Myth, Ritual And Religion Volume I Part 26

The latter ceremonies correspond, in short, to confirmation, and they are usually of a severe character, being meant to test by fasting (as Plutarch says) and by torture (as in the familiar Spartan rite) the courage and constancy of the young braves. The Greek mysteries best known to us are the Thesmophoria and the Eleusinia. In the former the rites (as will appear later) partook of the nature of savage "medicine"

or magic, and were mainly intended to secure fertility in husbandry and in the family. In the Eleusinia the purpose was the purification of the initiated, secured by ablutions and by standing on the "ram's-skin of Zeus," and after purifications the mystae engaged in sacred dances, and were permitted to view a miracle play representing the sorrows and consolations of Demeter. There was a higher element, necessarily obscure in nature. The chief features in the whole were purifications, dancing, sacrifice and the representation of the miracle play. It would be tedious to offer an exhaustive account of savage rites a.n.a.logous to these mysteries of h.e.l.las. Let it suffice to display the points where Greek found itself in harmony with Australian, and American, and African practice. These points are: (1) mystic dances; (2) the use of a little instrument, called turndun in Australia, whereby a roaring noise is made, and the profane are warned off; (3) the habit of daubing persons about to be initiated with clay or anything else that is sordid, and of washing this off; apparently by way of showing that old guilt is removed and a new life entered upon; (4) the performances with serpents may be noticed, while the "mad doings" and "howlings" mentioned by Plutarch are familiar to every reader of travels in uncivilised countries; (5) ethical instruction is communicated.

First, as to the mystic dances, Lucian observes:(1) "You cannot find a single ancient mystery in which there is not dancing.... This much all men know, that most people say of the revealers of the mysteries that they 'dance them out'" ((Greek text omitted)). Clemens of Alexandria uses the same term when speaking of his own "appalling revelations".(2) So closely connected are mysteries with dancing among savages, that when Mr. Orpen asked Qing, the Bushman hunter, about some doctrines in which Qing was not initiated, he said: "Only the initiated men of that dance know these things". To "dance" this or that means to be acquainted with this or that myth, which is represented in a dance or ballet d'action(3) ((Greek text omitted)). So widely distributed is the practice, that Acosta, in an interesting pa.s.sage, mentions it as familiar to the people of Peru before and after the Spanish conquest. The text is a valuable instance of survival in religion. When they were converted to Christianity the Peruvians detected the a.n.a.logy between our sacrament and their mysteries, and they kept up as much as possible of the old rite in the new ritual. Just as the mystae of Eleusis practised chast.i.ty, abstaining from certain food, and above all from beans, before the great Pagan sacrament, so did the Indians. "To prepare themselves all the people fasted two days, during which they did neyther company with their wives, nor eate any meate with salt or garlicke, nor drink any chic.... And although the Indians now forbeare to sacrifice beasts or other things publikely, which cannot be hidden from the Spaniardes, yet doe they still use many ceremonies that have their beginnings from these feasts and auntient superst.i.tions, for at this day do they covertly make their feast of Ytu at the daunces of the feast of the Sacrament. Another feast falleth almost at the same time, whereas the Christians observe the solempnitie of the holy Sacrament, which DOTH RESEMBLE IT IN SOME SORT, AS IN DAUNCING, SINGING AND REPRESENTATIONS."(4) The holy "daunces" at Seville are under Papal disapproval, but are to be kept up, it is said, till the peculiar dresses used in them are worn out. Acosta's Indians also had "garments which served only for this feast". It is superfluous to multiply examples of the dancing, which is an invariable feature of savage as of Greek mysteries.

(1) (Greek text omitted), chap. xv. 277.

(2) Ap. Euseb., Praep. Ev., ii, 3, 6.

(3) Cape Monthly Magazine, July, 1874.

(4) Acosta, Historie of the Indies, book v. chap. xxviii. London, 1604.

2. The Greek and savage use of the turndun, or bribbun of Australia in the mysteries is familiar to students. This fish-shaped flat board of wood is tied to a string, and whirled round, so as to cause a peculiar m.u.f.fled roar. Lobeck quotes from the old scholia on Clemens Alexandrinus, published by Bastius in annotations on St. Gregory, the following Greek description of the turndun, the "bull-roarer" of English country lads, the Gaelic srannam:(1) (Greek text omitted)". "The conus was a little slab of wood, tied to a string, and whirled round in the mysteries to make a whirring noise. As the mystic uses of the turndun in Australia, New Zealand, New Mexico and Zululand have elsewhere been described at some length (Custom and Myth, pp. 28-44), it may be enough to refer the reader to the pa.s.sage. Mr. Taylor has since found the instrument used in religious mysteries in West Africa, so it has now been tracked almost round the world. That an instrument so rude should be employed by Greek and Australians on mystic occasions is in itself a remarkable coincidence. Unfortunately, Lobeck, who published the Greek description of the turndun (Aglaophamus, 700), was unacquainted with the modern ethnological evidence.

(1) p.r.o.nounced strantham. For this information I am indebted to my friend Mr. M'Allister, schoolmaster at St. Mary's Loch.

3. The custom of plastering the initiated over with clay or filth was common in Greek as in barbaric mysteries. Greek examples may be given first. Demosthenes accuses Aeschines of helping his mother in certain mystic rites, aiding her, especially, by bedaubing the initiate with clay and bran.(1) Harpocration explains the term used ((Greek text omitted)) thus: "Daubing the clay and bran on the initiate, to explain which they say that the t.i.tans when they attacked Dionysus daubed themselves over with chalk, but afterwards, for ritual purposes, clay was used". It may be urged with some force that the mother of Aeschines introduced foreign, novel and possibly savage rites. But Sophocles, in a fragment of his lost play, the Captives, uses the term in the same ritual sense--

(Greek text omitted).

(1) De Corona, 313.

The idea clearly was that by cleansing away the filth plastered over the body was symbolised the pure and free condition of the initiate. He might now cry in the mystic chant--

(Greek text omitted).

Worse have I fled, better have I found.

That this was the significance of the daubing with clay in Greek mysteries and the subsequent cleansing seems quite certain. We are led straight to this conclusion by similar rites, in which the purpose of mystically cleansing was openly put forward. Thus Plutarch, in his essay on superst.i.tion, represents the guilty man who would be purified actually rolling in clay, confessing his misdeeds, and then sitting at home purified by the cleansing process ((Greek text omitted)).(1) In another rite, the cleansing of blood-guiltiness, a similar process was practised. Orestes, after killing his mother, complains that the Eumenides do not cease to persecute him, though he has been "purified by blood of swine".(2) Apollonius says that the red hand of the murderer was dipped in the blood of swine and then washed.(3) Athenaeus describes a similar unpleasant ceremony.(4) The blood of whelps was apparently used also, men being first daubed with it and then washed clean.(5) The word (Greek text omitted) is again the appropriate ritual term. Such rites Plutarch calls (Greek text omitted), "filthy purifications".(6) If daubing with dirt is known to have been a feature of Greek mysteries, it meets us everywhere among savages. In O-Kee-Pa, that curiously minute account of the Mandan mysteries, Catlin writes that a portion of the frame of the initiate was "covered with clay, which the operator took from a wooden bowl, and with his hand plastered unsparingly over". The fifty young men waiting for initiation "were naked and entirely covered with clay of various colours".(7) The custom is mentioned by Captain John Smith in Virginia. Mr. Winwood Reade found it in Africa, where, as among the Mandans and Spartans, cruel torture and flogging accompanied the initiation of young men.(8) In Australia the evidence for daubing the initiate is very abundant.(9) In New Mexico, the Zunis stole Mr.

Cushing's black paint, as considering it even better than clay for religious daubing.(10)

(1) So Hermann, op. cit., 133.

(2) Eumenides, 273.

(3) Argonautica, iv. 693.

(4) ix. 78. Hermann, from whom the latter pa.s.sages are borrowed, also quotes the evidence of a vase published by Feuerbach, Lehrbuch, p. 131, with other authorities.

(5) Plutarch, Quaest. Rom., 68.

(6) De Superst.i.tione, chap. xii.

(7) O-Kee-Pa, London, 1867, p. 21.

(8) Savage Africa, case of Mongilomba; Pausanias, iii. 15.

(9) Brough Smyth, i. 60.

(10) Custma and Myth, p. 40.

4. Another savage rite, the use of serpents in Greek mysteries, is attested by Clemens Alexandrinus and by Demosthenes (loc. cit.). Clemens says the snakes were caressed in representations of the loves of Zeus in serpentine form. The great savage example is that of "the snake-dance of the Moquis," who handle rattle-snakes in the mysteries without being harmed.(1) The dance is partly totemistic, partly meant, like the Thesmophoria, to secure the fertility of the lands of the Moquis of Arizonas. The turndum or (Greek text omitted) is employed. Masks are worn, as in the rites of Demeter Cidiria in Arcadia.(2)

(1) The Snake-Dance of the Moquis. By Captain John G. Bourke, London, 1884.

(2) Pausanias, viii. 16.

5. This last point of contact between certain Greek and certain savage mysteries is highly important. The argument of Lobeck, in his celebrated work Aglaophamus, is that the Mysteries were of no great moment in religion. Had he known the evidence as to savage initiations, he would have been confirmed in his opinion, for many of the singular Greek rites are clearly survivals from savagery. But was there no more truly religious survival? Pindar is a very ancient witness that things of divine import were revealed. "Happy is he who having seen these things goes under the hollow earth. He knows the end of life, and the G.o.d-given beginning."(1) Sophocles "chimes in," as Lobeck says, declaring that the initiate alone LIVE in Hades, while other souls endure all evils.

Crinagoras avers that even in life the initiate live secure, and in death are the happier. Isagoras declares that about the end of life and all eternity they have sweet hopes.

(1) Fragm., cxvi., 128 H. p. 265.

Splendida testimonia, cries Lobeck. He tries to minimise the evidence, remarking that Isocrates promises the very same rewards to all who live justly and righteously. But why not, if to live justly and righteously was part of the teaching of the mysteries of Eleusis? Cicero's evidence, almost a translation of the Greek pa.s.sages already cited, Lobeck dismisses as purely rhetorical.(1) Lobeck's method is rather cavalier.

Pindar and Sophocles meant something of great significance.

(1) De Legibus ii. 14; Aglaophamus, pp. 69-74.

Now we have acknowledged savage survivals of ugly rites in the Greek mysteries. But it is only fair to remember that, in certain of the few savage mysteries of which we know the secret, righteousness of life and a knowledge of good are inculcated. This is the case in Australia, and in Central Africa, where to be "uninitiated" is equivalent to being selfish.(1) Thus it seems not improbable that consolatory doctrines were expounded in the Eleusinia, and that this kind of sermon or exhortation was no less a survival from savagery than the daubing with clay, and the (Greek text omitted), and other wild rites.

(1) Making of Religion, pp. 193-197, 235.

We have now attempted to establish that in Greek law and ritual many savage customs and usages did undeniably survive. We have seen that both philosophical and popular opinion in Greece believed in a past age of savagery. In law, in religion, in religious art, in custom, in human sacrifice, in relics of totemism, and in the mysteries, we have seen that the Greeks retained plenty of the usages now found among the remotest and most backward races. We have urged against the suggestion of borrowing from Egypt or Asia that these survivals are constantly found in local and tribal religion and rituals, and that consequently they probably date from that remote prehistoric past when the Greeks lived in village settlements. It may still doubtless be urged that all these things are Pelasgic, and were the customs of a race settled in h.e.l.las before the arrival of the Homeric Achaeans, and Dorians, and Argives, who, on this hypothesis, adopted and kept up the old savage Pelasgian ways and superst.i.tions. It is impossible to prove or disprove this belief, nor does it affect our argument. We allege that all Greek life below the surface was rich in inst.i.tutions now found among the most barbaric peoples. These inst.i.tutions, whether borrowed or inherited, would still be part of the legacy left by savages to cultivated peoples.

As this legacy is so large in custom and ritual, it is not unfair to argue that portions of it will also be found in myths. It is now time to discuss Greek myths of the origin of things, and decide whether they are or are not a.n.a.logous in ideas to the myths which spring from the wild and ignorant fancy of Australians, Cahrocs, Nootkas and Bushmen.

CHAPTER X. GREEK COSMOGONIC MYTHS.

Nature of the evidence--Traditions of origin of the world and man--Homeric, Hesiodic and Orphic myths--Later evidence of historians, dramatists, commentators--The Homeric story comparatively pure--The story in Hesiod, and its savage a.n.a.logues--The explanations of the myth of Cronus, modern and ancient--The Orphic cosmogony--Phanes and Praj.a.pati--Greek myths of the origin of man--Their savage a.n.a.logues.