the practice of divination; the method of obtaining responses has
always varied in different places, and the mediation of a professional
diviner, though usual, cannot be regarded as essential[894]. Those
caves therefore where women make offerings of honey-cakes to the
Fates[895] and pray for the fulfilment of their conjugal hopes are
really oracles, provided that there is some means of learning there
whether the prayer is accepted or rejected. And this is often the
case; most commonly the answer is inferred--on what principle of
interpretation, I do not know--from the dripping of water or the
detachment and fall from the roof of a particle of stone; and in
Aetolia I was told of a cave in the neighbourhood of Agrinion in which
the nature of the response is determined by the behaviour of the bats
which frequent it. If they remain hanging quiescent from the roof and
walls, the suppliant’s hopes will be realised; but if they be disturbed
by his or, more often, her intrusion and flutter round confusedly, the
Fates are inexorably adverse.
But besides these modest and unpretentious oracles there still survives
in the island of Amorgos an oracle of a higher order ensconced in a
church and served by a priest. The saint under whose patronage this
pagan institution has continued to flourish is St George, here surnamed
Balsamites[896]. To the right on entering the church is seen a large
squared block of marble hollowed out so as to have the form of an urn
inside, and highly polished. It stands apparently on the natural rock,
and is roofed over with a dome-shaped lid capable of being locked. At
the present day the mouth of the urn is also covered by a marble slab
with a hole pierced through it and fitted with a plug; but this was not
observed by travellers of the seventeenth century and is probably a
recent addition. There is also a discrepancy in the various accounts
of the working of the oracle, the older authorities stating that the
answers were given by the rise and fall of the water in the vessel,
while the modern custom is to interpret the signs given by particles
of dust, insects, hairs, bits of dry leaf, and suchlike floating in a
cupful of water drawn from the urn[897].
The description given by a Jesuit priest of Santorini, Robert Sauger
by name, of what he himself witnessed in Amorgos towards the end of
the seventeenth century may be taken as trustworthy, inasmuch as he
elsewhere shows himself an accurate observer and certainly was not
tempted in the present case to exaggerate the wonders of the rival
Church.
‘The cavity,’ he says, ‘fills itself with water and empties itself of
its own accord, and it is impossible to imagine what gives the water
this motion and where it has a passage; for, besides being very thick,
the marble is so highly polished inside and its continuity of surface
is so unbroken that it is impossible to detect the tiniest hole or the
least unevenness, saving always the opening at the top which is always
kept locked. Additionally astonishing is the fact that within the space
of one hour the urn fills and empties itself visibly several times; at
one moment you see it so full that the water overflows, and a moment
afterwards it becomes so dry that it appears to have had no water in it
at all.
‘Superstition is rife everywhere. Any Greeks who have a voyage to make
do not fail to come and consult the Urn. If the water is high in it,
they set off gaily, promising themselves a good passage. But if the Urn
is without water, or the water is low in it, they draw therefrom a bad
omen for the success of their journey, and do not go, or, if business
makes it imperative, go unwillingly.
‘This alleged miracle, which is so famed throughout all Greece, is
a source of much gain to the priest who has charge of the Church of
St George; for the concourse of Greeks there is incessant; people
come thither from great distances, some in all seriousness to advise
themselves of the future, others to see the thing with their own eyes,
and a certain number to amuse themselves and to have a laugh, as I
have had several times, at the credulity of these folk[898].’
Whatever may have been the original method of oracular response--and
I suspect that, while the presence or the absence of water furnished
a plain ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ to the enquirer, a more detailed reply always
depended upon the observation and interpretation of any foreign
particles floating in the urn--the faith of the people in its virtue is
still intense. It can indeed no longer claim a reputation throughout
all Greece; but the inhabitants of Amorgos and the maritime population
of neighbouring islands still consult it regularly and seriously
concerning voyages, business matters, marriage, and other cares and
interests; nor are questioners from farther afield altogether unknown.
This oracular property of water was well known in antiquity. In this
branch of divination, says Bouché Leclercq, use was made ‘of springs
and streams which were felt to be endowed with a kind of supernatural
discernment. Certain waters were accorded the property of confirming
oaths and exposing perjury. The water of the Styx, by which the
Olympian gods swore, is the prototype of these means of test, among
which may be mentioned the spring of Zeus Orkios, near Tyane, and the
water-oracle of the Sicilian Palici[899].’ So too water-deities such as
Nereus and Proteus were believed to exercise special prophetic powers;
and Ino possessed in the neighbourhood of Epidaurus Limera a pool into
which barley-cakes were thrown by those who would consult her; if these
offerings sank, she was held to have accepted them and to favour the
enquirer; if they floated, his hopes would be disappointed[900].
The present oracle of Amorgos is of a higher order than this; its
method is more complex, and its responses are more detailed. It should
surely have ranked high even among the oracles of old, of which, both
in the reverence which it inspires and in the medium which it employs,
it is a true descendant.
* * * * *
Having thus examined the means by which the gods deign to communicate
with men, and having seen that both in form and in spirit the ancient
means of communion have been preserved almost unchanged, we have now to
consider the means by which men approach the gods and communicate to
them their hopes and petitions.
The first and most obvious method, one common to all religions, is
of course prayer; but the use of this channel just because it is so
universal cannot be claimed as a proof of religious unity between
ancient and modern Greece. It is rather in what we should deem the
accompaniments of prayer that evidence of such unity must be sought.
The ancient Greeks were not in general content with prayer only. It was
not customary to approach the gods empty-handed. The poor man indeed,
according to Lucian[901], appeased the god merely by kissing his right
hand; but the farmer brought an ox from the plough, the shepherd a
lamb, the goat-herd a goat, and others incense or a cake. ‘Thus it
looks,’ he says, ‘as if the gods do nothing at all _gratis_, but offer
their commodities for sale to men; one may buy of them health, for
instance, at the cost of a calf, wealth for four oxen, a kingdom for
a hecatomb, a safe return passage from Ilium to Pylos for nine bulls,
and the crossing from Aulis to Ilium for a princess--a high price
certainly, but then Hecuba was bidding Athene twelve cows and a dress
to keep Ilium safe. One must suppose however that they have plenty
of things to dispose of at the price of a cock, a garland, or even a
stick of incense[902].’ That this is a fair account of the externals
of Greek ritual can hardly be questioned; for Plato too, in more
serious mood, says that ‘the mutual communion between gods and men’ is
established by ‘sacrifices of all kinds and the various departments of
divination[903].’ The ‘various departments of divination’ are clearly
the means by which the gods communicate with men; and ‘sacrifices of
all kinds’ therefore represented to Plato’s mind the means by which
men communicate with their gods. Prayer, he seems to have felt, was a
necessary incident in sacrifice, rather than sacrifice an unnecessary
adjunct to prayer.
Now the word θυσία, which we commonly translate ‘sacrifice,’ was a term
of very wide meaning in ancient Greek. In Homer the word θύειν was
used of making any offering to the gods, and never denoted, though
naturally it sometimes connoted, the slaughtering of animals--an
act properly expressed by the verb σφάζειν. And in later times the
substantive θυσία was still applied to almost any religious festival,
at which undoubtedly some offerings, but not necessarily animal
sacrifices, were always made. When therefore Plato speaks of θυσίαι
πᾶσαι, ‘all sacrifices,’ he is clearly expressing his recognition
of the fact that sacrifices (θυσίαι) are manifold in kind--and if
in kind, therefore also in intention; for different rituals are the
expressions of different religious motives. Communion with the gods was
in general terms the object of all offerings made to them by men; but
the particular aspect of such communion varied.
Offerings, we may suppose, were rarely if ever made purely for the
benefit of the gods without any self-seeking on the part of the
worshipper. Even when a sacrifice to some god was merely a pretext for
social entertainments--and how frequently this was the case is shown
by the fact that φιλοθύτης, ‘fond of sacrificing,’ came to mean simply
‘hospitable’--it is reasonable to suppose that the presentation to the
god of the less edible portions of the victim was accompanied at least
by an ἵλαθι, ‘be propitious,’ by way of grace before the meal; and
at more strictly religious functions, at which the guests, if there
were any, were secondary to the god, the dedication of the offering
undoubtedly included a declaration of the offerer’s motive.
As regards the character of that motive in most cases, Lucian is right;
it was frankly and baldly commercial. Homer does not blink the fact;
for Phoenix even commends to the notice of Achilles the open mind
displayed by the gods towards an open-handed suppliant. ‘Verily even
the gods may be turned, they whose excellence and honour and strength
are greater than thine; yet even them do men, when they pray, turn from
their purpose with offerings of incense and pleasant vows, with fat
and the savour of sacrifice, whensoever a man hath transgressed and
done amiss[904].’ And so Greek feeling has ever remained. Offerings
are the ordinary means of gaining access to the gods, of buying their
goodwill and buying off their anger. The ordinary medium of exchange
in such commerce was, when Greece was avowedly pagan, food, and is,
now that Greece is nominally Christian, candles: for religion, ever
conservative, keeps up the otherwise obsolete system of barter between
men and gods, even though the priests of those gods are enlightened
enough to accept of a secular modern currency. But the particular
commodities in which the barter is made are of little consequence as
compared with the spirit which has always animated such dealings. The
substitution of candles for meat is practically the only modification
which Christianity has effected in this department of religion.
Even this change in detail does not affect the whole range of such
operations; candles are not by any means the only offerings of
which the Church takes cognisance. In dealing with the question of
divination, we have seen cases in which on some religious occasion,
saint’s-day or wedding, the priest blesses a genuinely sacrificial
victim[905]. We have seen too that at the laying of foundation stones,
a religious ceremony conducted by a priest of the Church, some animal
is immolated to appease the _genius_ of the site[906]. We have seen
again how the Church permits or encourages the dedication of those
silver-foil models of various objects--ships and houses, corn-fields
and vineyards, eyes and limbs--which serve at once to propitiate the
saint to whom they are offered and, on the principle of sympathetic
magic, to place the object, thus represented as it were by proxy,
under the saint’s special care; and how also the same kind of models
are frequently dedicated as thank-offerings[907]; so that indeed,
in default of an inscription announcing the motive of the offerer,
no one can decide how any given offerings of this kind should be
classified[908].
Then too in those religious rites which have survived without
ecclesiastical sanction the use and the purpose of food-offerings
remain unchanged. The favour of the Fates is bought by offerings of
cakes in order that they may bestow upon the women who thus propitiate
them the blessing of children[909]. Nereids who have ‘seized’ children
are known to withdraw their oft-times baneful influence when the mother
takes a present of food to the scene of the calamity and cries to them
with an Homeric simplicity, ‘Eat ye the little cakes, good queens, and
heal my child[910].’ Even the malice of Callicantzari may sometimes be
averted by a present of pork[911].
Thus with or without the ratification of the Church the old offerings
still continue to be made in the self-same form; and even where other
substitutes have been devised, the spirit which animates the dedication
of them is unchanged--a spirit essentially commercial; it matters
little whether the suppliant is trying to buy blessings or to get the
punishment which he has deserved commuted for a fine, or again whether
he is speculating in future favours or settling in accordance with a
vow for favours received; in each case there is the _quid pro quo_, the
bargaining that the Greek has never been able to forego, not even in
his religion.
But while the spirit thus manifested is not wholly admirable and
perhaps deserved the ridicule of Lucian, it is highly instructive. The
sacrifices or offerings are the means by which the worshipper gets into
touch with the worshipped, the vehicle for his thanks or petitions; the
possibility of bargaining implies intercourse; commerce is a form, even
though it be the lowest form, of communion.
But that there were other kinds of sacrifice which represented higher
aspects of the communion between men and gods in ancient Greece is
certain. The commonly accepted classification of ancient sacrifices
recognises three main groups--the sacramental, the honorific, and
the piacular. Of the sacramental class, in which--by a development,
it appears, of totemism--some sacred animal, representing the
anthropomorphic god who has superseded it in men’s worship, is consumed
by the worshippers in order that by eating the flesh and drinking the
blood they may partake of the god’s own life and self, no trace, so
far as I know, can now be found in the popular religion. The honorific
class comprises the majority of those offerings which might with less
euphemism be called commercial; those however which are prompted by the
desire to expiate sin, or rather to buy off the punishment which sin
has merited, would, I suppose, fall under the head of piacular. But the
line drawn between the honorific and the piacular seems to me far from
clear, for reasons which will be discussed in the remainder of this
chapter.
The view of sacrifice which I am about to propound, and which would
modify chiefly our conception of so-called piacular sacrifice in
antiquity, was suggested to me by a story which I had from the lips of
an aged peasant of the village of Goniá (the ‘Corner’) in the island of
Santorini[912]. In talking to me of the wonders of his native island
he mentioned among other things a large hall with columns round it
which had long since been buried--presumably by volcanic eruption.
This hall was of magnificent proportions, ‘as fine,’ to use the old
man’s own description, ‘as the _piazza_ of Syra or even of Athens.’ It
was situated between Kamári, an old rock-cut shelter in the shape of
an _exedra_ at the foot of the northern descent from the one mountain
of the island (μέσο βουνί), and a chapel of St George in the strip
of plain that forms the island’s east coast. So far my informant’s
veracity is beyond dispute; for in an account of the island written
by a resident Jesuit in the middle of the seventeenth century I
afterwards discovered the following corroboration[913]. ‘At the foot
of this mountain[914] are seen the ruins of a fine ancient town; the
huge massive stones of which the walls were built are a marvel to
behold; it must have taken some stout arms and portentous hands to
handle them.... Among these ruins have been found some fine marble
columns perfectly complete, and some rich tombs; and among others
there are four which would bear comparison in point of beauty with
those of our kings, if they were not damaged; several marble statues
in Roman style lie overturned upon the ground. On the pedestal of the
statue of Trajan there is still to be read at the present day a very
fine Greek panegyric of that powerful Emperor, as also on that of the
statue of Marcus Antoninus.’ Thus much as guarantee of the old man’s
_bona fides_, which even excavation on the spot, however desirable
from an archaeological standpoint, could not more clearly establish
than the French writer’s corroborative testimony; now for the story
associated by the aged narrator with this wonderful buried hall.
At the time of the revolution, he said, a number of the Greek ships
assembled off Kamári (where a fair anchorage exists), and he with
some fellow-islanders all since dead was going to fight in the cause
of Greek freedom. Naturally enough there was great excitement and
trepidation in this remote and quiet island at the thought of adventure
and war. ‘So we thought things over,’ he continued, ‘and decided to
send a man to St Nicolas to ask him that our ships might prosper in the
war[915].’ They accordingly seized a man and took him to this large
hall. There they cut off his head and his hands, and carried him down
the steps into the hall, whereupon God appeared with a bright torch in
his hand, and the bearers of the body dropped it, and all present fled
in terror.
There are few grounds on which to argue for or against the credibility
of this story. Historically Thera along with some other islands is
recorded to have maintained the position of a neutral by paying
contributions to both sides; but that does not in any way militate
against the supposition that a few young men from the island were
patriotic enough to volunteer for service in some of the Greek ships
which may have touched--perhaps to secure that contribution--at
Santorini. The story itself was narrated to me, I am persuaded, in all
good faith, and the old man really believed himself to have taken part
in the events described. His age would certainly have permitted him to
fight as a young man in the revolution; he himself estimated (in the
year 1899) that he had lived more than a century, and other old men of
the village who were well past their threescore years and ten reckoned
him senior to themselves by a full generation; moreover his own
reminiscences of the war argued a personal share in the fighting. But
whether the savage episode which he described was really a prelude to
that most savage war, or some traditional event of the island’s history
post-dated and inserted in the most glorious epoch of modern Greek
history, is a question which cannot be finally determined. Chronology
to a peasant who does not know the year of his own birth is naturally
a matter of some indifference, and excitability of imagination
coupled with the habit, or rather the instinct, of self-glorification
in the Greek character, would account for an unconscious and not
intentionally dishonest transference of the stirring events of
earlier days to a date at which their narrator could have personally
participated in them; there is no one so easily deceived by a Greek as
himself, and no one half so honestly. Yet on the whole I incline to
believe the story.
Fortunately the chronological exactitude and detailed precision of the
story do not much matter. Accurate or inaccurate in itself it contains
a clear expression of the view held by the old peasant of the purpose
of human sacrifice. ‘We thought things over and decided to send a man
to St Nicolas to ask him that our ships might prosper in the war.’
This is our text, and its very terseness and directness of expression
prove how familiar and native to the speaker’s mind was this aspect
of sacrifice. The human victim was simply and solely a messenger. St
Nicolas, to whom he was sent, has supplanted Poseidon, as has been
remarked above[916], in the government of the sea and the patronage
of sailors; but how he came to be associated with the hall which was
deemed a right place for the sacrifice, unless perhaps he had succeeded
to the possession of the site of some temple of Poseidon, I cannot say.
It is of little avail to press for further elucidation of a peasant’s
story. I would gladly have learnt more about the hall now wholly buried
but then partially at least visible above ground, into which none
the less a descent by steps is mentioned; I would gladly have learnt
more about the appearance of God with a bright torch in his hand, and
what was the significance to the peasant’s mind of the appearance of
God himself[917] (ὁ θεός) instead of St Nicolas to whom the messenger
was sent. These uncertainties and obscurities must remain. The only
additional fact which I elicited was that the man taken and sent to St
Nicolas was in Greek parlance a ‘Christian,’ that is to say neither a
Turk nor a member of the Roman Church which has long held a footing
in the island. There was therefore no admixture of either racial or
religious hatred in the feelings which prompted, as it is alleged, this
human sacrifice.
If then the story be accepted, the motive assigned must be accepted
with it; but if the story be discredited, the motive assigned has
still a value. For even if the old man had deliberately invented the
tale and claimed complicity in so ghastly a deed, whence could he have
obtained that conception of human sacrifice which furnished the motive
of the action? It is inconceivable that he should have evolved the idea
from personal meditations on the subject of sacrifice. It is equally
inconceivable that he could have obtained it from any literary source;
for he could not read, and the only book of which he could have had any
knowledge would have been the Bible, to which this view of sacrifice is
unknown. The only source from which he could have received the idea is
native and oral tradition.
So distinct an expression of the idea is naturally rare, because human
sacrifice is not an every-day topic of conversation among peasantry;
but such a theory of sacrifice is perfectly harmonious with that chord
of Greek religion of which several notes have already been struck. To
obey dreams, to enquire of oracles, to observe birds, to hear omens
in chance words, to read divine messages in the flesh of sacrificial
victims, to make presents to the powers above for the purpose of
securing blessings or averting wrath--these are the ways of a people
from whose mind the primitive belief in close contact and converse
with their gods has not been expelled by the invasion of education;
whose religion has not paid the price of ennobling its conceptions
and elevating its ideals by making the worshipper feel too acutely
his debasement and his distance from the godhead; whose instinctive
judgement divides the domain of faith from the domain of reason, and
accepts poetical beauty rather than logical probability as the evidence
of things unseen. True indeed it is that of all the practices by which
this people’s belief in intercourse with their gods is attested none is
so remarkable as acquiescence or complicity in murder prompted solely
by the belief that the victim by passing the gates of death can carry
a message in person to one in whose power the future lies. But all
that is painful and gruesome in such a deed only accentuates the more
the unflinching faith of a people who, not in blind devotion to custom
nor in fear of a prophet’s command, but intelligently and of piety
prepense, could sacrifice a compatriot and co-religionist to ensure the
safe carriage of their most urgent prayers.
If tragedy consists in the conflict of deep emotions, and religion in
obeying the divine rather than the human, few deeds have been more
tragic, none more religious than this. In that scene at Aulis when the
warrior-king gave up his child at the prophet’s bidding to stay the
wrath of Artemis against his host, the tragedy was indeed intensified
by the strength of the human tie between the sacrificer and the
victim; but blind and awe-struck submission to a prophet’s decree is
less grandly religious than clear-sighted recognition and courageous
application of the belief that the dead pass immediately into the
very presence of the gods. Here are the two given conditions: first,
the urgency of the present or the peril of the future requires that a
request for help be safely conveyed at all costs to that god or saint
in whose province the control of the danger lies; secondly, the safest
way of sending a message to that god or saint is by the mouth of a
human messenger whose road is over the pass of death. There is only
one solution of that problem. And if it is true that only some eighty
years ago the problem was solved at so cruel a cost, then the faith of
this people in their communion with those on whose knees the future
lies is more intense, more vital, more courageous than that of more
Western nations whose religion has long been subordinated or at least
allied to morality, and whose acts of worship are all well-regulated
and eminently decorous.
Human sacrifice is known to have been practised in ancient Greece and
the custom probably continued well into the Christian era. What was
the motive which prompted the continuance of so cruel a rite? Was it
the same as that which the old peasant of Santorini assigned for the
performance of a like act in his own experience--that conception of
the victim as a messenger with which he can have been familiar only
from native and oral tradition? Assuredly some strong religious motive
must have compelled the ancients to a rite which in the absence of such
motive would have been an indelible stigma upon their civilisation,
refuting all their claims to emancipation of thought and freedom
of intellect, and branding them the very bond-slaves of grossest
superstition. Even though they lived on the marches of the East where
human life is of small account, the horror of the rite is in too vivid
a contrast with Hellenic enlightenment for us to see in it a mere
callous retention of an unmeaning and savage custom; but that horror
is at least mitigated if underlying the practice there was some deep
religious motive, if a genuine faith in the possibility of direct
intercourse with heaven exalted above the sacredness of human life the
sacred privilege of sending a messenger to present the whole people’s
petition before their god.
But while it is easy to perceive that such a motive is in harmony
with that belief in the possibility of the communion of man with
God which is so pronounced a feature in the religion of the ancient
Greeks no less than in that of their descendants, it is a far harder
task actually, to prove that this motive was the one acknowledged
justification for human sacrifice. Ancient literature is extremely
reticent on the whole subject; the very fact of the existence of the
rite is known chiefly from late writers, Plutarch[918], Porphyry[919],
and Tzetzes[920]; and anything like a discussion of the motives
which underlay it is nowhere to be found. This reticence however was
prompted, we may suppose, simply and solely by the patent barbarity
of the act; it in no way impugns the latent beauty of the motive.
Rather the persistence in a rite which did violence to men’s humaner
feelings and moral sense proves the strength of the appeal which the
motive for it must have addressed to their religious convictions. There
was no place for shame in the belief that death was the road by which
alone a human messenger could gain immediate access to the gods; but
if a messenger were required to go at regular intervals, the regular
occurrence of deaths required murder. This, I think, was the cause of
shame and reticence.
Now if this very simple analysis of the feelings which almost barred
the discussion or even mention of human sacrifice by ancient authors is
correct, we should expect to find that, where death occurred naturally
and not by human intervention, the conception of the dying or the dead
as messengers to the unseen world would find ready and unembarrassed
expression. And especially is this to be expected among the Greeks with
whom grief has never imposed a check upon garrulity, but rather the
loudness of the lamentation has always been the test of the poignancy
of the sorrow. It is therefore in funeral-dirges and such-like that we
must look for the expression of this idea.
An organised ceremony of lamentation is at the present day an
essential part of every Greek funeral, and many dirges sung on such
occasions have been collected and published. In these the conception
of the departed as a messenger, or even as a carrier of goods,
abounds[921]. A Laconian dirge runs thus: ‘A prudent lady, a virtuous
wife, willed and resolved to go down to Hades. “Whoso has words” (she
cried) “let him say them, and messages, let him send them; whoso has
a son there unarmed, let him send his arms; whoso has son there a
scribe, let him send his papers; whoso has daughter undowered, let him
send her dowry; whoso has a little child, let him send his swaddling
clothes.”’[922]
The same thought inspires a dirge in Passow’s collection[923], in which
the thoughts of a dead man, round whose body the women are sitting
and weeping, are thus expressed: ‘Why stand ye round about me, all ye
sorrowing women? Have I come forth from Hades, forth from the world
below? Nay, now am I making ready, now am I at the point to go. Whoso
hath word, let him speak it, and message, let him tell it; whoso hath
long complaint, let him write and send it.’ And again in another
funeral-song a dead man is described as a ‘trusty courier bound for the
world below[924].’
This sentiment, so frequently and so clearly expressed in the modern
dirges, is of ancient descent. Polyxena, about to be sacrificed
at Achilles’ tomb, is made by Euripides to address to her mother
the question, ‘What am I to say from thee to Hector or to thy aged
husband?’, and Hecuba answers, ‘My message is that I am of all women
most miserable[925].’ And it is the same genuinely Hellenic thought
which Vergil attributes to Neoptolemus when he answers Priam’s taunts
of degeneracy with the words, ‘These tidings then thou shalt carry,
and shalt go as messenger to my sire, the son of Peleus; forget not to
tell him of my sorry deeds and that Neoptolemus is no true son. Now
die[926].’
And it is not only in the poetry of ancient and modern Greece but
also in the actual customs of the people that this idea has found
expression. At the present day funerals are constantly treated by the
peasants as real opportunities of communicating with their dead friends
and relatives. Whether the custom is ever carried out exactly as it
once was by the Galatae, who used to write letters to the departed and
to lay them on the pyre of each new courier to the lower world[927],
I cannot definitely say; but a proverbial expression used of a person
dangerously ill, μαζεύει γράμματα γιὰ τοὺς πεθαμμένους, ‘he is
collecting letters for the dead,’ lends colour to the supposition that
either now or in earlier days this form of the custom is or has been
in vogue. But in general now certainly the messages are not written
but verbal. It is a common custom, noticed by many writers on Greek
folklore[928], for the women who assist in the ceremonial lamentation
which precedes the interment to insert in the dirges, which they each
in turn contribute, messages which they require the newly-dead to
deliver to some departed person whom they name, or, according to a
slightly different usage, to whisper such messages secretly in the
ear of the dead either immediately before the body is borne away to
the church[929], or, where women are allowed to attend the actual
interment, at the moment of ‘the last kiss’ (ὁ τελευταῖος ἀσπασμός),
which forms an essential and very painful part of the Eastern rite.
The antiquity of this custom appears to me to be as certain as
anything which is not explicitly stated in ancient literature can be.
For in every detail of ancient funeral usage known to us there is
so complete a coincidence with modern usage that it would be absurd
not to supplement records of the past by observation of the present.
Actually to establish that identity in every particular is beyond the
scope of the present chapter and must be reserved until later; but
my assertion may be justified here by reference to three points in
Solon’s legislation on the subject of funerals. That legislation was
directed against three practices to which mourners were addicted in
this ceremonial lamentation of which I have been speaking--laceration
of the cheeks and breast, the use of set and premeditated dirges,
and lamentation for any other than him whose funeral was in
progress[930]--customs which all still flourish.
The laceration is quite a common feature of such occasions. Indeed in
some districts the women nearest of kin to the deceased are almost
thought to fail in their duty to him if they do not work themselves
up into an hysterical mood and testify to the wildness of their grief
by tearing out their hair and scratching their cheeks till the blood
flows. Such a display of agony, it must be remembered, comes easy to
the Greeks: for their temperament is such that, even when the fact
of the bereavement has moved them little, the _rôle_ of the bereaved
excites them to the most dramatic excesses. Men rarely if ever now take
part in this scene, and are certainly not guilty of such transports;
for their usual method of mourning is to let their hair grow instead of
tearing it out, and to avoid laceration by forswearing the razor.
Again, the use of set dirges, composed or adapted beforehand to suit
the estate and circumstances of the deceased, is almost universal; and
so essential to the funeral-rite is the formal lamentation that there
are actually women whose profession it is to intone dirges and who are
hired for the occasion. These professional mourners (μυρολογήτριαις
or μυρολογίστριαις) take their seats round the corpse in order of
seniority and assist the wife, mother, sisters, cousins, and aunts, who
also take their seats according to degree of kinship (the head of the
bier being of course the place of honour), to keep up an incessant flow
of lamentation. The scene differs in no detail, save that the hired
mourners now are always women, from that which was enacted round the
body of Hector. There too ‘they set singers to lead the lamentation,’
and of the women present it was Andromache, the wife, who began the
wailing, Hecuba, the mother, who followed next, and Helen whose voice
was heard third and last[931]. The singers who led the lamentation
were probably then as now hired, for Plato speaks of paid minstrels
at funerals using a particular style of music known as Carian[932]--a
custom suggestive of antiquity; and in all probability the singing of
set dirges, which Solon tried to suppress, was the recognised business
of professional and paid mourners; for dirges premeditated by the
relatives would have been less objectionable, one may suppose, than
their hysterical improvisations. What success his legislation obtained
in Athens cannot now be ascertained; but the custom was undoubtedly
universal in Greece, and with the exception of the Ionian islands,
where the Venetians imitated Solon in sternly repressing what they
regarded as a scandal and a grave offence against public decency[933],
all parts of Greece still to some extent retain it; and it is likely
long to survive for the simple reason that lamentation has always
been held by the Greeks to be as essential to the repose of the dead
as burial. There is more than hazard in the repeated collocation of
ἄκλαυτος, ἄταφος, ‘unwept, unburied,’ in the tragedians[934]; there is
the religious idea that the dead need a twofold rite, both mourning and
interment.
The third point in the funeral customs to which Solon demurred was that
mourners attending the ceremony of lamentation misused the occasion by
wailing again for their own dead and neglecting him whose death had
brought them together. This practice was known to the Homeric age; for
while Briseïs ‘tore with her hands her breast and smooth neck and fair
face’ and with shrill wailing and tears made lament over Patroclus,
‘the women joined their groans to hers, for Patroclus in form, but each
really for their own losses[935].’ There is no intention of satire
here; it is simply a naïve touch in the picture of a familiar and
pathetic scene. Patroclus’ death furnished the excuse and the occasion
for tears, but most of those tears--pent up till they might flow freely
and without shame--were shed for nearer sorrows, dearer losses. To-day
the manner is the same. In some districts, as in Chios[936], a woman’s
desire to lament again over her own dead is recognised as so legitimate
that etiquette merely prescribes that she first must make mention of
the present dead and afterwards she is free to mourn for whom she will;
and indeed throughout Greece the opportunity for rehearsing former
sorrows is rarely neglected.
Now when in these details that have been enumerated (as well as in
many others such as the washing, arraying, and crowning of the dead
body, the antiquity of which will be treated in another chapter[937])
that portion of ancient usage which is known from literary sources is
found surviving, point for point identical, as a portion of modern
usage, then the defect of ancient literary sources is best and most
reasonably supplemented from present observations. Thus we know from
the _Iliad_ that the women of the Homeric age used Patroclus’ funeral
as an occasion for renewing their wailing over their own losses; we
know too from Plutarch that in Solon’s age the same practice had
attained such excessive proportions that legislation intervened to
check it; the only detail which we are not told is whether the mourners
in commemorating thus their own dead friends were wont to entrust
messages for them to him about whose bier they were assembled. But
when the ancient picture of funeral-usage corresponds thus in every
distinguishable trait with the living scenes of to-day, clearly the
right way of restoring that which is obscured or obliterated in the
picture is to go and to see still enacted in all its traditional
fulness that very scene which the remnants of ancient literature
imperfectly pourtray. And by going and seeing we learn this--that one
strongly marked characteristic of funeral-rites is the belief, both
expressed in words and evidenced in acts, that he whose death has
brought the mourners together is a messenger who can and will carry
tidings to those who have preceded him to the world below. Then on
looking back we may feel confident that that aspect of death, which
prompted Polyxena to ask what message she should bear from Hecuba to
Hector and to Priam, was no mere poetic conceit imagined by Euripides,
but a common feature of the popular religion. The belief that the
passing spirit is a sure and unerring messenger to another world has
ever been the property of the Hellenic people.
Since then this belief existed in ancient times and the practice of
human sacrifice also existed, it remains to enquire whether the two
were correlated as cause and effect, as in my story from Santorini.
In this enquiry the reticence of ancient literature on the subject
precludes, as I have pointed out, actual certainty; but a passage from
Herodotus offers a clue which is worth following up.
In speaking of the Getae, a Thracian people, he remarks that they
believe in their own immortality. ‘They hold that they themselves do
not die, but the departed go to dwell with a god named Zalmoxis....
And every four years they choose one of their own number by lot and
despatch him as messenger to Zalmoxis, enjoining upon him the delivery
of their various requests. The manner of sending him is this. Some of
them are set to hold up three spears, while others take their emissary
by his arms and by his legs and swinging him up into the air let him
fall upon the spear-points. If he be pierced by them mortally, they
consider that their god is favourable to them; but if death do not
result, they lay the blame on the messenger himself and give him a bad
name; but having censured him they despatch another man instead. Their
injunctions are given to the messenger before he is killed[938].’
Now no one can fail to notice that Herodotus’ own interest in this
custom centres not in the idea which prompted it but in the manner
of carrying it out. His account of it reads as if he knew his Greek
readers to be familiar enough with the conception of human sacrifice
as a means of sending a messenger to some god; but he seems to be
contrasting the method adopted with some rite of which they were
cognisant. Tacit comparisons of foreign customs with those of Greece
occur all through Herodotus’ work. The points which he here seems
to emphasize are, first, that the messenger of the Getae was one
of themselves, not a prisoner of war or a slave; secondly, that
impaling was the ritual mode of death--a mode which the Greeks held
in abhorrence and would never have employed; and, thirdly, that the
messages were committed to the victim’s charge before and not after
death. The inference therefore is that Herodotus and the Greeks for
whom he was writing were accustomed to some rite which was inspired by
the same motive but was differently executed, the messenger being other
than a citizen, the method of sacrifice less barbarous to their minds
than impaling, and the messages being whispered, as at funerals, in the
dead victim’s ear; for of course, if the newly-dead could carry tidings
to men in the other world, they could equally well carry petitions to
gods.
Moreover my contention that Herodotus had in mind some Greek rite,
with which he was contrasting that of the Getae, is borne out by the
passage immediately following, in which the idea of comparison comes to
the surface. This Zalmoxis, he continues, according to the Greeks of
the Hellespont and the Euxine, was in origin not a god but a man. He
served for a time as a slave to Pythagoras in Samos, but having gained
his liberty and considerable wealth returned to Thrace and tried to
reclaim his countrymen from savagery and ignorance. The ways of life
and the doctrines which he inculcated were such as he had derived from
intercourse with Greeks and above all with Pythagoras, whose teachings
concerning immortality and a future life in a happier land he both
preached and (by the trick of hiding himself for three years in a
subterranean chamber and then re-appearing to those who had believed
him dead) illustrated in his own person. This story is neither accepted
nor rejected by Herodotus, but, estimating Zalmoxis to have been of
much earlier date than Pythagoras, he inclines slightly to the view
that Zalmoxis was really a native god of the Getae.
If we may assume this view to be correct, what significance is to be
attached to the story of Zalmoxis’ relations with Pythagoras? Evidently
it is one of those fictions by which the ancient Greeks loved to bring
the great figures of history into contact and personal acquaintance.
Pythagoras and Zalmoxis were two names with which was associated the
doctrine of immortality; some story therefore of their meeting was
desirable. And since Pythagoras was Greek, Zalmoxis barbarian, the
legend that the slave Zalmoxis was instructed by his master Pythagoras
was more flattering to Hellenic pride than the idea that Pythagoras in
his travels should have borrowed so important a doctrine from a foreign
religion; and if chronology did not concur--well, imagination always
had precedence of accuracy. To the Greeks who invented the tale fitness
was of more account than fact; and for us who dismiss the actual story
as mere fiction their sense of its fitness remains instructive. It
shows that the Greeks recognised the existence of specially close
relations between the religion of the Getae and their own--relations
attested probably not only by their common acceptance of the doctrine
of immortality, for that was the property of other peoples too, but
also by some resemblance between the rites of the Getae which were
based upon that doctrine and similar rites practised, as Herodotus
hints, by themselves.
Then again if the motive which we have found operating in Herodotus’
time among the Getae and operating also less than a century ago among
the peasants of Santorini was not the motive which prompted the
ancient Greeks to human sacrifice, how can we account for the long
perpetuation of the practice? It is practically certain that it was
tolerated in Athens during the period of her ascendency and highest
enlightenment[939]; but the repugnance which it inspired is proved
by the reticence which almost concealed the fact from posterity. It
was practised apparently in honour of Lycaean Zeus in the time of
Pausanias[940]; but the horror of it closed his lips concerning this
‘secret sacrifice.’ Suppose then that the motive for this sacrifice
had been the sating of a wolf-like god--for so Pausanias seems to have
understood the epithet Λυκαῖος[941]--with human flesh; could such
a rite have continued in any part of Greece for some six centuries
after it had become repugnant at least in Athens? Was the supposed
motive so sublime that it was held to hallow or even to mitigate the
barbarity of the act? Or did the custom live on without motive when an
anthropomorphic Zeus had superseded the old wolf-like deity? Custom,
it is true, often outlives its parent belief; but custom itself is
not invulnerable nor deathless if it has to battle against sentiments
irreconcilably opposed to that original belief. If the purpose of
propitiating a wolf-god with human flesh was rendered null and void by
the modifications which the conception of Lycaean Zeus had undergone,
how could the crude and savage rite have still flourished in the
uncongenial soil of an humaner civilisation--unless of course some
new stream of religious thought, instead of the original motive, had
watered and revived it? The very fact that so hideous a custom was so
long maintained in civilised Greece argues that, whatever the original
motive of it may have been, only some strong religious belief in the
necessity of it could have saved it from extinction in the historical
age. Surely it was some convincing plea of justification, and not mere
acquiescence in the inveteracy of custom, which caused Pausanias,
though he could not bring himself to describe or to discuss the horrid
sacrifice, yet to conclude his brief allusion to it with the words, ‘as
it was in the beginning and is now, so let it be[942].’
My reasons then for suggesting that one motive which led to human
sacrifice in ancient Greece was the belief that the victim could carry
a petition in person to the gods are threefold. First, that motive
was recognised as sufficient by a peasant of Santorini, who can only
have inherited the idea, just as all the ideas of divination have
been inherited, from the ancient world. Secondly, Herodotus appears
to contrast the method of such sacrifice among the Getae with the
method of some similar rite familiar to his audience and to imply that
the motive in each case was the same. Thirdly, without an adequate
motive--and it is hard to see what other motive could have been
adequate in the case which I have taken--it is almost inconceivable
that human sacrifice should have continued, in spite of the repugnance
which it certainly excited, for so long a time. For these reasons I
submit that the known belief of the ancients that the dead could serve
as messengers to the other world and their known custom of making human
sacrifice were correlated in the minds of thinking men in the more
civilised ages as cause and effect.
The reservation, ‘in the minds of thinking men in the more civilised
ages,’ is necessary; for I am at a loss how to determine whether
the belief in question was the original motive of the custom or a
later justification of the custom when its original motive had been
forgotten. Either the belief was coeval with the custom, and both were
inherited together from ancestors belonging to that ‘lower barbaric
stage’ of culture in which ‘men do not stop short at the persuasion
that death releases the soul to a free and active existence, but they
quite logically proceed to assist nature by slaying men in order
to liberate their souls for ghostly uses[943]’; or on the other
hand the custom of human sacrifice originated in some other motive
(such as satisfying the appetite of a beast-like god) and remaining
itself unchanged, while the conception of the god was gradually
humanised until his beast-form and therewith the original purpose of
the sacrifice were lost to memory, embarrassed a more enlightened
and humaner age until a new justification for it was found in the
messenger-functions of the dead.
In support of the former supposition it may be mentioned that tribes
far more barbarous than the Getae (who may have benefited from Greek
civilisation) have evolved the particular ghostly use of dead men’s
souls which we are considering. In Dahome, according to Captain Burton,
not only are a large number of wives, eunuchs, singers, drummers, and
soldiers slaughtered at the king’s funeral, that they may wait on him
in another world, but ‘whatever action, however trivial, is performed
by the (new) king, it must dutifully be reported to his sire in the
shadowy realm. A victim, almost always a war-captive, is chosen; the
message is delivered to him, an intoxicating draught of rum follows it,
and he is dispatched to Hades in the best of humours[944].’ There is
therefore no objection to the supposition that the Hellenic people too
from the days of prehistoric savagery were constantly actuated by this
motive.
On the other hand it is equally admissible to think that some cruder
motive first led the population of Greece to adopt the custom of human
sacrifice, and that it was only comparatively late in their history,
in an age when men’s humaner instincts were offended by the atrocity
of the rite and religious speculation on the subject of the soul’s
immortality was rife, that the old custom was invested with a new
meaning. Herodotus clearly recognised the connexion between the rite
of the Getae and the doctrine of immortality which was bound up with
the names of Zalmoxis and Pythagoras; and it is possible that in Greece
too the later justification of human sacrifice was founded on the same
doctrine. It would have been an irony of fate truly if a doctrine not
indeed founded, I think, but largely expounded by Pythagoras, who
forbade his followers to kill even animals for the purposes of food,
should have been so construed as to furnish a plea for the immolation
of men; but it is quite clear that a belief in the activity of the soul
after death, superimposed upon the desire for close communion between
men and gods, might have had that issue.
But, as I have said, I see no means of deciding at what date the
correlation of the conception of the dead as messengers and the custom
of human sacrifice as cause and effect first entered men’s minds; but
that in the historical age that correlation was acknowledged seems to
me highly probable. Such a view would certainly have militated against
the substitution of animal for human victims; for only a man would have
been felt to be capable of understanding the message and of delivering
it to the god to whom he was sent. This perhaps is the reason why the
use of a surrogate animal--though early introduced, as one version of
the story of Iphigenia proves--never met with universal acceptance, and
why also at the present day there remains a vague but real feeling that
for the proper laying of foundations a human victim is preferable to
beast or bird[945].
To single out particular instances of ancient sacrifice in which
this motive may have operated is, owing to the general absence of
data concerning the ritual, well-nigh impossible. The sacrifice to
Lycaean Zeus was performed upon an altar before which, according to
Pausanias[946], there stood two columns and upon them two gilded
eagles; and we may surmise that as the eagles represented to his mind
the messengers sent by Zeus to men, so did the human victim represent
the messenger of men to Zeus. But this can be only a conjecture, for
Pausanias’ silence admits of no more.
Of the ceremony connected with the _pharmakos_, or human scape-goat,
at Athens and elsewhere somewhat more is known. Certain persons
ungainly in appearance and debased in character were maintained at the
public expense, in order that, if any calamity such as a pestilence
should befall the city, they might be sacrificed to purify the city
from pollution. These persons were called φαρμακοί, ‘scape-goats,’ or
καθάρματα, ‘purifications[947].’ ‘If calamity overtook a city through
divine wrath, whether it were famine or pestilence or any other bane,’
a _pharmakos_ was led out to an appointed place for sacrifice. Cheese,
barley-cake, and dried figs were given to him. He was smitten seven
times on the privy parts with squills and wild figs and other wild
plants; and finally he was burnt with fire upon fuel collected from
wild trees, and the ashes were scattered to the winds and the sea[948].
At Athens, it appears, this rite was performed, not under the stress of
occasional calamity, but annually as part of the _Thargelia_, and was
therefore associated with Apollo[949].
All this evidence, with corroboration from other sources than those to
which I have referred, has recently been set forth by Miss Harrison,
who certainly has made out a strong case for the view which she thus
summarises: ‘The leading out of the _pharmakos_ is then a purely
magical ceremony based on ignorance and fear; it is not a human
sacrifice to Apollo or to any other divinity or even ghost, it is a
ceremony of physical expulsion[950].’ In other words, the _pharmakos_
was treated as an incarnation of the polluting influence from which the
city was suffering; and his expulsion (which only incidentally involved
his death) was the means of purification.
But there are certain points in the practice which incline me to put
forward another view of the _pharmakos_. His mission undoubtedly was to
purify the city; but the question to my mind is whether he was expelled
as a personification of the pollution or was led out and despatched to
the other world as a messenger on the city’s behalf to petition Apollo
or some other deity for purification from the defilement.
It might, I think, have been this Greek rite which was present to
Herodotus’ mind when he was describing human sacrifice among the Getae.
He was apparently familiar, we saw, with the conception of the human
victim as a messenger; and the contrasts in method which seem to have
struck him most would certainly have been provided by the ceremony
of the _pharmakos_. The Getae chose the victim by lot from among
themselves; the Athenians apparently selected some deformed or criminal
slave--one of the very scum of the population. The Getae impaled their
messenger upon the spears of warriors; the Athenians treated the
_pharmakos_ as a burnt-sacrifice. The Getae entrusted their messages
to the victim before he was slain; did the Athenians perchance whisper
their petitions for purification in the ear of the dead _pharmakos_ as
he lay on the pyre? Was he the messenger whose treatment Herodotus had
in mind?
There are certain points in the ritual itself which make for that view.
The _pharmakos_ was maintained for a time at the public cost. Why so?
A kindred custom of Marseilles in ancient times supplies the answer.
‘Whenever the inhabitants of Marseilles suffer from a pestilence, one
of the poorer class offers himself to be kept at the public expense and
fed on specially pure foods. After this has been done he is decorated
with sacred boughs and clad in holy garments, and led about through
the whole city to the accompaniment of curses, in order that upon him
may fall all the ills of the whole city, and thus he is cast headlong
down[951].’ The _pharmakos_ was therefore publicly maintained in order
that he might be purified by diet. Again, we know, the _pharmakos_
was provided before the sacrifice with cheese, barley-cake, and dried
figs--pure food, it would seem, with which to sustain himself on his
journey to the other world. Again, he was smitten seven times on the
privy parts with squills and branches of wild fig and other wild
plants. Why with squill and wild fig? Because plants of this kind were
purgative, as Miss Harrison[952] very clearly points out. Among other
evidences of the existence of this idea, Lucian[953] makes Menippus
relate how before he was allowed to consult the oracle of the dead he
was “purged and wiped clean and consecrated with squill and torches.”
And why on the privy parts? Because sexual purity was required. When
Creon was bidden to sacrifice a son for the salvation of his city
in a time of calamity such as commonly called for the sacrifice of
a _pharmakos_, Haemon was refused because of his marriage[954], and
Menoeceus was the only pure victim. And why beaten at all? Because
again, as Miss Harrison shows[955], the act of beating was expulsive of
evil and pollution. So then the chief part of the ritual was devoted to
purifying the _pharmakos_ himself.
But if the _pharmakos_ was thus himself made pure, how could his
expulsion purify the city? How could a man deliberately cleansed by
every religious or magical device serve as the embodiment of that
pollution of which the city sought to be rid? Miss Harrison[956] seeks
to explain this difficulty on the grounds of that combination of the
notions ‘sacred’ and ‘accursed,’ ‘pure’ and ‘impure,’ which the savage
describes in the word ‘taboo.’ But the notion of ‘taboo,’ though
complex, is not illogical; anything supernatural, which when properly
used or respected is holy, is logically enough believed to be fraught
with a curse for those who misuse or disregard it. But deliberately
to purify that which is to be the embodiment of defilement is not
the outcome of a complex but logical primitive notion; it is simply
illogical.
The view of the rite then which I propose is briefly this. The
_pharmakos_ was originally a messenger, representative of a whole
people, carrying to some god their petition for deliverance from any
great calamity; and, that he might be fitted to enter the presence
of the god, he was purified, like Menippus before he was allowed to
approach even an oracle, by every known means. But the office of
_pharmakos_ did not always remain a post of honour. It was naturally
not coveted by those who found any pleasure in life; and gradually the
duty devolved upon the lowest of the low. Instead of an Iphigenia or
a Menoeceus the people’s chosen representative was some criminal or
slave, and the personality of the messenger overshadowed the character
of his office. The original purport of the rite was forgotten. Instead
of being honoured as the people’s ambassador, specially purified for
his mission of intercession with the gods, he was deemed an outcast
by whose removal the people could rid themselves of pollution. Thus
the religious rite lost its true motive and degenerated into a magical
ceremony of riddance.
That this debased idea was the vulgar interpretation of the rite in
historical Athens is absolutely proved by a passage from Lysias’
speech against Andocides: ‘We needs must hold that in avenging
ourselves and ridding ourselves of Andocides we purify the city and
perform apotropaic ceremonies and solemnly expel a _pharmakos_ and rid
ourselves of a criminal; for of this sort the fellow is[957].’ But the
whole ritual forms a protest against that idea. Its keynote was the
sanctification, not the degradation, of the _pharmakos_. In Marseilles
indeed the people’s change of attitude towards the messenger whom they
so scrupulously purified had gone so far that imprecations upon him
were substituted for the prayers which he should have been bidden to
carry; but in Athens and in Ionia the ritual itself, so far as we know,
contained no suggestion of contempt or hatred of the victim. It was
only the appearance and the character of those who were selected as
_pharmakoi_ which made of the word a term of vulgar abuse such as we
find it to be in Aristophanes[958]; for the scattering of the victim’s
ashes to the winds and waves must not be interpreted as an act denoting
any abhorrence of the dead man. Its significance is rather this.
Religious motives had involved an act of bloodshed, and the people who
had performed it as a religious duty were, like Orestes, none the less
guilty of blood. In any case of blood-guilt it was held prudent for
the guilty party to take precautions against his victim’s vengeance;
and one means to this end was, as we shall see later, to burn the body
and scatter its ashes. In the modern story from Santorini there is a
precaution mentioned which has precisely the same object; the victim’s
hands, as well as his head, were cut off. This, as I shall show later,
is a survival of the old μασχαλισμός or mutilation of murdered men,
by which they were rendered innocuous, if they should return from the
grave, and incapable of vengeance upon their murderers. There is then,
I repeat, nothing in the ritual itself which suggests any contempt or
hatred of the victim, as there assuredly would have been if from the
first he had been the incarnation of the city’s defilement.
Possibly then the _pharmakos_ was originally a messenger from men
to gods, sent in any time of great calamity and peril; possibly too
this significance of the rite had not in Herodotus’ time been wholly
supplanted by the lower view to which Lysias gave utterance. Lysias
was addressing a jury and abusing an opponent; a vulgar and base
presentment of the _pharmakos_ suited the occasion. But sober and
reflective men may still have read in the ritual its early meaning and
have recognised in the _pharmakos_, for all his sorry appearance, the
purified representative of a people sent by them to lay their prayers
before some god.
This, I am aware, is a suggestion and no more. To prove the existence
of this motive underlying any given case of human sacrifice in ancient
times is, owing to the meagre character of the data, impossible. But
since at any rate the conception of the dead as messengers was known
to the ancients--for that much, I think, I have proved--the suggestion
deserves consideration. If it be right, it shows that even the most
ugly and repulsive ceremonies of Greek worship need not be regarded as
damning refutation of the beauty of Greek religion. Though the act of
human sacrifice is horrible, the motive for it may have been sublime.
Where else in the civilised world is the faith which whispers messages
in a dead ear? Who shall cast the first stone at those who in this
faith dared to speed their messenger upon the road of death? Surely
such a deed is the crowning act of a faith which by dreams and oracles,
by auspices and sacrificial omens, has ever sought after communion with
the gods.
Yet no, that faith aspired even higher; another chapter will treat of
a sacrament which foreshadowed not merely the colloquy of men with
gods as of servants with masters, but a closer communion between them,
the communion of love; for, as Plato says in the text which heads
this chapter, ‘all sacrifices and all the arts of divination, wherein
consists the mutual communion of gods and men, are for nought else but
the guarding and tending of Love.’
FOOTNOTES:
[787] Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 185, with reading οὐδὲ θεῶν ὄπα εἰδότες.
[788] Βάκχος and Βάκχη, cf. Eur. _H. F._ 1119.
[789] _De divinatione_, I. 3.
[790] _op. cit._ I. 18.
[791] _Prom. Vinct._ 485-99.
[792] Suid. _Lex._ s.v. οἰωνιστική.
[793] Cic. _de Divin._ I. 4.
[794] _Ibid._ I. 6 and 18.
[795] Above, p. 281.
[796] Cf. Lucian, _Philopseudes_, 19 and 20.
[797] See above p. 60.
[798] Nov. 26.
[799] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηναίων, III. p. 19.
[800] Cf. Cic. _de Divinat._ I. 18.
[801] The shift of accent is curious. It may be some result of dialect,
but is not explained.
[802] e.g. Hom. _Od._ XVIII. 116.
[803] At midsummer. The name of the custom ὁ κλήδονας is sometimes
given as a title to the saint himself; and from his willingness to
enlighten enquirers concerning their future lot he is also named
sometimes ὁ Φανιστής (the enlightener) and ὁ Ῥιζικάς (from ῥίζικο,
‘lot’ or ‘destiny’), Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχέλαος, ἡ Σινασός, p. 86.
[804] Sonnini de Magnoncourt, _Voyage en Grèce et en Turquie_, II. pp.
126-7.
[805] In the _Iliad_ it is not found. Cf. Bouché Leclercq, _Hist. de la
Divination_, I. p. 156.
[806] Hom. _Od._ XVII. 114 ff. Cf. also _Od._ XX. 98 ff.
[807] For examples see Herod. V. 72, VIII. 114, IX. 64, 91; Xenoph.
_Anab._ I. 8. 16. Cf. Bouché Leclercq, _op. cit._ I. p. 157. The word
φήμη is in some of these passages used in the sense of κληδών.
[808] Paus. VII. 22. 2, 3.
[809] Le Bas et Waddington, _Voyage Archéologique_, V. 1724^a.
[810] Paus. IX. 11. 7. Cf. Bouché Leclercq, _Hist. de la Divin._ I. p.
159 and II. p. 400.
[811] Paus. _ibid._
[812] The proper precaution is prescribed in the couplet, ’στὸ δρόμο
σὰν ἰδῆς παπᾶ, | κράτησ’ τ’ ἀρχίδι̯α σου καλά. _Si per viam sacerdoti
occurres, testiculos tuos teneto._
[813] γαϊδοῦρι με συμπάθειο, ‘a donkey, with your leave.’ So also often
in mentioning the number ‘three,’ and sometimes with ‘five.’
[814] Aristoph. _Aves_, 720.
[815] _Eccles._ 792.
[816] Theophr. _Char._ 16. 1.
[817] _Ibid._
[818] _op. cit._ 16. 3.
[819] Cf. Suidas, s.v. οἰωνιστική.
[820] Bouché Leclercq, _op. cit._ I. p. 129.
[821] Assuming derivation from οἶος, as υἱωνός from υἱός, κοινωνός from
κοινός.
[822] Plutarch, _de solertia animalium_, cap. 20 (p. 975).
[823] Bouché Leclercq, _Hist. de la Divin._ I. p. 133-4.
[824] e.g. Hom. _Il._ XXIV. 310.
[825] Hom. _Il._ VIII. 247.
[826] _Etymol. Magn._ p. 619, s.v. οἰωνοπόλος.
[827] Apoll. Rhod. III. 930.
[828] Ovid, _Metam._ II. 548 sqq.
[829] Hom. _Od._ XV. 526.
[830] Hom. _Il._ X. 274.
[831] Plutarch, _Pyth. Orac._ cap. 22.
[832] Paroemiogr. Graec. I. pp. 228, 231, 352.
[833] περὶ ὠμοπλατοσκοπίας καὶ οἰωνοσκοπίας.
[834] Suid., _Lexicon_, s.v. οἰωνιστική.
[835] _op. cit._ § 2.
[836] Cf. Bouché Leclercq, _op. cit._ I. p. 140, note 2.
[837] Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 745.
[838] The identification of the birds named by even the more
intelligent peasants is necessarily uncertain. The name κουκουβάγια
is seemingly onomatopoeic, suggesting the hooting of the owl, but is
generally reserved to the brown owl.
[839] _op. cit._ § 2.
[840] In the dialects of Scyros and other Aegean islands, κ before the
sounds of ε and ι is regularly softened to τσ. The ρ has, as often,
suffered metathesis.
[841] Hom. _Od._ XV. 524 ff.
[842] Derivation from χαρά, instead of Χάρος, and πουλί is possible,
but less likely. It would then be an euphemistic name, ‘bird of joy.’
An owl named στριγλοποῦλι (on which see above, p. 180) appears to be
a semi-mythical bird chiefly found in Hades; it is possibly identical
with ‘Charon’s bird.’
[843] Cf. Ἐμαν. Μανωλακάκης, Καρπαθιακά, p. 126.
[844] _Il._ VII. 184.
[845] _Od._ XVII. 365.
[846] _Il._ I. 597.
[847] Βικέντιος Κορνάρος, Ἐρωτόκριτος, p. 320.
[848] Aristot. _Hist. An._ IX. 1.
[849] Cf. Aesch. _Sept._ 24, Soph. _Antig._ 999 sqq.
[850] Origen, _contra Cels._ IV. 88.
[851] _Homeric Hymn to Demeter_, 46.
[852] e.g. Passow, _Popul. Carm._ nos. 122, 123, 213, 232, 234, 235,
251 _et passim_.
[853] A. Luber in a monograph _Die Vögel in den historischen Liedern
der Neugriechen_, pp. 6 ff., notes the impossibility of determining in
many cases whether a real bird or a scout is meant.
[854] Passow, _Popul. Carm._ no. 415, vv. 5-7. Cf. 413, 414.
[855] _Ibid._ no. 410.
[856] ξεφτέρι (probably a diminutive from ὀξύπτερος), a ‘falcon,’ is a
favourite name for the warrior, just as the humbler πουλί, ‘bird,’ is
used for ‘scout.’
[857] With reference to Ibrahim’s Egyptian troops.
[858] Passow, _Popul. Carm._ no. 256.
[859] Cic. _de Divin._ I. 52, II. 12, 15, 16, 17. Cf. Bouché Leclercq,
_Hist. de la Divin._ I. p. 167.
[860] Plato, _Tim._ 71 c.
[861] Philostr. _Vit. Apollon._ VIII. 7. 49-52. Cf. Bouché Leclercq,
_op. cit._ I. p. 168.
[862] For authorities on this point see Bouché Leclercq, _op. cit._ I.
p. 170.
[863] Cf. _ibid._ p. 169.
[864] K. O. Müller (_die Etrusker_, II. p. 187) places the introduction
of the custom in the sixth century B.C.
[865] Bybilakis, _Neugriechisches Leben_, p. 49 (1840).
[866] Περὶ ὠμοπλατοσκοπίας καὶ οἰωνοσκοπίας, § 1.
[867] Λαμπρίδης, Ζαγοριακά, p. 210. No details are given.
[868] Λαμπρίδης, Ζαγοριακά, p. 176.
[869] The writer does not actually mention the two things in connexion.
He belongs to that class of modern Greek writers who exhibit their
own intellectual emancipation by deploring or deriding popular
superstitions, and wastes so much energy therein that he fails to
note such points of interest. But, since it is not probable that the
peasants of Epirus eat meat more often than other Greek peasants, the
connexion of the sacrifice and the divination may, I think, be assumed.
[870] Certain details of the art as practised in Macedonia are given by
Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 96. But, as they may in part be due
to Albanian influence there, I have not made use of them.
[871] Περὶ ὠμοπλατοσκοπίας κ.τ.λ. _l. c._
[872] Reading ἄλλα γὰρ for ἀλλὰ γὰρ of Codex Vindobonensis, as
published in _Philologus_, 1853, p. 166.
[873] The word is ῥάχις. This in relation to the body generally means
the ‘spine,’ but can be used of any ridge (as of a hill), and so here,
I suppose, of the ridge of bone along the shoulder-blade.
[874] So I understand the somewhat obscure sentence, εἰ μὲν γὰρ
μεταξὺ τοῦ ὠμοπλάτου δύο ὑμένες ἐξ ἀμφοτέρων μερῶν τῆς ῥάχεως κ.τ.λ.,
conjecturing οἱ before μεταξὺ, where Codex Vindob. has corruptly εἰ.
[875] _Prom. Vinct._ 493.
[876] Pausan. VI. 2. 5.
[877] Tatian, _adv. Graecos_, I. Cf. Bouché Leclercq, _Hist. de la
Divin._ I. p. 170.
[878] In Zagorion in Epirus, the ram is sacrificed on the entrance
of the bride to her new home (cf. the sacrifice of a cock mentioned
below). Λαμπρίδης, Ζαγοριακά, p. 183.
[879] Curtius Wachsmuth, _Das alte Griechenland im Neuen_, p. 86.
[880] In Macedonia the weasel is said on the contrary to be a good
omen. Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 108.
[881] Λαμπρίδης, Ζαγοριακά, p. 203.
[882] Theophr. _Char._ 16.
[883] Theocr. _Id._ II. 35.
[884] So too in antiquity apparently according to Propertius IV. (V.)
3. 60; Ovid (_Heroid._ XIX. 151) on the contrary reckons it a good omen.
[885] Theocr. _Id._ III. 37 ἄλλεται ὀφθαλμός μευ ὁ δεξιός· ἆρά γ’
ἰδησῶ | αὐτάν; the order of the words, it will be seen, justifies the
emphasis which I have given to δεξιός and to αὐτάν.
[886] _Dialog. Meretric._ 9. 2.
[887] The significance of right and left in this case is reversed in
Macedonia (cf. Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 112). But in all these
instances I am only giving what I have found to be the commonest form
of the superstition in Greece as a whole.
[888] Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 111.
[889] The word ψοφῶ is properly used only of the dying of animals.
[890] ἐπέπταρε πᾶσιν ἔπεσσιν.
[891] Hom. _Od._ XVII. 539 ff. Cf. Xenoph. _Anab._ III. 2. 9 and
Catull. XLV. 9 and 18.
[892] See above, p. 304.
[893] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθηναίων, III. p. 22.
[894] e.g. at the oracle of Hermes Agoraeus at Pherae the enquirer
performed the whole ceremony required and obtained his response without
the intervention of any priest or seer. Cf. above, p. 305.
[895] See above, p. 121.
[896] See above, p. 55.
[897] Cf. an article by Ἀντ. Μηλιαράκης, τὸ ἐν Ἀμοργῷ Μαντεῖον τοῦ
Ἁγίου Γεωργίου τοῦ Βαλσαμίτου, in Περιοδικὸν τῆς Ἑστίας, no. 411, 13th
Nov. 1883.
[898] Le Père Robert (Sauger), _Histoire nouvelle des anciens ducs
et autres souverains de l’Archipel_ (Paris, 1699) pp. 196-198. Cf.
Tournefort, _Voyage du Levant_, I. pp. 281 ff.; Sonnini de Magnoncourt,
_Voyage en Grèce et en Turquie_, vol. I. p. 290.
[899] Bouché Leclercq, _Hist. de la Divin._ I. p. 187.
[900] Pausan. III. 23. 8.
[901] _De sacrificiis_, p. 12.
[902] _Ibid._ cap. 2.
[903] Plato, _Sympos._ p. 188.
[904] Hom. _Il._ IX. 497 ff.
[905] See above, pp. 322-3 and 326.
[906] See above, p. 265.
[907] See above, pp. 58-9.
[908] Ancient offerings of this type, as found at Epidaurus, should
not I think be grouped all together as thank-offerings; many of them
belonged probably to the propitiatory class.
[909] See above, p. 121.
[910] See above, p. 145.
[911] See above, p. 201.
[912] Formerly (and again latterly) called Thera.
[913] Le père Richard, _Relation de ce qui s’est passé à Sant-Erini_,
p. 23.
[914] Called by him ὄρος τοῦ ἁγίου Στεφάνου; but the fact that there is
only this one mountain in the island and that it still has a chapel of
St Stephen on it places the identification beyond all doubt.
[915] This phrase as noted down by me from memory along with the rest
of the story immediately after my interview is, I believe, verbally
exact. The old man’s words were ἐσκεφτήκαμε λοιπὸν κι’ ἀποφασίσαμε
νὰ στείλουμε ἄνθρωπο ’στὸν Ἅγι’ Νικόλα, γιὰ νά τον παρακαλέσῃ νὰ
ἐπιτυχαίνουνε τὰ καράβι̯α μας στὸν πόλεμο.
[916] See above, p. 55.
[917] The term ὁ θεός could not have been intended to apply to St
Nicolas; although the saints are practically treated as gods, they are
not so spoken of. See above, pp. 42 ff.
[918] Plutarch, _Pelop._ 21 (p. 229).
[919] Porph. _de Abstin._ 27 and 54.
[920] Tzetz. _Hist._ XXIII. 726 ff.
[921] Cf. Πολίτης, Μελέτη, II. p. 341.
[922] Ραζέλης, Μυρολόγια, p. 16. Πολίτης, Μελέτη, II. 343.
[923] _Popul. Carm._ no. 373.
[924] Ραζέλης, Μυρολόγια, p. 36. Cf. Πολίτης, Μελέτη, II. p. 342. The
line runs μαντατοφόρος φρόνιμος ’ποῦ πάει ’στὸν κάτω κόσμο.
[925] Eur. _Hec._ 422-3.
[926] Verg. _Aen._ II. 547 sqq.
[927] Diodor. Sic. V. 28.
[928] e.g. Fauriel, _Chants de la Grèce Moderne, Discours Prélimin._ p.
39. Rennell Rodd, _Customs and Lore of Mod. Greece_, p. 129.
[929] Dora d’Istria, _Les Femmes en Orient_, Bk. III. Letter 2.
[930] Plutarch, _Vita Solon._ 20.
[931] Hom. _Il._ XXIV. 719-775.
[932] Plato, _Leg._ VII. p. 801.
[933] An edict of the year 1662 preserved in the record-office (
ἀρχαιοφυλακεῖον) of Zante was shown and interpreted to me by Mons.
Λεωνίδας Χ. Ζώης, whose courtesy I wish here to acknowledge. The
record-office contains much valuable material for the study of the
period of Venetian supremacy in the Heptanesos.
[934] Soph. _Antig._ 29; Eur. _Hec._ 30; cf. also Soph. _Antig._ 203-4
τάφῳ μήτε κτερίζειν, μήτε κωκῦσαί τινα, and _Philoct._ 360.
[935] Hom. _Il._ XIX. 301-2.
[936] Κωνστ. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, pp. 335-6.
[937] See below, pp. 555 ff.
[938] Herodot. IV. 94.
[939] For the evidence see Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of
Greek Religion_, pp. 96 ff.
[940] Cf. Paus. VIII. 38. 7 and Porphyr. _de abstinentia_, II. 27.
[941] Paus. VIII. 2. 6 and VIII. 38. 7 and Frazer’s note _ad loc._
[942] Paus. VIII. 38. 7.
[943] Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. p. 458.
[944] Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. p. 462.
[945] See above, p. 264.
[946] Paus. VIII. 38. 7.
[947] Schol. ad Ar. _Eq._ 1136 in explanation of the word δημόσιοι.
[948] Tzetzes, _Hist._ XXIII. 726 ff. quoting Hipponax’ authority on
most points.
[949] Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, pp.
95 f.
[950] _op. cit._ p. 108.
[951] Serv. ad Verg. _Aen._ III. 75 as translated by Miss Harrison,
_op. cit._ p. 108.
[952] _op. cit._ p. 100.
[953] Luc. _Nek._ 7.
[954] Eur. _Phoen._ 944.
[955] _op. cit._ p. 100.
[956] _op. cit._ p. 108.
[957] Lysias, _c. Andoc._ 108. 4 as translated by Miss Harrison, _op.
cit._ p. 97
[958] _Ran._ 734, _Equ._ 1405 and fragm. 532 (from Miss Harrison, _op.
cit._ p. 97).