(6) Brotherhoods and guilds. —If the ritual of the Mysteries was used as a sort of sacrament to consecrate or give the Divine sanction to marriage and the other important steps in the family life of man, so that the family was united and constituted and maintained by Divine law, the same seems to have been the case in the formation of associations and unions wider than the family. Such groups played a highly important part in Anatolian society. Originally, in the simplest form of primi- tive society, there was probably only the one wider group, the village, united in the religion of the central sanctuary or Hieron [see (7)]. The ritual of the Mysteries (to use the later Greek name anachronistically) constituted the bond to hold the village together. All were brothers, because all knew in the mystic ritual that they were the children of the Great Mother.
But as life and society became more complex, as towns became too large for a common bond of ritual to hold them (while no common municipal bond existed, such as the Greek city offered), groups of persons with common interests and pur- suits were formed, some as trade guilds, some for other purposes. They are known under many names, Boukoloi, Korybantes, Hymnodoi, Satyroi, etc., but all were united in a common ritual; and an essential part of this lay in the common meal and the cup of which all partook. There can be no doubt that the ceremonial was similar to that of the Mysteries, and was of the nature of a sacrament or religious consecration of the common tie, and yet no direct evidence can be given, or is likely ever to be found. But the indirect evidence
* Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1884, p. 253; Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i. p. 99f., ii. pp. 867, 395.
} Cities and Bishopries of Phrygia, i. p. 96 ff., ii. pp. 359, 630. See also the following note, and (among other places) Athen.
Mittheil. 1899, p. 179f., where the priest of Dionysos Kathe- gemon is head of a list of Boukoloi.
seems conclusive: the most general name for the members of any association is symbiotat (‘those who live in association’), but the term symunystar is occasionally used as an equivalent ;* and this term seems conclusive, for it is inexplicable unless the symbiotat were united by the tie of the com- mon mystic ritual. ‘
The unity of the brotherhood or society was consecrated, therefore, by the common meal and the common cup from which all drank+ this was the ritual of the Mysteries, according to the for- mula, ‘I ate from the tympanon: I drank from the kymbalon’ ; where the names of the sacred instruments of the Mother-Goddess are given to the common dish and the common cup. The Christian idea of breaking a common loaf was perhaps peculiar to Christianity, and due to the direct institution of the Founder; the common meal of the pagan societies probably followed the usual practice of simple Oriental meals, in which each guest has his own loaf, though all eat from a common dish. But that eating from one loaf implies brotherhood is an old idea.
(7) Government and administration.—The form of social organization which, in the historical period, was characteristic of Anatolia was the village -system,+ which is often contrasted with the highly articulated and self-governing muni- cipality (rds) of the Hellenes. The people dwelt in groups of houses called villages: at the head of each village was a komarch, who represented it to the supreme authority, which in the strict Ana- tolian system was the priesthood of the neighbour- ing temple (iepdv) as representative of the Divine power in human form. The government was in theory a theocracy: in practice the priest (usually hereditary, according to some uncertain system of inheritance) or priest-dynast was autocratic, as speaking in the name of the Deity. One restric- tion of his power lay in the fact that intimation of the Divine will was often conveyed to wor- shippers in dreams; but even in this case the interpretation of the dream usually required aid from the priesthood. ‘Beyond this there was no education, and no State, and probably little or no formal law.’ +
In what relation this system, as we find it later in practical working, stood to the primitive Ana- tolian system is uncertain. It shows obvious traces of development, in that the mother has beconie less prominent, and the male element more important. This line of development was inevitable. Immigrant races were usually in- sufficiently provided with women; and armed conquerors must certainly have consisted mainly of men. The conquering race, therefore, must take wives from the conquered race; and the social position of women necessarily deteriorated when the conquering caste was mainly men, and the women for the most part belonged to the sub- jugated people. In the earliest period there can be little or no doubt that theocracy was the ruling system ; but the way in which it was worked, and the exact position of women in the priesthood, remain uncertain. Further, we know that there were in early Anatolia imperial systems and great monarchies ; but what was the relation in which they stood to the theocracy is obscure. We may be confident that the Herakleid dynasty in Lydia ruled as priest-kings, each new king representing the god Herakles, consort of the Great Goddess (a8 we see in the myth of Herakles and Omphale) ;