In the remains of the earliest Greek poetry we are met by a
striking contrast. As Mr. Lang has told us, ‘Homer presents to the
anthropologist the spectacle of a society which will have nothing to
do with anthropology.’ By Homer of course Mr. Lang means the _Iliad_
and the _Odyssey_; and we may add to those poems a stream of heroic
tradition which runs more or less clearly through most of our later
literature, and whose spirit is what we call classic, Homeric, or
Olympian.
But there is also in the earliest epic tradition another stratum,
of which this Olympian character does not hold. A stratum full of
the remains, and at times even betraying the actuality, of those
‘beastly devices of the heathen’ which are dear to the heart of
us anthropologists--if a mere Greek scholar may venture to class
himself among even amateur anthropologists: ceremonies of magic and
purification, beast-worship, stone-worship, ghosts and anthropomorphic
gods, traces of the peculiar powers of women both as ‘good medicine’
and as titular heads of the family, and especially a most pervading and
almost ubiquitous memory of Human Sacrifice.
This stratum is represented by Hesiod and the Rejected Epics--I mean
those products of the primitive saga-poetry which were not selected for
recitation at the Panathenaea (or the unknown Ionian archetype of the
Panathenaea), and which consequently fell into neglect--by the Orphic
literature, by a large element in tragedy, most richly perhaps by the
antiquarian traditions preserved in Pausanias, and in the hostile
comments of certain Christian writers, such as Clement and Eusebius.
Now the first thing for the historian to observe about this non-Homeric
stratum is this: that non-Homeric is by no means the same thing as
post-Homeric. We used to be taught that it was. We used to be taught
that Homer was, practically speaking, primitive: that we started
from a pure epic atmosphere and then passed into an age of romantic
degradation. The extant remains of the non-Homeric poems frequently
show in their form, and sometimes even in their content, definite
signs of presupposing the _Iliad_, just as the _Iliad_ here and there
shows signs of presupposing them; and it is not until recently that
we have been able to understand properly the nature and the method of
composition of an ancient Traditional Book. I will not go into that
point in detail here. Even supposing that the _Cypria_, as a poem,
could definitely be called ‘later’ than the _Iliad_, it is enough to
say that a later literary whole may often contain an older kernel or
a more primitive mass of material, and in the case of the non-Homeric
saga-poems it is fairly clear that they do so.
Two arguments will suffice. First the argument from analogy. Few
anthropologists, with the knowledge now at our command, will regard the
high, austere, knightly atmosphere of the _Iliad_ as primitive
when compared with that of Hesiod. In the second place, a great
proportion of our anthropological material is already to be found in
prehistoric Crete. The an-iconic worship, the stones, the beasts, the
pillars, and the ouranian birds: the great mother goddess of Anatolia,
the human sacrifices, and the royal and divine bull. I speak under
correction from those who know the Cretan finds better than I; but to
me it seems that there are many bridges visible from Crete to Hesiod or
Eumelus or even Pausanias; but the gulf between Crete and Homer seems,
in certain places, to have no bridge.
Thus the later literary whole contains the more primitive modes of
thought, the earlier religion.
Now this fact in itself, though it may be stated in different ways, is
not much disputed among scholars. But the explanations of the fact are
various. That which seems to me much the most probable is the theory
of Expurgation. As Mr. Lang seems not quite to have understood what I
tried to say about this in my _Rise of the Greek Epic_, I will restate
it in this way: We know that the great mass of saga-poetry began to be
left on one side and neglected from about the eighth century on; and we
find, to judge from our fragments, that it remained in its semi-savage
state. Two poems, on the contrary, were selected at some early time for
public recitation at the solemn four-yearly meeting of ‘all Ionians’,
and afterwards of ‘all Athenians’. The poems were demonstrably still in
a fluid condition; and the intellect of Greece was focussed upon them.
This process lasted on through the period of that great movement which
raised the shores of the Aegean from a land of semi-savages to the
Hellas of Thales, of Aeschylus, and of Euripides. And we find,
naturally, that amid all the colour of an ideal past, in which these
two epics, like all other epics, have steeped their story, there has
been a gradual but drastic rejection of all the uglier and uncleaner
elements. That is a very broad statement; it omits both the evidence
and the additional causes and qualifications. But it serves to explain
why I treat the non-Homeric sagas as representing more faithfully the
primitive pre-Hellenic habits of thought, the mere slough out of which
Hellas rose.
Now to one lecturing on Anthropology in Homer, the difficulty is to
find enough material. In the case of the early saga outside Homer, the
difficulty is only what to choose and where to stop.
One might begin by discussing the remnants of primitive secret
societies. The remains are fairly rich. Mr. Webster, in his instructive
book,[41] has traced the normal genesis of these bodies which exercise
such an enormous influence over savage life. The first stage he takes
to be the ordinary system of ordeals and puberty rites through which
all males of the tribe have to pass before they can be admitted as full
men. The ordeals of the Arunta and of the various Red Indian tribes
are familiar to most of us. These ceremonies are often involved in a
good deal both of mystery and of charlatanry. The youths initiated,
for instance, sometimes are supposed to die and be born again. The
process is secret. The women of the tribe are kept carefully away. The
neighbourhood is filled with the warning sound of the Rhombos or
Bull-roarer--that ‘whirring of immortal things’ which Hesiod perhaps
means when he speaks of the air resounding ῥιπᾖ ὑπ’ ἀθανάτων.[42]
The next stage begins when this initiation ceremony ceases to be
compulsory. This sometimes depends on the separation of the War Chief
from the medicine-man or the elders. For of course the initiation
ceremonies are specially the department of the last named. In the
third stage we find a full-flown Secret Society. The initiated form a
definite body and work together for the maintenance of such conduct as
is pleasing to the gods and themselves.
Take the case of Dukduk, a powerful society in the Bismarck
Archipelago, north-east of New Guinea. I will not dwell on its power
nor on the advantages which accrue to its worshippers. But I cite from
Mr. Webster an eyewitness’s account of an epiphany of Dukduk.
Dukduk arrives about six times a year, and always on the day of the new
moon. His arrival is announced a month beforehand by the Old Men--the
Gerontes. During that month great quantities of food are made ready for
Dukduk, and are ‘taken care of’ by the Old Men, his votaries. The day
before the epiphany all women disappear from sight. It is death to them
to look on the divine being. Before daybreak all the males of the tribe
assemble on the beach, most of the young men looking frightened. At
the first streak of dawn singing and drum-beating is heard out at sea,
and as soon as there is enough light five or six canoes are seen at a
distance, lashed together and with a platform built over them. On this
platform are two Dukduks, dancing and uttering shrill cries. They are
got up like gigantic cassowaries, some ten feet high, surmounted by a
grotesque human mask. At least, says Mr. Romilly, the witness whom I
cite, the body looks much like the body of the cassowary, but the head
is like nothing but the head of a Dukduk. The canoes make the beach.
The natives fall back in apprehension, for if Dukduk is touched he
frequently tomahawks the offender on the spot. They proceed through the
settlement, always dancing and screaming, to the secret house which
has been prepared for them in the bush. They stay about a fortnight.
They beat people a good deal, and exact money from suitable sources,
especially plundering the women; if any one has shown disrespect of
any sort to any member of the Dukduk society, not to speak of Dukduk
himself, the punishment is swift and terrible.
Now Dukduk, like Egbo and Mumbo-Jumbo, is an anti-feminist, whereas
Dionysus was essentially worshipped by women. There are several West
African parallels to this. The Bundu of the Mendi country is a very
powerful woman‘s society.[43] But otherwise is not the whole of this
story curiously reminiscent of the Dionysus myths, as they occur, for
instance, in the early Corinthian epos attributed to Eumelos? In his
native Thrace, very possibly, everybody was initiated to Dionysus; but
in Greece his worshippers form a special society. Dionysus arrives in
a ship from unknown seas: when he moves inland this ship is set bodily
upon a wagon.[44] He makes his epiphany at various places, claiming
worship for himself and honours for his worshippers. In the regular
propagandist legend that comes down to us, Lycurgus perished for wrongs
done to the Bacchic society and the god himself. He ‘sought to stay the
women possessed of god and the Bacchic fire’.[45] He smote or drove into
the sea Dionysus himself and his Nurses.[46] The same with Pentheus. In
the actual ritual, we can have little doubt, a man personated Dionysus,
exactly as a man personates the Dukduk or Egbo or Mumbo-Jumbo. And
presumably, in just the same way, the uninitiated, as Mungo Park says,
‘were so ignorant, or at least were obliged to pretend to be so,’ as to
take the figure on the ship for a divine being.
The Mysteries are all intimately connected with Secret Societies. The
Demeter mystery has an epiphany in it; it has the arrival of Demeter
at Eleusis; it has the Rhombos or Bull-roarer and the exclusion of the
uninitiated. And, a sign perhaps of declining influence in this actual
world, it professes, like many of these societies, to do wonderful
things in the next.
There are, to my mind, traces in prehistoric Greece of another kind of
secret society, resembling the Human Leopards or Human Lions of West
Africa. I must refer here to the long expected book of my friend Mr.
Penmorlan Maine on Werewolves. But, to give the mere outlines of the
subject, the members of these societies are apt to turn, at certain
seasons, into leopards or lions, and then kill human beings in a
leopard-like or lion-like way. Their object is partly to obtain human
fat for ‘medicine’, partly to remove or discourage their enemies. Sir
H. H. Johnston[47] tells of a series of murders committed by an old
man, who concealed himself in long grass and leaped out on solitary
travellers. He killed them and then mutilated the bodies. He confessed
the murders freely, but explained that he at times turned into a
lion, and had to act as such.[48] The leopard societies have special
three-pronged forks or gloves with knives at the end to imitate the
wound of a leopard’s claw. And I have seen a long club ending in
claws like a wild beast’s, which I suspect had the same purpose. My
father-in-law bought it in Khartoum from a negro from the south, who
professed not to know what it was. He said it was a ‘fantasia’--as no
doubt it was.
To take a particular instance, the mode of initiation in the Sherbro
leopard society strongly recalls certain pre-Hellenic myths. The
society chooses some stranger and asks him to a dinner at which human
flesh is secretly mixed among the other food. At the end of the meal
they reveal to him what he has eaten, and in proof (I think) show him
the hands, and sometimes the head, of the murdered human being. He has
shared the leopard feast, and is now a leopard.[49]
Was it not exactly like this that Atreus kept the hands and feet of the
murdered children apart, hidden with a cloth, and at the end of the
feast removed the cloth to show Thyestes what he had eaten? Lykaon too,
though his name can scarcely be derived from λύκος, turned into a wolf
because he had ‘sacrificed a child on the altar of Zeus Lykaios’. As
he himself can scarcely be different from Zeus Lykaios, this must
originally have implied some cannibal act. And you will remember that
ever afterwards in the ritual of Zeus Lykaios legend said that one
piece of human flesh was mixed up with the rest of the sacrificial
meat, and the man who unknowingly tasted that bit was doomed to turn
into a wolf.[50]
There are the burning questions of totems and of matriarchy; there is
Earth-magic, there is Purification, there is Fetichism: there are many
other marks of ‘the Religions of the Lower Culture’ to be found in the
ancient pre-Hellenic myths. But I must turn to the special point which
I wish to illustrate in the remainder of this lecture.
I wish to deal with a most familiar part of the subject, the Divine
King, or, as I prefer to call him, the Medicine-King, and then to apply
the results which we reach to the most obvious remnant of non-Homeric
poetry that has come down to us, the Theogony of Hesiod.
We all know about this medicine-king. If we like we can call him
divine. On his force and his _mana_--what Hesiod, I venture to suggest,
calls his κράτος τε βία τε--depends the welfare of his people, in the
way of rain and thunderstorms, of abundance of game, of crops, of
success in war. He also affects floods, earthquake, and pestilence. If
he suffers in any way, if his _mana_ is weakened, his whole people
suffers and is weakened too. Consequently he is encouraged and kept
strong as long as possible; if he shows any weakness, he must be got
rid of and a better man found to take his place. There seem to be three
main methods. Either he is set aside periodically, at the end of five
years, or nine years, or the like; or he is quietly deposed when he
shows signs of age, like Peleus, Oineus, Aison, in the legends; or,
and this is our main subject to-day, when some one else shows superior
_mana_ by killing him. At present my _mana_ is supreme; I am king;
my will carries itself out. But if your _mana_, your Kratos and Bia,
conquer mine, then you are king. If you can also get my _mana_ into
you, so much the better. For κράτος and βία are tricky things and may
desert any one of us, or, according to Hesiod, any except Zeus: ‘No
house of Zeus is without them, no seat of Zeus, there is no going forth
of the god where they do not follow him, and they sit for ever beside
the Thunderer.’[51] Already, in Hesiod, these _mana_ qualities have
become half anthropomorphic; much more so, of course, in Aeschylus’
_Prometheus_.
Now in anthropology we are always making fresh efforts at the
imaginative understanding of men far removed from us, and naturally,
therefore, we are always slightly correcting and modifying our
conceptions. I want here to suggest that with regard to this Divine
King the ordinary classical conception is slightly wrong. We speak of
deification; and this deification always remains rather a puzzle for
us. It may be all very well for the mysterious Minos: but when applied
to Julius Caesar or to Hadrian, in the full light and plain prose of
history, it seems such an absurd and gratuitous blasphemy. I think
the mistake lies in applying our highly abstract conception ‘God’,
a conception rarefied and ennobled during many centuries by the
philosophic and religious thought of the highest of mankind, to a
stratum of human ideas to which it does not belong. In one of the
presidential addresses delivered to the recent Congress of Religions,
Mr. Hartland dwelt on a significant fact with regard to this idea of
God, viz. that whenever this word is used our best witnesses tend to
contradict one another. Among the most competent observers of the
Arunta tribes, for instance, some hold that they had no conception of a
God, others that they were constantly thinking about God. Much may be
said about this; but one thing, I think, emerges with some clearness:
that this idea of a god far away in the sky--I do not say merely a god
who is ‘without body, parts, or passions’, but even a god who is very
remote and is a cause behind the regular phenomena of the world--this
idea is one which practically does not enter their minds at all, or,
if by an effort they can reach and accept it, it has little working
value and is soon forgotten. For most primitive races, I suspect, the
medicine-chief, the βασιλεύς, with his immense _mana_, is Theos, and
equally the Theos is the medicine-chief. The rainmaker, the bringer of
game, the possessor of the power to make dead and to make alive--there
he is, the visible doer of all those things which later races have
delegated to higher and more shadowy beings, walking palpably before
you with his medicine and perhaps his pipe, his grand manner, his fits,
and his terrific dress.
The Basileus, the possessor of great _mana_, wants people to obey him,
and by will-power, by force of character, aided by impressive ritual,
he makes them. In the same way he makes rain; he says so vehemently
‘It shall rain’ that it cannot help itself. It does. This lies at the
back of what we somewhat erroneously call mimetic magic. For the real
rainmaker does not imitate rain, he just makes it. One must bear in
mind always the extreme sensitiveness of savages to suggestion--to
hocus-pocus, to bullying, to paroxysms of rage. When Kyknos-Ares,
who presumably belonged to this class of Basileus, was waiting for
Heracles to attack him in his _temenos_, he did not simply make
suitable arrangements and stay on guard; no, περιμαίνετο, he ‘raged
round’, working up his _mana_ and inspiring all the terror possible.
Think of the scolding priests of the Middle Ages. Think even of the
Bull ‘Ausculta Fili’. Think of the rages that are characteristic of
ancient prophets, such as Tiresias, just as they are of modern yogis
and Maroccan saints.
In the first place, then, on sociological grounds, I think we should
not conceive this primitive king as a man deified, but rather as a
pre-deistic medicine-man possessed of those powers which more cultured
ages have relegated to the gods. In the second place, though I know
that etymological arguments are often like broken reeds and pierce
the hand of him who leans thereon, I cannot but remember that Curtius
derived θεός from the root _thes-_ which appears in πολύθεστος,
ἀπόθεστος, θέσσασθαι, perhaps θεσμός, the Latin _festus_ and _feriae_,
and which has the special connotation of ‘spell’ or ‘magic prayer’.
Professor Conway, who prefers another derivation (Lith. dvãse, ‘spirit,
breath,’ MHG. ge-twas, ‘ghost,’ see Brugmann, _Gr. Gr._ s.v.), writes
to me that the fatal objection to the _thes-_ derivation is that θεσός
could not mean God; it could only mean ‘prayer’ or ‘one who prays’.
Now, except that the word suggests ‘spell’ rather than ‘prayer’, that
is exactly what I want it to mean. If the word θεός was originally
neuter it meant magic or medicine, like φάρμακον. If masculine, it was
the medicine-man or magic-man--not very far from φαρμακός.
The process of thought, if I may over-simplify it a little, seems to be
like this. First the Theos or Rainmaker on earth makes his rain. Then
it is found that he does not always or unconditionally make the rain,
and you reach the hypothesis that a greater rainmaker lives far away,
on some remote mountain, or perhaps in the sky. That is the true Theos.
The Theos on earth only knows his ways, belongs to him, partly controls
him; sometimes indeed he can only humbly pray to him. The so-called
Theos on earth, in fact, is not Theos at all. Here comes one of the
strongest antitheses between Homeric and non-Homeric, between the
reformed Olympian religion and the old savage stuff from which it was
made. Homer drew clear the line between mortal and immortal, between
God in Olympus and man here. And most early Greek poetry rings with the
antithesis. Μὴ μάτευε Ζεὺς γενέσθαι. θνητὸν ὄντα θνητὰ χρὴ φρονεῖν.
By the fifth century the time was long past when ‘gods and mortal men
strove in Mêkônê’, and the gods had carried the day. Yet even Sophocles
makes his Thebans go with prayer and supplication to a Basileus, to stop
the plague; and it seems significant that he makes the priest explain
θεοῖσι μέν νυν οὐκ ἱσούμενόν σ’ ἑγὼ
οὑδ’ οἴδε παῖδες ἑζόμεσθ’ ἑφέστιοι
ἁνδρῶν δὲ πρῶτον ἔν τε συμφοραῖς βίου
κρίνοντες ἒν τε δαιμόνων συναλλαγαῖς (_O.T._ 31 ff.).
The suppliant comes to him not exactly as a God, but as the first of
men and as holding some special intercourse with the δαίμονες.
A great collection of these medicine-kings, especially of rain and
thunder-makers, is to be found in Mr. A. B. Cook’s very remarkable
articles on ‘Zeus, Jupiter and the Oak’, published in the _Classical
Review_ for 1903, and again in his ‘European Sky God’ in _Folk Lore_,
xv, pp. 371-90. I will run briefly through a few of them.
The clearest of all is Salmoneus. His nature was explained, I believe,
partly by M. Salomon Reinach and partly by Miss Jane Harrison. ‘He
declared that he was Zeus,’ says Apollodorus (i. 9, 7), ‘and depriving
Zeus of his sacrifices bade men offer them to himself. He attached to
a chariot leather thongs with bronze caldrons and, trailing them after
him, said he was thundering; he tossed blazing torches into the air and
said he was lightening.’--So he was; at least, he was doing his best.
Mr. Cook shows that he had also some justification for saying that he
was Zeus. For he was an Olympian victor; and thereby became Basileus,
or Zeus, of Olympia, and had the thunder-making as part of his official
duties.
Almost exactly similar is Remulus Silvius, _Remulus ... imitator
fulminis_, as Ovid calls him. ‘In contempt of the gods he contrived
mock thunderbolts and noises like thunder, wherewith he thought to
frighten men as though he were a god. But a storm fraught with rain
and lightning falling upon his house, and the lake near which it
stood swelling in an unusual manner, he was drowned with his whole
family.’[52] As with Salmoneus, amid his mock thunder-storms came the
real thunder-storm and slew him.
More modest and more in accord with later beliefs was Numa. No impiety
was to be found in his thunder-making.[53] ‘Picus and Faunus taught Numa
many things, including a charm for thunder and lightning, composed
of onions, hair, and pilchards, which is used to this day.’ You may
remember the story told by Livy, Ovid, and others, how Numa cheated
Jupiter of his human sacrifice. He conjured Jupiter by a spell to come
to him and reveal a charm for thunder. The god came, but was angry at
being brought, and meant to have blood. ‘I want heads’ ... ‘Of onions,’
said Numa. ‘I want human’ ... ‘Hairs,’ said Numa. ‘I want living’ ...
‘Pilchards,’ put in the pious king, and Jupiter gave the matter up.
Minos in much the same way had the power to thunder, but only had it by
means of a prayer to his father Zeus.
Now observe that most of these early Roman heroes appear both as men
and as gods. The explanation is, I think, that when the celestial
gods were introduced the old _Theoi_ or _Basilêes_ had to be either
condemned, like Mezentius, Remulus Silvius, Salmoneus, or else deified.
Numa and Romulus suggest themselves at once. Aeneas, too, while engaged
in battle with Turnus, or some say Mezentius, vanished and became
Jupiter Indiges. Latinus vanished while fighting Mezentius, and became
Jupiter Latiaris. In later times there were numbers of these ‘_Humani
Ioves_’. It is one of the most important social facts to remember about
antiquity, that the spread of education was very difficult and slow,
and in consequence it was almost impossible for a whole nation at once
ever to rise entirely above that primitive state of superstition which
Preuss describes by the pleasant word ‘Urdummheit’.
Julius Caesar was worshipped as Jupiter, with M. Antonius for his
Flamen Dialis. Caligula was worshipped as Optimus Maximus and also as
Jupiter Latiaris; it was perhaps in this capacity that he put to death
his rival the Rex Nemorensis at Nemi. Domitian is constantly referred
to as Jupiter in the poets. Coins are found inscribed =ΛΙΒΙΑ ΗΡΑ=,
and =HADRIANO IOVI OLYMPIO=.
We have further the somewhat mysterious statement of Macrobius (_Sat._
iii. 7. 6) that ‘the souls of consecrated men were called by the
Greeks Zânes’, and the express and frequently repeated statement of
Tzetzes ‘that the ancients called all their kings Zeus and their queens
goddesses’. Οἱ γὰρ πρίν τε Δίας πάντας κάλεον βασιλῆας.[54]
I will not dwell on Zeus-Agamemnon or on Zeus-Minos; nor on the number
of priests of Zeus at Corycus who bear the name Zâs. But I will just
draw attention to one fact. Two classes of people who are not kings,
and I believe two only, are found bearing the title of Zeus. They are
prophets--like Zeus-Amphiaraos and Zeus-Trophonios; and doctors--like
the celebrated Menekrates, who called himself Zeus and his various
attendants by other divine names. That is to say the old conception of
medicine-chief has split up into those three channels, king, prophet,
and doctor; and to all three the name of Zeus occasionally belongs. It
was for a medical miracle at Lystra that Barnabas was hailed as Zeus
and Paul as Hermes (Acts xiv. 12).
Now, as has been observed before now, the history of these _Humani
Ioves_ is written in blood, and that for two special reasons. First,
it is by blood that they come to the throne and by blood that they
leave it. Secondly, they are always appealed to in times of great
strait or danger, when ‘strong medicine’ is wanted. And the strongest
and most favourite medicine in such cases is human blood, of one sort
or another. The main object of the Leopard Societies is said to be
the wish to obtain human fat as ‘medicine’. The same motive leads to
murders in Australia.[55]
We should perhaps add a third cause for the stain of blood which lies
so deep on these primitive medicine-kings. I mean, the mere wish to
inspire terror and obedience and to keep off as long as possible that
inevitable successor who filled their days with dread. Kyknos, Phorbas,
Oinomaos, Kerkyon, Amykos, Philomeleides, Sinis, and Procrustes, all
those ogres of Greek myth who race or wrestle with all comers and,
having defeated them, hang their heads on trees or tear their bodies
asunder or fling them to wild beasts or the like, have their parallel
in many an African king, whose hut is ringed by heads stuck
on poles.[56]
Now I wish to apply these conceptions, as I said, to the most
obvious piece of Greek Epic poetry outside Homer, and illustrate
anthropologically the main legend of the Theogony. You will remember
the outlines of the story. The first possessor of the kingly
office--βασιληίδα τιμήν--is Ouranos. He is afraid of his children,
and ‘hides’ or imprisons them. At last his son Kronos conquers and
mutilates him, and he passes out of sight. Kronos becomes king and is
equally afraid of his children; he ‘swallows’ them one after another;
eventually Zeus conquers and ‘binds’ him. Zeus now reigns; but Zeus
took the precaution of swallowing Metis, when Metis was about to give
birth to Athena.
I omit details for the moment. I refrain also from discussing the Maori
parallel, first pointed out, I believe, in Mr. Lang’s _Custom and
Myth_. This series of conflicts has been explained as referring to a
change of religion, an early Pelasgian worship being ousted by that of
the incoming Achaeans. There may be that in it: but such an explanation
obviously does not explain the whole series of swallowings. There were
not three, certainly not four, different religions in question.
Analysing the story I find in it the following elements.
First, the medicine-king, or Theos, is afraid of his successor. In this
case the possible successors are represented as his children. That
may be a mere piece of convenience in story-telling; it may be the
influence of a time when kingship was hereditary.
In all three cases the motive assigned by Hesiod seems to be the fear
of a successor. The motive of Ouranos, indeed, is not very clearly
stated. He began by hiding his children in the earth because they were
‘the most dangerous of sons’ (155). They ‘were hated of their father’,
and ‘he rejoiced in the evil work’.
Kronos arose and conquered him: the exact meaning of the mutilation I
leave aside. Kronos proceeded to swallow his children ‘intending that
none other of the proud sons of Ouranos should have king’s rank among
the immortals; for he had heard from Gaia and Ouranos that he was
destined to be vanquished by his son’ (461 ff.). Here the motive is
clearly given.
As for Zeus and his strange act in swallowing Metis when she was about
to give birth to Athena, two quite distinct motives are attributed to
him. First, that which we have met with before. ‘He was determined that
none but himself should have the king’s rank, βασιληίδα τιμήν, over the
immortals. He had heard an oracle that Metis was destined to give birth
to’--one expects the motive of the Marriage of Thetis--‘a child who
should be mightier than his father.’ But it is not quite so simple; for
Athena was the child of Metis, and she was obviously not mightier than
Zeus. The oracle takes the curious form that Metis is to bear ‘first
Athena, and secondly a child who shall be mightier than his father.’
Zeus seems to have swallowed her rather prematurely. But he had a
second motive also. He swallowed Metis ‘that the goddess being inside
him should tell him of good and evil’. The name Μῆτις of course means
‘Counsel’ or ‘Wisdom’.
Leaving this last detail aside for the present, I suggest that the
main motive in this strange story of the swallowing or hiding of the
successive possible pretenders to the crown is the dread which each
king naturally felt of him who was coming after. But this still leaves
much unexplained; the second main element which I find is the worship
of sacred flints or thunder-stones.
When Kronos set about swallowing Zeus, you will remember, Gaia put a
big stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to great Kronos. And he ‘put
it inside his belly’, ἑὴν ἑσκάτθετο νηδύν (487). Then, ‘in the passing
of the years’--whatever that exactly means--‘beguiled by the counsels
of Gaia, great crooked-hearted Kronos spewed up his brood again, being
conquered by the craft and force of his son’. (Two reasons there,
belonging probably to different stories--in one he was overcome by the
craft of Gaia, in the other by the _mana_ of his son.) ‘And the first
thing he vomited up was the stone, which he had swallowed last.... Then
straightway Zeus set loose his father’s brothers, the Titanes. They
were grateful, and gave him three gifts, thunder and thunder-bolt and
lightning; formerly vast Earth had hidden them away: and it is by them
that Zeus rules over mortals and immortals.’[57]
That is to say Zeus in this story is a thunder-god. The thunder
or lightning is his _mana_. And not only a thunder-god, he is a
thunder-stone. The identity has been, of course, disguised in our
present version of the myth. It is muddled, like everything else in
Hesiod.[58] But it shows through. When Kronos sets about swallowing
Zeus, it is the stone he swallows. And it is only when ‘by the counsels
of Earth’ Cronos vomits up the stone that Zeus can take any action;
and that action takes the form of thunder and lightning, the special
property of a thunder-stone. In the word ‘thunder-stone’, or κεραυνία,
the ancients seem to have mixed, and perhaps confused, two ideas: that
of a meteorite, which seemed to be the actual bolt which fell in the
thunder, and that of an ordinary flint, nephrite, jade, or the like,
which has its mysterious fire inside it. The fire is the soul, or
indwelling _mana_, of the flint.
A careful reading of Hesiod’s story will, I think, convince most
anthropologists that Zeus _is_ the stone. And as a matter of fact it
is not uncommon for both Zeus and Jupiter to appear as stones. In the
temple of Jupiter Feretrius, the oldest temple of Jupiter in Rome,
founded by Romulus, there was a sacred flint which was called _Jupiter
Lapis_--it was not _Jovis Lapis_. It was used for killing the victim
in solemn treaties. It must have been one of those ‘thunder-stones
resembling axes’ of which Pliny speaks; what we should call neolithic
axe-heads. There seems to have been more than one _Jupiter Lapis_; for
in 201 B.C. the Senate sent several such with the _fetiales_
to Africa. I need not dwell on other cases; the Zeus Kappôtas at
Gythîum, apparently a bigger stone, as Orestes could sit upon it; the
Zeus Kasios or Keraunios at Seleucîa; the stone of Zeus Sthenios, on
the road from Trozên to Hermione; or the thunder-stone on Mount Ida, in
Crete, with which Pythagoras was purified by the Idaean Dactyls, the
attendants of Zeus. They are all in De Visser’s book.
The best known of these stones is perhaps that which was believed to
be--not to belong to, but actually to be--the Mother of the Gods. Livy
(xxix. II) tells of the embassy sent from Rome to Attalus to
fetch the Great Mother; and how the king took the legates to Pessinûs
in Phrygia and handed over to them the sacred stone which the natives
affirmed to be the Mother of the Gods. Arnobius describes its
appearance: ‘a stone not large, which could be carried in a man’s hand
without noticeable weight, in colour black and _furvus_, in shape more
or less round with projecting corners, which is now to be seen in
the mouth of the image of the Great Mother.’ Superstitious Rome was
ready to accept and to worship the Mother in the form of a stone; but
common-sense Rome did at least demand that the Great Mother should have
a decently anthropomorphic image, and the stone was then placed in the
image’s mouth.
So far, then, we are clear. But there remain some difficult questions.
Why was the stone in Hesiod wrapped in swaddling clothes? I do not
understand this. But the ritual practice is well attested. Pausanias
tells how this Kronos stone was anointed and wrapped in wool.[59] A coin
in Macdonald’s Hunter Catalogue (ii. 68. 145) represents the Great
Mother stone covered with a goat-skin. This may be merely because of
the _hagos_ or taboo, just as the omphalos on vases is commonly covered
with an ἄγρηνον and Semitic betyls are wrapped in cloths. The actual
body of a god would be dangerous to touch; but it looks as if there
was some special connexion between stones and infants. The Orphic poem
called Lithica is, of course, full of magic stones, which might be
cited here. But take one in especial, the ‘Live Siderite’. This stone
has to be prayed to, like a god; it has also to be washed daily for ten
days and nursed and wrapped in clean robes, like a baby. At the end of
that time it will reward its benefactor by uttering the scream of a
young baby when hungry; then, the poet remarks, the great thing is not
to drop it.[60]
In some Mexican dances, Preuss tells us, the souls of infants come
through the air in the likeness of five stones. Among the Kaitish
and the Arunta there are stones inhabited by infant souls, which are
induced in one way or another to come out of the stones and be born.
And we all remember the stones flung by Deucalion and Pyrrha, and the
race of man which is--or is not--sprung ἀπὸ δρυὸς ἡδ’ ἁπὸ πέτρης.[61]
But again, why were the stones swallowed? What does all this swallowing
mean? Zeus of course swallowed Metis in order to have her _mana_ inside
him. That is sensible enough. Do medicine men or Theoi ever actually
swallow smooth stones in order to get the fire-power or other magic
inside them? In Mexico the devils which are sucked out of the body in
curing diseases are usually in the form of stones. For instance, in
the ceremony of the Huichol tribe, where the gods are healed of their
weariness by the Dawn-Star, Kaiumari, sucking ‘stones and the like’ out
of them.[62] The same practice is common among Australian blacks.
Mr. Marett refers me to a still better case. Among the Yuin of New
South Wales the word _joïa_, which is almost like _mana_ and is used to
denote the immaterial force in sacred animals, is actually the name of
certain stones like these. They are commonly quartz-crystals or bits
of glass, but also we hear of Kunambrun, a black stone, apparently
lydianite. A black stone probably means thunder. The medicine man often
carries these stones in his mouth, and when he sends out a curse or
a blessing he projects them out of himself into his victim ‘like the
wind,’ that is, invisibly and impalpably.[63]
The actual swallowing seems strange, unless it was a mere fraud. But I
used to know an Australian blackfellow--I never thought of asking his
tribe--who used to put stones in his mouth and give or sell them to the
boys of the neighbourhood as bearing a charm in consequence. They were
sure to hit what they were aimed at, unless the aim was very bad. I
suppose he put a lot of his _mana_ into them. One of the ways in which
a Papuan chief causes death, according to the report of Dr. Bellamy
in the White Book for 1907, is to send to a man a present of a smooth
stone. The man recognizes the meaning of the stone, and wastes away.
Dr. Bellamy cured some by the application of strong smelling salts,
which drove away the devils. Presumably the chief had put his _mana_ on
the stone in some very strong way.
Lastly, there is another element in this story which calls for
explanation from better anthropologists than myself; I mean the
constant reference to ‘hiding’ or ‘concealment’. Ouranos (157) _hid_
all his children in a secret place of the Earth; this gave pain to
Earth, and she groaned, being squeezed by them. Earth again (482) took
Zeus and _hid_ him in a cave. Kronos _put the stone inside_ him--surely
a form of hiding. The Titans _were hidden away_--κεκρύφατο, by Kronos
(729) till Zeus brought them again to light. Lastly and most important,
Zeus _hid away fire_ from man, κρύψε δὲ πῦρ.
This last case is pretty clear. Zeus had the fire hidden away in the
heart of the flint or in the veins of Earth; Prometheus, or Pramanthas,
the Fire-Stick, introduced the more open visible fire. But the other
cases seem different. In them it is always a king or a would-be king, a
deposed Theos or a conquered aspirant, who is made to disappear. We are
reminded of Aeneas and Latinus who vanished in battles, of Romulus and
Numa who vanished in thunderstorms.
In one case we find that the hiding was in a ‘monstrous cave’, and a
cave in Crete, too. We know from other sources something about the
kind of hiding which took place in that particular cave. At the end of
the fatal nine years, if we are to believe the authors quoted by me
in the _Rise of the Greek Epic_, p. 127, and much more completely by
Mr. A. B. Cook in the articles mentioned above, the divine king Minos
in his mask, as a god, went up into the Idaean cave to converse with
Zeus. Doubtless the divine mask covered his head. A masked Minos went
in, and a masked Minos came out; but one strongly suspects that it was
not the same man beneath the mask. My friend Mr. Gordon, an education
officer in Lower Nigeria, informs me that there is there a great oracle
or ordeal in a cave called the Long Juju. It decides cases between
litigants, or persons who have some dispute. And the method is that
both go up into the cave, and only one returns. The other, presumably
the guilty one, has vanished; he is hidden; κέκρυπται.
All through this pre-Hellenic realm of saga and half-history we find
ourselves in contact with these god-kings, or medicine-chiefs, these
βασιλῆες or, if I am right, Theoi. And we cannot but wonder whether we
have not here the explanation of Herodotus’ famous statement about the
origins of Greek Religion (Herod. ii. 52). The Pelasgians, he tells us,
did not originally know the names of the Olympian gods; ‘they brought
offerings and prayed to the Theoi.’ It was only at a later time that
they sent to Dodona to ask if they should worship those definite gods
with special names and attributes and ‘Olympian Houses’ which had
come into Greece but were still in some sense foreign. And the oracle
said ‘Yes’. I am quite aware that the passage may be differently
interpreted; and I do not suggest that Herodotus knew all that lay
behind his words when he spoke of the nameless Theoi of the Pelasgians
in contrast to the Olympians of Homer and Hesiod. But I do suspect that
the contrast between these medicine-chiefs and the Homeric gods is one
of the cardinal differences between Hellenic and pre-Hellenic religion;
and, further, that some reminiscence of this difference has shaped the
tradition which Herodotus repeats. Clearer evidence will, no doubt, be
forthcoming from some better-equipped anthropologist.