* Nic. Damase. in Dindorf, Hist. Gree. Min. i. p. 148.
+The accounts of the ceremony vary a little as regards details : see Mr. J. G. Frazer's Golden Bough, vol. ii. p. 294f. |
{ This sense of the plural is typical and common: Asos yovei, ‘the circumstances connected with the birth of Zeus,’ and so on. A false interpretation of the word Bougow« is alluded to in the next paragraph. — ~.
§ See Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i. pp. 138, 150. The present writer has there adopted an explanation suggested to him by Prof. Robertson Smith, which would take the crime to consist in eating goats’ flesh at all. But it is more probable that the crime lay in eating it without first offering the animal in sacrifice. Either of the two different senses given to a&buros in the two explanations is grammatically possible.
118 RELIGION OF GREECE
(10) The dion, which is so often associated with Cybele, is also found in art as the supporter on which a deity stands. Like the bull, and doubt- less for the same reason, the lion was taken as a common ornament on tombstones—originally with a protective meaning, later as a mere conventional figure—especially in Phrygia and Pisidia.* Simi- larly, the stag was the regular accompaniment of Artemis, and appears carrying a deity on an early Anatolian seal.
There can be no doubt that the sacredness of these two animals, the lion and the stag, springs from their being the most typical representatives of wild natural life in its strength and its swiftness. These two typical wild animals are connected intimately and characteristically with the Divine nature as female, i.e. with Cybele or Artemis. That side of the Divine nature bulked far more largely in old Anatolian religion than the male side. The Great Goddess, the All-Mother, plays a much more characteristic and commanding part than the god, who is often pictured as her attend- ant, and as secondary to her. The life of nature is commonly represented as female. The spirits of the trees and mountains, the lakes and forests, are the Nymphs, described often as if they led a sexless, separate existence, though there are not wanting examples of the other conception, which brings them into association with the Satyrs or Sileni and makes the reproduction of the life of nature spring from the relations between the male and the female divinities.
Accordingly, it is a pair of lionesses, not of lions, that appear on the most ancient Phrygian Lion- Tombs and on the Gateway at Mycene. But the sex is not always emphasized; and artistic con- siderations probably contributed to determine the ultimate preference for lions and stags, so that these were regularly represented as companions even of the goddesses Cybele and Artemis: the mane and the horns made the male animals more picturesque and striking types.
But in none of these cases is there any universal rule of sex. If the male Divinity is symbolized by the ram or he-goat, there are certain to be some cases in which the female Divinity must be repre- sented by the female animal in order to carry out the mythological tale or the cult-act. These less usual and less typical instances, which need not be quoted in detail, do not really interfere with the general rule of sex which has been stated.
(11) The serpent, however, was pre - eminently the sacred animal in Anatolian and Greek religion. It dwells in the bosom of the earth, the Great Mother. It appears and disappears in a mysteri- ous way. In many Greek temples, and especially in the temple of Athena Polias on the Acro- polis at Athens, a sacred serpent dwelt: it was fed by the priests, and considered to be a sort of em- bodiment or guarantee of the Divine presence in the temple. This idea, however, was below the religious level of the highest Greek literature, in which it does not make much appearance ; but it played a great part in popular belief and super- stition, as well as in actual ritual. Especially, a serpent with large cheeks, called pareias, which was believed to be friendly to man and hostile to dangerous serpents, was considered holy, and used in the ritual of the Mysteries. In ‘the sacred drama enacted in the Mysteries the god in the
* For Phrygia, see Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1882, ete. For Pisidia, see Sterrett, Wolfe Hapedition, pp. 91-98. The present writer has seen many other Pisidian or Isaurian examples. Rohde (Psyche, p. 679) thinks that the lion was used as denoting the fourth grade in Mithraic initiation, and Cumont (Monum. relat. aw Cult de Mithras, p. 178) inclines to agree with him. This cannot be correct.’ It leayes the sex out of account : see the two following paragraphs,
t Perrot, op. cit. iv. p, 772,
t See below, § VI.
ete a a RELIGION OF GREECE
form of a serpent became father of the god-bull by Kora or Persephone his daughter (see the quo- tation in note to § III (2)); and the initiated fondled a pareias serpent in imitation of this.* Hence the idea that human life is of Divine origin took the form, in regard to some special heroes, (e.g. Alexander the Great) that a serpent was their father. ;
The idea that the serpent is a representative of the Divine life appears in various forms: a serpent was intimately associated with, and almost the embodiment to human eyes of, Aisculapius or Asklepios, of Sabazios, of Zeus Meilichios, and in general of most heroic and demonic conceptions, and of the departed dead. Naturally, the animal, which often took up its residence in graves, was regarded by popular superstition as the embodied spirit of the dead; and, when a serpent took pos- session of any grave in this way, there was a general tendency to regard the person there buried as being peculiarly active and efficacious, i.e. as a hero.| The dead man, again, has become identi- fied with the Divine nature; and the serpent there- fore is peculiarly representative of the Divine nature in its Chthonian aspect, z.e. as connected with the world of death. The Agathos Daimon, a Chtho- nian power, associated with the earth and the riches of the earth, is represented by a serpent (sometimes with a human head). See B, § V.