Such is my interpretation of the facts collected by Polites, and it

differs from that which he has advanced in the reversal of cause and

effect. Starting from the fact that dressing up in various disguises

was the chief characteristic of the Kalandae and Brumalia and is

perpetuated in the mumming of the Twelve Days, but failing to carry his

researches far enough back and so to discover the absolute identity of

these festivals with the ancient Dionysia, he holds that the generally

prevalent custom of dressing up in monstrous and horrible disguises at

a given period of the year--a custom which he leaves unexplained--was

the cause of the belief in the activity of monstrous and horrible

demons at that period; those who had once been simply human mummers

were exalted to the ranks of the supernatural, but still betrayed

their origin by the possession of a name which meant either ‘wearers

of nice boots’ or else ‘hoofed and not booted.’ In my view on the

contrary the identity of the modern mumming with the ancient Dionysia

is indisputable; and just as in ancient times the belief in the Satyrs

and Sileni was the cause of the adoption of satyr-like disguises in the

Dionysia, so in more recent times, when the Satyrs, Sileni, and others

came to be included in the more comprehensive term Callicantzari,

it was the belief in the Callicantzari which continued to cause the

wearing of similar disguises during the Twelve Days.

And this interpretation of the facts explains no less adequately than

that of Polites the reason why the activities of the Callicantzari are

limited to the Twelve Days. That which was in ancient times the special

season for the commemoration of Dionysus and his attendants has now

with the very gradual but still real decline of ancient beliefs become

the only season. This is natural and intelligible enough in itself;

but, if a parallel be required, Greek folklore can provide one. No one

will suppose that the Dryads of ancient Greece were feared during the

first six days of August only, though it is likely enough that they

had a special festival at that time; but in modern folklore these are

the only days on which, in many parts of Greece, any survival of the

Dryads’ memory can be found[614].

Moreover the identification of the Callicantzari with the Satyrs and

other kindred comrades of Dionysus elucidates a modern custom which I

noticed earlier in this chapter but did not then explain--the rare, but

known, custom of making offerings to the Callicantzari. The sweetmeats,

waffles, sausages, and even the pig’s bone which are occasionally

placed in the chimney for the Callicantzari correspond, it would seem,

with offerings formerly made to Dionysus and shared by his train of

Satyrs. Possibly even the choice of pork (usually in the shape of

sausages) or, in the more rudimentary form of the survival, of a pig’s

bone, dates from the age in which the proper victim for Dionysus at the

Anthesteria was a sow; but of course it may only have been determined

by the fact that pork is the peasant’s Christmas fare and therefore the

most ready offering at that season.

How then, it will be asked, does the conclusion here reached,

namely that the Callicantzari are, in many districts, the modern

representatives of the Satyrs and other kindred beings, square with

that other conclusion previously drawn from another set of facts,

namely that the Callicantzari were originally not demons but men who

either voluntarily or under the compulsion of a kind of madness assumed

the shape and the character of beasts? The reconciliation of these two

apparently antagonistic conclusions depends primarily on the derivation

of the name Callicantzari.

Now the conditions which in my opinion that derivation should satisfy,

have already been indicated in my discussion of dialectic forms and in

my criticism of the several derivations proposed by others; but it will

be well to summarise them here. They are four in number.

First, the derivation of this word, as of all others, must involve only

such phonetic changes as find parallels in other words of the language.

Secondly, it must recognise the commonest form καλλικάντζαρος as being

also the central and original form from which the many dialectic forms

in the above table have diverged.

Thirdly, it must explain this form as a compound of a word

κάντζαρος--presumably with καλός. For, in dialect, there exists a

word σκατζάρι, which is used as a synonym with καλλικάντζαρος and is

evidently in form a diminutive of the word κάντζαρος, and likewise

there exists another synonym λυκοκάντζαρος, which cannot be formed from

καλλικάντζαρος by an arbitrary shuffling of syllables but is a separate

compound of κάντζαρος--presumably with λύκος.

Fourthly, and consequently on the last-named condition, the word

κάντζαρος, whether alone or in composition with either καλός or λύκος,

must possess a meaning adequate to denote the monsters who have been

described.

All these conditions are satisfied in the identification of the word

κάντζαρος with the ancient word κένταυρος.

The phonetic change herein involved will, to any who are not familiar

with the pronunciation of modern Greek, appear more considerable

than it really is. In that pronunciation it must be remembered that

the accent, which indicates the syllable on which stress is laid,

is everything, and ancient quantity is nothing; and further that

the ancient diphthongs _au_ and _eu_ have come to be pronounced

respectively as _av_ or _af_ and _ev_ or _ef_. The change of sound in

this case may therefore be fairly measured by the difference between

kéndăvrŏs and kándzărŏs in British pronunciation[615]. The phonetic

modifications therefore which require notice are the substitution of α

for ε in the first syllable, the introduction of a ζ after the τ, and

the loss of the _v_-sound before the ρ.

The change from ε to α is very common in Greek, especially (by

assimilation it would seem) where the following syllable, as in the

word before us, has an α for its vowel. Thus ἀλαφρός is constantly to

be heard instead of ἐλαφρός (light), ἀργαλει̯ός for ἐργαλειός (a loom),

ματα- for μετα- in compound verbs. The insertion of ζ (or σ) after

τ is certainly a less common change, but parallels can be found for

this also. The ancient word τέττιγες (grasshoppers) appears in modern

Greek as τζίτζικες. A word of Latin origin[616] τεντόνω (I stretch)

has an equally common by-form τσιτόνω. The classical word τύκανον

(a chisel) has passed, through a diminutive form τυκάνιον, into the

modern τσουκάνι. The word κεντήματα (embroideries) has a dialectic

form κεντζήματα[617]. From the adjective μουντός (grey, brown, dusky)

are formed substantives μουντζοῦρα and μουντζαλι̯ά (a stain or daub).

The substantive κατσοῦφα (sulkiness, sullenness) is probably to be

identified with the ancient κατήφεια. The two most frequently employed

equivalents for ‘mad’ or ‘crazy’--τρελλός and ζουρλός--are probably of

kindred origin--an insertion of ζ in the former having produced first

τζερλός and thence (τ)ζουρλός. Finally there is some likelihood that

the word κάντζαρος, in a botanical sense in which it is now used, is to

be identified with the ancient plant-name κενταυρεῖον or κενταύριον.

The former indeed now denotes a kind of juniper, while the later is

of course our ‘centaury’; but this difference in meaning is not, I

think, fatal to the identification of the words. At the present day

the common-folk are extraordinarily vague in their nomenclature of

natural objects. In travelling about I made a practice of asking my

guides and others the names of flowers and birds and suchlike; and my

general experience might fairly be summed up by saying that the average

peasant divides all birds which he does not eat into two classes; the

larger ones are hawks, and the smaller are--‘little birds, God knows

what’; and an accompanying shrug of the shoulders indicates that the

man does not care; while most flowers can be called either violets or

gilly-flowers at pleasure. Even therefore when a peasant of superior

intelligence knows that κάντζαρος is now the name of a kind of juniper,

it does not follow that that name has always belonged to it, and has

not been transferred to it from some plant formerly used, let us say,

for a like purpose. In this case it is known that both juniper and some

kind of centaury were formerly used for medicating wine[618], and the

wine treated with either was prescribed as ‘good for the stomach[619].’

Hence a confusion of the two plants is intelligible enough among a

peasantry not distinguished by a love of botanical accuracy. But

I place no reliance upon this possible identification; the cases

previously cited furnish sufficient analogies.

Further it may be noted that in the first two examples of this

insertion of ζ or σ a certain change in the consonants of the next

syllable accompanies it. The γ in τέττιγες becomes κ, the ντ in τεντόνω

is reduced to τ. In the same way, it seems, when ζ was inserted after

the τ of κένταυρος, the sound of _vr_ was reduced to _r_ only, though

certainly the loss of the _v_-sound might have occurred, apart from any

such predisposing modification, as in the common word ξέρω (I know) for

ἠξεύρω.

Since then the etymological conditions of the problem are satisfied by

the identification of the word κάντζαρος with the ancient κένταυρος,

it remains only to show that the name of ‘Centaurs’ fitly belongs to

the monsters whom I have described; and my contention will be that the

simple word κάντζαρος, ‘Centaur,’ surviving now only in the dialectic

diminutive form σκατζάρι, adequately expresses every sort and condition

of Callicantzaros that has been depicted; that καλλικάντζαρος, the

general word, of which so many dialectic varieties occur, being

simply an euphemistic compound of κάντζαρος with καλός such as we

have previously seen in the title καλλικυρᾶδες given to the Nereids,

expresses precisely the same meaning as the simple word κάντζαρος,

‘Centaur’; and that λυκοκάντζαρος originally denoted one species only

of the genus Centaur, namely a Callicantzaros whose animal traits were

those of a wolf.

What then did the ancients mean by the word ‘centaur’?

The mention of the name is apt to carry away our minds to famous frieze

or pediment, where in one splendidly impossible creation of art the

excellences of man, his head and his hands, are wed with the horse’s

strength and speed. This was the species of Centaur which the great

sculptors and painters in the best period of Greek Art chose to depict,

and these among educated men became the Centaurs _par excellence_. Yet

even so it was not forgotten that they formed only one species, and

were strictly to be called ἱπποκένταυροι, ‘horse-centaurs.’ Moreover

two other species of Centaur are named in the ancient language,

ἰχθυοκένταυροι or fish-centaurs, and ὀνοκένταυροι or ass-centaurs. Of

the former nothing seems to be known beyond the mere name, but this

matters little inasmuch as they can assuredly have contributed nothing

to the popular conception of the wholly terrestrial Callicantzari. The

ass-centaurs will prove of more interest.

But the list of ancient species of Centaur does not really stop here.

No other compounds of the word Centaur may exist, but none the less

there were other Centaurs--other creatures, that is, of mixed human

and animal form. Chief among these were the Satyrs, who as pourtrayed

by early Greek art might equally well have been called ‘hippocentaurs,’

and in the presentations of Greco-Roman art deserved the name, if I

may coin it, of ‘tragocentaurs.’ And the Greeks themselves recognised

this fact. ‘The evidence of the coins of Macedonia,’ says Miss Jane

Harrison[620], ‘is instructive. On the coins of Orreskii, a centaur, a

horse-man, bears off a woman in his arms. At Lete close at hand, with

a coinage closely resembling in style, fabric, weight the money of the

Orreskii and other Pangaean tribes, the type is the same in _content_,

though with an instructive difference of form--a naked Satyr or

Seilenos with the hooves, ears and tail of a horse seizes a woman round

the waist.... This interchange of types, Satyr and Centaur, is evidence

about which there can be no mistake. Satyr and Centaur, slightly

diverse types of the horse-man, are in essence one and the same.’

Nor was the recognition of this fact confined to Macedonia. A famous

picture by Zeuxis, representing the domestic life of Centaurs, with a

female Centaur (a creature about as rare as a female Callicantzaros)

suckling her young, pourtrayed her in most respects, apart from her

sex, conventionally, but gave her the ears of a Satyr[621]. And

reversely Nonnus ventured to describe the ‘shaggy Satyrs’ as being, ‘by

blood, of Centaur-stock[622].’ In view then of this close bond between

the two types of half-human half-animal creatures, it would be natural

that, when the specific name Satyr was lost, as it has been lost, from

the popular language, while the generic term Centaur survived in the

form Callicantzaros, the Satyrs should have been amalgamated with those

who from of old had professed and called themselves Centaurs; and with

the Satyrs, I suppose, went also the Sileni.

Thus the word Centaur, in spite of the narrowing tendencies of

Greek art which selected the hippocentaur as the ideal type, was

always comprehensive in popular use, and perhaps became even wider

in scope as time went on and the distinctive appellations of Satyrs

and suchlike were forgotten; but it is also possible that from the

very earliest times the distinction between Satyrs and Centaurs was

merely an artistic and literary convention, and that in popular speech

the name Centaur was applied to both without discrimination. But it

does not really concern us to argue at length the question whether

the common-folk in antiquity never distinguished, or, having once

distinguished, subsequently confused the Satyrs and the Centaurs.

It is just worth noticing that it was in art of the Greco-Roman

period, so far as I can discover, that horse-centaurs first began to

be represented along with Satyrs and Sileni in the _entourage_ of

Dionysus; and if this addition to the conventional treatment of such

scenes was made, as seems likely, in deference to popular beliefs,

the date by which the close association of the two classes was an

accomplished fact and confusion of them therefore likely to ensue is

approximately determined.

At some date therefore probably not later than the beginning of

our era, the generic name of Centaur comprised several species

of half-human, half-animal monsters, of whom the best known were

horse-centaurs, ass-centaurs, Satyrs, and Sileni; and each of these

species, it will be seen, has contributed something to one or other of

the many types of the modern Centaurs, the Callicantzari.

The horse-centaur, which was the favourite species among the artists of

ancient times, has curiously enough had least influence upon the modern

delineation of Callicantzari. The only attribute which they seem to

have received chiefly from this source is the rough shaggy hair with

which they are usually said to be covered; ‘shaggy’ is Homer’s epithet

for the Centaurs[623], and the hippocentaurs of later art retained the

trait; for it is specially noted by Lucian that in Zeuxis’ picture the

male hippocentaur was shaggy all over, the human part of him no less

than the equine[624].

The ass-centaur on the contrary is rarely mentioned by ancient writers,

but has contributed largely to some presentments of the Callicantzari.

Aelian mentions the name, in the feminine form ὀνοκενταύρα, but the

monster to which he applies it, although true to its name in that

the upper part of its body is human and the lower part asinine, is

not a creation of superstitious fancy, but, as is evident from other

facts which he mentions, some species of ape known to him, none too

accurately, from some traveller’s tale. The _locus classicus_ on the

subject of genuine supernatural ass-centaurs is a passage in the

Septuagint translation of Isaiah[625]: καὶ συναντήσουσιν δαιμόνια

ὀνοκενταύροις καὶ βοηθήσονται ἕτερος πρὸς τὸν ἕτερον, ἐκεῖ ἀναπαύσονται

ὀνοκένταυροι εὑρόντες αὑτοῖς ἀνάπαυσιν--‘And demons shall meet with

ass-centaurs and they shall bring help one to another; there shall

ass-centaurs find rest for themselves and be at rest.’ Here our Revised

Version runs:--“The wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the

wolves (_Heb._ ‘howling creatures’), and the satyr shall cry to his

fellow; yea, the night-monster shall settle there.” The comparison

is instructive. It is clear from the context that the Septuagint

translators were minded to give some Greek colouring to their rendering

even at the expense of strict accuracy; for in the previous verse,

where our Revised Version employs the word ‘jackals,’ the Septuagint

introduces beings whose voices are generally supposed to have been

more attractive, the Sirens. The use of the word ‘ass-centaurs’ cannot

therefore have been prompted by any pedantic notions of literal

translation. The creatures, for all the lack of other literary

warranty, must have been familiar to the popular imagination. And what

may be gleaned from the passage concerning their character? Apparently

they are the nearest Greek equivalent for ‘howling creatures’ and

for ‘night-monsters’; and such emphasis in the Greek is laid upon

the statement that they will ‘find rest for themselves and be at

rest,’ that they must surely in general have borne a character for

restlessness. These restless noisy monsters of the night, in shape

half-human and half-asinine, are clearly in character no less than in

form the prototypes of some modern Callicantzari.

Of the many traits inherited by the Callicantzari from the Satyrs

and Sileni, the usual comrades of Dionysus, I have already spoken.

So far as outward appearance is concerned, the Satyrs as they came

to be pourtrayed in the later Greek art are clearly responsible for

the goat-type so common in the description of the Callicantzari,

while a reminiscence of the Sileni may perhaps be traced in the rarer

bald-headed type. But as regards their manner of life, which as I have

shown bears many resemblances to that of the Satyrs--their boisterous

merriment and rioting, their love of wine, their violence, and their

lewdness--these traits cannot of course be referred to the Satyrs any

more than to the hippocentaurs or for that matter to the onocentaurs

who were probably no more sober or chaste than their kindred. Rather it

was the common possession of these qualities by the several types of

half-human and half-bestial monsters that allowed them to be grouped

together under the single name of Callicantzari.

Thus the conclusion drawn from an historical survey of those ancient

festivals which are now represented by the Twelve Days, namely that the

Callicantzari are the modern representatives of Dionysus’ monstrous

comrades, is both corroborated and amplified by the etymological

identification of the Callicantzari (or in the simple and unadorned

form, the σκατζάρια) with the Centaurs, of whom the Satyrs and the

Sileni are species.

The remaining modern name on which I have to touch readily explains

itself in the light of what has already been said. If the word

κάντζαρος is the modern form of κένταυρος, and if by the name ‘Centaur’

was denoted a being half-human and half-animal both in shape and

in character, then the name λυκοκάντζαρος clearly should mean a

creature half-man half-wolf, such as the ancients might have called

a lycocentaur, but did actually name λυκάνθρωπος. Lycocantzaros then

etymologically should mean the werewolf--a man transformed either by

his own power or by some external influence into a wolf.

The idea of lycanthropy has probably been familiar to the peasants of

Greece continuously from the earliest ages down to the present day,

either surviving traditionally like so many other beliefs, or possibly

stimulated by actual experiences; for lycanthropy is not a mere figment

of the imagination, but is a very real and terrible form of madness,

under the influence of which the sufferer believes himself transformed

(and by dress or lack of it tries to transfigure himself) into a wolf

or other wild animal, and in that state develops and satisfies a

craving for human flesh. Outbreaks of it were terribly frequent in the

east of Europe during the Middle Ages, especially among the Slavonic

populations; and it is not likely that Greece wholly escaped this

scourge. But whether the idea received some such impetus or no, it was

certainly known to the ancient Greeks, and is not wholly forgotten

at the present day. This was curiously betrayed by some questions put

to an American archaeologist by an Arcadian peasant. Among the items

of falsehood vended as news by the Greek press he had seen, but owing

to the would-be classical style had failed to understand, certain

allegations concerning the cannibalistic habits of Red Indians; and

the points on which he sought enlightenment were, first, whether they

ran on all fours, and, secondly, whether they went naked or wore

wolf-skins. In effect the only form of savagery familiar to his mind

was that of the werewolf.

Now here, it might be thought, is the clue by which to explain the

first conclusion which we reached, namely, that the Callicantzari

were originally men capable of transformation into beasts. The name

λυκοκάντζαρος or werewolf, it might be urged, involved the idea of such

transformation; and the idea originally associated with the one species

was extended to the whole tribe of Callicantzari. At first sight

such an explanation is attractive and appears tenable; but maturer

consideration compels me to reject it.

In the first place, although the word λυκοκάντζαρος cannot

etymologically have meant anything but werewolf when it was first

employed, at the present day in the few districts where the name may

be heard, in Cynouria, in Messenia, and, so far as I can ascertain, in

Crete, it involves no idea of the transformation of men into beasts; it

is merely a variant form for καλλικάντζαρος and in no way distinguished

from it in meaning, and the Callicantzari in those districts are demons

of definite hybrid form, not men temporarily transformed into beasts.

And conversely in the Cyclades and other places where the belief in

this transformation of men is prevalent, the compound λυκοκάντζαρος

seems to be unknown, and καλλικάντζαρος (or some dialectic form of the

same word) is in vogue. Since then in many places where the generic

name Callicantzari is alone in use, the human origin of these monsters

is maintained, while in those few districts where the specific name

Lycocantzari is also used that human origin is denied, it is hard to

believe that in this respect the surviving ideas concerning the genus

can be the outcome of obsolete ideas concerning the species.

Secondly, if for the sake of argument it be granted that the

Callicantzari had always been demons, how came the werewolf, the

λυκάνθρωπος, whose very name proved him half-human, to change that

name to λυκοκάντζαρος? How came a man who occasionally turned into

a wolf to be classified as one species in a genus of beings who _ex

hypothesi_ were not human even in origin, but demoniacal? We should

have to suppose that the peasants of that epoch in which the change

of name occurred did not distinguish between men and demons--which,

as Euclid puts it, is absurd; wherefore the supposition that the

Callicantzari had always been regarded as demons until werewolves were

admitted to their ranks cannot be maintained. Rather the point of

resemblance between the earliest Callicantzari and werewolves, which

made the amalgamation of them possible, must have been the belief that

both alike were men transformed into animals.

Since then the belief in the metamorphosis of men into Callicantzari

existed before that epoch--a quite indeterminate epoch, I am afraid--in

which the word λυκάνθρωπος fell into desuetude[626] and was replaced by

λυκοκάντζαρος, where are we to look for the origin of the idea?

Since the Callicantzari bear the name of the Centaurs, it is obvious

that the enquiry must be carried yet further back, and that the ancient

ideas concerning the Centaurs’ origin must be investigated. Pindar

touches often upon the Centaur-myths; what view did he take of the

Centaurs’ nature? Were they divine in origin or human? We shall see

that he held no settled view on the subject. Both traditions concerning

the origin of the Centaurs were familiar to him just as both traditions

still prevail in modern accounts of the Callicantzari; sometimes he

follows the one, sometimes the other. On the one hand the Centaur

Chiron is consistently described as divine. ‘Fain would I,’ says

Pindar[627], ‘that Chiron ... wide-ruling scion of Cronos the son of

Ouranos were living and not gone, and that the Beast of the wilds were

ruling o’er the glens of Pelion’; and again he names him ‘Chiron son

of Cronos[628]’ and ‘the Beast divine[629].’ In Pindar’s view Chiron,

be he Beast or God, is certainly not human; and if he is once named

by the same poet ‘the Magnesian Centaur[630],’ the epithet need only

perhaps declare his habitation. His divinity is plainly asserted, and

the legend that he resigned the divine guerdon of immortality in order

to deliver Prometheus accords with Pindar’s doctrine.

But on the other hand the story of Ixion as told by Pindar reveals

another tradition. Ixion himself was human; for his presumptuous sin of

lusting after the wife of Zeus ‘swiftly he suffered as he, mere man,

deserved, and won a misery unique[631].’ The son of Ixion therefore

by a nebulous mother could not be divine. The cloud wherewith in

his delusion he had mated ‘bare unto him, unblest of the Graces, a

monstrous son, a thing apart even as she, with no rank either among

men or where gods have their portion; him she nurtured and named

Centauros; and he in the dales of Pelion did mate with Magnesian mares,

and thence there sprang a wondrous warrior-tribe like unto both their

parents--like to their dams in their nether parts, and the upper frame

their sire’s[632].’ The first Centaur then, the founder of the race,

though only half-human in origin, was in no respect divine. How then

came Chiron, one of that race, to be divine? The two traditions are

inconsistent. Pindar as a poet was not troubled thereby; he chose now

the one, now the other, for his art to embroider. But in the science

of mythology the discrepancy of the two traditions is important. Once

more we must carry our search further back--to Hesiod and to Homer.

The former, in placing the battle of the Lapithae and the Centaurs

among the scenes wrought on the shield of Heracles[633], says never a

word to suggest that either set of combatants were other than human;

the contrast between them lies wholly in the weapons they use. The

Lapithae have their leaders enumerated, Caineus, Dryas, Pirithous,

and the rest; the Centaurs in like manner are gathered about their

Chieftains, ‘huge Petraeos and Asbolos the augur and Arctos and Oureios

and black-haired Mimas and the two sons of Peukeus, Perimedes and

Dryalos.’ The account reads like a description of a fight between two

tribes, one of them equipped with body-armour and using spears, the

other more primitive and armed only with rude wooden weapons.

To this representation of the Centaurs Homer also, in the _Iliad_,

consents; for, though he names them Pheres or ‘Beasts,’ it is quite

clear that this is the proper name of a tribe of men--men who dwelt

on Mount Pelion and were hardly less valiant than the heroes who

conquered them. ‘Never saw I,’ says Nestor, ‘nor shall see other such

men as were Pirithous and Dryas, shepherd of hosts, and Caineus and

Exadios and godlike Polyphemus and Theseus, son of Aegeus, like unto

the immortals. Mightiest in sooth were they of men upon the earth,

and against mightiest fought, even the mountain-haunting Pheres,

and fearfully they did destroy them[634].’ And again we hear how

Pirithous ‘took vengeance on the shaggy Pheres, and drave them forth

from Pelion to dwell nigh unto the Aethices[635].’ Apart from the name

‘Pheres,’ which will shortly be examined, there is nothing in these

passages any more than in that of Hesiod to suggest that the conflict

of the Lapithae and the Centaurs means anything but the destruction

or expulsion of a primitive and wild mountain-tribe by a people who,

in the wearing of body-armour, had advanced one important step in

material civilisation. Yet in some respects the tribe of Centaurs

were, according to Homer, at least the equals of their neighbours; for

Chiron, ‘the justest of the Centaurs[636],’ was the teacher both of

the greatest warrior, Achilles[637], and of the greatest physician,

Asclepios[638]. The only passage of Homer which has been held to imply

that the Centaurs were not men comes not from the _Iliad_ but from the

_Odyssey_[639]--ἐξ οὗ Κενταύροισι καὶ ἀνδράσι νεῖκος ἐτύχθη--which Miss

Harrison[640] translates ‘Thence ’gan the feud ’twixt Centaurs and

mankind,’ inferring therefrom the non-humanity of the Centaurs. It is

however legitimate to take the word ἀνδράσι in a stricter sense, and to

render the line, ‘Thence arose the feud between Centaurs and heroes,’

to wit, the heroes Pirithous, Dryas, and others; and the inference is

then impaired. But in any case the _Iliad_, the earlier authority,

consistently depicts both Chiron and the other Centaurs as human. The

tradition of a divine origin must have arisen between the date of

the _Iliad_ and the time of Pindar, and from then until now popular

opinion must have been divided on the question whether the Centaurs,

the Callicantzari, were properly men or demons. But one part of the

conclusion at which we first arrived, namely that Callicantzari were

originally men, is justified by Homer’s and Hesiod’s testimony.

What then of the other part of that conclusion? There is ancient

proof that the Callicantzari were originally men; but what witness is

there to the metamorphosis of those men into beasts? The Centaurs’

alternative name, Pheres.

An ethnological explanation of this name has recently been put forward

by Prof. Ridgeway[641]. Concluding from the evidence of the _Iliad_

that ‘the Pheres are as yet nothing more than a mountain tribe and

are not yet conceived as half-horse half-man,’ he points out, on the

authority of Pindar, that Pelion was the country of the Magnetes[642]

and that Chiron not only dwelt in a cave on Pelion, but is himself

called a Magnete[643]. ‘It is then probable,’ he continues[644], ‘that

the Centaur myth originated in the fact that the older race (the

Pelasgians) had continued to hold out in the mountains, ever the last

refuge of the remnants of conquered races. At first the tribes of

Pelion may have been friendly to the (Achaean) invader who was engaged

in subjugating other tribes with whom they had old feuds; and as the

Norman settlers in Ireland gave their sons to be fostered by the native

Irish, so the Achaean Peleus entrusted his son to the old Chiron.

Nor must it be forgotten that conquering races frequently regard the

conquered both with respect and aversion. They respect them for their

skill as wizards, because the older race are familiar with the spirits

of the land.... On the other hand, as the older race have been driven

into the most barren parts of the land, and are being continually

pressed still further back, and have their women carried off, they

naturally lose no opportunity of making reprisals on their enemies, and

sally forth from their homes in the mountains or forests to plunder

and in their turn to carry off women. The conquering race consequently

regard the aborigines with hatred, and impute to them every evil

quality, though when it is necessary to employ sorcery they will always

resort to one of the hated race.’

Then follow a series of instances from various parts of the world

which amply justify this estimate of the relations between conquerors

and conquered. But in applying the principle thus obtained to the

case of the Centaurs Prof. Ridgeway goes a little further. ‘As it is

therefore certain that aboriginal tribes who survive in mountains and

forests are considered not only possessed of skill in magic, but as

also bestial in their lusts, _and are even transformed into vipers and

wild beasts by the imagination of their enemies_, we may reasonably

infer from the Centaur myth that the ancient Pelasgian tribes of Pelion

and Ossa had been able to defy the invaders of Thessaly, and that they

had from the remotest times possessed these mountains.

‘We can now explain why they are called Pheres, Centauri and Magnetes.

Scholars are agreed in holding that Pheres (φῆρες) is only an Aeolic

form for θῆρες, “wild beasts.” Such a name is not likely to have been

assumed by the tribe itself, but is rather an opprobrious term applied

to them by their enemies. Centauri was probably the name of some

particular clan of Magnetes[645].’

Prof. Ridgeway then, as I understand, believes the Centauri to have

been named Pheres or ‘Beasts’ by their enemies because they were

bestial in character, and supports his view by the statement which I

have italicised. On this point I join issue.

First, the phrase in question is based upon one only out of the many

instances which he adduces as evidence of the relations between

invaders and aborigines--and that the most dubious, for it depends upon

a somewhat arbitrary interpretation of a passage[646] of Procopius.

‘He wrote,’ says Prof. Ridgeway[647], ‘in the sixth century of Britain

thus: “The people who in old time lived in this island of Britain built

a great wall, which cut off a considerable portion of it. On either

side of this wall the land, climate and everything are different.

For the district to the east of the wall enjoys a healthy climate,

changing with the seasons, being moderately warm in summer and cool

in winter. It is thickly inhabited by people who live in the same

way as other folk.” After enumerating its natural advantages he then

proceeds to say that “On the west of the wall everything is quite the

opposite; so that, forsooth, it is impossible for a man to live there

for half-an-hour. Vipers and snakes innumerable and every kind of wild

beast share the possession of that country between them; and what is

most marvellous, the natives say that if a man crosses the wall and

enters the district beyond it, he immediately dies, being quite unable

to withstand the pestilential climate which prevails there, and that

any beasts that wander in there straightway meet their death.”

‘There seems little doubt that the wall here meant is the Wall of

Hadrian, for the ancient geographers are confused about the orientation

of the island.

‘It is therefore probable that the vipers and wild beasts who lived

beyond the wall were nothing more than the Caledonians, nor is it

surprising to learn that a sudden death overtook either man or beast

that crossed into their territory.’

That a native British statement made in the sixth century to the effect

that the country beyond Hadrian’s wall was pestilential in climate and

infested with vipers, snakes, and wild beasts, should be considered as

even probable evidence that either the Romans or the natives of Britain

regarded the Caledonians as noxious animals, is to me surprising. The

question whether the Centaurs were called Pheres because of their

bestial repute among neighbouring tribes must be decided independently

of that inference and on its own merits.

Secondly then, was there anything bestial in the conduct of the

Centaurs, as known to Homer, which could have won for them the name

of ‘Beasts’? All that ancient mythology tells of their conduct may be

briefly summarised; they fought with the men and carried off the women

of neighbouring tribes, and occasionally drank wine to excess. Were

the Achaeans then such ardent abstainers that they dubbed those who

indulged too freely in intoxicants ‘Beasts’? Did the invaders of Greece

and the assailants of Troy hold fighting so reprehensible? Or was it

the Centaurs’ practice of carrying off the women of their enemies

which convicted them of ‘bestial lust’? In all ages surely _humanum

est errare_, but in that early age the practice was not only human

but manly; the enemy’s womenfolk were among the rightful prizes of a

raid. There is nothing then in mythology to warrant the belief that the

Centaurs’ moral conduct was such as to win for them, in that age, the

opprobrious name of ‘Beasts.’

And here Art supports Mythology; for clearly the representation of the

Centaurs in semi-animal form cannot be dissociated from their name of

Pheres; the same idea must lie at the root of both. If then the name

Pheres was given to the Centaurs because of their violence or lust, the

animal portion of them in the representations of early Greek Art should

have been such as to express one or both of those qualities. But what

do we find? In discussing the development of the horse-centaur in art,

Miss Harrison[648] points out that though in horse-loving Athens, by

the middle of the fifth century B.C., the equine element predominated

in the composite being, ‘in archaic representations the reverse is the

case. The Centaurs are in art what they are in reality, _men_ with

men’s legs and feet, but they are shaggy mountain-men with some of the

qualities and habits of beasts; so to indicate this in a horse-loving

country they have the hind-quarters of a horse awkwardly tacked on

to their human bodies.’ Now the particular ‘qualities and habits of

beasts,’ if such there be, in the Centaurs must be their violence

and lust. Are these then adequately symbolised by ‘the hind-quarters

of a horse awkwardly tacked on to their human bodies’? In scenes of

conflict, in the archaic representations, it is the human part of the

Centaur which bears the brunt of the fight, and the weapon used is a

branch of a tree, the primitive human weapon; the Centaur fights as a

man fights. If he had been depicted with horns or teeth or claws as his

weapons of offence, then the animal part of him would fairly symbolise

his bestial violence; but who could discover a trace of pugnacity in

his equine loins and rump, hind legs and tail? Or again if pugnacity

is not the particular quality which caused the Centaurs to be named

‘Beasts’ and to be pourtrayed in half-animal form, is it their lewdness

which art thus endeavoured to suggest? Surely, if the early artists

had understood that the name Pheres was a contemptuous designation of

a tribe bestial in their lust, Greek taste was not so intolerant of

ithyphallic representations that they need have had recourse to so

cryptic a symbol as the hind-quarters of a horse. But if it be supposed

that, while a sense of modesty, unknown to later generations, deterred

those early artists from a more obvious method of expressing their

meaning, the idea of the Centaurs’ lewdness was really present to

their minds, then Chiron too falls under the same condemnation and is

tainted with the same vice as the rest. ‘A black-figured vase,’ says

Prof. Ridgeway, _à propos_ of the virtues, not of the vices, of this

one Centaur, ‘shows the hero (Peleus) bringing the little Achilles to

Chiron, who is depicted as a venerable old man with a white beard and

clad in a long robe from under the back of which issues the hinder

part of a diminutive pony, the equine portion being a mere adjunct to

the complete human figure[649].’ So far then as the animal part is

concerned, the representation of Chiron in early art differs no whit

from that of other Centaurs, and the quality, which is symbolised by

the equine adjunct in these, is imputed to him also. Yet to convict

of bestial lust the virtuous Chiron, the chosen teacher of great

heroes, is intolerable. In effect, no explanation of the name Pheres

in mythology and of the biform representation of the Centaurs in art

can be really satisfactory which does not reckon with Chiron, the most

famous and ‘the most just’ of the Centaurs, as well as with the rest

of the tribe. Some characteristic common to them all--and therefore

not lust or any other evil passion--must be the basis of any adequate

interpretation of the name ‘Beasts.’

If then the name Pheres cannot have been an opprobrious term applied

to the Pelasgian tribe of Centauri by the Achaean invaders in token

of their lusts or other evil qualities, can it have been a term of

respect? It may not now sound a respectful title; but in view of that

ethnological principle which Prof. Ridgeway enunciates, namely ‘that

conquering races frequently regard the conquered both with respect and

aversion,’ the enquiry is worth pursuing. The principle itself seems to

me well established; it is only his application of it in the particular

case of the Centaurs to which I have demurred.

The conquering race, he shows, are apt to respect the conquered

for their skill as wizards. This certainly holds true in the case

before us. Chiron was of high repute in the arts of magic and

prophecy. It was from him that Asclepios learned ‘to be a healer of

the many-plaguing maladies of men; and thus all that came unto him

whether plagued with self-grown sores or with limbs wounded by the

lustrous bronze or stone far-hurled, or marred by summer heat or winter

cold--these he delivered, loosing each from his several infirmity, some

with emollient spells and some by kindly potions, or else he hung their

limbs with charms, or by surgery he raised them up to health[650].’ And

it was Chiron too to whom Apollo himself resorted for counsel, and from

whom he learned the blissful destiny of the maiden Cyrene[651]. Nor was

Chiron the only exponent of such arts among the Centaurs; for Hesiod

names also Asbolos as a diviner.

If then the tribe of Centaurs enjoyed a reputation for sorcery, could

this have won for them the name of ‘Beasts’? Can it have been that,

in the exercise of their magic powers, they were believed able to

transform themselves into beasts?

Within the limits of Greek folk-lore we have already once encountered

such a belief, namely in the case of the ‘Striges,’ old witches capable

of turning themselves into birds of prey; and in the folk-lore of the

world at large the idea is extremely frequent. There is no need to

encumber this chapter with a mass of recorded instances; the verdict

of the first authority on the subject is sufficient. According to

Tylor[652], the belief ‘that certain men, by natural gift or magic art,

can turn for a time into ravening wild beasts’ is ‘a widespread belief,

extending through savage, barbaric, classic, oriental, and mediaeval

life, and surviving to this day in European superstition.’ ‘The origin

of this idea,’ he says, ‘is by no means sufficiently explained,’ but

he notes that ‘it really occurs that, in various forms of mental

disease, patients prowl shyly, long to bite and destroy mankind, and

even fancy themselves transformed into wild beasts.’ Whether such cases

of insanity are the cause or the effect of the belief, he does not

determine; but he adds, what is most important to the present issue,

that ‘professional sorcerers have taken up the idea, as they do any

morbid delusion, and pretend to turn themselves and others into beasts

by magic art’; and, later on[653], citing by way of illustration a

passage of the _Eclogues_[654], in which Vergil ‘tells of Moeris as

turning into a wolf by the use of poisonous herbs, as calling up souls

from the tombs, and as bewitching away crops,’ he points out that in

the popular opinion of Vergil’s age ‘the arts of the werewolf, the

necromancer or “medium,” and the witch, were different branches of one

craft.’

If then the Centaurs were a tribe of reputed sorcerers and also

obtained the secondary name of ‘Beasts,’ the analogy of worldwide

superstitions suggests that the link between these two facts is to be

found in their magical power of assuming the shape of beasts.

What particular beast-shape the Centaurs most often affected need not

much concern us. The analogy, on which my interpretation of the name

Pheres rests, makes certainly for some shape more terrifying than that

of a horse; and the word φῆρες itself also denotes wild and savage

beasts rather than domestic animals. But the horse-centaur, though it

monopolised art, was not the only form of centaur known, nor, if we may

judge from modern descriptions of the Callicantzari, had it so firm a

hold on the popular imagination as some other types. Possibly its very

existence is due only to the aesthetic taste of a horse-loving people.

Pindar certainly knew of one Centaurus earlier in date and far more

monstrous than the horse-centaurs which artists chose to depict, and

provided a genealogy accordingly. Moreover in the passage of Hesiod

which I have quoted above and which, by its agreement with the _Iliad_

as to the human character of the Centaurs, is proved to embody an

early tradition, there is at least a suggestion of a more savage form

assumed by the Centaurs. Several of their names in that passage[655]

seem to indicate various qualities and habits which they possessed.

One is called Petraeos, because the Centaurs lived in rocky caves or

because they hurled rocks at their foes; another is Oureios, because

they were a mountain-tribe; then there are the two sons of Peukeus, so

named because the Centaurs’ weapons were pine-branches. And why is

another named Arctos? Is it not because the Centaurs assumed by sorcery

the form of bears? There is some probability then that the equine type

of Centaur, the conventional Centaur of Greek Art, was a comparatively

late development, and that the remote age which gave to the Centaurs

the name of Pheres believed rather that that tribe of sorcerers were

wont to transform themselves into the more monstrous and terrible

shapes of bears and other wild beasts.

But if the particular animal which Greek artists selected as a

component part of their Centaurs is thus of minor importance, the

fact that their Centaurs were always composite in conception, always

compounded of the human and the animal, is highly significant. In

discussing the various types of Callicantzari in various parts of

Greece, we found that, where there exists a belief in their power of

metamorphosis, they are stated to appear in single and complete shapes,

while, where the belief in their transformation is unknown, they are

represented in composite shapes; and having previously concluded that

the belief in their metamorphosis was a genuine and original factor

in the superstition, we were led to formulate the principle, that a

being of some single, normal, and known shape who has originally been

believed capable of transforming himself into one or more other single,

normal, and known shapes, comes to be represented, when the belief

in his power of transformation dies out, as a being of composite,

abnormal, and fantastic shape, combining incongruous features of the

several single, normal, and known shapes. Now the horse-centaur of

Greek Art is a being of composite, abnormal, and fantastic shape,

combining incongruous features of man and animal. If then the principle

based on facts of modern Greek folk-lore may be applied to the facts

of ancient Greek folk-lore, the horse-centaur of Greek Art replaced

a completely human Centaur capable of transforming himself into

completely animal form.

Moreover I am inclined to think that such a development was likely to

occur in the representations of art even more readily than in verbal

descriptions. For even if the artist belonged to an age which had not

yet forgotten that the Centaurs were human beings capable of turning

themselves by sorcery into beasts, how was he to distinguish the

Centaur in his picture either from an ordinary man, if the Centaur

were in his ordinary human shape, or from a real animal, if the

Centaur were in his assumed shape? He might of course have drawn an

ordinary man and have inscribed the legend, ‘This is a Centaur capable

of assuming other forms’; or he might have drawn an ordinary animal

with the explanatory note, ‘This is not really an animal but a Centaur

in disguise.’ But if such expedients did not satisfy his artistic

instincts, what was he to do? Surely his only course was to depict

the Centaur in his normal human shape, and by some animal adjunct

to indicate his powers of transformation. And that is what he did;

for in the earliest art the fore part of the Centaur is a complete

human figure, and the hind part is a somewhat disconnected equine

appendage[656].

Nor is this artistic convention without parallel in ancient Greece.

At Phigalea there was once, we are told, an ancient statue of Demeter

represented as a woman with the head and mane of a horse; and the

explanation of this equine adjunct was that she had once assumed the

form of a mare[657]. In other words, the power of transformation was

indicated in art by a composite form.

Hence indeed it is not unlikely that the very method which early

artists adopted of indicating the Centaurs’ power to assume various

single forms, being misunderstood by later generations among whom the

Centaurs’ human origin and faculty of magical transformation were

no longer predominant traditions, contributed not a little to the

conception of Centaurs in an invariable composite form; and that later

art, by blending the two incongruous elements into a more harmonious

but less significant whole, confirmed men in that misunderstanding,

until the old traditions became a piece of rare and local lore.

Thus on three separate grounds--the analogy of world-wide superstition

which attributes to sorcerers the power of assuming bestial form;

the tendency detected in modern Greek folk-lore to replace beings of

single shape, but capable of transforming themselves into other single

shapes, by creatures of composite shape; and the contrast between the

horse-centaurs of archaic art and those of the Parthenon--we are led to

the same conclusion, namely that the Centaurs were a tribe of reputed

sorcerers whose most striking manifestation of power, in the eyes of

their Achaean neighbours, was to turn themselves into wild beasts. The

name Pheres was then in truth a title of respect, a title in no way

derogatory to the virtuous Chiron, who, if he exercised his magical

powers chiefly in mercy and healing, shared doubtless with the other

Centaurs the miraculous faculty of metamorphosis.

Our first conclusion then concerning the Callicantzari, namely that

they were originally men capable of turning into beasts, was no less

correct than the second conclusion which showed them as the modern

representatives of Dionysus’ attendant Satyrs and Sileni. Where the

beliefs in their human origin and in their power of metamorphosis

still prevail, Greek tradition has preserved not only the name but the

essential character of the ancient Centaurs.

Does it seem hardly credible that popular tradition should still

faithfully record a superstition which dates from before Homer and yet

is practically ignored by Greek literature? Still if the fidelity of

the common-folk’s memory is guaranteed in many details by its agreement

with that which literature does record, it would be folly to disregard

it where literature is silent or prefers another of the still prevalent

traditions. Let us take only Apollodorus’ account[658] of the fight

of Heracles with the Centaurs and mark the several points in which it

confirms the present beliefs about the Callicantzari. The old home, he

says, of the Centaurs before they came to Malea was Pelion; Pelion is

now the place where above all others stories of the Callicantzari are

rife; and in the neighbouring island of Sciathos it is believed[659]

that they come at Christmas not from the lower world, but from the

mainland, the old country of the Magnetes; even local associations then

seem to have survived, just as in the modern stories about Demeter

from Eleusis and from Phigaleia. Heracles was entertained in the cave

of the Centaur Pholos; the Callicantzari likewise live in caves during

their sojourn on earth, and their hospitality, though never sought,

has been endured. The Centaur Pholos ate raw meat, though he provided

his guest with cooked meat; the Callicantzari also regale themselves

on uncooked food[660], toads and snakes for the most part, but in one

Messenian story also raw dogs’-flesh[661]. Heracles broached a cask of

wine, and Pholos’ brother Centaurs smelt it and swarmed to the cave on

mischief bent; the Callicantzari have the same love of wine and the

same malevolence. The first of the Centaurs to enter the cave were put

to flight by Heracles with fire-brands, and his ordinary weapon, the

bow, was not used by him save to complete the rout; fire-brands are the

right weapons with which to scare away the Callicantzari. Surely, when

such correspondences as these attest the integrity of popular tradition

for some two thousand years, there is nothing incredible in the

supposition that there had been equal integrity in popular (as opposed

to artistic and literary) traditions for another thousand years or more

before that.

Thus then it appears that in some districts of modern Greece, in which

there prevail the beliefs that the Callicantzari are, in their normal

form, human and that they are capable of transforming themselves into

beasts, popular tradition dates from the age in which the Achaean

invaders credited the Pelasgian tribe of Centauri with magical powers

and in token of one special manifestation thereof surnamed them Pheres.

In other districts, where the Callicantzari are represented as

demoniacal and not human and as monsters of mixed rather than of

variable shape, the popular memory goes back to a period somewhat less

remote, that period in which a new conception, encouraged perhaps

unwittingly by archaic art, became predominant in classical art and

literature, with the further result, we must suppose, that in the minds

of some of the common-folk too monsters of composite shape took the

place of the old human wonder-working Centaurs.

And yet again in other districts, where the Christmas mummers in

the guise of Callicantzari are the modern representatives of those

worshippers of Dionysus who dressed themselves in the guise of

Satyrs or Sileni, the traditions which survive are mainly those of

a post-classical age in which the half-human half-animal comrades

of Dionysus lost their distinctive names and were enrolled in the

Centaurs’ ranks.

Finally in the few districts where language at least testifies that

werewolves have also been numbered among the Callicantzari, popular

belief, though preserving much that is ancient, may have been modified

by a superstition, or rather by an actual form of insanity, which was

particularly prevalent in the Middle Ages.

Such have been in different districts and periods the various

developments of a superstition which originated in the reputation for

sorcery enjoyed by a Pelasgian tribe inhabiting Mount Pelion in a

prehistoric age; and the complexity of modern traditions concerning the

Callicantzari is due to the fact that they do not all date from one

epoch but comprise the whole history of the Centaurs.

§ 14. GENII.

The tale of deities is now almost told. There remain only a few

miscellaneous beings, identical or, at the least, comparable with the

creations of ancient superstition, who may be classed together under

the name of στοιχει̯ά[662] (anciently στοιχεῖα) or, to adopt the exact

Latin equivalent, _genii_.

The Greek word, which in classical times served as a fair equivalent

for any sense of our word ‘elements,’ became from Plato’s time

onward a technical term in physics for those first beginnings of the

material world which Empedocles had previously called ῥιζώματα and

other philosophers ἀρχαί. The physical elements however were commonly

supposed to be haunted each by its own peculiar spirit, and hence

among the later Platonists the term στοιχεῖα became a technicality of

demonology rather than of natural science[663]. Every component part

of the visible universe was credited with an invisible _genius_, a

spirit whose being was in some way bound up with the existence of its

abode; and the term στοιχεῖον was transferred from the material to the

spiritual.

But though the Platonists invented and introduced this new sense of

the word, its widespread acceptance was probably not their work,

but a curious accident resulting from misinterpretation of early

Christian writings. In St Paul’s Epistles[664] there occurs several

times a phrase, τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου, ‘worldly principles,’ which

was apparently a little too cultured for many of those who heard or

read it. It conveyed to their minds probably no more than ‘being

enslaved to weak and beggarly elements[665]’ conveys to the British

peasant of to-day. What more natural then than that the commentator

should accept the word in the sense given to it by the Platonists,

and that the common-folk who heard his exposition should readily

identify the στοιχεῖα whom they were bidden no longer to serve with the

lesser deities and local _genii_ to whose service they had long been

bound--to whose service moreover in spite of the supposed injunction

they have always continued faithful? The Church, they would have felt,

acknowledged the existence of these beings; ecclesiastical authority

endorsed ancestral tradition; and since such beings existed, it were

folly to ignore them; nay, since the Church declared that they were

powers of evil, it was but prudent to propitiate them, to appease their

malevolence. Thus στοιχεῖα came to be reckoned by every right-minded

peasant among his regular demoniacal _entourage_. And so they

remain--some of them hostile to man, some benevolent, but all alike

wild, uncontrollable spirits--so that St Paul’s phrase στοιχεῖα τοῦ

κόσμου even appears in one folk-song metaphorically as a description of

wild and wilful young men[666].

Thus the very origin of the term rendered it comprehensive in

meaning. Even the greater deities of ancient Greece were, in a sense,

local--the occupants of prescribed domains; Poseidon might logically

be called the _genius_ of the sea, Demeter of the corn-land; while

lesser deities were always associated with particular spots and often

unknown elsewhere. But mediaeval usage of the word στοιχεῖον and of

its derivatives tended to widen the meaning of the word yet more.

A verb στοιχειοῦν[667] was formed which properly meant to settle a

_genius_ in a particular place--either a beneficent _genius_ to act

as tutelary deity, or an evil _genius_ whose range of activity would

thus be circumscribed within known and narrower limits; but it was

used also in a larger sense to denote the exercise of any magical

powers. A corresponding adjective στοιχειωματικός[668] was applied

to anyone who had dealings with genii or familiar spirits, and more

vaguely to wizards in general. Thus the famous magician Apollonius

of Tyana is described as a ‘Pythagorean philosopher with power over

_genii_’ (φιλόσοφος Πυθαγόρειος στοιχειωματικός)[669]; and two out

of his many miracles may be taken as typical of his exercise of the

power. Once, it is recorded, he was summoned to Byzantium by the

inhabitants and there ‘he charmed (ἐστοιχείωσεν) snakes and scorpions

not to strike, mosquitoes totally to disappear, horses to be quiet

and not to be vicious either towards each other or towards man;

the river Lycus also he charmed (ἐστοιχείωσεν) not to flood and do

damage to Byzantium[670].’ In the first part of this passage the

verb is undoubtedly used in a very lax sense, for snakes, scorpions,

mosquitoes, and horses can hardly have been conceived to have their own

several _genii_ or guardian-spirits upon whom magic could be exercised;

but the charming of the river Lycus certainly suggests the restraining

of the στοιχεῖον or _genius_ of the river within settled bounds. This

stricter sense of the word however comes out more clearly in relation

to good _genii_ who were settled by magical charms in any given object

or place. Hence even the word στοιχεῖον reverted to a material sense,

and was sometimes employed to mean a ‘talisman[671]’--an object, that

is, in which resided a _genius_ capable of averting wars, pestilences,

and suchlike. _Genii_ of this kind, we are told, were settled by the

same Apollonius in the statues throughout Constantinople[672], where

the belief in their efficacy seems to have been generally accepted;

for there was to be seen there a cross in the middle of which was

‘the fortune of the city, namely a small chain having its ends locked

together and possessed of power to keep the city abounding in all

manner of goods and to give her victory ever over the nations (or

heathen), that they should have strength no more to approach and draw

nigh thereto, but should hold further aloof from her and retreat as

though they had been vanquished. And the key of the chain was buried

in the foundations of the pillars[673]’ on which the cross rested.

The locked chain was probably the magical means by which the tutelary

_genius_ of the city was kept at his post.

But these wide and vague usages of the word and its derivatives have

now for the most part disappeared. Leo Allatius[674] still used

στοιχειωματικός in the sense of ‘magician,’ but I have not found it

in modern Greek. A remnant of the verb στοιχειοῦν[675] is seen in the

past participle στοιχειωμένος, which at the present day is applied in

its true sense to objects ‘haunted by _genii_.’ And the word στοιχειά,

though locally extended in scope so as to become in effect synonymous

with δαιμόνια or ἐξωτικά[676], comprising all non-Christian deities

irrespectively of their close connexion with particular natural

phenomena, still maintains in its more strict, and I think more

frequent, usage the meaning of _genii_.

The term thus provided by the Platonists and popularised accidentally

by the Church is a convenience in the classification of demons; for the

ancient Greeks had no popular word which was exactly equivalent; they

had to choose between the vague term δαιμόνιον which implied nothing

of attachment to any place or object, and the special designation of

the particular kind of _genius_. The Latin tongue was in this respect

better supplied. It must not however be inferred that the introduction

of the useful term στοιχεῖα into the demonological nomenclature of

Greece marked any innovation in popular superstition. The Greeks no

less than the Romans had from time immemorial believed in _genii_.

That scene of the _Aeneid_[677], in which, while Aeneas is holding a

memorial feast in honour of his father, a snake appears and tastes

of the offerings and itself in turn is honoured with fresh sacrifice

as being either the genius of the place or an attendant of the hero

Anchises, is throughout Greek in tone; and the comment of Servius

thereupon, ‘There is no place without a _genius_, which usually

manifests itself in the form of a snake,’ revives a hundred memories

of sacred snakes tended in the temples or depicted on the tombs of

ancient Greece. Moreover several of the supernatural beings whom I have

already described, and whose identity with the creatures of ancient

superstition is established, are essentially _genii_. The Lamia is the

_genius_ of the darksome cave where she makes her lair; the Gorgon, of

the straits where she waylays her prey; and, most clearly of all, the

Dryads are the _genii_ of the trees which they inhabit. For the life

of each one of them is bound up with the life of the tree in which

she dwells; and still as in old time, so surely as the tree decays

away with age, her life too is done and ‘her soul leaves therewith the

light of the sun[678].’ The woodman of to-day therefore speaks with the

utmost fidelity to ancient tradition when he calls the trees where his

Nereids dwell στοιχειωμένα δέντρα, ‘trees haunted by _genii_’; such

innovation as there has been is in terminology only.

One word of caution only is required before we proceed to the

consideration of various species of _genii_ not yet described. It must

not be assumed that all _genii_, on the analogy of the tree-nymphs, die

along with the dissolution of their dwelling-places; the existence of

the _genius_ and that of the haunted object are indeed always closely

and intimately united, but not necessarily in such a manner as to

preclude the migration of the _genius_ on the dissolution of its first

abode into a second. The converse proposition however, that any object

could enjoy prolonged existence after the departure from it of the

indwelling power, may be considered improbable.

The _genii_ with whom I now propose to deal fall into five main

divisions according to their habitations. These are first buildings,

secondly water, thirdly mountains, caves, and desert places, fourthly

the air, fifthly human beings.

* * * * *

The _genii_ of buildings are universally acknowledged in Greece. The

forms in which they appear are various; this may partly be explained by

the belief that they possess the power of assuming different shapes at

will; but it is certain also that their normal shape is in some measure

determined by the nature of the building--house, church, or bridge--of

which each is the guardian.

The _genius_ of a house appears almost always in the guise of a snake,

or, according to Leo Allatius[679], of a lizard or other reptile. It

is believed to have its permanent dwelling in the foundations, and

not infrequently some hole or crevice in a rough cottage-floor is

regarded as the entrance to its home. About such holes peasants have

been known to sprinkle bread-crumbs[680]; and I have been informed,

though I cannot vouch as an eye-witness for the statement, that on the

festival of that saint whose name the master of a house bears, he will

sometimes combine services to both his Christian and his pagan tutelary

deities, substituting wine for the water on which the oil of the sacred

lamp before the saint’s icon usually floats, and pouring a libation

of milk--for the older deities disapprove of intoxicants--about the

aperture which leads down to the subterranean home of the _genius_. If

it so happen that there is a snake in the hole and the milky deluge

compels it speedily to issue from its hiding-place, its appearance

in the house is greeted with a silent delight or with a few words of

welcome quietly spoken. For on no account must the ‘guardian of the

house,’ νοικοκύρης[681] or τόπακας[682], as it is sometimes called, be

frightened by any sound or sudden movement. Much less of course must

any physical hurt or violence be done to it; the consequences of such

action, even though it be due merely to inadvertence, are swift and

terrible; the house itself falls, or the member of the family who was

guilty of the outrage dies in the self-same way in which he slew the

snake[683].

These beliefs and customs are probably all of ancient date.

Theophrastus[684] notes how the superstitious man, if he sees a snake

in the house, sets up a shrine for it on the spot. The observation also

of such snakes was a recognised department of ‘domestic divination’

(οἰκοσκοπική) on which one Xenocrates--not the disciple of Plato--wrote

a treatise[685]. They were probably known as οἰκουροί, ‘guardians

of the house’ (a name which is identical in meaning with the modern

νοικοκύρης), for it is thus at any rate that Hesychius[686] designates

the great snake which Herodotus[687] tells us was ‘guardian (φύλακα)

of the acropolis’ at Athens, and which, by leaving untouched the

honey-cake with which it was fed every month, proved to the Athenians,

when the second Persian invasion was threatening them, that their

tutelary deity had departed from the acropolis, and decided them

likewise to evacuate the city. Thus the few facts that are recorded

about this belief in antiquity accord so exactly with modern

observations, that from the minuter detail of the latter the outlines

of the former may safely be filled in.

The _genii_ of churches most commonly are seen or heard in the form of

oxen--bulls for the most part[688], but also steers and heifers[689].

They appear, like all _genii_, most frequently at night, and, according

to one authority, ‘are adorned with various precious stones which

diffuse a brightness such as to light the whole church.’ ‘They are

seldom harmful,’ continues the same writer[690]; ‘the few that are

so--called simply κακά--do not dare to make their abode within the

churches, but have their lairs close to them in order to do hurt to

church-goers.... Near Calamáta, on a mountain-side, there is a chapel

of ease dedicated to St George. The peasants narrate that at each

annual festival held there on April 23rd a _genius_ used to issue forth

from a hole close by and to devour one of the festal gathering. After

some years the good people, seeing that there was no remedy for this

annual catastrophe, decided to give up the festival. But a week before

the feast St George appeared to them all simultaneously in a dream, and

assured them that they should suffer no hurt at the festival, because

he had sealed up the monster. And in fact they went there and found the

hole closed by a massive stone, on which was imprinted the mark of a

horse’s hoof; for St George, willing that the hole should remain always

closed, had made his horse strike the stone with his hoof. Thenceforth

the saint has borne the surname Πεταλώτης (from πέταλον the ‘shoe’ or

‘hoof’ of a horse) and up to this day is shewn the hoof-mark upon a

stone.’

Harmless _genii_ however are more frequently assigned to churches,

exercising a kind of wardenship over them and taking an interest in

the parishioners. At Marousi, a village near Athens, there is a church

which is still believed to have a _genius_, in the form of a bull,

lurking in its foundations; and when any parishioner is about to die,

the bull is heard to bellow three times at midnight. A church in Athens

used to claim the same distinction, and the bellowing of the bull

there is said to have been heard within living memory at the death of

an old man named Lioules[691]. Other churches also in Athens, not to

be outdone, pretended to the possession of _genii_ in the shapes of a

snake, a black cock, and a woman, who all followed the bull’s example

and emitted their appropriate cries thrice at midnight as a presage of

similar events[692].

Why the _genii_ of churches in particular appear mostly as bulls, I

cannot determine. When the _genius_ of a river manifests itself in that

form, the connexion with antiquity is obvious; for river-gods, who _ex

vi termini_ are the _genii_ of the rivers whose name they share, were

constantly pourtrayed of old in the form of bulls. All that can be said

is that the type of _genius_ is old, though its localisation is new and

difficult to explain.

The _genii_ of bridges cannot properly, I suppose, be distinguished

from the _genii_ of those rivers or ravines which the bridges span.

They are usually depicted as dragons or other formidable monsters,

and they are best known for the cruel toll which they exact when

the bridge is a-building. The original conception is doubtless that

of the river-god demanding a sacrifice, even of human life, in

compensation for men’s encroachment upon his domain. The most famous

of the folk-songs which celebrate such a theme is associated with ‘the

Bridge of Arta,’ but many versions[693] of it have been published

from different districts, and in some the names of other bridges are

substituted; in Crete the story is attached to the ‘shaking bridge’

over a mountain torrent near Canea[694]; in the Peloponnese to ‘the

Lady’s bridge’ over the river Ladon[695]; in the neighbourhood of

Thermopylae to a bridge over the river Helláda[696]; in the island of

Cos to the old bridge of Antimachia[697]. The song, in the version[698]

which I select, runs thus:

‘Apprentices three-score there were, and craftsmen five and forty,

For three long years they laboured sore to build the bridge of Arta;

All the day long they builded it, each night it fell in ruin.

The craftsmen fall to loud lament, th’ apprentices to weeping:

“Alas, alas for all our toil, alack for all our labour,

That all day long we’re building it, at night it falls in ruin.”

Then from the rightmost arch thereof the demon gave them answer:

“An ye devote not human life, no wall hath sure foundation;

And now devote not orphan-child, nor wayfarer, nor stranger,

But give your master-craftsman’s wife, his wife so fair and gracious,

That cometh late toward eventide, that cometh late toward supper.”

The master-craftsman heard it well, and fell as one death-stricken;

A word anon he writes and bids the nightingale to carry:

“Tarry to don thy best array, tarry to come to supper,

Tarry to go upon thy way across the bridge of Arta.”

The nightingale heard not aright, and carried other message:

“Hurry to don thy best array, hurry to come to supper,

Hurry to go upon thy way across the bridge of Arta.”

Lo, there she came, now full in view, along the dust-white roadway;

The master-craftsman her espied, and all his heart was breaking;

E’en from afar she bids them hail, e’en from afar she greets them:

“Gladness and health, my masters all, apprentices and craftsmen!

What ails the master-craftsman then that he is so distressèd?”

“Nought ails save only that his ring by the first arch is fallen;

Who shall go in and out again his ring thence to recover?”

“Master, be not so bitter-grieved, I will go fetch it for thee;

Let me go in and out again thy ring thence to recover.”

Not yet had she made full descent, not halfway had descended;

“Draw up the rope, prithee goodman, draw up the cable quickly,

For all the world is upside down, and nought have I recovered.”

One plies the spade to cover her, another shovels mortar,

The master-craftsman lifts a stone, and hurls it down upon her.

“Alas, alas for this our doom, alack for our sad fortune!

Three sisters we, and for all three a cruel fate was written.

One went to building Doúnavi, the next to build Avlóna,

And I, the last of all the three, must build the bridge of Arta.

Even as trembles my poor heart, so may the bridge-way tremble,

Even as my fair tresses fall, so fall all they that cross it!”

“Nay, change, girl, prithee change thy speech, and utter other presage;

Thou hast one brother dear to thee, and haply he may pass it.”

Then changèd she her speech withal, and uttered other presage:

“As iron now is my poor heart, as iron stand the bridge-way,

As iron are my tresses fair, iron be they that cross it!

For I’ve a brother far away, and haply he may pass it.”’

But while the most famous examples of sacrifice to _genii_ are

connected with bridges, the custom in a less criminal form than that

which the folk-songs celebrate is common throughout Greece to-day. In

building a house or any other edifice, the question of propitiating the

_genius_ already in possession of the site and of inducing it to become

the guardian of the building is duly considered. Sacrifice is done. The

peace-offering, according to the importance of the building and the

means of the future owner, may consist of an ox, a ram, a he-goat, or

a cock (or, less commonly, of a hen with her brood[699]), preferably

of black colour, as were in old time victims designed for gods beneath

the earth. The selected animal is in Acarnania and Aetolia[700] taken

to the site, and there its throat is cut so that the blood may fall on

the foundation-stone, beneath which the body is then interred. In some

other places[701] it suffices to mark a cross upon the stone with the

victim’s blood. In the same district the practice of taking auspices

from the victim--from the shoulder-blade in the case of a ram and from

the breast-bone in the case of a cock--is occasionally combined with

the sacrifice, but is not essential to the ceremony.

But animals, though they are the only victims actually slaughtered upon

the spot, are not the only form of peace-offering. Even at the present

day when, added to the power of the law, a sense of humanity, or a fear

of being pronounced ‘uncivilised,’ tends to deter the peasantry even of

the most outlying districts from actually satisfying the more savage

instincts of hereditary superstition, there still exists a strong

feeling that a human victim is preferable to an animal for ensuring

the stability of a building. Fortunately therefore for the builder’s

peace of mind, the principles of sympathetic magic offer a compromise

between actual murder and total disregard of the traditional rite.

It suffices to obtain from a man or woman--an enemy for choice but,

failing that, ‘out of philanthropy’ as a Greek authority puts it, any

aged person whose term of life is well-nigh done--some such object as

a hair or the paring of a nail, or again a shred of his clothing or a

cast-off shoe, or it may be a thread or stick[702] marked with the

measure either of the footprint or of the full stature of the person,

and to bury it beneath the foundation-stone of the new edifice. By this

proceeding a human victim is devoted to the _genius_ of the site, and

will die within the year as surely as if an image of him were moulded

in wax and a needle run through its heart. Another variation of the

same rite consists in enticing some passer-by to the spot and laying

the foundation-stone upon his shadow. In Santorini I myself was once

saved from such a fate by the rough benevolence of a stranger who

dragged me back from the place where I was standing and adjured me to

watch the proceedings from the other side of the trench where my shadow

could not fall across the foundations. Nor are the invited guests

immune; unenviable therefore is the position of those persons who are

officially required to assist at the laying of the foundation-stones of

churches and other public buildings. The demarch (or mayor) of Agrinion

informed me that, according to the belief of the common-folk in the

neighbourhood, his four immediate predecessors in office had all fallen

victims to this their public duty; and he described to me the concern

and consternation of his own women-folk when he himself had recently

braved the ordeal. He honestly allowed too that he had kept his shadow

clear of the dangerous spot.

So much importance is attached to these foundation-ceremonies that the

Church has provided a special office to be read alike for cathedral or

for cottage; and the priest who attends for this purpose is sometimes

induced to pronounce a blessing on the animal that is to be sacrificed.

This however is the more expensive rite; the victim has to be bought,

and the priest expects a fee for blessing it; whereas the immolation of

a shadow-victim costs nothing, is more efficacious as being equivalent

to a human sacrifice, and provides an excellent means for removing an

enemy with impunity.

The sacrificial ceremony is also sometimes performed on other occasions

than those of the laying of foundation-stones. In Athens a precept of

popular wisdom enjoins the slaughtering of a black cock when a new

quarry is opened[703]; and an interesting account is given by Bent[704]

of a similar scene at the launching of a ship in Santorini. ‘When they

have built a new vessel, they have a grand ceremony at the launching,

or benediction, as they call it here, at which the priest officiates;

and the crowd eagerly watch, as she glides into the water, the position

she takes, for an omen is attached to this. It is customary to

slaughter an ox, a lamb or a dove on these occasions, according to the

wealth of the proprietor and the size of the ship, and with the blood

to make a cross on the deck. After this the captain jumps off the bows

into the sea with all his clothes on, and the ceremony is followed by

a banquet and much rejoicing.’ Here it is reasonable to suppose that

the captain by jumping into the sea goes through the form of offering

himself as a sacrifice to the _genius_ of the sea, and that the animal

actually slaughtered is a surrogate victim in his stead.

The strength of these superstitions to-day, as gauged by the shifts

and compromises to which the peasants resort in order to satisfy

their scruples, goes far to guarantee the historical accuracy of

such ballads as ‘the Bridge of Arta.’ Not of course that each of the

numerous versions with all its local colouring is to be taken as

evidence of human sacrifice in each place named; exactitude of detail

cannot be claimed for them. But as a faithful picture of the beliefs

and customs prevalent not more perhaps than two or three centuries ago

they deserve full credence. Both the wide dispersion of the several

versions, and also the skill with which in each of them the action of

the master-builder evokes feelings not of aversion but rather of pity

for a man of whom religious duty demanded the sacrifice of his own

wife, furnish plain proof of the domination which the superstition in

its most gruesome form once exercised; and the intentions of the modern

peasants, if not their acts, testify to the same overwhelming dread of

_genii_.

That the ceremonies which I have described are in general of the nature

of sacrifices to _genii_ is beyond question. In the version of ‘the

Bridge of Arta’ which I have translated, both the _genius_ and the

victim whom he demands appear as _dramatis personae_. Again, in some

districts the word ‘sacrifice’ (θυσιό[705] or θυσία[706]) is actually

still applied to the rite. Finally, though the victims are of various

kinds and the forms in which a genius may appear equally various,

the distinction between the two is as a rule kept clear; cases of a

single species of animal serving for both _genius_ and victim--of the

_genius_ for example appearing as a cock or of the chosen victim being

a snake--are extremely rare.

Confusion of the two nevertheless does occur; the original _genius_

of the site is sometimes forgotten, and the victim is conceived to be

slain and buried in order that from the under-world it may exercise a

guardianship over the building which is its tomb. Thus in one version

of ‘the Bridge of Arta,’ inferior in many respects to that which I have

translated, the complaint of the master-craftsman’s wife contains the

line

τρεῖς ἀδερφούλαις εἴμασταν, ταὶς τρεῖς στοιχειὰ μᾶς βάλαν[707],

‘Three sisters we, and all the three they took for guardian-demons.’

Probably the same confusion of thought was responsible for the

representation of the _genius_ of a church in Athens in the shape

of a cock, which is the commonest kind of victim; and possibly too

the bulls which are so frequently the guardians of churches were

originally the victims considered most suitable for the foundation of

such important edifices. This error of belief has undoubtedly been

facilitated by the use of a word which in its mediaeval meanings has

already been discussed--the verb στοιχειόνω. This, as I have pointed

out, meant strictly ‘to provide (a place or object) with a _genius_.’

But in modern usage it can take an accusative of the victim devoted

to a _genius_ no less than of the place provided with a _genius_.

In Zacynthos and Cephalonia, says Bernhard Schmidt[708], the phrase

στοιχειόνω ἀρνί, for example, meaning ‘I devote a lamb’ to the

_genius_, is in regular use; and so too in the above rendering of ‘the

Bridge of Arta,’ the phrase which I have translated ‘an ye devote not

human life’ is in the Greek ἂν δὲ στοιχειώσετ’ ἄνθρωπο. Now verbs of

this form are in both ancient and modern Greek usually causative.

The ancient δηλόω and modern δηλόνω mean ‘I make (an object) clear’

(δῆλος): the ancient χρυσόω and modern χρυσόνω mean ‘I make (an object)

gold’ (χρυσός). Similarly στοιχειόνω is readily taken to mean ‘I

make (an animal or person) the _genius_’ (στοιχεῖον) of a place. If

therefore this word continued to be applied to the rite of slaughtering

an animal at foundation-ceremonies in any place where the true purport

of the custom, as often happens, had been forgotten, language itself

would at once suggest that erroneous interpretation of the custom of

which we have seen examples; the victim would be raised to the rank of

_genius_.

This development of modern superstition supplies a clue for tracing the

evolution of ancient Greek religion, which has hitherto been missed

by those who have dealt with the subject[709]. They have generally

compared with the modern Greek superstition similar beliefs and

customs prevalent throughout the Balkans and even beyond them, and

have thence inferred that the practice of sacrificing to the _genii_

of sites selected for building was of Slavonic importation. The wide

distribution of the superstition in the Balkans, especially among

the Slavonic peoples, is a fact; but the inference goes too far. To

Slavonic influence I impute the recrudescence of the superstition in

its most barbarous form, involving human sacrifice, during the Middle

Ages. Ancient history, even ancient mythology, contains no story so

suggestive of barbarity as one brief statement made by Suidas: ‘At St

Mamas there was a large bridge consisting of twelve arches (for there

was much water coming down), and there a brazen dragon was set up,

because it was thought that a dragon inhabited the place; and there

many maidens were sacrificed[710].’ The date of the events to which the

passage refers cannot be ascertained; but I certainly suspect it to be

subsequent to the Slavonic invasion of Greece. Yet even so the Slavs

did not initiate a new custom but merely stimulated the native belief

that _genii_ required sacrifice in compensation for the building of any

edifice on their domains. This belief dated from the Homeric age--nay,

was already old when the Achaeans built their great wall with lofty

towers, a bulwark for them and their ships against the men of Ilium.

‘Thus,’ we read, ‘did they labour, even the long-haired Achaeans; but

the gods sitting beside Zeus that wieldeth the lightning gazed in

wonder on the mighty work of the bronze-clad Achaeans. And to them

did Poseidon the earth-shaker open speech: “Father Zeus, is there now

one mortal on the boundless earth, that will henceforth declare unto

immortals his mind and purpose? Seest thou not that contrariwise the

long-haired Achaeans have built a wall to guard their ships and driven

a trench about it, and have not offered unto the gods fair sacrifice?

Verily their wall shall be famed far as Dawn spreads her light; and

that which I with Phoebus Apollo toiled to build for the hero Laomedon

will men forget.” And unto him spake Zeus that gathereth the clouds,

sore-vexed: “Fie on thee, thou earth-shaker whose sway is wide, for

this thy word. Well might this device of men dismay some other god

lesser than thou by far in work and will; but thou verily shalt be

famed far as Dawn spreads her light. Go to; when the long-haired

Achaeans be gone again with their ships unto their own native land,

break thou down their wall and cast it all into the sea and cover again

the vast shore with sand, that so the Achaeans’ great wall may be wiped

out from thy sight[711].”’ And later in the _Iliad_ we read of the

fulfilment; how that the rivers of the Trojan land were marshalled and

led by Poseidon, his trident in his hands, to the assault of the wall

that ‘had been fashioned without the will of the gods and could no long

time endure[712].’

The whole passage finds its best commentary in modern superstition.

Poseidon, though a great god, is the local _genius_; to him belongs the

shore where the Greek ships are assembled, to him too the land where

he had built the town of Ilium; to him therefore were due sacrifices

for the building of the wall. But the god whose fame is known far as

Dawn spreads her light deserves the rebuke administered by Zeus for his

pettiness of spirit. An ordinary local _genius_, ‘some god far lesser

than he in work and will,’ might justly wax wrathful at the neglect

of his more limited prerogatives. Yet even so the wall was doomed to

endure no long time. Then as now the divine law ran, ‘An ye devote not

hecatombs, no wall hath sure foundation.’

In this passage there is of course no suggestion of a local _genius_ in

animal shape; the anthropomorphic tendency of Homeric religion was too

strong to admit of that. But since we know from Theophrastus’ sketch

of the superstitious man and from other sources that in the classical

age _genii_ of houses and temples were believed to appear in the form

of snakes, we may without hesitation assign the same belief to earlier

ages. Such a superstition could not in the nature of things have sprung

up after an anthropomorphic conception of the gods dominated all

religion, but must necessarily have been a survival from pre-classical

and pre-Homeric folklore.

But, though Homer speaks of the _genius_ only as a ‘lesser god’ without

further description, he implies clearly that the present custom of

doing sacrifice to such a being for the foundation of any building

was then in existence. Did the sacrifice ever involve human victims?

A positive and certain answer cannot, I suppose, be made; but bearing

in mind the many ancient traditions of human sacrifice in Greece and

even the occasional continuance of the practice in the most civilised

and enlightened age[713] I cannot doubt it. I suspect that, if we

could obtain an earlier version of the story of Iphigenia than has

come down to us, we should find that the wrath of Artemis had no part

in it, but that human sacrifice was offered to the Winds or other

_genii_ of the air--that the ‘maiden’s blood’ was, in the words of

Aeschylus, ‘a sacrifice to stay the winds[714],’ ‘a charm to lull the

Thracian blasts[715],’ that and nothing more. But a story still more

strongly evidential of the custom is told by Pausanias[716]. In the

war between Messenia and Sparta, when the Messenians had been reduced

to extremities, ‘they decided to evacuate all their many towns in the

open country and to establish themselves on Mount Ithome. Now there was

there a town of no great size, which Homer, they say, includes in the

Catalogue--“Ithome steep as a ladder.” In this town they established

themselves, extending its ancient circuit so as to provide a stronghold

large enough for all. And apart even from the fortifications the place

was strong; for Ithome is as high as any mountain in the Peloponnese

and, where the town lay, was particularly inaccessible. They determined

also to send an envoy to Delphi,’ who brought them back the following

oracle:

A maiden pure unto the nether powers,

Chosen by lot, of lineage Aepytid,

Ye shall devote in sacrifice by night.

But if ye fail thereof, take ye a maid

E’en from a man of other race as victim,

An he shall give her willingly to slay.

And the story goes on to tell how in the end Aristodemus devoted his

own daughter, and she became the accepted victim.

Here Pausanias, it will be noticed, does not give any reason for the

sacrifice being required. But three points in his narrative are highly

suggestive. The story of the sacrifice follows immediately upon the

mention of the building of new fortifications--and the foundation of

what was to be practically a new city was eminently a question on which

to consult the Delphic oracle; the powers to whom sacrifice is ordered

are designated merely as νέρτεροι δαίμονες, the nearest equivalent

in ancient Greek to _genii_; and the time of the sacrifice is to be

night, when, according to modern belief, _genii_ are most active. If

then modern superstition can ever teach us anything about ancient

religion, it supplies the clue here. The maiden was to be sacrificed

to the _genii_ of Mount Ithome to ensure the stability of the new

fortifications.

Now if my interpretation of this story is right and the practice of

human sacrifice to _genii_ was known in ancient Greece, the transition

from the worship of _genii_ in the form of snakes or dragons to the

worship of tutelary heroes or gods in human likeness is readily

explained on the analogy of a similar transition in modern belief.

What was originally the victim was mistaken for the genius. The same

confusion of thought, by which, in one version of ‘the Bridge of Arta,’

the _genius_ in person demands a human victim and yet afterwards the

victim speaks of herself as becoming the _genius_ of the bridge,

can be detected even in the oracle given to the Messenians. ‘If ye

fail to find a maid of the blood of the Aepytidae,’ it said, ‘ye may

take the daughter of a man of other lineage, provided that he give

her willingly for sacrifice.’ Why the condition? Why ‘willingly’

only? Because, I think, even the Delphic oracle halted between two

opinions--between the conception of the maiden as a victim to appease

angry _genii_ and the belief that the dead girl herself would become

the guardian-_daemon_ of the stronghold.

Let us read another story from Pausanias[717]: ‘At the base of Mount

Cronius, on the north side (of the Altis at Olympia), between the

treasuries and the mountain, there is a sanctuary of Ilithyia, and in

it Sosipolis, a native _daemon_ of Elis, is worshipped. To Ilithyia

they give the surname “Olympian,” and elect a priestess to minister to

her year by year. The old woman too who waits upon Sosipolis is bound

by Elean custom to chastity in her own person, and brings water for the

bathing of the god and serves him with barley-cakes kneaded with honey.

In the front part of the temple, which is of double construction, is

an altar of Ilithyia, and entrance thereto is public; but in the inner

part Sosipolis is worshipped, and only the woman who serves the god may

enter, and she only with her head and face covered by a white veil.

And while she does so, maidens and married women wait in the temple of

Ilithyia and sing a hymn; incense of all sorts is also offered to him,

but no libations of wine. An oath also at the sanctuary of Sosipolis is

taken on very great occasions.

‘It is said that when the Arcadians had once invaded Elis, and the

Eleans lay encamped opposite to them, a woman came to the generals of

the Eleans, with a child at her breast, and said that, though she was

the mother of the child, she offered it, bidden thereto by dreams,

to fight on the side of the Eleans. And those in command, trusting

the woman’s tale, put the child in the forefront of the army naked.

Then the Arcadians came to the attack, and lo! straightway the child

was changed into a serpent. And the Arcadians, dismayed at the sight,

turned to flight, and were pressed by the Eleans, who won a signal

victory and gave to the god the name of Sosipolis (“saviour of the

state”). And at the place where the serpent disappeared in the ground

after the battle they set up the sanctuary; and along with him they

took to worshipping Ilithyia, because she was the goddess who had

brought the boy into the world.’

Is this story complete, or did Pausanias’ informants suppress one

material point out of shame? How came a mortal infant to assume the

form of a serpent which is proper only to apparitions from the lower

world? The missing episode is, I believe, the sacrifice of the child,

which having been offered willingly became after death a _daemon_

friendly to the Eleans and fought, in the form of a serpent, on their

side. Human sacrifice before a battle was not unknown in ancient

Greece[718], but by Pausanias’ time the inhabitants of Elis might well

have hesitated to impute to their forefathers so barbarous a custom,

and have modified the story by omitting even that incident which alone

could make it harmonise with ancient religious ideas[719].

A similar view has been taken of another story of Pausanias[720], also

from Elis. ‘Oxylus (the king of Elis), they say, had two sons Aetolus

and Laias. Aetolus died before his parents and was buried by them in a

tomb which they caused to be made exactly in the gate of the road to

Olympia and the sanctuary of Zeus. The cause of their burying him thus

was an oracle which forbade the corpse to be either within or without

the city. And up to my time the governor of the gymnasium still makes

annual offerings to Aetolus as a hero.’ Commenting on this passage Dr

Frazer[721] says, ‘The spirit of the dead man was probably expected

to guard the gate against foes.... It is possible that in this story

of the burial of Aetolus in the gate we have a faded tradition of an

actual human sacrifice offered when the gate was built.’ Certainly the

facts that Aetolus was young and that he was not head of the royal

house make his elevation to the rank of tutelary hero after death

difficult to understand on any other hypothesis; and it should be

noted too that the oracle, in obedience to which his tomb was made in

the gateway, probably came, as the preceding context suggests, from

Delphi, that same shrine which was responsible for the sacrifice of

Aristodemus’ daughter in the Messenian war.

Thus there is some probability that in ancient, as in modern, Greece

the _genius_ was sometimes superseded by the victim offered to him,

but bequeathed to his successor something of his own character. The

victim, now become a hero, manifested himself in the old-established

guise of a serpent, and, if we may judge from the case of Sosipolis at

Olympia, continued to be fed with honey-cakes, the same food which had

been considered the appropriate diet for the original snake-_genii_

such as those dwelling in the Erechtheum. But, when once the transition

of worship was well advanced, the power to assume serpent-form was

naturally extended to all tutelary heroes and even to gods; to have

been sacrificed was no longer the sole qualifying condition. The hero

Cychreus went to the help of the Athenians at Salamis in the form

of a serpent[722]. Two serpents were the incarnations of the heroes

Trophonius and Agamedes at the oracle of Lebadea[723]. Amphiaraus was

represented by a snake on the coins of Oropus. An archaic relief of the

sixth century B.C. in the Museum of Sparta, to which Miss Harrison

has recently called attention, represents ‘a male and a female figure

seated side by side on a great throne-like chain.... Worshippers of

diminutive size approach with offerings--a cock and some object that

may be a cake, an egg, or a fruit.... It is clear that we have ...

representations of the dead, but the dead conceived of as half-divine,

as heroized--hence their large size as compared with that of their

worshipping descendants. They are κρείττονες, “Better and Stronger

Ones.” The artist of the relief is determined to make his meaning

clear. Behind the chair, equal in height to the seated figures, is a

great curled snake, but a snake strangely fashioned. From the edge of

his lower lip hangs down a long beard, a decoration denied by nature.

The intention is clear; he is a _human_ snake, the vehicle, the

incarnation of the dead man’s ghost[724].’

In this relief the offerings depicted also are, I think, no less

instructive than the bearded snake. If we may suppose that the

somewhat indeterminate object, cake, egg, or fruit, was intended for a

honey-cake, the offerings combine that which was the accustomed food of

snake-_genii_ in ancient times with a cock, the victim most frequently

sacrificed to the same _genii_ at the present day.

Of gods, Asclepius, perhaps because he began life as a hero, was most

frequently represented in serpent-form. It was in this guise that he

came to Sicyon, Epidaurus Limera, and Rome[725]; and in later times

Lucian tells a humorous tale of how an impostor effected by trickery a

supposed re-incarnation of Asclepius in snake-form before the very eyes

of the people out of whose superstitions he made a living and indeed

a fortune[726]. Here again, if we may argue from modern custom, the

serpent-form carried with it the traditional offering of a ‘cock to

Asclepius.’ But other gods too had sometimes their attendant snakes,

as had Asclepius at Epidaurus; and in every case it is likely that the

particular god had originally dispossessed a primitive snake-_genius_,

but inherited from him and retained for a time in local cults the

form of a snake; until, as the conception of the gods became more and

more anthropomorphic, the snake ceased to be a manifestation of the

god himself and became merely his minister or his symbol. Even Zeus

himself, under the title of Meilichios, is proved by two reliefs found

at the Piraeus to have been figured for a time by his worshippers as a

snake[727].

In many such cases doubtless the substitution of the cult of a new

and named god for that of a primitive and nameless _genius_ explains

adequately the incomer’s inheritance and temporary retention of the

snake-form; but in the case of tutelary heroes, above all, the analogy

of modern folk-lore, in which the human victim is sometimes erroneously

elevated to the rank of guardian-_genius_, supplies, I think, the right

clue to the process by which in ancient times the snake came to be the

recognised incarnation of the spirits of dead men and heroes.

* * * * *

The _genii_ of water, to whom we now turn, are sometimes imagined in

the form of dragons or of bulls, but more often by far in human or

quasi-human shape. An exception to the general rule must of course be

made in the case of the _genii_ of bridges, if, as I suppose, they were

originally identical with the _genii_ of those rivers which the bridges

span; for these, as I have said, are usually dragons. But if in this

case there is a difference in outward appearance, there is a general

agreement at any rate in characteristics; for the _genii_ of water are

no less hostile to man than those who demand human sacrifice as the

price of their permission to build a bridge.

At Kephalóvryso in Aetolia the _genii_ of a river were described to me

as red, grinning devils who might often be seen sitting in the bed of

the stream beneath the water. They were believed to mate with _Lamiae_

who infested several caves on the bank of the river; and together these

two kinds of monster would feed on the bodies of men whom they had

dragged into the river and drowned.

But far more frequently the _genii_ of water, and especially of wells,

appear in the form of Arabs (Ἀράπηδες), and may be seen sometimes

smoking long pipes in the depths. They have the power of transforming

themselves into any shape. At one time they assume dragon-form and

terrorise a whole country side; at another they adopt the guise of a

lovely maiden weeping beside a well, and, on pretence of having dropped

into it a ring, induce gallant and unwary men to descend to their

death[728]; for when once the Arab has entrapped them in his well he

feeds upon them or smokes them in lieu of tobacco in his pipe.

How Arabs have come to find a place among the _genii_ of modern Greece

is a question which must be answered in one of two ways. Either during

the Turkish domination of Greece the Arab slaves, who were to be found

in every wealthy house, were suspected by the Christian population of

possessing magical powers, and from being magicians were elevated,

as the _Striges_ often were in mediaeval and modern Greece, to the

rank of demons; or else they are another example of the transmutation

of victims into _genii_. For several reasons I incline to the latter

explanation. First, these Arabs are most commonly associated with

wells, and for the sinking of a well, no less than for the erection

of a building or the opening of a quarry, a victim would naturally be

required. Secondly, an animal victim is for choice of a black or dark

colour, and, by parity of reasoning, among human victims an Arab (or

other man of dark colour, for the word Arab is used popularly of all

such) would be preferable to a white man. Thirdly, it was reported

from Zacynthos only a generation ago that a strong feeling still

existed there in favour of sacrificing a Mohammedan or a Jew at the

foundation of important bridges and other buildings[729]; and there

is a legend of a black man having been actually immured in the bridge

of an aqueduct near Lebadea in Boeotia[730]. Lastly, I heard from a

shepherd belonging to Chios the story of a house in that island haunted

by beings whom he called indifferently Arabs[731] and _vrykólakes_. He

himself had been mad for eight months from the shock of seeing them,

and four of his friends who visited the house to discover the cause of

his disaster were similarly afflicted. The demons were finally laid to

rest by an old man driving a flock of goats through the house[732]. Now

_vrykólakes_, with whom I shall deal at length later on, are persons

resuscitated after death who issue from their graves; and among those

who are predisposed to such reappearance are men who have met with a

violent death. The identification therefore of Arabs with _vrykólakes_

in this story suggests that an Arab victim sacrificed at the foundation

of some building might become the _genius_ of it--not in this case the

beneficent guardian of it, but owing to his violent death a malicious

and hurtful monster. On this evidence I incline to the view that the

Arabs who now form a class of _genii_ were originally the human victims

preferred at the sinking of wells--a piece of engineering, it must be

remembered, of first-rate importance in a country as dry as Greece--and

that, when once these _genii_ had become associated with water, the

popular imagination soon assigned them to rivers and natural springs no

less than to wells.

The _genii_ of rivers sometimes appear also in the shape of bulls,

though as I have already remarked this type of _genius_ is far more

commonly associated with churches. Possibly in some cases the fact

that the church was built in the neighbourhood of some sacred spring,

whose miraculous virtue was of older date and repute than Christianity,

first caused the transference; but at any rate some rivers still retain

this type of _genius_, the type under which river gods were regularly

represented in ancient times. In this connexion a story entitled

‘the ox-headed man[733]’ and narrated to me at Goniá in the island of

Santorini deserves mention.

A princess and a poor girl once agreed that when they were married, if

of their respective first-born the one should be a boy and the other

a girl, these two should be married. Now, as it chanced, princess

and peasant-maid were both wed on the same day, but for a long time

both remained childless. Then at last they prayed to the Panagia, the

princess for a child even if it were but a girl, the peasant for a son

even if he were but half a man; and their prayers were answered; for

the poor woman bore a son with the head of an ox, while the princess

was blest with a beautiful daughter.

When the two children were grown up, the poor woman went one day to

claim the fulfilment of the agreement, and the princess, or rather now

the queen, went to ask her husband. He however objected to the suitor

on the grounds of personal appearance, and stipulated that he should at

least first perform certain feats to prove his worthiness. The first

task was to build a palace of pearls, the second to plant the highest

mountain of Santorini (μέσο βουνί, ‘central mountain,’ as it is locally

called) with trees, and the third to border all the roads of the island

with flowers. For each labour one single night was the limit of time.

But the ox-headed man was equal to the work, and having accomplished

it came riding on a white horse to claim his bride. The king however,

who had imposed these three labours in full assurance that the unseemly

suitor would fail, now flatly refused to abide by his promise, and the

man retired disconsolate and disappeared none knew whither.

The young princess was much affected at the unfair treatment of her

lover, and each day she grew more and more melancholy. But finally she

hit upon a means of cheering herself. She proposed to her father that

they should leave the palace and start an inn, not for money, but for

the sake of the amusement to be derived from the stories and witty

sayings of the guests. The king consented, and the inn was set up.

Now one day a boy who had been fishing dropped his rod into the river,

and having dived in after it came to a flight of stairs at the bottom.

Having walked down forty steps, he entered a large room where sat the

ox-headed man, who talked with him and told him that he was waiting

there for a princess who came not. The boy then returned without hurt,

and on his way home had to pass the inn. Having turned in there, he

was asked by the princess to tell her something amusing. He replied

however that he knew no stories, but would recount to her an adventure

which had just befallen him. In the course of the story the princess

recognised that what the boy called the _genius_ of the river (τὸ

στοιχειὸ τοῦ ποταμοῦ) could be no other than her lover, and having been

straightway conducted to the spot, found and married the ox-headed man,

and in his palace under the river lived happily ever afterwards--“but”

(as Greek fairy-tales often end) “we here much more happily.”

It is curious that Santorini of all places should be the source of

this story; for the island does not possess a stream. Locally however

certain gullies by which the island is intersected are known as rivers

(ποταμοί)[734], and after unusually heavy rain they might perhaps form

torrents; at any rate one known as ‘the evil river’ (ὁ κακὸς ποταμός)

is frequently mentioned in popular traditions as a real river. Possibly

the tradition is accurate; for the volcanic nature of the island

would readily account for the disappearance of a single stream[735].

But the importance of the story lies in the mention of an ox-headed

man as _genius_ of a river. The fact that he is made the son of a

peasant-woman need not concern us; the first part of the story is

probably adapted from some other folk-tale with a view to account for

the wooing of a princess by so ill-favoured a suitor. In the latter

part we have a more ancient _motif_, the wedding of a mortal maid with

a river-god. If only it were mentioned in this tale that, besides the

power of performing miraculous tasks, the bull-headed man had the

faculty, which modern _genii_ possess, of transforming himself into

other shapes, we should have a complete parallel (save in the princess’

willingness to wed) with the wooing of Deianira by the river-god

Achelous; “for he,” says she, “in treble shapes kept seeking me from

my sire, coming now in true bull-form, now as a coiling serpent of

gleaming hues, anon with human trunk and head of ox[736].” The _genii_

of rivers have not, it would seem, changed their forms and attributes,

save for the admission of Arabs to their number, from the age of

Sophocles to this day.

* * * * *

The third class of _genius_ which we have to notice is terrestrial,

inhabiting mountains, rocks, caves, and any other grim and desolate

places. These _genii_ are the most frequent of all, and are known

as dragons. Not of course that all dragons are terrestrial; the

dragon-form has already been mentioned among the forms proper to the

_genii_ of springs and wells, and also as a shape assumed at will by

the Arabs who more frequently occupy those haunts. But terrestrial

_genii_, in whatever place they make their lair--and no limit can be

set to such places--are far most commonly pictured as dragons; and

I have therefore preferred to speak of the dragons in general here,

rather than among the _genii_ of either buildings or water.

The term δράκος or δράκοντας[737] indicates to the Greek peasant a

monster of no more determinate shape than does the word ‘dragon’ to

ourselves. The Greek word however differs, and has always differed,

from the English form of it in one respect, namely that it is often

employed in a strict and narrow sense to denote a ‘serpent’ as

distinguished from a small snake (in modern Greek φίδι, i.e. ὀφίδιον,

the diminutive of the ancient ὄφις). On the other hand, a Greek

‘dragon,’ in the widest sense of the term, is sometimes distinctly

anthropomorphic in popular stories, and is made to boil kettles and

drink coffee without any sense of impropriety. It is in fact only from

the context of a story that it is possible to determine in what shape

the dragon is imagined; in general it is neither flesh nor fowl nor

good red devil; heads and tails, wings and legs, teeth and talons, are

assigned to it in any number and variety; it breathes air and fire

indifferently; it sleeps with its eyes open and sees with them shut;

it makes war on men and love to women; it roars or it sings, and

there is little to choose between the two performances; for the lapse

of centuries, it seems, has in no wise mellowed its voice[738]. The

stories of the common-folk are full of these monsters’ savagery and

treachery[739]; for it is the dragons, above all other supernatural

beings, who provide the wandering hero of the fairy-tales with

befitting adventures and tests of prowess.

A common _motif_ of such stories is provided by the belief that dragons

are the guardians of buried treasure. When a man in a dream has had

revealed to him the whereabouts of buried treasure, his right course

is to go to the spot without breathing to anyone a hint of his secret,

and there to slay a cock or other animal such as is offered at the

laying of foundation-stones, in order to appease the _genius_ (which

is almost always a dragon, though an Arab is occasionally substituted)

before he ventures to disturb the soil. This is the very superstition

which Artemidorus had in mind when he interpreted dreams about dragons

to denote ‘wealth and riches, because dragons make their fixed abode

over treasures[740].’ Having complied with these conditions the digger

may hope to bring gold to light; but if he have previously betrayed to

anyone his expectations or have failed to propitiate the dragon, the

old proverb is fulfilled, ἄνθρακες ὁ θησαυρός[741], his treasure turns

out to be but ashes (κάρβουνα).

The guardianship likewise of gardens wherein flow ‘immortal waters’ or

grows ‘immortal fruit’ is the province of dragons. In Tenos a typical

story concerning them is told in several versions[742]. The hero of

them all bears the name of Γιαννάκης or ‘Jack’ (a familiar diminutive

of Ἰωάννης, ‘John’)--a name commonly given in Greek fairy-tales to the

performer of Heraclean feats. The hero who, after discovering that his

youngest sister is a Strigla, has fled with his mother, the queen, from

the palace where they were in imminent danger of being devoured[743],

comes to a castle occupied by forty dragons. The prince straightway

attacks them single-handed and slays, so he thinks, all of them, but

in reality one has only feigned to be dead and so escapes to a hole

beneath the castle, of which Jack now becomes the master. The remaining

dragon however ventures forth, when the prince is gone out to the

chase, and makes love to the queen, and after a while dragon and queen

knowing that the prince would be incensed at their intrigue conspire to

kill him. To this end the queen on her son’s return pretends to be ill,

and in response to his enquiries tells him that the only thing that can

heal her is ‘immortal water[744],’ which, as her paramour, the dragon,

knows, is to be found only in a distant garden guarded by one or more

other dragons. The prince at once undertakes to obtain the desired

remedy, and is directed by a witch (who in some versions appears as the

impersonation of his τύχη or ‘Fortune’) whither to go and how to deal

with the dragons. These accordingly he slays or eludes, and so returns

home unhurt bringing the immortal water. Then once more the dragon

and the queen take counsel together, and the pretence of illness is

repeated with a demand this time for some immortal fruit or herb[745]

known to be guarded in the same way as the water; and once more the

prince sets out and circumvents the dragons in some new fashion.

Between such stories and the ancient fable of Heracles’ journey to

the land of the Hesperides in search of the golden apples, and of his

victory over the guardian-dragon Ladon, the connexion is self-evident.

Whether that connexion is one of direct lineage, is less certain. More

probably, I think, a form of this same story was already current in an

age to which the name of Heracles was as unknown as that of the modern

Jack; and just as the story of Peleus and Thetis became the classical

example of the winning of a nymph to wife by a mortal man[746], so

the myth, by which the exploit of bearing off wonderful fruit from the

custody of a dragon was numbered among the labours of Heracles, is

nothing more than the authorised version, so to speak, of a fairy-tale

that might have been heard of winter-nights in Greek cottage-homes any

time between the Pelasgian and the present age.

* * * * *

Daemons of the air, the fourth class of _genius_ which we have to

consider, have been acknowledged ever since the time of Hesiod and

doubtless from a period far anterior to that. In his theology it was

the lot of the first race of men in the golden age to become after

death daemons ‘clothed in air and going to and fro through all the

world’ as good guardians of mortal men. But the goodness which Hesiod

attributes to the _genii_ of the air was never, I suspect, an essential

trait in their character. In Hesiod it is a corollary of the statement

that they are the spirits of men who belonged to the golden age; but

there is no reason to suppose that the common-folk ever regarded them

as more beneficent than other gods and daemons. At any rate at the

present day the ἀερικά, or _genii_ of the air, are no better disposed

towards mankind than any other supernatural beings.

Of this class as a whole little can be said. The word ἀερικό is

applied to almost any apparition too vague and transient to be more

clearly defined. It suggests something ‘clothed in air,’ something

less tangible, less discernible, than most of the beings whom the

peasant recognises and fears. The limits of its usage are hard to fix.

It may properly include a Nereid whose passing through the air is the

whirlwind, and it will equally certainly exclude a callicantzaros or a

dragon. Yet even the Nereids are more substantial than the _genii_ of

the air in their truest form; for the assaults of Nereids upon men and

women are made, as we have seen, from without[747], while _genii_ of

the air are more often supposed to ‘possess’ men in the same way as do

devils, and to be liable to exorcism.

But, if the class as a whole is too vague and shadowy in the popular

imagination to be capable of exact description, one division of it

is more clearly defined and has a generally acknowledged province of

activity. These particular aërial _genii_ are known as Telonia (τελώνια

or, more rarely, τελωνεῖα). They cannot claim equal antiquity with

some of their fellows, for they are, it would seem, a by-product of

Christianity, with a certain accretion however of pagan superstition.

The origin of the name Telonia is not in dispute. It means frankly

and plainly ‘custom-houses.’ Such is the bizarre materialism of the

Greek imagination that the soul in its journeys no less than the

body is believed to encounter the embarrassment of custom-houses.

An institution which of all things mundane commands least sentiment

and sympathy has actually found a place in popular theology. Many of

the people indeed at the present day, as I know from enquiry, have

ceased to connect their two usages of the word; but others accept as

reasonable the belief that the soul in its voyage after death up from

the earth to the presence of God must bear the scrutiny of aërial

customs-officers.

But, apart from modern belief, the apotheosis of the _douane_ is amply

proved by passages cited by Du Cange[748] from early Christian authors.

‘Some spirits,’ says one[749], ‘have been set on the earth, and some

in the water, and others have been set in the air, even those that

are called “aërial customs-officers” (ἐναέρια Τελώνια).’ Another[750]

speaks of ‘the Judge and the prosecutions by the toll-collecting

spirits.’ Yet another[751] explains the belief in fuller detail: ‘as

men ascend, they find custom-houses guarding the way with great care

and obstructing the soaring souls, each custom-house examining for

one particular sin, one for deceit, another for envy, another for

slander, and so on in order, each passion having its own inspectors

and assessors[752].’ Again a prayer for the use of the dying contains

the same idea: ‘Have mercy on me, all-holy angels of God Almighty, and

save me from all evil Telonia, for I have no works to weigh against my

wrong-doings[753].’ Appeal in support of this belief was made even to

the authority of Christ as given in the words, ‘Thou fool, this night

they require thy soul of thee[754],’ where the commentators explained

the vague plural as implying some such subject as ‘toll-collectors’ or

‘custom-house officers[755].’

But the belief does not stop here. One does not pass the custom-houses

of this world, or at any rate of Greece, without some expenditure

in duty or in _douceur_; and the same apparently holds true of the

celestial custom-houses. Hence in some places the belief has generated

a practice, or, to speak more exactly, has breathed a new spirit

into the old practice of providing the dead with money. My view of

the origin of this practice has already been explained; I have given

reasons for holding that the coin placed in the mouth of the dead was

simply a charm to prevent evil spirits from entering, or the soul from

re-entering, into the body, and that the interpretation of the custom,

according to which the coin was the fee of the ferryman Charon, was of

comparatively late date. At the present day Charon in the _rôle_ of

ferryman is almost forgotten; but in his place the Telonia seem locally

to have become the recipients of the fee, and the old custom has thus

received a second and equally erroneous explanation.

This may have been the idea in the mind of my informant who vaguely

said that a coin placed in the mouth of the dead was ‘good because of

the aërial beings[756].’ If the particular aërial beings whom he had in

mind were the Telonia, he no doubt thought of the coin as a fee payable

to them, though in that case it is somewhat strange that he should

not have used the name which actually denotes their toll-collecting

functions.

But from other sources at any rate comes evidence of a less ambiguous

kind that the idea of paying the Telonia for passage is, or has been, a

real motive in the minds of the peasantry. In Chios (where however the

object actually placed in the mouth of the dead is clearly understood

as a precaution against a devil entering the body) it is believed

that the soul after death remains for forty days in the neighbourhood

of its old habitation, the body, and then making its way to Hades

has to pass the Telonia. Happy the soul that makes its voyage on

Friday, for then the activities of the Telonia (who in the conception

of the islanders are clearly evil spirits and not, as sometimes, the

ministers of God) are restrained. But, to appease the Telonia and

to ensure the safe passage of the soul, money is distributed to the

poor[757]. The same usage obtains also at Sinasos in Cappadocia, and

there the money so distributed is actually called τελωνιακά, ‘duty paid

at the customs[758].’ The fact that in both these cases the money is

now given in alms instead of being buried with the body is clearly a

result of Christian influence; before that change was effected, it is

reasonably likely that the widely-known practice of placing a coin in

the mouth of the dead was explained in some places, though erroneously,

by the belief that the dead must pay their way through the aërial

custom-houses. The term περατίκι, ‘passage-money,’ by which, in the

neighbourhood of Smyrna, is denoted the coin still in that district

buried with the dead, has reference possibly to the same Telonia rather

than to Charon[759].