Seers and Oracles (Part 1)

The religious situation in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.; belief shaken but not abandoned; religious hysteria and the trials for atheism; Greek religion bound up with political life; advice of oracles sought by the state and by individuals; art of foretelling the future a part of Greek religion; questions concerning daily life put to the oracles; role of the seers in war; popularity of the seers; the oracle mongers and their influence on public opinion; collections of oracles; political importance of the oracles; Sibylline Books; Thucydides' account of oracles; role of the oracles in the preparation of the expedition to Sicily; oracles in Aristophanes; some seers were influential politicians; seers the defenders of the old religion; Diopeithes, the instigator of the trials for atheism; clash between seers' interpretation of phenomena and that of the natural philosophers; the Sophists confused with the natural philosophers in popular opinion; clash between belief and disbelief took place not in theoretical discussion but in practical life

ILLUSTRATIONS

ILLUSTRATIONS

DEMETER, TRIPTOLEMOS, AND KORE

Frontispiece

Votive relief. National Museum, Athens (Photograph by Alinari)

1.

ARCADIAN HERM

From K. Rhomaios, "Arkadikoi Hermai," Ephemeris archaiologike, 1911

2.

HERMES PSYCHOPOMPOS

Lekythos. Jena. From A. Furtwängler and K. Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei (Munich, 1900-1932)

3.

HERM OFFERING

Red-figured vase. From C. Watzinger, Griechische Vasen in Tübingen (Reutlingen, 1924)

4.

GOAT DAEMONS

Bronze statuette. From F. Hiller von Gaertringen and H. Lattermann, Arkadische Forschungen (Berlin, 1911)

5.

ARTEMIS

Ivory votive relief. Halle. From Mitteilungen des Deutschen archäologischen Instituts, athenische Abteilung, Vol. L (1925)

6.

RIVER GOD

Red-figured vase. Louvre, Paris. From J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 3d ed. (Cambridge, 1922)

7.

VOTIVE MASKS

Terracotta masks from the shrine of Artemis Orthia. From the Illustrated London News, Oct. 17, 1936

8.

PAN AND NYMPHS

Votive relief. National Museum, Athens (Photograph by Alinari)

9.

LANDSCAPE WITH SHRINES

Fresco. House of Livia, Rome. From G. E. Rizzio, Monumenti delta pittura antica scoperti in Italia (Rome, 1936-38)

10.

HERO IN A SHRINE

Votive relief. National Museum, Athens (Photograph by Alinari)

11.

KERNOS

British Museum, London. From "Notes from the Cyclades," Annual of the British School at Athens, III (1896-97)

12.

SWINGING FESTIVAL

Red-figured skyphos. State Museum, Berlin. From A. Furtwängler and K. Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei (Munich, 1900-1932)

13.

DIONYSUS IN A SHIP

Black-figured vase. Bologna. From M. Bieber, Die Denkmäler zum Theaterwesen im Altertum (Berlin, 1920)

14.

WINE OFFERING TO DIONYSUS

Red-figured stamnos. National Museum, Naples. From A. Furtwängler and K. Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei (Munich, 1900-1932)

15.

INITIATION RITES

Marble vase. National Museum, Rome. From L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (Oxford, 1896-1909)

16.

GODS OF ELEUSIS

Votive relief. National Museum, Athens. From Ephemeris archaiologike, 1886

17.

ANODOS OF PHEREPHATTA

Red-figured krater. Albertinum Museum, Dresden. From J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 3d ed. (Cambridge, 1922)

18.

ANODOS OF KORE

Black-figured lekythos. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. J. E. Harrison Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 3d ed. (Cambridge, 1922)

19.

BEARDED TRIPTOLEMOS

Black-figured amphora. From A. B. Cook, Zeus (Cambridge, 1914-25)

20.

CORN IN A SHRINE

Red-figured vase. Hermitage, Leningrad. From P. Wolters, "Die goldenen Ähren," Festschrift für James Loeb zum sechzigsten Geburtstag gewidmet (Munich, 1930)

21.

REUNION OF DEMETER AND KORE

Pinax of Ninnion. Ethnikon Museum, Athens. From L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (Oxford, 1896-1909)

22.

DEPARTURE OF TRIPTOLEMOS

Red-figured skyphos by Hieron. British Museum, London. From A. Furtwängler and K. Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei (Munich, 1900-1932)

23.

TRIPTOLEMOS WITH A PLOW

Red-figured skyphos. From J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 3d ed. (Cambridge, 1922)

24.

THE CHILD PLOUTON

Hydria. Museum, Istanbul. From J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 3d ed. (Cambridge, 1922)

25.

PLOUTON AND PERSEPHONE (PHEREPHATTA)

Red-figured kylix. British Museum, London. From L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (Oxford, 1896-1909)

26.

ZEUS KTESIOS

Votive relief. From Mitteilungen des Kaiserlich deutschen archäologischen Instituts, athenische Abteilung, Vol. XXXIII (1908)

27.

ZEUS MEILICHIOS

Votive relief from the Peiraeus. Berlin Museum. From J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 3d ed. (Cambridge, 1922)

28.

ZEUS MEILICHIOS

Votive relief from the Peiraeus. Berlin Museum. From A. B. Cook, Zeus (Cambridge, 1914-25)

29.

DIOSCURI

Coin from Sparta. From W. H. Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen and römischen Mythologie (Leipzig, 1884-1937)

30.

APOLLO AGYIEUS

Coin. From L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (Oxford, 1896-1909)#

31.

DIOSCURI

Relief from Sparta. Museum, Sparta. From M. N. Tod and A. J. B. Wace, A Catalogue of the Sparta Museum (Oxford, 1906)

32.

DIOSCURI COMING TO A MEAL

Votive relief. Louvre, Paris (Photograph by Alinari)

33.

TRIPLE HECATE

Collection of Graf Lamberg. From Jahreshefte des Osterreichischen archäologischen Institutes in Wien, Vol. XIII (1910)

34.

ATHENA ERGANE

Red-figured vase. Caputi Collection, Ruvo. From C. Dugas, Greek Pottery (London, 1926)

35.

CYBELE, THE GREAT MOTHER

Black-figured pelike. British Museum, London (Photograph by the British Museum)

36.

BENDIS

Votive relief. British Museum, London (Photograph by the British Museum)

37.

OFFERING TO ASCLEPIUS

Votive relief. Glyptothek, Munich (Photograph by Kaufmann)

38.

ASCLEPIUS OF MELOS

Marble head. British Museum, London. From H. von Brunn and F. Bruckmann, Denkmäler griechischer and römischer Sculptur, 1st Series (Munich, 1888-1900)

39.

GARDENS OF ADONIS

Red-figured aryballos. Karlsruhe. From A. Furtwängler and K. Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei (Munich, 1900-1932)

GREEK POPULAR RELIGION

THE COUNTRYSIDE

Greek religion in its various aspects has been the subject of numerous investigations. Modern research has progressed along two lines especially, the search for primitive survivals and the study of the literary expressions of religion. The first is attributable to the rise of the science of anthropology since the seventies of the last century. In this science the study of Greek religion, viewed as a direct development from a primitive nature religion, has always taken a prominent place. I need only mention the names of Andrew Lang, Sir James Frazer, and Jane Harrison. While it is true that there were very many relics of primitive religion in Greek religion, it must be remembered that Greece was a highly civilized country and that even its most backward inhabitants were subject to the influence of its culture. It is misleading, therefore, to represent Greek religion as essentially primitive. The primitive elements were modified and overlaid by higher elements through the development of Greek culture. They were survivals and must be treated as such.

The second line of research has been pursued by philologists, who, quite naturally from their point of view, found the highest and most valuable expression of Greek religious thought in the works of the great writers and philosophers. I may recall the names of such men as Lewis Campbell, James Adam, and Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. The philologists neglect or impatiently brush aside the popular aspects of Greek religion as less valuable and less well known. It is true that the religion of

the masses was on a lower level than the religious ideas of eminent literary men, but it is also true that those ideas made hardly any impression on the development of Greek religion. The writers were not prophets, and the philosophers were seekers of wisdom, not of religious truth. The fate of religion is determined by the masses. The masses are, indeed, susceptible to high religious ideas if they are carried away by a religious genius, but only one such genius arose in Greece, Plato. Even he wished to be regarded as a philosopher rather than as a prophet, and he was accepted as such by his contemporaries. The religious importance of his thought did not come to the fore until half a millennium after his death, although since that time all religions have been subject to his influence.

I should perhaps mention a third kind of inquiry which has been taken up by scholars in recent years, especially in Germany. Their endeavors cannot properly be called research, however, for they have been directed to the systematizing of the religious ideas of the Greeks and the creation of a kind of theology, or, as the authors themselves express it, to revealing the intrinsic and lasting values of Greek religion. To this class belong, among others, W. F. Otto and E. Peterich. The great risk they run is that of imputing to the Greeks a systematization such as is found in religions which have laid down their creeds in books. The Greeks had religious ideas, of course, but they never made them into a system. What the Greeks called theology was either metaphysics, or the doctrine of the persons and works of the various gods. 1

It is of the greatest importance to attain a well-founded knowledge of Greek popular religion, for the fate of Greek religion as a whole depended on it. It is incorrect to say that we have not the means to acquire such knowledge, for the

means are at hand: first, in our information about the cults in which the piety of believers expressed itself; second, in hints by the writers of the classical period; and third, in archaeological discoveries. As I have stated, we ought not to mistake the popular religion for the primitive elements, which persisted in great measure but were subject to and influenced by the development of Greek civilization and political life.

In beginning my exposition of Greek popular religion I want to draw attention to a point of primary importance. In the latter part of the archaic age and in the classical age the leading cities of Greece were more and more industrialized and commercialized. Greek civilization was urban. Many parts of Greece, however, remained in a backward state, and while they are of no importance in the history of civilization and political life, they are important in the history of religion. For they still preserved the mode of life which had been common in earlier times, when the inhabitants of Greece were peasants, compelled to subsist on the products of their own country--the crops, the fruits, the flocks, and the herds.

In trying to understand Greek popular religion we must start from the agricultural and pastoral life of the countryside, which was neither very advanced nor very primitive culturally. The Greek peasant usually lived in a large village. Many ancient cities with names familiar in history were but villages similar to those found in Greece today. Let us imagine a Greek peasant. He rose early, as simple people always do, before dawn. In the dusk of the morning he looked for the stars which were beginning to wane above the eastern horizon, where the growing light announced the rising of the sun. The stars were for him only indications of the time of the year, not objects of worship. He greeted the rising sun with a kiss of the hand, as he greeted the first swallow or the first

kite, but he did not pay it any reverence. He needed rain, and sometimes cool weather, more than he needed the sun. He looked at the highest mountaintop in the neighborhood. Maybe it wore a cloudcap. This was promising, for up there on the top of the mountain sat Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, the thrower of the thunderbolt, the rain-giver. He was a great god. He had other aspects of which we shall hear later. The roar of the thunder was the sign of his power and presence--sometimes of his anger. He smote the high mountains, the tall oaks, and occasionally man with his thunderbolt. But the flash of the lightning and the roar of the thunder were followed by the rain, which moistened the soil and benefited the crops, the grass, and the fruits.

It was seldom necessary to pray for rain in Greece, for the course of the seasons is much more regular there than in northern Europe. Late autumn and winter bring rain; summer brings drought and heat. On the other hand, the weather is not so regular that certain days of the year could be fixed upon for weather magic. This is the reason why as weather god Zeus had few festivals. Sometimes heat and drought were excessive. Myths have much to tell about these disasters, and it is related that they were sometimes so great that the most extreme of all sacrifices, a human sacrifice, was offered. Two such sacrifices are recorded from historical times, one to Zeus Lykaios and one to Zeus Laphystios. 2 Zeus Lykaios received his name from the high mountain in southwestern Arcadia, Lykaion, on the top of which he had a famous sanctuary. Zeus Laphystios was named after the mountain Laphystion in Boeotia, although his cult belonged to Halos in Thessaly. On Mount Lykaion there was a well called Hagno. When there was need of rain the priest of Zeus went to this well, performed

ceremonies and prayers, and dipped an oak twig into the water. Thereupon a haze arose from the well and condensed into clouds, and soon there was rain all over Arcadia.

Zeus Laphystios is well known from the myth of the Golden Fleece, according to which Phrixos and Helle, who were to be sacrificed because of a drought, saved themselves by riding away on a ram with a golden fleece. Their mother was called Nephele (cloud). At the bottom of this myth is weather magic such as is known to have been practiced at several places in Greece, including Mount Pelion, not far from Halos. At the time of the greatest heat young men girt with fresh ram fleeces went up to the top of this mountain in order to pray to Zeus Akraios for cool weather. 3 From this fleece, Zeus was called Melosios on Naxos, 4 and the fleece, which was used in several rites, for example, in the initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries, was called Zeus' fleece (Dios kodion). It is generally said to have been a means of purification and propitiation, and so it was. But its origin is to be found in the weather magic by which the weather god was propitiated. It had a place at Athens in the cult of Zeus Maimaktes, the stormy Zeus, who gave his name to the stormy winter month of Maimakterion.

We are told that in other places, also, people went to the mountain of Zeus to pray for rain. Ombrios and Hyetios are common epithets of Zeus, and we hear of sanctuaries of Zeus on Olympus and on various other mountaintops, such as the highest mountain of the island of Aegina, where he was called Zeus Panhellenios. In this sanctuary a building was erected

to accommodate his visitors. Probably the weather god Zeus ruled from the highest peak in every neighborhood. It is supposed that Hagios Elias, who nowadays has a chapel everywhere on the mountaintops, is his successor.

We follow our peasant on his way. We pass the gardens and cornfields where most of his work was done. We shall return to them later. We follow him to those parts of the countryside which were not subject to the labor of men--the meadows and the pasture grounds, the mountains and the forests. Even in modern Greece there are vast tracts of land which cannot be cultivated, and the extent of such land was greater in antiquity. If our peasant passed a heap of stones, as he was likely to do, he might lay another stone upon it. If a tall stone was erected on top of the heap, he might place before it a bit of his provision as an offering (Fig. 3). He performed this act as a result of custom, without knowing the real reason for it, but he knew that a god was embodied in the stone heap and in the tall stone standing on top of it. He named the god Hermes after the stone heap (herma) in which he dwelt, and he called the tall stone a herm. Such heaps were welcome landmarks to the wanderer who sought his way from one place to another through desert tracts, and their god became the protector of wayfarers. And if, by chance, the wayfarer found on the stone heap something, probably an offering, which would be welcome to the poor and hungry, he ascribed this lucky find to the grace of the god and called it a hermaion.

Our peasant or his forefathers knew that the stone heaps sometimes covered a dead man and that the stone erected on top was a tombstone. Accordingly, the god who dwelt in the stone heap had relations with the dead. Although the people brought libations and food offerings to the dead in their tombs, they also believed in a common dwelling place of the dead.

[paragraph continues] Such contradictions are hardly noticed by simple people. This abode of the dead, the dark and gloomy Hades, was some-where far away beneath the earth. On leaving their earthly home, the souls needed someone to show them the way, and nobody was more appropriate for this function than the protector of wayfarers, who dwelt in the stone heaps. Hermes, the guide of souls, is known not only from literature but also from pictures, in which he is represented with a magic rod in his hand, permitting the souls, small winged human figures, to ascend and sending them down again through the mouth of a large jar (Fig. 2) . Such jars were often used for burial purposes.

Perhaps our peasant wanted to look after his stock, which grazed on the meadows and mountain slopes. The god of the stone heaps was concerned with them, too. The story, told in the Homeric Hymn, how, when a babe, he stole the oxen of Apollo, is a humorous folk tale invented by herdsmen who did not hesitate to augment their herds by fraud and rejoiced in such profitable tricks. One may think of the Biblical story of Jacob and Laban. To Hermes such stories were no boon, for he became the god of thieves.

On Olympus Hermes was a subordinate god, the messenger of the gods, and we know him chiefly as such. I take no ac-count of later additions to his functions, which made him a god of commerce, of gymnastics, and of rhetoric. He was especially popular in one of the backward provinces of Greece, Arcadia, the land of shepherds. Here, too, the herms were especially popular in cult. Attention has recently been drawn to a series of Arcadian herms, some of which are double or triple and inscribed with the names of various gods in the genitive 5 (Fig. 1). Other gods than Hermes were also embodied

in these stone pillars, a relic of the old stone cult, which has left many traces.

According to Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn, Hermes cared for and protected the livestock, but we do not find many evidences of this function in his cult. It fell to other gods. Apollo is called Lykeios, an epithet which surely describes him not as the light god but as the wolf god. And why should not the shepherds have appealed to the great averter of evil for protection against the most dangerous foe of their flocks, the wolf? Pastoral life found expression in another god who was always especially Arcadian, Pan. He came to Athens late--not until the time of the Persian wars. He is represented with the legs and face of a goat; he is as ruttish as the he-goat; he plays the syrinx, as the shepherds do in the lazy hours when the flocks graze peacefully; but he may also cause a sudden panic, when the animals, seized for some unknown reason by fright, rush away headlong.

There are many rivers in Greece, but few of them are large. Most of them are small and precipitous, and many are dry in summer. Water is scarce in Greece, and so the benefits received from the rivers are especially appreciated. In ancient times the rivers were holy. An army did not cross a river without making a sacrifice to it, and Hesiod prescribes that one should not cross a river without saying a prayer and washing one's hands in its water. The aid of the rivers was sought for the fertility not only of the land but also of mankind. After the sixth century B.C., names taken from certain rivers were common, for instance, Kephisodotos, the gift of Kephisos. When the young man cut his long hair, he dedicated the locks to the neighboring river.

The rivers each had their god. These gods are represented in the shape of a bull or a bull with a human head (Fig. 6). Such a figure is sometimes called by the name of the great river

in northwestern Greece, Acheloos, and Acheloos was venerated in several places in Greece. It is not clear whether the god of the river Acheloos was on his way to becoming a common river god or whether Acheloos is an old word for water. At all events, as the rivers were individualized, so too were their gods.

River spirits in the shape of a bull are well known from European folklore of the present day, and they are certainly an ancient heritage. The river spirit appears just as often, however, in the shape of a horse. This is true, for example, in Sweden and in Scotland. One of the great gods, Poseidon, is closely connected with the horse as well as with water. It is related in some myths that he appeared in the shape of a horse and that he created the horse. He brought forth a spring on the Acropolis of Athens with a stroke of his trident, and Pegasus brought forth the spring of Hippocrene on Mount Helicon with a stroke of his hoof. Other springs, such as Aganippe, also have names referring to the horse. No doubt the water spirit appeared in the shape of a horse also, but the springs had other deities who carried the day, the nymphs, to whom we shall come presently.

To the seafaring Ionians, Poseidon was the god of the sea. On the mainland of Greece, and especially in the Peloponnesus, he was the god of horses and of earthquakes. Earthquakes occur in Greece not infrequently, and when the earth began to tremble, the Spartans used to sing a paean to Poseidon. There is a certain connection between the rivers and the earthquakes, for many rivers in Greece sink down into the ground, eroding the limestone, and flow in subterranean channels for long distances until they break forth again in a mighty stream. The nature philosophers took over from the people the opinion that the earthquakes were caused by this eroding of the ground by the rivers. It is understandable, therefore,

that the god of water was also the god of earthquakes. One of the epithets by which he was designated in Laconia, Gaiaochos, has been interpreted as "he who drives beneath the earth."

The Greeks also knew other horse-shaped daemons, the centaurs and the seilenoi. The centaurs have in part the body of a horse and in part that of a man. Homer calls them beasts. They appear only in the myths of art and literature, and they seem to have been localized in two districts, Mount Pelion and northwestern Arcadia. There is no doubt that they were de-rived from popular belief. If the proposed etymology, according to which the word means "water whipper," 6 is correct, they were water spirits. In that case, one might believe that they were originally spirits of the precipitous mountain torrents. At all events, their character is rough and violent. They resemble the spirits of wood and wilderness which appear in the folklore of northern Europe. They represent the fierce and rough aspects of nature. They are depicted as using uprooted fir trees for weapons and as carrying the victims of the chase on a pole.

There is another kind of horse daemon, which is often represented in works of art of Ionian origin. These daemons are distinguished from the centaurs by having the body of a man with the legs and tail of a horse and by being ithyphallic. There has been a lengthy discussion concerning their name. It was proposed to assign to these daemons, which were confined to the Ionian area, the name of seilenoi--we know from inscriptions that they were so called--in distinction from the goatlike satyrs, which were supposed to be Dorian. 7 The attempt

to make such a distinction has failed. Proper names prove that seilenoi were well known in the Peloponnesus also, 8 and their value as testimony is the greater because they prove that the seilenoi belong not only to mythology but also to popular belief. Moreover, there are archaic statuettes from Arcadia showing daemons with a human body and features of goats and other animals (Fig. 4). These goatlike daemons are sometimes called panes, and they are certainly akin to Pan. The seilenoi and the satyrs have intercourse with the nymphs, and very often they appear dancing and frolicking with the maenads, for they were made companions of Dionysus. We do not know the exact reason why this came about. It is supposed that they were fertility daemons, just as Dionysus was a vegetation god. As a consequence, they appear only in mythology, not in cult. But it is evident that the Greeks peopled untamed nature, the mountains and the forests, with various daemons which were thought of as having half-animal, half-human shape. This is one of the many similarities between Greek mythology and the popular beliefs of northern Europe, in which similar daemons and spirits are numerous. There can be no doubt that centaurs, seilenoi, and satyrs were created by popular belief, although art and literature appropriated them and they had no cult.

Like the peoples of northern Europe, the Greeks knew not only male but also female spirits of nature, the nymphs. The word signifies simply young women, and, unlike the male daemons, the nymphs are always thought of in purely human shape. They are beautiful and fond of dancing. They are benevolent. But they may also be angry and threatening. If a man goes mad it is said that he has been caught by the nymphs. In ancient Greek mythology, as elsewhere, we find the folktale

motif of a man compelling a nymph to become his wife. She bears him children but soon returns to her native element. Thetis was originally a sea nymph whom Peleus won by wrestling with her. She soon abandoned his house and only returned from time to time to look after her son, Achilles. Nymphs are often mothers of mythical heroes.

The nymphs are almost omnipresent. They dwell on the mountains, in the cool caves, in the groves, in the meadows, and by the springs. There are also sea nymphs--the Nereids--and tree nymphs. The nymphs had cults at many places, especially at springs and in caves (Fig. 8). Caves with remains of such cults have been discovered. Most interesting is the cave at Vari on Mount Hymettus. 9 In the fifth century B.C., a poor man of Theraean origin, Archedemos, who styles himself "caught by the nymphs," planted a garden, decorated the cave, and engraved inscriptions on its walls. Still more interesting is a cave which was recently discovered at Pitza in the neighborhood of Corinth. 10 The discovery is famous especially for its well-preserved paintings on wood in Corinthian style. One of these tablets represents a sacrifice to the nymphs, and the other represents women. There are a lot of terracottas representing women--some of whom are pregnant--Pan, satyrs, and various animals. The character of the cult and its connection with the nature daemons and with animals is evident, but, on the other hand, it appears that it was preeminently a cult of women and that the women applied to the nymphs for help in childbirth. Such cults are also found in other places. In the so-called prison of Socrates at Athens, where a century ago women brought offerings to the Moirai

for success in marriage and childbirth, 11 the Moirai may have succeeded the nymphs. The nymphs were very popular in cult. They were beautiful and kind and represented the gentle and benevolent aspects of nature and of almost all its parts. It is quite understandable that they were venerated by women especially. Although the cults of women were not absolutely separated from those of men, men and women went different ways and had different occupations in daily life, as they still do in the Greek countryside. The women had their special concerns centering around marriage and childbirth, and it was only natural that they should apply to divinities of their own sex. The nymphs were to be found everywhere and were supposed to be especially benevolent to those of their own sex.

There is a great goddess who is very similar to the nymphs and who is accompanied by nymphs, namely Artemis, "Lady of the Wild Things" (Fig. 5). She haunts the mountains and the meadows; she is connected with the tree cult and with springs and rivers; she protects women in childbirth; and she watches over little children. Girls brought offerings to her before their marriage. Her aspect is different in different parts of Greece, but it always goes back to the general characteristics just mentioned, except that one or another of them comes more into the foreground. Her habitual appearance is determined by Homer and the great art and literature of Attica. She is the virgin twin sister of Apollo and by preference the goddess of hunting. How her relation to Apollo came about is not clear. We may only remark here that both carry the bow as their weapon. Of course, the goddess who haunts the mountains and the forests with a bow in her hand is a hunting goddess. Artemis was much more than that, but the Homeric knights, as well as the inhabitants of the great Ionian cities,

had no relation to the free life of nature except in the sport of hunting, which they loved. Hence, this side of Artemis' nature was especially emphasized.

Other very interesting and very popular aspects of Artemis' nature were prominent, especially in the Peloponnesus. She was closely connected with the tree cult. She is sometimes called Lygodesma, because her image was wound round with willow; Caryatis, after the chestnut; and Cedreatis, after the cedar. Dances and masquerades of a very free and even lascivious character assumed a prominent place in many of her cults, in which men as well as women took part. Cymbals have been found in the temple of Artemis Limnatis in the borderland between Laconia and Messenia. 12 During the excavations of the British School in the famous sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta, a number of terracotta masks, representing grotesque faces of both men and women, were found (Fig. 7) . It is very probable that similar masks were worn by the dancers who performed in this cult. In these customs we find the popular background for the mythological Artemis who dances with her nymphs.

Artemis was the most popular goddess of Greece. She was the leader of the nymphs, and, in fact, she herself was but the foremost of the nymphs. Archedemos, who decorated the cave of Vari, dedicated his inscriptions to the nymphs, but one of them is addressed to the Nymph, in the singular. One of the crowd of nymphs was singled out as a representative of them all, and she became the great goddess Artemis.

Christianity easily swept away the great gods, but the minor daemons of popular belief offered a stubborn resistance. They were nearer the living rock. The Greek peasant of today still believes in the nymphs, though he gives them all the old name

of the sea nymphs, Neraids. They haunt the same places, they have the same appearance and the same occupations, and the same tales are told of them. It is remarkable that they have a queen, called "the Great Lady," "the Fair Lady," or even "the Queen of the Mountains." Perhaps she is a last remembrance of the great goddess Artemis, or perhaps there has been a recurrence of the process by which Artemis, the foremost of the nymphs, became a great goddess. Nobody knows, but the fact that the nymphs alone survive in modern popular belief is a telling argument for their popularity among the Greek people in ancient times.

What interests primitive man is not nature in itself but nature so far as it intervenes in human life and forms a necessary and obvious basis for it. In the foreground are the needs of man together with nature as a means of satisfying those needs, for upon the generosity of nature depends whether men shall starve or live in abundance. Therefore, in a scantily watered land such as Greece, the groves and meadows where the water produces a rich vegetation are the dwelling places of the nature spirits, and so are the forests and mountains where the wild beasts live. In the forests the nymphs dance; centaurs, satyrs, and seilenoi roam about; and Pan protects the herds, though he may also drive them away in a panic. The life of nature becomes centered in Artemis, who loves hills and groves and well-watered places and promotes that natural fertility which does not depend upon the efforts of man.

Anyone who wishes to understand the religion of antiquity should have before him a living picture of the ancient landscape as it is represented in certain Pompeian frescoes 13 (Fig. 9) and in Strabo's description of the lowland at the mouth of

the river Alpheus. 14 "The whole tract," Strabo says, "is full of shrines of Artemis, Aphrodite, and the nymphs, in flowery groves, due mainly to the abundance of water; there are numerous hermae on the roads and shrines of Poseidon on the headlands by the sea." One could hardly have taken a step out of doors without meeting a little shrine, a sacred enclosure, an image, a sacred stone, or a sacred tree. Nymphs lived in every cave and fountain. This was the most persistent, though not the highest, form of Greek religion. It outlived the fall of the great gods.

This is not the end of the story. Our peasant certainly passed on his way other small sanctuaries or groves where he paid his respects. Not gods or nature daemons but heroes dwelt in them 15 (Fig. 10). Although modern scholars have proffered other opinions, the Greeks were persuaded that a hero was a man who had once lived, who died and was buried, and who lay in his grave at the place where he was venerated. I should think it likely that our peasant had heard weird stories about heroes, such as those about the hero of Temesa, to whom the most beautiful virgin of the town had to be sacrificed until the famous boxer Euthymus drove him out in a regular fight, or about the hero Orestes, whom the Athenians did not like to meet at night because he was apt to give them a beating and to tear off their clothes. If our peasant became sick he believed, perhaps, that some hero had attacked him. In other words, ghost stories such as are not yet forgotten were told of the heroes. The hero was a dead man who walked about corporeally, a revenant such as popular belief tells of everywhere. But this aspect of the heroes lingered only in the background, for in Greece the heroes had cults and were generally

helpful. Their cult was bound to their tomb, and their power was bound to their relics, which were buried in the tomb. This is the reason why their bones were sometimes dug up and transferred to another place. Cimon, for example, fetched the bones of Theseus from the island of Scyros to Athens, and the Lacedaemonians with some difficulty found the bones of Orestes beneath a smithy at Tegea and transferred them to Sparta when they wanted his help in the war against the Arcadians. The heroes were especially helpful in war. The sense which the word "hero" had in Homer, namely "warrior," was not forgotten either, and the heroes were particularly well suited to defend the land in which they were buried. In the battle of Marathon, Theseus rose from the ground to fight with his people against the Persians. The Locrians in Italy left a place open in the file for Aias, and in the battle of Sagra he was said to have wounded the commander of their foes, the Crotoniates. It sometimes occurred that a people sent its heroes to help another people.

There were an exceedingly large number of hero tombs and sanctuaries all over the countryside. The names of only the best known of these heroes, and especially those with mythological names, are recorded. Very many were anonymous or called only by some such epithet as "the leader." Others were designated simply by the place where their cult was located. This fact emerges, for example, from the sacrificial calendar of the Marathonian tetrapolis, 16 in which we find four couples, each consisting of a hero and a heroine, and in addition to these some other heroes. In the inscription of the Salaminioi, 17 which was discovered recently during the American excavations at Athens, we also find a series of heroes designated by the localities of their cults in the neighborhood of Sunium.

The heroes were exceedingly numerous; they were found everywhere; and they were close to the people. They were thought to appear in very concrete form. It is not to be wondered at that the people applied to them for help in all their needs. They were often healers of diseases, like the Mohammedan saints, whose tombs are often hung with patches torn from the clothes of the sick. Asclepius himself was a hero. He ousted many other heroes who were locally venerated as healers of sickness. Thus the heroes were good for almost everything, and this fact explains why minor local gods who were too insignificant to be reckoned as true gods were received among the number of the heroes. This is the reason why some scholars were prone to consider the heroes as debased gods or "special gods." I cannot enter into this complicated problem, which Farnell has treated fully in his book on the hero cults. I have only wished to give a concrete idea of the importance of the cult of the heroes for the Greek people.

The similarity of the heroes to the saints of the Catholic Church is striking and has often been pointed out. The power of the saints, like that of the heroes, is bound to their relics, and just as the relics of the saints are transferred from one place to another, so were those of the heroes. Moreover, the oracle of Delphi prescribed that a hero cult should be devoted to a dead man if it appeared that a supernatural power was attached to his relics, and the pope canonizes a saint for similar reasons. The cult of the heroes corresponded to a popular need which was so strong that it continued to exist in Christian garb.

I have tried to give as well as possible in a limited space a concrete idea of Greek rustic religion as far as it was concerned with the free life of nature and with the heroes. Nature was peopled with spirits, daemons, and gods. They haunted the

mountains and the forests. They dwelt in trees and stones, in rivers and wells. Some of them were rough and dreadful, as the wilderness is, while others were gentle and benevolent. Some of them promoted the life of nature and also protected mankind. The great gods are less prominent in this sphere. Zeus holds his place as the god of the weather, the hurler of the thunderbolt, and the sender of rain. Poseidon appears as the god of water and earthquakes. Hermes is really a minor god, the spirit embodied in the stone heaps, who has been introduced into Olympus by Homeric poetry. Artemis is the foremost of the nymphs who has grown into a great goddess. The innumerable heroes are protectors of the soil in which their bones are laid, ready to help their fellow countrymen in all their needs, linked with both the past and the present.

This aspect of Greek religion was certainly not the highest, but it was the most enduring. It was close to the earth, which is the source of all religion and from which even the great gods sprang. The great gods were overthrown and soon forgotten by the people. The nature daemons and the heroes were not so easily dealt with. The nature spirits have lived on in the mind of the people to this day, as they have in other parts of Europe, although they were not acknowledged by the Church, which called them evil daemons, nor by educated people, who regarded them as products of superstition. The cult of the heroes took on a Christian guise and survived in much the same forms, except that the martyrs and the saints succeeded the heroes.

These facts prove that we have here encountered a religion which corresponds to deep-lying ideas and needs of humanity. They also prove the importance of this kind of religion in antiquity. It was a religion of simple and unlettered peasants, but it was the most persistent form of Greek religion.

Footnotes

4:1 θεολογία is πρώτη φιλοσοφία, Aristotle, Metaphysica, X, p. 1064a, ll. 33 ff. The persons and the works of the gods are described by Cornutus in a book entitled Ἐπιδορμή τῶν κατὰ τήν ἑλληνικήν θεολογίαν παραδεδομέων.

6:2 Herodotus, VII, 197, and Pseudo-Plato, Minos, p. 315c; Theophrastus in Porphyrius, De abstinentia, II, 27.

7:3 C. Müller, ed., Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum (Paris, 1841-73), II, 262.

7:4 Inscriptiones Graecae, consilio et auctoritate Academiae litterarum regiae borussicae editae (Berlin, 1873-), Vol. XII, Fasc. 5, No. 48; interpretation by A. B. Cook, Zeus; a Study in Ancient Religion (Cambridge, 1914-25), I, 164.

9:5 K. Rhomaios, "Arkadikoi Hermai," Ephemeris archaiologike, 1911, pp. 149 ff.

12:6 P. Kretschmer in Glotta, X (1920), 50.

12:7 There has been a lengthy discussion. I cite only E. Reisch, "Zur Vorgeschichte der attischen Tragödie," Festschrift Theodor Gomperz dargebracht zum siebzigsten Geburtstage (Vienna, 1902), pp. 451 ff., and the most recent work, F. Brommer, Satyroi (Dissertation, Munich, 1937).

13:8 F. Solmsen in Indogermanische Forschungen, XXX (1912), 1 ff.

14:9 Amer. Journ. of Archaeology, VII (1903), 263 ff.; the inscriptions in Inscriptiones Graecae, Editio minor (Berlin, 1913-), Vol. I, Nos. 778-800.

14:10 Summary description in Archäologischer Anzeiger, Beiblatt zum Jahrbuch des archäologischen Instituts, 1934, pp. 194 ff., and 1935, pp. 197 ff.

15:11 J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion; a Study in Survivals (Cambridge, 1910), p. 121.

16:12 H. Roehl, ed., Inscriptiones Graecae antiquissimae praeter Atticas in Attica repertas (Berlin, 1882), Nos. 50, 61, 73.

17:13 M. Rostovtzeff, "Die hellenistisch-römische Architekturlandschaft," Römische Mitteilungen, XXVI (1911), 1 ff.

18:14 Strabo, VIII, p. 343.

18:15 The most comprehensive treatment is by L. R. Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality (Oxford, 1921).

19:16 Inscriptiones Graecae, Editio minor, Vols. II-III, Pt. 1, No. 1358.

19:17 Published by W. Ferguson in Hesperia, VII (1938), 31 ff.

RURAL CUSTOMS AND FESTIVALS

I have emphasized strongly the fact that except for a few industrial and commercial centers ancient Greece was a country of peasants and herdsmen and that according to modern notions many of its so-called cities were but large villages. Certain provinces such as Boeotia, Phocis, and Thessaly, not to speak of Messenia, were always agricultural. In other ways also some of them were still very simple and backward in the classical age. Examples are Arcadia, Aetolia, and Acarnania. Except for those cities to which the leading role in Greek history fell, Greece depended on agriculture and on cattle and sheep raising. In early times, before the industrial and commercial development began, this was true of the whole of Greece, and it was then that the foundations of the Greek cults were laid.

I want to stress this fact and certain of its implications once more. Corn, wheat, or barley was always the staple food of the Greeks. The daily portion of food of soldiers, laborers, and slaves was always reckoned as a certain number of pecks of corn. With the bread, some olives, some figs, or a little goat-milk cheese was eaten and a little wine was drunk. The diet of the Greek peasant is the same even today. Meat was not daily or common food. One might slaughter an animal in order to entertain a guest, as Eumaeus did when Odysseus came to his hut, but this was considered as a sacrifice also. Generally

speaking, the common people ate meat only at the sacrifices which accompanied the great festivals. One is re-minded of the great feasting on mutton at Easter in modern Greece, where the peasants seldom eat meat. It will be well to keep this background of Greek life in mind when we try to expound the rural customs of ancient Greece.

The significance of agriculture in the popular festivals occurred even to the ancients. Aristotle says that in early times sacrifices and assemblies took place especially after the harvest had been gathered because people had most leisure at this time. 1 A late author, Maximus of Tyre, writes on this topic at greater length. 2 Only the peasants seem, he says, to have instituted festivals and initiations; they are the first who instituted dancing choruses for Dionysus at the wine press and initiations for Demeter on the threshing floor. A survey of the Greek festivals with rites which are really important from a religious point of view shows that an astonishing number of them are agricultural. The importance of agriculture in the life of the people in ancient times is reflected even in the religious rites.

The significance of agriculture in the festivals founded on religious rites goes still further. The Greek calendar is a calendar of festivals promulgated under the protection of Apollo at Delphi in order that the rites due to the gods might be celebrated at the right times. But long before Apollo had appropriated the Delphic oracle for himself, agriculture had created a natural calendar. Agricultural tasks succeed each other in due order because they are bound up with the seasons, and so also do the rites and ceremonies which are connected with these tasks of sowing, reaping, threshing, gardening, and fruit gathering. For all of them divine protection is required

and is afforded by certain rites which belong, generally speaking, to an old religious stratum and which have a magical character. Such customs, very similar to those of the Greeks, have been preserved by the European peasantry down to our own day.

The Greek goddess of agriculture was Demeter, together with her daughter Kore, the Maiden. The meaning of -meter is "mother." In regard to the first syllable, de-, philologists are at variance as to whether it means "earth" or "corn." The cult proves that Demeter is the Corn Mother and her daughter the Corn Maiden. Demeter is not a goddess of vegetation in general but of the cultivation of cereals specifically. The Homeric knights did not care much for this goddess of the peasants. The references to her in Homer are few, but they are sufficient to show that she was the corn goddess who presided at the winnowing of the corn. Hesiod, who was himself a peasant and composed a poem for peasants, mentions her often. For instance, he prescribes a prayer to Demeter and Zeus in the earth that the fruit of Demeter may be full and heavy when the handle of the plow is grasped in order to begin the sowing, and he calls sowing, plowing, harvesting, and the other agricultural labors the works of Demeter.

Agricultural labors were accompanied by rites and festivals, most of which were devoted to Demeter. At the autumn sowing the Thesmophoria was celebrated; in the winter, during which the crops grow and thrive in Greece, sacrifices were brought to Demeter Chloe (the verdure); and when the corn was threshed the Thalysia was celebrated. Best known is the festival of the autumn sowing, the Thesmophoria. There is no other festival for which we have so many testimonies from various places. Demeter herself was called thesmophoros, and she and her daughter were the two thesmophoroi. The epithet has been translated legifera. In this interpretation thesmos is

taken in the sense of "law" or "ordinance" and reference is made to the conception of agriculture as the foundation of a civilized life and of obedience to the laws. This idea comes to the fore in the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were originally a festival of the autumn sowing like the Thesmophoria to which they were closely akin. 3 It is said that the gift of Demeter is the reason why men do not live like wild beasts, and Athens is praised as the cradle of agriculture and of civilization.

But this interpretation of the word is late and erroneous. It arose only after men had begun to reflect and had recognized that agriculture is the foundation of a civilized life. Thesmos signifies simply "something that has been laid down," and in compound names of festivals ending in -phoria the first part of the compound refers to something carried in the festival. Oschophoria, for example, means the carrying of branches. The thesmoi, consequently, were things carried in the rites of the Thesmophoria, and we know what these things were. At a certain time of the year, perhaps at another festival of Demeter and Kore, the Skirophoria, which was celebrated at the time of threshing, pigs were thrown into subterranean caves together with other fertility charms. At the Thesmophoria the putrefied remains were brought, mixed with the seed corn, and laid on the altars. This is a very simple and old-fashioned fertility magic known from Athens as well as from other places in Greece. The swine was the holy animal of Demeter.

The Thesmophoria and some other festivals of Demeter were celebrated by women alone; men were excluded. Some scholars have thought that the reason for this was that the Thesmophoria had come down from very ancient times when the cultivation of plants was in the hands of the women. This can hardly be so, for the cultivation of cereals with the help

of the plow drawn by oxen has always been the concern of men. The Thesmophoria was a fertility festival in which the women prayed for fertility not only for the fields but also for themselves. The parallelism of sowing and begetting is constant in the Greek language. The reason why this festival was celebrated by women alone may simply be that the women seemed especially fit for performing fertility magic.

While the festival of the autumn sowing is very often mentioned, references to the corresponding festival of the harvest, the Thalysia, are curiously few. It is, however, the only festival mentioned in Homer, who says that sacrifices were offered on the threshing floor. Theocritus describes it in his lovely seventh idyl, in the last lines of which he mentions the altar of Demeter of the threshing floor and prays that he may once again thrust his winnowing shovel into her corn heap and that she may stand there smiling with sheaves and poppies in both hands. In modern Europe the harvest home is a very popular rustic festival. The contrast between the popularity of the modern harvest home and the few references to the ancient harvest festival of the Thalysia is probably only seeming. The rites of the autumn sowing, having become a state festival, were celebrated on certain days of the calendar, while the harvest home was in Greece a private festival celebrated on every farm when the threshing was ended and its date was not fixed. It may be added that the harvest is conducted differently in Greece than in northern Europe. The sheaves are not stored in a barn but are brought immediately to the threshing floor and threshed. The harvest in the coast districts falls in May and the threshing at the beginning of June in the dry season when rain is not to be expected. Another harvest festival was probably the Kalamaia, which was not uncommon, though very little is known about it. Its name, derived from

kalamos (stalk of wheat), its time--June--and its connection with Demeter seem to prove its harvest character.

As becomes a harvest festival, first fruits were offered at the Thalysia. A loaf baked of the new corn was called thalysion arton. These loaves are also mentioned in other connections, and Demeter herself received the name of the "goddess with the great loaves." In Attica such a loaf was called thargelos, and it gave its name to another well-known festival, the Thargelia. This festival, however, belongs to Apollo, not to Demeter. Its characteristic rite is quite peculiar, and its meaning is much discussed. A man, generally a criminal, was led around through the streets, fed, flogged with green branches, and finally expelled or killed. He was called pharmakos, which is the masculine form of pharmakon (medicine). Some scholars regard the pharmakos as a scapegoat on whom the sins and the impurity of the people were loaded and who was then expelled or destroyed. They are certainly right. Others have thought that he was a vegetation spirit which was expelled in order to be replaced by a new one. This opinion, too, is not quite unfounded, for fertility magic is conspicuous in the rites. A crossing of various rites has taken place, as happens not infrequently. 4

The purificatory character of the central rite of the Thargelia explains why the festival was dedicated to Apollo, who is the god of purifications. Purificatory rites are needed and often performed when the crops are ripening in order to protect them against evil influences, and this was probably the original purpose of leading around the pharmakos. References to similar magical rites abound in the writings about agriculture by later authors and are found elsewhere as well. Theoretically,

two different kinds of rites can be distinguished, though they are often mixed up. One consists in walking about with some magical object in order that its influence may be spread over the area. The other is encirclement. 5 Conducting the pharmakos through the streets of the town belongs to the former class. So does a kind of magic prescribed for destroying vermin, which required that a nude virgin or a menstruating woman should walk about in the fields or gardens. In the other case, a magic circle is drawn which excludes the evil. It is related of Methana that when winds threatened to destroy the vines, two men cut a cock into two pieces and, each taking a bleeding piece, ran around the vineyard in opposite directions until they met. Thus the magic circle was closed. Magic of a corresponding kind is still practiced in modern times. The leading around of the pharmakos is probably an old agrarian rite which was introduced into the towns and extended to the expelling of all kinds of evil.

Thus, a connection can be established between the chief rite of the Thargelia and the agrarian character of the festival, which is proved by the derivation of its name from thargelos, the loaf offered as first fruit. This presents a certain difficulty, because the Thargelia was celebrated on the seventh day of the month Thargelion, a date which commonly falls a little before harvest time. But it is not without precedent to use unripe ears for the first fruits. The vestal virgins at Rome did so in preparing the mola salsa at the commencement of May.

First fruits are commonly considered as a thank offering to the gods, and many people may have brought them with this intention. But like most of the rites and customs discussed here, the offering of first fruits is pre-deistic and older than

the cult of the gods. Its origin is to be found in magic. Among many primitive peoples certain plants and small animals are tabooed during a particular time, and the lifting of the taboo so that they can be used for food is effected by elaborate ceremonies, which are also intended to bring about an increase of these plants and animals. Some scholars are of the opinion that among the Greeks, too, the offering of first fruits and the ceremonial drinking of new wine, of which I shall speak later, represented the breaking of the taboo imposed upon the unripe cereals and wine. 6 Perhaps they are right in regard to the ancient times, about which we have no direct information. The information which has come down to us from the Greeks proves that they themselves thought that the aim of the offering of first fruits was the promotion of fertility. The loaf called thargelos was also called eueteria (a good year). It is said, furthermore, that thargela were fruits of all kinds which were cooked in a pot and carried around as offerings of first fruits to the gods. The loaf and the mixture of fruit cooked together belong to two different forms of the same custom, to which many parallels are found among modern European peoples, especially in the harvest customs of eating ceremonially some part of the harvest. We have found this custom in the harvest festival of the Thalysia and in the Thargelia, which was celebrated a little before the harvest. It also occurs in the Pyanopsia, which received its name from the cooking of beans in a pot. The Pyanopsia was celebrated in the month of Pyanopsion in late autumn and was a festival of fruit gathering. The eiresione (the May bough), about which we shall have something to say later, was also carried

around at this festival. The Pyanopsia, as the festival of the fruit harvest, corresponds to the Thalysia, the festival of the cereal harvest.

The meaning of such offerings appears very clearly in an ancient Sicilian custom, which was recorded by ancient students of literature because they believed that they had found in it the origin of bucolic poetry. 7 The so-called bucoliasts went around to people's doors. The goddess with whom the custom came to be associated was Artemis, but the practices which characterize it prove that it belongs among those which we are describing. The bucoliasts wore hartshorns on their heads and carried loaves stamped with figures of animals (this was a concession to the goddess with whom the custom was associated), a sack of fruit of all kinds, and a skin of wine. They strewed the fruit on the thresholds of the houses, offered a drink of wine to the inhabitants, and sang a simple song: "Take the good luck, take the health-bread which we bring from the goddess." What they carried may, in fact, be called a panspermia, and the partaking of it conferred luck on the inhabitants of the houses. Similar customs were fairly common. A newly acquired slave and the bridegroom at a wedding were strewn with fruit (katachysmata). 8 The custom of strewing the bridegroom with fruit still persists, but its original sense of conferring fertility is forgotten.

This kind of offering is commonly called panspermia, although the Greeks also called it pankarpia. Both words signify a mixture of all kinds of fruit. Such offerings were also brought to the dead at the ancient Greek equivalent of All

[paragraph continues] Souls' Day, the Chytroi, on the third day of the Anthesteria. It is very interesting that this usage seems to have persisted probably from prehistoric down to modern times. We are told of a vessel, called kernos, with many small cups which were filled with fruit of various kinds and with fluids such as wine and oil. In the middle was a lamp. The women carried the kernos on their heads in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Very similar is the liknon or winnowing basket filled with fruit, among which a phallus was fixed. It appears in the representations of the Dionysiac Mysteries and is only another way of presenting offerings of the same kind. Vessels of the same shape as the kernos have been found in Minoan Crete and elsewhere, and the conclusion seems to be justified that offerings of this kind were made in the prehistoric age (Fig. 11) . The custom has been taken over by the Greek Church. The panspermia is offered to the dead on the modern Greek All Souls' Day, the Psychosabbaton, which is celebrated in the churchyards before Lent or before Whitsunday. It is offered as first fruits on various occasions, but especially at the harvest and at the gathering of the fruit. It is brought to the church, blessed by the priest, and eaten in part, at least, by the celebrants. This modern panspermia varies according to the seasons and consists of grapes, loaves, corn, wine, and oil. Candles are fixed in the loaves, and there are candlesticks with cups for corn, wine, and oil, which have been compared to the ancient kernos. 9 The usual modern name of these offerings is kollyba, which signified in late antiquity as well as in modern times an offering of cooked wheat and fruit. The word appears also in descriptions of ecclesiastical usages from the Middle Ages. 10 Very seldom can the continuity of a cult usage be followed

through the ages as this one can. These popular customs, which belong to the oldest and, as some may say, the lowest stratum of religion, are the most long-lived of all.

Up to this point we have dealt chiefly with customs and usages connected with the cultivation of cereals, although in the later paragraphs we have mentioned also some customs pertaining to fruit gathering. As I have remarked, fruit was an important part of the daily food of the Greeks, although we must keep in mind that certain kinds familiar to us, such as oranges, were introduced in recent times. Of wine I need not speak. The cultivation of the olive was very important. Olives were not only eaten as a condiment with bread but also provided the fat which man needs. The oil served for illumination and as a cosmetic. But no special customs referring to the cultivation of the olive are recorded. We know only that at Athens it was protected by Zeus and Athena and that there were sacred olive trees from which came the oil distributed as prizes at the Panathenaean games.

Starting from the beginning of the year, we find a festival celebrated at Athens about the commencement of January. Our information about it and even its name seem to be contradictory. The name, Haloa, 11 is derived from halos, which means both threshing floor and garden. Since the first sense of the word would be inapplicable to a festival celebrated in January, it must have been a gardening festival. It is said to have comprised Mysteries of Demeter, Kore, and Dionysus and to have been celebrated by the women on the occasion of the pruning of the vines and the tasting of the wine. It bore a certain resemblance to the Thesmophoria, and sexual symbols were conspicuous in it. If we think of the labors in the vineyards of modern Greece, this account is intelligible though not quite correct. In December the soil is hoed around the

vines, and their roots are cut. At the same time the first fermentation of the wine is ended, and the wine can be drunk, although it is not very good. Thus, the description of the Haloa fits in with what we know about the labors in the vine-yards. On the other hand, the Haloa is also said to have been a festival of Demeter, and this, too, is possible. The crops grow and thrive during the winter, and, as we have seen, sacrifices were brought to Demeter Chloe at this time.

In February the vines are pruned, and the second fermentation of the wine comes to an end. The wine is now ripe for drinking. One of the most popular and most complex of the festivals at Athens, the Anthesteria, fell in this season, when spring had come with plenty of flowers. The name means "festival of flowers." We hear of festivals celebrated in other parts of Greece at the season when the vines were pruned. The Aiora, or swinging festival, of the Attic countryside seems to have been of this nature. It was connected with the myth of Icarius, who taught the culture of the vine, and with the Anthesteria. It was a rustic merrymaking. Youths leaped on skin sacks filled with wine, and the girls were swung in swings, a custom which is common in rustic festivals and may perhaps be interpreted as a fertility charm 12 (Fig. 12).

In the city of Athens the most prominent part of the Anthesteria was the blessing and ceremonial drinking of the new wine. The first day, called Pithoigia, had its name from the opening of the wine jars. In Boeotia a similar custom was observed at about the same time, but it was devoted to Agathos Daimon, the god to whom the libation after every meal was made. At Athens the wine was brought to the sanctuary of Dionysus in the Marshes, mixed by the priestesses, and blessed before the god. Everyone took his portion in a small jug, and

hence this day is called "the Festival of the Jugs" (Choes). Even the small children got their share and received small gifts, particularly little painted jugs. The schools had a vacation, and the teachers received their meager fee. The admission to this festival at the age of about four years was a token that a child was no longer a mere baby. Another rite pertaining to the Anthesteria was the ceremonial wedding between Dionysus and the wife of the highest sacral official of Athens, the king archon. This is an instance of a widespread rite intended to promote fertility. Examples abound in the folklore of other countries. In Greece they are mostly mythical. At Athens the god was driven into the city in a ship set on wheels (Fig. 13). He was the god of spring coming from the sea.

It is impossible to enter here into a discussion of the very complex rites comprised in the Anthesteria. 13 It should be re-marked, however, that the third day, or, more correctly, the evening before it, was gloomy. It was the Athenian All Souls' Day. Offerings of vegetables were brought to the dead, and libations of water were poured out to them. The Anthesteria has a curious resemblance to the popular celebration of Christmas in the Scandinavian countries. Many of the customs observed there at Christmas evidently refer to fertility. People eat and drink heartily and there is much merrymaking. But there is also a gloomy side to the celebration. The dead visit their old houses, where beds and food are prepared for them. There is of course no connection between this festival and the Anthesteria, but only a curious similarity. The popular customs of all countries and of all ages are related.

Vintage festivals are rare in classical Greece. There was one at Athens, the Oschophoria, which got its name from the

vine branches laden with grapes which were carried by two youths from the sanctuary of Dionysus to the temple of Athena Skiras. A race followed, and the victor received for a prize a drink made up of five ingredients. At Sparta there was a race of youths, called staphylodromoi (grape-runners), at the great festival of the Carnea, which was celebrated about the beginning of September. The name proves that the custom had something to do with the vintage. One of the youths put fillets on his head and ran on before the others, pronouncing blessings upon the town. It was a good omen if he was overtaken by the others and a bad omen if he was not. Many speculations concerning this custom have been advanced, but we cannot with certainty say more than that it seems to have been an old vintage custom. The race reminds one of the race at the Oschophoria.

The association of Dionysus with festivals of viticulture is not nearly so constant as that of Demeter with the cultivation of cereals. The reason is not hard to find. Dionysus came to Greece at a fairly late date--a little before the beginning of the historical age. Viticulture is much older in Greece than he, and the rustic customs which have been described here are very ancient, pre-deistic, magical rites which were not associated with a god until a later time, when it seemed that every festival should be dedicated to a god. The connection was not indissoluble. The gods have vanished, but the customs still persist in part. It is the general belief that Dionysus was above all the god of wine (Fig. 14). Already in Hesiod and Homer wine was his gift. He was not the god of wine alone, however, but of vegetation and fertility in general, though not of cereals. The fig also was a gift from him. 14 In the festival of flowers, the Anthesteria, he appeared as the god of spring.

This explains why the phallus was his symbol. The phallus was used in other fertility cults, especially in the festivals of Demeter, but it was nowhere so conspicuous as in the cult of Dionysus. It was carried in all Dionysiac processions. The colonies of Athens were required to send phalli to the Great Dionysia. The procession at this festival, during which the great works of the tragic and comic poets were performed, would make a grotesque impression upon us if we were able to see it with its many indecent symbols. Another Dionysiac festival with a phallus procession was the Rustic Dionysia, which is described by Aristophanes. Rural customs of this sort are mentioned also by Plutarch, who complains that these simple and merry festivals have been ousted by the luxurious life of his times. Comedy had its origin in the jokes and funny songs of the carriers of the phalli. Tragedy also originated in the cult of Dionysus--the cult of Dionysus of Eleutherai, a village in the Boeotian borderland. This cult was brought to Athens by Pisistratus. We ought to keep in mind that in this cult Dionysus was called Melanaigis (he with the black goat-skin) and that there was a myth which proves that a combat between "the Light One" and "the Black One" was enacted. Whether this was the same combat between winter and summer which is found in later European folklore, as some scholars think, I dare not say. 15 But it may not be useless to observe that two of the highest achievements of the Greek spirit, the drama and bucolic poetry, had their origin in simple rural customs.

I have mentioned the eiresione, the May bough, which was carried in the festival of the fruit gathering, the Pyanopsia. It is described in a fragment of a popular song as a branch with leaves hung with figs, loaves, and cups of honey, wine,

and oil. 16 So far it is reminiscent of the panspermia, and it is an appropriate symbol for a festival of fruit gathering. It was carried by a boy whose father and mother were both alive, and it was set up before the temple of Apollo or before the doors of private houses. There it remained until it was dry and likely to take fire. We may guess that it was perhaps exchanged for a new one the following year, just as the modern bouquet de moisson, a sheaf decorated with flowers and ribbons, is nailed above the door of the barn at harvest time and remains there until it is exchanged for a new one at the next harvest. The eiresione was also carried at the late spring festival of the Thargelia, mentioned above, and on the island of Samos boys went around carrying the eiresione and asking for alms. The biography of Homer falsely attributed to Herodotus has preserved many precious bits of popular poetry, and among them is the song which the boys sang when they carried the eiresione about. "We come," they sang, "to the house of a rich man. Let the doors be opened, for Wealth enters, and with him Joy and Peace. Let the jars always be filled and let a high cap rise in the kneading trough. Let the son of the house marry and the daughter weave a precious web." The procession and song strikingly resemble modern rural customs in which youths go around asking for alms. To adduce only one example out of many, in southern Sweden they carry green branches, which they fasten to the houses, and sing a song like the ancient Greek one containing wishes for good luck and fertility. This is done on the morning of the first of May. We have already met a similar procession, that of the bucoliasts in Sicily, who carried around and distributed a panspermia, wished good luck, and asked for alms. On the Cyclades the women went around singing a hymn to the Hyperborean

virgins and collecting alms for them. 17 It may be supposed that this custom had something to do with the myth of these virgins and the sheaves which were brought from the Hyperboreans to Delos.

On the island of Rhodes the boys carried a swallow around at the commencement of spring. They began by singing: "The swallow has come bringing the good season and good years." They then asked for loaves, wine, cheese, and wheat porridge. If they were not given anything, they ended with threats. Such threats are often a feature in modern customs also. 18 The poet Phoenix of Colophon, who lived in the third century B.C., composed a similar song for boys who carried a crow. 19 Not only has this custom many parallels in modern times, but it can be demonstrated that it has survived in Greece since antiquity. On the first of March the boys make a wooden image of a swallow, which revolves on a pivot and is adorned with flowers. The boys then go from house to house singing a song, of which many variants have been written down, and receiving various gifts in return. 20 The same custom is recorded for the Middle Ages. It does not seem very much like a religious practice, although it has its roots in religious or magical beliefs, but it shows a greater tenacity than any of the lofty religious ideas.

We return to the May bough which is often carried in such processions. The green branch with its newly developed leaves is the symbol of life and of the renewal of life, and there is no doubt that formerly the purpose of bringing in green branches and setting them up was to confer life and good luck.

[paragraph continues] The custom persists, but its old significance has long been forgotten. The May bough is only a lovely decoration. Nowadays we find it at all rural festivals and at family festivals. The same custom prevailed in ancient Greece, though the name of the May bough varied. We have found it in several festivals, sometimes hung with fruits, flowers, and fillets like the modern Maypole. Sometimes the ancient May bough was as elaborately decorated as our Maypole. There is a graphic description of such a Maypole which was carried around the city of Thebes. 21 It was a laurel pole decorated with one large and many small balls of copper, purple fillets, and a saffron-colored garb. This Maypole was carried around at a festival of Apollo, with whom also the May bough is connected. I think it likely that the laurel became his holy tree because it was often used for May boughs.

Sometimes the May bough is simply called by the same name as the loaves which bring luck, hygieia (health, health-bringer), a name which proves that it was supposed to confer good fortune. In the Mysteries it was called bacchos, a name evidently connected with the role of Dionysus as a god of vegetation. Hence, it is customary to call by this name the bundles of branches tied together by fillets which appear in representations of Eleusinian scenes. In my opinion, the thyrsus which was carried by the maenads, a stick with a pine cone on its top and wound round with ivy and fillets, was just a May bough. We also find pine branches and stalks of the narthex plant in the hands of the maenads. In Sparta there was a cult of Artemis Korythalia, in whose honor lascivious dances were performed and to whose temple sucklings were carried. Her epithet is derived from another name of the May bough, korythale. It is said to have been the same as the eiresione. It was a laurel branch which was erected before a house when

the boys arrived at the age of ephebes and when the girls married, just as in modern times the May bough is erected before a house for a wedding.

The May bough was carried in numerous processions. I may recall the thallophoroi--dignified old men carrying branches--represented on the Parthenon frieze. The suppliant who sought protection carried a branch wound with fillets, the hiketeria. Evidently the idea was that this branch made the suppliant sacred and protected him from violence. Finally, the crown of flowers which the Greeks wore at all sacrifices, at banquets, and at symposia and which the citizen who rose to speak in the popular assembly put on his head is another form of the May bough, and like the May bough it confers good luck and divine protection.

It may perhaps seem that I have wandered far from religion and have chiefly discussed folklore. But the distinction which has been made between religion and folklore since Christianity vanquished the pagan religions did not exist in antiquity. Scholars have been very busy discovering survivals of old magical and religious ideas in our rustic customs and beliefs. In ancient Greece such customs and beliefs were part of religion. Greek religion had much higher aspects, but it had not forsaken the simple old forms. They not only persisted among the people of the countryside, but they also found a place in the festivals and in the cults of the great gods.

These beliefs and customs are time honored and belong to the substratum of religion. They have not much to do with the higher aspects of religion, and they are for the most part magical in significance. They seem quite nonreligious in character, and very often they have changed into popular secular customs. This was not difficult in Greece, for, as we shall see later, the sacred and the secular were intermingled in a manner which is sometimes astonishing to us. But however profane

these customs and beliefs may seem to be, their tenacity is extraordinary. Similar beliefs and customs occur everywhere in European folklore, and while the old gods and their cults were so completely ousted by a new religion that hardly a trace of them remains, the old rural customs and beliefs survived the change of religion through the Middle Ages to our own day.

Footnotes

23:1 Ethica Nicomachea, VIII, p. 1160a.

23:2 Dissertationes, 30.

25:3 See Chapter III.

27:4 A survey of the discussion is in my Griechische Feste von religiöser Bedeutung, mit Ausschluss der attischen (Leipzig, 1906), pp. 106 ff. See also L. Deubner, Attische Feste (Berlin, 1932), pp. 179 ff.

28:5 See my paper, "Die griechischen Prozessionstypen," Jahrbuch des Deutschen archäol. Instituts, XXXI (1916), 319 ff.

29:6 See E. Gjerstad, "Tod und Leben," Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, XXVI (1928), 182; for another opinion see J. E. Harrison, Themis; a Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 2d ed., rev. (Cambridge, 1927), pp. 291 ff.

30:7 The passages in question are collected in the introduction to Scholia in Theocritum vetera, ed. C. Wendel (Leipzig, 1914), and discussed in my Griechische Feste, pp. 199 ff.

30:8 Exhaustively treated by E. Samter, Familienfeste der Griechen and Römer (Berlin, 1901), but with an interpretation of the custom with which I cannot agree.

31:9 S. Xanthoudides, "Cretan Kernoi," Annual of the British School at Athens, XII (1905-6), 9 ff.

31:10 Aristophanes, Plutus, vs. 678 and scholia. Cf. Hesychius: κόλλυβα, τρωγάλια.

32:11 Deubner, Attische Feste, pp. 60 ff.

33:12 See my paper, "Die Anthesterien and die Aiora," Eranos, XV (1916), 187 ff.

34:13 Deubner, Attische Feste, pp. 93 ff. Deubner erroneously denies that the mixing of the wine depicted on certain vases took place at this festival. See my paper, "Die griechischen Prozessionstypen," referred to in note 9 of this chapter.

35:14 He was called συκάτης in Laconia (Hesychius s.v. συκίτης ) and, for the same reason, μειλίχιος on Naxos (Athenaeus, III, p. 78c).

36:15 See my paper, "Der Ursprung der griechischen Tragödie," Neue Jahrbücher für klass. Altertum, XXVII (1911), 673 ff.

37:16 Plutarch, Theseus, 22.

38:17 Herodotus, IV, 35.

38:18 Athenaeus, VIII, p. 360b.

38:19 Athenaeus, VIII, p. 359e.

38:20 See G. F. Abbott, Macedonian Folklore (Cambridge, 1903), p. 18. The songs are collected in A. Passow, Popularia carmina Graeciae recentioris (Leipzig, 1860), Nos. 291 ff.

39:21 Photius, Bibliotheca, ed. Bekker (Berlin, 1824-25), p. 321b.

THE RELIGION OF ELEUSIS

A chapter on the religion of Eleusis is a natural sequel to the description of the rural customs and festivals, 1 for the Eleusinian Mysteries are the highest and finest bloom of Greek popular religion. Originally the Eleusinian Mysteries were a festival celebrated at the autumn sowing. This is proved by the testimony of Plutarch 2 and by their very near kinship to the Thesmophoria. Although it is acknowledged that the basis of the Eleusinian Mysteries is an old agrarian cult, this fact has been pushed into the background by the attempts to discover the secret rites of the Mysteries. They have been discussed repeatedly by scholars and laymen, and numerous hypotheses have been put forward, some of them intelligent, others fantastic, none of them certain or even probable. Such a question seems to cast an everlasting spell on mankind, for mankind wants to know the unknowable. But the silence imposed upon the mystae has been well kept.

We possess a knowledge of certain preliminary rites which were not so important that it was forbidden to speak of them. In regard to the central rites belonging to the grade of the epopteia, our knowledge extends only to the general outlines. We know that there were things said, things done, and things shown, but we do not know what these things were, and that

is the essential point. The rites consisted, not in acts performed by the mystae, as modern scholars would have us believe, but in the seeing by the mystae of something which was shown to them. This is repeated again and again from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter onward, and it is proved by the very name of the highest grade, epopteia, but we do not know what it was that was shown. The name of the high priest, hierophantes, proves that his chief duty was to show some sacred things. The names of the family from which he was always taken, the Eumolpidae, and of its mythical ancestor, Eumolpos, prove that he was famous for his beautiful voice. He recited or sang something, but what it was we do not know. Words probably accompanied the showing, but the showing, not the words, was the chief and culminating act of the Mysteries. It should be kept well in mind that the highest mystery was something shown and seen. It may be added that the Mysteries were celebrated by night in the light of many torches, which added to their impressiveness.

The silence imposed upon the mystae has, as I said, been well kept. Only Christian authors, who paid no heed to the duty of silence, have given information concerning the central rites of the Mysteries. But their testimony is subject to the gravest doubts. In the first place, what did they know? Had they any firsthand knowledge? Had they themselves been initiated? Clement lived in Alexandria and the others in Asia or Africa. It is much more probable that what they related was only hearsay. Further, are they reliable? We should realize that their writings were polemics against the perversity of the heathens and that in polemics of this kind controversialists are not conscientious about the means they use if only they hit the mark. Ecclesiastical authors certainly did not trouble themselves much about truth and about such questions of fact as whether a given rite belonged to the Eleusinian or to some

other Mysteries, if only they could succeed in impressing upon their hearers or readers a sense of the contemptibility of the Mysteries. The hearers and readers knew nothing for certain and were not able to control the suggestions made to them.

Relying upon such unsafe evidence, modern scholars have tried to find out the kernel of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Two lines of thought are prominent in these attempts. One of these starts from the mysteries of late antiquity, whose highest aim was to elevate man above the human sphere into the divine and to assure his redemption by making him a god and so conferring immortality upon him. It is very questionable whether this idea existed at all in early times, when the gulf separating men from gods was regarded as self-evident and impassable. The supposition that it did exist is very popular in modern research, which has busied itself a great deal with the syncretistic religions of late antiquity; but this supposition should not be admitted without reliable evidence, and of such evidence there is none at all. Sex appeal finds a place even in the science of religion. Scholars have suggested that in the Eleusinian Mysteries immortality was conferred upon the mystes by his being made the son of the goddess through touching some sexual symbol. He was born anew of the goddess in a symbolic way. 3 It is true that Christian authors do ascribe sexual symbols to the Eleusinian Mysteries, and it is possible that there were such symbols at Eleusis, as there were, for instance, in the closely related festival of the Thesmophoria. But if such symbols were used at Eleusis, they did not have the significance suggested above but the old one of fertility charms, as in the Thesmophoria and other ceremonies.

Perhaps a remark is needed on the much-discussed formula

which Clement of Alexandria gives as that of the Eleusinian Mysteries: "I have fasted, I have drunk of the kykeon, I have taken from the chest, and having worked, I have laid down into the basket and from the basket into the chest." 4 The first two of these rites, the fasting and the drinking of the kykeon, are known to have been practiced at Eleusis; but this is not true of the other rites, and it is uncertain whether they belong to Eleusis at all. They may be taken from the Mysteries of Demeter at Alexandria. 5 In any case, this formula refers to the preliminary rites performed by the neophyte, not to the highest mystery, the epopteia. It was pronounced by the neophyte in order to show that he had performed the preliminary rites necessary for being admitted to the final initiation. On this evasive formula are founded the hypotheses mentioned, which try to elucidate the kernel of the Mysteries.

Even if we are precluded from knowing the highest and most central rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries, we are not precluded from knowing the Eleusinian religion--the ideas which were at the bottom of the belief of the initiated in the bliss conferred upon them in the Mysteries. 'We are acquainted with the gods of the Mysteries, and we know something of the impression made by the celebration and of the hopes which it evoked. We have a document concerning the Eleusinian cult which is older and more comprehensive than anything concerning any other Greek cult, namely, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter composed in Attica before Eleusis was incorporated into the Athenian state, not later than the end of the seventh century B.C. We know that the basis of the Eleusinian Mysteries was an old agrarian cult celebrated in the middle of the month Boedromion (about October) and

closely akin to the Thesmophoria, a festival of the autumn sowing celebrated by the women not quite a month later. I need not dwell upon this connection, which is established by internal evidence as well as by direct information.

According to all probability, the Eleusinian cult goes back to the Mycenaean age. In the excavations of recent years a Mycenaean megaron was discovered beneath the mystery hall. 6 This hall is very unlike a Greek temple, which was the house of a god. It was rebuilt several times, but always according to the old plan. It was a square hall, with pillars supporting the roof and with benches carved in the rock on three sides, destined for the great assembly of the mystae. This hall was called anaktoron (the royal house). It has been suggested that the name is reminiscent of a time when the mystery assembly took place in the king's house. 7 The family of the Eumolpidae were the successors of the king, and the cult always remained the property of this family, from which the high priest was taken. Originally the Eleusinian Mysteries were a family cult to which the head of the family admitted whom he pleased. This explains why it was a secret cult and why not only citizens but also strangers and slaves had access to the celebration.

After these preliminaries, we turn to the gods of Eleusis. There were two pairs, one comprising the two goddesses Demeter and Kore, or, more properly, the Mother and the Maid; the other, "the God" and "the Goddess." Both pairs are represented on a relief which Lysimachides dedicated at Eleusis in the fourth century B.C. 8 (Fig. 16) . The inscription

above the heads of the second pair reads: "To the God, to the Goddess." It is said that "the God" and "the Goddess" were anonymous, and reference is made to the rule forbidding mention of the name of a man who had become a hierophant; but this interdiction is an accretion belonging to a late age, which loved to enhance the mystic character of the cult. In the classical age the hierophants were called by their proper names. Very often, when no misunderstanding was possible, the Greeks said only "the God" or "the Goddess" instead of using proper names. Thus, "the God" at Delphi is Apollo, and "the Goddess" at Athens is Athena. "The God" and "the Goddess" at Eleusis were Plouton and Persephone. They are represented, fortunately with their names inscribed, in a similar scene in a vase painting 9 (Fig. 25), in which Plouton holds his constant attribute, the cornucopia. They are also represented on a badly mutilated tablet from Eleusis. 10

To each of these two pairs a hero was added, and so we get two triads: Demeter, Kore, and Triptolemos; and "the God," "the Goddess," and Eubouleus. They are seen on an Attic relief found at Mondragone near Sinuessa in Italy, 11 with the addition of a seventh figure clad in a Dionysiac costume--boots and fawnskin. He is Iacchos. Iacchos is a personification of the Iacchic cry heard in the great procession which went from Athens to Eleusis in order to celebrate the Mysteries. The gay revels, the merry cries, and the light of the torches in this procession were reminiscent of the festivals of Dionysus, and the name of Iacchos suggested the second name of this god, Bacchos. So Iacchos was represented in the likeness of Dionysus. But he is a later creation, who owes his existence to the procession mentioned; that is to say, he cannot

be older than the incorporation of Eleusis into the Athenian state, and he was created at the earliest in the sixth century B.C. There is no question of Dionysiac elements in the Eleusinian Mysteries at an early age, but we shall see that from the late fifth and early fourth centuries B.C., there was a certain mixing up of the Mysteries of Eleusis and the cult of Dionysus.

The largest of all Eleusinian monuments, the relief dedicated by Lakrateides, priest of "the God," "the Goddess," and Eubouleus, in the year 97-96 B.C., 12 is peculiar. Happily the names of the chief figures are inscribed, so that it can be ascertained that both "the God" and Plouton are represented. The splitting up of this deity into two is due to the late date of the monument, for in this age the avoidance of proper names was current in the Mysteries and thus "the God" and Plouton might appear as two personages. The daughter of Demeter also was divided into two goddesses, Kore and Persephone. The two are one and the same person, although they are represented as two different goddesses. In order to understand how this was possible, we must turn to the myth of the rape of Demeter's daughter by Plouton. It is the central part of the Homeric Hymn, but it was common to all Greeks. The Maiden was playing with her comrades in a meadow strewn with flowers when the earth opened and up came the god of the nether world in his car. Seizing the Maiden, he abducted her to his subterranean realm.

Here I take the occasion to mention a legend told in later sources. A herdsman, Eubouleus, was tending his herd of swine near by when the earth opened. His swine were swallowed up by the chasm and then the earth closed again. This

is an explanatory legend, invented to account for a sacred custom. At a certain time of the year, perhaps at the festival of the threshing, pigs were thrown into subterranean hollows. The putrefied remains were brought up again at the festival of the autumn sowing--the Thesmophoria--laid on altars, and mixed with the seed corn--a very simple and old-fashioned fertility charm. The swine was the holy animal of Demeter. Pigs were sacrificed by the mystae before their initiation, and figures of swine are found in Demeter's sanctuaries at Eleusis, at Cnidus, and elsewhere. The connection of Eubouleus with the Eleusinian gods shows that this fertility charm belonged to Eleusis also, and it proves that the Eleusinian festival referred to the autumn sowing. The rite is one of the links between the Thesmophoria and the Eleusinian Mysteries, proving that both were agrarian rites whose purpose was to promote the fertility of the corn which was laid down in the earth.

We revert to the myth told in the Homeric Hymn. The Mother wandered about, clad in black garments and carrying torches, in search of her daughter. Coming to Eleusis, she sat down at the well of the maidens, or, as some say, at "the laughless stone." At the well Demeter met King Keleos' daughters, who came to fetch water, and followed them to their father's house. Here she sat down on a seat spread with the skin of a ram. She sat in grief and silence until Iambe by her obscene jests contrived to make Demeter smile. She rejected a cup of wine offered to her and ordered a drink of water mixed with barley meal and pennyroyal. This drink is the kykeon. The story refers to the preliminary initiation, which is represented on certain monuments of the Roman age. Among these is a marble vase described by Countess Lovatelli 13 (Fig. 15). To the right, a youth who is to be initiated

sacrifices a pig. Then we see him seated with veiled head on a seat decked with a ramskin, while a priestess holds a winnowing basket over his head. This agrarian implement is mentioned in several other Mysteries, especially those of Dionysus, though not at Eleusis. It may be an addition, but it goes well with the character of the Eleusinian cult. Finally, we see the mystes playing with the snake of Demeter, behind whom is Kore. I emphasize again that these were preliminary rites, for this is the reason why they could be mentioned and represented. They are the rites mentioned in the formula of Clement--the fasting and the drinking of the kykeon.

In the house of Keleos, Demeter nursed Demophon, the child of the royal pair. She put him into the fire in order to make him immortal, but her intention was frustrated by the frightened mother, who discovered her in the act. This story is based on an old folk-tale motif which has nothing to do with the Eleusinian cult. It is introduced in order to let Demeter reveal herself in her divine shape. King Keleos ordered a temple to be built for her. Demeter sat in her temple in grief. Not a stalk sprouted in the fields; the labor of the plow oxen was vain; men nearly died of hunger. Zeus was compelled to interfere. He ordered Plouton to send Kore back to the upper world; but Plouton had offered a pomegranate seed to her, and, as she had eaten it, she was bound to the nether world. And so Kore was compelled to dwell one third of the year in the nether world. However, she dwells two thirds of the year in the upper world, reunited with her mother.

This last is the essential point. The understanding of the Eleusinian religion depends on the correct understanding of this myth. The fact that the Maiden dwells two thirds of the year in the upper world and one third in the nether world is manifestly connected with vegetation. Demeter is a goddess of vegetation, but not of vegetation in general. Philologists

disagree as to whether the syllable de- signifies "earth" or "corn." The cult is decisive. Demeter presides at the threshing and at the autumn sowing. She is the Corn Mother. According to Homer and Hesiod, she united herself with Iasion on the thrice-plowed fallow land and bore to him Ploutos, the god of wealth. The Homeric Hymn promises that the goddesses will send him to the house of the man whom they love. Under the conditions prevalent in early times, wealth is the store of corn on which men live during the season when the gifts of nature are scarce. Plouton is only a derivative form of the word ploutos and means "he who has wealth." Everywhere in the Mediterranean countries the corn is stored in subterranean silos. An inscription orders such silos to be built at Eleusis for storing the tithes of corn which were brought to the goddesses.

For people who live in a northerly country, where the soil is frozen and covered by snow and ice during the winter and where the season during which everything sprouts and is green comprises about two thirds of the year, it is only natural to think that the Corn Maiden is absent during the four winter months and dwells in the upper world during the eight months of vegetation. And, in fact, this is what most people do think. But it is an ill-considered opinion, for it does not take into account the climatic conditions of Greece. In that country the corn is sown in October. The crops sprout immediately, and they grow and thrive during our winter except for the two or three coldest weeks in January, when they come to a standstill for a short time. Snow is extremely rare and soon melts away. The crops ripen and are reaped in May and threshed in June. This description refers to Attica. The climate is of course different in the mountains, but Eleusis is situated in Attica. The cornfields are green and the crops grow and thrive during our winter, and yet we are asked to believe that the

[paragraph continues] Corn Maiden is absent during this period. There is a period of about four months from the threshing in June to the autumn sowing in October during which the fields are barren and desolate; they are burned by the sun, and not a green stalk is seen on them. Yet we are asked to believe that during these four months the Corn Maiden is present. Obviously she is absent. 14

Thus, we are enabled to reach a true understanding of the myth of the absence of the Corn Maiden which agrees with the climatic conditions of Greece. In June the crops are threshed, and the corn, which is the wealth of man, is stored in subterranean silos. In Sicily a festival was celebrated at the time of the threshing which was called the Descent of Kore (Katagoge Kores). Down in the subterranean silos the Corn Maiden is in the realm of Plouton, the god of wealth. Four months later, when the time of the autumn sowing is approaching, the silos are opened and the seed corn is brought up. This is the anodos, the ascent of the Corn Maiden, and on this occasion the Eleusinian Mysteries took place. The seed corn, the corn of the old crop which will soon sprout and produce the new crop, is laid down in the fields. The Corn Maiden is reunited with the Corn Mother, for at this time the old crop and the new meet each other.

Thus, we are able to understand why Plouton, the god of wealth, had become a god of the nether world. His abode was beneath the surface of the earth, in the silos in which the corn was stored. In early times the corn was often stored in great jars set down into the ground, and such jars were often used for burials also. The myth of the abduction of the vegetation goddess seems to be pre-Greek; and so is the name of

[paragraph continues] Persephone, which occurs in curiously varying forms: Phersephassa and Periphone. It was inevitable that those gods who dwelt beneath the earth should be fused with the lords of the underworld, the king and queen of gloomy Hades. The other aspect of the Corn Maiden was the dreary Persephone, as Homer calls her. Her two aspects were so much at variance that it is not in the least astonishing to find her appearing at Eleusis as Kore, the daughter of Demeter, on the one hand, and as Persephone, the wife of Plouton on the other. Probably two old goddesses were fused into one, the pre-Greek queen of the underworld and the Greek Corn Maiden. These diverse aspects referring to life and death were a source of wealth to the Mysteries. The sprouting of the new crop is a symbol of the eternity of life.

There is, however, another ascent of the Corn Maiden, which follows soon after the fetching of the seed corn from the subterranean silos. It is depicted in some vase paintings, 15 of which one on a mixing bowl in the museum at Dresden is the most remarkable (Fig. 17). There we see Pherephatta emerging from the ground, which reaches her knees, while Hermes assists her, and three satyrs--nature daemons--dance around her. 16 The meaning of this ascent of the Corn Maiden is explained by other vase paintings which seem enigmatical. A great female head emerges from the ground and satyrs strike it with large hammers 17 (Fig. 18). The explanation is not doubtful. A large wooden hammer was a common rustic implement; it was used for smashing the clods and smoothing

the surface of the fields, which was very rough after the seed corn was plowed under. This process, which corresponds to the rolling of the present day, was carried out just when the corn had begun to sprout and when it was still possible to walk on the fields without doing harm to the crops. It concurred with the second ascent of the Corn Maiden, the germinating of the new crop.

The reuniting of the Mother and the Maid was the kernel of the myth. Judging from the nature of the festival, it must likewise have been the kernel of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were a celebration of the ascent of the Corn Maiden in the autumn sowing. The old agrarian myth was elevated into the human sphere. The grief and sorrow of the bereaved mother, the despair of her search, touch upon the deepest feelings of man. Demeter is rightly called the mater dolorosa of Greek religion. To this heartbreaking sorrow, the reunion of mother and daughter provided a joyful contrast, rousing the mystae to exultation and moving their minds with the deepest emotions. The Mysteries were not a gloomy festival; they conferred joy and happiness upon man. Not the rape and separation but the reunion was its theme. The reunion is represented on the famous tablet of Ninnion from the end of the fifth century B.C., found in the sacred precinct at Eleusis 18 (Fig. 21). In the lower zone Demeter is seated, and at her side is a vacant seat; Kore is absent. Demeter is approached by Iacchos, the leader of the great procession to Eleusis, and by two mystae. In the upper zone we again see Demeter seated. A stately woman approaches, carrying torches and followed by mystae, a woman with a kernos (a vessel used in the mysteries) on her head, a youth, and a man. It is Kore,

brought back to her mother. This is, of course, not a direct representation of a scene in the Mysteries, which it was forbidden to divulge not only in words but also in pictures. It is a mythical scene with features borrowed from the mystery procession. We do not know if the reuniting of mother and daughter was enacted in the Mysteries, but it must have been in the minds of all. Perhaps it was enacted in some manner, perhaps it was only indicated symbolically. A Christian writer says that the highest mystery of the epopteia at Eleusis was a reaped ear of corn shown in silence. 19 It may be that this statement is more trustworthy than others, for it agrees exactly with the simple old agrarian character of the Eleusinian cult. In this connection, mention is often made of the picture on an Apulian tomb vase, which shows five ears of corn in a sacellum, very carefully drawn 20 (Fig. 20). Of course it has nothing to do with the Eleusinian Mysteries, but it is an expression of the same belief in the sacredness of the ear of corn, the symbol of the eternity of life. The purpose of these rites at the autumn sowing, that which the celebrants hoped for, was the new crop. Here it was--the ear held up in the hands of the hierophant. All saw that their hopes would be fulfilled; nay, were fulfilled. Here was she who had long been absent and had been sought for in vain, the Corn Maiden, reunited with the Corn Mother. For, if this information is reliable, I should like to call the ear of corn the Corn Maiden.

The old agrarian cult was capable of carrying other ideas of a moral character. We have heard that Triptolemos was added to the pair of goddesses. Originally, this was not so.

[paragraph continues] In the Homeric Hymn he is barely mentioned as one of several Eleusinian noblemen. We are able to trace his rise to a higher dignity. It was due to his name, which may signify the "thrice warring," but which was understood as the "thrice plowing." He became the hero of the thrice-plowed cornfield and is sometimes represented with a plow in his hand 21 (Fig. 23). Pausanias mentions the threshing floor of Triptolemos in the sacred Rharian field near Eleusis, the cradle of agriculture, where corn was sown for the first time. Triptolemos begins to appear in paintings on black-figured vases in the late sixth century B.C., represented as a bearded hero 22 (Fig. 19). In the vase paintings of the early red-figured style he is extremely popular. He is seated on a winged car drawn by serpents and is placed between the two goddesses, who offer him the cup of farewell as they send him out on his mission to propagate agriculture 23 (Fig. 22). Even when other gods are added, Triptolemos is the central figure.

We know the meaning of this scene from the praises be-stowed upon Athens as the cradle of civilization. Isocrates speaks in his Panegyricus of the two greatest gifts granted the Athenians by Demeter--the corn, which is the reason why men do not live like wild beasts, and the Mysteries, from which they derive higher hopes in regard to their life and all time. The dadouchos Kallias said something similar in the peace negotiations at Sparta in 372 B.C. This praise of Athens is behind the decree of 418 B.C., in which the Athenians invited all Greeks to bring tithes to the Eleusinian goddesses

according to old custom and an oracle from Delphi. 4 At this time Eleusis must have been recognized as the cradle of agriculture.

The vase paintings mentioned show how strongly the benefits of agriculture were felt at the end of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth century B.C. This feeling was of course not limited to the cultivation of cereals, but referred especially to the moral and social consequences of agriculture. I should like to refer to a parallel, the exploits of the Athenian national hero Theseus, which were very popular in vase paintings of the same age. It is said that the Athenians wished to create a counterpart of Heracles for themselves, but a great difference between Heracles and Theseus is to be noted. While the exploits of Heracles are those of an old mythical hero, Theseus conquers highwaymen and robbers who resist civilization and are dangerous to it. Theseus is the guardian and hero of a peaceful and civilized life, of which agriculture is the foundation.

The peasant loved peace. In war his fields were burned and his trees cut down. Hesiod says that for the wild beasts the law is to eat each other, but Zeus has given justice to man. Hesiod preaches labor, through which man earns his livelihood, and justice, which assures him of the fruits of his labor. Hesiod has abandoned the ideal of the warring Homeric knights and embraced a new, quite contrasted ideal of peace and justice created by agriculture. Its hero is the Eleusinian Triptolemos. This is a complete revolution in moral ideals, which ought to be appreciated to its full extent. I venture to speak of an Eleusinian piety founded on this idea that agriculture created a civilized and peaceful life worthy of human

beings. Aristophanes speaks of it in some remarkable verses of his comedy The Frogs. 25 The mystae sing: "The sun and the gay light are only for us who are initiated and live a pious life in regard to foreigners and private persons." In order to attain to the better lot in the other world for which the mystae hoped, it was necessary to have been initiated; but here there is added to this requirement the further requirement of a pious life, specified in a somewhat pedantic manner by the words "in regard to foreigners and private persons." Among the private persons were also the slaves. Slaves as well as foreigners were admitted to the Eleusinian Mysteries, provided that they spoke Greek. In antiquity foreigners and slaves were excluded from the protection of civil law. This traditional limit was transcended in the Mysteries. They could not grant the protection of the law, but they demanded the piety which implies the law and is more than the law. In fact, an effort was made to break the traditional bonds of the local city-state and to attain to the idea of humanity as a great brotherhood. This morality issued from the agricultural conditions prevalent in Attica in the early age and was developed in the old agricultural cult of Eleusis.

The Eleusinian Mysteries had still more to offer to the initiated. The Homeric Hymn promises: "Happy is he who has seen this. Who has not taken part in the initiation will not have the same lot after death in the gloomy darkness." 26 Sophocles repeats the same idea in still more impressive words. He says that those who have seen the Mysteries are thrice happy when they go to the underworld, and adds that for them only is life, for others all is evil. 27 Aristophanes in The Frogs introduces a chorus of mystae in the scene which is laid in the

underworld. I have already quoted his words. The mystae dance and revel in a meadow strewn with flowers. This conviction of a happier lot in the underworld, which filled the minds of the initiated, sprang from ancient roots, the world-wide idea that the other life is a repetition of this life. The idea is found, for example, in the eleventh book of the Odyssey, which describes Odysseus' visit to the underworld. The simple fact is that the initiated believed that they would continue to celebrate the Mysteries in the underworld, as Aristophanes and Euripides 28 show them doing. Since the Mysteries were the most edifying event they knew of, such a conception of a future state formed the brightest possible contrast to the dark and gloomy Hades in which the Greeks believed.

This is really a very simple belief, and perhaps it satisfied the great mass. But it may be permitted to ask whether deeper ideas of life and death were not evoked by the Eleusinian Mysteries. Perhaps they were. In a remarkable fragment Pindar says: "Happy is he who, having seen this, goes beneath the earth; he knows the end of life and he knows its god-sent beginning." 29 We do not know if Pindar was initiated, but supposing that his words really refer to Eleusinian beliefs, we will try to interpret them. What is the beginning of life? If we remember that the Mysteries were a festival of the autumn sowing, the ascent of the Corn Maiden, we are re-minded of the words in the Gospel of St. John: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." 30 It is related that the Athenians sowed corn on graves and that they called the dead demetreioi. 31 In a well-known hymn, the Christian poet

[paragraph continues] Prudentius uses the same simile for the resurrection of the individual; but we have no right to postulate this idea for an age when conscious individualism was unknown and when the individual was only a link in the chain of the generations. Such an age had no need of a belief in the immortality of the individual, but it believed in the eternity of life in the sense that life flows through the generations which spring from each other. No clearer, no better expression of this belief can be found than the sprouting of the new crop from the old crop which has been laid down in the earth. It is the second ascent of the Corn Maiden, which was familiar to that age from its labors and which was the immediate result of the autumn sowing celebrated in the Eleusinian cult.

The latest monument of art which represents the mission of Triptolemos is the famous Eleusinian relief (Frontispiece), which better than any other conveys an idea of the high artistry and the deep religious feeling of Phidias. Triptolemos is almost a boy standing between the two goddesses. This relief was sculptured about 440 B.C. In later monuments Triptolemos often appears, but only as a member of the assembly of the Eleusinian deities. He is no longer the central figure. To the Eleusinian deities, others are added: the city goddess of Athens; Dionysus, who in this age had a certain connection with Eleusis; and more heroes--Heracles and the Dioscuri. These heroes, the first strangers to be initiated, recall the Panhellenic aspirations of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Such representations are manifestly a product of the interest taken in the Eleusinian Mysteries, but they do not express any special idea, as the representations of Triptolemos and the Ninnion tab-let do.

Certain other vase paintings are more interesting because they introduce a novelty. A child appears among the Eleusinian

deities. Most remarkable is a hydria found in Rhodes 32 (Fig. 24). A woman has partly emerged from the ground, which reaches to her breast. She holds a cornucopia on which a child is seated. The child stretches out its arms toward a goddess with a scepter, who must be Demeter, for on the other side is Kore with two torches and above her is Triptolemos. A pelike from Kertsch shows a woman rising from the ground and handing over a child to Hermes, at whose side is Athena. 33 To the left are Demeter and Kore, and to the right are "the God" and "the Goddess," that is Plouton and Persephone. On the other side, and on a vase in the collection at Tubingen, the child is a little older. He stands at the side of Demeter and holds a cornucopia. 34

In these paintings the birth of a child is represented in Eleusinian surroundings. The type is well known from the representations of the birth of Erichthonios, but this Athenian hero has no connection with Eleusis. The cornucopia which the child carries, and on which it is seated in the picture on the hydria from Rhodes, puts us on the right track. The cornucopia is the attribute of the god of wealth, Plouton. The ideal embodied in this god was popular at the time to which these vases belong. The most famous example is the group by Kephisodotos, erected in 372 B.C., in which the goddess of peace carries the child Ploutos in her arms. It is an expression of the hopes of the Athenian people in those troubled times.

In the foregoing we have heard of Plouton as a full-grown god, and he is sometimes represented as a white-haired old man. 35 But we have also mentioned the myth that Demeter bore Ploutos, having united herself with Iasion on the thrice-plowed fallow land. We find representations of Ploutos at all stages of life, corresponding to the cycle of vegetation. Without any doubt, Ploutos is the child who appears in the vase paintings mentioned. Except for these vase paintings, we hear nothing of the child Ploutos at Eleusis. The reason is very simple. By the side of the daughter of Demeter, whose part was most prominent, there was no place for the son of Demeter. He would have been completely out of accord with the idea expressed in the Eleusinian myth. His reappearance in the fourth century B.C. is a kind of atavism, due to the longing of that age for the security of peace and wealth. Kephisodotos called the mother "Peace." For the vase painters, her name was probably Ge (the earth), from which the crops sprout. Ploutos appeared only for a brief time, and he vanished as quickly as he had come, but that he did appear proves that new ideas could find a place in the minds of those who were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries.

At the same time, Dionysiac elements were introduced at Eleusis. One connecting link was, of course, Iacchos, whose similarity to Dionysus-Bacchos was pointed out above. But there were also internal connections, for the cult of Dionysus in one of its aspects had to do with the cycle of vegetation. At Delphi he was represented as a child in a winnowing basket, awakened by the maenads. According to Furtwangler, the child which is handed over to Hermes on the pelike from Kertsch is wrapped in a fawnskin and crowned with ivy, and

on a vase from the Hope collection we see Dionysus emerging from the ground like the Corn Maiden. 36 We have seen further that in several late Eleusinian vase paintings Dionysus is introduced among the Eleusinian deities. This is a forerunner of the coalescence between various mystery cults, which became common in a later age. There are traces of this syncretism in the Roman age, with which I cannot deal here.

The rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries were persistently preserved from a hoary antiquity, although they, too, may have been somewhat modified in the course of time. There were no doctrines, however, but only some simple fundamental ideas about life and death as symbolized in the springing up of the new crop from the old. Every age might interpret these according to its own propensities. Thus the persistence of the most venerable religion of ancient Greece is explained. Its power was a result of the absence of dogmas and of its close connection with the deepest longings of the human soul.

So it was possible to develop on the foundation of the old agrarian cult a hope of immortality and a belief in the eternity of life, not for the individual but for the generations which spring one from another. Thus, also, there was developed on the same foundation a morality of peace and good will, which strove to embrace humanity in a brotherhood without respect to state allegiance and civil standing. The hope and the belief and the morality were those of the end of the archaic age. The thoroughly industrialized and commercialized citizens of Athens in its heyday had lost understanding of the old foundation of human civilization--agriculture--and at the end of the fifth century B.C. the individual was freed from the old fetters of family and tradition. The foundations for the ideal-ism of the Eleusinian belief and morality were removed. Man

was no longer content with the immortality of the generations but wanted immortality for himself. The Eleusinian Mysteries promised even this in a happy life in the underworld. If a man underwent initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries in this era, he did so because he hoped for a happier life in the other world and because he found the celebration of the Mysteries edifying. The hero of agriculture became only a concomitant figure in the assembly of the Eleusinian gods. Dionysus was added, and the child which brings wealth reappeared. But participation in the mystery rites was still a religious experience, which had the power of conferring happiness on man and of helping him through life. For it was an experience that was rooted in the deepest feelings of man and spoke to his heart, although its language changed with the changing ages.

Footnotes

42:1 For a full presentation of the materials and arguments see my paper, "Die eleusinischen Gottheiten," Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, XXXII (1935), 79 ff. See also my forthcoming Geschichte der griechischen Religion, Vol. I.

42:2 Frag. 23.

44:3 A. Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie (Leipzig, 1903), p. 125; A. Körte in Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, XVIII (1915), 122 ff.; and C. Picard in Revue de l’histoire des religions, XCV (1927), 220 ff.

45:4 Protrepticus, ed. O. Stählin (Leipzig, 1905), p. 16, 11. 18-20.

45:5 H. G. Pringsheim, Archäologische Beiträge zur Geschichte des eleusintschen Kults (Dissertation, Bonn, 1905), p. 49 and note 1 on p. 58.

46:6 K. Kourouniotes, "Das eleusinische Heiligtum," Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, XXXII (1935), 52 ff.; and my Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, 318, Fig. 4, and 319, Fig. 5.

46:7 Deubner, Attische Feste, p. 90.

46:8 Ephemeris archaiologike, 1886, Pl. 3; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (Oxford, 1896-1909), III, Pl. 1; and my Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, Pl. 39, Fig. 3.

47:9 Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, III, Pl. 8a.

47:10 Ephemeris archaiologike, 1901, Pl. 2; and my Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, Pl. 41, Fig. 1.

47:11 Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, LV (1931), Pl. 2.

48:12 R. Heberdey in Festschrift Für Otto Benndorf zu seinem 60. Geburtstage (Vienna, 1898), Pl. 4 and pp. iii ff.; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, III, Pl. 2; and my Gesch. der Griech. Rel., I, Pl. 40.

49:13 Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, III, Pl. 15a; and my Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, Pl. 43, Fig. 2. This and kindred monuments are exhaustively treated by G. E. Rizzo in Römische Mitteilungen, XXV (1910), 89 ff.

52:14 This view is contested by K. Kourouniotes in Deltion archaiologikon, XV (1934-35), 1 ff., but I cannot find his arguments conclusive. He does not take into account the fact that Demeter is not a goddess of vegetation in general but of cereals.

53:15 They are enumerated and discussed in an appendix to my paper, "Die eleusinischen Gottheiten," pp. 131 ff., referred to in note 1 of this chapter.

53:16 Archäologischer Anzeiger, 1892, p. 166; J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 3d ed. (Cambridge, 1922), p. 277, Fig. 67; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, III, Pl. 6b; and my Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, Pl. 39, Fig. I.

53:17 Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 279, Fig. 69; and my Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, Pl. 39, Fig. 2.

54:18 Ephemeris archaiologike, 1901, Pl. 1; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, III, Pl. 16; and my Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, Pl. 41, Fig. 2.

55:19 Hippolytus, Refutatio haereseon, V, 8, 39.

55:20 P. Wolters, "Die goldenen Ähren," Festschrift für James Loeb zum sechzigsten Geburtstag gewidmet (Munich, 1930), p. 124, Fig. 14; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, III, Pl. 3b; and my Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, Pl. 42, Fig. 3.

56:21 Athenische Mitteilungen, XXIV (1899), Pl. 7; and Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 273, Fig. 65.

56:22 W. H. Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen and römischen Mythologie (Leipzig, 1884-1937), Vol. V, col. 1127, Fig. 1.

56:23 The most beautiful example is a skyphos by Hieron. It is often reproduced. See A. Furtwängler and K. Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei (Munich, 1900-1932), Pl. 161; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, III, Pl. 13; and my Gesch. der griech. Rd., I, Pl. 43, Fig. 1 (part).

57:4 Isocrates, Panegyricus, 28; Xenophon, Hellenica, VI, 3, 6; the decree in W. Dittenberger, Sylloge inscriptionum Graecarum, 3d ed. (Leipzig, 1915-24), Vol. I, No. 83.

58:25 Ranae, vss. 454 ff.

58:26 Homeric Hymn to Demeter, vss. 480 ff.

58:27 Frag. 753, in A. Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta, 2d ed. (Leipzig, 1889).

59:28 Euripides, Hercules furens, vs. 613.

59:29 Frag. 137, in T. Bergk, Poetae lyrici Graeci, 4th ed. (Leipzig, 1878-82).

59:30 Gospel of St. John, 12: 24.

59:31 Cicero, De legibus, II, 63, from Demetrius of Phaleron; Plutarch, De facie in orbe lunae, p. 943b.

61:32 It is often reproduced. See Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 525, Fig. 151; and my Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, Pl. 44, Fig. 1.

61:33 Admirably reproduced in Furtwängler and Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei, Pl. 70. See also Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, III, Pl. 21a (the side with Hermes); and my Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, Pl. 46.

61:34 C. Watzinger, Griechische Vasen in Tubingen (Reutlingen, 1924), Pi. 40; and my Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, Pl. 45, Fig. 1. Unfortunately this vase was overlooked in my paper, "Die eleusinischen Gottheiten," referred to in note 1 of this chapter. On the interpretation see my Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, 295, note 4.

62:35 On a Nolan hydria; see British Museum, Corpus vasorum antiquorum (London, 1925-), Fasc. 6, Pl. 84, Figs. 2a-c. For Plouton alone see Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, III, Pl. 32a.

63:36 E. M. W. Tillyard, The Hope Vases (Cambridge, 1923), No. 163, Pl. 26, and pp. 97 ff.

THE HOUSE AND THE FAMILY

A great scholar has graphically described Artemis as the goddess of the outdoors (Göttin des Draussen). Untamed nature may be lovely and beneficent, but, on the other hand, it may be terrible and frightful. The desert wilderness, the rugged mountains, the deep ravines, the precipitous torrents, and the thick forests inspire awe in man. Among them he feels himself subject to unknown and dangerous powers. There the wild beasts which attack him and his herds roam about, and robbers may lurk in the glens. "It is better at home, for it is dangerous outdoors" is an old Greek saying, found in Hesiod and in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. 1 Within the walls of his house, man feels himself secure, protected from dangers which threaten without. The ancient Greeks would have understood what we mean when we say, "A man's house is his castle." In the beginning of the work of Thucydides there is a vivid description of how unsafe life was in early times because of robbers and pirates.

Descriptions in Homer, supported by archaeological evidence, give us an idea of the house of the early age in its main lines. It was a great, square, single-roomed house--a hall with a porch or forehall on one of its shorter sides and a fixed hearth in its midst. It stood in a courtyard, surrounded by a wall or fence to protect the inhabitants against the attacks of

wild beasts and human foes. This house or hall is generally called a megaron. It is by its nature an isolated building, standing free, not connected with other houses, and adapted to country life. But already in prehistoric times there were towns in Greece with complex buildings and narrow streets, 2 and in the great palaces of the Mycenaean age the megaron was introduced into a complex building plan. We may confidently suppose that the detached house with its enclosed courtyard survived for a long time in the countryside, but such mean houses were so lightly built that they have left no traces. When people settled together in towns or large villages, lack of space caused a modification of the plan. The houses were built together and connected, the fence disappeared, and the courtyard was reduced; but the characteristic form of the great living room, the megaron, remained, even in the city of Priene, which was built at the time of Alexander the Great.

The house and its fence protected man against enemies and other dangers, but it needed divine protection itself. Its protector was Zeus, whom we here meet in various roles quite different from that of the weather god. The Greek word for fence is herkos, and herkeios is an epithet of Zeus. According to Homer, the altar of Zeus Herkeios generally stood in the courtyard before the house, where sacrifices and libations were offered to him. Mythology emphasizes the savagery of Neoptolemus by making him slay the aged Priamus on the very altar of Zeus Herkeios. An altar of Zeus Herkeios was to be seen among the ruins of the house of Oinomaos at Olympia. He is found at Sparta as well as at Athens, where Aristophanes and Sophocles mention him. In Sophocles his name is used to designate the whole family. A much more important fact is that at Athens, when the newly elected archons were examined, they

were asked whether they owned an Apollo Patroos and a Zeus Herkeios and where these sanctuaries were, for this question presupposes that every citizen had an altar of Zeus Herkeios. The divine protector of the house was found in every house; but his name proves that originally he was the protector of the fence which surrounded the house and that he guarded it against dangers from without.

There is another rather curious instance of the protection which Zeus afforded to the house. He was the god of lightning, and as such he was named Kataibates 3 (he who descends), that is to say the thunderbolt, which was imagined to be a stone or a stone ax. Stones inscribed with the name of this god have been found. Now an altar dedicated to Zeus Kataibates stood beside that of Zeus Herkeios in the ruins of the house of Oinomaos, another was found in a house on the island of Thera, and at Tarentum there were altars before the houses on which sacrifices were made to Zeus Kataibates. The altars were erected and the offerings were made in order to protect the house from a stroke of lightning. This custom seems to have been fairly common.

Much more important and interesting is another form of Zeus in which he appears as a house god, Zeus Ktesios, the most curious of all, because the sky god appears in the guise of a snake. He is not very often mentioned, for on the whole the simple house cult belonged to the daily routine for which literature cared little. But that he was venerated in all of Greece is proved by the fact that this epithet also appears in the Doric form Pasios. It is exceptional for an epithet thus to appear in various dialectic forms. Both Ktesios and Pasios signify "the Acquirer." Sometimes the name is used without the

addition of Zeus. An altar of Zeus Ktesios is mentioned by Aeschylus, an altar dedicated to him was found in a house on the island of Thera, and there are other such altars of a small size with his name. On the island of Thasos he is called Zeus Patroos Ktesios, 4 and in its colony Galepsos in Thrace he appears in company with Zeus Herkeios Patroos. 5 He was still not forgotten in the Roman era. Finally, on a relief found at Thespiae his name is inscribed above a great snake (Fig. 26). Fortunately, Attic writers give some information about his cult. Menander says that he was the protector of the storehouse and that his function was to guard this against thieves. 6 It is said that his "image" was erected in the storehouse. Another Attic writer, who treated of the cults, explains the kind of image these were. He calls them semeia (tokens or symbols). 7 These were jars or amphorae, the handles of which were deco-rated with woolen fillets and into which were put fresh water, oil, and fruit of all kinds. The Greek word for this mixture was panspermia or pankarpia, a kind of offering which we have become acquainted with in the agrarian cults. I suppose that this offering was a meal offered to the house god and that the house god in the shape of a snake came to partake of it.

That this supposition is right is proved by a cult that is familiar under quite a different aspect, that of the Dioscuri, 8 the sons of Zeus as their name indicates. I shall not here go into their generally known appearance and cult, but shall confine myself to their role in the house cult. The form in which the Dioscuri appear in mythology and in their cult in later times is certainly the result of a blending of various elements.}

[paragraph continues] They were also called Anaktes (kings), and sometimes they appear as children. Their cult was especially popular at Sparta, where they were evidently house gods. A series of reliefs shows their symbols and cult paraphernalia. Their special symbol was the dokana, two upright beams joined by two transverse beams. This has been interpreted variously and ingeniously both in ancient and modern times. The simple explanation is that the dokana represent the wooden frame of a house built of crude bricks. On certain reliefs from Sparta and from its colony Tarentum, and on Spartan coins, two amphorae appear as the symbols of the Dioscuri (Fig. 29). A snake approaches them or is coiling around them or the beams of the dokana (Fig. 31). That the Dioscuri were house gods is proved by their cult. A meal was set out and a couch prepared for them in the house. This is what Euphorion did; 9 Phormion was punished because he would not open the chamber of his house to them. 10 These meals were called theoxenia. Theron of Agrigentum and Iason of Pherae prepared meals in honor of the Dioscuri, and Bacchylides in a poem invites them to a meal from which wine and songs will not be missing. The Athenians spread the table in the prytaneum for them with a frugal, old-fashioned meal of cheese, cakes, olives, and leeks. Some vase paintings and reliefs show the Dioscuri coming to the meal. Here they are riding, in accordance with the common conception (Fig. 32). In Sparta they appear as snakes. The close affinity of Zeus Ktesios and the sons of Zeus is apparent.

Another Zeus, for whose occurrence in the house cult there is no evidence, must be mentioned because he is not infrequently represented as a snake. This is Zeus Meilichios, who was much venerated in Attica (Fig. 27). He is also represented as seated on a throne with a cornucopia (Fig. 28); he is accordingly

akin to Zeus the Acquirer. His name signifies the one who has been propitiated, he is the propitious one. This is probably the reason why he became like Zeus the Acquirer. Zeus Soter, the Savior, also seems to have been connected with Meilichios at Piraeus. I do not speak here of that Zeus Soter whom the cities celebrated as the savior of their political freedom, but of the Zeus Soter of the house cult. To him, some of the altars which were found in the houses of the island of Thera are dedicated. Aeschylus says that besides the upper and nether gods he is the third protector of the house. At the symposium the first and third libations were devoted to him. No representations of him in snake form are known, however. Finally, we must mention Agathos Daimon, the Good Daemon, whose name is inscribed on one of the house altars from Thera. At the end of the daily meal a few drops of unmixed wine were poured out on the floor as a libation to Agathos Daimon. He too is represented as a snake.

Why Zeus was the protector of the house is clear if we consider the epithet "father," which is very often given to him by the Greeks, the Indians, the Illyrians, 11 and the Romans, in whose language the epithet coalesced with the noun to form the name "Jupiter." The occurrence of this epithet among these four peoples of Indo-European stock proves that it is an ancient heritage from the time before they had separated. It is generally supposed to designate Zeus as father of gods and men, but this is clearly erroneous. It cannot be believed that in those ancient times, before the Indo-European peoples separated and began their great migrations, there was a nobility which traced its pedigree back to the gods as Homeric heroes did. Nor did Zeus create man or the world. He is neither creator nor father of men in the physical sense. Consequently,

the epithet must designate him as pater familias, the head of

the family, which perfectly agrees with the patriarchal social conditions of the Indo-European peoples. And this is the reason why Zeus was the obvious protector of the house.

But the astonishing fact is that Zeus appears as a snake. This Zeus was, of course, called by modern scholars a chthonian deity, because the snake is always considered to represent the souls of, the dead. Certainly it does so very often, but we may question whether this is always the case. It was once supposed that all family and domestic cults had sprung from the cult of the dead. This doctrine should be reduced to its proper proportions. It would surely be astonishing if the house cult had no other roots than the cult of the dead. Among many European peoples, as well as in other parts of the world, we find the snake as the guardian of the house. In my own country--Sweden--the house snake was extremely common, and only a few years ago there died a farmer of whom I know that he was wont to offer milk to the house snakes. The house snake is still generally venerated in the Balkan Peninsula and in modern Greece. When it appears it is greeted with reverent words, such as "welcome, lady of the house," "your obedient servant," "guardian," or "guardian spirit of our house." It is related that in ancient Egypt the houses were full of snakes, which were so tame that they came to partake of offerings when they were called. The Minoan snake-goddess was a house goddess. 12 She was a snake-goddess, not because, as Sir Arthur Evans asserts, she was the lady of the nether world and of the dead, but because she was a house goddess. The guardian spirit of the house had been anthropomorphized, and the house snake had become her attribute. Kipling, in "Letting in the Jungle," says of the doomed village: "Who could fight against the jungle, when the very village cobra had left his

hole in the platform under the peepul." The holy snake of Athena also went away when the Athenians evacuated their city at the coming of the Persians, as Herodotus reports. Athena was the house goddess of the Mycenaean king. She inherited the snake from the Minoan house goddess. The great goddess had statues, and the snake could be given to her as her attribute, but in the common house cult there were no statues or even statuettes. Hence, it seems that the house god Zeus himself appeared as a snake. But in reality the association is rather loose and came about because Zeus was the protector of the house and the snake was its guardian spirit in bodily form. Many snakes may live in a house, and therefore people sometimes called them the sons of Zeus, the Dios kouroi. In the cult of the house snake we have come upon another striking similarity between modern folklore and ancient Greek popular religion. We see how modern folklore is helpful to a correct understanding of Greek popular religion. The cult of the house snake also survives in modern Greece.

In the middle of the great living room of the Greek house, the megaron, was a fixed hearth. The fire of this hearth warmed the house on cold days, and over this fire meals were prepared. The fixed hearth was brought to Greece by the Greeks, for in Minoan houses there were only portable fire pots of the sort used for preparing meals in Hellenistic and even in modern times. 13 The sanctity of the hearth is common to the Greeks and the Romans, and it is very probable that the Greek name of the goddess of the hearth, Hestia, and her Roman name, Vesta, are both derived from the same word, although this has been contested. 14 The sanctity of the hearth

is bound up with the fixed hearth. Consequently, the Greeks are responsible for it, not the pre-Greek population, who did not have a fixed hearth. The hearth is the center of the house and the symbol of the family. When Herodotus counts the number of families in a town he counts the hearths. 15 The hearth was sacred. A suppliant took his place on the hearth, as did Odysseus, Telephus, and Themistocles, because he was protected by its sanctity. People swore by the hearth. The newborn babe was received into the family by being carried around the hearth, a ceremony which was called amphidromia and took place on the fifth day after birth.

The hearth was the center of the house cult and of the piety of daily life. We should remember that while our piety is expressed chiefly in words, by prayers, the piety of the ancients was expressed chiefly by acts. In our schools the day begins with a morning prayer, but in the Greek gymnasia there was a hero shrine at which cult rites were performed. This fact is particularly evident in daily life. Whereas we say a prayer before and after the meal, the Greeks before the meal offered a few bits of food on the hearth and after it poured out a few drops of unmixed wine on the floor. The libation was said to be made to Agathos Daimon, the Good Daemon, the guardian of the house, who appears in snake form. It is not stated to whom the food offering was made, but if someone is to be mentioned it must be Hestia, the goddess of the hearth.

Thus, the hearth was sacred, and the daily meal was sacred. The sanctity of the meal found expression in the rites which accompanied it. It is a widespread custom to regard the meal as sacred. Among many peoples a stranger who has been permitted to take part in a meal is thereby received under the protection of the tribe and becomes inviolable. The meal unites with sacred bonds all who partake of it. One may recall the old Russian custom of offering a distinguished visitor bread and

salt before the gates of the city. The same feeling was alive in Greece. "Thou hast forsaken thy great oath, the table, and the salt," the poet Archilochus says reproachfully to someone; 16 and the orator Aeschines asked emphatically of his colleagues by whom he thought he had been deceived: "Where is the salt? where the table? where the drink-offering?" 17

This sanctity of the meal, which knits the partakers together in a sacred community, will help us to understand the best known and most prominent of all the rites of Greek religion, animal sacrifice. Its meaning and origin have been vigorously discussed. A great scholar, W. Robertson Smith, advanced the hypothesis of a totemistic origin. 18 The animal sacrificed was the god himself, Smith thought, and by eating his flesh the worshippers were united with the god and imbued with his power. This hypothesis has been somewhat modified by Jane Harrison 19 and others, but it is untenable. Not the slightest trace of totemism appears among the Greeks or other Indo-European peoples. The sacredness of the meal suffices to explain the peculiarities of animal sacrifice. The sacrifice is a meal common to the god and his worshippers, linking them together in a close unity. The god is invited by prayer to come to the meal. He receives his portion, and the men, who are the greater number, feast on their portions. This is the reason why only a small portion of the flesh is offered on the altar of the god, a custom which had already struck Hesiod as so peculiar that he invented a mythical explanation of it. 20 The sacrifice is sacred. This is the reason why it is often forbidden to carry parts of it outside the holy precinct. Even the refuse, the bones,

and the ashes are sacred and are left in the sanctuary. Such a sacrifice was performed not only at festivals but occasionally in daily life. Whenever an animal was slaughtered, it was considered as a sacrifice and was accompanied by the usual rites. The word philothytes (fond of sacrifices) signifies simply "hospitable."

The sanctity of the hearth was not conferred by any god but was immanent. Hestia was never wholly anthropomorphized. She was given a place in mythology, but her statues are artistic inventions, not cult statues. Nevertheless, her importance was great. A Greek proverb says: "Begin with Hestia," that is to say, "Begin at the right end." If an animal was slaughtered and a sacrifice was performed in the house, the first pieces of the sacrificial meal were offered to her, just as at all meals a few pieces were laid on the hearth. This is the reason why it seems to have been customary to offer the first pieces of all sacrifices, even public ones, to Hestia. The position of Hestia is also reflected in semiphilosophical speculations, in which it is said that Hestia is enthroned in the middle of the universe, just as the hearth is the center of the house.

A few words must be added concerning the role of the hearth in public cult, for this role is the best argument for the belief that the family was the model and basis of Greek state organization. Just as each family had its hearth, so the state had its hearth in the council house, where the officials and a few especially honored citizens took their daily meals. When a colony was founded, the emigrants carried fire from this hearth to kindle the fire on the hearth of the new city.

The cult of the hearth comes down from hoary antiquity, from Indo-European times. It induces me to add a remark of general bearing in regard to the difference between our religion and that of the Greeks, especially their popular religion. This difference is less appreciated than it ought to be, because

our attitude is not the same as that of the Greeks. The sanctity of the hearth was great, and we rightly speak of a cult of the hearth because certain sacred acts were performed there. But there were no prayers, no images, and no gods, for Hestia herself was not a full-fledged personality but only a pale personification. The cult consisted in acts. The place was sacred in itself according to the ideas of the ancients. For us it is not so. Nowadays a place is made sacred by erecting a house of God on it. Sanctity is conferred upon the building by its consecration as a church. In antiquity sanctity was inherent in the place. The place was not made holy by building a house for a god on it, but a house for a god was built on a certain place because the place was holy. Finally, although the hearth was sacred, the same hearth was used for nonreligious purposes--for roasting meat and cooking food, for boiling water and heating the room. Here we come upon another difference between ancient and modern religious ideas, which is perhaps greater than any other. We make a clear distinction between the sacred and the profane, we object to using holy things for ordinary purposes. Religion is our Sunday suit. The ancients also made a distinction between the sacred and the profane. Sacred things could not be treated as profane things. But the sacred and the profane were intermingled in daily life in a manner of which there are almost incredible examples. Religion was much more a part of daily life among the ancients than among us. It consisted in acts more than in words. Obviously, there was a danger that these acts might become a mere routine, and in general they probably did. They were deprived of real religious feeling even more than our grace is when it is recited by custom and without thinking.

The sanctity of the hearth was so great that everyone who sat on it was sacred and could not be violated. One would probably say that he was under the protection of the gods. This

was, in fact, considered to be so, but the statement is not quite correct. The hearth was sacred in itself, and its sacredness was conferred upon anybody touching it. There was no question of any personal god as mediator. But, on the other hand, everyone who sought protection at the hearth was under the protection of the gods and, it should be added, of a quite special god, Zeus. This takes us back to early times, in which law and justice and the state were only slightly developed. Divine protection to foreigners and suppliants was much more important then than in historical times, when life was regulated by state institutions and laws and was relatively secure. It should be added that respect for certain religious rules in regard to foreigners and suppliants is found among most primitive peoples, and such rules must have existed in very ancient Indo-European times.

Under primitive conditions a foreigner is excluded from the protection of law and custom enjoyed by members of the tribe. The word "guest" and the Latin word hostis (foe) are the same word. A suppliant is a man who by trespassing against law and custom has put himself outside their protection. Such a man might be purified and pardoned. As for foreigners, there might be reasons for entering into friendly relations with them. They might, for example, be merchants, for trade, however restricted, always existed, even in early times and under the most primitive conditions. From ancient times there was a god who conferred his protection upon foreigners and suppliants, namely, Zeus. He, and almost he alone, has epithets referring to this function (xenios, hikesios), and they were very commonly used in the historical age. Zeus was the protector of suppliants and foreigners because he, being "the father," the divine pater familias, upheld the unwritten laws and customs on which the power of the head of the family depended. Such laws and customs were necessary, for otherwise a person who

had trespassed would not have been able to make atonement, nor would commerce or other relations with people outside the tribe have been possible. So Zeus was the protector of the unwritten laws, of the moral order, and of customs invested with religious sanctity in primitive Greek society. But as political life gradually developed and life became more secure, this function of Zeus receded into the background in actual practice. Generally speaking, people did not need to turn to Zeus for protection. Theoretically, Zeus always remained the heavenly ruler and the protector of justice and morality, but hardly more than theoretically.

From of old, Zeus had been the protector of the house, the family, and its rights. But as the power of the state increased and internal peace was secured, life became safer and consequently the importance of Zeus in private life diminished. Zeus Ktesios and Zeus Herkeios remained, but not much was said of them. The old rites were performed in a routine fashion, more or less without thought. The importance of Zeus and his cult was noticeably less in the classical age than in Homer. He was still officially the highest god, the protector of the state and of the law. But in daily life people cared more for other gods who were nearer to them.

If in historical times people were relatively safe from the assaults of enemies and from robbery, they feared dangers of other kinds which threatened them and their houses. Belief in magic and witchcraft is primeval and was not lacking even in the classical age. The house also had to be protected against secret perils from these sources, and for this purpose people resorted to gods who were able to avert evils of all kinds. One of these was the great hero Heracles, who had vanquished so many monsters, ghosts (Antaeus was a ghost), and even Death. Above the entrance to the house was placed the inscription:

[paragraph continues] "Here the gloriously triumphant Heracles dwells; here let no evil enter."