Myth, Ritual And Religion Volume II Part 21

Say to the king that the beautiful fane hath fallen asunder, Phoebus no more hath a sheltering roof nor a sacred cell, And the holy laurels are broken and wasted, and hushed is the wonder Of water that spake as it flowed from the deeps of the Delphian well.

* See "Nature-Myths," antea. Schwartz, as usual, takes Daphne to be connected, not with the dawn, but with lightning. "Es ist der Gewitter-baum." Der Ursprung der Mythologie, Berlin, 1860, pg. 160-162.

** For the influence of Apollo-wors.h.i.+p on Greek civilisation, see Curtius's History qf Greece, English transl., vol. i. For a theory that Apollo answers to Mitra among "the Arians of Iran," see Duncker's History of Greece, vol, i. 173.

In his oracle he appears as the counsellor of men, between men and Zeus he is a kind of mediator (like the son of Baiame in Australia, or of Puluga in the Andaman isles), tempering the austerity of justice with a yearning and kind compa.s.sion. He sanctifies the pastoral life by his example, and, as one who had known bondage to a mortal, his sympathy lightens the burden of the slave. He is the guide of colonists, he knows all the paths of earth and all the ways of the sea, and leads wanderers far from Greece into secure havens, and settles them on fertile sh.o.r.es.

But he is also the G.o.d before whom the Athenians first flogged and then burned their human scapegoats.* His example consecrated the abnormal post-Homeric vices of Greece. He is capable of metamorphosis into various beasts, and his temple courts are thronged with images of frogs, and mice, and wolves, and dogs, and ravens, over whose elder wors.h.i.+p he throws his protection. He is the G.o.d of sudden death; he is amorous and revengeful. The fair humanities of old religion boast no figure more beautiful; yet he, too, bears the birthmarks of ancient creeds, and there is a shadow that stains his legend and darkens the radiance of his glory.

* At the Thergelia. See Meursius, Graecia Feriata.

ARTEMIS.

If Apollo soon disengages himself from the sun, and appears as a deity chiefly remarkable for his moral and prophetic attributes, Artemis retains as few traces of any connection with the moon. "In the development of Artemis may most clearly be distinguished," says Claus, the progress of the human intellect from the early, rude, and, as it were, natural ideas, to the fair and brilliant fancies of poets and sculptors."*

* De Dianae Antiguisstma apud Graecos Natura, Vratialaviae, 1881.

There is no G.o.ddess more beautiful, pure and maidenly in the poetry of Greece. There she s.h.i.+nes as the sister of Apollo; her chapels are in the wild wood; she is the abbess of the forest nymphs, "chaste and fair", the maiden of the precise life, the friend of the virginal Hippolytus; always present, even if unseen, with the pure of heart.* She is like Milton's lady in the revel route of the _Comus_, and among the riot of Olympian lovers she alone, with Athene, satisfies the ascetic longing for a proud remoteness and reserve. But though it is thus that the poets dream of her, from the author of the _Odyssey_ to Euripides, yet the local traditions and cults of Artemis, in many widely separated districts, combine her wors.h.i.+p and her legend with hideous cruelties, with almost cannibal rites, with relics of the wild wors.h.i.+p of the beasts whom, in her character as the G.o.ddess of the chase, she "preserves" rather than protects. To her human victims are sacrificed; for her bears, deer, doves, wolves, all the tameless herds of the hills and forests are driven through the fire in Achaea. She is adored with bear-dances by the Attic girls; there is a gloomy Chthonian or sepulchral element in her wors.h.i.+p, and she is even blended in ritual with a monstrous many-breasted divinity of Oriental religion. Perhaps it is scarcely possible to separate now all the tangled skeins in the mixed conception of Artemis, or to lay the finger on the germinal conception of her nature. "Dark," says Schreiber, "is the original conception, obscure the meaning of the name of Artemis."**

* Hippolytus, Eurip., 73-87.

** Roscher's Lexikon, s. v.

It is certain that many tribal wors.h.i.+ps are blended in her legend and each of two or three widely different notions of her nature may be plausibly regarded as the most primitive. In the attempt to reach the original notion of Artemis, philology offers her distracting aid and her competing etymologies. What is the radical meaning of her name? On this point Claus* has a long dissertation. In his opinion Artemis was originally (as Dione) the wife, not the daughter, of Zeus, and he examines the names Dione, Diana, concluding that Artemis, Dione and Diana are essentially one, and that Diana is the feminine of Ja.n.u.s (Dja.n.u.s), corresponding to the Greek. As to the etymology of Artemis, Curtis wisely professes himself uncertain.** A crowd of hypotheses have been framed by more sanguine and less cautious etymologists. Artemis has been derived from "safe," "unharmed," "the stainless maiden ". Goebel,3 suggests the root _arpar_ or _par_, "to shake," and makes Artemis mean the thrower of the dart or the shooter. But this is confessedly conjectural. The Persian language has also been searched for the root of Artemis, which is compared with the first syllables in Artaphernes, Artaxerxes, Artaxata, and so forth. It is concluded that Artemis would simply mean "the great G.o.ddess ". Claus again, returning to his theory of Artemis as originally the wife of Zeus, inclines to regard her as originally the earth, the "mighty mother".****

* Roscher's Lexikon, s. v., p. 7.

** Etym. Or,, 5th ed., p. 556.

*** Lexilogus, i. 554.

**** For many other etymologies of Artemis, see Roscher's Lexikon, p. 558. Among these is "she who cuts the air". Even the bear, has occurred to inventive men.

As Schreiber observes, the philological guesses really throw no light on the nature of Artemis. Welcker, Preller and Lauer take her for the G.o.ddess of the midnight sky, and "the light of the night".* Claus, as we have seen, is all for night, not light; for "Night is identical in conception with the earth"--night being the shadow of earth, a fact probably not known to the very early Greeks. Claus, however, seems well inspired when he refuses to deduce all the many properties, myths and attributes of Artemis from lunar aspects and attributes. The smallest grain of ingenuity will always suffice as the essential element in this mythological alchemy, this "trans.m.u.tation" of the facts of legend into so many presumed statements about any given natural force or phenomenon.

From all these general theories and vague hypotheses it is time to descend to facts, and to the various local or tribal cults and myths of Artemis. Her place in the artistic poetry, which wrought on and purified those tales, will then be considered. This process is the converse of the method, for example, of M. Decharme. He first accepts the "queen and huntress, chaste and fair," of poetry, and then explains her local myths and rituals as accidental corruptions of and foreign additions to that ideal.

The Attic and Arcadian legends of Artemis are confessedly among the oldest.**

* Welcker, Oriechische Gotterlehre, i. 561, Gottingen, 1867; Preller, i. 239.

** Roscher, Lexikon, 580.

Both in Arcadia and Attica, the G.o.ddess is strangely connected with that animal wors.h.i.+p, and those tales of b.e.s.t.i.a.l metamorphosis, which are the characteristic elements of myths and beliefs among the most backward races.

The Arcadian myth of Artemis and the she-bear is variously narrated.

According to Pausanias, Lycaon, king of Arcadia, had a daughter, Callisto, who was loved by Zeus. Hera, in jealous wrath, changed Callisto into a she-bear; and Artemis, to please Hera, shot the beast.

At this time the she-bear was pregnant with a child by Zeus, who sent Hermes to save the babe, Areas, just as Dionysus was saved at the burning of Semele and Asclepius at the death of his mother, whom Apollo slew. Zeus then transformed Callisto into a constellation, the bear.*

No more straightforward myth of descent from a beast (for the Arcadians claimed descent from Areas, the she-bear's son) and of starry or b.e.s.t.i.a.l metamorphosis was ever told by Cahrocs or Kamilaroi. Another story ran that Artemis herself, in anger at the unchast.i.ty of Callisto, caused her to become a bear. So the legend ran in a Hesiodic poem, according to the extract in Eratosthenes.**

* Paus., viii. 3, 5.

** O. Muller, Engl. transl., p. 15; Catast., i.; Apollodor., iii. 82; Hyginus, 176, 177. A number of less important references are given in Bachofen's Der Bar in den Religionen des Alterthums.

Such is the ancient myth, which Otfried Muller endeavours to explain by the light of his lucid common sense, without the a.s.sistance which we can now derive from anthropological research. The nymph Callisto, in his opinion, is a mere refraction from Artemis herself, under her Arcadian and poetic name of Calliste, "the most beautiful". Hard by the tumulus known as the grave of Callisto was a shrine, Pausanias tells us, of Artemis _Calliste_.* Pamphos, he adds, was the first poet known to him who praised Artemis by this t.i.tle, and he learned it from the Arcadians.

Muller next remarks on the attributes of Artemis in Athens, the Artemis known as Brauronia. "Now," says he, "we set out from this, that the circ.u.mstance of the G.o.ddess who is served at Brauron by she-bears having a friend and companion changed into a bear, cannot possibly be a freak of chance, but that this metamorphosis has its foundation in the fact that the animal was sacred to the G.o.ddess."

It will become probable that the animal actually was mythically identified with the G.o.ddess at an extremely remote period, or, at all events, that the G.o.ddess succeeded to, and threw her protection over, an ancient wors.h.i.+p of the animal.

Pa.s.sing then from Arcadia, where the friend of the G.o.ddess becomes a she-bear, to Brauron and Munychia in Attica, we find that the local Artemis there, an Artemis connected by legend with the fierce Taurian G.o.ddess, is served by young girls, who imitate, in dances, the gait of bears, who are called little bears, apktoi, and whose ministry is named aptcreia, that is, "a playing the bear". Some have held that the girls once wore bear-skins.**

* Paus., viii. 3.

** Claus, op. cit., p. 76. [Suchier, De Dian Brauron, p.

33.] The bearskin seems later to have been exchanged for a saffron raiment. Compare Harpokration, Aristophanes, _Lysistrata_, 646. The Scholiast on that pa.s.sage collects legendary explanations, setting forth that the rites were meant to appease the G.o.ddess for the slaying of a tame bear [cf. Apostolius, vii. 10]. Mr. Parnell has collected all the lore in his work on the Cults of the Greek States.

Familiar examples in ancient and cla.s.sical times of this religious service by men in b.e.s.t.i.a.l guise are the wolf-dances of the Hirpi or "wolves," and the use of the ram-skin in Egypt and Greece.* These Brauronian rites point to a period when the G.o.ddess was herself a bear, or when a bear-myth accrued to her legend, and this inference is confirmed by the singular tradition that she was not only a bear, but a bear who craved for human blood.**

* Servius. Jen. i. xi. 785. For a singular parallel in modern French folk-lore to the dance of the Hirpi, see Mannhardt, Wald und Feld Qultus, ii 824, 825. For the ram, see Herodotus, ii. 42. In Thebes the ram's skin was in the yearly festival flayed, and placed on the statue of the G.o.d.

Compare, in the case of the buzzard, Bancroft, iii. 168.

Great care is taken in preserving the skin of the sacrificed totem, the buzzard, as it makes part of a sacred dress.

** Apostolius, viii. 19, vii. 10, quoted by O. Muller (cf.

Welcker, i. 573).

The connection between the Arcadian Artemis, the Artemis of Brauron, and the common rituals and creeds of totemistic wors.h.i.+p is now, perhaps, undeniably apparent. Perhaps in all the legend and all the cult of the G.o.ddess there is no more archaic element than this. The speech of the women in the _Lysistrata_, recalling the days of their childhood when they "were bears," takes us back to a remote past when the tribes settled at Brauron were bear-wors.h.i.+ppers, and, in all probability, claimed to be of the bear stock or kindred. Their distant descendants still imitated the creature's movements in a sacred dance; and the girls of Periclean Athens acted at that moment like the young men of the Mandans or Nootkas in their wolf-dance or buffalo-dance. Two questions remain unanswered: how did a G.o.ddess of the name of Artemis, and with her wide and beneficent functions, succeed to a cult so barbarous? or how, on the other hand, did the cult of a ravening she-bear develop into the humane and pure religion of Artemis?

Here is a moment in mythical and religious evolution which almost escapes our inquiry. We find, in actual historical processes, nothing more akin to it than the relation borne by the Samoan G.o.ds to the various animals in which they are supposed to be manifest. How did the complex theory of the nature of Artemis arise? what was its growth? at what precise hour did it emanc.i.p.ate itself on the whole from the lower savage creeds? or how was it developed out of their unpromising materials? The science of mythology may perhaps never find a key to these obscure problems.*

* The symbolic explanation of Bachofen, Claus and others is to the effect that the she-bear (to take that case) is a beast in which the maternal instinct is very strong, and apparently that the she-bear, deprived of her whelps, is a fit symbol of a G.o.ddess notoriously virginal, and without offspring.

The G.o.ddess of Brauron, succeeding probably to the cult of a she-bear, called for human blood. With human blood the Artemis Orthia of Sparta was propitiated. Of this G.o.ddess and her rights Pausanias tells a very remarkable story. The image of the G.o.ddess, he declares, is barbarous; which probably means that even among the archaic wooden idols of Greece it seemed peculiarly savage in style. Astrabacus and Alopecus (the a.s.s and the fox), sons of Agis, are said to have found the idol in a bush, and to have been struck mad at the sight of it. Those who sacrificed to the G.o.ddess fell to blows and slew each other; a pestilence followed, and it became clear that the G.o.ddess demanded human victims. "Her altar must be drenched in the blood of men," the victim being chosen by lot.

Lycurgus got the credit of subst.i.tuting the rite in which boys were flogged before the G.o.ddess to the effusion of blood for the older human sacrifices.* The Taurian Artemis, adored with human sacrifice, and her priestess, Iphigenia, perhaps a form of the G.o.ddess, are familiar examples of this sanguinary ritual.** Suchier is probably correct in denying that these sacrifices are of foreign origin. They are closely interwoven with the oldest idols and oldest myths of the districts least open to foreign influence. An Achaean example is given by Pausanias.***

Artemis was adored with the offering of a beautiful girl and boy.

Not far from Brauron, at Halae, was a very ancient temple of Artemis Tauropolos, in which blood was drawn from a man's throat by the edge of the sword, clearly a modified survival of human sacrifice. The whole connection of Artemis with Taurian rites has been examined by Muller,**** in his _Orchomenos_***** Horns grow from the shoulders of Artemis Tauropolos, on the coins of Amphipolis, and on Macedonian coins she rides on a bull. According to Decharme,****** the Taurian Artemis, with her hideous rites, was confused, by an accidental resemblance of names, with this Artemis Tauropolos, whose "symbol" was a bull, and who (whatever we may think of the symbolic hypothesis) used bulls as her "vehicle" and wore bull's horns.

* Paus., iii. 8,16. Cf. Muller, Dorians, book ii. chap. 9, 6. Pausanias, viii. 23, 1, mentions a similar custom, ordained by the Delphian oracle, the flogging of women at the feast of Dionysus in Alea of Arcadia.

** Cf. Muller, Dorians, it 9, 6, and Claus, op. cit., cap.

v.

*** Paus., vii. 19.

****Op. cit., ii. 9, 6.

***** Ibid., p. 311. Qf. Euripides, Iph. Taur., 1424, and Roscher, Lexikon, p. 568.