Mr. Max Muller goes on--citing, as I also do, Otfried Muller:--'Otfried
Muller in 1825 treated the same myth without availing himself of the
light now to be derived from the Cahrocs and the Kamilarois. He quoted
Pausanias as stating that the tumulus of Kallisto was near the sanctuary
of Artemis Kalliste, and he simply took Kallisto for an epithet of
Artemis, which, as in many other cases, had been taken for a separate
personality.' Otfried also pointed out, as we both say, that at Brauron,
in Attica, Artemis was served by young maidens called [Greek] (bears);
and he concluded, 'This cannot possibly be a freak of chance, but the
metamorphosis [of Kallisto] has its foundation in the fact that the
animal [the bear] was sacred to the goddess.'
Thus it is acknowledged that Artemis, under her name of Callisto, was
changed into a she-bear, and had issue, Arkas--whence the Arcadians. Mr.
Max Muller proceeds (ii. 734)--'He [Otfried] did not go so far as some
modern mythologists who want us to believe that originally the animal,
the she-bear, was the goddess, and that a later worship had replaced the
ancient worship of the animal pur et simple.'
Did I, then, tell anybody that 'originally the she-bear was the goddess'?
No, I gave my reader, not a dogma, but the choice between two alternative
hypotheses. I said, 'It will become probable that the she-bear actually
_was_ the goddess at an extremely remote period, or at all events that
the goddess succeeded to, and threw her protection over, an ancient
worship of the animal' (ii. 212, 213).
Mr. Max Muller's error, it will be observed, consists in writing 'and'
where I wrote 'or.' To make such rather essential mistakes is human; to
give references is convenient, and not unscholarly.
In fact, this is Mr. Max Muller's own opinion, for he next reports his
anonymous author (myself) as saying ('we are now told'), 'though without
any reference to Pausanias or any other Greek writers, that the young
maidens, the [Greek], when dancing around Artemis, were clad in
bearskins, and that this is a pretty frequent custom in the dances of
totemic races. In support of this, however, we are not referred to
really totemic races . . . but to the Hirpi of Italy, and to the [Greek]
in Egypt.' Of course I never said that the [Greek] danced around
Artemis! I did say, after observing that they were described as 'playing
the bear,' 'they even in archaic ages wore bear-skins,' for which I cited
Claus {141a} and referred to Suchier, {141b} including the reference in
brackets [ ] to indicate that I borrowed it from a book which I was
unable to procure. {142a} I then gave references for the classical use
of a saffron vest by the [Greek].