BIRTH-FEAST—NAMING THE CHILD.—NURSERY—NURSERY
TALES—SPARTAN FESTIVAL.
To quit, however, this melancholy topic: while the poor, as we have
seen, were driven by despair to imbrue their hands in the blood of their
offspring, their more wealthy neighbours celebrated the birth of a
child[373] with a succession of banquets and rejoicings. Of these, the
first was held on the fifth day from the birth, when took place the
ceremony called Amphidromia, confounded by some ancient authors with the
festival of the tenth day.[374] On this occasion the accoucheuse or the
nurse, to whose care the child was now definitively consigned,[375]
having purified her hands with water,[376] ran naked[377] with the
infant in her arms, and accompanied by all the other females of the
family, in the same state, round the hearth,[378] which was regarded as
the altar of Hestia, the Vesta of the Romans. By this ceremony the child
was initiated in the rites of religion and placed under the protection
of the fire goddess, probably with the same view that infants are
baptized among us.
Footnote 373:
More particularly that of a son.—Casaub. ad Theophr. Char. p. 307.
Footnote 374:
Sch. Aristoph. Lysist. 757.
Footnote 375:
Etym. Mag. 89. 54.
Footnote 376:
Suid. in v. t. i. p. 214. d.
Footnote 377:
Hesych. in. v. δρομιάφιον. Meurs. Græc. Fer. p. 20. Brunck, in
Aristoph. Av. 922.
Footnote 378:
Harpocrat. in v. Cf. not. Gronov. p. 26.
Meanwhile the passer-by was informed that a fifth-day feast was
celebrating within, by symbols suspended on the street-door, which, in
case of a boy, consisted in an olive crown; and of a lock of wool,
alluding to her future occupations, when it was a girl.[379] Athenæus,
apropos of cabbage, which was eaten on this occasion, as well as by
ladies “in the straw,”[380] as conducing to create milk, quotes a comic
description of the Amphidromia from a drama of Ephippos, which proves
they were well acquainted with the arts of joviality.
“How is it
No wreathed garland decks the festive door,
No savoury odour creeps into the nostrils
Since ’tis a birth-feast? Custom, sooth, requires
Slices of rich cheese from the Chersonese,
Toasted and hissing; cabbage too in oil,
Fried brown and crisp, with smothered breast of lamb.
Chaffinches, turtle-doves, and good fat thrushes
Should now be feathered; rows of merry guests
Pick clean the bones of cuttle-fish together,
Gnaw the delicious feet of polypi,
And drink large draughts of scarcely mingled wine.[381]”
Footnote 379:
Hesych. ap. Meurs. Græc. Fer. p. 20.
Footnote 380:
Potter, ii. 322.
Footnote 381:
Athen. ix. 10. Cf. Ludovic. Nonn. De Pisc. Esu. c. 7. p. 28.
A sacrifice[382] was likewise this day offered up for the life of the
child, probably to the god Amphidromos, first mentioned, and therefore
supposed to have been invented by Æschylus.[383] It has moreover been
imagined that the name was now imposed, and gifts were presented by the
friends and household slaves.[384]
Footnote 382:
Cf. Aristoph. Lys. 700. cum not. et schol.—Plaut. Truc. ii. 4. 69.
Footnote 383:
Semel. fr. 203. Well.
Footnote 384:
Meurs. Gr. Fer. p. 21.
But it was on the seventh day that the child generally received its
name,[385] amid the festivities of another banquet; though sometimes
this was deferred till the tenth.[386] The reason is supplied by
Aristotle.[387] They delayed the naming thus long, he says, because most
children that perish in extreme infancy die before the seventh day,
which being passed they considered their lives more secure. The eighth
day was chosen by other persons for bestowing the name, and, this
considered the natal day, was solemnized annually as the anniversary of
its birth, on which occasion it was customary for the friends of the
family to assemble together, and present gifts to the child, consisting
sometimes of the polypi and cuttle-fish[388] to be eaten at the feast.
However the tenth day[389] appears to have been very commonly observed.
Thus Euripides:[390]
“Say, who delighting in a mother’s claim
Mid tenth-day feasts bestowed the ancestral name?”
Footnote 385:
Alex. ab Alex. 99. a.
Footnote 386:
Harpocrat. _v._ Ἑβδομ. p. 92. Cf. Lomeier, De Lustrat. Vet. Gentil. c.
27. p. 327. sqq.
Footnote 387:
Hist. Anim. vii. 12. Bekk.
Footnote 388:
Suid. v. Ἀμφιδ. t. i. p. 214. d.
Footnote 389:
Isæus, Pyrrh. Hæred. § 5. Dem. Adv. Bœot. §§ 6, 7. Lys. in Harpocrat.
v. Ἀμφιδρομ. p. 19.
Footnote 390:
Ægei. Frag. i.
Aristophanes, too, on the occasion of naming his Bird-city, which a
hungry poet pretends to have long ago celebrated, introduces
Peisthetæros saying,
“What! have I not but now the sacrifice
Of the tenth day completed and bestowed
A name as on a child?”[391]
Footnote 391:
Aves, 922. seq.
Connected with this custom, there is a very good anecdote in Polyænos,
from which Meursius[392] infers that there existed among the Greeks
something like the office of sponsor. Jason, tyrant of Pheræ, most of
whose stratagems were played off against members of his own family, had
a brother named Meriones, extremely opulent, but to the last degree
close-fisted, particularly towards him. When at length a son was born to
Jason, he invited to the Nominalia many principal nobles of Thessaly,
and among others his brother Meriones, who was to preside over the
ceremonies. In these he was probably occupied the whole day, during
which, under pretence, apparently, of providing some choice game for his
guests, the tyrant went out for a few hours with his dogs and usual
followers. His real object, however, soon appeared. Making direct for
Pagasæ, where his brother’s castle stood, he stormed the place, and
seizing on Meriones’ treasures, to the amount of twenty talents,
returned in all speed to the banquet. Here, by way of showing his
fraternal consideration, he delegated to his brother the honour of
pouring forth the libations, and bestowing the name, which was the
father’s prerogative. But Meriones receiving from one of the tyrant’s
attendants a hint of what had taken place, called the boy “Porthaon,” or
the “Plunderer.”[393] At Athens the feast and sacrifice took place at
night, with much pomp, and all the glee which such an occasion was
calculated to inspire.[394]
Footnote 392:
Græc. Feriat. p. 22.
Footnote 393:
Polyæn. Strat. vi. i. 6.
Footnote 394:
Suid. v. Δεκάτην ἑστιάσαν, t. i. p. 654. c. d.
On the bestowing of the name Potter’s information is particularly full.
He is probably right, too, in his conjecture, that in most countries the
principal object of calling together so great a number of friends to
witness this ceremony was to prevent such controversies as might arise
when the child came out into the business of the world. But at Athens
the Act of Registration[395] rendered such witnesses scarcely necessary.
The right of imposing the name belonged, as hinted above, to the father,
who likewise appears to have possessed the power afterwards to alter it
if he thought proper. They were compelled to follow no exact precedent;
but the general rule resembled one apparently observed by nature, which,
neglecting the likeness in the first generation, sometimes reproduces it
with extraordinary fidelity in the second. Thus, the grandson inheriting
often the features, inherited also very generally the name of his
grandfather,[396] and precisely the same rule applied to women; the
granddaughter nearly always receiving her grandmother’s name.[397] Thus,
Andocides, son of Leagoras, bore the name of his grandfather; the father
and son of Miltiades were named Cimon; the father and son of Hipponicos,
Cleinias.[398] The orator Lysias formed an exception to this rule, his
grandfather’s name having been Lysanias.[399] In short, though there
existed no law upon the subject, yet ancient and nearly invariable
custom operated with the force of law.[400]
Footnote 395:
Harpocrat. v. Μεῖον, Poll. iii. 53. Schol. ad Aristoph. Ran. 810.
Etym. Mag. 533. 37. Meurs. Lect. Att. iii. 1.
Footnote 396:
Palmer, Exercit. p. 754. Sluiter. Lect. Andocid. c. i.
Footnote 397:
Isæus de Pyrrh. Hæred. § 5.
Footnote 398:
Aristoph. Av. 284.
Footnote 399:
Plat. Rep. l. i. t. vi. p. 9.
Footnote 400:
Dem. c. Macart. § 17. Taylor, Lect. Lysiac. c. 5.
The names of children were often in remote antiquity derived from some
circumstance attending their birth, or in the history of their parents.
Sometimes, too, their own deeds, as in the case of modern titles,
procured them a name; or perhaps some misfortune which befell them.
Thus, Marpissa, in Homer, being borne away[401] by Apollo, obtained the
name of Halcyone, because her mother, like the Halcyon, was inconsolable
for the loss of her offspring.[402] Scamandrios, son of Hector, was
denominated Astyanax, because his father was τοῦ ἄστεος ἄναξ, “the
defender of the city;”[403] and Odysseus, metamorphosed by the Romans
into Ulysses, is supposed to have been so called τοῦ ἄστεος ἄναξ διὰ τὸ
ὀδυσσέσθαι τοῦ Αὐτολυκου, from the anger of Autolychos.[404] Again, the
son of Achilles, at first called Pyrrhos, as our second William, Rufus,
from the colour of his hair, afterwards obtained the name of
Neoptolemos, “the youthful warrior,” from his engaging at a very early
age in the siege of Troy. It came, in aftertimes, to be considered
indecorous for persons of humble condition to assume the names of heroic
families. Thus, the low flatterer Callicrates, at the court of Ptolemy
the Third, was thought to be audacious because he bestowed upon his son
and daughter the names of Telegonos and Anticleia, and wore the effigy
of Odysseus in his ring, which appeared to be claiming kindred with that
illustrious chief. In fact, to prevent the profanation of revered names,
the law itself forbade them to be adopted by slaves or females of bad
character,[405] though, in defiance of its enactments, we find there
were hetairæ, who derived their appellation from the sacred games of
Greece, Nemeas, Isthmias, and Pythionica.[406]
Footnote 401:
See in Winkel. iii. p. 248, an account of a picture representing this
transaction.
Footnote 402:
Il. i. 552. seq.
Footnote 403:
Potter, ii. 225.
Footnote 404:
Odyss. τ. 406. sqq.
Footnote 405:
Athen. xiii. 51.
Footnote 406:
Anim. ad Athen. t. xii. p. 170.
But of this enough: we now proceed to the management and education of
children, beginning with their earliest infancy. In old times the women
of Greece always suckled their own offspring, and for the performance of
this office they were excellently adapted by nature,[407] since they had
no sooner become mothers than their breasts filled so copiously with
milk than it not only flowed through the nipple, but likewise transpired
through the whole bosom. On the little derangements of the system
peculiar to nurses the Greeks entertained many superstitious opinions;
for instance, they conceived those thread-like indurations which
sometimes appear in the breasts to be caused by swallowing hairs, which
afterwards come forth with the milk, on which account the disorder was
called Trichiasis.[408] The nourishment supplied by mothers so robust
and lactiferous was often so rich and abundant as, like over-feeding, to
cause spasms and convulsions, supposed to be most violent when they
happened during the full moon, and began in the back. The usual remedy
among nurses would appear to have been wine, since Aristotle,[409] in
speaking of the disorder, observes that white, particularly if diluted
with water, is less injurious than red, though even from the former he
thought it better to abstain. The administering of aperient medicines
and the absence from everything that could cause flatulence, he
considered the only safe treatment. Nurses, however, sometimes placed
much reliance on the brains of a rabbit.[410]
Footnote 407:
When the case happened to be otherwise the remedies recommended by
physicians were numerous, among which was the halimos, a prickly shrub
found growing along the northern shores of Crete.—Dioscor. i. 120.
Tournefort. i. 44.
Footnote 408:
Arist. Hist. An. vii. 10. Foës. Œconom. Hippoc. v. Τριχίασις.
Footnote 409:
Hist. An. vii. 11.
Footnote 410:
Dioscor. ii. 21.
In Plato’s Republic the nurses were to live apart in a distinct quarter
of the city, and suckle indiscriminately all the children that were to
be preserved; no mother being permitted to know her own child.[411]
Footnote 411:
Plat. Rep. v. t. vi. p. 236.—The desire of the philosopher was, that
the people, or the state, should be regarded as the father of the
child. Among our ancestors illegitimate children were denominated
“sons of the people,” which was then thought equivalent to being the
sons of nobody. Hence the following distich:—
Cui pater est populus, pater est sibi nullus et omnis,
Cui pater est populus, non habet ipse patrem.
Fortescue, Laud. Legg.
Angl. c. 40.
Every one must have observed, as well as Plato,[412] that children are
no sooner born than they exhibit unequivocal signs of passion and
anger, in the moderating and directing of which consists the chiefest
difficulty of education. Most men, through the defect of nature or
early discipline, live long before they acquire this mastery, which
many never attain at all. Generally, however, where it is possessed,
much may certainly be attributed to that training which begins at the
birth, so that of all the instruments employed in the[413] forming of
character, the nurse is probably the most important. Of this the
ancients generally appear to have been convinced, and most of all the
Spartans and Athenians. The Lacedæmonian nurses, on whom the force of
discipline had been tried, enjoyed a high reputation throughout
Greece, and were particularly esteemed at Athens.[414] They no doubt
deserved it. To them may be traced the first attempt to dispense with
those swathes and bandages which in other countries confined the
limbs, and impeded the movements of infants, and by their skilful and
enlightened treatment, combined with watchfulness and tender
solicitude, they are said to have preserved their little charges from
those distortions so common among children. But their cares extended
beyond the person. They aimed at forming the manners, regulating the
temper, laying the foundation of virtuous habits, at sowing in short
the seeds, which in after life, might ripen into a manly, frank, and
generous character. In the matter of food, in the regulating of which,
as Locke confesses, there is much difficulty, the Spartan nurses acted
up to the suggestions of the sternest philosophy, accustoming the
children under their charge, to be content with whatever was put
before them, and to endure occasional privations without murmuring.
Over the fear of ghosts too they triumphed. Empusa and the
Mormolukeion, and all those other hideous spectres which childhood
associates with the idea of darkness, yielded to the discipline of the
Spartan nurse.[415] Her charge would remain alone or in the dark,
without terror, and the same stern system, which overcame the first
offspring of superstition, likewise subdued the moral defects of
peevishness, frowardness, and the habit of whining and mewling, which
when indulged in render children a nuisance to all around them. No
wonder therefore, these Doric disciplinarians were everywhere in
request. At Athens it became fashionable among the opulent to employ
them, and Cleinias, as is well known, placed under the care of one of
these she-pædagogues that Alcibiades, whose ambitious character, to be
curbed by no restraints of discipline or philosophy, proved the ruin
of his country and the scourge of Greece.[416]
Footnote 412:
Repub. i. 315. Stallb.—On the harshness and severity of nurses,
Teles remarks in that curious picture of human life, which he has
drawn quite in the spirit of the melancholy Jaques. Stob. Floril.
Tit. 98. 72.
Footnote 413:
Cf. Cramer de Educ. Puer. ap. Athen. 9. Odyss. β. 361. seq.
Terpstra, Antiq. Homer. 122. seq.
Footnote 414:
Plut. Alcib. § 1.
Footnote 415:
Or if not, the Spartan legislator had recourse to other expedients
for extirpating these superstitious terrors in after years. It being
customary among the Laconians to drink moderately in the syssitia,
says Plutarch, they went home without a torch, it not being lawful
to make use of a light on these or any other occasions, in order
that they might be accustomed to walk by night and in darkness
boldly, and without fear. Instit. Lacon. § 3.
Footnote 416:
Plut. Lycurg. § 16.
Plato, however, while framing at will an imaginary system, and though
inclined upon the whole to laconise, adheres, in some respects, to the
customs of his country, and ordains that infants be confined by
swaddling bands till two years old. From the mention of this age, it
may be inferred that children commonly did not walk much earlier at
Athens, which is the case in the East, as we may learn from the story
of Ala-ed-deen Abushamet. Plato would also have nurses to be vigorous
and robust women, much inclined to frequent the temples, in order,
probably, to introduce into the minds of their charges early
impressions of religion, and to stroll about the fields and public
gardens until the children could run alone; and even then, and until
they were three years old, he urged the necessity of their being
frequently carried, to prevent crooked legs and malformed ankles. But
because all this might press hard on one nurse, several were employed,
as among ourselves,[417] and a kind of Nursery Governess overlooked
the whole. The Gerula or under-nurse was, in later times, the person
upon whom fell the principal labour of bearing the infant about; but
in remoter ages the Greeks, more particularly their royal and noble
families, employed in this capacity a Baioulos[418] or nurse-father,
who, as in the case of Phœnix, was sometimes himself of illustrious
birth. Cheiron, too, the Pelasgian mountain prince, performed this
sacred office for the son of his friend Peleus.
Footnote 417:
Plat. de Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 5. Pignor. de Serv. p. 185.
Footnote 418:
Pignor. de Serv. p. 186. seq.
Our readers, we trust, will not be reluctant to enter a Greek
nursery,[419] where the mother, whatever might be the number of her
assistants, generally suckled her own children. Their cradles were of
various forms, some of which like our own required rocking,[420] while
others were suspended like sailors’ hammocks from the ceiling, and
swung gently to and fro when they desired to pacify the child or lull
it to sleep:[421] as Tithonos is represented in the mythology to have
been suspended in his old age.[422] Other cradles there were in the
shape of little portable baskets wherein they were carried from one
part of the harem to another.[423] It is probable, too, that as in the
East the children of the opulent were rocked in their cradles wrapped
in coverlets of Milesian wool.
Footnote 419:
See in Winkelmann, vignette to l. iv. ch. 3. a view of an ancient
nursery, where the mother, the pædagogue, the nurse, &c. are engaged
in the work of education, t. i. p. 414. Cf. Max. Tyr. Diss. iv. p.
49. Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 713.
Footnote 420:
Pignor. de. Serv. p. 186.
Footnote 421:
Schweigh. Animadv. in Athen. vi. 74.
Footnote 422:
Eudoc. ap. Villois. Anecdot. Græc. t. i. p. 396. Tzetz. ad Lyc. v.
16.
Footnote 423:
Mus. Real. Borbon. t. i. pl. 3.
Occasionally in Hellas,[424] as everywhere else, the nurse’s milk
would fail, or be scanty, when they had recourse to a very original
contrivance to still the infant’s cries; they dipped a piece of sponge
in honey which was given it to suck.[425] It was probably under
similar circumstances that children were indulged in figs; the Greeks
entertaining an opinion that this fruit greatly contributed to render
them plump and healthy. They had further a superstition that by
rubbing fresh figs upon the eyes of children they would be preserved
from ophthalmia.[426]
Footnote 424:
It was even then remarked that sucking children teethe much better
than such as are dry nursed.—Aristot. de Gen. Anim. v. 8. Hist.
Anim. vii. 10.
Footnote 425:
Sch. Arist. Acharn. 439.
Footnote 426:
Athen. iii. 15.
The Persians attributed the same preventive power to the petals of the
new-blown rose.[427] When a child was wholly or partly dry-nursed, the
girl who had charge of it would under pretence of cooling its pap,
commonly made of fine flour of spelt,[428] put the spoon into her own
mouth, swallow the best part of the nourishment, and give the refuse
to the infant, a practice attributed by Aristophanes to Cleon, who
swallowed, he says, the best of the good things of the state himself,
and left the residue to the people.[429]
Footnote 427:
Geopon. xi. 18.
Footnote 428:
Dioscor. ii. 114.
Footnote 429:
Equit. 712. Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 326.
All the world over the singing of the nurse has been proverbial. Music
breathes its sweetest notes around our cradles. The voice of woman
soothes our infancy and our age, and in Greece, where every class of
the community had its song, the nurse naturally vindicated one to
herself.[430] This sweetest of all melodies—
“Redolent of joy and youth”
was technically denominated Katabaukalesis, of which scraps and
fragments only, like those of the village song which lingered in the
memory of Rousseau, have come down to us. The first verse of a Roman
nursery air, which still, Pignorius[431] tells us, was sung in his
time by the mothers of Italy, ran thus:—
“Lalla, Lalla; dorme aut lacte.
Lalla, Lalla; sleep or suck.”
Footnote 430:
Ilgen. de Scol. Poes. p. xxvi. Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 204. seq.
Footnote 431:
De Serv. p. 186. seq. Cf. Athen. xiv. 10.
The Sicilian poet, whose pictures of the ancient world are still
so fresh and fragrant, has bequeathed to us a Katabaukalesis of
extreme beauty and brevity which I have here paraphrastically
translated:[432]—
“Sleep ye, that in my breast have lain,
The slumber sweet and light,
And wake, my glorious twins, again
To glad your mother’s sight.
O happy, happy be your dreams,
And blest your waking be,
When morning’s gold and ruddy beams
Restore your smiles to me.”[433]
Footnote 432:
A nurse’s lay prevalent among our own ancestors may not inaptly find
a place here:
“Now suck, child, and sleep, child, thy mother’s own joy,
Her only sweet comfort to drown all annoy;
For beauty, surpassing the azurèd sky,
I love thee, my darling, as ball of mine eye.”
D’Israeli, Amenities of
Literature ii. 287.
Footnote 433:
Theoc. Eidyll. 24. 7. sqq.
The philosopher Chrysippos[434] considered it of importance to
regulate the songs of nurses, and Quintilian,[435] with a quaint but
pardonable enthusiasm, would have the boy who is designed to be an
orator placed under the care of a nurse of polished language and
superior mind. He observes,[436] too, that children suckled and
brought up by dumb nurses, will remain themselves dumb, which would
necessarily happen had they no other person with whom to converse.
When the infant was extremely wakeful the soothing influence of the
song was heightened by the aid of little timbrels and rattles hung
with bells.
Footnote 434:
Quintil. i. 10.
Footnote 435:
Instit. Orat. i. 1.
Footnote 436:
Quintil. Inst. Orat. l. x. c. i. Herod. ii. 2.
A very characteristic anecdote is told of Anacreon apropos of
nurses.[437] A good-humoured wench with a child in her arms happening
one day to be sauntering _more nutricum_, through the Panionion, or
Grand Agora of Ionia, encountered the Teïan poet, who returning from
the Bacchic Olympos, found the streets much too narrow for him, and
went reeling hither and thither as if determined to make the most of
his walk. The nurse, it is to be presumed, felt no inclination to
dispute the passage with him; but Anacreon attracted, perhaps, by her
pretty face, making a timely lurch, sent both her and her charge
spinning off the pavement, at the same time muttering something
disrespectful against “the brat.” Now, for her own part, the girl felt
no resentment against him, for she could see which of the divinities
was to blame; but loving, as a nurse should, her boy, she prayed that
the poet might one day utter many words in praise of him whom he had
so rudely vituperated; which came to pass accordingly, for the infant
was the celebrated Cleobulos, whose beauty the Teïan afterwards
celebrated in many an ode.[438]
Footnote 437:
See in the Mus. Cortonens. pl. 35. the figure of a nurse bearing the
infant Bacchos.
Footnote 438:
Max. Tyr. Diss. xi. p. 132.
Traces of the remotest antiquity still linger in the nursery. The word
baby, which we bestow familiarly on an infant, was with little
variation, in use many thousand years ago among the Syrians, in whose
nursery dialect _babia_[439] had the same signification. _Tatta_, too,
_pappa_ and _mamma_[440] were the first words lisped by the children
of Hellas. And from various hints dropped by ancient authors, it seems
clear that the same wild stories and superstitions that still flourish
there haunted the nursery of old. The child was taught to dread Empusa
or Onoskelis or Onoskolon,[441] the monster with one human foot and
one of brass, which dwelt among the shades of night and glided through
dusky chambers and dismal passages to devour “naughty children.” The
fables which filled up this obscure part of Hellenic mythology, were
scarcely less wild than those the Arabs tell about their Marids, their
Efreets, and their Jinn; for Empusa, the phantom minister of
Hecate,[442] could assume every various form of God’s creatures,
appearing sometimes as a bull, or a tree, or an ass, or a stone, or a
fly, or a beautiful woman.[443] Shakspeare, having caught, perhaps,
some glimpse of this superstition, or inventing in a kindred spirit,
attributes a similar power of transformation to his mischievous elf in
the Midsummer Night’s Dream, located on Empusa’s native soil.
“I’ll follow you, I’ll lead you about, around,
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through briar.
Sometimes a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometimes a fire,
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire at every turn.”
Footnote 439:
Phot. Biblioth. 31. l. 11. Menage shrewdly supposes Baby, Babble,
&c. to have been derived from Babel.—D’Israeli, Amenities of
Literature, i. 5.
Footnote 440:
Pignor. de Serv. p. 187. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 1365.—Pac. 119.
Footnote 441:
Lil. Gyrald. Synt. xii. Hist. Deor. 361 seq. Cf. Lucian. Ver. Hist.
lib. 2 § 46. This spectre was said to glide before the sight of
persons celebrating the rites of initiation, and therefore the
mother of Æschines who performed a part in the rites, and also
appeared to the initiated was, with much bad taste, called Empusa by
Demosthenes.—De Coronâ, § § 41. 79. Adam Littleton in his Cambridge
Dictionary supposes this to have been her real name, which, however,
was Glaucis or Glaucothea. Stock. and Wunderl. ad loc. Cf. Harpoc.
in. v. Sch. Aristoph. Concion. 1056. Ran. 293, 294. ὁρᾲς τὸν
Αἰσχινην ὅς τυμπανιστρίας υἱὸς ἠν. Lucian. Somn. § 12.
Footnote 442:
This goddess was also known by the name of Artemis Phosphoros.
Aristoph. Concion. 444 et schol.
Footnote 443:
Aristoph. Ran. 293. Epicharm. ap. Nat. Com. p. 854. See also Sch.
Apol. Rhod. iii. 478. iv. 247.
It was this spectral being that was said to appear to those who
performed the sacrifices to the dead, to men overwhelmed with
misfortune,[444] and travellers in remote and dismal roads; as
happened to the companions of Apollonios of Tyana who, in journeying
on a bright moonlight night, were startled by the appearance of
Empusa, which having stood twice or thrice in their way, suddenly
vanished.[445] To protect themselves against this demon the
superstitious were accustomed to wear about them a piece of jasper,
either set in a ring, or suspended from the neck.[446]
Footnote 444:
Meurs. Lect. Att. iii. 17.
Footnote 445:
Philost. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. l. ii. c. 2.
Footnote 446:
Cf. De Boot, De Lap. p. 251. sqq. on the properties and virtues of
this stone.
The Lamia, too, fierce and beautiful, the ancestress of our “White
ladies,” and of the Katakhanas or Vampire of the modern Greeks, roamed
through solitary places to terrify, delude, or destroy good folks, big
or little, who might lose their way amid moonlit crags or shores made
white with bones and sea-shells. They loved to relate “around the fire
o’ nights,” how Lamia had once been a beautiful woman caressed and
made the mother of a fair son by Zeus; how Hera through jealousy had
destroyed the boy; and how, thereupon Lamia took to the bush and
devoted her wretched immortality to the destroying of other women’s
children.[447] According to another form of the tradition there were
many Lamiæ, so called from having capacious jaws, inhabiting the
Libyan coast,[448] somewhere about the Great Syrtis, in the midst of
sand hills, rocks, and wastes of irreclaimable aridity. Formed above
like women of surpassing beauty, they terminated below in serpents.
Their voice was like the hissing of an adder, and whatever approached
them they devoured.[449]
Footnote 447:
Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 1035. Philost. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. iv. 25.
Footnote 448:
Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 1035.
Footnote 449:
Lil. Gyrald. Hist. Deor. Synt. xv. 447. seq.
Another race of wild and grotesque spirits were the Kobaloi,[450]
companions of Dionysos, who doubtless subsist still in our woods and
forests under the name of goblins and hobgoblins. Our Elves and Trolls
and Fairies appear likewise to belong to the same brood, though in
these northern latitudes, they have become less mischievous and more
romantic, delighting the eyes of the wayfarers by their frolics and
gambols, instead of devouring him.
“Fairy elves,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest side,
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course; they on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear,
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.”
Footnote 450:
Schol. Aristoph. Plut. 279.
Though, as we have seen, weak children were unscrupulously sacrificed
at Sparta, they still made offerings to the gods in favour of the
strong. The ceremony took place annually during certain festivals,
denominated Tithenidia,[451] when, in a moment of hospitality, they
not only made merry themselves, but overlooked their xenelasia, and
entertained generously all such strangers as happened to be present.
The banquet given on this occasion was called Kopis, and, in
preparation for it, tents were pitched on the banks of the Tiasa near
the temple of Artemis Corythalis. Within these, beds formed of heaps
of herbs were piled up and covered with carpets. On the day of the
festival the nurses proceeded thither with the male children in their
arms, and, presenting them to the goddess, offered up as victims a
number of sucking pigs. In the feast which ensued loaves baked in an
oven, in lieu of the extemporary cake, were served up to the guests.
Choruses of Corythalistriæ or dancing girls, likewise performed in
honour of the goddess; and in some places persons, called Kyrittoi, in
wooden masks, made sport for the guests.[452] Probably it may have
been on occasions such as this that the nurses, like her in Romeo and
Juliet, gave free vent to their libertine tongues, and indulged in
those appellations which the tolerant literature of antiquity has
preserved.[453]
Footnote 451:
Athen. iv. 16.
Footnote 452:
Meurs. Græc. Fer. 261. seq.
Footnote 453:
Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. 161.
When children were to be weaned, they spread, as the moderns do,
something bitter over the nipple,[454] that the young republican might
learn early how—
“Full in the fount of joy’s delicious springs
Some bitter o’er the flower its bubbling venom flings.”
Footnote 454:
Athen. vi. 51.