Topic: Greek & Roman Mythology

[Prometheus]

The Nature of Persephone. — Persephone, who was generally
known in cult as Kore ("Daughter"), was obviously an
offshoot of Gaia, the earth goddess, and, therefore, a dupli-
cate of Demeter. The mother and daughter represented two
phases of the vegetative power of the soil, the first standing for
the entire power, latent or active, at all seasons of the year;
and the second typifying rather the potency in its exuberant
youthful aspect, manifested chiefly in the renewed growth of



 



 



 



 



PLATE L

Mystic Rites at Eleusis

The proper order of anatytis of this scene proceeds
from left to right. First, one observes a gnarled and
twisted tree, the sacred laurel which keeps evil influ-
ences away from the sanctuary. Next, there is an
altar from which rises a flame surrounded by a circle
of fruits. The first two human figures are the youth-
ful lakchos and Demeter, the latter seated on a fawn-
skin spread over the so-called mystic chest, about
which a serpent has wound its coils. The headless
female figure next in order is Kore, in the rile of
divine hierophant, who with lowered torches is cleans-
ing the soil just as Demeter purifies the air with a
flame held aloft. On the throne of expiation sits the
initiate with veiled head and resting his feet on the
sanctifying fleece of a ram, while before him a male
hierophant bows over a low akar on which the flesh
of the ram is being burned, and with his right hand
pours water on the fire. On the opposite side stands
Dionysos grasping a torch, and at the same time pour-
ing a liquid, probably wine, from a kantharos upon
the flame of the altar. Behind the god is a female
divinity who is doubtless to be identified as Hekate.
From a relief on a marble sarcophagus found at Torre
Nuova {RMitt. xxv, Plate I). See pp. 231-32.



 



 




 



 



 



 



THE GREATER GODS — DEMETER, KORE 231

spring. As may readily be gathered, the seizure of Persephone
as it occurred in the myth, and her subsequent espousal to
Hades for four months of each year, are but graphic representa-
tions of the annually recurring period during which vegeta-
tion practically ceases. Our knowledge of the meaning of the
name Persephone is incomplete; the second part is certainly
related to the base of the verb <t>alv€iVy "to show," but of the
first we are entirely ignorant.

The Mysteries of Eleusis. — Like the nature cult of Dionysos,
that of Demeter developed, in the consciousness of the wor-
shipper, along two different lines. Working along the one, it
aimed to supply physical needs, and along the other, spiritual
wants, the first touching society in the mass, while the second
affected the individual. It is with the latter influence that we
are most concerned, although in reality the two lines were but
one; the difference was a matter of interpretation.

The Eleusinia, or Mysteries of Eleusis, took place just prior
to the autumn sowing. They began on the fifteenth day of
the month Boedromion (roughly, September) and lasted for
ten days, or a few more according to the historical period, the
entire festival being divided into four distinct ceremonial acts.
The first, which covered four or five days, consisted in the
assembling of the properly qualified mystaiy i. e. candidates
for initiation, in impressing upon them the duties of silence,
secrecy, and purity, and, finally, in giving them a ritual puri-
fication. In the second the mystaiy departing from Athens at
daybreak and usually reaching Eleusis late at night, advanced
in procession, dancing, singing hymns, sacrificing at the shrines
by the way-side, swinging torches, and bearing the image of the
infant lakchos, or Dionysos. The next act involved concerted
efforts of the mystai to awaken in themselves the emotions that
stirred the heart of Demeter in her search for her daughter.
At night, with torches in their hands, they would roam about
the sea-shore, as she had done, haunting those places which
tradition still associated with her. As each candidate beheld his



 



 



232 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

neighbour doing the same thing as himself, and presumably
through the same motives, the meaning of the ceremony was
driven deeply into his soul, giving a thousandfold intensifica-
tion to his belief in the reality of Demeter's power, drawn
from her own sorrow, to sympathize with the heartbreak of
mortals. When the mystai had all become one with the god, and
therefore with one another, they appropriately partook of food
and drink in common and together handled certain sacred ob-
jects. Concerning the last act we are told only the barest
outline, so sacredly did the initiates keep their vows of secrecy*
Substantially all we know is that the votaries gathered to-
gether in the great Hall of Initiation and there witnessed cer-
tain performances, probably of a dramatic character and based
on the experiences of the divine mother and daughter. They
listened, too, to weird sounds produced by the hierophant and
his associates, and into both sight and sound the spectators,
with their fancy quickened by long and intense contemplation
of holy things, read meanings which were not at all warranted
in fact. When the secret rites were over, the festival ter-
minated with public games.

There can be no doubt that the Mysteries of Eleusis effected
much good in Greece. While the bare substance of their teach-
ing was practically the same as that of the cult of Dionysos,
they were much superior as a spiritual tonic, so to speak, in
that they strengthened the finer feelings and relied less upon
wanton extravagance of action; and many a despondent man
became filled with a saving hope at the thought that he, too,
could know the inmiortal joy of Demeter.

Demeter and Kore in Art. — Prior to the fourth century
art had not devised two distinct types for the mother and the
daughter, and in many cases inscriptions are necessary to iden-
tify them severally. Both goddesses were shown with that
serious air which, reflecting a past sorrow, has become a part
of their character. In the later art Demeter appeared as a
matron, seated or standing, her head crowned with the lofty



 



 



THE GREATER GODS — HADES 233

polos or covered with the folds of her robe, her emblems being
the torch, sceptre, bowl, and sheaf. In function she was now
the bestower of grain, and now the grief-worn mother. Per-
sephone became distinctively maidenly in form, face, and
dress; as a chthonic divinity she held a torch, and as a queen
a sceptre.

HADES

When the kingdom of the universe wrested from Kronos
was divided, the dominion of the invisible realm beneath the
earth was given to his son Hades. He was, therefore, not a
place, after our modern way of thinking, but a person, and his
name, which to the Greek signified " the unseen," betrayed at
once his dwelling-place and his general functions. These
simple statements of myth seem to disclose at a single glance
the complete story of Hades from the very inception of his
career as a divinity, but in reality, as we shall see later on,
they are deceptive, for the manner and stages of his growth
are by no means certain.

While Homer generally speaks of this nether god as Hades,
in one passage he knows him as "Zeus of the underworld,"
yet, although suggestions of royal power accompany mentions
of him, real kingly attributes are lacking. His chief function
is to put into effect the curses uttered by men against their
fellows, and the practice, which continued to a late day, of
invoking his name in oaths was a recognition of his power to
discharge this duty, for, when one bound himself to destruc-
tion at the hands of Hades in event of failure to keep a solemn
pledge, he was giving utterance to a conditional curse.^ From
this most unlikely source the god derived what little moral
significance he had, although at the best it was of a negative
character. His relation to the principle and to the enforce-
ment of retribution is seen in a rather moralizing genealogy
which makes him the father of the Erinyes.

The various appellations and titles of Hades throw light



 



 



234 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

upon his nature, and, indeed, the commonest form of his name,
which we have just used, had much to do in shaping his char-
acter. Through its obvious reference to the unseen abode of
the dead and because of its formal association with curses,
which are nothing else than injury by magic, the word became
so foreboding of ill that men could not take it easily upon their
lips. It was very natural to deny to such a name the beneficent
power that gave increase to the crops and herds, so that, as a
consequence, the worship of Hades dwindled away and the
enlargement of his personality was arrested. Only in Elis
did he have a temple and a cult under this name, although as
the earth god Trophonios he dispensed oracles in his cave at
Lebadeia in Boiotia, while his title, Zeus Eubouleus, with its
evident suggestion of the wisdom of his counsel, is a distinct
echo of his oracular functions. As Plouton (Pluto) or Plouteus
he is the divinity who enriches men with the abundance of
the field and the fecundity of the flocks, whence Ploutos, the
son of Demeter and lasion, is apparently none other than a
double of Hades.

With the data available it is impossible, as has already been
hinted, to state in just what form Hades first emerged. It may
be that it was in the aspect in which he was known to Homer,
as the lord of the departed, but if so, he could scarcely have been
a product of the worship of ancestors, for nowhere do we find
any Greek stock tracing its descent back to him. A much
more probable theory is that Hades was given a being in the
mind of the Greek worshipper in answer to the demand that,
for the sake of absolute uniformity in the divine government
of the universe, the lower world, like the upper, should have
its own separate ruler. Hence Hades was a nether Zeus, and
exercised over the assembled souls a dominion akin to that of
his greater brother over the hosts of the living, both human
and divine.

Hades in Art. — One need not go far to find a reason for the
fact that Hades was comparatively neglected by the artists.



 



 



THE GREATER GODS — HADES 235

Except in Etruscan paintings, he is generally shown in his
beneficent aspects, the cornucopia placed in his hands stamping
him as the bestower of abundance, the eagle sometimes perched
on his sceptre or on his cap marking him as the Zeus of his own
special realm. His nether functions are suggested by a dense
mass of hair, which generally falls forebodingly over his fore-
head.



 



 



CHAPTER XI

THE LESSER GODS — OF THE CIRCLE OF
ZEUS, OF LIGHT, AND OF HEAT

OF THE CIRCLE OF ZEUS

JOURYNOME. — We have already met with Eurynome, the
-'— ^ beautiful daughter of Okeanos, as one of the wives of Zeus,
and there is a story concerning her to the effect that, long
before her marriage, she and the Titan Ophion together ruled
the universe from the summit of Olympos, but were at length
forced to give place to Kronos and Rhea. If she was actually,
as is reasonably to be suspected from her parentage, a per-
sonification of the "wide-ruling" element of moisture, this
legend may record a very old belief that in the beginning the
earth was entirely covered with water and afterward emerged
from it by degrees. Eurynome holds an inconspicuous place
in myth, and remains little more than a symbol of the far-
reaching dominion of her husband.

ChariUs {^^ Graces*^). — Eurynome is best known through
the Charites, the lovely daughters who blessed her marriage
with Zeus, and who were at first conceived as gracious divinities
that caused the soil to bring forth flowers and fruit for the use
of man, although they were not yet endowed with the joyful
spirits and unaffected charms which have made them a fa-
vourite study of poet and artist. A brief legend testifies to the
sombre character of their worship in the island of Paros.
Minos was offering sacrifices to them here when word came
to him that his son Androgeos had been killed, whereupon,
distraught with sorrow, he commanded the flute-players to
cease their music and tore the garlands from his head. From



 



 



 



 



PLATE LI

I

Helios

Helios, with radiate head, ascends in his car, drawn
by four winged horses, out of the eastern sea, and the
stars (the small boyish figures) disappear one by one
in the water or beneath the horizon. From a red-
figured kratir of the first part of the fifth century
B.C., in the British Museum (Furtwingler-Reichhold^
Griicbische Vasenmaleni^ No. 126). See pp. 241 ff.

2

The Horai

The Horai (thus named by the artist) are here
represented in their original character as divinities of
vegetation and fruitfulness. The first carries what
seems to be a fig-branch; the second bears two
branches, the larger of which is laden with pome-
granates ; and the third holds a plucked fruit on the
tip of her hand. From a red-figured kylix of the
fifth century B.C., in Berlin (Furtwangler-Reichhold,
Griechischi Fasenmalerei^ No. 1 23). See pp. 237-38.



 



 





 



 



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — CIRCLE OF ZEUS 237

that day, the legend explains, flutes and garlands were no
longer used in the worship of the Charites, this suggesting that
their rites took place during that gloomy season of the year
when vegetation had disappeared. In contrast to their worship
was their gladdening bounty of springtime, this irresistible
infection touching their personalities, and in time transforming
them from elemental into spiritual forces. Thenceforth they
were divorced from natural objects as such, and stood for those
subtle qualities in persons and in things pertaining to the social
life of man which beget the purest joy and happiness. They
were associated, for instance, with tasteful dress, with the
various forms of art, and with personal and household orna-
ments, and this connexion throws light on their relations to
Aphrodite and to the craftsman-god in the well-known spring-
song of Horace: —

"Now Cythcrca leads the dance, the bright moon overhead;
The Graces and the Nymphs, together knit,
With rhythmic feet the meadow beat, while Vulcan, fiery red.
Heats the Cyclopian forge in Aetna's pit." *

The Charites are generally held to be three in number, Hesiod
giving their names as Aglaia ("Splendour"), Thaleia ("Luxu-
riant Beauty '*)> and Euphrosyne ("Good Cheer").

Themis . — The second wife of Zeus, according to the ac-
count in the Theogony of Hesiod, was Themis ("Justice"),
and, as we have pointed out elsewhere, she is a form of the
great earth goddess. Her primary role apparently was that
of controlling the cycle of the seasons, and so regularly did she
bring about the periods of productiveness that men came to
look upon her as a power to whom they, could appeal for the
elucidation of matters in which human arbiters failed. In
brief, she became an oracular goddess, and the righteousness
of her deliverances established her as the personification of
justice and equity.

Horai Q^Houts^^). — The Horai who, according to H^
siod, were Eunomia ("Order"), Dike ("Law"), and Eirene



 



 



238 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTH0LCX5Y

(" Peace ")> inherited in name the social traits of their mother
Themis, but, in respect to their origin, her terrestrial char-
acteristics. They seem at the outset to have had to do with
the seasonal stimulation of plant life; it was they who adorned
the newly-created Pandora with gariands of vernal blossoms,
and every spring and autumn they were honoured at Athens
with a procession and were given offerings of the fruits of the
earth. We are told that here these divinities were called
Thallo ("Bloom"), Auxo ("Growth"), and Karpo ("Fruit-
age"), but we cannot be sure that these are the official names.
In late times the Horai were often regarded as the hours of
the day.

Mnemosyne; The Muses. — By her union with Zeus, Mne-
mosyne ("Memory") did more than serve as a living re-
minder of his power; she brought him the nine comely daugh-
ters, the Muses, who by their many and varied gifts have
done much to give charm to the life of mankind. It has been
suggested that they sprang from the same stratum of elemental
powers as the Graces and the Hours, and it certainly appeals
to one's poetic sense to find personified in them the musical
voices of the rivulet and of the foliage of the forest, although
we are probably much nearer to real fact if we assign to them
the psychic origin which is claimed for their mother. One
modern writer* advances the very acceptable explanation
that they were "the mental tension that relieves itself in
prophecy and song," the stress to which Tennyson • alludes
when he says that

"For the unquiet heart and brain
A use in measured language lies."

As men became more and more conscious of this state of
mind, they tended to dissociate it from themselves and to
attribute an independent existence to it; how it became plural-
ized we cannot outline, but may only fancy.
The native abode of the Muses was in the extreme north of



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — CIRCLE OF ZEUS 239

Hellas; hence their kinship with the Zeus of Olympos and their
association with Orpheus.* At Delphoi they became attached
to Apollo, and in the south Mount Helikon in Boiotia was




Fig. 9. Mnemosyne and Kalliope

Mnemosyne, a beautiful and dignified matron, stands holding a scroll as she gazes
sympathetically on her daughter, the Muse Kalliope, who is seated before her playing
on a seven-stringed kithara (zither). This is the first recorded insunce in which Mne-
mosyne is definitely identified by the presence of her name in the vase-paintings.
From a red-figured Ukythos of the fifth century B.C., found at Gela {Monumenti AiUichi,
xvii, Plate XXVI).

their permanent centre. We know of many Greek states in
which Mouseia, or schools under the patronage of the Muses,
were established for the advanced education of the youth.
The Muses were recognized in groups of various numbers;



 



 



240 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

but that in which nine were enumerated became fixed as the
standard, although the differentiation of their functions and
personalities took place only late and not always along logical
lines. The nine were formally divided, as shown in the ap-
pended table, into three classes corresponding to the great
departments of literature.



Epos
Lyric

Drama



Name Sphere Attribute

Kalliope ("Sweet-Voiced") Heroic Epic Writing-ublet

KJeio (" Praise ") Hittorical Epic Scroll or writing-ublet

la ("Heavenly") Astronomic " * '"' '

(" Loveliness '*) Love-lyric



KJeio (" Fraise "} Histoncal lipic ScroU o

Ourania ("Heavenly") Astronomical Epic Globe

Erato ("Loveliness^') Love-lyric Zither

'^dSI^'^O ^"^^^^^ ^ ^^ Choral lyric Lyre

Euterpe ("Delight") Flute music Flute

' Melpomene (" Song ") Tragedy Tragic mask

Thaleia ("Luzurijuit Beauty") Comedy Comic mask

Polymnia ("Many Hymns ") ^"^""^l,^^^ No definite attribute

[Prometheus]

Ganymedes. — The story of Ganymedes, the beautiful son
of Tros of Ilion, is found in its most attractive form in the per-
suasive words of Aphrodite addressed to Anchises in the
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite.* "Indeed counselling Zeus
snatched away golden-haired Ganymedes for his beauty's
sake that he might dwell with the inmiortals and in the home
of Zeus be a cup-bearer to the gods, a marvel to look upon,
held in high honour as he pours the ruddy nectar from a
golden bowl. And inexorable grief possessed the soul of Tros,
nor did he know whither the divine whirlwind had hurried his
dear son. Then indeed did he mourn him unceasingly day after
day. And Zeus had pity on him and gave him as a recompense
for his son swift steeds, such as draw the inmiortals. These
he gave him as a gift, and Hermes at the behest of Zeus told
him clearly that, like the gods, he should never die nor know
old age." In the most widely known form of the story Gany-
medes was borne aloft by an eagle, or by Zeus in the guise of
an eagle. He seems to stand for the healthy beauty and joy of
youth, and is a male counterpart of Hebe in her later aspects.

Hebe. — In origin Hebe ("Youth**) seems to have been
more than the mere personification of the charms of youth or



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — LUMINARIES 241

of the well-preserved beauty of her mother, Hera, for she was,
rather, a spring divinity of flowers akin to the Horai and
Charites, or perhaps she was the earth goddess herself, re-
garded as in the prime of maidenhood. The legend which
makes her the child of Zeus is undoubtedly not so old as that
in which she is bom of a strange union between Hera and a
leaf of lettuce, and the not improbable suggestion has been
advanced that Hebe was in a very early period the equivalent
of Dione, the spouse of Zeus at Dodona, and that with the amal-
gamation of the two stocks whose chief deities were Zeus and
Hera, Hebe was thrust from her place and a myth was created
to give her legitimate standing as a daughter in the new family.
Like the other children of Zeus and Hera, she never enjoyed any
great distinction; her roU was always that of an attendant.
In the Iliad she is the maiden cup-bearer to the Olympians,
and on one occasion she helps Hera get her chariot and
horses ready for a journey, while at another time she per-
forms the rather menial task of preparing the bath for the dust-
begrimed Ares on his return from a battle.

Iris. — Iris is no more than a personification of the rainbow.
Like the rainbow, she comes and goes without warning, while
her speed of movement and her pathway across the heavens
fit her for the post of messenger of the gods. She is clothed in
the bright colours becoming to youth, and on golden wings she
flits from place to place, performing the errands of her greater
companions, notably Zeus and Hera. In her representations
in art she is scarcely to be distinguished from other winged
figures, except when she is shown as bearing a herald's wand.

OF THE GREATER LUMINARIES

Helios ("Sttn")' — From a remote time many phases of
the sun's power had been observed by the Greeks with an atten-
tion which was akin to adoration, but only in a few places did
this develop into genuine worship; for the sun was altogether



 



 



242 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

too corporeal an object to appeal strongly to the religious
fancy. Yet it must have aroused in the mind some feeling of
divinity, inasmuch as it was the daily practice of the Greek to
rise at dawn and greet the sun with a kiss of the hand; and very
early this luminary became a frequent theme in myths, although
little by little these legends lost their distinctive solar char-
acteristics in the popular consciousness.

In myth, Helios is the son of Hyperion and Euryphaessa
("Far-Shining**), both of them Titan children of Ouranos
and Gaia, and Hyperion ("High-Going") being transparently
another name for Helios himself. Helios took as his wife
Perse ("Gleaming"), the daughter of Okeanos, their children
being Kirke, the sorceress of the West, and Aietes, the father of
Medeia, the sorceress of the East. Pindar relates the story of
another marriage which is of prime importance in our study,
having to do, as it does, with the chief centre of the sun-cult
among the Greeks. When the jurisdiction of the various
departments of the world was apportioned, it happened
that Helios, being absent, was forgotten, but although, on
discovery of the error, Zeus wished to make a new division,
Helios dissuaded him from so doing, stating that he was willing
to receive as his share an island which he beheld rising from
the sea. This Zeus granted him, and wedding the nymph
Rhodos (or Rhode), the daughter of Amphitrite, Helios gave
her name to the island and named the three cities of Rhodes
after three of their sons. Helios is also said to have had as wives
Leukothoe, KJytia, and Neaira, the last of whom, according
to Homer, bore him two daughters, Lampetie, who tended her
father's cattle, and Phaethousa, who shepherded his sheep.
There were seven herds of cattle and seven of sheep, each
comprising fifty animals; that is, there were three hundred
and fifty of each kind; and Aristotle is probably right in seeing
in these a reference to the days and nights of a lunar year.
The herds were generally located either in Sicily or Crete.

The appearance of the sun in the heavens reminded the



 



 



 



 



PLATE LII
Ganymedes and the Eagle

^ Though the copy is but an inadequate rendering
of the original, it serves to show the originality and
power of the composition, which almost transcends
the bounds of sculpture in its addition of surround-
ings and accessions to enhance the efFect. A high
tree-trunk forms the background and support for the
whole, which is most skilfully constructed, so that the
feet of the boy do not touch the ground, and the
wonderful upward sweep of the whole composition is
enhanced by the contrast with the dog, who sits on
the ground and looks upward after bis master. The
outspread wings of the eagle form a broad summit to
the group from which it gradually narrows down to
the feet of Ganymede, and thus the effect is further
increased. Eagle and boy alike strain upward in an
aspiration like that which Goethe expresses in his
poem of Ganymede. There is no hint of sensual
meaning in the treatment of Leochares ; the eagle is
merely the messenger of Zeus; and we can see in his
grip of the boy the care which Pliny mentions''
(E. A. Gardner, A Handbook of Greek Sculpture^
p. 376). From a Roman marble copy, now in the
Vatican, of a founh century original by Leochares
(Brunn-Bruckmann, Denkmaler grtecbiscber und rom^
iscber Sculptur^ No. 158). See p. 240.



 



 




 



 



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — LUMINARIES 243

Greeks of a variety of objects — a ball of fire, a head with
streaming golden hair, an eye, a bow bristling with arrows, or
a spoked wheel — but the most commanding and persistent
likeness which they saw was that of a chariot and horses.
Poets gave the four steeds names suggestive of the sun's out-
standing properties and had them feed on the same ambrosial
herb which made Glaukos inrniortal. Homer follows Helios's
course across the heavens from his ascent out of the stream of
Okeanos in the east to his descent in the western reaches of
the same stream, describing each stage with a wealth of epi-
thet. The puzzle of the sun's nightly return from the west to the
east the Greeks lightly dismissed with legendary explana-
tions. Some said that there was a land of light whose bound-
aries embraced both east and west, and whose inhabitants —
a good and kindly folk — stabled Helios's steeds each even-
ing and led them out each morning. Others declared that
Helios, chariot and all, was conveyed eastward every night
in a golden goblet, although one poet, more appropriately,
understands that the conveyance was a bed instead of a drink-
ing-vessel.

Helios had genuinely ethical functions, and as one who took
in the whole world at a glance he was invoked in oaths.
After the murder of Klytaimestra, Orestes appealed to him
as a witness of his mother's establishment of a precedent in
crime, and together with Hekate he was a witness of the
seizure of Persephone. Not only did he make clear the path
of goodness and purity to those who sought to walk in it, but
he was pure himself, as he showed when he shrank from the
slaughter of the house of Atreus.

On Rhodian coins Helios is shown as in the full bloom of
youth, from whose head, covered with a thick growth of hair,
radiate streams of light.

Phaethon. — In Phaethon ("Gleaming One") we cannot fail

to recognize once more the person of Helios, but he has no

standard genealogy, being in one myth the youthful son
I — 20



 



 



244 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

of Eos and Kephalos whom Aphrodite seized and set to
guard her temple by night, while elsewhere he is the son of
Helios, either by the sea-nymph Klymene or by Rhode. The
most famous legend which grew up about his name recounts
that he coaxed his father until he obtained permission to
drive the fiery chariot of the sun for a single day, but since he
lacked his parent's skill in handling the reins, the swift horses
soon got beyond his control. In their mad career they
descended too low, and the flame of the car caused such
great heat and so terrible a drought upon earth that Libya
became forever a desert, the people of Aithiopia took on a
black hue, and the channels of mighty rivers were dried;
but at length Zeus smote Phaethon with a thunderbolt and
he fell from his car into the river Eridanos. His seven sisters,
weeping over his body, were turned into poplars (or poppies)
and their tears became beads of amber (or rubies), while the
Eridanos was given a place among the constellations. One
version states that, in order to put an end to the drought and
the conflagrations raging upon earth, Zeus filled the channels
of the rivers to overflowing and the Great Flood of Deukalion
came to pass. The story of Phaethon probably had its roots
in an ancient festival in which the death of vegetation in the
heat of midsummer was celebrated by mourning. •

Selene. — Selene ("Moon") was too transparently a defi-
nite material body to become invested with the many and
varied traits which go to make up a great personality. She
was, in consequence, generally conceived merely as a planet
with feminine characteristics, for the softness of her light ap-
pealed to the Greeks, as it does to us, as very feminine in com-
parison with the more virile light of the sun. Homer never
fully deified her, and even in the later period, when her divin-
ity was somewhat enlarged, she yielded up all her moral at-
tributes to Artemis and Hekate. The regularity of her phases
was altogether too mechanical to give to the Greek religious
imagination that freedom of action which could create an



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — PHASES OF LIGHT 245

entire circle of gods out of phenomena only vaguely com-
prehended or out of pure illusion. The family relationships
of Selene are confused. In one passage she is the daughter
of Zeus, but, again, she is the sister, or daughter, or wife of
Helios, and as his wife she bore to him Pandia, " a daughter of
surpassing beauty among the immortal gods." From her as-
sociation with Helios she was conceived as riding across the
heavens in a car drawn by horses or bulls, but very often
poetical allusions to her car are patently metaphors.

The classic legend of Selene is that which tells of her love
for Endymion, the son of Aethlios. One night she looked down
from the clear heavens upon this youth as he was sleeping near
his flocks on the slopes of Mount Latmos in Karia, and at the
sight of his beauty a tide of affection rose in her heart which
her will was unable to stem. Coming down from heaven, she
stooped and kissed him and then lingered near him till dawn
as he slept on, repeating these visits night after night until
her absences excited suspicion among her divine companions.
When at length the cause of them became known, Zeus gave
Endymion the choice between death and an endless sleep,
and, choosing the latter, he may still be found asleep on the
mountain-side, visited each night by his pale lover, who
keeps a careful watch over his flocks.

OF PHASES OF LIGHT

Eos. — Eos ("Dawn*0> the Roman Aurora, was very early
considered the equal of the great luminaries, this being clear
evidence of the importance of the return of the day to a
primitive people lacking the means of producing strong and
steady artificial light. Eos not only brought the dawn, but she
was the dawn. She slept in her home among the Aithiopians,
and, wakening when her hour came, rose from the stream of
Okeanos; or, again, she was thought to keep watch at the fron-
tiers of Day and Night, driving Night to the underworld and



 



 



246 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

letting Day go forth after the morning star had heralded the
return of the light. According to Homer, the sun spent the
hours of darkness near her so that at his appointed time she
could call forth his gleaming chariot. It was she who roused
the breeze of morning and sprayed the grass with refreshing
dew. Sometimes, like the sun, she was conceived as riding in a
car drawn by two or by four horses, but often she was thought
to move by running, or by flying with wings growing from her
shoulders and feet. She is conmionly represented in art as
winged and with her hair streaming behind her as she speeds
forward.

Eos was uniformly the daughter of Hyperion, and, there-
fore, the sister of Helios and Selene. She had a notorious
penchant for beautiful young hunters, for example, Kephalos
and Orion, and another of her lovers was Tithonos, a brother
of Priam of Troy. Enamoured of his beauty, she carried him
off in her chariot to the land of the Aithiopians, and, inasmuch
as he was a mere mortal, she besought Zeus to grant him endless
life. Zeus granted her request, but she had forgotten to ask
also for the boon of eternal youth, so that, after many years,
Tithonos wasted away with the steady advance of old age,
and became only a burden to himself and to Eos. To get him
out of the way she enclosed him in a room from which only
the faint cry of his voice could emerge, and finally, to end his
misery, she changed him into a cicada. Their children were
Menmon, who fell at Troy, Emathion, and Hemera. It is
customary to account for Tithonos as the regular return, the
waxing, and the waning of the day, and to explain Memnon,
the dusky Aithiopian, as the darkness between evening twi-
light and the dawn, while Emathion (cf. ^fjuipy "day") and
Hemera are masculine and feminine conceptions of the day.

Helen and the Dioskouroi. — Helen, in myth the wife of
Menelaos and Paris, has been considered by a number of
scholars as originally a divinity of light, being identified now
with the moon, now with the red of dawn, and now with the



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — STARS 247

phenomenon of a single orb of St. Elmo's fire. This last was
held to be fraught with evil, while the appearance of the twin
globes, represented by Helen's brothers, the Dioskouroi, was
regarded as favourable. Some scholars believe that the Dios-
kouroi were at first daemons of the morning and evening
twilight.^

OF SINGLE STARS AND CONSTELLATIONS

AstraioSy PhosphoroSj Eosphoros. — Astraios (" Starry-
Heaven") was accounted the son of the Titan Krios and
Eurybia, but any lustre that attached to his name was a
reflection of that of the children whom Eos bore him —
Eosphoros, or Phosphoros, and the winds Argestes, Zephyros,
Boreas, and Notos. The allegorical character of this parentage
is clear at a glance.

Eosphoros ("Dawn-Bearer") and Phosphoros ("Light-
Bearer") are two names for the morning star, the planet Venus,
whose Latin name, Lucifier, is a translation of Phosphoros.
In the myths, Eosphoros was united in marriage with Philonis
(or KJeoboia), by whom he became the father of Philam-
mon, a son, and Stilbe ("Flash"), a daughter whose name is
a manner of recording the fact of the unusual brilliancy of the
morning star.* He was conceived as the forerunner of the sun
and the dawn, speeding forward on a white horse, or a chariot.
Like Phaethon, he was taken away by the love-smitten Aphro-
dite to be night-watcher in her temple — an aetiological ex-
planation of the absence of his star from the heavens until
just before daybreak — and he was considered to have the power
of fructifying the crops. Art portrayed him in the company of
other divinities of light as a youthful rider bearing a torch.

Hesperos. — Not until a comparatively late day was Hes-
peros (Latin Vesper), the evening star, identified by the an-
cients with the morning star. In the field of myth he was
called the son, and again the brother, of Atlas, and he had a



 



 



248 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

daughter Hesperis, who as the wife of Atlas bore the seven
Atlantides (or Hesperides). For an obvious reason he was al-
ways associated with the west, but when he scaled the lofty
peak of Atlas to gaze at the stars, a storm-wind suddenly
snatched him away, and he was seen no more. Nevertheless,
he was honoured as divine, and the brightest stellar body in
the western heaven was given his name, while the memory of
his piety and loving nature lived after him among men, so
that his orb was known as the star of love, that is, of Aphro-
dite, or Venus, its religious importance lying in the ease with
which the dates of festivals could be determined from its
periodic movements.

Pleiades and Hyades. — Owing to their conspicuous char-
acter, constellations received much more attention among the
ancients than did single stars, and two groups, one of seven
stars and the other of five, which appear in the constellation
of Taurus, were known to the Greeks — in fact, are still
known to us — by the names of Pleiades and Hyades respec-
tively, these belonging among the earliest attested star names.
In Homer, Hephaistos depicts the Pleiades on the shield of
Achilles, and by them Odysseus holds his course for Scheria.
They and the Hyades were said to have been originally the
daughters of Atlas through a union with Pleione or Aithra,
but when their brother Hyas was killed by some creature of
the wild, all twelve died of grief, and Zeus accorded them
places among the stars. One ancient author, however, mothered
them on the queen of the Amazons. As for the Hyades as a
separate group, a well-known legend identifies them with the
attendants of Dionysos who were pursued by Lykourgos, but
who, after they had safely delivered their ward to Ino, fled to
their grandmother Tethys and were appointed a constella-
tion by Zeus. The names of the individual Pleiades and Hyades
vary to such an extent that no purpose would be served by
their recital here.

Very early the Greeks fancied that they saw in the Pleiades



 



 

[Prometheus]

 



 



 



 



PLATE LIII
The Death of Aktaion

Artemis, carrying a quiver on her back and wearing
a fawn-skin over her shoulders and breast, braces her-
self to draw her bow as she places an arrow on the
string. Before her Aktaion is falling to the ground
overpowered by his four maddened dogs, which leap
upon him and tear his flesh. From a red-figured
krater of the fifth century B.C. (Furtwangler-Reichhold,
Griecbiscbe Fasenmalirei^ No. 115). See p. 252.



 



 




 



 



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — STARS 249

a swarm of wood doves, and, indeed, many scholars seriously
entertain the belief that their name was derived from the word
irdkeuu (" doves *')• Th^ ancients themselves ranged widely in
their attempts to find the source of the name of the Hyades.
To some the peculiar resemblance of the form of the stellar
group to a capital T supplied at once an initial impulse and an
initial letter for the formation of 'Tcf&9, although, because of
the Hyades' relations to fertility, others discovered a connexion
between their name and that fertile animal, the pig (89).
The most popular derivation, however, was apparently that
which linked the appellation with the verb veiv ("to rain'*),
for the seasons of their early rising and their early setting were
notoriously rainy. A certain type of vase-picture shows the
influence of this traditional association, since it depicts Al-
kmene as being saved from a burning pyre by the arrival of
two Hyades, who extinguish the flames with water. The
rising and the setting of both Hyades and Pleiades divided the
year into two parts, the portion between May and November
marking the period of safe navigation.

Orion. — In treating of Orion one must bear in mind that
the name stands both for a constellation and for a mythical
personage, and although the frequent confusion of the two
makes it impossible to say with certainty which was the
original, it can scarcely be doubted that some of the sagas of
Orion developed without reference to the stellar group. Homer,
for instance, knows the two forms as distinct, although he does
not always treat them as such. Were we to rely solely upon
him, we should incline to the conclusion that the Orion of
myth came first in point of time and was afterwards imported
into the realm of the stars; but, on the other hand, late Greek
and Roman writers allude only to the constellation.

This stellar group is situated near Taurus and, therefore,
near the Pleiades and Hyades, and owing to its peculiar shape
it was also called the Cock's Foot, or the Double Axe. The
period of the early rising of Orion and Sirius, the dog-star



 



 



2SO GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

(i. e. June), marks the end of the rainy season and ushers in
the heat of summer, while the Pleiades and Hyades at the time
of their early setting (November) disappear from the western
sky ahead of Orion and Sirius, as if driven away by them. In
these astronomical facts one can read without further com-
mentary the meaning of some of the myths which concern
these constellations.

In the Homeric epic Orion, the meaning of whose name is
unknown, was a hunter of remarkable beauty and of a stature
that exceeded even that of the giants Otos and Ephialtes.
Eos cast looks of love upon him and carried him away to her
dwelling, but her inordinate happiness over her good fortune
aroused the anger of the gods, and Artemis, deceived by a trick
of Apollo, with her noiseless shafts gave Orion an early death
in the island of Ortygia (Delos). Together with Leto she set
him among the stars, while in Hades his shade, armed with a
brazen club, continued to pursue and kill the wild beasts which
he had hunted in life.

In the legends of Boiotia, Orion was a hero bom of the soil
in Tanagra or Thebes. Once, when Pleione and her large
family of daughters were passing through Boiotia, he accosted
them, and although they immediately turned and fled, for five
continuous years he relentlessly pursued them until, moved
by the unhappy plight of the women, Zeus exalted them
all to the heavens, where the pursuit still goes on. Side, the
wife of Orion, dared to vie in beauty with Hera, and for her
boldness was consigned to Hades.

In other cycles of myth Orion was the son of Poseidon and
Euryale, the daughter of Minos, and his father endowed him
with the gift of moving swiftly over the sea, either by striding
across it, or by walking through it with his head high and
dry above the waves, or, again, by using the islands as gigantic
stepping-stones. From Boiotia he made his way to Chios,
where he married the daughter of King Oinopion, but, par-
taking too liberally of the vintage of his father-in-law, he



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — HEAT 251

became intoxicated and attempted a serious crime against
hospitality, whereupon Oinopion put out his eyes and drove
him out of his home. As Orion wandered about, he chanced
to reach Lemnos and there he found Hephaistos, one of whose
servants guided him to the sunrise, where the light of the solar
rays made his eyes whole again. He then gave himself over to
searching for Oinopion that he might punish him for his cruel
deed, but failing to find him, he at last joined Artemis in the
chase in Crete and there was killed by the sting of a scorpion.
Ursa Major J or Great Bear; Bootes. — The peculiar arrange-
ment of the stars in the constellation known as Ursa Major
has always attracted the attention of the peoples of the north-
em hemisphere. Homer knew it both as the Bear and as the
Chariot, and the suggestion of its appearance as a vehicle is
perpetuated in a couple of its English names — Charles's
Wain, or the Great Wain — whereas the utilitarian American
eye sees it as the Great Dipper. The Greeks explained its desig-
nation as the Bear by the story of the Arkadian Kallisto,
near whom in the heavens was placed her son Arkas in the
form of the stellar group sometimes known to the ancients
as Arktophylax ("Guardian of the Bear")j but generally as
Bootes ("Ox-Driver").*

OF MIDSUMMER HEAT

Aristaiosj Sirius (Greek Seirios), Aktaion. — As the legends
which follow more than hint, Aristaios was an agricultural
god of the primitive inhabitants of Greece, and in spite of
his frequent confusion with Apollo, he seems to have been
originally not a sun-god, but a personification of the period of
cooling Etesian winds which gave relief to man and beast
and crop during the burning dog-days.

Apollo is said to have espied the beautiful nymph Kyrene
hunting amid the foothills of Mount Pelion, and overcome
by his passion, he bore her away in his golden car to Libya,



 



 



252 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

where he wedded her. In process of time she became the mother
of Aristaios, and Hermes took the child to his great-grand-
mother Gaia, who in her turn entrusted him to the Hours.
These maidens nurtured him on nectar and ambrosia, thereby-
making him an immortal, and later he was trained by Cheiron
in the arts of manhood, while the Muses instructed him in
healing and prophecy, and from certain nymphs he learned the
culture of the olive, dairying, and bee-keeping, fable declaring
that he visited almost every land in the Mediterranean basin
in his successful efforts to establish these rural industries
among men. On one occasion he went to the island of Keos
when the heat of Sinus was causing a plague to spread among
the Aegean islands, and raising an altar to Zeus Ikmaios, a
divinity of moisture, he put an end to the plague by the reg-
ular offering of sacrifices to him and to Sirius. Zeus sent the
Etesian winds to blow for forty days and cool the atmosphere,
thereby acquiring for himself the title Aristaios ("Best")j
and by following the example of Aristaios in offering sacrifices
the people of the island were thenceforth able each year to
mitigate the extreme heat of midsummer. Aristaios married
Autonoe, a daughter of Kadmos, and by her became the father
of Aktaion, of whose unhappy fate we have read in the stories
of Thebes. Aktaion personified the strong plant growth of
spring withered by the parching heat of the sunmier weeks,
and the madness of his dogs is a graphic representation of the
supposed result of the heat upon these animals, an effect which
is still popularly recorded in the expression "dog-days."

Linos. — The story of Linos affords an excellent illustration
of the manner in which a myth and a personality could be
evolved from religious rites. The name seems to have been
derived from the sad refrain ai lenu ("woe to us"), occurring
in Semitic ritual songs in which the parching of vegetation
under the summer sun was lamented, while the ceremonies
rested on the wide-spread belief that daemons of heat and
drought run about like ravening dogs.



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — HEAT 253

The parentage of Linos varied according to the localization
of his story. In Argos he was the son of Apollo and the prin-
cess Psamathe, and, exposed by his mother for fear of her
father, he was found by the king's hounds and torn to pieces.
In anger at his child's death, Apollo dispatched a monster
called Poine ("Punishment") to tear children from the wombs
of the Argive women, but when the people rose up and slew
the creature, they only brought on themselves a plague from
which they suffered until they gave Apollo a temple in their
city. Another version, however, relates that the plague was
sent because the king killed Psamathe, and that it was ended
only when the women of Argos appeased the souls of Linos and
his mother with ceremonial prayers and dirges. Elsewhere in
Hellas Linos was the son of Apollo and the Muse Kalliope, or
again, of Amphiaraos and Ourania. As the son of the latter
pair he was killed by Apollo because in a song he rashly likened
his gifts to those of the god, and was buried on the slopes of
Mount Helikon nearest to Thebes. From the song developed
the singer and lyre-player, and in this capacity Linos became
the music-teacher of Herakles, although, as we have recorded
among the deeds of that mighty hero, he met a violent death
at the hands of his choleric pupil. To the musical gifts of Linos
myth gratuitously added others of an allied nature, crediting
him with having been the first to use in the writing of Greek
the letters brought from Phoinikia by Kadmos, and also
declaring that he was a grammarian, and, like Orpheus, the
author of philosophical works.

Lityerses. — The personality of Lityerses ("Prayer for
Dew"), who was, according to the legends, a son of Midas,
also grew, in part, out of a midsummer song. Under the pre-
tence of hospitality, he made a practice of luring passers-by
into his palace, but once they were in his power, he would take
them to the harvest fields, wrap them in sheaves, and cut off
their heads, until at length Herakles came on the scene and,
killing him, threw his body into the Maeander River. Another



 



 



254 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

form of the story represents Lityerses as engaging in mowing
contests in the fields. On achieving victory in each contest
he would cruelly scourge his defeated competitor, but in the
end he was himself defeated by a stronger mower. In these
stories a combination of several features may be observed.
The scourging is an allusion to the primitive practice of whip-
ping up laggard mowers, and the treatment accorded to the
last mower reflects an ancient custom which was designed to
insure successful reaping on the following day, while the dis-
posal of the prince's body in the river seems to be a fanciful
portrayal of a magic rite to produce dew.



 



 



 



 



PLATE LIV
Linos Slain by Hbraklbs

Linos, the kneeling figure, has been knocked down
by Herakles with a fragment of a chair, which can be
partly seen lying on the floor in the background, and,
as he attempts to defend himself with hb lyre, is in
danger of being struck again by another piece of the
chair brandished in the hand of his pupil. The
youthfiil comrades of Herakles, some thoroughly
terror-stricken, others manifesting a desire to help
their master, stand helplessly looking on. High
in the background to the left is a writing-tablet.
From a red-figured kylix of the style of Douris (early
fifth century B.C.), in Munich (Furtwangler-Reich-
hold, Griechische Vasenmaleni^ No. 105). See pp. 79,

252-53-



 



 




 



 



 



 



CHAPTER XII

THE LESSER GODS — OF WATER, WIND,
AND WILD

" And hark, below, the many-voiced earth,
The chanting of the old religious trees.
Rustic of far-ofiF waters, woven sounds
Of small and multitudinous lives awake,
Peopling the grasses and the pools with joy,
Uttering their meaning to the mystic night."

THESE words of Pyrrha in Moody's Fire-Bringer interpret
for us the peculiar appeal of terrestrial nature to the
Greek far better than a multitude of well-turned periods of the
most logical prose, and, moreover, through suggestion they
subtly reveal that the sources of the appeal are as numerous
as are the departments of nature. It is hopeless for us to think
of obtaining for this presentation a just and adequate classifi-
cation of these departments; if only we obtain a convenient
one, we must be content.

OF THE WATER

Okeanos and the Okeanides. — When Pausanias * makes the
statement that Okeanos "is not a river, but the farthest sea
that is navigated by men," he is assuming the role of the en-
lightened teacher and is consciously correcting an ignorant
public, for from the age of Homer, and doubtless before, men
had no other thought than that it was a deep refluent stream
of fresh water. Homer distinguishes clearly between it and
the salt sea, the Mediterranean, and deems it the father of



 



 



2s6 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

all being, human and divine, and the source of all mundane
waters. Hesiod accounts Okeanos as the son of Ouranos and
Gaia, and the husband of his natural counterpart, Tethys, by
whom he begat the rivers, brooks, and springs of earth — three
thousand divine daughters, the Okeanides, and three thousand
divine sons. Nine parts of the water of Okeanos, says Hesiod,
flow about earth and sea, while the tenth part becomes the
Styx and flows underneath the earth, bursting out again
through a rocky opening.

As to the location of Okeanos, we are told that it is the outer
boundary of the upper world and also the border between the
nether world and the heavens. The Kimmerians dwelt on its
northern shore, the Aithiopians on the eastern and the west-
em, and the dwarflike Pygmies on the southern; but nowhere
in Greek literature is it even hinted that people believed in the
existence of a further and outer shore.

In art Okeanos is shown reclining like the river-gods, but he
can be distinguished from them by his p)Ossession of a steering
oar or by the presence of sea animals near him.

Rivers. — The belief in the divinity of rivers was general
among the Greeks, this doubtless arising from the speed and
strength of their currents down the steep mountain valleys
as well as from their stimulating influence upon vegetation.
They usually passed as the sons of Okeanos, but sometimes as
the sons of 2feus; their relations to Poseidon are not clear.
They were conceived as being now of human form, now of
animal shape, now of a combination of the two. The Acheloos,
for example, appeared to men with the body of a bull and the
head of a man bearded and horned, while in human shape the
Skamandros talked and fought with Achilles, and was in turn
attacked by Hephaistos. In Homer the river-gods are found
in the great council of 2^us.

The chief function of the rivers was the bestowal of fertility,
and so important was this to the growth and even to the exist-
ence of many conmiunities that rivers were often worshipped



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — OF WATER 257

as the founders both of the local stocks and of the local culture.
The Asopos occupied this high place in Phlious and Sikyon,
the Inachos in Argos, the Peneios in Thessaly, the Eurotas in
Sparta, and the Kephisos in Boiotia, while the role of the
Acheloos is obvious in his gift of the Horn of Plenty to Hera-
kles, and such rivers as the Kaikos of Mysia and the Himeros
of Sicily were thought to p)Ossess p)Owers of healing disease and
of averting harm. The many early stories which tell of the
union of human maidens with river-gods apparently go back
to rites, partly religious, partly magical, in which young women
just prior to marriage were made fertile by bathing in the
waters of a river.

A pretty story is told of the river Alpheios of Elis. At first
Alpheios was a huntsman who fell in love with Arethousa, a
huntress maiden, but she refused his advances and crossed
over the sea to the little island of Ortygia before the harbour of
Syracuse, where she was transformed into a fountain of fresh
water. In despair Alpheios became a river, but since his love
remained unchanged, he made his way beneath the sea until
he came to Ortygia and there mingled with the outflow of the
spring.

Springs (Nymphs). — The first nymphs were the Naiads,

who dwelt

"By deep wells and water-floods,
Streams of ancient hills, and where
All the wan green places bear
Blossoms cleaving to the sod." *

That is to say, they were spirits of the springs, and from them
developed, by very natural processes, the marks and func-
tions of the nymphs of hill and forest. In the life-giving ele-
ment of the springs the Greeks fancied that they saw a kind of
female fruitfulness, whence the fundamental meaning of the
name vvfMfyrf ("bride") embodies the idea of pregnancy, al-
though by long usage the word became less and less strict in
its application until at last it could be appropriately used to



 



 



2S8 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTH0LCX5Y

designate also the Nereids and Okeanids, who essentially be-
longed to the larger waters; the Oreads, or mountain-spirits;
and even the Dryads and Hamadryads. In their proper sphere,
which included all places, like caves and marshes, where
moisture gathered, the nymphs were as p)Otent as was Posei-
don over the sea or Demeter over the earth, and from their
conception as feminine p)Owers in the bloom of youth they ac-
quired all sorts of maidenly characteristics. They danced and
sang, and ceaselessly made merry in their woodland retire-
ment; they were the nurses of the infants Dionysos and 2^us;
and, again, they were the chaste attendants of Artemis;
while through their fresh charms they won many lovers from
among both gods and men.

[Prometheus]

 



 



 



 



PLATE LIII
The Death of Aktaion

Artemis, carrying a quiver on her back and wearing
a fawn-skin over her shoulders and breast, braces her-
self to draw her bow as she places an arrow on the
string. Before her Aktaion is falling to the ground
overpowered by his four maddened dogs, which leap
upon him and tear his flesh. From a red-figured
krater of the fifth century B.C. (Furtwangler-Reichhold,
Griecbiscbe Fasenmalirei^ No. 115). See p. 252.



 



 




 



 



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — STARS 249

a swarm of wood doves, and, indeed, many scholars seriously
entertain the belief that their name was derived from the word
irdkeuu (" doves *')• Th^ ancients themselves ranged widely in
their attempts to find the source of the name of the Hyades.
To some the peculiar resemblance of the form of the stellar
group to a capital T supplied at once an initial impulse and an
initial letter for the formation of 'Tcf&9, although, because of
the Hyades' relations to fertility, others discovered a connexion
between their name and that fertile animal, the pig (89).
The most popular derivation, however, was apparently that
which linked the appellation with the verb veiv ("to rain'*),
for the seasons of their early rising and their early setting were
notoriously rainy. A certain type of vase-picture shows the
influence of this traditional association, since it depicts Al-
kmene as being saved from a burning pyre by the arrival of
two Hyades, who extinguish the flames with water. The
rising and the setting of both Hyades and Pleiades divided the
year into two parts, the portion between May and November
marking the period of safe navigation.

Orion. — In treating of Orion one must bear in mind that
the name stands both for a constellation and for a mythical
personage, and although the frequent confusion of the two
makes it impossible to say with certainty which was the
original, it can scarcely be doubted that some of the sagas of
Orion developed without reference to the stellar group. Homer,
for instance, knows the two forms as distinct, although he does
not always treat them as such. Were we to rely solely upon
him, we should incline to the conclusion that the Orion of
myth came first in point of time and was afterwards imported
into the realm of the stars; but, on the other hand, late Greek
and Roman writers allude only to the constellation.

This stellar group is situated near Taurus and, therefore,
near the Pleiades and Hyades, and owing to its peculiar shape
it was also called the Cock's Foot, or the Double Axe. The
period of the early rising of Orion and Sirius, the dog-star



 



 



2SO GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

(i. e. June), marks the end of the rainy season and ushers in
the heat of summer, while the Pleiades and Hyades at the time
of their early setting (November) disappear from the western
sky ahead of Orion and Sirius, as if driven away by them. In
these astronomical facts one can read without further com-
mentary the meaning of some of the myths which concern
these constellations.

In the Homeric epic Orion, the meaning of whose name is
unknown, was a hunter of remarkable beauty and of a stature
that exceeded even that of the giants Otos and Ephialtes.
Eos cast looks of love upon him and carried him away to her
dwelling, but her inordinate happiness over her good fortune
aroused the anger of the gods, and Artemis, deceived by a trick
of Apollo, with her noiseless shafts gave Orion an early death
in the island of Ortygia (Delos). Together with Leto she set
him among the stars, while in Hades his shade, armed with a
brazen club, continued to pursue and kill the wild beasts which
he had hunted in life.

In the legends of Boiotia, Orion was a hero bom of the soil
in Tanagra or Thebes. Once, when Pleione and her large
family of daughters were passing through Boiotia, he accosted
them, and although they immediately turned and fled, for five
continuous years he relentlessly pursued them until, moved
by the unhappy plight of the women, Zeus exalted them
all to the heavens, where the pursuit still goes on. Side, the
wife of Orion, dared to vie in beauty with Hera, and for her
boldness was consigned to Hades.

In other cycles of myth Orion was the son of Poseidon and
Euryale, the daughter of Minos, and his father endowed him
with the gift of moving swiftly over the sea, either by striding
across it, or by walking through it with his head high and
dry above the waves, or, again, by using the islands as gigantic
stepping-stones. From Boiotia he made his way to Chios,
where he married the daughter of King Oinopion, but, par-
taking too liberally of the vintage of his father-in-law, he



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — HEAT 251

became intoxicated and attempted a serious crime against
hospitality, whereupon Oinopion put out his eyes and drove
him out of his home. As Orion wandered about, he chanced
to reach Lemnos and there he found Hephaistos, one of whose
servants guided him to the sunrise, where the light of the solar
rays made his eyes whole again. He then gave himself over to
searching for Oinopion that he might punish him for his cruel
deed, but failing to find him, he at last joined Artemis in the
chase in Crete and there was killed by the sting of a scorpion.
Ursa Major J or Great Bear; Bootes. — The peculiar arrange-
ment of the stars in the constellation known as Ursa Major
has always attracted the attention of the peoples of the north-
em hemisphere. Homer knew it both as the Bear and as the
Chariot, and the suggestion of its appearance as a vehicle is
perpetuated in a couple of its English names — Charles's
Wain, or the Great Wain — whereas the utilitarian American
eye sees it as the Great Dipper. The Greeks explained its desig-
nation as the Bear by the story of the Arkadian Kallisto,
near whom in the heavens was placed her son Arkas in the
form of the stellar group sometimes known to the ancients
as Arktophylax ("Guardian of the Bear")j but generally as
Bootes ("Ox-Driver").*

OF MIDSUMMER HEAT

Aristaiosj Sirius (Greek Seirios), Aktaion. — As the legends
which follow more than hint, Aristaios was an agricultural
god of the primitive inhabitants of Greece, and in spite of
his frequent confusion with Apollo, he seems to have been
originally not a sun-god, but a personification of the period of
cooling Etesian winds which gave relief to man and beast
and crop during the burning dog-days.

Apollo is said to have espied the beautiful nymph Kyrene
hunting amid the foothills of Mount Pelion, and overcome
by his passion, he bore her away in his golden car to Libya,



 



 



252 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

where he wedded her. In process of time she became the mother
of Aristaios, and Hermes took the child to his great-grand-
mother Gaia, who in her turn entrusted him to the Hours.
These maidens nurtured him on nectar and ambrosia, thereby-
making him an immortal, and later he was trained by Cheiron
in the arts of manhood, while the Muses instructed him in
healing and prophecy, and from certain nymphs he learned the
culture of the olive, dairying, and bee-keeping, fable declaring
that he visited almost every land in the Mediterranean basin
in his successful efforts to establish these rural industries
among men. On one occasion he went to the island of Keos
when the heat of Sinus was causing a plague to spread among
the Aegean islands, and raising an altar to Zeus Ikmaios, a
divinity of moisture, he put an end to the plague by the reg-
ular offering of sacrifices to him and to Sirius. Zeus sent the
Etesian winds to blow for forty days and cool the atmosphere,
thereby acquiring for himself the title Aristaios ("Best")j
and by following the example of Aristaios in offering sacrifices
the people of the island were thenceforth able each year to
mitigate the extreme heat of midsummer. Aristaios married
Autonoe, a daughter of Kadmos, and by her became the father
of Aktaion, of whose unhappy fate we have read in the stories
of Thebes. Aktaion personified the strong plant growth of
spring withered by the parching heat of the sunmier weeks,
and the madness of his dogs is a graphic representation of the
supposed result of the heat upon these animals, an effect which
is still popularly recorded in the expression "dog-days."

Linos. — The story of Linos affords an excellent illustration
of the manner in which a myth and a personality could be
evolved from religious rites. The name seems to have been
derived from the sad refrain ai lenu ("woe to us"), occurring
in Semitic ritual songs in which the parching of vegetation
under the summer sun was lamented, while the ceremonies
rested on the wide-spread belief that daemons of heat and
drought run about like ravening dogs.



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — HEAT 253

The parentage of Linos varied according to the localization
of his story. In Argos he was the son of Apollo and the prin-
cess Psamathe, and, exposed by his mother for fear of her
father, he was found by the king's hounds and torn to pieces.
In anger at his child's death, Apollo dispatched a monster
called Poine ("Punishment") to tear children from the wombs
of the Argive women, but when the people rose up and slew
the creature, they only brought on themselves a plague from
which they suffered until they gave Apollo a temple in their
city. Another version, however, relates that the plague was
sent because the king killed Psamathe, and that it was ended
only when the women of Argos appeased the souls of Linos and
his mother with ceremonial prayers and dirges. Elsewhere in
Hellas Linos was the son of Apollo and the Muse Kalliope, or
again, of Amphiaraos and Ourania. As the son of the latter
pair he was killed by Apollo because in a song he rashly likened
his gifts to those of the god, and was buried on the slopes of
Mount Helikon nearest to Thebes. From the song developed
the singer and lyre-player, and in this capacity Linos became
the music-teacher of Herakles, although, as we have recorded
among the deeds of that mighty hero, he met a violent death
at the hands of his choleric pupil. To the musical gifts of Linos
myth gratuitously added others of an allied nature, crediting
him with having been the first to use in the writing of Greek
the letters brought from Phoinikia by Kadmos, and also
declaring that he was a grammarian, and, like Orpheus, the
author of philosophical works.

Lityerses. — The personality of Lityerses ("Prayer for
Dew"), who was, according to the legends, a son of Midas,
also grew, in part, out of a midsummer song. Under the pre-
tence of hospitality, he made a practice of luring passers-by
into his palace, but once they were in his power, he would take
them to the harvest fields, wrap them in sheaves, and cut off
their heads, until at length Herakles came on the scene and,
killing him, threw his body into the Maeander River. Another



 



 



254 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

form of the story represents Lityerses as engaging in mowing
contests in the fields. On achieving victory in each contest
he would cruelly scourge his defeated competitor, but in the
end he was himself defeated by a stronger mower. In these
stories a combination of several features may be observed.
The scourging is an allusion to the primitive practice of whip-
ping up laggard mowers, and the treatment accorded to the
last mower reflects an ancient custom which was designed to
insure successful reaping on the following day, while the dis-
posal of the prince's body in the river seems to be a fanciful
portrayal of a magic rite to produce dew.



 



 



 



 



PLATE LIV
Linos Slain by Hbraklbs

Linos, the kneeling figure, has been knocked down
by Herakles with a fragment of a chair, which can be
partly seen lying on the floor in the background, and,
as he attempts to defend himself with hb lyre, is in
danger of being struck again by another piece of the
chair brandished in the hand of his pupil. The
youthfiil comrades of Herakles, some thoroughly
terror-stricken, others manifesting a desire to help
their master, stand helplessly looking on. High
in the background to the left is a writing-tablet.
From a red-figured kylix of the style of Douris (early
fifth century B.C.), in Munich (Furtwangler-Reich-
hold, Griechische Vasenmaleni^ No. 105). See pp. 79,

252-53-



 



 




 



 



 



 



CHAPTER XII

THE LESSER GODS — OF WATER, WIND,
AND WILD

" And hark, below, the many-voiced earth,
The chanting of the old religious trees.
Rustic of far-ofiF waters, woven sounds
Of small and multitudinous lives awake,
Peopling the grasses and the pools with joy,
Uttering their meaning to the mystic night."

THESE words of Pyrrha in Moody's Fire-Bringer interpret
for us the peculiar appeal of terrestrial nature to the
Greek far better than a multitude of well-turned periods of the
most logical prose, and, moreover, through suggestion they
subtly reveal that the sources of the appeal are as numerous
as are the departments of nature. It is hopeless for us to think
of obtaining for this presentation a just and adequate classifi-
cation of these departments; if only we obtain a convenient
one, we must be content.

OF THE WATER

Okeanos and the Okeanides. — When Pausanias * makes the
statement that Okeanos "is not a river, but the farthest sea
that is navigated by men," he is assuming the role of the en-
lightened teacher and is consciously correcting an ignorant
public, for from the age of Homer, and doubtless before, men
had no other thought than that it was a deep refluent stream
of fresh water. Homer distinguishes clearly between it and
the salt sea, the Mediterranean, and deems it the father of



 



 



2s6 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

all being, human and divine, and the source of all mundane
waters. Hesiod accounts Okeanos as the son of Ouranos and
Gaia, and the husband of his natural counterpart, Tethys, by
whom he begat the rivers, brooks, and springs of earth — three
thousand divine daughters, the Okeanides, and three thousand
divine sons. Nine parts of the water of Okeanos, says Hesiod,
flow about earth and sea, while the tenth part becomes the
Styx and flows underneath the earth, bursting out again
through a rocky opening.

As to the location of Okeanos, we are told that it is the outer
boundary of the upper world and also the border between the
nether world and the heavens. The Kimmerians dwelt on its
northern shore, the Aithiopians on the eastern and the west-
em, and the dwarflike Pygmies on the southern; but nowhere
in Greek literature is it even hinted that people believed in the
existence of a further and outer shore.

In art Okeanos is shown reclining like the river-gods, but he
can be distinguished from them by his p)Ossession of a steering
oar or by the presence of sea animals near him.

Rivers. — The belief in the divinity of rivers was general
among the Greeks, this doubtless arising from the speed and
strength of their currents down the steep mountain valleys
as well as from their stimulating influence upon vegetation.
They usually passed as the sons of Okeanos, but sometimes as
the sons of 2feus; their relations to Poseidon are not clear.
They were conceived as being now of human form, now of
animal shape, now of a combination of the two. The Acheloos,
for example, appeared to men with the body of a bull and the
head of a man bearded and horned, while in human shape the
Skamandros talked and fought with Achilles, and was in turn
attacked by Hephaistos. In Homer the river-gods are found
in the great council of 2^us.

The chief function of the rivers was the bestowal of fertility,
and so important was this to the growth and even to the exist-
ence of many conmiunities that rivers were often worshipped



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — OF WATER 257

as the founders both of the local stocks and of the local culture.
The Asopos occupied this high place in Phlious and Sikyon,
the Inachos in Argos, the Peneios in Thessaly, the Eurotas in
Sparta, and the Kephisos in Boiotia, while the role of the
Acheloos is obvious in his gift of the Horn of Plenty to Hera-
kles, and such rivers as the Kaikos of Mysia and the Himeros
of Sicily were thought to p)Ossess p)Owers of healing disease and
of averting harm. The many early stories which tell of the
union of human maidens with river-gods apparently go back
to rites, partly religious, partly magical, in which young women
just prior to marriage were made fertile by bathing in the
waters of a river.

A pretty story is told of the river Alpheios of Elis. At first
Alpheios was a huntsman who fell in love with Arethousa, a
huntress maiden, but she refused his advances and crossed
over the sea to the little island of Ortygia before the harbour of
Syracuse, where she was transformed into a fountain of fresh
water. In despair Alpheios became a river, but since his love
remained unchanged, he made his way beneath the sea until
he came to Ortygia and there mingled with the outflow of the
spring.

Springs (Nymphs). — The first nymphs were the Naiads,

who dwelt

"By deep wells and water-floods,
Streams of ancient hills, and where
All the wan green places bear
Blossoms cleaving to the sod." *

That is to say, they were spirits of the springs, and from them
developed, by very natural processes, the marks and func-
tions of the nymphs of hill and forest. In the life-giving ele-
ment of the springs the Greeks fancied that they saw a kind of
female fruitfulness, whence the fundamental meaning of the
name vvfMfyrf ("bride") embodies the idea of pregnancy, al-
though by long usage the word became less and less strict in
its application until at last it could be appropriately used to



 



 



2S8 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTH0LCX5Y

designate also the Nereids and Okeanids, who essentially be-
longed to the larger waters; the Oreads, or mountain-spirits;
and even the Dryads and Hamadryads. In their proper sphere,
which included all places, like caves and marshes, where
moisture gathered, the nymphs were as p)Otent as was Posei-
don over the sea or Demeter over the earth, and from their
conception as feminine p)Owers in the bloom of youth they ac-
quired all sorts of maidenly characteristics. They danced and
sang, and ceaselessly made merry in their woodland retire-
ment; they were the nurses of the infants Dionysos and 2^us;
and, again, they were the chaste attendants of Artemis;
while through their fresh charms they won many lovers from
among both gods and men.

[Prometheus]

In myth the nymphs are as a rule simply the daughters of
2^us; the name of a mother is seldom mentioned, although the
Melian nymphs come into being from the blood of Ouranos,
and in the Orphic hymns all nymphs are the offspring of
Okeanos. Once in Homer the nymphs appear up>on Olympos,
and they plant elms about the tomb of Andromache's father.
A group of Naiads inhabits the island of Ithake. In various
places the divinities of many of the famous springs were re-
puted to have originally been women, most of whom had been
drowned, the stories of the fountains of Peirene and Glauke at
O^rinth and of Kirke at Thebes being excellent illustrations
of this manner of myth-making. There were also nymphs of
cities who were the daughters of the important rivers of the
neighbourhood and who were in many instances wedded to
the local eponymous hero. Some of these divinities were
credited with the gift of foretelling the future, a belief which
was derived not so much from the poetic fancy that running
water talks as from tKe conviction that the drinking of certain
waters produced a state of inspiration. Indeed the epithet of
"nymph-smitten" was applied to persons wrought up to pro-
phetic ecstasy.

The worship of the nymphs was generally limited to special



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — OF WATER 259

spots in the open air, as in groves, on the slopes of hills, or be-
side streams and natural fountains. Garlands of flowers were
the common offerings of the worshippers, but very often cereals
and animal victims were also given.

The Sea. — Owing to their proximity to the sea and to
their manifold interest in it as a source of life and as a high-
way, the Greeks were from the remotest times much attracted
by its numerous phases. Calm and storm and the various grada-
tions between these conditions meant to them safety or danger.
The countless forms of marine life opened a wide field for the
free play of their fancy, while the uncertainty of the sea's
depths and shallows and reefs kept them in a constant state
of wonder. The only feature of the sea about which there was
any assurance was its aqueous character and this was so
obvious that, like Selene, the sea never became sufliciently
divinized to be the proper material for myth. Those phases,
on the other hand, which were marked by vagueness or vast-
ness, or were susceptible of limitless variation, were eagerly
seized by the myth-making mind. Pontos, for instance, was
the sea in its aspect as a boundless barren tract, whereas
Phorkys, the grey son of Plouton and Gaia,' together with
his wife, Keto, represented in themselves, and, in part, in their
offspring (Sky 11a, the Graiai, and the Gorgons), the monstrous
elements of the sea, while the many arms of the Aegean,
reaching far into the recesses of the mainland and islands,
were personified by the hundred-handed Briareos, or Aigaion.
Atlas, "who knoweth the depths of every sea, and himself
stays the towering pillars which keep earth and sky apart," •
is really not a mountain, but rather the sea-billow on which
the heavens seem to rest.

Triton. — Triton is a figure of the roaring of the sea and

the larger bodies of fresh water. He was known as the son

of Poseidon and Amphitrite and dwelt with them in a golden

palace beneath the waves, although his special home seems to

have been in Lake Kopais of Boiotia. The Greeks pictured him
I — 21



 



 



26o GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

as driving a horse-drawn chariot over the sea and as holding
a trident, or a dolphin, or a drinking-horn in his hand; but
his chief attribute was a sea-shell, on which he used to blow
loudly or softly according as he desired to arouse or to calm
the sea. The artists delineated him as of human form above
but of animal shape below the waist, the line of union being
concealed by a garment. In the later centuries, however, his
lower parts were shown as those of a fish.

A Boiotian tale narrates that the women of Tanagra, who
had gone down to the sea to be purified in preparation for a
festival of Dionysos, were attacked by Triton while they were
in the water, but the god heard their cries for help and beat
their assailant off. In another tale, Triton was charged with
raids on the herds and shipping of Tanagra until at last the
people set out a bowl of wine as a trap, whereup)on, drinking
the wine, Triton fell asleep on the shore of the sea, and a man
of the city chopped off his head with an axe. That is why the
Tanagran image of Triton was headless.

Nereus. — Nereus, "the Ancient of the Sea," portrayed
in his person and family the multiform beauties of the sea.
He was the issue of Pontos and Gaia, and by his wife Doris
he begat a host of daughters, the Nereids, the beautiful nymphs
of the inner sea as opposed to the Okeanids, the nymphs of
the outer sea. He was a benevolent old man always ready
to help those who were in trouble, his great age being marked
by the hoary foam of the breaking waves. Like certain other
gods of the sea, he was an unerring prophet and gifted with
marvellous powers of transformation, but in spite of his changes
into many animal forms, he was forced by Herakles to point out
the road leading to the golden apples of the Hesperides. In
his true form he was conceived as an old man with a thick beard
and a heavy tangled mat of hair. His emblem was the trident.

The Nereids seem to have stood for the ripples and waves
of calm weather, those most famous in myth being Amphitrite
and Thetis.



 



 



 



 



PLATE LV
Odysseus and the Sirens

Odysseus stands on tiptoe, lashed faceforward to
the mast. In front of him is a Siren perched on a
branch and singing to the accompaniment of a tym-
panon which she is beating, while behind him is an-
other Siren, similarly seated, holding a kithara (zither)
in her left hand and a pUktron (pick) in her right.
The four companions of Odysseus are working dis-
tractedly at their oars as they gaze spellbound at the
alluring creatures above them. From a design, done
in white and three colours, on a Locanian krater of
the third century B.C., in Berlin (Furtwangler-Reich-
hold, Griichiscbi FasinmaUni^ No. 130). See pp.
262-63.



 



 




 



 



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — OF WATER 261

Proteus, — Proteus, the son and underling of Poseidon, was
so far the master god of elusive "sea change" that the epithet
Protean has become a synonym of the sophistical and dis-
simulating mind. His two sons, Polygonos and Telegonos,
met Herakles at Torone as the latter was returning from the
country of the Ama2X)ns, and challenged him to a wrestling
bout, but the hero threw and killed them both. According to
Homer and Euripides, Proteus was the king of the Egyptian
island of Pharos ^ and the husband of a Nereid nymph. He
was the herder and guardian of the seals and knew everything
that took place in the depths of the sea, and also, like Nereus,
all that had happened or was to come to pass up)on earth.
Through the connivance of his daughter, Eidothea, he was
seized by Menelaos and forced to reveal to him the state of
affairs at Sparta and to direct him on his homeward voyage.

Glaukos. — The sea-god Glaukos was said to have been at
first an ordinary human being, the son of Anthedon and
Alkyone, this being a mythological way of saying that he was
a native of the Boiotian city of Anthedon. By trade he was a
fisherman, and one day, when reclining on the shore after land-
ing his catch, he observed that some of the fish, eating of a
certain herb, came back to life and leaped into the sea. After
tasting the herb himself, he, too, sprang into the water at a
spot which the Anthedonians later called "Glaukos's Leap"
and was transformed into a deity, being admitted into the circle
of the sea-gods after Okeanos and Tethys had purged him of
all human imperfections, and becoming so skilled in prophecy
that in this art he gave instruction to Apollo and Nereus.
The artists were wont to sketch him as a fisherman equipped
with fish-traps and a fish-basket and as wearing the skin of a
fish on his head. This story is, without doubt, essentially re-
lated to the more widely known legend of the search for the
Fountain of Youth.

Ino (Leukothea). — We are already aware of the role played
by Ino, the daughter of Kadmos, in those events of the early



 



 



262 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

history of Thebes which culminated in the great tribal move-
ment known in mythology as the Voyage of the Argonauts.
Her function as guardian of the sailor folk, which she exer-
cised under the new name of Leukothea, is exemplified most
clearly in the Homeric episode where she comes to the aid of
the shipwrecked Odysseus. Seeing the hero exhausted by his
efforts to save himself, she rose from the sea and sat beside
him on his raft, giving him a magic veil and bidding him bind
it about his breast, cast himself into the raging water, and
endeavour to swim to the Phaiakian coast. Following her
counsel, Odysseus was kept afloat by the veil for two days and
two nights, and on the morning of the third day he set foot
upon land.

Seirenes (Sirens). — By nature the Sirens ("Bewitching
Ones") were akin to the Keres and Erinyes, being winged dae-
mons of death who haunted graves and the underworld. The
belief in them was deeply rooted in the minds of the common
people, and Homer must have been aware of their special at-
tributes, although he seems to have chosen only such of them
as would serve his literary purposes. He is the creator of their
musical gifts and is responsible for their association with the sea.

The descent of the Sirens was not definitely fixed. They
were reputed to be the children of Phorkys, or, again, they were
born of the drops of blood that fell upon Earth from the broken
horn of Acheloos, while another genealogy accounts them the
children of this same Acheloos and one of the Muses. In
Homer they are two in number, though the vase-painters gen-
erally represent them as three; but in the sphere of popular
religion their number is unlimited by reason of their very
nature, and any names that attach to them are invariably sug-
gestive of meretricious wiles and charms. Hesiod locates these
beguiling divinities in the flowery island of Anthemoessa in the
western sea.

Kirke thus describes the Sirens to Odysseus: "To the Sirens
first shalt thou come, who bewitch all men, whosoever come to



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — OF WATER 263

them. Whoso draws nigh them unwittingly and hears the
sound of the Sirens' voice never doth he see wife or babes
stand by him on his return, nor have they joy at his coming;
but the Sirens enchant him with their clear song, sitting in
the meadow, and all about is a great heap of bones of men,
corrupt in death, and round the bones the skin is wasting.'*
To the description Kirke added directions for defeating their
witchery, and by following these Odysseus and his compan-
ions passed safely by. "But do thou drive thy ship past,"
she said, "and knead honey-sweet wax, and anoint therewith
the ears of thy company, lest any of the rest hear the song;
but if thou thyself art minded to hear, let them bind thee in
the swift ship hand and foot, upright in the mast-head, and
from the mast let rope-ends be tied that with delight thou
mayest hear the voice of the Sirens. And if thou shalt beseech
thy company and bid them to loose thee, then let them bind
thee with yet more bonds." *

The Sirens are often represented in tombstone reliefs and
in vase-paintings as birds standing or flying, and with human
heads, which are occasionally bearded.

Skylla and Charybdis. — Among the most formidable mon-
sters known to Greek mythology were Skylla and Charybdis,
the former of whom regularly passed as the daughter of Phor-
kys and Krataiis ("Mighty"). Up to the age of womanhood
she was a divinity of such beauty as to awaken love for her
in the breast of Poseidon, but when Amphitrite discovered her
husband's waywardness, she jealously threw magic herbs into
the spring in which Skylla was wont to bathe, after which
her rival became the horrible ravening creature against whom
Kirke warned Odysseus. She dwelt in a dim cave in the face
of a cliff hard by his course, and as the vessel passed by, she
reached out her six long and snakelike necks, with each head
snatching a sailor from his bench, and crushing him in her
pitiless jaws.

Over against Skylla was Charybdis, a less repulsive but no



 



 



264 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

less cruel monster, who, too, had been bom a goddess, being
the daughter of Poseidon and Gaia. Her chief characteristic
was an insatiable voracity, and, because of repeated thefts of
cattle from Herakles, 2^us, with the stroke of a thunderbolt,
hurled her into the sea, where, in the very path of ships, she
sucked down black water three times a day, and thrice daily
spouted it forth. Beginning with the fifth century B.C., Skylla
and Charybdis were localized in the Straits of Messina.



OF WINDS AND STORMS

A little knowledge of the meteorological conditions of Greece
and of the manner of life to which the ancient Greek was
bound by the very nature of things makes it plain why Hesiod •
called the winds "a great trouble to mortals." One who is well
acquainted with modem Greece writes: "In the winter the
winds blow from every p)oint of the compass and cannot be
relied up)on from one day to the next," ^ while in strong con-
trast is the regularity of direction of the summer winds. In
all this variety of air-currents, sometimes humouring, some-
times thwarting the plans of man, it was not at all strange to
see the operations of beings of independent will and of those
motley traits which go to make up personality. It was in-
evitable that the mountain hurricanes, which without warning
swooped down on the sailor or fisherman who thought himself
safe as long as he hugged the shore, should seem to be daemons
of destruction; and it was equally axiomatic that the useful
trade-winds should be credited with peaceful and benevolent
dispositions. Owing to their imp)ortance the winds were very
early given a place in cult or in those magic ceremonies which
can be differentiated from cult only with difliculty; and, con-
sequently, as there were rain-charms, so were there wind-
charms to avert or to arouse the winds as necessity required.
With the continuous development of chthonic elements in
Greek ritual the tendency gained momentum to identify the



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — OF WINDS 265

violent winds with milignant daemons of the earth; yet, on the
other hand, many of them were thought to reside in birds of
prey, such as the sea-hawk, while in the kingfisher dwelt the
spirit of midwinter calm, whence we still speak of "halcyon
(kingfisher) days,*'

Boreas^ Euros ^ NotoSj and Zephyros. — The most imp)ortant
winds, Boreas, Euros, Notos, and 2fephyros, were classified in
myth as the sons of Astraios and Eos. The character which
Boreas, the north wind, exhibits in Attic myth holds good every-
where else. He is lustful, cruel, and strong, and with a decided
bent for thievery; he is a cold, blustering, and uncouth Thra-
cian; he leaps swiftly down from the peaks of the hills, up-
rooting the oaks and shattering the ships which lie in his path;
according to his caprice, he brings clear sky or cloud. Homer
tells us that Achilles besought Boreas and Zephyros to fan the
flames of Patroklos's pyre, and the Athenians of the fifth
century attributed to Boreas's connexion with them by mar-
riage the destruction of the fleet of Xerxes off Chalkis. They
habitually thought of him as a shaggy-haired and heavy-
browed man, equipped with wings on both shoulders and feet,
while at Thourioi he was regarded as so nearly human that he
was given the rank of citizen and was assigned a domicile.
Homer relates, however, that in the form of a horse he begat
by the mares of Erichthonios twelve foals that could race over
the sea without sinking and over the tilled lands without leav-
ing a footmark or the trail of a wheel behind them.

The remaining winds are devoid of the sharp individuality
of Boreas. From the southland comes Notos in autumn and
winter, his beard heavy with clouds, and his grey p)oll dripping
great drops of moisture, while from his wings a leaden mist
falls over glen and hill, and men and beasts and herbage be-
come sluggish and sickly. Over the sea he spreads a dense mist
so that sailors despair of making p>ort, and, in Horatian phrase,
he is the wind "than whom there is no greater ruler of the
Adriatic." • Along with Euros he hindered Odysseus's depart-



 



 



266 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

ure from Thrinakia and drove him back upon Charybdis. In
the south-east is the home of Euros, at whose warm breath the
snows melt and rains fall. Zephyros is the gentle wind of the
west which gives strength to plants, and in a very childish
allegory myth makes him the husband of Chloris ("Verdant
Herbage ")> by whom he became the father of Karpo ("Fruit-
fulness").

Aiolos. — In the Odyssey Aiolos, the steward of the winds,
inhabits the floating island of Aiolia in the western sea along
with his family of six convivial sons and six convivial daugh-
ters. The story of how he packed the winds in a bag and gave
them to Odysseus we need not repeat here. The person of
Aiolos seems to represent the mobility and variability of the
winds, and his children, living as they did "tn Saus und Brans j^
their rapacity; while his method of controlling them is paral-
leled in a primitive Germanic custom of bagging the winds in
order to quell them.

Harpies. — The hated and destructive squalls that burst
suddenly from the mountain valleys on the coastal shipping
were well described in the appearance and the actions of
the Harpies CA/oTn/uit, "Snatchers"), whom popular epithet
styled "the dogs of Zeus," and with good reason, as their
treatment of Phineus has already demonstrated. These loath-
some creatures had the arms and breasts of a woman, but all
their remaining parts were those of a bird. The talons of their
hands and feet were long and sharp, and with their wings they
flew about with the speed of the wind, their names, Aellopous
("Storm-Foot") andOkypete ("Swift-Flying"), being accurate
registers of their nature. To account for such marvellous
beings mythology derived them from some monstrous sire like
Thaumas, or Typhon, or Poseidon; and, since like begets like,
they in their turn became the mothers of the swift steeds of
Achilles, Erechtheus, and the Dioskouroi. Their home was in
the Strophades, a group of islands in the Aegean, or, accord-
ing to Vergil, at the very gates of the underworld.



 



 



 



 

[Prometheus]

PLATE LVI
Orbithyia and Boreas

Boreas, well characterized as a thick-set and
bristly-haired man of cruel countenance, has grasped
Oreithyia around the waist, and, lifting her off her
feet, is on the point of flying away with her through
the air. A sister of the maiden, Pandrosos, is hasten-
ing away in fear, while Herse, another sister, runs
forward to lend aid. From a red-figured amphora of
about 475 b.c, in Munich (Furtwangler-Reichhold,
Griechischi Fasenmalerei^ No. 94). See pp. 73-74^
265.



 



 




 



 



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — OF THE WILD 267

Typhon and the Kyklopes. — Apparently Typhon and all
the forms of the Kyklopes — the Homeric, the smiths of Zeus,
the spirits of the volcano, and the mythical builders of city
walls — were originally storm-daemons.*



OF THE WILD

Party Silenoiy and Satyroi (Satyrs). — Pan has about him the
unmistakable marks of a native of the hills and the grazing
lands of Arkadia, his name (a contraction of Hcuav) denoting
"the grazier." It was in the Arkadian mountain, Lykaion,
where he was born a son of Hermes and Dryope, or of Zeus and
Kallisto, and only among the pastoral Arkadians was his cult
of national importance. On his favour to flock and herd hung
the existence and the prosperity of the inhabitants, and with
the spread of the story that in the battle at Marathon he rein-
forced the Greek cause by driving the Persians into a mad rout,
his cult extended into every part of Greece. Nevertheless, with
the exception of his exaltation in certain philosophical circles
to the position of the All-God (a conception born partly from
the false derivation of his name from the adjective meaning
"all"), he had no contact with the spiritual life of the people
— he always remained, as he is portrayed in the Homeric
Hymn in his honour, the unconventional, if not wanton, divin-
ity of the wilderness and country-side.

As the "goat-footed, two-homed lover of the dance" he
haunts "the snowy height, the mountain peaks, and paths
amid the crags. Hither and thither he fares through the thick
copses, now enticed by the gentle streams, and now, climbing
an exceeding lofty height overlooking the herds, he makes his
way among the rocks. Often he runs over the long white ridges
of the mountains, and often, again, over the foot-hills, slaying
wild beasts and glancing sharply about him. Then at evening,
returning from the chase, he sings alone and plays a sweet song
upon the pipes. Not even the bird which pours forth her sweet



 



 



268 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

lays amid the leaves of flowery spring can excel him in song.
With him then join in the melody the sweetly singing nymphs
of the highlands thronging round the darkling fountain, and
echo resounds about the summit of the mountain." *®

At the outset Pan was simply a generative daemon of the
flocks and herds, but the concept of his being a sort of ideal
shepherd and protector was a natural sequel of this function,
and in time his powers were so enlarged that he was held to
exert an influence on the growth of forage plants, although he
never became a full-fledged deity of vegetation. In the fore-
going spheres his emblem was the phallos. So far as wind and
weather affected the condition of the cattle, Pan was a weather-
god, and doubtless his fabled skill on the pipes is a reminiscence
of the primitive magical practice of endeavouring to control
the winds by whistling or by playing on wind-instruments.
As the chief divine inhabitant of the solitudes Pan contrived
the special perils that beset hunters, herdsmen, travellers,
and others who invaded his domains. The mirage was a de-
vice created by him to mislead and perplex, and panic, named
after himself, was his coup de maitre for suddenly dispersing
great hosts.

The Satyrs and the Silenoi can best be comprehended,
perhaps, in the statement that they are a plurality of Pans,
although in them this playful and lustful character stands out
in exaggerated relief. They combine the elements of human,
brute, and inanimate nature more successfully than any other
creatures of myth. By virtue of their connexion with fertility
they frequently appear in the circle of Dionysos as well as in
that of Pan.

The representations of Pan and his lesser congeners in
art are, in more than the ordinary sense, myths in pictorial or
graphic form. Two periods of their development may be ob-
served, the dividing line being drawn, roughly, at about 400
B.C. In the first the human element predominates, all of the
divinities being regularly shown as possessing the heads and



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — OF THE WILD



269



bodies of men and the members of animals, such as horns, tail,
pointed ears, shaggy hair, and the legs of goats or of horses.
Toward the end of this time types appear which represent
them as beautiful youths, bearing here and there upon their
persons mere hints of their semi-bestial nature. In the second
period the animal element becomes more prominent, but more
smoothly fused with the human, and the types of Pan, the
Satyrs, and the Silenoi now begin to diverge along their own




Fig. 10. Sattrs at Plat

In the centre of the lower band is a Maenad holding a tkyrsos (ritual wand) and look-
ing at a group of four Satyrs, two of whom, riding on the backs of the others, are waiting
to catch the ball about to be thrown by the old Satyr at the extreme left of the picture.
Between the old Satyr and the Maenad is a boy Satyr lightly leaning on a hoop which
he has just been trundling. The upper band shows a pantomimic dance of maidens
(JHS xi, Plate XII).

separate lines. Pan is now practically always seen with goat's
legs and has a leering, sensual countenance, while the flute
of reed, the goatherd's staff, and the goatskin are his common
attributes. All these characteristics are gradually taken over
by the Satyrs.

Maenads and Bacchantes. — The Maenads and Bacchantes
were the spirits of the wild conceived as feminine. Although
they were much less gross than their male companions whom
we have just described, in that they were devoid of the bodily
attributes of the animal kinds, nevertheless, they counted the
beasts of the wild among their chief associates, and, despite
their human form, they were distinctly unhuman in spirit.



 



 



270 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

They had their birth in the belief, common to many primitive
peoples, that the storms of the latter part of the winter release
the daemons which put life into herb and tree; in fact, they
were these storms themselves, wanton, wild, and free. Their
natures brought them into an intimate alliance with Dionysos,
and the roU which they played in his rites has made their
names synonyms of unrestraint and revelry. Wrought to a
state of ecstasy by the shrill music of the flute and the clash
of cymbals, they would shout and sing as they ran wildly to
and fro, waving burning brands and thyrsoi (ritual wands).
As Agave tore her unbelieving son Pentheus asunder, so the
Maenads were said to rend the young of wild animals and then
to eat their flesh raw.

Dryads and Hamadryads. — The spirits which were thought
to inhabit trees were known as Dryads or Hamadryads, and
they became classed as nymphs, as we have previously pointed
out, by a very easy extension of terms. Under the name of
Dryad the Greeks seem to have comprehended a female spirit
dwelling among the trees, whereas a Hamadryad, on the other
hand, was the spirit of an individual tree whose life began and
ended with that of her host. Stories which bring out the indi-
viduality of Hamadryads — for example, that of Daphne and
Apollo — are simply the devices of mythology to explain the
marked peculiarities of single trees or of single species of trees.

Kentauroi {Centaurs). — Of all the monsters put together by
the Greek imagination the Centaurs constituted a class in
themselves. Despite a strong streak of sensuality in their
make-up, their normal behaviour was moral, and they took
a kindly thought of man's welfare. The attempted outrage of
Nessos on Deianeira, and that of the whole tribe of Centaurs
on the Lapith women, are more than offset by the hospitality
of Pholos and by the wisdom of Cheiron, physician, prophet,
lyrist, and the instructor of Achilles. Further, the Centaurs
were peculiar in that their nature, which united the body of
a horse with the trunk and head of a man, involved an unthink-



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — OF THE WILD 271

able duplication of vital organs and important members. So
grotesque a combination seems almost un-Greek. These strange
creatures were said to live in the caves and clefts of the moun-
tains, myth associating them especially with the hills of Thes-
saly and the range of Erymanthos.



 



 



I



CHAPTER XIII
THE LESSER GODS — OF THE EARTH

I. GAIA (GE)

F a poet of this utilitarian day and generation can sing,
with such happy fancy,

"The earth that is the sister of the sea,
The earth that is the daughter of the stars,
The mother of the myriad race of men," *



why should we wonder at the Greeks' imputation of person-
ality to the various features of the material world? This mod-
ern conception of Earth, i. e. Gaia or Ge, is almost textually,
we may safely say, that of the most ancient Greeks of whom
we have even the vaguest knowledge. At Dodona Zeus, the
sky-god, was coupled with the earth goddess, a union long
consummated even then. In Homer*s time she was held to be a
sentient being, although perhaps not quite personal enough to
be a goddess, but later, in Hesiod, we find her consciously
exercising the functions of parenthood. As we have seen in
the chapter on the beginning of things, she was the mother,
first of Ouranos, and afterward, by him, of the Titans, of the
Kyklopes, and of the Giants, and, by the indirect process of
descent, of gods and men; while in the local myths we learned
that men like Pelasgos, Kekrops, and Alalkomeneus sprang
straight from her bosom. When she had brought all these
into the world, she nourished them, enriched them, and gave
them the mysterious power to reproduce their kind, whence
at Athens she was venerated under the title "Nourisher of
Youths."



 



 



 



 



PLATE LVII

A Mabkad

This vigorously drawn figure represents a Maenad
at the height of her orgiastic frenzy. Her slightly
raised foot and the flutter of her garments show that
she is dancing wildly rather than moving swiftly for-
ward. She wears a girdle of fawn-skin, and is crowned
with a wreath of ivy from beneath which flow long
loose tresses of her hair. Behind her and to one side
her thyrsos (ritual wand) stands obliquely in the ground.
In each hand she holds a part of the fawn which in her
madness she has just rent asunder, as the blood still
dripping from the wounds testifies. From a red-
figured Ukythos of about 475 B.C., from Gela (Monu-
menti Jntichi^ xvii, Plate LVa). See pp. 269-70.



 



 




 



 



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — RHEA-KYBELE 273

Under the name of Gaia, however, the development of the
goddess stopped, for Gaia was too obvious a suggestion of the
material earth to stir the constructive .Greek fancy into ac-
tion, although certain of her epithets descriptive of different
concepts of the earth-power survived and took on attractive
forms. Thus, as Pandora ("All-Giver") she became the theme
of a significant myth, and as Pandrosos ("All-Bedewing")
she plays a role in early Athenian religious history, while,
partly from the righteousness of her oracles, as delivered, for
instance, from her pre-Apolline shrine at Delphoi, she became
Themis ("Justice"), although it was under the name of
Demeter that she attained her highest and loveliest attributes
of divinity.

Yet there is another side to the nature of Gaia, for after
death men were laid away in her deep bosom, whence they had
first come, so that she presided over the host of departed spirits,
and it was only natural that, under the name of Persephone,
she ultimately came to be known as the queen of the lower
world. She was associated with the Genesia, a festival in which
ancestors were honoured, and with the latter part of the An-
thesteria, while in public oaths that bound treaties and alli-
ances she was invoked, along with Zeus and Helios, as an ever-
present witness of the solenm obligation.

II. RHEA-KYBELE (GREAT MOTHER)

Beginning with the fifth century, the names Great Mother
or Mother of the Gods, Rhea, and Kybele were employed
indifferently to designate a single divine being, a great earth
goddess, and it is altogether probable that historically also
they represented only one being. At Athens her official title
was the first of the foregoing names, or its alternative form,
and there, as early as the sixth century, she was accorded a
shrine, known as the Metroon, which served as the depository
of the state archives, an honour which seems to have come to



 



 



274 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

her through her likeness to Demeter, who had already been
naturalized. The name Rhea belonged rather to the circle of
myth, being seldom used as a formal religious designation,
while the mention of Kybele always called to mind the peculiar
manner of cult connected with the Asiatic form of the mother
goddess of earth.

Rhea was primarily the Cretan conception of the maternal
principle resident in the earth, and as with the other gods her
functions increased with her recognition, until many were in-
cluded which in reality had only a remote relation to her actual
nature. In some quarters her name is explained as being pos-
sibly a Cretan form of y4a (7^), "earth," while in others it
is connected with /Jciv, "to flow," a relation which seems to
put emphasis on her function as a producer of rain. In the
Orphic genealogy Rhea is the daughter of Okeanos and Tethys,
but in the Hesiodic the offspring of Ouranos and Gaia. Be-
coming the sister-wife of Kronos, she bears Hera, Zeus, Posei-
don, Hades, Demeter, and Hestia, and in this way she plays a
very important part in the early scenes of the world's history
as set forth in myth. The story of her giving birth to Zeus in
Crete is a mirror of her functions and cult, Zeus representing
the herbage of spring emerging from the fertile bosom of mother
earth, and the nymphs attending him being the countless
kindly spirits which cherish the tender plants of earth. The
Kouretes, who later become an organized priesthood, are none
other than the early Cretans engaged in the performance of
magical ceremonies designed to encourage the productivity of
earth, while the stone which Rhea gives Kronos to swallow
must surely be a rain-stone to bring rain upon earth. Finally,
the death of Zeus as reported in Crete is, in the language of
myth, the annual decline of vegetation, the fall of leaf and
flower upon the breast of earth.

In the fifth century the name and worship of Kybele were
introduced into Greece and spread abroad, largely through the
influence of freed Phrygian slaves. The personality of this god-



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — RHEA-KYBELE 275

dess included, without doubt, traits of many other local earth
goddesses whom she had assimilated from time to time, and,
as one may clearly observe in the legend which we are about to
relate, she and her youthful favourite, Attis, are parallel cult-
figures to Aphrodite and Adonis.

An almond-tree wedded to the Phrygian river Sangarios
became the mother of a handsome lad named Attis, who spent
his childhood in the wilds among the beasts and birds, and
became a herdsman when he grew to manhood. His beauty
attracted the attention both of Kybele and of the princess of
the realm, so that they became rivals for his love, but when his
marriage with the princess was about to be celebrated in the
presence of a large gathering, Kybele suddenly appeared and
smote the guests with madness. Attis, fleeing to the highlands,
killed himself, and though Kybele entreated Zeus to restore the
boy to life, all that she could obtain was the consent that
his body and hair were to remain as in life, and that he could
move his little finger.

The legend just narrated seems to be an attempt to follow
back to its sources the ritual in which the yearly death and re-
birth of the young god of wild vegetation were symbolized by
a fir-tree. But Kybele was also associated with the vegetation
of the tilled lands, this being suggested, first, by the legends
which make her the wife of Gordias, the first king of Phrygia,
and by him the mother of Midas, whom she generously blesses
with the wealth of the earth; and, secondly, by the myths where
the daughter whom she has borne to the river Sangarios is
joined in wedlock to Dionysos. The dependence of Phrygia
upon her bounty for its well-being made her the chief divinity
both of the separate cities and of the entire country.

Kybele was attended by the lion and other wild animals and

by bands of priests known as Korybantes and Daktyloi.

The former might be characterized as male Maenads, so wild

and abandoned were their rites, and, in fact, they surpassed

the Maenads in this respect, even going so far as to practice
I — 22



 



 



276 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

mutilation of their bodies. The aim of their ritual was twofold
— to advance the growth of vegetation, and to free themselves
from eternal death by mystic union with the immortal god-
dess. Owing to the highly emotional and unreflective character
of this cult, it was never thoroughly acceptable to the Greek
temperament.

During the fifth and fourth centuries art did not succeed in
elaborating a strictly Greek type of Rhea-Kybele, who was
often portrayed in a manner which suggested the Artemis of
the wild beasts — a matronly figure seated, crowned, and ac-
companied by lions. Her later type was an amplification of the
earlier, although barbarian traits now predominated.

III. LESSER DIVINITIES OF THE UNDERWORLD

Erinyes (Latin Furiae). — After the murder of Abel, we are
told in Genesis,* God said to Cain: "The voice of thy brother's
blood crieth unto me from the ground," and from the same
idea of the appeal of murdered souls for vengeance the Erinyes
were bom. The Hebrew and the Greek differed, however, in
the extent to which they severally elaborated the idea, since
the former put the avenging power into the hands of God, and
the latter into the hands of the injured souls themselves. The
soul of the murdered man, according to Greek belief, could rise
from the ground and as a free agent hound the murderer night
and day until he made proper expiation for his crime, this aveng-
ing soul being an Erinys. In time, through the influence of
a common tendency to pluralize daemonic conceptions, it was
expanded into a number of beings of a like nature; and as these
became established in popular thought, they acquired an
ever-enlarging endowment of attributes, the most important
being those which they acquired from the earth out of which
they came. As Earth was generally conceived as feminine,
so were they, and at times men even entreated them, as they
would Earth, for the blessing of a good harvest. Strange to

[Prometheus]

 



THE LESSER GODS — UNDERWORLD 277

say, the Erinyes did not pursue every murderer; their vindic-
tive fury was reserved especially for him who had committed
the sin of sins, the slaughter of a kinsman, and herein lies the
significance of their pursuit of Orestes and Alkmaion — each
had slain his mother. Once established as defenders of the
family, to the Greek mind the mainstay of the social order,
their powers to enforce justice were broadened, and they now
became the champions of the right of the first-bom, and of
strangers, and of beggars. In Homer we find them depriving
Achilles' horses of the gift of speech in order to correct an
offence against the just laws of nature. They are generally,
but not always, represented as being three in number and
named respectively Alekto, Megaira, Tisiphone. In imagina-
tion men painted them as repulsive caricatures of women;
for hair they had a tangle of serpents; instead of running, they
flew about like birds of prey; in their hands they brandished
scourges with which they threatened the victim of their pur-
suit; and the Taurian herdsmen reported to Iphigenia Orestes*
description of the Erinys who assailed him:

^'A she-dragon of Hell, and all her head
Agape with fanged asps, to bite me dead.
She hath no face, but somewhere from her cloak
Bloweth a wind of fire and bloody smoke:
The wind's heat fans it: in her arms. Ah see!
My mother, dead grey stone, to cast on me
And crush." •

EumenideSj Semnai Theai, Maniai. — Small wonder that
the Greeks shrank from pronouncing the name of such dire
beings as the Erinyes. Since a name has a happy way of cloak-
ing realities, they called them in Athens Semnai Theai, " Re-
vered Goddesses," and at Kolonos, the Eumenides, "Benevo-
lent Ones," but in time they forgot that these epithets were
only substitutes and built up new divine characters to suit
them, such being the pliability of the myth-making mind.
The Maniai ("Madnesses") of Megalopolis seem to have
been of identical nature.



 



 



278 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

Miscellaneous. — Besides the Erinyes, there was a host of
inferior hellish creatures popularly located in the underworld.
The Keres passed now as the souls of the dead, now as malevo-
lent death-dealing daemons of an independent origin and exist-
ence; the Stringes ("Vampires") were horrid winged creatures
in the form of night-birds who brought evil dreams and sucked
the life-blood of sleepers; and Empousa was a destructive
monster with one foot of brass and the other of an ass. Lamia,
who still lives in modern Greek superstition, was said to have
been a woman of Libya whose children, begotten by Zeus,
were slain by Hera, and who in revenge gave herself over to
the perpetual task of killing strange children.

In the underworld there also lived Hypnos ("Sleep*')
and Thanatos ("Death"), twin sons of Nyx ("Night")
and Erebos ("Darkness"). Hypnos spent his time now on
earth, now in the Island of Dreams, and now beneath the
earth, exercising his power over men and gods as he willed;
while Thanatos would come forth from below and clip a lock
from the head of the dying to hasten the last breath.



 



 



'-^



 



 



PLATE LVIII
Hypnos

Hypnot, a beautiful, soft-fleshed, dreamy youth,
seems originally to have held in his extended right
hand a horn from which to pour sleep on reposing
mortals; in his left he probably grasped a poppy-stem
with which he cast over them a spell of forgetfulness.
His appearance calls to mind the description of Sleep
which Ovid puts into the mouth of luno: ^Sleep,
mildest of all the gods, thou art thyself sweet peace of
mind, a soothing balm, an alien to care, and bringest
rest and strength to mortals worn and weary with
the toils of life" {Metamorphoses^ xi. 623-25). A
Roman marble copy of a bronze original (apparently
of the fourth century B.C.), in the Prado, Madrid
(Brunn-Bruckmann, DenknUtUr griecbiscbir und rom-^
ischer Sculptur^ No. 529). See p. 278.



 



 



'N






 



 



 



 



CHAPTER XIV

THE LESSER GODS — ASKLEPIOS,
ABSTRACT DIVINITIES

I. ASKLEPIOS

ALTHOUGH, as wc shall presendy see, Asklepios was not,
strictly speaking, an abstract divinity, yet the more
or less abstract character of his function of healing affords some
warrant for our present classification of him.

The Origin and the Name of Asklepios. — If the myths con-
cerning the parentage of Asklepios are at all significant, he
was the heir and successor of Apollo in the art of healing.
This mythical relationship doubtless became established in
some cult-shrine of Apollo, such as that in Epidauros or even
that in Cretan Gortyna, where the two were affiliated and
where, in the end, the younger divinity ousted the elder from
the first place. Whatever may have been the initial nature of
Asklepios, his mature form seems to reveal a combination of
two natures, chthonic and solar, and of this there are traces
in the myths that are to follow. Some scholars see in the first
part of his name a root which embodies the idea of brightness,
but, unfortunately, this is so uncertain that it is useless as a
confirmation of the partly solar nature of the god. It is pretty
generally agreed, on the other hand, that the second part of
the name, -lyTTto?, signifies "mild" or "soothing," a very ap-
propriate quality for a dispenser of healing.

Myths of Asklepios. — Asklepios sometimes passed as the
son of Arsinoc, the daughter of Leukippos, but generally as
the son of Koronis (" Sea-Gull"), the daughter of Thessalian
Phlegyas. Pausanias ^ tells the story of his birth and infancy



 



 



28o GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

with an attractive simplicity. "When he [i. e. Phlegyas] came
to Peloponnese his daughter came with him, and she, all
unknown to her father, was with child by Apollo. In the land
of Epidauros she was delivered of a male child, whom she ex-
posed upon the mountain which is named Tltthion (* nipple*).
. . . But one of the goats that browsed on the mountain
gave suck to the forsaken babe; and a dog, the guardian of
the flock, watched over it. Now when Aresthanas — for that
was the name of the goatherd — perceived that the tale of the
goats was not full, and that the dog kept away from the flock,
he went up and down, they say, looking everywhere. At
last he found the babe and was fain to take it up in his arms.
But as he drew near he saw a bright light shining from the
child. So he turned away, 'For surely,' thought he, *the hand
of God is in this,* as indeed it was. And soon the fame of the
child went abroad over every land and sea, how that he had
all power to heal the sick and that he raised the dead.*' An-
other account relates that while Asklepios was still in the
womb of his mother, a raven came to Apollo with the tidings
that Koronis was unfaithful to him, whereupon Apollo straight-
way cursed the raven, which, in consequence, was changed
forever from white to black, and, hastening to Koronis, he
slew her and burned her body on a pyre. Snatching the child
from the midst of the flames, he took him to Cheiron, who
trained him in the chase and in the mysteries of healing,
whereby Asklepios became so skilful as a physician that he
not only kept many men from death, but even raised to life
some who had died, for instance, Kapaneus, Hippolytos,
Tyndareos, Glaukos the son of Minos, and others. Zeus, how-
ever, fearful lest men, too, might learn how to revive the dead,
slew Asklepios with the thunderbolt, whereupon, in reprisal,
Apollo killed the Kyklopes and for this act had to make ex-
piation by serving Admetos as a slave. The legend also tries
to explain the healing means employed by Asklepios, saying
that, through Athene, he secured blood from the veins of



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — ASKLEPIOS 281

Medousa. With that which came from her left side he destroyed
men, while with that which was derived from the right he
brought them back to life.

The people of Epidauros said that Asklepios was first known
as Epios, but after he had healed King Askles of a grievous
malady, he assumed the longer and traditional name. In
Epidauros his wife was Epione, but elsewhere she was Lam-
petie, a daughter of Helios. Machaon, the hero-physician, was
always held to be a son of Asklepios and sometimes Epione
and Hygieia ("Health'') were said to be his daughters.

The serpent is the constant symbol of Asklepios in both
legend and worship, the burghers of a certain Epidauros in
Lakonia claiming that their shrine of the god was built on a
spot where a snake had disappeared beneath the earth. In
his sacred precincts in the Argive Epidauros, and in those of
Athens and Kos, which were offshoots of the former, the ser-
pent was the living emblem of his presence and was thought
to communicate means of healing to sufferers from disease
as they slept in the holy place — the rite technically known as
"incubation." * Asklepios was invariably attended by groups
of priests who devoted themselves to surgery and other cura-
tive means, and many extant inscriptions tell of their wonderful
successes. In the island of Kos in particular the priests of As-
klepios laid the foundations of the modern scientific study and
practice of medicine.

Asklepios in Art. — Owing to the failure of poetry to at-
tribute any definite traits of face and form to Asklepios, the
artists were thrown back upon their own ingenuity. They chose
to represent him after the ideal of Zeus, but of milder counte-
nance and of less majestic manner. He is shown seated or
standing like the corresponding types of Zeus, though holding
the sceptre not as a mark of might but as a staff on which to
lean. The best representations of him are seen in the votive
offerings of his shrine where incubation (sleej>-cure) was prac-
tised.



 



 



282 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

11. ABSTRACT DIVINITIES

The same habit of thought which could clothe the mysterious
operations of nature with all the features of personality could
consistently treat in like manner the inscrutable processes of
the mind and the qualities of things, whence we actually find
the Greeks making these abstract conceptions over into divine
beings. That this was not merely a late but a very early prac-
tice is demonstrated in the evident antiquity of Mnemosyne,
Eunomia, and certain others of their kind in Hesiod. This
entire class of divinities was treated in myth, when they were
given any place at all, in the same way as were the more highly
personalized nature-gods, although they were debarred from
frequent appearance in this field, for temperamentally the
Greek shrank from the bald literalness of their names, and some
of the divinities recorded below are by nature perilously near the
concrete. The list is of necessity far from complete and must
be regarded as supplying little more than mere illustrations.
It will be noticed that some of the names have been discussed
in earlier chapters, but here we see them from another angle.

Of time: Eos, Hemera, Nyx, Chronos ("Time"; cf. "Father
Time"), Hebe, Geras ("Old Age"), Kairos ("Opportunity,"
" Psychological Moment ") .

Of states of body: Hygieia, Hypnos, Thanatos, Limos ("Fam-
ine"), Laimos ("Pestilence"), Mania ("Madness").

Of states of mind: Phobos, Eleos ("Pity"), Aidos ("Mod-
esty"), Eros, Himeros ("Longing"), Euphrosyne.

Of the spiritual faculties: Metis, Mnemosyne, Pronoia ("Fore-
thought").

Of the virtues and vices: Arete ("Excellence" or "Virtue"),
Sophrosyne ("Temperance"), Dikaiosyne ("Righteousness"),
Hybris ("Offensive Presumption"), Anaideia ("Shameless-
ness").

Of sundry social institutions: Telete ("Rite of the Myster-
ies"), Litai ("Prayers"), Arai ("Curses"), Nomos ("Law"),



 



 



THE LESSER GODS — CHANCE 283

Dike ("Precedent "),Demo8 ("the People*'), Eirene ("Peace*'),
Homonoia ("Unanimity").

To the foregoing catalogue we may add the personifications
of the various phases of war and strife (e. g. Nike, "Victory")
and of the several types of poetry.



III. THE ELEMENT OF CHANCE

Owing to the importance of the element of chance in legend
and religious thought, it is well to treat this abstraction by
itself.

Tyche. — Tyche ("Chance") was frankly the deification of
the element of risk, and its relation to the plans and efforts
of men to earn their daily bread and to better their conditions
of life held it continually before the attention, so that men
had to admit its existence as a real force. In the early days,
when the Greeks had the self-reliant spirit of pioneers and a
strong faith in the ability of men to bring to pass things which
were not positively forbidden, Tyche received only meagre
recognition, but in the later days of their religious degeneracy
and enfeebled initiative they gratuitously endowed her with a
power in contrast with which their own dignity as free agents
entirely disappeared. Still more uncertain than the future of
individuals is that of associations of individuals, and thus, from
the sixth century onward, Tyche was exalted with gradually
increasing frequency to the position of the goddess of the luck
of the state, this development being doubtless aided in the
Roman period by the influence of Fortuna.

Moirdj Moiraij Ananke, Adrasteia. — Moira (or Aisa,
"Fate") and the Moirai ("Fates") represented the order of
chance, or, in other words, the determinative elements which
seem to operate amid the vicissitudes of human life. Ethically,
they imply a much healthier point of view than that implied
in Tyche. In Homer, it will be remembered, Moira was an
almost impersonal decree issuing from Zeus; that is, she was



 



 



284 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

herself the will of Zeus, although the other gods limited her
scope of action according to their respective degrees of great-
ness. Somewhat later than Homer she was conceived as an
independent power to which gods as well as men must yield,
and in this aspect she is Ananke (" Necessity "), or Adrasteia

("Inevitable")-

In legend the Moirai, who were reckoned as three in number,
were, appropriately, the daughters of Zeus and Themis • and
bore the names Klotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Plato may be
following an old tradition when he states that into the ears of
man Klotho sings of the present, Lachesis of the past, and
Atropos of the future; and a late belief ascribed to them sever-
ally, in the order in which they have just been named, control
over the birth, the life, and the death of mortals.

Nemesis. — The name of Nemesis* seems to have been first
employed as an epithet of Artemis, intended to convey the
idea that this goddess, as one who presided over birth, was also
a dispenser of human lots. By the times of Homer and Hesiod,
however, it had lost its character as a purely descriptive term
and had become the name of a vague personality; while later
it came to stand for the divinity who brought upon men ret-
ribution for their deeds and who was especially hostile to ex-
cessive human prosperity. "Pride breaks itself, and too much
gained is gone." * We read in a fragment of the Kypria that
Nemesis was a winged goddess who flew over land and sea
and assumed the forms of many animals in order to escape the
embraces of Zeus, but in the form of a swan he overtook her
at Rhamnous and by her became the mother of Helen.



 



 



 



 



PLATE LIX

NiKB

A winged Nike ("Victory"), clad in chiton and
himationj and wearing a tongued diadem, pours out
wine from an oinochoty held in her right hand, into a
saucer resting in the hand of an armed Greek warrior.
The kirykeion^ or caduceus^ in the left hand of the
goddess signifies that she is bringing a message of vic-
tory. From a red-figured Attic lekythos of the early
fifth century B.C., found at Gela {Monumtnti Jnticbi^
xvii, Plate XIII). Sec p. 283.



 



 




 



 



 



 



PART III
THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT ITALY



 



 



 



 



THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT ITALY

INTRODUCTION

FIR the very good reason that the Italic mind and religious
attitude were quite unlike the Greek, it is impossible to
treat the mythology of the Italic peoples as we have considered
that of the Greeks. Now, the mind of the Italian was not natu-
rally curious and speculative, whence, since speculation is the
motive power behind myth, the output of Italic myth was very
small, and at the same time well-nigh barren of lively fancy.
Furthermore, the Italian had not advanced to a stage of re-
ligious thought which would of itself favour the creation of
a group of divine personalities specially adapted even for such
imaginary genealogies and stories of marvellous achievement
as his type of mind might be able to construct under certain
circumstances. What, then, was the nature of his religion?
We shall endeavour to compact a description of it into a para-
graph or two.

Up to a point about midway between the animistic grade of
religious thought and the stage of belief in personal divinities
the Greek and the Roman seem to have developed in virtually
the same way. Beyond this point, however, the lines of their
progress diverged, for while the Greek mind easily and natu-
rally emerged from animism into deism, as the moth from the
chrysalis, the Roman found the utmost difficulty; and, indeed,
so awkward was the metamorphosis that the great majority of
the deities which it produced were and remained stunted and
deformed as compared with the Greek divinities. In brief, the
Roman seldom got farther than to regard the potency, or life-
power, as a living will, a numen, as he termed it. Only the barest
few of the numina did he endue with the many-coloured coat of



 



 



288 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

personality; all others he left in the plain rustic garb of func-
tional spirits of nature. The assignment of names to the fa-
voured few and the establishment of their worships and priest-
hoods in definite localities added to the illusion of their per-
sonality in the popular mind. Although from the point of view
of our classification the numina were scarcely gods, yet for the
practical purposes of Roman private and public religion they
were as much deities as were, for instance, the nobler figures of
luppiter, luno, and Minerva.

By reason of the power of the gods to help or to harm it was
to the best interest of the Roman to keep on good terms with
them; in his own words, to secure and maintain a pax deorum;
and, accordingly, every act of his worship was directed to this
end. By rites, largely magical in character, by sacrifice, and
by supplication he strove daily to ensure for himself, his family,
his fields and flocks, and his state the favour of the benevo-
lent divinities, and to avert the displeasure of the evil; but the
fixed system of ritual which he evolved in a very early period
so mechanized his religious thinking that he became incapable
of imagining his gods as departing from the traditional con-
ception of them, and hence was equally unable to invent myths.

[Prometheus]

In the dearth of Roman myth the Latin writers from Livius
Andronicus onward were forced to draw for their literary
material on the abundant store of Greek poetry, and with the
poetry naturally went the Greek gods and the Greek mythology,
although, in order to make the character of these beings in-
telligible to Roman readers, the authors had to equate or
identify them with those of the accepted gods of the land
whom they resembled most closely. In some instances they
made use of identifications ready made in the popular belief,
whence it came about that, for instance, Zeus was always repre-
sented by luppiter, Hera by luno, Artemis by Diana, and
Demeter by Ceres. Practically all the myths of pan-Hellenic
currency became common Roman property; only the narrowly
local ones were untouched. Assuming this, we can read the



 



 



NATIVE ITALIC GODS 289

Greek myths of our preceding pages as Roman, if only we take
the pains to change the names of the gods to those of their
Roman equivalents.^

I. ETRUSCAN MYTHOLOGY

Unhappily we are unable to distinguish with exactness the
Etruscan contribution to Roman religion, although Roman
writers definitely labelled a few myths as from this source.
According to an Etruscan cosmogony, the creator appointed
twelve millenniums for the acts of creation and assigned to them
severally the twelve signs of the zodiac. In the first millennium
he created heaven and earth; in the second the firmament; in
the third the land, sea, and lesser waters; in the fourth the
sun, moon, and stars; in the fifth the creatures of air, earth,
and water; and in the sixth man, whose race was to endure
for the remaining six millenniums and then perish. A myth
attributed the origin of the Etruscan religious system to a
child named Tages, who took human form from a clod thrown
up by a plough and in song delivered his holy message to a
wondering throng. The nymph Begoe was said to have re-
vealed the so-called sacred law of limitation to Arruns Vel-
tymnius, while Mantus is recorded as the name of the Etruscan
god of the underworld, and Volta as the appellation of a
mythical monster.

II. NATIVE ITALIC GODS

(a) Nature-Xiods: Of the Sky^ Atmosphere, and Time

luppiter. — luppiter (lovis, Diovis, Dius, Diespiter), the
chief god of all the Italic stocks, was a personification of the
sky and its phenomena, being, therefore, rightly identified
with Zeus. His control over the weather and light made him
of necessity the all-important divinity of a nation of shepherds
and husbandmen, and his might was manifested in the thun-



 



 



290 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

der, lightning, and rain; in fact, legend reported him as coming
to earth in bodily form with the thunderbolt. This is the
origin of his epithets Fulgur (" Lightning ")> Fulmen ("Thun-
derbolt '*)> and, doubtless, also of Feretrius, while as the rain-
god he bears the names Pluvius, Pluvialis, and Elicius. From
his lofty seat in the heavens he could behold all that hap-
pened upon earth; hence, as Terminus, he became the guar-
dian of boundaries between properties, and, as Dius Fidius,
the witness of men's fidelity to their oaths. Only a few of the
Roman gods became thus moralized.

Mater Matuta. — Mater Matuta was the deity who, in
the words of Lucretius,* "at a certain hour brings down the
dawn through the tracts of air and diflFuses the light of day";
but she was also a divinity of birth, and in these two capacities
was likened by the Greeks to their Leukothea and Eileithyia
respectively. As the former she became a goddess of the sea
and of sailors, while Melikertes, or Palaimon, the son of Leu-
kothea, was likened to the Roman Portunus ("Protector of
Harbours").

The gods of the seasons were few. The explanations sug-
gested by the ancients to account for the significance of the
goddess Angerona are childish, and she seems really to have
been, like Anna Perenna, a divinity of the winter solstice.
As protector of plants through all their stages from blooming
to fruit-bearing Vertumnus was perhaps aboriginally a god of
the changing year. Ovid relates that, in the days of King Proca,
Vertumnus fell in love with Pomona, a shy nymph who with-
drew from the society of men to the retirement and duties of
her orchard and garden, and although in many disguises he
sought to make his way into her retreat, it was all in vain,
until he presented himself in the form of an old woman. He
then told her of his passion, but all his words could not avail
to soften her heart. Only when he showed himself to her in
his true likeness, as a youth of unblemished beauty, did she
relent; and from that time on they were never seen apart.



 



 



 



 



PLATE LX
Genius and Lares

In the centre stands the Genius, presumably of the
head of the household, in human form, while below he
appears in the guise of a serpent approaching an altar
to devour the offerings placed thereon. In his right
hand the Genius holds a sacrificial saucer and in his
left a box of incense, and on either side of him dance
two Lares, each holding a rbyton (drinking-horn) and
a small bronze pail. From a wall-painting in the
House of the Vettii, Pompeii (Hermann-Bruckmann,
Denkm&ler der Malerei dis Altertums^ No. 48). See
pp. 291, 298-99.



 



 




 



 



 



 



NATIVE ITALIC GODS 291

(b) Nature-Gods: Of Human Life^ Earthy Agriculturey
and Herding

Genius; luno. — If we adopt the Roman point of view, and
regard the Genius of man and the luno of woman as functional
powers originating outside of human life and employing men
and women merely as fields of operation, we must place these
two divinities among the nature-gods. Fundamentally Genius
was the procreative power of each man and luno that of each
woman, whence, finally, through a logical expansion the names
came to stand severally for the two sexes and their respective
life-interests. The ramifications of man's activities arrested
the development of Genius as an individual numeny while the
restricted sameness of woman's life intensified the individuality
of luno. In Genius, however, was latent the germ of the man-
worship of the Empire. luno presided over the conception of
children and their development up to birth, while her Samnite
epithet, Populona, marked her as the divinity who augmented
the population. Her union with luppiter and her identification
with Hera were late and greatly altered her personality.

Ceres. — Ceres and her male counterpart, Cerus (who was
snuflFed out early), were among the oldest of the Italic gods.
Ceres was closely associated with Tellus. The purpose of all
her festivals was to elicit her blessing on the crops in all their
stages from seeding until harvest, and the fact that the staple
grain foods were her gift to the people gave her a peculiarly
plebeian standing. Myth represented her as very susceptible
to oflFence and as prompt to punish the offender.

Tellus Mater. — Tellus, or Tellus Mater, seems to have be-
longed to the same ancient stratum as Ceres and to have been
primevally affiliated with her. As her name implies, she was
really Mother Earth, but in agriculture she was a personifica-
tion of the field which receives and cherishes the seed. In time,
however, she had to yield place to Ceres, as a double of the

Greek Demeter, only to reappear later under the name Terra
1—23



 



 



292 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

Mater. In certain rites she was held to be a divinity of the
underworld, for when the bodies of the dead were entrusted,
like the seed-grain, to her care, she was simply taking back
what she herself had given. In myth, she stood, of course, for
Gaia (Ge).

Liber. — Liber first arose as an epithet of luppiter to desig-
nate the amplitude of his productive powers in the fertiliza-
tion of the seed of plants and animals, but later the adjective
became detached and invested with personality, the resulting
divinity being then identified as Dionysos and appointed as the
protector of the vine. Liber's female counterpart. Libera, was
equated with Kore and was thus drawn into the circle of Ceres.

Saturnus. — From the ancient prominence of Satumus ("the
Sower *'; cf. serere)^ or, in English, Saturn, Italy was often
known in myth as Satumia. The native function of Satumus
is transparent in his name, but this was gradually broadened
so as to include practically all agricultural operations, his
great December festival, the Saturnalia, having for its object
the germination of the seed just sown, while the sickle, as his
chief symbol, marked his intimate relation to harvesting.
For some reason unknown to us he was given a high place
in Italic myth, where he was the husband of Ops. Through
his association with her he assimilated some of her chthonic
traits, and, further, through her identification as Rhea, was in
his turn identified with Kronos, thus coming to be exalted as
the ruler of the Golden Age.

Consus and Ops. — The special province of Consus (cf .
conderey "to store *')> a purely Italic god, was the safe garner-
ing of the fruits of the field, and the underground location of
his altar at Rome is a sort of myth without words, symbolizing
as it did the common custom of storing the grain in pits. His
most intimate companion in cult was Ops, who seems prima-
rily to have been the personal embodiment of a bountiful har-
vest, though she assumed the secondary function of protecting
the private and public granaries against destruction by fire.



 



 



NATIVE ITALIC GODS 293

Mars. — The god Mars (Mavors, Marspiter, Maspiter)
was known to all the primitive stocks. In his later career he
was certainly the god of war, and in the Roman versions of
Greek legends his name regulariy replaced that of Ares, but
that war was his role from the beginning is not generally ad-
mitted, for he may have been a god of vegetation and of the
borderiands lying between the farmstead and the wild, and have
possessed the double function of fostering the crops and herds
and of defending them against the attacks of enemies from
without. Just as the Greeks associated the horse and the bull
with Poseidon, so the Italians variously connected the wood-
pecker, the ox, and the wolf with Mars.

Faunus. — No Roman god incorporated in his single per-
son more features of terrestrial nature than did Faunus
(cf. favere^ "to favour")- There is no doubt that he had
been established in the life of the people of the fold and the
hamlet from a very remote age, and so familiar were they
with him that they could take some of those liberties with his
personality such as mythology allows. He was, their legends
ran, the kindly spirit of out-of-doors who caused crop and
herd to flourish and who warded oflF wolves, being Lupercus
in this latter aspect. It was he who was the speaker of the
weird prophetic voices which men heard in the forest, and
late legend said that he cast his prophecies in the form
of verse, and thus became the inventor of poetry. Yet
there was a mischievous side to his nature as well as a seri-
ous, for he was the spirit who sent the Nightmare (Incubo).
Fauna, a divinity of fertility, passed now as his wife, now as
his sister.

Silvanus. — Silvanus seems to have sprung into being from
the detached and divinized epithet of either Mars or Faunus,
and his domain, true to his name, was the woodland. He
bestowed his favour on hunter and shepherd and on all the
interests of the husbandman who had won a title to his acres
through clearing away the wild timber. He was himself



 



 



294 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

mythologically conceived as a hunter or as an ideal gardener,
and many stories of Pan were transferred to him.

Diana. — The earliest of the Italic divinities to be adopted
by Rome was Diana, and her cult on the Aventine Hill was
simply a transference of her cult at Aricia of Latium. The
common belief of a later period that she was the same as
Artemis obscured her original nature, but her affiliation at
Aricia with the spring-nymph Egeria, and with Virbius, both
divinities of child-birth, arouses the suspicion that her function
was a similar one.

Venus. — The process which converted the native Italian
Venus into a goddess of love and the Roman double of Aph-
rodite is very interesting. Her personality seems to have been
an efflorescence of her name, which first denoted the element of
attractiveness in general, then, as it narrowed, this quality
in nature, and, in the end, the goddess who elaborated it. To
the utilitarian Roman the chief field of her activity was the
market-gardens on which the city depended for a large pro-
portion of its food-stuflFs, and it was in this capacity, no doubt,
that she was recognized as the same as Aphrodite. With this
identification she took over Aphrodite's attribute of love,
but in so doing arrested her own development along its original
lines. At an early date in Rome she was accorded special
homage as the mother of Aeneas, and, later, as the divine an-
cestress of the Julian family, the temple of Venus Genetrix
built by Julius Caesar and that of Venus and Rome con-
structed by Hadrian being material evidences of her high
standing. Cupido became her companion in myth as Eros
was that of Aphrodite.

Flora. — Flora was an ancient goddess of springtime and
flowers, giving beauty and fragrance to the blossom, sweet-
ness to honey, aroma to wine, and charm to youth. Her
April festival was marked by the unstinted and varied use of
flowers, and by the practice of pursuing animals often ritually
associated with fertility.



 



 



 



 



PLATE LXI

I

Arbthousa

The head of Arethousa may be distinguished from
that of Persephone (see Plate IV, Fig. 4) in that it
lacks the diadem of stalks and ears of grain. The
dolphins indicate that the nymph dwells by the sea.
From a decadrachm of Syracuse of the fourth century
B.C. (enlarged two diameters). See p. 257.

2

Ianus Bifrons

This coin type delineates the Roman conception of
the two-faced god of entrances. Each face is that of
an old man with bushy hair and beard, and is in keep-
ing with the idea recorded in Ovid that Ianus was the
oldest of the gods. From a Roman bronze coin of
the fourth century B.C. (G. F. Hill, Historical Roman
Coins^ Plate I, Fig. i). See p. 297.



 



 





 



 



 



 



NATIVE ITALIC GODS 295

Fortuna. — If we follow the successive stages of Fortuna's
growth, we must rank her as a nature-god. As far back as we
can probe into her history, she was apparently the deification
of that incalculable element which shapes the conditions of
harvest, a time of great anxiety to an agricultural people, while
her votaries at Praeneste believed that she controlled the des-
tiny of women in child-birth. She was, in brief, a sort of in-
dependent predetermining force in nature. As Vergil repre-
sented her, however, she was the incorporate will of the gods,
and submission to her decisions was always a moral victory.
Her Greek counterpart was generally Tyche, rarely Moira.

(c) Nature-Gods: Of the Water

The importance of springs and streams in the life of the
Italian sufficiently accounts for his belief in their individual
numina. The numina of the springs appeared as kindly young
goddesses gifted with song and prophecy and with the power
of healing, but they were also, after a manner, sorceresses,
though they used their magic to good ends. The best known
of these at Rome was lutuma who, the legends said, was the
wife of lanus and the mother of Fons ("Fountain")- The
Camenae, nymphs of song and of child-birth, were known as the
Roman muses, one of their number, Carmentis (or Carmenta),
like a Greek Fate, singing to the new-born child its destiny.
Egeria, the nymph brought in from Aricia, had gifts like those
of the Camenae. The Romans imagined the numina of rivers
to be benevolent and indulgent old men.

Neptunus. — Neptunus, as the divinity of the element of
moisture, belonged to the oldest circle of the Roman gods,
and only through his likeness to Poseidon did he become the
lord of the sea. His nature confined the observance of his
worship to the rural population, and the persistence of his
festival, the Neptunalia, the purpose of which was to bring
moisture to the land, into the fourth century of our era is one



 



 



296 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

evidence of the tenacious power of nature-religion over the
masses of the Roman people.

(d) Nature-Gods: Of Fire, of the Underworld^ and of Disease

Folcanus. — The fire-god Volcanus was far less conspicuous
than one would have expected him to be in the land of Vesu-
vius, and doubtless because the volcano had been quiescent
for many centuries prior to 79 a.d. Although the god wore
the mask of Hephaistos in the Latin renderings of Greek
myth, he was by nature only partially qualified to do so. In
the old Roman group of gods he was the spirit of destructive
rather than of useful fire, and was reputed to be of an irascible
disposition which always needed placation, whence the pres-
ence of many docks and valuable stores at Ostia led to the
wide extension of his worship in that place.

Vediovis. — Left to himself, and with his imagination un-
prodded by the Greek spirit of wonder, the Roman gave little
time to speculating on the lot of man after death. His chief
interest was in the living and those yet to be born, so that one
is not surprised to find his divinities of the underworld few
and only vaguely outlined. The chief one was Vediovis (Vei-
ovis, Vedius), who seems to have been given his place in the
lower world largely for the reason that the logic of the Roman
religious system called for a spiritual and physical opposite
to luppiter. Little is known of him beyond the fact that he
was invoked in oaths along with Tellus.

Febris. — The disease which the Romans feared the most
was, of course, malaria, which was the fever {febris) par ex-
cellence; and so concrete and uniform were its manifestations
that we utterly lose the Roman's point of view if we regard
Febris, the divinity, as born of an abstraction. This holds
equally true of the offshoots of Febris, Dea Tertiana and Dea
Quartana, the one standing for the malarial chills which,
according to our mode of reckoning, return every second day,
the other for those which recur every third day.



 



 

[Prometheus]

NATIVE ITALIC GODS 297

(e) Gods of Human Society

lanus. T- So obscure was the origin of lanus that the
Roman poets took all manner of liberties with him, using the
joint appearance of his head and of a ship on coins as data for
a mythical history of this god. He was, said one of them, an
aboriginal king who ruled on Mount laniculum, at first sharing
his throne with a noble whose name was Camese, but later,
when luppiter's divine regime began, being banished along
with Saturnus and taking up his abode in Latium. In another
account he was represented as having come to Latium from the
land of the Perrhaiboians together with his sister-wife, Camese,
who bore him three sons, one of them being Tiberinus, after
whom the Tiber was named. The legends did not stint lanus
with wives. Besides Camese he is said to have married either
the water-nymph Venilia and by her to have become the father
of Canens, or the water-nymph luturna, who bore to him Fons
(or Fontus). Again he is said to have conceived a passion for a
certain divinity Cama, whom he seized in a grotto, after a
long pursuit, promising to appoint her the Goddess of Hinges
should she yield to him. Upon her compliance he renamed her
Cardo, or Cardea ("Hinge *')> and gave her the white thorn
with which to banish evil from doorways.

Of all the theories to account for the origin of lanus none
is more probable than that which comprehends him as a per-
sonality gradually evolved from a private ritual of a magical
order designed to drive evil influences from the doors of dwell-
ings. "The very vagueness of this god, even with the Romans
themselves, indicates that their interest was rather in the con-
crete values associated with the doorway and in the practical
expedients necessary in guarding it." • As the state was simply
an enlarged domestic circle, it was not unnatural that lanus
should be connected with the ancient gates or arches in the
Forum which bore his name, and there, in the late Republican
period, stood an image of the god with two faces, one of which



 



 



298 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

was turned toward the east and the other toward the west
This intimation that his domain lay both before and behind
him may have sprung from the very obvious fact that every
entrance has two sides. From being a god of entrances it was
not a far cry to become a deity of beginnings, and as such he
was invoked at the beginning of each year, each month, and
each day. The prominence of his name and of his epithet,
paUr^ in ancient ceremonial formulae attests his great age.

Vesta. — By reason of her fixed character Vesta had no
place in formal myth. She was the numen of the hearth, first
of the home and then of the state, and since the functions and
symbolism of the hearth never changed from century to cen-
tury, neither could Vesta vary a jot or a tittle from her original
conception — any alteration would have broken the thread
of continuity in the religious sentiment of the Roman as a
member of a family and as a citizen. In the home Vesta typi-
fied and protected the life of the family; the food in the larder,
destined to be subjected to the heat of the hearth-flame, was
under her care; the matron was her priestess. The Temple
(or, better, the House) of Vesta in the Forum was nothing
less than the home and fireside of the state, and on its hearth
the six Vestal Virgins prepared sacrificial offerings in behalf
of the state with food taken from the sacred larder, while the
inviolability of the home and the integrity of the state were
pictured in the purity of Vesta herself and of her Virgins. Her
title, matety was suggestive of her graciousness.

Di Penates; Lares. — Also closely connected with family
life were the Di Penates, the numerous divinities of the penuSy
or larder, though they were so dimly conceived that they were
endued with neither sex nor personality, their plurality being
doubtless derived from the variety and the changing character
of the stock of food-stuffs. From the time of Julius Caesar and
Augustus the mythical idea of the Trojan origin of the Penates
prevailed. The Lares are linked with the Penates in popular
phrase, jointly constituting a synonym for household property,



 



 



NATIVE ITALIC GODS 299

but at the outset, apparently, there was only one Lar to a
household, and that the protecting numen of the allotment of
land on which the actual building stood- At length its function
was broadened so as to include the house, and in Imperial
times the name became pluralized and acquired a character
as a synonym of house. When Ovid wrote that the Lares were
the children of the outraged Lara, or Dea Tacita, and Mercury,
he was indulging his fancy; as a matter of fact, they were some-
times held to be the Roman counterparts of the Kouretes, the
Korybantes, or the Daktyloi.

Minerva. — Any complexity there was in the personality of
the static divinity, Minerva (Menerva), was due to the in-
fluence of Athene, with whom she was identified, for in her
primitive estate she seems to have been merely the goddess of
the few and simple arts of an undeveloped rustic community.
The Romans probably got her from Falerii prior to its fall in
241 B.C. and after the institution of the so-called Calendar of
Numa, and established her in a temple in the Aventine as the
patroness of the crafts and the guilds. Her inclusion in the
Capitoline triad beside luppiter and luno may have resulted
from a conscious attempt to reproduce in Rome a group like
that of Zeus, Hera, and Athene.

(f) Abstract Gods

The inelastic character of the Roman's religious thinking
is nowhere more clearly brought out than in the circle of his
abstract divinities, for Pavor ("Panic")? Pax ("Peace''),
Concordia ("Harmony"), Spes ("Hope"), and the like, were
each fixed personalities of one trait and one trait only, a cir-
cumstance which naturally shut them out from narrative
myth. The field for which they were by nature suited was that
of stereotyped symbolism, and only so far as an accepted reli-
gious symbol is a myth may they be considered as mythological
personages. They and their several symbols are too numerous
for us to discuss here.



 



 



300 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

(g) Momentary and Departmental Gods

The great host of the Roman's momentary and departmental
divinities, commonly known to scholars as Sondergotter^ seem
at first glance to be an argument which disproves the lack of
pliability in the Roman's habits of religious thought. As a
matter of fact, however, they confirm the reality of this char-
acteristic, for as a class they are nothing more than an aggre-
gate of the most simply conceived units which sustain to one
another the same immediate relations that exist between the
practical interests and activities of a primitive people. Some
of these divinities, such as Messor ("Harvester"), Convector
("Gamerer")> and Sari tor ("Weeder''), spiritualize human
acts, while others spiritualize certain processes of nature which
are conspicuous either in themselves or in their results. A
chosen few of this latter order will be ample for the purpose
of illustration: Seia, Segesta, Nodutus, Patelana, and Matura
are numina that preside successively over the sowing and sprout-
ing of the com, the formation of the joints on its stem, the un-
folding of leaf and flower, and, finally, the ripening of straw
and ear. Similarly each stage of a child's growth from concep-
tion to adult stature is guarded by a numen whose function is
transparent in its commonly accepted name. In brief, no nat-
ural process of moment to the Roman's well-being fails to
receive recognition as a divinity.

III. GODS OF FOREIGN ORIGIN

Apollo. — Apollo was from the beginning frankly a loan
from the Greek world. He was brought to Rome in the fifth
century by way of Cumae as a god of healing to put an end
to a great plague which threatened to exterminate the populace,
and in his train came the books of the Sibylline oracles. In the
Augustan age the average Roman knew him only as the god
of poetry and music, a role which was first assigned him in



 



 



 



 



PLATE LXII

Magna Mater

T^e image of Kybele, or, as known to the Romans,
Magna Mater, is seated on a throne placed in a car
drawn by lions. On her head is the so-called mural
crown, on the back of which an end of her bimaMn
has been so caught up as to hang behind her like a
veil In her lap she holds a tympanon on edge. This
group is commemorative of an annual Roman ritual in
which the image of the Great Mother was conveyed
in her car from her shrine in the city to a neighbour-
ing stream, where both were ceremonially bathed.
From a bronze of the second century a.d., found in
Rome and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York {photograph). See pp. 273 ff., 303-04.



 



 




 



 



 



 



FOREIGN GODS 301

Rome, when translations of Greek literary works began to
attain popularity. Augustus chose him as the divine patron
of his regime and dedicated to him a beautiful temple on the
Palatine.

Aesculapius. — The outbreak of a pestilence at Rome in
292 B.C. turned the Romans to a consultation of the Sibylline
books, where they discovered directions enjoining them to
send a deputation of citizens to the healing shrine of Asklepios
at Epidauros, the envoys bringing back a serpent as a living
symbol of the god, and at the same time instructions for
establishing the new worship. It happened that when their
ship reached the city, the serpent leaped overboard and swam
to the island in the Tiber, where the new shrine was built,
the god's name being given the Latin form of Aesculapius.
When Salus, originally an abstract divinity of well-being in
general, became recognized as the same as Hygieia ("Health")*
the matter-of-fact Roman mind made her the oflScial consort
of the new god of healing.

Mercurius. — In the early fifth century, on the occasion of
a failure of crops which necessitated the importation of foreign
food-stuffs, the Romans borrowed one phase of the character
of Hermes, and, exalting it to the dignity of godhead, used it
to protect the maritime routes which the grain ships must fol-
low. Naturally, this phase was the favour which Hermes ac-
corded to trade and traders, and Mercurius, the name of the
new god, connected as it is with the Latin words merces ("mer-
chandise") and mercatOT ("tradesman"), served as a permanent
register of his function. While Mercurius always took the
place of Hermes in the Romanized Greek legends, his character
in cult remained unaltered through the centuries. In art he
was generally distinguished by the chief symbols of Hermes —
the caduceus, the pouch, and the winged hat.

Castor and Pollux. — The worship of Kastor and Polydeu-
kes, as Castor and Pollux, came to Italy at so early a date that
when the Romans accepted it, apparently from Tusculum, they



 



 



302



GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY



did so under the impression that it was of Italic origin; but the
outstanding features of these divinities at Rome — their asso-
ciation with horses and lakes,
and their power to give help in
time of need — were brought
with them from Greece. In
myth it is recorded that they
suddenly appeared at the bat-
tles of Lake Regillus, Pydna,
and Verona just in time to
bring victory to the Roman
cause. After the battle of
Lake Regillus they were seen
to water their horses in the
basin of the fountain of lu-
turna, and on this spot the
citizens erected a shrine known
as the Temple of the Castors,
or the Temple of Castor.

Hercules. — Under the name
of Hercules the Greek Herakles
was admitted into the Roman
family of gods as though he
were a native Italic divinity.
At his very ancient altar, the

Zeus, seated on an altar-like throne be- ^ t| *- . i. t?

tween luno and Hercules, draws the two -«^^ Moxxma^ near the TOHim

diyinities toward one another thus sancti- Boarium, or the Cattle-market,

tying their union. From the design incised i • t j

on the back of an Etruscan bronze mirror he WaS Worshipped aS a god

of the fourth century Bc now in the Met- powerful to aid Commerce and

ropolitan Museum of Art, New York. '^

Other practical pursuits,
whence, accordingly, tithes of profits in trade and of the booty
of war were dedicated to him.

The popularity which Herakles enjoyed in Greece, owing to
his unparalleled ability to bring things to pass, so inspired the
Roman imagination that almost out of whole cloth it manufac-




FiG. II. Marriage of Iuno and
Hercules



 



 



FOREIGN GODS 303

tured mythological forms to glorify the adopted Hercules.
Not only did he have an intrigue with a certain Acca Larentia,
but he was the husband now of luno, now of Evander's daugh-
ter, now of Rhea, now of Fauna; and by the last three in this
order he became the father of Pallas, Aventinus, and Latinus,
Among his mighty feats were numbered his retention of the
waters of Lake Avemus in their basin by means of a dam, and
his slaughter of some threatening giants at Cumae. When he
was returning eastward through Italy with the cattle of Geryo-
neus, we are told, some of his herd were stolen by a native
shepherd named Cacus (apparently an aboriginal fire-god) and
driven backward into a cave; but, although at first puzzled
by the inverted tracks, Hercules at length succeeded in locat-
ing and recovering the animals and in killing the thief. He
then naade himself known to Evander, an Arkadian refugee
ruling on the Palatine, who received him with unbounded hos-
pitality and dedicated to him the Ara Maxima^ the ceremonies
observed at this altar by Evander becoming the model of those
used in the worship of Hercules through succeeding centuries.

Dis Pater. — Dis Pater — also known as Orcus — and Pro-
serpina were both Greek, the name Dis being simply a trans-
lation of nXovTooi/ ("Wealthy") and that of Orcus a faulty
transliteration of ""Op^o?, the "oath" sworn in the name of
Hades, while Proserpina is obviously an adaptation of Per-
sephone. To the Roman Dis Pater was the chief god of the lower
world in his function as king of the departed, and Orcus was the
same deity in his role as the inexorable reaper, or, occasionally,
as that divinity who takes pity on suffering mortals and gently
bears them away to their long rest, the nature of Orcus being
so readily grasped by the Roman mind, in its slavery to fact,
that he was the more popular of the two forms.

Magna Mater. — In the midst of the Romans* despair of
receiving help against Hannibal from their accepted gods they
turned, in obedience to a Sibylline oracle, to the Asiatic Magna
Mater, the "Great Mother" of the gods. With the permission



 



 



304 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

of Attalos of Pergamon they brought to Rome from Phrjrgia
the meteoric stone which embodied her and then established a
festival for the re-enactment of the rites which characterized
her worship in the east. She accomplished the purpose for which
she had been brought and drove Hannibal out of Italy, but m
spite of his gratitude to her, the sedate Roman never became
thoroughly accustomed to the wild abandon of her votaries.

IV. MYTHS OF THE EARLY DAYS OF ROME

The Aeneid of VergiL — In their national epics Naevius and
Ennius had made the glory of the city their central interest and
had popularized the idea that the founders of Rome were of
Trojan stock. Vergil took over these motives, and, by injecting
into them his own deep love of his land and his broodings on
the life and destiny of man, and by lavishing on them his
chastened poetical skill, produced the greatest of all Roman
epics, the Aeneidj which tells the story of the wanderings of
Trojan Aeneas.

Aeneas (Greek Aineias), as we have read, was the son of
Anchises and Venus (i. e. Aphrodite). Amid the confusion
attendant on the sack of Troy, he made his way with his father
and little son, lulus, to the shelter of the wooded heights near
the city, and there gathered about him a number of fugitives,
whom he led in making preparations to sail away to a strange
land and found a new home. After many busy weeks they set
out, first crossing to Thrace and then steering southward to
Delos, where, at the shrine of Apollo, they were bidden by
the oracle to seek the motherland of their ancestors and
there make their abode. Believing that this referred to Crete,
Aeneas led his followers thither, but after the little colony
had suffered many misfortunes he was warned in a dream to
establish it instead in the western land of Hesperia (i. e. Italy).
In the quest of this country he again set sail with his follow-
ers, and many were the vicissitudes of their long voyage. They



 



 



EARLY DAYS OF ROME 305

came successively to the island of the Harpies, to the home of
Helenus and Andromache on the coast of Epirus, and to the
land of the Cyclops, where they saw the blinded Polyphemus.
In an endeavour to avoid Scylla and Charybdis, they hugged
the southern shores of Sicily with the intention of doubling
the western extremity of the island, but luno espied them, and,
unable to forget that they belonged to the Trojan race which
she hated, roused a great storm that drove them on the coast
of Carthage.

At this time Carthage was ruled by a Tyrian queen named
Dido, who welcomed the fugitives into her court, entertaining
them for many months as though they were a company of
kings, and at her request Aeneas told the story of the fall of
his city and of his perilous voyage from land to land in his
search for a home. His personal charms won her love, and she
offered to share her kingdom with him, but when, weary of
wandering longer and despairing of finding his destined land,
Aeneas was on the point of yielding to her passionate impor-
tunities, luppiter, through Mercury, roused him from his
lethargy and turned his face once more toward the ships and
the sea.

Re-embarking, the Trojans sailed northward and under the
protection of Neptune reached the shores of Hesperia near
Cumae, the home of the Sibyl. Here, like Odysseus in Kim-
meria, Aeneas made the descent into Hades and saw many
dire monsters and the shadowy troops of the dead. After con-
versing with the shades of some whom he had known in life,
he turned to make his way upward to the light, his path
leading him through Elysium, where he found the shade of
his father, Anchises, who had died since the departure from
Troy. By him he was led into the spacious Vale of Forget-
fulness and was shown the vast assemblage of souls that were
waiting to be implanted in some human body and given life
upon earth, while Anchises also revealed to him the trials
which he had yet to experience in establishing his colony in



 



 

[Prometheus]

3o6 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLCXJY

Italy and the glories of the great nation into which the exiles
were destined to grow. Pondering these things in his heart,
Aeneas pursued his way back to earth.

From Cumae Aeneas sailed northward until he cast anchor
in the mouth of the Tiber off the coast of Latium at a time
when the king of this country was Latinus, the son of Faunus
and a grandson of Saturn. Recognizing in Aeneas the man who,
according to a prophecy, was to be the husband of his only
daughter, Lavinia, he entered into a political alliance with
him and promised to make him his son-in-law, thereby annul-
ling Lavinia's betrothal toTumus, the king of the neighbouring
Rutulians. Through the interference of the implacable luno
this led to a long war between Turnus and Latinus, but though
the latter was killed in one of the early struggles, his forces,
aided by Aeneas and his men, succeeded in winning a victory.
Turnus, defeated but not discouraged, called to his assistance
Mezentius, the Etruscan king, and to such an extent did he
threaten the supremacy of the Trojans that the latter asso-
ciated themselves with a band of Greek colonists who, under
the leadership of Evander and his son Pallas, were living on
the hills destined to be included in the city of Rome. In the
conflicts that ensued, Pallas was slain by Turnus, and, later,
Mezentius and Turnus fell at the hand of Aeneas, the Trojans
achieving, through the death of this last foe, a victory which
gave them undisputed possession of the land. At this point
the narrative of the Aeneid ends, leaving the reader to infer
that the nuptials of Aeneas and Lavinia were promptly con-
summated.

EvenU subsequent to those of the Aeneid. — After his mar-
riage, Aeneas founded in Latium a new city which he called
Lavinium after his wife, and when he died a short time later,
his subjects, regarding him as a god, gave him the title of
luppiter Indiges. About thirty years subsequent to the found-
ing of Lavinium, Ascanius, the son whom Lavinia bore to
Aeneas, withdrew a portion of its population and established



 



 



 



 



PLATE LXIII
Romulus and Remus

This archaic Italian bronze is commonly interpreted
as representing the she-wolf suckling Romulus and
Remus in the wild lands near the Tiber; it may have
originally referred, however, to other legendary char-
acters who were said to have been similarly reared.
From a bronze in the Conservatory Museum, Rome
(Brunn-Bruckmann, DenkmdUr griichischer und rSm-
iscber Sculptur^ No. 3 1 . See p. 307.



 



 




 



 



 



 



EARLY DAYS OF ROME 307

the colony of Alba Longa, over which he and his descendants
ruled for several successive generations.

At length a quarrel arose between Numitor and Amulius,
two brothers in the direct line of descent, as to which of them
should reign, and Amulius, the younger and less scrupulous,
getting the upper hand, banished his brother, and, in order to
wipe out that branch of the family, forced his niece, Rea Silvia,
to take the vows of a Vestal. But his wicked designs were frus-
trated by destiny, for the god Mars looked with favour on the
maiden, and by him she became the mother of twin boys,
Romulus and Remus. When Amulius learned of their birth,
he cruelly had them set adrift in a basket on the flooded Tiber,
but when the water subsided, they were left on dry land and
were found and nursed by a she-wolf. As it happened, the
king's shepherd, Faustulus, came across them in the wild lands
and taking them to his home reared them as his own sons.
When they had become men, they learned of their relationship
to Amulius and of his wicked deeds, and, accordingly, with a
band of youths they attacked him in his palace, slew him, and
restored the kingdom of Alba Longa to their grandfather,
Numitor. Unable to sever their connexions with the locality
where they had spent their boyhood, they jointly founded a
new city there, but when it became necessary to decide the
question as to which of them should rule, they fell to quarrel-
ling, until finally, in an outburst of anger, Romulus killed
Remus, and, now without a rival, assumed the title and the
powers of king. To perpetuate his own name he called his city
Rome.



1—24



 



 



 



 



APPENDIX



 



 



 



 



APPENDIX

I. SURVIVALS OF ANCIENT GREEK DIVINITIES AND MYTHS IN

MODERN GREECE

rj 1910 Mr. J. C. Lawson published at Cambridge a book entitled
ModemGreek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion^ basing his treatise
mainly on his own investigations, yet also taking into account those
of his predecessors in the field, Polites, Hahn, Schmidt, Bent, and
others. In undertaking his task he was more timely than he knew,
anticipating as he did by only a small margin of years both the
Balkan Vl^ar and the present European Vl^ar. In view of the rapidly
changing conditions of life and thought in the peninsula since 191 2,
no one can entertain a doubt that Mr. Lawson has gathered together,
just before it is too late, certain popular beliefs of undeniable an-
tiquity which are of incalculable importance to the student of com-
parative religion in general and to the student of the ancient Greek
religion in particular. It is generally regretted, however, that his book
lacks the happy multum in parvo which would have made it more
useful to scholars and would have ensured it a wider circle of lay
readers; his prolix discussion, for instance, of Kallikantzaroi, and the
protracted study of revenants among the Slavonic stocks, are, to say
the least, ennuyeux as well as of doubtful profit, even for those thor-
oughly interested in such themes. Nevertheless, we overlook these
faults in recognition of the true worth of the volume, and in the para-
graphs which follow we shall present a summary of those features of
the book which reflect most clearly the principal gods and myths dis-
cussed in our own study.

The objection is frequently urged that the strong Slavic strain in
the population of modem Greece precludes the possibility of differ-
entiating, with any degree of certainty, the purely Greek elements
in the belief of the common people from those factors which have
their origin in other sources. Mr. Lawson's reply to this is very con-
vincing. He points out^ that "even in the centre of the Peloponnese
where the Slavonic element has probably been strongest, the pure
Greek type is not wholly extinct," and also that in many of the
islands the population is admittedly of an almost unmixed Greek de-
scent. The probability of the continuity of Greek tradition, at least
in certain districts, is therefore very strong. At any rate "the exact



 



 



312 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGV

proportion of Slavonic and of Hellenic blood in the veins of the mod-
em Greeks is not a matter of supreme importance."

Only in a few localities, notably in Crete, does any form of the
name of Zeus survive, but the god still lives under the title Gefc
("God"), a title so conveniently equivocal that the Christian can
use it without heresy and at the same time square perfectly with the
ancient pagan belief. For instance, the modem Greek says, /Spexa
6 e^ ("God rains"), or, 6 Gc^ plxv^i vtpb ("God is throwing water"),
just as the ancient said, Zein 5c4 ("Zeus rains"). When it thunders,
the modem exclaims, fipovrow rh irkroKa iivd r' UXoyo rod Qeov ("the
hoofs of God's horse are resounding"), an expression which instantly
calls to mind the story of Pegasos in the stables of Olympos or har-
nessed to the rolling car of Zeus. The lightning is God's peculiar
prerogative and at times is even employed as an instrument of
vengeance on o£Fending mortals or devils as on the Titans and Sal-
moneus of old.

Poseidon survives in function and attribute only, though he can
be identified as the divinity with the trident alluded to in a story of
Zakynthos which Mr. Lawson* borrows from Bemhard Schmidt.
"A king who was the strongest man of his time made war on a
neighbour. His strength lay in three hairs on his breast. He was
on the point of crushing his foes when his wife was bribed to cut off
the hairs, and he with thirteen companions was taken prisoner.
But the hairs began to grow again, and so his enemies threw him and
his companions into a pit. The others were killed by the fall, but
he being thrown in last, fell upon them and was unhurt. Over the
pit his enemies then raised a mound. He found however in the pit
a dead bird, and having fastened its wings to his hands flew up and
carried away mound and all with him. Then he soared high in the
air until a storm of rain washed away the clay that held the feathers
to his hands, and he fell into the sea. *Then from out the sea came
the god thereof (6 daliMvas Tfjs ^dXeur<raf) and struck him with a three-
pronged fork (jxla irtipowa /U rpla dtx^Xta)' and changed him into a
dolphin until such time as he should find a maiden ready to be his
wife. The dolphin after some time saved a ship-wrecked king and
his daughter, and the princess by way of reward took him for her
husband and the spell was broken." This story contains clear
reminiscences of Nisos and Ikaros as well as of the ancient god
of the sea.

To the Greek of today the Archangel Michael is as Hermes to the
pre-Christian Greek, being the psychopomp, the divine escort of
souls to the afterworld, which is still popularly located in the heart
of earth. In the Maina, at the southem extremity of the Peloponnesc,
the belief prevails that, with drawn sword in hand, Michael keeps



 



 



APPENDIX 313

sentry on the mouths of the great cavern of Tainaros, which is still
the best known approach to the underworld.

The character and functions of Dionysos are transferred to Saint
Dionysios in a legend told in many places. "Once upon a time
Saint Dionysios was on his way to Nazos: and as he went he espied a
small plant which excited his wonder. He dug it up, and because the
sun was hot sought wherewith to shelter it. As he looked about, he
saw the bone of a bird's leg, and in this he put the plant to keep it
safe. To his surprise the plant began to grow, and he sought again
a larger covering for it. This time he found the leg-bone of a lion,
and as he could not detach the plant from the bird's leg, he put both
together in that of the lion. Yet again it grew and this time he found
the leg-bone of an ass and put plant and all into that. And so he
came to Nazos. And when he came to plant the vine — for the
plant was in fact the first vine — he could not sever it from the bones
that sheltered it, but planted them all together. Then the vine grew
and bore grapes and men made wine and drank thereof. And first
when they drank they sang like birds, and when they drank more
they grew strong as lions, and afterwards foolish as asses." ' A similar
popular identification of this beneficent saint with Dionysos is also
to be inferred from the fact that the road which skirts the south side
of the Athenian Acropolis and the ancient theatre of Dionysos is at
present known as the street of Saint Dionysios.

Of all the survivals of the greater goddesses, the most conspicuous
is Demeter, who lives on in three forms. In one of these she retains
her agrarian relations, but has changed her sez and taken on the
name of Saint Demetrios, whereas at Eleusis she has well maintained
her old character under the name of Saint Demetra. There is a
popular myth concerning the saint, which, in spite of its many con-
taminations of ancient and mediaeval elements, is distinctly reminis-
cent of the sad wanderings of Demeter in her search for the lost
Persephone. Along with Aphrodite and Pyrrha, Demeter contributes
traits to the modem Goddess of the Sea and Earth. This hybrid
divinity, the story runs, drowned all mankind by sending a flood upon
the earth as a punishment of human sin, but on the subsidence of
the waters she created a new race by sowing stones.

In Aitolia, the land of Atalante, the huntress Artemis survives as
4 icupA KAXoj ("Lady Kalo"), a title which seems to be more than a
mere echo of the divine Kalliste and her mythic double, Kallisto.
In some localities, however, Artemis, like Demeter, has gone over to
the opposite sez and is now known as Saint Artemidoros, who, in his
capacity as special patron of weakling children, is plainly the direct
successor of the ancient "Aprc/uj xat5orp60os.

At Eleusis Aphrodite (if wpd '<l>po5lTri) has become the beautiful



 



 



314 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

daughter of Saint Demetra, although she is also associated with
Daphni and the heights of Corinth, at both of which places she had
shrines in ancient times, while the people of Z^kynthos still know
her as the mother of Eros (TEpa>ra$). The chaste Athene, on the
other hand, survives only in the recollection that the Parthenon was
at one time converted into a church of the Blessed Virgin.

Although the Nereids were to the ancient Greeks a lesser order of
divinities, they are perhaps the chiefest in the ill-co-ordinated pan-
theon of the modem. Their collective name, N^dtS^, appears in
numerous dialectic forms, and this term, like the ancient designa-
tion NC^M^i, is broadly inclusive of all types of female spirits of the
wild — of water, wood, mountain, spring, and stream. The pres-
ence of the Nereids is suspected everywhere in the great out-of-
doors, and they are conceived as "women half-divine yet not im-
mortal, always young, always beautiful, capricious at best, and at
their worst cruel."* In some districts they have borrowed from the
satyrs the feet of goats or of asses. Human beings and animals alike
are liable to fall under their spells, and like Thetis and her kindred
folk of the sea they have the power of transforming themselves at
pleasure. The Nereids of the springs sometimes steal children as
the nymphs of old carried oflF Hylas, and when they pass over the
land, their paths are marked by whirlwinds. So close are they still
to the lives of the common people that they are believed to consort
with men and to bear them children.

The grim grey ferryman Charon is now known as Charos, or, less
frequently, Charondas, but in the process of centuries he has been
almost utterly despoiled of his craft and oar, and, as the god of death,
has assumed the sceptre of the underworld. Hades being no longer a
person, but a place whither Charos receives the souls of the de-
parted. Associated with Charos are his wife Charissa, or Charondissa,
a merely nominal female counterpart, and a three-headed snake,
although according to a Macedonian story, his animal companion
is a three-headed dog, which can be none other than the hell-hound
Kerberos. There exist only sporadic traces of the old custom of
placing a coin in the mouth of a corpse as passage-money due to
Charon. The prominent place occupied by Charos in the thought
of the modern Greek suggests that his prototype was a much more
important personage in the popular mythology of the ancient than
the literature would lead one to believe, and it may be that among
the rank and file of the people Charon, rather than Hades, was the
Lord of the Dead.

The most monstrous of the mythical creatures living in the
imagination of the modern Hellenes are the Kallikantzaroi, whose
name, like that of the Nereids, appears in many dialectic forms, and



 



 



APPENDIX 3 IS

is derived, Lawson believes and takes great pains to demonstrate,
from that of the Centaurs. Be this as it may, at least a part of the
bestial habits of the Kallikantzaroi have been drawn from the
Centaurs. They are divided into two classes, according as they are
of more than or less than human size, those of the former category
being repulsive to look upon and generally malevolent, while those
of the second type are given to frolic and mischief and are harmless
to men, though not to animals.

In the faith of the populace the Moirai, or Fates, still possess a
very real vitality and are endowed with a large measure of their
primitive powers. In a story current in a certain district of Epeiros
they are three in number, the first of whom spins the thread which
determines the length of each human life, the second accords good
fortune, and the third evil fortune. They are regarded as inhabiting
caves and even artificially wrought openings in the sides of hills,
such as the rock-dwellings in the Hill of the Muses at Athens.
Women rather than men are their most constant votaries, matrons
generally consulting them in reference to motherhood, and maidens
in regard to matrimony. OflFerings are made to them with the ob-
ject of winning their favour and of influencing their decrees, which
are inalterable when once they have been issued.

Pan is not yet dead, ancient legend to the contrary, and Lawson*
gives the epitome of a story treating of him taken from Schmidt's
collection of folk-tales. "Once upon a time a priest had a good son
who tended goats. One day *Panos' gave him a kid with a skin of
gold. He at once offered it as a burnt-offering to God, and in answer
an angel promised him whatever he should ask. He chose a magic
pipe which should make all his hearers dance. So no enemy could
come near to touch him. The king however sent for him, and the
goatherd, after making the envoys dance more than once, volun-
tarily let himself be taken. The king then threw him into prison,
but he had his flute still with him, and when he played even houses
and rocks danced, and fell and crushed all save him and his. 'The
whole business,' concludes the story, *was arranged by Panos to
cleanse the world somewhat of evil men.' ... If the tale be a piece
of genuine tradition [i. e. not a scholastic revival], the conclusion of
it is remarkable. The moral purpose ascribed to the deity seems to
indicate a loftier conception of him than that which is commonly
found in ancient art and literature."



 



 

[Prometheus]

3i6 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY



II. SURVIVALS OF DIVINITIES AND MYTHS OF THE ETRUSCANS
AND ROMANS IN THE ROMAGNOLA

Although Charles Godfrey Leland's book, Etrusco-Roman Rf-
mains ^ first appeared as long ago as 1892, it is still the best compila-
tion of the modem survivals of any ancient Italian religion. It must,
however, be used with great caution. In the first place, it treats
merely of one small district in the north of Italy, the Tuscan Ro-
magna, or Romagnola, whose inhabitants speak a rude form of the
Bolognese dialect, so that one must refrain from applying the au-
thor's remarks and deductions to the whole Italian people of today.
In the next place, Leland was not a scholar in the best sense, for his
knowledge of the ancient religion and mythology was only superficial,
and his judgements are, consequently, very far from safe. His book
is written throughout in a journalistic style, intimate and spirited,
but careless and uncritical. Nevertheless, Leland must be given
credit for having been an enthusiastic and enterprising investigator,
and for having shown a remarkable faculty in winning the confi-
dence of the simple but suspicious folk of the Romagnola and in
inducing them to yield to him the secrets of la vecchia religions,
whence scholars should be grateful to him for blazing a trail for them
through a wilderness hitherto almost unknown. It is to be hoped, as
Professor W. Vl^arde Fowler says, that the pioneer work of Leland
will lead some really qualified investigator to undertake a study in
Italian survivals similar to that made by Lawson in the vague traces
of Greek myths still existing in modem times.

The religions of the Etmscans and the Romans appear today
merely as disjecta membra^ and even when the divinities can be recog-
nized, they have lost the sharp definition of character and function
which distinguished them of old, because of the utter disappearance
of some traits and through the obscuration of others. An explana-
tion may be readily seen if one reflects that this vecchia religiorUy or
*'old religion," is really much less a religion than a system of magic,
a stregeria, as indeed it is frankly called by the people whom it serves,
the tendency of magic being to narrow down the functions of divini-
ties as far as possible.

In name luppiter is dead, but his prerogative of control over the
phenomena of lightning, thunder, and hail is still held by the great
folletto ("spirit") Tinia, who cannot well be other than Tina (or
Tinia), the head of the Etmscan pantheon, and the people dread this
spirit's power of destmction on home and field and flock as their
primitive ancestors feared luppiter and Tina. Terminus, the god of
boundaries, bom of an epithet of luppiter, survives under the name



 



 



APPENDIX 317

of Sentiero, the spirit of the boundary-stone, and those who wantonly
remove such landmarks expose themselves to the vindictive attacks
of the Sentieri.

In Jano with his two heads, one human and the other animal, we
may easily recognize the ancient lanus bifrons of the Forum and the
coins, and Jano's function of presiding over chance is simply a natu-
ral development of lanus's oversight of incipient undertakings.

Maso, "a very great /0/////0" who protects the crops, may derive
his name and office from those of the primitive Mars, who is believed
by many to have been a deity of the fields and marchlands before
war became his special sphere of operations.

There can be no doubt that Fanio is the successor of Faunus in
the latter's role of the practical joker of the woodland sprites. Fanio
suddenly comes on peasants in the thickets, frightening them out
of their wits and laughing at the consternation he has caused, while
at weddings he often anticipates the bridegroom in his embraces,
and when the young husband bursts into a rage, he interrupts him
with a laugh, saying:

"Who am I? — if you would know,
I'm the spirit Fanio!
What in life once gave me bliss,
Pleases me as much as this;
And I think that thanks are due
Unto me for helpmg youl"*

As Faunus had Silvanus for his double, so Fanio has Silvanio, who
is good-natured, but very sensitive to o£Fence. He is the special bogey
of the charcoal-burners, whose piles of wood he scatters when moved
by caprice so to do.

The Lassi, or Lassie, as spirits of ancestors who are heard or seen
in a house after the death of a member of the family, must surely
be in origin the Lares (the Lasa of the Arval Brethren). They are
regarded as both male and female. Larunda, the mythical mother
of the Lares G>mpitales, is now Laronda, the spirit of the barracks,
who manifests a special fondness for soldiers.

The two peculiarly Etruscan divinities, Tages and Begoe, reappear
in Tago and Bergoia. Tago, who remains a spirito bambino and is
invoked to bring healing to afflicted children, is said to emerge from
the ground at times and predict the future. Bergoia retains Begoe's
power over the thunder and the lightning, but seems to have lost her
gift of augury, although this diminution of her power is ofiFset by
her ability to assume human form and thus mingle with men and
women.



 



 



3i8 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

Of the deities which to the ancient Romans were frankly Greek
a few are still found in forms not difficult to recognize. Aplu (cf.
the Etruscan Aplu, Aplun, Apulu) possesses not only traits of his
original, Apollo, but also some borrowed from Artemis. **Aplu is
the most beautiful of all the male spirits. He is also a spirit of music,
and when any one would become a good hunter, or good musician,
or a learned man — un uomo doUo e di taUrUo — ho should repeat
this:

'Aplu, Apluy Aplu I
Thou who art so good and wise.
So learned and talented,
Aplu, Aplu, Aplu!
Thou who art so good
And through all xkt world renowned;
And spoken of by all,
Aplu, Aplu, Aplu!
Even a spirit should be generous,
Granting us fortune and ulent.
Aplu, Aplu, Aplu!
I (therefore) pray thee give me
Fortune and talent!*"'



The knavish and nimble Mercurius is represented in the Roma-
gnola by Teramo (Etruscan Turms). He is not only notorious as a
deceiver of innocent maidens, but is also — and primarily — the
friend of thieves, traders, and messengers; in fact, he is himself a
spirito messagicTO who can flit with news from place to place in the
twinkling of an eye. A constant companion of his, Boschet by name,
may be in origin a form of Apollo.

The spirit of the vines is no longer Liber, but Faflon (Etruscan
Fufluns, Fuflunu), who is probably the equivalent of Dionysos.
At the vintage he often scatters the gathered grapes, and if the
vintagers become angry at his pranks, he utterly destroys the fruit;
but if they take his mischief good-naturedly, he puts the grapes
back in the baskets. Leland thus renders into English a prayer
offered to Faflon for a good vintage:

"Faflon, Faflon, Faflon!
Oh, listen to my prayer.
I have a scanty vinUge,
My vines this year are bare;
Oh, listen to my prayer!
And put, since thou canst do so,
A better vintage there!



 



 



APPENDIX 319

"Faflon, Faflon, FaflonI
Oh, listen to my prayer!
May all the wine in my cellar
Prove to be strong and rare.
And good as any grown,
Faflon, Faflon, Faflon!"*

PanOy undoubtedly the ancient Pan, is a whimsical spirit who
favours the crops in their growth, or, if so minded, beats them down
with a high wind.

Orcus, of the nether world, now lives in the person of Oreo, who,
in the thought of the people, was once a great wizard.

The functions and attributes of the goddesses of the old mythology
have become much attenuated in the gradual process of transmission
to their modem descendants. Esta is surely Vesta, although her of-
fice is the converse of that of her original, for "when a light is sud-
denly and mysteriously extinguished or goes out apparently of its
own accord, especially when two lovers are sitting together, it is
commonly said in jest that *Esta did it/"*

Through their kinship with Hekate, Diana and Artemis (the latter
under the amplified epithet of Artemisia) have entirely gone over to
the realm of witchcraft and goblinism, the first being now more po-
tent for evil than Satan himself, while the second has become a vam-
pire who sucks the blood of the newly buried dead.

The combined functions of Aphrodite, Venus, Mater Matuta,
and Aurora (Eos) are represented by a group of divinities who can-
not easily be distinguished except in name, and even in this respect
there is a certain overlapping. They are Turanna (Etruscan Turan),
apparently to be connected historically with Teramo (cf. the asso-
ciation of Aphrodite and Hermes), Tesana (Etruscan Thesan),
Alpena (Etruscan Alpan), Albina, and La Bella Marta (Mater
Matuta). Exceptional beauty, connexion with the dawn, and in-
terest in human love characterize them all in varying degrees.

Floria presents in her single person a contamination of Flora and
Pomona. None of the goddesses has changed less than Carmenta,
for under her ancient name she is still besought to grant motherhood
to the barren and to render aid in child-birth. Feronia is generally
regarded by mythologists as being originally a spring-nymph, but
now the people of the Romagnola conceive her as a spirit who wan-
ders about the country in disguise and who haunts market places.
To those who receive her hospitably she is kind and generous, but
those who neglect her she requites by casting evil spells on their
children and domestic animals, this belief being very possibly based
on conceptions of Feronia which have failed to find their way into



 



 



320 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

the ancient literature. Indeed, it may well be that many, or even
most, of the traits of the divinities whom Leland has rescued from
oblivion were possessions of these same divinities as they lived in
the religious fancy of the common people of ancient Rome and
luly.



 



 



NOTES



 



 



 



 



NOTES

The complete titles and descriptions of the works cited in the Notes will be found
in the Bibliography.



INTRODUCTION TO THE GREEK MYTHS

1. Cf. W. G. Sumner, Folkways^ Boston, 1907, passim.

2. For extended discussions of the nature and development of prim-
itive religion special recommendation may be made of Marett, The
Threshold of Religion; King, The Development of Religion; S. A. Cook,
**The Evolution of Primitive Thought," in Essays and Studies pre-
sented to William Ridgeway, pp. 375 ff.

3. Gnippe, Gr. Myth.j p. 1061; cf. A. B. Cook, Zeus^ i. 9-14.

4. Murray, Four Stages of Gr. Rel.^ p. 99.

5. Gruppe, p. 989.

6. S. A. Cook, The Found, of Rel, p. 17.

7. Republic y 377A ff.

8. 11. 451 ff.

9. The question whether Homer was one or many does not affect
the influence of the Homeric poems.

10. AmoreSy III. vi. 17-18 (as translated by E. K. Rand, in Harvard
Essays on Classical Subjects y Boston, 191 2).

11. Lang, Custom and My thy p. 21.



PART I
Chapter I

1. Milton, Paradise Lost^ vii. 211-12.

2. F. Solmsen, in Indogermanische Forschungen^ xxx. 35, note i
{1912), claims ancient lexical authority for regarding the name Ttr^v
as an early Greek word for "king." A. B. Cook {Zeus^ i. 655) accepts
the explanation. While the present writer is ready to admit that the
word once had this meaning, he is strongly inclined to believe that in
origin it was non-Greek, possibly Semitic.

3. E. S. Bouchier, Life and Letters in Roman Africa^ Oxford, 1913,
J). 82.

1 — 25



 



 



324 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

4. Milton, Paradise Losiy vi. 211-14.

5. Preface to the Prometheus Unbound,

6. Prometheus Unbound^ Act I.

7. A. B. Cook (Z/ttJ, i. 325-30) regards Prometheus as e88entiall7
a god of fire.

8. It is more in accord with Pandora's origin as a form of the Elarth
Goddess to interpret her name as meaning "All-Giving."

9. Euripides, Iphigeneia in Taurisy 11. 414-15 (translated by Gilbert
Murray, New York, 191 5).

ID. Strictly, Xaol means the subjects of a prince.

Chapter II

1. Gruppe, pp. 918-20, suggests that this myth is based on the
belief that a man who had offered a human sacrifice and made himself
one with the god by partaking of human flesh was himself a wolf,
i. e. he was banished from the society of men and became a wanderer
like a wolf. The similar but much more penetrating explanation of-
fered by A. B. Cook {ZeuSy i. 70-81) is too elaborate and detailed to
be even summarized here.

2. Description of Greece, VIII. xxviii. 6.

3. This cannot be the flower which we know as the hyacinth.

4. Stephen Phillips, "Marpessa," in Poems, London and New York,
1898, pp. 26-29.

5. Friedlander, ^rg., pp. 5 ff.; Gruppe, pp. 168 ff.

6. See infra, p. 193.

7. The name of the Kimmerian (i. e. Crimean) Bosporos was sim-
ilarly explained. As far as the Thracian strait is concerned the deri-
vation is wrong. B6<rTopos is really a dialectical form of ^(oa^pos
("Light-Bearer''), a title of Hekate.

8. A. H. Sayce (The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonioj
Edinburgh, 1903, p. 55) derives Aigyptos from Ha^ka^Ptah "the
temple of the ka of Ptah,*^ the sacred name of the dty of Memphis.
In the Tell el-Amama letters this is Khikuptakh.

9. See Gruppe, pp. 831-32; Friedlander, pp. 15-16, 25-30. "If we
may trust Eustathius, it was the custom to place *on the grave of
those who died unmarried a water jar called Loutrophoros in token
that the dead had died unbathed and without offspring.' Probably
these vases, as Dr. Frazer suggests [i. e. on Pausanias X. xzxi. 9], were
at first placed on the graves of the unmarried with the kindly intent of
helping the desolate unmarried ghost to accomplish his wedding in the
world below. But once the custom fixed, it might easily be interpreted
as the symbol of an underworld punishment" (Harrison, Prolego-
mena, p. 621).



 



 



NOTES 32s

10. See Friedlander, pp. 36-37.

1 1. In other versions the weapon employed by Perseus was a stone,
or a sword, or his scimitar (sickle-sword).

12. The story of Perseus in its bearings on primitive folk-tale and
religion is exhaustively treated by E. S. Hartland, Legend of Perseus^
3 vols., London, 1894-96.

13. Homer, Odyssey^ xi. 593-600 (translated by S. H. Butcher and
A. Lang, London, 1900).

14. Fick {Hattiden und Danubier in Griechenlandj pp. 43 flF.) suggests
that the name and person of Sisyphos are derived from TiSup (or
Tishub, Teshub), the principal male deity of the Hittites so often
depicted on their monuments.

15. For a similar story see that of Kyknos and Tennes in Pausanias,
X. xiv.

16. One is probably nearer the truth in connecting it with inry6$
(cf. iHiywni)y "strong."

Chapter III

1. Christopher Marlowe, Didoy Act II.

2. For a discussion of the problems involved consult T. G. Tucker,
Aeschylus^ The Seven against ThebeSy Cambridge, 1908, Introd.;
Gomme, "The Legend of Cadmus," etc.; and "The Topography of
Boeotia," etc.

3. For the story of Aktaion see infra^ p. 252; of Ino, p. 262; of
Semele and Dionysos, p. 217.

4. Sophokles, Oidipous KoloneuSy 11. 161 1 £F. (translated by E. H.
Plumptre, Boston, 1906).

5. AUinson, Greek Lands and Letters ^ p. 332.

6. Cf. Tucker, pp. xxxiv-xxxvii; Allinson, p. 292.

7. Homer, Iliad^ ix. 573-99.



Chapter IV

1. "In Cretan myth the sun was conceived as a bull. On the other
hand, in Cretan ritual the Labyrinth was an orchestra of solar pattern
presumably made for a mimetic dance. ... It would seem highly
probable that the dancer imitating the sun masqueraded in the Laby-
rinth as a bull" (A. B. Cook, Zeus^ i. 490-91).

2. Pausanias, II. iv. 5 (translated by J. G. Frazer).

3. Miss Harrison {Myth, and Mon,y pp. xxxiii, xxxv) advances the
very probable suggestion that this story is primarily aetiological in
character, being intended as an explanation of the ritual of the Arre-
phoria (or Hersephoria). The fate of the disobedient sisters is a detail



 



 



326 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

added for the purpose of frightening officiating maidens into strict
observance of the rules governing the ritual.

4. Another etymology derives the word from iLpGtp T&ym, "hill of
curses"; cf. pp. 102, 189.

5. I. XXX. 3.

Chapter V

1. For the development of Herakles as a mythological character
see especially Friedlander, Herakles.

2. xix. 90-133.

3. The order of the labours which we shall follow is that given by
ApoUodoros.

4. For discussions of the identity and character of the Amazons see
especially the articles by Adolphe Reinach listed in the Bibliography.

5. Pindar, Olympian Odesj xi. (x.) 44 flF.

Chapter VII

1. Apollonios of Rhodes, Argonautika^ i. 1 13-14.

2. ib. i. 544-45-

3. ib. ii. 79-80.

4. The writer is tempted, in agreement with A. B. Cook {Zeus^ i.
723-24), to see in the person of Talos a reference to the cite perdue
method of hollow-casting in bronze.



Chapter VIII

1. A. B. Cook {Zeus^ i. 414-19) is strongly inclined to believe that
both this golden lamb and the golden ram of Phrixos are epiphanies
of Zeus.

2. The most accessible collection of the fragments and ancient sum-
maries of the Cyclic Epics is to be found in the Scriptorum Classicorum
Bibliotheca OxoniensiSy Homeri Opera^ v. (Oxford, 191 1). The frag-
ment of the Kypria just quoted appears on p. 118.

3. Euripides, Trojan Women^ U. 892-93 (translated by Gilbert
Murray, New York, 1915).

4. ib. 11. 924-33-

5. Euripides, Iphigeneia in Tauris, 1. 15 (translated by Gilbert
Murray).

6. i. 52 (translated by A. Lang, W. Leaf, and E. Myers, London,
1907).

7. vi. 486-89 (translated by Lang, Leaf, and Myers).

8. xix. 67-70 (translated by Lang, Leaf, and Myers).

9. See Oxford text of Homer, v. pp. 125-27.



 



 



NOTES 327

10. See Oxford text of Homer, v. pp. 127-40.

11. Euripides, Trojan Women^ 11. 1 160-61 (translated by Gilbert
Murray).

12. ib. 1. 75 (translated by Gilbert Murray).

13. Oxford text of Homer, v. 140-43.

14. Aischylos seems to have made Argos and not Mykenai the scene
of the Agamemnon in order to please the Argive allies of Athens.

15. Euripides, Iphigeneia in Tauris^ 11. 79 flF. (translated by Gilbert
Murray).

16. Tennyson, The Lotos-Eaters,

17. Oxford text of Homer, v. 143-44.

[Prometheus]

Chapter IX

1. Euripides, Trojan fFomen^ 11. 632-33 (translated by Gilbert
Murray).

2. Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon.

3. It was customary to explain as Charon's fee the obol which the
Greeks put into the mouth of a corpse, but the account is plainly
aetiological, for the custom is really a survival of the belief that the
metal of the coin had power to avert evil influences. Allegorically
the obol might be interpreted as a ferry fare.

4. Can the howling of the wind at the cavernous entrances to the
underworld have helped in giving rise to the canine conception of
Kerberos?

5. Pausanias, III. xxv. 5.

6. "The mythical Ixion, if I am not mistaken, typifies a whole series
of human Ixions, who in bygone ages were done to death as effete em-
bodiments of the sun-god" (A. B. Cook, ZeuSy i. 211). By this argu-
ment the wheel is the circle of the sun.

7. "Men say that he by the music of his songs charmed the stub-
bom rocks upon the mountains and the course of rivers. And the wild
oak-trees to this day, tokens of that magic strain, that grow at Zone
on the Thracian shore, stand in ordered ranks dose together, the same
which under the charm of his lyre he led down from Pieria" (ApoUo-
nios of Rhodes, Argonautika^ i. 25-31, translated by R. C. Seaton,
London and New York, 1912).

8. Ovid, Metamorphoses, x. 41 ff. (modified translation).

9. Homer, Odyssey , iv. 563-68 (translated by Butcher and Lang).



 



 



328 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

PART II

Chapter I

1. Gruppc, p. II02.

2. Sec A. B. Cook, 2^euSj i. i-8.

3. In time this process of generalizing the personal characteristics
of the gods practically neutralized all other processes of their devel-
opment.

4. Hera's power in this sphere was doubtless derived from her union
with Zeus, while that of Poseidon came from his traditional association
with the sea.

5. The unqualified use of the epithet 'OXiiAxtoi in Homer invariably
designates Zeus.

6. Porphyrios, Life of Pythagoras^ i?; cf« Tatian, Upds T!kkripas,
27 (Migne, Patrologia Graeca^ vi. 865).

7. Most of these mythical marriages can probably be explained as
attempts to secure sanction for the recognition of Zeus in localities
into which he was newly introduced and in which the chief native
divinity was a goddess. The identification of the new god as the
husband of the old goddess immediately gave the former a standing
with the local worshipper.

8. Idylb, iv. 43 ; cf . xvii. 78.

9. Only in this sense can he be regarded as the Creator; in the
Orphic philosophy he was life itself.

10. This school would see the same earth goddess in the original of
the Eleusinian Demeter. For a discussion of the problem see Famell,
CultSy i. 192, and The Higher AspectSy etc., p. 14.

11. A. B. Cook, "Who was the Wife of Zeus?'' in CR xx. 365-78,
416-19 (1906).

Chapter H

1. If this derivation is correct, it may possibly go back to a mjrth
which set forth one or other of these characteristics of Athene.

2. Homeric Hymn to Athene^ xxviii. 9-16.

3. Euripides, Trojan fFonun^ 11. 801-02 (translated by Gilbert
Murray).

Chapter IH

1. Homeric Hymns ^ iii.

2. Cf. THj$€<T$ai, "to become rotten, to rot."

3. See Swindler, Cretan Elements ^ etc.

4. Through its famous enigmatic reference to wooden walls, which
Themistokles interpreted to mean ships, the oracle foretold the suc-
cessful defence of Greece against the Persians.



 



 



NOTES 329

5. The statement that Apollo "is the solar word of Zeus conceived
as the eternal and infinite god and through him the revealer of the ar-
chetypes of things" (Schure, "Le Miracle hellenique. L'ApoUon de
Delphes et la Pythonisse," in Revue des deux Mondes^ 6th per. vii.
344-45 [191 2]) ignores the progressive development of Apollo from a
simple to a complex personality.

6. Occasionally Artemis was a goddess of counsel, that is to say,
of health of mind, an extension of her function as the goddess of health
of body,

7. Hekate's association with sorcery is ample explanation of the
fact that she figured more prominently in private than in public cult.

Chapter IV

I. The same kind of magical imprisonment seems here to be in-
volved as that to which the genie was subjected in the story of Alad-
din and the Wonderful Lamp.

Chapter V

1. This was presented by Professor A. L. Frothingham in a paper
read before the Archaeological Institute of America at its annual meet-
ing held at Haverford College, Dec. 1914. So far as the present writer
knows, the paper is not yet in print.

2. Shelley's translation of the Homeric Hymn to HermeSj ix.

3. ib. xlv.

4. ib. xcvii.

5. The union of Hermes with both Herse and Pandrosos in Attic
legend probably signifies that at least in Athens he had a connexion
with certain phases of the weather, but such an association does not
seem to have been general.

Chapter VI

1. Since the manuscript has left the author's hands he has come to
the conclusion that Famell is right in regarding the name as wholly
foreign. In the forthcoming volume of the Transactions and Proceed-
ings of the American Philological Association the writer presents a pre-
liminary statement of what he believes to be the correct derivation,
and later he hopes to publish an article supporting the etymology in
detail.

2. The affinity is due to Aphrodite's primitive connexion with vege-
tation.

3. The matter-of-fact mind can easily detect an overlapping of the



 



 



330 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

functions of Aphrodite on those of other divinities of fertility. Yet
this need disturb no one, for the Greek gods were not mechanical
creations. To insist upon a precise differentiation among the Greek
divinities is to miss the Greeks' religious point of view and to be
insensitive to the myth-making spirit.

4. A. Lang, The New Pygmalion.

5. In philosophical circles the epithets Ourania and Pandemos were
thought to signify the relations of Aphrodite to pure celestial love and
degrading sensuality respectively; and common knowledge of the
licentious character of certain rites of the goddess gave colour to this
interpretation of the second epithet.



Chapter VII

1. Iliady i. 591 ff.

2. Murray, Four Stages of Gr, Rel.y p. 66.
3- «JV.

4. V. 21 ff.

Chapter VIII

1. See Blinkenberg, The Thunderweapon; Powell, Erickthonius and
the Three Daughters of Cecrops^ p. 12.

2. The tidal wave which submerged Helike in the fourth century
B.C. was regarded as a demonstration of Poseidon's power.

3. If the name of Poseidon's son Boiotos means anything at all in
this connexion, it implies that Poseidon was in the form of a bull
when he begat this son.

Chapter IX

1. Iliady vi. 130 ff. (translated by Lang, Leaf, and Myers).

2. See infray p. 221.

3. This myth contains unmistakable evidence of human sacrifice
in certain of the earlier Dionysiac rites.

4. Vll.

5. It is still a moot point whether the appearance of the ship in this
myth of Dionysos reflects the influence of certain Oriental vegetation-
rites in which a ship was a prominent feature.

6. See infraj p. 224.

7. The use of the phallic emblem in the rites of Demeter to arouse
fertility in the earth was one of a number of factors in bringing about
an association of Demeter and Dionysos.

8. To regard Dionysos unqualifiedly as a rain-god is to exaggerate
the influence of Osiris on his development.

9. Euripides, Bacchaiy 11. 379-81.



 



 



NOTES 331

Chapter X

1. Theogonyy 11. 969 ff.

2. Whether Demeter was originally connected with these rites or
whether they were a product of sympathetic magic primarily unre-
lated to any divinity, it is clear that during the height of the Demeter-
cult the woman was the representative of the goddess.

3. Demeter's power to fructify human beings was the thought
underlying the ceremonies of the Thesmophoria, a festival in which
only matrons of good civic standing took part.

4. See Homeric HymnSj ii.

5. For the invocation of Hades (or Plouton) in curses see A. Audol-
lent, Tabellae Defixionuniy Paris, 1904, Index, pp. 461 ff.

Chapter XI

1. OdeSy I. iv. 5-8 (translated by J. Conington, London, 1909).

2. Famell, CultSy v. 434.

3. In Memoriamj v. 5-6.

4. "In early days the Muses were to Zeus what the mountain-
roaming Maenads were to Dionysos" (A. B. Cook, ZeuSy i. iii). J.
Wackemagel {Zeitschrift fUr vergleichende Sprachforschungj xxxiiL
571-74 [1895]) expresses his belief that the relation of the Muses to
mountains was original, and accordingly he would trace their name
back to *iJL0VT'j "mountain."

5. V. 202 ff.

6. Those who see in the fall of Phaethon and his car the sun's ap-
proach to earth at sunset ignore those details of the myth which em-
phasize the effect of the sun's heat.

7. For the most recent discussions of the Dioskouroi consult A. B.
Cook, ZeuSy i. 760 ff., and Harris, Boanerges.

8. In the clear air of the east Venus shines so brightly as to cast
a faint shadow and to render her successive phases visible to the naked
eye.

9. The stars of this group seemed to outline the figure of a man
driving a yoke of oxen in the Great Wain. It is difficult for us modem
city-dwellers, who seldom really see the stars and for whom they have
little or no practical significance, to understand how the Greeks and
their neighbours could find a world of living creatures in the night
heavens.

Chapter XII

1. I. xxxiii. 4.

2. Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon.

3. Homer, Odyssey ^ i. 52-54.



 



 



332 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

4. This association of Proteus with Egypt is secondary; his native
habitat seems to have been Chalkis.

5. Homer, Odyssey^ xii. 39-54.

6. Theogonyy 1. 871.

7. A. E. Zimmern, The Greek Commontveahhj Oxford, 191 1, p. 35.

8. Odesy I. iii. 14.

9. A. B. Cook {ZeuSy i. 302 ff.) holds the one-eyed Kyklopes to be
monstrous incarnations of the disk of the sun.

10. Homeric HymnSy xix. 6-21.

Chapter XHI

1. Charles L. O'Donnell, Ode for Panama Day.

2. iv. 10; see also vs. 11.

3. Euripides, Iphigeneia in Taurisy 11. 285-91 (translated by Gilbert
Murray).

Chapter XIV

1. n. xxvi. 4-5 (translated by Frazer, ist ed.).

2. On this rite see L. Deubner, De incubationey Leipzig, 1900, and
Mary Hamilton, Incubationy London, 1906.

3. So in Hesiod, Theogonyy 1. 904; but ib. 1. 217 they are the daugh-
ters of Nyx.

4. So Usener, GotUmameny p. 371. A. B. Cook {ZeuSy i. 273), how-
ever, holds Nemesis, like Diana, to have been first of all a goddess of
the greenwood (cf. vkfun, "glade," vkfMip, "to pasture").

5. Swinburne, AuUanta in Calydon.



PART HI

1. It has long been the practice to assume that virtually all Italic
myths were corruptions or adaptations of Greek myths. Now, how-
ever, there is a growing tendency to account for them as independent
products of Italian religious experience. See especially Ettore Pais,
Ancient Legendsy etc.

2. De Rerum Naturay v. 655-56.

3. King, Devel. of Rel.y p. 130.



APPENDIX

1. p. 27. 4. ib. pp. 132-33- 7- ib. pp. 37-38.

2. Lawson, p. 75. 5. ib. pp. 77-78. 8. ib. p. 69.

3. ib. p. 43. 6. Leland, p. loi. 9. ib. p. 61.



 



 



BIBLIOGRAPHY



 



 



 



 



BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. ABBREVIATIONS

A A . . . Archaologischer Anzeiger (see J BAT),

ABSA . . The Annual of the British School at Athens.

AJA . . . American Journal of Archaeology.

AJP . . . The American Journal of Philology.

AM . . . Mittheilungen des kaiseriich deutschen archaologischen
Instituts: athenische Abtheilung.

AR . . . Archiv fiir Religionswisscnschaft.

AtR . . . Atene e Roma.

BAAR . . BoUetino dell' associazione archeologica romana.

CP . . . . Classical Philology.

CQ . , , . The Classical Quarteriy.

CR . . . . The Classical Review.

diss. . . . dissertation.

DL .... Deutsche Literaturzeitung.

DR .... Deutsche Rundschau.

£ . . . . Eranos, Acta philologica Suecana.

ERE . . . Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. James Hastings,
editor.

H . . . . Hermes, Zeitschrift fiir classische Philologie.

JBAI . . Jahrbuch des kaiseriich deutschen archaologischen In-
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JHAI . . Jahreshefte des osterreichischen archaologischen Insti-
tutes in Wien.

JHS . . . The Journal of Hellenic Studies.

JP .... Jahrbiicher fiir classische Philologie (see NJ).

JRS . . . The Journal of Roman Studies.

MAH . . Melanges d'archeologie et d'histoire.

MB . . . Le Musee beige.

Mnem. . . Mnemosyne, Tijdschrift voor classieke Litteratuur.

MVG . . . Mitteilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft.

NJ . . . Neue Jahrbiicher fiir das klassische Altertum, Ge-
schichte und deutsche Literatur und fiir Padagogik
(Continuation of Jahrbiicher fiir classische Philologie) .

OL .... Orientalistische Literaturzeitung.

PhU, . . . Philologus, Zeitschrift fiir das klassische Altertum.



 



 



336 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTH0LCX5Y



RA .
REA .
RHLR
RHR .
RM .
RMiu

SIFC
S . .
SSAC
WS .



Revue archeologique.

Revue des etudes ancicnncs.

Revue d'histoire ct de litterature religieuse.

Revue de Thistoire des religions.

Rheinisches Museum fiir Philologie.

Mittheilungen des kaiserlich deutschen archaologischen

Instituts: romische Abtheilung.
Studi italiani di filologia classica.
Socrates, Zeitschrift fiir Gymnasialwesen.
Studi storici per Tantichita classica.
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Marchesi, C, "Leggende romane nei 'Fasti' di Ovidio," in MR xiii.

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"Romische Sagen," in WS xxxiv. 318-31 (1912); xxxv. 62-74

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"Die Luperci und die Feier der Lupercalien," in Phil. Ixxii.



161-95 (1913)-
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"Amphiaraus," i. 393-94.

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"Cosmogony and Cosmology (Greek)," iv. 145-51.

"Cosmogony and Cosmology (Roman)," iv. 175-76.

"Faith (Greek)," v. 694-95.

"Faith (Roman)," v. 697.

"Holiness (Greek)," vi. 741-43.

Campbell, L., "God (Greek)," vi. 279-82.



 



 



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