Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews in the Year 1920

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GREEK HERO CULTS AND IDEAS OF

IMMORTALITY

I

^

GREEK HERO CULTS AND IDEAS OF

IMMORTALITY Cfte (SiffocD lectures

DELIVERED IN

THE UNIVERSITY OF IN

THE YEAR

ST.

ANDREWS

1920

BY

LEWIS RICHARD FARNELL RECTOR OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD

AND VICE-CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 192

I

Oxford London

Edinburgh

New Tork Bombay

Humphrey

University

Toronto

Calcutta

Glasgow Melbourne

Madras

Press Copenhagen

Cape Town Shanghai

Milford Publisher to the University

PREFACE This work, last

of

which the main contents were dehvered

year as Gifford Lectures in the University of St. Andrews, planned many years ago as a continuation and supple-

was ment

Cults of the Greek States, but the difference of the subject has necessitated a somewhat different method in the presentation of the facts. I had collected and arranged of

my

'

'

geographically a complete table and Schriftquellen of all the hero-cults in the Greek world recorded by literature, inscriptions, and art-monuments. That I have not published this in extenso here is no loss to scholars, nor to the public,

For I did not wish to write a mere Encycloand scholars can always avail themselves of Roscher's paedia, is which Lexikon, nearing completion and is fairly exhaustive nor to myself.

;

also a large part of this material turns out to be

merely barren, mere names about which nothing positive, nothing that concerns religion or history, can be said. Here, as so One of my often, the half may be better than the whole. mass chaotic of has been to reduce the facts to objects some order, by defining the categories under which the different hero-personalities may be classified, and to discuss under each the salient examples and those of whom something of interest for religion, history, or psychology

may

be proved or surmised I have dealt at length, therefore, with the greater personages of saga, for they are part of the fabric of the literature of Europe. I am not dealing with the whole heroic mythology of Greece, but only with that part of it a very large part that concerns a certain ;

worship of the human personage purpose I have had to face the much-debated and sorely mishandled problem whether the heroes and heroines worshipped were mainly human religious phenomenon, the after death and for this ;

personages.

And

the question of hero-worship

is

part of

PREFACE

vi

the larger question, considered at the close of the volume, concerning Greek opinion about existence after death and the possibility of a blessed immortality.

The work has been long delayed by other literary tasks and the cares of official life. And delay, whether chosen or enforced, gives a writer the advantage of living through many temporary phases of theorizing and of chewing the

cud

I was glad had reached concerning Greek heroic saga and saga-personages was the same as that which inspires Mr. Chadwick in his admirable treatise The Heroic Age. For a general exposition of my views on the right and wrong methods of mythologic inter-

of long reflection before

his mind.

making up

to find that the settled conviction that at last I

pretation I may be permitted to refer to my paper published by the British Academy on The Value and the Methods '

*

Study in 1919. If this treatise is censured Euhemerism ', it will only be censured on this ground by those who have not followed recent researches in anthropology and the comparative study of saga. And if, though that is not its main intention, it helps to corroborate of Mythologic

as a revival of

*

Mr. Chadwick's contention that saga is imperfect history, I shall be content for I have long felt the unreality of the and the historic distinction between the prehistoric But main task has to and collect the been track periods. my ;

'

'

'

'

evidence of the worship of the dead, the apotheosis of the being, from the earliest days of Greece to the latest,

human

^d my

interest in

this religious

phenomenon has been

sustained by the light that it throws upon much of the religion, the history, and the mentality of the Hellenic race. A serious and systematic treatment of this theme has long been a desideratum in our literature it is for criticism to ;

pronounce whether this

treatise supplies

Exeter College, Oxford, September, 1921.

it.

CONTENTS CHAPTER

I

PAGES

General Survey of the Prehistoric Period

.

.

1-18

was Importance of the subject, especially for Hellenism, 1-3 worship of the dead aboriginal among the Hellenes or the preHellenic populations ? evidence from Cretan and Mycenaean graves, distinction between tendance and worship, 3-5 ;_evidence from Homer as to worship and beliefs concerning the dead, from Hesiod in his account of the four ages of man, 12-14 -"'5-12 ;

;

;

.

meaning of the word ^poj^, 15-16 a priori probability of some worship of the dead in proto-Hellenic period, 16-18*^ ;

CHAPTER

II

Heroes and Heroines of Divine or Daimoniac Origin 19-52

(Ref. 1-29)

Seven distinguishable types of heroes, iqj

criteria for

judging the question of divine origin of hero, 20 Trophonios a.nd other Linos, 23-30, a~vegetation-daimon who examples, 21-25 developed into culture-hero, Argive-ritual of the dpuis and the slaughter of dogs, 21-28, primitive traits in legend transformed ;

.

;

legends arising from ritual of hanging by Hellenic genius, 30 CAan/a-ritual and legend at Delphoi, puppets on trees, 30-32 Ino-Leukothea, 35-47, in Homer a human goddess, 32-35 but in cult a chthonian rather than a seaapparently maritime the name Ino cannot be dissociated from Leukothea, goddess which probably arose from a rite of immersion, 35-39 MelikertesPalaimon of no independent origin but always her young son, compare Opheltes and Sosipolis, 39-42 legend of the cauldron examined, suggests a cathartic-baptismal ritual rather than human ethnic question, Ino and sacrifice, late survival in Sj'^ria, 42-43 Melikertes inherited by the Minyans from Minoan Crete, 45-47 Europa, Cretan mother-goddess, festival of Hellotia, 47-48 Ariadne, Hellenic transformation of Cretan goddess, the chthonian Aphrodite, little or no cult on Greek mainland, 42=49; Aristaios, son of the earth-spirit, imagined as male, of divine origin, Best {'ApicTt]) ', but developed into a culture-hero rather than a god. Myths about vegetation-daimones often independent ;

;

;

:

:

:

:

:

;

;

'

of their origin or of ritual, 49-5-2.

\^^

CONTENTS

viii

CHAPTER

III

PAGES

Sacral Heroes and Heroines

(Ref. 30-54)

53-70

.

.

Heroic honours paid to priest or priestess or missionary, some of the names in the list may be historic, none are of faded Gods ', ^-5 j^ Aineias, a sacral eponym of the Aineiadai, 53 Iphigeneia, ? a double of Artemis or heroized priestess, ritual '

;

;

at Aulis and Brauron, 55-58 prophet, no reason to regard

him

god, ritual at Oropos, 58-62

Minyan

Amphiaraos, the

;

;

mere

as a

human

heroized

a faded

fiction or as

Melampous, a similar

figure of

connected with a Bacchic Katharsis,

origin,

63-64

;

Hippolutos, his humanity earlier than his divinity, meaning of the name, M. Salomon Reinach's theory, weakness of the hieratic

explanation of his myth, 64-70.

CHAPTER '

Functional Heroes and

IV

Sonder-Gotter

'

(Ref.

238)

20771-94

List of these, including individuals and groups, 71-76 ; are these products of polydaimonism ? meaning" of Sainojv and r]pa.s, 76-77 Usener's theory stated and examined, meaning '

'

pre-theistic

;

evidence from Roman and Lithuanian religion Sonder-Gott no proof that the functional heroes and daimones of Greece belonged to a system of thought earlier than the polytheism and the parent of it, some of them are obviously late and arise from the polytheism, some may be adjectival or functional cultnames of historic personages; adjectival cult-titles not necessarily earlier than proper personal names human dramatic stories attaching to some of them, such as Eunosios, 77-94.

of

'

'

;

;

;

CHAPTER V Origin and Diffusion of the Cult of Herakles

95-145

.

Herakles the ^pws ecus, distinction between heroia-iind^jlieiatj^ in many places, as at Sikuon, both awarded him, _ritual, 9^s-.q6 96-97 yet the human aspect of him primary and the earliest, the evidence of the name points to this, so also the legend, his divine or daimonistic functions later accretions, 97- 102 the ethnic question, the old Dorian theory 1:)aseless, no single tribe or stock can claim him, 102-105 ethnic survey, Thessaly, Druopis, Phokis, Boeotia, 105-107; Attica, cult perhaps associated with Ionian immigration, 107-110 in the Isthmus, Megara, Corinth, Sikuon, neither cult nor legend points to Dorian influence, ;

;

-

;

'

'

;

;

110-113; prominent,

in Argolis and Messenia, cult pre-Dorian and not 1 13-1 1 5 in Laconia the cult-title Tevdpxas Dormn, but ;

CONTENTS

ix

PAGES otherwise the imprint of Dorian influence slight, 115-119; in Dorian HexapoUs, Kos Rhodes, &c,, his cult not prominent, but his name Hnked with the Dorian settlement of Rhodes, 1 19-124 the fiction of in Crete scarcely any trace of his cult, 11 4-1 15 the Idaean Herakles or examined, Herakles the Daktyl in Dorian colonies in Magna Graecia and Sicily 125-131 ;

;

'

'

'

'

;

Herakles nowhere prominent except at Akragas, 1 31-135 Herakles a Pan-Hellenic hero, his cult no proof of Dorian settleHerakles in Arcadia, links with Delphoi, 135ment, ;

I.242535

;

prominent in Magna 137 ; in Ionia, Miletos, Eruthrai, 137-138 Graecia and Liguria, associated with lolaos in Sicily and Sardinia, alien associations of Herakles in non-Hellenic lands, 138-139 at Tyre with in Lydia with Sandan and Omphale, 1 39-1 41 ;

;

;

Melqart, at Tarsos with Sandan, reasons discussed, 142-145.

CHAPTER The Functions of Herakles

VI

....

146-154

Heroic and warhkc

cult-titles, 146-148 ;^his functions as con-_ troller of ghosts, healer of disease, protector~or~flr6c'ks~a^'Iater, development, 1 48-1 53 j^ Tils ~chier~sociabati\aty"tlie protection of the Epheboi, 154.

CHAPTER Vn The Ritual of Herakles

155-174

and the male victim usual in his worship, 155 ritual at Lindos accompanied with curses, not explicable by other examples of cursing in ritual, modern theories concerning Blood-sacrifice

;

examined, 156-160 peculiar ceremonies in his worship in Kos, in women's garments, the Thracian woman at Kos and a Upus ydfus in Eruthrai, theories of explanation, 160-165 his ritual, 165-166 ritual at Gades, death of the deity on the

it

;

men

'

'

;

;

pyre and resurrection in records of Melqart and Sandan transferred by legend to Herakles, source of the legend of Mount Oita in oriental ritual, unknown to Hesiod, spiritual value of the legend, 166-174.

CHAPTER Vni

The Dioskouroi

.......

175-228

about them, older view of Myriantheus that they were a deposit of Indo-Germanic period, Lettish Sons of God ', ? Celtic, ? Teutonic, 175-176 Dioskouroi identified with Vedic Asvins, criteria for judging this equation, Perplexity of the problems '

;

reasons for rejecting it, 176-179 contradictory explanations of the Dioskouroi as Nature-powers, 179 examination of Dr. Rendel Harris's theory, the awfulness of twins in savage superstition. ;

;

CONTENTS PAGES re-examination of the evidence in chronologic sequence; wholly human in the Iliad, they begin to show divine character in the Nekuia of the Odyssey, 180-182 evidence from Hesiodi9 poems, Homeric Hymns (where the phrase Atoy Kovpoi first occurs) and the Kupria, diffusion of cult in seventh century, Dioskouroi always regarded as twins and as the Twin-Brethren Laconian heroes of Therapnai, 180-184 in Euripides, their stellar character beginning to emerge, this

179-180

;

for

necessity

;

;

later assimilation emphasized only in later period, 185-186 to Kabeiroi and Korubantes, casual and valueless for any theory of origin, 186-189 value of evidence from art, the Skara in the aniconic period, snakes on amphora of the fifth century, stars not found as their art-emblem until the fourth century, 1 89-191 Laconia the aboriginal home of their legend and cult, their Laconian cult suggests divinity, but Laconian legend ;

;

;

their mortal-heroic status, ferred this aspect of them,

and the popular imagination pre191-196

their oldest appellative

;

value of this fact as evidence of their human origin, Tundareos no divine name but belonging to purely human genealogies, 196-198 general conclusion concerning Laconian cult and myth, the Twins arise as Kastor and Poludeukes with

Ivvoapidai,

;

family name TvvtafM^ai, human figures of prehistoric Achaean genealogy, 198-199 fallacy of interpreting legendary figures by their associates, son or husband of god or goddess need not be a god, no proof of divinity of Leda nor of Helen, the brides Dioscalled Leukippides do not explain the Twins,* 199-201 ;

;

'

Sons of God or Heavenly Twins other than Kastor and Poludeukes not discoverable, the Anaktes in Argolis and Attica and the Dioskouroi of Messenia and Elis always Kastor and Poludeukes, Idas and Lunkeus and the Molionides never called Dioskouroi and never worshipped, Attic 201-208 cults in Arcadia, Achaia, Phlious, 209-210 cults and religious feeling, 210-212 question of Theban cult examined, claim of Amphion and Zethos to be independent local Dioskouroi examined and rejected, Euripides has falsified kouroi-cults in other locahties, local

'

'

'

;

;

;

the facts and misled modern theorists into totemistic theories, true explanation of the vwKoi tuv A'.6s, 212-216 the Spartan twins ;

found elsewhere in Boeotia, in Lokris, Phokis, at an early period in Kephallenia, in Thessaly and Macedonia, 217-220; Milesian colonization probably brought them to the Black Sea and into the Argonautic myth, 220-221 evidence from western Mediterra;

nean, as far as Massilia, points the same way, everywhere Dioskouroi = Kastor and Polydeukes, no evidence in Greece of pre-ethnic daimones of of

God

astral,

'

'

'

Sons period called Indo-European Kastor and Polydeukes not faded gods nor originally but human heroic personaUties, 223-224 superstition ',

;

about twins, suggesting the name AiosKovpoi, grows stronger in later period, evidence for this, 224-227 value of cult for Greek religion and ethics, 227-228. ;

CONTENTS

xi

CHAPTER IX PAGES

The Leukippides

229-233

names Phoibe and Uncertainty as to their original character Hilaeira usually regarded as proving astral character, but the Laconian cult of Phoibe suggests a chthonian power, 229-233. ;

CHAPTER X The Cult of Asklepios

234-279

Importance of the study, Asklepios the typical man-god, the earliest tradition in Homer and Hesiod presents his human side only two possible views to consider (a) that 234-235 Asklepios was originally an earth-daimon of Trikka gradually humanized, (b) that he was a real physician of prehistoric age, worshipped with heroic honours after death and gradually prima facie reasonableness of latter view. Homer apotheosized

only,

:

:

local cults preserve many real names of physicians, 235-238 ; the the name, the forms of cult, the legend may help to decide

and

;

the cult points more naturally to a man than to a god is doubtful, being chthonian, and chthonian ritual being much the same for buried man as for earth-spirit, also his emblem or incarnation the snake equally appropriate to either, but the sacrificial dog, his other familiar, more to the man, 238-241

name

;

;

goat generally excluded, a taboo more frequent in his legend strengthens cults of heroes than of deities, 241-242 belief in his human character as primary, the stories of his miraculous birth and death by lightning no proof of divinity, the only other st6ries attaching to him show the culture-hero, 242-244 he has no vegetative functions, therefore probably no original earth-deity, no real connexion with Trophonios, oracular power by incubation only for healing, 244-246 diffusion of the cult, earliest home Trikka, earliest worshippers the Phleguai who may have brought it to Boeotia and Phokis, Asklepios dpxTjyeTrjs

animals,

;

;

;

in Phokis, hostiUty of Delphoi,

247-249 migration of cult to the Peloponnese, Corinth, Titane in Sikuon, Epidauros Thessalian origin partly obliterated in Laconia, Arcadia, Messene, 249251 Epidaurian legend and cult, close connexion with Trikka and the Phleguai, with Apollo Maleatas, influence of Apollo on development of Asklepios, 251-256 shrine at Kos, founded direct from Trikka though Coan worship influenced by Epidaurian, 256;

;

;

;

introduction of Asklepios into Athens as full-blown god 258 in the fifth and still more from Epidauros, sacred dogs, 258-263 in the fourth century cult penetrates the islands, Crete, Kos, and later Paros, &c., its greatest centres Pergamon and Rome and at last ubiquitous in Roman empire, but its aboriginal connexion with Trikka not forgotten, 263-265 question of contribu;

;

;

tion of Asklepjos-cuH to the science of medicine,

relation of

CONTENTS

xii

PAGES the Greek world, question whether the Asklepieia directly aided development of therapeutics, divergent views, Greek physicians generally attributed their inspiration to Asklepios, 265-270 the shrines at Epidauros, Kos, Perscience to religion in

;

gamon, Rome, mainly thaumaturgic, but admitted some science especially in later period, contrast between Christian and Hellenic deep devotion of Graeco-Roman world to reasons for this, illustrations from literature and art, attempt to develop Asklepios into the highest god, 275-279. view,

270-275

:

Asklepios,

CHAPTER XI The Cults of Epic Heroes Weakness and

(Ref. 55-109)

.

.

280-342

theory that would explain the faded gods ', hieratic element in leading heroes of saga as cults of epic heroes in Greece mythology much exaggerated intended to be cults of real men, not always ancestors, most of failure

of the '

:

them post-Homeric, due 280-285

Achilles-cult

'

to great

examined,

and wide influence of epos, no plausible evidence of

aboriginal divinity, diffusion of his hero-worship, prominent only in Black Sea, scarcely traceable in Thessaly, never worshipped as ancestor except possibly in Epeiros ritual at Kroton and Elis ;

showing epic influences, 285-289,.

Diomedes, diffusion of his cult

in the Adriatic, theory asserting his original divinity criticized, Aias Oiliades, probably a real Diomedes of Thrace, 289-2^ personage remembered, discreditable stories attaching to him, ;

the Eastern and Western Lokroi, 293-294 maidens to expiate his sin against Kassandra, facts concerning this ritual, inscription found in West Lokris,it was established at least as early as eighth century B.C., no parallel to it in Greek annals, failure of comparable method and of all hieratic explanations of the Aias- Kassandra episode, 296-300

hero-worship

among

;

ritual of the Locrian

'

'

;

the only possible explanation

is

that something like that episode

had occurred which demanded atonement, 300-301 special reasons compelling Locrians to atone, connexion between names Oileus and lUon, interest of Locrians in later city VII -, Athena Ilias in Troad and Lokris, importance of these facts for the ;

'

Homeric Question ', 301-305 Aias Telamonios; generally double of the former, erroneousness of this regarded as a view, both distinct in legend, genealog3^ and cult, Aias Telamonios real figure of popular saga, no faded god, 305-307 hero-cult in Salamis, thence brought into Attica, possibly into the Megarid, cult in Troad due to epic influences, doubtful if Aias was of the Aiakidai, connexion of the Aiakidai with Zeus Hellanios, Meleus slight traces of cult at Pella and in island off 307-310 Euboia, to be classed as figure of the historic-epic than of the daimonistic type, 2jn-.UT Neoptolemos, his reaUty a tenable hypothesis, problems arise about the double name Pyrrhos;

'

'

;

;

,

:

CONTENTS Neoptolemos,

both

names

of

xiii

transparent

meaning but not

therefore fictitious, his descendants the Epeirote kings preserved both, 3 1 1-3 13: belongs to the tradition received by Homer,

heroic honours at Delphoi, connected with a tradition there, religious pomp of the Ainianes at Delphoi, doubtful evidence of his cult in Epeiros, authority of Delphic

313-314

of his

;

'

murder

tradition

'

'

a bar to his cult elsewhere,

314-317

;

hieratic

'

explanations of his murder, futility of them, no ground for supposing Neoptolemos to have been a priest-king put to death ritualistically, human-historic reasons might explain his death and burial within the temple, 317-320 no ground for dissociating the ;

Pyrrhos of Delphoi from Neoptolemos, 320-321

Agam^mmm-

;

and Mgwg/flo srcults no proof of aboriginal divinities, their names and legends compel us to class them among the human figures of epic saga, their cult later and greatly due to epic influences, Helene, generally regarded as faded goddess, cult in 321-323 Eaconia, Athens, Rhodes (Helene Dendritis '), but this theory explains nothing and is unnatural, love-motives in heroic saga may be based on real events, the Trojan war no Upos \6yos, cosmic or celestial explanation of human stories a vaTtpov irporfpov, 323-325 later cult of Helene owed much to cult of Dioskouroi other examples of epic evoking cult, Alkinoos, Idomeneus, Meriones, Odysseus, Talthubios at Sparta, Homeric heroes worshipped en bloc at Tarentum and many leading heroes in the cult of Hektor in Thebes, fallacious theory of Troad, 325-328 ;

'

'

'

:

;

;

Bethe, Theban cult late and suggested by their Medizing policy, Kassandra, apparent cult in Laconia, important for ^28:^^29-;. construction of epic plot and cult influence of the epic, but cult of Kassandra really a cult of Achaean goddess Alexandra confused with Kassandra because of Paris- Alexandros, confusion helped by independent tradition of the bringing of Kassandra to Laconia,

329-332 Oidipous, cult shows influence of Theban cycle of epic Adrastos, ? Ttideus), hero-worship (cf. Amphiaraos, "Amphion, of him in Laconia and Attica, evidence of Sophokles authoritative yet perplexing, Oidipous no hieratic figure but belongs to real Theban tradition, J323534.! Adrastos-cu]t at Sikuon of same type, ;

cult-influence of Cyclic epic, 336 Perseus at Argos, cult ancestral-heroic, merely heroic at Athens and Seriphos, later raised to a city-god at Tarsos, 337 Theseus, question of his

334-336

:

;

;

*

divinity, in spite of his parentage noTndication of a god the name human rather than divine, his cult in Attica

Theseus \

and Delos not earlier than the period of Kimon, Theseus essentially an Ionian hero, close association with Poseidon and Aphrodite, incarnation of Attic virtue, ethical value of the heroic ideal, general considerations on the cult-influence of the 322=349 '>

epic.

340-342.

4'-

CONTENTS

xiv

CHAPTER

XIT PAGES

The Cults of Ancestors The

distinction

cult,

343-344

(Ref. 110-206)

.

.

343-360

between hero-cult and ancestorin Attica, the yeveaia, tendance Feast of Pots probably pre-Dionysiac, viKvaia, vH((na, the souls under the charge of the earth-divinities, motives of affection and fear combined in the ritual, 344-347 the miasma of the dead, scarcely recognized by Homer but felt by Hesiod, more strongly in later times leading to veto on burying within the city wall, various funeral laws and ritual evoked by this 347-349 miasma ', results of it on religious dogma concerning the soul and on views about the ghost, 349-352 family meals to the but usually food offered to the dead, ? sacramental, 352-353 dead forbidden to the living, (vayifrfxara, the early funeralritual of Greece shows affection and fear coexistent, 353-355 evidence vague but sufficient that the direct worship of certain an;

and the

relation

'

'

ancestral '

'

'

'

;

;

'

;

;

;

cestors or groups of ancestors was very ancient, the Tritopatores, aspect of the spirit-world perpetual fire in the City Hall, 355-356 different from the Homeric, the kindly ghost the source of life, ;

doctrine of ficance

of

'

'

in early Greece, evidence and signipalingenesis the phalloi on tombs, 356-357 ancestor-worship ;

probably developed with agriculture. and was based on patrilinear systems, the cults give evidence against the hypothesis of a prehistoric matriarchy, cults of heroines and ancestresses ver>' restrictions on ancestorfew, but 6eoi Mrjrpwoi recognized, 358 worship in historic period, many ancestors fictitious and merel}" ;

eponymous, yet these fictions often became realities in popular legend and cult, e. g. Messene, Lakedaimon, no doubt some true and real names preserved by cult, 359-360.

CHAPTER XHI Cults of Real Persons in the Historic Period

(Ref.

361-372

239-325)

Cults of great legislators, Lukourgos the earliest recorded, noground for doubting his reahty, public worship of recently deceased veryrare in seventh and sixth centuries in fifth- century worship sometimes the reward of a brave death on the battle-field, e. g. at :

Plataea, Thermopulai, Marathon, cult of Brasidas, social value of these honours, heroizing of poets and philosophers beginning in fifth century, 361-365 the heroizing of athletes, a religious evidence from the Spartan reUefs of the degradation, 365-366 later instances of poets heroizing of real individuals, 366-367 :

;

;

and philosophers canonized, 367 Greek religious and ethical sense not perturbed by hero-cult, but the Greek higher conscience ;

revolted against apotheosis of the living rife in Hellenistic period, hero-worship on the whole not the cause of demonology nor

CONTENTS .^

XV PAGES

~~--N

injurious to the polytheism, 368-369 ; relation of lieroes to gods, influence of Delphoi, popular conception of the heroes as corporeal,

CHAPTER XIV Individual Belief in Immortality

the Mysteries and

:

373-402

Orphism

Posthumous hopes gratified by the Mysteries, the Eleusinian opened as early as seventh century, sacramental communion discernible at Eleusis and Samothrace but not the secret of the Eleusinian appeal, 373-374) Orphic-Bacchic sects aimjug^t mystic^ union with deity and promising happy immortality, 374^^ ('375jQrphic sources, (a) gold tablets from South Italy and TSrete, analysis of contents, doctrine of purgation, the cycle of existences, the Orphic Paradise, Greek literature, Pindar's (6)

375-^7^

second Olympian ode, passages in Plato's Dialogues, 378-381 summary of results, Orphism marks new epoch in Greek rehgion, its eschatology, stress on purity, ritual magical-religious with ;

ethical possibilities, doctrine of purgatory and eternal damnation, identity of mortal and divinity, the death of the god, 381-38^ ?

higher morality taught by Orphism, doubtful evidence, higher

the prevalence and ethic of Greece not Salvationist, 383-386 influence of Orphism, evidence from Pindar, Plato, Aristophanes, from the vases, from orators of the fourth century. Pausanias, ;

Plutarch,

386-389

;

later

popular views concerning

life

after

Plato's Apology, the pseudo-Flsdonic A xiochos first speech against, Axistogeiton, funeral oration by Hupereides, Lucian, Plutarch, 389-393^ grave-ritual, grave-monuments and

death,

ol fiaKapioi,

epitaphs, evidence Conflicting but suggesting stronger hopes and convictions in later Paganism, 390-.^oi summary conclusion, ;

402.

References for Hero-cults

:

Alphabetical

lists

.

403-426

ERRATA Page

21, for

,

23, for

,

23, for

,

62,

,

It

the

i8, for

*

Ikaros

'

'

*

Add

Kion

'

read

Prusiai

'

Ikarios

read

Demiphon *

'

read

*

*

Kios *

read

to foot-note b

'.

'

Demophon

'.

*.

Prousias

'.

:

would be equally in accordance with analogy to interpret as living round the temple cf. trJ^io?.

name

63, for

'

*

:

*

'

Pylos

read

'

Pulos

'.

CHAPTER

I

GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD The

question concerning a people's belief in a posthumous

death in a spirit-world, will appear to many as one of the most interesting that the comparative study of religion has to propound and consider. Some theologians are apt to regard it as a fundamental tenet of all higher religions, and are at times inclined to claim for it the value of an a priori axiom life,

in the continued existence of the soul after

of natural religion even those who have discarded the belief have sometimes held the view that all higher religion is really a derivative from it, in accordance with Herbert :

Spencer's theory that the worship of the ancestral spirit the source of the worship of gods. In fact, in this as in

is

most other

fields of scientific inquiry,

of the first

who worked

and some

in

it

the zealous devotion

led to certain exaggerations

Scarcely any one still maintains a wider and more accurate comparison of the phenomena prevents us regarding these beliefs as universal or as an axiom of natural religion nor, when we look at the history of Judaism, dare we affirm that illusory theories.

Herbert Spencer's dogma

:

*

'

;

they inevitably accompany the higher development of the We must indeed admit that their prevalence has been and is extraordinarily wide and belongs to a very religious spirit.

ancient stage of the social history of man. But those who are familiar with the religions of the ancient civilizations are

aware that only a few of them gave any prominence to eschatological doctrine, or allowed the ideas concerning the future life to be constructive of their religious system.

Most of the ritual and worship were mainly efficacious of man's welfare, material and spiritual, in this world, and other- worldliness, as it has been called, had little or nothing to do with it. And it was particularly their preoccupation with B 2460

GENERAL SURVEY OF THE

2

the

that

distinguished early Judaism, the older Indo-Iranian, and the older the Babylonian- Assyrian, Hellenic religions, from Buddhism, Islamism, and Christianity. Even the Egyptian religion, in which the eschatological life

present

idea appears so prominent, was probably in

its

earlier

stages by no means preoccupied with it. Yet in all these systems we find the doctrine, more or less articulate, of the soul's continuance, and in some of them this evoked in certain cases an actual cult of the dead. Now we know that such doctrine can coexist with, and yet not essentially affect, but also that at certain times and under the higher religion certain conditions it may become quickened with dogmas and beliefs that vitally transform men's conceptions concerning ;

the High Gods and the hopes that he entertains about them. It is only then that views concerning the dead and men's relations with the spirits of the departed become a matter of primary religious importance. But in any case they are

always of intrinsic interest for the study both of religion and of social institutions, for they are often discovered to be the foundation on which much of the social fabric has been constructed.

Now

the study of this phenomenon in Hellenism is important from every point of view. It was associated, and in the later periods became ever more intimately associated,

with the higher religion it was a social and constructive force, shaping morality and law and it was one of the sources to which we can trace certain currents of Greek philosophy, notably the Academic. ;

;

Its influence

on Greek

sidered elsewhere ^

;

social institutions I

have partly con-

my primary concern here

the religious

is

phenomenon and its religious character. It is intricate and many-sided. For the sake of clearness of arrangement we should distinguish, and mark the distinction with precision, between ancestor-cult, hero-cult,

evolution of the

'

'

and, thirdly, the general religious tendance or depainCa of the dead but we must be aware that all these are liable to blend, the one with the other. ;

*

Vide Higher Aspects of Greek Religion, pp. 58-68.

PREHISTORIC PERIOD

We may

3

on the one hand, the significance and the ritual whereby man fulfilled his religious duty to the departed and also that whereby he expressed and ensured his own posthumous hopes. We must review the literary and archaeological evidence of the doctrines current among the people from time to time also consider,

of certain funeral rites,

concerning the

life

after death.

And

if

we

find

many

in-

consistencies of doctrine even in the religions that rest on the dogmas of sacred books, we shall expect to find still more

was by sacred books or orthodox dogma. And it has been remarked that there is no sphere of religious doctrine where more contradiction prevails, either veiled or apparent, in the opinions of the same period, even of the same individual. The first question we may ask is whether belief in the soul's survival of the body was an ancient heritage of the in Hellenic belief, uncontrolled as

it

Though presuppositions are always a danger Comparative ReUgion, we may presuppose with a fair degree of certainty that it was. The Homeric poems, Hellenic

people.

in

which give

sufficient proof of the prevalence of the belief, reflect Hellenic society of the eleventh and tenth centuries,

and as such

beliefs

do not grow up

a day, we

in

may regard it

as indefinitely older than the first emergence of those poems. Also, the Hellenic tribes when they won their way into Hellas

had already reached a stage of comparative culture. If they possessed no such beliefs then, they were singular among all the nations of this area, and singular among all Aryan nations of which we have record among their nearest ;

kinsmen, the Thraco-Phrygians, the belief has been traced back with some probability to the second millennium. The next question, whether the aboriginal Hellene worshipped his dead or some of them, is not so easy to answer. It is true that this worship has prevailed at some time or other and with lesser or greater power among the main branches of the Aryan stock. But we are not warranted in drawing the conclusion that it was an Indo-Germanic tradition, which the Hellenes must have inherited and maintained like their other kinsmen. Nevertheless, a review of the B 2

GENERAL SURVEY OF THE

4 evidence,

when we

get to

it,

some

suggests the opinion that

dead belongs to an early period of the of the race. In our attempt to penetrate the religious history pre-Homeric society, we naturally look to the evidence of the Minoan-Mycenaean monuments. And they contribute worship of the

help our present inquiry. In the first place Mycenaean burials in Greece might take place near or within the inhabited precincts, and funeral- jars or

certain facts that

may

have actually been found in the niches of the walls of a pre-Mycenaean house in Aigina ^. One important reflection is at once suggested the earlier people, whoever they were, did not fear the contagion of the dead ^ believing in the ttCOol

:

;

continuance of the soul as

we know

that they did, they must have regarded the ghost with affection rather than with terror and desired to keep it in or near the family.

Some

other peoples have done the same, but not many. Mycenaean shaft-graves reveal elaborate provision

Also, the

tendance of the departed ornaments and weapons were buried with him there is reason to think that slaves were sometimes killed in order that their spirits might wait upon him ^ and the grave-mound was constructed with contrivances for conveying sustenance, especially liquids, down to All this, however, may be mere the dead. tendance for the

:

;

;

'

'

prompted by family

affection,

and does not

in itself prove

But

actual cult of the spirit regarded as a divine power. *

Eph. Arch. 1895, p- 251. ^ The evidence from Crete, as Sir Arthur Evans has kindly given it me, is there conflicting. At Knossos the tombs appear outside the settlement is a cemetery a mile from the Palace at Phaistos it is well away from the Akropolis at Hagia Triada tombs have been found quite near the Palace but in one or two cases he has found tholos-tornbs in the outer ;

:

:

:

walls of buildings, e.g. at ara 'EWrjvim, a group of castles (late Minoan), one with a series of small eSXoi built in its outside wall with openings outside so also at Ame in South Crete an akropolis with OoKos in its outside wall partly rock-cut. The prehistoric tombs at Phylakopi in Melos :

show the

practice of bur5dng the corpses of grown-up people outside the but those of infants in pitchers within the walls of the houses, possibly that the soul of the prematurely deceased might be reincarnated in a new member of the family {Arch. Anz. 1912, p. 259 vide Ann. Brit. Sch. city,

;

xvii, pp. 6-9).

Eph. Arch. 1888, Mukenai and Argos) v rjpoioov and ultimately from the Boeotian poetess Murtis, gives a curious story to explain the fact. A maiden of the country wooes the virtuous Eunostos in vain, and thereupon hangs herself in grief. To requite her death one of her brothers slays Eunostos, whose ghost then becomes a scourge to the territory until he is pacified with cult and a shrine where no women might enter. The rule was once infringed, with the result of earthquakes, famine, and other prodigies, and Eunostos was seen hastening to the sea to cleanse himself from the pollution. This genial tale of despised love doubtless arose out of a quaint agricultural or horticultural ritual. Eunostos is the hero of the His cornfield, who is slain like John Barleycorn is slain. ;

^

Cf. the use of yoaros in

Athenae, p. 6i8 C.

SONDER-GOTTER

'

'

89

parents are 'EAtvs of the marshes and SKtas of the shade ; the wicked brother is BovkoXos ; the hapless maiden is "O^va, '

and these hanging-stories of personages, whose names or legends convey an allusion to the fertility of the trees and the crops, arose, as I have pointed out before, from the old agrarian ritual of hanging images on trees. We may then regard Eunostos and Echetlaios, the

Pear-tree

',

*

possibly also 'EpexOevs, the ground-breaker \ as descendants or survivals of a very old stratum of European agricultural religion, when the personages of worship were simpler in their structure of Greece field

and

and

less individualized

than the high gods

yet as we know them these Greek heroes of the the tree are of the same concrete life as that which ;

quickened the forms of Hermes and Dionysos. Going back we can, we have not yet found among them the shadowy impalpable forms that seem to float before us in the Indigit amenta. Km/utri^s, the bean-hero ', whose shrine stood on the sacred way, may have had the same descent as far as

'

and character as Evvoo-tos or he may be a late product, a personage who grew up artificially within the area of the Demeter-cult, at a time when the passion for hero-worship had reached the pitch that it had attained in the seventh and sixth centuries, and culture-heroes were needed for ;

many departments

of life

he

;

may

also

have been called

into existence because the culture of beans could not be

imputed to Demeter, who happened to loathe them.

Telesi-

dromos, the hero of the Eleusinian race-course, is obviously a late and transparent fiction, and we may beheve the same of Evbpoixoi of Delphoi. Again, we must reckon with the possibility that the theory of Euhemeros may occasionally true. The worship of real people of flesh and

have been blood

a living force, as Sir Alfred Lyall has emphatically pointed out, in India and China to this day. He records the case of the very real Indian, Hurdeo Lala, becoming after his death the functional god of cholera ^. It would be quite natural, from the Greek point of view, that when is

'

*

an individual was *

deified or

'

heroized

'

after his death a

Asiatic Studies, 2nd ser., p. 287,

new

FUNCTIONAL HEROES AND

90

(/'

and functional name should be then attached to him, expressive of the benign influence which he was called upon to exert in behalf of his worshippers. This would explain such family cults as those of Epimachos at Knidos and Eruthrai, and of Summachos at Pharsalos. That these are the cults of real men is certain in the latter case ^ and probable in the former.

Similarly, the cult of

the "Hpcoj ^rpar-nyoi

which we have proof in the first century B.C., well have been the cult of a real historical personage may whose name was concealed and lost. The "Hpwes 'Tarpot in at Athens, of

may with perfectly good reason be supposed to have been real men, who had an existence apart from their function *, or at least ancestors imagined and worshipped as real, who take over the art of healing, as every hero always could if he wished. And of two different parts of Attica *

*

'

of these glorified 'larpot personal names are actually recorded. The rjpo)^ Kara upvfxvav at Phaleron need not originally have

been the functional demon-impersonation of steering, but a buried and sacred personage whose name was lost, and who was believed to have been the steersman of Theseus, and thus came to be an occasional patron-saint of mariners. Greece was full of forgotten graves belonging to an immemorial past. Many were believed to be, and very likely were, the resting-places of ancestral chiefs, and cults consecrated to them may often have arisen or been revived after

the

name had been

forgotten.

We know

that tombs were

frequently near or within the precincts of temples, and from this local accident the buried ancestor might acquire a new porter of the descriptive name, such as KAatKo^o/^o?, the '

temple which

'.

A

may

an apparently functional cult be thus explained, and to which Usener's

clear instance of

theory can be proved inappropriate, was that of the hero TapafiTTTTos at Olympia and on the Isthmus. Near the entrance

B.C.H.

On

a relief found at Pharsalos, of the fourth seen standing by his horse, and his type is common for that of the heroized dead near him is a seated goddess whom the remains of letters prove to be Hestia. As the writer of the article points out, this is a unique instance of the figure of Hestia being used as the divine symbol of a family cult. '^

12, p.

184.

century b.c, Summachos

'

is

'

;

'

SONDER-GOTTER

'

91

Olympia was an altar which appears have been erected over a grave, where we may suppose that some one had been really buried, and at this place What was more natural than to horses habitually shied. to the race-course at

to

account for their fear by supposing the ghost to be the it ? It was most important, then, to know the name of that ghost, but though various theories as to his personal name were put forward, none could prevail, and

cause of

the most reasonable course was adopted of caUing him As the institution of the races at Olympia is Tapu^LTTTTos.

comparatively

not a remnant of

late, Ta/adfnnros at least is

a prehistoric religion. Again, there are other appellatives in this list that we may quite reasonably explain as the sheddings and leavings of concrete high divinities, 'Ept^ota, for instance, in Lesbos,

being very probably an epithet of Demeter, Ev^oaCa or

And what

are

Eviroa-Ca

we

to say Agrippina-Demeter. or evolution can the creation We understand of a daimon of the banquet ', but the daimon of the equal seems a somewhat stranger fiction. The record banquet in Harpokration gives us a clue to a different explanation. We are told that he was a fcmKo? AaCixoov at Athens, who was worshipped by women of doubtful character. Now, there were certain foreign cults of Dionysos, mystic and disrepuin

Phrygia

of 'Io-o8atrr/9

of ?

*

'

'

were in vogue at Athens from the fifth century onwards, and were specially attractive to women, and Plutarch tells us that in mystic circles Dionysos was called

table, that

l(robaLTr]S.

More important are the cults of KaAAtyeVeta, and Kovporpoc^os, both of whom are in Usener's list. Sonder-Gottheiten KaWiyiveia may be interpreted as the goddess of fair '

'

offspring, or as she

who

gives fair offspring.

The ancient

both learned and popular, were doubtful about her, but all associated her with Demeter and it is in the comof this that we meet with her both at Athens pany goddess and in Sicily. The name must be considered in close relation to the ritual of the KoAAiyeveta, which took place in the great festival of Demeter, the Thesmophoria, on the

writers,

;

92

day

FUNCTIONAL HEROES AND aiter the Nrjoreia.

Wherever the Thesmophoria was

held in Greece, the KaWiyiveLa must have usually formed part of it, for Plutarch specially notes its non-existence at Eretria. It is a legitimate conjecture that on this day the

goddess was believed to have been reunited with Kore, and that the women then prayed for fair offspring to the goddess of fair offspring, the 06o-fxoop6a being specially a festival of married women. But Kalligeneia herself was almost certainly a later fiction like Amphidromos, an imaginary

personaUty invented to explain the name of the festival-day, TO. Ka\\Ly4vLa ^. As regards KovpoTp6(t>os at Athens, we cannot be sure that she did not once possess a more concrete proper name. Many goddesses were called by this adjective, and the type of a female divinity holding a child in her arms, or giving suck to it, was widely spread over the Mediterranean at a very early time, and it has recently been discovered that Aphaia in Aigina was thus represented. The very multiplicity of the proper names that might claim the epithet might be a reason for a cautious cult preferring to use the epithet alone. But in any case the KovpoTp6(j)os at Athens was a robust and personal figure closely akin to the earth-goddess, and whether the earth-mother is called Ge or KovpoTp6(f)o^\ or Uavbcapa, the conception may be equally anthropomorphic and personal in each case, and this is really the important fact to bear in view. I have reserved for the close of this short critical account '

the consideration of Mutaypoy, the Fly-Chaser ', at Aliphera for Usener's theory might really make more out of this ;

humble personage than out

of

any

of his confreres.

The

facts that illustrate the cult are interesting. At Leukas and Actium they sacrificed to the flies before the great ritual in honour of Apollo began. This was perhaps the simplest

and most primitive thing to do

it does not imply fly- worship, but the preliminary offering to them of a piece of cooked meat was a bribe to the flies to go away and not disturb the worshippers at the solemn function that was to follow, where any disturbance would be ill-omened, and where the *

Vide Cults.

;

3,

pp. 95-96.

SONDER-GOTTER

'

'

93

were likely, unless pacified first, to be attracted by the savour of the burnt- sacrifice. As thought advances, a hero, Mviaypos, is evolved at Aliphera, to look after the flies before the sacrifice to Athena. We have traces of the same hero at Ol5mipia, though here his function was at last absorbed by Zeus 'ATTo/avto?. Here, then, in MvCaypos is almost the true for his Sonder-Gott ', almost the Augenblick-Gott flies

'

*

'

;

and his value for the worshipper was probably little more than momentary, nor are any stories told about him. Yet he is a late invention, implying the pre-existence of the higher gods, for whose better ministration he was created and ordained. Likewise he is called a ijpm by Pausanias, and therefore by him at least function

is

very limited,

regarded as personal. It seems, then, that scarcely any figure in this brief catalogue entirely satisfies Usener's definition of a SonderGott those that may be supposed to have descended from a remote past yet possess a personal character which '

'

;

betrays the same religious thought as that which produced the personal gods of polytheism. Many of the figures imply the high gods, and some are probably emanations from

them. The more shadowy and impalpable forms can be sometimes proved, and often suspected, to be the products of the latest period. The ancestor of a personal deity may be often more limited in function, but appears sometimes to be more complex than his descendant. An adjectival name may have been originally chosen to designate the Godhead Christ was adjectival, and originally Zeus the name may have only signified the Bright One '. But such names may in thought have been connected with many other qualities that make up personality, and may have at once denoted full concrete individuals. Doubtless a divine in often the course of time more comgrows individuality and and more sometimes we can plex intensely conceived, ;

*

*

*

'

'

mark the

many

or even

made

background

But Usener's learned growth. valuable treatise has not proved, respects, its theorem that in the immediate probable,

stages

and, in

of

of

its

Greek polytheism, out of which much of

it

FUNCTIONAL HEROES

94

developed, was a shadowy world of functional, half-impersonal numina *. Greek religion early and late had always its animistic and daemonistic elements and in the history of our race animism probably preceded theism and poly'

;

but our present knowledge points to the belief that the ancestors of the historic Greeks brought with them

theism

;

a personal religion of concrete divinities, and found a personal polytheism in many respects differing from their own, but in other ways akin, on the soil that they conquered.

CHAPTER

V

ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF THE CULT OF

HERAKLES On

a higher plane and of more varied interest than any type of hero-deity hitherto examined are Herakles, the Dioskouroi, and Asklepios, and much the of the personages of the

arise in regard to them all, though they differ in their life-history, character, and functions. In the galaxy of Greek heroes Herakles is pre-eminent, not merely in respect of his irresistible might, but in respect of the richness of the legend that has grown up around him. He is the ijfms par excellence, so that Pindar by a bold com-

same reUgious problems

bination of terms could style him the rjpcos ^eo's ^, and for many of the communities he was both a hero and a god at

the same time.

We know

that the term 6^6^ was often

vaguely and thoughtlessly applied by the litterateurs of Greece but in actual ritual the distinction between hero and the gods of the upper world was sharply maintained, and too palpable for one to be confused with the other. The animals offered were mostly the same, except that the goat is scarcely mentioned among the offerings to heroes but the hero-sacrifice was called by a different name, Myiaixa, as distinct from dvaia, and was very rarely partaken by the ;

;

worshipper, whereas the common meal near the altar was the rule in the service of the god. When a community

tomb of the hero, the blood of the victim might be poured down through a ^odpos, or hole in the ground, and the victim would be sacrificed with his head held down over the hole, whereas the animal sacrificed to the upper powers was lifted up from the ground, and the neck drawn back so that the head faced the sky and the hero's altar, which was strictly and technically called kaxapa, possessed the

;

*

Nem.

3.

22.

ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF THE

96

was much lowerin height than the Bcofios, the altar of the deity, and of round form ^ it served for libations only, and its for was convenient allowing them to run down into the shape sacrificial service of the hero was disearth. the Finally, from that of the deity by the general rule that tinguished in the calendar for one day only in the former was fixed ;

the year, probably the supposed day of his death ^. Therefore we may trust the ancient authorities where they definitely assert that the sacrifice was either of the heroic

In regard, however, to Herakles, a special uncertainty might arise from the fact that no community is known to have claimed to possess his tomb or his relics therefore it would be impossible to arrange his or the divine type.

;

service

on the ordinary

lines

of sepulchral

But

ritual.

sufficient archaeological proof has been adduced that a special architectural structure became linked with the cult of

Herakles,

as

a traditional and distinctive

mark

from

:

and Ithome we have a series of and vases showing a peculiar form of the heroon

Attica, Boeotia, Andros,

'

*

reliefs

or hero-shrine of Herakles, consisting of a quadrilateral stone basis supporting four pillars at the corners, the two front ones surmounted by a pediment and the space between

them unroofed

the form agrees exactly with the type of

;

in grave described by Pausanias as prevalent in Sikuon the rest of Greece it is found associated with no divinity and no other hero save Herakles. Now we have clear testimony of an ancient hero-cult of him at Sikuon ^, which always survived in conjunction with the theistic ritual and Herodotus implies in one text that There is this combination of the two was not infrequent. a record also that only heroic honours were assigned him in where later his Lokris ^ and in early times in Thebes itself of faith that Isokrates ^ became so a divinity strong dogma declared he was more honoured there than all the other '-

;

;

*=,

*

The two terms

)3a;/xos

and kaxapa are often used indiscriminately,

e. g.

19. 3 and Pollux, On. 1.8; but vide Schol. Eur. Phoin. 274. ^ Kar' iviavTov Oveiv is the usual phrase.

Paus. *=

I.

2. 7. 2.

^

Paus.

2. 10. I.

*

Diod. Sic.

^

4. 39.

Philipp. p. 88.

CULT OF HERAKLES

97

and a Theban hymn pronounced him the son of Zeus and Hera''. In Messene it is not certain that he was raised above heroic rank, for he is not mentioned among the deities to whom special prayers were made on the restoration in his shrine of the Messenians after Epaminondas' victory at Abia on the coast he was identified with Mantiklos, the Messenian hero who founded his worship there ^, and a reUef found at Ithome shows him standing by a heroon of the Even at Argos, whence sepulchral type described above so much of his myth is supposed to have emanated ^, there is no mention of a temple, and a decree of the early Roman imperial period^, mentioning that 'the honours of Perseus and Herakles' were voted to a certain citizen, suggests only heroic cult. Even in Attica, the land which claimed to be the first to consecrate divine worship to Herakles, we hear of no va6

:

THE CULTS OF ANCESTORS

347

primitive belief of the x^Vo^-service the soul does not flit away helplessly and irrevocably to a far-off shadow-land somewhere in the west, but abides under the kindly guardianship of the Earth-mother in or near the grave in the Attic soil,

whence periodically

it is

invited to return to the living

perhaps to share a meal with them. And let us note also that the departed souls in Attica were specially friends,

by the auspicious name Demeter has gathered to herself

'

called

'

Ar^jutTJrpetot, ^ ;

though

those it is

that this special term was the privilege of those

whom

possible

who had

been initiated at Eleusis.

The

ritual of the Anthesteria presents us with another question of psychological importance. Was the emotion of the living

towards the ghost mainly one of fear or affecis usually regarded by writers on the as the subject aboriginal emotion of man in his relation to the unseen world, and as the most usual stimulus of cult ^ it is certainly the more frequent and the more obvious but as a matter of fact the records both of backward and advanced societies show us the blending of the two emotions, and now one, now the other, as predominant. We have noted that in Homer there is scarcely a hint of fear of the tion

?

The former

;

;

*

and although Odysseus frankly confesses pale fear -when the throng of phantoms crowd upon me around him in the lower world, in the upper air neither he nor any other Homeric hero seems to be so troubled. Nor has Homer any apparent consciousness of the miasma of the dead to which Hesiod is the first to give testimony ghost, seized

'

"",

;

wrong, he declares, to beget children returned from the ill-omened funeral

*

it is

feeling of the

miasma

of the

when one has

'

'^.

just Doubtless this

dead was world-old in Greece

* The desire to secure the favour of the Earth-mother for the departed might explain the curious Lycian custom of men wearing female garments for it during the period of mourning (Plut. Consol. ad Apoll. p. 113 A) is a recognized law in ritual that the worshipper should endeavour to assimilate himself to the nature and type of the divinity. But we must reckon with a different explanation, namely, that the change of garments was intended to deceive the ghosts that are wandering round at such times. ;

^ /. 7. 141 TA.^7roA.e/xo5 in Rhodes :

'"^

2,

TvSevs Pat

Tarentum

:

Aristot. p.

840 a.

;

Artemis, R. 79"^. Schol.

ib..

HEROES OF EPIC AND SAGA ^"'

Lemnos

in

^i\oKTrjryjvvs at Argos

4>o/)ySas at

:

chidas) ritual

^

:

culture-hero). ^^ ^vXovorj, daughter of Tundareus, at Sparta: Athenag. Leg. i. ^^ Paton and Hicks, no. 349 (family-hero of XdpfjivXo^ in Kos :

the

'

Charmuleis

').

FUNCTIONAL AND CULTURE-HEROES ^^

P'Aypevs on coins of Korkura: Head, Hist. Num} p. 328 (bearded figure with cornucopia). ? Hero akin to Apollo 'Ay/oatb?. ^"^

*^ ^"

^AKpaTOTTOTTjs at

*AAa>aSai, heroes in

(boundary '^^

Mounuchia

:

'AXe$dvo>pj physician-hero at

inscr.

Naxos

:

Athenae.

Sikuon

:

p.

39

Paus.

Diod. Sic.

5.

F

(from Polemon).

2.

11, 6.

51;

C.

I.

G. 2420

of shrine).

Ath. Mitth, 1896, p. 295, "A/xwo?, physician-hero in Athens on Akropolis, fourth century b. c. ; cf. inscription :

inscription found

of 6pya>v