The worship of the god-serpent at Hierapolis and Laodicea in the Lycus valley+ has played some part in the formation of Christian legend : the sacred serpent is there called the Echidna, and is described as the powerful enemy of St. John and St. Philip.
The belief in the sacredness of the serpent was practically disregarded by the majority of Greeks in the classical period, and despised as a supersti- tion unworthy of an educated person; but some peculiarly sacred serpents, such as that of Athena Polias, retained a hold on general opinion. Avlian mentions that, of all the Peloponnesian Greeks, only the Argives refrained from killing serpents.
(12) Sacredness of wild animals.—O bviously, there is not the slightest appearance that the sacredness of the above-mentioned wild animals in this early religion was founded on dread of their power, and anxiety to propitiate them. The facts as stated are absolutely opposed to that opinion. More- over, in the region of Asia Minor. which we take to be the centre and origin of its religious ideas, the great central plateau, wild animals can hardly have been a serious danger within historical times. The country is open, and there is such total absence of cover§ that beasts of prey cannot have existed in any numbers. The Austrian traveller Sarre quotes the statement of Von Moltke, that the great plains are the most perfectly level known in the world. As arule, they are and have been for thousands of years so bare and, apart from human work and provision, so unproductive, that little wild life, and none of the greater savage animals, could be supported in them. In such a level country deer would be a difficult prey ; and when human skill wrought out some irrigation, found water, where it was not accessible on the sur- face, by sinking very deep wells, and introduced great herds of domesticated animals, the wild beasts which were able to prey on sheep or oxen
* BaeBoiov yooy pevornplay cipeBoroy rois pevovpeévors 6 Sue xoArev Deds* dpdnav dé gory obros, dicrzopesvos rod xodarov sy TEroumtvan (Clemens Alex. Protrept. ii. 16 ; cf. Arnobius, v. 21; Foucart, Les Associations Religieuses),
t Strictly, every dead man was a hero; but such ones were heroes pan eacellence.
t Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i. pp. 51, 87.
§ The central plains were known as Aaylon, the treeless region, two centuries before Christ, in the first glimpse of them that the records permit; and other considerations show that this state had existed for a long time previously.
RELIGION OF GREECE
or goats could shelter themselves only in the broken ground of the surrounding mountains, * and in some of the isolated mountain peaks of the plateau (for others of those plateau mountains are singularly bare and shelterless). Thus the greater beasts of prey must have been from a very remote period few, and regarded in practical life as an object of the chase and of sport to the rulers and the nobles (in whatever form nobles existed) ; and it is probable that this condition of things fostered the tendency to regard them as sacred by some sort of religious substitute for a game law.
Again, serpents are neither very numerous nor at all dangerous. Various quite harmless species
occur in moderate abundance, and a few are said
to be venomous, but death from the bite of a serpent is practically unknown in the country. Yet the scantiness of the population in recent centuries, and the small extent of agriculture, have given full opportunity for wild life to in- crease to its natural limits.
Accordingly, for a period of four thousand years or more, wild animals in the plateau must probably have derived their sacredness from other considera- tions than the terror and danger that they caused ; and the evidence of religious facts is clear that the origin lay in their noble qualities of strength and swiftness, and in their association with the Divine nature living free in the wild and mountainous districts. See also above, (10).
IV. SACRED PLACES. —(1) Mountains. —Tfé a stone could be holy, much more could a great rock or a mountain be regarded as the home or the em- bodiment of the Divine power. Mount Argzeus, the lofty mountain which towers above Caesarea in Cappadocia to the height of nearly 13,000 feet, was regarded as a god or as an image of the god, and by it men took a solemn oath: on the coins of Cesarea it is the regular type, taking the place which the image of a god occupies in most coins of Hellenic or Hellenized cities. On coins of Pros- tanna in Pisidia, Mount Viaros is represented in a similar way, and it, too, was evidently regarded by the people who dwelt near it as the holy mountain. The identification proposed in the Historical Geo- graphy of Asia Minor (p. 407) for Mt. Viaros rests chiefly | on a certain similarity in the situation of the lofty peak, which towers over Egerdir and the great lake called by the ancients Limnai, to Argzeus rising out of the level Cappadocian plateau. .
Then in general it is probable or certain that the Great God was adored on the tops of other mountains. An example from another Cappado- cian hill is proved by an inscription found on the summit.§ The lofty mountain, now called Hassan Dagh, 10,000 feet tigte north-west from Tyana, seems to have borne the same name, Argeus, as the Czesarean mountain ; and in that case it prob- ably had a similar sacred character. The Bithy- nians worshipped Zeus under the names of Papas (‘father’) and Attis || on the tops of mountains.