CHAPTER I.

Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion

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Prolegomena to the

Study of Greek Religion

by

JANE ELLEN HARRISON,

HON. D.LITT. (DURHAM), HON. LL.D. ABERDEEN,

FELLOW AND LECTURER OF NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

Cambridge

at the University Press

1903

Cambridge:

PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY,

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

ARTURO ET MARGARITAE VERRALL

HUIC AMICAE MEAE CONSTANTISSIMAE

ILLI ET AMICO ET MAGISTRO

HUNC LIBRUM DEDICO

INTRODUCTION.

The object of the following pages is to draw attention to some neglected

aspects of Greek religion.

Greek religion, as set forth in popular handbooks and even in more

ambitious treatises, is an affair mainly of mythology, and moreover of

mythology as seen through the medium of literature. In England, so far

as I am aware, no serious attempt has been made to examine Greek ritual.

Yet the facts of ritual are more easy definitely to ascertain, more

permanent, and at least equally significant. What a people _does_ in

relation to its gods must always be one clue, and perhaps the safest, to

what it _thinks_. The first preliminary to any scientific understanding

of Greek religion is a minute examination of its ritual.

This habit of viewing Greek religion exclusively through the medium of

Greek literature has brought with it an initial and fundamental error in

method—an error which in England, where scholarship is mainly literary,

is likely to die hard. For literature Homer is the beginning, though

every scholar is aware that he is nowise primitive; for theology, or—if

we prefer so to call it—mythology, Homer presents, not a starting-point,

but a culmination, a complete achievement, an almost mechanical

accomplishment, with scarcely a hint of _origines_, an accomplishment

moreover, which is essentially literary rather than religious, sceptical

and moribund already in its very perfection. The Olympians of Homer are

no more primitive than his hexameters. Beneath this splendid surface lies

a stratum of religious conceptions, ideas of evil, of purification, of

atonement, ignored or suppressed by Homer, but reappearing in later poets

and notably in Aeschylus. It is this substratum of religious conceptions,

at once more primitive and more permanent, that I am concerned to

investigate. Had ritual received its due share of attention, it had not

remained so long neglected.

I would guard against misapprehension. Literature as a starting-point

for investigation, and especially the poems of Homer, I am compelled to

disallow; yet literature is really my goal. I have tried to understand

primitive rites, not from love of their archaism, nor yet wholly from

a single-minded devotion to science, but with the definite hope that

I might come to a better understanding of some forms of Greek poetry.

Religious convention compelled the tragic poets to draw their plots

from traditional mythology, from stories whose religious content and

motive were already in Homer’s days obsolete. A knowledge of, a certain

sympathy with, the _milieu_ of this primitive material is one step to the

realization of its final form in tragedy. It is then in the temple of

literature, if but as a hewer of wood and drawer of water, that I still

hope to serve.

As the evidence to be set before the reader is necessarily somewhat

complex in detail, and the arguments of the successive chapters closely

interdependent, it may be well at the outset to state, as simply as may

be, the conclusions at which I have arrived, and to summarize briefly the

steps of the discussion.

* * * * *

In Chapter I. it is established that the Greeks themselves in classical

times recognized two forms of ritual, Olympian and Chthonic. It is

further seen that the characteristic ritual of Homeric days was of the

kind known to them as Olympian. Sacrifice in Homer takes the form of an

offering to the god to induce his favour. Its formulary is _do ut des_.

Moreover the sacrificial banquet to which the god is bidden is shared by

the worshipper. In sharp contradistinction to this cheerful sacrificial

feast, when we examine the supposed festival of Zeus at Athens, the

Diasia, we find rites of quite other significance; the sacrifice is a

holocaust, it is _devoted_, made over entirely to the god, unshared by

the worshipper, and its associations are gloomy. The rites of the Diasia,

though ostensibly in honour of Zeus, are found really to be addressed to

an underworld snake on whose worship that of Zeus has been superimposed.

In the three chapters that follow, on the festivals of the Anthesteria,

Thargelia, and Thesmophoria, held respectively in the spring, summer,

and autumn, the Olympian ritual superimposed is taken as known and only

alluded to in passing. The attention is focussed on the rites of the

underlying stratum.

In the Anthesteria, ostensibly sacred to Dionysos, the main ritual is

found to be that of the placation of ghosts. Ghosts, it is found, were

placated in order that they might be kept away; the formulary for these

rites is not, as with the Olympians, _do ut des_, but _do ut abeas_. The

object of these rites of Aversion, practised in the spring, is found to

be strictly practical; it is the promotion of fertility by the purgation

of evil influences.

The ritual of the Thargelia is even more primitive and plain-spoken.

In this festival of the early summer, ostensibly dedicated to Apollo,

the first-fruits of the harvest are gathered in. The main gist of the

festival is purification, necessary as a preliminary to this ingathering.

Purification is effected by the ceremonial of the pharmakos. Though the

festival in classical days was ‘sacred to’ Apollo, the pharmakos is

nowise a ‘human sacrifice’ to a god, but a direct means of physical and

moral purgation, and again with a view to the promotion and conservation

of fertility.

Thus far it will be seen that the rites of the lower stratum are

characterized by a deep and constant sense of evil to be removed and of

the need of purification for its removal; that the means of purification

adopted are primitive and mainly magical nowise affects this religious

content.

This practical end of primitive ceremonies, the promotion of fertility

by magical rites, comes out still more strongly in the autumn sowing

festival of the Thesmophoria. Here the women attempt, by carrying certain

magical _sacra_, the direct impulsion of nature. In connection with

these _sacra_ of the Thesmophoria the subject of ‘mysteries’ falls to be

examined. The gist of all primitive mysteries is found to be the handling

or tasting of certain _sacra_ after elaborate purification. The _sacra_

are conceived of as having magical, i.e. divine, properties. Contact

with them is contact with a superhuman potency, which is taboo to the

unpurified. The gist of a mystery is often the removal of a taboo. From

the Olympian religion ‘mysteries’ appear to have been wholly absent.

In Chapter V. we pass from ritual to theology, from an examination of

rites performed to the examination of the beings to whom these rites

were addressed. These beings, it is found, are of the order of sprites,

ghosts, and bogeys, rather than of completely articulate gods, their

study that of demonology rather than theology. As their ritual has been

shown to be mainly that of the Aversion of evil, so they and their

shifting attributes are mainly of malevolent character. Man makes his

demons in the image of his own savage and irrational passions. Aeschylus

attempts, and the normal man fails, to convert his Erinyes into Semnai

Theai.

In Chapter VI. the advance is noted from demonology to theology, from

the sprite and ghost to the human and humane god. The god begins to

reflect not only human passions but humane relations. The primitive

association of women with agriculture is seen to issue in the figures of

the Mother and the Maid, and later of the Mother and the Daughter, later

still in the numerous female trinities that arose out of this duality.

In Chapter VII. the passage from ghost to god is clearly seen, and the

humane relation between descendant and ancestor begets a kindliness which

mollifies and humanizes the old religion of Aversion. The culminating

point of the natural development of an anthropomorphic theology is here

reached, and it is seen that the goddesses and the ‘hero-gods’ of the

old order are, in their simple, non-mystic humanity, very near to the

Olympians.

* * * * *

At this point comes the great significant moment for Greece, the

intrusion of a new and missionary faith, the religion of an immigrant

god, Dionysos.

In Chapter VIII. the Thracian origin of Dionysos is established. In his

religion two elements are seen to coexist, the worship of an old god of

vegetation on which was grafted the worship of a spirit of intoxication.

The new impulse that he brought to Greece was the belief in _enthusiasm_,

the belief that a man through physical intoxication at first, later

through spiritual ecstasy, could pass from the human to the divine.

This faith might have remained in its primitive savagery, and therefore

for Greece ineffective, but for another religious impulse, that known to

us under the name of Orpheus. To the discussion of Orphism the last four

chapters IX.-XII. are devoted.

In Chapter IX. I have attempted to show that the name Orpheus stands for

a real personality. I have hazarded the conjecture that Orpheus came

from Crete bringing with him, perhaps ultimately from Egypt, a religion

of spiritual asceticism which yet included the ecstasy of the religion

of Dionysos. Chapter X. is devoted to the elucidation of the Orphic and

Dionysiac mysteries. It has been shown that before the coming of the

Orphic and Dionysiac religion the mysteries consisted simply in the

handling of certain _sacra_ after elaborate purification. By handling

these _sacra_ man came into contact with some divine potency. To this

rudimentary mysticism Orphism added the doctrine of the possibility of

complete union with the divine. This union was effected in the primitive

Cretan rite of the Omophagia by the physical eating of the god; union

with the divine was further symbolically effected by the rite of the

Sacred Marriage, and union by adoption by the rite of the Sacred Birth.

The mission of Orphism was to take these primitive rites, originally of

the crudest sympathetic magic, and inform them with a deep spiritual

mysticism. The rite of the Omophagia found no place at Eleusis, but the

other two sacramental rites of union, the Sacred Marriage and the Sacred

Birth, formed ultimately its central mysteries.

With the doctrine and ritual of union with the divine there came as

a necessary corollary the doctrine that man could attain the divine

attribute of immortality. Orphic eschatology is the subject of Chapter

XI. Its highest spiritual form, the belief that perfect purity issued

in divinity and hence in immortality, is found expressed in the Orphic

tablets. Its lower expression, the belief in a Hades of eternal

punishment as contrasted with the shadowy after-world of Homer, is seen

in the vases of Lower Italy and the eschatology denounced by Plato.

Finally in Chapter XII. it is shown how, as a concomitant to their

Eschatology, the Orphics, unlike Homer, evolved a Cosmogony, and with

this Cosmogony was ultimately bound up a peculiar and philosophic

theology. In the fifth century B.C. the puppet-show of the Olympians was

well-nigh played out, but the two gods of the Orphics remained potent.

In ritual they worshipped Dionysos, but their theoretical theology

recognized Eros as source of all things. The Eros of the Orphics was a

mystery-being, a _daimon_ rather than a _theos_, a potency wholly alien

to the clear-cut humanities of Olympus.

* * * * *

With the consideration of Orphism it has become, I hope, abundantly

clear why at the outset attention was focussed on the primitive rites of

Aversion and Purification rather than on the Service of the Olympians.

The ritual embodied in the formulary _do ut des_ is barren of spiritual

content. The ritual embodied in _do ut abeas_ contains at least the

recognition of one great mystery of life, the existence of evil. The

rites of the Olympians were left untouched by the Orphics; the rites

of purification and of sympathetic magic lent them just the symbolism

they needed. Moreover even in theology the crude forms of demons were

more pliant material for mysticism than the clear-cut limitations and

vivid personality of the Olympians. Orphism was the last word of Greek

religion, and the ritual of Orphism was but the revival of ancient

practices with a new significance.

* * * * *

The reader will note that in the pages that follow, two authors, Plutarch

and Euripides, have been laid under special contribution. Plutarch’s

gentle conservatism made him cling tenaciously to antique faith.

According to him, one function of religion was to explain and justify

established rites, and in the course of his attempted justification he

tells us many valuable ritual facts. Euripides, instant in his attack on

the Olympian gods, yet treats with respect the two divinities of Orphism,

Dionysos and Eros. I have suggested that, born as he was at Phlya, the

ancient home of Orphic mysteries, his attitude on this matter may have

been influenced by early associations. In any case, a religion whose

chief divinities were reverently handled by Euripides cannot be dismissed

as a decadent maleficent superstition.

* * * * *

I would ask that the chapters I have written be taken strictly as they

are meant, as Prolegomena. I am deeply conscious that in surveying

so wide a field I have left much of interest untouched, still more

only roughly sketched in. I wished to present my general theory in

broad outline for criticism before filling in details, and I hope in

the future to achieve a study of Orphism that may have more claim to

completeness. If here I have dwelt almost exclusively on its strength and

beauty, I am not unaware that it has, like all mystical religions, a weak

and ugly side.

* * * * *

If in these Prolegomena I have accomplished anything, this is very

largely due to the many friends who have helped me; the pleasant task

remains of acknowledging my obligations.

* * * * *

My grateful thanks are offered to the Syndics of the University Press

for undertaking the publication of this book; to the Syndics of the

University Library and the Fitzwilliam Museum for the courtesy they have

shown in allowing me free access to their libraries; to my own College,

which, by electing me to a Fellowship, has given me for three years the

means and leisure to devote myself to writing.

For the illustrations they have placed at my disposal I must record my

debt to the Trustees of the British Museum, to the Hellenic Society,

the German Archaeological Institute, and the École Française of Athens.

The sources of particular plates are acknowledged in the notes.

The troublesome task of drawing from photographs and transcribing

inscriptions has been most kindly undertaken for me by Mrs Hugh Stewart.

* * * * *

Passing to literary obligations, it will be evident that in the two first

chapters I owe much, as regards philology, to the late Mr R. A. Neil. His

friendship and his help were lost to me midway in my work, and that loss

has been irreparable.

It is a pleasure to me to remember gratefully that to Sir Richard Jebb I

owe my first impulse to the study of Orphism. The notes in his edition

of the _Characters_ of Theophrastos first led me as a student into the

by-paths of Orphic literature, and since those days the problem of

Orphism, though often of necessity set aside, has never ceased to haunt

me.

To Professor Ridgeway I owe much more than can appear on the surface. The

material for the early portion of my book was collected many years ago,

but, baffled by the ethnological problems it suggested, I laid it aside

in despair. The appearance of Professor Ridgeway’s article, ‘What people

made the objects called Mycenaean?’ threw to me an instant flood of light

on the problems of ritual and mythology that perplexed me, and I returned

to my work with fresh courage. Since then he has, with the utmost

kindness, allowed me to attend his professorial lectures and frequently

to refer to him my difficulties. I have thought it best finally to state

my own argument independently of his ethnological conclusions, first

because those conclusions are, at the time I write, only in part before

the public, but chiefly because I hoped that by stating my evidence

independently it might, in the comparatively narrow sphere in which

I work, offer some slight testimony to the truth of his illuminating

theories.

To all workers in the field of primitive religion Dr Frazer’s writings

have become so part and parcel of their mental furniture that special

acknowledgement has become almost superfluous. But I cannot deny myself

the pleasure of acknowledging a deep and frequent debt, the more as from

time to time I have been allowed to ask for criticism on individual

points, and my request, as the notes will show, has always met with

generous response.

Mr F. M. Cornford of Trinity College has, with a kindness and patience

for which I can offer no adequate thanks, undertaken the revision of

my proof-sheets. To him I owe not only any degree of verbal accuracy

attained, but also, which is much more, countless valuable suggestions

made from time to time in the course of my work. Many other scholars have

allowed me to refer to them on matters outside my own competency. Some of

these debts are acknowledged in the notes, but I wish specially to thank

Dr A. S. Murray, Mr Cecil Smith and Mr A. H. Smith of the British Museum

for constant facilities afforded to me in my work there, and Mr R. C.

Bosanquet and Mr M. Tod for help in Athens; and, in Cambridge, Dr Haddon,

Dr Hans Gadow, Mr Francis Darwin, Mr H. G. Dakyns and Mr A. B. Cook.

My debt to Dr A. W. Verrall is so great and constant that it is hard to

formulate. If in one part of my book more than another I am indebted to

him it is in the discussion of the Erinyes. Chapter V. indeed owes its

inception to Dr Verrall’s notes in his edition of the _Choephoroi_, and

its final form to his unwearied criticism. Throughout the book there is

scarcely a literary difficulty that he has not allowed me to refer to

him, and his sure scholarship and luminous perception have dissipated

for me many a mental fog.

Mr Gilbert Murray has written for me the critical Appendix on the

text of the Orphic tablets, a matter beyond my competence. Many verse

translations, acknowledged in their place, are also by him, and uniformly

those from the _Bacchae_ and _Hippolytus_ of Euripides. It is to Mr

Murray’s translation of the _Bacchae_ that finally, as regards the

religion of Dionysos, I owe most. The beauty of that translation, which

he kindly allowed me to use before its publication, turned the arduous

task of investigation into a labour of delight, and throughout the later

chapters of the book, the whole of which he has read for me in proof, it

will be evident that, in many difficult places, his sensitive and wise

imagination has been my guide.

JANE ELLEN HARRISON.

NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, _September 9, 1903_.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

OLYMPIAN AND CHTHONIC RITUAL.

Mr Ruskin on the absence of fear in the Greek genius,

Religion, to writers of the fifth century B.C., mainly a

matter of festivals. In the _Euthyphron_ religion is ‘doing

business with the gods,’ a form of ‘tendance’ (θεραπεία).

Contrast of δεισιδαιμονία, ‘fear of spirits.’ Plutarch on

‘fear of spirits.’ Distinction drawn by Isocrates and others

between Olympian and apotropaic ritual. Contrast between

‘Tendance’ (θεραπεία) and ‘Aversion’ (ἀποτροπή). Sacrifice

to Zeus in Homer is a banquet shared. Contrast of the ritual

of the Diasia. The holocaust or uneaten sacrifice. Ritual

of the Diasia addressed primarily to an underworld snake.

Superposition of the Homeric Zeus. Evidence of art. The ‘Dian’

fleece, not the ‘fleece of Zeus’ but the fleece of magical

purification. Examination of the Attic calendar. The names of

festivals not connected with the names of Olympian divinities.

The ritual of these festivals belongs to a more primitive

stratum than that of the Olympians, pp. 1-31.

CHAPTER II.

THE ANTHESTERIA. THE RITUAL OF GHOSTS AND SPRITES.

The Anthesteria, ostensibly dedicated to Dionysos, a spring

festival of the revocation and aversion of ghosts. Examination

of the rites of the three days. Meaning of the Chytroi, the

Choes and the Pithoigia. Derivation of the word _Anthesteria_.

Rites of purgation among the Romans in February. The Feralia

and Lupercalia. The ritual of ‘devotion’ (ἐναγισμοί).

Contrast of θύειν and ἐναγίζειν. The word θύειν used of burnt

sacrifice to the Olympians, the word ἐναγίζειν of ‘devotion’

to underworld deities. The ritual of ἀπόνιμμα. Gist of the

word ἐναγίζειν is purgation by means of placation of ghosts.

Contrast of ἱερεῖον, the victim sacrificed and eaten, with

σφάγιον, the victim sacrificed and ‘devoted.’ The σφάγια in

use for the taking of oaths, for purification, for omens, for

sacrifice to winds and other underworld powers. Elements of

‘tendance’ in the ritual of ‘aversion,’ pp. 32-74.

CHAPTER III.

HARVEST FESTIVALS. THE THARGELIA, KALLYNTERIA, PLYNTERIA.

The Thargelia an early summer festival of first-fruits. The

Eiresione. Object of the offering of first-fruits a release

from taboo. The Australian Intichiuma. Removal of taboo

developes into idea of consecration, dedication, sacrifice.

The material of sacrifice. The god fares as the worshipper,

but sometimes, from conservatism, fares worse. Instances in

ritual of survival of primitive foods. The οὐλοχύται, the

pelanos and the nephalia. The fireless sacrifice. The bringing

in of first-fruits preceded by ceremonies of purification.

The pharmakos. Details of the ritual. The pharmakos only

incidentally a ‘human sacrifice.’ Its object physical and

spiritual purgation. Meaning of the term. The pharmakos in

Egypt, at Chaeronea, at Marseilles. Analogous ceremonies. The

Charila at Delphi. The Bouphonia. The Stepterion. Further

ceremonies of purification. The Kallynteria, Plynteria,

Vestalia. General conclusion: in the Thargelia the gist of

sacrifice is purification, a magical cleansing as a

preparation for the incoming of first-fruits, pp. 75-119.

CHAPTER IV.

THE WOMEN’S FESTIVALS. THESMOPHORIA, ARREPHORIA, SKIROPHORIA,

STENIA, HALOA.

Importance of these festivals as containing the germ of

‘Mysteries.’ Detailed examination of the ritual of the

Thesmophoria. The Kathodos and Anodos, the Nesteia, the

Kalligeneia. Gist of the rites the magical impulsion of

fertility by burying _sacra_ in the ground. Magical rites

preceded by purification and fasting. Analogy of Arrephoria,

Skirophoria and Stenia with Thesmophoria. Meaning of the word

_Thesmophoria_, the carrying of magical _sacra_. Magical

spells, curses and law. θεσμός and νόμος. The curse and

the law. The Dirae of Teos. The Haloa, a festival of the

threshing-floor, later taken over by Dionysos. Tabooed foods.

Eleusinian Mysteries a primitive harvest-festival. Order of the

ritual. The pig of purification. Other rites of purification.

The _tokens_ of the mysteries. Ancient confessions rather

of the nature of _Confiteor_ than _Credo_. The fast and

the partaking of the _kykeon_. The Kernophoria. Ancient

mysteries in their earliest form consist of the tasting of

first-fruits and the handling of _sacra_ after preliminary

purification, pp. 120-162.

CHAPTER V.

THE DEMONOLOGY OF GHOSTS, SPRITES AND BOGEYS.

Primitive demonology constantly in flux. Various connotations

of the word Ker. The Ker as evil sprite, the Ker as bacillus of

disease. The Keres of Old Age and Death. The Ker as Harpy and

Wind-Daimon. The Ker as Fate in Homer and Hesiod. The Ker as

Gorgon. Origin of the Gorgoneion. Apotropaic masks. The Gorgon

developed from the Gorgoneion. The Graiae. The Evil Eye. The

Ker as Siren. The Sirens of Homer. Problem of the bird-form

in art. The Siren as midday daimon. The Siren on funeral

monuments. The bird-form of the soul in Greece and Egypt.

Plato’s Sirens. The Ker as Sphinx. Mantic aspect of Sphinx.

The Sphinx as Man-slaying Ker, as Funeral Monument. The Ker

as Erinys. The Erinyes as angry Keres. Erinys an adjectival

epithet. The Erinyes primarily the ghosts of slain men crying

for vengeance. The Erinyes developed by Homer and Herakleitos

into abstract ministers of vengeance. The Erinyes of Aeschylus

more primitive than the Erinyes of Homer. The blood-curse

in the _Choephoroi_. The Erinyes of the stage. The Erinyes

analogous to Gorgons and Harpies, but not identical. The

wingless Erinyes of Aeschylus. The winged Erinyes of later art.

The Poinae. The Erinys as snake. The _Semnai Theai_. New cult

at Athens. New underworld ritual. The transformation of Erinyes

into Semnai Theai. The Eumenides at Colonos, at Megalopolis,

at Argos, pp. 163-256.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MAKING OF A GODDESS.

Anthropomorphism. Gradual elimination of animal forms. The

gods begin to mirror human relations and at first those of

‘matriarchal’ type. The Mother and the Maid, two forms of

one woman-goddess. The Great Mother as Πότνια θηρῶν, as

Kourotrophos. Influence of agriculture. Relation of women

to primitive agriculture. Demeter and Kore as Mother and

Maid rather than Mother and Daughter. Gradual predominance

of the Maid over the Mother. The Anodos of the Maiden.

Influence of mimetic agricultural rites. The evidence of

vase-paintings. Pandora Mother and Maid. The Hesiodic story.

The Maiden-Trinities. Origin of Trinities from the duality

of Mother and Maid. Korai, Charites, Aglaurides, Nymphs. The

Judgment of Paris a rivalry of three dominant Korai—Hera,

Athene and Aphrodite. Evidence of vase-paintings. Development

of Athene, her snake- and bird-forms. Athene finally a frigid

impersonation of Athens. Developement of Aphrodite. Myth of her

sea-birth. Its origin in a ritual bath. The Ludovisi throne.

Ultimate dominance of the mother-form of Aphrodite as Genetrix.

Hera as maiden. Her marriage with Zeus. Intrusion of Olympian

‘patriarchal’ cults on the worship of the Mother and the Maid.

Evidence from art, pp. 257-322.

CHAPTER VII.

THE MAKING OF A GOD.

The passage from ghost to god more plainly seen in the

cult of heroes than in that of heroines. Instances from

heroine-worship. Helen and Hebe. The hero as snake. Origin of

the bearded snake. Heroes called by adjectival cultus-titles

rather than personal names. The ‘nameless’ gods of the

Pelasgians. The name ‘hero’ adjectival. Origin of supposed

‘euphemistic’ titles. The ‘Blameless’ Aigisthos. The

‘Blameless’ Salmoneus. Antagonism between the gods proper

of the Olympian system and local heroes. Beneficence of

the heroes. Asklepios and the heroes of healing. Asklepios

originally a hero-snake. Evidence of votive reliefs. Amynos and

Dexion. The ‘Hero-Feasts.’ Cult of Hippolytus. Zeus Philios.

Hero-Feasts lead to Theoxenia. Type of the Hero-Feast taken

over by Dionysos. Evidence from reliefs, pp. 323-363.

CHAPTER VIII.

DIONYSOS.

Mystical character of the religion of Dionysos. Dionysos

an immigrant Thracian. The legend of Lycurgus. Historical

testimony. In Euripides Dionysos an oriental. Explanation

of apparent discrepancy. The Satyrs. Analogy with the

Centaurs. The Satyrs represent an indigenous people who became

worshippers of Dionysos. Cheiron the good Centaur. The Maenads

not merely mythological. The Thyiades of historical times. The

Maenads, Thyiades, Bacchants, women possessed by Dionysos. They

are the nurses of the god and worship him as Liknites. Dionysos

son of Semele. Semele the Earth-Mother. Cult of thunder-smitten

places. Dionysos son of Zeus. Zeus adopts Dionysos as god

of the grape. Examination of the titles Bromios, Braites,

Sabazios. All three are titles of a god of a cereal intoxicant.

The cereal intoxicant preceded in the North the intoxicant

made from the grape. Tragedy the song of the cereal drink.

Dionysos emerges from obscurity as god of the grape. Dionysos

the tree and vegetation god. Evidence of art. The ‘Principle

of Moisture.’ Dionysos the Bull-god. Animal incarnations. The

‘return to nature.’ Dithyrambos and the Dithyramb. Dithyrambos

the Mystery-Babe. Plutarch on the Dithyramb. Possible

association with the Bee-Maidens, the Thriae. Moderation of

the Greek in the use of wine. Sacramentalism of eating and

drinking. The ecstasy of asceticism, pp. 364-454.

CHAPTER IX.

ORPHEUS.

Problem of relation between Orpheus and Dionysos. Analogy

and contrast between the two. Orpheus a Thracian; a magical

musician. Possible Cretan origin of Orpheus. The island route

from Crete to Thrace. The death of Orpheus. Representations on

vase-paintings. Orpheus an enemy of the Maenads. His burial and

the cult at his tomb. His oracle at Lesbos. His relation to

Apollo. Orpheus a real man, a reformer, and possibly a martyr;

heroized but never deified. Orpheus as reformer of Bacchic

rites. Influence of Orphism at Athens. New impulse brought

by Orphism into Greek religion. Spiritualization of the old

Dionysiac doctrine of divine possession. Contrast with the

anthropomorphism of Homer and Pindar. Consecration the

keynote of Orphic religion, pp. 455-478.

CHAPTER X.

ORPHIC AND DIONYSIAC MYSTERIES.

Our chief source a fragment of the _Cretans_ of Euripides.

The Idaean Zeus the same as Zagreus. The _Omophagia_ or

feast of raw flesh. The bull-victim. Bull-worship in

Crete. The Minotaur. Evidence of Clement of Alexandria

as to the _Omophagia_. Narrative of Firmicus Maternus.

Analogous _Omophagia_ among primitive Arabs. Account of

Nilus. Sacramental union with the god by eating his flesh.

Reminiscences of human sacrifice in Greek tradition. The

Titans and the infant Zagreus. The Titans white-earth men. The

smearing with gypsum. The Orphic doctrine of the dismembered

god. The Mountain Mother. Her image on a Cretan seal

impression. The Kouretes her attendants. The final consecration

of the mystic. Meaning of the word ὁσιωθείς, ‘consecrated.’

Orphic taboos. Orphic formalism. Parody of Orphic rites of

initiation in the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes. The ‘shady side’

of Orphism. The Liknophoria. Dionysos Liknites. Symbolism

of the _liknon_. Purification, rebirth. The _liknon_ and

the Homeric _ptyon_. The _liknon_ in marriage ceremonies.

The Sacred Marriage. Orphic elements in Eleusinian Ritual.

Iacchos at Eleusis. The Liknophoria at Eleusis. The Sacred

Marriage and the Sacred Birth at Eleusis. Thessalian influence,

Brimo. Thracian influence, Eumolpos. Dionysos at Eleusis. As

child, and as grown man. The pantomime element in the cult

of Dionysos. Its influence on the Eleusinian Mysteries, pp. 479-572.

CHAPTER XI.

ORPHIC ESCHATOLOGY.

The tablets our chief source for Orphic doctrines. Their

_provenance_ and general character. The Petelia tablet of

the British Museum. Analogous tablets from Crete. The Well

of Mnemosyne. Parallels in Fiji and Egypt. Lethe in Greek

Literature. Lethe in the ritual of Trophonios. The river of

Eunoë, Good Consciousness, in Dante. The Sybaris tablets. The

tablet of Caecilia Secundina. The confession of Ritual Acts

on the Sybaris tablets. The attainment of divinity through

purification. The escape from the Wheel. The kid and the

milk. The formulary of adoption. Eschatology on Orphic vases

from Lower Italy. Orpheus in Hades. The tortured criminals.

Developement by Orphism of doctrine of eternal punishment.

The Danaides and the Uninitiated, pp. 573-624.

CHAPTER XII.

ORPHIC COSMOGONY.

Orphic theology as seen in the Hymns. The World-Egg. Use of

eggs in Orphic ritual of purification. Birth of Eros from

World-Egg. Complex origin of Orphic Eros. Eros as Herm. Eros

as Ker of life. Evidence of art. Eros as Ephebos. Eros and

the Earth-Mother. Eros present at the Anodos. Evidence of

art. The Mystery-cult at Phlya, the birthplace of Euripides.

Pythagorean revival of the cult of the Mother. The mystic Eros

as Phanes and Protogonos. _Contaminatio_ of Eros and Dionysos.

Popular Orphism on vases from Thebes. Eros as Proteurhythmos.

The divinities of Orphism are demons rather than gods. Orphism

resumed, pp. 625-659.

CRITICAL APPENDIX ON THE ORPHIC TABLETS pp. 660-674.

INDEX

I. Greek pp. 675, 676.

II. General pp. 676-680.

CHAPTER I.

OLYMPIAN AND CHTHONIC RITUAL.

‘δαίμοσι μειλιχίοισιν ἱλάσματα καὶ μακάρεσσιν

οὐρανίοις.’

In characterizing the genius of the Greeks Mr Ruskin says: ‘_there is no

dread in their hearts; pensiveness, amazement, often deepest grief and

desolation, but terror never. Everlasting calm in the presence of all

Fate, and joy such as they might win, not indeed from perfect beauty,

but from beauty at perfect rest._’ The lovely words are spoken of course

mainly with reference to art, but they are meant also to characterize the

Greek in his attitude towards the invisible, in his religion—meant to

shew that the Greek, the favoured child of fortune yet ever unspoilt, was

exempt from the discipline to which the rest of mankind has been subject,

never needed to learn the lesson that in the Fear of the Lord is the

beginning of Wisdom.

At first sight it seems as though the statement were broadly true. Greek

writers of the fifth century B.C. have a way of speaking of, an attitude

towards, religion, as though it were wholly a thing of joyful confidence,

a friendly fellowship with the gods, whose service is but a high festival

for man. In Homer sacrifice is but, as it were, the signal for a banquet

of abundant roast flesh and sweet wine; we hear nothing of fasting, of

cleansing, and atonement. This we might perhaps explain as part of the

general splendid unreality of the heroic saga, but sober historians of

the fifth century B.C. express the same spirit. Thucydides is assuredly

by nature no reveller, yet religion is to him in the main ‘a rest from

toil.’ He makes Pericles say[1]: ‘Moreover we have provided for our

spirit very many opportunities of recreation, by the celebration of games

and sacrifices throughout the year.’

Much the same external, quasi-political, and always cheerful attitude

towards religion is taken by the ‘Old Oligarch[2].’ He is of course

thoroughly orthodox and even pious, yet to him the main gist of religion

appears to be a decorous social enjoyment. In easy aristocratic fashion

he rejoices that religious ceremonials exist to provide for the less

well-to-do citizens suitable amusements that they would otherwise lack.

‘As to sacrifices and sanctuaries and festivals and precincts, the

People, knowing that it is impossible for each poor man individually to

sacrifice and feast and have sanctuaries and a beautiful and ample city,

has discovered by what means he may enjoy these privileges. The whole

state accordingly at the common cost sacrifices many victims, while it

is the People who feast on them and divide them among themselves by

lot’; and again[3], as part of the splendour of Athens, he notes that

‘she celebrates twice as many religious holidays as any other city.’ The

very language used by this typical Athenian gentleman speaks for itself.

Burnt-sacrifice (θυσία), feasting, agonistic games, stately temples are

to him the essence of religion; the word sacrifice brings to his mind not

renunciation but a social banquet; the temple is not to him so much the

awful dwelling-place of a divinity as an integral part of a ‘beautiful

and ample city.’

Thucydides and Xenophon need and attempt no searching analysis of

religion. Socrates of course sought a definition, a definition that

left him himself sad and dissatisfied, but that adequately embodied

popular sentiment and is of importance for our enquiry. The end of the

_Euthyphron_ is the most disappointing thing in Plato; Socrates extracts

from Euthyphron what he thinks religion is; what Socrates thought he

cannot or will not tell[4].

Socrates in his enquiry uses not one abstract term for religion—the

Greeks have in fact no one word that covers the whole field—he uses

two[5], piety (τὸ εὐσεβές) and holiness (τὸ ὅσιον). Euthyphron of

course begins with cheerful confidence: he and all other respectable men

know quite well what piety and holiness are. He willingly admits that

‘holiness is a part of justice,’ that part of justice that appertains

to the gods; it is giving the gods their due. He also allows, not quite

seeing to what the argument is tending, that piety and holiness are ‘a

sort of tendance (θεραπεία) of the gods.’ This ‘tendance,’ Socrates

presses on, ‘must be of the nature of service or ministration,’ and

Euthyphron adds that it is the sort of service that servants shew their

masters. Socrates wants to know in what particular work and operation the

gods need help and ministration. Euthyphron answers with some impatience

that, to put it plainly and cut the matter short, holiness consists in

‘a man understanding how to do what is pleasing to the gods in word

and deed, i.e. by prayer and sacrifice.’ Socrates eagerly seizes his

advantage and asks: ‘You mean then that holiness is a sort of science of

praying and sacrificing?’ ‘Further,’ he adds, ‘sacrifice is giving to the

gods, prayer is asking of them, holiness then is a science of asking and

giving.’ If we give to the gods they must want something of us, they must

want to ‘do business with us.’ ‘Holiness is then an art in which gods and

men do business with each other.’ So Socrates triumphantly concludes, to

the manifest discomfort of Euthyphron, who however can urge no tenable

objection. He feels as a pious man that the essence of the service or

tendance he owes to the gods is of the nature of a freewill tribute of

honour, but he cannot deny that the gods demand this as a _quid pro quo_.

Socrates, obviously unfair though he is, puts his finger on the weak

spot of Greek religion as orthodoxly conceived in the fifth century

B.C. Its formula is _do ut des_. It is, as Socrates says, a ‘business

transaction’ and one in which, because god is greater than man, man gets

on the whole the best of it. The argument of the _Euthyphron_ is of

importance to us because it clearly defines one, and a prominent, factor

in Greek religion, that of _service_ (θεραπεία), and in this service,

this kindly ‘tendance,’ there is no element of fear. If man does his part

in the friendly transaction, the gods will do theirs. None of the deeper

problems of what we moderns call religion are even touched: there is no

question of sin, repentance, sacrificial atonement, purification, no fear

of judgment to come, no longing after a future complete beatitude. Man

offers what seems to him in his ignorance a reasonable service to gods

conceived of as human and rational. There is no trace of scepticism; the

gods certainly exist, otherwise as Sextus Empiricus[6] quaintly argues

‘you could not serve them’: and they have human natures. ‘You do not

serve Hippocentauri, because Hippocentauri are non-existent.’

To the average orthodox Greek the word θεραπεία, service, tendance,

covered a large, perhaps the largest, area of his conception of religion.

It was a word expressing, not indeed in the Christian sense a religion

whose mainspring was love, but at least a religion based on a rational

and quite cheerful mutual confidence. The Greeks have however another

word expressive of religion, which embodies a quite other attitude of

mind, the word δεισιδαιμονία, _fear of spirits_; fear, not tendance,

fear not of gods but of spirit-things, or, to put it abstractly, of the

supernatural.

It is certainly characteristic of the Greek mind that the word

δεισιδαιμονία and its cognates early began to be used in a bad sense,

and this to some extent bears out Mr Ruskin’s assertion. By the time of

Theophrastos ὁ δεισιδαίμων is frankly in our sense ‘the superstitious

man,’ and superstition Theophrastos defines as not just and proper

reverence but simply ‘cowardice in regard to the supernatural.’ Professor

Jebb[7] has pointed out that already in Aristotle the word δεισιδαίμων

has about it a suspicion of its weaker side. An absolute ruler,

Aristotle[8] says, will be the more powerful ‘if his subjects believe

that he fears the spiritual beings’ (ἐὰν δεισιδαίμονα νομίζωσιν εἶναι)

but he adds significantly ‘he must shew himself such _without fatuity_’

(ἄνευ ἀβελτερίας).

Plutarch has left us an instructive treatise on ‘the fear of the

supernatural.’ He saw in this fear, this superstition, the great element

of danger and weakness in the religion that he loved so well. His

intellect steeped in Platonism revolted from its unmeaning folly, and

his gentle gracious temperament shrank from its cruelty. He sees[9] in

superstition not only an error, a wrong judgment of the mind, but that

worse thing a ‘wrong judgment inflamed by passion.’ Atheism is a cold

error, a mere dislocation of the mind: superstition is a ‘dislocation

complicated, inflamed, by a bruise.’ ‘Atheism is an apathy towards the

divine which fails to perceive the good: superstition is an excess of

passion which suspects the good to be evil; the superstitious are afraid

of the gods yet fly to them for refuge, flatter and yet revile them,

invoke them and yet heap blame upon them.’

Superstition grieved Plutarch in two ways. He saw that it terrified men

and made them miserable, and he wanted all men to be as cheerful and

kindly as himself; it also made men think evil of the gods, fear them as

harsh and cruel. He knew that the canonical religion of the poets was

an adequate basis for superstitious fear, but he had made for himself

a way out of the difficulty, a way he explains in his treatise on ‘How

the poets ought to be taken.’ ‘If Ares be evil spoken of we must imagine

it to be said of War, if Hephaistos of Fire, if Zeus of Fate, but if

anything honourable it is said of the real gods[10].’ Plutarch was too

gentle to say sharply and frankly:

‘If gods do aught that’s shameful, they are no gods[11],’

but he shifted the element of evil, of fear and hate, from his

theological ideals to the natural and purely human phenomena from which

they had emerged. He wants to treat the gods and regard them as he

himself would be treated and regarded, as kindly civilized men. ‘What!’

he says[12], ‘is he who thinks there are no gods an impious man, while he

who describes them as the superstitious man does, does he not hold views

much more impious? Well anyhow I for my part would rather people would

say of me there never was or is any such a man as Plutarch, than that

they should say Plutarch is an unstable, changeable fellow, irritable,

vindictive, and touchy about trifles; if you invite friends to dinner and

leave out Plutarch, or if you are busy and omit to call on him, or if

you do not stop to speak to him, he will fasten on you and bite you, or

he will catch your child and beat him, or turn his beast loose into your

crops and spoil your harvest.’

But though he is concerned for the reputation of the gods, his chief

care and pity are for man. Atheism shuts out a man, he says, from the

pleasant things of life. ‘These most pleasant things,’ he adds[13] in

characteristic fashion, ‘are festivals and feastings in connection with

sacred things, and initiations and orgiastic festivals, and invocations

and adorations of the gods. At these most pleasant things the atheist

can but laugh his sardonic laugh, but the superstitious man would fain

rejoice and cannot, his soul is like the city of Thebes:

“It brims with incense and burnt sacrifice

And brims with paeans and with lamentations.”

A garland is on his head and pallor on his face, he offers sacrifice and

is afraid, he prays and yet his tongue falters, he offers incense and

his hand trembles, he turns the saying of Pythagoras into foolishness,

“Then we become best when we approach the gods, for those who fear

spirits when they approach the shrines and dwellings of the gods make as

though they came to the dens of bears and the holes of snakes and the

lairs of sea-monsters.”’ In his protest against the religion of fear

Plutarch rises to a real eloquence[14]. ‘He that dreads the gods dreads

all things, earth and sea, air and heaven, darkness and light, a voice,

a silence, a dream. Slaves forget their masters in sleep, sleep looses

their fetters, salves their gangrened sores, but for the superstitious

man his reason is always adreaming but his fear always awake.’

Plutarch is by temperament, and perhaps also by the decadent time in

which he lived, unable to see the good side of the religion of fear,

unable to realize that in it was implicit a real truth, the consciousness

that all is not well with the world, that there is such a thing as evil.

Tinged with Orphism as he was, he took it by its gentle side and never

realized that it was this religion of fear, of consciousness of evil and

sin and the need of purification, of which Orphism took hold and which it

transformed to new issues. The cheerful religion of ‘tendance’ had in it

no seeds of spiritual development; by Plutarch’s time, though he failed

to see this, it had done its work for civilization.

Still less could Plutarch realize that what in his mind was a

degradation, superstition in our sense, had been to his predecessors

a vital reality, the real gist of their only possible religion. He

deprecates the attitude of the superstitious man who enters the

presence of his gods as though he were approaching the hole of a snake,

and forgets that the hole of a snake had been to his ancestors, and

indeed was still to many of his contemporaries, literally and actually

the sanctuary of a god. He has explained and mysticized away all the

primitive realities of his own beloved religion. It can, I think, be

shewn that what Plutarch regards as superstition was in the sixth and

even the fifth century before the Christian era the _real_ religion of

the main bulk of the people, a religion not of cheerful tendance but of

fear and deprecation. The formula of that religion was not _do ut des_ ‘I

give that you may give,’ but _do ut abeas_ ‘I give that you may go, and

keep away.’ The beings worshipped were not rational, human, law-abiding

_gods_, but vague, irrational, mainly malevolent δαίμονες, spirit-things,

ghosts and bogeys and the like, not yet formulated and enclosed into

god-head. The word δεισιδαιμονία tells its own tale, but the thing itself

was born long before it was baptized.

Arguments drawn from the use of the word δεισιδαιμονία by particular

authors are of necessity vague and somewhat unsatisfactory; the use of

the word depends much on the attitude of mind of the writer. Xenophon[15]

for example uses δεισιδαιμονία in a good sense, as of a bracing

confidence rather than a degrading fear. ‘The more men are god-fearing,

spirit-fearing (δεισιδαίμονες), the less do they fear man.’ It would be

impossible to deduce from such a statement anything as to the existence

of a lower and more ‘fearful’ stratum of religion.

Fortunately however we have evidence, drawn not from the terminology of

religion, but from the certain facts of ritual, evidence which shews

beyond the possibility of doubt that the Greeks of the classical period

recognised two different classes of rites, one of the nature of ‘service’

addressed to the Olympians, the other of the nature of ‘riddance’ or

‘aversion’ addressed to an order of beings wholly alien. It is this

second class of rites which haunts the mind of Plutarch in his protest

against the ‘fear of spirits’; it is to this second class of rites that

the ‘Superstitious Man’ of Theophrastos was unduly addicted; and this

second class of rites, which we are apt to regard as merely decadent,

superstitious, and as such unworthy of more than a passing notice and

condemnation, is primitive and lies at the very root and base of Greek

religion.

First it must clearly be established that the Greeks themselves

recognised two diverse elements in the ritual of their state. The

evidence of the orator Isocrates[16] on this point is indefeasible. He is

extolling the mildness and humanity of the Greeks. In this respect they

are, he points out, ‘like the better sort of gods.’ ‘Some of the gods are

mild and humane, others harsh and unpleasant.’ He then goes on to make a

significant statement: ‘_Those of the gods who are the source to us of

good things have the title of Olympians, those whose department is that

of calamities and punishments have harsher titles; to the first class

both private persons and states erect altars and temples, the second is

not worshipped either with prayers or burnt-sacrifices, but in their case

we perform ceremonies of riddance._’ Had Isocrates commented merely on

the _titles_ of the gods, we might fairly have said that these titles

only represent diverse aspects of the same divinities, that Zeus who is

Maimaktes, the Raging One, is also Meilichios, Easy-to-be-Intreated,

a god of vengeance and a god of love. But happily Isocrates is more

explicit; he states that the two classes of gods have not only diverse

natures but definitely _different rituals_, and that these rituals not

only vary for the individual but are also different by the definite

prescription of the state. The ritual of the gods called Olympian is of

burnt-sacrifice and prayer, it is conducted in temples and on altars: the

ritual of the other class has neither burnt-sacrifice nor prayer nor,

it would seem, temple or altar, but consists in ceremonies apparently

familiar to the Greek under the name of ἀποπομπαί, ‘sendings away.’

For ἀποπομπαί the English language has no convenient word. Our religion

still countenances the fear of the supernatural, but we have outgrown the

stage in which we perform definite ceremonies to rid ourselves of the

gods. Our nearest equivalent to ἀποπομπαί is ‘exorcisms,’ but as the word

has connotations of magic and degraded superstition I prefer to use the

somewhat awkward term ‘ceremonies of riddance.’

Plato more than once refers to these ceremonies of riddance. In the

_Laws_[17] he bids the citizen, if some prompting intolerably base occur

to his mind, as e.g. the desire to commit sacrilege, ‘betake yourself

to ceremonies of riddance, go as suppliant to the shrines of the gods of

aversion, fly from the company of wicked men without turning back.’ The

reference to a peculiar set of rites presided over by special gods is

clear. These gods were variously called ἀποτρόπαιοι and ἀποπομπαῖοι, the

gods of Aversion and of Sending-away.

Harpocration[18] tells us that Apollodorus devoted the sixth book of his

treatise _Concerning the gods_ to the discussion of the θεοὶ ἀποπομπαῖοι,

the gods of Sending-away. The loss of this treatise is a grave one for

the history of ritual, but scattered notices enable us to see in broad

outline what the character of these gods of Aversion was. Pausanias[19]

at Titane saw an altar, and in front of it a barrow erected to the hero

Epopeus, and ‘near to the tomb,’ he says, ‘are the gods of Aversion,

beside whom are performed the ceremonies which the Greeks observe for

the averting of evils.’ Here it is at least probable, though from the

vagueness of the statement of Pausanias not certain, that the ceremonies

were of an underworld character such as it will be seen were performed

at the graves of heroes. The gods of Aversion by the time of Pausanias,

and probably long before, were regarded as gods who presided over the

aversion of evil; there is little doubt that to begin with these gods

were the very evil men sought to avert. The domain of the spirits of the

underworld was confined to things evil. Babrius[20] tells us that in the

courtyard of a pious man there was a precinct of a hero, and the pious

man was wont to sacrifice and pour libations to the hero, and pray to him

for a return for his hospitality. But the ghost of the dead hero knew

better; only the regular Olympians are the givers of good, his province

as a hero was limited to evil only. He appeared in the middle of the

night and expounded to the pious man this truly Olympian theology:

‘Good Sir, no hero may give aught of good;

For _that_ pray to the gods. We are the givers

Of all things evil that exist for men.’

It will be seen, when we come to the subject of hero-worship, that this

is a very one-sided view of the activity of heroes. Still it remains,

broadly speaking, true that dead men and the powers of the underworld

were the objects of fear rather than love, their cult was of ‘aversion’

rather than ‘tendance.’

A like distinction is drawn by Hippocrates[21] between the attributes,

spheres and ritual of Olympian and chthonic divinities. He says: ‘we

ought to pray to the gods, for good things to Helios, to Zeus Ouranios,

to Zeus Ktesias, to Athene Ktesia, to Hermes, to Apollo; but in the case

of things that are the reverse we must pray to Earth and the heroes, that

all hostile things may be averted.’

It is clear then that Greek religion contained two diverse, even

opposite, factors: on the one hand the element of _service_ (θεραπεία),

on the other the element of _aversion_[22] (ἀποτροπή). The rites of

_service_ were connected by ancient tradition with the Olympians, or as

they are sometimes called the Ouranians: the rites of _aversion_ with

ghosts, heroes, underworld divinities. The rites of service were of a

cheerful and rational character, the rites of aversion gloomy and tending

to superstition. The particular characteristics of each set of rites will

be discussed more in detail later; for the present it is sufficient to

have established the fact that Greek religion for all its superficial

serenity had within it and beneath it elements of a darker and deeper

significance.

So far we have been content with the general statements of Greek writers

as to the nature of their national religion, and the evidence of these

writers has been remarkably clear. But, in order to form any really just

estimate, it is necessary to examine in detail the actual ritual of some

at least of the national festivals. To such an examination the next three

chapters will be devoted.

* * * * *

The main result of such an examination, a result which for clearness’

sake may be stated at the outset, is surprising. We shall find a series

of festivals which are nominally connected with, or as the handbooks say,

‘celebrated in honour of’ various Olympians; the Diasia in honour of

Zeus, the Thargelia of Apollo and Artemis, the Anthesteria of Dionysos.

The service of these Olympians we should expect to be of the nature of

joyous ‘tendance.’ To our surprise, when the actual rites are examined,

we shall find that they have little or nothing to do with the particular

Olympian to whom they are supposed to be addressed; that they are rites

not in the main of burnt-sacrifice, of joy and feasting and agonistic

contests, but rites of a gloomy underworld character, connected mainly

with purification and the worship of ghosts. The conclusion is almost

forced upon us that we have here a theological stratification, that

the rites of the Olympians have been superimposed on another order of

worship. The contrast between the two classes of rites is so marked, so

sharp, that the unbroken development from one to the other is felt to be

almost impossible.

To make this clear, before we examine a series of festivals in regular

calendar order, one typical case will be taken, the Diasia, the supposed

festival of Zeus; and to make the argument intelligible, before the

Diasia is examined, a word must be said as to the regular ritual of this

particular Olympian. The ritual of the several Olympian deities does not

vary in essentials; an instance of sacrifice to Zeus is selected because

we are about to examine the Diasia, a festival of Zeus, and thereby

uniformity is secured.

Agamemnon[23], beguiled by Zeus in a dream, is about to go forth to

battle. Zeus intends to play him false, but all the same he accepts the

sacrifice. It is a clear instance of _do ut des_.

The first act is of prayer and the scattering of barley grains; the

victim, a bull, is present but not yet slain:

‘They gathered round the bull and straight the barley grain did take,

And ’mid them Agamemnon stood and prayed, and thus he spake:

O Zeus most great, most glorious, Thou who dwellest in the sky

And storm-black cloud, oh grant the dark of evening come not nigh

At sunset ere I blast the house of Priam to black ash,

And burn his doorways with fierce fire, and with my sword-blade gash

His doublet upon Hector’s breast, his comrades many a one

Grant that they bite the dust of earth ere yet the day be done.’

Next follows the slaying and elaborate carving of the bull for the

banquet of gods and men:

‘When they had scattered barley grain and thus their prayer had made,

The bull’s head backward drew they, and slew him, and they flayed

His body and cut slices from the thighs, and these in fat

They wrapped and made a double fold, and gobbets raw thereat

They laid and these they burnt straightway with leafless billets dry

And held the spitted vitals Hephaistos’ flame anigh—

The thighs they burnt; the spitted vitals next they taste, anon

The rest they slice and heedfully they roast till all is done—

When they had rested from their task and all the banquet dight,

They feasted, in their hearts no stint of feasting and delight.’

Dr Leaf[24] observes on the passage: ‘The significance of the various

acts of the sacrifice evidently refers to a supposed invitation to the

gods to take part in a banquet. Barley meal is scattered on the victim’s

head that the gods may share in the fruits of the earth as well as in

the meat. Slices from the thigh as the best part are wrapped in fat to

make them burn and thus ascend in sweet savour to heaven. The sacrificers

after roasting the vitals taste them as a symbolical sign that they are

actually eating with the gods. When this religious act has been done, the

rest of the victim is consumed as a merely human meal.’

Nothing could be simpler, clearer. There is no mystic communion, no

eating of the body of the god incarnate in the victim, no awful taboo

upon what has been offered to, made over to, the gods, no holocaust.

Homer knows of victims slain to revive by their blood the ghosts of those

below, knows of victims on which oaths have been taken and which are

utterly consumed and abolished, but the normal service of the Olympians

is a _meal shared_. The god is Ouranios, so his share is burnt, and the

object of the burning is manifestly sublimation not destruction.

With the burnt-sacrifice and the joyous banquet in our minds we turn to

the supposed festival of Zeus at Athens and mark the contrast, a contrast

it will be seen so great that it compels us to suppose that the ritual of

the festival of the Diasia had primarily nothing whatever to do with the

worship of Olympian Zeus.

THE DIASIA.

Our investigation begins with a festival which at first sight seems of

all others for our purpose most unpromising, the Diasia[25]. Pollux, in

his chapter[26] on ‘Festivals which take their names from the divinities

worshipped,’ cites the Diasia as an instance—‘the Mouseia are from the

Muses, the Hermaia from Hermes, the Diasia and Pandia from Zeus (Διός),

the Panathenaia from Athene.’ What could be clearer? It is true that

the modern philologist observes what naturally escaped the attention of

Pollux, i.e. that the _i_ in Diasia is long, that in Διός short, but

what is the quantity of a vowel as against the accredited worship of an

Olympian?

To the question of derivation it will be necessary to return later, the

nature of the cult must first be examined. Again at the outset facts

seem against us. It must frankly be owned that as early as the middle of

the seventh century B.C. in common as well as professional parlance, the

Diasia was a festival of Zeus, of Zeus with the title Meilichios.

Our first notice of the Diasia comes to us in a bit of religious history

as amusing as it is instructive, the story of the unworthy trick played

by the Delphic oracle on Cylon. Thucydides[27] tells how Cylon took

counsel of the oracle how he might seize the Acropolis, and the priestess

made answer that he should attempt it ‘on the greatest festival of Zeus.’

Cylon never doubted that ‘the greatest festival of Zeus’ was the Olympian

festival, and having been (B.C. 640) an Olympian victor himself, he felt

that there was about the oracle ‘a certain appropriateness.’ But in

fine oracular fashion the god had laid a trap for the unwary egotist,

intending all the while not the Olympian festival but the Attic Diasia,

‘for,’ Thucydides explains, ‘the Athenians too have what is called the

Diasia, the greatest festival of Zeus, of Zeus Meilichios.’ The passage

is of paramount importance because it shows clearly that the obscurity

lay in the intentional omission by the priestess of the cultus epithet

Meilichios, and in that epithet as will be presently seen lies the whole

significance of the cult. Had Zeus _Meilichios_ been named no normal

Athenian would have blundered.

Thucydides goes on to note some particulars of the ritual of the

Diasia; the ceremonies took place outside the citadel, sacrifices

were offered by the whole people collectively, and many of those who

sacrificed offered not animal sacrifices but offerings in accordance

with local custom. The word ἱερεῖα, the regular ritual term for _animal_

sacrifices, is here opposed to θύματα ἐπιχώρια, local sacrifices. But

for the Scholiast the meaning of ‘local sacrifices’ would have remained

dubious; he explains, and no doubt rightly, that these customary ‘local

sacrifices’ were cakes made in the shape of animals. The principle _in

sacris simulata pro veris accipi_ was and is still of wide application,

and as there is nothing in it specially characteristic of the Diasia it

need not be further exemplified.

Two notices of the Diasia in the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes[28] yield

nothing. The fact that Strepsiades bought a little cart at the Diasia

for his boy or even cooked a sausage for his relations is of no

significance. Wherever any sort of religious ceremony goes on, there

among primitive peoples a fair will be set up and outlying relations

will come in and must be fed, nor does it concern us to decide whether

the cart bought by Strepsiades was a real cart or as the Scholiast

suggests a cake-cart. Cakes in every conceivable form belong to the

common fund of _quod semper quod ubique_. Of capital importance however

is the notice of the Scholiast on line 408 where the exact date of the

Diasia is given. It was celebrated on the 8th day of the last decade of

the month Anthesterion—i.e. about the 14th of March. The Diasia was a

Spring festival and therein as will be shown later (p. 52) lies its true

significance.

From Lucian we learn that by his time the Diasia had fallen somewhat into

abeyance; in the _Icaro-Menippos_ Zeus complains that his altars are as

cold as the syllogisms of Chrysippos. Worn out old god as he was, men

thought it sufficient if they sacrificed every six years at Olympia. ‘Why

is it,’ he asks ruefully, ‘that for so many years the Athenians have left

out the Diasia?’ It is significant that here again, as in the case of

Cylon, the Olympian Zeus has tended to efface from men’s mind the ritual

of him who bore the title Meilichios. The Scholiast[29] feels that some

explanation of an obsolete festival is desirable, and explains: ‘the

Diasia, a festival at Athens, which they keep with a certain element

of chilly gloom (στυγνότης), offering sacrifices to Zeus Meilichios.’

This ‘chilly gloom’ arrests attention at once. What has Zeus of the

high heaven, of the upper air, to do with ‘chilly gloom,’ with things

abhorrent and abominable? Styx is the chill cold water of death, Hades

and the Erinyes are ‘chilly ones’ (στυγεροί), the epithet is utterly

aloof from Zeus. The Scholiast implies that the ‘chilly gloom’ comes in

from the sacrifice to Zeus _Meilichios_. Zeus quâ Zeus gives no clue, it

remains to examine the title Meilichios.

Xenophon in returning from his Asiatic expedition was hindered, we are

told[30], by lack of funds. He piously consulted a religious specialist

and was informed that ‘Zeus Meilichios’ stood in his way and that he must

sacrifice to the god as he was wont to do at home. Accordingly on the

following day Xenophon ‘sacrificed and offered a holocaust of pigs in

accordance with ancestral custom and the omens were favourable.’

The regular ancestral ritual to Zeus Meilichios was a holocaust of

pigs, and the god himself was regarded as a source of wealth, a sort

of Ploutos. Taken by itself this last point could not be pressed, as

probably by Xenophon’s time men would pray to Zeus pure and simple for

anything and everything; taken in conjunction with the holocaust and the

title Meilichios, the fact, it will presently be seen, is significant.

There is of course nothing to prove that Xenophon sacrificed at the time

of the Diasia, though this is possible; we are concerned now with the

cult of Zeus Meilichios in general, not with the particular festival

of the Diasia. It may be noted that the Scholiast, on the passage of

Thucydides already discussed, says that the ‘animal sacrifices’ at the

Diasia were πρόβατα, a word usually rendered ‘sheep’; but if he is basing

his statement on any earlier authority πρόβατα may quite well have meant

pig or any four-legged household animal; the meaning of the word was only

gradually narrowed down to ‘sheep.’

It may be said once for all that the exact animal sacrificed is not of

the first importance in determining the nature of the god. Pigs came to

be associated with Demeter and the underworld divinities, but that is

because these divinities belong to a primitive stratum, and the pig then

as now was cheap to rear and a standby to the poor. The animal sacrificed

is significant of the status of the worshipper rather than of the content

of the god. The argument from the pig must not be pressed, though

undoubtedly the cheap pig as a sacrifice to Zeus is exceptional.

The manner of the sacrifice, not the material, is the real clue to

the significance of the title Meilichios. Zeus as Meilichios demanded

a holocaust, a whole burnt-offering. The Zeus of Homer demanded and

received the tit-bits of the victim, though even these in token of

friendly communion were shared by the worshippers. Such was the custom

of the Ouranioi, the Olympians in general. Zeus Meilichios will have all

or nothing. His sacrifice is not a happy common feast, it is a dread

renunciation to a dreadful power, hence the atmosphere of ‘chilly gloom.’

It will later be seen that these _un_-eaten sacrifices are characteristic

of angry ghosts demanding placation and of a whole class of underworld

divinities in general, divinities who belong to a stratum of thought

more primitive than Homer. For the present it is enough to mark that the

service of Zeus Meilichios is wholly alien to that of the Zeus of Homer.

The next passage makes still clearer the nature of this service.

Most fortunately for us Pausanias, when at Myonia in Locris, visited[31]

a sanctuary, not indeed of Zeus Meilichios, but of ‘the Meilichians.’ He

saw there no temple, only a grove and an altar, and he learnt the nature

of the ritual. ‘The sacrifices to “the Meilichians” are at night-time and

it is customary to consume the flesh on the spot before the sun is up.’

Here is no question of Zeus; we have independent divinities worshipped

on their own account and with nocturnal ceremonies. The suspicion begins

to take shape that Zeus must have taken over the worship of these dread

Meilichian divinities with its nocturnal ceremonial. The suspicion is

confirmed when we find that Zeus Meilichios is, like the Erinyes, the

avenger of kindred blood. Pausanias[32] saw near the Kephissos ‘an

ancient altar of Zeus Meilichios; on it Theseus received purification

from the descendants of Phytalos after he had slain among other robbers

Sinis who was related to himself through Pittheus.’

Again Pausanias[33] tells us that, after an internecine fray, the Argives

took measures to purify themselves from the guilt of kindred blood, and

one measure was that they set up an image of Zeus Meilichios. Meilichios,

Easy-to-be-entreated, the Gentle, the Gracious One, is naturally the

divinity of purification, but he is also naturally the other euphemistic

face of _Maimaktes_, he who rages eager, panting and thirsting for blood.

This Hesychius[34] tells us in an instructive gloss. Maimaktes-Meilichios

is double-faced like the Erinyes-Eumenides. Such undoubtedly would have

been the explanation of the worship of Zeus Meilichios by any educated

Greek of the fifth century B.C. with his monotheistic tendencies. Zeus he

would have said is all in all, Zeus Meilichios is Zeus in his underworld

aspect—Zeus-Hades.

Pausanias[35] saw at Corinth three images of Zeus, all under the open

sky. One he says had no title, another was called He of the underworld

(χθόνιος), the third The Highest. What earlier cults this triple Zeus had

absorbed into himself it is impossible to say.

Such a determined monotheism is obviously no primitive conception, and it

is interesting to ask on what facts and fusion of facts it was primarily

based. Happily where literature and even ritual leave us with suspicions

only, art compels a clearer definition.

The two reliefs in figs. 1 and 2 were found at the Peiraeus and are

now in the Berlin Museum[36]. From the inscription on the relief in

fig. 1 and from numerous other inscribed reliefs found with it, it is

practically certain that at the place in which they were found Zeus

Meilichios was worshipped. In any case the relief in fig. 1 is clearly

dedicated to him. Above the splendid coiled beast is plainly inscribed

‘to Zeus Meilichios’ (Διὶ Μειλιχίῳ). We are brought face to face with

the astounding fact that Zeus, father of gods and men, is figured by his

worshippers as a snake.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

So astonishing is the inscription that it drove a man of M. Foucart’s

learning and ability into strange straits. He was the first to attempt

the interpretation of these remarkable reliefs, and so determined is

he that the Hellenic Zeus _is_ not, cannot be, a mere snake that he

resorts to the perfectly gratuitous assumption that Meilichios is

Moloch (Melek) and that the reliefs are dedicated by foreigners to

their foreign god[37]. We have no evidence that Moloch was figured as a

snake, but anything is good enough for a foreigner. This explanation,

though supported by a great name, was too preposterous long to command

attention and another way was sought out of the difficulty. The snake,

it was suggested, was not the god himself, it was his attribute. Again

the assumption is baseless. Zeus is one of the few Greek gods who never

appear attended by a snake. Asklepios, Hermes, Apollo, even Demeter and

Athene have their snakes, Zeus never. Moreover when the god developed

from snake form to human form, as, it will later be shown, was the case

with Asklepios, _the snake he once was_ remains coiled about his staff

or attendant at his throne. In the case of Zeus Meilichios in human form

_the snake he once was not_ disappears clean and clear.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.]

The explanation of the snake as merely an attribute is indeed impossible

to any unbiassed critic who looks at the relief in fig. 2. Here clearly

the snake is the object worshipped by the woman and two men who approach

with gestures of adoration. The colossal size of the beast as it towers

above its human adorers is the _Magnificat_ of the artist echoed by the

worshippers. When we confront the relief in fig. 3, also found at the

Peiraeus, with those in figs. 1 and 2, the secret is out at last. In

fig. 3 a man followed by a woman and child approaches an altar, behind

which is seated a bearded god holding a sceptre and patera for libation.

Above is clearly inscribed ‘Aristarche to Zeus Meilichios’ (Ἀριστάρχη

Διὶ Μειλιχίῳ). And the truth is nothing more or less than this. The

human-shaped Zeus has slipped himself quietly into the place of the

old snake-god. Art sets plainly forth what has been dimly shadowed

in ritual and mythology. It is not that Zeus the Olympian has ‘an

underworld aspect’; it is the cruder fact that he of the upper air, of

the thunder and lightning, extrudes an ancient serpent-demon of the lower

world, Meilichios. Meilichios is no foreign Moloch, he is home-grown,

autochthonous before the formulation of Zeus.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.]

[Illustration: FIG. 4.]

How the shift may have been effected art again helps us to conjecture.

In the same sanctuary at the Peiraeus that yielded the reliefs in figs.

1 and 2 was found the inscribed relief[38] in fig. 4. We have a similar

bearded snake and above is inscribed ‘Heracleides to the god.’ The

worshipper is not fencing, uncertain whether he means Meilichios or

Zeus; he brings his offering to the local precinct where the god is a

snake and dedicates it to _the_ god, the god of that precinct. It is not

monotheism, rather it is parochialism, but it is a conception tending

towards a later monotheism. When and where the snake is simply ‘the god,’

the fusion with Zeus is made easy.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.]

In fig. 5 is figured advisedly a monument of snake worship, which it must

be distinctly noted comes, not from the precinct of Zeus Meilichios at

the Peiraeus, but from Eteonos in Boeotia. When we come to the discussion

of hero-worship, it will be seen that all over Greece the dead hero

was worshipped in snake form and addressed by euphemistic titles akin

to that of Meilichios. The relief from Boeotia is a good instance of

such worship and is chosen because of the striking parallelism of its

art type with that of the Peiraeus relief in fig. 3. The maker of this

class of votive reliefs seems to have kept in stock designs of groups

of pious worshippers which he could modify as required and to which

the necessary god or snake and the appropriate victim could easily be

appended. Midway in conception between the Olympian Zeus with his sceptre

and the snake demon stands another relief[39] (fig. 6), also from the

Peiraeus sanctuary. Meilichios is human, a snake no longer, but he is

an earth god, he bears the cornucopia, his victim is the pig. He is

that Meilichios to whom Xenophon offered the holocaust of pigs, praying

for wealth; he is also the Zeus-Hades of Euripides. We might have been

tempted to call him simply Hades or Ploutos but for the inscription

[Κριτο]βόλη Διὶ Μειλιχίῳ, ‘Kritoboule to Zeus Meilichios,’ which makes

the dedication certain.

By the light then of these reliefs the duality, the inner discrepancy of

Zeus Meilichios admits of a simple and straightforward solution. It is

the monument of a superposition of cults. But the difficulty of the name

of the festival, _Diasia_, remains. There is no reason to suppose that

the name was given late; and, if primitive, how can we sever it from Διός?

[Illustration: FIG. 6.]

It is interesting to note that the ancients themselves were not quite at

ease in deriving Diasia from Διός. Naturally they were not troubled by

difficulties as to long and short vowels, but they had their misgivings

as to the connotation of the word, and they try round uneasily for

etymologies of quite other significance. The Scholiast on Lucian’s

_Timon_[40] says the word is probably derived from διασαίνειν ‘to fawn

on,’ ‘to propitiate.’ Suidas[41] says it comes from διαφυγεῖν αὐτοὺς

εὐχαῖς τὰς ἄσας, because in the Diasia ‘men escaped from curses by

prayers.’ If etymologically absurd, certainly, as will be seen, a happy

guess.

Such derivations are of course only worth citing to show that even in

ancient minds as regards the derivation of Diasia from Διός misgiving

lurked.

The misgiving is emphasized by the modern philologist. The derivation

of Diasia with its long from Διός with its short _i_ is scientifically

improbable if not impossible. Happily another derivation that at least

satisfies scientific conditions has been suggested by Mr R. A. Neil.

Not only does it satisfy scientific conditions but it also confirms

the view arrived at by independent investigation of the ritual and art

representations of Zeus Meilichios. Mr Neil[42] suggests that in several

Greek words showing the stem δῑο this stem may stand by the regular

falling away of the medial σ for δῑσο and is identical with the Latin

_dīro_[43]. _dirus_, he notes, was originally a purely religious word.

Such words would be the Dīasia, whatever the termination may be, the Δῖα

of Teos (p. 143) and perhaps the Πάνδια of Athens. Seen in the light of

this new etymology the Diasia becomes intelligible: it is the festival

of curses, imprecations; it is nocturnal and associated with rites of

placation and purgation, two notions inextricably linked in the mind of

the ancients.

We further understand why Meilichios seems the male double of Erinys

and why his rites are associated with ‘chilly gloom.’ The Diasia has

primarily and necessarily nothing to do with Διός, with Zeus; it has

everything to do with ‘dirae,’ magical curses, exorcisms and the like.

The keynote of primitive ritual, it will become increasingly clear, is

exorcism.

In the light of this new derivation it is possible further to explain

another element in the cult of Zeus Meilichios hitherto purposely left

unnoticed, the famous Διὸς κώδιον, the supposed ‘fleece of Zeus.’ The

Διὸς κώδιον is, I think, no more the fleece of Zeus than the Diasia is

his festival.

Polemon, writing at the beginning of the second century B.C., undoubtedly

accepted the current derivation, and on the statement of Polemon most of

our notices of ‘the fleece of Zeus’ appear to be based. Hesychius[44]

writes thus: ‘The fleece of Zeus: they use this expression when the

victim has been sacrificed to Zeus, and those who were being purified

stood on it with their left foot. Some say it means a great and perfect

fleece. But Polemon says it is the fleece of the victim sacrificed to

Zeus.’

But Polemon is by no means infallible in the matter of etymology,

though invaluable as reflecting the current impression of his day. Our

conviction that the Διὸς κώδιον is necessarily ‘the fleece of Zeus’ is

somewhat loosened when we find that this fleece was by no means confined

to the ritual of Zeus, and in so far as it was connected with Zeus, was

used in the ritual only of a Zeus who bore the titles Meilichios and

Ktesios. Suidas[45] expressly states that ‘they sacrifice to Meilichios

and to Zeus Ktesios and they keep the fleeces of these (victims) and call

them “Dian,” and they use them when they send out the procession in the

month of Skirophorion, and the Dadouchos at Eleusis uses them, and others

use them for purifications by strewing them under the feet of those who

are polluted.’

It is abundantly clear that Zeus had no monopoly in the fleece supposed

to be his; it was a sacred fleece used for purification ceremonies in

general. He himself had taken over the cult of Meilichios, the Placable

One, the spirit of purification; we conjecture that he had also taken

over the fleece of purification.

Final conviction comes from a passage in the commentary of Eustathius[46]

on the purification of the house of Odysseus after the slaying of the

suitors. Odysseus purges his house by two things, first after the slaying

of the suitors by water, then after the hanging of the maidens by fire

and brimstone. His method of purifying is a simple and natural one, it

might be adopted to-day in the disinfecting of a polluted house. This

Eustathius notes, and contrasts it with the complex magical apparatus

in use among the ancients and very possibly still employed by the

pagans of his own day. He comments as follows: ‘The Greeks thought such

pollutions were purified by being “sent away.” Some describe one sort of

purifications, some others, and these purifications they carried out of

houses after the customary incantations and they cast them forth in the

streets with averted faces and returned without looking backwards. But

the Odysseus of the poet does not act thus, but performs a different and

a simpler act, for he says:

“Bring brimstone, ancient dame, the cure of ills, and bring me fire

That I the hall may fumigate.”’

In the confused fashion of his day and of his own mind Eustathius sees

there is a real distinction but does not recognise wherein it lies. He

does not see that Homer’s purification is actual, physical, rational, not

magical. He goes on: ‘Brimstone is a sort of incense which is reputed to

cleanse pollutions. Hence the poet distinguishes it, calling it “cure of

ills.” In this passage there are none of the incantations usual among

the ancients, nor is there the small vessel in which the live coals were

carried and thrown away vessel and all backwards.’

What half occurs to Eustathius and would strike any intelligent modern

observer acquainted with ancient ritual is that the purification of

the house of Odysseus is as it were scientific; there is none of the

apparatus of magical ‘riddance.’ Dimly and darkly he puts a hesitating

finger on the cardinal difference between the religion of Homer and

that of later (and earlier) Greece, that Homer is innocent, save for an

occasional labelled magician, of magic. The Archbishop seems to feel

this as something of a defect, a shortcoming. He goes on: ‘It must be

understood that purifications were effected not only as has just been

described, by means of sulphur, but there are also certain plants that

were useful for this purpose; at least according to Pausanias there is

verbena, a plant in use for purification, and the pig was sometimes

employed for such purposes, as appears in the _Iliad_.’ This mention

of means of purification in general brings irresistibly to the mind

of Eustathius a salient instance, the very fleece we are discussing.

He continues: ‘Those who interpret the word διοπομπεῖν say that they

applied the term δῖον to the fleece of the animal that had been

sacrificed to Zeus Meilichios in purifications at the end of the month of

Maimakterion[47] when they performed the Sendings and when the castings

out of pollutions at the triple ways took place: and they held in their

hands a sender which was they say the kerukeion, the attribute of Hermes,

and from a sender of this sort, _pompos_, and from the δῖον, the fleece

called “Dian,” they get the word διοπομπεῖν, divine sending.’

From this crude and tentative etymological guessing two important points

emerge. Eustathius does not speak of the ‘fleece of Zeus,’ but of the

_Dian_ or perhaps we may translate _divine_ fleece. δῖος is with him an

adjective to be declined, not the genitive of Ζεύς. This loosens somewhat

the connection of the fleece with Zeus, as the adjective δῖος could be

used of anything divine or even magical in its wonder and perfection.

Further, and this is of supreme importance, he connects the Dian fleece

with the difficult word διοπομπεῖν, and in this lies the clue to its

real interpretation. ‘That this,’ he goes on—meaning his derivation

of διοπομπεῖν from πομπός the kerukeion of Hermes and δῖον the divine

fleece—‘is so we find from special investigation, but in more general

parlance by διοπομπεῖν and ἀποδιοπομπεῖν is meant the sending away of

unclean things in the name of Zeus Averter of Evil.’ Eustathius evidently

gets nervous; his ‘special investigation’ is leading him uncomfortably

near the real truth, uncomfortably far from the orthodox Zeus, so he

pulls himself up instinctively.

The explanation of the strange word ἀποδιοπομπεῖν, to which Eustathius at

the close of his remarks piously reverts, is still accredited by modern

lexicons. ἀποδιοπομπεῖσθαι—the middle form is the most usual—means, we

are told, ‘to avert threatened evils by offerings to Zeus[48].’ Are

scholars really prepared to believe that ἀποδιοπομπεῖσθαι means, to put

it shortly, ‘to Zeus things away’? The lexicons after this desperate

etymology proceed ‘hence, to conjure away, to reject with abhorrence,’

and finally, under a heading apart, ‘ἀποδιοπομπεῖσθαι οἶκον to purify a

house.’ Surely from beginning to end the meaning inherent in the word

is simply ‘to rid of pollution’; ἀποδιοπομπεῖσθαι is substantially the

same as ἀποπέμπειν, to send away, to get rid of, but—and this is the

important part—the element διο emphasizes the means and method of the

‘sending.’ The quantity of the ι in ἀποδιοπομπεῖσθαι we have no means of

knowing, the ι in Diasia the feast of Zeus Meilichios is long, the ι in

the δῖον κώδιον used in his service is long, the δῖον κώδιον is used in

ritual concerned with διοπομπούμενα, its purpose is ἀποδιοπομπεῖσθαι. Is

it too bold to see in the mysterious διο the same root as has been seen

in Diasia and to understand ἀποδιοπομπεῖσθαι as ‘to effect riddance by

magical imprecation or deprecation’?

The word _dirus_ is charged with magic, and this lives on in the Greek

word δῖος which is more magical than divine. It has that doubleness, for

cursing and for blessing, that haunts all inchoate religious terms. The

fleece is not divine in our sense, not definitely either for blessing or

for cursing; it is taboo, it is ‘medicine,’ it is magical. As magical

medicine it had power to purify, i.e. in the ancient sense, not to

cleanse physically or purge morally, but to rid of evil influences, of

ghostly infection.

Magical fleeces were of use in ceremonies apparently the most diverse,

but at the bottom of each usage lies the same thought, that the skin

of the victim has magical efficacy as medicine against impurities.

Dicaearchus[49] tells us that at the rising of the dog-star, when the

heat was greatest, young men in the flower of their age and of the

noblest families went to a cave called the sanctuary of Zeus Aktaios,

and also (very significantly it would seem) called the Cheironion; they

were girded about with fresh fleeces of triple wool. Dicaearchus says

that this was because it was so cold on the mountain; but if so, why

must the fleeces be fresh? Zeus Aktaios, it is abundantly clear, has

taken over the cave of the old Centaur Cheiron; the magic fleeces, newly

slain because all ‘medicine’ must be fresh, belong to his order as they

belonged to the order of Meilichios.

Again we learn that whoever would take counsel of the oracle of

Amphiaraos[50] must first purify himself, and Pausanias himself adds

the explanatory words, ‘Sacrificing to the god is a ceremony of

purification.’ But the purification ceremony did not, it would appear,

end with the actual sacrifice, for he explains, ‘Having sacrificed a

ram they spread the skin beneath them and go to sleep, awaiting the

revelation of a dream’; here again, though the name is not used, we have

a δῖον κώδιον, a magic fleece with purifying properties. It is curious

to note that Zeus made an effort to take over the cult of Amphiaraos, as

he had taken that of Meilichios; we hear of a Zeus Amphiaraos[51], but

the attempt was not a great success; probably the local hero Amphiaraos,

himself all but a god, was too strong for the Olympian.

* * * * *

The results of our examination of the festival of the Diasia are then

briefly this. The cult of the Olympian Zeus has overlaid the cult of

a being called Meilichios, a being who was figured as a snake, who

was a sort of Ploutos, but who had also some of the characteristics

of an Erinys; he was an avenger of kindred blood, his sacrifice was a

holocaust offered by night, his festival a time of ‘chilly gloom.’ A

further element in his cult was a magical fleece used in ceremonies of

purification and in the service of heroes. The cult of Meilichios is

unlike that of the Olympian Zeus as described in Homer, and the methods

of purification characteristic of him wholly alien. The name of his

festival means ‘the ceremonies of imprecation.’

* * * * *

The next step in our investigation will be to take in order certain

well-known Athenian festivals, and examine the ceremonies that actually

took place at each. In each case it will be found that, though the

several festivals are ostensibly consecrated to various Olympians, and

though there is in each an element of prayer and praise and sacrificial

feasting such as is familiar to us in Homer, yet, when the ritual is

closely examined, the main part of the ceremonies will be seen to be

magical rather than what we should term religious. Further, this ritual

is addressed, in so far as it is addressed to any one, not to the

Olympians of the upper air, but to snakes and ghosts and underworld

beings; its main gist is purification, the riddance of evil influences,

this riddance being naturally prompted not by cheerful confidence but by

an ever imminent fear.

In the pages that follow but little attention will be paid to the

familiar rites of the Olympians, the burnt sacrifice and its attendant

feast, the dance and song; our whole attention will be focussed on the

rites belonging to the lower stratum. This course is adopted for two

reasons. First, the rites of sacrifice as described by Homer are simple

and familiar, needing but little elucidation and having already received

superabundant commentary, whereas the rites of the lower stratum are

often obscure and have met with little attention. Second, it is these

rites of purification belonging to the lower stratum, primitive and

barbarous, even repulsive as they often are, that furnished ultimately

the material out of which ‘mysteries’ were made—mysteries which, as will

be seen, when informed by the new spirit of the religions of Dionysos and

Orpheus, lent to Greece its deepest and most enduring religious impulse.

ATTIC CALENDAR.

NOTE. Names of Festivals selected for special discussion are printed in

large type. Names of Festivals incidentally discussed in italics.

1. Hecatombaion July, August Kronia, Panathenaia

2. Metageitnion Aug., September Metageitnia

3. Boedromion Sept., October Eleusinia and _Greater Mysteries_

4. _Pyanepsion_ Oct., November THESMOPHORIA. Pyanepsia and

Oschophoria [Id. Oct. (Oct. 15)

October Horse]

5. Maimakterion Nov., December ‘Διὸς κώδιον’

6. Poseideon Dec., January _Haloa_

7. Gamelion Jan., February Gamelia (Lenaia?)

8. _Anthesterion_ Feb., March ANTHESTERIA, DIASIA, _Lesser

Mysteries_ [XV. Kal. Mart.

(Feb. 15) Lupercalia] [(Feb.

21) Feralia]

9. Elaphebolion March, April Dionysia

10. Munychion April, May Munychia, Brauronia

11. _Thargelion_ May, June THARGELIA, _Kallynteria_,

_Plynteria_ (May 15 Argei,

June 15 Vestalia,

Q. St. D. F.)

12. Skirophorion June, July _Skirophoria_, _Arrephoria_,

Dipolia, Bouphonia

The Athenian official calendar began in the month Hecatombaion

(July-August) at the summer’s height. In it was celebrated the great

festival of the Panathenaia, whose very name marks its political import.

Such political festivals, however magnificent and socially prominent, it

is not my purpose to examine; concerning the gist of primitive religious

conceptions they yield us little. The Panathenaia is sacred rather to

a city than a goddess. Behind the Panathenaia lay the more elementary

festival of the Kronia, which undoubtedly took its name from the faded

divinity Kronos; but of the Kronia the details known are not adequate for

its fruitful examination.

A cursory glance at the other festivals noted in our list shows that

some, though not all, gave their names to the months in which they were

celebrated, and (a fact of high significance) shows also that with one

exception, the Dionysia, these festivals are not named after Olympian or

indeed after any divinities. _Metageitnia_, the festival of ‘changing

your neighbours,’ is obviously social or political. The Eleusinia are

named after a place, so are the Munychia and Brauronia. The Thesmophoria,

Oschophoria, Skirophoria and Arrephoria are festivals of _carrying

something_; the Anthesteria, Kallynteria, Plynteria festivals of persons

who _do something_; the Haloa a festival of _threshing-floors_, the

Thargelia of _first-fruits_, the Bouphonia of _ox-slaying_, the Pyanepsia

of _bean-cooking_. In the matter of nomenclature the Olympians are much

to seek.

The festivals in the table appended are arranged according to the

official calendar for convenience of reference, but it should be noted

that the agricultural year, on which the festivals primarily depend,

begins in the autumn with sowing, i.e. in Pyanepsion. The Greek

agricultural year fell into three main divisions, the autumn sowing

season followed by the winter, the spring with its first blossoming

of fruits and flowers beginning in Anthesterion, and the early summer

harvest (ὄπωρα) beginning in Thargelion, the month of first-fruits; to

this early harvest of grain and fruits was added with the coming of the

vine the vintage in Boedromion, and the gathering in of the later fruits,

e.g. the fig. All the festivals fall necessarily much earlier than the

dates familiar to us in the North. In Greece to-day the wheat harvest is

over by the middle or end of June.

No attempt will be made to examine all the festivals, for two practical

reasons, lack of space and lack of material; but fortunately for us we

have adequate material for the examination of one characteristic festival

in each of the agricultural seasons, the Thesmophoria for autumn, the

Anthesteria for spring, the Thargelia for early summer, and in each case

the ceremonies of the several seasons can be further elucidated by the

examination of the like ceremonies in the Roman calendar. To make clear

the superposition of the two strata[52], which for convenience’ sake may

be called Olympian and chthonic, the Diasia has already been examined. In

the typical festivals now to be discussed a like superposition will be

made apparent, and from the detailed examination of the lower chthonic

stratum it will be possible to determine the main outlines of Greek

religious thought on such essential points as e.g. purification and

sacrifice.

It would perhaps be more methodical to begin the investigation with

the autumn, with the sowing festival of the Thesmophoria, but as the

Thesmophoria leads more directly to the consummation of Greek religion in

the Mysteries it will be taken last. The reason for this will become more

apparent in the further course of the argument. We shall begin with the

_Anthesteria_.