CHAPTER III.

THE COMMUNION OF GODS AND MEN.

ἜΤΙ ΤΟΊΝΥΝ ΚΑῚ ΘΥΣΊΑΙ ΠΑ͂ΣΑΙ ΚΑῚ ΟἿΣ ΜΑΝΤΙΚῊ

ἘΠΙΣΤΑΤΕΙ͂--ΤΑΥ͂ΤΑ Δ’ ἘΣΤῚΝ Ἡ ΠΕΡῚ ΘΕΟΥΣ ΤΕ ΚΑῚ ἈΝΘΡΏΠΟΥΣ ΠΡῸΣ

ἈΛΛΉΛΟΥΣ ΚΟΙΝΩΝΊΑ--ΟΥ̓ ΠΕΡῚ ἌΛΛΟ ΤΊ ἘΣΤΙΝ Ἢ ΠΕΡῚ ἜΡΩΤΟΣ ΦΥΛΑΚΉΝ ΤΕ ΚΑῚ

ἼΑΣΙΝ.

PLATO, _Symposium_, p. 188.

The short sketch which has been given of the attitude of the Greek

peasantry towards the Christian Godhead and all the host of assistant

saints, and also the more detailed account of those pagan deities

or demons whom the common-folk’s awe, not unmingled with affection,

has preserved from oblivion through so many centuries, have, I hope,

justified the statement that the religion of Greece both is now,

and--if a multitude of coincidences in the very minutiae of ancient and

modern beliefs speak at all for the continuity of thought--from the

dawn of Greek history onward through its brief bright noontide to its

long-drawn dusk and night illumined even now only by borrowed lights

has ever been, a form, and a little changed form, of polytheism.

Whatever be the merits and the demerits of such a religion in contrast

with the worship of one almighty God, most thinkers will concede

to it the property of bringing the divine element within more easy

comprehension of the majority of mankind. Proper names, limited

attributes, definite duties and spheres of work--these give a starting

point from which the peasant can set out towards a conception of gods.

He himself bears a name, he himself has qualities, he himself performs

his round of work; and though his name be writ smaller than that of the

being whom he strives to imagine--though his virtues and perhaps his

vices be less pronouncedly white and black--though his daily task be

more trivial--yet in one and all of these things he stands on common

ground with his deities; they differ from him in degree rather than

in kind; he has but to picture a race of beings somewhat stronger and

somewhat nobler than the foremost of his own fellow-men, and these whom

he thus imagines are gods. A single spirit omniscient and omnipotent

is too distant, too inaccessible from any known ground. Lack of the

capacity to form or to grasp lofty ideals carries with it at least the

compensation of closer intimacy with the supernatural and the divine.

It may therefore be expected that in the course of the intellectual

and spiritual development of any primitive people, the more accurately

they learn to measure their own imperfections and limitations, and the

more imaginatively they magnify the wisdom and power of their gods,

the wider and more impassable grows the chasm that divides mortal from

immortal, human from divine; communion of man and god becomes less

frequent, less direct. Such certainly was the experience of the Greek

nation in some measure; but, owing probably to an innate and persistent

vanity which at all times has made the race blind to its own failings,

that experience was less acute than in the case of other peoples. There

had been days indeed when their gods walked the earth with men and

counselled them in troubles and fought in their battles; there had been

days when the chiefest of all the gods sought a hero’s aid against his

giant foes; there had been days when men and women might aspire even

to wedlock with immortals, and to possess children half-divine. In

those days too death was not the only path by which the heavens or the

house of Hades might be gained. Kings and prophets, warriors and fair

women passed thither by grace of the gods living and unscathed; nay,

even personal skill or prowess emboldened minstrel and hero to match

themselves with the gods below, and wielding of club or sweeping of

lyre sufficed to open the doors for their return to earth.

But those days soon passed; men walked and spoke and held open

fellowship with the gods no more; the very poetry and imagination of

the Greek temperament so fast outstripped in rapidity of development

the growth of material or moral resources, that the rift between their

religious ideals and the realities of their life and character ever

widened, until the daily and familiar intercourse of their ancestors

with the gods seemed to them a condition of life irretrievable and

thenceforth impossible. This result was observed and remarked by the

Greeks themselves, but the process by which it had come about was not

agreed. To one school of thought, it was the degeneracy of mankind

through successive ages--the golden age in which men lived as gods and

passed hence, as it were in sleep, to become spirits clothed in air,

administering upon earth the purposes of mighty Zeus--the silver age

wherein childhood was still long and innocent, and, though men’s riper

years brought cares and quarrels and indifference to holy things, yet

when the earth covered them they were called blessed and received a

measure of honour--the bronze age when all men’s minds were set on war

and their stalwart arms were busy with brazen weapons, and by each

other’s hands they were sent down to the chill dark house of Hades

and their names were no more known--the age of heroes who were called

half-divine, who fought in the Theban and the Trojan wars, and when

the doom of death overtook them were granted a life apart from other

men in the islands of the blest, because they had been nobler and more

righteous than those of the age of bronze and had stemmed for a time

the current of degeneracy--the fifth age in which the depravity of man

grows apace and soon there will be nought but discord between father

and son, and no regard will be paid to guest nor comrade nor brother,

and children will slight their aged parents, and the voice of gods will

be unknown to them[787]--to one school of thought, I say, it was simply

and solely this decline of the human race, swift and only once checked,

that was held accountable for their estrangement from the powers above

them.

But such thinkers were in a minority. Humility and self-dissatisfaction

were and are qualities foreign to the ordinary Greek. He observed the

wide gulf that separated him from those whom he worshipped, but without

any sense of unworthiness, without any depression of spirit. He was not

despondent over his own shortcomings and limitations, but was filled

rather with a larger complacency in the thought that, incapable though

he might be to reproduce actually in his own life and character much

of the beauty and nobility of his gods, he was so gifted in mind and

godlike in understanding, that in his moments of highest imagination

and most spiritual exaltation he could soar to that loftier plane

whereon was enacted all the divine life, and could visualise his gods

and feel the closeness of their presence. The motive of the highest

acts of Greek worship seems to have been not the self-abasement of

the worshipper and the glorification of the worshipped, but rather an

obliteration of the distinctions between man and god, and a temporary

attainment by the human of spiritual equality and companionship with

the divine. The votary of Bacchus in his hours of wildest ecstacy

enjoyed so completely this sense of equality and of real union with the

god, that even to others it seemed fitting that he should be called by

the god’s own name[788].

But the hours, in which the Greeks of the historical age attained by

a sort of religious frenzy such intimacy with their gods as their

ancestors were famed to have enjoyed all their life long, were few and

far between. The means of communion had become in general less direct,

less personal. Yet even so the desire for communion continued unabated,

and the belief in it still pervaded every phase of life. Intellectual

progress had curiously little effect upon the dominant religious

ideas. A strongly conservative attachment to ancient tradition and

custom was strangely blended with that progressive spirit which made

the intellectual development of the Athenians unique in its swiftness,

as in its scope, among all peoples known to history. Their minds

welcomed new speculations, new doctrines; but their hearts clung to

the old unreasonable faith. Ancestral ideas remained for them the

sole foundation of religion. Each poet or philosopher in drama or in

dialogue, each man in his own heart, was free to build upon it and to

ornament his superstructure as he would; and his work found a certain

sanction in the appeal which it made to other men’s sense of truth and

of beauty. But for the foundation the _fiat_ of antiquity had been

pronounced and was immutable. Plato’s reasoned exposition of the soul’s

immortality culminates in an Apocalypse ratified by the old mythology;

and a quotation from Homer ever served to quash or to confirm the

subtlest argument.

That the foundation-stone was not, in the estimate of reason, well and

truly laid, that the basis of religion was insecure, must have been

obvious to many. Pindar saw it, and, by refusing to impute to the gods

any deed or purpose which his own heart condemned as ungodly, strove

to repair its defects; Euripides too saw it, and scoffed at those who

would build on so unstable a base. But the mass of men, though they

also must have seen, were little troubled, it would seem, either to

demolish or to repair. They accepted the old beliefs and ceremonies

because they were sanctioned by the authority or the experience of

past ages; and if sober reasoning and criticism exposed flaws and

inconsistencies therein, what matter? They were, as they still are,

a people incapable of any mental equilibrium; the mood of the hour

swayed them now to emotions, now to reasonings; they did not cultivate

consistency; they could not sit still and preserve an even balance

between the passions of the heart and the judgements of the intellect,

but threw their whole selves into the one scale, and the other for the

moment was as vanity.

In the whole complex and irrational scheme of religion thus accepted,

nothing was more highly valued than the means by which divine counsel

was obtained for the conduct both of public and of private affairs.

Omens were regularly taken before battle, at the critical moment when

we should prefer to trust experience and generalship. Oracles were

consulted as to the sites for planting colonies, in cases where a

surveyor’s report might have seemed more decisive. But the efficacy

of these old methods of consulting the gods went almost unchallenged.

It seems seldom to have occurred to men’s minds that those untoward

signs in the victim’s entrails, which perhaps delayed tactics on which

victory depended, were the symptoms of an internal disease and not

the handiwork of a deity, or that the inferior and ambiguous verse,

in which the gods condescended to give counsel, more often confused

than confirmed human judgement. Even of the philosophers, according

to Cicero[789], two only, Xenophanes and Epicurus, went so far as to

deny the validity of all means of communion; and Socrates, for all his

questioning and testing of truth, obeyed without question the whispered

warnings of a _daemon_, and in deference to the ambiguous exhortations

of a vision spent some of his last days in turning Aesop’s fables into

verse, that so he might go into the presence of the gods with his

conscience clear. Thus, though men no longer expected to look upon the

faces or to hear the voices of the gods, they still felt them to be

close at hand, easy of access, ready to counsel, to warn, to encourage;

and the methods of communion, in proportion as they stand condemned by

reason, commend so much the more the steady faith of the people who

used them and never doubted their efficacy. The answer of the ordinary

man to those critics, who questioned the validity of divination merely

because they could not understand the way in which it operated, is well

expressed by Cicero: ‘It is a poor sort of cleverness to try to upset

by sophistry facts which are confirmed by the experience of ages. The

reason of those facts I cannot discover; the dark ways of Nature, I

suppose, conceal it from my view. God has not willed that I should know

the reason, but only that I should use the means[790].’

The Greek nation saw many philosophies rise and fall, but it clung

always to the religion which it had inherited. The doctrines of Plato

and Aristotle, Zeno and Epicurus, became for the Greek people as though

they had never been; but the old polytheism of the Homeric and earlier

ages lived. Faith justified by experience was a living force; the

conclusions of reason a mere fabrication. And an essential part of that

polytheism which was almost instinctive in the Greeks was their belief

in the possibility of close and frequent communion with their gods.

Now the means of communion between men and gods are obviously

twofold--the methods by which men make their communications to the

gods, and the methods by which the gods make their communications to

men. The former class of communications involve for the most part

questions or petitions; the latter are mainly the responses thereto;

and it would seem natural to consider them in that order. But inasmuch

as more is known of the ancient methods by which the gods signified

their will to men than of the reverse process, it will be convenient

first to establish the unity of modern folklore with ancient religion

in this division of the subject, and afterwards to discuss how any

modern ideas concerning the means open to man of communicating with the

gods may bear upon the less known corresponding department of ancient

religion. For if we find that the theory no less than the practice of

divination, that is, of receiving and interpreting divine messages,

has been handed down from antiquity almost unchanged, there will be

a greater probability that, along with the general modern system of

sacrifices or offerings which accompany men’s petitions, a curious

conception of human sacrifice in particular which I once encountered is

also a relic of ancient religion.

The survival of divination then in its several branches first claims

our attention. The various modes employed are for the most part

enumerated by Aeschylus[791] in the passage where Prometheus recounts

the subjects in which he claimed to have first instructed mankind:

dreams and their interpretation; chance words (κληδόνες) overheard,

often conveying another meaning to the hearer than that which the

speaker intended; meetings on the road (ἐνόδιοι σύμβολοι), where the

person or object encountered was a portent of the traveller’s success

or failure in his errand; auspices in the strict sense of the word,

observations, that is, of the flight and habits of birds; augury

from a sacrificial victim, either by inspection of its entrails or

by signs seen in the fire in which it was being consumed. To these

arts Suidas[792] adds ‘domestic divination’ (οἰκοσκοπικόν)--the

interpretation of various trivial incidents of domestic life--palmistry

(χειροσκοπικόν), and divination from the twitching of any part of

the body (παλμικόν). Finally of course there was direct inspiration

(μαντική), either temporary, as in an individual seer, or permanent, as

at the oracle of Delphi.

Whether the common-folk ever distinguished the comparative values of

these many methods of divination may well be doubted. The Delphic

oracle, I suspect, attained its high prestige more because it was ready

to supply immediately on demand a more or less direct and detailed

answer to a definite question, than because personal inspiration was

held to be in any way a surer channel for divine communications than

were other means of divination. Some thinkers indeed, chiefly of the

Peripatetic school[793], were inclined to draw distinctions between

‘natural’ and ‘skilled’ divination[794]. The ‘natural’ methods,

including dreams and all direct inspiration, were accepted by them; the

‘skilled’ methods, those which required the services of a professional

augur or interpreter, were disallowed. But the division proposed was

in itself bad--for dreams do not by any means exclusively belong

to the first class, but probably in the majority of cases require

interpretation by experts--and, apart from that consideration, the

distinction was the invention of a philosophical sect and not an

expression of popular feeling. There is nothing to show that the

common-folk, believing as they did in the practicability of communion

with their gods, esteemed one means of divination as intrinsically more

valuable than another.

Nor was there any logical reason for such discrimination. Granted

that there were gods superior to man in knowledge and in power and

also willing to communicate with him, no restriction could logically

be set upon the means of communication which they might choose to

adopt. There was no reason why they should speak by the mouth of a

priestess intoxicated with mephitic vapours or disturb men’s sleep with

visions rather than use the birds as their messengers or write their

commandment on the intestines of a sacrificial victim.

A certain justification for accepting some means of divination, such

as intelligible dreams, and for suspecting others, might certainly

have been found in distrust of any human intermediary; vagrant and

necessitous oracle-mongers infested the country; and even the priestess

of Delphi, as history shows, was not always superior to political and

pecuniary considerations. But experience of fraud did not apparently

teach distrust; the fact that oracles and other means of divination

were undoubtedly often abused did not cause the Greek people to

reject the proper use of them; down to this day all the chief methods

of ancient divination still continue. In some cases, we shall see,

the modern employment of such methods is a mere survival of ancient

custom without any intelligent religious motive; but in others there

is abundant evidence that the modern folk are still actuated by the

feelings which so dominated the lives of their ancestors--the belief

in, and the desire for, close and frequent communion with the powers

above.

Direct inspiration is a gift which at the present day a man is not

inclined to claim for himself, though he will often attribute it to

another; for it implies insanity. But though the gift is not therefore

envied, it is everywhere respected. Mental derangement, which appears

to me to be exceedingly common among the Greek peasants, sets the

sufferer not merely apart from his fellows but in a sense above them.

His utterances are received with a certain awe, and so far as they

are intelligible are taken as predictions. He is in general secure

from ill-treatment, and though he do no work he is not allowed to

want. The strangest case which I encountered was that of a man,

unquestionably mad, who wandered from place to place and seemed to be

known everywhere. I met him in all three times, in Athens, in Tenos,

and in Thessaly. He had no fixed home, did no work, and was usually

penniless; but a wild manner, a rolling eye, and an extraordinary power

of conducting his part of a conversation in metrical, if not highly

poetical, form sufficed to obtain for him lodging, food, and clothing,

and even a free passage, it appeared, on the Greek coasting steamers.

Whether the long monologues in verse in which he sometimes indulged

were also improvisations, I could not of course tell; but once to have

heard and seen his delivery of them was to understand why, among a

superstitious people, he passed for a prophet. He was a modern type of

those old seers whose name μάντεις was believed by Plato to have been

formed from the verb μαίνεσθαι, ‘to be mad’; his frenzy really gave the

appearance of inspiration.

Dreams furnish a more sober and naturally also a more general means

of communion with the gods; and the belief in them as a channel of

divine revelation is both firmly rooted and widely spread. This indeed

is only natural. The change from paganism to Christianity, even if it

had been more thorough and complete than it actually has been, would

probably not have affected this article of faith. So long as a people

believe in any one or more deities not wholly removed from human

affairs, it is logically competent for them to regard their dreams as a

special communication to them from heaven; and Christianity, far from

repudiating the old pagan idea, confirmed it by biblical authority. The

Greek Church, as we shall see, has made effective use of it.

The degree of importance universally attached in old time to dreams is

too well known to all students of Greek literature to call for comment.

Artemidorus’ prefatory remarks to his _Oneirocritica_, or ‘Treatise on

the interpretation of dreams,’ and his criticism of former exponents of

the same science, would alone prove that public interest in the subject

must indeed have been great to stimulate so serious and so large a

literature. There is the same practical evidence of a similar interest

in modern Greece. Books of the same nature are sought after and

consulted no less eagerly now than then. A new edition of some Μέγας

Ὀνειροκρίτης, or ‘Great Dream-interpreter,’ figures constantly in the

advertisements of Athenian newspapers, and the public demand for such

works is undeniable. In isolated homesteads, to which the Bible has

never found its way, I have several times seen a grimy tattered copy

of such a book preserved among the most precious possessions of the

family, and honoured with a place on the shelf where stood the _icon_

of the household’s patron-saint and whence hung his holy lamp.

One of the pieces of information most frequently imparted to men in

dreams is the situation of some buried treasure. The precautions

necessary for unearthing it, namely complete reticence as to the

dream, and the sacrifice of a cock, have already been mentioned[795].

This kind of dream has been utilized by the Greek Church. There is

no article of ecclesiastical property of more value than a venerable

_icon_; to any church or monastery which aspires to become a great

religious centre an ancient and reputable _icon_, competent to work

miracles, is indispensable.

Now the most obvious way of obtaining such pictures is, it seems, to

dig them up. A few weeks underground will have given the right tone

to the crudest copy of crude Byzantine art, and all that is required,

in order to determine the spot for excavation, is a dream on the part

of some person privy to the interment. It was on this system that the

miracle-working _icon_ of Tenos came to be unearthed on the very day

that the standard of revolt from Turkey was raised, thus making the

island the home of patriotism as well as of religion. And this is no

solitary example; the number of _icons_ exhumed in obedience to dreams

is immense; wherever the traveller goes in Greece, he is wearied with

the same reiterated story, and if the picture in question happens to

be of the Panagia, there is often an appendix to the effect that the

painter of it was St Luke--an attribution which can only have been

based on clerical criticism of the style. Inspection is now difficult;

the old pagan custom of covering venerable statues with gold or silver

foil by way of thank-offering[796] has, to avoid idolatry, been

transferred to _icons_; and in many cases only the faces and the hands

of the saints depicted are left visible, the outlines of the rest

of the picture being merely incised upon the silver foil. But, with

inspection thus limited, the layman does not detect in any crudity of

style a sufficient reason why the saintly painter, if only he could

have foreseen the ordinary decoration of Greek churches, should have

had his productions put out of sight in the ground. Nevertheless the

story of the origin of the _icon_ is believed as readily as the story

of its finding.

Nor is it only in stories that the discovery of _icons_ in obedience

to dreams is heard of. During my stay in Greece a village schoolmaster

embarrassed the Education Office by applying for a week’s holiday in

order to direct a party of his fellow-villagers in digging up an _icon_

of which he had dreamt, and to build a chapel for it on the spot.

It was felt that a body concerned with religious as well as secular

instruction ought not to commit the impiety of refusing such a request,

but it was feared that other schoolmasters would be encouraged to dream.

Besides those visions which are concerned with the finding of treasure

or of _icons_, that class of dream also may be noticed in which is

given some divine communication as to the healing of the sick. Many a

time I have met in some sanctuary of miraculous repute peasants from a

far-off village, who have travelled from one end of Greece to another,

bringing wife or child, in the faith that mind will be restored or

sickness healed; time after time their story is the same, that they

were bidden in a dream to go and tarry so many days in such a church,

and they have started off at once, obedient to what they feel to be a

promise of divine help, begging their way may be for many days, but

unflinchingly hopeful. And then comes the long sojourn in a strange

village, for a mere visit is not always enough; weeks and months they

wait, sleeping each night in the holy precincts and if possible at the

foot of the _icon_, hoping and believing that some mysterious virtue of

the place will heal the sufferer, or at the least that in a fresh dream

they will be told what is next to be done. And if nothing happen--for

now and then rest or change of air or, it may be, faith[797] effects

the cure desired--they return home with hope lessened but belief

unshaken, ready to obey again if another message be vouchsafed to them

from the dream-land of heaven.

Such dreams as these are regarded as spontaneous revelations of the

divine will, granted possibly in response to prayer, but in no way

controlled or procured by any previous action of the dreamer. But there

is one curious custom, observed by the girls of Greece, by which dreams

are deliberately induced as a means of foreknowing their matrimonial

destinies. On the eve of St Catharine’s day[798] most appropriately,

for she is the patroness of all marrying and giving in marriage, but

sometimes also on the first day of Lent[799], the girls knead and bake

cakes (ἀρμυροκούλουρα) of which, as their name implies, the chief

ingredient is salt. By consuming undue quantities of this concoction,

and often by assuaging the consequent thirst with an equally undue

quantity of wine, they produce a condition of body eminently suited

to cause a troubled sleep, and, their minds being already absorbed in

speculations on marriage, it is little wonder if their dreams reveal to

them their future husbands. How far this custom is now taken seriously,

I cannot determine; in some districts it has certainly degenerated into

a somewhat disreputable game. But the fact that the intoxication of the

girls is tolerated on this occasion among a peasantry whose men even

are seldom drunk except on certain religious occasions--on Easter-day

and after funerals--proves clearly that the custom was once, as I think

it sometimes is now, a genuinely religious rite and an acknowledged

means of divination.

A modification of this custom, preferred in some districts as obviating

alike the unpleasant process of eating salt-cake and the disreputable

sequel thereto, substitutes for dreaming two other ancient methods of

divination--divination by drawing lots, a primitive system common to

many peoples but employed nevertheless even by established oracles[800]

in ancient Greece, and divination from chance words overheard by the

diviner, a method which is, I think, more exclusively Hellenic. For

this form of the custom also salt-cakes are required, but only a morsel

of each is eaten, and the remainder of the cake is divided into three

portions, to which are tied respectively red, black, and blue ribbands.

Each girl then places her three pieces under her pillow for the night,

and in the morning draws out one by chance. The red ribband denotes a

bachelor, the black a widower, and the blue a stranger, that is to say

some one other than a fellow-villager. Then, in order to supplement

with fuller detail the indications of the lot, the girl takes her stand

in the door-way of the cottage and listens to the casual conversation

of the neighbours or the passers-by; and the first name, trade,

occupation, and suchlike which she hears mentioned are taken to be

those of her future husband.

Another similar custom, practised only by girls and not necessarily

taken more seriously than a game of forfeits, preserves in its modern

name ὁ κλήδονας[801] the old word κληδών, and the purpose of the

custom is to obtain that which Homer[802] actually denoted by κληδών,

a presage drawn from chance words. The preliminaries of the ceremony

are as follows. On the eve of the feast of St John the Baptist[803] a

boy (who for choice should be the first-born of parents still living)

is sent to fetch fresh water from the spring or well. This water is

known as ἀμίλητο νερό, ‘speechless water,’ because the boy who brings

it is forbidden to speak to anyone on his way. Each girl then drops

into the vessel of water some object such as a coin, a ring, or, most

frequently, an apple as her token. The vessel is then closed up and

left for the night on the roof of a house or some other open place

‘where the stars may see it.’ The proceedings of the next morning

vary. According to one traveller[804], each girl first takes out her

own apple--for he mentions only this token--and then draws off some of

the water into a smaller vessel. This vessel is then supported by two

other girls on the points of their four thumbs and begins to revolve

of its own accord. If it turn towards the right, the girl may expect

to marry as she wishes; if to the left, otherwise. Also, he says, they

wash their hands with this water and then go out into the road, and

take the first name they hear spoken as that of their future husband.

This latter part of the ceremony is true to the meaning of the word

κλήδονας and is a genuine instance of divination from chance words.

But neither this nor the former part as described by Magnoncourt is

generally practised now. The usual procedure is either for the boy who

fetched the water or for the girls in rotation to plunge the hand in

and draw out the first object touched, improvising or reciting at the

same time some couplet favourable or adverse to the love or matrimonial

prospects of her who shall be found to own the forthcoming object; and

so in turn, until each girl has received back her token and learnt the

presage of her fate.

The recitation of possibly prepared distichs by those who are taking

part in the ceremony is certainly a less pure method of divination

than the earlier practice described by Magnoncourt. The prediction is

deliberately provided, and the element of chance or of divine guidance

is confined to the drawing of the token. The older method exhibits

more clearly the relation of the modern custom to the superstitious

observation of κληδόνες from the time of the _Odyssey_[805] onwards.

Thus when Odysseus heard the suitors threaten to take the beggar Irus

to Epirus, ‘even to the tyrant Echetus the destroyer of all men,’ he

hailed the chance words as a divine ratification of his hope that soon

the suitors should take their own journey to another destroyer of all

men, even the tyrant of the nether world, and ‘he rejoiced in the

presage’ (χαῖρεν δὲ κλεηδόνι)[806].

The same method of divination was frequently employed in the classical

age also, and that too not only privately[807] but even by public

oracles. It was thus that Hermes Agoraeus at Pherae made response to

his worshippers. The enquirer presented himself towards evening before

the statue of the god, burnt incense on the hearth, filled with oil and

lighted some bronze lamps that stood there, placed a certain bronze

coin of the local currency upon the altar, whispered his question into

the ear of the statue, and then at once holding his hands over his ears

made his way out of the agora. Once outside, he removed his hands,

and the first words which greeted his ears were accepted as the god’s

response to his question[808]. A primitive statue of Hermes with the

surname κλεηδόνιος existed also at Pitane[809], which place may be the

actual site of that ‘sanctuary of chance utterances’ (κληδόνων ἱερόν)

to which, according to Pausanias[810], the people of Smyrna resorted

for oracles. And at Thebes again Apollo Spodios gave his replies in

like manner[811].

Clearly then in antiquity divination from chance words was a

well-established religious institution; and at the present day, though

the practice is rarer, its character is unchanged. The religious nature

of the two customs which I have described is shown by their association

with the festivals of St Catharine and St John the Baptist; and though

in different localities or periods a certain amount of divination by

the lot or other means has been mixed up with divination from chance

words, the latter obviously forms the essence of both rites, supplying

as it does to the one its very name, and supplementing in the other

the meagre indications of the lot with more detailed information. A

girl may learn from the colour of the ribband attached to the piece

of salt-cake which she happens to draw whether her future husband is

bachelor, widower, or stranger; but only from the chance utterance

accepted as an answer to her own secret questionings can she learn the

name and home and occupation and appearance of her destined husband.

The next branch of divination, the science of reading omens of success

or failure in the objects which a traveller meets on his road, is

still largely cultivated. In old days indeed it was so elaborate a

science that a treatise, as Suidas tells us, could be written on

this one method of divination alone. Possibly the same feat might be

accomplished at the present day if a complete collection were made of

all the superstitions on the subject of ‘meeting’ (ἀπάντημα) in all

the villages of Greece. How instructive the results might be, I cannot

forecast; but at any rate the task is beyond me, and I must content

myself with mentioning a few of the commonest examples. To meet a

priest is always unlucky, and for men even more so than for women, for,

unless they take due precautions as they pass him[812], their virility

is likely to be impaired; and the omen is even worse if the priest

happen to be riding a donkey, for even the name of that animal is not

mentioned by some of the peasants without an apology[813]. To meet a

witch also is unfortunate, and since any old woman may be a witch, it

is wise to make the sign of the cross before passing her. A cripple is

also ominous of failure in an enterprise. On the other hand to meet an

insane person is usually accounted a good omen, for insanity implies

close communion with the powers above. To meet a woman with child is

also fortunate, for it indicates that the journey undertaken will bear

fruit; and the peasant by way of acknowledgement never fails to bow or

to bare his head, and if he be exceptionally polite may wish the woman

a good confinement. Of animals those which most commonly forebode ill

are the hare, the rat, the stoat, the weasel, and any kind of snake.

In Aetolia superstition is so strong regarding these that the mere

sight of one of them, or indeed of the trail of a snake across the

path, is enough to deter many a peasant from his day’s work and to send

him back home to sit idly secure from morn till night; and even the

more stout-hearted will cross themselves or spit three times before

proceeding.

That some of these beliefs date from classical times is certain.

Aristophanes, playing upon the use of ὄρνις, ‘a bird,’ in the sense

of ‘omen,’ rallies the Athenians upon calling ‘a meeting a bird,

a sound a bird, a servant a bird, and an ass a bird[814]’; and

there can be little doubt that the ass belonged then as now to the

category of objects ominous to encounter on the road; and the same

author[815], corroborated in this case by Theophrastus’ portrait of

the superstitious man[816], speaks to the dread inspired by a weasel

crossing a man’s path. The snake too, it can hardly be doubted, was,

owing perhaps to its association with tombs, an object of awe to the

superstitious out of doors as well as within the house[817]. On the

other hand an insane person apparently was in Theophrastus’ time not

as now an omen of good but of evil, to be averted by spitting on the

bosom[818]. But though the modern interpretations of such omens may not

be identical in every respect with the old, enough has been said to

show that the science of divining from the encounters of the road is

still flourishing.

The observation of birds is in many cases closely allied with the

last method of divination; for naturally the peasant as he goes on

his way is as quick to notice the birds as any other object which

he encounters. But since auspices may also be taken under other

conditions, it will be well to observe the old line of demarcation,

and to treat this branch of augury, as it was treated in ancient

handbooks[819], separately. Moreover the attitude of the modern folk

towards these two branches of divination justifies the division.

The superstitions which I have just recorded are somewhat blindly

and unintelligently held; but in the taking of auspices proper the

ordinances of ancient lore which the people follow are felt by them

to be doubly sanctioned--by reason as well as by antiquity; they

apprehend the theory on which their practice is based--the idea that

birds are better suited than any other animate thing, by virtue both

of their rapid flight and of their keen and extended vision, to be the

messengers between gods and men.

In practice this branch of divination is still concerned chiefly with

the large and predatory birds to which alone was originally applied the

term οἰωνός. ‘The largest, the strongest, the most intelligent, and at

the same time those whose solitary habits gave them more individual

character,’ says a French writer[820], ‘were deliberately preferred by

the diviners of antiquity as the subjects of their observation. For

these and these only was reserved at first the name οἰωνός, “solitary

bird[821],” or bird of presage’; and he goes on to suggest that the

Oriental belief in the magical power of blood to revivify the souls

of the dead and to stimulate prophecy influenced the selection for a

prophetic _rôle_ of carnivorous birds such as might indeed often feed

on the entrails of those very victims from which sacrificial omens were

taken. But the reasons assigned by Plutarch for the pre-eminence of

birds among all other things as the messengers of heaven apply with so

special a force to the special class of birds selected, that it seems

unnecessary to search out reasons more abstruse.

‘Birds,’ he says[822], ‘by their quickness and intelligence and their

alertness in acting upon every thought, are a ready instrument for the

use of God, who can prompt their movements, their cries and songs,

their pauses or wind-like flights, thus bidding some men check, and

others pursue to the end, their course of action or ambitions. It is on

this account that Euripides calls birds in general “heralds of gods,”

while Socrates speaks of making himself “a fellow-servant with swans.”’

In this special class of ominous birds the principal group, says

the same French writer[823], was composed of the eagle (ἀετός), the

messenger[824] of Zeus, the ‘most perfect of birds[825]’; the vulture

(γύψ), which closely rivalled even the king of birds[826]; the raven

(κόραξ), the favourite and companion of Apollo, a bird so much observed

that there were specialists (κορακομάντεις) who studied no other

species; and the carrion-crow (κορώνη), transferred from the service

of Apollo to that of Hera[827] or Athene[828]. These, it may safely be

said, were observed at all periods. Of others, various species of hawk

(ἵεραξ, ἴρηξ)--in particular that known as κίρκος, acting in Homeric

times as the ‘swift messenger of Apollo[829]’ and thus rivalling the

raven--and with them the heron[830] (ἐρωδιός) enjoyed in early times

great respect, but gradually fell out of favour with the augur. But as

these disappeared from the canon of ornithological divination, certain

other birds were admitted, the wren[831] (τρόχιλος or βασιλίσκος), the

owl (γλαῦξ)[832], the κρέξ dubiously identified with our ‘rail’ (_crex

rallus_, Linn.), and the woodpecker (δρυοκολάπτης).

The continuity of the art of taking auspices is at once obvious when

it is found that the birds which the modern peasant most frequently

observes are of the very same class which furnished the Homeric

gods with their special envoys. Eagles, vultures, hawks, ravens,

crows--these are still the chief messengers of heaven, and only one

other bird can claim equality with them, that bird which in classical

times symbolised wisdom, the owl.

Of the methods pursued by the professional augurs in ancient Greece

unfortunately less is known. The best treatise on the subject is that

of Michael Psellus[833], written in the eleventh century; but probably

ancient works on the subject, such as that of Telegonus to which

Suidas[834] refers, were then extant and contributed the bulk of his

information. But even so it is the broad principles rather than the

detailed application of them which Psellus presents, and on them we

must in the main rely in comparing the modern science with the ancient.

First of all the species of bird under observation had to be

ascertained; for the characters of different species were held to be

so various that birds as closely cognate as the raven and the crow

employed wholly contrary methods of communication with mankind. ‘If

as we go out of our house to work,’ says Psellus[835], ‘we hear the

cry of a raven behind or of a crow in front, it forebodes anxieties

and difficulties in our business, while if a crow fly past and caw

on the left or a raven do likewise on the other side, it gives hope

and confidence.’ The crow then was not subject even to the rule

concerning right and left which applied, so far as I know, to all

other birds, but, thanks to some innate contrariety, reversed the

normal significance of position, and therewith also of cry and of

flight[836]. Such exceptions even to the most general rules made the

accurate identification of species an indispensable preliminary to

successful augury. The same primary condition still holds. The diviner

must be able to distinguish the cawing of a crow settled on his roof

from that of a jackdaw; the former is an omen of death, as perhaps it

was in Hesiod’s day[837], to some member of his family, the latter

heralds the coming of a letter from a friend abroad. Again he must be

able to distinguish the brown owl (κουκουβάγια) from the tawny owl

(χαροποῦλι)[838]; the message of the former may be good or bad, as

we shall see, according to its actions, while the latter brings only

presages of woe.

The species having been identified, there remained, according to

Psellus[839], four possible points in the behaviour of the bird itself

(all of them liable to be modified in significance by the position

of the observer) to be noticed and interpreted; these were its cry

(anciently φωνή or κλαγγή), its flight (πτῆσις), its posture when

settled (ἕδρα or καθέδρα), and any movement or action performed by it

while thus settled (ἐνέργεια). These divisions are still recognised in

modern augury.

The cry is observed in the case of many birds. The scream of an eagle

is a warning of fighting or conflict to come. The croak of a raven,

especially if it be thrice repeated, while the bird is flying over a

house or a village, is a premonition of death to one of the inmates.

The laugh of the woodpecker, owing I suppose to its mocking sound,

is a sign that an intrigue against some one’s person or pocket is in

train. The repeated call of the cuckoo within the bounds of a village

forebodes an epidemic therein.

Flight is chiefly observed in the case of the birds of prey. The

successful swoop of an eagle upon its prey, or the rapid determined

flight of a hawk in pursuit of some other bird, is an encouragement to

the observer (provided of course that the birds are seen on his right

hand) to pursue untiringly any enterprise in which he is engaged, and

is a promise of success and profit therein. In Scyros I once pointed

out to my guide a large hawk chasing a flock of pigeons, which he at

once hailed as a good omen and watched carefully as long as it was

in sight; and when I asked him what kind of hawk it was, he promptly

replied that that kind was known as τσίκρος--the goshawk, I believe.

This word is a modern form of the ancient κίρκος[840], and a closely

similar incident is mentioned in the _Odyssey_, when this bird, the

‘swift messenger of Apollo,’ is seen by Telemachus on the right,

tearing a pigeon in its talons and scattering its feathers to the

ground, and is taken to foreshow the fate that awaits Eurymachus[841].

The position occupied and the posture are observed above all in the

case of owls. The ‘brown owl’ (κουκουβάγια), perched upon the roof of

a house and suggesting by its inert posture that it is waiting in true

oriental fashion for an event expected within a few days, forebodes a

death in the household; but if it settle there for a few moments only,

alert and vigilant, and then fly off elsewhere, it betokens merely

the advent and sojourn there of some acquaintance. Another species

of owl, our ‘tawny owl’ I believe, known popularly as χαροποῦλι or

‘Charon’s bird[842],’ is, as the name suggests, a messenger of evil

under all circumstances, whether it be heard hooting or be seen sitting

in deathlike stillness or flitting past like a ghost in the gathering

darkness.

The casual actions and movements of birds are less observed now than

the cry, flight, and posture; nor am I aware of any auspices being

drawn therefrom with regard to any matters of higher importance and

interest than the prospective state of the weather. For such humdrum

prognostication poultry[843] serve better than the more dignified

birds--perhaps because their movements on the ground are more easily

observed--and by pluming themselves, by scratching a hole in which to

dust themselves over, and by roosting on one leg or with their heads

turned in some particular direction foretell rain, fine weather, or a

change of wind.

All these auspices are further modified, as in ancient times, by

the position of the observer in reference to the bird observed. The

right hand side is the region of good omen, whether the bird be seen

or heard; and if it be a case of the bird crossing the path of the

observer, passage from left to right is to be desired, on the principle

that all is well that ends well; flight from right to left indicates

a decline of good fortune. Motion towards the right, it may be noted,

has always been the auspicious direction in Greece. In that direction,

according to Homer, the herald carried round the lot which had been

shaken from the helmet, to be claimed by that Chieftain whose token

it might prove to be[844]; in that direction Odysseus in beggar-guise

proceeded round the board, asking alms of the suitors[845]; in that

direction even the gods passed their wine[846]. And in like manner

at the present day wine is passed, cards are played, and at weddings

bride and bridegroom are led round the altar, from left to right. Thus

then in modern augury too, if the eagle’s scream, which forebodes

fighting, be heard on the right, the hearer will come well out of it,

but if on the left, he is like to be worsted. If the woodpecker laugh

on the right, the hearer may proceed with full confidence to cheat

his neighbour, but if the sound come from the left, he must be wary

to baffle intrigues against himself. If the hawk pursue its prey on

the right or across a man’s path from left to right, he may take the

pursuer as the type of himself and go about the work in hand with

assurance of success; but if the omen be on the other side or in the

other direction, some enemy is the hawk and he himself is the pigeon to

be plucked.

The interpretation of auspices is also affected by number. A single

or twice repeated cry of a bird may be of good omen, but, if the same

note be heard three times, the meaning may be reversed. This applies in

Cephallenia, as I was told, to the case already mentioned of a raven

flying over a house; one or two croaks are a presage of security or

plenty, but three are a warning of imminent death. In this detail a

pronounced change of feeling towards the number three is responsible

for what must, I think, be a contravention of the ancient rules in the

case. According to Michael Psellus, an even number of cries from the

crow were lucky and an odd number unlucky; but the crow, as we have

seen, was perverse and abnormal; reversing therefore the rule in the

case of other birds, we find that an odd number of croaks from a raven

should be lucky. But the number three, which in old times was lucky, is

now universally unlucky; the peasant often will apologize for having to

mention the number; and Tuesday, being called Τρίτη, the ‘third day’ of

the week, is the unlucky day. But if in this case the significance of

a particular number has changed, the principle of taking number into

consideration is indubitably ancient.

Moreover there are some cases in which even the particular application

of the old principle holds good. The first, almost the only, literary

poet of modern Greece (as distinguished from the many composers of

unwritten ballads), who found beauty in the popular beliefs and music

in the vulgar tongue, makes his heroine thus divine her own death:

Καὶ τὰ πουλάκι’ ἀποῦ ’ρθασιν συντροφιασμέν’ ὁμάδη

σημάδ’ εἶν’ πῶς ὀγλήγορα πανδρεύομαι ’στὸν Ἅιδη·

λογιάζω κι’ ὁ ’Ρωτόκριτος ἀπόθανε ’στὰ ξένα

κ’ ἦρθ’ ἡ ψυχή του νά μ’ εὑρῇ νὰ σμίξῃ μετ’ ἐμένα[847].

“And the little birds that have come consorting close together are a

sign that soon I am to be wed in Hades. I see that Erotocritus has

died in a strange land, and his soul has come to seek me, to mingle

with me.”

Here neither the species of the birds nor their cry nor flight is

taken into account; the whole significance of the omen turns on the

close company which they kept. And for the method of interpreting it

we can go back to Aristotle. ‘Seers observe whether birds settle apart

or settle together; the former indicates enmity, the latter mutual

peace[848].’

Lastly, as regards practical augury from birds at the present day it

may be laid down as a rule that any extraordinary phenomenon, exciting

in the simple peasant’s mind more alarm than curiosity, passes for

a bad omen. The hen that so far forgets her sex as to crow like a

cock falls under suspicion and the knife at once. To the professional

diviner of old time probably such incidents were less distressing; he

could observe such striking anomalies in as calmly judicial a spirit

as the details of more ordinary occurrences. But at the present day,

though there are magicians in plenty, there are no specialists, to my

knowledge, in the science of auspices. The modern peasant does not

entice the birds with food to a special spot, as did Teiresias[849],

in order to listen to their talk and to gain from them deliberately

the knowledge of things that are and things that shall be. But amateur

though he be, lacking in power of minute observation and in science of

detailed interpretation, such rudiments of the art as he possesses are

an heritage from the old Hellenic masters of divination.

So far then as the broad principles of practical auspice-taking are

concerned, the proofs of the identity of modern with ancient methods

are sufficiently complete; and it remains only to show that the

modern practice of this art is not a mere inert survival of customs

no longer understood but is in truth informed by the same intelligent

religious spirit as in antiquity. What that spirit was, is admirably

defined in that passage of Plutarch which I have already quoted, in

which he claims that the quickness of birds and their intelligence and

their alertness to act upon every thought qualify them, beyond all

other living things, for the part of messengers between gods and men.

Celsus too in his polemics against Christianity, made frank confession

of the old faith: ‘We believe in the prescience of all animals and

particularly of birds. Diviners are only interpreters of their

predictions. If then the birds ... impart to us by signs all that God

has revealed to them, it follows of necessity that they have a closer

intimacy than we with the divine, that they surpass us in knowledge

of it, and are dearer to God than we[850].’ Indeed it might seem that

there was hope of birds knowing that which a god sought in vain to

learn. To Demeter enquiring for her ravished child ‘no god nor mortal

man would tell the true tale, nor came there to her any bird of omen as

messenger of truth[851].’ In effect, the special aptitude of birds to

carry divine messages to men was never questioned in ancient Greece;

it was a very axiom of religion, without which the whole science of

auspices would have been a baseless fabrication.

Now it would have been no matter of surprise for us, if practical

augury had still been in vogue at the present day and the theory had

been forgotten; if the customs born of a belief in the prophetic power

of birds had, with the inveteracy of all custom, outlived the parent

principle. Rather it is surprising that among all the perplexity

and bewilderment of thought caused by the long series of changes,

religious, political, and social, through which Greece has passed,

this recognition of birds as intermediaries between heaven and earth

has abated none of its force or its purity, neither vanquished by the

direct antagonism of Christianity, nor contaminated by the influx of

Slavonic or other foreign thought. Yet so it is; and the perusal of any

collection of modern folk-songs will show that the idea is fully as

familiar now as in the literature of old time.

A few examples may be cited; and in selecting them I shall exclude

from consideration those many Klephtic ballads which open with a

conversation between three ‘birds[852]’; for the word ‘bird’ (πουλί)

seems to have become among the Klephts a colloquial equivalent for

‘spy’ or ‘scout,’ suggested perhaps by the qualities of intelligence,

alertness, and speed required, and it is admittedly[853] impossible

in many cases to determine whether the term has its literal or its

conventional meaning. Moreover these openings of ballads have passed

into a somewhat set form; and formulae are no more proof of the

continuance of belief than mummies of the continuance of life.

But, even with the range of trustworthy evidence thus limited, the

residue of popular poetry contains ample store of passages in which

birds are recognised as the best messengers between this world and

another. And here, as we shall see, the reiteration of the idea is not

uniform in expression; the thought has not been crystallised into a

number of beautiful but inert phrases; it is still alive, still young,

still procreative of fresh poetry.

There is a well-known folk-song, recorded in several versions, which

tells how a young bride, trusting in the might of her nine brothers and

in her husband’s valour, boasted that she had no fear of Charos. ‘A

bird, an evil bird, went unto Charos, and told him, and Charos shot an

arrow at her and the girl grew pale; a second and a third he shot and

stretched her on her death-bed[854].’ The special bird in the poet’s

mind was, one may surmise, ‘Charon’s bird,’ the tawny owl, which as

I have noted is always a messenger of evil. In another poem a bird

issues from the lower world and brings doleful tidings to women who

weep over their lost ones. ‘A little bird came forth from the world

below; his claws were red and his feathers black, reddened with blood

and blackened with the soil. Mothers run to see him, and sisters to

learn of him, and wives of good men to get true tidings. Mother brings

sugar, and sister scented wine, and wives of good men bear amaranth in

their hands. “Eat the sugar, bird, and drink of the scented wine, and

smell the amaranth, and confess to us the truth.” “Good women, that

which I saw, how should I tell it or confess it? I saw Charos riding

in the plains apace; he dragged the young men by the hair, the old

men by their hands, and ranged at his saddle-bow he bore the little

children[855].”’

Nor is it only between earth and the nether world that birds carry

tidings to and fro; earth and heaven are equally united by their

ministry. An historical ballad, belonging to the year 1825, when

Ibrahim Pasha had just occupied the fortress of Navarino and other

places in the Morea and was about to join in investing Mesolonghi,

gives to this idea unusually imaginative treatment; for the bird which

brings from heaven encouragement and prophecies of future success (one

of which was literally fulfilled in the battle of Navarino two years

later) is an incarnation of the soul of a fallen Greek warrior. ‘“Would

I were a bird” (I said), “that I might fly and go to Mesolonghi, and

see how goes the sword-play and the musketry, how fight the unconquered

falcons[856] of Roumelie.” And a bird of golden plumage warbled answer

to me: “Hold, good George; an thou thirstest for Arab[857] blood, here

too are infidels for thee to slay as many as thou wilt. Dost see far

away yonder the Turkish ships? Charos is standing over them, and they

shall be turned to ashes.” “Good bird, how didst thou learn this that

thou tellest me?” “A bird I seem to thee to be, but no bird am I. Yon

island that I espied for thee afar belongeth to Navarino; ’twas there

I spent my last breath a-fighting. Tsamados am I, and unto the world

have I come; from the heavens where I dwell I discern you clearly,

yet yearn to see you face to face.” “Nay, what shouldest thou see now

among us in our unhappy land? Knowest thou not what befell and now is

in the Morea?” “Good George, be not distraught, consent not to despair;

though the Morea fight not now, a time will come again when they will

fight like wild beasts and chase their foe. Piteously shall bones

lie scattered before Mesolonghi, and there shall the lions of Suli

rejoice.” And the bird flew away and went up to the heavens[858].’

Such an identification of the winged messenger with the soul of a

dead man does not represent the ordinary thought of the people; it is

a conceit peculiar to this ballad; but the very fact that the dead

warrior is made to assume the guise of a bird in order to communicate

with his living comrades shows how strong is the popular feeling that

birds are the natural intermediaries between earth and heaven.

Thus then the ancient belief that birds are among the most apt

instruments of divine and human communion has survived as little

impaired by lapse of ages as the practical science of augury founded

upon it. Perhaps indeed it has even fared better; for practical augury

has, I suspect, suffered from the paucity or extinction of professional

augurs, who alone could be expected to remember and to transmit to

their successors all the complex details of their art, whereas the old

faith may even have gained thereby; for history, I suppose, is not

void of instances in which the professional exponents of a religion

have fostered its forms and have starved its spirit, forgetting their

ministry in their desire for mastery, and making their office the sole

gate of communion with heaven. But, be that as it may, such decline as

there may have been from the complete and elaborate system of auspices

which the ancients possessed is not at any rate due to any abatement of

the ancient belief in the mediation of birds.

Not of course that the peasant, when he draws an omen from the eagle’s

stoop or the raven’s croak, pauses at all to reflect on the general

principle by which his act is guided; his recognition of the principle

is then as formal and unconscious as is his avowal of Christianity when

he crosses himself. But if ever in meditative mood he seeks the reason

and basis of his auspice-taking, he falls back, as the popular poetry

proves, on the doctrine that the powers above and below have chosen

birds as their messengers to mankind.

Doubtless many other peoples have held or still hold kindred beliefs;

but the fact that in Modern Greece the same class of birds is

observed as in Ancient Greece and that the same broad principles of

interpretation are followed is sufficient warranty that the underlying

belief is also a genuinely Hellenic heritage.

The next method of divination to be considered, that namely in which

omens were obtained from sacrifice, was anciently divided into two

branches; in one the diviner concerned himself with the dissection of

the victim, and based his predictions on the appearance of various

internal parts; in the other, special portions of the victim were

consumed by fire, and omens were read in the flame or smoke therefrom.

Of the latter I have discovered no trace in Modern Greece; but the

former still survives in some districts.

Naturally however this mode of divination is less frequently practised

than that with which I have just dealt. The cry or the flight of birds

can be observed without let or hindrance in the course of daily work,

and, what is more important still, without cost; while this method

involves the slaying of a victim, and is consequently confined to

high days and holidays when the peasants eat meat. But when occasion

offers or even demands the performance of the rite, the presages drawn

therefrom are the more valued because they are less readily to be

obtained.

And the value attached to them is by no means diminished because the

method pursued is less intelligent than the taking of auspices. In the

latter case, as we have seen, the common-folk have a reasonable basis

for their actions in the universal belief that birds are by nature

qualified to act as messengers between gods and men; in the former the

peasants are more blindly and mechanically repeating the practices of

their forefathers. They would be hard put to it to say how it comes to

pass that divine counsels should be found figured in the recesses of a

sheep’s anatomy. But in their very inability to answer this question,

no less than in their acceptance of the means of communion, they

resemble their ancestors; for, with all their love of enquiry, they too

practised the art without answering conclusively or unanimously the

questionings of their own hearts concerning it. One theory advanced

was that the anatomical construction of the victim was directly

affected by the prayers and religious rites to which it was subjected.

Another held the internal symptoms to be inexorable and immutable,

and saw divine agency only in the promptings of the sacrificer’s mind

and his choice of an animal whose entrails were suitably inscribed

by nature[859]. A third view, advocated by Plato, was that the liver

was as a mirror in which divine thought was reflected; during life

this divine thought might remain hidden as tacit intuition or be

manifested in prophetic utterance; after death the divine visions

contemplated by the soul were left recorded in imagery upon the liver,

and faded only by degrees[860]. The obvious objection to this theory

was its too practical corollary, that human entrails would be the most

interesting to consult. Less barbarous therefore in consequences, if

also less exquisite in idea, was the fourth doctrine, propounded by

Philostratus, that the liver had no power of presage unless it were

completely emancipated from the passions and surrendered wholly to

divine influence--a condition best fulfilled by animals of peaceful and

apathetic temperament[861].

But while these theories were built up and knocked down, the practices

which they were meant to explain continued firm and unshaken. The

fact seems to be that the custom of consulting entrails was not

native to Greece. In Homeric times the liver was not dissected in

search of omens, and such observations as were made were directed to

the brightness of the flame and the ascent of the smoke from burnt

offerings and not to any malformation or discoloration of the victim’s

inward parts. All that could be learnt was whether the sacrifice, and

therefore also the prayers accompanying it, were accepted or rejected.

The complexities of post-Homeric divination from burnt sacrifice

and the whole system of inspecting the entrails seem to have been a

foreign importation. Whether the source was Etruscan, Carian, Cyprian,

Babylonian, or Egyptian, does not here concern us[862]; the practices

were in origin foreign to Greece, and the ancients, in referring the

invention of them to Delphus, son of Poseidon, to Prometheus, to

Sisyphus, or to Orpheus[863], were guilty not only of sheer fabrication

but of manifest anachronism[864]. Homer convicts them.

It is then the foreign origin of these methods of divination which

explains the attitude of the ancient Greeks towards them. It was a

practice, not a theory--a custom, not an idea--a conglomeration of

usages, not a coherent and reasoned system--which was introduced

from abroad. The Greeks accepted it readily as furnishing them with

one more means to that communion with their gods which to them was

a spiritual necessity. The principle of the machinery employed was

unknown to them; but what matter? Its operation was commended by

the experience of others and soon tested by their own. The unknown

principle long continued to excite interest, conjecture, speculation,

among the educated and enlightened, but their failures to reach any

final and unanimous conclusion never moved them to dispute the tested

fact. And if this was the attitude of the educated, the common-folk of

those days must surely have been in the same position as the people

of to-day--gladly accepting the usage and avowedly ignorant of the

principle. Such blind acquiescence during so many centuries may seem

indeed a disparagement of the Greeks’ intelligence; but it is equally

a testimonial to their religious faith; it is the things which defy

reasoning that are best worth believing; and among these the Greeks

have steadfastly numbered the writing of divine counsels on the

sacrificial victim’s inward parts.

The actual methods now pursued are also an inheritance from the ancient

world. The animal from which the Klephts a century ago are said to

have taken omens most successfully was the sheep, and the portion of

its anatomy on which the tokens of the future were to be read was the

shoulder-blade. The questions to which an answer was most often sought

were, as might be surmised from the life of the enquirers, questions

of war. ‘In this connexion,’ says a Greek writer[865] of the first

half of last century, when stories of the Klephts’ life might still

be heard from their own lips, ‘the shoulder-blade of a young lamb

is ... a veritable Sibylline book; for its condition enables men to

ascertain beforehand the issue of an important engagement, the serious

losses on each side, the strength of the enemy, the reinforcements

to be expected, and indeed the very moment when danger threatens’;

and he recounts, by way of illustration, the story of a Thessalian

band of Klephts, whose captain, in the security of his own fastness,

was sitting divining in this way; suddenly he sprang up with the

exclamation, ‘The Turks have caught us alive,’ and at the head of his

troop had only just time to break through the Turkish forces which were

already surrounding them.

That this method of divination was derived directly and with

little deviation from the old system of inspecting shoulder-blades

(ὠμοπλατοσκοπία) as known to Michael Psellus can hardly be doubted. ‘If

the question be of war,’ he says, ‘a patch of red observed on the right

side of the shoulder-blade, or a long dark line on the left, foreshows

a great war; but if both sides present their normal white appearance,

it is an omen of peace to come[866].’

But the days of patriot-outlaws are over now, and the questions

submitted to the arbitrament of ovine shoulder-blades are of more

peaceful bent. It is the shepherd now, and not the warrior, who thus

resolves the uncertainties of the future. It is the vicissitudes of

weather, not of war, that interest him; the birth of lambs, not the

death of Turks. It is of plague, pestilence, and famine threatening his

flock, not of battle and murder and sudden death for himself, that he

seeks forewarning. But the same instrument of divination supplies the

answers.

My own knowledge of its use is obtained entirely from Acarnania

and Aetolia; but the practice is also recorded from Zagorion in

Epirus[867], and prevails too, I have been told, among the shepherds

of Elis. The opportunity for it is, as I have said, offered only

by certain feast-days, when the peasants indulge in meat. On other

occasions, when the shepherds kill only in order to sell in the

towns, divination cannot be undertaken; for it is only after cooking

that the meat can be properly removed from the bone so as to leave

it clean and legible. There is therefore no doubt an economical

reason for confining this practice to certain religious festivals;

but this consideration must not be allowed to obscure the genuinely

religious character of the rite itself. In Zagorion, at the festivals

in honour of the patron-saint of each village or monastery, sheep are

brought and slain in the enclosure of the particular sanctuary, and

are called κουρμπάνι̯α[868], a plural evidently of the Hebrew word

‘corban,’ a thing devoted to the service of God; thus both name and

ceremony proclaim this custom a genuine survival of sacrifice; and it

is apparently from the shoulder-blades of these victims that omens

are drawn[869]. A similar case of divination by sacrifice came to my

knowledge in Boeotia, though whether the shoulder-blade or some other

part of the victim furnished the predictions, I could not ascertain.

While looking round a small museum at Skimitári I had happened to stop

before a relief representing a man leading some animal to sacrifice,

and heard the custodian, a peasant of the place, remark to another

peasant, evidently a stranger to the district, who had followed me in,

‘That is just like what we do’; and he then explained that at a church

of St George, somewhere in the neighbourhood, there was an annual

festival at which a similar scene took place. The villagers of the

country-side congregate early on the morning of St George’s day round

the church, each man bringing a kid or a lamb; service in the church

having been duly performed, the priest comes out and blesses each of

the animals in turn, after which they are killed and roasted and a

feast is held accompanied by some kind of divination from the victims.

Such in brief was the custodian’s account; but, when I intervened in

the conversation with a question about the method of divining, he

would say nothing more. The Boeotians are still boorish. But what I

had already overheard exhibits clearly enough the religious character

of the rite; and I do not doubt that in Aetolia and Acarnania also the

peasants handle the sheep’s shoulder-blade in an equally religious

mood. Their very indulgence in meat is due to the religious occasion;

much more therefore the divination which reveals to them the mind of

those powers whom they worship.

In the art of interpreting the particular marks upon the shoulder-blade

I cannot claim to be an adept. The few facts which I managed to

discover were that in general spots and blurs upon the bone are

prognostications adverse to the hopes of the enquirer, and that

a clean white surface always gives full security: that different

portions of the bone are scrutinised for answers to different classes

of questions; thus the prospects of the lambing season are indicated

on the projecting ridge of the bone, and the weather-forecast on the

flat surfaces on either side of it, marks on the right side (the bone

being held horizontally with what is naturally its upper end towards

the diviner) being favourable signs, and those on the left ill-omened:

and finally that a pestilence is foreshown by a depression in the

surface of the bone. The science, I was told, is extremely complex and

elaborate; but I never had the fortune to meet any peasant who was

considered an expert in it; the best exponents of it are to be found

among the mountain shepherds, and since these are constantly shifting

their grazing grounds it is no easy matter to fall in with one both

able and willing to unfold the full mysteries of the art. How to

distinguish in interpretation markings of different sizes, shapes, and

colours I never discovered[870].

But the little which I learnt agrees in the main with the ancient

method as described by Michael Psellus[871]. ‘Those,’ he says, ‘who

wish to avail themselves of this means of divination, pick out a sheep

or lamb from the flock, and, after settling in their mind or saying

aloud the question which they wish to ask, slay the victim and remove

the shoulder-blade from the carcase. This--the organ of divination as

they think--they bake thoroughly upon hot embers, and having stripped

it of the flesh find on it the tokens of that issue about which they

are enquiring. The answers to different kinds of questions are learnt

from different parts[872]. Questions of life or death are decided by

the projection of the ridge[873]; if this is clean and white on both

sides, a promise of life is thereby given; but if it is blurred, it

is a token of death. Weather-forecasts again are made from inspection

of the middle part of the shoulder-blade; if the two membrane-like

surfaces which form the middle of the shoulder-blade on either side

of the ridge[874] are white and clean, they indicate calm weather

to come; while, if they are thickly spotted, the reverse is to be

expected.’ Here, it will have been noticed, no mention is made of

any discrimination between the markings on the right and on the left

sides of the bone; but this, I suspect, is an omission on the part of

Psellus, for so simple a principle of ancient divination is hardly

likely to have been excluded from consideration in this case. In other

respects the information which I obtained tallies closely with his

account; the clean and white appearance of the bone was then, as it

is now, a reassuring omen; then, as now, the prospects of the weather

were to be learnt from the flat surface on either side of the ridge;

then, as now, the question of life or death, which from the shepherd’s

point of view becomes most acute at each lambing season, was settled

by reference to the ridge of the bone. To judge then from the few

principles of the art known to me, divination from the shoulder-blade,

besides being still recognised as a religious rite, is conducted on

the same lines by Aetolian and Acarnanian peasants as it was by those

ancient augurs to whose hand-books probably Psellus was indebted for

his knowledge.

Another animal utilised in the same district for purposes of

divination is the pig; but in this case the prophetic organ is not

the shoulder-blade but the spleen. This is removed from the fresh

carcase before the rest of the flesh is cut up or cooked in any

way, and omens are taken from the roughness or discoloration of its

surface. The questions which may be decided by this means are very

various--the prospects of weather, of crops, and of vineyards, the

success of journeys and other enterprises, the advisability of a

contemplated marriage, and so forth. Of the exact details of the art I

know even less than in the last case; the facts which I learned were

these, that a smooth surface is a good omen, just as it was in the

case of other internal organs in the time of Aeschylus[875], while

certain roughnesses portend obstacles and difficulties in a journey

or enterprise, and further that certain abnormal blotches of colour

give warning of blight and mildew on crops and vines. Proficiency in

the science, I was told, is commonest among the inhabitants of the

low-lying cultivated or wooded districts of Acarnania where large

herds of half-wild swine are kept; and hence it is natural that the

predictions sought in this way are chiefly concerned with agricultural

and social interests, whereas the omens obtained from the sheep’s

shoulder-blade by shepherds living solitary lives in the mountains

deal with few issues other than the prospects of the flock. But this

difference between the two methods of divination is circumstantial

rather than essential; either method can, I believe, in the hands of

experts be used for answering almost any questions.

Divination from the pig’s spleen is, I think, undoubtedly ancient. It

appears to be a solitary survival of the σπλαγχνοσκοπία, or ‘inspection

of entrails,’ which in ancient Greece would seem to have been the

commonest method of divining from the sacrificial victim. Among the

animals embarrassed with prophetic entrails the pig indeed was not

ordinarily reckoned; but Pausanias mentions that the people of Cyprus

discovered its value[876], and it seems actually to have furnished

responses to the highly reputable oracle of Paphos[877]. How it has

come to pass that modern Acarnania should preserve a custom peculiar

to ancient Cyprus, is a problem that I cannot solve; but it can hardly

be questioned that here again we have an old religious rite still

maintained as a proven means of communion with those powers in whose

knowledge lies the future.

Divination from sacrifice also forms part of the preliminaries of a

wedding in many districts. On the day before the actual ceremony[878]

the first animal for the feast is killed by the bridegroom with his

own hand. The proper victim is a young ram, though in case of poverty

a more humble substitute is permitted. This, after being in some

districts blessed by the priest who receives in return a portion of the

victim, is made to stand facing eastward, and the bridegroom endeavours

to slaughter it with a single blow of an axe. Omens for the marriage

are taken from the manner and the direction in which the blood spirts

out; and a further investigation is sometimes made as to whether the

tongue is bitten or the mouth foaming, each sign finding its own

interpretation in the lore of the village cronies[879]. The substitute

allowed for the ram is a cock. Where the peasants avail themselves of

this economy, the killing is usually deferred until after the wedding

service, and is performed on the doorstep of the bridegroom’s house

before the bride is led in. The bird is held down on the threshold by

the best man, and the bridegroom, having been provided with a sharp

axe, tries to sever the cock’s neck at one blow. Here too the man’s

dexterity counts for something; for the peace or the agony in which the

victim is despatched belongs to that class of omens which in antiquity

also were drawn from the demeanour of the animal before and during

the act of sacrifice, and were taken not indeed to furnish a detailed

answer to any question preferred but to indicate the acceptance or the

rejection of the offering and the accompanying petitions. It is however

the effusion of blood and the muscular convulsions of the decapitated

bird which are most keenly observed; for from these signs, I was

told, the old women of the village profess to determine such points of

interest as the chastity of the bride, the supremacy of the husband or

the wife in the future _ménage_, and the number and sex of children

to be born. All this information can in most places where the rite

prevails be obtained without any dissection of the victim such as would

have been customary in antiquity; but in Aetolia and Acarnania the

peasants continue faithful to what are probably ancient methods even

in this detail; there the breast-bone of the fowl is treated both at

weddings and on other religious occasions as a poor man’s legitimate

substitute for the ovine shoulder-blade, which it sufficiently

resembles in the possession of a ridge with flat surfaces on either

side suitable for divine inscriptions.

But it is not upon coincidences of practical detail, instructive as

they are in proving the unity of modern with ancient Greece, that I

wish most to insist. If it is clear that the victims often blest by the

priests at weddings and on other religious occasions are really felt by

the people to be sacrifices, then the practice of divining from them,

whatever the exact method pursued, is once more distinct evidence of

the belief that the powers above are able and willing to hold close

communion with men.

Among the minor methods of divination we may notice first what Suidas

calls οἰκοσκοπικόν or ‘domestic divination’; under this head he

includes such incidents as the appearance of a weasel on the roof, or

of a snake, the spilling of oil, honey, wine, water, or ashes, and the

crackling of logs on the fire. The subject was expounded apparently in

a serious treatise by one Xenocrates; but it is difficult to suppose

that there was any scientific system governing so heterogeneous a

conglomeration of incidents; the treatise was probably no more than a

compilation of possible occurrences with disconnected regulations for

interpreting each of them.

Many events of a like trivial nature are observed at the present day,

and the interpretations set upon some of them are demonstrably ancient.

A weasel seen about the house, just as on the road, is significant of

evil[880], more especially if there is in the household a girl about to

be married; for the weasel (νυφίτσα) was once, it is said, a maiden

destined to become, as the name implies, a ‘little bride,’ but in some

way she was robbed of her happiness and transformed into an animal;

its appearance therefore augurs ill for an intended wedding. A snake

on the contrary is of good omen when seen in the house; for it is the

guardian-_genius_ watching over its own. The orientation of a cat

when engaged in washing its face indicates the point of the compass

from which wind may be expected. A mouse nibbling a hole in a bag of

flour is in Zagorion[881] as distressing a portent as it was to the

superstitious man of Theophrastus[882]. A dog howling at night in or

near the house portends a death in the neighbourhood, as it did in

the time of Theocritus: ‘Hark,’ cries Simaetha, ‘the dogs are barking

through the town. Hecate is at the cross-ways. Haste, clash the brazen

cymbals[883]’; only instead of the cymbals it is customary to use an

ejaculation addressed to the dog, ‘may you burst’ (νὰ σκάσῃς), or ‘may

you eat your own head’ (νὰ φᾶς τὸ κεφάλι σου).

Again, to take another class of the domestic incidents mentioned by

Suidas, the spilling of oil is universally an evil omen, and the

spilling of wine a good omen; the former foreshadows poverty, the

latter plenty. The upsetting of water is also a presage of good

success, especially on a journey; but in this connexion, as a later

chapter will show, it often passes out of the sphere of divination,

which should rest on purely fortuitous occurrences, into that of

sympathetic magic.

The crackling of logs on the fire, which Suidas mentions, remains

to-day also an incident to be duly noted. Generally it appears to mean

that good news is coming or that a friend is arriving, but, if sparks

and ashes are thrown out into the room, troubles and anxieties must be

expected. The spluttering of a lamp or candle also usually foretells

misfortune[884]. Omens as to marriage also may be obtained on the

domestic hearth. Two leaves of basil are put together upon a live coal;

if they lie as they are placed and burn away quietly, the marriage will

be harmonious; if there is a certain amount of crackling, the married

life of the two persons represented by the leaves will be disturbed

by quarrels; if the leaves crackle fiercely and leap apart, there is

an incompatibility of temper which renders the projected alliance

undesirable.

These are but a few instances of domestic divination, and a much

longer list might easily be compiled. But while I know that many of

the peasants do indeed observe such occurrences seriously enough to

act upon the supernatural warnings thereby conveyed, yet the religious

character of these methods of divination is less demonstrable than that

of divination from birds or from sacrifice; and I may content myself

with indicating, by a few illustrations only, the continuity of Greek

superstition in both this and those other minor branches of divination

to which I now pass.

Palmistry, according to Suidas, was an ancient art, and a hand-book of

it was composed by one Helenos. The signs of the future were read in

the lines of the palm and of the fingers as in modern palmistry. This

science is still kept up by some of the old women in Greece, but real

proficiency therein is as in other countries chiefly attained by the

gypsies (ἀτσίγγανοι), who follow a nomadic life in the mountains and

have very little intercourse with the native population.

Divination from involuntary movements of various parts of the

body--παλμικόν, as Suidas calls it, on which one Poseidonios was a

leading authority--is still very generally practised, and evidently has

deviated hardly at all from ancient lines. The twitching of a man’s

eye or eyebrow is a sign that he will soon see some acquaintance--an

enemy, if it be the left eye that throbs, a friend, if it be the right;

and this clearly was the principle which the goat-herd of Theocritus

followed when he exclaimed, ‘My eye throbs, my right eye; oh! shall

I see Amaryllis herself?’[885] Similarly the buzzing or singing of

a man’s ears is an indication that he is being spoken of by others,

just as it was in the time of Lucian[886]; and, according to the usual

principle, the right ear is affected in this manner by praise and

kindly speech, the left by backbiting and slander. Again, if the palm

of the right hand itch, it shows that a man will receive money; and

reversely, if the left palm itch, he will have to pay money away[887].

So too, if the sole of the right or of the left foot itch, it is a

premonition of a journey successful or unsuccessful. Omens of this kind

fall with uncomfortable frequency to the lot of those who have to find

a night’s lodging in Greek inns or cottages.

To the same category belong hiccoughing and sneezing. The hiccough

(λόξυγγας), as also in Macedonia choking over food or drink[888], is

a sign that some backbiter is at work, and the method of curing it is

to guess his name. Sneezing is a favourable omen, but the particular

interpretation of it depends on alternative sets of circumstances. If

anyone who is speaking is interrupted by a sneeze, whether his own

or that of another person present, whatever he is saying is held to

be proved true by the occurrence. ’Γειά σου, cry the listeners, καὶ

ἀλήθεια λές (or λέει), ‘Health to you, and you speak (_or_ he speaks)

truth.’ If however no one present is in the act of speaking when the

sneeze is heard, the first phrase only is used, ‘Health to you,’

or by way of facetious variant, νὰ ψοφήσῃ ἡ πεθερά σου, ‘May your

mother-in-law die like a dog[889].’ In either case the prayer for good

health can benefit only the sneezer; but in the former, that member of

the company who is speaking at the time may obtain corroboration of

the statement which he is making from the omen produced by another.

This part of the belief is very strongly held; and anyone who is in the

unfortunate position of having his word doubted or of being compelled

to prevaricate will be better advised to conjure up a sneeze than to

expostulate or to swear.

Both these interpretations of sneezing date from ancient times. The

old equivalent of ‘Health to you’ was Ζεῦ σῶσον, ‘Preserve him, Zeus’;

but such expressions are common to many nations and not distinctively

Hellenic. The other interpretation of sneezing, as a confirmation of

words which are being uttered, is of more special interest, and has

been handed down from the Homeric age. ‘Let but Odysseus come,’ says

Penelope, ‘and reach his native land, and soon will he and his son

requite the violent deeds of these men.’ ‘Thus she spake,’ continues

the passage, ‘and Telemachos sneezed aloud; and round about the house

rang fearfully; and Penelope laughed, and quickly then she spake winged

words to Eumaeus: “Go now, call the stranger here before me. Dost thou

not see how my son did sneeze in sanction of all my words[890]? For

this should utter death come upon the suitors one and all, nor should

one of them escape death and destruction[891].”’

Among other instruments of divination occasionally used are eggs,

molten lead, and sieves. Eggs are chiefly used to decide the prospects

of a marriage. ‘Speechless water’[892] is fetched by a boy, and the

old woman who presides over such operations pours into it the white

of an egg. If this keeps together in a close mass, the marriage will

turn out well; but if it assumes a broken or confused shape, troubles

loom ahead. In antiquity the science was probably more extended; for a

work on egg-divining (ὠοσκοπικά) was attributed to Orpheus. A similar

rite may be performed with molten lead instead of white of egg, and

it suffices to pour it upon any flat surface[893]. Divination with a

sieve--the ancient κοσκινομαντεία--also continues, I have been told,

but I know no details of the practice.

Thus then the chief methods of learning the gods’ will as practised

in antiquity have been reviewed, and are found to be perpetuated in

substantially the same form down to the present day; and not only is

the form the same but in many of them the same religious spirit is

manifest. The principal difference lies in the paucity of professional

diviners now; experts assuredly in some branches there still are, but

augury alone would now, I think, be a precarious source of livelihood.

Advice from the village priest would in so many cases be cheaper and no

less valued than that of the soothsayer.

And as with persons so with places. The pagan temples in which oracles

were given have been largely superseded by Christian churches, and

possibly the peasants are more inclined to pay for masses which will

secure the fulfilment of their wishes than for oracular responses which

may run counter to them. Still even so oracles have not yet entirely

ceased; and in discussing those which survive we shall find once more

a coincidence both in form and spirit between ancient and modern Greek

religion.