuuer 29”
Maypole 321
Medicine King 94
Megara 266
— dromenon at 417, 418
Mekone 373!
Melampos 111
— yearly sacrifice to 374
Melanippe 50, 463
Melanippos as hero-daimon 335
Meleager 103
Melite 378, 378?
Memory, throne of 509
— Bergson on 514!
Menelaos 261
Menoitios 373
Messenger 342, 345
Metallurgy 26
Migrations, result of 335, 336
554
Mimes, bull-voiced 61
Mimesis and Methexis 125
Mimnermus 2, 3802
Minoa 3
Minos 26, 50, 51, 261
— and Paros 192
Minotaur 50, 208, 449
Minyas, treasury of 401
Mrerzees, Miss H. 672
Mithra, Spring Mysteries of 196?
Mnemosyne and Anamnesis 511-4
Moira, F. M. Cornford on 477
Moirae 189, 476
— as divisions of moon 389, 408
Moki 79
Moloch as Melek 495
Money-boxes, ancient as Thesauroi 401
Montetius, O. 161!
Moon, cult in Crete 190
— cult in Erechtheion 191
— elements in goddesses and he-
roines 392?
— halo 191
— in Daphnephoria 438
— marriage with Sun 200, 226, 228,
232
— month 199
— mythology 393
— oracle of 388
— queen 190
— races 228, 242
— shields 198
— waxing and waning 192
Mopsos 111
Moral ideal confused with life-principle
478
Morgos 56
Moriae 174
Mother, as fruit-bearer 421
— and Son 28, 323, 324, 421
— mountain 55, 61
— rites 55
— stone 413+
Themis as 493
Mothers, Maenads as 40
Mummers’ play 334°
Murray, Prof. Gizpert 4!, 22°, 291, 33,
514, 56, 722, 91. 952,5,-961,
1085, 1377, 1403, ©3342,
33523, 3861, 4127, 4293
— on expurgation in Homer 460!
— on polis 484!
Mycenaean shield 160, 161, 196
— shrine 165
Mysteries, Eleusinian 34+
Mystery, sense of 490
— gods, totemistic character of 450
Myth, aetiological 11, 13, 366, 418,
427
== ritual 217, 257
Mythoi 327-31, 334
— ‘tied’ 3343
Index
Nachahmung as basis of ritual 5341
Napé 399
Narrinyeri 36
Narumbe 36
Naturalism of Minoan pottery 450
Naturism 390
Nemesis 291, 116, 526
Neoptolemos, yearly sacrifice to 374
— slaying of 397
Nestor, sacrifice by 160
New birth 28, 35, 38, 41, 49, 245, 248
— as calf 131
— as wolf 131
— rite of, as goat 130
NrietzscHe on Olympians and mystery-
gods 476
Nike 72, 81
‘Ninnion’ Pinax 293?
Noldvoa 112
Nonnus 17
Numa Pompilius 105, 108
— Quinquilius 108
— and ancilia 198
Numen 282
Numina 106
Nymphs 54
Nysa 40
Obelisks 162
Ododam 120
(Edipus 348
— as medicine-king 532
Oinomaos 218
— and Dionysos 231
— pillar of 220
Okeanids and Prometheus 456
Okeanos, as Ouranos 457
— derivation of 457?
Old Year, death of 332
Olive, at Olympia 220, 230, 231, 236,
238
— branch of 318
— on Delos 191
— tree 161, 170) Wie
oe 364-72
and earth-daimones 450
— as diversified Moirai 477
— as individualized personalities
476, 477
— as objets dart 462, 478
— contrast of, with "Eniautos- dai-
mones 466- 9
— reflect social structure 490
twelve 154
Olympias 270
Olympic Games 210-59, 322
— as New Year’ s Festival 216,
245
Cook’s theory 219
date of 224
originally annual 229
— victor 221, 233, 256
Index
Olympic victor as hero 256
Olympiodorus 52?
Olympos 491
— northern elements in 491
— southern elements in 492
Omaha 69
Omophagia 561, 118, 119
Omphale 506
Omphalos 99, 396-424
— altar 409
— as fertility-cone 400-15
— as holy stone 396-9
— at Athens 418
— at Eleusis 384
— at Phlius 384, 412
— sanctuary 419
— snake-twined 384
— with bird 428
Opous, ritual of Herakles at 373
Oracle of Earth at Olympia 237
Order, social, reflected in natural 534
Ordination 20
Orenda 66, 67, 68, 84
Oresteia 347
Orestes 346
— and omphalos 396
— as New Year-daimon 356
— as Winter-daimon 356
— at Gythion 413
Orpheus 14, 521, 345
— and Eurydike 420, 523, 529
— cosmogony of 463
— cult of Helios by 465
— oracle of, at Lesbos 466
Orphic Hymn 14, 222, 38
— Iranian elements in 466
— religion, characteristics of 462-6
— tablets 513!
Orthia 114
Oschophoria 2545, 317-27
Oschophoros 324, 325
Oschos 319
Osiris 238, 345
OstHorr, H. 823
Otem 120
Ouraniones 454
Ouranos 168, 176, 454-8, 465
— and Aither 455
OverBeEck, J. 60!
Paean 48
Palaikastro 1, 3, 571
— excavations by British School 5
Palladion 87, 88, 92
Pallas 87, 88
a oe eencrraaae
“recitation of Homer 336
Pandora (Anesidora) 295, 298
Pandroseion 171, 176, 190, 220
Pandrosos 192
Pankarpia 291-4, 299, 300, 322, 371,
375
555
Panspermia 291-4, 305-7, 320, 322, 373,
375
Pantheion 171}, 220
Parnassus 41
Parthenia 230
Parthenon, frieze of 154
Participation 84, 122
— Lévy-Bruhl on 122?
Pasiphae 190, 208
Pathos 342, 345
Patroklos, tomb of 403
— as hero-daimon 335
Patroos 410
Payne, Exve-439, 590, 301
— on primitive plurals 470
Pegasus receives Dionysos 315, 316
Peirithoés 526
Peisistr:
Peitho 60
Pelopium 213
Pelops and
— an eponym 217
— boiling of 24
a 25
a Lenates as Genethlioi, Herkeioi, Ktesioi,
Mychioi, Patréoi 300
Pentaple 319
Pentaploa 319
Penteteris 223, 224, 229, 231, 237
Pentheus 40, 41, 47, 48, 94, 99, 129,
344, 345, 441
— as giant 452
— earthborn 434
PERDRIZET, Pau 185°
Periodicity, importance of 439
Peripeteia 339, 342, 344, 345
Periphemos 287
Prerror and CHrprez 57?
Persae, Trilogy 347
Persephone 179
Persians, at Delos 192
— nature-worship of 445-6
Personality and individuality 469-77
Petelia tablet (Orphic) 464
Phaedra 26
Phaedrus 30, 32, 39
Phaistos 2, 5, 37°, 52, 158
Phalloi 266, 371
— in tombs 401°
Phallos 293, 383?
Pharmakos, Charila as 416
Pherophatta 419, 422
Philios and Philia 312
Philippeum 259
Philochoros 319
Philosophoumena 344
Philosophy arises from Religion 461
Phlius, omphalos at 384, 412
Phlya, Eros at 299
δδ0
Phoibe 387, 390
— as moon 388
Phoibos 387
— as newborn child 394
— sun-aspect of 388
Phorbas 220
Phrixos and Ram 450
Physcoa 2311
Physis reflects Themis 533
Phytalidae 319, 326
Phytalmios 171
Phytalos, tomb of 326
Phytomorphic gods 128
Phytomorphism 122
Phyton 311
Pick, primitive use of 423
Pickarp-CampripGE, A. 343
Picus 58, 60, 102, 104, 105, 109, 110
— and Faunus 106, 107, 108
— Martius 117
Pillar, sacrifice on 164
Pindar 33
— on δαίμων γενέθλιος 274
Pitaras 290
Pithoigia 253, 275-88, 294, 315
Pithos 275
Plataeans, yearly sacrifice by 375
Plato and initiation ceremonies 513 .
Plays, fragmentary epiphanies in 349, 350
Pleiades 96, 97
Plouton-Hades as old man 421
Ploutos 2844, 285
— and Hirene 315!
— as child 286, 287, 288, 420, 421
— Zeus as 297
Plurals, collective and selective 470-1
Point Barrow 64
Polias, temple of 266
Polis 484, 484}
Polyidos 293
Poseidon 92
— bulls of 163
— contest with Athena 171
Poutsen, F. 77}
Praisians sacrifice to sow 5
Praisos 3, 4
Pratinas 343
Praying-wheels 520
Pretiwitz, Dr 484, 183°
Priapos 2843, 3704
— as Titan 453
Proagon 360
Pro-logos, meaning of 359
Prologues, Dieterich on 359
— in Aischylus 360
— in Euripides 361, 362
— in Sophocles 361
Prometheus 3731, 386}
— and Okeanids 456
Prorrhésis 359
Prostaterios 276
Psychro 4
Index
Pyanepsia 320
Pythagoras ὅθ, 57, 60, 249+
— purification of 107
Python, slaying of 396, 399, 424-9
Queen Archon, marriage of 288°
Quéte 334
Quirinus 104
Race, for luck of the year 234
— of Virgins 226, 230, 233, 236
Rain birds 82
— makers 79
— storm as wedding 180
Rape of the Bride 219, 226
Rattle-gourd 78
Regeneration 34
Rernacu, 5. 90, 455?
— 1 7623, 812.872
Reincarnation 271, 299
— among central Australians 272,
273
— cycle of 274, 292, 293
Religion defined 62, 486
— and Art 486
— and Ethics 485
— intellectualism in 487
— Max Miiller on 488
RenpEL Harris, Dr J. R. 304
Renouveau of spring 339, 340
Resurrection at Easter 243, 254
Revinue, M. 29?
Rhea 9, 10, 13, 36, 37, 39, 61
Rhombos 14, 61
Ripceway, Prof. W. 311, 1082, 196},
212, 215, 237, 259, 2612, 3341,
341, 342
— on Dorians 408
— on Tragedy 3391
Rite de passage 20, 184, 290, 506-7
Ritual dance 341
— forms 341
Rivers, Dr W. H.R., on Social Structure
490?
Rozertson, D. 5. 95}
Rogertson SurrH, Prof. 28, 29
— on commensal meal 136
— on mythology 329
Roupe, E. 47!
Romulus and Remus 103
Roscor, J. 269?
RovuritepGE, Mr and Mrs 211
Rta 526, 527
RuSSELL, BERTRAND 534?
Rutuburi 112
Sackcloth 2094
Sacrament 118-57
Sacramental communion 162
Sacred 63
Sacred marriage 230, 237
Sacrifice 118-57
Index
Sacrifice as medium 137
— gift-theory of 134-5
— yearly, to heroes 373-6
Saga heroes 335
— Homeric 334-6, 339
Salamis 287
Salii 105, 193, 194-202, 242
Sallust, on Sacrifice 137
Salmonea 81?
Salmoneus 79, 80, 81, 109, 220, 223, 253
Samothrace 54
— mysteries of 464
Santayana, ΟΕ, 4787
Saturnalia 223, 224, 225, 251, 253
Satya 526
Satyr-play 343, 344
— in spring 182
Satyrs 14, 25, 30, 59, 182, 186, 344, 372
— at Anodos 420
— dance of 200
— with picks 348
Sauvastika and Swastika 526
Scuuttrz, W. 186?
Scuurtz, H. 192, 262, 272
Second birth 47
Segmentation of tribe 125
Seilenoi 25
Sekyon 373!
Seleukeia 58
Selloi 236, 389
Semele 33, 35, 38, 91, 168
— bringing up of 416, 418, 420, 423
— dream of 173%
— tree of 1781, 203
Semeleios 421
Semnae 2811, 282, 414
Septimius Severus 30
Sepulchral tablets 307-14
Seriphos, lobster in 129
Shent as head-dress of snake 278
Shield, as tool 86
— Mycenaean 77, 85, 88
Shiloh 29
Sibyl in Moon 389
Sileni 186
Silvia 103
Sisyphos 530
— as Titan 454
Situla 162
Skirophorion (month) 144, 172
Skiros 287
Sky-god 62, 63
Snake and dead man 268
— and household altar 302
— as life-daimon 271
— bodied nymphs 281
— born man 129
— clan 129
— daimon as collective representa-
tion 279
— eponymous hero as 267
— guardian of tree 431
557
Snake guardian of well 430
— household 267
— mana of 271
— twined amphora 304
Social structure, matrilinear 492-511
— — patriarchal 490
Sol 92
Solmissos 247
Solomon’s Runners 242
Solon 287
Sosipolis 1502, 283, 284, 285
— at Olympia 239, 258
— in Magnesia 241
Soul, A. E. Crawley on 473?
— Dr Tylor on 471
— individual 122
— Lévy-Bruhl on 473?
Sparta 36
— hero-reliefs 268
Spartoi, snake-blazon of 434
SpPENcER and GinuEN 534, 861
Sphagia 287, 287?
Sphinx 348
Spirit, functional 282
Spring 98
— festival 158-211
— spirit of 421
Squirrel, blue 112
Staphylodromoi 234, 255, 321
Stemmata 409
Stepterion 415, 424, 425-9
— meaning of 427
Srewart, Prof. J. A. 4792
Stichomuthia 363
Stone axes 56
Stones, holy 417
Stratis 300
Sruart, Ὁ. S. .494}
Stymphalos, sanctuary of Hera 180!
Styx 72, 73
Suggestion, collective 123
Sun calendar, moralities of 439
— and Moon marriage 200, 226, 228,
2312, 237
— and Thunder 524
— chariot of 524
— festivals at solstice 199
— god, as Titan 454
— god, Cretan 449
— god, young 395°
— races 220, 242
— wheel of 524
Suppliant Plays 352, 361
Suppliants at Sanctuary 342
Supplices, Trilogy 347, 357
— Prof. Murray on 3861-412
Swallow 97, 98
Swan 116
Swastika 525-6
Symbiosis 475
Synapses, inhibition of 479?
Tabu 73, 76, 90, 94, 373
-
558 Index
Tabu on tomb 404
Talos vase 226%
Tantalos, Feast of 243, 307}
— tomb of 401, 402, 403, 405
Tao 527
Tarahumares, danges of 111
Tattoo-marks, fawn 132, 133
— ivy-leaf 133
Taygetos 37
Teeth, knocking out of 272
Teiresias 99, 111
Telchines 27, 107
Telesphoros 381-4
— as new year 383
Tempe, flight to 425, 426
— laurel of 428
Tenos, Panagia of 389
Tereus, yearly sacrifice to 374
Terminus 92
Tetraskeles 525
Thalia 3722
Thallophoros 325
Thargelia 293, 321
Thebes 38
— Acropolis of 91
Themis 9, 28, 198, 480-535
— and agora 485
— and Physis 487, 490, 533
— and polis 484
— and Zeus 519
— 88 collective conscience 485
— 85 Earth 481
— as Ichnaios 481
— as mother of Horai 515
— as Titan 385, 387, 389, 394, 456
— cult of 480-1
— Dike and Horai 514-35
- etymology of 483
— in Homer 482
temple of 338
Dhemistes 483
Themistocles 154, 154?
Theoi and. Daimones 426
Theophanies in plays of Aischylus 357
— in plays of Euripides 352-7
— in plays of Sophocles 358, 359
Theophany 343-59
— in satyr play 423
Theopompos 291
Theoxenia 306
Thera 54
— precinct at 417
Theriomorphie gods 128
Theriomorphism 122
Thesauroi 400, 412
Theseus as hero-daimon 316-7
— in Hades 520
— ship of 318
— synoikia of 317
Thesmophoria 266, 275, 373
Thespesios, adventures of 388, 389, 390
Thespiae 297
Thespis 207, 343 45
Thessaly 81
Thestius, daughters of 371
Thiasos 46, 48, 49
Tuomeson, D’Arcy 1011
Thracians 61
Threnos 332, 334, 342, 345
Thriae 40
Throne 58, 62
Thunder axe 177
= ππτἢ iby
— bolt 58, 59, 61, 62
— drums 115
—. Epiphany 130
— god, Chinese 114
— mimic 61
— rites 62
stome 56, 61
em τ Τρ τς 56
‘Thunner spell’ 64
Thyestes 22, 248, 2512
Thyiades 40, 155, 416
Timarchos, experiences of 509-10
Timotheos 33
Tiora 102
Titaia 453
Titan 453, 454, 455
Titane 453
Titanes 17
Titanomachia 453
Titans 14, 15, 100, 453-61
— and Zagreus 248
Tithenidia 504
Tithorea, festival of booths at 4272
Tityas 453
Tityroi 25, 182, 420, 423
Tityros 182!
— goat-headed 368!
Tleptolemos as son 374
Toodaim 120
Tool, sanctity of 86
Tooth, as seed-corn 435
— knocking out of 435
Totem 119
— edible 123
— focus of mana 124
— soul 133
Totemism 118, 157, 215
— and epistemology 122, 131
— and individualism 127
— and non-differentiation 122
— in Greece 128
Totemistic thinking 122
Trachiniae 369
Tragoedia 32, 207
Treasuries 401
Tree and sky god 220
— King 107
— sacred 165, 166, 340
Trident mark 92, 170, 171, 175
Trieteris 223
Trinity, male 497
Triptolemos 286
Triskeles 525
Tritogeneia 499, 500
Tritopatores 499, 500
Trochilos 116
Trophoniads 511
Trophonios and Asklepios 508
— oracle of 282, 283, 508-14
Trozén, Hippolytos at 336, 337, 341
Truth 53
Trygaeus 445
Tucker, Prof. T. G. 413}
Turkey, dance of 112
Tyche 58, 241
— Agathe 312
— at Lebadeia 282
— carrying Ploutos 285
Tychon 284%, 3704
Tytor, E. B. 564, 823
— on gift sacrifice 135
Unkulunkulu 68
Usener, Dr H. 733, 92}, 341
Uzzah and Ark 455?
Van GeEnnepP 192, 20, 613
Vegetation spirits 215, 221, 236, 238
VERRALL, Dr A. W. 411, 48, 2925, 3691
— on Eumenides 387}
Vertu 674
Wace, A. 1743, 332
Wakings up 179
Wa-kon’-da 69, 70, 71, 73, 84, 85, 89, 91
Warve Fow er, W. 22°, 1771, 1961, 282,
3031
Water-carriers 173
Way of Man and Way of Nature 532
‘Weather’ 391
Wesster, H. 192, 26%, 273, 381, 541
Wenicer, Dr 171}
White-clay-men 15
WuitrEnHeaD, Dr A. N. 184}
Winz, 5. 771
Wivamowirz-MorLLenDorFF 56!
Winter, driving out of 197
Wiradthuri 18, 63
Witchetty grub 124
Wolf, she 103
Woodpecker 100, 101, 102, 103, 104,
105, 109, 110
— town 101
Winscu, R. 17+
Xenophanes 464
Xouthos 116
Year baby 16
— cycle 361
— feast 169, 185
— feast at Thera 417
— moon 189, 193
559
Year, new 188
— old, death of 323
— old and new 178
— spirit, death and rebirth of 342
— Sun 189
Yoga 72
Yumari 112
Zagreus 17, 18, 23, 51, 55, 56, 59, 62,
64, 156, 345
— mysteries of 14-6
— ritual of 247
Zakro 3
Zan 57
Zauber 82
Zelos 72
Zeus 1, 16, 35, 37, 39, 57, 60, 62, 108, 349
— Aphiktor 412
— Charitodotes 298
— Diktaios 4
— KEpikarpios 298
— KEpiteleios 312
— Hyetios 172, 173
— Hypatos 262
— Idaean 57, 107
— Kataibates 175
— Kretagenes 54°
— Kronian 11
— Ktesios 297, 298, 300, 368, 414,
447, 449
— Meilichios 298
— Morios 175
— Olbios 148, 156, 298, 368, 414, 447
— Olympios 147
— Oratrios 5
— Ouranian 373
— Peloros 459
— Philios 298, 312!
— Polieus 141, 144, 146, 152
— Sosipolis 150, 154
— Soter 283, 284, 294
— Teleios 298
— Adschylus on 386
— and Hades 300
— and Hera 179, 225, 230
— as Father 491
— as Homeric Trinity 501
— as Phratrios 501
— as Ploutos 298
— as sky god 174}, 491
— Athena and Apollo 501
— birth of 247
— birth-cave of 5
— bull-headed 448
— infant 285
— two jars of 298
Zoism 472, 475}
Zoroaster 75
Zrvan as Chronos 497
Zulus, reverence of serpents 269
Yunis 78
— sanctity of myth among 329
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