THE SURVIVAL OF PAGAN DEITIES.
§ 1. THE RANGE OF MODERN POLYTHEISM.
Thus far we have considered paganism in its bearing and influence upon
modern Greek Christianity. We have seen how the Church, in endeavouring
to widen her influence, countenanced many practices and conciliated
many prejudices of a people whose temperament needed a multitude of
gods and whose piety could pay homage to them all, a people moreover
to whom the criterion of divinity was neither moral perfection nor
omnipotence. From the ethical standpoint some of the ancient gods were
better, some worse than men: in point of power they were superhuman
but not almighty. Some indeed claimed that there was no difference in
origin between mankind and its deities. ‘One is the race of men’ sang
Pindar ‘with the race of gods; for one is the mother that gave to both
our breath of life: yet sundered are they by powers wholly diverse, in
that mankind is as naught, but heaven is builded of brass that abideth
ever unshaken[107].’ One in origin, they are diverse in might. The test
of godhead is power sufficing to defy death. Rightly therefore did
Homer make ‘deathless’ and ‘everbeing’ his constant epithets for the
gods. Immortality alone is the quality which distinguishes them in kind
and not merely in degree from men, and makes them worthy of worship.
A people wedded to such conceptions were naturally ready enough to
install new immortals of whom they had not known before, but reluctant
to depose in their favour those whom they and their forefathers
had known and served. Dangers were to be apprehended from neglect;
blessings were to be secured by tendance. Greater honour might be paid
to one god, less to another; but from no immortal should service be
wholly withheld: even unconscious oversights should be remedied by
offerings ‘to an unknown god.’ Such in its essence was the popular
religion, inconsistent it may be and not deeply intellectual, but in
sympathies very broad--broad enough to encompass the worship of all
immortals, broad as the earth and the sky and the sea wherein they
dwelt and moved.
So vital and so deep-seated in the hearts of the common-folk are
these religious tendencies, that even at the present day when
the word ‘Christian’ has become a popular synonym for ‘Greek’ in
contradistinction not only with ‘Mohammedan,’ but even sometimes with
‘Western’ or ‘Catholic’ or with ‘Protestant,’ and when horror would
be excited by any imputation of polytheism, there are yet recognised
a large number of superhuman and for the most part immortal beings,
whom the Church has been able neither to eradicate from the popular
mind nor yet to incorporate under the form of saints or devils in her
own theological system. These beings, whether benignant to man or
maleficent, are all treated as divine. In ancient times the common
people had probably little appreciation of the various grades of
divinity; indeed it was one of the seven sages, we are told, who first
differentiated God and the lesser deities and the heroes[108]; and
at the present day the common-folk are certainly no more subtle of
understanding than they were then. God and the Saints and these pagan
powers are all feared and worshipped in the several ways traditionally
suited to each; but the fact of worship proclaims them all alike to be
gods.
The origin of the non-Christian deities, even if we were unable to
identify any of them with the gods of classical Greece, would be
clearly enough proved by some of the general terms under which all
of them are included. Those who use these terms indeed no longer
appreciate their significance; for all sense of antagonism between
the pagan and Christian elements in the popular religion has, as we
have seen, long been lost. But the words themselves are a relic of
the early days in which the combat of Christianity with the heathen
world was still stern. Among the most widespread of these terms is the
word ξωτικά[109] (i.e. ἐξωτικά), the ‘extraneous’ powers, clearly an
invention of the early Christians. The phrase ‘those that are without’
(οἱ ἔξω or οἱ ἔξωθεν) was used by S. Paul first[110] and afterwards
generally by the Fathers of the Church to denote men of all other
persuasions. In the fourth century Basil of Caesarea employed the
adjective ἐξωτικός also in a corresponding sense[111]. This word no
doubt became popular, and hence τὰ ἐξωτικά, ‘the extraneous ones,’
became a convenient term by which to denote comprehensively all those
old divinities whose worship the Church disallowed but even among her
own adherents could not wholly suppress. Another comprehensive term
equally significant, if not so commonly used, is τὰ παγανά[112], ‘the
pagan ones.’ This is in use in the Ionian islands and some parts of the
mainland, but I have not met with it nor found it understood in the
Peloponnese or in the islands of the Aegean Sea[113]. In Cephalonia
it is chiefly, though not exclusively, applied to a species of
supernatural beings usually called callicántzari (καλλικάντζαροι) of
whom more anon: the reason of this restriction may be either the fact
that these monsters--to judge from the folk-stories of the island--so
far outnumber there all other kinds of ‘pagan’ beings that this one
species has almost appropriated to itself the generic name, or that in
old time, when the word παγανά, ‘pagan,’ was still understood in the
sense which we attribute to it, these monsters were deemed specially
‘pagan’ because, as we shall see later, they delight in disturbing a
season of Christian gladness. But elsewhere the term, still employed
in what must have been its original meaning, comprises all kinds of
non-Christian deities; and in earlier times ‘the pagan ones’ was
probably as frequent an expression as its synonym ‘the extraneous
ones.’ To these may perhaps be added the rare appellation recorded
by Schmidt[114], τσίνια: for if the derivation from τζίνα, ‘fraud,’
‘deceit,’ be right, it will mean ‘the false gods.’
Besides these three names, which indicate the pre-Christian origin
of these deities, there are several others--some in universal usage,
others local and dialectic,--which represent them in various aspects.
As a class of ‘divinities’ they are called δαιμόνια: as ‘apparitions,’
whose precise nature often cannot be further determined, φάσματα or
φαντάσματα and, in Crete, σφανταχτά[115]: as swift and ‘sudden’ in
their coming and going, ξαφνικά[116]: as ghostly and passing like a
vision, εἰδωλικά: as denizens, for the most part, of the air, ἀερικά:
and from their similarity to angels, ἀγγελικά.
It may seem strange that the first and the last of these terms,
δαιμόνια and ἀγγελικά, should be practically interchangeable; for
the Church at any rate did her best in early days to make the former
understood in the sense of ‘demons’ or ‘devils’ rather than ‘deities.’
But the attempted change of meaning seems to have failed to make much
impression on a people who did not view goodness as an essential of
godhead; and in later times the Church herself, or many of her less
educated clergy at any rate, surrendered to the popular ideas. Father
Richard[117], a Jesuit resident during the seventeenth century in the
island of Santorini, mentions the case of an old Greek priest who had
long made a speciality of exorcism and was prepared to expel angels and
demons alike from the bodies of those who were afflicted by them. The
priest when questioned by the Jesuit as to what distinction he drew
between demons and angels, replied that the demons came from hell,
while the angels were ἀερικόν τι, a species of aërial being; but while
he maintained a theoretical difference between them, his practice
betrayed a belief that both were equally harmful. Exorcism had to be
employed in cases of ‘angelic’ as well as of ‘demoniacal’ possession;
and Father Richard details the cruelties and tortures inflicted upon a
woman suspected of the former in order to make the pernicious angelic
spirit within her confess its name. The characters of δαιμόνια and
ἀγγελικά are in fact the same, and the subtle theological distinctions
which might be drawn between them are naturally lost on a people who
see them treated even by the priests as equally baneful.
A few other local or dialectic names remain to be noticed. Two of
them, στοιχει̯ά and τελώνια, denote properly two several species of
supernatural beings--the former being the _genii_ of fixed places[118],
and the latter aërial beings chiefly concerned with the passage of men
from this world to the next[119]--and are only loosely and locally
employed in a more comprehensive sense. The name σμερδάκια, recorded
from Philiatrá in Messenia, is apparently a diminutive form from a root
meaning ‘terrible[120].’ A Cretan word καντανικά is of less certain
etymology, but if, as has been surmised, it has any relation with the
verb καντανεύω, ‘to go down to the underworld,’ and hence ‘to fall
into a trance,’ (‘entranced’ spirits being thought temporarily to have
departed thither,) it may denote either denizens of the lower world or
beings who frighten men into a senseless and trance-like state[121].
Next come the two words ζούμπιρα and ζωντόβολα, of which I believe
the interpretation is one and the same. Bernhard Schmidt[122], whose
work I have constantly consulted in this and later chapters, would
derive the former from a middle-Greek word ζόμβρος[123], equivalent to
the ancient τραγέλαφος, a fantastic animal of Aristophanic fame; but
it was explained to me in Scyros to be a jocose euphemism as applied
to supernatural beings and to denote properly parasitic insects. The
implied combination of superstitious awe in avoiding the name of
supernatural things with a certain broad humour in substituting what
is, to the peasant, one of the lesser annoyances of life is certainly
characteristic of the Greek folk; and the accuracy of the explanation
given to me is confirmed by the fact that in the island of Cythnos
the other word, ζωντόβολα, is recorded to bear also the meaning of
‘insects[124].’ The joke, if such it be, must date from a long time
back and in its prime must have enjoyed a widespread popularity; for at
Aráchova on the slopes of Parnassus, a place far distant from Scyros,
the word ζούμπιρα is employed in the sense of supernatural beings by
persons who apparently are quite ignorant of its original meaning[125].
To these difficult terms must be added a few euphemisms of a simple
nature--τὰ πίζηλα (i.e. ἐπίζηλα) ‘the enviable ones’ in one village
of Tenos[126], and in many places such general terms as οἱ καλοί ‘the
noble,’--οἱ ἀδερφοί μας ‘our brothers,’--οἱ καλορίζικοι ‘the fortunate
ones,’--οἱ χαρούμενοι ‘the joyful ones.’ These evasions of a more
direct nomenclature are very frequent, and, since the choice of epithet
is practically at the discretion of the speaker, it would be impossible
to compile a complete list of them.
How far each of these names may be applied in general to all the
classes of pagan gods and demons and monsters whom I am about to
describe is a question which I cannot determine. On the one hand
many of the names, as we have seen, are purely local, confined to a
few villages or districts or islands and unknown and unintelligible
elsewhere: and on the other hand some of these supernatural beings
themselves are equally local, and my information concerning them has
been gathered from widely separated regions of the Greek world. Hence
it follows that while the several terms which I have explained are
comprehensive in local usage and include all the supernatural beings
locally recognised, it is impossible to say whether the users of them
would think fit to extend them to the deities of other districts.
Probably they would do so; but only for the most widely current
terms, δαιμόνια and ἐξωτικά, can I claim with assurance anything like
universal application.
The surviving pagan deities fall naturally into two classes. There are
the solitary and individual figures such as Demeter, and there is the
gregarious and generic class to which belong for example the Nymphs. An
exceptional case may occur in which some originally single personality
has been multiplied into a whole class. The Lesbian maiden Gello, who,
according to a superstition known to Sappho[127], in revenge for her
untimely death haunted her old abodes preying upon the babes of women
whose motherhood she envied, is no longer one but many; the place of a
maiden, whom death carried off ere she had known the love of husband
and children, has been taken by withered witch-like beings who none the
less bear her name and resemble her in that they light, like Harpies,
upon young children and suck out their humours[128]. But in the main
the division holds; there are single gods and there are groups of gods.
Of the former, in several cases, there is very little to record. Such
memory of them as still lingers among the people is confined perhaps
to a single folk-story out of the many that have been preserved. In
such cases I do not feel entire confidence that the reference is a
piece of genuine tradition; in spite of the popular form in which the
stories are cast, it is always possible that, owing to the spread of
education, some scholastic smatterings of ancient mythology have been
introduced by the story-teller. There are certainly plenty of tales
to be heard about Alexander the Great which are drawn from literary
sources; and it is possible that two stories published by Schmidt which
contain apparent reminiscences of Poseidon and of Pan are vitiated,
from the point of view of folklore, in the same way. Fortunately the
cases in which this reserve must be felt are few and in the nature
of things unimportant: for, though proof of genuine tradition would
be interesting, yet a single modern allusion is not likely to throw
any light on the ancient conception of a deity or his cult. Where
on the other hand modern folklore is more abundant--and in the case
of the groups of lesser deities above all there is ample store of
information--it is possible that study of the popular conceptions of
to-day may illumine our understanding of ancient religion.
§ 2. ZEUS.
Ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα.
To Zeus, the ancient father of gods and men, belongs precedence;
but there is in truth little room for him in the modern scheme
of popular religion. His functions have been transferred to the
Christian God, and his personality merged in that of the Father whom
the Church acknowledges. But though he is no longer a deity, the
ancient conception of him has imposed narrow limitations upon the
character of his successor. We have noted already that the God now
recognised exercises the same general control, as did formerly Zeus,
over all the changes and chances of this mortal life, but has, again
resembling Zeus, for his special province only the regulation of the
more monotonous phases of nature and the weather. The more unusual
phenomena, and among them sometimes even the thunder, to which S. Elias
has pretensions, are delegated to saints or to non-Christian deities;
but for the most part the thunder remains the possession of God, as
it was always that of Zeus; and its more important concomitant, the
lightning, is never, I think, attributed to S. Elias, but is wielded by
God alone.
The very name of this weapon which the Christian God has inherited is
suggestive of the Olympian _régime_. Much has been heard lately of
the double-headed axe as a religious symbol which seems to have been
constantly associated, especially in Crete, with the worship of Zeus.
The modern Greek word for what we call the thunderbolt is ἀστροπελέκι
(a syncopated form of ἀστραποπελέκι by loss of one of two concurrent
syllables beginning with the same consonant), and means literally a
‘lightning-axe.’ The weapon therefore which the supreme God wields
is conceived as an axe-shaped missile; and, though in the ancient
literature which has come down to us we may nowhere find the word
πέλεκυς used of the thunderbolt, there is no reason why the modern word
should not be the expression of a conception inherited from antiquity
and so furnish a clue to what in itself seems a simple and suitable
explanation of the much-canvassed symbol.
Again the divine associations of the thunderbolt now as in the reign
of Zeus are attested by the awe in which men and cattle, trees and
houses, which have been struck by lightning, are universally held--awe
of that primitive kind which does not distinguish between the sacred
and the accursed. It is sufficient that particular persons or objects
have come into close contact with divine power; that contact sets them
apart; they must not do common work or be put to common uses. In old
days any place which had been struck was distinguished by the erection
of an altar and the performance of sacrifice, but at the same time it
was left unoccupied and, save for sacrificial purposes, untrodden[129];
it was both honoured and avoided. In the case of persons however the
sense of awe verged on esteem. ‘No one,’ says Artemidorus, ‘who has
been struck by lightning is excluded from citizenship; indeed such
an one is honoured even as a god[130].’ The same feeling is still
exhibited. The peasant makes the sign of the cross as he passes any
scorched and blackened tree-trunk; but if a man has the fortune to be
struck and not killed, he may indulge a taste for idleness for the rest
of his life--his neighbours will support him--and enjoy at the same
time the reputation of being something more than human.
But in spite of the reverent awe which the victim of the lightning
excites, the thunderbolt is often viewed now, as in old time, as the
instrument of divine vengeance. The people of Aráchova, when they see a
flash, explain the occurrence in the phrase κάποιον διάβολον ἔκαψε, ‘He
has burnt up some devil,’ and the implied subject of the verb, as in
most phrases describing the weather, is undoubtedly God[131]. The same
idea, in yet more frankly pagan garb, is well exhibited in a story from
Zacynthos[132], which is nothing but the old myth of the war of the
Titans against Zeus with the names of the actors omitted. The gist of
it is as follows.
The giants once rebelled against God. First they climbed a mountain
and hurled rocks at him; but he grasped his thunderbolts (τσακώνει τὰ
ἀστροπελέκι̯α του) and threw them at the giants, and they all fell down
from the mountain and many were killed. Then one whose courage was
still unshaken tied reeds together and tried to reach to heaven with
them (for what purpose, does not appear in the story; but folk-tales
are often somewhat inconsequent, and this vague incident is probably an
imperfect reminiscence of the legend of Prometheus); but the lightning
burnt him to ashes. Then his remaining companions made a last assault,
but the lightning again slew many of them, and the rest were condemned
to live all their life long shut in beneath a mountain.
This story is one of those which in themselves might be suspected of
scholastic origin or influence; but it so happens that practically the
same story has been recorded from Chios also, with the slight addition
that there the leader of the giants’ assault has usurped the name of
Samson. Such corroboration from the other end of the Greek world goes
far to establish the genuine nature of the tradition.
Thus though Zeus has been generally superseded by the Christian God,
his character and mythic attributes have left a strong and indelible
mark upon the religion of to-day. The present conception of God is
practically identical with the ancient conception of the deity who was
indeed one among many gods and yet in thought and often also in speech
the god _par excellence_. Christianity has effected little here beyond
the suppression of the personal name Zeus.
All this, no doubt, illustrates the fusion of paganism with
Christianity rather than the independent co-existence of deities of
the separate systems. But there are two small facts in virtue of which
I have given to Zeus a place among the pagan deities whose distinct
personality is not yet wholly sunk in oblivion. The men of Aráchova,
as we have noticed above, still swear by the ‘god of Crete,’ who can
be no other than Zeus; and in Crete itself there was recently, and may
still be, in use the invocation ἠκοῦτε μου Ζῶνε θεέ, ‘Hearken to me,
O god Zeus[133].’ Such expressions, though their original force is no
longer known by those who use them, are none the less indications that
perhaps not many generations ago Zeus was still locally recognised
and reverenced as a deity distinct from the Christian God, to whom
indeed everywhere he can only gradually have ceded his position and his
attributes.
§ 3. POSEIDON.
For the survival of any god of the sea in the imagination of the
Greek people I cannot personally vouch. Though I have been among the
seafaring population in many parts, I have never heard mention of other
than female deities. That which I here set down rests entirely on the
authority of Bernhard Schmidt.
In his collection of folk-stories there is one from Zacynthos, entitled
‘Captain Thirteen,’ which runs as follows[134]:--A king who was the
strongest man of his time made war on a neighbour. His strength lay in
three hairs on his breast. He was on the point of crushing his foes
when his wife was bribed to cut off the hairs, and he with thirteen
companions was taken prisoner. But the hairs began to grow again, and
so his enemies threw him and his companions into a pit. The others
were killed by the fall, but he being thrown in last, fell upon them
and was unhurt. Over the pit his enemies then raised a mound. He found
however in the pit a dead bird, and having fastened its wings to his
hands flew up and carried away mound and all with him. Then he soared
high in the air until a storm of rain washed away the clay that held
the feathers to his hands, and he fell into the sea. ‘Then from out the
sea came the god thereof (ὁ δαίμονας τῆς θάλασσας) and struck him with
a three-pronged fork (μία πειροῦνα μὲ τρία διχάλια)’ and changed him
into a dolphin until such time as he should find a maiden ready to be
his wife. The dolphin after some time saved a ship-wrecked king and his
daughter, and the princess by way of reward took him for her husband
and the spell was broken.
Other characteristics of this trident-bearing sea-god are, according
to the same authority[135], that he is in form half human and half
fish; that his wealth, consisting of all treasures lost in the sea,
is so great that he sleeps on a couch of gold; and that he rides
upon dolphins. Thus Poseidon, it appears, (or it may be Nereus,) has
survived locally in the remembrance of the Greek people as a deity
unconnected with Christianity. Far more generally however his functions
have been transferred to S. Nicolas, whose aid is invariably invoked
by seamen in time of peril, and who has acquired the byname of ‘sailor’
(ναύτης)[136].
The allusion to the sea-god and his trident in the story which I have
repeated must, I think, be accepted with some reserve as being possibly
a scholastic interpolation. I cannot find confirmation of it in any
other folk-story, and moreover the latter part of the tale is familiar
to me in another form. The hero is usually a young prince who goes out
to seek adventures in the world, not a king who has already a wife
at home; and his transformation into a dolphin is effected by some
malicious witch into whose toils he falls. But while for these reasons
I do not put the story forward as certain evidence of the survival of
Poseidon in the popular memory, I have recounted it at some length
because it is an excellent type of current folk-tales, and from a study
of it, if we may now leave Poseidon and make a brief digression, we may
appreciate the relation existing between such stories and the myths of
antiquity.
The king who was the strongest man of his time has a classical
prototype in the Messenian leader Aristomenes. He too was thrown with
his comrades into a pit by his enemies, the Spartans, and alone escaped
death from the fall, being borne up on the wings of eagles. Again, the
idea of a man’s strength residing in a certain hair or hairs is well
known in ancient mythology; and although it is by no means peculiar to
the Greeks, but is common to many peoples of the world, we may fairly
suppose that the modern Greek has not borrowed it from outside, but has
inherited it from those ancestors among whose myths was the story of
Scylla and Nisus. Lastly, in the incident of the hero fastening wings
to his arms with clay and his subsequent fall into the sea there are
all the essentials of the legend of Icarus.
Here then combined in one modern folk-story we find the _motifs_
of three separate ancient myths. And from it and others of like
nature--for in the collection from which I have borrowed it there are
several stories in which such figures as Midas, the Sphinx, and the
Cyclopes are easily recognised--an inference may be drawn as to the
real relation of ancient mythology to modern folk-stories. Certain
themes must have existed from time immemorial, and these have been
worked up into tales by successive generations of _raconteurs_ with
ever-varying settings. Fresh combinations of _motifs_ have been and
are still being tried; fresh embroidery of detail may be added by
each artist; only the theme in its plainest form, the mere groundwork
of story, remains immutable. This at the same time explains the wide
variations of the same myth even among the ancients themselves, and
warns us not to judge of the value of a modern folk-story or folk-song
by the closeness of its resemblance to any ancient myth which may have
been preserved to us in literature. It was naturally the most finished
and artistic presentment of the story which appealed to the taste
of educated men and thus became the orthodox classical version; but
there is every likelihood that before the story reached the stage of
acknowledged perfection much that was primitive had been suppressed
as inartistic, and much that was not traditional had been added by
the poet’s imagination. The unlettered story-teller, endowed with
less fancy and ignorant of the conventions of art, is a far trustier
vehicle of pure tradition; for though he feels himself at liberty to
compose variations of the original theme, he certainly has less power
and generally less inclination to do so; for it is on exactness of
memory and even verbal fidelity to the traditional form of the story
that the modern story-teller chiefly prides himself. Hence the modern
folk-story, straight from the peasant’s lips in a form almost verbally
identical with that in which successive generations of peasants before
him narrated it, may contain more genuinely primitive material than a
literary version of it which dates from perhaps two thousand years or
more ago.
§ 4. PAN.
A story, again from the same collection[137], runs in brief as
follows:--Once upon a time a priest had a good son who tended goats.
One day ‘Panos’ gave him a kid with a skin of gold. He at once offered
it as a burnt-offering to God, and in answer an angel promised him
whatsoever he should ask. He chose a magic pipe which should make all
hearers dance. So no enemy could come near to touch him. The king
however sent for him, and the goatherd, after making the envoys dance
more than once, voluntarily let himself be taken. The king then threw
him into prison, but he had his flute still with him, and when he
played even houses and rocks danced, and fell and crushed all save him
and his. ‘The whole business,’ concludes the story, ‘was arranged by
Panos to cleanse the world somewhat of evil men.’
Here the pastoral scene and the gift of the magic pipe (not by Panos
himself, it is true, but indirectly thanks to him) suggest a genuine
remembrance of Pan. It was from him that ‘bonus Daphnis’ learnt the art
of music. The form which the name has assumed is the chief difficulty.
The modern nominative, if formed in the same way as in other words
of the same declension, would naturally be Panas (Πάνας), and the
unusual termination arouses some suspicion that the narrator of the
story had heard of Pan from some literary source and, as often happens
in such cases, had got the name a little wrong. But if the tale be
a piece of genuine tradition, the conclusion of it is remarkable.
The moral purpose ascribed to the deity seems to indicate a loftier
conception of him than that which is commonly found in ancient art
and literature. But the popular tradition embodied in the legend is
not therefore necessarily at fault; indeed it may be more true to the
conception of Pan which prevailed among the common-folk in old days
than were the portraits drawn and handed down by the more educated of
their contemporaries. The patron-god of Arcadian shepherd-life would
naturally have seemed a rude being to the cultured Athenians of the
fifth century, who but for his miraculous intervention in the battle
of Marathon would never have honoured him with a temple. But among his
original worshippers it may well be that, besides presiding over the
increase of their flocks, as did Demeter over the increase of their
fields, he was deemed to resemble her also in the possession of more
exalted attributes, so that there was cause indeed for lamentation over
that strange message ‘Great Pan is dead[138].’
But perchance Pan is not dead yet, or if dead not forgotten. And as
this solitary modern story, if it be genuine, testifies to a longlived
remembrance of his better qualities, so in the demonology of the middle
ages a sterner aspect of his ancient character still secured to him
men’s awe. Theocritus[139] gave voice to a well-known superstition
when he made the goat-herd say: ‘Nay, shepherd, it may not be; in the
noontide we may not pipe; ’tis Pan that we fear’; for in his rage if
roused from his midday slumber he was believed to strike the intruder
with ‘panic’ terror: and it was this superstition which influenced the
translators of the Septuagint when they rendered the phrase, which in
our Bible version of the Psalms[140] appears as ‘the destruction that
wasteth at noonday,’ by the words σύμπτωμα καὶ δαιμόνιον μεσημβρινόν.
By the latter half of this phrase the memory of Pan was undoubtedly
perpetuated; for in certain forms of prayer quoted by Leo Allatius[141]
in the seventeenth century, among the perils from which divine
deliverance is sought is mentioned more than once this ‘midday demon’;
and a corresponding ‘daemon meridianus[142]’ found a place of equal
dignity among the ghostly enemies of Roman Catholics.
Perhaps even yet in the pastoral uplands of Greece some traveller will
hear news of Pan.
§ 5. DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE.
Of few ancient deities has popular memory been more tenacious than
of Demeter; but in different districts the reminiscences take very
different forms. There are many traces of her name and cult, and of the
legends concerning both her and her daughter; but in one place they
have been Christianised, in another they have remained pagan.
In so far as she has affected the traditions of the Church, a male
deity, S. Demetrius, has in general superseded her. Under the title
of στερεανός, ‘belonging to the dry land,’ he has in most districts
taken over the patronage of agriculture; while his inherited interest
in marriage receives testimony from the number of weddings celebrated,
especially in the agricultural districts, on his day. But at Eleusis,
the old home of Demeter’s most sacred rites, the people, it seems,
would not brook the substitution of a male saint for their goddess,
and yielded to ecclesiastical influence only so far as to create for
themselves a saint Demetra (ἡ ἁγία Δήμητρα) entirely unknown elsewhere
and never canonised. Further, in open defiance of an iconoclastic
Church, they retained an old statue of Demeter, and merely prefixing
the title ‘saint’ to the name of their cherished goddess, continued to
worship her as before. The statue was regularly crowned with garlands
of flowers in the avowed hope of obtaining good harvests, and without
doubt prayer was made before it as now before the pictures of canonical
saints. This state of things continued down to the beginning of the
nineteenth century. Then, in 1801, two Englishmen, named Clarke and
Cripps, armed by the Turkish authorities with a license to plunder,
perpetrated an act unenviably like that of Verres at Enna, and in
spite of a riot among the peasants of Eleusis removed by force the
venerable marble; and that which was the visible form of the great
goddess on whose presence and goodwill had depended from immemorial
ages the fertility of the Thriasian plain is now a little-regarded
object catalogued as ‘No. XIV, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, (much
mutilated)[143].’
Saint Demetra however, though lost to sight, was yet dear to the memory
of the village-folk; and in spite of the devastation of old beliefs
and legends which the much-vaunted progress and education of Greece
have committed in the more civilised districts without conferring any
sensible compensation, the antiquarian Lenormant found in 1860 an old
Albanian[144] priest who when once reassured that no ridicule was
intended, recited to him the following remarkable legend[145]: ‘S.
Demetra was an old woman of Athens, kind and good, who devoted all her
little means to feeding the poor. She had a daughter who was beautiful
past all imagining; since “lady Aphrodite” (κυρὰ ’φροδίτη) none had
been seen so lovely. A Turkish lord of the neighbourhood of Souli, who
was a wicked man and versed in magic, saw her one day combing her hair,
which was of golden hue and reached to the very ground, and became
passionately enamoured of her. He bided his time, and having found
his chance of speaking with her tried to seduce her. But she being as
prudent as she was beautiful, repulsed all the miscreant’s advances.
Thereupon he resolved to carry her off and put her in his harem. One
Christmas night, while Demetra was at church, the Turk (ὁ ἀγᾶς) forced
the door of her house, seized the girl who was at home alone, carried
her off in spite of her cries of distress, and holding her in his arms
leapt upon his horse. The horse was a wonderful one; it was black in
colour; from its nostrils it breathed out flames, and in one bound
could pass from the East unto the West. In an instant it had carried
ravisher and victim right to the mountains of Epirus.
When the aged Demetra came back from church, she found her house broken
into and her daughter gone; great was her despair. She asked her
neighbours if they knew what had become of her daughter; but they dared
not tell her aught, for they feared the Turks and their vengeance. She
turned her enquiries to the tree that grew before her house; but the
tree could tell her nothing. She asked the sun, but the sun could give
her no help; she asked the moon and the stars, but from them too she
learnt nothing. Finally the stork that nested on the house-top said to
her: “Long time now we have lived side by side; thou art as old as I.
Listen; thou hast always been good to me, thou hast never disturbed my
nest, and once thou didst help me to drive away the bird of prey that
would have carried off my nestlings. In recompense I will tell thee
what I know of the fate of thy daughter; she was carried off by a Turk
mounted on a black horse, who took her towards the West. Come, I will
set out with thee and we will search for her together.”
Accompanied by the stork, Demetra started; the time was winter; it was
cold, and snow covered the mountains. The poor old woman was frozen and
could hardly walk; she kept asking of all those whom she met, whether
they had seen her daughter, but they laughed at her or did not answer;
doors were shut in her face and entrance denied her, for men love not
misery; and she went weeping and lamenting. In this manner however
she dragged her limbs as far as Lepsína (the modern form of the name
Eleusis); but, arriving there, she succumbed to cold and weariness and
threw herself down by the roadside. There she would have died, but
that by good luck there passed by the wife of the _khodja-bachi_ (or
head man of the village), who had been to look after her flocks and
was returning. Marigo--such was her name--took pity on the old woman,
helped her to rise and brought her to her husband, who was named
Nicolas[146]. The _khodja-bachi_ was as kind as his wife; both welcomed
as best they could the poor sorrow-stricken woman, tended her and
sought to console her. To reward them S. Demetra blessed their fields
and gave them fertility.
Nicolas, the _khodja-bachi_, had a son handsome, strong, brave, and
practised, in a word the finest _pallikar_ of all the country side.
Seeing that Demetra was in no condition to continue her journey, he
offered to set to work to recover her daughter, asking only her hand in
recompense. The offer was accepted, and he set out accompanied by the
faithful stork who would not abandon the undertaking.
The young man walked for many days without finding anything. At last
one night, when he was in a forest right among the mountains, he
caught sight of a great bright light at some distance. Towards this
he hastily bent his steps, but the point from which the light came
was much further off than he had at first imagined; the darkness had
deceived him. Eventually however he arrived there, and to his great
astonishment found forty dragons lying on the ground and watching an
enormous cauldron that was boiling on the fire. Undismayed by the
sight, he lifted the cauldron with one hand, lit a torch, and replaced
the vessel on the fire. Astounded by such a display of strength, the
dragons crowded round him and said to him, “You who can lift with one
hand a cauldron which we by our united efforts can scarcely carry,
you alone are capable of carrying off a maiden whom we have long been
trying to lay our hands on, and whom we cannot seize because of the
height of the tower wherein a magician keeps her shut up.” The son of
the _khodja-bachi_ of Lepsína perceived the impossibility of escape
from these monsters. Accompanied by the forty dragons, he approached
the tower, and after having examined it, he asked for some large nails,
which he took and drove into the wall, so as to form a kind of ladder,
and which he kept pulling out again as he ascended to prevent the
dragons from following him. Having arrived at the top and with some
difficulty entered at a small window there, he invited the dragons to
ascend as he had done, one by one, which they did, thus giving him
time to kill each as it arrived while the next was climbing up, and
to throw it over the other side of the tower, where there were a large
court, a splendid garden, and a fine castle. Thus rid of his dangerous
guardians, he went down into the interior of the tower and found there
S. Demetra’s daughter, whose beauty at once inspired him with the most
ardent love.
He was kneeling at her feet when suddenly the magician appeared, and in
a fury of anger threw himself upon the young man, who met him bravely.
The former was of superhuman strength, but Nicolas’ son was not
inferior to him. The magician had the power to transform himself into
any thing he might choose; he changed successively into a lion, into a
serpent, into a bird of prey, into fire--hoping under some one of these
forms to wear his adversary out; but nothing could shake the courage
of the young man. For three days the combat continued. The first day
the magician seemed beaten, but the next he regained his advantage; at
the end of the day’s struggle he killed his young opponent, and cut his
body into four quarters, which he hung on the four sides of the tower.
Then elated by his victory, he did violence to Demetra’s daughter,
whose chastity he had hitherto respected. But in the night the stork
flew away to a great distance to fetch a magic herb which it knew,
brought it back in its beak, and rubbed with it the young man’s lips.
At once the pieces of his body came together again and he revived.
Great was his despair when he learnt what had taken place after his
defeat; but he only threw himself upon the magician with the greater
fury the third day, to punish him for his crime.
Once again the young man, it seemed, was on the point of being
vanquished, when suddenly he conceived the happy idea of invoking
the Panagia, vowing that if victorious he would become a monk at the
monastery of Phaneroméne[147]. The divine protection which he had
invoked gave him strength and he succeeded in throwing his adversary:
the stork, who had aided him so much, at once attacked the fallen
magician and picked out his eyes; then with its beak pulled out a
white hair noticeable among the black curls that covered his head. On
this hair depended the life of the Turkish magician, who immediately
expired.
His conqueror, taking with him the girl, brought her back to Lepsína,
just at the season when spring was coming and the flowers were
beginning to appear in the fields. Then he went, as he had vowed, and
shut himself up in the monastery. S. Demetra, having received back
her daughter, went away with her. What became of them afterwards, no
one knows; but since that time the fields of Lepsína, thanks to the
blessing of the Saint, have not ceased to be fertile.’
It would be superfluous to point out the numerous details of this
legend which accord explicitly with the account of the rape of
Persephone in the Homeric hymn. The interspersion of Christian ideas
and reminiscences of Turkish domination and stories of fabulous
monsters may strike oddly on the ear unacquainted with the vagaries
of Greek folk-stories. Yet the most sceptical could not doubt that
the tradition which forms the groundwork of the legend is none other
than the old myth, or that the four chief actors in the drama are none
other than Demeter and Core, Pluto and Triptolemus. Pluto, masked
as a Turkish _agha_, is perhaps the least readily recognisable; yet
in one way as a relic of ancient tradition the part he plays is the
most remarkable in the whole legend. It is to Souli in Epirus that he
carries off the maiden. Now this is the district of the ancient Cocytus
and Acheron; here was one of the descents to the lower world; here
Aidoneus held sway; and here, in one version of the myth[148], was laid
the scene of the rape of Persephone by that god. Hence the claims of
two separate localities to the same mythological distinction seem by
some means to have become incorporated in the single modern legend.
In the same part of Epirus, according to Lenormant, a similar story to
that which he heard at Eleusis concerning S. Demetra’s daughter, is
told, _mutatis mutandis_, of S. Demetrius: but since either a sense
of propriety or a want of knowledge prevented him from publishing the
details of it, the mere statement that it existed is of no great value.
But the legend which he narrates in full may I think be accepted as
genuine without corroboration on the grounds of its own structure.
Lenormant has indeed been accused of _mala fides_ in his own department
of archaeology and of tampering with some of the inscriptions which he
published; but even if this charge could be substantiated, I should
doubt whether he had either the inclination to invent a legend which he
only mentions in a cumbrous foot-note, or the ability to fuse ancient
and modern ideas into so good an imitation of the genuine folk-story.
In my judgement the construction of the legend is practically proof of
its genuinely popular origin.
Thus Eleusis and, in a lesser degree, the many places where S.
Demetrius has succeeded to the chief functions of Demeter have hardly
yet lost touch with the ancient worship of the goddess, Christianised
in form though it may be. But Arcadia too, where alone of all the
Peloponnese the indigenous population were secure from the Achaean
and Dorian immigrations and maintained in seclusion the holiest of
Pelasgian cults, preserves to the present day in story and in custom
some vestiges of the old religion; and here they are less tinged with
Christian colour.
Near the city of Pheneos, which according to Pausanias[149] was the
scene of mysteries similar to those enacted at Eleusis, there are some
underground channels by which the waters of Lake Pheneos are carried
off, soon to reappear as the river Ladon. These channels were believed
by Pausanias himself to be artificial--the work of Heracles, it was
said, who also constructed a canal close by, traces of which are still
visible: but according to another authority[150] they were the passage
by which Pluto carried off Persephone to the infernal regions. Some
memory of the latter belief seems still to linger among the people
of Phoniá (the modern form of Pheneós), who call these subterranean
vents ἡ τρούπαις τοῦ διαβόλου, ‘the holes of the devil,’ and who
further believe that it is through them that the spirits of the dead
pass to the lower world. My guide informed me also that the rise or
fall of the waters of the lake--the level varies to an extraordinary
degree--furnishes an augury as to what rate of mortality may be
expected in the village. If the water is high, the lower world is for
the time being congested and requires no more inhabitants; if it sinks,
the lower world is empty, and thirsts for fresh victims. The connexion
of such beliefs with the cult of Persephone, though vague, is probably
real; but how general they may be among the present villagers I cannot
say; Dodwell[151] apparently heard nothing of them except the name of
‘the devil’s holes,’ and the explanation of this name which was given
to him took the form of a story about a conflict between the devil and
a king of Phoniá, in which the former hurled explosive balls of grease
at his adversary, one of which set him on fire and drove his body right
through the base of the mountain which rises from the lake’s edge,
leaving thereafter an escape for the waters. There is certainly nothing
in common between this story, which Leake also heard in a slightly
different version[152], and the beliefs communicated to me; and I
suspect that it is a comparatively modern aetiological fable designed
perhaps to satisfy the curiosity of children concerning the name. The
belief that the subterranean channel is a descent to the lower world is
more clearly a vestige of the old local cult of Kore.
Again in the neighbourhood of Phigalia there is current among the
peasantry a curious story which I tried in vain to hear recited
in full, but only obtained in outline at second-hand. I cannot
consequently vouch for its accuracy, but such as it is I give it. There
once were a brother and sister, of whom the former was very wicked
and a magician, while the latter was very virtuous and beautiful. Her
beauty was indeed so wonderful, that her brother became enamoured of
her. In her distress she fled to a cave near Phigalia, hoping to elude
his pursuit; but the magician straightway discovered her. Then being
at her wits’ end how to save herself from the unholy passion which her
beauty inspired, she prayed to be turned into some beast. Her prayer
was straightway granted, but the wicked magician had power to change
himself likewise. So when they had both been changed into several
shapes he at length overcame her. But no sooner was the infamous deed
done, than the Panagia caused an earthquake, and the roof of the cave
fell and destroyed both brother and sister together.
A story of incest necessarily ends at the present day among the highly
moral countryfolk of Greece with punishment inflicted by some Christian
deity: but for the rest the story is practically the same as that which
Pausanias heard concerning Poseidon and his sister Demeter in the same
district[153]. In the old version, which Pausanias gives very briefly,
there is only one transformation mentioned, that of Demeter into a
mare and of Poseidon into a horse; but it is at least noteworthy that
the statue of horse-headed Demeter which commemorated this incident
is said to have had ‘figures of snakes and other wild animals’ fixed
on its head; and possibly, if Pausanias had given a fuller version
of the myth, we should find that these figures related to other
transformations which Demeter had tried in vain before in equine form
she was finally forced to yield. The mention of the cave in the modern
story is also significant; for though the cave in the ancient version
is not the scene of the rape, it was there that Demeter hid herself
in her anger afterwards and there too that the statue of horse-headed
Demeter was set up. It would be interesting to know whether the horse
is one of the forms assumed in the modern story; perhaps some other
traveller will be fortunate enough to hear the tale in full.
In northern Arcadia I also learnt that the flesh of the pig, in
respect of which the ordinary _Graeculus_ fully deserves the epithet
_esuriens_, is taboo; and the result of eating it is believed to be
leprosy. It might be supposed that this superstition has resulted from
contact with Mohammedans; but such an explanation would not account
for the confinement of it to one locality--and that a mountainous
and unprofitable district where intercourse with the Turks must have
been small; and further the Greek would surely have found a malicious
pleasure, the most piquant of sauces, in eating that which offended
the two peoples whom he most abhors, Turks and Jews. On the other
hand, if we suppose this fear of swine’s flesh to be a piece of native
tradition, its origin may well be sought in the ritual observances of
the old cult of Demeter and her daughter, to whom the pig was sacred
and in whose honour it was sacrificed once only in each year, at the
festival of the Thesmophoria[154]. There are many instances among
different peoples of the belief that skin diseases, especially leprosy,
are the punishment visited upon those who eat of the sacred or unclean
animal; for the distinction between sacred and unclean is not made
until a primitive sense of awe is inclined by conscious reasoning in
the direction either of reverence or of abhorrence[155]. Thus in
Egypt, the land from which the Pelasgians, if Herodotus[156] might be
believed, derived the worship of Demeter, it was held that the drinker
of pig’s milk incurred leprosy[157]; and we may reasonably suppose that
the same punishment threatened those Egyptians who tasted of pig’s
flesh save at their one annual festival when this was enjoined[158].
Now the Thesmophoria resembled this Egyptian festival in that it was
an annual occasion for sacrificing pigs and for partaking therefore of
their flesh; if then the worshippers of Demeter, like the Egyptians,
were forbidden to use the pig for food at other times, and if the
penalty for disobedience in Greece too was believed to be leprosy, the
present case of taboo in Arcadia--the only one known to me in modern
Greece--may be a survival from the ancient cult.
But apart from these traces of the worship of Demeter and Kore
in Christian worship, in folk-story, and in custom, traces which
constitute in themselves cogent proof of the firm hold on the popular
mind which the goddesses twain must long have kept, there exists in the
belief of the Greek peasantry a personal Power, a living non-Christian
deity, who still inspires awe in many simple hearts and who may
reasonably be identified with one or rather perhaps with both of them.
For it must not be forgotten that the mother and the daughter were
in origin and symbolism one. The idea of life’s ebb and flow, of
nature’s sleeping and waking, is expressed in them severally as well as
conjointly. It would be impossible to analyse the complete myth and,
even if a purely physical interpretation were sought, to express in
physiological terms the two persons and the parts which they play: for
certain ideas find duplicate expression. Either Demeter’s retirement
to some dark cave or the descent of Persephone to the underworld might
have represented alone and unaided the temporary abeyance of earth’s
productive powers. Yet it was with good reason that the myth expanded
as it were spontaneously until the spirit of life, that pervades
not only the cornfield but all that is animal and human too, was
pourtrayed in double form; not because the mere physical fact of the
decay and the revival of vegetation needed larger symbolism for its
due expression, but because in the tie of mother and daughter and all
that it connotes was fitly represented that by which the life-spirit
works among the higher orders of created things, that which goes before
life’s manifestations and outlasts its vanishings, the spirit of love.
Of all such ideas as these the modern peasant, needless to say, is
wholly innocent. He has learnt from his ancestors of a woman beautiful,
reverend, deathless, who dwells within a mountain of his land, and who
by her dealings with mankind has proved her real and divine puissance.
Her name is no more uttered, perchance because it is too holy for
men of impure lips; they speak only of ‘the Mistress.’ She is a real
person, not the personification of any natural force. The tiller of
the land foresees his yearly gain from cornfield and vineyard; the
shepherd on the mountain-side expects the yearly increase of his flock;
but by neither is any principle inferred therefrom, much less is such
a principle personified; the blessing which rests on field and fold
is the work of a living goddess’ hands. Flesh and blood she is, even
as they themselves, but immortal and very mighty, nobler than many of
whom the priests preach, stronger to help the good and to punish the
wicked. Simple people they are, who still believe such things, and
ignorant; yet less truly ignorant than some half-educated pedants of
the towns who vaunt their learning in chattering of ‘Ceres’ rather than
of ‘Demeter’ and, misled by Roman versifiers who at least had an excuse
in the exigencies of metre, misinterpret the name as a mere synonym for
corn. Happily however the influence of the schools--for it is amongst
the schoolmasters that the worst offenders in this respect are to be
found--is not yet all-reaching, and in the remoter villages tradition
is still untainted. There without fear of ridicule men may still
confess their faith in the great compassionate goddess.
It was in Aetolia that I first recognised the popular belief in this
deity. There I heard tell of one who was called ἡ κυρὰ τοῦ κόσμου, ‘the
mistress of the world.’ Her dwelling was in the heart of a mountain,
the means of access to it a cave, but where situated, the peasants
either did not know or feared to tell. Her character indeed was ever
gracious and kindly, but it may be they thought she would resent a
foreigner’s approach. In her power was the granting of many boons, but
her special care was the fertility of the flocks and the abundance of
the crops, including in that district tobacco.
This revelation convinced me of the accuracy of what I had previously
suspected only in North Arcadia and in Messenia. In both those regions
I had heard occasional mention among the peasants of one whose title
was simply ἡ δέσποινα, ‘the Mistress.’ The word had always struck me
as curious, for in ordinary usage it is obsolete and the mistress of
a house or whatever it may be is always ἡ κυρά (i.e. κυρία). Knowing
however that the Church had preserved the title ἡ δέσποινα among those
under which the Virgin may be invoked, I was disposed at first to think
that the dedication of some church in the neighbourhood had influenced
the people to use the rare name ἡ δέσποινα instead of the ordinary
‘Panagia.’ But when I enquired where the church of ‘the Mistress’ was,
the answer was ‘she has none’: and yet, on making subsequent enquiries
of other persons, I found that there was a church of the Panagia close
by. Clearly then it was not in the ecclesiastical sense that the title
ἡ δέσποινα was being used. More than this I failed to elicit--the
peasants of the Peloponnese are on the whole more suspicious and
secretive than those of northern Greece--but I have little doubt that
this goddess is the same as she who in Aetolia bears a title more
colloquial in form but identical in meaning.
The existence of this deity among the survivals of the old religion has
never, I think, been observed by any writer on the subject of Greek
folk-lore. But in Bernhard Schmidt’s collection of popular stories and
songs there is evidence, whose value he himself did not recognise, to
corroborate it. One of the songs[159] from Zacynthos contains the lines:
Ἔκαμ’ ὁ Θεὸς κι’ ἡ Παναγι̯ὰ κι’ ἡ Δέσποινα τοῦ κόσμου,
καὶ ἐπολέμησα με Τούρκους, μ’ Ἀρβανίταις·
χίλιους ἔκοψα, χίλιους καὶ δυ̯ὸ χιλιάδες.
‘They wrought in me, even God and the Virgin and the Mistress of the
world, and I fought with Turks and with Albanians: a thousand I slew,
a thousand yea and two thousand.’
The editor of this song omits from his translation and does not even
mention in his notes the last phrase of the first line, assuming, I
suppose, that the Virgin is mentioned twice over under two different
titles; but it is at least possible that three persons are intended.
God and the Virgin belong to the category of Christian deities; the
third may be the pagan goddess already discovered in Messenia, Arcadia,
and Aetolia; if so, the collocation of her name along with those of
the highest Christian powers is strong testimony to the reverence
with which the people of Zacynthos too were wont, and perhaps still
continue, to regard her.
In Schmidt’s stories again yet another variation of the title occurs.
In one, which has already been narrated in full[160], ‘the Mistress of
the earth and of the sea’ (ἡ κυρὰ τσῆ γῆς και τσῆ θάλασσας) rewards
a poor man, on the recommendation of his good angel, with miraculous
gifts, and when he is slain by an envious king, herself appears and
sends down the tyrant quick into the pit where punishment for his
wickedness awaits him. Another, in which the same ample appellation is
used, runs in brief as follows[161]:
‘Once upon a time a king on his return from a journey gave to his
eldest son as a present a picture of “the Mistress of the earth and of
the sea.” The prince was so dazzled by her beauty that he resolved to
seek her out and make her his wife. He accordingly consulted a witch
who told him how to find the palace where the Mistress of earth and sea
lived, and warned him also that before he could secure the fulfilment
of his desire two tasks would be set him, the first to shatter a small
phial carried by a dove in its beak without injuring the bird, the
second to obtain the skin of a three-headed dragon. She also provided
him with a magic bow wherewith to perform the first labour, and with
two hairs from the dragon’s head, by means of which he would be
magically guided to the monster’s lair. Arrived there he should glut it
with a meal of earth which he was to carry with him, and then slay it
as it slept.
Thus forewarned and forearmed the prince set out and passing through a
cave, of which the witch had told him, came to the palace. The Mistress
having enquired of him his errand at once set him to perform the two
tasks. These he accomplished, and she returned with him as his wife to
his own land. But they did not live peaceably together, and one day
the Mistress of earth and sea in her anger bade the waters overflow
the whole land, so that all mankind was drowned while she herself
hovered above in the air and looked on. Then when the waters subsided,
she descended to the earth and made new men by sowing stones; and
thereafter she ruled again as before over the whole world.’
Both these stories hail, as does the song of which a few lines are
cited above, from Zacynthos, and there is therefore good reason
for believing that in that island the same ‘Mistress’ was recently
acknowledged as at this very day is venerated in those parts of the
mainland which I have mentioned.
Taking the common factors in these several traditions and beliefs,
we are led at once to identify the goddess to whom they relate with
Demeter.
First, the simplest form of her title, ἡ δέσποινα, of which the others
are merely elaborations, is that which Demeter commonly shared with
Persephone in old time; and that the title has been handed down from
antiquity is shown clearly by the fact that the word is in ordinary
usage obsolete. Since then it is unlikely that in the course of
tradition such a title should be transferred (save, owing to Christian
influence, in the case of the Virgin, who has locally no doubt
superseded one of the goddesses twain and appropriated her byname),
the word itself declares in favour of the identification of this still
living deity with Demeter.
Secondly, her dwelling-place is consistently in the modern accounts
the heart of a mountain, and the passage to it a cave. Such precisely,
according to Pausanias, was the habitation of Demeter in Mt
Elaïon[162]; and the same idea is reflected in her whole cult; for,
though in the classical period she had temples built like those of
other deities, yet her holy of holies, as befitted a Chthonian deity,
was always a subterranean hall (μέγαρον) or palace (ἀνάκτορον), an
artificial and glorified cavern.
Thirdly, the modern deity is in character benevolent, therein differing
markedly from many of the pagan powers whom we have yet to consider and
also from several of the Christian saints. Once only, in the second of
the stories from Zacynthos, does she appear in angry mood, when she
destroys all mankind by a flood. To the actual means of destruction
employed too much importance must not be attached. The _motif_ of
the flood is common in modern Greek folk-tales. In the islands of the
Aegean I encountered it several times, the fullest version being one
which I heard in Scyros. The story as told there was exactly that of
Deucalion, save that in deference to biblical tradition he was named
Noah and, by a slight anachronism, it was the Panagia instead of Themis
who counselled him to create fresh men by throwing stones over his
shoulder. I was also taken to see the place where the flood was at
its highest, a narrow glen through which runs a small stream, whose
high sloping banks are certainly a mass of half-fossilised animal and
vegetable matter; and I was escorted to the hill-top on which Noah’s
caïque finally rested. Such a theme is easily worked into a story
of the deity, usually benevolent though she be, who is ‘Mistress of
the earth and of the sea’; and apart from the means of punishment so
appropriately adopted by a goddess who rules the sea, this single
outburst of somewhat unreasonable anger on the part of the modern deity
against all mankind is singularly like the old-time Demeter’s resentful
retirement into the depths of her cave, until ‘all the produce of earth
was failing and the human race was perishing fast from famine[163].’
Yet otherwise the ancient goddess too was benevolent and gracious to
man.
Fourthly, in Aetolia at any rate and probably also in the Peloponnese,
where however I failed to extract definite information, the modern
goddess is the quickener of all the fruits of the earth, and in
functions therefore corresponds once more with the ancient conception
of Demeter. On these grounds the identification seems to me certain.
This being granted, the permanence of tradition concerning the
dwelling-place of Demeter raises a question which I approach with
diffidence, feeling that an answer to it must rest with others more
competent than myself in matters archaeological. First, is the
tradition as old as that of the personality of the goddess? It is hard
to suppose otherwise; for the primitive mind would scarcely conceive
of a person without assigning also an habitation; and the habitation
actually assigned is of primitive enough character--a cave in a
mountain-side. Where then was Demeter worshipped by the Pelasgians
in the Mycenaean age? That she was a deity much reverenced by the
dwellers in the Argive plain is certain; small idols believed to
represent Demeter Kourotrophos have been found at Mycenae[164]; others,
of which the identification is more certain, at Tiryns[165]; and at
Argos, in later times, Demeter continued to be worshipped under the
title Pelasgian[166]. Was a mere cavern then her only home? Or did
Mycenae lavish some of its gold on building her a more worthy temple?
May not the famous bee-hive structures which have passed successively
for treasuries and for tombs of princes prove to be μέγαρα, temples of
Chthonian deities such as Demeter?
It is true that in some humbler structures of the same type, such
as those at Menídi and Thoricus, clear evidences of inhumation have
been found; but I question whether it is permissible to draw from
this fact the inference that those magnificent structures also, the
so-called Treasuries of Atreus and of Minyas, were in reality tombs.
It would seem reasonable to suppose that dwelling-places for the dead
beneath the earth and for earth-deities may have been constructed on
the same plan, but that the abodes dedicated to immortals were more
imposing than those destined for dead men. This hypothesis appears to
me more consistent with the evidence of the actual sites at Mycenae and
Orchomenos than the commonly accepted view that the inner chamber of
the ‘Treasury of Atreus’ was a place of burial. ‘In the centre of the
Mycenaean chamber,’ says Schuchhardt[167], ‘there is an almost circular
depression three feet in diameter and two feet in depth, cut into the
rocky ground. In spite of its unusual shape, we must recognise in it
the actual site of the grave.’ Was it a royal posture to lie curled up
like a cat? And if so, what of a similar depression in the floor of
the ‘Treasury of Minyas’ at Orchomenos? ‘Almost in the centre of the
treasure-room’--I again quote Schuchhardt[168]--‘was a long hole in the
level rock, nine inches deep, fifteen inches broad and nineteen inches
long, which’--must be recognised as the sepulchre of a royal baby? No,
our faith is not to be so severely taxed;--‘which must have served
to secure some monument.’ May we not, with more consistency, extend
the same explanation to Mycenae? And what then were the monuments?
May they not have been images of the deity set up in the most natural
place, the centre of the outer or the inner sanctuary?
Again, the actual shape of the buildings is important. Ethnologists
tell us that it is ultimately derived from a type of dwelling commonly
occupied by primitive man, a circular wattle-hut with conical top; or
even more directly, as some would have it, from a similarly shaped
abode which the ancient Phrygians used to excavate in the ground,
constructing the top of withies laced over beams converging to the apex
and covered over with earth, while they tunnelled out an approach from
one side where the ground sloped conveniently away[169]. From this it
is argued that the domed chambers of Mycenae must be tombs, on the
ground that ‘men in all ages have fashioned the dwellings of the dead
in accordance with those of the living; but the dead are conservative,
and long after a new generation has sought a new home and a new pattern
for its houses, the habitations of the dead are still constructed in
ancestral fashion[170].’ I readily admit conservatism in all religious
matters; but how does the argument touch Mycenae? Archaeologists, and
among them Schuchhardt himself[171], are agreed that the shaft-graves
in the citadel are earlier in date than the bee-hive structures of
the lower town. There was therefore a breach in the continuity of the
ancestral fashion. Reversion to a disused fashion is a very different
thing from conservatism in upholding an unbroken usage.
But even supposing that there were good evidence of the uninterrupted
continuity of this type of sepulchre, may not the temples of Chthonian
deities have been built on the same plan? The use of the old word
μέγαρον suggests that the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone, though
subterranean, was modelled on the dwellings of men, and, to borrow an
argument, religious conservatism may well have preserved for the gods’
abodes the hut-like shape of primitive man’s dwellings long after a new
type of house had become general among mortals. Concrete instances of
this actually existed in much later times[172]. In Rome the temple of
Vesta was of this primitive shape, and so also most probably was the
Prytaneum of Athens, which, though not a temple, contained the sacred
hearth of the whole community and a statue of Hestia[173]. Demeter
then, as one of the deities of primitive Greece, might well have been
provided with a temple constructed on the same primitive pattern as
that of Vesta, but subterranean, as would befit a Chthonian deity, and
thus analogous to the cave wherein she had been wont to dwell. The
large domed chamber would be her _megaron_, wherein her worshippers
assembled just as guests assembled in the _megaron_ of a prince. The
small square apartment, where such exists, opening on one side of the
main room, might be the παστάς or ‘bedchamber,’ an inner sanctuary
which temples of later ages also possessed. The approach or ‘dromos’
would represent the natural cave which had given access to her fabled
palace in the bowels of the earth.
Finally, on such a view of these buildings, it would not be difficult
to explain Pausanias’ belief that they were treasuries[174]. Treasuries
only, we may be sure, they were not; for they would not have been built
outside the walls of the citadel. But temples in later times were used
as depositories for treasure; the would-be thief shrank apparently from
the further crime of sacrilege; and it is not unlikely that in a more
primitive age, when superstitious awe was certainly no less strong,
while robbery far from being a crime was an honourable calling, men
should have secured their treasure by storing it in some inviolable
sanctuary. Indeed it may be to such a custom that Homer alludes in
speaking of ‘all that the stone threshold of the archer, even Phoebus
Apollo, doth enclose within at rocky Pytho[175].’ If then this practice
prevailed in Mycenaean, as it did in later, times, Pausanias would
be recording a tradition which was partially right; and it is not
hard to see how, when Mycenae’s greatness had suddenly, as it seems,
declined and her population perhaps had migrated for the most part to
Argos, later generations, familiar in their new settlements with that
different type of temple only which afterwards became general, might
have forgotten the sacred character of the bee-hive structures and
have remembered only the proverbial wealth once stored by the kings of
Mycenae within them.
There remains one point to which I may for the moment direct attention
here, reserving the development of the religious idea contained in
it for a later chapter. The main theme of the second of the stories
from Zacynthos was the seeking of the Mistress in marriage by a young
prince. Now if this story stood alone, it would not be right to lay
much stress upon it; for the adventures of a young prince in search of
some far-famed bride form the plot of numerous Greek folk-tales; and
it would be possible to suppose that the real divine personality of
the Mistress had been partially obscured in the popular memory before
such a story became connected with her name. But the same _motif_
as it happens is repeated in two stories, one Greek and the other
Albanian, in von Hahn’s collection[176]. The name of ‘the Mistress’
does not indeed occur; the deity is called in both ‘the beautiful
one of the earth[177].’ But her identity is made quite clear in the
Albanian story, which evidently must have been borrowed from the
Greek and is therefore admissible as good evidence, by the mention
of ‘a three-headed dog that sleeps not day nor night’ by which she
is guarded. This is undoubtedly the same monster as the hero of the
Zacynthian story was required to kill--the three-headed snake; and
while the Albanian story, in making the beast a guardian of the
subterranean abode whom the adventurer must slay before he can reach
‘the beautiful one,’ is better in construction and, incidentally, more
faithful to old tradition[178] than the Greek version which makes the
slaying an useless task arbitrarily imposed, yet in both portraits of
the monster we can recognise Cerberus--half dog, half snake. But of him
more anon; ‘the beautiful one of the earth’ whom he guards can be none
other than Persephone.
Thus there are three modern stories which record the winning of Demeter
or Persephone in marriage by a mortal lover. Is this a relic of ancient
tradition? There was the attempt of Pirithous to seize Persephone for
his wife; but that failed, and moreover was judged an impious deed
for which he must suffer punishment. Yet there is also the story of
Iasion who was deemed worthy of Demeter’s love. Wedlock then even with
so great a deity as Demeter or her daughter was not beyond mortals’
dream or reach. Thus much I may notice now; when I come to examine
more closely the ancient worship of these goddesses, I shall argue
that the idea of a marriage-union between them and human kind was the
most intimate secret of the mysteries, and that in such folk-tales
as those which I have here mentioned is contained the germ of a
religious conception from which was once evolved the holiest of ancient
sacraments.
§ 6. CHARON.
There is no ancient deity whose name is so frequently on the lips
of the modern peasant as that of Charon. The forms which it has now
assumed are two, Χάρος and Χάροντας, analogous to the formations γέρος
and γέροντας from the ancient γέρων: for in late Greek at any rate the
declension of Χάρων followed that of γέρων[179]. The two forms do not
seem to belong to different modern dialects, for they often appear in
close juxtaposition in the same folk-song. The shorter form however is
the commoner in every-day speech, and I shall therefore employ it.
About Charos the peasants will always, according to my experience,
converse freely. Neither superstitious awe nor fear of ridicule imposes
any restraint. They feel perhaps that the existence of Charos is one of
the stern facts which men must face; and even the more educated classes
retain sometimes, I think, an instinctive fear of making light of his
name, lest he should assert his reality. For Charos is Death. He is
not now, what classical literature would have him to be, merely the
ferryman of the Styx. He is the god of death and of the lower world.
Hades is no longer a person but a place, the realm over which Charos
rules. But the change which has befallen the old monarch’s name is
the only change in the Greek conception of that realm. It is still
called ‘the lower world’ (ὁ κάτω κόσμος or ἡ κάτω γῆ), and even the
name Tartarus (now τὰ Τάρταρα, with the addition frequently of τῆς
γῆς) still may be heard. Nor is the character of the place altered.
Its epithet ‘icy-cold,’ κρυοπαγωμένος, is well-nigh as constant in
modern folk-songs as was the equivalent κρυερός in Homer’s allusions
to Hades’ house, while the picturesque word ἀραχνιασμένος, ‘thick with
spiders’-webs,’ repeats in thought the Homeric εὐρωείς, ‘mouldering.’
Such is Charos’ kingdom, and hither he conveys men’s souls which he has
snatched away from earth.
Here with him dwells his mother, a being, as one folk-song tells[180],
more pitiful than he, who entreats him sometimes, when he is setting
out to the chase, to spare mothers with young children and not to part
lovers new-wed. He has also a wife, Charóntissa or Chárissa, who as the
name itself implies is merely a feminine counterpart of himself without
any distinct character of her own. A son of Charos is also mentioned
in song, for whose wedding-feast ‘he slays children instead of lambs
and brides as fatlings[181],’ and to whose keeping are entrusted the
counter-keys of Hades[182]. Adopted children are also counted among
his family, but these are of those whom he has carried from this world
to his own home[183]. The household is completed by the three-headed
watch-dog, of whom however remembrance is very rare. Yet in two
stories in the last section we recognised Cerberus, and even the less
convincing of the embodiments there presented, that which represented
him as a three-headed snake rather than dog, is not devoid of traces
of ancient tradition. The hero who would slay the monster has to cross
a piece of water--the sea instead of the river Styx--in order to reach
an island where is the monster’s lair; and there arrived, he sees
‘looking out from a hole three heads with eyes that flash fire and
jaws that breathe flames[184].’ This is Cerberus without doubt; and
if the story calls him ‘serpent’ rather than ‘dog,’ ancient mythology
and art alike justify in part the description; for his mother was
said to be Echidna, and he himself is found pourtrayed with the tail
of a serpent and a ring of snakes about his neck. Schmidt himself
appears to have overlooked the testimony of this story and of that also
from the collection of von Hahn in which, as I have pointed out, we
have a modern picture of Cerberus guarding the realm of Persephone;
for he speaks of some remarkable lines from a song which he himself
heard in Zacynthos as an unique mention of Cerberus, and questions
the genuine nature of the tradition. All doubt is however removed
by the corroborative evidence contained in the two stories already
mentioned and by the fact that a three-headed dog belonging to Charos
was recently heard of by a traveller in Macedonia[185]. The lines
themselves are put in the mouth of Charos:--
Ἔχω ὀχτρὸ ἐγὼ σκυλὶ, π’ ούλους μας μᾶς φυλάει,
κῂ ἄντας με ἰδῇ ταράζεταικὴ καὶ θέλει νά με φάῃ.
εἶναι σκυλὶ τρικέφαλο, ποῦ καίει σὰ φωτία,
ἔχει τὰ νύχια πουντερὰ καὶ τὴν ὠρὰ μακρύα.
βγάνει φωτιὰ ’φ’ τὰ μάτια του, ἀπὸ τὸ στόμα λάβρα,
ἡ γλῶσσα του εἶναι μακρυά, τὰ δόντια του εἶναι μαῦρα[186].
‘A savage dog have I, who guards us all, and when he sees me he rages
and fain would devour me. A three-headed dog is he, and he burns like
fire; his claws are sharp and his tail is long; from his eyes he gives
forth flame and from his mouth burning heat; long is his tongue and
grim his teeth.’
Here at least recognition of Cerberus must be immediate; every detail
of the description, save for the characteristically modern touch
which makes Charos afraid of his own dog, is in accord with classical
tradition.
Such is the household of Charos, so far as a description may be
compiled from a few scattered allusions; his own portrait varies more,
in proportion as there are more numerous attempts in every part of
Greece to draw it. Sometimes he is depicted as an old man, tall and
spare, white of hair and harsh of feature; but more often he is a lusty
warrior, with locks of raven-black or gleaming gold--just as Hades in
old time was sometimes κυανοχαίτης, sometimes ξανθός,--who rides forth
on his black steed by highway or lonely path to slay and to ravage:
‘his glance is as lightning and his face as fire, his shoulders are
like twin mountains and his head like a tower[187].’ His raiment is
usually black as befits the lord of death, but anon it is depicted
bright as his sunlit hair[188], for though he brings death he is a god
and glorious.
His functions are clearly defined. He visits this upper world to
carry off those whose allotted time has run, and guards them in the
lower world as in a prison whose keys they vainly essay to steal and
to escape therefrom. But the spirit in which he performs those duties
varies according as he is conceived to be a free agent responsible to
none or merely a minister of the supreme God. Which of these is the
true conception is a question to which the common-folk as a whole have
given no final answer; and the character of Charos consequently depends
upon the view locally preferred.
Those who regard him as simply the servant and messenger of God, find
no difficulty in accommodating him to his Christian surroundings;
for, as I have said, the peasant does not distinguish between the
Christian and the pagan elements in his faith which together make his
polytheism so luxuriant. We have already seen Charos’ name with the
prefix of ‘saint[189]’; and though this Christian title is not often
accorded him, yet his name appears commonly on tomb-stones in Christian
churchyards. At Leonídi, on the east coast of the Peloponnese, I noted
the couplet:
καὶ μένα δὲν λυπήθηκε ὁ Χάρος νά με πάρῃ,
ποῦ εἴμουνα τοῦ οἴκου μου μονάκριβο βλαστάρι.
‘Me too Charos pitied not but took, even me the fondly-cherished
flower of my home.’
So too in popular story and song he is represented as working in
concord with the Angels and Archangels, to whom sometimes falls
the task of carrying children to his realm[190]. Indeed one of the
archangels, Michael, who as we saw above has ousted Hermes, the
escorter of souls, and assumed his functions, is charged with exactly
the same duties as Charos in the conveyance of men’s souls to the
nether world, so that in popular parlance the phrases ‘he is wrestling
with Charos’ (παλεύει μὲ τὸ Χάρο)[191] and ‘he is struggling with
an angel’ (ἀγγελομαχεῖ)[192] are both alike used of a man in his
death-agony.
This Christianised conception of Charos has not been without influence
in softening the lines of the character popularly ascribed to him. The
duties imposed upon him by the will of God are sometimes repugnant to
him, and he would willingly spare those whom he is sent to slay. One
folk-story related to me exhibits him even as a friend of man:--
‘Once upon a time there were a man and wife who had had seven children
all of whom died in infancy. When an eighth was born, the father betook
himself to a witch and enquired of her how he might best secure the
boy’s life. She told him that the others had died because he had chosen
unsuitable godparents, and bade him on this occasion ask the first man
whom he should meet on his way home to stand sponsor for the child. He
accordingly departed, and straightway met a stranger riding on a black
horse, and made his request to him. The stranger consented, and the
baptism at once took place; but no sooner was it over than he was gone
without so much as telling his name.
Ten years passed, and the child was growing up strong and healthy.
Then at last the father again encountered the unknown stranger, and
reproached him with having been absent so long without ever making
enquiry after his godson. Then the stranger answered, “Better for thee
if I had not now come and if thou neededst not now learn my name. I am
Charos, and because I am thy friend[193], am come to warn thee that thy
days are well-nigh spent.” Thereupon Charos led him away to a cave in
the mountain-side, and they entered and came to a chamber where were
many candles burning. Then said Charos, “See, these candles are the
lives of men, and yonder are thine and thy son’s.” Then the man looked,
and of his own candle there were but two inches left, but his son’s was
tall and burnt but slowly. Then he besought Charos to light yet another
candle for him ere his own were burnt away, but Charos made answer that
that could not be. Then again he besought him to give him ten years
from the life of his son, for he was a poor man, and if he died ere his
son were grown to manhood, his widow and orphan would be in want. But
Charos answered, “In no way can the decreed length of life be changed.
Yet will I show thee how in the two years that yet remain to thee thou
mayest enrich thyself and leave abundant store for thy wife and child.
Thou shalt become a physician. It matters not that thou knowest nought
of medicine, for I will give thee a better knowledge than of drugs.
Thine eyes shall ever be open to see me; and when thou goest to a sick
man’s couch, if thou dost see me standing at the bed-head, know then
that he must die, and say to them that summoned thee that no skill can
save him; but if thou dost see me at the foot of the bed, know that he
will recover; give him therefore but pills of bread if thou wilt, and
promise to restore him.” Then did the man thank Charos, and went away
to his home.
Now it chanced that the only daughter of the king lay grievously sick,
and all the doctors and magicians had been called to heal her, but they
availed nothing. Then came the poor man whom Charos had taught, and
went into the room where the princess lay, and lo! Charos stood at the
foot of her bed. Then he bade the king send away the other physicians,
for that he alone could heal her. So he himself went home and mixed
flour and water and came again and gave it to the king’s daughter, and
soon she was recovered of her sickness. Then the king gave him a great
present, and his fame was spread abroad, and many resorted to him, and
soon he was rich.
Thus two years passed, and at the end thereof he himself lay sick. And
he looked and saw Charos standing at the head of his bed. Then he bade
his wife turn the bed about, but it availed nothing; for Charos again
stood at his head, and caught him by the hair, and he opened his mouth
to cry out, and Charos drew forth his soul[194].’
Again the unwillingness of Charos to execute the harsh decrees of God
is illustrated in numerous folk-songs. Most often it is some brave
youth, shepherd or warrior, a lover of the open air, who excites his
compassion; for the same notes of regret which Sophocles made melodious
in the farewell of Ajax to the sunlight, to his house in Salamis, even
to the streams and springs of the Trojan land which brought his death,
ring clear and true in modern folk-song too from the lips of dying
warriors. Such were the last words of the outlaw-patriot (κλέφτης)
Zedros:
‘Farewell, Olympus, now farewell, and all the mountain-summits,
Farewell, my strongholds desolate, and plane-trees rich in shadow,
Ye fountains with your waters cool, and level plains low-lying.
Farewell I bid the swift-winged hawks[195], farewell the royal eagles,
Farewell for me the sun I love and the bright-glancing moonlight,
That lighted up my path wherein to walk a warrior worthy[196].’
Such laments are not lost upon Charos, the servant of God, but he must
needs turn a deaf ear to prayers for a respite. Clear and final comes
his answer, almost in the same words in every ballad[197],
δὲν ἠμπορῶ, λεβέντη μου, γιατ’ εἶμαι προσταμμένος,
ἐμένα μ’ ἔστειλ’ ὁ Θεὸς νὰ πάρω τὴ ψυχή σου.
‘No respite can I give, brave sir, for I am straitly chargèd;
’Tis God that sent me here to thee, sent me to take thy spirit.’
Sometimes then the doomed man will seek to tempt Charos with meat and
drink, that he may grant a few hours’ delay, but against offers of
hospitality he is obdurate. Or again his victim refuses to yield to
death ‘without weakness or sickness’ and challenges him to a trial
of athletic skill, in wrestling or leaping, whereon each shall stake
his own soul. And to this Charos sometimes gives consent, for he
knows that he will win. So they make their way to the ‘marble-paved
threshing-floor,’ the arena of all manly pursuits; and there the man
perchance leaps forty cubits, yet Charos surpasses him by five; or
they wrestle together from morn till eve, but at the last bout Charos
is victor. One hero indeed is known to fame, whose exploits make him
the Heracles of modern Greece, Digenes the Cyprian, who wrestled with
Charos for three nights and days and was not vanquished. But then
‘there came a voice from God and from the Archangels, “Charos, I sent
thee not to engage in wrestlings, but that thou should’st carry off
souls for me[198].”’ And at that rebuke Charos transformed himself into
an eagle and alighted on the hero’s head and plucked out his soul.
The other and more pagan conception of Charos excludes all traits
of kindness and mercy; and men do not stint the expression of their
hatred of him. He is ‘black,’ ‘bitter,’ ‘hateful’ (μαῦρος[199], πικρός,
στυγερός). He is the merciless potentate of the nether world,
independent of the God of heaven, equally powerful in his own domain,
but more terrible, more inexorable: for his work is death and his abode
is Hades. Thence he issues forth at will, as a hunter to the chase.
‘Against the wounds that Charos deals herbs avail not, physicians give
no cure, nor saints protection[200].’ His quarry is the soul of man;
‘where he finds three, he takes two of them, and where he finds two,
takes one, and where he finds but one alone, him too he takes[201].’
Sometimes he is enlarging his palace, and he takes the young and strong
to be its pillars; sometimes he is repairing the tent in which he
dwells, and uses the stout arms of heroes for tent-pegs and the tresses
of bright-haired maidens for the ropes; sometimes he is laying out a
garden, and he gathers children from the earth to be the flowers of
it and young men to be its tall slim cypresses; more rarely he is a
vintager, and tramples men in his vat that their blood may be his red
wine, or again he carries a sickle and reaps a human harvest.
But most commonly he is the warrior preëminent in all manner of
prowess--archer, wrestler, horseman. Once a bride boasted that she
had no fear of Charos, for that her brothers were men of valour and
her husband a hero; then came Charos and shot an arrow at her, and
her beauty faded; a second and a third arrow, and he stretched her
on her death-bed[202]. Often in the pride of strength have young
warriors laughed Charos to scorn; then has he come to seize the
strongest of them, and though the warrior strain and struggle as in
a wrestling-match, yet Charos wearies not but wins the contest by
fair means or foul: for he is no honourable foe, but dishonest above
thieves, more deceitful than women[203]: he seizes his adversary by the
hair and drags him down to Hades. Even more striking is the picture of
Charos as horseman riding forth on his black steed to the foray, and
it is this conception which has inspired one of the finest achievements
of the popular muse:--
Why stand the mountains black and sad, their brows enwrapped in darkness?
Is it a wind that buffets them? is it a storm that lashes?
No, ’tis no wind that buffets them, nor ’tis no storm that lashes;
But ’tis great Charos passing by, and the dead passing with him.
He drives the young men on before, he drags the old behind him,
And at his saddle-bow are ranged the helpless little children.
The children cling and cry to him, the old men call beseeching,
“Good Charos, at some hamlet halt, halt at some cooling fountain;
There let the young men heave the stone, the old men drink of water,
There let the little children go agathering pretty posies.”
“No, not at hamlet will I halt, nor yet at cooling fountain,
Lest mothers come draw water there and know their little children,
Lest wife and husband meet again and there be no more parting.”
Such is the more pagan presentment of the modern Charos, a tyrant as
absolute in his own realm as God in heaven, a veritable Ζεὺς ἄλλος[204]
as was Hades of old, but hard of heart, heedless of prayer, delighting
in cruelty.
At first sight then the Charos of modern Greece would seem to have
little in common with the Charon of ancient Greece beyond the name and
some connexion with death: and Fauriel, in the introduction to his
collection of popular songs, pronounces the opinion that in this case
the usual tendencies of tradition have been reversed, in that it is the
name that has survived, while the attributes have been changed[205].
To this judgement I cannot subscribe. I suspect that in ancient times
the literary presentation of Charon was far more circumscribed than the
popular, and that out of a profusion of imaginative portraitures as
varied as those seen in the folk-songs of to-day one aspect of Charon
became accepted among educated men as the correct and fashionable
presentment. Hades was, in literature, the despot of the lower world,
and for Charon no place could be found save that of ferryman. But this,
I think, was only one out of the many guises in which the ancient
Charon was figured by popular imagination; for at the present day the
remnants of such a conception are small, in spite of the fact that
there has remained a custom which should have kept it alive--the custom
of putting a coin in the mouth of the dead.
Only in one folk-song, recorded from Zacynthos, can I find the old
literary representation of Charon as ferryman of the Styx unmistakably
reproduced. The following is a literal rendering:--‘Across the river
that none may ford Charos was passing, and one soul was on the bank and
gave him greeting. “Good Charos, long life to thee, well-beloved; take
me, even me, with thee, take me, dear Charos! A poor man’s soul was I,
even of a poor man and a beggar; men left me destitute and I perished
for lack of a crumb of barley-bread. No last rites did they give me,
they gave me none, poor soul, not even a farthing in my mouth for
thee who dost await me. Poor were my children, poor and without hope;
destitute were they and lay in death unburied, poor souls. Them thou
did’st take, good Charos, them thou did’st take, I saw thee, when thy
cold hand seized them by the hair. Take me too, Charos, take me, take
me, poor soul; take me yonder, take me yonder, no other waiteth for
thee.” Thus cried to him the poor man’s soul, and Charos made answer,
“Come, soul, thou art good, and God hath pitied thee.” Then took he the
soul and set her on the other bank, and spreading then his sail he sped
far away[206].’
In another song[207] of the same collection, hailing also from
Zacynthos, there may be a reminiscence of the same old tradition. In
it Charos has a caïque with black sails and black oars and goes to and
fro--whence and whither is not told--with cargoes of the dead. But more
probably the imagery is borrowed from seafaring; the Greek peasant
would hardly imagine a caïque plying on a river; the streams of his own
country will seldom carry even a small bark. A sea-voyage on the other
hand is, especially in the imagination of islanders, the most natural
method of departure to a far-off country. From the sea certainly comes
the metaphor in a funeral dirge from Zacynthos in which the mourner
asks of the dead,
σὲ τὶ καράβι θὰ βρεθῇς καὶ ’σ τὶ πόρτο θ’ ἀράξῃς;[208]
‘In what boat wilt thou be and at what haven wilt thou land?’
This too is claimed by Schmidt[209] as a reminiscence of Charon’s
ferry--somewhat unfortunately; for the next line continues,
γιὰ νἄρθῃ ἡ μανοῦλα σου νά σε ξαναγοράσῃ,
‘That thy mother may come and ransom thee again.’
Now in another dirge[210] also heard by Schmidt in the same island,
this idea is worked out even more fully: the mother cries to the master
of the ship that bears away her lost son not to sell him, and offers
high ransom for him; but the dead man in answer bids her keep her
treasure; ‘not till the crow doth whiten and become a dove, must thou,
mother mine, look for me again.’ Clearly the imagery is borrowed not
from the ferry-boat of Charon plying for hire, but from a descent of
pirates who carry men off to hold them to ransom or to sell them for
slaves. In neither dirge is Charos actually named, but doubtless he is
understood to be the captain of the pirates; for in more than one dirge
of Laconia and Maina he is explicitly called κουρσάρος, a corsair[211].
Here then we have yet another presentation of the modern Charos; but
of Charon the ferryman there is no sure remembrance except in one song
from Zacynthos. Nor again, save in that one song, is the river of death
imagined as an impassable barrier; it is rather a stream of Lethe: no
boatman is needed to carry the dead across; but mention is made only
of ‘the loved ones, that pass the river and drink the water thereof,
and forget their homes and their orphan children[212]’--just as in the
mountains there are ‘springs in marble grots, whereat the wild sheep
drink and remember no more their lambs[213].’ It is the drinking of the
water, not the passing of the stream, which frees the dead from aching
memories: the picture is wholly different from that of a river which
cannot be crossed but by grace of the ferryman.
The general oblivion into which the ancient conception of Charon has
fallen is the more remarkable, as I have said, in view of the survival
of a custom which in antiquity was closely associated with it. In parts
of Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor the practice prevails[214], or
till recently prevailed, of placing in the mouth (or more rarely on
the breast) of the dead a small coin, which in the environs of Smyrna
is actually known as τὸ περατίκι, passage-money[215]. In the Cyclades
and in parts of the Greek mainland I myself have met aged persons
who could recall the existence of the custom: a century or two ago
it was probably frequent. But there is less evidence that the coin
was commonly intended for Charos. Protodikos indeed, the authority
for the existence of the custom in Asia Minor, writing in 1860, says
expressly that the coin was designed for Charos as ferryman; and the
name of ‘passage-money’ locally given to the coin tends to confirm
the statement of a writer whom I have found in some other matters
inaccurate. Another authority[216] moreover, writing also in 1860,
states that at Stenimachos in Thrace ‘until a short time ago’ the coin
was laid in the mouth of the dead actually for Charos; nor can there be
any question that the classical interpretation of the custom survived
long in Zacynthos, as is evidenced by the complaint of the poor man’s
soul in the song translated above,
’στερνὰ ἐμὲ δὲ μοὔδωκαν, δε μοὔδωκαν τσῆ καϋμένης,
μήτε λεφτὸ ’στὸ στόμα μου γιὰ σὲ ποῦ περιμένεις,
‘No last rites did they give me, they gave me none, poor soul, not
even a farthing in my mouth for thee (Charos) who awaitest me.’
Yet Schmidt, who recorded these lines from Zacynthos, found that the
actual custom was barely remembered there. He met indeed, in 1863,
one old woman aged eighty-two, who as a child had known the practice
of putting a copper in the mouth of the dead as also that of laying a
key on the corpse’s breast; but of the purpose of the coin she knew
nothing; the key she believed to be useful for opening the gates of
Paradise. For myself, though I have heard mention of the use of the
coin, I have never known it to be associated with Charos. I incline
therefore to the opinion that in most places where the custom is or has
recently been practised, it has outlived the interpretation which was
in classical times put upon it.
But was the classical interpretation a true index to the origin of
the custom? Was it anything more than an aetiological explanation of
a custom whose significance even in an early age had already become
obscured by lapse of time? One thing at least has been made certain
by the modern study of folklore, namely that a custom may outlive not
only the idea which gave it birth but even successive false ideas which
it has itself engendered in the minds of men who have sought vainly
to explain it. When therefore Lucian[217] stated that ‘they put an
obol in the dead man’s mouth as boat-fare for the ferryman,’ it is
possible that he was recording a late and incorrect interpretation of
a custom which had existed before the rôle of ferryman had ever been
invented for Charon. Further if that interpretation had been in the
main a literary figment, it would have been natural for the original
meaning of the custom to be still remembered among the unlettered
common-folk of outlying districts. There are plenty of cases in modern
Greece in which different explanations of the same custom are offered
in different localities. In spite therefore of the fact that one view
only found expression in classical literature, there is no antecedent
improbability in the supposition that an older view may have been
handed down even to recent generations in the purer oral traditions of
the common-folk.
Once only, from a fellow-traveller in the Cyclades, did I obtain any
explanation at all of the use of the coin, εἶναι καλὸ γιὰ τἀερικά[218],
‘it is useful because of the aërial ones.’ This sounds vague enough,
but nothing more save gestures of uncertainty could I elicit. Was the
coin useful, in his view, as a fee to be paid to ‘the aërial ones’ on
the soul’s journey from this world to the next, or as a charm against
the assaults of such beings? That was the question to which I sought an
answer from him, but in vain. For myself I cannot determine in which
sense the dark saying was actually meant. The former would accord well
with one local belief of the present day, if only my informant had
specified one particular kind of aërial beings who are believed to
take toll of departing souls; but to this I shall return in a later
section of this chapter[219]. The second interpretation of the words,
however, whether they were intended in that sense by the speaker or
not, furnishes what will be shown by other evidence to be the key to
the origin of the custom.
A coin is often used as a charm against sinister influences[220]. In
this case then it may have been a prophylactic against aërial spirits.
Why then is it generally put in the dead man’s mouth? Not, I think,
because the mouth is a convenient purse, as seems to be assumed in the
classical interpretation of the custom, but because the mouth is the
entrance to the body. The peasants of to-day believe as firmly as men
of the Homeric age that it is through the mouth that the soul escapes
at death. The phrase μὲ τὴ ψυχὴ ’στὰ δόντια, ‘with the soul between
the teeth,’ is the popular equivalent for ‘at the last gasp’; and in
the folk-songs the same idea constantly recurs; ‘open thy mouth,’ says
Charos to a shepherd whom he has thrown in wrestling, ‘open thy mouth
that I may take thy soul[221].’ Now the passage by which the soul
makes its exit, is naturally the passage by which evil spirits (or the
soul[222], if it should return,) would make their entrance; and, as we
shall see later, there is a very real fear among the peasantry that a
dead body may be entered and possessed by an evil spirit. Clearly then
the mouth, by which the spirit would enter, is the right place in which
to lay the protective coin.
The interpretation which I suggest gains support from some points in
modern usage. In Macedonia, according to one traveller[223], the coin
which formerly used to be laid in the corpse’s mouth was Turkish and
bore a text from the Koran, an aggravation of the pagan custom which
was made a pretext for episcopal intervention[224]. Now clearly, if the
coin had in that district been designed as payment for the services
of Charos as ferryman, there would have been no motive for preferring
one bearing an inscription from the Mohammedan scriptures, which
assuredly could not enhance the coin’s value in the eyes of Charos:
but if the coin was itself employed as a charm against evil spirits,
the sacred text might well have been deemed to add not a little to its
prophylactic properties. Thus the character of the particular type
of coin chosen indicates that the coin in itself too was at one time
viewed as a charm; a charm moreover whose effect would be precisely
that of the key which in the island of Zacynthos was also laid upon the
dead man’s breast; for the key was certainly not designed, as Schmidt’s
informant would have it, to open the gates of Paradise, but, like any
other piece of iron, served originally to scare away spirits. The use
of a coin as well as of a key in that island was merely meant to make
assurance doubly sure.
Again, in many places throughout Greece, where this use of a coin is no
longer known, a substitute of more Christian character has been found.
On the lips of the dead is laid either a morsel of consecrated bread
from the Eucharist[225], or more commonly a small piece of pottery--a
fragment it may be of any earthenware vessel--on which is incised
the sign of the cross with the legend Ι. Χ. ΝΙ. ΚΑ. (‘Jesus Christ
conquers’) in the four angles[226]. Here the choice of the inscribed
words of itself seems to indicate the intention of barring the dead
man’s mouth against the entrance of evil spirits; and as final proof
of my theory I find that in both Chios[227] and Rhodes[228], where a
wholly or partially Christianised form of the custom prevails, the
charm employed is definitely understood by the people to be a means of
precaution against a devil entering the dead body and resuscitating it.
Nor must the mention of a devil in this connexion be taken as evidence
that the Chian and Rhodian interpretation of the custom is not ancient.
I shall be able to show in a later chapter that the idea of a devil
entering the corpse is only the Christian version of a pagan belief in
a possible re-animation of the corpse by the soul[229].
But there is yet another variety of the custom, in which no coin and no
Mohammedan nor Christian[230] symbol is used, but a charm whose magic
properties were in repute long before Mohammed, long before Christ,
probably long before coinage was known to Greece. Again a piece of
pottery is used, but the symbol stamped upon it is the geometrical
figure [pentagram], the ‘pentacle’ of mediaeval magic lore. In Greece
it is now known as τὸ πεντάλφα, but of its properties, beyond the fact
that it serves as a charm[231], the people have nothing to say. In the
mediaeval and probably in the yet earlier magic of Europe and the East
it is one of the commonest figures, appearing sometimes as Solomon’s
seal, sometimes as the star which led the wise men to Bethlehem,
sometimes, in black colouring, as a symbol of the principle of evil,
and correspondingly, in white, as the symbol of the principle of good.
But though the figure has been known to the magicians of many nations
and many epochs, there is no reason to suppose that it is in recent
times or from other races that the Greeks have learnt it: for it was
known too by the ancient Greeks, who noted among its more intelligible
properties the fact that the five lines composing it can be drawn
without removing pencil from paper. The Pythagoreans, who called it
the πεντάγραμμον[232], are known to have attached to it some mystic
value. There is a reasonable likelihood therefore that the symbol has
been handed down in Greece as a magical charm--for we have seen how
many other methods of magic have survived--from the time of Pythagoras.
Further back we cannot penetrate; yet--_vixere fortes ante Agamemnona_,
and there were professors of occult sciences before Pythagoras. Was
it then he who first discovered the figure’s mystic value? Or did he
merely adopt and interpret in his own way a symbol which for long ages
before him had been endowed with magical powers? Was it perhaps this
figure, graven on some broken potsherd, which long before coinage
supplied a more ready charm protected the corpse from possession by
evil spirits, or rather, in those days, from reanimation by the soul?
Who shall say? The belief, which has found its modern expression in
the engraving of Christian or Mohammedan texts on prophylactic coins
or pottery and in barring with them the door of the lips which gives
access to the corpse, is certainly primitive enough in character to
date from the dimmest prehistoric age.
If my suggestion as to the origin of the custom is correct, it was only
the accident of a coin being commonly used as the prophylactic charm,
which caused the classical association of the custom with Charon; and,
once disembarrassed of this association, the popular conception of
Charon in antiquity is more easily studied.
The literary presentation of him in the guise of a ferryman only is a
comparatively late development. The early poets know nothing of him
whatever in any character. The first literary reference to him was
apparently in the _Minyad_, an epic poem of doubtful but not early
date, of which two lines referring to the descent of Theseus and
Pirithous to the lower world ran thus: ‘There verily the ship whereon
the dead embark, even that which the aged Charon as ferryman doth
guide, they found not at its anchorage[233].’ These are the lines by
which Pausanias believed that Polygnotus had been guided when painting
the figure of Charon in his famous representation of the nether world
at Delphi. Thenceforth this was the one orthodox presentation of Charon
in both literature and art. Euripides and Aristophanes in numerous
passages[234] both alike conform to it, and the painters of funeral
vases were equally faithful.
But there is evidence to show that this was not the popular conception
of Charon, or at any rate not the whole of it. Phrases occur (and were
probably current in classical times) which seem to imply a larger
conception of Charon’s office and functions. The ‘door of Charon’
(Χαρώνειος θύρα[235] or Χαρώνειον[236]) was that by which condemned
prisoners were led out to execution. The ‘staircase of Charon’
(Χαρώνειος κλίμαξ[237]) was that by which ghosts in drama ascended
to the stage, as if they were appearing from the nether world. To
Charon likewise were ascribed in popular parlance many caverns of
forbidding aspect, particularly those that were filled with mephitic
vapours--Χαρώνεια βάραθρα[238], σπήλαια[239], ἄντρα[240]. Finally
Χαρωνῖται is Plutarch’s[241] rendering of the Latin _Orcini_, the
_sobriquet_ given to the low persons whom Caesar brought up into the
Senate. These uses point to a popular conception of Charon larger
than classical art and literature reveal, and justify Suidas’ simple
identification of Charon with death[242].
Moreover once in Euripides, for all his strict adherence to the
conventional literary characterisation of Charon, a glimpse of popular
thought is reflected in the person of Death (Θάνατος) and the part
which he plays in the _Alcestis_. First, in the altercation between
Apollo and Death over the fate of Alcestis, there occur the words,
‘Take her and go thy way; for I know not whether I should persuade
thee’; to which Death answers, ‘Persuade me to slay those whom I must?
nay, ’tis with this that I am charged’ (τοῦτο γὰρ τετάγμεθα[243]).
Can it be a mere coincidence that, in modern folk-song, when some
doomed man seeks to persuade Charos to grant a respite, he answers,
‘Nay, brave sir, I cannot; for I am straitly charged’? The very word
‘charged,’ προσταμμένος, the modern form of προστεταγμένος, repeats
the word placed by Euripides in the mouth of Death. Secondly, Death
appears in warrior-guise, just as does Charos most commonly in modern
folk-songs; he is girt with a sword[244], and it is by wrestling[245]
that Heracles vanquishes him and makes him yield up his prey. Is this
again a mere coincidence? Or was Euripides, in his personification
of Death, utilising the character popularly assigned to Charon? It
looks indeed in one line as if the poet had almost forgotten that he
was not using the popular name also; otherwise there is no excuse
for the inelegance of making Death inflict death[246]. It is hardly
surprising that the copyist of one[247] of the extant manuscripts of
the _Alcestis_ was so impressed with the likeness of Death to Charon
as he knew him, that he altered the name of the _dramatis persona_
accordingly.
In the Anthology again Charon appears several times[248] acting in a
more extended capacity than that of ferryman; as in modern folk-songs,
he actually seizes men and carries them off to the nether world. One
epigram is particularly noticeable as seeming to have been suggested by
a passage of the _Alcestis_. ‘Is there then any way whereby Alcestis
might come unto old age?’ asks Apollo; and Death answers, ‘There is
none; I too must have the pleasure of my dues.’ ‘Yet,’ says Apollo,
‘thou wilt not get more than the one soul,’--be it now or later. And
similarly the epigram from the Anthology, save that Death is frankly
named Charon. ‘Charon ever insatiable, why hast thou snatched away
Attalus needlessly in his youth? Was he not thine, an he had died old?’
Clearly, it would seem, Euripides knew a popular conception of Charon
other than that which literary and artistic tradition had crystallised
as the orthodox presentation, but rather than break through the
conventions by bringing Charon on the stage otherwise than as ferryman,
he had recourse to a purely artificial personification of death.
But the conception of Charon as lord of death can be traced yet
further back than the time of Euripides. Hesychius states that the
title Ἀκμονίδης[249] was shared by two gods, Charon and Uranus. Charon
therefore, as son of Acmon and brother of Uranus, is earlier by two
long generations of gods than Zeus himself, and belongs to the old
Pelasgian order of deities. Was Charon then the god of death among the
old Pelasgian population of Greece, before ever the name of Hades or
Pluto had been invented or imported? Yes, if the corroboration from
another Pelasgian source, the Etruscans, is to count for anything. On
an Etruscan monument figures the god of death with the inscription
‘Charun’[250]; and the same person is frequently depicted on urns,
sarcophagi, and vases[251]. Usually the door of the nether world is
to be seen behind him; either he is issuing forth to seek his prey,
or he is about to enter there with a victim who stands close beside
him, his hand clasped in that of wife or friend to whom he bids
farewell[252]. In appearance he is most often an old bearded man
(though a more youthful type is also known) bearing an axe or mallet,
and more rarely a sword as well, wherewith he pursues men and slays
them[253]. In effect the Etruscan Charun closely corresponds with the
modern Greek Charos in functions as well as in name. The coincidence
allows of one explanation only. The Greeks of the present day must
have inherited their idea of Charos from ancestors who were closely
connected with the Etruscans and to whom Charon was the god of death
who came to seize men’s souls and carry them off to his realm in the
nether world. These ancestors can only have been the original Pelasgian
population of Greece. In classical times the primitive conception
of Charon was in abeyance. Hades had assumed the reins of government
in the nether world; and a literary legend, which confined Charon
to the work of ferryman, had gained vogue and supplanted or rather
temporarily suppressed the older conception. But this version, it
appears, never gained complete mastery of the popular imagination, and
to the common-folk of Greece from the Pelasgian era down to this day
Charon has ever been more warrior than ferryman, and his equipment an
axe or sword or bow rather than a pair of sculls. More is to be learnt
of the real Charon of antiquity from modern folk-lore than from all the
allusions of classical literature.
§ 7. APHRODITE AND EROS.
In the story of S. Demetra communicated to Lenormant at Eleusis and
narrated above, we have already had one instance of the preservation of
Aphrodite’s name. ‘Since the lady Aphrodite (ἡ κυρὰ ‘φροδίτη) none had
been seen so lovely’ as S. Demetra’s daughter. Another story related to
Perrot[254] by an Attic peasant in the year 1858 contains both the name
of the goddess and some reminiscences of her worship. The gist of it is
as follows. There once was a very beautiful queen, by name Aphrodite,
who had a castle at Daphni (just half-way on the road from Athens to
Eleusis) and also owned the heights of Acro-Corinth; these two places
she had caused to be connected by a subterranean way which passed under
the sea. Now there were two kings both of whom were smitten with her
beauty and sought her hand in marriage. She herself favoured one of
them and hated the other; but not wishing to declare her preference and
so arouse the anger of the rejected suitor, she announced that she was
about to build a palace on the height of Acro-Corinth, and would set
her suitors each a task to perform; one should build the fortifications
round the summit, the other should sink a well to provide the castle
with water[255]; and she promised her hand to the suitor who should
first complete his task. Now she supposed the sinking of the well
to be the lighter task and therefore assigned it to the suitor whom
she favoured; but he met with unforeseen difficulties, and his rival
meanwhile made steady progress with the walls. At last they were
wellnigh built, and it remained only to put in place the keystone over
the main gate. Then Aphrodite, marking the danger, went with winning
words and smiles and bade the builder lay aside his tools, for the
prize was now safely in his grasp, and led him away to a grassy spot
where she beguiled him so long with tender words and caresses, that
the other suitor meanwhile redoubling his efforts pierced the rock and
found water in plenty.
In this story the character, as well as the name, of the queen
is that of the ancient goddess; but there are other points too
deserving of notice. Perrot points out that in the neighbourhood of
the modern monastery at Daphni there stood in antiquity a temple
of Aphrodite[256]; and to this fact Schmidt[257], in commenting on
the story, adds that on the summit of Acro-Corinth also there was a
sanctuary of the goddess[258], while he accounts for the mention of
that place in an Attic story by the fact that Corinth was specially
famous for the worship of Aphrodite.
No other vestiges of the actual name, so far as I know, are to be
found, save that among certain Maniote settlers in Corsica the corrupt
derivative, Ἀφροδήτησσα[259] (which would perhaps be better spelt
Ἀφροδίτισσα) was until recent times at any rate applied to an equally
corrupt class of women, votaries of Ἀφροδίτη Πάνδημος. In a few stories
however from Zacynthos[260] the same goddess is prettily described as ἡ
μάνα τοῦ Ἔρωτα[261], ‘the Mother of Love,’ a title competent in itself
to establish her identity.
The first of these stories tells how a poor maiden fell in love with a
youth of high degree, and went to the Mother of Love to ask her help.
The latter promised to ask the assistance of her son Eros (Ἔρωτας) when
he came home. Next morning went Eros with bow and arrows and sat at the
maiden’s door till the swain passed by. Then suddenly he shot his arrow
at him, and the young man loved the maiden and took her to wife.
Another yet more remarkable story introduces us to the garden of Eros,
whither a prince once went to fetch water to cure the blindness of
the king, his father. ‘There at the entrance he beheld a woman that
was the fairest upon earth; she sat at the gate and played with a boy
who had wings and in his hand held a bow and many arrows. The garden
was full of roses, and over them hovered many little winged boys like
butterflies. In the midst of this garden was a spring, whence the
healing water flowed. As the king’s son drew near to this spring, he
espied therein a woman white as snow and shining as the moon; and it
was in very truth the moon that bathed there. Beside the spring sat a
second woman of exceeding beauty who was the Mother of Eros (ἡ μάνα τοῦ
Ἔρωτα).’ She gave him the water and her blessing, and his father was
healed.
The distinct reminiscence of Artemis in this story will be noticed
later[262]; here we need only notice a few points in the story relating
to Eros and his mother. The description of the ‘boy who had wings
and in his hand held a bow and many arrows’ is simply and purely
classical, according exactly with the Orphic address to him as τοξάλκη,
πτερόεντα[263]. The ‘woman at the gate who was the fairest upon earth’
is in all probability the same as ‘the Mother of Eros’ beside the
spring, the single personality, by some vagary in the transmission of
the story, having become duplicated. The roses, of which the garden was
full, are the flower always sacred to Aphrodite, the sweetest emblem of
love; and over these it is fitting that the ‘little winged boys’ should
hover, brothers as it were of Eros, ever-fresh embodiments of love, to
all of whom, in antiquity, Aphrodite was mother[264].
These folk-tales present sufficient evidence that the memory of the
name and attributes of Aphrodite survived locally until recent times
to warrant the conclusion that her worship, like that of other pagan
deities, possessed vitality enough to compete for a long while with
Christianity for the favour of the common-folk; but as a personality
she is no longer present, I think, to their consciousness; she is at
most only a character in a few folk-stories--if indeed the present
generation has not forgotten even these. For my part, I never heard
mention of her in story or otherwise, although her son, the winged
Eros, is often named in the love-songs which form a large part of the
popular poetry.