Transcriber's Note


Superscript text is indicated by caret signs, e.g. M^t Pelion. The text
includes diacritics which may not display well in all software, e.g. the
inverted breve in ἀστροπελέκι̯α.




  MODERN GREEK FOLKLORE

  AND

  ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION




  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
  London: FETTER LANE, E.C.
  C. F. CLAY, MANAGER

  [Illustration]

  Edinburgh: 100, PRINCES STREET

  Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO.

  Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS

  New York: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.


  _All rights reserved_




  MODERN GREEK FOLKLORE

  AND

  ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION

  A STUDY IN SURVIVALS

  BY

  JOHN CUTHBERT LAWSON, M.A.

  FELLOW AND LECTURER OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
  FORMERLY CRAVEN STUDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY

  Cambridge:
  at the University Press
  1910




  Cambridge:
  PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
  AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS




  PIIS MANIBUS

  ROBERTI ALEXANDRI NEIL

  LABORUM ADHORTANTE IPSO SUSCEPTORUM
  HUNC DEDICAVI FRUCTUM.




PREFACE.


This book is the outcome of work undertaken in Greece during my two
years’ tenure of the Craven Studentship from 1898 to 1900. It is
therefore my first duty gratefully to commemorate John, Lord Craven,
to whose benefactions of two and a half centuries ago I owed my
opportunity for research.

The scheme of work originally proposed was the investigation of the
customs and superstitions of modern Greece in their possible bearing
upon the life and thought of ancient Greece; and to the Managers of the
Craven Fund at that time, with whom was associated Mr R. A. Neil of
Pembroke College to whose memory I have dedicated this book, I render
hearty thanks for their willingness to encourage a venture new in
direction, vague in scope, and possibly void of result.

The course of research proposed was one which required as the first
condition of any success considerable readiness in speaking and
understanding the popular language, and to the attainment of this my
first few months were necessarily devoted. When once the ear has become
accustomed to the modern pronunciation, a knowledge of ancient Greek
makes for rapid progress; and some three or four months spent chiefly
in the _cafés_ of small provincial towns rendered me fairly proficient
in ordinary conversation. Subsequent practice enabled me also to follow
conversations not intended for my ear; and on more than one occasion
I obtained from the talk of peasants thus overheard information which
they might have been chary of imparting to a stranger.

The time at my disposal however, after I had sufficiently mastered
the language, would have been far too short to allow of any complete
enquiry into the beliefs and customs of the country, had it not been
for the existence of two books, _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen und das
Hellenische Alterthum_ by Bernhard Schmidt, and Μελέτη ἐπὶ τοῦ βίου τῶν
νεωτέρων Ἑλλήνων by Professor Polites of Athens University, which at
once supplied me with a working knowledge of the subject which I was
studying and suggested certain directions in which further research
might profitably be pursued. My debt to these two books is repeatedly
acknowledged in the following pages; and if I have given references to
Schmidt’s work more frequently than to that of Polites, my reason is
not that I owe less to the latter, but merely that the former is more
generally accessible.

In pursuit of my task I followed no special system. I have known of
those who professed to obtain a complete knowledge of the folklore of
a given village in the course of a few hours’ visit, and whose method
was to provide themselves with an introduction to the schoolmaster,
who would generally be not even a native of the place, and to read
out to him a formidable _questionnaire_, in the charitable and
misplaced expectation that the answers given would be prompted not by
courtesy and loquacity, which are the attributes of most Greeks, but
by veracity, which is the attribute of few. The formal interview with
paper and pencil is in my opinion a mistake. The ‘educated’ Greek whose
pose is to despise the traditions of the common-folk will discourse
upon them no less tediously than inaccurately for the sake of having
his vapourings put on record; but the peasant who honestly believes the
superstitions and scrupulously observes the customs of which he may
happen to speak is silenced at once by the sight of a note-book. Apart
however from this objection to being interviewed, the countryfolk are
in general communicative enough. They do not indeed expect to be plied
with questions until their own curiosity concerning the new-comer has
been satisfied, and even then any questions on uncanny subjects must
be discreetly introduced. But it is no difficult matter to start some
suitable topic. A wedding, a funeral, or some local _fête_ perhaps
is in progress, and your host is eager to have the distinction of
escorting you to it and explaining all the customs appropriate to the
occasion. You have been taken to see the village-church, and some
offering there dedicated, to which you call attention, elicits the
story of some supernatural ‘seizure’ and miraculous cure. You express a
desire to visit some cave which you have observed in the mountain-side,
and the dissuasion and excuses which follow form the prelude to an
account of the fearful beings by whom it is haunted. Your guide crosses
himself or spits before fording a stream, and you enquire, once
safely across, what is the particular danger at this spot. Your mule
perhaps rolls with your baggage in the same stream, and the muleteer’s
imprecations suggest luridly novel conceptions of the future life.

Much also may be effected by playing upon patriotism or vanity or,
let it be confessed, love of lucre. You relate some story heard in
a neighbouring village or praise some custom there observed, and the
peasant’s parochial patriotism is up in arms to prove the superiority
of his native hamlet. You show perhaps some signs of incredulity (but
not until your informant is well launched upon his panegyric), and
his wounded pride bids him call in his neighbours to corroborate his
story. Or again you may hint at a little largesse, not of course for
your host--only witches and the professional reciters of folk-tales and
ballads are entitled to a fee--but on behalf of his children, and he
may pardon and satisfy what might otherwise have seemed too inquisitive
a curiosity.

Such are the folk to whom I am most beholden, and how shall I fitly
acknowledge my debt to them? Their very names maybe were unknown to me
even then, or at the most a ‘John’ or ‘George’ sufficed; and they in
turn knew not that I was in their debt. You, muleteers and boatmen,
who drove shrewd bargains for your services and gave unwittingly so
much beside, and you too, cottagers, who gave a night’s lodging to a
stranger and never guessed that your chatter was more prized than your
shelter, how shall I thank you? Not severally, for I cannot write nor
could you ever read the list of acknowledgements due; but to you all,
Georges and Johns, Demetris and Constantines, and rare anachronistic
Epaminondases, in memory of services rendered unawares, greeting from
afar and true gratitude!

Nor must I omit to mention the assistance which I have derived from
written sources. In recent times it has been a favourite amusement with
Greeks of some education to compile little histories of the particular
district or island in which they live, and many of these contain a
chapter devoted to the customs and superstitions of the locality. From
these, as also from the records of travel in Greece, particularly those
of French writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I have
culled much that is valuable.

Nearly ten years have passed since my return from Greece, and such
leisure as they have allowed has been devoted to co-ordinating the
piecemeal information which I personally obtained or have gathered
from the writings of others, and to examining its bearing upon the
life and thought of Ancient Greece. In the former half of this task
I have but followed in the steps of Bernhard Schmidt and of Polites,
who had already presented a coherent, if still incomplete, account of
the folklore of Modern Greece, and my work has been mainly to check,
to correct, and to amplify; but for the latter half I would ask the
indulgent consideration which may fairly be extended to a pioneer.
Analogies and coincidences in the beliefs and customs of modern and of
ancient Greece have indeed been pointed out by others; but no large
attempt has previously been made to trace the continuity of the life
and thought of the Greek people, and to exhibit modern Greek folklore
as an essential factor in the interpretation of ancient Greek religion.

It is my hope that this book will prove interesting not to Greek
scholars only, but to readers who have little or no acquaintance with
Greek. All quotations whether from the ancient or modern language
are translated, and references to ancient and modern writers are
distinguished by the use of the ordinary Latinised names and titles in
the case of the former, and the retention of the Greek character for
denoting the latter. As regards the transliteration of modern Greek
words, I have made no attempt to represent the exact sound, except to
indicate in some words the accented syllable and to make the obvious
substitution of the English _v_ for the Greek β; but to replace
γ by _gh_ and δ by _dh_, as is sometimes done, gives to words an
uncouth appearance without assisting the majority of readers in their
pronunciation.

It remains only to express my thanks to the reviser of my proofs, Mr
W. S. Hadley of Pembroke College, but these are the hardest to express
adequately. I was conscious of making no small demand on the kindness
of the Tutor of a large College when I asked him to do me this service;
and I am conscious now that any words in acknowledgement of his
kindness are a poor expression of my gratitude for the generous measure
of time and of trouble which he has expended on each page.

Lastly I would thank the Syndics of the University Press for their
willingness to undertake the publication of this book, and the staff of
the Press for their unfailing courtesy in the course of its preparation.

  J. C. L.

  PEMBROKE COLLEGE,
    CAMBRIDGE,
      _December 31, 1909_.




TABLE OF CONTENTS.


                                                                    PAGE

  PREFACE                                                          vii-x

  CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.

  § 1. Modern Folklore as a source for the study of
        Ancient Religion                                             1-7
  § 2. The survival of Ancient Tradition                            8-25
  § 3. The survival of Hellenic Tradition                          25-36
  § 4. The survival of Pagan Tradition                             36-64

  CHAPTER II. THE SURVIVAL OF PAGAN DEITIES.

  § 1. The Range of Modern Polytheism                              65-71
  § 2. Zeus                                                        72-74
  § 3. Poseidon                                                    75-77
  § 4. Pan                                                         77-79
  § 5. Demeter and Persephone                                      79-98
  § 6. Charon                                                     98-117
  § 7. Aphrodite and Eros                                        117-120
  § 8. The Fates                                                 121-130
  § 9. The Nymphs                                                130-162
  § 10. The Queens of the Nymphs                                 162-173
  § 11. Lamiae, Gelloudes, and Striges                           173-184
  § 12. Gorgons                                                  184-190
  § 13. The Centaurs                                             190-255
  § 14. Genii                                                    255-291

  CHAPTER III. THE COMMUNION OF GODS AND MEN.                    292-360

  CHAPTER IV. THE RELATION OF SOUL AND BODY.

  § 1. The Modern Greek Vampire                                  361-376
  § 2. The Composition of the Superstition: Slavonic,
        Ecclesiastical, and Hellenic Contributions               376-412
  § 3. Revenants in Ancient Greece                               412-434
  § 4. Revenants as Avengers of Blood                            434-484

  CHAPTER V. CREMATION AND INHUMATION                            485-514

  CHAPTER VI. THE BENEFIT OF DISSOLUTION                         515-542

  CHAPTER VII. THE UNION OF GODS AND MEN                         543-606

  GENERAL INDEX                                                  607-617

  INDEX OF GREEK WORDS AND PHRASES                               618-620




CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.


§ 1. MODERN FOLKLORE AS A SOURCE FOR THE STUDY OF ANCIENT RELIGION.

The sources of information most obviously open to the student of
ancient Greek religion are the Art and the Literature of ancient
Greece; and the idea that modern Greece can have any teaching to impart
concerning the beliefs of more than two thousand years ago seems seldom
to have been entertained. Just as we speak of ancient Greek as a dead
language, and too often forget that many of the words and inflexions
in popular use at the present day are identical with those of the
classical period and even of the Homeric age, while many others, no
longer identical, have suffered only a slight modification, so are we
apt to think of Greek paganism as a dead religion, and do not enquire
whether the beliefs and customs of the modern peasant may not be a
direct heritage from his classical forefathers. And yet, if any such
heritage exist, there is clearly a fresh source of knowledge open to
us, from which to supplement and to correct the lessons of Art and
Literature.

Art, by its very nature, serves rather as illustration than as proof
of any theory of ancient religion. Sculpture has preserved to us the
old conceptions of the divine personalities. Vase-paintings record
many acts of ritual and scenes of worship. Architectural remains allow
us to restore in imagination the grandeur of holy places. But these
things are only the externals of religion: they need an interpreter,
if we would understand the spirit which informed them: and however
able the interpreter, the material with which he deals is so small
a remnant of the treasures of ancient art, that from day to day
some fresh discovery may subvert his precariously founded theories.
Though all would acknowledge how fruitful in religious suggestion the
evidence of art has proved when handled by competent critics, none
would claim that that evidence either in its scope, which the losses of
time have limited, or in its accuracy, which depends upon conjectural
interpretation, is a complete or infallible guide to the knowledge of
ancient religion.

From literature more might be expected, and more indeed is forthcoming,
though not perhaps where the modern mind, with its tendency to
methodical analysis, would look for it. If anyone should attempt to
classify ancient Greek literature in modern fashion, under the headings
of religion, science, history, drama, and so forth, he would remark one
apparent deficiency. While history, philosophy, and poetry of every
kind are amply represented and, however much has perished to be read no
more, the choicest blossoms and richest fruit of Greek toil in these
fields have been preserved to us, religion seems at first sight to have
been almost barren of literary produce. The department of religion
pure and simple would have little beyond an Hesiodic Theogony or some
Orphic Hymns to exhibit,--and even these have little enough bearing
upon real religion. In short, it is not on any special branch of Greek
literature, but rather upon the whole bulk thereof, that the student
of Greek religion must rely. He must recognize that a religious spirit
pervades the whole; that there is hardly a book in the language but has
some allusion to religious beliefs and customs, to cults and ceremonies
and divine personalities. And while recognizing this, he must still
admit the fact that nowhere is there found any definite exposition of
accepted beliefs as a whole, any statement of doctrine, any creed which
except a man believe he cannot be saved. How are we to reconcile these
two facts,--the constant presence of religion in all Greek literature,
and the almost total absence of any literature appertaining to religion
only? The answer to this question must be sought in the character of
the religion itself.

Greek religion differed from the chief now existing religions of the
world in its origin and development. It had no founder. Its sanction
was not the _ipse dixit_ of some inspired teacher. It possessed nothing
analogous to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, or the Koran. It was a
free, autochthonous growth, evolved from the various hopes and fears
of a whole people. If we could catch a glimpse of it in its infancy,
we should probably deny to it the very name of religion, and call it
superstition or folklore. Great teachers indeed arose, like Orpheus,
advocating special doctrines and imposing upon their followers special
rules of life. Great centres of religious influence were developed,
such as Delphi, exercising a general control over rites and ceremonies.
But no single preacher, no priesthood, succeeded in dominating over
the free conscience of the people. Nothing was imposed by authority.
In belief and in worship each man was a law unto himself; and so far
as there were any accepted doctrines and established observances,
these were not the subtle inventions of professional theologians or
an interested priesthood, but were based upon the hereditary and
innate convictions of the whole Greek race. The individual was free to
believe what he would and what he could; it was the general, if vague,
consensus of the masses which constituted the real religion of Greece.
The _vox populi_ fully established itself as the _vox dei_.

Again in this popular religion, when it had emerged from its earliest
and crudest form and had reached the definitely anthropomorphic stage
in which we know it, we can discern no trace of any tendency towards
monotheism. The idea of a single supreme deity, personal or impersonal,
appealed only to some of the greatest thinkers: the mass of the people
remained frankly polytheistic. For this reason the development of
Greek religion proceeded on very different lines from that of Hebrew
religion. The earliest Jewish conception of a God ‘walking in the
garden in the cool of the day’ was certainly no less anthropomorphic
than the Homeric presentation of the Olympian deities: but the
subsequent growth of Judaism was like that of some tall straight palm
tree lifting its head to purer air than is breathed by men; whereas
Greek religion resembled rather the cedar spreading wide its branches
nearer the earth. The Jew, by concentrating in one unique being every
transcendent quality and function, exalted gradually his idea of
godhead far above the anthropomorphic plane: the Greek multiplied
his gods to be the several incarnations of passions and powers and
activities pertaining also, though in less fulness, to mankind.

It is obvious that in point of simplicity and consistency the
monotheistic system must prove superior. As the worshipper’s
intellectual and spiritual capacities develop, he discards the older
and cruder notions in favour of a more enlightened ideal. Abraham’s
crude conception of the deity as a being to whom even human sacrifice
would be acceptable was necessarily rejected by an humaner age to whom
was delivered the message ‘I will have mercy and not sacrifice.’ In the
growth of Greek polytheism, on the contrary, the new did not supersede
the old, but was superimposed upon it. Fresh conceptions were expressed
by the creation or acceptance of fresh gods, but the venerable
embodiments of more primitive beliefs were not necessarily displaced by
them. The development of humaner ideas in one cult was no bar to the
retention of barbarous rites by another. The same deity under different
titles of invocation (ἐπωνυμίαι) was invested with different and even
conflicting characters: and reversely the same religious idea found
several expressions in the cults of widely different deities. The forms
of worship, viewed in the mass, were of an inconsistent and chaotic
complexity. Human sacrifice, we may be sure, was a thing abhorrent to
the majority of the cults of Zeus: yet Lycaean Zeus continued to exact
his toll of human life down to the time of Pausanias[1]. The worship of
Dionysus embodied something of the same religious spirit which pervaded
the teachings of Orpheus and the mysteries of Demeter, and came to be
closely allied with them: yet neither the austerity of Orphism nor
the real spirituality of the Eleusinian cult succeeded in mitigating
the wild orgies of the Bacchant or in repressing the savage rite of
_omophagia_ in which drunken fanatics tore a bull to pieces with their
teeth. Aphrodite was worshipped under two incompatible titles: in the
_rôle_ of the ‘Heavenly’ (οὐρανία), says Artemidorus[2], she looks
favourably upon marriage and childbirth and the home life, while under
her title of ‘Popular’ (πάνδημος) she is hostile to the matron, and
patroness of laxer ties. It is needless to multiply illustrations. The
forms in which the religious spirit of Greece found embodiment are
beyond question confused and mutually inconsistent. The same religious
idea might be expressed in so great a variety of rites, and the same
divine personality might be associated with so great a variety of
ideas, that no formal exposition of Greek religion as a whole was
possible. The verbal limitations of a creed, a _summa theologiae_,
would have been too narrow for the free, imaginative faith of Greece.
It was a necessary condition of Hellenic polytheism that, as it came
into being without any personal founder, without any authoritative
sacred books, so in its development it should be hampered and confined
neither by priestcraft nor by any literature purely and distinctively
religious. The spirit which manifested itself in a myriad forms of
worship could not brook the restraint of any one form of words.

And not only would it have been difficult to give adequate expression
to the essential ideas of Greek religion, but there was no motive for
attempting the task. Those of the philosophers who dealt with religion
wrote and taught for the reason that they had some new idea, some fresh
doctrine, to advance. Plato certainly abounds in references to the
popular beliefs of his age: but his object is not to expound them for
their own sake: rather he utilizes them as illustration and ornament
of his own philosophical views: his treatment of them in the main is
artistic, not scientific. In fact there was no one interested in giving
to popular beliefs an authoritative and dogmatic expression. There
was no hierarchy concerned to arrest the free progress of thought or
to chain men’s minds to the faith of their forefathers. A summary of
popular doctrines, if it could have been written, would have had no
readers, for the simple reason that the people felt their religion
more truly and fully than the writer could express it: and few men
have the interests of posterity so largely at heart, as to write what
their own contemporaries will certainly not read. Thus it appears that
there was neither motive nor means for treating the popular religion
in literary form: to formulate the common-folk’s creed, to analyse the
common-folk’s religion, was a thing neither desired nor feasible.

But because we observe an almost total absence of distinctively
religious literature, we need not for that reason be surprised at the
constant presence of religious feeling in all that a Greek wrote or
sang. Rather it was consistent with that freedom and that absence of
all control and circumscription which we have noted, that religion
should pervade the whole life of the people, whose hearts were its
native soil, and should consequently pervade also the literature in
which their thoughts and doings are recorded. For religion with them
was not a single and separate department of their civilisation, not
an avocation from the ordinary pursuits of men, but rather a spirit
with which work and holiday, gaiety and gloom, were alike penetrated.
We should be misled by the modern devotion to dogma and definite
formulae of faith, were we to think that so vague a religion as Greek
polytheism was any the less an abiding force, any the less capable of
inspiring genuine enthusiasm and reverence. It is not hard to imagine
the worshipper animated for the time by one emotion only, his mind
void of all else and flooded with the one idea incarnate in the divine
being at whose altar he sat in supplication. It is impossible really
to misdoubt the strength and the depth of Greek religious sentiment,
however multifarious and even mutually contradictory its modes of
display. A nation who peopled sky and earth and sea with godlike forms;
who saw in every stream and glen and mountain-top its own haunting,
hallowing presence, and, ill-content that nature alone should do them
honour, sought out the loveliest hills and vales in all their lovely
land to dedicate there the choicest of their art; who consecrated with
lavish love bronze and marble, ivory and gold, all the best that wealth
could win and skill adorn, in honour of the beings that were above man
yet always with him, majestic as Zeus, joyous as Dionysus, grave as
Demeter, light as Aphrodite, yet all divine; such a nation, though it
knew nought of inspired books and formulated creeds, can be convicted
of no shortcoming in real piety and devotion.

Their gods were very near to those whom they favoured; no communion
or intercourse was beyond hope of attainment; gods fought in men’s
battles, guided men’s wanderings, dined at men’s boards, and took to
themselves mortal consorts; and when men grew degenerate and the race
of heroes was no more, gods still held speech with them in oracles.
Religious hopes, religious fears, were the dominant motive of the
people’s whole life. It was in religion that sculpture found its
inspiration, and its highest achievements were in pourtraying deities.
The theatre was a religious institution, and on the stage, without
detriment to reverence, figured the Eumenides themselves. Religious
duties were excuse enough for Sparta to hang back from defending the
freedom of Greece. Religious scruples set enlightened Athens in an
uproar, because a number of idols were decently mutilated. Religious
fears cost her the loss of the proudest armament that ever sailed from
her shores. A charge of irreligion was pretext enough for condemning
to death her noblest philosopher. In everything, great and small, the
pouring of libations at the feast, the taking of omens before battle,
the consulting of the Delphic oracle upon the most important or most
trivial of occasions, the same spirit is manifest. Religion used or
abused, piety or superstition, was to the Greeks an abiding motive and
influence in all the affairs of life.

It is chiefly of these definite doings and customs that literature
tells us, just as art depicts the _mise-en-scène_ of religion. Yet it
would be inconceivable that a people who displayed so strong and so
abundant a religious feeling in all the circumstances and tasks of
life, should not have pondered over the essential underlying questions
of all religion, the nature of the soul and the mystery of life and
death. Literature tells us that to their poets and philosophers these
problems did present themselves, and many were the solutions which
different thinkers propounded: but of the general sense of the people
in this respect, of the fundamental beliefs which guided their conduct
towards gods and men in this life and prompted their care for the dead,
literature furnishes no direct statement: its evidence is fragmentary,
casual, sporadic. Everywhere it displays the externals, but it leaves
the inner spirit veiled. Literature as well as art needs an interpreter.

It is precisely in this task of interpretation that the assistance
offered by the folklore of Modern Greece should be sought. It should
be remembered that there is still living a people who, as they have
inherited the land and the language, may also have inherited the
beliefs and customs, of those ancients whose mazes of religion are
bewildering without a guide who knows them. Among that still living
people it is possible not only to observe acts and usages, but
to enquire also their significance: and though some customs will
undoubtedly be found either to be mere survivals of which the meaning
has long been forgotten, or even to have been subjected to new and
false interpretations, yet others, still rooted in and nourished by an
intelligent belief, may be vital documents of ancient Greek life and
thought.


§ 2. THE SURVIVAL OF ANCIENT TRADITION.

There may perhaps be some few who, quite apart from the continuity of
the Hellenic race, a question with which I must deal later, would be
inclined to pronounce the quest of ancient religion in modern folklore
mere lost labour. The lapse, they may think, of all the centuries which
separate the present day from the age of Hellenic greatness would in
itself disfigure or altogether efface any tradition of genuine value.
Such a view, however, is opposed to all the lessons that have of late
years been gained from a more systematic study of the folklore of all
parts of the world. Certain principles of magic and certain tendencies
of superstition seem to obtain, in curiously similar form, among
peoples far removed both in racial type and in geographical position.
It is sometimes urged by way of explanation that the resources of the
primitive mind are necessarily so limited, that many coincidences in
belief and custom are only to be expected, and that therefore the
similarity of form presented by some superstitions of widely separated
peoples is no argument in favour of their common origin. But, for my
part, when I consider such a belief as that in the Evil Eye, which
possesses, I believe, an almost world-wide notoriety, I find it
more reasonable to suppose that it was a tenet in the creed of some
single primitive people, of whom many present races of the world are
offshoots, and from whom they have inherited the superstition, than
that scores or hundreds of peoples, who had long since diverged in
racial type and dwelling and language, should subsequently have hit
upon one uniform belief. Indeed it may be that in the future the study
of folklore will become a science of no less value than the study of
language, and that by a comparison of the superstitions still held by
various sections of the human race it will be possible to adumbrate
the beliefs of their remotest common ancestors as clearly as, by
a comparison of their various speeches, the outlines of a common
ancestral language have been, and are being, traced. The _data_ of
folklore are in the nature of things more difficult to collect, more
comprehensive in scope, and more liable to misinterpretation, than the
_data_ of linguistic study; but none the less, when once there are
labourers enough in the field, it is not beyond hope that the laws
which govern the tradition and modification of customs and beliefs may
be found to be hardly less definite than the laws of language.

But comparative folklore is outside my present purpose. I assume
only, without much fear of contradiction, that many of the popular
superstitions and customs and magical practices still prevalent in the
world date from a period far more remote than any age on which Greek
history or archaeology can throw even a glimmering of light. If then
I can show that among the Greek folk of to-day there still survive in
full vigour such examples of primaeval superstition as the belief in
‘the evil eye’ and the practice of magic, I shall have established at
least an antecedent probability that there may exist also vestiges of
the religious beliefs and practices of the historical era.

The fear of ‘the evil eye’ (τὸ κακὸ μάτι, or simply τὸ μάτι[3],) is
universal among the Greek peasantry, and fairly common though not so
frankly avowed among the more educated classes. The old words βασκαίνω
and βασκανία are still in use, but ματιάζω and μάτι̯αγμα[4], direct
formations from the word μάτι, are more frequently heard. It would be
difficult to say on what grounds this power of ‘overlooking,’ if I
may use a popular English equivalent, is usually imputed to anyone.
Old women are most generally credited with it, but not so much owing
to any menacing appearance as because they are the chief exponents of
witchcraft and it is only fitting that the wise woman of a village
should possess the power of exercising the evil eye at will. These form
therefore quite a distinct class from those persons whose eyes are
suspected of exerting naturally and involuntarily a baneful influence.
In the neighbourhood of Mount Hymettus it appears that blue eyes fall
most commonly under suspicion: and this is the more curious because in
Attica, with its large proportion of Albanian inhabitants, blue eyes
are by no means rare. Possibly, however, it was the native Greeks’
suspicion of the strangers who settled among them, which first caused
this particular development of the belief in this district. Myself
possessing eyes of the objectionable colour, I have more than once been
somewhat taken aback at having my ordinary salutation (’γει̯ά σου,
‘health to you,’) to some passing peasant answered only by the sign
of the Cross. Fortunately in other localities I never to my knowledge
inspired the same dread; had it been general, I should have been forced
to abandon my project of enquiring into Greek folklore; for the risk
of being ‘overlooked’ holds the Greek peasant, save for a few phrases
of aversion, in awe-stricken silence. My impression is that any eyes
which are peculiar in any way are apt to incur suspicion, and that in
different localities different qualities, colouring or brilliance or
prominence, excite special notice and, with notice, disfavour. The evil
eye, it would seem, is a regular attribute both of the Gorgon and of
the wolf; for both, by merely looking upon a man, are still believed to
inflict some grievous suffering,--dumbness, madness, or death; and yet
there is little in common between the narrow, crafty eye of the wolf
and either the prominent, glaring eyes in an ancient Medusa’s head or
the passionate, seductive eyes of the modern Gorgon, unless it be that
any fixed unflinching gaze is sufficient reason for alarm.

Some such explanation will best account for the strange vagary of
superstition which brings under the category of the evil eye two
classes of things which seemingly would have no connexion either with
it or with each other, looking-glasses and the stars.

To look at oneself in a mirror is, in some districts, regarded as a
dangerous operation, especially if it be prolonged. A bride, being
specially liable to all sinister influences, is wise to forego the
pleasure of seeing her own reflection in the glass; and a woman in
child-bed, who is no less liable, is deprived of all chance of seeing
herself by the removal of all mirrors from the room. The risk in
all cases is usually greatest at night, and in the town of Sinasos
in Cappadocia no prudent person would at that time incur it[5]. The
reflection, it would seem, of a man’s own image may put the evil eye
upon him by its steady gaze: and it was in fear of such an issue that
Damoetas, in the _Idylls_ of Theocritus, after criticizing his own
features reflected in some glassy pool, spat thrice into his bosom that
he might not suffer from the evil eye[6].

The belief in a certain magical property of the stars akin to that of
the evil eye is far more widely held. They are, as it were, the eyes
of night, and in the darkness ‘overlook’ men and their belongings as
disastrously as does the human eye in the day-time. Just as a woman
after confinement is peculiarly liable to the evil eye and must have
amulets hung about her and mirrors removed from her room, so must
particular care be taken to avoid exposure to stellar influence.
Sonnini de Magnoncourt, who had some medical experience in Greece,
speaks authoritatively on this subject. According to the popular view,
he says, she must not let herself be ‘seen by a star’; and if she
goes out before the prescribed time,--according to this authority,
only eight days, but now preferably forty days, from the birth of
the child,--she is careful to return home and to shut herself up in
her room by sunset, and after that hour to open neither door nor
window, for fear that a star may surprise her and cause the death of
both mother and child[7]. So too in the island of Chios, if there is
occasion to carry leaven from one house to another, it must be covered
up,--in the day-time ‘to prevent it from being seen by any strange
eye,’ at night ‘to prevent it from being seen by the stars’: for if it
were ‘overlooked’ by either, the bread made with it would not rise[8].
Such customs show clearly that the stars are held to exercise exactly
the same malign influence as the human eye: the same simple phrases
denote in Greek the operation of either, and the ‘overlooking’ of
either has the same blighting effect.

The range of this mischievous influence--for I now take it that the
evil eye and the stars are indistinguishable in their ill effects--is
very large. Human beings are perhaps most susceptible to it. In some
districts[9] indeed new-born infants up to the time of their baptism
are held to be immune; till then they are the children of darkness,
and the powers of darkness do not move against them. But in general
no one at any moment of his life is wholly secure. Amulets however
afford a reasonable safety at ordinary times; it is chiefly in the
critical hours of life, at marriage and at the birth of children, that
the fear of the evil eye is lively and the precautions against it more
elaborate. Animals also may be affected. Horses and mules are very
commonly protected by amulets hung round their necks, and this is the
original purpose of the strings of blue beads with which the cab-horses
of Athens are often decorated. The shepherd too has cause for anxiety
on behalf of his flock, and, when a bad season or disease diminishes
the number of his lambs, is apt to re-echo the pastoral complaint,

    Nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos[10].
    ‘Some jealous eye “o’erlooks” my tender lambs.’

And the pernicious influence makes itself felt in even a lower scale
of life. In the neighbourhood of Sparta, where there is a considerable
silk industry, the women believe that silk-worms are susceptible of
mischief from the evil eye; and the same superstition is recorded by de
Magnoncourt from Chios.

Of inanimate things, those most easily damaged in a similar way are
leaven, salt, and vinegar,--as being possessed of quickening or
preservative properties to which the blighting, destructive power of
the evil eye or of the stars is naturally opposed. The precautions
to be observed in carrying leaven from house to house have already
been noticed. Equal care is required in the making of the bread. It
often happens, so I have been told, that when a woman is kneading,
some malicious neighbour will come in, ostensibly for a chat, and put
the evil eye upon the leaven; and unless the woman perceives what is
going on and averts disaster by a special gesture which turns the evil
influence against the intruder, nothing to call bread will be baked
that day. Similarly it is unwise to borrow or to give away either salt
or vinegar at night[11]; but if it is necessary, it is prudent to
take precautions to prevent its exposure to the stars, which may even
be cheated of their prey by some such device as calling the vinegar
(ξεῖδι) ‘syrup’ (γλυκάδι) in asking for it[12]. Further, an object
which has been exposed to the stars may even carry the infection, as
it were, to those who afterwards use it. For this reason the linen and
clothes of a mother and her new-born infant must never be left out of
doors at night[13].

The precaution, as I have said, most commonly adopted is the wearing
of amulets. The articles which have the greatest intrinsic virtue for
this purpose are garlic, bits of blue stone or glass often in the form
of beads, old coins, salt, and charcoal: but many other things, by
their associations, may be rendered efficacious. The stump of a candle
burnt on some high religious festival, or a shred of the Holy Shroud
used on Good Friday, is by no means to be despised; and the bones of a
bat or a snake’s skin over which a witch has muttered her incantations
acquire thereby an equal merit. But such charms as these are _objets
de luxe_; the ordinary man contents himself with the commoner articles
whose virtue is in themselves. No midwife, I understand, would go about
her business without a plentiful supply of garlic. It is well that the
room should be redolent of it, and a few cloves must be fastened about
the baby’s neck either at birth or immediately after the baptism. Blue
beads are in general use for women, children, and animals. If men wear
them, they are usually concealed from view. But mothers value them
above all, because in virtue of their colour--γαλάζιος is modern Greek
for ‘blue’--they ensure an abundant supply of milk (γάλα) unaffected
by the evil eye or any other sinister potency. Salt and charcoal are
most conveniently carried in little bags with a string to go round the
neck. An effective charm consists of three grains of each material with
an old coin. But many other things are also used; when I have been
permitted to inspect the contents of such a bag, I have found strange
assortments of things, pebbles, pomegranate-seeds, bits of soap, leaves
of basil and other plants, often hard to recognize through age and dirt
and grease. One scientifically-minded man recommended me sulphate of
copper.

Special occasions also have special precautions proper to them. At
a wedding, the time of all others when envious eyes are most likely
to cause mischief, the bridegroom commonly carries a black-handled
knife slipped inside his belt[14], and the bride has an open pair of
scissors in her shoe or some convenient place, in order that any such
evil influence may be ‘cut off.’ But some of these magical safeguards
concern not only the evil eye, but ghostly perils in general, and will
claim notice in other connexions.

If, however, through lack of precautions or in spite of them, a man
suspects that he is being ‘overlooked,’ he must rely for protection
on the resources with which nature has provided him. The simplest
thing is to spit,--three times for choice, for that number has magical
value,--but on oneself, not at the suspected foe. Theocritus was
scrupulously correct, according to the modern view, in making his
shepherd spit thrice on his own bosom. Another expedient, though no
garlic be at hand to give effect to the words, is to ejaculate, σκόρδο
’στὰ μάτι̯α σου, ‘garlic in your eyes!’ Or use may be made of an
imprecation considered effective in many circumstances of danger, νὰ
φᾶς τὸ κεφάλι σου, ‘may you devour your own head!’ Lastly there is the
φάσκελον, a gesture of the hand,--first raised with the fist closed
and then suddenly advanced either with all the fingers open but bent,
or with the thumb and little finger alone extended,--which returns the
evil upon the offender’s own head with usury.

But, in spite of these manifold means of defence, the evil eye has
its victims; some malady seizes upon a man, for which no other cause
can be assigned; and the question of a cure arises. Here the Church
comes to the rescue, with special forms of prayer, commonly known as
βασκανισμοί, provided for the purpose. The person affected goes to the
church, or, if the case be serious, the priest comes to his house,
the prayers are recited, and the sufferer is fumigated with incense.
Also if there happens to be a sacred spring or well, ἅγι̯ασμα as it
is called, in the precincts of any church near,--and there are a fair
number of churches in Greece which derive both fame and emolument from
the possession of healing and miracle-working waters[15],--the victim
of the evil eye is well-advised to drink of them. There are some,
however, who rate the powers of a witch more highly than those of a
priest, and prefer her incantations to the prayers of the Church. She
knows, or is ready to improvise, forms of exorcism (ξόρκια, ξορκισμοί)
for all kinds of affliction. A typical example[16] begins, as do many
of the incantations of witchcraft, with an invocation of Christ and the
Virgin and the Trinity and the twelve Apostles; then comes a complaint
against the grievous illness which needs curing; next imprecations
upon the man or woman responsible for causing it; and finally an
adjuration of the evil eye to depart from the sufferer’s ‘head and
heart and finger-nails and toe-nails and the cockles of the heart,
and to begone to the hills and mountains[17]’ and so forth; after all
which the Lord’s prayer or any religious formula may be repeated _ad
libitum_. During the recitation of some such charm, the witch fumigates
her patient either with incense, or,--what is more effectual where a
guess can be made as to the identity of the envious enemy,--by burning
something belonging to the latter, a piece of his clothing or even a
handful of earth from his doorway[18]. Or again, if the patient is at a
loss to conjecture who it is that has harmed him, recourse may be had
to divination. A familiar method is to burn leaves or petals of certain
plants,--basil and gillyflower being of special repute[19],--mentioning
at the same time a number of names in succession. A loud pop or
crackling denotes that the name of the offender has been reached, and
the treatment can then proceed as described above.

       *       *       *       *       *

No less widespread in Greece than the belief in the evil eye, and
equally primitive in character, is the practice of magic. Few
villages, I believe, even at the present day do not possess a wise
woman (μάγισσα). Often indeed, owing to the spread of education and
the desire to be thought ‘European’ and ‘civilised,’ the inhabitants
will indignantly deny her existence, and affect to speak of witches
as things of the past. But in times of illness or trouble they are
apt to forget their pretensions of superiority, and do not hesitate
to avail themselves of the lore inherited from their superstitious
forefathers. For the most part women are the depositaries of these
ancient secrets, and the knowledge of charms, incantations, and all
the rites and formularies of witchcraft is handed down from mother to
daughter. But men are not excluded from the profession. The functions
of the priest, for example, are not clearly distinguished from those of
the unconsecrated magician. At a baptism, which often takes place in
the house where the child is born and not at the church, the priest
opens the service by exorcising all evil spirits and influences from
the four corners of the room by swinging his censer, but the midwife,
who usually knows something of magic, or one of the god-parents,
accompanies him and makes assurance doubly sure by spitting in each
suspected nook. Moreover if a priest lead a notoriously evil life or
chance to be actually unfrocked, the devil invests him with a double
portion of magical power, which on any serious occasion is sure to be
in request. But, apart from the clergy who owe their powers to the use
or abuse of their office, there are other men too here and there who
deal in witchcraft. They are usually specialists in some one branch,
and professors of the white art rather than of the black,--one versed
in popular medicine and the incantations proper to it, another in
undoing mischievous spells, another in laying the restless dead. The
general practitioners, causing disease as often as curing it, binding
with curses as readily as loosing from them, are for the most part
women.

I shall not attempt to enumerate here all the petty uses of magic
of which I have heard or read: indeed an exhaustive treatment of
the subject, even for one who had devoted a lifetime to cultivating
an intimacy with Greek witches, would be hardly possible; for their
secrets are not lightly divulged, and new circumstances may at any
time require the invention of new methods. I propose only to describe
some of the best known and most widely spread practices, some
beneficent, others mischievous. Most of them will be seen to be based
on the primitive and worldwide principle of sympathetic magic,--the
principle that a relation, analogy, or sympathy existing, or being once
established, between two objects, that which the one does or suffers,
will be done or suffered also by the other.

If it be desired to cause physical injury or death to an enemy, the
simplest and surest method is to make an image of him in some malleable
material,--wax, lead, or clay,--and, if opportunity offer, to knead
into it or attach to it some trifle from the enemy’s person. Three
hairs from his head are a highly valuable acquisition, but parings
of his nails or a few shreds of his clothing will serve: or again
the image may be put in some place where his shadow will fall upon
it as he passes. These refinements of the practice, however, are not
indispensable; the image by itself will suffice. This being made, the
treatment of it varies according to the degree of suffering which it is
desired to inflict.

Acute pain may be caused to the man by driving into his image pins
or nails. This device is popularly known as κάρφωμα, ‘pinning’ or
‘nailing,’ and many variations of it are practised. One case recorded
in some detail was that of a priest’s wife who from her wedding-day
onward was a prey to various pains and ills. The priest tried in vain
to relieve them by prayer, and finally called in a witch to aid him.
After performing certain occult rites of divination, she informed him
that he must dig in the middle of his courtyard. There he found a tin,
which on being opened revealed an assortment of pernicious charms,--one
of his wife’s bridal shoes with a large nail through it, a dried-up bit
of soap (presumably from the bridal bath) stuck full of pins, a wisp
of hair (probably some of the bride’s combings) all in a tangle, and
lastly a padlock. The nail and pins were at once pulled out and the
hair carefully disentangled, with the result that the woman was freed
from her pains and her complicated ailments. But the padlock could not
be undone, and was thrown away into the sea, with the result that the
woman remained childless. The bride had been ‘nailed’ (καρφωμένη) by a
rival. In this case, it is true, no waxen or leaden image was used, but
the principle is the same. The use of an image is only preferable as
allowing the maker of it to select any part of the body which he wishes
to torture.

Another method of dealing with the image is to melt or wear it away
gradually; if it be of wax or lead, it may be seared with a red-hot
poker, or placed bodily in the fire; if it be of clay, it may be
scraped with a knife, or put into some stream which will gradually wash
it away. Accordingly as it is thus wasted away, slowly or rapidly, so
will the person whom it represents waste and die. This is in principle
the same system as that adopted by Simaetha in the Idyll of Theocritus
to win back the love of Delphis. ‘Even as I melt this wax,’ she cries,
‘with God’s help, so may the Myndian Delphis by love be straightway
molten[20]’; and she too used in her magic rites a fringe from Delphis’
cloak, to shred and to cast into the fierce flame.[21] Only, in her
case, the incantation turned what might have been a death-spell into a
love-charm.

Love and jealousy are still the passions which most frequently suggest
the use of magic. Occult methods are necessary to the girl whose
modesty prevents her from courting openly the man on whom her heart is
set, and not less so to her who would punish the faithlessness of a
former lover.

The following are some recorded recipes[22] for winning the love of an
apathetic swain.

Obtain some milk from the breasts of a mother and daughter who are both
nursing male infants at the same time, or, in default of that, from any
two women both nursing first-born male infants; mix it with wheat-flour
and leaven, and contrive that the man eat of it. Repeat therewith the
following incantation: ὅπως κλαῖνε καὶ λαχταρίζουν τώρα τὰ παιδία ποῦ
τοὺς λείπει τὸ γάλα τους, ἔτσι νὰ λαχταρίσῃ καὶ ὁ τάδε γι̯ὰ τὴν τάδε,
‘As the infants now cry and throb with desire for the milk which fails
them, so may N. throb with desire for M.’

Take a bat or three young swallows, and roast to cinders on a fire of
sticks gathered by a witch at midnight where cross-roads meet: at the
same time repeat the words, ὅπως στρηφογυρίζει, τρέμει, καὶ λαχταρίζει
ἡ νυχτερίδα ἔτσι νὰ γυρίζῃ ὁ τάδε, νὰ τρέμῃ καὶ νὰ λαχταρίζῃ ἡ καρδι̯ά
του γι̯ὰ τὴν τάδε, ‘As the bat writhes, quivers, and throbs, so may N.
turn, and his heart quiver and throb with desire for M.’ The ashes of
the bat are then to be put into the man’s drink.

Take a bat and bury it at cross-roads; burn incense over it for forty
days at midnight; dig it up and grind its spine to powder. Put the dust
in the man’s drink as before.

Such are some of the magic means of winning love; and the rites, while
involving as much cruelty to the bat as was suffered by the bird of
witchcraft, the ἴυγξ, in the ancient counterpart of these practices,
are at any rate, save for the ashes in the man’s liquor, innocuous
to him. But the weapon of witchcraft wherewith a jealous woman takes
vengeance upon a man who has forsaken her or who has never returned
her affection and takes to himself another for his bride, is truly
diabolical. This is known as the spell of ‘binding’ (δέσιμον or
ἀμπόδεμα[23]). Its purpose is to fetter the virility of the husband
and so to prevent the consummation of the marriage. The rite itself
is simple. Either the jealous girl herself or a witch employed by her
attends the wedding, taking with her a piece of thread or string in
which three loops have been loosely made. During the reading of the
gospel or the pronouncement of the blessing, she pulls the ends of
the string, forming thereby three knots in it, and at the same time
mutters the brief incantation, δένω τὸν τάδε καὶ τὴν τάδε, καὶ τὸ
διάβολο ’στὴ μέση, ‘I bind N. and M. and the Devil betwixt them.’ The
thread is subsequently buried or hidden, and unless it can be found
and either be burnt or have the knots untied, there is small hope for
the man to recover from his impotence. There is no doubt, I think,
that the extreme fear in which this spell is held has in some cases so
worked upon the bridegroom’s nerves as to render the ‘binding’ actually
effective, just as extreme faith in miraculous _icons_ occasionally
effects cures of nervous maladies[24]. Sonnini de Magnoncourt vouches
for a case, known to him personally, in which the effect of this
terror continued for several months, until finally the marriage was
dissolved on the ground of non-consummation, and the man afterwards
married another wife and regained his energy[25]. I myself have more
than once been told of similar cases, in which however divorce was not
sought (it is extremely rare in Greece) but the spell was broken by
the finding of the thread or by countervailing operations of magic. In
Aetolia, where this superstition is specially rife, I knew of a priest,
a son of Belial by all accounts, who made a speciality of loosing
these binding-spells. By his direction the afflicted man and his wife
would go at sunset to a lonely chapel on a mountain-side, taking
with them food and a liberal supply of wine, with which to regale
themselves and the priest till midnight. At that hour they undressed
and stood before the priest, who pronounced over them some form of
exorcism and benediction,--my informant could not give me the words.
They then retired to rest on some bedding provided by the priest on
the chapel-floor, while he recited more prayers and swung his censer
over them. I was assured that more than one couple in the small town
where I was staying confessed to having obtained release from the spell
by a night thus spent and with the extreme simplicity of the peasants
of that district thought no shame to confess it. And this is the more
easily intelligible, because, as we shall see later[26], the practice
of ἐγκοίμησις, sleeping in some holy place with a view to being cured
of any ailment, is as familiar to Christians of to-day as it was to
their pagan ancestors.

But pure magic too, no less than these quasi-Christian methods, may
effect the loosing of the bond, even without the discovery of the
knotted thread which is the source of the mischief. In a recent case
on record, a witch, having been consulted by a couple thus distressed,
took them to the sea-shore, bade them undress, bound them together with
a vine-shoot, and caused them to stand embracing one another in the
water until forty waves had beaten upon them[27]. On the significance
of the details of this charm no comment is made by the recorder of
it; but they deserve, I think, some notice. The vine-shoot, like the
olive-shoot, is a known instrument of purification, and is sometimes
laid on the bier beside the dead during the lying-in-state (πρόθεσις).
Salt is likewise possessed of magical powers to avert all evil
influences,--we have noticed the use of it in amulets to protect from
the evil eye,--and the sea is therefore more efficacious than a river
for mystic purposes. Forty is the number of purification; the churching
of women takes place on the fortieth day from the birth, whence the
Greek word for to ‘church’ is σαραντίζω,--from σαράντα, ‘forty.’ Lastly
the beating of the waves seems intended to drive out by physical
compulsion the devil or any power of evil by which husband and wife are
kept apart.

In view of this danger it is natural that ample precautions should
be taken at every wedding. During the dressing of the bride or the
bridegroom, it is customary to throw a handful of salt into a vessel
of water, saying, ὅπως λυώνει τὸ ἁλάτι, ἔτσι νὰ λυώσουν οἱ ὀχτροί
(ἐχθροί), ‘As the salt dissolves, so may all enemies dissolve.’ The
black-handled knife worn by the bridegroom in his belt, and the pair
of scissors put in the bride’s shoe or sometimes attached to her
girdle, both of which have been noticed as safeguards against the
evil eye, serve also to ‘cut’ this magic bond of impotence. Sometimes
too a pair of scissors and a piece of fisherman’s net are put in the
bridal bed. In Acarnania and Aetolia, and it may be elsewhere, a still
more primitive custom prevails; both bride and bridegroom wear an
old piece of fishing-net,--in which therefore resides the virtue of
salt water,--round the loins next to the body; and from these bits of
netting are afterwards made amulets to be worn by any children of the
marriage. Such customs are likely long to continue among the simpler
folk of modern Greece, who frankly and innocently wish the bride at her
wedding reception ‘seven sons and one daughter.’

But it is not only for ailments induced by malicious magic that magical
means of cure or aversion are used. The whole of popular medicine is
based upon the knowledge of charms and incantations. Many simples and
drugs are of course known and employed; but it is still generally
believed, as it was in old time, that ‘there would be no good in the
herb without the incantation[28].’ For the most ordinary diseases are
credited to supernatural causes, and there is no ill to which flesh is
heir,--from a headache to the plague,--without some demon responsible
for it. A nightmare and the sense of physical oppression which often
accompanies it are not traced to so vulgar a cause as a heavy supper,
but are dignified as the work of a malicious being named Βραχνᾶς[29],
who in the dead of night delights to seat himself on the chest of
some sleeper, and by his weight produces an unpleasant feeling of
congestion. Material for a similar personification has been found also
in the more terrible pestilences by which Greece has from time to time
been visited. It is still believed among the poorest folk of Athens
that in a cleft on the Hill of the Nymphs, undisturbed even by the
modern observatory on its summit, there lives a gruesome sisterhood,
a trinity of she-devils, Χολέρα, Βλογι̯ά, and Πανοῦκλα,--Cholera,
Smallpox, and Plague.

Granted then that illness in general is the malicious work of
supernatural beings, common reason recommends the employment of
supernatural means to defeat and expel them. Forms of exorcism have
in past times been provided by the Church and are still in vogue; but
here, as in other matters, the functions of the priest are shared
with the witch, and an old woman versed in the traditional lore of
popular medicine is as competent as any bishop to cast out the devils
of sickness. Nor do the popular incantations differ much in substance
from the ecclesiastical. The witch knows better than to try to cast
out devils in the Devil’s name, and her exorcisms contain invocations
of God and the saints of the same character as those sanctioned by
the Church; only in her accompanying rites and gestures there is a
picturesque variety which is lacking in the swinging of the priest’s
censer.

The details of the rites and the full forms of incantation are in
general extremely difficult to obtain. The witches themselves are
always reticent on such points, and I have known one plead, by way of
excuse for her apparent discourtesy in withholding information, that
the virtue of magic was diminished in proportion as the knowledge of
it was disseminated. One cure, however,--a cure for headache--will
sufficiently illustrate the principle on which the healing art among
the common-folk generally proceeds. This cure is based upon the
assumption that the tense and bruised feeling of a bad headache is
due to the presence of some demon within the skull, and that the
room which he occupies must have been provided by distention of the
head,--which will therefore measure more in circumference while it
aches than when the demon has been exorcised. This is demonstrated in
the course of the cure. The witch takes a handkerchief and measures
with it the patient’s head. Doubling back the six or eight inches of
the handkerchief that remain over, she puts in the fold three cloves of
garlic, three grains of salt, or some other article of magical virtue,
and ties a knot. Then waving the handkerchief about the patient’s head,
she recites her form of exorcism,--but usually in a tone so low and
mumbling that the bystanders cannot catch the words. The exorcism being
finished, she again measures the head, and this time the knot, which
marks the previous measurement, is found to overlap, by two or three
inches it may be, the other end of the kerchief,--a sure sign that the
intruding demon has been expelled and that the head having returned to
its natural dimensions will no longer ache[30]. The exact words of the
incantation which should accompany this rite I could not obtain; but
I make little doubt that in substance they would differ little from a
Macedonian formula recently published:--

‘For megrim and headache:

‘Write on a piece of paper:--God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of
Jacob, loose the demon of the megrim from the head of Thy servant. I
charge thee, unclean spirit which ever sittest in the head of man,
take thy pain and depart from the head: from half-head, membrane, and
vertebra, from the servant of God, So-and-so. Stand we fairly, stand we
with fear of God. Amen[31].’

In this instance we have the formula but not, it seems, the rite which
should accompany it; for the mere act of committing the words to paper
is hardly likely to be deemed sufficient. Probably the paper would be
laid under the pillow at night, or, as I have known in other cases,
would be burnt, and its ashes taken as a sedative powder.

The various charms which we have so far considered are directed towards
the hurt or the healing of man: but external nature is also responsive
to magic spells. It is rumoured that there are still witches who have
power to draw down the moon from the heavens by incantation; but a more
useful ceremony, designed to draw down the clouds upon a parched land,
may still be actually witnessed. The most recent case known to me was
in the April of 1899, when the rite was carried out some few days,
unfortunately, after I had left the district by the people of Larissa.
The custom is known all over the north of Greece--in Epirus[32],
Thessaly, and Macedonia,--and also it is said among some of the Turks,
Wallachs, and Servians; to the south of those regions and in the
islands of the Aegean I heard nothing of it. A boy (or sometimes, it
is said, a girl[33]) is stripped naked and then dressed up in wreaths
and festoons of leafage, grass, and flowers, and, escorted by a troop
of children of his own age, goes the round of the neighbourhood. He is
known as the περπερία, and his companions sing as they go,

    Perpería goes his way
    And to God above doth pray,
    Rain, O God, a gentle rain,
    Shed, O God, a gentle shower,
    That the fields may give their grain,
    And the vines may come to flower,

and so forth in such simple strain[34]. At each doorway and more
particularly at every spring and well, which it is the special duty of
the Perpería to visit, anyone who will may empty a vessel of water over
the boy, to whom some compensation for his drenching is usually made in
the form of sweetmeats or coppers.

The word περπερία has been the subject of considerable discussion.
By-forms περπερίτσα, περπεροῦνα, and παππαροῦνα also occur. The first
two are of the nature of diminutives; the last-named is a corrupt form
used only, so far as I know, in one district of Epirus, and means
a ‘garden-poppy.’ The perversion of the word has in this district
(Zagorion) affected the rite itself; for it is considered necessary
for this flower to be used largely in dressing up the chief actor in
the ceremony[35]. But the most general, and, as I think, most correct
form is περπερία (or περπερεία). With the ancient word περπερεία,
derived from the Latin _perperus_ and used in the sense of ‘boasting’
or ‘ostentation,’ it can, I feel, have no connexion; and I suggest that
it stands for περιπορεία, with the same abbreviation as in περπατῶ
for περιπατῶ, ‘walk,’ and subsequent assimilation of the first two
syllables. If my conjecture is right, the word originally meant nothing
more than a ‘procession round’ the village; next it became confined in
usage to a procession for the particular purpose of procuring rain;
and finally, the words πορεία[36] and πορεύομαι having been lost from
popular speech, it was taken to be the name of the boy who plays the
uncomfortable part of vegetation craving water. And indeed it would
seem likely that the song which forms part of the ceremony was actually
first composed at a time when περπερία was still understood in the
sense of ‘procession’: for in every recorded version known to me it
would be still possible to interpret the word in this meaning without
detriment to the context.

The rite itself as an example of sympathetic magic requires no
commentary: a simpler application of the principle that like produces
like could not be found.

       *       *       *       *       *

Other examples of primitive customs and beliefs still prevalent
in Greece might easily be amassed: but I have preferred to select
these few for detailed treatment rather than to glance over a larger
number, in order that they may the more clearly be seen to belong to
certain types of superstition found the whole world over and therefore
presumably dating from prehistoric ages: for if the population of
Greece has proved a good vehicle for the transmission of superstitions
so primaeval, it will surely follow that there is nothing extravagant
in hoping to learn also from their traditions something of the religion
of historic Hellas.


§ 3. THE SURVIVAL OF HELLENIC TRADITION.

There may however be some who, while admitting that mere lapse of time
need not have extinguished ancient Hellenic ideas, will be disposed to
question the likelihood, even the possibility, of their transmission
on racial grounds. The belief in the evil eye and the practice of
sympathetic magic were once, they may say, the common property of the
whole uncivilised world; and though the inhabitants of modern Greece
have inherited these old superstitions and usages, there is nothing
to show from what ancestry they have received the inheritance. The
population, it may be urged, has changed; the Greeks of to-day are not
Hellenes; their blood has been contaminated by foreign admixture, and
with this admixture may have come external, non-Hellenic traditions;
has not Fallmerayer stoutly maintained that the modern inhabitants of
Greece have practically no claim to the name of Hellenes, but come of a
stock Slavonic in the main, though cross-bred with the offscourings of
many peoples?

The historical facts from which Fallmerayer argued are not to be
slighted. It is well established[37] that, from the middle of the sixth
century onwards, successive hordes of Slavonic invaders swept over
Greece, driving such of the native population as escaped destruction
into the more mountainous or remote districts; that in the middle of
the eighth century, when the numbers of the Greek population had been
further reduced by the great pestilence of 746, ‘the whole country,’
to use the exact phrase of Constantine Porphyrogenitus[38], ‘became
Slavonic and was occupied by foreigners’; that the Slavonic supremacy
lasted at least until the end of the tenth century; that thereafter
a gradual fusion of the remnants of the Greek population with their
conquerors began, but proceeded so slowly that at the beginning of the
thirteenth century the ‘Franks,’ as the warriors of Western Christendom
were popularly called, found Slavonic tribes in Elis and Laconia quite
detached from the rest of the population, acknowledging indeed the
supremacy of the Byzantine government, but still employing their own
language and their own laws; and finally that the amalgamation of the
two races was not complete even by the middle of the fifteenth century,
for the Turks at their conquest of Greece found several tribes of the
Peloponnese, especially in the neighbourhood of Mount Taygetus, still
speaking a Slavonic tongue.

If then, as is now generally admitted, Fallmerayer’s conclusions were
somewhat exaggerated, it remains none the less an historical fact that
there is a very large admixture of Slavonic blood in the veins of the
present inhabitants of Greece. The truth of this is moreover enforced
by the physical characteristics of the people as a whole. Travellers
conversant alike with Slavs and with modern Greeks have affirmed to me
their impression that there is a close physical resemblance between the
two races; and while I have not the experience of Slavonic races which
would permit me to judge of this resemblance for myself, it certainly
offers the best explanation of my own observations with regard to the
variations of physical type in different parts of the Greek world. In
the islands of the Aegean and in the promontory of Maina, to which the
Slavs never penetrated, the ancient Hellenic types are far commoner
than in the rest of the Peloponnese or in Northern Greece. Not a
little of the charm of Tenos or Myconos or Scyros lies in the fact
that the grand and impassive beauty of the earlier Greek sculpture may
still be seen in the living figures and faces of men and women: and if
anyone would see in the flesh the burly, black-bearded type idealised
in a Heracles, he need but go to the south of the Peloponnese, and
among the Maniotes he will soon be satisfied: for there he will find
not merely an occasional example, as of reversion to an ancestral type,
but a whole tribe of swarthy, stalwart warriors, whose aspect seems to
justify their claim that in proud, though poverty-stricken, isolation
they have kept their native peninsula free from alien aggression,
and the old Laconian blood still pure in their veins. The ordinary
Greek of the mainland, on the other hand, is usually of a mongrel and
unattractive appearance; and in view of the marked difference of the
type in regions untouched by the Slavs, I cannot but impute his lack of
beauty to his largely Slavonic ancestry.

Yet even in the centre of the Peloponnese where the Slavonic influence
has probably been strongest, the pure Greek type is not wholly extinct.
I remember a young man who acted as ostler and waiter and in all other
capacities at a small _khan_ on the road from Tripolitza to Sparta, who
would not have been despised as a model by Praxiteles; and elsewhere
too, now and again, I have seen statuesque forms and classic features,
less perfect indeed than his, but yet proclaiming beyond question an
Hellenic lineage; so that I should hesitate to say that in any part of
Greece the population is as purely Slavonic as in Maina or many of the
islands it is purely Greek.

But, as I think, the exact proportion of Slavonic and of Hellenic
blood in the veins of the modern Greeks is not a matter of supreme
importance. Even if their outward appearance were universally and
completely Slavonic, I would still maintain that they deserve the
name of Greeks. Though their lineage were wholly Slavonic, their
nationality, I claim, would still be Hellenic. For the nationality of
a people, like the personality of an individual, is something which
eludes definition but which embraces the mental and the moral as
well as the physical. A man’s personality is not to be determined by
knowledge of his family and his physiognomy alone; and similarly racial
descent and physical type are not the sole indices of nationality. Even
if a purely Slavonic ancestry had dowered the inhabitants of Greece
with a purely Slavonic appearance, yet, if their thoughts and speech
and acts were, as they are, Greek, I would still venture to call them
Greek in nationality. _Ce n’est que la peau dont l’Ethiope ne change
pas._

But the people of modern Greece do not actually present so extreme
a case of acquired nationality. They are partly Greek in race: and
if it should appear that they are wholly Greek in nationality, the
explanation must simply be that the character, no less than the
language, of their Hellenic ancestors was superior in vitality to that
of the Slavs who intermarried with them, and alone has been transmitted
to the modern Greek people.

What, then, is the national character at the present day?

The first feature of it which casual conversation with any Greek will
soon bring into view is that narrow patriotism which was so remarkable
a trait in the Greeks of old time. If he be asked what is his native
land (πατρίδα), his answer will be, not Greece nor any of the larger
divisions of it, but the particular town or hamlet in which he happened
to be born: and if in later life he change his place of abode, though
he live in his new home ten or twenty years, he will regard himself
and be regarded by the native-born inhabitants as a foreigner (ξένος).
Or again if a man obtain work for a short time in another part of
the country, or if a girl marry an inhabitant of a village half a
dozen miles from her own, the departure is mourned with some of those
plaintive songs of exile in which the popular muse delights. Nor are
there lacking historical cases in which this narrow love of country
has produced something more than fond lamentations; the boast of the
Maniotes that they have never acknowledged alien masters is in the
main a true boast, and it was pure patriotism which nerved them in
their long struggle with the Turks for the possession of their rugged,
barren, storm-lashed home. It was patriotism too, narrow and proud,
that both sustained the heroic outlaws of Souli in their defiance of
Ottoman armies, and also,--because they disdained alliance with their
Greek neighbours,--contributed to their final downfall.

But so tenacious and indomitable a courage is in modern, as it was in
ancient, Greece the exception rather than the rule. The men of Maina
and of Souli are comparable to the Spartans: but in no period of Greek
history has steadfast bravery been commonly displayed. Yet, in spite
of the humiliating experiences of the late Graeco-Turkish war, the
Greek people should not be judged devoid of courage. But theirs is a
courage which comes of impulse rather than of self-command; a courage
which might prompt a charge as brilliant as that of Marathon, but could
not cheerfully face the hardships of a campaign; a courage which might
turn a slight success into a victory, but could not save a retreat from
becoming a rout.

It must be acknowledged also that the rank and file are in general
more admirable than their officers. The bravery of the men, impulsive
and short-lived though it be, is inspired by a real devotion of
themselves to a cause; whereas among the officers self-seeking and even
self-saving are conspicuous faults. Even the really courageous leaders
seldom have a single eye to the success of their arms. Their plans are
marred by petty jealousies. The same rivalries for the supreme command
which embarrassed the Greeks of old in defending their liberty against
Persia, were repeated in the struggles of the last century to throw off
the Turkish yoke. And if in both cases the Greeks were successful, in
neither was victory due to the unity and harmony of their leaders, but
rather to that passionate hatred of the barbarians which stirred the
people as a whole.

Indeed, not only in war but in all conditions of life, any personal
eminence or distinction has been apt to turn the head of a Greek.
‘The abundant enjoyment of power or wealth,’ said the ancients not
without knowledge of the national character, ‘begets lawlessness and
arrogance’; and in humbler phrase the modern proverb sums up the same
qualities of the race,--καλὸς δοῦλος, κακὸς ἀφέντης, ‘a good servant
and a bad master.’ In all periods of Greek history there have been
few men who have attained to power without abusing it. The honour
of being returned to the Greek Parliament upsets the mental balance
of a large number of deputies. Without any more intimate knowledge
of politics than can be obtained from second-rate newspapers, they
believe themselves called and qualified to lead each his own party,
with the result--so it is commonly said--that no government since the
first institution of parliament has ever had an assured majority in
the House, and on an average there have been more than one dissolution
a year. The modern parliament is as unstable an institution as the
ancient ecclesia of Athens when there was no longer a Pericles to
control it, and its demagogues are as numerous.

Even the petty eminence of a village schoolmaster proves to be too
giddy a pinnacle for many. Such an one thinks it necessary to support
his position--which owing to the Greek love of education is more highly
respected perhaps than in other countries--by a pretence of universal
knowledge and a pedantry as lamentable as it is ludicrous. I remember
a gentleman who boasted the title of Professor of Ancient History in
the _gymnasium_ or secondary school of a certain town, who called to me
one day as I was passing a _café_ where he and some of his friends were
sitting, and said that they were having a pleasant little discussion
about the first Triumvirate, and had recalled the names of Cicero and
Caesar, but could not at the moment remember the third party. Could
I help them? I hesitated a moment, and then resolved to risk it and
suggest, what was at least alliterative if not accurate, the name of
Cato. ‘Of course,’ he answered, ‘how these things do slip one’s memory
sometimes!’ Yet this Professor posed as an authority on many subjects
outside his own province of learning, and frequently when I met him
would insist on talking dog-Latin with an Italian pronunciation, a
medium in which I found it difficult to converse.

In this readiness to discourse on any and every subject and to
display attainments in and out of season, he and the class of which
he is typical are the living images of the less respectable of the
ancient Sophists. And in pedantry of language too they fairly rival
their famous prototypes. The movement in favour of an artificial
revival of ancient Greek has already been of long duration, and has
had a detrimental effect upon the modern language. The vulgar tongue
has a melodious charm, while many classical words, in the modern
pronunciation, are extremely harsh and uncouth. The object of the
movement is to secure an uniform ‘pure’ speech, as they call it,
approximate to that of Plato or of Xenophon; and the method adopted is
to mix up Homeric and other words of antiquarian celebrity with literal
renderings of modern French idioms, inserting datives, infinitives,
and other obsolete forms at discretion. To aid in this movement is the
task and the delight of the schoolmasters: and such is their devotion
to this linguistic sophistry, that they are not dismayed even by the
ambiguity arising from the use of ancient forms indistinguishable in
modern speech. The two old words ἡμέτερος and ὑμέτερος have now no
difference in sound: yet the schoolmaster uses them and inculcates
the use of them, with the lamentable result that the children are not
taught to distinguish _meum_ and _tuum_ even in speech.

And here again the character of the modern Greek reflects that of his
ancestors. Honesty and truthfulness are not the national virtues. To
lie, or even to steal, is accounted morally venial and intellectually
admirable. It is a proof of superior mother-wit, than which no quality
is more valued in the business of everyday life. Almost the only
things in Greece which have fixed prices are tobacco, newspapers, and
railway-tickets. The hire of a mule, the cost of a bunch of grapes,
the price of meat, the remuneration for a vote at the elections,--such
matters as these are the subject of long and vivacious bargaining, and
if the money does not change hands on the spot, the bargain may be
smilingly repudiated and an attempt made, on any pretext which suggests
itself, to extort more. Yet there is a certain charm in all this; for,
if a man get his own price, it is not so much the amount of his profit
which pleases him as his success in winning it; and if he fail, he
takes a smaller sum with perfect good humour and increased respect for
the man who has outwitted him. Anyone may be honest; but to be ἔξυπνος,
as they say, shrewd, wide-awake,--this is Greek and admirable. The
contrast of an Aristides with a Themistocles is the natural expression
of Greek thought. Moral uprightness and mental brilliance are not to be
expected of one and the same man; and for the most part the Greeks now
as in old time praise others for their justice and pride themselves on
their cunning. The acme of cleverness is touched by him who can both
profit by dishonesty and maintain a reputation for sincerity.

But, while truthfulness and fair dealing are certainly rare, there
is one relation in which the most scrupulous fidelity is unfailingly
shown. The obligations of hospitality are everywhere sacred. The
security and the comfort of the guest are not in name only but in
actual fact the first consideration of his host. However unscrupulous
a Greek may be in his ordinary dealings, he never, I believe, harbours
for one moment the idea of making profit out of the stranger who
seeks the shelter of his roof. For hospitality in Greece, it must be
remembered, means not the entertainment of friends and acquaintances
who are welcome for their own sake or from whom a return in kind may
be expected, but real φιλοξενία, a generous and friendly welcome to
a stranger unknown yesterday and vanished again to-morrow. To each
unbidden chance-comer the door is always open. For lodging he may
chance to have an incense-reeking room where the family _icons_ hang,
or a corner of a cottage-floor barricaded against the poultry and
other inmates; for food, hot viands rich in circumambient oil, or
three-month-old rye-bread softened in a cup of water; but among rich
and poor alike he is certain of the best which there is to give. Even
where there are inns available, the stranger will constantly find
that the first native of the place to whom he puts the Aristophanic
enquiry ὅπου κόρεις ὀλίγιστοι[39]--which inn is of least entomological
interest--will constitute himself not guide but host and will place the
resources of his own house freely at the service of the chance-found
visitor.

The reception accorded by Eumaeus to Odysseus, in its revelation of
human--and also of canine--character, differs in no respect from
that which may await any traveller at the present day. As Odysseus
approached the swineherd’s hut, ‘suddenly the yelping dogs espied him,
and with loud barking rushed upon him, but Odysseus guilefully sat
down and let fall his staff from his hand[40].’ Such is the opening
of the scene; and many, I suppose, must have wondered, as they read
it, wherein consisted Odysseus’ guilefulness. A shepherd of Northern
Arcadia resolved me that riddle. I had been attacked on a mountain-path
by two or three of his dogs,--‘like unto wild beasts[41],’ as Homer
has it,--and the combat may have lasted some few minutes when the
shepherd thought fit to intervene. Sheep-dogs are of course valued in
proportion to their ferocity towards any person or animal approaching
the flock, and a taste of blood now and again is said to keep them
on their mettle. Fortunately matters had not reached that point; but
none the less I suggested to the man that he might have bestirred
himself sooner. ‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘if you are really in difficulties,
you should sit down’; and when I showed some surprise, he explained
that anyone who is attacked by sheepdogs has only to sit down and let
go his walking-stick or gun or other offensive weapon, and the dogs,
understanding that a truce has been called, will sit down round him and
maintain, so to speak, a peaceful blockade[42]. On subsequent occasions
I tested the shepherd’s counsel, beginning prudently with one dog only
and, as I gained assurance, raising the number: it is uncomfortable[43]
to remain sitting with a bloodthirsty Molossian hound at one’s back,
ready to resume hostilities if any suspicious movement is made; but I
must own that, in my own fairly wide experience, Greek dogs, as they
are _sans peur_ in combat, are also _sans reproche_ in observing a
truce. The traveller may fare worse than by following the example of
guileful Odysseus.

But if the scene of the encounter be not a mountain-path but the
approach to some cottage, the dogs’ master will, like Eumaeus, hasten
to intervene, ‘chiding them and driving them this way and that with
a shower of stones[44],’--for the Greek dog does not heed mere
words,--and again like Eumaeus will assure his visitor that he himself
would have been ‘covered with shame[45]’ if the dogs had done his guest
any hurt. Then he will conduct his guest into his cottage and bid him
take his fill of bread and wine before he tells whence he is come
and how he has fared[46]: for Greek hospitality spares the guest the
fatigue of talking until he is refreshed. The visitor therefore sits
at his ease, silent and patient, while his host catches and kills such
beast or fowl as he may possess, cuts up the flesh in small pieces,
threads these on a spit, and holds them over the embers of his fire
till they are ready to serve up[47]: similarly, in Homeric fashion,
he mixes wine and water[48]; and then, all the preparations being now
complete, he urges his guest to the meal[49].

Thus the hospitality of to-day, in its details no less than in its
spirit, recalls the hospitality of the Homeric age. The supreme virtue
of the ancient Greek remains the supreme virtue of the modern, and a
familiarity with the manners of the present day alone might suffice
to explain why Paris who stole another man’s wife was execrable but
Admetus who let his own wife die for him could yet win admiration. The
one broke the laws of hospitality; the other, by hiding his loss and
entertaining his guest, upheld them.

A comparative estimate, such as I have essayed, of the characters of
Greeks of old and Greeks of to-day is perhaps evidence of a somewhat
intangible nature to those who are not personally intimate with the
people: but no foreigner, even though he were totally ignorant of the
modern language, could chance upon one of the many festivals of the
country without remarking that there, in humbler form, are re-enacted
many of the scenes of ancient days. The πανηγύρια, as they call these
festivals,--diminutives, both in name and in form, of the ancient
πανηγύρεις,--present the same medley of religion, art, trading,
athletics, and amusement which constituted the Olympian games. The
occasion is most commonly some saint’s-day, and a church or a sacred
spring (ἅγι̯ασμα) the centre of the gathering. Art is represented by
the contests of local poets or wits in improvising topical and other
verses, and occasionally there is present one of the old-fashioned
rhapsodes, whose number is fast diminishing, to recite to the
accompaniment of a stringed instrument still called the κιθάρα[50] the
glorious feats of some patriot-outlaw (κλέφτης) in defiance of the
Turks. Then there are the pedlars and hucksters strolling to and fro or
seated at their stalls, and ever crying their wares--fruit, sausages,
confectionery of strange hues and stranger taste, beads, knives, cheap
_icons_ ranging in subject from likenesses of patron-saints to gaudy
views of hell, and all manner of tin-foil trinkets representing ships,
cattle, and parts of the human body for dedication in the church. Then
in some open space there will be a gathering of young men, running,
wrestling, hurling the stone; yonder others, and with them the girls,
indulge in the favourite recreation of Greece, those graceful dances,
of which the best-known, the συρτός[51], and probably others too, are
a legacy from dancers of old time. It is impossible to be a spectator
of such scenes without recognising that here, in embryonic form, are
the festivals of which the famous gatherings of Olympia and Nemea,
Delphi and the Isthmus, were the full development.

And it may well happen too that the observant onlooker will descry
also the rudiments of ancient drama. Often, as is natural in so
mountainous and rugged a country, the only level dancing-place which
a village possesses is a stone-paved threshing-floor hewn out of the
hill-side. Hither on any festal occasion, be it a saint’s-day or one
of the celebrations which naturally follow the ingathering of harvest
or vintage, the dancers betake themselves. Here too a small booth
or tent, still called σκηνή, is often rigged up, to which they can
retire for rest or refreshment, while on the slopes above are ranged
the spectators. The circular threshing-floor is the _orchestra_,
the hill-side provides its tiers of seats, the dancers, who always
sing while they dance, are the chorus; add only the village musician
twanging a sorry lyre, and in the intervals of dancing an old-fashioned
rhapsode reciting some story of bygone days, or, it may be, two village
wits contending in improvised pleasantries, and the rudiments of
ancient Tragedy or Comedy are complete.

Other illustrations might easily be amassed. On March 1st the boys
of Greece still parade the village-streets with a painted wooden
swallow set on a flower-decked pole, and sing substantially the same
‘swallow-song’ (χελιδόνισμα)[52] as was sung in old time in Rhodes[53].
On May 1st the girls make wreaths of flowers and corn which, like the
ancient εἰρεσιώνη, must be left hanging over the door of the house till
next year’s wreaths take their place. The fisherman still ties his oar
to a single thole with a piece of rope or a thong of leather, as did
the mariners of Homer’s age[54]. The farmer still drives his furrows
with an Hesiodic plough.

Such are a few of the survivals which bear witness to the genuinely
Hellenic nationality of the inhabitants of modern Greece: and last,
but not least, there is the language, which, albeit no index of race,
is most cogent evidence of tradition. To the action of thought upon
language there corresponds a certain reaction of language upon thought:
it is impossible to speak a tongue which contains, let us say, the
word νεράϊδα (modern Greek for a ‘nymph’) without possessing also an
idea of the being whom that word denotes. Therefore even if the whole
population of Greece were demonstrably of Slavonic race, the fact that
it now speaks Greek would go far to support its claim to Hellenic
nationality: for its adoption of the Greek language would imply its
assimilation of Greek thought.

But, quite apart from the evidence of custom and language, the
occasional perpetuation of the ancient Greek physical type and the
general survival of the ancient Greek character plainly forbid so
extreme a supposition as that of Fallmerayer: no traveller familiar
with the modern Greek peasantry could entertain for a moment the idea
that at any period the whole of Greece became Slavonicized, but,
whatever might be the historical arguments for such a theory, would
reject it, on the evidence of his own eyes, as ludicrously exaggerated.
Fusion of race, no doubt, there has been; but in that fusion the
Hellenic element must have been the most vital and persistent; for if
the present population of Greece is of mixed descent, in its traditions
at least it is almost purely Hellenic.


§ 4. THE SURVIVAL OF PAGAN TRADITION.

It appears then that notwithstanding the immigration of Slavonic
hordes, and notwithstanding also, it may be added, the influences
exercised in later periods by ‘Franks,’ Genoese, Venetians, and Turks,
the traditions of the inhabitants of Greece still remain singularly
pure; and their claim to Hellenic nationality is justified by their
language, by their character, and by many secular aspects of their
civilisation. But in the domain of religion it might reasonably be
expected that a large change would have taken place. There is the
obstinate fact, it may be thought, that the Greeks are now and have
long been Christian. Did not the new religion dispossess and oust the
ancient polytheism? Are we to look for pagan customs in the hallowed
usages of the Greek Church? What can the simple Christian peasant of
to-day, subject from his youth up to ecclesiastical influence, know of
the religion of his distant ancestors,--of those fundamental beliefs
which guided their conduct towards gods and men in this life, and
inspired their care for the dead?

On the conduct of man towards his fellow-men in this life the influence
of Christianity appears to have been as great as that of paganism was
small. Duty towards one’s neighbour hardly came within the purview
of Hellenic religion. If we look at the supreme acts of worship in
ancient times, we cannot fail to be struck by the disunion of the
religious and the ethical. A certain purity was no doubt required of
those who attended the mysteries of Eleusis; but by that purity was
meant physical cleanliness and, strangely enough, a pure use of the
Greek language, just as much as any moral temperance or rectitude; and
the required condition was largely attained by the use or avoidance
of certain foods and by bathing in the sea. Their cleanliness in fact
was of the same confused kind, half physical and half moral, as that
which the inhabitants of Tenos were formerly wont, and perhaps still
continue, to seek on S. John the Baptist’s day (June 24) by leaping
thrice through a bonfire and crying ‘Here I leave my sins and my
fleas[55]’: and it was acquired by means equally material. There is
nothing conspicuously ethical in such a purity as this.

If moreover, as has been well argued[56], a state of ecstasy was
the highest manifestation of religious feeling, and this spiritual
exaltation was the deliberate aim and end of Bacchic and other orgies,
it must be frankly avowed that religion in its highest manifestations
was not conducive to what we call morality. The means of inducing
the ecstatic condition comprised drunkenness, inhalation of vapours,
wild and licentious dancing. With physical surexcitation came, or
was intended to come, a spiritual elevation such that the mind could
visualise the object of its desire[57] and worship, and enjoy a sense
of unity therewith. On the savagery and debauchery which accompanied
these religious celebrations there is no need to enlarge. The _Bacchae_
of Euripides, with all its passion for the beauty of holiness, is a
standing monument to the excesses of frenzy: and that these were no
mere figment of the poet’s imagination nor a transfiguration of rites
long obsolete, is proved by a single sentence of a sober enough writer
of later times, ‘The things that take place at nocturnal celebrations,
however licentious they may be, although known to the company at large,
are to some extent condoned by them owing to the drunkenness[58].’

There were of course certain sects, such as the Orphic, who, in
strong contrast with the ordinary religion, upheld definite ethical
standards, preaching the necessity of purification from sin, and
advocating moral and even ascetic rules of life. Yet, in spite of
this, we find a certain amalgamation of Orphic and Bacchic mysteries.
And why? Simply because both sects alike had a single end in view, a
spiritual exaltation in which the soul might transcend the things of
ordinary life, and see and commune with its gods. What did it matter
if the means to that end differed? The one sect might reduce the
passions of the body by rigid abstinence; the other might deaden them
with a surfeit of their desire; but, whether by prostration or by
surexcitation, the same religious end was sought and gained, and that
end justified means which we count immoral.

In effect the morality of a man’s life counted for nothing as compared
with his religion. Participation in the mysteries ensured blessings
here and hereafter which an evil life would not forfeit nor a good
life, without initiation, earn. ‘Thrice blessed they of men, who look
upon these rites ere they go to Hades’ home: for them alone is there
true life there, and for the others nought but evil[59].’ It was this
that made Diogenes scoffingly ask, ‘What, shall the thief Pataecion
have a better lot than Epaminondas after death, because he has been
initiated[60]?’ Seemingly religion and morality were to the Greek mind
divorced, or rather had never been wedded. Religion was concerned only
with the intercourse of man and god: the moral character of the man
himself and his relations with his fellows were outside the religious
sphere.

Indeed it would have been hard for the ancients to regard morality as
a religious obligation, when immorality was freely imputed to their
gods. This was a real obstacle to the ethical improvement of the people
at large, and was recognised as such by many thinkers. Pindar strove to
expurgate mythological stories which brought discredit on the morals
of Olympus. Plato would have banished the evil records of Homeric
theology from his ideal state, and ridicules Musaeus for forming no
more lofty conception of future bliss than ‘eternal drunkenness.’
Epicurus defended his own attitude towards the gods on the plea that
there was ‘no impiety in doing away with the popular gods, but rather
in attaching to the gods the popular ideas of them[61].’ In effect, in
order to reconcile religion with the teaching of ethics, the would-be
preacher of morality had either openly to discard a large amount of the
popular theology or else to have recourse to adaptation and mystical
interpretation of so artificial and arbitrary a kind that it could gain
no hold upon the simple and spontaneous beliefs of the common-folk.
Yet even among the ordinary men of those days there must have been
some who, though they did not aspire to instruct their fellow-men,
yet in hours of sober reason and cool judgement cannot have viewed
unabashed the inconsistencies of a religion whose gods were stained
with human vices. But such thoughts, we may suppose, were swept away,
as men approached their sanctuaries and their mysteries, by a flood of
religious fervour. Passion in such moments defeated reason. Emotion,
susceptibility, imagination, impetuosity, powers of visualisation
regarded among western nations as the perquisite of the inebriate,
powers of ecstasy not easily distinguished from hysteria,--such were
the mental conditions essential to the highest acts of worship; by
these, and not by sober meditation, the soul attained to the closest
communing and fullest union with that god whose glory for the nonce
outshone all pale remembrance of mere moral rectitude and alone was
able to evoke every supreme emotion of his worshipper.

If then morality was ever to be imposed and sanctioned by religion,
a wholly new religion had to be found. This was the opportunity of
Christianity. Paganism, in some of its most sacred rites, had availed
itself even of immoral means to secure a religious end: Christianity
gave to ethics a new and higher status, and was rather in danger of
making religion wholly subservient to morality. That it was difficult
to bring the first converts to the new point of view, is evident from
the rebukes administered by S. Paul to the Corinthians, who seem not
only to have indulged in many gross forms of vice in everyday life, but
even to have made the most sacred of Christian services an occasion for
gluttony and drunkenness[62].

In all then that concerns the ethical standards of the people, our
study of modern Greece will contribute little to the understanding of
ancient thought or conduct. Christianity has fenced men about with a
rigid moral code, and has exerted itself to punish those who break
bounds. Duty towards man is now recognised as the complement of duty
towards God; and any one who by a notoriously evil life has outraged
the moral laws of conduct, is liable to be deprived by excommunication
of the established means of worship. The frailties of the Greek
character remain indeed such as they always were: but now religion at
least enjoins, if it cannot always enforce, the observance of a moral
code which includes the eighth commandment, and Pataecion, though he go
regularly to church, yet lacks something.

But while the Church had an open field in matters of morality and had
no system of ethics based on Hellenic religion to combat in introducing
her higher views of man’s duty towards his fellow-men, in the province
of pure religion and of all that concerns the relations of man with his
God or gods she necessarily encountered competition and opposition.
Primarily the contest between paganism and Christianity might have
been expected to resolve itself into a struggle between polytheism
and monotheism: but as a matter of fact that simple issue became
considerably complicated.

The minds of the educated classes had become confused by the
subtleties of the Gnostics, who sought to find, in some philosophical
basis common to all religions, an intellectual justification for
accepting Christianity without wholly discarding earlier religious
convictions. This however was a matter of theology rather than of
religion, appealing not to the heart but to the head: and so far as the
common-folk were concerned we may safely say that such speculations
were above their heads.
Yet for them too the issue was confused in two ways. The first
disturbing factor was the attitude adopted by each of the two parties,
pagan and Christian, towards the object of the other’s worship. The
pagans--so catholic are the sympathies of polytheism--were ready enough
to welcome Christ into the number of their gods. Tertullian tells
us that the emperor Tiberius proposed the apotheosis of Christ[63].
Hadrian is said to have built temples in his honour[64]. Alexander
Severus had in his private chapel statues of Christ, Abraham, and
Orpheus[65]; and a similar association of Homer, Pythagoras, Christ,
and S. Paul is noted by S. Augustine[66]. Since then there is no
reason for supposing that the common-folk were more exclusive in
their religious sympathies than the upper classes, it may safely be
inferred that the average Pagan was willing to admit Christ to a place
among the gods of Greece. The Christians on the other hand did not
attack paganism by an utter denial of the existence of the old gods.
They sought rather to ridicule and discredit them by pointing out
the inconsistencies of pagan theology, and by ransacking mythology
for every tale of the vices and misdoings of its deities. They even
appealed to the testimony of Homer himself to show that the so-called
gods (θεοί) of the Greek folk were mere demons (δαίμονες)[67],--for
since Homer’s day the latter word had lost caste. Such methods, had
they been wholly successful, might have produced similar results to
those which followed the conflict of two religions in the early ages of
Greece. As the Titanic dynasty of gods had fallen before the Olympian
Zeus, and in their defeat had come to be accounted cruel and malicious
powers rightly ousted from heaven by a more just and gracious deity,
so too in turn might the whole number of the pagan gods have been
reduced to the status of devils to act as a foil to the goodness of
the Christian God. But this did not happen. One reason perhaps was
that Christianity came provided with its own devil or devils, and the
pagans were naturally averse from placing the gods whom they had been
wont to venerate in the same category with spirits so uncompromisingly
evil. The main reason however must be found in the fact that the Church
had nothing to offer to the pagans in exchange for the countless
gods of the old religion whom she was endeavouring to displace and
to degrade. Indeed the real difficulty of the Christian Church was
the tolerant spirit of the Greek people. They would not acknowledge
that any feud existed. They were ready to worship the Christian God:
but they must have felt that it was unreasonable of the Christian
missionaries to ask them to give up all their old gods merely because
a new god had been introduced. Even if their gods were all that the
Christians represented them to be--cruel, licentious, unjust--that was
no reason for neglecting them; rather it furnished a stronger motive
for propitiating them and averting their wrath by prayer and sacrifice.
Tolerant themselves, they must have resented a little the intolerance
of the new religion.

Such being the attitude of the two parties, it may be doubted whether
the Church would have made much headway in Greece, had it not been for
a fresh development in her own conditions. And this development was the
second disturbing factor in what should have been the simple struggle
between monotheism and polytheism. Christianity, as understood by the
masses, became polytheistic on its own account.

It is true that the authorities of the Greek Church have always taught
that the angels and saints are not to be worshipped in the same sense
as God. Ecclesiastical doctrine concedes to them no power to grant the
petitions of men at their own will: they can act as intermediaries
only between man and the Almighty; yet while they cannot in their
own might fulfil the requests which they hear, their intervention as
messengers to the throne of God is deemed to enhance the value of man’s
prayers and wellnigh to ensure their acceptance. But such a doctrine
is naturally too subtle for the uninstructed common-folk: and just as
Christ had been admitted to the ranks of the Greek gods, so were the
saints, it would seem, accepted as lesser deities or perhaps heroes.
Whatever their precise status may have been, they at any rate became
objects of worship; and a religion which admits many objects of worship
becomes necessarily a form of polytheism.

Now while the Church did not sanction this state of things by her
doctrine, there can be no doubt that she condoned it by the use to
which she put it. The attempt to crush paganism had so far failed, and
there was no longer any thought of a combat _à outrance_ between the
two religions. Violence was to give way to diplomacy; and the chief
instrument of the Church’s diplomacy was the worship of the saints. It
became her hope to supplant paganism by substituting for the old gods
Christian saints of similar names and functions; and the effects of
this policy are everywhere in evidence in modern Greece.

Thus Dionysus was displaced by S. Dionysius, as a story still current
in Greece testifies. ‘Once upon a time S. Dionysius was on his way to
Naxos: 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 Naxos. 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[68].’

The disguise of the ancient god is thin indeed. His name is changed by
an iota, but his character not a jot. S. Dionysius is god of the vine,
and even retains his predecessor’s connexion with Naxos. It is perhaps
noteworthy too that in Athens the road which skirts the south side of
the Acropolis and the theatre of Dionysus is now called the street of
S. Dionysius the Areopagite. I was once corrected by a Greek of average
education for speaking of the theatre of Dionysus instead of ascribing
it to his saintly namesake.

Demeter again, although as we shall see later she still survives as
a distinct personality, has been for the most part dispossessed by S.
Demetrius. His festival, which falls in October and is therefore remote
from harvest-time, is none the less celebrated with special enthusiasm
among the agricultural classes; marriages too are especially frequent
on that day[69].

Similarly Artemis, though she too is still known to the common-folk in
some districts, has in the main handed over her functions to a saint of
the other sex, Artemidos. Theodore Bent has recorded a good instance of
this from the island of Keos (modern Zea). There is a belief throughout
Greece that weakly children who show signs of wasting have been ‘struck
by the Nereids,’--by nymphs, that is, of any kind, whether terrestrial
or marine. ‘In Keos,’ says Bent, ‘S. Artemidos is the patron of these
weaklings, and the church dedicated to him is some little way from the
town on the hill-slopes; thither a mother will take a child afflicted
by any mysterious wasting, “struck by the Nereids,” as they say. She
then strips off its clothes and puts on new ones, blessed by the
priest, leaving the old ones as a perquisite to the Church; and then
if perchance the child grows strong, she will thank S. Artemidos for
the blessing he has vouchsafed, unconscious that by so doing she is
perpetuating the archaic worship of Artemis, to whom in classical times
were attached the epithets παιδοτρόφος, κουροτρόφος, φιλομείραξ; and
now the Ionian idea of the fructifying and nourishing properties of the
Ephesian Artemis has been transferred to her Christian namesake[70].’
It might have been added that in this custom are reflected not only
those general attributes of the tendance of children which Artemis
shared with many other deities, but possibly also her power to undo any
mischief wrought by her handmaidens, the nymphs[71].

Again there is every reason to suppose that S. Elias[72] whose chapels
crown countless hilltops is merely the Christian successor to Helios,
the Sun. The two names, which have only a moderate resemblance in the
nominative, coincide for modern pronunciation in the genitive; and the
frequency with which that case was needed in speaking of the church or
the mountain-peak dedicated to one or the other may have facilitated
the transition. Besides inheriting the mountain sanctuaries at which
the worship of the Sun may have persisted from a very early age, S.
Elias has also taken over the chariot of his predecessor, and thunder
is sometimes attributed to the rolling of its wheels.

In other cases, without any resemblance of names, identity of
attributes or functions suggested the substitution of saint for pagan
deity. Hermes who in old times was the chief ‘angel’ or messenger
of the immortals (ἄγγελος ἀθανάτων) was naturally succeeded by the
archangel Michael, upon whom therefore devolves the duty of escorting
men’s souls to Hades; and to this day the men of Maina tell how the
archangel, with drawn sword in his hand instead of the wand of his
prototype, may be seen passing to and fro at the mouth of the caves of
Taenarus through which Heracles made his ascent with Cerberus from the
lower world, and which is still the best-known descent thereto. The
supplanting of Hermes by Michael is well illustrated in the sphere of
art also by a curious gem. The design is an ordinary type of Hermes
with his traditional cap, and at his side a cock, the symbol of
vigilance and of gymnastic sport; by a later hand has been engraved
the name ‘Michael’; the cock remained to be interpreted doubtless as
the Christian symbol of the awakening at the last day of them that
sleep[73].

The conversion of pagan temples or of their sites to the purposes of
Christianity tells the same tale. The virgin goddess of Athens ceded
the Parthenon to the Blessed Virgin of the Christians. The so-called
Theseum, whether Theseus or Heracles was its original occupant, was
fitly made over to the warrior S. George: but none the less what seems
to have been an old pagan festival, known as the ρουσάλια (Latin
_rosalia_)[74], continues to this day to be celebrated with dancing and
feasting in its precincts. The Church of the Annunciation at Tenos, so
famous throughout the Greek world for its miracles of healing, stands
on the foundations of Poseidon’s ancient sanctuary, and includes in
its precincts a holy spring (ἅγι̯ασμα) whose healing virtues, we can
hardly doubt, were first discovered by the pagans: for Poseidon was
worshipped in Tenos under the title of the ‘healer’ (ἰατρός)[75].
Indeed throughout the length and breadth of the land the traveller
will find churches built with the material of the old temples or
superimposed upon their foundation, and cannot fail to detect therein
evidence of a deliberate policy on the part of the Church.

But in her attempts to be conciliatory she became in fact compromised.
It was politic no doubt to encourage the weaker brethren by building
churches on sites where they had long been wont to worship: it was
politic to smooth the path of the common-folk by substituting for the
god whom they had worshipped a patron-saint of like name or attributes.
But in so doing the Church practically condoned polytheism. She drove
out the old gods from their temples made with hands, but did not ensure
the obliteration of them from men’s hearts. The saints whom she set
up in the place of the old deities were certain to acquire the rank
of gods in the estimation of the people and, despite the niceties of
ecclesiastical doctrine, to become in fact objects of frank and open
worship. The adoption of the old places of worship made it inevitable
that the old associations of the pagan cults should survive and blend
themselves with the new ideas, and that the churches should more often
acquire prestige from their heathen sites than themselves shed a new
lustre of sanctity upon them. In effect, paganism was not uprooted to
make room for the planting of Christianity, but served rather as an
old stock on which a new and vigorous branch, capable indeed of fairer
fruit but owing its very vitality to alien sap, might be engrafted.

Bitterly and despondently did the early Fathers of the Church, and
above all S. John Chrysostom, complain of the inveteracy of pagan
customs within the pale of the Church, while a kind of official
recognition was given to many superstitions which were clearly outside
that pale, if only by the many forms of exorcism directed against
the evil eye or prescribed for the cure of those possessed by pagan
powers of evil[76]. For illustration we need not fall back upon the
past history of the Greek Church; even to-day she has not succeeded in
living down the consequences of her whilom policy of conciliation.
The common-folk indeed profess and call themselves Christian; their
priesthood is a Christian priesthood; their places of worship are
Christian churches; they make the sign of the cross at every turn;
and the names of God and Christ and the Virgin are their commonest
ejaculations. But with all this external Christianity they are as pagan
and as polytheistic in their hearts as were ever their ancestors.
By their acceptance of Christianity they have increased rather than
diminished their number of gods: in their conception of them and
attitude towards them they have made little advance since the Homeric
Age: and practically all the religious customs most characteristic of
ancient paganism, such as sacrifice, the taking of auspices, and the
consultation of oracles, continue with or without the sanction of the
Church down to the present day.

These are strong statements to make concerning even the humblest and
most ignorant members of the Holy Orthodox Church: but I shall show, I
think, that they do not exceed the warranty of facts.

First of all then the peasant believes himself to be ever compassed
about by a host of supernatural beings, who have no relation with his
Christian faith, and some of whom he unconsciously acknowledges, by the
very names that he applies to them, as ‘pagan’ beings and ‘outside’ the
Christian fold[77]. To all of these--and they are a motley crew, gods
and demons, fairies and dragons--he assigns severally and distinctly
their looks, their dispositions, their habitations, and their works. To
some of them he prays and makes offerings; against others he arms and
fortifies himself in the season of their maleficence; but all of them,
whether for good or ill, are to him real existent beings; no phantoms
conjured up by trepidation of mind, but persons whose substance is
proved by sight and hearing and touch.

Nothing is more amazing in the peasantry of modern Greece than their
familiarity with these various beings. More than once I have overheard
two peasants comparing notes on the ghostly fauna of their respective
districts; and the intimate and detailed character of their knowledge
was a revelation in regard to their powers of visualisation. It is the
mountaineers and the mariners who excel in this; but even the duller
folk of the lowlands see much that is hidden from foreign eyes. Once
however I did see a nymph--or what my guide took for one--moving
about in an olive-grove near Sparta; and I must confess that had I
possessed an initial faith in the existence of nymphs and in the
danger of looking upon them, so lifelike was the apparition that I
might have sworn as firmly as did my guide that it was a nymph that we
had seen, and might have required as strong a dose as he at the next
inn to restore my nerves. The initial faith in such things, which the
child acquires from its mother, is no doubt an important factor in the
visualisation; but it is certainly strange that often in Greece not
one man only but several together will see an apparition at the same
moment, and even agree afterwards as to what they saw.

These beings then are not the mere fanciful figures of old wives’
fables, but have a real hold upon the peasant’s belief and a firm place
in his religion. To the objects of Christian worship or veneration--God
and Christ and the Virgin together with the archangels and all the host
of saints--have been accorded the highest places and chiefest honours:
but beside them, or rather below them, yet feared and honoured too,
stand many of the divine personalities of the old faith, recognised and
distinguished still. Artemis, Demeter, and Charon, as well as Nymphs
and Gorgons, Lamiae and Centaurs, have to be reckoned with in the
conduct of life; while in folk-stories the memory at least of other
deities still survives. To these remnants of ancient mythology the
next chapter will be devoted; the purely pagan element in the modern
polytheism may be sufficiently illustrated here by a few curious cases
of the use even of the word ‘god’ (θεός) in reference to other than the
God of Christendom.

In Athens, down to recent times, there was a fine old formula of
blessing in vogue--and who shall say but that among the simpler people
it may still be heard?--which combined impartially the one God and the
many:--νὰ ς’ ἀξιῶσῃ ὁ Θεὸς νὰ εὐχαριστήσῃς θεοὺς καὶ ἀνθρώπους[78],
‘God fit thee to find favour with gods and men!’ In the island of
Syra, according to Bent[79], it was ‘a common belief amongst the
peasants that the ghosts of the ancient Greeks come once a year from
all parts of Greece to worship at Delos, ... and even to-day they
will reverently speak of the “god in Delos.”’ Another writer mentions
a similar expression as used in several parts of the mainland, though
only it would seem as an ejaculation, θεὲ τῆς Κρήτης or γιὰ τὸ θεὸ
τῆς Κρήτης ‘by the god of Crete[80]!’ In the island of Santorini (the
ancient Thera) I personally encountered a still more striking case
of out-spoken polytheism. I chanced one day upon a very old woman
squatting on the extreme edge of the cliff above the great flooded
crater which, though too deep for anchorage, serves the main town of
the island as harbour--a place more fascinating in its hideousness than
any I have seen. Wondering at her dangerous position, I asked her what
she was doing; and she replied simply enough that she was making rain.
It was two years since any had fallen, and as she had the reputation
of being a witch of unusual powers and had procured rain in previous
droughts, she had been approached by several of the islanders who were
anxious for their vineyards. Moreover she had been prepaid for her
work--a fact which spoke most eloquently for the general belief in
her; for the Greek is slow enough (as doubtless she knew) to pay for
what he has got, and never prepays what he is not sure of getting.
True, her profession had its risks, she said; for on one occasion, the
only time that her spells had failed, some of her disappointed clients
whose money she had not returned tried to burn her house over her one
night while she slept. But business was business. Did I want some rain
too? To ensure her good will and further conversation, I invested a
trifle, and tried to catch the mumbled incantations which followed
on my behalf. Of these however beyond a frequent invocation of the
Virgin (Παναγία μου) and a few words about water and rain I could catch
nothing; but I must acknowledge that her charms were effectual, for
before we parted the thunder was already rolling in the distance, and
the rain which I had bought spoilt largely the rest of my stay in the
island. The incantations being finished, she became more confidential.
She would not of course let a stranger know the exact formula which she
employed; that would mar its efficacy: she vouchsafed to me however
with all humility the information that it was not by her own virtue
that she caused the rain, but through knowing ‘the god above and
the god below’ (τὸν ἄνω θεὸ καὶ τὸν κάτω θεό). The latter indeed had
long since given up watering the land; he had caused shakings of the
earth and turned even the sea-water red. The god above also had once
rained ashes when she asked for water, but generally he gave her rain,
sometimes even in summer-time. One thing she could not make out--who
was the god that caused the thunder; did I know? I evaded the question,
and our theological discussion went no further, for the god of thunder
was making his voice heard more threateningly, and the old witch would
not stay to make his acquaintance at closer quarters.

The physical interpretation of these references to the god above and
the god below is not difficult. At the present day there are said to
be three springs, and three only, in the whole island; nor are they of
much use to the inhabitants; indeed the only one which I saw was dry
save for a scanty moisture barely sufficient to keep the rock about
it green and mossy: and in fact the population depends entirely upon
rain-water stored up in large underground cisterns or reservoirs.
Clearly the god below no longer gives water; but that there may have
been more spring-water prior to the great eruptions of 1866 is very
probable; for the people still call certain dry old torrent-beds by
which the island is intersected ‘rivers’ (ποταμοί), and real rivers
with water in them figure also in several of the local folk-stories.
The perversity of the god above in sending ashes on one occasion
instead of rain may also be understood in reference to the same
eruptions, of which the old woman gave me a vivid description.

But the theology itself is more interesting than its material basis.
This witch--a good Christian, they told me, but a little mad, with a
madness however of which sane vine-growers were eager enough to avail
themselves--acknowledged certainly three gods: the unknown thunder-god
was clearly distinct from the god of the rain who was known to her: and
there was also the god of the waters under the earth, in whose service
she had perhaps followed the calling of a water-finder, and to whom she
ascribed, as did the ancients to Poseidon, the shaking of the earth.

Polytheism then even in its purely pagan form is not yet extinct in
Greece. In the disguise of Christianity, we shall see, it is everywhere
triumphant.

Among the Christian objects of worship--for I have already explained
that by the common-folk the saints are worshipped as deities--the
Trinity and the Virgin occupy the highest places, rivalled perhaps
here and there by some local saint of great repute for miracles, but
nowhere surpassed. It is the Virgin indeed who, in Pashley’s opinion,
‘is throughout Greece the chief object of the Christian peasant’s
worship[81]’; and certainly, I think, more numerous and more various
petitions are addressed to her than to any person of the Trinity or
to any saint. But the Trinity, or at any rate God (ὁ Θεός) and Christ
(ὁ Χριστός), as the peasants say,--for the Holy Ghost is hardly a
personality to them and is rarely named except in doxologies and formal
invocations--are of almost equal importance, and are so closely allied
with the Virgin that it is difficult to draw distinctions.

But while the Church has thus secured the first place for her most
venerated figures, the influence of pagan feeling is clearly seen in
the popular conception of this ‘God.’ His position is just such as
that of Zeus in the old _régime_. He is little more than the unnamed
ruler among many other divinities. His sway is indeed supreme and he
exercises a general control; but his functions are in a certain sense
limited none the less, and his special province is the weather only.
Ζεὺς ὕει, said the ancients, and the moderns re-echo their thought in
words of the same import, βρέχει ὁ Θεός, ‘God is raining,’ or ὁ Θεὸς
ῥίχνει νερό, ‘God is throwing water[82].’ So too the coming and going
of the daylight is described as an act of God; ἔφεξε, or ἐβράδει̯ασε,
ὁ Θεός, say the peasants, ‘God has dawned’ or ‘has darkened.’ When it
hails, it is God who ‘is plying his sieve,’ ῥεμμονίζει[83] ὁ Θεός.
When it thunders, ‘God is shoeing his horse,’ καλιγώνει τ’ ἄλογό του,
or, according to another version[84], ‘the hoofs of God’s horse are
ringing,’ βροντοῦν τὰ πέταλα ἀπὸ τ’ ἄλογο τοῦ Θεοῦ. Or again the roll
of the thunder sometimes suggests quite another idea; ‘God is rolling
his wine-casks,’ ὁ Θεὸς κυλάει τ’ ἀσκιά του[85], or τὰ πιθάρι̯α του.
And once again, because a Greek wedding cannot be celebrated without a
large expenditure of gunpowder, the booming of the thunder suggests to
some that ‘God is marrying his son’ or ‘God is marrying his daughters,’
ὁ Θεὸς παντρεύει τὸν ὑγιό του[86], or ταὶς θυγατέραις του[87].

Such expressions as these[88] are in daily use among the Greek
peasantry: and nothing could reveal more frankly the purely pagan
and anthropomorphic conception of God which everywhere prevails. The
God of Christendom is indistinguishable from the Zeus of Homer. A
line from a Cretan distich, in which God is described as ἐκεῖνος ἀποῦ
συννεφιᾷ κι’ ἀποβροντᾷ καὶ βρέχει[89], ‘He that gathereth the clouds
and thundereth and raineth,’ exhibits a popular conception of the chief
deity unchanged since Zeus first received the epithets νεφεληγερέτης
and ὑψιβρεμέτης, ‘cloud-gatherer,’ ‘thunderer on high.’

But even in the province of the weather God has not undivided control.
The winds are often regarded as persons acting at their own will; and
of the north wind in particular men speak with respect as Sir Boreas
(ὁ κὺρ Βορε̯άς), for as in Pindar’s time he is still ‘king of the
winds[90].’ So too the whirlwind is the passing of the Nereids, and the
water-spout marks the path of the Lamia of the sea. Even the thunder
is not always the work of God, but some say that the prophet Elias is
‘driving his chariot,’ or ‘pursuing the dragon.’ The more striking and
irregular phenomena in short are governed by the caprice of lesser
deities--Christian saints or pagan powers--while God directs the more
orderly march of nature.

When however we turn from the external world to the life of man, we
find the functions of the supreme God even more closely circumscribed
or--to put it in another way--more generally delegated to others. The
daily course of human life with all its pursuits and passions is under
the joint control of the saints and some of the old Hellenic deities.
Of the latter, as I have said, another chapter must treat: but it
should be remembered that the peasant does not draw a hard and fast
line of distinction between the two classes with whom for clearness’
sake I am bound to deal separately. Thus Charon in many of the
folk-songs which celebrate his doings is made to represent himself as a
messenger of God, charged with the duty of carrying off some man’s soul
and unable to grant a respite[91]. He is occasionally addressed even
as Saint Charon[92]; and his name constantly occurs in the epitaphs of
country churchyards. A story too in Bernhard Schmidt’s collection[93]
illustrates well the way in which pagan and Christian elements are thus
interwoven:--

‘There was once an old man who had been good his whole life through. In
his old age therefore he had the fortune to see his good angel (ὁ καλὸς
ἄγγελός του); who said to him--for he loved him well--“I will tell thee
how thou mayest be fortunate. In such and such a hill is a cave; go
thou in there and ever onward till thou comest to a great castle. Knock
at the gate, and when it is opened to thee thou wilt see a tall woman
before thee, who will straightway welcome thee and ask thee of thine
age and business and estate. Answer only that thou art sent by me: then
will she know the rest.” Even so did the old man: and the woman within
the earth gave unto him a tablecloth and bade him but spread it out and
say “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,”
and lo! everything that he wished would be found thereon. And thus it
came to pass.

‘Now when the old man had oft made use of it, it came into his heart to
bid the king unto his house: who, when he saw the wonder-working cloth,
took it from the old man. But because he was no virtuous man, the cloth
did not its task in his hands; wherefore he threw it out of the window
and straightway it turned to dust. So the old man went again to the
woman in the hill, and she gave him this time a hen that laid a golden
egg every day. When the king heard thereof, he had the hen too taken
away from the old man. Howbeit in his keeping she laid not, and so he
threw the hen also out of window, and she likewise turned to dust. So
in his anger he bade seize the old man forthwith and cut off his head.

‘But scarce was this done when there appeared before the king the
Mistress of the Earth and of the Sea--for she was the woman in the
hill--and when she had told him in brief words what awaited him after
this life in requital for his wickedness, she stamped with her foot
upon the ground, which swallowed up the castle with the king and all
that was therein. But the old man that was slain had entered into
Paradise.’

In this story the Mistress of the Earth and of the Sea (ἡ κυρὰ τσῆ
γῆς καὶ τσῆ θαλάσσης) is, as we shall see later[94], none other than
Demeter: but pagan as she is, she works in accord with the good angel
(who is evidently her inferior), and orders the old man to invoke the
Trinity.

Thus the peasant does not conceive of any antagonism between his pagan
and his Christian objects of worship; and both classes are equally
deserving of study by those interested in ancient Greek religion.
For while every minutest trait or detail of the modern peasant’s
conception of those ancient deities, who, though despoiled of temples
and organised worship, still survive, may throw some new ray of light
on the divine personalities and the myths of old time, yet a more
broad and comprehensive view of the outlines of ancient religion may
be obtained by contemplating the worship of Christian saints who,
though deficient often in personal significance, nevertheless by their
possession of dedicated shrines and of all the apparatus of a formal
cult occupy more exactly the position of the old gods and heroes.

The saints then, as I have remarked above, have a large share in the
control of man’s daily life. The whole religious sense of the people
seems to demand a delegation of the powers of one supreme God to many
lesser deities, who, for the very reason perhaps that they are lower
in the scale of godhead, are more accessible to man. Under the name of
saints lies, hardly concealed, the notion of gods. In mere nomenclature
Christianity has had its way; but none of the old tendencies of
paganism have been checked. The current of worship has been turned
towards many new personalities; but the essence of that worship is the
same. The Church would have its saints be merely mediators with the one
God; but popular feeling has made of them many gods; their locality and
scope of action are defined in exactly the old way; vows are made to
the patron-saint of such and such a place; invocations are addressed
to him in virtue of a designated power or function.

Local titles are often derived merely from the town or district in
which the church stands, as Our Lady of Tenos, or S. Gerasimos of
Cephalonia. In other cases they have reference to the surroundings
of the sanctuary. The chapel of the Virgin in the monastery of
Megaspelaeon consists of a large cave at the foot of some towering
cliffs, and the dedication is to our Lady of the Golden Cave (Παναγία
χρυσοσπηλαιώτισσα). In this case the word ‘golden’ is an imaginative
addition, for the interior is peculiarly dark: but the dedication has
been borrowed, owing to the repute of the original shrine, by churches
which have not even a cave to show. In Amorgos S. George has the title
of Balsamites, derived from the balsam which covers the hill-side on
which stands his church. In Paros several curious dedications are
mentioned by Bent, which he renders as Our Lady of the Lake, Our Lady
of the Unwholesome Place, and S. George of the Gooseberry[95]. In
Athens there is a church of which the present dedication is said to be
due to a fire which blackened the _icon_ of the Virgin, who is known
on this account as Our smoke-blackened Lady (Παναγία καπνικαρέα), or,
it may be, Our Lady of the smoky head, according as the second half of
the compound is connected with the Turkish word for ‘black’ or the now
obsolete Greek word κάρα, ‘head[96].’

Titles denoting functions are equally numerous and quaint. In Rhodes
the Archangel Michael is invoked as πατητηριώτης, patron of the
wine-press[97]. S. Nicolas, who has supplanted Poseidon, often assumes
the simple title of ‘sailor’ (ναύτης). S. John the Hunter (κυνηγός)
owns a monastery on Mt Hymettus. In Cimolus there is a church of Our
Guiding Lady (Παναγία ὁδηγήτρια)[98]. SS. Costas and Damien, the
physicians, are known as the Moneyless (ἀνάργυροι), because their
services are given gratis. S. George at Argostóli has been dubbed the
Drunkard (μεθυστής)[99]--thus furnishing a notable parallel to the
hero celebrated in old time at Munychia as ἀκρατοπότης[100]--because
on his day, Nov. 3rd, the new wine is commonly tapped and there is much
drinking in his honour.

In other cases the actual name of the saint has determined his powers
or character without further epithet. S. Therapon is invoked for all
kinds of healing (θεραπεύειν): S. Eleutherios (with an echo possibly
of Eilythuia) to give deliverance (ἐλευθερία) to women in childbirth:
S. James, in Melos, owing to a phonetic corruption of Ἰάκωβος into
Ἄκουφος, to cure deafness[101]. S. Elias, the successor of the sun-god
(ἥλιος), has power over drought and rain. S. Andrew (Ἀνδρέας) is
implored to make weakly children ‘strong’ (ἀνδρειωμένος). S. Maura, in
Athens, requires that no sewing be done on her day under pain of warts
(locally known as μαύραις), which if incurred can only be cured by an
application of oil from her lamp[102]. S. Tryphon resents any twisting
(στρήφω) of thread, as in spinning, on his day; and on the festival of
S. Symeon expectant mothers must touch no utensil of daily toil, above
all nothing black; for S. Symeon ‘makes marks’ (ὁ Ἄϊ Συμεὼν σημειόνει),
and a birth-mark would inevitably appear on the child. If however a
woman offend unwittingly, she must lay her hands at once on that part
of the body where the birth-mark will be least disfiguring to the child.

These are only a small selection of the saints whom the peasant seeks
to propitiate, and it may be noted in passing that among them there
are some characters, as among the ancient deities, either immoral as
S. George the Drunkard, or unamiable as S. Maura, S. Tryphon, and S.
Symeon. But a better idea of the multitude of the popular deities may
perhaps be conveyed by giving a list of those worshipped in a single
island with the functions there ascribed to them. Here is the catalogue
given by a native of Cythnos[103]. The Virgin (Παναγία) is invoked on
any and every occasion, and the SS. Anargyri (Costas and Damien) in
all cases of illness. S. Panteleëmon is a specialist in eye-diseases,
S. Eleutherios in obstetrics, S. Modestes in veterinary work, S.
Vlasios in ulcers etc. S. Charalampes and S. Varvara (Βαρβάρα) deliver
from pestilences, and S. Elias from drought. The power of protecting
children from ailments is ascribed to S. Stylianos, and that of saving
sailors from the perils of the sea to S. Nicolas, S. Sostes, and the
SS. Akindyni (ἀκίνδυνοι). S. Tryphon deals with noxious insects, S.
John the Baptist with ague, S. Menas with loss of goods, S. Paraskeve
(Friday) with headache: while S. Aekaterine (Catherine) and S.
Athanasios assist anxious mothers to marry off their daughters.

As in the multiplicity of the objects of worship, so too in the mental
attitude of the worshipper, there is little change since first were
written the words δῶρα θεοὺς πείθει, ‘Gifts win the gods.’ There are
certain great occasions, it is true, now as in old days, on which
religious feeling attains a higher level, and the mercenary expectation
of blessings is forgotten in whole-hearted adoration of the blesser.
But in general a spirit of bargaining tempers the peasant’s prayer, and
a return is required for services rendered. A sketch of the religious
sentiments of the Sphakiotes given by the head of a Cretan monastery
is worth reproducing, for it is typical of the whole Greek folk. ‘The
faith,’ he writes, ‘of these highlanders in Jesus Christ is sincere
in every way, reverent, deep-seated, and unshaken, but unfortunately
it is not free from superstitious fancies which mar this otherwise
great merit. Many of them are fully persuaded that God, Our Lady, and
the Saints go to and fro unseen above their heads, watch each man’s
actions, and take part in his quarrels, like the gods of Homer. They
are under an obligation to work constant miracles, to vindicate and
avenge, to listen readily to each man’s requests and petitions, whether
they be just or no. Many of the people go off cattle-lifting or on
other wrongful enterprises, and at the same time call upon Our Lady,
or any other saints of repute as wonder-workers, to assist them, and
as payment for success promise them gifts! To some of the Saints they
attribute greater power and grace than to the God who glorified them.
In the same way they show greater reverence for this or that church or
_icon_, and bring presents from great distances, in the belief that it
has miraculous powers, without understanding that Faith works miracles
equally in all places[104].’

Such is the verdict of an educated priest of the Greek Church who
deplores the polytheism and idolatry of the common-folk among whom
he lives, and who in so doing speaks with the authority of intimate
knowledge. Nor can the justice of the verdict be questioned by any one
who has entered one of the more highly reputed churches of Greece and
observed the votive offerings which adorn or disfigure it. For these
offerings are of two qualities just as the motives which inspire them
are twofold. There are the genuine thank-offerings, selected for their
beauty or worth, which commemorate gratefully some blessing received;
of such the treasury of the Church of the Annunciation in Tenos is
full--gold and silver plate, bibles and service-books in rich bindings
studded with jewels, embroideries of Oriental silk unmatched in skill
and splendour. But there is another class, the propitiatory offerings
designed to place the offerer in a special way under the protection of
the saint. Most characteristic among these are the shreds of infected
clothing sent by some sick person to the church of the particular saint
whose healing power he invokes. Just as in the province of magic the
possession of a strip of a man’s clothing gives to the witch a control
over his whole person, so in the religious sphere the dedication of
some disease-laden rag from the body of the sufferer places him under
the special care of the saint. In the church of ‘S. John of the Column’
at Athens the ancient pillar round which the edifice has been built is
always garnished with dirty rags affixed by a daub of candle-grease;
and if the saint cures those who send these samples of their fevers, he
must certainly kill some of those who visit his sanctuary in person.
To this class of offerings belong also the bulk of the silver-foil
trinkets which are so cheap that the poorest peasant can afford one
for his tribute, and so abundant that at Tenos out of this supply of
metal alone have been fashioned the massive silver candelabra which
light the whole church. These trinkets are models of any object which
the worshipper wishes to commend to the special attention of the saint.
At Tenos they most frequently represent parts of the human body,
for there the Virgin is above all a goddess of healing; but a vast
assortment of models of other objects committed to her care may also
be seen--horses and mules, agricultural implements, boats, sheaves
of corn to represent the harvest, bunches of grapes in emblem of the
vintage; there is no limit to the variety; anything for which a man
craves the saint’s blessing is thus symbolically confided to her
keeping. Doubtless among them there are a number of thank-offerings for
mercies already received; I remember in particular a realistic model
of a Greek coasting steamer with a list attached giving the names of
the captain and crew who dedicated it in gratitude for deliverance from
shipwreck. It may even be that some few of the models of eyes and limbs
are thank-offerings for cures effected, and in beauty or worth are all
that the peasant’s artistic sense desires or his purse affords. But the
majority of them, as I have said, are the gifts of those whose prayers
are not yet answered and who thus keep before the eyes of the saint the
maladies which crave her healing care.

Other offerings again may be dedicated with either motive. Candles
and incense are equally suited to win a favour or to repay one. But
whether the motive be propitiation or gratitude, the whole system is a
legacy of the pagan world and permeated with the spirit of paganism.
Everywhere the Christian disguise of the old religion is easily
penetrable; the Church for instance has forbidden the use of graven
images, and only in one or two places do statues or even reliefs
survive: but the painted _icons_ which are provided in their stead
satisfy equally well the common-folk’s instinct for idolatry.

Vows conditional upon the answering of some prayer usually conform
outwardly at least to Christian requirements. Scores of the small
chapels with which the whole country is dotted have been built in
payment of such a vow; and often a boy may be seen dressed in a
miniature priest’s costume, because in some illness his mother devoted
him to the service of God or of some saint for a number of years if
only he should recover. But the idea of bargaining by vows is more
pagan than Christian, and sometimes indeed an even clearer echo of
ancient thought is heard, as when a girl vows to the Virgin a silver
girdle if she will lay her in her lover’s arms[105].

Miracles again are expected of the higher powers in return for man’s
services to them; for as the proverb runs, ἅγιος ποῦ δὲν θαυματουργεῖ,
δὲν δοξάζεται, ‘it is a sorry saint who works no wonders.’ And wonders
are worked as the people expect--some in appearance, some in fact.

A sham miracle is annually worked by the priests of a church near Volo
in Thessaly. Within the walls, still easily traced, of the old town
of Demetrias on a spur of Mount Pelion stands an unfinished church
dedicated to the Virgin. Here on the Friday after Easter there is a
concourse from all Thessaly to see the miracle. At the east end of the
church, on the outside, a square tank has been sunk ten or twelve feet
below the level of the church floor, exposing, on the side formed by
the church wall, ancient foundations--perhaps of some temple where the
same miracle was worked two thousand years ago. The miracle consists in
the filling of this tank with water; but seeing that under the floor
of the church itself there are cisterns to which a shaft in each aisle
descends, and that the tank outside, sunk, as has been said, to a lower
level, undisguisedly derives its water from a hole in the foundations
of the church, there is less of the marvellous in the fact that the
priests by opening some sluice fill the tank than in the simple faith
with which the throng from all parts presses to obtain a cupful of the
miraculously fertilizing but withal muddy liquid. The women drink it,
the men carry it home to sprinkle a few drops on cornfield or vineyard.

Genuine miracles, at any rate of healing, seem to be well established.
After personal investigation and enquiry at the great festival of
Tenos I concluded that some faith-cures had actually occurred. Some
travellers[106] indeed have been inclined to scoff at these miracles
and to write them down mere fabrications of interested priests. But in
an official ‘Description of some of the miracles of the wonder-working
_icon_ of the Annunciation in Tenos’ the total number claimed down to
the year 1898 is only forty-four, that is to say not an average even
of one a year; and a large majority of the cases detailed--including
twelve cases of mental derangement, eleven of blindness, and ten of
paralysis, none of them congenital,--might I suppose come under the
category of nervous diseases for which a faith-cure is possible; while
several of the remainder, such as the case of a man who at first sight
of the _icon_ coughed up a fish bone which had stuck in his throat
for two years, do not pass the bounds of belief; and even if the
priests do sometimes set false or exaggerated rumours afloat, it must
be conceded that the peasant, who has faith enough to believe their
stories, has also faith enough, if faith-cures ever occur, to render
such a cure possible in his case. Indeed no one who has been to the
great centres of miraculous healing can fail to be impressed by the
unquailing faith of the pilgrims. Year by year they come in their
thousands, bringing the maimed and the halt and the blind, and, more
pitiful still, the hopelessly deformed, for whose healing a miracle
indeed were needed. Year by year these are laid to sleep in the church
or in its precincts on the eve of the festival. Year by year they are
carried where the shadow of the _icon_ as it passes in procession may
perchance fall on them. Year by year they are sprinkled with water from
the holy spring. And year by year most of them depart as they came,
maimed and halt and blind and horribly misshapen. Yet faith abides
undimmed; hope still blossoms; and they go again and again until they
earn another release than that which they crave. The very dead, it is
said, have ere now been brought from neighbouring islands, but the
_icon_ has not raised them up. There are but few indeed whose faith
has made them whole; but for my part I do not doubt that a boy’s sight
was restored at Tenos in the year that I was there (1899), or that
similar occurrences are well established at such shrines as that of the
Virgin at Megaspelaeon, of S. George in Scyros, or of S. Gerasimos in
Cephalonia.

Closely bound up with these miraculous cures is the old pagan practice
of ἐγκοίμησις, sleeping in the sanctuary of the god whose healing
touch is sought. At Tenos the majority of the pilgrims who come for
the festival of Lady-day can only afford to stop for the one night
which precedes it. The sight then is strange indeed. The whole floor
of the church and a great part of the courtyard outside is covered
with recumbent worshippers. With them they have brought mattresses and
blankets for those of the sick for whom a stone floor is too hard; by
their side is piled baggage of all descriptions, cooking utensils,
loaves of bread, jars of wine or water, everything in fact necessary
for a long night’s watch or slumber. And on this mass of close-packed
suffering worshippers the doors of the church are locked from nine in
the evening till early next morning. Shortly before the closing-hour I
picked my way with difficulty in the dim light over prostrate forms
from the south to the north door. The atmosphere was suffocating and
reeked with the smoke of wax tapers which all day long the pilgrims had
been burning before the _icon_. Every malady and affliction seemed to
be represented; the moaning and coughing never stopped: and I wondered,
not whether there would be any miraculous cures, but how many deaths
there would be in the six or seven hours of confinement before even the
doors were again opened.

But this is the practice at its worst. Where there is more time
available, there is nothing insanitary in it. In the list of cures
at Tenos, to which I have alluded, there are many cases in which the
patient spent not one night only but several months in the church. As a
typical case I may take that of a sailor who while keeping look-out on
a steamer in the harbour of Patras had some kind of paralytic seizure.
He was taken to Tenos and for four months suffered terribly. Then about
midday at Easter he had fallen asleep and heard a voice bidding him
rise. He woke up and asked those about him who had called him; they
said no one; so he slept again. This happened twice. The third time
on hearing the voice he opened his eyes and saw entering the church a
woman of unspeakable beauty and brilliance, and at the shock he rose to
his feet and began to walk; and the same day accompanied the festival
procession round the town to the astonishment of all the people.

When I was in Scyros I heard of an equally curious case of a
long-deferred cure which had recently taken place and was the talk of
the town. For seven consecutive years a man from Euboea had brought
his wife, who was mad, to the church of S. George to ‘sleep in’ for
forty days. Shortly before I arrived the last of these periods was
just drawing to a close, when one night both the man and his wife saw
a vision of S. George who came and laid his hand on her head; and in
the morning she woke sane. Of her sanity when I saw her--for they
were still in the island, paying, I think, some vow which the man had
made--I had no doubt; and the evidence of the people of the place who
for seven years previously had seen her mad seemed irrefragable.

The instances which I have cited are from the records of churches which
have succeeded to the reputation possessed by Epidaurus in antiquity.
These owing to the enthusiasm which their fame inspires are probably
the scenes of more faith-cures than humbler and less known sanctuaries.
But in every church throughout the land the observance of the custom
may occasionally be seen; for in the less civilised districts at any
rate it is among the commonest remedies for childish ailments for a
mother to pass the night with her child in the village church.

We shall notice in later chapters the remnants of other pagan
institutions which the Greek Church has harboured--an oracle
established in a Christian chapel and served by a priest--a
church-festival at which sacrifice is done and omens are read--the
survival of ancient ‘mysteries’ in the dramatic celebration of Good
Friday and Easter. For the present enough has been said to show that,
even within the domain of what is nominally Christian worship, the
peasant of to-day in his conception of the higher powers and in his
whole attitude towards them remains a polytheist and a pagan. And as in
this aspect of religion, so in that other which concerns men’s care for
the dead and their conception of the future life, the persistence of
pagan beliefs and customs is constantly manifest. The ancient funeral
usages are undisturbed; and in the dirges which form part of them the
heaven and the hell of Christianity seem almost unknown: ‘the lower
world’ (ὁ κάτω κόσμος), over which rules neither God nor the Devil but
Charon, is the land to which all men alike are sped.

But there is no need to dilate upon these matters yet. It is clear
enough already, I hope, that the fact of Greece being nominally a
Christian country should not preclude the hope of finding there
instructive survivals of paganism. The Church did not oust her
predecessor. By a policy of conciliation and compromise she succeeded
indeed in imposing upon Hellenic religion the name of Christianity
and the Christian code of morality and all the external appanages
of Christian worship: but in the essentials of religion proper she
deferred largely to the traditional sentiments of the race. She
utilised the sanctuaries which other associations had rendered holy;
she permitted or adopted as her own the methods by which men had
approached and entreated other gods than hers; she condoned polytheism
by appropriating the shrines of gods whom men had been wont to worship
to the service of saints whom they inevitably would worship as gods
instead; and even so she failed to suppress altogether the ejected
deities. The result is that for the peasant Christianity is only a
part of a larger scheme of religion. To the outside observer it may
appear that there are two distinct departments of popular religion,
the one nominally Christian, devoted to the service of God and the
Saints, provided with sanctuaries and all the apparatus of worship,
served by a regular priesthood, limited by dogma and system; the other
concerned with those surviving deities of pre-Christian Greece to
whom we must next turn, free in respect of its worship alike from the
intervention of persons and the limitations of place, obedient only to
a traditional lore which each may interpret by his own feelings and
augment by his own experience. But the peasant seems hardly sensible of
any such contrast. His Christian and his pagan deities consort amicably
together; prayer and vow and offering are made to both, now to avert
their wrath, now to cajole them into kindness; the professed prophets
of either sort, the priests and the witches, are endowed with kindred
powers; everywhere there is overlapping and intertwining. And when the
very authorities of the Greek Church have adopted or connived at so
much of pagan belief and custom, how should the common-folk distinguish
any longer the twin elements in their blended faith? Their Christianity
has become homogeneous with their paganism, and it is the religious
spirit inherited from their pagan ancestors by which both alike are
animated.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] VIII. 38. 7.

[2] _Oneirocr._ II. 34 and 37.

[3] i.e. (ὀμ)μάτι(ον), diminutive of ὄμμα.

[4] Also locally βιστυρι̯ά, a word whose origin I cannot trace.

[5] Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχελάου, ἡ Σινασός, p. 90.

[6] Theocr. _Id._ VI. 39.

[7] Sonnini de Magnoncourt, _Voyage en Grèce et en Turquie_, vol. II.
p. 99.

[8] Κωνστ. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, p. 360, cf. Καμπούρογλου,
Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηναίων, vol. III. p. 146.

[9] In Athens, among other places, cf. Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστορία τῶν
Ἀθηναίων, vol. III. p. 69.

[10] Verg. _Ecl._ III. 103.

[11] In Sinasos the rule is strict in regard to both, cf. Ἰ. Σ.
Ἀρχελάου, ἡ Σινασός, pp. 83, 93.

[12] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθηναίων, vol. III. p. 146.

[13] _Ibid._ p. 64.

[14] Cf. Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθηναίων, vol. III. p. 41.

[15] The Church of the Annunciation, for example, in Tenos, possesses
an ἅγι̯ασμα as well as its miraculous _icon_. This spring was in high
repute before the _icon_ was discovered, cf. Μαυρομαρᾶ, Ἱστ. τῆς Τήνου,
p. 102 (a translation of Salonis, _Voyage à Tine_ (Paris 1809)). The
_icon_ was discovered only just before the Greek War of Independence.

[16] Καμπούρογλου, Μνημεῖα τῆς Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθηναίων, vol. III. p. 5.

[17] The banishment of suffering etc. to the mountains is an idea to be
met with in ancient Greek literature, cf. Orphic Hymn, no. 19, ἀλλὰ,
μάκαρ, θυμὸν βαρὺν ἔμβαλε κύμασι πόντου ἠδ’ ὀρέων κορυφῇσι.

[18] Cf. Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχελάου, ἡ Σινασός, p. 87.

[19] _Ibid._ p. 88.

[20] Theocr. _Id._ II. 28.

[21] _Ibid._ 53.

[22] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθ. vol. III. p. 21.

[23] This is probably the modern form of ἐμπόδευμα, ‘entanglement.’ The
change of initial ε to α is not rare in dialect, cf. ἄρμος for ἔρμος
(= ἔρημος) ‘miserable’; and υ, with sound of English _v_, is regularly
lost before μ.

[24] See below, pp. 60 ff.

[25] _Voyage en Grèce et en Turquie_, II. 140.

[26] Below, pp. 61 ff.

[27] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Αθηναίων, vol. III. p. 60.

[28] Plato, _Charm._ § 8 (p. 155).

[29] The name is probably derived from the ancient βράγχος, with
metathesis of the nasal sound. If βράγχος means congestion of the
throat, the modern formation in -ᾶς would mean ‘one who causes
congestion,’--apparently of other parts besides the throat. The
by-forms Βαραχνᾶς and Βαρυχνᾶς seem to have been influenced by a
desire to connect the name with βαρύς, ‘heavy.’ Under the ancient name
of this demon, ‘Ephialtes,’ Suidas gives also a popular name of his
day, Βαβουτσικάριος, a word borrowed from late Latin and apparently
connected with _babulus_ (_baburrus_, _baburcus_, _babuztus_)
‘foolish,’ ‘mad.’ _Babutsicarius_ should then be the sender of foolish
or mad dreams. Suidas however may be in error; see below p. 217.

[30] I learnt the details of this cure in Aetolia; a different version
of it is recorded from Cimolos by Theodore Bent, _The Cyclades_, pp. 51
ff.

[31] Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 363.

[32] Λαμπρίδης, Ζαγοριακά, pp. 172 ff.

[33] Passow (_Popularia Carmina_, Index, s.v. περπερία) speaks of a
girl only. He was perhaps influenced by the feminine form of the word.

[34] Many versions of the song have been collected, but with little
variation in substance. Passow gives three versions, _Pop. Carm._ nos.
311-313.

[35] Λαμπρίδης, Ζαγοριακá, pp. 172 ff.

[36] πορεία belongs to the dialect of the Tsakonians as spoken at
Leonidi, but is otherwise obsolete.

[37] For authorities etc. see Finlay, _Hist. of Greece_, vol. IV. pp.
11 ff. (cap. 1, § 3).

[38] _De Themat._ II. 25. Finlay, _op. cit._ IV. 17.

[39] Arist. _Frogs_, 114.

[40] Hom. _Od._ XIV. 29-31.

[41] _Ib._ 21.

[42] I am indebted to Mr L. Whibley for pointing out to me two
records of this fact by English travellers of last century, W. Mure
(_Journal of a Tour in Greece_, 1842, vol. I. p. 99), and W. G. Clark
(_Peloponnesus_, 1858, p. 237).

[43] Perhaps this is the ἀεικέλιον πάθος (_Od._ 14. 32) which Odysseus
would have endured for some time but for the intervention of Eumaeus.
Otherwise the line must have been inserted by someone who did not
appreciate the guile of Odysseus.

[44] ll. 35-6.

[45] l. 38.

[46] ll. 45-7.

[47] ll. 72-7.

[48] l. 78.

[49] ll. 79-80.

[50] In some islands the old word φόρμιγγα also is still used.

[51] C.I.G. vol. I. p. 790 (No. 1625, l. 47) τὰς δὲ πατρίους πομπὰς
μεγάλας καὶ τὴν τῶν συρτῶν ὄρχησιν θεοσεβῶς ἐπετέλεσεν (from Carditsa,
anc. Acraephia, in Boeotia).

[52] For examples see Passow, _Popul. Carm._ nos. 305-309.

[53] Athen. VIII. 360 C.

[54] Cf. Hom. _Od._ 4. 782.

[55] ἐδῶ ἀφίνω τὰ ἁμαρτήματά μου καὶ τοὺς ψύλλους μου, Δ. Μ.
Μαυρομαρᾶς, Ἱστορία τῆς Τήνου, p. 87 (transl. of Dr M. Salonis, _Voyage
à Tine_ (Paris, 1809)).

[56] Rohde, _Psyche_, vol. II. pp. 9 ff.

[57] οἱ βακχευόμενοι καὶ κορυβαντιῶντες ἐνθουσιάζουσι μέχρις ἄν τὸ
ποθούμενον ἴδωσιν, Philo, _de vita contempl._ 2. p. 473 M., cited by
Rohde _l.c._

[58] Artemidorus, _Oneirocr._ III. 61.

[59] Soph. _Fr._ 753.

[60] Diog. Laert. _Vita Diog._ 6. 39.

[61] _apud_ Diog. Laert. X. 123.

[62] 1 _Cor._ XI. 21.

[63] _Apolog._ cap. 5.

[64] Lampridius (Hist. Aug.) _Alex._ cap. 29 f.

[65] _Ibid._

[66] _de Haeres._ cap. 8. For the references I am indebted to
Pouqueville, _Voyage de la Grèce_, vol. VI. p. 136.

[67] Clem. Alex. _Protrept._ cap. iv. § 55 (p. 17 Sylb.).

[68] I have given the story in the form in which I heard it told by a
peasant on board a boat in the Euripus. He was a native, I think, of
Euboea, and being uneducated probably knew the story by oral tradition.
A slightly longer form has, however, been published by Hahn (_Griech.
Märchen_, vol. II. no. 76) and by Πολίτης (Μελέτη ἐπὶ τοῦ βίου τῶν
νεωτέρων Ἑλλήνων, p. 43).

[69] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθ. _III_. p. 164.

[70] Bent, _The Cyclades_, p. 457.

[71] See below, pp. 169 f.

[72] I am unable to determine whether this saint is the prophet Elijah
of the Old Testament, or a Christian hermit of the fourth century. The
Greeks themselves differ in their accounts.

[73] Maury, in _Revue Archéologique_, I. p. 502.

[74] According to Pouqueville (_Voyage de la Grèce_, II. p. 170) the
_rosalia_ was formerly celebrated both at Parga in Epirus and Palermo
in Sicily. The festival at Athens falls on Easter Tuesday, and a large
number of peasants come in from the country to attend it.

[75] Clem. Alex. _Protrept._ § 30.

[76] See J. M. Neale, _History of the Holy Eastern Church_, p. 1042.

[77] See below, pp. 66 ff.

[78] Καμπόυρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθ. III. p. 160.

[79] _The Cyclades_, p. 319.

[80] B. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 28.

[81] _Travels in Crete_, vol. I. p. 250.

[82] Schmidt (_Volksleben der Neugr._ p. 31) records also the phrase
κατουράει ὁ θεός, parallel with Strepsiades’ joke (Ar. _Nub._ 373)
πρότερον τὸν Δί’ ἀληθῶς ᾤμην διὰ κοσκίνου οὐρεῖν.

[83] The word is extremely rare, but ῥεμμόνι, I was told, is a coarse
kind of sieve. The expression is from Boeotia.

[84] From Arachova on Parnassus, Schmidt, _Das Volksleben der Neugr._
p. 33.

[85] From Cyprus.

[86] From Zacynthos, Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 32.

[87] From the island of Syme, near Rhodes.

[88] There is a good discussion of them by Πολίτης in Παρνασσός for
1880, pp. 585-608, 665-678, 762-773, from which some of my examples are
taken. I have noted the _provenance_ of the rarer expressions.

[89] Passow, _Pop. Carm., Distich. Amat. 242_, quoted by Schmidt (_op.
cit._ p. 30), who notes the Homeric parallel.

[90] _Pyth._ IV. 181 (322), Βασιλεὺς ἀνέμων.

[91] See _e.g._ Passow, _Pop. Carm._ nos. 426-432, and below, pp.
101-104.

[92] Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχελάου, ἡ Σινασός, p. 159.

[93] _Märchen, etc._, no. 19.

[94] pp. 91 ff.

[95] _The Cyclades_, p. 373.

[96] There is some likelihood that the title καπνικαρέα is a mere
corruption of an older title which had a quite different meaning; but I
am concerned only with the existing title as popularly interpreted.

[97] Ross, _Reisen auf den Griech. Inseln_, IV. p. 74.

[98] Bent, _Cyclades_, p. 46.

[99] So also in Paros, Bent, _Cyclades_, p. 373.

[100] Athenaeus, II. 39 C.

[101] Bent, _Cyclades_, p. 72.

[102] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθ. III. p. 153.

[103] Ἀντ. Βάλληνδας, Κυθνιακά, p. 131.

[104] Γρηγ. Παπαδοπετράκης, Ἱστορια τῶν Σφακιῶν, p. 69.

[105] Cf. a couplet quoted by Pashley, _Travels in Crete_, p. 253.

    Τάζω σου, Παναγία μου, μίαν ἀσημένεαν ζώστρα,
    νὰ μὰς συσμίξῃς καὶ τζὴ δυό ς’ ἕνα κρεββατοστρώσι.

[106] _e.g._ Bent, _The Cyclades_, p. 249.




CHAPTER II.

THE SURVIVAL OF PAGAN DEITIES.


§ 1. THE RANGE OF MODERN POLYTHEISM.

Thus far we have considered paganism in its bearing and influence upon
modern Greek Christianity. We have seen how the Church, in endeavouring
to widen her influence, countenanced many practices and conciliated
many prejudices of a people whose temperament needed a multitude of
gods and whose piety could pay homage to them all, a people moreover
to whom the criterion of divinity was neither moral perfection nor
omnipotence. From the ethical standpoint some of the ancient gods were
better, some worse than men: in point of power they were superhuman
but not almighty. Some indeed claimed that there was no difference in
origin between mankind and its deities. ‘One is the race of men’ sang
Pindar ‘with the race of gods; for one is the mother that gave to both
our breath of life: yet sundered are they by powers wholly diverse, in
that mankind is as naught, but heaven is builded of brass that abideth
ever unshaken[107].’ One in origin, they are diverse in might. The test
of godhead is power sufficing to defy death. Rightly therefore did
Homer make ‘deathless’ and ‘everbeing’ his constant epithets for the
gods. Immortality alone is the quality which distinguishes them in kind
and not merely in degree from men, and makes them worthy of worship.
A people wedded to such conceptions were naturally ready enough to
install new immortals of whom they had not known before, but reluctant
to depose in their favour those whom they and their forefathers
had known and served. Dangers were to be apprehended from neglect;
blessings were to be secured by tendance. Greater honour might be paid
to one god, less to another; but from no immortal should service be
wholly withheld: even unconscious oversights should be remedied by
offerings ‘to an unknown god.’ Such in its essence was the popular
religion, inconsistent it may be and not deeply intellectual, but in
sympathies very broad--broad enough to encompass the worship of all
immortals, broad as the earth and the sky and the sea wherein they
dwelt and moved.

So vital and so deep-seated in the hearts of the common-folk are
these religious tendencies, that even at the present day when
the word ‘Christian’ has become a popular synonym for ‘Greek’ in
contradistinction not only with ‘Mohammedan,’ but even sometimes with
‘Western’ or ‘Catholic’ or with ‘Protestant,’ and when horror would
be excited by any imputation of polytheism, there are yet recognised
a large number of superhuman and for the most part immortal beings,
whom the Church has been able neither to eradicate from the popular
mind nor yet to incorporate under the form of saints or devils in her
own theological system. These beings, whether benignant to man or
maleficent, are all treated as divine. In ancient times the common
people had probably little appreciation of the various grades of
divinity; indeed it was one of the seven sages, we are told, who first
differentiated God and the lesser deities and the heroes[108]; and
at the present day the common-folk are certainly no more subtle of
understanding than they were then. God and the Saints and these pagan
powers are all feared and worshipped in the several ways traditionally
suited to each; but the fact of worship proclaims them all alike to be
gods.

The origin of the non-Christian deities, even if we were unable to
identify any of them with the gods of classical Greece, would be
clearly enough proved by some of the general terms under which all
of them are included. Those who use these terms indeed no longer
appreciate their significance; for all sense of antagonism between
the pagan and Christian elements in the popular religion has, as we
have seen, long been lost. But the words themselves are a relic of
the early days in which the combat of Christianity with the heathen
world was still stern. Among the most widespread of these terms is the
word ξωτικά[109] (i.e. ἐξωτικά), the ‘extraneous’ powers, clearly an
invention of the early Christians. The phrase ‘those that are without’
(οἱ ἔξω or οἱ ἔξωθεν) was used by S. Paul first[110] and afterwards
generally by the Fathers of the Church to denote men of all other
persuasions. In the fourth century Basil of Caesarea employed the
adjective ἐξωτικός also in a corresponding sense[111]. This word no
doubt became popular, and hence τὰ ἐξωτικά, ‘the extraneous ones,’
became a convenient term by which to denote comprehensively all those
old divinities whose worship the Church disallowed but even among her
own adherents could not wholly suppress. Another comprehensive term
equally significant, if not so commonly used, is τὰ παγανά[112], ‘the
pagan ones.’ This is in use in the Ionian islands and some parts of the
mainland, but I have not met with it nor found it understood in the
Peloponnese or in the islands of the Aegean Sea[113]. In Cephalonia
it is chiefly, though not exclusively, applied to a species of
supernatural beings usually called callicántzari (καλλικάντζαροι) of
whom more anon: the reason of this restriction may be either the fact
that these monsters--to judge from the folk-stories of the island--so
far outnumber there all other kinds of ‘pagan’ beings that this one
species has almost appropriated to itself the generic name, or that in
old time, when the word παγανά, ‘pagan,’ was still understood in the
sense which we attribute to it, these monsters were deemed specially
‘pagan’ because, as we shall see later, they delight in disturbing a
season of Christian gladness. But elsewhere the term, still employed
in what must have been its original meaning, comprises all kinds of
non-Christian deities; and in earlier times ‘the pagan ones’ was
probably as frequent an expression as its synonym ‘the extraneous
ones.’ To these may perhaps be added the rare appellation recorded
by Schmidt[114], τσίνια: for if the derivation from τζίνα, ‘fraud,’
‘deceit,’ be right, it will mean ‘the false gods.’

Besides these three names, which indicate the pre-Christian origin
of these deities, there are several others--some in universal usage,
others local and dialectic,--which represent them in various aspects.
As a class of ‘divinities’ they are called δαιμόνια: as ‘apparitions,’
whose precise nature often cannot be further determined, φάσματα or
φαντάσματα and, in Crete, σφανταχτά[115]: as swift and ‘sudden’ in
their coming and going, ξαφνικά[116]: as ghostly and passing like a
vision, εἰδωλικά: as denizens, for the most part, of the air, ἀερικά:
and from their similarity to angels, ἀγγελικά.

It may seem strange that the first and the last of these terms,
δαιμόνια and ἀγγελικά, should be practically interchangeable; for
the Church at any rate did her best in early days to make the former
understood in the sense of ‘demons’ or ‘devils’ rather than ‘deities.’
But the attempted change of meaning seems to have failed to make much
impression on a people who did not view goodness as an essential of
godhead; and in later times the Church herself, or many of her less
educated clergy at any rate, surrendered to the popular ideas. Father
Richard[117], a Jesuit resident during the seventeenth century in the
island of Santorini, mentions the case of an old Greek priest who had
long made a speciality of exorcism and was prepared to expel angels and
demons alike from the bodies of those who were afflicted by them. The
priest when questioned by the Jesuit as to what distinction he drew
between demons and angels, replied that the demons came from hell,
while the angels were ἀερικόν τι, a species of aërial being; but while
he maintained a theoretical difference between them, his practice
betrayed a belief that both were equally harmful. Exorcism had to be
employed in cases of ‘angelic’ as well as of ‘demoniacal’ possession;
and Father Richard details the cruelties and tortures inflicted upon a
woman suspected of the former in order to make the pernicious angelic
spirit within her confess its name. The characters of δαιμόνια and
ἀγγελικά are in fact the same, and the subtle theological distinctions
which might be drawn between them are naturally lost on a people who
see them treated even by the priests as equally baneful.

A few other local or dialectic names remain to be noticed. Two of
them, στοιχει̯ά and τελώνια, denote properly two several species of
supernatural beings--the former being the _genii_ of fixed places[118],
and the latter aërial beings chiefly concerned with the passage of men
from this world to the next[119]--and are only loosely and locally
employed in a more comprehensive sense. The name σμερδάκια, recorded
from Philiatrá in Messenia, is apparently a diminutive form from a root
meaning ‘terrible[120].’ A Cretan word καντανικά is of less certain
etymology, but if, as has been surmised, it has any relation with the
verb καντανεύω, ‘to go down to the underworld,’ and hence ‘to fall
into a trance,’ (‘entranced’ spirits being thought temporarily to have
departed thither,) it may denote either denizens of the lower world or
beings who frighten men into a senseless and trance-like state[121].
Next come the two words ζούμπιρα and ζωντόβολα, of which I believe
the interpretation is one and the same. Bernhard Schmidt[122], whose
work I have constantly consulted in this and later chapters, would
derive the former from a middle-Greek word ζόμβρος[123], equivalent to
the ancient τραγέλαφος, a fantastic animal of Aristophanic fame; but
it was explained to me in Scyros to be a jocose euphemism as applied
to supernatural beings and to denote properly parasitic insects. The
implied combination of superstitious awe in avoiding the name of
supernatural things with a certain broad humour in substituting what
is, to the peasant, one of the lesser annoyances of life is certainly
characteristic of the Greek folk; and the accuracy of the explanation
given to me is confirmed by the fact that in the island of Cythnos
the other word, ζωντόβολα, is recorded to bear also the meaning of
‘insects[124].’ The joke, if such it be, must date from a long time
back and in its prime must have enjoyed a widespread popularity; for at
Aráchova on the slopes of Parnassus, a place far distant from Scyros,
the word ζούμπιρα is employed in the sense of supernatural beings by
persons who apparently are quite ignorant of its original meaning[125].
To these difficult terms must be added a few euphemisms of a simple
nature--τὰ πίζηλα (i.e. ἐπίζηλα) ‘the enviable ones’ in one village
of Tenos[126], and in many places such general terms as οἱ καλοί ‘the
noble,’--οἱ ἀδερφοί μας ‘our brothers,’--οἱ καλορίζικοι ‘the fortunate
ones,’--οἱ χαρούμενοι ‘the joyful ones.’ These evasions of a more
direct nomenclature are very frequent, and, since the choice of epithet
is practically at the discretion of the speaker, it would be impossible
to compile a complete list of them.

How far each of these names may be applied in general to all the
classes of pagan gods and demons and monsters whom I am about to
describe is a question which I cannot determine. On the one hand
many of the names, as we have seen, are purely local, confined to a
few villages or districts or islands and unknown and unintelligible
elsewhere: and on the other hand some of these supernatural beings
themselves are equally local, and my information concerning them has
been gathered from widely separated regions of the Greek world. Hence
it follows that while the several terms which I have explained are
comprehensive in local usage and include all the supernatural beings
locally recognised, it is impossible to say whether the users of them
would think fit to extend them to the deities of other districts.
Probably they would do so; but only for the most widely current
terms, δαιμόνια and ἐξωτικά, can I claim with assurance anything like
universal application.

The surviving pagan deities fall naturally into two classes. There are
the solitary and individual figures such as Demeter, and there is the
gregarious and generic class to which belong for example the Nymphs. An
exceptional case may occur in which some originally single personality
has been multiplied into a whole class. The Lesbian maiden Gello, who,
according to a superstition known to Sappho[127], in revenge for her
untimely death haunted her old abodes preying upon the babes of women
whose motherhood she envied, is no longer one but many; the place of a
maiden, whom death carried off ere she had known the love of husband
and children, has been taken by withered witch-like beings who none the
less bear her name and resemble her in that they light, like Harpies,
upon young children and suck out their humours[128]. But in the main
the division holds; there are single gods and there are groups of gods.
Of the former, in several cases, there is very little to record. Such
memory of them as still lingers among the people is confined perhaps
to a single folk-story out of the many that have been preserved. In
such cases I do not feel entire confidence that the reference is a
piece of genuine tradition; in spite of the popular form in which the
stories are cast, it is always possible that, owing to the spread of
education, some scholastic smatterings of ancient mythology have been
introduced by the story-teller. There are certainly plenty of tales
to be heard about Alexander the Great which are drawn from literary
sources; and it is possible that two stories published by Schmidt which
contain apparent reminiscences of Poseidon and of Pan are vitiated,
from the point of view of folklore, in the same way. Fortunately the
cases in which this reserve must be felt are few and in the nature
of things unimportant: for, though proof of genuine tradition would
be interesting, yet a single modern allusion is not likely to throw
any light on the ancient conception of a deity or his cult. Where
on the other hand modern folklore is more abundant--and in the case
of the groups of lesser deities above all there is ample store of
information--it is possible that study of the popular conceptions of
to-day may illumine our understanding of ancient religion.


§ 2. ZEUS.

Ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα.

To Zeus, the ancient father of gods and men, belongs precedence;
but there is in truth little room for him in the modern scheme
of popular religion. His functions have been transferred to the
Christian God, and his personality merged in that of the Father whom
the Church acknowledges. But though he is no longer a deity, the
ancient conception of him has imposed narrow limitations upon the
character of his successor. We have noted already that the God now
recognised exercises the same general control, as did formerly Zeus,
over all the changes and chances of this mortal life, but has, again
resembling Zeus, for his special province only the regulation of the
more monotonous phases of nature and the weather. The more unusual
phenomena, and among them sometimes even the thunder, to which S. Elias
has pretensions, are delegated to saints or to non-Christian deities;
but for the most part the thunder remains the possession of God, as
it was always that of Zeus; and its more important concomitant, the
lightning, is never, I think, attributed to S. Elias, but is wielded by
God alone.

The very name of this weapon which the Christian God has inherited is
suggestive of the Olympian _régime_. Much has been heard lately of
the double-headed axe as a religious symbol which seems to have been
constantly associated, especially in Crete, with the worship of Zeus.
The modern Greek word for what we call the thunderbolt is ἀστροπελέκι
(a syncopated form of ἀστραποπελέκι by loss of one of two concurrent
syllables beginning with the same consonant), and means literally a
‘lightning-axe.’ The weapon therefore which the supreme God wields
is conceived as an axe-shaped missile; and, though in the ancient
literature which has come down to us we may nowhere find the word
πέλεκυς used of the thunderbolt, there is no reason why the modern word
should not be the expression of a conception inherited from antiquity
and so furnish a clue to what in itself seems a simple and suitable
explanation of the much-canvassed symbol.

Again the divine associations of the thunderbolt now as in the reign
of Zeus are attested by the awe in which men and cattle, trees and
houses, which have been struck by lightning, are universally held--awe
of that primitive kind which does not distinguish between the sacred
and the accursed. It is sufficient that particular persons or objects
have come into close contact with divine power; that contact sets them
apart; they must not do common work or be put to common uses. In old
days any place which had been struck was distinguished by the erection
of an altar and the performance of sacrifice, but at the same time it
was left unoccupied and, save for sacrificial purposes, untrodden[129];
it was both honoured and avoided. In the case of persons however the
sense of awe verged on esteem. ‘No one,’ says Artemidorus, ‘who has
been struck by lightning is excluded from citizenship; indeed such
an one is honoured even as a god[130].’ The same feeling is still
exhibited. The peasant makes the sign of the cross as he passes any
scorched and blackened tree-trunk; but if a man has the fortune to be
struck and not killed, he may indulge a taste for idleness for the rest
of his life--his neighbours will support him--and enjoy at the same
time the reputation of being something more than human.

But in spite of the reverent awe which the victim of the lightning
excites, the thunderbolt is often viewed now, as in old time, as the
instrument of divine vengeance. The people of Aráchova, when they see a
flash, explain the occurrence in the phrase κάποιον διάβολον ἔκαψε, ‘He
has burnt up some devil,’ and the implied subject of the verb, as in
most phrases describing the weather, is undoubtedly God[131]. The same
idea, in yet more frankly pagan garb, is well exhibited in a story from
Zacynthos[132], which is nothing but the old myth of the war of the
Titans against Zeus with the names of the actors omitted. The gist of
it is as follows.

The giants once rebelled against God. First they climbed a mountain
and hurled rocks at him; but he grasped his thunderbolts (τσακώνει τὰ
ἀστροπελέκι̯α του) and threw them at the giants, and they all fell down
from the mountain and many were killed. Then one whose courage was
still unshaken tied reeds together and tried to reach to heaven with
them (for what purpose, does not appear in the story; but folk-tales
are often somewhat inconsequent, and this vague incident is probably an
imperfect reminiscence of the legend of Prometheus); but the lightning
burnt him to ashes. Then his remaining companions made a last assault,
but the lightning again slew many of them, and the rest were condemned
to live all their life long shut in beneath a mountain.

This story is one of those which in themselves might be suspected of
scholastic origin or influence; but it so happens that practically the
same story has been recorded from Chios also, with the slight addition
that there the leader of the giants’ assault has usurped the name of
Samson. Such corroboration from the other end of the Greek world goes
far to establish the genuine nature of the tradition.

Thus though Zeus has been generally superseded by the Christian God,
his character and mythic attributes have left a strong and indelible
mark upon the religion of to-day. The present conception of God is
practically identical with the ancient conception of the deity who was
indeed one among many gods and yet in thought and often also in speech
the god _par excellence_. Christianity has effected little here beyond
the suppression of the personal name Zeus.

All this, no doubt, illustrates the fusion of paganism with
Christianity rather than the independent co-existence of deities of
the separate systems. But there are two small facts in virtue of which
I have given to Zeus a place among the pagan deities whose distinct
personality is not yet wholly sunk in oblivion. The men of Aráchova,
as we have noticed above, still swear by the ‘god of Crete,’ who can
be no other than Zeus; and in Crete itself there was recently, and may
still be, in use the invocation ἠκοῦτε μου Ζῶνε θεέ, ‘Hearken to me,
O god Zeus[133].’ Such expressions, though their original force is no
longer known by those who use them, are none the less indications that
perhaps not many generations ago Zeus was still locally recognised
and reverenced as a deity distinct from the Christian God, to whom
indeed everywhere he can only gradually have ceded his position and his
attributes.


§ 3. POSEIDON.

For the survival of any god of the sea in the imagination of the
Greek people I cannot personally vouch. Though I have been among the
seafaring population in many parts, I have never heard mention of other
than female deities. That which I here set down rests entirely on the
authority of Bernhard Schmidt.

In his collection of folk-stories there is one from Zacynthos, entitled
‘Captain Thirteen,’ which runs as follows[134]:--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 (ὁ δαίμονας τῆς θάλασσας) and struck him with
a three-pronged fork (μία πειροῦνα μὲ τρία διχάλια)’ 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.

Other characteristics of this trident-bearing sea-god are, according
to the same authority[135], that he is in form half human and half
fish; that his wealth, consisting of all treasures lost in the sea,
is so great that he sleeps on a couch of gold; and that he rides
upon dolphins. Thus Poseidon, it appears, (or it may be Nereus,) has
survived locally in the remembrance of the Greek people as a deity
unconnected with Christianity. Far more generally however his functions
have been transferred to S. Nicolas, whose aid is invariably invoked
by seamen in time of peril, and who has acquired the byname of ‘sailor’
(ναύτης)[136].

The allusion to the sea-god and his trident in the story which I have
repeated must, I think, be accepted with some reserve as being possibly
a scholastic interpolation. I cannot find confirmation of it in any
other folk-story, and moreover the latter part of the tale is familiar
to me in another form. The hero is usually a young prince who goes out
to seek adventures in the world, not a king who has already a wife
at home; and his transformation into a dolphin is effected by some
malicious witch into whose toils he falls. But while for these reasons
I do not put the story forward as certain evidence of the survival of
Poseidon in the popular memory, I have recounted it at some length
because it is an excellent type of current folk-tales, and from a study
of it, if we may now leave Poseidon and make a brief digression, we may
appreciate the relation existing between such stories and the myths of
antiquity.

The king who was the strongest man of his time has a classical
prototype in the Messenian leader Aristomenes. He too was thrown with
his comrades into a pit by his enemies, the Spartans, and alone escaped
death from the fall, being borne up on the wings of eagles. Again, the
idea of a man’s strength residing in a certain hair or hairs is well
known in ancient mythology; and although it is by no means peculiar to
the Greeks, but is common to many peoples of the world, we may fairly
suppose that the modern Greek has not borrowed it from outside, but has
inherited it from those ancestors among whose myths was the story of
Scylla and Nisus. Lastly, in the incident of the hero fastening wings
to his arms with clay and his subsequent fall into the sea there are
all the essentials of the legend of Icarus.

Here then combined in one modern folk-story we find the _motifs_
of three separate ancient myths. And from it and others of like
nature--for in the collection from which I have borrowed it there are
several stories in which such figures as Midas, the Sphinx, and the
Cyclopes are easily recognised--an inference may be drawn as to the
real relation of ancient mythology to modern folk-stories. Certain
themes must have existed from time immemorial, and these have been
worked up into tales by successive generations of _raconteurs_ with
ever-varying settings. Fresh combinations of _motifs_ have been and
are still being tried; fresh embroidery of detail may be added by
each artist; only the theme in its plainest form, the mere groundwork
of story, remains immutable. This at the same time explains the wide
variations of the same myth even among the ancients themselves, and
warns us not to judge of the value of a modern folk-story or folk-song
by the closeness of its resemblance to any ancient myth which may have
been preserved to us in literature. It was naturally the most finished
and artistic presentment of the story which appealed to the taste
of educated men and thus became the orthodox classical version; but
there is every likelihood that before the story reached the stage of
acknowledged perfection much that was primitive had been suppressed
as inartistic, and much that was not traditional had been added by
the poet’s imagination. The unlettered story-teller, endowed with
less fancy and ignorant of the conventions of art, is a far trustier
vehicle of pure tradition; for though he feels himself at liberty to
compose variations of the original theme, he certainly has less power
and generally less inclination to do so; for it is on exactness of
memory and even verbal fidelity to the traditional form of the story
that the modern story-teller chiefly prides himself. Hence the modern
folk-story, straight from the peasant’s lips in a form almost verbally
identical with that in which successive generations of peasants before
him narrated it, may contain more genuinely primitive material than a
literary version of it which dates from perhaps two thousand years or
more ago.


§ 4. PAN.

A story, again from the same collection[137], runs in brief as
follows:--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
whatsoever he should ask. He chose a magic pipe which should make all
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, voluntarily 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.’

Here the pastoral scene and the gift of the magic pipe (not by Panos
himself, it is true, but indirectly thanks to him) suggest a genuine
remembrance of Pan. It was from him that ‘bonus Daphnis’ learnt the art
of music. The form which the name has assumed is the chief difficulty.
The modern nominative, if formed in the same way as in other words
of the same declension, would naturally be Panas (Πάνας), and the
unusual termination arouses some suspicion that the narrator of the
story had heard of Pan from some literary source and, as often happens
in such cases, had got the name a little wrong. But if the tale be
a piece of genuine tradition, 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. But the popular tradition embodied in the legend is
not therefore necessarily at fault; indeed it may be more true to the
conception of Pan which prevailed among the common-folk in old days
than were the portraits drawn and handed down by the more educated of
their contemporaries. The patron-god of Arcadian shepherd-life would
naturally have seemed a rude being to the cultured Athenians of the
fifth century, who but for his miraculous intervention in the battle
of Marathon would never have honoured him with a temple. But among his
original worshippers it may well be that, besides presiding over the
increase of their flocks, as did Demeter over the increase of their
fields, he was deemed to resemble her also in the possession of more
exalted attributes, so that there was cause indeed for lamentation over
that strange message ‘Great Pan is dead[138].’

But perchance Pan is not dead yet, or if dead not forgotten. And as
this solitary modern story, if it be genuine, testifies to a longlived
remembrance of his better qualities, so in the demonology of the middle
ages a sterner aspect of his ancient character still secured to him
men’s awe. Theocritus[139] gave voice to a well-known superstition
when he made the goat-herd say: ‘Nay, shepherd, it may not be; in the
noontide we may not pipe; ’tis Pan that we fear’; for in his rage if
roused from his midday slumber he was believed to strike the intruder
with ‘panic’ terror: and it was this superstition which influenced the
translators of the Septuagint when they rendered the phrase, which in
our Bible version of the Psalms[140] appears as ‘the destruction that
wasteth at noonday,’ by the words σύμπτωμα καὶ δαιμόνιον μεσημβρινόν.
By the latter half of this phrase the memory of Pan was undoubtedly
perpetuated; for in certain forms of prayer quoted by Leo Allatius[141]
in the seventeenth century, among the perils from which divine
deliverance is sought is mentioned more than once this ‘midday demon’;
and a corresponding ‘daemon meridianus[142]’ found a place of equal
dignity among the ghostly enemies of Roman Catholics.

Perhaps even yet in the pastoral uplands of Greece some traveller will
hear news of Pan.


§ 5. DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE.

Of few ancient deities has popular memory been more tenacious than
of Demeter; but in different districts the reminiscences take very
different forms. There are many traces of her name and cult, and of the
legends concerning both her and her daughter; but in one place they
have been Christianised, in another they have remained pagan.

In so far as she has affected the traditions of the Church, a male
deity, S. Demetrius, has in general superseded her. Under the title
of στερεανός, ‘belonging to the dry land,’ he has in most districts
taken over the patronage of agriculture; while his inherited interest
in marriage receives testimony from the number of weddings celebrated,
especially in the agricultural districts, on his day. But at Eleusis,
the old home of Demeter’s most sacred rites, the people, it seems,
would not brook the substitution of a male saint for their goddess,
and yielded to ecclesiastical influence only so far as to create for
themselves a saint Demetra (ἡ ἁγία Δήμητρα) entirely unknown elsewhere
and never canonised. Further, in open defiance of an iconoclastic
Church, they retained an old statue of Demeter, and merely prefixing
the title ‘saint’ to the name of their cherished goddess, continued to
worship her as before. The statue was regularly crowned with garlands
of flowers in the avowed hope of obtaining good harvests, and without
doubt prayer was made before it as now before the pictures of canonical
saints. This state of things continued down to the beginning of the
nineteenth century. Then, in 1801, two Englishmen, named Clarke and
Cripps, armed by the Turkish authorities with a license to plunder,
perpetrated an act unenviably like that of Verres at Enna, and in
spite of a riot among the peasants of Eleusis removed by force the
venerable marble; and that which was the visible form of the great
goddess on whose presence and goodwill had depended from immemorial
ages the fertility of the Thriasian plain is now a little-regarded
object catalogued as ‘No. XIV, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, (much
mutilated)[143].’

Saint Demetra however, though lost to sight, was yet dear to the memory
of the village-folk; and in spite of the devastation of old beliefs
and legends which the much-vaunted progress and education of Greece
have committed in the more civilised districts without conferring any
sensible compensation, the antiquarian Lenormant found in 1860 an old
Albanian[144] priest who when once reassured that no ridicule was
intended, recited to him the following remarkable legend[145]: ‘S.
Demetra was an old woman of Athens, kind and good, who devoted all her
little means to feeding the poor. She had a daughter who was beautiful
past all imagining; since “lady Aphrodite” (κυρὰ ’φροδίτη) none had
been seen so lovely. A Turkish lord of the neighbourhood of Souli, who
was a wicked man and versed in magic, saw her one day combing her hair,
which was of golden hue and reached to the very ground, and became
passionately enamoured of her. He bided his time, and having found
his chance of speaking with her tried to seduce her. But she being as
prudent as she was beautiful, repulsed all the miscreant’s advances.
Thereupon he resolved to carry her off and put her in his harem. One
Christmas night, while Demetra was at church, the Turk (ὁ ἀγᾶς) forced
the door of her house, seized the girl who was at home alone, carried
her off in spite of her cries of distress, and holding her in his arms
leapt upon his horse. The horse was a wonderful one; it was black in
colour; from its nostrils it breathed out flames, and in one bound
could pass from the East unto the West. In an instant it had carried
ravisher and victim right to the mountains of Epirus.

When the aged Demetra came back from church, she found her house broken
into and her daughter gone; great was her despair. She asked her
neighbours if they knew what had become of her daughter; but they dared
not tell her aught, for they feared the Turks and their vengeance. She
turned her enquiries to the tree that grew before her house; but the
tree could tell her nothing. She asked the sun, but the sun could give
her no help; she asked the moon and the stars, but from them too she
learnt nothing. Finally the stork that nested on the house-top said to
her: “Long time now we have lived side by side; thou art as old as I.
Listen; thou hast always been good to me, thou hast never disturbed my
nest, and once thou didst help me to drive away the bird of prey that
would have carried off my nestlings. In recompense I will tell thee
what I know of the fate of thy daughter; she was carried off by a Turk
mounted on a black horse, who took her towards the West. Come, I will
set out with thee and we will search for her together.”

Accompanied by the stork, Demetra started; the time was winter; it was
cold, and snow covered the mountains. The poor old woman was frozen and
could hardly walk; she kept asking of all those whom she met, whether
they had seen her daughter, but they laughed at her or did not answer;
doors were shut in her face and entrance denied her, for men love not
misery; and she went weeping and lamenting. In this manner however
she dragged her limbs as far as Lepsína (the modern form of the name
Eleusis); but, arriving there, she succumbed to cold and weariness and
threw herself down by the roadside. There she would have died, but
that by good luck there passed by the wife of the _khodja-bachi_ (or
head man of the village), who had been to look after her flocks and
was returning. Marigo--such was her name--took pity on the old woman,
helped her to rise and brought her to her husband, who was named
Nicolas[146]. The _khodja-bachi_ was as kind as his wife; both welcomed
as best they could the poor sorrow-stricken woman, tended her and
sought to console her. To reward them S. Demetra blessed their fields
and gave them fertility.

Nicolas, the _khodja-bachi_, had a son handsome, strong, brave, and
practised, in a word the finest _pallikar_ of all the country side.
Seeing that Demetra was in no condition to continue her journey, he
offered to set to work to recover her daughter, asking only her hand in
recompense. The offer was accepted, and he set out accompanied by the
faithful stork who would not abandon the undertaking.

The young man walked for many days without finding anything. At last
one night, when he was in a forest right among the mountains, he
caught sight of a great bright light at some distance. Towards this
he hastily bent his steps, but the point from which the light came
was much further off than he had at first imagined; the darkness had
deceived him. Eventually however he arrived there, and to his great
astonishment found forty dragons lying on the ground and watching an
enormous cauldron that was boiling on the fire. Undismayed by the
sight, he lifted the cauldron with one hand, lit a torch, and replaced
the vessel on the fire. Astounded by such a display of strength, the
dragons crowded round him and said to him, “You who can lift with one
hand a cauldron which we by our united efforts can scarcely carry,
you alone are capable of carrying off a maiden whom we have long been
trying to lay our hands on, and whom we cannot seize because of the
height of the tower wherein a magician keeps her shut up.” The son of
the _khodja-bachi_ of Lepsína perceived the impossibility of escape
from these monsters. Accompanied by the forty dragons, he approached
the tower, and after having examined it, he asked for some large nails,
which he took and drove into the wall, so as to form a kind of ladder,
and which he kept pulling out again as he ascended to prevent the
dragons from following him. Having arrived at the top and with some
difficulty entered at a small window there, he invited the dragons to
ascend as he had done, one by one, which they did, thus giving him
time to kill each as it arrived while the next was climbing up, and
to throw it over the other side of the tower, where there were a large
court, a splendid garden, and a fine castle. Thus rid of his dangerous
guardians, he went down into the interior of the tower and found there
S. Demetra’s daughter, whose beauty at once inspired him with the most
ardent love.

He was kneeling at her feet when suddenly the magician appeared, and in
a fury of anger threw himself upon the young man, who met him bravely.
The former was of superhuman strength, but Nicolas’ son was not
inferior to him. The magician had the power to transform himself into
any thing he might choose; he changed successively into a lion, into a
serpent, into a bird of prey, into fire--hoping under some one of these
forms to wear his adversary out; but nothing could shake the courage
of the young man. For three days the combat continued. The first day
the magician seemed beaten, but the next he regained his advantage; at
the end of the day’s struggle he killed his young opponent, and cut his
body into four quarters, which he hung on the four sides of the tower.
Then elated by his victory, he did violence to Demetra’s daughter,
whose chastity he had hitherto respected. But in the night the stork
flew away to a great distance to fetch a magic herb which it knew,
brought it back in its beak, and rubbed with it the young man’s lips.
At once the pieces of his body came together again and he revived.
Great was his despair when he learnt what had taken place after his
defeat; but he only threw himself upon the magician with the greater
fury the third day, to punish him for his crime.

Once again the young man, it seemed, was on the point of being
vanquished, when suddenly he conceived the happy idea of invoking
the Panagia, vowing that if victorious he would become a monk at the
monastery of Phaneroméne[147]. The divine protection which he had
invoked gave him strength and he succeeded in throwing his adversary:
the stork, who had aided him so much, at once attacked the fallen
magician and picked out his eyes; then with its beak pulled out a
white hair noticeable among the black curls that covered his head. On
this hair depended the life of the Turkish magician, who immediately
expired.
His conqueror, taking with him the girl, brought her back to Lepsína,
just at the season when spring was coming and the flowers were
beginning to appear in the fields. Then he went, as he had vowed, and
shut himself up in the monastery. S. Demetra, having received back
her daughter, went away with her. What became of them afterwards, no
one knows; but since that time the fields of Lepsína, thanks to the
blessing of the Saint, have not ceased to be fertile.’

It would be superfluous to point out the numerous details of this
legend which accord explicitly with the account of the rape of
Persephone in the Homeric hymn. The interspersion of Christian ideas
and reminiscences of Turkish domination and stories of fabulous
monsters may strike oddly on the ear unacquainted with the vagaries
of Greek folk-stories. Yet the most sceptical could not doubt that
the tradition which forms the groundwork of the legend is none other
than the old myth, or that the four chief actors in the drama are none
other than Demeter and Core, Pluto and Triptolemus. Pluto, masked
as a Turkish _agha_, is perhaps the least readily recognisable; yet
in one way as a relic of ancient tradition the part he plays is the
most remarkable in the whole legend. It is to Souli in Epirus that he
carries off the maiden. Now this is the district of the ancient Cocytus
and Acheron; here was one of the descents to the lower world; here
Aidoneus held sway; and here, in one version of the myth[148], was laid
the scene of the rape of Persephone by that god. Hence the claims of
two separate localities to the same mythological distinction seem by
some means to have become incorporated in the single modern legend.

In the same part of Epirus, according to Lenormant, a similar story to
that which he heard at Eleusis concerning S. Demetra’s daughter, is
told, _mutatis mutandis_, of S. Demetrius: but since either a sense
of propriety or a want of knowledge prevented him from publishing the
details of it, the mere statement that it existed is of no great value.
But the legend which he narrates in full may I think be accepted as
genuine without corroboration on the grounds of its own structure.
Lenormant has indeed been accused of _mala fides_ in his own department
of archaeology and of tampering with some of the inscriptions which he
published; but even if this charge could be substantiated, I should
doubt whether he had either the inclination to invent a legend which he
only mentions in a cumbrous foot-note, or the ability to fuse ancient
and modern ideas into so good an imitation of the genuine folk-story.
In my judgement the construction of the legend is practically proof of
its genuinely popular origin.

Thus Eleusis and, in a lesser degree, the many places where S.
Demetrius has succeeded to the chief functions of Demeter have hardly
yet lost touch with the ancient worship of the goddess, Christianised
in form though it may be. But Arcadia too, where alone of all the
Peloponnese the indigenous population were secure from the Achaean
and Dorian immigrations and maintained in seclusion the holiest of
Pelasgian cults, preserves to the present day in story and in custom
some vestiges of the old religion; and here they are less tinged with
Christian colour.

Near the city of Pheneos, which according to Pausanias[149] was the
scene of mysteries similar to those enacted at Eleusis, there are some
underground channels by which the waters of Lake Pheneos are carried
off, soon to reappear as the river Ladon. These channels were believed
by Pausanias himself to be artificial--the work of Heracles, it was
said, who also constructed a canal close by, traces of which are still
visible: but according to another authority[150] they were the passage
by which Pluto carried off Persephone to the infernal regions. Some
memory of the latter belief seems still to linger among the people
of Phoniá (the modern form of Pheneós), who call these subterranean
vents ἡ τρούπαις τοῦ διαβόλου, ‘the holes of the devil,’ and who
further believe that it is through them that the spirits of the dead
pass to the lower world. My guide informed me also that the rise or
fall of the waters of the lake--the level varies to an extraordinary
degree--furnishes an augury as to what rate of mortality may be
expected in the village. If the water is high, the lower world is for
the time being congested and requires no more inhabitants; if it sinks,
the lower world is empty, and thirsts for fresh victims. The connexion
of such beliefs with the cult of Persephone, though vague, is probably
real; but how general they may be among the present villagers I cannot
say; Dodwell[151] apparently heard nothing of them except the name of
‘the devil’s holes,’ and the explanation of this name which was given
to him took the form of a story about a conflict between the devil and
a king of Phoniá, in which the former hurled explosive balls of grease
at his adversary, one of which set him on fire and drove his body right
through the base of the mountain which rises from the lake’s edge,
leaving thereafter an escape for the waters. There is certainly nothing
in common between this story, which Leake also heard in a slightly
different version[152], and the beliefs communicated to me; and I
suspect that it is a comparatively modern aetiological fable designed
perhaps to satisfy the curiosity of children concerning the name. The
belief that the subterranean channel is a descent to the lower world is
more clearly a vestige of the old local cult of Kore.

Again in the neighbourhood of Phigalia there is current among the
peasantry a curious story which I tried in vain to hear recited
in full, but only obtained in outline at second-hand. I cannot
consequently vouch for its accuracy, but such as it is I give it. There
once were a brother and sister, of whom the former was very wicked
and a magician, while the latter was very virtuous and beautiful. Her
beauty was indeed so wonderful, that her brother became enamoured of
her. In her distress she fled to a cave near Phigalia, hoping to elude
his pursuit; but the magician straightway discovered her. Then being
at her wits’ end how to save herself from the unholy passion which her
beauty inspired, she prayed to be turned into some beast. Her prayer
was straightway granted, but the wicked magician had power to change
himself likewise. So when they had both been changed into several
shapes he at length overcame her. But no sooner was the infamous deed
done, than the Panagia caused an earthquake, and the roof of the cave
fell and destroyed both brother and sister together.

A story of incest necessarily ends at the present day among the highly
moral countryfolk of Greece with punishment inflicted by some Christian
deity: but for the rest the story is practically the same as that which
Pausanias heard concerning Poseidon and his sister Demeter in the same
district[153]. In the old version, which Pausanias gives very briefly,
there is only one transformation mentioned, that of Demeter into a
mare and of Poseidon into a horse; but it is at least noteworthy that
the statue of horse-headed Demeter which commemorated this incident
is said to have had ‘figures of snakes and other wild animals’ fixed
on its head; and possibly, if Pausanias had given a fuller version
of the myth, we should find that these figures related to other
transformations which Demeter had tried in vain before in equine form
she was finally forced to yield. The mention of the cave in the modern
story is also significant; for though the cave in the ancient version
is not the scene of the rape, it was there that Demeter hid herself
in her anger afterwards and there too that the statue of horse-headed
Demeter was set up. It would be interesting to know whether the horse
is one of the forms assumed in the modern story; perhaps some other
traveller will be fortunate enough to hear the tale in full.

In northern Arcadia I also learnt that the flesh of the pig, in
respect of which the ordinary _Graeculus_ fully deserves the epithet
_esuriens_, is taboo; and the result of eating it is believed to be
leprosy. It might be supposed that this superstition has resulted from
contact with Mohammedans; but such an explanation would not account
for the confinement of it to one locality--and that a mountainous
and unprofitable district where intercourse with the Turks must have
been small; and further the Greek would surely have found a malicious
pleasure, the most piquant of sauces, in eating that which offended
the two peoples whom he most abhors, Turks and Jews. On the other
hand, if we suppose this fear of swine’s flesh to be a piece of native
tradition, its origin may well be sought in the ritual observances of
the old cult of Demeter and her daughter, to whom the pig was sacred
and in whose honour it was sacrificed once only in each year, at the
festival of the Thesmophoria[154]. There are many instances among
different peoples of the belief that skin diseases, especially leprosy,
are the punishment visited upon those who eat of the sacred or unclean
animal; for the distinction between sacred and unclean is not made
until a primitive sense of awe is inclined by conscious reasoning in
the direction either of reverence or of abhorrence[155]. Thus in
Egypt, the land from which the Pelasgians, if Herodotus[156] might be
believed, derived the worship of Demeter, it was held that the drinker
of pig’s milk incurred leprosy[157]; and we may reasonably suppose that
the same punishment threatened those Egyptians who tasted of pig’s
flesh save at their one annual festival when this was enjoined[158].
Now the Thesmophoria resembled this Egyptian festival in that it was
an annual occasion for sacrificing pigs and for partaking therefore of
their flesh; if then the worshippers of Demeter, like the Egyptians,
were forbidden to use the pig for food at other times, and if the
penalty for disobedience in Greece too was believed to be leprosy, the
present case of taboo in Arcadia--the only one known to me in modern
Greece--may be a survival from the ancient cult.

But apart from these traces of the worship of Demeter and Kore
in Christian worship, in folk-story, and in custom, traces which
constitute in themselves cogent proof of the firm hold on the popular
mind which the goddesses twain must long have kept, there exists in the
belief of the Greek peasantry a personal Power, a living non-Christian
deity, who still inspires awe in many simple hearts and who may
reasonably be identified with one or rather perhaps with both of them.

For it must not be forgotten that the mother and the daughter were
in origin and symbolism one. The idea of life’s ebb and flow, of
nature’s sleeping and waking, is expressed in them severally as well as
conjointly. It would be impossible to analyse the complete myth and,
even if a purely physical interpretation were sought, to express in
physiological terms the two persons and the parts which they play: for
certain ideas find duplicate expression. Either Demeter’s retirement
to some dark cave or the descent of Persephone to the underworld might
have represented alone and unaided the temporary abeyance of earth’s
productive powers. Yet it was with good reason that the myth expanded
as it were spontaneously until the spirit of life, that pervades
not only the cornfield but all that is animal and human too, was
pourtrayed in double form; not because the mere physical fact of the
decay and the revival of vegetation needed larger symbolism for its
due expression, but because in the tie of mother and daughter and all
that it connotes was fitly represented that by which the life-spirit
works among the higher orders of created things, that which goes before
life’s manifestations and outlasts its vanishings, the spirit of love.

Of all such ideas as these the modern peasant, needless to say, is
wholly innocent. He has learnt from his ancestors of a woman beautiful,
reverend, deathless, who dwells within a mountain of his land, and who
by her dealings with mankind has proved her real and divine puissance.
Her name is no more uttered, perchance because it is too holy for
men of impure lips; they speak only of ‘the Mistress.’ She is a real
person, not the personification of any natural force. The tiller of
the land foresees his yearly gain from cornfield and vineyard; the
shepherd on the mountain-side expects the yearly increase of his flock;
but by neither is any principle inferred therefrom, much less is such
a principle personified; the blessing which rests on field and fold
is the work of a living goddess’ hands. Flesh and blood she is, even
as they themselves, but immortal and very mighty, nobler than many of
whom the priests preach, stronger to help the good and to punish the
wicked. Simple people they are, who still believe such things, and
ignorant; yet less truly ignorant than some half-educated pedants of
the towns who vaunt their learning in chattering of ‘Ceres’ rather than
of ‘Demeter’ and, misled by Roman versifiers who at least had an excuse
in the exigencies of metre, misinterpret the name as a mere synonym for
corn. Happily however the influence of the schools--for it is amongst
the schoolmasters that the worst offenders in this respect are to be
found--is not yet all-reaching, and in the remoter villages tradition
is still untainted. There without fear of ridicule men may still
confess their faith in the great compassionate goddess.

It was in Aetolia that I first recognised the popular belief in this
deity. There I heard tell of one who was called ἡ κυρὰ τοῦ κόσμου, ‘the
mistress of the world.’ Her dwelling was in the heart of a mountain,
the means of access to it a cave, but where situated, the peasants
either did not know or feared to tell. Her character indeed was ever
gracious and kindly, but it may be they thought she would resent a
foreigner’s approach. In her power was the granting of many boons, but
her special care was the fertility of the flocks and the abundance of
the crops, including in that district tobacco.

This revelation convinced me of the accuracy of what I had previously
suspected only in North Arcadia and in Messenia. In both those regions
I had heard occasional mention among the peasants of one whose title
was simply ἡ δέσποινα, ‘the Mistress.’ The word had always struck me
as curious, for in ordinary usage it is obsolete and the mistress of
a house or whatever it may be is always ἡ κυρά (i.e. κυρία). Knowing
however that the Church had preserved the title ἡ δέσποινα among those
under which the Virgin may be invoked, I was disposed at first to think
that the dedication of some church in the neighbourhood had influenced
the people to use the rare name ἡ δέσποινα instead of the ordinary
‘Panagia.’ But when I enquired where the church of ‘the Mistress’ was,
the answer was ‘she has none’: and yet, on making subsequent enquiries
of other persons, I found that there was a church of the Panagia close
by. Clearly then it was not in the ecclesiastical sense that the title
ἡ δέσποινα was being used. More than this I failed to elicit--the
peasants of the Peloponnese are on the whole more suspicious and
secretive than those of northern Greece--but I have little doubt that
this goddess is the same as she who in Aetolia bears a title more
colloquial in form but identical in meaning.

The existence of this deity among the survivals of the old religion has
never, I think, been observed by any writer on the subject of Greek
folk-lore. But in Bernhard Schmidt’s collection of popular stories and
songs there is evidence, whose value he himself did not recognise, to
corroborate it. One of the songs[159] from Zacynthos contains the lines:

    Ἔκαμ’ ὁ Θεὸς κι’ ἡ Παναγι̯ὰ κι’ ἡ Δέσποινα τοῦ κόσμου,
    καὶ ἐπολέμησα με Τούρκους, μ’ Ἀρβανίταις·
    χίλιους ἔκοψα, χίλιους καὶ δυ̯ὸ χιλιάδες.

 ‘They wrought in me, even God and the Virgin and the Mistress of the
 world, and I fought with Turks and with Albanians: a thousand I slew,
 a thousand yea and two thousand.’

The editor of this song omits from his translation and does not even
mention in his notes the last phrase of the first line, assuming, I
suppose, that the Virgin is mentioned twice over under two different
titles; but it is at least possible that three persons are intended.
God and the Virgin belong to the category of Christian deities; the
third may be the pagan goddess already discovered in Messenia, Arcadia,
and Aetolia; if so, the collocation of her name along with those of
the highest Christian powers is strong testimony to the reverence
with which the people of Zacynthos too were wont, and perhaps still
continue, to regard her.

In Schmidt’s stories again yet another variation of the title occurs.
In one, which has already been narrated in full[160], ‘the Mistress of
the earth and of the sea’ (ἡ κυρὰ τσῆ γῆς και τσῆ θάλασσας) rewards
a poor man, on the recommendation of his good angel, with miraculous
gifts, and when he is slain by an envious king, herself appears and
sends down the tyrant quick into the pit where punishment for his
wickedness awaits him. Another, in which the same ample appellation is
used, runs in brief as follows[161]:

‘Once upon a time a king on his return from a journey gave to his
eldest son as a present a picture of “the Mistress of the earth and of
the sea.” The prince was so dazzled by her beauty that he resolved to
seek her out and make her his wife. He accordingly consulted a witch
who told him how to find the palace where the Mistress of earth and sea
lived, and warned him also that before he could secure the fulfilment
of his desire two tasks would be set him, the first to shatter a small
phial carried by a dove in its beak without injuring the bird, the
second to obtain the skin of a three-headed dragon. She also provided
him with a magic bow wherewith to perform the first labour, and with
two hairs from the dragon’s head, by means of which he would be
magically guided to the monster’s lair. Arrived there he should glut it
with a meal of earth which he was to carry with him, and then slay it
as it slept.

Thus forewarned and forearmed the prince set out and passing through a
cave, of which the witch had told him, came to the palace. The Mistress
having enquired of him his errand at once set him to perform the two
tasks. These he accomplished, and she returned with him as his wife to
his own land. But they did not live peaceably together, and one day
the Mistress of earth and sea in her anger bade the waters overflow
the whole land, so that all mankind was drowned while she herself
hovered above in the air and looked on. Then when the waters subsided,
she descended to the earth and made new men by sowing stones; and
thereafter she ruled again as before over the whole world.’

Both these stories hail, as does the song of which a few lines are
cited above, from Zacynthos, and there is therefore good reason
for believing that in that island the same ‘Mistress’ was recently
acknowledged as at this very day is venerated in those parts of the
mainland which I have mentioned.

Taking the common factors in these several traditions and beliefs,
we are led at once to identify the goddess to whom they relate with
Demeter.

First, the simplest form of her title, ἡ δέσποινα, of which the others
are merely elaborations, is that which Demeter commonly shared with
Persephone in old time; and that the title has been handed down from
antiquity is shown clearly by the fact that the word is in ordinary
usage obsolete. Since then it is unlikely that in the course of
tradition such a title should be transferred (save, owing to Christian
influence, in the case of the Virgin, who has locally no doubt
superseded one of the goddesses twain and appropriated her byname),
the word itself declares in favour of the identification of this still
living deity with Demeter.

Secondly, her dwelling-place is consistently in the modern accounts
the heart of a mountain, and the passage to it a cave. Such precisely,
according to Pausanias, was the habitation of Demeter in Mt
Elaïon[162]; and the same idea is reflected in her whole cult; for,
though in the classical period she had temples built like those of
other deities, yet her holy of holies, as befitted a Chthonian deity,
was always a subterranean hall (μέγαρον) or palace (ἀνάκτορον), an
artificial and glorified cavern.

Thirdly, the modern deity is in character benevolent, therein differing
markedly from many of the pagan powers whom we have yet to consider and
also from several of the Christian saints. Once only, in the second of
the stories from Zacynthos, does she appear in angry mood, when she
destroys all mankind by a flood. To the actual means of destruction
employed too much importance must not be attached. The _motif_ of
the flood is common in modern Greek folk-tales. In the islands of the
Aegean I encountered it several times, the fullest version being one
which I heard in Scyros. The story as told there was exactly that of
Deucalion, save that in deference to biblical tradition he was named
Noah and, by a slight anachronism, it was the Panagia instead of Themis
who counselled him to create fresh men by throwing stones over his
shoulder. I was also taken to see the place where the flood was at
its highest, a narrow glen through which runs a small stream, whose
high sloping banks are certainly a mass of half-fossilised animal and
vegetable matter; and I was escorted to the hill-top on which Noah’s
caïque finally rested. Such a theme is easily worked into a story
of the deity, usually benevolent though she be, who is ‘Mistress of
the earth and of the sea’; and apart from the means of punishment so
appropriately adopted by a goddess who rules the sea, this single
outburst of somewhat unreasonable anger on the part of the modern deity
against all mankind is singularly like the old-time Demeter’s resentful
retirement into the depths of her cave, until ‘all the produce of earth
was failing and the human race was perishing fast from famine[163].’
Yet otherwise the ancient goddess too was benevolent and gracious to
man.

Fourthly, in Aetolia at any rate and probably also in the Peloponnese,
where however I failed to extract definite information, the modern
goddess is the quickener of all the fruits of the earth, and in
functions therefore corresponds once more with the ancient conception
of Demeter. On these grounds the identification seems to me certain.

This being granted, the permanence of tradition concerning the
dwelling-place of Demeter raises a question which I approach with
diffidence, feeling that an answer to it must rest with others more
competent than myself in matters archaeological. First, is the
tradition as old as that of the personality of the goddess? It is hard
to suppose otherwise; for the primitive mind would scarcely conceive
of a person without assigning also an habitation; and the habitation
actually assigned is of primitive enough character--a cave in a
mountain-side. Where then was Demeter worshipped by the Pelasgians
in the Mycenaean age? That she was a deity much reverenced by the
dwellers in the Argive plain is certain; small idols believed to
represent Demeter Kourotrophos have been found at Mycenae[164]; others,
of which the identification is more certain, at Tiryns[165]; and at
Argos, in later times, Demeter continued to be worshipped under the
title Pelasgian[166]. Was a mere cavern then her only home? Or did
Mycenae lavish some of its gold on building her a more worthy temple?
May not the famous bee-hive structures which have passed successively
for treasuries and for tombs of princes prove to be μέγαρα, temples of
Chthonian deities such as Demeter?

It is true that in some humbler structures of the same type, such
as those at Menídi and Thoricus, clear evidences of inhumation have
been found; but I question whether it is permissible to draw from
this fact the inference that those magnificent structures also, the
so-called Treasuries of Atreus and of Minyas, were in reality tombs.
It would seem reasonable to suppose that dwelling-places for the dead
beneath the earth and for earth-deities may have been constructed on
the same plan, but that the abodes dedicated to immortals were more
imposing than those destined for dead men. This hypothesis appears to
me more consistent with the evidence of the actual sites at Mycenae and
Orchomenos than the commonly accepted view that the inner chamber of
the ‘Treasury of Atreus’ was a place of burial. ‘In the centre of the
Mycenaean chamber,’ says Schuchhardt[167], ‘there is an almost circular
depression three feet in diameter and two feet in depth, cut into the
rocky ground. In spite of its unusual shape, we must recognise in it
the actual site of the grave.’ Was it a royal posture to lie curled up
like a cat? And if so, what of a similar depression in the floor of
the ‘Treasury of Minyas’ at Orchomenos? ‘Almost in the centre of the
treasure-room’--I again quote Schuchhardt[168]--‘was a long hole in the
level rock, nine inches deep, fifteen inches broad and nineteen inches
long, which’--must be recognised as the sepulchre of a royal baby? No,
our faith is not to be so severely taxed;--‘which must have served
to secure some monument.’ May we not, with more consistency, extend
the same explanation to Mycenae? And what then were the monuments?
May they not have been images of the deity set up in the most natural
place, the centre of the outer or the inner sanctuary?

Again, the actual shape of the buildings is important. Ethnologists
tell us that it is ultimately derived from a type of dwelling commonly
occupied by primitive man, a circular wattle-hut with conical top; or
even more directly, as some would have it, from a similarly shaped
abode which the ancient Phrygians used to excavate in the ground,
constructing the top of withies laced over beams converging to the apex
and covered over with earth, while they tunnelled out an approach from
one side where the ground sloped conveniently away[169]. From this it
is argued that the domed chambers of Mycenae must be tombs, on the
ground that ‘men in all ages have fashioned the dwellings of the dead
in accordance with those of the living; but the dead are conservative,
and long after a new generation has sought a new home and a new pattern
for its houses, the habitations of the dead are still constructed in
ancestral fashion[170].’ I readily admit conservatism in all religious
matters; but how does the argument touch Mycenae? Archaeologists, and
among them Schuchhardt himself[171], are agreed that the shaft-graves
in the citadel are earlier in date than the bee-hive structures of
the lower town. There was therefore a breach in the continuity of the
ancestral fashion. Reversion to a disused fashion is a very different
thing from conservatism in upholding an unbroken usage.

But even supposing that there were good evidence of the uninterrupted
continuity of this type of sepulchre, may not the temples of Chthonian
deities have been built on the same plan? The use of the old word
μέγαρον suggests that the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone, though
subterranean, was modelled on the dwellings of men, and, to borrow an
argument, religious conservatism may well have preserved for the gods’
abodes the hut-like shape of primitive man’s dwellings long after a new
type of house had become general among mortals. Concrete instances of
this actually existed in much later times[172]. In Rome the temple of
Vesta was of this primitive shape, and so also most probably was the
Prytaneum of Athens, which, though not a temple, contained the sacred
hearth of the whole community and a statue of Hestia[173]. Demeter
then, as one of the deities of primitive Greece, might well have been
provided with a temple constructed on the same primitive pattern as
that of Vesta, but subterranean, as would befit a Chthonian deity, and
thus analogous to the cave wherein she had been wont to dwell. The
large domed chamber would be her _megaron_, wherein her worshippers
assembled just as guests assembled in the _megaron_ of a prince. The
small square apartment, where such exists, opening on one side of the
main room, might be the παστάς or ‘bedchamber,’ an inner sanctuary
which temples of later ages also possessed. The approach or ‘dromos’
would represent the natural cave which had given access to her fabled
palace in the bowels of the earth.

Finally, on such a view of these buildings, it would not be difficult
to explain Pausanias’ belief that they were treasuries[174]. Treasuries
only, we may be sure, they were not; for they would not have been built
outside the walls of the citadel. But temples in later times were used
as depositories for treasure; the would-be thief shrank apparently from
the further crime of sacrilege; and it is not unlikely that in a more
primitive age, when superstitious awe was certainly no less strong,
while robbery far from being a crime was an honourable calling, men
should have secured their treasure by storing it in some inviolable
sanctuary. Indeed it may be to such a custom that Homer alludes in
speaking of ‘all that the stone threshold of the archer, even Phoebus
Apollo, doth enclose within at rocky Pytho[175].’ If then this practice
prevailed in Mycenaean, as it did in later, times, Pausanias would
be recording a tradition which was partially right; and it is not
hard to see how, when Mycenae’s greatness had suddenly, as it seems,
declined and her population perhaps had migrated for the most part to
Argos, later generations, familiar in their new settlements with that
different type of temple only which afterwards became general, might
have forgotten the sacred character of the bee-hive structures and
have remembered only the proverbial wealth once stored by the kings of
Mycenae within them.

There remains one point to which I may for the moment direct attention
here, reserving the development of the religious idea contained in
it for a later chapter. The main theme of the second of the stories
from Zacynthos was the seeking of the Mistress in marriage by a young
prince. Now if this story stood alone, it would not be right to lay
much stress upon it; for the adventures of a young prince in search of
some far-famed bride form the plot of numerous Greek folk-tales; and
it would be possible to suppose that the real divine personality of
the Mistress had been partially obscured in the popular memory before
such a story became connected with her name. But the same _motif_
as it happens is repeated in two stories, one Greek and the other
Albanian, in von Hahn’s collection[176]. The name of ‘the Mistress’
does not indeed occur; the deity is called in both ‘the beautiful
one of the earth[177].’ But her identity is made quite clear in the
Albanian story, which evidently must have been borrowed from the
Greek and is therefore admissible as good evidence, by the mention
of ‘a three-headed dog that sleeps not day nor night’ by which she
is guarded. This is undoubtedly the same monster as the hero of the
Zacynthian story was required to kill--the three-headed snake; and
while the Albanian story, in making the beast a guardian of the
subterranean abode whom the adventurer must slay before he can reach
‘the beautiful one,’ is better in construction and, incidentally, more
faithful to old tradition[178] than the Greek version which makes the
slaying an useless task arbitrarily imposed, yet in both portraits of
the monster we can recognise Cerberus--half dog, half snake. But of him
more anon; ‘the beautiful one of the earth’ whom he guards can be none
other than Persephone.

Thus there are three modern stories which record the winning of Demeter
or Persephone in marriage by a mortal lover. Is this a relic of ancient
tradition? There was the attempt of Pirithous to seize Persephone for
his wife; but that failed, and moreover was judged an impious deed
for which he must suffer punishment. Yet there is also the story of
Iasion who was deemed worthy of Demeter’s love. Wedlock then even with
so great a deity as Demeter or her daughter was not beyond mortals’
dream or reach. Thus much I may notice now; when I come to examine
more closely the ancient worship of these goddesses, I shall argue
that the idea of a marriage-union between them and human kind was the
most intimate secret of the mysteries, and that in such folk-tales
as those which I have here mentioned is contained the germ of a
religious conception from which was once evolved the holiest of ancient
sacraments.


§ 6. CHARON.

There is no ancient deity whose name is so frequently on the lips
of the modern peasant as that of Charon. The forms which it has now
assumed are two, Χάρος and Χάροντας, analogous to the formations γέρος
and γέροντας from the ancient γέρων: for in late Greek at any rate the
declension of Χάρων followed that of γέρων[179]. The two forms do not
seem to belong to different modern dialects, for they often appear in
close juxtaposition in the same folk-song. The shorter form however is
the commoner in every-day speech, and I shall therefore employ it.

About Charos the peasants will always, according to my experience,
converse freely. Neither superstitious awe nor fear of ridicule imposes
any restraint. They feel perhaps that the existence of Charos is one of
the stern facts which men must face; and even the more educated classes
retain sometimes, I think, an instinctive fear of making light of his
name, lest he should assert his reality. For Charos is Death. He is
not now, what classical literature would have him to be, merely the
ferryman of the Styx. He is the god of death and of the lower world.

Hades is no longer a person but a place, the realm over which Charos
rules. But the change which has befallen the old monarch’s name is
the only change in the Greek conception of that realm. It is still
called ‘the lower world’ (ὁ κάτω κόσμος or ἡ κάτω γῆ), and even the
name Tartarus (now τὰ Τάρταρα, with the addition frequently of τῆς
γῆς) still may be heard. Nor is the character of the place altered.
Its epithet ‘icy-cold,’ κρυοπαγωμένος, is well-nigh as constant in
modern folk-songs as was the equivalent κρυερός in Homer’s allusions
to Hades’ house, while the picturesque word ἀραχνιασμένος, ‘thick with
spiders’-webs,’ repeats in thought the Homeric εὐρωείς, ‘mouldering.’
Such is Charos’ kingdom, and hither he conveys men’s souls which he has
snatched away from earth.

Here with him dwells his mother, a being, as one folk-song tells[180],
more pitiful than he, who entreats him sometimes, when he is setting
out to the chase, to spare mothers with young children and not to part
lovers new-wed. He has also a wife, Charóntissa or Chárissa, who as the
name itself implies is merely a feminine counterpart of himself without
any distinct character of her own. A son of Charos is also mentioned
in song, for whose wedding-feast ‘he slays children instead of lambs
and brides as fatlings[181],’ and to whose keeping are entrusted the
counter-keys of Hades[182]. Adopted children are also counted among
his family, but these are of those whom he has carried from this world
to his own home[183]. The household is completed by the three-headed
watch-dog, of whom however remembrance is very rare. Yet in two
stories in the last section we recognised Cerberus, and even the less
convincing of the embodiments there presented, that which represented
him as a three-headed snake rather than dog, is not devoid of traces
of ancient tradition. The hero who would slay the monster has to cross
a piece of water--the sea instead of the river Styx--in order to reach
an island where is the monster’s lair; and there arrived, he sees
‘looking out from a hole three heads with eyes that flash fire and
jaws that breathe flames[184].’ This is Cerberus without doubt; and
if the story calls him ‘serpent’ rather than ‘dog,’ ancient mythology
and art alike justify in part the description; for his mother was
said to be Echidna, and he himself is found pourtrayed with the tail
of a serpent and a ring of snakes about his neck. Schmidt himself
appears to have overlooked the testimony of this story and of that also
from the collection of von Hahn in which, as I have pointed out, we
have a modern picture of Cerberus guarding the realm of Persephone;
for he speaks of some remarkable lines from a song which he himself
heard in Zacynthos as an unique mention of Cerberus, and questions
the genuine nature of the tradition. All doubt is however removed
by the corroborative evidence contained in the two stories already
mentioned and by the fact that a three-headed dog belonging to Charos
was recently heard of by a traveller in Macedonia[185]. The lines
themselves are put in the mouth of Charos:--

    Ἔχω ὀχτρὸ ἐγὼ σκυλὶ, π’ ούλους μας μᾶς φυλάει,
    κῂ ἄντας με ἰδῇ ταράζεταικὴ καὶ θέλει νά με φάῃ.
    εἶναι σκυλὶ τρικέφαλο, ποῦ καίει σὰ φωτία,
    ἔχει τὰ νύχια πουντερὰ καὶ τὴν ὠρὰ μακρύα.
    βγάνει φωτιὰ ’φ’ τὰ μάτια του, ἀπὸ τὸ στόμα λάβρα,
    ἡ γλῶσσα του εἶναι μακρυά, τὰ δόντια του εἶναι μαῦρα[186].

 ‘A savage dog have I, who guards us all, and when he sees me he rages
 and fain would devour me. A three-headed dog is he, and he burns like
 fire; his claws are sharp and his tail is long; from his eyes he gives
 forth flame and from his mouth burning heat; long is his tongue and
 grim his teeth.’

Here at least recognition of Cerberus must be immediate; every detail
of the description, save for the characteristically modern touch
which makes Charos afraid of his own dog, is in accord with classical
tradition.

Such is the household of Charos, so far as a description may be
compiled from a few scattered allusions; his own portrait varies more,
in proportion as there are more numerous attempts in every part of
Greece to draw it. Sometimes he is depicted as an old man, tall and
spare, white of hair and harsh of feature; but more often he is a lusty
warrior, with locks of raven-black or gleaming gold--just as Hades in
old time was sometimes κυανοχαίτης, sometimes ξανθός,--who rides forth
on his black steed by highway or lonely path to slay and to ravage:
‘his glance is as lightning and his face as fire, his shoulders are
like twin mountains and his head like a tower[187].’ His raiment is
usually black as befits the lord of death, but anon it is depicted
bright as his sunlit hair[188], for though he brings death he is a god
and glorious.

His functions are clearly defined. He visits this upper world to
carry off those whose allotted time has run, and guards them in the
lower world as in a prison whose keys they vainly essay to steal and
to escape therefrom. But the spirit in which he performs those duties
varies according as he is conceived to be a free agent responsible to
none or merely a minister of the supreme God. Which of these is the
true conception is a question to which the common-folk as a whole have
given no final answer; and the character of Charos consequently depends
upon the view locally preferred.

Those who regard him as simply the servant and messenger of God, find
no difficulty in accommodating him to his Christian surroundings;
for, as I have said, the peasant does not distinguish between the
Christian and the pagan elements in his faith which together make his
polytheism so luxuriant. We have already seen Charos’ name with the
prefix of ‘saint[189]’; and though this Christian title is not often
accorded him, yet his name appears commonly on tomb-stones in Christian
churchyards. At Leonídi, on the east coast of the Peloponnese, I noted
the couplet:

    καὶ μένα δὲν λυπήθηκε ὁ Χάρος νά με πάρῃ,
    ποῦ εἴμουνα τοῦ οἴκου μου μονάκριβο βλαστάρι.

 ‘Me too Charos pitied not but took, even me the fondly-cherished
 flower of my home.’

So too in popular story and song he is represented as working in
concord with the Angels and Archangels, to whom sometimes falls
the task of carrying children to his realm[190]. Indeed one of the
archangels, Michael, who as we saw above has ousted Hermes, the
escorter of souls, and assumed his functions, is charged with exactly
the same duties as Charos in the conveyance of men’s souls to the
nether world, so that in popular parlance the phrases ‘he is wrestling
with Charos’ (παλεύει μὲ τὸ Χάρο)[191] and ‘he is struggling with
an angel’ (ἀγγελομαχεῖ)[192] are both alike used of a man in his
death-agony.

This Christianised conception of Charos has not been without influence
in softening the lines of the character popularly ascribed to him. The
duties imposed upon him by the will of God are sometimes repugnant to
him, and he would willingly spare those whom he is sent to slay. One
folk-story related to me exhibits him even as a friend of man:--

‘Once upon a time there were a man and wife who had had seven children
all of whom died in infancy. When an eighth was born, the father betook
himself to a witch and enquired of her how he might best secure the
boy’s life. She told him that the others had died because he had chosen
unsuitable godparents, and bade him on this occasion ask the first man
whom he should meet on his way home to stand sponsor for the child. He
accordingly departed, and straightway met a stranger riding on a black
horse, and made his request to him. The stranger consented, and the
baptism at once took place; but no sooner was it over than he was gone
without so much as telling his name.

Ten years passed, and the child was growing up strong and healthy.
Then at last the father again encountered the unknown stranger, and
reproached him with having been absent so long without ever making
enquiry after his godson. Then the stranger answered, “Better for thee
if I had not now come and if thou neededst not now learn my name. I am
Charos, and because I am thy friend[193], am come to warn thee that thy
days are well-nigh spent.” Thereupon Charos led him away to a cave in
the mountain-side, and they entered and came to a chamber where were
many candles burning. Then said Charos, “See, these candles are the
lives of men, and yonder are thine and thy son’s.” Then the man looked,
and of his own candle there were but two inches left, but his son’s was
tall and burnt but slowly. Then he besought Charos to light yet another
candle for him ere his own were burnt away, but Charos made answer that
that could not be. Then again he besought him to give him ten years
from the life of his son, for he was a poor man, and if he died ere his
son were grown to manhood, his widow and orphan would be in want. But
Charos answered, “In no way can the decreed length of life be changed.
Yet will I show thee how in the two years that yet remain to thee thou
mayest enrich thyself and leave abundant store for thy wife and child.
Thou shalt become a physician. It matters not that thou knowest nought
of medicine, for I will give thee a better knowledge than of drugs.
Thine eyes shall ever be open to see me; and when thou goest to a sick
man’s couch, if thou dost see me standing at the bed-head, know then
that he must die, and say to them that summoned thee that no skill can
save him; but if thou dost see me at the foot of the bed, know that he
will recover; give him therefore but pills of bread if thou wilt, and
promise to restore him.” Then did the man thank Charos, and went away
to his home.

Now it chanced that the only daughter of the king lay grievously sick,
and all the doctors and magicians had been called to heal her, but they
availed nothing. Then came the poor man whom Charos had taught, and
went into the room where the princess lay, and lo! Charos stood at the
foot of her bed. Then he bade the king send away the other physicians,
for that he alone could heal her. So he himself went home and mixed
flour and water and came again and gave it to the king’s daughter, and
soon she was recovered of her sickness. Then the king gave him a great
present, and his fame was spread abroad, and many resorted to him, and
soon he was rich.

Thus two years passed, and at the end thereof he himself lay sick. And
he looked and saw Charos standing at the head of his bed. Then he bade
his wife turn the bed about, but it availed nothing; for Charos again
stood at his head, and caught him by the hair, and he opened his mouth
to cry out, and Charos drew forth his soul[194].’

Again the unwillingness of Charos to execute the harsh decrees of God
is illustrated in numerous folk-songs. Most often it is some brave
youth, shepherd or warrior, a lover of the open air, who excites his
compassion; for the same notes of regret which Sophocles made melodious
in the farewell of Ajax to the sunlight, to his house in Salamis, even
to the streams and springs of the Trojan land which brought his death,
ring clear and true in modern folk-song too from the lips of dying
warriors. Such were the last words of the outlaw-patriot (κλέφτης)
Zedros:

    ‘Farewell, Olympus, now farewell, and all the mountain-summits,
    Farewell, my strongholds desolate, and plane-trees rich in shadow,
    Ye fountains with your waters cool, and level plains low-lying.
    Farewell I bid the swift-winged hawks[195], farewell the royal eagles,
    Farewell for me the sun I love and the bright-glancing moonlight,
    That lighted up my path wherein to walk a warrior worthy[196].’

Such laments are not lost upon Charos, the servant of God, but he must
needs turn a deaf ear to prayers for a respite. Clear and final comes
his answer, almost in the same words in every ballad[197],

    δὲν ἠμπορῶ, λεβέντη μου, γιατ’ εἶμαι προσταμμένος,
    ἐμένα μ’ ἔστειλ’ ὁ Θεὸς νὰ πάρω τὴ ψυχή σου.

    ‘No respite can I give, brave sir, for I am straitly chargèd;
    ’Tis God that sent me here to thee, sent me to take thy spirit.’

Sometimes then the doomed man will seek to tempt Charos with meat and
drink, that he may grant a few hours’ delay, but against offers of
hospitality he is obdurate. Or again his victim refuses to yield to
death ‘without weakness or sickness’ and challenges him to a trial
of athletic skill, in wrestling or leaping, whereon each shall stake
his own soul. And to this Charos sometimes gives consent, for he
knows that he will win. So they make their way to the ‘marble-paved
threshing-floor,’ the arena of all manly pursuits; and there the man
perchance leaps forty cubits, yet Charos surpasses him by five; or
they wrestle together from morn till eve, but at the last bout Charos
is victor. One hero indeed is known to fame, whose exploits make him
the Heracles of modern Greece, Digenes the Cyprian, who wrestled with
Charos for three nights and days and was not vanquished. But then
‘there came a voice from God and from the Archangels, “Charos, I sent
thee not to engage in wrestlings, but that thou should’st carry off
souls for me[198].”’ And at that rebuke Charos transformed himself into
an eagle and alighted on the hero’s head and plucked out his soul.

The other and more pagan conception of Charos excludes all traits
of kindness and mercy; and men do not stint the expression of their
hatred of him. He is ‘black,’ ‘bitter,’ ‘hateful’ (μαῦρος[199], πικρός,
στυγερός). He is the merciless potentate of the nether world,
independent of the God of heaven, equally powerful in his own domain,
but more terrible, more inexorable: for his work is death and his abode
is Hades. Thence he issues forth at will, as a hunter to the chase.
‘Against the wounds that Charos deals herbs avail not, physicians give
no cure, nor saints protection[200].’ His quarry is the soul of man;
‘where he finds three, he takes two of them, and where he finds two,
takes one, and where he finds but one alone, him too he takes[201].’
Sometimes he is enlarging his palace, and he takes the young and strong
to be its pillars; sometimes he is repairing the tent in which he
dwells, and uses the stout arms of heroes for tent-pegs and the tresses
of bright-haired maidens for the ropes; sometimes he is laying out a
garden, and he gathers children from the earth to be the flowers of
it and young men to be its tall slim cypresses; more rarely he is a
vintager, and tramples men in his vat that their blood may be his red
wine, or again he carries a sickle and reaps a human harvest.

But most commonly he is the warrior preëminent in all manner of
prowess--archer, wrestler, horseman. Once a bride boasted that she
had no fear of Charos, for that her brothers were men of valour and
her husband a hero; then came Charos and shot an arrow at her, and
her beauty faded; a second and a third arrow, and he stretched her
on her death-bed[202]. Often in the pride of strength have young
warriors laughed Charos to scorn; then has he come to seize the
strongest of them, and though the warrior strain and struggle as in
a wrestling-match, yet Charos wearies not but wins the contest by
fair means or foul: for he is no honourable foe, but dishonest above
thieves, more deceitful than women[203]: he seizes his adversary by the
hair and drags him down to Hades. Even more striking is the picture of
Charos as horseman riding forth on his black steed to the foray, and
it is this conception which has inspired one of the finest achievements
of the popular muse:--

    Why stand the mountains black and sad, their brows enwrapped in darkness?
    Is it a wind that buffets them? is it a storm that lashes?
    No, ’tis no wind that buffets them, nor ’tis no storm that lashes;
    But ’tis great Charos passing by, and the dead passing with him.
    He drives the young men on before, he drags the old behind him,
    And at his saddle-bow are ranged the helpless little children.
    The children cling and cry to him, the old men call beseeching,
    “Good Charos, at some hamlet halt, halt at some cooling fountain;
    There let the young men heave the stone, the old men drink of water,
    There let the little children go agathering pretty posies.”
    “No, not at hamlet will I halt, nor yet at cooling fountain,
    Lest mothers come draw water there and know their little children,
    Lest wife and husband meet again and there be no more parting.”

Such is the more pagan presentment of the modern Charos, a tyrant as
absolute in his own realm as God in heaven, a veritable Ζεὺς ἄλλος[204]
as was Hades of old, but hard of heart, heedless of prayer, delighting
in cruelty.

At first sight then the Charos of modern Greece would seem to have
little in common with the Charon of ancient Greece beyond the name and
some connexion with death: and Fauriel, in the introduction to his
collection of popular songs, pronounces the opinion that in this case
the usual tendencies of tradition have been reversed, in that it is the
name that has survived, while the attributes have been changed[205].
To this judgement I cannot subscribe. I suspect that in ancient times
the literary presentation of Charon was far more circumscribed than the
popular, and that out of a profusion of imaginative portraitures as
varied as those seen in the folk-songs of to-day one aspect of Charon
became accepted among educated men as the correct and fashionable
presentment. Hades was, in literature, the despot of the lower world,
and for Charon no place could be found save that of ferryman. But this,
I think, was only one out of the many guises in which the ancient
Charon was figured by popular imagination; for at the present day the
remnants of such a conception are small, in spite of the fact that
there has remained a custom which should have kept it alive--the custom
of putting a coin in the mouth of the dead.

Only in one folk-song, recorded from Zacynthos, can I find the old
literary representation of Charon as ferryman of the Styx unmistakably
reproduced. The following is a literal rendering:--‘Across the river
that none may ford Charos was passing, and one soul was on the bank and
gave him greeting. “Good Charos, long life to thee, well-beloved; take
me, even me, with thee, take me, dear Charos! A poor man’s soul was I,
even of a poor man and a beggar; men left me destitute and I perished
for lack of a crumb of barley-bread. No last rites did they give me,
they gave me none, poor soul, not even a farthing in my mouth for
thee who dost await me. Poor were my children, poor and without hope;
destitute were they and lay in death unburied, poor souls. Them thou
did’st take, good Charos, them thou did’st take, I saw thee, when thy
cold hand seized them by the hair. Take me too, Charos, take me, take
me, poor soul; take me yonder, take me yonder, no other waiteth for
thee.” Thus cried to him the poor man’s soul, and Charos made answer,
“Come, soul, thou art good, and God hath pitied thee.” Then took he the
soul and set her on the other bank, and spreading then his sail he sped
far away[206].’

In another song[207] of the same collection, hailing also from
Zacynthos, there may be a reminiscence of the same old tradition. In
it Charos has a caïque with black sails and black oars and goes to and
fro--whence and whither is not told--with cargoes of the dead. But more
probably the imagery is borrowed from seafaring; the Greek peasant
would hardly imagine a caïque plying on a river; the streams of his own
country will seldom carry even a small bark. A sea-voyage on the other
hand is, especially in the imagination of islanders, the most natural
method of departure to a far-off country. From the sea certainly comes
the metaphor in a funeral dirge from Zacynthos in which the mourner
asks of the dead,

    σὲ τὶ καράβι θὰ βρεθῇς καὶ ’σ τὶ πόρτο θ’ ἀράξῃς;[208]

    ‘In what boat wilt thou be and at what haven wilt thou land?’

This too is claimed by Schmidt[209] as a reminiscence of Charon’s
ferry--somewhat unfortunately; for the next line continues,

    γιὰ νἄρθῃ ἡ μανοῦλα σου νά σε ξαναγοράσῃ,

    ‘That thy mother may come and ransom thee again.’

Now in another dirge[210] also heard by Schmidt in the same island,
this idea is worked out even more fully: the mother cries to the master
of the ship that bears away her lost son not to sell him, and offers
high ransom for him; but the dead man in answer bids her keep her
treasure; ‘not till the crow doth whiten and become a dove, must thou,
mother mine, look for me again.’ Clearly the imagery is borrowed not
from the ferry-boat of Charon plying for hire, but from a descent of
pirates who carry men off to hold them to ransom or to sell them for
slaves. In neither dirge is Charos actually named, but doubtless he is
understood to be the captain of the pirates; for in more than one dirge
of Laconia and Maina he is explicitly called κουρσάρος, a corsair[211].

Here then we have yet another presentation of the modern Charos; but
of Charon the ferryman there is no sure remembrance except in one song
from Zacynthos. Nor again, save in that one song, is the river of death
imagined as an impassable barrier; it is rather a stream of Lethe: no
boatman is needed to carry the dead across; but mention is made only
of ‘the loved ones, that pass the river and drink the water thereof,
and forget their homes and their orphan children[212]’--just as in the
mountains there are ‘springs in marble grots, whereat the wild sheep
drink and remember no more their lambs[213].’ It is the drinking of the
water, not the passing of the stream, which frees the dead from aching
memories: the picture is wholly different from that of a river which
cannot be crossed but by grace of the ferryman.

The general oblivion into which the ancient conception of Charon has
fallen is the more remarkable, as I have said, in view of the survival
of a custom which in antiquity was closely associated with it. In parts
of Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor the practice prevails[214], or
till recently prevailed, of placing in the mouth (or more rarely on
the breast) of the dead a small coin, which in the environs of Smyrna
is actually known as τὸ περατίκι, passage-money[215]. In the Cyclades
and in parts of the Greek mainland I myself have met aged persons
who could recall the existence of the custom: a century or two ago
it was probably frequent. But there is less evidence that the coin
was commonly intended for Charos. Protodikos indeed, the authority
for the existence of the custom in Asia Minor, writing in 1860, says
expressly that the coin was designed for Charos as ferryman; and the
name of ‘passage-money’ locally given to the coin tends to confirm
the statement of a writer whom I have found in some other matters
inaccurate. Another authority[216] moreover, writing also in 1860,
states that at Stenimachos in Thrace ‘until a short time ago’ the coin
was laid in the mouth of the dead actually for Charos; nor can there be
any question that the classical interpretation of the custom survived
long in Zacynthos, as is evidenced by the complaint of the poor man’s
soul in the song translated above,

    ’στερνὰ ἐμὲ δὲ μοὔδωκαν, δε μοὔδωκαν τσῆ καϋμένης,
    μήτε λεφτὸ ’στὸ στόμα μου γιὰ σὲ ποῦ περιμένεις,

 ‘No last rites did they give me, they gave me none, poor soul, not
 even a farthing in my mouth for thee (Charos) who awaitest me.’

Yet Schmidt, who recorded these lines from Zacynthos, found that the
actual custom was barely remembered there. He met indeed, in 1863,
one old woman aged eighty-two, who as a child had known the practice
of putting a copper in the mouth of the dead as also that of laying a
key on the corpse’s breast; but of the purpose of the coin she knew
nothing; the key she believed to be useful for opening the gates of
Paradise. For myself, though I have heard mention of the use of the
coin, I have never known it to be associated with Charos. I incline
therefore to the opinion that in most places where the custom is or has
recently been practised, it has outlived the interpretation which was
in classical times put upon it.

But was the classical interpretation a true index to the origin of
the custom? Was it anything more than an aetiological explanation of
a custom whose significance even in an early age had already become
obscured by lapse of time? One thing at least has been made certain
by the modern study of folklore, namely that a custom may outlive not
only the idea which gave it birth but even successive false ideas which
it has itself engendered in the minds of men who have sought vainly
to explain it. When therefore Lucian[217] stated that ‘they put an
obol in the dead man’s mouth as boat-fare for the ferryman,’ it is
possible that he was recording a late and incorrect interpretation of
a custom which had existed before the rôle of ferryman had ever been
invented for Charon. Further if that interpretation had been in the
main a literary figment, it would have been natural for the original
meaning of the custom to be still remembered among the unlettered
common-folk of outlying districts. There are plenty of cases in modern
Greece in which different explanations of the same custom are offered
in different localities. In spite therefore of the fact that one view
only found expression in classical literature, there is no antecedent
improbability in the supposition that an older view may have been
handed down even to recent generations in the purer oral traditions of
the common-folk.

Once only, from a fellow-traveller in the Cyclades, did I obtain any
explanation at all of the use of the coin, εἶναι καλὸ γιὰ τἀερικά[218],
‘it is useful because of the aërial ones.’ This sounds vague enough,
but nothing more save gestures of uncertainty could I elicit. Was the
coin useful, in his view, as a fee to be paid to ‘the aërial ones’ on
the soul’s journey from this world to the next, or as a charm against
the assaults of such beings? That was the question to which I sought an
answer from him, but in vain. For myself I cannot determine in which
sense the dark saying was actually meant. The former would accord well
with one local belief of the present day, if only my informant had
specified one particular kind of aërial beings who are believed to
take toll of departing souls; but to this I shall return in a later
section of this chapter[219]. The second interpretation of the words,
however, whether they were intended in that sense by the speaker or
not, furnishes what will be shown by other evidence to be the key to
the origin of the custom.

A coin is often used as a charm against sinister influences[220]. In
this case then it may have been a prophylactic against aërial spirits.
Why then is it generally put in the dead man’s mouth? Not, I think,
because the mouth is a convenient purse, as seems to be assumed in the
classical interpretation of the custom, but because the mouth is the
entrance to the body. The peasants of to-day believe as firmly as men
of the Homeric age that it is through the mouth that the soul escapes
at death. The phrase μὲ τὴ ψυχὴ ’στὰ δόντια, ‘with the soul between
the teeth,’ is the popular equivalent for ‘at the last gasp’; and in
the folk-songs the same idea constantly recurs; ‘open thy mouth,’ says
Charos to a shepherd whom he has thrown in wrestling, ‘open thy mouth
that I may take thy soul[221].’ Now the passage by which the soul
makes its exit, is naturally the passage by which evil spirits (or the
soul[222], if it should return,) would make their entrance; and, as we
shall see later, there is a very real fear among the peasantry that a
dead body may be entered and possessed by an evil spirit. Clearly then
the mouth, by which the spirit would enter, is the right place in which
to lay the protective coin.

The interpretation which I suggest gains support from some points in
modern usage. In Macedonia, according to one traveller[223], the coin
which formerly used to be laid in the corpse’s mouth was Turkish and
bore a text from the Koran, an aggravation of the pagan custom which
was made a pretext for episcopal intervention[224]. Now clearly, if the
coin had in that district been designed as payment for the services
of Charos as ferryman, there would have been no motive for preferring
one bearing an inscription from the Mohammedan scriptures, which
assuredly could not enhance the coin’s value in the eyes of Charos:
but if the coin was itself employed as a charm against evil spirits,
the sacred text might well have been deemed to add not a little to its
prophylactic properties. Thus the character of the particular type
of coin chosen indicates that the coin in itself too was at one time
viewed as a charm; a charm moreover whose effect would be precisely
that of the key which in the island of Zacynthos was also laid upon the
dead man’s breast; for the key was certainly not designed, as Schmidt’s
informant would have it, to open the gates of Paradise, but, like any
other piece of iron, served originally to scare away spirits. The use
of a coin as well as of a key in that island was merely meant to make
assurance doubly sure.

Again, in many places throughout Greece, where this use of a coin is no
longer known, a substitute of more Christian character has been found.
On the lips of the dead is laid either a morsel of consecrated bread
from the Eucharist[225], or more commonly a small piece of pottery--a
fragment it may be of any earthenware vessel--on which is incised
the sign of the cross with the legend Ι. Χ. ΝΙ. ΚΑ. (‘Jesus Christ
conquers’) in the four angles[226]. Here the choice of the inscribed
words of itself seems to indicate the intention of barring the dead
man’s mouth against the entrance of evil spirits; and as final proof
of my theory I find that in both Chios[227] and Rhodes[228], where a
wholly or partially Christianised form of the custom prevails, the
charm employed is definitely understood by the people to be a means of
precaution against a devil entering the dead body and resuscitating it.
Nor must the mention of a devil in this connexion be taken as evidence
that the Chian and Rhodian interpretation of the custom is not ancient.
I shall be able to show in a later chapter that the idea of a devil
entering the corpse is only the Christian version of a pagan belief in
a possible re-animation of the corpse by the soul[229].

But there is yet another variety of the custom, in which no coin and no
Mohammedan nor Christian[230] symbol is used, but a charm whose magic
properties were in repute long before Mohammed, long before Christ,
probably long before coinage was known to Greece. Again a piece of
pottery is used, but the symbol stamped upon it is the geometrical
figure [pentagram], the ‘pentacle’ of mediaeval magic lore. In Greece
it is now known as τὸ πεντάλφα, but of its properties, beyond the fact
that it serves as a charm[231], the people have nothing to say. In the
mediaeval and probably in the yet earlier magic of Europe and the East
it is one of the commonest figures, appearing sometimes as Solomon’s
seal, sometimes as the star which led the wise men to Bethlehem,
sometimes, in black colouring, as a symbol of the principle of evil,
and correspondingly, in white, as the symbol of the principle of good.
But though the figure has been known to the magicians of many nations
and many epochs, there is no reason to suppose that it is in recent
times or from other races that the Greeks have learnt it: for it was
known too by the ancient Greeks, who noted among its more intelligible
properties the fact that the five lines composing it can be drawn
without removing pencil from paper. The Pythagoreans, who called it
the πεντάγραμμον[232], are known to have attached to it some mystic
value. There is a reasonable likelihood therefore that the symbol has
been handed down in Greece as a magical charm--for we have seen how
many other methods of magic have survived--from the time of Pythagoras.
Further back we cannot penetrate; yet--_vixere fortes ante Agamemnona_,
and there were professors of occult sciences before Pythagoras. Was
it then he who first discovered the figure’s mystic value? Or did he
merely adopt and interpret in his own way a symbol which for long ages
before him had been endowed with magical powers? Was it perhaps this
figure, graven on some broken potsherd, which long before coinage
supplied a more ready charm protected the corpse from possession by
evil spirits, or rather, in those days, from reanimation by the soul?
Who shall say? The belief, which has found its modern expression in
the engraving of Christian or Mohammedan texts on prophylactic coins
or pottery and in barring with them the door of the lips which gives
access to the corpse, is certainly primitive enough in character to
date from the dimmest prehistoric age.

If my suggestion as to the origin of the custom is correct, it was only
the accident of a coin being commonly used as the prophylactic charm,
which caused the classical association of the custom with Charon; and,
once disembarrassed of this association, the popular conception of
Charon in antiquity is more easily studied.

The literary presentation of him in the guise of a ferryman only is a
comparatively late development. The early poets know nothing of him
whatever in any character. The first literary reference to him was
apparently in the _Minyad_, an epic poem of doubtful but not early
date, of which two lines referring to the descent of Theseus and
Pirithous to the lower world ran thus: ‘There verily the ship whereon
the dead embark, even that which the aged Charon as ferryman doth
guide, they found not at its anchorage[233].’ These are the lines by
which Pausanias believed that Polygnotus had been guided when painting
the figure of Charon in his famous representation of the nether world
at Delphi. Thenceforth this was the one orthodox presentation of Charon
in both literature and art. Euripides and Aristophanes in numerous
passages[234] both alike conform to it, and the painters of funeral
vases were equally faithful.

But there is evidence to show that this was not the popular conception
of Charon, or at any rate not the whole of it. Phrases occur (and were
probably current in classical times) which seem to imply a larger
conception of Charon’s office and functions. The ‘door of Charon’
(Χαρώνειος θύρα[235] or Χαρώνειον[236]) was that by which condemned
prisoners were led out to execution. The ‘staircase of Charon’
(Χαρώνειος κλίμαξ[237]) was that by which ghosts in drama ascended
to the stage, as if they were appearing from the nether world. To
Charon likewise were ascribed in popular parlance many caverns of
forbidding aspect, particularly those that were filled with mephitic
vapours--Χαρώνεια βάραθρα[238], σπήλαια[239], ἄντρα[240]. Finally
Χαρωνῖται is Plutarch’s[241] rendering of the Latin _Orcini_, the
_sobriquet_ given to the low persons whom Caesar brought up into the
Senate. These uses point to a popular conception of Charon larger
than classical art and literature reveal, and justify Suidas’ simple
identification of Charon with death[242].

Moreover once in Euripides, for all his strict adherence to the
conventional literary characterisation of Charon, a glimpse of popular
thought is reflected in the person of Death (Θάνατος) and the part
which he plays in the _Alcestis_. First, in the altercation between
Apollo and Death over the fate of Alcestis, there occur the words,
‘Take her and go thy way; for I know not whether I should persuade
thee’; to which Death answers, ‘Persuade me to slay those whom I must?
nay, ’tis with this that I am charged’ (τοῦτο γὰρ τετάγμεθα[243]).
Can it be a mere coincidence that, in modern folk-song, when some
doomed man seeks to persuade Charos to grant a respite, he answers,
‘Nay, brave sir, I cannot; for I am straitly charged’? The very word
‘charged,’ προσταμμένος, the modern form of προστεταγμένος, repeats
the word placed by Euripides in the mouth of Death. Secondly, Death
appears in warrior-guise, just as does Charos most commonly in modern
folk-songs; he is girt with a sword[244], and it is by wrestling[245]
that Heracles vanquishes him and makes him yield up his prey. Is this
again a mere coincidence? Or was Euripides, in his personification
of Death, utilising the character popularly assigned to Charon? It
looks indeed in one line as if the poet had almost forgotten that he
was not using the popular name also; otherwise there is no excuse
for the inelegance of making Death inflict death[246]. It is hardly
surprising that the copyist of one[247] of the extant manuscripts of
the _Alcestis_ was so impressed with the likeness of Death to Charon
as he knew him, that he altered the name of the _dramatis persona_
accordingly.

In the Anthology again Charon appears several times[248] acting in a
more extended capacity than that of ferryman; as in modern folk-songs,
he actually seizes men and carries them off to the nether world. One
epigram is particularly noticeable as seeming to have been suggested by
a passage of the _Alcestis_. ‘Is there then any way whereby Alcestis
might come unto old age?’ asks Apollo; and Death answers, ‘There is
none; I too must have the pleasure of my dues.’ ‘Yet,’ says Apollo,
‘thou wilt not get more than the one soul,’--be it now or later. And
similarly the epigram from the Anthology, save that Death is frankly
named Charon. ‘Charon ever insatiable, why hast thou snatched away
Attalus needlessly in his youth? Was he not thine, an he had died old?’

Clearly, it would seem, Euripides knew a popular conception of Charon
other than that which literary and artistic tradition had crystallised
as the orthodox presentation, but rather than break through the
conventions by bringing Charon on the stage otherwise than as ferryman,
he had recourse to a purely artificial personification of death.

But the conception of Charon as lord of death can be traced yet
further back than the time of Euripides. Hesychius states that the
title Ἀκμονίδης[249] was shared by two gods, Charon and Uranus. Charon
therefore, as son of Acmon and brother of Uranus, is earlier by two
long generations of gods than Zeus himself, and belongs to the old
Pelasgian order of deities. Was Charon then the god of death among the
old Pelasgian population of Greece, before ever the name of Hades or
Pluto had been invented or imported? Yes, if the corroboration from
another Pelasgian source, the Etruscans, is to count for anything. On
an Etruscan monument figures the god of death with the inscription
‘Charun’[250]; and the same person is frequently depicted on urns,
sarcophagi, and vases[251]. Usually the door of the nether world is
to be seen behind him; either he is issuing forth to seek his prey,
or he is about to enter there with a victim who stands close beside
him, his hand clasped in that of wife or friend to whom he bids
farewell[252]. In appearance he is most often an old bearded man
(though a more youthful type is also known) bearing an axe or mallet,
and more rarely a sword as well, wherewith he pursues men and slays
them[253]. In effect the Etruscan Charun closely corresponds with the
modern Greek Charos in functions as well as in name. The coincidence
allows of one explanation only. The Greeks of the present day must
have inherited their idea of Charos from ancestors who were closely
connected with the Etruscans and to whom Charon was the god of death
who came to seize men’s souls and carry them off to his realm in the
nether world. These ancestors can only have been the original Pelasgian
population of Greece. In classical times the primitive conception
of Charon was in abeyance. Hades had assumed the reins of government
in the nether world; and a literary legend, which confined Charon
to the work of ferryman, had gained vogue and supplanted or rather
temporarily suppressed the older conception. But this version, it
appears, never gained complete mastery of the popular imagination, and
to the common-folk of Greece from the Pelasgian era down to this day
Charon has ever been more warrior than ferryman, and his equipment an
axe or sword or bow rather than a pair of sculls. More is to be learnt
of the real Charon of antiquity from modern folk-lore than from all the
allusions of classical literature.


§ 7. APHRODITE AND EROS.

In the story of S. Demetra communicated to Lenormant at Eleusis and
narrated above, we have already had one instance of the preservation of
Aphrodite’s name. ‘Since the lady Aphrodite (ἡ κυρὰ ‘φροδίτη) none had
been seen so lovely’ as S. Demetra’s daughter. Another story related to
Perrot[254] by an Attic peasant in the year 1858 contains both the name
of the goddess and some reminiscences of her worship. The gist of it is
as follows. There once was a very beautiful queen, by name Aphrodite,
who had a castle at Daphni (just half-way on the road from Athens to
Eleusis) and also owned the heights of Acro-Corinth; these two places
she had caused to be connected by a subterranean way which passed under
the sea. Now there were two kings both of whom were smitten with her
beauty and sought her hand in marriage. She herself favoured one of
them and hated the other; but not wishing to declare her preference and
so arouse the anger of the rejected suitor, she announced that she was
about to build a palace on the height of Acro-Corinth, and would set
her suitors each a task to perform; one should build the fortifications
round the summit, the other should sink a well to provide the castle
with water[255]; and she promised her hand to the suitor who should
first complete his task. Now she supposed the sinking of the well
to be the lighter task and therefore assigned it to the suitor whom
she favoured; but he met with unforeseen difficulties, and his rival
meanwhile made steady progress with the walls. At last they were
wellnigh built, and it remained only to put in place the keystone over
the main gate. Then Aphrodite, marking the danger, went with winning
words and smiles and bade the builder lay aside his tools, for the
prize was now safely in his grasp, and led him away to a grassy spot
where she beguiled him so long with tender words and caresses, that
the other suitor meanwhile redoubling his efforts pierced the rock and
found water in plenty.

In this story the character, as well as the name, of the queen
is that of the ancient goddess; but there are other points too
deserving of notice. Perrot points out that in the neighbourhood of
the modern monastery at Daphni there stood in antiquity a temple
of Aphrodite[256]; and to this fact Schmidt[257], in commenting on
the story, adds that on the summit of Acro-Corinth also there was a
sanctuary of the goddess[258], while he accounts for the mention of
that place in an Attic story by the fact that Corinth was specially
famous for the worship of Aphrodite.

No other vestiges of the actual name, so far as I know, are to be
found, save that among certain Maniote settlers in Corsica the corrupt
derivative, Ἀφροδήτησσα[259] (which would perhaps be better spelt
Ἀφροδίτισσα) was until recent times at any rate applied to an equally
corrupt class of women, votaries of Ἀφροδίτη Πάνδημος. In a few stories
however from Zacynthos[260] the same goddess is prettily described as ἡ
μάνα τοῦ Ἔρωτα[261], ‘the Mother of Love,’ a title competent in itself
to establish her identity.

The first of these stories tells how a poor maiden fell in love with a
youth of high degree, and went to the Mother of Love to ask her help.
The latter promised to ask the assistance of her son Eros (Ἔρωτας) when
he came home. Next morning went Eros with bow and arrows and sat at the
maiden’s door till the swain passed by. Then suddenly he shot his arrow
at him, and the young man loved the maiden and took her to wife.

Another yet more remarkable story introduces us to the garden of Eros,
whither a prince once went to fetch water to cure the blindness of
the king, his father. ‘There at the entrance he beheld a woman that
was the fairest upon earth; she sat at the gate and played with a boy
who had wings and in his hand held a bow and many arrows. The garden
was full of roses, and over them hovered many little winged boys like
butterflies. In the midst of this garden was a spring, whence the
healing water flowed. As the king’s son drew near to this spring, he
espied therein a woman white as snow and shining as the moon; and it
was in very truth the moon that bathed there. Beside the spring sat a
second woman of exceeding beauty who was the Mother of Eros (ἡ μάνα τοῦ
Ἔρωτα).’ She gave him the water and her blessing, and his father was
healed.

The distinct reminiscence of Artemis in this story will be noticed
later[262]; here we need only notice a few points in the story relating
to Eros and his mother. The description of the ‘boy who had wings
and in his hand held a bow and many arrows’ is simply and purely
classical, according exactly with the Orphic address to him as τοξάλκη,
πτερόεντα[263]. The ‘woman at the gate who was the fairest upon earth’
is in all probability the same as ‘the Mother of Eros’ beside the
spring, the single personality, by some vagary in the transmission of
the story, having become duplicated. The roses, of which the garden was
full, are the flower always sacred to Aphrodite, the sweetest emblem of
love; and over these it is fitting that the ‘little winged boys’ should
hover, brothers as it were of Eros, ever-fresh embodiments of love, to
all of whom, in antiquity, Aphrodite was mother[264].

These folk-tales present sufficient evidence that the memory of the
name and attributes of Aphrodite survived locally until recent times
to warrant the conclusion that her worship, like that of other pagan
deities, possessed vitality enough to compete for a long while with
Christianity for the favour of the common-folk; but as a personality
she is no longer present, I think, to their consciousness; she is at
most only a character in a few folk-stories--if indeed the present
generation has not forgotten even these. For my part, I never heard
mention of her in story or otherwise, although her son, the winged
Eros, is often named in the love-songs which form a large part of the
popular poetry.

Vows and offerings which would in former days have been made to
Aphrodite are now made either to suitable saints who have taken her
place, such as S. Catharine[265], or to the Fates (Μοίραις), who
were from of old associated with her. According to a fragment of
Epimenides[266], ‘golden Aphrodite and the deathless Fates’ were
daughters of Cronos and Euonyme. Their sisterly relation was recognised
also in cult. Near the Ilissus once stood a temple containing an old
wooden statue (ξόανον) of Heavenly Aphrodite with an inscription naming
her ‘eldest of the Fates’ (πρεσβυτέρα τῶν Μοιρῶν)[267]. So venerable a
shrine must in old time have witnessed many a petition for success in
love; and when we bear in mind the ancient inscription of the statue,
it is interesting to find that among the girls of Athens until recent
times the custom prevailed of visiting the so-called ‘hollow hill[268]’
(τρύπιο βουνό) in the immediate neighbourhood to offer to the Fates
cakes with honey and salt and to consult them as to their destined
husbands[269].

Sacred also to Aphrodite in old days was a cave in the neighbourhood
of Naupactus, frequented particularly by widows anxious to be
remarried[270]. At the present day a cave at the foot of Mt Rigani,
which may probably be identified as the old sanctuary, is the spot to
which girls repair in order to consult the Fates on the all-absorbing
question[271].

Thus it seems that ‘golden Aphrodite’ has disappeared from the old
sisterly group of deities, and that ‘the deathless Fates’ alone remain
to receive prayers and to grant boons which once fell within the
province rather of Aphrodite. To the Fates we must now turn.


§ 8. THE FATES.

The custom of taking or sending offerings to a cave haunted by the
Fates, of which we have just seen two examples, is widely extended
among the women of Greece. In Athens, besides the ‘hollow hill,’ two
or three of the old rock-dwellings round about the Hill of the Muses
were formerly a common resort for the same purpose, and the practice
though rarer now is not yet extinct[272]. Among the best-known of these
resorts is the so-called Prison of Socrates. Dodwell, in his account
of his travels in Greece at the beginning of last century, states that
he found there ‘in the inner chamber, a small feast consisting of a
cup of honey and white almonds, a cake on a little napkin, and a vase
of aromatic herbs burning and exhaling an agreeable perfume[273]’; and
the observance of the custom is known to have continued in that place
down to recent years[274]. The same practice, I was informed at Sparta,
is known at the present day to the peasant-women of the surrounding
plain, who will undertake even a long and wearisome journey to lay a
honey-cake in a certain cave on one of the eastern spurs of Taÿgetus.
Other places in which to my own knowledge the custom still continues
are Agrinion in Aetolia and neighbouring districts, the villages of Mt
Pelion in Thessaly, and the island of Scyros; and from the testimony
of many other observers I conclude that it is, or was till recently,
universal in Greek lands.

Nor does there seem to be much variety in the subjects on which the
peasant-women consult the Fates: with the girls matrimony, with the
married women maternity, is the perpetually recurring theme. Everywhere
also honey in some form is an essential part of the offering by which
the Fates’ favour is to be won. The acceptance of this offering, and
therefore also the success of the prayers which accompany it, are
occasionally, as in the cave near Sparta which I have mentioned,
inferred from omens provided by the dripping of water from the roof of
the cave; but more usually the realisation of the conjugal aspirations
is not assured, unless a second visit to the sanctuary, three days or a
month later, proves that the sweetmeats have been accepted by the Fates
and are gone. This, I am told, occurs with some frequency. Dodwell
mentions that his donkey ate some[275]; and considering the character
of the offerings--cakes and honey for the most part, for only in the
‘hollow hill’ at Athens was salt added thereto--it is not surprising
if the Fates find many willing proxies, human and canine as well as
asinine.

At the moment when these delicacies are proffered, an invocation is
recited. This may take the form of a metrical line,

    Μοίραις μου, μοιράνετέ με, καὶ καλὸ φαγὶ σας φέρνω,

    ‘Kind Fates, ordain my fate, for I bring you good fare,’

or may be a simple prose formulary,

 Μοίραις τῶν Μοιρῶν καὶ τῆς τάδε ἡ Μοῖρα, κοπιάστε νὰ φᾶτε καὶ νὰ
 ξαναμοιράνετε τὴν τάδε νἄχῃ καλὴ μοῖρα[276],

 ‘Fates above all Fates, and Fate of N., come ye, I pray, and eat, and
 ordain anew the fate of N., that she may have a good fate.’

Various other versions are also on record, one of which will be
considered later; but these two examples illustrate sufficiently for
the present the simple Homeric tenour of such prayers.

The words which I have quoted, it must be admitted, give clear
expression to the hope that the Fates may revise the decrees which they
have already pronounced on the fortunes of the suppliant. Nevertheless
that such a hope should be fulfilled is contrary to the general beliefs
of the people. The Fates, they know, are inexorable so far as concerns
the changing of any of their purposes once set; for, as their proverb
runs, ὅτι γράφουν ᾑ Μοίραις, δὲν ξεγράφουν, ‘what the Fates write,
that they make not unwritten[277].’ They are not, it would appear,
subordinate, as Charon is sometimes deemed to be, even to the supreme
God; I can find no song or story that would so present them. They are
absolute and irresponsible in the fashioning of human destiny. But the
Greek peasants are not the first who have at the same time believed
both in predestination and in the efficacy of prayer. Perhaps all
unconsciously they reconcile the ideas as did Aeschylus of old:

    τὸ μόρσιμον μένει πάλαι,
    εὐχομένοις δ’ ἂν ἔλθοι[278],

 ‘Destiny hath long been abiding its time, but in answer to prayer may
 come.’

But even without any intuition of so hard a doctrine the peasant-women
may justify their prayers and offerings by the hope that, though the
Fates will detract nothing from the fulfilment of whatsoever they have
spoken or written, they may be willing to add thereto such supplement
as shall modify in large measure the issue. For the Fates are as Greek
in character as their worshippers, and stories are not wanting to
illustrate the shifts to which they have stooped in order practically
to invalidate without formally cancelling their whilom purpose.

‘Once upon a time a poor woman gave birth to a daughter, and on the
third night after the birth the Fates came to ordain the child’s lot.
As they entered the cottage they saw prepared for them a table with
a clean cloth and all manner of sweetmeats thereon. So when they had
partaken thereof and were content, they were kindly disposed toward the
child. And the first Fate gave to her long life, and the second beauty,
and the third chastity. But as they went forth from the cottage, the
first of them tripped against the threshold, and turning in wrath
towards the infant pronounced that she should be always an idler.

Now when she was grown up, she was so beautiful that the king’s son
would have her to wife. As the wedding-day drew near, her mother and
her friends chided her because she delayed to make her wedding dress;
but she was idle and heeded not. Soon came the eve of the wedding, and
she wept because the prince would learn of her idleness and refuse to
take her to wife. Now the Fates loved her, and saw her tears and pitied
her. Therefore they came suddenly before her, and asked why she wept;
and she told them all. Then sat they down there and spun and weaved and
embroidered all that night, and in the morning they arrayed her in a
bridal dress decked with gold and pearls such as had never been seen.

Presently came the prince, and there was much feasting and dancing, and
she was far the most beautiful of all the company. And because he saw
her lovely dress and knew how much toil it must have cost her to array
herself thus for him, he granted her the favour of doing no more work
all her days[279].’

This story, besides illustrating well the finality of every word
pronounced by the Fates and the means which they may employ to mitigate
their own severity, is typical too of the ideas generally accepted
concerning the Fates. Their number is three[280], and they are seen
in the shape of old women, one of whom at least is always engaged
in spinning. Of the remaining two, one is sometimes seen bearing a
book wherein to record in writing the decrees which the three jointly
utter, while the other carries a pair of scissors wherewith to cut the
thread of life at the appointed time; or again sometimes these two
also are spinning, one of them carrying a basket of wool or a distaff
and the other fashioning the thread. This association of the Fates
with spinning operations is commemorated in certain popular phrases by
the comparison of man’s life to a thread. ‘His thread is cut’ or ‘is
finished’ (κόπηκε or σώθηκε ἡ κλωστή του) is a familiar euphemism for
‘he is dead’: and again, with the same ultimate meaning but a somewhat
different metaphor, the people of Arachova use the phrase μαζώθηκε τὸ
κουβάρ’ του[281], ‘his spindle is wound full,’--an expression which
seems to imply the idea that the Fates apportion to each man at birth a
mass of rough wool from which they go on spinning day by day till the
thread of life is completed.

According to Fauriel[282], a reminiscence of the Fates is also to be
found in a personification of the plague (ἡ πανοῦκλα), which in the
tradition of some districts is not represented as a single demon but
has been multiplied into a trio of terrible women who pass through
the towns and devastate them, one of them carrying a roll on which to
write the names of the victims, another a pair of scissors wherewith
to cut them off from the living, and the third a broom with which to
sweep them away. He assigns however no reason for identifying the
deadly trio with the Fates, and it is more natural, if any link with
antiquity here exists, to connect them with the Erinyes[283] or other
similar deities. In fact their resemblance to the Fates, save for some
superficial details, is small. The Fates, though inexorable when once
their decree is pronounced, are never wantonly cruel. Their displeasure
may indeed be aroused by neglect, as we shall shortly see, to such an
extent that they will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.
But, when men treat them with the consideration and the reverence due
to deities, they are unfailingly kindly, and deserve the title by which
they are sometimes known, ᾑ καλοκυράδες, ‘the good ladies.’ For this
name is not an euphemism concealing dread and hatred, but an expression
of genuine reverence; such at any rate is my judgement, based on many
conversations with the common-folk in all parts of Greece--for on this
topic for some reason there is far less reticence than on many others.
And indeed if the character of the Fates were believed to be cruel,
their aspect also would be represented as grim and menacing; whereas
they are actually pourtrayed as deserving almost of pity rather than
awe by reason of their age and their infirmity.

The occasion on which the Fates have most often been seen by human eyes
and on which, even though invisible, they never fail to be present,
is the third night (or as some say the fifth night[284]) after the
birth of a child. Provision for their arrival is then scrupulously
made. The dog is chained up. Any obstacles over which the visitors
might trip in the darkness are removed. The house-door is left open
or at any rate unlatched. Inside a light is kept burning, and in the
middle of the room is set a low table with three cushions or low stools
placed round it--religious conservatism apparently forbidding the use
of so modern an invention as chairs, for at the lying-in-state before
a funeral also cushions or low stools are provided for the mourners.
On the table are set out such dainties as the Fates love, including
always honey; in Athens formerly the essentials were a dish of honey,
three white almonds, a loaf of bread, and a glass of water[285]; and
ready to hand, as presents from which the goddesses may choose what
they will, may be laid all the most costly treasures of the family,
such as jewellery and even money, in token that nothing has been spared
to give them welcome. These preparations made, their visit is awaited
in solemn silence; for none must speak when the Fates draw near. Most
often they are neither seen nor heard; but sometimes, it is said, a
wakeful mother has seen their forms as they bent over her child and
wrote their decrees on its brow--for which reason moles and other marks
on the forehead or the nose are in some places called γραψίματα τῶν
Μοιρῶν[286], ‘writings of the Fates’; sometimes she has heard the low
sound of their voices as they consulted together over the future of
the child; nay more, she has even caught and understood their speech;
yet even so her foreknowledge of the infant’s fate is unavailing; she
may be aware of the dangers which await its ripening years, but though
forewarned she is powerless to forearm; against destiny once pronounced
all weapons, all wiles, are futile.

Neglect of any of the due preparations for the visit of the Fates may
excite their wrath and cause them to decree an evil lot for the child.
This idea is the _motif_ of many fables current in Greece. A typical
example is furnished by the following extract from a popular poem in
which a man whose life has brought him nothing but misery sees in a
vision one of the Fates and appeals to her thus:

    ‘I beg and pray of thee, O Fate, to tell me now, my lady,
    Then when my mother brought me forth, what passèd at my bearing?’

And she makes answer:

    ‘Then when thy mother brought thee forth, ’twas deep and bitter winter,
    Eleven days o’ the year had run when anguish came upon her.
    Thereon[287] I robed me and did on this raiment that thou seëst,
    And had it in my heart to cry “Long life to thee and riches.”
    Ah, but the night was deep and dark, yea wrappèd thick in darkness,
    And hail and snow were driving hard, and angry rain was lashing;
    From mire to mud, from mud to mire, so lay my road before me,
    And as I went,--a murrain on’t,--against your well I stumbled;
    Nay, sirrah, an thou believest not, scan well the scars I carry.
    Two cursed hounds ye had withal, hounds from the Lombard country,
    And fierce upon me sprang the twain, and fierce as wolves their baying.
    Then cursèd I thee full bitterly, a curse of very venom,
    That no bright day should ever cheer thy miserable body,
    That thou shouldst burn, that thou shouldst burn, and have no hope of riddance,
    That joy should ever ’scape thy clasp, and sorrow dog thy goings,
    That thine own kin should slander thee and thy friends rail upon thee,
    Nor strangers nor thy countrymen know aught of love toward thee.
    Yet, hapless man, not thine the sin; thy parents’ was the sinning,
    That chainèd not those hounds right fast to a corner of their dwelling;
    Well is it said by men of old, well bruit they loud the saying,
    “The fathers eat of acid things, and the bairns’ teeth fall aching.”
    Have patience then, O hapless man, a year or twain of patience,
    And there shall come a happy day when all thy woes shall vanish;
    For all thy bitterness of soul thou shalt find consolation,
    Thy dreams of beauty and of wealth thou shalt at last encompass[288].’

The Fates, it has been already said, are three in number; why so, it
seems impossible to determine. It may be that the functions discharged
by them fell readily into a three-fold division; thus in the district
of Zagorion in Epirus, one Fate ‘spins the thread’ (κλώθει τὸ γνέμα)
which determines the length of life, the second apportions good
fortune, and the third bad[289]. Or again, the division may have been
made in such a way that one Fate should preside over each of the
three great events of human experience, birth, marriage, and death.
The term ‘fate’ (μοῖρα)[290] is often used by women as a synonym for
marriage (γάμος)--in curious contrast with the man’s more optimistic
description of his wedding as χαρά, ‘joy’; and a Greek proverb, used of
a very ignorant man, δὲν ξέρει τὰ τρία κακὰ τῆς Μοίρας του, ‘he does
not know the three evils of his Fate,’ to wit birth, marriage, and
death, carries the connexion of fate with these three events a little
further. But such distributions of functions are probably posterior to
the choice of the number. Three was always a sacred number, and the
ancients delighted in trinities of goddesses[291].

But besides the three great Fates we must recognise also in modern
Greece the existence of lesser Fates, attached each to a single human
life. This is a slight extension of the main belief, and consists
really in the personification of the objective fate which the three
great Fates decree. Just as each man is believed to have his good
guardian-angel and, by antithesis but with less biblical warranty, his
bad angel, so too he is accompanied by his own personal Fate. But these
lesser Fates are only faint replicas of the great trinity, and I doubt
whether they are believed to have any independent power of their own;
they would seem to be mere ministers who carry out the original decrees
of the three supreme Fates.

Often in the popular songs it is impossible to tell whether it is the
lesser personal Fate or one of the great trio who is addressed. For in
such lines as,

    Παρακαλῶ σε, Μοῖρα μου, νὰ μή με ξενιτέψῃς,
    Κι’ ἂν λάχῃ καὶ ξενιτευτῶ, θάνατο μή μου δώσῃς[292],

 ‘I pray thee, good Fate, send me not to a strange land, but if it be
 my lot to be sent, let me not die there,’

the form of address Μοῖρα μου (literally ‘my Fate’) implies no personal
possession, but is the same as that employed in praying to God or the
Virgin, Θεέ μου, Παναγία μου. But in definite forms of incantation,
composed for recitation along with propitiatory offerings, the great
Fates and the lesser Fate of the individual suppliant are coupled in a
way which shows the difference in importance between them. The former
are called ‘the Fates over all Fates’ (ἡ Μοίραις τῶν Μοιρῶν), as in the
plain prose formulary quoted above; the latter is merely the Fate of
this or that person.

Whether these inferior Fates were known also in the classical period
is a question which I am unable to answer; but that the belief in them
is certainly of no recent growth is proved by an incantation more
elaborate than those given above and on internal evidence very old:--

    ’π’ τὸν Ὄλυμπον, τὸν κόλυμβον,
    τὰ τρία ἄκρα τοὐρανοῦ,
    ὁποῦ ᾑ Μοίραις τῶν Μοιρῶν
    καὶ ἡ ’δική μου Μοῖρα,
    ἂς ἀκούσῃ καὶ ἂς ἔλθῃ[293].

 ‘From Olympus, even from the summit, from the three heights of heaven,
 where dwell the Fates of all Fates and my own Fate, may she hearken
 and come.’

The version of the formula which I have given is only one out of
several which have been recorded from various parts of Greece[294],
and there can be no doubt that the original was a widely-esteemed
incantation. I have given the most intelligible; but the mere fact
that some of the others, through verbal corruption in the course
of tradition, have become almost meaningless, is strong proof of
the antiquity of the original. There are however two clear marks of
antiquity in the version before us. The mention of Olympus as the abode
of deities carries us back at once to the classical age; and the word
κόλυμβος in the sense of ‘summit’ is no less suggestive of a very early
date. The ancient word κόρυμβος, used in this sense by Aeschylus[295]
and by Herodotus[296], is obsolete now in the spoken language. But
κόλυμβος is evidently either a dialectic form of it (with the common
interchange of λ and ρ) or else a corrupt form, not understood by those
who continued to use it in this incantation, and assimilated, by way of
assonance, to Ὄλυμπος. Further one of the other versions gives the word
as κόρυβο[297], where the original ρ is retained but the μ lost before
β, which now universally has the sound of the English _v_. A comparison
of the two forms therefore establishes beyond question the fact that
the somewhat rare classical word κόρυμβος, in its known meaning of
‘summit,’ was the original form. Hence the incantation, containing both
a mention of Olympus as the seat of deities and an old classical word
long since disused, cannot but date from very early times. Possibly
therefore the belief in subordinate Fates, attached each to one human
being, was known to the common-folk of the classical age.

But, be this as it may, the popular conception of the great Trinity of
Fates has persisted unchanged for more than a score of centuries--and
who shall say for how many more? Here the literary tradition of
classical times was evidently faithful to popular traditions. The
number of the Fates is still the same as in Hesiod’s day[298]; they
are still depicted as old and infirm women, as they were by the poets
at any rate in antiquity, though in ancient art, for beauty’s sake,
they are apt to be figured as more youthful; it is still their task
‘to assign to mortal men at their birth,’ as Hesiod knew, ‘both good
and ill[299]’; the functions of Clotho who spun the thread of life, of
Lachesis who apportioned destiny, and of Atropos whom none might turn
from her purpose, are still the joint functions of the great Three; the
book, the spindle, and an instrument for cutting the thread of life are
still their attributes.

There is little new therefore to be learnt from the study of the
Fates in modern folk-lore. The lesson which it teaches rather is the
continuity of the present with the past. But there is one point to
which special attention may perhaps be directed--the belief that the
Fates invariably visit each child that is born in order to decree
its lot. I do not wish to engage in the controversy which has raged
round the identification of the figures in the east pediment of the
Parthenon; but those who would recognise among them the three Fates
may fairly draw a fresh argument from the strength of this popular
belief. It is only fitting that at the birth of Athena from the head
of Zeus the Fates should be present; for even Zeus himself, said
Aeschylus[300], might not escape their decree.


§ 9. THE NYMPHS.

Of all the supernatural beings who haunt the path and the imagination
of the modern Greek peasant by far the most common are the Nymphs
or ‘Nereids’ (Νεράϊδες). The name itself occurs in a multitude of
dialectic varieties[301], but its meaning is everywhere uniform, and
more comprehensive than that of the ancient word. It is no longer
confined to nymphs of the sea, but embraces also their kindred of
mountain, river, and woodland. There is no longer a Nereus, god of
the sea, to claim the Nereids as his daughters, denizens like himself
of the deep; and the connexion of their name with the modern word for
‘water’ (νερό) is not understanded of the common-folk. Hence there has
been nothing to restrain the extension of the term Νεράϊδα, and it has
entirely superseded, in this sense, the ancient νύμφη, which in modern
speech can only mean ‘a bride.’

The familiarity of the peasants with the Nereids is more intimate than
can be easily imagined by those who have merely travelled, it may
be, through the country but have no knowledge of the people in their
homes. The educated classes of course, and with them some of the less
communicative of the peasants, will deny all belief in such beings
and affect to deride as old wives’ fables the many stories concerning
them. But in truth the belief is one which even men of considerable
culture fail sometimes to eradicate from their own breasts. A paper
on the Nereids (the nucleus of the present chapter) was read by me in
Athens at an open meeting of the British School; and no sooner was it
ended than an Athenian gentleman whose name is well known in certain
learned circles throughout Europe rose hurriedly crossing himself and
disappeared without a word of leave-taking. As for the peasants, let
them deny or avow their belief, there is probably no nook or hamlet
in all Greece where the womenfolk at least do not scrupulously take
precautions against the thefts and the malice of the Nereids, while
many a man may still be found ready to recount in all good faith
stories of their beauty and passion and caprice. Nor is it a matter
of faith only; more than once I have been in villages where certain
Nereids were known by sight to several persons (so at least they
averred); and there was a wonderful agreement among the witnesses
in the description of their appearance and dress. I myself once had
a Nereid pointed out to me by my guide, and there certainly was the
semblance of a female figure draped in white and tall beyond human
stature flitting in the dusk between the gnarled and twisted boles
of an old olive-yard. What the apparition was, I had no leisure to
investigate; for my guide with many signs of the cross and muttered
invocations of the Virgin urged my mule to perilous haste along the
rough mountain-path. But had I inherited, as he, a belief in Nereids
together with a fertile gift of mendacity, I should doubtless have
corroborated the highly-coloured story which he told when we reached
the light and safety of the next village; and the ready acceptance of
the story by those who heard it proved to me that a personal encounter
with Nereids was really reckoned among the possible incidents of
every-day life.

The awe in which the Nereids are held is partially responsible, without
doubt, for the many adulatory by-names by which they are known. Now and
again indeed a peasant, when he is suffering from some imagined injury
at their hands, may so far speak his mind concerning them as to call
them ‘evil women’ (κακαὶς or ἄσχημαις γυναῖκες): but in general his
references are more diplomatic and conciliatory in tone. He adopts the
same attitude towards them as did his forefathers towards the Furies;
and, though the actual word ‘Eumenides’ is lost to his vocabulary,
the spirit of his address is unchanged. ‘The Ladies’ (ᾑ κυρᾶδες),
‘Our Maidens’ (τὰ κουρίτσι̯α μας), ‘Our good Queens’ (ᾑ καλαὶς
ἀρχόντισσαις), ‘The kind-hearted ones’ (ᾑ καλόκαρδαις), ‘The ladies
to whom we wish joy’ (ᾑ χαιράμεναις), or most commonly of all ‘Our
good Ladies’ (ᾑ καλοκυρᾶδες or καλλικυρᾶδες)[302],--such is the wonted
style of his adulation, in which the frequent use of the word κυρᾶδες
(the plural of κυρά, i.e. κυρία) is a heritage from his ancestors who
made dedications ‘to the lady nymphs’ (κυρίαις νύμφαις). Yet it may be
questioned whether these by-names are wholly euphemistic; for mingled
with the awe which the Nereids inspire there is certainly an element of
admiration and, I had almost said, of affection in the feelings of the
common-folk toward them.

The Nereids are conceived as women half-divine yet not immortal, always
young, always beautiful, capricious at best, and at their worst
cruel. Their presence is suspected everywhere; grim forest-depth and
laughing valley, babbling stream and wind-swept ridge, tree and cave
and pool, each may be their chosen haunt, the charmed scene of their
dance and song and godlike revelry. The old distinctions between the
nymphs according to their habitations still to some extent hold good;
there are nymphs of the sea and nymphs of the streams, tree-nymphs
and mountain-nymphs; but in characteristics these several classes
are alike, in grace, in frolic, in wantonness. Of all that is light
and mirthful they are the ideal; of all that is lovely the exquisite
embodiment; and their hearts beneath are ever swayed by fierce gusts of
love and of hate.

The beauty of the Nereids, the sweetness of their voices, and the grace
and litheness of their movements have given rise to many familiar
phrases which are eloquent of feelings other than awe in the people’s
minds. ‘She is fair as a Nereid’ (εἶνε ὤμορφη σὰ νεράϊδα), ‘she has
the eyes, the arms, the bosom of a Nereid’ (ἔχει μάτια, χέρια, βυζιὰ
νεράϊδας), ‘she sings, she dances, like a Nereid’ (τραγουδάει, χορεύει,
σὰ νεράϊδα),--such are the compliments time and again passed upon a
bride, whose white dress and ornaments of gold seem to complete the
resemblance. Possibly the twofold usage in antiquity of the word νύμφη
is responsible for a still surviving association of bridal dress with
the Nereids; it is at any rate to the peasants’ mind an incontestable
fact that white and gold are the colours chiefly affected by Nereids in
their dress[303].

Only in one particular is the beauty of the Nereids ever thought to
be marred; in some localities they are said to have the feet of goats
or of asses[304]; as for instance the three Nereids who are believed
to dance together without pause on the heights of Taÿgetus. But this
is a somewhat rare and local trait, and must have been transferred to
them, it would seem, from Pan and his attendant satyrs, with whom of
old they were wont to consort; in general they are held to be of beauty
unblemished.

Their accomplishments include, besides singing and dancing, the humbler
arts of the good housewife. ‘She cooks like a Nereid’ (μαγειρεύει
σὰ νεράϊδα) and ‘she does house-cleaning like a Nereid’ (παστρεύει
σὰν ἀνεράϊδα) are phrases of commendation[305] occasionally heard.
But chiefly do they excel in the art of spinning[306]; and so well
known is their dexterity therein that a delicate kind of creeper with
which trees are often festooned is known in the vulgar tongue under
the pretty name of νεραϊδογνέματα, ‘Nereid-spinnings.’ The attribute
indeed is natural and obvious; for the popular conception of the
nymphs is but an idealisation of the peasant-women, to whom, whether
sitting in the sunlight at their cottage-door or tending their sheep
and goats afield, the distaff is an ever constant companion. But, easy
though it is to account for the trait, some interest, if no great
measure of importance, attaches to its consonance with the ancient
characterisation of Nymphs. To the Nereids proper[307] a golden spindle
was specially assigned; and in the cave of the Naiads in Ithaca might
be seen, in Odysseus’ day, the kindred occupation of weaving, for
‘therein were great looms of stone whereon the nymphs wove sea-purple
robes, a wonder to behold[308].’

As might be expected of beings so divinely feminine, their relations
with men and with women are very different; in the one case there
is the possibility of love; in the other the certainty of spite. It
is necessary therefore to examine their attitude towards either sex
separately.

The marriage of men with Nereids not only forms the theme of many
folk-stories current in Greece, but in the more remote districts is
still regarded as a credible occurrence. Even at the present day the
traveller may hear of families in whose ancestry of more or less remote
date is numbered a Nereid. A Thessalian peasant whom I once met claimed
a Nereid-grandmother, and little as his looks warranted the assumption
of any grace or beauty in so near an ancestor--he happened to have a
squint--his claim appeared to be admitted by his fellow-villagers, and
a certain prestige attached to him. Hence the epithet ‘Nereid-born’
(νεραϊδογεννημένος or νεραϊδοκαμωμένος) frequently heard in amatory
distichs[309] may formerly have been not merely an exaggerated
compliment to the lady’s beauty, but a recognition of high birth
calculated to conciliate the future mother-in-law.

Nor is it men only whose susceptibilities are stirred by the beauty of
the Nereids; even animals may fall under their spell. A shepherd of
Scopelos told me that in the neighbouring island of Ioura, which he
frequented with his flocks for pasturage, he once tamed a wild goat,
which after a time began to behave very oddly. All night long it would
remain with the rest of his flock, but in the daytime it persistently
strayed away from the pasture to the neighbourhood of a Nereid-haunted
cave on the bare and rocky hillside, and from want of food became very
thin. The goat, he believed, was enamoured of a Nereid and pining away
from unrequited love.

But it is from the old folk-stories rather than from the records of
contemporary or recent experience that the character of the Nereids
as lovers or wives is best learnt. And herein they are not models of
womanhood; passion indeed they feel and inspire; they suffer, they
even seek the caresses of the young and brave; but true wives they
will not long remain. Constancy and care are not for them; the longing
for freedom and the breezes of heaven, the memory of rapid tuneful
dance, are hot within them; they leave the men whose strength and
valour snared their hearts, they forsake their homes and children,
and on the wings of the wind are gone, seeking again their etherial
unwearied fellows. Yet they do not altogether forget their children;
for motherhood is presently more to them than mirth; ever and anon
they steal back to visit their homes and bless their children with the
gifts of beauty and wealth which their touch can bestow, and even stay
to mend their husbands’ clothes and clean the house, vanishing again
however before the man’s return. Only in one case have I heard of a
nymph’s continued intimacy with a man throughout his life, and that
strangely enough not in a folk-story but in recent experience. Their
relations, it must be acknowledged, were illicit, for he had a human
wife and family; but it was commonly reported that his rise from penury
to affluence and the mayoralty of his native village was the work of a
Nereid in a cave near by, who of her love for him enriched the produce
of his land and shielded his flocks from pestilence.

In the popular stories which deal with the marriages of Nereids, the
bridal fashion of their dress, which has already been noticed, is often
an essential feature of the plot. In one tale it is said explicitly
that the supernatural quality of the Nereids lies not in their persons
but in their raiment[310]; and for this reason a prince, smitten with
love of the youngest of three sister Nereids but knowing not how to win
her, is counselled by a wise woman, to whom he confides his perplexity,
to lie in wait when they go to bathe in their accustomed pool and to
steal the clothes of his _inamorata_, who would then follow him to
recover her loss and so be in his power to take to wife. But there is
greater delicacy and, as we shall see, more certain antiquity also
in the commoner version of the episode, in which a kerchief alone is
possessed of the magic powers ascribed above to the whole dress. And in
this detail of costume the resemblance of bride and Nereid still holds
good; for no wedding-dress would be complete without a kerchief either
wrapped about the bride’s head or pinned upon her breast or carried in
her hand to form a link with her neighbour in the chain of dancers[311].

Of the stories which have for their _motif_ the theft of such a
kerchief from a Nereid[312] the following Messenian tale is a good
example.

‘Once upon a time there was a young shepherd who played the pipes
so beautifully that the Nereids one night carried him off to the
threshing-floor where they danced and bade him play to them. At first
he was much afraid and thought that some evil would overtake him from
being in their company and speaking with them. But gradually, as he
grew accustomed to his strange surroundings and the Nereids showed
themselves kind to him and grateful for his piping, he took courage
again and night after night made his way to the spot which they haunted
and made music till cock-crow.

Now it so happened that one of the Nereids was beautiful beyond the
rest, and the shepherd loved her and determined to make her his wife.
But inasmuch as the Nereids danced all night long without pause while
he piped, and at dawn vanished to be seen no more until the next
night’s dance began, he knew not what to do.

So at last he went to an old woman and told her his trouble, and she
said to him, “Go again to-night and play till dawn is near; then before
the cock crows[313], make a dash and seize the kerchief in the Nereid’s
hand, and hold it fast. And though she change into terrible shapes, be
not afraid; only hold fast until she take again her proper form; then
must she do as thou wilt.”

The young man therefore went again that night and played till close on
dawn. Then as the Nereid passed close beside him, leading the dance,
he sprang upon her and grasped the kerchief. And straightway the cock
crew, and the other Nereids fled; but she whose kerchief he had seized
could not go, but at once began to transform herself into horrible
shapes in hope to frighten the shepherd and make him loose his hold.
First she became a lion, but he remembered the witch’s warning and
held fast for all the lion’s roaring. And then the Nereid turned into
a snake, and then into fire[314], but he kept a stout heart and would
not let go the kerchief. Then at last she returned to her proper form
and went home with him and was his wife and bore him a son; but the
kerchief he kept hidden from her, lest she should become a Nereid
again.’

In this story there are two ancient traits especially noteworthy. The
power of transformation into horrible shapes is precisely the means of
defence which the Nereid Thetis once sought to employ against Peleus;
the forms of wild beast and of fire, which she assumed according to
ancient myth, are the same as Nereids now adopt; and the instructions
now given to hold fast until the Nereid resume her proper shape are
the same as Chiron, the wise Centaur, gave once to Peleus[315]. It is
true that in the ancient story it is the person of Thetis that Peleus
was bidden to grasp, while in the modern tale the shepherd’s immediate
object is to retain hold of the kerchief only. But this feature of
the story too is an interesting witness to antiquity, although in
Thetis’ history it does not appear. Ancient art has left to us several
representations[316] of nymphs with veil-like scarves worn on the
head or borne in the hand and floating down the breeze; and the magic
properties inherent in them are exemplified by Ino’s gift, or rather
loan, to Odysseus. The scarf imperishable (κρήδεμνον ἄμβροτον) which
she bade him gird about his breast and have no fear of any suffering
nor of death, was not his own to keep after he reached the mainland;
in accordance with her behest ‘he loosed then the goddess’ scarf from
about him, and let it fall into the river’s salt tide, and a great
wave bore it back down the stream, and readily did Ino catch it in her
hands’[317]. Here Ino’s anxiety and strait command as to the return of
her veil are most easily understood by the aid of the modern belief
which makes the possession of the scarf or kerchief the sole, or at
least the chief, means of godlike power. In Cythnos at the present day
it is the μπόλια, or scarf worn about the head, which alone is believed
to invest Nereids with their distinctive qualities[318]; and if the
modern scarf is a lineal descendant of the Homeric type such as Ino
wore--for even in feminine dress fashions are slow to change in the
Greek islands[319]--the epithet ‘imperishable’ may have unsuspected
force, as implying that the scarf confers a semblance of divinity on
its owner and not _vice versa_.

In such of the stories of the above type as do not end with the
marriage of the Nereid[320] the sequel is not encouraging to
other adventurers. For though she be a good wife in commonplace
estimation--and the Greek view of matrimony is in general commonplace
to the verge of sordidness--though her skill in domestic duties be as
proverbial as her beauty, she either turns her charms and her cunning
to such account as to discover the hiding-place of her stolen kerchief,
or, failing this, so mopes and pines over her work that her husband
worn down by her sullenness and persistent silence decides to risk
all if he can but restore her lightheartedness. Then though he have
taken an oath of her that she will not avail herself of her recovered
freedom, but will abide with him as his wife, her promise is light as
the breeze that bears her away with fluttering kerchief, and he is
alone.

But fickleness is not the worst of the Nereids’ qualities in their
dealings with men. In malice they are as wanton as in love. Woe
betide him who trespasses upon their midday carnival or crosses their
nightly path; dumbness, blindness, epilepsy, and horrors of mutilation
have been the penalties of such intrusion, though the man offend
unwittingly; for the Nereids are tiger-like in all, in stealth and
cruelty as in grace and beauty; and none who look upon their radiance
can guess the darkness of their hearts. Terrible was the experience of
a Melian peasant, who coming unawares upon the Nereids one night was
bidden by them to a cave hard by, where they feasted him and made merry
together and did not deny him their utmost favours; but when morning
broke, they sent him to his home shattered and impotent.

If such be sometimes the results of their seeming goodwill and
proffered companionship, how much more fearful a thing must be their
enmity! Let a man but intrude upon their revels in some sequestered
glen, or sleep beneath the tree that shelters them, or play the pipe
beside the river where they bathe, and in such wrath they will gather
about him[321], that the eyes which have looked upon them see no more,
and the voice that cries out is thenceforth dumb, and madness springs
of their very presence.

But if the Nereids are fickle and treacherous in their dealings with
men, towards women they are consistently malicious. Especially on two
occasions must every prudent peasant-woman be on her guard against
their envy--at marriage and in child-birth. For though the Nereids
themselves prove no true wives, so jealous are they of the joys of
wedlock, that if a bride be not well secured from their molestation,
they will mar the fruition of her love, or else, where they cannot
prevent, they will endeavour at the least to cut short the happiness
of motherhood, slaying with fever the woman whose bliss has stirred
their malevolence, yet sparing always the child and even blessing it
with beauty and wealth.

The means by which women most commonly protect themselves on these
occasions are the wearing of amulets; the fastening of a bunch of
garlic over the house-door; the painting of a cross in black upon
the lintel (this custom may be a Christianised form of the ancient
practice, mentioned by Photius[322], of smearing houses with pitch
at the birth of children as a means of driving away powers of evil);
and, if any strange visitants are heard about the house at night, the
maintenance of strict silence. But steps are also sometimes taken to
appease the Nereids; offerings of food, in which honey is the essential
ingredient, are set out for them, and formerly in Athens[323] to this a
bride used to add two chemises out of her trousseau.

Such precautions after a confinement are regularly continued for forty
days. It would appear that in ancient times this was the period during
which women were held to be specially exposed to the evil eye and all
other ghostly and sinister influences[324], including probably, as now,
the assaults of nymphs; and in modern usage the duration of the time
of peril is so well established that the word σαραντίζω, literally to
‘accomplish forty (σαράντα) days,’ is used technically of the churching
of women at the end of that period; while a more frankly pagan survival
is to be found in the fact that for forty days no right-minded mother
will cross the threshold of her own house to go out, nor enter a
neighbour’s house, without stepping on the door-key, that being the
most easily available piece of iron, a metal, which in the folk-lore of
ancient Greece[325], as in that of many other countries, was a charm
and safeguard against the supernatural.

It is not however the mothers only, who need protection from the
Nereids, but the children also, and that too throughout their
childhood; yet not against the same perils; for the mother is liable
to malicious injuries; the child is safe indeed from wilful hurt, but
it may be stolen by Nereids. We have already seen how Nereids who
have wed with mortal men, though faithless to their husbands, are yet
drawn home now and again by love of their children. And such of them
too as have never yielded to human embrace are yet instinct with a
strange yearning to possess a mortal woman’s prettiest little ones; on
one child they exert a fascination which unhappily proves fatal to it;
another they seize with open violence; or again they set stealthily
in some cradle a babe of pure Nereid birth--a changeling that by some
weird fatality is weakly and doomed to die--and carry off to the woods
and hills the human infant, in whom they delight, to be their playmate
and their fosterling. In a history of the island of Pholegandros, the
writer, a native of the place, accounts for the multitude of small
chapels in the island on the ground of the peasants’ anxiety each to
have a saint close to his property to defend him from such raids by
Nereids and other kindred beings[326].

The wife of a priest at Chalandri in Attica related to Ross[327] a
story in point. ‘I had a daughter,’ she said, ‘a little girl between
twelve and thirteen years old, who showed a very strange disposition.
Though we all treated her kindly, her mood was always melancholy,
and whenever she got the chance she ran off from the village up the
wooded spurs of the mountain (Brilessos). There she would roam about
alone all day long, from early morning till late evening; often she
would take off some of her clothes and wear but one light garment,
so as to be less hindered in running and jumping. We dared not stop
her, for we saw quite well that the Nereids had allured her, but we
were much distressed. It was in vain that my husband took her time
after time to the church and read prayers over her. The Panagia (the
Virgin) was powerless to help. After the child had been thus afflicted
a considerable while, she fell into yet deeper despondency, and at last
died--a short time ago. When we buried her, the neighbours said, “Do
not wonder at her death; the Nereids wanted her; it is but two days
since we saw her dancing with them.”’

Such was the view taken by a Greek priest and his wife concerning the
cause of their daughter’s death about two generations ago; and at
the present day the traveller may hear of similar events in recent
experience. An important point to notice is that the child’s death
was thought to be due, not to any malevolence on the part of the
Nereids, but to their desire to have her for their own, a desire more
happily gratified in cases of which I have several times heard where
the child has not died but has simply disappeared. Thus in Arcadia I
was once assured that a small girl had been carried off by Nereids in
a whirlwind, and had been found again some weeks after on a lonely
mountain side some five or six hours distant from her home in a
condition which showed that she had been well fed and well cared for in
the interval.

But certainly the snatching away of children by the Nereids, whether
this mean death or only disappearance, is still a well-accredited fact
in the minds of many of the common-folk. They still remain too simple
and too closely wedded to the beliefs of their forefathers to need the
old exhortation[328],

    ‘Trust ye the fables of yore: ’tis not Death, but the Nymphs of the river
      Seeing your daughter so sweet stole her to be their delight.’

They believe still that the Nereids have befriended their children,
even while they weep for their own loss.

Whatever mischief the Nereids work upon man, woman, or child, be it
death or loss of faculties or merely deportation from home to some
haunted spot, ‘seized’ (παρμένος or πιασμένος) is the word applied to
the victim. The compound ἀναρᾳδοπαρμένος[329], ‘Nereid-seized,’ also
occurs, exactly parallel in form as well as equivalent in meaning to
the ancient νυμφόληπτος as used by Plato. ‘Now listen to me,’ says
Socrates to Phaedrus[330], ‘in silence; for in very truth this seems to
be holy ground, so that if anon, in the course of what I say, I suffer
a “seizure” (νυμφόληπτος γένωμαι), you must not be surprised.’ Such
speech, save for its disregard of the acknowledged peril, might be held
in all seriousness by a peasant of to-day. In Socrates’ mouth it is
intended merely as a happy metaphor; but its point and appropriateness
are lost on those who do not both know the superstition to which he
alludes and at the same time recall the _mise-en-scène_[331] of the
dialogue. The two friends have crossed the Ilissus and are stretched
on a grassy slope in the shade of a lofty plane-tree, beneath which is
a spring of cool water pleasant to their feet as is the light breeze to
their faces in the heat of the summer noon. The spot must surely be a
favourite haunt of the rural gods, and indeed the statues close at hand
attest its dedication to Pan and to the Nymphs. In such a situation
there would be, according to modern notions, three distinct grounds
for apprehending a ‘seizure.’ The neighbourhood of water is throughout
Greece dreaded as the most dangerous haunt of Nereids[332], so that few
peasants will cross a stream or even a dry torrent-bed without making
the sign of the cross. Hardly less risky is it to rest in the shade of
any old or otherwise conspicuous tree. If in addition to this the time
of day be noon, it is not merely venturesome to trespass on such spots,
but inexcusably foolhardy; for the hour of midday slumber is fraught
with as many terrors as the night[333]. Any or all of these popular
beliefs may have been present to Plato’s mind as he wrote this passage;
for the ancients numbered among those Nymphs, by whom Socrates was
likely to be ‘seized,’ both Naiads and Dryads, who might be expected
to resent and to punish any intrusion upon their haunts in stream or
tree; while, as regards the hour of noon, the fear felt in old time
of arousing Pan[334] from his siesta may well have extended also to
Nymphs, who on this spot beside the Ilissus, as commonly elsewhere,
were named his comrades.

The same kind of ‘seizure’ was denoted formerly by the phrase ἔχει
ἀπ’ ἔξω[335], ‘he has it (i.e. a stroke or seizure) from without,’
and the modern compound ’ξωπαρμένος[336] bears obviously a kindred
meaning. The exact significance of ἔξω in this relation is difficult
to determine. Either it is only another example of the usage already
noted in discussing the term ἐξωτικά and implies the activity of one
of those supernatural beings who exist side by side with the powers
of Christianity and are by their very name proved to be pagan; or
else it indicates a difference in the mode of injury by two classes of
supernatural foes, the difference between ‘seizure’ and ‘possession.’
Certainly no story is known to me of ‘possession’ by Nereids in the
same sense as by devils. The latter take up their abode within a man
and are subject to exorcism; the seizure by Nereids is conceived rather
as an external act of violence. This is made clear by several terms
locally used of seizure. ‘He has been struck’ (βαρέθηκε or χτυπήθηκε),
‘he has been wounded’ (λαβώθηκε), ‘he has had hands laid upon him’
(ἐγγίχτηκε) are typical expressions, to which is sometimes added ‘by
Nereids’ or ‘by evil women[337].’ Such phrases clearly convict the
Nereids of assault and battery rather than of undue mental influence
upon their victims.

Moreover the Nereids, and with them all the surviving pagan deities,
are pictured by the peasant in corporeal form, whereas the angels--and
there are bad angels, who ‘possess’ men, as well as good--are in common
speech as well as in the formal dedications of churches known as οἱ
ἀσώματοι, ‘the Bodiless ones.’ There is then an essential difference
in the nature of these two classes of beings, which justifies the
supposed distinction in their methods of working. For ‘possession’
proper is the injury inflicted, or rather infused, by spirits pure and
simple; external ‘seizure’ is the work of corporeal beings. And this
distinction was recognised in comparatively early times; for John of
Damascus[338] in speaking of στρίγγαι, a peculiarly maleficent kind of
witch (of whom more anon), notes as singular the fact that sometimes
they appear clothed in bodily form and sometimes as mere spirits (μετὰ
σώματος ἢ γυμνῇ τῇ ψυχῇ). It is then to the second interpretation of
the phrase ἔχει ἀπ’ ἔξω, as implying external and bodily violence, that
the balance of argument, I think, inclines.

The precautions which may be taken against injury by Nereids have
already been briefly noticed. Amulets, garlic, the sign of the
cross, the invocation of saints--all these are common and suitable
prophylactics. But above all, in the actual moment when imminent danger
is suspected, the lips, as Phaedrus was reminded by Socrates, and also
the eyes should be close shut; for in general the principle obtains
that the particular organ by which there is converse or contact with
the Nereids is most likely to be impaired or destroyed. Apart from
this, there is no precaution more specially adapted for self-defence
against the Nereids than against the evil eye or any other baneful
influence; and with these I have already dealt[339].

But when these precautions are neglected or fail, the mischief wrought
by the Nereids is not necessarily permanent; there are several cures
which may be tried. Sometimes prayers (but not, so far as I know,
a formal exorcism such as the Greek Church provides for diabolic
possession) are recited by a priest over the sufferer in the church of
some suitable saint; or a trial may be made of sleeping in a church
which possesses a wonder-working _icon_. Sometimes an offering of
honey-cakes sent or carried to the spot where the misfortune occurred
suffices to turn the Nereids from their wrath and wins them to undo the
hurt that they have done; on such an errand however the bearer of the
offering must beware of looking back to the place where he has once
deposited it, lest a worse fate overtake him than that which he is
trying to dispel[340]. Theodore Bent[341] gives full details of such
an offering made in the island of Ceos. ‘For those,’ he writes, ‘who
are supposed to have been struck by the Nereids when sleeping under a
tree, the following cure is much in vogue. A white cloth is spread on
the spot, and on it is put a plate with bread, honey, and other sweets,
a bottle of good wine, a knife, a fork, an empty glass, an unburnt
candle, and a censer. These things must be brought by an old woman
who utters mystic words and then goes away, that the Nereids may eat
undisturbed, and that in their good humour they may allow the sufferer
to regain his health.’ How mystic may be the words of a Cean witch, I
cannot say; but the formula to be used by mothers in Chios in the event
of a similar misfortune to a child is extremely simple: ‘Good day to
you, good queens, eat ye the little cakes and heal my child’--καλημέρα
σας, καλαὶς ἀρχόντισσαις, φᾶτε σεῖς τὰ κουλουράκια καὶ ’γιάνετε τὸ
παιδί μου[342]. But the most frequent and most efficacious method of
cure (with which the offering of honeycakes may be combined) is for
the sufferer to revisit the scene of his calamity at the same hour of
the same day in week, month, or year, when by some capricious reversal
of fate the presence of the Nereids is apt to remove the hurt which it
formerly inflicted.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus far I have dealt with the main characteristics of nymphs in
general: it remains to consider the several classes into which
they were anciently divided; and though for the most part the old
appellations, Nereids, Naiads, Oreads, and Dryads, have either
disappeared or else changed their form or meaning, we shall find that
the old division of them into these four main classes according to
their habitation still to some extent survives.

The Nereids, whose name is now extended to comprise all kinds of
nymphs, are in the ancient and proper sense of the term among the
rarest of whom the peasant speaks. But here and there mention is made
of genuine sea-nymphs, and also of their queen, the Lamia of the
Sea[343], who has superseded Amphitrite. In 1826 a villager of Argolis
described to Soutzos, the historian of the Greek revolution[344], a
true Nereid. Her hair was green and adorned with pearls and corals;
often by moonlight she might be seen dancing merrily on the surface of
the sea, and in the daytime she would come to dry her clothes upon the
rocks near the mills of Lerna. These, I may add from my own knowledge,
are reputed to be haunted by Nereids down to this day. Happily a
peasant of that period cannot be suspected of any education; he was not
recalling a piece of repetition mastered at school when he spoke of

    viridis Nereidum comas[345],

but knew by tradition from his ancestors what Horace learnt of them by
study.

In the Greek town of Sinasos also, in Cappadocia, a class of sea-nymphs
is popularly recognised and distinguished under the name Ζαβέται, a
word said by the recorder of it to be derived from a Cappadocian word
_zab_ meaning the ‘sea[346].’ But of the districts known to me the
most fertile in stories of sea-nymphs is the province of Maina, the
middle of the three peninsulas south of the Peloponnese. One such story
attaches to a fine palm-tree growing on the beach at Liméni, a small
port on the west coast of the peninsula. A full version of it has been
published[347], but as it is long and not peculiarly instructive, I
content myself with an abridgement of it.

A fisherman of Liméni was sleeping one summer night in his boat; at
midnight he suddenly awoke to find Nereids rowing him out to sea, but
happily, remembering at once that Nereids drown any one whom they catch
looking at them, he lay quiet as if asleep. The boat travelled like
lightning, and soon they reached Arabia; and having shipped a cargo
of dates, the Nereids started home again. As they were returning, one
Nereid proposed to drown the man; but the others replied that he had
not opened his eyes to see them, and that they owed him a debt besides
for the use of his boat. Finally they arrived at some unknown place and
unloaded the dates; and then in a flash the fisherman found himself
back at the shore by the monastery of Liméni, and ‘the she-devils,
the Nereids,’ gone. As he baled out his boat, he found one date; but
suspecting that it had been left intentionally by the Nereids to cause
him trouble, he threw it, not into the sea, for fear his fishing should
suffer, but ashore. And since the date had been handled by supernatural
beings (’ξωτικά), it could not perish, but took root where it fell; and
hence the palm-tree on the shore to this day.

These same sea-nymphs--θαλασσιναὶς νεράϊδες--play also a part in the
daily life of the people of this district[348]. It is said that every
Saturday night these Nereids join battle with the Nereids of the
mountains, and according as these or those win, their _protégés_,
the upland or the maritime population, are found on Sunday morning
in higher or lower spirits, booty-laden or despoiled. It is indeed
an imaginative folk which can thus make its deities responsible for
drunken brawls and sober thefts; but some of them have humour enough to
smile at their own imaginings.

A class of maleficent beings known to the inhabitants of Tenos,
Myconos, Amorgos, and other islands of the same group under the name
of ἀγιελοῦδες or γιαλοῦδες[349], have been reckoned as sea-nymphs
by several writers, who would derive the name from ’γιαλός (i.e.
αἰγιαλός), the ‘sea-shore[350].’ But there is no evidence advanced to
show that the common-folk regard them as a species of Nereid; and there
is, on the contrary, evidence of their identity with certain female
demons whose name more commonly appears in the form γελλοῦδες[351], and
with whom I shall deal later.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Oreads are no longer known under their old name, but their
existence is still recognised throughout the mainland of Greece. Their
change of name is the result merely of a change in the ordinary word
for ‘mountain.’ Anciently ὄρος was usual, βουνός rare; now the peasant
uses commonly βουνό, and ὄρος although understood everywhere and
occurring in popular poetry comes less readily to his lips. Hence the
Oreads are now called ᾑ Βουνήσι̯αις[352] (sc. νεράϊδες) or τὰ κουρίτσια
τοῦ βουνοῦ[353] (‘the mountain-nymphs’ or ‘the maidens of the mount’).
These mountain-nymphs delight in dance and merriment even more than
their kin of the rivers and of the sea. In Maina indeed they seem to
have become infected with the pugnacious character of the people, for
as we have seen they there do battle with the sea-nymphs each Saturday
night. But in general frolic is more to their taste than fighting. On
the heights of Taÿgetus are three Oreads, well known to the dwellers
in the plain of Sparta, who dance together without pause. On the
summit of Hymettus too there is a flat space, called in the modern
Attic dialect a πλάτωμα and in shape ‘round like a threshing-floor,’
where Nereids of the mountain dance at midday[354]. Above all in the
uplands of Acarnania and Aetolia many are the hollows or tree-encircled
level spaces which the shepherds will point out as νεραϊδάλωνα,
‘threshing-floors’ where the nymphs make merry; for a threshing-floor,
it must be remembered, is the usual resort for dancing, wrestling, and
all those amusements for which a level space is required.

Nymphs of the same kind are known also in Crete. A curious story of
a wedding procession in which they took part was there narrated
to Pashley[355], and his informant’s words are recorded by him in
the original dialect. ‘Once upon a time a man told me that two men
had once gone up to the highest mountain-ridges, where wild goats
live, and sat by moonlight in a grassy hollow[356] (διασέλι), in the
hopes of shooting the goats. And there they heard a great noise, and
supposed that there were men come to get loads of snow to carry to
Canea. But when they drew nearer, they heard violins and cithers and
all kinds of music, and such music they had never heard. So they knew
at once that these were no men but an assemblage of divine beings
(δαιμονικὸ συνέδριον). And they watched them and saw them pass at a
short distance from where they were sitting, clothed in all manner of
raiment, and mounted some on grey horses and some on horses of other
colours, and they could make out that there were men and women, afoot
or riding, a very host. And the men were white as doves, and the
women very beautiful like the rays of the sun. They saw too that they
were carrying something in the way that a dead body is carried out.
Forthwith the mountaineers determined to have a shot at them as they
passed before them. They had heard also a song of which the words were

    “Go we to fetch a bride, a lady bride,
    From the steep rock, a bride that is alone.”

And they made up their minds and fired a shot at them. Thereupon those
that were in front cried out with one voice, “What is it?” and those
behind answered, “Our bridegroom is slain, our bridegroom is slain.”
And they wept and cried aloud and fled.’

In regard to this story it may be noted that a male form of Nereid
(Νεραΐδης) is sometimes mentioned, and here such are undoubtedly
implied. The necessity of finding husbands for the Nereids naturally
presents itself to the minds of the old women who are the chief
story-tellers, and the demand is met by an assorted supply of young
men, male Nereids, and devils. As consorts of the last-mentioned, the
Nereids enjoy in many places the title of διαβόλισσαις, ‘she-devils’;
and it was on the ground of such unions that a peasant-woman of
Acarnania once explained to me the belief, held in her own village,
that Nereids were seen only at midday. How should the devils their
husbands let such beautiful women be abroad at night?

It is on the mountain-nymphs also that the peasants most frequently
lay the responsibility for whirlwinds[357], by which children or
even adults are said to be caught up and carried from one place to
another[358], or to their death. Some such fate, we must suppose, in
ancient times also was held to have befallen a seven-year-old boy on
whose tomb was written, ‘Tearful Hades with the help of Oreads made
away with me, and this mournful tomb that has been builded nigh unto
the Nymphs contains me[359].’ The habit of travelling on a whirlwind,
or more correctly perhaps of stirring up a whirlwind by rapid passage,
has gained for the nymphs in some districts secondary names--in
Macedonia ἀνεμικαίς, in Gortynia ἀνεμογαζοῦδες[360]--which might almost
seem to constitute a new class of wind-nymphs. But so far as I know
the faculty of raising whirlwinds, though most frequently exercised by
Oreads, is common to all nymphs.

In Athens whirlwinds are said to occur most frequently near the old
Hill of the Nymphs[361]: and women of the lower classes, as they see
the spinning spiral of dust approach, fall to crossing themselves
busily and to repeating μέλι καὶ γάλα ’στὴ στράτα σας[362] (or ’στο
δρόμο σας), ‘Honey and milk in your path!’ This incantation is widely
known as an effective safeguard against the Nereids in their rapid
flight, and must in origin, it would seem, have been a vow. This
supposition is confirmed by the fact that in Corfu[363] a few decades
ago the peasantry used to make actual offerings of both milk and honey
to the Nereids, and that Theocritus also associates these two gifts in
vows made to the nymphs and to Pan. ‘I will set,’ sings Lacon, ‘a great
bowl of white milk for the nymphs, and another will I set full of sweet
oil’; to which Comatas in rivalry rejoins, ‘Eight pails of milk will
I set for Pan, and eight dishes of honey in the honeycomb[364].’ The
gift of honey is of special significance. In every recorded case which
I know of offerings to Nereids in modern Greece honey is expressly
mentioned, and seems indeed to be essential; and it is probably from
their known preference for this food that at Kastoria in Macedonia
they have even received the by-name, ᾑ μελιτένιαις, ‘the honeyed
ones[365].’ And if we look back over many centuries we may find a hint
of the same belief in Homer’s description of the cave of the Naiads
in Ithaca, wherein ‘are bowls for mixing and pitchers of stone, and
there besides do bees make store[366].’ For it is well established
that honey was the special offering made to the indigenous deities of
Greece before the making of wine such as Homer’s heroes quaff had yet
been discovered[367]. Perchance then even in distant pre-Homeric days
men vowed, as now they vow, honey and milk to the nymphs whose swift
passing was the whirlwind, and felt secure.

       *       *       *       *       *

The memory of the tree-nymphs is still green throughout Greece. From
Aegina their ancient name δρυάδες is recorded as still in use[368];
and in parts of Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, as well as in
several islands of the Aegean Sea, Chios, Cimolos, Cythnos, and others,
there is a word employed which is, I believe, formed from the same root
and once denoted the same class of beings. This word is found in the
forms δρύμαις[369], δρύμιαις[370], δρύμναις[371], δρύμνιαις[372] and,
in Chios, in a neuter form δρύματα[373].

It has been suggested indeed by one writer[374] that this word has
nothing to do with Dryads, but that its root is δρυμ- (better perhaps
written δριμ- as in the ancient δριμύς, since, so far as the sound of
the vowel in modern Greek is concerned, the philologist may write η,
ι, υ, ει, οι, or υι, as seemeth him best), in the sense of ‘fierce,’
‘bitter’; and support for this derivation is sought in a somewhat vague
statement of Hesychius who explains the word δρυμίους by the phrase
τοὺς κατὰ τὴν χώραν κακοποιούς, ‘the evil-doers in the country’: but
whether he took δρυμίους to be the proper name of some class of demons,
or an adjective synonymous with κακοποιός, does not appear.

But even on the grounds of form alone (which grounds will be
considerably strengthened when we come to consider signification),
it appears better to derive this group of words from δρῦς or more
immediately from δρυμός, ‘a coppice’; for in ancient literature mention
is made of ‘Artemis of the coppice’ and ‘nymphs of the coppice’
(Ἄρτεμις δρυμονία[375] and δρυμίδες νύμφαι)[376], of a particular nymph
named Drymo[377], of a Ζεὺς δρύμνιος[378] worshipped in Pamphylia, and
of Apollo invoked at Miletus under the title δρύμας[379]. In the last
two instances the title may be supposed to have had reference merely to
the surroundings of a particular sanctuary; but in relation to Artemis
and the nymphs the epithet clearly suggests their woodland haunts.

In present-day usage the words which we are considering almost
universally denote, not nymphs or any other supernatural beings,
but the first few days of August, which are observed in a special
way. The number of these days varies from three in Sinasos[380], in
Carpathos[381], and in Syme (an island north of Rhodes), to five in
Cythnos[382] and Cyprus[383], and six in most other places where
they are specially observed. There are two rules laid down for this
observance, though in some places only one of the two is in force: no
tree may be peeled or cut (this is the usual practice for obtaining
mastic and resin); and the use of water for washing either the person
or clothes is prohibited; neither is it permitted to travel by water
during this period. In the interests of personal cleanliness it is
unfortunate that the month of August should have been selected for this
abstention; by that time even the Greeks find the sea tepid enough
to admit of bathing without serious risk of chill, and it is a pity
therefore that a penalty should be inflicted upon bathers during the
first week of the only month in which ablutions extend beyond the
pouring of a small jug of water over the fingers. Howbeit the decrees
stand, and as surely as there is transgression thereof, skin will
blister and peel off, clothes will rot[384], and trees will wither. The
severity of these pains has in Cyprus changed the name of these days
from δρύμαις into κακαουσκιαίς, ‘the evil days of August[385].’

Now among a people so superstitious as the Greeks it is reasonable to
suppose that days thus marked by special abstinences were originally
sacred to some deities. Washing and tree-cutting at this season must,
we may assume, have been offences against some supernatural persons
whose festival was then observed and who avenged its profanation; and
the supernatural persons most nearly concerned would naturally be the
tree-nymphs and the water-nymphs.

The association or even confusion of these two classes of nymphs is
very common both in ancient literature and in modern belief, and is
indeed a natural consequence of the fact that the finest trees, such
as that plane under which sat Socrates and Phaedrus, grow only in the
close vicinity of water. It would have puzzled even Socrates to say
whether the Nymphs by whom he might be seized would be more probably
Dryads or Naiads. Homer himself, to go yet further back, suggests the
same association, for he tells of ‘a spreading olive-tree and nigh
thereto’ the cave of the Naiads in Ithaca. Again in later times we
find a dedication by one Cleonymus to ‘Hamadryads, daughters of the
river’[386]; and though an ingenious critic would replace Ἁμαδρυάδες
by Ἀνιγριάδες (nymphs of the Arcadian river Anigrus), I believe the
fault to lie with Cleonymus and not with the manuscript; for the place
where he makes his dedication is beneath pine-trees (ὑπαὶ πιτύων). At
the present day the same tendency towards confusion of the two classes
is common. This was well illustrated to me by some peasants of Tenos.
Ten minutes’ walk from the town there is a good spring from which a
remarkable subterranean passage cut through the solid rock carries the
water to supply the town. The spring is within a cave, artificially
enlarged at the entrance, over which stands a fine fig-tree. Standing
outside while a companion entered first, I noticed that our guides
(for several persons had escorted us out of curiosity or hospitality)
were distinctly perturbed, and I heard one say to another, ‘See, he
is going in, he is not afraid.’ Inferring thence that the place was
haunted, and remembering that mid-day, the hour at which we happened
to be there, was fraught with special peril, I determined to test my
guides, and so sat down under the fig-tree. Then remarking that the
sun was hot at noon, I invited them to come and sit in the shade and
smoke a cigarette. But the bait was insufficient; they would stand in
the sun rather than approach either the spring or the tree, though
they were ready enough to accept cigarettes when I moved out of the
zone of danger. Afterwards by enquiries made elsewhere I learnt that
the spot was the reputed home of Nereids--but whether their abode was
tree or water, who should say? Close neighbours in their habitations,
indistinguishable in their appearance and attributes, it is pardonable
to confuse those sister nymphs,

    ‘Centum quae siluas, centum quae flumina seruant[387].’

It is exactly this kind of confusion of the two classes of nymphs
which has produced the twofold injunctions for the observance of the
days known as δρύμαις: for evidence is forthcoming that this word
originally denoted a class of nymphs and not, as generally now, their
August festival. From Stenimachos in Thrace comes the statement that
by δρύμιαις the people there understand female deities who live in
water and are always hostile to man, but specially dangerous only
during the first six days of August[388]. Here the name δρύμιαις, if
the derivation which I prefer is right, points to the identification of
these beings with the ancient Dryads; while their watery habitations
proclaim them rather Naiads. Reversely again in Syme, where the word
δρύμαις is not in use, there are certain nymphs known as Ἀλουστίναι
who live in mountain-torrents, in trees, and elsewhere, and who are
seen only at mid-day and at midnight during the first three days of
August; but, far from being hurtful to men, they may even themselves
be captured by certain magical ceremonies and employed as servants
in the house for a period, after which the spell is broken and they
return again to their homes. Their name Ἀλουστίναι[389], said to be
formed from Ἀλούστος[389], the local name for the month of August,
clearly means ‘anti-washing,’ and at once identifies them with those
Naiads whose festival, as I believe, has rendered the waters sacred
and therefore harmful if disturbed during these days; but on the other
hand their dwelling-places include trees. These two pieces of evidence
from places so wide apart as Stenimachos and Syme are reinforced by a
popular expression formerly, and perhaps still, in use, τὸν ἔπι̯ασαν ᾑ
δρύμαις[390], ‘the “drymes” have seized him’; where the word denoting
‘seizure’ is one of those already noted as proper to ‘seizure’ by
nymphs.

From the usage of the word therefore as well as from its formation we
may conclude that the word δρύμαις is the modern equivalent of the
ancient δρυάδες: and the widely-spread custom of abstaining both from
tree-cutting and from the use of water during the early days of August
is a survival of an old joint festival of wood-nymphs and water-nymphs.

But it is not in the relics of ancient worship only that traces of
the Dryads are now to be found. The traveller in Greece will commonly
hear that such and such a tree is haunted by a Nereid. Particularly
famous in North Arcadia is a magnificent pine-tree on the path from
the monastery of Megaspélaeon to the village of Solos. My muleteer
enthusiastically compared it to the gigantic tree which is believed
to uphold the world; and piously crossed himself, as we passed it,
for fear of the nymph who made it her home. In general the trees thus
reputed are the fruit-bearing trees which were comprehensively denoted
by the term δρῦς, from which the Dryads took their name--the fig-tree,
the olive, the holly-oak[391], and the plane. Such trees, especially
when conspicuous for age or for luxuriance, are readily suspected to
be the abode of Nereids. One Nereid only, it would seem, is assigned
to each tree (though, if her retreat be violated, she may swiftly call
others of her kind to aid her in taking vengeance), and with the life
of the tree her own life is bound up.

For a nymph is not immortal. Her span of life far exceeds that of
man, but none the less it is measured. ‘A crow lives twice as long
as a man, a tortoise twice as long as a crow, and a Nereid twice as
long as a tortoise.’ Such is a popular saying which I heard from an
unlettered peasant of Arcadia, to whom evidently had been transmitted
orally through many centuries a version of Hesiod’s lines, ‘Verily
nine times the age of men in their prime doth the croaking raven live;
and a stag doth equal four ravens; and ’tis three lives of a stag ere
the crow grows old; but the phoenix hath the life of nine crows; and
ye, fair-tressed Nymphs, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, do live ten
times the phoenix’ age[392].’ Commenting on this passage, Plutarch
takes the word γενεά in the phrase ἐννέα γενεὰς ἀνδρῶν ἡβώντων, which
I have rendered as ‘nine times the age of men in their prime,’ to
be used as the equivalent of ἐνιαυτός, a year; and, making a sober
computation on this basis, discovers that the limit of life for nymphs
and _daemones_ in general is 9720 years. But he then admits that the
mass of men do not allow so long a duration, and quotes by way of
illustration a phrase from Pindar, νύμφας ... ἰσοδένδρου τέκμωρ αἰῶνος
λαχούσας, according to which the nymphs are allotted a term of life
commensurate with that of a tree; hence, it is added, the compound name
Ἁμαδρυάδες, Dryads whose lives are severally bound up with those of
the trees which they inhabit[393]. Other ancient authorities concur.
Sophocles markedly calls the nymphs of Mt Cithaeron ‘long-lived’
(μακραιῶνες), not ‘immortal’[394]: Pliny certifies the finding of
dead Nereids on the coasts of Gaul during the reign of Augustus[395]:
Tzetzes cites from the works of Charon of Lampsacus the story of an
Hamadryad who was in danger of being swept away and drowned by a
swollen mountain-torrent[396]: and, to revert to yet earlier authority,
in one of the Homeric Hymns Aphrodite rehearses to Anchises the whole
matter[397]. Speaking of the son whom she will bear to him, she says:
‘So soon as he shall see the light of the sun, he shall be tended
by deep-bosomed nymphs of the mountains, even those that dwell upon
this high and holy mount. These verily are neither of mortal men nor
of immortal gods. Long indeed they live and feed on food divine, and
they have strength too for fair dance amid immortals; yea, and with
them have the watchful Slayer of Argus and such as Silenus been joined
in love within the depths of pleasant grots. But at the moment of
their birth, there spring up upon the nurturing earth pines, may be,
or oaks rearing high their heads, good trees and luxuriant, upon the
mountain-heights. Far aloft they tower; sanctuaries of immortals they
are called, and men hew them not with axe[398]. But so soon as the doom
of death stands beside them, first the good trees are dried up at the
root and then their bark withers about them and their branches fall
away, and therewith the soul of the nymphs too leaves the light of the
sun.’

So my Arcadian friend was true to ancient tradition both in his
estimate of the life of Nereids and in his belief, thereby implied,
that they are mortal. Nor is other modern testimony wanting. There are
popular stories still current concerning Nereids’ deaths. One has been
recorded in which a Nereid is struck by God with lightning and slain as
a punishment for stealing a boy from his father, and her sister nymphs
in terror restore the child[399]. A pertinent confession of faith has
also been heard from the lips of a Cretan peasant. In explanation of
the name Νεραϊδόσπηλος, ‘Nereid-grot,’ attached to a cave near his
village, he had related a story of a Nereid who was carried off from
that spot and taken to wife by a young man, to whom she bore a son; but
as she would never open her lips in his presence, he went in despair to
an old woman who advised him to heat an oven hot and then taking the
child in his arms to say to the Nereid, ‘Speak to me; or I will burn
your child,’ and so saying to make show of throwing the child into
the oven. He did as the old woman advised; but the Nereid saying only,
‘You hound, leave my child alone,’ seized it from him and disappeared.
And since the other Nereids would not admit her again to their company
in the cave, as being now a mother, she took up her abode in a spring
close by; and there she is seen two or three times a year holding the
child in her arms. ‘After hearing this tale,’ says the recorder of
it, ‘I asked the old peasant who told it me, how long ago this had
happened.’ He replied that he had heard it from his grandfather, and
guessed it to be about a hundred and sixty years. ‘My good man,’ said
the other, ‘would not the child have grown up in all that time?’ ‘What
do you suppose, sir?’ he answered; ‘are those to grow up so easily who
live from a thousand to fifteen hundred years?[400]’

How this period was computed by the Cretan peasant, or whether it
was computed at all on any system known to him, is not related; but
very probably the longevity of trees was the original basis of the
calculation; for the peasants will often point out some old contorted
olive-trunk as a thousand or more years old; I was once even taken to
see a tree reputed to have been planted by Alexander the Great. But
at any rate it is clear that both in ancient and in modern times the
nymphs have always been believed to be subject to ultimate death, and
however the tenure of life may be determined in the case of the others,
the Dryads have without doubt been generally reckoned coeval with the
trees that are their homes.

An exception to this rule must however be made in the case of
Nereid-haunted trees which do not die a natural death, but are felled
untimely. A Nymph’s life is not to be cut short by a humanly-wielded
axe. In the Homeric Hymn indeed, which I have quoted, we learn that men
hew not such trees with steel; and the same might, I think, be said
at the present day with certainty of those trees which are known to
be haunted. But the unknown is ever full of risk; and the woodcutter
of the North Arcadian forests, mindful of the sacrilege which he may
commit and fearful of the vengeance wherewith it may be visited,
takes such precautions as piety suggests. With muttered appeals to
the Panagia or his own patron-saint and with much crossing of himself
he fills up the moments between each bout of hewing at any suspected
tree (unfortunately the finest timber on which he plies his axe is
also the most likely to harbour a Nereid) and finally as the upper
branches sway and the tree trembles to its fall, he runs back and
throws himself down with his face to the ground, in silence which not
even a prayer must break, lest a Nereid, passing out from her violated
abode, hear and espy and punish. For, as has been said before, nothing
is more sure than that he who speaks in the hearing of a Nereid loses
from thenceforth the power of speech; while the practice of hiding
the face in the ground is not a foolish imitation of the ostrich, but
is prompted by the belief that a Nereid is most prone to injure those
who by look, word, or touch have of their own act, though not always
of their own will, placed themselves in communication or contact with
her[401].

These precautions appertaining to the lore of modern Greek forestry
indicate a belief that, when a tree is hewn down, its death does not
involve the death of the Nereid within it, but that she escapes alive
and vengeful. And herein once more there is agreement between the
beliefs of modern and of ancient Greece. Apollonius Rhodius tells
the story of the want and penury which befell Paraebius for all his
labours. ‘Verily he was paying a cruel requital for the sin of his
father; who once when he was felling trees, alone upon the mountains,
made light of the prayers of an Hamadryad. For she with tears and
passionate speech strove to soften his heart, that he should not hew
the trunk of her coeval oak, wherein she lived continuously her whole
long life; but he right foolishly did fell the tree, in pride of his
young strength. Wherefore the Nymph set a doom of fruitless toil
thereafter on him and on his children[402].’

       *       *       *       *       *

The Naiads, of whose ancient name, so far as I know, no trace remains
in the dialects of to-day, are not less numerous than other nymphs
and as much to be feared. The peasants speak of them usually as
‘Nereids of the river’ or ‘of the spring’ (νεράϊδες τοῦ ποταμίου or
τῆς βρύσης); and only in one place, Kephalóvryso (‘Fountain-head’)
in Aetolia, did I find a distinctive by-name for them. This was the
word ξεραμμέναις[403], which I take to be a half-humorous euphemism
meaning ‘the Parched Ones’; but, so far as sound is concerned, it
would be equally permissible to write ’ξεραμέναις (past participle of
’ξερνῶ = Latin _respuo_) and to interpret therefore in the sense of
‘the Abominable Ones.’ The latter appellation however seems to me too
outspoken in view of the awe in which the Naiads are everywhere held.

Wherever fresh water is, whether in mountain-torrent or reservoir, in
river or village-well, there is peril to be feared; no careful mother
will send her children at noontide to fetch water from the spring,
or, if they are sent, they must at least spit thrice into it before
they dip their pitchers, nor will she suffer them to loiter beside a
stream when dusk has fallen; no cautious man will ford a river without
crossing himself first on the brink.

The actual dwelling-place of these nymphs may be either the depths
of the water itself or some cave beside the stream. Homer gave to
the Naiads of Ithaca for their habitation a grotto, wherein were
everflowing waters[404]; and though in some cases the nymphs who haunt
the mountain caves may as well be Oreads as Naiads, I have preferred
to deal with them in this place; for usually it is river-gods who
have hollowed out these rocky homes for their daughters, and in many
such caves may be seen the everflowing waters that attest the Naiads’
birthright.

Some such places, whether springs or caves, have, as might be expected,
attained greater fame or notoriety than others; some special incident
starts a story about them which from generation to generation rolls on
gathering it may be fresh volume.

A typical story--typical save only for the absence of tragedy, since
the Naiads are wont to drown by mistake those whom they carry off--was
heard by Leo Allatius[405] from what he considered a trustworthy
source. ‘Some well-to-do people of Chios were taking a summer holiday
in the country _en famille_, when a pretty little girl of the party got
separated from the rest and ran off to a well at a little distance.
Amusing herself, as children will, she leant forward over the well,
and as she was looking at the water in it, was, without perceiving
it, insensibly lifted by some force and pushed into the well. Her
relations saw her carried off, and running up, perceived the girl
amusing herself on the top of the water as if she were seated on a bed.
Thereupon her father, emboldened by the sight, tried to climb down into
the well, but was pulled in by some force and set beside his child.
In the meantime some of the others had brought a ladder, which they
lowered into the well and bade the man ascend. Catching up his daughter
in his arms, he mounted the ladder safe and sound, and to the amazement
of all, though father and daughter had been all that time in the water,
they came out with clothes perfectly dry, without so much as a trace
of dampness. The seizure of the girl and her father they attributed
to Nereids, who were said to haunt that well. The girl too herself
asserted that while she was hanging over the well, she had seen women
sporting on the surface of the water with the utmost animation, and at
their invitation had voluntarily thrown herself in.’

This story, though it ends happily, bears a marked resemblance to that
of Hylas. It is specially noted that the child had a pretty face, and
this without doubt is conceived as impelling the Nereids to seize
her. It is of little consequence that their home is, in this case,
a mere well instead of ‘a spring,’ as Theocritus[406] pictures it,
‘in a hollow of the land, whereabout grew rushes thickly and purple
cuckoo-flower[407] and pale maidenhair and bright green parsley and
clover spreading wide’; for the ancients also attributed nymphs to
their wells[408].

Such stories are sometimes causes, sometimes effects, of the
not uncommon place-names νεραϊδόβρυσι, νεραϊδόσπηλῃ͜ο[409],
‘Nereid-spring,’ ‘Nereid-cave.’

Two such caves, to which the additional interest attaches of having
been in classical times also regarded as holy ground, are found on
Parnassus and on Olympus. The former is the famous Corycian cave
sacred in antiquity to Pan and the Nymphs[410] and still dreaded
by the inhabitants of the district as an abode of Nereids[411]. The
latter is thought to be the ancient sanctuary of the Pierian Muses,
and the peasants of the last generation held the place in such awe
that they refused to conduct anyone thither for fear of being seized
with madness[412]. It is right to add that the tenants of this cavern
were called by the vague name ἐξωτικαίς, which would comprise not
only Nereids, but presumably the Muses also, if any remembrance of
them survives in the district; but the fear of being seized with
madness suggests the ordinary conception of nymphs. In neither of
these instances of course can it be claimed that Naiads rather than
Oreads are the possessors of the cave; but as I have said the peasants
generally employ the wide appellation ‘Nereids’ or some yet vaguer
name, and do not discriminate between the looks and the qualities
of the several orders of nymphs. It is only by observing local and
occasional distinctions that I have been able to trace some survivals
of the four main ancient classes. In general the ‘Nereid’ of to-day is
simply the ‘Nymph’ of antiquity.


§ 10. THE QUEENS OF THE NYMPHS.

Travelling once in a small sailing-boat from the island of Scyros to
Scopelos I overheard an instructive conversation between one of my two
boatmen and a shepherd whom we had taken off from the small island
of Skánzoura. The occasion of our touching there, namely pursuit by
pirates (from whom the North Aegean is not yet wholly free, though
their piracies are seldom of a worse nature than cattle-lifting from
the coasts and islands), had certainly had an exciting effect upon my
boatman’s nerves, and, as darkness fell, the shepherd responded to his
companion’s mood, and their talk ranged over many strange experiences.
Very soon they were exchanging confidences about the supernatural
beings with whom they had come into contact; and among these figured
two who are the queens respectively of the nymphs of land and of sea.
Of these deities one only was known to each of the speakers, but on
comparing notes they agreed that the two personalities were distinct.

The landsman told of one whom he named ‘the queen of the mountains’ (ἡ
βασίλισσα τῶν βουνῶν) who with a retinue of Nereids was ever roaming
over the hills or dancing in some wooded dell. In form she was as a
Nereid, but taller and more glistening-white than they; and as she
surpassed her comrades in beauty, so did she also excel in cruelty
towards those who heedlessly crossed her path. The sailor on the other
hand had both seen and heard one whom he called ‘the queen of the
shore’ (ἡ βασίλισσα τοῦ γιαλοῦ). Most often she stands in the sea with
the water waist-high about her, and sings passionate love-songs to
those who pass by on the shore. Then must men close fast their eyes and
stop their ears; for, if they yield to her seductions, the bridal bed
is in the depths of the sea and she alone rises up again to tempt yet
others with her fatal love.

The former is without question she of whom Homer sang, ‘In company with
her do mirthful nymphs ... range o’er the land.... High above them all
she carries her head and brow, and full easily is she known, though
they all be beautiful’[413].

Nigh on three thousand years ago was composed this graceful epitome of
beliefs still current to-day; for, though the name of Artemis is no
longer heard, her personality remains. The peasants in general describe
rather than name her. In Zacynthos she is called ‘the great lady’ (ἡ
μεγάλη κυρά)[414]; in Cephalonia and in the villages of Parnassus
she is distinguished simply as ‘the chief’ or ‘the greatest’ of the
Nereids[415]; in either Chios or Scopelos (I cannot say which, for
my shepherd had been born in the former but was then living in the
latter) her title is ‘Queen of the mountains.’ In Aetolia however I was
fortunate enough to hear an actual name assigned, ἡ κυρὰ Κάλω, ‘the
lady Beautiful,’ where the shift of the accent in Κάλω as compared
with the adjective καλός is natural to the formation of a proper name,
and the feminine termination in -ω, almost obsolete now, argues an
early origin. The name therefore in its present form may have come
down unchanged from classical times; but, whatever its age, we may
at least hear in it an echo of the ancient cult-title of Artemis,
Καλλίστη, ‘most beautiful’[416]. The same deity, I suspect, survived
also until recently, under a disguised form but with a kindred name,
in Athens: for the folk there used to tell of one whom they named
‘Saint Beautiful’ (ἡ ἅγι̯α Καλή), but to whom no church was ever
dedicated[417]; her canonisation was only popular.

The account which I received in Aetolia of this ‘lady Beautiful’
agreed closely with the description already given of ‘the queen of
the mountains.’ In appearance and in character she is but a Nereid on
a larger scale. All the beauty and the frowardness so freely imputed
to the nymphs are superlatively hers; there is no safety from her; on
hillside, in coppice, by rivulet, everywhere she may be encountered;
the tongue that makes utterance in her presence is thenceforth tied,
and the eyes that behold her are darkened. The punishment that befell
Teiresias of old for looking upon Athena as she bathed still awaits
those who stray by mischance beside some sequestered pool or stream
where the Nereids and their queen are wont to bathe in the heat of noon.

Such a spot, favoured in olden time by Artemis and her attendant
Naiads, was the Cretan river Amnisos[418]; and it was probably no
mere coincidence, but a good instance rather of the continuity of
local tradition, that in comparatively recent times her personality
and perhaps even her old name were still known in the district. It
is recorded that in the sixteenth century both priests and people of
the district declared that at a pretty little tarn near the Gulf of
Mirabella they had seen ‘Diana and her fair nymphs’ lay aside their
white raiment and bathe and disappear in the clear waters[419]. It
would have been highly interesting to know the name of the goddess
which the Italian writer translated as ‘Diana.’ Though it is true that
in Italy[420] Diana herself was still worshipped in magical nightly
orgies as late as the fourteenth century, it is scarcely likely that
the Italian name had been adopted in Crete. More probably the slovenly
fashion of miscalling Greek deities by Latin names was as common then
as now; and in this instance a piece of valuable evidence has thereby
been irretrievably lost. Yet the traditional connexion of Artemis with
this district of Crete warrants the assumption that the leader of the
nymphs of whom the story tells was in personality, if not also in name,
the ancient Greek goddess, and no Italian importation.

Distinct reference to the bathing of Artemis is also made in a story
which has already been related in connexion with Aphrodite and
Eros[421]. A prince, who had journeyed to the garden of Eros to fetch
water for the healing of his father’s blindness, saw in the spring
there ‘a woman white as snow and shining as the moon. And it was in
very truth the moon that bathed here.’ The last sentence, provided
always that it be free from modern scholastic contamination, is an
unique example of the survival of Artemis in the _rôle_ of the moon;
while the healing properties of the spring in which she bathes offer
a coincidence, certainly undesigned, with the powers of the goddess
whom her worshippers of yore besought to ‘banish unto the mountain-tops
sickness and suffering’[422].

Whether ‘the lady Beautiful’ is known now also in her ancient
huntress-guise, is a point not readily determined. In Aetolia certainly
I once or twice heard mention of her hunting on the mountains, but
without feeling sure whether the word ‘hunt’ was being used literally
or in metaphor. Expressions borrowed from the chase are not uncommon
in the language, and the particular verb κυνηγῶ, ‘I hunt,’ is in the
vernacular used of anything from rabbit-shooting to wife-beating. The
injuries inflicted by Artemis on those who trespass upon her haunts
might possibly be denoted by the same term. On the other hand it is
not in the character of ‘the lady Beautiful,’ as it is in that of the
‘hunter’ Charos, to seek men out and slay them; men may fall chance
victims to the sudden anger of the goddess, but they are the chosen
quarry of the other’s prowess; he is a true ‘hunter’ of men, and, try
as they will to evade him, he still pursues; but Artemis strikes none
who turn aside from her path. I incline therefore to believe that the
word ‘to hunt’ was intended literally when I heard it used of ‘the lady
Beautiful,’ and that the ancient Artemis’ love of the chase is not
forgotten by the Aetolian peasantry.

Such are the reminiscences of Artemis which I have been able to
gather in a few districts of modern Greece. But it is clear that down
to the seventeenth century the goddess was much more widely known.
Leo Allatius[423], writing about the year 1630, after giving a good
description of the Nereids, plunges abruptly into a long quotation from
Michael Psellus, from which and from Allatius’ own comments on it some
information about the Queen of the Nereids may be gleaned. The passage
in question runs as follows, the comments and explanations in brackets
being my own:--

‘ἡ καλὴ τὸν ὡραῖον. Supply ἀπέτεκεν. (Apparently a proverb, ‘Fair
mother, fine son,’ to the usage of which Psellus gives some religious
colour.) For the Virgin that brought forth was wonderfully fair,
dazzling in the brightness of her graces, and her son was exceeding
beautiful, fair beyond the sons of men. (Notwithstanding however the
religious significance of the proverb, he at once condemns the use of
it.) As a matter of fact, the phrase is due to faulty speech. For the
popular language has perverted the saying. It is right to say καλὴν
τῶν ὀρέων (‘fair lady of the mountains’); but the people have made
the saying καλὴ τὸν ὡραῖον (‘fair mother, fine son’). (There is no
distinction in sound, according to the modern pronunciation, between
τῶν ὀρέων and τὸν ὡραῖον.) Hence we see that the popular imagination
had once fashioned, quite unreasonably, a female deity whose domain was
the mountains and who as it were disported herself upon them.... There
is no deity called ‘fair lady of the mountains,’ nor is the so-called
Barychnas a deity at all but a trouble arising in the head from
heartburn or ill-digested food, ... which is also known as Ephialtes.’

Here Psellus is rambling in his dissertation as wildly as though his
own head were affected by this demoniacal ailment. Which Allatius
observing comments thus:--

‘What has Barychnas or Babutzicarius[424] or if you like Ephialtes to
do with the fair lady of the woods or the mountains (_pulcram nemorum
sive montium_)? From them men suffer lying abed; whereas attacks such
as we have said are made by Callicantzarus[425], Burcolacas[426],
or Nereid, occur in the open country and public roadways.... And
Psellus himself knew quite well that the ‘fair lady of the mountains’
was nothing other than those who are commonly called the ‘fair
mistresses’[427] (i.e. Nereids), who have nothing on earth to do with
Barychnas and Ephialtes.’

The argument of this strangely confused passage is happily beside our
mark, and we need not puzzle, with Psellus, over the demonology of
dyspepsia. His interpretation of the phrase καλὴ τῶν ὀρέων I have even
ventured to omit, for a devious path of wilful reasoning leads only to
the conclusion that it means the tree on which Christ was crucified.
The only method in his mad medley of medicine and theology is the
intention to refute the popular belief in a beautiful goddess who
haunted the mountains.

Some details of the belief may be gathered from Allatius’ criticism of
the argument. Psellus mentions only the title ἡ καλὴ τῶν ὀρέων, but
Allatius amplifies it in the phrase _pulcram nemorum sive montium_,
implying thereby that in his own time Artemis--for it can be none
other--was associated as much with woodland as with mountain; while her
intimate connexion with the Nereids is adduced as a matter of common
knowledge. The somewhat loose phrase by which Allatius indicates this
fact--_pulcram montium nihil aliud esse quam eas quas vulgus vocat
pulcras dominas_--must not be read in any strict and narrow sense. The
beautiful lady of the mountains is, he means, just such as are the
Nereids; but she is a definite person, distinguished as of old among
her comrades by supreme grace and loveliness.

The statements of Leo Allatius, based as they are in the main upon his
own recollections of his native Chios, find remarkable corroboration
in a history of the same island written a little earlier by one
Jerosme Justinian[428]. In the main the history is purely fabulous,
taking its start from a point, if my memory serves me rightly, many
centuries earlier than the Deluge; but the reference to contemporary
superstitions may I think be trusted.

Previously to the passage which I translate, the writer has been
telling the tale of the building of a wonderful tower by king Scelerion
of Chios, wherein to guard his daughter Omorfia (Beauty) and three
maids of honour with her until such time as he should find a husband
worthy of her; how the workmen never left the tower till it was
finished; how the master-mason threw down his implements from the top
and himself essayed to fly down on wings of his own contrivance, which
however failed to work as he had hoped, with the result that he fell
into the river below the castle and was drowned; and how his ghost
was seen there every first of May at midday. This story, which may be
taken as a fair type of the whole ‘history,’ leads, by its mentions of
apparitions on May 1st, to the following passage[429]:--

‘They have also another foolish belief, that near the tower are to be
seen three youthful women, clothed in white, who invite passers-by to
throw themselves into the river and get some cups of gold and silver
which by diabolical illusion are seen floating on the water, in the
hope that going into the river they may be drowned in a whirlpool
called by the Greeks Chiroclacas, the water of which penetrates beneath
the mountain as far as the precipice where the princess still shows
herself. Further, there is no manner of doubt that the three ladies
who appear to the inhabitants of the place are those spirits who make
their dwelling in the water, assuming the form of women, and called by
the ancients _Nereides_ or _Negiardes_; the good women are so abused by
these illusions that on the first of May they are wont to make crosses
on their doors, saying that the goddess of their mountains is due to
come and visit them in their houses, and that without this mark she
would not come in; likewise they say that she would slay any one who
should go to meet her. And so they give her the name of ‘good,’ being
obliged by the fear in which they hold her to give her this title of
honour. Some people are of opinion that this goddess is one of the
Oread nymphs who dwell in the mountains....’

This ‘goddess of the mountains’ whom they call ‘good’ (i.e. probably
καλή) is beyond doubt the same who was known to Psellus and to
Allatius as ἡ καλὴ τῶν ὀρέων, ‘the beautiful lady of the mountains,’
and to my pastoral informant as ἡ βασίλισσα τῶν βουνῶν, ‘the queen of
the mountains’; and in general the conception of her is the same as
continues locally to the present day. One statement indeed I cannot
explain, namely that the women make crosses on their doors with the
purpose of attracting the goddess to their houses; for I have already
mentioned the same use of the symbol for the contrary purpose of
keeping the Nereids out[430]. Possibly as regards this detail of the
‘foolish belief’ the _grand seigneur_ was wrongly informed. But in
other respects, in the close association of the goddess with the Oreads
or other nymphs, in the fear which she inspired, in the belief that she
slew those who ventured upon her path, the Chian record is in complete
agreement with the description which I have given from oral sources. In
terror, as in charm, the Nereids’ queen is foremost.

A contrary view however is taken by Bernard Schmidt[431], who states
that she is pictured by the commonfolk as gentler and friendlier
to man than her companions, and even disposed to check their light
and froward ways. On such a point, I freely admit, local tradition
might well vary; but in this particular case I am inclined to think
that Schmidt fell into the error of confusing the wild-roaming,
nymph-escorted goddess of hill and vale and fountain with that other
goddess who dwells solitary in the heart of the mountain, dispensing
blessings to the good and pains to the wicked, and in the conception of
whom we found an aftermath of the ancient crop of legends concerning
Demeter and Kore. Surely this grand and lonely figure, ‘the Mistress
of the Earth and of the Sea,’ is in every trait different from the
lovely, capricious, cruel ‘Queen of the Mountains.’ Indeed the very
circumstance of both presentations being known in one and the same
district--as, to my own knowledge, in Aetolia, and, on Schmidt’s own
showing, in Zacynthos[432]--proves that two divine persons, in type
and in character essentially different, are here involved, and not
merely two accidental and local differentiations of the same deity.
Doubtless in the more ‘civilised’ parts of Greece (to use the word
beloved of the half-educated town-bred Greek), in the parts where old
beliefs and customs are falling into decay and contempt while nothing
good is substituted for them, even the lower classes have lost or are
losing count and memory of many of those powers whom their forefathers
acknowledged; but in the more favourably sequestered villages, let us
say, of Aetolia, where superstition still fears no mockery, no peasant
would commit the mistake of confounding his Demeter with his Artemis.
Between majestic loneliness and frolicsome throng, between dignified
beauty and bewitching loveliness, between gentleness and lightness,
between love of good and wanton merriment, between justice and caprice,
the gulf is wide.

But while the modern Artemis is the leader of her nymphs in mischief
and even in cruelty, it must not be thought that she is always a foe
to man. In Aetolia ‘the lady Beautiful’ is quick to avenge a slight or
an intrusion; but for those who pay her due reverence she is a ready
helper and a giver of good gifts. Health and wealth lie in her hand,
to bestow or to withhold, as in the hands of the Nereids. Hence even
he whom her sudden anger has once smitten may regain her favour by
offerings of honey and other sweetmeats on the scene of his calamity.
And probably peace-offerings with less definite intent have been or
still are in vogue; for it is reported that presents used to be brought
to the cross-roads in Zacynthos at midday or midnight simply to appease
‘the great lady’ and her train[433], a survival surely of the ancient
banquets of Hecate surnamed Τριοδῖτις, ‘Goddess of the Cross-roads.’

In some cases hesitation may be felt in pronouncing an opinion whether
it is for Artemis and the nymphs or for the Fates[434] (Μοῖραι) that
these gifts are intended; and in the category of the doubtful must
be included all those cases where the dedication of the offerings
is merely to the καλαὶς κυρᾶδες[435], ‘good ladies,’ no further
information being vouchsafed. Several writers, including the German
Ross and the Greek Pittakis, appear to have assumed without sufficient
enquiry that none but the Nereids could be thus designated; but as a
matter of fact, the same euphemistic title is occasionally given also
to the Fates[436]; and while I incline to trust the experience and
judgement of Ross in the general statement which he makes concerning
such offerings at Athens, Thebes, and elsewhere[437], the accuracy of
Pittakis[438] on the other hand is challenged by the actual spot which
he is describing when he identifies the ‘good ladies’ with the Nereids;
for the place was none other than the so-called ‘prison of Socrates,’
which the testimony of many travellers concurs in assigning to the
Fates.

But, though some of the evidence concerning offerings demands closer
scrutiny before it can have any bearing upon the continued belief in
the existence of Artemis, there are certainly some corners of Greece in
which that goddess is still worshipped. ‘The great lady,’ ‘the Queen of
the mountains,’ ‘the lady Beautiful’ are the various titles of a single
goddess whose beauty and quick anger have ever since the heroic age
held the Greek folk in awe and demanded their reverence; and until the
inroads of European civilisation destroy with the weapon of ridicule
all that is old in custom and creed, Artemis will continue to hold some
sway over hill and stream and woodland.

       *       *       *       *       *

The other queen, of whom my boatman spoke, ‘the Queen of the Shore,’
she who stands in the shallows and by her beauty and sweet voice
entices the unwary to share her bed in the depths of the sea, must
I think be identified with a being who is more commonly called ‘the
Lamia of the Sea’ or ‘the Lamia of the Shore.’ A popular poem[439] from
Salonica, in which these two titles are found side by side, tells of a
contest between her and a young shepherd. One day, in disregard of his
mother’s warning, he was playing his pipes upon the shore, when the
Lamia appeared to him and made a wager with him that she would dance
longer than he would go on playing. If he should win, he should have
her to wife; if she should win, she was to take all his flocks as the
prize. Three days the shepherd played, three whole nights and days;
then his strength failed him, and the Lamia took his sheep and goats
and left him destitute.

This poem has some points in common with a belief said to be held in
the district of Parnassos, that if a young man--especially one who is
handsome--play the flute or sing at mid-day or midnight upon the shore,
the Lamia thereof emerges from the depths of the sea, and with promises
of a happy life tries to persuade him to be her husband and to come
with her into the sea; if the young man refuse, she slays him[440]; and
presumably, though this is not mentioned, if he consent, she drowns him.

The same Lamia, it is recorded[441], is also known on the coasts of
Elis as a dangerous foe to sailors; for her work is the waterspout and
the whirlwind, whereby their ships are engulfed. Among the Cyclades too
the same belief certainly prevails (though I have never obtained there
any details concerning the character of the Lamia); for on seeing a
waterspout the sailors will exclaim, ‘the Lamia of the Sea is passing’
(περνάει ἡ Λάμια τοῦ πελάγου), and sometimes stick a black-handled
knife into the mast as a charm against her[442].

In these somewhat meagre accounts of the Lamia of the Sea, there are
several points in harmony with the general conception of Nereids.
She is beautiful; she seeks the love of young men, even though that
love mean death to them; she is sweet of voice and untiring in dance;
and she passes to and fro in waterspout or whirlwind. It is not
surprising then to find that in Elis she is actually named queen of the
Nereids[443], that is, without doubt, of the sea-nymphs only, since
she herself has her domain only in the sea. And the title ‘queen of
the shore’ which I learnt of my boatman from Scyros points to the same
belief; for as we found Artemis, ‘queen of the mountains,’ to be the
leader of all the Nereids of the land, so should ‘the queen of the
shore’ be ruler over the Nereids of the sea.

How far this conception of the Lamia of the Sea accords with classical
tradition, it is impossible to decide. Only in one passage, a fragment
of Stesichorus[444], is there any evidence of the connexion of a Lamia
with the sea. There the marine monster, Scylla, was made ‘the daughter
of Lamia,’ a phrase which has given rise to the conjecture that the
ancients like the moderns, as we shall see in the next section,
recognised more than one species. A marine Lamia would supply the most
natural parentage for Scylla; and if her mother may be identified
with the modern Lamia of the Sea, the foe of ships and creator of the
waterspout, the character of Scylla is true to her lineage.

But the other traits in the character of the modern Lamia of the Sea
can hardly be hers by such ancient prescription. It is difficult to
suppose that Stesichorus pictured Scylla’s mother as a thing of beauty;
and the charm of the modern Lamia’s love-songs which seduce men to
their death is perhaps an attribute borrowed from the Sirens. It is
therefore in virtue of acquired rather than original qualities that the
Lamia of the Sea has come to be queen of the sea-nymphs.


§ 11. LAMIAE, GELLOUDES, AND STRIGES.

The three classes of female monsters, of whom the present section
treats, have ever since the early middle ages[445] been constantly
confounded, and the special attributes of each assigned promiscuously
to the others. This is due to the fact that all three possess one
pronounced quality in common, the propensity towards preying upon young
children; and wherever this horrible trait has absorbed, as it well
may, the whole attention of mediaeval writer or modern peasant, the
distinctions between them in origin and nature have become obscured.
Yet sufficient information is forthcoming, if used with discrimination,
to enable some account to be given of each class separately.

The Lamiae are hideous monsters, shaped as gigantic and coarse-looking
women for the most part, but, with strange deformities of the lower
limbs such as Aristophanes attributed to a kindred being, the
Empusa[446]. Their feet are dissimilar and may be more than two
in number; one is often of bronze, while others resemble those of
animals--ox, ass, or goat[447]. Tradition relates that one of these
monsters was once shot by a peasant at Koropíon, a village in Attica,
and was found to measure three fathoms in length; and her loathsome
nature was attested by the fact that, when her body was thrown out in
a desert plain, no grass would grow where her blood had dripped[448].
The chief characteristics of the Lamiae, apart from their thirst for
blood, are their uncleanliness, their gluttony, and their stupidity.
The details of the first need not be named, but would still furnish
a jest for Aristophanes in his coarser mood as they did of old[449].
Their gluttony is clearly proved by their unwieldy corpulence. Their
stupidity is best shown in their sorry management of their homes;
for even the Lamiae have their domestic duties, being mated usually,
according to the folk-tales[450], with dragons (δράκοι), and making
their abode in caverns and desert places. They ply the broom so poorly
that ‘the Lamia’s sweeping’ (τῆς Λάμιας τὰ σαρώματα) has become a
proverb for untidiness[451]; they are so ignorant of bread-making
that they put their dough into a cold oven and heap the fire on top
of it[452]; they give their dogs hay to eat, and bones to their
horses[453]. But they have at least the redeeming virtue of sometimes
showing gratitude to those who help them out of the ill plight to which
their ignorance has brought them[454].

Their stupidity also is regarded by the Greeks as a cause of honesty.
Though they are often rich, as being the consorts of dragons whose
chief function it is to keep guard over hidden treasure, they have not
the wit to keep their wealth, but foolishly keep their word instead.
Athenian tradition tells of a very rich Lamia (known by the name of ἡ
Μόρα, perhaps better written Μώρα, a proper name formed from μωρός,
‘foolish’), who used to walk about at night, seizing and crushing men
whom she met till they roared like bulls. But if her victim kept his
wits about him and snatched her head-dress from her, she would, in
order to get it back, promise him both life and wealth, and keep her
word[455].

Such aspects of the Lamiae however are by no means universally
acknowledged; nine peasants out of ten, I suspect, could give no
further information about their character than that they feed on human
flesh and choose above all new-born infants as their prey. Hence
comes the popular phrase (employed, it would appear, in more than one
district of Greece) in reference to children who have died suddenly,
τὸ παιδὶ τὸ ἔπνιξε ἡ Λάμια[456], ‘the Child has been strangled by the
Lamia.’

But in general I think the ravages of Lamiae have ceased to inspire
much genuine fear in the peasants’ minds. One there was, so I heard,
near Kephalóvryso in Aetolia, whose dwelling-place, a cave beside
a torrent-bed, was to some extent dreaded and avoided. But in most
parts the Lamia only justifies the memory of her existence by serving
to provide adventures for the heroes of folk-stories; by lending her
name, along with Empusa and Mormo (who still locally survive[457]),
as a terror with which mothers may intimidate naughty children, or by
furnishing it as a ready weapon of vituperation in the wordy warfare of
women.

The word Lamia, which has survived unchanged in form down to the
present day save that the by-forms Λάμνα, Λάμνια and Λάμνισσα are
locally preferred, did not originally it would seem indicate a species
of monster but a single person. Lamia according to classical tradition
was the name of a queen of Libya who was loved by Zeus, and thus
excited the resentment of Hera, who robbed her of all her children;
whereupon the desolate queen took up her abode in a grim and lonely
cavern, and there changed into a malicious and greedy monster, who
in envy and despair stole and killed the children of more fortunate
mothers[458].

But a plural of the word, indicating that the single monster had
been multiplied into a whole class, soon occurs. Philostratus[459]
in speaking of ‘the Empusae, which the common people call Lamiae and
Mormolykiae,’ says, ‘Now these desire indeed the pleasures of love,
but yet more do they desire human flesh, and use the pleasures of love
to decoy those on whom they will feast.’ A plural such as is here used
might of course be merely a studied expression of contempt for vulgar
superstitions; but the latter part of the quotation seems to give a
fair summary of the character of ancient Lamiae. This is illustrated
by a gruesome story, narrated by Apuleius[460], of two Lamiae who, in
vengeance for a slight of the love proffered by one of them to a young
man named Socrates, tore out his heart one night before the eyes of his
companion Aristomenes.

Of these two main characteristics of the ancient Lamiae, the one,
lasciviousness, has come to be mainly imputed in modern times to the
Lamia of the Sea, the single deity who rules the sea-nymphs; while the
craving for human flesh is the most marked feature of the terrestrial
tribe of Lamiae. But the latter certainly are the truest descendants
of the ancient Lamia, and occupy a place in popular belief such as she
held of old; for few, it would seem, stood then in any serious fear of
the Lamia; the testimony of several ancient writers[461] (the story of
Apuleius notwithstanding) proves that more than two thousand years ago
she had already fallen to the level of bogeys which frighten none but
children.


GELLOUDES.

In my account of the Nereids properly so-called, reference was made to
certain beings known in the Cyclades as ἀγιελοῦδες or γιαλοῦδες and
reckoned by several writers[462] among the nymphs of the sea. In this
they certainly have the support of popular etymology; for in Amorgos
Theodore Bent[463] heard that ‘an evil spirit lived close by, which now
and again rises out of the sea and seizes infants; hence it is called
Gialoù (from γιαλός[464], the sea (_sic_)).’ But it is, I think, only
an erroneous association by the inhabitants of the Cyclades of two
like-sounding words which has caused the Ἀγιελοῦδες to be regarded
as marine demons; Bent’s information transposes cause and effect.
Elsewhere in Greece there are known certain beings called Γελλοῦδες or
Γιλλοῦδες, female demons with a propensity to carry off young children
and to devour them; and it is strange that so careful an authority on
Greek folk-lore as Bernhard Schmidt should not have recognised that the
name ἀγιελοῦδες employed in some of the Cyclades is only a dialectic
form of the commoner γελλοῦδες[465] with an euphonetic ἀ prefixed as in
the case of νεράϊδες and ἀνεράϊδες. Enquiry in Tenos revealed to me the
fact, not mentioned, though perhaps implied, in the statement of Bent,
that the ἀγιελοῦδες are there believed to feed upon the children whom
they carry off. This trait at once confirms their identity with the
γελλοῦδες, and renders it impossible to class them as a form of nymph.
It is of course believed that nymphs of the sea or of rivers, when they
carry off human children to their watery habitations, do incidentally
drown them, but by an oversight and not of malice prepense. But
savagely to prey upon human flesh--for all the nymphs’ wantonness and
cruelty, that is a thing abhorrent from their nature and inconceivable
in them. This horrid propensity proves the γελλοῦδες or ἀγιελοῦδες to
be a separate class of female demons.

The chief authority on these malignant beings is Leo Allatius[466],
who both quotes a series of passages which enable us to trace the
development of the belief in them, and also tells a story which is the
only source of evidence concerning other of their characteristics than
their appetite for the flesh of infants.

Their prototype, mentioned, we are told, by Sappho, was the maiden
Gello, whose spectre after her untimely end was said by the people of
Lesbos to beset children and to be chargeable with the early deaths of
infants[467].

The individuality of this Gello continued to be recognised to some
extent as late as the tenth century[468]; for Ignatius, a deacon of
Constantinople, in his life of the Patriarch Tarasius named her as a
single demon, though he added that the crime of killing children in
the same way was also imputed to a whole class of witches. ‘Hence,’
comments Allatius, ‘it has come about that at the present day Striges
(i.e. the witches of whom Ignatius speaks), because they practise
evil arts upon infants and by sucking their blood or in other ways
cause their death, are called Gellones[469].’ In the story also which
exhibits the chief qualities of this demon, her name (in the form
Γυλοῦ) appears still as a proper name.

But the multiplication of the single demon into a whole class dates
from long before the time of Allatius. John of Damascus in the eighth
century used the plural γελοῦδες as a popular word, the meaning of
which he took to be the same as that of Striges (στρίγγαι); and Michael
Psellus too in the eleventh century evidently regarded these two words
as interchangeable designations of a class of beings (whether of demons
or of witches, he leaves uncertain); for after an exact account of the
Striges and their thirst for children’s blood, he says that new-born
infants who waste away (as if from the draining of their blood by these
Striges) are called Γιλλόβρωτα[470], ‘Gello-eaten.’

The story of Leo Allatius[471], which sets forth the chief qualities
of Gello, is a legend of which the Saints Sisynios and Synidoros are
the heroes. The children of their sister Melitene had been devoured
by this demon, and they set themselves to capture her. She, to effect
her escape, at once changed her shape, and became first a swallow and
then a fish; but, for all her slippery and elusive transformations,
they finally caught her in the form of a goat’s hair adhering to the
king’s beard. Then addressing to her the words ‘Cease, foul Gello, from
slaying the babes of Christians,’ they worked upon her fears until they
extorted from her a confession of her twelve and a half names, the
knowledge of which was a safeguard against her assaults.

It is this list of names in which the various aspects of her activity
appear. The first is Γυλοῦ, one of the forms of the name Gello; the
second Μωρά[472], the name of a kind of Lamia; the third Βυζοῦ or
‘blood-sucker’; the fourth Μαρμαροῦ, probably ‘stony-hearted’; the
fifth Πετασία, for she can fly as a bird in the air; the sixth Πελαγία,
for she can swim as a fish in the sea; the seventh Βορδόνα[473],
probably meaning ‘stooping like a kite on her prey’; the eighth
Ἀπλετοῦ, ‘insatiable’; the ninth Χαμοδράκαινα, for she can lurk like
a snake in the earth; the tenth Ἀναβαρδαλαία[474], possibly ‘soaring
like a lark in the air’; the eleventh Ψυχανασπάστρια[475], ‘snatcher
of souls’; the twelfth Παιδοπνίκτρια, ‘strangler of children’; and the
half-name Στρίγλα, the kind of witch whereof the next section treats.

Whether these names are anywhere still remembered as a mystic
incantation, or all the qualities which they imply still imputed to
the Gelloudes, I cannot say. But a modern cure for such of the demon’s
injuries as are not immediately fatal has been recorded from Amorgos.
‘If a child has been afflicted by it, the mother first sends for the
priest to curse the demon, and scratches her child with her nails; if
these plans do not succeed, she has to go down at sunset to the shore,
and select forty round stones brought up by forty different waves;
these she must take home and boil in vinegar, and when the cock crows
the evil phantom will disappear and leave the child whole[476].’


STRIGES.

The Striges, though often confused with Lamiae and with Gelloudes, are
essentially different from them. The two classes with which I have
dealt are demons; the Striges, in the modern acceptation of the term,
are women who possess the power to transform themselves into birds of
prey or other animals; and it is only the taste for blood, shared by
them with those demons, which has created the confusion.

The Striges moreover cannot, like the Lamiae or Gelloudes, be claimed
either as an original product of the Greek imagination or as the
exclusive property of Greek superstition at the present day. The
Albanians have a word σ̈τρῑ́γ̇ε̱α, and the people of Corsica a
term _strega_, both of which denote a witch of the same powers and
propensities as are feared in Greece; and it is likely that all of
them--Greeks, Albanians, Corsicans--have borrowed the conception from
Italy. The ancient Greeks indeed had a word στρίγξ identical with
the _strix_ of Latin, but the shrieking night-bird denoted by it was
not, so far as I can discover, invested by Greek imagination with any
terrors. In Italy on the contrary the Strix was widely feared as a
bloodthirsty monster in bird-form. Pliny evidently supposed it to be
some actual bird, though he doubted the fables concerning it. ‘The
_strix_,’ he says, ‘certainly is mentioned in ancient curses; but what
kind of bird it may be, is not I think agreed[477].’ Perhaps in those
‘ancient curses’ it was invoked to inflict such punishment upon enemies
as it once meted out to Otos and Ephialtes for their attempt upon
Diana’s chastity[478].

The notion however that Striges were not really birds but witches in
bird-form early suggested itself and found an exponent in Ovid[479].
‘Voracious birds,’ he says, ‘there are ... that fly forth by night and
assail children who still need a nurse’s care, and seize them out of
their cradles and do them mischief. With their beaks they are said to
pick out the child’s milk-fed bowels, and their throat is full of the
blood they drink. Striges they are called ... and whether they come
into being as birds or are changed thereto by incantation, and the
Marsian spell transforms old women into winged things,’--such are their
ways.

This was probably the state of the superstition when the Greeks added
Striges to their own list of nightly terrors; and the very form of
the word in modern Greek, στρίγλα or στρίγγλα (being apparently a
diminutive, _strigula_, such as spoken Latin would readily have formed
from the literary form _strix_), testifies to the borrowing of the
belief.

In Greece the latter of the two ways in which Ovid explained the
origin of the Strix seems to have been generally accepted as correct.
It is true that the modern Greeks still have a real bird called
στριγλοποῦλι[480] (either some kind of owl or the night-jar), which not
only loves twilight or darkness in the upper world but is also said to
haunt the gloomy demesnes of Charos below--thereby revealing perhaps
some slight evidence of its relationship to the _strix_ which tormented
the brother giants; but the Strigla has long ceased to be a real bird,
and (apart from the confusion with a Lamia or Gello) is always a witch.

The condition of the belief in the eighth century is noticed by John of
Damascus[481]. ‘There are some of the more ignorant who say that there
are women known as Striges (Στρῦγγαι), otherwise called Geloudes. They
allege that these are to be seen at night passing through the air, and
that when they happen to come to a house they find no obstacle in doors
and bolts, but though the doors are securely locked make their way in
and throttle infants. Others say that the Strix devours the liver and
all the internal organs of the children, and so sets a short limit to
their lives. And they stoutly declare, some that they have seen, and
others that they have heard, the Strix entering houses, though the
doors were locked, either in bodily form or as a spirit only.’

Again in the eleventh century Michael Psellus noticed the same
superstition, though as we have seen his language suggests some
confusion of Striges with Gelloudes. But he is really describing the
faculty of the former to assume the shape of birds when he says, ‘The
superstition obtaining nowadays invests old women with this power. It
provides them with wings in their extreme age, and represents them as
settling[482] unseen upon infants, whom, it is alleged, they suck until
they exhaust all the humours in them’[483].

Leo Allatius, by whom this passage is cited, produces both from his
own experience and from the testimony of others several instances of
such occurrences, and mentions also the various precautions taken
against them. These include all-night watches, lamps suspended before
the pictures of patron-saints, amulets of garlic or of coral, and
the smearing of oil from some saint’s lamp on the face of the child
or invalid. It will suffice however to quote his general description
of the Striges according to the beliefs of the seventeenth century.
Striges (στρίγλαις), he tells us in effect, are old women whom poverty
and misery drive to contract an alliance with the devil for all evil
purposes; men are little molested by them, but women and still more
commonly children, being a weaker and easier prey, suffer much from
them, their breath alone[484] being so pernicious as to cause insanity
or even death. They are especially addicted to attacking new-born
babes, sucking out their blood and leaving them dead, or so polluting
them by their touch that what life remains to them is never free from
sickness.

It will have been noticed in this last account of the Striges, that the
range of their activity is somewhat enlarged, so that women as well
as children fall victims to them. At the present day, though they are
believed to prey chiefly upon infants, even grown men are not immune,
as witness a story[485] from Messenia.

Once upon a time a man was passing the night at the house of a friend
whose household consisted of his wife and mother-in-law. About midnight
some noise awakened him, and listening intently he made out the voices
of the two women conversing together. What he heard terrified him, for
they were planning to eat himself or his host, whichever proved the
fatter. At once he perceived that his friend’s wife and mother-in-law
were Striges, and knowing that there was no other means of escaping the
danger that was threatening him, he determined to try to save himself
by guile. The Striges advanced towards the sleeping men and took hold
of their guest’s foot to see if it was heavy, and consequently fat and
good for eating; he however, understanding their purpose, raised his
foot of his own accord as they took it in their hands and weighed it,
so that it felt to them as light as a feather, and they let it drop
again disappointed. Then they took hold of the foot of the other man
who was sleeping, and naturally found it very heavy. Delighted at the
result of their investigation, they ripped open the wretched man’s
breast, pulled out his liver and other parts, and threw them among the
hot ashes on the hearth to cook. Then noticing that they had no wine,
they flew to the wine-shop, took what they wanted and returned. But
in the interval the guest got up, collected the flesh that was being
cooked, stowed it away in his pouch, and put in its place on the hearth
some animal’s dung. The Striges however ate up greedily what was on
the hearth, complaining only that it was somewhat over-done. The next
day the two friends rose and left the house; the victim of the previous
night was very pale, but he did not bear the slightest wound or scar
on his breast. He remarked to his companion that he felt excessively
hungry, and the other gave him what had been cooked during the night,
which he ate and found exceedingly invigorating; the blood mounted to
his cheeks and he was perfectly sound again. Thereupon his friend told
him what had happened during the night, and they went together and slew
the Striges.

This story exhibits all the essential qualities of Striges. The pair
of them are women, and one at least, the mother-in-law, is old; they
choose the night for their depredations; they can assume the form of
birds, for ‘they flew,’ it is said, to the wine-shop; and their taste
for human flesh is the _motif_ of the story.

It must however be acknowledged that as the area of the Striges’
activities has become somewhat extended, so also has the ancient
limitation of the term to old women become locally somewhat relaxed. In
many parts of Greece a belief is held that certain infants are liable
to a form of lycanthropy; and female infants so disposed are sometimes
called Striges. A story from Tenos[486], narrated in several versions,
concerns an infant princess who was a Strigla. Every day one of the
king’s horses was found to have been killed and devoured in the night.
The three princes, her brothers, therefore kept watch in turn; and it
fell to the fortune of the youngest of them, owing to his courage and
skill, to detect the malefactor. About midnight he heard a noise, and
fired into the middle of a cloud that seemed to hang over the horses,
thereby so wounding his sister that the mark observed on her next day
betrayed her nightly doings. Not daring however to accuse her to his
father, he fled from home with his mother to a place of safety, while
the girl remained undisturbed in her voracity and consumed one by one
all the people of the town.

But in other places where the same belief prevails, as we shall see
later, these _enfants terribles_, who may be of either sex, are called
not Striges but by some such name as ‘callicantzaros,’ ‘vrykolakas,’
or ‘gorgon’; and this variety of names is in itself a proof that, while
the idea of infant cannibals is widespread, no exact verbal equivalent
now exists, and each of the several names used is only requisitioned to
supply the deficiency. A child can indeed enjoy the title of Strigla by
courtesy; only an old woman can possess it of right.

Thus the old Graeco-Roman fear of Striges still remains little changed.
The Church has repeatedly forbidden belief in them[487]; legislation
has prohibited in times past the killing of them[488]. But the link of
superstition between the past and the present is still unbroken; and
witch-burning is an idea which in any secluded corner of Greece might
still be put into effect[489].


§ 12. GORGONS.

The modern conception of the Gorgon (ἡ γοργόνα) or Gorgons
(γοργόνες)--for popular belief seems to vary locally between
recognising one or more such beings--is extremely complex. Of my own
knowledge I can unfortunately contribute nothing new to what has been
published by others concerning them; for though I have several times
heard Gorgons mentioned, and always on further enquiry found them to
be terrible demons who dwell in the sea, it has so chanced that I have
been unable to get any more explicit information on the subject. The
present section is therefore, so far as the facts are concerned, a
compilation from the researches of others, especially of Prof. Polites
of Athens University.

A Gorgon is represented as half woman, half fish. Rough sketches on the
walls of small taverns and elsewhere may often be observed, depicting
a woman with the tail of a fish, half emerging from the waves, and
holding in one hand a ship, in the other an anchor; sometimes also
she is armed with a breastplate[490]. Similar designs are also to be
seen tattooed upon the arms or breasts of men of the lower classes,
especially among the maritime population.

The Gorgons themselves are to be encountered in all parts of the sea;
but their favourite resort, especially on Saturday nights, is reputed
to be the Black Sea, where if one of them meets a ship, grasping the
bows with her hand she asks, ‘Is king Alexander living?’ To this the
sailors must reply ‘he lives and reigns,’ and may add ‘and he keeps the
world at peace,’ or ‘and long life to you too!’; for then the awful
and monstrous Gorgon in gladness at the tidings transforms herself
into a beautiful maiden and calms the waves and sings melodiously to
her lyre. If on the contrary the sailors make the mistake of saying
that Alexander is dead, she either capsizes the ship with her own
hand or by the wildness of her lamentations raises a storm from which
there is no escape nor shelter[491]. The mention of Alexander the
Great in these stories of the Gorgons, as also sometimes in connexion
with the Nereids, is unimportant; it is not an instance of purely
oral tradition, but has its source in the history of Alexander by
Pseudocallisthenes[492], of which there exist paraphrases in the
popular tongue. The interest of such fables lies in the association of
beauty and melody as well as of horror with the Gorgons, and in the
_rôle_ of marine deity which they play.

In general however it is upon the monstrous and terrifying aspect of
the Gorgons that the common-folk seize, so that the name Gorgon is
metaphorically applied to ill-favoured and malevolent women[493].
Thus in Rhodes it is used of any large fierce-looking virago[494]; in
Cephalonia (where also the word Μέδουσα, Medusa, survives in the same
sense) of any lady conspicuously ill-featured[495]. Allusion too has
already been made to the case where a child possessed by a mania of
bloodthirstiness is occasionally called a Gorgon[496].

But there is another and fresh aspect of the Gorgon’s nature suggested
by the use of the word in Cythnos. There it is metaphorically applied
to depraved women[497]; and this isolated usage is in accord with one
description of the Gorgon which has come down from the middle ages.
This description forms part of a poem entitled ‘The Physiologus[498]’
(written in the most debased ecclesiastical Greek and supposed to date
from before the thirteenth century), which gives a fantastic account of
the habits of many birds and beasts among which the Gorgon is included.

‘The Gorgon is a beast like unto a harlot; the hair of her head is
all auburn; the ends thereof are as it were heads of snakes; and her
body is bare and smooth, white as a dove, and her bosom is a woman’s
with breasts fair to behold; but the look of her face brings death;
whatsoever looks upon her falls down and dies. She dwells in the
regions of the West. She knows all languages and the speech of wild
beasts. When she desires a mate, she calls first to the lion; for fear
of death he draws not near to her. Again she calls the dragon, but
neither does he go; and even so all the beasts both small and great.
She pipes sweetly and sings with charm beyond all; lastly she utters
human voice: “Come, sate fleshly desire, ye men, of my beauty, and I
of yours.” The men, knowing then their opportunity against her, lay
snares that she may lose her pleasure; and stand afar off, that they
may not see her, and raise their voice and cry and say unto her: “Dig
a deep pit and put thy head therein, that we may not die and may come
with thee.” She straightway then goes and makes a great hole and puts
her head therein and leaves her body; from the waist downward it is
seen naked; so she remains and awaits the pains of lewdness. The man
goes from behind, cuts off her head, holds it face downward, and places
it in a vessel, and if he meet dragon or lion or leopard, he shows the
head, and the beasts die.’

These modern or mediaeval descriptions of the Gorgons, though they are
by no means consistent one with another, offer four main aspects in
which the modern Gorgon may be compared with the creatures of ancient
mythology. Her face is terrible either in its surpassing loveliness or
in its overwhelming hideousness. She possesses the gift of entrancing
melody. She is voluptuous. She dwells in the sea.

The first aspect may be derived directly from the ancient conception
of the Gorgons. The word Γοργώ itself is a name formed from the
adjective γοργός and means simply ‘fierce’ or ‘terrible’ in look,
without implying anything of beauty or the opposite; while of Medusa,
the Gorgon _par excellence_, tradition relates that once she was a
beautiful maiden beloved of Poseidon, and that it was only through the
wrath of Athena that her hair was changed into writhing snakes and
her loveliness lost in horror. Moreover in ancient works of art the
representation of the Gorgon’s head varies from a type of cruel beauty
to a grinning mask. But it is also possible that the idea of their
beauty is due to a confusion of Gorgons with Sirens, from whom, as we
shall see, certain traits have certainly been borrowed.

These traits are the two next aspects of the modern Gorgons which
we have to consider, the sweetness of their singing and their
voluptuousness. These were the essential qualities of the Sirens, and
have undoubtedly been transferred to the Gorgons no less than to the
Lamia of the Sea[499].

Possibly also from the same source comes the mixed shape, half woman
and half fish, in which the Gorgon is now pourtrayed. The Sirens were
indeed originally terrestrial, dwelling in a meadow near the sea, yet
not venturing in the deep themselves, but luring men to shipwreck on
the coast by the spell of their song; and an echo perhaps of this
conception, though the Sirens themselves are no longer known, lives on
in a folk-song which pictures the enchantment of a maiden’s love-song
wafted to seafarers’ ears from off the shore: ‘Thereby a ship was
passing with sails outspread. Sailors that hearken to that voice and
look upon such beauty, forget their sails and forsake their oars; they
cannot voyage any more; they know not how to set sail[500].’ But by the
sixth century[501] the traditional habitat of the Sirens had changed.
‘The Sirens,’ says an anonymous work on monsters and great beasts,
‘are mermaids, who by their exceeding beauty and winning song ensnare
mariners; from the head to the navel they are of human and maidenly
form, but they have the scaly tails of fishes[502].’ This description
establishes an unquestionable connexion between the Sirens and the
modern Gorgons.

But the fourth aspect of the Gorgons on which I have to touch, their
connexion with the sea, is not, I think, to be explained as another
loan from the Sirens. On the contrary the Gorgons were it would seem
deities of the sea, when the Sirens were still dwellers upon the shore;
and it was their originally marine character which enabled them to
absorb the qualities once attributed to the Sirens. Thus according
to Hesiod[503] the three Gorgons were daughters of the sea-deities
Phorcys and Ceto, and their home was at the western bound of Ocean.
Further one of their number, Medusa, was loved by the sea-god Poseidon,
and gave birth both to the horse Pegasus whose name may be a derivative
of πήγη, ‘water-spring,’ and whose resort was certainly the fountain
of Pirene[504], and also to Chrysaor whose bride was ‘Callirrhoe,
daughter of far-famed Ocean.’ Whether this mythological problem is
capable of solution in terms of natural phenomena[505] does not here
concern us; but it is a straightforward and necessary inference from
these genealogical data, that an early and intimate connexion existed
between the Gorgons and the sea. And here art comes to the support of
literature. In the National Museum of Athens are two vases of about
the sixth century, depicting Gorgons in the company of dolphins. The
first, an early Attic _amphora_[506] represents the three Gorgons, of
whom Medusa appears headless, surrounded by a considerable number of
them. The second, a _kylex_[507] with offset lip of the _Kleinmeister_
type, pourtrays a single Gorgon with a dolphin on either side. These
artistic presentments furnish the strongest possible corroboration of
Hesiodic lore, and justify the assertion that from the earliest times
the Gorgons were deities of the sea. It was clearly then in virtue of
their own marine character that they were able later to usurp also the
place of the Sirens.

But the Sirens are not the only ancient beings who have contributed
to the formation of the popular conception of modern Gorgons. In one
story[508] the personality of Scylla is unmistakeable beneath the
disguise of name. This fusion is the more natural in that Scylla was
from the beginning[509] a monster of the sea, whose form, according
to Vergil[510], terminated like that of latter-day Gorgons in a fish’s
tail; a monster too fully as terrible in her own way as any Gorgon. The
following extract from the story contains all that is pertinent.

‘So the lad departed and tramped on for twenty hours. Then he came to
a village by the sea, and saw some men busy lading a boat with oil,
and they were carrying on board each one a barrel. When he drew near
to them, he said, “Can you carry but one barrel at a time, my good
fellows? See how many I will carry.” So saying, he took a barrel on
each shoulder, and placed them in the boat. Then said the captain to
him, “Thank you, my lad” (for he was afraid of him), “come and have
some food.” “No, thank you, captain,” he replied, “I do not want any.
But when you are passing yonder straits, please take me along with
you.” The captain was delighted to do so, for in the sea at that place
there was a Gorgon, and from every boat that passed she took one man
as toll and devoured him, or else swamped the whole boat. So they set
out, and as they were going the captain said to the lad, “Take a turn
at the tiller, my boy, that we may go and sleep, for we are tired.”
Accordingly they went below--to sleep, so they pretended--and the
lad remained at the helm. Suddenly the boat stopped. He was looking
about on each side when he heard a voice behind him. He turned at
once and saw a beautiful woman with golden hair, who said to him,
“Give me my tribute.” “What tribute?” replied the lad. “The man whom
I devour from each boat that passes.” “Give me your hand,” said the
lad to her. Straightway without demur she gave it to him, and tried to
pull him down into the sea. At this the lad grew angry. “Come up, you
she-devil, come up here,” he cried, and dashed her upon the deck. Then
he belaboured her soundly, and said to her: “Swear to me that you will
never molest man again, or I will not let you go.” “I swear,” she said,
“by my mother the sea and by my father Alexander, that I will molest
none.” Then he threw her back into the sea.’

Apart from the description of the Gorgon in this story, as in others,
as a ‘beautiful woman with golden hair,’ the tradition which has
contributed chiefly to the invention of the episode is the ancient
myth of Scylla and, we may perhaps add, of Charybdis; for here too the
straits are the scene of alternative horrors, either the devouring of
one man out of the crew or the sinking of the whole craft.

But in spite of the fusion of both Scylla and the Sirens with the
Gorgons in the crucible of popular imagination, analysis of the complex
modern conception still reveals two elements in the Gorgons’ nature
which vindicate their claim to their ancient name, their association
with the sea and the terror that they inspire.


§ 13. THE CENTAURS.

 ἈΝΆΓΚΗ ΜΕΤᾺ ΤΟΥ͂ΤΟ ΤῸ ΤΩ͂Ν ἹΠΠΟΚΕΝΤΑΎΡΩΝ ΕἾΔΟΣ ἘΠΑΝΟΡΘΟΥ͂ΣΘΑΙ.

  PLATO, _Phaedrus_, 7.

The Callicántzari (Καλλικάντζαροι) are the most monstrous of all the
creatures of the popular imagination, and none are better known to the
Greek-speaking world at large; for even where educated men have ceased
to believe in them, they still figure in the stories told and retold to
children with each recurring New Year’s Day; and, among the peasants,
many reach manhood or womanhood without outgrowing their early fears of
them.

The name Callicantzaros itself appears in many dialectic and widely
differing forms, and there are also a multitude of local by-names. Of
the former I shall treat later in discussing the origin of the word
Callicantzaros, while the by-names, being for the most part descriptive
of the appearance or qualities of these monsters, will be mentioned as
occasion requires. But even where other local names are in common use,
some form of the word Callicantzaros is almost always employed as well,
or at least is understood.

As in the nomenclature, so too in the description of the Callicantzari,
one locality differs very widely from another. And this cannot be
merely a result of the wide distribution of the belief in them;
for the Nereids certainly are equally widely known, and yet their
appearance and habits are, broadly speaking, everywhere the same.
The extraordinary divergences and even contradictions in different
accounts of the Callicantzari demand some other explanation than that
of casual variation. That explanation, as I shall show later, lies in
their identity with the ancient Centaurs. But before I discuss their
origin, I must attempt as general a description of their appearance and
habits as the vast variation of local traditions permits. In revising
this description I have had the advantage of consulting Prof. Polites’
new work on the traditions of modern Greece[511], from which I have
learnt some new facts, and have obtained on several points confirmation
from a new source of what I had myself heard or surmised. I take this
opportunity of gratefully acknowledging my indebtedness to him.

In describing the Callicantzari, although the diversities of their
outward form are almost endless, two main classes of them must be
distinguished, because corresponding with that physical division there
is also a marked difference in character. The two classes differ
physically in stature, and, while all Callicantzari are essentially
mischievous in character, the mischief wrought by the larger sort is
often of a malicious and even deadly order, while the smaller sort are
more frolicsome and harmless in their tricks.

The larger kind vary from the size of a man to that of a gigantic
monster whose loins are on a level with the chimneypots. They are
usually black in colour, and covered with a coat of shaggy hair, but
a bald variety is also sometimes mentioned. Their heads and also
their sexual organs are out of all proportion to the rest of their
bodies. Their faces are black; their eyes glare red; they have the
ears of goats or asses; from their huge mouths blood-red tongues loll
out, flanked by ferocious tusks. Their bodies are in general very
lean, so that in some districts the word Callicantzaros is applied
metaphorically to a very lean man[512]; but a shorter and thickset
variety also occurs. They have the arms and hands of monkeys, and their
nails are as long again as their fingers and curved like the talons
of a vulture. They are sometimes furnished with long thin tails. They
have the legs of a goat or an ass, or sometimes one human leg and
one of bestial form; or again both legs are of human shape, but the
foot so distorted that the toes come where the heel should be[513].
Hence it is not surprising that they are often lame, but even so they
are swift of foot and terrible in strength. ‘They devour their road
at the pace of Pegasus,’ wrote Leo Allatius[514]; and at the present
day several by-names bear witness to their speed. In Samos they are
called Καλλισπούδηδες[515], ‘those who make good speed’; in Cyprus
Πλανήταροι[516], ‘the wanderers’; in Athens they have the humorous
title Κωλοβελόνηδες, formed from the proverbial expression βελόνια
ἔχει ’στὸν κῶλο του, ‘he has needles in his buttocks,’ said of any one
who cannot sit still, but is always on the move[517]. Their strength
also has earned them one by-name, reported from Kardamýle in Maina, τὰ
τσιλικρωτά, said to be formed from the Turkish _tselik_ (‘iron’), in
the sense of ‘strong as iron[518].’

All or any of the features which I have mentioned may be found in the
person of a single Callicantzaros; but it must be allowed also that no
one of them is essential. For sometimes the Callicantzaros appears in
ordinary human form without so much as a cloven hoof to distinguish
him from ordinary mankind, or again completely in animal shape. In one
place they are described as ἀγριάνθρωποι[519], savages but human in
appearance, while in another they are ἄγρια τετράποδα[520], ‘savage
quadrupeds.’

Yet in general the Callicantzari are neither wholly anthropomorphic nor
wholly theriomorphic, but a blend of the two. In a story of some men
at Athens who dressed themselves up as Callicantzari, it is said that
they blacked their faces and covered themselves with feathers[521].
Again two grotesque and bestial clay statuettes from the Cabirium
near Thebes and now in the National Museum at Athens, were identified
by peasants as Callicantzari[522]; an identification I have also met
with when questioning peasants about similar objects in local museums;
in one case it was a Satyr and in another a Centaur which my guide
identified as a Callicantzaros. On the whole I should say that the
goat contributes more than any other animal to the popular conception
of these monsters. Besides having the legs and the ears of goats, as
was noted above, they are sometimes said to have their horns also;
and in Chios their resemblance to goats is so clearly recognised that
in one village they have earned the by-name of Κατσικᾶδες[523], which
by formation should mean ‘men who have to do with goats (κατσίκια),’
though it has apparently been appropriated to the designation of beings
who are in form half goat and half man. There are however districts, as
we shall see later, in which some other animal than the goat forms the
predominant element in the monstrous _ensemble_.

The smaller sort of Callicantzari is rarer than the large, but their
distribution is at any rate wide. They are the predominant type in
north-west Arcadia, in the district about Mount Parnassus, and at
Oenoë[524] on the southern shore of the Black Sea. They are most often
human in shape, but are mere pigmies, no taller than a child of five
or six. They are usually black, like the larger sort, but are smooth
and hairless. They are very commonly deformed, and in this respect the
strange beasts on which they ride are like them. At Arachova[525],
on the slopes of Parnassus, every one of them is said to have some
physical defect. Some are lame; others squint; others have only one
eye; others have their noses or mouths, hands or feet set all askew;
and as a cavalcade of them passes by night through the village, one is
to be seen mounted on a cock and his long thin legs trail on the ground
as he rides; another has a horse no bigger than a small dog; another,
the tiniest of them all, is perched on an enormous donkey’s back, and
when he falls off cannot mount again; and others again ride strange
unknown beasts, lame, one-eyed, or one-eared like their masters.

Callicantzari of this type are usually harmless to men. They play
indeed the same boisterous pranks as their larger brethren, but perhaps
owing to their insignificant size are an object of merriment rather
than of fear. But, as I shall show later, there is reason to believe
that they are not the original type of Callicantzari. It is only by a
casual development of the superstition, that these grotesque hobgoblins
have been locally substituted for the grim and gaunt monsters feared
elsewhere. They form, as it were, a modern and expurgated edition of
the larger sort of Callicantzari, to whom I now return.

The Callicantzari appear only during the δωδεκαήμερον or ‘period of
twelve days’ between Christmas and Epiphany[526]. The rest of the year
they live in the lower world, and occupy themselves in trying to gnaw
through or cut down the great tree (or in other accounts the one or
more columns) on which the world rests. Each Christmas they have nearly
completed their task, when the time comes for their appearance in the
upper world, and during their twelve days’ absence, the supports of the
world are made whole again.

Even during their short visit to this world, they do not appear in the
daytime. From dawn till sunset they hide themselves in dark and dank
places--in caves or beneath mills--and there feed on such food as they
can collect, worms, snakes, frogs, tortoises, and other unclean things.
But at night they issue forth and run wildly to and fro, rending and
crushing those who cross their path. Destruction and waste, greed and
lust mark their course. Now they break into some lonely mill, terrify
and coerce the miller into showing them his store, bake for themselves
cakes thereof, befoul with urine all that they cannot use, and are
gone again. Now they pass through some hamlet, and woe to that house
which is not prepared against their coming. By chimney and door alike
they swarm in, and make havoc of the home; in sheer wanton mischief
they overturn and break all the furniture, devour the Christmas pork,
befoul all the water and wine and food which remains, and leave the
occupants half dead with fright or violence. Now it is a wine shop that
they enter, bind the publican to his chair, gag him with dung, break
open each cask in turn, drink their fill, and leave the wine running.
Now they light upon some belated wayfarer, and make sport of him as
their fancy leads them. Sometimes his fate is only to dance all night
with the Callicantzari and to be let go at cockcrow unscathed; for
these monsters despite their uncouth shape delight in dancing, and to
that end often seek the company of the Nereids; but more often men are
sorely torn and battered before they escape, and women are forcibly
carried off to be the monsters’ wives. In some accounts they even make
a meal of their human prey.

The fact that the activities of the Callicantzari are always limited to
the night-time has given them a special claim to the name Παρωρίταις or
Νυχτοπαρωρίταις[527], formed from πάρωρα, ‘the hour before cockcrow,’
for then it is that their excesses and depredations have reached
their zenith; but the word cannot correctly be called a by-name of
the Callicantzari, for it is also, if more rarely, applied to other
nocturnal visitants.

The only redeeming qualities in these creatures’ characters, from the
point of view of men who fall into their clutches, are their stupidity
and their quarrelsomeness. They have indeed a chieftain who sometimes
tries to marshal and to discipline them, and who is at least wise
enough to warn them when the hour of their departure draws near. But
in general ‘the Great Callicantzaros[528],’ as he is called, or ‘the
lame demon[529],’ is too like the rest of them to be of much avail; and
indeed his place is not at the head of the riotous mob where he might
control them, but he limps along, a grotesque and usually ithyphallic
figure, in the rear. Thus in the popular stories it often happens that
either the Callicantzari go on quarrelling about the treatment of some
man or the possession of some woman whom they have captured, or else
their prisoner is shrewd enough to keep them amused, until cock-crow
brings release. For at that sound (or, to be more precise, at the
crowing of the third cock, who is black and more potent to scare away
demons than the white and red cocks who precede him[530]) they vanish
away, like all terrors of the night in ancient[531] as well as modern
times, to their dark lairs.

The tales told by the peasants about the Callicantzari are extremely
numerous, though there is a certain sameness about the main themes.
Three types of story however are deserving of notice, to illustrate
the character of the Callicantzari and the ways in which they may be
outwitted and eluded.

The first type may be represented by a tale told to me in Scyros in
explanation of the name of a cave some half-hour distant from the town.
Both the cave itself and that part of the path which lies just below it
are popularly called τοῦ καλλικαντζάρου τὸ ποδάρι, ‘the Callicantzaros’
foot.’ My enquiries concerning the name elicited the following story,
which seems incidentally to explain how the Great Callicantzaros came
to be lame.

‘Once upon the eve of Epiphany a man of Scyros was returning home
from a mill late at night, driving his mule before him laden with two
sacks of meal. When he had gone about half-way, he saw before him
some Callicantzari in his path. Realising his danger, he at once got
upon his mule and laid himself flat between the two sacks and covered
himself up with a rug, so as to look like another sack of meal. Soon
the Callicantzari were about his mule, and he held his breath and heard
them saying, “Here is a pack on this side and a pack on that side, and
the top-load in the middle, but where is the man?” So they ran back to
the mill thinking that he had loitered behind; but they could not find
him and came back after the mule, and looked again, and said, “Here is
a pack on this side and a pack on that side, and the top-load in the
middle, but where is the man?” So they ran on in front fearing that
he had hasted on home before his mule. But when they could not find
him, they returned again, and said as before, and went back a second
time towards the mill. And thus it happened many times. Now while
they were running to and fro, the mule was nearing home, and it so
happened that when the beast stopped at the door of the man’s house,
the Callicantzari were close on his track. The man therefore called
quickly to his wife and she opened the door and he entered in safety,
but the mule was left standing without. Then the Callicantzari saw how
he had tricked them, and they knocked at the door in great anger. So
the woman, fearing lest they would break in by force, promised to open
to them on condition that they should first count for her the holes in
her sieve. To this they agreed, and she let it down to them by a cord
from a window. Straightway they set to work to count, and counted round
and round the outermost circle and never got nearer to the middle; nor
could they discover how this came to pass, but only counted more and
more hurriedly, without advancing at all. Meanwhile dawn was breaking,
and so soon as the neighbours perceived the Callicantzari, they
hurried off to the priests and told them. The priests immediately set
out with censers and sprinkling-vessels in their hands, to chase the
Callicantzari away. Right through the town the monsters fled, spreading
havoc in their path and hotly pursued by the priests. At last when they
were clear of the town, one Callicantzaros began to lag behind, and by
a great exertion the foremost priest came up to him and struck him on
the hinder foot with his sprinkling vessel. At once the foot fell off,
but the Callicantzaros fled away maimed though he was. And thus the
spot came to be known as “the Callicantzaros’ foot.”’

This story consists of three episodes. The first, in which the driver
of the mule outwits the Callicantzari by lying flat on the animal’s
back and making himself look like a sack of meal, occurs time after
time in the popular tales with hardly any variation; indeed it often
forms in itself the _motif_ of a whole story, in which, as soon as
the man reaches his home, the cock crows and the Callicantzari flee.
The second episode in which the wife effects some delay by bargaining
with the Callicantzari that they shall count the holes in a sieve, is
also fairly common, but the difficulty which the monsters find, in
every other version of which I know, is that they dare not pronounce
the word ‘three,’ and so go on counting ‘one, two,’ ‘one, two’ till
cock-crow[532]. The third episode in which the priests chase away the
Callicantzari is not often found in current stories, but the belief
that the ἁγιασμός or ‘hallowing’ which takes place on the morning of
Epiphany is the signal for the final departure of the Callicantzari
is firmly held throughout Greece. This ceremony consists primarily in
‘blessing the waters’--whether of the sea, of rivers, of village-wells,
or, as at Athens, of the reservoir--by carrying a cross in procession
to the appointed place and throwing it in; but in many districts also
the priests afterwards fill vessels with the blest waters, and with
these and their censers make a round of the village, sprinkling and
purifying the people and their houses and cornfields and vineyards.
The fear which the Callicantzari feel of this purification is embodied
in some rough lines which they are supposed to chant as they disappear
at Twelfth-night:

    φύγετε, νὰ φύγουμε,
    τ’ ἔφτασ’ ὁ τουρλόπαπας
    μὲ τὴν ἁγι̯αστοῦρα του
    καὶ μὲ τὴ βρεχτοῦρα του,
    κι’ ἅγι̯ασε τὰ ῥέμματα
    καὶ μᾶς ἐμαγάρισε[533].

    Quick, begone! we must begone,
    Here comes the pot-bellied priest,
    With his censer in his hand
    And his sprinkling-vessel too;
    He has purified the streams
    And he has polluted us.

In the actual tales however as told by the people the intervention
of the priests is not a common episode. More often the story ends in
a rescue effected by neighbours armed with firebrands, of which the
Callicantzari go in mortal terror, or simply with the crowing of the
black cock.

The second type of story deals with the adventures of a girl sent by
her wicked stepmother to a mill during the dangerous Twelve Days,
nominally to get some corn ground, but really in the hope that she
will fall a prey to the Callicantzari. Having arrived at the mill the
girl calls in vain to the miller to come and help unload her mule, and
entering in search of him finds him bound to his chair or dead with
fright and the Callicantzari standing about him. They at once seize the
girl, and begin to quarrel which shall have her for his own. But the
girl keeps her wits, and says that she will be the wife of the one who
brings her the best bridal array. So they disperse in search of fine
raiment and jewels. Meanwhile she sets to work to grind the corn, and
each time a Callicantzaros returns with presents, she sends him on a
fresh errand for something more. Finally the corn is all ground, and
she quickly loads the mule with two sacks, one on either side, clothes
herself in the gold and jewels which the Callicantzari have brought,
mounts the mule and lies flat on the saddle covered over with a sack,
and eluding the Callicantzari who pursue her, like the muleteer in the
previous story, reaches home in safety.

The wicked stepmother seeing that her plans have miscarried and that
her stepdaughter is now rich while her own daughter is poor, determines
to send the latter the next evening to the mill. She too finds the
mill occupied by the Callicantzari, but not being so shrewd as her
half-sister either falls a victim to the lust of the monsters, or is
killed and eaten by them, or, in one version[534], is stripped of her
own clothes, dressed in the skin of her mule which the Callicantzari
have killed and flayed, and sent home with a necklace of the mule’s
entrails about her neck.

The third type of story, one which is known all over Greece, introduces
us to the domestic circle of a Callicantzaros. A midwife is roused
one night during the Twelve Days by a furious rapping at her door,
and, imagining that the call is urgent, slips on her clothes in haste
without enquiring who it is that needs her services, and stepping out
of her door finds herself face to face either with an unmistakeable
Callicantzaros who seizes her and carries her off, or else with a man
unknown to her who subsequently proves to be a Callicantzaros[535].
On their way to his home he bids her see to it that the child with
which his wife is about to present him be male; in that case he will
reward her handsomely; but if a female child be born, he will devour
the midwife. Arrived at the cave or house where the Callicantzaros
dwells, the midwife goes about her task, and the Callicantzaros’
wife is soon delivered of a child; but to the midwife’s horror it is
female. Her wits however do not desert her, and she quickly devises a
scheme for her escape. Taking a candle, she warms it and fashions from
the wax a model of the male organs and fastens it to the child. Then
calling the Callicantzaros, she tells him that a fine male child is
born and holds up the infant for him to see. Thereat he is content and
bids her swaddle it. This done, she craves leave to go home, and the
Callicantzaros, true to his word, rewards her with a sack of gold and
lets her go.

The conclusion of the story varies. In some versions, the fraud is
discovered before the midwife reaches her home, the Callicantzaros
curses the gold which he has given her, and when she opens her sack she
finds nothing but ashes. In others, she reaches home in safety with
the gold and by magic means breaks the power of the Callicantzaros
over his gift; and when he arrives at her door in hot pursuit, she has
already taken all precautions against his entrance and lies secure and
silent within.

The wife of the Callicantzaros here mentioned is in some stories
pictured as being of the same monstrous species as himself, in others
as an ordinary woman whom he has seized and carried off. But, apart
from these stories in which she is a necessary _persona dramatis_,
she has no hold upon the popular imagination. A feminine word,
καλλικαντζαρίνα or καλλικαντζαροῦ, has been formed in this case just
as the word νεραΐδης[536] has been formed as masculine of Nereid
(νεράϊδα), and female Callicantzari are as rare and local as male
Nereids. Their existence is assumed only as complementary to that of
their mates.

Security from the Callicantzari is sought by many methods, some of
them Christian in character, others magical or pagan. Foremost among
Christian precautions is the custom of marking a cross in black upon
the house-door on Christmas Eve; and the same emblem is sometimes
painted upon the various jars and vessels in which food is kept to
ensure them against befouling by the Callicantzari, and even upon the
forehead of infants, especially if they are unbaptised, to prevent them
from being stolen or strangled[537] by the monsters. If in spite of
these precautions the inmates of any house are troubled by them, the
burning of incense is accounted an effectual safeguard. For out-door
use, if a man is unfortunate enough to encounter Callicantzari, an
invocation of the Trinity or the recitation of three Paternosters is
recommended.

But precautions of a more pagan character are often preferred to these
or combined with them. Ordinary prudence demands that the fire be kept
burning through all the Twelve Days, to prevent the Callicantzari
entering by the chimney, and the usual custom is to set one huge
log on end up the chimney, to go on burning for the whole period.
In addition to this a fire is sometimes kept burning at night close
by the house-door. Certain herbs also, such as ground-thistle[538],
hyssop, and asparagus[539], may be suspended at the door or the
chimney-place, as magical charms. If even then there is reason to
suspect that Callicantzari are prowling round the house, the golden
rule is to observe strict silence and, above all, not to answer any
question asked from without the door; for it is commonly believed that
the Callicantzari, like the Nereids, can deprive of speech any who
have once talked with them. At the same time it is wise to make up the
fire, throwing on either something which will crackle like salt or
heather[540], or something which will smell strong, such as a bit of
leather, an old shoe, wild-cherry wood[541], or ground-thistle; for
the stench of these is as unbearable to the Callicantzari as that of
incense.

Such at any rate is the current explanation of the purpose of these
malodorous combustibles; but in view of the notorious gullibility of
the Callicantzari I am tempted to surmise that both the crackling and
the smell were originally intended to pacify them for a while with
the delusive hope that a share of the Christmas pork, their favourite
food, was being prepared for them. For certainly even now propitiatory
presents to the Callicantzari are not unknown. At Portariá and other
villages of Mount Pelion it is the custom to hang a rib or other bone
from the pork inside the chimney ‘for the Callicantzari,’ but whether
as a means of appeasement or of aversion the people seem no longer to
know: in Samos however the first sweetmeats made at the New Year are
placed in the chimney avowedly as food for the Callicantzari[542], and
in Cyprus waffles and sausages are put in the same place as a farewell
feast to them on the Eve of Epiphany[543]. Moreover in earlier times
the custom of appeasing them with food was undoubtedly more widespread;
for in places where, so far as I know, the custom itself no longer
exists, a few lines supposed to be sung by the Callicantzari on the
eve of their departure are still remembered, in which they ask for ‘a
little bit of sausage, a morsel of waffle, that the Callicantzari may
eat and depart to their own place[544].’

But propitiation of the Callicantzari, in spite of this evidence of
offerings made to them, is certainly not now so much in vogue as
precautions against them; and it is perhaps simpler to suppose that
the choice of crackling or odorous fuel was originally prompted by the
intention of conveying to the Callicantzari a plain warning that the
fire within the house was burning briskly; for apart from the Christian
means of defence--crosses, incense, invocations and the general
purification on the morning of Epiphany--it may be said that the one
thing which they really fear is fire. Everywhere it is held that so
long as a good fire is kept burning on the hearth the Callicantzari
cannot gain access to the house by their favourite entrance; and that
the utmost they will venture is to vent their urine down the chimney
in the hope of extinguishing the fire. For this reason the wood-ashes
from the hearth, which are generally stored up and used in the washing
of clothes, are during the Twelve Days left untouched, and after the
purification at Epiphany are carried out of the house; but in some
districts[545], though the ashes are not thought suitable for ordinary
use, they are not thrown away as worthless impurities, but, owing I
suppose to their contact with supernatural beings, are held to be
endowed with magically fertilising properties and are sprinkled over
the very same fields and gardens which the priests have sprinkled with
holy water. Again there are not a few stories current[546] in which
a Callicantzaros, attracted to some house at Christmas-tide by the
smell of roasting pork, has been put to rout by having the hot joint
or the spit on which it was turning thrust in his face. In one version
also of the song which the Callicantzari are supposed to sing as they
depart, ‘the pot-bellied priest with censer and sprinkling-vessel’ is
accompanied by his wife carrying hot water to scald them[547]. In other
stories again the rescue of a man from the clutches of Callicantzari is
effected by his neighbours with fire-brands as their only weapons; and
where such help cannot be obtained, a man may sometimes free himself
merely by ejaculating ξύλα, κούτσουρα, δαυλιὰ καμμένα, ‘sticks, logs,
and brands ablaze!’ for the very thought of fire will sometimes scare
the monsters away.

Other safeguards are also mentioned; you are recommended for instance
to keep a black cock in the house, or you may render the Callicantzaros
harmless by binding him with a red thread or a straw rope[548]; but the
latter method would in most cases be like putting salt on a bird’s tail.

Such, on a general view, are the monsters whose origin I now propose
to examine; and the first step in the investigation must be to
account for the extraordinary variations in shape exhibited by the
Callicantzari in different districts.

I have already observed that the Callicantzari are sometimes conceived
to be of ordinary human form, but that more commonly there is an
admixture of something beast-like. Among the animals which are
laid under contribution, first comes the he-goat, from which the
Callicantzari borrow ears, horns, and legs. Almost equally common is
a presentment of Callicantzari with the ears and the legs of an ass
combined with a body in other respects human; or again the head of an
ass, according to Pouqueville[549], may be combined with the body and
legs of a man. In other districts again the wolf has once been a factor
in the conception of Callicantzari. Thus in Messenia, in Cynouria
(a district in the east of Laconia), and in parts of Crete[550] the
Callicantzari are called also Λυκοκάντζαροι, in which the first half of
the compound name is undoubtedly λύκος, ‘wolf.’ Similarly in some parts
of Macedonia Callicantzari are often called simply ‘wolves’ (λύκοι),
and both names are also applied metaphorically to any particularly
ill-favoured man[551]. Resemblances to apes are also mentioned,
particularly in the long, lean, hairy arms of the Callicantzari;
and Pouqueville speaks also of their monkey-like tails[552]. Next
from Phoeniciá in Epirus comes the suggestion that Callicantzari may
resemble squirrels; for there they have the two by-names σκιορίσματα
and καψιούρηδες[553], in which it is not hard to recognise the two
ancient Greek names for the squirrel, σκίουρος and καμψίουρος.
Concerning the local character of these I have no information; but
it is fairly safe to surmise that they possess the power, commonly
ascribed to the smaller sort of Callicantzari, of climbing with great
dexterity the walls and roofs of houses in order to gain access by the
chimney. Finally in Myconos, as noted above, the Callicantzari are
described as ‘savage four-footed things’--a description which need
not exclude some human attributes any more than it does in the savage
four-footed Centaurs of ancient art, but implies it would seem at
least a predominance of the bestial over the human element.

What then is the explanation of these wide divergences of type?
The answer is really very simple and final. The Callicantzari were
originally believed to possess the power, which many supernatural
beings share, of transforming themselves at their pleasure into
any shape. The shapes most commonly assumed differed in different
districts, and gradually, as the belief in the metamorphosis of
Callicantzari here, there, and almost everywhere was forgotten, what
had once been the commonest form locally assumed by Callicantzari
became in the several districts their fixed and only form.

The correctness of this explanation was first proved to me by
information obtained from the best source for all manner of stories
and traditions about the Callicantzari, the villages on Mount Pelion.
There I was definitely told that the Callicantzari are believed to
have the power of assuming any monstrous shape which they choose;
and the accuracy of this statement is, I find, now confirmed by
information obtained independently by Prof. Polites[554] from one of
these same villages, Portariá; he adds that there the shapes most
frequently affected by Callicantzari are those of women, bearded men,
and he-goats. Further evidence of the same belief existing also in
Cyprus is adduced by the same writer. ‘The Planetari (πλανήταροι),’ so
runs the popular tradition which he quotes from a work which I have
been unable to consult, ‘who are also called in some parts of Cyprus
Callicantzari, come to the earth at Christmas and remain all the Twelve
Days. They are seen by persons who are ἀλαφροστοίχει̯ωτοι[555] (i.e.,
to give the nearest equivalent, ‘fey’). Sometimes they appear as dogs,
sometimes as hares, sometimes as donkeys or as camels, and often as
bobbins. Men who are ‘fey’ stumble over them, and stoop down to pick
them up, when suddenly the bobbin rolls along of its own accord and
escapes them. Further on it turns into a donkey or camel and goes on
its way. The man is deceived (by its appearance) and mounts it, and
the donkey grows as tall as a mountain and throws the man down from a
great height[556], and he returns home half-dead, and if he does not
die outright, he will be an invalid all his life[557].’

Linguistic evidence is also forthcoming that the same belief in the
metamorphosis of these monsters was once held both in Epirus and in
Samos. The by-name σκιορίσματα, recorded from Phoeniciá, proves more
than the squirrel-form of Callicantzari; it implies that that shape
is not natural but assumed. From the ancient word σκίουρος, comes
by natural formation an hypothetical verb σκιουρίζω, ‘I become a
squirrel,’ and thence the existing substantive σκιούρισμα or σκιόρισμα
(for this difference in vocalisation is negligible in modern Greek)
meaning ‘that which has turned into a squirrel.’ Similarly in Samos the
by-name κακανθρωπίσματα means ‘those that have turned into evil men.’
Whether the belief implied by these names is still alive in Epirus,
I do not know; in Samos it has apparently died out, for the word
κακανθρωπίσματα is popularly there interpreted to mean ‘those who do
evil to men[558]’--a meaning which the formation really precludes.

Since then the belief that Callicantzari possess the power of
metamorphosis either obtains now or has once obtained in places as far
removed from one another as Phoeniciá in Epirus, Mount Pelion, Samos,
and Cyprus, it is reasonable to conclude that this quality was in
earlier times universally attributed to them, and therewith the whole
problem of their multifarious presentments in different districts is at
once solved.

The next question which arises is this; if the various forms in
which the Callicantzari are locally represented are, so to speak, so
many disguises assumed by them at their own will, what is the normal
form of the Callicantzaros when he is not exercising his power of
self-transformation? On reviewing the various shapes assumed, one fact
stands out clearly; it is the animal attributes of the Callicantzari
which are variable, while the human element in their composition
(with a possible exception in the case of the ‘savage quadrupeds’
of Myconos) is constant. But the variation of form results, as has
been shown, from the power of transformation. Therefore the animal
characteristics, which are variable, are the characteristics assumed
at pleasure by the Callicantzari, and the constant or human element
in their composition indicates their normal form. In other words, the
Callicantzaros in his original and natural shape was anthropomorphic,
as indeed he is sometimes still represented to be.

And here too, while the various types of Callicantzari are still before
us, it is worth while to notice, at the cost of a short digression,
a curious principle which seems to govern the representation of
Callicantzari in those districts in which the belief in their power
of metamorphosis has been lost. On Mount Pelion and in Cyprus the
shapes which the Callicantzari are said to assume at will are those of
known and familiar objects--in the former place of women, bearded men,
and he-goats, in the latter of dogs, hares, donkeys, and camels--but
always complete and single shapes whether of man or beast; on the other
hand in the large majority of places in which the remembrance of this
power of transformation is lost, the Callicantzari are represented in
fanciful and abnormal shapes--hybrids as it were between men and such
animals as goat, ass, or ape. What appears to have happened in these
cases is that, as the belief in the metamorphosis of Callicantzari
was lost from the local folklore, a sort of compensation was made by
depicting them arrested in the process of transformation, arrested
halfway in the transition from man to beast. Now there are very few
parts of Greece in which this change in the superstition has not taken
place; and each island of the Greek seas, each district of the Greek
mainland--I had almost said each village, for the folklore like the
dialect of two villages no more than an hour’s journey apart may differ
widely--may be fairly considered to furnish separate instances on which
a general principle can be founded. The law then which seems to me to
have governed the evolution of Greek folklore is this, that a being of
some single, normal, and known shape who has originally been believed
capable of transforming himself into one or more other single, normal,
and known shapes, comes to be represented, when the belief in his power
of transformation dies out, as a being of composite, abnormal, and
fantastic shape, combining incongruous features of the several single,
normal, and known shapes.

How wide may be the application of this principle, I cannot pretend
to determine; but obviously it may supply the solution of certain
puzzles in ancient Greek mythology. The goddess Athene, to take
but one instance, is in Homer regularly described as γλαυκῶπις, an
epithet which, though interpreted by ancient artists in the sense of
‘blue-eyed’ or ‘gray-eyed,’ seems, in view of Athene’s connexion with
the owl, to have meant originally ‘owl-faced’; for the sake of argument
at any rate, without entering into the controversy on the subject, let
me assume this; let it be granted that the goddess was once depicted as
a maiden with an owl’s face. How is this hybrid form to be explained?
If our principle holds here, the explanation is that in a still earlier
stage of Greek mythology the goddess Athene was wont to transform
herself into an owl and so manifest herself to her worshippers, just as
in early Christian tradition it is recorded that once ‘the Holy Ghost
descended in a bodily shape like a dove[559].’

But this digression is long enough. Later in this chapter I shall have
occasion to return to the principle which has been formulated. At
present the Callicantzari are calling.

Thus far our investigation has shown us that the Callicantzari were
originally anthropomorphic, possessing indeed and exercising the power
of transmutation into beast-form, but in their natural and normal form
completely human in appearance. What therefore remains to be determined
is whether these beings were anthropomorphic demons or simply men.

On this point there is a direct conflict of evidence at the present
day. The very common tradition that the Callicantzari come from the
lower world at Christmas and are driven back there by the purification
at Epiphany; the fact that they are often mentioned under the vague
names παγανά and ξωτικά which have already been discussed[560], and
that their leader is sometimes called ὁ κουτσοδαίμονας, ‘the halting
demon’; the belief that they are fond of dancing with the Nereids,
and sometimes exercise also a power, proper to the Nereids, of taking
away the speech of those who speak in their presence; these and other
such considerations might be thought abundantly to prove that the
Callicantzari were a species of demon.

But on the other hand there is equally abundant evidence of the
belief that Callicantzari are men who are seized with a kind of
bestial madness which often effects a beast-like alteration in their
appearance. This madness is not chronic, but recurrent with each
returning Christmas, and the victim of it displays for the time being
all the savage and lustful passions of a wild animal. The mountaineers
of South Euboea for example have acquired the reputation of being
Callicantzari and are much feared by the dwellers on the coast.

A remarkable feature in this form of the superstition is the idea that
the madness is congenital. Children born on Christmas-day, or according
to some accounts on any day between Christmas and Epiphany, are deemed
likely to become Callicantzari. This, it is naively said, is the due
punishment for the sin of a mother who has presumed to conceive and to
bring forth at seasons sacred to the Mother of God; whence also the
children are called ἑορτοπιάσματα or ‘feast-stricken.’ In Chios, in the
seventeenth century, this superstition was so strong that extraordinary
methods of barbarism were adopted to render such children harmless.
They were taken, says Leo Allatius[561], to a fire which had been
lighted in the market-place, and there the soles of their feet were
exposed to the heat until the nails were singed and the danger of their
attacks obviated. A modern and modified form of this treatment is to
place the child in an oven and to light a fire outside to frighten
it, and then to ask the question, ‘Bread or meat?’ If the child says
‘bread,’ all is well; but if he says ‘meat,’ he is believed to be
possessed by a savage craving for human flesh, and the treatment is
continued till he answers ‘bread[562].’

These infant Callicantzari are particularly prone, it is said, to
attack and kill their own brothers and sisters. Hence comes the by-name
by which they are sometimes known, ἀδερφοφᾶδες, ‘brother-eaters,’ as
also, according to Polites’ interpretation, the name κάηδες, which
is an equivalent for Callicantzari in several islands of the Aegean
Sea. This word Polites holds to be the plural of the name Cain, and to
denote ‘brother-slayers’; but inasmuch as a longer form καϊμπίλιδες
appears side by side with κάηδες in Carpathos[563], I hesitate to
accept this interpretation of the one while the other remains to me
wholly unintelligible. At any rate to the people themselves the word
has ceased to convey any idea of murderous propensities; for in the
island of Syme, where the name is in use, the beings denoted by it are
held to be harmless[564].

The issue before us is well summarised in two popular traditions
which Polites adduces from Oenoë and from Tenos, and which are in
clear mutual contradiction. The tradition of Oenoë begins thus:
‘“Leave-us-good-sirs” (Ἀς-ἐμᾶς-καλοί) is the name which we give them
(the Callicantzari), though they are really evil demons (ξωτικά).’ The
tradition of Tenos opens with the words: ‘The Callicantzari are not
demons (ζωτ’κά)[565]; they are men; as New Year’s Day approaches, they
are stricken with a fit of madness and leave their houses and wander
to and fro.’ How are we to decide which of these two traditions is the
older?

The evidence in favour of either is at the present day abundant;
the two chief authorities on the subject, Schmidt and Polites, both
acknowledge this; and, in my own experience, I should have difficulty
in saying which view of the Callicantzari I have the more frequently
heard expressed. On the mainland they are most commonly demons; in the
islands of the Aegean, more usually human. But in a matter of this kind
it would be of no value to count heads; even if the whole population of
Greece could be polled on the question, the view of the majority would
have no more value than that of the minority. The issue must be decided
on other than numerical grounds.

And clearly the first consideration which suggests itself must be the
nature of the earliest evidence on the subject. The earliest authority
then is Leo Allatius[566], and his statement is in brief as follows.
Children born in the octave of Christmas are seized with a kind of
madness; they rage to and fro with incredible swiftness; and their
nails grow sharp like talons. To any wayfarer whom they meet they put
the question ‘Tow or lead?’ If he answer ‘tow,’ he escapes unhurt; if
he answer ‘lead,’ they crush him with all their power and leave him
half-dead, lacerated by their talons.

Thus far the testimony of Leo Allatius distinctly favours the belief
that Callicantzari are human and not demoniacal in origin; but at the
same time it must be admitted that his statement was probably founded
upon the particular traditions of his native island only and carries
therefore less weight. The barbarous custom however which he next
proceeds to describe is of some importance. He states that children
born during the dangerous period between Christmas and New Year had
the soles of their feet scorched until the nails were singed and so
they could not become Callicantzari. Now there is a small but obvious
inconsistency in this statement. Persons who scratch one another use,
presumably, not their toe-nails but their finger-nails; and animals
likewise employ the fore feet and not the hind feet. To scorch the feet
therefore, and particularly the soles of the feet, is not a logical
method of preventing the growth of talons. But on the other hand the
treatment adopted might well be supposed to prevent the development
of hoofs, such as in many parts of Greece the Callicantzari are still
believed to have. In other words, the custom which Leo Allatius
describes was not properly understood in his time. But a custom
which has ceased to be properly understood and has had an inaccurate
interpretation set upon it is necessarily of considerable age. Already
therefore in the first half of the seventeenth century the custom which
Allatius describes was of some antiquity; and the belief that children
turn into Callicantzari, which is implied alike by the original meaning
and by the later interpretation of the custom, was equally ancient. In
Chios then at any rate the human origin of Callicantzari is a very old
article of faith.

But more important for our consideration is the answer to be made to
the following question; is it more probable, that Callicantzari, if
they were originally demons, should have come in the belief of many
people to be men, or that, being originally men, they should have
assumed in the belief of many people the rank of demons? Here, if I may
trust the analogy of other instances in Greek folklore, my answer is
decided. I know of no case in which a demon has lost status and been
reduced to human rank; but I can name three several cases in which
beings originally human have been elevated to the standing of demons.
The human maiden Gello was the prototype of the class of female demons
now known as Gelloudes. Striges (στρίγγλαις) are properly old women
who by magical means can transform themselves into birds, but they too
both in mediaeval and in modern times are frequently confused with
demons. ‘Arabs’ (Ἀράπηδες), as the name itself implies, were originally
nothing but men of colour, but they now form, as will be shown in
the next section, a recognised class of _genii_. And if we turn from
modern Greek folklore to ancient Greek religion, there also we find the
tendency in the same direction. There men in plenty are elevated to the
rank of hero, demon, or god, but the degradation of a demon to human
rank is a thing unknown. In view of this strongly marked principle of
Greek superstition or religion, it is impossible to come to any other
conclusion than that the Callicantzari were originally not demons but
men--men who either voluntarily or under the compulsion of a kind of
madness chose or were forced to assume the shape and the character of
beasts.

Having thus disposed of the problem presented by the various types
of Callicantzari, we must next investigate the origin of the name
itself. This investigation too is not a little complicated by the
fact that the dialectic varieties of the name are fully as manifold
and divergent as the various shapes which the monsters are locally
believed to assume. There can be few words in the Greek language which
better illustrate the difference in speech between one district and
another. The most general form of the word, and one which is either
used side by side with other dialectic forms or at least is understood
in almost every district, is the form which I have used throughout this
chapter καλλικάντζαρος or, to transliterate it, Callicantzaros; but in
reviewing all the dialectic varieties of the word, I find that there
are only two out of the fourteen letters composing this word, which do
not, in one dialect or another, suffer either modification of sound or
change of position. The consonant κ in the first syllable and the vowel
α in the third are the only constant and uniform elements common to
all dialects.

These dialectic forms demand consideration for the reason that some of
the derivations proposed take as their starting-point not the common
form καλλικάντζαρος but one of the rarer by-forms--a method which is
evidently open to objection when it is seen, as the accompanying table
of forms will show, that καλλικάντζαρος, besides being the common
and normal form, is also the centre from which all the dialectic
varieties radiate in different directions. In compiling my list of
forms, however, I may abbreviate it by the omission of those which are
a matter of calligraphic rather than of phonetic distinction. Thus
the first two syllables of καλλικάντζαρος are often written καλι- or
καλη-, but since ι and η represent exactly the same sound and λλ is
very seldom distinguished from λ, I have uniformly written καλλι- even
where my authority for the particular form uses some other spelling.
On the other hand, as regards the use of τζ or τσ, between which there
is a real if somewhat subtle difference in sound, I have retained the
particular form which I have found recorded.

Starting then from the normal form καλ-λι-κάν-τζα-ρος, which I thus
dismember for convenience of reference to its five syllables, I may
classify the changes which the word undergoes in various dialects as
follows:

(1) The insertion of α in the second syllable, giving λι̯α in the place
of λι.

(2) The prefixing of σ to the first syllable, giving σκαλ for καλ. With
this Bernhard Schmidt well compares the modern σκόνη for κόνις, and
σκύφτω for κύπτω.

(3) The complete suppression of the second syllable, or the retention
of the ι only as a faintly pronounced y.

(4) Combined with, and consequent upon, the suppression of the
second syllable, the change of λ to ρ in the first syllable, or the
interchange of the λ in the first syllable with the ρ in the fifth.

(5) The loss of either ν in the third syllable or τ in the fourth.

(6) The change of the α in the first syllable to ο.

(7) The change of the α in the third syllable to ε, ι, ο, or ου.
Instances of this are most frequent in combination with the changes
under (4).

(8) The interchange of the κ in the third syllable with the τζ (or τσ)
in the fourth. The νκ thus produced becomes γγ.

(9) The formation of diminutive neuter forms ending in -ι instead of
the masculine forms in -ος, with the consequent shift of accent from
the third to the fourth syllable, the -ι representing -ιον. These
neuter forms occur chiefly in the plural.

Further it may be noted that the formation of the nominative plural of
the masculine forms shows some variation; the ordinary form is in -οι
with the accent on the antepenultimate as in the nominative singular;
a second form has the same termination but with the accent shifted to
the penultimate, as commonly happens in some dialects with words of the
second declension (e.g. ἄνθρωπος with plural ἀνθρώποι) by assimilation
to the other cases of the plural; while a third form has the anomalous
termination -αῖοι (e.g. in Cephallenia, σκαλλικάντσαρος with plural
σκαλλικαντσαραῖοι).

The following genealogical table exhibits the dialectic progeny of the
normal form καλλικάντζαρος. The numeral or numerals placed against each
form refer to the classification of phonetic changes as above. Beneath
each form is noted the name of one place or district (though of course
there are usually more) in which it may be heard, or, failing the
_provenance_, the authority for its existence.

                                                                            καλλικάντζαρος
                                  (with which καλλικάντσαρος and καλλικάντσι̯αρος (Cythnos and Melos) may be considered identical)
                                                                            |
                +--------------------+--------------+--------------------+------------------+-------------------------+--------------+
                |                    |              |                    |                  |                         |              |
  καλλιακάντζαρος (1)  καλλικάτζαρος (5)  καλλικάνζαρος (5)  σκαλλικάντζαρος (2)  καλι̯κάντζαρος (3)    κολλικάντζαρος (6)   καλλιτσάγγαρος (8)
  (Πολίτης, Μελέτη,    (Cyprus)           (Cythera)          (Ionian Islands)     and καλκάντζαρος (3)  (Gortynia and        (Pyrgos in Tenos
  p. 67)                                                                 |        (Lesbos, etc.)        Cynouria, districts  and Western shores
                                                                         |                  |           of the Peloponnese)  of Black Sea)
                +---------------------+-------------------+--------------+                  |                  |                      |
                |                     |                   |                                 |           κολλικάτζαρος (6, 5)          |
  σκαλλικαντζούρια (τὰ) σκαλκαντσέρι (τὸ)          σκαλκάντζερος                            |           (Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις,         |
  (2, 7, 9) (Sciathos)  (2, 3, 7, 9)               (2, 3, 7)                                |           II. p 1245)                   |
                        (Arachova on               (Arachova on                             |                                         |
                        Parnassus)                 Parnassus)                               |                +------------------+-----+
                                                                                            |                |                  |
                                                                                            |        καλσάγγαροι         καρτσάγγαλοι (8, 4)
                                +----------------------+-------------------------+----------+        (8, 3, 5)           (Oenoë on S. shore
                                |                      |                         |                   (Tenos)             of Black Sea)
                       καρκάντσαλος (4)       καλκάντσερος (3, 7)            καρκάντζαρος (4)
                       (Stenimachos in        (Arachova on                   (Scyros)
                       Roumelia)              Parnassus)
                           |
          +----------------+----------+-------------------------+
          |                           |                         |
    καρκάντζελος (4, 7)          καρκάντσιλος (4, 7)          καρκάντζολος (4, 7)
    (Zagorion in                 (Ophis, on S. shore          (Cythnos)
    Epirus)                      of Black Sea)                  |
          |                                                  _Albanian_
    καρκαντσέλια (τὰ)                                        καρκανdσόλ-ι
    (4, 7, 9)                                                (cf. Hahn, _Alban. Stud._,
    (Portariá on                                             Vocabulary, s.v.)
    M^t Pelion)                                              and
                                                             _Turkish
                                                             karakóndjolos_

This table of dialectic forms, which was originally based mainly
upon the information of Schmidt[567] and my own observations and has
now been enlarged with the aid of Polites’ new work[568], is even so
probably far from complete; nor have I included in it, for reasons to
be stated, the following forms: καλκάνια[569] (τὰ) which is apparently
an abbreviated diminutive formed from the first two syllables of
καλκάν-τζαρος with a neuter termination, and is therefore a nickname
rather than a strict derivative: καλκαγάροι which Bent[570] represents
to be the usual form in Naxos and Paros, but I hesitate to accept
without confirmation from some other source: σκατσάντζαροι[571], a
Macedonian form, and καλκατζόνια, a diminutive form from the district
of Cynouria, both so extraordinarily corrupt that I can find no place
for them in the table: λυκοκάντζαροι, which has been thought to be
κολλικάντζαρος with the first two syllables reversed in order--a change
to which I can find no parallel--but is, as I shall show later, a
distinct and very important compound of the word κάντζαρος: and lastly
καλι̯οντζῆδες[572] which has nothing at all to do with καλλικάντζαροι
etymologically, but is an euphemistic and not particularly good pun
upon it, really meaning the ‘sailors of a galleon[573]’ (Turkish
_qālioundji_), and humorously substituted for the dreaded name of the
Callicantzari.

To conclude this compilation, it must be added that the wives of
Callicantzari are denoted by feminine forms with the termination -ίνα
or -οῦ, and their children by neuter forms ending in -άκι or -οῦδι in
place of the masculine -ος.

From a careful analysis of this material two main facts seem to emerge.
First, the form καλλικάντζαρος, the commonest in use, is also the
centre from which the other dialectic forms diverge in many directions;
and therefore if one of the rarer dialectic forms be selected as
the parent-form and the basis of any etymological explanation, the
advocate of the particular etymology not only assumes the burden of
showing how his original form came to be so generally superseded by
the form καλλικάντζαρος, but also will require many more steps in his
genealogical table of existing varieties of the word. Secondly, the
words καλλικάντζαρος and λυκοκάντζαρος (if, as I hold, they cannot
be connected through the mediation of the form κολλικάντζαρος) show
that we have to deal with a compound word of which the second half is
κάντζαρος: and corroboration of this view is afforded by the existence
of a form of the uncompounded word in the dialect of Cynouria, where
σκατζάρια[574] (τὰ)--i.e. a diminutive form of κάντζαρος with σ
prefixed and ν lost--is used side by side with the words καλλικάντζαροι
and λυκοκάντζαροι to denote the same beings.

In view of the latter inference, or perhaps even apart from it, there
is no need to delay long over a derivation propounded by a Greek
writer, Oeconomos, whose theory, that ‘callicantzaros’ is a corruption
of the Latin ‘caligatus’ or perhaps of ‘calcatura,’ suggests a vision
of a monster in hob-nailed boots which does more credit to its author’s
imagination than to his knowledge of philology.

A suggestion which deserves at any rate more serious consideration is
that of Bernhard Schmidt[575] who holds that the word is of Turkish
origin and passed first into Albanian and thence into Greek--reversing,
that is, the steps indicated in the above table. But to this there
are several objections, each weighty in itself, and cumulatively
overwhelming.

First, if the Turkish word _karakondjolos_ be the source from which the
multitude of Greek forms, including in that case λυκοκάντζαρος[576]
are derived, it ought to be shown how the Turkish word itself came to
mean anything like ‘were-wolf[577].’ It is compounded, says Schmidt, of
_kara_, ‘black,’ and _kondjolos_ which is connected with _koundjul_,
a word which means a ‘slave of the lowest kind[578].’ But before that
derivation can be accepted, it should be shown what link in thought may
exist between a slave even of the lowest and blackest variety and a
were-wolf, and also how the supposed Turkish compound came to have the
Greek termination -ος.

Secondly, the theory that the Greeks borrowed the word, and presumably
also the notion which it expressed, from the Turks contravenes
historical probability. For when did the supposed borrowing take
place? Evidently not before the Ottoman influence had made itself
thoroughly felt in Eastern Europe not only in war but in peace; for
only those peoples who are living side by side in friendly, or at
the least pacific, relations, are in a way to exchange views on the
subject of were-wolves or any other superstitions; and in the case of
the Greeks and the Turks such intercourse would certainly have been
retarded by religious as well as racial animosity. Presumably then,
even if the transference of the word from the Turkish to the Greek
language had been direct and not, as Schmidt somewhat unnecessarily
supposes, through the medium of Albanian, two or three generations
must have elapsed after the Ottoman occupation of Chios in 1566[579],
and the seventeenth century must have well begun, before the Greeks of
that island even began to adopt the new word and the new superstition
involved in it. Yet the form of the word familiar to Leo Allatius
since the beginning of that century, when he lived as a boy in Chios,
was not _karakondjolos_ or anything like it, but _callicantzaros_;
while the belief that children born in the octave of Christmas became
Callicantzari was of such antiquity in Chios that a custom founded
upon it had already come, as I have shown, to be misinterpreted.
Indeed, as the same writer tells us, the Callicantzari and their
haunts and habits were so familiar to the people of Chios that two
proverbs of the island referred to them. One, which was addressed to
persons always appearing in the same clothes--βάλλε τίποτε καινούριο
ἀπάνω σου διὰ τοὺς καλλικαντζάρους, ‘put on something new because of
the Callicantzari’--is more than a little obscure; it would seem to
imply that the clothes which were being worn would hardly be worth
the while even of the mischief-loving Callicantzari to tear; but in
any case the very existence of an obscure proverb is evidence that
the Callicantzaros and all his ways had long been a matter of common
knowledge. The second saying--ἐκατέβης ἀπὸ τὰ τριποτάματα, ‘You have
come down from the Three Streams,’ or in another version, δὲν πᾶς ’στα
τριποτάματα; ‘Why not go to the Three Streams?’--was addressed to mad
persons, because, as Allatius explains, ‘the Three Streams’ was a
wild wooded place in Chios reputed to be the haunt of Callicantzari.
Historically then the theory that the people of Chios borrowed from the
Turks the name and the conception of the Callicantzari is untenable.

Another piece of historical evidence against Schmidt’s theory is
that the Callicantzaros of the present day appears to be identical
with the ‘baboutzicarios’ whereof Michael Psellus[580] discoursed in
the eleventh century. He himself indeed, with his usual passion for
explaining away popular superstitions, affirms that ‘baboutzicarios’
is the same as ‘ephialtes,’ the demon who punishes gluttony with
nocturnal discomfort and a feeling of oppression; and in that view he
was followed by Suidas[581] and other lexicographers; but he states
two important points in the popular superstition which he combats: the
‘baboutzicarios’ appears only in the octave of Christmas; and it is at
night that he meets and terrifies men. Moreover the name itself is, I
suspect, derived from the Low-Latin _babuztus_[582] meaning ‘mad,’ and
indicates the existence then of the belief which is so largely held
to-day, that the monstrous apparitions of Christmastide are really men
smitten with a peculiar kind of madness. Thus all the information which
Psellus gives about the ‘baboutzicarios’ tallies with modern beliefs
concerning the Callicantzaros, and militates against the supposition
that the Greeks are indebted for this superstition to the Turks.

Finally there is positive evidence that the Turks borrowed the word
in question from the Greeks; for the time at which they used to fear
the advent of the _karakondjolos_--whether the superstition still
remains the same, I do not know--was fixed not by their own calendar
but by that of the Christians. An article written on the subject of the
Turkish calendar early in last century contains this statement: ‘The
Turks have received this fabulous belief from the Greeks, and they say
that this demon, whom the former call Kara Kondjolos and the latter
Cali Cangheros, exercises his sway of maleficence and mischief from
Christmas-day until that of the Epiphany[583].’ Clearly the Turks would
not have fixed the time for the appearance of the _karakondjolos_ by
the Christian festivals if they had not borrowed the whole superstition
from the Greeks; and indeed the very termination in -ος of the Turkish
form of the word betrays its Hellenic origin.

The proposed Turkish derivation of the word καλλικάντζαρος must
therefore be rejected as finally as Oeconomos’ Latin derivation, and it
remains only to deal with those which treat the word as genuinely Greek.

The first of these is that proposed by Coraës[584], who made the word
a compound of καλός and κάνθαρος. The formation, as might be expected
of so great a scholar, is irreproachable; for the phonetic change of
θ to τζ; is seen in the development of the modern word καντζόχοιρος
(a hedgehog) from the ancient ἀκανθόχοιρος. But the meaning obtained
is less satisfactory. What has a ‘good’ or ‘beautiful beetle’ to do
with a Callicantzaros such as I have described? The question remains
without an answer. And yet some of Coraës’ followers in recent times
have thought triumphantly to vindicate his view by pointing out that in
the dialect of Thessaly ‘a species of large horned beetle’ is known as
καλλικάτζαροι. Now I am aware that elsewhere in Greece stag-beetles are
called κατζαρίδες, which is undoubtedly a modern form of the ancient
κάνθαρος and illustrates once more the phonetic change involved in
Coraës’ derivation; and I can believe that the Thessalian peasantry
with a certain rustic humour sometimes call them καλλικάτζαροι instead.
But what light does this throw on the supposed development of meaning?
The view which these disciples of Coraës appear to hold, namely that
the Callicantzari, who are known and feared throughout Greek lands and
even beyond them in Turkey and in Albania, were called after an alleged
Thessalian species of Coleoptera, would be fitly matched by a theory
that the Devil was so named after a species of fish or a printer’s
assistant or a patent fire-lighter.

The same objection holds good as against Polites’ first view[585].
Taking the word λυκοκάντζαρος as his starting-point, instead of the
common and central form καλλικάντζαρος, he proposed to derive the word
from λύκος, ‘wolf,’ and κάνθαρος, ‘beetle.’ But though the resulting
hybrid might be a monster as hideous as the worst of Callicantzari,
these creatures so far as I know show no traits suggestive of
entomological parentage. But since Polites himself has long abandoned
this view, there is no need to criticize it further.

His next pronouncement on the subject[586] banished both wolf and
beetle and seemed to recognise the necessity of keeping the main form
καλλικάντζαρος to the fore. But while he naturally assumed καλός to be
the first half of the compound, he could only set down κάντζαρος as an
unknown foreign, perhaps Slavonic, word.

But in his latest publication[587] he relinquishes this position
and falls back once more on a dialectic form καλιτσάγγαρος which is
reported to be in use at the village of Pyrgos in Tenos and at some
places on the western shores of the Black Sea. This word he believes to
be a compound, of which the second half is connected with a Byzantine
word τσαγγίον, meaning a kind of boot, and the still existing, if
somewhat rare, word, τσαγγάρης, ‘a boot-maker,’ while the first half
is to be either καλός, ‘fine,’ or καλίκι, ‘a hoof[588].’ The former
alternative provides easily the form καλοτσάγγαρος or, as would be
almost more likely, καλλιτσάγγαρος, meaning ‘one who wears fine boots’;
while in the other alternative there results a supposed original
form καλικοτσάγγαρος, meaning ‘one who has hoofs instead of boots,’
whence, by suppression of the third syllable, comes the existing word
καλιτσάγγαρος, or again, by loss of the first syllable, a supposed form
λικοτσάγγαρος which developed into λυκοκάντζαρος.

On the score of formation the former alternative is unassailable; but
the latter, with its supposed loss of syllables, is more questionable.
The loss of a first syllable is common enough in modern Greek, where
it consists of a vowel only (e.g. βρίσκω[589] for εὑρίσκω, μέρα for
ἡμέρα, etc.), but the supposed loss of the syllable κα would, I think,
be hard to parallel. Again the loss of a syllable in the middle of a
word is fairly common either through the suppression of the vowel ι (or
η, which is not distinguished from ι in sound) as in καλκάντζαρος for
καλλικάντζαρος, ἔρμος for ἔρημος, etc., or else when two concurrent
syllables begin with the same consonant, as in ἀστροπελέκι, ‘a
thunderbolt,’ for ἀστραποπελέκι, but the loss of the syllable κο from
the form καλικοτσάγγαρος is a bold hypothesis.

But on the score of meaning both alternatives are alike
unconvincing. Polites indeed cites one or two popular traditions in
which the Callicantzari are represented as wearing wooden or iron
shoes--wherewith no doubt the better to kick and to trample their
victims; and such footgear might, I suppose, be described ironically as
‘nice boots.’ But to find in this occasional trait the origin of the
word Callicantzaros[590] appears to me a counsel of despair. Nor does
the other alternative commend itself to me any more. It is of course
a widely accepted belief--and one by the way which contradicts the
traditions just mentioned--that the Callicantzari have feet like those
of an ass or a goat. But in describing such a creature no one surely
would be likely to say that it had hoofs ‘instead of boots’--‘instead
of feet’ would be the natural and reasonable expression. To suppose
that the Callicantzari (or rather, to use the hypothetical form,
the καλικοτσάγγαροι) are so named because their boot-maker provides
them with hoofs instead of detachable foot-gear, is little short of
ludicrous.

But though neither of the proposed derivations will, I think, win much
acceptance, the historical evidence which Polites adduces in support of
his views forms a valuable contribution to the study of this subject.
The inferences which he draws therefrom may not be correct; but the
material which he has collected is of high interest.

Singling out of the many traditions concerning the Callicantzari the
widely, and perhaps universally, prevalent belief that their activities
are confined to the Twelve Days between Christmas and Epiphany, he
argues that if we can discover the origin of this limitation, we shall
be in a fair way to discover also whence came the conception of the
Callicantzari themselves.

Accordingly he traces the history of winter festivals in Greece,
starting from the period in which the Greeks, in deference to their
Roman masters, adopted the festivals known as the Saturnalia, the
Brumalia, and the Kalándae (for so the celebration of the Kalends of
January was called by the Greeks) in place of their own old festivals
such as the Kronia and some of the festivals of Dionysus. The change
however was more one of name than of method of observance[591]. The
pagan orgies which marked these festal days were strongly denounced
by the Fathers of the Church from the very earliest times. In the
first century of our era, Timothy, bishop of Ephesus, met with his
martyrdom in an attempt to suppress such a festival. At the end of the
fourth century S. John Chrysostom and, after him, Asterios, bishop of
Amasea, loudly inveighed against the celebration of the Kalandae. At
the end of the seventh century the sixth Oecumenical Council of the
Church promulgated a canon forbidding all these pagan winter-festivals.
But still in the twelfth century, as Balsamon testifies[592], the
old abuses continued unabated; and there are local survivals of such
festivals at the present day.

The most prominent feature of these celebrations was that men dressed
themselves up in various characters, to represent women, soldiers, or
animals, and thus disguised gave themselves up to the wildest orgies.
At Ephesus it is clear that these orgies included human sacrifice, and
that Bishop Timothy was on one occasion the victim; for we are told by
Photius that he met with his death in trying to suppress ‘the polluted
and blood-stained rites of the Greeks[593]’; and the same writer
speaks of τὸ καταγώγιον--so this particular ceremony was called--as
a ‘devilish and abominable festival[594]’ in which men ‘took delight
in unholy things as if they were pious deeds[595].’ And again another
account of the same celebration tells how men with masks on their faces
and with clubs in their hands went about ‘assaulting without restraint
free men and respectable women, perpetrating murders of no common sort
and shedding endless blood in the best parts of the city, as if they
were performing a religious duty (ὡσανεὶ ἀναγκαῖόν τι καὶ ψυχωφελὲς
πράττοντες)[596].’

At Amasea, according to Asterios, at the beginning of the fifth
century, things were not much better. The peasants, he says, who come
into the town during the festival ‘are beaten and outraged by drunken
revellers, they are robbed of anything they are carrying, they have
war waged upon them in a time of peace, they are mocked and insulted
in word and in deed[597].’ Here too the custom of dressing up was in
vogue among those who took part in the festival--women’s dress being
especially affected.

Again in the seventh century the points specially emphasized by the
canon of the Church are that ‘no man is to put on feminine dress, nor
any woman the dress proper to men, nor yet are masks, whether comic,
satyric, or tragic, to be worn’; and the penalty for disregard of this
ordinance was to be excommunication. Yet for all these fulminations the
old custom continued. The author of ‘the Martyrdom of S. Dasius[598],’
writing perhaps as late as the tenth century, speaks of the festival of
the Kronia as still observed in the old way: ‘on the Kalends of January
foolish men, following the custom of the (pagan) Greeks, though they
call themselves Christians, hold a great procession, changing their
own appearance and character, and assuming the guise of the devil;
clothed in goat-skins and with their faces disguised,’ they reject
their baptismal vows and again serve in the devil’s ranks. And still in
the twelfth century these practices obtained not only among the laity
but even among the clergy, some of whom, in the words of Balsamon[599],
‘assume various masks and dresses, and appear in the open nave of the
church, sometimes with swords girt on and in military uniform, other
times as monks or even as quadrupeds.’

Several instances of the continuance of this custom in modern times
have been collected by Polites[600] and others; the savage orgies of
old time have indeed dwindled into harmless mummery; but their most
constant feature, the wearing of strange disguises, remains unchanged;
and the occasion too is still a winter-festival, either some part
of the Twelve Days or the carnival preceding Lent. From certain
facts concerning these modern festivals it will be manifest that
some relation exists between the mummers who celebrate them and the
Callicantzari.

In Crete, where the New Year is thus celebrated, the mummers are
called καμπουχέροι, while in Achaia a fuller form of the same word,
κατσιμπουχέροι, is a by-name of the Callicantzari. At Portariá on
Mount Pelion, each night of the Twelve Days, a man is dressed up as an
‘Arab,’ wearing an old cloak and having bells affixed to his clothes.
He goes the round of the streets with a lantern; and the villagers
explicitly state that this is done γιὰ τὰ καρκαντζέλια, ‘because of
the Callicantzari,’ i.e., says Polites, as a means of getting rid of
them. At Pharsala there is a sort of play at the Epiphany, in which
the mummers represent bride, bridegroom, and ‘Arab’; the Arab tries to
carry off the bride, and the bridegroom defends her. In some parts of
Macedonia similar mumming takes place at the New Year; in Belbentós the
men who take part in it are called ‘Arabs’; at Palaeogratsana they have
the name ῥουκατζιάρια (evidently another compound of κάντζαρος, but one
which I cannot interpret); formerly also ‘at Kozane and in many other
parts of Greece,’ according to a Greek writer in the early part of the
nineteenth century, throughout the Twelve Days boys carrying bells used
to go round the houses, singing songs and having ‘one or more of their
company dressed up with masks and bells and foxes’ brushes and other
such things to give them a weird and monstrous look.’

This custom is evidently identical with one which I myself saw enacted
in Scyros at the carnival preceding Lent. The young men of the town
array themselves in huge capes made of goat-skin, reaching to the
hips or lower, and provided with holes for the arms. These capes are
sometimes made with hoods of the same material which cover the whole
head and face, small holes being cut for the eyes but none for purposes
of respiration. In other cases the cape covers the shoulders only,
leaving the head free, and the young man contents himself with the
blue and white kerchief, which is the usual head-gear in Scyros, and a
roughly made domino. A third variety of cape is provided with a hood
to cover the back of the head, while the mask for the face is made
of the skin of some small animal such as a weasel, of which the hind
legs and tail are attached to the hood, while the head and forelegs
hang down to the breast of the wearer; eye-holes are cut in these as
in the other forms of mask. These capes are girt tightly about the
waist with a stout cord or strap, from which are hung all round the
body a large number of bronze goat-bells, of the ordinary shape but
of extraordinary dimensions, some measuring as much as ten inches for
the greatest diameter. The method by which these bells are attached
to the belt is remarkable, and is designed to permit a large number of
them to be worn without being in any way muffled by contact with the
cape. Each bell is fastened to one end of a curved and springy stick of
about a foot in length, and the other end is inserted behind the belt
from above; the curve and elasticity of the stick thus cause the bell
to hang at some few inches distance from the body, free to jangle with
every motion of the dancer. Some sixty or seventy of these bells, of
various sizes, are worn by the best-equipped, and the weight of such
a number was estimated by the people of the place as approximately
a hundredweight--no easy load with which to dance over the narrow,
roughly-paved alleys of ‘steep Scyros.’ Those however who lack either
the prowess or the accoutrements to share in the glorious fatigue
do not abstain altogether from the festivities; even the small boys
beg, borrow, or steal a goat-bell and attach it to the hinder part of
their person in lieu of a tail, or, at the worst, make good the caudal
deficiency with a branch from the nearest tree.

Thus in various grades of goat-like attire the young men and boys
traverse the town, stopping here and there, where the steep and
tortuous paths offer a wider and more level space, to leap and dance,
or anon at some friendly door to imbibe spirituous encouragement to
further efforts. In the dancing itself there is nothing peculiar to
this festival; the swinging amble, which is the gait of the more
heavily equipped, is prescribed by the burden of bells and the
roughness of roads. The purpose of the leaping and dancing is solely
to evoke as much din as possible from the bells; and prodigious indeed
is the jarring and jangling in those narrow alleys when the troupe of
dancers leap together into the air, as high as their burdens allow, and
come down with one crash.

Since I first published[601] an account of these festivities in Scyros,
similar celebrations of carnival-time have been reported from other
places; at Sochos in Macedonia[602] the scene is almost identical
with that which I have described; in the district of Viza in Thrace a
primitive dramatic performance was recently observed in which the two
chief actors wore similar goat-skins, masks, and bells, and had their
hands blackened[603]; and again at Kostí in the extreme north of Thrace
there is mummery of the same kind[604].

A scene of the same sort was formerly enacted in Athens also during
the carnival, and was known by the expressive name τὰ ταράματα (i.e.
ταράγματα), ‘The Riotings.’ A man dressed up as a bear used to
rush through the streets followed by a crowd of youths howling and
clashing any noisy instruments that came to hand. That this ceremony
was originally of a religious character is shown not only by its
association with the season of Lent, but by an accessory rite performed
on the same occasion. Wooden statues, actually called ξόανα as late
as the time of the Greek War of Independence, were carried out in
procession; and the well-being of the people was believed to be so
bound up with the due performance of these rites, that even during the
Revolution, when Athens was in the hands of the Turks, a native of the
place is said to have returned from Aegina, whither he had fled for
safety, in order to play the part of the bear and to carry out the
_xoana_ for the general good[605].

The close connexion of these several modern customs, whether the
occasion of them is the Twelve Days or Carnival-time, cannot be
doubted. The variation of date is of old standing; for the canon of
the Church, on which Balsamon[606] comments, condemns certain pagan
festivals on March 1st (approximately the carnival time) along with the
_Kalandae_ and _Brumalia_; and the similarity of the dresses, masks,
bells, and other accoutrements proper to both occasions proves the
substantial identity of the festivals.

A comparison of these allied modern customs can only lead to one
conclusion. The use of the same word to denote the mummers in Crete and
the Callicantzari in Achaia; the name ῥουκατζιάρια for these mummers
at Palaeogratsana; the custom of blackening the face, which is clearly
indicated by the employment of the name ‘Arab’ in this connexion; the
monstrous and half-animal appearance produced by masks, foxes’ brushes,
goat-skins, and suchlike adornments; the attempted rape of the bride
by the ‘Arab’ in the play at Pharsala--all furnish contributory
evidence that the mummers themselves represent Callicantzari. Only at
Portariá is the significance of the custom somewhat confused; there
the ‘Arab’ in his old cloak and bells has long ceased to represent a
Callicantzaros, and has actually been provided with a lantern with
which to scare the Callicantzari away.

The mummers then represent Callicantzari; the question which remains to
be answered is whether the mumming was the cause or the effect of the
belief in Callicantzari.

Polites, in support of his theory that the name Callicantzari, in its
earliest form, meant either ‘wearers of nice boots’ or ‘possessors of
hoofs instead of boots,’ claims that the mummers first suggested to
the Greek imagination the conception of the Callicantzari (it is not
indeed anywhere mentioned in the above traditions that the feet or the
footgear of the mummers were in any way remarkable, but we may let
that pass), and that the fear which their riotous conduct inspired in
earlier times gradually elevated them in men’s minds to the rank of
demons. This, he urges, is the reason why these demons are feared only
during the Twelve Days, the period when such mumming was in vogue.

In confirmation of his view Polites cites some of the evidence
concerning the human origin of the Callicantzari, mentioning both
the fairly common belief that men turn into Callicantzari, and the
rarer traditions that a Callicantzaros resumes his human shape if a
torch be thrust in his face and that the transformation of men into
Callicantzari can be prevented by certain means. With this evidence
I have already dealt, and I agree with Polites that in it there
survives a genuine record of the human origin of the Callicantzari.
But of course on the further question, whether the particular men thus
elevated to the dignity of demons were the mummers of Christmastide, it
has no immediate bearing.

As a second piece of corroboration, he adduces another derivation
hardly more felicitous than those with which I have already dealt.
The word on which he tries his hand this time is καμπουχέροι
or κατσιμπουχέροι--the name of the mummers in Crete and of the
Callicantzari in Achaia. Here again, with a certain perversity, he
selects the worse form of the two, καμπουχέροι, which is evidently
a syncopated form of the other, and proceeds to derive it from the
Spanish _gambujo_, ‘a mask,’ leaving the subsequent development of
κατσιμπουχέροι totally inexplicable. For my own part I consider it far
more probable that the word κατσιμπουχέροι is a humorously compounded
name, of which the second half is the word μπουχαρί[607] (an Arabic
word which has passed, probably through Turkish, into Greek) meaning
‘chimney,’ and that the whole by-name has reference simply to the
common belief that Callicantzari try to extinguish the fire on the
hearth and thus to gain access to the house by the chimney. As to
the meaning of κατσι-, the first half of the compound, I can only
hazard the conjecture that it is connected with the verb κατσιάζω,
which ordinarily means to blight, to wither, to dry up, and so forth,
though its passive participle, κατσιασμένος, is said by Skarlatos[608]
to be applied to clothes which are ‘difficult to wash.’ If then the
compound κατσιμπουχέροι is a descriptive title of the Callicantzari,
meaning those who render the chimney difficult to wash, the coarse
and eminently rustic humour of the allusion to their habits needs no
further explanation; and it is the mummers of Crete who owe their name
to the Callicantzari, not _vice versa_.

While therefore I acknowledge and appreciate to the full the value of
Polites’ researches into the history of the Twelve Days, the inferences
which he draws from the material collected seem to me no more sound
than the derivations which they are designed to corroborate. My own
interpretation of the historical facts which Polites has brought
together is as follows.

The superstitions and customs connected by the modern folk with
the Twelve Days are undoubtedly an inheritance from ancestors who
celebrated the Brumalia and other pagan festivals at the same season
of the year. These ancient festivals, though Roman in name, probably
differed very little in the manner of their observance from certain
old Greek festivals, chief among which was some festival of Dionysus.
This is rendered probable both by the date of these festivals and
by the manner of their celebration. For the worship of Dionysus was
practically confined to the winter-time; at Delphi his cult superseded
that of Apollo during the three winter months[609]; and at Athens the
four festivals of Dionysus fell within about the same period--the rural
Dionysia at the end of November or beginning of December, the Lenaea
about a month later, the Anthesteria at the end of January, and the
Great Dionysia at the end of February. As for the manner of conducting
the Latin-named festivals, Asterios’ description of the Kalándae in the
fifth century plainly attests the Dionysiac character of the orgies,
and Balsamon, in the twelfth, was so convinced, from what he himself
witnessed, of their Bacchanalian origin, that he actually proposed
to derive the name _Brumalia_ from Βροῦμος[610] (by which he meant
Βρόμιος) a surname of Dionysus.

The mumming then, which is still customary in some parts of Greece
during the Twelve Days, is a survival apparently of festivals in
honour of Dionysus. Further the mummers dress themselves up to
resemble Callicantzari. But the worship of Dionysus presented a
similar scene; ‘those who made processions in honour of Dionysus,’
says Ulpian, ‘used to dress themselves up for that purpose to resemble
his companions, some in the guise of Satyrs, others as Bacchae, and
others as Sileni[611].’ The mummers therefore of the present day have,
it appears, inherited the custom of dressing up from the ancient
worshippers of Dionysus and are their modern representatives; and
from this it follows that the Callicantzari whom the modern mummers
strive to resemble are to be identified with those motley companions of
Dionysus whom his worshippers imitated of old.

The more closely these two identifications are examined, the
more certain they will appear. Take for example Müller’s general
description[612] of the celebration of Dionysus’ festivals. ‘The
swarm of subordinate beings--Satyrs, Panes, and Nymphs--by whom
Bacchus was surrounded, and through whom life seemed to pass from
the god of outward nature into vegetation and the animal world, and
branch off into a variety of beautiful or grotesque forms, were ever
present to the fancy of the Greeks; it was not necessary to depart
very widely from the ordinary course of ideas, to imagine that dances
of fair nymphs and bold satyrs, among the solitary woods and rocks,
were visible to human eyes, or even in fancy to take a part in them.
The intense desire felt by every worshipper of Bacchus to fight,
to conquer, to suffer, in common with him, made them regard these
subordinate beings as a convenient step by which they could approach
more nearly to the presence of their divinity. The custom, so prevalent
at the festivals of Bacchus, of taking the disguise of satyrs,
doubtless originated in this feeling, and not in the mere desire of
concealing excesses under the disguise of a mask; otherwise, so serious
and pathetic a spectacle as tragedy could never have originated in
the choruses of these satyrs. The desire of escaping from _self_ into
something new and strange, of living in an imaginary world, breaks
forth in a thousand instances in these festivals of Bacchus. It is
seen in the colouring the body with plaster, soot, vermilion, and
different sorts of green and red juices of plants, wearing goats’ and
deer skins round the loins, covering the face with large leaves of
different plants; and lastly in the wearing masks of wood, bark, and
other materials, and of a complete costume belonging to the character.’
To complete this description it may be added that ‘drunkenness, and the
boisterous music of flutes, cymbals and drums, were likewise common to
all Dionysiac festivals[613].’ Which of all these things is missing in
the mediaeval or modern counterpart of the festival? The blackening
of the face or the wearing of the masks, the feminine costume or
beast-like disguise, the boisterous music of bells, the rioting and
drunkenness--all are reproduced in the celebration of Kalandae and
Brumalia or in the mumming of the Twelve Days. The mummers are the
worshippers of a god, whose name however and existence they and their
forefathers have long forgotten.

And again are not the Callicantzari faithful reproductions of the
Satyrs and Sileni who ever attended Dionysus? Their semi-bestial form
with legs of goat or ass affixed to a human trunk, their grotesque
faces and goat-like ears and horns, their boisterous and mischievous
merriment, their love of wine, their passion for dancing, above all
in company with Nereids, the indecency of their actions and sometimes
of their appearance, their wantonness and lust--all these widely
acknowledged attributes of the Callicantzari proclaim them lineal
descendants of Dionysus’ motley comrades.

Such is my interpretation of the facts collected by Polites, and it
differs from that which he has advanced in the reversal of cause and
effect. Starting from the fact that dressing up in various disguises
was the chief characteristic of the Kalandae and Brumalia and is
perpetuated in the mumming of the Twelve Days, but failing to carry his
researches far enough back and so to discover the absolute identity of
these festivals with the ancient Dionysia, he holds that the generally
prevalent custom of dressing up in monstrous and horrible disguises at
a given period of the year--a custom which he leaves unexplained--was
the cause of the belief in the activity of monstrous and horrible
demons at that period; those who had once been simply human mummers
were exalted to the ranks of the supernatural, but still betrayed
their origin by the possession of a name which meant either ‘wearers
of nice boots’ or else ‘hoofed and not booted.’ In my view on the
contrary the identity of the modern mumming with the ancient Dionysia
is indisputable; and just as in ancient times the belief in the Satyrs
and Sileni was the cause of the adoption of satyr-like disguises in the
Dionysia, so in more recent times, when the Satyrs, Sileni, and others
came to be included in the more comprehensive term Callicantzari,
it was the belief in the Callicantzari which continued to cause the
wearing of similar disguises during the Twelve Days.

And this interpretation of the facts explains no less adequately than
that of Polites the reason why the activities of the Callicantzari are
limited to the Twelve Days. That which was in ancient times the special
season for the commemoration of Dionysus and his attendants has now
with the very gradual but still real decline of ancient beliefs become
the only season. This is natural and intelligible enough in itself;
but, if a parallel be required, Greek folklore can provide one. No one
will suppose that the Dryads of ancient Greece were feared during the
first six days of August only, though it is likely enough that they
had a special festival at that time; but in modern folklore these are
the only days on which, in many parts of Greece, any survival of the
Dryads’ memory can be found[614].
Moreover the identification of the Callicantzari with the Satyrs and
other kindred comrades of Dionysus elucidates a modern custom which I
noticed earlier in this chapter but did not then explain--the rare, but
known, custom of making offerings to the Callicantzari. The sweetmeats,
waffles, sausages, and even the pig’s bone which are occasionally
placed in the chimney for the Callicantzari correspond, it would seem,
with offerings formerly made to Dionysus and shared by his train of
Satyrs. Possibly even the choice of pork (usually in the shape of
sausages) or, in the more rudimentary form of the survival, of a pig’s
bone, dates from the age in which the proper victim for Dionysus at the
Anthesteria was a sow; but of course it may only have been determined
by the fact that pork is the peasant’s Christmas fare and therefore the
most ready offering at that season.

How then, it will be asked, does the conclusion here reached,
namely that the Callicantzari are, in many districts, the modern
representatives of the Satyrs and other kindred beings, square with
that other conclusion previously drawn from another set of facts,
namely that the Callicantzari were originally not demons but men who
either voluntarily or under the compulsion of a kind of madness assumed
the shape and the character of beasts? The reconciliation of these two
apparently antagonistic conclusions depends primarily on the derivation
of the name Callicantzari.

Now the conditions which in my opinion that derivation should satisfy,
have already been indicated in my discussion of dialectic forms and in
my criticism of the several derivations proposed by others; but it will
be well to summarise them here. They are four in number.

First, the derivation of this word, as of all others, must involve only
such phonetic changes as find parallels in other words of the language.

Secondly, it must recognise the commonest form καλλικάντζαρος as being
also the central and original form from which the many dialectic forms
in the above table have diverged.

Thirdly, it must explain this form as a compound of a word
κάντζαρος--presumably with καλός. For, in dialect, there exists a
word σκατζάρι, which is used as a synonym with καλλικάντζαρος and is
evidently in form a diminutive of the word κάντζαρος, and likewise
there exists another synonym λυκοκάντζαρος, which cannot be formed from
καλλικάντζαρος by an arbitrary shuffling of syllables but is a separate
compound of κάντζαρος--presumably with λύκος.

Fourthly, and consequently on the last-named condition, the word
κάντζαρος, whether alone or in composition with either καλός or λύκος,
must possess a meaning adequate to denote the monsters who have been
described.

All these conditions are satisfied in the identification of the word
κάντζαρος with the ancient word κένταυρος.

The phonetic change herein involved will, to any who are not familiar
with the pronunciation of modern Greek, appear more considerable
than it really is. In that pronunciation it must be remembered that
the accent, which indicates the syllable on which stress is laid,
is everything, and ancient quantity is nothing; and further that
the ancient diphthongs _au_ and _eu_ have come to be pronounced
respectively as _av_ or _af_ and _ev_ or _ef_. The change of sound in
this case may therefore be fairly measured by the difference between
kéndăvrŏs and kándzărŏs in British pronunciation[615]. The phonetic
modifications therefore which require notice are the substitution of α
for ε in the first syllable, the introduction of a ζ after the τ, and
the loss of the _v_-sound before the ρ.

The change from ε to α is very common in Greek, especially (by
assimilation it would seem) where the following syllable, as in the
word before us, has an α for its vowel. Thus ἀλαφρός is constantly to
be heard instead of ἐλαφρός (light), ἀργαλει̯ός for ἐργαλειός (a loom),
ματα- for μετα- in compound verbs. The insertion of ζ (or σ) after
τ is certainly a less common change, but parallels can be found for
this also. The ancient word τέττιγες (grasshoppers) appears in modern
Greek as τζίτζικες. A word of Latin origin[616] τεντόνω (I stretch)
has an equally common by-form τσιτόνω. The classical word τύκανον
(a chisel) has passed, through a diminutive form τυκάνιον, into the
modern τσουκάνι. The word κεντήματα (embroideries) has a dialectic
form κεντζήματα[617]. From the adjective μουντός (grey, brown, dusky)
are formed substantives μουντζοῦρα and μουντζαλι̯ά (a stain or daub).
The substantive κατσοῦφα (sulkiness, sullenness) is probably to be
identified with the ancient κατήφεια. The two most frequently employed
equivalents for ‘mad’ or ‘crazy’--τρελλός and ζουρλός--are probably of
kindred origin--an insertion of ζ in the former having produced first
τζερλός and thence (τ)ζουρλός. Finally there is some likelihood that
the word κάντζαρος, in a botanical sense in which it is now used, is to
be identified with the ancient plant-name κενταυρεῖον or κενταύριον.
The former indeed now denotes a kind of juniper, while the later is
of course our ‘centaury’; but this difference in meaning is not, I
think, fatal to the identification of the words. At the present day
the common-folk are extraordinarily vague in their nomenclature of
natural objects. In travelling about I made a practice of asking my
guides and others the names of flowers and birds and suchlike; and my
general experience might fairly be summed up by saying that the average
peasant divides all birds which he does not eat into two classes; the
larger ones are hawks, and the smaller are--‘little birds, God knows
what’; and an accompanying shrug of the shoulders indicates that the
man does not care; while most flowers can be called either violets or
gilly-flowers at pleasure. Even therefore when a peasant of superior
intelligence knows that κάντζαρος is now the name of a kind of juniper,
it does not follow that that name has always belonged to it, and has
not been transferred to it from some plant formerly used, let us say,
for a like purpose. In this case it is known that both juniper and some
kind of centaury were formerly used for medicating wine[618], and the
wine treated with either was prescribed as ‘good for the stomach[619].’
Hence a confusion of the two plants is intelligible enough among a
peasantry not distinguished by a love of botanical accuracy. But
I place no reliance upon this possible identification; the cases
previously cited furnish sufficient analogies.

Further it may be noted that in the first two examples of this
insertion of ζ or σ a certain change in the consonants of the next
syllable accompanies it. The γ in τέττιγες becomes κ, the ντ in τεντόνω
is reduced to τ. In the same way, it seems, when ζ was inserted after
the τ of κένταυρος, the sound of _vr_ was reduced to _r_ only, though
certainly the loss of the _v_-sound might have occurred, apart from any
such predisposing modification, as in the common word ξέρω (I know) for
ἠξεύρω.

Since then the etymological conditions of the problem are satisfied by
the identification of the word κάντζαρος with the ancient κένταυρος,
it remains only to show that the name of ‘Centaurs’ fitly belongs to
the monsters whom I have described; and my contention will be that the
simple word κάντζαρος, ‘Centaur,’ surviving now only in the dialectic
diminutive form σκατζάρι, adequately expresses every sort and condition
of Callicantzaros that has been depicted; that καλλικάντζαρος, the
general word, of which so many dialectic varieties occur, being
simply an euphemistic compound of κάντζαρος with καλός such as we
have previously seen in the title καλλικυρᾶδες given to the Nereids,
expresses precisely the same meaning as the simple word κάντζαρος,
‘Centaur’; and that λυκοκάντζαρος originally denoted one species only
of the genus Centaur, namely a Callicantzaros whose animal traits were
those of a wolf.

What then did the ancients mean by the word ‘centaur’?

The mention of the name is apt to carry away our minds to famous frieze
or pediment, where in one splendidly impossible creation of art the
excellences of man, his head and his hands, are wed with the horse’s
strength and speed. This was the species of Centaur which the great
sculptors and painters in the best period of Greek Art chose to depict,
and these among educated men became the Centaurs _par excellence_. Yet
even so it was not forgotten that they formed only one species, and
were strictly to be called ἱπποκένταυροι, ‘horse-centaurs.’ Moreover
two other species of Centaur are named in the ancient language,
ἰχθυοκένταυροι or fish-centaurs, and ὀνοκένταυροι or ass-centaurs. Of
the former nothing seems to be known beyond the mere name, but this
matters little inasmuch as they can assuredly have contributed nothing
to the popular conception of the wholly terrestrial Callicantzari. The
ass-centaurs will prove of more interest.

But the list of ancient species of Centaur does not really stop here.
No other compounds of the word Centaur may exist, but none the less
there were other Centaurs--other creatures, that is, of mixed human
and animal form. Chief among these were the Satyrs, who as pourtrayed
by early Greek art might equally well have been called ‘hippocentaurs,’
and in the presentations of Greco-Roman art deserved the name, if I
may coin it, of ‘tragocentaurs.’ And the Greeks themselves recognised
this fact. ‘The evidence of the coins of Macedonia,’ says Miss Jane
Harrison[620], ‘is instructive. On the coins of Orreskii, a centaur, a
horse-man, bears off a woman in his arms. At Lete close at hand, with
a coinage closely resembling in style, fabric, weight the money of the
Orreskii and other Pangaean tribes, the type is the same in _content_,
though with an instructive difference of form--a naked Satyr or
Seilenos with the hooves, ears and tail of a horse seizes a woman round
the waist.... This interchange of types, Satyr and Centaur, is evidence
about which there can be no mistake. Satyr and Centaur, slightly
diverse types of the horse-man, are in essence one and the same.’
Nor was the recognition of this fact confined to Macedonia. A famous
picture by Zeuxis, representing the domestic life of Centaurs, with a
female Centaur (a creature about as rare as a female Callicantzaros)
suckling her young, pourtrayed her in most respects, apart from her
sex, conventionally, but gave her the ears of a Satyr[621]. And
reversely Nonnus ventured to describe the ‘shaggy Satyrs’ as being, ‘by
blood, of Centaur-stock[622].’ In view then of this close bond between
the two types of half-human half-animal creatures, it would be natural
that, when the specific name Satyr was lost, as it has been lost, from
the popular language, while the generic term Centaur survived in the
form Callicantzaros, the Satyrs should have been amalgamated with those
who from of old had professed and called themselves Centaurs; and with
the Satyrs, I suppose, went also the Sileni.

Thus the word Centaur, in spite of the narrowing tendencies of
Greek art which selected the hippocentaur as the ideal type, was
always comprehensive in popular use, and perhaps became even wider
in scope as time went on and the distinctive appellations of Satyrs
and suchlike were forgotten; but it is also possible that from the
very earliest times the distinction between Satyrs and Centaurs was
merely an artistic and literary convention, and that in popular speech
the name Centaur was applied to both without discrimination. But it
does not really concern us to argue at length the question whether
the common-folk in antiquity never distinguished, or, having once
distinguished, subsequently confused the Satyrs and the Centaurs.
It is just worth noticing that it was in art of the Greco-Roman
period, so far as I can discover, that horse-centaurs first began to
be represented along with Satyrs and Sileni in the _entourage_ of
Dionysus; and if this addition to the conventional treatment of such
scenes was made, as seems likely, in deference to popular beliefs,
the date by which the close association of the two classes was an
accomplished fact and confusion of them therefore likely to ensue is
approximately determined.

At some date therefore probably not later than the beginning of
our era, the generic name of Centaur comprised several species
of half-human, half-animal monsters, of whom the best known were
horse-centaurs, ass-centaurs, Satyrs, and Sileni; and each of these
species, it will be seen, has contributed something to one or other of
the many types of the modern Centaurs, the Callicantzari.

The horse-centaur, which was the favourite species among the artists of
ancient times, has curiously enough had least influence upon the modern
delineation of Callicantzari. The only attribute which they seem to
have received chiefly from this source is the rough shaggy hair with
which they are usually said to be covered; ‘shaggy’ is Homer’s epithet
for the Centaurs[623], and the hippocentaurs of later art retained the
trait; for it is specially noted by Lucian that in Zeuxis’ picture the
male hippocentaur was shaggy all over, the human part of him no less
than the equine[624].

The ass-centaur on the contrary is rarely mentioned by ancient writers,
but has contributed largely to some presentments of the Callicantzari.
Aelian mentions the name, in the feminine form ὀνοκενταύρα, but the
monster to which he applies it, although true to its name in that
the upper part of its body is human and the lower part asinine, is
not a creation of superstitious fancy, but, as is evident from other
facts which he mentions, some species of ape known to him, none too
accurately, from some traveller’s tale. The _locus classicus_ on the
subject of genuine supernatural ass-centaurs is a passage in the
Septuagint translation of Isaiah[625]: καὶ συναντήσουσιν δαιμόνια
ὀνοκενταύροις καὶ βοηθήσονται ἕτερος πρὸς τὸν ἕτερον, ἐκεῖ ἀναπαύσονται
ὀνοκένταυροι εὑρόντες αὑτοῖς ἀνάπαυσιν--‘And demons shall meet with
ass-centaurs and they shall bring help one to another; there shall
ass-centaurs find rest for themselves and be at rest.’ Here our Revised
Version runs:--“The wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the
wolves (_Heb._ ‘howling creatures’), and the satyr shall cry to his
fellow; yea, the night-monster shall settle there.” The comparison
is instructive. It is clear from the context that the Septuagint
translators were minded to give some Greek colouring to their rendering
even at the expense of strict accuracy; for in the previous verse,
where our Revised Version employs the word ‘jackals,’ the Septuagint
introduces beings whose voices are generally supposed to have been
more attractive, the Sirens. The use of the word ‘ass-centaurs’ cannot
therefore have been prompted by any pedantic notions of literal
translation. The creatures, for all the lack of other literary
warranty, must have been familiar to the popular imagination. And what
may be gleaned from the passage concerning their character? Apparently
they are the nearest Greek equivalent for ‘howling creatures’ and
for ‘night-monsters’; and such emphasis in the Greek is laid upon
the statement that they will ‘find rest for themselves and be at
rest,’ that they must surely in general have borne a character for
restlessness. These restless noisy monsters of the night, in shape
half-human and half-asinine, are clearly in character no less than in
form the prototypes of some modern Callicantzari.

Of the many traits inherited by the Callicantzari from the Satyrs
and Sileni, the usual comrades of Dionysus, I have already spoken.
So far as outward appearance is concerned, the Satyrs as they came
to be pourtrayed in the later Greek art are clearly responsible for
the goat-type so common in the description of the Callicantzari,
while a reminiscence of the Sileni may perhaps be traced in the rarer
bald-headed type. But as regards their manner of life, which as I have
shown bears many resemblances to that of the Satyrs--their boisterous
merriment and rioting, their love of wine, their violence, and their
lewdness--these traits cannot of course be referred to the Satyrs any
more than to the hippocentaurs or for that matter to the onocentaurs
who were probably no more sober or chaste than their kindred. Rather it
was the common possession of these qualities by the several types of
half-human and half-bestial monsters that allowed them to be grouped
together under the single name of Callicantzari.

Thus the conclusion drawn from an historical survey of those ancient
festivals which are now represented by the Twelve Days, namely that the
Callicantzari are the modern representatives of Dionysus’ monstrous
comrades, is both corroborated and amplified by the etymological
identification of the Callicantzari (or in the simple and unadorned
form, the σκατζάρια) with the Centaurs, of whom the Satyrs and the
Sileni are species.

The remaining modern name on which I have to touch readily explains
itself in the light of what has already been said. If the word
κάντζαρος is the modern form of κένταυρος, and if by the name ‘Centaur’
was denoted a being half-human and half-animal both in shape and
in character, then the name λυκοκάντζαρος clearly should mean a
creature half-man half-wolf, such as the ancients might have called
a lycocentaur, but did actually name λυκάνθρωπος. Lycocantzaros then
etymologically should mean the werewolf--a man transformed either by
his own power or by some external influence into a wolf.

The idea of lycanthropy has probably been familiar to the peasants of
Greece continuously from the earliest ages down to the present day,
either surviving traditionally like so many other beliefs, or possibly
stimulated by actual experiences; for lycanthropy is not a mere figment
of the imagination, but is a very real and terrible form of madness,
under the influence of which the sufferer believes himself transformed
(and by dress or lack of it tries to transfigure himself) into a wolf
or other wild animal, and in that state develops and satisfies a
craving for human flesh. Outbreaks of it were terribly frequent in the
east of Europe during the Middle Ages, especially among the Slavonic
populations; and it is not likely that Greece wholly escaped this
scourge. But whether the idea received some such impetus or no, it was
certainly known to the ancient Greeks, and is not wholly forgotten
at the present day. This was curiously betrayed by some questions put
to an American archaeologist by an Arcadian peasant. Among the items
of falsehood vended as news by the Greek press he had seen, but owing
to the would-be classical style had failed to understand, certain
allegations concerning the cannibalistic habits of Red Indians; and
the points on which he sought enlightenment were, first, whether they
ran on all fours, and, secondly, whether they went naked or wore
wolf-skins. In effect the only form of savagery familiar to his mind
was that of the werewolf.

Now here, it might be thought, is the clue by which to explain the
first conclusion which we reached, namely, that the Callicantzari
were originally men capable of transformation into beasts. The name
λυκοκάντζαρος or werewolf, it might be urged, involved the idea of such
transformation; and the idea originally associated with the one species
was extended to the whole tribe of Callicantzari. At first sight
such an explanation is attractive and appears tenable; but maturer
consideration compels me to reject it.

In the first place, although the word λυκοκάντζαρος cannot
etymologically have meant anything but werewolf when it was first
employed, at the present day in the few districts where the name may
be heard, in Cynouria, in Messenia, and, so far as I can ascertain, in
Crete, it involves no idea of the transformation of men into beasts; it
is merely a variant form for καλλικάντζαρος and in no way distinguished
from it in meaning, and the Callicantzari in those districts are demons
of definite hybrid form, not men temporarily transformed into beasts.
And conversely in the Cyclades and other places where the belief in
this transformation of men is prevalent, the compound λυκοκάντζαρος
seems to be unknown, and καλλικάντζαρος (or some dialectic form of the
same word) is in vogue. Since then in many places where the generic
name Callicantzari is alone in use, the human origin of these monsters
is maintained, while in those few districts where the specific name
Lycocantzari is also used that human origin is denied, it is hard to
believe that in this respect the surviving ideas concerning the genus
can be the outcome of obsolete ideas concerning the species.

Secondly, if for the sake of argument it be granted that the
Callicantzari had always been demons, how came the werewolf, the
λυκάνθρωπος, whose very name proved him half-human, to change that
name to λυκοκάντζαρος? How came a man who occasionally turned into
a wolf to be classified as one species in a genus of beings who _ex
hypothesi_ were not human even in origin, but demoniacal? We should
have to suppose that the peasants of that epoch in which the change
of name occurred did not distinguish between men and demons--which,
as Euclid puts it, is absurd; wherefore the supposition that the
Callicantzari had always been regarded as demons until werewolves were
admitted to their ranks cannot be maintained. Rather the point of
resemblance between the earliest Callicantzari and werewolves, which
made the amalgamation of them possible, must have been the belief that
both alike were men transformed into animals.

Since then the belief in the metamorphosis of men into Callicantzari
existed before that epoch--a quite indeterminate epoch, I am afraid--in
which the word λυκάνθρωπος fell into desuetude[626] and was replaced by
λυκοκάντζαρος, where are we to look for the origin of the idea?

Since the Callicantzari bear the name of the Centaurs, it is obvious
that the enquiry must be carried yet further back, and that the ancient
ideas concerning the Centaurs’ origin must be investigated. Pindar
touches often upon the Centaur-myths; what view did he take of the
Centaurs’ nature? Were they divine in origin or human? We shall see
that he held no settled view on the subject. Both traditions concerning
the origin of the Centaurs were familiar to him just as both traditions
still prevail in modern accounts of the Callicantzari; sometimes he
follows the one, sometimes the other. On the one hand the Centaur
Chiron is consistently described as divine. ‘Fain would I,’ says
Pindar[627], ‘that Chiron ... wide-ruling scion of Cronos the son of
Ouranos were living and not gone, and that the Beast of the wilds were
ruling o’er the glens of Pelion’; and again he names him ‘Chiron son
of Cronos[628]’ and ‘the Beast divine[629].’ In Pindar’s view Chiron,
be he Beast or God, is certainly not human; and if he is once named
by the same poet ‘the Magnesian Centaur[630],’ the epithet need only
perhaps declare his habitation. His divinity is plainly asserted, and
the legend that he resigned the divine guerdon of immortality in order
to deliver Prometheus accords with Pindar’s doctrine.

But on the other hand the story of Ixion as told by Pindar reveals
another tradition. Ixion himself was human; for his presumptuous sin of
lusting after the wife of Zeus ‘swiftly he suffered as he, mere man,
deserved, and won a misery unique[631].’ The son of Ixion therefore
by a nebulous mother could not be divine. The cloud wherewith in
his delusion he had mated ‘bare unto him, unblest of the Graces, a
monstrous son, a thing apart even as she, with no rank either among
men or where gods have their portion; him she nurtured and named
Centauros; and he in the dales of Pelion did mate with Magnesian mares,
and thence there sprang a wondrous warrior-tribe like unto both their
parents--like to their dams in their nether parts, and the upper frame
their sire’s[632].’ The first Centaur then, the founder of the race,
though only half-human in origin, was in no respect divine. How then
came Chiron, one of that race, to be divine? The two traditions are
inconsistent. Pindar as a poet was not troubled thereby; he chose now
the one, now the other, for his art to embroider. But in the science
of mythology the discrepancy of the two traditions is important. Once
more we must carry our search further back--to Hesiod and to Homer.

The former, in placing the battle of the Lapithae and the Centaurs
among the scenes wrought on the shield of Heracles[633], says never a
word to suggest that either set of combatants were other than human;
the contrast between them lies wholly in the weapons they use. The
Lapithae have their leaders enumerated, Caineus, Dryas, Pirithous,
and the rest; the Centaurs in like manner are gathered about their
Chieftains, ‘huge Petraeos and Asbolos the augur and Arctos and Oureios
and black-haired Mimas and the two sons of Peukeus, Perimedes and
Dryalos.’ The account reads like a description of a fight between two
tribes, one of them equipped with body-armour and using spears, the
other more primitive and armed only with rude wooden weapons.

To this representation of the Centaurs Homer also, in the _Iliad_,
consents; for, though he names them Pheres or ‘Beasts,’ it is quite
clear that this is the proper name of a tribe of men--men who dwelt
on Mount Pelion and were hardly less valiant than the heroes who
conquered them. ‘Never saw I,’ says Nestor, ‘nor shall see other such
men as were Pirithous and Dryas, shepherd of hosts, and Caineus and
Exadios and godlike Polyphemus and Theseus, son of Aegeus, like unto
the immortals. Mightiest in sooth were they of men upon the earth,
and against mightiest fought, even the mountain-haunting Pheres,
and fearfully they did destroy them[634].’ And again we hear how
Pirithous ‘took vengeance on the shaggy Pheres, and drave them forth
from Pelion to dwell nigh unto the Aethices[635].’ Apart from the name
‘Pheres,’ which will shortly be examined, there is nothing in these
passages any more than in that of Hesiod to suggest that the conflict
of the Lapithae and the Centaurs means anything but the destruction
or expulsion of a primitive and wild mountain-tribe by a people who,
in the wearing of body-armour, had advanced one important step in
material civilisation. Yet in some respects the tribe of Centaurs
were, according to Homer, at least the equals of their neighbours; for
Chiron, ‘the justest of the Centaurs[636],’ was the teacher both of
the greatest warrior, Achilles[637], and of the greatest physician,
Asclepios[638]. The only passage of Homer which has been held to imply
that the Centaurs were not men comes not from the _Iliad_ but from the
_Odyssey_[639]--ἐξ οὗ Κενταύροισι καὶ ἀνδράσι νεῖκος ἐτύχθη--which Miss
Harrison[640] translates ‘Thence ’gan the feud ’twixt Centaurs and
mankind,’ inferring therefrom the non-humanity of the Centaurs. It is
however legitimate to take the word ἀνδράσι in a stricter sense, and to
render the line, ‘Thence arose the feud between Centaurs and heroes,’
to wit, the heroes Pirithous, Dryas, and others; and the inference is
then impaired. But in any case the _Iliad_, the earlier authority,
consistently depicts both Chiron and the other Centaurs as human. The
tradition of a divine origin must have arisen between the date of
the _Iliad_ and the time of Pindar, and from then until now popular
opinion must have been divided on the question whether the Centaurs,
the Callicantzari, were properly men or demons. But one part of the
conclusion at which we first arrived, namely that Callicantzari were
originally men, is justified by Homer’s and Hesiod’s testimony.

What then of the other part of that conclusion? There is ancient
proof that the Callicantzari were originally men; but what witness is
there to the metamorphosis of those men into beasts? The Centaurs’
alternative name, Pheres.

An ethnological explanation of this name has recently been put forward
by Prof. Ridgeway[641]. Concluding from the evidence of the _Iliad_
that ‘the Pheres are as yet nothing more than a mountain tribe and
are not yet conceived as half-horse half-man,’ he points out, on the
authority of Pindar, that Pelion was the country of the Magnetes[642]
and that Chiron not only dwelt in a cave on Pelion, but is himself
called a Magnete[643]. ‘It is then probable,’ he continues[644], ‘that
the Centaur myth originated in the fact that the older race (the
Pelasgians) had continued to hold out in the mountains, ever the last
refuge of the remnants of conquered races. At first the tribes of
Pelion may have been friendly to the (Achaean) invader who was engaged
in subjugating other tribes with whom they had old feuds; and as the
Norman settlers in Ireland gave their sons to be fostered by the native
Irish, so the Achaean Peleus entrusted his son to the old Chiron.
Nor must it be forgotten that conquering races frequently regard the
conquered both with respect and aversion. They respect them for their
skill as wizards, because the older race are familiar with the spirits
of the land.... On the other hand, as the older race have been driven
into the most barren parts of the land, and are being continually
pressed still further back, and have their women carried off, they
naturally lose no opportunity of making reprisals on their enemies, and
sally forth from their homes in the mountains or forests to plunder
and in their turn to carry off women. The conquering race consequently
regard the aborigines with hatred, and impute to them every evil
quality, though when it is necessary to employ sorcery they will always
resort to one of the hated race.’

Then follow a series of instances from various parts of the world
which amply justify this estimate of the relations between conquerors
and conquered. But in applying the principle thus obtained to the
case of the Centaurs Prof. Ridgeway goes a little further. ‘As it is
therefore certain that aboriginal tribes who survive in mountains and
forests are considered not only possessed of skill in magic, but as
also bestial in their lusts, _and are even transformed into vipers and
wild beasts by the imagination of their enemies_, we may reasonably
infer from the Centaur myth that the ancient Pelasgian tribes of Pelion
and Ossa had been able to defy the invaders of Thessaly, and that they
had from the remotest times possessed these mountains.

‘We can now explain why they are called Pheres, Centauri and Magnetes.
Scholars are agreed in holding that Pheres (φῆρες) is only an Aeolic
form for θῆρες, “wild beasts.” Such a name is not likely to have been
assumed by the tribe itself, but is rather an opprobrious term applied
to them by their enemies. Centauri was probably the name of some
particular clan of Magnetes[645].’

Prof. Ridgeway then, as I understand, believes the Centauri to have
been named Pheres or ‘Beasts’ by their enemies because they were
bestial in character, and supports his view by the statement which I
have italicised. On this point I join issue.

First, the phrase in question is based upon one only out of the many
instances which he adduces as evidence of the relations between
invaders and aborigines--and that the most dubious, for it depends upon
a somewhat arbitrary interpretation of a passage[646] of Procopius.
‘He wrote,’ says Prof. Ridgeway[647], ‘in the sixth century of Britain
thus: “The people who in old time lived in this island of Britain built
a great wall, which cut off a considerable portion of it. On either
side of this wall the land, climate and everything are different.
For the district to the east of the wall enjoys a healthy climate,
changing with the seasons, being moderately warm in summer and cool
in winter. It is thickly inhabited by people who live in the same
way as other folk.” After enumerating its natural advantages he then
proceeds to say that “On the west of the wall everything is quite the
opposite; so that, forsooth, it is impossible for a man to live there
for half-an-hour. Vipers and snakes innumerable and every kind of wild
beast share the possession of that country between them; and what is
most marvellous, the natives say that if a man crosses the wall and
enters the district beyond it, he immediately dies, being quite unable
to withstand the pestilential climate which prevails there, and that
any beasts that wander in there straightway meet their death.”

‘There seems little doubt that the wall here meant is the Wall of
Hadrian, for the ancient geographers are confused about the orientation
of the island.

‘It is therefore probable that the vipers and wild beasts who lived
beyond the wall were nothing more than the Caledonians, nor is it
surprising to learn that a sudden death overtook either man or beast
that crossed into their territory.’

That a native British statement made in the sixth century to the effect
that the country beyond Hadrian’s wall was pestilential in climate and
infested with vipers, snakes, and wild beasts, should be considered as
even probable evidence that either the Romans or the natives of Britain
regarded the Caledonians as noxious animals, is to me surprising. The
question whether the Centaurs were called Pheres because of their
bestial repute among neighbouring tribes must be decided independently
of that inference and on its own merits.

Secondly then, was there anything bestial in the conduct of the
Centaurs, as known to Homer, which could have won for them the name
of ‘Beasts’? All that ancient mythology tells of their conduct may be
briefly summarised; they fought with the men and carried off the women
of neighbouring tribes, and occasionally drank wine to excess. Were
the Achaeans then such ardent abstainers that they dubbed those who
indulged too freely in intoxicants ‘Beasts’? Did the invaders of Greece
and the assailants of Troy hold fighting so reprehensible? Or was it
the Centaurs’ practice of carrying off the women of their enemies
which convicted them of ‘bestial lust’? In all ages surely _humanum
est errare_, but in that early age the practice was not only human
but manly; the enemy’s womenfolk were among the rightful prizes of a
raid. There is nothing then in mythology to warrant the belief that the
Centaurs’ moral conduct was such as to win for them, in that age, the
opprobrious name of ‘Beasts.’

And here Art supports Mythology; for clearly the representation of the
Centaurs in semi-animal form cannot be dissociated from their name of
Pheres; the same idea must lie at the root of both. If then the name
Pheres was given to the Centaurs because of their violence or lust, the
animal portion of them in the representations of early Greek Art should
have been such as to express one or both of those qualities. But what
do we find? In discussing the development of the horse-centaur in art,
Miss Harrison[648] points out that though in horse-loving Athens, by
the middle of the fifth century B.C., the equine element predominated
in the composite being, ‘in archaic representations the reverse is the
case. The Centaurs are in art what they are in reality, _men_ with
men’s legs and feet, but they are shaggy mountain-men with some of the
qualities and habits of beasts; so to indicate this in a horse-loving
country they have the hind-quarters of a horse awkwardly tacked on
to their human bodies.’ Now the particular ‘qualities and habits of
beasts,’ if such there be, in the Centaurs must be their violence
and lust. Are these then adequately symbolised by ‘the hind-quarters
of a horse awkwardly tacked on to their human bodies’? In scenes of
conflict, in the archaic representations, it is the human part of the
Centaur which bears the brunt of the fight, and the weapon used is a
branch of a tree, the primitive human weapon; the Centaur fights as a
man fights. If he had been depicted with horns or teeth or claws as his
weapons of offence, then the animal part of him would fairly symbolise
his bestial violence; but who could discover a trace of pugnacity in
his equine loins and rump, hind legs and tail? Or again if pugnacity
is not the particular quality which caused the Centaurs to be named
‘Beasts’ and to be pourtrayed in half-animal form, is it their lewdness
which art thus endeavoured to suggest? Surely, if the early artists
had understood that the name Pheres was a contemptuous designation of
a tribe bestial in their lust, Greek taste was not so intolerant of
ithyphallic representations that they need have had recourse to so
cryptic a symbol as the hind-quarters of a horse. But if it be supposed
that, while a sense of modesty, unknown to later generations, deterred
those early artists from a more obvious method of expressing their
meaning, the idea of the Centaurs’ lewdness was really present to
their minds, then Chiron too falls under the same condemnation and is
tainted with the same vice as the rest. ‘A black-figured vase,’ says
Prof. Ridgeway, _à propos_ of the virtues, not of the vices, of this
one Centaur, ‘shows the hero (Peleus) bringing the little Achilles to
Chiron, who is depicted as a venerable old man with a white beard and
clad in a long robe from under the back of which issues the hinder
part of a diminutive pony, the equine portion being a mere adjunct to
the complete human figure[649].’ So far then as the animal part is
concerned, the representation of Chiron in early art differs no whit
from that of other Centaurs, and the quality, which is symbolised by
the equine adjunct in these, is imputed to him also. Yet to convict
of bestial lust the virtuous Chiron, the chosen teacher of great
heroes, is intolerable. In effect, no explanation of the name Pheres
in mythology and of the biform representation of the Centaurs in art
can be really satisfactory which does not reckon with Chiron, the most
famous and ‘the most just’ of the Centaurs, as well as with the rest
of the tribe. Some characteristic common to them all--and therefore
not lust or any other evil passion--must be the basis of any adequate
interpretation of the name ‘Beasts.’

If then the name Pheres cannot have been an opprobrious term applied
to the Pelasgian tribe of Centauri by the Achaean invaders in token
of their lusts or other evil qualities, can it have been a term of
respect? It may not now sound a respectful title; but in view of that
ethnological principle which Prof. Ridgeway enunciates, namely ‘that
conquering races frequently regard the conquered both with respect and
aversion,’ the enquiry is worth pursuing. The principle itself seems to
me well established; it is only his application of it in the particular
case of the Centaurs to which I have demurred.

The conquering race, he shows, are apt to respect the conquered
for their skill as wizards. This certainly holds true in the case
before us. Chiron was of high repute in the arts of magic and
prophecy. It was from him that Asclepios learned ‘to be a healer of
the many-plaguing maladies of men; and thus all that came unto him
whether plagued with self-grown sores or with limbs wounded by the
lustrous bronze or stone far-hurled, or marred by summer heat or winter
cold--these he delivered, loosing each from his several infirmity, some
with emollient spells and some by kindly potions, or else he hung their
limbs with charms, or by surgery he raised them up to health[650].’ And
it was Chiron too to whom Apollo himself resorted for counsel, and from
whom he learned the blissful destiny of the maiden Cyrene[651]. Nor was
Chiron the only exponent of such arts among the Centaurs; for Hesiod
names also Asbolos as a diviner.

If then the tribe of Centaurs enjoyed a reputation for sorcery, could
this have won for them the name of ‘Beasts’? Can it have been that,
in the exercise of their magic powers, they were believed able to
transform themselves into beasts?

Within the limits of Greek folk-lore we have already once encountered
such a belief, namely in the case of the ‘Striges,’ old witches capable
of turning themselves into birds of prey; and in the folk-lore of the
world at large the idea is extremely frequent. There is no need to
encumber this chapter with a mass of recorded instances; the verdict
of the first authority on the subject is sufficient. According to
Tylor[652], the belief ‘that certain men, by natural gift or magic art,
can turn for a time into ravening wild beasts’ is ‘a widespread belief,
extending through savage, barbaric, classic, oriental, and mediaeval
life, and surviving to this day in European superstition.’ ‘The origin
of this idea,’ he says, ‘is by no means sufficiently explained,’ but
he notes that ‘it really occurs that, in various forms of mental
disease, patients prowl shyly, long to bite and destroy mankind, and
even fancy themselves transformed into wild beasts.’ Whether such cases
of insanity are the cause or the effect of the belief, he does not
determine; but he adds, what is most important to the present issue,
that ‘professional sorcerers have taken up the idea, as they do any
morbid delusion, and pretend to turn themselves and others into beasts
by magic art’; and, later on[653], citing by way of illustration a
passage of the _Eclogues_[654], in which Vergil ‘tells of Moeris as
turning into a wolf by the use of poisonous herbs, as calling up souls
from the tombs, and as bewitching away crops,’ he points out that in
the popular opinion of Vergil’s age ‘the arts of the werewolf, the
necromancer or “medium,” and the witch, were different branches of one
craft.’

If then the Centaurs were a tribe of reputed sorcerers and also
obtained the secondary name of ‘Beasts,’ the analogy of worldwide
superstitions suggests that the link between these two facts is to be
found in their magical power of assuming the shape of beasts.

What particular beast-shape the Centaurs most often affected need not
much concern us. The analogy, on which my interpretation of the name
Pheres rests, makes certainly for some shape more terrifying than that
of a horse; and the word φῆρες itself also denotes wild and savage
beasts rather than domestic animals. But the horse-centaur, though it
monopolised art, was not the only form of centaur known, nor, if we may
judge from modern descriptions of the Callicantzari, had it so firm a
hold on the popular imagination as some other types. Possibly its very
existence is due only to the aesthetic taste of a horse-loving people.
Pindar certainly knew of one Centaurus earlier in date and far more
monstrous than the horse-centaurs which artists chose to depict, and
provided a genealogy accordingly. Moreover in the passage of Hesiod
which I have quoted above and which, by its agreement with the _Iliad_
as to the human character of the Centaurs, is proved to embody an
early tradition, there is at least a suggestion of a more savage form
assumed by the Centaurs. Several of their names in that passage[655]
seem to indicate various qualities and habits which they possessed.
One is called Petraeos, because the Centaurs lived in rocky caves or
because they hurled rocks at their foes; another is Oureios, because
they were a mountain-tribe; then there are the two sons of Peukeus, so
named because the Centaurs’ weapons were pine-branches. And why is
another named Arctos? Is it not because the Centaurs assumed by sorcery
the form of bears? There is some probability then that the equine type
of Centaur, the conventional Centaur of Greek Art, was a comparatively
late development, and that the remote age which gave to the Centaurs
the name of Pheres believed rather that that tribe of sorcerers were
wont to transform themselves into the more monstrous and terrible
shapes of bears and other wild beasts.

But if the particular animal which Greek artists selected as a
component part of their Centaurs is thus of minor importance, the
fact that their Centaurs were always composite in conception, always
compounded of the human and the animal, is highly significant. In
discussing the various types of Callicantzari in various parts of
Greece, we found that, where there exists a belief in their power of
metamorphosis, they are stated to appear in single and complete shapes,
while, where the belief in their transformation is unknown, they are
represented in composite shapes; and having previously concluded that
the belief in their metamorphosis was a genuine and original factor
in the superstition, we were led to formulate the principle, that a
being of some single, normal, and known shape who has originally been
believed capable of transforming himself into one or more other single,
normal, and known shapes, comes to be represented, when the belief
in his power of transformation dies out, as a being of composite,
abnormal, and fantastic shape, combining incongruous features of the
several single, normal, and known shapes. Now the horse-centaur of
Greek Art is a being of composite, abnormal, and fantastic shape,
combining incongruous features of man and animal. If then the principle
based on facts of modern Greek folk-lore may be applied to the facts
of ancient Greek folk-lore, the horse-centaur of Greek Art replaced
a completely human Centaur capable of transforming himself into
completely animal form.

Moreover I am inclined to think that such a development was likely to
occur in the representations of art even more readily than in verbal
descriptions. For even if the artist belonged to an age which had not
yet forgotten that the Centaurs were human beings capable of turning
themselves by sorcery into beasts, how was he to distinguish the
Centaur in his picture either from an ordinary man, if the Centaur
were in his ordinary human shape, or from a real animal, if the
Centaur were in his assumed shape? He might of course have drawn an
ordinary man and have inscribed the legend, ‘This is a Centaur capable
of assuming other forms’; or he might have drawn an ordinary animal
with the explanatory note, ‘This is not really an animal but a Centaur
in disguise.’ But if such expedients did not satisfy his artistic
instincts, what was he to do? Surely his only course was to depict
the Centaur in his normal human shape, and by some animal adjunct
to indicate his powers of transformation. And that is what he did;
for in the earliest art the fore part of the Centaur is a complete
human figure, and the hind part is a somewhat disconnected equine
appendage[656].

Nor is this artistic convention without parallel in ancient Greece.
At Phigalea there was once, we are told, an ancient statue of Demeter
represented as a woman with the head and mane of a horse; and the
explanation of this equine adjunct was that she had once assumed the
form of a mare[657]. In other words, the power of transformation was
indicated in art by a composite form.

Hence indeed it is not unlikely that the very method which early
artists adopted of indicating the Centaurs’ power to assume various
single forms, being misunderstood by later generations among whom the
Centaurs’ human origin and faculty of magical transformation were
no longer predominant traditions, contributed not a little to the
conception of Centaurs in an invariable composite form; and that later
art, by blending the two incongruous elements into a more harmonious
but less significant whole, confirmed men in that misunderstanding,
until the old traditions became a piece of rare and local lore.

Thus on three separate grounds--the analogy of world-wide superstition
which attributes to sorcerers the power of assuming bestial form;
the tendency detected in modern Greek folk-lore to replace beings of
single shape, but capable of transforming themselves into other single
shapes, by creatures of composite shape; and the contrast between the
horse-centaurs of archaic art and those of the Parthenon--we are led to
the same conclusion, namely that the Centaurs were a tribe of reputed
sorcerers whose most striking manifestation of power, in the eyes of
their Achaean neighbours, was to turn themselves into wild beasts. The
name Pheres was then in truth a title of respect, a title in no way
derogatory to the virtuous Chiron, who, if he exercised his magical
powers chiefly in mercy and healing, shared doubtless with the other
Centaurs the miraculous faculty of metamorphosis.

Our first conclusion then concerning the Callicantzari, namely that
they were originally men capable of turning into beasts, was no less
correct than the second conclusion which showed them as the modern
representatives of Dionysus’ attendant Satyrs and Sileni. Where the
beliefs in their human origin and in their power of metamorphosis
still prevail, Greek tradition has preserved not only the name but the
essential character of the ancient Centaurs.

Does it seem hardly credible that popular tradition should still
faithfully record a superstition which dates from before Homer and yet
is practically ignored by Greek literature? Still if the fidelity of
the common-folk’s memory is guaranteed in many details by its agreement
with that which literature does record, it would be folly to disregard
it where literature is silent or prefers another of the still prevalent
traditions. Let us take only Apollodorus’ account[658] of the fight
of Heracles with the Centaurs and mark the several points in which it
confirms the present beliefs about the Callicantzari. The old home, he
says, of the Centaurs before they came to Malea was Pelion; Pelion is
now the place where above all others stories of the Callicantzari are
rife; and in the neighbouring island of Sciathos it is believed[659]
that they come at Christmas not from the lower world, but from the
mainland, the old country of the Magnetes; even local associations then
seem to have survived, just as in the modern stories about Demeter
from Eleusis and from Phigaleia. Heracles was entertained in the cave
of the Centaur Pholos; the Callicantzari likewise live in caves during
their sojourn on earth, and their hospitality, though never sought,
has been endured. The Centaur Pholos ate raw meat, though he provided
his guest with cooked meat; the Callicantzari also regale themselves
on uncooked food[660], toads and snakes for the most part, but in one
Messenian story also raw dogs’-flesh[661]. Heracles broached a cask of
wine, and Pholos’ brother Centaurs smelt it and swarmed to the cave on
mischief bent; the Callicantzari have the same love of wine and the
same malevolence. The first of the Centaurs to enter the cave were put
to flight by Heracles with fire-brands, and his ordinary weapon, the
bow, was not used by him save to complete the rout; fire-brands are the
right weapons with which to scare away the Callicantzari. Surely, when
such correspondences as these attest the integrity of popular tradition
for some two thousand years, there is nothing incredible in the
supposition that there had been equal integrity in popular (as opposed
to artistic and literary) traditions for another thousand years or more
before that.

Thus then it appears that in some districts of modern Greece, in which
there prevail the beliefs that the Callicantzari are, in their normal
form, human and that they are capable of transforming themselves into
beasts, popular tradition dates from the age in which the Achaean
invaders credited the Pelasgian tribe of Centauri with magical powers
and in token of one special manifestation thereof surnamed them Pheres.

In other districts, where the Callicantzari are represented as
demoniacal and not human and as monsters of mixed rather than of
variable shape, the popular memory goes back to a period somewhat less
remote, that period in which a new conception, encouraged perhaps
unwittingly by archaic art, became predominant in classical art and
literature, with the further result, we must suppose, that in the minds
of some of the common-folk too monsters of composite shape took the
place of the old human wonder-working Centaurs.

And yet again in other districts, where the Christmas mummers in
the guise of Callicantzari are the modern representatives of those
worshippers of Dionysus who dressed themselves in the guise of
Satyrs or Sileni, the traditions which survive are mainly those of
a post-classical age in which the half-human half-animal comrades
of Dionysus lost their distinctive names and were enrolled in the
Centaurs’ ranks.

Finally in the few districts where language at least testifies that
werewolves have also been numbered among the Callicantzari, popular
belief, though preserving much that is ancient, may have been modified
by a superstition, or rather by an actual form of insanity, which was
particularly prevalent in the Middle Ages.

Such have been in different districts and periods the various
developments of a superstition which originated in the reputation for
sorcery enjoyed by a Pelasgian tribe inhabiting Mount Pelion in a
prehistoric age; and the complexity of modern traditions concerning the
Callicantzari is due to the fact that they do not all date from one
epoch but comprise the whole history of the Centaurs.


§ 14. GENII.

The tale of deities is now almost told. There remain only a few
miscellaneous beings, identical or, at the least, comparable with the
creations of ancient superstition, who may be classed together under
the name of στοιχει̯ά[662] (anciently στοιχεῖα) or, to adopt the exact
Latin equivalent, _genii_.

The Greek word, which in classical times served as a fair equivalent
for any sense of our word ‘elements,’ became from Plato’s time
onward a technical term in physics for those first beginnings of the
material world which Empedocles had previously called ῥιζώματα and
other philosophers ἀρχαί. The physical elements however were commonly
supposed to be haunted each by its own peculiar spirit, and hence
among the later Platonists the term στοιχεῖα became a technicality of
demonology rather than of natural science[663]. Every component part
of the visible universe was credited with an invisible _genius_, a
spirit whose being was in some way bound up with the existence of its
abode; and the term στοιχεῖον was transferred from the material to the
spiritual.

But though the Platonists invented and introduced this new sense of
the word, its widespread acceptance was probably not their work,
but a curious accident resulting from misinterpretation of early
Christian writings. In St Paul’s Epistles[664] there occurs several
times a phrase, τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου, ‘worldly principles,’ which
was apparently a little too cultured for many of those who heard or
read it. It conveyed to their minds probably no more than ‘being
enslaved to weak and beggarly elements[665]’ conveys to the British
peasant of to-day. What more natural then than that the commentator
should accept the word in the sense given to it by the Platonists,
and that the common-folk who heard his exposition should readily
identify the στοιχεῖα whom they were bidden no longer to serve with the
lesser deities and local _genii_ to whose service they had long been
bound--to whose service moreover in spite of the supposed injunction
they have always continued faithful? The Church, they would have felt,
acknowledged the existence of these beings; ecclesiastical authority
endorsed ancestral tradition; and since such beings existed, it were
folly to ignore them; nay, since the Church declared that they were
powers of evil, it was but prudent to propitiate them, to appease their
malevolence. Thus στοιχεῖα came to be reckoned by every right-minded
peasant among his regular demoniacal _entourage_. And so they
remain--some of them hostile to man, some benevolent, but all alike
wild, uncontrollable spirits--so that St Paul’s phrase στοιχεῖα τοῦ
κόσμου even appears in one folk-song metaphorically as a description of
wild and wilful young men[666].

Thus the very origin of the term rendered it comprehensive in
meaning. Even the greater deities of ancient Greece were, in a sense,
local--the occupants of prescribed domains; Poseidon might logically
be called the _genius_ of the sea, Demeter of the corn-land; while
lesser deities were always associated with particular spots and often
unknown elsewhere. But mediaeval usage of the word στοιχεῖον and of
its derivatives tended to widen the meaning of the word yet more.
A verb στοιχειοῦν[667] was formed which properly meant to settle a
_genius_ in a particular place--either a beneficent _genius_ to act
as tutelary deity, or an evil _genius_ whose range of activity would
thus be circumscribed within known and narrower limits; but it was
used also in a larger sense to denote the exercise of any magical
powers. A corresponding adjective στοιχειωματικός[668] was applied
to anyone who had dealings with genii or familiar spirits, and more
vaguely to wizards in general. Thus the famous magician Apollonius
of Tyana is described as a ‘Pythagorean philosopher with power over
_genii_’ (φιλόσοφος Πυθαγόρειος στοιχειωματικός)[669]; and two out
of his many miracles may be taken as typical of his exercise of the
power. Once, it is recorded, he was summoned to Byzantium by the
inhabitants and there ‘he charmed (ἐστοιχείωσεν) snakes and scorpions
not to strike, mosquitoes totally to disappear, horses to be quiet
and not to be vicious either towards each other or towards man;
the river Lycus also he charmed (ἐστοιχείωσεν) not to flood and do
damage to Byzantium[670].’ In the first part of this passage the
verb is undoubtedly used in a very lax sense, for snakes, scorpions,
mosquitoes, and horses can hardly have been conceived to have their own
several _genii_ or guardian-spirits upon whom magic could be exercised;
but the charming of the river Lycus certainly suggests the restraining
of the στοιχεῖον or _genius_ of the river within settled bounds. This
stricter sense of the word however comes out more clearly in relation
to good _genii_ who were settled by magical charms in any given object
or place. Hence even the word στοιχεῖον reverted to a material sense,
and was sometimes employed to mean a ‘talisman[671]’--an object, that
is, in which resided a _genius_ capable of averting wars, pestilences,
and suchlike. _Genii_ of this kind, we are told, were settled by the
same Apollonius in the statues throughout Constantinople[672], where
the belief in their efficacy seems to have been generally accepted;
for there was to be seen there a cross in the middle of which was
‘the fortune of the city, namely a small chain having its ends locked
together and possessed of power to keep the city abounding in all
manner of goods and to give her victory ever over the nations (or
heathen), that they should have strength no more to approach and draw
nigh thereto, but should hold further aloof from her and retreat as
though they had been vanquished. And the key of the chain was buried
in the foundations of the pillars[673]’ on which the cross rested.
The locked chain was probably the magical means by which the tutelary
_genius_ of the city was kept at his post.

But these wide and vague usages of the word and its derivatives have
now for the most part disappeared. Leo Allatius[674] still used
στοιχειωματικός in the sense of ‘magician,’ but I have not found it
in modern Greek. A remnant of the verb στοιχειοῦν[675] is seen in the
past participle στοιχειωμένος, which at the present day is applied in
its true sense to objects ‘haunted by _genii_.’ And the word στοιχειά,
though locally extended in scope so as to become in effect synonymous
with δαιμόνια or ἐξωτικά[676], comprising all non-Christian deities
irrespectively of their close connexion with particular natural
phenomena, still maintains in its more strict, and I think more
frequent, usage the meaning of _genii_.

The term thus provided by the Platonists and popularised accidentally
by the Church is a convenience in the classification of demons; for the
ancient Greeks had no popular word which was exactly equivalent; they
had to choose between the vague term δαιμόνιον which implied nothing
of attachment to any place or object, and the special designation of
the particular kind of _genius_. The Latin tongue was in this respect
better supplied. It must not however be inferred that the introduction
of the useful term στοιχεῖα into the demonological nomenclature of
Greece marked any innovation in popular superstition. The Greeks no
less than the Romans had from time immemorial believed in _genii_.
That scene of the _Aeneid_[677], in which, while Aeneas is holding a
memorial feast in honour of his father, a snake appears and tastes
of the offerings and itself in turn is honoured with fresh sacrifice
as being either the genius of the place or an attendant of the hero
Anchises, is throughout Greek in tone; and the comment of Servius
thereupon, ‘There is no place without a _genius_, which usually
manifests itself in the form of a snake,’ revives a hundred memories
of sacred snakes tended in the temples or depicted on the tombs of
ancient Greece. Moreover several of the supernatural beings whom I have
already described, and whose identity with the creatures of ancient
superstition is established, are essentially _genii_. The Lamia is the
_genius_ of the darksome cave where she makes her lair; the Gorgon, of
the straits where she waylays her prey; and, most clearly of all, the
Dryads are the _genii_ of the trees which they inhabit. For the life
of each one of them is bound up with the life of the tree in which
she dwells; and still as in old time, so surely as the tree decays
away with age, her life too is done and ‘her soul leaves therewith the
light of the sun[678].’ The woodman of to-day therefore speaks with the
utmost fidelity to ancient tradition when he calls the trees where his
Nereids dwell στοιχειωμένα δέντρα, ‘trees haunted by _genii_’; such
innovation as there has been is in terminology only.

One word of caution only is required before we proceed to the
consideration of various species of _genii_ not yet described. It must
not be assumed that all _genii_, on the analogy of the tree-nymphs, die
along with the dissolution of their dwelling-places; the existence of
the _genius_ and that of the haunted object are indeed always closely
and intimately united, but not necessarily in such a manner as to
preclude the migration of the _genius_ on the dissolution of its first
abode into a second. The converse proposition however, that any object
could enjoy prolonged existence after the departure from it of the
indwelling power, may be considered improbable.

The _genii_ with whom I now propose to deal fall into five main
divisions according to their habitations. These are first buildings,
secondly water, thirdly mountains, caves, and desert places, fourthly
the air, fifthly human beings.

       *       *       *       *       *

The _genii_ of buildings are universally acknowledged in Greece. The
forms in which they appear are various; this may partly be explained by
the belief that they possess the power of assuming different shapes at
will; but it is certain also that their normal shape is in some measure
determined by the nature of the building--house, church, or bridge--of
which each is the guardian.

The _genius_ of a house appears almost always in the guise of a snake,
or, according to Leo Allatius[679], of a lizard or other reptile. It
is believed to have its permanent dwelling in the foundations, and
not infrequently some hole or crevice in a rough cottage-floor is
regarded as the entrance to its home. About such holes peasants have
been known to sprinkle bread-crumbs[680]; and I have been informed,
though I cannot vouch as an eye-witness for the statement, that on the
festival of that saint whose name the master of a house bears, he will
sometimes combine services to both his Christian and his pagan tutelary
deities, substituting wine for the water on which the oil of the sacred
lamp before the saint’s icon usually floats, and pouring a libation
of milk--for the older deities disapprove of intoxicants--about the
aperture which leads down to the subterranean home of the _genius_. If
it so happen that there is a snake in the hole and the milky deluge
compels it speedily to issue from its hiding-place, its appearance
in the house is greeted with a silent delight or with a few words of
welcome quietly spoken. For on no account must the ‘guardian of the
house,’ νοικοκύρης[681] or τόπακας[682], as it is sometimes called, be
frightened by any sound or sudden movement. Much less of course must
any physical hurt or violence be done to it; the consequences of such
action, even though it be due merely to inadvertence, are swift and
terrible; the house itself falls, or the member of the family who was
guilty of the outrage dies in the self-same way in which he slew the
snake[683].

These beliefs and customs are probably all of ancient date.
Theophrastus[684] notes how the superstitious man, if he sees a snake
in the house, sets up a shrine for it on the spot. The observation also
of such snakes was a recognised department of ‘domestic divination’
(οἰκοσκοπική) on which one Xenocrates--not the disciple of Plato--wrote
a treatise[685]. They were probably known as οἰκουροί, ‘guardians
of the house’ (a name which is identical in meaning with the modern
νοικοκύρης), for it is thus at any rate that Hesychius[686] designates
the great snake which Herodotus[687] tells us was ‘guardian (φύλακα)
of the acropolis’ at Athens, and which, by leaving untouched the
honey-cake with which it was fed every month, proved to the Athenians,
when the second Persian invasion was threatening them, that their
tutelary deity had departed from the acropolis, and decided them
likewise to evacuate the city. Thus the few facts that are recorded
about this belief in antiquity accord so exactly with modern
observations, that from the minuter detail of the latter the outlines
of the former may safely be filled in.

The _genii_ of churches most commonly are seen or heard in the form of
oxen--bulls for the most part[688], but also steers and heifers[689].
They appear, like all _genii_, most frequently at night, and, according
to one authority, ‘are adorned with various precious stones which
diffuse a brightness such as to light the whole church.’ ‘They are
seldom harmful,’ continues the same writer[690]; ‘the few that are
so--called simply κακά--do not dare to make their abode within the
churches, but have their lairs close to them in order to do hurt to
church-goers.... Near Calamáta, on a mountain-side, there is a chapel
of ease dedicated to St George. The peasants narrate that at each
annual festival held there on April 23rd a _genius_ used to issue forth
from a hole close by and to devour one of the festal gathering. After
some years the good people, seeing that there was no remedy for this
annual catastrophe, decided to give up the festival. But a week before
the feast St George appeared to them all simultaneously in a dream, and
assured them that they should suffer no hurt at the festival, because
he had sealed up the monster. And in fact they went there and found the
hole closed by a massive stone, on which was imprinted the mark of a
horse’s hoof; for St George, willing that the hole should remain always
closed, had made his horse strike the stone with his hoof. Thenceforth
the saint has borne the surname Πεταλώτης (from πέταλον the ‘shoe’ or
‘hoof’ of a horse) and up to this day is shewn the hoof-mark upon a
stone.’

Harmless _genii_ however are more frequently assigned to churches,
exercising a kind of wardenship over them and taking an interest in
the parishioners. At Marousi, a village near Athens, there is a church
which is still believed to have a _genius_, in the form of a bull,
lurking in its foundations; and when any parishioner is about to die,
the bull is heard to bellow three times at midnight. A church in Athens
used to claim the same distinction, and the bellowing of the bull
there is said to have been heard within living memory at the death of
an old man named Lioules[691]. Other churches also in Athens, not to
be outdone, pretended to the possession of _genii_ in the shapes of a
snake, a black cock, and a woman, who all followed the bull’s example
and emitted their appropriate cries thrice at midnight as a presage of
similar events[692].

Why the _genii_ of churches in particular appear mostly as bulls, I
cannot determine. When the _genius_ of a river manifests itself in that
form, the connexion with antiquity is obvious; for river-gods, who _ex
vi termini_ are the _genii_ of the rivers whose name they share, were
constantly pourtrayed of old in the form of bulls. All that can be said
is that the type of _genius_ is old, though its localisation is new and
difficult to explain.

The _genii_ of bridges cannot properly, I suppose, be distinguished
from the _genii_ of those rivers or ravines which the bridges span.
They are usually depicted as dragons or other formidable monsters,
and they are best known for the cruel toll which they exact when
the bridge is a-building. The original conception is doubtless that
of the river-god demanding a sacrifice, even of human life, in
compensation for men’s encroachment upon his domain. The most famous
of the folk-songs which celebrate such a theme is associated with ‘the
Bridge of Arta,’ but many versions[693] of it have been published
from different districts, and in some the names of other bridges are
substituted; in Crete the story is attached to the ‘shaking bridge’
over a mountain torrent near Canea[694]; in the Peloponnese to ‘the
Lady’s bridge’ over the river Ladon[695]; in the neighbourhood of
Thermopylae to a bridge over the river Helláda[696]; in the island of
Cos to the old bridge of Antimachia[697]. The song, in the version[698]
which I select, runs thus:

    ‘Apprentices three-score there were, and craftsmen five and forty,
    For three long years they laboured sore to build the bridge of Arta;
    All the day long they builded it, each night it fell in ruin.
    The craftsmen fall to loud lament, th’ apprentices to weeping:
    “Alas, alas for all our toil, alack for all our labour,
    That all day long we’re building it, at night it falls in ruin.”
    Then from the rightmost arch thereof the demon gave them answer:
    “An ye devote not human life, no wall hath sure foundation;
    And now devote not orphan-child, nor wayfarer, nor stranger,
    But give your master-craftsman’s wife, his wife so fair and gracious,
    That cometh late toward eventide, that cometh late toward supper.”
    The master-craftsman heard it well, and fell as one death-stricken;
    A word anon he writes and bids the nightingale to carry:
    “Tarry to don thy best array, tarry to come to supper,
    Tarry to go upon thy way across the bridge of Arta.”
    The nightingale heard not aright, and carried other message:
    “Hurry to don thy best array, hurry to come to supper,
    Hurry to go upon thy way across the bridge of Arta.”
    Lo, there she came, now full in view, along the dust-white roadway;
    The master-craftsman her espied, and all his heart was breaking;
    E’en from afar she bids them hail, e’en from afar she greets them:
    “Gladness and health, my masters all, apprentices and craftsmen!
    What ails the master-craftsman then that he is so distressèd?”
    “Nought ails save only that his ring by the first arch is fallen;
    Who shall go in and out again his ring thence to recover?”
    “Master, be not so bitter-grieved, I will go fetch it for thee;
    Let me go in and out again thy ring thence to recover.”
    Not yet had she made full descent, not halfway had descended;
    “Draw up the rope, prithee goodman, draw up the cable quickly,
    For all the world is upside down, and nought have I recovered.”
    One plies the spade to cover her, another shovels mortar,
    The master-craftsman lifts a stone, and hurls it down upon her.
    “Alas, alas for this our doom, alack for our sad fortune!
    Three sisters we, and for all three a cruel fate was written.
    One went to building Doúnavi, the next to build Avlóna,
    And I, the last of all the three, must build the bridge of Arta.
    Even as trembles my poor heart, so may the bridge-way tremble,
    Even as my fair tresses fall, so fall all they that cross it!”
    “Nay, change, girl, prithee change thy speech, and utter other presage;
    Thou hast one brother dear to thee, and haply he may pass it.”
    Then changèd she her speech withal, and uttered other presage:
    “As iron now is my poor heart, as iron stand the bridge-way,
    As iron are my tresses fair, iron be they that cross it!
    For I’ve a brother far away, and haply he may pass it.”’

But while the most famous examples of sacrifice to _genii_ are
connected with bridges, the custom in a less criminal form than that
which the folk-songs celebrate is common throughout Greece to-day. In
building a house or any other edifice, the question of propitiating the
_genius_ already in possession of the site and of inducing it to become
the guardian of the building is duly considered. Sacrifice is done. The
peace-offering, according to the importance of the building and the
means of the future owner, may consist of an ox, a ram, a he-goat, or
a cock (or, less commonly, of a hen with her brood[699]), preferably
of black colour, as were in old time victims designed for gods beneath
the earth. The selected animal is in Acarnania and Aetolia[700] taken
to the site, and there its throat is cut so that the blood may fall on
the foundation-stone, beneath which the body is then interred. In some
other places[701] it suffices to mark a cross upon the stone with the
victim’s blood. In the same district the practice of taking auspices
from the victim--from the shoulder-blade in the case of a ram and from
the breast-bone in the case of a cock--is occasionally combined with
the sacrifice, but is not essential to the ceremony.

But animals, though they are the only victims actually slaughtered upon
the spot, are not the only form of peace-offering. Even at the present
day when, added to the power of the law, a sense of humanity, or a fear
of being pronounced ‘uncivilised,’ tends to deter the peasantry even of
the most outlying districts from actually satisfying the more savage
instincts of hereditary superstition, there still exists a strong
feeling that a human victim is preferable to an animal for ensuring
the stability of a building. Fortunately therefore for the builder’s
peace of mind, the principles of sympathetic magic offer a compromise
between actual murder and total disregard of the traditional rite.
It suffices to obtain from a man or woman--an enemy for choice but,
failing that, ‘out of philanthropy’ as a Greek authority puts it, any
aged person whose term of life is well-nigh done--some such object as
a hair or the paring of a nail, or again a shred of his clothing or a
cast-off shoe, or it may be a thread or stick[702] marked with the
measure either of the footprint or of the full stature of the person,
and to bury it beneath the foundation-stone of the new edifice. By this
proceeding a human victim is devoted to the _genius_ of the site, and
will die within the year as surely as if an image of him were moulded
in wax and a needle run through its heart. Another variation of the
same rite consists in enticing some passer-by to the spot and laying
the foundation-stone upon his shadow. In Santorini I myself was once
saved from such a fate by the rough benevolence of a stranger who
dragged me back from the place where I was standing and adjured me to
watch the proceedings from the other side of the trench where my shadow
could not fall across the foundations. Nor are the invited guests
immune; unenviable therefore is the position of those persons who are
officially required to assist at the laying of the foundation-stones of
churches and other public buildings. The demarch (or mayor) of Agrinion
informed me that, according to the belief of the common-folk in the
neighbourhood, his four immediate predecessors in office had all fallen
victims to this their public duty; and he described to me the concern
and consternation of his own women-folk when he himself had recently
braved the ordeal. He honestly allowed too that he had kept his shadow
clear of the dangerous spot.

So much importance is attached to these foundation-ceremonies that the
Church has provided a special office to be read alike for cathedral or
for cottage; and the priest who attends for this purpose is sometimes
induced to pronounce a blessing on the animal that is to be sacrificed.
This however is the more expensive rite; the victim has to be bought,
and the priest expects a fee for blessing it; whereas the immolation of
a shadow-victim costs nothing, is more efficacious as being equivalent
to a human sacrifice, and provides an excellent means for removing an
enemy with impunity.

The sacrificial ceremony is also sometimes performed on other occasions
than those of the laying of foundation-stones. In Athens a precept of
popular wisdom enjoins the slaughtering of a black cock when a new
quarry is opened[703]; and an interesting account is given by Bent[704]
of a similar scene at the launching of a ship in Santorini. ‘When they
have built a new vessel, they have a grand ceremony at the launching,
or benediction, as they call it here, at which the priest officiates;
and the crowd eagerly watch, as she glides into the water, the position
she takes, for an omen is attached to this. It is customary to
slaughter an ox, a lamb or a dove on these occasions, according to the
wealth of the proprietor and the size of the ship, and with the blood
to make a cross on the deck. After this the captain jumps off the bows
into the sea with all his clothes on, and the ceremony is followed by
a banquet and much rejoicing.’ Here it is reasonable to suppose that
the captain by jumping into the sea goes through the form of offering
himself as a sacrifice to the _genius_ of the sea, and that the animal
actually slaughtered is a surrogate victim in his stead.

The strength of these superstitions to-day, as gauged by the shifts
and compromises to which the peasants resort in order to satisfy
their scruples, goes far to guarantee the historical accuracy of
such ballads as ‘the Bridge of Arta.’ Not of course that each of the
numerous versions with all its local colouring is to be taken as
evidence of human sacrifice in each place named; exactitude of detail
cannot be claimed for them. But as a faithful picture of the beliefs
and customs prevalent not more perhaps than two or three centuries ago
they deserve full credence. Both the wide dispersion of the several
versions, and also the skill with which in each of them the action of
the master-builder evokes feelings not of aversion but rather of pity
for a man of whom religious duty demanded the sacrifice of his own
wife, furnish plain proof of the domination which the superstition in
its most gruesome form once exercised; and the intentions of the modern
peasants, if not their acts, testify to the same overwhelming dread of
_genii_.

That the ceremonies which I have described are in general of the nature
of sacrifices to _genii_ is beyond question. In the version of ‘the
Bridge of Arta’ which I have translated, both the _genius_ and the
victim whom he demands appear as _dramatis personae_. Again, in some
districts the word ‘sacrifice’ (θυσιό[705] or θυσία[706]) is actually
still applied to the rite. Finally, though the victims are of various
kinds and the forms in which a genius may appear equally various,
the distinction between the two is as a rule kept clear; cases of a
single species of animal serving for both _genius_ and victim--of the
_genius_ for example appearing as a cock or of the chosen victim being
a snake--are extremely rare.

Confusion of the two nevertheless does occur; the original _genius_
of the site is sometimes forgotten, and the victim is conceived to be
slain and buried in order that from the under-world it may exercise a
guardianship over the building which is its tomb. Thus in one version
of ‘the Bridge of Arta,’ inferior in many respects to that which I have
translated, the complaint of the master-craftsman’s wife contains the
line

    τρεῖς ἀδερφούλαις εἴμασταν, ταὶς τρεῖς στοιχειὰ μᾶς βάλαν[707],
    ‘Three sisters we, and all the three they took for guardian-demons.’

Probably the same confusion of thought was responsible for the
representation of the _genius_ of a church in Athens in the shape
of a cock, which is the commonest kind of victim; and possibly too
the bulls which are so frequently the guardians of churches were
originally the victims considered most suitable for the foundation of
such important edifices. This error of belief has undoubtedly been
facilitated by the use of a word which in its mediaeval meanings has
already been discussed--the verb στοιχειόνω. This, as I have pointed
out, meant strictly ‘to provide (a place or object) with a _genius_.’
But in modern usage it can take an accusative of the victim devoted
to a _genius_ no less than of the place provided with a _genius_.
In Zacynthos and Cephalonia, says Bernhard Schmidt[708], the phrase
στοιχειόνω ἀρνί, for example, meaning ‘I devote a lamb’ to the
_genius_, is in regular use; and so too in the above rendering of ‘the
Bridge of Arta,’ the phrase which I have translated ‘an ye devote not
human life’ is in the Greek ἂν δὲ στοιχειώσετ’ ἄνθρωπο. Now verbs of
this form are in both ancient and modern Greek usually causative.
The ancient δηλόω and modern δηλόνω mean ‘I make (an object) clear’
(δῆλος): the ancient χρυσόω and modern χρυσόνω mean ‘I make (an object)
gold’ (χρυσός). Similarly στοιχειόνω is readily taken to mean ‘I
make (an animal or person) the _genius_’ (στοιχεῖον) of a place. If
therefore this word continued to be applied to the rite of slaughtering
an animal at foundation-ceremonies in any place where the true purport
of the custom, as often happens, had been forgotten, language itself
would at once suggest that erroneous interpretation of the custom of
which we have seen examples; the victim would be raised to the rank of
_genius_.

This development of modern superstition supplies a clue for tracing the
evolution of ancient Greek religion, which has hitherto been missed
by those who have dealt with the subject[709]. They have generally
compared with the modern Greek superstition similar beliefs and
customs prevalent throughout the Balkans and even beyond them, and
have thence inferred that the practice of sacrificing to the _genii_
of sites selected for building was of Slavonic importation. The wide
distribution of the superstition in the Balkans, especially among
the Slavonic peoples, is a fact; but the inference goes too far. To
Slavonic influence I impute the recrudescence of the superstition in
its most barbarous form, involving human sacrifice, during the Middle
Ages. Ancient history, even ancient mythology, contains no story so
suggestive of barbarity as one brief statement made by Suidas: ‘At St
Mamas there was a large bridge consisting of twelve arches (for there
was much water coming down), and there a brazen dragon was set up,
because it was thought that a dragon inhabited the place; and there
many maidens were sacrificed[710].’ The date of the events to which the
passage refers cannot be ascertained; but I certainly suspect it to be
subsequent to the Slavonic invasion of Greece. Yet even so the Slavs
did not initiate a new custom but merely stimulated the native belief
that _genii_ required sacrifice in compensation for the building of any
edifice on their domains. This belief dated from the Homeric age--nay,
was already old when the Achaeans built their great wall with lofty
towers, a bulwark for them and their ships against the men of Ilium.

‘Thus,’ we read, ‘did they labour, even the long-haired Achaeans; but
the gods sitting beside Zeus that wieldeth the lightning gazed in
wonder on the mighty work of the bronze-clad Achaeans. And to them
did Poseidon the earth-shaker open speech: “Father Zeus, is there now
one mortal on the boundless earth, that will henceforth declare unto
immortals his mind and purpose? Seest thou not that contrariwise the
long-haired Achaeans have built a wall to guard their ships and driven
a trench about it, and have not offered unto the gods fair sacrifice?
Verily their wall shall be famed far as Dawn spreads her light; and
that which I with Phoebus Apollo toiled to build for the hero Laomedon
will men forget.” And unto him spake Zeus that gathereth the clouds,
sore-vexed: “Fie on thee, thou earth-shaker whose sway is wide, for
this thy word. Well might this device of men dismay some other god
lesser than thou by far in work and will; but thou verily shalt be
famed far as Dawn spreads her light. Go to; when the long-haired
Achaeans be gone again with their ships unto their own native land,
break thou down their wall and cast it all into the sea and cover again
the vast shore with sand, that so the Achaeans’ great wall may be wiped
out from thy sight[711].”’ And later in the _Iliad_ we read of the
fulfilment; how that the rivers of the Trojan land were marshalled and
led by Poseidon, his trident in his hands, to the assault of the wall
that ‘had been fashioned without the will of the gods and could no long
time endure[712].’

The whole passage finds its best commentary in modern superstition.
Poseidon, though a great god, is the local _genius_; to him belongs the
shore where the Greek ships are assembled, to him too the land where
he had built the town of Ilium; to him therefore were due sacrifices
for the building of the wall. But the god whose fame is known far as
Dawn spreads her light deserves the rebuke administered by Zeus for his
pettiness of spirit. An ordinary local _genius_, ‘some god far lesser
than he in work and will,’ might justly wax wrathful at the neglect
of his more limited prerogatives. Yet even so the wall was doomed to
endure no long time. Then as now the divine law ran, ‘An ye devote not
hecatombs, no wall hath sure foundation.’

In this passage there is of course no suggestion of a local _genius_ in
animal shape; the anthropomorphic tendency of Homeric religion was too
strong to admit of that. But since we know from Theophrastus’ sketch
of the superstitious man and from other sources that in the classical
age _genii_ of houses and temples were believed to appear in the form
of snakes, we may without hesitation assign the same belief to earlier
ages. Such a superstition could not in the nature of things have sprung
up after an anthropomorphic conception of the gods dominated all
religion, but must necessarily have been a survival from pre-classical
and pre-Homeric folklore.

But, though Homer speaks of the _genius_ only as a ‘lesser god’ without
further description, he implies clearly that the present custom of
doing sacrifice to such a being for the foundation of any building
was then in existence. Did the sacrifice ever involve human victims?
A positive and certain answer cannot, I suppose, be made; but bearing
in mind the many ancient traditions of human sacrifice in Greece and
even the occasional continuance of the practice in the most civilised
and enlightened age[713] I cannot doubt it. I suspect that, if we
could obtain an earlier version of the story of Iphigenia than has
come down to us, we should find that the wrath of Artemis had no part
in it, but that human sacrifice was offered to the Winds or other
_genii_ of the air--that the ‘maiden’s blood’ was, in the words of
Aeschylus, ‘a sacrifice to stay the winds[714],’ ‘a charm to lull the
Thracian blasts[715],’ that and nothing more. But a story still more
strongly evidential of the custom is told by Pausanias[716]. In the
war between Messenia and Sparta, when the Messenians had been reduced
to extremities, ‘they decided to evacuate all their many towns in the
open country and to establish themselves on Mount Ithome. Now there was
there a town of no great size, which Homer, they say, includes in the
Catalogue--“Ithome steep as a ladder.” In this town they established
themselves, extending its ancient circuit so as to provide a stronghold
large enough for all. And apart even from the fortifications the place
was strong; for Ithome is as high as any mountain in the Peloponnese
and, where the town lay, was particularly inaccessible. They determined
also to send an envoy to Delphi,’ who brought them back the following
oracle:

    A maiden pure unto the nether powers,
    Chosen by lot, of lineage Aepytid,
    Ye shall devote in sacrifice by night.
    But if ye fail thereof, take ye a maid
    E’en from a man of other race as victim,
    An he shall give her willingly to slay.

And the story goes on to tell how in the end Aristodemus devoted his
own daughter, and she became the accepted victim.

Here Pausanias, it will be noticed, does not give any reason for the
sacrifice being required. But three points in his narrative are highly
suggestive. The story of the sacrifice follows immediately upon the
mention of the building of new fortifications--and the foundation of
what was to be practically a new city was eminently a question on which
to consult the Delphic oracle; the powers to whom sacrifice is ordered
are designated merely as νέρτεροι δαίμονες, the nearest equivalent
in ancient Greek to _genii_; and the time of the sacrifice is to be
night, when, according to modern belief, _genii_ are most active. If
then modern superstition can ever teach us anything about ancient
religion, it supplies the clue here. The maiden was to be sacrificed
to the _genii_ of Mount Ithome to ensure the stability of the new
fortifications.

Now if my interpretation of this story is right and the practice of
human sacrifice to _genii_ was known in ancient Greece, the transition
from the worship of _genii_ in the form of snakes or dragons to the
worship of tutelary heroes or gods in human likeness is readily
explained on the analogy of a similar transition in modern belief.
What was originally the victim was mistaken for the genius. The same
confusion of thought, by which, in one version of ‘the Bridge of Arta,’
the _genius_ in person demands a human victim and yet afterwards the
victim speaks of herself as becoming the _genius_ of the bridge,
can be detected even in the oracle given to the Messenians. ‘If ye
fail to find a maid of the blood of the Aepytidae,’ it said, ‘ye may
take the daughter of a man of other lineage, provided that he give
her willingly for sacrifice.’ Why the condition? Why ‘willingly’
only? Because, I think, even the Delphic oracle halted between two
opinions--between the conception of the maiden as a victim to appease
angry _genii_ and the belief that the dead girl herself would become
the guardian-_daemon_ of the stronghold.

Let us read another story from Pausanias[717]: ‘At the base of Mount
Cronius, on the north side (of the Altis at Olympia), between the
treasuries and the mountain, there is a sanctuary of Ilithyia, and in
it Sosipolis, a native _daemon_ of Elis, is worshipped. To Ilithyia
they give the surname “Olympian,” and elect a priestess to minister to
her year by year. The old woman too who waits upon Sosipolis is bound
by Elean custom to chastity in her own person, and brings water for the
bathing of the god and serves him with barley-cakes kneaded with honey.
In the front part of the temple, which is of double construction, is
an altar of Ilithyia, and entrance thereto is public; but in the inner
part Sosipolis is worshipped, and only the woman who serves the god may
enter, and she only with her head and face covered by a white veil.
And while she does so, maidens and married women wait in the temple of
Ilithyia and sing a hymn; incense of all sorts is also offered to him,
but no libations of wine. An oath also at the sanctuary of Sosipolis is
taken on very great occasions.

‘It is said that when the Arcadians had once invaded Elis, and the
Eleans lay encamped opposite to them, a woman came to the generals of
the Eleans, with a child at her breast, and said that, though she was
the mother of the child, she offered it, bidden thereto by dreams,
to fight on the side of the Eleans. And those in command, trusting
the woman’s tale, put the child in the forefront of the army naked.
Then the Arcadians came to the attack, and lo! straightway the child
was changed into a serpent. And the Arcadians, dismayed at the sight,
turned to flight, and were pressed by the Eleans, who won a signal
victory and gave to the god the name of Sosipolis (“saviour of the
state”). And at the place where the serpent disappeared in the ground
after the battle they set up the sanctuary; and along with him they
took to worshipping Ilithyia, because she was the goddess who had
brought the boy into the world.’

Is this story complete, or did Pausanias’ informants suppress one
material point out of shame? How came a mortal infant to assume the
form of a serpent which is proper only to apparitions from the lower
world? The missing episode is, I believe, the sacrifice of the child,
which having been offered willingly became after death a _daemon_
friendly to the Eleans and fought, in the form of a serpent, on their
side. Human sacrifice before a battle was not unknown in ancient
Greece[718], but by Pausanias’ time the inhabitants of Elis might well
have hesitated to impute to their forefathers so barbarous a custom,
and have modified the story by omitting even that incident which alone
could make it harmonise with ancient religious ideas[719].

A similar view has been taken of another story of Pausanias[720], also
from Elis. ‘Oxylus (the king of Elis), they say, had two sons Aetolus
and Laias. Aetolus died before his parents and was buried by them in a
tomb which they caused to be made exactly in the gate of the road to
Olympia and the sanctuary of Zeus. The cause of their burying him thus
was an oracle which forbade the corpse to be either within or without
the city. And up to my time the governor of the gymnasium still makes
annual offerings to Aetolus as a hero.’ Commenting on this passage Dr
Frazer[721] says, ‘The spirit of the dead man was probably expected
to guard the gate against foes.... It is possible that in this story
of the burial of Aetolus in the gate we have a faded tradition of an
actual human sacrifice offered when the gate was built.’ Certainly the
facts that Aetolus was young and that he was not head of the royal
house make his elevation to the rank of tutelary hero after death
difficult to understand on any other hypothesis; and it should be
noted too that the oracle, in obedience to which his tomb was made in
the gateway, probably came, as the preceding context suggests, from
Delphi, that same shrine which was responsible for the sacrifice of
Aristodemus’ daughter in the Messenian war.

Thus there is some probability that in ancient, as in modern, Greece
the _genius_ was sometimes superseded by the victim offered to him,
but bequeathed to his successor something of his own character. The
victim, now become a hero, manifested himself in the old-established
guise of a serpent, and, if we may judge from the case of Sosipolis at
Olympia, continued to be fed with honey-cakes, the same food which had
been considered the appropriate diet for the original snake-_genii_
such as those dwelling in the Erechtheum. But, when once the transition
of worship was well advanced, the power to assume serpent-form was
naturally extended to all tutelary heroes and even to gods; to have
been sacrificed was no longer the sole qualifying condition. The hero
Cychreus went to the help of the Athenians at Salamis in the form
of a serpent[722]. Two serpents were the incarnations of the heroes
Trophonius and Agamedes at the oracle of Lebadea[723]. Amphiaraus was
represented by a snake on the coins of Oropus. An archaic relief of the
sixth century B.C. in the Museum of Sparta, to which Miss Harrison
has recently called attention, represents ‘a male and a female figure
seated side by side on a great throne-like chain.... Worshippers of
diminutive size approach with offerings--a cock and some object that
may be a cake, an egg, or a fruit.... It is clear that we have ...
representations of the dead, but the dead conceived of as half-divine,
as heroized--hence their large size as compared with that of their
worshipping descendants. They are κρείττονες, “Better and Stronger
Ones.” The artist of the relief is determined to make his meaning
clear. Behind the chair, equal in height to the seated figures, is a
great curled snake, but a snake strangely fashioned. From the edge of
his lower lip hangs down a long beard, a decoration denied by nature.
The intention is clear; he is a _human_ snake, the vehicle, the
incarnation of the dead man’s ghost[724].’

In this relief the offerings depicted also are, I think, no less
instructive than the bearded snake. If we may suppose that the
somewhat indeterminate object, cake, egg, or fruit, was intended for a
honey-cake, the offerings combine that which was the accustomed food of
snake-_genii_ in ancient times with a cock, the victim most frequently
sacrificed to the same _genii_ at the present day.

Of gods, Asclepius, perhaps because he began life as a hero, was most
frequently represented in serpent-form. It was in this guise that he
came to Sicyon, Epidaurus Limera, and Rome[725]; and in later times
Lucian tells a humorous tale of how an impostor effected by trickery a
supposed re-incarnation of Asclepius in snake-form before the very eyes
of the people out of whose superstitions he made a living and indeed
a fortune[726]. Here again, if we may argue from modern custom, the
serpent-form carried with it the traditional offering of a ‘cock to
Asclepius.’ But other gods too had sometimes their attendant snakes,
as had Asclepius at Epidaurus; and in every case it is likely that the
particular god had originally dispossessed a primitive snake-_genius_,
but inherited from him and retained for a time in local cults the
form of a snake; until, as the conception of the gods became more and
more anthropomorphic, the snake ceased to be a manifestation of the
god himself and became merely his minister or his symbol. Even Zeus
himself, under the title of Meilichios, is proved by two reliefs found
at the Piraeus to have been figured for a time by his worshippers as a
snake[727].

In many such cases doubtless the substitution of the cult of a new
and named god for that of a primitive and nameless _genius_ explains
adequately the incomer’s inheritance and temporary retention of the
snake-form; but in the case of tutelary heroes, above all, the analogy
of modern folk-lore, in which the human victim is sometimes erroneously
elevated to the rank of guardian-_genius_, supplies, I think, the right
clue to the process by which in ancient times the snake came to be the
recognised incarnation of the spirits of dead men and heroes.

       *       *       *       *       *

The _genii_ of water, to whom we now turn, are sometimes imagined in
the form of dragons or of bulls, but more often by far in human or
quasi-human shape. An exception to the general rule must of course be
made in the case of the _genii_ of bridges, if, as I suppose, they were
originally identical with the _genii_ of those rivers which the bridges
span; for these, as I have said, are usually dragons. But if in this
case there is a difference in outward appearance, there is a general
agreement at any rate in characteristics; for the _genii_ of water are
no less hostile to man than those who demand human sacrifice as the
price of their permission to build a bridge.

At Kephalóvryso in Aetolia the _genii_ of a river were described to me
as red, grinning devils who might often be seen sitting in the bed of
the stream beneath the water. They were believed to mate with _Lamiae_
who infested several caves on the bank of the river; and together these
two kinds of monster would feed on the bodies of men whom they had
dragged into the river and drowned.

But far more frequently the _genii_ of water, and especially of wells,
appear in the form of Arabs (Ἀράπηδες), and may be seen sometimes
smoking long pipes in the depths. They have the power of transforming
themselves into any shape. At one time they assume dragon-form and
terrorise a whole country side; at another they adopt the guise of a
lovely maiden weeping beside a well, and, on pretence of having dropped
into it a ring, induce gallant and unwary men to descend to their
death[728]; for when once the Arab has entrapped them in his well he
feeds upon them or smokes them in lieu of tobacco in his pipe.

How Arabs have come to find a place among the _genii_ of modern Greece
is a question which must be answered in one of two ways. Either during
the Turkish domination of Greece the Arab slaves, who were to be found
in every wealthy house, were suspected by the Christian population of
possessing magical powers, and from being magicians were elevated,
as the _Striges_ often were in mediaeval and modern Greece, to the
rank of demons; or else they are another example of the transmutation
of victims into _genii_. For several reasons I incline to the latter
explanation. First, these Arabs are most commonly associated with
wells, and for the sinking of a well, no less than for the erection
of a building or the opening of a quarry, a victim would naturally be
required. Secondly, an animal victim is for choice of a black or dark
colour, and, by parity of reasoning, among human victims an Arab (or
other man of dark colour, for the word Arab is used popularly of all
such) would be preferable to a white man. Thirdly, it was reported
from Zacynthos only a generation ago that a strong feeling still
existed there in favour of sacrificing a Mohammedan or a Jew at the
foundation of important bridges and other buildings[729]; and there
is a legend of a black man having been actually immured in the bridge
of an aqueduct near Lebadea in Boeotia[730]. Lastly, I heard from a
shepherd belonging to Chios the story of a house in that island haunted
by beings whom he called indifferently Arabs[731] and _vrykólakes_. He
himself had been mad for eight months from the shock of seeing them,
and four of his friends who visited the house to discover the cause of
his disaster were similarly afflicted. The demons were finally laid to
rest by an old man driving a flock of goats through the house[732]. Now
_vrykólakes_, with whom I shall deal at length later on, are persons
resuscitated after death who issue from their graves; and among those
who are predisposed to such reappearance are men who have met with a
violent death. The identification therefore of Arabs with _vrykólakes_
in this story suggests that an Arab victim sacrificed at the foundation
of some building might become the _genius_ of it--not in this case the
beneficent guardian of it, but owing to his violent death a malicious
and hurtful monster. On this evidence I incline to the view that the
Arabs who now form a class of _genii_ were originally the human victims
preferred at the sinking of wells--a piece of engineering, it must be
remembered, of first-rate importance in a country as dry as Greece--and
that, when once these _genii_ had become associated with water, the
popular imagination soon assigned them to rivers and natural springs no
less than to wells.

The _genii_ of rivers sometimes appear also in the shape of bulls,
though as I have already remarked this type of _genius_ is far more
commonly associated with churches. Possibly in some cases the fact
that the church was built in the neighbourhood of some sacred spring,
whose miraculous virtue was of older date and repute than Christianity,
first caused the transference; but at any rate some rivers still retain
this type of _genius_, the type under which river gods were regularly
represented in ancient times. In this connexion a story entitled
‘the ox-headed man[733]’ and narrated to me at Goniá in the island of
Santorini deserves mention.

A princess and a poor girl once agreed that when they were married, if
of their respective first-born the one should be a boy and the other
a girl, these two should be married. Now, as it chanced, princess
and peasant-maid were both wed on the same day, but for a long time
both remained childless. Then at last they prayed to the Panagia, the
princess for a child even if it were but a girl, the peasant for a son
even if he were but half a man; and their prayers were answered; for
the poor woman bore a son with the head of an ox, while the princess
was blest with a beautiful daughter.

When the two children were grown up, the poor woman went one day to
claim the fulfilment of the agreement, and the princess, or rather now
the queen, went to ask her husband. He however objected to the suitor
on the grounds of personal appearance, and stipulated that he should at
least first perform certain feats to prove his worthiness. The first
task was to build a palace of pearls, the second to plant the highest
mountain of Santorini (μέσο βουνί, ‘central mountain,’ as it is locally
called) with trees, and the third to border all the roads of the island
with flowers. For each labour one single night was the limit of time.
But the ox-headed man was equal to the work, and having accomplished
it came riding on a white horse to claim his bride. The king however,
who had imposed these three labours in full assurance that the unseemly
suitor would fail, now flatly refused to abide by his promise, and the
man retired disconsolate and disappeared none knew whither.

The young princess was much affected at the unfair treatment of her
lover, and each day she grew more and more melancholy. But finally she
hit upon a means of cheering herself. She proposed to her father that
they should leave the palace and start an inn, not for money, but for
the sake of the amusement to be derived from the stories and witty
sayings of the guests. The king consented, and the inn was set up.

Now one day a boy who had been fishing dropped his rod into the river,
and having dived in after it came to a flight of stairs at the bottom.
Having walked down forty steps, he entered a large room where sat the
ox-headed man, who talked with him and told him that he was waiting
there for a princess who came not. The boy then returned without hurt,
and on his way home had to pass the inn. Having turned in there, he
was asked by the princess to tell her something amusing. He replied
however that he knew no stories, but would recount to her an adventure
which had just befallen him. In the course of the story the princess
recognised that what the boy called the _genius_ of the river (τὸ
στοιχειὸ τοῦ ποταμοῦ) could be no other than her lover, and having been
straightway conducted to the spot, found and married the ox-headed man,
and in his palace under the river lived happily ever afterwards--“but”
(as Greek fairy-tales often end) “we here much more happily.”

It is curious that Santorini of all places should be the source of
this story; for the island does not possess a stream. Locally however
certain gullies by which the island is intersected are known as rivers
(ποταμοί)[734], and after unusually heavy rain they might perhaps form
torrents; at any rate one known as ‘the evil river’ (ὁ κακὸς ποταμός)
is frequently mentioned in popular traditions as a real river. Possibly
the tradition is accurate; for the volcanic nature of the island
would readily account for the disappearance of a single stream[735].
But the importance of the story lies in the mention of an ox-headed
man as _genius_ of a river. The fact that he is made the son of a
peasant-woman need not concern us; the first part of the story is
probably adapted from some other folk-tale with a view to account for
the wooing of a princess by so ill-favoured a suitor. In the latter
part we have a more ancient _motif_, the wedding of a mortal maid with
a river-god. If only it were mentioned in this tale that, besides the
power of performing miraculous tasks, the bull-headed man had the
faculty, which modern _genii_ possess, of transforming himself into
other shapes, we should have a complete parallel (save in the princess’
willingness to wed) with the wooing of Deianira by the river-god
Achelous; “for he,” says she, “in treble shapes kept seeking me from
my sire, coming now in true bull-form, now as a coiling serpent of
gleaming hues, anon with human trunk and head of ox[736].” The _genii_
of rivers have not, it would seem, changed their forms and attributes,
save for the admission of Arabs to their number, from the age of
Sophocles to this day.

       *       *       *       *       *

The third class of _genius_ which we have to notice is terrestrial,
inhabiting mountains, rocks, caves, and any other grim and desolate
places. These _genii_ are the most frequent of all, and are known
as dragons. Not of course that all dragons are terrestrial; the
dragon-form has already been mentioned among the forms proper to the
_genii_ of springs and wells, and also as a shape assumed at will by
the Arabs who more frequently occupy those haunts. But terrestrial
_genii_, in whatever place they make their lair--and no limit can be
set to such places--are far most commonly pictured as dragons; and
I have therefore preferred to speak of the dragons in general here,
rather than among the _genii_ of either buildings or water.

The term δράκος or δράκοντας[737] indicates to the Greek peasant a
monster of no more determinate shape than does the word ‘dragon’ to
ourselves. The Greek word however differs, and has always differed,
from the English form of it in one respect, namely that it is often
employed in a strict and narrow sense to denote a ‘serpent’ as
distinguished from a small snake (in modern Greek φίδι, i.e. ὀφίδιον,
the diminutive of the ancient ὄφις). On the other hand, a Greek
‘dragon,’ in the widest sense of the term, is sometimes distinctly
anthropomorphic in popular stories, and is made to boil kettles and
drink coffee without any sense of impropriety. It is in fact only from
the context of a story that it is possible to determine in what shape
the dragon is imagined; in general it is neither flesh nor fowl nor
good red devil; heads and tails, wings and legs, teeth and talons, are
assigned to it in any number and variety; it breathes air and fire
indifferently; it sleeps with its eyes open and sees with them shut;
it makes war on men and love to women; it roars or it sings, and
there is little to choose between the two performances; for the lapse
of centuries, it seems, has in no wise mellowed its voice[738]. The
stories of the common-folk are full of these monsters’ savagery and
treachery[739]; for it is the dragons, above all other supernatural
beings, who provide the wandering hero of the fairy-tales with
befitting adventures and tests of prowess.

A common _motif_ of such stories is provided by the belief that dragons
are the guardians of buried treasure. When a man in a dream has had
revealed to him the whereabouts of buried treasure, his right course
is to go to the spot without breathing to anyone a hint of his secret,
and there to slay a cock or other animal such as is offered at the
laying of foundation-stones, in order to appease the _genius_ (which
is almost always a dragon, though an Arab is occasionally substituted)
before he ventures to disturb the soil. This is the very superstition
which Artemidorus had in mind when he interpreted dreams about dragons
to denote ‘wealth and riches, because dragons make their fixed abode
over treasures[740].’ Having complied with these conditions the digger
may hope to bring gold to light; but if he have previously betrayed to
anyone his expectations or have failed to propitiate the dragon, the
old proverb is fulfilled, ἄνθρακες ὁ θησαυρός[741], his treasure turns
out to be but ashes (κάρβουνα).

The guardianship likewise of gardens wherein flow ‘immortal waters’ or
grows ‘immortal fruit’ is the province of dragons. In Tenos a typical
story concerning them is told in several versions[742]. The hero of
them all bears the name of Γιαννάκης or ‘Jack’ (a familiar diminutive
of Ἰωάννης, ‘John’)--a name commonly given in Greek fairy-tales to the
performer of Heraclean feats. The hero who, after discovering that his
youngest sister is a Strigla, has fled with his mother, the queen, from
the palace where they were in imminent danger of being devoured[743],
comes to a castle occupied by forty dragons. The prince straightway
attacks them single-handed and slays, so he thinks, all of them, but
in reality one has only feigned to be dead and so escapes to a hole
beneath the castle, of which Jack now becomes the master. The remaining
dragon however ventures forth, when the prince is gone out to the
chase, and makes love to the queen, and after a while dragon and queen
knowing that the prince would be incensed at their intrigue conspire to
kill him. To this end the queen on her son’s return pretends to be ill,
and in response to his enquiries tells him that the only thing that can
heal her is ‘immortal water[744],’ which, as her paramour, the dragon,
knows, is to be found only in a distant garden guarded by one or more
other dragons. The prince at once undertakes to obtain the desired
remedy, and is directed by a witch (who in some versions appears as the
impersonation of his τύχη or ‘Fortune’) whither to go and how to deal
with the dragons. These accordingly he slays or eludes, and so returns
home unhurt bringing the immortal water. Then once more the dragon
and the queen take counsel together, and the pretence of illness is
repeated with a demand this time for some immortal fruit or herb[745]
known to be guarded in the same way as the water; and once more the
prince sets out and circumvents the dragons in some new fashion.

Between such stories and the ancient fable of Heracles’ journey to
the land of the Hesperides in search of the golden apples, and of his
victory over the guardian-dragon Ladon, the connexion is self-evident.
Whether that connexion is one of direct lineage, is less certain. More
probably, I think, a form of this same story was already current in an
age to which the name of Heracles was as unknown as that of the modern
Jack; and just as the story of Peleus and Thetis became the classical
example of the winning of a nymph to wife by a mortal man[746], so
the myth, by which the exploit of bearing off wonderful fruit from the
custody of a dragon was numbered among the labours of Heracles, is
nothing more than the authorised version, so to speak, of a fairy-tale
that might have been heard of winter-nights in Greek cottage-homes any
time between the Pelasgian and the present age.

       *       *       *       *       *

Daemons of the air, the fourth class of _genius_ which we have to
consider, have been acknowledged ever since the time of Hesiod and
doubtless from a period far anterior to that. In his theology it was
the lot of the first race of men in the golden age to become after
death daemons ‘clothed in air and going to and fro through all the
world’ as good guardians of mortal men. But the goodness which Hesiod
attributes to the _genii_ of the air was never, I suspect, an essential
trait in their character. In Hesiod it is a corollary of the statement
that they are the spirits of men who belonged to the golden age; but
there is no reason to suppose that the common-folk ever regarded them
as more beneficent than other gods and daemons. At any rate at the
present day the ἀερικά, or _genii_ of the air, are no better disposed
towards mankind than any other supernatural beings.

Of this class as a whole little can be said. The word ἀερικό is
applied to almost any apparition too vague and transient to be more
clearly defined. It suggests something ‘clothed in air,’ something
less tangible, less discernible, than most of the beings whom the
peasant recognises and fears. The limits of its usage are hard to fix.
It may properly include a Nereid whose passing through the air is the
whirlwind, and it will equally certainly exclude a callicantzaros or a
dragon. Yet even the Nereids are more substantial than the _genii_ of
the air in their truest form; for the assaults of Nereids upon men and
women are made, as we have seen, from without[747], while _genii_ of
the air are more often supposed to ‘possess’ men in the same way as do
devils, and to be liable to exorcism.

But, if the class as a whole is too vague and shadowy in the popular
imagination to be capable of exact description, one division of it
is more clearly defined and has a generally acknowledged province of
activity. These particular aërial _genii_ are known as Telonia (τελώνια
or, more rarely, τελωνεῖα). They cannot claim equal antiquity with
some of their fellows, for they are, it would seem, a by-product of
Christianity, with a certain accretion however of pagan superstition.

The origin of the name Telonia is not in dispute. It means frankly
and plainly ‘custom-houses.’ Such is the bizarre materialism of the
Greek imagination that the soul in its journeys no less than the
body is believed to encounter the embarrassment of custom-houses.
An institution which of all things mundane commands least sentiment
and sympathy has actually found a place in popular theology. Many of
the people indeed at the present day, as I know from enquiry, have
ceased to connect their two usages of the word; but others accept as
reasonable the belief that the soul in its voyage after death up from
the earth to the presence of God must bear the scrutiny of aërial
customs-officers.

But, apart from modern belief, the apotheosis of the _douane_ is amply
proved by passages cited by Du Cange[748] from early Christian authors.
‘Some spirits,’ says one[749], ‘have been set on the earth, and some
in the water, and others have been set in the air, even those that
are called “aërial customs-officers” (ἐναέρια Τελώνια).’ Another[750]
speaks of ‘the Judge and the prosecutions by the toll-collecting
spirits.’ Yet another[751] explains the belief in fuller detail: ‘as
men ascend, they find custom-houses guarding the way with great care
and obstructing the soaring souls, each custom-house examining for
one particular sin, one for deceit, another for envy, another for
slander, and so on in order, each passion having its own inspectors
and assessors[752].’ Again a prayer for the use of the dying contains
the same idea: ‘Have mercy on me, all-holy angels of God Almighty, and
save me from all evil Telonia, for I have no works to weigh against my
wrong-doings[753].’ Appeal in support of this belief was made even to
the authority of Christ as given in the words, ‘Thou fool, this night
they require thy soul of thee[754],’ where the commentators explained
the vague plural as implying some such subject as ‘toll-collectors’ or
‘custom-house officers[755].’

But the belief does not stop here. One does not pass the custom-houses
of this world, or at any rate of Greece, without some expenditure
in duty or in _douceur_; and the same apparently holds true of the
celestial custom-houses. Hence in some places the belief has generated
a practice, or, to speak more exactly, has breathed a new spirit
into the old practice of providing the dead with money. My view of
the origin of this practice has already been explained; I have given
reasons for holding that the coin placed in the mouth of the dead was
simply a charm to prevent evil spirits from entering, or the soul from
re-entering, into the body, and that the interpretation of the custom,
according to which the coin was the fee of the ferryman Charon, was of
comparatively late date. At the present day Charon in the _rôle_ of
ferryman is almost forgotten; but in his place the Telonia seem locally
to have become the recipients of the fee, and the old custom has thus
received a second and equally erroneous explanation.

This may have been the idea in the mind of my informant who vaguely
said that a coin placed in the mouth of the dead was ‘good because of
the aërial beings[756].’ If the particular aërial beings whom he had in
mind were the Telonia, he no doubt thought of the coin as a fee payable
to them, though in that case it is somewhat strange that he should
not have used the name which actually denotes their toll-collecting
functions.

But from other sources at any rate comes evidence of a less ambiguous
kind that the idea of paying the Telonia for passage is, or has been, a
real motive in the minds of the peasantry. In Chios (where however the
object actually placed in the mouth of the dead is clearly understood
as a precaution against a devil entering the body) it is believed
that the soul after death remains for forty days in the neighbourhood
of its old habitation, the body, and then making its way to Hades
has to pass the Telonia. Happy the soul that makes its voyage on
Friday, for then the activities of the Telonia (who in the conception
of the islanders are clearly evil spirits and not, as sometimes, the
ministers of God) are restrained. But, to appease the Telonia and
to ensure the safe passage of the soul, money is distributed to the
poor[757]. The same usage obtains also at Sinasos in Cappadocia, and
there the money so distributed is actually called τελωνιακά, ‘duty paid
at the customs[758].’ The fact that in both these cases the money is
now given in alms instead of being buried with the body is clearly a
result of Christian influence; before that change was effected, it is
reasonably likely that the widely-known practice of placing a coin in
the mouth of the dead was explained in some places, though erroneously,
by the belief that the dead must pay their way through the aërial
custom-houses. The term περατίκι, ‘passage-money,’ by which, in the
neighbourhood of Smyrna, is denoted the coin still in that district
buried with the dead, has reference possibly to the same Telonia rather
than to Charon[759].

Another and wholly different aspect of the Telonia concerns the
living and not the dead, while it still exhibits them as true _genii_
of the air. Any striking phenomena of the heavens at night, such as
shooting-stars or comets, are believed to be manifestations of the
Telonia[760]; but most dreaded of all is the phenomenon known to us
as St Elmo’s light, the flame that sometimes flickers in time of
storm about the mast-head and yards. This light, the Greek sailor
thinks, portends an immediate onset of malevolent aërial powers, whom
he straightway tries to scare away by every means in his power, by
invocation of saints and incantation against the demons, by firing of
guns, and, best of all, by driving a black-handled knife (which is in
the Cyclades thought doubly efficacious if an onion has recently been
peeled with it) into the mast. For he no longer discriminates as did
the Greek mariner of old; then the appearance of two such flames was
greeted with gladness as a manifestation of the Dioscuri, the saviours
from storm and tempest, and evil was portended only if there appeared a
single flame, the token of Helena[761], who wrecked as surely as her
twin brothers guarded; now the phenomenon in any form bodes naught but
ill. This change is probably due to Christian influences; the seaman
no longer looks to any pagan power for succour in time of peril; he
accounts St Nicholas his friend and saviour; and the Telonia, who in
this province of their activity represent the older order of deities,
have become by contrast man’s enemies.

Other vague and incorrect usages of the term Telonia are also recorded.
Sometimes it may be heard as a synonym for δαιμόνια, any non-Christian
deities. In Myconos it is said to have been applied to the _genii_
of springs[762]. In Athens men used to speak of Telonia of the sea,
who like the Callicantzari were abroad only from Christmas until the
blessing of the waters at Twelfth-night; and during this time ships
were wont to be kept at anchor and secure from their attacks[763].
A belief is also mentioned by Pouqueville[764], in a very confused
passage, that children who die unbaptised become Telonia; but the
statement is corroborated by Bernhard Schmidt[765], who adduces
information of the same belief existing in Zacynthos. The idea at the
root of it probably was that unbaptised children could not pass the
celestial customs, and were detained there on their road to the other
world in order to assist in obstructing the passage of other souls. But
these are local variations of the main belief, and, so far as I can
see, are of little importance. In general the Telonia are a species of
aërial _genius_, and their two activities consist in the collecting of
dues from departed souls and assaults upon mariners.

       *       *       *       *       *

There remain only for consideration the _genii_ of human beings, or
the attendant spirits to whom is committed in some way the guidance of
men’s lives. To some of them the name _genius_ (i.e. στοιχειό) would
hardly perhaps be extended by the peasants; but they all bear the same
kind of relation towards men, and may therefore conveniently be grouped
together for discussion.

The best example which I know of an acknowledged _genius_ attached to
a man is in a story in Hahn’s collection[766], which tells of an old
wizard whose life was bound up with that of a ten-headed snake which
lived beneath a threshing-floor. Here the monstrous nature of the
_genius_ is doubtless intended to match the character of the wizard;
ordinary men, unversed in magic, may have _genii_ of a less complex
pattern. Thus the snake which so commonly acts as _genius_ to a house
is also in many cases regarded as the _genius_ of the head or some
other member of the household. When therefore the death-struggle of any
person is prolonged, this is sometimes set down to the unwillingness of
the _genius_ to permit his death; and in extreme cases of protracted
agony recourse has before now been had to a priest, who, entering
the sick man’s room alone, reads a special prayer for the sufferer’s
release, and by virtue of this solemn office causes the house-snakes,
who are pagan _genii_, to burst[767]. With their disruption of course
the soul of the dying man is at once set free.

But the guardian spirits of whom the peasants most commonly speak
belong to the _personnel_ of Christian theology or demonology, and are
therefore not actually numbered among _genii._ These are angels, two
of whom are allotted to each man, the one good (ὁ καλὸς ἄγγελος) and
the other bad (ὁ κακὸς ἄγγελος). But though the designation _genius_ is
not applied to them, in functions angels and _genii_ do not differ. To
them belongs the control of a man’s life, the one guiding him in the
way of righteousness, and the other diverting him to the pitfalls of
vice. Their presence is ever constant, but seldom visible. Sometimes
indeed, in stories at any rate, we hear of the good angel appearing
to a man and rewarding him in his old age for a virtuous life[768];
and in general men born on Saturday, σαββατογεννημένοι, are reputed to
be ἀλαφροστοίχει̯ωτοι[769] and endowed with special powers of seeing
and dealing with the supernatural. But most commonly the power to
see the guardian angel is granted only to the dying, and the vision
is a warning that the end is near. So, when the gaze of a dying man
becomes abstracted and fixed, they say in some places βλέπει τὸν
ἄγγελό του, or in one word ἀγγελοθωρεῖ[770], ‘he sees his angel,’ or
again ἀγγελοσκιάζεται[771], ‘he is terrified of an angel.’ In these
expressions it is not clear which of the two angels is intended; but,
to judge from other expressions, popular belief recognises the activity
of the one or the other according to the peace or pain of the death.
‘He is borne away by an angel,’ ἀγγελοφορᾶται[772], suggests a quiet
passing, as of Lazarus who was carried by the angels into Abraham’s
bosom; while the word ἀγγελομαχεῖ, ‘he is fighting with an angel,’ an
expression used in Laconia of a protracted death-struggle, and again
ἀγγελοκρούσθηκε[773], ‘he was stricken by an angel,’ a term which
denotes a sudden death, argue rather the presence of the evil angel.

Another kind of _genius_ sometimes associated with men is the ἴσκιος
(the modern form of σκιά), the ‘shadow’ personified. The phrase ἔχει
καλὸ ἴσκιο, ‘he has a good shadow,’ is used of a man who enjoys good
fortune, and he himself is described sometimes as καλοΐσκι̯ωτος[774],
‘good-shadowed,’ that is, ‘lucky.’ But apparently a man may also get
into trouble with this shadow no less than with an angel. The word
ἰσκιοπατήθηκε, ‘he has been trampled upon by his shadow[775],’ is
used occasionally of a man who has been stricken down by some sudden,
but not necessarily fatal, illness such as epilepsy or paralysis.
This personification of the shadow as _genius_ is perhaps responsible
in some measure for the fear which the peasant feels of having the
foundation-stone of a building laid upon his shadow; but, as I have
said above, the principle of sympathetic magic will explain the cause
of fear without this supposition.

To these _genii_ might reasonably be added the Fate (ἡ Μοῖρα or, more
rarely, ἡ Τύχη) of each individual. But these lesser Fates, as well as
the great Three, have already been discussed, and there is nothing to
add here save that by virtue of the close connexion of each lesser Fate
with the life of one man these too might be numbered among _genii_.

The same belief in a guardian-deity presiding over each human life is
to be found throughout ancient Greek literature. In Homer the name
for such a _genius_ is Κὴρ (at any rate if it be of an evil sort),
in later writers δαίμων--both of them vague terms which embrace
other kinds of deities as well, yet not so vague but that with the
aid of context we can readily discover in them the equivalent of the
‘guardian-angel’ or other modern _genius_. From Homer onwards the word
λαγχάνειν is regularly used of the allotment of each human life from
the moment of birth to one of these guardians, and the belief in their
attendance upon men throughout, and even after, life seems to have had
general acceptance. In the _Iliad_ the wraith of Patroclus is made
to speak of the hateful _Ker_ to whom he was allotted at the hour of
birth[776], and the _Ker_ here mentioned is not, I think, merely fate
in the abstract but as truly a person as that baneful _Ker_ of battle
and carnage ‘who wore about her shoulders a robe red with the blood of
heroes[777].’ After Homer the word δαίμων is preferred, but there is
no change in the idea. The famous saying of Heraclitus, ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ
δαίμον, ‘the god that guides man’s lot is character,’ is in no wise
dark, but Plato throws even clearer light upon the popular belief in
guardian-_daemons_. ‘It is said that at each man’s death his _daemon_,
the _daemon_ to whom he had been allotted for his lifetime, has the
task of guiding him to some appointed place[778],’ where the souls of
men must assemble for judgement. Here the words ‘it is said’ indicate
the popular source of the doctrine; and this is confirmed by another
passage in which Plato[779] protests against the fatalism involved in
the allotment of souls to particular _daemons_, and prefers to hold
that the soul may choose its own guardian. Again in a fragment of
Menander there is a simple statement of the belief in a form which robs
fatalism of its gloom:

    Beside each man a daemon takes his stand
    E’en at his birth-hour, through life’s mysteries
    A guide right good[780].

But there were others who did not take so cheerful a view, at any rate
of their own guardian-deities; ‘alas for the most cruel _daemon_ to
whom I am allotted[781]’ is a complaint of a type by no means rare in
Greek literature, and the word κακοδαίμων came as readily as εὐδαίμων
to men’s lips[782].

From these passages it is evident that in general each man was believed
to have one, and only one, attendant _genius_, and his happiness or
misery to depend on the character of the guardian allotted to him by
fate. But sometimes this injustice of destiny was obviated by a belief
similar to the modern belief in both good and bad angels in attendance
on each man. The comment of Servius on Vergil’s line, ‘Quisque suos
patimur manes[783],’ sets forth this view: ‘when we are born two
_Genii_ are allotted to us, one who exhorts us to good, the other who
perverts us to evil.’

As in modern so in ancient times these _genii_ were rarely visible to
the men whom they guarded. The _genius_ of Socrates, which, like those
of other men past and present, had been, so he held, divinely appointed
to wait upon him from his childhood onward[784], spoke to him indeed
in a voice which he could hear[785] (just perhaps as the priestess of
Delphi heard the voice of Apollo[786]), but ever remained unseen.


FOOTNOTES:

[107] Pindar, _Nem._ VI. 1

    ἓν ἀνδρῶν, ἓν θεῶν γένος· ἐκ μιᾶς δὲ πνέομεν
    ματρὸς ἀμφότεροι· διείργει δὲ πᾶσα κεκριμένα
    δύναμις κ.τ.λ.

The opening phrase is often, even usually, translated ‘one is the race
of men, another the race of gods.’ Whether ἓν ... ἓν was ever used
in Greek for ἄλλο ... ἄλλο, I doubt; but even if it be possible, the
emphasis ἓν ... ἓν ... ὲκ μιᾶς must to my mind be an emphasis upon
unity, and the first mention of divergence comes equally strongly in
διείργει δὲ....

[108] Stobaeus, _Sentent._ p. 279, Πρῶτος Θαλῆς διαιρεῖ ... εἰς θεὸν,
εἰς δαίμονας, εἰς ἥρωας.

[109] For dialectic variations of the form, see Schmidt, _Das
Volksleben der Neugr._ p. 91.

[110] I. _Cor._ v. 12, I. _Tim._ iii. 7, and elsewhere.

[111] Basil III. 944 A (Migne, _Patrol. Graec._ vol. XXIX.).

[112] Pouqueville, _Voyage de la Grèce_, I. p. 319, writes ‘Pagania.’

[113] In Andros the word is used (in the singular παγανό) to denote
an unbaptised child. Cf. Ἀντ. Μηλιαράκης, Ὑπομνήματα περιγραφικὰ τῶν
Κυκλάδων νησῶν,--Ἄνδρος, Κέως, p. 45.

[114] _op. cit._ p. 92, referring to Du Cange, τζίνα = fraus, p. 1571.

[115] Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστ. καὶ Ἐθν. Ἑταιρίας, II. p. 122.

[116] Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 97.

[117] _Relation de ce qui s’est passé de plus remarquable à Sant-Erini,
isle de l’Archipel, depuis l’etablissement des Pères de la Compagnie de
Jesus en icelle_ (Paris, 1657), p. 192 ff.

[118] See below, pp. 255 ff.

[119] See below, pp. 284-7.

[120] Cf. Hesych. σμερδαλέος, σμερδνός = φοβερός, καταπληκτικός,
πολεμικός; and σμέρδος = λῆμα, ῥώμη, δύναμις, ὅρμημα.

[121] Bybilakis, _Neugriechisches Leben_, p. 16, and in the periodical
Φιλίστωρ, IV. p. 517.

[122] _op. cit._ p. 92.

[123] Steph. _Thesaur._ s.v.

[124] Ἐφημ. τῶν Φιλομαθῶν, anno 1861, p. 1851, quoted by Schmidt, _loc.
cit._

[125] Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 92.

[126] _Ibid._

[127] Zenob. _Cent._ III. 3. Cf. Hesych. and Suidas, s.v. Γελλώ.

[128] Cf. Leo Allatius, _de quor. Graec. opin._ cap. III. _ad fin._,
quoting Mich. Psellus, πᾶσαν τὴν ἐν τοῖς βρέφεσιν ἀπορροφᾶν ὥσπερ
ὑγρότητα.

[129] Artemidorus, _Oneirocritica_, Bk II. cap. 9, p. 90.

[130] _Ibid._ p. 91.

[131] Schmidt, _Das Volksleben der Neugr._ p. 33.

[132] Schmidt, _Märchen_, etc. p. 131.

[133] Soutzos, _Hist. de la Révolution Grecque_, p. 158. Cf. Schmidt,
_Das Volksleben_, p. 27.

[134] Schmidt, _Märchen_, etc. no. XI.

[135] Schmidt, _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 135.

[136] Πανδώρα (periodical) XVI. p. 538, ἅγιε Νικόλα ναύτη.

[137] B. Schmidt, _Märchen_, etc. no. XX.

[138] Plutarch, _de defect. orac._ 17.

[139] _Idyll._ I. 15.

[140] _Ps._ 91. 6.

[141] _De quorumdam Graecorum opinationibus_, cap. VIII.

[142] Du Cange, _Lex. med. et infim. Latin_, s.v.

[143] Clarke, _Catalogue of Sculptures in Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge_.

[144] The population of Eleusis, as of many villages in Attica,
is mainly Albanian; but they have inherited many of the old Greek
superstitions and customs.

[145] Lenormant, _Monographie de la voie sacrée éleusinienne_, p. 399
ff.

[146] “The diminutive in Albanian of Nicolas is Kolio: in the choice of
this name is there not a reminiscence of that of Celeus?”--so Lenormant
in a note. The suggestion does not appear to me very probable.

[147] Opposite Eleusis in Salamis.

[148] Euseb. _Chron._ p. 27. Plut. _Vita Thes._ XXXI. _ad fin._

[149] Paus. VIII. 15.

[150] Conon, _Narrat._ 15.

[151] _Tour through Greece_, II. p. 440.

[152] _Travels in the Morea_, III. p. 148.

[153] Paus. VIII. 42. 1-4, and 25. 5.

[154] Schol. in Ar. _Ran._ 441. Aelian, _Hist. Anim._ X. 16.

[155] Frazer, _Golden Bough_, II. 44 ff. (2nd edit.).

[156] Herod. II. 171.

[157] Aelian, _l.c._

[158] Herod. II. 47. Plut. _Isis et Osiris_, 8 (Moral. 354). Aelian,
_l.c._

[159] _Märchen_ etc. Song no. 56.

[160] Above, p. 53.

[161] Schmidt, _Märchen_ etc. no. VII.

[162] Paus. VIII. 42. 1 ff.

[163] Paus. VIII. 42. 2.

[164] Schuchhardt, _Schliemann’s Excavations_ (tr. Sellers), p. 296.

[165] _Ibid._

[166] Paus. II. 22. 1.

[167] _op. cit._ p. 147.

[168] _op. cit._ p. 302.

[169] Schuchhardt, _op. cit._ p. 151, and Leaf’s introduction, p.
XXVII. Cf. Frazer in _Journal of Philology_, XIV. 145 ff.

[170] Schuchhardt, _op. cit._ p. 151.

[171] _op. cit._ p. 303.

[172] Frazer in _Journal of Philology_, XIV. pp. 145 ff.

[173] Paus. I. 18. 3.

[174] _Id._ IX. 36.

[175] _Iliad_ IX. 404-5.

[176] _Griech. und Albanesische Märchen_, nos. 63 and 97.

[177] ‘die Schöne der Erde’ in von Hahn’s translation. Unfortunately
the original does not appear in Pio’s Νεοελληνικὰ παραμύθια, for which
the MSS. of von Hahn provided the material.

[178] Cf. Plut. _Vita Thes._ 31, _ad fin._

[179] For references see Schmidt, _Das Volksleben der Neugr._ p. 222.

[180] Passow, _Popul. Carm. Graeciae recentioris_. Carm. no. 408.

[181] Χασιώτης, Συλλογὴ τῶν κατὰ τὴν Ἤπειρον δημοτικῶν ἀσμάτων, p. 169.

[182] Passow, _op. cit._ no. 423.

[183] Πολίτης, Μελέτη ἐπὶ τοῦ βίου τῶν νεωτέρων Ἑλλήνων, p. 290.

[184] Bernhard Schmidt, _Märchen_ etc. p. 81.

[185] Kindly communicated to me by Mr G. F. Abbott, author of
_Macedonian Folklore_.

[186] B. Schmidt, _Märchen_ etc. Song no. 39.

[187] Cf. Passow, no. 428.

[188] _Ibid._ no. 430.

[189] Above, p. 53.

[190] _e.g._ Passow, no. 427.

[191] Cf. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 230.

[192] This expression which I have heard several times is not noticed
by Schmidt or Polites. They give, however, ἀγγελοκρούεται, ‘he is being
stricken by an angel,’ and other phrases meaning to see, to fear, to
be carried away by, an angel, all in the same sense. See Schmidt, _op.
cit._ 181, and Πολίτης, Μελέτη, κ.τ.λ. 308.

[193] κουμπάρος. The word expresses the relationship in which a
godfather stands to the parents of his godson.

[194] This story, as I have told it, is not a literal translation, for
I could not take down the original. But notes which I set down after
hearing it enable me to reproduce it in a form which certainly contains
the whole substance and many actual phrases of the version which I
heard.

[195] Probably meaning the brigand’s ‘comrades.’ The term ξεφτέρι,
‘hawk,’ is commonly so applied.

[196] Πολίτης, _op. cit._ p. 246 (from Λελέκης, Δημοτ. ἀνθολ. p. 57).

[197] _e.g._ Passow, _Popul. Carm._ nos. 426-429.

[198] Σακελλάριος, Κυπριακά, vol. III. p. 48. Cf. Πολίτης, _op. cit._
p. 239.

[199] The word for ‘black’ includes the sense of ‘grim,’ ‘gloomy,’
‘sorrowful.’ Tears are commonly described as ‘black,’ μαῦρα δάκρυα.

[200] Passow, _op. cit._ distich no. 1155.

[201] Cf. Passow, no. 408.

[202] Cf. Passow, nos. 414, 415, 417.

[203] Passow, no. 424.

[204] Aesch. _Eum._ 237.

[205] Fauriel, _Chants populaires de la Grèce Moderne, Discours
préliminaire_, p. 85.

[206] Schmidt, _Märchen_ etc. Song no. 38.

[207] _Ibid._ no. 37.

[208] Schmidt, _Märchen_ etc. Song no. 7.

[209] _Das Volksleben_, p. 237.

[210] _Märchen_ etc. Song no. 10.

[211] Πολίτης, Μελέτη κ.τ.λ. p. 272.

[212] Passow, no. 371.

[213] Ἰατρίδης, Συλλογὴ δημοτ. ἀσμάτων, p. 17. Cf. Schmidt, _op. cit._
p. 236.

[214] So in some districts of Macedonia up to the present day; Abbott,
_Macedonian Folklore_, p. 193.

[215] Πρωτόδικος, περὶ τῆς παρ’ ἡμῖν ταφῆς, p. 14. The form περατίκιον
which the writer gives can hardly be popular. It might be, as Schmidt
points out, περατίκιν in the local dialect. I have given the form which
the word would assume in most districts.

[216] Σκορδέλης in the periodical Πανδώρα, XI. p. 449. Cf. Schmidt,
_op. cit._ p. 238.

[217] περὶ πένθους, § 10.

[218] For this term see above, p. 68, and below, p. 283.

[219] Below, p. 285.

[220] See above, p. 13.

[221] Passow, no. 432.

[222] This is shown later to be the first form of the superstition. See
below, pp. 433-4.

[223] Newton, _Travels and Discoveries in the Levant_, I. p. 289 (cited
by Schmidt, _das Volksleben_, p. 239).

[224] The use of the coin, quite apart from any such variation of the
custom, was forbidden by several councils of the Church between the 4th
and 7th centuries, cf. Πολίτης, Μελέτη etc. p. 269.

[225] Cf. Ricaud, _Annales des conciles généraux et particuliers_
(1773), vol. I. p. 654 (from Πολίτης, Μελέτη, p. 269).

[226] According to Bent (_Cyclades_, p. 363) the object used thus in
Naxos is a wax cross with the initial letters Ι. Χ. Ν. engraved upon
it, and it still bears the old name ναῦλον, ‘fare.’

[227] Κωνστ. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, pp. 335 and 339.

[228] Newton, _Travels and Discoveries in the Levant_, I. p. 212. The
exact details of the custom in each place are given below, p. 406.

[229] See below, pp. 433-4.

[230] In Rhodes, according to Newton, _l.c._, the Christian symbol Ι.
Χ. Ν. Κ. is combined with that to which I now come, the ‘pentacle.’

[231] Cf. Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. 573, where it is said that in Myconos
the symbol is sometimes carved on house doors to keep _vrykolakes_ (on
which see below, cap. IV.) from troubling the inmates at night.

[232] Cf. Lucian, ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἐν τῇ προσαγορεύσει πταίσματος, 5.

[233] apud Pausan. x. 28. 1.

[234] _e.g._ Eur. _Alc._ 252, 361, _Heracl._ 432, Arist. _Ran._ 184
ff., _Lysistr._ 606, _Plut._ 278.

[235] Suidas s.v.

[236] Pollux, 8, 102.

[237] Pollux, 4, 132.

[238] Strabo, 579.

[239] _Ibid._ 636

[240] _Ibid._ 649.

[241] Plut. _Anton._ 16.

[242] Χάρων θάνατος, s.v.

[243] Eur. _Alc._ 48, 49.

[244] _Ibid._ 74-6.

[245] _Ibid._ 1141-2.

[246] _Ibid._ 50.

[247] Codex Vaticanus, no. 909. Cf. Schmidt, _das Volksleben_, p. 223,
whence the majority of these references are borrowed.

[248] VII. 603 and 671; XI. 133. Cf. Schmidt, _l.c._

[249] s.v.

[250] Gerhard, _die Gottheiten der Etrusker_, p. 56; Müller, _die
Etrusker_, II. 102.

[251] Ambrosch, _de Charonte Etrusco_, pp. 2, 3.

[252] _Ibid._ p. 8.

[253] _Ibid._ pp. 4-7; and Maury in _Revue Archéologique_, I. 665, and
IV. 791.

[254] _Annuaire de l’Association pour l’encouragement des études
grecques en France_, no. VIII. (1874), p. 392 ff.

[255] Both fortifications and well are actual features of Acro-Corinth
up to the present day.

[256] Pausan. I. 37, _ad fin._; Perrot, _l.c._ Cf. Frazer, _Pausanias_,
II. 497.

[257] _Märchen_ etc. _Introduction_, p. 35.

[258] Cf. Bursian, _Geographie von Griechenland_, II. p. 17.

[259] Vréto, _Mélange Néo-hellenique_.

[260] Schmidt, _Märchen_ etc. nos. 16-18.

[261] _Ibid._ p. 113 (note 2).

[262] See below, p. 165.

[263] _Orph. Hymns_, 57 (58), 2.

[264] _Orph. Hymns_, 55, 8. μήτερ ἐρώτων. For representations in
ancient art of many ἔρωτες, cf. Philostr. _Eikones_, p. 383 (770).

[265] See above, p. 57.

[266] Tzetzes, _Schol. on Lycophron_, 406.

[267] Pausan. _I._ 19. 2. Cf. _C. I. G._ no. 1444, and Orph. Hymn, 55
(54), 4.

[268] Apparently the old subterranean passage by which competitors
entered the stadium.

[269] Mentioned by Pouqueville, _Voyage en Grèce_, V. p. 67, and
confirmed by many other writers.

[270] Pausan. X. 38. 6.

[271] Pouqueville, _op. cit._ IV. p. 46.

[272] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηναίων, I. p. 222, III. p. 156.
Πολίτης, Μελέτη κ.τ.λ. p. 227.

[273] Dodwell, _Tour through Greece_, I. 397.

[274] Πολίτης, _l.c._

[275] _l.c._

[276] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθην. I. p. 222.

[277] Cf. ἦτον γραφτό μου, ‘It was my written lot,’ i.e. destiny, and
other similar phrases cited by Schmidt, _das Volksleben_, p. 212, and
Πολίτης, Μελέτη, pp. 218, 219.

[278] _Choeph._ 464-5, which the Scholiast annotates thus, πέπηγε
μὲν καὶ ὥρισται ὑπὸ Μοιρῶν τὸ τὴν Κλυταιμνήστραν ἀνδροκτονήσασαν
ἀναιρεθῆναι κ.τ.λ.

[279] I regret to say that I cannot trace the source of this story.
I incline to think that I took it from some publication, but it is
possible that it was narrated to me personally.

[280] Except in Zacynthos, according to Schmidt (_Volksleben_, p. 211),
where they number twelve.

[281] Schmidt, _Volksleben_, p. 220.

[282] _Chants populaires de la Grèce moderne, Discours préliminaire_,
p. 83.

[283] According to Bent (_Cyclades_, pp. 292 and 437), the name Erinyes
is still applied by the people of Andros and of Kythnos to the evil
spirits who cause consumption.

[284] So Pouqueville, _Voyage de la Grèce_, VI. p. 160.

[285] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθην., III. pp. 67, 68.

[286] Cf. Πολίτης, Μελέτη κ.τ.λ. p. 218.

[287] The visit of the Fate on the day of birth instead of the third
day after is unusual.

[288] From Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθην. I. pp. 310, 311.

[289] Schmidt, _das Volksleben_, p. 212.

[290] Cf. μόρσιμος of the ‘destined’ bridegroom, in Hom. _Od._ XVI. 392.

[291] Cf. Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_,
pp. 286 ff.

[292] Passow, no. 385.

[293] Heuzey, _Le mont Olympe_, p. 139. I have introduced a few
alterations of spelling, mostly suggested by Schmidt, _das Volksleben_,
p. 229 (note), _e.g._ τοὐρανοῦ for τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, in order to restore the
rather rough metre.

[294] Πολίτης (Μελέτη κ.τ.λ. p. 228, note 1) gives the following
references: Wordsworth, _Athens and Attica_, p. 228; Ἐφημ. Φιλομαθῶν,
1868, p. 1479; Passow, _Popul. Carm._ p. 431, besides those to which I
have referred in other notes.

[295] _Persae_, 659.

[296] VII. 218.

[297] Πιττάκης, who recorded this version in Ἐφημ. Ἀρχαιολογική, no. 30
(1852), p. 653, spelt the word erroneously κόροιβο; the sound of οι and
υ being identical in modern Greek, I have substituted the latter.

[298] _Theog._ 217 and 904.

[299] _Theog._ 217.

[300] _Prom. Vinct._ 516 ff.

[301] Leo Allatius (_de quorumdam Graec. opinationibus_, cap. xx.)
quotes from Mich. Psellus (11th century) the ancient form Νηρηΐδες
as then in use. He himself (_ibid._ cap. xix.) employs the form
Ναραγίδες which was probably the dialectic form of his native Chios.
Bern. Schmidt (_Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, pp. 98-9) has brought
together a large number of variants now in use, in which the accent
fluctuates between the α and the ι, the first vowel is indifferently α,
ε or η, the two consecutive vowels αϊ are sometimes contracted to ᾳ,
sometimes more distinctly separated by the faintly pronounced letter γ,
and lastly an euphonetic α is occasionally prefixed to the word. Hence
forms as widely distinct as ἀνερᾷδες and ναραγίδες often occur. Du
Cange, it may be added, gives the form Ναγαρίδες (with interchange of
the ρ and the inserted γ); but since his information is seemingly drawn
entirely from Leo Allatius, there is reason to regard it as merely his
own error in transcribing Ναραγίδες.

[302] An attempt has been made by one authority on the folk-lore of
Athens (Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηναίων, I. pp. 218 and 222), to
distinguish καλοκυρᾶδες from νεράϊδες. He maintains that in Athens the
latter were never regarded as maleficent beings, and must therefore be
distinguished from the dread καλοκυρᾶδες, whom he seeks to identify,
on no better ground than the euphemistic name, with the Eumenides. A
folk-story, however, which he himself records (_ibid._ p. 319), how a
καλοκυρά was married to a prince, whose eyes she had blinded to all
other women, and how after living with him for a while she disappeared
finally in a whirlwind, reveals in her all the usual traits of a
Nereid, and thus defeats the writer’s previous contention. But apart
from this a little enquiry on the subject outside the limits of Athens
would have set at rest his doubts as to the identity of the two. It is
quite possible that formerly in Athens, as now elsewhere, it was usual
to employ the euphemism καλοκυρᾶδες in referring to the Nereids in
their more mischievous moods; only in that way can I explain his idea
that the Nereids were never maleficent.

[303] Cf. Passow, _Distich_ 692; Pashley, _Travels in Crete_, vol. II.
p. 233; Πανδώρα, XIV. p. 566; Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 104.

[304] Cf. Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 105.

[305] The latter is quoted by Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 106,
from the dialect of Arachova near Delphi.

[306] Cf. Bern. Schmidt, _l. c._; Bybilakis, _Neugriechisches Leben_,
p. 13.

[307] Pind. _Nem._ V. 36.

[308] Hom. _Od._ 13. 102 ff.

[309] Cf. e.g. Passow, _Popularia Carmina_, Distichs 552-3.

[310] Hahn, _Griech. Märchen_, vol. I. no. 15. ‘Ihre ganze Kraft steckt
aber in den Kleidern, und wenn man ihnen die wegnimmt, so sind sie
machtlos.’

[311] To form a chain of dancers the leader, who occupies the extreme
right, is linked to the second in the row by a kerchief, while the rest
merely join hands. More freedom of motion is thus allowed to the chief
performer.

[312] Cf. also Hahn, _Griech. Märchen_, vol. II. no. 77. Ἀντ.
Βάλληνδας, Κυθνιακά, p. 123.

[313] The crowing of the third cock is more usually the signal for the
departure of Nereids and their kind. It is commonly held that the white
cock crows first, the red second, and the black third. The last is a
sure saviour from the assaults of all manner of demons.

[314] Similar transformations occur in a Cretan story, the forms
assumed being those of dog, snake, camel, and fire. Χουρμούζης,
Κρητικά, p. 69.

[315] Cf. Apollodorus, III. 13. 5.

[316] Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 104, quoting Ritschl, _Ino
Leucothea_, Pl. I., II. (1 and 2), III.; and referring to a sarcophagus
in the Corsini Gallery at Rome, figured in _Monum. Ined._ vol. VI. Pl.
XXVI.

[317] Hom. _Od._ 5. 346 sqq. and 459 sqq.

[318] Ἀντ. Βάλληνδας, Κυθνιακά, p. 123.

[319] The women of Scopelos on certain festal occasions wear a dress
which may well be the same as the classical ὀρθοστάδιον, a loose
pleated robe falling from the shoulders and widening as it falls, so
that their figures resemble a fluted column too broad at the base and
too tapering at the top.

[320] Hahn, _Griechische Märchen_, vol. II. no. 83. Χουρμούζης,
Κρητικά, p. 69.

[321] Cf. a folk-song quoted by Ross, _Reisen auf Inseln_, III. p. 180,

    Σὲ μονοδένδριν μὴ ἀναιβῇς, ’στοὺς κάμπους μὴ καταίβῃς,
    καὶ ’στὸν ἀπάνω ποταμὸν μὴ παίζῃς τὸ περνιαῦλι,
    κῂ ἐρθοῦν καὶ μονομαζευθοῦν τοῦ ποταμοῦ ’νερᾷδες,

‘Go not up to the solitary tree, go not down to the lowlands, beside
the torrent above play not thy pipes, lest the Nereids of the stream
come and swarm thick about thee.’

[322] Lexicon, s.v. ῥάμνος, ἐν ταῖς γενέσεσι τῶν παιδίων χρίουσι
(πίττῃ) τὰς οἰκίας εἰς ἀπέλασιν τῶν δαιμόνων.

[323] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηναίων, III. p. 32.

[324] Cf. Welcker, _Kleine Schriften_, 3. 197-9; Rohde, _Psyche_, I. p.
360, note 1.

[325] Cf. Hom. _Od._ XI. 48 ff. and Eustathius, _ad loc._

[326] Ζ. Δ. Γαβαλᾶς, Ἡ νῆσος Φολέγανδρος, p. 29.

[327] _Reisen auf Inseln_, etc. III. pp. 181-2.

[328] _C.I.G._, no. 6201 (from Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, etc. p.
122 note). Τοῖς πάρος οὖν μύθοις πιστεύσατε· παῖδα γὰρ ἐσθλὴν | ἥρπασαν
ὡς τερπνὴν Ναΐδες, οὐ Θάνατος.

[329] Ἐμ. Μανωλακάκης, Καρπαθιακά, p. 129. There are also compounds
ἐξωπαρμένος and ἀλλοπαρμένος with the same meaning.

[330] Plato, _Phaedr._ XV. (238 D).

[331] _Ibid._ 229 A, B; 230 B; 242 A; 279 B.

[332] Cf. Leo Allatius, _De quor. Graec. opin._ cap. xx. ‘potissimum si
fluentis aquarum solum irrigetur.’

[333] To this belief I attribute the origin of the phrase ὥρα τὸν
ηὗρε, ‘an (evil) hour overtook him’ (Leo Allatius, _op. cit._ xix.),
employed euphemistically in reference to ‘seizure’ by the Nereids, and
of the kindred imprecation, κακὴ ὥρα νά σ’ εὕρῃ, ‘may an evil hour
overtake you’ (Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 97), which gains in force
and elegance by its reversal of an ordinary phrase of leave-taking, ὥρα
καλή.

[334] See above, p. 79.

[335] Leo Allatius, _op. cit._ xix.

[336] From Epirus, Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 120. See above, p. 142,
note 2.

[337] Cf. Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 120.

[338] I. p. 473 (Migne, _Patrolog. Graeco-Lat._ vol. XCIV. p. 1604).

[339] See above, p. 13.

[340] Cf. Hahn, _Griech. Märchen_, Vol. II. no. 80.

[341] _The Cyclades_, p. 457.

[342] Κωνστ. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, p. 369.

[343] ἡ Λάμια τοῦ πελάγου. Cf. the periodical Παρνασσός IV. p. 773, and
Wachsmuth, _Das alte Griechenland im Neuen_, p. 30. See also below, pp.
171 ff.

[344] _Histoire de la Révolution grecque_, p. 228 note.

[345] Hor. _Carm._ III. 28. 10.

[346] Ἰ. Σαραντίδου Ἀρχελάου, Ἡ Σινασός, p. 90.

[347] Εὐαγγελία Κ. Καπετανάκης, Λακωνικὰ Περίεργα, pp. 43 sqq.

[348] Cf. Παρνασσός, IV. p. 669 (1880).

[349] So according to Theodore Bent (_Cyclades_, p. 496) but perhaps
inaccurately.

[350] So Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 101, following Βάλληνδας in
Ἐφημερὶς τῶν Φιλομαθῶν, 1861, p. 1826; and Bent, _loc. cit._

[351] In this view Prof. Πολίτης of Athens University, whom I
consulted, concurs with me.

[352] Cf. Παρνασσός, IV. p. 669, Πολίτης, Μελέτη κ.τ.λ. p. 97.

[353] Cf. Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, etc. p. 101.

[354] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθηναίων, I. p. 223.

[355] Travels in Crete, II. pp. 232-4.

[356] I cannot vouch for the accuracy of my translation of this word,
which I have never seen or heard elsewhere.

[357] Cf. Leo Allatius, _op. cit._ cap. xix.

[358] Cf. Ἰον. Ἀνθολογία, III. p. 509. Hahn, _Griech. Märchen_, vol.
II. no. 81.

[359] _C.I.G._ no. 997 (from Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 122 note).

[360] Παρνασσός, IV. p. 765. The origin of the second part of the
compound is unknown.

[361] Ἀρχαιολογικὴ Ἐφημερίς, 1852, p. 647.

[362] Cf. Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηναίων, III. p. 156.

[363] Theotokis, _Détails sur Corfou_, p. 123.

[364] Theocr. _Id._ v. 53-4 and 58-9.

[365] Kindly communicated to me by Mr Abbott, author of _Macedonian
Folklore_.

[366] Hom. _Od._ XIII. 105-6.

[367] See Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion_,
p. 423.

[368] Οἰκονόμος, Περὶ προφορᾶς, p. 768.

[369] Ἀντ. Βάλληνδας, Κυθνιακά, p. 131 and Σκαρλάτος, Λεξικὸν τῆς καθ’
ἡμᾶς Ἑλληνικῆς γλῶσσης, s.v. δρίμαις.

[370] Σκορδίλης, in Πάνδωρα, XI. p. 472; cf. Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._
p. 130.

[371] Cited by Bern. Schmidt, _ibid._ from Βρετός, Ἐθν. Ἡμερολ. 1863,
p. 55. This reference I have been unable to verify.

[372] In Macedonia.

[373] Κωνστ. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, p. 359.

[374] Wachsmuth in _Rhein. Mus._ 1872.

[375] _Orph. Hymns_, 36 (35), 12.

[376] Alexis, _Fragm. Fab. Incert._ 69.

[377] Verg. _Georg._ IV. 336.

[378] Tzetzes, _Lycophron_, 536.

[379] _ibid._ 522.

[380] Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχέλαος, Ἡ Σινασός, p. 85.

[381] Ἐμ. Μανωλακάκης, Καρπαθιακά, p. 189. In Carpathos however the
three middle and three last days of August are added.

[382] Ἀντ. Βάλληνδας, Κυθνιακά, p. 131.

[383] Σακελλάριος, Κυπριακά, vol. I. p. 710.

[384] Theodore Bent (_Cyclades_, p. 174) says that the word δρύμαις
is used in Sikinos to mean actually the sores on limbs, and in other
islands the holes in linen caused by washing during Aug. 1-6. But as
he appears to have been unaware that δρύμαις usually means the days
themselves, I question the accuracy of his statement.

[385] Σακελλάριος, Κυπριακά, I. p. 710, who derives the word from κακὸς
and Α(ὔγ)ουστος.

[386] Anthol. Palat. VI. 189.

[387] Verg. _Georg._ IV. 383.

[388] Σκορδίλης, in Πανδώρα, XI. p. 472.

[389] I give both these words as I received them, but cannot account
for the abnormal accents. Ἄλουστος and either Ἀλουστιναίς or
Ἀλούστιναις would be usual. As regards the whole form Ἀλούστος, it
cannot I think be a dialectic change of Αὔγουστος, but is probably a
pun upon it with reference to the custom of not washing during the
first days of the month.

[390] Σκαρλάτος, Λεξικόν, s.v. δρίμαις.

[391] Modern πρινάρι, ancient πρῖνος.

[392] Hesiod, _Fragm. apud_ Plutarch. _De Orac. Defect._ p. 415.

[393] Cf. also Schol. _ad_ Apoll. Rhod. II. 479, where Mnesimachus is
quoted for the same opinion.

[394] _O. T._ 1099.

[395] _Nat. Hist._ IX. cap. 5.

[396] _Lycophron_, 480.

[397] _Hom. Hymns_, III. 256 sqq.

[398]

    ἑστᾶσ’ ἠλίβατοι· τεμένη δέ ἑ κικλήσκουσιν
    ἀθάνατων· τὰς δ’ οὔτι βροτοὶ κείρουσι σιδήρῳ.

These two lines (267-8) have fallen under suspicion because, it is
urged, the word ἀθανάτων is in direct contradiction of what has been
said as to the intermediate position of nymphs between mortals and
immortals. This criticism is due to careless reading. The lines do not
mean that each tree is called the τέμενος of an immortal nymph, but
that a number of trees, each inhabited by a nymph, often form together
the τέμενος of an immortal god. A sanctuary of Artemis, for example,
might well be surrounded by trees which each harboured one of her
attendant nymphs.

[399] Hahn, _Griech. Märchen_, II. no. 84. Cf. also no. 58.

[400] Χουρμούζης, Κρητικά, pp. 69, 70.

[401] This belief however is not universal in Greece; in some few
districts a Nereid now, like a wolf in ancient times, is safer seen
first than seeing first.

[402] Apoll. Rhod. _Argon._ II. 477 sqq.

[403] i.e. past participle passive of ξεραίνω (anc. ξηραίνω).

[404] Hom. _Od._ XIII. 103-4.

[405] _De quorumdam Graec. opinat._ cap. xix.

[406] _Id._ XIII. 39 sqq.

[407] So I translate χελιδόνιον on the authority of a muleteer whom I
hired at Olympia; the modern form is χελιδόνι. It may be added that in
Greece the cuckoo-flower is often of a dark enough shade to justify the
epithet κυάνεον.

[408] Artem. _Oneirocr._ II. 27.

[409] Cf. Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 102. Χουρμούζης, Κρητικά, p. 69.
Δελτίον τῆς Ἱιστορ. καὶ Ἐθνολ. Ἑταιρίας τῆς Ἑλλάδος, II. p. 122.

[410] Inscription on rock at entrance now barely legible. Cf. Paus. X.
32. 5, Strabo IX. 3, Aesch. _Eum._ 22.

[411] Cf. Ulrichs, _Reisen und Forschungen in Griechenland_, I. p. 119,
Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 103.

[412] Heuzey, _Le mont Olympe et l’Acarnanie_, pp. 204-5.

[413] Hom. _Od._ VI. 105.

[414] Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 107. The title ἡ μεγάλη κυρά
must not be confused with the title ἡ κυρὰ τοῦ κόσμου (see above p.
89), which belongs to Demeter.

[415] _Ibid._

[416] Cf. Paus. VIII. 35. 8, whence it appears probable that the
nymph Καλλιστώ was once identical with Artemis; see Preller, _Griech.
Mythol._ p. 304.

[417] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθην. I. p. 227.

[418] Apoll. Rhod. III. 877. Callim. _Hymn to Artemis_, 15.

[419] From Onorio Belli, _Descrizione dell’ isola di Candia_, in Museum
of Classical Antiqu., vol. II. p. 271. Cf. B. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p.
108. Spratt, _Trav. in Crete_, I. p. 146.

[420] Du Cange, _Gloss. med. et infim. Latin._ s.v. _Diana_.

[421] Above, p. 119.

[422] _Orph. Hymn_ 36 (35) _ad fin._

[423] _De quor. Graec. opinat._ cap. xx.

[424] For these two names see above, p. 21.

[425] For the _Callicantzari_ see below, p. 190.

[426] For _Burcolakes_ or _Vrykolakes_ see below, cap. IV.

[427] _pulcras dominas_, a translation of the Nereids’ title καλὰς
ἀρχόντισσας, _ibid._ cap. XIX.

[428] The title-page of this exceedingly rare work runs as follows:--

  La description et histoire de l’isle de Scios ou Chios
  par
  Jerosme Justinian

Gentil’homme ordinaire de la chambre du Roy Tres-Chrestien, fils
de Seigneur Vincent Justinian, l’un des Seigneurs de la dite Isle,
Chevalier de l’ordre de sa Majesté, Conseiller en son Conseil d’Estat
et Privé, et Ambassadeur extraordinaire du Roy, auprez de Sultan Selin,
Grand Seigneur de Constantinople.

  M.D.VI.

In the copy formerly belonging to the historian Finlay and now in the
possession of the British School of Archaeology at Athens is found a
note by Finlay as follows:--‘Joh. Wilh. Zinkeisen in Geschichte des
osmanischen Reiches in Europa (Gotha, 1854), vol. ii. p. 90, note 2,
mentions a second printed copy as existing in the Mazarine Library at
Paris, and a manuscript copy in possession of Justiniani family at
Genoa. The date according to Zinkeisen should be not MDVI but MDCVI.’
There is no designation of the press or place from which the volume
issued.

[429] _op. cit._ bk vi. p. 59.

[430] See above, p. 140.

[431] _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, pp. 107 and 123.

[432] Compare _Märchen_, etc. Song 56 and Stories 7, 19, with _Das
Volksleben_, p. 123.

[433] Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 129.

[434] See above, p. 121.

[435] Also in one word καλλικυρᾶδες or καλοκυρᾶδες.

[436] Cf. Πολίτης, Μελέτη κ.τ.λ. p. 227; Pouqueville, _Voyage en
Grèce_, VI. p. 160; and above, p. 125.

[437] _Reisen auf dem griech. Inseln_, III. pp. 45 and 182.

[438] In Ἐφημ. Ἀρχαιολογική, 1852, p. 648.

[439] Passow, _Pop. Carm. Graec. Recent._ no. 524.

[440] Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 130.

[441] Curt. Wachsmuth, _Das alte Griechenland im Neuen_, p. 31. Cf.
also Παρνασσός, IV. p. 773 (1880).

[442] Cf. Theodore Bent, _The Cyclades_, p. 144, who mentions also the
custom of shooting at the waterspout as a precaution.

[443] Curt. Wachsmuth, _op. cit._ p. 30.

[444] Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. IV. 828, cited by Wachsmuth, _loc. cit._

[445] For passages from authors of the 11th century and onwards see
Leo Allatius, _De quor. Graec. opin._ cap. iii., and Grimm, _Deutsche
Mythologie_, II. 1012.

[446] Aristophanes, _Frogs_, 293.

[447] Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 133.

[448] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθην. I. p. 224.

[449] _Vespae_, 1177, and _Pax_, 758.

[450] e.g. Hahn, _Griech. Märchen_, no. 4.

[451] Πολίτης, Μελέτη κ.τ.λ. p. 193.

[452] Hahn, _Griech. Märchen_, no. 4. Cf. Πολίτης, _l.c._

[453] Πολίτης, _l.c._

[454] e.g. Hahn, _Griech. Märchen_, nos. 4 and 32.

[455] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθην. III. p. 156.

[456] Ἐφημ. Ἀρχαιολογική, 1852, p. 653, and Δελτίον τὴς Ἱστορ. καὶ
Ἐθνολ. Ἑταιρ. II. p. 135.

[457] A few instances are collected by Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 141.

[458] See Preller, _Griech. Myth._ p. 618.

[459] Τὰ ἐς τὸν Τυανέα Ἀπολλώνιον, IV. 25 (p. 76).

[460] _Metamorph._ I. cap. 11-19.

[461] Lucian, _Philopseudes_, § 2. Strabo, I. p. 19. Schol. ad Arist.
_Vesp._ 1177.

[462] See above, pp. 147-8.

[463] _The Cyclades_, p. 496.

[464] γιαλός = ancient αἰγιαλός, ‘the shore.’

[465] The differences in sound between γι and γ before ε, and between λ
and λλ, are negligible. In many words and dialects there are none.

[466] _De quor. Graec. opinat._ cap. iii.-viii.

[467] Zenob. _Cent._ III. 3. Suidas s.v. Γελλοῦς παιδοφιλωτέρα (a
proverb). Hesych. s.v. Γελλώ.

[468] The date is approximate only; for the authorship of the work in
question is, I understand, disputed.

[469] This is merely a Latinised plural form; the Greek plural
regularly ends in -δες.

[470] This word is recorded as still in use by Wachsmuth, _Das alte
Griechenland im Neuen_, p. 78.

[471] _op. cit._ cap. viii.

[472] Cf. above, p. 174, where however the accent is given as belonging
to the first syllable. The actual spelling in Allatius is Μωρρᾷ. The
word in form Μορῆ also occurs in conjunction with the mention of
Striges and Geloudes in a MS. of νομοκανόνες obtained by Dr W. H. D.
Rouse. See _Folklore_, vol. X. no. 2, p. 151.

[473] Probably from Low Latin ‘_burdo_’ = _milvus_, a kite.

[474] Compounded from Low Latin ‘_bardala_’ = _alauda_, a lark. A form
ἀναβαρδοῦ occurs in a similar list of names cited by Dr Rouse from a
MS. on magic. See _Folklore_, _l.c._ p. 162. The names said to have
been extorted by the Archangel Michael begin there with στρίγλα, γιλοῦ,
and belong clearly to a similar female demon.

[475] The spelling in the text of Allatius before me is ψυχρανωσπάστρια.

[476] Theo. Bent, _The Cyclades_, p. 496.

[477] Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ XI. 39.

[478] Hyginus, _Fabul._ 28, emend. Barth.

[479] _Fasti_, VI. 131 ff.

[480] The same apparently as the στρίγλος of Hesychius. The Greek
peasants are very vague about the names of any birds other than those
which they eat.

[481] I. p. 473 (περὶ Στρυγγῶν), Migne, _Patrol. Graeco-Lat._ vol.
XCIV., p. 1604.

[482] The word is εἰσοικίζει which suggests rather the ‘possession’ of
children by Striges as by devils. This however could hardly represent
fairly the popular belief.

[483] Quoted by Leo Allatius, _op. cit._ cap. iii.

[484] So also in Albania, Hahn, _Alb. Studien_, I. 163.

[485] From Πολίτης, Μελέτη κ.τ.λ. pp. 179-181.

[486] Αδαμάντιος Ἰ. Ἀδαμαντίου, Τηνιακά, pp. 293 sqq.

[487] Du Cange, _Gloss. med. et infim. Latin._ s.vv. ‘Diana’ and
‘Striga.’

[488] _Ibid._

[489] A witch of Santorini told me that she had a narrow escape from
being burnt for a much less heinous crime, failure to get rain. See
above, p. 49.

[490] Πολίτης in Παρνασσός, II. p. 261 (1878).

[491] Πολίτης, _ibid._ p. 260.

[492] Πολίτης, _ibid._ pp. 266-8.

[493] Σκαρλάτος, Λεξικόν, s.v. (Πολίτης, _l.c._).

[494] Ἐφημ. τῶν Φιλομαθῶν, 1860, p. 1272 (Πολίτης, _l.c._).

[495] Νεοελληνικὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, II. p. 191 (Πολίτης, _l.c._).

[496] Ἀδαμάντιος Ν. Ἀδαμαντίου, Τηνιακά, pp. 293 ff. Cf. above, p. 183.
The forms used are ἡ γοργόνα, τὸ γοργόνι, and γοργονικὸ παιδί.

[497] Ἐφημ. τῶν Φιλομαθῶν, 1871, p. 1843 (Πολίτης _l.c._).

[498] Published by E. Legrand in _Collection de monuments de la langue
néo-hellénique_, no. 16, from two MSS. nos. 929 and 930 in Paris
(Bibliothèque Nationale).

[499] See above, p. 173.

[500] Passow, _Carm. Popul._ no. 337.

[501] The date assigned is, I believe, not certain, but is not of great
importance.

[502] _De monstris et beluis_, edited by Berger de Xivrey in
_Traditions Tératologiques_, p. 25. Πολίτης, _l.c._

[503] _Theog._ 270-288.

[504] Cf. Pind. _Ol._ XIII. 90.

[505] Kuhn in _Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung_, vol. I.
pp. 460-1, connects γοργώ with γάργαρα and Sanskr. _garya, garyana_, in
sense of ‘the noise of the waves.’ Cf. Maury, _Hist. des relig. de la
Grèce antique_, I. p. 303.

[506] No. 1002, found at Athens; date 600 B.C. or earlier.

[507] No. 534, from Corinth; date about 550 B.C.

[508] Πολίτης, _l.c._ p. 269.

[509] Hom. _Od._ XII. 73 ff.

[510] _Aen._ IV. 327.

[511] Παραδόσεις, part ii. of the series Μελέται περὶ τοῦ βίου καὶ τῆς
γλώσσης τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ λαοῦ.

[512] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, II. p. 1293.

[513] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, II. 1295.

[514] _De quor. Graec. opinat._ cap. ix.

[515] Πολίτης, Παραδ. II. 1245.

[516] _Ibid._ II. 1245. It might equally well however, as Polites
suggests, mean ‘deceivers,’ from the active πλανάω, ‘to lead astray.’

[517] So explained by Πολίτης, _op. cit._ 1247.

[518] _Ibid._ II. 1245.

[519] Πολίτης, Παραδ. I. p. 370 (from Syra).

[520] _Ibid._ II. 1293 (from Myconos).

[521] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθην. I. p. 230.

[522] Πολίτης, Παραδ. II. p. 1291. In the Museum they are numbered
10333-4.

[523] Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, p. 367.

[524] Πολίτης, Παραδ. II. p. 1323.

[525] Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 148, and Πολίτης, Παραδ. I. p. 333.

[526] Leo Allatius (_De quor. Graec. opinat._ cap. ix.) makes the
period a week only, ending on New Year’s Day.

[527] For dialectic varieties of this name from Macedonia, the
Peloponnese, Crete, and some of the Cyclades, see Πολίτης, Παραδ., II.
1256.

[528] ὁ μεγάλος or ὁ πρῶτος καλλικάντζαρος. Also, according to Πολίτης,
Παραδ. I. p. 369, ὁ ἀρχικαλλικάντζαρος. In Constantinople (acc. to
Πολίτης, Παραδ. I. 343) he has a proper name Μαντρακοῦκος, which
however I cannot interpret satisfactorily.

[529] ὁ κουτσοδαίμονας, or simply ὁ κουτσὸς, ὁ χωλός. Cf. B. Schmidt,
_Das Volksleben_, pp. 152-4.

[530] The sequence of these cocks varies locally; their order is
sometimes black, white, red.

[531] Lucian, _Philops._ cap. 14.

[532] So Leo Allatius, _De quor. Graec. opin._ cap. ix.

[533] Several other versions in the same vein are recorded, cf. B.
Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 151, Πολίτης, Παραδ. I. pp. 337-41 and
II. p. 1305.

[534] Πολίτης, Παραδ. I. p. 372.

[535] For this version see Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθην. I. p. 229.

[536] See above, p. 149.

[537] Πολίτης, Παραδ. I. p. 338 (from Samos).

[538] Mod. Gk χαμολι̯ό, Anc. χαμαιλέων.

[539] Ἐφημ. τῶν Φιλομαθῶν, 1862, p. 1909.

[540] Πολίτης, Παραδ. I. 347.

[541] _Ibid._ I. 356.

[542] _Ibid._ I. 338.

[543] _Ibid._ I. 342.

[544] ψίχα, ψίχα λουκάνικο, κομμάτι ξεροτήγανο, νὰ φᾶν οἱ
Καλλικάντζαροι, νὰ φύγουνε ’στὸν τόπο τους. For other versions see B.
Schmidt, _Das Volksl._ p. 150, and Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. 342.

[545] Cf. Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθην. III. 154.

[546] Cf. Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. p. 357.

[547] _Ibid._ II. p. 1308.

[548] Abbott, _Maced. Folklore_, p. 74.

[549] _Voyage de la Grèce_, VI. p. 157.

[550] Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστορ. καὶ Ἐθνολ. Ἑταιρ. τῆς Ἑλλάδος, II. pp. 137-141.

[551] Ἰ. Μιχαήλ, Μακεδονικά, p. 39. Πολίτης, Παραδ. II. 1251 note 2.

[552] _loc. cit._

[553] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθην. III. pp. 66 and 156.

[554] Παραδόσεις, i. p. 334.

[555] The word means literally men whose attendant _genii_ ( στοιχει̯ά,
on which see the next section) are ‘light’ ( ἀλαφρός) instead of being
solid and steady. The temperament of such persons is ill-balanced in
ordinary affairs, but peculiarly sensitive to supernatural influences;
it often involves the gift of second sight and other similar faculties.

[556] Supernatural donkeys with the same habits are known also in Crete
under the name of ἀνασκελᾶδες (prob. formed from ἀνάσκελα, ‘on one’s
back,’ the position in which the rider soon finds himself).

[557] Πολίτης, Παραδ. I. p. 342, from Γ. Λουκᾶς, Φιλολ. ἐπισκ. p. 12.

[558] Πολίτης, Παραδ. I. 338.

[559] Luke iii. 22.

[560] Cf. above, p. 67.

[561] _De quorundam Graec. opinat._ cap. X.

[562] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, II. p. 1286.

[563] Ἐμαν. Μανωλακάκης, Καρπαθιακά, p. 130.

[564] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις I. p. 344.

[565] The word ζωτικά which is sometimes heard in the Cyclades is, I
suspect, merely a corrupt form of ξωτικά (on which see above, p. 67);
some writers however have derived it from the root of ζάω. But at any
rate in usage it denotes the same class of beings as the commoner form
ξωτικά.

[566] _op. cit._ cap. X. Actually the earliest reference to the
Callicantzari which I have found occurs in _La description et histoire
de l’isle de Scios ou Chios_ by Jerosme Justinian, p. 61, where he
says, _Ils tiennent ... qu’il y a de certains esprits qui courent par
les grands chemins, et sont nommez Calican, Saros_. But inasmuch as
he does not record even the name correctly, his statement that these
beings are _esprits_ can have little weight as against that of Leo
Allatius.

[567] _Das Volksleben_, p. 143.

[568] Παραδόσεις, I. pp. 331-81, and II. pp. 1242-4.

[569] Πολίτης, Παραδ. II. 1257.

[570] _The Cyclades_, pp. 360 and 388. Bent does not seem to have known
the ordinary form καλλικάντζαροι.

[571] Abbott, _Maced. Folklore_, p. 73.

[572] Λαμπρίδης, Ζαγοριακά, p. 209.

[573] In this, the ordinary, sense the word appears twice in Passow’s
_Popularia Carm._ nos. 142 and 200. See also his index, s.v.
καλιουντσήδαις. The Turks themselves borrowed the word _qālioum_ (our
‘galleon’) from the Franks.

[574] Πολίτης, Παραδ. II. pp. 1242 and 1244.

[575] _Das Volksleben_, p. 144.

[576] Schmidt, it should be said, was dubious about the existence of
this form.

[577] In Bianchi, _Dict. Turc- fr._ II. p. 469, it is translated
‘loup-garou,’ Schmidt, _l.c._

[578] Schmidt, _l.c._ note 2, ‘esclave de la plus mauvaise espèce.’

[579] The previous relations between the Giustiniani, who controlled
the Genoese chartered company in Chios, and the Ottoman Empire seem to
have been purely commercial.

[580] Quoted by Leo Allat. _de quor. Graec. opinat._ cap. ix. and
published in full by Σάθας.

[581] If this was the origin of Suidas’ information, as seems almost
certain in view of its inaccuracy, his date cannot be earlier than that
of Psellus (flor. circa 1050).

[582] d’Arnis, _Lexicon Med. et Infim. Latin._, explains _babuztus_
(with other forms _babulus_, _baburrus_, and _baburcus_) by the words
_stultus_, _insanus_.

[583] J. B. Navon, _Rouz Namé_, in the periodical _Fundgruben Orients_,
Vienna, 1814, vol. IV. p. 146, quoted by Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, II. p.
1249, note 1.

[584] Ἄτακτα, IV. p. 211.

[585] In the periodical Πανδώρα, 1866, XVI. p. 453.

[586] Μελέτη, p. 73, note 6.

[587] Παραδόσεις, II. pp. 1252-3.

[588] The word καλίκι or καλίγι is a diminutive form from the Latin
_caliga_. Besides its original meaning ‘shoe,’ it has acquired now
the sense of ‘hoof.’ The transition was clearly through the sense of
‘horse-shoe,’ as witness the verb καλιγόνω, ‘I shoe a horse.’

[589] This word has to be written with β to give the _v_-sound of υ
following ε. The ε drops, and the υ cannot then be used alone, for
except after α and ε it is sounded as a vowel.

[590] Polites backs up this meaning by deriving _baboutzicarios_ (on
which see above, p. 217) from παποῦτσι (Arabic _bābouch_) ‘a shoe,’ but
reluctantly refuses to accept the identification of καλιοντζῆς (above,
p. 215) with γαλόντζης, a maker of γαλόντσας or ‘wooden shoes.’ Παραδ.
II. 1253.

[591] Their Greek character is strongly emphasized by Balsamon, pp.
230-1. (Vol. 137 of Migne, _Patrol. Gr.-Lat._)

[592] _loc. cit._

[593] Photius, _Biblioth._ 254, pp. 468-9, ed. Bekker, μυσαρὰς καὶ
μιαιφόνους τελετάς.

[594] _Ibid._ δαιμονιώδης καὶ βδελυκτὴ ἑορτή.

[595] _Ibid._ ὡς ἐνθέσμοις ἔργοις τοῖς ἀθεμίτοις καλλωπιζόμενοι.

[596] Usener, _Acta S. Timothei_, p. 11 (Bonn).

[597] Migne, _Patrol. Gr.-Lat._ Vol. 40, p. 220.

[598] Edited by Cumont.

[599] Balsamon, _loc. cit._

[600] Παραδόσεις, II. pp. 1273-4. To this work I am indebted for most
of my instances of these celebrations during the ‘Twelve Days.’

[601] _Annual of the British School at Athens_, VI. p. 125.

[602] Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 31.

[603] R. M. Dawkins, in _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, Vol. 26, Part
II. (1906), p. 193.

[604] Dawkins, _op. cit._ p. 201, referring to a pamphlet, περὶ τῶν
ἀναστεναρίων καὶ ἄλλων τινῶν παραδόξων ἐθίμων καὶ προλήψεων, ὑπὸ Ἀ.
Χουρμουρζιάδου, Constantinople, 1873, p. 22.

[605] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθ. III. p. 162.

[606] _loc. cit._

[607] The word is certainly in my experience rare, and is not given
in Skarlatos’ Lexicon. But it occurs e.g. in a popular tradition from
Thessaly concerning the Callicantzari, in Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. p.
356.

[608] Λεξικὸν τῆς καθ’ ἡμᾶς Ἑλληνικῆς διαλέκτου, s.v. κατσιασμένος.

[609] Plutarch, _de εἰ apud Delphos_, 9 (p. 389).

[610] Balsamon, p. 231 (Migne, _Patrol. Gr.-Lat._ Vol. 137).

[611] Ulpian, _ad Dem._ p. 294. Cf. also Balsamon, _loc. cit._

[612] Müller and Donaldson, _History of the Literature of Ancient
Greece_, I. p. 382.

[613] Smith, _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities_, s.v.
_Dionysia_.

[614] See above, p. 151.

[615] I write _d_ in the place of the Greek τ, which when following ν
always has the sound of English _d_.

[616] It is probably formed from τέντα, ‘a tent,’ which clearly comes
from the Latin. Some however derive directly from the anc. Gk τιταίνω.
The question of origin however does not affect my illustration of the
later change of τ into τσ.

[617] Heard in Sciathos and kindly communicated to me by Mr A. J. B.
Wace.

[618] Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxv. 6; Dioscor. v. 45; Sophocles Byzant.
_Lexicon_, s.v. ἀρκεύθινος οἶνος.

[619] Marcellus Empir., cap. 20 (p. 139).

[620] _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, p. 380.

[621] Lucian, _Zeuxis_, cap. 6.

[622] Nonnus, _Dionys._ 13. 44 καὶ λασίων Σατύρων, Κενταυρίδος αἶμα
γενέθλης. This reference I owe to Miss Harrison, _l. c._

[623] _Iliad_, II. 743.

[624] Lucian, _Zeuxis_, cap. 5.

[625] Isaiah xxxiv. 14.

[626] I cannot of course absolutely affirm that the word is extinct in
every dialect even now; but the only suggestion of its use which I can
find is in a story of Hahn’s collection (_Alban. und Griech. Märch._
II. 189), where the German translation has the strange word ‘Wolfsmann.’

[627] _Pyth._ III. 1-4.

[628] _Ibid._ IV. 115.

[629] _Ibid._ IV. 119.

[630] _Ibid._ III. 45.

[631] _Pyth._ II. 29.

[632] _Pyth._ II. 42-48.

[633] Hesiod, _Shield of Heracl._ 178-188.

[634] Hom. _Il._ I. 262-8.

[635] Hom. _Il._ II. 743.

[636] _Il._ XI. 832.

[637] _Ibid._

[638] _Il._ IV. 219.

[639] Hom. _Od._ XXI. 303.

[640] _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, p. 382.

[641] _Early Age of Greece_, I. pp. 173 ff.

[642] _Pyth._ IV. 80.

[643] _Pyth._ III. 45.

[644] _Early Age of Greece_, I. pp. 175-6.

[645] Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, I. p. 178.

[646] _De bello Gothico_, IV. 20 (Niebuhr, 1833, p. 565).

[647] _Early Age of Greece_, I. pp. 177-8.

[648] _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, p. 382.

[649] Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, I. p. 174. The vase in question
is figured by Colvin in _Journ. of Hellenic Studies_, Vol. I. p. 131,
Pl. 2, and by Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena_ etc. p. 384.

[650] Pind. _Pyth._ III. 45 ff. (transl. Myers).

[651] Pind. _Pyth._ IX. 31 ff.

[652] _Primitive Culture_, Vol. I. p. 308. For a mass of instances, see
pp. 308-315.

[653] _Op. cit._ I. p. 312.

[654] Verg. _Ecl._ VIII. 95.

[655] Hesiod, _Shield of Heracles_, 178 ff. Cf. also the names Ἄγριος
and Ἔλατος (suggesting ἐλάτη, the fir-tree from which their weapons
were made) in Apollodor. II. 5. 4. The name Ἄσβολος in Hesiod, meaning
‘soot,’ I cannot interpret; for it is hard to suppose that the ancient
Centaurs, like the Callicantzari, came down the chimney. But the word
is possibly corrupt; for Ovid (_Met._ XII. 307) refers to an augur
Astylus among the Centaurs.

[656] Cf. Miss J. Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion_, pp. 383-4.

[657] Paus. VIII. 42. 1-4. Cf. VIII. 25. 5.

[658] Apollodorus, II. 5. 4.

[659] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. p. 339.

[660] Stories of their coming to cook frogs etc. at the hearths of men
occur, but only confirm the general belief that they have no fires of
their own at which to cook, and are in general afraid of fire.

[661] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, II. pp. 1297 and 1337.

[662] The shift of accent is due to the synizesis of the syllables
-ει-α, pronounced now as -yá.

[663] Du Cange, s.v. στοιχεῖον.

[664] _Coloss._ ii. 3 and 20; _Galat._ iv. 3 and 9.

[665] _Galat._ iv. 9.

[666] Passow, _Popul. Carm._ no. 524. According to Σκαρλάτος (Λεξικόν,
s.v.) στοιχειόν is sometimes a term of abuse; on that statement I base
my interpretation of the folk-song.

[667] Du Cange, s.v.

[668] Du Cange, s.v.

[669] Georg. Cedrenus (circ. 1050) _Historiarum Compendium_, p. 197
(edit. Paris).

[670] Cedrenus, _ibid._

[671] στοιχεῖον pro eo quod τέλεσμα (whence by Arabic corruption our
‘talisman’) vocant Graeci, usurpant alii. Du Cange, _ibid._

[672] Codinus (15th century), _de Originibus Constantinop._ p. 30
(edit. Paris) § 63.

[673] Codinus, _ibid._ p. 20. § 39.

[674] _De quor. Graec. opinat._ cap. XXI.

[675] The active of the verb also survives in a special sense, for
which see below, p. 267. The modern form is στοιχειόνω: cf. δηλόνω for
δηλόω, etc.

[676] See above, p. 69.

[677] Verg. _Aen._ V. 84 ff.

[678] _Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite_, 272. Cf. above, p. 156.

[679] _De quor. Graec. opinat._ cap. XXI.

[680] B. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 185.

[681] i.e. οἰκοκύριος, with initial ν attached (first in the
accusative) from the article (τὸν) preceding. This is the ordinary word
for ‘the master of a house.’

[682] i.e. δαίμων τοῦ τόπου. The word is used in Cythnos and Cyprus.
Cf. Βάλληνδας, Κυθνιακά, p. 124. Σακελλάριος, Κυπριακά, III. p. 286.

[683] For detailed stories in point, see Leo Allatius, _l. c._, B.
Schmidt, _op. cit._ pp. 186, 187.

[684] _Char._ 16.

[685] Suidas, s.vv. οἰωνιστική and Ξενοκράτης.

[686] s.v. ὄφιν οἰκουρόν.

[687] VIII. 41.

[688] Cf. Passow, _Popul. Carm._, Index, s.v. στοιχεῖον.

[689] Πολίτης, Μελέτη, p. 134.

[690] Πολίτης, _l. c._

[691] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθην. III. p. 155.

[692] Καμπούρογλου, _op. cit._ I. 226.

[693] e.g. Passow, _Popul. Carm._ nos. 511, 512.

[694] Ἀντωνιάδης, Κρητηΐς, p. 247 (from Πολίτης, _op. cit._ p. 141).

[695] Πολίτης, _ibid._

[696] Ἰατρίδης, Συλλογὴ δημοτ. ἀσμάτων, pp. 28-30 (Πολίτης, _ibid._).

[697] W. H. D. Rouse in _Folklore_, June, 1899 (Vol. x. no. 2), pp. 182
ff.

[698] Passow, no. 511, and Ζαμπέλιος, Ἄσματα δημοτικὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος, p.
757.

[699] So Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 196. Ἰατρίδης, Συλλογὴ
δημοτ. ἀσμάτων, p. 93, mentions also a dog.

[700] So also in Zacynthos and Cephalonia. Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p.
196.

[701] e.g. in Cimolus, Bent, _The Cyclades_, p. 45.

[702] Cf. Ricaut, _Hist. de l’église grecque_, pp. 369-70.

[703] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθην. III. p. 148.

[704] _The Cyclades_, p. 132.

[705] Πολίτης, Μελέτη, p. 138.

[706] Ricaut, _Hist. de l’église grecque_, p. 367 (from Πολίτης,
_ibid._).

[707] Ἰατρίδης, Συλλογὴ δημοτ. ἀσμάτων, p. 28.

[708] _Das Volksleben_, p. 196, note 2.

[709] Since this was written, a new work of Prof. Polites ( Μελέται
περὶ τοῦ βίου καὶ τῆς γλώσσης τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ λαοῦ, Παραδόσεις) has come
into my hands, and I find that he has modified his views. Cf. below,
pp. 272-3, where I insert a suggestion made by Polites, _op. cit._ II.
p. 1089.

[710] Suidas, Λεξικόν, s.v. Μάμας. The statement is corroborated
by Codinus, περὶ θεαμάτων, p. 30, who adds to the human victims
‘multitudes of sheep and oxen and fowls.’ From Πολίτης, Μελέτη, p. 141,
note 1.

[711] Hom. _Il._ VII. 442 ff.

[712] Hom. _Il._ XII. 3-33.

[713] See below, p. 273.

[714] _Agam._ 214.

[715] _Agam._ 1418.

[716] IV. 9. 1-5.

[717] VI. 20. 2-5.

[718] Porphyrius, _De abstinentia_, II. 56. Plutarch, _Themistocles_,
13.

[719] This view of the story I take from Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, II. p.
1089.

[720] V. 4. 4.

[721] _Pausanias’ Description of Greece_, III. p. 468.

[722] Pausanias, I. 26. 1.

[723] Schol. ad Aristoph. _Nubes_, 508.

[724] Miss Jane Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_,
p. 327 ff.

[725] See Roscher, _Lexicon d. Mythol._ I. 2468 ff.

[726] Lucian, _Alexander vel Pseudomantis_, cap. XIV.

[727] See Miss Jane Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion_, pp. 17-20, where the two reliefs in question are reproduced.

[728] For ballads dealing with this theme, see Πολίτης, Μελέτη, p. 133,
and Ᾱραβάντινος, Συλλογὴ δημωδῶν ἀσμάτων τῆς Ἠπείρου, no. 451.

[729] Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 197.

[730] _Ibid._ p. 198.

[731] He used a neuter form, τὰ ἀράπια, which I have not found
elsewhere.

[732] A similar method of laying _vrykólakes_ is reported from Samos by
Πολίτης (Παραδόσεις, I. 580). In this case a wizard ‘took three calves
born at one birth and drove them three times round the churchyard,
saying some magic words.’

[733] ὁ βῳδοκέφαλας. The story as I give it is not a verbatim report of
what I heard; as usual, I had to rely on my memory at the time and make
notes afterwards.

[734] This is the form which I heard used constantly in the island
instead of the more common ποτάμι (τὸ).

[735] This however must have been prior to the middle of the 17th
century; for a history of the island published in 1657 says, ‘cette
Isle ... n’est arrousée d’aucun ruisseau ou fontaine.’ Père François
Richard, _Relation de ce qui s’est passé à Santorini_, p. 35.

[736] Soph. _Trach._ 10 ff.

[737] Formed from the ancient δράκων as Χάρος and Χάροντας from Χάρων.
Cf. above, p. 98. There is a feminine δρακόντισσα or δράκισσα.

[738] Cf. Philostr. _Vit. Apollon._ III. 8. Aelian, _de natur. anim._
XVI. 39. Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 191.

[739] Only one variety of dragon, the χαμοδράκι or ‘ground-dragon,’ is
often harmless. It is of pastoral tastes and consorts with the ewes and
she-goats, and is more noted among the shepherds for its lasciviousness
than for any other quality.

[740] Artem. _Oneirocr._ II. 13 (p. 101). Cf. Festus, 67, 13.

[741] Lucian, _Philopseudes_, cap. XXXII. Zenobius, _Cent._ II. 1. The
same punishment is in one story inflicted by a Callicantzaros on a
midwife who had deceived him into believing that his newborn child was
male. After sending her away with a sackful of gold, he discovered her
deceit, and on her arrival at home the gold had turned to ashes. See
above, p. 199.

[742] Ἀδαμάντιος Ἰ. Ἀδαμαντίου, Τηνιακά (published first in Δελτίον τῆς
Ἱστορ. καὶ Ἐθνολ. Ἑταιρίας τῆς Ἑλλάδος, Vol. V. pp. 277 sqq.).

[743] For the first half of this story, see above, p. 183.

[744] ἀθάνατο νερό, _op. cit._ pp. 299 and 315.

[745] e.g. ἀθάνατα μῆλα, ‘immortal apples,’ _op. cit._ pp. 311 and 316.
ἀθάνατο καρποῦζι, ‘immortal water-melon,’ pp. 297 and 315. ἀθάνατο
γαροῦφαλο, ‘immortal gilly-flower,’ p. 317. The translation of this
last is correctly that which I have given, but the peasants all over
Greece will call almost any bright and scented flower by this same name.

[746] See above, p. 137.

[747] Cf. above, pp. 143-4.

[748] _Glossar. med. et infim. Graecitatis_ (p. 1541), s.v. τελώνιον.

[749] _Ibid._, Damasc. Hierodiac. _Serm._ 3.

[750] _Ibid._, Maximus Cythaer. Episc.

[751] _Ibid._, Georg. Hamartolus.

[752] τελώνας καὶ διαλόγους (for which I read δικολόγους with Bern.
Schmidt, _das Volksleben_, p. 172).

[753] _Ibid._, _Euchologium_.

[754] Luke xii. 20.

[755] Du Cange, _ibid._ τελωνάρχαι, λογοθέται, πρακτοψηφισταί, etc.

[756] See above, p. 110.

[757] Κωνστ. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, pp. 362-3.

[758] Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχέλαος, ἡ Σινασός, p. 81.

[759] See above, p. 109.

[760] Testimony to the same belief is cited by Du Cange (s.v. τελώνιον)
from an anonymous astronomical work.

[761] For references see Preller, _Griech. Mythol._ II. 105-6.

[762] Villoison, _Annales des voyages_, II. p. 180, cited by B.
Schmidt, _das Volksleben_, p. 174, note 4.

[763] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθην. III. p. 166.

[764] _Voyage de la Grèce_, VI. p. 154.

[765] _Das Volksleben_, p. 173.

[766] _Griech. Märch._ Vol. II. no. 64.

[767] Cf. Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθηναίων, III. p. 77.

[768] Cf. above, p. 53.

[769] For this term see above, p. 204.

[770] B. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 180.

[771] _Ibid._ note 6.

[772] _Op. cit_. p. 181.

[773] _Op. cit._ p. 181.

[774] _Op. cit._ p. 182.

[775] I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this translation. The word
might possibly mean ‘he has had his shadow trampled on,’ and has been
hurt indirectly through an injury inflicted upon his shadow-_genius_.

[776] Hom. _Il._ XXIII. 79.

[777] _Il._ XVIII. 535-8.

[778] Plato, _Phaedo_, p. 107 D.

[779] _Rep._ p. 617 D, E. Cf. 620 D, E.

[780] Meineke, _Fragm. Com. Graec._ IV. p. 238.

[781] Theocr. IV. 40.

[782] I do not of course wish to imply that in the every-day usage of
these words the thought of a guardian-_genius_ was present to men’s
minds; but the first formation of them can only have sprung from this
belief.

[783] _Aen._ VI. 743.

[784] Plato, _Theag._ 128 D.

[785] _Ibid._ E.

[786] Both Plato (_Apol._ 40 A) and Xenophon (_Mem._ I. 1. 2-4),
compare Socrates’ converse with his _genius_ with μαντική or
‘inspiration.’




CHAPTER III.

THE COMMUNION OF GODS AND MEN.

 ἜΤΙ ΤΟΊΝΥΝ ΚΑῚ ΘΥΣΊΑΙ ΠΑ͂ΣΑΙ ΚΑῚ ΟἿΣ ΜΑΝΤΙΚῊ
 ἘΠΙΣΤΑΤΕΙ͂--ΤΑΥ͂ΤΑ Δ’ ἘΣΤῚΝ Ἡ ΠΕΡῚ ΘΕΟΥΣ ΤΕ ΚΑῚ ἈΝΘΡΏΠΟΥΣ ΠΡῸΣ
 ἈΛΛΉΛΟΥΣ ΚΟΙΝΩΝΊΑ--ΟΥ̓ ΠΕΡῚ ἌΛΛΟ ΤΊ ἘΣΤΙΝ Ἢ ΠΕΡῚ ἜΡΩΤΟΣ ΦΥΛΑΚΉΝ ΤΕ ΚΑῚ
 ἼΑΣΙΝ.

  PLATO, _Symposium_, p. 188.


The short sketch which has been given of the attitude of the Greek
peasantry towards the Christian Godhead and all the host of assistant
saints, and also the more detailed account of those pagan deities
or demons whom the common-folk’s awe, not unmingled with affection,
has preserved from oblivion through so many centuries, have, I hope,
justified the statement that the religion of Greece both is now,
and--if a multitude of coincidences in the very minutiae of ancient and
modern beliefs speak at all for the continuity of thought--from the
dawn of Greek history onward through its brief bright noontide to its
long-drawn dusk and night illumined even now only by borrowed lights
has ever been, a form, and a little changed form, of polytheism.

Whatever be the merits and the demerits of such a religion in contrast
with the worship of one almighty God, most thinkers will concede
to it the property of bringing the divine element within more easy
comprehension of the majority of mankind. Proper names, limited
attributes, definite duties and spheres of work--these give a starting
point from which the peasant can set out towards a conception of gods.
He himself bears a name, he himself has qualities, he himself performs
his round of work; and though his name be writ smaller than that of the
being whom he strives to imagine--though his virtues and perhaps his
vices be less pronouncedly white and black--though his daily task be
more trivial--yet in one and all of these things he stands on common
ground with his deities; they differ from him in degree rather than
in kind; he has but to picture a race of beings somewhat stronger and
somewhat nobler than the foremost of his own fellow-men, and these whom
he thus imagines are gods. A single spirit omniscient and omnipotent
is too distant, too inaccessible from any known ground. Lack of the
capacity to form or to grasp lofty ideals carries with it at least the
compensation of closer intimacy with the supernatural and the divine.

It may therefore be expected that in the course of the intellectual
and spiritual development of any primitive people, the more accurately
they learn to measure their own imperfections and limitations, and the
more imaginatively they magnify the wisdom and power of their gods,
the wider and more impassable grows the chasm that divides mortal from
immortal, human from divine; communion of man and god becomes less
frequent, less direct. Such certainly was the experience of the Greek
nation in some measure; but, owing probably to an innate and persistent
vanity which at all times has made the race blind to its own failings,
that experience was less acute than in the case of other peoples. There
had been days indeed when their gods walked the earth with men and
counselled them in troubles and fought in their battles; there had been
days when the chiefest of all the gods sought a hero’s aid against his
giant foes; there had been days when men and women might aspire even
to wedlock with immortals, and to possess children half-divine. In
those days too death was not the only path by which the heavens or the
house of Hades might be gained. Kings and prophets, warriors and fair
women passed thither by grace of the gods living and unscathed; nay,
even personal skill or prowess emboldened minstrel and hero to match
themselves with the gods below, and wielding of club or sweeping of
lyre sufficed to open the doors for their return to earth.

But those days soon passed; men walked and spoke and held open
fellowship with the gods no more; the very poetry and imagination of
the Greek temperament so fast outstripped in rapidity of development
the growth of material or moral resources, that the rift between their
religious ideals and the realities of their life and character ever
widened, until the daily and familiar intercourse of their ancestors
with the gods seemed to them a condition of life irretrievable and
thenceforth impossible. This result was observed and remarked by the
Greeks themselves, but the process by which it had come about was not
agreed. To one school of thought, it was the degeneracy of mankind
through successive ages--the golden age in which men lived as gods and
passed hence, as it were in sleep, to become spirits clothed in air,
administering upon earth the purposes of mighty Zeus--the silver age
wherein childhood was still long and innocent, and, though men’s riper
years brought cares and quarrels and indifference to holy things, yet
when the earth covered them they were called blessed and received a
measure of honour--the bronze age when all men’s minds were set on war
and their stalwart arms were busy with brazen weapons, and by each
other’s hands they were sent down to the chill dark house of Hades
and their names were no more known--the age of heroes who were called
half-divine, who fought in the Theban and the Trojan wars, and when
the doom of death overtook them were granted a life apart from other
men in the islands of the blest, because they had been nobler and more
righteous than those of the age of bronze and had stemmed for a time
the current of degeneracy--the fifth age in which the depravity of man
grows apace and soon there will be nought but discord between father
and son, and no regard will be paid to guest nor comrade nor brother,
and children will slight their aged parents, and the voice of gods will
be unknown to them[787]--to one school of thought, I say, it was simply
and solely this decline of the human race, swift and only once checked,
that was held accountable for their estrangement from the powers above
them.

But such thinkers were in a minority. Humility and self-dissatisfaction
were and are qualities foreign to the ordinary Greek. He observed the
wide gulf that separated him from those whom he worshipped, but without
any sense of unworthiness, without any depression of spirit. He was not
despondent over his own shortcomings and limitations, but was filled
rather with a larger complacency in the thought that, incapable though
he might be to reproduce actually in his own life and character much
of the beauty and nobility of his gods, he was so gifted in mind and
godlike in understanding, that in his moments of highest imagination
and most spiritual exaltation he could soar to that loftier plane
whereon was enacted all the divine life, and could visualise his gods
and feel the closeness of their presence. The motive of the highest
acts of Greek worship seems to have been not the self-abasement of
the worshipper and the glorification of the worshipped, but rather an
obliteration of the distinctions between man and god, and a temporary
attainment by the human of spiritual equality and companionship with
the divine. The votary of Bacchus in his hours of wildest ecstacy
enjoyed so completely this sense of equality and of real union with the
god, that even to others it seemed fitting that he should be called by
the god’s own name[788].

But the hours, in which the Greeks of the historical age attained by
a sort of religious frenzy such intimacy with their gods as their
ancestors were famed to have enjoyed all their life long, were few and
far between. The means of communion had become in general less direct,
less personal. Yet even so the desire for communion continued unabated,
and the belief in it still pervaded every phase of life. Intellectual
progress had curiously little effect upon the dominant religious
ideas. A strongly conservative attachment to ancient tradition and
custom was strangely blended with that progressive spirit which made
the intellectual development of the Athenians unique in its swiftness,
as in its scope, among all peoples known to history. Their minds
welcomed new speculations, new doctrines; but their hearts clung to
the old unreasonable faith. Ancestral ideas remained for them the
sole foundation of religion. Each poet or philosopher in drama or in
dialogue, each man in his own heart, was free to build upon it and to
ornament his superstructure as he would; and his work found a certain
sanction in the appeal which it made to other men’s sense of truth and
of beauty. But for the foundation the _fiat_ of antiquity had been
pronounced and was immutable. Plato’s reasoned exposition of the soul’s
immortality culminates in an Apocalypse ratified by the old mythology;
and a quotation from Homer ever served to quash or to confirm the
subtlest argument.

That the foundation-stone was not, in the estimate of reason, well and
truly laid, that the basis of religion was insecure, must have been
obvious to many. Pindar saw it, and, by refusing to impute to the gods
any deed or purpose which his own heart condemned as ungodly, strove
to repair its defects; Euripides too saw it, and scoffed at those who
would build on so unstable a base. But the mass of men, though they
also must have seen, were little troubled, it would seem, either to
demolish or to repair. They accepted the old beliefs and ceremonies
because they were sanctioned by the authority or the experience of
past ages; and if sober reasoning and criticism exposed flaws and
inconsistencies therein, what matter? They were, as they still are,
a people incapable of any mental equilibrium; the mood of the hour
swayed them now to emotions, now to reasonings; they did not cultivate
consistency; they could not sit still and preserve an even balance
between the passions of the heart and the judgements of the intellect,
but threw their whole selves into the one scale, and the other for the
moment was as vanity.

In the whole complex and irrational scheme of religion thus accepted,
nothing was more highly valued than the means by which divine counsel
was obtained for the conduct both of public and of private affairs.
Omens were regularly taken before battle, at the critical moment when
we should prefer to trust experience and generalship. Oracles were
consulted as to the sites for planting colonies, in cases where a
surveyor’s report might have seemed more decisive. But the efficacy
of these old methods of consulting the gods went almost unchallenged.
It seems seldom to have occurred to men’s minds that those untoward
signs in the victim’s entrails, which perhaps delayed tactics on which
victory depended, were the symptoms of an internal disease and not
the handiwork of a deity, or that the inferior and ambiguous verse,
in which the gods condescended to give counsel, more often confused
than confirmed human judgement. Even of the philosophers, according
to Cicero[789], two only, Xenophanes and Epicurus, went so far as to
deny the validity of all means of communion; and Socrates, for all his
questioning and testing of truth, obeyed without question the whispered
warnings of a _daemon_, and in deference to the ambiguous exhortations
of a vision spent some of his last days in turning Aesop’s fables into
verse, that so he might go into the presence of the gods with his
conscience clear. Thus, though men no longer expected to look upon the
faces or to hear the voices of the gods, they still felt them to be
close at hand, easy of access, ready to counsel, to warn, to encourage;
and the methods of communion, in proportion as they stand condemned by
reason, commend so much the more the steady faith of the people who
used them and never doubted their efficacy. The answer of the ordinary
man to those critics, who questioned the validity of divination merely
because they could not understand the way in which it operated, is well
expressed by Cicero: ‘It is a poor sort of cleverness to try to upset
by sophistry facts which are confirmed by the experience of ages. The
reason of those facts I cannot discover; the dark ways of Nature, I
suppose, conceal it from my view. God has not willed that I should know
the reason, but only that I should use the means[790].’

The Greek nation saw many philosophies rise and fall, but it clung
always to the religion which it had inherited. The doctrines of Plato
and Aristotle, Zeno and Epicurus, became for the Greek people as though
they had never been; but the old polytheism of the Homeric and earlier
ages lived. Faith justified by experience was a living force; the
conclusions of reason a mere fabrication. And an essential part of that
polytheism which was almost instinctive in the Greeks was their belief
in the possibility of close and frequent communion with their gods.

Now the means of communion between men and gods are obviously
twofold--the methods by which men make their communications to the
gods, and the methods by which the gods make their communications to
men. The former class of communications involve for the most part
questions or petitions; the latter are mainly the responses thereto;
and it would seem natural to consider them in that order. But inasmuch
as more is known of the ancient methods by which the gods signified
their will to men than of the reverse process, it will be convenient
first to establish the unity of modern folklore with ancient religion
in this division of the subject, and afterwards to discuss how any
modern ideas concerning the means open to man of communicating with the
gods may bear upon the less known corresponding department of ancient
religion. For if we find that the theory no less than the practice of
divination, that is, of receiving and interpreting divine messages,
has been handed down from antiquity almost unchanged, there will be
a greater probability that, along with the general modern system of
sacrifices or offerings which accompany men’s petitions, a curious
conception of human sacrifice in particular which I once encountered is
also a relic of ancient religion.

The survival of divination then in its several branches first claims
our attention. The various modes employed are for the most part
enumerated by Aeschylus[791] in the passage where Prometheus recounts
the subjects in which he claimed to have first instructed mankind:
dreams and their interpretation; chance words (κληδόνες) overheard,
often conveying another meaning to the hearer than that which the
speaker intended; meetings on the road (ἐνόδιοι σύμβολοι), where the
person or object encountered was a portent of the traveller’s success
or failure in his errand; auspices in the strict sense of the word,
observations, that is, of the flight and habits of birds; augury
from a sacrificial victim, either by inspection of its entrails or
by signs seen in the fire in which it was being consumed. To these
arts Suidas[792] adds ‘domestic divination’ (οἰκοσκοπικόν)--the
interpretation of various trivial incidents of domestic life--palmistry
(χειροσκοπικόν), and divination from the twitching of any part of
the body (παλμικόν). Finally of course there was direct inspiration
(μαντική), either temporary, as in an individual seer, or permanent, as
at the oracle of Delphi.

Whether the common-folk ever distinguished the comparative values of
these many methods of divination may well be doubted. The Delphic
oracle, I suspect, attained its high prestige more because it was ready
to supply immediately on demand a more or less direct and detailed
answer to a definite question, than because personal inspiration was
held to be in any way a surer channel for divine communications than
were other means of divination. Some thinkers indeed, chiefly of the
Peripatetic school[793], were inclined to draw distinctions between
‘natural’ and ‘skilled’ divination[794]. The ‘natural’ methods,
including dreams and all direct inspiration, were accepted by them; the
‘skilled’ methods, those which required the services of a professional
augur or interpreter, were disallowed. But the division proposed was
in itself bad--for dreams do not by any means exclusively belong
to the first class, but probably in the majority of cases require
interpretation by experts--and, apart from that consideration, the
distinction was the invention of a philosophical sect and not an
expression of popular feeling. There is nothing to show that the
common-folk, believing as they did in the practicability of communion
with their gods, esteemed one means of divination as intrinsically more
valuable than another.

Nor was there any logical reason for such discrimination. Granted
that there were gods superior to man in knowledge and in power and
also willing to communicate with him, no restriction could logically
be set upon the means of communication which they might choose to
adopt. There was no reason why they should speak by the mouth of a
priestess intoxicated with mephitic vapours or disturb men’s sleep with
visions rather than use the birds as their messengers or write their
commandment on the intestines of a sacrificial victim.

A certain justification for accepting some means of divination, such
as intelligible dreams, and for suspecting others, might certainly
have been found in distrust of any human intermediary; vagrant and
necessitous oracle-mongers infested the country; and even the priestess
of Delphi, as history shows, was not always superior to political and
pecuniary considerations. But experience of fraud did not apparently
teach distrust; the fact that oracles and other means of divination
were undoubtedly often abused did not cause the Greek people to
reject the proper use of them; down to this day all the chief methods
of ancient divination still continue. In some cases, we shall see,
the modern employment of such methods is a mere survival of ancient
custom without any intelligent religious motive; but in others there
is abundant evidence that the modern folk are still actuated by the
feelings which so dominated the lives of their ancestors--the belief
in, and the desire for, close and frequent communion with the powers
above.

Direct inspiration is a gift which at the present day a man is not
inclined to claim for himself, though he will often attribute it to
another; for it implies insanity. But though the gift is not therefore
envied, it is everywhere respected. Mental derangement, which appears
to me to be exceedingly common among the Greek peasants, sets the
sufferer not merely apart from his fellows but in a sense above them.
His utterances are received with a certain awe, and so far as they
are intelligible are taken as predictions. He is in general secure
from ill-treatment, and though he do no work he is not allowed to
want. The strangest case which I encountered was that of a man,
unquestionably mad, who wandered from place to place and seemed to be
known everywhere. I met him in all three times, in Athens, in Tenos,
and in Thessaly. He had no fixed home, did no work, and was usually
penniless; but a wild manner, a rolling eye, and an extraordinary power
of conducting his part of a conversation in metrical, if not highly
poetical, form sufficed to obtain for him lodging, food, and clothing,
and even a free passage, it appeared, on the Greek coasting steamers.
Whether the long monologues in verse in which he sometimes indulged
were also improvisations, I could not of course tell; but once to have
heard and seen his delivery of them was to understand why, among a
superstitious people, he passed for a prophet. He was a modern type of
those old seers whose name μάντεις was believed by Plato to have been
formed from the verb μαίνεσθαι, ‘to be mad’; his frenzy really gave the
appearance of inspiration.

Dreams furnish a more sober and naturally also a more general means
of communion with the gods; and the belief in them as a channel of
divine revelation is both firmly rooted and widely spread. This indeed
is only natural. The change from paganism to Christianity, even if it
had been more thorough and complete than it actually has been, would
probably not have affected this article of faith. So long as a people
believe in any one or more deities not wholly removed from human
affairs, it is logically competent for them to regard their dreams as a
special communication to them from heaven; and Christianity, far from
repudiating the old pagan idea, confirmed it by biblical authority. The
Greek Church, as we shall see, has made effective use of it.

The degree of importance universally attached in old time to dreams is
too well known to all students of Greek literature to call for comment.
Artemidorus’ prefatory remarks to his _Oneirocritica_, or ‘Treatise on
the interpretation of dreams,’ and his criticism of former exponents of
the same science, would alone prove that public interest in the subject
must indeed have been great to stimulate so serious and so large a
literature. There is the same practical evidence of a similar interest
in modern Greece. Books of the same nature are sought after and
consulted no less eagerly now than then. A new edition of some Μέγας
Ὀνειροκρίτης, or ‘Great Dream-interpreter,’ figures constantly in the
advertisements of Athenian newspapers, and the public demand for such
works is undeniable. In isolated homesteads, to which the Bible has
never found its way, I have several times seen a grimy tattered copy
of such a book preserved among the most precious possessions of the
family, and honoured with a place on the shelf where stood the _icon_
of the household’s patron-saint and whence hung his holy lamp.

One of the pieces of information most frequently imparted to men in
dreams is the situation of some buried treasure. The precautions
necessary for unearthing it, namely complete reticence as to the
dream, and the sacrifice of a cock, have already been mentioned[795].
This kind of dream has been utilized by the Greek Church. There is
no article of ecclesiastical property of more value than a venerable
_icon_; to any church or monastery which aspires to become a great
religious centre an ancient and reputable _icon_, competent to work
miracles, is indispensable.

Now the most obvious way of obtaining such pictures is, it seems, to
dig them up. A few weeks underground will have given the right tone
to the crudest copy of crude Byzantine art, and all that is required,
in order to determine the spot for excavation, is a dream on the part
of some person privy to the interment. It was on this system that the
miracle-working _icon_ of Tenos came to be unearthed on the very day
that the standard of revolt from Turkey was raised, thus making the
island the home of patriotism as well as of religion. And this is no
solitary example; the number of _icons_ exhumed in obedience to dreams
is immense; wherever the traveller goes in Greece, he is wearied with
the same reiterated story, and if the picture in question happens to
be of the Panagia, there is often an appendix to the effect that the
painter of it was St Luke--an attribution which can only have been
based on clerical criticism of the style. Inspection is now difficult;
the old pagan custom of covering venerable statues with gold or silver
foil by way of thank-offering[796] has, to avoid idolatry, been
transferred to _icons_; and in many cases only the faces and the hands
of the saints depicted are left visible, the outlines of the rest
of the picture being merely incised upon the silver foil. But, with
inspection thus limited, the layman does not detect in any crudity of
style a sufficient reason why the saintly painter, if only he could
have foreseen the ordinary decoration of Greek churches, should have
had his productions put out of sight in the ground. Nevertheless the
story of the origin of the _icon_ is believed as readily as the story
of its finding.

Nor is it only in stories that the discovery of _icons_ in obedience
to dreams is heard of. During my stay in Greece a village schoolmaster
embarrassed the Education Office by applying for a week’s holiday in
order to direct a party of his fellow-villagers in digging up an _icon_
of which he had dreamt, and to build a chapel for it on the spot.
It was felt that a body concerned with religious as well as secular
instruction ought not to commit the impiety of refusing such a request,
but it was feared that other schoolmasters would be encouraged to dream.

Besides those visions which are concerned with the finding of treasure
or of _icons_, that class of dream also may be noticed in which is
given some divine communication as to the healing of the sick. Many a
time I have met in some sanctuary of miraculous repute peasants from a
far-off village, who have travelled from one end of Greece to another,
bringing wife or child, in the faith that mind will be restored or
sickness healed; time after time their story is the same, that they
were bidden in a dream to go and tarry so many days in such a church,
and they have started off at once, obedient to what they feel to be a
promise of divine help, begging their way may be for many days, but
unflinchingly hopeful. And then comes the long sojourn in a strange
village, for a mere visit is not always enough; weeks and months they
wait, sleeping each night in the holy precincts and if possible at the
foot of the _icon_, hoping and believing that some mysterious virtue of
the place will heal the sufferer, or at the least that in a fresh dream
they will be told what is next to be done. And if nothing happen--for
now and then rest or change of air or, it may be, faith[797] effects
the cure desired--they return home with hope lessened but belief
unshaken, ready to obey again if another message be vouchsafed to them
from the dream-land of heaven.
Such dreams as these are regarded as spontaneous revelations of the
divine will, granted possibly in response to prayer, but in no way
controlled or procured by any previous action of the dreamer. But there
is one curious custom, observed by the girls of Greece, by which dreams
are deliberately induced as a means of foreknowing their matrimonial
destinies. On the eve of St Catharine’s day[798] most appropriately,
for she is the patroness of all marrying and giving in marriage, but
sometimes also on the first day of Lent[799], the girls knead and bake
cakes (ἀρμυροκούλουρα) of which, as their name implies, the chief
ingredient is salt. By consuming undue quantities of this concoction,
and often by assuaging the consequent thirst with an equally undue
quantity of wine, they produce a condition of body eminently suited
to cause a troubled sleep, and, their minds being already absorbed in
speculations on marriage, it is little wonder if their dreams reveal to
them their future husbands. How far this custom is now taken seriously,
I cannot determine; in some districts it has certainly degenerated into
a somewhat disreputable game. But the fact that the intoxication of the
girls is tolerated on this occasion among a peasantry whose men even
are seldom drunk except on certain religious occasions--on Easter-day
and after funerals--proves clearly that the custom was once, as I think
it sometimes is now, a genuinely religious rite and an acknowledged
means of divination.

A modification of this custom, preferred in some districts as obviating
alike the unpleasant process of eating salt-cake and the disreputable
sequel thereto, substitutes for dreaming two other ancient methods of
divination--divination by drawing lots, a primitive system common to
many peoples but employed nevertheless even by established oracles[800]
in ancient Greece, and divination from chance words overheard by the
diviner, a method which is, I think, more exclusively Hellenic. For
this form of the custom also salt-cakes are required, but only a morsel
of each is eaten, and the remainder of the cake is divided into three
portions, to which are tied respectively red, black, and blue ribbands.
Each girl then places her three pieces under her pillow for the night,
and in the morning draws out one by chance. The red ribband denotes a
bachelor, the black a widower, and the blue a stranger, that is to say
some one other than a fellow-villager. Then, in order to supplement
with fuller detail the indications of the lot, the girl takes her stand
in the door-way of the cottage and listens to the casual conversation
of the neighbours or the passers-by; and the first name, trade,
occupation, and suchlike which she hears mentioned are taken to be
those of her future husband.

Another similar custom, practised only by girls and not necessarily
taken more seriously than a game of forfeits, preserves in its modern
name ὁ κλήδονας[801] the old word κληδών, and the purpose of the
custom is to obtain that which Homer[802] actually denoted by κληδών,
a presage drawn from chance words. The preliminaries of the ceremony
are as follows. On the eve of the feast of St John the Baptist[803] a
boy (who for choice should be the first-born of parents still living)
is sent to fetch fresh water from the spring or well. This water is
known as ἀμίλητο νερό, ‘speechless water,’ because the boy who brings
it is forbidden to speak to anyone on his way. Each girl then drops
into the vessel of water some object such as a coin, a ring, or, most
frequently, an apple as her token. The vessel is then closed up and
left for the night on the roof of a house or some other open place
‘where the stars may see it.’ The proceedings of the next morning
vary. According to one traveller[804], each girl first takes out her
own apple--for he mentions only this token--and then draws off some of
the water into a smaller vessel. This vessel is then supported by two
other girls on the points of their four thumbs and begins to revolve
of its own accord. If it turn towards the right, the girl may expect
to marry as she wishes; if to the left, otherwise. Also, he says, they
wash their hands with this water and then go out into the road, and
take the first name they hear spoken as that of their future husband.
This latter part of the ceremony is true to the meaning of the word
κλήδονας and is a genuine instance of divination from chance words.
But neither this nor the former part as described by Magnoncourt is
generally practised now. The usual procedure is either for the boy who
fetched the water or for the girls in rotation to plunge the hand in
and draw out the first object touched, improvising or reciting at the
same time some couplet favourable or adverse to the love or matrimonial
prospects of her who shall be found to own the forthcoming object; and
so in turn, until each girl has received back her token and learnt the
presage of her fate.

The recitation of possibly prepared distichs by those who are taking
part in the ceremony is certainly a less pure method of divination
than the earlier practice described by Magnoncourt. The prediction is
deliberately provided, and the element of chance or of divine guidance
is confined to the drawing of the token. The older method exhibits
more clearly the relation of the modern custom to the superstitious
observation of κληδόνες from the time of the _Odyssey_[805] onwards.
Thus when Odysseus heard the suitors threaten to take the beggar Irus
to Epirus, ‘even to the tyrant Echetus the destroyer of all men,’ he
hailed the chance words as a divine ratification of his hope that soon
the suitors should take their own journey to another destroyer of all
men, even the tyrant of the nether world, and ‘he rejoiced in the
presage’ (χαῖρεν δὲ κλεηδόνι)[806].

The same method of divination was frequently employed in the classical
age also, and that too not only privately[807] but even by public
oracles. It was thus that Hermes Agoraeus at Pherae made response to
his worshippers. The enquirer presented himself towards evening before
the statue of the god, burnt incense on the hearth, filled with oil and
lighted some bronze lamps that stood there, placed a certain bronze
coin of the local currency upon the altar, whispered his question into
the ear of the statue, and then at once holding his hands over his ears
made his way out of the agora. Once outside, he removed his hands,
and the first words which greeted his ears were accepted as the god’s
response to his question[808]. A primitive statue of Hermes with the
surname κλεηδόνιος existed also at Pitane[809], which place may be the
actual site of that ‘sanctuary of chance utterances’ (κληδόνων ἱερόν)
to which, according to Pausanias[810], the people of Smyrna resorted
for oracles. And at Thebes again Apollo Spodios gave his replies in
like manner[811].

Clearly then in antiquity divination from chance words was a
well-established religious institution; and at the present day, though
the practice is rarer, its character is unchanged. The religious nature
of the two customs which I have described is shown by their association
with the festivals of St Catharine and St John the Baptist; and though
in different localities or periods a certain amount of divination by
the lot or other means has been mixed up with divination from chance
words, the latter obviously forms the essence of both rites, supplying
as it does to the one its very name, and supplementing in the other
the meagre indications of the lot with more detailed information. A
girl may learn from the colour of the ribband attached to the piece
of salt-cake which she happens to draw whether her future husband is
bachelor, widower, or stranger; but only from the chance utterance
accepted as an answer to her own secret questionings can she learn the
name and home and occupation and appearance of her destined husband.

The next branch of divination, the science of reading omens of success
or failure in the objects which a traveller meets on his road, is
still largely cultivated. In old days indeed it was so elaborate a
science that a treatise, as Suidas tells us, could be written on
this one method of divination alone. Possibly the same feat might be
accomplished at the present day if a complete collection were made of
all the superstitions on the subject of ‘meeting’ (ἀπάντημα) in all
the villages of Greece. How instructive the results might be, I cannot
forecast; but at any rate the task is beyond me, and I must content
myself with mentioning a few of the commonest examples. To meet a
priest is always unlucky, and for men even more so than for women, for,
unless they take due precautions as they pass him[812], their virility
is likely to be impaired; and the omen is even worse if the priest
happen to be riding a donkey, for even the name of that animal is not
mentioned by some of the peasants without an apology[813]. To meet a
witch also is unfortunate, and since any old woman may be a witch, it
is wise to make the sign of the cross before passing her. A cripple is
also ominous of failure in an enterprise. On the other hand to meet an
insane person is usually accounted a good omen, for insanity implies
close communion with the powers above. To meet a woman with child is
also fortunate, for it indicates that the journey undertaken will bear
fruit; and the peasant by way of acknowledgement never fails to bow or
to bare his head, and if he be exceptionally polite may wish the woman
a good confinement. Of animals those which most commonly forebode ill
are the hare, the rat, the stoat, the weasel, and any kind of snake.
In Aetolia superstition is so strong regarding these that the mere
sight of one of them, or indeed of the trail of a snake across the
path, is enough to deter many a peasant from his day’s work and to send
him back home to sit idly secure from morn till night; and even the
more stout-hearted will cross themselves or spit three times before
proceeding.

That some of these beliefs date from classical times is certain.
Aristophanes, playing upon the use of ὄρνις, ‘a bird,’ in the sense
of ‘omen,’ rallies the Athenians upon calling ‘a meeting a bird,
a sound a bird, a servant a bird, and an ass a bird[814]’; and
there can be little doubt that the ass belonged then as now to the
category of objects ominous to encounter on the road; and the same
author[815], corroborated in this case by Theophrastus’ portrait of
the superstitious man[816], speaks to the dread inspired by a weasel
crossing a man’s path. The snake too, it can hardly be doubted, was,
owing perhaps to its association with tombs, an object of awe to the
superstitious out of doors as well as within the house[817]. On the
other hand an insane person apparently was in Theophrastus’ time not
as now an omen of good but of evil, to be averted by spitting on the
bosom[818]. But though the modern interpretations of such omens may not
be identical in every respect with the old, enough has been said to
show that the science of divining from the encounters of the road is
still flourishing.

The observation of birds is in many cases closely allied with the
last method of divination; for naturally the peasant as he goes on
his way is as quick to notice the birds as any other object which
he encounters. But since auspices may also be taken under other
conditions, it will be well to observe the old line of demarcation,
and to treat this branch of augury, as it was treated in ancient
handbooks[819], separately. Moreover the attitude of the modern folk
towards these two branches of divination justifies the division.
The superstitions which I have just recorded are somewhat blindly
and unintelligently held; but in the taking of auspices proper the
ordinances of ancient lore which the people follow are felt by them
to be doubly sanctioned--by reason as well as by antiquity; they
apprehend the theory on which their practice is based--the idea that
birds are better suited than any other animate thing, by virtue both
of their rapid flight and of their keen and extended vision, to be the
messengers between gods and men.

In practice this branch of divination is still concerned chiefly with
the large and predatory birds to which alone was originally applied the
term οἰωνός. ‘The largest, the strongest, the most intelligent, and at
the same time those whose solitary habits gave them more individual
character,’ says a French writer[820], ‘were deliberately preferred by
the diviners of antiquity as the subjects of their observation. For
these and these only was reserved at first the name οἰωνός, “solitary
bird[821],” or bird of presage’; and he goes on to suggest that the
Oriental belief in the magical power of blood to revivify the souls
of the dead and to stimulate prophecy influenced the selection for a
prophetic _rôle_ of carnivorous birds such as might indeed often feed
on the entrails of those very victims from which sacrificial omens were
taken. But the reasons assigned by Plutarch for the pre-eminence of
birds among all other things as the messengers of heaven apply with so
special a force to the special class of birds selected, that it seems
unnecessary to search out reasons more abstruse.

‘Birds,’ he says[822], ‘by their quickness and intelligence and their
alertness in acting upon every thought, are a ready instrument for the
use of God, who can prompt their movements, their cries and songs,
their pauses or wind-like flights, thus bidding some men check, and
others pursue to the end, their course of action or ambitions. It is on
this account that Euripides calls birds in general “heralds of gods,”
while Socrates speaks of making himself “a fellow-servant with swans.”’

In this special class of ominous birds the principal group, says
the same French writer[823], was composed of the eagle (ἀετός), the
messenger[824] of Zeus, the ‘most perfect of birds[825]’; the vulture
(γύψ), which closely rivalled even the king of birds[826]; the raven
(κόραξ), the favourite and companion of Apollo, a bird so much observed
that there were specialists (κορακομάντεις) who studied no other
species; and the carrion-crow (κορώνη), transferred from the service
of Apollo to that of Hera[827] or Athene[828]. These, it may safely be
said, were observed at all periods. Of others, various species of hawk
(ἵεραξ, ἴρηξ)--in particular that known as κίρκος, acting in Homeric
times as the ‘swift messenger of Apollo[829]’ and thus rivalling the
raven--and with them the heron[830] (ἐρωδιός) enjoyed in early times
great respect, but gradually fell out of favour with the augur. But as
these disappeared from the canon of ornithological divination, certain
other birds were admitted, the wren[831] (τρόχιλος or βασιλίσκος), the
owl (γλαῦξ)[832], the κρέξ dubiously identified with our ‘rail’ (_crex
rallus_, Linn.), and the woodpecker (δρυοκολάπτης).

The continuity of the art of taking auspices is at once obvious when
it is found that the birds which the modern peasant most frequently
observes are of the very same class which furnished the Homeric
gods with their special envoys. Eagles, vultures, hawks, ravens,
crows--these are still the chief messengers of heaven, and only one
other bird can claim equality with them, that bird which in classical
times symbolised wisdom, the owl.

Of the methods pursued by the professional augurs in ancient Greece
unfortunately less is known. The best treatise on the subject is that
of Michael Psellus[833], written in the eleventh century; but probably
ancient works on the subject, such as that of Telegonus to which
Suidas[834] refers, were then extant and contributed the bulk of his
information. But even so it is the broad principles rather than the
detailed application of them which Psellus presents, and on them we
must in the main rely in comparing the modern science with the ancient.

First of all the species of bird under observation had to be
ascertained; for the characters of different species were held to be
so various that birds as closely cognate as the raven and the crow
employed wholly contrary methods of communication with mankind. ‘If
as we go out of our house to work,’ says Psellus[835], ‘we hear the
cry of a raven behind or of a crow in front, it forebodes anxieties
and difficulties in our business, while if a crow fly past and caw
on the left or a raven do likewise on the other side, it gives hope
and confidence.’ The crow then was not subject even to the rule
concerning right and left which applied, so far as I know, to all
other birds, but, thanks to some innate contrariety, reversed the
normal significance of position, and therewith also of cry and of
flight[836]. Such exceptions even to the most general rules made the
accurate identification of species an indispensable preliminary to
successful augury. The same primary condition still holds. The diviner
must be able to distinguish the cawing of a crow settled on his roof
from that of a jackdaw; the former is an omen of death, as perhaps it
was in Hesiod’s day[837], to some member of his family, the latter
heralds the coming of a letter from a friend abroad. Again he must be
able to distinguish the brown owl (κουκουβάγια) from the tawny owl
(χαροποῦλι)[838]; the message of the former may be good or bad, as
we shall see, according to its actions, while the latter brings only
presages of woe.

The species having been identified, there remained, according to
Psellus[839], four possible points in the behaviour of the bird itself
(all of them liable to be modified in significance by the position
of the observer) to be noticed and interpreted; these were its cry
(anciently φωνή or κλαγγή), its flight (πτῆσις), its posture when
settled (ἕδρα or καθέδρα), and any movement or action performed by it
while thus settled (ἐνέργεια). These divisions are still recognised in
modern augury.

The cry is observed in the case of many birds. The scream of an eagle
is a warning of fighting or conflict to come. The croak of a raven,
especially if it be thrice repeated, while the bird is flying over a
house or a village, is a premonition of death to one of the inmates.
The laugh of the woodpecker, owing I suppose to its mocking sound,
is a sign that an intrigue against some one’s person or pocket is in
train. The repeated call of the cuckoo within the bounds of a village
forebodes an epidemic therein.

Flight is chiefly observed in the case of the birds of prey. The
successful swoop of an eagle upon its prey, or the rapid determined
flight of a hawk in pursuit of some other bird, is an encouragement to
the observer (provided of course that the birds are seen on his right
hand) to pursue untiringly any enterprise in which he is engaged, and
is a promise of success and profit therein. In Scyros I once pointed
out to my guide a large hawk chasing a flock of pigeons, which he at
once hailed as a good omen and watched carefully as long as it was
in sight; and when I asked him what kind of hawk it was, he promptly
replied that that kind was known as τσίκρος--the goshawk, I believe.
This word is a modern form of the ancient κίρκος[840], and a closely
similar incident is mentioned in the _Odyssey_, when this bird, the
‘swift messenger of Apollo,’ is seen by Telemachus on the right,
tearing a pigeon in its talons and scattering its feathers to the
ground, and is taken to foreshow the fate that awaits Eurymachus[841].

The position occupied and the posture are observed above all in the
case of owls. The ‘brown owl’ (κουκουβάγια), perched upon the roof of
a house and suggesting by its inert posture that it is waiting in true
oriental fashion for an event expected within a few days, forebodes a
death in the household; but if it settle there for a few moments only,
alert and vigilant, and then fly off elsewhere, it betokens merely
the advent and sojourn there of some acquaintance. Another species
of owl, our ‘tawny owl’ I believe, known popularly as χαροποῦλι or
‘Charon’s bird[842],’ is, as the name suggests, a messenger of evil
under all circumstances, whether it be heard hooting or be seen sitting
in deathlike stillness or flitting past like a ghost in the gathering
darkness.

The casual actions and movements of birds are less observed now than
the cry, flight, and posture; nor am I aware of any auspices being
drawn therefrom with regard to any matters of higher importance and
interest than the prospective state of the weather. For such humdrum
prognostication poultry[843] serve better than the more dignified
birds--perhaps because their movements on the ground are more easily
observed--and by pluming themselves, by scratching a hole in which to
dust themselves over, and by roosting on one leg or with their heads
turned in some particular direction foretell rain, fine weather, or a
change of wind.

All these auspices are further modified, as in ancient times, by
the position of the observer in reference to the bird observed. The
right hand side is the region of good omen, whether the bird be seen
or heard; and if it be a case of the bird crossing the path of the
observer, passage from left to right is to be desired, on the principle
that all is well that ends well; flight from right to left indicates
a decline of good fortune. Motion towards the right, it may be noted,
has always been the auspicious direction in Greece. In that direction,
according to Homer, the herald carried round the lot which had been
shaken from the helmet, to be claimed by that Chieftain whose token
it might prove to be[844]; in that direction Odysseus in beggar-guise
proceeded round the board, asking alms of the suitors[845]; in that
direction even the gods passed their wine[846]. And in like manner
at the present day wine is passed, cards are played, and at weddings
bride and bridegroom are led round the altar, from left to right. Thus
then in modern augury too, if the eagle’s scream, which forebodes
fighting, be heard on the right, the hearer will come well out of it,
but if on the left, he is like to be worsted. If the woodpecker laugh
on the right, the hearer may proceed with full confidence to cheat
his neighbour, but if the sound come from the left, he must be wary
to baffle intrigues against himself. If the hawk pursue its prey on
the right or across a man’s path from left to right, he may take the
pursuer as the type of himself and go about the work in hand with
assurance of success; but if the omen be on the other side or in the
other direction, some enemy is the hawk and he himself is the pigeon to
be plucked.

The interpretation of auspices is also affected by number. A single
or twice repeated cry of a bird may be of good omen, but, if the same
note be heard three times, the meaning may be reversed. This applies in
Cephallenia, as I was told, to the case already mentioned of a raven
flying over a house; one or two croaks are a presage of security or
plenty, but three are a warning of imminent death. In this detail a
pronounced change of feeling towards the number three is responsible
for what must, I think, be a contravention of the ancient rules in the
case. According to Michael Psellus, an even number of cries from the
crow were lucky and an odd number unlucky; but the crow, as we have
seen, was perverse and abnormal; reversing therefore the rule in the
case of other birds, we find that an odd number of croaks from a raven
should be lucky. But the number three, which in old times was lucky, is
now universally unlucky; the peasant often will apologize for having to
mention the number; and Tuesday, being called Τρίτη, the ‘third day’ of
the week, is the unlucky day. But if in this case the significance of
a particular number has changed, the principle of taking number into
consideration is indubitably ancient.

Moreover there are some cases in which even the particular application
of the old principle holds good. The first, almost the only, literary
poet of modern Greece (as distinguished from the many composers of
unwritten ballads), who found beauty in the popular beliefs and music
in the vulgar tongue, makes his heroine thus divine her own death:

    Καὶ τὰ πουλάκι’ ἀποῦ ’ρθασιν συντροφιασμέν’ ὁμάδη
    σημάδ’ εἶν’ πῶς ὀγλήγορα πανδρεύομαι ’στὸν Ἅιδη·
    λογιάζω κι’ ὁ ’Ρωτόκριτος ἀπόθανε ’στὰ ξένα
    κ’ ἦρθ’ ἡ ψυχή του νά μ’ εὑρῇ νὰ σμίξῃ μετ’ ἐμένα[847].

 “And the little birds that have come consorting close together are a
 sign that soon I am to be wed in Hades. I see that Erotocritus has
 died in a strange land, and his soul has come to seek me, to mingle
 with me.”

Here neither the species of the birds nor their cry nor flight is
taken into account; the whole significance of the omen turns on the
close company which they kept. And for the method of interpreting it
we can go back to Aristotle. ‘Seers observe whether birds settle apart
or settle together; the former indicates enmity, the latter mutual
peace[848].’

Lastly, as regards practical augury from birds at the present day it
may be laid down as a rule that any extraordinary phenomenon, exciting
in the simple peasant’s mind more alarm than curiosity, passes for
a bad omen. The hen that so far forgets her sex as to crow like a
cock falls under suspicion and the knife at once. To the professional
diviner of old time probably such incidents were less distressing; he
could observe such striking anomalies in as calmly judicial a spirit
as the details of more ordinary occurrences. But at the present day,
though there are magicians in plenty, there are no specialists, to my
knowledge, in the science of auspices. The modern peasant does not
entice the birds with food to a special spot, as did Teiresias[849],
in order to listen to their talk and to gain from them deliberately
the knowledge of things that are and things that shall be. But amateur
though he be, lacking in power of minute observation and in science of
detailed interpretation, such rudiments of the art as he possesses are
an heritage from the old Hellenic masters of divination.

So far then as the broad principles of practical auspice-taking are
concerned, the proofs of the identity of modern with ancient methods
are sufficiently complete; and it remains only to show that the
modern practice of this art is not a mere inert survival of customs
no longer understood but is in truth informed by the same intelligent
religious spirit as in antiquity. What that spirit was, is admirably
defined in that passage of Plutarch which I have already quoted, in
which he claims that the quickness of birds and their intelligence and
their alertness to act upon every thought qualify them, beyond all
other living things, for the part of messengers between gods and men.
Celsus too in his polemics against Christianity, made frank confession
of the old faith: ‘We believe in the prescience of all animals and
particularly of birds. Diviners are only interpreters of their
predictions. If then the birds ... impart to us by signs all that God
has revealed to them, it follows of necessity that they have a closer
intimacy than we with the divine, that they surpass us in knowledge
of it, and are dearer to God than we[850].’ Indeed it might seem that
there was hope of birds knowing that which a god sought in vain to
learn. To Demeter enquiring for her ravished child ‘no god nor mortal
man would tell the true tale, nor came there to her any bird of omen as
messenger of truth[851].’ In effect, the special aptitude of birds to
carry divine messages to men was never questioned in ancient Greece;
it was a very axiom of religion, without which the whole science of
auspices would have been a baseless fabrication.

Now it would have been no matter of surprise for us, if practical
augury had still been in vogue at the present day and the theory had
been forgotten; if the customs born of a belief in the prophetic power
of birds had, with the inveteracy of all custom, outlived the parent
principle. Rather it is surprising that among all the perplexity
and bewilderment of thought caused by the long series of changes,
religious, political, and social, through which Greece has passed,
this recognition of birds as intermediaries between heaven and earth
has abated none of its force or its purity, neither vanquished by the
direct antagonism of Christianity, nor contaminated by the influx of
Slavonic or other foreign thought. Yet so it is; and the perusal of any
collection of modern folk-songs will show that the idea is fully as
familiar now as in the literature of old time.

A few examples may be cited; and in selecting them I shall exclude
from consideration those many Klephtic ballads which open with a
conversation between three ‘birds[852]’; for the word ‘bird’ (πουλί)
seems to have become among the Klephts a colloquial equivalent for
‘spy’ or ‘scout,’ suggested perhaps by the qualities of intelligence,
alertness, and speed required, and it is admittedly[853] impossible
in many cases to determine whether the term has its literal or its
conventional meaning. Moreover these openings of ballads have passed
into a somewhat set form; and formulae are no more proof of the
continuance of belief than mummies of the continuance of life.

But, even with the range of trustworthy evidence thus limited, the
residue of popular poetry contains ample store of passages in which
birds are recognised as the best messengers between this world and
another. And here, as we shall see, the reiteration of the idea is not
uniform in expression; the thought has not been crystallised into a
number of beautiful but inert phrases; it is still alive, still young,
still procreative of fresh poetry.

There is a well-known folk-song, recorded in several versions, which
tells how a young bride, trusting in the might of her nine brothers and
in her husband’s valour, boasted that she had no fear of Charos. ‘A
bird, an evil bird, went unto Charos, and told him, and Charos shot an
arrow at her and the girl grew pale; a second and a third he shot and
stretched her on her death-bed[854].’ The special bird in the poet’s
mind was, one may surmise, ‘Charon’s bird,’ the tawny owl, which as
I have noted is always a messenger of evil. In another poem a bird
issues from the lower world and brings doleful tidings to women who
weep over their lost ones. ‘A little bird came forth from the world
below; his claws were red and his feathers black, reddened with blood
and blackened with the soil. Mothers run to see him, and sisters to
learn of him, and wives of good men to get true tidings. Mother brings
sugar, and sister scented wine, and wives of good men bear amaranth in
their hands. “Eat the sugar, bird, and drink of the scented wine, and
smell the amaranth, and confess to us the truth.” “Good women, that
which I saw, how should I tell it or confess it? I saw Charos riding
in the plains apace; he dragged the young men by the hair, the old
men by their hands, and ranged at his saddle-bow he bore the little
children[855].”’

Nor is it only between earth and the nether world that birds carry
tidings to and fro; earth and heaven are equally united by their
ministry. An historical ballad, belonging to the year 1825, when
Ibrahim Pasha had just occupied the fortress of Navarino and other
places in the Morea and was about to join in investing Mesolonghi,
gives to this idea unusually imaginative treatment; for the bird which
brings from heaven encouragement and prophecies of future success (one
of which was literally fulfilled in the battle of Navarino two years
later) is an incarnation of the soul of a fallen Greek warrior. ‘“Would
I were a bird” (I said), “that I might fly and go to Mesolonghi, and
see how goes the sword-play and the musketry, how fight the unconquered
falcons[856] of Roumelie.” And a bird of golden plumage warbled answer
to me: “Hold, good George; an thou thirstest for Arab[857] blood, here
too are infidels for thee to slay as many as thou wilt. Dost see far
away yonder the Turkish ships? Charos is standing over them, and they
shall be turned to ashes.” “Good bird, how didst thou learn this that
thou tellest me?” “A bird I seem to thee to be, but no bird am I. Yon
island that I espied for thee afar belongeth to Navarino; ’twas there
I spent my last breath a-fighting. Tsamados am I, and unto the world
have I come; from the heavens where I dwell I discern you clearly,
yet yearn to see you face to face.” “Nay, what shouldest thou see now
among us in our unhappy land? Knowest thou not what befell and now is
in the Morea?” “Good George, be not distraught, consent not to despair;
though the Morea fight not now, a time will come again when they will
fight like wild beasts and chase their foe. Piteously shall bones
lie scattered before Mesolonghi, and there shall the lions of Suli
rejoice.” And the bird flew away and went up to the heavens[858].’

Such an identification of the winged messenger with the soul of a
dead man does not represent the ordinary thought of the people; it is
a conceit peculiar to this ballad; but the very fact that the dead
warrior is made to assume the guise of a bird in order to communicate
with his living comrades shows how strong is the popular feeling that
birds are the natural intermediaries between earth and heaven.

Thus then the ancient belief that birds are among the most apt
instruments of divine and human communion has survived as little
impaired by lapse of ages as the practical science of augury founded
upon it. Perhaps indeed it has even fared better; for practical augury
has, I suspect, suffered from the paucity or extinction of professional
augurs, who alone could be expected to remember and to transmit to
their successors all the complex details of their art, whereas the old
faith may even have gained thereby; for history, I suppose, is not
void of instances in which the professional exponents of a religion
have fostered its forms and have starved its spirit, forgetting their
ministry in their desire for mastery, and making their office the sole
gate of communion with heaven. But, be that as it may, such decline as
there may have been from the complete and elaborate system of auspices
which the ancients possessed is not at any rate due to any abatement of
the ancient belief in the mediation of birds.

Not of course that the peasant, when he draws an omen from the eagle’s
stoop or the raven’s croak, pauses at all to reflect on the general
principle by which his act is guided; his recognition of the principle
is then as formal and unconscious as is his avowal of Christianity when
he crosses himself. But if ever in meditative mood he seeks the reason
and basis of his auspice-taking, he falls back, as the popular poetry
proves, on the doctrine that the powers above and below have chosen
birds as their messengers to mankind.

Doubtless many other peoples have held or still hold kindred beliefs;
but the fact that in Modern Greece the same class of birds is
observed as in Ancient Greece and that the same broad principles of
interpretation are followed is sufficient warranty that the underlying
belief is also a genuinely Hellenic heritage.

The next method of divination to be considered, that namely in which
omens were obtained from sacrifice, was anciently divided into two
branches; in one the diviner concerned himself with the dissection of
the victim, and based his predictions on the appearance of various
internal parts; in the other, special portions of the victim were
consumed by fire, and omens were read in the flame or smoke therefrom.
Of the latter I have discovered no trace in Modern Greece; but the
former still survives in some districts.

Naturally however this mode of divination is less frequently practised
than that with which I have just dealt. The cry or the flight of birds
can be observed without let or hindrance in the course of daily work,
and, what is more important still, without cost; while this method
involves the slaying of a victim, and is consequently confined to
high days and holidays when the peasants eat meat. But when occasion
offers or even demands the performance of the rite, the presages drawn
therefrom are the more valued because they are less readily to be
obtained.

And the value attached to them is by no means diminished because the
method pursued is less intelligent than the taking of auspices. In the
latter case, as we have seen, the common-folk have a reasonable basis
for their actions in the universal belief that birds are by nature
qualified to act as messengers between gods and men; in the former the
peasants are more blindly and mechanically repeating the practices of
their forefathers. They would be hard put to it to say how it comes to
pass that divine counsels should be found figured in the recesses of a
sheep’s anatomy. But in their very inability to answer this question,
no less than in their acceptance of the means of communion, they
resemble their ancestors; for, with all their love of enquiry, they too
practised the art without answering conclusively or unanimously the
questionings of their own hearts concerning it. One theory advanced
was that the anatomical construction of the victim was directly
affected by the prayers and religious rites to which it was subjected.
Another held the internal symptoms to be inexorable and immutable,
and saw divine agency only in the promptings of the sacrificer’s mind
and his choice of an animal whose entrails were suitably inscribed
by nature[859]. A third view, advocated by Plato, was that the liver
was as a mirror in which divine thought was reflected; during life
this divine thought might remain hidden as tacit intuition or be
manifested in prophetic utterance; after death the divine visions
contemplated by the soul were left recorded in imagery upon the liver,
and faded only by degrees[860]. The obvious objection to this theory
was its too practical corollary, that human entrails would be the most
interesting to consult. Less barbarous therefore in consequences, if
also less exquisite in idea, was the fourth doctrine, propounded by
Philostratus, that the liver had no power of presage unless it were
completely emancipated from the passions and surrendered wholly to
divine influence--a condition best fulfilled by animals of peaceful and
apathetic temperament[861].

But while these theories were built up and knocked down, the practices
which they were meant to explain continued firm and unshaken. The
fact seems to be that the custom of consulting entrails was not
native to Greece. In Homeric times the liver was not dissected in
search of omens, and such observations as were made were directed to
the brightness of the flame and the ascent of the smoke from burnt
offerings and not to any malformation or discoloration of the victim’s
inward parts. All that could be learnt was whether the sacrifice, and
therefore also the prayers accompanying it, were accepted or rejected.
The complexities of post-Homeric divination from burnt sacrifice
and the whole system of inspecting the entrails seem to have been a
foreign importation. Whether the source was Etruscan, Carian, Cyprian,
Babylonian, or Egyptian, does not here concern us[862]; the practices
were in origin foreign to Greece, and the ancients, in referring the
invention of them to Delphus, son of Poseidon, to Prometheus, to
Sisyphus, or to Orpheus[863], were guilty not only of sheer fabrication
but of manifest anachronism[864]. Homer convicts them.

It is then the foreign origin of these methods of divination which
explains the attitude of the ancient Greeks towards them. It was a
practice, not a theory--a custom, not an idea--a conglomeration of
usages, not a coherent and reasoned system--which was introduced
from abroad. The Greeks accepted it readily as furnishing them with
one more means to that communion with their gods which to them was
a spiritual necessity. The principle of the machinery employed was
unknown to them; but what matter? Its operation was commended by
the experience of others and soon tested by their own. The unknown
principle long continued to excite interest, conjecture, speculation,
among the educated and enlightened, but their failures to reach any
final and unanimous conclusion never moved them to dispute the tested
fact. And if this was the attitude of the educated, the common-folk of
those days must surely have been in the same position as the people
of to-day--gladly accepting the usage and avowedly ignorant of the
principle. Such blind acquiescence during so many centuries may seem
indeed a disparagement of the Greeks’ intelligence; but it is equally
a testimonial to their religious faith; it is the things which defy
reasoning that are best worth believing; and among these the Greeks
have steadfastly numbered the writing of divine counsels on the
sacrificial victim’s inward parts.

The actual methods now pursued are also an inheritance from the ancient
world. The animal from which the Klephts a century ago are said to
have taken omens most successfully was the sheep, and the portion of
its anatomy on which the tokens of the future were to be read was the
shoulder-blade. The questions to which an answer was most often sought
were, as might be surmised from the life of the enquirers, questions
of war. ‘In this connexion,’ says a Greek writer[865] of the first
half of last century, when stories of the Klephts’ life might still
be heard from their own lips, ‘the shoulder-blade of a young lamb
is ... a veritable Sibylline book; for its condition enables men to
ascertain beforehand the issue of an important engagement, the serious
losses on each side, the strength of the enemy, the reinforcements
to be expected, and indeed the very moment when danger threatens’;
and he recounts, by way of illustration, the story of a Thessalian
band of Klephts, whose captain, in the security of his own fastness,
was sitting divining in this way; suddenly he sprang up with the
exclamation, ‘The Turks have caught us alive,’ and at the head of his
troop had only just time to break through the Turkish forces which were
already surrounding them.

That this method of divination was derived directly and with
little deviation from the old system of inspecting shoulder-blades
(ὠμοπλατοσκοπία) as known to Michael Psellus can hardly be doubted. ‘If
the question be of war,’ he says, ‘a patch of red observed on the right
side of the shoulder-blade, or a long dark line on the left, foreshows
a great war; but if both sides present their normal white appearance,
it is an omen of peace to come[866].’

But the days of patriot-outlaws are over now, and the questions
submitted to the arbitrament of ovine shoulder-blades are of more
peaceful bent. It is the shepherd now, and not the warrior, who thus
resolves the uncertainties of the future. It is the vicissitudes of
weather, not of war, that interest him; the birth of lambs, not the
death of Turks. It is of plague, pestilence, and famine threatening his
flock, not of battle and murder and sudden death for himself, that he
seeks forewarning. But the same instrument of divination supplies the
answers.

My own knowledge of its use is obtained entirely from Acarnania
and Aetolia; but the practice is also recorded from Zagorion in
Epirus[867], and prevails too, I have been told, among the shepherds
of Elis. The opportunity for it is, as I have said, offered only
by certain feast-days, when the peasants indulge in meat. On other
occasions, when the shepherds kill only in order to sell in the
towns, divination cannot be undertaken; for it is only after cooking
that the meat can be properly removed from the bone so as to leave
it clean and legible. There is therefore no doubt an economical
reason for confining this practice to certain religious festivals;
but this consideration must not be allowed to obscure the genuinely
religious character of the rite itself. In Zagorion, at the festivals
in honour of the patron-saint of each village or monastery, sheep are
brought and slain in the enclosure of the particular sanctuary, and
are called κουρμπάνι̯α[868], a plural evidently of the Hebrew word
‘corban,’ a thing devoted to the service of God; thus both name and
ceremony proclaim this custom a genuine survival of sacrifice; and it
is apparently from the shoulder-blades of these victims that omens
are drawn[869]. A similar case of divination by sacrifice came to my
knowledge in Boeotia, though whether the shoulder-blade or some other
part of the victim furnished the predictions, I could not ascertain.
While looking round a small museum at Skimitári I had happened to stop
before a relief representing a man leading some animal to sacrifice,
and heard the custodian, a peasant of the place, remark to another
peasant, evidently a stranger to the district, who had followed me in,
‘That is just like what we do’; and he then explained that at a church
of St George, somewhere in the neighbourhood, there was an annual
festival at which a similar scene took place. The villagers of the
country-side congregate early on the morning of St George’s day round
the church, each man bringing a kid or a lamb; service in the church
having been duly performed, the priest comes out and blesses each of
the animals in turn, after which they are killed and roasted and a
feast is held accompanied by some kind of divination from the victims.
Such in brief was the custodian’s account; but, when I intervened in
the conversation with a question about the method of divining, he
would say nothing more. The Boeotians are still boorish. But what I
had already overheard exhibits clearly enough the religious character
of the rite; and I do not doubt that in Aetolia and Acarnania also the
peasants handle the sheep’s shoulder-blade in an equally religious
mood. Their very indulgence in meat is due to the religious occasion;
much more therefore the divination which reveals to them the mind of
those powers whom they worship.

In the art of interpreting the particular marks upon the shoulder-blade
I cannot claim to be an adept. The few facts which I managed to
discover were that in general spots and blurs upon the bone are
prognostications adverse to the hopes of the enquirer, and that
a clean white surface always gives full security: that different
portions of the bone are scrutinised for answers to different classes
of questions; thus the prospects of the lambing season are indicated
on the projecting ridge of the bone, and the weather-forecast on the
flat surfaces on either side of it, marks on the right side (the bone
being held horizontally with what is naturally its upper end towards
the diviner) being favourable signs, and those on the left ill-omened:
and finally that a pestilence is foreshown by a depression in the
surface of the bone. The science, I was told, is extremely complex and
elaborate; but I never had the fortune to meet any peasant who was
considered an expert in it; the best exponents of it are to be found
among the mountain shepherds, and since these are constantly shifting
their grazing grounds it is no easy matter to fall in with one both
able and willing to unfold the full mysteries of the art. How to
distinguish in interpretation markings of different sizes, shapes, and
colours I never discovered[870].

But the little which I learnt agrees in the main with the ancient
method as described by Michael Psellus[871]. ‘Those,’ he says, ‘who
wish to avail themselves of this means of divination, pick out a sheep
or lamb from the flock, and, after settling in their mind or saying
aloud the question which they wish to ask, slay the victim and remove
the shoulder-blade from the carcase. This--the organ of divination as
they think--they bake thoroughly upon hot embers, and having stripped
it of the flesh find on it the tokens of that issue about which they
are enquiring. The answers to different kinds of questions are learnt
from different parts[872]. Questions of life or death are decided by
the projection of the ridge[873]; if this is clean and white on both
sides, a promise of life is thereby given; but if it is blurred, it
is a token of death. Weather-forecasts again are made from inspection
of the middle part of the shoulder-blade; if the two membrane-like
surfaces which form the middle of the shoulder-blade on either side
of the ridge[874] are white and clean, they indicate calm weather
to come; while, if they are thickly spotted, the reverse is to be
expected.’ Here, it will have been noticed, no mention is made of
any discrimination between the markings on the right and on the left
sides of the bone; but this, I suspect, is an omission on the part of
Psellus, for so simple a principle of ancient divination is hardly
likely to have been excluded from consideration in this case. In other
respects the information which I obtained tallies closely with his
account; the clean and white appearance of the bone was then, as it
is now, a reassuring omen; then, as now, the prospects of the weather
were to be learnt from the flat surface on either side of the ridge;
then, as now, the question of life or death, which from the shepherd’s
point of view becomes most acute at each lambing season, was settled
by reference to the ridge of the bone. To judge then from the few
principles of the art known to me, divination from the shoulder-blade,
besides being still recognised as a religious rite, is conducted on
the same lines by Aetolian and Acarnanian peasants as it was by those
ancient augurs to whose hand-books probably Psellus was indebted for
his knowledge.

Another animal utilised in the same district for purposes of
divination is the pig; but in this case the prophetic organ is not
the shoulder-blade but the spleen. This is removed from the fresh
carcase before the rest of the flesh is cut up or cooked in any
way, and omens are taken from the roughness or discoloration of its
surface. The questions which may be decided by this means are very
various--the prospects of weather, of crops, and of vineyards, the
success of journeys and other enterprises, the advisability of a
contemplated marriage, and so forth. Of the exact details of the art I
know even less than in the last case; the facts which I learned were
these, that a smooth surface is a good omen, just as it was in the
case of other internal organs in the time of Aeschylus[875], while
certain roughnesses portend obstacles and difficulties in a journey
or enterprise, and further that certain abnormal blotches of colour
give warning of blight and mildew on crops and vines. Proficiency in
the science, I was told, is commonest among the inhabitants of the
low-lying cultivated or wooded districts of Acarnania where large
herds of half-wild swine are kept; and hence it is natural that the
predictions sought in this way are chiefly concerned with agricultural
and social interests, whereas the omens obtained from the sheep’s
shoulder-blade by shepherds living solitary lives in the mountains
deal with few issues other than the prospects of the flock. But this
difference between the two methods of divination is circumstantial
rather than essential; either method can, I believe, in the hands of
experts be used for answering almost any questions.

Divination from the pig’s spleen is, I think, undoubtedly ancient. It
appears to be a solitary survival of the σπλαγχνοσκοπία, or ‘inspection
of entrails,’ which in ancient Greece would seem to have been the
commonest method of divining from the sacrificial victim. Among the
animals embarrassed with prophetic entrails the pig indeed was not
ordinarily reckoned; but Pausanias mentions that the people of Cyprus
discovered its value[876], and it seems actually to have furnished
responses to the highly reputable oracle of Paphos[877]. How it has
come to pass that modern Acarnania should preserve a custom peculiar
to ancient Cyprus, is a problem that I cannot solve; but it can hardly
be questioned that here again we have an old religious rite still
maintained as a proven means of communion with those powers in whose
knowledge lies the future.

Divination from sacrifice also forms part of the preliminaries of a
wedding in many districts. On the day before the actual ceremony[878]
the first animal for the feast is killed by the bridegroom with his
own hand. The proper victim is a young ram, though in case of poverty
a more humble substitute is permitted. This, after being in some
districts blessed by the priest who receives in return a portion of the
victim, is made to stand facing eastward, and the bridegroom endeavours
to slaughter it with a single blow of an axe. Omens for the marriage
are taken from the manner and the direction in which the blood spirts
out; and a further investigation is sometimes made as to whether the
tongue is bitten or the mouth foaming, each sign finding its own
interpretation in the lore of the village cronies[879]. The substitute
allowed for the ram is a cock. Where the peasants avail themselves of
this economy, the killing is usually deferred until after the wedding
service, and is performed on the doorstep of the bridegroom’s house
before the bride is led in. The bird is held down on the threshold by
the best man, and the bridegroom, having been provided with a sharp
axe, tries to sever the cock’s neck at one blow. Here too the man’s
dexterity counts for something; for the peace or the agony in which the
victim is despatched belongs to that class of omens which in antiquity
also were drawn from the demeanour of the animal before and during
the act of sacrifice, and were taken not indeed to furnish a detailed
answer to any question preferred but to indicate the acceptance or the
rejection of the offering and the accompanying petitions. It is however
the effusion of blood and the muscular convulsions of the decapitated
bird which are most keenly observed; for from these signs, I was
told, the old women of the village profess to determine such points of
interest as the chastity of the bride, the supremacy of the husband or
the wife in the future _ménage_, and the number and sex of children
to be born. All this information can in most places where the rite
prevails be obtained without any dissection of the victim such as would
have been customary in antiquity; but in Aetolia and Acarnania the
peasants continue faithful to what are probably ancient methods even
in this detail; there the breast-bone of the fowl is treated both at
weddings and on other religious occasions as a poor man’s legitimate
substitute for the ovine shoulder-blade, which it sufficiently
resembles in the possession of a ridge with flat surfaces on either
side suitable for divine inscriptions.

But it is not upon coincidences of practical detail, instructive as
they are in proving the unity of modern with ancient Greece, that I
wish most to insist. If it is clear that the victims often blest by the
priests at weddings and on other religious occasions are really felt by
the people to be sacrifices, then the practice of divining from them,
whatever the exact method pursued, is once more distinct evidence of
the belief that the powers above are able and willing to hold close
communion with men.

Among the minor methods of divination we may notice first what Suidas
calls οἰκοσκοπικόν or ‘domestic divination’; under this head he
includes such incidents as the appearance of a weasel on the roof, or
of a snake, the spilling of oil, honey, wine, water, or ashes, and the
crackling of logs on the fire. The subject was expounded apparently in
a serious treatise by one Xenocrates; but it is difficult to suppose
that there was any scientific system governing so heterogeneous a
conglomeration of incidents; the treatise was probably no more than a
compilation of possible occurrences with disconnected regulations for
interpreting each of them.

Many events of a like trivial nature are observed at the present day,
and the interpretations set upon some of them are demonstrably ancient.
A weasel seen about the house, just as on the road, is significant of
evil[880], more especially if there is in the household a girl about to
be married; for the weasel (νυφίτσα) was once, it is said, a maiden
destined to become, as the name implies, a ‘little bride,’ but in some
way she was robbed of her happiness and transformed into an animal;
its appearance therefore augurs ill for an intended wedding. A snake
on the contrary is of good omen when seen in the house; for it is the
guardian-_genius_ watching over its own. The orientation of a cat
when engaged in washing its face indicates the point of the compass
from which wind may be expected. A mouse nibbling a hole in a bag of
flour is in Zagorion[881] as distressing a portent as it was to the
superstitious man of Theophrastus[882]. A dog howling at night in or
near the house portends a death in the neighbourhood, as it did in
the time of Theocritus: ‘Hark,’ cries Simaetha, ‘the dogs are barking
through the town. Hecate is at the cross-ways. Haste, clash the brazen
cymbals[883]’; only instead of the cymbals it is customary to use an
ejaculation addressed to the dog, ‘may you burst’ (νὰ σκάσῃς), or ‘may
you eat your own head’ (νὰ φᾶς τὸ κεφάλι σου).

Again, to take another class of the domestic incidents mentioned by
Suidas, the spilling of oil is universally an evil omen, and the
spilling of wine a good omen; the former foreshadows poverty, the
latter plenty. The upsetting of water is also a presage of good
success, especially on a journey; but in this connexion, as a later
chapter will show, it often passes out of the sphere of divination,
which should rest on purely fortuitous occurrences, into that of
sympathetic magic.

The crackling of logs on the fire, which Suidas mentions, remains
to-day also an incident to be duly noted. Generally it appears to mean
that good news is coming or that a friend is arriving, but, if sparks
and ashes are thrown out into the room, troubles and anxieties must be
expected. The spluttering of a lamp or candle also usually foretells
misfortune[884]. Omens as to marriage also may be obtained on the
domestic hearth. Two leaves of basil are put together upon a live coal;
if they lie as they are placed and burn away quietly, the marriage will
be harmonious; if there is a certain amount of crackling, the married
life of the two persons represented by the leaves will be disturbed
by quarrels; if the leaves crackle fiercely and leap apart, there is
an incompatibility of temper which renders the projected alliance
undesirable.

These are but a few instances of domestic divination, and a much
longer list might easily be compiled. But while I know that many of
the peasants do indeed observe such occurrences seriously enough to
act upon the supernatural warnings thereby conveyed, yet the religious
character of these methods of divination is less demonstrable than that
of divination from birds or from sacrifice; and I may content myself
with indicating, by a few illustrations only, the continuity of Greek
superstition in both this and those other minor branches of divination
to which I now pass.

Palmistry, according to Suidas, was an ancient art, and a hand-book of
it was composed by one Helenos. The signs of the future were read in
the lines of the palm and of the fingers as in modern palmistry. This
science is still kept up by some of the old women in Greece, but real
proficiency therein is as in other countries chiefly attained by the
gypsies (ἀτσίγγανοι), who follow a nomadic life in the mountains and
have very little intercourse with the native population.

Divination from involuntary movements of various parts of the
body--παλμικόν, as Suidas calls it, on which one Poseidonios was a
leading authority--is still very generally practised, and evidently has
deviated hardly at all from ancient lines. The twitching of a man’s
eye or eyebrow is a sign that he will soon see some acquaintance--an
enemy, if it be the left eye that throbs, a friend, if it be the right;
and this clearly was the principle which the goat-herd of Theocritus
followed when he exclaimed, ‘My eye throbs, my right eye; oh! shall
I see Amaryllis herself?’[885] Similarly the buzzing or singing of
a man’s ears is an indication that he is being spoken of by others,
just as it was in the time of Lucian[886]; and, according to the usual
principle, the right ear is affected in this manner by praise and
kindly speech, the left by backbiting and slander. Again, if the palm
of the right hand itch, it shows that a man will receive money; and
reversely, if the left palm itch, he will have to pay money away[887].
So too, if the sole of the right or of the left foot itch, it is a
premonition of a journey successful or unsuccessful. Omens of this kind
fall with uncomfortable frequency to the lot of those who have to find
a night’s lodging in Greek inns or cottages.

To the same category belong hiccoughing and sneezing. The hiccough
(λόξυγγας), as also in Macedonia choking over food or drink[888], is
a sign that some backbiter is at work, and the method of curing it is
to guess his name. Sneezing is a favourable omen, but the particular
interpretation of it depends on alternative sets of circumstances. If
anyone who is speaking is interrupted by a sneeze, whether his own
or that of another person present, whatever he is saying is held to
be proved true by the occurrence. ’Γειά σου, cry the listeners, καὶ
ἀλήθεια λές (or λέει), ‘Health to you, and you speak (_or_ he speaks)
truth.’ If however no one present is in the act of speaking when the
sneeze is heard, the first phrase only is used, ‘Health to you,’
or by way of facetious variant, νὰ ψοφήσῃ ἡ πεθερά σου, ‘May your
mother-in-law die like a dog[889].’ In either case the prayer for good
health can benefit only the sneezer; but in the former, that member of
the company who is speaking at the time may obtain corroboration of
the statement which he is making from the omen produced by another.
This part of the belief is very strongly held; and anyone who is in the
unfortunate position of having his word doubted or of being compelled
to prevaricate will be better advised to conjure up a sneeze than to
expostulate or to swear.

Both these interpretations of sneezing date from ancient times. The
old equivalent of ‘Health to you’ was Ζεῦ σῶσον, ‘Preserve him, Zeus’;
but such expressions are common to many nations and not distinctively
Hellenic. The other interpretation of sneezing, as a confirmation of
words which are being uttered, is of more special interest, and has
been handed down from the Homeric age. ‘Let but Odysseus come,’ says
Penelope, ‘and reach his native land, and soon will he and his son
requite the violent deeds of these men.’ ‘Thus she spake,’ continues
the passage, ‘and Telemachos sneezed aloud; and round about the house
rang fearfully; and Penelope laughed, and quickly then she spake winged
words to Eumaeus: “Go now, call the stranger here before me. Dost thou
not see how my son did sneeze in sanction of all my words[890]? For
this should utter death come upon the suitors one and all, nor should
one of them escape death and destruction[891].”’

Among other instruments of divination occasionally used are eggs,
molten lead, and sieves. Eggs are chiefly used to decide the prospects
of a marriage. ‘Speechless water’[892] is fetched by a boy, and the
old woman who presides over such operations pours into it the white
of an egg. If this keeps together in a close mass, the marriage will
turn out well; but if it assumes a broken or confused shape, troubles
loom ahead. In antiquity the science was probably more extended; for a
work on egg-divining (ὠοσκοπικά) was attributed to Orpheus. A similar
rite may be performed with molten lead instead of white of egg, and
it suffices to pour it upon any flat surface[893]. Divination with a
sieve--the ancient κοσκινομαντεία--also continues, I have been told,
but I know no details of the practice.

Thus then the chief methods of learning the gods’ will as practised
in antiquity have been reviewed, and are found to be perpetuated in
substantially the same form down to the present day; and not only is
the form the same but in many of them the same religious spirit is
manifest. The principal difference lies in the paucity of professional
diviners now; experts assuredly in some branches there still are, but
augury alone would now, I think, be a precarious source of livelihood.
Advice from the village priest would in so many cases be cheaper and no
less valued than that of the soothsayer.

And as with persons so with places. The pagan temples in which oracles
were given have been largely superseded by Christian churches, and
possibly the peasants are more inclined to pay for masses which will
secure the fulfilment of their wishes than for oracular responses which
may run counter to them. Still even so oracles have not yet entirely
ceased; and in discussing those which survive we shall find once more
a coincidence both in form and spirit between ancient and modern Greek
religion.

An oracle, it must be remembered, is simply a place set apart for
the practice of divination; the method of obtaining responses has
always varied in different places, and the mediation of a professional
diviner, though usual, cannot be regarded as essential[894]. Those
caves therefore where women make offerings of honey-cakes to the
Fates[895] and pray for the fulfilment of their conjugal hopes are
really oracles, provided that there is some means of learning there
whether the prayer is accepted or rejected. And this is often the
case; most commonly the answer is inferred--on what principle of
interpretation, I do not know--from the dripping of water or the
detachment and fall from the roof of a particle of stone; and in
Aetolia I was told of a cave in the neighbourhood of Agrinion in which
the nature of the response is determined by the behaviour of the bats
which frequent it. If they remain hanging quiescent from the roof and
walls, the suppliant’s hopes will be realised; but if they be disturbed
by his or, more often, her intrusion and flutter round confusedly, the
Fates are inexorably adverse.

But besides these modest and unpretentious oracles there still survives
in the island of Amorgos an oracle of a higher order ensconced in a
church and served by a priest. The saint under whose patronage this
pagan institution has continued to flourish is St George, here surnamed
Balsamites[896]. To the right on entering the church is seen a large
squared block of marble hollowed out so as to have the form of an urn
inside, and highly polished. It stands apparently on the natural rock,
and is roofed over with a dome-shaped lid capable of being locked. At
the present day the mouth of the urn is also covered by a marble slab
with a hole pierced through it and fitted with a plug; but this was not
observed by travellers of the seventeenth century and is probably a
recent addition. There is also a discrepancy in the various accounts
of the working of the oracle, the older authorities stating that the
answers were given by the rise and fall of the water in the vessel,
while the modern custom is to interpret the signs given by particles
of dust, insects, hairs, bits of dry leaf, and suchlike floating in a
cupful of water drawn from the urn[897].

The description given by a Jesuit priest of Santorini, Robert Sauger
by name, of what he himself witnessed in Amorgos towards the end of
the seventeenth century may be taken as trustworthy, inasmuch as he
elsewhere shows himself an accurate observer and certainly was not
tempted in the present case to exaggerate the wonders of the rival
Church.

‘The cavity,’ he says, ‘fills itself with water and empties itself of
its own accord, and it is impossible to imagine what gives the water
this motion and where it has a passage; for, besides being very thick,
the marble is so highly polished inside and its continuity of surface
is so unbroken that it is impossible to detect the tiniest hole or the
least unevenness, saving always the opening at the top which is always
kept locked. Additionally astonishing is the fact that within the space
of one hour the urn fills and empties itself visibly several times; at
one moment you see it so full that the water overflows, and a moment
afterwards it becomes so dry that it appears to have had no water in it
at all.

‘Superstition is rife everywhere. Any Greeks who have a voyage to make
do not fail to come and consult the Urn. If the water is high in it,
they set off gaily, promising themselves a good passage. But if the Urn
is without water, or the water is low in it, they draw therefrom a bad
omen for the success of their journey, and do not go, or, if business
makes it imperative, go unwillingly.

‘This alleged miracle, which is so famed throughout all Greece, is
a source of much gain to the priest who has charge of the Church of
St George; for the concourse of Greeks there is incessant; people
come thither from great distances, some in all seriousness to advise
themselves of the future, others to see the thing with their own eyes,
and a certain number to amuse themselves and to have a laugh, as I
have had several times, at the credulity of these folk[898].’

Whatever may have been the original method of oracular response--and
I suspect that, while the presence or the absence of water furnished
a plain ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ to the enquirer, a more detailed reply always
depended upon the observation and interpretation of any foreign
particles floating in the urn--the faith of the people in its virtue is
still intense. It can indeed no longer claim a reputation throughout
all Greece; but the inhabitants of Amorgos and the maritime population
of neighbouring islands still consult it regularly and seriously
concerning voyages, business matters, marriage, and other cares and
interests; nor are questioners from farther afield altogether unknown.

This oracular property of water was well known in antiquity. In this
branch of divination, says Bouché Leclercq, use was made ‘of springs
and streams which were felt to be endowed with a kind of supernatural
discernment. Certain waters were accorded the property of confirming
oaths and exposing perjury. The water of the Styx, by which the
Olympian gods swore, is the prototype of these means of test, among
which may be mentioned the spring of Zeus Orkios, near Tyane, and the
water-oracle of the Sicilian Palici[899].’ So too water-deities such as
Nereus and Proteus were believed to exercise special prophetic powers;
and Ino possessed in the neighbourhood of Epidaurus Limera a pool into
which barley-cakes were thrown by those who would consult her; if these
offerings sank, she was held to have accepted them and to favour the
enquirer; if they floated, his hopes would be disappointed[900].

The present oracle of Amorgos is of a higher order than this; its
method is more complex, and its responses are more detailed. It should
surely have ranked high even among the oracles of old, of which, both
in the reverence which it inspires and in the medium which it employs,
it is a true descendant.

       *       *       *       *       *

Having thus examined the means by which the gods deign to communicate
with men, and having seen that both in form and in spirit the ancient
means of communion have been preserved almost unchanged, we have now to
consider the means by which men approach the gods and communicate to
them their hopes and petitions.

The first and most obvious method, one common to all religions, is
of course prayer; but the use of this channel just because it is so
universal cannot be claimed as a proof of religious unity between
ancient and modern Greece. It is rather in what we should deem the
accompaniments of prayer that evidence of such unity must be sought.
The ancient Greeks were not in general content with prayer only. It was
not customary to approach the gods empty-handed. The poor man indeed,
according to Lucian[901], appeased the god merely by kissing his right
hand; but the farmer brought an ox from the plough, the shepherd a
lamb, the goat-herd a goat, and others incense or a cake. ‘Thus it
looks,’ he says, ‘as if the gods do nothing at all _gratis_, but offer
their commodities for sale to men; one may buy of them health, for
instance, at the cost of a calf, wealth for four oxen, a kingdom for
a hecatomb, a safe return passage from Ilium to Pylos for nine bulls,
and the crossing from Aulis to Ilium for a princess--a high price
certainly, but then Hecuba was bidding Athene twelve cows and a dress
to keep Ilium safe. One must suppose however that they have plenty
of things to dispose of at the price of a cock, a garland, or even a
stick of incense[902].’ That this is a fair account of the externals
of Greek ritual can hardly be questioned; for Plato too, in more
serious mood, says that ‘the mutual communion between gods and men’ is
established by ‘sacrifices of all kinds and the various departments of
divination[903].’ The ‘various departments of divination’ are clearly
the means by which the gods communicate with men; and ‘sacrifices of
all kinds’ therefore represented to Plato’s mind the means by which
men communicate with their gods. Prayer, he seems to have felt, was a
necessary incident in sacrifice, rather than sacrifice an unnecessary
adjunct to prayer.

Now the word θυσία, which we commonly translate ‘sacrifice,’ was a term
of very wide meaning in ancient Greek. In Homer the word θύειν was
used of making any offering to the gods, and never denoted, though
naturally it sometimes connoted, the slaughtering of animals--an
act properly expressed by the verb σφάζειν. And in later times the
substantive θυσία was still applied to almost any religious festival,
at which undoubtedly some offerings, but not necessarily animal
sacrifices, were always made. When therefore Plato speaks of θυσίαι
πᾶσαι, ‘all sacrifices,’ he is clearly expressing his recognition
of the fact that sacrifices (θυσίαι) are manifold in kind--and if
in kind, therefore also in intention; for different rituals are the
expressions of different religious motives. Communion with the gods was
in general terms the object of all offerings made to them by men; but
the particular aspect of such communion varied.

Offerings, we may suppose, were rarely if ever made purely for the
benefit of the gods without any self-seeking on the part of the
worshipper. Even when a sacrifice to some god was merely a pretext for
social entertainments--and how frequently this was the case is shown
by the fact that φιλοθύτης, ‘fond of sacrificing,’ came to mean simply
‘hospitable’--it is reasonable to suppose that the presentation to the
god of the less edible portions of the victim was accompanied at least
by an ἵλαθι, ‘be propitious,’ by way of grace before the meal; and
at more strictly religious functions, at which the guests, if there
were any, were secondary to the god, the dedication of the offering
undoubtedly included a declaration of the offerer’s motive.

As regards the character of that motive in most cases, Lucian is right;
it was frankly and baldly commercial. Homer does not blink the fact;
for Phoenix even commends to the notice of Achilles the open mind
displayed by the gods towards an open-handed suppliant. ‘Verily even
the gods may be turned, they whose excellence and honour and strength
are greater than thine; yet even them do men, when they pray, turn from
their purpose with offerings of incense and pleasant vows, with fat
and the savour of sacrifice, whensoever a man hath transgressed and
done amiss[904].’ And so Greek feeling has ever remained. Offerings
are the ordinary means of gaining access to the gods, of buying their
goodwill and buying off their anger. The ordinary medium of exchange
in such commerce was, when Greece was avowedly pagan, food, and is,
now that Greece is nominally Christian, candles: for religion, ever
conservative, keeps up the otherwise obsolete system of barter between
men and gods, even though the priests of those gods are enlightened
enough to accept of a secular modern currency. But the particular
commodities in which the barter is made are of little consequence as
compared with the spirit which has always animated such dealings. The
substitution of candles for meat is practically the only modification
which Christianity has effected in this department of religion.

Even this change in detail does not affect the whole range of such
operations; candles are not by any means the only offerings of
which the Church takes cognisance. In dealing with the question of
divination, we have seen cases in which on some religious occasion,
saint’s-day or wedding, the priest blesses a genuinely sacrificial
victim[905]. We have seen too that at the laying of foundation stones,
a religious ceremony conducted by a priest of the Church, some animal
is immolated to appease the _genius_ of the site[906]. We have seen
again how the Church permits or encourages the dedication of those
silver-foil models of various objects--ships and houses, corn-fields
and vineyards, eyes and limbs--which serve at once to propitiate the
saint to whom they are offered and, on the principle of sympathetic
magic, to place the object, thus represented as it were by proxy,
under the saint’s special care; and how also the same kind of models
are frequently dedicated as thank-offerings[907]; so that indeed,
in default of an inscription announcing the motive of the offerer,
no one can decide how any given offerings of this kind should be
classified[908].

Then too in those religious rites which have survived without
ecclesiastical sanction the use and the purpose of food-offerings
remain unchanged. The favour of the Fates is bought by offerings of
cakes in order that they may bestow upon the women who thus propitiate
them the blessing of children[909]. Nereids who have ‘seized’ children
are known to withdraw their oft-times baneful influence when the mother
takes a present of food to the scene of the calamity and cries to them
with an Homeric simplicity, ‘Eat ye the little cakes, good queens, and
heal my child[910].’ Even the malice of Callicantzari may sometimes be
averted by a present of pork[911].

Thus with or without the ratification of the Church the old offerings
still continue to be made in the self-same form; and even where other
substitutes have been devised, the spirit which animates the dedication
of them is unchanged--a spirit essentially commercial; it matters
little whether the suppliant is trying to buy blessings or to get the
punishment which he has deserved commuted for a fine, or again whether
he is speculating in future favours or settling in accordance with a
vow for favours received; in each case there is the _quid pro quo_, the
bargaining that the Greek has never been able to forego, not even in
his religion.

But while the spirit thus manifested is not wholly admirable and
perhaps deserved the ridicule of Lucian, it is highly instructive. The
sacrifices or offerings are the means by which the worshipper gets into
touch with the worshipped, the vehicle for his thanks or petitions; the
possibility of bargaining implies intercourse; commerce is a form, even
though it be the lowest form, of communion.

But that there were other kinds of sacrifice which represented higher
aspects of the communion between men and gods in ancient Greece is
certain. The commonly accepted classification of ancient sacrifices
recognises three main groups--the sacramental, the honorific, and
the piacular. Of the sacramental class, in which--by a development,
it appears, of totemism--some sacred animal, representing the
anthropomorphic god who has superseded it in men’s worship, is consumed
by the worshippers in order that by eating the flesh and drinking the
blood they may partake of the god’s own life and self, no trace, so
far as I know, can now be found in the popular religion. The honorific
class comprises the majority of those offerings which might with less
euphemism be called commercial; those however which are prompted by the
desire to expiate sin, or rather to buy off the punishment which sin
has merited, would, I suppose, fall under the head of piacular. But the
line drawn between the honorific and the piacular seems to me far from
clear, for reasons which will be discussed in the remainder of this
chapter.

The view of sacrifice which I am about to propound, and which would
modify chiefly our conception of so-called piacular sacrifice in
antiquity, was suggested to me by a story which I had from the lips of
an aged peasant of the village of Goniá (the ‘Corner’) in the island of
Santorini[912]. In talking to me of the wonders of his native island
he mentioned among other things a large hall with columns round it
which had long since been buried--presumably by volcanic eruption.
This hall was of magnificent proportions, ‘as fine,’ to use the old
man’s own description, ‘as the _piazza_ of Syra or even of Athens.’ It
was situated between Kamári, an old rock-cut shelter in the shape of
an _exedra_ at the foot of the northern descent from the one mountain
of the island (μέσο βουνί), and a chapel of St George in the strip
of plain that forms the island’s east coast. So far my informant’s
veracity is beyond dispute; for in an account of the island written
by a resident Jesuit in the middle of the seventeenth century I
afterwards discovered the following corroboration[913]. ‘At the foot
of this mountain[914] are seen the ruins of a fine ancient town; the
huge massive stones of which the walls were built are a marvel to
behold; it must have taken some stout arms and portentous hands to
handle them.... Among these ruins have been found some fine marble
columns perfectly complete, and some rich tombs; and among others
there are four which would bear comparison in point of beauty with
those of our kings, if they were not damaged; several marble statues
in Roman style lie overturned upon the ground. On the pedestal of the
statue of Trajan there is still to be read at the present day a very
fine Greek panegyric of that powerful Emperor, as also on that of the
statue of Marcus Antoninus.’ Thus much as guarantee of the old man’s
_bona fides_, which even excavation on the spot, however desirable
from an archaeological standpoint, could not more clearly establish
than the French writer’s corroborative testimony; now for the story
associated by the aged narrator with this wonderful buried hall.
At the time of the revolution, he said, a number of the Greek ships
assembled off Kamári (where a fair anchorage exists), and he with
some fellow-islanders all since dead was going to fight in the cause
of Greek freedom. Naturally enough there was great excitement and
trepidation in this remote and quiet island at the thought of adventure
and war. ‘So we thought things over,’ he continued, ‘and decided to
send a man to St Nicolas to ask him that our ships might prosper in the
war[915].’ They accordingly seized a man and took him to this large
hall. There they cut off his head and his hands, and carried him down
the steps into the hall, whereupon God appeared with a bright torch in
his hand, and the bearers of the body dropped it, and all present fled
in terror.

There are few grounds on which to argue for or against the credibility
of this story. Historically Thera along with some other islands is
recorded to have maintained the position of a neutral by paying
contributions to both sides; but that does not in any way militate
against the supposition that a few young men from the island were
patriotic enough to volunteer for service in some of the Greek ships
which may have touched--perhaps to secure that contribution--at
Santorini. The story itself was narrated to me, I am persuaded, in all
good faith, and the old man really believed himself to have taken part
in the events described. His age would certainly have permitted him to
fight as a young man in the revolution; he himself estimated (in the
year 1899) that he had lived more than a century, and other old men of
the village who were well past their threescore years and ten reckoned
him senior to themselves by a full generation; moreover his own
reminiscences of the war argued a personal share in the fighting. But
whether the savage episode which he described was really a prelude to
that most savage war, or some traditional event of the island’s history
post-dated and inserted in the most glorious epoch of modern Greek
history, is a question which cannot be finally determined. Chronology
to a peasant who does not know the year of his own birth is naturally
a matter of some indifference, and excitability of imagination
coupled with the habit, or rather the instinct, of self-glorification
in the Greek character, would account for an unconscious and not
intentionally dishonest transference of the stirring events of
earlier days to a date at which their narrator could have personally
participated in them; there is no one so easily deceived by a Greek as
himself, and no one half so honestly. Yet on the whole I incline to
believe the story.

Fortunately the chronological exactitude and detailed precision of the
story do not much matter. Accurate or inaccurate in itself it contains
a clear expression of the view held by the old peasant of the purpose
of human sacrifice. ‘We thought things over and decided to send a man
to St Nicolas to ask him that our ships might prosper in the war.’
This is our text, and its very terseness and directness of expression
prove how familiar and native to the speaker’s mind was this aspect
of sacrifice. The human victim was simply and solely a messenger. St
Nicolas, to whom he was sent, has supplanted Poseidon, as has been
remarked above[916], in the government of the sea and the patronage
of sailors; but how he came to be associated with the hall which was
deemed a right place for the sacrifice, unless perhaps he had succeeded
to the possession of the site of some temple of Poseidon, I cannot say.
It is of little avail to press for further elucidation of a peasant’s
story. I would gladly have learnt more about the hall now wholly buried
but then partially at least visible above ground, into which none
the less a descent by steps is mentioned; I would gladly have learnt
more about the appearance of God with a bright torch in his hand, and
what was the significance to the peasant’s mind of the appearance of
God himself[917] (ὁ θεός) instead of St Nicolas to whom the messenger
was sent. These uncertainties and obscurities must remain. The only
additional fact which I elicited was that the man taken and sent to St
Nicolas was in Greek parlance a ‘Christian,’ that is to say neither a
Turk nor a member of the Roman Church which has long held a footing
in the island. There was therefore no admixture of either racial or
religious hatred in the feelings which prompted, as it is alleged, this
human sacrifice.

If then the story be accepted, the motive assigned must be accepted
with it; but if the story be discredited, the motive assigned has
still a value. For even if the old man had deliberately invented the
tale and claimed complicity in so ghastly a deed, whence could he have
obtained that conception of human sacrifice which furnished the motive
of the action? It is inconceivable that he should have evolved the idea
from personal meditations on the subject of sacrifice. It is equally
inconceivable that he could have obtained it from any literary source;
for he could not read, and the only book of which he could have had any
knowledge would have been the Bible, to which this view of sacrifice is
unknown. The only source from which he could have received the idea is
native and oral tradition.

So distinct an expression of the idea is naturally rare, because human
sacrifice is not an every-day topic of conversation among peasantry;
but such a theory of sacrifice is perfectly harmonious with that chord
of Greek religion of which several notes have already been struck. To
obey dreams, to enquire of oracles, to observe birds, to hear omens
in chance words, to read divine messages in the flesh of sacrificial
victims, to make presents to the powers above for the purpose of
securing blessings or averting wrath--these are the ways of a people
from whose mind the primitive belief in close contact and converse
with their gods has not been expelled by the invasion of education;
whose religion has not paid the price of ennobling its conceptions
and elevating its ideals by making the worshipper feel too acutely
his debasement and his distance from the godhead; whose instinctive
judgement divides the domain of faith from the domain of reason, and
accepts poetical beauty rather than logical probability as the evidence
of things unseen. True indeed it is that of all the practices by which
this people’s belief in intercourse with their gods is attested none is
so remarkable as acquiescence or complicity in murder prompted solely
by the belief that the victim by passing the gates of death can carry
a message in person to one in whose power the future lies. But all
that is painful and gruesome in such a deed only accentuates the more
the unflinching faith of a people who, not in blind devotion to custom
nor in fear of a prophet’s command, but intelligently and of piety
prepense, could sacrifice a compatriot and co-religionist to ensure the
safe carriage of their most urgent prayers.

If tragedy consists in the conflict of deep emotions, and religion in
obeying the divine rather than the human, few deeds have been more
tragic, none more religious than this. In that scene at Aulis when the
warrior-king gave up his child at the prophet’s bidding to stay the
wrath of Artemis against his host, the tragedy was indeed intensified
by the strength of the human tie between the sacrificer and the
victim; but blind and awe-struck submission to a prophet’s decree is
less grandly religious than clear-sighted recognition and courageous
application of the belief that the dead pass immediately into the
very presence of the gods. Here are the two given conditions: first,
the urgency of the present or the peril of the future requires that a
request for help be safely conveyed at all costs to that god or saint
in whose province the control of the danger lies; secondly, the safest
way of sending a message to that god or saint is by the mouth of a
human messenger whose road is over the pass of death. There is only
one solution of that problem. And if it is true that only some eighty
years ago the problem was solved at so cruel a cost, then the faith of
this people in their communion with those on whose knees the future
lies is more intense, more vital, more courageous than that of more
Western nations whose religion has long been subordinated or at least
allied to morality, and whose acts of worship are all well-regulated
and eminently decorous.

Human sacrifice is known to have been practised in ancient Greece and
the custom probably continued well into the Christian era. What was
the motive which prompted the continuance of so cruel a rite? Was it
the same as that which the old peasant of Santorini assigned for the
performance of a like act in his own experience--that conception of
the victim as a messenger with which he can have been familiar only
from native and oral tradition? Assuredly some strong religious motive
must have compelled the ancients to a rite which in the absence of such
motive would have been an indelible stigma upon their civilisation,
refuting all their claims to emancipation of thought and freedom
of intellect, and branding them the very bond-slaves of grossest
superstition. Even though they lived on the marches of the East where
human life is of small account, the horror of the rite is in too vivid
a contrast with Hellenic enlightenment for us to see in it a mere
callous retention of an unmeaning and savage custom; but that horror
is at least mitigated if underlying the practice there was some deep
religious motive, if a genuine faith in the possibility of direct
intercourse with heaven exalted above the sacredness of human life the
sacred privilege of sending a messenger to present the whole people’s
petition before their god.

But while it is easy to perceive that such a motive is in harmony
with that belief in the possibility of the communion of man with
God which is so pronounced a feature in the religion of the ancient
Greeks no less than in that of their descendants, it is a far harder
task actually, to prove that this motive was the one acknowledged
justification for human sacrifice. Ancient literature is extremely
reticent on the whole subject; the very fact of the existence of the
rite is known chiefly from late writers, Plutarch[918], Porphyry[919],
and Tzetzes[920]; and anything like a discussion of the motives
which underlay it is nowhere to be found. This reticence however was
prompted, we may suppose, simply and solely by the patent barbarity
of the act; it in no way impugns the latent beauty of the motive.
Rather the persistence in a rite which did violence to men’s humaner
feelings and moral sense proves the strength of the appeal which the
motive for it must have addressed to their religious convictions. There
was no place for shame in the belief that death was the road by which
alone a human messenger could gain immediate access to the gods; but
if a messenger were required to go at regular intervals, the regular
occurrence of deaths required murder. This, I think, was the cause of
shame and reticence.

Now if this very simple analysis of the feelings which almost barred
the discussion or even mention of human sacrifice by ancient authors is
correct, we should expect to find that, where death occurred naturally
and not by human intervention, the conception of the dying or the dead
as messengers to the unseen world would find ready and unembarrassed
expression. And especially is this to be expected among the Greeks with
whom grief has never imposed a check upon garrulity, but rather the
loudness of the lamentation has always been the test of the poignancy
of the sorrow. It is therefore in funeral-dirges and such-like that we
must look for the expression of this idea.

An organised ceremony of lamentation is at the present day an
essential part of every Greek funeral, and many dirges sung on such
occasions have been collected and published. In these the conception
of the departed as a messenger, or even as a carrier of goods,
abounds[921]. A Laconian dirge runs thus: ‘A prudent lady, a virtuous
wife, willed and resolved to go down to Hades. “Whoso has words” (she
cried) “let him say them, and messages, let him send them; whoso has
a son there unarmed, let him send his arms; whoso has son there a
scribe, let him send his papers; whoso has daughter undowered, let him
send her dowry; whoso has a little child, let him send his swaddling
clothes.”’[922]

The same thought inspires a dirge in Passow’s collection[923], in which
the thoughts of a dead man, round whose body the women are sitting
and weeping, are thus expressed: ‘Why stand ye round about me, all ye
sorrowing women? Have I come forth from Hades, forth from the world
below? Nay, now am I making ready, now am I at the point to go. Whoso
hath word, let him speak it, and message, let him tell it; whoso hath
long complaint, let him write and send it.’ And again in another
funeral-song a dead man is described as a ‘trusty courier bound for the
world below[924].’

This sentiment, so frequently and so clearly expressed in the modern
dirges, is of ancient descent. Polyxena, about to be sacrificed
at Achilles’ tomb, is made by Euripides to address to her mother
the question, ‘What am I to say from thee to Hector or to thy aged
husband?’, and Hecuba answers, ‘My message is that I am of all women
most miserable[925].’ And it is the same genuinely Hellenic thought
which Vergil attributes to Neoptolemus when he answers Priam’s taunts
of degeneracy with the words, ‘These tidings then thou shalt carry,
and shalt go as messenger to my sire, the son of Peleus; forget not to
tell him of my sorry deeds and that Neoptolemus is no true son. Now
die[926].’

And it is not only in the poetry of ancient and modern Greece but
also in the actual customs of the people that this idea has found
expression. At the present day funerals are constantly treated by the
peasants as real opportunities of communicating with their dead friends
and relatives. Whether the custom is ever carried out exactly as it
once was by the Galatae, who used to write letters to the departed and
to lay them on the pyre of each new courier to the lower world[927],
I cannot definitely say; but a proverbial expression used of a person
dangerously ill, μαζεύει γράμματα γιὰ τοὺς πεθαμμένους, ‘he is
collecting letters for the dead,’ lends colour to the supposition that
either now or in earlier days this form of the custom is or has been
in vogue. But in general now certainly the messages are not written
but verbal. It is a common custom, noticed by many writers on Greek
folklore[928], for the women who assist in the ceremonial lamentation
which precedes the interment to insert in the dirges, which they each
in turn contribute, messages which they require the newly-dead to
deliver to some departed person whom they name, or, according to a
slightly different usage, to whisper such messages secretly in the
ear of the dead either immediately before the body is borne away to
the church[929], or, where women are allowed to attend the actual
interment, at the moment of ‘the last kiss’ (ὁ τελευταῖος ἀσπασμός),
which forms an essential and very painful part of the Eastern rite.

The antiquity of this custom appears to me to be as certain as
anything which is not explicitly stated in ancient literature can be.
For in every detail of ancient funeral usage known to us there is
so complete a coincidence with modern usage that it would be absurd
not to supplement records of the past by observation of the present.
Actually to establish that identity in every particular is beyond the
scope of the present chapter and must be reserved until later; but
my assertion may be justified here by reference to three points in
Solon’s legislation on the subject of funerals. That legislation was
directed against three practices to which mourners were addicted in
this ceremonial lamentation of which I have been speaking--laceration
of the cheeks and breast, the use of set and premeditated dirges,
and lamentation for any other than him whose funeral was in
progress[930]--customs which all still flourish.

The laceration is quite a common feature of such occasions. Indeed in
some districts the women nearest of kin to the deceased are almost
thought to fail in their duty to him if they do not work themselves
up into an hysterical mood and testify to the wildness of their grief
by tearing out their hair and scratching their cheeks till the blood
flows. Such a display of agony, it must be remembered, comes easy to
the Greeks: for their temperament is such that, even when the fact
of the bereavement has moved them little, the _rôle_ of the bereaved
excites them to the most dramatic excesses. Men rarely if ever now take
part in this scene, and are certainly not guilty of such transports;
for their usual method of mourning is to let their hair grow instead of
tearing it out, and to avoid laceration by forswearing the razor.

Again, the use of set dirges, composed or adapted beforehand to suit
the estate and circumstances of the deceased, is almost universal; and
so essential to the funeral-rite is the formal lamentation that there
are actually women whose profession it is to intone dirges and who are
hired for the occasion. These professional mourners (μυρολογήτριαις
or μυρολογίστριαις) take their seats round the corpse in order of
seniority and assist the wife, mother, sisters, cousins, and aunts, who
also take their seats according to degree of kinship (the head of the
bier being of course the place of honour), to keep up an incessant flow
of lamentation. The scene differs in no detail, save that the hired
mourners now are always women, from that which was enacted round the
body of Hector. There too ‘they set singers to lead the lamentation,’
and of the women present it was Andromache, the wife, who began the
wailing, Hecuba, the mother, who followed next, and Helen whose voice
was heard third and last[931]. The singers who led the lamentation
were probably then as now hired, for Plato speaks of paid minstrels
at funerals using a particular style of music known as Carian[932]--a
custom suggestive of antiquity; and in all probability the singing of
set dirges, which Solon tried to suppress, was the recognised business
of professional and paid mourners; for dirges premeditated by the
relatives would have been less objectionable, one may suppose, than
their hysterical improvisations. What success his legislation obtained
in Athens cannot now be ascertained; but the custom was undoubtedly
universal in Greece, and with the exception of the Ionian islands,
where the Venetians imitated Solon in sternly repressing what they
regarded as a scandal and a grave offence against public decency[933],
all parts of Greece still to some extent retain it; and it is likely
long to survive for the simple reason that lamentation has always
been held by the Greeks to be as essential to the repose of the dead
as burial. There is more than hazard in the repeated collocation of
ἄκλαυτος, ἄταφος, ‘unwept, unburied,’ in the tragedians[934]; there is
the religious idea that the dead need a twofold rite, both mourning and
interment.

The third point in the funeral customs to which Solon demurred was that
mourners attending the ceremony of lamentation misused the occasion by
wailing again for their own dead and neglecting him whose death had
brought them together. This practice was known to the Homeric age; for
while Briseïs ‘tore with her hands her breast and smooth neck and fair
face’ and with shrill wailing and tears made lament over Patroclus,
‘the women joined their groans to hers, for Patroclus in form, but each
really for their own losses[935].’ There is no intention of satire
here; it is simply a naïve touch in the picture of a familiar and
pathetic scene. Patroclus’ death furnished the excuse and the occasion
for tears, but most of those tears--pent up till they might flow freely
and without shame--were shed for nearer sorrows, dearer losses. To-day
the manner is the same. In some districts, as in Chios[936], a woman’s
desire to lament again over her own dead is recognised as so legitimate
that etiquette merely prescribes that she first must make mention of
the present dead and afterwards she is free to mourn for whom she will;
and indeed throughout Greece the opportunity for rehearsing former
sorrows is rarely neglected.

Now when in these details that have been enumerated (as well as in
many others such as the washing, arraying, and crowning of the dead
body, the antiquity of which will be treated in another chapter[937])
that portion of ancient usage which is known from literary sources is
found surviving, point for point identical, as a portion of modern
usage, then the defect of ancient literary sources is best and most
reasonably supplemented from present observations. Thus we know from
the _Iliad_ that the women of the Homeric age used Patroclus’ funeral
as an occasion for renewing their wailing over their own losses; we
know too from Plutarch that in Solon’s age the same practice had
attained such excessive proportions that legislation intervened to
check it; the only detail which we are not told is whether the mourners
in commemorating thus their own dead friends were wont to entrust
messages for them to him about whose bier they were assembled. But
when the ancient picture of funeral-usage corresponds thus in every
distinguishable trait with the living scenes of to-day, clearly the
right way of restoring that which is obscured or obliterated in the
picture is to go and to see still enacted in all its traditional
fulness that very scene which the remnants of ancient literature
imperfectly pourtray. And by going and seeing we learn this--that one
strongly marked characteristic of funeral-rites is the belief, both
expressed in words and evidenced in acts, that he whose death has
brought the mourners together is a messenger who can and will carry
tidings to those who have preceded him to the world below. Then on
looking back we may feel confident that that aspect of death, which
prompted Polyxena to ask what message she should bear from Hecuba to
Hector and to Priam, was no mere poetic conceit imagined by Euripides,
but a common feature of the popular religion. The belief that the
passing spirit is a sure and unerring messenger to another world has
ever been the property of the Hellenic people.

Since then this belief existed in ancient times and the practice of
human sacrifice also existed, it remains to enquire whether the two
were correlated as cause and effect, as in my story from Santorini.
In this enquiry the reticence of ancient literature on the subject
precludes, as I have pointed out, actual certainty; but a passage from
Herodotus offers a clue which is worth following up.
In speaking of the Getae, a Thracian people, he remarks that they
believe in their own immortality. ‘They hold that they themselves do
not die, but the departed go to dwell with a god named Zalmoxis....
And every four years they choose one of their own number by lot and
despatch him as messenger to Zalmoxis, enjoining upon him the delivery
of their various requests. The manner of sending him is this. Some of
them are set to hold up three spears, while others take their emissary
by his arms and by his legs and swinging him up into the air let him
fall upon the spear-points. If he be pierced by them mortally, they
consider that their god is favourable to them; but if death do not
result, they lay the blame on the messenger himself and give him a bad
name; but having censured him they despatch another man instead. Their
injunctions are given to the messenger before he is killed[938].’

Now no one can fail to notice that Herodotus’ own interest in this
custom centres not in the idea which prompted it but in the manner
of carrying it out. His account of it reads as if he knew his Greek
readers to be familiar enough with the conception of human sacrifice
as a means of sending a messenger to some god; but he seems to be
contrasting the method adopted with some rite of which they were
cognisant. Tacit comparisons of foreign customs with those of Greece
occur all through Herodotus’ work. The points which he here seems
to emphasize are, first, that the messenger of the Getae was one
of themselves, not a prisoner of war or a slave; secondly, that
impaling was the ritual mode of death--a mode which the Greeks held
in abhorrence and would never have employed; and, thirdly, that the
messages were committed to the victim’s charge before and not after
death. The inference therefore is that Herodotus and the Greeks for
whom he was writing were accustomed to some rite which was inspired by
the same motive but was differently executed, the messenger being other
than a citizen, the method of sacrifice less barbarous to their minds
than impaling, and the messages being whispered, as at funerals, in the
dead victim’s ear; for of course, if the newly-dead could carry tidings
to men in the other world, they could equally well carry petitions to
gods.
Moreover my contention that Herodotus had in mind some Greek rite,
with which he was contrasting that of the Getae, is borne out by the
passage immediately following, in which the idea of comparison comes to
the surface. This Zalmoxis, he continues, according to the Greeks of
the Hellespont and the Euxine, was in origin not a god but a man. He
served for a time as a slave to Pythagoras in Samos, but having gained
his liberty and considerable wealth returned to Thrace and tried to
reclaim his countrymen from savagery and ignorance. The ways of life
and the doctrines which he inculcated were such as he had derived from
intercourse with Greeks and above all with Pythagoras, whose teachings
concerning immortality and a future life in a happier land he both
preached and (by the trick of hiding himself for three years in a
subterranean chamber and then re-appearing to those who had believed
him dead) illustrated in his own person. This story is neither accepted
nor rejected by Herodotus, but, estimating Zalmoxis to have been of
much earlier date than Pythagoras, he inclines slightly to the view
that Zalmoxis was really a native god of the Getae.

If we may assume this view to be correct, what significance is to be
attached to the story of Zalmoxis’ relations with Pythagoras? Evidently
it is one of those fictions by which the ancient Greeks loved to bring
the great figures of history into contact and personal acquaintance.
Pythagoras and Zalmoxis were two names with which was associated the
doctrine of immortality; some story therefore of their meeting was
desirable. And since Pythagoras was Greek, Zalmoxis barbarian, the
legend that the slave Zalmoxis was instructed by his master Pythagoras
was more flattering to Hellenic pride than the idea that Pythagoras in
his travels should have borrowed so important a doctrine from a foreign
religion; and if chronology did not concur--well, imagination always
had precedence of accuracy. To the Greeks who invented the tale fitness
was of more account than fact; and for us who dismiss the actual story
as mere fiction their sense of its fitness remains instructive. It
shows that the Greeks recognised the existence of specially close
relations between the religion of the Getae and their own--relations
attested probably not only by their common acceptance of the doctrine
of immortality, for that was the property of other peoples too, but
also by some resemblance between the rites of the Getae which were
based upon that doctrine and similar rites practised, as Herodotus
hints, by themselves.

Then again if the motive which we have found operating in Herodotus’
time among the Getae and operating also less than a century ago among
the peasants of Santorini was not the motive which prompted the
ancient Greeks to human sacrifice, how can we account for the long
perpetuation of the practice? It is practically certain that it was
tolerated in Athens during the period of her ascendency and highest
enlightenment[939]; but the repugnance which it inspired is proved
by the reticence which almost concealed the fact from posterity. It
was practised apparently in honour of Lycaean Zeus in the time of
Pausanias[940]; but the horror of it closed his lips concerning this
‘secret sacrifice.’ Suppose then that the motive for this sacrifice
had been the sating of a wolf-like god--for so Pausanias seems to have
understood the epithet Λυκαῖος[941]--with human flesh; could such
a rite have continued in any part of Greece for some six centuries
after it had become repugnant at least in Athens? Was the supposed
motive so sublime that it was held to hallow or even to mitigate the
barbarity of the act? Or did the custom live on without motive when an
anthropomorphic Zeus had superseded the old wolf-like deity? Custom,
it is true, often outlives its parent belief; but custom itself is
not invulnerable nor deathless if it has to battle against sentiments
irreconcilably opposed to that original belief. If the purpose of
propitiating a wolf-god with human flesh was rendered null and void by
the modifications which the conception of Lycaean Zeus had undergone,
how could the crude and savage rite have still flourished in the
uncongenial soil of an humaner civilisation--unless of course some
new stream of religious thought, instead of the original motive, had
watered and revived it? The very fact that so hideous a custom was so
long maintained in civilised Greece argues that, whatever the original
motive of it may have been, only some strong religious belief in the
necessity of it could have saved it from extinction in the historical
age. Surely it was some convincing plea of justification, and not mere
acquiescence in the inveteracy of custom, which caused Pausanias,
though he could not bring himself to describe or to discuss the horrid
sacrifice, yet to conclude his brief allusion to it with the words, ‘as
it was in the beginning and is now, so let it be[942].’

My reasons then for suggesting that one motive which led to human
sacrifice in ancient Greece was the belief that the victim could carry
a petition in person to the gods are threefold. First, that motive
was recognised as sufficient by a peasant of Santorini, who can only
have inherited the idea, just as all the ideas of divination have
been inherited, from the ancient world. Secondly, Herodotus appears
to contrast the method of such sacrifice among the Getae with the
method of some similar rite familiar to his audience and to imply that
the motive in each case was the same. Thirdly, without an adequate
motive--and it is hard to see what other motive could have been
adequate in the case which I have taken--it is almost inconceivable
that human sacrifice should have continued, in spite of the repugnance
which it certainly excited, for so long a time. For these reasons I
submit that the known belief of the ancients that the dead could serve
as messengers to the other world and their known custom of making human
sacrifice were correlated in the minds of thinking men in the more
civilised ages as cause and effect.

The reservation, ‘in the minds of thinking men in the more civilised
ages,’ is necessary; for I am at a loss how to determine whether
the belief in question was the original motive of the custom or a
later justification of the custom when its original motive had been
forgotten. Either the belief was coeval with the custom, and both were
inherited together from ancestors belonging to that ‘lower barbaric
stage’ of culture in which ‘men do not stop short at the persuasion
that death releases the soul to a free and active existence, but they
quite logically proceed to assist nature by slaying men in order
to liberate their souls for ghostly uses[943]’; or on the other
hand the custom of human sacrifice originated in some other motive
(such as satisfying the appetite of a beast-like god) and remaining
itself unchanged, while the conception of the god was gradually
humanised until his beast-form and therewith the original purpose of
the sacrifice were lost to memory, embarrassed a more enlightened
and humaner age until a new justification for it was found in the
messenger-functions of the dead.

In support of the former supposition it may be mentioned that tribes
far more barbarous than the Getae (who may have benefited from Greek
civilisation) have evolved the particular ghostly use of dead men’s
souls which we are considering. In Dahome, according to Captain Burton,
not only are a large number of wives, eunuchs, singers, drummers, and
soldiers slaughtered at the king’s funeral, that they may wait on him
in another world, but ‘whatever action, however trivial, is performed
by the (new) king, it must dutifully be reported to his sire in the
shadowy realm. A victim, almost always a war-captive, is chosen; the
message is delivered to him, an intoxicating draught of rum follows it,
and he is dispatched to Hades in the best of humours[944].’ There is
therefore no objection to the supposition that the Hellenic people too
from the days of prehistoric savagery were constantly actuated by this
motive.

On the other hand it is equally admissible to think that some cruder
motive first led the population of Greece to adopt the custom of human
sacrifice, and that it was only comparatively late in their history,
in an age when men’s humaner instincts were offended by the atrocity
of the rite and religious speculation on the subject of the soul’s
immortality was rife, that the old custom was invested with a new
meaning. Herodotus clearly recognised the connexion between the rite
of the Getae and the doctrine of immortality which was bound up with
the names of Zalmoxis and Pythagoras; and it is possible that in Greece
too the later justification of human sacrifice was founded on the same
doctrine. It would have been an irony of fate truly if a doctrine not
indeed founded, I think, but largely expounded by Pythagoras, who
forbade his followers to kill even animals for the purposes of food,
should have been so construed as to furnish a plea for the immolation
of men; but it is quite clear that a belief in the activity of the soul
after death, superimposed upon the desire for close communion between
men and gods, might have had that issue.

But, as I have said, I see no means of deciding at what date the
correlation of the conception of the dead as messengers and the custom
of human sacrifice as cause and effect first entered men’s minds; but
that in the historical age that correlation was acknowledged seems to
me highly probable. Such a view would certainly have militated against
the substitution of animal for human victims; for only a man would have
been felt to be capable of understanding the message and of delivering
it to the god to whom he was sent. This perhaps is the reason why the
use of a surrogate animal--though early introduced, as one version of
the story of Iphigenia proves--never met with universal acceptance, and
why also at the present day there remains a vague but real feeling that
for the proper laying of foundations a human victim is preferable to
beast or bird[945].

To single out particular instances of ancient sacrifice in which
this motive may have operated is, owing to the general absence of
data concerning the ritual, well-nigh impossible. The sacrifice to
Lycaean Zeus was performed upon an altar before which, according to
Pausanias[946], there stood two columns and upon them two gilded
eagles; and we may surmise that as the eagles represented to his mind
the messengers sent by Zeus to men, so did the human victim represent
the messenger of men to Zeus. But this can be only a conjecture, for
Pausanias’ silence admits of no more.

Of the ceremony connected with the _pharmakos_, or human scape-goat,
at Athens and elsewhere somewhat more is known. Certain persons
ungainly in appearance and debased in character were maintained at the
public expense, in order that, if any calamity such as a pestilence
should befall the city, they might be sacrificed to purify the city
from pollution. These persons were called φαρμακοί, ‘scape-goats,’ or
καθάρματα, ‘purifications[947].’ ‘If calamity overtook a city through
divine wrath, whether it were famine or pestilence or any other bane,’
a _pharmakos_ was led out to an appointed place for sacrifice. Cheese,
barley-cake, and dried figs were given to him. He was smitten seven
times on the privy parts with squills and wild figs and other wild
plants; and finally he was burnt with fire upon fuel collected from
wild trees, and the ashes were scattered to the winds and the sea[948].
At Athens, it appears, this rite was performed, not under the stress of
occasional calamity, but annually as part of the _Thargelia_, and was
therefore associated with Apollo[949].

All this evidence, with corroboration from other sources than those to
which I have referred, has recently been set forth by Miss Harrison,
who certainly has made out a strong case for the view which she thus
summarises: ‘The leading out of the _pharmakos_ is then a purely
magical ceremony based on ignorance and fear; it is not a human
sacrifice to Apollo or to any other divinity or even ghost, it is a
ceremony of physical expulsion[950].’ In other words, the _pharmakos_
was treated as an incarnation of the polluting influence from which the
city was suffering; and his expulsion (which only incidentally involved
his death) was the means of purification.

But there are certain points in the practice which incline me to put
forward another view of the _pharmakos_. His mission undoubtedly was to
purify the city; but the question to my mind is whether he was expelled
as a personification of the pollution or was led out and despatched to
the other world as a messenger on the city’s behalf to petition Apollo
or some other deity for purification from the defilement.

It might, I think, have been this Greek rite which was present to
Herodotus’ mind when he was describing human sacrifice among the Getae.
He was apparently familiar, we saw, with the conception of the human
victim as a messenger; and the contrasts in method which seem to have
struck him most would certainly have been provided by the ceremony
of the _pharmakos_. The Getae chose the victim by lot from among
themselves; the Athenians apparently selected some deformed or criminal
slave--one of the very scum of the population. The Getae impaled their
messenger upon the spears of warriors; the Athenians treated the
_pharmakos_ as a burnt-sacrifice. The Getae entrusted their messages
to the victim before he was slain; did the Athenians perchance whisper
their petitions for purification in the ear of the dead _pharmakos_ as
he lay on the pyre? Was he the messenger whose treatment Herodotus had
in mind?

There are certain points in the ritual itself which make for that view.
The _pharmakos_ was maintained for a time at the public cost. Why so?
A kindred custom of Marseilles in ancient times supplies the answer.
‘Whenever the inhabitants of Marseilles suffer from a pestilence, one
of the poorer class offers himself to be kept at the public expense and
fed on specially pure foods. After this has been done he is decorated
with sacred boughs and clad in holy garments, and led about through
the whole city to the accompaniment of curses, in order that upon him
may fall all the ills of the whole city, and thus he is cast headlong
down[951].’ The _pharmakos_ was therefore publicly maintained in order
that he might be purified by diet. Again, we know, the _pharmakos_
was provided before the sacrifice with cheese, barley-cake, and dried
figs--pure food, it would seem, with which to sustain himself on his
journey to the other world. Again, he was smitten seven times on the
privy parts with squills and branches of wild fig and other wild
plants. Why with squill and wild fig? Because plants of this kind were
purgative, as Miss Harrison[952] very clearly points out. Among other
evidences of the existence of this idea, Lucian[953] makes Menippus
relate how before he was allowed to consult the oracle of the dead he
was “purged and wiped clean and consecrated with squill and torches.”
And why on the privy parts? Because sexual purity was required. When
Creon was bidden to sacrifice a son for the salvation of his city
in a time of calamity such as commonly called for the sacrifice of
a _pharmakos_, Haemon was refused because of his marriage[954], and
Menoeceus was the only pure victim. And why beaten at all? Because
again, as Miss Harrison shows[955], the act of beating was expulsive of
evil and pollution. So then the chief part of the ritual was devoted to
purifying the _pharmakos_ himself.

But if the _pharmakos_ was thus himself made pure, how could his
expulsion purify the city? How could a man deliberately cleansed by
every religious or magical device serve as the embodiment of that
pollution of which the city sought to be rid? Miss Harrison[956] seeks
to explain this difficulty on the grounds of that combination of the
notions ‘sacred’ and ‘accursed,’ ‘pure’ and ‘impure,’ which the savage
describes in the word ‘taboo.’ But the notion of ‘taboo,’ though
complex, is not illogical; anything supernatural, which when properly
used or respected is holy, is logically enough believed to be fraught
with a curse for those who misuse or disregard it. But deliberately
to purify that which is to be the embodiment of defilement is not
the outcome of a complex but logical primitive notion; it is simply
illogical.

The view of the rite then which I propose is briefly this. The
_pharmakos_ was originally a messenger, representative of a whole
people, carrying to some god their petition for deliverance from any
great calamity; and, that he might be fitted to enter the presence
of the god, he was purified, like Menippus before he was allowed to
approach even an oracle, by every known means. But the office of
_pharmakos_ did not always remain a post of honour. It was naturally
not coveted by those who found any pleasure in life; and gradually the
duty devolved upon the lowest of the low. Instead of an Iphigenia or
a Menoeceus the people’s chosen representative was some criminal or
slave, and the personality of the messenger overshadowed the character
of his office. The original purport of the rite was forgotten. Instead
of being honoured as the people’s ambassador, specially purified for
his mission of intercession with the gods, he was deemed an outcast
by whose removal the people could rid themselves of pollution. Thus
the religious rite lost its true motive and degenerated into a magical
ceremony of riddance.

That this debased idea was the vulgar interpretation of the rite in
historical Athens is absolutely proved by a passage from Lysias’
speech against Andocides: ‘We needs must hold that in avenging
ourselves and ridding ourselves of Andocides we purify the city and
perform apotropaic ceremonies and solemnly expel a _pharmakos_ and rid
ourselves of a criminal; for of this sort the fellow is[957].’ But the
whole ritual forms a protest against that idea. Its keynote was the
sanctification, not the degradation, of the _pharmakos_. In Marseilles
indeed the people’s change of attitude towards the messenger whom they
so scrupulously purified had gone so far that imprecations upon him
were substituted for the prayers which he should have been bidden to
carry; but in Athens and in Ionia the ritual itself, so far as we know,
contained no suggestion of contempt or hatred of the victim. It was
only the appearance and the character of those who were selected as
_pharmakoi_ which made of the word a term of vulgar abuse such as we
find it to be in Aristophanes[958]; for the scattering of the victim’s
ashes to the winds and waves must not be interpreted as an act denoting
any abhorrence of the dead man. Its significance is rather this.
Religious motives had involved an act of bloodshed, and the people who
had performed it as a religious duty were, like Orestes, none the less
guilty of blood. In any case of blood-guilt it was held prudent for
the guilty party to take precautions against his victim’s vengeance;
and one means to this end was, as we shall see later, to burn the body
and scatter its ashes. In the modern story from Santorini there is a
precaution mentioned which has precisely the same object; the victim’s
hands, as well as his head, were cut off. This, as I shall show later,
is a survival of the old μασχαλισμός or mutilation of murdered men,
by which they were rendered innocuous, if they should return from the
grave, and incapable of vengeance upon their murderers. There is then,
I repeat, nothing in the ritual itself which suggests any contempt or
hatred of the victim, as there assuredly would have been if from the
first he had been the incarnation of the city’s defilement.

Possibly then the _pharmakos_ was originally a messenger from men
to gods, sent in any time of great calamity and peril; possibly too
this significance of the rite had not in Herodotus’ time been wholly
supplanted by the lower view to which Lysias gave utterance. Lysias
was addressing a jury and abusing an opponent; a vulgar and base
presentment of the _pharmakos_ suited the occasion. But sober and
reflective men may still have read in the ritual its early meaning and
have recognised in the _pharmakos_, for all his sorry appearance, the
purified representative of a people sent by them to lay their prayers
before some god.

This, I am aware, is a suggestion and no more. To prove the existence
of this motive underlying any given case of human sacrifice in ancient
times is, owing to the meagre character of the data, impossible. But
since at any rate the conception of the dead as messengers was known
to the ancients--for that much, I think, I have proved--the suggestion
deserves consideration. If it be right, it shows that even the most
ugly and repulsive ceremonies of Greek worship need not be regarded as
damning refutation of the beauty of Greek religion. Though the act of
human sacrifice is horrible, the motive for it may have been sublime.
Where else in the civilised world is the faith which whispers messages
in a dead ear? Who shall cast the first stone at those who in this
faith dared to speed their messenger upon the road of death? Surely
such a deed is the crowning act of a faith which by dreams and oracles,
by auspices and sacrificial omens, has ever sought after communion with
the gods.

Yet no, that faith aspired even higher; another chapter will treat of
a sacrament which foreshadowed not merely the colloquy of men with
gods as of servants with masters, but a closer communion between them,
the communion of love; for, as Plato says in the text which heads
this chapter, ‘all sacrifices and all the arts of divination, wherein
consists the mutual communion of gods and men, are for nought else but
the guarding and tending of Love.’


FOOTNOTES:

[787] Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 185, with reading οὐδὲ θεῶν ὄπα εἰδότες.

[788] Βάκχος and Βάκχη, cf. Eur. _H. F._ 1119.

[789] _De divinatione_, I. 3.

[790] _op. cit._ I. 18.

[791] _Prom. Vinct._ 485-99.

[792] Suid. _Lex._ s.v. οἰωνιστική.

[793] Cic. _de Divin._ I. 4.

[794] _Ibid._ I. 6 and 18.

[795] Above, p. 281.

[796] Cf. Lucian, _Philopseudes_, 19 and 20.

[797] See above p. 60.

[798] Nov. 26.

[799] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηναίων, III. p. 19.

[800] Cf. Cic. _de Divinat._ I. 18.

[801] The shift of accent is curious. It may be some result of dialect,
but is not explained.

[802] e.g. Hom. _Od._ XVIII. 116.

[803] At midsummer. The name of the custom ὁ κλήδονας is sometimes
given as a title to the saint himself; and from his willingness to
enlighten enquirers concerning their future lot he is also named
sometimes ὁ Φανιστής (the enlightener) and ὁ Ῥιζικάς (from ῥίζικο,
‘lot’ or ‘destiny’), Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχέλαος, ἡ Σινασός, p. 86.

[804] Sonnini de Magnoncourt, _Voyage en Grèce et en Turquie_, II. pp.
126-7.

[805] In the _Iliad_ it is not found. Cf. Bouché Leclercq, _Hist. de la
Divination_, I. p. 156.

[806] Hom. _Od._ XVII. 114 ff. Cf. also _Od._ XX. 98 ff.

[807] For examples see Herod. V. 72, VIII. 114, IX. 64, 91; Xenoph.
_Anab._ I. 8. 16. Cf. Bouché Leclercq, _op. cit._ I. p. 157. The word
φήμη is in some of these passages used in the sense of κληδών.

[808] Paus. VII. 22. 2, 3.

[809] Le Bas et Waddington, _Voyage Archéologique_, V. 1724^a.

[810] Paus. IX. 11. 7. Cf. Bouché Leclercq, _Hist. de la Divin._ I. p.
159 and II. p. 400.

[811] Paus. _ibid._

[812] The proper precaution is prescribed in the couplet, ’στὸ δρόμο
σὰν ἰδῆς παπᾶ, | κράτησ’ τ’ ἀρχίδι̯α σου καλά. _Si per viam sacerdoti
occurres, testiculos tuos teneto._

[813] γαϊδοῦρι με συμπάθειο, ‘a donkey, with your leave.’ So also often
in mentioning the number ‘three,’ and sometimes with ‘five.’

[814] Aristoph. _Aves_, 720.

[815] _Eccles._ 792.

[816] Theophr. _Char._ 16. 1.

[817] _Ibid._

[818] _op. cit._ 16. 3.

[819] Cf. Suidas, s.v. οἰωνιστική.

[820] Bouché Leclercq, _op. cit._ I. p. 129.

[821] Assuming derivation from οἶος, as υἱωνός from υἱός, κοινωνός from
κοινός.

[822] Plutarch, _de solertia animalium_, cap. 20 (p. 975).

[823] Bouché Leclercq, _Hist. de la Divin._ I. p. 133-4.

[824] e.g. Hom. _Il._ XXIV. 310.

[825] Hom. _Il._ VIII. 247.

[826] _Etymol. Magn._ p. 619, s.v. οἰωνοπόλος.

[827] Apoll. Rhod. III. 930.

[828] Ovid, _Metam._ II. 548 sqq.

[829] Hom. _Od._ XV. 526.

[830] Hom. _Il._ X. 274.

[831] Plutarch, _Pyth. Orac._ cap. 22.

[832] Paroemiogr. Graec. I. pp. 228, 231, 352.

[833] περὶ ὠμοπλατοσκοπίας καὶ οἰωνοσκοπίας.

[834] Suid., _Lexicon_, s.v. οἰωνιστική.

[835] _op. cit._ § 2.

[836] Cf. Bouché Leclercq, _op. cit._ I. p. 140, note 2.

[837] Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 745.

[838] The identification of the birds named by even the more
intelligent peasants is necessarily uncertain. The name κουκουβάγια
is seemingly onomatopoeic, suggesting the hooting of the owl, but is
generally reserved to the brown owl.

[839] _op. cit._ § 2.

[840] In the dialects of Scyros and other Aegean islands, κ before the
sounds of ε and ι is regularly softened to τσ. The ρ has, as often,
suffered metathesis.

[841] Hom. _Od._ XV. 524 ff.

[842] Derivation from χαρά, instead of Χάρος, and πουλί is possible,
but less likely. It would then be an euphemistic name, ‘bird of joy.’
An owl named στριγλοποῦλι (on which see above, p. 180) appears to be
a semi-mythical bird chiefly found in Hades; it is possibly identical
with ‘Charon’s bird.’

[843] Cf. Ἐμαν. Μανωλακάκης, Καρπαθιακά, p. 126.

[844] _Il._ VII. 184.

[845] _Od._ XVII. 365.

[846] _Il._ I. 597.

[847] Βικέντιος Κορνάρος, Ἐρωτόκριτος, p. 320.

[848] Aristot. _Hist. An._ IX. 1.

[849] Cf. Aesch. _Sept._ 24, Soph. _Antig._ 999 sqq.

[850] Origen, _contra Cels._ IV. 88.

[851] _Homeric Hymn to Demeter_, 46.

[852] e.g. Passow, _Popul. Carm._ nos. 122, 123, 213, 232, 234, 235,
251 _et passim_.

[853] A. Luber in a monograph _Die Vögel in den historischen Liedern
der Neugriechen_, pp. 6 ff., notes the impossibility of determining in
many cases whether a real bird or a scout is meant.

[854] Passow, _Popul. Carm._ no. 415, vv. 5-7. Cf. 413, 414.

[855] _Ibid._ no. 410.

[856] ξεφτέρι (probably a diminutive from ὀξύπτερος), a ‘falcon,’ is a
favourite name for the warrior, just as the humbler πουλί, ‘bird,’ is
used for ‘scout.’

[857] With reference to Ibrahim’s Egyptian troops.

[858] Passow, _Popul. Carm._ no. 256.

[859] Cic. _de Divin._ I. 52, II. 12, 15, 16, 17. Cf. Bouché Leclercq,
_Hist. de la Divin._ I. p. 167.

[860] Plato, _Tim._ 71 c.

[861] Philostr. _Vit. Apollon._ VIII. 7. 49-52. Cf. Bouché Leclercq,
_op. cit._ I. p. 168.

[862] For authorities on this point see Bouché Leclercq, _op. cit._ I.
p. 170.

[863] Cf. _ibid._ p. 169.

[864] K. O. Müller (_die Etrusker_, II. p. 187) places the introduction
of the custom in the sixth century B.C.

[865] Bybilakis, _Neugriechisches Leben_, p. 49 (1840).

[866] Περὶ ὠμοπλατοσκοπίας καὶ οἰωνοσκοπίας, § 1.

[867] Λαμπρίδης, Ζαγοριακά, p. 210. No details are given.

[868] Λαμπρίδης, Ζαγοριακά, p. 176.

[869] The writer does not actually mention the two things in connexion.
He belongs to that class of modern Greek writers who exhibit their
own intellectual emancipation by deploring or deriding popular
superstitions, and wastes so much energy therein that he fails to
note such points of interest. But, since it is not probable that the
peasants of Epirus eat meat more often than other Greek peasants, the
connexion of the sacrifice and the divination may, I think, be assumed.

[870] Certain details of the art as practised in Macedonia are given by
Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 96. But, as they may in part be due
to Albanian influence there, I have not made use of them.

[871] Περὶ ὠμοπλατοσκοπίας κ.τ.λ. _l. c._

[872] Reading ἄλλα γὰρ for ἀλλὰ γὰρ of Codex Vindobonensis, as
published in _Philologus_, 1853, p. 166.

[873] The word is ῥάχις. This in relation to the body generally means
the ‘spine,’ but can be used of any ridge (as of a hill), and so here,
I suppose, of the ridge of bone along the shoulder-blade.

[874] So I understand the somewhat obscure sentence, εἰ μὲν γὰρ
μεταξὺ τοῦ ὠμοπλάτου δύο ὑμένες ἐξ ἀμφοτέρων μερῶν τῆς ῥάχεως κ.τ.λ.,
conjecturing οἱ before μεταξὺ, where Codex Vindob. has corruptly εἰ.

[875] _Prom. Vinct._ 493.

[876] Pausan. VI. 2. 5.

[877] Tatian, _adv. Graecos_, I. Cf. Bouché Leclercq, _Hist. de la
Divin._ I. p. 170.

[878] In Zagorion in Epirus, the ram is sacrificed on the entrance
of the bride to her new home (cf. the sacrifice of a cock mentioned
below). Λαμπρίδης, Ζαγοριακά, p. 183.

[879] Curtius Wachsmuth, _Das alte Griechenland im Neuen_, p. 86.

[880] In Macedonia the weasel is said on the contrary to be a good
omen. Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 108.

[881] Λαμπρίδης, Ζαγοριακά, p. 203.

[882] Theophr. _Char._ 16.

[883] Theocr. _Id._ II. 35.

[884] So too in antiquity apparently according to Propertius IV. (V.)
3. 60; Ovid (_Heroid._ XIX. 151) on the contrary reckons it a good omen.

[885] Theocr. _Id._ III. 37 ἄλλεται ὀφθαλμός μευ ὁ δεξιός· ἆρά γ’
ἰδησῶ | αὐτάν; the order of the words, it will be seen, justifies the
emphasis which I have given to δεξιός and to αὐτάν.

[886] _Dialog. Meretric._ 9. 2.

[887] The significance of right and left in this case is reversed in
Macedonia (cf. Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 112). But in all these
instances I am only giving what I have found to be the commonest form
of the superstition in Greece as a whole.

[888] Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 111.

[889] The word ψοφῶ is properly used only of the dying of animals.

[890] ἐπέπταρε πᾶσιν ἔπεσσιν.

[891] Hom. _Od._ XVII. 539 ff. Cf. Xenoph. _Anab._ III. 2. 9 and
Catull. XLV. 9 and 18.

[892] See above, p. 304.

[893] Καμπούρογλου, Ἱστ. τῶν Ἀθηναίων, III. p. 22.

[894] e.g. at the oracle of Hermes Agoraeus at Pherae the enquirer
performed the whole ceremony required and obtained his response without
the intervention of any priest or seer. Cf. above, p. 305.

[895] See above, p. 121.

[896] See above, p. 55.

[897] Cf. an article by Ἀντ. Μηλιαράκης, τὸ ἐν Ἀμοργῷ Μαντεῖον τοῦ
Ἁγίου Γεωργίου τοῦ Βαλσαμίτου, in Περιοδικὸν τῆς Ἑστίας, no. 411, 13th
Nov. 1883.

[898] Le Père Robert (Sauger), _Histoire nouvelle des anciens ducs
et autres souverains de l’Archipel_ (Paris, 1699) pp. 196-198. Cf.
Tournefort, _Voyage du Levant_, I. pp. 281 ff.; Sonnini de Magnoncourt,
_Voyage en Grèce et en Turquie_, vol. I. p. 290.

[899] Bouché Leclercq, _Hist. de la Divin._ I. p. 187.

[900] Pausan. III. 23. 8.

[901] _De sacrificiis_, p. 12.

[902] _Ibid._ cap. 2.

[903] Plato, _Sympos._ p. 188.

[904] Hom. _Il._ IX. 497 ff.

[905] See above, pp. 322-3 and 326.

[906] See above, p. 265.

[907] See above, pp. 58-9.

[908] Ancient offerings of this type, as found at Epidaurus, should
not I think be grouped all together as thank-offerings; many of them
belonged probably to the propitiatory class.

[909] See above, p. 121.

[910] See above, p. 145.

[911] See above, p. 201.

[912] Formerly (and again latterly) called Thera.

[913] Le père Richard, _Relation de ce qui s’est passé à Sant-Erini_,
p. 23.

[914] Called by him ὄρος τοῦ ἁγίου Στεφάνου; but the fact that there is
only this one mountain in the island and that it still has a chapel of
St Stephen on it places the identification beyond all doubt.

[915] This phrase as noted down by me from memory along with the rest
of the story immediately after my interview is, I believe, verbally
exact. The old man’s words were ἐσκεφτήκαμε λοιπὸν κι’ ἀποφασίσαμε
νὰ στείλουμε ἄνθρωπο ’στὸν Ἅγι’ Νικόλα, γιὰ νά τον παρακαλέσῃ νὰ
ἐπιτυχαίνουνε τὰ καράβι̯α μας στὸν πόλεμο.

[916] See above, p. 55.

[917] The term ὁ θεός could not have been intended to apply to St
Nicolas; although the saints are practically treated as gods, they are
not so spoken of. See above, pp. 42 ff.

[918] Plutarch, _Pelop._ 21 (p. 229).

[919] Porph. _de Abstin._ 27 and 54.

[920] Tzetz. _Hist._ XXIII. 726 ff.

[921] Cf. Πολίτης, Μελέτη, II. p. 341.

[922] Ραζέλης, Μυρολόγια, p. 16. Πολίτης, Μελέτη, II. 343.

[923] _Popul. Carm._ no. 373.

[924] Ραζέλης, Μυρολόγια, p. 36. Cf. Πολίτης, Μελέτη, II. p. 342. The
line runs μαντατοφόρος φρόνιμος ’ποῦ πάει ’στὸν κάτω κόσμο.

[925] Eur. _Hec._ 422-3.

[926] Verg. _Aen._ II. 547 sqq.

[927] Diodor. Sic. V. 28.

[928] e.g. Fauriel, _Chants de la Grèce Moderne, Discours Prélimin._ p.
39. Rennell Rodd, _Customs and Lore of Mod. Greece_, p. 129.

[929] Dora d’Istria, _Les Femmes en Orient_, Bk. III. Letter 2.

[930] Plutarch, _Vita Solon._ 20.

[931] Hom. _Il._ XXIV. 719-775.

[932] Plato, _Leg._ VII. p. 801.

[933] An edict of the year 1662 preserved in the record-office (
ἀρχαιοφυλακεῖον) of Zante was shown and interpreted to me by Mons.
Λεωνίδας Χ. Ζώης, whose courtesy I wish here to acknowledge. The
record-office contains much valuable material for the study of the
period of Venetian supremacy in the Heptanesos.

[934] Soph. _Antig._ 29; Eur. _Hec._ 30; cf. also Soph. _Antig._ 203-4
τάφῳ μήτε κτερίζειν, μήτε κωκῦσαί τινα, and _Philoct._ 360.

[935] Hom. _Il._ XIX. 301-2.

[936] Κωνστ. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, pp. 335-6.

[937] See below, pp. 555 ff.

[938] Herodot. IV. 94.

[939] For the evidence see Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of
Greek Religion_, pp. 96 ff.

[940] Cf. Paus. VIII. 38. 7 and Porphyr. _de abstinentia_, II. 27.

[941] Paus. VIII. 2. 6 and VIII. 38. 7 and Frazer’s note _ad loc._

[942] Paus. VIII. 38. 7.

[943] Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. p. 458.

[944] Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. p. 462.

[945] See above, p. 264.

[946] Paus. VIII. 38. 7.

[947] Schol. ad Ar. _Eq._ 1136 in explanation of the word δημόσιοι.

[948] Tzetzes, _Hist._ XXIII. 726 ff. quoting Hipponax’ authority on
most points.

[949] Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, pp.
95 f.

[950] _op. cit._ p. 108.

[951] Serv. ad Verg. _Aen._ III. 75 as translated by Miss Harrison,
_op. cit._ p. 108.

[952] _op. cit._ p. 100.

[953] Luc. _Nek._ 7.

[954] Eur. _Phoen._ 944.

[955] _op. cit._ p. 100.

[956] _op. cit._ p. 108.

[957] Lysias, _c. Andoc._ 108. 4 as translated by Miss Harrison, _op.
cit._ p. 97

[958] _Ran._ 734, _Equ._ 1405 and fragm. 532 (from Miss Harrison, _op.
cit._ p. 97).




CHAPTER IV.

THE RELATION OF SOUL AND BODY.


§ 1. THE MODERN GREEK VAMPIRE.

The division of the human entity into the two parts which we call
soul and body has been so universally recognised even among the most
primitive of mankind that the idea of it must have been first suggested
by the observation of some universal phenomenon--most probably the
phenomenon of unconsciousness whether in sleep, in fainting, in
trance, or in death. If it had been man’s lot to pass in this world a
life of activity unbroken by sleep or exhaustion, and thereafter to
be translated like Enoch or Ganymede to another world, so that the
spectacle of a body lying inert and senseless could never have been
forced upon men’s sight, the first impulse to speculation concerning
that impalpable something, the loss of which severs men from converse
with the waking, active world, might never have been given, and the
duality of human nature might never have been conceived. But death
above all overtaking each in turn has forced in turn the mourners for
each to muse on the future condition of these two elements which,
united, make a man, and, disjoined, leave but a corpse. Does neither or
does one or do both of them continue? And, continuing, what degree of
intelligence and of power has either or have both? Are they for ever
separated, or will they be re-united elsewhere? Such are the questions
that must have vexed, as they still vex, the minds of many when their
eyes were confronted by the spectacle of death.

For some indeed a means of answering or of quieting such searchings of
heart has been found in the acceptance of religious dogma. But ancient
Greek religion, the faith or superstition in which the Hellenic people,
defiant alike of destructive and of constructive philosophy, lived
and moved and had their being, was not dogmatic; the very priests
were guardians and exponents of ceremonies rather than preachers of
doctrine; there was no organised hierarchy committed to one set creed
and prepared to assert the divine revelation of a single formulated
answer to these questions. The sum total of orthodoxy amounted to
little more than a belief in gods; and each man was free to believe
what he would, evil as well as good, concerning them, and to find for
himself hope or despair. In determining therefore the views to which
the mass of the common-folk inclined with regard to the relations of
soul and body, little assistance can be obtained in the first instance
from those personal opinions which literature has preserved to us,
opinions emanating from poets and philosophers who were not of the
people but consciously above them, and who set themselves some to
expose, others to reform, the popular religion, but few simply to
maintain it. The conservative force of the ancient religion lay in
the inherited and almost instinctive beliefs of the common-folk; oral
tradition weighed more with them than philosophic reasoning, and their
tenacity of customs as barbarous even as human sacrifice defied the
softening influences of an humaner civilisation.

That these characteristics of the ancient Greek folk are stamped
equally upon the people of to-day is a fact which every page of
this book has confirmed; and it is therefore by analysis of modern
beliefs and customs relative to death that I propose to discover
the fundamental ideas held by the Greek people from the beginning
concerning the relations between soul and body. For I venture to
think that the great teachers of antiquity, whose doctrines dominate
ancient literature, were often more widely removed by their genius,
than are the modern folk by the lapse of centuries, from the peasants
of those early days, and that the oral tradition of a people who have
instinctively clung to every ancient belief and custom is even after
more than two thousand years a safer guide than the contemporary
writings of men who deliberately discarded or arbitrarily modified
tradition in favour of the results of their own personal speculations.
First then the peasants of modern Greece must furnish our clue to the
popular beliefs of antiquity; afterwards we may profitably consider the
use and handling of those beliefs in ancient literature.

To this end I shall examine first and necessarily at some length a
certain abnormal condition of the dead about which very definite ideas
are everywhere held; for the abhorrence and dread with which the
abnormal state is regarded will be an accurate measure of the eagerness
with which the opposite and normal state is desired; and further in
this desire to promote and to secure the normal condition of the
departed will be found the motive of various funeral-customs.

This abnormal condition of the dead is a kind of vampirism. It is
believed that under certain conditions a dead body is withheld from
the normal process of corruption, is re-animated, and revisits the
scenes of its former life, sometimes in a harmless or even kindly mood,
but far more often bent on mischief and on murder. The superstition
as it now stands is by no means wholly Greek or wholly popular. Two
extraneous influences, the one Slavonic and the other ecclesiastical,
have considerably modified it. But in the present section I shall
confine myself to describing the appearance, nature, habits, and proper
treatment of the Greek vampire as he is now conceived; the work of
analysing the superstition and of separating the pure Hellenic metal
from the extraneous alloys with which in its now current form it is
contaminated will occupy the next section; and the two which follow
will be devoted to showing that the native residue of superstition was
in fact well known to the ancient Greeks and was utilised to no small
extent in their literature.

The best accounts of this superstition and of the savage practices to
which it led are furnished by writers of the seventeenth century. At
the present day, though the superstition is far from extinction, the
more violent outbreaks of it are comparatively rare; and, although
stories dealing with it may frequently be heard, it might perhaps be
difficult to piece together any complete and coherent account of the
Greek vampire without a previous knowledge obtained from writers of
two or three centuries ago. In such stories as I myself have heard I
have found nothing new, and have often missed something with which
older narratives had made me familiar. In the seventeenth century some
parts of Greece would seem to have been infested by these vampires.
The island of Santorini (the ancient Thera) acquired so enduring a
notoriety in this respect, that even at the present day ‘to send
vampires to Santorini[959]’ is a proverbial expression synonymous
with ‘owls to Athens’ or ‘coals to Newcastle’; and the inhabitants of
the island enjoyed so wide a reputation as experts in dealing with
them, that two stories recently published[960], one from Myconos and
the other from Sphakiá in Crete, actually end with the despatch of a
vampire’s body to Santorini for effective treatment there. The justice
of this reputation will shortly appear; for one of the best accounts
of the superstition was written by a Jesuit residing in the island, to
whom the resurrection of these vampires seemed an unquestionable, if
also inexplicable, phenomenon of by no means rare occurrence. Nowadays
cases of suspected vampirism are much less common, and I can count
myself very fortunate to have once witnessed the sequel of such a case.
But of that more anon.

The most common form of the Greek name for this species of vampire
is βρυκόλακας[961], and in order to avoid on the one hand continual
qualification of the word ‘vampire’ (which I have used hitherto as the
nearest though not exact equivalent) and on the other hand confusion
of the Greek with the Slavonic species from which in certain traits
it differs, I prefer henceforth to adopt a transliteration of the
Greek word, and, save where I have occasion to speak of the purely
Slavonic form of vampire, to employ the name _vrykólakas_ (plural
_vrykólakes_[962]).

The first of those writers of the seventeenth century whose accounts
deserve attention is one to whose treatise on various Greek
superstitions reference has already frequently been made, Leo Allatius.
‘The _vrykolakas_,’ he writes[963], ‘is the body of a man of evil
and immoral life--very often of one who has been excommunicated by
his bishop. Such bodies do not like those of other dead men suffer
decomposition after burial nor turn to dust, but having, as it
appears, a skin of extreme toughness become swollen and distended
all over, so that the joints can scarcely be bent; the skin becomes
stretched like the parchment of a drum, and when struck gives out
the same sound; from this circumstance the _vrykolakas_ has received
the name τυμπανιαῖος (“drumlike”).’ Into such a body, he continues,
the devil enters, and issuing from the tomb goes about, chiefly at
night, knocking at doors and calling one of the household. If such an
one answer, he dies next day; but a _vrykolakas_ never calls twice,
and so the inhabitants of Chios (whence Allatius’ observations and
information were chiefly derived) secure themselves by always waiting
for a second call at night before replying. ‘This monster is said to
be so destructive to men, that appearing actually in the daytime, even
at noon--and that not only in houses but in fields and highroads and
enclosed vineyards--it advances upon them as they walk along, and by
its mere aspect without either speech or touch kills them.’ Hence, when
sudden deaths occur without other assignable cause, they open the tombs
and often find such a body. Thereupon ‘it is taken out of the grave,
the priests recite prayers, and it is thrown on to a burning pyre;
before the supplications are finished the joints of the body gradually
fall apart; and all the remains are burnt to ashes....’ ‘This belief,’
he pursues, ‘is not of fresh and recent growth in Greece; in ancient
and modern times alike men of piety who have received the confessions
of Christians have tried to root it out of the popular mind.’

As evidence of this statement he adduces a _nomocanon_, or ordinance of
the Greek Church, of uncertain authorship:

‘Concerning a dead man, if such be found whole and incorrupt, the which
they call _vrykolakas_.

‘It is impossible that a dead man become a _vrykolakas_, save it be
that the Devil, wishing to delude some that they may do things unmeet
and incur the wrath of God, maketh these portents, and oft-times
at night causeth men to imagine that the dead man whom they knew
before[964] cometh and speaketh with them, and in their dreams too they
see visions. Other times they see him in the road, walking or standing
still, and, more than this, he even throttles men.

‘Then there is a commotion and they run to the grave and dig to see the
remains of the man ... and the dead man--one who has long been dead and
buried--appears to them to have flesh and blood and nails and hair ...
and they collect wood and set fire to it and burn the body and do away
with it altogether....’

Then, after denying the reality of such things, which exist in
imagination (κατὰ φαντασίαν) only, the _nomocanon_ with some
inconsistency continues: ‘But know that when such remains be found,
the which, as we have said, is a work of the Devil, ye must summon the
priests to chant an invocation of the Mother of God, ... and to perform
memorial services for the dead with funeral-meats[965].’

Allatius then leaving the _nomocanon_ pronounces his own views. ‘It is
the height of folly to deny altogether that such bodies are sometimes
found in the graves incorrupt, and that by use of them the Devil, if
God permit him, devises horrible plans to the hurt of the human race.’
He therefore advocates the burning of them, always accompanied by
prayers.

To the fact of non-decomposition he cites several witnesses--among
them Crusius[966] who narrates the case of a Greek’s body being found
by Turks in this condition after the man had been two years dead and
being burnt by them. Moreover Allatius himself claims to have been an
eye-witness of such a scene when he was at school in Chios. A tomb
having for some reason been opened at the church of St Antony, ‘on the
top of the bones of other men there was found lying a corpse perfectly
whole; it was unusually tall of stature; clothes it had none, time
or moisture having caused them to perish; the skin was distended,
hard, and livid, and so swollen everywhere, that the body had no flat
surfaces but was round like a full sack[967]. The face was covered
with hair dark and curly; on the head there was little hair, as also
on the rest of the body, which appeared smooth all over; the arms by
reason of the swelling of the corpse were stretched out on each side
like the arms of a cross; the hands were open, the eyelids closed, the
mouth gaping, and the teeth white.’ How the body was finally treated or
disposed of is not related.

The next writer whose testimony deserves notice and respect is Father
François Richard, a Jesuit priest of the island of Santorini, to whose
work on that island reference has above been made[968]. Agreeing with
Allatius in his description of the appearance of _vrykolakes_, he
adds thereto many instances of their unpleasantly active habits. His
whole narrative bears the stamp of good faith, but is too long to
translate in full; and I must therefore content myself with a _précis_
of it, indicating by inverted commas such phrases and sentences as are
literally rendered.

The Devil, he says[969], works by means of dead bodies as well as
by living sorcerers. ‘These bodies he animates and preserves for a
long time in their entirety; he appears with the face of the dead,
traversing now the streets and anon the open country; he enters men’s
houses, leaving some horror-stricken, others deprived of speech, and
others again lifeless; here he inflicts violence, there loss, and
everywhere terror.’ At first I believed these apparitions to be merely
the souls of the dead returning to ask help to escape the sooner
from Purgatory; but such souls never commit such excesses--assault,
destruction of property, death, and so forth. It is clearly then a form
of diabolical possession; for indeed the priests with the bishop’s
permission employ forms of exorcism. They assemble on Saturday (the
only day on which _vrykolakes_ rest in the grave and cannot stir
abroad) and exhume the body which is suspected. ‘And when they find
it whole, fresh, and full of blood, they take it as certain that it
was serving as an instrument of the Devil.’ They accordingly continue
their exorcisms until with the departure of the Devil the body begins
to decompose and gradually to lose ‘its colour and its _embonpoint_,
and is left a noisome and ghastly lump.’ So rapid was the decomposition
in the case of a Greek priest’s daughter, Caliste by name, that no one
could remain in the church, and the body was hastily re-interred; from
that time she ceased to appear.

When exorcisms fail, they tear the heart out, cut it to pieces, and
then burn the whole body to ashes.

At Stampalia (Astypalaea), he proceeds, a short time before my arrival
(about the middle of the seventeenth century) five bodies were so
treated, those of three married men, a Greek monk, and a girl. In Nio
(Ios) a woman who was confessing to me affirmed that she had seen
her husband again fifty days after burial, though already his grave
had been once changed and the ordinary rites performed to lay him.
He began however again to torment the people, killing actually some
four or five; so his body was exhumed for the second time and was
publicly burnt. Only two years ago they burnt two bodies in the island
of Siphanto for the same reason; ‘and rarely does a year pass in
which people do not speak with dread of these false resuscitations.’
In Santorini a shoemaker named Alexander living at Pyrgos became a
_vrykolakas_; he used to frequent his house, mend his children’s shoes,
draw water at the reservoir, and cut wood for the use of his family;
but the people became frightened, exhumed him, and burned him, and he
was seen no more.... In Amorgos these _vrykolakes_ have been seen not
only at night but in open day, five or six together in a field, feeding
apparently on green beans.

I heard, continues the holy father, from the Abbé of the famous
monastery of Amorgos, that a certain merchant of Patmos, having gone
abroad on business, died. His widow sent a boat to bring his body home.
Now it so happened that one of the sailors sat down by accident upon
the coffin and to his horror felt the body move. They opened the coffin
therefore and found the body intact. Their fears being thus confirmed,
they nailed up the coffin again and handed it over to the widow without
a word and it was buried. But soon the dead man began to appear at
night in the houses, violent and turbulent to such a degree that more
than fifteen persons died of fright or of injuries inflicted by it. The
exorcisms of priests and monks proved useless, and they thought best
to send back the body whence it had been brought. The sailors however
unshipped it at the first desert island[970] and burnt it there, after
which it was seen no more.
The Abbé considered this possession by the devil to be a proof of the
truth of the Greek persuasion, alleging that no Mohammedan or Roman
Catholic ever became a _vrykolakas_[971]. This however is not strictly
accurate, for in Santorini a Roman priest, who had apostatized and
turned Mohammedan and who for his many crimes was finally hanged,
appeared after death and was only disposed of by burning.

Another case was that of Iannetis Anapliotis of the same island, an
usurer who about a year before his death repented of his misdeeds
and made what amends he could; he also left his wife an order to pay
anything else justly reclaimed from him. She however though giving
much in charity did not pay his debts. It was just six weeks after
his death when she refused to satisfy some just claim for repayment,
and immediately he began to appear in the streets and to molest above
all his own wife and relatives. Also he woke up priests early in the
morning, telling them it was time for matins, pulled coverlets off
people as they slept, shook their beds, left the taps of wine-barrels
running, and so on. One woman was so frightened in broad day-light
as to lose the power of speech for three days, and another whose
bed he shook suffered a miscarriage. Then at length his name was
published--for as a man of some position he had till then been spared.
Exorcism was tried in vain by the Greek priests. Then by my advice the
widow paid off all her husband’s debts and made due restitution. Also
she had the body exhumed and exorcised a second time. On this occasion
I saw it, but it did not look like a real _vrykolakas_; for, though the
hands were whole and parchment-like, the head and the entrails were
to some extent decomposed. At the end of the ceremony of exorcism the
priests hacked the body to pieces and buried it in a new grave. From
this time the _vrykolakas_ never re-appeared, but this was due, in my
opinion, to the restitution made, not to the treatment of the body.

There are in Greek cemeteries dead bodies of another kind which after
fifteen or sixteen years--sometimes even twenty or thirty--are found
inflated like balloons, and when they are thrown on the ground or
rolled along, sound like drums; for this reason they have the name
ντουπί[972] (drum).... The common opinion of the Greeks is that this
inflation is a sure sign that the man had suffered excommunication;
and indeed Greek priests and bishops add always to the formula of
excommunication the curse, καὶ μετὰ τὸν θάνατον ἄλυτος καὶ ἀπαράλυτος,
‘and after death to remain indissoluble[973].’

In a manuscript from the Church of St Sophia at Thessalonica, he
continues, I found the following:

 Ὁποῖος ἔχει ἐντολὴν ἢ κατάραν, κρατοῦσι μόνον τὰ ἔμπροσθεν τοῦ σώματός
 του.

 Ἐκεῖνος ὁποῦ ἔχει ἀνάθεμα, φαίνεται κιτρινὸς καὶ ζαρωμένα τὰ δακτύλιά
 του.

 Ἐκεῖνος ὁποῦ φαίνεται ἀσπρὸς[974] (_sic_), εἶναι ἀφωρισμένος παρὰ τῶν
 θείων νόμων.

 Ἐκεῖνος ὁποῦ φαίνεται μαῦρος, εἶναι ἀφωρισμένος ὑπὸ ἀρχιερέως.

 ‘He who has left a command of his parents unfulfilled or is under
 their curse has only the front portions of his body preserved.

 ‘He who is under an anathema looks yellow and his fingers are wrinkled.

 ‘He who looks white has been excommunicated by divine laws.

 ‘He who looks black has been excommunicated by a bishop.’

From this account it is manifest that Father Richard, with the
experience acquired by residence in Santorini, drew a distinction not
known to Leo Allatius between two classes of dead persons. Those, who
though not subject to the natural law of decomposition lay quiescent
in their graves, were merely τυμπανιαῖοι or ‘drum-like’; while
_vrykolakes_ proper were addicted also to periodical resurrection.
And the extract with which he concludes his description shows that
the authorities of the rival Church pretended to powers of even more
subtle discrimination between different species of incorrupt corpses.
The importance of Father Richard’s distinction will appear later; there
was originally a difference in the usage of the two words, although
not precisely the difference which he makes; but by the middle of the
seventeenth century popular speech rarely discriminated between them.
To the common-folk, whose views Leo Allatius fairly presents, any
body which was withheld from decomposition for any cause was at least
a potential _vrykolakas_, even if its power of resurrection was not
known to have been exerted and no act of violence had been traced to it.

For further attestation of the prevalence and the violence of this
superstition it would be easy to quote many graphic accounts by other
writers, such as Robert Sauger[975], another Jesuit of Santorini, or
the traveller Tournefort[976]. But it will suffice to call as witness
Paul Lucas, whose observations concern a part of the Greek world remote
enough from either Chios or Santorini, the island of Corfu. ‘Some
persons,’ he says, ‘who seem possessed of sound good sense speak of a
curious thing which often happens in this place, as also in the island
of Santorini. According to their account dead persons return and show
themselves in open day, going even into the houses and inspiring great
terror in those who see them. In consequence of this, whenever one of
these apparitions is seen, the people go at once to the cemetery to
exhume the corpse, which is then cut in pieces and finally is burnt by
sentence of the Governors and Magistrates. This done, these quasi-dead
return no more. Monsieur Angelo Edme, Warden and Governor of the
island, assured me that he himself had pronounced a sentence of this
kind in a case where upwards of fifty reasonable persons were found to
testify to the occurrence[977].’

The superstition, which had so firm a grip upon the Greeks of two or
three centuries ago, has by no means relaxed its hold at the present
day, in spite of the efforts made by the higher authorities civil
and ecclesiastical, native and foreign, to suppress those savage and
gruesome ceremonies to which it leads. The horrible scenes of old time,
when the suspected body was dragged from its grave and dismembered
by a panic-stricken and desperate mob, when the heart, as sometimes
happened, was torn out and boiled to shreds in vinegar, or when the
ghastly remains were burnt on a public bonfire, have certainly become
rarer. The administrative action of the Venetians in the Ionian
Islands in requiring proof to be furnished of the _vrykolakas’_
resuscitation, and official sanction to be obtained for exhuming and
burning the body; the more vigorous suppression of such acts by the
Turks in the Aegean Islands[978] and probably also on the mainland;
the somewhat half-hearted condemnation of the superstition by the
Greek Church, which, as we shall see later, maintained the belief in
the non-decomposition of excommunicated persons and notorious sinners,
hesitated between denying and explaining the further notion that such
persons were liable to re-animation, but certainly endeavoured to
repress or to mitigate the atrocities to which that notion led; and
at the present day the forces of law and order as represented on the
one hand by the police and on the other by modern education, the chief
fruit of which is a desire to appear ‘civilised’ in the eyes of Europe;
all these influences combined have certainly succeeded in reducing the
proportions of the superstition and curtailing the excesses consequent
upon it. Thus in some places the old practice of burning corpses which
fail to decompose within the normal period--and it must be remembered
that exhumation after three years’ burial is an established rite of the
Church in Greece--has been definitely superseded by milder expedients.
In Scyros the body is carried round to forty churches in turn and is
then re-interred, while in parts of Crete, in Cythnos[979], and, I
believe, in some other Aegean Islands the custom is to transfer the
body to a grave in some uninhabited islet, whence its return is barred
by the intervening salt water.

None the less the superstition itself still holds a firm place among
the traditional beliefs of modern Greece. Witness the following account
of it from a history[980] of the district of Sphakiá in Crete written
by the head of a monastery there and published in 1888:

‘It is popularly believed that most of the dead, those who have
lived bad lives or who have been excommunicated by some priest (or,
worse still, by seven priests together, τὸ ἑπταπάπαδον[981]) become
_vrykolakes_[982]; that is to say, after the separation of the soul
from the body there enters into the latter an evil spirit, which takes
the place of the soul and assumes the shape of the dead man and so is
transformed into a _vrykolakas_ or man-demon.

‘In this guise it keeps the body as its dwelling-place and preserves
it from corruption, and it runs swift as lightning wherever it lists,
and causes men great alarms at night and strikes all with panic. And
the trouble is that it does not remain solitary, but makes everyone,
who dies while it is about, like to itself, so that in a short space
of time it gets together a large and dangerous train of followers. The
common practice of the _vrykolakes_ is to seat themselves upon those
who are asleep and by their enormous weight to cause an agonizing sense
of oppression. There is great danger that the sufferer in such cases
may expire, and himself too be turned into a _vrykolakas_, if there
be not someone at hand who perceives his torment and fires off a gun,
thereby putting the blood-thirsty monster to flight; for fortunately it
is afraid of the report of fire-arms and retreats without effecting its
purpose. Not a few such scenes we have witnessed with our own eyes.

‘This monster, as time goes on, becomes more and more audacious and
blood-thirsty, so that it is able completely to devastate whole
villages. On this account all possible haste is made to annihilate the
first which appears before it enter upon its second period of forty
days[983], because by that time it becomes a merciless and invincible
dealer of death. To this end the villagers call in priests who profess
to know how to annihilate the monster--for a consideration. These
impostors proceed after service to the tomb, and if the monster be not
found there--for it goes to and fro molesting men--they summon it in
authoritative tones to enter its dwelling-place; and, as soon as it is
come, it is imprisoned there by virtue of some prayer and subsequently
breaks up. With its disruption all those who have been turned into
_vrykolakes_ by it, wherever they may be, suffer the same lot as their
leader.

‘This absurd superstition is rife and vigorous throughout Crete and
especially in the mountainous and secluded parts of the island.’
So too another well-informed Greek writer, who has published a series
of monographs upon the Cyclades, says in one of them[984]:

‘The ignorant peasant of Andros believes to this day that the corpse
can rise again and do him hurt; and is not this belief in _vrykolakes_
general throughout Greece?’

To that question I might without hesitation answer ‘yes,’ even on the
grounds of my own experience only; for the places in which I have
heard _vrykolakes_ mentioned, not merely in popular stories[985] such
as are told everywhere, but with a very present and real sense of
dread, include some villages on the west slopes of Mount Pelion, the
village of Leonidi on the east coast of the Peloponnese, Andros, Tenos,
Santorini, and Cephalonia.

The wide range and general prevalence of the superstition in modern
times being thus established, it remains only to record a few recent
cases in which the peasants, in defiance of law and order, have gone
the length of exhuming and burning the suspected body.

Theodore Bent[986] states that a few months before his visit to Andros
(somewhat over twenty years ago) the grave of a suspected _vrykolakas_
was opened by a priest and the body taken out, cut into shreds, and
burnt. In January of 1895 at Mantoúde in Euboea a woman was believed
to have turned _vrykolakas_ and to have caused many deaths, and
the peasants resolved to exhume and burn her--but it is not stated
whether the resolve was actually carried out[987]. In 1899, when I
was in Santorini, I was told that two or three years previously the
inhabitants of Therasia had burnt a _vrykolakas_, and when I visited
that island the incident was not denied but the responsibility for it
was laid upon the people of Santorini. In 1902 there was a similar
case of burning at Gourzoúmisa near Patras[988]. These are certain and
well-attested instances of the continuance of the practice, and, regard
being had to the secrecy which such breaches of the law necessarily
demand, it is not unreasonable to suppose that even now a year seldom
passes in which some village of Greece does not disembarrass itself of
a _vrykolakas_ by the traditional means, cremation[989].

Of the causes by which a man is predisposed to become a _vrykolakas_
some mention has already been made in the passages which have been
cited from various writers above; but before I conclude this account
of the superstition as it now is and has been since the seventeenth
century, and proceed to analyse its composite nature, it may be
convenient to give a complete list of such causes. The majority of
these are recognised all over Greece and are familiar to every student
of modern Greek folklore, and I shall not therefore burden this chapter
with references to previous writers whose observations tally exactly
with my own; for rarer and more local beliefs I shall of course quote
my authority.

The classes of persons who are most liable to become _vrykolakes_ are:

(1) Those who do not receive the full and due rites of burial.

(2) Those who meet with any sudden or violent death (including
suicides), or, in Maina[990], where the _vendetta_ is still in vogue,
those who having been murdered remain unavenged.

(3) Children conceived or born on one of the great
Church-festivals[991], and children stillborn[992].

(4) Those who die under a curse, especially the curse of a parent, or
one self-invoked, as in the case of a man who, in perjuring himself,
calls down on his own head all manner of damnation if what he says be
false.

(5) Those who die under the ban of the Church, that is to say,
excommunicate.

(6) Those who die unbaptised or apostate[993].

(7) Men of evil and immoral life in general, more particularly if they
have dealt in the blacker kinds of sorcery.

(8) Those who have eaten the flesh of a sheep which was killed by a
wolf[994].

(9) Those over whose dead bodies a cat or other animal has passed[995].

The _provenance_ and the significance of these various beliefs
concerning the causes of vampirism will be discussed in the next
section.


§ 2. THE COMPOSITION OF THE SUPERSTITION. SLAVONIC, ECCLESIASTICAL, AND
HELLENIC CONTRIBUTIONS.

_Vrykolakes_ are not ghosts. Such is the first observation which I am
compelled to make and which the reader of the last chapter might well
consider superfluous. But so many Greek writers, and with them even
Bernhard Schmidt[996], have fallen into the error of comparing ancient
ghost-stories with modern tales about _vrykolakes_, without apparently
recognising the essential and fundamental difference between them, that
some insistence upon the point is necessary. That a definite and close
relation does indeed subsist between the ancient belief in wandering
spirits and the modern belief in wandering corpses, I readily admit,
and with that relation I shall deal later; but the issue before us can
only be kept clear by remembering that _vrykolakes_ are not ghosts.
There is absolute unanimity among the Greek peasants in their belief
that the corpse itself is the _vrykolakas_, and even the work of
re-animating the corpse is generally credited not to the soul which
formerly inhabited it, but to the Devil. Thus it appears that whereas
most peoples believe to some extent in the return of the ghosts or
spirits of the dead, the Greeks fear rather the return of their bodies.
If then we can determine what part, if any, of this superstition is
genuinely Hellenic, we shall have gained a step in our knowledge of the
ideas popularly held in ancient Greece concerning the condition and the
relations of soul and body after death.

The view which I take is briefly this, that though Slavonic influence
is very conspicuous in the modern superstition as I have described it,
yet the whole superstition has not been transplanted root and branch
from Slavonic to Greek soil, but the growth, as we now see it and as
the writers of the seventeenth century saw it, is the result of the
grafting of Slavonic branches upon an Hellenic stock; and further,
that before that process began the old pagan Greek element in the
superstition had been modified in certain respects by ecclesiastical
influence. This is the view which I propose to develop in this section;
and my method will be to work back from the modern superstition,
removing first the Slavonic and then the ecclesiastical elements in it,
and so leaving a residue of purely Hellenic belief.

To Slavonic influence is due first of all the actual word _vrykolakas_,
the derivation of which need not long detain us. Patriotic attempts
have indeed been made by Greeks to deny its Slavonic origin, the most
plausible being that of Coraës[997], who selecting the local form
βορβόλακας sought to identify it with a supposed ancient form μορμόλυξ
(= μορμολύκη, μορμολυκεῖον), a ‘bugbear’ or ‘hobgoblin’ of some kind.
But there need be no hesitation in pronouncing this suggestion wrong
and in asserting the identity of the modern Greek word with a word
which runs through all the Slavonic languages. This word is in form
a compound of which the first half means ‘wolf’ and the second has
been less certainly identified with _dlaka_, the ‘hair’ of a cow or
horse. But, however the meaning of the compound has been obtained,
it is, in the actual usage of all Slavonic languages save one, the
exact equivalent of our ‘were-wolf[998].’ That one exception is the
Serbian language in which it is said to bear rather the sense of
‘vampire[999].’ If this is true, the reason for the transition of
meaning lies probably in the belief current among the Slavonic peoples
in general that a man who has been a were-wolf in his lifetime becomes
a vampire after death[1000]. Yet in general there is no confusion of
nomenclature. Although the depredations of the were-wolf and of the
vampire are similar in character, the line of demarcation between the
living and the dead is kept clear, and the great mass of the Slavonic
peoples apply only to the living that word from which the Greek
_vrykolakas_ comes, and to the dead the word which we have borrowed in
the form ‘vampire[1001].’

Now among the Greeks the latter word is almost unknown; in parts of
Macedonia indeed where the Greek population lives in constant touch
with Slavonic peoples, a form βάμπυρας or βόμπυρας has been adopted and
is used as a synonym of _vrykolakas_ in its ordinary Greek sense[1002];
but in Greece proper and in the Greek islands the word ‘vampire’ is, so
far as I can discover, absolutely non-existent, and it is _vrykolakas_
which ordinarily denotes the resuscitated corpse. In discriminating
therefore between the Slavonic and the Greek elements in the modern
Greek superstition it is of some importance to determine in which
sense the Greeks originally borrowed the word _vrykolakas_ which at
the present day they in general employ in a different sense from that
which both etymology and general Slavonic usage accord to it. Was it
originally borrowed in the sense of ‘were-wolf’ or in the sense of
‘vampire’?

Among Slavonic peoples the only one said to have transferred the
word _vrykolakas_ from its original meaning to that of ‘vampire’ is
the Serbian; and the Greeks therefore, in order to have borrowed the
word in that sense, would have had to borrow direct from the Serbian
language. But linguistic evidence renders that hypothesis untenable.
All the many Greek dialectic forms of the word _vrykolakas_ concur
in showing a liquid (ρ or λ) in the first syllable; while Serbian
is among the two or three Slavonic languages which have discarded
that liquid. It follows therefore that the Greeks borrowed the word
from some Slavonic language other than Serbian, and consequently from
some language which used and still uses that word in the sense of
‘were-wolf.’

Further, there is evidence that in the Greek language itself the
word _vrykolakas_ does even now locally and occasionally bear its
original significance. This usage indeed is flatly denied by Bernhard
Schmidt, who, having accurately distinguished the were-wolf and the
vampire, states that ‘the modern Greek _vrykolakas_ answers only to
the latter[1003].’ This pronouncement however was made in the face
of two strong pieces of independent evidence to the contrary, which
Schmidt notices and dismisses in a footnote[1004]. The first witness
is Hanush[1005], who was plainly told by a Greek of Mytilene that
there were two kinds of _vrykolakes_, the one kind being men already
dead, and the other still living men who were subject to a kind of
somnambulism and were seen abroad particularly on moonlight nights. The
other authority is Cyprien Robert[1006], who describes the _vrykolakes_
of Thessaly and Epirus thus: ‘These are living men mastered by a kind
of somnambulism, who seized by a thirst for blood go forth at night
from their shepherd’s-huts, and scour the country biting and tearing
all that they meet both man and beast.’

To these two pieces of testimony--strong enough, it might be thought,
in their mutual agreement to merit more than passing notice and
arbitrary rejection--I can add confirmation of more recent date. In
Cyprus, during excavations carried out in the spring of 1899 under
the auspices of the British Museum, the directors of the enterprise
heard from their workmen several stories dealing with the detection
of a _vrykolakas_. The outline of these stories (to which Tenos
furnishes many parallels[1007], though in these latter I have not
found the word _vrykolakas_ employed) is as follows. The inhabitants
of a particular village, having suffered from various nocturnal
depredations, determine to keep watch at night for the marauder.
Having duly armed themselves they maintain a strict vigil, and are
rewarded by seeing a _vrykolakas_. Thereupon one of them with gun or
sword succeeds in inflicting a wound upon the monster, which however
for the nonce escapes. But the next day a man of the village, who had
not been among the watchers of the night, is observed to bear a wound
exactly corresponding with that which the assailant of the _vrykolakas_
had dealt; and being taxed with it the man confesses himself to be a
_vrykolakas._

Similarly on the borders of Aetolia and Acarnania, in the neighbourhood
of Agrinion, I myself ascertained that the word _vrykolakas_ was
occasionally applied to living persons in the sense of were-wolf,
although there as elsewhere it more commonly denotes a resuscitated
corpse. Lycanthropy, as has been observed in a previous chapter[1008],
is in Greece often imputed to children. In the district mentioned this
is conspicuously the case. If one or more children in a family die
without evident cause, the mother will often regard the smallest or
weakliest of the survivors--more especially one in any way deformed
or demented--as guilty of the brothers’ or sisters’ deaths, and the
suspect is called a _vrykolakas_. Εἶσαι βρυκόλακας καὶ ’φάγες τὸν
ἀδερφό σου, ‘you are a _vrykolakas_ and have devoured your brother,’ is
the charge hurled at the helpless infant, and ill-treatment to match is
meted out in the hope of deterring it from its bloodthirsty ways.

In effect from four widely separated parts of the Greek
world--Mytilene, Cyprus, the neighbourhood of Agrinion, and the
district of Thessaly and Epirus--comes one and the same statement, that
to the word _vrykolakas_ is still, or has recently been, attached its
etymologically correct meaning ‘were-wolf’; and, since these isolated
local usages cannot be explained otherwise than as survivals of an
usage which was once general, they constitute a second proof that the
Greeks originally adopted the word in the sense in which the vast
majority of the Slavonic races continue down to this day to employ it.

But while it is thus certain that the Greeks first learnt and acquired
the word _vrykolakas_ in the sense of ‘were-wolf,’ it is equally
certain that the main characteristics of the monster to which that name
is now applied are those of the Slavonic ‘vampire.’ The appearance and
the habits of the re-animated corpse according to Slavonic superstition
differ hardly at all from those described in the last chapter. Indeed
the question is not so much whether the Greeks are indebted to the
Slavs in respect of this belief, as what is the extent of their
indebtedness. Is the whole superstition a foreign importation, or is it
only partly alien and partly native?

The former alternative is rendered improbable in the first place by
the fact that the Greeks have not adopted the word ‘vampire.’ If the
whole idea of dead men remaining under certain conditions incorrupt
and emerging from their graves to work havoc among living men had been
first communicated to them by the Slavs, they must almost inevitably
have borrowed the name by which the Slavs described those men. But
since in fact they did not adopt the Slavonic name ‘vampire,’ it is
probable that they already possessed in their own language some word
adequate to express that idea, and therefore possessed also some native
superstition concerning resuscitation of the dead which Slavonic
influence merely modified.

Further, there is positive evidence that such a word or words existed;
for there have been, and still are, dialects which employ a word of
Greek formation in preference not merely to the word ‘vampire,’ which
seems to be unknown in Greece proper, but even to the misapplied
Slavonic word _vrykolakas_. Thus Leo Allatius was familiar with the
word τυμπανιαῖος, ‘drum-like,’ but whether in his day it belonged
especially to his native island Chios[1009] or was still in general
usage, he does not record. At the present day it survives only, so
far as I know, in Cythnos, where also ἄλυτος, ‘incorrupt,’ is used
as another synonym[1010]. From Cythera are reported three names,
ἀνάρραχο, λάμπασμα, and λάμπαστρο[1011], evidently Greek in formation
but to me, I must confess, unintelligible. In Cyprus (where, as
we have seen, the word _vrykolakas_ may still bear its old sense
‘were-wolf’) the _revenant_ is named σαρκωμένος[1012], because his
swollen appearance suggests that he has ‘put on flesh,’ or more rarely
στοιχειωμένος[1013], perhaps with the idea that he has become the
‘genius’ (στοιχειό)[1014] of some particular locality. Again, from the
village of Pyrgos in Tenos is reported the word ἀναικαθούμενος[1015]
meaning apparently one who ‘sits up’ in his grave. Finally, in Crete
the name popularly employed is καταχανᾶς[1016], the origin of which is
not certain. Bernhard Schmidt[1017], following Koraës[1018], derives
it from κατὰ and χάνω (= ancient Greek χαόω), ‘lose,’ ‘destroy,’ and
would have it mean accordingly ‘destroyer.’ I would suggest that
derivation from κατὰ and the root χαν-, ‘gape,’ ‘yawn,’ is at least
equally probable, inasmuch as other local names such as τυμπανιαῖος,
‘drumlike,’ and σαρκωμένος, ‘fleshy,’ have reference to the monster’s
personal appearance, and the ‘gaper’ in like manner would be a name
eminently suitable to a creature among whose features are numbered
by Leo Allatius ‘a gaping mouth and gleaming teeth[1019].’ The same
name was some forty years ago[1020], and probably still is, used in
Rhodes, and in a Rhodian poem of the fifteenth century occurs both
in its literal sense and as a term of abuse[1021]. This secondary
usage however is in no way a proof that the word meant originally
‘destroyer’ rather than ‘gaper’; for by the fifteenth century there
can be little doubt that the _revenant_ was everywhere an object of
horror, and therefore his name, whatever it originally meant, furnished
a convenient term of vituperation. But one thing at least is clear,
that καταχανᾶς, whichever interpretation of it be right, is certainly
a word of Greek origin no less than the others which I have enumerated.

Now all these dialectic Greek names are found, it will have been
observed, only in certain of the Greek islands, while on the mainland
_vrykolakas_ has come to be universally employed. But it was the
mainland which was particularly exposed to Slavonic immigration and
influence, while islands like Crete and Cyprus were practically immune.
Hence, while the mainland gradually adopted a Slavonic word, it was
likely enough that some of the islands should retain their own Greek
terms, even though in the course of their relations with the mainland
they became acquainted also with the new Slavonic word. These insular
names for the _vrykolakas_ may therefore be regarded as survivals from
a pre-Slavonic period, and, though they are now merely dialectic, it is
reasonable to suppose that one or more of them formerly held a place
in the language of mainlanders and islanders alike. But the existence
of such words presupposes the existence of a belief in some kind of
resuscitated beings denoted by them. In other words, the Greeks when
first brought into contact with the Slavs already possessed a belief
in the re-animation and activity of certain dead persons, which so
far resembled the Slavonic belief in vampirism, that the Slavonic
vampire could be adequately denoted by some Greek word or words already
existing and there was no need to adopt the Slavonic name.

I claim then to have established two important points: first, that
the word _vrykolakas_ was originally borrowed by the Greeks from the
Slavs in the sense of ‘were-wolf,’ though now it is almost universally
employed in the sense of ‘vampire’; secondly, that, whatever ideas
concerning vampires the Greeks may have learnt from the Slavs, they did
not adopt the Slavonic word ‘vampire’ but employed one of those native
Greek words, such as τυμπανιαῖος or καταχανᾶς, which are still in local
usage; whence it follows that some superstition anent re-animated
corpses existed in Greece before the coming of the Slavs.

These points being established, I am now in a position to trace the
development of the superstition in Greece from the time of the Slavonic
immigrations onward, and to show how it came to pass that, whereas
in the tenth century, let us say, when the Greeks had had ample time
to imbibe Slavonic superstitions, _vrykolakas_ meant a ‘were-wolf,’
and a ‘vampire’ was denoted by τυμπανιαῖος or some other Greek word,
nowadays _vrykolakas_ almost always means a ‘vampire’ and τυμπανιαῖος
is well-nigh obsolete.

The Slavs brought with them into Greece two superstitions, the
one concerning were-wolves and the other concerning vampires. The
old Hellenic belief in lycanthropy was apparently at that time
weak--confined perhaps to a few districts only--for the Greeks borrowed
from the invaders their word _vrykolakas_ in the place of the old
λυκάνθρωπος[1022], by which to express the idea of a ‘were-wolf.’ They
also learnt the Slavonic superstition concerning vampires, but in
this case did not borrow the word ‘vampire’ but expressed the notion
adequately by means of one of those words which now survive only in
insular dialects--adequately, I say, but not exactly. For--and here
I must anticipate what will be proved later--the Greeks denoted by
those words a _revenant_ but not a vampire. They believed in the
incorruptibility and the re-animation of certain classes of dead men,
but they did not impute to these _revenants_ the savagery which is
implied by the name ‘vampire.’ The dead who returned from their graves
acted, it was held, as reasonable men, not as ferocious brutes. This
did not of course exclude the idea that a _revenant_ might return to
seek revenge where vengeance was due; he was not necessarily peaceable;
but if he exacted even the life of one who had wronged him, the act of
vengeance was reasonable. To the proof of this, as I have said, I shall
come later on; here I will only point out that the names which survive
in the island-dialects are perfectly consistent with my view. Of the
words τυμπανιαῖος, ‘drumlike,’ σαρκωμένος, ‘fleshy,’ στοιχειωμένος,
‘_genius_,’ ἀναικαθούμενος, ‘sitting up’ in the grave, and, if my
interpretation is right, καταχανᾶς, ‘gaper,’ not one suggests any
inherent ferocity in the resuscitated dead.

Nevertheless, when the Greeks first heard of the Slavonic ‘vampire,’
they naturally regarded it merely as a new and particularly vicious
species of the genus _revenant_. Their own words for the genus
implied no idea beyond that of the resuscitation of the dead, and
were therefore no less applicable to the uniformly ferocious Slavonic
variety than to the more reasonable and human type with which they
themselves were familiar. They therefore did not require the word
‘vampire,’ but were content at first to comprise all _revenants_,
whatever their character, under one or other of the existing Greek
names.

Subsequently however, it appears, a change took place. The Slavonic
superstition concerning were-wolves included then, we may suppose, as
it includes now[1023], the idea that were-wolves become after death
vampires. The Greeks, who borrowed from the Slavs the very name of
the were-wolf, must therewith have learnt that these _vrykolakes_ as
they then called them were among the classes of men who were liable
to vampirism; and in this particular case it would surely have seemed
natural to them that the _revenant_ should be conspicuous for ferocity.
The conduct of a reasonable being could not be expected after death
from one who in his lifetime had suffered from lycanthropic mania;
or rather, if there could be any reason in his conduct, the most
reasonable and consistent thing would be for him to turn vampire.

Thus one class of _revenants_ came to be distinguished in the now
composite Greek superstition by its wanton and blood-thirsty character;
and in order to mark this distinction in speech also the Greeks, it
would seem, began to call one who from a were-wolf had become a genuine
vampire by the same name after as before death, _vrykolakas_, while to
the more reasonable and human _revenants_ they still applied some such
term as τυμπανιαῖοι, ‘drumlike.’

By the seventeenth century the superstition had undergone a further
change, which is reflected in the usage of the word τυμπανιαῖος. In
proportion as the horror of real _vrykolakes_ had grown and spread, the
very memory of the more innocent kind of _revenants_ had faded, until
the genus _revenant_ was represented only by the species _vrykolakas_.
The word τυμπανιαῖος was indeed still known, but Leo Allatius was
undoubtedly following the popular usage of his time when he made it
synonymous with _vrykolakas_; for those narratives of the seventeenth
century from which I have quoted above make it abundantly clear that
the common-folk had come to suspect all _revenants_ alike of predatory
propensities.

This change in popular beliefs placed the Church in an awkward
predicament, and was the cause of a marked divergence between the
popular and the clerical usages of the word τυμπανιαῖος. It had long
been claimed that a sentence of excommunication was binding upon
a man even beyond death and could arrest the natural process of
decomposition; indeed the formula officially employed ended, as Father
Richard of Santorini notes, with the phrase, ‘and after death to remain
indissoluble.’ But when the fear of real vampires spread over Greece,
the priests would naturally have been unwilling to be held responsible
for the resuscitation of such pests, while they were equally unwilling
to diminish the terrors of excommunication by omitting the final
imprecation. Their only course therefore was to emphasize what seems
indeed to have been always the authorised doctrine of the Church, that
excommunicated persons remained indeed incorrupt and ‘drum-like,’ but
were not, like _vrykolakes_, subject to diabolical re-animation. It is
Father Richard’s acceptance of this clerical view which explains why,
writing as he did some few years after Leo Allatius, he distinguished
the two words which Leo had treated as synonymous, making resuscitation
the criterion of the _vrykolakas_ and stating that the ‘drum-like’
body, though withheld from natural decay, lay quiet in its grave.
But the ecclesiastical doctrine made no impression upon the popular
belief; to this very day the common-folk regard any corpse which is
found incorrupt as a potential _vrykolakas_, and excommunication is
everywhere numbered among the causes of vampirism.

Thus it has come to pass that any _revenants_ other than the savage
_vrykolakes_ are well-nigh forgotten, and in most districts their very
name is no longer heard. The word _vrykolakes_, which first meant
were-wolves, came to denote also the vampires into which were-wolves
changed, and gradually, as these vampires by exciting men’s horror
and concentrating on themselves the people’s attention became the
predominant class of _revenants_, ousted from the very speech of
Greece as a whole the old Greek names for the more harmless sort, and
established itself as the regular equivalent of _revenant_.

Such is my solution of the somewhat complex problem of nomenclature;
and in presenting it I have incidentally stated my view that the
genuinely Greek element in the modern superstition is a belief in
the incorruptibility and re-appearance of dead persons under certain
special conditions, and that the imported and now dominant element is
the Slavonic belief that the resuscitation of the dead renders them
necessarily predatory vampires. This I now have to prove.

It is a well-established characteristic of the Slavonic vampire that
his violence is directed first and foremost against his nearest of kin.
The same trait is so pronounced too in the modern Greek _vrykolakas_
that it has given rise to the proverb, ὁ βρυκόλακας ἀρχίζει ἀπὸ τὰ
γένειά του, ‘the _vrykolakas_ begins with his own beard’--a saying
which carries a double meaning, so a peasant told me. It may be taken
literally, inasmuch as the _vrykolakas_ usually appears bald and
beardless; but the words τὰ γένειά του, ‘his beard,’ are popularly
understood as a substitute, half jocose and half euphemistic, for τὴ
γενεά του, ‘his family.’ In other words, this most deadly of pagan
pests, like the most lively of Christian virtues, begins at home.

Such being the acknowledged and even proverbial habits of the
_vrykolakas_, nothing, it might be supposed, could be more repugnant
and fearful to the near relations of a dead man than the possibility
that he would turn _vrykolakas_ and return straightway to devour
them. The first sufferers from such an eventuality would be the
man’s own kinsfolk, the next his acquaintances and fellow-villagers,
but he himself would appear to be aggressor rather than sufferer.
Nevertheless, in face of this consideration, there is no more
commodious form of curse in popular usage than the ejaculation of
a prayer that the person who has incurred one’s displeasure may be
withheld from corruption after death and return from his grave. I have
heard it extended even to a recalcitrant mule; but it is also used
gravely by parents as an imprecation of punishment hereafter upon
undutiful children. A few samples of this curse will not be out of
place, as showing at once its frequency and its range[1024].

Νὰ μήν τον δεχτῇ ἡ γῆς, ‘May the earth not receive him’: νὰ μήν
τον φάγῃ τὸ χῶμα, ‘May the ground not consume him’: ἡ γῆ νὰ μή σε
χωνέψῃ[1025], ‘May the earth not digest thee’: ἡ μαύρη γῆ νά σ’
ἀναξεράσῃ[1026], ‘May the black earth spew thee up’: νὰ μείνῃς
ἄλυ̯ωτος, ‘Mayest thou remain incorrupt’: νὰ μή σε λυώσῃ ἡ γῆ, ‘May the
earth not loose thee’ (i.e. not let thy body decompose): νά σε βγάλῃ
τὸ χῶμα, ‘May the ground reject thee’: κουτοῦκι νὰ βγῇς[1027], ‘Mayest
thou become (after death) like a log (in solidity)’: τὸ χῶμα ’ξεράσ’
τόνε, ‘May the ground spew him out’--this last phrase being made more
terrible by being a parody, as it were, of the prayer uttered by the
mourners at every Greek funeral ὁ θεὸς ’χωρέσ’ τόνε, ‘May God forgive
him.’ Such are the popular forms of the curse; and akin to them are the
ecclesiastical imprecations, with which the formula of excommunication
used to end: καὶ ἔσῃ μετὰ θάνατον ἄλυτος αἰωνίως, ὡς αἱ πέτραι καὶ τὰ
σίδηρα[1028], ‘And after death thou shalt be bound (i.e. incorrupt)
eternally, even as stone and iron’; or, in a shorter form, καὶ μετὰ
τὸν θάνατον ἄλυτος καὶ ἀπαράλυτος[1029], ‘And after death bound and
indissoluble.’ Here, it will be observed, the Church spoke only of
incorruptibility, but several of the popular expressions contain
explicit mention of resuscitation as well; and the very forms of the
curse which I have quoted show how closely knit together, how almost
identical, are these two notions in the mind of the peasants. That
which the earth will not ‘receive,’ she necessarily ‘rejects’; that
which she does not ‘consume’ or ‘digest,’ she necessarily ‘spews up.’
The man whose body does not decompose is necessarily a _revenant_.

Now curses, it must be remembered, among a primitive people are
considered as operative, and not merely expletive; each bullet of
malediction deliberately aimed is expected to find its billet; each
imprecation seriously uttered has a magical power of fulfilling itself.
That this belief is firmly held by the Greek folk is sufficiently
proved by certain quaint solemnities enacted beside the deathbed. It is
a common custom[1030] for a dying man to put a handful of salt into a
vessel of water, and when it is dissolved to sprinkle with the liquid
all those who are present, saying, ὡς λυ̯ώνει τ’ ἀλάτι, νὰ λυ̯ώσουν
ᾑ κατάραις μου, ‘As the salt dissolves, so may my curses dissolve.’
By this ceremony all persons whom he has cursed are released from the
bonds of an imprecation which after death he would no longer be able
to revoke or annul. Then in turn the relations and friends formally
pronounce their forgiveness of aught that the dying man has done to
their hurt. Thus pardoning and pardoned the sick man may expect a short
and easy passing; and, if the death-struggle be prolonged, it is taken
as a sign that some one whom he has injured has not forgiven him.
Accordingly the friends and kinsmen, having decided among themselves
who the delinquent must be, send to fetch him, if he be still living,
in order that he too may pronounce his forgiveness and so smooth the
passage of the parting soul. If however he be dead, a portion of his
shroud or of his ashes is brought and burnt, and the sick man, who
needs his forgiveness ere he can die in peace, is fumigated with the
smoke therefrom.

Since then curses in general are regarded by the Greek folk no less
than by other primitive peoples as effective instruments of wrath which
work out their own fulfilment, the particular curses which we are
considering, when they are gravely uttered, do seriously contemplate
the possibility of the person cursed becoming after death a _revenant_
and are designed to bring about that future state.

But, if already at the time when such imprecations first became popular
it had been believed that their effect was to render the corpse, whose
decay was arrested and whose resuscitation was assured, a wanton and
blood-thirsty monster, preying first of all upon his nearest of kin,
the question of relationship or no relationship between the curser and
the cursed would necessarily have been taken into account.

On the one hand, where a man was in no degree akin to the object of his
wrath, he would have welcomed the opportunity of including his enemy’s
whole family in his vengeance by causing him to return and devour them.
For in Greece recrimination is wholly unsparing, and no man pretending
to any elegance or taste in the matter of abuse could neglect to
level his taunts and threats and curses at least as much against the
relatives--especially the female relatives--of his enemy as against
the man himself. Just as the tenderest blessings among the peasants
are prayers, not for him to whom they wish well, but rather for those
whom he has loved and lost, so that the beggar’s thanks are often ‘May
God forgive your father and your mother’ (which, however it may sound,
is not intended otherwise than graciously) or again, prettier still in
its vague genderless plural which no translation can adequately render,
ὁ θεὸς ’χωρέσ’ τὰ πεθαμμένα σου, ‘May God forgive your dead,’ so the
harshest and bitterest of curses are vented, not upon the man who has
excited them, but upon those who are nearest and dearest to him. And
bitterness in cursing being as much a part of the Greek character as
gentleness in blessing, it is almost inconceivable that, if any idea
of real vampirism had originally been associated with _revenants_,
the merest novice in malediction could have missed the opportunity
of adding to his imprecations of incorruptibility and resuscitation
a prayer that his enemy might devastate with horrid carnage the home
of those who mourned him. Yet not one of the curses which I have
quoted above suggests any savagery to be shown by the resuscitated
body; not one of them hints at the blood-thirsty predatory character
of the modern _vrykolakas_; nay, most significant of all, not one of
them contains the word _vrykolakas_, nor have I ever heard or found
recorded, so far as I can remember, any form of the curse in which that
word appears[1031]. Now this is certainly not due to any difficulty
of language in using the word, for there is a convenient enough verb
formed from it, βρυκολακιάζω, ‘I turn vampire,’ and νὰ βρυκολακιάσης,
‘May you turn vampire,’ should commend itself as both sonorous and
compendious. The reason why all mention and all thought of the ordinary
_vrykolakas_ are lacking in these curses must rather be that, when
they first came into vogue, _revenants_ were not yet credited with
the savage character which under Slavonic influence they afterwards
acquired; and that, when the word _vrykolakas_ was introduced, the
old traditional forms of curse underwent no modification, but were
bandied to and fro by boys with the same glib uniformity as by their
fathers before them. They had been cast in set forms before the idea of
vampirism had been introduced and when men believed only in reasonable
and usually harmless _revenants_.
On the other hand, where the curser was akin to the cursed, the nearer
the tie of blood the more incomprehensible would be the attitude of
one who by an imprecation should recall from the grave so malignant
a thing as the modern _vrykolakas_, only to fall himself perhaps the
first victim to its blood-thirstiness. If the phrase ‘May the earth
reject thee’ had suggested anything beyond simple resuscitation,
if there had been any resemblance in character between the Greek
_revenant_ and the Slavonic vampire, such an imprecation would have
been impossible where close kinship existed; it would at once recoil
with fatal force upon the curser’s own head; above all, that most
solemn curse, the curse of parent upon child, would have been the first
to ‘come home to roost’; and yet the use of such parental imprecations
is both celebrated in ballad and not unknown, I am told, in actual
experience. Once more then the use of these curses is explicable only
on the hypothesis that the original Greek _revenants_ were not the
formidable monsters now known as _vrykolakes_, and that, when under
Slavonic influence the popular conception of them changed, the old
set phrases of commination--coins, as it were, of speech, struck in
the mint of the original superstition--continued current in spite of
their inconsistency with the new ideas. These colloquial survivals of
the original Greek superstition are at once a proof and a measure of
its later contamination. The Greeks had believed in reasonable human
_revenants_; the Slavs taught them to believe in brutish inhuman
vampires.

This conclusion is confirmed by the ballad to which I have just
referred; in it a mother’s imprecation recalls her son from the grave;
the _revenant_, who is the protagonist in a most dramatic story, is, as
will be seen, of the type which I claim to have been the original Greek
type and exhibits no Slavonic traits.

The ballad[1032], which as an important document I translate at length,
runs as follows:

    Mother with children richly blest, nine sons and one dear daughter,
    The darling of thy heart was she, and fondly did’st thou tend her;
    For full twelve years thou guardedst her, and the sun looked not on her,
    But in the dusk thou bathedst her, by moonlight trim’dst her tresses,
    By evening-star and morning-star her curls in order settest.
    And lo! a message brought to thee, from Babylon a message,
    Bidding thee wed thy child afar, afar in a strange country;
    Eight of her brethren will it not, but Constantine doth hearken:
    --‘Nay, mother, send thine Areté, send her to that strange country,
    That country whither I too fare, that land wherein I wander,
    That I may find me comfort there, that I may find me lodging.’
    --‘Prudent art thou, my Constantine, yet ill-conceived thy counsel:
    If there o’ertake me death, my son, if there o’ertake me sickness,
    If there hap bitterness or joy, who shall go bring her to me?’
    He made the Saints his witnesses, he gave her God for surety,
    If peradventure there come death, if haply there come sickness,
    If there hap bitterness or joy, himself would go and bring her.
    Now when they had sent Areté to wed in the strange country,
    There came a year of heaviness, a month of God’s displeasure,
    And there befell the Pestilence, that the nine brethren perished;
    Lone as a willow in the plain, lone, desolate their mother.
    Over eight graves she beats her breast, o’er eight makes lamentation,
    But from the tomb of Constantine she tears the very grave-stones:
    --‘Rise, I adjure thee, Constantine, ’tis Areté I long for;
    Thou madest the Saints thy witnesses, thou gavest me God for surety,
    If there hap bitterness or joy, thyself would’st go and bring her.’
    Forth from the mound that covered him the stern adjuring drave him;
    He takes the clouds to be his steed, the stars to be his bridle,
    The moon for escort on his road, and goes his way to bring her.
    He leaves the mountains in his wake, he gains the heights before him,
    He finds her ’neath the moonlight fair combing her golden tresses.
    E’en from afar he bids her hail, cries from afar his message:
    --‘Up, Aretoúla, up and come, for lo! our mother needs thee.’
    --‘Alack, alack, dear brother mine, what chance hath then befallen?
    If haply ’tis an hour of joy, let me go don my jewels,
    If bitterness, speak, I will come and tarry not for robing.’
    --‘Up, Aretoúla, up and come, and tarry not for robing.’
    Beside the way whereon they passed, beside the road they travelled,
    They heard the singing of the birds, they heard the birds a-saying:
    --‘Who hath e’er seen a maiden fair by a dead man escorted?’
    --‘Didst hear, my brother Constantine, what thing the birds are saying?
    “Who hath e’er seen a maiden fair by a dead man escorted?”’
    --‘Nay, foolish birds, let them sing on, nor heed their idle chatter.’
    Anon as they went faring on, yet other birds were calling:
    --‘What woeful sight is this we see, so piteous and so plaintive,
    That lo! as comrades on their way, the dead escort the living?’
    --‘Didst hear, my brother Constantine, what thing the birds are saying?
    “That lo! as comrades on their way, the dead escort the living.”’
    --‘Nay, what are birds? let them sing on, nor heed their idle chatter.’
    --‘Ah, but I fear thee, brother mine, thou savourest of censing.’
    --‘Nay, at the chapel of Saint John we gathered yester even,
    And the good father hallowed us with incense beyond measure.’
    And yet again as they fared on, yet other birds were crying:
    --‘O God, great God omnipotent, great wonders art thou working;
    So gracious and so fair a maid with a dead man consorting!’
    --‘Didst hear, my brother Constantine, what thing the birds are saying?
    Tell me, where are those locks of thine, thy trimly-set mustachio?’
    --’Twas a sore sickness fell on me, nigh unto death it brought me,
    And spoiled me of my golden locks, my trimly-set mustachio.’
    Lo! they are come; but locked their home, the door fast barred and bolted,
    And all the windows of their home in spider-webs enshrouded.
    --‘Op’n, prithee, open, mother mine, ’tis Areté thy daughter.’
    --‘An thou art Charon, go thy way, for I have no more children;
    My one, my little Areté, bides far in the strange country.’
    --‘Op’n, prithee, open, mother mine, ’tis Constantine that calls thee;
    I made the Saints my witnesses, I gave thee God for surety,
    If there hap bitterness or joy, myself would go and bring her.’
    Scarce had she passed to ope the door, and lo! her soul passed from her.

The versions of this ballad which have been collected are very
numerous[1033], and some of them differ so widely from others in
language as not to have a single line in common. That which I have
selected for translation is one of the most complete, presenting fairly
all the essential points of the story, and free from the eccentricities
which some versions have developed. At the same time it must be allowed
that here the mother’s curse is only implied by her action of tearing
up the gravestones and adjuring Constantine to rise, whereas in one or
two versions, otherwise inferior, it is clearly and forcibly expressed.

Thus in one[1034] her words run:

    πέτρα νὰ γίνῃ ὁ Κωσταντής, λιθάρι νὰ μὴ λει̯ώσῃ,
    πώστειλε τὴν Ἀρέτω μου, τὴν Ἀρετὼ ’στὰ ξένα.

 ‘May Constantine become as rock, yea even as stone, and have no
 loosing (i.e. dissolution), for that he sent my Areto to a strange
 land.’

And in another[1035]:

    Ὅλοι μου οἱ γυιοὶ νὰ λυώσουνε κῂ ὁ Κώστας νὰ μὴ λυώσῃ,
    Ὅπ’ ἔδωκε τὴν Ἀρετὴ πολὺ μακρυὰ ’στὰ ξένα.

 ‘May all my other sons have “loosing” and Constantine be not “loosed,”
 for that he let my Areté be taken afar to a strange country.’

Again, another version[1036] ends, not with the arrival of Areté in
time to close her dying mother’s eyes, but with the revoking of the
curse upon Constantine in gratitude for the fulfilment of his oath:

    ‘νὰ σὲ λυώσῃ τὸ χῶμα σου καὶ νὰ σὲ φάγ’ ἡ πλάκα σ’.’
    ὅσο νὰ σώσ’ τὸ λόγο της χοῦφτα χῶμα γενότον.

 ‘May the earth where thou liest loose thee and thy tomb consume thee.’
 Scarce had she finished her speech and he became but a handful of
 earth.

Clearly then the curse, which in this story is conceived as binding
Constantine’s body and driving him forth from the grave and which must
be revoked before his body can be loosed by natural decay, is one of
that class which we have been considering; but the story confers
the further advantage of letting us see such a curse in operation.
Constantine is presented as a revenant, but not of the modern type;
for what turn must the story have taken if he had been a normal
_vrykolakas_? His first act would have been to devour his nearest of
kin--his mother, who was tearing up his grave-stones and cursing him:
and his next, if he had troubled to go as far as Babylon, to make a
like end of Areté. And what do we actually find? Constantine acts not
only as a reasonable man in seeking to allay his sister’s suspicions,
but also as a good man in keeping his oath. He is driven forth from the
grave on a quest which (in most versions of the story) earns him no
thanks from those whom he benefits; he does his weary mission and (in
most versions) goes back again to the cold grave from which the curse
had raised him. Our sympathy is engaged by Constantine no less than by
his mother. He too is a sufferer, first stricken down in his youth by
pestilence, and then cursed because his oath remained unfulfilled. He
claims our pity, and in this differs fundamentally from the ordinary
_vrykolakas_ which could only excite our horror.

Furthermore it is noteworthy that in the many versions of this
poem, just as in the popular curses which I have quoted, the word
_vrykolakas_ is nowhere found[1037].

Hence I am inclined to believe that the original poem, from which
have come so many modern versions, differing widely in many respects,
but agreeing completely in the exclusion both of the Slavonic word
_vrykolakas_ and of all the suggestions of horror which surround it,
was composed in a period anterior to the intrusion of Slavonic ideas;
and that the modern versions therefore, which prove their fidelity
to the spirit of the original precisely by having refused admittance
to anything Slavonic, furnish that which we are seeking, the purely
and genuinely Greek element in the now composite superstition. That
Greek element then is the conception of the _revenant_ as a sufferer
deserving even of pity, the very antithesis in character of the
Slavonic vampire, an aggressor exciting only loathing and horror.

In the composite modern Greek superstition, as described in the
last chapter, the Slavonic element is clearly predominant. But the
conclusion to which my analysis of the superstition has now led,
explains what would otherwise have been almost inexplicable, the
existence of a few stories in which the _revenant_, though called
_vrykolakas_, is none the less represented as harmless or even amiable.

One such case is mentioned in Father Richard’s narrative[1038]--the
case of a shoemaker in Santorini, who having turned _vrykolakas_
continued to frequent his house, mend his children’s shoes, draw water
at the reservoir, and cut wood for the use of his family; and though
it is added that the people became frightened and exhumed and burned
him, this was only a measure of precaution dictated by their experience
of other _vrykolakes_; no charge was brought against this particular
_revenant_. It might also be supposed that the _vrykolakes_ of Amorgos,
mentioned next in the same narrative, who were seen in open day five or
six together in a field feeding apparently on green beans, were of the
less noxious kind; but they may of course have been carnivorous also.

Another story, recently published[1039], records how a native of Maina,
also a shoemaker by trade, having turned _vrykolakas_ issued from his
grave every night except Saturday, resumed his work, and continued to
live with his wife, whose pregnancy forced her to reveal the truth
to her neighbours. When once this was known, many accusations, it is
true, were brought against the _vrykolakas_; but the story at least
recognises some domestic and human traits in his character.

But a much more remarkable tale[1040] is told of a field-labourer of
Samos who was so devoted to the farmer for whom he worked, that when
he died he became a _vrykolakas_ and continued secretly to give his
services. At night he would go to the farm-buildings, take out the oxen
from their stall, yoke them, and plough three acres while his master
slept; in the daytime an equal piece of work was done by the master--so
that incidentally the oxen were nearly killed. The neighbours however
having had their suspicions aroused by the rapidity of the work, which
the farmer himself could in no wise explain, kept watch one night, and
having detected the _vrykolakas_ opened his grave, found him, as would
be expected, whole and incorrupt, and burned him.

Such stories as these testify that the old and purely Greek conception
of _revenants_ is not quite extinct even in places where the only name
for them is the Slavonic word _vrykolakes_.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Slavonic element in the modern superstition having been now
removed, it remains to consider what was the attitude of the Church
towards the Greek belief in _revenants_ and what effect her teaching
had upon it.

I have already pointed out that the Jesuit, Father Richard,
discriminated between _vrykolakes_ and certain bodies called ‘drums,’
which were found incorrupt after many years of burial. This distinction
he had no doubt learnt from clergy of the Greek Church; for, while the
common-folk held that those whom the earth did not receive and consume
were necessarily ejected by her, or, in other words, that a dead man
whose body did not decay was necessarily also a _revenant_, the Church
distinguished, as we shall see, between belief in incorruptibility and
belief in resuscitation, inculcating the former, and varying between
condonation and condemnation of the latter. These two ideas must
therefore be handled separately.

The incorruptibility of the body of any person bound by a curse was
made a definite doctrine of the Orthodox Church. In an ecclesiastical
manuscript, seen by Father Richard, were specifications of the
discoloration and other unpleasant symptoms by which the precise
quality of that curse--parental, episcopal, and so forth--which had
arrested the decay of a corpse might be diagnosed; and in one of the
forms of absolution which may be read over any corpse found in such
a condition there is a clause which provides for all possible cases
without requiring expert diagnosis: ‘Yea, O Lord our God, let Thy great
mercy and marvellous compassion prevail; and, whether this Thy servant
lieth under curse of father or mother, or under his own imprecation,
or did provoke one of Thy holy ministers and sustained at his hands
a bond that hath not been loosed, or did incur the most grievous ban
of excommunication by a bishop, and through heedlessness and sloth
obtained not pardon, pardon Thou him by the hand of me Thy sinful and
unworthy servant; resolve Thou his body into that from which it was
made; and stablish his soul in the tabernacle of saints[1041].’ But the
curse to which the Church naturally gave most prominence and attached
most weight was the ban of excommunication; and therefore, consistently
with the accepted doctrine, the formula of excommunication ended by
sentencing the offender to remain whole and undissolved after death--a
condition from which the body was not freed unless and until absolution
was read over it and the decree of excommunication thereby rescinded.

This doctrine was held to have the authority of Christ’s own
teaching[1042]. The power which was conferred upon the apostles in
the words, ‘Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in
heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in
heaven[1043],’ was believed to have been so transmitted to their
successors, the bishops[1044] of the Church, that they too had the
faculty of binding and loosing men’s bodies--that is, of arresting
or promoting their decomposition after death. Such an interpretation
of the text was facilitated by the very simplicity of its wording;
for λύω, in modern Greek λυόνω, ‘loose,’ expresses equally well the
ideas of dissolution and of absolution, while δέω, in modern Greek
δένω, ‘bind,’ embraces their respective opposites. A _nomocanon de
excommunicatis_[1045], promulgated in explanation of the fact that
excommunication sometimes failed to produce its expected result,
presents clearly the authorised doctrine and at the same time
illustrates effectively the twofold usage of the words ‘loosing’ and
‘binding.’

‘Concerning excommunicated persons, the which suffer excommunication by
their bishops and after death are found with their bodies “not loosed”
(ἄλυτα).

‘Certain persons have been justly, reasonably, and lawfully
excommunicated by their bishops, as transgressors of the divine law,
and have died in the state of excommunication without amending their
ways and receiving forgiveness, and have been buried, and in a short
time their bodies have been found “loosed” (λελυμένα) and sundered bone
from bone....

‘Now this is exceeding marvellous that he who hath been lawfully
excommunicated should after his death be found with his body “loosed”
(λελυμένος τὸ σῶμα) and the joints thereof sundered....’

This ‘exceeding marvellous’ occurrence was therefore submitted to the
consideration of learned divines, whose verdict was to the effect that
any excommunicated person whose body did not remain whole had no more
hope of salvation, because he was no longer in a state to be ‘loosed’
and forgiven by the bishop who had excommunicated him[1046], but had
become already ‘an inheritor of everlasting torment.’

‘But,’ continues the _nomocanon_ formulated by these theologians,
‘they that are found excommunicate, to wit, with their bodies whole
and “not loosed” (ἄλυτα), these stand in need of forgiveness, in order
that the body may attain unto freedom from the “bond” (δεσμόν) of
excommunication. For even as the body is found “bound” (δεδεμένον)
in the earth, so is the soul “bound” (δεδεμένη) and tormented in the
hands of the Devil. And whensoever the body receive forgiveness and be
“loosed” (λυθῇ) from excommunication, by power of God the soul likewise
is freed from the hands of the Devil, and receiveth the life eternal,
the light that hath no evening, and the joy ineffable.’

The whole doctrine of the physical results both of excommunication
and of absolution appeared to Leo Allatius to be indisputable, and
he mentions[1047] several notable cases in which the truth of it
was demonstrated. Athanasius, Metropolitan of Imbros, is quoted
as recording how at the request of citizens of Thasos he read the
absolution over several incorrupt bodies, ‘and before the absolution
was even finished all the corpses were dissolved into dust.’ A similar
case was that of a converted Turk who was subsequently excommunicated
at Naples, and had been dead some years before he obtained absolution
and dissolution at the hands of two Metropolitans. More remarkable
still was a case in which a priest, who had pronounced a sentence of
excommunication, afterwards turned Mohammedan, while the victim of his
curse, though he had died in the Christian faith, remained ‘bound.’ The
matter was reported to the Patriarch Raphael, and at his instance the
Turk, though after much demur, read the absolution over the Christian’s
body, and towards the end of the reading, ‘the swelling of the body
went down, and it turned completely to dust.’ The Turk thereupon
embraced Christianity once more, and was put to death for doing so.

Most graphic of all is a story attributed to one Malaxus[1048]. The
Sultan having been informed--among other evidences of the power of
Christianity--that the bodies of the excommunicated never obtained
dissolution till absolution was read over them, bade seek out such
an one and absolve him. The Patriarch of the time accordingly made
enquiries, which resulted in his hearing of a priest’s widow who had
been excommunicated by a predecessor, the Patriarch Gennadius. Her
story was that having been rebuked by him for prostitution she publicly
charged him with an attempt to seduce her. Gennadius had answered
the charge by praying aloud one Sunday in the presence of all the
clergy, that, if her accusation were true, God would pardon her all
her sins and give her happiness hereafter and let her body, when she
died, dissolve; but, if the charge were slander and calumny against
himself, then by the will and judgement of Almighty God he exercised
his power of severing her from the communion of the faithful, to remain
unpardoned and incorruptible. Forty days afterwards she had died of
dysentery and having been buried remained incorrupt.

Exhumed at the Sultan’s instance the body was found to be still sound
and whole, of a dark colour and with the skin stretched like the
parchment of a drum. It was then removed and kept for a certain time
under the Sultan’s seal, until the Patriarch decided to absolve it. As
he read the absolution the crackling of the body as it broke up could
be heard from within the coffin. It was then again kept for a few
days under the Sultan’s seal, and when finally the coffin was opened
the body was found ‘dissolved and decomposed, having at last obtained
mercy.’ And the Sultan was so impressed by the miracle that he is
recorded to have exclaimed, ‘Certainly the Christian religion is true
beyond all question.’

Suchlike stories, together with the formula of excommunication and
the _nomocanon_ above quoted, prove conclusively that the Church did
not merely acquiesce in one part of the popular superstition but
authoritatively sanctioned it and utilised it for her own ends. The
incorruptibility of the dead body under certain conditions was made an
article of faith and an instrument of terrorism, which, as will appear
later[1049], the ill-educated peasant-priests did not scruple to wield
widely as an incentive to baptism, a deterrent from apostasy, and a
challenge to repentance.

The name by which ecclesiastical writers designated a person
whose body was thus ‘bound’ by excommunication, was one which has
already been explained, τυμπανιαῖος[1050] or, in another form,
τυμπανίτης[1051]--swollen until the skin is as tight as a drum. This
word, which now survives, so far as I know, only in one island, and in
the seventeenth century, to judge by Leo Allatius’ reference to it,
was certainly less common than the word _vrykolakas_, had probably at
one time, before Slavonic influence was felt, belonged to the popular
as well as to the ecclesiastical vocabulary; and it was, I suspect,
borrowed by the Church from popular speech at the same time as she
borrowed from popular superstition the idea of dead bodies being
‘bound’ and withheld from corruption by a curse.

At what date this appropriation took place I cannot determine; but
it must certainly have been before Slavonic influence was widely
felt; for, when once the Greek _revenant_ had acquired the baneful
characteristics of the Slavonic vampire, the clergy would surely
never have claimed as a new thing the power to ‘bind’ the dead by
excommunication, when the laity (and indeed many of their own calling
too) believed that persons so ‘bound’ became rampant and ravening
_vrykolakes_. The belief must therefore have been incorporated in
ecclesiastical doctrine at a time when the Greek people spoke of the
incorrupt dead as τυμπανιαῖοι, ‘drumlike,’ and conceived of them as
reasonable _revenants_.

The process by which the belief came to obtain the sanction of the
Church is not hard to guess. The ambiguity of the words λύω, ‘loose,’
and δέω, ‘bind,’ may well have been the starting-point. If, on the
one hand, the apostles, or the bishops who succeeded them, treated
certain sins as ‘having no forgiveness neither in this world nor the
world to come,’ and in the exercise of their power to bind and to loose
included in their formula of excommunication some such phrase as Leo
Allatius records, καὶ μετὰ τὸν θάνατον ἄλυτος καὶ ἀπαράλυτος, ‘and
after death never to be “loosed”’ (meaning thereby ‘absolved’); while,
on the other hand, the Greek people were hereditarily familiar with
a pagan belief that the dead bodies of persons who lay under a curse
were not ‘loosed’ (in the sense of ‘dissolved’); then the common-folk
for their part would necessarily have understood the ecclesiastical
curse as a sentence of ‘non-dissolution’; while the clergy would have
been less than Greek if they had not seen, and more than Greek if they
had not seized, the handle which popular superstition gave them, and
by adding to their accustomed formula (μετὰ τὸν θάνατον ἄλυτος, ‘after
death never to be “loosed”’) such apparently innocent words as ὥσπερ αἱ
πέτραι καὶ τὰ σίδηρα[1052], ‘even as stone and iron,’ substituted the
idea of ‘dissolution’ for that of ‘absolution’ and definitely committed
the Church to the old pagan doctrine.

If this conjecture as to the process by which the popular belief became
an article of the Orthodox faith be correct, a further suggestion
may be made as to the date at which the process began. If the word
‘loosing’ was misunderstood by the Greeks when used in the formula
of excommunication, it would equally have been misunderstood in the
words of Christ, ‘Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound
in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in
heaven[1053].’ Was it then the knowledge that these words were commonly
misinterpreted by the Greeks which led the author of the fourth Gospel
to reproduce them in a less equivocal form: “Whosesoever sins ye remit,
they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are
retained[1054]”? This would indicate an early date indeed. Yet the date
matters little as compared with the main fact that the ecclesiastical
doctrine of the incorruptibility of excommunicated persons was at some
time borrowed from paganism.

The other half of the popular superstition, namely that those whose
bodies were ‘bound’ by excommunication or otherwise, and whom the earth
did not ‘receive,’ were ejected by her and re-appeared as _revenants_,
caused the Church some embarrassment. Sometimes the alleged
resuscitation of such persons was condemned as a mere hallucination of
timorous and superstitious minds; at other times it was accepted as a
fact and explained as a work of the Devil designed to lead men astray,
and acting upon this idea the clergy often lent their services to
absolve and to dissolve the suspected corpse.

Leo Allatius[1055] reflects both these views and shows their effect
upon the conduct of the clergy. After describing the actual appearance
of such bodies, which gained for them the name τυμπανιαῖοι, ‘drumlike,’
he introduces the second half of the superstition by saying that into
such bodies the devil enters, and issuing from the tomb goes about
working all manner of destruction; and he adds that when the body is
exhumed, ‘the priests recite prayers, and the body is thrown on a
burning pyre; before the supplications are finished, the joints of the
body gradually fall apart, and all the remains are burnt to ashes.’ Yet
shortly afterwards he states, ‘This belief is not of fresh and recent
growth in Greece; in ancient and modern times alike men of piety who
have received the confessions of Christians have tried to root it out
of the popular mind.’ There is a clear contrast between the conduct
of ‘the priests’ in one passage and that of the ‘men of piety’ in the
other. The clergy did not as a body adopt a single and consistent
attitude towards the popular superstition.

Similar inconsistency marks the _nomocanon_ concerning _vrykolakes_,
from which I have given selections along with the rest of Leo’s account
in the last section; these passages, for convenience of reference, are
here repeated:

‘Concerning a dead man, if such be found whole and incorrupt, the which
they call _vrykolakas_...

‘It is impossible that a dead man become a _vrykolakas_ save it be
that the Devil, wishing to delude some that they may do things unmeet
and incur the wrath of God, maketh these portents and oft-times at
night _causeth men to imagine_ that the dead man whom they knew before
cometh and speaketh with them, and in their dreams too they see
visions. Other times they see him in the road, walking or standing
still, and, more than this, he even throttles men.

‘Then there is a commotion and they run to the grave and dig to see the
remains of the man ... and the dead man--one who has long been dead and
buried--_appears to them_ to have flesh and blood and nails and hair
... and they collect wood and set fire to it and burn the body and do
away with it altogether....’

Then, after denying again the reality of such things which exist κατὰ
φαντασίαν, _in imagination only_, the _nomocanon_ continues:

‘But know that _when such remains be found_, the which, as we have
said, is a work of the Devil, ye must summon the priests to chant an
invocation of the Mother of God, ... and _to perform memorial services
for the dead_ with funeral meats.’

The self-contradiction of the pronouncement is exposed in the phrases
which I have italicised. Clearly if such remains are found and the
dead man is so affected by the work of the Devil that special services
for his repose[1056] are required, the theory of hallucination is
untenable. But this very inconsistency of the _nomocanon_, though
according to Allatius it is of uncertain authorship, proves it, as
I will show, a very valuable document of the Church’s traditional
teaching on this matter.

S. Anastasius Sinaita, who became bishop of Antioch in 561 and died
in 599, refers to _revenants_ in a passage which, literally rendered,
runs as follows[1057]: ‘Again it appears that devils, by means of false
prophets who obey them and with their aid work signs and heal bodily
diseases to the delusion of themselves and others, present even a
dead man as risen again, and (in his person) talk with the living, in
imagination (ἐν φαντασίᾳ). For a devil enters into the dead body of the
man, and moves it, presenting the dead man risen again as it were in
answer to the foolish prayer of the deceiver. And the evil spirit talks
as it were in the person of the dead man with him whom he is deluding,
telling him such things as he himself wishes to tell and answering also
further questions....’

In this passage Anastasius is clearly thinking of _revenants_ called
up by sorcerers; in his time, when the first Slavonic invaders had
only just entered Greece and anything like friendly intercourse
between the two races was still a thing of the future, the conception
of a real vampire was not yet known to the Greeks of Greece proper,
much less to those of Antioch; and it is easy therefore to believe
that the calling up of harmless _revenants_ was then a recognised
department of witchcraft, which afterwards lost its attractions. The
particular circumstances however to which Anastasius refers are of
minor importance; the interest of the passage lies in its inconsistency
of thought, which results indeed in a certain confusion of language;
for to say that ‘it appears that devils ... present even a dead man as
risen again, and talk with the living in imagination,’ would be not a
little obscure, if the context did not throw light upon the meaning.
More lucidly expressed the ideas are these: men see a dead person
apparently risen from his grave and able to talk with them; the raising
of the dead is the work of a devil (whose _modus operandi_ is described
in the second sentence); the talking is also done by the devil (as
explained in the third sentence); and finally the whole thing is an
hallucination.

Here then are the same contradictory doctrines as in the _nomocanon_;
the resuscitation of the dead man is the work of a devil who enters
into the corpse and moves it and raises it from the grave; and yet it
is the ‘imagination’ of the men who see it which is at fault. But it
can be no casual coincidence that S. Anastasius in the sixth century
and a _nomocanon_ which was quoted as authoritative in the seventeenth
attempted to combine two incompatible doctrines concerning the
re-appearance of the dead. Rather is it proof that from a very early
age the Church remained halting between two opinions; and the attitude
adopted towards the superstition by the clergy, some of whom, according
to Leo Allatius, had long tried to root it out of the popular mind,
while others rendered aid in absolving suspected corpses, naturally
varied according as they personally believed that _revenants_
(including _vrykolakes_) were a figment of the people’s imagination or
a real work of the Devil.

Now of these two ecclesiastical views, which are really alternative
and incompatible although attempts were made to combine them, the
former has clearly had little or no effect upon the people; in spite
of the efforts of the ‘men of piety who received the confessions
of Christians[1058]’ to extirpate the superstition, it remains
vigorous, as we have seen, down to this day. But the explanation of
the phenomenon as a work of the Devil was readily entertained; even
educated men were convinced of it. ‘It is the height of folly,’ says
Leo Allatius, speaking for himself, ‘to deny altogether that such
bodies are sometimes found incorrupt in the graves, and that by use of
them the Devil, if God permit him, devises horrible plans to the hurt
of the human race’; and similarly Father Richard opens his account of
_vrykolakes_ with the statement that the Devil sometimes works by means
of dead bodies which he preserves in their entirety and re-animates.
As for the common-folk, the explanation accorded so well with the
diabolical characteristics of the _vrykolakas_ that they could hardly
have failed to accept it.

The popularisation of this view is well illustrated by a local
interpretation set upon a custom which I have already discussed, the
so-called custom of ‘Charon’s obol.’ I have shown that the practice
of placing a coin or other object in the mouth of the dead continues
down to the present day; that the classical notion, that the coin was
intended as payment for the ferryman of the Styx, was only a temporary
and probably local misinterpretation of the custom; and that the coin
or other object employed was really a charm designed to prevent any
evil spirit from entering (or possibly the soul from re-entering) the
dead body. Now in Chios and in Rhodes this original intention has not
been forgotten, and is combined with the belief in _vrykolakes_. In
the former island the woman who prepares the corpse for burial places
on its lips a cross of wax or cotton-stuff, and the priest also during
the funeral service prepares a fragment of pottery to be laid in the
same place by marking on it the sign of the cross and the letters I.
X. N. K. (Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς νικᾷ, ‘Jesus Christ conquers’), both of them
with the avowed purpose of preventing any evil spirit from entering
the dead body and making of it a _vrykolakas_[1059]. In Rhodes a piece
of ancient pottery, inscribed with the same words but marked with the
pentacle[1060] instead of the cross, is placed in the mouth of the
dead for the same purpose[1061]. Clearly then in these two islands
this ecclesiastical view has been fully accepted by the people; and
what I can illustrate by customs in these cases I know to be equally
true of Greece in general. Whenever an explanation is sought of the
resuscitation of the dead, the answer, if any be forthcoming, lays the
responsibility for it on the Devil.

This opinion, as I have said, is abundantly justified by the conduct
of modern _vrykolakes_; but I am inclined to think that it was
held also, by the Church at any rate, in the pre-Slavonic age when
_revenants_ were of a less diabolical character. The actual practice of
excommunication was thought to have been instituted by St Paul[1062],
who twice speaks of ‘delivering persons unto Satan[1063].’ The early
ecclesiastical interpretation of this phrase is clearly given by
Theodoretus[1064]; commenting upon the sentence, “To deliver such an
one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may
be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus,” he draws special attention
to the fact that the body, and not the soul, is to be subjected to
diabolic affliction, and then adds, ‘We are taught by this, that those
who are excommunicated, that is to say, severed from the body of the
Church, will be assailed by the devil when he finds them void of
grace.’ In other words, the bodily punishment inflicted by the act of
excommunication was ‘possession’ by the devil.

Now Theodoretus, it is true, says nothing in this passage as to the
continuance of the punishment after death. But clearly if demoniacal
possession was the effect of excommunication, and if also, as we have
seen, the sentence of excommunication remained valid after death, it
must have followed that the dead body no less than the living body was
possessed of the devil; and if the devil in possession of the corpse
chose to agitate it and drive it out of the grave, the dead demoniac
was at once a _revenant_.

There is therefore some probability that, though the Church never
threatened the excommunicated with resuscitation but only with
incorruptibility, she may at a very early date have offered this
explanation of their alleged re-appearance; and the theory of
diabolical agency may have gained popular approval from the first; for
resuscitation was originally viewed by the Greek people as a calamity
befalling the dead man, not as a source of danger to the living;
and therefore an ecclesiastical doctrine, that it was by delivering
an offender unto Satan that the curse of the Church rendered him a
_revenant_, would have been felt to be a perfectly satisfactory, if
novel, explanation of the process by which a known cause, imprecation,
produced its known effect, resuscitation.

But, whatever the date at which the theory of diabolical possession
was first developed and disseminated, the Church, and the Church only,
was responsible for it. The Devil is a Christian conception, just as
the vampire is Slavonic. Both must go, if the modern superstition is
to be stripped of its accretions, and the genuinely Hellenic elements
discovered. What then remains? Simply the belief that the bodies of
certain classes of persons did not decay away in their graves but
returned therefrom, and the feeling that such persons were sufferers
deserving of pity. What then were the classes of persons so affected,
according to the original Greek superstition?

The classes now regarded as liable to become _vrykolakes_ were
enumerated at the end of the last section. But both Slavonic and
Christian influences have been felt here, as in the rest of the
superstition. I must therefore take those classes one by one, and
indicate the origin of each. None of them will require long discussion;
their _provenance_ is in many cases self-evident.

(1) Those who have not received the full and due rites of burial.

Here there can be no reason for supposing any alien influence; on
the contrary, the high importance attached by the ancient Greeks to
funeral-rites is everywhere apparent. It was these which Patroclus’
spirit returned to implore; these which Antigone risked her life to
give. The sin of Clytemnestra culminated in that she ‘dared to bury
her husband without mourning or lamentation[1065]’--an essential part
of the Greek funeral; and again in historical times Lysander’s honour
was tarnished not so much because he put to death some prisoners
of war, but because ‘he did not throw earth even upon their dead
bodies[1066].’ What effect such neglect was anciently believed to have
upon the dead is a question to be considered later; but the general
idea is plainly Hellenic.

(2) Those who meet with any sudden or violent death (including
suicides), or, in Maina, where the vendetta is still in vogue, those
who having been murdered remain unavenged.

The most important element in this class is formed by those who
have been murdered, especially when, as in Maina, they are believed
to return from the grave with the purpose of seeking revenge upon
their murderers. Such an idea, as will be shown later, is thoroughly
consonant with ancient views of bloodguilt. But it appears also from
a passage of Lucian[1067] that any ‘violent’ or ‘sudden,’ as opposed
to ‘natural,’ death was commonly held to debar the victim from rest no
less effectually than actual murder. The whole class may therefore be
accepted as Hellenic, and may probably be considered to have always
comprised all persons whose lives were cut short suddenly before their
proper hour had come.

(3) Children conceived or born on one of the great Church-festivals,
and children still-born.

The first division of this class may be variously explained; either
the child may be supposed to suffer for the sin committed by its
parents on a day when the Church enjoins continence, or else the
notion, that children born between Christmas and Epiphany are subject
to lycanthropy[1068] and therefore also, according to Slavonic views,
to vampirism, has become associated with other church-festivals
also. Children still-born are probably to be numbered among victims
of ‘sudden’ death. Thus the first division, being of ecclesiastical
or Slavonic origin, is to be set aside; the second may probably be
included in a larger Hellenic class already considered; neither
therefore requires any further discussion.

(4) Those who die under a curse, especially the curse of a parent,
or one self-invoked, as in the case of a man who in perjuring himself
calls down on his own head all manner of damnation if what he says be
false.

The dread which a curse, above all a parent’s curse, excited in the
ancient Greeks is well known. No one can have read Aeschylus’ story
of the house of Atreus, nor followed with Sophocles the fortunes of
Oedipus and his children, without perceiving therein the working of a
curse that claims fulfilment and cannot be averted. The idea therefore
here involved is purely Hellenic.

(5) Those who die under the ban of the Church, that is to say,
excommunicate.

This class is an ecclesiastical variety of the last.

(6) Those who die unbaptised or apostate.

The apostate is of course _ipso facto_ excommunicate, even though no
formal sentence have been pronounced against him. The unbaptised have
probably been included by priestcraft for purposes of intimidation;
baptism is commonly held to prevent children from becoming were-wolves,
and therefore also _vrykolakes_ at death.

(7) Men of evil and immoral life in general, more particularly if they
have dealt in the blacker kinds of sorcery.

Clerical influence is clearly discernible here, but is not, I think,
responsible for the whole idea. A story from Zacynthos[1069] records
how the treacherous murderer of a good man was first smitten by a
thunderbolt so that he lost both his sight and his reason, and after
his death was turned by God into a _vrykolakas_ as a punishment for
his crime, and has so remained for a thousand years. Here, in spite of
the word _vrykolakas_ being used, the _revenant_ is represented, like
Constantine in the popular ballad, as a sufferer. This idea has been
shown to be pre-Slavonic--and incidentally it is not a little curious
that the story itself claims to date from a thousand years ago, when
this idea was only beginning to be ousted by Slavonic superstition. But
if the idea of ‘punishment’ is old, the idea that the punishment was
merited by a crime must be equally old. For this reason, and for others
which will be developed later, I hold that the perpetrators of certain
deadly sins were from early times regarded as accursed and subject to
the same punishment as befell those on whom a curse had actually been
called down. The Church, I think, merely added to the number of those
sins, and at the same time undertook the task of pronouncing in many
cases the curse which they had earned.

(8) Those who have eaten the flesh of a sheep which was killed by a
wolf.

This class is purely Slavonic in origin. To become a were-wolf in
consequence of having eaten flesh which a wolf’s fangs have infected
with madness is to a simple mind rational enough; and a were-wolf
becomes after death a vampire. Further the belief, so far as I know,
belongs only to Elis, one of the districts where Slavonic ascendancy
was most complete and continued longest.

(9) Those over whose dead bodies a cat or other animal has passed.

This class also is Slavonic. The jumping of a cat over a dead
body is still believed by some Slavonic peoples to be a cause of
vampirism[1070], while in Greece the idea is rare and local only.

Thus out of the many conditions by which, in modern belief, a man is
predisposed to turn _vrykolakas_, only three can be genuinely Hellenic:
first, lack of burial; second, a sudden or violent death; and third,
a parental or other curse, or such sin as renders a man accursed. The
_revenant_ therefore was regarded, as we inferred also from the story
of Constantine and Areté, as a sufferer. His suffering might be the
result of pure mischance, as in the case of sudden death, or of neglect
on the part of those whose duty it was to lament and to bury him, or
again of some sin of his own which had merited a curse. But whether he
was the victim of sheer misfortune or of punishment, he was still a
sufferer, an object to excite the pity of mankind in general, although
in special cases, as when he had been murdered or had not received the
last offices of love at the hands of his kinsfolk, he might reasonably
be feared by those who had injured him as an avenger.

Since then in the pre-Slavonic period the general feeling towards
_revenants_ was a feeling of pity, the treatment of them in that period
requires investigation.

Starting once more from the modern superstition, we find that the
treatment of _vrykolakes_ by the Greeks differs widely from that
accorded by the Slavs to vampires. The Slavonic method is generally to
pierce the suspected corpse with a stake of aspen or whitethorn, taking
care to drive it right through the heart at one blow. The usual Greek
method is to burn the body. The Greeks therefore, who learnt from the
Slavs all that is most horrible in their conception of _vrykolakes_,
none the less thought that they knew a better way of disposing of
these new-found pests than that which was practised by their teachers.
Convinced by foreign influence of the danger, they relied on a native
method of obviating it. They would not impale the _vrykolakas_; they
would burn him. Clearly there must have been some strong conviction
and assurance in the heart of a people who, freshly persuaded of the
peril threatening them at the hands of so loathly and savage a monster,
yet chose to pursue their own method of combating it rather than to
adopt the foreign and repugnant practice of impaling the dead. That
conviction plainly was that cremation, by ensuring the immediate and
complete dissolution of the body, put an end to all relations of the
dead with the living; and their confidence in it can only have been
based upon their own experience in the treatment of the Greek species
of _revenants_. Cremation then was the means by which the Greek folk
had always been wont to succour those of the dead who suffered from
incorruptibility and resuscitation.

Such a custom would not, so far as I can judge, have encountered any
serious ecclesiastical opposition. The Church, it is true, in her
earlier days had condemned cremation as a pagan rite, and with the
spread of Christianity inhumation became the ordinary rite. But in the
case of those who, having been buried, yet returned from the grave,
since the Christian rite had proved of no avail, some concession to
pagan traditions would have been natural. Many of the clergy, as we
have seen, condoned cremation in the case of _vrykolakes_ as a measure
of self-defence; surely they would equally have allowed it as an act of
charity to more innocent men to whom the earth had denied dissolution
and death had brought no repose.

Thus the actual custom of burning dates from the pre-Slavonic era; it
is only the motive of the act which is changed. Formerly men felt pity
for the _revenant_, and sought to promote his dissolution in order to
release him from a state of suffering; now, as for some centuries past,
men feel only horror of the _vrykolakas_, and seek to promote his
dissolution in order to release themselves from a state of peril. Hence
no doubt came the more horrible barbarities occasionally inflicted on
the corpse; to tear out the heart, to boil it in vinegar, to tear the
body to shreds--these are the acts of a panic-stricken and vindictive
people eager to torment their foe before annihilating him. But in the
old custom of cremation there was nothing inhumane; it was the merciful
act of a people who had compassion upon the unquiet dead and gave to
them, in solicitude for their welfare, that boon of bodily dissolution
by which alone they were finally severed from the living and admitted
to the world of the departed.


§ 3. REVENANTS IN ANCIENT GREECE.

The Slavonic and the ecclesiastical elements have now been removed from
the modern Greek superstition, and the Hellenic residue is briefly
this: the human body sometimes remains incorruptible in the earth, and
in this state is liable to resuscitation; persons so affected stand
as it were halfway between the living and the dead, resembling the
former when they walk the earth, and the latter when they are lying
quiet in their graves or, if unburied, elsewhere; during their periods
of resuscitation they act as reasonable human beings, but their whole
condition is pitiable, and the most humane way of treating them is
to burn their bodies; disintegration being thus secured, they return
no more to this world, but are numbered among the departed. Further
the causes of such a condition are threefold--lack of burial, sudden
death, and execration or deadly sin deserving of it. The only question
which we have left unsolved is that of the agency by which the body is
resuscitated. The Devil is now held responsible; but the Devil is a
Christian, not a pagan, conception.

My purpose in the present section is, first, to verify by the aid of
classical literature the conclusions which have been reached, and,
secondly, to solve the one problem which remains.

There is, so far as I know, only one story in ancient literature which
contains anything like a full account of a _revenant_. This is related
by Phlegon[1071], a freedman of Hadrian; and the narrator professes
to have been an eye-witness of the occurrences which he describes. In
his story are embodied most of those very ideas which on wholly other
grounds have been argued to form the genuine Hellenic element in the
modern superstition concerning _vrykolakes_, and I shall therefore
reproduce it at length. Unfortunately however the beginning of the
story is lost, and therewith possibly the cause assigned for the
strange conduct of the resuscitated corpse which plays the heroine’s
part.

What remains of the story opens abruptly with a weird scene in the
guest-chamber of the house of Demostratus and his wife Charito.

Their daughter Philinnion had been dead and buried somewhat less than
six months, when one evening she was observed by her old nurse in the
guest-chamber, where a young man named Machates was lodged, to all
appearances alive. The nurse at once ran to the girl’s parents and bade
them come with her and see their child. Charito however was so overcome
by the tidings that she first fainted and then wept hysterically for
her lost daughter and finally began to abuse the old woman, calling her
mad and ordering her out of the room; but the nurse expostulated with
spirit, and Charito at last went with her. In the meanwhile however
Philinnion and her lover had retired to rest, so that when the mother
arrived she could not obtain a good view of her; but from the peep
which she got of the girl’s clothes and the shape of her face she
thought that she recognised her daughter. Then, feeling that she could
not at that hour ascertain the truth of the matter, she decided to keep
quiet until morning, and then to rise betimes and surprise the girl if
still there, or, failing that, to extort from Machates the whole truth.

But when dawn came the girl had gone away unobserved, and Charito began
to take Machates to task, telling him the whole story and imploring
him to confess the truth and to keep nothing back. The young man (who
seems to have been unaware that Charito had lost a daughter named
Philinnion) was much distressed, and at first would only admit that
such was indeed the name of the girl whom they had seen; but afterwards
he told the whole story of the girl’s visits to him, mentioning that
she had said that she came without her parents’ knowledge. To confirm
his story, he produced the gold ring which she had given him and her
breast-band which she had left behind on the previous night. These
were at once recognised by Charito as having belonged to her daughter,
and with a loud cry she rent her clothes and loosed her hair and threw
herself upon the ground beside the tokens and began making lamentation
anew. Her example was soon followed by others of the family as if in
preparation for a funeral, and Machates, at his wits’ end how to quiet
them, promised to let them see the girl if she should come to him again.

That night accordingly they kept watch, and at the usual hour the
girl came, went into Machates’ room, and sat down upon the bed. The
young man himself was now anxious to learn the truth; he could not
wholly credit the supposition that it was a dead woman who had come so
regularly, and who had eaten and drunk with him and lain at his side,
and thought rather that the real Philinnion’s tomb had been robbed
and the booty sold to the father of the girl, whoever she might be,
who visited him. No sooner therefore was she come than he quietly
summoned the watchers. The girl’s parents at once entered, and were
for a while dumb with astonishment at the sight of her, and then threw
their arms round her with loud cries. Then said Philinnion, ‘O my
mother and father, it was wrong of you to grudge me three days with
this man here in my own home and doing no harm. And so, because of
your meddlesomeness, you shall mourn for me anew, and I shall go away
again to my appointed place. For it is by divine consent that I have
done thus.’ Scarcely had she spoken when she became a corpse and her
body lay stretched upon the bed in the sight of all. Confusion and loud
lamentation at once ensued, and before long the rumour had got about
the town and was reported to the narrator of the story, Phlegon, who
appears to have held some official position. To him at any rate it fell
to keep order during the night among the excited townsfolk, and early
next morning he was present at a crowded meeting in the theatre, at
which it was decided to inspect first of all the family vault in which
Philinnion had been laid.

The vault having been opened, on all the shelves, save that
appropriated to Philinnion, were found bodies or bones; but on hers
there was nothing except an iron ring belonging to Machates and a
gilt cup--presents which she had received from him at her first
visit. Horror-stricken the party left the vault and went straight to
Demostratus’ house, and in the guest-chamber saw the girl stretched
upon the floor. Thence they returned to another public assembly as
crowded as the first, at which one Hyllus, who was reputed not only the
best seer of the place but also a clever diviner[1072] and possessed of
a comprehensive knowledge of other branches of the profession, advised
that the girl’s body should be taken outside the boundaries of the town
and should be burnt to ashes--it was inexpedient, he said, for her to
be buried in the town--and that certain propitiatory rites, accompanied
by a general purification, should be paid to Hermes Chthonios and the
Eumenides.

The strange episode ended with the acceptance of this advice by the
townspeople and the suicide of Machates.

This story was known to Father Richard of Santorini[1073], who
recognised in it an ancient case parallel to some which he himself had
witnessed or learnt from other eye-witnesses in his own times. Even the
harmless character of Philinnion did not appear to him incompatible
with the popular conception of _vrykolakes_. Indeed, as we saw above,
he himself mentions, among the many instances known to him, one in
which a shoemaker of Santorini, having turned _vrykolakas_, manifested
no vicious tendencies, but rather the greatest affection and solicitude
for his wife and children.

Nor again is the incident of Philinnion’s intercourse with Machates
unparalleled in modern times. Many travellers and writers[1074] have
concurred in recording the belief that the _vrykolakas_ sometimes
revisits his widow, or does violence to other women in their husbands’
absence, or even marries again in some place where he is unknown, and
that of such unions children have been born. Indeed in the Middle
Ages this belief seems to have spread even beyond the confines of
Greece; for a Roman priest, early in the seventeenth century, sums up
the views of his Church on the subject as follows[1075]: ‘Devils,
though incorporeal and spiritual, can take to themselves the bodies of
dead men ... and in such bodies can have intercourse with women, as
commonly with _striges_[1076] and witches, and by such union can even
beget children.’ This statement would be a fair ecclesiastical summary
of modern Greek belief. In Thessaly I myself was told of a family in
the neighbourhood of Domoko, who reckoned a _vrykolakas_ among their
ancestors of the second or third generation back, and by virtue of such
lineage inherited a special skill (such as is more commonly ascribed
to σαββατογεννημένοι, ‘men born on a Saturday,’ when _vrykolakes_
usually rest in their graves, or to ἀλαφροστοίχει̯ωτοι[1077], those who
are in close touch with a ‘familiar spirit,’) in dealing with those
_vrykolakes_ which from time to time troubled the country-side; indeed
they had been summoned, I was assured, even to remote districts for
consultation as specialists.

The story of Philinnion was not overlooked by Bernhard Schmidt, but he
does not appear to have recognised in it anything more relevant than
in the ancient ghost-stories (_gespenstergeschichten_) among which
he reckons it[1078]. Most emphatically this is no ghost-story. The
distinction between ghosts and Greek _revenants_ is of a primary and
universal nature, patent to all who can discriminate between soul and
body. In this story Philinnion acts as a _revenant_ and is treated as a
_revenant_; the inspection of the vault in which her body had been laid
and the purpose of her nocturnal visits to Machates furnish conclusive
evidence of her corporeal resuscitation; and the method of disposing of
her corpse is the method generally approved and employed in the case
of _revenants_--cremation. In effect all that remains of the story
is in complete accord with what I have claimed on other grounds as
the Hellenic element in the modern superstition; only one detail is
wanting--the cause of Philinnion’s resuscitation--and if we had the
first part of the story, it is not unlikely that in it we should find
that her early death had been also sudden or violent. Clearly then the
belief in _revenants_ was known in Greece in the age of Hadrian.

A casual allusion to the same superstition occurs also in
Lucian[1079]. ‘I know of a man,’ says a doctor named Antigonus, ‘who
rose again twenty days after he was buried; I attended him after his
resurrection as well as before his death.’ ‘But how was it,’ rejoins
another, ‘that in twenty days the body did not decompose or in any
case the man perish of hunger?’ Unfortunately no answer is given and
the subject drops, but the man in question was clearly a corporeal
_revenant_ and not a mere ghost.

A reference to the same vulgar belief is also seemingly intended by
Aristophanes in the _Ecclesiazusae_, where the personal appearance of
one of the reprobate old women calls forth the exclamation,

    ‘Is yon an ape be-plastered with white lead,
    Or an old hag uprisen from the dead?’[1080]

The passage is of course too brief to make any such allusion certain;
but it becomes highly probable if it can be shown from other sources
that the superstition was popularly current in Aristophanes’ time. This
I can do.

The fixity of popular phrases of imprecation has been amply
demonstrated in the last section[1081]. A large selection of curses,
all conceived in the same spirit, furnished, by their contrast with
some features of the now contaminated superstition, a clue for the
detection of the Slavonic elements therein. These imprecations, we
learnt, were based upon the purely Hellenic belief, and had remained
unaffected by the foreign influence which had modified and in some
respects almost transformed it. Spoken often in a moment of passion,
springing spontaneously and familiarly to the lips, too hasty to be
informed by conscious thought, such curses have been handed down from
generation to generation as fixed expressions subject to none of the
changes which come of deliberate reflection. Though the old beliefs
have been altered by the infusion of alien doctrines, the old curses
stand fast in bold antagonism to all foreign lore, true records
of a superstition now garbled, coins stamped with the effigy and
superscription of by-gone thought, but current still.

As the simplest types of these old-established curses may be taken
the two phrases, νὰ μὴν τὸν δεχτῇ ἡ γῆς, ‘May the earth not receive
him,’ and νὰ τὸν βγάλῃ ἡ γῆς, ‘May the earth cast him out.’ The one
is negative in form, the other positive, but both equally suggest,
in the peasant’s mind, both the incorruptibility of the body and its
resuscitation. Can a prototype of these curses be found in ancient
literature? If so, in view of the general continuity of Greek belief
and custom, we shall be justified in concluding that, as those ancient
curses are identical with the modern, so the superstition which
suggested them in old time is identical with that part of the modern
superstition on which they are now based.

Two examples of these curses are furnished by Euripides. In a scene
where Orestes conjures his comrade Pylades to leave him and not
to involve himself in the meditated act of vengeance, the latter
replies[1082], ‘Never may the fruitful earth receive my blood, nor yet
the gleaming air, if ever I turn traitor to thee and save myself and
forsake thee!’ In like tone rings out Hippolytus’ assertion of his
innocence toward his father[1083]: ‘Now by Zeus the judge of oaths and
by the earth beneath our feet, I swear that never have I touched thy
marriage-bed, nor would have willed it nor conceived the thought. May I
verily perish without glory and without name, cityless and homeless, an
outcast and wanderer upon the earth, yea and in death may neither sea
nor earth receive my flesh, if I have proved false!’

‘May the earth not receive my flesh!’ Such is the common burden of the
two oaths; such the final chord struck by Hippolytus in that symphony
of imprecations with which he vindicates his innocence; such too
would be the strongest oath by which any peasant of to-day might bind
himself. The very words have scarcely varied in a score of centuries;
who then will venture to claim that their purport is changed? Is it
not clear that just as in later times the Church, by incorporating the
popular curse in her formula of excommunication, seized the weapons
of paganism and turned them against those rebels and infidels whom
her own direst fulminations had no power to dismay, so Euripides,
conscious that no imaginings of his own art could suffice to excite in
his hearers that horror which the climax of self-execration demanded,
did not disdain ‘the touchings of things common,’ but turned to tragic
use a popular curse which then, as now, pierced home to every heart?
It would be strange indeed if words, which since early in the Christian
era have continuously implied a belief in the indissolubility and
resuscitation of those who die accursed, should be held to have borne
some other meaning a few centuries earlier.

Thus then Euripides, by the identity of his language with that of
to-day, discovers most conspicuously his knowledge of that which
on other grounds I have shown to be the Hellenic element in the
superstition concerning _vrykolakes_. But he was not alone in
employing it for dramatic purposes. In the pages of Sophocles too
and of Aeschylus there are passages which only a knowledge of this
superstition can adequately explain. First among these is the climax
of that speech in which Oedipus, blind and outcast, denounces his
undutiful son:

‘Begone, abhorred and renounced of me thy father, thou basest villain,
and take with thee these curses that I call down upon thee, that thou
win not with thy spear that land of thine own kin, nor yet return ever
again to the vale of Argos, but that thou and he that drave thee forth,
smiting and smitten, fall each by a brother’s hand. Such is my curse;
yea, and I call on Tartarus, in whose hated gloom my father lies, to
drive thee from his home[1084].’

The last phrase of this denunciation,

                    καὶ καλῶ τοῦ Ταρτάρου
    στυγνὸν πατρῷον Ἔρεβος, ὥς σ’ ἀποικίσῃ,

is that with which I am concerned. It is an old-established difficulty.
Commentators have translated variously ‘to remove thee from thy home,’
‘to take thee away to his home,’ ‘to give thee another home’; but in
effect they are all agreed in trying to make the words refer to removal
from this to the nether world, or, in one word, to death. Now even
if the word ἀποικίζω could in this context bear any of the meanings
ascribed to it, such an euphemism following upon the explicit threat
that Polynices should be slain by his own brother’s hand would be
an imbecile anticlimax; but I question the very possibility of the
supposed usage. It is true that an emigrant from one place becomes an
immigrant into another; but that cannot justify the interchange of
the two terms. Tartarus is here besought, as plainly as language can
express it, to drive Polynices out, not to take him in. There can be
only one explanation of that prayer. Polynices’ death has already been
foretold; but his father’s curse pursues him beyond death. Tartarus, in
whose keeping the dead should lie, is conjured to drive him forth from
the home of the dead, even as the peasants now pray that the earth may
cast out those whom they hate.

And the context shows clearly that the curse was so understood by
Polynices. Turning to Antigone and Ismene with impassioned entreaty
he implores them--them at least, though all others forsake him and
turn against him--if so be his father’s cruel imprecations come to
fulfilment and they, his sisters, ever return to their home, not to
leave him dishonoured, but to lay him in the grave and to grant him
the guerdons of the dead[1085]. Why then this insistence, unless
the father’s curse had extended beyond death? Merely to introduce
a reference to the plot of the _Antigone_? Clearly more than that.
Polynices was to die bound by his father’s curse, slain by his
brother’s hand, doubly debarred, if modern beliefs be a key to ancient,
from dissolution and from reception into the nether world. The words
of his father’s invocation of Tartarus had conveyed to his mind the
certainty of a doom outlasting death, that Tartarus should not receive
him, but reject him from the home of the dead. Only one faint gleam of
hope was left, that by the fulfilment of those last offices of love
toward the departed, which were for all men a passport to the lower
world, he, burdened and bound with a father’s curse, both slayer and
slain of his own brother, might yet be not debarred from his last home,
but free to enter into rest.

Thus Sophocles in language less popular, but hardly less clear, than
that of Euripides proclaims that the belief in the non-dissolution or
rejection of the body by the earth and the powers under the earth was
a terror as potent then as it is now, and an ever effective weapon of
malediction. Aeschylus had gone even further, and, by enlisting this
terror among the threats uttered on behalf of a dead man by a god
in his most holy sanctuary, had claimed as it were for the popular
superstition the highest religious sanction.

In the _Choephori_[1086] Orestes is made to review in a speech as
difficult as it is powerful the motives which are urging him on to the
requital of blood with blood. Most cogent among these motives is the
explicit command issued from Apollo’s Delphic shrine, bidding him not
spare his father’s murderess, mother though she be, and foretelling the
direst penalties for disobedience. And what are these penalties? First,
the physical torment of ‘blains that leap upon the flesh and with
savage jaws eat out its erstwhile vigour’; second, the mental horror of
coming madness, ‘the arrow that flieth in darkness winged by the powers
of hell with the curse of fallen kindred, even raving and vain terror
born of the night’; third, banishment from home and city, with no place
at friendly board, no part in drink-offering and sacrifice; and yet one
penalty more wherein should culminate the threatened agonies, ‘to die
at last with none to honour, none to love him, damned, even in the doom
that wastes all, to know no corruption.’

Of the earlier penalties and of their intimate connexion with one
branch of this popular superstition I shall have occasion to speak
later. Here I have only to justify the new rendering which I have given
to the last lines of the passage,

    πάντων δ’ ἄτιμον κἄφιλον θνήσκειν χρόνῳ
    κακῶς ταριχευθέντα παμφθάρτῳ μόρῳ[1087].

It has generally been held that ταριχευθέντα is here metaphorically
used of the wasting or withering of the body through physical
suffering, the first penalty, or, it may be, through mental distress,
the second. In other words, the last line of the passage merely
sums up in a concise expression a penalty, or penalties, previously
detailed. On the same view it is but consistent to regard πάντων ἄτιμον
κἄφιλον as a similar summary of the third penalty. Stripped of these
recapitulations and vain repetitions Apollo’s final threat amounts
to--what? θνήσκειν χρόνῳ, ‘to die in course of time.’ A blood-curdling
and unique climax of human suffering in very truth! And this a last
threat after leprosy and madness and outcast loneliness? Surely rather
a promise of release and rest.

But let the anti-climax pass. Whence comes the alleged metaphorical
meaning of ταριχεύεσθαι, so foreign to its normal use? How comes
it to denote the wasting of disease, and what authority has this
supposed use? Its mainstay apparently is a single passage in a
pseudo-Demosthenic speech, which, in describing the cowardly assault of
a young man upon an old, depicts the aggressor as νεαλὴς καὶ πρόσφατος
and his victim as τεταριχευμένου καὶ πολὺν χρόνον συμπεπτωκότος[1088].
But here the metaphor, whatever may be thought of its elegance or
of its likelihood to excite mirth rather than indignation, is at
least clearly explained both by its antithesis and by its context;
νεαλὴς and πρόσφατος are terms properly applied to ‘fresh’ fish or
meat, τεταριχευμένος to the same commodities ‘preserved’ by drying or
pickling, and we understand at once that the old man is represented
to be dried and shrivelled in appearance. Such is the support for the
alleged Aeschylean usage of ταριχευθέντα without the same antithesis
to illuminate its meaning. Are we then to understand that all the
fulminations and thunderings of Apollo’s oracle dwindle away into an
appeal to Orestes’ pride in his personal appearance and a warning that
leprosy will render him as unattractive as a bloater? Or, if it be
claimed that the slow painful process of wasting is suggested rather
than its ultimate effect, is it reasonable that a word which properly
denotes artificial preservation should be used metaphorically of
natural decay? This is not metaphor, but metamorphosis.

Let us then abandon far-fetched explanations; let us conceive it
possible that Aeschylus used the word in the sense which it normally
bore in relation to the human body--‘preserved from corruption,’ like
the mummies of Egypt--and further that he placed the word παμφθάρτῳ
in immediate juxtaposition with it in order to emphasise the more
strikingly the contrast between the threatened ‘non-corruption’ and
the ordinary ‘wasting’ powers of death. So understood, the final
penalty presents a true climax. As the victim is to be excluded in his
lifetime from all intercourse with the living, so in his death, by the
withholding of that dissolution without which there is no entrance to
the lower world, he is to be cut off from communion with the dead. He
is to die with none to honour him with the rites due to the dead, none
to love him and shed the tears that are their just meed, but even in
that last doom which consumes all others is damned to be withheld from
corruption. As ‘Euripides the human’ uses the common phrase of to-day
‘May the earth not receive,’ so Aeschylus the divine anticipates the
ecclesiastical formula, ‘and after death thou shalt be indissoluble.’

The same contrast between the all-wasting functions of death and the
‘bound’ condition of the damned now becomes intelligible in two other
passages of Aeschylus.

In the _Supplices_ the king of the Pelasgians, who is beset by the
daughters of Danaus with the twofold claim of kinsfolk and suppliants,
and besought to deliver them from the lust and violence of their
pursuers, acknowledges himself in a sore strait. If he rescue his
suppliants, he may involve his people in war; if he refuse to
hearken, he fears that, as a tacit accomplice in the violence and
pollution[1089] threatened, he may make to himself ‘the God of all
destruction a stern Avenger ever present, an Avenger that sets not free
the dead even in Hades’ home[1090].’

Again in the _Eumenides_, when Orestes having slain his mother is no
longer seeking for vengeance but flying therefrom with no hope of
safety save in the promises of Apollo whose will he has done, the band
of pursuing Furies, like to be presently thwarted by that god, yet
comfort their black hearts with the assurance of future retribution.
‘Yea,’ cries one, ‘me doth Apollo vex, but Orestes shall he not redeem;
though he flee from me beneath the earth, there is no freeing for him,
but because of his blood-guiltiness he shall find another in my stead
to visit his pollution on his head[1091].’

The conception of future punishment in these two passages is clearly
the same. What then is meant by the fear that even the dead may not
be set free? and who is ‘the God of all destruction’ who is named in
the first passage as the author of that punishment? The answer has
already been found. ‘The all-destroying, God’ (ὁ πανώλεθρος θεὸς) is
none other than the ‘all-wasting doom’ (πάμφθαρτος μόρος) of Apollo’s
oracle--Death personified instead of death abstract; and Death’s
refusal ‘to set free’ the dead is to be interpreted in the light
of Apollo’s warning to Orestes that, if he fail in his duty to his
murdered sire, he will himself in death be ‘damned to incorruption.’
The language employed is indeed vaguer and more allusive; the word
ἐλευθεροῦν, ‘to set free,’ might suggest many ideas besides bodily
‘freeing’ or dissolution; yet it may be noticed that this is the very
word which the above-quoted[1092] _nomocanon de excommunicatis_ uses
interchangeably with the more common λύειν in this very sense. Only
for us, who have not in our hearts the same faiths and fears quick to
vibrate in response to each touch of religious awe, is a commentary
needed; for a Greek audience the suggestion contained in ἐλευθεροῦν,
above all in its implied contrast with πανώλεθρος, fully sufficed.

Thus then we have found two passages of Euripides containing
imprecations almost identical in form with the curses that may be heard
from the lips of modern Greek peasants; we have found a similar passage
in Sophocles which has hitherto proved a difficulty to commentators
simply because they have tried to pervert the meaning of the word
ἀποικίζω, when its normal sense will make the phrase a parallel to
those of Euripides and of modern Greece; and finally in the _Choephori_
of Aeschylus--here again by reading a word in its proper sense--we have
found religious sanction claimed for the belief which underlies these
imprecations--the belief that the fate to be most dreaded by mankind
after death is incorruptibility and resuscitation.

It remains to examine the supposed causes of this dreaded fate,
and to see whether the three causes which, when we discussed the
modern classes of men liable to become _vrykolakes_, appeared to be
Hellenic--namely, lack of burial, violent death, and parental or other
execration or any sin deserving it--actually figure as causes in
ancient Greek literature.

It will be convenient to consider the last-mentioned first.

An instance of formal execration has already been provided. No better
example than the curse called down by Oedipus upon his son could be
desired. But it was suggested above that in certain other cases, even
where no actual imprecation had been uttered, men were accounted
accursed; and indeed it would be an absurdity that a son who acted
undutifully towards his father should fall a victim to his curse,
but that one, let us say, who slew his father and gave him no time to
pronounce the damning words, should go scatheless. From the earliest
times, I believe, there were held to be certain deadly sins, sins
against the few primitive god-given principles of right and wrong,
which brought their own curse. Among these was numbered from the first
the murder of a kinsman. To this Hesiod[1093] adds others which were
so regarded in his day. ‘Equal is the guilt when one ill treateth the
suppliant and the stranger, or goeth up unto his brother’s bed, ... or
sinneth against orphan children and heedeth not, or chideth his old
father, who hath passed the gloomy gates of age, and raileth upon him
with hard words; against such an one verily Zeus himself is wroth,
and at the end layeth upon him stern retribution for his unrighteous
deeds.’ A more civilised age included all murder in the list; and later
again the Church seems to have extended it until ‘transgressors of the
divine law’ might become _ipso facto_ excommunicate and accursed.

To Aeschylus the chief of such sins was unquestionably the murder
of a close kinsman; but other sins also, especially those involving
pollution (μίασμα), rendered the perpetrator liable to the same
punishment as followed upon a formal imprecation. And this view was
not of Aeschylus’ own invention; it must have belonged to the popular
religion. Otherwise it would be impossible to explain how the Greek
Church in the Middle Ages had come to adopt almost the same views as
Aeschylus. For what said the Church? The _nomocanon_ quoted in the last
section[1094] teaches that persons who ‘have been justly, reasonably,
and lawfully excommunicated by their bishops, as transgressors of the
divine law, and have died in the state of excommunication, without
amending their ways and receiving forgiveness,’ may be expected to
remain whole and incorrupt after death. But another ecclesiastical
document[1095] shows clearly that a formal sentence of excommunication
was not essential to this result; a distinction is drawn between him
whose corpse appears white, showing that he was ‘excommunicated by
the divine laws,’ and him whose corpse is black, showing that he was
‘excommunicated by a bishop.’ Clearly then the Church taught that
certain ‘transgressors of the divine law’ might become automatically
excommunicate. Certain deadly sins deserved the ecclesiastical curse
and, whether it were pronounced or not, incurred the same punishment
after death. The list of such sins was certainly extended by the Church
so as to include, for example, apostasy, omission of baptism, the more
reprehensible acts of sorcery, and suicide, which was, and still is
sometimes, a bar to Christian burial. But at the same time the number
of those sins which were actually left to work out their own curse was
probably diminished; the Church constituted herself judge, and in most
cases formally sentenced the sinner to that punishment which the sin
alone, without her condemnation, was popularly believed to entail. If
then we strip this doctrine of its ecclesiastical dress and put out of
sight the intervention of an hierarchy arrogating to itself the office
of binding and loosing, there remains the simple belief that certain
transgressors of the divine law, certain sinners of deadly sins, were
_ipso facto_ accursed and condemned to incorruption.

Is not this precisely the Aeschylean doctrine? Pelasgus, if he should
consent unto the violence of those suitors who sought the daughters
of Danaus in unhallowed wedlock, if he should defy Zeus the God of
suppliants and set at naught those other deities at whose altar his
kinswomen sat--would not he indeed be a transgressor of the divine
law? He acknowledges it himself, and, conformably to the doctrine
enunciated, anticipates that Death himself will turn Avenger and free
him not when dead. Orestes, owing to his murdered father the sacred
duty of vengeance and expressly urged by Apollo to perform it--would
not he too be a transgressor of the divine law, if he should fail
or flag in his enterprise of blood? Fitly then did Apollo threaten
him that after manifold troubles in life he should die damned to
incorruption. The same Orestes, viewed now not from Apollo’s standpoint
but from that of the Erinyes, bloodguilty with his mother’s murder--had
he not perpetrated a deadly sin, was he not a transgressor of the
divine law? Rightly then may his foes exult that he shall not escape,
but, though he be fled from them beneath the earth, still ‘hath
he no freeing.’ In fine, Aeschylus agrees, save for the mediaeval
multiplication of deadly sins, with the doctrine of the Church; and
this agreement is proof that in the popular creed of Greece, from
which both Aeschylus and the Church must have borrowed, the commission
of certain sins has always involved the penalty of incorruptibility,
whether the curse which those sins merited had been formally pronounced
or no. The actual source and operation of such unspoken curses will be
considered in the next section.

The other two causes, lack of burial and violent death, may be
considered together; for the whole trend of ancient literature in
regard to both these calamities is the same, namely, that they caused
the return of the dead man’s spirit--of his spirit only, be it noted,
and not of his body. It is the ghost of Patroclus which in the
_Iliad_[1096] appears to Achilles and demands the funeral-rites due to
his body; it is the ghost of Elpenor which in the _Odyssey_[1097] makes
the same claim upon Odysseus; it is the ghost of Polydorus which in
the _Hecuba_[1098] of Euripides bemoans his body cast away in the sea.
Again it is the ghost of Clytemnestra which in the _Eumenides_[1099]
of Aeschylus comes seeking vengeance for her violent death; and Lucian
in the _Philopseudes_[1100] gives special prominence to this cause of
the soul’s unrest. ‘Perhaps, Eucrates,’ says one of the speakers in
the dialogue, ‘what Tychiades means is this, that the only souls which
wander about are those of men who met with a violent death--anyone, for
example, who hanged himself, or was beheaded or impaled, or departed
this life in any other such way--but that the souls of those who
died a natural death do not wander; if that is his theory, it cannot
be lightly dismissed.’ It is needless to multiply examples[1101];
literary tradition, from Homer down to Lucian, is all in favour of the
re-appearance of the soul, and not of the body, as the result of either
lack of burial or violent death.

It is perfectly clear then that there is a considerable discrepancy
between the ancient literary view and the modern popular creed. Ancient
literature is extremely reticent on the subject of bodily resuscitation
occasioned solely by a violent death[1102] or by lack of burial. In
Phlegon’s story it is indeed probable that the cause of Philinnion’s
re-appearance was a violent death; but the first part of the narrative
is missing, and no such statement is actually made.

In modern beliefs, on the contrary, there is little or no trace of
the idea that the dead return for these causes in purely spiritual
form. The very conception of ghosts is weak and indefinite among the
peasantry. I have certainly been told by peasants of cases in which
a person at the point of death has appeared, presumably in spiritual
form, to friends at a distance; and there is a fairly common belief,
seemingly derived from the Bible, that at Easter many of the graves
are opened and release for a time the spirits of the dead. But it is a
significant fact that there is not even a name for ghosts which cannot
be equally well applied to any supernatural apparitions. The thought
of them in general seems to be nothing more definite than a vague
uneasiness in the minds of timid women and children at that hour when

                      ‘a faint erroneous ray,
    Glanced from the imperfect surfaces of things,
    Flings half an image on the straining eye.’

There is no fixed creed or tradition here. In an account of the
definite superstitions of modern Greece ghosts are a _quantité
négligeable_.

But, while ancient literature and modern superstition are thus in
direct conflict on one point, they are agreed in making lack of burial
and violent death the causes of a certain unrest on the part of the
dead; and though the one usually attributes that unrest to the ghost,
and the other to the corpse, their agreement in all else could not
surely be a mere casual coincidence; there must be a connexion to be
discovered between them.

The consistency of the popular view which has obtained practically
throughout the Christian era has already been established. The Church
found the Greek people already firmly convinced that the two causes
which we are considering, no less than formal execration or execrable
sin, led to bodily incorruption and resuscitation. The only moot
point is what agency was held to produce the resuscitation before
the Church taught that it was the work of the Devil. But can equal
consistency be claimed for ancient literature? It has just now been
shown that the tragedians recognised that a curse or a deadly sin led
to the resuscitation of the body; and yet they make lack of burial
and violent death lead rather to the re-appearance of a ghost. Why
then this discrimination between the effects produced by causes all of
which in more recent popular belief produce the same effect? My answer
is that popular belief in antiquity was the same as popular belief
now in respect of all the causes, but that literary propriety forbade
more than a mere verbal reference to so gross a superstition as bodily
resuscitation. When a dead man was required in literature to re-appear,
he was conventionally pourtrayed as a ghost, not as a walking corpse;
and the convention was, I think, right and necessary.

For let it be granted for a moment that the popular belief of to-day
dates from the earliest times, and that then as now the _revenant_ was
popularly pictured as a monster ‘swollen and distended all over so that
the joints can scarcely be bent; the skin being stretched like the
parchment of a drum, and when struck giving out the same sound.’ Could
even Homer have re-animated the dead Patroclus, with this unearthly
ghastliness added to his wounds and to his mangling by the chariot,
and have brought him to Achilles in the darkness of the night, without
exciting in his breast horror instead of pity and loathing for love?
Euripides again was greatly daring when he assigned the prologue of
a tragedy to Polydorus’ ghost; but even he could not have restrained
the unquenchable mirth of his audience, if his play had opened with
a soliloquy by an agitated corpse. Epic and dramatic propriety must
have demanded some refinement of so grossly material a conception. The
canons of drama, we know, would not allow the enactment of a murder on
the stage before the eyes of the spectators; would it then have been
compatible with the restraint of Greek art to represent the murdered
body as a _revenant_? Aeschylus himself, the lover of weird misbegotten
shapes, would have recoiled from such an enterprise. But those same
canons did permit a verbal description of the murder; and similarly the
tragedians permitted themselves to refer, in imprecations and suchlike,
to the horror of bodily resuscitation.

The case then stands thus. References are, as we have seen, made by the
tragedians to the possibility of men becoming _revenants_, whereas
they shrank from presenting the actuality. But the references to the
possibility occur, chiefly at any rate, in imprecations, with the
result that at first sight a curse would seem to have been the only
recognised cause of bodily resuscitation in ancient times; whereas
the most famous literary examples of the actual re-appearance of the
dead--Clytemnestra and Polydorus in tragedy, or, if we go back to
Homer, Patroclus and Elpenor--happen to be cases in which the cause
was lack of burial or a violent death, with the result that literary
tradition inclined to substitute ghosts for the corporeal _revenants_
of the popular creed in these two cases.

Such is my explanation of the discrepancy; and the probability of
it is warranted by three considerations--first, that Greek Tragedy
does contain one or two references to the possible resuscitation of
other than the accursed--second, that Plato modifies the popular
notions concerning the accursed in almost the same way that the
tragedians modified the fate of the unburied and of those slain by
violence--third, that the literary tradition concerning ghosts is in
itself inconsistent and bears the marks of arbitrary modification.

The most important reference in Tragedy occurs in the _Choephori_,
where Orestes and Electra pray their murdered father to rise from
the grave in bodily form[1103]. This passage, together with a close
parallel from Sophocles, will be fully discussed later[1104]. Here
I need only point out the justification by Aeschylus of my theory
that the substitution of ghost for _revenant_ is a necessary literary
convention. He suggests verbally the possible uprising of the murdered
Agamemnon as a _revenant_; but, when it comes to an actual presentation
of the murdered Clytemnestra on the stage, his _dramatis persona_ is a
ghost.

Next, Plato, in a well-known passage of the _Phaedo_[1105], speaks
of the souls of dead men having actually been seen in the form of
shadowy apparitions haunting the neighbourhood of tombs--souls, he
explains, which have not been fully cleansed and freed from the
visible material world, but still have some part therein and hence
are themselves visible; and, he adds, these are the souls of the
wicked, which are compelled to wander thus in punishment for their
former evil life. Naturally Plato of all men--and of all his works
in the _Phaedo_--could not accept the notion that the body under any
conditions remained incorruptible; his whole doctrine is imbued with
his belief that the gross and material perishes, and only the pure
and spiritual endures. When therefore he came to utilise the popular
doctrine, which the tragedians had endorsed, that certain sinners
were condemned to incorruption, some modification of the idea was
necessary; and accordingly he makes the wicked to wander as ghosts, not
as corporeal _revenants_, just as Homer and the tragedians seem to have
done in the case of the unburied and those who had met their death by
violence. Plato’s extension of the literary tradition suggests that its
earlier development had been such as I have indicated.

Lastly, the literary tradition, as represented by earlier writers than
Plato, is by no means uniform. If it had been a definite religious
doctrine, and not merely a literary convention, that the unburied
returned as ghosts, the presentment of Patroclus and of Polydorus
should have been in all respects similar. But what do we find? Each
certainly appears as a ghost and asks for burial; but there the
resemblance ends. According to Homer[1106] the spirit of Patroclus, in
craving burial of his body, declares that, ere that rite be performed,
the spirit itself cannot pass the gates of Hades but is held aloof by
the spirits of the other dead, and moreover that having once passed
it can no more return to this world. According to Euripides[1107],
familiar though he must have been with Homer’s teaching, the spirit of
Polydorus had passed within the gates of Hades and by permission of
the nether gods had returned to demand the burial of his body. Homer’s
reason for the soul’s anxiety about the body’s burial is none too
convincing in itself; for it only raises a further question: if death
means the final separation of soul from body, and the lower world is
tenanted by souls only--for so Homer at any rate teaches--why should
the denizens of that world make the admission of a newly-sped soul
conditional upon the burial of the body which it had finally quitted?
But, what is more important, Homer’s reason, such as it is, is flatly
disavowed by Euripides, who yet advances no reason of his own why the
spirit of Polydorus, having once passed into Hades’ halls, should have
any further interest in its old carnal tenement. This disagreement can
only mean that Homer and Euripides were not following an acknowledged
doctrine of popular religion in representing Patroclus and Polydorus in
the form of ghosts; for in that case they would surely have agreed with
the popular doctrine, and therefore also with each other, in assigning
a reason for the ghost’s interest in the burial of its discarded body.
Either then there was no popular belief on the whole subject--which is
incredible--or else it was such as literary propriety forbade them to
follow. Now if the popular belief was that the unburied appeared as
corporeal _revenants_, their eagerness for burial is intelligible; but
if a ghost be substituted by literary convention for the _revenant_,
a good reason for such eagerness becomes hard to find. Hence the
inconsequence of Homer’s reason; hence the silence of Euripides.

But if, as now seems likely, the substitution of mere ghost for bodily
_revenant_ was a literary convention, it by no means follows that
that convention is valueless as a guide to the popular beliefs of the
time. It may represent a part of those beliefs, though not the whole.
The established doctrines on this whole subject were not remodelled
by the tragedians save in obedience to the laws of their art. This we
definitely know; for the causes which they assign for the unrest of
the dead are numbered among the popularly received causes which remain
to this day; and even the idea of physical resuscitation was retained
and effectively utilised by them within certain limitations. Clearly
then they kept what they could, and only changed what they must.
Judicious selection rather than arbitrary invention was the method by
which the literary tradition was established. Since then that tradition
uniformly speaks of the soul’s return, while discrepancies only arise
in accounting for the soul’s interest in the corpse, was it perhaps
only in the latter respect that literary tradition parted company with
popular belief? Did the spirit as well as the body of the dead play
some part in the popular superstition? Did the common-folk too hold
that, after the separation of soul from body at death, the soul itself
under certain conditions returned from its flight towards the house of
Hades--returned however not to appear alone in ghostly guise, but to
re-animate the dead body and raise it up as a _revenant_? Was this the
popular doctrine from which literature selected, recording the soul’s
return, but suppressing the re-animation of the body, and thereby
creating for itself the difficulty of explaining the soul’s interest in
the body?

The hypothesis commends itself as providing at the same time an answer
to the one question which remained unanswered in the last section. We
saw that, through ecclesiastical influence, Christian Greece has long
assigned the work of resuscitating the dead to the Devil. But to whom
or to what did pagan Greece previously assign it? Surely in the whole
range of Greek mythology it were hard to find any supernatural being
either specially suited or probably condemned to such a task. The soul
is, _prima facie_, the most appropriate and likely agent.

But there is even stronger evidence than this. The probable becomes
proven when we turn back to the only full pagan account of a bodily
_revenant_, the story of Philinnion. What are her words, when she is
discovered by her parents? ‘Mother and father, it was wrong of you to
grudge me three days with this man here in my own home and doing no
harm. And so, because of your meddlesomeness, you shall mourn for me
anew, and I shall go away to my appointed place. For it is by divine
consent that I have done thus.’ And how is her threat of going away
fulfilled? ‘Scarce had she spoken when she became a corpse, and her
body lay stretched upon the bed in the sight of all.’ The words ‘I
shall go away’ were therefore intended by the writer to mean ‘My soul
will go away’; for the body remained. Clearly then, in the belief of
that age, resuscitation of the dead meant the re-animation of the body
by the soul which had been temporarily separated from it.

In the light of this fact Plato’s reference to the wandering of the
souls of the wicked is found to approximate more nearly to the popular
superstition. Such souls, he says, have been seen in the neighbourhood
of tombs; and they are visible because they are not cleansed and freed
from the visible and material world[1108], but participate therein.
What then is the particular material thing in which they participate
and which keeps them near the tombs? Evidently the body whose
impurities they contracted in life, the body from which they are not
cleansed and freed. Plato admits only participation, not re-animation;
but in all else he adheres to the genuine popular belief.
The same idea furnishes also what I believe to be the true explanation
of the custom of the so-called ‘Charon’s obol.’ The coin or other
object placed in the mouth of the dead was originally, I have
argued[1109], a charm to prevent the entry of some evil spirit or the
re-entry of the soul into the corpse. In Chios and in Rhodes, as we
have seen, this is the popular explanation still given--the particular
spirit against whom the precaution is taken being, owing to Christian
influence, a devil. But if, as is likely, a devil has merely been
substituted for the soul, while the rest of the superstition has
remained unchanged, it follows that the precaution was originally
directed against the return of the soul, and so was a means of ensuring
bodily dissolution; for, though I cannot actually prove it, it is
natural to suppose that re-animation was not the result, but the cause,
of incorruption.

To sum up, the conclusions which have been reached stand thus:--Death,
according to the popular religion of ancient Greece, was not a final
separation of body and soul; in certain cases the body remained
incorrupt and the soul re-animated it. This condition, in which the
dead belonged neither to this nor to the nether world, was one of
misery; and bodily dissolution was to be desired. Dissolution could
in no case be properly effected without the rite of interment or
cremation. The unburied therefore formed one class of _revenants_. But
even due interment did not necessarily produce dissolution; a sudden or
violent death rendered the body incorruptible, presumably because the
proper hour had not yet come for the soul to leave it; an imprecation
withheld the body from decay by its own ‘binding’ power; and finally,
the commission of a deadly sin, above all of murder, rendered the
sinner subject to the same dire fate as if the curse which his sin
merited had actually been pronounced. The only unfailing method of
dissolution was cremation.


§ 4. REVENANTS AS AVENGERS OF BLOOD.

The conclusions which have now been reached show, among others, the
somewhat surprising result, that the popular religion of Greece both
ancient and modern has always comprised the belief that both the
murdered and the murderer were doomed to the same unhappy lot after
death. The murderer, in the class of men polluted and accursed by
heinous sin, and his victim, in the class of those who have met with
violent deaths, have alike been regarded as pre-disposed to become
_revenants_. The two facts thus simply stated constitute a problem
which deserves investigation. It can be no accident that two classes
of men, so glaringly contrasted here, should be believed to share the
same fate hereafter. Some relation between the two beliefs must surely
subsist.

The solution to which the mind naturally leaps is the idea that in some
way retributive justice causes the murderer to be punished with the
selfsame suffering as he has brought upon his victim; that, as blood
calls for blood, so the resuscitation of the murdered calls for the
resuscitation of the murderer; that the old law, δράσαντι παθεῖν, ‘as
a man hath wrought, so must he suffer,’ is not limited to this world
nor fully vindicated by the mere shedding of the murderer’s blood, but
dooms him to become, like his victim, a _revenant_ from the grave.

Such an explanation of the two facts before us is, it may almost be
said, obviously and self-evidently right, so far as it goes; but the
proof of its correctness is best to be obtained by going further,
so as not merely to indicate the appropriateness of the murderer’s
punishment, but to discover also the agency whereby it is inflicted;
for, if it can be established that according to the popular belief it
is the murdered man himself who, in the form of a _revenant_, plagues
his murderer, then the retributive character of all the murderer’s
sufferings both here and hereafter will be manifest.

The most striking testimony to the existence of such a belief is to
be found in a gruesome practice to which, we are told, murderers in
old time were addicted--the practice of mutilating (μασχαλίζειν) the
murdered man by cutting off his hands and feet, and either placing
them under his armpits or tying them with a band (μασχαλιστήρ) round
his breast. What object was had in view in so disposing of the severed
extremities, if indeed our information as to the act itself be correct,
remains uncertain; perhaps indeed that information amounts to nothing
more than a faulty conjectural interpretation of the word μασχαλίζειν
itself, which might equally well mean to sever the arms from the body
at the armpit and to treat the lower limbs in similar fashion. But at
any rate the intention of the whole act of mutilation is known and
clear; the murderer sought to deprive his victim of the power to exact
vengeance for his wrongs. Clearly then the vengeance apprehended was
not that of a disembodied spirit entreating the gods to act on its
behalf or appearing in visions to its surviving kinsfolk and urging
them to requite the murderer, but the vengeance of a bodily _revenant_
with feet swift to pursue and hands strong to strike. On no other
grounds is the mutilation of the dead body intelligible.

But if any doubt could still rest upon this interpretation of the old
custom, it must be finally dispersed by a consideration of the one
instance of the same custom known to me in modern times. This occurs
in a story which I have already related[1110]--the story of a human
sacrifice in Santorini at the time of the Greek War of Independence, as
narrated to me by an old man of the island who claimed to have himself
taken part in the affair. According to his narrative not only the head
of the victim was cut off but also his hands, and in that order. Why
then this mutilation of the dead body? That question I put in vain to
the old man; he had obliged me by giving me his reminiscences, but he
had no intention of letting himself be cross-questioned upon them. Yet
the real answer is not hard to conjecture. Santorini is the most famous
haunt of _vrykolakes_ in the whole of Greece, and familiarity with them
has bred in the minds of the islanders no contempt for them, but rather
a more lively terror. Nowhere therefore is any expedient for combating
the powers of the _vrykolakas_ more likely to be remembered and
adopted. Since then the human victim in the story is not represented as
a willing victim, but was evidently seized and slain by violence, his
slayers, in performing their task, must have recognised that he would
in all probability turn _vrykolakas_, and in their mutilation of his
corpse (a deed inexpressibly repugnant to Greek feeling now as in old
time) can only have been actuated by the hope of thus incapacitating
the _revenant_ for his otherwise sure and terrible vengeance.

The reason then why the murderer as well as the murdered becomes a
_revenant_ is plain. The victim, rising from his grave in bodily
substance, pursues his enemy with untiring rancour until he brings him
to the same sorry state as that to which he himself has come.
Such, I venture to say, has been the conviction deep down in the hearts
of the Greek people from the earliest times down to this day. A custom,
which consists in a deliberate and sacrilegious act of mutilation,
more ghastly than murder itself, perpetrated upon the helpless dead,
and which yet has continued unchanged throughout the changes and
chances which the Greek people have undergone for more than a score of
centuries, can only be based upon the most immutable of superstitious
beliefs and dreads, and reveals more unerringly than even the whole
literature of Greece the fundamental ideas of the Greek people
concerning the avenging of blood. The murdered man in bodily shape
avenges his own wrongs.

But while the existence of this belief is thus established by the best
evidence of all, namely the fact that men have continued to act upon
it, the views of ancient writers on the subject of blood-guilt are not
on that account to be neglected; on the contrary, the whole literature
bearing thereupon, and above all the story of the house of Atreus
as told by Aeschylus, much as they have been studied, deserve fresh
consideration just for the very reason that our judgement of them must
be modified by this new fact. Starting with the knowledge of the part
which the murdered man himself played according to popular belief in
securing the punishment of his murderer, we are enabled more fully to
appreciate the genius of Aeschylus in so handling a superstition which,
like other things primitive in Greek religion, was still venerated by
an age which could discern its grossness, that, without either losing
the religious sympathies of his audience by too wide a departure from
venerable traditions, or offending their artistic taste by too close an
adherence to primitive crudities, he wrought out of that material the
fabric of the greatest of tragedies.

What we shall find in thus studying anew some of the literature of
the subject is a modification of the grosser elements in the popular
superstition such as the last section has already prepared us to
expect. We saw there how restricted was the use which the tragedians
and others dared to make of the popular belief in corporeal _revenants_
of any kind; we saw that dramatic propriety absolutely forbade the
introduction of a dead man to play a part otherwise than in the form of
a ghost; and yet more than once we found, especially as the climax of
some imprecation, a verbal allusion to the belief in incorruptibility
and bodily resuscitation. And now similarly we shall see that the
tragedians allowed themselves no greater license in dealing with
_revenants_ in quest of vengeance than in dealing with the more
innocuous sort; we shall see that dramatic propriety forced them to
find some other agency than that of the bodily _revenant_ whereby
the vengeance of Agamemnon upon Clytemnestra, and of Clytemnestra
upon Orestes, might be executed; but we shall find withal that here
again there are a few verbal references to the uprising of the dead
themselves as avengers of their own wrongs, and moreover that, though
in the actual development of the plot they can have no part save
only that of a ghost, and some other avenger is made to act on their
behalf, yet it is they themselves who instigate and urge him to his
task. The bodily activity of the murdered man is suppressed, save for
some few hints, as a thing too gross for representation by tragic art;
but at the same time fidelity to old religious tradition is in a way
maintained by proclaiming his personal, though ghostly, activity in
inciting and even compelling others to avenge him.

The clearest references to the bodily activity of the murdered
man occur in precisely the same connexion in both Aeschylus and
Sophocles--in a prayer offered by Agamemnon’s children at their dead
father’s tomb. In Sophocles the occasion is that scene in which Electra
rebukes her sister for bearing Clytemnestra’s peace-offerings to
Agamemnon’s tomb--peace-offerings, be it noted, which in themselves
imply that the dead man is still a powerful foe to his murderess--and
bids her instead thereof join with Electra herself in laying a lock of
hair upon the tomb; and then come the notable lines,

    αἰτοῦ δὲ προσπίτνουσα, γῆθεν εὐμενῆ
    ἡμῖν ἀρωγὸν αὐτὸν εἰς ἐχθροὺς μολεῖν[1111],

‘and falling at his tomb beseech thou him to come from out the earth
in his own strength a kindly helper unto us against his foes.’ No one,
I suppose, can misdoubt the emphasis which falls on αὐτὸν, ‘his very
self’; and to the Greek mind the ‘very self’ was not a disembodied
spirit, but a thing of flesh and bones and solid substance. Unless
Sophocles was hinting verbally at that which he durst not represent
dramatically--the resurrection of the dead man in bodily substance as
an avenger of his own wrongs--the word could have had no meaning for
his hearers.

The parallel passage in Aeschylus comes from the prayer of Orestes and
Electra beside their father’s grave[1112]. ‘O Earth,’ cries Orestes,
‘send up, I pray thee, my father to watch o’er my fight’; and Electra
makes response, ‘O Persephone, grant thou him still his body’s strength
unmarred,’

    ὦ Περσέφασσα, δὸς δ’ ἔτ’ εὔμορφον κράτος.

It has been customary among translators and commentators to render
εὔμορφον as if the second half of the compound were negligible; yet I
can find no instance in which the word denotes anything but beauty of
bodily shape. Let Aeschylus’ own usage of it elsewhere be the index of
his meaning here. The Chorus of the _Agamemnon_, musing on the fate
of those who have fallen at Ilium, tell how in place of some there
have been sent home to their kin mere parcels of ashes, ‘while others,
about the walls where they fell, possess sepulchres of Trojan soil, in
comeliness of shape unmarred’--οἱ δ’ αὐτοῦ περὶ τεῖχος θηκὰς Ἰλιάδος
γᾶς εὔμορφοι κατέχουσιν[1113]. My rendering then of εὔμορφον κράτος is
right and cannot be evaded. Aeschylus, like Sophocles in the preceding
passage, lightly yet surely, by the use of a single word, hints at the
popular belief that the murdered man may rise again in bodily form to
wreak his own vengeance.

Once again then the tragedians have come to our aid in the unravelling
of this superstition. From them we learnt that incorruptibility and
resuscitation were as great a terror to their contemporaries as they
are to the modern peasants of Greece, and that actually the same
imprecations of that calamity were in vogue then as at this day; and
now again we receive from them corroboration of that which the horrible
practice of mutilating a murdered man’s corpse had already revealed,
namely, that some of the dead who returned from their graves were
believed to go to and fro, not in mere vain and pitiable wanderings,
but with the fell purpose of revenging themselves upon their murderers.

The general tendency however of Greek literature, as we saw in the
last section, was to replace the bodily _revenant_ by a mere ghost.
In many cases the consequences of this literary modification were
comparatively small; the ghost of Polydorus for example can sustain
the part of pleading plaintively for burial no less effectively,
perhaps indeed even more so, than a lusty _revenant_. But the case of
_revenants_ bent upon vengeance was different; the consequences of
substituting a mere spirit were far-reaching; the part to be played
consisted not in piteous words but in stern work; and for this part so
frail and flimsy a creature as the Greeks pictured the ghost to be was
absolutely unfitted. The only means of escaping from this difficulty
was to represent the dead man as employing some instrument or agent
of retribution; and accordingly, where the gross popular superstition
would have had the murdered man emerge from his grave in bodily form
to chase and to slay his murderer, literature in general confined the
dead man to the unseen world and allowed him only to work by less
directly personal means--sometimes by the hands of his next of kin,
in other cases by a curse either automatically operative or executed
by demonic agents. But it is important to observe that, whatever the
means employed, literature cleaves to the old traditions, so far as
artistic taste permits, by conceding to the murdered man the power
of instigating the agents and controlling the instruments of his
vengeance. His power is made spiritual instead of physical; but his
personal activity is still recognised; he remains the prime avenger of
his own wrongs.

These indirect methods of retribution must now be examined severally.

As regards the part taken by the next of kin to the murdered man in
furthering the work of vengeance, I find no reason to suppose that
literature deviated in any way from popular tradition. The idea of
the vendetta is essentially primitive and at the same time perfectly
harmonious with the belief that the murdered man is capable of
executing his own revenge. The acknowledged power of the dead man has
never in the minds of the Greek people served as an excuse for his
kinsmen to sit idle; rather it has been an incentive to them to assist
more strenuously in the task of vengeance, lest they themselves also
should fall under the dead man’s displeasure. On this point ancient
lore and modern lore are completely agreed.

The best exponents of this view at the present day are a people who
can claim to be the most distinctively Hellenic inhabitants of the
Greek mainland. The peninsula which terminates in the headland of
Taenarum is the home of a race which is historically known to be of
more purely Greek descent than the inhabitants of any other district,
and which both in physical type and in social and religious customs
stands apart--the Maniotes. Among their customs is the vendetta, and
the beliefs on which it rests are in brief as follows. A man who has
been murdered cannot rest in his grave until he has been avenged, but
issues forth as a _vrykolakas_ athirst for his enemy’s blood; for, in
Maina, one who has turned _vrykolakas_ for this cause is still credited
with some measure of reasonableness. To secure his bodily dissolution
and repose, it is incumbent upon the next of kin to slay the murderer
or, at the least, some near kinsman of the murderer. Until that be
done, the son (to take the most common instance) lies under his dead
father’s curse; and, if he be so craven or so unfortunate as to find no
opportunity for vengeance, the curse under which he has lived clings to
him still in death, and he too becomes a _vrykolakas_.

The Maniote doctrine then amounts to this, that the murdered man rises
from his grave to execute his own vengeance, which consists in bringing
upon his murderer the same fate as he himself has suffered through his
enemy’s deed--a violent death and consequently resuscitation; but at
the same time he demands the assistance of his nearest kinsman, under
pain of suffering a like fate hereafter if his efforts in the cause
of vengeance are feeble or fruitless. Thus the belief in powerful and
vindictive _revenants_ forms the very mainspring of the vendetta.

To this view both Euripides and Aeschylus subscribe in telling the
story of Orestes. In the former we have the answer made by Orestes
himself to the tirade of Tyndareus[1114] against the vendetta: ‘Nay,
if by silence,’ he says, ‘I had consented unto my mother’s deeds, what
would my dead sire have done to me? Would he not have hated me and made
me the sport of Furies? Hath my mother these goddesses at her side to
help her cause, and hath not he that was more despitefully used?’[1115]
Surely no clearer statement could be made of Orestes’ apprehension
that, if he should fail in the duty which his dead father imposed
upon him, the dead man would turn other ministers of his vengeance
upon his cowardly son, to plague him, as if he were an accomplice,
with the same punishment as had been designed for the actual author of
the murder. And similarly in Aeschylus we have the retort of Orestes
to his mother’s last warning before he slays her. ‘Beware,’ she says,
‘the fiends thy mother’s wrath shall rouse’; and he answers, ‘But, an
I flag, how should I ’scape my sire’s?’[1116] Thus according to the
ancient tragedians the vendetta of Orestes was prompted by the same
beliefs and fears as still stir the Maniotes thereto.

So far then as concerns the vengeance for Agamemnon’s death, ancient
drama added no new element to the popular beliefs, but was able to
satisfy the requirements of art by judicious selection from them. The
idea, to which the Maniotes still cling, that the murdered man in the
form of a _revenant_ avenges his own wrongs, is, save for the rare
verbal allusions which we have noticed, rejected, and forms no part
of the plot; but the belief, that fear of the dead man’s wrath is a
cogent motive to action on the part of his kinsman, is retained. And
here it is interesting to observe that Aeschylus even justifies his
rejection of the first half of the popular doctrine, and that too
by a plea perfectly satisfactory to the popular mind. Agamemnon’s
case was peculiar. Not only had he been murdered, but his dead body
according to Aeschylus, who is followed in this by Sophocles[1117],
had been mutilated (ἐμασχαλίσθη) by his murderers. The effect of such
mutilation, as we have seen, was to render the _revenant_ powerless
to wreak vengeance with his own hands. Hence the work devolving upon
Orestes would have been, in popular esteem, doubled; if murder alone
had been committed, he would have worked in conjunction, as it were,
with the dead man; but the super-added mutilation incapacitated the
dead man for bodily work, and placed the whole burden of retribution
on the shoulders of his son. This, plainly put, is the meaning of the
words spoken by the Chorus in the _Choephori_ to Orestes: ‘Yea, and
he was mutilated, for thou must know the worst. Cruel was she in the
slaying of him, cruel still in the burial, in that she thought to
make his doom a burden past bearing upon thy life[1118].’ Thus it may
be claimed that Aeschylus, in the peculiar conditions of the case
which he here presents, follows unswervingly the popular doctrine. It
is only Euripides who can fairly be said to have really suppressed
anything in this part of the story without troubling to justify himself
by the circumstances of Agamemnon’s fate. But even Euripides, though
he simply ignores in his plot the possibility of Agamemnon’s bodily
resuscitation, is faithful to the doctrine that the next of kin was
actuated in seeking vengeance not by simple piety but by a lively fear
of the dead man’s wrath.

Moreover, this conception of the relations subsisting between the
murdered man and his nearest kinsman did not merely furnish the _motif_
of some fine passages of Tragedy; it served also a more prosaic
purpose, and actually formed the basis first of Attic law concerning
blood-guilt, and then of Plato’s Laws in the same connexion.

At Athens, as is well known, the duty of prosecuting a murderer (or
homicide) was imposed by law upon the nearest relative of the murdered
man. But the obligation was not only legal; it was also, and indeed
primarily, religious. The law did no more than affirm and regulate a
custom which religious tradition had long established. To this fact
Antiphon especially bears witness in certain passages[1119] with which
I must deal more fully later; but the whole tenor of his appeals to the
religious feelings and fears of the jury is strictly in accord with the
Maniote doctrine of the present day, save that in one small point he
takes a more merciful view. In Maina it is held that, if the next of
kin fail to avenge the dead man, no matter to what cause the failure be
due, he falls a prey to the dead man’s wrath. Antiphon on the contrary
asserts that, if the next of kin have honestly done his best to bring
the murderer to justice, he will not be punished for failure therein;
and yet he does not represent the dead man as inactive in such a case,
but dares to threaten the jury that the murdered man’s anger will now
descend, not upon his kinsman who has loyally striven to avenge him,
but upon the jury who, by unjustly acquitting and harbouring[1120]
the murderer, make themselves accomplices in his crime and sharers
in his pollution. This difference of opinion however is of minor
importance, and seems to be almost a necessary result of different
social conditions. In ancient Athens the next of kin was required to
proceed against the murderer by legal means, and not to commit a breach
of law and order by personal violence. In modern Maina the kinsman who
should have recourse to law and call in the police would be accounted a
recreant; public opinion requires him to find an opportunity, openly or
by ambush, of slaying the murderer with his own hand; this is to be his
life’s work, if need be, and the possibility of failure, save through
want of enterprise and energy, is hardly contemplated. But as regards
the main issue, namely the belief that the dead man himself is the
prime avenger of his own wrongs and that his kinsman acts only under
his instigation as an assistant in the work, modern superstition has
the entire support both of the drama and of the law of ancient Athens.

Further corroboration is perhaps unnecessary; yet Plato’s legislation
in the matter of homicide must not be passed over; for it possesses
this peculiar interest and importance of its own, that it was
confessedly based upon a religious doctrine which Plato esteemed ‘old
even among the traditions of antiquity[1121].’ From what source he
obtained the doctrine he does not definitely say; but, from a mention
of Delphi in the passage immediately preceding as the supreme authority
in all matters of purification from blood-guilt, it may fairly be
surmised that this too is a piece of Delphic lore. At any rate Plato
accepted it as an authoritative pronouncement to which the homicide
must pay due heed.

‘The doctrine,’ says Plato, ‘is that one who has lived his life in the
spirit of a free man and meets with a violent death is wroth, while
his death is yet recent, against the man who caused it, and when he
sees him going his way in the places where he himself was wont to move,
he strikes[1122] him with the same quaking and terror with which he
himself has been filled by the violence done to him, and in his own
confusion confounds his enemy and all his doings to the utmost of his
power, aided therein by the slayer’s own conscience. And that is why it
is right that the doer of the deed should in deference to the sufferer
withdraw for the full space of the year, and should keep clear of the
whole country which the dead man had frequented as his native land;
and if the dead man be a foreigner the slayer must hold aloof from the
foreigner’s country for the same period. Such then is the law; and, if
a man voluntarily observe it, the dead man’s nearest kinsman, whose
duty it is to look to all this, must respect the slayer, and will
do right to be at peace with him; but, if the slayer disregard this
law and either presume to enter holy places and to sacrifice before
he be purified, or, again, refuse to fulfil the allotted period in
retirement, the nearest of kin must proceed against him on a charge of
homicide, and, if a conviction be obtained, the penalties are to be
doubled. But if the nearest of kin do not seek vengeance for the deed,
it is held that the pollution devolves upon him, and that the sufferer
(i.e. the dead man) turns upon him the suffering (i.e. that which
the homicide himself should have incurred), and anyone who will may
bring a suit against him and obtain a sentence of banishment for five
years[1123].’

Now for a right appreciation of this passage it must be borne in mind
that Plato introduces his old tradition _à propos_ of unintentional
homicide. The actual penalties therefore are of a milder nature than
those with which we have hitherto been concerned. Indeed it is not the
difference in the penalties which should cause any surprise, but rather
that an unintentional act should be punished at all; and it would seem
perhaps that in citing this doctrine Plato sought to justify himself
in retaining a provision of Attic law which at first sight appeared
unjust. In Athens[1124], we know, the involuntary homicide was required
not only to undergo purification but to withdraw for a whole year from
the country of the man whom he had slain. The hardship of this was
manifest, and yet Plato acquiesced in the righteousness of it for the
reason apparently that the year’s retirement[1125] was not a penalty
imposed by the state, but a satisfaction which, according to religious
tradition, the dead man demanded and might even himself enforce.

Plato in fact recognises no less frankly than others the personal
activity of the slain man. He differs indeed in limiting the duration
of that activity, when he says that the dead man’s anger is hot
against the slayer only while his death is still recent, and when by
the provisions of his law he implies that the victim’s desire for
vengeance is fully satisfied by the slayer’s withdrawal for the space
of one year. But this difference is completely explained by the fact
that Plato introduces the tradition in connexion with unintentional
homicide, whereas previously we have had it treated in relation to
wilful murder. Reasonably enough the man who has been accidentally
slain is represented as angry only for a time, while the victim of
deliberate murder nourishes a wrath implacable. The one drives the
author of his misfortune into exile for a year and then repents him
of the evil; the other dogs his enemy with vengeance not only for a
year but throughout his life and even after death; and indeed Plato
himself, when he passes from the subject of involuntary homicide to
that of deliberate murder, proves his recognition of this difference
by his enactments; for, at any rate in the most heinous case, namely
the murder of a near kinsman, he expressly states[1126] that the
old principle ‘as a man hath done, so must he suffer’ admits of no
abatement; the guilty man must die, and his body be left unburied.

But I must not yet enter upon a discussion of the actual punishments
inflicted. Here I am only concerned to point out how completely Plato’s
‘old doctrine’ harmonises with that which we have learnt from other
sources concerning the personal activity of the dead man. First we read
that the dead man terrifies and confounds the slayer to the utmost of
his power, with the aid of the slayer’s own conscience; and then again
that his next of kin is under an obligation to obtain satisfaction
for him, and is punished by him if he neglects that duty. Clearly the
slayer’s own conscience is no more than an instrument--a somewhat
ineffective instrument, one might think, in a case of unintentional
homicide--and the next of kin is no more than a minister, both of them
employed and directed by the dead man himself. He it is who exacts his
own vengeance.

The other literary method of mitigating the crude popular belief in a
bodily _revenant_ hunting down his enemy was to treat the murderer’s
punishment as the result of a curse. Such a curse was denoted usually
by the word μήνιμα, which may perhaps be more exactly rendered by
the phrase ‘a manifestation of wrath (μῆνις)’ on the part of some
supernatural being[1127], whether a god or the departed spirit of a
man; when once provoked by deadly sin such as the murder of a kinsman
or refusal of burial, this curse was held to cleave to the tainted
family from generation to generation.

In the case of blood-guilt, which we are at present considering, the
curse, as was said above, was held either to work spontaneously or to
be executed by some powers of the nether world. The former view is
more rarely adopted, but is clearly enough indicated in one or two
passages of ancient literature. Plato in the _Phaedrus_ speaks of most
grievous sicknesses and sufferings being produced in certain families
as the consequence of ancient curses (παλαιῶν ἐκ μηνιμάτων)[1128]; and
from the reminiscences and verbal echoes of Euripides’ _Orestes_ which
appear in the passage[1129] it is abundantly clear that the particular
family which Plato had in mind was the blood-guilty house of Atreus.
Here then there is no mention of any gods, no suggestion that the curse
was executed by them or in the first instance proceeded from them.
And the negative evidence of Plato’s silence concerning the gods is
turned to certainty by the positive statement of Aeschylus that, if a
son neglect the task of vengeance, ‘betwixt him and the gods’ altars
standeth the unseen barrier of his father’s wrath[1130]’; for if, in
the case of the kinsman who by neglecting the duty of vengeance has
made himself a partaker in the guilt and pollution of the murderer, the
Wrath (μῆνις) by which he is punished both proceeds from the dead man
and, far from needing the gods’ furtherance in order to take effect,
stands as it were on guard to hold the polluted man aloof from their
altars, then surely the Wrath which pursues the murderer himself must
emanate from the same source and possess the same spontaneous efficacy.
The dead man himself then both launches the curse and controls its
course; and probably it was in deference to this doctrine that Plato
formulated his own law, that, even in the case of a father being killed
by his own son, the dying man might with his last breath remit the
curse which such a deed incurred and exempt his son from all except
the purifications and the temporary retirement imposed in cases of
involuntary homicide[1131].

But more frequently the execution of the curse is conceived to be
the work of certain powers of the nether world. These powers however
do not act on their own initiative; they are instigated to the task
of vengeance by the murdered man himself. Here, no less than in the
other renderings of the old tradition, the sufferer himself is the
supreme avenger of his own sufferings. The most famous example of this
conception is furnished by the plot of the _Eumenides_. The Furies
are represented as the servants of Clytemnestra, faithful witnesses
to her wrongs, exactors of blood for blood on her behalf[1132].
When they slumber and allow Orestes to escape the while, her ghost
approaches them in no suppliant manner for all their godhead, but
chides them and urges them afresh, like hounds, upon the quarry’s
trail[1133]. And, most significant of all, there is one passage in
which they say of themselves that the name whereby they are known in
their home beneath the earth is the name of Curses (Ἀραί)[1134]; they
are in fact the personification of those curses which a murdered man
himself directs against his murderer. Nor is this notion confined
to drama. Xenophon is little prone to poetic imaginings; yet he can
find an argument for the immortality of the soul in what he considers
an established fact of human experience, namely, that the spirits
of those who have been unjustly slain inspire terrors in their
murderers’ hearts and ‘send against them’ certain ‘avengers of blood’
(παλαμναίους ἐπιπέμπουσι[1135]). And elsewhere again and again we hear
of the same avengers under a variety of names--μιάστορες, ἀλάστορες,
προστρόπαιοι--names which will receive consideration later and by their
very meaning and usage will confirm once more my contention that,
by whatever instrument or agency the murder is represented as being
avenged, ancient literature only departed from the primitive belief in
bodily _revenants_ executing their own vengeance at the one point at
which the grossness of popular superstition must have offended educated
sensibilities, and followed the old tradition as faithfully as might be
in conceding to the dead man, if not bodily, yet personal, activity.

The same popular beliefs, _mutatis mutandis_, probably attached
also to another class of _revenants_, dead men whose bodies had not
received due burial. The necessary modifications of the superstition
would be two in number. First, the anger of the dead man would not
endure for ever, unless his body had been so treated that burial was
no longer possible, but would cease with the performance of that which
he returned to demand; and secondly, he would not be represented
as using for his agent his next of kin, who in most cases of the
kind would be the very person responsible to him for the neglect of
burial. Literature therefore had here no choice of versions; the
bodily re-appearance of the dead man was reckoned too gross an idea;
the employment of his nearest kinsman to act on his behalf became in
this case impossible; a curse was the only expedient. And this is
the expedient which we actually find adopted. In the _Iliad_ Hector
adjures Achilles not to fulfil his threat of throwing his dead body to
the dogs and to the fowls of the air, but to give him burial, ‘lest,’
he says, ‘I become a cause of the gods’ wrath against thee’--μή τοί
τι θεῶν μήνιμα γένωμαι[1136]--and the self-same phrase is put into
the mouth of Elpenor’s spirit in the _Odyssey_ when he craves due
burial of Odysseus[1137]. The same idea occurs once more in Pindar’s
reference to Phrixus, who bade go unto the halls of Aeetes (for there
in a strange land he had died, and had not received the burial-rites of
his own country) and bring his spirit to rest, and whose bidding Jason
is besought by Pelias to fulfil, for that ‘already doth old age wait
upon me; but with thee the blossom of youth is but burgeoning, and thou
canst put away the wrath of powers beneath[1138].’ In each of these
passages then the actual enforcement of the dead man’s will is by means
of a curse or ‘manifestation of wrath’--for the same word μήνιμα (or
μῆνις) is used; in each case also, as it happens, the curse does not
operate automatically but is executed by gods--the method preferred
also, as we saw, in cases of blood-guilt; but here also, as there, the
personal activity of the dead man is frankly acknowledged; the phrase
of Homer ‘lest I become ...’ and that of Pindar ‘Phrixus doth bid ...’
clearly suggest that the gods were instigated to intervene by the
sufferer himself.

The case then stands thus. We learnt in the last chapter that the
unburied dead no less than the murdered were popularly believed to
become _revenants_. We have since learnt that the murdered, in the
capacity of _revenants_, were popularly believed to avenge their own
wrongs with their own hands, but that ancient literature commonly
presents a modified version of that belief according to which the
personal activity indeed of the dead man is recognised, but the
instrument of his vengeance is a curse executed by demonic agents. We
find now that literature assigns also to the unburied dead the same
personal activity in punishing those whose neglect has caused their
suffering, and by the same means. The reasonable inference is that here
too we have a modified version of a popular belief that the unburied,
like the murdered, not only became _revenants_, which we know, but, in
the capacity of _revenants_, themselves punished those who refused or
neglected to render them their due funeral rites.

Thus the same principle governed the whole system of the punishment
incurred by men who were guilty either of murder or of leaving the
dead unburied--the principle that the dead man whom they had injured
in either of these ways himself requited those injuries. Hence, when
we proceed to examine the actual punishments inflicted, we need no
longer concern ourselves with the fact that literature attributes the
infliction now to the nearest kinsman of the dead man and anon to some
divine avenger; but, whatsoever instrument or agency is employed, we
know that the dead man himself was believed to control and direct
it, and therefore that the punishment thus effected was conceived to
be such as the dead man himself willed and, in popular belief, could
with his own hands enforce. Thus in the _Oresteia_ the punishment of
Clytemnestra is actually effected by Orestes, and again the punishment
of Orestes is entrusted to the Furies; but Orestes is only the minister
of his dead father, carrying out the work of retribution under pain of
incurring the same punishment himself if by inaction he should consent
unto his mother’s crime; and the Furies in like manner are only the
servants of the dead Clytemnestra, instigated by her to their pursuit.
The slaying of Clytemnestra and the sufferings of Orestes are the
punishments which the dead Agamemnon and the dead Clytemnestra, even in
the literary version of the story, impose, and, in a more primitive and
gross form of it, might themselves have inflicted.

But before examining the nature of those punishments in detail, it
will be well to recall the fact that to the eyes of the ancient
Greeks murder or homicide always presented itself in two distinct
aspects[1139]. Regarded from one point of view, it was the gravest
possible injury to the man who was slain. Viewed from the other, it
was a source of ‘pollution’ (μίασμα, μύσος, ἅγος), an abomination to
the gods and a peril to living men; for the taint of bloodshed was
conceived as a contagious physical malady, which the polluted person
by touch or even by speech[1140] might communicate to his fellow-men,
and not to them only, but to places which he visited, the market,
the harbours, the temples[1141]; nay, even the sanctity of the gods’
images was not proof against the contamination of his bloodstained
hands[1142]. In brief, the two aspects of homicide were the moral and
the religious aspects; and both moral and religious atonements were
required. The wrong done to the dead man was requited by the sufferings
which he in turn imposed; the pollution, being primarily a state of
religious disability (for it involved, as Plato says[1143], the enmity
of the gods), was removed by a religious ceremony of purification.

How clearly marked was this distinction in antiquity is evident from
Plato’s laws on homicide, as a brief consideration of two or three
special cases will show.

First, in the most venial case of homicide, where a man had killed his
own slave, he incurred no punishment at all, but was bound none the
less to get himself purified[1144].

Secondly, in cases of the utmost enormity, as where a man wilfully
murdered his father or mother, religion provided no means of
purification. Blood-guilt in general was ‘hard to cure’; but parricide
belonged to the class of sins ‘incurable[1145].’ Such a murderer
therefore must die, for, as Plato says, ‘there is no other kind
of purification’ in this case than the paying of blood for blood.
Religious purification in the ordinary sense of the word was refused,
but the extreme punishment was demanded.

Thirdly, in the majority of cases of blood-guilt, where both
purification and punishment were required, the two were clearly
independent of each other. The purification of the involuntary
homicide was to precede the year’s retirement[1146]. The religious
ceremony cleansed the man from pollution, but could no more exempt him
from making satisfaction to the dead man whom he had wronged, than
absolution of sin pronounced in the Christian confessional can exempt
from the legal consequences of crime. The Delphic priesthood itself, if
we may trust the testimony of Aeschylus, claimed no more than the power
to cleanse; for Apollo himself, holding Orestes guilty of manslaughter
though not of murder, after granting him religious purification, does
not intervene to save him from that exile which even the unintentional
homicide was bidden by Attic law to undergo; nay, he even acquiesces
in the necessity of Orestes’ flight, bids him not faint before his
wanderings are done, and promises only to set a limit thereto and to
free him from the pursuing Furies in the end[1147].

The distinction between the pollution and the injury, and between
the purification and the punishment, being thus clearly recognised,
it is necessary, in investigating the relations between the dead man
and his murderer, to set the purely religious aspect of blood-guilt
on one side, and to treat the punishments inflicted upon the murderer
simply as the settling of an account between man and man. One point
only as regards the pollution need be borne in mind, namely, that
purification was granted to the homicide in the interests of gods and
men whose abodes would otherwise be defiled by his presence, and that
the dead man could not conceivably derive any satisfaction therefrom.
On the contrary, his desire for vengeance would naturally lead him to
interpose ‘the unseen barrier of his wrath’ betwixt the guilty man and
those altars of the gods where alone purification could be won, and
thus to keep his enemy still polluted; for his pollution, just because
it was a peril to his fellowmen, carried with it the punishment of
utter solitude until he was cleansed. When therefore, as will appear
later, the murdered man is described not only as an avenger of his own
wrongs, but as one who strives to keep alive the religious defilement
of the murderer, there is no confusion of the moral and the religious
aspects of murder, but rather the injured man is conceived as wreaking
his vengeance by every possible means, not only directly by the
sufferings which he can personally inflict, but also indirectly by the
privation which the state of pollution necessarily involves.

The nature of the direct acts of vengeance, which are now to be
examined, can best be learnt from that passage of the _Choephori_
which depicts the horrible penalties awaiting Orestes if by inaction
he should make himself a consenter to the crime of Clytemnestra. We
have already learnt that in such a case the defaulting kinsman incurred
precisely the same punishment as he should have assisted to inflict on
the actual murderer. That therefore with which Orestes was threatened
was that to which Clytemnestra was already condemned. The punishments
named are those with which, according to popular superstition, a
murdered man, risen in bodily substance from the grave, could requite
his enemy. For no one, I suppose, would suggest that Aeschylus,
who followed popular tradition so scrupulously in all that did not
absolutely conflict with dramatic propriety, invented for himself the
whole scheme of penalties here set forth. That he was bound to modify
the means whereby the punishments were inflicted, in order to avoid
the incongruity of a _revenant_ upon the stage, we already know and
shall see again; but how closely he adhered to the popularly accepted
scheme of punishments, even when he was forced to find some new means
of inflicting them, will incidentally be shown by that detailed
examination to which his list of penalties must now be subjected.

The first penalty is the physical torment of leprous blains that
consume the body and age the sufferer prematurely. At first we are
inclined to wonder why leprosy is selected by the dead man as his
means of retaliation against his enemy; but a little reflection will
lead us to guess that in this particular act of vengeance Aeschylus
could not actually reproduce the popular doctrine. The common-folk
believed in the bodily activity of the dead; and, if they believed
also that bodily sufferings were part of the punishment which the
murderer incurred, the two beliefs must surely have been correlated;
the physical sufferings of the murderer must have been conceived to be
caused by the physical activity of the murdered; or, to put it more
plainly, if we may elucidate ancient superstition by the aid of modern,
the murdered man, in the form of a _revenant_ bent on vengeance, was
believed to leap upon his victim and rend him with his teeth and suck
out his very life-blood. Clearly Aeschylus could not commit himself to
so crude a presentation of a _revenant_; he could not conjure up before
his audience the spectacle of the dead Agamemnon athirst for actual
blood; but equally clearly he knew that popular superstition, and had
it in his mind when he depicted the horrors of leprosy. For the bodily
assault of a _revenant_ he substituted a natural malady engendered by a
dead man’s unseen wrath; but he described the operation of that malady
in language suggested by the popular presentment of a personal avenger
more reasonable indeed in his purpose but scarcely less ferocious in
his acts than a Slavonic vampire--‘blains that leap upon the flesh
and with savage jaws eat out its erstwhile vigour[1148].’ The means
of inflicting the punishment is changed, but the actual punishment of
the murderer is the same as if it were not leprosy but in very truth
a vampire, which leapt upon him and gnawed his flesh and drained his
life-blood. So faithful is Aeschylus to the crude popular idea of a
retribution which required that he who had spilled another’s blood
should have his own blood drunk by his victim.

The second penalty is the mental agony of one whom ‘madness and vain
terror sprung of the darkness do shake and confound[1149].’ Here again
the punishment is in strict accord with that law that a man must suffer
as he has wrought. That old tradition recorded and revered by Plato,
on which I have already touched, taught that every man who was slain
by violence was himself filled thereby with quaking and terror and
confusion of spirit, and accordingly sought his revenge in terrifying
and confounding the slayer. No clearer commentary on the lines of
Aeschylus could be desired. Plato explains how the terror and the
confusion--for he employs the selfsame words as Aeschylus--by which the
murderer is overwhelmed are the exact counterpart of the mental anguish
which his violence brought upon his victim. Aeschylus then once
again was following closely an old tradition of the popular religion.
It matters not at all that in this case he names the Erinyes as the
agents, just as previously he made leprosy the instrument, of the dead
man’s vengeance. The actual sufferings which the murderer must undergo
are in this case also identical in character with those which he caused
to his victim.

The third punishment of the blood-guilty man consists in wandering
friendless and outcast; and this again is no arbitrary invention of
Aeschylus, but was clearly prescribed by that old tradition which,
in Plato’s reckoning, justified the legal imposition of a year’s
retirement even upon those who had shed blood involuntarily. Where
then is that correspondence, which our examination of the first two
penalties has led us to expect, between this third punishment and the
sufferings of the dead man who exacts it? Is there the same nicety
of retribution? Clearly so. The dead man became in popular belief a
_revenant_, a wanderer from out the grave, pitiable in his loneliness,
cut off from all friendly intercourse with living men, not yet admitted
to the fellowship of the departed, the sorriest of outcasts. Such was
the misery to which the murderer by his act of violence had brought his
victim; such therefore too the misery which the murderer himself must
taste in his wanderings and loneliness here on earth, though it were
but a foretaste of more consummate misery hereafter. Truly even in life
the murderer was made to suffer as he had wrought.

And then comes the fourth penalty, death; for though Aeschylus, in
the list of punishments which we have now before us, touches but
lightly on this, the most obvious form of retribution, yet elsewhere
he repeatedly affirms, and many another re-echoes, the doctrine that
blood cries for blood[1150]. Perhaps in this passage he felt that by
depicting the gnawing pangs of leprosy he had sufficiently proclaimed
the sure approach of death; perhaps he passed it by as a slight thing
in comparison with the horror that yet remained to be told. For death
did not close the tale of punishments; the blood-guilty man, so chant
the Furies, ‘though he be dead is none too free[1151].’

And so we pass to the last requirement of vengeance, that the
outcast shall have no friend to honour his dead body with the due
funeral-rites, whereby alone the desired dissolution could be secured,
but is doomed to lie unburied, incorruptible. Such is my interpretation
of the closing lines of the passage before us; and there is no need
to repeat the defence of my contention that the word ταριχευθέντα
must be understood in its literal and proper sense. But it will not
be out of place to note here how, in the _Eumenides_, Aeschylus’ mind
was still pervaded by the same popular belief. The word ταριχεύεσθαι
means, in the literal sense in which I have taken it, to be withheld
from corruption by some process of curing or drying; and, fantastic
though it may seem, it is that process of ‘drying,’ if I may use
the word, which the Furies are charged by Clytemnestra to carry out
against her murderer. Let Aeschylus’ own words prove it. Hear first how
Clytemnestra’s ghost with her last words spurs on the Furies to this
special task:

    σὺ δ’ αἱματηρὸν πνεῦμ’ ἐπουρίσασα τῷ,
    ἀτμῷ κατισχναίνουσα, νηδύος πυρὶ,
    ἕπου, μάραινε δευτέροις διώγμασιν[1152].

    ‘Up and pursue! let thy breath lap his blood
    With sering reek, as were thy bowels a furnace,
    Till he be shrivelled in the redoubled chase.’

And the Furies prove by their threats to Orestes that they are not
unmindful of their charge. ‘Nay, in return for the blood thou hast
shed, thou must give me to suck the red juices from thy living limbs.
Thyself must be my meat, my horrid drink.’ ‘Yea, while thou livest, I
will drain thee dry, ere I hale thee ’neath the earth[1153].’ And the
same thought is emphasized yet again in that binding-spell which the
Furies chant to draw him whom they already account their prey from his
vain refuge at Athene’s altar:

        ἐπὶ δὲ τῷ τεθυμένῳ
    τόδε μέλος, παρακοπὰ, παραφορὰ φρενοδαλής,
        ὕμνος ἐξ Ἐρινύων,
    δέσμιος φρενῶν, ἀφόρμικτος, αὐονὰ βροτοῖς[1154].

    ‘Over our victim thus chant we our spell,
    Rocking and wrecking the torturèd soul,
        The jubilant song of Avengers,
    Fettering the soul with no ’witchments of lute,
        A spell as of drought[1155] upon mortals.’

Such is the wild, weird refrain of the Furies’ incantation; and in its
closing phrase are re-echoed the closing words of Clytemnestra’s charge.

Will anyone then venture to say that Aeschylus had no special reason
for thus repeating thrice within the compass of some two hundred lines
the same threat? For the punishment threatened is substantially the
same, though the means of inflicting it vary. Now it is the breath of
the Furies which shall scorch up the victim’s very blood; now it is
their lips that shall suck him dry; now a magic spell to parch and
shrivel him; but ever the effect is the same; the bloodguilty man
shall lie in death a sere and sapless carcase, already ‘damned to
incorruption[1156] even in that doom which wastes all else.’ And the
only reason which I can conceive for the poet’s insistence upon this
thought is that here again, as in all the former punishments, he was
reproducing a popular belief substantially the same then as it is in
Maina now, namely, that the murdered man, having become a _revenant_,
sucked his murderer’s blood and made him also in his turn a _revenant_.

Nor is Aeschylus the only ancient authority for the idea of some such
retribution after death. Plato, in a passage of the _Phaedrus_ already
cited, contemplates the activity of a murdered man’s wrath (μήνιμα)
not only in the present time but also hereafter[1157]; and in his
_Laws_ there is a provision, not assuredly of his own devising but
dating from the very beginning of Greek legislation, which can only
have been designed to insure the complete vengeance of the murdered
man on his murderer even beyond death. A man convicted of the wilful
murder of a near kinsman[1158] was punishable not only with death but
with a further penalty: ‘the attendants of the jury and the magistrates
having killed him shall cast out his corpse naked at an appointed
cross-roads without the city, and all the magistrates, representing
the whole city, shall take each a stone and cast it upon the head of
the corpse and thereby free the whole city from guilt, and thereafter
they shall carry the corpse to the borders of their land and cast it
out, in accordance with the law, unburied[1159].’ Now the law, we know,
in ordaining the penalty of death, ordained it as a satisfaction of
the murdered man’s claims to vengeance. The State, so to speak, sided
with the dead man and assisted him to exact blood for blood. Again the
stoning of the dead body by representatives of the city was intended,
we are expressly told, to free the whole city from guilt--from guilt,
that is, in the eyes of the murdered man, who might otherwise visit
his wrath upon the city as though it had consented to the crime or had
too lightly punished it. Can it then be supposed that the State was
actuated by any other motive in carrying out the rest of the penalty?
It was surely still in deference to the murdered man’s desires that the
murderer’s corpse was left unburied. To refuse burial was the surest
means of condemning the man to resuscitation and thereby of satisfying
his former victim’s uttermost demands.

Thus our detailed examination of the Aeschylean catalogue of penalties
establishes beyond doubt that of which we had already had some
evidence, namely, that all the punishments which were inflicted on
the murderer--and, in popular belief, inflicted by the murdered man
on his own behalf--were an exact reproduction of the sufferings which
the murdered man himself had undeservingly endured, and culminated
therefore, as they should, in the blood-guilty man becoming, like his
victim, a _revenant_.

The main problem then of this section is now fully solved; but
incidentally much light has been thrown upon the character ascribed
by the Greek people in antiquity to those _revenants_ who were not
merely pitiable sufferers but were active in bringing a like doom
upon those who had wronged them. And the character of these Avengers
approximates very closely to that of the modern _vrykolakes_. True,
there is one fundamental difference; the ancient Avenger directed his
wrath solely against the author of his sufferings, or at the most
extended it only to those who, owing to him the duty of furthering his
vengeance, had proved lax and cowardly therein; the modern _vrykolakas_
is unreasoning in his wrath and plagues indiscriminately all who fall
in his way. But the actual sufferings which the _vrykolakas_ inflicts
are identical with those which furnished Aeschylus with his tale of
threatened horrors. Modern stories there are in plenty, which tell
how the _vrykolakas_ springs upon his victim and rends him and drinks
his blood; how sheer terror of his aspect has driven men mad; how, in
order to escape him, whole families have been driven forth from their
native island to wander in exile[1160]; how death has often been the
issue of his assaults; and how those whom a _vrykolakas_ has slain
become themselves _vrykolakes_. Only his unreasoning and indiscriminate
fury is necessarily of Slavonic origin; his acts are the acts of those
ancient _revenants_ whose own wrongs rightfully made them the Avengers
of blood. Apart from the one Slavonic trait, the characters of the
_vrykolakas_ and the ancient Avenger are identical.

And perhaps this identity is most clearly seen in the one case in which
the old Avenger punished not only the immediate author of his own
wrongs, but a whole community which had subsequently given the guilty
man an asylum. We have noticed how Antiphon ventured to threaten an
Athenian jury with such punishment at the hands of the dead man if they
wrongfully acquitted his murderer. In the same spirit Aeschylus makes
the Furies, as the agents of the dead Clytemnestra, menace the whole
land of Attica with a venomous curse that shall blast man and beast and
herb in revenge for the wresting of Orestes from their grasp[1161].
And such too is the dread which in the _Phoenissae_ of Euripides stirs
Creon to make to the blood-guilty Oedipus this appeal: ‘Nay, remove
thee hence: verily ’tis not in scorn that I say this, nor in enmity to
thee, but because of thine Avengers, in fear lest the land suffer some
hurt[1162].’ In such cases the punishments with which a whole community
is threatened, although still a reasonable measure, approach most
nearly to the indiscriminate violence of the modern _vrykolakas_.

For the fulfilment of such threats as these we must turn to the
_Supplices_ of Aeschylus, and there we shall find a description of just
such a devastation as is said to have been suffered by the inhabitants
of Santorini and many other places in the seventeenth century. The
story of Aeschylus tells how ‘there came unto the Argive land, from
the shore of Naupactus, Apis, son of Apollo, both healer and seer,
and cleansed the land of monsters that destroyed mankind, even of
those that Earth, tainted with the pollutions of blood shed of old,
sent up in wrath to work havoc, fearsome as a dragon-brood to dwell
among[1163].’ What then were these monsters? I will venture to say
that any Greek peasant of to-day, could he but read and understand
the Aeschylean description, would furnish a better commentary upon
those lines than the most learned discourse thereon that any scholar
has written; and his commentary would be summed up in the one word
_vrykolakes_. For, vigorous as the description is, its vigour comes
less of dramatic word-building than of fidelity to the horrors of
popular superstition, and no other single passage could so fully
establish the unity of ancient and modern belief. For while the actual
language contains all the words[1164] which in antiquity were bound
up with the superstition--the ‘pollution’ which comes of bloodshed,
the ‘wrath’ which follows thereon and in which Earth herself is here
made to share, and the ‘sending up’ by Earth of the Avengers--the
thought of the passage is a faithful reflection of what the Greek
peasants still believe, that a violent death is among the chief causes
of resuscitation, that the earth sends up the dead man raging to deal
destruction, and that with others of his kind he consorts and conspires
in veritable dragon-bands; and men still tell of gifted seers and
healers, such as Apis, summoned in hot haste to panic-stricken hamlets
to allay the pest. The κνώδαλα βροτοφθόρα of Aeschylus, ‘the monsters
that destroy mankind,’ are indeed but little removed from the modern
_vrykolakes_.

Is it not then clear also on what sources Aeschylus drew for his
picture of the Furies themselves? We have seen how, for dramatic
purposes, they were substituted for a _revenant_ wreaking his own
vengeance. Clytemnestra herself in bodily form should have been the
Avenger, if popular superstition had not been in this respect too
gross; but the Erinyes take her place in the actual execution of
vengeance, and she herself appears only as a ghost to instigate them
to their work. But, when that substitution was effected, did not
Aeschylus clearly transfer to the Erinyes the whole character and
even the appearance popularly attributed to the human Avenger? They
are black and loathly to look upon[1165]; their breath is deadly
to approach[1166]; the smell of blood is a joy to them[1167]; they
follow like hounds upon their victim’s trail[1168]; they torment him
both body and soul[1169]; they fasten upon his living limbs and gorge
themselves with his blood[1170]; and if any would harbour him from
their pursuit, the venom of their wrath falls like a plague upon the
land, and devastates it[1171]; they are monsters, κνώδαλα[1172]--and
the recurrence of this word is significant--abhorrent alike to gods
and to men[1173]. The description is surely not that which Aeschylus
would himself have invented for beings who should come afterwards to be
worshipped as ‘revered goddesses,’ σεμναὶ θεαί. The difficulty of that
transition in the play itself cannot but arrest the attention of every
reader; it is a difficulty which even the genius of Aeschylus could not
remove. Why then did he draw so loathsome a portrait of the Erinyes
in the earlier part of the play? Why did he create that difficulty?
The reason, I suggest, was that he followed once more, and this time
almost too faithfully, the popular traditions, and, while he would not
represent a real _revenant_ on the stage, transferred to those demonic
agents, by whom the work of vengeance was vicariously performed, all
the attributes popularly associated with the prototypes of the modern
_vrykolakas_.

Thus then the history of the modern belief in _vrykolakes_ has been
fully traced. The ancients also believed that for certain causes--the
same causes in the main as are still assigned--men were doomed to
remain incorruptible after death and to rise again in bodily form from
their graves, and that one class of these _revenants_, those namely
who had wrongs of their own to avenge, inflicted upon their enemies
(and upon any who shielded or harboured them) the same sufferings as
are now generally believed to be inflicted in an unreasoning manner
by all classes of _vrykolakes_ alike upon mankind at large, with no
justification, such as a natural desire for vengeance might afford,
in the case of those whose resuscitation is not the outcome of any
injury or neglect at the hands of other men, and with no discrimination
between friend and foe on the part of those who have real wrongs
to avenge. Remove the unreasoning element in the character of the
_vrykolakas_, and the _revenant_ in which the folk of ancient Greece
believed remains.

But, if they believed in him, they must have called him by some
name. Aeschylus’ phrase κνώδαλα βροτοφθόρα, ‘monsters that destroy
mankind,’ is a description rather than a name. What were the reasonable
_vrykolakes_ of ancient Greece called? That is now the one question
which must be answered in order to make our enquiry complete.

Briefly my answer is this, that the particular class of _revenants_
with which the present section has mainly dealt, the Avengers of blood,
were known by three several names, μιάστωρ, ἀλάστωρ, and προστρόπαιος,
but that literature contains no word which could serve as a collective
designation for all classes alike. I hope however to show that the
Greek language was not originally defective in this respect, but that
the term ἀλάστωρ, although regularly used from the fifth century
onwards in the narrow sense of an Avenger, had originally a wider
application and denoted simply a _revenant_.

Now the interpretation which I give to these three words is not that
which is commonly accepted. Anyone who will turn to a lexicon will
find that to each of the three is assigned a double signification
in connexion with blood-guilt. All three are said to denote either
a god who punishes the blood-guilty or the blood-guilty man who is
punished. Thus a god, it is alleged, may be called μιάστωρ (literally
a ‘polluter’) because he punishes the polluted--a somewhat obvious
misnomer; or again ἀλάστωρ, because he ‘does not forget’ but punishes
the sinner--a derivation which, as I shall show later, cannot be
accepted; or thirdly προστρόπαιος, as the being who was ‘turned to’
by the murdered man and was besought to avenge his cause--a somewhat
circuitous way for the word to arrive at its active sense of ‘Avenger.’
And, secondly, a man, it is said, was called μιάστωρ when, being
himself polluted, he was liable to be ‘a polluter’ of other men with
whom he came in contact--a view which is certainly defensible; ἀλάστωρ
as one whose sin ‘could not be forgotten’--an interpretation almost
beyond the pale of serious discussion; and προστρόπαιος because,
being blood-guilty, he ‘turned towards’ some god for purification--an
explanation which may be right--whence the word came to denote in
general a polluted person who still needed purification.

Thus in my view, as I have indicated, the greater part of the
information in the lexicons with regard to these three words is
inaccurate; and my reasons for disputing the received interpretations
will be set forth point by point as I offer my own interpretations in
their stead.

In dealing with the first group of meanings assigned to the three
words, by which they came, somehow or other, to be used with the common
active signification of ‘Avenger,’ my main contention will be that,
as regards their primary and strictest usage, all three words were
applied not to gods but to men--men who, having been murdered, sought
to requite their murderers--and were only secondarily extended to the
agents, whether divine or human, to whom those dead men committed the
task of vengeance; but I shall also endeavour to show, as regards the
literal meaning of the three words severally, that the interpretation
by means of which their final sense of ‘Avenger’ has generally been
elicited from them is in each case wrong, and that, in the case of
the word ἀλάστωρ in particular, a right understanding of its original
meaning gives very important results.

And in dealing with the second group of meanings, by which the three
words are said to denote three only slightly different aspects of
one and the same person--a murderer who is μιάστωρ as polluted and
spreading pollution, ἀλάστωρ as pursued by vengeance, and προστρόπαιος
as still needing purification--I shall maintain that these alleged uses
of the first two words do not exist, and, as regards the third, I will
offer a suggestion, but a suggestion only, as to the means by which it
acquired this signification which it unquestionably bore.

It will be convenient to deal first with μιάστωρ and ἀλάστωρ as being
parallel in usage throughout, and to reserve προστρόπαιος for later
consideration.

The clearest example of that which I take to be the original usage
of μιάστωρ is furnished by Euripides. In that scene of mutual
recrimination between Medea and Jason, after that in revenge for her
husband’s faithlessness she has slain their children, there comes
at last from her lips the brutal taunt, as she points to the dead,
‘They live no more: that truth at least will sting thee’; and Jason
answers, ‘Nay, but they live, to wreak vengeance on thy head (σῷ κάρᾳ
μιάστορες)[1174].’ No language could be more simple, more explicit. The
very children who lay there murdered at Medea’s feet, they and none
other should be the _Miastores_, the Avengers of their own foul deaths.

But of course the word has other applications also. When
Aeschylus[1175] made the Erinyes threaten that even when Orestes should
have fled beneath the earth, he should find another Avenger (μιάστορα)
to plague him in their stead, the whole tenor of the passage compels
us to understand that that other Avenger is some deity or demon of the
nether world--a divine, not a human, _Miastor_, though at the same
time one who will act, like the Erinyes themselves, on behalf of the
murdered Clytemnestra.

And, yet again, the same term is applied to a living man, when, as
next of kin to him who has been murdered, he is in duty bound to exact
vengeance. This time Sophocles is our authority, and the person of whom
the word is used is Orestes. ‘Oft,’ says Electra to Clytemnestra, ‘oft
hast thou reproached me with saving him to take vengeance upon thee
(σοὶ τρέφειν μιάστορα)[1176].’

These three passages then illustrate the threefold application of the
name _Miastor_, and the question to be answered is which represents the
primary usage of the word. To multiply instances of each or any would
be of no avail; the question is not of the frequency of each usage; the
commonest is not necessarily the earliest. How then is the question
to be answered? It is, I think, already answered. We have seen that
in popular belief the murdered man was the prime avenger of his own
wrongs, and that even in literature, when the execution of vengeance
is wholly transferred either to the nearest kinsman or to some demonic
power, the murdered man is still recognised as the principal and
the others are only his agents. It is this relation between them
which settles the question. A principal does not act in the name of
his agents, but the agents in the name of their principal. The name
_Miastor_ therefore belonged first to the dead man himself, and was
only extended afterwards to those who wrought vengeance on his behalf.

So much for the usage of the word. Next, how did it acquire the
meaning of ‘Avenger,’ which it undoubtedly possessed? This can be
only a matter of opinion. But since it appears to me unscholarly and
illogical to suppose that a word, which on the grounds of formation
must have first meant ‘one who causes pollution,’ could have come to
mean ‘one who punishes pollution,’ I may at least offer an alternative
suggestion. The murdered man, I admit, can hardly be said to have
‘caused’ the pollution of his murderer, or at any rate he could only
have caused it involuntarily. But he might well be regarded as active
in debarring the murderer from the means of purification and in keeping
the pollution, as it were, fresh and virulent, with intent to isolate
his enemy and to ban him from the abodes of his fellow-men. And some
indication of such an activity is afforded by the Erinyes--acting,
as always, on Clytemnestra’s behalf; they refuse to acknowledge the
purification granted by Apollo to Orestes, and they say moreover that
their task is to ‘keep dark and fresh the stain of blood[1177].’ The
murdered man may therefore have been believed, if not actually to cause
and to create, yet at least to promote and to re-create, the pollution
of his foe, and, by keeping the stains of blood as it were from fading
or being cleansed away, to wreak some part of his vengeance. In this
way the transition from the sense of ‘polluter’ to that of ‘avenger’ is
at least, I submit, intelligible. This however is only a side-issue.
The important point is that the word _Miastor_, however it may have
come to mean ‘Avenger,’ was primarily applied to the _revenant_
himself, and only secondarily to any god.

The next name to be considered, ἀλάστωρ, is commonly accounted a
synonym of μιάστωρ, denoting in actual usage a ‘god of vengeance,’
and meaning literally ‘one who does not forget’ blood-guiltiness. I
too hold it to be a synonym of _Miastor_, but to denote therefore
primarily not a god but a human _revenant_ seeking vengeance, and only
afterwards, by a transference of usage, a god or living man acting in
the name of the dead; while, as for the supposed derivation, I count it
absolutely untenable.

And first as regards the application of the word; after what has
been, I hope, a fairly exhaustive study of the passages of classical
literature in which it occurs, I am bound to confess that, though the
instances of its use are far more numerous than those of _Miastor_,
I am still unable to select three passages and to say ‘Here are my
proofs of the triple application of the word.’ Indeed all that I can
prove by the evidence of any single passage taken alone is curiously
enough the existence of what I take to have been the rarest of the
three usages--the application of the name _Alastor_ to the kinsman of
the dead man, as being the agent of his vengeance. Just as Sophocles
speaks of Orestes being preserved as a _Miastor_ to take vengeance
on Clytemnestra for his father’s death, so does Aeschylus make the
same Orestes name himself an _Alastor_ on the score of the vengeance
which he has taken. ‘Queen Athene,’ he prays, ‘at Loxias’ bidding am
I come; receive thou me graciously, avenger as I am, no murderer,
nor of defiled hand ... ἀλάστορα, οὐ προστρόπαιον, οὐδ’ ἀφοίβαντον
χέρα[1178].’ Such, I am convinced, is the right rendering of the
passage. The lexicons indeed cite the line as an example of the alleged
passive meaning of ἀλάστωρ--one who suffers from divine vengeance, an
accursed wretch[1179]; and I acknowledge that such a meaning would
make passable sense of the passage; for Orestes was indeed suffering
from the vengeance of the Erinyes. But I hold, and I shall endeavour
to prove later, that ἀλάστωρ never possessed a passive meaning, and I
claim moreover that the active meaning of ‘Avenger,’ which I attribute
to the word here as elsewhere, is immensely preferable in itself. For
Orestes throughout pleads justification[1180]; he has avenged murder,
not committed it; he has discharged a duty to his dead sire, not
perpetrated a wanton crime against his mother; he slew her indeed,
but his motive was pious, and the ordaining of his act divine. On the
grounds therefore, first, of the word’s own active meaning, secondly,
of the whole trend of Orestes’ defence of his conduct, and last, but by
no means least, of the exact parallel furnished by Sophocles’ use of
the word _Miastor_, I am confident that _Alastor_ as applied by Orestes
to himself means an ‘Avenger.’

That the word however was not primarily applied to the kinsman acting
on behalf of the murdered man will be universally conceded; in the
vast majority of passages some supernatural being is clearly intended.
But it has been too hastily assumed that the supernatural avengers
were always gods or demons; that they were often so conceived I do not
doubt; but, as a matter of fact, I have discovered no single passage of
classical literature which can be said finally and absolutely in itself
to demand that interpretation. In many instances the probabilities are
in favour of the _Alastores_ being regarded as a class of avenging
demons; in many others it is equally good or even better to suppose
that they are the dead men themselves in person.

What then are the foundations upon which the received notion, that
the _Alastores_ were always gods, is based? It might perhaps be urged
that the word _Alastor_ found a place among the many epithets and
titles conferred by worshippers upon Zeus[1181] in order to indicate
the particular exercise of his all-reaching power which their hearts
desired. It might also be urged that Clement of Alexandria names
the _Alastores_ among those classes of gods whom the pagan Greeks
had evolved from the naughtiness of their own imagination as types
and personifications of the baser human passions[1182]. But neither
of these facts can serve to substantiate the contention that the
_Alastores_ were primarily and necessarily gods. The occasional use
of a word as an epithet of Zeus cannot be held to prove the general
appropriation of that word to a class of lesser gods; while the
statement of Clement is the statement of a man designedly vilifying the
whole Greek religion, neither appreciating nor desirous to appreciate
its refinements, but willing rather to overwhelm it utterly, its better
and its worse elements alike, with the torrent of his invective and
reprobation. To him the _Alastores_ appeared as supernatural beings
instinct with the pagan passion of revenge, false gods therefore
or devils, fit objects whereon to pour out the vials of righteous
wrath and Christian scorn. He was not concerned to be wholly just or
wholly accurate. Indeed the very sources from which he drew the idea
that the _Alastores_ were gods are still open to us; it is the Greek
Tragedians whom he holds guilty of this naughty invention; it is the
Greek Tragedians who remain for us the fountain-head of information
concerning these Avengers, and who will on examination make it clear
that they were not primarily or necessarily gods.

The single passage in Greek Tragedy which has been often regarded
as evidence in favour of Clement’s classification of _Alastores_
among gods is on fuller enquiry rather a refutation of that view. In
the _Persae_ of Aeschylus the messenger, who reports to the queen
the disaster which has befallen the Persian fleet, sets it down to
supernatural agency:

    ἦρξεν μὲν ὦ δέσποινα, τοῦ παντὸς κακοῦ
    φανεὶς ἀλάστωρ ἢ κακὸς δαίμων ποθέν[1183].

This has generally been taken to mean that the beginning of the
disaster was due to the sudden appearance of ‘some vengeful or
malicious deity.’ But elsewhere in Tragedy ἀλάστωρ is treated not as
adjective but as substantive; and, since there is no compulsion to
suppose other than the ordinary use of the word here, it appears better
to translate the phrase ‘some Avenger or some malicious god.’ In other
words the real, if unemphatic, contrast implied in the phrase is not
between ἀλάστωρ and κακός--no contrast is possible there[1184]--but
between ἀλάστωρ and δαίμων. The inference therefore is rather that the
_Alastor_ in this passage was not conceived as a deity.

There are other passages of Greek Tragedy also in which the balance
of probability seems to me to incline towards interpreting the name
_Alastor_ in the sense of a _revenant_ and not of a god. Two such occur
in the _Medea_ of Euripides--the same play, be it noted, which contains
that perfectly plain statement that the dead children of Medea are
themselves the _Miastores_ who will punish her. The first is in the
scene in which Medea works herself up to the perpetration of her crime.
Passionate love of her children, passionate jealousy and fury against
their father, alternate in tragic turmoil, until the tense agony of
spirit is let loose in that fierce oath,

    ‘No, by the Avengers that lurk deep in hell,
    Ne’er shall it come to pass that I should leave
    My children to mine enemies’ despite.
    Most surely they must die; and since they must,
    ’Twas my womb bare them, ’tis my hand shall slay[1185].’

Strong and terrible would be the oath even if the _Alastores_,
whose wrath Medea thus defies, were gods or spirits; but the force
and the horror are doubled, if the _Alastores_ here are of the same
order as those whom Jason names _Miastores_ but a little later in the
same drama, and if therefore among those Avengers, in whose name the
murderous oath was sworn, were soon to be numbered those very children
whom Medea loved best and yet bound herself to slay most foully.

The second passage occurs in Jason’s outburst of fury against Medea
when he first learns her crime. ‘’Tis thine Avenger whom the gods have
let light on me; for truly thou didst slay thine own brother at his
own hearth, or ever thou didst set foot in Argo’s shapely hull[1186].’
Surely we are meant to understand that the dead Absyrtus is himself
the _Alastor_--for one _Alastor_ only is named this time, and that
too as distinct from the gods (θεοί)--and that Jason diverted to
himself a portion of the dead man’s wrath by wedding the blood-guilty
woman. Again then the interpretation of _Alastor_ in the same sense in
which, only a little later in the same scene, _Miastor_ is undoubtedly
employed is, if not necessary, yet vastly preferable.

To review here all the passages of Greek Tragedy in which the word may
advantageously be so understood, when at the same time no single one of
them constitutes a final proof of my view, would be to encumber this
enquiry to no purpose; but I may perhaps be permitted to select one
instance from a story of blood-guilt other than that of which Medea is
the centre.

This shall be from that scene in the _Hercules Furens_ in which the
hero, sane now and overwhelmed with horror at the ghastly slaughter of
his own children which in a moment of sudden madness he had wrought,
receives from Theseus some measure of consolation and advice. Early in
that colloquy, ere yet Theseus has had time to soothe the sufferings or
to guide the course of his stricken friend, Heracles cries to him in
bitterness of soul,

    Theseus, hast view’d my triumph o’er my children?

and Theseus answers with gentle simplicity,

    I heard, and now I see the woes thou showst me.

And then follow the lines:

    ΗΡ. τί δῆτά μου κρᾶτ’ ἀνεκάλυψας ἡλίῳ;
    ΘΗ. τί δ’ οὐ; μιαίνεις θνητὸς ὢν τὰ τῶν θεῶν;
    ΗΡ. φεῦγ’, ὦ ταλαίπωρ’, ἀνόσιον μίασμ’ ἐμόν.
    ΘΗ. οὐδεὶς ἀλάστωρ τοῖς φίλοις ἐκ τῶν φίλων[1187].

    _Her._ Why then hast bared my head before the Sun?
    _Thes._ Nay, wherefore not? canst thou--mere man--taint godhead?
    _Her._ Yet flee thyself, risk not my taint of blood-guilt.
    _Thes._ Where love joins, bloodshed to no vengeance moves.

It is the connexion and significance of the last two lines which I
wish briefly to discuss. Theseus has used the word ‘taint’ (μιαίνεις),
and Heracles at once seizes on it, emphasizes it, and warns his friend
to begone lest he be contaminated; and then Theseus answers (to give
a literal rendering) ‘No Avenger of blood proceeds from them that
love against them that love.’ What does this mean? The line is often
translated as if Theseus meant, ‘No, I will stay, for though an Avenger
of blood may probably pursue you, Heracles, I have no fear that he will
touch me who love you as a friend[1188].’ A generous and sympathetic
utterance indeed! And how consistent with that fine burst of feeling
with which he had but a moment before refused to be warned away:

    ‘Why warn’st thou me of blood with hand uplift?
    In fear lest I be tainted by thy speech?
    Nought reck I of ill fortune at thy side
    Where once ’twas good; that hour must draw my heart
    When thou didst bring me safe from death to light;
    Nay, I hate friends whose gratitude grows old,
    I hate the man that will enjoy good hap
    But will not face foul weather with his friend[1189].’

Is this the man whose words, spoken but a moment later, shall be
interpreted to mean, ‘I will not run away, because the danger that
threatens my friend cannot hurt me’? The thought is deeper, more
generous, than that. Theseus is thinking not of himself, but of his
friend. It is the word ‘pollution,’ used first by himself and caught
up by Heracles, which arrests his attention. Was his friend ‘polluted’
by a deed of blood, wrought in madness, expiated in tears? Polluted?
Yes, in the sense that religious purification was required[1190]. He
cannot deny the pollution. But could the deed also be punished as the
murder of close kinsfolk was wont to be punished? Could the children,
albeit slain by their own father’s hand, desire revenge upon him who
loved them and was loved of them? ‘No,’ he answers boldly, ‘pollution
(μίασμα) there is, but no _Alastor_, no Avenger of blood, can come from
them that love against them that love.’ How then does Theseus picture
the _Alastor_ who, but for the bond of love between the father and his
dead children, would seek vengeance for their death? The phrase which
he uses is ambiguous--perhaps deliberately ambiguous--οὐδεὶς ... ἐκ
τῶν φίλων. It may mean equally well ‘no one of those who love’ or ‘no
one coming from those who love.’ But when the close correspondence of
μίασμα, ‘pollution,’ and ἀλάστωρ ‘avenger,’ is noted in this passage,
and when it is also remembered that the dead children of Medea are
elsewhere plainly named _Miastores_, it is hard to suppose that an
audience familiar with the belief that the dead themselves avenged
their own wrongs would not have interpreted the ambiguous phrase
to mean ‘none of these children shall rise up from the grave as an
_Alastor_, for love is stronger than vengeance.’

But such doubt as still remains is set at rest when we turn from the
usage of the word _Alastor_ to its origin and enquire how it obtained
the sense of ‘Avenger.’ What is its derivation?

Two conjectures seem to have been made by the ancients and are recorded
by early commentators and lexicographers[1191]. The one connects the
word with the root of λανθάνω, ‘I escape notice,’ and extracts a
meaning in a variety of ways, leaving it open to choice, for example,
whether it shall mean a god whose notice nothing escapes or a man
who commits acts which cannot escape some god’s notice. The other
conjecture refers the word to the root of ἀλάομαι, ‘I wander.’ It is
between these two proposed derivations that our choice lies; nor can we
obtain much help from the greatest modern authorities. Curtius[1192]
unhesitatingly adopts the latter, Brugmann[1193] the former, nor does
either of them so much as mention the possibility of the alternative.
I must therefore discuss the question without reference to these
authorities, knowing that, if I run counter to the one, I have the
countenance of the other.

Is then ἀλάστωρ, in the sense of a ‘non-forgetter,’ a possible
formation from the root of λανθάνω? My own answer to that question
is a decided negative, and my reasons are as follows. Substantives
denoting the agent and formed with the suffix -τωρ (-τορ-) can only be
so formed direct from a verb-stem, as ῥήτωρ from ϝρε or ϝερ appearing
in ἐρῶ etc., μήστωρ from the stem of μήδομαι, ἀφήτωρ answering to the
verb ἀφίημι, ἐπιβήτωρ to ἐπιβαίνω. It is among these and other such
examples that Brugmann places the anomalous ἀλάστωρ, to be connected
with ἄλαστος, λήθω. But evidently, in order that ἀλάστωρ may be
parallel, let us say, to ἀφήτωρ, we must postulate the existence of
an impossible verb ἀ-λήθω or ἀ-λανθάνομαι, ‘I non-forget.’ Nor would
it mend matters to suppose, first, the formation, direct from λήθω,
of a _nomen agentis_ of the form λάστωρ, a ‘forgetter’; for the
privative ἀ- appears only in adjectives and adverbs and in such verbs
and substantives as are formed directly from them, as ἀμνημονεῖν from
ἀμνήμων etc., and cannot be prefixed at pleasure to a substantive
or verb not so formed; ἀλάστωρ could no more be formed from an
hypothetical substantive λάστωρ[1194], than could an hypothetical
verb ἀ-λανθάνεσθαι be formed from λανθάνεσθαι. Etymologically then
the derivation of ἀλάστωρ from ἀ- privative and the root of λήθω is
impossible, and its sense of ‘Avenger’ was not developed from the
meaning ‘one who does not forget.’

On the other hand, to the connexion of ἀλάστωρ with the verb ἀλᾶσθαι,
‘to wander,’ no exception can be taken. Not only is the formation
simple, but an exact parallel is forthcoming. As the substantive
μιάστωρ stands to the verb μιαίνω, so does the substantive ἀλάστωρ
stand to a by-form of ἀλάομαι, which is fairly frequent in Tragedy,
ἀλαίνω[1195]. It follows then that ἀλάστωρ meant originally a
‘wanderer.’

But, when once that primary meaning is discovered, there can be no
further doubt as to the primary application of the term. Of the three
possible exactors of vengeance--the _revenant_ himself, some demonic
agent, and the nearest kinsman--the first alone could be aptly
described as a ‘wanderer’; moreover we know that the murdered man was
actually so conceived, and that, among the punishments by which he
sought to make his murderer suffer the same lot as he himself endured,
one of the most conspicuous was the punishment of wandering and exile.
The name _Alastor_ therefore, like _Miastor_, denoted first of all the
dead man himself, and was only secondarily extended to human or divine
agents seeking vengeance on his behalf.

It remains only to enquire how the meaning ‘Avenger’ was evolved from
the meaning ‘Wanderer,’ and so completely superseded it that the name
_Alastores_ was extended to those agents who were in no obvious sense
‘Wanderers’ but simply ‘Avengers.’

The first occurrence of the word is in the _Iliad_, as the proper name
of a Greek warrior[1196]. This fact tends to show that the word had as
yet acquired none of that ill-omened sense which it undoubtedly bears
in Greek Tragedy. It was used rather, we may believe, in its original
and literal sense of ‘wanderer,’ and the adoption of such a word as
a proper name is entirely consistent with the principles of Homeric
nomenclature. Hector, Nestor, Mēstor, are famous names of the same
class.

Otherwise than as a proper name the word is not used in Homer, nor
does it occur at all again, so far as I am aware, before the time
of Aeschylus. It is during this interval then that the evolution of
meaning must have taken place; for by the age of Aeschylus the idea of
vengeance--and vengeance of a horrible kind--had become the ordinary
signification of the word. My view then is that the intervening
centuries had witnessed a gradual differentiation of the several words
which alike originally meant a ‘wanderer,’ a differentiation such that
ἀλήτης remained the ordinary and general term, while ἀλάστωρ was little
by little restricted to the wanderer from the dead, the _revenant_; and
that subsequently from meaning a _revenant_ of any and every kind it
became limited to that single class of _revenants_ whose wanderings
were guided by the desire for revenge--the class to whom the name
_Miastores_ had always belonged.

Some evidence for the first stage in this development of meaning is
furnished by the Tragic usage of the verb from which the substantive
is derived; for in both its forms, ἀλᾶσθαι and ἀλαίνειν, it continued
to be applied to any of the restless dead, when the substantive
ἀλάστωρ, as I conceive, had come to be appropriated to the Avenger
only. Indeed it might almost be thought that both Aeschylus and
Euripides had an inkling of the derivation and earlier meaning of the
substantive; for while idiom debarred them from using ἀλάστωρ in the
large sense of any _revenant_, they certainly used the corresponding
verb in contexts which suggest that those who thus ‘wander’ were not
imagined by them as vague impalpable ghosts, but possessed for them
rather the real substance and physical traits of a _revenant_. Thus in
the _Eumenides_, though Clytemnestra could not be permitted to play
the part of a _revenant_ and appears only as a ghost, yet the more
gross and popular conception of her is clearly present to the poet’s
mind. Though a ghost, she points to the wounds which her son’s hands
inflicted[1197]; though a ghost, she is made to exhort the Erinyes to
vengeance ‘on behalf of her very soul’ (τῆς ἐμῆς πέρι ψυχῆς)[1198].
Strange gestures and strange language indeed, if the so-called ghost
had been conceived as a mere disembodied soul! But the popular
conception of the _revenant_ penetrated even here. And was it not the
same conception which suggested the phrase αἰσχρῶς ἀλῶμαι, ‘I wander
in dishonour[1199]’? In the popular belief, as we know, the murderer
was bound to wander after death, suffering as he had wrought; and it
is as a murderess[1200] that Clytemnestra avows herself condemned
to shameful wanderings. ‘To wander,’ ἀλᾶσθαι, sums up the suffering
which the murderer, like his victim, must incur after death. It is
likely then that the name ἀλάστωρ too was originally applied to any
‘wanderer’--whether murderer or murdered--before it acquired the
connotation of vindictiveness and so became appropriated to the latter
only.

Again Euripides uses the same verb of one whose body has not received
burial. This time there is no connexion with blood-guilt at all, but
the lines are simply the plaint of captive wife for husband slain in
battle: ‘oh beloved, oh husband mine, dead art thou and wanderest
unburied, unwatered with tears’--σὺ μὲν φθίμενος ἀλαίνεις, ἄθαπτος,
ἄνυδρος[1201]. ‘To wander unburied’--could there be a simpler
description of a _revenant_? Does not the whole misery of the unburied
dead consist in this--that they must wander? It is almost inconceivable
then that the name _Alastor_, ‘wanderer,’ should have been originally
applied only to a single class of the wandering dead--to those whose
wanderings were directed towards vengeance, and not also to those whose
wanderings were more aimless, more pitiable, whose whole existence
might have been summed up in that one word ‘wandering.’ At some time
then between the age of Homer and that of Aeschylus _Alastor_, I hold,
meant simply _revenant_.

How then shall we explain that caprice of language which, according
to this Tragic usage, permitted all the unhappy dead to be said
‘to wander’ (ἀλᾶσθαι, ἀλαίνειν), but apparently forbade them to be
collectively named ‘wanderers’ (ἀλάστορες)? How did _Alastor_ acquire
its sense of ‘Avenger’ and become restricted to one class of _revenant_
only?

It might be sufficient answer to point out that those _revenants_
who were bent on avenging their own wrongs are likely always to have
occupied a prominent place in popular superstition simply because
they inspired most terror in the popular mind; other _revenants_ were
harmless, and, as harmless, liable to be little regarded and seldom
named; and the most conspicuous class might thus have appropriated to
itself the name which properly belonged to all. But there is another
influence which, if it did not cause, may at least have facilitated and
quickened the change--the influence of the word ἄλαστος, ‘unforgotten,’
which, as I have noted above, was commonly and naturally, in an age
when etymology was not science but guess-work, connected with ἀλάστωρ.
Etymologically the two words have nothing in common; but that is no
obstacle to the supposition that, in their usage, their casual but
close similarity of form rendered the meaning of the one susceptible
to the influence of the other. Nay more, the fact that the two words,
it matters not how erroneously, were actually in early times referred
to a common origin[1202] warrants the suggestion that such influence
had been exercised. Now ἄλαστος always remained in meaning true to
its derivation. Itself employed in the passive sense, ‘unforgotten,’
it seems to have made over the active meaning, ‘unforgetting,’
‘vindictive’ (which, on the analogy of ἄπρακτος and a score of similar
forms, it should naturally have possessed), to the apparently kindred
word ἀλάστωρ. This adventitious meaning accorded well with the popular
conception of the most conspicuous class of ‘wanderers’ from the
grave--those whose wanderings had a vindictive aim; and thus, by the
help of the accidental resemblance of two words, it seems to have
come to pass that the term _Alastores_ ceased to be applicable to all
kinds of _revenants_ and denoted only the ‘Avengers.’ At this point
it became in fact synonymous with _Miastores_, and, like that word,
enlarged its scope so as to denote not only the prime Avenger, the
_revenant_ himself, but also any divine or human agents employed by him
as subsidiary Avengers.

So much then for the first meaning which the lexicons attach to the
words _Alastor_ and _Miastor_; the second interpretation of them, in
relation to a blood-guilty man, may be more briefly treated. _Alastor_
in this passive sense is alleged to mean a man who suffers from the
vengeance of one who is an _Alastor_ in the active sense; and _Miastor_
to mean a man who is himself polluted and therefore pollutes those with
whom he associates.

As regards _Alastor_, this explanation stands already condemned by
the fact that it pre-supposes the derivation from λανθάνομαι, and
even then it does fresh and incredible violence to language; a sane
philologist may commit the error of deriving ἀλάστωρ from λανθάνομαι
and making it mean ‘one who does not forget’; but only the maddest
could dream of interpreting it as ‘one who does deeds which others
do not forget.’ But, if in spite of this we trouble to turn up the
references which the lexicons give under this heading, it is obvious
at once that there is no more support for such a meaning in idiomatic
usage than in etymological origin. Three references are cited. The
first is to that passage of the _Eumenides_ in which Orestes declares
himself ἀλάστορα, οὐ προστρόπαιον[1203], a phrase which means, as I
have already shown, ‘an avenger, not a murderer.’ This then should
be classified as an example of the active, not of the hypothetical
passive, meaning of _Alastor_. Of the other two passages, one is from
the _Ajax_ of Sophocles, where the hero in his anger and despair
speaks of the guileful enemies who robbed him of his prize as
_Alastores_[1204], and the other a passage from Demosthenes in which
he criticizes Aeschines for applying the word as an opprobrious name
to Philip of Macedon[1205]. But in what possible sense could either
Ajax’ enemies or Philip of Macedon be described as ‘suffering from
Avengers’? On the contrary, at the times when the word _Alastor_ was
applied to them, their success should surely have suggested that they
were favoured by heaven, and their opponents rather were the sufferers.
What then was the meaning of the word thus opprobriously employed?
A meaning, I answer, very little removed from that of ‘Avenger’ and
arising out of it. For how was the Avenger--be he the _revenant_
himself or a demon acting on his behalf--constantly pictured? Was it
not as a fiend tormenting with every torment the object of his wrath,
plaguing him, maddening him, sucking his very blood? Little wonder
then if the justice of that vengeance was sometimes obscured in men’s
minds by their horror of it, and if the word _Alastor_ suggested to
them a fiend, a merciless tormentor. In that sense Ajax might well
apply the name to his enemies, and Aeschines to Philip. Nor are other
instances of it lacking. Demosthenes himself, for all his criticism of
Aeschines’ vulgarity in calling Philip βάρβαρόν τε καὶ ἀλάστορα, ‘a
foreign devil,’ used the same word of Aeschines and his friends[1206];
again, in Sophocles, the lion of Nemea for the loss and havoc that he
inflicted is unique among beasts that perish in having merited the same
sorry title--βουκόλων ἀλάστωρ, the ‘herdsmen’s Tormentor[1207]’; and
indeed, apart from living men and animals, there are many instances in
Tragedy[1208] in which the word _Alastor_, applied to some supernatural
foe, _revenant_ or demon, may be more appropriately rendered by ‘fiend’
or ‘tormentor’ than by ‘avenger.’

And the same thing is true, I hold, of the word _Miastor_. The
theory of the lexicons, namely, that the word denotes a polluted
and blood-guilty man because such an one is inevitably a ‘polluter’
of others, is certainly not intrinsically bad; for it recognises the
primary meaning of the word, ‘polluter,’ and bases the secondary
meaning ‘polluted’ upon a right understanding of the old belief that
pollution was contagious. But at the same time it gives some occasion
to wonder why the word should have been diverted from its most natural
meaning in order to denote that which the cognate word μιαρός already
expressed more simply. Moreover, when examination is made of those
passages which are claimed as examples of such an usage, the theory
becomes wholly unnecessary. The two most specious examples are two
passages from Aeschylus[1209] and Euripides[1210], in both of which
the persons called _Miastores_ are Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Now the
authors of Agamemnon’s death were certainly polluted, and might with
justice have been called μιαροί--that is admitted. But because they
might have been called μιαροί and actually are called μιάστορες, it
does not follow that, though the words have the same root, they also
bear the same meaning. Obviously the word ‘fiends,’ if μιάστορες ever
has that sense, would be an equally apt description of the murderous
pair. The choice therefore between these two renderings here must be
guided by more certain examples of usage elsewhere.

Two may be selected as eminently clear. In one Orestes calls Helen τὴν
Ἑλλάδος μιάστορα[1211], where the word cannot mean a ‘polluted wretch,’
for the construction postulates an active meaning in _Miastor_; nor
yet can the phrase be intelligibly rendered ‘the polluter of Greece,’
for there was no pollution involved in the warfare which Helen had
caused; clearly Orestes means ‘the tormentor of Greece,’ the fiend who
had proved the bane of ships and men and cities. In the other passage
Peleus applies the word to Menelaus: ‘I look upon thee,’ he says,
‘as on the murderer--the fiend-like destroyer (μιάστορ’ ὥς τινα)--of
Achilles[1212].’ Here again _Miastor_ clearly bears an active sense,
and at the same time cannot be rendered ‘polluter.’ Menelaus had
brought upon Achilles not pollution but death, and the word _Miastor_
explains the word ‘murderer’ (αὐθέντην) which precedes it--explains
that the murder laid to Menelaus’ charge was not the open violence of
a stronger foe, but resembled the death-dealing of some lurking fiend.
In these two passages then the interpretation of _Miastor_ in the sense
of ‘fiend,’ ‘tormentor,’ ‘destroyer,’ is necessary and proven; and,
this being known, common reason bids us read more ambiguous scriptures
in the light thus obtained. There is therefore no call to suppose
that μιάστωρ ever meant ‘polluted’; from the active meaning ‘Avenger’
it developed, like _Alastor_, the broader sense of ‘Tormentor’ or
‘Fiendish Destroyer’; and these meanings completely satisfy the
conditions of Tragic and other usage of the words.

There remains the word προστρόπαιος, to which the lexicons, I admit,
rightly ascribe a twofold meaning. It is clearly used both of the
Avenger of blood and also of the blood-guilty person who is seeking
purification. But as regards both the means by which the first
signification was obtained, and the primary application of the word
in that signification, I join issue. The second meaning is more
satisfactorily explained, and my criticism of it will not go beyond an
alternative suggestion.

The lexicons elucidate the first meaning as follows: _he to whom one
turns_, especially with supplications, θεός or δαίμων προστρόπαιος
the god _to whom the murdered person turns_ for vengeance, hence _an
avenger_, like ἀλάστωρ ... hence also of the _manes_ of murdered
persons, _visiting with vengeance, implacable_.

The objections to this explanation are obvious. It may well be
questioned whether προστρόπαιος is at all likely to have had any
passive meaning--as it were a person who ‘is turned to’--when the
verb προστρέπω itself was, so far as I can ascertain, never so used;
and further, if a god had really been called προστρόπαιος because the
murdered man turned for vengeance to him, the extension of the term to
the _manes_ of murdered persons must imply a conception of the murdered
man turning for vengeance towards--himself. This is not a little
cumbrous; and for my part I deny the existence of any passive sense of
προστρόπαιος.

I do however find two senses of the word, the one active, corresponding
to the transitive use of the verb προστρέπειν or προστρέπεσθαι (for the
middle as well as the active voice might be used transitively, as will
shortly appear), the other middle, corresponding to the ordinary usage
of the middle προστρέπεσθαι. Thus the active meaning of προστρόπαιος
will be _turning_ something _towards_ or _against_ someone; the middle
meaning, _turning oneself towards_ someone.

The active usage is best illustrated by a passage of Aeschines, in
which he accuses Demosthenes of wilful perjury in calumniating him, and
then appeals to the jury in these words--ἐάσετε οὖν τὸν τοιοῦτον αὑτοῦ
προστρόπαιον (μὴ γὰρ δὴ τῆς πόλεως) ἐν ὑμῖν ἀναστρέφεσθαι[1213]; ‘Will
you then allow this perjurer, who has turned upon his own head (for I
pray that it be not on the city) the anger of the gods in whose name he
swore, to continue in your midst?’ Here the very brevity of the Greek,
which I am compelled to expand in translation, proves that Aeschines’
audience were perfectly familiar with an active meaning of προστρόπαιος
with an evil connotation, ‘turning some misfortune or punishment or
vengeance upon someone.’

The middle sense of προστρόπαιος is equally clearly exhibited by
Aeschylus, who in telling the story of Thyestes says that after
his banishment by his brother Atreus he came again προστρόπαιος
ἑστίας[1214], ‘turning himself (as a suppliant) towards the hearth’
of his father’s home, so that his own life at least was spared out of
respect for the place.

Thus the two meanings of the word are established, and it remains only
to show how they were specially used in connexion with blood-guilt.

In the active sense προστρόπαιος was primarily applied, I hold, like
_Miastor_ and _Alastor_, to the murdered man himself, who ‘turned’
his wrath ‘against’ the murderer, or, if it so happened, against the
next of kin who had failed in his duty of bringing the murderer to
justice. It is precisely thus that Plato uses the verb προστρέπεσθαι
in recording the old tradition in which he apparently reposed so much
faith as to base his own laws upon it. ‘If the nearest of kin,’ so
runs the passage, ‘do not seek vengeance for the deed, it is held
that the pollution devolves upon him, and that _the sufferer_ (i.e.
the dead man) _turns upon him the suffering_ (i.e. that which the
homicide himself should have incurred), and anyone who will may bring
a suit against him, etc.[1215]’ The words which I have italicised are
in the Greek τοῦ παθόντος προστρεπομένου τὴν πάθην, where the middle
presumably was preferred to the active because the sufferings which
the dead man inflicts are, as we already know and as the language of
the particular phrase itself suggests, exactly those which he himself
suffers. This usage of the verb, though it is distinctly rare and
probably a technicality of religion or law, is so perfectly clear
in this one example[1216], that there should be no hesitation about
understanding the cognate word προστρόπαιος in the same sense. And
indeed one lexicographer, Photius, shows that he did so understand
it; for he tells us that Zeus was sometimes invoked under this title,
as turning against murderers the pollution (including perhaps the
punishments) of their crime: Ζεὺς ... προστρόπαιος, ὁ προστρέπων τὸ
ἄγος αὐτοῖς (sc. τοῖς παλαμναίοις)[1217]--such are his actual words,
and this time of course the verb is rightly in the active, for Zeus
is in no way personally concerned but acts only in the interests of
the dead man. Clearly then it was in virtue of this active meaning
that προστρόπαιος came to be practically a synonym of _Miastor_ and
_Alastor_ in the sense of an Avenger of blood.

Once more then we return to the same question which has been propounded
and answered with regard to those two other names--to whom was the term
προστρόπαιος primarily applied?

I find the application of it more restricted than that of the other two
words. It was used of the dead man himself, and it was used of demons
avenging his cause; but it was never used[1218] of the next of kin in
the character of avenger--and that for the very good reason that when
the word was applied to a living man it bore an entirely different
meaning, which has yet to be discussed, the meaning of ‘blood-guilty.’

A few examples of each usage must be given. Both Antiphon and Aeschylus
apply the word to murdered men; Antiphon, in a speech in which the
kinsman, who has, as in duty bound, undertaken the prosecution of the
murderer, claims that, if the jury wrongfully acquit, the dead man
will not become προστρόπαιος, an Avenger, against his kinsmen who have
done their best in his service, but will visit his anger on the jury
for condoning and thereby sharing the blood-guilt[1219]; Aeschylus,
in that list of penalties which has been discussed, when he depicts
the ‘madness and vain terror,’ which will befall Orestes if he fail in
his task, as an arrow that flieth in darkness sped by powers of hell
‘at the behest of fallen kindred that turn their vengeance upon him’
(ἐκ προστροπαίων ἐν γένει πεπτωκότων[1220]). But equally clearly in
other passages the Avenger indicated is not the murdered man, but some
divine being. Antiphon again is an authority for this usage. Twice,
in a context similar to that which has just been noticed, he speaks
not of the murdered man himself becoming an Avenger, but of certain
divine powers--whom he also calls ἀλιτήριοι, the powers that deal with
sin--acting as Avengers (προστρόπαιοι) of the dead[1221]. And similarly
in later time Pausanias also speaks of ‘the pollution (μίασμα) incurred
by Pelops and of the Avenger (προστρόπαιος) of Myrtilus[1222].’

Since then there is no question but that the word προστρόπαιος was
actually applied both to dead men and to gods, to which of the two did
it refer primarily? We already know the answer. The dead man himself,
as a _revenant_, was the prime and proper Avenger of his own wrongs;
demons of vengeance acted only in his name, as his subordinates and
agents. To him therefore the name primarily belonged. And even if
we had not already learnt this from other sources, the passage of
Aeschylus, to which I have just referred, might well guide us to the
same conclusion. The arrow that flieth in darkness is sped indeed, he
says, ‘by powers of hell’ (τῶν ἐνερτέρων)--the demonic agents of the
dead--but ‘at the behest of fallen kindred.’ The activity both of the
principal and of the agent is recognised in the same passage, and
either might have been called προστρόπαιος: but, because the activity
of both was plainly asserted, Aeschylus reserved the name for the one
to whom it primarily belonged, the murdered man, who turns his wrath,
who turns indeed those powers of hell who execute his wrath, against
his enemies.

There now remains for consideration only the second meaning of
προστρόπαιος; how could a word, which in reference to dead men or to
deities meant ‘an Avenger of blood,’ bear, in relation to living men,
the sense of ‘blood-guilty’? Very likely the dictionaries are right
in accepting the explanation of this use which Hesychius[1223] and
others give. We have seen one case[1224] in which the word clearly
has a middle sense ‘turning oneself towards’ a place or a person in
supplication; and there is no difficulty in supposing that the word was
used technically in the same sense of a blood-guilty man who turned
to some god or to some sanctuary in quest of purification. This, I
say, is very probably the right explanation. But I may perhaps offer
an alternative explanation which I do not count preferable but merely
possible. The active meaning of προστρόπαιος, ‘turning something upon
someone,’ might conceivably have produced this sense of ‘blood-guilty’
as well as the other sense ‘an Avenger of blood.’ As the dead man was
held to turn something, namely his wrath, against his enemy, so might
the murderer have been pictured as trying to turn something, namely the
pollution which he had incurred, upon some object and so to cleanse
himself therefrom. Now the chief feature in the Delphic ceremony of
purification was the slaying of a sucking-pig[1225]. This may of course
have been merely a propitiatory sacrifice; but it is possible also that
the animal was really a surrogate victim for the murderer himself,
that by laying his polluted hand on its head he transferred the
religious uncleanness from himself to it, and that, by the subsequent
slaughter of the now blood-guilty animal, he vicariously satisfied the
old law that blood could only be washed out by blood. This is only a
conjecture, and I leave others to judge of its probability; but, if the
ceremony had followed the lines which I have suggested, it is easily
intelligible that, in the technical language of religion, the murderer
who sought to turn his own pollution upon the victim might have been
called προστρόπαιος.

Thus then the problem of the ancient nomenclature of _revenants_
is solved, and the results are briefly these: all _revenants_ were
originally called ἀλάστορες, ‘Wanderers’; but subsequently that name
was restricted only to the vengeful class of _revenants_, to which the
names μιάστορες and προστρόπαιοι had always belonged; and for the more
harmless and purely pitiable _revenants_ no name remained, but men said
of such an one simply, ‘He wanders.’


FOOTNOTES:

[959] Heard by me from a fisherman of Myconos.

[960] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. pp. 573 and 593.

[961] The list of dialectic forms compiled by Bern. Schmidt (_das
Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 158) comprises, besides that which
I have adopted as in my experience the most general, the following:
βουρκόλακας, βρουκόλακας, βουρκούλακας, βουλκόλακας, βουθρόλακας,
βουρδόλακας, βορβόλακας. To these may be added βαρβάλακας from Syme
(Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. 601), βουρδούλακας, from Cythnos (Βάλληνδας,
Κυθνιακά, p. 125), and an occasional diminutive form such as βρυκολάκι.
The κ is often doubled in spelling.

[962] A plural in -οι, -ους, with accent either paroxytone or
proparoxytone, also occurs.

[963] _De quorumdam Graecorum opinationibus_, cap. 12 sqq.

[964] ὁποῦ τὸν ἐγνώριζε προτίτερα, leg. ἐγνώριζαν.

[965] For these memorial services (μνημόσυνα) and the appropriate
funeral-meats (κόλλυβα) see below, pp. 534 ff.

[966] The reference given by Allatius is to _Turco-Grecia_, Bk 8, but I
cannot find the passage.

[967] With this description compare a phrase used in a recent
Athenian account of a _vrykolakas_, σὰν τουλοῦμι, ‘like a (distended)
wine-skin,’ Πολίτης, Παραδ. I. 575.

[968] See p. 339.

[969] _Relation de ce qui s’est passé de plus remarquable a Sant-Erini
Isle de l’Archipel, depuis l’établissement des Peres de la compagnie de
Jesus en icelle_ (Paris, MDCLVII.), cap. XV. pp. 208-226.

[970] In many places at the present day it is believed that
_vrykolakes_ (and sometimes other supernatural beings) cannot cross
salt water. Hence to bury (not burn) the corpse in an island is often
held sufficient.

[971] Some modern authorities state that Turks are believed to be
more subject to become _vrykolakes_ than Christians. Schmidt (_Das
Volksleben_, p. 162) appears to me to overstate this point of view,
which I should judge to be rarer and more local than its contrary. Even
where found, it is unimportant, being a mere invention of priestcraft
for purposes of intimidation. See below, pp. 400 and 409.

[972] Evidently a local form of τουμπί (= τύμπανον, cf. Du Cange, _Med.
et infim. Graec._, s.v. τυμπανίτης), with metathesis of the nasal. Cf.
the word τυμπανιαῖος above.

[973] To this phrase I return later.

[974] leg. ἄσπρος.

[975] _Histoire nouvelle des anciens ducs et autres souverains de
l’Archipel_, pp. 255-6 (Paris, 1699).

[976] _Voyage du Levant_, I. pp. 158 ff. (Lyon, 1717). Cf. also
Salonis, _Voyage à Tine_ (Paris, 1809), translated by Δ. Μ. Μαυρομαρᾶς,
as Ἱστορία τῆς Τήνου, pp. 105 ff.

[977] Paul Lucas, _Voyage du Levant_ (la Haye, 1705), vol. II. pp.
209-210.

[978] Cf. Tournefort, _Voyage du Levant_, I. p. 164 (Lyon, 1717).

[979] Ἀντών. Βάλληνδας, Κυθνιακά, p. 125.

[980] Γρηγ. Παπαδοπετράκης, Ἱστορία τῶν Σφακίων, pp. 72-3.

[981] The writer points out in a note the correspondence of the number
of priests who assemble for τὸ εὐχέλαιον, the anointing of the sick
with oil.

[982] The Cretan word used throughout this passage is καταχαν-ᾶς (plur.
-ᾶδες), on which see below, p. 382.

[983] διπλοσαραντίσῃ. I have given what I take to be the meaning of a
popular word otherwise unknown to me.

[984] Ᾱντ. Μηλιαράκης, Ὑπομνήματα περιγραφικὰ τῶν Κυκλάδων
νήσων.--Ἄνδρος, Κέως, p. 56.

[985] Good examples may be found in Bern. Schmidt, _Märchen_, etc., no.
7, and Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. 590 sqq.

[986] _The Cyclades_, p. 299.

[987] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. p. 577.

[988] _Ibid._, p. 578.

[989] In Scyros and in Cythnos, as I have noted above, this means of
riddance has given place to milder remedies. But in the former I heard
of fairly recent cases of vampirism, and in the latter, according to
Βάλληνδας (Κυθνιακά, p. 125), the names of several persons (including
one woman) who became _vrykolakes_ are still remembered.

[990] Communicated to me by word of mouth in Maina.

[991] ἑορτοπιάσματα (see above, p. 208), who are commonly regarded as
subject to lycanthropy in life and continue the same predatory habits
as vampires after death.

[992] Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben_, p. 162 (from Aráchova).

[993] This belief belongs chiefly, in my experience, to the Cyclades.

[994] Curt. Wachsmuth, _Das alte Griechenland im Neuen_, p. 117 (from
Elis).

[995] _Ibid._ p. 114 (from Elis). Bern. Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 162
(Parnassus district). Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. 578 (Calávryta).

[996] _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 170.

[997] This derivation is reviewed and rejected by Bern. Schmidt, _Das
Volksleben_ etc., p. 158.

[998] Cf. Miklosich, _Etym. Wörterbuch d. Slav. Spr._, p. 380, s.v.
*velkŭ, Old Slav., vlъkъ, _wolf_....

Old Slav., vlЪkodlakЪ; Slovenian, volkodlak, vukodlak, vulkodlak;
Bulg., vrЪkolak; Kr., vukodlak; Serb., vukodlak; Cz., vlkodlak; Pol.,
wilkodłak; Little Russian, vołkołak; White Russian, vołkołak; Russian,
volkulakЪ; Roum. ve̥lkolak, ve̥rkolak; Alb., vurvolak; cf. Lith.,
vilkakis.

‘Der vlЪkodlak ist der Werwolf der Deutschen, woraus m. Lat. guerulfus,
mannwolf, der in Wolfgestalt gespenstisch umgehende Mann.’ The second
half of the compound is less certainly identified with _dlaka_, Old
Slav., New Slav., Serb., = ‘hair’ (of cow or horse).

I am indebted for this note to the kindness of Mr E. H. Minns, of
Pembroke College, Cambridge. It will be found to corroborate the view
pronounced by B. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 159.

[999] Bern. Schmidt, _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 160 (with
note 1).

[1000] Ralston, _Songs of the Russian people_, p. 409.

[1001] Whether this word is originally Slavonic appears to be
uncertain, but it is at any rate found in all Slavonic languages and is
proved by the forms which it has assumed to have been in use there for
fully a thousand years. This note also I owe to my friend, Mr Minns.

[1002] Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 217.

[1003] _Das Volksleben d. Neugr._ p. 159.

[1004] _Ibid._ note 2.

[1005] Mannhardt’s _Zeitschrift f. d. Mythol. und Sittenk._ IV. 195.

[1006] _Les Slaves de Turquie_, I. p. 69 (Paris, 1844).

[1007] Cf. above, p. 183.

[1008] Cf. pp. 183 and 208.

[1009] In Chios at the present day the word _vrykolakas_ is in general
usage, except that in the village of Pyrgi, owing to a confusion of
_vrykolakes_ and _callicantzari_, a local name of the latter is applied
also to the former. Cf. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, p. 367, and see
above p. 193.

[1010] Ἀντ. Βάλληνδας, Κυθνιακά, p. 125. The two words are given in
the neuter plural τυμπανιαῖα and ἄλυτα, as equivalents of the word
_vrykolakas_ which, in the form βουρδούλακκας, is also employed.

[1011] The periodical Πανδώρα, vol. 12, no. 278, p. 335 and vol. 13,
no. 308, p. 505, cited by Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 160.

[1012] Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 160, referring to Φιλίστωρ (periodical),
III. p. 539; Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. p. 574.

[1013] Πολίτης, _ibid._

[1014] Cf. above, p. 277.

[1015] Βάλληνδας in Ἐφημερὶς τῶν Φιλομαθῶν, 1861, p. 1828. Schmidt
interprets the word as ‘der Aufhockende,’ one who sits upon and crushes
his victims, a habit sometimes ascribed to _vrykolakes_, but more
often to _callicantzari_. My own interpretation has the support of
many popular stories, in which, when the exhumation of a _vrykolakas_
takes place, he is found sitting up in his tomb. See e.g. Πολίτης,
Παραδόσεις, I. p. 590.

[1016] Cf. Χουρμούζης, Κρητικά, p. 27 (Athens, 1842); Γρηγ.
Παπαδοπετράκης, Ἱστορία τῶν Σφακίων, pp. 72-3.

[1017] _Op. cit._ p. 160.

[1018] Ἄτακτα, II. p. 114.

[1019] _Os hians, dentes candidi_, cf. above, p. 367.

[1020] The word is mentioned by Newton, _Travels and Discoveries in
the Levant_, I. p. 212. I have been unable to obtain any more recent
information.

[1021] Τὸ Θανατικὸν τῆς Ῥόδου (_The Black Death of Rhodes_), ll. 267
and 579, published in Wagner’s _Medieval Greek Texts_, I. p. 179 (from
Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 160, note 4).

[1022] I have shown above (pp. 239 ff.) that in certain districts the
word λυκάνθρωπος was superseded by a new Greek compound λυκοκάντζαρος;
but this new term was probably always confined, as it now is, to
the vocabulary of a few districts only, while the Slavonic word
_vrykolakas_ enjoyed a wider vogue.

[1023] See above, p. 378.

[1024] I quote my authority only for choice specimens which I have not
myself heard. Variations may be found in almost any work bearing on
popular speech or belief.

[1025] Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστορ. καὶ Ἐθνολ. Ἑταιρίας, II. 123 (from Crete).

[1026] _Ibid._

[1027] Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχέλαος, Ἡ Σινασός, p. 199 (from Sinasos in Asia Minor).

[1028] Christophorus Angelus, _De statu hodiernorum Graecorum_, cap. 25.

[1029] Cf. above, p. 370.

[1030] In the details of my account of this custom I follow Βάλληνδας,
Κυθνιακά, pp. 113-114. But it prevails also in substantially the same
form in many places besides Cythnos.

[1031] I have been at some pains to make wide enquiries on this point,
but have found no example.

[1032] The version which I translate is No. 517 in Passow’s _Popularia
Carmina Graec. recent._

[1033] Prof. Πολίτης has collected seventeen in a monograph entitled
Τὸ δημοτικὸν ἅσμα περὶ τοῦ νεκροῦ ἀδελφοῦ (originally published in the
Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστορ. καὶ Ἐθνολ. Ἑταιρίας).

[1034] Πολίτης, _op. cit._ p. 43 (Version No. 4, ll. 18, 19).

[1035] The periodical Πανδώρα, 1862, vol. 13, p. 367 ( Πολίτης, _op.
cit._ p. 66, no. 17, ll. 19, 20).

[1036] Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχέλαος, Ἡ Σινασός, p. 164 (from Sinasos in Asia Minor).

[1037] I make this statement with as full confidence as can be felt in
any such negation, after perusing nearly a score of versions.

[1038] See above, p. 368.

[1039] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. p. 589.

[1040] _Ibid._ p. 591.

[1041] Goar, _Eucholog._ p. 685.

[1042] Cf. Leo Allatius, _De quor. Graecorum opinat._ XIII. Balsamon,
I. 569 (Migne). _Epist. S. Niconis_, quoted by Balsamon, II. p. 1096
(ed. Paris, 1620). Christophorus Angelus, cap. 25.

[1043] S. Matthew xviii. 18.

[1044] The power of excommunicating belonged to priests as well as
to bishops, but they might not exercise it without their bishop’s
sanction. Cf. Balsamon, I. 27 and 569 (Migne).

[1045] Quoted by Leo Allatius, _De quor. Graec. opinat._ XIII. and XIV.

[1046] The reversal of the decree of excommunication by the same person
who had pronounced it was always preferred, largely as a precaution
against an excommunicated person obtaining absolution too easily. Cf.
Balsamon, I. 64-5 and 437 (Migne).

[1047] _op. cit._ cap. XV. Cf. also Christophorus Angelus, Ἐγχειρίδιον
περὶ τῆς καταστάσεως τῶν σήμερον εὑρισκομένων Ἑλλήνων (Cambridge,
1619), cap. 25, where is told the story of a bishop who was
excommunicated by a council of his peers, and whose body remained
‘bound, like iron, for a hundred years,’ when a second council of
bishops at the same place pronounced absolution and immediately the
body ‘turned to dust.’

[1048] According to Georgius Fehlavius, p. 539 (§ 422) of his edition
of Christophorus Angelus, _De statu hodiernorum Graecorum_ (Lipsiae,
1676), Emanuel Malaxus was the writer of a work entitled _Historia
Patriarcharum Constantinopolitanorum_, which I have not been able to
discover. It was apparently used by Crusius for his _Turco-Grecia_; for
the story here told is narrated by him in two versions (I. 56 and II.
32, pp. 27 and 133 ed. Basle) and he alludes also (p. 151) to a story
concerning Arsenios, Bishop of Monemvasia, which likewise according to
Fehlavius (_l.c._) was narrated by Malaxus.

[1049] See below, p. 409.

[1050] Christophorus Angelus (_op. cit._ cap. 25) vouches for the early
use of this word by one Cassianus, whom he describes as Ἕλλην παλαιὸς
ἱστορικός. I cannot identify this author.

[1051] Du Cange, _Med. et infim. Graec._, s.v. τυμπανίτης.

[1052] Christophorus Angelus, _l.c._

[1053] Matthew xviii. 18.

[1054] John xx. 23.

[1055] See above, p. 365.

[1056] The word μνημόσυνα, which I have rendered with verbal
correctness ‘memorial services,’ really implies more, and corresponds
to a mass for the repose of the dead.

[1057] Anastasius Sinaita, in Migne’s _Patrologia Gr.-Lat._, vol. 89,
279-280.

[1058] i.e. the πνευματικοί, as they were called, the more discreet
and ‘spiritual’ priests who alone were authorised by their bishops to
discharge this function. Cf. Christophorus Angelus, _op. cit._ cap. 22.

[1059] Κωνστ. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, pp. 335 and 339.

[1060] On this symbol see above, pp. 112 f.

[1061] Newton, _Travels and Discoveries in the Levant_, I. p. 212
(1865). (Cf. B. Schmidt, _das Volksleben_, p. 164.)

[1062] Cf. Christophorus Angelus, _op. cit._ cap. 25 (init.).

[1063] _I. Cor._ v. 5 and _I. Tim._ i. 20.

[1064] Theodoretus, on _I. Cor._ v. 5 (Migne, _Patrologia Gr.-Lat._,
vol. 82, 261).

[1065] Aesch. _Choeph._, 432-3.

[1066] Paus. IX. 32. 6.

[1067] _Philopseudes_, cap. 29.

[1068] See above, p. 208.

[1069] Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. p. 576.

[1070] Ralston, _Songs of the Russian people_, p. 412.

[1071] Mirabilia, cap. I.

[1072] By ‘seer’ I render μάντις, a man directly inspired; by ‘diviner’
οἰωνοσκόπος, one who is skilled in the science of interpreting signs
and omens.

[1073] _Relation de ce qui s’est passé de plus remarquable a Sant-Erini
etc._, p. 213. He calls Philinnion a Thessalian girl, and makes
Machates come from Macedonia. But his reference to the story contains
a patent inaccuracy (for he speaks of the girl being buried a second
time, whereas she was burnt), and in all probability he was quoting
from memory, not from a more complete text than that now preserved.

[1074] See Pashley, _Travels in Crete_, II. p. 221; Carnarvon,
_Reminiscences of Athens and the Morea_, p. 162; Schmidt, _das
Volksleben_, p. 165; Πολίτης, Παραδόσεις, I. pp. 589, 591 and 593;
Βάλληνδας, Κυθνιακά, p. 125.

[1075] Alardus Gazaeus, _Commentary on_ Ioh. Cassianus, _Collatio_,
VIII. 21 (Migne, _Patrologia_, Ser. I. vol. 49).

[1076] On ‘striges’ see above, pp. 179 ff.

[1077] On this word see above, p. 288.

[1078] _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 170, with note 1.

[1079] _Philopseudes_, cap. 26.

[1080] Ar. _Eccles._, 1072-3.

[1081] See above, pp. 387-91.

[1082] Eur. _Or._, 1086.

[1083] Eur. _Hipp._, 1038.

[1084] Soph. _O. C._, 1383 ff.

[1085] Soph. _O. C._, 1405.

[1086] 261-297.

[1087] Aesch. _Choeph._, 287-8.

[1088] Κατὰ Ἀριστογείτονος, I. p. 788. συμπεπτωκότος is a necessary
correction of the ἐμπεπτωκότος of the MSS.

[1089] Cf. l. 366 μιαίνεται.

[1090] Aesch. _Suppl._, 407 ff.

[1091] Aesch. _Eum._, 173 ff. reading ἄλλον μιάστορ’ ἐξ ἐμοῦ.

[1092] See above, p. 398.

[1093] _Works and Days_, 325 ff.

[1094] See above, p. 397.

[1095] See above, p. 370.

[1096] Hom. _Il._ XXIII. 69 ff.

[1097] Hom. _Od._ XI. 51 ff.

[1098] Eur. _Hec._ 1-58.

[1099] Aesch. _Eum._ 94 ff. It must be observed, however, that
Clytemnestra’s restlessness is represented as being due to her being a
murderess quite as much as to her having been violently slain. There
was a double cause. See below, p. 474.

[1100] cap. 29.

[1101] Other references are given by Schmidt, _das Volksleben_, p. 169,
among them Servius on Virg. _Aen._, IV. 386 and Heliod. _Aethiop._, II.
5.

[1102] Certain hints however are to be found, on which see below, pp.
438-9.

[1103] Aesch. _Choeph._ 480 ff.

[1104] See below, pp. 438-9.

[1105] p. 81 C, D.

[1106] _Iliad_ XXIII. 65 ff.

[1107] Eurip. _Hecuba_ 1 ff.

[1108] τοῦ ὁρατοῦ as opposed to τοῦ ἀειδοῦς τε καὶ Ἅιδου.

[1109] See above, pp. 110 ff.

[1110] See above, p. 340.

[1111] Soph. _El._ 453-4.

[1112] Aesch. _Choeph._ 480-1.

[1113] Aesch. _Ag._ 455.

[1114] Eur. _Or._ 491-541.

[1115] _Ibid._ 580 ff.

[1116] Aesch. _Choeph._ 924-5. Cf. also 293.

[1117] Soph. _El._ 445.

[1118] Aesch. _Choeph._ 439 ff.

[1119] Antiphon, pp. 119, 125, and 126.

[1120] Cf. below, p. 459.

[1121] Plato, _Leges_, 865 D, παλαιόν τινα τῶν ἀρχαίων μύθων.

[1122] The word δειμαίνει, which in this passage seems clearly
transitive, is perhaps a verbal reminiscence of the old language in
which Plato had heard the tradition.

[1123] Plato, _Leges_, 865 D ff.

[1124] Cf. Demosth., _in Aristocr._, pp. 634 and 643.

[1125] The word technically used of this withdrawal without formal
sentence of banishment was ἀπενιαυτεῖν, or simply ἐξιέναι (cf.
ὑπεξελθεῖν τῷ παθόντι in the above passage of Plato), or, as again in
the same passage, ἀποξενοῦσθαι; whereas legal banishment was denoted by
φεύγειν.

[1126] Plato, _Leges_, 872 D ff.

[1127] In early Greek, as witness the first line of the _Iliad_, the
use of μῆνις, was less restricted than in later times; but the word,
μήνιμα even in Homer occurs only, I think, in the phrase μήνιμα θεῶν.
See below, p. 449.

[1128] Plato, _Phaedrus_, § 49, p. 244 D.

[1129] Cf. especially Eur. _Or._ 281-2, as pointed out by Bekker in his
note on Plato, _Phaedrus_, _l.c._

[1130] Aesch. _Choeph._ 293.

[1131] Plato, _Leges_, 869 A (Bekker’s text); cf. also 869 E.

[1132] See Aesch. _Eum._ 101 and 317 ff.; cf. Eur. _Or._ 583.

[1133] _Ibid._ 94-139.

[1134] _Ibid._ 417.

[1135] Xenoph. _Cyrop._ VIII. 7, 18.

[1136] Hom. _Il._ XXII. 358.

[1137] Hom. _Od._ XI. 73.

[1138] Pind. _Pyth._ IV. 280 ff.

[1139] Cf. Plato, _Leges_, IX. _passim_, and especially p. 871.

[1140] Cf. Aesch. _Eum._ 285 and 448 ff.

[1141] Plato, _Leges_, 868 A and 871 A.

[1142] Cf. Aesch. _Eum._ 445.

[1143] Plato, _Leges_, 871 B.

[1144] _Ibid._ 865 C.

[1145] Cf. Plato, _Leges_, p. 854 A, δυσίατα καὶ ἀνίατα.

[1146] Cf. Plato, _Leges_, 866-874, _passim_.

[1147] Aesch. _Eum._ 74 ff.

[1148] Aesch. _Choeph._ 280-1.

[1149] Aesch. _Choeph._ 288-9.

[1150] Cf. especially Aesch. _Choeph._ 400 ff.

[1151] Aesch. _Eum._ 336, θανὼν δ’ οὐκ ἄγαν ἐλεύθερος.

[1152] Aesch. _Eum._ 137-9.

[1153] _Ibid._ 264-7.

[1154] _Ibid._ 328 ff., and again 343 ff.

[1155] This rendering of the word αὐονά has been challenged, but has
the support of the Scholiast who explains it by the words ὁ ξηραίνων
τοὺς βροτούς, (the hymn) which dries and withers men.

[1156] The tense of ταριχευθέντα in the phrase from which I started
(_Choeph._ 296) is hereby explained.

[1157] Plato, _Phaedrus_, 244 E, πρός τε τὸν παρόντα καὶ τὸν ἔπειτα
χρόνον.

[1158] Plato’s list is ‘father, mother, brother, sister, or child,’
_Leges_, IX. 873 A.

[1159] Plato, _Leges_, IX. 873 B.

[1160] Cf. especially Tournefort, _Voyage du Levant_, I. p. 163, who
was an eye-witness of such an occurrence in Myconos.

[1161] Cf. Aesch. _Eumen._ 780 ff., and (for the withdrawal of the
curse) 938 ff.

[1162] Eur. _Phoen._ 1592 ff. The word here translated ‘avengers’ is
ἀλάστορες, which is fully discussed below, pp. 465 ff.

[1163] Aesch. _Suppl._ 262 ff., reading in 266 μηνιτὴ δάκη, the
emendation of Porson.

[1164] _l.c._ 265-6, μιάσμασιν ... μηνιτή ... ἀνῆκε.

[1165] Aesch. _Eum._ 52.

[1166] Aesch. _Eum._ 53, 137-9.

[1167] _Ibid._ 254.

[1168] _Ibid._ 75, 111, 131, 246-7.

[1169] _passim._

[1170] 183-4, 264.

[1171] _Ibid._ 780 ff., 938 ff.

[1172] _Ibid._ 644.

[1173] _Ibid._ 70, 73, 644.

[1174] Eur. _Med._ 1370.

[1175] Aesch. _Eum._ 177.

[1176] Soph. _El._ 603.

[1177] Aesch. _Eum._ 349, reading μαυροῦμεν νέον αἷμα.

[1178] Aesch. _Eum._ 236.

[1179] L. and S. s.v.

[1180] Cf. Aesch. _Choeph._ 1026 ff., and _Eumen._ _passim_.

[1181] Cf. Preller, _Griech. Mythol._, I. p. 145 (edit. 4, Carl Robert).

[1182] Clem. Alex. _Protrept._ II. § 26.

[1183] Aesch. _Pers._ 353.

[1184] This fact is recognised by Geddes in his edition of the
_Phaedo_, in the course of his note (p. 280 ff.) on the difficulty
concerning the words ἢ λόγου θείου τινὸς in cap. 33 (p. 85 D). He does
not however infer that the words really contrasted are ἀλάστωρ and
δαίμων, but claims for the particle ἢ an epexegetic sense (‘or, in
other words,’) besides its usual disjunctive sense (‘or else’). I am
far from being satisfied that the epexegetic use of ἢ existed at all
in Classical Greek, which idiomatically employed καὶ in that way. At
any rate its existence is not proved by the other passages which Geddes
cites--Aesch. _Pers._ 430 and Soph. _Phil._ 934--where the ἢ perhaps
equals _vel_ rather than _aut_, but has none of the epexegetic sense of
_sive_.

[1185] Eur. _Med._ 1059 ff.

[1186] Eur. _Med._ 1333 ff.

[1187] Eur. _H. F._ 1229 ff.

[1188] Cf. Paley, in his note to elucidate this dialogue. It should be
added however that in a second note on the same page, dealing with this
line only, he apparently contradicts his previous explanation.

[1189] Eur. _H. F._ 1218 ff.

[1190] Cf. 1324.

[1191] See Eustath. on _Il._ IV. 295.

[1192] _Gk Etymol._ 547.

[1193] _Vergleichende Grammatik_, II. § 122.

[1194] The nearest parallel could only be the dubious form ἀδώτης in
Hesiod, _W. and D._, 353. But that form, if correct, is probably best
treated as adjective (giftless) not as substantive (non-giver).

[1195] I am indebted to Mr P. Giles, of Emmanuel College, for pointing
out to me that the analogy with μιάστωρ is mentioned in the last
edition of Meyer’s _Griechische Philologie_.

[1196] Hom. _Il._ IV. 295, Ἀμφὶ μέγαν Πελάγοντα, Ἀλάστορά τε, Χρόμιόν
τε. The hiatus in the third foot has been made the basis of a
suggestion, to which Mr P. Giles has kindly called my attention, that
ἀλάστωρ should begin with a digamma. There is however no need for the
supposition, since hiatus after the trochaic caesura is not infrequent
(e.g. _Il._ I. 569) and some license is generally allowed in any case
in the metrical treatment of proper names; moreover, in _Il._ VIII.
333, we have a line δῖος Ἀλάστωρ which makes against the original
existence of a digamma in the word.

[1197] Aesch. _Eum._ 103.

[1198] Aesch. _Eum._ 114.

[1199] Aesch. _Eum._ 98.

[1200] This is distinctly stated in the passage, though of course her
own violent death might equally well have been given as a cause of
‘wandering.’

[1201] Eur. _Tro._ 1023.

[1202] Cf. Plutarch, _de defect. orac._, cap. 15 (p. 418).

[1203] Aesch. _Eum._ 236, cf. above, p. 466.

[1204] Soph. _Ajax_, 373.

[1205] Demosth. _de Falsa Legat._, p. 438, 28.

[1206] Demosth. _de Corona_, § 296, p. 324.

[1207] Soph. _Trach._ 1092.

[1208] e.g. Eur. _Iph. in Aul._ 878; _Phoen._ 1550; _El._ 979; _Or._
1668.

[1209] _Choeph._ 928.

[1210] _Electra_, 677.

[1211] Eur. _Or._ 1584.

[1212] Eur. _Andr._ 614.

[1213] Aeschines, _De falsa legatione_, § 168 (p. 49). Cf. § 162 (p.
48).

[1214] Aeschylus, _Agam._ 1587.

[1215] Plato, _Leges_, IX. p. 866 B, cf. above, p. 445.

[1216] So far as I can discover, it is a solitary example of the use
in Classical Greek; but I very strongly suspect that in Antiphon, p.
127 (init.), προστρέψομαι should be read instead of προστρίψομαι. A
man accused of murder is saying, ἀδίκως μὲν γὰρ ἀπολυθεὶς, διὰ τὸ μὴ
ὀρθῶς διδαχθῆναι ὑμᾶς ἀποφυγὼν, τοῦ μὴ διδάξαντος καὶ οὐχ ὑμέτερον τὸν
προστρόπαιον τοῦ ἀποθανόντος καταστήσω· μὴ ὀρθῶς δὲ καταληφθεὶς ὑφ’
ὑμῶν, ὑμῖν καὶ οὐ τούτῳ τὸ μήνιμα τῶν ἀλιτηρίων προστρίψομαι. The sense
is, ‘If I were really guilty of this murder and yet owing to the feeble
case presented by the prosecutor I were acquitted by you, my escape
would bring the Avenger of the dead man upon the prosecutor and not on
you; whereas, if you condemn me wrongly when I am innocent, it will be
on you and not on him that I, after death, shall turn the wrath of the
Avengers.’ Clearly προστρέψομαι is required to answer προστρόπαιον, and
it could have no more natural object than τὸ μήνιμα, the special word
denoting the wrath which follows on bloodguilt.

[1217] Photius, s.v. παλαμναῖος.

[1218] I venture upon this emphatic negation, not so much because I
have found no such usage in my reading of Greek literature, as because
the line of the _Eumenides_ in which Orestes calls himself ἀλάστορα, οὐ
προστρόπαιον, would be hopelessly ambiguous if such an usage had been
possible.

[1219] Antiphon, 119. 6.

[1220] Aesch. _Choeph._ 287.

[1221] Antiphon, 125. 32 and 126. 39.

[1222] Pausan. II. 18. 2.

[1223] Hesychius, s.v. προστρόπαιος.

[1224] Aesch. _Agam._ 1587; see above, p. 480.

[1225] Cf. Aesch. _Eum._ 283 and 450.




CHAPTER V.

CREMATION AND INHUMATION.


The discussion of those abnormal cases of after-death existence, to
which the last chapter has been devoted, has disclosed to us the fact
that in all ages of Greece the condition most to be dreaded by the
dead has been incorruptibility and the boon most to be desired a sure
and quick dissolution; and that of the two methods by which the living
might promote the disintegration of the dead, cremation and inhumation,
the former alone has been accounted infallible. What benefit in the
future existence was in old time thought to accrue to those whose
bodies had been duly dissolved, and to be withheld from _revenants_,
is a question which may conveniently be adjourned for a while. First
we must verify the results obtained from the study of the abnormal
by consideration of the normal; we must see whether ordinary funeral
usage has had for its sole object the dissolution of the dead in the
interests of the dead; and what, if any, distinction has been made
between inhumation and cremation as a means of securing that object.

Now diverse methods of disposing of the dead, especially among a
primitive folk, would naturally suggest diverse religious purposes to
be served thereby, diverse conceptions of the future estate of the
dead, or of their future abode, or of their future relations with
the living; and for my part I do not doubt that, if our eyes could
pierce the darkness of a long distant past which neither history nor
even archaeology has illumined, we should see that the peoples who
first used cremation and inhumation side by side in Greece were in so
doing animated by diverse religious sentiments. But I hold also that
in no period of which we have any cognisance have the Greeks regarded
inhumation and cremation as means to different religious ends; but
that, whichever funeral-method has been employed, one and the same
immediate object has always been kept in view, the dissolution of the
dead body, and one and the same motive (save in the quite exceptional
circumstances where a scare of _vrykolakes_ has temporarily arisen) has
always prompted the mourners thereto, the motive of benefiting the dead.

But, while the object in view was single and constant, there would
have been no inconsistency in making a certain distinction between
the two methods available. On the contrary, if the sole object was
the disintegration of the dead body, the surer and quicker means of
attaining it should logically have been preferred. Cremation therefore
might legitimately have been reckoned a superior rite to inhumation;
for it cannot but have been recognised that the disintegration of the
body is more rapidly and unfailingly effected by the action of fire
than by the action of the soil.

It is true indeed that the solvent action of the earth upon the buried
body--even with all due allowance for the absence of any coffin in many
cases--is popularly regarded as far more rapid than it can actually
be. The period usually reckoned by the common-folk as the limit of
time requisite for complete dissolution is forty days. This is stated
clearly enough in a few lines of a song of lamentation heard in
Zacynthos:

    καὶ μέσ’ ’στὸ σαραντοήμερο ἀρμοὺς ἀρμοὺς χωρίζουν,
    πέφτουνε τὰ ξανθὰ μαλλιὰ, βγαίνουν τὰ μαύρα μάτια,
    καὶ χώρια πάει τὸ κορμὶ καὶ χώρια τὸ κεφάλι[1226].

 ‘And within the forty days, they (the dead) are severed joint from
 joint, their bright hair falls away, their dark eyes fall out, and
 asunder go trunk and head.’

The Zacynthian muse is horribly explicit; its utterances need no
interpreter; itself rather gives the true interpretation of certain
customs which are wide-spread in modern Greece and appear to date from
pre-Christian days.

The fortieth day after death is almost universally observed in Greece
as one on which the relations of the deceased should provide a memorial
feast. There are indeed other fixed days for the like commemoration
and ‘forgiveness[1227]’ of the dead, but these all fall at periods
of three, or a multiple of three, days, weeks, months, or years, from
the date of death. These, I think, have been selected in deference to
the mysterious virtue of the number three[1228], and not improbably
multiplied by the importunities of a penurious priesthood, to whom some
half-dozen hearty meals in the course of the year do not appear an
inappropriate remuneration for their services at death-bed and burial.
But the fortieth day was originally devoted to this purpose, it may
reasonably be supposed, because it was the last opportunity of setting
before the dead man’s neighbours and acquaintances savoury meat such
as their soul loved, that they might eat thereof and ‘loose’ the dead
man from any curse wherewith in his lifetime they had bound him; if
dissolution was not to be retarded, the fortieth day was in popular
reckoning the last opportunity for absolution.

From this it should follow that any memorial feasts held later[1229]
than the fortieth day are of purely ecclesiastical contrivance; and
the correctness of this inference is attested by a curious local usage
which clearly distinguishes the popular and the ecclesiastical feasts.
At Sinasos in Asia Minor two classes of commemorations are recognised.
The one is called κανίσκια, ‘little baskets,’ from the method in which
food is distributed to the poor; this is held on the fortieth day. The
other has usurped the name μνημόσυνα, which commonly belongs to all
memorial-feasts, and is held on the three anniversaries of the death
(for, after the third, exhumation generally takes place, and no further
memorial-feasts are needed) and consists in the presentation of an
ornamental dish of boiled wheat (κόλλυβα) at the church and the reading
of a service[1230]. In other words, the fortieth day is the popular
festival, and the observances of later dates are ecclesiastical.
Clearly the reason for this distinction must lie in the fact that the
common-folk believe, as the song from Zacynthos shows, that dissolution
is normally complete by the fortieth day, while the Church has
prudently fixed the date, after which exhumation is permissible, at the
end of the third year. Presumably then a period of forty days was the
old pagan period, for which the Church has tried, with partial success,
to substitute three years.

Several other small pieces of evidence point to the wide distribution
of this popular notion. In Sinasos[1231], once more, and also in
Patmos[1232], the fees paid to the priests for memorial services derive
their name from the word ‘forty’ (σαράντα), as if the fortieth day were
the limit; after that date, apparently, though my authorities are not
explicit on the point, the priests have for their remuneration only the
dish of boiled wheat or other presents in kind. In Crete, if a dead
man is suspected of turning _vrykolakas_ soon after his death, the
people are anxious to deal with him before he enters upon his second
period of forty days[1233]; for then all hope of natural dissolution
is past, and he becomes as it were a confirmed vampire. In Scyros, the
old custom of burning such corpses as were found on exhumation at the
end of three years (or, in case of a panic, earlier) to be still whole,
and were therefore suspected of vampire-like proclivities, has been
replaced by the milder expedient of carrying the body round to forty
churches in turn and then re-interring it, in the hope, as it seems,
that each of the forty saints, whose sanctuaries have been honoured
with a visit and a certain consumption of candles, will in return take
a proportionate share in ‘loosing’ the suppliant dead--or, it may be,
in the more mathematical expectation that the work effected in cases of
ordinary burial by one funeral-service in forty days, will be achieved
by forty funeral-services in one day. Whichever be the calculation on
which the practice has been based, the number of churches to be visited
is clearly governed by the number of days requisite, in popular belief,
for ordinary dissolution.

But with all this reputed rapidity of the earth in ‘loosing’ the dead
bodies committed to her care, the action of fire is incontrovertibly
more rapid. In hours, not in days, may be counted the period of
disintegration on the pyre. And as it is quicker, so also is it far
surer. No body that has been burned can wander as a _revenant_ over
the earth, while for the buried there is no perfect assurance of
dissolution. Some curse, some crime, the violence of their death, or
the deficiency of their funeral rites, each and all of these may keep
their bodies ‘bound’ and indissoluble. Cremation then is indisputably
in theory the preferable means of securing to the dead that boon which
they most desire; and I hold that in the practice of the Greek people
there are signs that this preference was felt.

There are then two propositions to be established by reference to the
actual funeral methods of Ancient and Modern Greece; first, that from
the earliest ages of which we have cognisance cremation and inhumation
have been identical in their religious purpose; second, that a
preference for cremation, considered as a means to the single religious
end, has been manifested.

The first thing needful in this twofold investigation is to understand
the terms, which are to be used, in the sense in which the Greek
understood them. Cremation means to us the consumption of the corpse by
fire; inhumation the laying of the corpse out of sight in the earth;
and unless one or other of those acts had been really performed, we
should not consider that a funeral had taken place. But the Greeks
judged rather by the intention than by the act. In certain cases, in
which the actual digging of a grave was impossible, ancient usage
prescribed a ceremonial substitute. The sprinkling of a handful of
dust over a dead body was held to constitute burial. Such was all the
funeral that Antigone could give to Polynices[1234]; such the minimum
of burial enjoined by Attic Law on any who chanced upon a dead body
lying unburied[1235]; such, according to Aelian, ‘the fulfilment of
some mysterious law of piety imposed by Nature’ not only upon man but
even on some of the brute creation, in such sort that the elephant, if
he find one of his own kind dead, gathers up some earth in his trunk
and sprinkles it over the prostrate carcase[1236]. ‘The fulfilment of
some mysterious law of piety’--Aelian’s phrase accurately summarises
the Greek view of burial. To us it is a necessary and decent method of
disposing of the dead. To the Greeks it was something more--a provision
for their dimly discerned welfare; and the intention of the living
mattered so much more than the performance, that, in cases where real
burial could not be given, a mere ceremony suggestive of burial was
considered competent to ensure the same end.

Again in the case of a man drowned at sea or having met his death
in any way which precluded the possibility of his body being brought
home for burial, a means has always been found for fulfilling ‘the
mysterious law of piety.’ Still, as in old time, the cenotaph serves
the same end as the real sepulchre. A lay-figure, dressed if possible
in some clothes of the dead man, receives on his behalf the full rite
of burial[1237]; and if enquiry be made, to what purpose this empty
ceremony, the answer is not slow in coming, γιὰ νὰ λυωθῇ ὁ πεθαμένος,
‘to the end that the dead man may be dissolved’; nor can I doubt that
the same formal rite in old time served the same end.

And let no practical-minded critic here interpose the objection that
a dead body lying unburied, exposed to sun and rain, must decompose
at least as rapidly as one that has been buried; I have myself tried
the effect of that criticism on the Greek peasants with instructive
results. Once my suggestion was promptly met with a flat and honest
denial--the most simple and final of answers, for, be it remembered, it
is with the honest beliefs of the peasant, and not with physical facts,
that we are dealing. Another time there was a pause, and then came the
deliberate answer, βρωμάει τὸ κορμὶ, δὲν λυώνεται, ‘the corpse becomes
putrid, but is not “loosed”.’ There was a distinction in the peasant’s
mind between natural decomposition and the dissolution effected by a
religious rite. But more often it has been pointed out to me that my
apparently reasonable suggestion was really unpractical; a dead body
left unburied would never suffer natural decay, but would be a prey to
the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air; the vultures circling
yonder overhead convicted me of unreason. And the answer could not
but recall the threats of Achilles against Hector, or the fears of
Antigone for Polynices, that dogs and carrion-birds should feast upon
the corpse. So then it is perhaps a logical as well as an honest belief
which the Greeks have always held, that dissolution of the body is
afforded by one of two rites and by no third means.

Now one of these rites, inhumation, might on occasion be reduced to
a mere ceremonial observance, the scattering of a handful of dust
over the body, or the interment of an effigy in its stead. Was the
other rite, cremation, ever so reduced? Could the roar and crackle of
the blazing pyre be ceremonially replaced by a small flame lighted
in proximity to the dead body? Did the kindling of a fire, however
incapable of consuming the dead body, constitute cremation in the
same sense that a handful of earth, incapable of concealing the dead
body, constituted interment? _Prima facie_ there is nothing wild in
the supposition; it is consistent with the Greek conception of the
funeral-rite, which looked rather to the intention than to the act;
the proven fact of ceremonial inhumation guarantees the likelihood of
ceremonial cremation. I take it therefore as a working hypothesis, and
base its subsequent claim to be accepted as a fact on its ability to
explain consistently a long series of phenomena in Greek funeral usage.

My first proposition, that from the earliest ages of which we have
cognisance cremation and inhumation have served the same religious
end, would have had an initial obstacle to surmount but for Professor
Ridgeway’s work on the ethnology of early Greece. Diverse methods of
disposing of the dead would at first sight, as I have said, suggest
diverse conceptions of after-death existence. But Professor Ridgeway
has shown conclusively, to my mind, that inhumation was the rite of
the autochthonous Pelasgian people of Greece, and that cremation was
introduced by the Achaean immigrants[1238]. Now it is improbable of
course that these two peoples, when they first came into contact, held
similar views concerning the hereafter. But the entry of the Achaean
element was, according to all evidence, a long process of infiltration
rather than a sudden invasion. The beginnings of it are conjecturally
placed well back in the third millennium before Christ[1239]. There was
ample time therefore, even before the later Mycenaean or the Homeric
age, for differences of religious sentiment as between the two races to
dwindle or to vanish, while the two rites of cremation and inhumation,
with the inveteracy of all custom, still survived.

Thus there is no initial objection to the view that in any period
known to us those who used cremation and those who used inhumation
were animated by the same religious ideas; and at the same time I
am relieved of the necessity of combating both the old theory that
cremation was adopted by the Greeks as a convenient substitute for
inhumation during some period of migration or nomadic life, and Rohde’s
more recent theory[1240] that fear of the spirits of the dead, which
were believed to hover about graves where their bodies lay buried, led
men to adopt cremation as a means of annihilating the body and thereby
ridding themselves of the unwelcome spirit. Both those theories fail,
apart from certain intrinsic defects, because they are attempts to
explain a thing which never took place--a supposed substitution of
cremation for inhumation between the Mycenaean and the Homeric ages.
Professor Ridgeway has shown that the Mycenaean rite was that of the
Pelasgians; the Homeric rite that of the Achaeans. It is an accident
only that our earliest information respecting the two rites happens to
be drawn from different periods of time; the real distinction between
the two was a racial distinction; from the age when the Achaeans first
entered Greece down to the Christian era cremation and inhumation were
both continuously practised.

The positive evidence for my view that these two rites were mere racial
survivals, which had already, in the earliest ages known to us, ceased
to differ in religious import, is to be found not only in the fact
that in historical times, or even earlier, the two rites were used
side by side by the people of a single city in the same cemetery, but
in an early tendency to fuse the two rites into one and to give to the
same body the double treatment of cremation and inhumation combined;
for clearly the only condition under which two such rites could be
amalgamated must have been that there had ceased to be any conflict of
religious significance between them.

How early this fusion began it is difficult to determine; but it is at
least worth while to note a point which is apt to be overlooked, that
the Homeric funeral-rite comprised inhumation. Cremation certainly
was the main part of the rite, the actual means by which the corpse
was disintegrated; but the funeral was not complete until the ashes
had been collected and inhumed[1241]. This is an act of ceremonial
inhumation just as much as the burial of an effigy dressed in a dead
man’s clothes.

Moreover it is possible that the Mycenaean funeral-rite sometimes
comprised an act of ceremonial cremation. To review here the
archaeological evidence for some use of fire in Mycenaean graves
is unnecessary; it will suffice to quote from the summary given
by Rohde[1242] as the basis of his theory--to which I by no means
assent--that a vigorous ‘soul-cult,’ involving propitiatory offerings
to the dead, was a religious feature of that age. ‘Traces of smoke,
remnants of ash and charcoal, point to the fact that the dead bodies
were laid on the spot where were burnt those offerings to the dead
which had previously been made in the tomb.... On the ground, or
sometimes on a specially prepared bed of flints, the offerings were
burnt, and then, when the fire had gone out, the bodies were laid on
top and covered over with sand, lime, and stones.’

Now the fact that in Mycenaean graves gifts were actually consumed
by fire while the corpse was left to the process of natural decay is
indisputable; but, if the fire employed had no further purpose, the
practice of the Mycenaean age would be unique. The custom of all later
ages was to treat the corpse and the gifts alike, to burn both or to
bury both. This is implied in ancient literature[1243], and confirmed
by modern excavations; for funeral-urns seldom contain any remnants of
gifts; which means that the gifts had been consumed on the pyre with
the body, but that only the bones were collected and stored in the urn;
whereas in graves the gifts are constantly found buried with the body
and intact. Further the custom of burning both body and gifts is the
old Achaean custom, as described by Homer in the funeral of Patroclus;
and it would seem probable that the custom of interring both body and
gifts intact was the original Pelasgian custom. Was then the use of
fire in these Mycenaean graves the first step in the fusion of the
Achaean and Pelasgian rites?

Again, the body was observed to lie on top of the burnt gifts. What is
the meaning of this superimposition? According to Rohde the fire which
consumed the gifts was allowed to go out, and the bodies were then laid
on the cold ashes. But manifestly this cannot be proved. All that we
know is that the fire did not consume the bodies. No one can assert
that they were untouched by flame or ember and that the smell of fire
did not pass over them. Was then the act of laying the body on top of
the burnt or burning gifts an act of ceremonial cremation?

These questions I cannot answer; but one thing is clear. Either the
fusion of the Achaean and Pelasgian rites had already begun, or else,
in their original forms, they both comprised usages which greatly
facilitated their subsequent fusion.

When we pass on to the Dipylon-period, there is no longer any doubt.
Cremation and inhumation were practised both severally side by side and
also conjointly as a single rite. The evidence on which I mainly rely
is derived from two series of excavations, those of Philios[1244] at
Eleusis and those of Brückner and Pernice[1245] in the Dipylon cemetery
at Athens.

The autochthonous population of Attica naturally adhered in the
main to the old Pelasgian rite of inhumation. Yet at Eleusis, even
according to Philios who strangely belittles the importance of his
own discoveries[1246], there was one certain case of cremation; and
in the Dipylon cemetery also was found one urn which could be dated
with equal certainty. One or two other probable cases have also been
recorded by others[1247]. Clearly then as early as the eighth century
B.C. cremation was sometimes used, side by side with inhumation, as the
effective means of disintegrating the dead body.

And there is equally sure proof that the two rites were also employed
conjointly, in the sense that a ceremonial act of inhumation followed
actual cremation, or a ceremonial act of cremation accompanied actual
inhumation. A conspicuous instance of the former is the one certain
case of actual cremation recorded by Brückner and Pernice[1248]. A
bronze urn containing the calcined bones of a boy or girl had been
deposited not in a mere hole dug to fit it, but in a grave fully
prepared as if for the reception of a corpse. The measurements of the
grave were of normal size; in it had been laid, along with the urn,
gifts of the usual nature--an amphora, two boxes, a bowl, and a jug;
and above the grave, in a prepared space considerably wider than the
actual grave, stood one of the large Dipylon-vases. In every respect
the interment had been carried out as if it were the interment of an
unburnt body. An attempt had been made so to combine the two rites of
cremation and inhumation that neither should seem subordinate to the
other.

Instances of the other sort, in which ceremonial cremation accompanied
actual inhumation, are furnished by Philios’ excavations at Eleusis.
Speaking of the large earthenware jars which often served as coffins
for children, he says, ‘Whereas the bones contained in these vessels
were unburnt, all round the vessels in the soil traces of burning were
abundant and varied[1249].’ Now these traces of fire cannot have been
due to the burning of gifts brought subsequently to the interment;
for that custom naturally resulted in a stratum of burnt soil above
the grave. But here the traces were ‘all round the vessels, in the
soil.’ Apparently then we have here a practice parallel to that
of Mycenaean times. The body was interred and obtained its actual
dissolution by natural decay; but before the interment a fire was
kindled in the grave, and among the flames or on the embers the body
in its coffin-jar was laid and covered over with the soil. Whether at
Eleusis, as at Mycenae, the funeral-gifts were consumed in that fire,
we do not know for certain; but since it is undoubtedly rare to find
any gift along with the child’s body in these vessels, it is reasonable
to suppose that the few gifts--few, because all the circumstances of
these funerals seem humble--were burnt[1250] just as were the grander
offerings at Mycenae. At any rate these cases reveal an intention
of associating fire with the buried body, of adding to the rite of
interment a ceremonial act of cremation.

The tendency towards fusion of the two funeral rites has now been
traced through the pre-historic era; it is in the historic period
that the fusion appears most general and most complete. I will take as
typical instances a number of graves, ranging in date from the sixth
to the fourth century, opened by the two German excavators on whose
narrative I have largely relied for the Dipylon-period[1251]. These
graves numbered somewhat under two hundred. In the classification of
them there appears the important item--forty-five graves in which the
body had been actually burned. In other words, in approximately a
quarter of the cases observed the rites of cremation and inhumation
had been combined, and that too in such a way that both elements,
fire and earth, might well have seemed to share together the work
of dissolution. Neither method is here exalted to sole efficacy,
neither is degraded into mere ceremony. The balance of importance is
adjusted, and the two acts which form the composite funeral-rite are
recognised as equal. Indeed there are no longer two distinct acts;
they have coalesced; the moment and the act of laying the body in the
earth are also the moment and the act of laying the body on the pyre.
Amalgamation is complete.

Having traced the history of Greek funeral-usage down to this point, I
may now fairly claim, first, that my working hypothesis--the practice
of ceremonial cremation as the counterpart of ceremonial inhumation--is
justified by the single and consistent explanation which it affords of
the phenomena which I have noticed (and I may add that I shall have
occasion to explain other phenomena in the latter half of this chapter
in the same way); secondly, if that explanation be accepted, I may
claim that the only condition under which the two rites could have been
employed both severally as alternatives and conjointly as one composite
rite was that the religious purpose underlying them both was one and
the same. And this purpose, if there is any meaning in the stories of
Patroclus, Elpenor, Polynices, and Polydorus, was to give to the dead
that which they most craved, a speedy dissolution.

The evidence for this unity of purpose is, I hope, already sufficient;
but confirmation may be found, if required, in the smaller details
of funeral-custom. It is, I believe, a received principle of textual
criticism that, in estimating the relation of two manuscripts of a
given author, coincidence in _minutiae_ is the true criterion of their
common origin or other close kinship, and its testimony is not to
be outweighed by a few conspicuous divergences. So too, I think, in
estimating the mutual relation of two rites, the coincidence of all
the minor circumstances connected with them is of more significance
than one large and evident contrast between them. Such a contrast, let
it be granted, exists between cremation and inhumation when employed
separately. Yet it would be a rash and faulty judgement, I hold,
which should at once infer thence that the two rites were informed by
different religious ideas. The minute coincidences claim examination.
If all that preceded and accompanied and followed the actual disposal
of the corpse, whether by burning or by burial, exhibited uniformity in
scheme and in scope; if the washing and the anointing, the arraying and
the crowning, were performed with the same tender care whether the body
was destined for the cold, slow earth or for the rapid flame; if from
the death-chamber, where the body had lain in state and the kinsfolk,
grouped in order of dearness about it, had paid in turn their debt of
lamentation, the same sad pomp escorted the dead whether to the pyre
or to the grave; if the same gifts--the same provision as it seems for
bodily comfort--were mingled as ashes with the ashes of the dead or
were consigned intact with the body yet intact to the will and keeping
of the earth; then, whichever means the mourners chose for effecting
the actual dissolution of the fleshly remains, their religious attitude
towards death and their conception of the hereafter must have been
single and constant.

Space forbids me to enter into the evidence for the uniformity of all
this detail in all periods of Greek life. I will confine myself to two
illustrations. The first shall be the _prothesis_ or lying-in-state
of the body with the solemn lamentation of the kinsfolk, for the most
part women, grouped about it. I have elsewhere[1252] described the
scene; I have only to illustrate here the universality of it as the
prelude alike to cremation and to inhumation, alike in Ancient and in
Modern Greece, alike amid pagan and amid Christian surroundings. In the
Mycenaean age the bodies of the dead were sumptuously arrayed--probably
with a view to the lying-in-state; more than that cannot be actually
asserted of the earliest epoch. But in the Homeric age, as at the
funeral of Hector[1253], the custom is seen already fully developed.
In the Dipylon-age the scene described by Homer is found depicted
on the great vases that served as monuments over the graves[1254]. A
little later, the legislation of Solon is directed against the excesses
to which the rite of solemn lamentation led[1255]. Next, an orator of
Athens is found declaiming against the wrongs done to him by the thirty
tyrants, who, not content with having put his brother to death, had
actually refused the use of any of the three houses belonging to the
family and had forced them to lay out the body in a hired hut[1256].
Again we have the ridicule of Lucian directed against the discordant
scene of useless misery[1257]. In strange company with him appears
St Chrysostom upbraiding Christians for their extravagances of grief
and threatening them with excommunication if they continue to call in
heathen women to act as professional mourners[1258]. Centuries passed
without diminution of the custom, and the Venetians during their
occupation of the Ionian islands enacted laws[1259] in the spirit of
those formulated by Solon more than two thousand years before. Of this
custom it might well be said, ‘_et vetabitur semper et retinebitur_,’
for it still maintains its old vogue and vitality, and is the necessary
prelude of every peasant’s funeral to-day.

My second illustration is a far more trivial circumstance, but not on
that account less significant--the use of the foliage of the olive as
a couch for the dead, whether on the bier which conveyed him to the
grave or on the funeral-pyre. The reason for choosing olive-leaves
does not concern us; there may have been, as Rohde suggests[1260],
some idea of purification connected with it; but it is only the
wide-spread use of it which I have to illustrate. Among the ashes of
those small pyres, on which the dead were laid in Mycenaean sepulchres,
were recognised charred olive-leaves[1261]. Lycurgus in curtailing
the funeral-rites of Sparta bade his countrymen wrap their dead for
burial in the red military cloak (as became a race of warriors) and in
olive-leaves[1262]. The Pythagoreans, who objected to cremation[1263],
laid their dead to rest on a bed of leaves gathered from myrtle,
poplar, and olive[1264]. An Attic law forbade the felling of certain
olive-trees under penalty of a fine of a hundred drachmae per tree,
but contained a saving-clause exempting cases in which olive-wood was
wanted for funerals[1265]. This permission points to a special use of
olive-wood as fuel for the pyre, for, if a few branches or sprays only
had been needed for decking out the bier, there would have been no
question of felling whole trees. It was probably then this custom which
Sophocles also had in mind, when the messenger, who brought the news
of Polynices’ tardy funeral, was made by him to specify ‘fresh-plucked
olive-shoots’ as the material of the pyre[1266]. Again, in a number
of sarcophagi found by Fauvel outside the gates of Athens on the
road to Acharnae the skeleton was observed to lie ‘on a thick bed of
olive-leaves[1267].’ In the second century of our era the custom of
placing olive-branches on the bier still prevailed[1268]; and at the
present day the olive is often conspicuous at the funerals of peasants,
either in the garland about the dead man’s head or in the decoration of
the bier.

Thus the uniformity of detail in funerals, whether the main rite was
cremation or inhumation, no less than the tendency to amalgamate these
two into a single rite, proves that, from the earliest ages known to
us, their religious purpose had been identical--to give to the dead
that speedy bodily dissolution which they desired.

But in spite of this unity of purpose, one or other rite doubtless
continued long through force of custom to hold predominance in
particular districts. In Attica it was perhaps not until the sixth or
even the fifth century that the Pelasgian rite had entirely lost the
support of ancestral tradition. But then and thenceforward the two
methods appear to have been judged simply as methods, and the estimate
of their respective merits was little affected by the old racial
differences. But this does not mean that the methods were judged
wholly on their religious merits--on their adaptability to the single
religious purpose. Cost and convenience were necessarily factors in
determining the choice between them. Thus the question of cost must
often have decided the poorer classes to choose inhumation; and in
that portion of the Dipylon cemetery to which I have already referred,
it was actually found that, out of the graves in which no evidence of
cremation was found, more than a hundred were of a poor character,
mere shafts in the earth, or at the best walled with rough brick-built
sides, while only thirteen were of a costly style--sepulchres built
with slabs of stone, or regular sarcophagi. And similarly other
practical considerations must often have turned the scale in favour
of the one or the other rite. The soldiers who fell at Marathon were
simply interred, presumably because to dig a trench and to raise a
mound in the middle of the plain was a more feasible task than to
collect masses of fuel from the surrounding hill-sides; but the victims
of the plague at Athens were with good reason cremated.

Nevertheless, where none of these external causes operated, there
are signs that cremation was held in somewhat higher esteem than
inhumation. The story went that Solon’s body was burnt, by way of
honour seemingly, and his ashes scattered over that island which he
had won back for Athens. And we hear of cremation being accorded,
apparently again as the more honourable rite, to other great men
such as Dionysius, the famous tyrant of Syracuse, and Timoleon, her
deliverer. But more conclusive is the evidence of literature, where not
only the act itself is named, but a clear indication of the feeling
of the actors is given. According to Aeschylus, the dead body of
Agamemnon, king though he was, was merely hidden away in the ground
by his blood-guilty wife; even in death she would show him no pity,
do him no honour. But in Sophocles the dying Heracles is laid on a
funeral-pyre, and the dead Polynices, to whom Antigone was perforce
content to give the most meagre form of interment, obtains from
Creon, when at last too late he repents, the full rite of cremation.
And the tone too in which Herodotus once speaks of the two rites is
significant: ‘the funeral-rites of well-to-do Thracians,’ he says, ‘are
as follows: the body lies in state for three days, and they slaughter
all manner of victims and make good cheer, when once the preliminary
lamentation is done; and then they dispose of the body by cremation
or merely by interment’--ἔπειτα δὲ θάπτουσι κατακαύσαντες, ἢ ἄλλως γῇ
κρύψαντες[1269]. The ‘merely’ plainly betrays Herodotus’ own feeling
that well-to-do persons might be expected to have the advantage of
cremation.

In the following centuries the preference for cremation would seem
to have become even more pronounced; for though both rites still
continued in use, separately as well as conjointly, Lucian was able to
call cremation the distinctively Hellenic rite[1270]. But more marked
still was the feeling in favour of cremation among those who upheld
the old Greek religion when first they had to face the invasion of
Christianity. ‘The heathen for the most part,’ says Bingham[1271],
‘burned the bodies of the dead in funeral piles, and then gathered
up the bones and ashes, and put them in an urn above ground: but the
Christians abhorred this way of burying; and therefore never used
it, but put the body whole into the ground.’ The conflict over this
matter was bitter. The pagans taunted the Christians with fearing
that, if their bodies were reduced to ashes by cremation, they would
be incapacitated for the vaunted resurrection[1272], and as a final
injury to Christian martyrs sometimes burnt their bodies and scattered
the ashes to the winds[1273]. The Christians in retaliation condemned
the rite of cremation as in appearance an act of cruelty to the dead
body[1274], and ridiculed the pagans for first ‘burning up their
dead in a most savage manner and then feasting them in a manner most
gluttonous, using the flames alike for their service and for their
injury[1275]’--for their service in cooking them a funeral-meal, for
their injury in consuming them to ashes. The two now conflicting
rites continued in use until the end of the fourth century of our
era; for reference is made to them in the laws of Theodosius[1276].
But cremation must have been on the decrease; for Macrobius early in
the fifth century says that in his time the practice had fallen into
entire desuetude, and all he knew of it was from reading[1277]. ‘It
is most probable,’ says Bingham, ‘that the heathen custom altered by
degrees from the time of Commodus the Emperor; for Commodus himself
and many of his friends were buried by inhumation and not by burning
... and from that time the custom of burning might decrease till at
last under the Christian emperors, though without any law to forbid it,
the contrary custom entirely prevailed, and this quite dwindled into
nothing.’ If this view be correct, it will mean that the old preference
for cremation exhibited by the adherents of paganism was only excited
to temporary intensity by a spirit of antagonism towards Christianity,
and that they soon returned to the old way of thinking and recognised
inhumation as a method alternative, if slightly inferior, to cremation.
When the bitterness of religious strife was over, and pagans and
Christians lived more at peace together, the former may readily have
resumed the practice of interment, which after all was their own
heritage from dim ages long before the dawn of Christianity.

But though Macrobius in the fifth century speaks of cremation as then
in disuse, the memory of it cannot have passed away so soon. Only a few
generations were to lapse before the infusion of a Slavonic population
into Greece. Among the superstitions which these intruders disseminated
was one which concerned the resuscitated dead. The Greeks, as we have
seen, themselves held a superstition on which the horrid imaginings
of the Slavs were soon grafted; the common-folk became haunted by the
dread of _vrykolakes_. How then did they deal with the bodies of such
dead persons as were suspected? Not by adopting the Slavonic custom of
impaling them, but by a revival of cremation. The advantage which that
rite possessed over burial was remembered; by its aid the dissolution
of the dead could be rendered quick and sure. Thus cremation came
once more into use as a means to the same end as in old time--the
quick dissolution of the dead body; but the motive for promoting that
dissolution was, under the altered conditions, itself altered. Instead
of love it was fear; instead of solicitude for the welfare of the dead,
it was anxiety for the protection of the living.

Yet even so, the act of burning the _vrykolakas_ was a purely
defensive, not an offensive, measure. It was not an act of hostility
or reprisal, but merely a necessary act of self-preservation, which
inflicted no hurt on the _revenant_ but simply interposed an impassable
barrier between the living and the dead. The motive was fear; there was
little or nothing of hatred mixed with it. This is made clear by the
fact that cremation has been used even in recent times in a case which
had nothing whatsoever to do with the belief in _vrykolakes_, and where
the sole motive was the old desire to serve the interests of the dead.

The occasion was the evacuation of Parga in 1819. The inhabitants of
that town had long defied the Turks, but the end was at hand, and it
was only by the intervention of the English that they were saved from
the tender mercies of Ali Pasha. The English offered them asylum in
the Ionian Islands and obtained from the Porte on their behalf a sum
of money which fully indemnified them for the houses and lands which
they abandoned. But in spite of the terms obtained, the emigrants never
forgave the English for treacherously selling to the Turks, as they
said, the home which they had defended so stoutly and so long[1278].
This evacuation of Parga forms the theme of some ballads which have
been preserved[1279]. One of them runs as follows:

    ‘Bird of black tidings, that art come from yon confronting coastland,
    Tell me what mean those sobs of woe, those dismal lamentations,
    That rise aloud from Parga’s walls and shake the very mountains.
    Hath the Turk overwhelmèd her, do fire and sword consume her?’
      ‘The Turk hath not o’erwhelmèd her, nor fire and sword consume her;
    The men of Parga have been sold, as ye sell goats and oxen,
    And all must hie them thence to dwell in miserable exile.
    They must leave all, the homes they love, the tombs of their own fathers,
    The shrine whereat they bowed the knee, for infidels to trample.
    Women in anguish rend their hair and beat their bare white bosoms,
    Old men lift up their quavering voice in dismal lamentation,
    Priests amid flowing tears strip bare the churches where they worshipped.
    Dost see the glare of yonder fire? the pall of smoke above it?
    There are they burning dead men’s bones, the bones of valiant warriors,
    Who made the hosts of Turkey quail and fired their captain’s palace[1280].
    Yonder, I tell thee, many a son his father’s bones is burning,
    Lest the Liápid[1281] light on them, lest Turk upon them trample.
    Dost hear the wailing manifold wherewith the woodlands echo?
    Dost hear the beating of the breast, the dismal lamentation?
    ’Tis that the parting hour has come, to part them from their country;
    They kiss her very stones, they clasp her dust in fond caresses.’

The incident in this ballad with which we are concerned is the
exhumation and burning of the remains of those dead warriors who had
valiantly maintained the liberty of their native town; and there need
be little doubt that the incident is actually historical, for the story
is confirmed by a second ballad in the same collection[1282]; but in
any case all that concerns us here is the fact that the motive for such
an act was known and appreciated by the authors of the two ballads.

Now in order to understand this motive, it must be remembered that
the general custom of the Church in Greece is to exhume the bones of
the dead at the expiration of three years from the time of burial,
when dissolution is expected to be complete. Hence the kinsfolk for
whose remains the men of Parga were concerned were those who had been
recently buried and could not yet have attained complete dissolution.
They feared that the Turks would disturb and desecrate the graves and
thus obstruct the proper course of natural decay; and they therefore
decided to adopt the alternative method of disintegration, and by
cremation to effect speedily and surely that end which, without
friends at hand to guard the graves from the molestation of foes and
infidels, could not be secured by leaving the dead to the slow action
of the earth. This decision then reveals a clear recognition of the
superiority of cremation over inhumation as a means of compassing the
final dissolution of the dead; and equally clear is the motive for
seeking that end; it was not fear on their own account--to that feeling
indeed the men of Parga had proved themselves strangers--but simply
love and respect for the brave men who had fought, and perhaps had
fallen, in the defence of freedom.

Since then the exhumation and cremation of the dead constituted in
this case an act of love towards them, the same action in the case of
suspected _vrykolakes_ can never have been an act of hostility. It was
rather a measure beneficial alike to the living and to the dead. To the
living it gave immunity from the assaults of _vrykolakes_, and this
without doubt was commonly the uppermost or indeed the only thought
in the minds of those who had recourse to it; but to the dead too it
gave repose. And indeed I cannot but suppose that this is the reason
why the Greeks, when first confronted with the horror of _vrykolakes_,
chose to burn them rather than to follow the Slavonic custom of
impaling them. To impale them might have given security to the living,
but it appeared as an act of cruelty and hostility against the dead.
Cremation, by effecting immediate dissolution and the consequent
severance of the dead from this world, was bound to give equal security
to the living, and at the same time was an act of mercy and kindness
to the dead. In effect, the new motive of dread which came along with
Slavonic influence never excluded the old motive of love which inspired
the sons of warriors at Parga no less than the chief of Homeric
warriors at his comrade’s funeral, and perhaps will, if occasion arise,
prove itself not yet extinct. Cremation, though often in recent times
employed primarily as a safeguard for the living, has all along been
felt to confer also a benefit on the dead, an even surer and speedier
benefit than inhumation secured.

Now if this feeling existed, and if there existed also from early
times, as I have shown to be probable, a system of combining cremation
of a ceremonial kind with actual inhumation, it might reasonably be
expected that many who recognised the superior merit of cremation, but
had not the means to carry out so costly a rite in full, would have
availed themselves of the inexpensive ceremonial practice. This, I
believe, is what occurred, and in this I shall seek the explanation
of a custom which, like the practice of real cremation, has been
bequeathed by Ancient to Modern Greece.

In the funerals of Ancient Greece the procession, which escorted the
dead body from the room where it had lain in state to the pyre or the
grave, carried torches. Where cremation was to be employed, these
were doubtless used for kindling the pyre; the fire brought from the
dead man’s home in this world was used to speed him on his way to the
next. But when inhumation was practised, what became of these torches?
Was the fire brought from the dead man’s home put to no purpose? Or
were the torches thrown into the grave along with him? That we cannot
tell, for the torches were quickly perishable. But there is one object
commonly found in tombs which is suggestive of the association of
fire with the buried body. That common object is a lamp. Here again
we cannot tell whether that lamp was lighted when it was put in the
grave. Some that have been dug up have certainly been in use, for they
bear marks of the flame; but of course they may have been in every-day
use before they were devoted to the service of the dead. Yet the few
facts known would at least fit the theory that the procession which
carried out the dead man carried also fire from his home to the grave,
and that either the torches themselves or a lamp lighted from them was
put in the grave beside the body. If that view were correct, it would
further be note-worthy that most of the lamps found are of little
intrinsic value and of late date[1283]. Now the fact that they are
mostly worthless implies that they were often given by poor persons,
or, if the other contents of the grave be of value, that the lamp
was not brought as a gift for its intrinsic worth or beauty, but for
some practical purpose; while the fact that they are mainly of late
date means that the practice of putting them in the graves increased
in frequency during the period which begins with the fifth century
B.C.--that is to say, during that period in which we have already noted
an increasing preference for cremation. Further the increase in the
frequency of lamps makes it improbable that they are to be reckoned
as part and parcel of the ordinary furniture of a grave; for the
_lekythi_ and other vases which were the ordinary gifts to the dead
had already in the fifth century assumed a conventional character. Any
fresh departure therefore after that century, or any increase in the
frequency of one particular object among the contents of graves, must
be a sign of some new or more strongly marked feeling towards the dead.
Now all these facts and inferences are intelligible on one hypothesis;
and that hypothesis is that the lamps found in the graves were put
there lighted and burning, as the ceremonial minimum of the rite of
cremation for which a growing preference is evident during some four
centuries before the Christian era.

When we pass on to the early days of Christianity, a similar series of
facts meets our view. The Church officially rejected and reprobated
the practice of cremation. Converts therefore were bound to use
inhumation; and this obligation probably excited the less repugnance,
in that interment was no new thing to them, but had always been
alternative, if slightly inferior, to cremation. But while even
cheerfully obeying the law of the Church thus far, they clung to many
of the details of their old funeral-custom, some of which were allowed
by the Church, others disallowed. The practice of laying out the dead
in rich and choice robes continued and called down strong rebuke
from St Jerome[1284]; the excessive lamentation and the use of hired
mourners at the lying-in-state provoked St Chrysostom to threats of
excommunication[1285]; yet both these customs still obtain. But the
custom of carrying torches in the funeral-procession was continued
without even a protest on the part of the Church. Perhaps it was felt
to be a harmless concession to ancient custom; perhaps then as now
ecclesiastical taste even favoured the consumption of many candles in
religious ceremonies. At any rate the fact is clear that the pagan
custom of carrying torches in the procession held a place also in
Christian ritual. What was the reason for which the common people
held to their old custom? The torches were not needed any longer
to kindle pyres; for actual cremation was abolished by the Church.
Nor were they needed to give light to the procession; for Christian
funerals, except in times of persecution, took place in open daylight.
The reason was, I believe, that by means of these torches fire was
carried along with the dead from his home to his grave, and that there
a ceremonial act, a semblance of cremation, was combined with the rite
of inhumation. And there are some indications that the fire brought to
the grave-side was actually associated in some way with the dead body.
In a disquisition ‘about them that sleep,’ which passed for a work of
St Athanasius[1286], there is a recommendation to burn a mixture of oil
and wax at the grave of the dead; and though the practice inculcated
is disguised as ‘a sacrifice of burnt-offering to God,’ it is possible
to attribute it to a less Jewish and more Greek motive, a desire
to keep up the old custom of cremation, be it only in a ceremonial
form. Again we have evidence that the custom of burning lights at
the graves of the dead was commonly followed for some non-Christian
purpose; for the Council of Eliberis saw fit to forbid it under pain of
excommunication[1287]. This non-Christian purpose will explain itself
in the light of some modern customs.

There is a custom well known in Modern Greece which consists in the
maintenance of what is called ‘the unsleeping lamp’ (τὸ ἀκοίμητο
καντῆλι). A fair general idea of it may be given by saying that after a
funeral a light is kept continuously burning either in the room where
death took place or at the grave for a period of either forty days or
three years. This variation in time and place requires examination.
In customs, as in other things, there is a right way and a wrong way;
variety in observance is not original; there is a proper time and a
proper place.

First then, which is the proper place for this particular custom, the
chamber of death or the grave-side?

The localities, in which that form of the custom which I shall show
to be correct in this particular has come most conspicuously under my
own observation, are Aráchova, a village near Delphi; Leonídi on the
east coast of Laconia; a cemetery in the Thriasian plain belonging,
I think, to the village of Kalývia; and the island of Aegina. In the
last-mentioned it is an ordinary lantern which is used; it is placed
at the head of the grave, and for forty days after the funeral is so
trimmed and tended that the flame is not once extinguished. At Aráchova
and in the Thriasian plain each grave is provided with an erection
capable of sheltering a naked light. Some of the erections are like
doll’s-houses with door and windows complete; others are mere boxes;
others again are no more than a few tiles or flat stones set on edge
to form a square and covered over with a roof of the same material. At
Aráchova the lamps contained in these erections are tended both evening
and morning, and the obligation to keep them burning uninterruptedly
for three years, until the exhumation of the body, is strongly felt
and scrupulously discharged. In the Thriasian plain the light is
kept burning with equal care, but I am uncertain for what period. At
Leonídi some shelters of the same kind as those described are in use;
but there are also more elaborate tombs at the head of which is built
a small recess below the level of the ground or at any rate under the
slab of stone or marble which covers the grave, and in this recess,
which is closed with a small door allowing the passage of air through
its chinks, is placed ‘the unsleeping lamp.’ Here again the lights are
kept burning until the exhumation takes place, and the lamps are fed
and trimmed every evening. At Gytheion a device not dissimilar, though
ruder, was formerly employed; among some old graves, now neglected,
from which, it appeared, the bones of the dead had never been exhumed,
I noticed several plastered over with a rough concrete in which was
sunk at the head of the grave an iron vessel, like a sauce-pan docked
of its handle; this vessel had presumably served the purpose of
sheltering a light.

Such then is the main aspect of this custom; but the preliminary
details also require notice. The fire with which to light the
‘unsleeping lamp’ must not be kindled on the spot beside the grave,
but is conveyed from the house of the deceased. There, in general,
the moment that death takes place or at any rate so soon as the body
is laid out in state, candles or lamps are lighted and are placed at
the head and at the foot of the couch on which the body reposes. These
are kept burning until the funeral-procession is ready to start, and
along with the procession either the same lights or other tapers and
candles lighted from them are carried to the grave; and here the same
fire which was burning in the house of the dead is transmitted to the
‘unsleeping lamp’ at the grave.

This I believe to be the correct form of the custom, but I must
notice other varieties and give my reasons for regarding them as
less authentic. It is stated in a reliable treatise on the island
of Chios[1288], that there the people keep a lamp burning for forty
nights in the room where a death has taken place, thinking that the
soul wanders for forty nights before it goes down to Hades. The
interpretation given evidently implies that the lamp is intended to
give light to the spirit of the dead if in the course of its nightly
wanderings it visits its former home.

Now so far as the Chian form of the custom is concerned, some such
meaning might reasonably be assigned to it. But what of the more
usual form of the custom by which the lamp is kept burning both night
and day? A disembodied spirit, if it resemble an ordinary man, may
reasonably be supposed to need a candle to see its way at night,
but surely it needs none in the day-time; yet it is only the custom
of burning the light all day long as well as at night that can have
gained for it the name of ‘the unsleeping lamp,’ the lamp that is never
extinguished. Here then is a visible defect in the Chian manner of
observing the custom and likewise in the Chian manner of interpreting
it; and a custom defective and misinterpreted in one important detail
is open to suspicion in others. So far therefore as Chios is concerned,
no great importance attaches to the fact that there the chamber of
death is the place where the remnants of the custom are observed.

But there are other parts of Greece in which the death-chamber is the
place for the ‘unsleeping lamp,’ and where the lamp still deserves that
designation inasmuch as it is kept burning both day and night until the
fortieth day after the funeral, and is not, as in Chios, lighted afresh
each night. In such districts, I believe, the custom has long ceased to
bear any meaning, and being on the wane has for convenience undergone
a change. It is still felt to be obligatory to keep the flame that is
lighted as soon as death has occurred burning constantly for forty
days, but the work of tending it has been found to be more conveniently
performed at home than in the grave-yard. The necessity to transmit
the flame to the grave, to keep it continuously in close proximity
to the dead, is no longer felt. This form of the custom can then be
accounted for as a relaxation of that which I have put forward as the
old and correct form; whereas on the other hand if the room where
death occurred had originally been the proper place for maintaining
the ‘unsleeping lamp,’ it would be impossible to account for the
transference of the custom to the grave-side, where special shelters
or receptacles must be made for the protection of the flame and where
more trouble is needed to feed and to trim the lamps day by day.
Aráchova and Leonídi where most pains are taken in the observance of
the custom--and that not for forty days only but for three years--have
the best claim to be regarded as the true exponents of the old custom.
The proper place for the ‘unsleeping lamp’ is the grave-side.

But there is a variation also, as I have said, in the period of time
during which this custom is kept up in different districts. In some it
is a period of forty days, in others a period of three years; and in
this respect there is a divergence between the usages even of those
places which in other details have been shown to adhere faithfully
to the old custom; for at Aráchova and Leonídi the longer period is
customary, in Aegina the shorter. It is in this very variation that we
find a clue to the meaning and purpose of the custom. In the earlier
part of this chapter I showed, by quotation from a popular dirge and by
the consideration of various customs connected with death, that in the
belief of the common-folk the dissolution of a dead body is effected
by the fortieth day after burial. On the other hand the Church has
more prudently fixed three years as the time required for dissolution,
the period which must elapse before the body may be exhumed. Thus
there are two periods, fixed respectively by popular opinion and by
ecclesiastical authority, between which there is a choice; the _vox
populi_ and the _vox Dei_ are here in disagreement; and according as
preference is locally given to the one or to the other mandate, so is
a period of forty days or a period of three years locally believed to
be that required for the dissolution of the body. But these two periods
are also those between which there is a local variation in the custom
of maintaining the ‘unsleeping lamp.’ Hence it is reasonably to be
inferred that the ‘unsleeping lamp’ is in some way closely connected
with the dissolution of the body.

Moreover this connexion is actually recognised by the common-folk
themselves, as witness the following two couplets from a funeral-dirge.
The words are put, as so often in the dirges, in the mouth of the dead
man, who in this instance is supposed to be young and to be addressing
his forlorn lady-love.

    ‘And when the priests with solemn song march toward the grave with me,
    Steal thou out from thy mother’s side and light me torches three;
    And when the priests shall quench again those lights for me,--ah then,
    Then, like the breath of roses, sweet, thou passest from my ken[1289].’

These lines are based on a belief which is fairly general among the
Greek peasants, that consciousness of, and concern for, the things
of this world are not broken off finally at the moment of death, but
continue in some degree until the body of the dead is completely
dissolved. Here the memories of love are spoken of as lasting until
the priests quench the burning lights, which can be none other in the
context than the ‘unsleeping lamp’--for three, the number mentioned,
is merely a number of peculiar virtue and has no special force. It
follows then that the quenching of the lights is understood in the
passage to denote the accomplishment of that process of dissolution,
which, though it mean the cessation of all intercourse with this
upper world, is yet earnestly desired. Here in fact are plain words
of popular poetry which recognise the connexion of the ‘unsleeping
lamp’ with the dissolution of the body, and make the quenching of the
one signify the completion of the other. It is going but a short step
further to suppose that the presence of the lamp’s flame at the grave
was originally intended to advance the process of dissolution--or, in
other words, that the maintenance of the ‘unsleeping lamp’ at the grave
until the body is finally dissolved is an act of ceremonial cremation.

This supposition gains yet more in probability when we compare with
the custom of the ‘unsleeping lamp’ another not dissimilar custom
which obtains in Zacynthos. There, as elsewhere, candles or lamps are
lighted about the dead body while it is lying in state, and fire from
them is carried to the grave. But, arrived there, instead of lighting
an ‘unsleeping lamp,’ the bearers of the candles drop them into the
grave beside the corpse. In this we have a close parallel to the
ancient custom of putting a lamp, probably enough, as I have suggested,
a lighted lamp, into the grave; and at the same time it cannot but be
intimately connected with the custom of the ‘unsleeping lamp,’ the
purpose of which is now known to concern the dissolution of the dead
body. I claim then that the series of customs which we have reviewed,
exhibiting as they do an intention to associate fire in some close
way with the buried body and, as in the modern form of the custom, to
associate it therewith until the process of dissolution is complete,
find a common explanation in the continuance of a practice already
exemplified in earlier ages, the practice of ceremonial cremation in
conjunction with the full burial rite.

Nor is this explanation open to attack on the ground that a mere
lamp lighted near the dead body bears so little outward resemblance
to real cremation. To the outside observer the ceremonial act may
seem a mere travesty of that for which it is substituted; but to the
persons concerned the presence of fire, in however small a volume, may
have seemed sufficient; for in all ritual it is not the act, but the
intention, which has value. I have already pointed out how interment
was occasionally reduced to an equally ineffective minimum; but I may
perhaps cite a still closer parallel--another case in which a lamp
is thought to have done duty for a real fire. There was in old time a
custom, to which several ancient writers refer[1290], of keeping a lamp
burning both day and night in the Prytaneum or in the chief temple of
a Greek city; and both Athens and Tarentum are said to have had these
lamps so constructed that they could hold a supply of oil sufficient to
last a whole year. Such lamps, it has been suggested[1291], represented
the fire on the city’s hearth which was not allowed to go out. The
purpose of the lamp was clearly not to give light--for then it need
not have been kept burning by day as well as by night--but it was a
labour-saving appliance for keeping the sacred fire ever burning.
The small flame was in fact a rudimentary fire. Thus all that I am
supposing is that a lamp could represent a real fire just as well at
the tomb as in the Prytaneum.

If then my explanation of the modern custom is right, the fact that the
common-folk, though they have for many centuries employed inhumation
as the ordinary Christian rite, have clung at the same time to a
ceremonial form of cremation which they still connect in some way with
the dissolution of the buried corpse, is additional proof of the favour
with which the quicker and surer rite was formerly, and perhaps here
and there still is, regarded.

Thus then the study of ordinary funeral-usage has confirmed the
conclusions drawn in preceding chapters from the study of a certain
abnormal state of after-death existence. As incorruptibility was the
greatest bane to the dead, so dissolution was the greatest boon that
the living could give them. This dissolution was to be effected by
one of two methods, cremation and inhumation, which in theory were
alternative but in practice were frequently combined. The combination
of them was due in the first instance to the amalgamation of two
races to which they respectively appertained; but in later times the
racial difference between the two rites was obliterated, and they
were judged on their own merits, with the result that a preference
for cremation manifested itself in funeral-usage. This preference was
due to a recognition that cremation was a quicker and surer method of
dissolution, and is itself strong testimony to the desire to effect
dissolution. The end to which both rites were directed was the same,
but since one led to that end more quickly and surely than the other,
it was rightly preferred.

Further the motive which prompted the living to effect the dissolution
of the dead was not in general selfish; for dissolution, as we have
seen, was a boon to the dead. That complete severance from this world,
which came with the dissolution of the body, was in some way for the
benefit of the dead. Patroclus sought for it, and Achilles granted his
petition through love; and some three thousand years later the men
of Parga are found effecting the rapid dissolution of their kinsfolk
with the same motive. Only in one set of circumstances was the selfish
motive of fear in operation, namely, where, the resuscitated dead
were, by the influence of Slavonic superstition, invested with the
character of malignant blood-thirsty monsters against whom self-defence
was imperative, and whose complete severance from this world was
desirable as a safeguard for the living. But such circumstances were
the exception. The rule was that cremation and inhumation alike were
means to the dissolution of the dead and their complete severance from
this world, and the motive which prompted living men to seek that end
was love of the dead who would in some way benefit thereby.


FOOTNOTES:

[1226] Bern. Schmidt, _Lieder, Märchen, Sagen etc._, Folk-song no. 33.

[1227] Cf. above, p. 389.

[1228] See above, p. 307, note 1, and p. 313.

[1229] The feasts at earlier dates, as on the third and ninth days,
will be shown later to be popular in origin. See below, pp. 530 ff.

[1230] Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχέλαος, ἡ Σινασός, p. 82.

[1231] _Op. cit._ p. 81. The form here is σαρανταρίκια.

[1232] Δελτίον τῆς ἱστορ. καὶ ἐθνολ. ἑταιρ. τῆς Ἑλλάδος, III. p. 337.
The form is σαραντάρια.

[1233] See above, p. 373.

[1234] Soph. _Antig._ 256. Cf. Jebb’s note _ad loc._, from which I take
the further references.

[1235] Aelian, _Var. Hist._ V. 14.

[1236] Aelian, _Hist. Anim._ V. 49.

[1237] Cf. Fauriel, _Chants de la Grèce Moderne, Discours
Préliminaire_, p. 40; Μιχαὴλ Σ. Γρηγορόπουλος, ἡ νῆσος Σύμη, p. 46.

[1238] _Early Age of Greece_, Vol. I. cap. 7.

[1239] Bury, _History of Greece_, p. 41.

[1240] Rohde, _Psyche_, cap. I.

[1241] Hom. _Il._ VI. 417 ff., XXIII. 252 ff., XXIV. 791 ff.; _Od._ XI.
72 ff. and XII. 11 ff.

[1242] _Psyche_ I. pp. 31-32.

[1243] Cf. Lucian, _De Luctu_ 14, ἐσθῆτα καὶ τὸν ἄλλον κόσμον
συγκατέφλεξεν ἣ συγκατώρυξεν.

[1244] Described in Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολ. 1889, pp. 171 ff.

[1245] Described in _Athen. Mittheilungen_, 1893, pp. 73-191.

[1246] The perusal of Philios’ narrative leaves the impression that
several cases of cremation were discovered. Yet in his concluding
summary he says: “Burial, not burning, of the dead was in those times
the more prevalent custom, since in one case and one only can we admit
that the corpse was not buried but burnt.” I note that Brückner and
Pernice (_op. cit._ p. 149) in referring to Philios’ results tacitly
soften his rigid ‘one and one only’ into the more supple ‘one or two.’
For justification of this see Philios, _op. cit._ pp. 178, 179, 180,
185.

[1247] Hirschfeld, in _Annali_, 1872, pp. 135, 167, cited by Brückner
and Pernice _op. cit._ p. 148. Κουμανούδης, in Πρακτικὰ, 1873-4, p. 17.

[1248] _Op. cit._ pp. 91 ff.

[1249] _Op. cit._ p. 178.

[1250] Brückner and Pernice take this view of the fact, though the
words which they use are coloured by their acceptance of Rohde’s theory
of propitiatory offerings to the dead. ‘Vor der Beerdigung, so scheint
es nach den Funden des Herrn Philios, sind an der Grabstätte des
öfteren Brandopfer dargebracht worden.’ _Op. cit._ p. 151.

[1251] See _op. cit._ pp. 78-9.

[1252] See above, p. 347.

[1253] _Il._ XXIV. 719 ff.

[1254] Cf. _Athen. Mittheil._ 1893, p. 103.

[1255] Plutarch, _Solon_ 20.

[1256] Lysias, _Or._ XII. 18, 19.

[1257] Lucian, _de Luctu_, 12 and 13.

[1258] _Hom._ 32 _in Mat._ p. 306.

[1259] Preserved among the archives of Zante, which the kindness of Mr
Leonidas Zoës enabled me to inspect.

[1260] _Psyche_, I. pp. 209 and 360. From this source I draw several of
the following references.

[1261] Tsountas in Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολ. 1888, p. 136.

[1262] Plut. _Lycurg._ 27.

[1263] Iambl. _Vit. Pythag._ 154.

[1264] Pliny, _N. H._ XXXV. 160.

[1265] Dem. _Orat._ 43 § 71.

[1266] _Antig._ 1201. Prof. Jebb in his note on this passage expresses
the opinion that the θάλλοι νεοσπάδες were not fuel: in view of the
Attic law above cited I am inclined to dissent. He also takes κλήματα
in Ar. _Eccles._ 1031 to mean ‘olive twigs’ and not, as more usual,
‘vine-shoots.’ I pass by the passage as doubtful evidence.

[1267] Ross, _Arch. Aufs._ I. 31.

[1268] Artemid. _Oneirocr._ IV. 57.

[1269] Herod. V. 8.

[1270] Lucian, _de Luctu_, 21.

[1271] _Antiquities of the Christian Church_, Bk XXIII. cap. 2, whence
I take the following references.

[1272] Minucius, p. 32.

[1273] _Acta Tharaci_ ap. Baron. an. 299, n. XXI., Ammian. Marcell.
lib. XXII. p. 241, Euseb. lib. VIII. cap. 6.

[1274] Tertull. _De Anima_, cap. 51.

[1275] Tertull. _de Resur._ cap. 1.

[1276] _Cod. Th._ lib. IX. tit. 17 _de Sepulcris violatis_, leg. 6.

[1277] _Saturnal._ lib. VII. cap. 7.

[1278] See Finlay, _History of Greece_, vol. V. pp. 274-6.

[1279] Passow, _Popularia Carm. Graeciae recentioris_, nos. 222-224. I
translate here no. 222.

[1280] So I interpret, but without certainty, the words καὶ τὸ βεζύρη
κάψαν, literally ‘and they burnt the Vizir.’

[1281] The Liápides were an Albanian tribe employed by the Turks.

[1282] No. 223.

[1283] Actual data on this point are difficult to obtain; but
archaeologists whom I consulted in Greece were all agreed, that
lamps are more frequent in graves of late date, most frequent in the
Greco-Roman period.

[1284] Hieron. _Vita Pauli_ 4, cap. 66.

[1285] Chrysostom, _Hom._ 32 _in Mat._ p. 306.

[1286] Cited by Durant, _de Ritibus_, lib. I. cap. XXIII. n. 14 (p.
235). I have been unable to discover the original passage. Cf. Bingham,
_op. cit._ XXIII. 3.

[1287] See Bingham, _Antiquities of the Christian Church_, Bk XXIII.
cap. 3 _ad fin._

[1288] Κωνστ. Ν. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, p. 341.

[1289] These lines, or others in the same tenor, are well known among
the professional μυρολογίστριαις (women hired to mourn at funerals).
The version which I here follow is given by Passow, _Popul. Carm._ no.
377 A.

    Κι’ ὄντες νά με περάσουνε ψάλλοντες οἱ παπᾶδες,
    Ἔβγα κρυφὰ ’π’ τὴ μάνα σου κι’ ἄναψε τρεῖς λαμπάδες·
    Κι’ ὄντες νά μου τὰ σβέσουνε παπᾶδες τὰ κηριά μου,
    Τότες τρανταφυλλένια μου βγαίνεις ἀπ’ τὴν καρδιά μου.

[1290] Theocritus XXI. 36 f.; Athenaeus 700 D; Pausan. I. 26. 7.

[1291] Frazer, in _Journ. of Philol._ XIV. 145 ff.




CHAPTER VI.

THE BENEFIT OF DISSOLUTION.


Thus far the investigation of customs and beliefs in ancient and modern
times relating to the treatment of the dead has established the fact
that the dissolution of the body was a thing eagerly to be desired in
the interests of the dead. With complete disintegration the _summum
bonum_ of the dead, so far as it was in the power of their surviving
friends to win it for them, was secured. It remains to consider in what
way the dead profited thereby.

Now I have hitherto spoken designedly of dissolution as a benefit,
not to the souls of the dead nor to their bodies, but simply ‘to the
dead’ without further specification. It will now limit the range of
discussion as to the nature of the _summum bonum_ to which dissolution
gave access, if we can first answer the old question, _cui bono?_
Is it the body alone or the soul alone or both conjointly on which
the benefit is conferred? This question once answered, we shall have
eliminated a certain number of possible conceptions of future happiness.

That the body alone might have been the recipient of the whole benefit
is an idea which no one will entertain. Was it then the soul alone
to which the dissolution of the body brought gain? Death, as we have
learnt, was not a complete and final severance of soul from body; the
soul might re-enter and re-animate the corpse. Was dissolution then
believed to complete the severance?

The deliverance of the soul from the bondage of the body, the divorce
of spirit from matter, is an idea which has appealed and does appeal to
many, and would therefore furnish a motive of considerable intrinsic
probability for the treatment which the Greek people have consistently
accorded to their dead; the dissolution of the body, it might be
supposed, was desired and hastened in order that the soul might be
freed from its last link with this material world and pass away winged
and unburdened towards things ethereal.

But such an explanation savours too much of philosophy and too little
of popular religion. ‘The rehearsal of death,’ that is of the severance
of soul from body, was according to Socrates the proper occupation of
the philosopher; and death itself was welcome to him as a final release
of the soul, the true self, from the fetters of physical existence.
But the very emphasis which the whole of the _Phaedo_ gives to this
idea, the insistence of Socrates that his real self is that which
converses with his friends and seeks to convince them of his views, and
not the corpse which they will soon be burying or burning as seemeth
them good[1292], suggest, if anything, that in the popular religion
the severance of soul from body was not desired, and the true self was
not conceived as a thing apart from body. At any rate the reason for
desiring dissolution must be sought from more popular sources.

I return therefore to a passage[1293] on which I have already touched
more than once, the earliest passage of extant literature, in which a
dead man is represented as craving the dissolution of his body. Why was
it that the soul of Patroclus desired so urgently the last rites for
his body? Was it for the benefit of his soul only? Popular religion,
as we have seen, did not reckon death a final severance of soul and
body; for the soul might return and re-animate the body. Was then
dissolution believed to complete the severance, annihilating the body
and emancipating the soul? Did the future happiness of the soul depend
upon such emancipation? Did Patroclus, in the case before us, crave
dissolution in order that his soul, finally severed from his body,
might find happiness?

Homer certainly peoples the lower world with souls only, severed from
their former bodies. It is clearly the soul only of Patroclus which
will pass the gates of Hades, when once his request for the burial
of his body has been fulfilled; for it is ‘the souls, the semblances
of the dead[1294],’ who bar his entrance thereto meanwhile. But
those souls are not happy souls. The house of Hades is not a place of
happiness; it is dank, murky, mouldering; and the souls themselves are
not of a nature to enjoy anything; they are feeble, impotent wraiths,
mere semblances of men, all doomed to the same miserable travesty
of life; the bodies from which they are now severed were their real
selves[1295], and there remain now only impalpable joyless phantoms.
‘Sooner,’ cries the spirit of Achilles to Odysseus, ‘would I be a serf
bound to the soil, in the house of a portionless man whose living were
but scant, than lord over all the dead that are perished[1296]’; for
the old valour even of Achilles avails him no more; his soul fares in
the house of Hades even as all others fare; all alike are doomed to
everlasting futility in a land of everlasting gloom. Fitly is the soul
of Patroclus said to have sped, at the moment of death, towards Hades’
realm ‘bewailing its fate in that it had left vigour and manhood[1297].’

How then comes it that anon the same soul is eager to pass the gates of
Hades? Surely the wanderings of the dead Patroclus, whether in the form
of a _revenant_ as the popular belief would have had it, or, according
to Homer’s version, as a disembodied spirit, would hardly be more
pitiable than the lot which he in common with all the dead must suffer
below. Why then this eagerness?

I can find nothing in Homer to justify it; it appears to me wholly
inconsistent with the Homeric conception of the under-world.

And this inconsistency is of wide bearing. The cases of Patroclus and
Elpenor are not isolated. The same eagerness for dissolution on the
part of the dead has, as we have seen, been steadily recognised in all
the relations between the living and the dead from the days of Homer
until now. That which is at variance with the Homeric conception of
the hereafter is not merely the petition of Patroclus, but the idea on
which the funeral-customs of a whole people have been based for nearly
three thousand years.

Such a discrepancy cannot but force upon us the question how far the
Homeric conception of the hereafter was the popular conception.

That the whole picture of the house of Hades and of the condition
of the departed therein was not an Homeric invention is, I suppose,
indisputable. Its two main features are the gloom of the place and the
lack of distinction between the lots of those who dwell there[1298].
Of these the first at any rate is frequent enough in later literature,
and indeed held so firm a place in the Greek mind that ‘to see the
light’ became synonymous with ‘to live in this upper world’; and even
down to the present day both ideas live on. The constant epithets
which Homer applies to the house of Hades, ‘cold’ (κρυερός) and
‘mouldering’ (εὐρώεις), are exactly reproduced in the epithets with
which Hades, now a place instead of a person, is described in modern
dirges--κρυοπαγωμένος, ‘frozen,’ and ἀραχνιασμένος, ‘thick with
spiders’ webs’[1299]; and the same uniform misery of all the departed
is likewise a common theme in the many songs that deal with Charon and
the lower world. All this could not have been effected by the influence
of Homer alone, great though it was, if he had himself invented the
whole conception. It is clear that he utilised a conception which was
before his time, and still is, a popular conception.

But there is equally good evidence of a totally different presentation
of the future state. A fragment of one of Pindar’s dirges contradicts
the Homeric description of the lower world in every point. ‘Upon the
righteous the glorious sun sheddeth light below while night is here,
and amid meadows red with roses lieth the space before their city’s
gate, all hazy with frankincense and laden with golden fruits; and
some take their joy in horses and feats of prowess, and others at
the draught-board, and others in the music of lutes, and among them
every fair flower of happiness doth blossom; and o’er that lovely land
spreadeth the savour of all manner of spices that be mingled with
far-gleaming fire on the gods’ altars[1300].’ So then this under-world
is not cold and murky, but is warmed and lighted by the sun; its
inhabitants are not frail spirits incapable of joy, but take their
pleasure as aforetime in the world above; nor is the lot of all the
same, for it is only the righteous who enjoy this bliss.

The popular character of this conception is equally clear. The
distinction between the varying fortunes of the dead--the hope of
happiness for some in contrast with the universal misery of the Homeric
under-world--is an idea which finds expression throughout ancient
literature; and if the house of Hades often remains none the less a
place of gloom, that is because the abode of the righteous is often
transferred to the islands of the blest, and the dark under-world
left as a place of punishment for the wicked. At the present day too
the same ideas are widely current among the common-folk. It is true
that the dirges more generally pourtray the lower world as wrapped
in Homeric gloom, and the condition of the departed as monotonously
miserable; but the express purpose of these dirges, recited beside the
dead body before it is carried out to burial, is to excite the mourners
to a frenzy of grief, and the professional dirge-singer (for there are
still women in some parts of Greece who follow that calling) would soon
lose her work if, instead of harrowing the feelings of the mourners,
she took upon herself to comfort them; her whole business is to move
to tears those whom the bereavement itself has left unmoved, or to
stimulate to fresh outbursts of lamentation those who are already spent
with sorrow. But in a few folk-songs is found the more cheerful belief
that the departed still continue the pursuits which they followed in
this life[1301]; while as for their abode, any peasant who should have
the Pindaric description of the future home of the blessed explained to
him, would unhesitatingly identify it with that which he himself calls
Paradise. Some points perhaps in that description would surprise him
no less than they would please him, as for example the permission to
play draughts, but they would not obscure his recognition; the place of
fair flowers and fruits and scents could be none other than Paradise.
“The people of modern Greece,” says a Greek writer[1302], ... “unable
to comprehend the idea of spiritual joys, consider Paradise a place
of largely material and sensuous pleasures. The Paradise of the Greek
folk is watered by great rivers, ... and in it there grow trees which
diffuse odours sweet past telling.... Agreeably with this reception of
the idea of Paradise by the people, the fathers of the church also
were compelled to describe Paradise in terms of the senses as well as
of the spirit, thus making certain concessions to popular feeling and
ideas. ‘Some,’ says John of Damascus[1303], ‘have imagined a sensuous
Paradise, others a spiritual Paradise. For my part I think that, just
as man himself has been created with senses as well as with spirit,
so the most holy close (ἱερώτατον τέμενος) to which he has access
appeals alike to the senses and to the spirit.’” The compromise in this
passage is cleverly justified, but it has not lasted; the pagan part
of it alone has survived, and the Paradise of the modern folk is none
other than that abode which Pindar described. Even the rivers thereof,
which are naturally desired above all things by the inhabitants of a
dry and dusty land, were probably not absent from Pindar’s picture;
for Plutarch, to whom we owe the preservation of the fragment, passes
in one passage from actual quotation of the opening lines to a mention
of smooth and tranquil rivers flowing through the land[1304]; and
in the kindred picture of the Islands of the Blest, which Pindar
paints elsewhere, he does not omit to mention the water wherewith the
golden flowers are refreshed[1305]; for in his eyes too water was
the best of earth’s gifts, even as gold was the brightest of wrought
treasures[1306].

It was this high appreciation of water which first informed a custom
prevalent all over Greece on the occasion of funerals. As the bier
passes along the road, the friends and neighbours of the dead man empty
at their doorway or from their windows a vessel of water, and usually
throw down the vessel itself to be broken on the stones of the road.
This custom is evidently very old, for in some places the use of the
water, the very essence of the rite, has become obsolete, and all that
remains of the custom is the breaking of a piece of crockery. And even
though in most places the custom is observed in full, its meaning
has generally been forgotten, and curious conjectures have been made
to explain it. Some interpret the custom as a symbol of that which
has befallen the dead man; the vessel is his body, the water is his
soul; the pouring out of the water symbolises the vanishing of the
soul, and the dead body will fall to pieces like the broken crock.
Others say that they pour out the water ‘in order to allay the burning
thirst of the dead man[1307],’ a notion ominously suggestive of the
boon which Dives sought of Lazarus. But the real purpose of the rite
is still known in some of the Cyclades, where exactly the same custom
is followed also on the occasion of a man’s departure from his native
village[1308], to live, as they say, in exile. And the purpose is to
promote the well-being of the dead or of the exile in the new land
to which he is going. The pouring out of the water is in fact a rite
of sympathetic magic designed to secure that the unknown land shall
also be well-watered and pleasant and plentiful; and the breaking of
the vessel which held the water is due, I suppose, to a feeling that
an instrument which has served a magical purpose must not thereafter
be put to profane and mundane uses. This custom then in itself bears
witness how wide-spread is, or has been, the conception of the other
world as a land of delight wherein the pleasant things of this world
shall still abound.

Thus then it must be acknowledged that two contradictory popular
conceptions of the hereafter have survived side by side as a twofold
inheritance from the ancient world. The one pervades the whole of
Homer; the other is best expounded in a fragment of Pindar[1309]; and
the fundamental difference between them is this, that the one consigns
all the dead alike to gloom and misery, while the other distinguishes
between the future fortunes of the righteous and the unrighteous, and
holds out the hope of happiness in a yet brighter world than this.
Whence came these two conceptions?

The world which Homer describes is the Achaean world, and I suspect
that his under-world is likewise the Achaean under-world. The Achaean
religion, as exhibited in Homer, is in no way profound. The gods are
only Achaean princes on a yet grander scale, endowed with immortality.
Men’s relations with them are eminently simple and practical;
sacrifice is expected if prayers are to be answered. But both gods
and men are concerned with this upper world only; death closes all
relations between them. The gods are unconcerned, unless it be for some
special favourite; they live on Olympus as aforetime amid feasting,
quarrelling, laughter, and love; but men leave these pursuits and
pastimes, and go down to the misery of Hades’ house; their souls which
fled lamenting from their limbs at the hour of death still exist,
else could they not appear to living men in the visions of night; but
their existence is all misery, for they lack all that made this life
pleasant. Their joys had been the joys of a strenuous, full-blooded
life, the joys of battle, of feasting, of song, of comradeship; and
these joys were no more. The future existence of the soul was, to the
Achaeans, simply the negation of the present bodily life.

But the religion of a later age was by no means so simple. The
Homeric gods were still worshipped in the old way, and received
their sacrifices in exchange for favours desired or granted. But
there was another element in religion of which Homer shows little
trace--an element of awe and mystery. Homer indeed names the Erinyes
as beings concerned with the punishment of certain sins; but he shows
no knowledge of that awful doctrine of blood-guilt which Aeschylus
associates with them; the murdered man’s power of vengeance is wholly
ignored; for among the Achaeans the next of kin might accept a price at
the hands of the murderer, and allow him to remain in the land[1310],
without himself incurring any pollution or any manifestation of his
dead kinsman’s wrath. Again Homer knows indeed of Demeter as a goddess
connected with the crops; but there is nothing in his casual mention
of her to suggest that the mysteries of her worship transcended the
rites of all the Olympian gods. Yet no one, I suppose, would imagine
that these profounder elements in ancient religion were of post-Homeric
growth or could possibly have been evolved from the transparently
simple religion of the Achaeans.

On the contrary it is known that the more mysterious rites and
doctrines of the Greek religion were a legacy from the Pelasgians. That
the mysteries of Demeter were Pelasgian in origin is proved by the
localities in which her worship most flourished, and is corroborated
by the explicit statement of Herodotus[1311], who was disposed to
refer other mystic cults also to the same source[1312]. In fact the
co-existence, or even the conflict, of the old Pelasgian and the newer
Achaean religions is constantly recognised in ancient literature, and
to the Pelasgian is ascribed all that most touched men’s hearts, be it
with awe or with pity--with awe as in the conflict between the Erinyes
and the new dynasty of gods whom Apollo and Athene represent, with pity
in the dolorous struggle of Prometheus against the tyrant Zeus. The
Pelasgian religion, with all its horrors, drew the real sympathies of
the mystic Aeschylus; he could worship in deepest reverence Demeter
and her mysteries[1313]; he could worship perhaps even the ‘reverend
goddesses,’ horrible though they were in their displeasure; but his
heart must have been cold towards the usurping Olympian gods. There
is true insight in that passage of Aristophanes[1314] where Aeschylus
summarises the benefits conferred by great poets on the Greek race,
and praises Homer, the Achaean poet, for his lessons in discipline
and valour and warfare, but Orpheus, sometimes reputed the founder of
the Pelasgian mysteries, for instituting religious rites and teaching
men to abstain from bloodshed. And the feelings of Aeschylus were
the feelings of his countrymen. The Athenians boasted of a great
Achaean goddess as the foundress and patroness of their city, but
their personal hopes of future happiness centred in the Pelasgian
Demeter. The same generation of Athenians listened with delight to
Aristophanes’ ridicule of those gods whom Homer accounted greatest, and
were aghast at the thought that the mysteries had been profaned. The
Achaean gods, it would seem, made good figure-heads for the official
religion of the state; they served as majestic patrons of a city, or
of a great national festival where religion was of less real account
than horse-racing, athletics, and commerce; but the hearts of the
people clave to the older, more awful, more mysterious deities of the
Pelasgians, and the holiest sanctuaries[1315] were those which had been
holy long before the intrusion of the Achaean gods.

It was to this Pelasgian element in Hellenic religion that the doctrine
of future rewards and punishments belonged; for, as we shall see more
fully in the next chapter, participation in the Pelasgian mysteries
of Demeter at Eleusis was held to be an earnest of future bliss, from
which the impure or uninitiated were excluded.

Thus then there were two popular conceptions of the future life--the
Achaean conception of universal misery in a cold and gloomy
under-world, and the Pelasgian conception which distinguished between
the lots of the righteous and the unrighteous, and held out to some
men the promise of bliss. Now with the former conception, as we have
already seen, the belief that the dead eagerly desired dissolution
is utterly inconsistent; none could be in haste to pass the gates of
Hades with the prospect of nothing but misery within. But where there
were hopes of happiness, the eagerness for dissolution as a means of
attaining thereto is at once intelligible. This desire then, which has
constantly pervaded the mind of the Greek people and has furnished the
single motive of their funeral-rites down to the present day, is of
Pelasgian origin; and if Homer borrowed it and incongruously combined
it with a purely Achaean presentation of the under-world, we must no
more judge of its real meaning by the Homeric setting of it than we
would form an opinion of the place of the Erinyes or of Demeter in
Greek religion by Homer’s occasional references to them.

The fact then that Homer, in accordance with the Achaean religion,
considered the dissolution of the body to mean the annihilation of
the body and represented the soul as alone entering into the lower
world is wholly immaterial to the present enquiry. It is the Pelasgian
conception of future bliss with which we are concerned; for that alone
can account for the eagerness of the dead to obtain dissolution. What
then are the blissful occupations of the righteous in the other world?
‘Some,’ says Pindar, ‘take their joy in horses and feats of prowess,
and others at the draught-board, and others in the music of lutes.’
Clearly these dead are very different beings from the souls which
peopled the Homeric under-world. Athletics could be no pastime for
feeble unsubstantial spirits; the game of draughts would be ill suited
to them that have no mind in them[1316]; and those whose thin utterance
is like the squeak[1317] of a bat would get and give little pleasure
by singing to the lute. No; the pursuits of the dead as depicted by
Pindar are the pursuits which men of flesh and blood enjoy; and the
abode in which they dwell, the paradise of flowers and fruits and sweet
odours, is an abode to gladden men of flesh and blood. But a people
whose ideal of future bliss lay in bodily enjoyments cannot surely have
looked forward to the annihilation of the body and the survival of the
soul alone; the joys which they anticipated hereafter presupposed the
continuance of some kind of bodily existence.

Such a notion moreover cannot but seem more in harmony with the whole
spirit of the Greek world than the Homeric doctrine of the survival
of the soul only. A nation so conspicuous for their love of human
beauty and their delight in the human form could not have viewed the
extinction thereof with any feeling other than the most poignant
regret--a feeling which, as we know, the Homeric doctrine did actually
inspire in those who accepted it. The more thoughtful and hopeful
religion of the Pelasgians, unless it had anticipated the philosophy
of Plato in decrying the body and exalting the soul--an idea of which
there is no trace--was bound to give promise that body as well as soul
should survive death and dissolution.

Again it may fairly be claimed that in any religion of a profounder
character than the Achaean, in any religion which contains some
positive ideas of the future life and does not view it merely as the
negation of the present life, that which men hope to become in the
future state is something more similar to the deity or deities in
whom they believe. Their conception of godhead and their conception
of their own condition after death are of necessity founded upon the
same ideal of happiness--a happiness which the gods already enjoy and
which men hope to share. The Buddhist looks forward to the day when he
shall become like his deity--even one with his deity--clean from the
grossness of matter, free from bodily desires and necessities, spirit
unalloyed. The Christian believes in a God who became man and survived
the death of man not in the form of a spirit only but with flesh and
bones, and he himself looks forward to the resurrection of the body.
Socrates held that wisdom and goodness were one and pertained to the
soul only, and the God into whose presence his soul would pass after
death was ‘the good and wise God,’ rightly called Hades, that is, the
invisible and spiritual, with whom the soul has kinship[1318]. But
what of the ordinary Greek? His gods were not invisible or spiritual.
Pelasgian and Achaean deities alike were beings of flesh and blood,
robust, active, sensuous; they ate and drank, they waked and slept,
they married, they begot or bore children. Such was the Greek’s
conception of godhead, such his ideal of blessedness. How then should
he look forward to the annihilation of the body with any feeling but
dismay? How could his hopes of future bliss not involve of necessity a
belief in the survival of both body and soul?

I suggest then that the dissolution of the body, which the dead so
eagerly desired, far from being regarded as a final and complete
severance of soul and body, was in the Pelasgian religion the means of
their re-union in another world. Death was only a temporary severance
of the two entities which together form a living man capable of
enjoying physical pleasures. The soul at the moment of death went down
to the nether world in advance, or, it may be, as is sometimes held
by the peasants of modern Greece[1319], hovered about the body until
its dissolution was complete. But the dead body certainly remained in
this world, at the place where it lay evident to men’s eyes; it could
not pass to the other world at once; it could not ever pass thither
without the assistance of friends still living; it was too gross and
too impotent, bereft of the soul, to make its own way to the home of
the dead. Therefore upon the survivors was imposed the sacred charge
of resolving it into elements more refined, and of enabling it thus to
pass out of human touch and sight to a home which the soul could reach
unaided. When this process was effected by inhumation, the period of
forty days required for complete dissolution was the critical period
in the dead man’s existence; if the body was ‘bound’ and indissoluble
for any cause and the soul re-entered it before the proper time, the
_revenant_ was a pitiable wanderer, sharing in the joys neither of this
world nor of the next; the mourners therefore took such measures as
they could to prevent that calamity, by entertaining the acquaintances
of the dead man and prevailing upon them to revoke any curses wherewith
he was bound, and by laying in the dead man’s mouth a charm which
should bar the soul’s re-entry. When cremation was employed, the
dissolution of the body was more speedy and more sure; and it is not
therefore difficult to understand that the Pelasgians, conscious
though they must have been that in religion they were as far in advance
of the Achaeans as in material civilisation they were behind, should
have early adopted the use of fire in the interests of the dead. But
no matter which rite was employed, the ultimate effect was the same;
the heavy, helpless corpse that had been laid upon the pyre or in the
grave vanished, and nought but the bones remained. Whither then had it
vanished? How had the visible become invisible? Surely by passing from
this visible world to the world invisible. There is nothing to suggest
that this disappearance meant to the Greeks annihilation; that word
indeed had no counterpart in their speech; the strongest term of the
Greek language by which one might attempt, and would still fail, to
render the word ‘annihilate,’ would be ἀφανίζειν or ἀιστοῦν, ‘to make
unseen.’ And on the other hand their conception of future happiness in
another world is positive evidence that they believed dissolution to
mean not annihilation, but the vanishing of the body to be re-united
with the soul in the unseen world.

I am of course far from suggesting that these views which I have
sketched formed a definite religious doctrine to which every Greek
would have subscribed. No people have evinced greater liberty of
thought on religious matters; no people have been less hampered
by hierarchical limitations and the claims of authority; nowhere
have wider divergences of religious opinion been tolerated; nowhere
else have the advocates of material philosophies and of spiritual
philosophies been brought into sharper contrast and yet held in equal
repute. But it is not with the vagaries of individuals and the new
departures of great thinkers that I am concerned; my purpose is simply
to trace the general trend of thought as regards the relation of body
and soul after death among the mass of the Greek people.

And in so doing I fully realise the danger of over-statement. Probably
the mass of mankind in religious matters perform many acts without full
consciousness of their motive; they instinctively follow tradition
without enquiring into the meaning and the mutual relation of the
customs with which they comply; and if ever they try to justify to
their reason the acts to which instinct prompts them, they may be at
a loss to form a consistent theory out of the several motives which
they would assign to the several acts. If therefore I try not only
to disengage from among the network of religious and philosophical
speculation a thread of simple popular belief, but also to present
that thread unknotted and continuous, I may be attempting that which
the mass of the Greek people seldom and with difficulty performed
for themselves. To enunciate as a doctrine that which may have been
a subconscious or only partially realised belief--to present as a
consistent theory ideas which, separately apprehended, formed the
acknowledged motives of separate acts, but whose mutual relations were
seldom investigated--to formulate in words that which may have been no
more than a vague aspiration of men’s hearts--this is necessarily to
over-state. There lies the danger. But for my part, while admitting
that in all probability there was among the Greek people of old,
as among the Greek people and others too to-day, a large amount of
unintelligent religion, I claim that some such conception as I have
outlined of the relation between soul and body and of their future
existence is the only possible explanation of the manifold customs and
beliefs relating to death and dissolution which have been discussed,
and fairly represents the general trend of thought among the inheritors
of the Pelasgian religion.

This conclusion is not a little strengthened by the evidence of a
custom common to both ancient and modern Greece, which presupposes
the continuance of physical desires and needs after death. To make a
present of food indicates a belief on the part of the donor that the
recipient can eat; to make a present of clothing implies a belief that
the recipient has a body to be covered; and it is these two things,
food and clothing, the elementary requisites of living men, which have
most constantly been brought, either at the time of the funeral or
later, as gifts to the dead. Other gifts there were also in different
ages; treasures of wrought gold for the princes of Mycenae; articles of
the toilet for Athenian ladies whose first care even beyond the grave
would be their complexion; toys for the children. But while each grave
that is opened may tell its own story, humorous or pathetic, of those
tastes and pursuits of the occupant for which the same provision was
made in the next world as in this, it is in the supply of the common
necessaries of all mankind that the popular Greek notions concerning
the dead are most clearly revealed; for the custom has continued
without intermission or sensible alteration down to this day.

In the Mycenaean age the dead were supplied with a store of food at the
time of the funeral, but there is no evidence to show whether the gifts
were renewed subsequently[1320]. I incline to suppose that they were;
for the belief of later ages in some sort of bodily existence after
death has already been traced back to the Pelasgians; and the custom
of later ages therefore of continuing to supply the dead with bodily
necessaries was probably derived from the same source. But in any case
the Mycenaean custom of providing food for the dead at the time of the
funeral is sufficient proof that the dead were thought to have bodily
needs, and therefore also bodily existence.

The Achaeans of the Homeric age seldom presented the dead man with
gifts of food at the funeral, and never apparently afterwards. The
only gift, if such it can be called, which was commonly burned along
with the dead body was the warrior’s own armour; but it is so natural,
quite apart from any religious motive, for a soldier’s body to be laid
out arrayed in its wonted accoutrements and to have, as it were, a
military funeral, that little importance can attach to it. Other gifts
were rare. The funeral of Patroclus is quite exceptional, and, like
the return of Patroclus’ soul with its urgent petition for burial,
seems wholly inconsistent with the Homeric presentment of after-death
existence. The soul being doomed to a shadowy impotent semblance of
life could have no part in physical needs or pleasures[1321]. Nor does
Homer enlighten us as to the purpose of the abundant gifts, which
included not only food but slaughtered dogs and horses[1322]; he speaks
only of providing ‘all that it beseemeth that a man should have when
he goeth beneath the murky gloom[1323].’ Indeed I question whether
Homer had any clear conception of their utility; they seem rather
to have been vaguely honorific; and since the custom of making such
gifts is neither usual in Homer nor in harmony with his idea of future
existence, I hold it likely that once again he was drawing upon the
Pelasgian religion in order to give to the last rites of Patroclus the
maximum of splendour.

The Dipylon-period puts an end to all uncertainty; thenceforward down
to the present day the Greek custom of providing the dead with the
necessaries of bodily life will be found to have been uniform and
continuous. There has been no interruption of the simple practice of
providing the dead with food both at the time of the funeral and at
stated intervals thereafter. For the Dipylon-period this has been
proved by the contents of the graves and by the strata of burnt soil
observed at Eleusis[1324] above them. The same phenomena continue
to present themselves also in the case of later graves at Athens,
certainly down to the third century B.C., and, though any detailed
description of graves of a still later date is hard to find, the custom
unquestionably still prevailed; for literary evidence, overlapping that
of archaeology at the start, carries on our knowledge of the custom
into the Christian era.

The _Choephori_ of Aeschylus takes its very name from the practice of
pouring wine or other beverages on the graves of the dead for them
to consume; and the word χοαί was specially applied to this kind of
libation as opposed to the λοιβαί or σπονδαί wherewith gods were
propitiated. Similarly the Greek language possessed a special word for
gifts of food (or other perishable gifts such as flowers) brought to
the graves of the dead; these were called ἐναγίσματα in strict contrast
with the sacrifices (θυσίαι, etc.) by which gods were appeased[1325].
These presents of food were regularly made on two occasions at least
after the funeral; there were the τρίτα brought, according to modern
computation, on the second day, and the ἔνατα on the eighth day: how
regular was the custom of bringing them may be judged from the passing
references of Aristophanes[1326], Isaeus[1327], and Aeschines[1328].
In addition to these two meals there were others either on the
thirtieth day after the funeral or on the thirtieth of each month--for
the interpretation to be put on the term τριακάδες[1329] seems
doubtful--also γενέσια[1330], apparently a birthday-feast given to
the dead, and νεκύσια[1331] to commemorate the anniversary of the
death. The exact details of date however are of minor importance;
the significant fact is this, that at certain intervals after the
well-known περίδειπνον or funeral-feast, held on the day of burial,
other meals were served to the dead; and the Greek words themselves
corroborate the view that ‘meals,’ not ‘sacrifices,’ is the right
term to use; for as the funeral-feast is περίδειπνον, so also the
νεκύσια are called by Artemidorus[1332] not ἱερὰ but δεῖπνα. These
meals, being burnt over the place where the dead body lay, or being
deposited unburnt in some large vase set up at the head of the grave,
were thereby devoted to the use of the dead and became ἐναγίσματα in
that curious half-way sense between ‘sacred’ and ‘accursed’ for which
our language has no equivalent save the imported word ‘taboo’--objects
devoted to a sacred purpose and bringing the curse of desecration on
anyone who should pervert them to another use. The Greek language then
was careful to mark the difference between gifts presented to the
dead and propitiatory offerings made to the gods; and the difference
was observed, not because the presents differed in kind, but because
the conceptions of their purposes were different. The gods demanded
sacrifices under pain of their displeasure; the dead needed food as
living men need it, and their friends supplied it, not in fear, but in
love.

These old pagan customs were at first discountenanced by the
Church[1333]. But the common people clung to them with great
tenacity[1334], and after a while they appear to have received even
official encouragement; for St Anastasius Sinaites, bishop of Antioch
during the latter half of the sixth century, enjoined the observance of
them, and in so doing used some of the old names by which the customs
were known in pre-Christian times. ‘Perform,’ he wrote, ‘the offices
of the third day (τρίτα) for them that sleep, with psalms and hymns,
because of him who rose from sleep on the third day, and the offices
of the ninth day (ἔνατα) to remind those that yet live of them that
have fallen asleep, and the offices of the fortieth day according to
the old law and form (for even so did the people mourn for Moses),
and the offices of the anniversary in memory of the dead, with gifts
from his substance to the poor as a remembrance of him[1335].’ In this
passage the cloak of Christian decency which St Anastasius provided
does not entirely cover the nakedness of heathen superstition. There is
indeed much aetiological skill in the saint’s manipulation of Biblical
references; but the τρίτα and ἔνατα practised in his day, despite the
addition of Christian prayers and hymns, were without doubt the same
in essence as those to which Aristophanes and others allude--meals
provided for the dead; for such indeed they still remain.

At the present day the funeral service usually concludes with a
distribution of baked-meats and wine to the company assembled at the
grave-side, and a share of both is given to the dead. In some districts
this function means more than the serving of light refreshments, and
the grave-side becomes the scene of a substantial meal, from which
however meat is excluded; for, owing to Christian ideas of fasting, it
is generally held to be ‘spiritual’ for the mourners to abstain from
meat for the period of forty days. It is to this meal at the graveside
that the word μακαρία seems to be properly applied, in the sense of
a ‘feast of blessing,’ and it obviously corresponds with the term
μακαρίτης, ‘blessed,’ which was in antiquity, and still remains, the
Greek equivalent of our ‘deceased’ or ‘late.’

Subsequently, in the evening after the funeral or even on two or
three evenings thereafter, the nearer friends and relatives of the
dead assemble for another funeral-feast. This meal, which in ancient
times was called the περίδειπνον is now commonly known as the
παρηγορία[1336] or ‘comforting.’ It is held in the house of the nearest
relative[1337], as was done in the time of Demosthenes[1338], and its
modern name seems to indicate that the ‘consolation’ of the bereaved is
its chief purpose; and certainly some temporary solace is on many such
occasions poured into the mourners’ breasts; for the Greek peasants,
always abstemious save on certain great festivals such as Easter and
these funeral-parties, make no scruple of drinking and pressing their
host to drink until a riotous cheerfulness prevails. But though the
feast is designed to assuage the grief of the living, the dead are not
forgotten; for a special portion of food is often sent to the grave
from the house of mourning before the guests of the evening arrive.
Thus, though the dead is not felt to have any part in the actual ‘feast
of comforting’--for this feast is really provided by the guests, who
bring their own contributions of food and wine, while the host provides
only the accommodation for the company[1339]--yet the physical needs of
the departed are satisfied on this first day beneath the earth in the
same measure as when he was above ground. Two meals are provided, one
immediately after the funeral, the other in the evening.

Nor is the nature of this food lacking in interest. Locally indeed many
varieties may be found, the gifts including such ordinary comestibles
as bread, cheese, olives, caviare of the baser sort, _piláf_ (the
well-known Turkish dish of which the main ingredients are rice and
oil), and probably indeed anything, save meat, which the peasant’s
larder can supply; but the most generally approved viand is a specially
baked flat cake spread with honey. Now it will be remembered that jars
of honey were among the gifts of food on the pyre of Patroclus[1340],
but a more striking coincidence is to be found in Aristophanes’ mention
of a μελιτοῦττα or honey-cake in connexion with a funeral. ‘What,’ says
Lysistrata mockingly to the old deputy (πρόβουλος), ‘what do you mean
by not dying? You shall have room to lie; you can buy a coffin; and I
myself will knead you a honey-cake at once[1341].’ From this passage
it would appear that not only has the custom of providing food for the
dead remained in force from very early days, but even the kind of food
has not changed in more than two thousand years. The honey-cake, though
no longer known as μελιτοῦττα, in reference to its chief attraction,
but ψυχόπηττα[1342], ‘soul-cake,’ in reference to the occasion of its
making, is still apparently prepared according to a classical recipe,
and sweetness still gratifies the palate of the dead.

The dates subsequent to the funeral at which food is provided for
the dead have already[1343] been mentioned. Where the custom is most
fully observed, these are the third, sixth, ninth, and fortieth
days, the last days of the third, sixth, and ninth months, and three
anniversaries, the last of the three being also usually the day for
the exhumation of the bones. But in many villages the custom is less
extended, and it is held sufficient to observe in this way the third,
ninth, and fortieth days[1344] and the first anniversary. This minimum
of modern practice, it will be observed, is the exact tale of days
recommended for observance by St Anastasius, and without doubt the
sanction of the Church has helped to preserve the custom.

The Church likewise is wholly responsible for the name by which these
days are known, μνημόσυνα or ‘memorial-feasts’; and it would be wrong
to infer therefrom that the peasants attach no meaning to these rites
save that which the name ‘memorial-feast’ suggests. Rather it would
seem that the Church in permitting the continuance of a pagan custom
tried to diminish its significance. The words of St Anastasius make
it clear that such was his attitude. He bids that the anniversary be
observed ‘in memory of the dead, with gifts from his substance to the
poor as a remembrance of him’; and the repetition contained in the
phrase shows in what aspect he wished the custom to be viewed. But as
a matter of fact the real purpose of the custom was not to keep green
the memory of the dead by charitable distributions of his goods, but
partly, as we have seen, to induce those persons who were invited to
the feast to forgive the dead man and to revoke any curses with which
they had bound him, and partly to minister to the dead man’s own bodily
needs; and in spite of ecclesiastical influence to the contrary, this
twofold purpose is still generally recognised, and that portion of the
food which is not consumed by the company invited or by the priests,
but is actually left on the grave, is honestly intended as nourishment
for the dead body there interred.

This motive was fully appreciated by a French traveller of the
seventeenth century; describing these grave-side feasts, he says,
‘Frequent presents of cakes, wine, rice, fruits, and other eatables,
decked out with flowers and ribbons, are taken to the tomb.’ There,
he continues, the priest blesses the food and takes a good share of
it, and a feast is then held ‘wherein they seek to make the dead
man participate as well[1345].’ Thus even now, after centuries of
Christianity, there seems to be no change of feeling among the
common-folk, and their intention, or one part of it, is still best
summed up in the phrase of Euripides, ‘to render sustenance unto the
dead[1346].’

The food proper to these meals subsequent to the day of the funeral is
known as κόλλυβα. It consists of grain, usually wheat, boiled whole,
and thus closely resembles the English ‘frumenty.’ It is sometimes
garnished and made more palatable by the addition of sugar ornaments,
almonds, raisins, and pieces of pomegranate, but the essential thing
is boiled grain[1347]. How the word κόλλυβα obtained this meaning is
not known to me[1348]; but the food itself is quite probably a legacy
from the ancient world. The _silicernium_ or funeral-feast of the
Romans took its name apparently from _siliquae_, some kind of pulse,
which must therefore be supposed to have formed the chief dish; and
beans are at the present day an important part of the funeral-meats in
Sardinia[1349]. It is not unlikely therefore that the use of boiled
beans or grain in the service of the dead is an old custom common to
the coasts of the Mediterranean. The honey-cake on the day of the
funeral is of ancient prescription; the boiled wheat on later occasions
may equally well be so. At any rate the principle of supplying the dead
with meals both at the funeral and on certain fixed days thereafter
remains absolutely unchanged, and the custom is still understood to be
a means of ministering to the bodily needs of the dead.

And as with the gifts of food, the ancient ἐναγίσματα, so also with
the gifts of drink, the ancient χοαί. It is on record that among the
Greeks of Macedonia, Cappadocia, and other outlying districts[1350],
the custom of pouring out red wine on the graves of the dead at the
so-called memorial-feasts is still sedulously observed; and though I
have nowhere witnessed the practice, I have been told on good authority
that in Aegina also and in some parts of Crete it is in vogue. For the
use of water I can myself answer; and it is not a little interesting to
observe that while the dates on which food is set before the dead man
have been somewhat conventionally limited in number, water, the prime
necessary of life, is often taken to the grave daily[1351] up to the
fortieth day.

Again, in the matter of providing clothing for the dead, ancient
practice is well known. A store of raiment was buried with the dead,
and so great a store that it was necessary for Solon to impose a
legal limit by which three outer garments (ἱμάτια) were named as
the maximum[1352]. But this restriction applied only to the actual
funeral, and did not prohibit renewed gifts of clothing at subsequent
dates. To judge from a passage of Thucydides, this was an annual duty.
The Plataeans, in their appeal to the Lacedaemonians for protection,
are made to plead their performance of this kindness as a claim upon
Spartan gratitude. ‘Turn your eyes,’ they say, ‘to the tombs of your
fathers, who fell in the Persian wars and were buried in our land. Year
by year we were wont to do them honour at the public charge with gifts
of clothing and all else that is customary[1353].’

Some vestiges of this custom remain to the present day. The dead are
commonly dressed in their best clothes for the lying-in-state and for
the procession to the grave, during which, it must be remembered, the
body is always carried on an open bier, exposed to view. Often too
these clothes are buried with the dead; but sometimes when, as among
the poorer peasant-women, the richly-embroidered festival dress is
too costly a thing thus to abandon, and is handed down as an heirloom
from mother to daughter, the body is stripped at the grave-side of its
fine array; and indeed so far, I am told, has the custom degenerated
in Athens and some of the other towns, that costumes of special
magnificence may be hired from the undertakers and sent back from the
churchyard to them. In such cases the old meaning of the custom is
lost, and a vulgar desire for pomp and parade has taken its place. But
among the simpler folk of the country this is not the case; for, apart
from the custom of burying the dead in their best clothes, there is
in the folk-songs mention of gifts of clothing and other necessaries
of life sent by the hand of one recently dead to those who have gone
before[1354].

It appears then that the ancient custom of providing for the bodily
wants of the departed is still alive, still significant; and surely it
is incredible that a people who for more than two thousand years have
continued to resort to the graves in which the dead bodies of their
friends are laid, and there to set out meat and drink and clothing and
other things suited to their erstwhile needs and pursuits, could all
along have believed that these gifts were vanity, that the food could
not strengthen, the wine could not cheer, the clothing could not warm
the departed, but that they lay henceforth cold, tasteless, insentient.
For if men had so believed, then a custom, not merely lacking the
alliance of religious belief, but standing in perpetual antagonism to
it, could not have held its ground, as this custom has done, century
after century with vigour unabated. Rather the continuity of the custom
might alone prove, even if other considerations had not guided us to
the same conclusion, that the departed were held to possess a nature
no less corporeal, an existence no less material, than that which
belonged both to living men and to the gods whom they hoped to resemble
even more closely hereafter. The same food as men ate was offered to
the gods in sacrifice that they too might eat; why bring it to the
dead, if they had no power to eat? The wine that men drank was poured
out for the gods in libation, that they too might drink; why waste it
upon the soil of the grave, if the dead had no power to drink? A robe
such as Athenian women wore was presented to Athene year by year, that
she might wear it; why furnish the dead with gifts of raiment, if it
must rot unworn? It is impossible to evade the conclusion that the same
bodily needs and propensities were ascribed by the Greek folk to the
departed as to living men and to deathless gods.

Thus then the people of Greece are shown to have pursued constantly two
aims in their treatment of the dead--to ensure the dissolution of the
body, and also to provide the body with the necessaries of existence.
Unless therefore anyone is prepared to suppose that the Greek people
have been constantly actuated by two conflicting motives, the desire to
annihilate and the desire to keep alive, dissolution cannot have meant
to them annihilation, but rather a modification of the conditions of
bodily existence; and that modification can only have meant that the
existence of the body in this world indeed ended--for the substance
laid in the grave vanished--but continued in another world. But if
bodily existence continued in that other world whither the soul too
sped, the body and the soul having reached the same place would surely
not be imagined to remain separate, but to be re-united. The eagerness
for dissolution meant therefore eagerness for the re-union of body and
soul.

And there is a good means of testing the popular belief even as
regards this last step. If the body and soul were really believed to
be re-united as soon as dissolution was complete, the dead man in the
lower world would assuredly be as well able to take care of himself as
he had been while dwelling in this world, and the obligation of his
relatives to provide him with food would cease, although of course
they might, voluntarily and without any compulsion of duty, continue
their gifts[1355]. But it would be at any rate permissible, on this
theory, to discontinue all care for the dead when once his body was no
longer helpless but restored to its activity by re-union with the soul;
and it is to be expected that the Greek people should sometimes avail
themselves of the exemption from the task of feeding and otherwise
tending the dead. Such action would be the natural outcome of the
belief that dissolution meant the re-union of body and soul; and if I
can show that such action has been or is commonly taken, the existence
of the belief will have borne the best test, the demonstration of a
custom arising from it.

The period required for dissolution, according to common belief, is
either forty days or three years--the former being the really popular
period, while the latter was fixed indeed by the Church but in many
districts has been popularly accepted. Hence, if my views are correct,
the meals provided for the dead and all other marks of care ought
to cease sometimes at the fortieth day and sometimes at the third
anniversary.

As regards the present time, I do not know of any place, though it
would not surprise me to hear of one, in which the so-called memorial
feasts are discontinued after the fortieth day; but I have already
cited evidence to show that the memorial-feasts of later date are
definitely ecclesiastical in origin, and even retain to this day in
one district a distinctly ecclesiastical tone[1356]. Therefore before
a necessitous priesthood had succeeded in extending the custom, the
ministration to the bodily wants of the dead clearly did cease when
dissolution was popularly supposed to be complete. This conclusion
is fortified by a most striking piece of evidence. The priests’
interest has naturally been limited to the food and wine supplied to
the dead; for a supply of water they have not been dependent upon the
perquisites of their office. Hence it comes that the water, which, as
I noted above, is often supplied to the dead day by day, without any
accompanying provision of food, ceases to be brought after the fortieth
day. The wants of the dead man have been assiduously satisfied until,
in popular reckoning, his dissolution is complete, and ecclesiastical
influence has had no motive for encouraging a longer continuance of the
custom so far as water is concerned. The fortieth day then was without
doubt the old popular limit of the time during which the supply of all
kinds of provision was obligatory.

Nowadays, on the contrary, the presents of food to the dead are
generally continued up to the third anniversary, when exhumation
takes place. Then, if the evidence of men’s eyes assures them that
dissolution has been duly effected--that the body is gone and only
the white bones remain--there is no further thought or provision for
the dead; but in the rare cases in which the disintegration of the
corpse is not yet complete, the relatives are not freed from their
obligations. I witnessed a remarkable case of this kind at Leonídi
on the east coast of Laconia. Two graves had just been opened when I
arrived, and the utmost anxiety prevailed because in both cases there
was only partial decomposition--in one case so little that the general
outline of the features could be made out--and it was feared that one
or both of the dead persons had become _vrykolakes_. The remains,
when I saw them, had been removed to the chapel attached to the
burial-ground. Meanwhile the question was debated as to what should be
done with them. Dissolution must be effected both in the interests of
the dead themselves and in those of the whole community. Extraordinary
measures were required. The best measure--I am reporting what I
actually heard--the best measure next to prayer (which had been tried
without effect) was to burn the remains, and the bolder spirits of the
village counselled this plan; but this would have been a breach of law
and order, and the authorities of the place would have none of it. The
priest proposed re-interment; but here the relatives objected. They had
had trouble enough and expense enough; they had kept ‘the unsleeping
lamp’ burning at the grave, and had provided all the memorial feasts;
they would not consent to re-inter the body and to be at the same
charge for an indefinite time, without knowing when the corpse might be
properly ‘loosed’ and their tendance of it over. They would find some
way of dissolving it, and that speedily.

And so indeed they did; and I, for a short time, was a spectator of
the scene. On the floor of the chapel there were two large baskets
containing the remains; there were men seated beside them busy with
knives; and there were women kneeling at wash-tubs and scouring the
bones that were handed to them with soap and soda. The work continued
for two days. At the end of that time the bones were shown white and
clean. All else had disappeared--had probably been burnt in secret, but
the secret was kept close. It was therefore claimed and allowed that
dissolution was complete.

The attitude adopted by the relatives on this occasion makes it
perfectly clear that all the care expended on the dead is obligatory
up to the time of dissolution, but no longer. So long as the fleshly
substance remains in this world, provision of food must be made for it;
when it has disappeared and only the bones are left, the departed cease
to be dependent upon their surviving relatives, and no further anxiety
is felt for their welfare.

Nor must it be supposed that the cleaning and whitening of the bones
in the case which I have described had anything to do with a desire
to preserve the bones as relics of the dead. Such a custom is indeed
well known in Greek monasteries; at Megaspélaeon, for instance, the
wealthiest and most famous monastery of Greece proper, there is an
ossuary in which the monks take great pride. On one side, ranged
against the wall, stands a large triangular heap of skulls; the
opposite wall is decorated with cleverly-designed geometrical figures
carried out in other bones; while in a corner perhaps may be seen a
basket or two full of material awaiting the decorator’s convenience.
My guide, I remember, pointed out to me the skulls of many of the
distinguished monks of past time, and indicated with great satisfaction
the spot which he had bespoken for his own. But the usage of monastic
bodies has in truth little bearing upon the popular semi-pagan beliefs
and customs; the practice of storing up the bones of members of a
religious order in an ossuary is more closely akin to the old custom
of preserving relics of saints and martyrs; it is to the usage of the
common-folk in such matters that we must look. And what do they do
with the white or whitened bones? They throw them away and expend no
more care upon them. At Leonídi itself, close beside the fenced-in
burial-ground, but unprotected from the intrusion of man or beast,
there is a square open pit into which the bones of many generations
have been tipped like rubbish, lying at random in confusion as they
fell. Nor is this a solitary case. In far-away Sciathos I recall
the same scene as at Leonídi--a chapel set on a wooded hill, the
churchyard about it neatly kept and the graves of the recently buried
well-tended, but just beyond its precincts a rough hole in the ground
open to sun and rain, and ‘some two fathoms of bones,’ as a peasant
said jestingly, lying in neglect and disarray. These pits, which are
to be seen throughout Greece, are indeed dignified by the Church with
the name of cemeteries (κοιμητήρια[1357]); but they command no respect
on the part of the peasant. He will cross himself as he passes chapel
or enters churchyard, but he will jest over the depository of outcast
bones. In a word, when it is seen that every trace of the dead body
save only the white bones has disappeared, the common-folk exchange
their extraordinary devotion to the duties of tending the dead for a
total unconcern. And the reason for this can only be that the dead
body no longer lies helpless and dependent for its existence upon the
sustenance which they from time to time provide, but has vanished to
a land where, re-united with the soul, it regains its activity and
independence.

Such, I believe, is the trend of religious thought which, almost
insensibly, has guided the actions of the Greek people from the
Pelasgian age until now in their treatment of the dead; the benefit
which they have sought to confer upon the dead by the dissolution of
their bodies has been the re-union of body with soul and the resumption
of that active bodily life which death had for a time suspended.


FOOTNOTES:

[1292] Plato, _Phaedo_ 115 C ff.

[1293] Hom. _Il._ XXIII. 65 ff.

[1294] Hom. _Il._ XXIII. 72.

[1295] Cf. the constant contrast of αὐτὸς and ψυχή, as in _Iliad_ I.
3-4, and twice in the passage before us, _Il._ XXIII. 65 f. and 106 f.

[1296] Hom. _Od._ XI. 489 ff.

[1297] Hom. _Il._ XVI. 857.

[1298] The few inconsistencies in the _Odyssey_, such as the physical
punishment of Tityos, Tantalos, and Sisyphos (_Od._ XI. 576 ff.), or
again the mention of the ‘asphodel mead’ (_Od._ XI. 539, XXIV. 13),
are unimportant. They are, I think, adventitious Pelasgian elements in
the Homeric scheme of the future life, and it may be noted that the
_Iliad_ is singularly free from them, while in _Odyssey_, Bk XI., where
they chiefly occur, they are obviously incongruous with the general
conception of the lower world.

[1299] See above, p. 99.

[1300] Pindar, Fr. 129 (95).

[1301] See above, p. 345.

[1302] Πολίτης, Μελέτη, p. 407 ff.

[1303] Ἐκθ. ὀρθοδοξ. πίστεως 11 (25); Migne, _Patrolog._ (_ser.
Graec._) Vol. XCIV. p. 916.

[1304] Plutarch, _de occult. viv._ cap. 7, cited by Bergk in _Lyrici
Graeci_, _ad loc._

[1305] Pind. _Ol._ II. 134.

[1306] Pind. _Ol._ I. 1.

[1307] νὰ δροσίσουν τὴ λαύρα τοῦ πεθαμένου.

[1308] Cf. Theodore Bent, _The Cyclades_, p. 220.

[1309] This is of course only one out of several passages in which
Pindar speaks of the future life, and he does not adhere to any one
doctrine; elsewhere, as in _Ol._ II., his views are coloured largely
by Pythagorean or Orphic eschatology, although there is a close
resemblance between the isles of the blest there described (126-135)
and the abode depicted in this fragment.

[1310] Hom. _Il._ IX. 632 ff.

[1311] Herod. II. 51.

[1312] Herod. II. 171.

[1313] Aristoph. _Frogs_, 884.

[1314] _Op. cit._ 1032 ff.

[1315] A conspicuous example is Delphi, where the Achaean god Apollo
had usurped the place of some oracular deity of the Pelasgians, cf.
Plutarch, _de defect. orac._ cap. 15 p. 418. See Miss Harrison,
_Proleg. to the Study of Greek Religion_, pp. 113 f.

[1316] _Il._ XXIII. 104.

[1317] _Il._ XXIII. 101.

[1318] Plato, _Phaedo_, cap. 29 (p. 80 D).

[1319] Cf. Κωνστ. Ν. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, p. 341.

[1320] Rohde (_Psyche_ I. cap. 1) contends that the discovery of
an altar, of the type used in the worship of Chthonian deities,
superimposed upon one Mycenaean grave, proves both that offerings to
the dead were continued after the interment and also that the offerings
were of a propitiatory character. On this slight foundation he rears
the edifice of his theory that a vigorous soul-cult flourished in
Mycenaean and earlier ages. Accordingly he views all gifts to the dead,
including those made at the time of the funeral, as offerings intended
to propitiate departed souls, although he is forced to admit that from
the Homeric age onwards there is no evidence that fear of the dead was
a feature of Greek religion; the offerings made, on his view, to the
soul of Patroclus were merely, he holds, a ‘survival,’ a custom no
longer possessed of any meaning. The accident of an altar belonging
to some Chthonian deity having been found above the grave of some man
seems to me insufficient basis for any theory.

[1321] The blood which in the _Odyssey_ is used to attract the souls of
the dead and is given to Teiresias to drink forms, I imagine, part of a
magic rite, which has no connexion with the present point.

[1322] I omit the twelve Trojan prisoners; the slaughter of these is
clearly stated to have been an act of revenge. See _Il._ XXIII. 22 f.

[1323] _Il._ XXIII. 50.

[1324] Φίλιος, in Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολ. 1889, p. 183. Possibly also at
Athens, cf. Brückner and Pernice, in _Athen. Mittheil._ 1893, pp. 89-90.

[1325] I am not overlooking the fact that ἐναγίσματα were also made
to Chthonian deities (cf. Pausan. VIII. 34. 3), but there was a
distinction in character even between these ἐναγίσματα and those made
to the dead. Wine, for example, was excluded from the former and
included in the latter. Possibly in origin ἐναγίζειν was the Pelasgian
rite, θύειν the Achaean.

[1326] _Lysist._ 611.

[1327] _Menecl._ 46 and _Ciron_ 55 (p. 73. 26).

[1328] _Ctesiphon_, 226 (p. 86. 5).

[1329] Pollux VIII. 146; Harpocrat. s.v. τριακάς.

[1330] Herod. IV. 26.

[1331] Artem. _Oneirocr._ IV. 83.

[1332] _loc. cit._

[1333] Bingham, _Antiq. of Christian Church_, Bk 23, cap. 3.

[1334] See Chrysostom, _Homily_ 47 in 1 Cor., p. 565.

[1335] Anastasius, _Quaestio_ XXII., in Migne, _Patrolog. Graeco-Lat._
Vol. LXXXIX. 288.

[1336] Known also as τὸ ζεστόν (‘the warming’) according to Bybilakis,
_Neugriech. Leben_, p. 67.

[1337] According to Bybilakis, _loc. cit._, in the dead man’s house.
This, naturally, would be the usual case.

[1338] p. 321. 25.

[1339] Hence it is probable that the ancient περίδειπνον also was
conducted on the principle of the ἔρανος.

[1340] Hom. _Il._ XXIII. 170. Cf. also the use of μελίκρατον, Hom.
_Od._ XI. 27, and Eur. _Or._ 115. Cf. also Aesch. _Pers._ 614.

[1341] Ar. _Lys._ 599 ff.

[1342] In some villages of Chios, the diminutive ψυχοπῆττι or a word
ψύτση is used (Κωνστ. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, p. 337). The commoner
form ψυχόπηττα is that of Crete (cf. Bybilakis, _op. cit._ p. 69),
Kasos, and other Asiatic islands (Πρωτόδικος, περὶ τῆς παρ’ ἡμῖν ταφῆς,
p. 17) etc.

[1343] See above, pp. 486-7.

[1344] Called respectively τρίμερα, ἐννι̯άμερα, and σαράντα.

[1345] Sonnini de Magnoncourt, _Voyage en Grèce et en Turquie_, Vol.
II. p. 153.

[1346] Eur. _Or._ 109.

[1347] Cf. Suidas s.v. κόλυβα, σῖτος ἑψητός. The spelling with λλ is
preferable.

[1348] The classical meaning of κόλλυβα was ‘small coins.’ The
scholiast on Aristoph. _Plut._ 768 mentions κόλλυβα among the
καταχύσματα thrown over a new slave on his introduction to the
household. These consisted mainly of sweetmeats, etc. (cf. _op. cit._
798) whence apparently Hesychius (s.v. κόλλυβα) explains that word by
τρωγάλια. More probably small coins were thrown along with various
sweetmeats; for the kindred custom of throwing καταχύσματα over a bride
on her entry into her new home has continued down to the present day,
and these certainly now comprise small change as well as sticky edibles.

[1349] Gregorovius, _Wanderings in Corsica, etc._ (tr. Muir), II. p. 46.

[1350] Πρωτόδικος, περὶ τῆς παρ’ ἡμῖν ταφῆς, p. 17. Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχέλαος, ἡ
Σινασός, p. 92.

[1351] Cf. Bybilakis, _Neugriechisches Leben_, p. 67.

[1352] Plutarch, _Vita Solon._ cap. 21.

[1353] Thucyd. III. 58. 4.

[1354] See above, p. 345.

[1355] This occurred in old time in the case of heroes, whose offerings
are called ἐναγίσματα and χοαί, like those of other dead men; but since
the state and not the individual provided for them, the gifts were made
not for a time only, but regularly year after year.

[1356] See above, pp. 487 f.

[1357] As opposed, in correct speech, to νεκροταφεῖον, the place of
preliminary interment. But the two terms are often confused.




CHAPTER VII.

THE UNION OF GODS AND MEN.


The similitude of death with sleep is an idea of ancient date and of
wide distribution, which for many of mankind, whatever be the creed
professed, has mitigated the fears or lightened the uncertainties which
attach to the cessation of this life. Adopted by the founder of the
Christian religion as an illustration of the doctrine that men ‘shall
rise again with their bodies,’ the thought has become a part of the
heritage of Christendom, and in our own language the word ‘cemetery’
bears testimony to it. But the idea had been evolved by pagan thought
long centuries before the dawn of Christianity, and probably enough by
the thinkers and poets of many nations independently one of another. In
the oldest literature of Greece we meet with the thought already fully
developed and evidently familiar. ‘To sleep an iron slumber[1358]’ is
already in Homeric language a simple and natural synonym for ‘to die’;
and so too we are told that in the far off golden age men ‘died as it
were overborne by sleep[1359].’ And in yet plainer terms, where Death
and Sleep are personified, they are spoken of as twin brethren[1360],
the children of Night[1361]. This conception seems too to have been a
favourite in art[1362], and provided one of the scenes on the renowned
chest of Cypselus[1363].

When we turn to the folk-songs of the present day, we cannot of course
hope to find the imagery of Death and Sleep pourtrayed as infants
sleeping in the lap of Night, nor indeed, so far as I know, are they
even described as brothers; for the personification of them by the
modern peasants is rare. But the old resemblance between them is still
recognised, and, quite apart from Christian influence, the thought
finds natural expression in those largely pagan improvisations of
mourning in which the name of Charon is to be heard more frequently
than the name of God. It will suffice to quote but one stanza from one
of the most simple and touching of these funeral-songs:

    δὲν εἶν’ πεθαμένη,
    τὴν ὄψι τηρᾶτε,
    κοιμᾶται, κοιμᾶται,
    εἰς ὕπνο βαθύ[1364].

    Not dead lies the maiden,
    Doubt not, but behold her,
    ’Tis sleep doth enfold her
    In slumber profound.

Now this idea, born in some long-forgotten pagan age, fostered by Homer
and Hesiod and no less tenderly by the Christian Church, familiar
to every Greek mind for full three thousand years, harmonizes well
with the belief that body as well as soul survives death. Beyond
the superficial resemblance in the inert figures of the dead man
laid out for burial and of one who sleeps soundly, there was another
and profounder resemblance in the manner of their waking to fresh
activity, the one in this world, the other in the under-world. Homer,
with his belief that the soul alone, survives, notes only the first
resemblance. The twofold property of laying men to sleep and of raising
them therefrom resided fitly in the wand of Hermes the escorter of the
dead; but though he escorted men’s souls to the house of Hades and
might at will summon their souls thence[1365], there is no suggestion
of a bodily awakening from the sleep of death. But Virgil, even in his
close imitation of Homer, adds to the Homeric description of Hermes’
wand one phrase of his own. ‘Therewith doth he summon forth from Orcus
the pale spirits of the dead, and others doth he send down to gloomy
Tartarus; therewith he giveth sleep and taketh it away’--so far does
Virgil follow Homer, but he adds--‘and unsealeth men’s eyes from
death[1366].’ The Homeric picture is enriched by a new thought, foreign
to the Achaean religion but proper to that other belief which inspired
Pindar’s description of the future life, the thought that after death
and dissolution, men’s eyes should open upon a brighter world and a
life of renewed bodily activity.

Such was the thought with which the pagans of ancient Greece had
comforted themselves long before Christianity availed itself of the
same imagery. But the Hellenic religion went yet further, and found in
this thought not only peace and contentment but vivid joy. The sleep
of death was the means whereby men should attain to closer communion
with their gods. The grave was a bed, but a bed of delight rather than
of rest, a bridal bed. They should not sleep alone, but in the very
embrace of the gods to whom in this life they had striven to draw nigh.
The darkness of the tomb was but the wedding-night. Full union in the
other world should be the consummation of partial communion in this.
The marriage of men with their gods was the ideal to which Greek piety
dared aspire.

Such an ideal may well seem bold even to the verge of impious
presumption. But Greek religion, even in its highest developments,
was the natural and spontaneous expression of the beliefs and hopes
of a whole people; it differed from all the great religions of the
modern world in having no founder. Great teachers no doubt arose, as
Orpheus or Pythagoras, who influenced the course of religious thought;
but they were not the founders of new religions. The old self-grown
faiths of the people were the stocks upon which they grafted, as it
would seem, even their new doctrines; they founded schools indeed,
but schools which did not sever themselves from the received religion
and become sects. The Orphic mysteries differed so little from the
old Pelasgian mysteries of Eleusis that Orpheus was sometimes even
reputed to be their founder too; yet, as we shall see, the Eleusinian
rites were merely one presentment of a conception common to the whole
Greek people. If then this ideal of marriage between men and gods
in the future life was no invented or imported doctrine, but simply
the highest development of purely popular aspirations towards close
communion with the gods, its audacity is less surprising. From time
immemorial down to this day[1367] Greece has had its popular stories of
nuptial union even in this life between gods and mortal women, between
goddesses and mortal men; and educated Greeks, who could not credit
such occurrences in their own times, might well believe that a joy,
which had been granted to the brave men and fair women of a former and
better age even during their life-time upon earth, was still reserved
for the righteous in the world to come. Pausanias tells us with a
wonderful simplicity that in his time owing to the increase of iniquity
in all the world no one was changed from a man into a god, and that the
wrath of the gods against the unrighteous was laid up against the time
when they should quit this earth[1368]. If then there was believed to
be a postponement of punishment for those who offended the gods, there
might well be a reservation of blessedness for those who pleased them.
It would have imposed no strain upon the faith of such as Pausanias to
look forward to the enjoyment in a future life of the same bliss as
had been enjoyed in old time upon earth by men ‘who by reason of their
uprightness and piety sat at the same hospitable board as gods, and
whom the gods openly visited with honour for their goodness even as
they visited the wicked with their displeasure[1369],’ men who, as many
an old legend told, had shared not the board only but even the bed of
deities.

This curious Greek conception of death as a form of marriage was
first borne in upon me by the funeral-dirges of the modern peasants.
Examples may be found in any collection of Greek folk-songs. The actual
expression of the thought varies considerably, but it would probably be
hard to find in Greece any professional mourner in whose elaborations
the idea did not occupy an important place. It is utilised with
equal frequency in regard to persons of either sex, whether married
or unmarried at the time of death. The two following specimens from
Passow’s collection are fairly representative.

    ‘Ah me! ah me! the hours of youth and days all past and over,
    Haply shall they return again, those hours of youth regretted?’
    ‘Nay when the crow dons plumage white, when crow to dove is changèd,
    Then only shall they come again, those hours of youth lamented.’
    ‘Oh fare ye well, high mountain-tops and fir-trees rich in shadow,
    For I must go to marry me, to take a wife unto me;
    The black earth for my wife I take, the tombstone as her mother
    And yonder little pebbles all her brethren and her sisters[1370].’

Here evidently we have the funeral-dirge of an old man, and, as
is usual in these poems, a large part of the words are put into
his mouth. In this fragment the first two lines are the dead man’s
complaint, the next two are an answer returned to him, and then again
he takes up his parable. The second example which I will give is from
a lamentation for a young girl. The first few lines are addressed by
the father and mother to their dead child, and with a quaint directness
contrast the gloom of the lower world with the simple joys of a
peasant’s life here above; while the last three lines are an answer put
into the dead girl’s mouth.

    ‘Dear child, there where thou purposest to hie thee down, in Hades,
    There, sure, no cock doth ever crow, nor hen is heard a-clucking,
    There is no spring of water found, nor grass in meadows growing.
    Art hungered? nought thou tastest there; athirst? there nought thou drinkest;
    Would’st lay thee down and take thy rest? of sleep no fill thou takest.
    Then stay, dear child, in thine own house, stay then with thine own kindred.’
    ‘Nay, I may not, dear father mine and mother deep-beloved,
    Yesterday was my marriage-day, late yestere’en my wedding,
    Hades I for my husband have, the tomb for my new mother[1371].’

In this dirge, it may be noticed, there is no complaint on the part of
the dead girl; the lamentation and the gloomy description of Hades are
assigned to her parents. And indeed her reply is, I think, intended
to be by way of consolation. It is true that she does not deny their
cheerless prognostications nor attempt to paint a brighter picture of
the nether world, but she represents her death as no greater breaking
of old ties than is marriage; at an actual marriage indeed the same
kind of distressful presages are chanted by the girl’s companions, and
even the bride herself is bound by propriety to exhibit a sullen and
regretful demeanour. Very true of Greek marriages and of Greek funerals
is the proverb, μηδ’ ἀπὸ τὴ λύπη λείπουν γέλια μηδ’ ἀπὸ τὴ χαρὰ τὰ
κλάμματα[1372], ‘Mourning hath its mirth and joy its tears.’ But the
consolatory tone is far more pronounced in some other passages from
the same collection. A good example is found in the message which a
_Klepht_--one of those patriot-outlaws who struggled against Turkish
domination--is made to send, as he lies dying, to his mother:

    ‘Go, tell ye now my mother dear, my mother sore-afflicted,
    Ne’er to await me home again, ne’er to abide my coming;
    Yet tell her not that I am slain, tell her not I am fallen;
    Nay, tell her then that I am wed--wed in these wilds so weary.
    The black earth for my wife I took, the hard rock my bride’s mother,
    And all the little pebbles here I took for my new kindred[1373].’

The feeling displayed in these lines (which are credited by Passow
to the town of Livadia (Λεβαδεία) in Boeotia) finds closely similar
expression in a recently-published Macedonian folk-song. The latter
however is not a mere copy of the former. Its metre is different,
and further it is a folk-song of the romantic order, whereas the
lines which I have quoted belong to an historical ballad. A youth is
lowered by his brothers, so runs the story, into a well to get water
for them, but the well proves to be haunted by a snake-like monster
(στοιχειό[1374]) from whom they try in vain to rescue him. In this
plight he cries to them:

        ‘Oh leave me, brothers, leave me, go ye on your way,
        And say not to my mother dear that I am dead,
        But tell her, brothers, tell her how that I am wed;
    The black earth for my wife I took, the tombstone my bride’s mother,
    And all these little blades of grass her brethren and her sisters[1375].’

Even more remarkable in its total absence of grief is a fragment
given by Passow under the title of ‘the Wedding in Hades.’ The
lamentation--for technically at least the poem falls into the class
of ‘dirges’--is sung by a mother for her son, and she speaks of her
own mother, who is already dead and in the nether world, as making
preparation for the boy’s wedding in Hades.

    ‘My mother maketh glad to-day, she maketh my son’s wedding,
    She goeth for water to the springs, for snow unto the mountains,
    To fruit-wives in their garden-plots for apples and for quinces.
    “Ye springs,” she saith, “give water cool, and give me snow, ye mountains,
    Ye fruit-wives in your garden-plots, give apples and give quinces.
    For unto me a dear one comes down from the world above us;
    Not from a strange land cometh he, nor from among strange people,
    He is the child of mine own child, right dear and deep-beloved.”[1376]’

From these passages and from many others conceived in the same spirit
it will readily be seen that the thought of death as a kind of
marriage, however mystical it may seem to us, is familiar to the modern
Greek peasants. Nor has that thought become crystallised into a set
form of words to be repeated without heed or understanding of their
meaning. The very variety of treatment given to the idea proves that
we are not dealing with a mere traditional expression or unmeaning
commonplace, but with a vital belief still capable of stirring the
ballad-maker’s imagination. Further it is this thought which almost
alone strikes a note of cheerfulness and of hope in the popular dirges.
The usual picture of the lower world is nothing but gloom and despair.
It is a place of darkness on which the sun never shines, a place of ice
and snow, and full of cob-webs. There are no churches there with bright
golden icons; no quoits for the young men to throw; no looms for the
women to ply. Hunger is not appeased, thirst not quenched, and sleep
is denied. All is mourning and regret for the warm stirring life of
the upper world, and anxious fears for wife or children left behind.
Happy those who are allowed even to taste of the river of death, and to
forget their homes and orphaned little ones. Thus with strange medley
of ancient and modern is the dirge-singer wont to describe that lower
world to which all the dead without distinction go. Yet even into these
dirges, which--in order to excite the mourners to wilder displays of
grief--purposely emphasize the gloomiest aspects of death, there is
allowed to enter the one cheering thought that the departed for whom
lamentation is made is not dead nor yet fallen on eternal sleep, but
wedded in a new world; and it is worthy of notice that it is with this
thought that many of the dirges end, as if this one consolation and
hope were designed to assuage the pangs of sorrow which the first part
of the dirge had excited.

Thus a brief study of the modern Greek dirges reveals to us the curious
fact that a mystic conception of death is widely prevalent among the
simple-minded peasants of Greece, and that, with all their _naïveté_
in pourtraying the horrors of the lower world, it is from a recondite
doctrine that they draw consolation. How came they to be the stewards
of a doctrine so strange, so remote from the primitive simplicity of
their ordinary life?

Once more we must look back to a pre-Christian antiquity, and seek
again in Greek Tragedy the evidence of popular belief. Just as
Aeschylus above all others has preserved to us the awful doctrine of
future retribution for the deadly sin of blood-guilt, so from Sophocles
we may learn the more comfortable doctrine that death, while it
involves a parting from friends in this upper world, is also the means
of drawing nearer, in an union as it were of wedlock, to the denizens
of the lower world. The _locus classicus_ for this conception is the
_Antigone_. Throughout the latter part of that play, when once the
doom of Antigone has been pronounced, the thought of her death as a
wedding, and of the rock-hewn tomb where she is to be immured as a
bridal-chamber, finds repeated and emphatic expression.

Of course it may be said that Antigone was the promised bride of
Haemon, and that the poet in speaking of her tomb as a bridal-chamber
was seeking to accentuate the pathetic contrast between her hopes
and her destiny. That is true; but perhaps it is not the whole
truth; perhaps Sophocles rather utilised the evident pathos of the
situation for the purpose of covert allusion to doctrines which were
in themselves unspeakable, such as Herodotus would have passed over
with the words εὔστομα κείσθω. For we must not forget that the majority
of an Athenian audience, initiated as they naturally would be in the
Eleusinian mysteries, were familiar with religious teachings of which
none might make explicit mention in the pages of literature open to the
profane, but at which a poet might well hint in words which beneath
their superficial meaning hid a truth intelligible to such as had ears
to hear. Aeschylus indeed had once ventured too far in his allusions
to the mysteries[1377]; but there is no improbability, or rather there
is on that account an increased probability, in the supposition that a
discreet and veiled allusion to unspeakable doctrines was permitted to
the Tragic poet. Let us turn to the actual passages of the _Antigone_.

The first suggestion of the thought comes ironically enough, though
it is but a faint suggestion, from the lips of Creon, who to Ismene’s
exclamation, “Wilt thou indeed bereave thine own son of her?” retorts
“’Tis Hades’ part to arrest this wedding[1378].” The thought is
taken up later by the Chorus, who, after their hymn in honour of
unconquerable Love, revert to words of pity for the woman there before
them, and tell how they can no longer check the founts of tears, when
they behold Antigone drawing near to ‘the bed-chamber where all must
sleep’ (τὸν παγκοίταν θάλαμον)[1379]. Here the expression of the idea
is becoming plainer, and it is no accident that the word θάλαμος, so
commonly used of the bride-chamber, is here selected. But yet clearer
words are to follow; for Antigone herself, in response to these words
of compassion from the Chorus, interprets more boldly that at which
they hint. ‘Me doth Hades, with whom all must sleep, bear off yet
alive to Acheron’s shore, me that have had no part in wedlock, whose
name hath never rung forth in bridal hymn, but ’tis Acheron I shall
wed[1380].’

Nor does this clear pronouncement stand alone; thrice more, as the play
advances, the same thought is echoed in unmistakeable tones. First
comes the opening of that half impassioned, half sophistic, speech
of Antigone, from which some critics would delete her argumentative
estimate of a brother’s claims as against those of a husband; but
the removal of those lines would still leave intact that outburst,
‘Oh tomb, oh bride-chamber, oh cavernous abode of everlasting
durance[1381].’ And then again in the speech of the messenger, who
bears tidings of the fate of both Antigone and her lover, the same
thought is pressed upon us with double insistence. First he tells how,
having given Polynices his full rites of burial, they turned to go next
‘unto the vaulted chamber where on couch of rock the maiden should be
wed with Hades’ (πρὸς λιθόστρωτον κόρης νυμφεῖον Ἅιδου κοῖλον), and
from afar is heard the voice of loud lament beside ‘the bridal chamber
unhallowed by funeral rites’ (ἀκτέριστον ἀμφὶ παστάδα[1382]). And
later in the same narrative, when we have heard how that voice of loud
lament was stilled, Haemon is pictured as lying dead in Antigone’s dead
embrace, having won his bridal’s fulfilment only in Hades’ house (τὰ
νυμφικὰ τέλη λαχὼν δείλαιος ἐν γ’ Ἅιδου δόμοις)[1383].

The reiteration of a single thought through all this series of passages
is most remarkable. What does it mean? Did Sophocles intend merely to
enhance the tragedy of Antigone’s doom by constant comparison of that
which might have been with that which was? Or did each phrase in which
the thoughts of marriage and of death were blended contain a further
and a subtler appeal to his hearers’ emotions? Did each phrase strike
also a note which set vibrating in his listeners’ hearts responsive
chords of mystic hope?

For my part, as I draw near the end of these studies in Greek
religion, I find it more and more difficult to set down as mere casual
coincidences the close resemblances between Greece in the past and
Greece in the present. I have found a belief in the supernatural beings
of Ancient Greece still swaying the minds of the modern peasants; I
have seen the customs of antiquity repeated alike in the small acts
of every-day life and in the ceremonies of its greater events; I have
heard the same thoughts expressed in almost the same turns of phrase
as in ancient literature; I have traced the popular conceptions of
the present day concerning the relations of body and soul, and their
existence after death, back to native pre-Christian sources. Have I
then not a right, am I not bound, to abjure coincidence and to claim
for the past and the present real identity? When I find in Sophocles
the same thought, almost the same words, which may be gathered to-day
from the lips of any unlettered lament-maker the whole Greek world
over, I am compelled by my conviction of the continuity of all things
Greek to believe that Sophocles adapted to his own use a thought which
in his time even as now was uttered in many a funeral-dirge, and that
while the phrases of the _Antigone_ gained in his hands a new lustre
from the pathos of their setting, they themselves were not new nor the
invention of Sophocles’ genius, but an old heritage of the Greek race.
Maybe it was that same thought which gave birth to the strange and but
partially known legend of the death of Hymenaeus himself in the first
moment of his wedded delight[1384]; maybe it was in the same spirit
that Prometheus foretold how Zeus himself should make such a marriage
as should cast him down from his throne of tyranny and he be no more
seen, in fulfilment of the curse uttered by Cronos when he was cast
down into the unseen world[1385].

But, it may be said, the forebodings of Prometheus are generally
taken to refer to a future marriage with Thetis, not with death; and
Pindar’s reference to Hymenaeus is vague and fragmentary; and the lines
of Sophocles’ _Antigone_ have plenty of human pathos, without reading
into them any religious doctrine; let your contention at least have
the support of sober prose which shows its meaning on the surface. So
be it. Artemidorus in his hand-book to the interpretation of dreams
claims as a recognised religious principle the correlation of marriage
and death. To dream of the one is commonly a prognostication of the
other. But let us hear his own words. “If an unmarried man dream of
death, it foretells his marriage; for both alike, marriage and death,
have universally been held by mankind to be ‘fulfilments’ (τέλη); and
they are constantly indicated by one another; for the which reason also
if sick men dream of marriage, it is a foreboding of death[1386].” And
again: ‘if a sick person dream of sexual intercourse with a god or
goddess ..., it is a sign of death; for it is then, when the soul is
near leaving the body which it inhabits, that it foresees union and
intercourse with the gods[1387].’ And yet once more: ‘since indeed
marriage is akin to death and is indicated by dreaming of death, I
thought it well to touch upon it here. If a sick man dreams of marrying
a maiden, it is a sign of his death; for all the accompaniments of
marriage are exactly the same as those of death[1388].’ The gist of
these passages is unmistakeable; in clear and straightforward terms
is enunciated the principle that death and marriage are so intimately
associated that to dream of the one may portend the happening of the
other. Here is the doctrine which we sought to elicit from the poetry
of Sophocles and from the dirges of modern peasants, stated in plain
prosaic language. Death is akin to marriage, and, as death approaches,
men’s souls foresee a wedded union with gods.

But Artemidorus does not merely vouch for the existence of this mystic
doctrine; he suggests also, to those who will weigh his words, that
the doctrine was generally recognised and widely-spread: ‘for all the
accompaniments of marriage,’ he says, ‘are exactly the same as those
of death.’ What were these accompaniments? Seemingly Artemidorus had
in mind certain customs which he had enumerated a little earlier,
namely ‘an escort of friends, both men and women, and garlands and
scents and unguents and an inventory of goods[1389]’ (i.e. either the
marriage settlement or the last will and testament). It is then owing
to this similarity between marriage-customs and funeral-customs that
‘if a sick man dreams of marrying a maiden, it is a sign of death.’ But
previously we heard that if a sick person dreamt of commerce with a
god or goddess, it was a sign of death, because, as death approached,
the soul foresaw union and intercourse with the gods. How far do these
statements agree? In both cases the interpretation of the dream is
the same--to dream of marriage forebodes death--while the reasons for
that interpretation are differently given according as the partner
in the dreamt-of union is divine or human. But, though differently
given, these reasons are not mutually inconsistent. In the one case the
reason assigned is an idea--the idea that by death men were admitted
to wedded union with their gods. In the other case the reason assigned
is a custom--the custom of giving to the dead rites similar to the
marriage-rites. In effect then the two reasons assigned are one and the
same in spirit; for the ‘custom’ is merely the practical expression of
the ‘idea’; it was because men believed that the dead attained to a
wedded union with their gods, that they made the funeral-rites resemble
the rites of marriage. And clearly this custom of assimilating the
accompaniments of death to those of marriage could never have been
general, as Artemidorus suggests, unless the belief, on which that
custom was founded, had also been generally received and widely spread.

It will be worth while then to institute an enquiry into the customs
generally observed both in ancient and modern times at weddings and at
funerals. Our comparison of ancient literature with modern folk-songs,
illumined by the statements of Artemidorus, has established the fact
that death and marriage were very intimately associated in thought
by some of the ancient writers as they are by many of the modern
peasants. Custom will be found to tell the same tale, and will prove
how generally accepted was this idea. For in point after point which
Artemidorus does not mention in his brief enumeration--and without
reckoning, as he does, such purely business matters as the inventory
of goods--we shall find that the ceremonies incidental to a funeral
have now, and had in old time, a curiously close resemblance to the
ceremonies incidental to marriage; and, so finding, we may be confident
that they were informed by a general and wide-spread belief that to die
was but to marry into Hades’ house. Let us review them briefly and in
order[1390].

The first ceremony in both functions alike was, and is, a solemn
ablution. Before a Greek wedding both bride and bridegroom have always
been required to bathe themselves, usually in water specially fetched
from some holy spring. At Athens in old time, according to Thucydides,
the spring frequented for this purpose was Callirrhoë[1391]; and
similarly the Thebans had resort to the Ismenus[1392], the maidens
of the Troad to the Scamander[1393], and the inhabitants of other
districts to some spring or river of local repute[1394]. And at
the present day in Athens it is still from Callirrhoë (when there
is any water there) that the poorer classes fill the bridal bath;
while many a village has its own sacred well or fountain (ἅγι̯ασμα)
to which recourse is regularly had for this same purpose. And this
wedding-ablution, common, as it would thus appear, to the Greeks of
all ages, has its counterpart in the funeral-ablution, a ceremony
likewise observed in all ages. Thus Sophocles makes Antigone speak of
having washed with her own hands the dead bodies of father, mother,
and brother[1395]; and Lucian in a mocking tone refers to the same
practice as general in his day[1396]. At the present day the same rite
is practically universal in Greece. In some places, and most notably in
Crete, special magnificence is given to the ceremony by the use of warm
wine instead of water; in others, as Macedonia[1397], the custom has
dwindled away, and all that remains of it is a perfunctory moistening
of the dead man’s face with a piece of cotton-wool soaked in wine. But
in general the old custom remains unchanged. Thus we see that from
ancient times down to the present day a ceremony of ablution has held a
place in the preliminaries alike of a marriage and of a funeral.

Again in this matter of washing there is one detail of special
interest. The water for the bridal bath was in old times fetched by a
boy or girl[1398] closely related to the bride or the bridegroom, and
the λουτροφόρος, as the bearer was called, is still an important figure
in the wedding ceremonial of the present day. Nowadays, so far as I
know, the bearer is always a boy, and further it is essential that both
his parents be still living. The λουτροφόρος therefore has always been
closely associated with the marriage-rite. But in antiquity the same
water-bearer appears in another connexion. ‘It was customary,’ we hear,
‘to fetch water (λουτροφορεῖν) also for those who died unmarried, and
that the figure of a water-bearer (λουτροφόρον) should be set up over
their tomb. The figure was that of a boy with a pitcher[1399].’ Here we
have a clear case of the importation of a ceremony closely connected
with marriage into the funeral-rites of the unmarried. How are we
to explain this custom? On what religious conception was it based?
Clearly, it seems,--in view of that constant association of death
and marriage which we have observed in ancient literature and modern
folk-song--no other interpretation can well be maintained than that,
for those who died unwed, death itself was the first and only marriage
which they experienced, and that to such, ere they were laid in Hades’
nuptial-chamber, there ought to be given those same rites which were
held to be a fitting preparation for entrance into the estate of
wedlock in this world[1400].

The ceremonial ablutions being concluded, there came next the rites of
anointing and arraying whether for marriage or for burial. As regards
the cosmetics, we might feel well assured, even without the direct
testimony of Aristophanes[1401], that they were freely used in ancient
weddings; and I myself have experienced a sense of suffocation from the
same cause at weddings in modern Greece. Similarly at ancient funerals
the original purpose of the _lecythi_ was without doubt to contain the
choice perfumes for the anointing of the dead[1402]; and the custom
of anointing is still well known. Then again in the matter of dress,
the colour usually considered correct[1403] both for marriage and
for burial was white, and, even if this cannot be said to have been
universally the case, at any rate there was, and there still continues
to be, no less pomp and ornament in the dress of the dead body[1404]
than in the array of bride and bridegroom.

In this connexion too we may notice the use of the actual bridal-dress
in the funerals of betrothed girls and of young wives. That
this practice was known in antiquity is proved by a passage of
Chariton[1405], in which the heroine of his story, Callirrhoë, whose
first adventure, soon after her wedding, consists in being carried out
to burial while unconscious but not dead, is described as ‘dressed in
bridal array’; and exactly the same custom may be witnessed in Greece
to-day[1406]. In fact not only may the person of the dead be seen
dressed as for a wedding, but in the folk-songs we hear of the tomb
itself being adorned like the home to which the bride should have been
led.

    ‘Came her lover to her bedside, stooped him down, and met her kiss;
    Low and faint to his ear only, whispered she, her message this:
    “When I pass away, my lover, deck thou out my tomb for me,
    As thou would’st have decked the home where wedded I should dwell with thee[1407].”’

Yet another point of coincidence between the ceremonial of marriage
and of funeral is the wearing of a crown. In ancient times ‘chaplets,’
says Becker[1408], ‘were certainly worn both by bride and bridegroom,’
and in modern usage they are as essential to the marriage ceremony as
the wedding-rings. At a certain point in the service, it is the duty
of the best man, assisted by the chief bridesmaid, to keep exchanging
the rings from the hands of the bride and bridegroom, and in like
manner to exchange the crowns which they wear from the head of one to
the head of the other; and as the rings are always worn afterwards,
so the two crowns are carefully preserved and hung up together in the
new home. Equally well-established is the use of garlands in ancient
funerals[1409], and, if not quite universal at the present day[1410],
they are at any rate commonly employed in the funerals of women and
children. In Macedonia it is actually the bridal crown which is worn
for burial by anyone who was betrothed or newly married[1411].

Worthy of notice too is the not uncommon spectacle of an apple,
quince[1412], or pomegranate laid among the flowers with which the bier
is adorned; for all these three fruits have their special significance
in relation to marriage. The classical custom of throwing an apple into
a girl’s lap as a sign of love is a method of wooing still known to the
rustic swain. It is not indeed regarded as a highly respectable method,
but perhaps neither in old times was it so; for then, as now, the more
well-conducted youths seem to have had their wooing, if such it may be
called, carried on through the agency of an elderly lady (in ancient
Greek προμνήστρια, in modern προξενήτρια) whose negotiations were
chiefly addressed to the parents on either side, and whose conversation
smacked more of dowry than of love. The quince and the pomegranate
however are employed without any offence to propriety. The former is in
some districts the food of which the newly-married pair are required to
partake together at their first entry into their new home; and it is
hoped that the sweetness of the fruit will so temper their lips that
nothing but sweet words will ever be addressed by the one to the other.
To the open-minded observer it might appear that acidity rather than
sweetness was the chief characteristic of the quince, and that, if the
qualities of the fruit are found to affect the tones of those who eat
it, they would be better advised, as is the custom in some villages,
to substitute for the quince a well-sugared cake or a dish of honey.
But the pomegranate is far more commonly used than the quince, and in
a variety of ways. Sometimes the bride and bridegroom eat together of
it; elsewhere the bridegroom proffers it to the bride as his first gift
on her entrance to their home, and she alone eats of it; or again she
may be required to hurl it down and scatter its seeds over the floor.
The second of these methods of using the pomegranate at marriage is, it
will be remembered, of venerable antiquity; it was a seed of this fruit
which Hades gave to Persephone to eat, that when she visited again the
upper world she might not remain there all her days with reverend,
dark-robed Demeter, but return to her home in the nether world[1413];
and similarly at the Argive Heraeum, the bride of Zeus was represented
by Polyclitus holding in one of her hands the fruit of the pomegranate,
concerning which, says Pausanias, there is a mystic story not to be
divulged[1414]. Here again then is found the same close association of
death and marriage. The three fruits, apple, quince, and pomegranate,
each of which possesses a special use and purport in the preliminaries
or the actual ceremony of marriage, are also the fruits most commonly
laid upon the bier, in token, as it must appear, that death is but a
marriage into the unseen world. In the light of such customs we can
read with fuller understanding that simple and yet mystic dirge, ‘The
Wedding in Hades’:

    ‘My mother maketh glad to-day, she maketh my son’s wedding,
    She goeth for water to the springs, for snow unto the mountains,
    To fruit-wives in their garden-plots for apples and for quinces...[1415].’

Thus in point after point the rites of marriage and the rites of death
among Greeks both past and present have been found to coincide; and
the number of these points of coincidence is too large to admit of
their being referred to accident; design is evident. We are bound to
suppose either that marriage-ceremonies were deliberately transferred
to the funeral-rite, or that funeral-ceremonies were deliberately
transferred to the marriage-rite. Which supposition shall we prefer?
There can be no real question. It is impossible to conceive of a people
so cynical or so distempered as to darken the wedding-day with grim
reminders of death. But to transfer some of the usages of marriage to
the funeral-scene was to infuse one ray of hope where all else was
sorrow and darkness, to teach that, though the dead and the mourners
might grieve for their parting, yet by that parting from the old home
the dead was to enter upon a new life, a life of wedded happiness, in
the unseen world. For indeed if there were no such intention as this,
what was the meaning of the λουτροφόρος set up over the grave of the
unmarried, what the purpose of adorning the dead with wedding-garment
and wedding-crown? These two acts at least are no accidents; they
reveal a studied purpose of assimilating the usages of death to the
usages of marriage; and if that purpose underlay two of the customs
enumerated, there is good warrant for the belief that in all the
coincidences between marriage-rites and funeral-rites the same thought
was operating--that very thought which has been found to be the common
property of the Greek race, from one of the masters of ancient tragedy
down to the humblest peasant of our day. Custom past and present,
ancient literature, modern folk-song, all agree in their presentment of
death as a marriage into the house of Hades.

On this popular and withal recondite conception of death were founded,
I believe, the highest religious aspirations of the ancient Greeks.
Such as had served their gods piously and purely in this life might
hope to win a closer union, as of wedlock, with those gods in the life
hereafter. To them there could be neither blasphemy nor presumption
in their hope; for to pious believers the fabled experience of their
own ancestors in this life was a warrant for aspiring themselves to
the same bliss at least hereafter; what had been, might be again.
Nay, more; not only was the belief that the highest bliss of the
hereafter consisted in the marriage of men with their gods free
from all reproach of impiety, but it was the logical development of
two religious sentiments which we have already reviewed--the desire
for close communion between gods and men, and the belief that men
after death and dissolution would still enjoy, like their gods,
corporeal existence. A previous chapter has been devoted to a detailed
examination of the means whereby men in their daily life sought to
maintain communication with the powers above them--oracles from which
all might enquire and win inspired response; interpretation of the
flight and cries of birds that were the messengers of heaven; reading
of the signs written by the finger of some god on the flesh of the
victim presented to him; divination from sight and sound and dream;
sacrifice whereby some message of prayer might be sent with speed and
safety to the god who had power to fulfil it. And in general it will,
I think, be admitted that the main tendency of Greek religious thought
was to draw gods and men nearer together, alike by an anthropomorphic
conception of the gods and by an apotheosis of human beauty; that it
was to subserve this end that Art became the handmaid of Religion, and
strove to express the divine in terms of the human, to discover in man
the potentialities of godhead. All religious hope and ambition and
effort turned upon communion with the gods. How then in the next world
should hope be fulfilled, ambition satisfied, effort rewarded? What
should be the glorious consummation? Marriage was the closest communion
between mortals in this world; marriage, so sang the poets, bound
gods together in closest communion. Men’s aspirations for communion
with their gods could find no final satisfaction save in marriage. To
the few, we may suppose--men of refined and reflective mind, capable
of imagining spiritual joys--this marriage of men and gods was but a
mystic, figurative expression for the union of man’s soul with the soul
of God, a thought as chastened and innocent of all sensuous connotation
as the thought of many a woman who in a later era, withdrawn from the
world, has comforted her loneliness with the hope of being the bride
of Christ. But the many, I suspect, flinched not before a bold and
literal interpretation of the thought, and, believing that, when death
and physical dissolution were past, body as well as soul survived in
another world, dared dream that having passed the gates of mortality
into the demesne of the immortals they should be wedded, body and soul,
in true wedlock with those deities who by veiled communion with them
in this world had prepared them for sight and touch and full fruition
hereafter.

But, it will be asked, where in all Greek literature can we find a
statement, where even a hint, of this strange doctrine? Nowhere a
statement; often a hint; for these were things not to be divulged to
the profane. To those alone who were initiated into the Mysteries was
the doctrine revealed, and even to them, it may be, in parables only
whose inner meaning each must probe for himself.

There have of course been those who have made light of the mysteries
of the old Greek religion, and have seen in them nothing but the
impositions of a close hierarchy playing upon the ignorance and
credulity and fear of the common-folk. But when we consider the
veneration in which the more famous mysteries were held for many
centuries, when we remember that Eleusis was respected and left
inviolate not only by the Lacedaemonians and other Greek peoples when
they invaded Attic territory, but even by the Persians who had dared
to devastate the Acropolis, and in later times by the yet ruder Celts,
then it is easier to believe that we are dealing with a great religious
institution based upon solid principles and vital doctrines which
deserved a wide-spread and long-continued reverence from mankind, than
that it was all the elaborate and empty hoax of a crafty priesthood.

Nor again does the view which makes Demeter simply a corn-goddess
and the Eleusinian mysteries a portentous harvest-thanksgiving--and
that apparently somewhat premature--require any long or serious
consideration. Corn indeed was one of the blessings given by Demeter
to this upper world of living men; perhaps in the very earliest ages
of her worship this was the sum total of the boons which men sought of
her; doubtless even in her fully-developed mysteries a part of men’s
thanks were still for the garnered harvest of the last year and for
the promise which the green fields gave of her bounty once more to be
renewed; for even in the nineteenth century of the Christian era her
statue amid the ruins of Eleusis was still associated by the peasants
with agriculture, and the removal of it, they apprehended, would cause
a failure of the crops[1416]. But in old time this was not all. To
speak of Demeter as a mere personification of cereals is to advocate
a partial truth little better than the cynical falsehood which makes
her only the stalking-horse of designing priests. For what said men
of light and learning among the ancients[1417], men who knew the whole
truth and the whole Spirit of her worship? ‘Thrice happy they of men
that have looked upon these rites ere they go to Hades’ house; for they
alone there have true life, the rest have nought there but ill[1418].’
So Sophocles, in language clearly recalling that of the so-called
Homeric hymn[1419] to Demeter; and in harmony with him Pindar: ‘Happy
he that hath seen those rites ere he go beneath the earth; he knoweth
life’s consummation, he knoweth its god-given source[1420].’ And
surely such consummation of life should be in that paradise, where
‘mid meadows red with roses lieth the space before the city’s gates,
all hazy with frankincense and laden with golden fruits,’ where ‘the
glorious sun sheds his light while night is here[1421]’; for to this
belief even Aristophanes subscribes, neither daring nor wishing to
make mock of the blessed ones who in the other world have part in the
god-beloved festival, and wend their way with song and dance through
the holy circle of the goddess, a lawn bright with flowers, meadows
where roses richly blossom--on whom alone in their night-long worship
the sun yet shines and a gracious light, for that they have learnt the
mysteries and dealt righteously with all men[1422].

Here then are the three great masters of lyric poetry, of tragedy,
and of comedy in substantial agreement; and the hopes which they hold
out are not the mere exuberance of poetic fancy, for sober prose
affirms the same beliefs. What says Isocrates? ‘Demeter ... being
graciously minded towards our forefathers because of their services
to her, services of which none but the initiated may hear, gave us
the greatest of all gifts, first, those fruits of the earth which
saved us from living the life of beasts, and secondly, that rite which
makes happier the hopes of those that participate therein concerning
both the end of life and their whole existence; and our city proved
herself not only god-beloved but also loving toward mankind, in that,
having become mistress of such blessings, she grudged them not to
the rest of the world, but gave to all men a share in that she had
received[1423].’ Of this passage Lobeck[1424] was disposed to make
light, and that for the reason that Isocrates in another passage[1425],
with less orthodoxy perhaps and more charity, in speaking of the
pious and upright in general, employs part of the same phrase which
in the passage before us he applies to the initiated only. All good
men, he says, have happier hopes ‘concerning their whole existence’;
virtue, that is, may expect a reward, vice a punishment, either here
or hereafter. Are these fair grounds on which to condemn his reference
to the mysteries as a meaningless common-place? If any comment is to
be made upon this repetition of a well-known phrase, would it not be
fairer to note that in reference to the mysteries he speaks of men’s
happier hopes not only generally--‘concerning their whole existence’
(περὶ τοῦ σύμπαντος αἰῶνος) but also specifically--‘concerning the end
of life’ (περὶ τῆς τοῦ βίου τελευτῆς), and thus echoes the words of
Pindar above quoted, ‘he knoweth the consummation of life’ (οἶδεν μὲν
βιότου τελευτάν)? Nor is there any dearth of other authorities to prove
that it was after death that the hopes of the initiated should ‘be
emptied in delight.’ Let us hear Aristides. ‘Nay, but the benefit of
the (Eleusinian) festival is not merely the cheerfulness of the moment
and the freedom and respite from all previous troubles, but also the
possession of happier hopes concerning the end, hopes that our life
hereafter will be the better, and that we shall not lie in darkness and
in filth--the fate that is believed to await the uninitiated[1426].’
Such seem to have been the general terms in which the benefits of the
mysteries might be recommended to the profane. The same ideas, almost
the same phrases, occur again and again. Witness the well-known story
of Diogenes the Cynic, who, when urged by a young man to get himself
initiated, answered, ‘It is strange, my young friend, if you fancy
that by virtue of this rite the publicans will share with the gods
the good things of Hades’ house, while Agesilaus and Epaminondas lie
in filth[1427].’ Or again let us read the advice of Crinagoras to his
friend: ‘Set thy foot on Cecropian soil, that thou may’st behold those
nights of Demeter’s great mysteries, which shall free thee from care
among the living, and, when thou goest where most are gone, shall make
thy heart lighter[1428].’ And with equal seriousness Cicero, who in
his ideal state would forbid all nocturnal rites as tending towards
excesses, would except the Eleusinian mysteries, not only because of
their humanising and cheering influence upon men’s life in this world
but also because they furnish better hopes in death[1429].

Such are the most important passages bearing upon the religious as
opposed to the temporal and agricultural aspects of Demeter’s worship,
such the general terms in which the blessings flowing therefrom were
overtly described by men who knew the details of the covert doctrine.
The information contained in them amounts to this: the initiated
received in the mysteries a hope, a pledge, perhaps a foretaste, of the
future bliss reserved for them only; the profane should lie in filth
and outer darkness; the blessed should dwell in pleasant meadows, and
the sun should shine bright upon them; they should be god-beloved, and
should share with the gods the good things of the next world.

Now obviously these vague and general promises are conceived in the
tone and the spirit of that popular religion which had sprung from
the very heart of the Hellenic folk. The pleasant meadows where the
initiated should dwell are none other than that place which appears
once as the asphodel mead, anon as the islands of the blessed or as
part of the under-world, and is now named Paradise. The light which
illumines even the night-time of the blessed is the necessary contrast
to the murky gloom of a nether abode, conceived almost in the spirit of
Homer, where the profane must lie as in a slough. And finally the close
communion of the blessed with gods who love them is the consummation of
those hopes which the whole Hellenic people entertained, and of those
efforts which the whole Hellenic people put forth, to attain to close
intercourse in this life with the gods whom they worshipped. Clearly
then the general promises, whose inner mysteries were revealed only to
the initiated, were based upon the old ideals, the innate beliefs, the
traditional hopes, in a word, the natural and spontaneous religion of
the Hellenic race.

And, as at Eleusis, so probably in other mysteries. In a famous
passage Theo Smyrnaeus[1430] compares the successive steps to be taken
in the study of philosophy with the several stages of initiation in
mysteries, and Lobeck[1431] in his examination of the passage has
shown that the reference is not to the mysteries of Eleusis, or at any
rate not to them only. It is probable enough that Theo was speaking of
mysteries in general, both public and private, in most of which there
were, doubtless, several grades of initiation, and he may even have
selected the details of his illustration (for it is an analogy only,
not an argument, in which he is engaged) from different rites. Yet for
his fifth and final stage of initiation, beyond even ‘open vision’
(ἐποπτεία) and ‘exposition’ (δᾳδουχία or ἰεροφαντία), he names that
bliss which is the outcome of the earlier stages, the bliss of being
god-beloved and sharing the life of gods (ἡ κατὰ τὸ θεοφιλὲς καὶ θεοῖς
συνδιαιτὸν εὐδαιμονία).

The recurrence of the word θεοφιλής in the above passages, whether in
reference to the Eleusinian or to other mysteries, cannot but excite
attention; and we shall not I think go far astray if we take the last
phrase of Theo Smyrnaeus, ‘the bliss of being god-beloved and sharing
the life of gods,’ as an epitome of the somewhat vague and general
promises held out to the profane as an inducement to initiation. This
was the fulfilment of those ‘happier hopes’--to use another recurrent
phrase--of which the initiated might only speak in guarded fashion.
The exact interpretation of this phrase, as we shall have reason
to believe when we consider the separate rites in detail, was the
great mystic secret. But of that more anon; for the present let us
suppose that the general assurances openly given concerning both the
Eleusinian and other mysteries are fairly summed up in the promise ‘of
being god-beloved and of sharing the life of gods.’ Such a promise
appealed to those innate hopes of the whole Greek race which manifested
themselves in their constant striving after close intercourse and
communion with their gods; in other words, the happier hopes concerning
the hereafter, which the mysteries sought to appropriate and to reserve
to the initiated alone, had for their basis the natural religion of the
Hellenic folk.

To admit this is necessarily to admit the validity of Lobeck’s
refutation of those critics who have sought to father on the
mysteries, usually on those of Eleusis, doctrines and ideas foreign
to, or even incompatible with, popular Greek religion--pantheism, the
emanation of the human soul from the soul of God, the transmigration
of souls, the Platonic theory of ideas, the unity of God omnipotent
and omniscient[1432], and such-like religious products of different
ages and different climes. For if we were to accept the view that the
teaching of the mysteries was a thing apart from the ordinary trend and
tenor of the popular religion, then we should be compelled to regard
those general promises of future bliss (which were in truth, as we have
just seen, based upon popular religion) as a fraudulent bait designed
to entice men away from their old beliefs and to ensnare them in dogma
and priestcraft; and if any would impute fraud, there awaits them the
task of convicting Pindar, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Isocrates, and
others who wrote of that which they knew, of conspiracy to deceive.

But while the promises held forth by the Eleusinian and other
mysteries, and therefore also the doctrines which elucidated those
vague promises, were a product of the popular religion, those doctrines
themselves were not a matter of popular knowledge. The very fact of
initiation, the death-penalty inflicted upon the profane who by any
means penetrated to the scene of the mysteries, the wild indignation
excited in Athens by a charge of mocking the mystic rites, the
scrupulous privacy observed in investigating that charge before a court
composed of the initiated only--all these are proofs that Eleusis was
the school of secret beliefs and hopes held in deep veneration by those
to whom the knowledge of them was vouchsafed. Secret doctrines existed;
that which had sprung from the beliefs of the many had become the
property of the few. How can this be explained?

The explanation is not difficult. The worship of Demeter and possibly
many other rites which were afterwards called ‘mysteries’ were the most
holy part of the religion of the Pelasgians; and when the Achaeans, a
people of strange tongue and strange religion, came among them, the
Pelasgians would not admit them to a knowledge of their rites but
thenceforth performed those rites in secrecy. This is proved by two
facts. First, the rites which at Eleusis, in Samothrace, and among the
Cicones in Thrace, the country of Orpheus, were imparted as mysteries
to the initiated only, were in Crete open to all and there was no
obligation to secrecy concerning them[1433]. Secondly, at Eleusis at
any rate the purity required of candidates for initiation was not
only physical and spiritual, as secured by ablution and abstinence,
but also linguistic; it was necessary καθαρεύειν τῇ φωνῇ[1434], to
speak the Greek language purely. These two facts taken together solve
the difficulty. Before the coming of the Achaeans the whole Pelasgian
population whether of the Greek mainland or of such an island as Crete
celebrated the rites of Demeter openly. In Crete, where no Achaeans
penetrated, the old custom naturally continued unchanged. On the
mainland the influx of a people of strange tongue and strange religion
necessitated secrecy in the native rites, lest the presence of men
who knew not Demeter should profane her worship; the right of entry
therefore at her festivals was decided by the simplest test of Achaean
or Pelasgian nationality, the test of speech; and in later times, when
the Achaeans had acquired the Pelasgian speech[1435], the customs
thus established were not abolished; the rites of Demeter remained
‘mysteries’ to be conducted in secret, and the Shibboleth was still
exacted.

Since then we may not seek in the teachings of the mysteries anything
alien from the spirit of the popular religion, the scope of our enquiry
is more limited and its course more clear. The secret to be discovered
is something which had been evolved from the popular religion, some
intensification and higher development of those hopes and beliefs,
yearnings and strivings, which have continuously marked the religious
life of the Greek folk. Now the mass of the Greek people have always
hoped and believed, as their care for the dead has constantly shown,
that beyond death and dissolution lay a life in which body and soul
should be re-united and restored to their old activity; the mysteries
might well confirm the initiated in that expectation and picture to
them the happy habitations where they should dwell. Again the mass of
the Greek people have always yearned and striven by manifold means in
this life for close communion with their gods; the mysteries might
well be a sacrament which afforded to the initiated both a means and
a pledge of enjoying in the next world, to which body as well as soul
should pass, the closest of all communion with their gods, the union of
wedlock.

Let it then be supposed that the two main ideas of the mysteries,
whether expounded in speech or represented in ritual, were
these--bodily survival after death, and marriage of men with gods;
what would have been the natural attitude of Christians towards these
doctrines? For it is in the light of the charges brought by early
Christian writers against the mysteries that such a supposition must
first be examined. The doctrine of the immortality of the body as well
as of the soul was evidently little exposed to Christian attacks; and
it may have been because the Christian doctrine of the resurrection
had much in common with the old Greek doctrine, that St Paul found
among his audience on the Areopagus some who did not mock, but said ‘We
will hear thee again of this matter.’ But with the further doctrine
of marriage between men and gods Christianity could have no sympathy,
but would inevitably regard it as offensive both in theology and in
morality, as implying the existence of a plurality of gods, and as
savouring of that sensuality, which above all other sin the apostle to
the Gentiles set himself to combat.

And it is in fact upon these two points that the mass of the
accusations brought by early Christian writers against Greek paganism
hinge and hang. These were the points at which Greek religion seemed
to its assailants most readily vulnerable, and against which they
sought to use as weapons the very language of paganism itself. Just as
Clement of Alexandria[1436] seeks to prove out of the mouth of Homer,
who speaks of the gods in general as δαίμονες[1437], that the Greek
gods are confessedly mere _demons_ (for the word δαίμων had seemingly
deteriorated in meaning), that is to say, abominable and unclean
spirits, enemies of the one true God, so too the words ἄρρητος and
ἀπόρρητος, used by the pagans of their ‘unspeakable’ mysteries, were
misinterpreted by the Christians with one consent and became a handle
for convicting the old religion of ‘unnameable’ impurities.

With the question of polytheism however we are not further concerned;
whether the Hellenic gods were true gods, as their worshippers held, or
devils, as Clement thought, or non-existent, as many will think to-day,
matters not; all that we need to know in this respect is known, namely,
that the mysteries, like the popular religion, acknowledged a plurality
of gods; for in the Eleusinian drama alone several gods played a part.
It is rather the frequent and violent charges of impurity which call
for investigation.

A few examples will suffice for the present. A comprehensive
denunciation is that of Eusebius, who charges the pagans with
celebrating, ‘in chant and hymn and story and in the unnameable rites
of the mysteries, adulteries and yet baser lusts, and incestuous unions
of mother with son, brother with sister[1438].’ And again he says, ‘In
every city rites and mysteries of gods are taught, in harmony with
the mythical stories of old time, so that even now in these rites,
as well as in hymns and odes to the gods, men can hear of marriages
of the gods, and of their procreation of children, and of dirges for
death, and of drunken excesses, and of wanderings, and of passionate
love or anger[1439].’ Equally outspoken is Clement of Alexandria
in his ‘Exhortation to the heathen.’ Some specific statements in
that work concerning the mysteries of several gods, though they
support the general charges of impurity, may be postponed for later
examination. It will be enough here to adduce the phrases in which,
after denouncing those who, whether in the mysteries of the temples
or the paintings with which their own houses were adorned, loved to
look upon the lusts of gods (he risks even the word πασχητιασμοί), and
‘regarded incontinence as piety,’ Clement reaches the climax of his
invective:--‘Such are your models of voluptuousness, such your creeds
of lust, such the doctrines of gods who commit fornication with you;
for, as the Athenian orator says, what a man wishes, that he also
believes[1440].’ This brutal directness of Clement is however hardly
more effective than the elegant innuendo of Synesius in dealing with
the same subject. Commenting on the secrecy of the nocturnal rites, he
describes them as celebrated at ‘times and places competent to conceal
ἀρρητουργίαν ἔνθεον[1441]’--a phrase which I despair of rendering, for
the ‘unspeakable acts’ to which ‘divine frenzy’ led, are those which
are either too holy or too infamous to be named.

These few typical passages amply demonstrate that alike by insinuation
and by open accusation the Christian writers conspired to brand the
mysteries with the infamy of deeds unnameable. What is the explanation
of this organised campaign of calumny?

Some have supposed that the Christian writers in general confused
the public and the private mysteries, and that, aware of the license
which characterized the latter, they included all in one condemnation.
But this explanation appears at any rate inadequate. We have seen
how Cicero distinguished sharply between the Eleusinian mysteries,
in which he had participated and for which he felt reverence, and
other nocturnal rites which gave shelter to all manner of excess. It
is difficult therefore to suppose that in later times the Christian
writers should all have fallen unwittingly into the error of confusing
all mysteries together; and no less difficult to imagine that, if
they recognised how far removed were the most respected of the public
mysteries from the baser private orgies, they should have deliberately
exposed themselves to the charge of ignorance of the subject concerning
which they presumed to preach. Clement of Alexandria was too shrewd a
disputant so to stultify himself.

Nor again is it a sufficient explanation to say that the strain and
excitement of such mysteries as those of Eleusis were responsible
for a certain amount of subsequent indiscretion. Let it be granted
that many of those who had witnessed the solemn rites were guilty
afterwards of drunkenness and licentiousness[1442]; yet these would
be no grounds for convicting the mysteries themselves of impurity;
to so perverted a charge the heathen might well have answered that
rioting and drunkenness had not been unknown at the Christians’ most
solemn service; and indeed the same argument could up to this day
be used against the Greek celebration of Easter. No; the charges of
impurity were brought against the mysteries themselves, not against the
incidental misdoings of some who had witnessed them. It must have been
either the doctrines taught or the dramatic representations by means
of which they were taught that furnished the Christian writers with a
handle for accusation.

Now if, as I have supposed, the doctrine of the marriage of men with
their gods was the cardinal doctrine of the mysteries (for the other
doctrine of bodily survival is merely preliminary and subordinate to
this), and if some dramatic representation was given as a means of
instilling into men’s minds the hope of attaining to that summit of
bliss, it is not difficult to see what an opening the mysteries gave
to their opponents for the charges which were actually brought. The
ultimate bliss promised to the initiated was in general terms said to
consist in ‘being god-beloved and dwelling with the gods,’ and this
phrase, we are supposing, signified to the initiated themselves an
assurance that their gods would admit them even to wedlock with them
in the future life. It required then no great ingenuity in the way of
misrepresentation for Clement, if he had but an inkling of the secret
doctrine, to denounce the heathen and their beliefs in that opprobrious
phrase, ‘Such are the doctrines of gods that commit fornication with
you.’ This champion of Christianity knew no chivalry, gave no quarter,
disdained no weapon, held no method of attack too base or insidious,
if only he could wound and crush his heathen foes. It was his part to
pervert, to degrade, to blaspheme their whole religion; and that which
they held most sacred was marked out for his most virulent scorn.
Naturally to those who drew near with pure and reverent minds the
mysteries wore a very different aspect. That which Clement misnamed
lust, they felt to be love; where he saw only degradation, they
recognised a wonderful condescension of their gods. For in the words of
that religion which Clement preached ‘to the pure all things are pure’;
and it was purification which the initiated sought by abstinence and
ablution during the first part of the Eleusinian festival before they
were admitted to their holy of holies.

Indeed if we would understand at all the spirit in which the ancient
Greeks approached the celebration of the mysteries, we should do well
to turn our attention for a little to the modern Greek celebration
of Holy Week and Easter; for this is, so to speak, the Christian
counterpart of the old mysteries, and seems to owe much to them. It
so happens that Easter falls in the same period of the year as did
the great Eleusinian festival--the period when the re-awakening of
the earth from its winter sleep suggests to man his own re-awakening
from the sleep of death; and it is probable that the Church turned
this coincidence in time to good account by making her own festival a
substitute for the festival of Demeter or other kindred rites, and even
by modelling her own services after the pagan pattern; for it would
seem that the Church, when once her early struggles had secured her
a firm position, exchanged hostility for conciliation, and sought to
absorb rather than to oust paganism. Her complaisance is clearly seen
in the ceremonies of Good Friday and Easter; for, with all her severe
repression of the use of idols (whose place however is well supplied
by the pictures which are called icons), she has permitted the use of
a sculptured figure at this one festival, and even down to this day
Christ is represented in some localities[1443] in effigy; and it can
hardly be doubted that the purpose of this concession was to make the
Christian festival as dramatic and attractive as the pagan mysteries
celebrated at the same season. Again the absorption of pagan ideas is
well illustrated by the belief still prevalent among the peasants that
the Easter festival, like the cult of Demeter, has an important bearing
upon the growth of the crops. A story in point was told to me by one
who had travelled in Greece[1444]. Happening to be in some village of
Eubœa during Holy Week, he had been struck by the emotion which the
Good Friday services evoked; and observing on the next day the same
general air of gloom and despondency, he questioned an old woman about
it; whereupon she replied, ‘Of course I am anxious; for if Christ does
not rise to-morrow, we shall have no corn this year.’

In other details too there is a close correspondence between the pagan
and the Christian festivals. As a period of abstinence was required
of the _mystae_, so during Lent and still more strictly during Holy
Week the Greek peasants keep a fast which certainly predisposes them
to hysterical emotion during the services; and _en revanche_, just as
the initiated are said to have indulged themselves too freely when the
mysteries were over, so the modern peasants, when the announcement of
the Resurrection has been made, disperse in haste to feast upon their
Easter lamb, and while it is still a-cooking experience the inevitable
effects of plentiful wine on an empty stomach. Again, just as the rites
of Eleusis were nocturnal, so the chief services of Holy Week are those
of the Friday night and the Saturday night; and it may be that the
torch-light processions which close the services on those two nights
are related to the δᾳδουχία of Eleusis. But these are minor details;
it is in the actual services of Good Friday and Easter that the most
striking resemblance to the Eleusinian mysteries is found, and the
spirit in which the worshippers approach may still be the same now as
then. Let me briefly describe the festival as I saw it in the island
of Santorini, or, to give it the old name which has revived in modern
times, Thera.

The Lenten fast was drawing to a close when I arrived. For the first
week it is strictly observed, meat, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, and
even olive-oil being prohibited, so that the ordinary diet is reduced
to bread and water, to which is sometimes added a nauseous soup made
from dried cuttle-fish or octopus; for these along with shellfish
are not reckoned to be animal food, as being bloodless. During the
next four weeks some relaxation is allowed; but no one with any
pretensions to piety would even then partake of fish, meat, or eggs;
the last-mentioned are stored up until Easter and then, being dyed
red, are either eaten or--more wisely--offered to visitors. Then comes
‘the Great Week’ (ἡ μεγάλη ἑβδομάδα), and with it the same strict
regulations come into force as during the first week of Lent. It was
not hard to perceive that for most of the villagers the fast had been
a real and painful abstinence. Work had almost ceased; for there was
little energy left. Leisure was not enjoyed; for there was little
spirit even for chatting. Everywhere white, sharp-featured faces told
of real hunger; and the silence was most often broken by an outburst
of irritability. In a few days time I could understand it; for I too
perforce fasted; and I must own that a daily diet of dry bread for
_déjeuner_ and of dry bread and octopus soup for dinner soon changed my
outlook upon life. Little wonder then if these folk after six weeks of
such treatment were nervous and excitable.

Such was the condition of body and mind in which they attended the
long service of Good Friday night. Service I have said, but drama
were a more fitting word, a funeral-drama. At the top of the nave,
just below the chancel-step, stood a bier and upon it lay the figure
of the Christ, all too death-like in the dim light. The congregation
gaze upon him, reverently hushed, while the priests’ voices rise in
prayer and chant as it were in lamentation for the dead God lying
there in state. Hour after hour passes. The women have kissed the
dead form, and are gone. The moment has come for carrying the Christ
out to burial. The procession moves forward--in front, the priests
with candles and torches and, guarded by them, the open bier borne
shoulder-high--behind, a reverent, bare-headed crowd. The night is
dark and gusty. It rains, and the rugged, tortuous alleys of the town
are slippery. It is late, but none are sleeping. Unheeding of wind
and rain, the women kneel at open door or window, praying, swinging
censers, sprinkling perfume on the passing bier. Slowly, haltingly, led
by the dirge of priests, now in darkness, now lighted by the torches’
flare and intermittent beams from cottage doorways, groping at corners,
stumbling in ill-paved by-ways, the mourners follow their God to his
grave. The circuit of the town is done. All have taken their last look
upon the dead. The sepulchre is reached--a vault beneath the church
from which the funeral started. The priests alone enter with the bier.
There is a pause. The crowd waits. The silence is deep as the darkness,
only broken here and there by a deep-drawn sigh. Is it the last depth
of anguish, or is it well-nigh relief that the long strain is over?
The priests return. In silence the crowd have waited, in silence they
disperse. It is finished.

But there is a sequel on the morrow. Soon after dark on Easter-eve
the same weary yet excited faces may be seen gathered in the church.
But there is a change too; there is a feeling abroad of anxiety, of
expectancy. Hours must yet pass ere midnight, and not till then is
there hope of the announcement, ‘Christ is risen!’ The suspense seems
long. To-night there is restlessness rather than silence. Some go to
and fro between the church and their homes; others join discordantly
in the chants and misplace the responses; anything to cheat the long
hours of waiting. Midnight draws near; from hand to hand are passed
the tapers and candles which shall light the joyful procession, if
only the longed-for announcement be made. What is happening there now
behind those curtains which veil the chancel from the expectant throng?
Midnight strikes. The curtains are drawn back. Yes, there is the
bier, borne but yesternight to the grave. It is empty. That is only
the shroud upon it. The words of the priest ring out true, ‘Christ is
risen!’ And there behind the chancel, see, a second veil is drawn back.
There in the sanctuary, on the altar-steps, bright with a blaze of
light stands erect the figure of the Christ who, so short and yet so
long a while ago, was borne lifeless to the tomb. A miracle, a miracle!
Quickly from the priest’s lighted candle the flame is passed. In a
moment the dim building is illumined by a lighted taper in every hand.
A procession forms, a joyful procession now. Everywhere are light and
glad voices and the embraces of friends, crying aloud the news ‘Christ
is risen’ and answering ‘He is risen indeed.’ In every home the lamb is
prepared with haste, the wine flows freely; in the streets is the flash
of torches, the din of fire-arms, and all the exuberance of simple
joy. The fast is over; the dead has been restored to life before men’s
eyes; well may they rejoice even to ecstasy. For have they not felt the
ecstasy of sorrow? This was no tableau on which they looked, no drama
in which they played a part. It was all true, all real. The figure on
the bier was indeed the dead Christ; the figure on the altar-steps was
indeed the risen Christ. In these simple folk religion has transcended
reason; they have reached the heights of spiritual exaltation; they
have seen and felt as minds more calm and rational can never see nor
feel.

And the ancient Greeks, had not they too the gift of ecstasy, the
faculty to soar above facts on the wings of imagination? When the drama
of Demeter and Kore was played before the eyes of the initiated at
Eleusis, were not they too uplifted in mind until amid the magic of
night they were no longer spectators of a drama but themselves had a
share in Demeter’s sorrow and wandering and joy? For the pagan story
is not unlike the Christian story in its power to move both tears and
gladness. As now men mourn beside the bier of Christ, so in old time
may men have shared Demeter’s mourning for her child who though divine
had suffered the lot of men and passed away to the House of Hades. As
now men rejoice when they behold the risen Christ, so in old time may
men have shared Demeter’s joy when her child returned from beneath the
earth, proving that there is life beyond the grave. But the old story
taught more than this. Not only did Kore live in the lower world, but
her passing thither was not death but wedding. Therefore just as now
the resurrection of Christ, who though divine is the representative of
mankind, is held to be an earnest of man’s resurrection, so the wedded
life of Kore in the nether world may have been to the initiated an
assurance of the same bliss to be vouchsafed to them hereafter.

What was there then in this drama of Demeter and Kore at which the
Christian writers could take offence or cavil? We do not of course
know in what detail the story was represented; but the pivot on which
the whole plot turned was necessarily the rape of Kore. Now it appears
that in the play the part of Aïdoneus was taken by an hierophant and
the part of Kore by a priestess; and it was the alleged indecency
resulting therefrom which the fathers of the Church most severely
censured. Asterius, after defending the Christians from the charge of
worshipping saints as if they had been not human but divine, seeks to
turn the tables on his pagan opponents by accusing them of deifying
Demeter and Kore, whom he evidently regards as having once been human
figures in mythology. Then he continues, ‘Is not Eleusis the scene
of the descent into darkness, and of the solemn acts of intercourse
between the hierophant and the priestess, alone together? Are not the
torches extinguished, and does not the large, the numberless assembly
of common people believe that their salvation lies in that which is
being done by the two in the darkness[1445]?’ Again it was objected
against the Valentinians by Tertullian that they copied ‘the whoredoms
of Eleusis[1446],’ and from another authority we learn that part of the
ceremonies of these heretics consisted in ‘preparing a nuptial chamber’
and celebrating ‘a spiritual marriage[1447].’ These two statements,
read in conjunction, form a strong corroboration of the information
given by Asterius; and we are bound to conclude that the scene of the
rape of Kore was represented at Eleusis by the descent of the priest
and priestess who played the chief parts into a dark nuptial chamber.

Now it is easy enough to suppose, as Sainte-Croix suggests[1448],
that public morals were safeguarded by assigning the chief _rôles_
in the drama to persons of advanced age, or, as one ancient author
states[1449], by temporarily and partially paralysing the hierophant
with a small dose of hemlock. Whether each of the initiated was at any
time conducted through the same ritual is uncertain. In the formulary
of the Eleusinian rites, as recorded by Clement of Alexandria--‘I
fasted; I drank the sacred potion (κυκεῶνα); I took out of the chest;
having wrought (ἐργασάμενος) I put back into the basket and from the
basket into the chest[1450]’--the expression ‘having wrought’ has been
taken to be an euphemism denoting the same mystic union as between
hierophant and priestess[1451]. If this view is correct, it would imply
no doubt that full initiation required the candidate to go through the
whole ritual in person; in this case it must be presumed that some
precaution such as the dose of hemlock was taken in the interests of
morality.

But the mere fact that a scene of rape should form any part of a
religious rite, was to the Christians a stumbling-block. This was their
insurmountable objection to the mysteries, and they were only too prone
to exaggerate a ceremony, which with reverent and delicate treatment
need have been in no way morally deleterious, into a sensual and
noxious orgy. The story, how Demeter’s beautiful and innocent daughter
was suddenly carried off from the meadow where she was gathering
flowers into the depths of the dark under-world, spoke to them only
of the violence and lust of her ravisher Aïdoneus. But the legend
might bear another complexion. Kore, as representative of mankind or
at least of the initiated among mankind, suffers what seems the most
cruel lot, a sudden departure from this life in the midst of youth and
beauty and spring-time; and Demeter searches for her awhile in vain,
and mourns for her as men mourn their dead. Yet afterward it is found
that there is no cruelty in Kore’s lot, for she is the honoured bride
of the king of that world to which she was borne away; and Demeter is
comforted, for her child is not dead nor lost to her, but is allowed
to return in living form to visit her. What then must have been the
‘happier hopes’ held out to those who had looked on the great drama
of Eleusis? What was meant by that prospect of being ‘god-beloved
and sharing the life of gods’? How came it that the assembly of the
initiated believed their salvation to lie in the union of Hades and
Persephone, represented in the persons of hierophant and priestess, in
the subterranean nuptial-chamber? What was the bearing of the legend
dramatically enacted upon these hopes and prospects and beliefs? Surely
it taught that not only was there physical life beyond death, but a
life of wedded happiness with the gods.

And the same doctrine seems to be the _motif_ of many other popular
legends and of mysteries founded thereon; its settings and its
harmonies may be different, but the essential melody is the same. At
Eleusis Demeter’s daughter was the representative of mankind, for she
went down to the house of Hades as is the lot of men. But Crete had
another legend wherein Demeter was the representative deity with whom
mankind might hope for union. Was it not told how Iasion even in this
life found such favour in the goddess’ eyes that she was ‘wed with
him in sweet love mid the fresh-turned furrows of the fat land of
Crete[1452]’? And happiness such as was granted to him here was laid
up for all the initiated hereafter; else would there be no meaning in
those lines, ‘Blessed, methinks, is the lot of him that sleeps, and
tosses not, nor turns, even Endymion; and, dearest maiden, blessed I
call Iasion, whom such things befell, as ye that be profane shall never
come to know[1453].’ Surely that which is withheld from the profane is
by implication reserved to the sanctified, and to them it is promised
that they shall know by their own experience hereafter the bliss which
Iasion even here obtained. It was, I think, in this spirit and this
belief that the Athenians in old time called their dead Δημητρεῖοι
‘Demeter’s folk[1454]’; for the popular belief in the condescension
of the Mistress, great and reverend goddess though she was, was so
firmly rooted, it would seem, that even to this day the folk-stories,
as we have seen, still tell how the ‘Mistress of the earth and of the
sea,’ she whom men still call Despoina and reverence for her love
of righteousness and for her stern punishment of iniquity, has yet
admitted brave heroes to her embrace in the mountain-cavern where, as
of old in Arcady, she still dwells[1455].

Nor did the cults of Demeter and Kore monopolise these hopes and
beliefs. In the religious drama of Aphrodite and Adonis, in the
Sabazian mysteries, in the holiest rites of Dionysus, in the wild
worship of Cybele, the same thought seems ever to recur. It matters
little whether these gods and their rites were foreign or Hellenic in
origin. If they were not native, at least they were soon naturalised,
and that for the simple reason that they satisfied the religious
cravings of the Greek race. The essential spirit of their worship,
whatever the accidents of form and expression, was the spirit of the
old Pelasgian worship of Demeter; and therefore, though Dionysus may
have been an immigrant from northern barbarous peoples, the Greeks did
not hesitate to give him room and honour beside Demeter in the very
sanctuary of Eleusis. Similar, we may well believe, was the lot of
other foreign gods and rites. Whencesoever derived, they owed their
reception in Greece to the fact that their character appealed to
certain native religious instincts of the Greek folk. Once transplanted
to Hellenic soil, they were soon completely Hellenized; those elements
which were foreign or distasteful to Greek religion were quickly
eradicated or of themselves faded into oblivion, while all that
accorded with the Hellenic spirit throve into fuller perfection; for
the character of a deity and of a cult depends ultimately upon the
character of the worshippers.

It is fair therefore to treat of Aphrodite as of a genuinely Greek
deity; for, though she may have entered Greece from Eastern lands,
doubtless long before the Homeric age her worship no less than her
personality was permeated with the spirit of genuinely Greek religion.
Too well known to need re-telling here is the story of how--to use the
words of Theocritus once more--‘the beautiful Cytherea was brought by
Adonis, as he pastured his flock upon the mountain-side, so far beyond
the verge of frenzy, that not even in his death doth she put him from
her bosom[1456].’ Such was the plot of one of the most famous religious
dramas of old time. And what was its moral for those who had ears to
hear? Surely that the beloved of the gods may hope for wedlock with
them in death.

It was certainly in this sense that Clement of Alexandria understood
certain other mysteries of Aphrodite, though, needless to say, he
puts upon them the most obscene construction. After relating in
terms unnecessarily disgusting the legend of how by the very act of
Uranus’ self-mutilation the sea became pregnant and gave birth from
among its foam to the goddess Aphrodite, he states that ‘in the rites
which celebrate this voluptuousness of the sea, as a token of the
goddess’ birth there are handed to those that are being initiated
into the lore of adultery (τοῖς μυουμένοις τὴν τέχνην τὴν μοιχικήν)
a lump of salt and a phallus; and they for their part present her
with a coin, as if they were her lovers and she their mistress (ὡς
ἑταίρας ἐρασταί)[1457].’ Thus Clement; but those who are willing
to see in the mysteries of the Greek religion something more than
organised sensuality will do well to reflect whether that which
Clement calls ‘being initiated into the lore of adultery’ was not
really an initiation into those hopes of marriage with the gods of
which we have already found evidence in the popular religion, and
whether the goddess’ symbolic acceptance of her worshippers as lovers
does not fit in exactly with that bold conception of man’s future
bliss. The symbolism indeed, if Clement’s statement is accurate, was
crude and even repellent, but its significance is clear; and those
who approached these mysteries of Aphrodite in reverent mood need not
have been repelled by that which modern taste would account indecent
in the ritual. Greek feeling never erred on the side of prudery; men
were familiar with the _Hermae_ erected in the streets and with the
symbolism of the _phallus_ in religious ceremonies, and tolerated
the publication of literature--be it the comedy of Aristophanes or
Clement’s own exhortation to the heathen--which neither as a source of
amusement nor of instruction would be tolerated now.

The particular mysteries to which Clement alludes in this passage
seem to have been concerned with the story of Aphrodite’s birth, and
though it is difficult to conjecture how that story can have been made
to illustrate and to inculcate the doctrine of the marriage of men
and gods, the information given by Clement with respect to the ritual
makes it clear that such was their object. But in that other rite of
the same goddess, that namely which celebrated the story of Adonis,
the whole _motif_ of the drama was the continuance of Aphrodite’s love
for him after his death, a love so strong that it prevailed upon the
gods of the lower world to let him return for half of every year to
the upper world and the arms of his mistress. Here, though expressed
in different imagery, is the same doctrine as that which underlay the
drama of Eleusis. Here again is an illustration, or rather, for those
who were capable of religious ecstasy, a proof, of the doctrine that
the dead yet lived, and in that life were both in body and in soul one
with their gods. For ‘thrice-beloved Adonis who even in Acheron is
beloved[1458]’ was the type and forerunner of all those who had part in
his mysteries.

In another version this legend of Adonis is brought into even closer
relation with the Eleusinian mysteries by the introduction of
Persephone[1459]. To her is assigned the part of a rival to Aphrodite,
and being equally enamoured of the beautiful Adonis she is glad of his
death whereby he is torn from the arms of Aphrodite in the upper world,
and enters the chamber of the nether world where her love in turn may
have its will; but in the end Aphrodite descends to the house of Hades,
and a compact is arranged between the two goddesses by which each in
turn may possess Adonis for half the year. This version of the story is
cruder, but its teaching is obviously the same--Adonis, the favourite
of heaven in this life, and the precursor of all who by initiation in
the mysteries win heaven’s favour, survives in the lower world with
both body and soul unimpaired by death, and is admitted to wedlock with
the great goddess of the dead.

The same doctrine again seems to have been the basis of certain
mystic rites associated with Dionysus. From the speech against Neaera
attributed to Demosthenes we learn that at Athens there was annually
celebrated a marriage between the wife of the chief magistrate
(ἄρχων βασιλεύς) and Dionysus. The solemnity was reckoned among
things ‘unspeakable’; foreigners were not permitted to see or to
hear anything of it; and even Athenian citizens, it seems, might not
enter the innermost sanctuary in which the union of Dionysus with the
‘queen’ (βασίλιννα) was celebrated[1460]. There were however present
and assisting in some way fourteen priestesses (γεραραί), dedicated to
the service of the god and bound by special vows of chastity. These
priestesses, we are told, corresponded in number to the altars of
Dionysus[1461], and they were appointed by the archon whose wife was
wed with Dionysus[1462]. There our actual knowledge of the facts ends;
but there is material enough on which to base a rational surmise. The
correspondence between the number of priestesses bound by vows of
purity and the number of the altars suggests that in this custom is to
be sought a relic of human sacrifice. The selection of the priestesses
by the magistrate who held the title of ‘king’ suggests that in bygone
times it had been the duty of the king, as being also chief priest, to
select fourteen virgins who should be sacrificed on Dionysus’ altars
and thereby sent to him as wives. Subsequently maybe, as humanity
gradually mitigated the wilder rites of religion, the number of victims
was reduced to one; and later still the human sacrifice was altogether
abolished, and, instead of sending to Dionysus his wife by the road
of death, the still pious but now more humane worshippers of the god
contented themselves with a symbolic marriage between him and the wife
of their chief magistrate.

The conception of human sacrifice as a means of sending a messenger
from this world to some power above, which receives clear expression in
that modern story from Santorini which I have narrated in an earlier
chapter[1463], was, I have there argued, known also to the ancient
Greeks; and the same means of communication may equally well have been
employed for the despatch of a human wife to some god. Plutarch appears
to have been actually familiar with this idea. In a passage in which
he is attempting to vindicate the purity and goodness of the gods and,
it must be added withal, their aloofness from human affairs, he claims
that all the religious rites and means of communion are concerned, not
with the great gods (θεοί), but with lesser deities (δαίμονες) who
are of varying character, some good, others evil, and that the rites
also vary accordingly. “As regards the mysteries,” he says, “wherein
are given the greatest manifestations or representations (ἐμφάσεις καὶ
διαφάσεις) of the truth concerning ‘daemons,’ let my lips be reverently
sealed, as Herodotus has it”; but the wilder orgies of religion, he
argues, are to be set down as a means of appeasing evil ‘daemons’ and
of averting their wrath; the human sacrifices of old time, for example,
were not demanded nor accepted by gods, but were performed to satisfy
either the vindictive anger of cruel and tormenting ‘daemons,’ or in
some cases “the wild and despotic passions (ἔρωτας) of ‘daemons’ who
could not and would not have carnal intercourse with carnal beings.
Just as Heracles besieged Oechalia to win a girl, so these strong and
violent ‘daemons,’ demanding a human soul that is shut up within a
body, and being unable to have bodily intercourse therewith, bring
pestilences and famines upon cities and stir up wars and tumults,
until they get and enjoy the object of their love.” And reversely,
he continues, some ‘daemons’ have punished with death men who have
forced their love upon them; and he refers to the story of a man who
violated a nymph and was found afterwards with his head severed from
his body[1464]. The whole passage betrays clearly enough what was the
popular belief which Plutarch here set himself so to explain as to
safeguard the goodness of the gods; but perhaps the end of it is the
most significant of all. Plutarch forgets that a nymph, if she is a
‘daemon,’ is by his own hypothesis incapable of bodily intercourse; in
this case then his attempted explanation is not even logically sound,
and his conception of a purely spiritual ‘daemon’ is a failure; but at
the same time, save for this invention, he is following the popular
belief of both ancient and modern Greece that carnal intercourse
between man and nymph is possible but is fraught with grave peril to
the man[1465]. It is impossible then to doubt that in the earlier part
of the passage he was explaining away a popular belief by means of
the same hypothesis. He himself would hold that spiritual ‘daemons’
demanded human sacrifice because they lusted after a soul or spirit
confined out of their reach in a body until death severed it therefrom;
but the popular belief, which he is at pains to emend, was that
corporeal gods demanded human sacrifice because they lusted after the
person who, by death, would be sent, body and soul, to be wed with them.

There is good reason then to suppose that in old time death may have
been even inflicted as the means of effecting wedlock between men and
gods; and that the mystic rite of union between Dionysus and the wife
of the Athenian magistrate was based on the same fundamental idea as
the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone or of Aphrodite. Though in this
instance, when once human sacrifice had been given up, all suggestion
of death was, so far as we know, removed from the solemnity, yet the
repetition year by year of a ceremony of marriage between the god and
a mortal woman representing his worshippers might still keep bright
in their minds those ‘happier hopes’ of the like bliss laid up for
themselves hereafter.

This particular rite escaped the notice, or at any rate the malice,
of Clement; but Dionysus does not for all that go unscathed. Clement
fastens upon a legend concerning him, which, however widely ancient
Greek feeling in the matter of sex differed from modern, cannot but
have seemed to some of the ancients[1466] themselves to be a reproach
and stain upon the honour of their god. The story of Dionysus and
Prosymnus, as told by Clement[1467], must be taken as read. But those
who will investigate it for themselves will see that the same idea of
death being followed by close intercourse with the gods is present
there also. That this was the inner meaning of the peculiarly offensive
story is shown by a curious comment of Heraclitus upon it, which
Clement quotes--ωὐτὸς δε Ἀίδης καὶ Διόνυσος[1468], ‘Hades and Dionysus
are one’; whence it follows that union with Dionysus is a synonym for
that ‘marriage with Hades’ which elsewhere, in both ancient and modern
times, is a common presentment of death.

Again in the Sabazian mysteries, which some connect with Dionysus and
others with Zeus, the little that is known of the ritual favours the
view that here also the _motif_ was the marriage of the deity with his
worshippers. According to Clement[1469], the subject-matter of these
mysteries was a story that Zeus, having become by Demeter the father
of Persephone, seduced in turn his own daughter, having as a means to
that end transformed himself into a snake. That story, it may safely be
said, is presented by Clement in its worst light; but the statement,
that in the ritual the deity was represented by a snake, obtains some
corroboration from Theophrastus, who says of the superstitious man,
that if he see a red snake in his house he will invoke Sabazius[1470].
Now the token of these mysteries for those who were being initiated
in them was, according to Clement[1471] again, ‘the god pressed to
the bosom’ (ὁ διὰ κόλπου θεός); which phrase he explains by saying
that the god was represented as a snake, which was passed under the
clothing and drawn over the bosom of the initiated ‘as a proof of the
incontinence of Zeus.’ Clearly then the act of initiation was the
symbolic wedding of the worshipper with the deity worshipped; and it is
probable that the union which was symbolized in this life was expected
to be realised in the next.

Finally in the orgiastic worship of Cybele the same religious doctrine
is revealed. Here to Attis seems to be assigned the same part as to
Adonis in the mysteries of Aphrodite. He is the beloved of the goddess;
he is lost and mourned for as dead; he is restored again from the
grave to the goddess who loved him. And in all this he appears to be
the representative of all Cybele’s worshippers; for the ritual of
initiation into her rites, if once again we may avail ourselves of
Clement’s statements, is strongly imbued with the idea of marriage
between the goddess and her worshipper. The several acts or stages of
initiation are summarised in four phrases: ‘I ate out of the drum; I
drank out of the cymbal; I carried the sacred vessel; I entered privily
the bed-chamber--ἐκ τυμπάνου ἔφαγον· ἐκ κυμβάλου ἔπιον· ἐκερνοφόρησα·
ὑπὸ τὸν παστὸν ὑπέδυν[1472]. In the passage from which these phrases
are culled there appears to be a certain confusion between the rites
of Cybele and those of Demeter; but the fact that Clement shortly
afterwards gives another formulary of Demeter’s ritual is sufficient
proof that he meant this present formulary, as indeed the mention of
kettle-drum and cymbal[1473] suggests, to apply to the mysteries of
Cybele[1474]. It appears then that the final act or stage of initiation
consisted in the secret admission of the worshipper to the bed-chamber
of the goddess. Such ritual can have borne only one interpretation. It
clearly constituted a promise of wedded union between the initiated
and their deity. Viewed in this light even the emasculation of the
priests of Cybele may more readily be understood; it may have been the
consecration of their virility to the service of the goddess, a final
and convincing pledge of celibacy in this life, in return for which
they aspired to be blest by wedlock with their goddess hereafter.

The mention of the goddess’ bed-chamber in the above passage is of
considerable interest. The παστός (or παστάς) in relation to a temple
meant the same thing as it often meant in relation to an ordinary
house, an inner room or recess screened off, and in particular a
bridal chamber. Such provision for the physical comfort of the deity
was probably not rare. Pausanias tells us that on the right of
the vestibule in the Argive Heraeum there was a couch (κλίνη) for
Hera[1475], and he seems to speak of it as if it were a common enough
piece of temple furniture. So too at Phlya in Attica, where were held
the very ancient mystic rites ‘of her who is called the Great,’ there
was a bridal chamber (παστάς), where, it has rightly been argued, there
‘must have been enacted a mimetic marriage[1476].’ Again Clement of
Alexandria speaks of a παστός of Athena in the Parthenon, and makes
it quite clear by the story which he relates that he understood the
word in the sense of bed-chamber. The story is also for other reasons
worth recalling, because it shows how the religious conception of
marriage between men and gods was readily extended to the worship of
other deities than those whose mysteries we have sought to unravel,
and at the same time furnishes the only case known to me in which
that mystic belief was prostituted to the base uses of flattery. The
occasion was the reception accorded by the Athenians to Demetrius
Poliorcetes. Not content with hailing him as a god in name, they went
so far in their mean-spirited subjection as to set up a temple, at
the place where he dismounted from his horse on entering their city,
to Demetrius the Descender (Καταιβάτης)[1477], while on every side
altars were erected to him. But their grossest piece of flattery was
a master-piece of grotesque impiety, and met with a fitting reward. A
marriage was arranged between him (the most notorious profligate of his
age) and Athena. ‘He however,’ we are told, ‘disdained the goddess,
being unable to embrace the statue, but took with him to the Acropolis
the courtesan Lamia, and polluted the bed-chamber of Athena, exhibiting
to the old virgin the postures of the young courtesan[1478].’ Even that
contemptuous response to the Athenians’ flattery did not abash them,
but, finding that he did not favour their acknowledged deity, they
determined to deify his acknowledged favourite, and erected a temple to
Lamia Aphrodite[1479].

But such travesties of holy things were rare; and this one notorious
case excited the contempt alike of the man[1480] to whom the flattery
was paid and of all posterity--a contempt which teaches, hardly less
clearly than the indignation excited a century earlier by the supposed
profanation of the mysteries, in what reverence and high esteem the
idea of marriage between men and gods was generally held.

Even Lucian, in whom reverence was a less pronounced characteristic
than humour, condemns seriously enough a parody of the mysteries
of Eleusis which occurred in his own day; and his account of it at
the same time shows once more that the marriage of men and gods was
the very essence of the mysteries. The impostor Alexander, he says,
instituted rites with carrying of torches (δᾳδουχία) and exposition
of the sacred ceremonies (ἱεροφαντία) lasting for three days. “On
the first there was a proclamation, as at Athens, as follows: ‘If
any atheist, Christian, or Epicurean hath come to spy upon the holy
rites, let him begone, and let the faithful be initiated with heaven’s
blessing.’ Then first of all there was an expulsion of intruders.
Alexander himself led the way, crying ‘Out with Christians,’ and the
whole multitude shouted in answer ‘Out with Epicureans.’ Then was
enacted the story of Leto in child-bed and the birth of Apollo, and his
marriage with Coronis and the birth of Asclepius; and on the second day
the manifestation of Glycon and the god’s birth[1481]. And on the third
day was the wedding of Podalirius and Alexander’s mother; this was
called the Torch-day, for torches were burnt. And finally there was the
love of Selene and Alexander, and the birth of his daughter now married
to Rutilianus[1482]. Our Endymion-Alexander was now torch-bearer and
exponent of the rites. And he lay as it were sleeping in the view of
all, and there came down to him from the roof--as it were Selene from
heaven--a certain Rutilia, a very beautiful woman, the wife of one of
Caesar’s household-officers, who was really in love with Alexander
and was loved by him, and she kissed the rascal’s eyes and embraced
him in the view of all, and, if there had not been so many torches,
worse would perhaps have followed (τάχα ἄν τι καὶ τῶν ὑπὸ κόλπου
ἐπράττετο)[1483].”

The inferences which may be drawn from this narrative are, first, that
the mysteries in general, while reproducing in some dramatic form the
whole story of the deities concerned, culminated in the representation
of a mystic marriage between men and gods; (the birth of a child was
also represented or announced in this parody, as we know that it
was at Eleusis[1484], but it had, I am inclined to think, no mystic
significance otherwise than as proof of the consummation of that
marriage;) and, secondly, that the wild charges of indecency brought by
early Christian writers against the mysteries are baseless; for Lucian
condemns a much lesser license in this parody than that which they
attributed to the genuine rites.

Thus our examination of the mysteries, so far as they are known to us,
tends to prove that the doctrines revealed in them to the initiated
were simply a development of certain vaguer popular ideas which have
been prevalent among the Greek folk from the classical age down to our
own day. The people entertained hopes that this physical life would
continue in a similar form after death; the mysteries gave definite
assurance of that immortality by exhibiting to the initiated Persephone
or Adonis or Attis restored from the lower world in bodily form; and
though that exhibition was in fact merely a dramatic representation,
yet to the eyes of religious ecstasy it seemed just as much a living
reality as does the risen Christ in the modern celebration of Easter.
The people again were wont to think and to speak of death as a marriage
into the lower world; the mysteries showed to the initiated certain
representatives of mankind who by death, or even in life, had been
admitted to the felicity of wedlock with deities, and thereby confirmed
the faithful in their happier hopes of being in like manner themselves
god-beloved and of sharing the life of gods.

Since then there is good reason to believe that this was in effect the
secret teaching of the mysteries, it would naturally be expected that
human marriage should have been reckoned as it were a foretaste of
that union with the divine which was promised hereafter, and also that
death should have been counted the hour of its approaching fulfilment;
in other words, if my view of the mysteries is correct, it would
almost inevitably follow that the mysteries should have been brought
into close association both with weddings and with funerals. This
expectation is confirmed by the facts.

An ordinary wedding was treated as something akin to initiation into
the mysteries. An inscription of Cos[1485], relating to the appointment
of priestesses of Demeter, mentions among other duties certain services
on the occasion of weddings; and the brides, who are the recipients
of these services, are divided into two classes, αἱ τελεύμεναι and αἱ
ἐπινυμφευόμεναι, the maidens who, are being ‘initiated,’ and the widows
who are being married again; a woman’s first marriage in fact is called
by a religious document her initiation, and Demeter’s priestesses
are charged therewith. Nor was this usage or idea confined to Cos;
Plutarch speaks of services rendered by the priestess of Demeter in
the solemnisation of matrimony as part of an ‘ancestral rite[1486]’;
while the term τέλος was commonly used both of the mystic rites and of
marriage, and τέλειοι might denote the newly-wed[1487].

The same thought seems also to have inspired another custom
associated with marriage. The newly-wed, we hear, sometimes attended
a representation of the marriage of Zeus and Hera[1488], an ἱερὸς
γάμος which formed the subject of mystic drama or legend all over
Greece[1489]. The widely extended cults of Hera under the titles of
Maiden (παρθένος or παῖς) and of Bride (τελεία or νυμφευομένη) appear
to have been closely interwoven; indeed for a full appreciation of the
Greek conception of the goddess they must be treated as complementary.
They are well interpreted by Farnell. Rejecting the theory of physical
symbolism, he suggests ‘a more human explanation. Hera was essentially
the goddess of women, and the life of women was reflected in her;
their maidenhood and marriage were solemnised by the cults of Hera
Παρθένος and Hera Τελεία or Νυμφευομένη, and the very rare worship of
Hera Χήρα might allude to the not infrequent custom of divorce and
separation[1490].’ With, Hera the Widow we are not here concerned,
but only with the higher conceptions of Zeus and Hera as expressed in
the representation of the ‘sacred marriage’; the bride and bridegroom
who looked upon that saw in it, we may be sure, not a symbolical
representation of the seasons and the productive powers of the earth,
but rather the divine prototype of human marriage. It reminded them
that deities, like mortals, were married and given in marriage, and it
imparted to their wedding a sacramental character, making it at once a
foretaste and a gage of that close communion with the gods which, when
death the dividing line between mortals and immortals should once be
passed, awaited the blessed among mankind.

Other small points too suggest the same trend of thought. The
preliminaries of a wedding often comprised a sacrifice to Zeus
Teleios and Hera Teleia[1491], and were called προτέλεια being the
‘preliminaries of initiation’ into that mystery, of which the
sacred marriage, enacted before the now wedded pair, was the full
revelation[1492]. Again these preliminaries always included the
solemn ablution[1493] of which I have spoken above, and in this
resembled the preparations for admittance to the mysteries. Moreover
an instance is recorded in which this ablution was itself invested
with the significance of a wedding between the human and the divine.
The maidens of the Troad before marriage were wont to unrobe and bathe
themselves in the Scamander; and the prayer which they made to the
river-god, whose bed they entered, was, ‘Receive thou, Scamander, my
virginity[1494].’ Finally the first night on which the wedded pair came
together was known as the ‘mystic night’ (νὺξ μυστική)[1495], a term
not a little suggestive of the great night of Demeter’s mysteries when
to the eyes of the initiated was displayed the secret proof and promise
of wedlock between men and gods hereafter. In short the ceremonies
of a wedding by one means or another proclaimed it to be a form of
initiation, and the estate of marriage was to the Greeks, as our
prayer-book calls it, ‘an excellent mystery.’

Hence naturally followed the belief that the unmarried and the
uninitiated shared the same fate in the future life. One conception
of the punishment of the uninitiated was, according to Plato[1496],
that they should carry water in a sieve to a broken jar; and this, as
is well known, was also the lot of the Danaids in the nether world.
Commenting on these facts Dr Frazer says, ‘It is possible that the
original reason why the Danaids were believed to be condemned to this
punishment in hell was not so much that they murdered, as that they did
not marry, the sons of Aegyptus. According to one tradition indeed they
afterwards married other husbands (Paus. III. 12. 2); but according
to another legend they were murdered by Lynceus, apparently before
marriage (Schol. on Euripides, _Hecuba_, 886). They may therefore have
been chosen as types of unmarried women, and their punishment need
not have been peculiar to them but may have been the one supposed to
await all unmarried persons in the nether world[1497].’ A passage of
Lucian, which appears to have been overlooked in this connexion[1498],
converts the view of the Danaids which Dr Frazer considers possible
into a practical certainty. The passage in point forms the conclusion
of that dialogue in which Poseidon with the aid of Triton plots and
carries out the rape of Amymone, the Danaid. She has just been seized
and is protesting against her abduction and threatening to call her
father, when Triton intervenes: ‘Keep quiet, Amymone,’ he says, ‘it
is Poseidon.’ And the girl rejoins, ‘Oh, Poseidon you call him, do
you?’ and then turning to her ravisher, ‘What do you mean, sirrah, by
handling me so roughly, and dragging me down into the sea? I shall
go under and be drowned, miserable girl.’ And Poseidon answers, ‘Do
not be frightened, you shall come to no harm; no, I will strike the
rock here, near where the waves break, with my trident, and will let
a spring burst up which shall bear your name, and you yourself shall
be blessed and, unlike your sisters, shall not carry water when you
are dead (καὶ σὺ εὐδαίμων ἔσῃ καὶ μόνη τῶν ἀδελφῶν οὐχ ὑδροφορήσεις
ἀποθανοῦσα)[1499].’ The whole point of Poseidon’s answer clearly
depends upon the existence of a well-known belief that the Danaids were
punished hereafter for remaining unmarried and that the punishment took
the form of vainly fetching water for that bridal bath which was a
necessary preliminary to a wedding; Amymone shall have a very thorough
bridal bath, and the spring that bears her name shall be a monument
of it, while she herself shall be ‘blessed’ by wedlock with Poseidon;
thus shall she escape the fate of the unmarried. Clearly then there was
no distinction between the uninitiated and the unmarried; both alike
were doomed vainly to fetch water for those ablutions which preceded
initiation into the mysteries or into matrimony; and once again the
conception of marriage as a mystic and sacramental rite akin to the
rites of Eleusis is clearly revealed.

It may further be noted here that this idea of the punishment of the
unmarried completely explains the custom, on which I have already
touched, of erecting a water-pitcher (λουτροφόρος) over the grave of
unmarried persons. This intimated, according to Eustathius[1500], that
the person there buried had never taken the bath which both bride and
bridegroom were wont to take before marriage. But this must not be
taken to mean that the water-pitcher was erected as a symbol of the
punishment which the dead person was supposed to be undergoing; this
was not an idea which his relatives and friends, even if they had held
it, would have wished to blazon abroad. One might as soon expect to
find depicted on a modern tombstone the worm that dieth not and the
fire that is not quenched. No; the water-pitcher was not a symbol, it
was an instrument; for my part I have little faith in the existence
of any symbols in popular religion which are not in origin at least
instruments; and the purpose to which this instrument was put was to
supply the dead person with that wedding-bath which he had not taken
in life, and without which he would vainly strive in the under-world
to prepare himself for divine wedlock. The water-pitcher was not
commemorative, but preventive, of future punishment. Its erection was
not a warning to the living, but a service to the dead.

Thus then the evidence for the intimate association of the mysteries,
or of the main idea which runs through them, with human weddings is
complete and, I hope, convincing; and the custom of the water-pitcher,
which concludes it, fitly introduces at the same time the evidence
for the association of the same idea with funerals. This is equally
plentiful. The vague conception of death as a wedding, which as I have
shown was elaborated in the mysteries, has of course already been
exemplified in all those passages of ancient literature and modern
folk-songs which I have adduced, and I have found in it also the motive
for the assimilation of funeral-customs to the customs of marriage.
But the evidence that the actual doctrines of the mysteries, in which
more definite expression was given to that vague idea, were closely
associated with death and funeral-custom is to be found rather in
epitaphs and sepulchral monuments.
The tone of the epitaphs may be sufficiently illustrated by a single
couplet:

    Οὐκ ἐπιδὼν νύμφεια λέχη κατέβην τὸν ἄφυκτον
      Γόργιππος ξανθῆς Φερσεφόνης θάλαμον[1501].

‘I, Gorgippus, lived not to look upon a bridal bed ere I went down
to the chamber of bright-haired Persephone which none may escape.’
There is naturally here a note of lament, as befits any epitaph, and
more especially that of one who dies young and unmarried; but none
the less there is an anticipation--justified, we may think, if we
will, by some ceremony of bridal ablution performed for the dead man
by his friends--that his death is a wedding with the goddess of the
under-world; and indeed the phrase Φερσεφόνης θάλαμος, ‘the bridal
chamber of Persephone,’ recurs with some frequency in this class of
epitaphs[1502].

Considered collectively, such epitaphs would suggest a distinctly
offensive conception of Persephone; but in each taken separately, as
it was composed, it will be allowed, I think, that if there is supreme
audacity, there is equal sublimity. It is just these qualities which
give pungency to a blasphemous parody of such epitaphs, in which the
wit of Ausonius exposes the worst possible aspect of a religious
conception which to the pure-minded was wholly pure. My apology for
quoting lines which I will not translate must be the fact that a
caricature is often no less instructive than a true portrait. The mock
epitaph concludes as follows:

    Sed neque functorum socius miscebere vulgo
      Nec metues Stygios flebilis umbra lacus:
    Verum aut Persephonae Cinyreius ibis Adonis,
      Aut Jovis Elysii tu catamitus eris[1503].

Ausonius in jest bears an unpleasant resemblance to Clement in earnest;
both perverted to their uttermost a doctrine which commanded nothing
but reverence from faithful participants in the mysteries.

Akin to these epitaphs are certain tablets which recently have been
fully discussed by Miss Jane Harrison[1504], and have been shown to
be of Orphic origin. They were buried with the dead, and for this
reason were more outspoken in their references to the mystic doctrines
than was permissible in epitaphs exposed to the vulgar gaze. The most
complete of these tablets is one which was found near Sybaris, and,
with the exception of the last sentence of all, the inscription is in
hexameter verse. Miss Harrison, to whose work I am wholly indebted for
this valuable evidence, translates as follows[1505]:

    ‘Out of the pure I come, Pure Queen of Them Below,
    Eukles and Eubouleus and the other Gods immortal.
    For I also avow me that I am of your blessed race,
    But Fate laid me low and the other Gods immortal
                              ... starflung thunderbolt.
    I have flown out of the sorrowful weary Wheel.
    I have passed with eager feet to the Circle desired.
    I have sunk beneath the bosom of Despoina, Queen of the Underworld.
    I have passed with eager feet from the Circle desired.
    Happy and Blessed One, thou shalt be God instead of mortal.
            A kid I have fallen into milk.’

The gist of the document which the dead man takes with him is then
briefly this. He claims to have been pure originally and of the same
race as his gods; but as a man he was mortal and exposed to death,
and in this respect differed from his gods. He states however that he
has performed certain ritual acts which entitle him to be re-admitted
to the pure fellowship of the gods now that death is passed. And the
answer comes, ‘Thou shalt be God instead of mortal.’

Now here I wish to consider one only of these ritual acts--that one of
which the meaning is clearest--Δεσποίνας δ’ ὑπὸ κόλπον ἔδυν χθονίας
βασιλείας, which means, if I may give my own rendering, ‘I was admitted
to the embrace of Despoina, Queen of the under-world.’ The phrase
is one which repeats the idea which we have already seen expressed
in the formulary of Cybele’s rites, ὑπὸ τὸν παστὸν ὑπέδυν[1506], ‘I
was privily admitted to the bridal chamber,’ and in the token of the
Sabazian mysteries, ὁ διὰ κόλπου θεός[1507], ‘the god pressed to
the bosom’; and Lucian’s final phrase in his account of Alexander’s
mock-mysteries shows a kindred phrase, τὰ ὑπὸ κόλπου[1508], as an
euphemism of the same kind[1509]. The Orphic therefore no less than
others based his claim to future happiness on the fact that he had
performed a ritual act, of the nature of a sacrament, which constituted
a pledge that the wedlock between him and his goddess foreshadowed here
should be consummated hereafter.

Even more abundant evidence is furnished by sepulchral monuments;
and in support of my views I cannot do better than quote two high
authorities who coincide in their verdict upon the meaning of the
scenes represented. In reference to those scenes ‘in which death
is conceived in the guise of a marriage’ Furtwängler writes: ‘The
monuments belonging to this class are extraordinarily numerous, and
exhibit very different methods of treating the idea which they carry
out. A relief upon a sarcophagus from the Villa Borghese shows the God
of the dead in the act of carrying down the fair Kore to be his bride
in the lower world. Above the steeds of his chariot, which are already
disappearing into the depths of the earth, flies Eros as guide. The
bride however appears to be going only under compulsion and after some
struggle; the look of the bridegroom expresses sternness rather than
gentleness; and the mother who sits with face averted seems to exclude
all thoughts of the daughter’s return. Only in the torches which the
guide carries in his hand, in the snakes which are looking upward, and
in the observant attitude of Hecate, can a suggestion of the return be
found.

‘On another sarcophagus--from Nazzara--which represents the same
marriage-journey, Eros is not merely the guide of the steeds, but aids
the bridegroom in carrying off Kore, so that in this case the struggle
with death takes purely the form of a struggle with love. At the same
time the mother is driving along with her chariot, thereby signifying
the renewal of life, which is yet more clearly betokened in the
ploughman and the sower at her side.

‘In a yet gentler spirit we see the same journey conceived in a
vase-painting from lower Italy. Here there is a look of gentleness
on Hades’ face; the bride accompanies him gladly, and even takes an
affectionate farewell of her mother, who appears to acquiesce in her
departure. In this case too Eros is flying above the horses, and is
turned towards the lovers, while in front of him there flies a dove,
the bird sacred to the goddess of love. Hecate with torches guides the
steeds; near at hand waits Hermes to escort the procession; and above
the whole scene the stars are shining, as if to indicate the new life
in the region of death.

‘In another form, exalted to a yet higher holiness, the same marriage
is repeated in the sphere of Dionysus-worship. Thus on a cameo in the
Vatican, Dionysus is represented driving with his bride, Ariadne, in
a brightly-decked triumphal car. Holy rapture is manifested on the
features of both, and on top of the chariot stands a Cupid directing
it. Dionysus is arrayed in the doe-skin, and holds in his left hand
a _thyrsus_, in his right a goblet; Ariadne is carrying ears of corn
and poppy-heads, and has her hair wreathed with vine-leaves. The car
is drawn by Centaurs of both sexes, with torches, drinking-horns,
and musical instruments. The idea which underlies this scene is the
reproduction of Life out of Death; Hades has issued forth again for
a new marriage-bond with Kore in the realm of light, appearing now
rejuvenated in the form of Dionysus, just as his bride assumes the form
of Ariadne, and because the power of death is broken behind him, his
car likewise becomes a triumphal car.

‘Just as the marriage of Zeus in the realm of light became a type for
men in this life, so the marriage of Hades, or of Dionysus representing
him, developed into a similar prototype for the dead. Since that which
is true of Death bears directly upon the actual dead, it was quite
natural that gradually the process of death came to be considered in
general as a wedding with the deities of death. With this conception
too harmonize those wedding-scenes which are so common and conspicuous
on funeral monuments, as well as the often-recurring scenes from the
joyous cycle of Dionysus-myths[1510].’
Two brief comments may be made upon this passage. First, Furtwängler
clearly recognises in Dionysus a mere substitute for Hades, and thus
confirms my interpretation of the strange legend concerning Dionysus
and Prosymnus[1511]. We noticed that the somewhat obscure observation
of Heraclitus (as quoted by Clement) upon that story contained the
words ‘Dionysus and Hades are one and the same’; and we now see that
in art too the same identification was made, and that the marriage of
a mortal with Dionysus was used to typify the future marriage of the
dead with their gods. The reason for this identification seems simply
to be that the cults in which the two gods figured, although differing
in outward form, were felt to express one and the same idea--namely the
conception of death as a form of marriage; and the tendency to identify
in such cases was carried so far that the god Dionysus was even, we are
told, identified with the mortal Adonis[1512], presumably because the
worship of each, as I have shown above, turned upon this one cardinal
doctrine.

Secondly, Furtwängler points out that the marriage of Zeus and Hera
represented for living men the same doctrine as the marriage of Hades
and Persephone (or of Dionysus and Ariadne) represented for the dead.
The truth of this is well illustrated by the close resemblance between
Aristophanes’ picture of Hera’s wedding and those funeral monuments
and vases which Furtwängler describes; for there too ‘golden-winged
Eros held firm the reins, and drave the wedding-car of Zeus and blessed
Hera[1513].’ In other words, this Olympian marriage was only one among
several mystic marriages which all conveyed, though in diverse form,
the same lesson, that marriage was the perfection of divine life no
less than of human life, and therefore that hereafter when men, or at
any rate the blessed and initiated among men, should come to dwell with
their gods, no bond of communion between gods and men could be perfect
short of the marriage-bond.

It was natural enough that the drama of Hera’s wedding with Zeus should
most often have been chosen to be played at an ordinary wedding,
because it would not obtrude thoughts of death upon a joyous event
with such insistence as most of the other religious legends which
reposed upon the same fundamental doctrine; but sometimes, we know, it
was the priestesses of Demeter who officiated at wedding-ceremonies,
and in those cases it cannot be doubted that it was Persephone and not
Hera who was the divine prototype of the bride, and the thought that
her wedding was a wedding with the god of death could not have been
excluded. At funerals, on the other hand, the story of Zeus and Hera
which was preferred at weddings owing to its less obvious allusion to
death, would for that same reason have found less favour than those
other marriage-legends in which the identity of death with marriage
was more clearly enunciated; and of these, owing to the exceptional
reverence in which the Eleusinian mysteries were held, the story of
Persephone seems to have been among the most frequent. Yet in the
picture drawn by Aristophanes at which we have just glanced, for one
subtle touch which suggests the connexion of Hera’s wedding with human
weddings, there is another subtle touch which suggests its relation
with human death. The first is an epithet applied to Eros who drove the
wedding-car--the epithet ἀμφιθαλής, used of one who has both parents
living[1514]. The allusion to human weddings is clear. It was no doubt
imperative in old time, as it still is, in Greece, that anyone who
attended upon a bride or bridegroom, as for instance the bearer of
water for the bridal bath, should have both parents living; and the
use of the same term in reference to Eros, the attendant upon Zeus
and Hera, marks the intimate connexion between the divine marriage
and the marriage of living men and women. But another epithet in the
passage conveys no less clear an allusion to the marriage of those,
whom men call dead, with their deities. Hera is named εὐδαίμων, a word
which, meaning ‘favoured by God,’ may seem strangely applied to one
who herself was divine[1515]. But it was selected by Aristophanes for
a good reason; by the word εὐδαιμονία was commonly denoted that future
bliss which the initiated believed to consist in wedlock with their
deities. Like θεοφιλής, ‘god-beloved,’ the term εὐδαίμων, ‘blessed,’
was, so to speak, a catch-word of the mysteries[1516]; and the
application of it to Hera in Aristophanes’ ode brings the legend of
Hera’s marriage into rank with those other wedding-stories whose actual
plot hinged upon the identity of death and marriage. Thus though one
legend might be more appropriate in its externals to one occasion, and
another legend to another occasion, the ultimate and fundamental idea
of them all was single and the same.

This view is boldly championed by the second authority whom I proposed
to quote upon the subject of mystic marriage-scenes depicted on
funeral-monuments. ‘The idea,’ says Lenormant, ‘of mystic union
in death is frequently indicated in the scenes represented upon
_sarcophagi_ and painted vases. But for the most part the idea is
expressed there only in an allusive manner, which depends upon the
identification which this marriage-scene established between the dead
person and the deity, by means of such subjects as the carrying off
of Cephalus by Aurora, or Orithyia by Boreas, or the love-story of
Aphrodite and Adonis[1517].’ ‘Thus,’ he explains, ‘a girl carried
off (by death) from her parents was simply a bride betrothed to the
infernal god, and was identified with Demeter’s maiden daughter, the
victim of the passion and violence of Hades; a young man cut off by an
early fate figured as the beautiful Adonis, snatched away by Persephone
from the love of Aphrodite, and brought, in spite of himself, to the
bed of the queen of the lower world[1518].’ The identification which
Lenormant sees in these several instances is an identification, I
suppose, not of personalities but of destinies. The popular religion
of ancient Greece shows little trace of any pantheistic view which
would have contemplated the absorption of the personality of the dead
man or woman into that of any god or goddess. Indeed the very number
of the personally distinct deities with whom, on such an hypothesis,
the dead would have been identified, as well as that continuance of
sexual difference in the future life which is postulated by the very
doctrine before us, precludes all thought of personal identification.
Rather it is the future destiny of the dead person which was identified
with the destiny of the deity or hero whose marriage was represented on
sarcophagus or _cippus_ or commemorative vase[1519]. The lot of Kore or
Ariadne or Orithyia prefigured the lot of mortal women hereafter; the
fortunes of Adonis or Cephalus typified those of mortal men; and all
the marriage-scenes alike, whatever the differences of presentation,
revealed the hope and the promise of wedlock hereafter between mankind
and their deities.

But Lenormant mentions one vase-painting[1520] in which this
fundamental doctrine is taught not by parables of mythology, but more
overtly and directly. The scene depicted is the marriage of a youth,
whose name, Polyetes, is in pathetic contrast with his short span of
years spent upon earth, with a goddess Eudaemonia (or ‘Bliss’) in the
lower world. In this deity Lenormant sees ‘the infernal goddess under
an euphemistic name.’ Nor could any more significant name have been
used. It has already been pointed out that εὐδαιμονία was a term much
favoured by the initiated in the mysteries, and was openly used by them
to denote that future bliss which secretly was understood to consist in
divine wedlock. Hence the scene upon this vase would at once suggest to
those who were familiar with the doctrines of the mysteries, that the
youth, being presumably of the number of the initiated, had found in
death the realisation of his happy hopes and had entered into blissful
union with the goddess of the lower world.

       *       *       *       *       *

To sum up briefly: we have seen alike in the literature of ancient
Greece and in the folk-songs of modern Greece that death has commonly
been conceived by the Hellenic race in the guise of a wedding; a review
of marriage-customs and funeral-customs both ancient and modern has
re-affirmed the constant association of death and marriage, and has
shown how deep-rooted in the minds of the common people that idea must
have been which produced a deliberate assimilation of funeral-rites
to the ceremonies of marriage. Next we investigated the connexion
of the mysteries with the popular religion, and saw reason to hold
that, far from being subversive of it or alien to it, they inculcated
doctrines which were wholly evolved from vaguer popular ideas always
current in Greece. Finally we traced in many of those legends, on which
the dramatic representations of the mysteries are known to have been
based, a common _motif_, the idea that death is the entrance for men
into a blissful estate of wedded union with their deities. And this
religious ideal not only satisfies the condition of agreement with,
and evolution from, those popular views in which death figured somewhat
vaguely as a form of wedding, but also proves to be the natural and
necessary outcome of two religious sentiments with which earlier
chapters have dealt; first, the ardent desire for close communion with
the gods, and secondly, the belief that men’s bodies as well as their
souls survived death and dissolution; for if the body by means of its
disintegration rejoined the soul in the nether world, and the human
entity was then complete, enjoying the same substantial existence,
the same physical no less than mental powers, which it had enjoyed in
the upper world, and which the immortal gods enjoyed uninterrupted by
death, then, since the same rite of marriage was the consummation both
of divine life and of human life, men’s yearning for close communion
with their gods required for its ideal and perfect satisfaction the
full union of wedlock; and the sacrament which assured men of this
consummation was the highest development of the whole Greek religion,
the mysteries.

Such a sacrament and such aspirations might well have offended even
those Christians of early days, if such there were, who were willing to
deal sympathetically with paganism; that those who were its declared
enemies, and were ready to use against it the weapons of perversion and
vituperation, found in this conception a vulnerable point, is readily
understood. It is true indeed that in the very idea which they most
vilified there was a certain curious analogy between the new religion
and the old. Just as paganism allowed to each man or woman individually
the hope of becoming the bridegroom or the bride of one of their many
deities, so Christianity represented the Church, the whole body of the
faithful collectively, as the bride of its sole deity. But the analogy
is superficial only. The bond of feeling which united the Church with
God was very differently conceived from that which drew together the
pagans and their deities. The chastened ‘charity’ (ἀγάπη) of the
Christians had little in common with the passionate love (ἔρως) with
which the Greeks of old time had dared look upon their gods. Theirs
was the Love that ‘held firm the reins and drave the wedding-car of
Zeus and blessed Hera[1521]’; the Love that hovered above the steeds
of Hades and changed for Persephone the road of death into a road to
bliss; the Love whom ‘no immortal may escape nor any of mankind whose
life passeth it as a day, but whoso hath him is as one mad[1522]’; and
the only true consummation of such love was wedlock.

This conception necessarily implied the equality of men with their gods
in the future life; and that future equality was sometimes represented
as no more than a return to that which was in the beginning. ‘One is
the race of men with the race of gods; for one is the mother that gave
to both our breath; yet are they sundered by powers wholly diverse, in
that mankind is as naught, but heaven is builded of brass that abideth
ever unshaken[1523].’ So sang Pindar of the past and of the present;
but the Orphic tablet which has been already quoted carries on the
thought into the future:

    ‘Out of the pure I come, Pure Queen of Them Below,
    Eukles and Eubouleus and the other Gods immortal.
    For I also avow me that I am of your blessed race,
    But Fate laid me low....’

So far with Pindar. But the dead man’s claims do not end there: ‘I was
admitted to the embrace of Despoina, Queen of the Underworld’; already
had he received a foretaste of that divine wedlock which implied
equality with the gods; and so there comes the answer, ‘Happy and
Blessed One, thou shalt be God instead of mortal.’

This idea commended itself even to thinkers who did not believe in
bodily survival after death. Plato, in the _Phaedo_, where above all
things is taught the perishable nature of the body and the immortality
of the soul alone, yet avails himself of the belief that the pure among
mankind shall attain even to godhead hereafter. To him the pure are
not the initiated indeed, but the earnest strivers after wisdom. In
his theory of retributive metempsychosis he surmises that those who
have followed the lusts of the flesh shall hereafter enter the ranks of
asses and other lustful beasts; that those who have wrought violence
shall enter the ranks of wolves and hawks and kites; that those who
have practised what is popularly accounted virtue, but without true
understanding, shall enter the ranks of harmless and social creatures,
bees, wasps, and ants, or even the ranks of men once more. ‘But
into the ranks of gods none may enter without having followed after
wisdom and so departing hence wholly pure--none save the lover of
knowledge[1524].’ What precise meaning Plato attached to his phrase
‘to enter the ranks’ (εἰς γένος ἐνδύεσθαι or ἀφικνεῖσθαι), to which
he adheres throughout the passage, is a question which agitated the
Neoplatonists[1525] somewhat needlessly. The phrase is intended either
literally throughout or allegorically throughout. If it be allegorical,
the meaning must be that all human souls shall enter again into human
bodies, but that they shall start this new phase of existence with the
qualities of lust, violence, respectability, or real virtue and purity,
acquired in the previous life--merely resembling, as nearly as men may,
asses, wolves, bees, or gods. Now as regards the first three classes,
this allegorical interpretation, if a little forced, is feasible
enough; but what of the fourth class? Shall the soul which has attained
purity, the very negation of fleshliness in Plato’s view, suffer
re-incarnation and struggle once more against the flesh? Surely the
allegorical explanation is at once condemned. The phrase was intended
literally[1526]. Plato signified the re-incarnation of the lustful,
the violent, and the merely respectable, in the forms of animals of
like character, and he signified--I must not say the re-incarnation,
for Plato’s gods were spiritual and not carnal--but the regeneration
of the pure in the form of gods. And in the same spirit Plutarch too
contemplated the possibility of some men’s souls becoming first heroes,
and from heroes rising to the rank of ‘daemons,’ and from ‘daemons’
coming to share, albeit but rarely, in real godhead[1527].

Thus even the highest aspirations of the most spiritually-minded of
pagan thinkers owed much to the purely popular religion. The Orphic
tablet links up the popular conception of death as a wedding with the
Platonic conception of the deification of the soul. ‘I was admitted to
the embrace of Despoina, Queen of the underworld’: ‘Happy and Blessed
One, thou shalt be God instead of mortal.’

But if Plato, even in his conception of a purely spiritual life
hereafter, owed something to the popular religion, he drew upon it
far more freely in his conception of Love. In the _Symposium_ one
speech after another culminates in the assertion of that belief which
found its highest expression in the mysteries. ‘So then I say,’ says
Phaedrus, ‘that Love is the most venerable of the gods, the most
worthy of honour, the most powerful to grant virtue and blessedness
unto mankind both in life and after death[1528].’ And in the same tone
too Eryximachus: ‘He it is that wields the mightiest power and is
the source for us of all blessedness and of our power to have loving
fellowship both with one another and with the gods that are stronger
than we[1529].’ And finally Aristophanes: It is Love, ‘who in this
present life gives us most joys by drawing like unto like, and for our
hereafter displays hopes most high, if we for our part display piety
towards the gods, that he will restore us to our erstwhile nature and
will heal us and will make us happy and blessed[1530].’

This is not Platonic philosophy but popular religion. Phrase after
phrase reveals the origin of this conception of Love. The hopes most
high were the hopes held forth by the mysteries; the blessedness and
the loving fellowship with gods were the fulfilment of those hopes.
In such language did men ever hint at the joys to which their mystic
sacraments gave access. And Plato here ventures yet further. The author
of those high hopes, the founder of that blessedness, he proclaims, is
none other than Love--Love that appealed not to the soul only of the
initiated, but to the whole man, both soul and body--Love that meant
not only the yearning after wisdom and holiness and spiritual equality
with the gods, but that same passion which drew together man and woman,
god and goddess--the passion of mankind for their deities, fed in this
life by manifold means of communion and even by sacramental union,
satisfied hereafter in the full fruition of wedded bliss.


FOOTNOTES:

[1358] _Il._ XI. 241.

[1359] Hes. _W. and D._ 116.

[1360] e.g. Hom. _Il._ XVI. 454 and 672; XIV. 231.

[1361] Hes. _Theog._ 212, 756.

[1362] See Preller, _Griech. Myth._ I. 690 ff.

[1363] Paus. V. 18. 1. Cf. III. 18. 1.

[1364] Passow, _Popul. Carm._ CCCXCVI.

[1365] Hom. _Od._ XXIV. 1.

[1366] Virg. _Aen._ IV. 242 ff.

[1367] See above, pp. 96 ff. and pp. 134 ff.

[1368] Paus. VIII. 2. 5.

[1369] Paus. _ibid._ § 4.

[1370] Passow, _Pop. Carm._ no. 364.

[1371] Passow, _Pop. Carm._ no. 374.

[1372] The word χαρὰ, (‘joy’), as I have pointed out elsewhere, is
indeed often used technically of marriage.

[1373] Passow, _Pop. Carm._ no. 38 (ll. 13-18) and also nos. 65, 152,
180.

[1374] See above, pp. 255 ff.

[1375] Abbott, _Macedon. Folklore_, p. 255.

[1376] Passow, _Pop. Carm._ no. 370. The phrase κάνει χαρὰ, which I
have inadequately rendered as ‘maketh glad,’ is technically used of
marriage. See above, p. 127.

[1377] For authorities see Lobeck, _Aglaoph._ I. pp. 76 ff.

[1378] Soph. _Antig._ 574-5. I do not know how much stress may be laid
on the repetition of the pronoun ὅδε in these two lines (viz. στερήσεις
τῆσδε and τούσδε τοὺς γάμους); but the lines follow closely on that
in which Creon bids Ismene speak no more of Antigone as ἥδε, and an
ironical stress might well be laid by Creon on the word τούσδε as he
uses it, which would suggest to his audience its antithesis τοὺς ἐκεὶ
γάμους.

[1379] Soph. _Antig._ 804-5.

[1380] _ibid._ 810-16.

[1381] _ibid._ 891-2.

[1382] _ibid._ 1203-7.

[1383] _ibid._ 1240-1.

[1384] Pindar, _Fragm._ 139 (Bergk).

[1385] Aesch. _Prom._ 940 ff.

[1386] _Oneirocr._ II. 49. The word τέλη denotes here not merely a
‘rite,’ but a ‘consummation’ by which a man becomes τέλειος. See below,
p. 591.

[1387] _ibid._ I. 80. To translate the passage more fully is not
convenient; I append the original: θεῷ δὲ ἢ θεᾷ μιγῆναι ἢ ὑπὸ θεοῦ
περανθῆναι νοσοῦντι μὲν θάνατον σημαίνει· τότε γὰρ ἡ ψυχὴ τὰς τῶν θεῶν
συνόδους τε καὶ μίξεις μαντεύεται, ὅταν ἐγγὺς ᾖ τοῦ καταλιπεῖν τὸ σῶμα
ᾧ ἐνοικεῖ.

[1388] _ibid._ II. 65.

[1389] _Oneirocr._ II. 49.

[1390] The majority of the references to ancient usage given below are
borrowed from Becker’s _Charicles_.

[1391] Thuc. II. 15.

[1392] Eur. _Phoen._ 347.

[1393] Aeschines, _Epist._ X. p. 680.

[1394] Cf. Pollux, III. 43.

[1395] Soph. _Antig._ 901.

[1396] _De Luctu_, 11.

[1397] Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 193.

[1398] For a discussion of this point see Becker, _Charicles_ pp. 483-4.

[1399] Harpocrat. s.v. λουτροφόρος. ἔθος δὲ ἦν καὶ τοῖς ἀγάμοις
ἀποθανοῦσι λουτροφορεῖν, καὶ ἐπὶ τὸ μνῆμα ἐφίστασθαι. τοῦτο δὲ ἦν παῖς
ὑδρίαν ἔχων. The same words are repeated by Photius and Suidas. With
ἐφίστασθαι it appears necessary to supply λουτροφόρον. Cf. Pollux VIII.
66 τῶν δ’ ἀγάμων λουτροφόρος τῷ μνήματι ἐφίστατο, κόρη ἀγγεῖον ἔχουσα
ὑδροφόρον.... For other references see Becker, _Charicles_ p. 484. This
information, as regards the emblem used, is held to be incorrect. The
λουτροφόρος was not a boy bearing a pitcher, but the pitcher itself.
See Frazer, _Pausanias_, vol. V. p. 388.

[1400] For this view see Frazer, _Pausanias_, vol. V. p. 389. ‘It may
be suggested that originally the custom of placing a water-pitcher on
the grave of unmarried persons ... may have been meant to help them to
obtain in another world the happiness they had missed in this. In fact
it may have been part of a ceremony designed to provide the dead maiden
or bachelor with a spouse in the spirit land. Such ceremonies have
been observed in various parts of the world by peoples, who, like the
Greeks, esteemed it a great misfortune to die unmarried.’

[1401] _Plut._ 529.

[1402] Cf. Lucian, _de Luctu_ 11.

[1403] For a discussion of the point in relation to funerals see
Becker, _Charicles_ pp. 385 f. and in relation to marriage pp. 486 f.

[1404] Lucian, _de Luctu_ 11.

[1405] I. 6.

[1406] Cf. Passow, _Popul. Carm. Graec. Recent._ no. 415, and
Tournefort, _Voyage du Levant_, I. p. 153, who describes a dead woman,
whose funeral he witnessed, as ‘parée à la Gréque de ses habits de
nôces.’

[1407] Passow, _Popul. Carm._ 378.

[1408] _Charicles_ p. 487.

[1409] Lucian, _de Luctu_ 11. Aristoph. _Lysist._ 602 etc.

[1410] The influence of the Church was against the use of garlands in
early times and perhaps suppressed it in some districts. Cf. Minucius,
p. 109 ‘Nec mortuos coronamus. Ergo vos (the heathen) in hoc magis
miror, quemadmodum tribuatis exanimi aut [non] sentienti facem aut
non sentienti coronam: cum et beatus non egeat, et miser non gaudeat
floribus.’ The first _non_ is clearly to be deleted.

[1411] Cf. Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 193.

[1412] Cf. _ibid._ p. 197.

[1413] Hom. _Hymn. in Demet._ 372 ff. Hence the pomegranate was treated
as ‘an accursed thing’ in the worship of Demeter at Lycosura, Paus.
VIII. 37. 7.

[1414] Paus. II. 17. 4.

[1415] See above, p. 548.

[1416] See above, p. 80.

[1417] The following references are in the main taken from Lobeck,
_Aglaophamus_.

[1418] Soph. _Fragm._ 719 (Dind.).

[1419] Hom. _Hymn. ad Cer._ 480 ff.

[1420] Pind. _Fragm._ 137 (Bergk).

[1421] Id. _Fragm._ 129. See above, p. 518.

[1422] Aristoph. _Ranae_ 440-459.

[1423] Isocr. _Paneg._ p. 46.

[1424] _Aglaoph._ I. p. 70.

[1425] περὶ εἰρήνης, p. 166.

[1426] Aristid. _Eleusin._ 259 (454).

[1427] Julian. _Or._ VII. 238. The same story in similar words recurs
in Diog. Laert. VI. 39 and Plut. _de Aud. Poet._ II. p. 21 F.

[1428] Crinagoras, _Ep._ XXX.

[1429] Cic. _de Leg._ II. § 36.

[1430] _Mathem._ I. p. 18, ed. Buller.

[1431] _Aglaoph._ I. pp. 39 f.

[1432] See Lobeck, _Aglaoph._ I. pp. 6 ff.

[1433] Diodorus, v. 77. Cf. Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of
Greek Religion_, p. 567.

[1434] For references on this point, see Lobeck, _Aglaophamus_, I. 14
ff.

[1435] For the evidence that the Achaeans adopted the language of the
Pelasgians, and not _vice versâ_, see Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_,
vol. I. p. 631 ff.

[1436] _Protrept._ § 55.

[1437] Hom. _Il._ I. 221 f.

[1438] Euseb. _Demonstr. Evang._ V. 1, 268 E.

[1439] _Praep. Evang._ XV. 1, 788 C.

[1440] Προτρεπτ. § 61.

[1441] Synes. _de Prov._ II. 124 B.

[1442] Cf. Artemid. _Oneirocr._ Bk III. cap. 61.

[1443] In Thera, as I myself witnessed, and until recently at Delphi.
Greeks with whom I have spoken of this custom have often seen or heard
of it somewhere.

[1444] I regret that my notes contain no mention of my informant’s
name. I must apologise to him for the omission.

[1445] Asterius, _Encom. in SS. Martyr._ in Migne, _Patrolog.
Graeco-Lat._ vol. XL. p. 324.

[1446] _Adv. Valentin._ cap. I.

[1447] Eusebius, _Hist. Eccles._ IV. 11. Cf. Sainte-Croix, _Recherches
sur les Mystères_, 2nd ed., I. p. 366.

[1448] _loc. cit._

[1449] [Origen] _Philosophumena_, p. 115 (ed. Miller), p. 170 (ed.
Cruice). Cf. Miss J. Harrison, _Proleg. to Study of Gk Relig._ p. 549.

[1450] Clem. Alex. _Protrept._ II. 18.

[1451] Dieterich, _Eine Mithras-Liturgie_, p. 125, cited by Miss J.
Harrison, _Proleg. to Study of Gk Relig._ p. 155, note 3.

[1452] Hesiod, _Theog._ 970 f. Cf. Hom. _Od._ V. 125.

[1453] Theocr. _Id._ III. 49 ff. (A. Lang’s translation).

[1454] Plutarch, _de fac. in orb. lun._ 28, cited by Miss Harrison,
_Proleg. to Study of Gk Relig._ p. 267.

[1455] See above, pp. 91 f. and 96 ff.

[1456] Theocr. _Id._ III. 46 ff.

[1457] _Protrept._ § 14.

[1458] Theocr. _Id._ XV. 86.

[1459] _Orph. Hymn._ LVI.; Bion, _Id._ I. 5. 54; Lucian, _Dial. deor._
XI. 1; Macrob. _Saturn._ I. 21; Procop. _in Esai._ XVIII. p. 258. Cf.
Lenormant, _Monogr. de la voie sacrée éleusin._, where many other
references are given.

[1460] Dem. Κατὰ Νεαίρας, pp. 1369-1371 _et passim_. Cf. Arist. Ἀθην.
Πολ. 3.

[1461] _Etymol. Mag._ 227. 36.

[1462] Hesych. s.v. γεραραί.

[1463] See above, pp. 339 ff.

[1464] Plutarch, _de defectu orac._ cap. 14 (p. 417).

[1465] See above, p. 139.

[1466] Not so, however, to Artemidorus. Cf. _Oneirocr._ I. 80.

[1467] _Protrept._ § 34.

[1468] _l. c._

[1469] _Protrept._ § 16.

[1470] Theophr. _Char._ 28 (ed. Jebb).

[1471] _l. c._

[1472] Clem. Alex. _Protrept._ II. 15.

[1473] The cymbal certainly belonged to Demeter also (see Miss
Harrison, _op. cit._ p. 562) but not, I think, the kettle-drum.

[1474] Psellus (_Quaenam sunt Graecorum opiniones de daemonibus_, 3,
ed. Migne) refers the formulary to the rites of Demeter and Kore. But
I cannot agree with Miss J. Harrison (_Prolegomena to the Study of
Greek Religion_, p. 569) as to the importance of Psellus’ testimony
in any respect. He appears to me to give no more than a _résumé_ of
information derived from Clement’s _Protreptica_, misunderstood and
even more confused.

[1475] Paus. II. 17. 3.

[1476] Miss J. Harrison, _op. cit._ p. 536, commenting on
_Philosophumena_, ed. Cruice, v. 3.

[1477] A title under which both Zeus and Hermes were known; see
Aristoph. _Pax_, 42, and Schol. _ibid._ 649.

[1478] Clem. Alex. _Protrept._ § 54.

[1479] Athen. VI. p. 253 A. Shortly afterwards he quotes a song (253
D) in which it is the name of Demeter which is coupled with that of
Demetrius.

[1480] Athen. VI. 253 A, and 261 B.

[1481] Glycon was Alexander’s new god, a re-incarnation of Asclepius,
born in the form of a snake out of an egg discovered by Alexander.

[1482] A superstitious old Roman entrapped by Alexander.

[1483] Lucian, _Alexander seu Pseudomantis_, cap. 38-39 (II. 244 ff.).

[1484] See Miss J. Harrison, _op. cit._ pp. 549 ff.

[1485] Paton, _Inscr. of Cos_, 386, cited by Rouse, _Greek Votive
Offerings_, p. 246.

[1486] Plutarch, _Conjug. Praec. ad init._

[1487] Schol. _ad Soph. Antig._ 1241.

[1488] Photius, _Lex. Rhet._ Vol. II. p. 670 (ed. Porson), cited by
Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, I. p. 245.

[1489] For the chief references, see Farnell, _loc. cit._

[1490] Farnell, _op. cit._ p. 191.

[1491] Diod. Sic. V. 73; Pollux III. 38. Cf. Farnell, _op. cit._ p. 246.

[1492] Pollux, _l. c._ ταύτῃ (τῇ Ἤρᾳ) τοῖς προτελείοις προὐτέλουν τὰς
κόρας.

[1493] Cf. Plutarch, _Amator. Narrat._ 1, where the girls of Haliartus
are said to have bathed themselves in the spring Cissoessa immediately
before making the sacrifices just mentioned, and evidently as part of
the same ritual.

[1494] [Aeschines] _Epist._ 10, p. 680.

[1495] Chariton IV. 4.

[1496] _Gorgias_, p. 493 B.

[1497] Frazer, _ad Pausan._ X. 31. 9 (vol. V. p. 389).

[1498] I cannot pretend to have gone into the whole literature of the
subject, but I find no reference to this passage either in Dr Frazer’s
_Pausanias_, _l. c._, or in Miss Harrison’s _Proleg. to Study of Gk
Relig._ pp. 614 ff., where the same topic is fully discussed.

[1499] Lucian, _Dial. Marin._ 6. 3.

[1500] Eustath. _ad Hom. Il._ XXIII. 141.

[1501] _Anthol. Pal._ VII. 507.

[1502] For other examples see Lenormant, _Monographie de la voie sacrée
éleusinienne_, pp. 50 f., where also the above example is quoted.

[1503] Auson. _Epitaph._ no. 33.

[1504] _Prolegomena to Study of Gk Religion_, pp. 573 ff.

[1505] _op. cit._ p. 586; Kaibel, _C.I.G.I.S._, 641.

[1506] See above, p. 586.

[1507] See above, p. 586.

[1508] See above, p. 589.

[1509] I am forced by these considerations to dissent from Miss
Harrison’s view as expressed _op. cit._ p. 594, ‘Here the symbolism
seems to be of birth rather than of marriage,’ and again ‘this rite of
birth or adoption ...’: and indeed this view seems hardly to tally with
that which she suggests later (p. 600), “Burial itself may well have
been to them (the Pythagoreans) as to Antigone a mystic marriage: ‘I
have sunk beneath the bosom of Despoina, Queen of the Underworld.’”

[1510] Furtwängler, _Die Idee des Todes_, p. 293.

[1511] See above, p. 585.

[1512] Plutarch, _Sympos._ IV. 5. 3.

[1513] Aristoph. _Aves_, 1737.

[1514] Cf. Schol. _ad Aristoph._ _l. c._

[1515] This, I am aware, is not an unique case. Plato applies the same
epithet to the gods as a whole, but above all to Eros, clearly, I
think, with something of the same significance. See Plato, _Sympos._ §
21, p. 195 A.

[1516] Cf. Theo Smyrnaeus, _Math._ I. 18; Aristid. _Eleusin._ p. 415;
Plato, _Phaedrus_, p. 48.

[1517] Lenormant, _Monographie de la voie sacrée éleusinienne_, p. 54.

[1518] _l. c._

[1519] For a long list of such monuments dealing with the story of
Persephone, see Clarac, _Musée de Sculpt. anc. at mod._--‘Bas-reliefs
Grecs et Romains,’ pp. 209-10.

[1520] _Monographie de la voie sacrée éleusinienne_, p. 56.

[1521] Aristoph. _Aves_, 1737.

[1522] Soph. _Antig._ 787 ff.

[1523] Pind. _Nem._ VI. _init._

[1524] Plato, _Phaedo_, cap. 32, p. 82 B, C.

[1525] See Geddes’ notes _ad loc._

[1526] For other evidence confirming this view, see Geddes’ notes _ad
loc._

[1527] Plutarch, _de defect. orac._ cap. 10, p. 415.

[1528] Plato, _Symp._ § 7, p. 180.

[1529] _ibid._ § 15, p. 188.

[1530] _ibid._ § 19, p. 193.




GENERAL INDEX


  Ablutions, at weddings and at funerals, 555

  Aborigines, regarded as wizards, 248;
    their relations with invaders, 244

  Absolution, and dissolution, 401;
    of the dead, 396 ff.

  Achaeans, religion of, 521 f.

  Adonis, story of, 582;
    story of, how interpreted, 580;
    as type of the initiated, 582

  Aeschylus, popular beliefs utilised by, 437 ff., 459 f.;
    religious sympathies of, 523

  Aetolus, story of, 273

  Agamemnon, as _revenant_, 438

  Alastor, application of word, 465 ff.;
    as proper name (in Homer), 473;
    as term of abuse, 477;
    derivation of word, 471;
    development of meaning of word, 475 f.;
    meaning of, 476;
    original meaning of, 472

  Alastores, 462 ff.;
    not originally deities, 467 ff.

  Allatius, on _vrykolakes_, 364 ff.

  Amorgos, oracle of, 332

  Amulets, 12-13, 21, 140

  Amymone, story of, 593

  Ancient language, attempted revival of, 30

  Angels, exorcism of, 68;
    good and bad, 288;
    worship of, 42

  Animals, unlucky species of, 307

  Anointing, of the dead, 557

  Anthropomorphic conception of God, 52

  Antigone, as ‘bride of Acheron,’ 551

  Antiphon, on blood-guilt, 443

  Aphrodite, 117-120;
    ‘eldest of the Fates,’ 120;
    mystic rites of, 580

  Apis, story of, 459

  Apollonius of Tyana, 257

  Apostasy, 409

  Apple, symbolic usage of, 558

  ‘Arabs’ (a class of demons), 211, 276 f.;
    identified with _vrykolakes_ (q.v.), 277

  Ariadne, story of, how represented on sepulchral monuments, 598

  Aristomenes, 76

  Arrogance of Greeks, 29

  Art, in relation to religion, 1

  Artemidorus, on death and marriage, 553 ff.

  Artemis, 163-171;
    as huntress, 165;
    as the Moon, 165;
    bathing of, 164-5;
    displaced by S. Artemidos, 44;
    modern character of, 169;
    offerings to, 170

  Asclepius, in serpent-form, 274 f.;
    re-incarnation of, in mock-mysteries, 589

  Ass-centaurs, 235 and 237 f.

  Athene, and the owl, 207;
    succeeded by Virgin Mary, 45

  Athenians, religious sympathies of, 523

  Attis, 586

  Augury (_see_ Auspices)

  August, certain days sacred to Nymphs, 152

  Auspices, 308 ff.;
    affected by number, 313;
    from any movement of birds, 311;
    from cry of birds, 311;
    from flight of birds, 311;
    from posture of birds, 311;
    modified by position of observer, 312

  Avengers, dead persons as, 438

  Avengers of Blood, ancient names for, 462 ff.;
    their resemblance to modern _vrykolakes_, 458

  Axe, double-headed, as religious symbol, 72


  ‘Baboutzicarios,’ 217

  Bacchic rites, 38

  Baptism, exorcisms at, 15;
    neglect of, 409

  Beast-dances, 224 ff.

  Bed-chambers, in temples, 587

  Beehive tombs, original use of, 94

  Bells, worn at popular festivals, 224 ff.

  ‘Binding’ and ‘loosing,’ 397

  Binding-spells, 19;
    means of loosing, 19

  Birds, as messengers, in modern ballads, 316 f.;
    as messengers of particular gods, 309;
    colloquial application of word, 315;
    in popular ballads, 315;
    still acknowledged as messengers of heaven, 315;
    which classes observed for auspices (q.v.), 308 f.;
    why selected for divination, 308

  Black-handled knife, as charm, 286

  Blessing the waters, 197

  Blood-guilt, ancient conception of, 451;
    Attic law concerning, 443;
    penalties for, 453;
    Plato’s legislation concerning, 444

  Blue beads, as amulets, 12

  Body and soul, relation of, 361 ff., 526 ff.;
    re-union of, 538

  Bones of the dead, how treated after exhumation, 540 f.

  Boreas, 52

  Breast-bone of fowl, divination from, 327

  Bridal customs (_see_ Wedding, Marriage)

  ‘Bridge of Arta,’ The, 262 f.

  _Brumalia_ (in Greece), 221

  Burial (_see also_ Cremation, Inhumation);
    demanded by ghosts, 431;
    lack of, 407 f., 427, 449;
    lack of, as punishment, 457

  Buzzing in ear, as omen, 329


  Callicantzari, 190-255;
    afraid of fire, 202;
    beast-like elements in, 203;
    compared with Centaurs, 253;
    demons or men?, 207-211;
    description of, 191;
    description of smaller species of, 193;
    development of superstition concerning, 254;
    dialectic forms of name, 211 ff.;
    footgear of, 221; general habits of, 194;
    how outwitted, 196-200;
    identified with Centaurs, 235;
    identified with were-wolves, 208;
    offerings to, 201, 232;
    originally anthropomorphic, 206;
    origin of name, 211 ff.;
    power of transformation possessed by, 204, 240;
    precautions against, 200-202;
    resembling Satyrs and Centaurs, 192;
    sources of their features and attributes, 237 ff.;
    stories concerning, 196-200;
    their activity limited to Christmastide, 221;
    their relation to Satyrs, etc., 229 ff.;
    two main classes of, 191;
    variously represented, 190;
    whether demons or men originally, 209 ff.;
    wives of, 200

  Callicantzaros, The Great, 195

  Callirrhoë, as sacred spring, 555

  Candles, thrown into grave at funeral, 512

  ‘Captain Thirteen,’ a folk-story, 75

  Carnival, celebrations of, 224 ff.

  Cat, jumping over dead person, 410;
    omens drawn from, 328

  Caves, haunted by Nymphs, 160

  Cenotaphs, 490

  Centauros, son of Ixion, 242

  Centaurs (_see_ Callicantzari), 190-255;
    and Lapithae, 242;
    as wizards, 248 f.;
    compared with Callicantzari, 253;
    general character of, 246;
    Heracles’ fight with, 253;
    how represented in Art, 247;
    in Hesiod, 242;
    in Homer, 243;
    in Pindar, 241;
    popular conception of, how affected by Art, 252;
    Prof. Ridgeway’s view of, 244 ff.;
    various species of, 235, 237;
    whether human or divine in origin, 241 ff.;
    why called ‘Beasts,’ 245 ff.

  Cephalus, 601

  Cerberus, 97, 99

  Character of modern Greeks, 28 ff.

  Charms, 286

  Charon, 98-117;
    addressed as ‘Saint,’ 53;
    ancient literary presentation of, 106;
    as ferryman, earliest mention of, 114;
    brother to Uranos, 116;
    identified with Death, 114

  Charon’s obol, 108, 285;
    as charm to prevent soul from re-entering body, 434;
    custom of, how interpreted, 405 f.

  Charos, appearance of, 100;
    as agent of God, 101-4;
    as archer, 105;
    as ferryman, 107;
    as godfather, story of, 102;
    as horseman, 105;
    as pirate, 107-8;
    as warrior, 105;
    as wrestler, 104, 105;
    Christianised character of, 101;
    coin as fee for, 109;
    functions of, 101;
    household of, 99;
    in connexion with Christianity, 101;
    originally Pelasgian deity, 116;
    pagan character of, 105

  Charun, Etruscan god, 116

  Child-birth, precautions against Nereids observed at, 140;
    precautions at, 10-11

  Children, conceived or born on Church-festivals, how afflicted, 408;
    liable to lycanthropy, 208;
    preyed upon by Gelloudes, 177;
    preyed upon by Striges, 181;
    stricken by Nereids, how treated, 145;
    suspected of lycanthropy, how treated, 210

  Chiron, 241 ff., 248;
    as magician and prophet, 248 f.

  Cholera, personified, 22

  Christ, accepted as new deity by pagans, 41

  ‘Christian,’ popular usage of word, 66

  Christianity, became polytheistic, 42;
    and paganism, 36

  Church, influenced by paganism, 572 f.

  Churching of women, 20

  Clement of Alexandria, on the Mysteries, 570, 572;
    on rites of Aphrodite, 581

  Clytemnestra, ghost of, 474

  Cock, as victim, 326

  Cocks, superstitions concerning, 195

  Coin, as charm, 111;
    placed in mouth of dead persons, 108, 405;
    placed in mouth of dead persons, various substitutes for, 112

  ‘Comforting,’ feast of, 533

  Common origin of gods and men, 65

  Communion with gods, philosophers’ views of, 296

  Conquering and conquered races, relations of, 244

  Conservatism, religious, 95, 295, 337

  ‘Constantine and Areté’ (ballad), 391 f.

  Continuity of Greek life and thought, 552

  Convention, literary, 429

  Corpse, re-animation of, 112 (_see_ Re-animation, Resuscitation)

  Corycian cave, 161

  Courage of Greeks, 28

  Cremation (_see also_ Funeral-rites), 485 ff.;
    ceremonial, 496, 512;
    ceremonial substitute for, 491;
    Christian attitude towards, 501;
    combined with inhumation, 494;
    disuse of, 501 f.;
    for disposing of _revenants_ in Ancient Greece, 416;
    for disposing of _vrykolakes_, 411;
    in theory preferable to inhumation, 488 f.;
    in recent times, 503;
    introduced by Achaeans, 491;
    motives for, 502 f.;
    preferred to inhumation, 500 f.;
    revival of, 502;
    serving same religious end as inhumation, 491 ff.

  Crockery broken at funerals, 520

  Crow, 309;
    exception to ordinary rules of divination, 310

  Curses, 387 ff., 409;
    diagnosed by their effects, 396;
    executed by demonic agents, 448;
    fixity of, 417;
    in Euripides, 418;
    in Sophocles, 419;
    operation of, 447;
    parental, 391 ff.;
    revoking of, 388 f.

  Custom-dues, for passage of soul to other world, 285

  Customs-officers, celestial, 284

  Cybele, rites of, 586


  Daemons, Plutarch’s theory of, 583 f.

  Danaids, as types of unmarried women, 592

  Dances, 34

  Dead, messages to the, 345;
    worship of the, 529 note 1

  Dead persons, as messengers to the other world, 344 ff.;
    what kinds of food presented to, 533 f.

  Deadly sins, 425 ff.

  Death, as penalty for bloodguilt, 455;
    conceived as a form of marriage, by Sophocles, 549 ff.;
    conceived as a form of marriage, in modern dirges, 546 ff.;
    conceived as a wedding with Persephone, 595;
    how personified in the _Alcestis_, 115;
    in correlation with marriage, 553;
    represented as a wedding on sepulchral monuments, 597 f.;
    sudden or violent, 408, 427

  Death-struggle, 288, 289;
    how eased, 389

  Decomposition (_see_ Dissolution)

  Degeneracy of mankind, 294

  Deities, gregarious or solitary, 70;
    non-Christian, how denoted, 67;
    pagan, local names for, 69

  ‘Delivering unto Satan,’ 406

  Demeter (_see also_ Mysteries of Demeter), 79-98;
    and Poseidon, modern story of, 86;
    as corn-goddess, 562;
    character of, 92;
    Cretan legend of, 579;
    displaced by S. Demetrius, 44;
    dwelling-place of, 92;
    evidence for identity of, 92;
    her priestesses officiating at weddings, 590;
    horse-headed, 87, 252;
    in Homer, 522;
    in modern story, 54;
    modern functions of, 93;
    modern titles of, 89;
    modern worship of her statue, 80;
    mysteries of (_see_ Mysteries);
    represented by S. Demetrius, 79;
    stories of her union with men, 579 f.;
    story of, compared with story of Christ, 576;
    where originally domiciled, 93-96

  Demeter and Persephone, modern legend of, 80;
    symbolism of myth concerning, 88;
    unity of, 88

  Demetrius Poliorcetes, story of, 587

  Demons, exorcism of, 68

  Despoina, 579;
    marriage with, 596

  Deucalion, 93

  Devils, entering bodies of dead men, 416;
    exorcism of, 68

  Devil, responsible for resuscitation of dead persons, 402

  ‘Diana,’ 164

  Dionysus, and Prosymnus, story of, 585;
    displaced by S. Dionysius, 43;
    festivals of, 228-230;
    identified with Adonis, 599;
    identified with Hades, 585, 599;
    in scenes on sepulchral monuments, 598 f.;
    marriage of the ‘queen’ with, 583;
    mystic rites of, 582

  Dioscuri, 286

  Dipylon-cemetery, excavations in, 494

  Dirges, 347;
    character of modern, 549;
    examples of modern, 546 ff.;
    purpose of, 519, 549

  Diseases, caused by demons, 22

  Dishonesty of Greeks, 31

  Disintegration (_see_ Dissolution)

  Dissolution, and absolution, 401;
    best secured by cremation, 502;
    desire for, a feature of Pelasgian religion, 524;
    distinguished from annihilation, 525, 538;
    summary of ancient views concerning, 526;
    time required for, 486 ff.;
    why desired, 515 ff.

  Divination, at weddings, 326;
    by chance words, 303 ff.;
    by lot, 303;
    by sacrifice, 264, 318;
    ‘domestic,’ 327;
    from birds (_see also_ Auspices), 308 ff.;
    from breast-bone of fowl, 327;
    from chance words, in antiquity, 305;
    from demeanour of victim, 326;
    from eggs, 331;
    from involuntary movements of limbs, etc., 329;
    from meetings on the road, 306;
    from pig’s spleen, 325;
    from sheep’s shoulder-blade, 321 ff.;
    from sieves, 331;
    from water, 332 f.;
    methods of, compared, 298;
    suggested divisions of, 298;
    various branches of, 298

  Dog howling at night, significance of, 328

  Dogs, 32

  Donkey, ill-omened, 307

  Dragons, as guardians of buried treasure, 281;
    in folk-story, 82;
    popular conception of, 280;
    story of, 281 f.

  Drama, primitive, 224-6;
    restrictions of, 429;
    rudiments of, 35

  Dreams, 300 ff.;
    deliberately induced, 303;
    ecclesiastical use of, 301

  Dress, at weddings and at funerals, 557

  ‘Drumlike’ (as description of dead bodies) (_see_ τυμπανιαῖος), 370

  Drunkenness, when permissible, 303, 533

  Dryads, 151


  Eagle, 309

  Easter, 575 f.;
    celebration of, 572 ff.

  Ecstasy, in ancient religion, 37;
    religious, 294 f., 576

  Eleusinian mysteries (_see_ Mysteries of Demeter)

  Eleusis, excavations in cemetery at, 495

  Empusa, 174, 175

  Entrails, inspection of victim’s, 320, 325

  Ephialtes, 21 (note 2)

  Epiphany, observance of, 197;
    superstitions concerning, 221

  Equality of men and gods, 604

  Erinyes (_see_ Furies)

  Eros, 118-120

  ‘Eternal drunkenness,’ 39

  Ethical influence of Christianity, 39

  Eudaemonia, as goddess, 602

  Eumaeus, reception of Odysseus by, 32

  Euphemistic names for deities, 69, 70

  Euripides, popular form of imprecation utilised by, 418

  Evil Eye, amulets against, 13;
    animals affected by, 11-12;
    cures for maladies caused by, 14;
    effects of, 10;
    inanimate things affected by, 12;
    in Greece, 9-15;
    means of averting, 14;
    persons affected by, 11;
    to whom attributed, 9-10;
    widespread belief in, 8

  Excommunication (_see also_ ‘binding’ _and_ ‘loosing’), 401;
    causing non-dissolution, instances of, 398 ff.;
    effects of, 386, 396 ff.;
    origin of, 406;
    pagan influence on doctrine of, 401 f.

  Execration (_see_ Curses, Imprecations)

  Exhumation, 540;
    at end of three years, 487

  Exile, as punishment of homicide, 445, 455

  Exorcism, by witch, 14-15


  ‘Fair Lady of the Mountains,’ 166

  Faith-cures, 60, 62

  Fallmerayer, 25

  Fasts, strictly observed, 574

  Fate, 289

  Fates, the, 120-130;
    appearance of, 124;
    at birth of Athena, 130;
    character of, 125;
    distribution of functions among, 127;
    functions of, 124, 127;
    inexorability of, 122;
    invocations of, 122, 128;
    number of, 124;
    offerings to, 120, 121, 125;
    prayer to, 123;
    seen or heard, 125-6;
    the lesser, 127-8;
    visits of, 125;
    wrath of, 126

  Festival-dress, as heirloom from mother to daughter, 537

  Festivals, popular, 34, 35;
    survival of pagan, 221 ff.

  Fire, kept burning at grave-side, 507 ff.;
    omens drawn from, 328

  Fishing-net, as prophylactic, 21

  Five, ominous number, 307 (note 1)

  Flood, modern traditions of the, 93

  Folklore, antiquity of, 8;
    as clue to ancient religion, 7;
    laws of, 8

  Folk-stories and ancient myths, relation of, 76

  Foreign cults naturalised in Greece, 580

  Forestry, superstitions relating to, 158

  Fortieth day after death, customs and beliefs concerning, 486 ff.

  Foundation-stone, ceremonial of laying, 264

  Funeral-customs, 345 ff., 496 ff.;
    assimilated to marriage-customs, 560;
    compared with marriage-customs, 554 ff.;
    in relation to the Mysteries, 593 f.

  Funeral-feasts (_see also_ Memorial Feasts), 532 f.

  Funeral-meats, 533 f., 535 f.

  Funeral-rites, Christian and pagan contrasted, 501;
    Homeric, 492;
    in Dipylon-period, 494;
    Mycenaean, 493;
    purpose of, 485 ff.;
    why necessary for due dissolution of body, 490

  Funerals, Solon’s regulations concerning, 346 ff.

  Funeral-usage, summary of conclusions concerning, 513 f.

  Furies, as agents of Clytemnestra, 448;
    as personified Curses, 448;
    in Homer, 522;
    origin of Aeschylus’ conception of, 460 f.

  Furtwängler, on death conceived as wedding, 597

  Future life, Achaean conception of, 521 f.;
    conceived in general as resembling life of gods, 525;
    Homeric conception of, 516 ff.;
    material character of, 524;
    modern conceptions of, 518 f.;
    Pindaric conception of, 518


  Garlands, at weddings and at funerals, 557 f.

  Garlic, as prophylactic, 140

  ‘Garlic in your eyes,’ 14

  Gello, 71;
    by-names of, 179;
    story of, 177

  Gelloudes, 176-9, 211;
    activities of, 179;
    cure for injuries inflicted by, 179

  Genii, 255-291;
    confused with victims offered to them, 267, 271 ff., 276 f.;
    definition of, 256;
    how related to the place or object which they inhabit, 259;
    in form of bulls, 261 f., 277;
    in form of dragons, 262, 280;
    in form of snakes, 258, 259, 272 f.;
    in Homer, 269;
    in human shape, 275;
    mating with Lamiae, 276;
    of air, 283 ff.;
    of bridges, 262;
    of buildings, 259-275;
    of churches, 261;
    of houses, 259;
    of human beings, 287 ff.;
    of mountains and caves, etc., 280 ff.;
    of water, 275 ff.;
    offerings to, 260, 274;
    sacrifice to, 262 ff.;
    sacrifice to, in Ancient Greece, 269 ff.

  Gennadius, story of, 399

  Getae, human sacrifice among the, 350

  Ghosts, asking for burial of body, 431;
    conventionally substituted for _revenants_ in ancient literature, 429;
    haunting neighbourhood of tombs, 430 f., 433;
    in ancient literature, 427;
    a modern Greek notions concerning, 428

  Giants, story of, 73

  Gifts to the dead, 493, 528 ff.;
    how regarded by the Church, 531 f.;
    in form of clothing, 536 f.;
    in form of drink, 536;
    in form of food, 533 ff.;
    in modern Greece, 532;
    in the classical-period, 530 f.;
    in the Dipylon-period, 530;
    in the Homeric Age, 529;
    in the Mycenaean Age, 529;
    motive for, 531, 537;
    on what days presented, 530 f.;
    until what date continued, 539 f.

  Goat-skins, worn at certain popular festivals, 223 ff.

  God, as controller of weather, in popular phrases, 51;
    modern applications of word, 48

  ‘God of Crete,’ 74

  Godhead, ancient view of, 65;
    attainable by men, 604 f.

  Gods, character of Greek, 526;
    Greek conception of, 292 f.

  Good Friday, 572 ff., 574 f.

  Gorgons, 184-190;
    and Scylla, 188;
    appearance of, 184;
    as deities of the sea, 188;
    character of, 185;
    compared with Sirens, 187;
    depravity of, 185-6

  Gorgon, meaning of the word, 186

  Goshawk, 311

  Guardian-angels, 288

  Guardian-spirits, in ancient Greece, 290


  Hades, 97;
    house of, how conceived by Homer, 517;
    modern presentment of, 518, 549

  Hair, as source of strength, 76;
    cf. 83

  Hare, unlucky to meet, 307

  Hawks, 309

  Headache, magical cure of, 22

  Healing, miraculous, 60, 302

  Hebrew religion, contrasted with Greek, 3

  Helena, 286

  Helios, displaced by S. Elias, 44

  Hemlock, 578

  Hera, as type of women, 591;
    cults of, 591;
    wedding of, 599

  Heracles, 469

  Hermes Agoraeus, oracle of, 305

  Hermes, as escorter of the dead, 544;
    succeeded by S. Michael, 45

  Heroes, in form of serpents, 273

  Heron, 309

  Hesiodic Ages of mankind, 294

  Hesperides, 282

  Hiccough, as omen, 330

  Hippolytus, oath of, 418

  Holy Ghost, rarely named by peasants, 51

  Holy Week, 572 ff.

  Homicide, Delphic tradition concerning, 444, 480;
    Plato’s legislation concerning, 451

  Honey-cakes, as diet of _genii_, 274

  Honey, as food for the dead, 533;
    chief offering to Nymphs, 150;
    offered to the Fates, 121

  Hospitality of Greeks, 31

  Human sacrifice, 262 ff., 273, 276;
    a modern conception of, 341 ff.;
    as means of sending a wife to some god, 583;
    long-continued in Ancient Greece, 343;
    modern story of, 339, 436;
    substitute for, 583

  Humour, popular sense of, 69

  Hylas, modern parallel to story of, 161

  Hymenaeus, legend of, 552


  Iasion, as type of the initiated, 579

  Icarus, 76

  Icons, 301

  Idolatry, popular inclination towards, 59

  Image, magical treatment of, 16

  Immorality of ancient deities, 39

  Immortal fruit, 281 f.;
    waters, 281

  Immortality, doctrine of, 350 f.

  Imprecations (_see also_ Curses), 387 ff.

  Incantation, against whirlwinds, 150

  Incorruptibility (_see also_ Vrykolakes), 384;
    ancient imprecations of, 417 ff.;
    Apollo’s threat of, 421;
    as punishment of blood-guilt, 456;
    ecclesiastical view concerning, 396

  Inhumation (_see also_ Funeral-rites), 485 ff.;
    ceremonial substitutes for, 489 f.;
    combined with cremation, 494;
    serving same religious end as cremation, 491 ff.;
    the Pelasgian rite, 491

  Initiated, future happiness of the, 563 f.;
    hopes of the, 578 f.

  Ino, parallel to story of, 138

  Insanity, popular view of, 299

  Inspiration, 299

  Interment (_see_ Inhumation)

  Intoxication, when permitted, 303, 533

  Iphigenia, sacrifice of, 270

  Iron, as prophylactic, 140

  Islands of the Blest, 520

  Itching of hand or foot, as omen, 330

  Ixion, 242


  Kalándae (festival of the Kalends of January), 221

  Ker, 289 f.

  Key laid on breast of corpse, 109, 112

  Knife, black-handled, as charm, 20, 172

  Kore (_see also_ Persephone); as representative of the initiated, 578;
    story of, how represented on sepulchral monuments, 597 f.


  Laceration of checks, etc., at funerals, 346

  Lamentation, at funerals, 347

  ‘Lame Demon,’ The, 195

  Lamia, ancient conception of, 175;
    of the Sea, 171;
    responsible for water-spouts, 172

  Lamiae, 174-6;
    character of, 174;
    mated with _genii_, 276

  Lamp, in Prytaneum, 513;
    ‘The Unsleeping,’ 508;
    thrown into grave at funeral, 512;
    why placed in graves, 505 f.

  Language, as evidence of tradition, 35

  Law governing evolution of Greek folklore, 206

  Leaven, damaged by Evil Eye, 12

  Left hand, unlucky, 312

  Left to right, lucky direction, 312

  Lenormant, on death conceived as a wedding, 601

  Leprosy, penalty for eating pig’s flesh, 87;
    why named by Aeschylus among penalties of blood-guilt, 453 f.

  Lightning, as instrument of God’s vengeance, 73;
    persons and objects struck by, 73

  Literature, in relation to religion, 2

  ‘Loosing,’ 397;
    equivalent to both ‘absolution’ and ‘dissolution,’ 401

  Love, as the bond of feeling between men and deities, 603;
    in relation to the doctrine of the Mysteries, 606

  Love-charms, 18

  Lucian, on offerings to gods, 335

  Lycaean Zeus, 352

  Lycanthropy, 208, 239 f.;
    in children, 380;
    infants liable to, 183

  Lying-in-state, 497


  Madness, 299;
    among penalties of blood-guilt, 454

  Magic, 15-25;
    sympathetic, 16, 521

  Maniotes, the, 441

  Mankind, of same race as gods, 65, 604

  Marriage and death, correlation of, 533

  Marriage, arranged by Athenians between Athene and Demetrius
        Poliorcetes, 587 f.;
    as ‘initiation,’ 590;
    association of the Mysteries with, 590 f.;
    binding-spells to prevent consummation of, 19;
    mimetic, as culminating point of Mysteries, 589;
    mimetic, enacted in many cults, 577-587;
    of men with deities, 545 ff.;
    of men with deities, as a religious doctrine, 560 f.;
    of men with deities, as mystic doctrine (summary), 602 f.;
    the Sacred (ἱερὸς γάμος), 591

  Marriage-customs, compared with funeral-customs, 554 ff.;
    transferred to the funeral-rite, 560

  Masks worn at popular festivals, 222 ff.

  Matrimonial prospects, divination concerning, 303

  Meat, excluded from funeral-repasts, 532

  Medea, 463, 468

  Medicine, popular, 21

  Megrim, cure of, 23

  Memorial-feasts, 486 ff.;
    dates of, 534;
    real purpose of, 534 f.;
    significance of the dates of, 539

  Men elevated to rank of daemons, 211

  Messages to the dead, 344 ff.

  Metamorphosis (_see_ Transformation)

  Metempsychosis, Plato’s theory of, 604 f.

  Miastor, application of word, 463 f.;
    meaning of, 477 ff.;
    original meaning of word, 465

  Miastores, 462 ff.

  Midday, dangers of, 79

  Miracles, expected by common-folk, 59;
    genuine, 60;
    sham, 60

  Mirrors, superstition concerning, 10

  ‘Mistress, The,’ 89;
    marriage of, 97

  ‘Mistress of the Earth and of the Sea,’ 54, 91, 579

  Monotheism, compared with polytheism, 40;
    no popular tendency towards, 3

  Morality, little connected with ancient religion, 37

  Mormo, 175

  Mountain-nymphs, 148

  Mourners, conduct of, 347;
    professional, 347

  Mouse, omens drawn from, 328

  Mouth, as exit of soul, 111

  Mummers, at Christmastime and at Carnival, 223 ff.;
    representing Callicantzari, 227

  Mumming, a survival of Dionysiac festivals, 229 ff.

  Murder of kinsman, 425;
    legal punishment for, 457

  Murdered men as avengers (_see_ Avengers, _Revenants_)

  Murdered persons, avenging their own wrongs, 437 ff.;
    bodily activity of, 438;
    future lot of, 434 f.;
    mutilation of, 435;
    personal activity of, 440 ff.;
    returning in bodily form, 438

  Murderers, future punishment of, 434 ff.;
    penalties incurred by, 453 ff.

  Mutilation of murdered persons, 435

  Mysteries, alleged impurity of, 569 f.;
    allusions to, in Tragedy, 550;
    associated with funerals, 594 f.;
    associated with wedding-rites, 590 f.;
    benefits secured by participation in, 38;
    Christian attitude towards, 569;
    containing no doctrine alien to popular religion, 567;
    grades of initiation in, 566;
    main doctrines of the, 569;
    openly performed in Crete, 568;
    of Aphrodite, 581 f.;
    of Cybele, 586;
    of Demeter, (_see below_ Mysteries of Demeter);
    of Dionysus, 582;
    parodied by the false prophet Alexander, 588 f.;
    Sabazian, 585;
    summary of doctrines taught by, 589 f.;
    summary of argument concerning, 602 f.;
    their doctrines kept secret, 567;
    their promises summarised by Theo Smyrnaeus, 566

  Mysteries of Demeter, Achaeans excluded from, 567 f.;
    ancient references to, 563 f.;
    Christian attitude towards, 578;
    compared with modern celebration of Holy Week and Easter, 572 ff.;
    dramatic nature of, 577;
    their effect on spectators, 576;
    held in great veneration, 562 f.;
    how understood by participants, 578 f.;
    Pelasgian in origin, 567;
    safeguards of morality in, 577 f.;
    specific charge of impurity against, 577;
    test of linguistic purity imposed at Eleusis, 568;
    their kinship with Christian beliefs, 576;
    their promises based on ideas of popular religion, 565;
    their promises summarised, 565


  Naiads, 159

  ‘Nailing,’ magical rite, 17

  Nationality, 27

  Nereids (_see also_ Nymphs, Sea-nymphs, Mountain-nymphs, Tree-nymphs,
and Water-nymphs), 130 ff.;
    animals susceptible to influence of, 135;
    appearances of, 131;
    bride-like appearance of, 133;
    by-names of, 132;
    called ‘she-devils,’ 149;
    children carried off by, 150;
    confusion of different species, 153;
    consorts of, 149;
    cruelty of, 139;
    cures for mischief done by, 145;
    depart at cock-crow, 137;
    description of, 132-4;
    domestic accomplishments of, 133;
    dress of, 133;
    famed for skill in spinning, 134;
    festival of, 153;
    forms of name, 130 (note 3);
    general precautions against, 144;
    in old signification, 146;
    inconstancy of, 135, 138;
    longevity of, 156;
    magical kerchief of, 136;
    male, 149;
    means of protection against, 140;
    not immortal, 156;
    offerings to, 140, 150;
    responsible for whirlwinds, 150;
    ‘seizure’ by, 142;
    story of wedding-procession of, 149;
    supernatural qualities in dress of, 136;
    theft of children by, 141;
    their love of children, 140;
    their marriage with men, 134;
    their relations with men, 134-9;
    their relations with women, 139;
    transformation of, 137;
    widespread belief in, 131;
    with feet of goat or ass, 133

  Nether world (_see_ Under-world)

  _Nomocanon de excommunicatis_, 397

  _Nomocanon_ concerning _vrykolakes_, 365, 402 f.

  Non-dissolution (_see also_ Vrykolakes), 366;
    ancient imprecations of, 417 ff.

  Numbers, lucky and unlucky, 313

  Nymphs (_see also_ Nereids), 130 ff.;
    not immortal, 156;
    punishment for violence done to, 584;
    seizure by, 142


  Oedipus, curse pronounced by, 419

  Offerings, how affected by Christianity, 337;
    to Artemis, 170;
    to Callicantzari, 201;
    to _genii_, 274;
    to gods, motive of, 335, 336 f.;
    to Nereids, 140;
    to Saints, 58, 337;
    to the dead (_see_ Gifts), 493

  Oil, spilling of, as omen, 328

  Olive, foliage or wood used in funerals, 498 f.

  Olympus, as abode of the Fates, 128

  Omens (_see_ Divination);
    from dripping of water, 121

  Oracle of Amorgos, 332

  Oracles, 305, 331 ff.

  Orchestra, 35

  Oreads, 148

  Orestes, how spurred on to vengeance, 441 f.;
    with what penalties threatened by Apollo, 421

  Orithyia, 601

  Orphics, 38

  Orphic tablets, 595 f.

  Owl-faced Athene, 207

  Owls, 309, 310, 311

  ‘Ox-headed man,’ The, (popular story), 278


  Pagan customs, inveteracy of, 46;
    deities, how denoted, 67

  Palmistry, 329

  Pan, 77-9

  Panagia, portraits of, 301

  Paradise, popular conception of, 519

  Parga, evacuation of, 503

  Parthenon, Christian use of, 45;
    figures in east pediment of, 130

  Patriotism of Greeks, 28

  Patroclus, funeral of, 348 f., 529

  Patroclus’ ghost, 429;
    why desirous of burial, 516

  Pausanias, on human sacrifice, 353

  Pedantry of Greeks, 30

  Pelasgians, religion of, 522 f.

  Peleus (_see_ Thetis)

  Pentacle, 113, 406

  _Perpería_, 24

  Persephone (_see also_ Kore, Demeter);
    ‘bridal-chamber’ of, 595

  _Pharmakos_, 355 ff.

  Pheneos, Lake, 85

  ‘_Pheres_,’ 243

  Philinnion, story of, 413, 433

  Phlegon, story of _revenant_ narrated by, 412 ff.

  Phlya, mystic rites at, 587

  Physique of Modern Greeks, 26, 27

  Pig’s flesh, taboo, 87;
    spleen, used for divination, 325

  Plague, personified, 22;
    personified as trio of female demons, 124

  Pollution, 425;
    ancient conception of, 451;
    of bloodguilt, 445

  Polydorus, ghost of, 429

  Polynices, doom of, 420

  Polytheism, compared with monotheism, 40;
    merits of, 292;
    modern, 47, 48;
    popular bent towards, 54

  Pomegranate, symbolic usage of, 558 ff.

  Poseidon, 75-77;
    as healer, 46

  ‘Possession,’ by angels or devils, 68;
    by devils, 144;
    by the devil, as punishment, 406

  Poultry, divination from, 312

  Prayer, usually accompanied by offerings, 335

  Predestination, 122

  Priest, unlucky to meet, 306

  Prometheus, legend of, 74

  Prometheus’ prophecy of Zeus’ downfall, 552

  Prytaneum of Athens, shape of, 96

  Psellus, on divination, 321, 324

  _Pulcra montium_, 167

  Punishment after death, 419 ff.

  Purification, from bloodguilt, 451, 483;
    means of, 357

  Purity, confusion of physical and moral, 37

  Pythagoras and Zalmoxis, 351


  ‘Queen of the Mountains,’ The, 163

  ‘Queen of the Shore,’ The, 163

  Quince, symbolic usage of, 558 f.


  Rail (_ornith._), 309

  Rain-charm, 23

  Rain-making, 49

  Ram, as victim, 326

  Rat, unlucky to meet, 307

  Raven, 309

  Re-animation (_see also_ Resuscitation, _Vrykolakes_), 384;
    of corpses left unburied, 449;
    of dead body by the soul, 432 ff.

  Religion, Achaean and Pelasgian elements in, 522 f.;
    character of Greek, 2, 294, 361 f., 545;
    complexity of Greek, 4

  Religious feeling, dominance of, 5-7;
    literature, absence of, 2-5

  Resuscitation (_see also_ Re-animation, _Vrykolakes_), 388;
    of dead persons, how viewed by the Church, 402 ff.;
    of dead persons, summary of Hellenic belief concerning, 434

  Retribution, doctrine of future, 523;
    exactitude of, 453 ff.;
    law of, 435

  _Revenants_ (_see also Vrykolakes_);
    ancient names for, 462 ff.;
    ancient Greek instances of, 412 ff.;
    as Avengers of blood, 434 ff.;
    as Avengers of blood, summary of ancient belief concerning, 461;
    as Avengers of blood, their traits transferred to the Furies, 460;
    called up by sorcerers, 404;
    contrasted with ghosts, 427;
    different species of, 384;
    distinguished from ghosts, 416;
    exacting their own vengeance, in ancient literature, 438;
    Greek conception of, 394;
    harmless type of, 394 f.;
    Hellenic conception of, 412;
    in ancient literature, 430, 438 f.

  Rhapsodes, 34

  Richard, le Père, on _vrykolakes_, 367

  Ridgeway, on cremation and inhumation, 491

  Right hand, lucky, 312

  ‘Riotings,’ The, 226

  River-gods, 277, 280

  Rohde, on cremation, 492

  _rosalia_, 45


  Sabazian mysteries, 585

  Sabazius, in form of snake, 586

  Sacrifice (_see also_ Human Sacrifice), 335 ff.;
    at launching of ship, 266;
    at laying foundation-stone, 264;
    at opening of quarry, 265;
    at weddings, 326;
    human, 262 ff.;
    to _genii_, 276;
    to _genii_, Slavonic influence upon, 268

  Sacrifices, classification of, 338

  Sacrificial omens, 319

  Saints, functions of, 55;
    functions suggested by names of, 56;
    offerings made to, 58;
    sometimes reputed immoral or malign, 56;
    substituted for ancient gods, 43;
    with titles denoting locality, function, etc., 55;
    worship of, 42

  S. Artemidos, cures children ‘struck by the Nereids,’ 44;
    successor to Artemis, 44

  ‘Saint Beautiful,’ 164

  S. Catharine, 303

  S. Demetra, at Eleusis, 80;
    Eleusinian legend of, 80

  S. Demetrius, successor to Demeter, 44

  S. Dionysius, successor to Dionysus, 43

  S. Elias, responsible for thunder, 52;
    successor to Helios, 44

  S. Elmo’s light, 286

  S. George, displacing Theseus or Heracles, 45;
    legend concerning, 261

  ‘S. John of the Column,’ 58

  S. John the Baptist, 37, 304

  S. Luke, as painter, 301

  S. Michael, successor to Hermes, 45

  S. Nicolas, 340;
    patron of sailors, 287;
    superseding Poseidon, 75

  Salt-cake, 303

  Salt, dissolving of, as magical ceremony, 388 f.

  Satan, delivering persons unto, 406

  _Saturnalia_ (in Greece), 221

  Satyrs and Centaurs, closely related, 236

  Satyr-dances, 229

  Scylla, replaced by modern Gorgon, 188;
    parentage of, 173

  Scyros, faith-cure at, 62

  Sea-nymphs, 146

  ‘Seizure,’ by Nymphs, 142

  Serpents, as incarnations of heroes, 274

  Shadow, as _genius_, 289

  Shadow-victims, 265

  ‘She-devils,’ Nereids so called, 149

  Sheep-dogs, 32

  Shooting-stars, 286

  Shoulder-blade of sheep, used for divination, 321 ff.

  Sieve, employed to detain Callicantzari, 196-7

  Sieves, divination from, 331

  Sileni, 230

  _Silicernium_, 535

  Sins, deadly, 409 f., 425 ff.

  Sirens, 187

  Slavonic immigrations, 26;
    influence on belief in vampires, 376 ff.

  Sleep and Death, 543

  Sleeping in churches, 61

  Small-pox, personified, 22

  Snake, as _genius_ of Acropolis, 260;
    auspicious in house, 328;
    bearded, 274;
    unlucky to meet on road, 307

  Snakes, as manifestations of deities, 275

  Snake-form, assumed by _genii_ (_see_ Genii)

  Sneezing, as omen, 330

  Socrates’ familiar spirit, 291

  Sophocles, popular form of imprecation utilised by, 419

  Sorcery, punishment of, 409

  Sosipolis, story of, 272

  Souls (_see_ Ghosts)

  Soul and body, relations of, 361 ff., 526 ff.;
    re-union of, 538

  Soul-cult, Rohde’s theory of, 529, note 1

  Soul, emancipation of, 515 f.;
    Homeric conception of, 517 f.;
    Socrates’ teaching concerning, 516

  Spitting, to avert malign influences, 14, 307

  Stars, baneful influence of, 10, 11

  Stoat, unlucky to meet, 307

  Striges, 179-184, 211;
    Italian origin of, 180;
    intercourse of devils with, 416;
    precautions against, 181;
    prey upon children, 181;
    stories concerning, 182-3

  Strigla, 282

  Sucking-pig, as victim, 483

  Suicides, 408

  Sun, relics of worship of, 44

  Surrogate Victims, 355

  Swallow-song, 35

  Sympathetic magic, 264


  Taboo, 87, 357

  Taenarus, descent to Hades at, 45

  Tartarus, 98

  _Telonia_, 284;
    local usages of name, 287

  Temples, as treasuries, 96;
    converted to churches, 45

  Tenos, Church of Annunciation at, 45, 58;
    faith-cures at, 60;
    miraculous _icon_ of, 301

  Thargelia, 356

  ‘The Beautiful One of the Earth,’ 97

  ‘The Great Lady,’ 163

  ‘The Lady Beautiful,’ 163

  ‘The Lamia of the Sea,’ 171

  ‘The Lamia of the Shore,’ 171

  ‘The Mistress,’ 89;
    marriage of, 97

  Theseum, Christian use of, 45

  Theseus, 469

  Thesmophoria, 87

  Thetis, modern parallel to story of, 137

  Thracians, funeral-rites of, 500

  Thread of life, 124

  Three, ominous number, 307 (note 1), 487

  Thunderbolt, 72

  Thunder-god, 50

  Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus, martyrdom of, 222

  Titans, story of, 73

  Titles of saints, sources of, 55

  Tolerance of pagans, 42

  Torches, at funerals, 505 ff.

  Traditions, popular and literary, 432

  Trance, 69

  Transformation, magic power of, 86, 249;
    power of, attributed to _genii_, 276;
    power of, how indicated in Art, 251

  Transmigration of souls, Plato’s theory of, 604 f.

  Treasure, guarded by dragons, 281

  Treasury of Atreus, original use of, 94

  Tree, supporting the world, 155

  Tree-nymphs, 151;
    confused with water-nymphs, 153;
    woodcutters’ precautions against, 158

  Trees, not to be cut or peeled on certain days in August, 152

  Tuesday, unlucky day, 313

  Tutelary _genii_, fed on honey-cakes, 274

  ‘Twelve Days,’ The, 221

  Twitching of eyebrow, as omen, 329


  Unburied (_see_ Burial, lack of)

  Under-world (_see also_ Future life);
    Homeric conception of, 517 f.;
    modern presentment of, 549

  Uninitiated, future fate of the, 563 f., 592

  Unmarried, funeral-rite of the, 556;
    future fate of the, 592

  ‘Unsleeping Lamp,’ The, 540


  Vampires (_see Vrykolakes_);
    characteristics of Slavonic, 387;
    modern Greek conception of, 363 ff.;
    Slavonic treatment of, 410 f.

  Vampirism, causes of, 375, 407 ff.;
    imprecations of, 387;
    instances of, 367 ff.;
    widespread belief in, 371 ff.

  Vendetta, 440 ff.

  Vengeance for blood-guilt, extended to whole communities, 459;
    for homicide, Delphic tradition concerning, 444 ff.

  Vengeance for murder, effected by a curse, 446 f.;
    effected by demonic agents, 448;
    exacted by murdered person, 435 ff.;
    incumbent on next-of-kin, 440;
    legally incumbent on next-of-kin, 443 f.;
    methods of, 453 ff.

  Vesta, temple of, 96

  Victim, as messenger, 340 ff.;
    elevated to rank of _genius_, 267 ff., 276

  Vintage-festival, 35

  Virgin, worship of the, 51

  Virginity, consecrated to river-god, 592

  Virility, affected by magical spell, 19

  Visualisation, peasants’ powers of, 47

  Votive offerings, character of, 58

  Vows, 59

  _Vrykolakas_, Greek equivalents for word, 381 f.;
    how originally employed in Greek, 378;
    occasionally used in sense of ‘were-wolf,’ 379 f.;
    origin of word, 377;
    original meaning of word, 377 f.;
    Slavonic forms of word, 377 (note 2)

  _Vrykolakes_ (_see also_ Incorruptibility, Resuscitation, _Revenants_,
        Vampires, Vampirism), 361 ff.;
    attitude of authorities towards belief in, 371 f.;
    belief in them not wholly Slavonic, 381;
    capable of sexual commerce, 415 f.;
    classes of persons liable to become, 375, 407 ff.;
    close resemblance of ancient _revenants_ to, 458;
    corporeal nature of, 376;
    cremation of, substitutes for, 488;
    ecclesiastical view of, 386, 396 ff.;
    Greek treatment of, 410 f., 502;
    Hellenic element in conception of, 407;
    how disposed of, 371 f.;
    lineage traced from, 416;
    modern Greek conception of, 363 ff.;
    _nomocanon_ concerning, 365, 402;
    not to be confused with ghosts, 376;
    occasional barbarities inflicted upon, 412;
    original Greek type of, 391 ff.;
    peculiar method of treating, 540;
    recent cases of the burning of, 374;
    recent Cretan account of, 372;
    resuscitated by the Devil, 405 f.;
    Slavonic influence upon conception of, 376 ff.;
    stories of, 368 ff.;
    widespread belief in, 371 ff., 374

  Vultures, 309


  ‘Wanderers,’ 473

  Washing, prohibited on certain days of August, 152

  Water, immortal, 281;
    miraculous, 60;
    oracular property of, 334;
    pouring out of, as magic rite, 520;
    salt, bars passage of supernatural beings, 368 (note 1), 372;
    ‘speechless,’ 304, 331;
    spilling of, as omen, 328
    supplied daily to the dead, 539;

  ‘Water-bearer,’ the, 556, 592 f.

  Water-nymphs, 159;
    confused with tree-nymphs, 153;
    precautions against, 160

  Water-pitcher (_see also_ Water-bearer), 594

  Water-spout, caused by Lamia of the Sea, 52;
    superstitions concerning, 172

  Weasel, unlucky to meet, 307;
    why unlucky to see, 327

  Weather, chief province of God, 51

  Wedding, ‘The Sacred,’ 599 f.;
    in Hades, The, (ballad), 548

  Wedding-customs (_see_ Marriage-customs)

  Wedding-dress, as funeral-garb of betrothed girls or young wives, 557

  Weddings, precautions at, 13;
    precautions against magic at, 20;
    sacrifice and divination at, 326

  Wedding-scenes on funeral-monuments, 597 f., 601 f.

  Were-wolves, 239;
    and vampires, 377 f.;
    become vampires after death, 385

  Whirlwinds, caused by nymphs, 52, 150;
    safeguard against, 150

  Winds, personified, 52

  Wine, passed from left to right, 312;
    spilling of, as omen, 328

  Winter festivals, 221 ff.

  Witch, as rain-maker in Santorini, 49

  Witchcraft, male and female exponents of, 15, 16

  Witches, 15

  Woodpecker, 309

  Wooing, how conducted, 558

  Wren, 309


  Zalmoxis, 350 f.

  Zeus, 72-74;
    Lycaean, 352;
    Meilichios, 275;
    Prostropaeus, 481;
    survival of name, 74




INDEX OF GREEK WORDS AND PHRASES


  ἀγάπη, 603

  ἀγγελικά, 68

  ἀγγελοθωρεῖ, 288

  ἀγγελοκρούσθηκε, 289

  ἀγγελομαχεῖ, 289

  ἀγγελοσκιάζεται, 289

  ἀγγελοφορᾶται, 289

  ἁγι̯ασμός, 197

  ἀγιελοῦδες, 147, 176

  ἅγος, 451

  ἀδερφοί μας, οἱ, 70

  ἀδερφοφᾶδες, 208

  ἀερικά, 68, 283

  Ἀκμονίδης, 116

  ἀκοίμητο καντῆλι, τὸ, 508

  ἀλαίνειν, 472, 474

  ἀλάομαι, 474

  ἀλάστωρ (_see_ Alastor), 462 f., 465 ff.

  ἀλαφροστοίχει̯ωτοι, 204, 288

  ἀλιτήριοι, 482

  Ἀλουστίναι, 155

  ἄλυτος, 381, 397

  ἀμπόδεμα, 19

  ἀμφιθαλής, 600

  ἀναικαθούμενος, 382

  ἀναρᾳδοπαρμένος, 142

  ἀνάρραχο, 381

  ἀνασκελᾶδες, 205 (note 1)

  ἀνεμικαίς, 150

  ἀνεμογαζοῦδες, 150

  ἄνθρακες ὁ θησαυρός (proverb), 281

  ἀπάντημα, 306

  ἀπενιαυτεῖν, 445

  ἀποικίζω (in Soph. _O. C._ 1383 ff.), 419

  ἀπόρρητος, 569

  Ἀράπηδες, 276

  ἀραχνιασμένος, 518

  ἄρρητος, 569

  ἀστροπελέκι, 72

  ἀσώματοι, οἱ, 144

  Ἀφροδίτισσα, 118


  βάμπυρας, 378

  βασίλιννα, 583

  βασίλισσα τοῦ γιαλοῦ, ἡ, 163

  βασίλισσα τῶν βουνῶν, ἡ, 163

  βασκαίνω, 9

  βασκανία, 9

  βασκανισμοί, 14

  βιστυρι̯ά, 9 (note 2)

  βόμπυρας, 378

  βουρκόλακας, 364

  Βραχνᾶς, 21

  βρυκόλακας, 364

  βρυκολακιάζω, 390


  Γελλοῦδες, 148, 177

  γενέσια, 531

  γεραραί, 583

  γιαλοῦδες, 147, 176

  Γιλλόβρωτα, 178

  γλαυκῶπις, 207

  Γοργόνες, 184

  γραψίματα τῶν Μοιρῶν, 126


  δᾳδουχία, 566

  δαίμονας τῆς θάλασσας, ὁ, 75

  δαίμονες, 569

  δαίμονες )( θεοί, 41

  δαιμόνια, 68

  δαιμόνιον μεσημβρινόν, 79

  δὲν ξέρει τὰ τρία κακὰ τῆς Μοίρας του, 127

  δένω, 397

  δέσιμον, 19

  δέσποινα, 90

  δέω, 397

  Δημητρεῖοι, 579

  διαβόλισσαις, 149

  δράκος, δράκοντας, 280

  δράσαντι παθεῖν (proverb), 435

  δρύμαις, 151

  δρύματα, 151


  ἐγκοίμησις, 61

  εἰδωλικά, 68

  εἰρεσιώνη, 35

  ἐλευθεροῦν, 424

  ἐναγίσματα, 530, 531

  ἔνατα, 531, 532

  ἐνόδιοι σύμβολοι, 298

  ἐξωπαρμένος, 143

  ἐξωτικά, 143

  ἐξωτικός, 67

  ἑορτοπιάσματα, 208

  ἐποπτεία, 566

  ἐργασάμενος, 578

  ἔρως, 603

  Ἔρωτας, ὁ, 118

  εὐδαίμων, 600

  εὔμορφος, 439

  εὐρώεις, 518

  ἔχει ᾱπ’ ἔξω, 143


  ζαβέται, 146

  ζούμπιρα, 69

  ζωντόβολα, 69


  Θάνατος, personification of, 115

  θεός, modern applications of word, 48

  θεοφιλής, 566

  θύειν, 335

  θυσία, 335

  θυσίαι, 530


  ἱερὸς γάμος, 591

  ἱεροφαντία, 566

  ἱπποκένταυροι, 235


  ἰσκιοπατήθηκε, 289

  ἴσκιος, 289

  ἴυγξ, 18

  ἰχθυοκένταυροι, 235


  κάηδες, 208

  καθαρεύειν τῇ φωνῇ, 568

  καθάρματα, 355

  καϊμπίλιδες, 209

  κακανθρωπίσματα, 205

  κακαουσκιαίς, 153

  καλαὶς ἀρχόντισσαις, ᾑ, 132

  καλαὶς κυρᾶδες, to whom applied, 171

  Καλή, ἡ ἅγι̯α, 164

  Καλὴ τῶν ὀρέων, ἡ, 166

  καλι̯οντζῆδες, 215

  καλιτσάγγαρος, 220

  καλκαγάροι, 213

  καλκάνια, 213

  καλκατζόνια, 215

  καλλικαντζαρίνα, 200

  καλλικάντζαρος, derivation of, 232 ff.;
    dialectic varieties of form of, 211 ff.;
    proposed derivations of, 215 ff.;
    table of dialectic forms of, 214

  καλλικαντζαροῦ, 200

  καλλικυρᾶδες, 132

  Καλλισπούδηδες, 192

  καλοί, οἱ, 70

  καλοΐσκι̯ωτος, 289

  καλοκυρᾶδες, ᾑ, 125, 132

  καλορίζικοι, οἱ, 70

  Κάλω, ἡ κυρά, 163

  καμπουχέροι, 223, 227

  κάνθαρος, 219

  κανίσκια, 487

  καντανικά, 69

  κάντζαρος = κένταυρος, 233

  κάρφωμα, 17

  καταχανᾶδες (_see_ Vrykolakes), 372

  καταχανᾶς, 382

  καταχύσματα, 535 (note 4)

  κατζαρίδες, 219

  κατσικᾶδες, 193

  κατσιμπουχέροι, 223, 227

  καψιούρηδες, 203

  Κήρ, 289

  κίρκος, 311

  κλεηδόνιος (epithet of Hermes), 306

  κλήδονας, ὁ, 304

  κληδόνες, 298

  κληδών, 304

  κνώδαλα, 460

  κοιμητήρια, 542

  κόλλυβα, 487, 535

  κόλπος, 596

  κόλυμβος, 129

  κόπηκε ἡ κλωστή του (proverbial), 124

  κόρυμβος, 129

  κοσκινομαντεία, 331

  κουκουβάγια, 310, 311

  κουρμπάνι̯α, 322

  κουτσοδαίμονας, ὁ, 207

  κρυερός, 518

  κρυοπαγωμένος, 518

  κυρά, ἡ μεγάλη, 163

  κυρὰ τοῦ κόσμου, ἡ, 89

  κυρὰ τσῆ γῆς καὶ τσῆ θαλάσσης, ἡ, 54, 91

  κωλοβελόνηδες, 192


  λάμπασμα, λάμπαστρο, 381

  λοιβαί, 530

  λουτροφόρος, 556, 594

  Λυκαῖος, 352

  λυκάνθρωπος, 241, 384

  λυκοκάντζαροι, 203, 215

  λυκοκάντζαρος, 239 f.

  λυόνω, 397

  λύω, 397


  μαζεύει γράμματα γιὰ τοὺς πεθαμμένους (proverb), 346

  μαζώθηκε τὸ κουβάρι του (proverbial), 124

  μακαρία, 532

  μακαρίτης, 532

  μακραίωνες, 156

  μάνα τοῦ Ἔρωτα, ἡ, 118

  μαντική, 298

  μασχαλίζειν, 435 f., 442

  μασχαλισμός, 359

  μάτι, τὸ κακό, 9

  μάτι̯αγμα, 9

  ματιάζω, 9

  μέγαρα, 94

  μελιτοῦττα, 533

  μήνιμα, 447, 449

  μίασμα, 425, 451

  μιάστωρ (_see_ Miastor), 462 ff.

  μνημόσυνα, 487, 534

  Μοῖρα, 289

  Μοῖραις, 120, 122, etc.

  Μόρα (or Μώρα), ἡ, 174

  μυρολογήτριαις, μυρολογίστριαις, 347

  μυρολόγια (_see_ Dirges)

  μύσος, 451


  νὰ φᾶς τὸ κεφάλι σου, 14

  νεκύσια, 531

  νεραϊδάλωνο, 148

  Νεράϊδες, 130

  Νεραΐδης, 149

  νεραϊδογεννημένος, 134

  νεραϊδογνέματα, 134

  νεραϊδοκαμωμένος, 134

  νοικοκύρης, 260

  ντουπί, 370

  νύμφη, 131

  νυμφόληπτος, 142

  νυφίτσα, 328

  Νυχτοπαρωρίταις, 195


  ξαφνικά, 68

  ξεραμμέναις, 160

  ξεφτέρι, 317 (note 1)

  ξόανα, 226

  ξόρκια, ξορκισμοί, 14

  ξωτικά, 67, 207


  ὁ βρυκόλακας ἀρχίζει ἀπὸ τὰ γένειά του (proverb), 387

  ὁ διὰ κόλπου θεός, 586

  οἰκοσκοπικόν, 298, 327

  οἰκουροί, 260

  οἰωνός, 308

  ὀνοκένταυροι, 235, 237 f.

  ὄρνις, 307

  ὅτι γράφουν ᾑ Μοίραις, δὲν ξεγράφουν (proverbial saying), 122


  παγανά, 67, 207

  παλαμναῖος, 448

  παλμικόν, 298, 329

  πανηγύρια, 34

  παππαροῦνα, 24

  παρηγορία, 533

  παρμένος, 142

  Παρωρίταις, 195

  παστάς, 96, 587

  παστός, 587

  πεντάγραμμον, 113

  πεντάλφα, 113

  περατίκι, 109, 286

  περίδειπνον, 531, 532

  περπερία, 24

  Πεταλώτης (title of S. George), 261

  πιασμένος, 142

  πίζηλα, 70

  Πλανήταροι, 192, 204

  πλάτωμα, 148

  πρόθεσις, 497

  προμνήστρια, 558

  προξενήτρια, 558

  προστρέπω, προστρέπομαι, 479

  προστροπαῖος, 462 f., 479 ff.

  προτέλεια, 591


  Ῥἱζικάς, ὁ, 304 (note 3)

  ῥουκατζιάρια, 224, 226

  ῥουσάλια, 45


  σαββατογεννημένοι, 288

  σαραντάρια, σαρανταρίκια, 488 (notes 1 and 2)

  σαραντίζω, 20

  σαρκωμένος, 382

  σκαλλικάντζαρος (_see_ καλλικάντζαρος), 213

  σκατζάρια, 215

  σκατσάντσαροι, 215

  σκηνή, 35

  σκιορίσματα, 203, 205

  σκόρδο ’στὰ μάτι̯α σου, 14

  σμερδάκια, 69

  σπλαγχνοσκοπία, 325

  σπονδαί, 530

  στοιχει̯ά (στοιχεῖα) (_see_ Genii);
    comprehensive usage of, 69

  στοιχεῖα, development of meaning of, 255 ff.;
    τοῦ κόσμου, τὰ (St Paul), 255-6

  στοιχειό, 548

  στοιχειόνω, 267

  στοιχειοῦν, 256

  στοιχειωματικός, 256

  στοιχειωμένος, 258, 382

  στρίγγαι, 144

  στρίγλαις (στρίγγλαις, στρῦγγαι), 180-1

  στριγλοποῦλι, 180

  συρτός, 34

  σφάζειν, 336

  σφανταχτά, 68

  σώθηκε ἡ κλωστή του (proverbial), 124


  ταράματα, τά, 226

  ταριχευθέντα (Aesch. _Choeph._ 288), 421, 456

  τέλειοι, 591

  τελεύμεναι, αἱ, 590

  τέλη, 553

  τελώνια, comprehensive usage of, 69

  τελωνιακά, 286

  τῆς Λάμιας τὰ σαρώματα (proverb), 174

  τόπακας, 260

  τριακάδες, 531

  τρίτα, 530, 532

  τροῦπαις τοῦ διαβόλου, ᾑ, 85

  τσίκρος, 311

  τσιλικρωτά, 192

  τσίνια, 68

  τυμπανιαῖος, 365, 370, 381, 385 f., 400

  τυμπανίτης (_see also_ τυμπανιαῖος), 400

  Τύχη, 289


  ὑδροφορεῖν, 593


  Φανιστής, ὁ, 304 (note 3)

  φαντάσματα, 68

  φαρμακός, ὁ, 355

  φάσκελον, τὸ, 14

  φάσματα, 68

  Φῆρες, 245, 250


  χαμοδράκι, 281 (note 2)

  χαροποῦλι, 310

  Χάροντας, 97

  Χάρος, 97

  χαρούμενοι, οἱ, 70

  Χαρώνειος, 114

  Χαρωνῖται, 114

  χειροσκοπικόν, 298

  χελιδόνιον, meaning of, 161 (note 2)

  χελιδόνισμα, 35

  χοαί, 530


  ψυχόπηττα, 534


  ὠμοπλατοσκοπία, 321

  ὠοσκοπικά, 331

  ὥρα τὸν ηὗρε, 143


CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.




Transcriber's Note


The following apparent errors have been corrected:

p. 58 "sanctuary in person" changed to "sanctuary in person."

p. 60 (note) footnote number inserted

p. 85 (note) "Conon, _Narrat._ 15" changed to "Conon, _Narrat._ 15."

p. 99 (note) footnote number inserted

p. 105 (note) "'sorrowful." changed to "'sorrowful.'"

p. 148 "Μέλετη κ.τ.λ." changed to "Μελέτη κ.τ.λ."

p. 151 "the honeyed ones[365].’" changed to "'the honeyed ones[365].’"

p. 360 "guarding and tending of Love’" changed to "guarding and tending
of Love.’"

p. 476 (note) "cap. 15 (p. 418)" changed to "cap. 15 (p. 418)."

p. 608 "smaller species of 193" changed to "smaller species of, 193"

p. 609 "time required for" entry placed in alphabetical order

p. 616 "supplied daily to the dead" entry placed in alphabetical order

Inconsistent or archaic spelling, hyphenation and punctuation have
otherwise been kept as printed.