Myth, Ritual And Religion Volume I Part 24

Ritual is preserved because it preserves LUCK. Not only among the Romans and the Brahmans, with their endless minute ritual actions, but among such lower races as the Kanekas of New Caledonia, the efficacy of religious functions is destroyed by the slightest accidental infraction of established rules.(1) The same timid conservatism presides over myth, and in each locality the mystery-plays, with their accompanying narratives, preserved inviolate the early forms of legend. Myth and ritual do not admit of being argued about. "C'etait le rite etabli. Ce n'etait pas plus absurde qu'autre chose," says the conservative in M.

Renan's piece, defending the mode of appointment of

The priest who slew the slayer, And shall himself be slain.

(1) Thus the watchers of the dead in New Caledonia are fed by the sorcerer with a mess at the end of a very long spoon, and should the food miss the mouth, all the ceremonies have to be repeated. This detail is from Mr. J. J. Atkinson.

Now, if the rites and myths preserved by the timorousness of this same "cowardice towards the supernatural" were originally evolved in the stage of savagery, savage they would remain, as it is impious and dangerous to reform them till the religion which they serve perishes with them. These relics in Greek ritual and faith are very commonly explained as due to Oriental influences, as things borrowed from the dark and b.l.o.o.d.y superst.i.tions of Asia. But this attempt to save the native Greek character for "blitheness" and humanity must not be pushed too far.(1) It must be remembered that the cruder and wilder sacrifices and legends of Greece were strictly LOCAL; that they were attached to these ancient temples, old altars, barbarous xoana, or wooden idols, and rough fetish stones, in which Pausanias found the most ancient relics of h.e.l.lenic theology. This is a proof of their antiquity and a presumption in favour of their freedom from foreign influence. Most of these things were survivals from that dimly remembered prehistoric age in which the Greeks, not yet gathered into city states, lived in villages or kraals, or pueblos, as we should translate (Greek text omitted), if we were speaking of African or American tribes. In that stage the early Greeks must have lacked both the civic and the national or Panh.e.l.lenic sentiment; their political unit was the clan, which, again, answered in part to the totem kindred of America, or Africa, or Australia.(2) In this stagnant condition they could not have made acquaintance with the many creeds of Semitic and other alien peoples on the sh.o.r.es of the Levant.(3) It was later, when Greece had developed the city life of the heroic age, that her adventurous sons came into close contact with Egypt and Phoenicia.

(1) Claus, De Antiq. Form. Dianae, 6,7,16.

(2) As C. O. Muller judiciously remarks: "The scenes of nine-tenths of the Greek myths are laid in PARTICULAR DISTRICTS OF GREECE, and they speak of the primeval inhabitants, of the lineage and adventures of native heroes. They manifest an accurate acquaintance with individual localities, which, at a time when Greece was neither explored by antiquaries, nor did geographical handbooks exist, could be possessed only by the inhabitants of these localities." Muller gives, as examples, myths of bears more or less divine. Scientific Mythology, pp. 14, 15.

(3) Compare Claus, De Dianae Antiquissima Natura, p. 3.

In the colonising time, still later--perhaps from 900 B.C.

downwards--the Greeks, settled on sites whence they had expelled Sidonians or Sicanians, very naturally continued, with modifications, the worship of such G.o.ds as they found already in possession. Like the Romans, the Greeks easily recognised their own deities in the a.n.a.logous members of foreign polytheistic systems. Thus we can allow for alien elements in such G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses as Zeus Asterios, as Aphrodite of Cyprus or Eryx, or the many-breasted Ephesian Artemis, whose monstrous form had its exact a.n.a.logue among the Aztecs in that many-breasted G.o.ddess of the maguey plant whence beer was made. To discern and disengage the borrowed factors in the h.e.l.lenic Olympus by a.n.a.lysis of divine names is a task to which comparative philology may lawfully devote herself; but we cannot so readily explain by presumed borrowing from without the rude xoana of the ancient local temples, the wild myths of the local legends, the sacra which were the exclusive property of old-world families, Butadae or Eumolpidae. These are clearly survivals from a stage of Greek culture earlier than the city state, earlier than the heroic age of the roving Greek Vikings, and far earlier than the Greek colonies. They belong to that conservative and immobile period when the tribe or clan, settled in its scattered kraals, lived a life of agriculture, hunting and cattle-breeding, engaged in no larger or more adventurous wars than border feuds about women or cattle. Such wars were on a humbler scale than even Nestor's old fights with the Epeians; such adventures did not bring the tribe into contact with alien religions. If Sidonian merchantmen chanced to establish a factory near a tribe in this condition, their religion was not likely to make many proselytes.

These reasons for believing that most of the wilder element in Greek ritual and myth was native may be briefly recapitulated, as they are often overlooked. The more strange and savage features meet us in LOCAL tales and practices, often in remote upland temples and chapels.

There they had survived from the society of the VILLAGE status, before villages were gathered into CITIES, before Greeks had taken to a roving life, or made much acquaintance with distant and maritime peoples.

For these historical reasons, it may be a.s.sumed that the LOCAL religious antiquities of Greece, especially in upland districts like Arcadia and Elis, are as old, and as purely national, as free from foreign influences as any Greek inst.i.tutions can be. In these rites and myths of true folk-lore and Volksleben, developed before h.e.l.las won its way to the pure h.e.l.lenic stage, before Egypt and Phoenicia were familiar, should be found that common rude element which Greeks share with the other races of the world, and which was, to some extent, purged away by the genius of Homer and Pindar, pii vates et Phaebo digna locuti.

In proof of this local conservatism, some pa.s.sages collected by K. F.

Hermann in his Lehrbuch der Griechischen Antiquitaten(1) may be cited.

Thus Isocrates writes,(2) "This was all their care, neither to destroy any of the ancestral rites, nor to add aught beyond what was ordained".

Clemens Alexandrinus reports that certain Thessalians worshipped storks, "IN ACCORDANCE WITH USE AND WONT".(3) Plato lays down the very "law of least change" which has been described. "Whether the legislator is establishing a new state or restoring an old and decayed one, in respect of G.o.ds and temples,... if he be a man of sense, he will MAKE NO CHANGE IN ANYTHING which the oracle of Delphi, or Dodona, or Ammon has sanctioned, in whatever manner." In this very pa.s.sage Plato(4) speaks of rites "derived from Tyrrhenia or Cyprus" as falling within the later period of the Greek Wanderjahre. On the high religious value of things antique, Porphyry wrote in a late age, and when the new religion of Christ was victorious, "Comparing the new sacred images with the old, we see that the old are more simply fashioned, yet are held divine, but the new, admired for their elaborate execution, have less persuasion of divinity,"--a remark antic.i.p.ated by Pausanias, "The statues Daedalus wrought are quainter to the outward view, yet there shows forth in them somewhat supernatural".(5) So Athenaeus(6) reports of a visitor to the shrine of Leto in Delos, that he expected the ancient statue of the mother of Apollo to be something remarkable, but, unlike the pious Porphyry, burst out laughing when he found it a shapeless wooden idol.

These idols were dressed out, fed and adorned as if they had life.(7) It is natural that myths dating from an age when Greek G.o.ds resembled Polynesian idols should be as rude as Polynesian myths. The tenacity of LOCAL myth is demonstrated by Pausanias, who declares that even in the highly civilised Attica the Demes retained legends different from those of the central city--the legends, probably, which were current before the villages were "Synoecised" into Athens.(8)

(1) Zweiter Theil, 1858.

(2) Areop., 30.

(3) Clem. Alex., Oxford, 1715, i. 34.

(4) Laws, v. 738.

(5) De. Abst., ii. 18; Paus., ii. 4, 5.

(6) xiv. 2.

(7) Hermann, op. cit., p. 94, note 10.

(8) Pausanias, i. 14, 6.

It appears, then, that Greek ritual necessarily preserves matter of the highest antiquity, and that the oldest rites and myths will probably be found, not in the Panh.e.l.lenic temples, like that in Olympia, not in the NATIONAL poets, like Homer and Sophocles, but in the LOCAL fanes of early tribal G.o.ds, and in the LOCAL mysteries, and the myths which came late, if they came at all, into literary circulation. This opinion is strengthened and ill.u.s.trated by that invaluable guide-book of the artistic and religious pilgrim written in the second century after our era by Pausanias. If we follow him, we shall find that many of the ceremonies, stories and idols which he regarded as oldest are a.n.a.logous to the idols and myths of the contemporary backward races. Let us then, for the sake of ill.u.s.trating the local and savage survivals in Greek religion, accompany Pausanias in his tour through h.e.l.las.

In Christian countries, especially in modern times, the contents of one church are very like the furniture of another church; the functions in one resemble those in all, though on the Continent some shrines still retain relics and customs of the period when local saints had their peculiar rites. But it was a very different thing in Greece. The pilgrim who arrived at a temple never could guess what oddity or horror in the way of statues, sacrifices, or stories might be prepared for his edification. In the first place, there were HUMAN SACRIFICES. These are not familiar to low savages, if known to them at all. Probably they were first offered to barbaric royal ghosts, and thence transferred to G.o.ds.

In the town of Salamis, in Cyprus, about the date of Hadrian, the devout might have found the priest slaying a human victim to Zeus,--an interesting custom, inst.i.tuted, according to Lactantius, by Teucer, and continued till the age of the Roman Empire.(1)

(1) Euseb., Praep. Ev., iv. 17, mentions, among peoples practising human sacrifices, Rhodes, Salamis, Heliopolis, Chios, Tenedos, Lacedaemon, Arcadia and Athens; and, among G.o.ds thus honoured, Hera, Athene, Cronus, Ares, Dionysus, Zeus and Apollo. For Dionysus the Cannibal, Plutarch, Themist., 13; Porphyr., Abst., ii. 55. For the sacrifice to Zeus Laphystius, see Grote, i. c. vi., and his array of authorities, especially Herodotus, vii. 197. Clemens Alexandrinus (i. 36) mentions the Messenians, to Zeus; the Taurians, to Artemis, the folk of Pella, to Peleus and Chiron; the Cretans, to Zeus; the Lesbians, to Dionysus.

Geusius de Victimis Humanis (1699) may be consulted.

At Alos in Achaia Phthiotis, the stranger MIGHT have seen an extraordinary spectacle, though we admit that the odds would have been highly against his chance of witnessing the following events. As the stranger approaches the town-hall, he observes an elderly and most respectable citizen strolling in the same direction. The citizen is so lost in thought that apparently he does not notice where he is going.

Behind him comes a crowd of excited but silent people, who watch him with intense interest. The citizen reaches the steps of the town-hall, while the excitement of his friends behind increases visibly. Without thinking, the elderly person enters the building. With a wild and un-Aryan howl, the other people of Alos are down on him, pinion him, wreathe him with flowery garlands, and, lead him to the temple of Zeus Laphystius, or "The Glutton," where he is solemnly sacrificed on the altar. This was the custom of the good Greeks of Alos whenever a descendant of the house of Athamas entered the Prytaneion. Of course the family were very careful, as a rule, to keep at a safe distance from the forbidden place. "What a sacrifice for Greeks!" as the author of the Minos(1) says in that dialogue which is incorrectly attributed to Plato.

"He cannot get out except to be sacrificed," says Herodotus, speaking of the unlucky descendant of Athamas. The custom appears to have existed as late as the time of the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius.(2)

(1) 315, c.; Plato, Laws, vi. 782, c.

(2) Argonautica, vii. 197.

Even in the second century, when Pausanias visited Arcadia, he found what seem to have been human sacrifices to Zeus. The pa.s.sage is so very strange and romantic that we quote a part of it.(1) "The Lycaean hill hath other marvels to show, and chiefly this: thereon there is a grove of Zeus Lycaeus, wherein may men in nowise enter; but if any transgresses the law and goes within, he must die within the s.p.a.ce of one year. This tale, moreover, they tell, namely, that whatsoever man or beast cometh within the grove casts no shadow, and the hunter pursues not the deer into that wood, but, waiting till the beast comes forth again, sees that it has left its shadow behind. And on the highest crest of the whole mountain there is a mound of heaped-up earth, the altar of Zeus Lycaeus, and the more part of Peloponnesus can be seen from that place. And before the altar stand two pillars facing the rising sun, and thereon golden eagles of yet more ancient workmanship. And on this altar they sacrifice to Zeus in a manner that may not be spoken, and little liking had I to make much search into this matter. BUT LET IT BE AS IT IS, AND AS IT HATH BEEN FROM THE BEGINNING." The words "as it hath been from the beginning" are ominous and significant, for the traditional myths of Arcadia tell of the human sacrifices of Lycaon, and of men who, tasting the meat of a mixed sacrifice, put human flesh between their lips unawares.(2) This aspect of Greek religion, then, is almost on a level with the mysterious cannibal horrors of "Voodoo," as practised by the secret societies of negroes in Hayti. But concerning these things, as Pausanias might say, it is little pleasure to inquire.

(1) Pausanias, viii. 2.

(2) Plato, Rep., viii. 565, d. This rite occurs in some African coronation ceremonies.

Even where men were not sacrificed to the G.o.ds, the tourist among the temples would learn that these b.l.o.o.d.y rites had once been customary, and ceremonies existed by way of commutation. This is precisely what we find in Vedic religion, in which the empty form of sacrificing a man was gone through, and the origin of the world was traced to the fragments of a G.o.d sacrificed by G.o.ds.(1) In Sparta was an altar of Artemis Orthia, and a wooden image of great rudeness and antiquity--so rude indeed, that Pausanias, though accustomed to Greek fetish-stones, thought it must be of barbaric origin. The story was that certain people of different towns, when sacrificing at the altar, were seized with frenzy and slew each other. The oracle commanded that the altar should be sprinkled with human blood. Men were therefore chosen by lot to be sacrificed till Lycurgus commuted the offering, and sprinkled the altar with the blood of boys who were flogged before the G.o.ddess. The priestess holds the statue of the G.o.ddess during the flogging, and if any of the boys are but lightly scourged, the image becomes too heavy for her to bear.

(1) The Purusha Sukhta, in Rig-Veda, x. 90.

The Ionians near Anthea had a temple of Artemis Triclaria, and to her it had been customary to sacrifice yearly a youth and maiden of transcendent beauty. In Pausanias's time the human sacrifice was commuted. He himself beheld the strange spectacle of living beasts and birds being driven into the fire to Artemis Laphria, a Calydonian G.o.ddess, and he had seen bears rush back among the ministrants; but there was no record that any one had ever been hurt by these wild beasts.(1) The bear was a beast closely connected with Artemis, and there is some reason to suppose that the G.o.ddess had herself been a she-bear or succeeded to the cult of a she-bear in the morning of time.(2)

(1) Paus., vii. 18, 19.

(2) See "Artemis", postea.

It may be believed that where symbolic human sacrifices are offered, that is, where some other victim is slain or a dummy of a man is destroyed, and where legend maintains that the sacrifice was once human, there men and women were originally the victims. Greek ritual and Greek myth were full of such tales and such commutations.(1) In Rome, as is well known, effigies of men called Argives were sacrificed.(2) As an example of a beast-victim given in commutation, Pausanias mentions(3) the case of the folk of Potniae, who were compelled once a year to offer to Dionysus a boy, in the bloom of youth. But the sacrifice was commuted for a goat.

(1) See Hermann, Alterthumer., ii. 159-161, for abundant examples.