Helen of Troy

Woman and Goddess

Jack Lindsay

Copyright © Jack Lindsay 1974

The right of Jack Lindsay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

First published in the United Kingdom in 1974 by Constable.

This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

To my daughter Helen

*

Whose name but yours?

and yet

here’s no example that I’d set.

Still, Helen is no single thing:

destroying or preserving dream

delusion wildly fluttering

or daily wife who dims away:

she’s all of that, she’s less and more,

found, lost again, forever sought,

lost in the indiscriminate day

and found still at the quiet core,

lost in the self-regarding thought

and found in swarming streets of strife.

Rejoice

and find yourself, I beg you then,

not as Helen but in Helen

Helen as the earth of choice

Helen as the embosoming tree

as well as Helen who steps gaily

into the hells of chaffering men

to blaze her paradisiac trail.

Seek the whole truth and through the maze

of dangerous and delightful days

follow the thread that yet can save

and guide through the deceitful cave

where minotaurs, confronted, fail,

into bare light, which sets us free.

J.L.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations and Journals

Foreword

Part One – The Story of Helen

Chapter One – Helen in the Iliad

Chapter Two – Helen in the Odyssey

Chapter Three – Helen and History

Chapter Four – The Cyclic Poets and Hesiod

Chapter Five – The Lyric Poets

Chapter Six - Helen in the Fifth Century

Chapter Seven – From Gorgias to Late Antiquity

Part Two – Myth and Ritual

Chapter Eight – The Judgement of Paris

Chapter Nine – The Nature of Helen

Chapter Ten – Helen and her Brothers

Chapter Eleven – Runaway Heroine

Chapter Twelve – Nemesis

Appendix

Bibliography

Extract from Joan of Arc by Edward Lucie-Smith

Abbreviations and Journals

Among many debts I must single out that to L.B. Ghali-Kahil for her work on the representations of Helen’s Carryings-Off and her Return. But I must also gratefully mention George Thomson’s work on the moira concept, R.F. Willetts’s on Cretan Cults, Jouan’s on the Cypria, Dietrich’s on Nemesis, and Chapouthier’s on the Dioskouroi.

I have used the following abbreviations for authors often cited: Chap., Chapouthier; CZ, Cook, Zeus; D, Dietrich; F, Farnell; GK, Ghali-Kahil; GT, George Thomson; H, Herter; JH, Jane Harrison; JL, Jack Lindsay; N, Nilsson; PM, Evans Palace of Minos; RE, Paully-Wissow Real-Enc; Sev., Severyns; SS, Schmidt-Stahlin; W, Willetts; WM, Wilamowitz-Moellendorff.

*

AA, Archäolog. Anzeiger, ABV, Beazley (1); AC, Antiquité classique; AD, Archaiologike Deltion; AE, Année epigraphique; Aeg., Aegyptus; AEph., Archaiol. Ephemeris; AeR, Atene e Roma; AfR, Archiv f. Religionswiss.; AJA, American J. of Archaeology; AM, Mitteilungen des deutschen archäolog. Instituts; Ann., Annuali dell’ Istituto di Correspondena archeol.; Ant., Antiquity; AO, Acta Orientalia; AO(2), Archiv. Orientalni; ARV, Beazley (2); BBM, Bull. Brooklyn Mus.; BCH, Bull. de Correspondance hellénique; BIAO, Bull. Instit. Arch. Orient.; BICS, Bull. Instit. of Classical Studies; BJRL, Bull. J. Rylands Lib.; BSA, Annual of Brit. School at Athens; CAH, Cambridge Anc. History; CE, Chronique d’Egypte; CMS, Corpus d. minoischen u. myken. Siegel i 1946, A. Sakellariou; CP, Classical Philology; CQ, Classical Quarterly; CR, Class. Rev.; DS, Daremberg-Saglio Dict.; EC, Etudes classiques; IEJ, Israel Explor. Journal; JdAI, Jahrbuch des deut. archäol. Inst.; JEA, Journal of Egyptian Studies; JHS, J. of Hellenic Soc.; JNES, Journal Near Eastern Studies; JRAI, Journal of Royal Anthrop. Inst.; JRS , J. of Roman Soc.; LFE, Lexikon des frühgriech. Epos 1955 onwards; M, Minos; MH, Museum Helveticum; MEM, Mélanges de l’école française de Rome; MKAW Mededeelingen d. konigl. Akad. van Wetens. Afdeeling Letterkunde; Mnem., Mnemosyne; OLZ, Oriental. Literaturzeitung; PAA, Praktika tes Akad. Athenon; Ph., Philologus; RA, Rev. archéol.; REA, Rev. des études anciennes; REG, Rev. des études grecques; RhM, Rhein. Mus. F. Philologie; RHR, Rev. de l’hist. des religions; Roscher, Lexikon d. griech. u. röm. Mythologie; RP, Rev. de Philologie; RPA, Rend. Pont. Acc.; TAPA, Trans. American Philol. Assn.

Foreword

There are few serious studies of Helen of Troy; and as far as I can make out, no comprehensive work in any language — one that attempts to cover all aspects of her in the ancient world: in the fields of literature and art, of cult and myth. This book makes that attempt. The first half deals with her character and significance in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and discusses the various stages she goes through in the poets and prose-writers from Hesiod and the cyclic epic poets on to Euripides and Isokrates. These stages are in turn related to the phases of Greek society that beget them; and we examine the various forms of interpretation and their function as part of the effort made by the Greeks to understand their history and its driving forces, constructive and destructive; their ceaseless attempt to revalue the Homeric world in the light of contemporary problems. We find that certain moral or philosophic questions are throughout implicated: the nature of moral responsibility and of human fulfilment; the nature of fate as an inner compulsion or choice and as an outer controlling or determining force.

The second half deals with the roots of Helen in the world of cult and myth, and seeks to clarify her important connections with the early cults in which the earth-goddess, mother and nurse, was the dominating figure. We analyze the judgement of Paris and its triad of goddesses; Helen’s link with vegetation-cults and especially with the plane tree, and so with a series of cult-figures, Hanged Goddesses; her relations with her twin brothers; her role as an Earth-Maiden or Koré who is carried off like Persephone, and her consequent link with Ariadne and Europa; finally her relation to the goddess Nemesis, who is her mother in the early epic, the Cypria. In the end certain aspects that emerge during this line of enquiry merge with others that have come up out of the poetic tradition with its deep questions and answers.

We are left at the end with an insoluble problem. Was Helen a tree-goddess, connected with the dances and initiation rites of the young girls of Sparta, who became the highly individualized heroine of the Homeric story? Or was she in origin an historical figure who absorbed a large number of mythical elements? But in the process of arriving at the final form of the question we traverse a great deal of ancient Greek thought and poetry from a new angle, and we are enabled to explore many aspects of the early religious ideas and cults which reach back through the dark ages to Mykenean days. Ariadne’s Thread, which guided Theseus through the Labyrinth, plays an important part at one phase of our inquiry; and in a sense the whole book is a complex following-up of that clue (clew) through the maze of associations playing about Helen.

As I was completing the book, I had brought to my notice a recent example of the deadly feud possible in a tribal society through the abduction of a wife — though the tribal society here is one in its last stages of dissolution: that of the English gypsies. In November 1968 a fierce battle was fought between two gypsy gangs at Chalgrave camp near Toddington; it ended with two of the invaders being set on fire, one of them dying two days later. The attackers had come to avenge the carrying-off of the wife of a member of their group at Roydon.

Except for some well known names embedded in English literature, such as Achilles (Achilleus), I have kept to the correct spelling of Greek names, with upsilon transliterated as y, and have not used the Latinised forms.

JACK LINDSAY

Part One – The Story of Helen

Chapter One – Helen in the Iliad

The Homeric epics stand at the springs of Greek culture, and the story of Helen lies at their heart. Despite the endless developments, variations, additions, expansions which have happened since Homer’s time, his picture of her remains the essential thing, which all the other versions, one way or another, assume. We must therefore begin by considering his account in some detail, while taking care not to attribute to him ideas, attitudes, or motifs which came up later.

Helen, married to Menelaos, has left her home in Sparta with the prince Paris (Alexandros) of Troy; and an army of Achaians, the mainland Greeks, has set out to regain her under the command of Agamemnon, king of Mykenai and brother of Menelaos. The Iliad deals with one important episode in the siege of Troy, the wrath of Achilles, while weaving many lesser themes or episodes into the main tale. The Achaians have to carry on the siege for nine years and are entering on the tenth. (Later attempts were made to explain this length of time by the rudimentary siege methods at their disposal; and it has been suggested that the many references to the town’s pre-war wealth are meant to bring out by contrast the drying-up of resources in the long war. But in fact the ‘nine years’ are a proverbial term; and the episode of Helen’s appearance above the Skaian Gates gives the effect that the war has not been going on long, for she has to tell King Priam who the various Achaian leaders are.) Agamemnon, among his booty, has gained a girl Chryseis, daughter of a priest of Apollo. Moved by her charms, he refuses to let her father ransom her; and Apollo sends a plague on the Achaian camp. After the prophet Kalchas explains the cause, Agamemnon reluctantly agrees to surrender Chryseis, but compensates himself by seizing Briseis (girl of Brisa), to whom Achilles, her captor, has become much attached. Achilles then withdraws his allegiance to Agamemnon; he and his contingent, the Thessalian Myrmidons, take no more part in the fighting. The Achaians have lost their great champion; and despite the attempts of Diomedes, Aias and other heroes, they are driven back on the camp, which they fortify with a wall.

Agamemnon, on the advice of the veteran Nestor of Pylos, sends an embassy to Achilles, offering to return Briseis with a huge honour-prize, and, when victory comes, to see that Achilles is married, without bride-price, to a royal princess with seven cities for her dower. Achilles, still embittered, refuses. Next day, in the fighting, Hektor, brother of Paris and the Trojan champion, drives the Achaians back to the ships, forces an entrance in their wall, and sets one of the ships on fire. Patroklos, the favoured retainer and comrade of Achilles, gets permission to don that hero’s armour and lead the Myrmidons into the battle. The Trojans, thinking that Achilles himself has taken the field, retreat in disorder; but after a while Patroklos is killed — Apollo helping to bring about his death. The Achaians begin to fall back again. Achilles, in a transport of fury at the news of Patroklos’ death, appears unarmed at the trench round the camp. His war-cry makes the Trojans fall back and Patroklos’ body is recovered. He now wants to go on fighting; but Odysseus insists on ending the feud with the correct procedure. Achilles is paid his due compensation. (His mother the sea-goddess Thetis persuades the smithgod Hephaistos to make him a new suit of armour.) Next day he routs the Trojans, encounters Hektor and kills him in single combat. He returns to the camp with Hektor’s body dragged behind his chariot. Funeral games are held; and Priam, king of Troy, comes secretly by night to Achilles and succeeds in ransoming Hektor’s body. With the latter’s funeral the Iliad ends.

The carrying-off of Helen provides the epic’s background, but does not directly intrude on the story of Achilles. We may note however a certain duplication of patterns. The war has come about through Helen’s abduction; the conflict among the Achaian leaders, almost wrecking their whole enterprise, occurs through the quarrel about a woman, Briseis, who is forcibly taken from Achilles to compensate Agamemnon for the loss of Chryseis. To appreciate this point we must realize that the Trojans are not conceived as aliens. They are part of the Greek world of the second millennium BC, though on the eastern coast of the Aegean — as were later the great mercantile towns of the Ionians. Achaians and Trojans share the same pantheon. The Trojans are supported by Apollo, Artemis and Aphrodite, while the Achaians are sustained by Hera, Athena and Ares. Athena, though the great ally of the Achaians, is also the patron deity of Troy with her temple on the acropolis. In the Iliad her Trojan priestess is Theano, daughter of Kisseus of Thrace (who lived, says Strabon, in the peninsula of Chalkidice where there were a Mt. Kissos and a town Kissos).[1]

The story of the Trojan War had come down from the Bronze Age, through dark confused centuries leading to the Ionian colonization, on into the eighth century (when we can best imagine the Homeric poems being composed). It had come down as one of the main epic cycles which told of old heroic struggles and sought to explain how the civilization of the Mykenean Greeks had broken down. The bardic tradition told how the heroic world had been sapped and destroyed above all by two internecine conflicts, a fratricidal strife at Thebes on the mainland and a disastrous war expedition overseas against Troy. In the story of the collapse of a civilization, the war for possession of Helen played the central part; and so the contention between Agamemnon and Achilles over a girl captive was a sort of refraction of the larger pattern. It helped strongly to reinforce the key motif of the Iliad, showing in clear and prolonged detail how the self-assertions, the prides and greeds, of the leaders, involving a complex tribal code of status, of shames, humiliations, compensations and regaining of face, provided a destructive element in the culture — an element continually undermining and breaking down the cohesive forces of kindred, of loyalty of man to lord and lord to overlord, and so on, which held the system together. The Briseis theme thus expressed on the realistic everyday level what the Helen theme expressed on a higher level with deep symbolism and a far wider series of references.

This point will become clearer as we go on. For the moment it helps us to see that the motif of Helen, the abducted or eloping wife, who provokes a cataclysmic war, is not a casual or arbitrary one. Through the episode of the wrath of Achilles it is linked concretely with the whole system of balances in what we may call a tribal-feudal society — balances of loyalty and disloyalty, of ardent comradeship and passionate self-assertion, which both build up and rend such a society.

Helen pervades the epic because, as the object for which the long and desperate struggle is being waged, she stands somehow for the supreme good, the most desirable goal in the heroic world. But it is only in Books III and VI out of the twenty-four books that she comes forward personally in a prominent way. She is first mentioned in Book II, where Agamemnon, despairing, has proposed that the Achaians abandon the siege and return home. ‘Already have nine years of great Zeus passed by, and see, our shiptimbers rot, the tackling hangs loose, and our wives and little children, I suppose, sit in our halls and wait for us. Yet unfulfilled, quite foundered, is the task for which we sailed. Come then, as I tell you, let’s all obey, let’s be off with our ships to our beloved native land. There’s no more hope of taking broad-streeted Troy.’[2]

The men rush for the ships and the siege would have ended if the gods had not taken a hand afresh. Hera calls on Athena, ‘Are the Argives then to go scampering across the sea’s broad back to their dear native land? Yes, to Priam and the Trojans they’d leave their brag: that Argive Helen, for whom so many Achaians have died at Troy, far from the earth of home. Go through the host of the bronze-coated Achaians, seek to restrain each man with your soothing words, and stop them from drawing their curved ships to the sea.’

Athena obeys. First she goes to Odysseus and repeats Hera’s words about Helen as the brag of the Trojans. He knows her voice and hurries to the general. Taking aside any chief he meets, he advises him against Agamemnon, while, when he finds ‘a man of the people shouting out’, he strikes him with his staff and warns him. He thus quiets the panic, despite the abuse that Thersites, the outstanding man-of-the-people, is heaping on the general, calling on his fellow soldiers to go off home and leave Agamemnon ‘to digest his prizes’. Here we meet a parody of the motif of woman loot. ‘Your huts are heaped with bronze and herds of women are in your huts, the chosen loot that we, the Achaians, give you first, when he take a city. Or do you still want gold as well? Or is it some young girl to hug in love and keep apart for yourself?’

Nestor speaks against withdrawal. ‘Let no man hurry off home before each of us here has lain and mated with some Trojan wife in requital for his strivings and his groanings for Helen.’ The phrase here is ambiguous and the meaning could be ‘the strivings and groanings of Helen’, which suggest prolonged repentance on her part and a desire to return home. But there is no evidence that the Achaians looked on her as a victim carried off by force (as she became in quite late versions). Hellenistic critics such as Aristarchos felt the need to read ‘of Helen’ as an objective genitive referring to the thoughts and feelings of the Achaians, who considered her the cause of their sufferings. (The phrase recurs later in the book, as the fighting starts once more. Menelaos moves among his men, urging them on, ‘and his heart was zealous to gain requital for his strivings and groanings for Helen’.)[3]

Paris-Alexandros appears in the battle with his curved bow and sword, brandishing two bronze-tipped spears, a panther-skin on his shoulders. He is described as godlike but promptly shrinks away from the wronged husband, and Hektor upbraids him, calling him Dys-Paris, Evil-Paris, and giving an account of Helen’s abduction. ‘Dysparis, you’re a pretty fellow, mad after women, you seducer. I wish you’d never been born. I wish you’d died before you took a wife. Far better that than to have disgraced us all and turned a thing of contempt. How the long-haired Achaians must laugh out when they see us make a champion of a prince because he’s handsome to look at, though in his heart there’s no strength, no courage. Can you today be the man who got together a crew of trusty comrades and sailed overseas in your goodeepwater ships, made yourself at home in a foreign land and carried off a beautiful woman from that faraway place and her warrior kin, only to be a curse to your father and your city, a curse to all your people, to the delight of your enemies — only to end here with that hangdog face of yours? Won’t you stand up against Menelaos, that favourite of Ares? You’d soon learn what sort of a fighter he is, the man whose wife you stole. Your lyre won’t be the least bit of use to you then, nor all Aphrodite’s gifts, your fine hair and your good looks, when you lie there in the dust. But the Trojans are a timid lot, or you’d already have worn a stone coat for all the evil you’ve done.’ That is, they’d have stoned you to death.[4]

Paris takes the rebuke well. ‘Hektor, I deserve all your reproaches. You haven’t said a word too much. Your heart always has a stubborn edge, like an axe driven through a beam by the hand of man who shapes a ship’s timbers with shrewd skill. It adds to the force of his swing. And that’s how it is with your undaunted heart. But don’t hold against me the gifts of golden Aphrodite. The precious gifts of the gods are not to be thrown away. They give them of their own grace and no man may win them by his sole will. But now, if you insist on my going out to fight this duel, make all the troops sit down and set me between the two armies to meet this Menelaos whom Ares loves. Then we can fight for Helen and all her property. The one that wins and proves himself the better man will gain the right to all the property and the woman, and he can carry them home. But let the rest of you swear friendship and binding oaths with sacrifice, and live on in deep-soiled Troy, while they return to Argos with its horse-pastures and to Achaia the land of lovely women.’

Note the way in which Helen is consistently linked with her property, ktēmata. It means movable goods, all the valuables she could carry off with her. By translating it as treasure, the hard facts of the case are somewhat romanticized. Ktēmata are individual property, unlike land or herds; they go with a dead chief into his tomb. The stress is on acquisition, through war, games, or gifts, not through a deal with merchants. Whether Helen has taken only valuables that she could claim as her own, or whether she has also taken household goods that Menelaos might consider his, we are not told. In any event she has with her a lot of highly esteemed objects which are mentioned as if they are inseparable from her personality; they are part of her ‘value’.

Agamemnon sees that Hektor has a proposal to make; he calls for a pause. Hektor stands between the two hosts and speaks on behalf of his brother Alexandros, ‘for whose sake strife has been stirred up’, and who challenges Menelaos to single combat ‘for Helen and all her property’. The winner is to take ‘all the property and the woman’. Menelaos agrees. ‘For on my heart sorrow has come above all others. It’s my mind now to see Argives and Trojans parted, as you’ve all suffered many evils through my quarrel and the troubles provoked by Alexandros.’ He wants Priam to be present to swear an oath with sacrifice, since the hearts of the young are unstable, but an old man looks before and after so that the issue may be best for both sides.

The two armies rejoice, thinking the war will now be ended. Hektor sends heralds to the city to fetch lambs and Priam, while Agamemnon sends his herald to the ships for a lamb. But Iris, the girl messenger of the gods, takes the form of Paris’ sister Laodike, ‘comeliest of Priam’s daughters’. In this form ‘she found Helen in the hall weaving a great purple web of double fold, embroidering on it many battles of the Trojans, those horse-tamers, and the bronze-coated Achaians, battles they had endured at the hands of Ares for her sake’. (The word iris is used for the rainbow by Homer, but Iris is not called the rainbow-goddess. She is the messenger of the gods in the Iliad, whereas Hermes, with his underworld links, has that office in the Odyssey.[5])

Iris-Laodike approaches Helen and says, ‘Come here, dear lady [nympha], and see the wonderful doings of the horse-taming Trojans and the bronze-coated Achaians. They have been used to waging grievous battle against one another on the plain, with their hearts set on deadly combat; but now they stand silent and the battle has halted and they lean on their shields and their long spears are fixed at their sides. But Alexandros and Menelaos whom Ares loves are going to fight with their long spears for you; and you’ll be called the dear wife of the winner.’

So the goddess spoke, ‘and put in her heart sweet longing for the man who was once her husband, her city, her parents. And at once she veiled herself with shining linen and went out of her chamber, shedding rounded tears — not alone, but followed by her two handmaids, Aithra daughter of Pittheus and ox-eyed Klymenē’. They went to the Skaian Gates where waited Priam and various Elders of the People, too old for battle, but skilled in speaking. They, the Leaders of the People, were chatting together, and when they saw Helen coming along the battlements, quietly they spoke winged words to one another. ‘No blame that the Trojans and the well-greaved Achaians should suffer such pangs, so long, for such a woman. Strangely she’s like the immortal goddesses to look at. But even so, for all that she’s such a woman, let her go off in the ships and not stay here, a curse for us and our children to come.’

The word for blame is nemesis; and in saying that there is no nemesis Homer implies that there is no moral offence and no retribution or vengeance to follow. Yet the old men add that she is a calamity for them all. Somehow she is innocent of the misery she causes; she is not to blame because of the power of her beauty that surrounds her with a fatality over which she has no control. In a sense she is the pawn of that beauty, moved by a power within her which links her with the gods and introduces a set of values that go far beyond the merely personal level. We shall have more to say of all this later, especially of nemesis, which is closely bound up with her though it does not bring doom on her own head. Homer does not seem to be personifying the term and thinking of a goddess Nemesis; he uses the term in a purely moral sense. The whole effect is strengthened by the word ainōs; strangely, terribly. Later Menelaos says to Agamemnon, ‘Ainōs am I afraid no one will undertake this task for you, go out alone and spy on the enemy in the ambrosial night.’ The shiver of fear that he gives comes from the thought of anyone daring to wander in the night that is thick with unknown spirit forces.[6] The ambrosial is what belongs to the gods. In the Odyssey when Athena appears to Telemachos in the form of a copper trader she says, ‘You are Odysseus’ son, ainōs like his your head and beautiful eyes.’

On the Skaian Gates Priam calls Helen kindly: ‘Come here, dear child, and sit before me, so you may see your former husband and your kinsfolk and people. You’re not at all to blame in my eyes. It’s the gods who to my mind are to blame. They stirred up against me the grievous wars of the Achaians.’ He asks who is the royal-looking man among the enemy host. ‘And Helen, supreme (dia) among women, answered him, “You are revered in my eyes, dear father-in-law, a man who awes [ainōs]. I wish that evil death had been my pleasure when I followed your son here, leaving my bridal chamber, my husband, my kinsfolk and my darling daughter, and all the lovely companions of my girlhood. But that was not to be. So I waste with weeping.”’ The man, she adds, is Agamemnon, a noble king and brave spearman. ‘And he is brother-in-law to shameless me, if ever there was such.’ Shameless is kynōpis, bitch-eyed or bitchfaced. In the Odyssey, when Hephaistos catches his wife Aphrodite in a snare with her lover Ares, he shouts that he will demand back the wooing-gifts he gave ‘for the sake of his bitchfaced girl’.[7]

Priam then asks who is the shorter broad-shouldered man. Helen tells him it is crafty Odysseus. Antenor breaks in to corroborate; for Odysseus and Menelaos came on an embassy about Helen before the attack on Troy began, and he entertained them. ‘Menelaos indeed spoke fluently, with few words but very clearly; he wasn’t a man of drawn-out speech or a rambler, though in years the younger man. But when Odysseus with his many wiles rose up, he stood and looked down with his eyes fixed on the ground, and he didn’t move his staff backwards or forwards, but held it stiff, like a man of no understanding. You’d have thought him uncouth, nothing but a fool; yet when he brought his great voice out of his chest, with words like snowflakes on a winter’s day, no mortal man could vie with him.’ The third man Priam asks about is the towering Aias. Helen tells about him and adds that the man near him is Idomeneus, like a god among the Cretans. ‘Often Menelaos used to entertain him in our house, whenever he came from Crete. And now I see all the rest of the Achaians with their quick glances. I could note them all and tell you their names. But there are two marshallers of the host that I don’t see: Kastor, horse-tamer, and the fine boxer, Polydeukes, my own two brothers, whom the same mother bore. Either they did not accompany the host from lovely Lakedaimon, or else they came in the seafaring ships, but now lack heart to enter into the battle of warriors, afraid of the words of shame and the many revilings that are mine.’ The poet adds the explanation: ‘But before this they were held fast in the life-giving earth there in Lakedaimon, in their dear native land.’

Meanwhile the procedure for the duel goes on. The herald Idaios proclaims that ‘Alexandros and Menelaos whom Ares loves will fight with long spears for the woman’s sake; and whichever wins will get woman and property.’ Priam and Antenor drive out through the gates to the plain and join the crowd of watchers. Agamemnon sacrifices and makes a prayer to Zeus who rules from Ida, and to the Sun. He repeats the formula about the winner getting woman and property, adding that if Menelaos wins, the Trojans must pay him and his men suitable compensation or they will refuse to end the war. Priam says that he will return to the city as he cannot bear to watch the combat. The people pray. Hektor shakes the helmet in which lots, klēroi, have been put, and Paris’ lot comes out. Alexandros arms himself, ‘he, the lord of lovely-haired Helen’. He puts on greaves with silver ankle-pieces, a corselet that belonged to his brother Lykaon, a silver-studded sword of bronze slung about his shoulder. He takes up his great shield and puts on a helmet with horsehair crest; then seizes his spear. Menelaos also arms.

Each man is to throw a spear. Alexandros first throws his, but its point is turned on Menelaos’ shield. Then the latter’s spear goes through Alexandros’ shield and corselet, but he himself bends aside, unhurt. Menelaos draws his sword and strikes the horn of Alexandros’ helmet; the sword splinters. ‘Father Zeus,’ he cries, ‘no other god is more deadly than you. I thought I was avenged on Alexandros for his wickedness, but now my sword is broken in my hands and my spear flown out of my grasp in vain — I didn’t hit him.’ He leaps on his enemy, catches his helmet crest, and drags him along towards the Achaians. Paris is choked by the embroidered strap under his chin, but Aphrodite rushes to the rescue. She snaps the ox-skin thong and the helmet comes away in Menelaos’ hand. He throws it among his comrades and springs back to kill Alexandros with a spear. But Aphrodite snatches the fallen man up, shrouds him in thick mist, and transports him to his fragrant vaulted chamber; then she goes to fetch Helen.

‘Her she found on the high wall and round her in throngs were the women of Troy. With her hand the goddess took hold of her sweet-smelling robe, plucked at it, and spoke to her, assuming the likeness of an old woman, a wool-comber, who had been used to card fine wool for her when she lived in Lakedaimon, and of whom she was very fond. In this likeness dia Aphrodite spoke: “Come along, Alexandros calls you to go home. He’s there in his chamber — on his inlaid couch, shining with beauty and fine clothes. You wouldn’t think he’d just come from fighting with an enemy; you’d think he was going to a dance or that he sat there like someone who’s just left off dancing.”’

Despite the disguise, Helen ‘noticed the beautiful neck of the goddess, her desirable breasts and her flashing eyes’. Amazed she asked: ‘Spirit [daimoniē], why are you so concerned to fool and possess me like this? I see, you’ll lead me on yet further to one of the thriving cities of Phrygia or delightful Maionia, if there too is some mortal man you cherish. For now Menelaos has beaten dios Alexandros and wants to take loathsome me home. That’s why you’re here now with your tricky mind. Go and sit by him yourself and forget that you’re a goddess. Don’t let your feet carry you back to Olympos, but give yourself up to worrying about him. Look after him till he makes you his wife or perhaps his slave. But I won’t go there. It would be a blameable thing [nemessēton] to make up that man’s bed. All the women of Troy will reproach me from now on, and I’ve countless griefs in my own heart.’

Daimoniē is an adjectival form of daimōn. Homer uses daimōn of individual gods and goddesses, but also of divine force or spirit power in general. In the Odyssey we see it as a sort of power or fate linked with an individual. This meaning is already implicit in the Iliad; here for instance Aphrodite appears both as a universal goddess of love and sexuality, and as a daimōn especially connected with Alexandros and his fate. She protects him as Athena protects Odysseus. In one passage Hektor shouts at Diomedes, ‘I’ll give you your daimōn,’ meaning, ‘I’ll kill you, give you your fate.’ But daimoniē is also used as a mere form of address (good sir or lady) for both chiefs and commoners, especially for strangers , husbands and wives use it of one another. There its suggestion of strangeness, of the spirit power in someone else that needs to be respected, has been attenuated. (Dios, dia, usually translated godly, means strictly ‘belonging to Zeus’.) By the time of Attic tragedy daimōn often meant simply good or bad fortune.[8]

Helen’s show of defiance stirs Aphrodite to anger and she replies: ‘Don’t provoke me, you rash woman, or I’ll lose my temper and desert you and hate you — just as now I love you beyond all measure. I’ll stir up bitter hatred on both sides, Trojans and Danaans alike. Then you’ll come to a wretched end.’ (The hatred she threatens to work up must be hatred of Helen. We see again that neither side blames Helen for the war, though everyone recognizes that she is the cause of all the sufferings. What Aphrodite threatens is to stir up just that blame among them.)

Helen is frightened. She silently wraps herself in a bright mantle and is led away by the goddess without the Trojan women noticing her departure. They reach the domos or palace of Alexandros. Helen’s handmaids turn to their tasks and she goes into the high-roofed chamber. Aphrodite gets her a chair and sets it facing Alexandros. Helen sits down with averted eyes and speaks to her husband: ‘You’ve come back from the battle. I wish you’d died there, beaten by a brave man who used to be my husband. Before this you kept on boasting that you were a better man than Menelaos whom Ares loves — in the strength of your hands and as a spearman. Go on now. Challenge yet again Menelaos whom Ares loves, to fight with you, man to man. No, I myself tell you to give up and try no more outright fights with fair-haired Menelaos. Don’t be a fool and come up against him or you’ll soon be tamed by his spear.’

Paris replies, ‘Lady, don’t turn on me with hard reviling words. For the moment, with Athena’s aid, Menelaos has beaten me, but next time I’ll beat him. On our side too there are gods. But come on, let’s enjoy ourselves and lie together in love. For never yet has desire so come over me, not even when at the start I snatched you from lovely Lakedaimon and sailed with you in my seagoing ships and made you mine in love on that bed of Kranae’s isle. Not till this moment have I loved you so much and felt such sweet desire for you.’

He goes over to the bed and she follows. They lie on the corded bed. But on the battlefield Menelaos is raging about in search of the godlike Alexandros, whom the Trojans and their allies cannot find anywhere. ‘Not that indeed they wanted to hide him, if they caught sight of him, for all of them hated him like black death.’ So Agamemnon proclaims Menelaos the victor and demands the surrender of Helen and her property, with suitable compensation.

Where Kranae was is unclear. Some ancient commentators took the word as an adjective: kranaos means rugged and is used by Homer always of Ithaka. Others identified it with a small island called Helene (now Makronisi) near Cape Sounion: but Pausanias says that that island got its name because Helen and Menelaos landed there on their homeward journey. Others took Kranae to be Kythera, Aphrodite’s island, while Pausanias says that in Lakedaimonian legend it was an island near Gytheion. Tzetzes takes it to mean Salamis, while Lykophron speaks of the lovers mating on the Dragon’s Isle of Akte (Attika). The adjective is indeed used of Athens and the people of Attika were called Kranaoi. The island near Gytheion off the Lakedaimonian coast makes the best sense; for the lovers after their flight from Sparta down to the sea might have found it the first place where they felt able to halt with safety.[9]

A passage from Book V gives a glimpse of the preparations of Paris-Alexandros for his voyage to Sparta. We learn that Phereklos, son of Tekton (Carpenter, Joiner), a wonderful crafts-man loved by Pallas Athena above all men, built ‘the shapely ships, source of evils, which were made the evil of the Trojans and of his own self’, for he was killed in the fighting; a spear pierced through his right buttock to his bladder. The odd thing about this passage is that it makes Athena a patron of Paris; otherwise her beloved craftsman would not have worked for him. She plays the same role here in the shipbuilding as she does with Jason and his Argo. But whereas she continues to be the protectress of Jason, she becomes in the Trojan story the deadly enemy of Paris and the Trojans. Either then we see here an intrusion from an old legend in which Athena helps in the construction of the primal boat, or she becomes Paris’ enemy only after Helen has been carried off.

The dialogue between Helen and Aphrodite has been taken by some critics to represent Helen’s inner conflict. From one angle that viewpoint is true enough; but we must also realize that in the Homeric world the pressures and compulsions from the spirit world are felt to exist objectively. Aphrodite, we saw, is Helen’s daimōn, but she is also a great goddess engaged in actions of wide scope. We cannot say that the divine power is here simply confounded with the power of passion. Indeed in later Greek verse Aphrodite is used to mean sexual intercourse and enjoyment. Thus Mimnermos, priest of Kolophon in Ionia about 630 BC, laments: ‘What kind of life, what kind of life can there be without golden Aphrodite?’ Such a usage implies the goddess’ magical presence in and around the copulating lovers: a radiant explosion of the life force which transcends normal experience and thus needs a divine name. Later, in the fifth century, with the waning of direct belief in the Olympians, a poet could conceive of such a dialogue between Helen and Aphrodite as a purely psychological matter: for example, Euripides in The Trojan Women. But the situation is much more complex for Homer. Aphrodite embodies not only Helen’s beauty but also its social effects, its total meaning and action. Helen must play out her entangled role to the bitter end; she has no choice, herself as much swayed by her fatal beauty as the men who desire her. Or rather her choice involves much more than a personal decision; it emerges from the total situation, the significance of beauty and desire in Greek culture. If she disobeys Aphrodite, punishment will descend on her, probably the loss of her irresistible beauty. She will lose her role, her personality, her daimōn. For Homer a woman’s aretē, her characteristic virtue or power, is her beauty. (Virtue and power here are hardly distinguishable.) We are being anachronistic if we ask the woman to feel responsible for her aretē’s effects.[10]

To return to the scene of Paris’ discomfiture. The gods were watching the event from aloft. Zeus mocked at Hera by pointing out that she and Athena sat drinking nectar while Aphrodite was busy saving her hero. Still, Menelaos had won; what then were the gods to do? Should they stir up more trouble or allow peace? ‘Then might King Priam’s city still be inhabited and Menelaos take back Argive Helen.’ (The terms used here suggest the poet knew that the site of Troy, at least that of the Bronze-Age town, was deserted.) Zeus goes on to say that ‘sacred Ilios’, a rich town, had never failed in sacrifices to him and had been most favoured of his heart. Hera retorts that in her sight there are three cities far dearer: Argos, Sparta and broad-streeted Mykenai. (Athena might have made the same sort of comment about Athens.) Hera calls on Zeus to let Athena in turn intervene, and he assents. Athena goes down in the guise of a spearman, Laodokos son of Antenor, and stirs up Pandaros to let fly an arrow at Menelaos. The latter’s skin is merely grazed, but the truce is broken and the war starts off again.

*

Later, in Book VI, Hektor, depressed at the endless slaughter, returns to the palace from the battlefield. He bids his mother Hekabe (Hecuba) go to Athena’s temple and offer up the finest and amplest robe in her hall, with a vow to sacrifice twelve sleek heifers, ‘if the goddess will take pity on Troy and the wives of the Trojans and their little children’. He bursts out again in words which show how the direct blame for the war is laid on Paris and not on Helen. ‘I will go after Paris and summon him, if maybe he’ll listen to my word. I wish the earth would straightway split open for him. The Olympians reared him as a crushing misery for the Trojans and great-hearted Priam and the sons of Priam. If only I could see him going down to the House of Hades, then I might say my heart had forgotten its griefs.’

His mother, without comment on this estimation of his brother, calls her handmaids, who gather the old wives from throughout the town. She herself goes down to the vaulted room in which lay ‘her richly-embroidered robes, the handiwork of Sidonian women, whom godlike Alexandros had himself brought from Sidon as he sailed over the wide sea on that voyage when he brought back highborn Helen’. (We thus learn that Paris took a very roundabout way home.) Hekabe selects a robe as offering to Athena, ‘the one finest in its embroidering, the amplest, glittering like a star, which lay at the bottom of them all’.[11]

Hektor went on to Alexandros’ palace, ‘which he himself had built with the men who were at that time the best builders in rich-soiled Troy’. It consisted of a chamber, thalamos, with hall, doma, and court, aulē, and stood close to the palaces of Hektor and Priam in the citadel. Hektor went in, holding his bronze spear with a ring of gold round its point. Paris was busy with his splendid weapons. ‘And Argive Helen sat among her handmaids and set out for each of them her glorious handiwork.’ Hektor rebuked Paris: ‘Daimoniē, it’s not good for you to nurse this anger in your heart. The people are dying round the town and the steep walls in battle, and it’s because of you the battle-cry and the war are blazing about this city. You’d be angry at anyone else you saw shrinking from this abominable war. So come on, rouse yourself, or soon the city will flare up and be consumed by fire.’ Alexandros replied that he did not stay in his chamber through resentment against the Trojans, but because he wanted to give up his mind to sorrow. A moment ago Helen had tried with gentle words to urge him to return to the fighting; and he himself agreed with her. ‘Victory shifts from man to man. So wait a moment and let me put on my battle-gear. Or get on your way and I’ll follow you — I think I’ll catch you up.’

Hektor said nothing, but Helen spoke gently, ‘Brother, I know I’m a bitch, I can’t help causing troubles, and everyone abhors me. I wish that on the day my mother gave me birth a wicked stormwind had carried me off to some mountain or to the wave of the pouring roaring sea where the wave could have swept me away before all these things happened. But as the gods ordained these evils, I wish I’d been wife to some better man, who’d have responded to the indignation [nemesis] of his fellows and the abuse they heaped on him. But this man’s mind lacks steadfastness and will go on lacking it. So I think he’ll reap the fruits of the whole thing. But come now, enter and sit on this chair, my brother. Suffering has enclosed your heart above all others because of me the bitch and the folly [atē] of Alexandros on whom Zeus has brought an evil doom — so that in days to come we may be a song for men yet unborn.’

Hektor answered, ‘Don’t ask me to sit down, Helen. Loving as you are, you won’t persuade me. My heart’s eager to bring help to the Trojans who sorely miss me when I’m away. But rouse up this man of yours. Let him of himself hurry along and catch me up while I’m still in the city. For I’m going to my own house, to see my household, my dear wife and my baby son. I don’t know if I’ll ever get back home to them again, or if the gods will now give me death under the hands of the Achaians.’ So he went off to bid his wife and family farewell.

Ate here used of Paris means a bewilderment or infatuation sent in punishment by the gods, and thus also the reckless guilt or sin that results. It has the same root as aaein, to hurt or damage, always with reference to the mind, and so to mislead or infatuate. Atē may come from some divine judgement or from the effects of wine, sleep or any stupefying agent. Paris is thus seen as having acted through some blindness of passion inflicted from the spirit-world; he is sustained by Aphrodite, who also drives him on. He is under the same sort of compulsion as Helen, but is blamed for it. Helen, we may note, never expresses moral repentance. She is horrified by the effects of her action and feels that it would be better if she had never been born, yet she never asks herself if there is any point in striving against the fate that has given her a bitchface. She owns however a strange sort of innocence in her passive acceptance of her role and in her refusal to make excuses for herself. She is far from the woman of many lovers whom she became in later traditions. She compares Paris with Hektor and other warriors, and feels disillusioned; as her opinion of Paris worsens, her esteem and affection for Hektor grow. She contrasts the latter’s humanity, goodness and deep feeling, with Paris’ superficiality; but her attitude is open and honest, with no touches of coquetry.[12]

After Hektor has visited his wife in a moving scene of farewell, Paris soon catches him up. He is compared to a stalled horse that has fed his fill at the manger, then breaks his halter and runs stamping over the plain, making for his bathing-place in the river. ‘He tosses his head on high and his mane floats and streams along his shoulders, and, glorying in his beauty, away he goes, skimming the ground, to the haunts and pastures of mares.’ So is Paris as he strides down from high Pergamon (the upper part or citadel of Troy), ‘his armour lustrous as the burning sun, laughing out loud for high spirits.’ Reaching Hektor, he speaks first. ‘My brother, I’ve been too slow and kept you waiting when you were eager to be off. I didn’t turn up as promptly as you bade me.’

‘Daimoniē,’ says Hektor, ‘no reasonable man could jeer at your battle-behaviour. You’re a brave fighter. But you give up when the whim comes, and don’t want to go on. I take it hard when I hear you abused by the Trojans, who are in a bad way through you. But let’s hurry. Later I’ll make up for everything I said — if Zeus ever allows us to set a bowl of deliverance in our halls for the gods above, when we’ve driven the well-greaved Achaians from the land of Troy.’

*

The rest of the references to Helen are not important, apart from her final appearance, but they help to build up the picture. After the fight between Hektor and Aias, the Trojans hold a discussion in the citadel, ‘a fierce tumultuous gathering’. Antenor proposes the return of ‘Argive Helen and her property’. Alexandros, ‘husband of Helen with her lovely hair’, replies that he will not give up his wife, but ‘the property I brought from Argos to our home I’m willing to hand over, with additions from my own store’. Priam proposes that an embassy should take the offer to the Achaians at dawn. When the herald Idaios announces the terms, Diomedes answers, ‘Let nobody accept the property from Alexandros, no, not even Helen herself. Even the biggest fool can tell that now the cords of destruction tighten on the Trojans.’ Agamemnon sums up. The Trojans may only have their dead to burn, ‘and let Zeus the thundering husband of Hera be witness to our oaths’.[13]

In Book VIII Alexandros hits Nestor’s horse with an arrow. Later, when Agamemnon vainly tries to placate Achilles, the latter flares out: ‘Why must the Argives wage war against the Trojans? Why has Agamemnon, this son of Atreus, gathered his host and led it here? Was it for the sake of Helen with her lovely hair? So the sons of Atreus then alone of mortals love their bed-mates? No, anyone who’s a true and sensible man loves his own and cherishes her, as I too did mine with all my heart, though she was only the captive of my spear.’[14]

In Book XI the antagonism of Hektor to Paris comes out again. Hektor, sickened by the deaths and woundings of his kin and of other warriors, upbraids Paris with the phrases we have already met: ‘Dys-Paris, a fine fellow to look at, mad about women...’ He declares that the ruin of Ilios is sure. But Paris, who has been heartening his comrades, is now the one to talk in a rousing tone. ‘It’s your way to blame somebody on whom lies no blame. If I’ve ever drawn back from fighting, I haven’t done so here. My mother didn’t bear me an utter weakling. From the time you stirred up the battle of your comrades by the ships, we’ve held our ground and haven’t stopped engaging the Danaans. But the comrades you ask about are dead, except Deiphobos and the great lord Helenos, who’s gone back. Each of them was wounded in the arm by a long spear, but Zeus warded off death. Now lead us anywhere your heart and spirit bid you. We’ll follow with a will, and I don’t think we’ll show any lack of courage while our strength lasts. Beyond his strength no man can fight, however keen he is.’ Later, near the end of Book XXII, Hektor with dying breath prophesies that ‘Paris and Phoibos Apollo will kill Achilles at the Skaian Gate’.[15]

In Book XIX, during the mourning for Patroklos, Achilles throws some outright abuse at Helen. He could not have suffered a worse blow, he says, not even if news of his father’s death had come, ‘while in fact I’m fighting Trojans in an alien land for that horrible Helen’ — rigidanē, a creature that chills and makes one shudder.[16]

Finally, near the end of the last book, as Hektor is being lamented by Andromache his wife and then by his mother, the last word is given to Helen. She is the third to lead the wailing. ‘Hektor I loved by far the most of all my brothers-in-law. My husband indeed is godlike Alexandros, who brought me to the land of Troy — O, I wish I had died then. It’s now the twentieth year since I came away and left my homeland, but never once did I hear an ugly or spiteful word from you. No, if anyone else spoke of me with reproach in the halls, a brother of yours or sister, a brother’s finely dressed wife or your mother — your father was always as gentle with me as if he’d been my own — you protested and restrained them by the kindness of your words and your kindly heart. So I weep with stricken heart both for you and for my miserable self. Now I have no one in all the breadth of Troy to be gentle and friendly to me. They all shudder at me.’ These last words remind us of Achilles’ epithet for her.

Her statement that she had been at Troy for twenty years is surprising. It may imply that Homer accepted the story of a first Achaian expedition which lost its way and abortively landed in Mysia, so that operations were delayed for ten years. There is no other suggestion of this mishap in the Iliad, though the long delay would make the age of Achilles’ grown son (mentioned in Book XIX) more plausible. But Helen’s remark may merely be the result of the poet’s liking for parallelism: nine years of preparation, with the fleet sailing in the tenth year; nine years of siege, with Troy falling in the tenth year; nine years of wandering for Odysseus, with his homecoming in the tenth year.

*

Paris, we have seen, is presented in somewhat contradictory ways. He is much abused and makes a poor showing against Menelaos; his beauty of body is stressed and he is called a womanizer; he excels at the lyre. His action in carrying Helen off is never accepted. He has offended Zeus Xenios, the guardian of hospitality, a dire offence in the Homeric world. Zeus Xenios avenged any breach of the laws of hospitality. In the Odyssey Eumaios the swineherd tells the disguised Odysseus not to try any lies or cajolement. ‘It’s not for that I’ll show you respect or kindness, but out of fear of Zeus Xenios and pity for you.’ He also says, ‘From Zeus are all strangers [xenoi] and beggars.’ Pausanias records that at Sparta, where the Fates (or Moirai) had their shrine by the grave of Orestes, ‘the Lakedaimons have also a sanctuary of Hestia’, the hearth-goddess, ‘and there are as well Zeus Xenios and Athena Xenia’.[17] But with all Paris’ changes of spirit, he is volatile and lively, erratic and buoyant; his characteristic epithet is ‘godlike’. Some critics have suggested that he was the hero of an earlier epic composed at a time when archers had higher prestige than later. Not that the Achaians lacked their archers. There was, for instance, Philoktētēs, who had been disabled by a snakebite and left on Lemnos; the Iliad mentions this event and the Odyssey adds that he got home safely. The cyclic and tragic poets added that he was the friend of Herakles, who taught him to shoot and bequeathed him his bow. An oracle declared that Troy could not be taken without the arrows of Herakles. So Philoktētēs was fetched, and cured of his festering wound during a deep sleep sent to him by Apollo; soon afterwards he shot and killed Paris, and Troy fell. There may then have been a version of the Trojan War in which he and Paris, both great archers, were the protagonists.[18] We may also note that Herakles was a Mykenean archer who shot both Hades and Hera.[19]

If this view is correct, Paris was gradually pushed from the centre of the picture by Hektor. The latter was built up into the character of the perfect warrior, brave, steadfast, but humane, while Paris developed the wayward aspects suitable for a man who thinks more of his loves than of his homeland. Certainly he is marked out as an archer, different from the other fighters. Though he once cuts down a man, and though he uses spears in his fight with Menelaos, his normal weapon is the bow. He shoots Diomedes, Machaon, Eurypolos, Euchenor, and later (not in the Iliad) Achilles. But the heroes despise a bowman who does not come to grips with the enemy. Leaning against a pillar raised on the barrow erected of old for Ilos, an Elder of the People, he shoots Diomedes in the foot as he is stripping the armour from a fallen man. Diomedes, unafraid, denounces him: ‘Bowman, be-fouler, proud of your curling locks, ogler of girls. I only wish you’d face me man to man with proper weapons. You’d find your bow and arrow-flight a poor defence. Now you are puffed up for merely grazing the flat of my foot. I don’t mind it any more than a blow from a girl or a naughty boy. The dart of a weakling, a coward, is blunt. But a spear thrown by my hand, if it only touches, proves its edge and lays a man low.’[20]

Other critics have considered that the contradictions in Paris come from various versions of the Trojan epic or saga being confused. It is no doubt true that a long evolution, with varying evaluations of his character and of his place in the story, lies behind the Homeric Paris. However, in the Iliad he emerges as a vivid person precisely because of the poet’s skill in fusing the different aspects. We see him as a man out of step with his fellows, going his own way, and yet ready to recognize the claims of his family and people as long as his right to Helen is not challenged. He is good-humoured as well as passionate, and responds to both Helen and Hektor. He has been called a folktale hero plunged into the heroic world; but his complexity comes rather from the way in which he combines various strands of that world in an unusual way.

Helen too, with her varying moods and responses, has the same sort of complexity. The duel between Menelaos and Paris shocks and undermines her sense of security, but she cleaves to her role. She combines sorrow and contrition for having brought about the war, regret for the lost Menelaos, affectionate admiration for Hektor, submission to Aphrodite and to the fatality of her own beauty. The scene on the battlements when the old men look on her decisively conveys Homer’s own attitude and convinces us of her great role. Deeply as they long for the ending of the war, they cannot blame her or deny that the war is fitly waged for such a prize. This impact of her presence has an effect that no amount of description or explanation could attain. We feel her beauty as the visible emanation of the in-dwelling Aphrodite, merging woman and goddess, yet leaving Helen distinct as a proud, pathetic, indomitable figure. Her beauty, worn without the least coyness or coquetry, gives her, as we noted, a sort of immaculacy, a simplicity of innocence in the midst of her guilt. Even the disasters she provokes bear witness to her peculiar lack of implication. Through the walls of a crashing world she walks, suffering but uncrushed: in her own words, a bitchface, a shameless thing of destruction, and yet also the pledge of a happiness and a harmony which her world cannot compass. She has the momentary consolation of realizing her positive role in the comment she makes when she foresees the poems that will come out of the conflict and anguish. In that passage Homer himself intrudes to give his benediction and to express his faith in a deeper meaning that haunts the tale of betrayal and calamity.

But the particular way in which the questions of responsibility, fate and beauty were here interrelated and given their answers, could not carry on as soon as the epic or heroic view of life began to break down. Helen’s innocence as a living woman who is also a creature of Aphrodite’s will could not then be sustained. Homer does not see her departure from Sparta as a rape by Paris, though perhaps we may recognize a detritus from an earlier and cruder level of saga in the way in which discussions about her return always link her with her property and make her seem a piece of war loot. But, emotionally, the loot, the property, always has a secondary place. Helen is what the war is about, the Helen who is strangely like a goddess to look at.

There was a legendary tradition of beauty as something that called out for a divine ravishment. Pausanias, dealing with the themes of the Throne of Amyklai, says, ‘There is Kephalos too, ravished by Day [Hemera] because of his beauty.’ Ganymedes was carried off aloft by or for Zeus, to serve as his cupbearer, because of his beauty; only later an amorous interpretation of the rape was made. (Helen too had her cup-connections; Plinius tells us of the Rhodian tradition that at Lindos she consecrated a cup made to the shape or measure of her breast.) In tales such as those of Kephalos and Ganymedes we see the beauty as a spiritforce that breaks through its confines; the divine joins the divine.[21] With Helen the force is contained in the overwhelming body but wreaks destruction all around. However a tale preserved by Herodotos shows its creative impact in kindlier form. He tells us that the Spartan king, Ariston, though married twice, had no children; he fell in love with the loveliest woman in the country, who was married to a close friend of his.

Oddly enough, as a child she had been extremely plain and owed the transformation to her nurse. The latter noted that her looks were not at all attractive, and knew that the parents, persons of substance, were troubled at having such an ugly baby. So she had the idea of taking the child every day to Helen’s shrine at Therapne above Apollo’s temple. She carried the child in, put it down in front of Helen’s statue, and prayed the goddess to take away her ugliness. One day as she was leaving, a woman appeared and asked what she had in her arms. The nurse replied that it was a baby. The woman asked to see it, but the nurse, whom the parents had forbidden to show the child to anyone, refused. The woman however persisted, and at last the nurse, seeing how anxious she was for a peep at the baby, showed it. At that the stranger stroked its head and declared that it would grow up to be the most beautiful woman in Sparta. From that day its looks began to change.[22]

Though the picture that Homer gives of Paris and Helen is subtle and complex, both as characterization and as evocation of the wider issues involved, he tells us very little factually about them. Helen’s parents are not named. In Book III, in lines that come close together, she is called the Offspring of Zeus, his Girl or Daughter (kourē), but the relationship is not elaborated. Neither Zeus nor any other deity refers to it in discussing the war and its course; no mortal mentions it. Helen herself is not shown as being aware of it, since she explicitly refers to her parents as having been left behind at Sparta; she therefore looks on them as mortals. Her two brothers are mentioned as having died in the ordinary way; there is no hint of deification. Her homes lies in Lakedaimon, but she is often called Argive Helen and Paris once says that he took her away from Argos. There is however perhaps no contradiction here; for the mainland Greeks are called Achaioi, Argives or Danaoi in an indiscriminate way, and Argos seems to mean the Peloponnesos in general as well as a particular town.

There is no reference to the tale that she was carried off in her youth by Theseus; but Homer seems to have known of it, for he includes Aithra, Theseus’ mother, among her handmaids. This point, together with a large mass of other evidence, brings out the way in which he selected and controlled his material, getting rid of the darker elements in cult and myth, and simplifying where a conglomeration of legends tended to obscure the human lineaments of a character.

There is no hint that Helen’s suitors took an oath to support the man she chose. Some critics have argued that traces of the story are shown in the speech of Achilles to Agamemnon in Book I: ‘I didn’t come here to fight because of the spearmen of Troy; they’re not at fault in any way towards me. They never harried my cattle or horses; they didn’t lay waste the grain in deep-soiled Phthia. For many things lie between us, shadowy mountains and resounding sea.’ Why then did he come? Odysseus in Book II provides the answer. The Achaians, he says, ‘won’t carry out their promise, when coming here from Argos the pastureland of horses, that you shouldn’t return home till you’d sacked Ilios with its strong walls’. But the situation here suggests an oath to an overlord or great king, who has drawn lesser lords into an expedition. The suitors’ oath was made, not to Agamemnon, but to Helen’s father or rather to Menelaos. If Achilles had been thinking of such an oath, he would certainly have spoken directly about it, saying that he would not keep an oath about the sanctity of Menelaos’ wife when the latter’s brother had carried off his (Achilles’) woman.[23]

There is no reference to Paris having been exposed on Mt Ida, where he grew up as a shepherd. With his love for Helen twenty years old, he seems older than Hektor, who is yet the Trojan leader under Priam; moreover he has a specially fine palace which we are explicitly told that he himself had built — a detail that does not at all fit in with any scheme of exposure, Judgement and immediate departure for Sparta, or with his status in the family as shown in the Iliad. He is depicted as odd man out among the Trojan princes; but no explanation is offered. We are not told why Aphrodite favours him, unless the stress on his comeliness and charms is meant to explain the link. Such qualities could be either the cause or the effect of the goddess’s patronage. Paris, like Helen, draws in Aphrodite as both fate and guardian. We are not told of the Judgement on Ida when Paris chose her in the beauty contest — though there is one difficult passage in the last book which seems to mention it. The gods have taken pity on Hektor’s body which Achilles is dragging behind his chariot, and the corpse is stolen away. ‘And the act pleased all the others, but not Hera or Poseidon or the flashing-eyed Maiden [Athena]. They went on hating sacred Ilios and Priam and his people as they had from the first, because of the atē of Alexandros. For he had put reproach on the goddesses [or had reviled, upbraided them] when they came to his steading and he preferred her who furthered his lustfulness, machlosynē.’

The phrasing is odd. No version of the Judgement, in poetry or art, mentions that Paris reviled the losers; and it has been suggested that the wording here is more suitable for a tale in which a mortal (Paris) refuses hospitality to disguised deities. Also machlosynē is a term usually applied to women; only one late case (in Loukian, who is perhaps thinking of the Iliad passage) applies it to a man.[24] But the main objection to the authenticity of the two lines is that Homer would hardly have introduced so important a motif so late in the poem, and so clumsily. Machlos means lascivious; and lasciviousness or effeminacy would be a peculiar gift from Aphrodite in return for being chosen, unless we strain the meaning to make machlosynē imply prowess as a lover. The ancient critic Aristarchos picked on that word in his argument that the couplet was an interpolation. Indeed it is very hard to defend the passage as authentic; but the fact that it is no doubt an intrusion does not prove Homer to have been ignorant of the Judgement motif. He may well have been suppressing it as a folktale accretion which lowered the whole dignity of the epic theme and weakened the significance of the deeper fate motif surrounding Helen. More of this later.

We may note however that he explicitly provides a more broadly based set of reasons for the way in which the goddesses take sides. He explains the support given to the Achaians by Hera and Athena as the result of their strong links with the Mykenean cities of the mainland; we may add the point that Hera as goddess presiding over marriage would have further reasons for being outraged by the elopement. Athena was associated with the maintenance of law and order. At Athens she was connected with the political system through the Apatouria and in other ways; she was said to have instituted the ancient court of the Areiopagos, and one of her epithets was axiopoinos, avenger.[25] Not indeed that in Homer her special position in Athens appears; she is rather a warrior, a shrewd consort of hero kings, a patroness of the crafts. The first extant mention of her by an Athenian occurs in Solon’s poem in which she is still an outstanding member of the Olympian pantheon, but is also the special champion of Athens, assuring her city’s prosperity under the Olympian regime. But her Athenian basis must have been established much earlier. She had however, we saw, strong links with Troy as well in the epic tradition, though as protectress of the wily Odysseus she was an Achaian supporter. Bacchylides in a dithyramb tells of the embassy from the Greeks camped on Tenedos arriving in Troy and knocking at Athena’s temple. ‘The raven-eyed wife of godlike Antenor, deep-girdled Theano, daughter of Kisseus, Athena’s priestess, opened quickly the golden doors of pure [agna] Pallas who rouses to battle [Odysseus and Menelaos] at the knocking of the pair of messengers from the Argives.’ The envoys are led into the market place, where Antenor gives their message to Priam and the companies of the Trojans are summoned. The temple seems taken as the heart of Troy.[26]

But we cannot expect Homer to give reasons for the position of Hera and Athena when we are not told why Ares, Apollo, Artemis and Leto support the Trojans. They are the deities named in Book XX as on the Trojan side, with Hera, Athena, Poseidon, Hermes, Hephaistos on the Achaian. In Book XXI Hera makes a physical assault on Artemis and chases her off in disarray. A cup by Douris shows Artemis as well as Aphrodite aiding Paris in his duel with Menelaos. Apollo is linked with Troy as the builder of its sacred wall while in exile; and Artemis could be associated with Paris through her title Idaia as goddess of the wilds. But such links cannot be compared with the complex mythological basis provided for Paris and Aphrodite by the Judgement-tale.[27]

The will of Zeus appears as an overriding element in the whole story of the siege, but there is no hint of a definite plan or system in his attitudes. The one point with a suggestion of such a plan occurs in the passage about the shipbuilder Phereklos, who brought doom on himself and the Trojans because ‘he didn’t at all know the oracles of the gods’, thesphata, the divine decisions. The plural, gods, is used, so it is not a question of Zeus or Aphrodite in isolation. In the Odyssey, thesphata is used of oracles predicting that Poseidon in wrath will turn the Phaiakian ships to stone and ‘fling a great mountain round the town’. But all this is meagre evidence for an overall Plan, saying little more than that everything happens under the rule of the gods.[28] Yet though the Plan, in the sense later worked out by poets, is lacking, there is present something far subtler and more comprehensive: a sense of the Justice of Zeus as somehow pervading all the actions of men, bringing judgements to bear upon them, weighing them up, and, in the last resort, giving meaning to the total nexus of striving, conflicting and harmonizing wills, aims, hopes.

Chapter Two – Helen in the Odyssey

Helen appears in Books IV and XV of the Odyssey in connection with the wanderings of Telemachos. Here we are shown Helen in her later years, with a background largely drawn from the way of life of the lords in the dark age. Telemachos, failing to get rid of the princes who infest his house and woo his mother Penelope, goes off with Athena (who has taken the form of a friend, Mentes, king of the Taphians) to visit Nestor at Pylos. Nestor tells him of a violent dispute between Agamemnon and Menelaos as the Achaians were leaving Troy. Menelaos wanted to sail off at once; his brother wanted first to try to placate Athena, now grown angry, with hekatombs. She it was who caused the break between the two leaders, though Zeus himself also ‘planned in his heart a miserable return for the Argives, since all of them were by no means prudent or just’. How the wrath of Athena was roused, we are not told; but we may assume that Homer knew the story of Aias, during the sack of Troy, dragging Kassandra from Athena’s altar, where stood the goddess’ image, the palladion or talisman of the city. Kassandra’s other name, Alexandra, shows her as a maiden who defends-against-man, so that she appears as a doublet of Athena herself, the impregnable city-goddess; Aias, attempting to rape her, commits a deadly sin. Homer makes no reference to her prophetic powers. (In this episode we see Athena as indeed the defender of Troy, much concerned for its talisman. When we add the tale of Phereklos, we feel there may have been a version in which she was on the Trojan side.)[29]

Nestor says that the other warriors joined in the dispute between the two brothers; then they paused to rest for the night. In the morning half of them set sail with loot, ktēmata, and low-belted women. At Tenedos they made sacrifices, and some of them, including Odysseus, turned back to the shore where Agamemnon had remained. But Nestor sailed on, ‘knowing that the god was hatching up evil’. Menelaos joined him at Lesbos as he and his men debated which course to take. They asked the god for a sign, and he gave it, bidding them sail for Euboia. That night they put in at Geraistos and made bull sacrifices to Poseidon. On the fourth day Diomedes stayed on at Arhus, but Nestor continued towards Pylos.

Telemachos asks how Agamemnon was killed by Aigisthos. Was Menelaos wandering afar ‘so that Aigisthos got heart for the murderous deed’? Yes, Nestor replies that he and Menelaos were together till Cape Sounion; but there Menelaos’ helmsman was killed by ‘the gentle shafts of Apollo’ (a sudden painless death) as he held the steering-oar. So Menelaos, keen as he was to hurry on, paused to give the man his funeral rites. Then, when he reached the steep height of Malea, Zeus sent a storm that drove his ships apart, some to Crete, but five of them, including Menelaos’ own ship, to Egypt. So Menelaos roamed about among aliens, ‘gathering much livelihood and gold’, but knowing nothing of Aigisthos’ actions. In time Orestes killed his father’s murderer — on the very day when Menelaos arrived back, with much ktēmata, ‘as much as his ships could carry as cargo’. (As Helen was with him, she too visited Egypt.)[30]

Nestor now sends his son on with Telemachos as guide to Sparta. There they meet Menelaos, who is living happily with his reclaimed wife. Nothing is said about how they came together after the fall of Troy; there is no hint of recriminations or bad feeling. A marriage feast is going on. Menelaos is giving his daughter Hermione to Achilles’ son, and is about to send her off with horses and chariots to the land of the Myrmidons. At the same time he is bringing home the daughter of Alektor for his son Megapenthes, whom a slavewoman has borne. ‘For the gods permitted no further issue to Helen after she bore her lovely girl Hermione, who had the beauty of golden Aphrodite.’ Neighbours and kinsfolk of Menelaos are making merry, and a bard is singing to the lyre while a pair of tumblers whirl up and down among the guests. Eteoneus, Menelaos’ squire, welcomes the newcomers and introduces them to his master as ‘two strangers, Zeus-fostered, two men like the offspring of Zeus’.[31] He asks if their horses are to be unyoked or if the men are to be sent on somewhere else.

Menelaos rebukes him. The horses are put in the stalls and fed with spelt and white barley; the chariot is tilted up against the entrance-walls. Over the high roofs is a gleam as of sun or moon. The visitors go on into the polished baths and are washed by maids, who anoint them with oil and throw woollen cloaks and tunics over them. The two men then sit by Menelaos. A girl brings water for their hands in a gold pitcher and pours it in a silver basin, then draws a polished table to their side. And the grave housekeeper sets bread and dainties before them. A carver brings plates with all sorts of meats and golden goblets. Menelaos bids them eat, saying that he recognizes in them sceptred kings. ‘The base [kakoi] could not beget such men.’ In his own hands he gives them roast meat and the fat ox-chine which has been put before him as a mess of honour, geras. They eat and drink, then. Telemachos draws his head close to that of Nestor’s son and expresses amazement at the wealth, the glitter of bronze, gold, elektron (probably here an alloy of gold and silver, not amber), silver, ivory. ‘The court of Olympian Zeus must be made of such things within.’

Menelaos hears him and starts telling about his homecoming. ‘After many sufferings and wanderings far and wide, I brought my ktēmata home in my ships. I arrived in the eighth year. I wandered over Cypros and Phoinikia and Egypt, and I reached the Aithiopians, and I came to Libya where the lambs are horned at birth.’ (So Aristotle understood the passage; Herodotos, followed by Eustathios, read it as ‘begin at once to grow horns’.[32]) ‘For there the ewes bear their young three times a year, and masters and shepherds have no lack of cheese, meat, or sweet milk. The flocks yield milk all the year long. While I travelled in these lands, gathering much livelihood, a man killed my brother by stealth and without warning, through the guile of his accursed wife. So, you may realize, I feel no pleasure at owning such wealth. You may have heard these matters from your fathers, whoever they are. For greatly did I suffer and I let fall into ruin a stately house [oikos] — one stored with much noble treasure. I’d rather live in my halls with but a third share of these things if only there still lived the men who died in the broad land of Troy, far from Argos with its horse-pastures. And yet, though I often sit in my halls weeping and grieving for them all, one moment I ease my heart with tears, then I stop, for men soon grow tired of chilly lamenting, yet with all my grief I don’t mourn for the others so much as for one man. When I think of him I hate both sleep and food. None of the Achaians toiled so much as Odysseus or endured so much. His part seems to have been nothing but suffering and I feel indelible sorrow for him. He’s been gone so long and we don’t know if he’s alive or dead. He’s mourned, I suppose, by old man Laertes and constant Penelope and Telemachos whom he left in the oikos as a newborn baby.’

Telemachos cannot hold back his tears. Menelaos, seeing his grief, is uncertain whether to question him or leave him to speak first; but at that moment out of her fragrant high-roofed thalamos comes Helen, ‘like Artemis of the golden arrows’, with her girls.[33] Adraste sets the finely made chair for her; Alkippē brings a rug of soft wool, Phylo a silver basket given to her by Alkandrē, wife of Polybos, in Egyptian Thebes, ‘where vast store of wealth [ktēmata] is laid up in houses’. (Polybos gave Menelaos two silver baths, two tripods and ten talents of gold; and his wife gave Helen a golden distaff and a basket on wheels, a basket of silver with gold on the rims.) Phylo puts the basket, full of finespun yarn, at Helen’s side; and across it is laid the distaff with violet-dark wool. Helen sits on the chair with a footstool for her feet and begins questioning her husband: ‘Do we know, Zeus-fostered Menelaos, the names of these visitors to our house? Shall I disguise my thought or say what I truly think? My heart bids me speak out. Never yet have I seen a man so like another, I declare. I’m amazed as I look at him. This man seems the son of great-hearted. Odysseus, Telemachos, I mean, whom that warrior left as a newborn baby in his house when for the sake of bitchfaced me you Achaians came up under the walls of Troy with war fierce in your hearts.’

Menelaos agrees, saying that he too had noted the likeness: in the feet, the hands, the glances of the eyes, the head and the hair; while he spoke of Odysseus, the youth wept and held his purple cloak up to his eyes. Peisistratos, Nestor’s son, answers that his companion is indeed Telemachos, but he has been bashful about coming forward in the presence of a man ‘in whose voice we both take delight as in a god’s’. Nestor has sent them to Sparta.

Menelaos tells how he would have treated Odysseus if he himself had come. He’d have given him ‘in Argos a city to inhabit, after I’d brought him from Ithaka with his ktēmata, his son and all his people. I’d have driven out the inhabitants of one of the cities that lie roundabout and obey me personally as their lord. If that were done, we’d often meet one another.’ But, he adds, the god must have been jealous of such an outcome, the god who denied a return to Odysseus alone.

They are all so affected that they weep. ‘Argive Helen wept, the offspring of Zeus.’ Even Peisistratos weeps, thinking (he explains) of his brother who died at Troy — though (he adds) ‘I take no pleasure in weeping at suppertime.’ Menelaos consoles him and says that it is better to stop weeping and think of supper again. Water is poured on their hands by another squire; and they eat. But Helen has her own thoughts. She puts in the wine ‘a drug to cure all pain and strife, to bring forgetfulness of all ills’. After drinking it in his wine, a man would be cheerful all day, even though his father and mother lay there dead and he saw men cut down his brother or his son. ‘Such cunning drugs [pharmaka] had the daughter of Zeus: healing drugs which Polydamna, wife of Thon, a woman of Egypt, had given her; for in Egypt the earth, the giver of grain, bears the greatest amount of drugs, many that heal when mixed, many that are harmful. There every man is a physician, wise above other men. For they are of the race of Paiēon.’

Helen remarks that it is time to feast and to take pleasure in tales. She does not know, she says, all the labours of Odysseus, but she can tell of one of his exploits in the Trojan War. ‘He disfigured his own body with cruel blows, flung a wretched garment over his shoulders, just like a slave, and came into the broad streets of the enemy city. He disguised himself as a beggar, something quite unlike what he was on the Achaian ships. That’s how he came into the city of the Trojans and nobody noticed a thing. I was the only one who saw through his disguise and I questioned him. But he tried craftily to evade me. Still, when I bathed and anointed him, and dressed him, and swore a binding oath not to give him away to the Trojans as Odysseus before he’d reached the swift ships and the huts, at last he divulged all the Achaians’ plan. And when he’d killed many Trojans with his long sword, he went back to the Argives with plenty of information. Then the other Trojan women burst out wailing. But my heart was glad. Already I’d turned to thoughts of getting back to my home, and I moaned at the atē that Aphrodite gave me, when she led me from my dear native land, deserting my child and my bridal chamber and my husband, a man who lacked nothing that’s needed for a fine mind and body.’

Menelaos takes up the reminiscences and further praises Odysseus. ‘Think too of everything that mighty man did and endured in the carven Horse, where all we chiefs of the Argives were seated, bringing death and fate [kēr] to the Trojans. Then you came along. You must have been under the control of some god who wanted to grant glory to the Trojans; and godlike Deiphobos followed you on your way. You went three times round the hollow ambush, testing it with your hand, and you called out the names of the chiefs of the Danaans, making your voice sound like the voices of the wives of the Argives. Now I and the son of Tydeus [Diomedes] and dios Odysseus sat there in the midst and heard how you called. We were both eager to stand up and come out, or else to reply at once from where we were. But Odysseus held us back and stopped us for all our eagerness. Then the other sons of the Achaians held their peace. Only Antiklos wanted to answer you. But Odysseus firmly covered his mouth with strong hands and saved the Achaians. And he went on holding him till Pallas Athena led you away.’

Telemachos then suggests it is time for bed. So Helen bids her handmaids set out bedsteads under the portico with purple blankets and with woollen cloaks on top. The girls take torches and do as she has told them; and a herald leads the guests out. So they sleep in the prodromos of the palace, while Menelaos sleeps in the inner chamber of the lofty house with long-robed Helen at his side.

Menelaos rises and dresses at dawn, slings on his sword, puts his sandals on, and goes to sit by Telemachos, to ask what his business is, private or public. Telemachos tells him how Penelope’s suitors are consuming all his sheep and cattle, and how he himself has set out in search of his father. Menelaos says that Odysseus will know how to deal with the suitors, and tells about a wrestling-match he won on Lesbos. Then he goes on with a long narrative of his sojourn in Egypt. (The name Aigyptos here perhaps refers to the River Nile, not the land.) He was unable to get away despite all the hekatombs he offered the gods. In front of Egypt is an island Pharos, ‘distant as far as a hollow ship runs in a whole day when the shrill wind blows fair at her rear’. (Pharos lies close offshore of the site that later became Alexandreia.) It had a good harbourage where sailors called in for water. Menelaos was held there by contrary winds for twenty days. His stores were running out, but Eidotheē, daughter of Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, took pity on him. While his comrades were fishing, he wandered away and she approached him. He begged her to tell him which god was holding him there. She replied that her father Proteus of Egypt frequented the isle: catch him and he would explain how to get away, and what good and bad things had been happening at home. At noon Proteus slept in the hollow caves with a herd of seals, ‘the brood of the fair daughter of the sea’, which emitted a terrible smell.

She agreed to lead Menelaos to the spot, together with three of his men; after Proteus has counted his seals and laid down in their midst, the intruders must grab him and hold fast despite everything, for ‘he’ll assume all kinds of shapes of all things that move on the earth, and of water, and of portentous fire’. If they held fast he would assume his original form and speak; then he was to be set free and he would answer questions.

Next day Eidotheē brought four newly-flayed sealskins, which Menelaos and his men donned; she put ambrosia under each man’s nose to save him from the seal-stink. All went as she had said. Menelaos learned that his fault had been to omit offerings to Zeus and other gods before embarking; to get away he must go to the waters of Aigyptos, the heaven-fed river, and offer hekatombs there to the gods who hold broad heaven. He next asked about the fate of the other Achaian heroes on their return-journeys. He learned of Agamemnon’s murder and how Odysseus was held by the nymph Kalypso. As for himself, he would get back safely to Argos, but he would not die there, for the gods would carry him off ‘to the Elysian Plain and the ends of the earth, where fair-haired Rhadamanthys dwells and life is easiest for men. There’s no snow there, no heavy winter-storm, nor ever rain; but Okeanos all the while sends up draughts of the shrill-blowing Westwind with coolness for men. For you’ve got Helen as wife, so that in their eyes you’re son-in-law of Zeus.’[34] After this revelation, Proteus plunged back into the sea and Menelaos returned thoughtfully to his ship. At dawn they drew the ships down into the sea, set up the masts and sails; the men took seats on the benches and rowed. They went back to the River Aigyptos, offered up hekatombs, and built a mound to Agamemnon ‘so that his fame might be unquenchable’. Then with a favourable wind they sailed swiftly home.

Menelaos ends by asking Telemachos to stay on till the eleventh or twelfth day. ‘Then I’ll send you off homeward in the right way and give you splendid gifts, three horses and a polished chariot, with a beautiful cup as well, so you may pour libations to the gods and recall me all your days.’

Telemachos says that he would like to stay on a year listening to his host; but his comrades chafe in Pylos. And as for any gift, let it be something portable, not horses, which he would prefer to leave Menelaos to enjoy on his plains with their abundant lotus, galingale, wheat, spelt, and white barley. Ithaka had no broad courses, no meadowland; it was a land for goats to pasture — pleasanter than a place for horse-pasturing; for not one of the islands that leans on the sea is fit for driving horses, or rich in meadows, and Ithaka least of all’. So Menelaos says that his gift will be a mixing-bowl of silver with rims of gold, the work of Hephaistos, which the king of the Sidonians gave to him ‘when his house sheltered me as I was returning’. So we find that Menelaos called in at Sidon on his way back from Troy as Paris had when sailing for Troy, and Helen visited it twice, first with her lover, then with her husband: a suspicious parallelism.

While this conversation is going on, the banqueters come up to the palace, driving sheep and carrying wine, while their wives with comely veils send them bread. ‘Thus they were busied about the feast in the halls.’[35]

Later, in Book XV, we find Athena going off to Lakedaimon to hurry Telemachos up in his homecoming. She encounters him and Peisistratos in the forehall, the latter asleep, but Telemachos tired after a sleepless night. She bids him wake Menelaos up and depart; the suitors are trying to force Penelope to marry the one who has given her the most gifts. So Telemachos wakes Peisistratos and asks him to fetch the horses and yoke them under the chariot. It is not yet dawn. Peisistratos says they had better wait for the light; Menelaos will then bring out the gifts and say farewell. Soon the dawn comes up and Menelaos enters, ‘rising from his bed beside Helen with the lovely hair’. Telemachos at once dons his tunic and a large cloak, and asks to be sent back home.

Menelaos bids him only to wait till the gifts are put in the chariot and the women have a meal ready in the halls. The squire Eteoneus, who lives nearby, comes up, and Menelaos bids him kindle a fire and roast some meat. He himself descends into the vaulted storeroom with Helen and his son Megapenthes. Choosing a two-handled cup, he tells his son to take a silver mixing-bowl. Helen goes to the chest where she keeps her embroideries, her own work. Supreme (dia) among women, she lifts one out and takes it away, the finest in its embroideries and the amplest; it shines like a star and lies at the bottom. Menelaos repeats that the bowl was the work of Hephaistos, a gift from the king of Sidon. Helen, handing over the robe, says, ‘Here, I too give you this gift, dear child, a remembrance of Helen’s hands, against the day of your longed-for marriage — to be worn by your bride. Till then let it lie in your halls in your dear mother’s keeping. As for yourself, I wish you a joyous homecoming to your well-built house and your native land.’

Menelaos leads the two guests back to the palace. They sit on chairs and high seats. A handmaid brings water in a gold pitcher and pours it in a silver basin, and she draws up a table. And the grave housekeeper brings in bread and meats, and the carver carves and divides the portions. They eat and drink. Then the guests yoke the horses, mount the inlaid chariot, and drive off from the gateway and the echoing portico. Menelaos stands with honey-hearted wine in a gold cup before the horses and pledges his guests. Telemachos replies with thanks, saying that he would like to find his father at home and tell him of the meeting. An eagle with a big white goose in its talons flies by on the right: the goose a tame fowl from the yard, with men and women shouting after it. The eagle darts to the right in front of the horses. Peisistratos asks Menelaos which god has shown the sign. But it is Helen who replies. ‘Listen, I’ll prophesy as the immortals put it in my heart and as I think it will come about. Just as this eagle came from the mountain where his kin are and where he was born, and snatched up the homebred goose, so shall Odysseus return home after many toils and many wanderings. Or he is already at home, sowing the seed of evil for all the suitors.’ Telemachos answers, ‘May Zeus, Hera’s thundering husband, grant it. Then I’ll pray to you there as to a god.’ He touches the horses with the lash and they hurry through the city to the plain.

*

There are a few other references to Helen or her family. In his journey to the underworld Odysseus meets the ghost of Agamemnon, who talks about his wife, bitchfaced Klytemnaistra, his killer. Odysseus comments, ‘Indeed has Zeus with his far-blown voice shown amazing hate for the race of Atreus from the beginning because of the designs of women. Many of us died through Helen and while you were still afar Klytemnaistra spread a snare for you.’ Here the linking of Helen with her sister gives a note of moral condemnation absent from the passages in the Iliad where she is named as the cause of the war. In the underworld Odysseus also sees Ledē (Leda), wife of Tyndareos and mother of Kastor and Polydeukes, who are now said to have alternate days of immortality.

We should expect Odysseus to call Leda the mother of Helen, but he cites the Dioskouroi instead. And he does not call the Twins the sons of Zeus; he merely says that their alternate immortalities came from the fact that ‘even in the world below they get honour from Zeus’. There is no hint of swan-Zeus mating with Leda or Helen’s birth from an egg. Leda indeed is a faceless figure. She seems to be the same as Leto (Lato), the mother of Apollo and Artemis, a great mother-goddess, whose stature diminished as that of her son grew. Leda is Lada in Doric, the same word as lada, Karian for woman. Leto seems to have come from southwest Anatolia; personal names compounded with Leto occur only in that area. Her cults in Greece were few and uncertain in age; only in Crete do we meet a festival attributed to her. The uncertainty as to who Leda was appears in the genealogies; we know of five candidates for her father and five for her mother. Her husband Tyndareos also seems pre-Greek; the combination -nd- is alien to Greek save through composition or contraction; it is especially common in Karia, where we find such place names as Lindos, Myndos, Karyanda, Alabanda.[36] However, Menelaos in his account of the prophecies of Proteus describes Helen as the daughter of Zeus.

When Odysseus arrives home in disguise, the swineherd Eumaios, who has not recognized him, talks about his master and the hardships brought about by his absence. ‘So my lord would have rewarded me well if he’d grown old here at home, but he perished — as I wish all the race of Helen had utterly perished. For she loosened the knees of many warriors. He went off to Ilios with its famous horses to win honour for Agamemnon, to fight the Trojans.’ Here we at last find direct bitterness against Helen herself, and it is noteworthy that the speaker is a lowly herdsman. The normal epic terms appear later when Telemachos tells of his visit to Sparta: ‘There I saw Argive Helen for whose sake Argives and Trojans toiled hard by the will of the gods.’[37]

Near the end Athene (disguised as Mentor) rebukes Odysseus, who has guessed her identity: ‘You’ve lost your steady force [menos] and your courage, such as you had when you fought with the Trojans five years for highborn Helen with the white arms.’ And Penelope, when her husband reveals himself, tells how in her loneliness she feared that some man would come and beguile her with his words. ‘For there are many that plan evil tricks. Why, even Argive Helen, offspring of Zeus, would not have mated abed with another man if she’d known that the warrior sons of the Achaians would bring her back home again to her dear native land. Yet indeed in her case a god prompted her to do a shameful deed. Until then she had no thought of any such ate as that bitter one through which the first sorrow came upon us as well.’ Here Penelope hovers between a moral-psychological analysis and an acceptance of the notion of divine compulsion.[38]

We may add a passage which seems to show that Homer did not know the motif of the Suitors’ Oath. When the souls of Penelope’s suitors go down to the underworld, Agamemnon’s ghost recognizes one of them. ‘Don’t you remember how I came to your house with godlike Menelaos to urge Odysseus to go with us on the benched ships to Ilios? A whole month. A whole month it took us to cross all the wide sea, for we found it hard to win to our will Odysseus, that sacker of cities.’ Clearly they had no oath to which to appeal.[39]

Though no reference is ever made to Helen’s age, we know that according to the epic she spent twenty years at Troy and is now nearly ten years older. She is convincingly shown as a gracious and assured great lady, elegant and proper, getting on in years but still aware of her overpowering charms, which have been enhanced by the shattering world events she brought about. She is ready enough to recall the past, and she describes herself, perhaps not without a note of pride, as a bitchface; but the memories hardly seem to ripple her calm. It all happened long ago and is already part of history. She is so quietly and firmly appreciative of the loving role of Menelaos that it is hard to believe any violent troubles have ever disrupted the domestic scene. Not that the role she now plays is out of key with her character in the Iliad. We can imagine that Helen, who strove to maintain her balance in a far more troubled situation, turns in due time into this serene mistress of the palace, who dutifully dispenses hospitality, but who owns much strange herbal lore and can at need become a prophetess out of her stored sufferings and exaltations. Despite the swineherd’s outcry, the general ethic remains that of the Iliad. The gods brought about the war, using Helen as their instrument; and yet her role was also somehow the fated expression of her beauty in such a world as hers.[40]

The Egyptian episode seems rather out of character, though the poet uses it to explain why Menelaos did not appear as the avenger of Agamemnon ahead of Orestes. No doubt it occurred in the epic Returns; but even so, we have no proof that the Returns was composed before the Odyssey. There must have been many chants about the various heroes of the Trojan War, which Homer chose to ignore as distracting from the unity of his theme or belittling its dignity. A passage that does however seem to be an interpolation from the later epic cycle is the story of the Trojan horse, with Helen’s cunning effort to make the Achaians betray themselves. This story is told straight after Menelaos has tried to stress her underlying loyalty to the Achaian cause by the story about the disguised Odysseus. The two tales could hardly stand more in contrast. In one she is the trusty helper of the Achaians; in the other she is an arch-traitress. The contradiction is hardly helped by the half-hearted attempt to say that in the second episode she was under the control of some deity hostile to the Achaians.[41]

Another difficult and submerged point is her relation to Deiphobos, whom in later tradition she married after Paris’ death. When she comes up to test the Horse, she is being dogged by him. We might say that this detail is an intrusion, the whole passage being an interpolation; but in the song chanted by the bard Demodokos in Phaiakia we are told how, when the Achaians emerged from the Horse to sack Troy, ‘Odysseus went like Ares to the house of Deiphobos, together with godlike Menelaos. There it was that Odysseus dared to encounter a most terrible fight, which in the end he won with great-hearted Athena’s aid.’ No explanation is given why the two heroes make straight for Deiphobos; but clearly they are understood to have some special reason for wanting to kill him. So it does seem that Homer knew the tale of Helen’s third marriage, but censored it. We have always indeed to consider the possibility of interpolations; thus in ancient times Aristarchos marked the line about Deiphobos following Helen as dubious. But any argument that excludes all difficult passages as intrusions is begging the questions that it should solve.[42]

It may seem strange in terms of later thought to conceive of a person as guilty of a crime that brings about various disasters, and yet not morally responsible for what happens. But we must realize that the ideas surrounding Helen are only an extreme case of what was generally held in the heroic world about headstrong actions in which the actor was carried away by an irresistible impulse. Agamemnon, who has seized Briseis from Achilles, sees himself as no more reprehensible than Helen, who has deserted husband and daughter. The Achaians, he says, have often blamed him for his action, ‘But I’m not the cause of it — rather Zeus and Moira [Fate] and the Erinys who walks in darkness’ or sucks blood. ‘They it was who in the assembly cast wild ate into my understanding on the day when I arbitrarily took the geras of Achilles. But what could I do? Deity [theos] brings all things to their completion.’ Geras means gift of honour and so privilege in general; to take a man’s geras is to challenge his status, his whole place in society. Just as Moira or Fate means share, what a man gets as his lot.

What Agamemnon says is not a piece of special pleading, for his opponent Achilles takes just the same view of his proceedings. ‘Father Zeus, great indeed are the atai you send upon men. Never would the son of Atreus have throughout stirred up rage in my breast or led off the girl obstinately against my will; but perhaps Zeus wanted death to come on many of the Achaians.’ Right at the outset of the conflict he spoke of Agamemnon’s atē; and he told his mother Thetis that ‘Zeus took away his understanding’.[43] Any excessively stupid or misjudged action can be taken as the result of ate: a temporary transformation of normal states of mind by an influx of unreasoning impulse or emotion which disrupts the balance of a man and his world. The influx is felt as coming from the spiritworld, which we must not conceive as some remote or transcendental sphere. The spiritworld is in continual interaction with the minds and bodies of men; indeed this-world and other-world interpenetrate one another and are interdependent in various ways. Wine can cause atē by driving a man mad, by making him do things which he would not soberly do; but that is because the power in wine is itself demonic. Atē is not then a punishment sent on a man for some guilty or wild act; it is the act itself, though that act may in turn beget troubles and penalties. Atē is not sin or crime, though it may bring about injustices and calamities. That is why Helen, on whom atē is imposed by Aphrodite, is not guilty in any simple moral sense for the war she brings about.[44]

When Agamemnon puts the ultimate responsibility on Zeus the highgod, on Moira (Share or Fate), on the Erinys or Fury, he is not saying in any crude way that Fate has controlled him. Fate is not an abstract deity or force; it resides both in the total life energy of the individual and in his involvement with spirit-forces outside his conscious or rational control. The spirit-forces and the life-energy are one, and yet distinct; each represents the whole cultural tradition of the group, its relation to the ancestral past and to nature, but from a different angle. Zeus stands over against Agamemnon as the ultimate judgement embedded in both group and individual; but Moira is vitally part of the man, the movement of his whole self in a world of complex relationships, and the Erinys is not just an avenging fury invoked by the act of imbalance and infatuation. She is the active embodiment of Moira, which in turn is the expression of Zeus’ will; yet Moira and her agent Erinys are also deep aspects of the sufferer’s humanity. The law of justice acts both inside the man and all around him, altering his relations to other men and to nature, confirming his aretē (that which makes him man) or destroying him. Atē (the obsession, the infatuation, the impulse leading to a badly misjudged or unbalancing action) begets the Erinys; the Erinys, reacting to a situation of imbalance, intensifies the atē. Odysseus speaks of the seer Melampous ‘suffering grievous pains through Neleus’ daughter and the crushing atē which the hard-hitting goddess Erinys put upon him’. (He had tried to help his brother to win Pero, Neleus’ daughter, by stealing the cattle of Iphiklos, but was caught and imprisoned a year, while Neleus seized his property.) Later as the unity of the early conception broke down, ate came to mean punishment; the Erinyes became Furies exacting penalties for certain guilty acts; Moira became an impersonal Fate standing over the man.[45]

In the early conception the ideas and images are dynamic, expressing both the forces maintaining balance and those that result from breaking it. The Erinys is a protective power, which preserves the limits of a moira. A man’s position in society is an aspect of his moira, his share or lot, which arises out of family relationships, work, property. A parent has something due to him, his share, as parent; an elder brother as elder brother, and so on. Even a beggar has his inviolable moira and can invoke his Erinys to protect it. The gods themselves have their Erinyes. Hera’s Erinyes have the same function as those of Penelope: to protect the status of a mother by punishing an unfilial son. In the epic Thebais the Erinys of the Gods heard the curse of Oidipous, embodying in personal form the anger of the gods invoked in the curse; hence Erinys and curse could be equated. Moira is not only the share that a man gets but also the share he should get; and in the post-Homeric period it can be replaced by Dikē, Justice. Thus in Sophokles when Agamemnon and Menelaos refuse to the dead Aias the right of burial — a moira of the dead — the kinsman utters a curse upon them which invokes Zeus, Erinys and Dikē. Dikē here has the epithet telesphoros, ‘who brings to fulfilment’, which is also a traditional epithet of Moira. Herakleitos said that if the Sun were to exceed his metra or measures, he would be detected by the Erinyes, the ministers of Dikē. The whole idea of metron or measure had come about as a development of the Homeric concept of moira. We can begin to realize, along these lines, how central was that concept in Greek culture and how multiple its enduring effects.[46]

In a sense the moira and the erinys of a man were aspects of his daimōn. The daimōn was not so much guardian spirit as otherself: that is, the self as reflected in the otherworld, the spiritworld — the self as it appeared in its relations with that world. Zeus comes in here with the attempts to generalize and to link the individual fate with larger patterns of purpose.[47] We thus find the daimonion or spiritforce extended till it becomes co-extensive with divine power, the whole sphere of the gods. The complex dynamic link of daimōn and individual breaks down, and daimōn becomes, as we have noted, a sort of guardian spirit linked with, but separate from, the individual.

We must not however think that at any time the concept of the daimōn was limited to the spirit force of human beings. Everything that existed had its daimōn: all the objects or beings in nature, from stones to trees, from animals to the elements, had their daimones. By his daimonic being man became a living part of the universe, organically related to star and stone. For Homeric psychology the key problem was that of limits. Why and how does a person at times maintain a harmonious and secure relationship to his fellows and to nature — to the gods (in whom society and nature co-exist)? Why at other times does atē possess him and an erinys strike at him out of the disturbed balance? Therein lay the mystery. Helen the elegantly secure lady of the Odyssey is the same person as Helen the disastrous embodiment of beauty-power in the Iliad; the difference lies in the way that the limits function. They have broken down in the Iliad, but have resumed control in the Odyssey. In the Iliad, the atai of Helen and Paris, of Agamemnon and Achilles, have thrown everything into confusion, and the gods are in violent interaction with the world of mortals; in the Odyssey, at Sparta the re-establishment of limits has created afresh a balance in which the gods, receiving their due gifts in sacrifice and kept respectfully in their place by ritual, sanctify the normal routine of life.

Not only unsettling atai but any sudden sense of an exalting power was seen as an influx from the spirit world. In the Iliad, when a man acts with special courage and energy, he is infused with menos by a god. Often the access of menos comes in reply to a prayer; it appears through the act of a god who ‘increases or diminishes at will a man’s aretē’.[48] Aretē means excellence: the positive qualities of an individual in their strongest form or manifestation. In general the aretē of men lies in their strength and fighting capacity, their physical fitness. Thus, the youngest son of Priam is described as ‘making show of the aretē of his feet’ because he is a fast runner. And one of Penelope’s suitors remarks that ‘here day after day we are rivals because of her aretē, and don’t go after other women’. Her aretē is her supreme womanliness, her perfection as a wife. With Helen aretē is beauty and its seductive charms. In her bitchface days she was glowing with the infused forces of Aphrodite. A fragment of Bion runs: ‘The beauty of woman is her glory, that of the man is his strength.’ Diomedes erupts with warlike energies in battle through the menos put into him by Athena. We are told of Hektor, ‘Ares entered into him’.[49]

Menos is accompanied by a conviction of intense power, a physical sensation of invincibility. ‘My feet beneath and hands above feel eager because the god has made them nimble.’[50] In such a condition a man can do with ease things beyond his normal capacities; he can even, as Diomedes does, fight with gods. (We may compare the Norse Berserks.) The man of menos in fact is a man possessing daimonion. The normal division of self and other-self or daimōn breaks down; spiritworld and everyday world are one. The bard, carried away by his mastery in song, feels that a god has inspired him.

The word daimōn tells us much about Greek thought processes. It has the same root as daiein, to divide. The Iliad uses daiein in the phrase: ‘My heart is torn’; Pindar uses it of the gods apportioning pains to men; the Odyssey uses it of men sharing out meat. From Herodotos on the aorist, edaisa, is used for feasting, formed from daiein, but belonging in sense to dainynai, to give a feast.[51] The related word dais means a meal or banquet. ‘The dais is duly shared’; desmos means division or spoil of land, later tribute; daithmos, allotment of land. One’s daimon is thus one’s life-force in terms of the share one gets of life (and death) and it is linked with one’s share of the necessaries of life, above all with food and land.[52]

In Homer the word daimōn hovers between the full early sense and the wider one of deity, of divine power. A man may act against his daimōn, or with it. ‘You might rouse him with the daimōn.’ Here we see the meaning of deep impulse, impulse that comes out of the whole man, merging with the meaning of fate or lot.[53] Demos means a division of the people or land, the land occupied by a clan or the clan itself. Many Attic demoi bore the names of clans. (The Arabic hayy was applied both to the tribe and its land.) The demos in turn consisted of men, each of whom had his moira, his share or lot, guarded by his erinys and defined by his daimōn. The Greeks never lost the sense that each free man should have his share of the land, and at revolutionary moments their impulse was to take over the land and share it out equally.

The Greeks were aware of the original significance of daimōn. A scholiast on the Iliad discusses Homer’s reasons for calling the gods daimonēs and adduces the fact that ‘they are the arbitrators and dispensers of men, as the lyric poet Alkman says: who has allotted them with his own lots and divided to them his own portions’, that is, divisions. An arbitrator, diaitētēs, divided up the land for a new colony; a dispenser, dioikētēs, was an administrator, especially treasurer — under the Ptolemies in Egypt, he was the chief financial officer.[54]

We see how deep into the Greek mind had sunk the idea of individual appropriation of the life-force, which was objectified above all in food and land, and which expressed itself in the particular characteristics of a person. Some persons, for reasons that remained obscure, were liable to influxes of force beyond the normal measure, the warrior with menos, the woman with over-whelming beauty, and so on. Myths sought to explain the ways in which such influxes happened, and the effects they had. But the acute sense of the individual moira was linked in turn with a powerful collective sense, which defined the limits that should rule in life and which in the last resort was linked with a clan conviction that the shares of land and food should be open to all, should indeed be shared equally. The tensions thus created between collective rights and individual appropriations became the driving force in Greek society, in the end bringing about both democracy and its breakdown: a tremendous expansion of energies liberated in a new way, yet dogged by certain contradictions that finally determined their limits and undermined them.

Chapter Three – Helen and History

There then is the Helen of Homer. Next we must ask what verifications we can find in history for her legend, and what direct links can be made out with the Bronze Age. It is generally agreed since Schliemann dug up the early Troy at Hissarlik that the Trojan War has an historical basis; since from tribal days onward we find wars, large or small, provoked by the theft of women, there is nothing intrinsically improbable in that war being caused by the abduction of a princess from the Achaian mainland. If the traditional date for the war is roughly correct, there was much disturbance in the Near East at the time, dislocation and movement of peoples, and raids by sea-folks as far south as Egypt. We can then conjecture:

Whereas the Great Raids show us Sea Raiders and Land Raiders combining for aggressive action on the Palestinian coast, the Trojan War is the war of a maritime confederacy of the powers south and east of the Aegean, from Rhodes and Kalymnos to Thessaly, against a league of the northern and eastern shores, which are continental, and are represented as acting on the defensive around a central land-fortress on the Dardanelles. Yet some of the most identifiable of the Sea Raiders bear names which refer them to these continental coasts. In the Homeric story, in fact, the world of the Sea Raiders is divided against itself, only very shortly after the victory of Rameses over what seems to have been a very large and important part of its forces. Even the occasion of the quarrel has come down to us, little as this concerned the course or the issue of the war. In the absence of the King of Sparta a Trojan prince came, not as an enemy but as a friend and a guest, and stole his wife and his treasure: and as Helen was the heiress of the pre-Achaean dynasty, she was not only the consort, but the title-deed of Menelaos. War followed, so unanimously that later Greeks, who did not value their women so highly, were at a loss to account for it; pressed with such vigour and tenacity that it may well have had an economic cause as well as racial and political. (Myres and Frost)![55]

Such a position is based on an acceptance of the various legends and traditions as substantially derived from history; it rationalizes them and produces a coherent story. We may well feel that this is going too far in detail while holding that the core of the tradition may own a solid basis in fact. Let us then glance at what we know firmly of Troy and Mykenai, and how Helen’s story fits into the Mykenean world.

First we may repeat that there is nothing inherently unlikely in a story such as that of Helen owning a factual basis. We find similar stories circulating in the Germanic heroic age that followed the breakdown of the Roman Empire in the West. In Beowulf we hear of Heathcyn carrying off a Swedish queen with disastrous consequences. Prokopios tells how the war between the Angli and the Warni in the mid-sixth century AD arose through Radiger repudiating his marriage contract with the English king’s sister. Gregory of Tours tells how the breakdown of the Burgundian kingdom came about through Hrithhild demanding that her sons should take vengeance for the murder of her parents; how Hilderberht invaded Spain after his sister Hlothhild had been ill-treated by her husband the Visigothic king Amalric; how the proud and jealous Amaloberga, wife of Irminfrith, was responsible for the dissensions bringing down the Thuringian kingdom. We see that womenfolk of the ruling classes in such an age were often headstrong and passionate, and able to cause far-reaching troubles.

We cannot here examine the Homeric world in detail; but in general we may claim that, with all the changes and modifications which must have gone on in recited poems over four or five hundred years, there is still a strong imprint of the Bronze Age. The most striking lapse in tradition is the Dark-Age obliteration of any memory of the highly organized Mykenean states, with their bureaucracy of scribes and their use of writing. Such systems must have been so foreign to later experience that they were largely forgotten except for a general sense of lost splendours and of the power exercised by the king of Mykenai as a sort of overlord. The scale of life had shrunk. Homer was impressed by the way in which Odysseus or Alkinoos kept fifty women at work in his house; yet the Pylos tablets, dealing with a single locality over a short period of time, mention the names of 645 slavewomen, together with some 370 girls and 210 boys. But many items often cited as showing a post-Mykenean culture do not carry much weight, eg Odysseus’ brooch or Athena’s golden lamp. Temples standing on their own have been considered post-Mykenean; but now the discovery of a Mykenean temple on Keos with cult-statues, some life-sized, has shown the argument to be fallacious. Hardly any objects mentioned in the poems cannot be paralleled from the Mykenean period. Outstanding examples are the boar’s-tusk helmet of Iliad X, which Homer describes correctly in its smallest details, Nestor’s cup, Penelope’s couch, Helen’s silver work-basket on wheels, the huge body-shields — though these latter seem to have fallen into disuse some generations even before the fall of Mykenai. We may add Odysseus’ palace, though this type of house-plan may have survived some time at Athens.

The reference to Phoinikians has been taken as anachronistic, but the Mykeneans may already have used this name for the folk of the region later called Phoinikia, as they used it to denote a spice, a colour, a fabulous monster. The prominence of Sidon is noteworthy; for this town was destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age; and though the site was reoccupied, Tyre overshadowed it in the Early Iron Age. The place name Byblos certainly entered Greek before 1200 BC, when the pronunciation changed from Bubla to Gubla; also Tyre and Sidon must have become Greek words when their initial letters were still distinguished in Phoinikian. The tablets show that word-borrowing from Semitic in Mykenean days included the terms for gold, lion, cummin, cyperus, chiton.

Cremation indeed seems an Iron-Age feature, though sporadically used in the late Mykenean period. Oddly, it was practised by Trojans of the cities VI—VIIa. Anyhow, the burnings of the dead in Homer are mostly of warriors dying in a foreign land where tomb desecration was feared. The most significant argument by far for the antiquity of Homeric material lies in the Catalogue of Ships, which seems certainly to reflect to a substantial extent the situation in the Bronze Age. If such a detailed record of factual conditions could be orally transmitted over some five hundred years, we can have no difficulty in believing that the narrative sections of the Iliad have also a long and solid tradition behind them.

There was beyond doubt far more continuity between 1200 BC and 800 BC than has been thought. We must not look on the so-called Dorian invasion (the movement south of Greek tribes in a more primitive condition) as a mass irruption completely transforming the situation. There may well have been only raids on Mykenean centres already weakened by internal regressions, both social and economic. In art there was something like a continuous tradition, despite checks and declines, in the relatively broken-down world after 1000 BC. The horses in Geometric art suggest a survival of the Mykenean custom of horse-drawn funerals; they appear on funerary vases. Birds are associated with chariots in Mykenean art, and we find them in a similar role in Geometric. Greek artists may have known of Mykenean works in various ways. We meet early material in later contexts, later objects connected with earlier graves or structures, buildings carried over or against Mykenean architecture; and continuities in technical procedures can be traced. The Keos temple and many other later details suggest an unbroken tradition in many cult-practices. Most important of all we must realize that, with all the differences, there must have been many similar social elements among the Achaians of Agamemnon and the Greeks of the Dark Ages. The bureaucratic apparatus had gone; the great Wanax or overlord had gone; the Basileis, lords or princes, had turned into petty kings — and were finally to disappear in historical Greece. (Anax survived in a few cult-titles as with the Dioskouroi; basileus too survived in priestly titles such as that of the Archon Basileus at Athens.) What had been a well-organized sort of tribal-feudal society broke down into much more rudimentary systems; but under the various superstructures of power there must have been certain tribal elements not so different in the Bronze and Iron Ages. The breakdown was in no sense a simple reversion to earlier tribal forms. The political unit became smaller and the exploitation of large groups of slaves by palace systems faded out; but this development may well have been a gain for the peasantry in general. If we may judge from the Odyssey, the post-Mykenean system retained many sophisticated elements of social differentiation despite the large-scale fall in standards of living, which would have hit the chieftains most of all.

So we must not think of a Bronze-Age world remembered in bardic traditions across centuries of quite different social formations. After we have carefully pointed out this or that detail in the epics which can be labelled Bronze Age or Iron, in the last resort what we see is an indissoluble fusion of elements from both ages — or rather, the process by which the Mykenean elements have been modified and expanded during the Dark Ages and the early Ionian period, has produced a living work of art, not a mosaic of bits from here, there and somewhere else. Each poem is traditional, historical, legendary, rooted in Mykenai and Troy VIIa, and yet using a perspective determined by the Dark Ages. It is an individual creation in which the organizing poetic vision is at no points opposed to the other elements — traditional, historical, legendary.[56]

*

Troy was founded around 3000 BC by settlers who seem to have come by sea from the south-east and who moved from the floodable land near the estuary of the Skamandros to the higher ground, a ridge, east of the river valley. They felt insecure, for from the outset they fortified the site with a wall; they must have thus become the city dominating the north-west corner of Anatolia. Seven main stages of the city can be made out. After about five hundred years some conflict, apparently internal, destroyed the city; and the second settlement, with a palatial megaron or hall, was burned down after some three hundred more years. A yet stronger wall, with small projecting towers, was built. The place prospered; there were flocks of sheep and goats, and much spinning and weaving went on. The spread of Trojan pottery to the Cyclades and Greek mainland, as also to Central Anatolia, Kilikia, and north Syria, suggests a considerable trade, presumably in livestock and woollen textiles; timber from Mt Ida may also have been exploited. The city went on expanding. Troy IV covered some four acres and the people used domed ovens. With Troy VI we are in the Middle Bronze Age of the Aegean, with the citadel a powerful royal stronghold. The horse came in, and new pot shapes (called grey Minyan ware). The whole defensive system showed in the Late Bronze Age a very high level of military engineering for the period.

The ethnic affiliations in all these developments are obscure; and we must beware of thinking that the advent of the Minyan ware, for instance, means a complete or even substantial change in the population. Certainly during the second millennium BC peoples with an Indo-European speech basis did become powerful in Mitanni, Central Anatolia and the Aegean. They seem connected with the horse. What we must avoid is any idea of the Aegean suddenly becoming Greek in the sense we use that term of the historical periods after the eighth century. The Greeks of history clearly represented a combination of many elements; what sections derived more or less directly from the intrusive folk of the second millennium must have gone through many changes, by intermarriages and by fusions or interactions of cultures. The newcomers in Greece largely took over the Minoan palace organization they found in the Aegean, as well as its cults. We may infer that they did not come in a mass invasion, but imposed themselves as a ruling class on existing peasantries. Still, as long as we keep these points in mind, we can think of a Greek-speaking Mykenean world as the predecessor of the Aegean of the Dark Ages and of Homer’s day with its colonization of the eastern shores of the sea.[57]

Troy VI lasted from about 1800 to 1300; its end seems to have come through an earthquake. The rebuilt town, Troy VIIa, lasted on till about 1240 and may be taken as Priam’s realm. The walls were hastily rebuilt with materials from fallen houses; and houses were now smaller and crowded together, divided by party-walls (which do not seem to occur in Troy VI). The city fell by attack and capture. The date of its sacking would then seem to be not far from the year 1184 which was given by Eratosthenes; he based his calculations on the genealogies of Spartan kings and others, thus arriving at the year 1104 for the Dorian invasion (328 years before the First Olympiad, 776); by adding two generations of forty years each he dated the capture 1184. Other ancient reckoners produced dates ranging from 1334 (Douris of Samos) to 1135 (Ephoros of Kyme in Aiolis). On the mainland all major Mykenean cities (except perhaps in Attika) had been broken down by the end of the ceramic phase IIb. Mykenai, Tiryns, Pylos, Gla, and almost certainly Thebes were burned down; most of the smaller settlements such as Prosymna, Zygouros, Berbati, were burned and deserted. So by about 1200 the power of the Mykenean mainland was destroyed; the areas named in the Homeric Catalogue of Ships as providing the main contingents against Troy were abandoned and brought down to a low level. The expedition of Agamemnon must then have come about a generation or so earlier, and the tradition of disasters following the sack of Troy would presumably represent a memory of the breakdown of mainland Mykenean civilization not long after. At Troy the survivors did their best to rebuild the site; but about 1200 or soon afterwards newcomers with a characteristic knobbed ware took over. Around 1100 the settlement was again destroyed by fire, and the site was deserted for some four centuries until new settlers came in. But now Troy was in effect a Greek colony, part of the Hellenic world.[58]

The origins of the Homeric epics must then go back to the thirteenth century BC, but as we would expect with an oral bardic tradition the original lays, whatever they were like, have been expanded and adapted, put together and reorganized in varying combinations over the centuries. Steadily the manners of the Mykenean age have been changed to fit in with the social conditions of the bards, so that the systems at Ithaka or Sparta which we find described in the Odyssey are essentially those of the Dark Ages. The fighting in the Iliad shows a mixture of Bronze-Age and later elements. But many formulas of the epic style certainly go back to Mykenean days, and thus we have a strong argument for the hexameter itself, no doubt in a ruder form, similarly going back.

In the Iliad Andromachē remarks on the weakness of the western wall: ‘As for your host, let it stand by the wild figtree where the city can most easily be scaled and the wall is open to assault.’ Three times, she says, the Greeks tried to enter there: ‘whether it’s someone skilled in prophecy told them, or their own spirit [thymos] drives them there and urges them on.’ Her comments are upheld by archaeology. The walls were not as straight and steep as at Mykenai and Tiryns; they could be climbed up to the angle where the battlements began. ‘Three times Patroklos set his foot on an angle of the high wall and three times Apollo pushed him back.’[59]

Homer has many epithets for Troy, some conventional, used for any town, though appropriate in suggesting a well-built city with fertile and open land around, general amenities and important cults. Six are used for Troy alone. Eudmetos, normally used for towers, walls, altars, here stresses the solid work of the whole city; euteicheos refers to the strong walls (where some patching-up in period VIIa can be noticed); eupyrgos seems to point to the wall-towers, at least four of which survived from VI into VIIa. Towers also existed at Mykenai and Tiryns, but were there connected with the gates; they may have been fewer than at Troy. Ophryoessa gives an effect of the town’s forbidding aspect as it rose on its ridge, and helps to suggest the doom to come; eupolos refers to the horse-breeding on the plains. The Trojans are called horse-tamers twenty-one times in the Iliad, and they must have owed much wealth and power to their horses. Finally Troy is called aty mega, a great city. Mega hardly fits the extent; the remains of VI and VIIa at their widest points measure only some two hundred yards, and they cover not more than five acres. Homer does not give the effect of a large force located there. But mega may refer to strength, wealth, prestige.

Five more epithets are suitable, though not confined to Troy. Aipē suggests the way in which Hissarlik rises steeply on the north and western sides; men of Troy IX did much levelling on the other two sides, to help the approach to the sea. Hypsipylos, tall-gated, refers to the number as well as the height of the gates; seven have been found in VI, not all existing at the same time, but four must have been used at most phases of VI and carried on into VIIa, while there may have been other gates that do not survive. Homer knows of the Great Tower of Ilion, apparently near the Skaian Gate, and a Dardanian Gate leading south to Mt Ida. Hypsipylos is also used of Mysian Thebes, which had close relations with Troy and lay on a strategic position at the head of the Adramyttian Gulf. No epithet describes the fortifications of Mykenai; Tiryns is merely said to be walled; seven gates are attributed to Boiotian Thebes, while Egyptian Thebes is the hundred-gated. Enempoeesa evokes the fact that the north wind blows a great deal on the site. Eunaiomenon seems to mean well-populated; it is employed also of Kos and Sidoniē. Euryagyia used to be taken to refer to Troy VI where there was an unoccupied space between the walls and the buildings they enclosed; but it is also used of Mykenai and Athens where there was no such space, and at Troy the space was built on after the earthquake. So the meaning is probably ‘broad-streeted’. Troy VII had well-paved and drained streets; we may note in particular the street running from the south gate to the citadel, in which a bronze arrowhead was found. At Mykenai too a royal road went from the Lion Gate to the summit; and Athens had a well-made approach.[60]

For an epithet applied to the Achaians which seems to go back to Mykenean days we may take euknēmis, well-greaved. It has been argued that this might refer to the hoplite armour that came in about 700 BC; but it is almost certainly a Mykenean touch. We see the superior warriors of the Bronze Age with their greaves on monuments; and several remains of them have been found, with wire lace to fasten up the back. The dates are from about 1400 to 1200, and the sites lie in the Peloponnesos and Cypros.[61] What makes it sure that Homer is not dealing with contemporary armour but with an ancient device is the fact that he does not really think of his warriors as greaved. Thus, he forgets the greaves when Pandaros hits Menelaos with an arrow. Further, in the thirteenth century greaves were eminently characteristic of the Achaians and of no other peoples in the eastern Mediterranean. (Goliath wears them, but he is a Philistine with Aegean links.) In the thirteenth century the big body-shield was replaced by a small round shield and corselet, so that warriors could distribute the armour weight better about their persons and thus combine mobility and protection. In the eastern Mediterranean most peoples adopted the round shield and some sort of corselet; only the Mykeneans added the greaves.[62]

Fragments of the relief on a silver rhyton from Shaft Grave IV at Mykenai, Cretan in origin, show an intriguing scene of battle.[63] On the right are towers set on a steep slope; on the left are olive trees. On the battlements several women look on with vivacious gestures at the fighting below. Warriors defend the fortress with slings and crossbows; their hair is cut short and they are all naked save for two on the extreme right who seem in command and who wear short stiff cloaks (which may however be shields). On the main fragment we do not see the enemy — except for the upper part of man at the lower edge, who wears a helmet with flowing plume and a short-sleeved chiton; he seems to be punting a boat (which we cannot see). Four boar’s-tusk helmets appear to belong to men in the boat. One of the smaller fragments shows another part of the fortified towers, with a man whose hair is short like those of the fighters on the slope. The Minoan character of the towers is underlined by the addition of horns-of-consecration. A second fragment shows six naked figures, perhaps swimming in water, while other fragments have a pattern representing shallow water and a rocky sea-bed.[64]

The women on the battlements overlooking a battle remind us of Helen at the Skaian Gate; and the rhyton indeed is one of the earliest known artworks which make a new approach to comprehensive illustration, to single perspective, and to an epic rendering of a war scene.[65] But though the scene here is often referred to as a siege, all we can say is that a fortified settlement is being attacked — perhaps as the first step to a prolonged siege. The theme has been described as a barbarian assault on a Minoan outpost. But difficulties arise over the fact that we cannot give an example of any such outpost; and just what is happening in the battle is hard to make out. A rather forced interpretation sees the arrivals as Creto-Mykeneans who have attempted to disembark warriors for a siege, but have been attacked by native barbarians and forced to make their escape by sea.[66] There are indeed three groups: the women on the battlements who seem Minoans by the style of their dress and the architecture of the towers; the men in the boat, who are mainland Greeks if we may trust the chiton — a non-Minoan feature, but worn by warriors on the fragment of a Tiryns fresco — and the helmets, which show a plumed type that we see on a gold ring, while plates of boar’s-tusk for a second type have been found in the same grave as the rhyton; finally the fighters on the slope, who are neither Minoan nor Mykenean, with their cropt hair, nakedness, slings and bows and arrows. (Slings and bows do not occur in Mykenean art as battle-weapons; the bow is shown in use only during hunts. But slings may appear in an early fresco at Knossos; and we know from the tales of Paris, Herakles, and Philoktētēs, that the bow was wielded by Mykenean heroes. The argument that the weapons are here barbarian is thus not strong; but the general effect of the naked fighters is certainly uncouth and non-heroic.) The scene has been suggested as Anatolian; and somehow Minoan ladies, Mykenean warriors, and local tribesmen have been brought together. Because of the difficulties raised by these suppositions it has been argued that the scene is based on some story which the artist could not easily define and to which he could not give a convincing contemporary location. But even if this were so, we still have here an attempt to depict an heroic event of a quite different character than a generalized battle-scene, a march of warriors, or a hunting episode. In fact, if it is legend and not a recent event which the artist is treating we are all the more definitely confronted with an epical scene.[67] One of the fragments shows with the swimmers an animal that has been taken to be a hippopotamus, but which is more likely some sort of sea-monster. However, it has been made the basis for the argument that an Egyptian original lies behind the relief. But even if Cretan artists had seen Egyptian war-pictures, as doubtless some of them at certain times had, there is no point in seeking a link here. The Egyptian coast had no such steep slopes, and the scene, however enigmatic, is Minoan-Mykenean throughout.

So far the analysis of the rhyton went before the recent discovery of a related fresco on the island of Thera. This miniature work seems certainly related to the rhyton and reveals that the event depicted was the siege and sack of a North African city about 1500 BC by an Aegean fleet. The painting, found in fragments, ran along three walls of a room in what has been called the Western House. The room measured some 13 by 12 feet, and about 21 feet of the fresco have been saved. The scenes have been interpreted as telling the tale of two Libyan cities, allied or subject to the Aegean folk, who are threatened by a third Libyan city. They call for aid and the Aegean fleet arrives, destroys the enemy ships, sacks the city, loots its cattle, then visits the two allied cities to announce the victory. It has been estimated that over 90 persons are depicted, and at least 12 warships (of which we have only six, one of them intact). The room was entered from the east, with the fresco running from the northern wall. We see six or seven figures in impressive robes on an egg-shaped hill, praying or perhaps commanding the battle. Below, the bodies of drowned enemy warriors sink in the sea. To the right we see the walled city that has been besieged and sacked. Beautiful women of the city throw themselves off the walls to die; one has already jumped and another follows. The northern frieze shows the Mykenean victors leading away the enemy’s oxen, sheep, and goats.[68]

Just below this section is one of the room’s two full-size paintings, which shows a fisherman with his catch in his two hands; on the south wall was another fisherman. The eastern frieze is narrower. We see a long winding river, with windswept palm trees along its banks; and high above flies a griffin, half-lion, half-eagle. At the end of the river is a second walled city (covering the south-eastern corner of the room). We see the citadel with its high walls and some single houses on the left. Two figures clad in furs are on the banks of a small river; and rolling hills on the city’s outskirts have trees where a lion chases two stags. Five men stand on the top of the tower, watching the Aegean fleet that heads to the right, while a small boat in the harbour below gets ready to escort the warships. On the south frieze seven ships can be made out, with one well-preserved. Everything aboard is ordered by strict discipline. The oarsmen work with energetic precision; the coxswain at the stern keeps time with his hands or some instrument, while beside him towers the master with the helm in his hands. Behind them is the decorated captain’s-cabin. Men sit under a sort of tent amidships: Mykenean warriors or Libyan mercenaries. Of another ship we see the lionhead sternpost and the bearded master seated in his cabin. The cabins differ from ship to ship in their ornaments — which perhaps represent some sort of coat-of-arms. On the southern frieze the ships move to the right, where stands another walled city. Libyan women and children on the walls of the citadel wave in welcome.

The owner of the house, who commissioned the painting, may have been the captain in the ship with lionhead sternpost; for in another room is depicted a ship’s cabin with the same distinctive ornaments. The frieze as a whole suggests in its conception the almost contemporary relief of Queen Hatshepsut’s tomb in Egyptian Thebes which represents her Red Sea expedition to Punt for incense. The identification of the setting with Libya is based on several points: the maned sheep, which are still to be found wild in southern Libya; the type of buildings, which suits what is known of Libya at this time; and the crewcut brushlike hair styles, which suggest the small head-symbol on the Phaistos disk from Crete with its yet-undeciphered script. Even if details of the interpretation of the fresco are challenged, the overall meaning is clear. We have here the sort of epical narrative which we surmised from the rhyton. But there is no sign of any Helen-motif.

There are a few further hints of epical themes in Mykenean art. On another silver vase we see attackers with body-shields and boar’s-tusk helmets in a hilly situation. A vase fragment from Knossos shows a Mykenean archer getting out of a boat and shooting upwards — apparently at men on a wall. Fragments from frescoes of the fourteenth century in the megaron at Mykenai show a warrior falling off a wall while ladies look on from palace windows; and fighting of warriors on foot and in chariots seems to be going on outside a besieged town. On an early Mykenean vase from Cypros ladies in windows frame a chariot, while another vase from Enkomi may depict a naval expedition. At Pylos the palace had a scene of killings that seem connected with the siege of a hill town.[69] On a vase fragment from Tiryns a chariot is preceded by two warriors with raised spears and followed by two marching warriors. Another vase (late thirteenth or early fourteenth century) shows six Mykenean warriors marching out with provision bags on their spears; on the other side the enemy advances with lifted spears to the encounter. Behind the Mykeneans a woman raises her arms in lamentation. There may be here a story of some prophetess or foreboding wife, someone like Kassandra, Eriphyle or Kleopatra (Meleagros’ wife) in later Greek legend. Though such a conjecture cannot be proved, it seems better than the suggestion that the mourner is a captive. Certainly the females with hands to their heads on Mykenean larnakes (funerary vessels) are making a gesture of lamentation of the dead; and the gesture carries on this significance till Geometric times. To mourn thus as men marched out to battle would be surely ill-omened; and so the scene has been taken as a funeral one, with the men going to take part in a processional cortege or in funeral games. On a Geometric vase we see two men peaceably boarding a ship, followed by four men and then by two women who are making the mourning gesture. Again, unless we see here the representation of ship burial, it is hard to link the lamentations with the departure. But in view of the difficulties of interpretation we cannot press for a narrative basis in the scene.[70]

That epical tales of a simple kind, still entangled with ritual elements, circulated in the Mykenean world is proved by the texts from Ugarit (Ras Shamra) on the coast of North Syria. Here in 1928 was found a site revealing strong links between the Aegean world and Canaan; the heyday was about 1400-1200 BC. At Ugarit there was a meeting point of sea trade with Mesopotamia, bringing together Hittites, Egyptians and the sea people to its west. That from this area a certain penetration into the Aegean also went on is suggested by a place name near Epidauros, Sapyselaton, which seems clearly Ugaritic: Sapys was the Ugaritic sun-goddess (elat); the form of the name with p (instead of the m as in the Akkadian Shamash) is Northwest Semitic, as is also the gender (feminine, whereas Shamash is masculine).[71] The Ugarites had a Mountain of the Gods, Saphon, which, like Olympos or Ida, would be set in various localities; in the Old Testament it is at times identified with Jerusalem. (Among the Israelites the heavenly mountain moved from Sinai to Ebal or Gerizim according to the period and the region of Yahweh’s worshippers.) Another link of the Minoan-Mykenean cultures and the West Semites appears in the Greek and Latin taur- for bull; it is linked with Thor, the name given to El, the head of the Ugaritic pantheon. In Ugaritic mythology Baal mated with a heifer, who bore him a bull calf; the ritual basis was doubtless the copulation of a priest with a heifer (see Leviticus xviii 23-4). The Ugaritic craft-god Kothar was called a Cretan, a tribute to the high level of Minoan craftsmanship.[72]

We have much of the text of a Ugaritic poem, Keret. Keret of Hbr, like Danel (Daniel) in the Ugaritic epic Aqhat and like Abraham in Genesis, is blessed with a special offspring after incubation, sacrifices and the receipt of divine promises. The story told of him has affinities both with that of Helen and Menelaos, and with that of Sarah and Abraham or that of David and Michel. His name, we may note, appears in the Old Testament attached to a brook and again to the eponymous ancestor of the Philistines (Cretans) in Zephaniah; it appears often among the names in Minoan tablets from Hagia Triada. Keret deals mainly with the loss of a wife and the quest of the same woman (or another princess), leading to an expedition and siege.[73]

It opens with a brief account of how the destined wife has been taken from Keret before she has borne an heir. He reaches El through incubation and begs the god for help in regaining her (or getting another wife who will be fruitful). In the dream El appears and tells him to carry out a large-scale expedition.

Let Keret go down from the roof. Prepare food for the city, wheat for the House of Hbr. Bake bread of the fifth, provisions of the sixth month. The host is noble and the army goes forth, a noble army, and there goes forth the host of [the rank-and-file], your army, a great multitude; three hundred myriads, troops without number, soldiers without reckoning.

Even the solitary man is to close his house and the sick man to take up his bed. ‘Let the newly-wed groom come out to drive his wife to another, his well-beloved to a stranger.’ The host is to gather ‘like locusts taking over the field; like grasshoppers, the corners of the desert’. They are to march off and on the seventh day reach Great Odom, where they will occupy the towns, ‘invest the cities, capture the man gathering wood in the fields, the woman picking straw on the threshing-floor, capture the woman drawing at the well, filling at the spring’. For six days, ‘don’t send your arrows towards the city nor the slingshot of your hands’. At sunrise on the seventh day king Pbl will send messengers to ask Keret: ‘Take silver, even gold, a share of the estate and a permanent slave, a team of three horses, a chariot from the yard of a handmaid’s son. Keret, take peace-offerings in peace. Do not besiege Great Odom and Little Odom. Odom is a gift of El, a present of the Father of Man [the Ugaritic is Adam]. Be distant, King, from my house, go away, Keret, from my court.’ Keret is then to send a message that he wants none of those things: ‘Give my Lady Hurrai, the fairest of your first-born’s family.’

If this reading is correct, we may conjecture that Pbl’s eldest son has carried off Keret’s wife, whom he is to demand back. However, the line could simply mean that Hurrai is the king’s first-born child, and we are left without any clue as to the reason for Keret marching on Odom. Perhaps, however, El, favouring him, has directed him to the place where a particularly beautiful wife is to be gained. This interpretation is helped by the account of Hurrai which follows: Hurrai ‘whose charm is like Anath’s charm, whose beauty is like Astarte’s beauty, whose brows are lapis lazuli, whose eyes are bows of alabaster. Let her gird me...that I may repose in the view of her whom El granted in my dream, in my vision the Father of Man, that a man may be born to Keret, yes, a lad to the Servant of El.’

Keret awakens. ‘And it was a dream, the Servant of El awakens, and it was a theophany.’ So he does all he was told to do in the vision, which was both command and prophecy. The phrases are all duly repeated. He arrives at Odom and rejects the king’s offer. After a fragmentary passage, we rind that he has won Hurrai and the marriage is being celebrated in the palace, attended by ‘the assembly of the gods’. El takes a cup of wine and blesses Keret, saying that his wife will bear him seven sons and an eighth child, a daughter. ‘She will bear you the lad Yassib, one who sucks the milk of Asherah, who suckles the breasts of the Virgin [Anath], the wet-nurses [of the Good and Fair Gods].’

Hurrai bears the children, but Keret fails in some promise to Asherah. He falls ill and is near death; the family mourns, perplexed that a man regarded as El’s son could die. He asks Ilhu, a devoted son, to call the girl Eighth; she apparently tries to cure him but fails. Keret’s weakness has brought dearth and famine on the land. El asks the gods to provide a volunteer who will cure him. None offers. El himself takes charge and cures Keret by magic. Keret returns to his throne, but Yassib bids him vacate it since he neglected his kingly duties through illness. Keret heaps a mighty curse upon him.

Hurrai does not seem identical with the wife who left Keret; but there are several links with Greek legends. Keret’s grief at the outset may be compared with the account of Menelaos’ desolation in Aischylos’ Agamemnon. The attempt to buy Keret off has its parallel in the Iliad with regard to both Paris and Achilles. The presence of the gods at the marriage reminds us of the bridals of Peleus and Thetis, of Kadmos and Harmonia. It has been suggested that Menelaos was the hero of an early epic on the loss of Helen; he would then be in much the same position as Keret. An early Attic pedestal (before 650 BC) shows him, designated by an inscription, assembling the Achaian princes. The heroes are not differentiated, but Menelaos has more space around him and holds his head at a slightly higher angle than the others. However, in the last resort what is important to us here is not the various analogies we can draw between tales of Hurrai and Helen, of Keret and Menelaos, but the proof that such semi-secular epical narratives did exist within the orbit of the Mykenean world. We noted how the tablets showed Semitic borrowings; and the Mykeneans at Ugarit must have had contacts with all aspects of the cult there.

Keret is semi-secular; the hero is presented as an earthly king. But he is the son of El, who gives him instructions; and the action of the tale seems to show the stages of the rite of the sacred marriage. Ritual elements appear as the initial Devastation and Massacre in the temple, the wailing of the king-god, the sham fight, and in particular the rage and ecstasy that mark such festivals, eg the Feast of the Tabernacles. Pabil-Malik can be identified with Reshef, the adversary of the divine king; and the symbolic actions would include a procession and a mock combat, which is begun by a palaver, at the entry of the temple. The role of Pabil would no doubt be acted by a priest and that of Hurrai by a priestess. But even if all that is correct, the poem is well on the way to becoming quite secular, with divine intervention but with human action.

We may note indeed that Ugaritic history in the thirteenth century shows that the kings could have difficulties with their wives, with political repercussions. Thus, King Ammistamru managed to obtain a divorce from his wife, an Amurru princess. (Hittite kings and their agents regulated the marriages and divorces of vassals such as this king.) He had a furious quarrel with another Amurru princess who committed some ‘great sin’ against him and fled to her native land; finally by paying the king of Amurri 1400 shekels he got her back and executed her.

That siege tales were told is also shown by an Egyptian text of the New Kingdom which concerns a general, Djehuty, of Thutmosis III (of the first half of the fifteenth century). Djehuty knocks out the prince of Joppa with a club. (The prince has come and asked to see some famous club of the pharaoh.) Djehuty gets into the city by a stratagem which seems to include putting a large number of fettered soldiers into baskets, which are carried by other soldiers on poles. The prince’s charioteer is then told to ride into the city and inform the prince’s wife that Djehuty has been captured with his wife and children. ‘Lo, here is their tribute.’ The tribute is the soldiers pretending to be captives. So the gates are opened; and when the carriers are inside they let their comrades loose and the city is taken. This tale then we may rank with that of the Wooden Horse at Troy as showing the motif of a crafty trick for the penetration of a strong city.[74]

*

There is yet one more series of documents able to give us hints as to the sort of tales told in the Minoan-Mykenean world which have some bearing on the Helen theme. These are art representations which seem to deal with the abduction of a woman, goddess or heroine; it is however probable that the origin of the theme lies in ritual. A ring from Tiryns, which has been dated late sixteenth or early fifteenth century, shows a scene of departure by boat. On the right is a couple conversing in a sort of rectangular frame (? door); the two vertical lines on the extreme right indicate that they are inside, or in front of, a building. In the centre is a man with right arm lifted, left arm lowered; he faces a woman on a slightly lower level making a similar gesture. They stand to the left of a pair of angled lines, which probably represents the doorway of the building on the extreme right. Finally, on the left is a large boat with mast and sail, and apparently with four oars, and a fish to their left, another fish on the right between two oars. In a small cabin of the boat two persons sit facing one another, making what seem animated gestures; only the upper parts of their bodies are visible. On the right a man turns to the cabin; by him, more to the right, stands a much taller man facing the high pointed prow. The women all wear flounced skirts, while the first man wears a loincloth.[75]

We seem certainly to have here a narrative with three phases. The couple emerge, go up to the boat (hailed by the tall man), then go down into the cabin. Generally the scene has been interpreted as a departure, but Nilsson saw it as a homecoming. Some critics have taken it as depicting an early stage of the tales about Theseus and Ariadne, or about Paris and Helen; others have seen in it a ritual scene of the departure of a goddess over the waters, or merely the account of a marriage. One writer has even seen it specifically as Helen and Menelaos off for the Elysian Fields.[76] Before we decide let us consider more examples of the same sort of theme.

A ring found near Canea, probably from the port of Knossos, shows a ship to the right with six rowers sitting in a row (oars not marked) and a steersman with a strong rudder-oar. The waves beat up against the ship in sharp angles; under them are three dolphins and some markings to suggest a rocky sea-bottom. On the shore stand a man and a woman. The man turns with an inviting gesture to the ship, stretching out his left arm, while with his right hand he holds the woman behind him by her wrist. He wears a waist-length shirt and his hair falls down his back; she has a flounced skirt. Behind them is an elliptical object with an upper part looking like a cut-off slab, which may be a baetyl or sacred table, but may also be part of a large pithos with a rim opening. Over the ship is a tree and a woman with relatively short skirt, one leg shown; she stretches out her right arm before her, with her left arm bent down. Above the outstretched arm of the man on shore is a knob-like mark which, like the marks before his feet, seem meant to indicate the ground. The ship lies in a bay, and the tree and second woman are not meant to be in the air, but are depicted with bird’s-eye perspective. The tree and the idol-like figure with its single leg show that there is a sanctuary on the shore. To interpret this scene as a marriage is not so easy; we seem rather to see a goddess leaving her shrine to cross the waters. Whether she does of her own accord or not, or what is the function of the man, is not made clear.[77]

We jump half a millennium when we turn to the next item, a three-footed ovoid pithos of Knossos; the polychrome decoration belongs to the archaic orientalizing period, late eighth or early seventh century. Between the handles we see a man and a woman set on bases: a detail common in Minoan art. She has a rounded coiffure and seems naked to the waist; he wears a plumed helmet and boots. He raises his two arms; she in a similar gesture touches his chin with her right hand. (Helen makes the same gesture on a protocorinthian aryballos which shows her rape by Theseus and Peirithoos, and her return with her brothers.) If the woman here is Helen, she seems rather to be confronting Menelaos after the sack of Troy than to be turning to Paris.[78]

A dinos found at Thebes is Late Geometric (second half of the eighth century) but probably made in Attika. A man holds a woman by the wrist and prepares to mount a boat with two rows of oars. She holds a wreath. The scene may well be Helen’s departure. The wreath has made some scholars take the woman to be Ariadne; but archaic art does not show Ariadne’s magic crown lighting up the labyrinth. The wreath indeed can be simply a love emblem, and as such it appears in scenes of Paris or Menelaos with Helen. The man has his foot on the gangway of the ship and is eagerly springing aboard.[79]

The ship scene reappears in an ivory relief from the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. The ship floats above three fish; it seems to have just arrived — or else to be pulling up anchor for departure. Three warriors sit on the bridge with lances; one has a plumed helmet. Five round shields, decorated with geometrical patterns, hang over the edge of the deck. One of the crew fishes at the raised prow and hooks a fish; another crouches on the low beak beneath. The steersman sits under the high curved stern, facing forward, three sailors work the rigging. One at the bow hauls at the forestay; two by the mast raise the yard with halyards. At the stern a bearded man (? captain) grasps the hand of a woman facing him. He has been interpreted as saying goodbye; but his grasp may signify possession, so that he is about to draw the woman aboard. Through exigencies of space she is shown standing on one of the two steering-paddles. The man grasps her right wrist and she lays her left hand on his shoulder. Behind her is a large bird; and on the prow is an inscription, Orthaia (with digamma), so the relief was a votive offering to the goddess.[80]

How are we to interpret the ship-boarding series? A remarkable continuity runs from the Tiryns ring to the Spartan relief. One way of explaining this away is to say that all the scenes represent marriage. In the Greek ceremony, after a banquet where the women would be present in their own corner with the veiled bride, the bride removed her veil and received in return gifts from the groom. He then grasped her by the wrist, and that was the final act of the rite. It sealed the contract, symbolizing the passage of the bride into the groom’s complete possession. Still holding her by the wrist, he led her to the bridal carriage; and the pompe, procession or fetching-home, began. Artists then naturally used the gesture of wrist-grasping to express marriage; but they also naturally used it for an abduction. The lover thus grasping the woman was supplanting the husband. The connection of ship and possession-gesture does not however suggest a marriage so much as an abduction, a slipping away from normal pieties.[81]

The ambiguity of the gesture appears in the two figures on a signet-ring (provenance unknown), probably dated early seventh century. The woman, posed frontally, turns her head to the bearded man, who wears a wreath and a short chiton with a three-coiled belt. She has her hair elaborately arranged under a crown studded with raised circle-ornaments. Her short-sleeved chiton is secured by a double belt; from her waist hang at least five globular ornaments, suspended by fillets. The man grasps her right wrist and she lifts her left arm in a vigorous salutation or in surprise. The dramatic aspect makes clear that here is no genre scene, and it has been suggested the actors are Zeus and Hera in the sacred marriage.

The likelihood that the ship scenes have a ritual or symbolic meaning at least in origin is strengthened by other early works of art, such as a gold ring from Mochlos on which is depicted a boat with its forepart shaped like a sea-horse or hippocamp. A woman sits in the boat, seeming to steady herself with her right hand; her bent left arm has the effect of making a gesture of greeting. On the extreme right is a construction best interpreted as entrance to a holy place, with a part of the high enclosing wall. Apparently placed in the boat (actually behind it) is a tree within an enclosure of rough masonry, with a similar sort of construction before it. Some strange objects appear above the boat; to the right are two rounded shapes (possibly a figure-of-eight shield on its side), behind which are leafless bushes. The shapes have been recognized as squib or sea-onion, which was thought in ancient times to have therapeutic and apotropaic virtues. The woman here is alone; there is no question of a marriage; the accompanying details suggest herbal magic. In a seal-impression from Hagia Triada the boat in prow and stern suggests a bird’s head and tail.[82]

Now this effort to render the living nature of animals or monsters, moving across the waters, acting as boats, again calls to mind a series of early Mesopotamian seals. On these the fantastic mythological creature subdued by the deity is transformed into a boat — still, however, clearly preserving the features of its real nature — in order to carry the divinity in its journey through the heavenly or subterranean waters. In some cases there is a hybrid man-boat, or man-fish, in which a part of the boat is anthropomorphised, ending in a human bust holding an oar. Elsewhere, on the other hand, the monster is recognisable, transformed into a boat, its head forming a prow and its tail the stern, and the deity sails within it: e.g. Ea, or Bau, with her characteristic bird, on the cylinder in the Hague Museum. (C. Levi)[83]

It is of interest, in connection with the Tiryns ring, that two of these seals link the boat with a wide door in full view on the shore, and in one seal there is a group of figures in lively conversation before the door.[84]

We may suggest then that the great goddess of the Minoans, an earth-mother connected with vegetation, had a ritual and myth of departure over the seas, and that some rape or carrying-off (of the kind later associated with Korē or Persephone) was the explanation of her going away. Further we may suggest that tales of ravished or abducted heroines developed out of this pattern, and that the story of Helen, whether or not it had its origin in such ritual myths, was at some phase strongly affected by them.

This sort of Korē ritual may have influenced Spartan marriage customs, in which there was a strong tradition of the bride as a prize gained by capture. The lad who carried her off took her to her new home where the bridesmaid cut her hair short and dressed her in a man’s cloak and sandals. The cutting of a bride’s hair is common among primitive folk; and much argument has gone on as to whether it denotes chastity or subjection to the husband, or both. It may have developed such secondary significances; but at root it is a mode of initiation ritual, a passage rite, expressing the change from one form or level of life into another. At Athens males were enrolled in the phratriai or clans at the Apatouria, and the ceremony was called Homopatoria (the rite of those with the same fathers); on the third day came the Hair-cutting when lads competed in recitations. But the original nature of the rite is given away by the fact that the sacrifice was made by women to the Mother, the Bearer of Children, at the crossroads.

One of the Lives of Homer tells us how he was at Samos celebrating the Apatouria when a man recognized him and told the clansmen; they bade him bring the poet along to the feast. ‘And as he went, he lighted on the women who were sacrificing at the crossways to Kourotrophos; and the priestess looked at him in anger and said: “Man, get away from the holy things”.’ So we see that at the festival of the fathers no man might be present at the sacrifice. Photios explains the word oiniastemia (wine-doings) as ‘a libation to Herakles performed by the epheboi before the cutting of their hair’. At Troizen every girl before marriage cut a lock of her hair and dedicated it in the temple to Hippolytos. Indeed the very words koros and korē may well have the same root as keirein, to cut. Apollo was Phoibos of the Unshorn Hair — the initiate before the shearing. Ploutarch tells us that at Athens the lads passing from childhood to manhood dedicated ‘the first fruits of their hair’ to Apollo at Delphoi; a special sort of tonsure was called Theseis in commemoration of Theseus having been said to cut his hair in that way at Delphoi.[85]

Diōgma, Pursuit, was the name given to ‘a sacrifice at Athens performed in secret by the women at the Thesmophoria’. All men were excluded. In general we may say that it is a mistake to see cult-myths such as the carrying off of Korē the earthmaiden by Hades as merely reflecting the seasonal changes of winter, with the ascent of the maiden as the rebirth of vegetation in the spring. Such myths enter deeply into the experiences of the celebrants because they also express the death-rebirth of initiation ritual. Patterns of natural and social process continually and richly merge in primitive thought and feeling.

*

The Helen of the early chants, if we are right in imagining that there were such early chants — doubtless more like Keret than the Iliad — would not have lived the life of a lady of the oikos, as we see Helen living it in the Odyssey. We must imagine her in the settings shown by Mykenean art — or by Minoan art as well, since the ruling class of the Mykenean cities clearly took over much of the manners as well as the arts of Minoan Crete. The ladies are represented in styles essentially Minoan, and we may accept this as reflecting contemporary fashion, since the men are shown in non-Minoan chitons. In a fresco from Mykenai we see a group of women seated at a window; and fragments from Thebes and Tiryns show women full length, walking in procession and carrying ritual vessels. They are dressed in close-fitting jackets and bell-skirts. At Thebes a lady wears a chemise under her jacket, as does a dancing-girl at Knossos. Female charioteers in the boar-hunt at Tiryns wear a straight garment covering them from the neck downwards, as far as their bodies are visible.

The ladies clearly had much freedom in social activities, and were ready to show their breasts like their Minoan sisters. Crude terracottas, often found in tombs, suggest that the women of the native population, of the lower classes, always covered their bosom and did not go in for bell-skirts; they seem to have worn sleeves; whether their dresses were one-piece or two-piece is unclear. The latter point applies also to the woman on the Warrior vase, though a two-piece dress is more likely and she seems to have long sleeves. In the Homeric epics women wear a single garment, apart from head-dress or veil. The woman’s peplos, the man’s garb or zōstra, and the sheets of the bed, make up the entire laundry of a great house. We must no doubt see Helen of the Odyssey in a blanket-dress with big pins.[86]

Chapter Four – The Cyclic Poets and Hesiod

The dates of the Homeric poems and the methods by which they were orally transmitted and ultimately put into writing cannot be dealt with here; but we may suggest that the Iliad was composed in the earlier part of the second half of the eighth century BC.[87] Tradition associated Homer with Smyrna and Chios; and Chios had a rhapsodic guild called Homeridai in the late sixth century. But Kymē and Kolophon also claimed him, and by the Roman period other places had put in their claim. The link with Chios and Smyrna goes back to Pindar, and near the end of the seventh century Simonides of Amorgos quoted the Iliadic line about the generations of men as being by ‘the man of Chios’. Pindar knew Homeridai; and his scholiast, probably guessing, stated that they were at first members of the poet’s family, then rhapsodists or reciters with no direct descent. They developed from a clan into a gild where co-option was possible. One of them, Kynaithos of Chios, was the first to declaim the Homeric poems at Syracuse in 504. The first Homeridai may indeed have been members of Homer’s own circle, and we may put them back into the eighth century.[88] Sparta, at that time not yet militarized and full of a vivid cultural life, attracted poets from all over Greece. Terpandros instituted musical contests at the Karneia, and Alkman made a ballet of the ball-game at which Odysseus surprised Nausikaa. Probably at this early date the Homeridai established themselves at Sparta, as also at Argos (perhaps a little later). They were at Kyrene and in Cypros by the later seventh century.[89]

What is beyond argument is that the two epics were composed in Ionia on the basis of formular material handed down and worked on by Ionian bards for several generations. Whether the same poet composed the two epics cannot be simply decided. Certainly there are strong differences between them, and some critics have even tried to date the Odyssey to the mid-sixth century.[90] But that is certainly going too far. The qualities in the epic which are not shared by the Iliad might come from the different sort of material, the strong folktale element and the closer relation to everyday life — or from changes going on in the poet himself. We shall here assume that the same poet composed the two epics, the Iliad in his younger years, the Odyssey as he was ageing. The works are closely linked, not only by much of their vocabulary, but also by a host of identical lines or half-lines. An analysis of the metre shows a remarkable similarity in the two poems; the differences are slight. Compared with other early poems in hexameters, such as the Hymns or Hesiod, the epics present a common front. In short, the differences that they show in method, diction, material, ideas, metre, can be attributed to a variation in date, in the poet’s growth, apart from contrasts flowing from the themes.

The poems seem composed for different festivals. We must not think of Homer or the Homeridai as court poets, even if they inherited a tradition going back to heroic days when bards chanted before lords and warriors. The Ionian bards sang at the markets of busy sea-ports, at the fairs such as the one at Delos, which were great religious festivals. Pilgrims came to such gatherings from all over Greece, and we hear of early choral contests. A chorus from Messenia was at Delos in the early eighth century with a hymn by a Corinthian. By Solon’s day Athenians were competing, and no doubt much earlier. There was a proverbial saying for a hearty singer: He sings as if he were bound for Delos.[91]

Hesiod gives us a picture of life on the mainland at this phase of Greek history. The men of power were the local nobles, whom he feared and mistrusted; they held the best land on the fertile plains between sea and mountains; they could afford hired men and slaves; they had houses in the walled cities that were growing up in suitable positions near good regions of plain-land. The cities, prospering, tamed the neighbouring hillmen and formed local leagues, or they asserted supremacy over lesser settlements, as did Argos and Sparta. Soon the nobles lessened the powers of the city-king who had been needed as war-leader in more difficult and cruder times. The kingship faded out except occasionally for some harmless religious survival. Throughout the centuries the Greeks clung to certain tribal forms, of which the core was the assembly of all free men. These forms were reorganized and reoriented to meet new needs and situations. There were many changes. The tribal systems were long dominated by nobles who reconstructed the clans for their own advantage; at times membership was limited to men who could afford armour, and so on. Yet at certain key points the tribal idea and the persisting forms provided the basis for a drive forward, which finally led to Athenian democracy as the highest level of development. The kingship was never re-established; there were no organized temple-priesthoods.

By 750 the need for land was causing discontent, as we see from Hesiod. The Greeks never lost the feeling that the land should be equally divided out; and the demand for such a division was for centuries liable to become a revolutionary slogan. The ruling class had as their main policy the obstruction or diversion of such a demand. (There was a belief that once far back the equal division had existed; whether or not this was correct or was a dream picture of lost tribal fraternities need not concern us. As an emotion the conviction was potent.) One way out from the cramping situation was to become a sea-merchant dealing in metals and luxuries. Trade led to outposts in new lands east and west, and then to extensive planting of colonies. Thus Corinth founded Syracuse and colonized Kerkyra (Corfu), and many new towns were built up in Sicily and South Italy. Kyrene in North Africa was settled from the Dorian island of Thera, then by other Greeks from all over the Aegean. Colonizers spread north into the Troad and then round the Black Sea in the seventh century. Al-mina was a colony in North Syria, Naukratis in Egypt. There were few colonies after 500.

In ceramic art the Geometric style lasted through the ninth and eighth centuries, reaching its height with the new prosperous Greece of strong city-states and far-travelling merchants. By the early eighth century artists introduced figure decoration; by mid-century human forms appeared in scenes of some complexity; by the end of the period the rigid silhouette loosened.

In the generations following Homer, six more epics were com-posed to complete the tale of the Trojan War: the Cypria, which led on to the Iliad, the Aithiopis, the Little Iliad, the Sack of Troy, and the Returns, which led on to the Odyssey with the Telegony to complete the tale of Odysseus and his family. Our main source of information about these cyclical epics is the summary made by Proklos, who may have been a grammarian of the Antonine Age or the learned Neoplatonist who died in AD 584. As far as we can judge, the poets lacked the aesthetic and moral unity, the force and depth of Homer, though at times they tried to imitate him. Here we are concerned with them only in so far as they amplify the story of Helen, and we can treat them as a single group, mainly of the seventh century, by which time writing was widely spread in the Aegean. The full cycle may not have been completed till the mid-sixth century; when they were collected is obscure.[92]

The Cypria was far the most important of the group for our purposes. The poet to whom it was most often attributed, Stasinos, was called Homer’s son-in-law. It began with an explanation of the causes of the war.

Zeus plans with Themis to bring about the Trojan War. Eris [Strife] turns up while the gods are feasting at the marriage of Peleus. She starts a dispute between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, as to which of them is the most beautiful. The trio are led by Hermes at Zeus’ command to Alexandros on Mt Ida for his decision; and Alexandros, lured by marriage with Helen, selects Aphrodite.[93]

Thetis, sea-goddess, was marrying the hero Peleus, who had mastered her despite her shape-shifting. Pindar knew the version that both Poseidon and Zeus wooed her; but Themis declared that her son would be more illustrious than his father, so the two gods gave her up.[94] The Iliad says that she refused Zeus because she had been reared by Hera; so he married her off to a mortal.

Themis who appears in relation to Zeus’ Plan was another of the goddesses expressing man’s relation to his fellows; she was later abstracted as Law, Justice, Right. Her name is cognate with the Old English Doom, a customary and settled relationship or position (later turning into law proper and its decisions). Ordinances or oracles of the gods, or traditional dooms, were themistes, which held society together. Themis was the spirit presiding over the whole mass of particular themistes, giving them coherence, uniting them with the life of man. At Troizen there was a plural form, the Themides. In Homer Themis convened and dissolved the assembly, and she ruled over the feast; she was thus the spirit of the two most important times when men got together, arranged their lives, and enjoyed themselves. As ruler of the equal feast, she was one of the dividers or distributors like the daimones.[95] In the text of Proklos the councillor of Zeus is given as Thetis, an obvious slip of a copyist for Themis, who also had a prophetic role and was linked with Nemesis (whom we shall soon consider). Plato, in objections to any suggestion by poets that the gods plotted or abetted evil deeds, says:

If anyone asserts that the violation of oaths and treaties of which Pandaros was the author, was brought about by Athene and Zeus, we’ll refuse our approval; nor can we allow it to be said that the strife and trial of strength between the gods was instigated by Themis and Zeus.[96]

A scholiast cites the passage from the Cypria giving the reason for Zeus’ Plan: ‘There was a time when the countless tribes of men, though scattered about, oppressed the breadth of the deep-bosomed earth. Zeus saw it and pitied, and out of his wise heart he resolved to relieve all-fostering earth of men by causing the great struggle of the Ilian War, so that the weight of death might empty the world. Then at Troy the heroes were killed and the Plan of Zeus was fulfilled.’ Proklos only says that Zeus held discussions with Themis; the scholiast adds that Zeus first caused the Theban War, then meditated destruction by fire from heaven and by water, but Momos prevented him, persuading him to ‘marry Thetis to a mortal and to produce a girl of great beauty. These two means would provoke war between Greeks and Barbarians. From that moment earth was solaced as a result of the great number of dead men.’ (Zeus is mentioned in a fragment of the Cypria, probably at the interview of Nestor and Menelaos after the rape. Nestor speaks: ‘Zeus, the author who brought all this about, you don’t want to name; where there’s fear, there’s also restraint’ — aidōs.)[97]

Momos seems an odd character to come into such a serious discussion, but, personifying criticism and censure, he was said to be Zeus’ confidant; and we later are told that of all the gods he held Aphrodite alone blameless.[98] Hesiod’s Theogony gives him a weighty place among the children of Night: — Doom and black Fate (Kēr), Death, Sleep and the tribe of Dreams, Momos and agonizing Grief, the Hesperides, the Moirai and the Keres, Nemesis, Deceit, Friendship, hateful Age, and ruthless Strife (Eris). Sophokles wrote a satyric drama Momos, apparently the preface to Eris and Krisis which dealt with the Quarrel and the Judgement of Paris.[99] The Cypria gives no explanation as to why Eris turns up at the marriage feast; later versions made her act out of pique at not being invited — just like the bad fairy or witch in many folktales, eg the Sleeping Beauty.[100]

We see that already the idea of a war waged simply for Helen’s sake, with the result of the breakdown of a whole civilization, is not felt to be adequate. Some grander and more philosophic cause is needed. The encyclopaedic spirit of the age and the effects of Ionian rationality are at work on the poets. Such a set of events is felt to need as its basis a clear assertion of the will of a supreme god, with a sound reason behind it. Zeus supplants Aphrodite as the prime agent of the seduction; we see thus the first corrosion of faith in the magical force of Helen’s beauty and in Aphrodite’s power.[101]

The theme of a high god deciding to destroy mankind has a wide distribution. It appears in the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, in the literature of India and Egypt, and many other regions; in ancient Greece it further appears in the tale of Deukalion and the Flood. It is well known to Hesiod, who in Works tells how Zeus wiped out the race of silver for failing to honour the Olympians; indeed his whole concept of a series of races implies successive destructions and creations.

Homer is much concerned with the will of Zeus, but not in terms of a cut-and-dried scheme such as the Cypria gives. In general he sees the god’s will directed to increase the glory of Achilles and Helen; for the rest its operation is complex. Ancient commentators often looked back on the Iliad with the Cypria in mind, so that the school of Aristarchos had difficulty in distinguishing the Will of Zeus in the Iliad from the later interpretations. In those we find the Will taken as Destiny (among Stoics) or identified with the sacred prophetic Oak of Dodona. The boule or boulai of Zeus becomes a common term or idea in epical and hymnic poetry, without any reference to the legends of the Cypria.[102]

Proklos does not suggest that the Cypria explained why the three goddesses found Paris on Mt Ida; but the plan of Zeus, aimed at provoking war between Troy and mainland Greece, explains why the umpire is a Trojan prince. No apple of discord is mentioned. ‘Then Alexandros builds his ships at Aphrodite’s suggestion and Helenos foretells the future to him and Aphrodite bids Aineias sail with him, while Kassandra prophesies what will happen afterwards. Alexandros next lands in Lakedaimon and is entertained by the sons of Tyndareos [the Dioskouroi] and then by Menelaos in Sparta, where in the course of the feast he gives gifts to Helen. After that Menelaos sets sail for Crete, bidding Helen supply the guests with all they require till their departure. Meanwhile Aphrodite brings Helen and Alexandros together, and after their copulation they put very great ktēmata aboard and set sail by night. Hera raises a storm against them and they are carried to Sidon, where Alexandros takes the city. From there he sails to Troy and celebrates his marriage with Helen.’[103]

The Cypria here disagrees with the Odyssey, which sets the first mating on Kranae. It explains why Paris went to Sidon, but adds a war exploit which seems to contradict the Odyssey’s remarks about presents from the king there. (The late Diktys of Crete elaborates the episode. Paris, driven to Cypros, sails with some ships to Sidon where the king entertains him; he treacherously murders his host and sacks the palace; in his retreat he is attacked by the Sidonians, but escapes with the loss of two ships. Here Paris reduplicates his role as guest who betrays his host.) But Herodotos tells us that the Cypria recounted how ‘Alexandros came to Ilion from Sparta in three days, enjoying a favourable wind and calm sea’. He may have had a different version of the Cypria from that used by Proklos (or his authorities), or the episode of Sidon may have been later interpolated to make the Cypria harmonize with the Homeric references to Sidonian gifts.

Proklos goes on: ‘In the meantime, Kastor and Polydeukes, stealing the cattle of Idas and Lynkeus, were caught in the act, and Kastor was killed by Idas, and Idas and Lynkeus by Polydeukes. Zeus gave them each immortality on alternate days. Iris next informs Menelaos of what has happened at his home [oikos]. Menelaos returns and plans an expedition against Ilion with his brother, then goes to Nestor. Nestor in a digression tells how Epopeus was destroyed after seducing Lykos’ daughter, the tale of Oidipous, the madness of Herakles, and the tale of Theseus and Ariadne. Then they travel over Hellas and gather the leaders, detecting Odysseus when he pretends to be mad, not wanting to join the expedition, by seizing his son for punishment at the suggestion of Palamedes.’[104]

We have two lines of the Cypria: ‘Kastor was mortal and the fate of death was destined for him; but Polydeukes, scion of Ares, was immortal.’ The Cypria may well have mentioned the tale of Helen as a young girl being carried off by Theseus; her brothers attacked and sacked Aphidna in Attika, where Kastor was wounded in the thigh by King Aphidnos; failing to find Helen, they sacked Athens. Ploutarch cites some epic lines about Alykos: ‘In spacious Aphidna Theseus killed him in battle for Helen with her fine hair.’ But there seems no link between the cattle raid of the twins and their attack on Aphidna. There, they rescued Helen and captured Theseus’ mother, Aithra, who became Helen’s attendant and went with her to Troy. (The Athenians tried to explain the episode away by saying that Theseus was absent at the time.) The rape of Helen by Theseus, it has been said, suggests a forcible ravishment by Paris in the original version of her departure; but if there ever was such a primitive account, it has been obliterated by the stress on the roles of Aphrodite and Zeus.

Proklos goes on to say that the fleet gathered at Aulis, put to sea, and lost its way. The Achaians sacked Teuthrania in mistake for Troy, then were scattered by a storm. They re-gathered at Aulis, where Agamemnon, hunting, shot a stag and boasted that he surpassed Artemis. The goddess sent contrary winds and he had to sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia to her. But Artemis snatched the girl away to the Tauroi, making her immortal and putting a stag in her place. (Euripides based his play on the Cypria.) At last the Achaians, landing at Troy, sent envoys to demand Helen and her treasure. Refused, they attacked the town and wasted the countryside. ‘After that, Achilles wants to see Helen, and Aphrodite and Thetis [his mother] contrive a meeting between them.’ (Achilles had been too young to be suitor of Helen, but may well have wanted to see the woman for whom the war was being fought.) He gets Briseis as a prize and Agamemnon gets Chryseis. Then comes the plan of Zeus ‘to relieve the Trojans by detaching Achilles from the Hellenic Confederacy’.[105]

A scholiast tells us that the Cypria ‘says Helen’s third child was Pleisthenes and she took him with her to Cypros, and the child she bore Alexandros was Aganos’. This multiplication of her children erodes the Homeric picture.[106] But the most striking addition to the tradition by the Cypria was the account of Helen’s birth. Nemesis is her mother. The poet writes: ‘After them [? the Dioskouroi] she bore a third child Helen, a wonder to men. Once lovely-haired Nemesis, mated in love with Zeus by overpowering necessity, gave her birth. Nemesis tried to escape. She didn’t want to mate with her father Zeus, son of Kronos. Shame and indignation [nemesis] vexed her mind. So she fled from him over the land and the dark water that knows no harvest. But Zeus still pursued. He longed in his heart to catch her. Now over the waves of roaring pouring sea, now over the Ocean’s stream and the bounds of the earth as a fish she sped across the enormous sea, now over the furrowed land, always turning to such dread creatures as dry land nurtures, so that she might escape him.’

We have already met shape-shifting in the episode of Menelaos and the prophetic old man of the sea, and in that of the wooing of Thetis. Whether or not the Cypria told of the latter episode (which it might well have done in view of the importance of Thetis’ marriage in its scheme), the mating of Zeus and Nemesis has its clear parallelism with that of Thetis and Peleus. One mating begets the great heroine of the Trojan War, the other its great hero, Achilles. The shape-shifting motif is particularly alive in shamanist cultures such as the Siberian, and gives a mythical expression of the shaman’s possessed experience of a spirit flight through the elements. Thus the Kalmuk hero Karacha runs off with Joloi’s wife, chased by his own wife Ak Sakal:

But Karacha turned his steed and escaped the hands of Ak Sakal

before Sakal turned her horse that blackwinged heroic steed

has become a blue dove, soared aloft and flown away.

But at once the brown horse became a blue falcon,

struck it from the rear, swooping from heaven aloft.

Prince Karacha now afresh became a red fox

and hid himself in a forest, and the horse became a black vulture

and swooped down from above and so pierced the forest,

his feathers fluttering in the air. Yet again the other escaped

and became a white fish and sped plunging through the water.

The horse became a beaver, dived after him to the bottom of the water,

siezed him on the bottom of the water and so at last Ak Sakal

seized Karacha the prince.[107]

Here then in the Cypria is the first of our sources to mention Helen’s mother, and she turns out to be Nemesis, not Leda. One point which strongly argues for Nemesis as the original mother is the fact that her shape-shifting, her birdflight through the air, readily explains the idea that Helen was born from an egg. Between the Nemesis tale and the story of swan-Zeus embracing Leda there seems a transitional form in which the egg of Nemesis is brought to Leda. Thus Apollodoros, seeking to conflate various legends, begins by saying that swan-Zeus copulated with Leda and that on the same night Tyndareos lay with her, so that she bore Polydeukes and Helen to Zeus, Kastor and Klytemnaistra to her husband. But he adds: ‘Some say that Helen was a daughter of Nemesis and Zeus. She, fleeing from Zeus’ embrace, changed herself to a goose, but Zeus then took the likeness of a swan, and so mated with her. As a result of their copulation she laid an egg. A certain shepherd found it in a grove and gave it to Leda. She put it in a chest and kept it; and when in due time Helen was hatched out, Leda brought her up as her daughter.’[108]

With Nemesis we are back with the fate-goddesses variously represented by the Moirai, Erinyes and in some respects Themis. We must not consider such deities as personifications gradually made into goddesses; rather the reverse is true. Homer does his best to remove the vital elements of divinity from them, since his Ionian attitudes make him the partisan of the Olympians against the old earthmother cults. The more the fate-mothers were formalized as minor figures of justice or retribution, the more they became servants of the Olympians, with no large demands of their own.

Later we shall deal with Nemesis as a goddess; but here we must note how her name belongs to the same category as daimōn and moira. It comes from nemein, to share, deal out, dispose; Homer uses the verb in particular of meat and drink. Nemein is used of the gods. Nausikaa tells Odysseus: ‘It’s Zeus himself the Olympian that allots [nemei] good fortune to men, both the good and the bad, to each man at his will; to you he has given these things and you must endure them.’ Apollonios Rhodios speaks of the Nymphs of the Land, Chthoniai, ‘who share out [enemonto] Libya among themselves’. Also the Odyssey uses nemein of herdsmen grazing flocks, giving each beast its share of pasture. Plato writes of sharing out ‘enough land for pasture and tillage’. The cognate word nemēsis is used of land division. Homer, we saw, used nemesis to denote moral indignation roused at the sight of undeserved good or bad fortune: the wrong sort of share. In time it came to mean an avenging justice. Themis, in turn, had the same root as tithemai: to set or lay down. Dikē originally meant the ‘showing’ or ‘indicating’ of the requirements of themis; and we can probably trace here again the idea of definition by limits, with dikē at the outset signifying boundary or mark. Once again we come back to the share in land as the share in life, and to the problem of defining the limits of a man’s (rightful) share.[109]

Nemesis’ cult at Rhamnous was certainly ancient; it must have existed before the unification of Attika (linked in legend with Theseus). Otherwise the shrine would have been set at some important site like Athens, not at such an insignificant place. We thus have a strong argument for the fact that the Cypria is using a genuine and ancient Rhamnousian legend in which Zeus and the goddess mated in bird form — though it may have been the Cypria that linked this tale with Helen. In any event we see that at this early phase the connection of Helen and Leda is weak. The poet of the Cypria may have recalled the passage in the Iliad about Helen on the battlements, where the term nemesis is used as moral indignation. He wanted the begetting of Helen to fit in with the overall scheme of the Plan, and so, by making Nemesis her mother, he foreshadowed her role in the universal cataclysm.[110]

Nemesis seems to have come to the fore in Attika in the fifth century. Her reconstructed temple at Rhamnous was one of a group of four generally attributed to a single architect; the others are those of Hephaistos and Ares at Athens, and that of Poseidon at Sounion. Hers seems the latest; work on it was halted by the Peloponnesian War and never resumed, though the temple was sufficiently completed to have its cult-statue put in and to be used. Its marble was not Pentelic, but was mined from a hill at the south end of the Rhamnousian plain, near the top of a low pass leading down to a beach; the quarry was little more than a quarter of a mile from the temple, so that transport was very much easier than from Pentelikos.[111] Pausanias tells us that neither here nor in any other ancient statue of Nemesis did she have wings, ‘for not even the holiest wooden images of the Smyrnaians have them, but later artists, convinced that the goddess manifested herself most as a result of love, give wings to Nemesis as they do to Eros. I’ll now go on to describe what’s figured on the statue’s pedestal. The Greeks say that Nemesis was the mother of Helen while Leda suckled and nursed her; Helen’s father the Greeks, like everyone else, consider to be not Tyndareos but Zeus. Having heard this legend, Pheidias has depicted Helen being led to Nemesis by Leda, while Tyndareos and his children, with a man named Hippeus, stand by with a horse. There are Agamemnon and Menelaos and Pyrrhos, Achilles’ son and first husband of Helen’s daughter, Hermione. Orestes was passed over because of his crime against his mother, yet Hermione stayed at his side in everything and bore him a child.’[112]

The attribution of the statue to Pheidias is an error; the artist was Agorakritos of Paros, as we learn from Plinius and Strabon. The latter says: ‘It was a work of art which both in grandeur and in beauty is a great success and rivals the work of Pheidias.’ The date of the new inauguration seems that of the Treaty of Nikias; the relief may be taken as showing Helen as the intermediary of reconciliation between the peoples of Lakedaimon and of Attika. Tyndareos and Leda present Helen to her true mother as the betrothed of Menelaos: an image of union between the group of Atreids and the Attic goddess.

That Nemesis was Helen’s mother before Leda was assigned the role, or that at least she imposed on Leda the idea that Helen was born from an egg, is strongly suggested by the extraordinary amount of variants in the account of the birth of Helen and the Twins. We are told that Helen was the daughter of Tyndareos; that she came out of an egg with swan-Zeus as her father, while the Twins came out of another egg; that all three came from the same egg; that Helen and Klytemnaistra came from one egg, the Twins from another. At times both the Twins are the sons of Zeus, at times only Polydeukes; at times Klytemnaistra is the daughter of Leda and Tyndareos in a normal way, as were Timandra and Philonoē. We even find Nemesis made the mother of the Twins, and a late attempt to make sense of the situation asserts that Leda after death was deified as Nemesis.[113]

The Twins were called White Horses by Pindar, and White Colts of Zeus by Euripides; they were constantly associated with horses and depicted with them. Since they married two girls called White Fillies, the link with horses in their cult was certainly fundamental. A gloss of Hesychios suggests that the priestesses of the wives were two in number like the goddesses they served; and they seem to have been assisted by a boy priest or priests (? again a pair). A Lakonian inscription describes a young Marcus Aurelius Zeuxippos as ‘Priest of the Leukippides and Neatherd [? bouagor] of the Tyndarids’, the Twins. (The priest’s name is a compound of zeuxis, yoking, and hippos, horse.) We may further note that Melanippē (Black Mare), in the absence of her husband Hellēn, was raped by Poseidon, himself Hippios, a god of horses and at one time owning a horse-form. Melanippē bore twins, which a herdsman brought up; they were defended by the bull and suckled by a cow; the oxherds told the king of the portent, and he consulted Hellēn, who advised that the twins be burned. Euripides’ lost play began with the mother’s protests. Poseidon chased Demeter in Arkadia as she sought for Persephone; she turned into a mare and he took horse-form to mate with her. At Phigalia the old wooden image of Demeter showed a horse-headed woman. The sacred marriage in earlier times had clearly been imaged, in one of its forms, as the mating of mare and horse, in single or dual terms. We shall later work out how the White Colts of Zeus became attached to Helen.

How thoroughly Sparta and its region were filled with cult-reflections of the stories of Helen and her family may be seen in a passage from Pausanias, that assiduous compiler of an invaluable guide-book, the Description of Greece, in the second century AD. ‘A little further on is a small hill, on which is an ancient temple with a wooden image of Aphrodite Armed. This is the only temple I know with an upper storey built on. It is a sanctuary of Morphō [perhaps the Shapely], a surname of Aphrodite, who sits wearing a veil and with fettered feet. The tale runs that the fetters were put on her by Tyndareos, who symbolized by the bonds the fidelity of wives to their husbands. I won’t accept for a moment the other version: that he punished the goddess with fetters because he considered that Aphrodite had caused the shame of his daughters; for it was surely quite silly to think he was punishing a goddess by making a cedar figure and calling it Aphrodite. Nearby is the sanctuary of Hilaiira and Phoibe. The poet of the Cypria called them daughters of Apollo. Their priestesses are young girls, called, like the goddesses, Leukippides [daughters of Leukippos, White Horse]. One of the images was beautified by a Leukippis who served the goddesses as a priestess; she gave it a face of modern workmanship in place of the old one, but was forbidden in a dream to do up the other one as well. Here has been hung in the room an Egg tied to ribbons. They assert it is the famous egg which legend says Leda brought forth.’ (Loukian retails the belief that each of the Twins in heaven had half an egg on his head, or above it, as a token of having been hatched. The half-egg is the cap or pilens each of them wore.)[114]

It seems that the Cypria, as well as telling how the twins clashed with Idas and Lynkeus through a cattle-raid, dealt with their carrying-off the two girls to whom they were betrothed. Here again is a rape in which the ravishers are overwhelmed by the beauty of the women; and the perpetrators are close in kin to Helen. Idas and Lynkeus were killed when they tried to rescue the girls. The Cypria stressed how well the Twins entertained Paris on his arrival in Sparta; several ancient writers therefore suggested that they were accomplices in his carrying-off of their sister or at least that they and Tyndareos were not opposed to the deed.[115]

The Cypria does not seem to have known of the Oath of the Suitors, though Apollodoros in his Library, which has been thought to follow our poem, does tell of it at length. In his Epitome he mentions the Plan of Zeus: ‘so that his daughter might become famous for embroiling Europe and Asia; or as others have said, so that the race of demigods might be exalted. For one of these reasons, Strife threw an apple, as a beauty-prize to be contended for by Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite; and Zeus bade Hermes lead them to Alexandros for him to judge them. They promised gifts to Alexandros. Hera said that if she were preferred to all her sex she would give him the kingdom over all men; Athena offered victory in war; Aphrodite the bed of Helen. He decided in favour of Aphrodite and sailed for Sparta with ships built by Phereklos. Menelaos entertained him for nine days, then on the tenth went off on a journey to Crete to perform the obsequies of his mother’s father, Katreus.’ [Alkidamos said he went to Crete to decide the question of succession for the children of Molos.] ‘Alexandros then persuaded Helen to go off with him. And she deserted Hermione, then nine years old, put most of her property on board, and set sail with him by night. But Hera sent a heavy storm that forced them put in at Sidon; and in fear of pursuit Alexandros spent much time in Phoinikia and Cypros.’[116]

One fine passage from the Cypria which survives is an account of the Toilet of Aphrodite, which must describe her preparations for the Judgement. It brings out her close relation to the daimones of natural growth and blossoming: ‘She dressed in clothes made for her by the Hours and the Graces, and dyed in the flowers of the spring, such flowers as the Hours wear, crocus and hyacinth, flourishing violet, the lovely bloom of the rose, sweet and nectareous, and ambrosial buds, flowers of narcissos and lily: at every hour in such scented clothes is Aphrodite dressed....Then Aphrodite, the lover of laughter, and her attendants wove sweet-smelling garlands of flowers of the earth, and put them on their heads, the goddess with shining headgear, the Nymphs and the Graces, and golden Aphrodite, with beautiful songs on the crest of many-fountained Ida.’ Here is the goddess who infuses Helen with her irresistible charm.[117]

*

There is less interest for us in the other cyclic epics than in the Cypria. The Aithiopis told of the killing of Achilles by Paris and Apollo. Thetis arrived with her sisters and the Muses, snatched the body from the pyre, and transported it to the White Island. In the Little Iliad, Philoktētēs, healed of his wound, shot and killed Paris; only another archer, it seems, could deal with him. Menelaos outraged the dead body, but the Trojans recovered and buried it. Helen married Deiphobos. (Helen as a lonely widow was inconceivable; also if she did not marry another Trojan there was no reason why she should not have been handed back to Menelaos and the war ended.) The Wooden Horse was taken into Troy. On the neck of a vase from Mykonos, dated later seventh century, is a clay relief depicting the horse on wheels; through each of seven big windows is seen an Achaian, four of whom hand out weapons; other men have already emerged. Pausanias mentions ‘the Horse called Wooden set up in bronze’, which showed heroes peeping out, in the sanctuary of Brauronian Artemis. He himself thought the real Horse was some sort of siege-engine. He also tells how the Argives, to commemorate a victory over the Lakedaimonians, ‘sent to Delphoi a bronze horse supposed to be the Wooden Horse of Troy’.[118]

In the Little Iliad it was narrated how Aithra ‘after the taking of Ilion, stole out of the town and came to the Greek camp, where she was recognized by the sons of Theseus [her grandsons]; and Demophon asked her of Agamemnon. Agamemnon wanted to grant him this favour, but wouldn’t do it till Helen agreed. And when he sent a herald, Helen agreed.’ The episode must have occurred before the sack; and we see how courteously Agamemnon treats his errant sister-in-law and her property, though she is of the enemy camp. In the Sack, Proklos curtly tells us, ‘Menelaos finds Helen and takes her to the ships after killing Deiphobos.’ A scholiast states that the Little Iliad gave the same account as Aristophanes in the Lysistrata: ‘Menelaos at least, when he somehow caught a glimpse of the breasts of naked Helen, threw away his sword, I think.’ It seems unlikely however that Helen at this period would have been described as naked; probably the scholiast refers only to the motif of casting the sword away. Attempts have been made to carry the breast theme back in time, linking it with the legend of Helen as a ‘deep-bosomed Okeanid’ to prove that she was always famed for the beauty of her breasts. Art however gives no support to this thesis. Perhaps at most in the Little Iliad Aphrodite appeared to protect her favourite and convert Menelaos’ wrath into desire. But even this would show a change from the Homeric attitude, in which the motive of the Achaians is to regain Helen, not to take revenge on her.[119] The idea of Helen’s personal culpability was growing.

Apollodoros records a tendency to link the Trojan prince Helenos with Helen (no doubt through the likeness of the names). After Paris’ death, he and Deiphobos ‘quarrelled as to which should marry Helen; and as Deiphobos was preferred, Helenos left Troy and lived on Ida. But as Chalkas said that he knew the oracles protecting the city, Odysseus waylaid him and brought him to the camp. Helenos was forced to tell how Ilion could be taken: first if Pelops’ bones were brought to them; next if Neoptolemos [Achilles’ son] fought for them; thirdly, if the palladion, fallen from heaven, was stolen from Troy — for while it was within the walls, the city couldn’t be won.’[120]

*

The Boiotian farmer, Hesiod, probably of the eighth century, a little later than Homer, shows the full impact of the struggles and the new values emerging through the mercantile expansion; he represents both a summation of the epic tradition and a break from it. In many ways he carries on the old stories and views, though adding new aspects; but he brings a different moral focus to bear. He discards the Homeric valuation of Helen and sees her as responsible for her own actions, thus looking forwards to the tragic poets. He is much interested in the root causes at work in history, in the resulting patterns; he thus has his link with the cyclic poets, but his view is broader and deeper. Myth is being transformed into history.

In Works and Days, telling how the Race of Heroes was broken, he says that some were killed in evil war at Thebes, fighting ‘for the flocks of Oidipous’, while others died at Troy ‘for the sake of Helen with the lovely hair’. The survivors dwell in the Blessed Isles at the end of the world. This account is part of his general scheme of history. The race of heroes had been preceded by the ages of gold, silver and bronze; they were followed by the iron age, which now ruled. The idea of the great heroic cycles of Thebes and Troy as holding the clue to the breakdown of civilization, has become explicit and has been linked with a considered scheme of historical stages or levels. Hesiod sees men as torn or stimulated by two kinds of strife or conflict (eris): one which turns to war, violence, and accumulation of wealth through oppression; and another which drives men on competitively to outdo their fellows as farmers or craftsmen in productive activities. (He cannot see that his two types of conflict can merge with one another, though there is a sound idea behind his formulation, which contrasts the motive of greed and power with that of constructive work.) Helen is thus for the first time judged morally and seen as a mere adulteress, a member of a family notorious for infidelity; in part she exemplifies the first kind of eris, the irresponsible release of destructive energies. ‘And laughter-loving Aphrodite was jealous when she looked at them and cast on them evil repute. Then Timandra deserted Echemos, went off, and came to Phyleus dear to the blessed gods. And so Klytemnaistra deserted godlike Agamemnon and lay with Aigisthos, choosing a far worse mate. And so Helen stained the bed of gold-haired Menelaos.’ Aphrodite is no longer the protectress and divine otherself of Helen; she is as hostile to her as to the murderess Klytemnaistra. It would seem from such a statement that Hesiod knew nothing of the Judgement of Paris, or rejected it.[121]

Aidōs and nemesis are in Homer the two moral forces that underlie social sanction: respect and reverence for one another, and the indignation roused by a transgression of accepted limits. Poseidon, seeking to arouse the worn-out Achaians, cries: ‘Weaklings, soon you’ll cause yet greater evil by this slackness. Take in your hearts, each man of you, aidōs and nemesis.’ Hesiod keeps the connection, but sees the forces as goddesses. Aidōs and Nemesis rise from the earth, ‘their sweet forms wrapped in white robes’ to join the gods above on Olympos. When they go, ‘there will be no help against evil’. This disaster will happen when Zeus wearies of the present race of men with their endless discord, their repudiation of all the bonds of kin and comradeship, their creed that ‘might is right’. But what we see in the Hesiodic concept is not a mere personification of Homer’s nemesis; it is the attribution of the deepened moral sense expressed in Homer to the goddess of the ancient Rhamnousian cult.[122]

A fair-sized fragment from Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women describes the wooing of Helen; a number of the suitors are listed. Unfortunately the most interesting passage is fragmentary, but runs something like this (with conjectures bracketed): ‘[Philokte]tes [sought her], a leader of spearmen...most famous of men for [shooting from a]far and with the sharp spear. [And he came to Tyndare]os’ bright city for the sake of the [Argive] girl with the form of golden Aphrodite and the flashing movements of the Graces; and the darkfaced [daughter of Ocean] very l[ovely to see, bare her when she shared the embraces of Zeus and] of King Tyndareos in the [bri]ght palace...’ Amarygmata, used of the Graces, implies a flashing and changing of colour and light, a quick glancing movement. It will be seen that there is no certainty that Zeus or Leda were introduced. Next, someone, perhaps Philoktetes, brings presents including ‘women skilled in innocent arts, each with a golden bowl in her hands. And indeed Kastor and strong Polydeukes would have made him their brother with all their might; but Agamemnon, son-in-law of Tyndareos, wooed on his brother’s behalf.’ Then other suitors are mentioned. Odysseus sends no gifts as he knows Menelaos will win since ‘he had the most property of the Achaians and kept on sending messages’ (gifts) to the Twins. The wooings are done by proxy, though Idomeneus is said to have come in person because ‘he wanted to see Argive Helen, and so that no one else should bring back for him the girl whose renown spread all over the holy earth’. The competition is wholly carried out by gift-making. Menestheus tries to outdo the others, as he owns ‘very many stored treasures, gold and cauldrons and tripods’. But Lykomedes offers the most after Menelaos. Tyndareos accepts and keeps all the gifts, then he asks the suitors to take a powerful oath, sworn with unmixed libations, that he should have the final word and that if anyone ‘should cast off nemesis and aidōs, and take Helen by force, the others should pursue him and make him pay the penalty’. All swear the oath. Then Menelaos wins ‘because he gave the greatest gifts’. Achilles was still a boy, being trained by the centaur Cheiron on wooded Mt Pelion; otherwise he would certainly have won.[123] (Here nemesis and aidōs are purely moral forces as in Homer.)

Hesiod goes on to give the reasons for the war. ‘And she bore neat-ankled Hermione in the palace, a child unlooked-for. And all the gods were divided by eris. For at that time high-thundering Zeus meditated marvellous deeds: to mingle disorders over the boundless earth. And he was already hurrying to make an utter end of the race of men, declaring that he’d destroy the life of the demi-gods — so that the children of the gods should not mate with wretched mortals, seeing their fate with their own eyes; but that from now on the blessed gods should have their living and habitations apart from men.’ As yet none of the gods knew Zeus’ mind.[124]

Hesiod shows the tendency to add to Helen’s children. He makes her bear her final child Nikostratos to Menelaos, apparently after her return. Klytemnaistra in the Elektra of Sophokles says that Menelaos had had two children, and one of them, rather than her Iphigeneia, should have been sacrificed at Aulis to save the expedition against Troy. Pausanias however makes Nikostratos the son of a slavewoman (like Megapenthes in the Odyssey). The Cypria, we saw, gave Helen two more sons. A scholiast says that the Lakedaimonians worshipped two of her sons, Nikostratos and Aithiolas; he cites Ariaithos as saying that she had a son by Menelaos, Maraphios, from whom the Persian family of Maraphians was descended. Later writers gave her a son Korythos or Helenos by Paris; Diktys gave her three, Korythos, Bounomos, Idaios. Dardanos is added by others to Aganos, Helenos, Aithiolas.[125]

In the Catalogue Hesiod declared that Iphigeneia was not killed at Aulis, but became Hekate through the will of Artemis. A fragment of Philodemos states that Stesichoros followed Hesiod in this point; and as Stesichoros certainly told of the rape of Helen by Theseus, with the resulting birth of Iphigeneia, Hesiod may well have also dealt with that rape.[126] The story was well-known in Argos and around it; for Pausanias tells us of the site: ‘After these comes the temple of the Dioskouroi. The images represent them and their sons, Anaxis and Mnasinous, and with them their mothers Hilaiira and Phoibe. They are made of ebony, the work of Dipoinos and Skyllis. The horses too are mostly of ebony, there is a little ivory in their construction. Near the Lords [Anaktes, the Dioskouroi] is a sanctuary of Eileithyia [birth-goddess] dedicated to Helen, when, on Theseus’ departure with Peirithoos to Thesprotia, Aphidna had been captured by the Dioskouroi and Helen was being taken back to Lakedaimon. It’s said she was with child, was delivered in Argos, and founded there the sanctuary of Eileithyia, giving the daughter she bore to Klytemnaistra, who was already married to Agamemnon, while she herself later married Menelaos. And on this theme the poets Euphorion of Chalkis and Alexandros of Pleuron, and even before them Stesichoros of Himera, agree with the Argives in asserting that Iphigeneia was the daughter of Theseus. Over against the sanctuary of Eileithyia is a temple of Hekate where the image is a work by Skopas. This image of stone and the bronze image opposite, also of Hekate, were the work respectively of Polykleitos and his brother Naukydes, son of Mothon.’ The passage from. Philodemos mentioned above refers to Iphigeneia as Agamemnon’s daughter; but that is doubtless a slip, since what interested the author was the Hekate relation and he thus dropped into the usual genealogy. In a Hesiodic fragment we meet an Iphimēdē, daughter of Agamemnon, who is changed into Artemis Einodiē (Crossroads or Highway Artemis), a form close to Hekatē.[127]

Round mid-sixth century Theseus gained his role as the great Athenian hero associated with the unification of Attika. If we could trust Pausanias’ account of the Chest of Kypselos at Olympia (mid-sixth century) we could argue that he was already Athenian by the early years of that century. Among the items shown on the cedar chest we find:

Menelaos, wearing breastplate and holding sword, advances to kill Helen, so it’s clear Troy has been taken....There is Theseus holding a lyre, beside him Ariadne grasps a crown....There are also the Dioskouroi, one of them a beardless youth; between them is Helen. She’s clad in black and the inscription on the group is an hexameter line plus a single word: The Tyndarids are taking off Helen and dragging Aithra from Athens...Also Hermes leading to Alexandros, Priam’s son, the goddesses whose beauty he is to judge...[128]

But the text of the inscription is corrupt; we cannot be sure that ‘Athanathen’ is correct; the scene may after all be Aphidna. However, certainly by the early fifth century the repertory of Theseus myths was known all over Greece; black-figure vases took up his exploits, especially that against the Minotaur. He became the great Attic hero. In the process he had taken over ancient legends such as those of Helen and Ariadne. The question is how far back that appropriation had begun.[129]

Did Homer know him? And if so, what did he know? We saw that in the Iliad Helen was accompanied by his mother Aithra. Aristarchos condemned the line mentioning Aithra, refusing to believe that Homer knew of any lover of Helen except Paris. Menelaos shouted at the Trojans: ‘You wantonly carried overseas my wedded wife and much property with her.’ The term used is kouridiē, which Aristarchos took in the usual sense of a quite young girl. The scholiasts and Eustathios also understood the line to mean that Helen was a virgin at marriage. But they were straining the word’s meaning. A further proof however was found in the statement that Helen, during the duel of Paris and Menelaos, felt afresh desire for her ‘first husband’. But Homer may have known the Theseus tale and decided to ignore it; he may have considered the marriage with Menelaos the only true one.[130]

It has been suggested that Helen’s regret at not seeing her brothers among the Achaians is connected with her memory of the Theseus rape and the aid they then gave her; hence her dis-quiet at failing to make them out among the host.[131] A scholiast thus interprets: ‘Helen, carried off by Alexandros and unaware of the mishap falling afterwards on the Dioskouroi, her brothers, supposes it’s through shame of her they haven’t come to Troy. As we’ve seen, she had been carried off by Theseus, and through that rape Aphidna, Attic city, was ravaged and Kastor wounded in the thigh by Aphidnos, the king then reigning. The Dioskouroi, not finding Helen, ravaged Attika.’ He adds that the story was known to the cyclic poets and Alkman.[132] (We noted that the Cypria seems to have known of the Theseus rape.) The reason for the killing-off of the twins may well have been, however, the fact that they would not have fitted at all into the Trojan saga.

The early spread of the rape story is shown by a protocorinthian arbyallos (seventh century). Here Theseus and Peirithoos, one of them holding Helen’s wrist, see the Twins ride up; she lifts her two arms in a hieratic gesture. In the legend as it has come down the two ravishers were absent at this moment, but perhaps the vase gives us the original version, in which Theseus was defeated. Later the Athenians could not admit such a discomfiture for their hero and invented the episode of his absence. That the theme was popular in the Peloponnesos and not in Attika is shown by the fact that the first art representations come from there.[133] On the Throne of Amyklai in Lakonia (probably last quarter sixth century), among the many subjects such as the Minotaur, the rape of the Leukippides, the Judgement of Paris, the Phaiakian dancers, Menelaos and Protesus, there were Theseus and Peirithoos, who ‘have seized Helen’. The Twins appeared on horses at each side of the upper edge. Leda, in art, still appears associated with them, not with Helen. In one of her rare depictions, on a black-figure amphora by Exekias (third quarter eighth century) she holds a flower as she welcomes home the twin horsemen with Tyndareos, while a dog jumps up to lick Polydeukes’ hand. Here we see the heroic scene assimilated to everyday genre. The names are inscribed.[134]

A scholiast on the late poet Lykophron remarks: ‘First Hesiod introduced the eidolon concerning Helen’: that is, he first suggested that a phantom of Helen, not the living woman, went with Paris to Troy. But the poet mainly connected with the eidolon was Stesichoros, and the scholiast may have put Hesiod here by error, especially as he goes on: ‘And Herodotos stated that the true Helen remained beside Proteus, her eidolon sailing off with Alexandros to Troy.’ This is certainly incorrect (Euripides, not Herodotos was meant), so we can hardly trust so careless a commentator. There is no other evidence connecting Hesiod with the eidolon, but some scholars have accepted the scholiast’s statement. (It has also been suggested that in Lykophron lie some clues to a Hesiodic use of the motif. But his poem Alexandra is an incredibly obscure prophecy out of Kassandra’s mouth. The lover’s mating on Kranae produces the cry: ‘You shall see no morrows, aftermath of love, fondling in empty arms a chill embrace and a dreamland bed.’ Later Menelaos is called ‘the husband seeking the fatal snatched-away bride, having heard rumours and yearning for the phantom that fled to the sky, what secret sea-places shall he not explore, what dry land not reach and search.’ He goes on an endless quest: ‘and all shall he endure for the sake of the Aigyan [Lakonian] Bitch, her three-husbanded, who bore only female children.’ Helen is condemned despite the use of the eidolon, which blurs into a vague symbol of illusion and disillusion. There can be nothing of Hesiod here.)[135]

The Catalogue of Women perhaps has roots going far back in pre-migration poetry, together with the Catalogue of Heroines in Book XI of the Odyssey. The long Catalogue of Ships, a detailed account of the Achaian mustering in Iliad II, also seems surely, as we noted, to have a strong Mykenean basis. But though we may argue that the bardic tradition was early capable of organizing, listing, and setting out a complex series of tales and relationships, and then of handing it on over many centuries, we cannot without corroborating evidence argue for the antiquity of any particular episode.[136]

*

We may digress here a moment to consider an aspect of the Suitors’ Oath which does not appear in Hesiod and which has an indirect link with Theseus. Pausanias says: ‘On the road from Sparta to Arkadia, there stands in the open an image of Athena called Pareia, and beyond it is a sanctuary of Achilles. This it isn’t customary to open; but all the youths going to take part in the contest in the Planetree Grove are accustomed to sacrifice to Achilles before the fight. The Spartans say the sanctuary was made for them by Prax, grandson of Pergamos the son of Neoptolemos. Further on is what is called the Tomb of the Horse. Tyndareos, after sacrificing a horse here, administered an oath to the suitors of Helen, making them stand on the pieces of the horse. The oath was to defend Helen and the man who might be chosen to marry her if they were ever wronged. When he had sworn the suitors, he buried the horse here.’ (Later we shall see Helen’s close link with the Planetree.) When we note that the heroes standing on and in the dismembered horse are the men who are going to get inside the Wooden Horse, supposed to be a votive offering, we feel there must be some connection between the two horses, between the oath and the entry into Troy. But what is it?

First the oath ceremony belongs to two widespread series in which (a) the oath is embodied in an object: thus, the Naga of Assam stands in an oath circle, praying that he may rot as the rope rots if he fails in his promise. (I cite this example because it has its relation with the ritual thread, which we shall consider in dealing with Ariadne’s labyrinth); (b) men stand on bits of a sacrificial victim or pass between them at the making of a solemn covenant. A potent relation is thus established, with great binding force. At Methana, when the winds threatened the vines, a cock was cut in two; two men carried the halves round the vineyard in opposite directions. When they met, they joined the halves and buried the cock on the spot. A magical circuit had been completed and the vineyard was enclosed in the bowels of the body. In Boiotia and Macedonia we find armies purified by being led between the bleeding halves of a victim, eg a dog: we may compare the use of the jugum (yoke) and triumphal arch at Rome. Speke, in his account of travels to Lake Victoria Nyanza, says that ‘the guide, to make the journey propitious, plucked a twig, denuded it of its leaves and branches, waved it like a wand up and down the line of march, muttered some unintelligible words to himself, and threw the separated bits on either side of the path.’ The bough here both guides and provides an apotropaic passage between its halves.[137]

Such rites belong to a yet wider series of passage rites, which express purification and initiation, the movement from one state or level of life into another, eg by jumping over fires or passing through a split tree. The suitors have enclosed themselves in the oath (in the oath object, the horse), and they fulfil the oath by getting inside a horse which gives them the chance of returning Helen to her rightful husband. But there is a particular relation to Troy involved. Troy is a sacred city, as Homer stresses, with Athena its guardian (through her palladion). The capture of such a city is imagined as a rape of its goddess; the unpierced city is seen as a virgin. City and goddess are emotionally and ritually identified. Homer often mentions the sacred veil, hieron kredomenon, of a city which has to be rent or undone before the place can fall. At Troy and Thebes in particular the walls, built by gods, had this inviolable character. In the Hymn to Demeter kings are said to maintain the Sacred Veils of cities by right judgements; the just city has the blessing of the gods, of the protecting goddess who is an aspect of its life, strength, structure. To jump over a sacred wall was to affront and confront the magical power, and was liable to bring about death, as we see from such legends as those of Poimandros, Toxeus, Remus (at Rome), and, in an historical form, that of Miltiades. A vestal virgin who surrendered her maidenhead was a treacherous menace; at Rome she was buried alive to restore the sanctity of the defences. Legends like that of Tarpeia at Rome or Nixus at Megara reveal the same underlying ideas.[138]

Maze rituals were linked with the sacred nature of the city. They set up magical obstacles to the entry of the uninitiated. Indeed the names Troy and Ilios seem both to mean a sacred or magically encircled city; and Troia is possibly cognate with the Babylonian tirâni, found on tablets about moo BC, where the word is accompanied by maze patterns connected with entrail divination. One tablet has ekal tirâni, palace of the intestines.[139] There is a whole set of Latin words with the basic meaning of enclosing, surrounding, winding about, which have the root troare, eg porca troia, a pregnant pig; trulla, a cooking-pot; redantruare, to repay a kindness (complete the circular arrangement and enclose both parties in a beneficent or uniting force).[140] The Roman Game of Troy with its manoeuvres would then not be a late invention; it must have gone back to an initiatory maze movement or dance expressing the transition from one phase of living to another, in which all malign forces were baffled and left behind on the other side of the maze.

Much attention was certainly paid to the gates at Troy. Already in Troy I the city-gate had two towers, which could outflank any enemy trying to force the long corridor-like entrance. In Troy VI overlapping of walls was used to make attacks on the gates hazardous. Outside the southern entry was a house that must have been a sanctuary; many bones and burnt patches have been found in it, but no household goods. Prayers were no doubt made there, with sacrifices, at going off on a journey or on returning, or at emerging to fight. Monoliths resembling menhirs at the foot of the south wall of Tower VI, just at the entrance to the gateway, are clearly cult-stones; they are fixed in such strong foundations that they must once have been very tall. A similar stone block has been found at the entry to House VIa. These pillars may be compared with the menhirs in Cypros and Anatolia, or with the more elegant pillars that formed an important part of Minoan worship. The Trojan systems of defence, practical and religious, belong to a widespread type of enfiladed constructions with complicated and winding approaches, which provided both a genuine protection from attack and an apotropaic magic. The earliest tactical mazes are perhaps those found in some Egyptian forts of the 1st and and Dynasties; they also occur in the spiral rampart of the neolithic Trundle and on each shorter side of Maiden Castle, Dorset. Herodotos saw labyrinths at Knossos in Crete and at Hawara in the Egyptian Fayum, both of them mazes in the sense of a confusing complexity. The idea was at times applied to the private house. In China, ‘it is impossible to walk straight into ordinary middle-class dwellings. Inside the front door will be a screen which forces the visitor to turn to the right or the left; the object being to exclude evil spirits, which can only move in straight lines’ (Giles, 1911). The same principle appears in Egyptian tombs and mortuary chapels, eg the tomb of King Perabsen of the 2nd Dynasty or the funerary chapel of Sneferu at Medum; it was applied in a large-scale scheme in the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. The Book of Gates, of the second millennium BC, speaks of ‘double walls’ behind the gates to be passed in the death journey. The Greek meander pattern seems to have been used to define the indoor nature of a scene; it may have been derived from the Egyptian hieroglyph for a form of h, which represents the ground-plan of a courtyard; but similar designs from North Syria may well have affected the Greek pattern, which is found on the outside of clay models of the Geometric Age in the Heraion at Perachora near Corinth, where the function must be magical rather than descriptive. The square fret of the 8th Dynasty in Egypt, a time of strong influence from North Syria, has much the same meaning as the meander. One steatite plaque has a rectangular maze pattern on the lower half; in the upper half two seated figures, facing one another, are enclosed. A schist seal shows a single male figure within the maze. (In later Cretan coins the labyrinth encloses a human head, a bull’s head and a crescent moon; on the gate at Virgil’s Cumae, in the picture of the Cretan labyrinth, Pasiphae who mated with the bull, is shown, ‘She who gives light to all’, in some sense the moon.) Later we shall discuss the maze spiral as the genitals of the earth-goddess, which are located at the gates of a city.[141]

The breach of the sacred wall of Troy in order to bring in the horse is thus a rending of the virgin veil, a raping of the city-goddess, which deprives the Trojans of powers of resistance. What had been a rite enclosing the suitors in their oath, so that they cannot interfere with Helen’s mating outside it, becomes a rite breaking through an enclosing power — through the virgin defences of the goddess into her bowels — so that Helen can be taken out and once more handed over to the successful suitor. We may compare this complex with the episode of Theseus in the labyrinth. With the heroine’s aid he passes through the maze to defeat an evil power at its core, and is able to return to the outer world and claim his bride. We shall have more to say of mazes when we come to consider Ariadne in her full relation to Helen; but meanwhile this brief excursus will give us some idea of the ritual complexes surrounding Helen.

Chapter Five – The Lyric Poets

In broad terms we may say that the Epic Poets with their hexameter line represented the culture of the tribal society of the Dark Ages as it adapted and transformed itself to meet the requirements of the first stages of the mercantile polis or city-state. The Lyric Poets represented the period of more or less successful development of the aristocracies in this new situation, with the first stages of scientific and philosophic thought emerging in some of the advanced Ionian cities where trade and eastern contacts were most active. Drama and History, with fully matured Philosophy, appeared with the growth of democracy. Such generalizations must by their nature be loose and incomplete; for there were all sorts of survivals of the old and embryonic assertions of the new at every phase, all sorts of transitional divagations and combinations; and there were extreme inequalities of development all over the Greek world, where some areas, such as Thessaly and Makedonia, still carried on many old tribal elements, whilst elsewhere trade and money were at work as powerful solvents of such elements. But as long as we understand the complexity of the total situation, we can make the above points, disentangling the main trends or forms of expression.

Terpandros, who flourished about 675, was a poet of Aiolic Lesbos; he won a victory at the Karneia in Sparta in 673-2. He seems to have reintroduced the seven-stringed lyre to the Greek world. Some traditions link him with Kyme in Aiolis whence Hesiod’s father came, or even made him a descendant of Hesiod. A line attributed to him runs: ‘O Sons of Zeus and Leda, most beautiful saviours.’ Here as in the Odyssey Leda is linked with the Dioskouroi.[142] We are on surer ground with three poets of the late seventh and early eighth century: Sappho, Alkaios, Stesichoros. Sappho of Lesbos wrote in its Aiolic dialect. With her lyric verve and passion she could not but be interested in Helen; her ideal was beauty, with a life devoted to it; and Aphrodite dominated her verse.[143] A fragment of hers shows Leda as the nurse of Helen’s egg, not its producer. ‘They say that once on a time Leda found hidden an egg of hyacinthine hue.’ Elsewhere she calls Hekate ‘Aphrodite’s golden-shining handmaid’.[144] Again, she invokes Hera to manifest herself as she once did to the Atreidai, Agamemnon and Menelaos; and her version of the latter event has three differences from that in the Odyssey. The brothers are at Lesbos together instead of having separated; the prayer is not to Zeus alone, but to the Lesbian trinity of Zeus, Hera and Dionysos; and what is sought is not merely guidance in the choice of a passage to Hellas (above or below Chios), but help in some graver difficulties. What Sappho went on to ask Hera for we do not know, though we may guess that she prayed for fair winds and weather for herself or one of her friends. (The occasion of the poem may have been Sappho’s own forced flight to Sicily in a short political exile.)[145]

In the bits of a love-poem preserved in a papyrus of the second century AD we can make out that she compares one of her companions to Hermione. Perhaps the passage ran: ‘When I look you in the eyes, I think that not even Hermione was such as you — that you can be fairly likened to Helen with her golden hair.’[146] And Helen comes right to the forefront in an ode which seems written for Anaktoria, who has gone off with a soldier husband to Lydia; in another poem she speaks of this girl ‘shining among the ladies as after sunset the rosy-fingered Moon beside the stars about her’. The ode runs: ‘Some say the most beautiful thing on the dark earth is a host of horsemen riding. Others say: it’s footmen marching. But I against them say: it is the one I love. It is easy to make this understood by everyone. The woman who was born the loveliest of all on the earth, Helen, left her admirable husband deserted, and she went sailing off to Troy with never a thought for the daughter whom she left, or for her dear parents. The goddess of love drew her aside and she went. And all this has brought into my mind Anaktoria who is living far away...her lovely way of walking and the radiances changing across her face: I’d rather see them than all your Lydian chariots going by, all those fully-armed footmen.’[147] Helen is in one sense reinstated in her Homeric role, above criticism, a pure and spontaneous expression of energy; but the world in which she operates is restricted. Helen-Aphrodite sums up and concentrates the activities of Sappho and her group, their dream image of themselves, the elements of joy in their experiences realized as somehow vitally uniting them with the life process as a whole (which includes the vigours and flowerings of nature); but the larger pattern, the relation to history and its movements, is dropped out. Here we see how Sappho embodies the strong individualism of the seventh century.

Her contemporary Alkaios, also a Lesbian, embodies the same assured sense of individual energies as themselves in some way providing their own criteria and right of assertion; but as a man he cannot identify himself with Helen as Sappho did. Two fragmentary poems set out his attitudes. The first sees the episode of Helen and Paris as representing the power of love, of strong emotions, to wreck a world. ‘...And fluttered the heart of Argive Helen in her breast. Maddened with passion by the man from Troy, the traitor-guest, she followed him in his ship over sea, leaving her child at home forsaken and her husband’s bed with its rich coverlet, since her heart persuaded her to surrender to love, through the daughter of Dione and Zeus [Aphrodite]....Many of his brothers the dark earth holds, laid down on the plain of Troy for the sake of Helen; and many chariots overturned in the dust...and many dark-eyed...were trampled, and...Achilles...the slaughter.’ The key word is ekmaneisa, which suggests a woman driven out of her wits, out of her normal adaptations to the accepted ways of the world, by an uncontrollable impulse of desire. Helen is still not condemned, but is seen as the victim of divine forces.[148]

In the second poem, however, she is contrasted with the good wife, Thetis, who bears Achilles: ‘So the tale goes: that through evil acts came bitter grief, Helen, from you upon Priam and his sons long ago, and Zeus gave sacred Ilios up to fire. Not at all the same was the graceful girl whom the noble son of Aiakos married after summoning all the gods to his wedding and after taking her from the halls of Nereus to Cheiron’s house. He unbound the pure maiden’s girdle, and the love of Peleus and the best of Nereus’ daughters throve. In a year she bore a son, the mightiest of demi-gods, the blest driver of bay steeds. But they, the Phrygians, and their city perished for Helen’s sake.’ The occasion and audience of this poem are hard to make out, but the point is clear enough. However there may be a patriotic touch in the praise of Thetis; for the Lesbians had something of a proprietary interest in the monuments of the Troad linked with Homeric themes. Among the most revered of these was the tomb of Achilles. Fighting had gone on in the Troad between the Athenians and the Mytileneans of Lesbos in a dispute about the Achilleid territory; and Pittakos of Mytilene killed Phrynon the Athenian commander, an Olympic victor, in single combat. In one of the fights Alkaios dropped his weapons and ran away. But the wish to elevate Thetis and Achilles would not be enough alone to produce the moralizing tone of the poem; Alkaios has been affected, directly or indirectly, by the new sort of questions which we shall find besetting Stesichoros. Incidentally he is the first known poet who links the Twins with St Elmo’s Fire and makes them Saviours of Sailors; he describes the fire as leaping to the topmost point of the benched ships, then sitting far-seen on the forestays and bringing light in midnight to the black ship.’

The end of the Geometric period in art had seen a strong orientalizing tendency, with motives such as the Babylonian sacred tree, its boughs connected by ribbons. The poets emerge as strong distinct personalities — Archilochos and Sappho. We meet the rise of the city-tyrant: tyrannos, an old word meaning ruler, its malign sense mainly built up through the hatred of the nobles for such a dictator, who represented a transitional period when the people were stirring against aristocratic controls but not strong to develop secure democratic forms. Kypselos (whose name was attached to the Chest) overthrew the nobles in Corinth; his lame mother, of noble birth, had married a non-Dorian farmer. His traditional date 657 was perhaps somewhat too early. Money had reached its mature form, especially in the trading island of Aigina. In Lesbos, Pittakos became tyrant. The sixth century saw the great Ionian outburst of thought, laying the bases for philosophy and science. In the late seventh century the Spartans, defeated by the Argives, were in a hard fight for survival against the Messenians; they began to work out their militarist system aimed at holding down the helots or serfs. Athens was coming up as grain exporter, owning a larger crop area than most states. A series of internal convulsions led through Solon (early sixth century) and Kleisthenes to the democracy of the fifth century; this destroyed itself by its inner contradictions, which included its imperial expansion in the Aegean and its war with Sparta, now the great aristocratic state. The tyranny of the Peisistrads had been the transitional form at Athens. After the Peloponnesian War the heyday of the city-state system was over; Macedonia steadily rose up in power, bringing about the unification of Greece by conquest with the consequent movement east-ward in war and colonization under Alexander the Great (336-23).

But in the seventh century, when Sparta still had a vigorous and even joyous culture, two poets sang there whose work is of importance to us in our quest. The first was Alkman, probably a Lydian from Sardis. Pausanias, describing the Plane Grove at Sparta, says that behind the portico at its side lay various hero shrines. ‘There are sanctuaries of Helen and of Herakles. The former is near the grave of Alkman.’ In the poet’s fragments are several references to the Dioskouroi: their capture of Aphidna and of Aithra; their birthplace at Pephnos near Thalamai; their role as horsemen; their death at Therapne. He calls their mother the daughter of Glaukos, that is, Leda. A fragment uses the epic term for Paris: ‘Dys-Paris, dread Paris [Ainoparis], curse of Hellas the nurse of men.’ But more interesting for us are the songs he composed for girl choruses. In one poem he praises Astymeloisa who ‘holds the garland [pyleōn], like a star that falls through the glistening sky or a golden shoot or tender down...she has come with long steps.’ Pyleōn in Sparta could be used for a garland offered to Hera; and in another song the girl with the garland speaks of herself: ‘To you also I pray as I bring this pyleōn of casidony and lovely galingale.’ Of cyperos, galingale, Plinius says it is a root useful against bites of serpents and scorpions; when it is drunk, it opens the veins; and of casidony, helopchrysos, also called chrysanthemum, he says that it stops the flux of women (three ounces of leaves mixed in white wine). We see Hera as a goddess of health and growth, concerned with marriage and children over whom she watched while they were unwed. Alkman further wrote songs for Artemis rites. He ‘summons Artemis’, writes Menandros, ‘from countless mountains and countless cities and from rivers too’. There are as well signs of songs for Aphrodite and Athena (of the Brazen House at Sparta).[149]

But far the best preserved of such works is the Maidensong found in a papyrus near the second pyramid of Saqqara. It consisted of at least ten strophes, eight surviving. Of the latter, three tell of a myth; the following five deal with the occasion and the participating girls.[150] The myth tells of Hippokoōn and his sons, and the vengeance Herakles took on them for killing a cousin of his. Our text says nothing of Herakles, who must have appeared in the missing part, but it introduces Polydeukes, who does not figure in later versions of the legend. Elsewhere we are told that Hippokoōn’s sons were rivals in love with the Dioskouroi; that there was a feud between Hippokoōn and Tyndareos; and that one of the sons, Enarsphoros, tried to gain Helen by violence in her youth. It seems likely then that the Twins come into the picture as taking vengeance for the attack on Helen, and that that attack explains the warning: ‘Do not fly up into the sky or try to marry Aphrodite.’ There is also a reference to the Graces, Phanna and Kleta in Lakonia, who were worshipped together with the Dioskouroi at Sparta and had another temple on the River Tiasa.

The girls go on to sing of two others, Agido and Hagesichora. The group or agela seems to consist of ten, a sort of sorority, described in kin terms even if not actually related by blood, and certainly united in warm bonds of love. Hagesichora is called klenna, a word that seems related to kleinos, used of boys carried off by lovers in Crete. ‘Favourite boys among the Cretans are called kleinoi. Eager zeal possesses them to carry off boys; and so in the eyes of the handsome among them it was a disgrace not to get a lover.’ We do not need to infer any such custom connected with the klennai, except in so far as both groups, girls and boys, are made up of initiates with ages near the moment of change into adult status. Here Agido seems in charge of the rites, with Hagesichora superintending the chorus. The girls sing in a charming playful way about their leaders, teasing and admiring. The papyrus reads near the end: ‘To the gods belong the accomplishment and fulfilment. Teacher of the chorus, I shall say, I, who am myself a maiden, have screeched in vain like an owl from the roof-beam. But I want most of all to please Aōtis. She has been the healer of our pains, and because of Hagesichora the girls have found the peace they desired.’ Earlier we were told: ‘The Pleiads of the Dawn rise through the ambrosial Night like the Star of Serios [Dog-star] and fight against us as we bear the Plough.’[151]

The song is given at a thosteria, a festival of god or goddess. But of whom? The only name mentioned is Aōtis, which cannot be the same as Aōs, dawn, though it is clearly related. The performance goes on at night, close to dawn, and our choir seem rivals of another called Doves or Pleiads (the daughters of Atlas turned into doves and set in the sky). The song-dance of the Doves might well be linked with the star’s rising, an important moment in the calendar, signalling the farmer to reap; the girls would have had some sort of bird dress. Bird costumes were common in Attic and other rites. (Alkman seems to have written for a Spartan chorus called Halcyons.) The contest between the agelai appears to have been in beauty (with rich ornaments taken into consideration), song, perhaps dance as well (there is a reference to the Sirens right at the end), and finally some sort of race.[152]

Aōtis, it has been suggested, is Artemis Orthia or Helen. There seems no good reason, however, for linking Artemis with dawn or our festival; on the other hand Helen fits in rather well. Not that we can associate her with the dawn, apart from the slight suggestion of some lines in Theokritos: ‘Beautiful, Lady Night, is the face that the rising Dawn [Aōs] reveals, or the bright Spring at winter’s ending; and so among us did golden Helen shine.’[153] But she had her shrine at Sparta and a festival in which girls took part; and the opening myth of the Maiden-song seems certainly to have dealt with her. Her shrine behind the Colonnade was near the shrine of Herakles where Hippokoōn’s sons were said to have been killed. Aristophanes at the end of the Lysistrata, in the joyous song of the Lakonian women, shows that she was the spirit leader of the dancing girl choirs. ‘And the girls, like fillies, beside Eurotas, glitter to and fro on nimble feet; and their flowing hair waves as they go, like the tresses of Bacchanals sporting and flourishing their thyrsos wands. Leda’s daughter leads them, a pure [agna] and seemly dance leader.’ Alkman had made his girls compare their leaders to horses, one of Venetic breed, the other Kolaxean (Skythian); they declare Agido supreme, ‘as if one were to set among the herds a prize-winning courser, strong with ringing hooves, of the race of winged dreams’. We saw how the Dioskouroi and their White-Mare wives were linked with horses. Pōloi or fillies seem to have a ritual significance, especially in the cult of the Leukippides, whose two priestesses were pōloi. Later, when the cult of Demeter and Persephone was revived in Sparta, after a long lapse, the priestesses were also pōloi: a case of reapplying an earlier usage. In Euripides’ Helen the chorus, singing to Helen of the joys that await her at home, tell her: ‘Perhaps you’ll find the Leukippides by the water of the river or before the shrine of Pallas, and join in time with their dances.’[154]

The reference to a plough, pháros, in the rite is hard to explain however. It has been suggested we should read phāros, robe, since the carrying of a robe to a goddess often occurred. But the evidence for pháros is strong. A plough suggests a goddess in some way connected with agriculture. Still, the weight of evidence supports Helen as the person to whom the girls sing, especially as Hesychios says the Aōoi were deities moved from the Dromos, Racecourse, to Samothrace and Lemnos. The Twins had their shrine at Sparta near the Dromos, indeed right at its entry, since they were the Apheterioi or Starters, while Helen had her shrine close by. Theokritos makes his Spartan girls say they will go to the Dromos in spring to gather flowers, remembering Helen. If the Twins were Aōoi, Helen may well have been Aōtis. We may recall that at least in late times the pōloi of the Leukippides were linked with a boy priest apparently called bouagor or ox-herd; Hesychios mentions the ox-plough, boupharon; and the twins of the Black Mare, Melanippē, were connected with bull and cow. But even if Helen was not Aōtis, the Maidensong certainly shows us the sort of dance-song ritual with which she was associated at Sparta and in which she acted as daimon, as spirit choragos.[155]

*

That the legendary and religious role of Helen in Sparta of the seventh century and early sixth was a matter of great moment is brought out by the career of Stesichoros. He had come from the regions of the western Greeks, born at Matauros, a Lokrian settlement in the toe of Italy, and growing up in Himera, Sicily. In such areas the Greeks did not have a dense local folklore and cult-tradition; and we see the result in the poet’s inventiveness. He also drew on Sicilian folklore in such tales as that of Daphnis. Later poets set him by Homer. Simonides said, ‘For thus have Homer and Stesichoros sung to the people’, and Antipatros, ‘In his breast the soul of Homer found a second rest.’ Efforts were made to link him with Hesiod as son or grandson. Among the Ozolian Lokrians at Oineon and Naupaktos was a line of epic poets claiming descent from Hesiod; Stesichoros’ family may have been connected with them.[156]

He composed a poem bringing to a head the condemnatory attitudes we saw emerging in Hesiod and Alkaios. The legend ran that he was then stricken with blindness, but regained sight by denying his previous charges. The Souda states that he wrote his recantation in response to a dream. Pausanias tells us that when the peoples of Kroton and Lokroi in south Italy were at war, the latter called on Aias son of Oileus for aid. Leonymos the Krotonian general attacked at the point where he heard the dead hero was posted in the front line, and was wounded in the breast. He went to Delphoi, and the Pythia sent him on to the ‘White Island’ at the mouth of the Danube, saying that Aias would there appear and cure the wound. On his return, cured, he stated that he had seen Achilles. ‘With them were Patroklos and Antilochos; Helen was married to Achilles and had bidden him sail to Stesichoros at Himera and announce that his blindness was caused by her wrath. So Stesichoros composed his recantation.’

Plato remarks: ‘The precedent for purification of sinners in mythology goes far back, not indeed to Homer, but to Stesichoros, who, blinded for slandering Helen, did not, like Homer, wonder why, but like a true scholar recognized the reason for his affliction.’ He adds, ‘After finishing the Palinode, as it is called, he at once regained his sight.’ This passage oddly suggests that Homer too was blinded for his account of Helen, but never guessed the reason.[157] (Palinode merely means a second song, a repetition, but through Stesichoros it came to mean a recantation.) The offending poem was a vituperation; Isokrates calls it this in his Helen and says that it found fault with her at the beginning. A scholiast cites the passage: ‘Here Tyndareos one day made sacrifice to all the gods; yet Cypris [Aphrodite], giver of joy, he quite forgot; and she in wrath made his girls marry twice, and marry thrice, husband-forsakers they.’ Again we are told that the poet recounted how men (no doubt the conquering Achaians) went to stone her, but ‘the moment they saw her face, they let the stones fall from their hands’. Here we meet a variant of the motif of Menelaos dropping his sword at the sight of her face.[158]

Athenaios cites as from Stesichoros’ Helena three lines that must come from a description of her marriage with Menelaos: ‘Many the quinces [Kydonian apples] cast upon the king’s chariot, many the leaves of myrtle, garlands of roses and twisted wreaths of violets.’ The introduction of Theokritos’ poem on the same theme states that ‘certain things in it are taken from the First Book of Stesichoros’. (The marriage scene rarely inspired artists. There is a dinos at Smyrna where the bridal couple are shown in a chariot accompanied by the Twins; and on vase fragments, dated about 380, Menelaos is shown with sceptre or torch, holding Helen by the wrist; behind them a woman wearing a low kalathos is dancing.)

The ancients referred to a single palinode; but the critic Chamaileon in a papyrus fragment makes clear that there were two poems. The first began, ‘Come hither song-loving goddess’; the second, ‘Gold-winged maiden’. The call ‘hither’ suggests a festival at which the poem was sung and Helen was imagined to be present. But an address to Helen in such a confident tone would hardly suit the occasion of an abject apology. The poet speaks to the Muse; we have two other fragments of this in which he certainly makes this kind of start.[159] His Oresteia shows how he liked to invoke the Muse as co-worker: ‘Come, Muse, thrust wars away, and sing with me in honour of a wedding of gods and a feast of men and also a merrymaking of the blessed ones...’

Now that we know there were two palinodes, despite some twenty-odd references to a single work, we can perhaps read into a passage of Aristeides a reference to the double set. He is speak-ing of some opponents: ‘So much for that. I’ll go seek another prelude, as Stesichoros says. Now I know that I, like him, have on my hands a shadow fight. Those to whom my words will apply aren’t present, and so in a sense my words turn vain and empty, though at the same time it’s sure they’ll be true and to the point. For it’s obvious the fault is not — nor ever has been, save the mark — mine, but rather lies with the entire and inveterate apathy of these gentlemen themselves.’ It has been said that the change in tone here from self-confidence to self-defence echoes the palinode. We know that the poet admitted, ‘I spoke vanities.’[160]

Apart from the dramatic change from the assertion of guilt to one of innocence on Helen’s part, Stesichoros made the innovation of declaring that Homer’s story was all wrong. Helen had never gone off with Paris to Troy; the gods had sent instead a phantom or image of her, an eidolon. Plato tells us, speaking of true and false pleasures: ‘Does it not follow then that the pleasures with which such men have to do are mixed with pains, mere eidola of true pleasure, perspective paintings of it, taking each its depth of colour from contrast in juxtaposition with its particular pain, and for that reason appearing great, pleasures that make foolish persons madly in love with them, pleasures that are fought for, as the eidolon of Helen, according to Stesichoros, was fought for by the warriors at Troy in ignorance of the true Helen?’ Aristeides in another oration than that cited tells us that Stesichoros declared the Trojans held Helen’s eidolon as if it were a real person and thus excused themselves by blaming Helen.[161]

Even if there was any slight suggestion of the eidolon in some Hesiodic poem, it was Stesichoros who gave force to the idea and applied it consistently. Eidolon is cognate with eidos, form or shape, and eidein to know; Homer uses it to mean phantom. An eidolon of Aineias in armour is fashioned by Apollo in mid-battle; Athena makes a woman’s eidolon and sends it to Penelope. In the Odyssey the word is further used of the spirits or ghosts in the underworld, where the eidolon of Herakles persists after his real self has gone up to Olympos. There is nothing, then, in the Homeric notion of eidola to deny the possibility of Helen at Troy being all the while a phantom, though the poet’s realistic treatment makes it clear that he is not in the least thinking of her as an illusion.[162]

With the Stesichorean theme we may compare the tale of Ixion, father of Peirithoos, who, after treacherously killing his father-in-law to escape paying bridal gifts, was purified by Zeus and in return tried to seduce his wife Hera. Pindar, in one only known early account, says that Zeus sent a cloud, nephela, in Hera’s place, and on it Ixion begot the first horse-daimōn or centaur. The ancients used Ixion as the supremely ungrateful man. He gets a cloud as Paris (in Stesichoros) gets a phantom. Since Paris was the supreme betrayer of hospitality, there is parallelism in the two tales, but the effects of the betrayals are very different. Stesichoros included Hesiod with Homer as a maligner of Helen. Perhaps he had in mind the passage about Tyndareos’ daughters deserting their husbands; perhaps he was angry that Hesiod told of Theseus mating with Helen. He himself may have taken from Hesiod the motif of Aphrodite’s jealous hatred of Helen.[163]

The papyrus tells us, probably referring to the first palinode, ‘Stesichoros states that the eidolon went to Troy and Helen stayed with Proteus.’ The construction implies that the two events occurred at the same time. In linking Helen with Proteus the poet recalls the Odyssey, but makes the connection for the outward journey, not the homeward. The late annotator Tzetzes and a scholiast describe him as originating the theme of Helen in Egypt, where Proteus took charge of her, giving Paris back the phantom (Tzetzes) or a picture (scholiast).[164] But there is evidence making us distrust part of this account. Dion of the Golden Mouth says that Helen did not sail anywhere. Carelessly read, this would rule out her sojourn in Egypt; we would have to assume that she was hidden somewhere (eg Therapne) on the Greek mainland or that she went off at once to join her brothers in the sky or to live in the Blessed Isles. The answer however seems to be that she did go to Egypt, but not by ship. In four lines cited by Plato, Stesichoros says: ‘I spoke vanities and I’ll go in search of another prelude. This story isn’t true. You didn’t go in the benched ships, you didn’t come to the citadel of Troy.’ She went to Egypt by being wafted thither in the air, carried along by Hermes, as Euripides asserts.[165]

Dion tells us that other poets besides Stesichoros sang of Helen going to Egypt; Tzetzes and the scholiast probably used handbooks in which various versions were conflated. The location of Helen’s retreat in Egypt no doubt came from the Odyssey’s account of her sojourn there plus the reputation of the country as ancient and mysterious. The later account of her presence there may have been influenced by Egyptian priests; and we can find some clues in Herodotos. His tales, soon to be considered, may well have been partly made up by Greek travellers or settlers in Egypt, eg at Naukratis. Certainly by Roman days there were many honours paid to Helen and Menelaos there.[166] Tzetzes, in making the eidolon the creation of Proteus, probably draws on some Hellenistic poet of love themes. As the myth was rationalized, tortuous explanations were devised to make sense of a long war for a mere phantom; it was argued that the Trojans had no Helen to hand back and the Achaians refused to believe their tale.

What are we to make of the story of Stesichoros’ blindness? No doubt in one of his palinodes the poet referred to a period of blindness (error) which was ended by a revelation of the truth from Helen. Such a remark would readily be taken literally, assimilated to the many legends of blind poets illuminated by an inner inspiration. Bards had indeed often been blind, as smiths had been lame; the vocation was conditioned by the physical disability. The linking of blindness with second sight, prophecy and poetic power is typical of most primitive cultures. The bard Demodokos in the Odyssey was blind; Thamyris was blinded for boasting that he sang better than the Muses (the Pierides were turned into jackdaws for the same boast); Homer himself was reputed to have been blind.[167] The idea that Stesichoros was blinded may have been helped by his introduction into Greek poetry of the Sicilian folktheme of Daphnis, though we are not clear as to the length of his treatment. The neatherd Daphnis was beloved by a Nymph, with whom he mated; she exacted a promise that he would not mate with any other woman, on the threat of blindness; drunk, he lay with a king’s daughter, and was blinded. ‘From this story,’ says Ailian, ‘arose the pastoral songs of herdsmen, with the theme the blinding of Daphnis. The first composer of such songs was Stesichoros of Himera.’ In Diodoros we see the Hellenistic elaboration which made Daphnis the son of Hermes and a Nymph, who got ‘his name from the abundance and density of the baytrees [daphnai] which grew’ in the grove of the Nymphs where he was born and reared. Daphnis himself invented pastoral poetry and was a favourite of Artemis. Theocritos in his Idyll gave the story an enigmatic twist, with the dying man questioned by Hermes, his fellow herdsmen, Priapos. When he breathes his last, it is Aphrodite who tries to revive him.[168]

We must also note Stesichoros’ interest in the theme of eclipse, a sort of darkness and blindness come over the world. Plinius remarks, in his praise of men like Thales and Hipparchos who grappled with the problem of this phenomenon, that ‘by grasping the law of these mighty luminaries [sun and moon] they freed the miserable human mind from the apprehension of crimes or death it felt at their eclipse.’ And he adds: ‘an apprehension expressed, we know, by the sublime mouths of poets like Stesichoros and Pindar when they witnessed an eclipse of the sun.’ Ploutarch provides us with some of the phrases used. Stesichoros and Pindar, he says, bewail in eclipses that ‘the most manifest of stars is stolen away’, that ‘noonday is made night’, and that ‘the beam of the sun is in the path of darkness’. Pindar’s ninth Paian, written for the Thebans, gives us an idea of the panicked emotion. ‘Are you driving upon us some new and strange disaster?...Are you bringing a sign of some war or wasting of produce, or an unutterable violent snowstorm or destructive faction, or again some overflowing of the sea on the land, or frost to bind the earth, or heat of the south-wind pouring with raging rain? Or will you, by deluging the land, cause the race of men to begin all over again?’ Further, Eustathios tells us that Stesichoros used Telchines as an epithet of the Dooms (Kēres), as of Skotōseis (darkenings, eclipses). The Telchines, linked with the Idaian Mother like the Daktyls, were a spirit group connected with magic and with metallurgical transformations; one of their evil tricks was to sprinkle fields with sulphur and Styx-water, poisoning people and plants. Earlier, Archilochos had also expressed the dismay that men felt at an eclipse of the sun; he saw the darkness as a threat against all order, not the expression of a superior kind of order; he implicitly identified order with nature, even if all things came under the power of Zeus. His sheer horror at the thought that nature’s uniformity could be broken showed an abandonment of the idea of magic as a realm with its own systems; and he thus revealed a more advanced attitude than does Pindar with his dominating fear of the disasters that might be portended by the eclipse.[169]

If then to the dramatic change between Stesichoros’ Helena and his palinodes we add the tale of his blindness and its cure, his use of the Daphnis theme, and his deep concern about eclipses, we seem to touch in him a complex of images and ideas centred on a fear of some general disaster, a blacking-out of the universe with a breakdown of its normal laws. He is asking: What has gone wrong? Where have we sinned or erred? What can we do to avert doom? It is a tribute to the key role played by Homer in Greek culture, and by Helen in the Homeric world-picture, that the moral question comes to a head in the attempt to revalue the heroine. Did Zeus use her to set off forces leading to the destruction of mankind? Can we credit the sort of cosmic plan that the Cypria sets out? If only Helen can be cleared of guilt, then there is no such divine scheme of world end. The spiriting away of the sun ceases to be so frightening.

Stesichoros, though a poet of the western Greeks, probably went to Sparta like so many other poets; he may well have been influenced by the priesthood there. The growing tendency to blame Helen must have annoyed and angered the Spartans, and the palinodes were a counterblast to the denigrations. It has been suggested that they ended with the apotheosis of Helen; and an epode of Horace has been cited in support: ‘I’ll expiate my sin whether you ask of me a hecatomb of oxen, or, sung by a lying lute, you’d like to be a golden constellation walking modest and maiden — you! — amid the stars. When Helen was defamed, the wrath of Kastor and great Kastor’s brother was overcome by supplication, and they restored the light to the poet that was blind. Even so do you...’ But Horace here makes the Twins, not their sister, the healers; he is probably using some later version or conflated account.[170]

*

Ibykos was another westerner, born about 600 at Rhegion in south Italy, and at first influenced by Stesichoros. He belonged to the Age of the Tyrants, and is said to have been offered the tyranny of his native city, which he refused. He lived much of his life at Samos where the tyrant Polykrates kept a brilliant court. We find in his work a turn from epic narrative to a more personal approach, with secularizing of myth; he takes a stage further the attitudes found in Sappho and Alkaios. He is interested in Helen’s sensuous aspect. A scholiast remarks of the episode of Menelaos’ confrontation with Helen: ‘This has been better arranged by Ibykos’ in his dithyramb on the Sack, ‘who makes Helen take refuge in Aphrodite’s temple and parley from there with Menelaos, who then drops his sword for love of her’. Another scholiast adds: When Menelaos ‘went to attack Helen, he dropped his sword; the tale is told by Ibykos and Euripides’. Ibykos seems then to have invented the sword-dropping; but the motif of bared breasts has not yet come up. It may well have been devised by an artist, winning quick success.

Homer mentions the hatred felt by Deiphobos for Idomeneus of Crete. A scholiast tells us that he hated him ‘as his rival for Helen’s love, witness Ibykos and Simonides, but...’ (text corrupt). He states that Ibykos has misunderstood Homer; Idomeneus’ love for Helen was of old standing. (He is prominent among the suitors in the Hesiodic Catalogue.) A papyrus fragment speaks of the Achaians setting out at ‘the designs of great Zeus’ and upholding ‘an often sung strife in tearful war for the sake of the beauty of flaxen-haired Helen’. Troy fell because of the vengeance of the gods ‘on account of golden-haired Cypris’. The poet says that he will not sing of the heroes, ‘of host-deceiving Paris or slim-ankled Kassandra’.[171]

A fragment shows us the Molionids as Leukippoi: ‘And the White-Horse Lads of Molinoe I killed,’ says Herakles, ‘like in age, equal-headed and single-bodied, born together in a single egg’. This pair were Siamese twins (a detail censored by Homer), but only in Ibykos do we find them as Leukippoi born from an egg. It seems that twin-heroes had a cult-relation to white horses, in which they were incarnated; but how the egg came in, it is hard to see, unless the Dioskouroi got it via Helen and the Molionids via the Dioskouroi. In Euripides’ Herakles Mad the twins Amphion and Zethos are called the White Colts of Zeus; and Hesychios links them with the Dioskouroi in this guise; they were the builders of the walls of the Kadmeion at Thebes.[172]

With Pindar we reach the height of the aristocratic tradition; he uses myth to deepen his themes and to link past and present in a single imaginative perspective, especially in his epinikia, songs for victors in game contests, which he transformed into a highly complex genre. He was a Boiotian, but was educated at Athens in music and poetry. Living through the fifth century till about 438, he failed to rise to the occasion during the Persian Wars (unlike Simonides), for his Theban aristocracy were compromised on the side of the Persians. He did not add much to the story of Helen. She is still the cause of the Trojan War, but Paris is the destroyer; and Pindar brings in the theme of his mother’s foreboding dream: ‘When Hekabe told the Trojans the vision she had had, when she bore this man in her womb. She thought she carried a fiery hundred-handed Erinys, who with great strength hurled all Ilion to the ground; and she told the portent of her sleep. But her foreknowledge did not avail.’ It has been argued that the Cypria already told of this dream and that Pindar was drawing on it; but we have no evidence supporting the suggestion. More likely the growing sense of crisis in the Greek world, with the threat from Persia, made men feel that the birth of such a destroyer as Paris must have been linked with portents and prophecies. From now on the theme expands.[173]

In his wish to give an heroic background to the settlers in Kyrene, Pindar states that Antenor’s descendants came to North Africa ‘with Helen, after they had seen their native city burned’. So Libya was added to her wanderings. In another ode, Themis settles the dispute of Zeus and Poseidon, who both want to marry the Sea-queen, ignorant that she is fated to bear a son stronger than his father. ‘Let not the daughter of Nereus [Thetis] again place in our hands the ballot-leaves of strife.’ The term used is petala, which reminds us that in Syracuse and Athens olive leaves were at times used for the inscribing of votes (eg in questions of exile); at Syracuse the procedure was called petalismos.[174]

There is not much more of interest in the Lyric Poets. The moralizing strains are strengthened. Bacchylides (c. 516-450) stresses the element of hybris, the presumptuous breaking of limits. In a dithyramb of his Menelaos and Odysseus on their embassy in the market place of Troy demand the return of Helen. Hybris ‘thrives unabashed on shifty gains and lawless follies, and thus quickly bestows wealth on a man, and power, which aren’t his, only to send him down later in turn to deep ruin. She it was who destroyed those overweaning sons of Earth, the Giants.’ Simonides in his long attack on women ends: ‘ever since Death received them that went warring for a woman’. Helen is the final and supreme example of the woman who brings miseries upon men.[175]

*

Now let us glance at the art of the period. Often it is hard to be sure we are dealing with Helen. Thus, in black-figure vases her union with Paris can easily be confused with other heroic or divine bridals. Consider an ivory relief of the seventh century, where two women stand frontally, with feet in profile; the one on the right parts a fold of her himation or outer garment; the second (whose head is missing) wears a peplos or upper dress that leaves a breast bare, and is about to knot her belt. The pair have been taken as Peitho and Aphrodite, and compared with the figures of these goddesses on vases where they try to persuade Helen; they have also been seen as Demeter and Korē, or as Arge and Opis (Hyperborean Maidens who came with offerings to Delos); the belt-knotter has been taken as Aphrodite and the other as Helen getting ready to bare her charms to Menelaos. But the attribution of such gestures to Helen and Aphrodite in the seventh century cannot be accepted.

From the archaic era on to the arrival of the free style we meet the finest and most interesting pictures of the carrying off and return of Helen. Some of the types continue to be used; others, showing Helen married, carried off, regained, are dropped and new schemes take their place. The type of a woman led off by warriors may be used to illustrate similar themes, eg the story of Aithra. Especially in black-figure the gesture of Helen in opening a fold of her himation to show her face is not erotic. It is the ceremonial action of the betrothed girl: the unveiling, which has both a nuptial and a funerary reference, and which is found in depictions of the sacred marriage. Later, coquetry intrudes and new values colour the gesture.

In the archaic and black-figure eras all representations closely follow the epical poets. When Helen is set beside Aphrodite, on the skyphos of Makron, we must not infer an attempt at rehabilitation; the relationship is made in Homeric terms. But soon Eros is brought in to support Helen before Menelaos; here we see a weakening of her pure force. To her aid also comes Apollo, protector of Ilion as Thymbraios as well as a god worshipped at Sparta. In early days the theme of Helen being led off or pursued had a popularity which it never regained. Thus on an amphora of the Antimenes painter we see Menelaos dragging her by a fold of her himation and threatening with a sword pointed directly at her. On a middle-Corinthian krater, Paris and Helen mount a four-horsed chariot. Between horses and chariot stand Antenor and Kassandra; to the left are Daiphon (unknown) and Hektor with Andromache; to the right are two warriors. Here we see the marriage at Troy. (Antenor, Achilles’ charioteer, must simply represent ‘charioteer’.)[176]

Rarer are artworks showing the first encounter of Paris and Helen; but they have some importance as bringing out the close relation of Helen and Aphrodite, Paris and Eros: a scheme that grows (perhaps through some lost large painting) into a fixed system from mid-fifth century. Makron’s skyphos shows the meeting on one side, the carrying off on the other. Paris, helmed, leads Helen with the wrist gesture of marriage; she wears a diadem, a fine chiton (tunic worn next to the skin), a cloak covering the back of her head; Aphrodite is behind her with arms outstretched, almost touching her head in a protective gesture; a small Eros hovers between her and Paris. Peitho follows with a flower in her lifted right hand. To the left is Aineias, a warrior with flat hat on neck and lance in hand. Behind Peitho a young man, perhaps Helen’s son, Nikostratos, looks on in astonishment. In another work by Makron we see the carrying off and Judgement. Paris appears as a traveller, with two lances, holding Helen by the wrist; she follows with some hesitation. Behind her a bearded man, also with two lances, turns to thrust off a frightened woman who runs up; he must be Aineias, the woman is Helen’s sister Timandra. Behind Timandra is a group of three: Euopis, holding a flower, makes a reassuring gesture to the first of two old men on the edge of the scene, Ikarios and his brother Tyndareos. Both old men are indignant. Everyone is garlanded, so the occasion seems a festival. These two works by Makron are the purest pictorial representations of the elopement and show the climax of the Cypria’s influence on artists dealing with this episode.[177]

*

Looking back over the archaic age we see the breakdown of the Homeric synthesis under the strains set up by the new sense of independent individualism, which is linked with the mercantile expansions and uprootings that accompany the colonizing movements. Homer had expressed a peculiar moment of balance in the early Ionian trading cities between the new economic forces and old tribal elements re-ordered but held together under the nobles, the big landlords entangled with the trading and industrial developments. (Hesiod may be of the same period or only slightly later; his different social consciousness is perhaps based on the way the new forces impact on the mainland, Boiotia, with its more strongly rooted peasantry.) The archaic age sees both a liberation from old bonds, an increase of the economic tendencies worsening the lot of the peasants, and a fight back by the peasants. Partly through this fight back and partly through the slow permeation of the older and more settled regions by the new economic forces, there is a resurgence of ancient cults (above all that of Dionysos) and an invasion of the more urbanized areas by these cults and by all sorts of old popular beliefs and practices. Hence the way in which we find a deepened sense of guilt, partly replacing or modifying what has been called the shame culture of the Homeric world. That is, the sense of conflict, contradiction, failure, implication in evil, becomes much more deeply internalized, whereas in a shame culture what mostly matters is the saving of face, the preservation of respect and of status with all the gifts or honours that ratify it. What underlies the change is the intensifying class conflict, the widening and extension of social division.

The position has been too often incorrectly put. The archaic age did not see the invention of a guilt sense, with a vast amount of devices for dealing with pollution, individual and collective. Certainly in Homer’s day there must have been everywhere at the popular level the sort of ideas and practices that later forced their way into the urbanized mercantile areas. (By ‘popular’ at that phase one means almost wholly ‘peasant’, and one is thinking in the main of areas which are as yet little affected by the developments coming to a powerful head in the Ionian cities.) Homer knows of miasma, defilement or pollution, though he does not use the word, which comes into its own with Aischylos — he does, however, use the kindred word miaros for defilement by blood. At the outset of the Iliad, Apollo, hearing the prayer of his priest Chryseis, descends from Olympos to shoot plague-bearing arrows into the Achaian camp. Achilles calls an assembly and the prophet Kalchas explains the cause of the affliction. That Homer knows of the way to treat miasma is shown by Agamemnon’s order that the Achaians should cleanse themselves and dispose of the dirt into the sea.

The question then is not whether purification rites against pollution existed in the Homeric world; they certainly did. And the answer is not that Homer personally excluded or minimized the peasant cults or practices in his poems, as if the matter was the choice of a single poet. Homer is expressing the new consciousness of his Ionian world, however traditional his material; and though as a great poet he may develop many aspects of that consciousness more sharply and fully than the average man of his day, he is in the last resort expressing the peculiar Ionian balance. That balance was above all revealed in the Olympian hierarchy of gods, with Zeus dominating, which was imposed on the multiplicity of cults, ideas, magics, rites of initiation, purification, and earth-renewal, active among the peasantry with all their regional variations. Homer did not invent the hierarchy, but he must have done much to clarify it and indeed give it the quality of a living system. It is relevant to point out that he lacks the vocabulary to deal with questions of ‘free will’; for to lack the vocabulary to treat such a matter is to lack the specific consciousness of it. In one sense what Zeus wants to happen, happens; and as Eustathios pointed out, the Plan of Zeus is one with the moira of the gods. But if such comments imply that Homer is morally naive or that he takes a simple view of human activity and responsibility, they are wrongheaded. The depth and richness of his definition is what does much to make possible the later analyses, ethical, social, psychological; they emerge from the concrete fullness of his grasp of all that draws men together and all that cuts them apart.

A key point in this creation of his which is highly relevant to our quest is the role he developed for Zeus. He defines with great power and concreteness the tension between the more limited daimones, who embody some particular human quality or force, and the overlord Zeus, on whom in the last resort depends the ordering of the universe, which includes the ordering of human life. His Zeus is neither an abstract dispenser of justice nor a mere avenger of certain crimes that directly involve him, infringements of hospitality and breaking of oaths. In a diffused, subtle, un-dogmatic way he embodies the total human consciousness of what is at stake, the total sum of sanctions without which human life breaks down. Among men there is a ceaseless conflict between all that holds together and all that wrenches apart; moral terms seek to define or express this conflict, which however in its full working-out is vastly larger and more entangled than any encompassing term. So Zeus, with his apparent veerings and confusions, his moments of definite judgement or decision, symbolizes the conflict of values going on among men; he is above, it all, yet at every point implicated. So, for Homer, the Will or Plan of Zeus is a far more complex and comprehensive thing than the attempts to formulate it in explicit schemes or cut-and-dried moral values, which men feel driven to do in the following centuries. It is not till Aischylos that we meet another great poet who can regain the organic fullness of the Homeric universe without discarding all the anxious questions and limited judgements which have been made by men seeking to grasp Homer’s meaning in terms of the increased class conflict and the fragmentation of values around them. Not that the dissections and reapplications of the Homeric theme in the seventh and sixth centuries were merely negative. From Hesiod and the poet of the Cypria, on through Archilochos Sappho, Stesichoros, Alkman, and Pindar, we see a continual struggle of disintegrative and integrative elements; but it is only with Aischylos that we meet a single expression as comprehensive in its reach as was Homer’s.[178]

Chapter Six - Helen in the Fifth Century

With Herodotos a new orientation appears in the attitudes to Helen. Born in Asia Minor at Dorian Halikarnassos about 484, he moved through political troubles to Samos, then to Athens, finally took part in the Athenian colonization of Thourion, and died there about 420; he had travelled much in Syria and Babylonia, Egypt and Kyrene. The main theme of his History was the struggle between Europe and Asia, culminating in the invasion of Greece by Xerxes. He therefore interpreted the Trojan War as the first great clash of East and West, prefiguring later events. In the prelude to his work he sets out an account of the earlier conflicts. Persians put the responsibility for the first breach of the peace on Phoinikians trading at Argos. Some women had come down to the beach to see the market, among them the king’s daughter Io. ‘These women were standing round the ship’s stern, buying what took their fancy, when suddenly the Phoinikian sailors passed the word round and made a rush at them. Most got away, but Io and some others were grabbed and bustled aboard the ship, which cast off at once and made for Egypt.’ The Phoinikians however declared that Io had been going to bed with the captain and was pregnant; ashamed to face her parents, she sailed off of her own accord; no force was used. Later, Herodotos goes on, some Greeks called in at Tyre and carried off the king’s daughter Europa in revenge. Next, other Greeks in an armed merchant ship sailed to Kolchis in the Black Sea and abducted Medeia; her father demanded reparations, but got nothing. Then some forty or fifty years later Paris ‘was inspired by these tales to steal a wife out of Greece, confident that he’d not have to pay for the exploit any more than the Greeks had done. And that was how he came to carry off Helen.’ The first idea of the Greeks was to demand satisfaction and Helen’s return. Their demand was countered by a reference to the seizure of Medeia and the injustice of expecting satisfaction from people to whom they had themselves refused it, not to mention the fact that they had kept the girl.

Thus far there had been nothing worse than women thefts on either side; but for what happened next, they say, the Greeks were badly to blame; for they were in a military sense the aggressors. To carry off women is not indeed, in the Persian view, a lawful act; but after the event it is stupid to make such a fuss over it. The only sensible thing is to ignore the whole matter; obviously no young woman lets herself be abducted against her will. The Asiatics indeed took the seizure of their women lightly enough, but not so the Greeks. They, merely on account of a girl from Sparta, raised a large army, invaded Asia, and wiped out Priam’s empire. From that root sprang the easterners’ belief in the unceasing enmity of the Greek world towards them: Asia with its various foreign-speaking folks under the Persians. Such then was the Persians’ position. ‘In their view it was the capture of Troy that first made them enemies of the Greeks.’

There is of course no historical validity in these arguments which rationalize the myths of Io, Europa, Medeia, and attribute to the second millennium BC the same lay-out of peoples, the same sort of state systems, as existed in Herodotos’ own day. (We must note however that he claims to be giving the ideas of the Persians, which are not necessarily his own.)[179]

Again near the end of his History he links the Persian and the Trojan Wars. The region of the Hellespont was governed by a Persian Artayktes, ‘who got hold of the treasures of Protesilaos, son of Iphiklos’, one of the Achaian heroes of the Trojan War — treasures ‘that were at Elaios in the Chersonnese, where that hero’s tomb stands, surrounded by a plot of sacred ground. There was much there of value, gold and silver cups, bronze, rich garments, and other things which had been offered at his tomb.’ Artayktes took it all and told Xerxes, ‘There is the house here of a Greek who made war on your country and met the death he deserved. Give me his house. It will be a lesson in the future to men not to do as he did.’ He carried off the treasure to Sestos, turned the enclosure over to agricultural use, and, when visiting Elaios, took his women into the sanctuary.

The traditions thus put into Persian mouths, it has been argued, come in fact from the logopoioi (prose-writers, chroniclers) Akousilaos, Pherekydes, perhaps Hekataios. But there is no reason why we should not take Herodotos at his word and believe that he did hear similar comments on the Trojan War from Phoinikians and Persians. What is striking is his complete rationalization of myth and the reinterpretation of the Trojan War brought about by the conflicts with the Persians. The fratricidal struggle of the Mykenean world has been turned into a struggle between East and West.[180]

In Book II he deals with Helen in Egypt. He treats Proteus as a pharaoh, a native of Memphis, where he still had a sacred precinct; the whole area was called the Camp of the Tyrians on account of Phoinikians from Tyre who had occupied the houses. ‘Within the enclosure is a temple dedicated to Aphrodite the Stranger. Myself I’d guess it was built in honour of Helen, Tyndareos’ daughter, not only because I’ve heard it said that she spent some time at Proteus’ court, but also, and more particularly, because of the description of Aphrodite as the Stranger, a title never given to this goddess in any other temples of hers. I questioned the priests about Helen’s story, and in reply they told me that Paris was on his way home from Sparta with his stolen bride when, somewhere in the Aegean Sea, he struck bad weather, which drove his ship towards Egypt. At last, with the gale as wild as ever, he found himself on the coast and managed to get ashore at the salt-pans in the Nile mouth now called the Kanopic.’ On the shore was a temple of Herakles. If a slave took refuge there and had the signs (tattooing?) of the god’s service set on his body, his master could not reclaim him. (The custom was still being carried on.) Some of Paris’ servants fled into the temple and told the tale of Paris’ behaviour, both to the priest and the warden of that Nile mouth, Thonis. Thonis sent a despatch to Proteus at Memphis. ‘A Trojan stranger has arrived here from Greece, where he was guilty of a villainous crime. First he seduced his host’s wife, then carried her off with a great deal of valuable property. Stress of weather has forced him to land on this coast. Are we to let him sail away in possession of his stolen goods, or are we to confiscate them?’

Proteus ordered Paris to be arrested and sent to Memphis. Thonis then took Helen, the treasure and the refugee servants to the same place. Questioned, Paris told who he was, and described his voyage; but when asked about Helen, he grew evasive till his servants blabbed what had happened. Proteus said that he had never put to death anyone driven on to his shores, or he would have punished Paris. ‘You are a scoundrel. You seduced your friend’s wife, and, as if that weren’t enough, persuaded her to run off with you on the wings of the passion you aroused. Even that wasn’t all. You had to take along also the treasure stolen from your friend’s house. But though I can’t punish a stranger with death, I won’t let you get away with your ill-gotten gains. I’ll keep the woman and the treasure till the Greek to whom they belong chooses to come and claim them. As for you and the companions of your voyage, I give you three days to leave my country and find anchorage elsewhere. If you’re not gone by then, I’ll treat you as enemies.’

Herodotos adds: ‘That account I had from the priests about Helen’s arrival at Proteus’ court. I think Homer was familiar with the story; for though he rejected it as less suitable for epic poetry than the one he did use, he left signs that it wasn’t unknown to him. For instance, telling in the Iliad of Paris’ wanderings — and he doesn’t contradict the account elsewhere — he says that in the course of them he brought Helen to Sidon.’ He then cites a passage from the Iliad, and two passages from the Odyssey, to illustrate this point. (The two latter ones may have been added later, as the intrusion of Menelaos breaks the run of the argument.)[181] He also uses the mention of the Sidon visit to prove that Homer did not write the Cypria.

He goes on: ‘I asked the priests if the Greek account of events at Troy had any truth in it; and in reply they gave me information which they claimed to have got from Menelaos in person. This was that after Helen’s abduction the Greeks sent a strong force to the Troad in support of Menelaos’ cause, and that, as soon as the men landed and established themselves on Trojan soil, envoys, who included Menelaos, were sent to Troy. Received within the walls, they demanded Helen’s restoration together with the treasures Paris had stolen, and so satisfaction for their injuries. But the Trojans gave them an answer to which they always afterwards adhered, at times even swearing to its truth: that neither Helen nor the treasure was in their hands, but both were in Egypt, and there was no justice in trying to force them to give satisfaction for property detained by the Egyptian king Proteus. The Greeks, taking this to be a mere frivolous response, laid siege to the town and did not desist till it fell. But no Helen was found; and they were still told the same story, till at last they believed it and sent Menelaos to visit Proteus in Egypt.’ He sailed up the Nile to Memphis and there regained Helen and the property. But ‘when long detained by adverse winds, he seized two Egyptian children and offered them up in sacrifice. The discovery of this vile deed changed the friendship of the Egyptians to hatred; he was pursued but succeeded in getting off with his ships to Libya.’ Where he then went, the Egyptians could not say. ‘They told me they’d learned some of these events by inquiry, but spoke with certain knowledge of those that occurred in their own land.’ He adds that he accepted their version, because if Helen had been in Troy the Trojans would have handed her over. ‘I cannot believe that Priam or any kinsman of his was mad enough to be ready to risk his own life, and his children’s lives, with the city’s safety, only to let Paris go on living as Helen’s husband.’ As things grew worse, the madness of holding on to Helen would have been even more incredible. ‘I repeat, in such circumstances there can be little doubt that even if Helen had been wife of Priam the king, he’d have given her back.’ Paris was not even heir to the throne; Hektor, a better man, held that position and would never have tolerated his brother’s lawless behaviour, especially as it caused such distress to himself and every other Trojan; the only explanation is that Helen was not there. However, even with all this rationalization, which completely throws out all the Homeric presuppositions, Herodotos tries to save a fragment of the plan of Zeus. He states that he does not hesitate ‘to declare that the Greeks’ refusal to accept the truth was inspired by providence in order that the utter destruction of the Trojans might plainly prove to mankind that sin is always visited by condign punishment at God’s hands.’ But as in his version only Paris sins and the others fail to return Helen merely because they have not got her, it is hard to see how this moralizing applies. (Helen is not here altogether free from guilt; but her role is minimized and Aphrodite does not appear at all.)

Critics have often said that Herodotos is drawing on Stesichoros and Hekataios, plus the parts of the Odyssey that tell of Menelaos’ wanderings. But he does not seem to be aware of the eidolon tradition, unless he is concerned to rationalize it quite away; and there is no reason why we should not take him at his word and accept the fact that tales about Helen were current in Egypt, even if he has fitted them together in as plausible a way as possible. The existence of the sanctuary of Aphrodite the Stranger, which he mentions, supports the thesis that Greek legends were well known in the Delta; and we may assume that at least the general lines of Homeric epics were familiar to educated Phoinikians, Persians and Egyptians. The priests of the latter people, with their learned traditions and their wish to enhance their country’s prestige, would certainly have absorbed much of Greek mythology and have elaborated any elements linked with their own past. The ignoble role played by Menelaos and the glorification of Proteus as a righteous monarch seem their work, though the version they took up may have originated in a simpler form in Sparta, like the story of the eidolon. Stesichoros, we recall, had sent Helen to Egypt, though not with Paris.[182] We may assume that there was a Greek (Spartan) account of Helen in Egypt less favourable to the Egyptians than that extracted by Herodotos, but it seems to have dealt with the travels of Menelaos and his wife there. At least in Hellanikos, Thonis, who plays the kingly role in place of Proteus, tried to take Helen by force, thus leading on to Theoklymenos in Euripides’ Helena. But we have no evidence that Hellanikos rationalized the story as Herodotos did, though it has been argued that he did so, and thus affected Herodotos, who here in Book II treats the Trojan War in a perspective different from that of his prelude, where, however, he was setting out the Persian view.

During the fifth century the tales of Theseus ravishing Helen were expanded. Hellanikos (c. 490), an historian of Lesbos who tried to work out a chronological framework for his material, though criticized by Thoukydides for the period 480-30, tells of the mutual oath sworn by Theseus and Peirithoos to carry off daughters of Zeus.[183] Influenced by the discussion of the Iliadic word kouridiē, he declared that Helen was only seven years old when Theseus took her away. Following writers, such as Diodoros, Ploutarch, Pausanias, Hyginus, repeat the tale with minor variations, but agree in making Helen from nine to twelve years of age; Apollodoros makes her twelve and Theseus more than fifty; Loukian makes her not yet nubile, but by the time she arrived at Troy, ‘very old, almost as old as Hekabe’.[184]

We may perhaps see Helen in art works where a woman is set between two naked young warriors who take her by arm or wrist, or where a man is about to lift a woman into a chariot while his companion holds the reins or keeps enemies off. The amphora of Euthymedes, however, has names inscribed. Peirithoos on the left, turns to a young woman who is running up (on the other face), while Helen’s attendant Korone tries to stop Theseus from lifting her mistress up and driving her off. Theseus is here shown in a new beardless type, though his friend is bearded. (The names of Korone and Helen have been assigned to the wrong figures by the painter.) In other inscriptions we find Korone as an Amazon or an hetaira. Probably there was a notorious whore with the name at the time; and on the amphora the artist has amused himself by bringing together two women famed for their beauty. On another vase we perhaps see Helen snatched off among her girl friends at what may be the entry to a sanctuary. On a Hellenistic bowl with reliefs Theseus is depicted holding an unwilling Helen at the back of a chariot driven fast by Peirithoos to Corinth. In a second scene Theseus tenderly embraces the girl as they advance on foot to Athens. ‘Theseus, having carried Helen off, first [takes] her to Corinth, then to Athens...’[185]

With Aischylos (c. 525-456) we find the Helen theme bursting with full force into the world of tragic drama. He was about thirty-five at the time of the Battle of Marathon; the thirteen successes in the theatre which are attributed to him occurred between 486 and 470 when Kymon brought the Persian War to an end with a double victory. His deepest idea was that the world was ruled by justice and that sooner or later misdeeds bred their retribution; the fates of the actors in the great myths had a pattern which, if realized in its fullness, illuminated all human life, that of an individual and that of a whole people. He could accept no easy ways out, no loose generalizations: for instance that Zeus willed the Trojan War (to disencumber the earth of men or to stop gods and men mating) and that Helen was thus fated to embroil Trojans and Achaians. Both Helen and Paris were guilty, and Aischylos sought to work the issues out in his Oresteia.

Paris by his act has roused the wrath of Zeus Xenios; he has outraged the bonds that preserve human dignity, self-respect, and respect for one’s fellows. The motive force of the war is no longer the enmity of Hera and Athena for Troy; Zeus Xenios is the power sending punishment on Paris for his lybris and his country for its complicity. Now the moral issue is what matters, not in the narrow vein which we saw emerging in the lyric poets as the epic conceptions broke down, and which was countered only by a growing stress on the beauty of Helen; rather it is the moral issue enlarged in scope so as to embrace Trojans and Achaians alike, and to illuminate the conflicts rending the poet’s own world. Problems of free will invade the old field of obsessions inflicted by daimonic power. ‘Temptation leads him forward wretchedly, the child of his deliberate curse.’ Atē is conscious, deliberate; men know what they are doing.[186]

Helen is as guilty, as responsible, as Paris. ‘Helen has gone and left us for our share spear-clang, shield-clang, and clatter as the docks awaken; sure Ruin for her dowry she has taken as she passed lightly through the gate, daring what no one well may dare.’ Her very name reveals the doom she brings: ‘Ship-hell, man-hell, city-hell, Helen.’ She makes herself a priestess of atē; she is the Erinys sent by Zeus Xenios to make brides weep. Thus she reachieves a daimonic existence, but without the innocence of Homer’s Helen. She and Paris know what they are doing, but they do it out of a mad absorption in themselves, which refuses to recognize the social consequences of their action. ‘Woe, woe for mad Helen: one woman who has destroyed so many lives, so very many lives under Troy.’ There is a new force, as well as a new question, in this passionate accusation. Helen is paranous, mad with her own beauty, but therefore all the less excusable. Atē and Erinys merge with her beautiful presence, with Aphrodite as her daimonic self; a new integration is created, using the same ingredients as Homer, but orientating the whole in a new direction, with a new comprehension of history.[187]

The guilt of Paris and Helen lights up a whole world of guilt, which includes the Atreids who are wronged. ‘Zeus demands the penalty. He curbs the reckless leaders who began a war to please their heaving lust, though wealth had crammed their store-rooms to excess. O, let me live untouched by guilt!’ Hence the widening ring of murder and hate which encloses Agamemnon after the war.

At the same time Helen is the beauty of the world, however that beauty may have been perverted by self-pride, self-indulgence, hybris and atē. She has been perverted, yet the loss of her enfeebles and destroys life. The point is well brought out in the passage describing Menelaos’ lonely grief: ‘Woe for the house, the man left desolate, her yielding body dinted on the bed. Behold the silence scorned yet uncomplaining of him who sits apart with care. He yearns, but still the sundering sea denies. Queen of his house, a ghost is reigning. He looks with grudging hate on gracious effigies there, and in his empty eyes all Aphrodite has fled.’ Helen has become here a phasma of dream and anguish, deep in daily experience, not a cheating eidolon in an allegory. Menelaos looks on the statues about him, and they are dead. The term used is kolossoi, meaning something like effigies, substitution images. At Midea have been found the first funerary effigies known in mainland Greece, the first kolossoi. The custom of such images had died out long before the fifth century, but by the reference Aischylos achieves a certain magical effect. (Admetos in Euripides’ play says to Alkestis: ‘I’ll find a skilled craftsman to carve your likeness and I’ll lay it in your bed, I’ll kneel by it and throw my arms round it....In my dreams you’d come to cheer me.’)[188]

*

How to treat Helen? This question is continually raised by the motif of her confrontation with Menelaos in Troy. With the aid of vase paintings we can make out on the northern metopes of the Parthenon the mutilated figures of two advancing warriors, with Helen fleeing and touching the shoulder of a cult-statue. Between her and Menelaos seems to stand Aphrodite with a small Eros flying from her shoulder to the enraged husband with a crown or phiale. (Who is with Menelaos? Odysseus seems unlikely.) On an oinoche (about 430-25) Menelaos, naked but armed, chases Helen. The sword falls from his hand and a small Eros flies up with a garland, sent by Aphrodite. The goddess faces the husband, drawing up her cloak; Helen with disordered hair and frantic gesture of defiance, grips Athena’s cult-statue on a stepped altar; her breasts are not bare. On the left, separated from the scene by a floral decoration, stands Peitho (Persuasion) with a flowering sprig in her lifted hand.[189]

The psychologizing trend appears fully worked out in an amphoriskos dated soon after 430. Helen, at centre, sits on Aphrodite’s knees, with hand on chin in meditation; she is at the moment of choice. The goddess has her right arm over her shoulders. Behind Helen Peitho holds a toilet-coffer. Over on the right stands Paris, left hand on hip, with lance and slung sword, naked but for a cloak over his arm. Olive-crowned, he looks down at long-winged Eros, who holds his right forearm and shoulder, bending as he stares up with intense eyes. The inscription Ime(ros) shows that he personifies Desire. At each outer side stands a pair. On the left two women watch with interest, one leaning on the other’s shoulder and pointing a finger of accusation at Helen. Above the first woman’s head is inscribed Nemesis; near the second we can made out ‘..y.e’. On the right two other women face one another, seeming unimplicated in the scene; the one nearer to Paris has her back turned to the main actors and looks at a bird held by her companion, but she is marked Heimar(mene), Destiny.[190]

This work is linked with the expansion of Nemesis’ cult in Attika. She appears here both as Helen’s mother and as a goddess concerned with the moral effect of actions. The woman by her could be Tyche (Chance) or Oupis, a surname both of Nemesis and Artemis. The composition suggests that Nemesis and her companion are very interested in Helen’s choice, but Destiny turns away, assured that all will go as she wills. Peitho, however, plays so important a role, linked with Aphrodite, that we see the course of fate is not unconnected with inner conflicts, while Nemesis supplies the moral question. Helen is shown surrounded by a large complex of forces and motivations: sexual fascination, persuasion (involving matters of social prestige, self-expression, personal satisfaction), and fate pressures of varying kinds. We are approaching the world of Euripides.[191]

Peitho is not known to Homer, but with his dislike of such figures the absence proves little. Hesiod knew her as an Okeanid. Given the august title of potnia, she put golden necklaces on the new-made Pandora with the Graces, while Athena knotted the girdle. She seems certainly more than an emanation of Aphrodite. Alkman, Ibykos and Anakreon knew her. It has been suggested that she came into the Trojan tale through Stesichoros, but she may well have been in the Cypria. Sappho was fascinated by her, as we would expect; she made her Aphrodite’s servant or even merged her with the goddess herself. Peitho appears on vases of the severe style, which are often influenced by the Cypria, in representations of the abduction. She is shown as an attendant of Aphrodite, holding a flower in her hand. In black-figure and works of the severe style young folk often hold flowers, which do not even symbolize femininity. Peitho is a sort of bridesmaid of the marriage, agent and companion of Aphrodite.[192]

*

With Euripides the psychological and moralizing trends reach their climax. Helen and her whole world are stripped of all pretences and idealizations. Euripides is not concerned with the heroic values of epic; he treats men like Agamemnon and Menelaos as if they were the politicians and war-leaders of the fifth century. The link is that both the ancient heroes and the contemporary politicians are hellbent on destroying their societies; but the totality within which each operates has deeply different values and aims. Euripides returns again and again to the theme of the Trojan War in order to set out his world-view, his idea of the destructive forces at work inside Athenian democracy, the hybris of the leaders with their power lust, greed, and disregard of human values — all that Thoukydides set out succinctly, with terrible clarity, in his Melian Dialogue, where we see the raw material of evil which the poets generalized and exposed with relentless truth.

Helen, as the symbol of desire in such a world, suffers most of all the actors. She is revealed with increasing repugnance as a completely odious character. The plea that she acted in self-preservation is broken down till we see the cold core of her calculated coquettishness and vanity; she is obsessed with her abundant hair and ceaselessly occupied with the toilet, with mirrors and golden sandals. When she sends Hermione to put on the tomb of her sister Klytemnaistra a lock of her hair, she gives her only a small snippet. Elektra cries, ‘See, she’s cut the mere tips of her tresses. She’s always the same.’ The plea that she was compelled by Aphrodite is mocked away. Hekabe jeers, ‘My son was of a rare comeliness, and it’s your own spirit which at the sight of him became Cypris.’ Menelaos remarks, ‘Of her own free will she left her home for a stranger’s bed. Cypris was thrown in only as a bit of brag.’ Her beauty may be fatal, provoking all sorts of crimes, but it has no spirit basis. She prattles away in self-important tones, ‘Since my departure for Troy, where some strange fate, I don’t know what, took me...’ She claims that Achilles had been a suitor of hers. (Euripides is not innovating in this matter; he is making her reveal her vanity with a lie which everyone in his audience could see through.) All who know her accept that she has no morals. Hekabe reproaches Menelaos for leaving her unguarded; Peleus upbraids him for leaving ‘the worst of flirts’ alone with a Phrygian. The old excuses for her provided by the Plan of Zeus are mentioned only to be made to sound hollow. She suffers continual insults. She is DysHelena, Erinys, Miastōr (polluted and polluting) of all Hellas; her sister calls her margos (mad, rampant with lust); to Hekabe she is the loathed of the gods; to Andromache, the atē of the marriage-bed; to Peleus, the worst of all women. The climax in the exposure comes in the scene of the Trojan Women between Helen, Hekabe and Menelaos. Helen tries to keep up the mythological positions which ignore her personal responsibility, and Hekabe mocks them away with rational interpretations, bringing everything down to the simply human level. Here we have the sophistic play of pro and contra used with much gusto and vigour, but at root the poet is in deadly earnest. In stripping Helen, he is breaking down a vast complex of traditional ideas and attitudes, which he considers to be disastrous, providing a veil behind which power lust and greed can carry on unhindered.[193]

Hard-pressed, Helen progresses from a modest and apologetic tone to one of violence and aggression. She begins by accusing Hekabe of being the mother of all the troubles (that is, of Paris); Aphrodite has played a decisive role throughout; anyway the result of conflicts has been the supremacy of Greece over the Orient; she followed Paris only as the directed favourite of Aphrodite; Menelaos was to blame for so imprudently leaving her alone; and the responsibility for all the events lies with Aphrodite, who at times subdues even Zeus. She did her best, she claims, to escape from Troy. At the death of Paris the marriage arranged by the gods no longer existed; she attempted to leave her house and reach the Achaians. ‘I take as witnesses the guards of the towers and the sentinels of the ramparts; they often surprised me hung by a cord from the battlements and letting my body slip furtively to the ground.’ But Deiphobos wanted to keep her.

Hekabe in her reply is sarcastic, pitiless. All the mythological arguments are brushed aside. Not Aphrodite but Helen’s uncontrollable desire for luxury made her go off with Paris; no force was used. (Helen had described herself as forced — by the power of Aphrodite; Hekabe insists on taking the term literally.) At Troy she was an opportunist, vacillating with the changes of fortune on the two sides. When Menelaos was succeeding, she praised him to torment Paris; she swung round when the Trojans were doing well. ‘You watched the course of Fortune [Tyche] and followed her; you’d no concern for Virtue.’ That she tried to run off was a pack of lies; and she never tried to kill herself. Her one enduring motive was the wish to enjoy oriental luxury.

Menelaos, before he sees Helen, is eager to have her killed or to take her back to Greece for excution there. ‘Drag her out by the hair that reeks of murder.’ He does not want the debate. ‘I haven’t come to argue but to kill.’ When Helen and Hekabe have made their speeches, he still talks of death. ‘Get off to the stoners!’ He tells Helen to die and not dishonour him. She sinks down and clasps his knees, and he weakens, while trying to preserve his severe tone. But he has lost his resolution. Helen seeks to evade responsibility, ‘Don’t impute to me an evil come from the gods, don’t kill me, forgive me.’ He says that she is not to die till they reach Greece. The chorus of Trojan women lament that they are going into slavery, while Helen will be free to smile into her golden mirrors. (In the Andromache her daughter Hermione is shown as being as unpleasant as her mother.) In depicting the final triumph of Helen Euripides is following the tradition set out by the painter Polygnotos in the early classical period; his Sack of Troy in the leschē (clubhouse) of the Knidians at Delphoi showed Helen a prisoner yet enthroned among the lamenting Trojan women. ‘Briseis stands there with Diomede above her and Iphis in front of both of them; they seem to be scrutinizing Helen’s beauty. Helen herself is seated, with Eurybates near. I supposed he was Odysseus’ herald, though he didn’t yet have a beard. The handmaids Elektra and Panthalis are there; the latter stands next to Helen while Elektra binds sandals on her mistress’ feet.’[194]

In the five plays where Menelaos appears (apart from Helena) he is made ridiculous and despicable, a coward drawn on by a degrading passion, ready to sacrifice any number of men for his own end. He has one good impulse in Iphigeneia in Aulis, but ironically it occurs too late to have effect. There is some conflict in the accounts given of his confrontation with Helen. In the Trojan Women, as we saw, he calls for her death and others drag her out. But in the Andromache Peleus reproaches him: ‘As soon as you saw her breast, you threw your sword away and welcomed her kiss. You caressed this traitress bitch, you yielded to Cypris, you vile coward.’ Efforts have been made unnecessarily to reconcile the two versions.[195]

By the later fifth century Paris has become a gorgeous easterner under pressure of the ideas about the Trojan War which we noted in Herodotos. The first seeds of this image may have been present in the Cypria with its emphasis on the fine presents he brings to Sparta; later a fresco or vase may have shown him as a rich Phrygian. But such representations seem to appear only late in the fifth century, largely under Euripides’ influence. Thus an Attic hydria of the century’s last quarter shows Paris dressed in magnificent Phrygian vestments at the Judgement.[196] For some time however before 450 oriental elements had been coming in and vulgarizing Athenian middle-class culture. Eastern themes were the fight of Arimaspians with griffins, the fight of Phrygians with Amazons, the groups of Phrygians or Mainads with the god Sabazios. On vases of the late fifth or early fourth century a young Phrygian chases a woman or she is surrounded by a group of Phrygians. The image haunts Euripides. Paris is said to come to Sparta ‘flowery with his raiment, glistening with gold barbaric fripperies’. Hekabe taunts Helen, ‘You saw my son with his barbaric bravery, aglitter with gold, and your senses were distraught.’ The Kyklops makes a joke of the way she lost her head over his variegated loose trousers and his golden collar (klōion, a word used also for dog-collar and the wooden collar of prisoners).[197]

About 423 in the Andromache Euripides evoked the birth of Paris as a child with a curse. In 415 he wrote a trilogy: Alexandros, Palamedes and the Trojan Women — covering the whole war and developing with tragic insight the whole question of human responsibility. We now have a considerable part of the Alexandros and can reconstruct it; many points are still controversial, but the main pattern is clear.[198] The scene is Troy with the altar of Zeus Herkeios (of the front court, the household god) in middle of the stage; at the back, Priam’s palace and the sanctuary of Apollo. Priam enters, doubtless with a bird-tipped sceptre. Funeral games are being held for the son long past exposed on Ida as a baby; purifications are needed to stop various troubles come on the land. Paris as a herdsman wins in the games, unrecognized by his parents who still mourn for him; and Deiphobos, resenting the victory of a slave, quarrels with Hektor, trying to rouse him. Paris on his entry makes a strong denuncia-tion of wealth and praises poverty. ‘Wealth is unjust, it often makes a man swerve from the right. Poverty, however hard to bear, gives children a better school of endurance and energy.’ Priam confirms his claim to victory. The chorus of shepherds carry on the attack against the pride of the nobles. ‘True nobility lies in reason and intelligence, gifts of God not of money.’ The identity of Paris is at last revealed — by prophetic Kassandra, by Aphrodite arriving ex machina, by an old servant, or by Alexandros himself. (Tokens appear as proofs: birthmarks, valuables, or toys left with the baby.) At the end Aphrodite comes down from heaven to announce that Paris will gain the loveliest woman of Greece and that the whole thing is the will of Zeus, ‘who, wishing the Trojans’ misfortune and the trial of the Greeks, has formed this design’. Such a comment hardly seems encouraging and would fit better in the mouth of Kassandra than Aphrodite.[199]

A dozen years or so earlier Sophokles had written an Alexandros, which may have suggested to Euripides his previous references to young Paris and the dream of Hekabe. The child seems here to have been exposed in a pot of earth and nourished by a bear, though reared by a shepherd’s wife like the Persian Kyros (as told by Herodotos). In Sophokles’ Aleades, Telephos, exposed at birth, is fed by a hind and reared by herdsmen; he takes part in games at Tegea and beats the local nobility; the chorus reproach him with low birth; finally after a quarrel with his uncles he is recognized.[200]

There is a general contemporary reference in Euripides’ trilogy, with a particular point in the Alexandros. The moment is that of the Sicilian expedition connected with Alkibiades. Euripides is opposing war expeditions overseas, suggesting that events which seem at first to be all for the good, with the blessing of heaven upon them, can be the prelude to disaster, and that fascinating young leaders with a demagogic turn can be the worst omens for their country.[201]

Paris could be both prince and herdsman; but it has been argued that the earliest vases show him in his royal status. However, it is impossible to prove this point. An argument against the early coexistence of traditions about Paris as an exposed baby and a herdsman visited by the three goddesses is the extreme difficulty of fitting his arrival at the funeral games and his decision in the beauty contest in any convincing sequence. If the judgement occurred before the games, he is then already a man fated for great exploits and the advent of Aphrodite is not needed; if it occurred after the games, why has he gone back to his herds on Ida? There is as great a problem in making chronological sense of the various references to doom prophecies by Helenos or Kassandra.[202] In the Alexandros, at some point Kassandra seems to go into the temple of Apollo and emerge prophetically distracted. The version of the theme by the Latin poet Ennius (which like that in Hyginus is based on our play) states that she refers to the coming Judgement. Also, Deiphobos plans to kill Paris; this is a theme found on a series of Etruscan urns.[203]

In Helena Euripides makes a complete volte-face. Helen, who had been the most degraded of vanity-stricken coquettes, becomes a wholly blameless wife. She had been spirited off by Hermes from Paris and taken to Egypt, while Paris carried off the eidolon fashioned by Hera. For a while king Proteus protects her; then he died and his son Theoklymenos wants to possess her; she takes refuge at Proteus’ tomb. A stranded Greek tells her what has happened since she was carried off; a prophetess, Theonoē, sister of Theoklymenos, tells her that Menelaos disappeared seven years ago on his return journey from Troy. Then, on to an empty stage comes Menelaos himself, to tell of his wanderings. He knocks at the palace door and learns of Helen’s presence. They meet and plan their escape, which they manage with Theonoē’s aid. Menelaos in disguise announces his own death at sea and Helen gains permission to take offerings out for him. The Dioskouroi, who had related Helen’s apotheosis at the end of the Orestes, again appear here to save Theonoē from her brother’s wrath.[204]

The advent of the Twins in the Orestes has a deliberately jarring note, imposing the mythological interpretation on the realistic scene of Helen’s disastrous presence. Just what Euripides meant is a matter of opinion; the effect on the stage is of a savage parody, intended to shock the audience with the vast gap between reality and accepted values. But however that may be, the picture drawn of the actual Helen is one of ruthless devaluation. There is then no comparison with the presentation in the Helena, where we see Helen in action and find her unlike anything in previous poetry except in the palinodes of Stesichoros. Euripides indeed has taken the versions in that poet and in Herodotos, and merged them into his own picture of the virtuous Helen. The traditional Plan of Zeus (to lighten the world of its weight of men) is stated without irony; but Helen mentions the myths about herself without much conviction. ‘My father was Tyndareos. The story goes that Zeus had taken the form of swan and flew to my mother Leda. Fleeing from an eagle, he took his pleasure of her by guile — if the tale is true.’ Later she says that her mother bore a portent, for never before did Greek or barbarian ‘bring forth the white vase of a fledgling brood [the egg] in which men say that Leda bore me to Zeus.’ And she says of her Twin Brothers that they are ‘called the Sons of Zeus’. However, they appear at the end to announce that she will be carried with Menelaos to the Blessed Isles. They add that the island by the Attic coast from which Hermes wafted her to Egypt will be called Helena after her. (If Paris had taken her as far as that, it is hard to see how she had escaped violation by him; but Kranae is brought in to link the story with Attika. The island is certainly not Pharos, as has been suggested.).[205]

The play has been taken as a parody or as a completely serious attempt to whitewash Helen. It is certainly neither. From one angle it is a highly romantic play, full of excitement: a barbarian king is foiled and Greek exiles escape to their homeland. But Euripides fuses this romantic note with his unceasing antiwar propaganda. Now, instead of rebuking men for creating endless misery in their quest of unworthy ends (Helen the slut), he tells them that their wars and greeds have a mere illusion or mirage as their goal. The key statement is that of the chorus of captive Greek women: the fighters of wars are madmen. ‘If emulation in massacre is to decide disputes, discord [eris] will never end among the cities of men.’

By treating the Spartan heroine in such a sympathetic way, and by linking her with Attika through the island Helena, Euripides stresses his message of peace and amity. In a song Helen describes herself gathering fresh rose-petals and filling her robe with them when she is snatched up into the aither. This account contradicts what the Twins say of Kranae-Helena, but it provides a peace note; for Helen adds that she had meant to take the flowers to Athena of the Brazen House. The poet wants to remind his audience that Athena is worshipped by both Athenians and Spartans. Aristophanes does just the same at the end of his Lysistrata, where, in the joyous dance of peace and love that unites the women of both sides, the final word is with Helen, who leads the dance-song, and with Athena of the Brazen House. Helen with her flowers also suggests Persephone at Enna when Hades arrives to carry her off. At Megalopolis in Arkadia, in the sanctuary of the Great Goddesses, Demeter and Korē, with the cult-title of Soteira (Saviour), before the fifteen-foot images are ‘small maids in tunics down to the ankles, each bearing on her head a basket full of flowers. They are said to be Damophon’s daughters,’ says Pausanias, ‘but those who refer back to a more divine interpretation’, one drawn from the Mysteries, ‘hold they are Athena and Artemis gathering flowers with Persephone,’ a triad, we may note. Tertullian refers to Ceres’ priestess being carried off in the Mysteries in place of Ceres (Demeter, properly Persephone) herself; such drōmena would keep alive the sense of the great ritual importance of the carrying-off theme. In Aristophanes’ Acharnians, Diakiopolis, who concludes a private peace with Sparta, sets out a mock account of the Peloponnesian War. Some young men, getting drunk as they played at the kottabos, went to Megara and carried off a prostitute Simaitha (simos: with snub or flat nose); the Megarians in return stole two whores from Aspasia (as if she ran a brothel). ‘So the outset of the war arose for all Greeks from three tarts. Then Perikles, the Olympian, in his wrath lightened, thundered, utterly confounded Greece.’

There seem no artworks that show Helen in Egypt weeping for her husband. But Aristophanes, in his Thesmophoria Zousai, brings out how the theme of Helen Innocent surprised the public. He introduced a parody of the play. Euripides, trying to rescue Mnesilochos from the women, enacted a scene: he as Menelaos, Mnesilochos as Helen. The episode of recognition was ridiculed; the appearance of Menelaos in rags made people laugh. But the play itself was not taken as a joke; it had at least something of the impact intended by Euripides, startling his audience and perhaps making them think about the issues of war and peace. It had no lasting effect, however, on the tradition.[206]

*

The theme of Helen and Paris was exploited by other tragic poets, but we know little of the works. We have noticed the Alexandros of Sophokles (c. 496-06); he also wrote Helenes Apaitesis (Demand for Helen’s Return) which no doubt dealt with the embassy of Menelaos and Odysseus. It seems that Helen, after an interview with Menelaos, wanted to return home, and, when the Trojans refused to let her go, she contemplated suicide. (This humanized Helen is far from the daimonic woman of Homer.) The Antenoridai may be the same play, since Antenor was the wise Trojan elder who gave hospitality to the envoys and advised his fellows to restore Helen. (In later accounts he saved the lives of the envoys and planned on an embassy to Agamemnon to betray Troy and deliver up the palladion. When Troy was sacked, a panther-skin was hung before his house to show that it must not be outraged — a motif used by Polygnotos in his Sack. There was also a story that before the war he was sent by Priam to claim Hesione, who had been carried off by the Greeks, but failed. This failure was reckoned among the causes of the war by Dares Phrygios.) There may have been also Helenes Harpage (Carrying-off of Helen), mentioned in the argument to Aias, but this may be an error for the Apaitesis; it has also been identified with a satyric drama by Sophokles, Helen’s Marriage.[207]

The dramatist Theodektos took Helen for the central figure in his play Helena; and Dikaiogenes, contemporary of Aristophanes, wrote a Cypria, in which he described someone bursting into tears at the sight of a picture — Menelaos before an image of Helen? The passage does not recall the Helen of Zeuxis’ painting, as has been suggested, but the account of the husband’s desolation in Aischylos’ Agamemnon. Diogenes of Sinope also wrote a Helena.[208]

In satyric drama and comedy many poets used Helen and her war. A small kyathos, perhaps of the early fifth century, seems to recall such a drama: a warrior draws his sword from its sheath and chases a woman who runs off, opening her himation; on the left a satyr prepares to throw a stone. The themes of Helen’s abduction and return supplied material for endless jests and parodies, but we know for the most part only the titles of the works. In Old Comedy there was the Helene of Philillis; in New Comedy we have a fragment of Alexis’ Helene (perhaps the same as the Harpage and the Suitors); Anaximandros and Alexandros each wrote a Helen play. The argument of the Dionysalexandros of Kratinos has been preserved in a papyrus. The chorus of satyrs ‘address the audience on behalf of (?) the poet, and when Dionysos appears, they mock and jeer at him. He is offered by Hera irresistible power, by Athena success in war, and by Aphrodite the prospect of becoming the most beautiful and beloved of men; so he gives the victory to Aphrodite. Afterwards he sets sail for Lakedaimon, carries off Helen, and goes back to Ida. Hearing soon after that the Achaians are ravaging the country, he takes refuge with Alexandros, hides Helen in a basket like a goose, and turns himself into a ram to await the event. Alexandros comes up and detects them both. He orders them to be led away to the ships with the intention of delivering them up to the Achaians. But when Helen shrinks from this, he takes pity on her and keeps her as his wife, though he sends off Dionysos to be delivered up. Dionysos is accompanied by the satyrs, who encourage him and say that they won’t desert him. In the play Perikles is satirized with great plausibility by innuendo for bringing the war upon the Athenians.’ There is a gap after talaros, basket, which has been filled with tyron (cheese), but ornin or chēna is more likely, as Athenaios uses talaros as a bird-basket. Paris does not seem to play much of a part in the drama; he turns up as a herdsman on Ida by chance. It has been suggested that Kratinos was rehabilitating him as a chivalric character; but in fact he seems a minor figure merely needed for the discomfiture of Dionysos-Perikles and to bring the aberrations of the play back to an orthodox point of the legend. The date seems 430-29. Goose-Helen may derive from the Rhamnousian cult of Nemesis, which was expanding its influence at this moment.[209]

Sophokles wrote several satyric works on the Trojan War, such as Eris, Krisis (Judgement), Helen’s Marriage (with Paris, probably at Kranae). We are told that the sight of Helen inflamed the satyrs. Euripides in his Kyklops jeers at Helen and Menelaos, who was ‘such a good little man’. Aristophanes, we have noted, parodied his Helena, and in Lysistrata described Menelaos as throwing down his sword at the sight of Helen’s breasts. There are few vase paintings which can be securely referred to the comic poets in question.[210]

We may pause here to glance back at the various points made by the poets as to the archē or beginning of the troubles leading to the war and its repercussions. In Book III of the Iliad Menelaos speaks of the great sufferings brought about ‘through my quarrel [eris] and the archē of Paris’: where atē has also been read instead of archē. The same pair of readings occur in a passage where Helen speaks of the troubles caused ‘by bitch-faced me and the archē-atē of Alexandros.’ Finally in the last book we are told that Hera and Poseidon went on hating Troy and all its people ‘because of the atē of Alexandros’. In any event Homer is declaring Paris’ atē to have been the cause of the conflicts. Elsewhere he selects the ships built for Paris as the start of the evils, archekakoi; but this is to make the same point in a different way, picking on the first moment of decisive action. However, all round the atē and its effects, there plays the Will of Zeus, broadening the perspective and making the actions of Paris only the starting-point of events vast in their complex impact on the whole Achaian and Trojan civilization.

In the Cypria an attempt is made to schematize the Will or Plan of Zeus by linking it with the widespread myth of world-end brought about by some deed of impiety or a general degeneration of mankind. The Plan is made definite, but at the same time trivialized, by the thesis that the earth needed to be lightened of its load of men. The Hesiodic poems develop the idea of cycles of life, with periodic disasters or completions; the heroic age is ended to stop the mating of gods and mortals — to stop the imbalance, the breaking of limits, the hybris, that results. Here we see the rationalizing trend of thought in the Ionian cities, which is linked with the rise of comprehensive philosophic and scientific inquiry.

The new individualism of the age of the Lyric Poets is not much concerned with final causes. Stesichoros finds the archē of calamity in Tyndareos’ failure to include Aphrodite in his sacrifices. The large issues are brought down to small personal angers or clashes. In the fifth century, with Athenian democracy rapidly advancing after the great national conflict of the Persian Wars, we see on the one hand the Herodotean attempt to find specific social grievances (the abduction of women), interpreting the heroic age in terms of the contemporary situation of West (the Aegean) against the East (the Persian empire); and on the other hand the Aischylean deepening of the moral issues, in which the outrage against Zeus Xenios by Paris and Helen becomes the archē. (The moral issue here is also a social one, since the broken bond is more than that of guest and host, man and wife; it expands to take in all that truly unites men and makes society possible.) Aischylos thus returns to the ate of Paris, which was the key point in Homer, reachieving the epical sense of the kin bond and its disruptions, but in terms of a world in which the question of what unites men and what divides them is immensely more complex. With Euripides there appears a new stress on the Judgement of Paris as the archē, the crucial moment. The chorus in the Andromache sings: ‘Great were the griefs that Hermes began, when he came to the glens of Ida...to the steading of the cowherd, to the cottage of the young recluse, the lonely hearth.’ He then goes on to describe the goddesses bathing in a spring as preparation for appearing before Paris; they go on and make their offers: ‘rivals, they bid high with spiteful words’. The same stress on the bathing appears in Helena: ‘Alas for the springs where the goddesses bathed and made their beauty bright, whence came the Judgement’.[211]

Just as the lyric poets brought the large issues of Homer and Hesiod down to personal problems, Euripides interprets the Aischylean world, with its universal laws of justice and the penalties descending on the infringer, in a much more detailed way, realistically psychologizing and linking his criticism with a wide range of social phenomena. The bathing of the goddesses leads on to the narcissistic self-adoration of Helen with her mirrors; the Judgement with its conflicting moral and social choices reveals a society which has lost its sense of direction, its unity of purpose.

Chapter Seven – From Gorgias to Late Antiquity

Euripides in his analytic method, his use of debate, his finesse in splitting points, was much influenced by the sophistic movement. A typical Sophist was Gorgias of Leontinoi, a Chalkidian colony in Sicily, who in his teaching sought to exalt the logos (word and reason). He wanted to show how words could be used for persuasion, so that men could attain their ends without recourse to force. But behind this exaltation of the logos was a deep disillusionment with rational processes, a belief that men could not ever attain real knowledge; hence what mattered was the form, not the content, of argument. The rhetorical means of persuasion were the efficacy of one’s style, the extent to which one could use all sorts of dazzling or compelling devices, such as antithesis, assonance, rhyme and so on, which had their effect regardless of the ideas in the service of which they were applied. We may relate these attitudes to the art of the last three decades of the fifth century. ‘The flying-drapery style is obviously Gorgian in spirit and appears to emanate from the same pressures as contemporary rhetoric. On the surface it is all elegance, but underneath it may reflect a despairing desire to retreat from the difficult intellectual and political realities of the age and to take refuge in gesture.’ (Pollitt).

At an advanced age, in 427, Gorgias was sent to Athens as an ambassador, to ask for the protection of his home town against the power of Syracuse. Among his works was an Encomium on Helen. Much argument has gone on as to its relation to Euripides’ Helena. Probably it was composed before the play and Euripides knew it. It may indeed have given the poet his idea of reversing Helen’s role. But otherwise there is no affinity between Encomium and play. Euripides used the idea of Helen’s innocence to concoct a complex allegory aimed at debunking war and aiding the cause of peace; Gorgias was merely concerned to use his skill in subtle casuistry to rehabilitate Helen. He is attracted to the task precisely because of its difficulty; and behind his argument lies a moral nihilism.

He bases himself on the Plan of Zeus in the Cypria. Instrument of love and the logos, Helen must not be blamed for the war; unanimously condemned, she has not had justice. He sets out her genealogy: Zeus and Leda. From her origin came the beauty that fired the hearts of all. Why did she go to Troy? There were four possible causes. What she did was done by the purposes of Fortune (Tyche), by the commands of the gods, and by the decrees (psephismata, usually decrees passed by a majority of votes) of Necessity; she was ravished by force; she was persuaded by words; or she was infatuated by sight. In each case she can be shown to be innocent. If Tyche, the Gods, and Necessity determined her course, she was not responsible for what happened. If she was taken by force, we should pity her. If she was won over by the irresistible power that words exercise, she was as much a victim of compulsion. (Gorgias lets himself go in a passionate exposition of the nature of persuasion and the omnipotence of the logos, producing examples of its overwhelming effects. Persuasion, Peitho, becomes identified with Anankē, Necessity; for logos the word is one with logos the reason of things.) Finally comes the power of love. Eros takes free will away, whether he is a god endowed with divine powers or an evil that precipitates human suffering. Helen is still innocent. Gorgias stresses the effects of sight, the charms and physical attraction of Paris — a point where he is in accord with the art depicting Paris as the rich and fascinating Phrygian.[212]

He thus restates with much rhetorical effect the old doctrine of Helen as moved by a daimonic power that lifts her above everyday judgements; but in the process the Homer unity has evaporated. Energy is vindicated at the cost of making human beings into puppets, governed by fate, words, or their senses, and controlled by the man of logos.

With Thoukydides we move into a very different world of thought. Like everyone else he accepts the general historicity of the Trojan War; what is new in his approach is the attempt to get behind details to a fundamental political and economic pattern. He is interested in the way in which Greeks of those far times were able to unite for the war, and the fact that Homer does not use the term barbaros, barbarian, ‘probably because the Greeks had not yet been marked off from the rest of the world by one distinctive appellation’. As he sees it, a precondition of the war was an increase in the strength of the cities and in the intercourse of men. ‘Indeed they could not unite for this expedition till they had gained a greater familiarity with the sea.’ What made the expedition possible was not the oath of the suitors, but Agamemnon’s strength in armament and in ships, that is, the supremacy of Mykenai in his world. The long duration of the war came about because the Greeks had to disperse their forces in piracy and the cultivation of the Chersonnese to maintain supplies. As aftermath of the war came many revolutions and the growth of factions everywhere, with expelled citizens founding colonies.

Thoukydides thus seeks to supply to the past the critical and realistic sense which he learned out of the Peloponnesian War in which he played a part. He was especially interested in the causes of discord among Greeks and in the possibilities of union: the Trojan and the Persian Wars appearing as the only times when something like large-scale unified action had been achieved. In this quest for underlying social patterns Helen fades out.[213] Not that Thoukydides here or elsewhere in his work arrives at the concept of social forces in an abstract way; he is throughout struggling with his material, in a tension between his sense of such forces and an idiom that reduces everything to a personal and psychological basis, with a mythological background.

With Alkidamos we return to the sophistic world. A pupil of Gorgias, he wrote, it seems, an Odysseus and a Palamedes’ Treachery. In the first he apparently omitted the Judgement and made Paris journey to Greece through a wish to visit Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphoi. Hearing of Helen’s beauty, he wanted to see her. When he arrived in Sparta, Menelaos went off, called to Crete by the sons of Molos to deal with the property their father had left. Helen is not said to depart freely with Paris; the main blame seems put on the latter. Clearly Alkidamas had been affected by stories put out by the Delphic priesthood, stories that were probably older than this period. Later writers follow him in ignoring the Judgement. Antisthenes, another rhetor or orator, also wrote an Odysseus that mentions the statue which Paris carried off from Greece and on which depended Troy’s fate.[214]

Isokrates, contemporary of these two men, was a far more important orator and educationalist, an Athenian whose family was impoverished by the Peloponnesian War. Advocating Hellenic unity, he saw the only escape from endless internecine warfare in a general crusade against the Persians. He wrote a Helen, once thought to be a work directed against Anaximenes of Lampsakos (according to the critic Machaon cited in the argument), but now seen as a reply to Gorgias. However, whereas the latter was writing a playful apologia, in which the real hero was himself, the man of logos, Isokrates was in deadly earnest. For him the Trojan War represented the War against the East which he fiercely wanted. He praised Gorgias for defending Helen, but considered that he had not gone far enough. He evokes the memory of a woman who raised herself above others by birth, beauty, fame. ‘However, a slight error eluded him. He claims to have made an encomium of Helen, but what he does is merely to defend her conduct.’

Unlike Gorgias, he deals at some length with the myth. He insists on his heroine’s divine origin; Zeus gave her the beauty that dominates might itself. He covers her career in detail and shows that all who came near her fell under the spell of her charms. Theseus the conqueror was conquered; he carried her off to Aphidna. She represented the perpetual triumph of beauty. Paris made his choice, not out of mere desire, but because he wanted to be Zeus’ son-in-law. It was not by chance that he was made the umpire of the goddesses. ‘I am astonished that anyone dares to criticize the decision of a man who chose to live in the company of a woman for whom a number of demi-gods were ready to die.’ Paris thus shares in the rehabilitation of Helen; and the Trojans too are vindicated for refusing to surrender her. Greeks and barbarians alike thought that ‘the land to which the person of Helen remained attached would be the happier of the two’. So important was the question of what man, what country, possesses Helen, that gods took part in the battle for her or let their children take part.

The work ends with a rapturous praise of Beauty, which becomes identical with Virtue. Whereas Euripides had done his best to denigrate the beauty which, drunk with itself, had no sense of its effects, Isokrates praises beauty as itself a self-sufficient good. It is ‘the most venerated, the most precious, the most divine of goods’. Virtue itself is subordinated, gaining its final value only when it absorbs the beautiful. It is above all appreciated because ‘it is the most beautiful of the traits of the soul’. The gods submit to beauty. Zeus twice becomes a swan, to mate with Nemesis and then with Leda. (Isokrates thus gets over the problem of the relation of these two.) ‘You would find more human beings made immortal by their beauty than by all other merits.’ Beauty has made Helen the equal of the gods; she hands on this power of hers to the Twins and to Menelaos who suffers for her sake. She shares with the latter the cult at Therapne. Her glory, the force of her person, has been manifested in the life and work of such poets as Stesichoros and Homer. But her greatest merit of all is that she brought about the first large-scale united action of Greeks, their first great expansion. ‘She is the cause of our not being the slaves of barbarians. We see the Greeks, united, thanks to her, in a single aim, organize a common army against the barbarians and Europe set up for the first time a trophy of victory over Asia.’

The split between beauty and morality which was signalled by the work of Gorgias is here carried much further. An attempt is made to disguise the split by saying that virtue is itself beautiful. But whereas Gorgias showed an effort to cover up social disintegration with an aesthetic veneer, Isokrates is in the last resort guided by political opportunism. Anything is good that draws the Greeks together in a war of expansion against the Persians. Isokrates ignores the multiple issues of social conflict that are rending the Greek world through the corruption and distortion of democracy (by slavery, the cash nexus, exploitations of all kinds), and wants a unity imposed from above which (he hopes) will solve the internal problems of the Greek states at the expense of the easterners. Thus aestheticism in both Gorgias and Isokrates is used to obscure and conjure away the real conflicts of their world.[215] Gorgias indeed in his Olympikos had proposed that all Greeks should join together in a war of retaliation against Persia, so that the Greek states might stop damaging one another; but the idea was not dominant in him as it was in Isokrates, and he did not relate it to the glorification of Helen. The increased political decay that had gone on by Isokrates’ time favoured the association of Helen with the crusade and the advocacy of the crusade as the only way out from inner conflicts.

The argument to Isokrates’ encomium tells us that the theme was also treated by his contemporaries Polykrates and Anaximenes — the latter much younger than he was. Aristotle’s Rhetoric alludes to an Apology or Praise of Alexandros by an unknown. This work declared that Paris had elevated sentiments, disdained the company of the common shepherds, and lived alone on Ida. He was no more guilty of rape than Theseus or the Dioskouroi; and if he killed Hektor, what about Hektor killing Patroklos? He had the right to go off with Helen as the choice of husband had been left to her by her father. He was not a loose character, but at Troy stayed faithful to Helen. (The author may be Polykrates, whom Aristotle mentions several times in the same chapter.) Hyperides in his oration over the war dead of spring 322, when Leosthenes had led an alliance of Greek states in an attack on Macedonia after the death of Alexander the Great, made a use of the Helen motive on lines opposite to those of Isokrates. He compares Leosthenes to the Greeks before Troy: ‘They fought to avenge the injury done to a single woman; he has saved all the Greeks from the outrages that were meant to be inflicted on them.’ We see how deeply the theme had sunk into the politics of the time; both the defenders and the opponents of the Macedonian supremacy felt the need to use it.[216]

*

In art we have noted how the large painting by Polygnotos announced the triumph of Helen, of Beauty, in the midst of the Trojan wreck. However, Aristophon, his brother (according to Plato), produced ‘a detailed picture,’ says Plinius, ‘in which Priam, Helen, Credulity, Odysseus, Deiphobos and Deceit were represented.’ (Some critics read for Dolos, Deceit, the name Dolon; but in view of the presence of Credulity, the personification seems far more likely.) As far as we can tell from the brief description, the work seems to point to the Euripidean exposure of Helen rather than her exaltation.[217] Clearly in the fifth century there was much criss-crossing of ideas and images between the painters proper, the vase painters, the poets, and the sophistic orators. The baring of Helen’s breasts at the confrontation with Menelaos probably came from a painting. Some such painting seems to have influenced big compositions like those of the Parthenon metopes, which are followed by the artist of an oinoche in the Vatican. The scene of the confrontation, with Helen’s flight, is clearly more suited for painters than for sculptors. There are very large numbers of vases, Attic, Boiotian, Etruscan, which attempt to represent it. On the other hand, the episode where Helen is seized is more plastic and goes well on temple pediments — though the meeting of Helen and Menelaos is rarely used by sculptors. The latter part of the fifth century proliferated in variations: we see the fugitive Helen in the sanctuaries of Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena, or before Aphrodite herself. The deities tend to appear beside their cult-statues, so that their protection of Helen is doubly stressed. In general, however, the classical epoch held fast to a single pattern for the pursuit: Helen turns back while Menelaos rushes at her, dropping his sword. There is one exception, important for the future. On an amphora Menelaos is shown dragging her brutally by the hair from the foot of Apollo’s statue; there is a confusion here with the allied type of Aias dragging Kassandra away. Only the fact that the statue is of Apollo proves that the woman is Helen.

(We may recall Menelaos’ order in the Trojan Women for Helen to be dragged out by her hair.) On the whole, however, the tendency of the fifth century is to stress the motive of beauty and its power. For this reason, scenes of the abduction are rare. A few works of the mid-century show Helen carried off in a chariot; but these are exceptional and have moved far from the formal marriage motif (the held wrist). Also, in place of the old scheme, we find Paris standing before Helen, often in the presence of Aphrodite and Eros. We have already considered this type, probably born from a large painting. It rapidly degenerates into scenes of the gynaikion (the woman’s quarters), especially of the toilet; and it is hard at times to tell whether a mythological scene is being shown in everyday terms or whether we are looking at what is meant to be a work of genre. The use of the persuasion motif does not seem so widely popular as it became later.

The famous painter Zeuxis, around 410, produced a Helen for the people of Akragas in Sicily to be dedicated in the temple of Hera Kakinia — though Cicero and Dionysios of Halikarnassos say it was at Kroton in south Italy. We are told that he selected five virgins and used them for a composite picture of perfect beauty; the theme was perhaps Helen at the toilet.

The stress we have found on Helen’s magical beauty makes it likely that we see her rather than Aphrodite in the statuettes, supports for bronze mirrors, especially when the works have been turned out in the Peloponnese or at Corinth, where we can doubtless find at work the Spartan idea of her protective power over children and young girls, her ability to transmit beauty. Euripides, we noted, linked her strongly with mirrors. However, on the supports she is seen gradually less than Aphrodite is.[218]

The trivialization of the theme of Helen is part of a general art tendency. Whereas in such different poets as Euripides and Aristophanes, literature sought to grapple passionately with the crisis of Greek society, the artists retreated into styles mannered and decorative for all their superficial excitement. ‘Vase painting adapts itself to what seems a world of cosmetics and subdued conversations’ (Pollitt). On a hydria by the Meidias painter the rape of the Leukippides by the Twins is depicted with much verve and bravura, quite lacking the strict formality of the early carrying-off motif, but it all seems a well-acted charade. We are on the road that leads to attitudes such as that shown on a late cosmetics-container with the inscription: ‘To Helen Sister of Aphrodite’.

*

Of the Hellenistic poets the two most important for us are Theokritos and Lykophron. One of the former’s idylls consists of a marriage-song sung by Spartan girls for Helen, another of a hymn to the Dioskouroi. He himself (c. 310-250) was a native of Dorian Sicily, though his parents seem to have been Koans, and he spent some years at Kos, perhaps as a medical student, and later at the great cultural centre, Alexandreia. In Idyll XV he declared that the daughter of Queen Berenike ‘is like Helen to see’. Idyll XVIII is the epithalamion. The girls tell Menelaos that he has taken the daughter of Zeus under one coverlet; alone of the demi-gods he will be Zeus’ son-in-law. They have run with Helen in the race (dromos), anointed like the lads, by the pools of Eurotas; but none of the 240 girls can compare with the bride. She is an expert spinner and weaver, and she plays the lyre better than Artemis and Athena. They twine a garland of lotus flowers and hang it on a plane tree, and they cut in the bark the words: ‘Worship me, I am the Tree of Helen’. They bid goodnight and say they will return with the first cockcrow.

There is no hint of Paris and Troy, no shadow of doom. The whole aim is to present the kindly fostering Spartan goddess, who is also a plane tree, and to stress her beauty. Homer had used little description of Helen; he merely mentioned her white arms and fine hair, with some comparisons to goddesses or Graces; what he relied on was the effect that her presence had on others. Aischylos too used bare effects, suggestions like that of the kolossoi (dead forms) compared with her vital presence. Theokritos, inheriting the aesthetic doctrine of Gorgias and Isokrates, could not use such dramatic methods; he had to try to evoke an essence of beauty while carefully avoiding all the implications of daimonic Helen. (Later on we find Byzantine poets such as Constantine Manasses or John Tzetzes heaping up epithets in a hopeless effort to express the seamless beauty of the Homeric heroine.)

The Hymn (XXII) stresses their role of the Twins as saviours of sailors in storms, but does not mention their appearances as St Elmo’s Fire. Its main part is made up of an account of a boxing-match between Polydeukes and Amykos during the voyage of the Argo, and of the carrying-off of the Leukippides with the resulting destruction of Lynkeus and Idas. ‘For all bards [aoidoi] are dear to the sons of Tyndareos and to Helen and to the other heroes who sacked Troy in aid of Menelaos.’[219]

In the dialogue of seduction attached to Theokritos we find in the exchanges between the girl and her lover: ‘Another neat-herd it was that ravished Helen away’; ‘Helen’s more ready now, she kisses her neat-herd in play.’ In Bion’s epithalamion for Achilles and Deidameia we find: ‘The herdsman ravished Helen away and off to Ida led her: a heavy blow to Oinone. And Lakedaimon was angry....’ Here is the first reference extant to the nymph Oinone who was Paris’ love on Ida. Kallimachos in his Hymn to Artemis speaks of the Achaian ships setting sail in wrath for Rhamnousian Helen. He is denoting Helen as the daughter of Nemesis, not of Leda. In a papyrus fragment obtained from a crocodile-mummy at Tebtynis we find a lyrical piece in which Helen in later life moans her lot: ‘A dear delight you seemed to me, in days when you loved me and with hostile spear you sacked the Phrygians’ city. Then all you wanted was to take me back as your wife to your native land. But now, O heartless one, will you go off and leave me a lonely wife, me for whom the host of the Danaids went out, for whose sake Artemis carried off a virgin, Agamemnon’s victim?’ Here is a theme we find nowhere else: Helen is in turn deserted by Menelaos.[220]

We have already noted the deliberate obscurity of Lykophron’s Alexandra, with its heaped-up tortuous allusions. Even the poet’s date and identity are unsure, but he was perhaps the poet from Chalkis, born 330-25. Here we need only concern ourselves with what he has to say of Oinone, the nymph mentioned by Bion. This is the last important addition to the story of Paris and Helen. The nymph was daughter of the River Kebres. Paris lived happily with her on Ida till the goddesses came. She had gained from Rhea the gifts of healing and second sight, and she warned Paris not to go after Helen. But he deserted her. He quite forgot her till wounded by the arrows of Philoktetes; then he sent to ask for her help and she bade him turn to Helen. Too late, she repented; hurrying down, she found him dead.

Here was just the sort of tale which the Hellenistic poets exploited or invented. There is no hint of Oinone in Euripides; we find her nowhere indeed in classical poetry save perhaps in Bacchylides — and only there through a restoration. If the poet did speak of her, it was in some comparison with Niobe: maybe she was brought in for having caused the death of a loved one through pride and for then losing herself in tears. Her tale may have arisen as a local legend in connection with a site said to be the grave of Paris and Oinone. Strabon tells us that Demetrios of Skepsis ‘suspects that the territory of Ilion subject to Hektor stretched inland from the naval station as far as Kebrenia; for he states that the tomb of Alexandros is pointed out there, as also that of Oinone, who, according to the historians, was Paris’ wife before he carried off Helen.’ The region seems to be linked both with the river-god Kebres and Paris; the Iliad mentions ‘Kebriones bastard son of glorious Priam’.[221]

Hellanikos in his Trōika seems to have taken the story up; and it has been adduced that it was in the Cypria. But the lack of references in the dramatists argues strongly against its antiquity; Hyginus, basing himself on Euripides’ Alexandros, does not mention it. There is no sign of the tale in early art. We may surmise that there was an old local legend of a nymph with whom Paris lived on Ida, and that the pathetic details were added in the fourth century. Lykophron with his mass of learned oddments, which included bits of folklore, picked the story up and gave it currency; and its fuller form was worked out by a later poet. If so, the version of Hegesianax, repeated in effect by Ovid and Quintos Smyrnaios, would be mainly the result of Hellenistic romanticizing. The tombs may have been brought in to cap the tale; but it is more likely that they begot at least its primitive elements, just as the spring where the three goddesses bathed before the Judgement may well have had its local legend.[222] A tale of the Daphnis type was thus attached to Paris and gradually developed many touches of pathos, eg Paris, wounded, climbs Ida to find his old love (Quintos). Paris, the unfaithful lover of a nymph is punished by death, though his fate comes in a roundabout way through the nymph refusing to heal him. Such unfaithful lovers in myth are lamed, blinded, or killed, as we see from the tales of Daphnis, Anchises, Orion, Aktaion. Oinone’s refusal to aid may also be an old motif, as Philostratos tells a similar tale of Philolaos.[223]

Lykophron tells us of the wounding of Paris:

all which things the jealous spouse [Oinone] shall bring to light, sending her son [Korythos] to indicate the land, angered by the taunts of her father [Kebres] for her bed’s sake and because of the alien bride [Helen]. And herself, skilled in drugs [pharmaka; also spells], seeing the baneful incurable wound of her husband wounded by the giant-slaying arrows of his adversary [Philoktetes], shall endure to share her doom, from the topmost tower to the new-slain corpse hurtling herself head foremost and pierced by sorrow, for the dead shall breathe forth her soul on the quivering dead.

She dies on his pyre. We learn here of the son Korythos whom she sent to act as scout in guiding the Greeks. Through Korythos she becomes the final agent in destroying Troy. The tale thus blames Paris’ infidelity as the cause of disaster. Parthenios gives us a different version. In Story IV he tells us of Oinone, stressing her prophetic powers and adding that Paris swore ‘he would never desert her, but would rather advance her to the greatest honour’. In XXXIV, however, he adds, ‘Of the union of Oinone and Alexandros was born a lad name Korythos. He came to Troy to help the Trojans and there fell in love with Helen. She indeed received him with the greatest warmth — he was of extreme beauty — but his father discovered his aims and killed him. Nikandros (of Kolophon, second century BC) however says that he was the son, not of Oinone, but of Helen and Alexandros, and declares: There was the Tomb of fallen Korythos, whom Helen bore, the fruit of marriage rape, in bitter grief, the Herdsman’s wicked brood.’ For Oinone he cites the Troika of Kephalon of Gergitha.[224] Konon adds that Korythos was sent by his mother with the instruction to seduce Helen.

Korythos, unlike Oinone, does not seem to derive from a folk-tale. The name occurs in Linear B; and is used in Greek for a bird, the crested trochilos. It is also a title of Apollo; Korythalia or Korythallia is a title of Artemis at Sparta and also occurs in Italy. Korythallistriai are girls who dance in honour of Korythallia; they may have worn a bird-dress like the Doves of Alkman. Athenaios tells us that the Spartans celebrate ‘the Nurse Festival, called Tithenidia, for the children. In this the nurses take the male children at the time of the Kopis’ or Cleaver — a festival which involved a meal beside the temple of the god (Apollo of Amyklai?) ‘into the country; and there, before the image of Artemis Korythalia, as she is called, whose fountain is by the spring of Tiassos, in the region named Kleta, they celebrate the Kopis in the same way. They also sacrifice sucking-pigs, and at the festival banquet they serve the oven bread...’ There is no mention of bird-dress here; but there seems a strong link of the korythos-bird with the ancient Mother-Goddess, with the Nymphs who in myth have the important function of nurses. (The pig-sacrifice is typical of the cult of the earthmother.)[225]

Some of the other details in the Alexandra deserve a brief notice. In much Lykophron follows the Cypria; but he tells of Helen’s birth in terms that could involve either Leda or Nemesis, or both. ‘I see the winged firebrand [Paris] rushing to seize the Dove [Helen], the bitch of Pephnos’, where the Twins were born, ‘whom the water-roaming Vulture brought to birth, husked in a rounded shell’. But Helen later is called the Thyiad (Mainad) of Pleuron (from whom Leda was descended); and the poet refers to the Twins, after mentioning Theseus and Aithra, as harrying Attika ‘in vengeance for the raped Thyiad, those Wolves whose heads a cloven Eggshell covers’. He describes Helen as carried off by force from the seashore as she was sacrificing to the Thysad Nymphs and the goddess Byne (the Thyiades and Ino Leukothea).[226]

He uses a version about the meeting of Paris and Menelaos which may be quite old and which makes the episode of the Judgement of the Goddesses unnecessary; it also has the effect of making Paris’ ingratitude to Menelaos far more criminal. A plague had broken out in Lakedaimon, and the people there were bidden by an oracle to ‘propitiate the Kronian daimones in Troy’ — to sacrifice on the graves there of the sons of Prometheus. Menelaos went to carry out the propitiation, and while he was there Paris got into trouble by killing without intention a son of Antenor, whom in fact he dearly loved. Menelaos, to save him from punishment, took him home to Sparta. Paris’ treachery there, Lykophron adds, was ‘modelled on the ways of the she-bear that suckled him’. (A point that makes this story appear ancient is the way in which it treats Trojans and Achaians as of the same stock, the same culture. As Paris is living at Troy, the story seems to contain no knowledge of him as a herdsman on Ida. There is no hint of it in Homer or the Cipria; indeed the account of Phereklos building a fleet for Paris denies it.)[227]

Lykophron adds a new touch about Achilles. The reason why he wanted to see Helen at Troy was that in sleep he was tormented by her image. ‘She shall cause him to pine upon his bed, distracted by her phantom face [eidoloplastos] in his dreams.’[228]

*

There is not much of interest for us in later Greek literature or in Latin. Though Homer continued to be read and to play his key part in Greek education, the cyclic poets fell out of favour. A work like the Cypria was known by Alexandrian poets like Kallimachos, Lykophron, Theokritos, and was perhaps even edited by the learned critics; it was also translated into Latin by Ninnius. But from the fourth century summaries in prose were made, and much interest in the old myths or legends was pedantic and trivializing. Between the second and fifth centuries AD the text of the original Cypria faded out. In general the Latin poets carried on the tradition of cheapening Helen as a woman of shameless coquetry. Even poets like Catullus and Propertius, with their tragic love affairs, could not grasp the concept of Helen’s fatal beauty as it had developed in complex ways from Homer to Isokrates. For Virgil she is merely a vile woman, the Erinys of her own land. He makes Deiphobos in the underworld describe her in all her perfidy. On the walls of Troy she brandished a torch to let the Greeks know the moment to attack, then she disarmed him (Deiphobos) and called in Menelaos with Odysseus to murder and mutilate him. Thus she hoped to earn her pardon. (Earlier versions made Sinon give the signal; Virgil however was unlikely to have invented the motif, which may have been developed as part of the idea that Helen was the Moon Selene.)[229]

In general Helen becomes a shallowly treated emblem of infidelity or of overpowering beauty. Thus Propertius writes: ‘If I remember, she’s given to blaming fickle girls and damns the whole Iliad on account of Helen.’ And then: ‘You’re the first Roman girl that Jove will take to bed. You’ll always be my mistress on earth; your form’s the loveliest that earth has seen, after Helen. Can I now wonder at the young chaps burning with love for you? It would be all the more glorious for you, Troy, to perish for her. Once I used to wonder at a girl bringing so many warriors from Europe and Asia to Troy. And now I find you were wise, Paris and Menelaos: you for sticking to her and you for demanding her back.’ A few extra touches of villainy are added. Seneca in his Trojan Women makes Helen so treacherous as to inveigle Polyxena by lies into the Greek camp to be sacrificed.[230]

In Greek, Loukian carries on the mocking tradition. Helen is ‘a woman with a white skin and a long neck, as one could guess of a swan’s daughter’. In the Blessed Isles Menelaos has to institute a judicial action against Theseus to get possession of her; then he wakes in an empty bed and has to chase after her with Agamemnon to a near isle, to which she has eloped with Kinyras. Ptolemaios Chennos tells how she bears Euphorion in the Blessed Isles to Achilles.[231] Flavios Philostratos a century later embroiders this theme. He blames Homer for putting her in Troy and making her watch the slaughter from the wall, when she was in Egypt. Achilles and Helen had been in love when alive without knowing one another; after death they go to Leuke (White), an isle in the Black Sea, which Poseidon makes rise up for them. Some sailors were forced by a storm to land there and wait till the winds died down. Under a tree, they heard mysterious noises. Helen and Achilles, living joyously together, are talking of their love and of the exploits of the heroes before Troy. (Thus, in a sentimentalized end, the great heroine and the great hero of the Homeric epic come together.) In the second century AD there were made prose compilations under the names of Diktys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian, with various additions or changes. Dares says that Helen and Paris met on the isle of Kythera where Helen was preparing to sacrifice in the temple of Diana and Apollo. As Aphrodite was the Kytherean, he probably wants to put the meeting entirely under her controls. Diktys was supposed to be a Cretan who fought in the Trojan War and recorded the whole thing in nine books, written in Phoinikian characters on strips of bark; his tomb was broken open by an earthquake in the reign of Nero and the box with his strips was found by shepherds. The work makes Helen declare that she left Sparta for love of Paris. Dares, like Diktys, stresses the treacheries on both sides and the love of Achilles for the Trojan princess Polyxena, which leads to his murder in a temple. He tries to get a casually realistic effect, as of a genuine observer of the events. ‘Helen was as handsome as her fair-haired brothers, simple-minded, charming, with very fine legs, a mole between her eyebrows, and a tiny mouth.’ Epic is passing over into the novel.[232] Dracontius in the fifth century wrote a Latin poem on Helen’s Abduction.

More important by far was the Greek epic of Quintos of Smyrna in the fourth century, in fourteen books. Probably using summaries of the cyclic poets, it carries on from Homer. Quintos does his best to recapture the Homeric tone and outlook, laying all responsibility on the gods and exculpating both Helen and Paris. Helen is carried off by force. She laments her role in much the same way as in the Iliad, without being able to do anything about it. After the capture of Troy, Menelaos kills Deiphobos, who does not defend himself — a new touch. Then he angrily seeks Helen in the palace; Aphrodite halts his rush, forces him to drop his sword and realize Helen’s beauty; in the night the pair are reconciled in his tent. The degree of Quintos’ success may be gauged from the passage where the captive women are being led off to the ships. The Trojan women wail, but Helen stays silent, though afraid of being mishandled by the Achaians; she flushes like Aphrodite caught in the trap by Hephaistos as she lies mated with Ares. ‘The folk all around marvelled as they stared at the glory and fascinating beauty of the flawless woman. No man dared to cast any reproach on her, openly or covertly; they all watched her go by, enraptured, as if she were divine. Thus she appeared to all of them as they yearned towards her. As when men have wandered on a wild unslackening sea, after endless yearning the homeland comes in sight. Escaped from the waves, from death, they stretch their hands to the homeland with joy breaking in their hearts. So all the Danaoi felt joy rise up, and not a man of them there remembered the grievous pangs and the roar of battle — such thoughts Kythereia [Aphrodite] stirred in them all for the grace she brought Helen with her quick glances and Zeus her father.’[233]

So Helen makes her exit from Greek poetry in a way not unworthy of her Homeric origins. After Quintos come only the Egyptian imitators of the style of Nonnos. Triphiodoros wrote a Capture of Ilion, with no innovations; Kolouthos, under Anastasios, an Abduction of Helen, which was largely a caricature of the epic tradition. Thus, Helen, seeing a handsome stranger, runs to meet him, makes him come in and sit down, and cannot stop looking at him. He tells her of Aphrodite’s promise and asks her to marry him; she hurries to accept, since she cannot go against the goddess. They flee and Hermione laments. Later Byzantine writers, as we noted, merely dissipated the theme.[234]

Quintos had made a praiseworthy attempt; and his work at times has freshness, especially in the similes. But he could not possibly re-achieve the Homeric impact, its unity of conception, in such a different world, that of the Roman Empire in the crisis leading to the breakdown of its western half. To compensate for the inability to recreate Homer’s universe, he falls back on the idea of overruling fate. In his lengthy account of Oinone, he achieves his effect of pathos by the tension between the Hellenistic romanticism of the episode and the sense of harsh bars of fate against which the lovers beat. Paris pleads: ‘My true wife, don’t hate me in my anguish, because I left you a widow in your house, not of my own will, but the Fates [Kēres] that no man may escape led me to Helen, and I wish that before I knew her bed I’d died in your embrace.’ He begs her not to deny him aid through jealousy. ‘That would be a deed displeasing to the Prayers [Litai] who are daughters of thundering Zeus. In anger at those who won’t relent in their pride, they stir up against them the dread Erinys and Wrath. You, lady, ward off the Kēres, and quickly, even if I sinned in my folly.’

Quintos sees Fate in three forms: the Kēres, Aisa, and Moira or Moirai. The Kēres float about the doomed man, pitiless, depriving him of his senses, deceiving him and exulting in his doom. The gods cannot check them. Quintos at times uses a Homeric term, hyper kēras (beyond the Kēres) to express a narrow and lucky escape, but normally his Kēres are inevitable, aphyktoi. Aisa, the baleful and invincible, ‘hangs about all men on earth, caring not even for the gods, such strength has she alone. And she will sack Priam’s rich city, killing off those of the Trojans and Greeks she wishes, and there is no god who will halt her.’ The Moirai control the destinies of men and Zeus yields to them. So a divorce between gods and men arises. Thetis says, ‘It’s not right, when Zeus is angry, that the eternal ones should fight for men, mere men.’ And there is no force or conviction when Quintos talks of Justice working through the Erinyes. The split in his mind appears when Nestor, after laying down the principle of inescapable Fate, ends, ‘Hope always for the best. There’s a saying among men that the good go to heaven that never fades, but the bad man to hateful darkness.’ Here is an echo from the Christian creed, discordant with other passages where the poet somewhat confusedly tries to take over ancient views of the underworld and of the Blessed Isles. Fate rules the earth, but things may be different in another sphere. Thus Quintos reveals himself as a man of his authoritarian world with its sense of dire necessity ruling everything in human life and with a desperate hope of justice on the other side of death.[235]

*

In art we do not find efforts to break into new dimensions as in Theokritos or Lykophron, or to get inside the ancient epic and to revive it, as with Quintos of Smyrna. Archaizing sculptors or fresco painters look back to originals of the fifth or fourth century and merely adapt them to the taste of their period. New meanings are thus asserted, but not with any deep penetration or comprehension.

It is not by chance that we find brought together, in a bedroom, three paintings of tragic love, Medeia, Phaidra, Helen. If in his Troica Nero, the sovereign poet, sings of Hector and Paris as rivals in the tourney, we find them again in the Trojan chamber, afresh opposed, but in a different sense. To the lacerating farewell of Andromache and Hector corresponds the first meeting of Paris and Helen.[236]

The narrative element fades out; instead we find the illustration of situation. The psychological interest tends to dominate. We do not see Paris startled by the arrival of Hermes and the goddesses, or seated examining them; rather we see him calmly awaiting, in Hermes’ company, for them to come up. We do not get Helen’s abduction or her return with Menelaos, but the first arrival of Paris at Sparta: the moment of Persuasion. And there is nothing of the excitement or disarray of the actual arrival. The main actors give the impression of having faced one another for a long time: the moment is a timeless one of contemplation and choice. Their minds have been made up, with the aid of Aphrodite, Eros, Peitho; but they do not act. When the departure is the subject, we see Helen as she goes to join her lover on his ship. There is nothing of the bustle found in Etruscan reliefs that look back to other originals. In the confrontation at Troy the stress is laid on Helen’s beauty or on Menelaos’ awakening desire, symbolized by the winged Erotes that halt this avenging arm. A fine example of the arrested moment of choice is the Naples relief where Peitho sits, a small figure, on a high pillar behind Helen. Gradually the groups Aphrodite-Helen and Eros-Paris are dissociated; Eros becomes a simple emblem of union.

In the fourth century, for diverse reasons, had begun the movement to divinise Helen afresh; there was also an outburst of personifications, not with the concrete complexity that had made the Moirai or Nemesis such significant figures, but on the lines of direct allegorization. As we go on, we find more and more efforts, in art as in poetry or philosophy, to reappraise myth, to find allegories or symbolic meanings there; the living fullness of the poetic image splits up. In a painting in the Pythagorean basilica discovered in Rome (first century AD) the meeting of Paris and Helen is transformed with a mystic atmosphere of spiritual love; herdsman Paris takes her wrist and she comes confiding, looking into his eyes. No wonder the scene was taken to represent Orpheus and Eurydike, or Hermes and the Soul. But not only Pythagorean sects held this sort of view of Helen. Roman painting in general shows the same trend. In the romance attributed to Simon the Magus — an attempt to integrate Judeo-Christian positions with Alexandrian philosophy, creating a universal religion — Helen is a moon-goddess; from one angle she represents Ennoia (power of thought, conception); from another angle she appears degraded, a runaway wife ending in a brothel at Tyre. She becomes the heroine in the Seduction of the cosmic Archons, whose passions are so ruled by the female power that they are robbed of their seed.[237]

Thus in the late period we find both the earnest effort to return to origins by Quintos of Smyrna and the dissolution of Helen and her story in cosmic or other-world fantasies. Art under the Romans on the whole tries to merge the two tendencies: to keep to classical systems, however re-adapted, yet to carry on the fashion for psychologizing and for treating reality as a mere symbol. In the opposition of these tendencies we see the breakdown of ancient culture, of its original dynamic and vital synthesis. What is astonishing is that for well over a millennium people had struggled, one way or another, through a large number of changing social and political phases, to find in the Homeric world, with Helen at its centre, both the clues to understanding life and the forms for interpreting their culture.

Part Two – Myth and Ritual

Chapter Eight – The Judgement of Paris

We have seen how dubious is Homer’s one possible reference to the Judgement. The condemnation of the passage by Aristarchos carried much weight until in 1929 an ivory comb from the temple of Artemis Orthia at Sparta was published, which seemed to show the three goddesses before Paris. At first the date was given as the first half of the seventh century, or else about 650; but it has since been shown that the later seventh century is the most likely date. The man in the relief seems to hold an apple, but the object is in fact uncertain and the apple motif is not known till very late. The two birds with the women have been taken as Aphrodite’s dove and Hera’s peacock; but this again is only a guess. On another comb from the site we see a seated man with a second man kneeling, behind whom is a bird. Birds are common in archaic art to fill in spaces. Still, the Judgement seems to appear on an olpe, flask, of Chigi, dated perhaps to the third quarter of the seventh century.[238]

The motif appeared in the Cypria, so the comb and olpe prove nothing about the Iliad. We can however still argue that Homer knew the episode, even if the two lines in Book XXIV are indeed interpolations. He may have rejected it as alien to epic style and ethic. The Judgement story is in many ways a folktale, the sort of thing that Homer ignores or transforms. Thus, behind Hektor and Paris in the epic, there can perhaps be made out the folktale motif of ‘the Good and the Bad Brother’. In dealing with Bellerophon, Homer omits the monster Pegasos. He tones down barbarous aspects. Poison is cleaned off the arrowheads, though many phrases show it was once the normal thing. He seems to omit the firebrand, the object with which Meleagros’ life is bound up. So we may argue that he knew of the Judgement but deliberately left it out. But such a claim, without any substantiation, is very negative.[239]

What is the folktale core here? It is the choice of one out of three possible ways or gifts. What good thing is best? The grouping of such objects of choice in threes is very widespread and ancient. Someone has to answer three riddles or choose one of three wishes; a child is endowed with three gifts. Many deities, especially the ancient mothers of earth and vegetation, appear in triadic form, eg the Moirai or Fates. The plural occurs only once in the Iliad, in the doubtful last book, though the Moirai turn up once as Spinners in the Odyssey. We must not infer that three oldwomen fates did not exist in Homer’s time; he may well have preferred the single figure, which gave more an effect of the straightforward personification of Fate.[240]

He knew the gift theme, as is shown by his account of the gifts to daughters of Pandereos by Hera, Artemis, Athena. ‘The gods had killed their parents and they were left orphans in the halls, and dia Aphrodite tended them with cheese and sweet honey and pleasant wine. And Hera gave them beauty and wisdom above all women, and chaste Artemis gave them stature, and Athena taught them skill in famous handiwork. But while lovely Aphrodite was going to high Olympos to ask for the girls the completion of delightful marriage — going to Zeus the thunderbolt-flinger, who knows well all things, what is both the fate and not the fate of mortal men — the stormspirits [harpyiai] snatched the girls away and gave them to the loathsome Erinyes to deal with [or to be their servants].’ Here Aphrodite befriends the girls, but it is a triad of goddesses who provide the gifts, like birth-fairies; the motif of choice is however absent. The Three Graces in particular were gift-bestowers. ‘By your aid all things pleasant and sweet are achieved by mortals: if any man is skilled in songs or handsome or a winner of fame. Not even the gods order the dance or the banquet without the aid of the holy Graces.’ They give wisdom or skill, beauty, glory or prowess: a triad of gifts. The Nymphs too were gift-bestowers. In Sparta’s citadel (says Pausanias) was Athena’s sanctuary, begun by Tyndareos; then his sons, the Twins, wanted to finish it off with the spoils of Aphidna (won in their raid for Helen), but the work took a long time. ‘On the bronze were depicted exploits of Herakles, the rape of the Leukippides’ and other deeds of the Twins, ‘also Nymphs bestowing on Perseus, about to start on his enterprise against Medousa in Libya, a cap [of invisibility] and the shoes that were to bear him through the air.’ Here the Nymphs are like fairies or birth-fates giving a hero the magical devices that enable him to triumph.[241]

Nymphs and the assembled gods made gifts at marriages. Such gifts create or enhance life, or make divine. Such a gift was the necklace of Harmonia, which (in an archaic version recorded by Pherekydes) came from her husband Kadmos, founder of Thebes. Harmonia’s gifts were an important early theme, depicted on the Throne of Amyklai by Bathykles (about 530); there Athena gives a peplos. Kadmos got the necklace from Europa; the Catalogues told how the gold collar, made by Hephaistos, was given to her by Zeus. Thetis at her marriage was handed gifts by the attending gods; Aphrodite gave Helen a necklace which was later shown in the Delphic sanctuary. Gifts again were made at the creation of Pandora: a peplos from Athena and a diadem made by Hephaistos. Pandora here appears as She-who-gets-all-gifts, though originally she was Earth the All-giver. Harmonia had a son Polydoros, Many-gifts. Round Pandora, as round Harmonia at her wedding, were Hermes, Aphrodite, the Hours, Peitho, and Graces, suggesting in turn Helen’s companions. The Graces offered Pandora golden necklaces, and Aphrodite was often said to have given Harmonia her necklace. Pandora, we noted, was Gē Pandoteira, bounteous, giver of all things: a term later used of Demeter and Nature. Harmonia was protectress or prosperity-daimōn of Thebes; and she like Pandora seems to have had an anodos, a spring rite of renewal or uprising from the earth. The necklace is a mythical form of the leaf garland belonging to the earth in her spring renewal: the garland closely linked with Helen in her archaic representations. In the tale of Thebes the necklace becomes a source of strife and disaster, just as Pandora became a curse to men in the Hesiodic fable. In the same way Helen the earth-bride becomes a centre of conflict. Probably at Thetis’ wedding the apple at first was a gift from the Graces or Aphrodite, which by a tragic twist became a curse. Such tragic twists, when applied to ritual myths derived from fertility festivals, reflect the conflicts and contradictions coming on the productive group as society multiplies its divisions and exploitations. What once expressed a group joyously united in festival becomes a symbol of the group’s inner conflicts.[242]

Vase painters did not know of the episode of Eris or the Apple at Thetis’ marriage, or ignored it. Take a mixing-bowl painted by Sophilos about 560. Peleus stands with wine-cup to greet the deities coming to honour him; Thetis is apparently inside the house. Iris with herald wand leads the guests. First is a group on foot, in which appears Themis with a triad of Nymphs; then five chariots driven by deities in pairs, with Muses, Graces or Fates. No doubt the idea of an ugly disturbance at a ceremony attended by all the high gods was distasteful. But that point underlines the unlikelihood of the Eris episode being originally attached to the scene. The episode was no doubt invented to link the birth of the great hero with the heroine who caused the war in which he fought. The same impulse underlaid the later attempt to bring Helen and Achilles together and to mate them in the spiritworld.

The ancient roots of the theme of birth-fairies is shown by the role of the Seven Hathors in Egyptian folklore. When the god Khnum shapes a woman for Bata, a woman ‘who had fairer limbs than any other in the whole land and every god was in her’, as if each god had brought the gift of his special powers, ‘the Seven Hathors came to see her and said with one mouth: She will die a violent death.’ In the tale of the Enchanted Prince, when a son is born to the king, ‘the Hathors came to decree him his destiny, and they said: He will die by the crocodile or the snake or the dog. The people about the child heard it and repeated it to the king.’ The Hathors are invisible. What they prophesy is the child’s birth-fate. In Ugaritic epic we meet goddesses, the Kosharot, who turn up at births and are called songstresses. In Aqhat they attend the birth for seven days, fed by the father, the king, and are called the ‘daughters of shouting’, the ‘swallows’. Their songs are clearly of great importance to the child, but in what way is not clarified. However, we learn that the craftsman god Kothar brings as a gift a magical bow, which later the goddess Anath covets.[243]

We may surmise then that folktales dealing with the gifts of the triadic birth-fates (Moirai, Graces, Nymphs, Goddesses) were floating about in the eighth century: tales where the hero faced a choice of three ways or chances, tales of three riddles or a riddle with triadic form like that the Sphinx posed for Oidipous. But that does not prove they had crystallized into a story about Paris. What is unusual in the Judgement is the use of an arbitrator. Still, there is a dual aspect. The man chooses one of the fates or goddesses as preferable or superior; but he also chooses which of three gifts he wants for himself. In folktales the first aspect is not rare; we often meet three girls, one of whom is more desirable than the others, eg Cinderella and the Ugly Sisters. Grimm has a tale of a prince who cannot decide between three women and tries a test; and a modern folktale of Corinth combines gifts, arbitration, and the Aktaion-motif of the too-venturesome hero torn to pieces:

There was once a man whom the Nymphs had made rich because they liked him, though he was poor before. One day they suddenly appeared before him and asked him which of them all was most beautiful. But he, cunning fellow, told them that when he saw them all together he could not make out which was the most beautiful; they must come one at a time day after day so that he could look at them closely and then tell them afterwards. The Nymphs accepted this and arranged to go to him one at a time day after day, and when they’d arranged everything they went away. So the Nymphs came to him one by one, and he examined them naked with the utmost freedom. But when he’d finished, they presently came back all together and pressed him to tell which of them all had the most outstanding beauty. He tried to escape them, asking them to come to him again, since he’d found them all so beautiful and didn’t know how to choose. But the Nymphs were angry, for they understood his purpose, and falling upon him they tore him to pieces.[244]

In the Cypria the folk aspect is stressed by the episode of Eris turning up at the wedding of Thetis as the uninvited fairy who upsets the friendly prophecies of the others — though the Apple of Discord with the label ‘For the Fairest’ does not appear in a text before Hyginus.

The apple however does bring us back to birth-gifts. Apples probably had an erotic significance in archaic Greece; but more important is the apple, pomegranate, poppyhead held by the ancient Aegean mother-goddess as her attribute. The link of mother-goddess and such fruits or flowers carried on strongly into classical times.[245] Demeter is often shown with pomegranate or poppy, or both. The image of Athena Victory at Athens had a helmet in its right hand, a pomegranate in its left. Hera’s statue at Argos held a sceptre and a pomegranate; Pausanias adds, ‘I won’t say more about the pomegranate, as the story about it is in the nature of a secret’: that is, it was a myth told during the Mysteries. Hera holds baskets of pomegranates in statuettes from the Heraion in Lucania. More, we find in archaic times the divinized dead shown with pomegranates in their hands. (The man on the Spartan comb may be holding a pomegranate before a triad of goddesses.)[246]

Fruit and seed of the pomegranate are a brilliant red; the seed, kokkos, yielded a dye that provided the word for scarlet, kokkinos. It was felt to be magically related to blood; Hesychios tells us that kokkos was a word used for the female genitals. The fruit’s magical and medicinal use was for menstruation and pregnancy. With Demeter it had the same fertility value as the poppy. It was tabooed in the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Arkadian Mysteries of Despoina. At Athens, women keeping the Thesmophoria did not copulate or eat pomegranates; they slept on beds of withy, thought antagonistic to sex and snakes. Only in a secondary way was the fruit connected with violent death, as when it sprouted from the blood of the Titans, bloomed over the corpse of the suicide Menoikeus, or was planted on the grave of Eteokles by the Erinyes who caused his death. To dream of it portended wounds.[247] There was a special link with Hera. The apples in the Garden of the Hesperides, which were grown for her marriage, were probably quinces or pomegranates. She turned up in the Garden to greet Herakles on his arrival there, and she was ready with a welcome when he came home with the golden apples. Apples or quinces were (and still are) used as offerings of love or marriage. Attic brides were told to eat a quince before lying down to open their bodies to the bridegroom.[248] Stesichoros, describing Helen’s marriage, told of revellers casting quinces at the bridal chariot. To offer the pomegranate-apple was thus to make a gift of fertility or renewed life. The apple of Eris perverted the whole nature of the gift.

In the Judgement the choice is connected with a beauty contest; and this aspect gained ever more stress in later literature and art. Some scholars have seen in the beauty contest the original inspiration of the Judgement motif. Such contests seem to have grown up in the cults of Hera and Demeter. We have no evidence for them before the mid-seventh century, but they may have existed for some time before that. Nikias in his History of Arkadia related how Kypselos, after founding a city in the plain of the Alpheios with a precinct and altar dedicated to Demeter of Eleusis, instituted a beauty contest where the first winner was his own wife. ‘The contest is held even now,’ adds Pausanias, ‘and the women who enter are called Gold-wearers. Theophrastos says there’s a beauty contest of men in Elis, the trial being held in all solemnity, with weapons as prizes. These, says Dionysios of Leuktra, are dedicated to Athena; and the winner, bound with a headband by his friends, leads the procession to her temple. But the crown for winners is of myrtle, as Myrsilos records in his Historical Paradoxes.’ In some places prizes were given to women for sobriety and housekeeping; Tenedos and Lesbos stuck to beauty contests. (Tenedos, an island near Troy, was said to have the loveliest women; and a fragment of Alkaios attests to the Lesbian contests.) Pausanias also tells us that the chest of Kypselos had the Judgement scene: Hermes bringing the Three Goddesses. ‘Why Artemis has wings on her shoulders I don’t know; in her right hand she grips a leopard, in her left a lion.’ She was represented as the Lady of Wild Things.[249]

Athenaios says that at Elis the winner carried the vessels of the goddess (? Hera), the runner-up led the ox, the man with third place set the preliminary offerings on the fire. He then goes on to tell how the Spartans admired beautiful men and women, ‘the loveliest women in the world being born in Sparta’, and how kingship should be allied with physical beauty. He cites the account in the Iliad of Helen’s effect on Priam and the Trojan elders, and declares that many people have chosen their most handsome men as kings. ‘Beauty it seems is a special attribute of kingship. Goddesses quarrelled about their beauty; and because of his beauty the gods “caught up and carried off” Ganymedes to be Zeus’ cup-bearer.’ Goddesses carried off beautiful men and lived with them. Eos (Dawn) had Kephalos, Kleitos and Tithonos; Demeter had Iasion; Aphrodite had Anchises. Zeus changed his shape to rape lovely women. ‘The Spartan custom, too, of stripping young girls before strangers [or guests] is highly praised; and on Chios it’s very pleasant to watch the lads wrestling with the girls,’ naked. The theme of competitive beauty shades off into that of beauty as the object of admiration and of exploits involving carrying away.[250]

We may add the custom of contests held among the ten tribes of Attika at the Panathenaia and the Theseia; a passage in Xenophon suggests that mental and moral, as well as physical, qualities were considered. But later it seems the most handsome lads were most favoured.[251]

Many myths tell of contests in beauty. Athena punished Medousa for boasting that she had more beautiful hair or body, or for lying with Poseidon in Athena’s temple; Medousa was given tresses of live snakes. Kassiopeia vaunted her beauty above that of the Nereids; her daughter Andromeda paid the penalty by being offered up to the sea. Hyginus says it was the girl’s beauty she bragged of. Gerana (or Oinoe), queen of the Pygmies, was so arrogant about her charms that she refused to honour any goddess; her subjects worshipped her; Hera changed her into a crane, geranos. Ovid makes her challenge Hera to a beauty contest. Keyx and Alkyone called themselves Zeus and Hera, so he was changed into a sea-bird, keyx, she into a halcyon. Myrrha, changed into a tree for incestuous love of her father, had her fate brought on her through her mother boasting that she, Myrrha, surpassed Aphrodite. ‘At the sight of Myrrha letting her hair down on her shoulders,’ sings Theokritos, ‘her mother in wonder cried out: Not even Aphrodite has such hair!’ Her child Adonis was brought up by the Nymphs. Niobe boasted that her children were comelier than Leto’s, or that she had a dozen to Leto’s two, and so was shot down by Artemis and Apollo, or turned to stone. Chione, daughter of Deukalion, boasted of beauty greater than that of Artemis, who shot her.[252]

Already in the Cypria the three goddesses with their differing attributes represent different kinds of women, different ways in which a woman may develop; but this aspect is largely implicit. With the vulgarizing of the theme, in which the offered gifts become mere bribes, it grows stronger. Finally the choice of which goddess approximates to the choice of which road is to be taken by Herakles, in the allegory set out by Prodikos. In Sophokles’ satyr play, the Judgement, Aphrodite with her armament of mirrors, scents, unguents, is like Pleasure, Hedonē, while Athena with her bottle of oil for use after exercise represents Phronesis, Thought or Capacity of Judgement. In the allegory Herakles is waylaid by Pleasure and Virtue, and listens to their arguments. In fact, the contrast of the values of Athena and Aphrodite goes back to the Iliad, where Achilles says he would not marry Agamemnon’s daughter, ‘not though she competed in beauty with golden Aphrodite and in craftwork was the equal of flashing-eyed Athena’. In the Judgement the opposition of these two goddesses to one another grows stronger than their common opposition to Hera. Still we can reject the thesis that the original contest omitted Hera and dealt only with Athena and Aphrodite.[253] Behind the differentiated forms of the three goddesses what we see is a primitive type in which the competitors were a triad of nymphs such as the Graces or Moirai.

*

To appreciate this point we must realize how common was the development of dual or triple form by deities, especially by earth-mother goddesses. The earth-mother might be split into mother and daughter, to express the stages of summer fullness and of spring rebirth after the wintry death. This sort of division is most clearly seen at Eleusis, with Demeter and her girl Persephone who was raped away by the underworld god Hades and who came back to the upper world in the spring. Other deities appear in both single and plural forms. The multiplication often has a functional significance, eg triple Hekate standing at the crossroads or a birth-goddess such as Eileithyia becoming plural so that she might give aid on either side of the bed. The increased number was felt to strengthen the protective power of an invoked goddess. Thus Artemis became Artemides Praai — praos meaning gentle, loving, cognate with Sanskrit prinati, to love, give pleasure to. So we get the Mothers, Dameteres, Cereres, Junones, Nemeseis, a double Kybele, Fortunae.[254] Some deities or heroes appear only in the plural as two, three, or more beings: the Hours, Graces, Muses, Nymphs, Dioskouroi, Korybantes, Telchines, Daktyls, Eumenides. Pairs may have different names, but always appear together. Iconographical multiplication may express the different natures of a deity or a location in different cults; and such differentiation, existent in archaic times, can end by classical times in seeming to beget distinct deities, eg the various forms of Hera or Artemis. We even find a deity with one qualifying term set out as superior to himself with a different term. Thus in the Oath of the Cretan Lyttians, Hestia (the mother-goddess as the central or uniting hearth) heads the list, but Zeus Kretagenes (Cretan-born) comes next, taking precedence over Zeus Tallaios, Idaian Zeus, Zeus Monnitios as well as over Hera, Athena Polia, and all the others.[255]

At Thebes a triad of Aphroditai was linked with Harmonia; and Megalopolis had the same triad. Aphrodite was at times linked with the three Moirai; at Athens she was even one of them, the oldest; at Olympia she was linked with the Horai; at Sparta with the Moirai Lacheseis; on an Etruscan mirror she appears with the Fate Atropos. As Pandemos she seems charged with the defence of collective prosperity and is connected with the magistrates who superintend economic activities; she was also probably linked with Apatouria and presided over the puberty rites; as Leader of the People she was honoured at Athens with the Graces, one of whom was named Leader, Hēgemonē.[256]

The dual form, we noted, was especially associated with earth-goddesses of vegetation. So far there is no evidence from Linear-B texts of the cult of a dual mother or of two nymph-nurses of Zeus. (A Pylian reading, taken to mean ‘Two Queens worshipped with a King’, cannot be substantiated.) But images of two identical women side by side occur already in early Minoan tombs; they may have been put in children’s graves as blessing-goddesses or divine nurses to protect the children in their journey to the other-world. At Perati a few Psi-figures (with upraised arms) had been given to children. But adults too may have needed such guides and aids.[257] A famous ivory from Mykenai may represent a pair of goddesses, or mother and daughter, with a young boy. The subject has been interpreted as Dionysos and the Nymphs; Demeter, Korē and Iacchos; the Divine Child and Nurses. What matters is that the maternal and nursing aspects are strong, as later with the Nymphs and earth-goddesses, whether the link is direct or indirect.[258]

Minoan art gives us some clues. On some late gems two women, side by side, make the gesture of epiphany, as if multiplying the familiar image of a single goddess with raised arms; but in many groups of two or three women it is uncertain whether they are mortals or deities. In the archaic period we meet triadic groupings; Artemis and Leto were worshipped with Apollo under one roof, at least in Crete, from the eighth century; in the shrine of Artemis Orthia a young male god appears in votive ivories between two females. A relief at Gortyna has a female triad: a metope of Thermon, a seated triad.[259] So we go on to classical times. In general we can trace dual goddesses far back in Anatolian cultures such as that of Catal Huyuk. Not that we can prove a direct line of descent; but the persistence of the type shows it was not a mere matter of decorative symmetries. There seems a gap in the Dark Ages, in the Geometric era, till the later eighth century. Then when dual types reappear there seems no clear link with Minoan-Mykenean times; rather they seem to follow, more or less closely, Egyptian-Phoinikian prototypes. We can hardly doubt that the types came in through the increased trading and cultural contacts with the east, as did many other art forms; but in view of the substantial elements from Bronze-Age religion which certainly carried on, we may hold that various ritual practices and mythological ideas, surviving from the second millennium, helped to acclimatize the new imagery. (The Minoans themselves had not been free from eastern influences.)[260]

In view of the complex developments behind the dual or triple figures, it is natural that the ancients were themselves often puzzled. Thus the names of the Nurses of Zeus were many, according to different localities. At Delphoi the Moirai were two, though elsewhere a triad. The Semnai (August Ones, called at Athens the Erinyes) were both dual and triple. Pausanias notes that in Boiotia Eteokles was said to have been the first to sacrifice to the Graces, a triad; the Lakedaimonians worshipped a pair, Kleta and Phaenna. The Athenians also had a pair, Auxo and Hēgemonē, but later, ‘before the entry of the Akropolis they set up the images of three Graces’. At Orchomenos the ancient Graces were two; on the Throne of Amyklai were two Hours, two Graces. At Athens the three daughters of the legendary king, Kekrops, were ‘maidens threefold’, and the three girls of Erechtheus (their later doubles) were ‘a triple yoke of maidens’. But at first there seems to have been a pair: Aglauros with a site on the northern slope of the Akropolis where girls danced, and Pandrosos with a site to the west of the Erechtheion. In Ovid a third is inserted, Herse, drawn from the festival of the Hersephoria (in fact celebrated for Athena, Pandrosos, Earth, Themis, Eileithyia). Both drosos and hersē mean dew; aglauros (aglaos) — shining, beautiful. After the battle of Marathon the cult of Pan invaded the old Aglaurid dancing ground, and by the time of Euripides Pan was considered the guest and the girls his guests. A relief found in the precinct of Dionysos shows two Pans, each with a goat and a cave; above are three dancing nymphs, to whom the artist has added a figure of triple Hekate (as if to suggest that the three are really one).[261] Such images help us to grasp the rich elements of ritual and myth behind the motif of Hermes leading his triad on the mountains.

The dual or triadic group of nurse-mothers had three main points of contact with human life: birth, initiation, death. Under initiation we may class both the puberty passage rite and marriage, which were often connected. Both were steps into a new life, a new level of experience: telos, a word with a very rich series of meanings, but at root signifying consummation or completion, was applied to each of them. The Nymphs (taking that as the generic term) guided men through the ordeals, fostered them, protected them at danger points of growth. As they were also nature spirits, through them men entered into the life of nature as well and found their unity with natural process. So nympha meant both a nature spirit and a bride. In the Iliad it is used for young wife or bride; Iris calls Helen nymph at Troy and Eurykleia uses the same word for Penelope. These women were hardly young girls, but they were being complimented as if in their first and desirable bloom. Nympha also means a nubile girl. Homer further uses it for nature spirits: ‘On the lonely mountains where men say are the bedding places of goddesses, of the nymphs who range swiftly in the dance about Acheloos’ (the name of several rivers, including one in Lydia, but also used for rivers, springs, water in general). We find nympha later used for the clitoris and for various physical slits, eg the hollow between underlip and chin, the depression on a horse’s shoulder; for a niche, an opening rosebud, a kind of mollusc, a bee or wasp in the pupa stage. A nymph-kōmos was a bridal festival. At Nymphona on the Sikyon-Phlios road was a temple, Nymphon, with images of Dionysos, Demeter and Korē, in which only the faces were shown; the women here held festival, while the men celebrated in Hera’s shrine.[262]

The dancing nymphs expressed the eternal life and movement of nature, ever bursting into new forms. A woman as nympha entered into the fullness of life and was also one of the ever-dancing. But the nymphs were above all nurses, fosterers of vegetation and of human beings, and were thus especially linked with Dionysos as the babe of plenty, of overbrimming life and energy. An attempt has been made to explain the -nysos end of the god’s name as Thracian for son: linguistically possible, but not likely. Nysa was his nurse, later supposed to give her name to a city in India. On a vase of Sophilos a triad of Nysai receive the child-god; but the name came to be applied to all the nurses of the gods, Nysai or Nysiades. The Parthenoi (maidens) Hyakinthides or Hyades at Athens, with the names Protogeneia, Pandora, Chthonia (Firstborn, All-gifts, Earth) have been regarded as nurses of Dionysos.[263] In fact all women taking part in the ecstatic dances of the god were his nurses. In tales such women are often a triad. The three sisters of his mother Semele cared for him after she was blasted by Zeus; they led his bands on the mountains. The three daughters of Minyas were overcome by his madness; they had a little boy in the midst, who was killed. The three daughters of Proitos, resisting, were driven mad. There were three Mainads of the lineage of Ino, Semele’s sister, who came to Magnesia on the Maiandros to establish Dionysiac women choruses.[264] Vases often show nymphs and Mainads taking care of young children. The Thyiades at regular intervals woke the sleeping babe Dionysos. In Lakedaimon, we noted, was the Tithenidia, festival of nurses; it was the nurses, not the mothers, who brought the young boys (not girls) to Artemis as nurse of Hyakinthos. We see again the earthmother as guardian of boys and overseer of their initiations.[265] In Knidos, Artemis was Hyakinthotrophos, nurse of Hyakinthos, a young god or daimōn connected with both the flower and with Dionysos: the initiate in his aspect of death, of withered vegetation.[266]

*

We can now make out the originating elements in the tale of the Judgement. A triad of nymphs, not yet differentiated, are connected with a herdsman; they are gift-bearers and some question of choice arises about their gifts; they are led by Hermes, who as psychopomp or soul-leader is the natural intermediary between mankind and the spirit world. If we add Oinone, we have the further fact that the herdsman has entered in love union with a nymph, bringing out the bridal aspect of the nymphs. We can clarify these elements of the tale by considering further the role of Hermes, the bridal aspect, and the nature of the herdsman who is linked with the nymphs through their gifts and their bridal nature.

Hermes is leader of the nymph triad, quite apart from the Judgement story. An archaic relief from the Akropolis shows the three Horai dancing to his pipe; behind them is a young figure, perhaps Eniautos, the blithe New Year of the reviving Earth rather than a worshipper tacked on. Hermes was called Charidotes, giver of charis or joy. (The Graces were the Charites.) A later votive relief from Gallipoli shows him leading the triad of dancing nymphs into the cave of Pan, who stands on a sort of pedestal at the side; we are reminded of the dual Pan of the Agraulids.[267] On a Boiotian red-figure kylix (second half of the fifth century) we see three nymphs of Nyssa with Hermes bringing the child Dionysos; on a Chalkidian psykter nymphs or Graces are apparently with him. A relief of the fourth or third century has three dancing nymphs, with a large head of the river-god Acheloos on the right, in the rocks; on the left were probably Pan and Hermes.[268] Hermes himself was son of Zeus and the mountain-nymph Maia.

The gift-bringing triad appear on an archaic relief. Two women carry fruits, one a wreath; the three stand close together in profile, suggesting their ultimate unity; the inscription calls them the Korai. Three reliefs to the Eumenides, found outside Argos, show three maidens standing behind one another, holding snake and flower or two snakes. A stēlē of the fourth century depicts three standing women, the first holding a poppy, on the left; on the right are a man and two women with a child. The Furies were not necessarily terrible; in origin they were earth-daimones like the Fates or Graces.[269]

Hermes leading three gift-bearing Nymphs was thus an ancient idea, which turned into the Judgement through the introduction of a beauty contest. But we cannot deduce that a nymph triad was at first attached to Paris, then differentiated and vulgarized by the competition. Much development must have gone on before the complex was shaped into the Judgement episode. The earlier depictions of the scene on black figure work show the three goddesses as hardly differentiated; and at this stage the Judgement itself is never shown. We merely see the triad on their way, generally with Hermes at their head. Paris is at times not included, though his absence is not as common as has been stated; and at other times he turns to run away in alarm, but is caught by Hermes. The explanation for this way of presentation does not lie in some literary model or in a general liking for processional scenes. Rather it lies in the fact that artists are still thinking of Hermes and the gift-laden Graces; they adapt this design to the Judgement story. The lack of differentiation may not be intentional; it is sufficiently explained by the style of the period’s art. On the François vase the triad of the Hours is very similar to the group of Chariklo, Hestia, Demeter. Still, it is correct enough to say that the artists are thinking of the nymph triad more than of competing goddesses.[270] And this feeling carries on right into the dramatists. Sophokles speaks of ‘a troika of Olympians’; Euripides of a ‘triple team’, ‘a three-filly chariot of daimones, beauty-yoked’. Significantly he uses a similar phrase for the Graces and the daughters of Erechtheus, while Sophokles calls the Graces ‘three-yoked’. Such terms stress the unity of the group, assimilating the three goddesses to the triad of the Graces. Aristophanes parodied the turn of phrase as ‘three-slave yoke’ in his Hours; and we are reminded of Alkman’s Maidensong and the Leukippides by the repetition of the horse image.[271]

The episode of the bathing in the spring further links the goddesses and the nymphs. We saw how Euripides stressed it, even calling it the start of all the troubles. Certainly he did not do so out of a wish to add merely a decorative detail. We can realize the importance of the toilet moment by glancing back at the passage from the Cypria describing Aphrodite’s preparations, which merge her with the bright flower life of the earth. The Homeric Hymn tells how, when getting ready to seduce the herdsman Anchises, she goes into her fragrant temple at Paphos. ‘She went in and closed the glittering doors, and the Graces bathed her in ambrosial oil, such as blooms on the bodies of the eternal gods, oil divinely sweet.’ We may compare an early Egyptian tale of a goddess seducing a herdsman. ‘See, when I approached the swamp bordering on this meadow, I saw a woman who did not have a human body. My hair stood on end as I saw her hair[iness], as her skin wasn’t smooth. Never will I do what she suggested as her terror [still] pervades my limbs.’ Scared, he decides to leave the meadow with his herd. Departure is set for next day. The other herdsmen object; but next day they begin to carry out their orders. While the work is going on, he again faces the water and again sees the goddess, who is now however naked, without her animal fur. The story then breaks off. The goddess seems to be Hathor, with her dual nature; her cult-symbol consists of two faces looking in opposite directions. In the story she seems to appear first as a wild animal (lioness), then as a lovely naked goddess. Presumably even in the first encounter she keeps her human face, so that the image presented is that of the female-headed sphinx — a form usually considered to be purely Greek. The Greeks identified Hathor with Aphrodite, and we might say that in the goddess, lioness and lovely woman, destroyer and preserver, we have a crude expression of the idea concretely incarnated in the Homeric Helen, which works out in the later notion of beauty as the supreme good and a malefic force.[272]

We may further compare the fear felt by Anchises when he learns that he has embraced a goddess, and the alarm shown by Paris on some black-figure vases at the arrival of the trio. On Samos there is a belief that a man who sleeps with nymphs grows impotent; so impotent persons are said to have been carried off by the nymphs when young.[273]

Hathor in the Egyptian tale is not described as bathing, but she seems connected with the water. The spring on Ida does not appear in art save in one late red-figure krater, where Athena is shown washing in a spring. Kallimachos’ Fifth Hymn is entitled The Bath of Pallas. It describes the toilet before the Judgement. ‘Come, girls of Achaia, and don’t bring perfume or alabasters — I hear the voices of the axle-naves! Come, you pourers of bathwater, don’t bring perfume or alabasters [vessels of alabaster made to hold perfumes], for Athena doesn’t love mixed unguents. And don’t bring a mirror. Always her face is lovely, and even when the Phrygian judged the eris on Ida, the great goddess didn’t look into orichalk [a bronze mirror] nor into the transparent eddy of Simois. And neither did Hera. But Cypris took the shining bronze and again altered the same lock of hair. But Pallas, after running twice sixty double courses, as the Lakedaimonian Stars did beside the Eurotas [the Dioskouroi], took simple unguents, the product of her own tree [olive], and skilfully anointed herself with it. And, maidens, the red flush rose on her, like the colour of the morning rose or pomegranate seed. So now you too bring her only the manly olive oil, with which Kastor and Herakles anoint themselves. And bring her a comb all of gold, so that she may comb her hair, when she has anointed her glossy tresses.’ (Oddly we see Helen reflected here in both the mirror-obsessed Aphrodite and the runner-by-the-Eurotas; she too had her tree, the plane.)

The nymph-nurses were associated with rivers or springs, as were the nurse-goddesses. Artemis was Alpheiara or Alpheionia in Elis with its river Alpheus. The local legend at Haliartos told how baby Dionysos was washed by his nurses in Kissousa spring. There were tales of his nurses and of himself being chased or thrown into waters. The link with water derives from initiation practices. In Messenia the katharmata (that which is thrown away in purifications) from the birth of Zeus were said to have been cast into the River Neda; at that site the children of Phigalia, apparently on coming of age, used to dedicate their hair. At Tanagra in Boiotia women went down to the sea to purify themselves before festivals; the legend told how women, assaulted there by the sea-god Triton in the water, cried out to Dionysos, who found and overcame their attacker. The link with female mysteries is shown by tales such as that of Leukippos (White Horse) of Pisa, who, in love with Daphne, put on female clothes and went hunting with her; when the girls bathed in the Ladon they found him out and stabbed him to death. The tale of Aktaion is similar: he came on Artemis bathing in a spring, Parthenis (maiden); she turned him into a hind and his own hounds tore him to bits and ate him.[274] The river-god Alpheios fell in love with Artemis and tried to catch her at an all-night festival; but she and her nymphs covered their faces with mud so that he could not tell one from another. Here we can make out some secret rite in which nubile girls went down to the river, perhaps at Artemis’ shrine on its banks, and smeared their faces so as to partake of the water’s life-giving powers. The medicinal qualities ascribed to the river is shown by its name — River of Leprosy (alphos). Down on the coast from the valley was a shrine of Zeus Leukaios, god of the white sickness; and a stream in the district, Anigros, had a cave to which lepers made pilgrimage.[275]

The fact that so many streams or springs were called Parthenia or Parthenios shows the link with the rites of nubile girls, who bathed there for purifications before festivals. Brides customarily bathed before marriage in the local river or in water from it. Again we see the strong connection with initiations. Widely-spread customs insisted on an act of immersion to purify girls at their first menstruation. The water also made the bathers fertile; nuptial water was called life-giving. Girls bathing in the Skamandros used to pray to the river-god, ‘Skamandros, take my virginity!’ We see the ritual basis of legends about women impregnated by river-gods; and the link with the great initiation moments is brought out by the customs of the Dardaneis in Illyria, who washed only at birth and marriage, then were washed in death.[276]

We may add the custom of bathing a holy image once a year to renew its powers. Argive women on an appointed day took Athena’s image and Diomedes’ shield to be washed in the Inachos. (The image was said to be the Trojan palladion carried off by Diomedes.) The goddess Daitis (dētis, torch) of Ephesos went to her yearly sea-bath, as did Hera at Samos, while Kybele at Rome went to be bathed in the Almo. At Sikyon in Aphrodite’s shrine, says Pausanias, none may enter but ‘a female verger, who after appointment may have no intercourse with a man, and a virgin called the Bathbearer, who holds the sacred office a year. All others may see the goddess only from the entry and must pray from there.’ The gold and ivory image had a polos on its head, in one hand a poppy, in the other an apple. Opposite Kenchrai, a Corinthian port, was a site called Helen’s Bath. ‘It’s a large stream of salt tepid water flowing from a rock into the sea,’ says Pausanias, but gives no explanatory legend.[277]

*

Behind the visit of the goddesses to Ida we then see the dancing triad of the nurse-nymphs or Fates, led by Hermes; the Moirai attending a birth with gifts or destinies; and a bridal ritual or initiation which involved purification by water. The beauty contest doubtless originated also from initiation ritual; we saw how such contests were carried on at Athens in the Panathanaia and the Theseia. But, like other forms of competition or agōnes, the beauty contest detached itself as rite or game in its own right, though maintaining cult-links. Herdsmen are commonly connected with nymphs as lovers, perhaps because they often lived or worked alone in the wilds. So the complex we have analyzed gathered round Paris. Let us look at him more closely.

In the fully elaborated version, we saw, he was the child of doom, whose birth was accompanied by prophecies of his calamitous role; he was exposed as a baby on Ida, fed by a she-bear and reared by a herdsman; his identity was discovered when he was victor at the funeral games his parents belatedly held for him; he became the umpire in the beauty contest, then went off to gain Helen.

It is easy to show the inorganic nature of all that. We cannot make a plausible connection between Judgement and Recognition. The umpire who is promised Helen cannot be a poor mountain herdsman; the herdsman who wins the games cannot be the proud favourite of Aphrodite. The episode of Oinone was obviously developed after Paris had become a familiar figure in epic and in song. The first addition to the Homeric account seems the motifs of his mother’s dreams and the prophecies of doom. Some suggestions of such themes may indeed have come up in early bardic lays, which Homer ignored; but the expansion was certainly later, with its first important expression by Pindar. Then people felt that such a child would never have been reared; he must have been exposed. Exposure would explain his position as herdsman on Ida. Once he was seen as an exposed babe, a recognition story was needed. So it was devised, regardless of the difficulties it created in relation to the Judgement. One of the transitional stages may be shown on a cup by the Briseis painter, which has been taken to depict Paris’ return to Priam’s palace after the Judgement; Kassandra’s hand is lifted in imprecation. But the interpretation is not certain; Paris may be coming home from Greece.[278]

The problem of Paris as a herdsman was a problem only for a world that had lost the sense of Homeric things and found it anomalous for a prince to herd cattle. But such a job was a normal part of a Trojan hero’s routine. (In the same way people forgot the power wielded by a tribal-feudal overlord like Agamemnon and could credit a gathering of the Achaians only as the result of something like the suitors’ oath.) Anchises was a herdsman on Ida when Aphrodite waylaid him; the Iliad twice mentions the situation, which was also known to the poet of the Sack. But mostly Homer is ready to refer to such tales only in brief genealogical asides. Aias wounds Satnios, ‘whom the good nymphs of the stream bore to Enops as he tended his cattle by the banks of the Satnioeis’. Boukolion, son of Laomedon, lay with the nymph Abarbaree; ‘as he pastured his sheep he lay with her in love’s embrace, and she conceived and bore twin sons’, who were killed in the war. Enops’ girl has no name, as is normal in folktales; and Boukoli on (Cowherd) is a type, not a saga hero.[279]

The exposed child of myth was reared by nymphs or suckled by an animal, and then brought up by shepherds. Ancient Greece had many such tales. Often twins were exposed, but most of the babes were single and male. The motif was very ancient, and reasserted itself at all phases of Greek culture, reaching its apex (aided by Euripides) in the New Comedy and the romances — the theme being vulgarized by making the exposed child turn out to be a lost heir, his identity proved by tokens or birthmarks, then by the testimony of his foster-parents. The roots of the tale type lie in initiation ritual, where the youth dies and is reborn: he is taken away from his parents and normal life, is plunged into a series of tests or ordeals, and then, emerging, is recognized as an adult with a new status. (Often the lad had to stay for varying periods alone in the wilds: an experience which, linked with fasting and perhaps with drugs, could beget the conviction of terrible environing dangers and attacking demons. This withdrawal phase does not appear strongly in the evidence from the classical era in Greece; but its mark is clear on the myths and tales.) The moment of recognition passed as anagnorōsis into the structure of Greek tragedy, which in its structure reflects an agōn or struggle drawn from the passage rite. Thus the stages of initiation, expressing the key points in the experience of change, crisis, deep conflict and its resolution, provided the basis for dramatic structure. In tragedy the movement to a new level of life or consciousness was defeated, but the recognition moment expressed the sudden and complete awareness of what had been at stake, so that this understanding passed into the work of art in its totality, however the protagonist might go down. In comedy the breakthrough into the new life provided the conclusion, the kōmos or revel.[280]

Some scholars think that Sophokles introduced the exposure motif into the Paris saga, adapting Herodotos’ tale of Kyros. Certainly that tale did much to increase the motif’s popularity and affected the treatment of Paris by the dramatists; but it did not beget the motif. Elements taken from Herodotos perhaps included the regal behaviour of Paris as a boy, the stamp of his features, his freeborn manner, his independent behaviour (as in Euripides’ Alexandros). Paris, we are told, showed a remarkable likeness to the sons of Priam; though poor, he defeated the acknowledged princes in aretē, his nobility was inherent and showed that wealth was unimportant. Sophokles’ play dealt with the funeral games and doubtless gave Paris much the same cast as did Euripides, though less emphatically.[281]

A detail pointing to initiation is the double name. The fostering shepherd called the boy Paris; then Paris was called Alexandros for his courage in defending flocks and shepherds: Alex-andros means Defender of Men. Names with the prefix Alex- suggest protectors, especially during the dangerous transitions of initiation. Thus Herakles, the supreme image of the heroic initiate who passes ordeal after ordeal, was Alexikakos, Warder-off of Evil. A relief shows him standing by his shrine with a wine-krater on it; the inscription calls him Alexikakos; a worshipping ephebos (a lad nearing adolescence) comes up. Photios in his gloss on the Oiniasteria, the festival when the lads had their hair and beard down cut, mentions ‘a libation to Herakles performed by the epheboi before the hair-cutting’. Hesychios confirms that the rite occurred at Athens and Pamphilos adds that the libation was made from a big cup of wine. Hesiod calls the ‘race of gold’, become daimones, Alexikakoi. Alexandra was an epithet of Hera as well as the second name of Kassandra.[282]

For the second name given in initiation we may take the Tohungas of New Zealand: a naming rite was performed over the pupils in the Whare Wananga: that is, they were renamed during the initiation experience which brought them the ancestral lore. Maui, the great Polynesian hero, reared by sea-deities and an ancestor, at last found his ‘real parents’; his father purified him over a running stream and performed a naming rite, but omitted one name, thus ultimately causing Maui’s death. Here the initiation goes wrong; the full new name is not successfully obtained.[283]

Paris, we see, not only gains a second name, but by that name reveals himself as a sort of protective daimōn of initiation itself.

There is yet one more point about his exposure. He was suckled by a she-bear and was thus a Bear’s Son, as were so many other heroes, eg Beowulf (Bee-wolf, Bear), Salmoxis, Odysseus. Odysseus was grandson of Arkeisios (Bear-son, got by Kephalos on a she-bear) and brother of Kallisto (a bear name as we shall see); he had a son Arkesilaos, Bearcub. Homer omits the hero’s bear connections. Zeus was reared on Mt Ida in Crete in the Bear Cave, Arkesion Antron. Elements of the tale type called The Bear’s Son, perhaps the most important of all folktales, cling to Odysseus, but there are no signs of them in Paris’ story. However, not far from Ida lay Kyzikos, built on a hill called Bear Mountain; and here the nurses of Zeus were bears.[284] The Minoan-Mykenean basis of the bear-nurse seems clear; and bear-cults were strong in Arkadia, with its very old traditions. The region’s ancestor was Arkas, Bear; his mother was changed into a bear shortly before he was born. Her name was Kallisto, Megisto, or Themisto: all epithets of Artemis, a companion of whom she was in myth. The link of bear-cults and the initiation mysteries of girls is manifest in the Attic cult of Artemis Brauronia, with its centre at Brauron. Aristophanes tells us that young girls, dressed in saffron robes, used to dance there; like the priestess, they were called Bears. (The saffron robe may have been a substitute for bear-skins.) The dance was called Arkteia, and the girls were aged five to ten. Various rationalizing tales were devised in late times. Once a tame bear lived there, but a girl, teasing it, was torn to pieces; her brother killed the bear. So a plague fell on Athens, till an oracle bade the citizens to put their daughters through the rite arkteuein. As a result all girls had to dance the bear role before being allowed to marry. The bear-dance may also have been performed at the festival of Demeter or Artemis at Lykousoura; and the link of bear and Artemis is brought out by the myth of Atalanta, who, exposed on Mt Parthenion by a spring, was suckled by a bear and became a swift huntress, loved by the goddess.[285]

Through the fostering she-bear we then come back to the ancient mothers or nurses with whom initiation rites, of boys as well as girls, were connected. Only by an analysis such as we have been making can we realize the vast importance in early Greek religion of nature-goddesses, their shrines and cults; and we cannot doubt that the roots go back to Minoan-Mykenean times. Consider Aglauros whom we saw connected as a nymph heroine with Herse and Drosos (Dew) on the Acropolis at Athens. Nothing seems further from the initiations of lads; yet a slab from Acharnai, giving the oath of the Athenian epheboi, begins with her name: ‘I will venerate the cults of my fathers. I take in witness of this path the gods, Aglauros, Hestia, Enyo, Enyalios, Ares and Athena Areia, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, Hēgemonē, the Boundaries of my native land, the fields of wheat, barley, vineyards, olive and fig groves...’ Aglauros and the Hearth-goddess open the list; the three Graces end it. At least in the fourth century the oath was taken in Aglauros’ temple. In the Homeric pantheon gods have the superior role, though the goddesses are far from being inactive or ineffective; but as soon as we get back behind that pantheon, we find the earth-goddess in varying forms and functions, but related with a special potency to birth, puberty, marriage, death: the great moments of change or initiation. Gods, in so far as we can make them out, are children — baby Zeus or Dionysos — for the nurses to attend, or they are faint son-lovers like Iacchos in the Eleusinian Mysteries with Demeter and Korē. Paris, from the mythical angle, fits in with this pattern. He is the exposed babe of the wilds with an animal suckler, the young herdsman awaiting the moment of test and of recognition, awaiting the advent of the goddess who will take him between her thighs, though in his case, unlike that of Anchises, Adonis, Attis, it is not a single goddess who turns up. It is a quarrelling triad among whom Aphrodite offers, not herself, but her earthly deputy, Helen.

The couplet in the last book of the Iliad in which Paris is said to have reviled the goddesses would make more sense, however, if it applied to an episode where they offered, not gifts, but themselves. The rejection would then echo the episode where Gilgamesh in the Sumerian-Babylonian epic scorns the advances of Isthar, or that in the Ugaritic epic where Aqhat rejects the offers of Anath for his bow and ends by abusing her. We might indeed go on to say that the rejection motif, displaced, has been attached to the nymph Oinone, through whom (by her refusal to provide the needed pharmakon) Paris dies. From this perspective then we could say that the pattern of the Aqhat (Thammuz-Adonis) story may be traced in the various episodes of Paris’ life, in displaced and reorganized forms. Not that we could then argue that Paris originated as a secularized version of the son-lover of the Great Mother. More likely, his role as Helen’s lover had the effect of attracting elements from the supreme myth pattern — elements that ended by fitting to some extent together. (He has indeed something of the role of a god like Hades, or a hero like Theseus, who carry off or seek to carry off the earth-maiden Korē.) The rebirth motif appears in terms of what we have called the tragic twist, in the frustration of his effort to gain the pharmakon from Oinone; the return to the sources of renewal (to natural process as life-death and life-death) fails. Ida, we may note, means Forest; as well as having some definite locations, it was like Olympos, a heaven-mountain or sky-pillar.

*

We may now again ask, in the light of our deepened analysis, if Homer was aware of the Judgement motif. What is sure in the Iliad is that something has happened to differentiate Paris from the other princes of Troy; he is ‘odd man out’. This point is strongly brought out by the contrast with Hektor; the aberrant person who provokes division and disaster is set against the man of strong family roots, who provides a norm of social attitudes, of all that unites individual and group. Even the role of Paris as wielder of the bow makes him unlike Hektor and the others. We cannot say that it is the possession of Helen that makes the difference; for it was the difference that sent him after her. The disparities may arise from the way Homer combines different bardic traditions; but it may also derive from some such background episode as the Judgement, which Homer suppresses as distracting and trivializing. He shows the close interaction of human and daimonic forces, but he does not want to explain away the broad issues by a mythological sideshow.

We may go on to ask how far the underlying psychology of the judgement episode suits Homer and the world around 750. Though we saw that it was too simple to find in the trio of goddesses a vulgarized version of the undifferentiated nymph triad, a certain truth resides in that contrast. The oppositions of Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, show a breakdown of the unity of the concept of a good woman such as Penelope, who expresses in a comprehensive way the aretē of a woman in Homeric society. The gifts that the goddesses offer represent the qualities of their characters, so that each goddess stands for a different way of life for women. The unified concept, expressed by the nymph triad, has broken up into three opposed concepts of what a woman might or should be. Hera stands for the wife who bases herself on family life and exalts the power of the male by separating out her own lesser power; Athena stands for that part of woman which can compete with the man, which sees the virginal aspect of her own body, which turns also to craft, industry, intellectual matters; Aphrodite stands for the need to find sensuous enjoyment and excitement without concern for the family or society.

We here come back to the Moirai; for a person’s character is inseparable from his or her chosen role in life, and that role is a central part of the person’s fate or share in things. We see a primitive expression of the tendency to division of labour and social roles in the way in which Zeus, after the war with the Titans, becomes king as war-leader, and assigns a geras (gift, guerdon, honour) or moira to each deity. Hephaistos gets fire as his geras. The moira of Atlas is to hold up the sky. Apollo has music and dancing, while Hades has lamentation. Hesiod (though not using the term moira) says that the Nymphs, ‘together with the Lord Apollo and the Rivers, have youth in their keeping’ — kourizein, literally ‘shear the youth, watch over their puberty-rites’. Note the stress on the Rivers in this relationship, supporting what was said above of springs or rivers and rituals of initiation or marriage. Aphrodite’s moira was love-making. But once, the poet Nonnos tells us, she was caught at the loom. The Graces, ‘the dancers of Orchomenos, attendants on the Paphian, had then no dancing to do; but Pasithea made the spindle run round, Peitho dressed the wool, Aglaia gave thread and yarn to her mistress. And marriages went all astray in human life. Time, the ancient who guides our existence, was disturbed and lamented the bond of wedlock used no more....Life dwindled, birth was hard-smitten, the bolts of indivisible union were shot back.’ Athena protested to Zeus that Aphrodite had stolen her kleros or lot, so that she could no longer carry out the vocation that the Moirai had given her. (In Aischylos the Erinyes accuse Apollo of robbing them of the lachos that the Moirai gave them at birth; and Asklepios was punished for trespassing on the moira of Hades when he raised the dead.) Athena complains, ‘I no longer manage the gift of the Moirai; for your daughter Aphrodite has taken to weaving and stolen my kleros.’ She claims that she has never trespassed on the share of Artemis. ‘When have you seen Athena in your forest shooting arrows or hunting game? Who calls upon Glaukopis [owl-eyed, bright-eyed, Athena] when in labour?’ The gods rush to see the strange sight. Hermes jokes and remarks that if Aphrodite takes Athena’s loom she should also wield her spear and shield. Such things upset all order. ‘Take care once more of marriage; for the immemorial nature of the kosmos has been going astray since you took to weaving cloth.’ Aphrodite in shame goes off to Cypros ‘to be the nurse, tithēnētaira, of the human race’.[286]

Division of labour, once established, seems a part of the eternal nature of things. In the Judgement we see the differentiation of function among goddesses used to express a new social sense of woman’s place. A woman is no longer an harmonious mixture of Hera, Athena, Aphrodite: wife-housekeeper, mistress of crafts, and the lovely provoker of desire which she herself enjoys. She tends to be one or other in an inner imbalance which reflects increased social division. Paris by his choice of Helen becomes the factor precipitating a vast new rift in the human sphere. We cannot imagine this sort of myth arising in the Bronze Age; it is linked with the great social expansion and differentiation going on in the Ionian cities of which Homer was a member. So it could have been in existence in his day though we might also argue that it shows the crystallization in the mythological schema of the spiritual and social divisions embodied in his Helen image. The new consciousness of women expressed in the Judgement would then be post-Iliad, though not long after the epic had begun to make its impact.

There is one further question we may ask in connection with the material set out above about the nurse-mother, the initiation-mother, and the child god, Zeus or Dionysos. At some time during Mykenean days and the Dark Ages Zeus began to take on the role of a supreme and fully-grown god. How this happened is still quite hidden. But we find some suggestive parallels in such a group as the Ibibios of southern Nigeria. Here Eka Abassi, Mother of the Gods, was the main deity. As the Great Mother she bore all things, including her son-consort Obumo the Thunder-god. ‘She is not as the others. She it is who dwells on the Other Side of the Wall.’ Her spiritforce lives in everything, twig, stone, or waterdrop, but is most manifest in the unhewn stones set amid the sacred waters that are scattered about the land, or in the great trees, the Givers of Babes. At death, men say: Eka Abassi has taken our brother. ‘Holy pools and rocks, many of which are regarded as the earthly manifestation of Eka Abassi, and are often connected with the rites of her son and spouse, Obumo the Thunderer, hold first place among jujus, in the opinion of the greater number of Ibibio women.’ She also has a triadic form. ‘Water, earth, and stone, the three great Mothers, are most always to be found within the groves of the All-Father.’ Her cult has been invaded and partly taken over by Obumo. He had originally been inferior. Eka’s eldest born, he once lived on the earth, then he went up to join the sky-people; the earth-folk lost the road of passage to the sky, and now the sky-people rarely come down it. Only one informant could recall the use of sacrificial altars, but the offerings had been made to Eka. They had been set on altars of logs crisscrossed in alternate layers to breast height; twigs were put on the logs, and on them the body of a white hen, who had been a good layer but now was old; the twigs were then fired.[287]

Something of this sort must have happened in Greece, no doubt beginning in Mykenean days and carried further during the Dark Ages. The developments were clearly much influenced by ideas of the Council of the Gods and the like, long prevalent in the Near East and probably flowing into the Aegean world particularly via Ugarit; but there must have been local assertions of father-rights and of the powers of the war-chieftain, laying the basis on which the eastern influences could prove fertile. As we shall see later, among the Ibibios the men have taken over the cult-associations once belonging to the women.

Chapter Nine – The Nature of Helen

As our inquiry has gone on, now and then a cult-aspect of Helen has come up, for instance her connection with the plane tree at Sparta. Now we must examine her cult-relations in more detail and find what light they shed on her origins. First, there is her name: Helenē. From Hesychios we learn that the word helenē was used for a torch. We may compare elanē, torch of reeds, also bundle of reeds. Helenē further meant a wicker-basket used to carry sacred utensils at the festival of the Brauronian Artemis in her bear-cult. Such a basket would play an important part in a rite. We may compare the liknon, a broad basket used as a winnowing fan and sacred to Dionysos; at his festivals the bearer carried it on his head. It was also sacred to Athena and had the meaning of cradle. The Hymn tells us of Hermes: ‘As soon as he sprang from his mother’s immortal womb, he did not lie waiting for long in his holy liknon, but jumped up and sought Apollo’s oxen’. As Liknites, Dionysos was worshipped as the divine babe in the cradle. Ploutarch, seeking to draw likenesses between Osiris and Dionysos, says, ‘The Egyptians point out tombs of Osiris in many places, and the Delphians hold that they possess the relics of Dionysos buried beside their oracular shrine; the Hosioi make the secret sacrifice in Apollo’s sacred precinct when the Thyiades raise up Liknites.’ (He is addressing a woman, Klea, who was leader of the Thyiades or band of female devotees of Dionysos at Delphoi, and who had been initiated into the Osirian rites.) The raising-up of the holy babe in the basket by the tomb of the god can only represent a resurrection ritual. Again, the kalathos was a tall, tapering basket in which women put their work, especially materials for spinning; it was carried in honour of Demeter at the Eleusinian festival and is often shown set on the head of deities, above all Demeter. It had a chthonic (underworld) significance as well as implying abundance of fruits and crops. As a hat it is said to have been developed out of a crown of leaves with sharp points standing up or crossing one another. It would have been worn by young Spartan girls who danced the dance of the kalathiskos in honour of Artemis Karyatis, though some scholars argue it was rather a basket with flowers and fruit which the dancers held. Thus Ovid describes Persephone gathering flowers and putting them in a kalathos just before Hades arrives to carry her off; so we may surmise that Helen was similarly using a kalathos when Hermes came to carry her off to Egypt, as told in Euripides’ Helena. Kanephoroi, bearers of baskets made of reeds, were girls walking in festival processions at Athens, and also priestesses. Pollux, telling us of the basket helenē, adds that the festival in which it was carried was called Helenophoria.[288]

The importance of the sacred basket is shown by the custom at Athens of carrying one in a vehicle in honour of Athena on a fixed day, a custom imitated by Ptolemy Philadelphos at Alexandreia in the Procession of the Kalathos. In the Thesmophoria at Athens were three crucial moments: the Anodos or Kathodos (Ascent, Descent), the Nesteia (Mourning) and the Kalligeneia (Beauty-birth). In the third rite only the initiated women were allowed to go into the temple with the basket.[289]

We see then that Helen’s name was used for ritual implements. As both the torch and the basket were made of reeds, we can surmise that the reed was the common factor, especially when we find her name attached to herbs of considerable medical and magical virtue. She seems something of a vegetation-daimōn, though we shall have to test this suggestion by what further evidence comes up. The attempt in later antiquity to link Helene and Selēnē, and to see her as a lunar deity, has less to be said for it, despite the modern effort to find a root meaning brightness behind each name. An altar from the Roman Forum, found close to the fountain of Juturna, of imperial date, showed Castor and Pollux with lances and with stars over their caps, Leda and her swan, Zeus with sceptre and bolt, and a woman holding up a heavy torch with both hands. An Alexandreian coin of Trajan shows a goddess holding a torch, with a crescent over her head, between the Twins. A gem depicts the Twins with their lances at a festival table; the third person is a crescent moon. In a variant the goddess makes the gesture of Aphrodite Anadyomene, with her hands to her hair, a crescent over her head. A scholiast informs us that Helen had a star, its name Ourania. We are told that she went to the moon after her death, or that she was the daughter of the Sun and Leda. But all these ideas or images are late; they belong to the spiritualizing trend we noted in both late art and literature. Certainly much of the notion of her as star or crescent came from her connection with the Twins as saviours of sailors, who took the form of St Elmo’s Fire in storms. Thus, after a sea-battle, the Aiginetans dedicated at Delphoi Three Stars set on the top of a Mast — the Twins and Helen.[290]

Helen’s herbs were helenion — calamint, calaminthus incana; elecampane, inula Helenium; symphoton — comfrey, symphytum bulbosum. Elecampane has been used by herbalists from ancient times for lung or chest complains, or for kidney troubles, in the form of powder, ointment, oil, syrup, infusion; it promotes perspiration. Plinius comments: ‘Helenium was born, it’s said, from Helen’s tears.’ Columella gives three recipes for preserving elecampane. Ailian thought helenion of use against snakes. Strangely, in the old English Christmas Mumming-Play with its immemorial rite of resurrection, the Doctor often uses elecampane to revive the dead man. At Bursledon, Hampshire, he cried, ‘I have a bottle in my pocket what we calls elecome pain...I drop one drop on his head and one on his heart. Rise up, you man.’ At Camborne, Cornwall, ‘Now take a few drops of my helly come pain.’ At Weston-sub-Edge, Gloucestershire, ‘I’ve a little bottle by my side called Welgunpane...will quickly bring him to life again.’ At Overton, Hampshire, ‘I’ve got a little bottle by my side that you commonly call Elegant Paint.’ At Cocking, Sussex, ‘The stuff therein is called Hallecumb paint’, — pronounced ‘Ha-lo-cum-pain’. At Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire, it was called Champagne. We certainly see in this list a warning example of how folk corruptions operate.[291]

One more suggestion has been made about Helen’s name: that it is a transformation of the name Aphrodite. Aischylos’ attempt to derive it from helein, to drag, is only a play on words, with the sense of some magical hidden connection that such verbal links often gave the ancients. Helen has in modern times been connected with the root ven: German, wonne, wünschen; Latin, Venus. Helen would then be the Greek Venus, a pleasant idea, but without much force.[292]

What do we know of cults of Helen? Not a great deal, but enough to show that we must consider her seriously as a vegetation deity. At Sparta she had her shrine, we saw, near the tomb of the poet Alkman. Isokrates says that the Spartans sacrificed to her and to Menelaos, not as heroes, but as gods; and it was no doubt at her Spartan festival, the Heleneia, that maidens rode to her shrine in a special sort of chariot. We may further assume that the festival Helenophoria, where the baskets called helenai were carried, was in her honour. Her shrine at Sparta was near the Platanistas or Grove of Planes, where the epheboi had their traditional group fight. We have no direct evidence of a link between her and this fight; but in view of her connection with the plane tree, it is very likely. She then appears as a daimōn of the boys’ initiation agōn, as she does of the girls’ festival dances where Aristophanes saw her as the dance-leader. We may here recall some lines in Theokrites’ marriage-song for Helen: ‘Even now you are a wedded wife; but we will go out early to the course we ran, and to the grassy meadows, to gather sweet-breathing wreaths of flowers, thinking often of you, Helen, just like youngling lambs that miss the teats of the mother ewe. For you we’ll first twine a garland of lotus flowers which grow low on the ground, and hang it on a shadowy plane tree; for you we’ll first take soft oil from the silver phial and drop it under a shadowy planetree, and we’ll cut letters on the bark, in Dorian style, so that the wayfarer may read: Worship me, I’m the Tree of Helen’. There are four points here. Helen is the daimōn-leader of the girl group on the dromos in racing; she is the leader of the girl group before they have completed their initiation and marry; she is in the position of a nursing-mother to them, the mother ewe to the lambs that depend on her teats (now lost through marriage); and she is identified with the tree as a goddess to be worshipped.[293]

Then there is the Menelaion on the right bank of the Eurotas. The foothills of Taygetos rise some three miles to the west, with the highest peaks of the range rising behind them to some 8,000 feet. Therapne stands itself about 700 feet up, facing Taygetos across the river. Only the foundations of the temple remain, standing on a platform supported by a wall of massive blocks. Mykenean pottery has been found there, and many votive offerings of small lead warriors and women in striped and chequered garments. But we have no proof as to who was worshipped there during the Bronze Age. Pausanias says Helen and Menelaos were buried on the site. Though the temple was called after the husband, it seems rather to have been Helen’s, as we see from the tale in Herodotos about the nurse taking her ugly girl-charge there and the advent of Helen. The statement of Isokrates that the pair were treated as gods, not heroes, we cannot trust too far, as he would have been ready to stretch a point to glorify Helen. Eusebios cites a late Lakonian oracle from Oinomaos which also supports Menelaos’ deification; and as early as the Odyssey we hear of his translation to the Blessed Isles, though that does not imply god-head. Not far from Therapne was a place called the Phoibaion, with a temple of the Dioskouroi. ‘Here the epheboi sacrifice to Enyalios’ (the old form of the war-god).

Helen’s role as nurse-mother seems further to come out in the story that the temple of the birth-goddess, Eileithyia, at Argos was dedicated by her. She was said to have borne Iphigeneia to Theseus at Argos and so founded the sanctuary. The stags and griffins decorating her cult-chariot at Sparta suggest her link with Artemis as Lady of Wild Things; and finds in the temple of Artemis Orthia prove that she was linked with the goddess there.[294]

She had important cult-relations with Rhodes. Pausanias tells us: ‘They say that when Menelaos died and Orestes [her nephew] was still taken up with his wanderings, she was driven into exile by Nikostratos and Megapenthes, and went to Rhodes, where she had a friend Polyxo, wife of Tlepolemos. For Polyxo had been born an Argive, and when her husband ran off to Rhodes [after murdering the brother of Herakles’ mother], she went with him. Left a widow with an orphan son, she was queen of the island. They say she wanted to avenge her husband’s death [at Troy] on Helen, whom she now had in her power. So when Helen was bathing, she sent some serving-girls disguised as Erinyes, who seized her and hanged her on a tree.’ So in Rhodes there is a sanctuary of Tree-Helen, Helena Dendrites. Plinius records that in Athena’s sanctuary at Lindos on Rhodes Helen offered a cup made out of elektron in the measure of her own breast. (In the festivals of Isis at Corinth milk was poured from a breast-shaped golden vase. Such cups were common in Isiac ritual. Apuleius describes an Isiac procession in which the priest ‘carried a round vessel of gold in breast form from which milk flowed down’.) The breast-cup (of milk) again reveals Helen as nurse-mother. The temple of Lindos, by the way, held a long inscription on marble, known as the Lindian Chronicle, put there in 99 BC by the city council. It listed among other things the ancient treasures dedicated to Athena and claimed that these included: ‘Menelaos, a helmet, inscribed: Menelaos, the helmet of Alexandros’, that is, the helmet he pulled off Paris’ head in the duel recounted in the Iliad; ‘Helen, a pair of bracelets, inscribed: Helen to Athena. Kanopos; helmsman of Menelaos, his steering-oars, inscribed: Kanopos to Athena Polias’.

A rhetorician Polyainos gives a different account of Helen at Rhodes. ‘Menelaos, returning from Egypt with Helen, put in at Rhodes. Polyxo was mourning for her husband Tlepolemos killed at Troy. On hearing that Menelaos had arrived with Helen, she wished to avenge her husband and ran down to the ships with a crowd of Rhodian men and women armed with fire and stones. Menelaos, prevented by the wind from sailing, hid Helen in the hold and dressed up her best-looking serving-girl in her clothes. The Rhodians, believing her to be Helen, pelted her to death with fire and stones; and, thinking they’d sufficiently avenged Tlepolemos by Helen’s death, they went off. Menelaos sailed away with Helen.’

This variant, however, again links her with Artemis. For Pausanias says that in Arkadia, about a furlong from Kaphyai is a place called Kondylea where there is a grove and shrine of Artemis. In ancient times she was called Kondyleatis; but her name was changed, they say, for the following reasons. Some children, how many is not recorded, were playing about the sanctuary and found a rope. Tying it round the image’s neck, they said Artemis was being strangled. The Kaphyans detected the children in the act and stoned them to death. After that a malady fell on the women and their babies were stillborn, till the Pythian priestess bade them bury the children and sacrifice to them yearly in the manner used for heroes, since they had wrongly been put to death. The Kaphyans still obey this oracle, and at Kondylea from that day to this they call the goddess the Strangled [or Hanged] One, as they say the oracle instructed them.’ Kondylos means knuckle; kondylizein, to strike with the fist, maltreat. The myth seems to record, with the tragic twist, an initiation rite of blows and maltreatment inflicted on the boys in the presence of the Hanged Artemis. We may compare the Spartan initiation rite when lads were flogged at the altar of Artemis Orthia. Not far from the grove at Kaphyai was a tall and beautiful plane tree named after Menelaos and said to have been planted by him when mustering his forces for Troy. Theophrastos however says it was planted by Agamemnon. In any event we see that Helen was connected with the region of the Hanged Artemis and was again associated with a plane. The Greek for the tree is platanas (platonistos in the Iliad), a name derived from platys, broad, because of the tree’s broad crown; we may compare the hat of Helen, the kalathos.[295]

The hanging-motif is highly important in a large number of myths and legends; but before turning to it, let us deal with other cults of Helen and with the tree element in the nature of Artemis and Dionysos. Helen, we saw, was identified by Herodotos with Aphrodite because of the evidence in Egypt. Simon, the mage of Samaria, we also saw, associated with himself the whore Helen of Tyre, whom he presented as the embodiment of the Allmother, Being and Wisdom; his followers saw this Helen as a reincarnation of Homer’s heroine and set up statues with Athena’s traits besides those of Zeus (Simon). Some scholars have deduced the existence of a Helen Astarte, with a long-established cult in the Delta of Egypt. But excavations at Naukratis have turned up no hint of Helen; and the epithet Xeinē (Stranger) of Herodotos’ Aphrodite at Memphis is best interpreted as referring to Astarte, without any connection with Helen. The cults which Ploutarch mentions in Egypt of Menelaos and Helen must be late, doubtless stimulated among Greeks there by the Herodotean story.[296]

Athenagoras, a late writer pleading for the Christians, states that among the colonists of New Troy there was a cult of Hektor as a god and of Helen Adrasteia. But ‘Adrasteia’ was an epithet of Nemesis; its transference to Helen must be late. There seems to have been a cult of Helen on the shores of Bithynia. Isis of the many names is called Helen in Bithynia, and in general she takes over the role of the chief goddess of an area, for example she is Atargatis at Bambyke, Diktynna in Crete, Hekate in Karia. We may note too that Helen, mother of Constantine the Great, came from Drepanon in Bithynia. Finally, at Athens a triple sacrifice was offered to Helen in conjunction with the Dioskouroi. But again this development must be late; she found her place at Athens through her brothers.[297]

In the archaic rigidity of her effigy she is comparable with Artemis Orthia. She is not merely the young girl dancing in honour of the goddess; she is also the commanding presence and power of the goddess herself. In later representations, where she is flanked by the Twins, we find her at times set on a higher base than they, or holding a sceptre.

The strong element of tree and vegetation in her cult brings out her affinity with the old type of nature-goddess, especially with Artemis. The latter had several tree-titles. In Arkadia she was the Walnut-tree, Karyatis. ‘Karyai is a region sacred to Artemis and the Nymphs, and there in the open stands an image of Artemis Karyatis. Here yearly the Lakedaimonian maidens hold chorus-dances, and they have traditional dances of their own’ (Pausanias). At Orchomenos, near the city, is a wooden image of Artemis; ‘it is set in a large cedar tree, and after the tree they call her Kedreatis, Cedar-Goddess.’ Again in Lakedaimon at Hypsoi ‘is a sanctuary of Askiepios and of Artemis called Daphnaia, Bay-Goddess. By the sea is a temple of Artemis Diktynna on a promontory, in whose honour they hold a yearly festival.’ At Boiai in the Gulf of Boiai some inhabitants were said to have come from Sidē; an oracle told them that Artemis would show them where to settle. So, when they had landed, a hare appeared and they took it as guide. When it dived into a myrtle tree, they built a city on the site, and to this day they worship that myrtle and call Artemis ‘Saviour’. (Not far off at Asopos was a shrine of Athena Kyparissia, the Cypress Goddess; at the foot of the citadel were ruins of the city of the Parakyparissian Achaians.) At Syracuse Artemis was Phakelitis, from phakelos, bundle or faggot; presumably her image was wrapped round with boughs as if it were in a tree. At Sparta her image was said to have been found in a willow-brake; it was bound round with withies, lygodesma. On a coin of Perge a fir-cone is her badge; at Theuthea in Achaia she was Nemidia (Nemydia), goddess of woodland pasture.[298]

Dionysos is the one male god who shares fully the qualities of the old vegetation-mothers. He was dendrites, of the tree; the Boiotians called him ‘he who lives and works in the tree, endendros’. A cult legend of Magnesia told how his image was found in a plane tree which split open; the Delphic oracle informed the people who was the god of the image. Here we see the babe-god emerge from the tree-womb, and the tree is Helen’s. The evergreen pine, which provided torches as well as cones for tipping the thyrsoi, was linked with him. (Helen we saw had a torch connection.) The Corinthians received an oracular command from Delphoi to worship the pine ‘as the god’; they carved his statue from the pine in question, the tree in which Pentheus, Semele’s father, had sat to watch the Bacchantes, who then tore him to pieces. Dionysos was also lord of the fig tree with its genital symbolism, the myrtle (which was also Aphrodite’s and synonym for the female genitals) and the ivy.[299] He turned the myrtle over to Hades at the latter’s wish as a surrogate for Semele, whom he carried off from the underworld.[300] Indeed he was Anthios, god of all blossoming things, and Phytalmos, god of all growth; he had the title of Teeming or Bursting-into-life. His image as a tree-stump was set up in orchards. On a kylix by Hieron we see Mainads dance in circles round him as a rude plank or pillar draped with splendid garments and decorated with grape-bunches, ivy-sprigs, honeycombs, a necklace of dried figs. He was called Perikionis, He-about-the-Pillar.[301]

Until his name turned up in Linear-B, scholars often took him as a newcomer in Greece, representing a fusion of cults; but his deep and ancient roots should have been recognized precisely in his union of vegetation-cults and orgiastic rites. We see the same sort of mixture in Tree-Artemis and her rapturous dances in which women played the main role; she and Dionysos both absorbed other ancient deities of tree-cults.[302] (Helen in late representations stands as a tree between the Twins, on coins of Gythion, or rises like Korē from the earth.)[303]

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A consideration of the Hanged Goddesses or Heroines, of whom Helen was one, will help us to realize the strength of the tree-cults behind the Olympian system and the way in which legends arose around the tree-daimōn. Several tales of hanged girls are connected with the origin of a cult. Eunostos (Good Yield) of Tanagra was brought up by the nymph Eunostē, and Ochna (Pear-tree girl) fell in love with him. He avoided her, so she accused him to her brothers of assaulting her. They killed him. She confessed, then jumped from a rock or hanged herself. In the sanctuary of Eunostos in a sacred grove at Tanagra, no woman was admitted. The father of Erigonē, Ikarios, in Attika, was taught by Dionysos to cultivate the grape and was given some bags full of wine. He gave some of the wine to the shepherds, who, drunk, thought he had poisoned them, and killed him, then threw his body in a well or buried it under a tree. Erigone (also called Alētēs, Wanderer) was led by a faithful dog Maira to the spot; she hanged herself on the tree. The gods punished the Athenians with a plague or a mania; all maidens hanged themselves. An oracle said that the troubles would end with the finding of the bodies of Erigonē and Ikarios. As the bodies could not be found, the festival of Aiōra or Alētidēs was instituted in the girl’s honour, and first-fruits were offered to her. Erigonē means early-born: we may compare Korē Protogeneia, firstborn. Both Korē and Erigonē represented vegetation in its spring stage; but through the link with Dionysos and the vintage, the Aiora must have fallen near Choes when wine was ready. The Attic maidens came to lkaria and swung in trees to fertilize and purify. Aiora means both swing or hammock, and halter.[304]

Charila, a poor orphan girl, came in time of famine to beg for food from the Delphic king, who hit her with a sandal and drove her off; she hanged herself for shame. The famine grew worse, with a plague. The oracle bade the king atone for Charila. They found her body at last and did purificatory sacrifices, which were still kept up every ninth year in Ploutarch’s day. The king (long since became a purely religious functionary, like the archon basileus at Athens) sat before a crowd, distributing barley and vegetables to citizens and strangers. A puppet of the child Charila was brought. Everyone took hold of it and he flogged it with a sandal. The female leader of the Thyiades lifted it up and took it to a gulley, tied a rope round its neck, and buried it at the spot where Charila was said to have been buried after her hanging. Though Charila is a vegetation-daimōn of spring, the season of her death seems early autumn, and there is again a Dionysiac touch — the role of the Thyiades. Whipping or beating is a common way of stimulating fertility. Boys in Arkadia whipped the image of Pan with squills; and in the Greek rite of Leukothea at Rome, matrons brought into the shrine a slave woman, to slap her face and beat her with rods.[305]

A mythical reflection of ritual hanging appears in the story of Zeus hanging Hera in the clouds from Olympos, her hands chained and weights on her feet. Here the motif has been playfully diverted into a tale of Zeus punishing his refractory wife; and we find it carried to a further point of abstraction when Zeus challenges the other gods to pull him down to earth with a golden chain, boasting that he could hang the gods, earth, and sea on a rope from a peak of Olympos. Hera is shown on Samian coins with long fillets hanging from her wrists.[306] In the tales of Ochna, Erigonē and Charila we meet what we have called the tragic twist. In humanizing a cult myth of death and resurrection, all goes well till the heroine’s death; but she cannot be simply resurrected like Korē with the next spring. That would be to admit too plainly that the tale derives from the ritual and not the ritual from the tale; it would be to divinize the girl too directly. But the rebirth is not lost; it asserts itself in the recurring rite by which the worshippers gain a sense of renewed life, of revivified earth.

Thus, in the Theban tale, Oidipous, exposed as a baby with feet pierced and bound, returns after killing his father to marry his mother; when the recognition moment comes, he blinds himself and she hangs herself. Here the ritual myth of the young year marrying the earth-mother after killing the old year has been transferred to a saga hero and rationalized in human terms. The rebirth element seems quite gone. But we can perhaps link the story with the Dendrophoria, a Theban rite which Sophokles introduced into Oidipous Tyrannos. A bough was carried through the fields by a man dressed as a woman. A human image was tied to the top of a tree-trunk, which was raised from the ground by ropes and stood upright. The image was then stoned; the fragments were scrambled for; and the woman who got the head nailed it to the temple wall. The action was rationalized as deriving from an attack made by Thebans on a person or spirit hostile to Dionysos. There seems a clear link with the story of Pentheus, whom we mentioned above as the opponent of Dionysos who was seen hiding in a pine tree and torn to pieces by the revellers who included his own mother and daughters. Pentheus-in-the-tree was a form of the god: the sacrificial victim in which the mystery god is incarnated. Hence the use of his tree to make two images of the god. He, like Oidipous, represents the god at the death moment, with the resurrection removed; but the sacrificial rite plays its necessary part in bringing about the renewal of life in the earth and the worshippers. (Oidipous has a dual relation to the hanged or strangled goddess; his mother-wife hangs herself, but in gaining her and his kingdom he has defeated the Sphinx, who flings herself from a rock. Sphinx means Strangler.)[307]

Ariadne, who enabled Theseus by means of her thread to pass safely through the labyrinth, kill the minotaur and return, ended by hanging herself (with a thread). Theseus married her sister Phaidra, who tried to seduce her stepson Hippolytos; repulsed, she hanged herself. Theseus made use of the grant of three wishes by Poseidon to curse Hippolytos. The youth, driving off into exile, had his horses scared by a sea-monster so that he was thrown from the chariot and dragged to death in the traces. So the thread or rope plays a key part in all these tales.

Artemis has her bindings or hangings, as we saw, especially withies; her statue at Agra in Attika was decorated with withy garlands. (Hera of Samos was said to have been born under the withy tree in her sanctuary.) The binding-power of ligos, a kind of withy, was thought to be so great that it could halt menstruation. At Ephesus the temple of Artemis once belonged to her mother Leto; Artemis was here represented by a wooden image said to have been found in the swamps of the Kaystros, which was hung on a sacred tree. The earliest shrine was a mere courtyard round a tree beneath which stood a small altar, exactly the type shown on Minoan gems. The sacred tree marked the spot where she was born, her mother in travail having leant against its trunk. We may compare the holy palmtree on Delos where Leto was also said to have leant in bearing Artemis and Apollo. We see the Tree as itself the Mother, as in the tale of the image of Dionysos emerging from a split plane. Artemis was worshipped at Ephesos as child-rearer or nurse; several statues of the kourotrophos type have been found in the temple.[308]

The close kinship of Helen with Artemis and with Hera as a tree-daimōn should now be clear. She was herself hanged at Rhodes; and her cult-representations at Sparta show her with long fillets dangling from her hands — fillets that suggest both drooping boughs and the ropes that could serve to hang an image on a tree.[309]

The pattern of the hanged heroine appears in many tales of tragic love. In some cases the tale may well mask a local rite connected with springs and trees; in others it may have been taken over for its general appeal. Byblis, after a vain love-quest for her brother, hanged herself in her head-fillets from an oak; her tears created the spring Byblis. (Nikainetos adds that she haunts Miletos Gate as an owl.) Kleitē, whose husband Kyzikos had been killed by the Argonauts, hanged herself and from her tears the nymphs made a spring with her name. Phyllis, deserted by her lover, hanged herself and turned into an almond tree. Oinone in one version hanged herself. Kleoboia, a married woman, loved Anteos; she got him down Pirene spring, then dropped a millstone on him. She swore that the cord broke and a golden vessel fell; but in remorse hanged herself. A confused mixture of such motifs appeared in the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, where Hesiod was murdered by the brothers of a girl whom they suspected him of seducing. They threw his body in the sea; on the third day it was brought to land by dolphins while ‘some local festival of Ariadne was being held’. The girl’s sister, seduced by a stranger, hanged herself. The stranger was a man travelling with Hesiod, and the brothers killed him as well.[310]

One important son-lover god, Attis, was also hanged. Kybele, his mother, also called Agdistis, was bisexual; and the gods decided to end this anomaly. Bacchos doped her springwater with wine; and as she lay drunk, tied her male genitals to a tree with ropes. When she sprang up, the genitals were torn off and left hanging on the tree; from the blood was born the pomegranate tree (or the almond). In one version a blossom from the new tree, put in the bosom of Nana, daughter of the River Sangarios, made her conceive Attis, who on birth was exposed and looked after by a goat. (Nana is also a form of the Great Mother.) Kybele desired Attis, but was made jealous by his preparations to marry, or his love affair with, a nymph of the Sangarios. So she drove him mad and he castrated himself under a pine tree. He was imagined as hanging on the tree (which was identified with him), though in art he was shown lying under it. Christ, we recall, was also hanged on a tree; hymn III of Watts’ First Book of Hymns tells us: ’Tis through the purchase of his death, who hung upon the tree.’ The Attis-worshipper could have sung that hymn; and indeed a priest of Kybele asserted to Augustine the identity of Attis with Christ. Under the Roman Empire the festival of Attis was held from 15 to 27 March, opening with the Entry of the Reed — a procession by the College of Reed-bearers — apparently referring to the exposure of Attis in the reeds. (We may compare the statue of Artemis found in marshes and Helen’s connection with reeds in torch and basket; many culture heroes, exposed at birth, were put among reeds; another example is Moses.) 22 March saw the Entry of the Tree; the College of Tree-bearers took the sacred pine, decorated with violets and wool, to the Palatine Temple. After the Day of Blood, the Festival of Joy (Resurrection), and the Day of Rest, came the bathing of the cult-statue in the Almo.[311]

The idea of the Hanged Goddess substantially derived from the custom of hanging images or masks in trees, and ritual fillets helped to create the idea of the rope — though behind the custom lay the belief in the tree as a form or image of the earth-mother. We had better look more closely at the fillets, which are important both for Helen and Ariadne and the labyrinth. They were used in countless ceremonies, being considered as conductors of spirit force. ‘There are various examples of stone-cults in Greece. In the stone a power resided, and it was therefore anointed and wrapped round with sacred teniai and received a cult’ (Nilsson). We see the magical use of fillets far back in the Minoan world. Pillars with animals set heraldically on either side have fillets: ‘the animals are attached to the column by a string like watchdogs’. For example, a gem from a tomb at Zafer Papoura shows a sheep with big curved horns, perhaps a moufflon, with such a string round its neck. Fabulous beasts are similarly tied. A gem from Mykenai depicts two griffins resting their forelegs on an altar-like base and tied to the central column (the aniconic Mother) by a string; a gold ring shows a seated man holding with a cord the she-griffin seated before him; a gem from Vaphio shows a man with sacral stole also thus holding a she-griffin. On the Hagia Triada sarcophagus stands the cult-pillar enwreathed with greenery and filleted. (The double-axe on a cult-pole or pillar we may take to represent the tree-mother or the stone-mother in epiphany, in an act of union mingling sky and earth, thunderbolt and earth-stone.)[312]

Coins of Tenedos show the double-axe attached by fillets to an amphora. Fillets were worn by Greek prophets or seers, with bay or olive shoots, as a sign of their calling. Hermes’ caduceus was once filleted. The cult-bough was regularly hung with olive fillets, for example the Kopo, the bough borne by the Theban Daphnephoros at the nine-yearly festival; there were balls hanging from it. The Greeks had a custom of going regularly to garland and fillet graves in order to establish contact with the dead. In this they were carrying on a worldwide practice, for example, tying rags or fillets on trees at springs. Threads or cords were attached to the tree or pole in the English May-dances or the Provençal olivette.[313]

A survival among the modern Greeks of a thread or rag (here a kerchief) as the means of communicating spirit power occurs with the Anastarides, a sacred Thiasos with a Christian veneer over a Dionysiac type of fertility ritual. The sacred kerchiefs are kept in the sanctuary; they are ancient heirlooms; to own one is to have an assured place of leadership among the initiates. They are considered power-giving and are carried by the Anasterides at certain stages in the ritual: in the dance of ecstasy and in the fire-walking dance, instead of the ikon. During the sacred procession round the village to collect money for the sacrificial animal the donations are carried in an amenati, one of the kerchiefs. During the feast of the Kalogeros the chief Anastenaris uses the sacred amanetia to anoint two of the performers in the ritual play or drōmenon. The participants also carry amanetia when they do rites for the banishing of evil, the chasing away of epidemics and cattle diseases.

Customs of ancient Italy bring out the importance of cult-masks or puppets hung in trees at festivals. The masks or oscilla appear at the Compitalia, after the Saturnalia, when balls and female figures of wool were hung at crossroads and house-doors; the festival was in the name of the Lares and their mother Mania. (The Lares were tutelary deities of a house, of crossroads, of a town; we find Mania later used as a bugbear for children. Oscillum is interpreted as little os or mouth, and so a mask; but the same word was used for a swing: oscillare, to swing.) Macrobius says, ‘A custom was established: when a family was threatened with some danger, to hang the effigy of Mania before the house-door, to avert it.’ At the Feriae Latinae people swung themselves, some wearing masks. The explanatory tale linked the swinging with the quest for the dead bodies of Aeneas and Latinus; as they could not be found, the souls were sought by swinging in the air.[314] Swinging or leaping rites aimed at fertility can be cited from many lands. In Siam a temporary king was chosen at the end of April; he had to stand on one foot for three hours while Brahmins swung on posts decorated like maypoles. The Old Prussians got the tallest girl to stand on one foot on a seat, her lap full of cakes, a cup of brandy in her right hand, a piece of bark (elm or lime) in her left, while she prayed to the god Waisganthos for flax to rise as high as she stood. Lettish peasants tried to make flax grow by using their spare time swinging in spring or early summer. A. terracotta from a domestic shrine at Phaistos has been reconstructed as showing a Minoan woman on a swing; with it were two side-posts, each surmounted by a dove and thus revealing the presence of the mother-goddess.[315]

A Hymn to Zeus, found inscribed on a stone at Palaikastro in east Crete, one of the great Minoan centres, was probably set up about AD 200, though the language suggests the fourth century BC. It brings together elements of initiation, being sung by Kouretes or young men to Zeus as the greatest Kouros; of the divine birth, with ritual elements of seclusion; and of fertility rites — ultimately of the sacred marriage, since that it is which makes the earth fruitful. ‘Io, Greatest Kouros, I hail you, Son of Kronos, all-powerful and bright. You have stepped forth at the head of your daimones. To Diktē for the year, come and rejoice in the notes we strike for you on the strings and blend with our flutes as we stand and sing about your well-fenced altar. For there the shield[-bearing nurturers or nurses] took you, an immortal baby, from Rhea and [with beat of] foot [hid you away]...[three and a half lines lost]...of fair dawn. [And the seasons swelled with increase] year by year, and mortals were swayed by Justice, and Peace, which goes together with Prosperity, [attended by all] creatures. [Leap for us, for our wine-jars], and leap for fleecy [flocks] and leap [for our fields] of crops and for [hives that bring] full increase. [Leap also for] our cities and our sea-faring ships, and leap for [the young citizens] and leap for [fair] law-abidingness.’

‘Leap’ here has the usual sense of jumping high, but also the secondary one of copulating. So the jump is felt as an act of loving union with nature, impregnating and fecundating the earth: a sort of diffused sacred marriage. Strabon tells us that the Kouretes in Crete were youths ‘who executed armed movements and dances, enacting the myth of the birth of Zeus’. He links them with the Satyrs, Silenoi, Bacchoi and Tityroi, and states that they were concerned with the rearing of the Child Zeus in Crete and with the orgiastic worship of the Mother of the Gods in Phrygia and the Troad Ida. We see how the sacred birth can be closely connected with the sacred marriage. The Great Kouros is the spirit leader of the initiates, described as a baby because of the rebirth of the kouroi; but the latter are in fact moving into the life-level or status that offers them marriage. We understand how in folkplays and folktales the hero, beginning as a baby, may mature at once or in a few days into a swashbuckling adventurer, who often gains a bride. The Homer Hymn to Hermes provides an example of this speedy growth. In folkplays of modern Thrace the Babo, an old woman, carries a baby in a basket (like Dionysos in the liknos); to the accompaniment of a mime of forging a ploughshare, she announces that the child is too big for the basket and demands much food and drink, and a wife; the child then apparently becomes identified with the phallos-bearing Kalogeros, between whom and a girl (actually a young boy) a marriage takes place.

In Australia among the tribes, the churingas (other selves, external souls, doubles) were made up in bundles and stowed in a tree during dangerous moments. Compare what Hyginus tells of Zeus: ‘Amaltheia, nurse of the Child Zeus, hung him in a cradle in a tree, so that he might not be found on earth, in sea, or in heaven.’ Victims or sacrifices were hung in trees. (In many parts of the world the custom of hanging a child’s navel-string in a tree to get the child a tree-soul is found; the dead were often put in trees; trophies were hung there; trees over holy wells or springs were particularly chosen for decking with offerings and clothes; teeth or cut hair were secreted in trees for safety from magical attack or appropriation.)[316]

Kadmos, in founding Thebes, fought a snake or dragon which he pinned to an oak with his spear; from the tree came a voice telling him that he too would take the form of a snake. The snake hanging from the the tree suggests a fillet. Phorbas, till he was killed by Apollo, obstructed the road to Delphoi, made passers fight, then cut off their heads, which he put in a great oak, where they swung in the wind. Hanging is found in initiation ordeals (though not attested in ancient Greece). The Norse Havamal states: ‘I know that I hung full nine nights on the gallows or windy tree wounded by the javelin and given to Othin, myself to myself.’ This passage is best taken as a reference to some such mystery ordeal, in which the initiate became one with the god. Sacrificial hanging in Scandinavia was common. Adam of Bremen says that the great nine-yearly festival at Uppsala the bodies of both human and animal victims were hung in the grove close to the temple; prisoners of war were often thus hanged. Prokopios states that the folk of Thule (Sweden and Norway) most valued the sacrifice of the first prisoner to the war-god ‘by hanging him from a beam, casting him among thorns, or killing him by other horrible methods’. Among the Thracians there was a sort of ordeal game at drinking parties. Men drew lots and the chosen man climbed on an unsteady stone with a noose round his neck and pruning-knife in hand; if he cut himself loose as he fell, he was safe; if he failed, the others laughed at his death as a great joke.[317]

*

The tree-daimōn was essentially female. Dionysos, the child reared by nymphs, was the one great exception, as Attis was the one important male among the hanged deities. In Egypt the tree-goddess suckled the king or the dead man. In the tomb of Thutmosis III we see a breast, extended by an arm, emerge from the sacred tree to feed the king; in the Book of the Dead (Ani’s Papyrus) we see the dead scribe kneel in adoration under the boughs of a large sycamore by the side of a lake; almost hidden in the leafage is the goddess Nut, who holds out a table of food and a vessel of pure water. Aromatic gums, used in temples, held the mother’s power. The virtue of the gum acacia as an amulet among the Semites arose from the belief that the tree was a woman and the gum a clot of her menstrual blood.[318] Coins of Priansos in Crete (c. 430—200 BC) shows a goddess enthroned under a palm tree, caressing the head of a snake; scholars have seen her as Persephone or Hygeia. But what name was given her by the coin-makers? She lies in the line of descent from the Minoan snake-goddess of Knossos, Gournia, Palaikastro: just as Demeter’s attributes of snake, poppy, small beasts, also all lead back to the same point.[319] Coins of Aptera (c. 400-300 BC) show the head of Artemis Aptera with ornamental crown; on the reverse an armed warrior with upraised right hand salutes a sacred tree. At Dreros, where the old Cretan goddess Britomartis kept her identity beside Artemis instead of being absorbed, the citizen-initiates in the oath of their agela swore each to plant an olive tree or meet a fine of fifty staters.[320]

In the use of various trees or plants for the crowns of winners in ritual games like those of Olympia, which originated and at times carried on as initiation-agones, we see revealed the belief in the great power and virtue of the mother-tree, the presiding nurse-mother daimōn. The leaves enclosed the initiate in the goddess’s vital force which was incarnated in the tree. At Olympia the victor was crowned with olive. The local tradition said that when Rhea bore Zeus she entrusted the child to the Kouretes (the initiates in their daimonic form); they ran a race with a wild-olive crown for the winner; the foliage was so abundant that they slept on the leaves while they were still green. The green leaves, their fragrance and freshness, were the new life that the young men were absorbing and which made them one with the goddess. The victor, escorted to the town-hall, was pelted with leaves. At Sparta the boys, after the day’s racing, slept on rushes from the Eurotas; the ritual significance of the couch being brought home by a taboo on knives for the rush-cutting. Here, also, no offerings were set on a dead man’s tomb; his body was wrapped in a purple military cloak and then laid on olive leaves. Olives stood at the end of the Athenian racecourse, and old men carried olive shoots at the Panathenaia.[321]

The sacred marriage at Gortyna in Crete was carried out in a tree. A series of fifth-century coins depict stages in the mating, with Zeus as an eagle. The maiden sits lonely in the leafless tree; then she lifts her head and the tree breaks into leaf; a bird comes to perch cautiously as the tree blossoms and fruits; then the maiden is a bride, nympha, raising her head in a gesture characteristic of Hera; she cherishes the bird; she is a royal bride with a sceptre on which is a bird; next the bird is an eagle, overshadowing tree and girl with his wings, while a bull peers through the branches; finally the nymph still sits, alone, in the tree, but an inscription in old Corinthian letters among the boughs reads Tisyroi — nominative plural, not genitive, of place. Tisyroi perhaps means Play of the Tioroi (goat-daimons of fertility) as Satyroi can mean Play of the Satyrs. In any event there is some link intended between the sacred marriage (bird, tree, girl) and the dancing or leaping goat-daimones of natural growth. On the reverse of all the coins is a bull, perhaps indicating a bull sacrifice as part of the dramatic rite, the drōmenon. A bull’s head is at times affixed to the tree-trunk.

Coins of New Troy support the idea of a bull sacrifice. Here we see Athena Ilias with her fillet-twined spear and her owl; to her right is a pillar from which is hung a bull so that his throat can be easily slit. On another coin the ox (or rather cow) stands free before the goddess who stands on the pillar; on a third coin the latter stands free; on a fourth she stands on a pillar facing a tree from which the cow is hung with its head among the boughs. Behind the cow, apparently seated in the tree, is the sacrificer in short sleeveless chiton; he has seized a horn and is about to cut the cow’s throat; the blood will drench the tree. In this series, goddess, bull or cow, pillar, and tree are all vitally linked or identified. (An inscription from Ilion speaks of ‘the cow’, so we are safe in seeing the victim as female.) A connection with youth initiation is provided by a formula in many ephebic inscriptions about the lads ‘raising up the bulls’.

The tree at Gortyna is described as an evergreen plane (Helen’s tree), but the coins show a pollarded willow. Both planes and willows grow in damp marshy soil, so that there were no doubt many of them at Gortyna. Theophrastos speaks of the fruitful poplar growing in the mouth of the Idaian Cave, but Plinius seems to have thought it a willow. On Mt Ida Zeus was nursed by Helikē, Willow. Who was the goddess in the tree of Gortyna? As she is possessed by eagle-Zeus, she has been taken as Hera; she has also been identified with Britomartis. But the strongest case can be made for Europa; and it has been asked if Europa or Europeia was a cult-title rightly or wrongly taken to mean the Goddess of the Flourishing Willow-Withies. But whatever the meaning of the name Europa, it seems clear that its holder was at home in Gortyna and that she had taken over the role of a yet older goddess, Hellotis. We need not argue that here Zeus appears as a willow-nursling, the lover of a willow-bride; all we need to say is that Zeus was connected with the willow because he mated with a goddess who had grown up out of herbal magics.

Who was Hellotis? We are told her earliest home was Gortyna and that the name was given to a myrtle-twined wreath, thirty feet round, carried at the Hellotia. In it with all due care were the bones of Hellotis. The festival was celebrated at Argos and attached to Athena’s cult at Marathon and Corinth. It must have come from Crete; Europa appears to have entered the mainland by the same routes as Demeter, converging on Attika. The Hellotia seems a woman’s festival like the Thesmophoria, aimed at fertilizing the crops; in both rites the origin may have lain in the old custom of a secret disposal of the katharmata, ritual remains. A scholiast tells us that at the Corinthian festival ‘a certain Hellotis flung herself and her little sister, Chrysē [Golden] on the fire’, and he adds: ‘So katharsia, cleansings, are brought to the goddess’, and are called Hellotia. Yet another burned sister, Eurytione, is mentioned; and it has been suggested that a large puppet, or two large ones and a smaller, were burned, and that a puppet was hidden in the big wreath and later regarded as a relic of the dead heroine. The scholiast derives Hellotis from helos, a fertile marsh, near Marathon (Marsh-meadow), where Athena had a sanctuary. The tale is that when the Dorians burned Corinth down, Hellotis fled into Athena’s temple, where she died with Eurytione. A plague broke out; an oracle said that the spirits of the maidens must be propitiated; so a shrine was built to Athena Hellotis. The connections with fire came out in the torch-race at Corinth in honour of Athena as a goddess of fire.

The wreath seems a huge example of the sort of garland burned in Greece at midsummer bonfires. At the Thesmophoria pigs were sacrificed to Demeter and Korē, and thrown into chasms; the remains were later fetched up, set on the altar, and mixed with seed to ensure good crops. The bones of the Hellotia may once have been some such remains of sacrificed beasts with special fertilizing powers; the bones of pigs or such creatures may have been carried in the wreath together with katharmata.

*

If we knew what leaves the wreath was made of, we could guess better at Hellotis, who seems the personification of the wreath (the leaves, the tree) in the sacrificial moment of fire. The burnt sacrifice was the ritual common to all Olympians; the parts of a sacrifice that were burned were turned into a savour or force that could rise and reach gods on high. But burnt sacrifices existed before the Olympians, sending their steam and smoke to closer gods. If we can indeed identify Europa-Hellotis with the eagle-mated girl in the willow tree, then we may suspect the wreath was made of willow-withies and thus had affinities with the withy-bonds of Artemis. Recall the attempted derivation from marsh, helos. Only, here, instead of the cult-image of the goddess, there were the bones of her sacrifice, unless we take the ‘bones’ to be a ritual term for a puppet or puppets.[322]

*

The trails we have followed bring out how important were the tree aspects of the Minoan-Mykenean mother-goddess and how they permeated later Greek religion for all the Olympian dominations. Without some fairly detailed examination, any statement about the centrality of tree-cults in the older strata of ritual and myth cannot carry conviction. Helen, with her plane tree and her comfrey or elecampane, is clearly from one point deeply embedded in those cults. ‘We thus come up against the question: did Helen evolve from a heroine into a tree-spirit, or was the process the other way round? Probably in that plain form the question is unanswerable. Helen the tree-goddess has every sign of going back to Minoan-Mykenean times, and Homer sets his heroine in the same period. But that does not necessarily mean that in the thirteenth century BC there was either an historical princess or a nature-goddess, a nurse-nymph linked with initiation rituals, called Helen. Even if the name goes back directly to that period, the situation may even then not have been simple. The union and differentiation of goddess and heroine may have been a highly complex matter. There is no sign of anything like the Erigonē legend, which reveals the impact of the resurgent Dionysian cult on a single locality. But Helen has strong affinities with the Hanged Artemis and with the Ariadne of the thread. However, before we turn to Ariadne, we had better look further at the evidence for a magical relation between nature-goddess and flowers or herbs in early Greek religion and in Mykenean-Minoan art.

In the Iliad Paian or Paiōn is the medicine-man of the gods. The Odyssey makes him the father of doctors; according to Solon he was their patron. We may assume that doctors constituted a fraternity with its own initiations and hidden lore, like those of all important craftsmen, and that they looked on Paian as their founding ancestor. We find him especially connected with the peony, paionia, a flower-herb with many virtues. Apollo, who finally absorbed him, became a herbalist too, and taught the art to Asklepios and Oinone. In the Iliad Dionē, the old earth-goddess who was made the mother of Aphrodite, tells her wounded daughter how other gods have been hurt, including Hades who was hit in the shoulder by the arrow of Herakles. ‘But Paiēon spread pain-killing pharmaka on him and healed him; for indeed he was in no way of mortal make.’ Later, described in the same terms, he heals Ares. In the Odyssey we are told of Helen’s pharmakon that it came from Egypt where every man is a doctor, ‘for they are of the race of Paiēon’.

There is no suggestion of Apollo there; and Paiēon has turned up in Linear B, together with Athena, Poseidon and Enyalios. We cannot doubt his role in Homer has been carried on from the Bronze Age. Indeed it has been suggested that the Homeric formula ‘dark-clouded blood’ represents a conflation of blood with the epithet for Zeus: Zeus dark-clouded, blood becoming Zeus, dark-clouded blood. Such a tangle would most likely happen in a situation where a god was wounded by a mortal, eg Hera by Herakles; and it may derive from a Mykenean poem on the wanderings of Herakles brought about by Hera. The argument is somewhat tenuous, but no doubt there is often a long-drawn and complex development behind many terms in Homer. Herbal pharmaka are implied by the terms in which Paieon is described as healing Ares. ‘Just as the juice of the fig quickly thickens the white milk that was liquid, but is soon curdled when a man stirs it, so he quickly healed Ares; and Hebe bathed him...’[323]

Though Hermes was another patron of herbal magic, most of the practitioners in myth are female. Hekate was inspirer (in one version, mother) of Medeia, the outstanding witch of such lore. Others were Circe, Polydamna, Agamēdē, Perimēdē, Krokodikē, Thrakē, as well as the Telchines (daimonic reflection of certain craft fraternities connected with the great mother). The Hymn to Demeter tells of the goddess, disguised during her quest for the ravished Persephone, offering herself at Eleusis as nurse to Metanirē for the child Demophoon, whom she promises to protect against harmful drugs or spells. ‘Gladly I’ll take the boy to my breast and nurse him. Never indeed through any heedlessness of his nurse will witchcraft harm him, nor yet the Undercutter [herb-cutter]; for I know a counter-charm far stronger than the Woodcutter [herbalist], and I know a potent protection against magic and the pains it inflicts.’ The technical terms are obscure, but the meaning seems as here translated; Demeter is probably referring to convulsions which were popularly thought to be demoniac. She claims that she knows both incantations and herbal recipes more powerful than any that might be used against the child. The link with Minoan Crete appears in the traditions of the Telchines and the Daktyls, in the rich lore inherited by an historical shamanist character such as Epimenides. Demeter in the Hymn came from Crete to Eleusis; and the prominence of the episode of Demophoon in the poem suggests a relation to the Eleusinian Mysteries. Demeter as nurse suggests further a link of herbal magicks with the nymph-nurses.[324]

Herbal lore and its applications have normally been the provenance of women. In Greece they were especially connected with childbirth and menstruation; the roots of peony, dittany, withy, galingale, pomegranate, lily, myrtle were prominent.[325] Minoan rings show clearly how strong the relation of foliage, fruits, flowers, herbs was to the mother-goddess of those days, and we cannot doubt that the cults gave their initiates a large fund of herbal recipes. A gold ring from Vaphio depicts in the centre a woman bare to the waist, with loose hair; with her left arm outstretched and her right raised, she seems to dance. She looks at a man clad only in a short loincloth who, mounted on a rocky relief on the left, pulls violently at the boughs of a tree planted in a sort of jar; he turns his head away and bends his knee. On the right there seems to be a woman leaning on a rock and an idol in the field. On a gold ring from Mykenai again a woman in the centre dances, this time with her hands on her hips; her breasts are naked. On the right a man in loincloth or a small animal-skin over his haunches drags towards himself a plant or shrub planted in a sacred enclosure or a large chest. (He seems to uproot it, but this may be the effect of the artist needing to incline the shapes in an oval space.) He kneels as he turns his head round as far as possible. On the left a woman, naked to the waist, leans or seems to lean on a small monument similar to that with the tree. Both women have loosened hair. In the sky there seems to be shown the Milky Way. In another gold ring from Mykenai a woman is seated on a rock under a tree, bare to the waist; she holds a bunch of poppy-heads. Two women, similarly bare, with a small girl mounted on a rock, bring her flowers. In the field are hung bull-heads; in the sky is a shield-figure (a palladion or magical protection?), with double axe, moon, Milky Way (or rainbow) and solar disk (or star of eve). In a gold ring from Isopata, four women, one on a higher level, seem engaged in an orgiastic dance in a field of flowers, bare-breasted, loose-haired. In the field are a small idol, a serpent, a bough (or corn-ear) and perhaps an eye and ear (of the all-hearing, all-seeing deity?).[326]

Many more similar designs could be cited. An orgiastic cult connected with vegetation is certainly represented; and the prominence given to it shows its central nature in Minoan religion. Because of the ecstatic poses or movements, the participants may be seeking, as has been argued, for herbs or fruits that induce hallucination or frenzy. We are not looking at ordered ceremonials (except on the ring where the women approach the goddess with poppies); short loincloths are not worn in such rites. In the wild scenes there are no horns of consecration, but the objects of adoration or communion are trees, plants, boughs. On a ring from Mochlos with a woman in a boat, a sea-onion seems depicted, a plant which the ancients used medically and magically. In later texts concerned with herbal lore and the gathering of the plants, we also meet songs, dances, alalagmos (babble), incantations, psalmody of liturgic texts and poetic invocations. Some of the Minoan-Mykenean scenes have been taken to show rites of sowing or planting sacred flowers or herbs; in later times we find plants set in pots or closed spaces for magical purposes; important ritual examples are the Gardens of Adonis.[327]

*

We find then two opposed elements in the rituals and myths of the Hanged Goddesses or Heroines. On the one hand there are the happy fertility customs of hanging images or masks on trees, of dances and races under the presidence of the tree-mother, of swinging games or leapings to make the plants and crops grow, of sacred marriages enacted in the tree, of many acts of communion with plant and tree-life, which include the gathering of leaf, root, flower and fruit for medicinal and magical purposes. But on the other hand there is the pattern of tragic tales which express defeat in love, misunderstandings of various kinds, rape and murder. The Hanged Goddess represents the tree harmoniously united with human life and its needs; she also represents the twist or blind-alley of murder, division, frustration come inexplicably upon the happy group co-operating in production and at peace with the earth. Both elements are present in Helen. She is the exalted nurse-mother presiding over the dances and games; she is also the hanged heroine (in Rhodes). She is the pure emblem of daimonic beauty, which is an aspect of the fertility principle and which finds its natural end in delighted marriage; she is also the fatality disrupting marriage and provoking murder on a scale that undermines a civilization.

In the mystery religions the dual aspects can be taken in and the conflicts resolved. Dionysos, torn to pieces in his bulls, is perpetually reborn as the child nursed by the nymphs. In the rituals of the sacrificed son, Attis, Adonis, Christ, the terrible death is salved by the resurrection. But, as we saw, in the cults of heroines like Erigonē or Charila there was a break between the legend, which ends in death and disaster, and the ritual of renewal. The ritual became a purification of the group for the wrong turning it had taken, the mistake or crime it had committed. In Helen there seems no direct link between the happy fertility ritual with its arrest at the point of death (the hanging on the tree) and the story of her running away with Paris, her choice of infidelity, the universal calamity she brings about. The one mythic pattern that can be detected in her story is that of the ravished or carried-off earthbride. We shall examine it in a later chapter.

But we may make one last point here. The tragic twist certainly existed in many ritual myths in Homer’s day, perhaps much more so than appears from the epics; but his society could not have produced such works as those epics if the twist had been at all dominant. The tragic note, as it has come down to us in so many tales or artworks, was either the product of the archaic age, when social divisions rapidly increased, or it was at least much strengthened then. That age brought into being a new attitude of pessimism and helplessness as the other side of its individualist defiances and outbursts. ‘Zeus controls the fulfilment of all that is, and disposes as he will. But insight does not belong to men. We live like beasts, always at the mercy of what the day may bring, knowing nothing of the outcome that God will impose upon our acts.’ So cried Simonides of Amorgos, aware of the way in which what men achieved in his world seemed ever less what they had willed. Theognis, aristocrat of Megara, makes the same complaint: ‘No man is responsible for his own ruin or his own success; of both these things the gods are the givers. No man can perform an action and know if its outcome will be good or bad....Humanity in utter blindness follows its futile usages; but the gods bring all to the fulfilment that they have planned.’ There is a split in the meanings of telos. Telos as natural fulfilment and maturity, issuing in rites of completion, such as marriage or initiation, is opposed to telos as supreme power or decision and doom imposed by Zeus, the Kēres, and so on. With Pindar it can mean magistracy. There is an increasing moralization of divine machinery, especially in relation to Zeus. It is not that morality is absent from Homer’s world-view, which includes his gods, their actions and wills; but the interaction of factors occurs within a more organic concept of man’s relation to his fellows and to nature — to the gods. With the speeding-up of the breakdown of tribal elements of cohesiveness in society and in the whole complex of thought and feeling, the moralizing becomes more external and mechanical (legalistic). At the same time, linked with the elements of social struggle which are making for a wider and deeper humanity, a counter-tendency sets in, revealed in its fullness by the dramatists of the fifth century, to place the moralizing tendencies in a yet fuller organic concept of man and nature, in a comprehensive critique of social development.[328]

Chapter Ten – Helen and her Brothers

There is another cult-relation in which we find Helen. She appears at times closely linked with her brothers, Kastor and Polydeukes, the Dioskouroi or kouroi-of-Zeus. In myth she is only once an actor with them, when they rescue her from Aphidna where Theseus has left her — an episode with many obscurities. Otherwise they act completely on their own, cattle-raiding or carrying off the Leukippides as their brides. They have no part in the Trojan story and so have to be killed off before the siege began. Though Homer knows of them as Helen’s brothers, the relationship is otherwise most tenuous. Kastor means Beaver; Polydeukes may mean Rich-in-sweetness (deukes, gleukos: sweet young wine). But the names do not help us much. Clearly, in a general way, the Twins belong to a worldwide series, in which one twin often has connections with the sky. We can only assume that a twin-cult existed in Sparta and was drawn in to the Helen-Artemis complex on account of the fertility aspects common in such a cult.[329]

The monuments in which Helen appears with one of the Dioskouroi on either side, generally with their horses, are late; the type in which the Twins have horses is not known before the Hellenistic era. And though the goddess here was clearly Helen at the outset, with the spread of the Dioskouric cult various names were given to her. We find her called Agdistis, and on a lamp from the Fayum, Hera Ourania. In the late period the Dioskouroi become one of the pairs of cosmic stabilizers or assessors who appear in many cults, especially that of Mithras or Zeus Dolichenos. They had their aspects as saviours, mainly in war or in sea-storms; and here too from the fourth century we find Helen at times joining them. At the end of Euripides’ Orestes the trio are named as the helpers of seamen in peril. They were thought to manifest themselves in the lights seen on the masts of ships in tempests. Double fires announced the Twins, a single fire Helen. But in the first centuries AD the double fires were taken as a good omen, the single one as a bad one. A Rhodian crew of the second century, back from a successful sea-voyage, dedicated an offering on Tenos in homage to the trio: ‘To the Dioskouroi and Helen’. At least on Spartan territory she joined the Twins in scaring and repelling the enemy. Aristomenes of Messenia launched an attack and defeated the Lakedaimonians. But ‘there was a wild pear tree growing in the plain, beyond which Theoklos the Prophet forbade him to pass; for he said that the Dioskouroi were seated on the tree. Aristomenes, carried away by his fury, did not hear all that the prophet said; and when he reached the tree, he lost his shield.’ Trying to regain it, he gave the Lakedaimonians time to escape. On his return home the women ‘threw fillets and flowers over him’, singing. In a cattle-raid he was however wounded by a spear in the buttocks. ‘After waiting only for the wound to heal, he was making an attack by night on Sparta itself, but was deterred by the apparitions [phasmata] of Helen and the Dioskouroi. Still, he lay in wait for the maidens performing the dances in honour of Artemis at Karyai, and captured those of richest and noblest birth, taking them off to a village in Messenia.’ The young men that night, perhaps drunk, tried to rape the girls, and killed some of them; then he returned the girls for a large ransom.[330]

In the full working-out of the Dioskouric cult we find the Twins connected with twin births, springs, hunts, domestic shrines, friendship, the underworld. But their main and original bases seem to lie in the fertility-cult and athletics (initiation). Their sanctuary at Sparta marked the entry of the stadion; their statues were set up in the neighbourhood; they themselves carried out gymnastic exercises. We saw that Kallimachos, describing Athena’s athletic prowess, compares her with ‘the Lakedaimonian Stars beside the Eurotas’. Apollodoros names them as the models of andreia, all the virtues or forces which should make up a man, and which Spartan education had come to concentrate upon. They had become in some way the supervising patrons of Lakedaimon, with their house at Therapne; and they were thought to leave their sky residences and roam about the country. Near the sanctuary of the Leukippides was a house ‘which had been originally occupied by the Tyndaridai [the Twins], but afterwards was acquired by Phormion, a Spartan. To him came the Dioskouroi in the likeness of strangers [xenoi]. They said they’d come from Kyrene, and asked to lodge with him, requesting the chamber they’d most liked when living among men. He replied they might lodge in any other part of the house they wished, but they couldn’t have the chamber; for it so happened that his virgin daughter lived in it. Next day this virgin and all the things connected with her had disappeared, and in the room were found images of the Dioskouroi, a table, and silphion on it.’ There was a custom of setting up, beside loaded tables, couches on which the Twins came to lie down.

Perhaps in their role as the perfect young Spartans, the initiates who had triumphantly passed all tests and contests, they took their place at the side of Helen, the spirit embodiment of the young girls running and dancing by the Eurotas. One odd characteristic of the Twins was the extent to which they were thought to manifest themselves. At the theoxenai, the banquets offered to them by towns or individuals, they made regular epiphanies. In an Olympic ode Pindar sings of Theron of Akragas in Sicily, a colony of Sparta, and how he received the Tyndarids at his hospitable table, so as to gain the favour of Kastor, Polydeukes, and Helen with the lovely hair; but in the lines dealing with the theoxenai only the Twins are mentioned. At Athens the presence of Helen is better attested. On the Day of the Anakes (Lords), celebrants honoured the three images that rested in the Anakeion; they held a horse-race and sacrificed three victims. Helen, says Pausanias, got a part of the sacrifice, whether it took place once or was thrice repeated. Euripides at the end of his Helena thinks of these festivals when he makes the Twins announce to the heroine that she will get libations with them and sit at the table of hospitality. Athenaoios cites the Beggars, attributed to Chionides, as saying that the Athenians set before the Dioskouroi ‘cheese and a barley-puff, ripe olives and leeks’ — in memory of their ancient way of life.[331]

Artists show the table set, the repast served, the bed dressed; there are soft cushions, lyres, fan or fly-flap. The Twins generally arrive galloping in the air. Once on earth, they wait at the door to be introduced. We also see them stretched side by side, phialē in hand. Helen is never represented; she must have had a secondary place in the rite, even when she did accompany her brothers. However she had her banquets at Sparta, all on her own. Reliefs which depict her illustrate catalogues (lists, enumerations) of religious fraternities who had banquet meetings. But whereas the theoxenai of the Twins were celebrated over a wide area, Helen’s cult-banquets seem to have occurred only at Sparta. That she was recognized generally as the goddess between the Twins in works of art, despite her lack of distinctive attributes, is shown by an occasional reference. Ampelius (second century AD), author of a Liber Memorialis, says that at Ambrakia in Epeiros an image of Helen was painted on a wall with Kastor and Pollux. Synesios has the line: ‘The Three Tyndarids: Kastor, Helen, Polydeukes’. A stēlē from the valley of the Strymon was set on the tomb of three brothers accompanied by their sister; the brothers, one of whom is Dioskourides, are depicted in heroized form; as a Dioskouric triad, while their sister Kalliope (the name also of a muse) must be taking the role of Helen.[332]

There are a few more points about the Twins and their reliefs to be noted. Among the symbols that accompany them is a large jar or amphora, which represents their fertility aspect, especially related to domestic plenty; and a pair of pillars joined at the tops by a transverse beam, the dokana, which was said to stand for their union. Certainly the dokana harmonizes well with their later aspects as world-stabilizers and is itself a sort of cosmic symbol; but it also suggests such devices as the Roman jugum or yoke, two spears set in the ground and joined at the top by a third spear set transversely. Conquered enemies were made to pass under it, and sometimes the Romans passed under it themselves. Here the structure is a sort of door and the movement through it is a passage rite, purifying and getting rid of evil influences, which are left on the other side. The primitive meaning of the dokana at Sparta would then seem to have been connected with some passage rite or initiation over which the Dioskouroi presided. The two posts or pillars through which the young men or others passed would then represent the Dioskouroi themselves in the same heraldic pose as we find them on the reliefs with Helen. Eggs or cocks were their special offerings, for they decorate the gable or the lower part of their stēlai.[333]

We have noted their close relation to horses. This fact suggests Anatolian connections. There is, for example, the link of the mounted Amazons and the Troad in legend. Horses for long seem to have been used mainly in chariots. To ride horseback was unknown in Crete throughout Minoan-Mykenean civilization. The first tentative appearance of the motif occurs on a cinerary urn from Mouliana, coming from the very end of the Mykenean period, or rather from the sub-Mykenean. Till this time there were no depictions of riders also on the Greek mainland. In Greek protogeometric art, though chariots occur, there is no representation of a warrior fighting on horseback. ‘In Egypt representations of riding figures are not found before the fourteenth century BC, when they can be seen, infrequently, on a certain amount of monuments, and especially in representations of battle of the Ramessids. It has been pointed out, however, that no Egyptian warriors are shown fighting on horseback, but probably mounted messengers, or more often isolated figures of enemies turned in flight, Asiatic foreigners and perhaps slaves, represented without weapons and almost naked, confirming in all certainty the derivation of this custom from the neighbouring land of Asia. Here, too, however, the custom of riding horseback appears equally exceptional before Assyrian times’ (Levi). It seems sure then that the cult of the Dioskouroi in anything like its later form belongs to the sub-Mykenean period.

There is yet another line by which we may approach the Twins. Apart from Zeus (Juppiter or Father Dyeus at Rome and Dyaus in India), they are the only Greek deities for whom a good case may be made as Indo-European in character. As Heavenly Twins they have strong affinities with the Vedic Asvins, Nasatya and Asvinau. In the Rig-Veda the Asvins are often accompanied by Surya (female sun), the Dawn, who seems their sister. They are her spouses; she mounts in their chariot and has the name Asvini. If some elements of Surya have come down into Helen, we have a strong argument for identifying the latter as the Aotis of Alkman’s poem. The link between Asvins and Dioskouroi is not refuted by pointing out that the former do not ride horses. They are chariot-drivers; and we have seen it was some time before warriors changed from driving horses to riding them. That they were known to Indo-European speakers in the Near East of the second millennium BC is proved by an inscription at Boghazkoy in eastern Anatolia, which celebrated the conclusion of a treaty in the fourteenth century between the Hittite king and the Aryan ruler of Mitanni; the text mentions the two Nasatyas, Mitra, Varuna and Indra. (There is another dyad there, for the word ilani precedes the names of Mitra and Varuna, indicating that they must have been so closely linked as to be spoken of in their own lrido-European tongue as a single compound deity, as indeed we find in the Rig- Veda. Indra is the warrior-god of the Indo-Iranians, the Asvins are among other things the divine physicians.) The Asvins survived in Iran, where the prophet Zoroaster reduced the daevas to the rank of demons; and as such, Nanhaitya (Vedic Nasatya) turns up with Indra.

There is no sign of the Dioskouroi in Mykenean times. But Zeus himself, though he appears in tablets of Knossos and Pylos, coupled with Hera, was then still far from the Homeric Thunderer. We may assume that cults brought in by the earlier Greek-speakers were diminished or blotted out by the much stronger Minoan system. But related cults may well have been reintroduced by the more primitive Greek-speakers whose raids and intrusions were lumped together by later tradition as the Dorian invasion. The bringing-in of the Dioskouroi as an Asvin type of twins in the sub-Mykenean period would help to explain away many of our difficulties; the newcomers can hardly have brought Helen along, but they may have found her a suitable goddess to merge with the female consort, whoever that was, of the twins. In India the twins were associated not only with Surya but also with Sarasvati, a mother-goddess whose inexhaustible breasts poured out goods of all kinds, who dispensed prosperity, and who collaborated with the Asvins in healing. She is once called their wife; but she protected her worshippers and was in general ‘wife of the heroes’, sheltered them and destroyed their enemies; by stirring up impulses of piety she destroyed demons and impious persons — ‘all qualities that belong to the Iranian goddess Anahita, sometimes substituted for the Nasatya, or to Armaiti who ruled the earth directly as productive source, nurse, mother, but who also signified piety, devotion, and religiously correct thought, or perhaps even to the Akkadian Allatum of the Boghazkoy treaty, in which, goddess of the underworld, she is given the name Lady of the Earth’ (Merlat).

The theory that the post-Mykenean newcomers brought in an Asvin-type of Heavenly Twins is aided by the fact that the Dioskouroi were so thoroughly located in Lakedaimon in early days. It is barely possible however that their horse-aspect was strengthened by contacts with the mother-cults of Anatolia, with the mounted Amazons as attendants on the goddess. The Dioskouroi then took over the Amazonian function, which was linked with Helen instead of Kybele-Kubaba. There are no legends of Amazonian invasions of Lakedaimon, though Argos displayed in Hera’s temple the girdle which Herakles was said to have taken from their queen; and the Amazons were said to have attacked Attika, where Theseus defeated them and married the queen. (Another queen was killed by Achilles in the Troad.) There are no signs of Anatolian mother-cults directly moving in in the Dark Ages; the Great Mother appears in Attika in the late archaic period in the Mētrōon at Athens, then at Agrai and the Peiraios. But there had long been important fusions going on in the cities of the eastern coast of the Aegean. That two such important heroes as Herakles and Theseus, who above all others represented the triumphant initiates of the ordeal, should be brought into collision with the Amazons, suggests a conflict between the old mother-cults (especially with Anatolian elements) and the Olympian system. If this were so, the conflict in Sparta was resolved by Helen as tree-mother taking over male riders, Asvin-type twins, as her attendants. We lack iconographical evidence for the earlier phases of such a development; but in the epic tradition Helen is firmly attached to the Dioskouroi. The link must have been forged in the sub-Mykenean period, and then gradually extended.[334]

We have seen how in Minoan-Mykenean times the goddess was shown flanked by worshippers. On a gold ring from a tomb at Isopata, she stands on a higher level, with two women one side, one woman the other. But we meet the triad on some Cretan seals or impressions, each member in the same pose, with hands on thighs. On a signet from Hagia Triada the two side-figures wear animal-skin aprons, and one holds a long staff. The sacral skin can be worn by either sex; but here the pair seem to be males. An alternation in the sexes of the attendants, as well as uncertainty as to whether they are male or female, appears in examples of the scene produced in the early Helladic period. The same situation often occurs in eastern art; and in Egypt, on a relief of the 20th or 19th Dynasty, a goddess, Kadesh on the Orontes, is shown naked, standing on a lion and flanked by two male deities. At Mykenai the gate-reliefs show the goddess in aniconic form as a pillar, with a lion on either side. In the archaic period we find the Lady of Wild Things flanked by a pair of beasts or birds, which at times she grasps. The Great Mother is later accompanied in ritual myth by young men, Kouretes or. Korybantes, but we do not find these depicte in the heraldic pattern. Female triads, we saw, were common; but a goddess flanked by two males does not appear in a regular series till we reach Helen and the Twins.

The one work of art suggesting that group is a gold plaque from the Idaian Cave. The upper part is lost, but recently a new fragment has been fitted in. Here we see the goddess, frontal, with a male on each side in profile. Her robe is like that of Artemis on an ivory from the Orthia sanctuary (dated about 700); the way in which the legs of the males are set apart is like that on a gold ornament from the nekropolis of Kameiros (probably first half of the seventh century). Bronzes in the Idaian Cave show a goddess naked with lions or sphinxes. The many shields and tympana left as offerings suggest the Kouretes clashing shields round the baby Zeus. Notable in our plaque is the way in which the male on the left clasps the wrist of the goddess; we cannot doubt that his fellow on the right did likewise. This is the gesture of marriage or carrying off so common in scenes of Helen; but we cannot take the males as heroes like Theseus and Peirithoos ravishing her. There are no horses, no sign of weapons.

An ivory from Orthia’s shrine shows a man with two women, who are certainly holding his hands; his legs are in profile while his head turns to the front. In another a man holds a woman’s wrist, while she holds a wreath; their missing hands may have been raised with another wreath. In a third relief a man and a woman, facing one another, have hold of two wreaths. But none of these works has the hieratic force of the Idaian design, though they suggest how the grasp of hand or wrist is used to express an important moment or form of contact; the garlands increase the ritual effect, perhaps expressing the union of deity and worshipper. We may recall the Hellotis in which the goddess seems enclosed and resumed in the wreath. In two of the plaques the women have tall kalathos-headgear. Perhaps for a work which brings out the link with an eastern tradition of the wrist grasp as symbol of divine union, we may take the central group from a bronze bowl of Nimrud in which is depicted a god with crossed arms, his wrists held by a symmetrical pair of attendants.

We see how the Great Mother could attract a pair of male acolytes if we turn to the Phrygian area. At Boghazkoy we find Kybele-Kubaba flanked by two short-trousered males, one playing a seven-stringed kithara, the other blowing a double flute. The goddess wears a tall polos and holds a fruit. This group is later than the Idaian plaque but earlier than the reliefs with Helen and the Twins. The skirt of Kubaba with its long border and the edge tucked in to produce a set of curved folds looks back to East Greek art of the sixth century, such as the Samian Hera dedicated about 560, but the attendants are so different from the Idaian males or the later figures of the Dioskouroi that we certainly see here an independent development. As a whole the statue is eastern in character; it stands in a niche in the south-eastern gate of the citadel. The goddess is a gate-guardian, like Hekate or at times Athena.[335]

The role of the Twins as stabilizers of the cosmos, which emerges strongly in later phrases, has very early roots. Thus, on a relief from Tell Halaf based on Hittite-Hurrian cosmology, we see a central male figure whose palms uphold the elbows of two flanking bull-men, whose hands in turn uphold the firmament. The bull-men have horns and beast-legs and tails, thus anticipating such daimones as satyrs and centaurs as well as such flanking cosmos-supporters as the Dioskouroi in whom the animal attributes have been separated out as the horses that they ride.

The attendants on a mother-goddess might be daimōn-midwives. An archaic statue from Magoula in Lakonia shows one of two such attendants using epaphē (touch, handling), like Zeus with Io (who bore Epaphos); the other puts his hand to his mouth in the gesture of Vagitanus, the birth spirit who at Rome opened the lips of the newly-born. We perhaps see a scene of the birth-throes of the mother-goddess on the neck of a Boiotian amphora. The goddess wears a polos from which escape boughs of greenery, and she is flanked by two lions heraldic like those on the Gates of Mykenai; she is enveloped in a large falling tunic; and against her body press two daimones, the hand of one on her breast. Many scholars have refused to see a birth scene here; and perhaps it is merely lack of skill on the part of the artist that makes the two attendants, whose sex is uncertain, huddle against the huge barrel body.[336]

While then in a very general way the cult-pattern that lies behind the triad of Helen and the Twins is clear enough, the precise way in which the mounted Twins originated and were connected with her as Tyndarids in heraldic designs is obscure. Though the trio were certainly linked in the theoxenai and as saviours at sea, we do not feel that this link was early enough to explain much — at least in the forms in which it has come down to us. Perhaps the pair at the outset were Helen’s attendant daimones who acted both as guards and as ravishers according to the ritual moment. They would have carried her off when as earthbride she was enacting some such role as that of Korē ravished by Hades. They would then have had something of the function of the pair of daimones whom we shall later meet moving round the Lykian tree with the goddess in it; they would represent a doubling of the divine figure or the hierophant who accompanied the departing goddess on the Minoan designs. They would thus beget, as a mythical projection of one aspect of themselves, such a pair as Theseus and Peirithoos, though in the rationalization of the myth only one of the pair is made the ravisher of Helen, the other is sent off after the Korē of the underworld herself; and the Twins in their guise of protectors rescue her from themselves as ravishers. The abduction of the Leukippides by the Twins would be another version of the same ritual myth, with a pair of white-mare women taking over the role of Helen and mating with the white-colt youths. This primitive level of the Helen myth, if indeed it existed, would be linked with the elements going into the representations of the uprising of Korē from the earth as the rebirth of vegetation, when her helping daimones, often shown as satyrs, leap into the air to facilitate her advent, or cleave the earth with double-axes or picks. On one black-figure lekythos two men, not satyrs, strike with great mallets at the earth from which the huge head is coming up; though not symmetrical in postures they stand on either side of the head, which is seen in profile.

We can also point to an early black-figure amphora where, between Dionysos and a satyr, stands the mother with two small figures seated (in profile) on her shoulders. The latter have often been labelled Apollo and Artemis, and the mother, Leto. But there is no suggestion of differentiation in the two small figures, who both seem male. They are the Twins and the woman is the earthmother. Later, a similar nurse-mother has twins inscribed Himeros and E(ros): Desire and Love. Here the mother is certainly Aphrodite; and she is so inscribed in a fragment where, on the half of her body preserved, a child sits on her elbow. Pausanias mentions on the Chest of Kypselos a woman carrying on her arms two boys, one white, one black, who represent Death and Sleep, with Night as the mother-nurse. These latter examples show a sophisticated interpretation of the originally simple design of Nurse-Mother with Twins.[337]

We see then how the pair of attendants on the Nurse-Mother or the Uprising Korē could develop into Twins symmetrically attached to their mistress. One piece of evidence shows how far back went the image of the two attendants on Kore. A Middle-Minoan cup (soon after 2000) BC from the first palace at Phaistos shows two votaries (or female daimones, nymphs) dancing about the goddess, whose head rests on, or comes up out of, a mound or elongated body with no arms, but with a series of arcs along the sides. This body suggests the tubular clay idols found at Prinias and in other early-Helladic sites of more than a millennium later. The tubes served for communication with the netherworld. On the cup a flower is bursting out at the side of Korē.[338]

*

Perhaps because of the increase of interest in Nemesis at her Rhamnousian temple in the second half of the fifth century, we find in the period 430-400 the theme of Helen’s birth appearing on vases, and in the resulting scenes the Dioskouroi also appear. The egg is deposited on an altar in the sanctuary of Zeus (? at Sparta); Leda makes a gesture of surprise; with her is a bearded man, Tyndareos; and on the extreme right and left stand the Twins; the eagle of Zeus hovers above. In some examples we see Hermes and the shepherd who found the egg; on the cup of Xenotimos, perhaps the earliest extant version, we are given merely Leda and her husband; and in one painting, on a krater, the artist shows through the shell of the egg the veiled form of the baby. In two cases the egg is put in direct contact with the warm remnants of the sacrifice, suggesting that Leda has been given the mission to warm the egg. The eagle appears in four cases, once near the egg, but always with his beak directed towards it — as if he means to break it open, as is done at times by swans.

One krater, of Bari, is derived from the farces, phylakes of south Italy, which often parodied mythological subjects. Two phallic jokers approach the egg, which is wrapped in warm cloths in a basket; and one with blows of a double-axe splits the egg, from which the young goddess rises. (Here we have directly the theme of Helen as Korē.) The scene has shifted from the sanctuary to a domestic chamber. Another vase shows the Twins and Hermes sumptuously dressed; the painter seems to be thinking of some tragedy. The core of the series in question is Athenian, as we would expect if its main stimulus came from Rhamnous.[339]

Connected with the Korē are two interesting works of art: one a small monument in steatite which shows a woman seated on a bed between two huge conical caps of the Dioskouric type (found in Egypt); and a terracotta which shows a woman rising from the earth in which she is buried to the waist, between two conical caps. This terracotta, though found in Ephesos, may be of Egyptian make. Here the Twins are reduced to one of their main attributes, which in later times was seen as an emblem of a cosmic hemisphere. The reduction of the Twins symbolically to their caps is not uncommon on coins, for example one of Pessinos shows the lion of Kybele between the two caps with stars at their tops, a pair of cymbals under the cap on the right. The stars bring out the cosmic significance. A coin of Lemnos, dated 280-190 BC, shows the starred caps flanking a torch inscribed Hephai(stieon), referring to the volcanic mountain Hephaistia, which was connected with the god Hephaistos. Whatever name the maker attached to the goddess of the Ephesian terracotta, and whatever syncretizing trends he expressed, his work is none the less of interest as a return to origins in a sophisticated setting. The reduction of the Twins to their caps was made easy by their indentification with the two revolving halves of the sky. Many sarcophagus scenes can be explained along these lines. Thus we find the pair with a Moira in the Phaethon story; the latter’s fall from the sky in a solar chariot he cannot control is a cosmic event which involves the two sky-halves. The Twins are associated with Eros as a cosmic uniting force; a nymph pouring an urn out over the shoulder of one of them represents the sky-waters.[340]

*

We cannot claim to have solved with any certainty the odd relation of Helen with the Twins; but we have perhaps found the clues that best help to explain it. On the one hand Helen is a vegetation Korē whose drama of descent into the earth and ascent out of it is linked with two daimones, originally female like herself but later imaged in terms of the young men warrior-dancers. This pair both carry her off below and rescue her from her plight. On the other hand she is an earth-mother, a tree-mother, between two mounted attendants, Amazons who yield to Twins of an Asvin type. The latter are horse-daimones, who in their heroized form appear as young warriors riding on horses. The warrior-dancers and the white horsemen merge to provide the Dioskouroi of classical cult; but as legend and saga develop from the cult bases, the Twins are displaced by ravisher or lover, first by Theseus and Peirithoos, then by Paris. They are able to keep a role in connection with Theseus and his friend; they drop right out of the picture when Paris appears. The earlier connections then survive only in tales of rescue by land or sea, in the ritual advents of the theoxenai, and in the reliefs or other artworks which revive the ancient scheme of Earthmother flanked by her attendant daimones.

Chapter Eleven – Runaway Heroine

The one myth pattern we have noted that seems at all applicable to Helen is that of the earth-bride who is carried off and mated by a chthonic deity. This pattern reappears in a worldwide series of tales in which a culture hero seeks or finds a spirit-bride in the otherworld and brings her back home. In folktales the spirit-bride is often a bird, such as a swan, whom the hero captures when she has temporarily doffed her feathers to bathe with her sisters in a lake or spring. (Helen, through Nemesis, Leda and Zeus, has her connection with spirit-birds.) Helen has at least two experiences of being carried off, by Theseus and by Paris, and in Alkman we found traces of yet another attempt to get hold of her. Theseus not only carried Helen off, he attempted to reverse the feat of Hades and abduct Persephone from below on behalf of his friend Peirithoos, and he also carried off Ariadne from the Crete of the Labyrinth. A lesser ravishment of his is worth noting. On his way to Athens to claim his birthright, among other adventures he killed the robber Sinis, son of Poseidon or of Polypēmōn (Wreaker of Much Woe) and Sylea (She who Plunders). Sinis thus seems to have a chthonic genealogy; and Theseus chased his daughter Perigounē (Around-the-Garden), who hid under the asparagus and pimpernels, and conjured the plants to rescue her. Theseus enticed her out and by mating with her he became the ancestor of a family holding asparagus and pimpernel in high honour — a sort of herbalist clan.

The hiding in the garden reminds us of a legend of Aphrodite, which Athenaios mentions in connection with the reputation of lettuces as anti-aphrodisiacs able to make a man impotent. ‘Kallimachos says that Aphrodite hiding Adonis in the lettuce is an allegory of the poets to express the impotence in love that continual use of lettuces brings about. And Euboulos says in Impotents: Ah, don’t put lettuces on the table, wife; it’s in this salad, the legend says, that once Adonis, dead, was laid out by Cypris: so to eat it is like eating corpses. Kratinos says that Aphrodite, in love with Phaon, hid him away in “beautiful lettuce-beds”, while the younger Marsyas declares it was in a field of unripe barley....Lykos the Pythagorean says that the naturally flat-leaved lettuce, smooth and stalkless, is called Eunuch by the Pythagoreans, but Impotent by women; for it causes urination and relaxes desire; but it’s the best to eat.’ This notion of lettuces seems to have come about through their link with Adonis’ death. The lettuce may once have belonged to Aphrodite as in Egypt it did to Min, who is depicted with a huge erection among his plants. (There is however some truth in the statement that lettuces were anaphrodisiac.)[341]

Theseus was mainly a daimōn of puberty initiations with its tests and ordeals, as in a larger way Herakles was. The tales told about these heroes may be often interpreted as fantasies born of those tests and given a free expression in shamanist performances. (Shamanist ritual and myth, concerned much with danger points in the spirit journey to the other-world, are in general an elaboration of ordeal experiences in a traditional but also a personally imaginative way.) After Sinis, Theseus came to Krommyon (Onion) where he had to fight an Old Woman’s Sow, named after her Phaia, the Grey or Dark One: again an otherworld figure. In such an exploit there is often the passage into a Cave past an Old Woman or Sibyl. Theseus at his journey’s end again came up against tree-magic. At the point where the Sacred Way crossed the Kephisos, the clan of Phytalidai received and purified him. Their founding ancestor Phytalos (Planter) had shown hospitality to Demeter and been given the first figtree. The purification (for the persons he had killed) was at the altar of Zeus Meilichios (Gracious) of the underworld, to whom the fig was sacred. This Zeus, called Zeus Hades by Euripides, was depicted as a snake; he was a sort of Ploutos and had some of the characteristics of the Erinyes, being an avenger of kindred blood; his sacrifice of pigs was a holocaust offered at night, his festival a time of stygian Gloom.[342]

Theseus appears openly as a hell-harrower, like Herakles, in his adventures with Peirithoos. The latter was also a son of Zeus, in stallion form, and a brother of the centaurs; like the Dioskouroi he thus had strong horse-elements. Though Thessalian, he became linked with Theseus; and the folk of Attika, especially of the deme Peirithoidai, honoured him as their hero. The story ran that, hearing of Theseus’ fame, he went to drive off one of his cowherds; he was thus also a cattle-raider like the Twins. Theseus caught him up, but the two men, admiring one another, did not fight. Peirithoos offered to pay a fine, but Theseus instead proposed that they be friends. They confirmed their pact with an oath at Kolonos, where a rock-hollow was shown as their mixing-bowl. They decided that each of them must get a daughter of Zeus as wife. They drew lots and Helen fell to Theseus. They carried her off, and then, leaving her at Aphidna, went down into the underworld to get its queen Persephone. Their descent was said to have been made at Tainaron where Herakles also went down. They did not find Charon at his usual harbour on the Acheron, but somehow got across. When they reached Hades, he bade them sit on thrones hewn out of rock by the gate of his palace while he fetched them gifts; but what he gave was the Waters of Lethe. The pair sat as if fettered, oblivious. When Herakles passed, they could only stretch out their hands. They are described as bound down by snakes or by hundreds of chains, or as grown into the rock. (A later comic account tells how Theseus left part of his backside behind when Herakles pulled him up.) Odysseus in the account of his underworld visit says, ‘I should have yet seen others of the men of former days whom I wanted to see, yes, Theseus and Peirithoos, glorious children of the gods, but the myriad tribes of the dead came crowding up with an awful [inhuman, divinely sounding] cry, and pale fear gripped me lest august Persephone should send out at me from the house of Hades the head of that terrible monster Gorgeie [Gorgon].’ We have here a suggestive sequence: first the pair, now gone below in death, and then a monster that turns to stone, who is controlled by Persephone. Stories of Herakles state that only Theseus could be awakened and rescued; but old accounts made Peirithoos also escape, though when dead he returned to his punishment. There seems a confusion of traditions. In the original version perhaps the heroes failed and were doomed to stay underground; but as they were needed in other stories to continue their exploits, they had somehow to be rescued.

In the legend Helen is paired off with Persephone as the bride to be carried off. From one angle such tales of women being carried off by the gods repeat the Korē tale, with an ultimate reference to the imagery and ritual of the earth-goddess’s death-rebirth, descent-ascent. The source of all fertility and desirability is carried off below; she returns with the reviving spring. Helen then is here revealed as an ancient earthmother of vegetation, dying and reborn, ravished away and returning to the light of earth.[343]

A rationalized version of the Theseus episode was told, which shows how ritual myth could be turned into saga. Aidoneus (Hades), king of the Molossians, was married to a woman named Persephone; they had a daughter Korē and a dog Kerberos. Suitors for Korē had to fight the ferocious dog. When Theseus and Peirithoos arrived, the king heard that they meant to carry Korē off; so he arrested them. Peirithoos was handed over to the dog, who devoured him. Theseus was put in jail. Pausanias accepts the rationalized version as the original, from which the myth was derived. ‘I believe it was because Homer had seen these places that he was so bold as to describe in his poem the regions of Hades, and gave to the rivers there the names of those in Thesprotia.’[344]

If we knew more of the way in which the sacred marriage was mimed in Greek ritual in early days (presumably by priest and priestess or perhaps even by the lad and the girl initiates who had been victors in some agōnes), we would be in a better position to argue as to whether the carrying-off myths directly reflected a ritual event and experience. The pair who might have represented Zeus and Hera in a sacred union at Olympia were the male winner of the chariot-race and the winner of the maidens’ race at the Heraia. In countless folktales the hero who passes certain tests wins the coveted bride; and in spring rites we find the young man carrying off the dance-leader of the girls after he has defeated the old man, her husband who is also the old year. We cannot cite a rite from ancient Greece which embodies all these elements. But at Eleutherai in Attika there was the legend of a fight between Xanthos (Fair Man) and Melanthos (Black Man), linked with the cult of Dionysos of the Black Goatskin — though it was Melanthos who won, and the cult was probably of the vintage, not of the spring. (It was said to have been instituted by Eleuthēr to save his daughters from madness sent upon them because they ‘saw an apparition of Dionysos wearing a black goatskin and they reviled him’.) The theme of winning a coveted bride however, does appear in the kōmos or revel of Old Comedy, as when at the end of The Birds Peisthetairos as the new Zeus marries Basileia, no doubt suggesting to the audience the yearly ritual marriage of Dionysos to the Queen or Basilissa, wife of the official known as the King Archon, perhaps held at the Anthesteria.[345]

As an example of the kind of initiation experience that could be reflected in certain myths of abduction we may consider the carrying-off of the kleinoi in Crete which we already noted: a mock (homosexual) marriage by capture of a boy and an older male. The latter’s friends were warned three or four days before-hand; and as long as the abductor was the boy’s social equal or superior, the pursuing friends, on catching up with the pair, seized the boy in a playful way and handed him back to the ravisher. The boy was conducted to the latter’s Men’s House, where he was given gifts and then taken away into the country. The others followed, and hunts and feasts went on for two months; then they all returned to the city. The boy was released with the customary gifts (military costume, drinking-cup, ox). The young initiate then sacrificed the ox to Zeus and gave a feast to the participants in the abduction rite. To fail to be thus carried off was a disgrace; and the abducted boys or parastathentes (those-set-beside) continued to gain special favours, wearing fine clothes presented by their lovers and being allowed positions of the highest honour in dances and races. Even when grown to manhood, they wore a distinctive dress and were kleinoi. Such tales as that of the abduction of Ganymedes by Zeus seem to derive from customs like this from Crete. Plato says that his myth originated in Crete and there was a tradition that the abductor was Minos. It is indeed possible that the custom in Crete went back to Minoan days, and that abducted boys of the noble class served as cup-bearers in the palace. Perhaps girls too. Hebe, who shared the cup-bearing office on Olympos, was honoured at Phlious as Ganymeda. (The name Ganymedes might then represent a group, as did the term kleinoi.) We may note further that kleinoi of a similar age, when leaving their fraternity or agela, were all married at the same time. Sparta had a similar institution called boua or ox-herd.[346]

We may now turn to Theseus in Crete. Minos had a grudge against Athens, his son having been killed by the Marathonian Bull (which Theseus later dealt with). He was on Paros making sacrifices to the Graces at the time, says Apollodoros; he tore the garland off his head and bade the flutes to stop. (After that the Parians discarded garlands and flutes in sacrifices to the Graces. We see that the tale was devised to explain this taboo.) Minos had a Labyrinth built by the craftsman Daidalos and put in it the bull-headed man borne by his queen Pasiphae to a bull. As lord of the sea, he forced Athens to pay a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens every ninth year. Theseus went as a member of the third group of his own free will. Bacchylides tells how on the voyage he bade Minos take his hands off one of the girls and boasted that if Minos was born of Zeus he himself was born of Poseidon. The King, to make him prove his words, threw a ring into the sea and bade him fetch it back. Theseus dived in and was welcomed by Triton, also Poseidon’s son, who led him to the palace in the depths. There Amphitrite clothed him in purple and set on his head a rose wreath, her marriage gift from Aphrodite. Theseus rose up out of the sea with the ring. A cup by Euphranor and a krater by the Kadmos painter show the underwater scene. The first depicts Amphitrite giving the crown or wreath, with Athena between her and the hero, while the second (last quarter of the fifth century) provides much more detail, the tripods on columns suggesting that it records a winning dithyramb. The wreath gift links Theseus with Aphrodite as his favourer and guide; it also connects Ariadne with Harmonia of the bridal necklace, and both these heroines with Helen.[347] The dive may be related to the sea-leap that occurs in many myths and seems to derive from Minoan cult-practices.[348]

In Crete Theseus wins over the princess Ariadne. In an old representation she spins while he stretches out his hand to her. Mistress of the guiding thread, she is a sort of spinning fate for him. Later writers say that she learned her thread device from Daidalos. She fastens the thread to the labyrinth entry and lets it unwind; Theseus catches the monster sleeping in his lair and sacrifices him to Poseidon. (In the struggle there seems some memory of Minoan bullfights and games.) Ariadne accompanies her lover, lighting up the darkness with her crown or wreath.

Vase painters however treat the crown as a mere decorative item. It is apparently the crown which Theseus got in the sea-depths; Ariadne’s possession of it was later explained by making it the price of her virginity. (In one version Aphrodite bestowed it on Ariadne. She too had her crown. The smaller Hymn describes her toilet by the gold-filleted Hours, who ‘put on her head a well-wrought crown of gold’, with earrings in her pierced ears and necklaces round her throat. The crown was the work of the god Hephaistos who had lived nine years under the sea with Thetis, where he made a golden amphora for Dionysos, who gave it to Thetis.[349])

One vase shows Theseus grasping the monster, labelled Taurominion, with one hand, a sword in the other. At times he carries club or staff. One account makes him strangle the Minotaur. Afterwards, he leaves by night with Ariadne and the tribute group, and the same night he reaches Dia, where he deserts Ariadne. She is then united with Dionysos. Dia was said to be Naxos, but seems rather a little island near Crete, in front of the Gulf of Amnisos, though an islet near Naxos has also been suggested. The whole episode of desertion is obscure and full of variations. In the Odyssey, Odysseus in the underworld saw Phaidra and Prokris and lovely Ariadne, daughter of baneful-minded Minos, whom once Theseus wished to lead from Crete to the Hill of holy Athens; but he never mated with her, since before that happened Artemis killed her in sea-girt Dia because of the testimonies of Dionysos.’ Here Theseus had every intention of taking her to Athens, but death separated them. In Apollodoros, Dionysos sees her on Dia, falls in love, and carries her off to Lemnos; there he mates with her and she bears him four sons. Theseus is forced to sail alone from Dia; in his grief he forgets to change his dark sails to white as he promised to do if successful in Crete; his father in dismay throws himself into the sea. Again Theseus had had no intention of leaving the girl.

A third version is given under the name of the historian Pherekydes, which is supported by scholiasts and Eustathios. ‘Setting out in deep night, Theseus disembarks at the isle of Dia and sleeps ashore. Athena appears and orders him to go off to Athens, leaving Ariadne. He at once obeys. As Ariadne laments, Aphrodite appears and consoles her; she will become Dionysos’ wife and be glorious. The god in turn arrives, mates with her, and offers the gold crown which later the gods put among the stars to please him. But, it’s said, she is killed by Artemis for losing her virginity.’ It is hard to see why Artemis should be wrathful unless Ariadne were one of her nymphs: as in one account Britomartis seems to be, at least she is described as a nymph in love with solitude and chastity. But perhaps the last sentence is an intrusion, meant to harmonize Pherekydes and Homer. (We may note a parallelism between the part played by the isle Kranae-Helena in Helen’s story, and that of Dia in Ariadne’s — though on Dia the mating goes wrong, being immediately followed by disaster, while retribution is long in catching up with Helen.)[350]

Proklos, in his summary of the Cypria, mentioned Theseus and Ariadne among the unhappy lovers whose story is recounted by Nestor to console Menelaos after the loss of Helen. The Pherekydes version, the sources say, can be found in the neoteroi, the more recent or younger poets, a term they use for the cyclic poets. There are many more variant details. Dionysos appears to Theseus in his sleep and threatens him if he does not leave Ariadne; Theseus wakes in fear and hurries off while the girl is still asleep. Dionysos takes her to Mt Drios on Naxos; there he disappears, and she soon after him. Dionysos arrives with his tumultuous following, wakes Ariadne, and carries her off in a marriage procession. He sends oblivion upon Theseus, who then leaves Ariadne on the rocky isle without knowing what he does. She was not left quite alone, as her nurse Korkyna was with her; the latter’s grave was shown on Naxos. Ploutarch adds more stories, which he notes are inconsistent: that she hanged herself on being deserted; that she was carried off by sailors to Naxos, where she married Oinaros, a priest of Dionysos; that Theseus left her because he fell in love with Aiglē (according to a line which was said to have been once in Hesiod’s works, but expunged by Peisistratos); that she lived long enough with Theseus to bear him two sons, Oinopion and Staphylos; the poet of Chios was one of those who took this view. Ploutarch also adds the Story that Theseus was driven by storm with Ariadne to Cypros. She was now advanced in pregnancy and felt ill through the rolling of the ship; so he put her ashore, himself going back to the ship to lend a hand in managing it. Then a violent wind drove the ship out again to sea. The women of Cypros did their best to help and console Ariadne; they even forged letters from Theseus; and they tended her in childbirth. But she died before her delivery and was honourably buried. Soon after that Theseus returned, was much afflicted at his loss, and, on sailing away, left a sum of money for sacrifices to be offered to Ariadne; he also ordered two little images, one silver and one bronze, to be made and dedicated to her. And so in Cypros, on the second of the month Gorpiaios, which is sacred to Ariadne, they have a ritual in which a youth lies down and with voice and gesture imitates a woman in travail; and the Amathousians call the grove with her tomb the grove of Aphrodite Ariadne.

This account is attributed to Paion of Amathous, who seems certainly later than Alexander the Great; but even if much of the story is late, it must have been invented to account for rituals about which there was no clear explanation. Ploutarch goes on to say that some of the Naxians declare there were two Minoses and two Ariadnes. One Ariadne was married to Dionysos on Naxos, where she bore two sons. The other was of a later period; she was carried off by Theseus, who deserted her; she then retired to Naxos with her nurse.[351]

Many efforts have been made to explain some of the discrepancies. The Odyssey passage has been interpreted as meaning that Ariadne was already beloved by Dionysos, who accused her to Artemis of infidelity. Ancient critics suggested that Theseus and Ariadne had caused all the trouble by mating in a consecrated place, a sacred wood or the enclosure of Dionysos; or that Ariadne had broken a vow of virginity.[352] But however we juggle with the details, it is clear that the myth never had any clearcut lines, apart from the labyrinth episode. Ariadne belonged to both Theseus and Dionysos; and nobody could quite reconcile her two roles.

What we may call the Pherekydes version is strongly represented in the vase paintings. On a vase by the Syleus-painter, Athena orders Theseus away while Dionysos carries Ariadne off. On a Syracusan krater, Athena, with Poseidon, puts a wreath on Theseus’ head while Dionysos arrives to take over Ariadne. On a Tarentine vase Theseus retires to the ship, sword in hand as if to protect himself, while Dionysos touches the sleeping Ariadne’s breast. Once we see Athena and Dionysos appear in Dia and jointly move Theseus to depart. Vases also depict Theseus carrying off Koronē, or Theseus and Peirithoos carrying off the Amazon Antiopē — Theseus being the one that has her in his arms.[353]

One other part of the legend that concerns us is the tradition of Theseus landing on Delos with his lads and girls. There he danced with them the Crane Dance, imitating the windings of the labyrinth. He sacrificed to Apollo and set up a statue to Aphrodite which Ariadne had brought with her and given to him — a Cretan statue. The goddess was thenceforth venerated on Delos as Hagne Aphrodite: a detail that reveals again the close relation of Aphrodite to the whole venture and especially to Ariadne. In a vase painting we see at the festival of rejoicings over the deliverance, not the statue, but Ariadne herself with her nurse. Theseus led the dance and played on the lyre. On his return the Athenians in commemoration of the safety of their sons and daughters instituted the worship of the divine pair Ariadne and Dionysos at Phaleron on the coast — an act that makes no sense if Theseus had deserted Ariadne or she had left him for Dionysos. The god here appears as her co-helper in the deliverance. As we saw, Theseus’ father killed himself as a result of his negligence, and Theseus became king. The ordeal was ended in triumph; the death of the father has the same significance as the ignorant killing by Oidipous of his father, which leads on to his gaining the kingdom of Thebes.[354]

Ariagne, a dialectal variant of Ariadne, is often inscribed on Attic vases; it means someone to whom the title of agnos applies in the highest degree. We saw that her image on Delos also bore this title, which is hard to translate. ‘Pure’ or ‘holy’ are too vague; ‘untouched’ or ‘untouchable’ are better, as of a being with a nature that goes beyond human concepts of good and evil, an emanation of pure force. It was applied to female deities who embodied the mysterious element of earth: Artemis, Korē, Demeter, Aphrodite. The name Theseus occurs on Pylian tablets, as do Dionysos and Artemis. Daidalos had a fifteenth-century shrine at Knossos, where the Lady of the Labyrinth was worshipped too. She must surely be Ariadne in some earlier form. (At Knossos we also find the names Kastor and Aithon, Odysseus’ pseudonym in the Cretan tale he tells Penelope.)[355] The name Aridela conferred on Ariadne in Crete has been related to her crown that shines in the heavens, but reference to a specific constellation is unlikely at an early date. Perhaps she was just a shiner like Pasiphae and Phaidra — and maybe Helen.[356]

Among the women carried off or married by Theseus was Aiglē, Brightness, another shining woman. There were several heroines with this name: a daughter of Helios who with her sisters was changed to a poplar at the fall of her brother Phaethon (another Shiner); one of the Hesperides; the nymph for whom Theseus left Ariadne; the most lovely of the Naiads, on whom Helios begot the Graces. Aiglē is also called Koronis, though the vase that seems to show Theseus carrying her off makes her Korone. Koronis, Crowgirl, was also the faithless love of Apollo, who bore him Asklepios; yet another Koronis was changed to a crow by Athena as Poseidon pursued her. The Odyssean account of the killing of Ariadne by Artemis adds the similar killing of Koronis. Dionysos made the accusation in the first case, Apollo in the second. Nonnos cites Aiglē first in his list of the nurses of Dionysos, to whom Koronis also belonged; and to make things more confusing, on the vase where Koronē is being carried off, Helen and the Amazon Antiope attempt to prevent Theseus!

Ariadne too was a nurse of Dionysos. On a vase she appears as the nymph to whom Dionysos is given at birth by Hermes; her name is spelt Ariagne. We are reminded of Hagno of Arkadia, nurse of Zeus on Mt Lykaios; her springs flows with the same volume winter and summer; and in times of drought the priest of Lykaian Zeus ‘lowers an oak-branch to the surface of the water, not letting it sink deep’; the result is a vapour rising to form a cloud and produce rain. At Megalopolis Pausanias saw reliefs carved on a table in the temple of the Great Goddesses (Demeter and Korē): ‘Nymphs too are carved there: Neda carries baby Zeus, Anthrakia, another Arkadian nymph holds a torch, and Hagno has a water-pot in one hand and a bowl in the other. Anchirhoē and Myrtoessa carry water-pots with what is meant to be water coming down from them. In the precinct is a temple of Philios [Friendly] Zeus. Polykleitos of Argos made the image: it is like Dionysos in having buskins on its feet, a beaker in one hand, a thyrsos in the other, but an eagle seated on the thyrsos doesn’t fit in with accepted accounts of Dionysos.’ In the sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea reliefs on the altar showed: ‘Rhea and the nymph Oinoe holding baby Zeus; on either side are four figures — Glaukē, Neda, Theisoa and Anthrakia on one, Ide, Hagno, Alkinoe and Phrixa on the other. There are also images of the Muses and of Mnemosynē [Memory].’ In Hesiod’s Theogony Ariadne is called the wife of Dionysos: ‘And goldhaired Dionysos made fair-haired [xanthē] Ariadne, Minos’ daughter, his buxom wife; and Kronos’ Son [Zeus] made her deathless and unageing.’

For Nonnos she is the leader of the Mainads, the chief Dionysiac nymph. In his account of the war between Perseus and Dionysos he adds yet another account of her death. ‘The heavy bronze spears of Mykenai resisted the ivy and deadly fennel, and Perseus, sickle in hand, gave way to Bacchos with his wand [thyrsos] and fled before the rage of satyrs crying Euoi. Perseus cast a furious spear and hit frail Ariadne, who had no weapons, instead of Lyaios [Deliverer, Dionysos] the warrior. I do not admire Perseus for killing a single woman, in her bridal dress still breathing of love.’ Later, however, we get a different version: ‘So he left Dionysos and fought with the mad Bacchantes. He shook in his hand the deadly face of Medousa and turned armed Ariadne into stone. Bacchos, on seeing his bride all stone, was yet more furious.’[357]

Epimenides, who can be relied on for Cretan folklore, says it was in Crete that the daughter of Minos was mated with Dionysos. The account of Argos in Pausanias shows that Nonnos was basing himself on old traditions. ‘The temple of Hera the Flowery [Anthea] is on the right of the sanctuary of Leto, and before it a grave of women. They were killed in a battle against the Argives under Perseus, having come from the Aegean islands to help Dionysos in war. So they are surnamed Haliai [Sea-Women].’ Opposite the Grave is a small bronze vessel supporting ancient images of Artemis, Zeus and Athena. ‘Lykeas in his poem states that the image is of Zeus Mechaneus [Con-triver], and that here the Argives who set out against Troy swore to carry on the war till they took Troy or were all killed fighting.’ By the bronze underground chamber, where Perseus’ mother had been shut in by her father to keep her chaste, is a temple of Cretan Dionysos. ‘They say that the god, after making war on Perseus, later put his enmity aside and received great honours at the hands of the Argives, including this precinct set specially apart for him. It was afterwards called the Precinct of the Cretan God, because, when Ariadne died, Dionysos buried her here. But Lykeas declares that at the rebuilding of the temple an earthenware coIhn was found and it was Ariadne’s. He added that both he himself and other Argives saw it. Near the temple of Dionysos is a temple of Aphrodite Ourania.’[358]

We see that Ariadne had many deaths and burials: here at Argos; at Naxos where both she and her nurse were buried; at Amathous in Cypros; on Dia. For the rite at Amathous various theories have been propounded, such as that it represented the couvade (where the male mimes the woman’s pangs of childbirth, in order to draw off any hostile spirits). Most likely, however, it was connected with the Bearded Aphrodite of Cypros (as also in Pamphylia). This deity had a female body and wore female clothes, but had the beard and genitals of a man. Its image was certainly shown with an erection, for comic poets and lexicographers connected Aphrodite with priapic daimones. But no statues of the androgynous Aphrodite have been found. The stress on Ariadne’s death suggests the role of Semele, mother of Dionysos. The latter has her one great myth moment when she bears the god and is simultaneously blasted by Zeus. She was worshipped at Thebes as one who had died; the area dedicated to her was in the precinct of Dionysos; on the acropolis was a sakos, a grave. An Orphic hymn, speaking of the honours paid to her at the festivals of Dionysos, stresses that she owed them to Persephone, queen of the dead. A scholiast speaks of the unapproachable shrine, sekos, in the mountains, which was called the Grave of Semele. Indeed the house of the god’s birth was also her grave. The blasted house was shown next to the shrine of Dionysos Kadmeios; in a third-century inscription it is called a sekos, showing that she had a cult there. She was however worshipped also at other sites. Her main cult-days were the festivals for the Advent of Dionysos and for her Resurrection by the god from the underworld. In the invocation at the Attic Lenaia, Dionysos was called Semelēios. Ploutarch tells of an eight-yearly festival at Delphoi in which the Thyiads took part; the drōmenon enacted in public suggested that the theme was Semele’s resurrection. The festival was called Herōis, referring to Semele who bore this name, just as the women of Elis called Dionysos Herōs, the Hero, in a song. The Herōis may have been celebrated elsewhere. In Lerna it was said that Dionysos had sent to the depths of the Alkyonian Sea, to the land of Ocean, to fetch her; and in Troizen people pointed out the place where she had come up from Hades.[359]

The rites at Naxos show Ariadne as a vegetation deity who dies and is reborn, who is mourned and then rejoiced over. Like Demeter’s Korē, Britomartis and Diktynna, she is carried off and mourned as dead. She appears also as the daimōn of the girl initiate who disappears (dies) and then returns with a new status. Here as at many points we have to note how the pattern of death—birth ritual and myth is at root the same in both the nature-cults and initiation customs. A festival which illuminates Ariadne’s character is the Oschophoria at Athens: the Carrying of the Oscha, the vine-shoots laden with grapes. It was connected with the ephebes and included a contest or race and a procession with revel. The ten victors, feasted, formed into procession, one leading as herald, two following dressed as women and carrying boughs, the other seven composing the chorus. Ploutarch says that Theseus introduced the festival; and the two young men with boughs ‘on account of the myth’ performed in honour of Dionysos and Ariadne. The prize was a cup of mixed drinks, of magical virtue, a sort of panspermia or pankarpia (all-seeds, all-fruits) made up of cheese, honey, wine and so on, in the same way as the holy kykeon in Demeter’s Mysteries at Eleusis. From one aspect the Oschophoria was a survival of the old clan feast. Women called Deipnophoroi, meal-bringers, took part; they shared in the sacrifice ‘in imitation of the mothers of those on whom the lot fell’ of going to the Minotaur. And they recited myths to encourage the youths. Again we see survivals of initiation ritual. Ploutarch adds that the pair of lads in girls’ clothes represented a pair in the group that went to Crete and who had thus dressed up so as to fill the complement of girls; this pair on the return had headed the procession. That was how their transvestism was ‘on account of the myth’. Alternatively, they played their part because they came back at the time when the fruit harvest was being got in. The ten tribes of Attika seem to have contributed one each of the ephebes, the choric seven representing the lads sent in tribute to Minos.[360]

Ploutarch also tells us that an hereditary clan was in charge, the Phytalides, whose eponymous ancestor Phytalos had been taught by Demeter the art of cultivating figs, before the vine came in. (In Crete orchard cultivation was developed early.) This Phytalos we have met in the purification of Theseus at the end of his wandering ordeals. In the Oschophoria we then see three main elements: initiation, cultivation of a sacred tree, and a fertility-cult carried out by a clan or craft-fraternity. With the stress on the mothers as supervisors of the feast, as the inculculaters of traditional lore, we see elements that may well go back to Minoan-Mykenean times. Also we see Theseus in harmony with Dionysos and with Ariadne as the god’s bride, not his own.

*

Further light is thrown on Ariadne by the account of the Crane Dance instituted by Theseus on Delos. The dance was a circling one which imitated the entry into, movement through, and exit from, the labyrinth. Daidalos showed the group how to dance it. Homer in the Iliad described what can only be this dance. ‘There the famous god of the strong arms cunningly fashioned a dancing floor like that which in broad Knossos Daidalos constructed of old for lovely-haired Ariadne. There were lads dancing and maidens worth many cattle, holding each the wrists of another. The girls were dressed in fine linen, while the lads wore well-woven tunics faintly glistening with oil; and the girls had beautiful crowns [stephanai] and the lads had daggers of gold attached to their silver belts. One moment they ran round very lightly on cunning feet, as when a potter sits by the wheel that’s fitted between his hands, and tries it out to see how it spins. Then another moment they ran in lines opposite to one another. And a big crowd stood around enjoying the dance of desire [passionate, charming]; and two tumblers spun around in their midst as leaders of the dance’ — that is, setting the rhythm.

Pausanias tell us of the works he considered the actual products of Daidalos (that is, very ancient works). There were two in Boiotia: ‘a Herakles in Thebes and the Trophonios at Lebadeia. Also two wooden images in Crete, a Britomartis at Olous and an Athena at Knossos, at which latter place is also Ariadne’s Dance, mentioned in the Iliad, carved in relief on white marble. At Delos as well there is a small wooden image of Aphrodite, its right hand defaced by time and with a square base for feet. It’s my opinion that Ariadne got this image from Daidalos and when she followed Theseus she took it with her from home. Losing Ariadne, say the Delians, Theseus dedicated the wooden image of the goddess to the Delian Apollo, so that he wouldn’t take it home and be drawn into remembering Ariadne, with regret for his love perpetually renewed.’

Homer’s picture seems of the sort of setting that we find in what has been called the theatral area, orchestra, or arena at Knossos, a space designed for dances and sports. There may have been a maze pattern painted or set out in some other way, of the kind we find for dance mazes in England and elsewhere, as is suggested by a passage in Hesychios on grammai for the orchestra. Eustathios says that in the dance devised by Theseus the lads and girls danced anamix, all mixed up. He also clarifies the Homeric picture, in which we cannot tell if the two sexes alternated in each line or if there were separate lines; he informs us that they did alternate, standing side by side and hand in hand, anamix. Such a combination of the two sexes was most unusual in classical times, but may have been common much earlier. It has been suggested that the dance had a cosmic significance, the rapid circular figure expressing the planetary movements, the figure of the opposing lines representing the apparent approach of the planets to one another and to the earth. Indeed, Euripides, in the Elektra, speaking of the shield of Achilles which Homer is describing, refers to its ‘ethereal dances of the stars’. In a general way this may have been so, but there was the more specific relation to the labyrinth, which was also a cosmic emblem or pattern.

Pollux tells us that the geranos was danced by performers in a line, with a leader at each end. The François vase of the early sixth century, in its topmost band of figures, shows the geranos with the lands and girls anamix. The dance was performed on Delos all through ancient times; but the dance with the same name which is still found in the Greek islands is not of the same type as the ancient geranos. Geranos, we noted, has been taken to mean Crane, but all the efforts to find bird figures in the dance have failed. Apparently the word has been misunderstood; it does not mean crane but is a homonym, based on the root *ger-, which denotes a winding movement as of rivers or snakes. Delian inscriptions mention torches and lamps for the dancers of the geranos, showing that they performed at night. No doubt the dance had many winding or circular movements. A maze dance in Cornwall, called the Snail’s Creep, was danced in June:

The head or band of the serpent keeps marching in an ever-narrowing circle, while its train of dancing followers becomes coiled round in circle after circle. It is now that the most interesting part of the dance commences; for the band, taking a sharp turn about, begins to retrace the circle, still followed as before, and a large number of young men with long leafy branches in their hands as standards, direct this counter-movement with almost military precision.

The account is of interest in turning to the snake for an image to express the twining movements; we see a double spiralling pattern as well as the use of boughs to define the dance-leaders who are making the decisive turns; also the term ‘military precision’ suggests the young men of the Game of Troy, which became the basis of military evolutions, the tattoo. The maze dance is still danced in Crete, before a marriage. An observer, seeing an Albanian version of it in the 1930s, was reminded of having last seen it in the Malekulan Islands:

The significance of the particular figure of dancing known as the maze formula is obvious when one considers that many primitive races believe that the soul on leaving the body is required to find its way through a labyrinth....These Albanians were treading the serpent maze that winds itself into a seemingly insoluble state of confusion and then calmly unwinds itself back to the centre — a solution that you least expect.

The serpentine dance of the Australian Kurnai, we may note, is an initiation dance. In ancient Greece we hear of labyrinthine dances in caves; and there is a tradition that Japanese drama was born out of dances held at a cave mouth in honour of the hidden sun-goddess. Hekate had mystery rites in the Zerynthian Cave of Samothrace; and the underground cave-temple was central in Mithraic mysteries. Indeed there seems a tradition for such ritual that goes right back through temples like those of Egypt or Malta to palaeolithic days. The passage rite here becomes indeed the passage through dark underground ways or caves. Ploutarch defines the mystery experience at Eleusis in terms of labyrinth and cave. ‘Thus death and initiation closely correspond, word to word and thing to thing. At first there are wanderings and laborious circuits, and journeyings through the dark, full of misgivings when there is no consummation; then before the very end come terrors of every kind, shiverings and trembling and sweat and amazement. After this a wonderful light meets the wanderer; he is admitted into pure meadowlands, where are voices and dances...’ Loukian represents a man who has entered Hades as asking his companion if what was shown at Eleusis was not just the same; and elsewhere he speaks of the dances and rhythmic movements. There were also cymbal-clashes, suggesting the shield-clashings of the Cretan Kouretes. Eleusis had Mykenean origins; the polygonal walls of local limestone in the oldest Hall of the Mysteries and of the sacred precinct seem to go back to the Mykenean Age; and the use of a multiple jar called kernos suggests cult-continuity from Minoan days.

That the labyrinth, whether expressed as a laid-out maze pattern or as a winding dance, was felt as providing the correct ritual approach to the underworld, the bowels of mother-earth, is suggested by the structure of the tholos (rotunda) of the healing god Asklepios at Epidauros. It revealed on excavation two outer colonnades, then three inner rings; each of the latter was pierced by an opening in such a way that anyone at the centre, trying to get out, would have to traverse the whole length of the passages. We have here a small labyrinth, which has been dated to the fourth century BC, the work of construction taking about sixty years. It seems that sacrifices were made outside and burned on the altars there; the victim’s blood, caught in vessels, was carried along the labyrinth and poured into a bothros, a hole dug in the ground, specifically a ritual pit. The blood would thus be thought to go down into the chthonic regions below. This interpretation is strongly supported by the fact that for the tholos of Palaimon Melikertes at Corinth victims were sacrificed outside. In any event it seems sure that the labyrinthine passages of the tholos of Asklepios represented a movement down into the earth, ritually secured and safeguarded.

But to return to the geranos. Inscriptions tell us that the dancers carried rhymoi, the exact meaning of which has been much debated. The word seems to mean ropes; and possibly the dancers carried a sort of rope or garland-like object which suggested a snake and was used to emphasize the spiralling in and out. The ritualistic carrying of a snake or a replica of one can be instanced; and snake dances were probably common among the Minoans. Minoan art shows a bird-headed winged woman in a vigorous dance, suggesting that there were bird dances; and some of the so-called animal-daimones in their processional movements may represent masked men. The Minotaur may well have been in origin the king or priest wearing a bull-mask in a ritual of life-death. A Cypriot terracotta dating from before 1200 BC shows a masked dancer pulling a bull-mask off his head. Figures of similar style but later date show another bull-masked dancer, a dancer taking off a stag-mask so that we can see his own hair and right ear beneath it; and a dancer in a shaggy dress, who has just removed a horned animal-mask, which he holds in his left hand. The dancers are normally shown with human feet. Replicas of bull-masks or fox-masks have also been found. All these figures were discovered in shrines or temples. From a very early period Cypriot terracottas show circular dances. One type depicts a triad dancing back to back round what seems the trunk of a sacred tree.[361]

Theseus is said to have danced the geranos in Crete round a Horned Altar: a touch that suggests a Minoan setting. Kalli-machos, after describing the garlanded image of Aphrodite which Theseus brought, mentions the geranos and connects the dance figures with the labyrinth. ‘After escaping the cruel bellowing of Pasiphae’s wild son and the coiled abode [hedos] of the crooked labyrinth, about your altar, Lady, they raised the music of the kithara and danced the circling dance, with Theseus leading the chorus.’ Eustathios says that old-fashioned folk, especially sailors, did a dance with many twists and turns intended to represent the windings of the labyrinth. Loukian cites as Cretan dance themes ‘Europa, Pasiphae, both the Bulls, the Labyrinth, Ariadne, Phaidra, Androgeos, Daidalos, Ikaros, Glaukos, the seer-craft of Polyidos, and Talos the bronze sentinel of Crete’.

The dance expressed an ordeal followed by marriage with the king’s daughter. The tradition that Minos handed over Ariadne to Theseus suggests that she was the prize for overcoming the dangerous test. Homer saw the dance as one of love or courtship; the dancers were unmarried lads and girls. The property value of the girls in marriage was stressed. Probably the passage in the Iliad does not mean that the girls got the oxen for their parents; more likely the oxen were wedding gifts made to her by her own household and thus of value, not to her parents, but to her suitors. Female inheritance normally precedes the custom of a dowry, which represents the economic perquisite originally bestowed on a husband by a matrilocal wife. Certainly in historical Crete female inheritance existed before the dowry; and matri-local customs survived in several forms. Collective marriage, we saw, also survived, and in earlier days must have been yet stronger in range. Possibly Homer’s Knossian dance was a rite of collective marriage on graduation from the agela.[362]

A dance, the same or very similar, was the Spartan ring dance, hormos, performed by ephebes and maidens; from the context we see that the ephebes were not just young fellows in general, but that the term is used in the technical sense of youths undergoing ephebic training in the agela, in which both dancing and fighting were studied. ‘Even now’, says Loukian, ‘you may see their young men dancing quite as much as fighting under arms; when they have finished sparring and exchanging blow for blow with each other, their contest ends in dancing and a flute-player sits in the midst.’ Hormos means cord or chain, especially a necklace made up of bits and pieces strung together; the line of lads and girls was thus a living thread of bodies. Ariadne’s Thread then appears as more than a fillet communicating spiritforce from one point to another; it was the string of dancers tracing the maze pattern. Loukian tells us: ‘The lad goes first, doing the steps and postures of young manhood, and those which later he’ll practise in war. The maiden follows him, showing how to do the woman’s dance with propriety, and so the string is beaded with modesty and manliness.’ In his more general comments, he says that the flute-player marks time with his foot, while the lads, ‘following one another in line, perform figures of all sorts in rhythmic steps, now those of war, and presently those of the choral dance dear to Dionysos and Aphrodite’.

The Game of Troy, performed (as we noted) by boys of high rank in the Circus Maximus at Rome, seems certainly in origin the same sort of thing as the hormos, but with girls excluded and the aspect of military manoeuvres stressed. Virgil compares the movements to the Cretan Labyrinth and to troops of dolphins at play. The ancient roots of the Game have been proved by the picture on an Etruscan vase of about 600 BC, where armed riders are shown emerging from a labyrinth labelled TRVIA — Troy! Here is the surprising link of the maze pattern with Troy, which we earlier suggested.

Loukian goes on to refer to Homer’s account of Ariadne’s dance-floor, but excuses himself from details on the grounds that the reader will know about the subject. For him the choros of Ariadne and hormos are love dances. Hesychios glosses choros as ‘circle, crown’: which both links the labyrinth and its dance with Ariadne’s crown and helps the suggestion that Homer’s choros was in fact the floor on which the ring dance was performed. At Athens a labyrinth of Roman pattern lies on the floor of the later orchestra, and on a vase depicting the fight with the Minotaur the labyrinth is shown in Greek theatral form. The steps from the orchestra to the stage, we may note, were called Charon’s Steps ghosts, supposed to emerge from the underworld, went up and down them. The orchestra-labyrinth could then stand for the passage between the normal world and the underworld.

A finely engraved metal cuirass, recently found at Olympia, helps to link Helen with Ariadne as the girl carried off by Theseus. The design on the upper part belongs to the series on proto-corinthian vases in which the Twins rescue her from Theseus and Peirithoos. She stands with tall polos between the two pairs of young men; Theseus holds her hand, but she turns and lifts her free hand to salute her brothers, who are not this time mounted. Her dress shows a meander pattern which we earlier found to be a stylized version of the labyrinth. So, Helen enclosed in a meander with Theseus holding her hand is close to Ariadne accompanying him through the maze, however different the situation is in other ways.[363]

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The names Dionysos and Lady of the Labyrinth existed in the Bronze Age. It has been suggested that then Ariadne was supreme dancer of the female nature spirits, with Dionysos in a lesser role. The male figure of Minoan cult (son, lover, or both) was always much subordinated to the mother; in neolithic times he did not exist, but he began to come up in Middle and Late Minoan periods. The female vegetation-cults sank in many ways with the rise of Greek historical culture. We can then imagine Ariadne becoming the lesser figure, with Dionysos growing ever more important, till the insurgence of the peasants in the seventh and sixth centuries fully established him. The tale of Theseus in Crete would not have been in existence in the Bronze Age, but was developed in the later Dark Age as the hero gained prestige as someone who carried off heroines. The passage in the Odyssey would then reflect a simple clash between the claims of Theseus and Dionysos; the former intruded on the old settled relations of Ariadne and the god, and the god called on Artemis to deal with him.

In making these conjectures, one is not asserting that either Ariadne or Dionysos in Minoan-Mykenean days had all the attributes they later revealed. Only that there was a nurse-mother goddess presiding over an important initiation dance (connected also with marriage) and that there was a widespread cult involving ecstatic dances and rapt experiences which later gathered round the son rather than round the nurse-mother. The death-rebirth aspects of Ariadne tended to fade out or remain local in later days; the stress was put, apart from her link with the labyrinth, on her triumphal marriage with Dionysos. That marriage became a theme of funerary sculpture. On one sarcophagus we see a veiled Ariadne to whom Dionysos turns, almost naked with a female-looking body (which is contrasted with the sturdy Hermes on the other side); in a lost example, drawn in the early nineteenth century, a young androgynous lad is in place of Ariadne.

Thiasos, the word used for the Dionysiac revelling group, is non-Greek and not found in Homer; it may well be an ancient Aegean or Minoan term. Ecstatic dances were certainly an important feature of Minoan religion. We have seen them in connection with magical or sacred herbs and trees. Here are some more examples. On a gold ring from Isopata four women dance in a meadow in sunlight (if we may thus interpret the eye); there are two snakes over their heads, whether they are meant to be on the ground or thrown about between them. A small goddess appears to the dancers or is presiding over them; she may be compared with the faience figures from the central palace sanctuary at Knossos. Here the figures are Middle Minoan, so it seems too early to apply the name Lady of the Labyrinth. The snake-goddess, it is true, has been taken as a house-deity and the bell-shaped idols, who have snakes wrapped round them or are found in sacred vessels decorated with snakes, do not seem connected with the wild dances. But a dual function in ritual for snakes may well have existed in Minoan times. In later times the snake is linked both with Mainads and Dionysos and with the house-cult and Zeus. At Gazi a Minoan goddess with poppy-heads on her crown shares a shrine with a goddess who has birds on her head. It has been suggested that the Mykeneans knew the snake-goddess of the palace as the Lady of the Labyrinth and the revelling goddess as Ariadne. If so, we should have to separate the labyrinth dance, the geranos or hormos, from Ariadne, which sets up many difficulties.[364]

If we look back at the designs on rings from Tiryns and Canea, we see that the woman might be Ariadne as much as Helen; but the male would be the Minoan Dionysos or some similar figure rather than Theseus or an earlier prototype. Dionysos, we may recall, still had a ship in his cult at classical Athens.

*

We have seen the labyrinth as a dance expressing conflict, wandering, emergence into a new life; and the figures of this dance may have been reflected in a maze pattern on the floor (like those later cut in turf in England). Spiral patterns have a very long history. We might take as example the Maltese prehistoric temples. The entry, from an open central forecourt, into a middle temple at Tarxien is reduced, as in the other temples, to a narrow longish passage (five feet wide) by two mighty upright slabs; what entry is left is blocked by a two-feet-high slab that has to be stepped over. Two large spirals cover the whole of this slab, facing outward and set back to back; they develop down and out, with a small triangle (point down) at the top between them and a large one, less marked, pointing up from below. (Similar slabs from other temples of Malta are known.) The patterns have been called oculus-spirals, a formalized expression of the eyes and nose of the ancestor goddess who is guarding the internal structure. But the temples do not seem made for a cult of ancestors the spirals are a genital symbol and define the entrance into the womb of the goddess. The spiral as a symbol or image of the female goes back at least to the Late Palaeolithic:

From much later, historical times, may be cited one of the ‘snake-goddesses’ (or ‘priestesses’) from the temple repositories of Knossos or an archaic Carthaginian figurine from Ibiza whose garments are significantly decorated with a profusion of spirals. The aptitude of the circular spiral for this connotation may be found in its symbolising an urge and invitation to find a way to the final centre; perhaps also to return from it and infinitely to repeat the same experience. The latter component becomes indubitable where several of these spirals are joined into a pattern of endlessness, and even in the single S-spiral: with these, at any rate, the symbol becomes expressive of the experience of the conjunctio oppositorum: the up-and-down; the forward-and-back; the in-and-outward — and therewith of birth and death. These implications, so it would seem, constitute the aptitude of the spiral for symbolising the experience of the female principle. (Zuntz)

A few early examples will help to bring the point home. On the lap of a nurse-mother statuette from neolithic Sesklo a circular spiral is drawn as also on her seat and on that of the child. A crude Bronze-Age figurine from Salcutsa in Roumania has the same sort of spiral on her lap. A late neolithic clay figure of a seated goddess from a tumulus near Philippopel (Plovdiv) in Bulgaria has an S-spiral inside a lozenge on the genital zone. We see that the spiral does not simply represent the vulva, but the vulva in terms of movement: the entry into, or exit from, the female body, a dynamic symbol that can express birth, copulation, and (by analogy) death or rebirth. The Bulgarian figure is actually a vessel; we may compare the so-called face-urns of Troy with their suggestion of face, breasts and symbolic vulva. Woman is the vessel of life: here too the fluid goes in and out.[365]

Two examples of a dance or movement through the maze in initiations will help us get inside Ariadne’s system. In the circumcision dance of the Merina of Madagascar the path to the sacred stone was divided into five by means of strings. On the middle string the king walked in a straight line; on the other four strings, which were set out in labyrinthic meanderings, walked the people. The king, as embodied divinity, went straight to the initiation goal; the others had to dance to it through the difficult maze. But in all the cases the path of the goal, the achievement of the new life, was represented by a thread.

Among the Buddhists of Indochina we find the dance through the maze as a conflict with evil forces. In Arakan the faithful read the holy Bana as they danced through an artificial labyrinth. At each turn they challenged the Yaksha there and drove him away. At last they reached the divine region. Here no thread is mentioned; but we find it in the same situation among the Singhalese, where the devotee, reading the Paritta, which is aimed against the Yakshas, unwinds a thread as he reads.

If we turn to such a place as Malekula we see the maze pattern in full action, mythically and ritually. Thus on the island of Atchin a series of dances represent the gradual initiation of the Maki-men into the mysteries:

This dance represents at one and the same time (a) a sacred marriage (b) an initiation rite and (c) the Journey of the Dead....In the pattern of the final movement of the dance the Maki-men form a solid body arranged in rows and members of the introducing ‘line’ thread their way through them. Members of the introducing ‘line’ occupy in the Maki the position of those already fully initiated, and comparison with the version of the Journey of the Dead as recorded from Seniang shows that the progression of the initiates between the ranks formed by the Maki-men corresponds with the path followed by the dead man through a maze-like design drawn in the sand by the Guardian Ghost, a figure that the dead man must know how to complete before entering into the land of the dead through the cave by which she sits. If he does not know how to do this, the Guardian Ghost devours him. I have shown elsewhere how this maze-design represents the labyrinthine entrance to the tomb in the civilisations of the Ancient East, of which the existing Malekulan belief is a faint echo. Sand-tracings and figure-dances of na-leng type are thus both seen to be derived from labyrinths constructed to trap the ignorant and to prevent access to the land of the dead to all except those who, through the performance of due ritual and the resulting acquirement of the necessary knowledge, have earned the right to enter. (Layard)

The problem set the dead man is expressed again by a belief that the female Guardian Ghost draws a design on the sand; as the spirit of the dead man comes near, she rubs out half of the design; the spirit must fill in the missing part and walk over it before entering the land of the dead. Two main designs are found. One is of a single continuous line with a definite start and finish, crossing and recrossing itself on a framework of straight lines set at right angles to one another; the framework represents the labyrinth, the continuous line the path traced by the initiate through it. The second consists of a single never-ending line which encloses a space based on a framework of small circles or dots. The dots represent the eyes, nostrils, and breasts of the Guardian Ghost, and the line the contour of her body. The two types, clearly distinguished in ritual, have as art forms become merged.

In south India we find a series of designs drawn by Hindu women in Tamil country on the thresholds of their houses during the harvest-month until Margali or Mrigasira (mid-December to mid-January). Tattooers of the vagrant Korava community use similar designs. The threshold designs are aimed both at preventing evil from entering the house and facilitating a cosmic death—rebirth (initiation). The month in question is that in which the sun reaches the winter solstice and is said to die; then the most solemn rite in south India, Pongal, is held and the sun is said to be reborn. The month before Pongal is made up of unlucky days; the following month, of lucky days. Margali is ‘a most unhealthy month. It is the month on which all kinds of epidemics — cholera, fever, and smallpox — are supposed to occur.’ During the bad month mendicants go from door to door, about 4 am, waking all sleepers with gongs, warning them to be on guard against evil influences. The women then prepare a patch about a yard square outside the door, smear it with cowdung, and trace designs on it with rice-flour. In the square are set pellets each with a pumpkin flower in it. The pellets are said to represent Vigneshwara, god of obstacles. We hear also of the path being first swept and sprinkled, and the designs drawn with slaked lime or old ground-up mortar (anything white) in a continuous line; the work is done before sunrise. But no efforts are made to guard the drawings; it is enough that they have been made. The pumpkin flower is in the form of a five-pointed star, symbolic of sacrifice and used to avert the evil eye. Names used for the designs, kolam, are Brahma’s Knot and Pavitram (a finger-ring of sacrificial grass or gold: we may compare the garland or crown of Helen, Harmonia, Ariadne). The Sanskrit root of pavitram seems pu, to cleanse and to pacify. ‘The object of the pavitram is to scare away giants, evil spirits, or devils, whose mission is to bring disasters upon men and mar the ceremonies of the Brahmins. The very sight of the pavitram makes them tremble and take to flight. This powerful amulet consists of three, five, or seven stalks of darbha grass plaited together in the form of a ring.’ The Brahmins can do nothing without it. ‘It is the basis of all those pious and meritorious acts...which lead to everlasting felicity’ (Dubois). There is a virtue also in the knots tying the grass. Brahma’s Knot is the knot with which the three strands of the sacred cord of a Brahman are tied together in such a way that no loose end is visible and the cord becomes virtually a never-ending line. (The continuous-line design of a face, connected in the Near East with the mantic entrails of sacrifice and the face of Humbaba, was known in Greece; examples of the Humbaba type have been found in the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia.)

The principle uniting both these objects with the designs is that of the continuous looped line, represented in the case of the pavitram by the knotted grass-ring, and in that of the Brahma-mudi by the knotted cord. Just as in Malekula an examination of the chief mystery-play in the labyrinthine series revealed the ogre-hero to be characterised by the immense number of coils of underground creeper tied round his loins, being the Malekulan representation of what we in Europe have come to refer to as Ariadne’s clue, the thread by means of which the prisoner finds his way out of the labyrinth, so I venture to suggest that in the knotted grass or cord, associated as it is with the basic elements of the South Indian threshold-designs, we may most probably be in the presence of the same symbol of escape from the physical as well as the spiritual labyrinth. (Layard)

The designs are also used for magical purposes unconnected with doors. Thus an eight-snake design with central star-like figure is drawn by a Pulluvan, whose caste is said to be descended from the snake-deity. On the appointed day he draws the design in rice-flour on the floor; the spaces between the coils are filled in with burnt rice-husk, turmeric, powdered green leaves, and so on. The Pulluvan plays on his earthen pot-drum. A seated woman gradually grows possessed and quivers, shaking her wild locks; moving backwards and forwards she rubs away the snake figure with the coconut flowers. It may be thus necessary to rub out the snake as many as a hundred times, prolonging the rite over several weeks. Each time the snake is destroyed, one or two men with torches perform a dance to the Pulluvan’s music. In the rite worship is performed to the god Ganesha.

We find maze types called forts which are close to the Cretan design for a labyrinth and which bring out the defensive aspect of the pattern. They are met incised on a house-wall; and a labyrinth of small stones occurs near the ruined city of Kundani. Similar ones are found in megalithic areas such as Wisby in Gothland or on Wier Osland in the Gulf of Finland. The tattooed designs are always done by women; they are connected with Ganesha like the threshold designs and with averting the evil eye; they are regarded by some persons as a ‘passport for the forgiveness of sins and for admission to heaven’. In connection with the ancient near-eastern labyrinths three types of dancing were carried on: the Dance of Lamentation; the Protective Dance performed by armed men; the Fertility Dance, linked with the sacred marriage, performed by men and women. The encircling dance seems the most ancient and potent.[366]

A Malekulan dance of the Seniang district shows the sort of mystery play and myth that could arise from the labyrinthine dance. The performers consist of the principal dancer; a man called the Hawk, a man with bow and arrow (the man who shoots with the ne-leng), two bridegrooms, two more bowmen, two others called ne-tes-kew, another pair called man-yeosir, two brides, and a group of fifteen dancers called ‘the mouth of the ne-leng’. The first two syllables of ne-tes-kew mean the ‘sea’, so that we seem to be dealing with a death-crossing of the sea; man-yeosir has as first syllable a root meaning magic or bird, birds having their religious connotation, especially through the hawk and other strong fliers. The drawing here given shows the positions at the beginning; the lower end, where a spectator in the lodge would be sitting, represents the outside or normal world; the most sacred characters or aspects are at the further end. There we see the bridegrooms and two magicians with two bowmen guarding them; at the side is the man who shoots with the ne-leng guarding the sanctuary and its inmates. Outside these stand the main body of dancers facing the sanctuary; they represent the pattern of the labyrinth and thus are a further defence or barrier. Outside these again, in the normal world, stands the main dancer, who represents the spirit of the dead man about to attempt its journey, together with the Hawk (the introducer, the man already initiated).

The two magicians begin, dancing slowly forwards with stiffly held arms swung back and out in a leisurely motion, repeating a chant in which occurs the term ni-temes (spirit of the dead). They pass to the right of the two ferrymen, between the fourth and fifth column columns of the main body, round the dead man, back to the main body, threading their way through the fourth, second and third columns, and on to their first position, where they continue to dance. (The two magicians or priests, with the word ‘spirit’ on their lips, cross the water represented by the two ferrymen, advance through the labyrinth and approach the neophyte, then return through the labyrinth and over the waters.)

Next the bridegrooms act. As each advances, he makes a forward-plunging movement with an arrow. Singing they approach the screen behind which are the women. From a small opening in it their wives step out. Each woman is bent, crouching, and holds her hands between her thighs, rubbing a strongly-scented leaf between her palms. They take their places behind their husbands, still in the same pose, and follow them with quick short steps. The two men thus accompanied pass to the left of the ferrymen, between the first and second column of the main body, round the neophyte, and thread their way back through the other columns of the main body to their first position. (Both arrow-gestures and rubbings between the thighs express copulation or marriage: a sacred marriage since it occurs within the sanctuary. The pairs, after thus copulating, cross the waters and the labyrinth to visit the neophyte, then return.) Next the bowmen, with bow-strings taut, pass between the ferrymen, through the main body, round the neophyte, and back again. (We thus have the three stages of a procession headed by the priests, followed by the bridal couples and their armed guards the procession emerges from the sanctuary, the spiritworld, crosses the waters and the labyrinth, and shows itself to the neophyte.)

Now the Hawk dances down the ground, flapping his arms, till he faces the main body, where he sings a song, in which the word mbal, sacrifice, is heard. (He stands for the initiated introducer who offers up a sacrifice on behalf of the novice, to gain him right of entry.) After that the two ferrymen advance and go through the main body to the neophyte as the bowmen have done. (Apparently they signify that he now has the right to cross the waters.)

The dramatic conflict begins. The man with the ne-leng comes forward, draws his bow, and pretends to shoot at the main body. They back away. He slackens his bow-string and they again advance. This action is repeated for some time. (The man’s song begins kevini ne-sap, ‘he who shoots at the sap’: Temes Sav-sap, the Guardian Ghost.) He is battling with the Ghost and the host that represent the turns of the labyrinth. (The meaning of the episode seems to be that the maze defences are so strong that those without the clue are forced to attempt a violent entry. A myth tells how a dead man, ignorant of the maze design called the Path, went back to the living world for his bow and arrows, with which he killed the Ghost, so that the stone on which she sat crashed into the sea. We may compare the hell-harrowing tales of the Greeks, especially those of the great bowman Herakles.)

The attack is foiled. The neophyte at last advances singing a song that indicates his hope of everlasting felicity with the two chief persons in the sanctuary. With this song he threads the columns of the labyrinth, the guardians of which, now fully identified with him, form into a single-line procession and visit the other characters. The latter in turn join the procession till they form one line, when the neophyte, now initiate and dance-leader, disperses them.

In another dance we meet two Hawks: the Flyer-from-place-to-place and the Pouncer-on-its-prey. The first threads the lines of the main body of dancers; the second follows the same course up to the point of line-threading, then begins jumping and threatening, retraces his steps along the line, then threads his way between the lines. At last, with arms still outstretched like a swooping bird, he dashes into the midst of the square. The group of dancers shuffle and cower in a terrified knot, while he stands with outstretched arms in their midst to his full height. Two bowmen then appear from the opposite sides of the ground. A series of mock-fights occurs. At one point the main body of dancers breaks into two groups, each of which follows a bowman; then they reunite to accompany the two bowmen off the ground. Here the maze dance concentrates on the theme of conflict; under attack the maze breaks up but finally reachieves its dense defensive form.

These two Malekulan maze dances show how the ritual bases could supply the forms and imagery for themes of the sacred marriage, the passage into new levels or dimensions of life, the conflict of opposites. With the maze as the fort or impregnable stronghold, themes of siege, attacks on walls, breaching of defences, could easily develop. The imagery of the Maiden Castle persisted in popular sources in Europe well into the medieval period, when it appeared in the symbol of the Castellum Virginis, the fort of the faithful which was also the body of the Virgin Mary. The final form appears in the City of Mansoul in Bunyan’s Holy War.

Till recently sand patterns were made on doorsteps in parts of northern England. As for the dances, we may note:

the remarkable similarity with our own Morris-dances, not only in the ankle-rattles corresponding to the Morris-bells, but also in the linear formation common to both, with the roles of St George and hobbyhorse corresponding to those of the solo-dancers in the Seniang drama. In both areas the Morris, or maze-dance, and the mumming-play go hand in hand; the Morris, if the analogy be right, representing the labyrinth, and the mumming-play representing the doings of the mythological personages within, while the horned dancers of Abbots Bromley are thus seen to be not far removed from the bull-headed Minotaur. (Layard)

But, even if we see an ultimate affinity, we must not look for any simple line of descent. It is worthwhile noting however a maze in Wales called Caer Droia. Caer is Camp, Droia seems derived from a Celtic root -tro, turn, revolve, stir, also plough. Connected words have the meaning of curve, screw, twist, converse. The Latin tro-are may be compared. We meet the same complex of meanings as we noted in connection with the spiral, with the name of Troy.

There was even, we may add, something of a labyrinth or maiden-castle about the Plane Grove at Sparta in which the epheboi (young men in the tribal grade-sense) carried out contests, and near which Helen had her shrine. The name Platanistas, says Pausanias, came from ‘the unbroken ring of tall planes growing round it. The place itself where it’s the custom for the epheboi to fight, is surrounded by a moat just like an island in the sea. You enter it by bridges. On each of the two bridges stand images — on the one side Herakles, on the other a likeness of Lykourgos’ the great initiate-hero and the legendary lawgiver said to have laid down the contest regulations. The lads first sacrificed a puppy by night at the Phoibaion near Therapne, while they set trained boars fighting. ‘The company whose boar wins generally gains the victory in the Plane-Grove.’ They cast lots during the night ‘to decide by which entrance each band is to enter’. In the fights they used hands, kicked, bit, gouged out eyes, charged violently and knocked one another into the water. The ‘unbroken ring’ of trees, then the water-ring with two bridges (each with a guardian or presiding statue), suggest a definite sort of ‘impregnable enclosure’. The bridges were apparently at opposite sides of the moat, not in a zigzag line of approach; but if we knew more how a passage was made through the trees, synecheis (continuous and close), and how it was related to the bridges, we would be better able to pronounce on the nature of the system. But even from the bare account we have a structure suggestive of a simple labyrinthine or maiden-castle kind.[367]

*

We see then that Ariadne is the guardian of the entrance to the Cave of the Labyrinth; and her dance, like those of the Malekulans, is a sacred marriage, an initiation and a maze pattern mapping out the path between the living and the dead — the path into her own body, and out of it. She is the earth-mother from whom men come and to whom they come, and whom in some sort they enter when they enter the body of any woman. More, we see that the labyrinth into which Theseus enters to kill the monster, from which he emerges as possessor of Ariadne, is symbolically the same as Troy, the holy maze-city, which is one with the body of the guardian goddess. Though Athena is formally that goddess, with her palladion and its surrogate Kassandra, for the purposes of the siege myth Helen has displaced her; Athena has even become one of the attackers. Helen is at the heart of the maze, the turnings: the desired prize, the earth-mother, the divine tree, the otherworld-bride. Menelaos, penetrating into the bowels of the city and rupturing its sacred veil or hymen, kills Deiphobos and comes out with the goddess-bride, just as Theseus does after killing the Minotaur.

The Thread of Ariadne and the Fillet of Helen have essentially the same meaning; each represents a line of force, a link that vitally unites the young man with the sources of life, and makes possible his emergence on a new level. The fillets hang from Helen’s wrist and bind her to the divine tree; for the worshipper they are threads of communication with her daimonic force. The thread on the Cornuto bowl leaps out of Ariadne’s breasts to provide the guiding pattern of liberating movement for Theseus. The two types to which the Malekulan designs of continuous line can be reduced represent the path traced through the intricacies of the death passage and the bodily form of the lord of the underworld. We noted the Humbaba-type masks, perhaps used as oscilla, found in Helen’s own world at Sparta; we must remember that in the Epic of Gilgamesh Humbaba is the great demon that the hero has to defeat if he is reach the spirit world.

Burns tells us of a Celtic thread custom on Hallowe’en, called Throwing the Clue or the Blue Clue, which combines the uniting thread, love-consummation and craft process (clew and kiln): ‘Whoever would, with success, try this spell, must strictly observe these directions: steal out, all alone, to the kiln, and, darkling, throw into the pot a clew of blue yarn; wind it into a new clew off the old one; and towards the latter end, something will hold the thread; demand, “Wha hauds?” ie who holds? and answer will be returned from the kiln-pot, by naming the christian and surname of your future spouse.’

In the last resort then we can make out the same ritual pattern behind both Helen and Ariadne, however differently the elements have been put together. With Ariadne the ritual aspect is much closer to the surface; with Helen it has been deeply buried, so that we must make this sort of prolonged analysis if we are to disinter it.

*

As a final point, we can now explain why the Moirai as Fates were spinners. Plinius tells us that in Italy in early days it was taboo for women to carry their spindles in public and that all weaving or spinning had to be done in secret. The crafts were a female mystery. All processes of transformation in their origins and for long after were part of the mystery lore of a fraternity or cult-association; the way in which they laid hold of matter in one state and changed into another state (or new form) was felt to involve dangerous as well as valuable potencies, which had to be controlled by a strict system. The change of states or forms was felt to be analogous to the changes brought about by initiation tests and ordeals; matter in its changes was undergoing, it seemed, a similar sort of test and renewal. Spinning and weaving changed the mess of flax or wool into a thread and the thread into a patterned stuff. Especially the spinning gyre was a mystery, which was equated with the birth-gyre or the thrust of the penis into the rounded hole of the female body; the thread was equated with the navel-string. So we get the Moirai or the Norns who spin the life-thread and cut it at the crucial moment (now death not birth). The two Roman birthfates, Postvorta and Antevorta (Before-turner, After-turner, from vertere) have roots ultimately cognate with the Anglo-Saxon wyrd (fate) and the Germanic term for the spindle. Volva, vulva, the Latin for womb, has the same root as volvere, turn round and about. The Latin turbo was applied to spinning-top, spindle, and the cone or rhombos used for whirling in magic rites and in the mysteries. We see the same complex of ideas, emotions, sensations which we noted in the spiral. (About 1912 I saw chalked up on a wall near a brothel in Brisbane, Queensland, the quatrain: ‘Penny a look, tuppence a feel, thrippence a go on the hairy wheel.’) The vase painting which showed Ariadne spinning had intuited the deep meaning of her thread.

But while the thread in friendly hands can save, it can kill if the Fates are affronted. In an Irish tale of Finn the heroes lose their powers through contact with the hasps of yarn which three spirit-women are reeling lefthandwise in front of a cave. ‘The hags transported them into black mysterious holes, into dark perplexing labyrinths.’[368]

A relief from Sousa in the Louvre has been interpreted as showing Nin-har-sag as goddess of birth; she spins before a table on which is set a fish; behind her is an attendant with a square fan on a staff. The latter has been taken to be raising the wind while the goddess, twirling her spindle, conjures up the vortex of the storm — flood or rain being represented by the fish. However that may be, we see the spindle as a magical source of power which belongs to women. Spindle and distaff appear on reliefs of the Great Mother or Kybele, together with mirrors, the same three articles are found on gravestones in Phrygia and Bithynia, near springs and elsewhere. In Ephesos was found a small statue of a goddess, interpreted as Artemis, who grasps her spinning equipment and presses it to her body with its stiffly-rounded robe. In the passage from the Odyssey where Helen comes out from her chamber to meet Telemachos, we saw her described as ‘like Artemis of the golden arrows’. But the term is chrysēlakatos, literally ‘golden-distaffed’. Hesychios glosses it as meaning ‘with beautiful bow; for ēlakatē is the arrow-shaft’ or reed. He may be correct, but hēlakatē normally means distaff or spindle-stalk, though it is used by botanists for the joint of a reed or cane, or for a reed. In whatever way the ēlakatē of Artemis came to be used for her arrows, the mixture of meanings is significant. The mother-goddess could operate with spindle or arrow; and we find in an inscription ‘the ēlakatē of old age’ meaning ‘the fate of old age’. Nine lines after the reference to Artemis in the Odyssey, ēlakatē appears in the sense of distaff as a servant-girl brings Helen her work materials. When Herakles is enslaved by Queen Omphale (Navel) in Lydia, he discards his maleness by spinning; nothing could more fully submit him to the domination of the female principle. And this point remains even if we see here a mythical reflection of the transvestism practised in several Greek marriage customs. When we recall the way in which the ritual thread is identified with the navel-string and spinning with both birth-throes and coition agitation, the name of the woman setting Herakles to distaff and spindle is surely significant. As the Navel she is the female centre, the core of spiralling life. In a sense she is the spindle personified.[369]

The idea of weaving as a cosmic process, which involves the texture, pattern and length of human lives, is found in India. In the Vedas, the two sisters Night and Day, ‘like two weavers working in happy accord, weave the taut threads together’. Thus is woven the web of time. When the sacrifice is ‘stretched’, as in Satapatha Brahmana, that web is also stretched; this act amounts to making the world last yet another year. The Sun is the cosmic weaver, often compared with a spider. Sometimes the atman is the spider, sometimes the Imperishable, sometimes God. ‘As a spider comes out with its thread...so from the atman issue all breaths, all worlds, all gods, all beings’: Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Post-Vedic texts identify the cosmic weaver with the atman or Brahman, or with a personal god like Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita. We also meet the image of the beaded necklace: ‘All this universe is strung upon me, as rows of gems on a thread,’ says Krishna. The idiom is common. In the Tripura Rahasya the Spirit (literally Migrant or Newcomer) states that without it the folk of a town ‘would be scattered and lost like pearls without the thread of the necklace’. Such ideas and images help us to realize the full scope of the labyrinthine thread-and-dance, and of the necklaces of Harmonia and Helen.

The Greeks too saw the cosmic process in terms of weaving and spinning. Plato in the Timaios calls Lachesis the Law, Nomos, which accompanies the Physis or physical aspects of the universe. In the Phaidros she is the Thesmos (Law, ‘What is laid Down’) of Adrasteia the Inescapable. Some thinkers took Klotho to represent the present, Lachesis the future, Atropos the past, though in the Republic Plato gave past time to Lachesis and future to Atropos. In any event the spinning-weaving Fates were woven into the cosmic structure. Ploutarch saw the cosmos divided into three parts: the fixed, the planetary, the sub-planetary about the earth. Highest was the spinner Klotho; then Atropos who did not turn; lowest, Lachesis the Alloter who received the activities of her sisters and transmitted them to the earth regions. The imagery recurs in mystery systems. In the Mithraic relief at Osterburken we see Lachesis in the middle with a pair of scales; on her right, Atropos with a scroll; on her left, Klotho apparently with a whorl. Lachesis separates out the raw materials of life; Klotho spins the threads (combines the elements); Atropos provides the completed bodies whose fate is fixed in the web.[370]

*

Europa has come up in relation to the sacred marriage in the Gortyna tree and the big wreath of the Hellotia. Homer knew her as a carried-off heroine; Zeus, detailing his loves, includes ‘the daughter of far-famed Phoinix, who bore me Minos and god-like Rhadamanthys’, but says nothing of the bull-shape he took in raping her. The name of the father suggests that already she was connected with Phoinikia, as in the rationalized version of her myth given by Herodotos. She was also linked with Kadmos, of Phoinikian or Tyrian lineage in legend; it was indeed his quest for Europa, his sister, that led him to Crete and then to the Greek mainland, where the Delphic oracle bade him follow a certain kind of cow and build a city where she sank down in fatigue.

Europa’s cult, we saw, certainly came from Crete to the mainland; and there were historical facts behind the tradition of Thebes’ connection with the Levant. Excavations in what is called the Palace of Kadmos there have turned up thirty-six oriental seals, one with a cuneiform inscription. The seals belong to the Kassite-Babylonian period of the fourteenth century, though a few are earlier, one is Mitannian and another is Syro-Hittite. An agate shows a god taming wild animals; two cylinders depict a griffin and a wild bull’s capture; a Babylonian cylinder shows a winged demon tamed by a seated deity, and above winged beasts is a winged Lady of Wild Things; some of the many beads are in the form of small figure-of-eight-shields. No cylinder is later than 1300 BC. Previously not more than eleven cylinders had been found in the whole Aegean area, and only two of those in Crete were certainly from Babylon.

Europa was carried off by a bull come up from the sea; Kadmos in quest of her follows a cow to the spot destined for Thebes. There seems some link with the bull-cults and bull-games of Minoan Crete. Minos’s wife fell in love with a bull and bore the Minotaur; her bull, sent by Zeus or Poseidon, came up out of the sea and was also said to be Zeus himself. There was also the story that Daidalos made a cow-model, in which the queen inserted herself so as to mate with a real bull. Semele, daughter of Kadmos, bore Dionysos, the god who had a bull-form and was worshipped as Son of the Bull. We must add the myth of Io, turned to a cow by jealous Hera and driven on a far wandering. Hera had put her under the care of all-seeing Argos, who tied her to an olive tree in Hera’s grove at Mykenai; but Hermes, guided by a bird which was in fact Zeus, killed him. At Argos Io was said to head the chronological list of the priestesses of Hera, as Kallirhoe or Kalleithyia.

As in other myths of the ravished earth-bride, Europa was picking flowers by the seashore when Bull-Zeus came. Poets said the bull’s breath smelt of crocus. Europa on vases appears as a goddess, winged or holding fish or flower, at times grape-laden vine-boughs or a hoop, a necklace said to be a wedding gift made by Hephaistos. She is thus linked with Helen, Harmonia, Ariadne. Her mating with Bull-Zeus was in the Diktaian Cave near Gortyna, where Zeus was also said to have been born, with bees, goat or doves as his nurses. But in art stress is laid on her passage, riding the Bull, over the seas; and the cow that guided Kadmos came from the herds of Pelagon (pelagos, sea), whose sister Aigina was carried off by Zeus. Both Helen and Ariadne also were taken across the sea. There may be in the motif a reflection of the journey to the otherworld; at Malekula the spirit voyage involves both labyrinth passage and water-crossing. And we recall the Minoan depictions of what seems a goddess embarking on a sea-voyage.[371]

In the royal tomb of Dendra, dated round mid-fourteenth century, were found eight small worn plaques of blue glass, each with holes for two threads to fasten it to a helmet. Each plaque shows a woman seated on an animal that may well be a bull, which is moving fast forwards. The woman sits on one side and seems to be dressed with kaunakes (Assyrian guannakka, frilled and flounced mantle). She has been taken for Europa, or an early form of the goddess who finally got that name. Certainly we seem to see the direct ancestress of Europa-Astarte on Sidonian coins (111 BC-AD 117), of Aphrodite-Ariadne on Cypriot coins, of Artemis Tauropolis, worshipped especially in Asia Minor, also in Macedonia, and put on coins, for instance of Amphipolis. We may recall also the cult of Aphrodite Epitragia, Goat-rider, or Pandemos, which at Athens was connected with Theseus’ voyage to Crete and may be of Cretan origin.

But two seal-impressions from Hagia Triada in Crete suggest that we must not too confidently claim the Dendra beast as a bull. One impression shows a woman with kaunakes who rides a strange monster; the other shows the foreparts of two creatures of the same kind. The type belongs to the series of serpent-griffins of the Mesopotamian religion, which extend from early days into the Assyrian and neo-Babylonian periods. The Dendra animal may have been some similar sort of fantasy creature, though it is much more like a bull than the Hagia Triada monsters. The motif of a deity supported by an animal, actual or fabulous, has a long history in Mesopotamian art, though usually the deity stands on the animal. Still, we do meet the god enthroned on the animal’s back and then seated right on a lion-headed griffin. Deities also kneel on the animal, but are as well shown riding, gods astride, goddesses on one side. The Hittites took the motif over. In oriental examples we find a deity riding a bull; and in Greek archaic times a goddess appears as Lady of Bulls, a form of the Lady of Wild Things. Thus on two replicas of belt-clasps from Crete and Kolophon a goddess stands flanked by two bulls or in a bull-drawn chariot.

Both the Hagia Triada seal and the Dendra plaques show the woman riding with graceful effect, her arms raised in a ritual gesture. ‘The suggestion occurs that not only Cretan-Mykenean imagery passed over to Greek art in the image of Europa on the bull, but that that form as well as its religious content persisted in the images of several special cults’ (Levi), as shown by the coins already cited.[372]

On a Caeretan vase we see Europa holding a flower to her nose as she rides the bull over the sea, which is indicated by the dolphin leaping ahead. She is nearing land, shown by a hillock with three trees up which a hare is going. But the most interesting detail is that the bull is tricoloured. We are reminded of the story of Glaukos, son of Minos, who dies and is resurrected — an initiation myth. His body is found by the seer Polyidos, whose role in the story is linked with his ability to answer a riddle set by Apollo: ‘A portent has been born to you. He who can interpret it will also restore your son.’ The portent is a calf in Minos’ herds that changes colour three times a day (every four hours), first white, then red, then black. Polyidos shows that the changes compare with those of a mulberry as it ripens. (Agelai, herds, was the term used for the Cretan bands of youths who were initiated together. The threefold changes of the calf are triadic changes undergone by the initiate: the calf of the agela, the lad in his mimic death, the lad in his mimic rebirth.) The Souda tells us that the Woman-Cow Io was by turns white, black, violet; we surmise there was a link of Io with the three stages of the girl initiates of Hera. The triadic system appears in the Spinx’s riddle: man on four legs, two legs, three legs — three stages of growth. Perhaps the triple colours played some part in the rites of Demeter-Europa; otherwise it is hard to think how the Caeretan artist made his learned guess.[373]

We saw earlier how Hera in her mysteries represented the threefold stages of growth in women; initiations in Crete showed three stages (the lad’s departure, his ordeal in seclusion, his return with a new status); on the mainland we find the same pattern (pompē or processional departure; agōn, ordeal or contest; kōmos, triumphant return). Through her connection with the sacred marriage or through some lost link with groups of girl initiates in Crete (as Glaukos was linked with the youth agelai), Europa has a bull who represents three states: perhaps maidenhood, copulation, emergence as a wife with adult status.[374]

Europa, Ariadne, Helen — and we may add Harmonia — have thus many traits in common. They all seem ancient vegetation-goddesses, earth-mothers. The sacred marriage comes out most plainly with Europa; the cult of tree-goddess with Helen. Ariadne in terms of ritual myth is the most complex figure, dying reborn, wife of Dionysos, lady of the labyrinth of ordeal or spirit passage, of initiation and journey into the unknown. A relief on a tripod-leg from Olympia (about 600 BC) shows how easily she could merge with Helen or Harmonia. She and Theseus stand facing one another, as later on the Chest of Kypselos, holding out a garland and a lyre between them. Theseus fingers the lyre, a band with a plektron on his lower arm, while Ariadne holds out the wreath, which he grasps, raising his free hand in salutation. We are reminded of the reliefs from the shrine of Artemis Orthia, in which two figures hold a wreath or wreaths between them.[375]

But Helen has one characteristic separating her from Europa, Ariadne, or any of the many heroines raped or carried off by gods. She is a married woman. In this aspect she does not seem to be a projection of the mysteries of marriage or girl initiation. Apart from the way in which Homer makes her a convincing person at the centre of a great historical conflict, she has claims to exist in her own right as a woman, however much at one level she merges with the plane-mother or the spirit leader of the Spartan girls dancing by the Eurotas.

Chapter Twelve – Nemesis

We still have Nemesis to consider. Our main interests are her bird-form in the sacred marriage and her place in the group of mother-deities become fates or life-controllers. In Idyll XV of Theokritos, Praxinoa cries, ‘Women know everything, yes, even how Zeus married Hera.’ The phrase is clearly proverbial and suggests that the tale of the marriage was once a secret bit of mystery lore in a woman’s cult-association. The scholiast explains, citing Aristotle’s treatise on the Sanctuary of Hermione: ‘Zeus planned to marry Hera. Wanting to be invisible and unseen by her, he changed his shape into a Cuckoo’s and perched on a mountain once called Thronax but now Cuckoo. And on that day he raised a mighty storm. Now Hera was walking alone and she came to the mountain and sat down on it.’ Thronax embodies thronos, throne. ‘She sat where the sanctuary of Hera Teleia now is. And the cuckoo was shivering and frozen from the storm, so it flew down and settled on her knees. And Hera had pity at the sight and covered it with her cloak. And Zeus at once changed his shape and grabbed hold of her...The image of Hera in the temple [at Argos] is seated on a throne, and she holds in her hand a sceptre and on the sceptre is a cuckoo.’ Teleia means Fulfilled: with the mystery of marriage consummated.

Pausanias adds a point of correction. ‘There are two mountains and on their tops are sanctuaries: on Mt Cuckoo one of Zeus, on Prōn [Headland] one of Hera. At the foot of Mt Cuckoo is a temple, but there are no doors standing and I found it without roof or image inside. Not far off was a headland called Sparrow and a site called Twins.’[376]

Two hawks rest on a sphere at the top of a fine gold sceptre found at Kourion in Cypros, dated eleventh century, probably part of the regalia of the local kings; it would have been mounted on a wooden or ivory staff. Birds and sphere are set with cells containing white, green and mauve enamel: note the three colours. Aristophanes treats the bird-sceptre as an emblem of royalty in The Birds: ‘They [birds] held so powerful a sway that if anyone was king in the cities of the Greeks, an Agamemnon or a Menelaos, a bird used to sit on his sceptre, sharing whatever bribe he got. — I didn’t know that. And indeed I used to gape with wonder when some Priam came out on the tragic stage with a bird.’ Hawks suggest some such god as Horos of Egypt, and are not likely to represent a goddess. But a female figurine with birdface from a Late Bronze-Age tomb in Cypros, with huge ears perforated for clay earrings, has been called a Dove Aphrodite; its type looks to Syria. The goddess holds her breasts. Another bird-headed figurine of about the same date holds her arms behind her back and wears a bracelet. The bird-head may represent a mask with magical functions, or the artist may have meant to show a goddess who was half a bird. A goddess who manifests herself as bird seems certainly shown in a Mykenean figure with three doves, one over her head, the others flying out at the sides in opposite directions. She holds her breasts and is naked: an unusual thing for art of this culture and suggesting oriental influence. The work is one of the cut-out ornaments of embossed gold sewn on the clothes of a woman buried in Shaft Grave III; other decorations show octopus and butterfly, common themes of Minoan art, as well as sphinx, griffin and an heraldic arrangement of cats, deer, birds.[377]

The goddess of the archaic era, usually termed the Lady of Wild Things, often holds a pair of birds, with other wild animals around; and she herself is often winged. There are eastern analogies, but the roots seem to go vigorously back into the Minoan-Mykenean world. In a Cypriot work of the early sixth century (an advanced stage of orientalizing art) the goddess smells a flower and holds birds in both hands. The birds here are probably both manifestations of the goddess and her servants. We find Artemis as a Quail. Ortygia, a place-name near Delos, near Syracuse, near Ephesos, and in Aitolia, may be taken to mean the Place of the Quail-Goddess. Aristophanes in The Birds calls Leto mother of the Quail, that is, Artemis; and Sophokles says Artemis was called Ortygia in Euboian worship. At Tyre the quail was sacrificed for the yearly resurrection of Herakles. Agrotera, Wild Woman, was a cult-title of Artemis the Huntress at Agrai in Attika, at Sparta, and elsewhere.[378]

The bird perched on the double-axe set on a cult-pillar painted on the limestone sarcophagus of Hagia Triada (about 1400 BC) represents a divine epiphany. The main scenes depict a trussed bull lying on a table, a priestess pouring a libation at an altar to pipe-music, and votive offerings being brought to the dead man, who stands before his own tomb in some sort of apotheosis; at the ends are two goddesses in chariots, one drawn by horses, one by griffins. The bird on the axe has been seen as a raven, a magpie, a woodpecker; but a good case can be made for the cuckoo, which, like the painted bird, perches with wings open. (The open wings may however merely represent the moment of alighting.) Hesiod tells us that the cuckoo, calling in the oak, signalled the spring moment for Zeus to rain. Aristophanes has perhaps some folklore in mind when he tells us: ‘A Cuckoo was king of Egypt and again of the whole of Phoinikia; and when the cuckoo cried cuckoo, all the Phoinikians used to reap the wheat and barley in their fields.’ And he invents the name Cloudcuckoobury for his fantasy realm of the Olympos-usurping birds. In any event the bird on the axe represents a divine epiphany, a union of heaven and earth, the cuckoo-moment that heralds or brings about the fertilizing rain. A passage from Aischylos’ Danaides, spoken by Aphrodite, sums up this aspect of the sacred marriage. ‘There is desire in the holy [agnos] sky to pierce the body of Earth and the Earth desires to be mated. Rain falling from the amorous Sky flows into the Earth, and she bears for men the fodder for their flocks and the sustenance belonging to Demeter [crops] and there comes too for trees the hour of moistening marriage fulfilment. I am the cause of all this.’ The Danaides, heroines of the play, were the water-bearers, the spring-nymphs for thirsty Argos.[379]

To examine fully the nature of the double-axe would carry us too far on a complex inquiry; but it is relevant to note that the Lydian term labrys, glossed pelekys, double-edged axe, seems certainly connected with labyrinthos, a word belonging to the group of place-names with suffixes -nth-, -rn, -mn-, -nd-, also perhaps -ss- (Attic -tt-) and -nt-, which come from a single linguistic system — not Greek, but roughly classifiable as Anatolian.

Among the place-names are Corinthos, Tirynthos (Tiryns), Parnassos, Hymettos, Assos, Knossos, Labraundos, Halikarnassos. It has been conjectured that -inth- means ‘place of’. The Labyrinth would be the Place of the Labrys, a sacral symbol: not a weapon, but a fetish of the thunderbolt conceived as the fertilizing force of the rainstorm. The Caves of the Mother, where the sacred marriage was consummated and the divine Child born, would be the womb-clefts both caused and fertilized by the thunderbolt. The Labyrinth would originally have signified the sacred Vulva-Cave conceived in terms of action and movement, the spirals of copulation and birth, the dance pattern expressing the successful passage in and out of the Cave. This interpretation is helped by the presence of votive double-axes in the Cretan sacred caves, for example, the miniature gold and silver axes found in a cave at Arkalochori in central Crete. That such axes look like a pair of wings on either side of the staff would perhaps help to strengthen the symbolism. Only in a secondary sense would Place-of-the-Labrys refer to the Palace of Knossos.

Some coins of Lykia and Karia, which have been seen as illustrating the myth of Myrrha, show the double-axe in connection with the sacred tree marriage, though no bird is present. They depict a large tree with men dancing around it, wearing Phrygian caps and swinging double-axes; at times there is a female form inside the tree, and two snakes seem to guard her and her tree, on either side. The scene has generally been taken as showing an attack on the tree by the axe-men; but it is far more likely that we see a ritual dance in honour of the tree-goddess in epiphany with her snakes. The moment would be that of the spring bursting out of greenery, the Aischylean moment of mating Sky and Earth. It is perhaps worth noting that in a late magical gem we see the three Graces, the outer ones holding garlands, under Kybele enthroned with thunderbolt and bird-tipped sceptre.[380]

Where the myth of Nemesis is unusual is that it depicts both the god, Zeus, and the woman whom he ravishes, as assuming bird-forms during the copulation.

We may add here a ritual myth of Zeus and Hera, which helps to bring together the imagery of the goddess in the tree, the bird in the tree, and the tree itself as the goddess. At Stymphalos Pausanias heard that Temenos, son of Pelasgos, had reared Hera and in an older foundation had set up three sanctuaries for her, giving her three surnames: Girl or Pais, Teleia on her marriage with Zeus, and Widow, Chera, ‘when for some cause or other she quarrelled with Zeus and came back to Stymphalos’. (Widow must refer to a phase such as that of the sorrowing Demeter the forlorn earth of winter; the three phases may represent birth, marriage, death.) At Plataia, however, Pausanias found an image of Hera called the Bride or Nymph (Nympheuomenē), and a different story of her leaving Zeus. Angry with him for some reason, she withdrew to Euboia; Zeus tried vainly to change her mind, then visited Kithairon, ‘at that time lord over Plataia and surpassing all men in cleverness. He bade Zeus make a wooden image and carry it all wrapped up in a bullock-wagon, giving out that he was celebrating his marriage with Plataia, daughter of Asopos.’ Hera at once heard the news and promptly arrived on the scene. But when she neared the wagon and tore the dress from the image, she was amused at the trick and was reconciled with Zeus. The reconciliation was commemorated in the festival Daidala (because old images were so called) held every six years ‘according to a local guide, but actually at a shorter interval’. Pausanias wanted to work out the system but failed. Not far from Alalkomenai is a Grove of Oaks with the largest trunks in Boiotia. Here the Boiotians lay out portions of boiled flesh and watch the crows that flock along, then mark the tree where a crow settles with its meat; they cut down this tree and make the image of it. The Plataian feast is the Little Daidala, but the Great Daidala is shared by all the Boiotians and is held ‘at intervals of fifty-nine years: for once the Plataians, in exile, could not hold it for that length of time.’ Fourteen wooden images are made, and lots are cast for them by the Plataians, Koronaians, Thespians, Tanagraians, Chaironeans, Orchomeneans, Lebadeans, Thebans. Smaller towns pool resources for images. They take each image to Asopos, put it on a wagon together with a bridesmaid, and again cast lots, for positions in the procession. They drive from the river to the top of Mt Kithairon. There an altar has been prepared out of quadrangular pieces of wood (as if the edifice were of stone); brushwood is put on it; the cities with their magistrates each sacrifice a cow to Hera and a bull to Zeus, ‘burning on the altar the victims full of wine and incense along with the daidala. Rich persons sacrifice individually what they wish; the less wealthy, the smaller cattle.’ Victims and altar both burn. ‘I know of no fire so lofty or seen so far.’ Below the peak is the Cave of the Kithaironian Nymphs, named Sphragidion (from sphragis, seal); ‘the story runs that of old the nymphs gave oracles there.’

Here we clearly have a very ancient and important sacred marriage, which drew together a wide region. An oak-bride played the main role, with a bird as mantic guide. (The Koronaians were, by the way, People of Crow-town.) Perhaps once the crow was the incarnation or form of the mating god, as the sparrow or swan of Zeus in the other stories.

*

We now turn to Nemesis in her own right. We have seen that there is no proof as to whether she or Leda was originally the mother of Helen, and that, as far as the egg-birth is concerned, there is good reason for giving the primacy to Nemesis. Scholars have too often seen Nemesis as primarily a moral personification, a goddess of retaliation, who gained her prestige in the fifth century for political reasons. ‘About sixty stades from Marathon, as you go along the sea-road to Oropos, stands Rhamnous. The dwelling-houses are on the coast, but a short way inland is a sanctuary of Nemesis, the deity most implacable to men of hybris [wanton violence or pride]. Her wrath is thought to have fallen on the foreigners [Persians] who landed at Marathon. Sure in their pride that nothing stood in their way for capturing Athens, they were taking along a piece of Parian marble to be made into a trophy, convinced that their task was already completed.’ Of this marble the Greeks, after defeating the Persians, made the statue of Nemesis.[381]

Such an avenging Nemesis was indeed the mother of the destroying Helen depicted by Aischylos, man of Marathon. But in fact the goddess, like Helen, was an ancient vegetation deity, with cults at both Rhamnous and Smyrna. Legends made her an old queen of Rhamnous, gaining her position from her son Erechtheus, king of Athens, to whom the introduction of Athena’s cult was attributed. She was also linked with Themis, whose role in the Cypria we discussed. A statue dedicated to Themis in the third century has been found in the lesser shrine at Rhamnous; also two dedications of seats were made in the fourth century to Nemesis and Themis, at the time of Kallisto, priestess of Nemesis, and Philostratē, priestess of Themis. At Smyrna there was no Themis, but Nemesis had a dual form.

We have already glanced at the Rhamnousian cult-statue. Of it Pausanias says: ‘On her head is a crown with deer and small images of Victory; in her left hand she holds an apple bough, in her right a cup on which are wrought Aithiopians.’ He then attacks those who think these folk are shown because they lived near Okeanos and Nemesis was an Okeanid. (Perhaps they stood for blameless persons who had nothing to fear from Nemesis; the sculptor seems doing his best to synthesize the cult without fully understanding it.) Pausanias then adds that no early statue of the goddess had wings, and describes the relief in which Leda brings Helen to Nemesis. The bough (on which we may assume apples or an apple to hang) suggests Aphrodite; but as we saw, the apple in archaic times had a wide reference. The sculptor may have taken the detail from an early wooden statue in the shrine. There was a Demeter Malophoros at Megara, but as melon was used both for sheep and for apple, the meaning of the epithet is not sure. Pausanias thought it referred to sheep; but he may well have been wrong. At Selinos in Sicily, colonized by Megareans, there was the cult of a goddess simply called Malophoros, who seems certainly a giver of fruits. Many clay apples and pomegranates have been found in her precinct, as well as at other sanctuaries (Samos and Lindos). At Selinos Malophoros was linked with a younger goddess, perhaps called Pasikrateia, who had underworld links; in later strata of the site (in the section belonging to Malophoros) figures have been excavated showing Persephone with polos, torch, and piglet.[382]

An apple or pomegranate seems enough to define Helen in late art on sarcophagi, for instance at Kephissia. The image of the apple-offering goddess of love was spread all over the Near East. So we may say that while Aphrodite offers the apple of sexual joy and fulfilment, Eve is a surrogate offering the apple of temptation and sin. The apple in Greek myth, however, ends up with an ambivalent quality: for while it stands for the good fruits of the earth, and then for sensuous beauty and enjoyment, in the story of Helen it brings disaster upon mankind. The problem is posed how to use the apple rightly. Nemesis with her apple also has the ambivalent value of Helen. As nature-goddess, she offers the fruits of the earth like Demeter; as an avenging force, she warns against the misuse of the apple. Not that any such duality of meanings was intended by the sculptor; it was something that emerged willy-nilly out of the cult’s development.[383]

The legend of Atalanta deserves a glance. Exposed and then reared by a she-bear, she became a huntress of the wilds. She was exposed by a spring and mouth of a cave, and she herself caused a spring near Kyphanta by striking a rock with her spear. She was reconciled with her father, who imposed a bridal ordeal. The suitor had to compete with her in a foot-race; if he failed, she shot him with her arrows. Many failed, but Melanion (Apple-man) won her by dropping in turn three gold apples which Aphrodite had given him, apples from the Hesperides, which were later taken back to the Garden by Athena.[384] Atalanta stops to pick up the apples and loses the race. But we also hear that they came from the garland of Dionysos. Anyhow, they exercise an irresistible love-spell on the girl as she runs naked. She and Melanion slip off into the forest and mate in a sanctuary of the Great Mother (also called the Great Artemis). We may compare the Lucus Nemoriensis by Lake Nemi, to which Artemis carried off her beloved Hippolytos; there in later days hunters used to bring her as offering a branch with apples hanging on it.

Melanion may originally have won the girl by merely offering an apple. In one version Atalanta took to the wilds to keep her virgin independence and Melanion seems her counterpart. ‘Once upon a time lived a lad, Melanion was his name,’ sings Aristophanes. ‘He didn’t want to marry, so to the wilds he came, and he lived there on the mountain and he hunted after hares, and he kept a dog as well and he plaited crafty snares; and home again he would not go.’ He thus had affinities with Daphnis and Paris. Parthenios, following Timaios, says of Daphnis: ‘He never went down from the mountains to associate with the common run of men, but winter and summer lived out on Aitna, tending his cattle.’ Euripides in Andromache speaks of the three goddesses coming to the cottage of Paris, the young recluse, monotropos.[385] (The man living alone in the wilds with a nymph or spirit-bride has a shamanist character, though in myth no doubt he represents the initiate in his secluded withdrawal.) Melanion with his apple thrown or held out to Atalanta indeed suggests Paris. Turn the single nymph into a triad, and we have the raw material of Paris and the three goddesses.

The apple seems in fact to have been a prize in early contests, for example at the Olympic Games. Phlegon of Tralles, a contemporary of Pausanias, says that in the Sixth Olympiad Iphitos consulted the Delphic oracle and was told to make the prize, not the fruit of the apple, but the wild olive ‘now wreathed in the light web of the spider’. (After what we have learned about the spirit-thread of guidance, which, especially in Africa, appears as a cosmic spiderweb linking earth and heaven, we can perhaps understand this oracle in a new way.) It seems then that the Apple of the Earthmother was replaced by the Olive of Athena in the Seventh Olympiad, when the first victor to be olive-crowned was the foot-race winner. It has been suggested that the change came about when the race of young men was combined with that of the maidens, at the introduction of the sun-and-moon calendar, and the men’s games were assimilated as much as possible to those of the girls.[386]

As for the figures on the crown of Nemesis that Pausanias calls Victories, with the tale of Marathon in his mind, they may well have been really Graces, who were certainly associated with the cult at Smyrna. The cup or bowl may be connected with the vegetation-cult, since in it first fruits could be offered: as we see from the second and third statues of a group of three found in the smaller temple. The second shows a priestess of Nemesis with her name on the pedestal, Aristonoē: she holds a bowl in her left hand. The third shows a boy with uplifted arm; the hands are missing, but the right one may have held a bowl: a firstfruit offering by Lysikles. The stags may be merely decorative, but more likely express a link with Artemis. As for the cult-statue, a silver coin of Paphos is thought to give the type: a woman in a long chiton and a peplos fastened on shoulder with a griffin-headed fibula; in her left hand is branch, on her right a phiale.[387]

*

At Smyrna the cult seems dependent on that of Attika.[388] In a movement from Asia Minor to Greece, a more important town than Rhamnous would have been chosen; we may assume that early Ionian migrants took the goddess eastward. Aristeides paid tribute to the antiquity of the cult, which certainly existed when Alyattes, about 580 BC, destroyed Smyrna; this antiquity has indeed made some scholars argue unnecessarily for an eastern origin. The sculptor Boupalos, of the Chian school, made the golden Graces above the image; and Pausanias says that only later images here showed Nemesis with wings. But she was given a dual form. Pausanias tells how she, or rather they, appeared under a planetree to Alexander the Great asleep after a hard hunt; they bade him found a city nearby and transfer people to it from Smyrna. Following the Klaros oracle, which promised blessings to the inhabitants of Pagos ‘beyond the sacred Meles’, the Smyrnaians obeyed, and thereafter had two Nemeseis. It is easy to assume the duality arose from the new foundation which split the townsfolk into two; but that is unlikely. The dual form must have roots in the early attitudes we discussed; it brings out the link of Nemesis with Nymphs or Graces. A relief at Thasos has the triadic form; it occurs also at Halikarnassos, Antiocheia, Panamara; and the multiplication of form occurs in popular belief, in writings like the magical papyri. The dream-tale must have been invented to explain an old custom, the origin of which had been lost. Several other attempts have been made to explain the duality: it arose from twin peaks called the Two Brothers, it expressed the good and evil types of retribution, it represented the union of Greek Nemesis and an Asianic deity. But all such explanations are misconceived.[389]

Especially in later phases the cult showed a strong syncretising trend; Nemesis took over the attributions of others, most of all in Smyrna and Alexandreia, and conflation with Fate and Fortune gave her the Wheel of the City-Tyche. Any goddess of the nature-cults was liable to be multiplied, even Themis, who early became a rather abstract figure. At Troizen, ‘not far from Artemis Lykaia are altars close to one another. The first is to Dionysos, surnamed after an oracle Soates [Saviour], the second is called the Altar of the Themistes, and was dedicated, they say, by Pitteus.’

A Helen-Nemesis appears on magical gems. Thus we see the goddess holding the bridles of two horsemen, Dioskouroi, who brandish overhead hammer or sickle-sword and who trample two naked bodies stretched on the ground with feet towards the goddess. Behind each horse is a woman with hand to mouth in salutation, a serpent rearing at her back. Over Helen-Nemesis is a bird, probably a crow, with head turned back, surrounded by four stars and busts of sun and moon. Mithraic elements seem here to have merged with the Dioskouric cult. We also find Nemesis joined with Hekate in similar scenes.[390] She was further related to Aphrodite and Artemis. At Patrai in Achaia she stood side by side with Aphrodite in colossal white marble. Isokrates says that it was Aphrodite who helped Zeus to gain Nemesis by changing herself into an eagle and pretending to chase him into Nemesis’ lap. In later times both Nemesis and Aphrodite had the epithet Ourania, Heavenly.[391] Nemesis’ association with the Graces may well have been helped by the atmosphere of Smyrna; Aristeides refers symbolically to the city’s culture as ‘Choruses of Muses and Graces’, speaks of Choruses of Nymphs and Muses, and apostrophizes the place as ‘the Woven Robe of Nymphs and Graces’.

Nemesis and Artemis shared the epithet Oupis, which may be linked with opizesthai: to look on or watch with awe and dread. Artemis is the Watcher over women in travail; and in literature Oupis is extended for Nemesis to mean the Watcher over human life. An inscription calls her ‘You who behold the deeds of men, Oupis of Rhamnousia’. Shape-shifter and huntress, she was given offerings by hunters; she was depicted with bow and arrows; and she had griffins in her train like Aphrodite and Artemis — certainly at Smyrna, where coins of the first century AD show her in dual form in a car drawn by winged griffins.[392] At Smyrna too she was associated with an Aiolic form of Dionysos, Breseus (Briseus).[393] She had strong links with the underworld, a Daughter of Night like the Fates and the Kēres, like Deceit, Love, Old Age, Strife (according to Hesiod), and was associated with the snake.[394] A third-century decree, dealing with the Nemeseia at Rhamnous, makes clear her chthonic nature; and things must have been the same at Athens, or we would meet comments on this point. A passage in Demosthenes suggests that the festival was at times celebrated by individual families as well as in a city rite honouring the dead.[395]

In late times she was easily merged with Adrasteia, taken as a figure of Irresistible Fate. Strabon tells us of the Plain of Adrasteia in the Troad; ‘There is however no temple of Adrasteia, nor of Nemesis, to be seen — though the former has a temple near Kyzikos. Antimachos states: There’s a great goddess Nemesis who’s got as her portion all these things from the Blessed Ones. Adrastos first built her an altar by Aisopos River, where under the name of Adrasteia she’s worshipped.’ All that merely shows the late confusion of the two deities.[396]

It was easy thus for Nemesis to be also identified with Justice, Dikē, and to gain a certain eschatological significance. Aequitas got something of the same meaning as Nemesis-Dikē; and the scales, now at times attributed to Nemesis, appear on Roman tombstones. The imagery goes far back to the psychostasis or soul-weighing, depicted on vases and in sculpture, where the fates of two rival heroes are weighed in the balance. In the Iliad Zeus, deciding the fates of Achilles and Hektor, uses golden scales; but what he weighs are the Kēres or spirits of death. The Orphics, influenced by Egyptian ideas of the dead man’s heart weighed against Truth, probably developed the scheme of a universal weighing of souls after death. We find also a few sculptures of Kairos (due proportion or measure, the right or critical moment) with a pair of scales. In some Mykenean tombs small fragile scales have been found, with figures of butterflies. As the Greeks later used the word psyche for both butterfly and soul, it has been surmised that the scales symbolized some after-death psychostasis; but as they seem to occur only in graves of women and children, it would be unsafe to make too much of them.[397]

In inscriptions as well as in literature Nemesis became a watcher over tombs, an avenger, especially of violent death; and at times like the Erinyes she could herself bring death about. But all developments making her into a figure embodying modern ideas of nemesis are late. In late art she was given attributes like those of the Etruscan Erinyes: wings, short chiton, sword. She further appeared as soul-guide with the caduceus of Hermes, and even as judge of the dead. The Orphics made her a queen of the dead.[398]

*

We see then that the early Nemesis was a fit mother for Helen of the planetree and cult-dances. She had her fate aspect, with a strong chthonic bias shown in her festival of the dead; she had her close affinities with the Moirai as expressing the share that each person got of life and death, but she was also akin to Themis, representing and maintaining the due order of things, and so in time becoming a punisher of those who broke that order. Her Aphrodite side links her with the daimonic aspect of Helen; but her Themis side makes her condemn the various actions by which Helen oversteps limits and breaks the due order. As we have seen, a key question of Greek culture was the extent to which one accepted Helen’s daimonic absorption in her own beauty, or to which one judged it as morally indefensible. In this sense the Watcher of the situation was Nemesis, deciding where to lay down the limits that could not be ignored without disaster. She was thus the inescapable companion of Helen in the changing definitions and judgements of the following centuries. The concept and image of Helen lay at the heart of Greek culture, of the unceasing efforts to reaffirm and revalue the whole idea of limits and lots, of the necessary order in the life-process. Though these efforts issued in time in systems of analytic ethics, their scope was larger than any such systems; for they sought to express the struggle of men to act morally and to know themselves (their nature and its limits), and at the same time to evade all closed systems, all dogmatic finalities. In the expansive activities of men, and the conflicts they begot, there were always the two Strifes of Hesiod, something good and something bad; and while hybris must be avoided as far as was humanly possible, and the phthonos of the gods (their envy, spite, indignation, but more deeply, their response to hybris) must be averted, there was an unpredictable overflow of energy in men and women that could not simply be condemned and resisted because of its dangers of provoking the hybris-phthonos situation. That was why Helen with her beauty as a form of daimonic energy was a complex symbol of what was both most precious and most villainous in human life; and the moral depth of Homer lay precisely in the way in which he gave no ready-made answers to the problems she aroused, or indeed to any of the other great problems the Iliad dealt with (individual self-assertion and collective loyalty), but presented the living situation in its fullness.

The working out of explicit ethical systems went on side by side with the turning of various deities of natural process (Moirai, Erinyes, Nemesis, Themis) into abstract personifications of fate or justice, or at least with the modification of the process aspect and the strengthening of the aspect of direct moral force. There was both gain and loss in this development: a loss of the more organic concepts of the Homeric world and a gain in analytic comprehension. The social background (or rather in-ground) of it all lay in the movement from a phase in which there was still a vital balance between tribal elements and the new mercantile city-states, towards and into the fully developed city-state (with fifth-century Athens as the apex). Between the ninth and the fifth century there was a steady, if zigzag, increase in social division and the class struggle, with the climax in Athens, where there was a reassertion of tribal elements on the new level, working out as demokratia, but also a rapid increase in inner contradictions, through the growth of slavery (especially in industry), the worsening of the lot of the peasantry, and the appearance of imperial exploitations through the Delian League. We need then to end this chapter with some further examination of the way in which nature-goddesses were changed into moral concepts or fate-forces and the idea of the share or lot was put into action socially and politically.

Deities like Themis and Nemesis, or the Erinyes, developed the function of keeping intact the limits of the area they represented or controlled, an area that included human personality; it was therefore a part of their function to be present and assist at the taking of oaths; they watched that the pledges were not broken. Hence the need felt to develop explicitly the theme of the oath binding all Helen’s suitors (all the Achaian heroes) so as to give full warrant for the destruction of Troy, which had shared Paris’ guilt by becoming his accomplice. A cult in which we see nature-spirits changing into justice-exactors was that of the Praxidikai. These goddesses had a centre in Lakonia and in Boiotian Haliartos. Pausanias says that Menelaos, home from Troy, built them a sanctuary. ‘Before Gythion lies the island Kranae, and Homer says that Alexandros, carrying off Helen, copulated with her there for the first time. On the mainland, opposite the island, is a sanctuary of Aphrodite Migonitis [Mingler or Mater], and the whole place is called Migonion. This sanctuary, they say, was made by Alexandros. But when Menelaos had taken Ilion and returned home eight years after the sack of Troy, he set up in the sanctuary of Migonitis an image of Thetis and the goddesses Praxidikai. Above Migonion is a mountain called Larysion, sacred to Dionysos, and at the start of spring they hold a festival in honour of the god, and among the things they tell about the ritual is that they find here a ripe bunch of grapes.’ Themis would fit in better here than Thetis, and there may be a copyist’s error. At the open-air sanctuary in Haliartos the Praxidikai had the task of watching over oaths. We find them as a triad: Alalkomenia, Thelxinoia, Aulis — this third one with a cult at Haliartos. The names suggest nature-spirits who were turned into moral concepts or absorbed by great goddesses like Athena and Artemis. An Orphic hymn calls Persephonē Praxidikē.[399]

Now the Moirai need a closer scrutiny. The word moira is related to meiromai, moros, meros, meris (Latin mereo, mereor), all connected with the idea of receiving a portion or share. Moira thus means that which is reserved, destined, for someone — his share. It has been suggested that moira, though not personified in Homer, was in fact the personification of the share; other critics have argued that Moira existed before the idea of moira as a share. All attempts to fix on a moment of personification in the modern sense merely show an inability to enter into the origins of such concepts, which are at once personal, social, religious, ritualist, magical. The root element is always a deep intuition of the life-process, shared equally by man and nature, and the attempt to grasp a particular moment of experience, in which the relationship of the individual to the whole movement of society and nature is realized in a flash of comprehension, so that the vast interweaving of forces, dangerous and frightening because of their many unknown elements, is reduced to a particular moment, form, meaning, without losing its vital link with the whole.

The individual share of life and the critical moment (the moment of union and of objectification) are thus closely linked. That is, the Moirai and the Horai are related and in the last resort are one. Above the head of the image of Zeus at Megara ‘are the Seasons and Fates, and all may see that he is the only god obeyed by Destiny [Pepromenē, from an assumed verb porein, to give or offer — so, ‘what is given, destined’], and that he apportions [nemein] the Seasons as is due’. The Horai represent the right or fitting moment of time division, any part of the day, month, year, season. They are especially connected with Aphrodite as her toilet-attendants, though they also attend Dionysos and other deities. We may note how their names, Eunomia, Dikē, Eirene (Peace), declare that they too give balance, proportion, measure. It is not surprising then to find moira appearing in the terms of the early Ionian philosophers (for example, Anaxa-goras) to mean a simple portion of substance. Moirai are such portions which do not exist independently. The thinkers are then returning to the tribal concept of equality in share or portion; and moira played its part in maintaining the sense of equal proportions and just measures in the universe, from which proceeded the idea of natural law.[400]

We have seen in relation to Ariadne the deep significance of spinning and weaving as human (female) activities which merged their practitioner with natural process and gave her magical masteries. In Homer there is both one Moira and the group, the Klōthes, Spinners; Hesiod has the triad. That the KlOthes are already ancient in Homer’s day is shown by his use of the verb epiklōthō. Thus in the Odyssey we find: ‘Meanwhile he’ll not suffer any evil or harm till he set foot in his own land; after that he’ll suffer whatever Aisa and the heavy Klōthes spun with their thread for him at his birth, when his mother bore him.’ Hesiod tells us that Night bore without a father ‘the Moirai and ruthlessly avenging Kēres, Klōthō and Lachesis and Atropos, who give men at their birth both good and evil to possess; and they pursue the transgressors of men and gods. And these goddesses never cease from their dread anger till they punish the sinner with a sore penalty. Also deadly Night bore Nemesis.’ They could however be diverted; Apollo made them drunk to save Admetos from his appointed death-day.

There are four of them in an early depiction of the marriage of Thetis; at Delphoi they were two, a Moira of birth and a Moira of death, who took part in the War against the Giants, wielding brazen pestles. Empedokles of Sicily said there were two types of daimones or moirai who inaugurated man’s life at birth. In Euripides, Iphigeneia cries out against the evil daimōn who brought her out of the womb, and the Moirai who delivered her mother of a child so wretched. They were present at the birth of the hero Meleagros. Klōthō prophesied that he would be of a noble nature; Lachesis foretold his stature as a hero; Atropos said that he would live as long as the log which at that moment was on the fire. The mother snatched the log out. (Here we see a direct example, carried on through folklore, of the external soul or other self.)[401]

Hesiod in another version of the origin of the Moirai makes them daughters of Zeus and Themis. According to the later Orphics they lived aloft in heaven, in a cave, by a pool which sent its white waters gushing from the cave; the trio corresponded to the three phases of the moon. Hence Orpheus sings of the Moirai in white raiment.[402]

We find a revealing formula in the Iliad and Odyssey: ‘It lies on the knees of the gods.’ The phrase refers to unworked wool lying on the knees of spinners. So the fates of men as worked out by the gods is made one with the pattern of cloth woven by the Moirai, which begins as a mere confused mass of wool. The names of the triad are hard to make out, apart from Klōthō, the Spinner. Lachesis is the Apportioner, which could refer to apportioning the work or the materials. Atropos has the same root as trepein, to turn; and the ancients interpreted the name as meaning ‘she whose work cannot be turned back, unspun’. Aischylos understood the name thus; but one cannot see what action of spinning could be referred to, unless we take the word to mean ‘she whose work cannot be unravelled’, in the way that Penelope unravelled her web.

The deepest reason why the Fates spun and wove lay in the original importance of these craft activities as a woman’s mystery. The Cypria described the whole intricate movement of natural process as the weaving work of the nymphs; Aristeides saw city life, with its complex crisscrossings of relationships, as the robe woven by the Nymphs and Graces. But no doubt the rich significance of the crafts was also helped by the feeling that clothes were more than a mere extension of the wearer; they became a part of him. We may note the practices of decorating the body by tattooing, painting, scarification, or the attachment of ornaments (all at first felt as life-enhancing). In Greece the newborn child was wrapped in swaddling-bands and amulets, such as necklaces or rings; these were called anagnorismata or tokens, and the central part they play in the many myths of the recognition of the exposed child brings out their deep and intimate links with the child’s identity. (We saw how the moment of anagnorōsis or Recognition had a key role in the structure of tragedy.) Tattooing was also known to the Greeks, for instance among the Spartoi of Thebes whose bodies were marked with a spear (certainly a tattoo) from birth; and the Dionysiac cult-associations, at least at times, used tattooed signs, which must have represented a self-dedication to the god.[403]

We saw how the myth of Herakles and Queen Navel held more than the reflection of transvestist marriage customs; it showed the greatest of male heroes subjected to the female principle. Herakles spun. We find several mythical queens’ names oddly linked with crafts. Harmonia meant the fitting and joining of carpentry-work. The Praxitheai were married to the primeval Attic kings, Erechtheus and Erichthonios; we can reduce the pairs to a single Praxithea and a single king. The female name means Goddess of Praxis. Praxis in Homer means transaction, or trade, business; later, action in general, with special references to magical spells or sexual intercourse. The son of Praxithea, Kekrops, married Metiadousa, she who delights in Mētis. Mētis means counsel, skill, craft. In myth Mētis was the first wife of Zeus, who in the end swallowed her and became pregnant with Athena; she was a shape-shifter, taking various forms (like Thetis or Nemesis) to escape her wooer; she gave Zeus counsel. The word mētis has the same root as Latin metior and Old English maep, and means ‘measure’. King Aigeus had three Wives. One was Mēta (the same as Mētis), who, through her father Hoplēs, shows a link with a craft fraternity that made hopla, tools and instruments. A second was Chalkiopē, daughter of Chalkon the bronze-worker (or Chalkodon, an instrument of the forge), also called daughter of Thexenor, the Striker (on the anvil?). Mētis, we may further note, has the same root as Mēdeia, the supreme witch of herbal magic; and Homer uses the metaphor of ‘weaving a mētis’, giving counsel.[404]

What are we to make of all this? Surely that in early days there were goddesses presiding over craft fraternities and that women’s magic played an important part in their recipes and practices, even when, as with bronze-forging or tool-making, the workers were presumably male. This discovery, when we link it with the fact of the obvious preponderance of goddesses, as mothers, birth-fates, death-fates, nurses, presiders over initiations and sacred dances, in early Greek religion, raises the question of how far the Bronze-Age communities were dominated by women or at least had matrilineal systems of marriage, with a much higher status for women than in historical times. When we look at the survivals of marriage customs in the Aegean area, especially on the eastern side, we find many proofs that earlier the systems were matrilinear and probably matrilocal: that is, tracing descent through the mother and requiring a husband to live with his wife’s people rather than the other way round. To speak of matriarchy is to beg too many questions, though Strabon says of the Cantabri of Spain that they have ‘a form of matriarchy, gynokratia; the daughters inherit and give their brothers in marriage’. In Lykia, says Herodotos, ‘if you ask a man who he is, he replies by naming his mother and his mother’s mother’. He noted: ‘Sons were not obliged to support their parents, but daughters were.’ Tradition in Attika held that Kekrops instituted marriage (that is, of a patrilinear kind); previously ‘intercourse was promiscuous with the result that sons did not know their fathers nor fathers their sons. The children were named after their mothers.’ Such a situation seemed total confusion to the patriarchally minded. Traces of matrilinear societies can be made out along the Leleges, the Karians, the Lydians. We know little of Minoan society apart from what the art tells us, together with what appear to be religious survivals; but it seems sure that women had a high status there. Ploutarch knew the tradition that ‘in Crete it had been customary for women to appear in public’. The Greeks themselves, who seem in Mykenean days to have taken over many Minoan attitudes, showed survivals of matrilinear systems. The colony of Lokroi Epizephyrioi in the toe of Italy was founded from Lokris in central Greece, where the earliest folk, says Aristotle, were Leleges. ‘All their ancestral honours,’ Polybios records, ‘are traced through women, as for example the noble rank enjoyed by descendants of the Hundred Families.’ They, like Lydians and Etruscans, carried on prenuptial promiscuity; and theirs was the first Greek state to codify its laws, which incidentally made the alienation of ancestral estates illegal. Matrilineal succession to real property still survived on many islands, including Lesbos, Lemnos, Naxos, Kos, at the end of the eighteenth century AD.[405]

To return to the Moirai: though essentially birth-spirits, they had a potent relation also to the two other great moments of change, marriage and death. At Athens, when a man came home after being reported dead and lamented by his kin, he was readmitted by a rite consisting of a mimic birth and was called deuteropotmos, a man with a second fate or lot (potmos). In myth the Moirai attended the bridal bed of Zeus and Hera. In cult a bride offered a lock of her hair to Artemis and Moirai. Antiphon says of the bridal night that it ‘inaugurates a new potmos, a new daimōn’. And finally there was the term, moira thanatou, share or lot of death, corresponding to moira biotou and moira gamou, share of life, share of marriage. If we carry back the moira concept to the early days we discussed above, moira might well represent the authority of tribal custom administered, at least in large part, by women. The cults of the Moirai and the Erinyes were reserved for women; the Erinyes were specially concerned with crimes against the mother; and Aischylos recalled that in the beginning the world was ruled by ‘the threefold Moirai and the unforgetting Erinyes’.[406]

As an historical parallel we may take the situation among the Ibibios of southern Nigeria early in this century; we have already noticed how a son thundergod displayed the Great Mother there. The main secret societies had been taken over from the women. This was true even of the most dreaded association, Ekkpo Njawhaw, the Ghosts or Destroyers. From three different parts of the district the same story was obtained. ‘In the old days Ibibio women were more powerful than the men, for to them alone the mysteries of the gods and of secret things were made known. By such knowledge they were able to keep all males as servants, employing them to do the heaviest work.’ One day, in fighting another folk, the men captured the masks, fetishes and fringed robes needed for the cult. At a great festival they cajoled the women into imparting their lore, so that ‘together our people may become strong beyond all others’. The old women tried to keep up their mystery in secret places of the bush, but the men tracked them down and killed them. Again, at certain crucial moments in the ritual of the Egbo, connected with the death of an Efik chief who had held a high position in the society, an old woman had to be consulted. The investigator was told, ‘after considerable hesitation, that feminine aid was necessary because Egbo was originally a woman’s secret society, until the men wrested from them its secrets, learned the rites and then drove out women from all participation therein.’ No doubt the process was much more complex in the Aegean world, but we certainly see goddesses or priestesses in roles which show that their status had once been much more dominant. There, as elsewhere, the growth of war and the rise of the war-chieftain must have helped the increase in male powers, social and religious.

Agamemnon, coming to regret his action against Achilles, attributes his behaviour to the malice of Zeus, Moira, and Erinys; he has taken away the geras or moira of Achilles, his due honour. Aischylos says that Zeus, the first king, would not override the power of the Erinyes; that is, the new patriarchal power had to compromise with the immemorial rights and powers held by the women. Homer at moments depicts the equivocal situation. Zeus, tempted to rescue Sarpedon, is warned by Hera that if he violates the decrees of fate, other gods will do the same. All the while, however, the Moirai become more and more the reflection of the will of the Olympian gods, especially Zeus, who later takes the title of Moira-leader, Moiragetes, at Olympia, while Apollo takes it at Delphoi. The Erinyes are similarly subordinated to Zeus. These religious changes are linked at every point with the changes going on in the ownership of land and the distribution of the necessities of life, in particular food.[407]

Aisa, which we have seen was also used for Fate, means an equal share or portion. It seems connected with the Lesbian issasthai, or its equivalent klerousthai (Hesychios); and we thus have evidence for an Homeric issa, the portion of booty due to a man. Aisymnetes, with allied forms, shows the connection of aisa with order concepts. In the Odyssey, it is used of the judges for the dances at Alkinoos’ court; it can mean the president of an association of dancers and singers; it is used for the eponymous magistrates at Miletos and on Naxos; finally it stands for tyrannos or legislator (especially in times of crisis when the customary shares of men are undergoing change). All the meanings have at root the notion of ‘one who distributes, gives, or directs the shares’. Aisa in local dialects such as that of Argos seems to mean a share of the banquet or a part of the sacrificial offerings; thence, a portion of anything. Another fate word is oitos, generally used in a bad sense. There is much argument as to its origin; but from Demokritos and Sophokles we have evidence of the meaning of lot or share. Instructive too is the way in which the term for law, nomos, originally referred to a share of pastoral land, as moira did to a share of the arable. Commonlands were often used for pasture, so that the local group had to get together in making the arrangements. Nomos thus got the sense of customary usage. But as private property developed, matters of custom gave way to law proper, and nomos came to mean law. A similar development can be traced in the word ēthos, which in Homer means an accustomed place; in plural, haunts. Thus the Iliad tells us that when a stallion is let loose, ‘his knees bear him to the ētha and nomos of mares’. The Odyssey says: ‘They shut up the sows to sleep in their ētha’. In Hesiod ētha means the abodes of men, which men themselves have made. The heroes who died in Helen’s war were carried off by Zeus to the end of the world and given ‘a living and ētha’. The term next developed the sense of custom or usage in general, of manners and character. A turning point came when Herakleitos stated, ‘The ēthos of a man is his daimōn’. So our word Ethics goes back to the notion of common shares in pastureland.[408]

Few scholars have realized that the inner meaning of the fate words, the share of life and death by an individual of which they speak, is throughout linked with the social aspects of the given situation. The inner lot is dialectically one with the social lot. Moira was above all one’s share in arable land, since wealth, status, power, all went ultimately back to a man’s position as owning or lacking land. With moira was linked lachos (compare Lachesis), synonymous with klēros, used for a land-holding though originally meaning a bit of wood for use in casting lots. In Irish, crann, lot, is identical with crann, tree. (We noted earlier petala, leaves, used for lot-casting.) Yet another word for fate, potmos, means literally: what is falling, how the lot turns out for one. Numbers and Joshua tell how the land was to be distributed by lot among the Israelite tribes and clans. In Greece the system, which must have been at work through the Dark Ages, is reflected in myth. The Olympians cast lots for a conquered universe. Helios, absent, lacked a klēros. Rhodes, only just then coming up out of the sea, had not been included in the allocations; so it was given to Helios and the system was ratified by an appeal to Lachesis, the allotter of the lachos. Later on, Rhodes was divided into three moirai by the sons of Helios, who corresponded to the three immigrant tribes.[409]

The Iliad has the same myth of allocations by the gods, omitting the episode of Helios and Rhodes. Poseidon, told by Iris that Zeus bade him keep out of the war, retorted that when Zeus, Hades and he got their shares (sky, under-earth, sea), ‘the earth and high Olympos remained in common to us all’. Such myths may well reflect quarrels among groups, or inside groups, about common lands. There seems also a reflection of the system whereby, on a father’s death, his real estate (house and land) was held jointly by the heirs, while the personal estate was divided by lot. Iris threatens Poseidon, ‘You know how the Erinyes always follow to aid the elder-born.’ The elder son claims that customary right is on his side in assuming a dominant role.

Hesiod says that Hekate got from Zeus a moira of land and sea, holding in perpetuity the share allotted to her in the original division or dasmos. The Odyssey tells how the king of the Phaiakians, on leading his people into their new country, ‘divided the ploughlands’. The Dorians after their conquest of the Peloponnesos were said to have divided the land into three parts, for which they cast lots. In historical times, the settlers of Kyrene invited emigrants from Greece to share in a ‘redivision of the land’. Some years later the territory was again divided, under an arbitrator from Arkadia, into three moirai, and the inhabitants into three tribes (thus artificially created). When the dispossessed peasants of Attika demanded a redivision of the land in the later seventh century, and when Solon in the 590s brought in his reforms, they were all appealing to ancient custom.[410]

Indeed, through Greek history, the various states, dominated by rich landowners, were afraid of such demands, which came powerfully to a head in Sparta under Nabis. In earlier years one way of damping down or sidetracking the call for land redivision lay in the despatch of colonists to new regions. Athens had a system, kērouchia, by which conquered land was divided among settlers from Athens. Diodoros tells us of colonists from Rhodes and Knidos on the islands of Lipara about 580: ‘Well received on Lipara, the settlers were induced to share out the land with the natives, surviving settlers of Aiolos, about five hundred in all. In course of time, owing to depradations of Tuscan pirates, they built a fleet and divided their occupations, some of them continuing the collective tillage of the soil, others being organized for defence against the pirates. They held property in common and ate at common meals. After living this communal life for some time, they divided Lipara itself, where the city was, but went on cultivating the other islands collectively. In the end they divided all the islands for periods of twenty years, reallotting them at the end of each.’

The reference to common meals shows how strongly a tribal basis persisted, and the account reveals three stages: collective ownership of all arable land; division of land in the neighbourhood of the town; division of all the land with periodic redistribution. One part of the land was in general reserved for priests and kings, the temenos. Here a religious factor was at work; for kings were ‘honoured like a god’. The word temenos is Mykenean: at Pylos a tablet speaks of ‘the temenos of the king and the lawagetas’ (leader of the people, a military title). Homer knows of the king’s temenos; and as in later usage the word is restricted to land dedicated to a deity, he seems certainly to be speaking in terms derived from Mykenean customs, though how long such customs survived, perhaps in partially changed forms, in the Dark Ages we do not know. With the decay of the kingship, temenos took on a purely sacral character.[411]

Moira, lachos, geras, timē, were all terms used for the sharing of spoils among warriors. Dasmos was the distribution, as demos was the people who shared. The tradition had a long history, like the others we have examined. When in 484 there was a surplus from the silver mines, the Athenians proposed it be distributed among the body of citizens; Themistokles persuaded them to use if for a fleet. There was also a strong tradition that food should be held in common and shared out. Ploutarch says that in ancient times, when meals were administered by Moira or Lachesis on the principle of equality, all was liberally and decently performed; and he points out that the old word for a meal meant properly a share or division. He was right. (We saw that dais was cognate with demos.) Once the moira of meat went by lot. ‘And when they had roasted the outer flesh and drawn it off the spits,’ says Homer, ‘they divided the moirai and had a glorious dais.’ The chine went to the presiding chief as a geras. Ploutarch goes on to say that the brotherly equality of the common meal was destroyed in time by the growth of luxury (that is, private property), but persisted in public distribution of meats at state sacrifices (on which large sums were spent under the Athenian democracy). In Fraternal Love Ploutarch again shows the strongly persisting memory of a time of fraternal equality before the division of the land. He advises brothers, who want to share goods at a father’s death, to have recourse to the drawing of lots, but he thinks that sons of the same father should divide up only the administration and management of property, while the usage and enjoyment of the whole remains undivided, communal.[412]

After the democratic revolution at Athens the use of lots was an integral element in the state; Greek writers agreed in seeing it as distinctive of a democratic constitution. For the lots men employed pebbles, beans, kleroi, astragaloi (knuckle-bones, also used in games of chance). Already in the Iliad we find lots used for the selection of champions. Many systems of divination by lots were devised. Astragaloi lay ready on the holy tables in temples, for instance Orthia in Sparta or in the temple at Ephesos (in the lower deposits). On coins of Hypaipa, Tarsos, Samos, Ephesos, we see people casting coins before the image of a goddess. Dice-divination in the classical period was attached to the great mother. Kubaba has been claimed as an ancient Cretan goddess, her name connected with kybos, cube or dice. There is a familiar vase type in which two warriors cast lots before an image of Athena or a palmtree. Are they just passing time, or deciding some issue of fate? We see them also playing draughts (pessoi), though at times it is hard to tell if it is astragaloi or draughtsmen over which they crouch. But however we interpret the scenes, the idea of fate is implicated in some form.[413]

In myth the nymphs Thriai, daughters of Zeus and nurses of Apollo, discovered the three mantic psephoi (pebbles: used in calculations, in draughts, in juggling, in divination and in voting). They gave them to Athena; but not wanting to trespass on Apollo’s share of things, she cast them on the Thriasian Plain. In another version she herself invented the art of pebble divination, and Apollo complained to Zeus, who made the lots untrustworthy. (Here is another tale of one god trespassing on the moira of another.) In the Hymn to Hermes Apollo tells Hermes how the Thriai reared him in a glade of Parnassos, teaching him prophecy while he tended his cattle and his father ‘took no heed’. That is, he was a child secluded with the mothers, away from the male world. The Thriai are bees and their name seems to be connected with thriazein to be rapt, possessed.

At Delphoi tradition indicated that originally prophecy was made by drawing lots. The technical term for the Pythia’s delivery of the oracle was ‘to take up’, which is best explained as referring to her action in selecting a lot under the god’s inspiration. There was also a story that the Pythia first used lots in selecting the ten eponymous heroes for the Kleisthenic tribes at Athens, presumably soon after 508. Officials at Delphoi included representatives of the local community chosen by lot; and at least in early times the order of hearing was determined by lots. Lots were also used in the oracle of Zeus at Dodona. In Achaia, ‘on going down from Boura to the sea you come on a river called Bouraikos, and here you can divine by means of tablet and dice. He who inquires of the god offers up a prayer before the image; then he takes four dice, an abundant supply of which are set by Herakles, and throws them on the table. For every figure made by the dice there is an explanation expressly written on the tablet.’ Normally dice divination took the form of interpreting the sequences of numbers got by throwing several dice on a board. Figure or shape here cannot mean the number on a die-face; and the text has been taken to mean that each die has a certain figure marked on it.[414]

To return to the link of the lot or allotment with land: the whole basis of Hesiod’s Works and Days lies in the charge that his brother Perses has acted unjustly in the share-out of their patrimony. In Greece before Solon there were two kinds of property: the land of the city, the inalienable klēros, the common family estate; and the peripheral land, situated apart from the urban agglomeration, which was less rich and perhaps made up of reserves. This second kind could be the object of a different appropriation. Hesiod knew both types; but perhaps his father as a newcomer to Askra in Boiotia had got an estate of the peripheral kind. After Hesiod’s day the sharing-out of land by inheritors became more and more common, but was not yet the general rule. During the seventh century the nobles felt it necessary to take steps to deal with some of the effects; at Corinth the legislator Pheidon acted to preserve the inequality of lots. The smaller owners faced a dilemma. They could share out the land in ever smaller lots or cultivate in common; they could be beggared alone or in a group. In any case they had to borrow from rich neighbours, usually the aristocratic owner of a large estate; then at last they had to sell out after a bad harvest or some such run of ill luck. But the land was inalienable. The rich creditor got rights over it: not a definite sale, but a sort of control prefiguring the sale proper. The poor peasant lived on on his land, but produced in part or whole for the lord. So he vegetated in poverty or struck out elsewhere. The demos was not yet a community of citizens, but rather like the demos of Homer, the scattered peasants on the land in general.

So the clans or phratries which we find in the sixth and fifth centuries were largely a creation of the nobles. The latter organized themselves in genē, the alliances and rivalries of which decided the issue of the day. Their dependants were associated in phratries, each under a genos. No doubt elements of earlier kindred groups persisted in these organizations, but the latter were largely artificial creations. Nobles controlled the cults, to which a man needed access, for instance at Athens, in order to prove himself a true Athenian. Homer had known phratries, but these cannot have belonged to the earlier world; they had been formed for military and political reasons during the period of migration. We cannot fit them into the social picture drawn by the Odyssey. But certain tribal forms must have existed and been carried on through all phases of Greek society, including the Mykenean. Sometimes they were driven out of sight, that is, lacking an effective relation to the system of controls imposed from above by king or lords; sometimes they were taken up and reorganized in ways that suited the lords, yet always reasserting themselves and ultimately making possible Athenian democracy, which in effect was a tribal system reconstituted and given fresh points of reference on a new level of social development. Herein lay the one great element of difference between Greek society and all previous states in the ancient world.[415]

This point has to be made here, though we have no space to analyse it in detail. Why it is relevant to us is that without a proper grasp of the tenacious tribal elements in Greek society we cannot understand why the concept of the share, the lot, the due portion, played such an important part in all spheres of thought, social, psychological, political, moral, aesthetic. In other ancient societies, with their kings and their organized temple priesthoods, a man’s place in life was determined from the outset by the prevailing system. Because of the new mobility of Greek society, its particular set of conflicts and harmonies of union, there could be no question of such a fixed array of hierarchical functions. Each man was jostling the other; possibilities of profit, deceit, exploitation in a mercantile world ruled increasingly by money, made relationships complex in a way quite unknown to previous societies. Hence the need for a rule of law to control the situation, the intensely felt need for concepts and systems which allotted each man his place and penalized the overstepping of limits, of bounds. Everyone knew the limits were going to be overstepped continually, by individuals and by states; large numbers of men could not resist the chances of self-aggrandizement which the ‘freedoms’ of the city-state brought about. The individualist side was in ceaseless conflict with the communal; and out of the tensions came all that was best and all that was worst in the Greek world. The elements stimulating inequality were fused with the elements preserving the dream of equal shares in land, food and all the good things of life. A completely new set of tensions arose between society as a whole and the restless individuals who composed it. There was a vigorous drive forward and a continual entanglement of anxieties.

Once we grasp the nature of this tension we understand why the notion of share or portion so thoroughly permeates all the Greek ideas or images of fate. Similar ideas or images can be found in other cultures, but nowhere else is the clustering so powerful, complex and sustained. Where previous societies could get along with a system imposed from above and with various mythological justifications of that system, the Greeks had to beget law proper, definite constitutions and philosophic concepts of order and settled relationships. Scholars have mostly seen the development as a strange spontaneous matter because they have failed to see it as a whole, with its origins understood and the persisting interrelation of its parts, social, psychological, economic, moral. ‘A deep-seated need to discover an order in, or superimpose an order on, the flux of physical and psychological experience is a continuing feature of all Greek artistic and philosophical expression. While it is true that every conscious creature feels this need to some extent, the intensity with which the quest for order was carried on by the Greeks was exceptional. Whether as a result of some mysterious tendency in the national psyche or as spontaneous reaction to their turbulent historical experience after the break-up of the Mycenaean world, the Greeks felt to life with changing, undefined, unmeasured, seemingly random impressions — to live, in short, with what was expressed by the Greek word chaos — was to live in a state of constant anxiety’ (Pollitt). But the development was neither mysterious nor spontaneous, except in so far as all human activity has an element of spontaneity and a living totality evades complete analysis; it derived from the persistence of tribal elements in a scene full of riches inherited from earlier Near-East societies, tribal elements which found the logical conclusion of their struggle in Athenian democracy, where the limit of their possibilities was reached, the point beyond which their contradictions ceased to be fecund and stimulating; and which brought about an impasse broken by the Macedonian domination, the imposition of the kingship which the historical Greeks had rejected.[416]

*

Looking back over our inquiry, we may summarize as follows. The Judgement shows the Birth-Fates or Nymphs with their gifts turned into maturely differentiated and competing goddesses in a society where division of labour and status has been fast growing. The goddess of the Sacred Marriage — whether she is a Tree shaped into a wooden cult-statue or a Bird appearing in some moment or situation of epiphany — becomes the Heroine carried off by a ravisher and precipitating disasters for her group. The attendants or guides who go with her on her journey into the unknown, into the darkness of earth where the seed germi-nates, become the ravishers; and finally the tale of the rape provides the basis for explaining why a culture has become divided against itself in fratricidal conflicts of greed, lust, power madness. The maze-dance of movement between life and death, earth and spirit-world, which also expresses the coition spirals of sex and birth, becomes the scene of deepened conflict. The goddess who embodies the principle of the individual share or fate becomes more and more the penalizing force in a world where the correct (tribal) limits are being transgressed. Through-out, the tragic twist turns the myths of fertility ritual into tales felt to explain what has gone wrong in the group.

Helen as the image of supreme happiness and enjoyment, which has somehow brought division and misery on men in their over-eager impulse to grasp and own it, lies at the heart of the whole development. The result is the same whether she was an historical character who drew into herself multiple aspects of ritual myth or whether she was a nature-goddess drawn into the historical drama of conflicting human wills and social cleavages. She owns the substance of Artemis and Aphrodite; she is the earth-bride rescued or captured in the depths, in the spirit-world, to be a pledge of reviving and reintegrated life; she is the tree into which the goddess dies and from which she is reborn; she is the dance-leader of a group leaping from one level of life into another; she is the nymph-nurse of every child and she embodies the sacred marriage which is a vital element in every marriage of man and woman; she is both natural process and human essence; she is the Ariadne who leads through the maze of a difficult moment of transition and crucial change. And she gathers together all the enigmas and conflicts emerging in society and reflected in ritual myth. Yet she is also a mere woman and nothing more, for all that she embodies the moira, the daimonic spell of Aphrodite, by the intensity with which she lives out the drama of her overwhelming beauty.

The contradictions in this system are held in abeyance by Homer. The woman walks simply in her daimonic spell. But all the while inner conflicts chafe through and compel, step by step, a new consciousness of what is implied by measure, order (kosmos, which also means the adornment of beauty), limit, self-knowledge. Helen becomes the Moira, Aisa, Erinys, Themis, Nemesis, of a new dispensation; and what is implied by the due share, the equal share in a world of inequalities, has to be analytically grasped and yet still dynamically lived out.

Myth has become human drama. The ritual patterns have been lifted to a level where they absorb and express the total historical experience of a people, of a period of violent change and growth. Acceptance of the pattern of suffering and daimonic impulsion, of disaster and successful homecoming, alternates with a critical examination and reappraisal of the underlying concepts. The pattern is reformulated to meet the changed circumstances, but from one angle or another it remains deeply significant of the nature of Greek society, of its motivations, problems, and solutions. Hence the way in which that culture keeps on revealing its deepest self in its attitudes to Helen and the experience she embodies. The climax comes with the Peloponnesian War, when after the great moments of union against the outer enemy (the Persians, who represent the rejected kingly principle), the Greek world wrecks itself as the Achaian world had done. Helen is now seen as an illusion; the basis on which the expansion from the ninth century on had depended is breaking down under the weight of its unrealized inner contradictions. The consciousness of permissible limits is at the end of its tether. Euripides expresses the desperate disillusionment, plus the deep hope that men will be shocked, on the brink of failure, through the spectacle of their inhumanities into taking another course. Isokrates seeks to revive the illusion, glossing over the terrible results of the unrealized inner conflicts of the Helen image (and the world it reflects); he wants merely to refurbish the image in the service of what works out as the Macedonian overlordship, the final destruction of the free city-state, the triumph of the landlords under the aegis of the kingship, the imperial adventure turned eastwards. But this means the ending of the old tension between the demand for an equal share and the fact of an extending inequality. Helen is now aestheticized as an image of irresponsible beauty to console and decorate a world in which the old creative tension is lost.

That is what happens historically. But the complexity and richness of the Helen image in its development from Homer to Euripides is not thereby destroyed. The image remains alive for us as concentrating the vital impulses of one of the greatest creative epochs. Whatever are the distant facts of her genesis, Helen cannot but be felt by us as a real person whose drama is at the same time inseparable from a deep series of ritual myths. The fusion of historical reality with myths which powerfully embody man’s vital relation to earth-processes is what gives the imaginative depth and appeal to her image.

Appendix

More on the Thread

In view of the crucial importance for this book of the analysis of Helen’s Fillets and Ariadne’s Thread, further material is here added, to avoid overloading the main narrative.

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1. The thread as line of force

The idea of the body as emitting lines of force or energy goes far back. In an ancient rock-engraving at Tyout in North Africa we see a line issuing from the genitals of each of the three figures, who are thus connected by magical lines of force. The forms are rough; but it seems clear that a man, his wife and child are depicted; he is hunting and a flow of sympathetic aid is coming from his family. The line from his genitals leaps up to the arrow he is shooting at some game, and the arrow is magnified, given special force and virtue. The woman seems to be making a dance gesture with uplifted hands; perhaps she performs a dance rite while her husband hunts, as is common among primitive folk. The thread line flowing from her is ensuring the man’s success in killing the beast, as the thread spiralling from Ariadne ensures the success of Theseus in killing the monster.

As an example from later tribal society we may take a drawing made by North American Indians in a petition to Congress about fishing rights in some small lakes near Lake Superior. The totems of the seven tribes concerned are shown: crane, three martens, bear, manfish, catfish. ‘From the eye and heart of each of the animals runs a line connecting them with the eye and heart of the crane, to show that they are all of one mind, and the crane’s eye has a line connecting it with the lakes on which the tribes want to fish, while another line runs towards Congress.’ Other North American drawings, expressing a lovesong, show two figures, one with an elongated arm that touches the other; then the two figures, one standing, and the other lying down, connected with a double line that joins the lower part of the faces (? throats or mouths) while from the head of the standing lover runs a wriggling winding line towards the girl. The designs illustrate the statements: ‘I can make her blush, because I hear all she says...though she were far off, even on the other hemisphere.’[417]

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2. The spirit-string in Australia

The spirit-rope or string is highly important in shamanist experience, especially as link between this and the other world. In Australia, ‘sometimes by means of invisible ropes they [the medicine-men] climb up and down between earth and sky’. These spirit-ropes they bring up out of themselves. (So the ropes in a sense are the entrails or insides of the shamans.) Myth reflects these beliefs. In S.W. Australia the natives told how fire was brought from aloft down to earth by a man who threw a spear at the clouds, with string attached. He climbed the string and reached heaven. An invaluable account of initiation experience, just as it was felt and understood by one of the initiates, has been given by a Wiradjuri doctor of the kangaroo totem. His father took him as a small boy into the bush to be trained. He put two large quartz crystals against his breast. ‘They vanished into me. I do not know how they went, but I felt them going through me like warmth. That was to make me clever and also to bring things up. He also gave me some things like quartz crystals in water. They looked like ice, and the water tasted sweet. After that I used to see things that my mother could not see.’ At the puberty initiation he watched the doctors (shamans) bringing up their crystals and shooting the virtue into him to make him ‘good’. So, in a holy state like all the initiates during the rite, he went into seclusion in the bush to fast and meditate. His father came to him there and showed him a piece of crystal in his hand. ‘When I looked at it, he went down into the ground; and I saw him come up all covered with red dust. It made me very frightened.’ At his father’s bidding he managed to bring up a crystal and was told, ‘Come with me to this place.’ He goes on: ‘I saw him standing by a hole in the ground, leading to a grave. I went inside and saw a dead man, who rubbed me all over to make me clever, and gave me some crystals. When we came out, my father pointed to a tiger-snake, saying “That is your familiar. It is mine also.” There was a string extending from the tail of the snake to us — one of those strings which the medicine-men bring up out of themselves. My father took hold of the string and said, “Let us follow the snake.” The snake went through several tree-trunks and led us through them. At last we reached a tree with a great swelling round its roots. It is in such places that Duramulun lives. The snake went down into the ground and came up inside the tree, which was hollow. We followed him. Then I saw a lot of little Duramuluns, the sons of Baiame [the highgod]. Afterwards the snake took us into a great hole, in which were a number of snakes. These rubbed themselves against me and did not hurt me, being my familiars. They did this to make me a clever man and a doctor. Then my father said, “We will go up to Baiame’s camp.” He got astride a thread and put me on another and we held by each other’s arm. At the end of the thread was Wombu, the bird of Baiame. We went up through the clouds and on the other side was the sky. We went through the place where the clouds go through, and it kept opening and shutting very quickly. My father said that if it touched a doctor when he was going through, it would hurt his spirit, and when returned home he would sicken and die. On the other side we saw Baiame sitting in his camp. He was a very great old man with a long beard. He sat with his legs under him and from his shoulders extended two great quartz crystals to the very sky above him. There were also numbers of the boys of Baiame, and of his people who are birds and beasts [totems]. After this time, and while I was in the bush, I began to bring crystals up; but I became very ill and cannot do anything since.’

Here the thread plays the guiding part through the difficult sections of the spirit journey, into the underworld and up into the sky; it is attached to the two great messenger figures, the chthonic snake and the bird of the highgods. There is even the Symplegades of the Clashing Cloud-Jaws. The riding of the thread in the sky-ascent suggests both witch’s broom and Siberian shaman’s horse or goose.

The power of the string appears also in the main tools of magic used by the Australians: the pointing-stick and the tchintu. The stick has a length of string passing in and through a little hollow receptacle of bone or wood, and out again at the opposite end, which is then closed. The stick is pointed at the victim, who may be miles away; his life or blood is drawn down the string into the receptacle, where it is caught. The tchintu is a lump of resin and two teeth with a long string attached. The heat of the sun is ‘sung’ into it. Then it is put on the victim’s track, so that the heat passes out and into him, with mortal results. The string conducts the sun-force, transmits it into the doomed man. A dead man’s hair also provides much power.

The studies of Howitt showed that the natives of South-east Australia had their medicine-men who told of a cord magically attached to their bodies. Elkin thus describes the proceedings: ‘During the initiation of medicine-men in South-east Australia they produce a rope from the medicine man by means of incantations. This cord enables him to accomplish marvellous exploits, for instance to emit fire from his stomach like an electric wire. And, more interesting still is the use made of the rope to rise towards the sky, or to the treetops, or into space. At the initiation-parade, at the height of the ceremonial enthusiasm, the magician lies on his back under a tree, raises his rope, and climbs up to a nest placed at the treetop; he then passes to other trees, and at sunset climbs down the trunk again. Only the men see this exploit, which is preceded and followed by the whirling of the bull-roarer and other expressions of emotional excitement. In the description of these exploits noted by M. Berndt and myself will be found the names of the medicine-men and details like the following: Joe Dagan, a Wongaibon magician, lying on his back at the foot of a tree made his rope rise and climbed up it, his head thrown backwards and his body loose, his legs apart and his arms at his sides. When he reached his goal, forty foot up, he waved his hands to those who were below. He came down in the same manner and, as he was lying quietly on his back, the rope re-entered his body.’

The initiations of the medicine-men involve a death-rebirth action. There is a ritual decapitation and cutting to pieces of the aspirant.[418]

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3. Siberia, Tibet, China

The Ostyak shaman sings that he climbs by a rope let down from the sky, pushing aside the stars that block his way. In Buryat rite a large tree is planted in the middle of the yurt, with its top going through the smoke-hole. Silk strings, representing the rainbow and its colours, are fastened to the treetop and then carried over to a tree a short distance off (named the Pillar). Some of the shamans climb to the treetop and make offerings there to the gods. In the old days, said the informant, they could walk the silk string. The rite was called Walking the Rainbow. At the shaman’s investiture the large tree planted in the yurt represented the porter-god who allowed the shaman to enter the heavens; it had red and blue ribbons stretched from its top to a row of birches outside. The ribbons represented the path into the spiritworld. The shaman climbed the yurt-tree and some at least of those outside; at times he leaped from top to top along the whole row: from one heaven into the next. In the Altai rite the shaman in his spirit-journey to the underworld chanted and mimed the passage through the earth-hole, the jaws of the earth, and the sea that must be crossed by means of a hair. In rites like these, or that of the Australian initiate, we see how the image of a world-tree was born.

In Tibet we find a rite in which the thread or cord connecting the two worlds is used. At the New Year festival held at Lhasa near the Potala Palace, a man slid at lightning speed down a rope stretched from a palace pinnacle to a stupa in the courtyard, bringing heaven’s blessings to the assembled people. The subjective experience of the cord linking body and spirit is thus recorded. ‘A woman whom I met in a village of Tsarong had, some years ago, remained inanimate for a whole week.’ While in this state, ‘she could cross rivers, walking upon the waters, or pass through walls. There was only one thing she found impossible: to cut an almost impalpable cord that attached her ethereal being to the material body which she could see perfectly well sleeping upon her couch. The cord lengthened out indefinitely, but, nevertheless, it sometimes hampered her movements. She would “get caught up in it”, she said.’

There is a long tradition behind such ceremonies. In pre-Buddhist (Bon) beliefs we meet a rope that originally bound earth to heaven. The gods came down it to meet human beings. After the fall of man and the coming of death, the link between heaven and earth was broken. The first king of Tibet came down by a rope from heaven. The early kings did not die; they climbed back to heaven; but since the rope has been cut, only souls can ascend, the bodies stay on earth. But in many magical practices, especially Bon, men still try to climb up to heaven by a rope, and they hold that the pious dead are pulled up aloft by an unseen cord. In Buddhist beliefs there was a staircase or rope once connecting heaven and earth; the Buddha descended from the Trayastrimish Heaven by a staircase to ‘clear a path for mankind’; from the top of it all the Brahmalokas could be seen above, and the depths of hell below. The staircase was a pole or axis of the universe.

Tibet is very rich in thread rituals, which express a moment of decisive change in personal and social life. In initiations the lama attaches a string to the novice’s arm during the rite or the day before; often blades of grass, corn-ears, or other small objects are hung on the string. These objects have been with the lama during retreats and are thought to be endowed with spirit forces during his concentrations. ‘The initiated candidate keeps the string upon him during the night, and the following morning the lama himself removes it along with the grass, the ears of barley, or whatever has been attached to it. At the same time the disciple tells him all the dreams he has dreamt. It is said that strange transformations sometimes take place in these objects, they increase or diminish in size, they even disappear altogether.’ The spirit forces of the lama, stored up in the string, flow into the initiate; the removal of the string is a cutting of the umbilical cord, enabling the initiate to rise up into a new life.

At marriage, during the feast, the ceremony is completed by the groom’s mother putting scarves round the necks of the bridal pair. They are thus linked organically together. When a man dies, a hair is plucked from the top of his head to let the soul fly out; a feast is held; at the end of it a priest ties one end of a long silk scarf to the corpse and adjures the spirit of the dead man not to return and vex people, but to keep strictly to the paradise road. ‘The officiating lama then takes the free end of the scarf in his left hand, and preceded by another priest blowing on a thigh-bone trumpet, and ringing a bell or sounding a skull-drum, he leads the corpse to the burial ground.’ To investigate infectious diseases, the lama-doctors tie a rope to the patient’s wrist, then stand some distance off, holding the end of the rope and feeling the pulse through it. The rope thus is felt to be a better transmitter of the man’s vital forces than his body itself, or rather, it canalizes those forces in a way that no part of the body can. In New Year rites sacred emblems of sticks and strings are hung at the palace gates to stop evil spirits from entering; scarves, ceremonial silk scarves and knotted silk cords, are given at midnight, as New Year comes in, by the Dalai Lama to all officials. Here we see the thread both as a barrier against hostile powers and as a transmitter of new life. One of the Eight Lucky Signs of Tibet is the Diagram of the Twisted Entrails.

At Gyantse, Tibet, the New-Year Scapegoat is driven out with a bloody sheepskin round his head and a yak’s entrails round his neck; he is otherwise naked. We can detect a deodorized version of this kind of rite in the Hungarian Lent when at Carnival ‘the Jailbirds are carried out’. These were two lads wound from head to foot in straw ropes, one wearing a plumed hat, one with a scarf tied round his head; their faces were sooted; and they held hatchets or axes. They were paraded in a quête with chains.[419]

In China Chuang tze (iii 4) states that ‘the ancients describe death as the loosening of the cord on which God had hung life’.

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4. India

The hair-bridge occurs in a death ritual among the Badagas of the Neilgherry Hills, India. An elaborate service is held, in which the dead man is relieved of all major sins; these sins were in turn laid on a calf, while after each statement the folk chorused, ‘It is a sin.’ The recital ended with a shamanist account of the death journey, intended to help the dead man on his way after being cleansed of all guilt fears. ‘The dark chamber of death shall open to his soul. The sea shall rise in waves, surround on every side, but yet that awful bridge, no thicker than a thread, shall stand both firm and strong. The dragon’s yawning mouth is shut, it brings no fear. The palaces of heaven throw open wide their doors. Chorus: Throw open wide their door. The thorny path is steep, yet shall his soul go safe. The silver pillar stands so near, he touches it. He may approach the wall, the golden wall of heaven. The burning pillar’s flame shall have no heat for him. Chorus: Shall have no heat for him.’

In the Vedas and Upanishads we find the cosmic thread fully developed. These cords (the winds) hold all things together, as breath holds together and articulates a man’s body. ‘I know the stretched thread on which these living beings are woven; I know the thread of the thread and also the great brahman’ (Atharva-Veda x 8, 38). This thread, sutra, is the atman: ‘Do you know, Kapya, the thread by which this world and the other-world and all beings are bound together?...He who knows the thread, the ruler within, he knows brahman, he knows the worlds, he knows the gods, he knows atman, he knows all things’ (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad ii, 7, 1). When the ropes of the winds are cut, the universe will break up, fall apart (Maitri Upanishad i 4). As ‘it is by the air, as by a thread, that this world and the other world and all beings are strung together...they say of a dead man that his limbs have become unstrung, for it is the Air that binds them like a thread’ (Brih. Up. iii 7, z).

By the time of the Brahmanas the thesis of the correspondence of microcosm and macrocosm, defined by images of thread or rope, is fully worked out. The ritual myth of Prajapati defines the process of creation (of unification and articulation). After the worlds, the gods and living beings have been produced, Prajapati becomes ‘unstrung’. His reconstruction is symbolically expressed by the building of a fire altar. ‘With his joints unstrung he is incapable of standing up and the gods put them together again by means of sacrifice.’ The priest periodically repeats the action of the gods, reuniting Prajapati ‘totally and entirely’. In an episode in the Sarabhanga Jataka (v 130) the Bodhissatta Jotipala (Keeper of Light) stands in the centre of a field where a post has been erected at each of the four corners; he ties a thread to the neck of his arrow and with a single shot penetrates all four posts, the arrow passing a second time through the head of the first post and returning to his hand. Thus he ‘sews’ all things to himself by means of a single thread.

Further, the Sun binds all worlds to itself by means of a thread; the worlds ‘are attached to the Sun by the four points of the compass’ (Shatapatha Brahmana vi 7). The Sun is ‘well-meshed’ since it sews together the days and the nights (ix 4, i, 8).

We also find the thread as a binding or inhibiting power. Varuna and Vritra, as well as the gods of death, are Masters of Bonds. They tie up and paralyze living beings; they bind the dead. Vritra imprisons the waters. But Varuna can join with Indra to loosen and release human beings. Indra also releases the waters shut up by Vritra in the hollow of the mountain. The gods have ‘the power to bind and loose’: Matthew xvi 19. (Yoga denotes an action or process of binding; the root yuj, join, is found also in the Latin jungere, jugum, join, yoke. The yukta is the unified man.)

The thread plays a key in the basic Hindu marriage rite and in the inauguration of the Brahmin. ‘All marriages under Hindu custom are performed by the husband tying a thread round the bride’s neck.’ The sacred prostitutes of south India, the devadasis, are dedicated to their profession by a symbolic thread marriage. If we turn to the Chittagong hilltribes we find the Khyoung bridal pair tied together with a new-spun thread. The Chukma are bound with a muslin scarf, and, while being tied, they feed one another, their hands being guided, among much hilarity, by the bridesmaid and the best man. That is, their ritual aspect as infants is stressed to bring out the navel-string force of the scarf that ties and links them; they are being newly born.

In the Deccan at the foundation of a new village, mother earth was first worshipped, then the headman and Brahman recited incantations, winding a cotton thread smeared with red lac round the site, or pouring a stream of milk round the bounds. Here we see maiden-castle circuiting, and indeed all customs of beating the bounds have at root the same desire to enclose an area both practically and ritually. The fact that the red thread can have as its substitute milk brings out the way in which both are related to the mother’s anatomy. We see here also the basis of the many legends of how a large area was gained by a trick: the ‘area covered by a hide’ turns out to be the area enclosed by the hide-thread. In north India at Hoshangabad we again find the red thread used for a ritual control of the flow of spirit force. At the end of sowing each cultivator built a little shrine; at the ends two posts of a certain wood were set up, with leaves round the top (as in the hut set up for a marriage), and these were tied to the thatch with red thread. Red thread was also tied round the horns of the cattle.

A Lepcha of Maria Basti declared: ‘If in a dream a man sees a thread fall down towards him from heaven, he must read this sign as an order from heaven to become a shaman [Bongthing or Mun]. Those chosen in this way must obey and devote themselves to the shamanist function. It’s possible that a man may see a thread descend on another. In this case he must tell his dreams to the man in question, who must obey the summons. If, however, someone cuts the thread when it’s falling on a chosen person, the latter will die suddenly.’

We may add here a marriage rite of the East Indies among matrilinear folk, where the husband has to be adopted into the wife’s kindred. Seven women, who include the bride’s mother (or if she is dead, the aunt) take small torches and go round the man seven times. The mother has on her head a flat bamboo-basket with twenty-one small lights made of dhatura fruits. The women sprinkle water and blow shell-trumpets, crying the hymeneal Ulu-ulu. Then the lights are thrown over the man’s head, to fall at his back. The basket is set before him and the wife’s mother stands in it. She touches his brow with water, paddy, dhurba grass, betel and aleca nut, white mustard-seed, curds, white sandal-paste, vermilion, looking-glass, comb, bits of clay from the Ganges’ bed, a yak’s tail, etc., while the others cry Ulu-ulu. The man’s height is measured with a thin thread, which the mother eats in a bit of plaintain. She then puts a weaver’s shuttle between his folded hands, ties them with thread, and calls on him, now bound hands and feet, to bleat like a sheep in token of submission. Finally she touches his breast and turns the key.

At healing sessions of the Pahang Negritos of the Malay Peninsula, the shaman or halk holds in his fingers threads made of palmleaves or very fine cords. These threads stretch to the Bonsu, the sky-god who lives above the seven stages of heaven and is thought to have dropped them down; at the end of the session Bonsu raises the threads up again. The seven-staged heaven is of Indian origin, but the thread image has immemorial roots.

The powerful and rich relation of Buddhism to tree-cults deserves a long analysis. In Ceylon the Tree of Buddha (ficus ruminalis) is a sacred object in every Buddhist monastery. Ritual ‘games of gods’ are still played. People climb two sapu trees which incarnate a god and a goddess. The Tree of Buddha is a milk-tree; and every important moment of his life is connected with a tree. Yet the tree is clearly a mother-deity; in ritual the king pours milk over it.[420]

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5 . Africa

Here the sky-ascent is often achieved by means of a spider-thread; and since this thread is identified with the thread of the shamanist spirit journey, the spider turns into a culture hero. Thus, in Loango he has a ladder up to heaven, down which he brings fire. In one version the wind tosses on high the thread spun by the spider; the woodpecker climbs up and pecks holes (stars) in the sky; then man climbs up and gets fire. The Burotze (E. Africa) say that Niambe made animals and man, but man kept killing the animals; Niambe resurrected them, but at last, losing nerve, he climbed to heaven on a spider-web. The Louyi (Upper Zambesi) say that Nyambe the creator lost his nerve on seeing how men imitated all he did or made, so he climbed away up the spider-web. The Soubiya say that the highgod Leza was once a very strong man, who span a spider-web and climbed up to heaven; others tried to follow, but the thread broke and they fell, so they put out the spider’s eye (spiders being thought to be blind).

Other African tales tell of ascent or descent by string, rope or chain, without introducing the spider. The Tshy-speakers of the Gold Coast say that once there was sky and earth, but no men; rain came, then a great chain was let down, with seven men hanging on it; they had been created by the sky-god and were the first men. The Fo (W. Africa) say that in a great famine all the beasts grew lean but the dwarf-antelope, whose mother was aloft with the highgod Mawu; each day she let down a rope and the antelope climbed up to browse in heaven; the other beasts, watching, at last detected the trick; then they too tried to climb up, but the mother felt their weight and cut the rope. The Upotos [Upper Congo] say that in the days before Libanza, highgod and resurrector of the gods, two sisters lived in a tall tree. They were fine singers and a long string hung from their tree, so that those wanting a song gave a pull. The sisters had some adventures, then Libanza came along. The rest of the tale does not concern us here; but the tree and string were clearly cosmic, for the folk tell of Libanza’s great beard like a staircase, which the people climbed on visits to him. A Tjonga song (E. Africa) shows how familiar the idea of thread-ascent was: ‘O how I’d like to plait a string and go up to heaven. I’d go there and find rest.’ A Masai story recounts how highgod Engai intended to make various gifts to primal man; he bade the man sacrifice a calf (for the priest), tie up the meat in a hide, and then tie a bit outside the door of the hut; then fire was to be made and meat thrown in. Engai let cattle down from the sky, but they rubbed and bumped against the hut-walls where the man was ritually hidden. He cried aloud and rushed out. Engai rebuked him, ‘You’ll receive no more because you were surprised.’ The man found that someone had cut the hide-strip and that the cutting was the reason no more cattle came down from heaven. This story is confused, but deals with some sort of trance rite during which contact is achieved with the spirit world, from which various benefits are got. The breaking of the ritual taboo of silence and seclusion is equated with the cutting of the string; communion with the spirit world is lost.

In the Loanga area the Bavili equate rainbow and navel-string. ‘Luayi: the umbilical cord’. As Xama Luayi it is the protecting beneficent rainbow, so that as a power it may mean protection, maternal love, sustenance. Further, they equate rainbow and snake. The sacred Xama snake is seldom seen save as a part of the rainbow. The natives say it is huge and lives in the forest; if it is killed, the rain will not fall; pieces of it (probably talc) are at times found and highly prized. The sacred snake Nlimba grows into the sacred snake Ndundo, which in turn becomes Xama Luayi, the delivering rainbow that drives away the evil Xama Ngonzola. The six rainbow colours are equated with six rainbow snakes.

Among the Loanga a couple doing penance are taken into the sanctuary of the earth-god. The priest traces a circle round them with iron, then he tethers a cock to the woman’s ankle, a hen to the man’s. He watches how the fowls behave as they approach one another, and draws omens as to the future fortune of the guilty pair.

At Blantyre, Central Africa, if an ordeal is to be carried out by proxy (god or fowl), the proxy is tied by string to the accused. In Kenya in an ordeal the accused purges himself by oath while sitting on a sheep stomach draped with sheep entrails. If he swears falsely, he expects instant death. (We may compare the oath of Helen’s suitors.) When a child is born among the Chuka of E. Africa, a mime is enacted to make it seem the child had really been produced by a goat. A goat is killed, the skin is spread on the mother’s legs; the baby is wrapped in it, then snatched out by old women, who give the trill-cry usual at a birth. At times the goat’s intestines are tied round the mother’s waist and cut at the moment when the child is lifted out of the goatskin.

A Yoruba custom is to bury a sacrifice with chain attached. A piece of the chain’s end sticks out above ground. The person on whose behalf the sacrifice was offered sleeps on the spot, secure of the required protection. The chain gives direct contact with the underworld. Among the Hausa, to gain a sick person the maximum value from a sacrifice, a ‘common method was to tie a piece of cotton or string to the patient, the other end being made fast to the victim to be sacrified’. Among the Basoga of E. Africa, if a child is ‘proved’ illegitimate at its naming rite or the test of the sacred meal, the mother is tied to a post in the house till she confesses who the real father is. The man is brought. He and she are stripped naked and a wild gourd-vine is tied round the waist of each. The woman stands with her legs wide apart and the man crawls through. He rises and perhaps confesses. If he denies his guilt, he takes the woman’s breast and says, ‘Shall I suck?’ If he is innocent and she dares him to suck, she will die at once; if he is guilty and sucks, he will die of her milk. However, if she dares him, they are all so horrified that they generally kill him at once without waiting to see the result of the suck. In Uganda the navel-string is actually used as a medium of contact with the spirit world; when a king dies, a special temple is built to house his jawbone and navel-string, so that a prophet may keep up intercourse with his spirit. Among some tribes the medicine-man puts on his head a bundle of hay or grass; the inflowing spirit force pulls him about till it flings him at the guilty man.[421]

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6. North America

The Sia Indians of New Mexico say that the spider created all things; he lived underground, where he made fire by rubbing. In the end the coyote stole the fire despite the guards (snake, cougar, bear) at the three doors. The Tolowa of California say that after the Flood only a pair of human beings were left, without fire; the spider wove a gossamer balloon and a long rope; he let the balloon rise to the moon. The moonfolk were suspicious, but the spider persuaded them that he merely wanted to gamble. Then while they were all playing, his friend the snake climbed the rope and stole fire. The Cherokees tell how various animals tried to get fire, which the Thunderbird had sent down into a hollow sycamore on an island; after many failures the water-spider span a thread and wove it into a bowl which she fastened to her back and used for carrying a firecoal.

An Iroquois tale tells of a hero who sets off in quest of the daughter of a neighbouring chief. His uncle, under whose tutelage he is, brings out ‘a curious thing made of coloured string and elk-hair of deep red, about a foot long. “I shall keep this by me,” he says, “and as long as you are doing well it will hang as it is; but if you are in danger, it will come down of itself almost to the ground; and if it does reach the ground, you will die.”’ Here the string becomes a sort of external soul; when it touches the earth the life in it will run out (back into the mother). The birth-rite is reversed.

Among the Red Indians as among Melanesians, Malays, ancient and later Europeans, a common instrument of divination was a thread with an object (eg a ring) at the end. The movement transmitted to the thread seemed to make the latter a living attachment to the body. Sometimes the weight of the object was involved. Among the Chuckchi the diviner tied the thong to a corpse, asked his question, and lifted the thong. If the object grew light, the answer was yes.[422]

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7. Polynesia

Here we find the thread motif in a form equating girdle and rainbow, with the ritual actualization in the contests of kite-flying, in which are mingled religion, sport and meteorological lore. Thus, a myth from the Harvey Islands, with variant at Raratonga, tells one of the many tales of the hero Maui in the underworld. He notes that his father mysteriously departs every morning, and tucks the end of the latter’s girdle under his body, so that he wakes when it is pulled away. He hears his father address the main house-pillar: ‘O pillar, open up, so that Manushifare may enter and descend to the netherworld [Avaiki].’ During the day the children play at hide-and-seek, and Maui takes advantage of the game to say the charm to the pillar and slip off to the underworld. After meeting a blind old woman (his grandmother), whose sight he restores, he comes on his grandfather Tangaroa and sets about learning the fire secret from him, pestering him till he is shown the trick. A bird (the tern) takes part, holding the under-bit as they make fire by rubbing, till with the fire-stick Maui gives it the black marks that terns have by their eyes. The scared bird flies out through a hole into the upper-world, and Maui suggests to his grandfather that they fly. How? Maui says that flight is easy, and soars up. Tangaroa is charmed, and at Maui’s suggestion dons the Girdle (the Rainbow) which enabled Maui to rise aloft. He soars over the tallest coconut tree; but Maui has hold of the end of the thread, the Girdle, and tugs it. The old god comes crashing down to his doom, though later Maui resurrects him.

The Girdle appears in a similar role in a tale about a girl and her brother who run away from a cruel mother and leap up into the sky. The girl is inseparable from her brother, hanging on to his girdle. The kite connection appears in the tale of the god Kane, who at times ascends in this form.

In New Zealand, when a dead chief was laid out, wisps of long toitoi grass were put in his hands. His friends held these wisps and were thus in direct contact with the dead man as they lamented and wafted his spirit up in a sky-ascent with their chants. ‘Open, you gates of the heavens — enter the first heaven, then enter the second heaven, and when you shall travel the land of the spirits and they shall say to you, “What does this mean?” say you, the winds of this our world have been torn from it in the death of the brave one...’

Among the Fijians bark-cloth is used to catch and secure gods and souls, and was often hung in temples as the path along which gods came down when they arrived to give oracles. The legend told how a god presented to a man of Matuku a snake which was the ancestor-god of the nobles of that island. The god tied on a piece of bark-cloth, saying: ‘Behold the cloth of sovereignty. If you take the snake and install a chief tie the cloth on his arm.’ The nobles followed the instructions; and ever since when installing a king of Yaroi they tie a piece of bark-cloth on his arm and leave it there four nights. Then the cloth is slipped off and the knot drawn tight. When the chief dies the cloth is buried with him. The god is thought to enter him along the cloth and is put inside him in the form of kava. The installation ritual, which takes the form of a death-rebirth (initiation), includes a drinking of ambrosia, a distribution of food and ritual bathing, for which a human victim is killed and after which comes noise and rejoicing; the chief drops his old name and is only called Lord and his title is used. People say, ‘Word has come from the Great House’: we may compare the title Pharaoh.

We may add a tale from Mono-Alu, Western Solomon Islands. Two children climb a tree to eat its fruit; they throw some down to an old woman, who eats so much that she dies. They cut out her genitals and give them to an old man to cook and eat; then they climb a tree and sing at him that he has eaten the genitals of a loa (that is, broken a taboo about near relations). He cuts the tree down, they take to another, and so on till they are on a kengere tree, where they call out to the Man in the Moon, Murila, who lets down a rope on which they climb to the sky. The old man sends various birds after them; one at last succeeds and brings them back in a basket. In another tree, the culture hero who makes canoes (he is the younger of two brothers) climbs a tree, gets up to the sky, and climbs back by a rope. FIe and his brother are stone-cooked; but the younger, by means of magic learned in the sky, does not die (survives the death-ordeal), unlike the elder brother.

The shaman of the Ona, one of the tribes of Tierra del Fuego, owns a magic rope, nearly three metres long, which he brings out of his mouth and makes vanish in a flash.[423]

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8. Witches

The witch or wizard, wherever they still have something of a place in a peasant community, can be described as the shaman at the last stage of vitality; the function has been largely broken down and the practitioner is a lost individual or at best an opponent in hopelessly archaic terms of existing religious and social systems. In the Shetlands ‘when a witch wanted to upset a boat or wreck a ship, she stood on her head and muttered, “Sweery, sweery, linkum-loo, do to them as I would do.” When she went to sea, she got into an eggshell and attached a lucky-line (a seaweed that grows like endless ropes) to a rock. The line she paid out as a spider does its thread. If the line was broken, she could not return to land.’ We see how it is that the spider fascinated folk concerned with the spirit journey; the fact that it somehow exuded the thread from its own body seemed to reflect the way in which the spirit-thread was thought to be produced. We understand more fully how Ariadne’s Thread was a part of herself. The spider, Arachne, in Greek legend was a Lydian weaver who boasted that she could outdo Athena; the latter appeared to her in the shape of an old woman and accepted her challenge to a contest; when Arachne started weaving pictures of the scandalous loves of the gods (while Athena wove pictures of persons punished for arousing the wrath of the gods), the goddess tore the offending web to shreds and beat Arachne with her batten. Arachne hanged herself and Athena turned her into a spider.

The Eskimos of Greenland tell how the south part of their island was joined on by two women in a kayak, who fastened a child’s hair to the lump while it was still separated, chanted incantations and pulled, while an old woman tried to hold the lump back with a sealskin thong. In the Faeroes two isolated cliffs rise out of the sound between Eysturoy and Streymoy; they are said to be a giant and his wife who came from Iceland to pull the Faeroes over. The giant stood in the sea while his wife was tying the rope to the hilltop; at that moment the sun rose and the light petrified them. In Lewis we learn that the Wickings conquered a part of France and tried to drag it off to Norway with a cable of heather, hemp, wool, woman hair. A bit broke off and became Ireland; then another bit became the Hebrides; then in a storm the cable parted and the remnant became Lewis. The Lapps have a tale of how Aniov Island lies where it does. Three shamans went off on an expedition to carry away part of Norway with all the reindeer, etc., on it; but their mother dreamed of their return and ran out of her hut with loud cries of joy. She thus broke the taboo imposing silence during the spirit exploit; so she and her village were turned to stone and the ravished bit of Norway stopped in mid-sea. (Compare the Masai tale given above.)

The witches of Europe had a string in some form or other as an essential part of their equipment. A witch burned at St Andrews in 1672, had a white cloth like a collar with many strings and many knots in the strings, and was quite assured that nothing could be done to her while she had the string on her person. The string, sometimes in garter form, was a kind of witch badge or token; and it seems that the ritual death for a witch was a strangling with string. (Compare the Hanged Heroines.)[424]

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9. The string that binds or bars

At Mantinea in ancient Arkadia there was a shrine of Poseidon, which it was taboo to enter. Aipytos, son of Hippothos, cut the thread which barred the way, entered, and was stricken blind by the blast of force from the shrine. Here the string holds the force in, instead of acting as a line of communication. The Bavili made a witch impotent by using a hippopotamus tooth; the prince chewed kola and spat on the tooth, which was then bound with the string-plant; after that the witch had no power to stop him from propagating his image. In China to stop rain (considered an act of the earthgod) the god was tied up with red cord passed ten times round him or his altar; an eclipse was stopped by a red cord round the earth-mother’s altar. The Paphlagonians thought the god was bound and tied up in winter. The customs in which knots are used in some apotropaic or binding way are vast in number. We may take as one example a Fijian custom of delaying the sun by tying a reedknot. We may compare the net said to have been hung in the Peruvian Andes from tower to tower to catch the sun. A widespread custom is to tie a string about the wrist or loins of a woman in childbirth to stop her soul from escaping. The breaking or removal of the thread may express a passage change, the movement into a new life. In the Abyssinian coronation ritual the Negus is held up near the church by a cord which girls hold across the way. They thrice ask who he is, and he answers. At the third interrogation he cuts the thread and the girls cry out that he is truly their king, the king of Sion. We may compare the tale of Alexander cutting the Gordian knot, thereby proving his imperial right.

An African tale, of the Hausa, combines the binding and the loosening motifs, plus the link with weaving. Two lovers married but could not consummate the marriage. After fifteen days’ failure, the girl’s aunt (the mother being dead) recalled that the girl had been ‘tied’ by a weaver when young. So the girl was taken to the house of another weaver, where she walked round the loom. After that all went well.[425]

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10. Hair

We have noticed how at times the thread is seen as a hair. For instance, an African hero made the spirit-ascent by climbing the highgod’s beard. The woman’s hair or thread, by which the hero climbs from a pit or up a tower in a large number of widespread folktales, belongs to our series. In the more primitive versions the link with the otherworld journey is plain. The pit leads directly into the underworld or the hair-climb shows traces of a sky-ascent. Thus in a poem of the Kysyl Tatars, Sudäi Märgän, the hero, is trapped in a deep pit. His wife, finding him, sends his horse to fetch the sister of a being who lives on heaven’s bounds. This woman has very long hair, and by means of it the hero is drawn up out of the pit. The rope on which the hero in the great Bear’s-Son cycle descends into the underworld derives from our thread series.

Sometimes the hair is guide or key to the otherworld. A tale of Zante describes how a giant’s hair on touching the mountain opens the rocks and lets the giant into his underworld home. Another Zante tale tells how the hero finds two hairs from the three-headed snake he is fated to subdue; at the right moment he binds them on his hands; they draw him straight to the seashore over against the island where the monster has his lair; he crosses the water and kills the monster. In a Serbian tale, which makes fun of the motif, a character manages to descend from the sky-world by cutting off his hair and tying one hair to another as he goes down.

The binding aspect appears in the large series of tales in which a witch gains power over her victims (generally the hero and his faithful animals) by laying a hair on each of them. At the spelling moment the hair turns into a mighty cable and acts as a transmitting line for sending a petrifying force into man or animal. It is not the victim’s hair, but the witch’s, which is used, so we are not dealing with a matter of sympathetic magic in which any part of the former’s body could be used against him. For the rites lying behind the tales we may take the thumie of the Australians, a charmed hair-rope, which caused deep helpless sleep. The Musquatie women in their customs reveal a mixture of sympathetic magic and idea of the hair or its band as a special medium of spirit flow; the band as navel-string has a strong lover-power and becomes an external soul. The women use a narrow braided band to tie their hair up. ‘This, though a talisman when first worn, becomes something infinitely more sacred and precious, being transfused with the essence of her soul; anyone gaining possession of it has her for an abject slave if he keeps it, and kills her if he destroys it’. A woman will go from a man she loves to a man she hates if he has contrived to possess himself of her hairstring; and a man will forsake wife and children for a witch who has touched his lips with her hair-string. The hair-string is made for a girl by her mother or grandmother, and decorated with a luck pattern, and it is also prayed over by its maker and a shaman. The braiding or patterning of the band links this custom with the magical effects of weaving. The hair-string becomes a woman’s fate.

The beliefs and customs of Hungarian gypsies show a connection between spider-thread, hair, and fertility magic. The gypsies gather the floating spider-threads in the autumn fields and make their husbands eat them as sources of fertilizing potence, while they murmur incantations to the Keshalyi or Fate whose sorrow at this season for her lost mate (the dying son-lover of the earth) has made her tear out her hair. The threads are her hair; the incantation attributes powers of impregnation to them, and invites the goddess to the baptism (where she would appear as the birth-fate, the birth-fairy). Among the Transylvanian gypsies the Leila tribe ascribe their origin to a king’s daughter who was driven forth by her brother and his envious wife. In her wanderings she was pitied by the Three Keshalyi (we thus find the triad of the Moirai). One of the Keshalyi dropped some of her hairs, which the girl ate, becoming pregnant with a son, the tribal ancestor. Among the gypsies of South Hungary the Keshalyi and her hair are associated with the spirit journey. The hero gets some of the goddess’s hair, winning her favour by combing her locks. He is thus enabled to gain the rings from the horns of the black cattle of the Moon-King, the white cattle of the Sun-King, the yellow cattle of the Cloud-King.

The equation of navel-string and spider-thread is shown in the customs of the Kamchatka women, who first eat a spider to get pregnant, then eat the child’s navel-string to become pregnant a second time.[426]

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11. Belt and girdle

Folktale does not lack episodes in which the hero is aided by a self-acting rope; and the girdle, the usual form taken by the saving thread of the maiden, has a wide history in custom and belief, especially in fertility aspects, eg the kestos of Aphrodite. In the youth initiations of the Hungarian peasantry the central part is played by a belt, which is carefully handed down from generation to generation. We have seen Maui’s girdle as the rainbow-thread of sky-ascent. Also the girdle is the symbol of the Maiden Castle, the mother-goddess in her aspects as the inviolable city-guardian, as the city itself.

Ariadne in the Greek myth guides and helps the hero who kills the monster; without her he would not have succeeded, but it is he who does the crucial deed. However, the maiden alone with her thread can confront and defeat the monster; and this theme comes out clearly in a culture, such as our medieval one, which lays stress on the virtue of chastity. In pageantry we find the Maiden leading the Dragon with her girdle or thread, often in combination with St George. Voragine in the Golden Legand says that after his victory the saint bade the maid put her girdle round the monster, which then became tame and let itself be led into the city to be killed. The monster is thus twice subdued, by combat and by the thread. Two trails of myth have coalesced, or, from another angle, the unity of myth in the Ariadne story has broken into two. At Norwich the Dragon was led by Saint Margaret; she had taken one of the leading roles in the Christianization of dragon-taming legends. Here, at Norwich, she was linked with Saint George, with whom she had no connection except a common taste for subduing dragons and who was ordered in 1408 to ‘make a conflict with the Dragon’. In Provence at festivals the local monster, the Tarasque, was led in captivity by the maid, with no hero at all. At Tarascon on Whit Monday the girl miming Sainte Marthe was dressed in white with a blue veil; she carried a vessel of holy water in one hand and led the Tarasque with a silken thread.[427]

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12. Measurement of thread or stick

In myths of the Malekulan death ritual we find the dead man dependent on a cane, cut to his body length, which is buried with him. He is thought to sling a sacrificed fowl on this ‘measuring-stick’, gnaw the bark of a certain magic tree, walk through the cave of the dead to the shore, cross the river by striking it with the cane and parting the waters, meet the female guardian, and be ferried over. In medieval times (and still in some Roman Catholic countries) cures for sickness were sought by measuring a saint’s body with string or fillet, then passing the string round the sufferer. Simon de Montfort was reputed to have caused many miraculous cures in this way. Pope Clement VIII was said to have given his sanction to a measurement of the ‘true and correct length of Our Lord Jesus Christ’ found in the Holy Sepulchre, and copies of it were current in Germany still in the nineteenth century. In Germany, till the late medieval period, ease of birth throes was sought by measuring a wick the length of Saint Sixtus’ image and then wearing it as a girdle. The same principle appears in the practice, still used, of making a votive candle of the same size and weight as the vower. In Mexico headaches were cured by the measurement of the head of Saint Francis of Magdalena, stomach aches by the measurement of his stomach, and so on. Other images have been similarly used.

Here instead of the thread linking two objects or persons, it is used to store up spirit energy on a measurement principle; the energy can then be transferred. In a sense the measured thread becomes an external soul of the person measured. By a similar line of reasoning a disease can be transferred by means of a measurement and thus got rid of. The settlers in Virginia and Pennsylvania measured children for the disease called Gobacks with a yarn-string. They hung the string on a gate-hinge (a passage point) in the presence of the child’s parents, and the disease decayed with the string.[428]

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13. Some conclusions

It is then clearly not enough to take customs connected with a child’s navel-string as meaning that that object was merely an external soul or a substitute (part for whole) for the child himself. ‘This idea explains a common set of beliefs concerned with the placenta, umbilical cord and the caul. In Amboina, the placenta is hidden away in a tree; similarly in the Babar Islands, where on their way to the tree, the women carry weapons, “because evil spirits might, if they got hold of the placenta, make the child ill”.’ In the Watabela Islands the placenta is buried under a tree. The remains of the umbilical cord are preserved, to be used as medicine for the child. In the islands Loti, Moa and Lakor, the child’s navel-string is kept, and used by him later as an amulet in war or when travelling. The Central Australians work the navel-string into a necklace and the child wears it round its neck. ‘This makes it grow, keeps it quiet, and averts illness.’ The connection between these appurtenances and the idea of the external soul is also seen in the following cases. The Fijians buried the umbilical cord with a coconut, the latter being intended to grow up to the time the child reached maturity. It is interesting to compare the modern custom of planting a tree as a record of the birth of a child. The navel-string and the placenta are in South Celebes called the ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ of the child.

Certainly in such cases the idea of an external soul is strong, but the idea of a force conductor is never far from any of the thread systems. With the Fijians there is a complex union of child, navel-string and tree; the idea of external soul is linked with the idea of union with natural forces. The tree is both an external soul and a nature-guardian. In a creation myth from Indochina a creeper plays the part of the navel-string or thread connecting two worlds; when it was cut, blood poured out, with different colours; from the black blood as it splashed on earth was born wildfowl; from the red, deer; from the yellow, a monster tiger who was hunted down in a myth of the great-hunt type.

We may summarize our inquiry then by saying that while the navel-string is clearly of primary importance in the building of the thread symbol, it becomes linked with many other images of growth and interconnection — liana, tree, bough — and its magical force is much increased by the thread of spinning and weaving, which in turn is linked with the spider-web. It appears again and again in rituals of birth, marriage, death, in initiations and ordeals, bringing about an enclosed space of force or liberating force along its channel, uniting as in marriage or providing the bridge between life and life, between life and death or death and life. It thus played an important part in the shamanist spirit journey, directly, or in myths of the culture hero who raids the otherworld for a bride or some new tool or food-product. The labyrinth reveals its power of both connecting and separating; it links this world and the spirit-world, but by complex pattern it bars out those who lack the clue, the guiding thread. (Our very word clue, clew, means both a ball of thread and a guiding principle or line.)

There can then be no doubt that Ariadne’s thread and labyrinth belong to the series investigated and that to see them in this focus helps us to grasp their full meaning as nothing else can. It also helps to illuminate Helen’s fillets, the threads hanging from the tree. In these threads an image or a mask may be caught; but their primary function is to provide a free and safe flow of fertilizing energy between man and nature. The examples given could be vastly extended.[429]

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14. The Chain of Zeus

We see that the chain or rope by which Zeus hangs Hera or by which he defies the other gods to pull him down, even if touched in the poem by a note of Ionian burlesque, has behind it the very ancient series of myths and rituals that surround the shaman in his spirit-journey. (No doubt there is also a reference to the tug-of-war game played by two teams at the opposite ends of a rope, which was known to the Greeks; but underlying the game is ritual and ritual myth.) So, when the Greeks proceeded to find in the thread of Zeus a symbol of the bonds that hold the universe together in its complex and living unity, they were laying hold of a genuine element in the primitive image and developing it with a far greater philosophic consciousness, a more systematic and rigorous application of its premises. Already in the Rhapsodic Theogony (an Orphic poem which in substance may go back in this matter as far as the sixth century BC) the possibilities of the image are realized. Zeus asks Night: ‘Mother, highest of deities, divine Night, tell me how I shall set up my proud empire over the immortals? How by my efforts shall the All be One and the Parts distinct? Surround all things with the divine Aither, then put in the centre the sky and the boundless earth and the sea and the constellations that crown the sky. But when you have set a solid bond round all things, tying a Golden Chain to the Aither...’

But whether or not the Orphics had begun to develop the idea by the end of the archaic era, it appears fully fledged in Plato. (The Pythagoreans as well as the Orphics may have early exploited the image.) In the Theaitetos Sokrates states that ‘as long as the sun and the heavens go round in their orbits, all things human and divine are and are preserved, but if they were chained up and their motions ceased, all things would be destroyed, and, as the saying goes, turned upside down.’ In the Republic without mentioning Homer, Plato develops the idea of a pillar or axis of light, ‘very like the rainbow’, stretching across sky and earth, ‘a bond that binds the heavens as the under-girths that bind a ship’, and holding together all the revolving spheres. Further, other Greek writers saw the golden chain as the planets, or the four elements, or Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, or Heimarmene (Fate). Macrobius saw in the golden chain of I comer the symbol of the way that ‘everything follows in continuous succession and deteriorates stage by stage from the first to the last degree....From the supreme deity to the lowest life everything is united and bound by mutual and for ever indissoluble links’. Hence the golden chain ‘hanging in God’s hand from the vault of heaven and descending to earth’. Neoplatonists with their intuitions of an organic universe of hierarchical levels seized on to the symbol: Olympiodoros or Proklos. The Pseudo-Dionysios, the Areopagite, used the image to express the way men hauled themselves aloft by the rope of prayer. (A little Rosicrucian book, Aurea corona Homeri, was important in forming the youthful Goethe’s thought.)

In ancient Greece, then, as in India, the idea or image of the spirit-thread linking all things had deep and enduring effects.

For the cord as the guiding principle in individual life we may take Ploutarch’s On the Daimōn of Sokrates where he says that the soul, psyche, is submerged in the body, ‘but the uncorrupted part is called nous’, it ‘swings above the head, touching the top of the skull; it is like a cord, which must be held and with which one must guide the lower part of the spirit for as long as it proves obedient and is not overcome by the appetites of the flesh’.[430]

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If you enjoyed reading Helen of Troy by Jack Lindsay, you might be interested in Joan of Arc by Edward Lucie-Smith, also published by Endeavour Press.

Extract from Joan of Arc by Edward Lucie-Smith

I

On the morning of 30 May 1431 Joan of Arc was burnt in the Place du Vieux-Marche in Rouen. Her end was witnessed by ‘an almost innumerable throng of spectators’, (1) perhaps as many as ten thousand people. They included not only most of the citizens of the town, but others drawn from the surrounding countryside. A contemporary historian says that many people came to Rouen for this purpose as if to a public show. (2)

Though executions were, at this time, always a form of public entertainment, the size of the crowd indicated not only the curiosity aroused by the personality of Joan herself, self-styled or styled as she claimed by her voices ‘Jeanne la Pucelle, fille de Dieu’, (3) but the efficiency of the English occupying power. Tried as a heretic, Joan had made a public abjuration of her errors in the cemetery of the church of Saint Ouen on 24 May. She had then been condemned to perpetual imprisonment. On the following Sunday, 28 May, she was found to have relapsed, and the next day the ecclesiastical court responsible for her trial had met again to condemn her.

The authorities concerned must have made certain that the news of her condemnation and impending execution spread quickly. They wanted Joan’s death to be witnessed by as many people as possible — the ignominous end of the supposed miracle-worker who had raised the siege of Orleans, who was held to be responsible for the rout of an English army at Patay, and who had led their enemy, Charles of Valois, to the anointing and crowning at Rheims which seemed to legitimize his claim to the French throne.

Even though ten thousand pairs of eyes saw the flames envelop Joan where she stood chained to the stake on the high plaster scaffold, this was not enough. When her cries ceased ‘the fire was raked back and her naked body shown to all the people ... to take away any doubts from people’s minds. When they had stared long enough at her dead body bound to the stake, the executioner got a big fire going about her carcass, which was soon burned up.’ (4) Afterwards her ashes were thrown into the Seine.

It ought to have been, as it was meant to be, consignment to oblivion. Joan had excited popular wonder since her arrival at Charles VII’s court at Chinon, in the spring of 1429. Her reputation had been a little tarnished by her failure to take Paris, as she promised to do. It had been further dimmed by her capture at Compiègne, while it was being besieged by the armies of the Duke of Burgundy. For just over a year before her death she had been a prisoner, first in Burgundian, then in English hands. During the early part of her captivity, she had made several attempts to escape, all of which had failed.

When she was transferred to English custody, in return for a substantial sum of money, her fate became inevitable, though both she and her judges sometimes seemed reluctant to recognize this. The position was summed up by the Earl of Warwick’s remark to her doctors, at a time when she was sick in prison: ‘The King does not wish, for anything in the world, that she die a natural death; for he holds her dear, having dearly bought her.’ (5) Yet, even on the day of her execution, there were signs that the English plan had misfired. The majority of the spectators were greatly moved. Even if they had not approved of Joan before, they now felt, a movement of sympathy towards her. Some of her judges wept. One said, as she died, to the man standing next to him: ‘Please God that my soul be in the place where I believe this woman to be.’ (6) And it was afterwards reported that the executioner, Geoffrey Thérage, who had been plying his gruesome trade in the city since the year 1407, went that afternoon to the convent of the Friars’ Preacher, where he saw two monks who had been amongst the most sympathetic members of the ecclesiastical tribunal. ‘I greatly fear that I am damned,’ he said to them, ‘for I have burned a holy woman.’ (7) An English soldier, heard in confession at the same time, claimed that he had ‘seemed to see’, at the moment when Joan expired, a white dove come out of the pyre and fly towards France. (8) Other witnesses alleged that they had seen the name Jesus written in the flames. (9)

Soon the rumour began to be put about that Joan had somehow escaped burning. In the 1430s an impostor appeared, using the name of Dame des Armoises. She visited Orleans, and was ‘very honourably received’. (10) A Norman chronicler was sufficiently doubtful of the true facts of the matter to remark, at the conclusion of his account of Joan’s career: ‘Finally, they burned her publicly, or another woman like her: concerning which many people were and still are of different opinions.’ (11)

Today it is clear that the execution with which the English authorities had intended to write finis to a troublesome career, was, instead, the true start of one of the most considerable legends in European history. Like most legends it appears in a variety of guises. The Joan of Voltaire, the Joan of Schiller, the Joan of Michelet, the Joan of Anatole France and the Joan of George Bernard Shaw are all very different from one another. In modern historical literature she has been presented as everything from a great Christian mystic and visionary to the leader of a secret and unorthodox religion. The notion that she escaped burning persists; and some writers have been attracted by the idea that she was not a mere peasant girl at all, but a royal bastard with Valois blood in her veins. Theories of this kind seem to me unprovable.

What is certain is the fact that Joan existed. Her existence is vouched for not only by contemporary chronicles, but by two primary documents which form the basis for any assessment of her life and character. The first of these is the so-called Trial of Condemnation, which forms the record of the proceedings before the ecclesiastical court at Rouen in 1431. The second document, the Trial of Rehabilitation, is more complex. It is the record of three linked investigations, which were designed to quash the proceedings held before Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, and Joan’s other judges.

The Trial of Rehabilitation began with two preliminary inquiries: one held before Guillaume Bouillé, a former rector of the University of Paris and Canon of Noyon, in 1450; and another before the Papal Legate, Cardinal d’Estouteville, and Jean Bréhal, the Grand Inquisitor of France, which took place in 1452. This was followed, in 1455-6, by an inquiry on a much larger scale, begun before Jean Jouvenel des Ursins, Archbishop of Rheims, Guillaume Chartier, Bishop of Paris, and Richard de Longueil, Bishop of Coutances. Bouillé heard only seven witnesses; d’Estouteville, twenty-one; and in the course of the final inquiry depositions were taken from over a hundred: in Joan’s district of origin, and in Orleans, Paris and Rouen. One witness made a deposition in Lyons. There is, of course, a considerable overlap between the preliminary inquiries and the final one, both as far as the actual witnesses are concerned, and in the content of their depositions. In the record of the final inquiry, which forms the true Trial of Rehabilitation, we find testimony from members of every social class, ranging from peasants to a royal duke. All had known Joan personally, and all were asked to tell what they remembered of her.

From these two documents we can trace the basic outline of Joan’s life: her birth at Domrémy, on the river Meuse, which was then one of the frontiers of France; her visit to Vaucouleurs to seek the help of Robert de Baudricourt, the captain of the town and the principal royal representative in the region; her journey to Chinon to see King Charles VII, whom she insisted on calling ‘the dauphin’ because (though his father was dead) he had not yet been crowned and anointed. From Chinon Joan went to Poitiers, where an inquiry into her bona fides took place. This having been carried out to the satisfaction of the investigators, she proceeded soon thereafter to the city of Orleans, then besieged by the English. With her was a royal army. Orleans was relieved in a way which many people thought miraculous, and this success was followed by the taking of Jargeau and Beaugency, and the rout of an English army at Patay.

Joan then persuaded Charles VII to go to Rheims for the ceremony which, in her view, would make him a true king. This object was safely accomplished, and a number of important places were taken on the way, among them the city of Troyes where, in 1420, France had been handed over to the English by a treaty between Henry V of England, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and Charles’s own mother Queen Isabeau, acting on behalf of her mad husband Charles VI.

After the coronation ceremony at Rheims, Joan wanted to make an attempt on Paris, and Charles VII reluctantly agreed to let her do this. The attack failed, Joan was wounded, and her credit at court was permanently damaged. The royal army retreated towards the Loire. In the winter of the same year, 1429, Joan undertook another campaign, this time against the places held by the famous mercenary captain Perrinet Gressart. She succeeded in storming Saint Pierre-le-Moiltier, but failed against La Charite, which was Gressart’s principal stronghold.

The next March, Joan departed from Sully-sur-Loire, where Charles was staying with his favourite, Georges de La Trémoille. She did so without the king’s permission, and her aim was to campaign once more against the English and the Burgundians. She went to the town of Lagny-sur-Marne. There, with the help of a small mercenary force under an Italian captain, she defeated and captured the Burgundian freebooter, Franquet d’Arras. She then decided to try and relieve the city of Compiègne, which had just been invested by Anglo-Burgundian forces. Making a sally from Compiègne, she was pulled from her horse and captured by the men of Jean de Luxembourg, the ablest captain in the service of the Duke of Burgundy.

Jean de Luxembourg transferred his prisoner to the near-by castle of Beaulieu, and then, after she had made an attempt to escape, to his principal residence at Beaurevoir. Here Joan leapt from a tower and there is some dispute whether this was another attempt at escape or an attempted suicide. She survived her fall with little injury. Meanwhile, her captor was negotiating her sale to the English authorities in Normandy.

At the end of 1430 Joan was transferred to English custody at Rouen. Here she was tried for heresy and witchcraft by the ecclesiastical tribunal already mentioned. The trial began on 21 February 1431. On 24 May Joan made a public abjuration in the cemetery of the church of Saint-Ouen, and was taken back to her prison in Rouen castle. On 28 May she was found to have resumed male dress in her cell. On 29 May the court was re-convened and declared that she had relapsed into her former errors. Her execution followed.

According to Joan’s own account, she was about nineteen years old (12) at the time when her trial took place. This means that she was born in 1412 or 1413. We may even be able to fix the day and the approximate hour. Three days after the victory of Patay, Perceval de Boulainvilliers, one of Charles VII’s chamberlains and Seneschal of Berri, wrote an excited letter to the Duke of Milan, describing the personage of the moment. He says that she was born on the night of Epiphany, as the peasants celebrated in the fields, and as the cocks began to crow. (13) Her birth was thus at the time of the false dawn, about 5.30 a.m. on 6 January, as the revellers were stumbling home after their night of celebration. The place was the village of Domrémy.

Joan’s family had a place at the very centre of the social organization of the village. Her father, Jacques d’Arc, was born about 1375, and came from elsewhere. The general belief is that he was born at Ceffonds in Champagne. This was a little village dependent on the Abbey of Montier-en-Der. The serfs of this abbey had a tradition of rebellion against the monks, their overlords. They also had a traditional dislike of the English, who came into their orbit through the marriage of Blanche, widow of the last Count of Champagne, to Edmund, brother of Edward I. These facts have a certain resonance, if we take them in the context of Joan’s story.

Despite the fact that he was born elsewhere, Jacques d’Arc played an increasingly important part in village affairs. In 1420 he appears as one of the two lessors of the Château de l’Ile, a strongpoint upon an island in the Meuse, the river upon which Domrémy lay. During the troubled times through which France was passing, the villagers meant to use it as a place to shelter their livestock. In October 1423, when the villagers agreed to pay protection money to a local mercenary captain, Robert de Saarbruck, Jacques d’Arc signed as ‘doyen’, and was placed in rank immediately after the mayor and the sheriff. Among the ordinary tasks of the doyen were the command of the watch and keeping guard over prisoners. Such duties must have made him seem an important figure to a child during the anxious 1420s, and particularly so to a child who happened to be his own daughter. The doyen also collected taxes and saw to the verification of weights and measures.

By 1427 Jacques d’Arc was a man who carried enough authority in the affairs of the district to be appointed official representative of the people of Domrémy in a suit which had been brought before Robert de Baudricourt, captain of Vaucouleurs. Baudricourt was in effect the king’s viceroy, and the supreme power in the region where Domrémy lay.

Joan’s mother, Isabelle Romée or Isabelle de Vouthon, came from a village which lay immediately to the south-west of Domrémy. Isabelle’s origins were humble. Her brother, Jean de Vouthon, was a thatcher and tiler. Nevertheless another brother, Henri, was curé at Sermaize, which is close to Ceffonds. It may have been he who arranged the marriage between Jacques d’Arc and his sister. And it was apparently Isabelle who possessed a little property, both at Vouthon and in Domrémy where the couple lived. Despite repeated assertions by the witnesses at the Trial of Rehabilitation that Joan’s parents were ‘not rich’, they had about twenty hectares of land in and around Domrémy, of which twelve were arable, and the rest equally divided between pasture and woodland. Rather than living in the miserable earth-walled hovel which was the common habitation of peasants in many parts of France, they had a substantially built, if small, stone house which can still be seen today.

One of the most interesting things about Joan’s mother is her surname. Romée was the sobriquet given to those who had made the long pilgrimage to Rome, or at any rate an ambitious pilgrimage of some kind. Historians have usually asserted that Isabelle must have inherited it from her parents, or from some remoter ancestor. In this case, perhaps it came from the distaff side, as Joan told her judges that ‘in her country, girls bore the name of their mother’. (14) On the other hand, we do know that Isabelle had a taste for pilgrimages. Her immediate reaction to her daughter’s sensational departure for Chinon to see the king was to set out for Puy-en-Velay, (15) where the Jubilee of Puy was being celebrated, as it was whenever Good Friday coincided with the day of the Annunciation (25 March 1429). As it happens, there were special links between the diocese of Toul, in which Domrémy was situated, and the chapter of Notre Dame du Puy. But this can hardly have been Isabelle’s reason for going. What led her there must have been the fervour aroused by a place and a cult which were to the France of the fifteenth century what Lourdes is to our own time. Isabelle’s journey to Puy at this particular juncture makes one think of her as a woman who had been affected by the emotional currents which were sweeping through the religious life of the epoch. Joan was later to assert that ‘no one taught her her belief, unless it was her mother’. (16) The evidence we have thus seems to show that Joan’s parents were contrasted in character. Her father’s natural authority in the household would be reinforced by the official positions he assumed; while any emotion lacking from his character would be made up from the mother’s side.

When their daughter was born, Jacques and Isabelle chose numerous godparents for her. She may have had as many as seven godmothers and four godfathers altogether. This multiplicity was not at all uncommon at the time. The purpose, in part, was to make up for the lack of written records and for the high rate of mortality. But the godparents also served to bind the child to the community. One of Joan’s godmothers was the wife of the mayor; and one of her godfathers, Jean Morel, represented the people of Domrémy in their suit before Robert de Baudricourt at the same time as Jacques d’Arc himself. One of the few certain relics of Joan of Arc is the baptismal font at which she was held. This survives in the much-altered church at Domrémy: a simple, octagonal, stone basin, it must be the most ancient object there. Joan was not the first child of the Arc family to be brought to it, and she was not to be the last. She had two brothers and a sister who were older than herself, and she was followed by a younger brother.

The eldest brother, Jacquemin, plays no part in her story. He seems to have been almost grown up by the time she was born, and by 1425 he was living at Vouthon, probably working the land that came to him from his mother. Then — it is not certain in what order — came a sister, Catherine, and another brother, Jean. Catherine was married to Colin Le Maire, son of the mayor of the immediately neighbouring village of Greux, and died before Joan set out on her mission in 1429. Pierre, the youngest child in the family, born around 1413, was the member of it who took the most  substantial role, in the events which followed Joan’s departure from Domrémy. He accompanied her on her campaigns, and was captured with her on the fatal sortie from Compiègne.

Domrémy, the village in which Joan was born and in which she grew up, occupied a rather special position in the complicated political situation of the time. From the religious point of view, it depended from Greux, which contained the principal church. Greux, in turn, was attached to the bishopric of Toul, which was not a French see but one which belonged to the Holy Roman Empire. The feudal relationship was different. Domrémy lay on the very frontiers of the duchy of Lorraine — the river Meuse formed the boundary. Technically it was a part of the duchy of Bar, but in fact belonged to that portion which was called the Barrois mouvant because it ‘moved’ or depended directly from the French crown. Joan was thus, from her birth, a subject of the French king, ruled directly by the royal administration.

In practice Domrémy was administered from the nearby town of Vaucouleurs, although, to complicate matters still further, this applied to only a portion of the village. The southern part, which included the Château de l’Ile already mentioned, and about thirty houses, formed a seigneury belonging to the Bourlemont family. This seigneury depended from the castellany of Gondrecourt, which in turn depended from the duchy of Bar, itself a fief of the Empire and not of the French crown. Patchwork arrangements of this type were the rule rather than the exception under feudalism. What made Domrémy different was the ease with which the various relationships could be interpreted in national terms, as forming a kind of microcosm of the distressed realm of France.

In Joan’s day the Bourlemonts were a declining power. The main line died out in 1412, and the property passed to a niece of the last seigneur. Her husband had other seigneuries elsewhere, and she did not take much interest in the Château de Bourlemont, much less in Domrémy. It was her representative, Jannel Aubri, mayor of the village and husband of one of Joan’s godmothers, who in 1420 arranged to let the Château de l’Ile, which was a mere enclosure with a chapel attached to it, for a period of nine years to one Jean Biget and to Joan’s own father. It was a wise precaution on their part to rent it — Joan was later to remember helping to drive the cattle there ‘for fear of the men at arms’. (17) We gain the impression that, though threatened from time to time by roving bands of marauders, the inhabitants of Domrémy made up for this by an unusual degree of independence from feudal control.

The district that surrounded Domrémy remained loyal to Charles VII in an area which was otherwise Burgundian or English in its allegiances. Robert de Baudricourt, who governed the territory dependent on Vaucouleurs, used many shifts to preserve his little dominion. On the whole he was successful. The district did not suffer nearly as much as many other parts of France from the ravages of warfare. There were constant alarms, but nothing like the repeated razzias which the peasants suffered elsewhere.

Occasionally, however, danger came uncomfortably close. Lorraine was a mass of squabbling feudatories, and in July 1419 two of them fought a small battle at Maxey, which was just the other side of the Meuse. Among the prisoners was the husband of one of Joan’s godmothers. In 1421 part of the English army penetrated as far as nearby Gondrecourt, and it seems likely that the skirmishers reached the outskirts of Domrémy. The strain of events such as these, was, nevertheless, more psycho-logical than physical. The inhabitants of Domrémy got enough to eat, and they had roofs over their heads. Their lot was easy compared to that endured by many of their contemporaries. We find no sign of the social breakdown which afflicted other parts of France.

II

Joan’s childhood has so often been traduced that it is now hard to form any idea of what it must have been like. Yet there is enough material in the main sources to enable us to form an opinion. True enough, the witnesses at the Trial of Rehabilitation often give us the impression that they are reproducing a formula. The questions put to them seem designed to elicit a stock response — testimonies to Joan’s sweetness of character and perfect religious orthodoxy. All the same, we probably know more about Joan during her earliest years than we know about any of her contemporaries at the same period of their lives. Some of this material is doubly precious because it comes to us from her own mouth.

The valley of the Meuse is tranquil and beautiful today, and must have been even more so in the early fifteenth century. Then as now the meadows would be pearled with dew in the summer mornings, and the wooded hills scarved with mist. As the heat of the sun grew, the mist would be seen rising from the dense foliage and streaming away to disappear in the blue of the sky.

The idyllic quality of some of the days and seasons which Joan experienced when she was young emerges clearly when we read her own testimony, and that of her fellow-villagers, about the so-called Fairies’ Tree which preoccupied her judges in Rouen. To those harsh schoolmen, the Fairies’ Tree smelt of witchcraft. To us, it seems a charming instance of the folk beliefs and ceremonies which gave a special poetry to rural life in Europe during the Middle Ages, and which often survived until much later. It grew close to the village — a large weeping beech, particularly well formed and symmetrical. Gerardin d’Epinal, a fellow-villager who was one of the witnesses at the Trial of Rehabilitation, thought it was ‘as beautiful as a lily’. (1) The branches swept so low to the ground that they formed a kind of natural shelter, and the tree was also dubbed ‘aux Logis-des-Dames’ — the Ladies’ House. (2) The tree belonged to the Bourlémont family, and attached to it was a legend about a fairy who, ‘in ancient days’, had loved one of the seigneurs de Bourlémont. (3) The villagers remembered that the lovers were supposed to have used the great beech as a trysting place. They remembered, too, that the last Bourlémont seigneur had sometimes gone to dance there with his wife. (4) On Laetare Sunday — the Sunday in mid Lent which was a popular festival throughout the Barrois — they too were accustomed to go and celebrate the birth of spring. They danced and sang, and spread a cloth to eat a picnic under the tree. (5) Joan went with the rest, to make wreaths of flowers for the image of Our Lady in the chapel of Notre Dame de Bermont, and to hang garlands in the branches of the tree itself. She ‘danced there sometimes with the children, but she sang there more often than she danced’. (6)

If these activities are well authenticated, strangely enough, Joan’s duties as a herder of sheep are much less so. At Domrémy the herds were chiefly cattle, and it was these that constituted the wealth of the villagers. Yet the idea that Joan was a ‘little shepherdess’ is now so firmly rooted in the public imagination that it is difficult to combat it. Perceval de Boulainvilliers was one of the first to give it currency. He speaks of her as ‘looking after her parents’ sheep, while these wandered in the fields’. (7) The error was bred by distance, by the impulse towards courtly hyperbole, and by ignorance of local conditions. But it is also an example of a very medieval kind of allegorical thinking. A keeper of sheep, following in the footsteps of Christ, was likely to be a saviour herself.

At the time of her trial Joan was anxious to play down this aspect of her childhood. Her judges wished to prove that, while guarding the flocks and herds, she had escaped from the supervision of her parents. Her denial that she ‘guarded the sheep and other animals’ during the period that she lived in her father’s house (8) has been taken to refer to her brief sojourn in NeufChâteau, and to be the result of an error made during the compilation of the official version of the trial document. In addition to this, however, Joan is on record as having claimed that she did not usually keep watch over the animals, though she helped to drive them to pasture. (9) She added that she could not recall whether, in her youngest years, she looked after them. (10)

The probability is — and we find it supported by those who knew her as a child — that she took her turn at a common duty which did not occur so very often, and only at one season in particular. Every family, after the hay harvest, was allowed to graze a certain number of head of cattle, according to the amount of land they owned. The beasts were guarded on a rota system, by someone from each household in turn. It was the kind of job which could be delegated to children, and Joan certainly undertook it, but not, as she pointed out ‘when she was bigger and had reached the years of reason’. (11) One of her godmothers also said that Joan watched over the animals, (12) and her childhood playmates were later to recollect seeing her with her father’s beasts, her distaff in her hand. (13) But we must not imagine her spending the greater part of every day in some remote and lonely spot, surrounded by a herd of sheep.

For a peasant girl who lived in Domrémy, there were many other jobs to be done, and Joan did not shirk them. Her contemporaries remembered her as a hard and willing worker. (14) Some of the tasks she undertook required strenuous physical effort. For example, she sometimes went ploughing either with her father, (15) or with one of her young companions. (16) These exertions must have helped to build up the reserves of physical strength which others later marvelled at. Joan sewed and span, and was proud of her skill at these occupations — she told her judges that in this respect ‘she did not fear comparison with any woman in Rouen’. (17) Her physical dexterity, too, was to be a subject for comment once she became famous. She also carried out all the ordinary household duties which were expected of a girl of her class and kind. In all this she did nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the community to which she belonged.

There came a point, however, when those who surrounded Joan began to notice that she was increasingly different from the rest. She was intensely pious — ‘so pious’, her childhood friend Mengette declared, ‘that her comrades and I said she was too much so’. (18) When she heard the bell sound for mass, and she was in the fields, she would immediately return and go to church in order to hear the service said. (19) When evening came, she listened keenly for the compline bell, and, if she was still in the fields, would fall to her knees and say her prayers. (20) On occasion the churchwarden Perrin Drappier would forget to ring for compline. Joan, though normally gentle, would then become perturbed and would scold him. She even offered to give him some wool if he would be more conscientious about his duties in this respect. (21) Within the church she could sometimes be seen prostrated before the crucifix; or with her hands joined and her face and eyes lifted towards the image of Christ and that of the Holy Virgin. (22)

Every Saturday, she would go on pilgrimage to the little chapel of Notre Dame de Bermont, which lay above the road between Domrémy and NeufChâteau. She apparently started this custom in the days when her sister Catherine was still alive; and the sisters would go there with other young people, taking candles with them to light before the image. (23) Later, Joan developed the habit of slipping away to this chapel on her own, at times when her parents thought she was busy ploughing or working elsewhere in the fields. (24) By this time her contemporaries were aware of her tendency to draw apart from them. (25) They teased her for her piety, (26) and half-jestingly complained that she now refused to dance. (27)

Perhaps the most significant sign of the crisis through which Joan was passing was the frequency with which she went to confession. Joan’s own evidence conflicts with that of the people who knew her in her childhood and adolescence, perhaps for good reason. When the subject was raised by her judges, all she would say was that she ‘confessed her sins every year to her parish priest, or, if he was unable to hear her, to some other priest’. (28) She was thus giving the court to understand that her religious practice was strictly in line with that expected of most of the laymen of her time, and that she was careful to make the obligatory confession before the equally obligatory Easter communion which marked her as a member of the Church.

Her fellow-villagers recalled the matter differently. A modest estimate was that she ‘confessed at Easter and at the other solemn feasts’. (29) Others thought that she confessed whenever she got the opportunity, and that opportunities were not lacking. Mengette said, for instance, that she often saw Joan on her knees before their parish priest. (30) Joan herself was to remark, though in another context, that ‘one cannot cleanse one’s conscience too much’. (31) While these frequent confessions made the ecclesiastical court suspect her orthodoxy, at the time those who looked after her spiritual welfare approved of her attitude, and did not find it strange. Her parish priest, Messire Guillaume Fronté, was heard to say that he had never met a better Catholic, and that there was none better in his parish. (32) Today, though without siding with those who condemned her, we may legitimately ask what it was that drove such a pure and blameless girl to these repeated purgings of conscience? One answer, perhaps, is that she was disturbed by the changes she found taking place in her own body, now that she had reached puberty, and by desires she scarcely understood.

The true secret she was keeping from her family and friends, however — and it seems that she did not tell her priest about it either, even under the seal of confessional — was the fact that she had begun to hear voices. Her description of the way in which these voices first came to her is justly famous:

‘When she was thirteen years of age, she had a voice from God to help her to know what to do. And on the first occasion she was much afraid. And this voice came about the hour of midday, in the summertime, in her father’s garden... She heard the voice upon the right side, towards the church, and she rarely heard it without an accompanying brightness... And, after she had heard this voice upon three occasions, she understood that it was the voice of an angel.’ (33)

Since Joan’s voices were to govern her conduct for the rest of her career — she herself said: ‘Everything that I have done that was good I did by command of my voices’ (34) — it is necessary to look at this fascinating subject in more detail.

In the first place, we must note that Joan’s voices and apparitions were not unique. It is perhaps surprising to learn how many people are from time to time visited by visual or auditory hallucinations. Towards the end of the last century, for example, the English Society for Psychical Research conducted a census of hallucinations based upon a very large sample — nearly 16,000 people from English-speaking countries, and over 27,000 altogether. 9.4 per cent of the respondents from English-speaking countries said that they had experienced hallucinations of one kind or another, and affirmative replies from the whole sample amounted to as much as 11.96 per cent. In the English table of results, more than half (52 per cent) of hallucinatory experiences occurred when the subjects were aged between fifteen and thirty — that is they began with puberty, and declined after young adulthood. (35) However, the census-takers noticed the rarity of auditory hallucinations compared to visual ones, and of hallucinations affecting several of the senses compared to others. (36)

Joan’s voices and visions tend to fit a pattern which is quite familiar to twentieth-century doctors, and which is extensively recorded in medical literature. One specialist remarks, for example, that on their first appearance hallucinations are experienced as inexplicable, and as something foreign to the subject’s own concept of himself or herself. They therefore have a quality of the uncanny, and arouse feelings of awe, or alternatively of dread, horror and loathing. (37) There is a marked similarity here, to Joan’s description of how the voices came to her; and also a similarity to the account she gives of her first meeting with St Michael: ‘The first time, she was in great doubt if it was St Michael who came to her, and this first time she was much afraid; and she saw him a number of times before she knew it was St Michael.’ (38) When adolescents suffer from delusions of this type, even today, they often present themselves in religious terms.

The more bizarre details given in the trial document, especially in the section of Posthumous Information, which is sometimes dismissed as being in large part a fabrication, are also closely paralleled in the accounts offered by present-day patients. Joan is said to have told one of her judges that she once beheld a multitude of angels ‘in the guise of certain very tiny things’. (39) In addition, she told another judge that her apparitions came to her on some occasions ‘in great multitudes and in very small dimensions’. (40) These descriptions precisely match modern cases, where the subject sees the multitudinous personages of his vision much reduced in volume, but extra-ordinarily brilliant in hue, as if the shrinkage had led in turn to a condensation of the colours. (41)

The manner in which Joan’s voices and visions manifested themselves, and the relationship they seemed to establish with her, also have close similarities with the situations that doctors encounter today. One reason for her withdrawal from her friends at Domrémy was that the voices which now preoccupied her were more clearly heard in solitude. When she was a prisoner in Rouen, Joan was to complain that ‘the tumult of the prisons and the noise made by the guards’ prevented her from hearing St Catherine. (42) Yet the voice was capable of drawing attention to itself, often with great insistence, at moments when Joan’s attention had every cause to be focused elsewhere. There is a terrible pathos in the answer she made to her judges during the séance of 27 February 1431. Asked if she heard the voice in the room where the trial was being held, she replied that she had, but ‘she did not understand the voice properly, and understood nothing she could repeat, until she had gone back to her chamber’. (43)

One reason why, at Domrémy, she took such a close interest in the churchwarden’s dutifulness, or lack of it, in ringing for compline and the other offices was that the bells served as a kind of trigger-mechanism for the manifestations. She was to say in her last hours that she heard her voices ‘above all when the bells sounded, at the hour of compline and of matins’. (44) As her relationship with them strengthened, however, she began to feel able to consult them at will, at times when there was some problem to be resolved, and soon felt confident of being able to summon them if she needed them. ‘Often,’ she said, ‘they came without being called, and at other times, if they did not come, she would ask God to send them... She had never had need of them and not had them.’ (45)

But who and what were these advisers with whom Joan had been provided? She mentions three saints in particular: St Michael (the first to come to her), St Catherine and St Margaret. They spoke to her in French — ‘a better French than yours’, as she rudely told Séguin Séguin, a member of the commission appointed by Charles VII at the start of her mission. (46) When asked by her judges in Rouen if St Margaret spoke to her in English, she replied with equal tartness: ‘Why should she speak English, when she does not belong to the English party?’ (47) Because her saints ‘spoke very well and marvellously’, (48) Joan had no difficulty in understanding them after the first few occasions. In addressing Joan in the only tongue she knew and by gradually becoming more distinct to her, they again followed a pattern of auditory hallucination which is well known to specialists. (49)

All the saints who came to Joan had some connection either with her own personal situation, or with the situation in which France then found herself; and all were particularly suitable as guides in what was to be her mission. St Michael appeared to her in the guise of ‘un très vrai prud’homme’ (50) — or, as we might say, a good deal more tamely, as ‘a fine-looking gentleman’. He was the obvious patron for any kind of patriotic endeavour — in the early fifteenth century he had virtually replaced St Denis as the patron of France, and the Valois kings paid special regard to him. Charles VII, when Dauphin, had a particular reverence for this saint, and in 1419 ordered that his image should be painted upon the standards of France. At the time when Joan’s visions began, Mont Saint-Michel was one of the symbols of French resistance to the English, and one of the few successes that Charles VII could show at this period was the naval victory won by his supporters before the stronghold in June 1425. In addition to all this, St Michael was the patron of the Barrois, from which Joan’s mother came.

St Catherine and St Margaret were announced by St Michael as Joan’s other councillors. (51) Both were high-born virgins and martyrs. Catherine was the name of Joan’s sister, who may still have been alive when the visions began. She was also the patroness of Maxey, just across the Meuse from Domrémy. Perhaps more important in Joan’s mind, however, was the fact that St Catherine was the bride of Christ. When Joan ‘having her ring on her hand and upon her finger’ touched Catherine as she appeared to her in visible form, (52) it was near to being a repetition of the mystic marriage which the saint herself had undertaken.

St Margaret was represented in an elegant statue in the church at Domrémy. It is still there, and, judging from the style, must have been fairly newly installed in Joan’s time. But it seems that Joan attached less importance to her. She is much less often mentioned, and usually appears as a kind of coadjutor of St Catherine’s, just as she often accompanies the latter in representations of the virgin surrounded by saints.

It is apparent, from some of Joan’s replies, that there was a certain inconsistency about the way in which her visions appeared to her. Where St Catherine and St Margaret are concerned, it is fairly evident that they manifested themselves not as full length figures but as heads with glittering crowns — ‘she saw them always in the same form, and their forms were very richly crowned... About their robes she knows nothing’. (53) And again: ‘What aspect did she see? - She saw their faces.’ (54)

About St Michael she was even vaguer — she said that he did not have a crown and that she knew nothing of his clothing. (55) Asked if he was naked, and if he had hair, she produced two of her magnificently impertinent retorts. To the first question, the answer was: ‘Do you think God has nothing to clothe him with?’ (56) And to the second: ‘Why should it have been cut off?’ (57) Yet at last she admitted that she did not know whether St Michael had hair or not.

Questions about the actual appearance of her saints made her extremely uneasy, just as she was uneasy, and also irritated, at being questioned about what they said. There seem to have been two reasons for her disquiet. The first was that questions about her voices seemed to her a violation of privacy — they were an attempt to meddle with revelations which had been made to her directly and by divine agency. The second was that she felt threatened, because her voices and visions had a curious habit of slipping out of focus, and she did not like to admit to this. When, for example, she was asked if she saw other parts of her three saints except their faces, she burst out angrily: ‘I have told you all I know about that, and rather than tell you all I know I would prefer you cut off my head.’ (58)

Despite this, she believed unwaveringly in her counsellors, and to her they were very real. She even asserted that she had embraced St Catherine and St Margaret, who had a beautiful perfume about them. (59) Her experience of this sweet odour is, curiously enough, one of the things which links her to the religious mystics, such as St Theresa of Avila, from whom she otherwise differs in many details. When asked by her judges whether she saw St Michael and the angels corporeally and in reality, she replied — and we can still catch the passionate accent of the answer — ‘I saw them with the eyes of my body, as plainly as I see you; and when they left me, I wept, and longed for them to take me away with them.’ (60) On another occasion she declared, with reference to her saints: ‘I have seen them with my own eyes and I believe that it is they as firmly as I do that God exists.’ (61)

It remains to ask what commands her voices laid upon Joan. At first, following a pattern which is familiar to modern experts on auditory hallucinations, they seem to have confined themselves to brief phrases and injunctions of a fairly general kind. St Michael told Joan ‘to be a good girl and God would help her’. (62) But he told her too — and we may guess that some small space of time has been telescoped in the reply — that ‘she would come to the aid of the King of France’. (63) Then, elaborating once more, ‘the angel told her of the pity which was in the kingdom of France’. (64) One gets a closer view of the process of gradual amplification and clarification from another of Joan’s replies:

‘Questioned about the teaching which this voice gave her concerning the salvation of her soul: She said that it taught her to lead a good life; and to go to church; and it said to Joan that it was necessary that she, Joan, should go into France... She confessed further that this voice said to her two or three times a week that she, Joan, must leave and go into France; and she also admitted that her father had known nothing of her departure. She said, also, that the voice told her that she would go into France; and that she could no longer remain where she was; and that this voice told her that she would cause the siege laid before Orleans to be raised. She said then that the voice had told her that she, Joan, should go to the fortress town of Vaucouleurs, to find Robert de Baudricourt, captain of that place, and that he would give her people who would go with her; Joan then replied that she was a poor girl and did not know how to ride a horse or to make war.’ (65)

This answer is sequential, and covers a period of over three years, from the moment when the voices first announced themselves in the summer of (probably) 1425, until the time in December 1428 when Joan left Domrémy for Burey-en-Vaux, on the way to Vaucouleurs.

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[1] Il. xi 222-4; Str. 330, 24; Lyk. 1232 sch. Kissoi: tribe of Kissioi in Lower Mesopotamia near Sousa; note the Trojan ally Memnon as founder of Sousa, his father Tithonos (brother of Priam) married to Kissia: GT(3) 260f. Nine years: the plague lasts nine days. Though in which year the wrath occurs is not clearly stated, we have the effect that the war has been going on long. Briseis: Aristotle fr 162.

[2] Il. ii 158ff; 354ff; 590.

[3] Il. ii 536, 590. Victim: Mazon 151; innocent, Becker 11 n3. Aristarchos: sch. A; L & S.: hormē.

[4] Il. iii 16, 27, 30, 37ff (god-like).

[5] The reasons for the change are obscure; but Iris is a sky-messenger (for Zeus with his will); Hermes, chthonic, suits better Odysseus. Both deities seem to appear in the western gable of the Parthenon: Robertson 53f. Rainbow: Il. xi 27, ‘a protection for mortal men’. Iris also acts for Hera and in later poets is associated with her. Worship at Delos, on isle of Hekate: Athen. xiv 645. Ktemata: Gernet 418f, Bruck 39-74.

[6] Ambrosial night and sleep: Od. iv 429.

[7] Od. viii 519. Dia is used of goddesses. Dios: cf. ? diwija, PY An 607. Potis, husband, is cognate with IE potis, lord or master, and with potnia, cult-title for a goddess; Sanskrit patis, lord, master, husband; patni, lady, wife. Latin: potis (sum). Helen as offspring of Zeus; Il. iii 199, 418, 426. Helen uses same verb ēperopeuein (to check, coax, seduce) in accusing Aphrodite as Hektor did in denouncing Paris as woman-obsessed.

[8] Daimon as individual power: Od. v 396; x 64; xi 61; Il. viii i66. Your fate: oitos. Stygeros used of Hades, Erinyes, war, daimon, a marriage, in Il. and Od. Horned helmets: Korres (2).

[9] Sch. AT; Strab. ix 399; Lyk. 109; Eustath. 278,  34 and 433, 21; Paus. i 35, 1. Kythera: Eustath.; Paus. iii 21, 1; C. Robert (1) 1081 n2. Isle of Helena and embargo: Burn (1) 220. Aristonikos (sch. A.): ‘He did not mate in Sparta with Helen so that he might not become conspicuous.’

[10] Trojan brag: also Il. iv 173f. Inner conflict: F. Robert (I) 17 & 36f; Aphrodite as the élan of passion, existing only in imagination. Cf. Whitman 223-5 (who also sees Il. iii 395 — iv 219 as repeating the treachery motif: 267f). Kerenyi (4) 27 sees the constraint on Helen. See also Fraenkel (1) 93 n3; Wiesemann 37; Jaeger i 47. Aretē at last becomes divine, as gift of the gods; so we get the aretē of Zeus: Nock (3) nn12, 30.

[11] Il. vi 243ff, especially 280ff.

[12] Sev. iii 130ff; GK ch. 1.

[13] Passing refs.: Il. vii 355 (Antenor 350); ix 140, 282.

[14] Also ix 337ff; xi 122-5; xi 369, 505, 581; xxii 356ff.

[15] Also xiii 769ff, 490, 660ff; xvi 341 (Paris shooting).

[16] Il. xix 325; old age, AR iv 1343. Property: xxii 114. Paris among the seven brothers after Hektor’s death: xxiv 249. Twenty years: Thrasyllos (fr. 3) sets abduction ten years before the war.

[17] Od. xiv 389; 57. Paus. 111 II; Cic. ad Q. frat. ii 12. Xenios, translated guest-friend, can mean stranger, foreigner, host — showing the complex of emotions attached to someone outside the normal group. For Zeus Xenios: Adkins JHS 1972 1-19.

[18] Soph. Phi. 1426; Ap. iii 12, 6; Tzet. Lyk. 64 etc.

[19] Webster (1) 125; in general Lorimer 297f; duel c. 700, Boardman (3) fig. 19; Geom. art, Ahlberg 44f.

[20] Il. xi 385ff; Wüst 1488 for denigrations. God-like: iii 16, 27, 30, 37, 58, 450; vi 210; xxiv 763. Beauty: iii 39, 44; lyre, iii 53. Also see C. Roberts (1) 997f; Bethe (3) i 246, 249, 253. Contrary view: WM (2) 309; Sev. (1) iii 84. Bowmen: Littauer 148, 152; H. Balfour, JAI li (1921), 289ff.

[21] Ganymedes: Blinkenberg 15; Lindos i (1941), 166; CZ ii 346; Plin. NH xxiii 81; Paus. iii 18, 12. Note stress on physical perfection in Sparta.

[22] Hdt. vi 61, 6.

[23] Il. i 153; ii 286; Bethe (3) ii 229-31 thinks it the suitors’ oath.

[24] Folktale: WM (1) 242 = Kl. Shr. iv 510; Rose (1). Louk. Alex. 2 - as lachnos once used of women: Alexandrides fr. 6od; Stinton 3. Aristarchos: Sev. (2) 261. Sch. TV on Il. iv 52; Sev. (1) iii 55. Mazon (1) 227 supports machlosyne. Homer ignores: Schadewaldt; Irmscher 43.

[25] N(2) 285ff, (3) 331ff; Paus. iii 15, 6.

[26] ARV (2nd ed.) 434; C. Robert (3) 200f. Bacchyl.; Edmonds (1) iii 92; BM Pap. 733. Menelaos praises Justice, Eunomia, Themis, as against Hybris.

Helen of Argos: Il. vii 363, but iii 244, 443; Bethe (3) 97 thinks all the names correspond to an ancient reality. Schefold (2) 1099 ni incorrectly sees Leda at iii 426. Property: Helen as war loot: Becker 8 n3. Theano: Schefold (9) pl. 72: Corinthian krater c. 570-60.

[27] Il. xxi 446; Idaia, Pollux v 13.

[28] Il. v 64; Od. xiii 172; thes- is here related to Themis.

[29] Aias: Od. iv 502; JL (2) 125-7,136f; and index palladion.

[30] Menelaos, also Od. i 285; iii 317, 326; Nestor iii 130ff. Other disasters: Rose (2) 243; Aisch. Ag. 648ff; Verg. Aen. i 39ff. Orestes: Dyer; Duckworth 46-8; D’Arons; Elektra recognition scene: Haspels 226 no 18.

[31] Diotrephes: fostered or cherished by Zeus: used of kings, Il. ii 196; of Menelaos iv 44, cf. 63. Menelaos and Leleges: GT (3) 430.

[32] Arist. HA viii 28; Hdt. iv 29.

[33] Distaff, but sv Hesych. Klytemnaistra: bitch-faced as killer of husband, Od. xi 424.

[34] Vergil uses Proteus: Georg. iv 387ff. In art also Schefold (9) figs. 11-2; Buschor (3).

[35] Also for Menelaos, Od. viii 516-20 (Deiphobos); xi 460; xiii 414.

[36] Leda: N(5), 443f; (13) 366f; Picard (4) 458f, 463; GT (3) 293; Od. xi 436-9 and 298-304; xxiv 199 (Klytemnaistra as daughter of Tyndareos). Link (?) of Leda with Mylitta, Mu-al-li-da-at: title of Babylonian goddess of childbirth: Langdon. Ramsay (2) i 91 n2 inclines to drop derivation from Leto for identification with Semitic Al-lat or Alilat: Hdt. i 131; iii 8, Robertson-Smith. Other theories: CZ ii 1042 n5. Tyndareos: GT (3) 429; Krappe (1) 363. Ancestry: Ap. iii 10, 5; Paus. iii 13, 8; sch. AR i 146, 201; Ap. i 7, 10; Serv. Aen. viii 130; Hyg. Fab. 14 etc.

[37] Od. xiv 67-71 & 468ff; xvii 116-21; xxi 76 and 147.

[38] Od. xxii 226-30; xxiii.

[39] Od. xxiv 115-9.

[40] Jaeger i 47; no new physical traits, Od. xv 58; iv 305.

[41] Bérard on iv 264-79; Sev. (2) 336.

[42] Sev. (2) 334.

[43] Agamemnon: Il. xix 85ff; Dodds 3f. Achilles: Il. xix 270ff; i 412, ix 376, cf. xii 254; xi 340; Od. xxiii 11ff. Glaukos: Il. vi 634ff. Also xvii 469f. For Moira: N(3a) 168f, (12) 52; Cornford (1) chs. 1-2; Greene.

[44] Od. xi 61; xxi 297ff; Dodds 5.

[45] Od. xv 233f, or ‘bringing houses to ruin’. Dodds 7; see 6 for atē as late development in Ionia; Il. ix 512 an importation from mainland with the Meleagros legend. Dodds (6f) does not seem to grasp the full force of Moira-Moirai.

[46] Dodds 8 & 21 with refs.; GT (1) 50-3. Dikē: Guthrie (1) 123-7, Lloyd-Jones 5, 166 — a judgement or an assertion of one’s right (Iliad); as right or custom in Od. General sense twice, Il. xvi 387, Od. xiv 84; Chantraine (1) 283f; Palmer (5) 149f.

[47] Leitzke on relations of gods to Moira; Ehnrnark 74ff; N(3) i 338ff; Greene 22f. Zeus as impartial divine will: N(12) 59; a harmful intrusion is generally daimon, not theos. Further: N(11) & (3) i 201ff; WM (9) i 362ff, Leitzke 42ff; Rose (4); Dodds 23 n65.

[48] Dodds 8f; Il. xx 242, cf. Judges xiv 6, xv 4.

[49] Il. XX 411; Od. ii 206.

[50] Dodds 9; Il. xiii 61, 75, cf. v 122, xxiii 772. Hektor burial: Il. xv 605ff. Ares: Il. Xvii 210ff. Bard: Od. xx 347; viii 44, 498; Pind. Nem. iii 9; Chadwick Growth iii 182.; MacKay 50. Menos akin to Sanskrit minas, spirit or passion, cf. Greek mainomai.

[51] Od. i 48; i 23; Met. xv 140, xvii 332; Pind. Pyth. iii 81; feast, Il. ix 70.

[52] Dais: Il. xv 95; xviii 279. Desmos: Il. i 166. Daithmos: IG xiv 352 ii 23 (Halaisa); rules for distribution, IG xii (5) 50 Naxos.

[53] Il. xvii 98; xi 792. Lot: Od. v 396, x 64; Hdt. i 111.

[54] GT (1) 429, 206, 49f; Robertson-Smith (1) 39. Alkman: Edmonds 72; sch. Il. i 222; Hdt. v 95. Bacchylides: Greene 81f.

[55] Myres (2) 462; and (4); G. Murray (1) App. C. Winckler. Against historicity: Schadewaldt (2); Wade-Gory (on Hektor); Mireaux. Queens: H. M. Chadwick (3) 333, 337f, 97f; Beowulf 2930ff; Prokop. Hist. Gothic War iv 20; Greg. iii 6, 10. The theme of Waldhere’s story is the elopement and escape of lovers.

[56] Simpson; Webster (1) 111, 94, 128, 213, 83; iron in Bronze Age, Lorimer 111f, Simpson 10 nn3-6. Dendra panoply: Verdelia AE (1957), 15; BCH lxxxv (1961), 671; AJA lxxxx (1963), 67; Vermeule (1) 135f. Phoinikians: Lorimer 67; Webster (1) 66. Cremation: Lorimer 107; Mylonas (8). Objects: also Kirk (5). Slaves: Palmer (4) 5. Art: Benson, and for Mykenean patterns, N. Himmelmann-Wildschutz. Catalogue of Ships: Allen (1), Bowra (3) 70ff, Lorimer, Wade-Gery (App. A), Simpson pt. iii, Page (2) 136; Huxley (3). Social system: Finley (2). Muster-rolls at Pylos and Ugarit: Simpson 172 n40. Anax in Cypros used for king’s son or brother (? borrowed from Homer): Dow 155. As cult-term: Shipp Trans. Phil. Soc. 1958 and (1) 129, Ruijgh 113f, Hemberg. Tholoi as hero-tomb going back to Mykenean days: F. Robert (2). Word for gold: Benveniste 131; Mayer Rend. 1st. Lomb. xciv (1960), 315-19; Peruzzi Word xv (1959), 323.

[57] Killen; Allen. .Mykeneans as Greeks: Blegen (6); Dow; Vermeule 72.f; F. Matz Die Agais in HB d. Arch. ii 1954 263 etc. Against: Schachermeyr 1468, Hood etc. Early relations Crete and Byblos: Branigan. Mykenean sites in Asia Minor (Miletos, Ephesos, Müsgebi) AJA lxxi (1967), 183f. Hooker on relations to Egypt; Middle Helladic pottery in Sicily and Aiolian Islands, giving way to Mykenean I & II types; Taylour (2) 182; Mykenean pottery in Cyclades, Dawkins (4). Myth of Danaos: Vermeule 109; Hooker 176f; Astour; Kretschmer (4). Banquet-halls, west facades, palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia, and reception-halls; Pylos (3-aisled room): AJA lxv 165-72. Mellaart (1960) dated Troy to 3500: C. Renfrew, Before Civilisation (1973).

[58] Dates: Myres (2) with refs.; Forsdyke (3) 28f; Blegen (1) & (2) etc. Doubts: Nylander 7.

[59] Il. vi 433f; xvi 702; Troy iii 87; D. Gray 258. Alsop 73f; Troy vi 51, 61, 70, 73, 117, 123.

[60] Epithets: Bowra (1) 1-13. Forces: Thouk. i 10, 3. Open space: Leaf (1) 150f. Arrowhead: Troy iv 48-51. Epithets going back to Mykenean times, Bowra (1) 11-13.

[61] Greaves: Bowra (1) 17ff; Lorimer 250-54, 132-94 (shields). Goliath, I Sam. 17, 6. Armour: BCH lxxxii 707; lxxxi 322f, 340; Kirk (1) pls. 4a, 66b.

[62] Bowra (1) 14-26.

[63] Early battle fresco, Knossos: PM iii fig. 45; spears or slings, Webster (1) 32, 58f.

[64] Marinatos (7); Karo (3) 106-8 & no 481; W. S.Smith 65-8; Vermeule (1) pl. xiv; Hooker; Mellink AJA lxxi, 92-4. Also Matz (3) pl. 93 & (7) 208, 5 pl. 16, 1; Schefold (8) 1ff; Meuli. Cretan: Marinatos (7) 85; V. Muller JdAI xl (1925), 1141; Stais 49-51.

[65] Smith. Attack: Reichel & Stais.

[66] Outpost: PM iii 89-99. Forced interpretation: Marinatos (7) 84f. For walls, cf. Town Mosaic of Knossos, PM i 301-14; Smith 42, 67.

[67] Hooker 271; Vermeule (1) 102. Smith 68 suggests the naked men are on same side as Mykeneans in boat. Archers: Page (2) 278; Webster (1a) 104f. Hunt: Buchholz (2) Lorimer 276-9. Hall (JHS xxxi, 120) thinks defenders have feather headdresses; puts them in Anatolia.

[68] Persson (3) 181-6 argues for Egypt; Schachermeyr (4) 345; for hilly landscape, fragment from Shaft Grave IV: Karo no. 605a; Hooker 277. Also Webster 58f; Matz (3) 93f; Forsdyke pl. 17. Thera frescoes: Modiano, Marinatos (9).

[69] Karo (3) 128-31; Lorimer 279 & pl. 12, 3; Persson (3) 188; PM iii fig. 48; Rodenwaldt. Cypros: JHS lxxvii 269; Webster (1) fig. 18. In general: Webster 32, 58f.

[70] Webster (1) 60, 38; Lorimer 146 & pl. 1; BSA xxxix (1939), 70; Matz (3) 109. Cf. Myk. stēlē: Lorimer pl. 2, 2; Hood. Against myth: Kirk (4) 146ff. For myth: Hampe; Webster (6) 38ff & (1) 168ff. Sceptical: Dunbabin 20ff, 77ff; Starr 154, 261; Hood 86. Mourning: Iakovidis, Vermeule (2) & (1) 208f (funeral), cf. Lorimer 48. Woman: Webster (1) 38-40, 60f, prophetess; Marinatos (1) 177; Matz (6) 217, 228. Note on east pediment of temple of Zeus at Olympia, Pelops’ Seer (fig. N) mourns in anticipation.

[71] Astour 103 n1.

[72] Gordon (2) 28, (1) & (6); 2 Sam. 3, 14; Gordon (7) 294f; Zeph. ii 6; Gen. xii 12-20, 1-18; I Kings xvii 3, 5.

[73] Keret: Gordon as in previous note; Pritchard; Egnell 149ff. Historical basis: Virolleaud, Gaster. Webster (1) 69, 72, 86f, 120, 127, 120f. Ugaritic gods: Pope (1) & (2). People tend to be organized in gilds apart from peasants and herdsmen; king in general could dispose of land at will.

[74] Menelaos pedestal: Eilmann, CVA Berlin 1 pl. 31-3; Matz (5) 306 pl. 208. Joppa: Pap. Harris 500 verso 1-3; Peet JEA xi 226f; Maspero, Contes pop. (4th) 115ff; Erman (1) 167-9; W. K. Simpson 81-4; Wilson ANET 22; H. Goedicke, CE xliii 1968 219-33; JEA xli 1955 64-71; Lefebvre, 125-7 — cf. Arabian tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, also the Odyssean tale of the trick on the Kyklops Polyphemos. Goedicke rightly rejects the suggestion that a battering-ram was called Horse (such rams seem an Assyrian invention: Yadin, Art of Warfare 314ff), but suggests a confusion with a Semitic word such as hepp (to hide), which has a related term in Egyptian. (The Egyptian Hb seems assimilated by the Greeks with hippos, to which was added potamos, river; Hb meant hippopotamus.) Djehuty’s Club ASAE 1947 xlvii 245.

[75] Ring: 6209 Nat. Mus. Athens; PM iv fig. 926; GK 317; Persson (1) 80f pl. 25, 179 fig. 25; Karo (2); Bossert (1) fig. 400e; Mylonas (7) 567; Marinatos (4) takes as Elysion, Nilsson as homecoming. Points and angles in upper field probably represent buildings on hilly terrain.

[76] Karo and von Salis 27: departure; Marinatos (4) Elysion.

[77] Persson (1) 81f no 26; PM ii 250, fig. 147b; iv 953 fig. 923; Mylonas (7) 566.

[78] GK 318; Payne (2) 240 no 38, cf. vase of Arkades: Demargne pl. 10; aryballos, GK 309. Possible polos on the woman: GK. Carrying-off as marriage, eg Helen with crown on bronze relief of Olympia.

[79] GK 318; Pfuhl MuZ iii fig. 15; Hampe (4) 78 pl. 22; Buschor 36; von Salis (2); Mylonas (7) 561f.

[80] Dawkins (1) zi4f, pl. cix—cx, cf. 195 pl. lxxiv; GK 320; Burn (2) 40; E. Kunze GGA (1937) 290: not Helen. Basin: Kraiker pl. 5; J. M. Davison (1) 67ff fig. 98; Hampe (4) 26 pl. 22, I & (7) 30, 18; Kunze (2) 170, 2.

[81] Mylonas (7), comparing metope of Selinos and painting in House of Tragic Poet at Pompeii. Marriage: Mylonas 563 with refs. Compare group at Samos, c. 625-600, with wooing gesture, Zeus and Hera: Richter (3) fig. 263. Spartan stele at Magoula, c. 600, bearded man and woman either side: he sets his hand on her nape and she touches his beard; he threatens her with sword at her throat: Helen and Menelaos, less likely Helen and Paris? GK 71 no 24, pl. xliii, 1, cf. sarcophagus of Klazomenai (GK 76f): woman crouched between two warriors.

[82] Persson (1) 82-4; Bossert fig. 399b; Seager 89f; Marinatos (8) 224; Squab: Louk. Menippos 7. Chrysalis and quadruple axe in air?

[83] D. Levi (1) 278f; Persson (1) 180 fig. 28. Levi says objects are baetyls not pithos. PM iv 952 fig. 920.

[84] Delaporte ii 107, A 125 pl. 70, 2, cf. 641 (A31).

[85] Westermarck 175ff. Sparta: Plout. Lyk. xv; Nik. Damas FHG iii 458; Xenophon Resp. Lac. 1. Homopatoria: Sch. Arist. Ach. 146; JH (4) 498-500. Photios: ib. 378. Hippolytos: Paus. i 32, I; Eur. Hipp. 1424; JH (4) 336f. Keirein: ib. 337; Plout. Thes. v. Apollo: JH (4) 441; Frazer (2) iii 279. Woman in male clothes to cheat following spirits: Frazer (4) ii 260; N (2) 371f. Secret visit as trial marriage: N (7) 33i. Flight and pursuit in myth: initiation, Jeanmaire (1) 257ff, 179, 222.f, 235, 241, eg flight of Dionysos, ib. 62, 73-5, 210, 249f; II. Vi 123-43; flight of women in Dionysiac rites as at Agrionia at Orchomenos; at Sikyon: N (2); Plout. QG 38; Ap. ii 29; Hesych. sv Agrionia; Paus. ix 20,3, etc. Flight of daughters of Proitos maddened by Aphrodite; curative dance by young men, healing of girls in temple of Artemis Hemerasia. Cf. race of armed young men at wooing of Atalanta: Kall. Hymn Art. 234; Polyb. iv 18, io; Hesych. sv akrouchei; Paus. viii 18, 8; F (1) ii 448. Motif of nude youth running, popular in fifth century, eg on Nolan amphora, c. 480, he flees from Zeus. For relation to Dionysiac dance, youth appearing as komast: J. S. Crawford. God-ravishings, eg Apollo takes Kyrene in gold chariot: Pind. Pyth. ix 1-7. Rape of two Hyakinthidai, relief Ionic temple on Ilissos: Kerenyi (7) 50; goddess of Ilissos originally only Meter (‘Mother’) with her temple, the Metroion. Oreithyia carried off playing by Ilissos: Paus. i 9, 5. Diōgma: Hesych, Souda (historical rationalization).

[86] Lorimer 364-8, 370ff.

[87] Date: Webster (1) ch. 7 in relation to Geom. art, Iliad not long before 759. Lorimer, second half of ninth century; Schefold 134; Kirk (1) 282-7; Huxley (4) 124f, Cantarella (date before colonies of eight to sixth centuries).

[88] Il. vi 146; Pind. Nem. ii 1ff; GT (3) 550; Huxley (4) 48-50, 97, 191. Homer descendant of Atlas: Wade-Gery 91. Name: Ionic form of Homaros which is found in inscriptions from Crete to Thessaly: GDI 1033, SIG 1059 1, 3. Blindness: Chadwick Growth iii 619. Area: Kirk (2) 191f; Webster (1) 160ff.

[89] GT (3) 561; Hell. 122; GT 568.

[90] Muhl especially 699; Folktale aspect: Becker 21; (3) 277; R. Carpenter. Lesky (1) 149 inclines to two poets, cf. Heubeck; Page (3) 149 thinks two poets in different areas. Lines: W. Diehl; Webster (1) 276ff. Hexameter: Porter 27. Homer invents hexameter: E. Bichel. Also WM (2) ch. 18; E. Schwartz (2) Text: first Homeric specialist was Theagenes of Rhegion; Orphics (Orpheus of Kroton and Zopiros of Herakleion) contributed to Peisistrad ascension: Cantarella.

In general: C. Robert (1) iii 2; Bethe (3) ii; Sev. (2). Separation of the poems in time: Sev. (3); SS 1 i 195ff. Writing goes back to ninth century; Nestor cup of Pithekousa (last quarter eighth century) has two hexameters of Homeric type.

[91] Delos: GT (3) 55i; JL (2) 314f. Proverb: Zen. ii 37.

[92] Huxley (4) especially 123ff; Allen (2) 51-60; M. Sicherl Gnomon (1956), 210 n1; Stinton 57; Bethe (3) ii 200ff, 213ff, 282, 288; Wilson (1) 335ff. Huxley (4) for summary of other cycles. Episodic character of Troy cycle: Aristot. Poet. xxiii 5; Hor. AP 140. Stasinos: Jouan 23. When cyclic poems collected: Bethe (3) 288, 291; SS 196f, Sev. (3) 174ff; Schwartz (2) 5. Dates: generally seventh century: WM (2) 428; Rzach (3) 2396; Sev. (3) 179; SS 210; Lesky 100. Allen links the poems, esp. Cypria and Aithiopis, with colonizing by Miletos in Black Sea, 69, 76.

[93] Thetis: Volum. Hercul. ii 8, 105; Cheiron with spear-gift: Sch. Il. xvii 140.

[94] Pind. Isth. viii 58, 70; Aisch. Prom. 767; Hyg. Fab. 54 etc. Another version: Il. xxiv 60; AR iv 793.

[95] JH (4) 482f; Od. ii 68f; Il. xx 4-6. Equal feast: Il. xv 97-95; JH (4) 145-57. Overpopulation: Sch. Il. i 5.

[96] Kullmann accepts Thetis reading, 182. Thetis and Nemesis: Untersteiner 152f; del Grande 34; prophetic, JH (4) 480ff. Also Plat. Rep. ii 379c; Kullmann 181; Il. ii 69, xx.

[97] Plat. Euth. Iza; G. M. Bolling CP xxiii (1928), 63f is not convincing.

[98] GK 28; Philostr. ep. 21. The verb mōmaomai, to blame, occurs in the Od.

[99] Hes. Theog. 211ff; Kullmann 180, 184; Welcker (2) 86f doubts Momos motif; Soph. fr. ii 77 (Pearson) fr. 419-24.

[100] In later versions Eris acts in annoyance at no invitation: Hyg. Fab. 92; Kollouthos 38ff. She is in Soph. fr. 1 139f (P)?; Aisch. Ag. 698 is unclear (Fraenkel). Her role on vases: Stinton 7 n2. For Cypria fr. I K: sch. Il. i 5; Cramer Anecd. iv 406. Eur. (Hel. 39f; Or. 1641f) suggests glory of Achilles as alternative motive. Note Catullus’ epyllion on marriage of Thetis with its fate-song. Ap. epit. iii Tzet. Lyk. 93 keep to glorification of Helen and exalting of race of heroes as Zeus’ motive. Folktales: Frazer (1) ii app. x.

[101] Cf. Coman 34. Spirit of age: 228f.

[102] Mireaux (2) 399; Jouan (1) 48; Il. ii 3f, iii 156-8; vi 357f; xiii 348; Munro JHS v (1884); Welcker (2) 86; Jouan (1) 48. Commentators: sch. AD Il. i 5; Ibykos (Page fr. 1, 4) recalls Cypria. End: Jouan (1) 5o, with contingent Chance, Tychē.

[103] Sidon, also Il.. xxiii 743; Od. xiii 285. Menelaos: Eur. IA 76, Tro. 943. Jouan (1) 180f; Wüst 1505 (Kranae); Sophokles may have set satyric marriage of Helen on Kranae: Pearson i 126-9; Hdt. ii 117. Kastor etc.: Clem. Alex. Protr. ii 30, 5; Sch. Il. iii 242; Plout. Thes. xxxi-xxxii; sch. Pind. Nem. x 114; Philodemos On Piety says Idas killed Kastor with spear. I do not go into side question of Aineias as companion of Paris; for vases, GK no. 23, no 132.

[104] C. Robert (1) 1078.

[105] See Bethe (3) ii 239; SS i 1209 n6; Sev. (2) 34. Sacrifice: Laurentian sch. on Soph. Elek. 157, says Homer gives Agamemnon three daughters, Cypria four, distinguishing Iphigeneia and Iphianassa. Eust. 119, 4, Chryseis has gone to Asiatic Thebes to sacrifice to Artemis.

[106] Sch. Eur. Andr. 898; Frazer (1) ii 28 n2.

[107] Chadwick Growth iii 126f. Nemesis many-shaped: Carmen Virt. Herb., H (1) 2362. Associates: D. 157; Comedy Nemesis by Kratinos. Seal-demons: Fontenrose 106, 540; shape-changing, 433, 580f. Combined myths: H (1) 2342-6, Ap. iii 10, 7; sch. Kallim. Hymn Art. 232; sch. Lyk. 88; Hyg. PA ii 8 etc. Kratinos, Athen. ix 373a, Nemesis gives egg to Leda to hatch; swan visits Leda, Eur. Hel. 17ff etc. Helen as Okeanid: Hesiod fr. 92; sch. Pind. Nem. x 150 with Rzach’s note; R. Bohme 136; H. Hymn Dem. 5; Orphic h. xxix To. Swan-women are common in folktales, especially in shamanist northern areas: PA (4) 116; S. Reinach (1) ii 55, etc.

[108] Ap. iii 10, 7; 11, 1-3. Births: in art we find births of Athena, Dionysos, Korē; creation of Pandora; birth of Aphrodite on base of Olympia temple of Zeus.

[109] Od. vi 188; Pind. Is. v (iv) 52; Pyth. v 85; Plat. Rep. 373d. Food: Od. ix 449; Hdt. i 78; Aristoph. Birds 159 etc; A. R. ii 504f. Same root in OHG neman (take); Avesta ndmah (loan); Lith. nuoma (rent or usury). Nemesis: Isok. ix 17; Philod. Rh. ii 125S etc. Occupied land: Mounichia, IG (2nd) 894, cf. 462. For dike see n18 of ch. 2 above; Palmer makes the suggestion of boundary. It has been suggested that *dē(i) in Demeter means divide or distribute: Van Windekens. But see Hemp on possible relation of *Posei-das, *Da-mater. Reorganization of cults in the Ionian cities, after migrations across the sea (plus trade as solvent of old bases), must have done much to help the growth of the Olympian system, to the detriment of earth-powers — though ancient Anatolian elements complicated things by affecting or entering the cities.

[110] (1) 2342; Brunnhofer thinks otherwise, 54; see also Furtwängler (3) II; 160; GK 28. Fore-shadowing: Coman 34.

[111] Hodge; Dinsmoor 181f: Plommer BSA 1950, 66f; the marble was not used elsewhere. Personal goddess: Hes. Works 200, Theog. 223; but see F (1) ii 489f cf. (2) 81; D. XX 157f.

[112] Paus. i 23, 7f; Str. ix 396; Plin. xxxvi 17; H (1) 2348f, 2351; Pollitt (1) 78-80. Relief: C. Robert (5); Kjellberg; H. 2351; Picard (7) ii 2, 538ff, Lippold (2) 188; Richter (2.) figs. 633, 635. Agorakritos: Buschor (2.) 115-20; Andren; Schefold (5) 147, 164, 242; (6).

[113] Refs. Frazer (1) ii 23 n7, 25 n1; Char. (2); Twins: Eustath. on Il.xxiii 638 (1442, 39). Dead Leda: Lact. i 21. It is from fourth century that Leda grows prominent. See in general H. 2.342-6. Double paternity; Rendel Harris (2) 303-6.

[114] Paus. iii 16, 1; Louk. Dial. Gods xxvi 1. Suitors: Sev. (2) 275 thinks there was the marriage, but not the oath; Bethe (3) ii 229-31 thinks there was the oath; also Becker 37. Note the girl rapt away in the tale of the Twins. An early Lakonian sacred law states: ‘They shall not...nor shall they weave into the garments anything which the Polianomos has not prescribed. No unmarried woman shall hold the priesthood of the community of Arkali[a] nor serve as Polos...’ Date, early fifth or late sixth century; goddess may be Demeter, but Artemis or the Leukippides are more likely. Polianomos is a Dorian title, not previously known in Sparta, but see Plato cp. xiii 363c, Syracuse; Kyrene, Doc. ant. dell’ Africa Ital. ii 127; Herakelia, IG xiv no 645, I. 104 etc. For ritual weaving of garments, cf. wearing of plain white at Thesmophoria, mumming (transvestite), ritual dedication of garments. At Phaistos in Crete a rite Ekdysis was associated with the god Leukippos and involved the undressing of brides and incubatio in a temple: Nilsson (2) 370f; here the ref. is to weaving of garments for the goddess at public charge, or less probably to weaving of them by women privately for dedication to her. Ritual bathing and clothing of effigy were common to most if not all Greek goddesses connected with childbirth and fertility. In the cult of the Spartan Leukippides there was official weaving of garments (Paus. iii 16, 2). The aim of the law is to prevent impiety or pollution. Note gynaikonomos dealing with dress and behaviour of women at the Adanian Mysteries: IG v (1) no 1390. For the law, D. A. J. Beattie CQ 1951 46-58.

[115] Frazer (2) ii 30 for refs. Twins’ accomplice: Steph. ad Arist. Rhet. ii 23; Aristot. 1401 b36. The Twins: Pind. Pyth. i 66 (126); Eur. lost Antiope & Phoin. 606; S. Wide 331ff; CZ i 442. Inscr., Cauer (2) 17 no 36; Collitz iii 2, 40ff, no 44-99. Stesichoros fr. 79 ‘with white horses’. Demeter: Paus. viii 25, 4; 22, 1. Melanippe: Rendel Harris (2) 309f. Horse and springs: Guthrie (1) 95f; Spring Polydeukeia near Therapne, Paus. iii 20, 1.

[116] Ep. iii 1-3.

[117] Athen. xv 68DF.

[118] For drawings on Proklos: SS i 1, 200 & 207, nn1 & 3; Sev. (3) 174, (2) 357; Becker 40f fails to distinguish Arktinos and Lesches. For Proklos: Sev. (2) 334; Brunnhofer 13; Welcker (2) ii 194; Howald 55. Art: Boardman (3) fig. 47; Paus. i 23, 7f; x 9, 12 (date 548 or 414).

[119] Breasts: GK 32. Another Aithra (cloudless sky): Paus. x 10, 6-8 (oracle). Chest: Paus. x 25, 8. Okeanid: see above.

[120] Frazer (1) ii 224-5 for refs.; also 38-41.

[121] Sch. Eur. Or. 249, citing also Stesichoros. Strife: Works 11-26; Paus. ix 31, 4. Hesiod’s date: West 43f; Huxley (4) 125.

[122] Il. xiii 20-2; for sense of outrage, Psalms lxxii 1-19; Dodds 17f, 26 n109; WM (9) i 353ff; Verdenius.

[123] Oath: Rzach (2nd) fr. 94-6; Evelyn White fr. 68; Berlin pap. 3739 & 10560; Paus. iii 24, 10; Eur. IA; Ap. iii 10, 9, 1; Hyg. Fab. 78; Isok. Hel. 40. (Ap. and Hyg. attribute idea to Odysseus; Isok. to the suitors.)

[124] Possibly start of a second book, possibly of Eoiai (poem with each section starting e oiai); Paus. ix 31, 5; Athen. x 428b. Somewhere in fragments a son of Zeus (? Apollo) comes in; goes on to image of snake.

[125] Sch. Il. iii 175; sch. EHD Od. iv I 1; Dindorf (1) i 147ff, iii 171; Jouan 162f; Sev (2) 380f, Hes. fr. 99; Kinaithon fr. 3K; Lysimachos fr. 12 Jac.; Ap.1; sch. MNOA Androm. 898; Huxley (4) 88f, 198.

[126] Paus. i 43, 1; Stesichoros in his Oresteia; Hdt. iv 103.

[127] Paus. ii 22, 8; Bowra (1) 96f; Ap. iii 10, 7; Hellanikos fr. 4F, 134 Jacoby. Enodiē used especially of Hekate, also of Persephone; daimon enodia IG xiv 1390; Hermes, Theok. xxv 4.

[128] Paus. v 17, 5ff; von Massow; Cap. (1) 130; Pollux 50. Theseus: Séchan (2); Wolgensinger; Herter (2), (3), (4); Johansen; Dugas; GK 305-12. Attic hero: Herter (3); Plout. Thes. xxix 3; he took over Ionic legends, Wolgensinger 9ff. Also Webster (7).

[129] Myths: Kunze (2) 128f; Radermacher 245.

[130] Il. xiii 626f, iii 139f, cf. vii 392f; Sev. (2) 271f.

[131] Chap. (1) 130ff. Homer: Kunze (2) 132, Robert (1) 699, GK 306.

[132] Sch. AD Gen. Il. iii 242; Sev. (2) 273; Allen (3) v 121. Alkman fr. 3 (Bergk 4th ed.); Stesichoros fr. 13 Edmonds; SS i I, 477 n9; Pind. fr. 242, 258 Snell (Paus. i 41, 5); Hdt. ix 73. Aphidnos: GK 308, Plout. Thes. 33. E. Mauss saw him as oldest ravisher of Helen and equated his name (the Unsparing) with Hades; see also Krappe (3) 124; Becker 150.

[133] GK 309-12; Blinkenberg; Johansen (2) 143; CVA Louvre fasc. 8, iii Ca, pl. 14, 1-3; GK pl. C; Payne (3) 13, 21, pl. 10, 1; Hampe (4) 8o n1 (seeing Paris there); Kunze (2) 133; Matz (5) i pl. 147a; Schefold (7) 41 n4; Schweitzer esp. 111, fig. 2.

[134] Paus. iii 18, 15; Kunze (2) 133 n2; also Buschor (3); Lane 15, 157; Furtwängler (2) i 177; Beazley (3) 115 no. 34. More examples of type: GK 311f.

[135] M. Mayer 6; A. M. Dale p. xxiii for error. Accepting the reading: Seeliger 8 n2; Premerstein 634-8; WM (10) 141 n1; Becker 70; SS i 1, 483 n4. Also GK 286f; Grégoire 34 n2. Sceptics: Pisani 477; Delebecque (2) 327, 332; J. Schwartz 552; Goosens (2) 571. Think it possible, Robert 1086; Pohlenz ii 159; Clota (1) 381; Bowra (2) 89; Lykophron, Alex. 112-14, 131, 820-4, 850f; Becker 72f; GK 286f; Holzinger 290.

[136] Webster (1) 178f; Simpson 175 n108f.

[137] Paus. Iii 20, 8f. Oath-object: Crawley (2), Naga: J. Butler J. Asiatic Soc. of Bengal xliv (1) (1875) 316. Methana: N(15) on circuits in Greece. Army: N (2) 404; Hdt. vii 59, 3; Ap. iii 13, 7 with Frazer’s note; Speke Journal of Discovery of the Sources of the Nile (Everyman) 448f. Jugum: Warde Fowler 70ff; Rose (5) 96ff, cf. Janus-gate and dokana. Spelled princess is cut in half to be made whole: Arne-Thompson 507a. The king as a bull making a breach in a town’s wall appears on the Narmer pallette: Budge (1) 70.

[138] Knight (2) 102 n11; F. Muller (2), (1); Plout. Rom. xviif; Krappe (2).

[139] Knight (1) 113f, 132; F. Muller. Verb eilein (roll up, wind, turn about) is cognate. Tablets, Muller 15 citing Bohl, Weidner, Hommel. Humbaba drawings in continuous line (entrails): JL (3) 12, 21f; similar mask designs in temple of Orthia: Dawkins pls. lviii—lxii: probably apotropaic. See ch. xi.

[140] Klausen ii 829-33, though he does not accept the link with Troy.

[141] Knight 61ff; Hdt. ii 148; Plin. xxxvi 84f; Philochoros (Plout. Thes. xvi) says Cretans saw the maze merely as a complicated prison. Perachora: Payne (4) figs. 3, 4. Egypt: Flinders Petrie Medum 189 pl. iv; Royal Tombs of Earliest Dynasties 1901 ii 11, pl. lxi; placque, Buttons and Designs (1925), pl. iv, nos. 238, 237 & p. 7; Deedes 5-11. Sed: Lauer (1) pl. 1, (2) pls. ii, iii, v. Gates: Budge (1) 106. Note Homer knew of the winding river Maiandros of Karia. Eilmann 90 notes that dances, designs, big buildings, caves were all labyrinths. Enfilading: Lethaby 99; H. A. Giles Civilisation of China (1911). Indian tale of men in constructed elephant: P. Max Müller Chips from German Workshop iv (1880), i56f.

[142] Dionys. of Halik. Comp. xvii; Bowra (2) 20. For aristocrats in Archaic age: PAL Greenhalgh, G. and R. (1972) 190-207, esp. 201 (Theognis).

[143] Bowra (2) 186-9; Page (1) 126-30 etc.

[144] EM 822, 39; Philod. On Piety xlii Gomperz.

[145] Edmonds (1) i 210f; Page (1) 58-62; PSI 123; P. Oxy. 1231 fr. 1, 2289 fr. 9; the restoration making it a dream is unlikely. WM NJb xxxiii 228 takes lines 11-16 to refer to founding of a ritual, cf. Aly RE i A2371; Mazzarino Athenaeum (1943), 64f; Deubner Abh. d. preuss. Akad. d. Kiss. (1943), 7, pp. 3ff.

[146] Page (1) 138f; P. Oxy. 1231; Edmonds (1) i 215.

[147] Berl. Klassikertexte P9722; Lobel (1) 80; Edmonds 247; Ovid Ep. xv 15; Page (1) 52-7; Oxy. 1231 fr. 1; SS i 1 325ff; Domseiff 3ff, 78ff; Otterlo Mnem. (1939-40) 149ff; Fraenkel on Aisch. Ag. ii 407f; GK 36-8; W. Schubart 314; Lobel (1) 2; E. Diehl; Theander 70 (seeing contrast of Helen’s beauty and spiritual deformity); Lobel (3); T. Reinach.

[148] Page (1) 275-83, 152ff; Edmonds (1) i 392-5; Bowra (2) 178ff; SS i 1, 413 n2; Jurenka. Wien. St. xxxvi 229f. Troad: Hdt. v 95; Str. 599f; Diogenes i 74; Souda sv Pittakos. Another poem on Thetis and Achilles, Page 281-3; also fr. to Achilles as lord of Skythia (ie the white island); he was later called ruler of Pontos. Escher RE i 223f; Fleischer Myth. Les. i 56ff. Our poem was not written following a praise of Helen, as Jurenka thinks.

[149] Alkman (Doric: Ionian Alkmeon): Page (6) 167-70; Paus. iii 15, 1-3. Aphidna: Paus. i 41, 5; Hesych; Paus. iii 26,sch. Eur. Tro. 210; Prisc. Metr. Ter. 3, 428 Keil; sch. Bern. Verg. George. iii 89; Horsemen, Herodian P. Schem. 61. Blessed: Hephaist. HB of Metre 3; talking horse, Ailian HA xii 3; Leda; sch. AR i 146; Edmonds (1) iii 423: ? Helen of the glancing eye. Dys-Paris: Bowra (2) 22; sch. Il. iii 29; GK 39; Plin. xxi 15 (71), 118; 25 (96), 168f.

[150] Page (6); Bowra (2) 38ff; Wide; WM Hermes (1897), 251.

[151] Page (6) 26-32. Daughters of Porkos, 38-40; ref. to Graces and House of Zeus? Graces: Paus. iii 18, 6; Athen. 13913; sch. Eur. Or. 62.6; Paus. ix 35, 1; Wide 211ff; Paus. iii 14, 6 (Pind. Nem. x 38); Paus. iii 18, 8f, Throne of Amyklai; Robert (1) i 314. Limits: Bowra (2) 42.

[152] Athen. xi 782; Hesych. sv kleinoi. Agela: WM (12) 432-9; Pind. fr. 101 Bo. Cretans: Str. 483.

[153] Page 74ff; Bowra 51ff; Theok. xviii 26-8.

[154] Pōloi: Bowra 53; Wide 331; IG v I, 594.2; 1444a; Eur. Hel. 1465-7. Race of girls at Olympian Heraia: Paus. v 16, 2, cf. iii 13, 7, Lakonia; Hesych. sv endriōnas, Lakonia.

[155] Bowra 54f. Robe: Il. vi 90ff; Athena’s peplos at Panathenaia; Artemis as Chitonē (Kall. Hymn iii 225; Steph. Byz. sv Chitonē); clothes of women who died in childbirth at Brauron to Iphigeneia: Eur. IT 1464ff. Hesych. sv boupharon; EM 175, 36. Lyk. 154 uses pháros as pharynx. Phosphoros, light-bringer, is epithet of Artemis: Eur. IT 21; Kall. Hymn iii II, 204 (linked with Oupis). Dromos: Paus. iii 14, 6; 15, 3; Theok. xviii 39f.

[156] Englemann; Robert (1) iii 1086ff; Pisani; Chap. (1) 145; Bowra (1) 107ff, (2) 74ff; Seeliger; von Premerstein; Preuss; M. Mayer; Vürtheim; Mancuso: GK 285-90; Souda sv; Bergk P.L.G. (4th ed.). Grégoire thinks the whole thing a fake about time of outbreak of Peloponnesian War. Vallet on originality; Monturo & M. Napoli, effects on archaic art. The lyric poets: Garzya & E. Lapore.

[157] Simonides fr. 61; Antipatr. AP viii 75; Dion. Kass. ii 33; Hor. Carm. iv 9.8. Steph. Zyz. sv Metauros. Himera: Plato, Plout., Aristotle, Himeros, Paus., Ailian, Souda, cf. Vib. Seq. Flum. xi Oberl. Hesiod: Cic. Rep. ii 20, Tzet. Life Hes. 18; Souda. Paus. iii 19, 13; Plat. Phaid. 243 a; Plat. Letters iii 319e. Cf. Pindar Nem. vii 40ff and Paian vi 113ff; Olymp. i 58; in general SS i 1, 471 n6. Not one poem as seems from Isok. Hel. 64.

[158] Isok. x 64; Cruq. ad Hor. epod. xvii 43; sch. Eur. Or. 249. Stones: sch. Eur. Or. 1287. Tabula Ithaka as Sack of Troy according to Stesichoros: Stuart Jones Cat. Mus. Capit. 165. Marriage: Athen. iii 81d, x 451d; Hor. Epod. xvii 38; Pers. ii 56; Vurtheim 69; Souda sv Phormion; sch. Il. ii 339 (oath); Eustath. 1698 Init. Also Kaibel (2); Eur. Hel. 637-41, 722-5. Art: GK 106, 168; Brommer 326; GK nos. 106-ii. But marriage in quadriga common theme of Attic vases from sixth and fifth centuries.

[159] Bowra (1) 88f; Edmonds (1) ii 53, 56f, 58f; Bowra (2) 112; Viitheim 59. Not Helen as in Eur. Hel. 1667, 1465-7; Aristoph. Lysis. 1308-15. Gold-winged is epithet of Iris (Il. twice, and Hymn. Dem. 314).

[160] Sch. Aristoph. Peace 775; Aristeid. Or. xxxiii 3; Bowra (1) Zon. Lex. 1338.

[161] Plat. Rep. 586b; Aristeid. Or, xlv 54.

[162] Il. v 449-51; Od. iv 796, xi 476, 602; used of golden image of a woman, Hdt. i 51, cf. vi 5, 8. Hera and Ixion: Pind. Pyth. ii; sch. Eur. Phoin. 1185; Louk. Dial. Gods vi. Note important use of eidola in theories of Demokritos and Epikouros.

[163] He also wrote a Sack; we do not know its relation to similar work by contemporary Sakados of Argos: Athen. xiii 610e; for epic Sack by Arktinos, Huxley (4) 146-8.

[164] Proteus not in the story after Stesichoros, as WM (1) 240 n1 thought; SS ii 1, 476; Hopfer sees work of Egyptian priests. Tzet. Lyk. 113; sch. Aristeid. Or. xiii 131; Eur. Hel. 44ff; Dion Or. xi 40 Prem.

[165] Hidden on mainland, eg Therapne: Preuss 48ff; skies or isle, Vürtheim 67ff; Bowra (2) 109f; Plat. Phaidr. 243a; fr. 192/15 Page; Aristeid. Or. xiii 131; GK 289. For phasma of Herakles getting a woman with child: Paus. vi 11. Aristeides merely says that Paris took the eidolon, as Helen he could not take.

[166] See previous note; Plout. de mal. Herod. xiii 857b; Vissert 19, 84; Hdt. vi 291f.

[167] Chadwick Growth iii 619; Od. viii 63f; Il. ii 599f, cf. the blind singer of Chios (H. Hymn iii 172.). SS i 1, 471 n6; cf. Thamyris blinded for boasting he sang better than the muses.

[168] Welcker thinks Daphnis merely used as example. Ailian VH x 18; Diod. Sic. iv 84; Parthen. 29; Timaios, Jacoby F 83, 566 (in Sikelida?); Vürtheim 73; Retz 262; Williams and Ogilvie 18-27. For love disaster, cf. Kalyke and Rhadine, Athen. xiv 619d; Str. viii 347.

[169] Plin. ii 9; Ginzel ii 525 cites four notable sun eclipses between total ones of 585 and 463 BC; one (557 BC) was total. Edmonds (1) ii 19; Pind. Paian ix; Eustath. Il. 722, 3. Telchines: JL (2.) index, especially 195f. His original name Teisias (Souda), possibly suggesting tinein, tisis, retribution. Archilochos, fr. 74D. and Vlastos, Class. Philol. xlii 1947 174.

[170] Becker 80 sees a mere literary diversion; Premerstein 634 stresses Doric basis and suggests palinode ended with apotheosis — a local legend? Hor. Epod. xvii 38, cf. Eur. Hel. 1666, Or. 1636 (Vürtheim). Dioskouroi as healers: so considered by Romans and Byzantines: Viirtheim 69, sch. Pers. ii 56; Souda, sv Phormion.

[171] Ibykos: sch. Eur. Andr. 628; poet of passion, Cic. Tusc. iv 33, 71; sch. Ar. Wasps 714; sch. Il. xiii 516, cf. Il. X111 361, 516; GK 42. Grey hair: Il. xiii 361; friendship, 232f. Pap. Oxy. xv 1790; Diehl fr. 3; Edmonds (1) ii 115-19. He has Leda of Pleuron, Helen Menelaid, Spartan girls bare-thighed; Diomedes’ holy Adriatic isle, Achilles arriving in Blessed Isles and marrying Medeia; sch. Pind. Nem. x 7; sch. AR iv 814.

[172] Moliones: Athen ii 57f; Siamese twins, Hes. fr. 13 Rz.; Eustath. Il.. 882; Pherekyd. fr. 47 Sturz; Plout. de frat. am. 1; J. (1) 162; M. Mayer 21; Her. Mad. 29; Antiope 92 Page. In Geometric vase: Coldstream 351. Johansen (3) 25; Brann 65f; Huxley (4) 113. Homer ignores Siamese twins aspect.

[173] Pindar: Pyth. xi 33f; Paian vi 95ff, Isth. viii 53, cf. Eur. Tro. 921f; Verg. Aen. vii 320f; Jouan (1) 137.

[174] Pyth. v 82ff; Drachmann ii 185f; Defradas; Chamoux 71f. Petala: Isth. viii 43.

[175] Korinna: Edmonds (1) iii 39. Bacchylides calls Twins to a holy feast, Athen. xi 500a.

[176] GK 118f, 328; Dugas (5) 167: Warriors; ? Hippomedes and Hippolytos. Sacred marriage: Klinz; Toutain; Picard (10) 259; CZ iii 1025ff. Ivory: GK 77 n3; amphora, GK 100, no 89. Troy, GK ii 7f, cf. 56-9, no 112; archaic, GK 49-53; carry-off or return; severe style, carry-off, persuasion 59-61, Paris before Helen 61, evolving to gynaikion scene, 65; after 450, carry-off in favour 66; first vase inscribed Menelaos (Menelas): Beazley (3) 8, Hampe (4) 70; Kübler (1) 17, GK 47; Sack, early Corinthian painter Kleanthes, Plin. xxxv 15f & 55f, Athen. 346bc, Str. viii 343 (shrine of Artemis Alpheionia near Olympia); Corfu, GK 77 n3; types from Little Iliad and Sack of Troy GK 98-113.

[177] GK 53, no II. Peitho: Kekule AZ xl 1882 10; Jahn sees a companion of Helen, 176, 180; Gerhard Trinkschalen 15 sees Menelaos, not Aineias. GK no 13 for skyphos with Peitho and Aphrodite (with flower in hand); Eros, 54f. Refuge in shrine of Apollo, GK nos 58, 64, 68, Athena, nos 72f, ?67, uncertain no 60. Black-figure still being made in fifth century, but giving way to red-figure invented in Athens c. 530. Black-figure had been devised by the Corinthians, c. 725-625, protocorinthian.

[178] Many useful correctives in Lloyd-Jones, but he often oversimplifies. See especially ch. 1 and its notes. Free will: Chantraine (2), Eustath, Il. 1686. It is too simple also to say with Otto (3) 124 that Zeus punishes the injustices of men, but the gods are not bound by human morality. Gods and men make up a single whole, and the gods represent both the moral and social consciousness of men in their totality and the daimonic world of impulse, desire, pure growth.

[179] Pohlenz 10 on simple harpagai of Helen. Hdt.: Aly; Jacoby RE suppl. ii (1913) 333; de Sanctis (1) 307f; Focke (1), (2); Page (1) 1ff; Momigliano (1), (2); W. Schmidt (1); SS i 2, 586 n1; GK 291-5.

[180] Logopoioi: Aly 59; W. Schmidt 1003; Legrand Hérod. i 10.

[181] Legrand Hérod, ii 142: Hdt. may have added passages in margin.

[182] Premerstein 636f; Legrand i 32. Delta: Chap. (1) 144. Hdt. follows Stes.: Pohlenz (2) 408; Wiedemann 435; C. Robert (2) 25. But we cannot tell from his text: Becker 87ff, SS i 3, 478; Grégoire 36. Hdt. may have merely heard tales in Egypt influenced by eidolon. No sign of it: Vürtheim 65, 71; he did not know of it, WM (10) 141. See also Seeliger 8.

[183] Hellanikos: fr. 153, Jac. (FGH i 369); De Sanctis (2) 12 thinks Hellanikos rationalized. Kanopos, Helmsman of Menelaos, snake-bitten, buried on site of later town: Str. xvii 801 etc.; Gruppe (1) 1569, Kanopos divinized with wife Menouthis; Isis who is in Menouthis, IG xiv 1005.

[184] FHG fr. 168, 234; Tzet. Lyk. 513. Age: Diod. iv 63, 2; Plout. Thes. xxxi; Paus. iii 18, 9; Hyg. Fab. 79; GK 218f; Louk. Dream and Dial. Gods 20.

[185] GK 309f; Fürtwangler (2) i 177; Beazley (3) 115 no. 34; GK 311; Dugas (7). Bowl, GK 311f; Eph. Arch. 1884 pl. 5; Courby 292.

[186] Zeus: Lloyd-Jones ch. iv; Coman 35; Geffken i 165; Daube 97; Ag. 699-707; P. Oxy 2256, fr. 9A frag. where Dikē herself appears. Paris: Ag. 60-5; Glotz 317 n3; Fraenkel Ag. ii 39 (v. 61), cf. Ag. 362-5; Il. xiii 623-5; Ag. 397-402, 748ff; Jouan (1) 185. Aischylos had the idea, developed by Euripides, of disproportion between act of one woman and its effects.

[187] Ag. 403ff, 689ff, 744-9. The lovers act against the will of Zeus; are not carrying it out.

[188] Kolossoi: Benveniste (2); Picard (19); Lauffer; van Hall 95; Fraenkel ii 218ff. Going too far to compare magical practices of Vergil’s shepherdess, van Hall 95; Fraenkel thinks only of statues like Attic korai. Eur. Protesilaos fr. 665; Alk. 341ff. Ag. 412ff, 416-9; also GK 126f.

[189] GK 94f, 90f; Lowy (1) fig. 21; Rumpf 109; Dugas (4) 87f. Metopes: GK 94f; Lowy (2); Picard (8) 198; Dugas (3) 53-9; Lippols (2) 149f; Praschniker 17ff, 98ff, figs. 9-12; M. Robertson 48, with bibliography.

[190] GK 59f; Beazley ARV 738 n1. Egg-shaped vase: GK 67 n1; krater of Katane, 164. Vatican: GK 254; Voigt.

[191] Oupis: surname Nemesis: IG xiv 1389 ii 2; Artemis, Kall, Hymn Art. 204. Delian maid: Euph. 103; Opis title of Artemis, Plat. Ax. 371a; Alex. Ait. iv 5; Hdt. iv 35 (hyperborean).

[192] Hes. Works 72-4. Temple at Sikyon: Hdt. viii III, Paus. ii 7, 7. At Athens statues of Peitho and Aphrodite Pandemos close together; at Megara her statue in temple of Aphrodite: Paus. i 43, 6; link with Theseus and unification of Attika, Paus. i 22, 3. Peitho and Artemis, ii 21, 1. As one of Charites: Souda; Paus. ix 35, 1.

[193] Or. 128, 1100-09, 1112; Hek. 928; Tro. 987f, 1036-9. Again, Tro. 891-4. 772f; Or. 126f, 1385ff; Hek. 269, 442, 635; Or. 79; Tro. 943; Andr. 592-5; Hel. 36ff; Or. 1640ff. Insults: Or. 507-11, 239f; IT 354ff; Or. 1387, 1389, 1584; Elek.1027; Tro. 1213; Andr. 103, 595. GK 139; Jouan; Lloyd-Jones 144-55. Hekabe invokes Zeus, Helen for all her mythologizing does not: Devereux Psychoanalytic Q. xxvi (1957) 378ff. Suitors: IA 49-65. Paris himself cuts timber for ships: Hek. 629-35. Stoning: Tro. 1039-41.

[194] Pollitt (1) 95-105; Paus. x 25, 1ff. Aithra, Theano, Antenor also there. Underworld: Medousa as daughter of Priam (Stesichoros): Paus. x 26; Paris beardless clapping hands ‘like some rude country fellow’ 31.

[195] Or. 1113; IA 385ff; Andr. 616-8; sch. to 616 tries vainly to reconcile with Homeric Menelaos; GK 137 n2; Andr. 627ff, cf. Or. 1287. Art type for meeting of Helen and Menelaos used for murder of Klytemnaistra: Brunn pl. 75-9; G. Matthies 105.

[196] GK 186f. Cypria: WM (5) 189. Not mid-fifth century as Robert thought, 1080 n1; GK 176. Hydria: Clairmont K 165; Dugas (8) 11f.

[197] Vulgarization: GK 130, 256f; Devambez; Stinton 51; Dugas (1) 64; Boardman (3) fig. 180; GK 131 n3; Kyk. 182ff (date 423).

[198] Ail. VH ii 8; Stinton app. 1; Jouan (1) 113-42; C. Robert (1) ii 982 n5. Pap. Strasb. 2.342-4; Ennius Alexandrinus and parts of Seneca’s Agamemnon. For Paris young: Ap., Hyg., Ovid, Varro, Servius; art including Etruscan urns and mirrors : Turk 1605f; Davreux 97-223; Wüst 1515-7. Asklepiades of Tragilos, Thrace, disciple of Isokrates, studied the play: sch. A Il. iii 325 (fr. 12 Jac.); an inscription shows it played still at Tegea, end of third century, Lefke 108; Jouan (1) 115. Source: Stesichoros, M. Mayer 54-8 (on his influence in Tro.); mythographer, WM (8) iii 260 n1 (at time one did not realize a king’s son could be a shepherd).

[199] Sceptre: Ar. Birds (414 BC, line 512; Snell (2) 34 n3. I ignore some difficulties of reconstruction not essential to our purpose. (In Andr. Eur. substitutes Kassandra for dream-interpreters, makes her prophesy straight after Paris’ birth.) Davreux 10f sees two traditions: via Cypria Kassandra as prophetess, via another cyclic epic presages and dreams, cf. Mason 87.) Urns: Jouan 122. Games, race or pentathlon. Tokens: Jouan (1) 130-3, GT (4) 336f: equation of mark and name, possible relation to clan-sign. In Philostr. Imag. i 26 the Horai scatter flowers on swaddling-bands of baby Hermes ‘so that they may not lack markings’. In Menandros we see how animal figures were traditional on metal ornaments or embroidered linen of babes: ‘Is it a bull or goat?’ ‘Is this a he-goat or an ox or some such beast?...That’s the attire they found me in as a child,’ Epit. 170-4, PK 631-60. There is clearly here a link with myths of the fostering beast. Relation of Eur.’s play to Pindar: Jouan (1) 137. Snell thinks Aphrodite made the doom statement; others, Apollo, Kassandra; Robert (1) ii 982 n5 says Hekate. Paris: Kuiper (2); Lefke; Snell (2); SS i 3, 475ff, Scheidweiler; Masqueray 2.54. Links with other Eur. plays: Jouan (1) 141.

[200] Soph., fr. 98P; 532; 99. Also Dion Chr. xv 10; Drac. Hel. 69; Jouan 139 n2, Nero. Aleades: Srebny 16-8.

[201] Delebecque (2) 257-61.

[202] C. Robert 978 & n3; GK 136; placing of prophecies; Jouan (1) 136.

[203] Hyg. Fab. 173; Stinton app. 1; urns, Brunn i, i—xvi, 1-34; in general Brunn-Korte, Schlie, Huddleston (Gr. Tragedy 10-15); dates GK z8o; Andromeda may come after truce of 421 BC: Page (7); Orestes, Delebecque 307ff dates 413, not 418; Jouan 139; IA is 405; Orestes? 408 (GK 301).

[204] Premerstein; Kuiper (1); Pisani; D. L. Drew; Goosens; SS i 3, 501ff; Italie; Grégoire; Campbell; Delebecque 322ff. Ref. to eidolon in epilogue of Elektra possibly an interpolation by someone trying to reconcile with Helene. Proteus as pharaoh, possibly from Hekataios or even Stesichoros: Grég. 35 Preuss sees Gorgias inspiring. Making Helen respectable: A. Y. Campbell; Becker 88-92; SS 503f; Delebecque (2) 332.

[205] Plan, 36-41; Judgement 22-30; Swan-Zeus 17-21; 254-9, 284; she laments beauty 260-6, 134-6, 143, shame has shortened the life of the Twins. Pharos: Duchemin; GK 298 n1. Flowers: Paus. viii 31, 2.

[206] Parody: Steiger, Verrall, Grégoire; romance, SS i 3, 1, 505; Rivier 176ff. Helen as Penelope: SS 503f and see n26 above. Comic: Steiger 200ff; Kuiper (1) 180ff; Maniet; Goosens (2) 572. Theme, cf. IT; Trenkner 50-5, 59-64; role of Theoklymenos from tale of Bousiris. Chorus: lines 1115-60. Date after Sicilian disaster: Becker 88; GK 296; Delebecque (2) 328ff (he is using theme from Sicilian Stes.); political impact, Grégoire 23f (against, SS i 3, 1, 512 n7); Geffcken i 207; Delebecque 326ff; GK 300. Thesmoph. date 411; parody 855ff.

[207] GK 141f, Pearson 57ff, 121-3, 86. Antenor: Pearson 86, 89; SS i 2, 444 & n6; WM (2) 186a; Welcker (4) 158ff; Paus. x 17; Str. 608; sch. Pind. Pyth. v 108 etc.

[208] Welcker (4) 158ff, GK 141 f, Dikaiopolis on tears at sight of picture; Arist. Poet. 16 (1455a I), SS i 843 n12, A. Reinach (Zeuxis). Diogenes: SS i 3, 516.

[209] Kyathos: GK 98 n3; BCH lxxiii (1949), 519, cf. satyr in Kyk. 177-80. Further, GK 142-4; Athen. xiii 563d; SS i 4, 76ff; Basket, Körte on P. Oxy. iv 69ff, Clairmont 84 n204. Paris: Méautis.

[210] Pearson 126f; Aristeides Dind. ii 399; Kyk. 185f; Lysis. 155f. Vases GK 144; Stinton 62; not all the humorous possibilities lost.

[211] Il. iii 100, vi 356, xxiv 28, cf. Eur. Hel. 640;  Stinton 72; archē and aitia, Cornford (3) 58-70. Ships, Il. v 63, xxii 116, Hek. 631. Spring: Andr. 274-92, Hel. 676, Stinton 13ff. The Judgement seems largely ignored by writers between Cypria and Sophokles, Euripides.

[212] In general, Nahm 229-39; Jaeger Paideia i 286ff; Pohlenz (2) 157; 391 & (3) 167; Kennedy (1) 168f; Blass i 2, 192ff; Diès 192; Demand; Becker 62 n12; Zucker; Freeman 362. GK 145-53; E. Maass; Grégoire 28f; SS i 3, 72 nn2, 6f. Art: Pollitt (a) 125; logos Sycutris; Untersteiner 140ff; Zeus, Chap. (2) 19. Date: Preuss 9ff; Bruns 88. Date of Tro. 415, Helen 412; see Orsini. G. and Art: Duncan. He saw orator as psychagogos: Untersteiner 119f; Segal.

[213] GK 292; Book 1 init.; Gomme i 108; Cornford (3) ch. 5, chs. 12f.

[214] GK 148f; Muller Orat. Att. ii 199, 4; Kennedy (1) 172f; Walberer; Blass thinks by a sophist such as Polykrates; Scholl thought it later, third or second century. Delphoi: Wüst 1500; GK 256f; Helen and Apollo 257. Old tradition and late versions: Wüst 1500. Antisthenes: Müller ii 195 (182, 1).

[215] Isokrates: BC 436-338. Grégoire 28 n1; Kennedy (1) 174ff & (2). Mathieu (2) 158f & (1) 25; Blass ii 243ff; SS i 3, 72. Leda: Chap. (2) 19. Howland sees Helen as reply to Plato’s Phaidros; Kennedy (1) 188. Olympikos: Jaeger (2) 18; Diels Vors. ii fr. B7-8a.

[216] Arist. Rhet. 1401b 22 & 34; 1397b 27, 1938b 23. Sauppe (also Müller ii 314f) thinks it by Hyperides. Hyperides ch. 36.

[217] C. Robert (6), (7) & (8); Welcker (5); Lowy (1); Picard (8); Dugas (3); Rumpf 93; Dugas (4) ch. 1; Pollitt (2) 122; Chap. (1) 224; Plat. Gorg. 448 & sch.; Plin. xxxv 138.

[218] GK 327f, 325f, 61-6, 32.8f; Picard (7) i 332. Breast: Clairmont 109. Zeuxis: Pollitt (1) 154-8; A. Reinach 154ff; (1) 166.

[219] Lyre: Il. iii 120-36; GK 218f; Kaibel (2) thought Theok.’s aim to commemorate origins of Helen’s cult at Sparta; Becker denies 102, Legrand 80, Khafaga. See also epigrams, Peplos of Aristotle, Diehl ii 171, fr. 3, and fr. 61 (lament Paris).

[220] Bion ii 9ff; Theok. xxvii; Lament for Bion 78f (attributed to Moschos, even to Theok., but probably by pupil of Bion in south Italy) compares Bion with Homer who sang ‘the lovely daughter of Tyndareos’ etc. Kall. Hymn iii 23iff. Tebt. pap. I, 1-4; Diehl ii fasc. 6 p. 201; GK 205.

[221] Date: Mair 481ff; Ziegler 2365ff; Geffcken (2); WM (6) ii 143-64; GK 206-11. Oinone: Parthen. 4; Kephalon (i.e. Hegesianax) Troica (45F 2 Jac.) cf. Konon 23 (26F1); Stinton 40-2; P. Oxy. 2362 (Snell fr. 20d); Str. 596; Il. xvi 738.

[222] Welcker (2) ii 92 & (1) 140; Konon 23; Parth. 4 & 34. Spring: sch. Andr. 285.

[223] Stinton 44 n1, also for modern Greek FT. Hellenistic: Robert (1) 982ff; Krischan. Philostr. Her. 664 Kaiser; Philolaos as Aklepios: Paus. iii 22, 7. Also Radermacher (2) 23; Stinton 44 n2 & 59.

[224] Lyk. 56-68. Kephalon (Kephalion): Athen. 393d; RE sv Hegesianax. Cf. Ap. iii 12, 6; Kon. 23; Robert (1) 984f; Tzet. like Lyk. sends him to the Greeks; Scheer ii 41; WM thought it from Hellanikos.

[225] Korythos: Knossos Dv 1310; Hesych. sv. trochilos, perikephaleia; Apollo, Bull. Soc. R. Lettres de Lund (1828-9) iv 39f. Sparta: Polem. Hist. 86; Hesych. sv kyrittoi & korythallia; Athen. 109c, 115e. Lyk. 69ff (? from Hellanikos) on Elektra etc; her husband was Korythos; we come here on the obscure Kabeiric myths of Samothrace (JL (2) 187f), Serv. Aen. i 32, ii 325, iii 104, Vii 207 etc., Tzet. Lyk. 29. She is linked with palladion of Troy; becomes a Pleiad with six sisters; fabulous island AR i 916.

[226] Lyk. 86-9. 143, 505-7, 102f; Holzinger 187. Pephnos, Paus. iii 26, 2. Ship (Scheer ii 54), GK 208f, Kranae 209 n2. Oinone used for Aigine, Lyk. 175.

[227] Sch. ABDT Il. v 64; Lyk. 132 (Scheer ii 63); Bethe (4) 301; Geffcken (2) 576; Holzinger 185; Wüst 1500ff; attributed to Hellanikos, FHG iv 637, but perhaps Lyk.’s invention. Bear-nurse, Lyk. 138. For the Bear-Son see R. Carpenter. Bear in modern Greek cults, Kakouri 34, 42.

[228] Lyk. 171-3; GK 3, 211; no mention of union in Leuke. For Lyk. Helen is the woman with five lovers and three husbands. A papyrus of probably Augustan epoch treats of causes of war of Troy: Schubart (2.) 22; G. Bond JEA (1953), 130; GK 203 n2; uncertain if reference to contraband or Paris come stealthily as a trader. He is an `unjust judge’.

[229] Becker 106; UK 212-19; Jouan (1) 31, but see Sev. (2) 2, 92. Ninnius (? Naevius); Kroll RE xvii 1634 (Ninn. 6). For Euripides, Collart Rev. Ph. xvi (1943) 31. Aen. ii 309, 571-4; vi 494ff. Not Vergil’s invention: F. Noach RhM xlviii (1893), 430.

[230] Catullus 68, 101-4; Hor. Sat. i 3, 107; ep. 17, 42-4; Ovid Ars i 54 & 681-4 etc. Propertius ii I & 3.

[231] True Hist. ii 8 & 26; Dial. Gods. xx 14; Dead xviii 2, xix I; R. Helm RE xiii 2 (1927), 1733; E. Ziegeler Programm Hameln 1979. Ptol. Kaine historia iv 5 (Paus. iii 19, 2).

[232] Philostr. opera C. L. Kayser (1871) ii 301ff & 327f. Worship of Achilles at Borysthenis, on Danube: Dion Chr. Borysthenikos 9, 14, 25. Meidias: Beccati (2), Hahland, Nicole.

[233] W. F. J. Knight (3); Kehmptsow; Noack. (2) Q.S. vi 26, x 344, 395, xiv 156. Genuine emotion over Paris, x 390ff (not fake: Becker 127).

[234] GK 216f. Stinton 9. Byzantines: John of Antioch, Malalas, Constantine Manasses. School manual with summary of origins of war: J. Schwartz (2).

[235] Glover 94-8; Rohde 110 n5 & 109-12. Aisa: iii 649-56, xi 271-7, xiv 98-100, v 594, ix 402. Moira: iii 756, vii 70-92. Death: Glover 98f. Thetis: xii 206; Justice xiii 377-84. Nestor: vii 70-92. He ignores Achilles and Polyxena romance: Chassang 368.

[236] GK 223; Schefold (10) 939; von Salis (3) 56f. Return not popular. Persuasion: GK 225ff, 327f; mosaic and paintings 230ff, 238ff; reliefs 236; sarcoph. 238; Menelaos and Helen 245ff; Iliac Table 247f, 250f; K. Bulas 124; Paulske 54-6; Lippold (1) 22; toilet, Gerhard (3), Roscher sv Hel. 1962.

[237] GK 251, 236f; Carcopino La basilique pythagoréene 1926 321ff. Delatte (3) 110. Late interpretations: Wüst 1499; rationalist, Antikleides fr. 15, Jac.; Dion Chr. xx 21-3; Dares vii; Ptol. Heph. (197, 3 West) — allegorical: Chrysippos (Stoic. Vet. Fr. iii 197 xxv; Salloustios de diis iv; Proklos Comment Rep. ii 263, 21 Kr.; Fulgent. ii 1. Simon: Hippol. Ref. Haer. 252; Epiph. Adv. Haer. ii 1, 1; Schneidewin Gött. Nach. 1852 99; Knaack; P. Coucelle Les lettres grecques en Occident (1930), 85 n2; Tryphiod. Sack 512ff; Doresse i6f; 164 (told also of Barbelo, Prunikos, Norea, the Virgin of Light in Pistis Sophia); also in Manicheanism. Also, Oswald, ch. v.

[238] Dawkins (1) 223, pl. 127 & 130, 2; Boardman (2) 4; Clairmont 15 n3; Kunze (1) 14. Paris: Dawkins, Reinhardt, Clairmont; Hampe (2) 145 sceptical. Olpe: Payne (1) 71; Villard 15-21, 33.

[239] Ignored by Homer: Stinton 57f & 3. Expurgations: G. Murray 120ff. Antiquity of Pegasos: Radermacher (1) 86f. Further: Reinhardt (3) 9ff; Wüst agrees that Homer knew but omitted; N (1) 566 thinks unproven. Stinton (4) on difference of saga and myth, citing Radermacher (1) ch. iv & n144; Reinhardt n17; Halliday (1), ch. 1; Aly (2); Kirk (1) 96, 108f. Meleagros: WM (4) 887 (216f); Kakridis 14. Common FT, yet attached to hero as aetiology of his cult: Barrett 6f.

[240] Choice: Rose HB 107, 128 n191; Schultz (1) i 117f. Triads: Stinton 6; von Dorenseiff (1) 55f. Il. xxiv 49 obscure: WM (9) i 360; Od. vii 19. Fates may not be late addition to Meleagros tale as WM (1) 88m (216n) supposed: Kakridis 138.

[241] Od. xix 518, xx 67ff; Pind. Ol. xiv 7ff. Graces: Vian (2) 217-19; Paus. iii 17, 1-3. Moirai: Fontenrose 331, 426-9 (Korykian Nymphs), aid Zeus v. Typhon, 73f, 89, 280, 430; at births in FT 324.

[242] Harmonia: Vian 147-51; Pherek. FGH i 3F 89; Hes. fr. 233 Rz. fr. K1, 1-7 Merk. Thetis: Ephoros FGH ii A 70F 96; Demetr. of Phal. FGH iiB 228 F32; Diod. xvi 33, 3. Anodos: Vian 65f, 1 i8f. Tragic twist: JL (2) 295f.

[243] Erman 156 & 161f, both from New Kingdom; Peet 227; W. K. Simpson 92-107 and 85-91. Koharoth: Gordon (2) 25f, 123f, cf. Psalm 68, 7; 68, 6. Paris scared: Hampe (1) 549; Perdrizet; Rasch 36; Weninger 3; Dugas 61.

[244] Reinhardt n1 fails to see FT link, but Usener (1) does. Grimm 155 Brautschau. Greek FT: Stinton 6f; N. Polites 768; SS i 208 n2.

[245] Fates present: Catullus 64; Hyg. Fab. 92; Louk. Dial. Gods xx 7; Tzet. Lyk. 93. Erotic: Clairmont 102-4, but see Hampe (1) 550.

[246] Demeter: Roscher Lex. ii 1342f, 1345; Athena, Heliod. fr. 2 (FHG iv 425); F (1) i 327; Milon, Paus. vi 14, 6; Philostr. Ap. Ty. iv 28; Hera, Zanotti-Bianco 244; Elderkin 429-31; Bossert (2) 327. Goddess or Korē: GT (3) 219.

[247] Kokkos: Str. 630; Plin. xxiii 107, 112; Euseb. PE iii II, 6; Kall. Hymn Dem. 45; Theok. vii 155-7; PM iii 458. Taboo: Porph. Abs. iv 16; Paus. viii 37, 7. Athens: Clem. Pr. ii 16; Plin. xxiv 59; Ail. NA ix 26; Hesych. sv kneōron; Ov. Met. x 431-5. Death: Clem. Pr. ii 16; Paus. ix 25, 1; Philostr. Im. ii 29, 4. Frazer (2) iii 184f wrong. Dream: Artem. i 73. Further JL (4) 75, 77 (TC of Korē or girl rising from pomegranate should be ‘kneeling on it’): Kerenyi (7) 145. GT (3) 118, 219, 237, 252, 288.

[248] Hera: Gruppe (1) 460f; Athen. 83c. Love-apples: Theok. ii 120, iii 10, v 88; Verg. Ecl. iii 71; Polites E no 138. Brides: Plout. Mor. 138d.

[249] Robert (1) ii 979; Athen. 609ef-610ab (Paus. viii 29, 5; N (2), 94 336; FGH iv 460); Paus v 19, 5; Alkaios fr. 130, 32. L.-P. Athen. 565f; Tenedos; Athen. 609e.

[250] Athen. xiii 565f. Fire, Il. ix 220. FHG iii 168. Sparta: Od. xiii 412; Plout. Agis 2, cf. Educ.1cd, cf. Athen. 555. Eur. TGF (2nd ed.) 367 for Aiolos: Stob. Flor. 65, I. Agamemnon: Il. iii 169. Bion. FHG iv 351; Hdt. iii 20; Aristot. Pol. I 1290b5, cf. Hdt. iii 23 (Howe and Wells note). Ganymedes: Il. xx 234f. Kephalos: JH (6) lx—lxiii. Kleitos: Od. xv 250, Iasion: Od. v 125. Aigina: Nonnos vii 211ff (Ov. Met. vi 113; Plat. Rep. 381d). Chios: Petronius 63; Thouk. viii 24, 4; Plout. 249d.

[251] Harpok. sv (Philochoros); Xen. Mem. 3, 12ff, cf. Arist. Ethics 1099a 3 (Olympia). In general N (2) 57. 336; Gow on Theok. xii 29; Page (1) 168 n4.

[252] Paus. ii zi; sch. vet. Pind. Pyth. xii 13 (24); Fontenrose 285, 295, 100f; Athen. ix 393ef; Ail. NA xv 29; Boio in Ant. Lib. xv. Keyx: Vian 119; J. Schwartz 200-10; Ap. i 52 etc. (Halkyon daughter of Aiolos ancestor of Aiolians.) Niobe: Il. xxiv 603-17 etc. Myrrha: sch. Theok. i 109a; Fulgent. Myth. iii 8; Serv. Aen. v 75, Ecl. x 18. Chione: Ov. Met. x 270ff.

[253] Stinton 8f, 77; contest of two: Weninger 13. Moral distinction: Kall. Bath. of Pallas, Isomachos in Xen. Oik. x 7ff; Louk. Dial. Gods xx 10; each strips in different way.

[254] Price (1); Vian 146; JH (2) 286ff; O. Walter 300f; Picard (12), (13), (2) 104, 108f; Demargne 299-303. Phoin. 681-7. Persephone got Thebes as wedding gift: Euphorion fr. 107P, rape, Vian xx 368 n4. See on Harmonia, end of ch. II. Only plural: N (3) i 424ff; linked, Dorig 72-91. Dual and triple Hekate, Price 61f; Dameteres 61. Note Aglēis, one of a triad sacrificed on a Kyklops’ tomb to stop a plague, during Minos’ siege of Athens: Apollod. iii 15, 8. For Hekate and triad of (?) Erinyes: S. Karouzou, JHS 1972 64-73: they specially punished matricide: Nilsson (2) i 91; Roscher Lex. ii, 1, 998f; RE Suppl. viii i 16 (E. Wüst); Nestle (2) 26; Rohde, Psyche, i 72 n2 and 267f. Group of three dancing maidens, some with polos on head, was added to Hekataia in early Hellenistic period: Karouzou 73; Schwarzenberg 22f. Hekate and choros of Nymphs: Karouzou 70.

[255] Price 50. Thebes: Paus. ix 16, 3f; viii 32, 3. Vian, link of Aphrodite-cult with polemarchs; in general, Tümpel; Vian 144-7 for effort to link with Dumezil’s three Indo-European functions. Oaths: W. (1) 207f. Eileithyia singular in Homer, Od. xix 188, but plural as daughters of Hera, Il. xi 270. See further, Price (1) 50, 53. I call Hestia a mother-goddess as the uniting Hearth.

[256] Graiai (two in Hes., triad in Aisch. & Ap.) with swan shapes and one eye etc, sch. Prom. 793. Dyads of opposite sex, eg Hekalos, Hekale; Hekatos, Hekate: Deubner 217. Daimones or genii nearly always two, unless three: Salviat (1); Ath. Agora iii 65, 149f; BCH 1963 371; Karageorgis (1) ii 181. Three goddesses under one cloak: Guarducci (1). Paus. i 19, 2, Aphrodite is daughter of Kronos like Moirai or Erinyes, Epimenides fr. 19 Diels. Stoic exegesis linked Aphrodite Ourania, Pandemos, Pontia as symbols of sky, earth, water: Cornutus Theol. Comp. 24, cf. three Zeus (Zeus, Poseidon, Hades). Ourania: Vian 144. Olympia: Paus. v 15, 3. Mirror, Beazley (4); Simon (1) 47 argues she is with Moirai on the Ludovici throne. Pandemos: L. Robert (2) 229f. Puberty: Ganszyniec. Hegemonē: IG ii 3 (2nd) 2297; Paus. ix 35, 2. Price 53 for two Heras at Corinth. Dyads, triads in general, Roscher Lex. ii I 1288-1307; Zuntz 77; Hera triad, Paus. viii 22, 2.

[257] Korres 107-9 (including amendment by H. Muhlenstein); Price (1) 649 n10. Marinatos (1) fig. 11; Price 49 n12; G. F. Mylonas (1) 120; Marinatos (2) 303; Palmer (1) 135. Perati: Iakovidis 45f. Male dual gods (Hermes, Herakles, Pan), Price 53. Duals in Homer: Price 48f.

[258] H. Wace (1) no I; (2); Kantor (1); attributes, Korres 113 n1.

[259] ASAA 236; metope, Pfuhl (1) i 493; Artemis etc, Price (1) 58-60. Thebes: see Price 67.

[260] Thimme 75; eighth-century work, Price 68f.

[261] Ancients: Plout. Q. Symp. xi 14, 2; De Ei, ii 1. JIH (2) 242; ix 35, 1. Hera; Paus. ii 17, 2. Centaurs dual in Cypros: BCH (1963), 371; Karageorgis ii 181; Hes. Theog. 902, Good Order leads to Justice leads to Peace. Athens: Eur. Ion 496, Erech. fr.; JH (5) 350, (2) 286-8; sch. Arist. Thesm. 533; JH (2) 291. Pandrosos: IG (znd) 372, 45; 171; Hekate and Graces: JH (6) 373. Eteokles, end of Theokritos’ Graces.

[262] Il. xviii 492, iii 130; Od. iv 743; Il.. ix 560, xxiv 616; Od. vi 105. Nymphaion: IG xi (2) 144A 91, Delos fourth century; Paus. iii 1, 3.

[263] Terp. fr.; Nysai AM xiv pl. 1; Kretschmer (3) for derivations; Otto 61-3 localities. Triad: S. Maas 405f nz. Nysa: Jeanmaire (4) 65f, 349f.

[264] Otto 171; Il. vi 132; Euing 27ff; Theok. xxvi; Eur. Bacch. 680ff.

[265] Nurse of Ares: Paus. iii 19, 8. Vases: Buschor in Furtwängler (2) pl. 149. Festival: N (2) 188f. Knidos: GDI 3502, 3512; Arch. Anz. (1905), 11; N (2) 241; Otto 203-06 (H. and Dionysos).

[266] The Geraistiades Nymphai were nurses of Zeus; so too probably the Cretan Meteres (Diod. and Plout.). Texts are late, but arbitrary etymologies do not discredit the evidence; fanciful etymologies are common at all times in ancient world. (Taken as from gerairein, to honour or reward; Geraistion from geras, not from the nymphs.) Nymphai Gerastai in Attika connected with Kephisos (river-god), the triad of Apollo, Leto, Artemis, etc: classical and epigraphic evidence from Athens, near Phaleron, probably the Hill of the Muses. Korres (1) 117 nn1-2; Price (1) 50; Diod. iv 79; Plout. Marcell. xx 3; nurses of Zeus, Ciaceri, Faure 110. Gerastai: AE (1909), 244f, 250, pl. 8; Platon xi (1959) 146-59.

[267] JH (4) 188; Lechat (1) & (2) 443 different view; G. C. Richards 285. JH (2) 291; Benndorf Arch. Zeit. (1869). Pandora: Praschniker; Price (1) 56.

[268] Price 57; kylix, Lulliès; psykter, Guarducci 57 no 8. BCH v 349; Eph. Arch. (1893) 135; AJA 2nd s. vii 301; JH (6) 546f. BM Cat. Gr. & R. Fels. (1904) no 2158, 2166 (Baumeister Denkmaler 1033).

[269] JH (3) 218, (2) 289; JHS xix 218; West (4) 155 n19 (Nymphs as Kourai). Argos: AM iv (1879) 152f; Volgraff BCH (1944-5) 395; Paus. ii 11, 4; ADelt xxiii (1968), pt. I 117-31. Semnai: Paus. I 28, 6; sch. Aischines Against Timarchos 747 Reiske; Pollitt (1) 140-43.

[270] Vulgarization: JH (1) & (2) 292ff; see Price (1) 56f. François vase: Minto pl. 27. Aphrodite and two women (? Hours: Beazley), ARV (2nd) 291, 2 = K135; Stinton 61.

[271] Eur. Andr. 277; sch. to that, citing Soph. ft. 511 P; cf. Koll. 123; Eur. Tro. 924, Hel. 357; Hipp. 1148; Clairmont 9if; Stinton 15; Soph. fr. 547.

[272] Decorative: Stinton 6, 11, 17, 46f, 60; H. Hymn 60-63. Egypt: Erman 35f; Gardiner 15; Roeder 23f, Lefebvre 26-8; Schott 169; I follow Goedicke. Hathor: JL (5) 20ff.

[273] Samos: Polites 653, cf. the Bori: Talbot chs. vi-viii especially 42. See above: Paris scared. Also cf. Daphnis: Stinton 61; WM 229ff.

[274] Kall. Hymn v 13ff. Artemis: F (1) ii 558f n4. Haliartos: Paus. ix 20, 4; Plout. Lys. 28. Leap into sea: see Int. in JL (2); GT (1) 143f; Tanagra: Paus. ix 20, 4. Naxos: Diod. v 50. Perseus: Il. xiv 319 sch.; Ikaros: Hyg. Fab. 3o, PA ii 4; Lykourgos, Il. vi 130ff; Soph. Ant. 955. Messenia: Paus. viii 41, 2, cf. 28, 2, and i 43, 4; Poll. iii 38. Mystai into sea before Eleusinian Mysteries. Leukippos: Paus. iv 21, 7; Str. 357, 457; H. Hymn ii 99. Aktaion: Hyg. Fab. 181, Paus. viii 27, 17 (Tales of Boutes, Lykourgos, the head of Orpheus).

[275] GT (3) 223f; Paus. vi 22, 9, cf. Telesill. 1. Name: Str. 347; sch. Lyk. 1050-3. Cave: Paus. v 5, 5, 11; Str. 346.

[276] W. (1) 176f. Streams: Paus. vi 21, 7; Str. 357 & 457; Plout. Mor. 771f, 772b; Arist. Lysis. 913. Brides: Thouk. ii 15, 5; Poll. iii 43; Eur. Phoin. 344-8; Harpok. sv loutophoros.

[277] Sea-bath: Picard (4) 312ff, especially 317; Athen. xv 672; Bather; Graillot 136ff. Nock (2) n9 sees such processions as pre-Greek. Kall. Bath. Pallas, cf. Athenian Plynteria: Xen. Hell. i 4, 12; Plout. Alk. 34; Paus. ii 10, 4 (Sikyon); Ov. Fasti iv 336ff; Amm. Marc. xxiii 3; Tac. Germ. xl; Mannhardt (1) ch. vii, (2) ch. v. Note use of leaf of paideros, holm-oak (paid-eros) in offerings. Helen: Paus. ii 2, 3.

[278] Hyg. Fab. 91; Serv. Aen. v 380; Ap. iii 12, 5. Briseis cup: Beazley, ARV (2nd) 406, 8, fig. 1); Robert (2) 89-94; Stinton 57 n6. Beazley: ARV (1st) 268, 22; Kollouth. 391f. Cup by Brygos painter: Stinton pl. v; ARV (2nd) 369, 4; Hampe (2) 142ff, Pind. Paian viii; Robert (3); Rzach 43f denies implication; Eur. Tro. 921f, Verg. Aen. vii 3 2of. (Kassandra in art: Davreux 139ff; AJA (April 1972), 233.)

[279] Stinton 53 n3; 58f; Robert (2) Exkurs iv 234, (1) ii 978 n3; Il. ii 821; lameness, WM (5) 233 n1. Also Il. xiv 444f, vi 22f; Stinton 47 n5; Trenkner ch. iv; Rohde 30ff. Satnios: Str. 605-06.

[280] JL (2) ch. 18 Hybris 295f, 349ff. Exposure: Sith-Thomson M371; Frazer (3) ii 439ff; with reference to twins, introduction to JL (6).

[281] Jouan (1) 111ff.

[282] JH (4) 378f; Athen. xi 494. Hera: Menaich. 3. Also Il. xx 396; Hes. Works 123, cf. Il. x 20 of mētis. Herakles: Louk. Alex. 4. See Paus. iii 14, 6. Photios cites Demoi of Euphides.

[283] Chadwick Growth (1) iii pt. 2, 283f; E. Best The Maoris (1924) i 75; also his Maori School of Learning (1923). Australians: Crawley 116, 54 (fear). Kassandra: Paus. iii 27, 5. Alexandros as typical robber of FT: N (9) 252f. Males in Australian tribes often gave up their names at the first puberty rites (to escape spells) and were known then by some general term: brother, nephew, cousin. Agraulos: Pelekidis, Souda, Hesych. sv Agraulos; Hdt. viii 53; Plout. Alk. xv; attic deme, Agraule; her festival and mystery, Porph. De abs. i 2; Ulpian to Demos. de fals. leg. Aitiological tale of her throwing self from acropolis after oracle demanded a self-sacrifice to save the country in war.

[284] R. Carpenter for full discussion of Odysseus. Kyzikos: Str. 575; Nik. Alex. 6-8; AR i 936 sch.; Thomas 276-80; 277. Bear Cave on Ida; cults of Kydonians in NW Crete with the Diktynnaion and Artemis Aptera (Wingless), kourotrophos; her link with a female agela. Coins of Kydonia: Zeus suckled by a bitch, changed into a bear; surely a cult of divine nurses in caves like the Idaian; cave called Arkoudia on the peninsula: W. (1) 135f, 189f, 192. Diktynna as maid become mother, Britomartis become mature: W. 188ff. Artemis of Aptera linked with tale of contest of Sirens and Muses; Sirens losing have feathers plucked. Note Celtic bear-goddess Artio.

[285] GT (3) 276-80; W. (1) 275-7; Ap. iii 8, 2; Paus. i 25, 1; Paus. viii 5, 6f; Eratosth. Cat. i; Hyg. Fab. 165, 176f. Kallisto: F (1) ii 435; Paus. i 29, 2, viii 35, 8; K.O. Muller 73-6. Brauron: F (1) ii 435-8 for refs.; Carpenter 121f; Gruppe (1) ii 1204, 1293; Mommson (1) 456ff, (2) 406ff — cf. initiation dance of Azimba girls: Hartland (2) 197. Saffron is also Dionysiac; Chairemon (Athen. 608c) on the girls lying in saffron robes on helenion (Calamint, a sort of mint or basil) after weaving garlands of violets and crocus; Delcourt (1) 25. Atalanta: Kall. Hymn Art. 221; Paus. iii 12, 9; Hyg. Fab. 270; Ov. Met. x 560. Ida: CZ ii 932; Solmsen (6); Fick (1) 10 & (2) 11f; Boiacq sv.

[286] GT (1) 44; Hes. Theog. 73, 112, 383-402, 993; Aisa, Prom. 244. Hephaistos: Prom. 38. Atlas: Hes. Theog. 520. Nymphs: ib. 348; Apollo, Stes. 22; Aphrodite, Hes. Theog. 202, Nonnos xxiv 274ff; Erinyes, Aisch. Eum. 173, 335, 730; Askl. Ag. 1004.

[287] Talbot, especially (1) chs. i-ii.

[288] Helenē: with digamma: Dion. Hal. Ant. i 20. Elane: Neanth. 4J; Nik. fr. 89; torch, Hesych. sv, Athen. 699d, 701a; Hippolyt. Philosoph. vi 19 ref. to Aen. vi 18f (subject of Pompeian fresco, Helbig 1326); Norden Aen. Buch. VI p. 261 makes Helen a lunar symbol, cf. coins of Trajan at Alexandreia, Chap. cat. no. 27 etc.; Chap. (1) 139f. Brauron: Poll. x 191. Liknon: H. Hymn iv 21, 150 etc. Attic red-figure, G. van Hoorn (1); JH (2) 401f, 428; Plout. de Is. xxxv. Nurse-nymphs: Soph. O.K. 674; JAI (2) 368. Kalathos: Kall. Hymn Dem. 1 etc. Later worn by Serapis. Also, DS sv Calathus; Bourguet Ruines de Delphes 190; Séchan (3) 1037, (4) 136; N (2) 198; Homolle BCH 1897 605. Mask of Dionysos in liknon: Kerenyi (2) pl. 12.

[289] JH (2) 120ff. Eusthath. on Od. iv 131 (1488, 60) kalathos and ‘the fruit of Demeter’. Bringers of offerings, app. to Persephone (kiste, basket, peplos, cock, ball etc) shown in terra-cottas from city of Epizephyrean Lokrians, from end of sixth century, P. Orsi, Quagliati, etc.

[290] Moon: Solmsen (5) 196; Usener (3) iv 23, 69, 209, Carpenter 23f; but no proof, Becker 142f. Neokles of Kroton said egg with Helen in it fell from moon: Athen. 57f; after death to moon, Eustath. 1488, 19; star, sch. Stat. Theb. vii 792; Chap. (1) 232f, Pisidia. Gem: Chap. Cat. no 58; Ptol. Heph. makes her daughter of Sun and Leda, Phot. Bibl. 149a, but in tragedians Moon is daughter of Sun, eg Eur. Phoin. 174. Aigina: Hdt, viii 122.

[291] Herbs: Theophr. HP vi 6, 2; Diosk. i 29 & 28; ps.-Disk. iv 9; Arist. HA 16a 1; Diosk. iv 19; Ail. NA iv 47. Tears: Plin. xxi 33; EM 328, 16, Plin xxiii I (23), xxv 1f (12) nepenthe; Colum. xii 48 & xi 3, 35 elecampane; Bion Ep. Adon. 66, anemone. Folk-play: Tiddy 193, 136, 167, 201, 218. Ailian, NH ix 21.

[292] Grégoire (2): ven.

[293] Paus. iii 15, 3; 19, 9 & 20, 2; Wide 340f, cf. Hesych, sv heleneia and kannathra. Isok. Hel. 61; Athenag. Leg. 14; Euseb. Pr. Ev. v 28. F (2) 322f; Theok. xviii; Od. iv 567.

[294] Argos: Paus. ii 22, 6; Hesych. sv kannathra; Wace, Artemis Orthia 283 warning all female deities in lead ex-votos cannot be identified with goddess of sanctuary. Corinth: Tam Tinh 94; Chap. (1) 248; Apul. Met. xi 10; chronicle, Forsdyke (3) 44-6. For Limnatis, Stymphalia, Eleia: F (1) ii 427. Helen as vegetation-goddess: Mannhardt (1) ii 22ff; N (2) i 211, 315; Picard (2) 188.

[295] F (2) 323-5; Pollard; Paus. viii 23,iii 16, 10; Hyg. Fab. 261; Dawkins 356ff; Plout. Lyk. 18; Inst. Lak. 38; Nik. Dam. FHG iii 458, 144, 11; Michel 175f; Frazer (2) ad loc. Plane: Theophr. HP iv 5, 6; Il. ii 367; Pollard 104. Athenian epheboi, races in honour of Artemis Agrotera at Agra: IG ii 467-71; ordeal at Alea, Arkadia, Paus. viii 23, 1.

[296] Helen-Astarte: Bousset Hautprobleme d. Gnosis 78-83; RE sv Gnostiker 1537, 1539; Hilgenfeld Ketergesch. d. Urchrist. 155; Gruppe (1) 1612. Bousset 77 thinks of Asianic Great Mother, Delatte sees Gnostic Meter in Argos (JL (3) 382f).

[297] Athenag. Deprec. i (PG vi 889ff); Amin. Marc. xiv 11, 25. Bithynia: P. Oxy. xi no 1380; Lafaye RP (1916), 55f (Trajan or Hadrian): lines 111f. Ruge RE sv Drepanon (4). Athens: Eustath. Od. i 399 (1425, 62); Costanzi (2), WM (4) ii 236.

[298] Tod and Wace no 362 (probably fourth century, archaicizing); Art. Orth. pl. xcvi 2; Chap. (1) 116, 149. Athena: Paus. iii 22, 9. Artemis dances: Séchan (3), (4); Weninger (2), (3) 43, 72.

[299] JH (2) 4268; vases, Berlin Cat. 2290 and Wien. Vorlegeblätter s.A, Taf. vi. Names: Plout. Mor. Symp. v 3,1 (675F), Athen. iii 78d; Hesych. Krater: Annali d. Ist. 1962 tav. d’agg. C. Pind. fr. 153, cited Plout. Mor. de Is. 35 (365a), cf. 34 (364d); Varro in Aug. CD vii 21; Hesych. endendros; Diod. iii 63, 2; Athen. iii 82d.

[300] Paus. vi 24, 7; Ov. Met. x 512; Plin. xxiii 159f; xxiv 50; xxi 126; Boiai, Paus. iii 22, 12. Statues: Eur. Hipp. 73 sch. (lygōi); Hera, Plin. xxi 148; Athen. xv 678a; Alk. 24. Eleusis: sch. Soph. O.K. 683; Ar. Frogs 330 sch.; myrton, Lysis. 1004. Also Athen. xv 675ff. Myrtle, sacred to Artemis birth-aider at Boiai; was thought to stop premature delivery by closing the uterus (the lily checked menstruation).

[301] Stump: Frazer, Spirits of Corn i. Hermes: JH (2) 426-8, see also n12 above. But the ancient association of Hermes seems with stones.

[302] Jeanmaire (4) 214.

[303] Chap. (1) 149.

[304] Ochna: Plout. Q. Gr. 40; goddess of mills and just weights: Hesych. and Eustath. 214, 1383. Erigonē: Clem. Alex. Strom. i 366; A. Gell. xv 20, Schultz; Paus. ii 18, 5 i. Hyg. Fab. 122; Dikt. Cret. vi 4. Askoliasmos dance: Hyg. PA ii 4. Tale also linked with Kos and rising of dogstar; an Attic deme was named Ikarios. Ap. iii 14, 7; Paus. i 2, 4; Hyg. Fab. 130; Eustath. 389, 1535; Poll. iv 55 etc. Erigone in love with Dionysos, who seduces her: Ov. Met. vi 12.5; Hyg. Fab. 130. For Tmolos and hanged girl: Barnett (2) 144.

[305] Charila: F (2) 325; Plout. G.Q. 12 (293e); F (1) v 433; Cornford (4) 9f and driving-out of hunger recorded by Plout.

[306] Il. viii 400, 477; xv 17. Eustath. 1003; Il. viii 19ff. Possibly Ionian burlesque: Nestle. Coins: Num. Chr. ii 1882 pl. xi 18; xii 1-4, 7-9; BM Cat. Ionia pl. xxxvi 15, xxxvii 1, 2, 6, xxxviii 1, 2.

From the Homeric imagery came the philosophic idea of the chain of being. In general see Delacourt (2.) ch. 1: J. Heckenbach, Güntert, T. Zachariae, G. Dumézil, Eliade (4) 5. Knots and locks: Talbot (1) 22f, Frazer Taboo 294; J. Hillner 15.

[307] JL (1); Odd. xi 278. Tree; Paus. ii 6.

[308] Peony: Diosk. iii I57; Plin. xxvi 151. Dittany: Theophr. HP ix 16, 1; Arat. 33 sch. Myrtle: Plin. xxiii 159f; xxiv 50; xxi 126. Lygos: Diosk. i 134; Plin. xxiv 59f; Paus. iii 16, ii; Eur. Hipp. 73 sch. Hera: Paus. vii 4, 4. Galingale: Plin. xxi 118. Helichryse: Plin. xxi 148; Alk. 24 girl prays to Hera, bringing wreath of it and galingale. Juno: Varro in Aug. CD vii 2. Lygodesma: Paus. iii 16, 11 & 17. Ephesos: Thomson (3) 271; Lethaby (1); Minoan, Persson; N (5) 268, 275, 278, 280 n1, 333, 343; Picard (4) 20f, 28, 104, 328, 332; CIG 2954; Picard 377. Tree: Tac. Ann. iii 61; W (1) 186-8. At Ephesos there was a long yearly festival of contests with winners enrolled in sacred colleges; women were let watch as late as the sixth century. (At Olympia girls might watch; no married women apart from the priestess of Demeter Chamyne.)

[309] Tod and Wace 158, nos 201-3, figs. 38f, cf. nos 318, 362, 571 etc. Helen goddess: Patroni.

[310] Byblis: Parthen. xi; Konon Narr. 2. Kleite: AR i 967, 1063. Phyllis: Louk. Dance xl; Tzet. Lyk. 495; Hyg. Fab. 59; Serv. Verg. Ecl. V 10 etc. Oinone: Stinton 43 n4. Kleboia: Parth. xiv; Meineke Anal. Alexandr. 219. Ariadne: N (2) 383; Freidel 244; Thouk. iii 96; Plout. Conviv. Sept. Sap. 162c. Agnon: Hesych.; CIG 7441, 7692; F (2) 48.

[311] Paus. vii 17; Arnob. Adv. Nat. v 5-7; Hepding 37ff, 103ff; Kerenyi (2a) 77ff; Toutain (2); Vermaseren ch. iv; Lact. Plac. Comm. Stat. Theb. x 175. Crossed legs bound with chain: Vermaseren 33; Rose HB 170; Aug. in Joh. By. Tract. vii 1, 6; Cumont (2) 71; Hepding 219, 189, 70; Graillot 534; Cumont Mithra ii 59; Le Blant RA (1898) ii 18-20 takes pileatus as a Dioskouros. Agdistis: Delcourt (1) 31f.

[312] N (3a) 109; (5) 219; Evans (3) 58; Evans (2) 158, Furtwängler iii 44. Vaphio: Eph. Arch. (1889) 32; Furt. 39. Ring: Furt. iii 18, ii 27. Hagia Triada: N (5) 176ff.

[313] N (5) 194. Prophets: Aen. iii 81, vii 665. Kopo balls, cf. Roman pila. Hartland ii chs. 10f for the establishing of union.

[314] Fest. ed. Müller 129; 194, 9 & io; 239; Verg. Georg. ii 389; Serv. ad loc.; Macr. Sat. i 7, 11, who sees as substitute for human sacrifices; Verg. Aen. vi 740. Paganalia: Ov. Fast. i 667ff; Dionys. iv 15; Hor. Ep. i 1, 49, ii 1, 140. Sch. Bob. 256 (souls); Aen. vi 640. Mania (? Etruscan): Varro LL ix 61; Arnob. iii 41; Fest. 129; Paul Diac. 128.

[315] Frazer G.B. i 146; ii 33f & app. India. Folklore (1914), 147; F (1) v 195; Frazer iv 277ff. Terracotta: N (5) 287; PM iv 24-7; Lawler (1) 38. Amanetia: Kakouri 16, 80, 85; tug-of-war 34, 43f; tall hats 87f. Thrace, Chambers, 206ff with refs.

[316] Hymn: Guthrie (1) 46; JH (4) ch. 1; JL (2) index; BSA (1908-9); N (5) 472, 475ff; Picard (4) 231, 279 n4, 424ff; J. Poerner; Str. x 466; Eur. Bacc. 119-25; Kall. H. Zeus 32ff, Porph. De Abs. iv 19; Guthrie (1) 40-5. The Euripidean fragment links with Dionysos, Zagreus etc. Spencer & Gill Native Tribes of Central Australia 128ff, 138. Hyg. Fab. 139; N (2) 232ff; Fontenrose 25, 51 n19, 507.

[317] Halliday 87, ‘a hanged god’; Ov. Met. iii 90. Othin: H. M. Chadwick (2) 15ff. Thrace: Seleukos, Athen. 155e, D’Allemagne Sport et jeux d’adresse 368.

[318] Paus. iii 14, 7; G. Posener Dict. Eg. Civil. (1962), 170. Goddesses suckle king at birth and death, Book of Dead, Budge (1960), 285, and (1) 58f, 61. Gum: Robertson Smith (z) 133; GT (3) 212. Gem: Webster (1) 48 ni. At Ugarit also the goddess-suckling.

[319] W (1) 150f; CZ i 402; Head 476; Guarducci i 280; Lenormant; Gardner; Wroth p. xxxii, cf. JHS v 87; Svoronos i 295f.

[320] Head 458; Dreros: W (2) 122; Hermes lxxxv 381-4.

[321] Paus. viii 2, 2; GT (1) ii5; Arist. Wasps 544, Frogs 995. Athen. 678 bc on wreaths of palm and naked-boy dances, cf. 630e; N (2) 141f.

[322] W (1) 167f, 152ff, CZ i 526, pl. xxxii; tree, Theophr. HP i 95, Varro RR i 7, 6, Plin. xii i 1, Antig. Mir. 163 (179), cf. Sot. Flum. 4. Coins: CZ i 526 & ni; Hesych. xv Europia; CZ i 532, 528f; Theophr. HP iii 3, 4 (cf. ii 2, 10); JH (4) 180-82; CR (1903), 405; Svoronos i 13, 2219; 14, 16, 18; 7 (Britomartis), 15; IC iv 34.

Boiotia: N (6) 33; F (1) ii 479; Roscher Lex. i 1417; Persson (2) 303-8; P (3) 336; W (1) 159f (route); Paus. ix 5; Hampe (4) 67-9; Coste-Messelière 153-63; Brauw 52-67, 102-8; N (3) i 332 n1. Cult of Demeter Europa at Lebedeia; at Thebes, a shrine of D. Thesmophoros was said to be in Kadmos’ palace: routes, through Euboia into Boiotia, Argos into Peloponnese. Teumessos: H. Hymn Apollo 224; Paus. ix 19, 1; Gruppe i 60 n5; vases of Kabirion, Wolters 98 K9 pl. 10f, 44.

Hellotis: Pind. Ol. xiii 40; N (2) 96; EM sv (torch-race). Midsummer: CZ i 525, 358; Pfister 324, 432. (Oriental).

Ilion: JH (4) 164f (also on Atlantis bull rite); CIA II (1st) 467, also 471, 78f; coins, H.v. Fritze in Dörpfeld ii 514. Greeks had no word for tree, dendron means fruit tree: Myres Procs. Cl. Assn. (1910). Cf. rites passing child through fire, eg Demeter at Eleusis. Satyrs as goat-daimones in Minoan Crete: Webster (1) 50f; Lorimer 312; PM iv fig. 803; N (5) 148, 258, 358; Persson (1) no 10; JHS (1954), 171; Docs. 331.For the Tree of Life and its use in Pherekydes’ cosmogony; West (2) 55 = 60, with the cosmic robe and its weaving — related to the sacred marriage, 52-5.

[323] Il. v 401, 900; Od. iv 232; Hes. fr. 194 R (3rd ed.); Solon fr. 1, 37 D; Plin. xxv 29 etc. Apollo: Eur. Alk. 969; Ov. Her. v 145ff; Lyk. 61 & sch.; Plin. xxv 13; ps.-Apuleius Herb. xxii 8. Asklepios: Jeanmaire (3) 255; FHG ii 62 (GGM i 108).

[324] Hekate: Dionys. Skytobrachion, Diod. iv 45 (FGH 32 F14). Circe etc: Od. iv 228; Il. xi 741; Theok. ii 16 etc. Telchines: Friedlander, JL (2) Blood: Webster (1) 46, 125f; Leumann 202f. Hekate: also Delatte (1) 120, 137ff; JL (2). Hymn Dem. 227ff; Delatte (1) 10-13; Ov. Fast. iv 552; Cycéon in Bull. Ac. R. de Belge (1954), 719 n7. Reiner 45f, 61.

[325] See above; W (1) 160.

[326] PM iii 140, cf. i 432; PM iii 142, cf. i 161. Also Evans (2) 181ff; Karo 142ff; N (5) 268ff; Dussaud 412; Vallois. Mykenai again: Matz (3) pl. 52 (2); Evans (2) 108; PM i 341; Dussaud 392; Karo 149. Isopata: Delatte fig. 9. Eye, ear, as on Egyptian monster, Evans, Persson, Picard, but see N (5) 342. See also ring: N (5) 268, 275, 278; Delatte fig. 5; ring N (5) 267, Biesantz 118 thinks false; ditto Delatte fig. 7, Biesantz 119. Ring from Mochlos: Bossert fig. 399b; N (5) 269, 350; Biesantz 46; Marinatos (5), cf. N (5) 268 fig. 134. Further, Delatte 19 n2.

[327] N (5) 276, (2) 284, but Picard (2) 48, 192. Drugs: Snijder 139ff; sow or plant sacred herbs, Vallois, Karo 142. Hold herb high: Plin. xx 38. Tree-cults in general: Widengren and refs. n4 to appendix.

[328] Dodds 30-6; see also Lloyd-Jones. Telos: Wehrli 8 n4; Theognis 133-6, 141-2. Dodds 36 on Oidipous and mainland Thebais, but see Lloyd-Jones 120f. Anodos ritual: Cornford (4) 40f.

Further refs. to planes in Pausanias:

Grove of planes between Mt Pontinos and sea (in Corinthian area), in it statues of Demeter Prosymne and Dionysos in stone, in another temple a wooden one of Dionysos Saviour, and by the sea stone image of Aphrodite (linked with Danaides): ii 37, 1; at source of the Amymone, a plane under which said to have been the hydra killed by Herakles, ib. 4. While the boys hold their contests in the Grove at Sparta, ‘the ephors transact the most serious business’, iii 11, 2. In the grove is hero-shrine of Kyniska, ‘first woman to breed horses and win a chariot-race at Olympia’, ib. 15, 1. Fountain of Planiston (Messenia) with water flowing out of hollow cavernous oak, iv 34, 4. Plane trees in the Altis, Olympia: v 27, 11. Planes between tracks and wall at old gymnasion in Elis; the enclosure is associated with a task of Herakles, vi 23, 1. Plane grove where Alexander slept in dream of Nemesis, vii 5, 2. Pharai, Achaia, by River Pieros a grove of planes ancient and hollow; feasts held inside, vii 22, 1. Among Kynaitheans of Arkadia, a cold spring with plane above it, which cures mad dogs; the spring is Alyssos, Curer-of-Madness, viii 19, 2. Plane tree of Menelaos, oldest in world, ib. 23, 4 (see Theophor. HP iv 13, 2; Plin. xvi 234). At Aulis, ‘they preserve in the temple what still survives of the plane tree mentioned by Homer in the Iliad [ii 307]’: water flowing from under a beautiful plane, a terrible serpent appears as portent — the spring by which the plane grew is also shown: ix 19, 7.

[329] The books of Rendel Harris give much information about twins, the cults and beliefs associated with them, plus some over-zealous theories. See also JL (6) intro.; Eitrem (1); Grégoire (5). Note Herakles and Iphikles; Romulus-Remus etc. Cosmic: Chap. (1) 306-12. Campbell see index Dioscuri, egg, twins, etc. The Baronga in S. Africa called twins children of the sky, etc (Polynesia, Africa, America).

[330] Chap. (1) 97; nos 63, 66, no 14. Orestes 163ff; Robert i 322; CZ i 772ff. Tenos: Graindor 19 no 2. Aristomenes: Paus. iv 16, 5 & 9; Chap. (1) 4 n1; Albert chs. ii-iii. Sea-saviours in Alkaios and Hom. H. Diosk. which is probably not later than start of fifth century and may be earlier; Humbert 250f, Page (1) 265-8; Theok. xxii 8f; Isok. x 61; Plat. Euth. 293a etc.

[331] Paus. iii 14, 6f; Ap. iii 11, 2; Thouk. ii 39, I. Kastor’s tomb: Paus. iii 13, 1. Chap. 157; Paus. xiii 16, 3. Beds: Deneken 1ff. Akragas: Pind. Ol. iii 1; N (2) 421 thinks it a private cult, but note what scholiast says; lines 70ff mention only the pair. Theoxenai: Athen. vi 235b; Eustath. Od. 1425, 62; horse-race, Lysias fr. 75; Stengel (2) 195f on three victims as unconnected with the deities; Münsterberg thinks Helen added only to fill out a triad; Eur. Hel, 1667 ff; Deneken 13. Temple: Athen. 235 on slopes of Akropolis: meal, ib. 137. Also Il. i 425; Eur. Ion 805; Hdt. vi 127; Plat. Lys. 205d; CIG p. 1074; sch. Nem. vii 68 and Ol. iii 13. Link with other gods: Deneken 15-24; Athen. 400; CIG ii 2338, 2374.

[332] Chap. 135, 139. Refs., Chap. (1) 136.

[333] Dokana (dokos, beam): Tod—Wace no 844; Plout. Amor. frat. i (36); Livy ix 4, 3 etc. Souda and EM think dokana graves of Twins at Sparta (from dechomai). Eggs: Tod—Wace nos 575, 356, 109; no 1439 Nat. Mus. Athens. Snake (funerary or chthonic) may accompany amphora. Jars: Tod—Wace nos 7, 291, 575, 356; Chap. 316. I do not here go into questions of the Samothracian Mysteries, Lares, etc. Geom. art: Ahlberg, chariots 16, 42, 56, 84-8; fig. 78 for riding warrior, Assyrian 854 BC. For a Mykenean god Hippo, ‘Horse’, behind Poseidon: Palmer (1) 96, 130f, 174-6. Early riders in Greek art: Mykenean, Pottier BCH xii 8RS) 496; Athens, 495; Corinth 497, and D. Robinson AJA x (1906), 166; Kythnos, Pottier 500. Also Velitrae, G. Morett; Ausonia vi (1911), 147-54, JRS v (1915), 204; D. van Buren Figurative Revetments Etr. & Latium (1921), 60 etc. In Egypt, Touny 39-42. Astarte ‘strong on the horse’ or ‘mistress of chariots and horses’: riding naked astride, limestone ostrakon c. 1200 BC (Touny 40). Triumphal Arch: Versnel. Early riders also see here fig. 77 and TC from the Poros Wall, Mykenai.

[334] Levi (1) 274; PM iv 2, 830; iv 1, 374; Levi (4). Earlier examples: Levi 325f. Asvins: Chap. (1) 336-46; Renel. Against: F (2) 175ff; Meschek; Puech. Zaehner 66, 88; I. Gersevitch Avestan Hymn to Mithra 4; Merlat (1) 92f; G. Dumézil Tarpeia 38-64, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus iv 37ff, Dieux des I.-E. 7-35. Metroa: Will 97f, N (2) 687ff, Schwenn RE sv Kybele; Kubaba: Laroche. Zeus: KN 02, PY 172. Cretan Mother: P (21) 169; J. Chadwick (2) 125f. Amazons: Leonhard; A. Reinach (2); Rostovtzeff (2); P (3) 431ff; Bennett Relig. Cults Assoc. with Amazons chs. ii-iii (great mother, Ephesian Artemis). Horses in Anatolia: Perdrizet (4). Mykenean for horse, i-qo, chariot i-qi-ja: J. Chadwick (1) 108-10: Latin equus, Sansk. asvas, Gaulish epo-, O.E. ech, O. Irish ech; Crossland 4, 54. Helen’s lunar apotheosis: Pfeiffer Kallimachosstudien 4f; Chap. (1) 348f; Artemis Phosphoros, Chap. 332. At Elateia no woman was let come near door of Anakeion: Prott-Zichen ii I, 79. Mitanni: E. H. Sturtevant, Yale Class. St. I.

[335] Note tympanon from Idaian Cave: Assyrian or Urartian style: Zeus (or Dionysos) swings lion overhead between two winged Kourai whose four cymbals make a pattern like the held-out wreaths: Kunze (3) pl. 49; Bartlett (2) 152. Collignon Mon. Piot 1913 14; Picard (4) 503 n4 & RHR ii (1928), 61, pl. 1, fig. 1; Levi (1) 322f & Annuario (1927-9), 708, fig. 670. Robe, cf. Dawkins BSA xiii l06, Art. Orth.pl. xcvi, 2; Kameiros, RA viii (1863), pl. x; Poulsen 145f fig. 168. Also Art. Orth. pl. xciv, xcv, xcvii. Kubaba: Bittel 150-2; polos, Levi 322. N (5) 456ff, (6) 73ff thinks both Helen and Twins have vestiges of indigenous cult. Opposed Lions on Phrygian tombs: Akurgal (2) pl. 81; JH (2) 266f. Tell Halaf: Ceram 54; Bittel (2). Goddess enthroned in naiskos; Will 98-100; S. Reinach BCH xiii (1889), 543.

[336] Tod and Wace 171 no 364; Picard RHR ii (1928), pl. II; Aisch. Suppl. 18. Amphora: Wolters Eph. Arch. (1892), 213ff; De Ridder BCH (1898), 440; JH (2) 264f. JH thinks a ring of worshippers, not birth; Wide (2) 253; Wolters 253 thinks it Artemis Lecho; Levi 323 rejects birth idea. For such amphoras in general, De Ridder l.c. See also Courby 70. Nimrod: Bartlett (2) pl. iv, 6.

[337] JH (2) 276ff, 267-9; Inghirami iii 300; JHS xiii (1892), 284; Paus. v 18, 1. Question of distribution: Chap. (1) 149f, eg not in Lakonian and Messenian colonies in West; note Tyndaris with patroness a nymph Helen: Duhn Z. f. Num. (1876) 39; Twins at Taras, Chap. (1) 150 n1.

[338] Kerenyi (7) p. xix; Levi (3). Kourotrophos: Etruscan versions of harpy or siren carrying two smaller persons have a different relation: Acta Archaeologica xvi 1941 120 n24. See ib. 117-20 for Aphrodite with Eros and Himeros, Leto with Apollo and Artemis; also JdAI 1932 lxvi Abb. 16-8; Nyx with Hypnos and Thanatos (only on Chest of Kypselos): Athen. Mitt. xli 1916 51ff.

[339] Chap. (2) for refs. etc. Twins as snakes in relief, Avignon, with Helen as egg: Chap. (1) 140.

[340] Chap. (1) nos 24f, 76-94. Sky-halves: Cumont (1) ch. 1; Eros 86f; apotheosis for merit 91, cf. Menandros Rhetor 122 Bursian (Abh. Münch. xvi (1882). Underworld as lower hemisphere: Axiochos; Philippson RE viiA 1144. Phaethon: Nock (5) 141. Dokana and Twins as cosmic stabilizers: Merlat (1) 85f, 92 n1 (2) 237; P (20); Demangel (2). It is no argument against an ultimate link of Dioskouroi and Asvins to say that the latter were not hemisphere-symbols (late for the Dioskouroi) or that they did not ride. They were connected with chariots, and we saw that warriors drove before they rode. (For Diosk thiasos in Egypt, Aeg. 1933 xiii 446; Archiv v 158; Aeg. xxxiii 347 etc. with Isis, Lat. 1966, 93.)

[341] Kerenyi (5) 200; Pind. Isth. vii 44f; Eur. fr. 285; Athen. ii 69cd; Kall. fr. 478 Pf; Eub. fr. 14K; Krat. fr. 330 K. Lykos (Lykon), cf. Athen. 418e; WM (10) 33; Scr. Alex. Mag. 46. Min: JL (5) 355f; Deonna (2) 26.

[342] Paus. ii 1, 3; Ap. ep. i 1; Bacchyl. xii 23 (Edmonds); Kerenyi (5) 220. Epics: Huxley (4) ch. ix; Herter RhM lxxxviii (1939) , 283; Arist. Poet. 8. Troizen: Barrett 2f. Zeus Meilichos: JH (2) 13-29; sch. Louk. Ikaro-Men. 24; Paus. ii 20, 1. Enarsphoros: Dugas (7) 48.

[343] Sch. Il. i 263. Kolonos: Plout. Thes. 14b; Soph. O.K. 1539. Tainaros: Hyg. Fab. 79; Paus. x 28, 2; Aen. vi 393, 617. Thrones: Ap. ep. i 24; Paus. x 29, 9; Ap. ii 5, 12; Hor. Carm. iv 7, 27. Comic: sch. Arist. Knights 1368. Od. x 632ff; JL (2) 78f, 153, 181. Theseus and P. seated on rocks: Barron 42-4, in archaic art on thrones: Schefold (9) 69; Kunze 112f, 129. Panyassis, who died before mid-fifth century, wrote that they were held fast by rocks growing into them (fr. 9K: Paus. x 29, 9): date, W. MacLead, Phoenix xx 1966 95-110. This version prevails in early classical vase-painting. Note that the scene of the Niobid Painter (kalyx-krater in Louvre) is framed by the Dioskouroi (alternate life and death); they wait to rise with Theseus: Barron 23f, pl. 1. Here as in another Kalyx-k in N.Y. Herakles waits for Theseus. See also E. Simon AJA lxvii 1963 47, 52-4; sch. Soph. Oid. Kol. 1559.

[344] Plout. Thes. 31; Paus. i 17, 4-6. Peirithoos at Athens: Paus. i 30, 4; x 29, 2; Ap. i 8, 2; Ov. Met. viii 566; Plin. xxxvi 4.

[345] Plays by young men at sowing festival: H. Schurtz 102ff. Xanthos: Cornford (4) 21, 249; Souda sv Melanthos. Reviling points to ritual exchange of abuse, aischrologia, cf. Paris and the goddesses, Il. xxiv. Initiates: Cornford 68; JH (4) 244ff (Pelops and Hippodameia); Frazer G. B. (3rd) iii 91. Birds: Cornford 67-72; CZ i 708; Sheppard; Frazer Magic Art ii (1911), 136ff. Gaster in Introduction to Cornford (4) points out many Aristophanic plays do not exactly fit the pattern; but we must allow for free variations on a theme.

[346] W (1) 116f; Jeanmaire (1) 455. Crete: PM iv 297-9; Hesych. sv boua; W (1) 116, 84, 112. Ganymedes: Delcourt (1) 67; Il. xx 232-5; Louk. Dial. Gods 24; Plat. Leg. 636d; Athen. xiii 601. Hebe: Ar. Clouds 976; Paus. ii 13, 3.

[347] Dugas (7) pls. 9, 18f. Aphrodite as guide, bidden by Delphoi, ib. 36; sacrifices on shore a goat bitch (changed to buck), hence Aphrodite Epitragia.

[348] E.g. Britomartis (‘Sweet Maiden’) pursued 9 months by Minos; Aphaia (? Apha) on Aigina.

[349] W (1) 179ff. Name: Paus. iii 14, 2; Solin. 11; Diod. v 76; Ant. Lib. 40; Paus. ii 30, 3; Hesych. sv Aphaia; Soph. O.K. 1556. Apha: IG iv 1582; W (1) 182 n287. Art: Dugas (7) 85. Temple: Aigina i 370, 373. Diktynna, not Dikte: W (1) 182-4. Mt Tityros: Str. x 479; IC ii 128f. Str. x 470, 466; W (1) 193. Further: Kall. H. Art, 189 sch.; Paus. ii 30, 3; sch. Frogs 1402.; Frogs 1358; Eur. IT 126 (nymph of solitude); said to Laphria at Kephallenia. Temple of Aphaia has on its east terrace many Mykenean remains (including 150 clay balls and many female idols, one with two children); Leto said to be mother of Britomartis).

Jouan (1) 384-8; Wagner; C. Robert (1) 680-89; H (6). Art work: Kerenyi (5) 231; Daidalos, sch. Od. xi 322; crown, Hyg. PA ii 5; WM (15) 234 (depths); Aphrodite gives it: Arat. 71; Hephaistos, xviii 400ff, Od. xxiv 74f. Ariadne, Semele: Jeanmaire (4) 345f. Minos gives her: Jouan (1) 384 n1. Theseus inconstant: Hes. fr. 105 (attrib. also to author of Aigimios).

[350] Art: Dugas (7) 83. Dia: Diod. iv 61, 5; Od. xi 321-5. Ariadne in Nekyia: WM (7) 149f thought it an Attic interpolation; Jacoby sceptical brings in Athena or Poseidon for aid against Minotaur; see also Wagner 803. Ap. ep. i 9f; DS iv 61; Plout. Thes. 20. Pherekydes: J (1) 385. Diod. iv 61, 5, v 51, 4; Hyg. Fab. 43.

[351] Hyg. Fab. 43. Sch. Theok. ii 45f; Plout. Thes. 20; Ap. ep. i 9f; DS iv 61. Paion: O. Seel.

[352] Refs. J (1) 386 nn4-7.

[353] Dugas nos 20f; Kerenyi (5) pl. 56; Brommer 130 B5. Syleus painter: Gerhard (2) pls. vi—vii. Fresco, temple of Dionysos Eleutheros (Paus. i 20, 3): T. leaving A. asleep, while the god approaches her; date unclear. Korone: Kerenyi (5) pl. 57; Antiope: Dugas (7) pl. 8. For supposed Minotaur carrying off girls on gold ring from Athenian agora: Levi (1) 177 n25; AJA (1933), 540; Hesperia iv (1935), 319; Bossert (1) figs. 500f; CZ iii 1090. Persson (1) ioi sees a predecessor of Hermes psychopomp.

[354] Plout. Thes. 10d.

[355] Attic vases: Kretschmer (2) 198. Delos: Ditt. SIG (2nd) 769 with notes. Otto 75f, 182; Hesych. sv Ardela; WM (9) i 402, 405. Names in Linear B: Webster (1) 117f; Palmer BICS ii (1955), 40.

[356] Aiglē: Plout. Thes. 20, citing Hereas; WM (c,) i 404; Shield 182; Athen. 557a; Paus. ix 35, 5. Koronis: IG 4 (2nd) 1, 128, 43; Webster (1) 50; Nonn. xiv 221; Diod. v 52, 2; Kerenyi (5) 253 (vase).

[357] Vase: Palermo Mon. d. 1st. ii 17. Hagno: Otto 187; Paus. viii 38, 3; 31, 2; 47, 2. Wife: Hes. Theog. 948; Eur. Hipp. 399; Prop. iii 18, 8; Ov. Fast. iii 510ff. Nonn. xxv io5ff; different, xlvii 664; Aug. CD xviii 12; sch. Il. xiv 319; Guthrie (1) 170f. Euseb. (Chr. 168, Karst.) & Kyrillos (C. Iul. x 341): death of Dionysos goes back to poet Deinarchos (? Hellenistic). Perseus fighting Mainads on sixth-century black-figure: Roscher Lex. iii 201b; J. L. Catterall RE xix 987.

[358] Epimenides: Diels Vorsokr. 498; sch. AR iii 997. Argos: Paus. ii 22, I; 23, 8; Welcker (3) ii 592.

[359] N (5) 527f; Paus. ix 40, 2; Welcker (3) 590; W (1) 195; JH (4) 321-4 (Oschophoria); Plout. Thes. 21. Various theories: N (2) 369ff. Bearded Aphrodite, Delcourt (1) 27f: this book in general for transvestism, 24-7 for Dionysiac cult. Semele: Otto 71; Eur. Bacch. 6ff; Aristeides i 72 Keil. T. Homolle Fouilles de Delphes iii (1) (1905) 195; Eur. Bacch. 11. Lerna: sch. Frogs 479. Plout. Q. Gr. 12 (293df). Elis: E. Diehl ALG (3rd) vi (1942), 206; Paus. ii 37, 5; 31, 2. Also Eur. Phoin. 1751; Otto ch. 3 in general. Orphic H. 44.

[360] Girls: W (1) 195. Oschophoria: n19 above, with W (1) 195f; Grégoire (4) 63-71 takes as based on mole-hill! Paus. i 33, 2. Epidauros: Paus. ii 27, 3; F. Robert (2) 297f, 156, 342, 353-6, and REG (1933), 186; Lechat (3) 98-100; Noack (3); Svonoros (2); Chapot for theories; Eldenkin AJA (1911), 161-7 wrongly identifies tholos and thymelē.

[361] Crane dance: Sch. Il. xviii 590ff, and passage itself. Not a reference to a representation of a choral dance on her crown as taken by WM (9) i 403. Crown: Paus. ix 40, 2; Welcker (3) ii 590; Otto 186; CZ i 479ff; W (1) 123; Leaf Iliad 609f; Paus. ix 40, 3f; Lawler 45-7 (cosmic), who thinks of two different dances; Poll. iv 101, Sachs 259. François vase: Furtwängler (1). Snake: Lawler (2), (1) 34-6. Bull-mask: CZ i 172-95; Webster (1) 55f. Cyprus: Lawler (1) 52f, figs. 14f; Persson (1) 76-9, 179, pl. 24. Some scholars do not see dancers there. Bull and crane: CZ i 482. Plout. says T. was first to give palm in contest. Further on the dance: Matthews 19ff, 156ff; Oesterley 69f; JH (2) 123; Frazer, Dying God (1911), 76f. Cornwall: M. A. Courtney Cornish Feasts and Folklore. Albania: P. Thornton Dead Puppets Dance. Crete: PM iii 74-8. Caves: Eustath. 1166, 7 & 590. Louk. Katapl. 22, Dance 15; sch. Theok. ii 36; Vell. i 4, i; Kurnai, Sachs 154. Hekate: sch. Lyk. 77; Prichard Sel. Essays of Plut. 21 5; Stob. Flor. 120, 28; Turchi, Fontes Hist. Myst. 81. Maze dances in general, R. Winter. Mykenai: N (6) 402f, 113ff, 555f; Persson Archiv f. Relig. xxi 1922 292; F. Noack Eleusis 1927 14f; Palmer (1) 168, stirrup-jar with Linear B on it found at Eleusis, dated c. 1200. (G. Wilke Die Relig. d. Indogerm. (1923), 13f sees the series: spiral, snail, vulva.) Vase found in Cypros: Ohnefalsch-R. i 446, 48 (no cxxxii, 2).

[362] Kall. Del. 312f; Louk. Dance 49; Soph. Aias 700 (self-taught dances). Oxen: Od. i 277 & ii 196 are not suitors’, but those about the father: Eustath. Crete: W (2) 99 etc.; Str. x 482.

[363] W (1) 125f; Michell 188; Louk. Dance II, 16; Athen. 630 de; Pindar (Sandys: Loeb) 547ff. Deikelistai with masks dedicated to Artemis at Sparta: Athen, 621ef; BSA xii 338; Plout. Ages. 21; Thiele, N. J. f.d. klass. Alt. ix (1902), 411. Ludus Troiae: Dion Kass. xlix 43, liii 1, liv 26; Suet. Aug. 43, Cal. 18, Ner. 7, Tib. 12; Tac. Ann. ii 50, xi 11; Verg. Aen. v 553-603; ancient nature of Ludus shown by the Tragliatella vase. Od. iv 18f; W (1) 124-6. Patterns: Deedes 34, Murray God of the Witches pl. iv, 4. Cuirass: Schefold (9) pl. 26. Tragliatella oinochoe: Matteus 157f, F. Muller (2).

[364] Fall of Ariadne, rise of Dionysos: Kerenyi (6); de la Ferté 10; Webster (1) 49f. Ariadne as vegetation-goddess: Meerdink. Sarcoph., Mus. Therm. no. 124682; Delcourt (1) 63. Isopata: N (5) 84, 311, (3) pl. 15. Webster (1) 51 citing Matz (3) 60. Tomb of Double-Axe: Archaeologia lxv (I914), 10, fig. 16. Snake-cults: Webster 51f who sees two goddesses. Snake-goddess is Nurse of Dionysos: Kerenyi (8).

[365] Malta: Zuntz especially 23-53, citing 28, for refs. Face-urns: CZ iii 192; Neumann 42ff. Lerna: Higgins 72f. Zuntz 31f, spectacle spirals under rim of pithos from Knossos; Bossert (1a) fig. 73; BSA ix 139; Schachermeyr (3) pl. 62; Demargne (2) pl. 203f. And on late Minoan jug from grave at Katzabas: Demargne pls. 206, 209, cf. necklace, Bossert fig. 228c; Zervos pl. 701; Mon. Ant. xiv 59. Labyrinth not the whole palace as Evans thought, cf. CZ i 473, but theatral area at NW corner. Daidalos thought in antiquity, eg Plin. xxxvi 84, to have imitated Egyptian labyrinth, which was taken as sacred to Sun. Labyrinth name: Eilmann 74ff for support of cave-idea; labyrinths called Kyklopeia in caves near Nauplia, Str. viii 369 etc. Labyrinth as House of Double-Axe: Evans (2) 109; Kretschmer (6) 404; Hekate in cave on Samothrace, sch. Lyk. 77; Labyrinthine dances in caves: Eustath. 1166, 77 & 590. G. F. Hill, 14, noted likeness to Cretan labyrinth of temple of Marnos (Zeus Kretagenes) at Gaza. Plin. xxxvi 13 (19) on labyrinths at Clusium.

[366] Layard (1) 339f. In general Layard, Deacon, Deedes, Knight. Rub out: Deacon (1) 30. Types: Layard (3) 118. South India: S. M. Natesa Sastri, Hindu Feasts, Fasts and Ceremonies (1903), 18; J. A. Dubois Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies (1899), 152f, 579f; Layard (3) 12 I f. Pu: Layard (3) 138f; cited, 139; snakes, 156-8; E. Thurston Ethnog. Notes on S. India (1906) 290; Ganesa, Thurston, Castes and Tribes of S. India (1909) vi 232. Fort: Layard (3) 173f. Near East: Deedes 24f. Spiral dances among Nagas: Layard (3) 179f; meaning of kolam, 178. I have lost my references for sand-patterns in N. England. Kolam: also FL (June 1938), 181. Caen Droia: Mathews 92, Knight (1) 112; Sparta: Paus. iii 14, 8-10.

[367] Layard (2) 161-8; Deacon (2) 570, fig. 470; JRaI lxiv 474. Tattoos: Mysore Census (1901), 557-9. Second dance: Layard (2) 157-60. England, 170. For Castellum: G. R. Owst Life and Pulpit in Med. Eng.; JL John Bunyan. Soviet investigations claim the stone mazes near coast can be used for catching fish; but even if this practical use was developed, the origins of the form are ritual. Knight for Christian use of the maze pattern, Sumerian myth seems to have the Persephone-type rape (of Ereshkigal).

[368] Sex-metaphor, weaving: Arist. Clouds 55. Finn: Carmichael Silva Gadelica ii 343. Burns: notes to his Hallowe’en poem; cf H. Miller Scenes and Legends of N. of Scotland ch. v.

[369] Sousa: Suhr ch. v. Inscr., IG iv 1389, 18. Distaff: Od. iv 135, 357; Il. vi 491. Omphale: Suhr ch. viii, Kerenyi (5) 192-7; GT (3) 174; Diod. iv 31, 5 (Dionysiac); Frazer (1) i 240f, 275, and Adonis i 124ff for relation to Sandan of Tarsos. Use in comic drama to satirize Perikles dominated by Aspasia.

[370] Eliade 17f for refs. Greeks: Campbell 92, 333; Ps.-Plout. Mor. 568e; Plat. Tim. 41f; Sext. Emp. Adv. Dogm. iii A4; Ps.-Aristot. De mundo 401 B18; Campbell 374f; Plout. Daimon. of Sokr., Mor. 575b-578f.

[371] Il. xiv 32if, Hes. fr. 3o9. Thebes: Platon (2), Palmer (3). Cf. with Pasiphae, Europa’s mother Telephaessa, ‘Far-shining’. There may be primitive sky imagery in all this, eg earliest known form of Zodiac derives from the swastika, ie the revolving sun: CZ i 491; Frazer GB iii 77; W (1) 102f. Ap. iii 1, 3; Liban. Narr. 23; Mythog. Vat. i 47. Cow: CZ i 540; Frazer GB iii 87-9; sch. Il. ii 294; Ap. iii 4, 1f; Kerenyi (2) 96f. Flower: Sch. Il. xii 292; Moschos 2. Crocus, Caeretan vase, Mon. Inediti vi-viii 77; Kerenyi (2) pl. 3a. Necklace: P. Oxy. xi 1358. Gifts: Eratosth. Kat. 33, Hyg. PA ii 35. Gold dog: Ant. Lib. 36. Cave: Louk. Dial. Sailors xv 4; Dion. Halik. ii 26; W (1) 215-18, also for other birthplaces of Zeus. Dionysos Bull: Gruppe (1) 1425; Curtius; Grégoire (3) etc. Bull in Near Eastern legends: Schaeffer (1) 60-72; Pritchard 29ff; W (1) 162f etc. Bull sacrifices to Zeus: CZ i 712.; Hesych. sv Hekatombaios, etc. Female deity with bull still worshipped at Kolophon in classical times: P (4) 509. Bull themes in Mykenean art: Webster (1) 55 nn 6-8 etc. Theseus killed Bull of Marathon before tackling the Minotaur. Chthonia: JH (2) III; Paus. ii 35, 2. Cretan origin of Bouphonia: Cook JHS xiv 131. Europa at Teumessos: Antimachos fr. 3 W.; Paus. ix 19, 1; Hom. H. Apollo 224; Gruppe (1) i 60 n5; on vases of Kabeirion, Wolters 98 K9 pl. 10f, 44. Europa as originally of Boiotia: E. Schwartz 20-24; Gruppe (2) 6f; Vürtheim (2), (3); against, Coste-M. 93 n4, Brauw; N (5a) 532, 624; Kadmos Greek, Vian 54ff. Kabeiron five km from city on road to Thespiai, goes back to Geometric era: Hemberg (2) 189f, but earliest ref. not before 500 BC.

[372] Dendra: Persson (1) 131-4, (4) 65, 121; Levi (1) 270-6; Technau 99; Hampe (4) 67-9; N (3) i 332; Coste-M. 153-63; Malten; CZ i 639ff; Brauw 52-67, 102-8. Coins, Levi 277 n32. See Astarte: here ch. x n5. Woman on monster, lost seal from Gournia, Levi 274. Potnia Taurōn: Picard (16), Technau 89, Lehmann-H. Different attitudes, Levi 271 n36.

[373] Glaukos: JL (2) ch. xiii; also Cornford (2) for threefold pattern.

[374] See above for Harmonia and necklace; she was linked with Kadmos like Europa; her name suggests an abstraction but she is yet another daimon with deep earth-roots. The gods were at her wedding; her necklace has links with Ariadne’s thread-coil and Helen’s garland. Aphrodite was called her mother; poets tell of Aphrodite Harmonia; the Delphians of A. Harma. At Akmonia she was wife of Ares and mother of the Amazons. See Hymn to Apollo and pelike by Meidias painter for her likeness to Helen. Her name shows she was the tutelary deity of the (Theban) citizen assembly cf. Aphrodite Pandemos. Also shows strong craft-basis (joining and fitting); Harmon (primal Fitter in Od.); harmostes, 5th c governor; harmozein, in marriage, means customary and correct relation of man and woman together. Ephoros tells us of mystery-search for H. as for Persephone on Samothrace. (Kabeiric triad suggests in some ways Helen and Twins.) One Kabeiros at Thebes, assimilated to Dionysos and with a pais. Running woman on pediment of New Temple at Samothrace: ? running Demeter of Kyzikos, but what of Helen leader of dances and races for girls? For general significance of objects like the Necklace: Gernet. Od. v 248, 361; Prom. 551; Il. xxii 255, v 59. Black-figure amphora, Vian 36, pl. 1, c. 500-480 BC, Kassmos and Harmonia in chariot drawn by lion and boar; in general C. Robert (7) 378; L. Robert (2) 230; Oliver 106-17. Triad: Paus. ix 16, 3f; Vian 143. Ephor., sch. Phoin. 6; IG xii 8, p. 38; Chap. (1) 154-84. Demeter at Theban Kabeiron, Paus. ix 25, 5. Running figure. Chap. (1) 170 n6; Arch. Untersuch. pl. xxxix, xl; Rubensohn 186f, 181, 166. Hekate at Samothrace: Chap. 171f; Kybele 156ff. Harmonia was married but we know too little of her harpagē to generalize. List of Greek Mysteries: Magnien 16-20.

[375] Schefold (9) fig. 28; F. Willemsen 7th Olympianbericht (1961), 181ff, cf. Schefold pls. 27 a, b (early 7th c.).

[376] JH (4) 179f, cf. storm in Aen. iv 160; fr. 44 Aisch. Nauck (Athen. 600); Paus. ii 36, 1.

[377] Sceptre: Higgins fig. 222 (twelfth century); Dikaios pl. xxvi, 4, first dating seventh-sixth centuries, then eleventh, 113. Apollo with hawk: Birds 525. Cypriot statuettes: Discovering Art 5, ed. J. Chancellor (Feb. 1964) 72f. Mykenean goddess: Higgins figs. 208-10. Dove: Roscher Lex. i 407.

[378] Potnia: Dikaios 52f; F (1) ii 427, 434f. Fish: Paus. viii 41, 4; Athen. 325c (note chains). Ortygia: F (1) ii 433; Birds 870; Soph. Trach. 2Str. 639; Tac. Ann. iii 61; sch. AR i 419; Athen. 392d. Agrotera: IG ii 467; Paus. i 19, 6; Xen. H.G. iv 2, 20; Ar. Knights 660; F (1) ii 444. Artemis appears as bear, hare, and with stags (Head 660).

[379] JH (4) 176-8; N (5) 132ff; Persson (1) 61-3 etc. Hes. Works 486, Theog. 97. Aisch.: JH (4) 175f; (2) 620; cry of ‘Hye kye’, rain conceive, at end of Eleusinian rites. Labyrinth first in Hdt. ii 348; building with the name at Miletos: Milet vi 56; Suppl. Epigr. iv 446 (third-second centuries BC). Cave: Higgins fr. 174 (he takes them as arms of a warlike goddess). Labrys: Eilmann 74ff etc. Guthrie 230; Hester; Dow 166 takes to refer to palace; Persson (1) 89 notes ‘the ankh-shaped double-axe’ ie symbol of mating phallos and vulva. Attribute of Aegean Great Mother: Deroy.

[380] Paus. viii 22, 2; Attemis ib. 6f, and bird-legged maiden; F (1) i 191, 244ff; Rose HB 103f; Paus. ix 2, 1-9. Teleia: Aisch. Eum. 214. Guthrie (1) 61-7; Hera earth-goddess, Welcker (3); image at Samos hidden, Athen. 672, Guthrie 68. Coins: CZ ii 681; Laumonier 95f; Imhoof-B. 143; Atallah 42-4; Loebbecke: Head (2nd) 696. In general: Delatte (4) 271.

[381] Moral personifications of Near East: Deubner (2) 2071-2110; Guterbock 114 n71; Picard (11); Burkert 133 n6. Against Krappe (6). Politics: Paus. i 33, 2; Welcker (1) i 579; iii 28; N (6) 170; WM (9) ii 137. Rhamnous: Solders 67ff; Herter. Ancient: H (1) 2342. Queen: Souda sv Rhamnousia; sch. Demos. xviii 38; H (1) 2346, sources. Themis: H (1) 2347; Frazer (2) on i 33, 2; Webster (1) 106. Statue: Paus. i 33, 3; Plin. xxxvi 17; Str. ix 296; H (1) 2348f; CZ i 275. Arist.: H (1) 2350 thinks he had clear idea. See above, ch. 4, nn25-6.

[382] Zuntz 100, 105. Megara: Hanell 178f. WM (9) i 106 ni; Pind. Ol. i 12 (O. Schroder ad loc., ed. 1923) Eur. HF 396. Selinos: IG xiv 268; apples, Gabrici 374; AM lxxiv (1959) pl. 22; Jacobsthal 188ff. Bodyguard of Persian king (spear-butts with gold apples): Hesych. Statue at Panea: Euseb. HE vii 18; Harris (3) 366-72. Pomegranates: Gubernatis ii 168. Love-gifts: Rose HB 276f; Hdt. i 23f; Ov. Fast. ii 79ff; Ail. NA xii 45; Plout. Septem Sap. Conv. 160e.

[383] Gold apples among toys of Dionysos: Orph. H. 34; features of earthly paradise in West. We saw above about Hesperides and Hera: guarded by Hesperides, Daughters of Evening, generally a triad, and Ladon, a dragon who could assume different tones of voice. (In Arkadia a Ladon, river and river-god, son of Okeanos; so we see hint of oracular spring.) Cf. with Herakles’ exploit, voyage of Gilgamesh in cup. Rose HB 23; Hes. Theog. 215 etc.

[384] N (5) 547; 6 (24) for Minoan-Mykenean roots. Nereus shape-shifter: sch. AR iv 1396; Robert (7) ii 492; Ap. ii 21 (Athena). Nymph stealing on vase by Sosios: A. S. Murray pl. xvii. Herakles: Schefold (4) ii.

[385] Rose HB 258f; Kerenyi (5) 1 18f; garland, sch. Theok. ii 120. Sanctuary: Ov. Met. x 687, cf. tale of Theseus and Ariadne. Nemi: Grattius Cyneg. 490. Melanion: Andr. 281; Lysis. 781ff; Plout. Numa 4. Stinton 49; Paus. v 19, 2; Ap. iii 9, 2. Golden tree in Little Iliad. (In Boiotia the lover was Hippomenes, ‘Stallion-fury’: cf Hippolytos, ‘Stallion-loosened.’)

[386] JH (4) 236; FHG iii 604.

[387] Frazer on Paus. i 33, 2; Kerenyi (1) 208-10. Coins: BM Paphos 45; Paus. Loeb vol. v fig 82, 10. Stags: H (1) 1350, 2376; F (1) ii 401; Welcker (3) i 578f, iii 28.

[388] Volkmann (1) 74 & (2); H (1) 235 2-4; F (1) ii 493f; Paus. ix 35, 6; Plin. xxxvi II-3; Paus. vii 5, 2; Cadoux; Sweitzer (2); Coman. Occasionally a single goddess: CIG 3164; BMC Ionia 110f, 254 (winged). Double: BMC Ionia I 110f, 250, 265; Lydia 210, 155; Babelon 106; Schweitzer 203-05; Coman 38-44; H (1) 2353, 2374-6. Flourished third-second centuries BC, extended in all directions: Cadoux 223 n1; Coman 27-9; in general Lane 14, 42-6, 54; Cadoux. Naxos: Devambez (2), with N. Pax on coins; Alexandreia, Rostovtzeff; Ephesos, Schweitzer (2) 208; winged type, Perdrizet (2). At Naxos related (?) to Games: Devambez (2) 220f. In general, Premerstein (2).

[389] Boupalos: Cadoux 89f n2; Paus. viii 34, 3. For N. and Graces: Sweitzer 195, 202; Heidendreich 672; Aristeid. xlii 724 (xxiii 22), xxi 437 (xx 21, xx 427 (xviii 8). New city: F (1) ii 4931T; Ehrenberg 35 n8; Legrand DS iv 1, 53; H (1) 2363: Paus. vii 5, 2. Triad: Usener (4), H (1) 2364. Combination: Schweitzer 203. Theognis; Volkman, H (1) 2352f, Cadoux 84 nz. Magic: Delatte (4) 188ff, 238, 335; H (1) 2364. Dream: Schweitzer 203; H (1) 2353; Akurgal (2) pl. 46a; Cadoux 95-7, 22 n5; Coman 27f; Boeckh, CIG 3163; Two peaks: Ramsey (1) 5-9.

[390] H (1) 2363: no oriental influence in doublings. Themis: Paus. ii 31, 3. Gems: (1) Delatte (4) 195f, Chap. (1) 287ff (2) D. no 259; Bonner (1) 313; JdAI xlvi (1931), 175ff (3) D. no 254, cf. 255f, 257 (4) Hekate, Chap. (1) 77. Magic stone, Nemesites, Kyan. 30; Pythagorean number for five (Nemesis). Paus. ii 31, 5.

[391] Aptera: F (1) ii 495; H. rejects. Patrai: Paus. vii 20, 9. Isok. x 59, 217d; Hyg. PA ii 8; Ourania, IG iii 1, 289; F (1) ii 492 n.A.

[392] Invert: as does N (3) i 482. Artemis: F (1) ii 487ff, CIL iii 14076; CZ i 275; H (1) 2377 (though he denies, 2340, see also 2370). Oupis: sv EM; F (1) ii 587 n129; 593 n135; CIG 6280 A2. Hunt: H (1) 2372, 2374, 2376; JL (3) 244f. Griffins: H (1) 2376; F (1) ii 493. Mistress of animals: Loschke and Studniczka, Kyrene 159ff: no proof. Coins: Head 594; Lane 45; Ramsey (3) 264f.

[393] CIG 3161; Cadoux 221, 208f. Later history: Cadoux; Dion Chrys. xl 14; CIG 3193, 3148 (IGR iv 1431 cf. CIG 2663; Volkmann (2) 321; AP xii 193 (ii 421f); CIG 3163 (IGR iv 1403). See also Slaars; Rossbach. Great mother at Smyrna: Cadoux 215-19. Briseus is shown as a bearded adult.

[394] Hes. Theog. 223f, 133-5; Paus. vii 5, 3; sch. Eur. Rhes. 342; Hyg. Fab, praef. 1. Okeanid: sch. Lyk. 88; F (1) ii 492 sees link with Aphrodite, against Posnansky 12; H (1) 2362 sees it as sign of antiquity. Snakes: CZ i 2701f; Eitrem (1) 40 n4. See also n14 above. (Also called daughter of Zeus and Demeter, of Erebos, of Okeanos.)

[395] BCH liv (1930), 269; H (1) 2352; sch. Demos. xli 1031; Harpokr.; Phot.; Souda sv; Bekker Anec. Gr. i 182, 32; F (2) ii 490; Deubner 219, 230; Mommsen (1) 174.

[396] Origins of N.: Mannhardt 114; Gruppe 17, 45; Klinz 91; Coman 29-33; Picard (5) 67f (Crete); H (1) 2340. Adrasteia: Leaf (3) 77; F (1) ii 499f; SIG (2nd) 940, 16 (Kos), CIG 2663 (Halik.): from the hero Adrastos. IGR iv 1431, 5 (Smyrna), AP xii 193 (Straton), Suppl. Epigr. iv 277 (Panamara). Nurse: Kall. Zeus 46ff, AR iii 133; A. as nurse of Zeus makes a gold ball (CZ ii 933) and puts the babe to sleep in a gold cradle on Ida. N. and Herakles, ASAE 1947 xlvii 245; with Palmyrene deity, Seyrig Syria 1932 xiii 51.

[397] Il. xx 209-11; JH (2) 183; Wüst (2); Kretzenbacher 29-36, 41-4. Kairos not in Homer. Mykenai: Brandon (1) 78f & (2) pl. ix; P (2) 289f; N (5a) 34-6, 46; Wüst (2) 1446 thinks domestic. Psyche in Homer means life, also ghost. Aischylos wrote a Psychostasis. Orphics: Turcan RHR cl 170: Dessau ILS 3737, bilingual: Despoina N. as Justitia N.

[398] Avenger: Kaibel 119 (Peiraios); AP vii 358. Killer: Eunap. Vit. Max. 481; H (1) 2365. Etruscan: H (1) 2374. Dem. Erinys: Vian 136. Dike: Mesomedes, Hynn Nem. 2; Amn. Xiv 11, 25; Soph. Elektra 292. Themis: Gruppe ii 587; Latte 1628; WM (9) i 203; Tracker, Ichnaios, Latte 1628, Str. 435. All but Dietrich are too rationalist: WM (9) i 202; F (1) ii 495; H (1) 2348; D 170. Praxidike involved on defixio of lead (prob. third century BC), Cyranaic: JHS Arch. Rep. 1971-2 46f.

[399] Phthonos not in Homer; in general Lloyd-Jones. Praxidikai: D. 102-4; Paus. iii 22, 2; ix 33, 3; Souda sv; triad, Steph. Byz. sv Temile. Orphic hymn xxix 4. In general: Wide 240; F (1) iii 55; N (3) i 139.

[400] D. 340 & 11-13; Solmsen 40f; Personifications of share: D. 59-61; Pötscher Wien. St. lxxiii 1960 26; Ramat. N (3) and (8) for growth of personifications in fourth century. Megara: Paus. i 40, 4. Erinyes as Moirai of Cretan civilization: GT (3) 343. Anaxagoras: Lloyd, 246.

[401] Od. vii 197; Hes. Theog. 218ff. Il. xxiv 525; Od. i 17. Aisch. Eum. 728. Number: K (2) 28; Ap. i 6, 2. Birth: Il. xx 127f; Od. vii 197; Aisch. Eum. 348; Eur. Hel. 212, IT 203, Bacch. 99, cf. Plout. Mor. 637f; Pind. Nem. vii I, Ol. vi 42; Paus. viii 21, 3; Plat. Symp. 206d. Meleagros: Hyg. Fab. 171.

[402] Theog. 904; Orph. H. lix 2; Kern 99.

[403] Knees: Onians (2). Names: Lachesis, Orph. fr. 3; AP vii 5; Erinna 23. Atropos: GT (1) 47 suggests a- may be intensive, then A. is the Turner, the Spindle, itself. Marks etc: GT (1) 47-9, 431 nn 55-8, 424 nn 26f. Robertson Smith (2) 335; Karsten CSAI 1-197; Tzet. Lyk. 495; Pind. Paian v 101 sch.; Paus. viii 11, 8.

[404] Transvestism: Delcourt (1); Dionysiac touch: Diod. iv 34, 5. Queens: Jeanmaire (5) 34f, 18-21 & (1) i24f. Hoples was eponymous ancestor of one of Ionian tribes. Weave mētis: Il. vii 324, Od. iv 678; device, Il. x 19. Athene: Od. xiii 299.

[405] Str. 165: much same system in Egypt. GT (3) 240ff; Hdt. i 173, 5, and ii 35, 4; Klearchos 49; Charax 10; Varro in Aug. CD xviii 9; Leleges etc, GT (3) 166-71; Plout. Thes. xix; Str. 322; Klearch. 6; Arist. Polit. 1274a 6f; Eph. 47; Pind. Ol. x 17 sch.; estates, Arist. 1266b 6. Taras: Theop. 190; Serv. Aen. iii 351; different tale, Eph. 53; Parthenios. Il. xvi 180, parthenos means son of unmarried woman: GT (3) 200-3.

[406] Zeus: Ar. Birds 1731; Pind. fr. 30 Schroeder. Hair: Poll. iii 38; Antiphon fr. 49 Diels. Shares: Aisch. Pers. 917, Ag. 1463; Il. iv 170; Hes. Theol. 607. Women’s rights: GT (3) 5if; Aisch. Prom. 532, 534 (warning), Il. xvi 433.

[407] Olympians take over: Paus. v 15, 5; viii 37, I; x 24, 4, cf. i 40, 4; Eur. fr. 620, Hel. 1247; Mel. fr. adesp. 5; Orphic H. 59, 11, fr. 248, 5. Erinyes: CZ ii 1001-2. Ibibios: Talbot (1) 193-9: previously matrilineal. Note how writing became general and secular with Aegean, not the preserve of a priestly caste.

[408] Bianchi 1-10; WM (9) i 352., Solmsen (3) 39ff; Od. viii 258; Naxos etc.: Bianchi 5 n2; 5 n3 with more examples. Tyrannos: Norden (1) 398. Oitos: D 338; Demok. fr. 227 Diels; Soph. El. 167. Ethos: Corn-ford 27; Il. vi 551; Od. xiv 411.

[409] Inner and outer: Jaeger 140; GT (1) 38ff; sch. Pind. Isth. viii 43; Edmonds (1) ii 102; D 12; GT 424 n24 as to clan (Num. xxxiii 51-4, Jos. xviii 3-6). Helios? Pind. Ol. vii 58-64. Note lanchanein for association of god with region or city: H. Hymn xix 5; Hdt. vii 53; Pind. Nem. xi 7; Plat. Tim. 23d. Rhodes: GT (1) 39; Pind. Ol. vii 74; Il. ii 654; Cornford (1) 15; Il. xv 185ff.

[410] Hes. Theog. 411-28; H.H. iv 42.7f, Od. vi 9; Ap. ii 8, 4; Hdt. iv 159; Moret and Davey (1); GT (1) 48; Buckholtz ii 94f. Mazon (2) 21-4; Van Groningen 269f, local festival of Hekate provided occasion for first performance of Hesiod’s Theogony; her origins, D 341-3 with refs.; N (2) 395 n1 on Hesiodic passage as interpolation. Attika: Arist. Ath. Rep. xi 8. No need to discuss here just what the ‘Dorian invasion’ was.

[411] Diod. v 9; GT (1) 427f (for parallels), cf. Diod. v 34; Tac. Germ. 26. Temenos: J. Chadwick (4) 125; Il. xviii 510; tablet PY Er 3t2; Finley (2) 140.

[412] Plout. Mor. 644; GT (1) 41f; Od. xx 470, cf. Hes. Theog. 544. Tale in Theog. of Prometheus tricking gods into worse moira of sacrifices. Geras: Od. iv 65, Il. vii 321, H.H. iv 122, Od. xiv 433. Plout. Mor. 644a; Theog. 677ff; communal feasts, N (3a) 255; GT (1) 420 n31; Plout. 483c; GT (1) 430 n34. Divination: Sch. Pind. Ol. iv 337; Hogarth (1) pl. xxxvi, Josh. vii 14; Jonah i 7; Acts i 26; Tylor Prim. Cult. i 78ff; Frazer (2) iv 172. Coins: Halliday (4) 207 nn2f. Warriors: ib. 208 n1.

[413] Kubaba: Leroy (1) 51ff; also P (17) & (18), Demeter (Kybos). Voting: Staveley, index Sortition. At Sparta and Athens a voting council emerged after mid-eighth century, a voting assembly about 600 or a little later.

[414] Triai: Fontenrose 426-33; Halliday 210 n1; H. H. Hermes 550ff; sch. Kall. H. Apollo 45; Lobeck Aglaoph. 814; Philoch. 196; an Attic deme was Thria. Thriazein: Soph. fr. 466; Eur. fr. 478; glossed by Hesych. as from thrion, fig leaf, also EM 455, 45; thriou psophos, Wasps 436, possibly link with thriambos, epithet of Dionysos and hymn to him. Delphoi: Parke (1) ii no 80; Amandry (1) 25, (2) 184. Dodona: Cic. de div. i 34 (76); Halliday. Herakles, Paus. vii 25, 10; Frazer ad loc.; Halliday 213 nn2f: cf. gnomai monostichoi, also Italian kleromantic oracles at Caere and Falerii.

[415] Hesiod was called the Helot’s Poet by King Kleomenes of Sparta: Plout. Apopth. Lak. 223a.

[416] Pollitt (a) 3. I take this example at random, with no derogation of this writer’s excellent work on art.

[417] Bonnet, Rev. d’Ethnol. viii (1889) 156; Pommel, Single et Homme 18; Schmidt, Dawn of the Human Mind (1936) fig. 94. Cf. Dipylon vase: J. S. Droop BSA xii (1905-06) 81 figs. 1f; T. Reinach (a) 324. Date of rock carving uncertain. American drawings: E. Clodd, Childhood of the World (1914) figs. 22, 20 (Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes and Dorman, Prim. Superstitions).

[418] Howitt, JAI xvi 49ff; for snakes in Australian shamanism, Mauss, L’origine des pouvoirs magiques 33-43. Ropes: Baldwin Spencer, Aust. Encyc. i 27. Spear at clouds: R. Brough Smith, Aboriginals of Victoria (1878) i 462. Tchintu: Baldwin Spencer l.c.; A. P. Elkin, Aboriginal Men of High Degree (1946) 64f. Crystals: Eliade (3) 184-7 etc.

[419] Siberia: Mikhailovsky JRAI xxiv 67; Chadwick Growth iii 205, 207. Tibet: D. Macdonald, Land of Lama 204; L. A. Waddell, Lhasa and its Mysteries (1929) 397f. Forms once a ritual became a display: in the eighteenth century at Edinburgh: ‘A Flying Man slid on his stomach down a hundred and fifty yards of rope from Half-Moon Battery to the Castle Rock,’ C. Carswell, Life of R. Burns (1930) 26, cf. Hogarth’s Southwark Fair. Woman: A. David-Neel, With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet (1931) ch. 1, cf. the tumo ecstasy, ch. vi, A. David-Neel, Initiations and Initiates in Tibet (1931) 77; and marriage, Macdonald 142, 149, 151, 180, 207, 202, 189. Cosmic rope: Eliade (3) 166f. Indian rope-trick: Eliade (3) 160-4. Tying shadow to oneself (China) to ensure its safety at burial; de Groot, i 94, 210f.

[420] Eliade (2) 170-3 for refs. East Indies: De Moubray, Matriarchy in the Malay Peninsula (1931) 42, ‘marriage by the tying of the thread’. And L. Moore, Malabar Laws and Customs 70 (sacred prostitutes). Chittagong: Hartland (1) ii 344. Deccan: R. E. Enthoven, FL of Bombay (1924) 302. Hoshangabad: W. Crooke, Pop. Religion and FL of N. India i 31. Buddha, see esp. Semaka. Further, Widengren and Cser. Also Yalman and Viennot.

[421] Loango: Dennett, FL of Fjort 74; for Anansi (Spider) as folk-hero of cycle of tales in W. Africa, see eg W. H. Barker and C. Sinclair, W. African FTs; for his migration with Negroes to West Indies, app. to Dasent, Pop. Tales from Norse (2nd ed.) Variant: Von E. Pechuel-Loesche, Die Loango Expedition (1907) iii 2, 135. E. Beguin, Les Ma-Rotse (1903) 118ff. Louyi: E. Jacottet, Etudes sur les langues du Haut-Zambesi iii see Textes Louyi (1901) 116ff. Tshi: J. G. Christaller, Negersagen von d. Goldkuste, Z. f. Afrik. Sprache i (1887-8) 51ff. Soubiya: Jacottet, ii Textes Soubbia (1899) 102ff. Fo: Fr. Muller, Die Religionen Togos, Anthropos (1908) iii 279. Upotos: M. Lindeman, Les Utopos (1906) 23ff. Thonga: H. A. Junot, Life of a S. African Tribe (1912-13) ii 389ff. Masai: A. C. Hollis, The Masai (1905) 166ff; Dinka tell of a track cut to heaven by a rascal, JAI xxxiv (1904) i57ff. Bavili: Dennett, At the Back of the Black Man’s Mind (1906) 116, 142f. Loango penance: Pechuël-L. iii 2, 290f. Blantyre: Hartland (1) ii 101. Kenya: A. R. Wise, ‘Witchcraft Trial in Kenya’, Daily Telegraph 20 Aug. 1934. Chuka: G. St. Orde Browne, Vanishing Tribes of Kenya 82ff. Yoruba: Johnson in app. to Dennett. Hausa: A. J. N. Tremearne Ban of Bori (1914) 422. Basoga: Roscoe, N. Bantu 216. Uganda: Roscoe, The Baganda 282ff. The Kich of the Nile: myth of men sent down from heaven by a long golden cord: Frobernius, Childhood of Man 335.

[422] C. Stevenson, 11th Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol. (1894) 26ff, Toff. S. Powers. Tribes of California (1877) 38ff. 19th Ann. Rep. B. Eth. i (1900) 240ff. E. A. Smith, Rep. Bur. Eth. ii 94. Divination: Tylor P.C. (znd) i 127f; Halliday (1) 218ff. Chuckchi: Amer. Anthropologist n.s. iii 95.

[423] Chadwicks Growth iii 256f, 275, 296-8; 339 for songs showing kite-ascent akin to the spirit-ascent; rainbow, 297, 318, 320 (also Japanese parallel and belief of Cheremissi on Volga). Gill, Myths and Songs from S. Pacific (1876) 63-9. Same, 40f. Note in allied tale of Marquesas the passage into underworld is stressed as long and winding: Trans. & Procs. N.Z. Instit. xx (1887) 385ff. Kane: JAI lxi (1931) 455f. C. M. Wheeler, Monu-Alu FL (1926) 52-5; journey 55-7. E. L. Bridges, The Uttermost Part of the Earth (1948) 284ff.

[424] Shetlands: E. Saxby, Shetland Trad. Lore (1932) 184. Arachne: Schirmer, Roscher sv; Verg. Georg. iv 246; Serv. ad loc.; Ov. Met. vi 1ff. Rink, Tales and Trads. of Eskimo (1875) 464; Z.d. Vereins ii 15; M. MacPhail Folklore vi 162; JAI xxiv 150. Frazer: Taboo, section on Knots and Rings Tabooed; Murray, God of Witches 71-3. Installation: Hocart 40-44.

[425] Paus. viii 5, 5; 1o, 3. Dennett 130. E. Chavannes Le T’ai Chan (1910) 493f, 468f; 484ff for antiquity of rite. Plout. De Is. 69; Rose (6) 76f. Fiji: Anthropos (1911) 724. Peru: Bastian, Die Völker d. öst. Asien iv 174. Wrist: Frazer Taboo on absence and recall of soul. Negus: R. M. Woolley, Coronation Rites; Hocart sees relation to Alexander.

[426] Arne-Thompson no 310. Chadwick Growth iii 96ff. Zante: B. Schmidt, Gr. Märchen. Sagen. u. Volksieder (1855) nos 13, 17. Serbian: M. Petrovich, Tales and Legends of the Serbians, ‘Lying for a Wager’. Compare tales of the chain of people, animals, etc that makes a ladder, bridge, rope for some dangerous passage, cf. Arne-Thompson no 804. Witch-hair: Hartland (1) sections dealing with encounter with basilisk witch. Thumie: Ramsay Smith, Myths and Legends of Australian Aboriginals, note to ‘The Mischievous Crow’. For hair-string in N. America: ‘The Fairy Wives’ in Spence, Myths and Legends of N.A. Indians. Musquatie: Haddon, Magic and Fetishism. Hungary: H. von. Wlislocke, Volksglaube u. relig. Brauch d. Zigeuner (1891) 131; and his Volksdicht. d. siebenbürg. u. sudungar. Zig. (1886) 183; story no 13. Kamchatka: Hartland (1) i 156.

[427] Self-acting rope: R. C. Temple, Legends of Panjab i 17; Rev. trad. pop. iii 45I (horse’s heel-ropes tie giants up); for rope that binds and loosens, Arne-Thompson no 559. Cestus: Hartland (1) ii 2.24ff; Aphrodite holding cestus in hand, Martial vi 13. Hungary: K. Viski, Hungarian Peasant Customs (1932) 56ff. Maui: Knight 125ff; JHS 1931 176; Folklore xlvi lolf; Krappe RhM lxxviii 1929 249ff. A girdle is used in initiation rite of a guild or tradesmen or artisans in modern Egypt, with three knottings, Lane, Mod. Egyptians 515. Note hair-girdle that the Australian native will never take off, Basset-Smith JAI xxiii (1894) 327, and leaf-girdle of Veddas in ritual dance (later, a white cloth): C. G. and B. Z. Seligmann, The Veddas (1911) 213. A. Moret, Mystères egyptiens (1927) ch iii n34 for the ‘queue’ as navel-string playing key part (connected with girdle) in Egyptian rebirth rites, cf. Vedic apotheosis rite of the Diksa. Monster: Chambers Med. Stage ii 365; Stratford fresco in his English Folk Play (1933); note medieval belief that only a maiden could tame a unicorn.

Margaret: Chambers, Folk Play 173f; Leg. Aurea xciii; A. Wirth Danae in christl. Legenden (1892) 24; St Marcel subdued dragon near Paris by winding his stole round it. Tarasque: E. J. Robson, Wayfarer in Provençe (1926) 49, 211ff. Note belief knots can prevent childbirth: Lapps, Germans, Indians, Romans etc: Frazer, Taboo 294; J. Hillner Volksth. Brauch u. Glaube 15 etc. Note Lykosoura, N (3a) 89: no rings or braided hair.

[428] Measurement. Layard etc. Jesus : Z. f. Vereins ii 168. Grimm Teut. Myth. 1575. Rivista i 790. Rep. Bur. Ethnol. ix 572. J. Am. FL V 242, vii 135. Also v 108, 242. There is a statement, N. & Q. vii 8th s. 6, that in England up to seventeenth century a rope measured from a corpse was used to cause evil effects.

[429] Crawley (1) ch. v; also Hartland (1) ii 3iff; Frazer Magic Art. H. Norden Wanderer in Indo-China (1931), 103f. Tug-of-war: Kakouri 43f. Transmission of spirit power by anointing: Crawley (2) 60-89, union of rites of decoration and purification.

[430] Eliade (3) 180-82. Il. viii 17-27; Plat. Theait. 153cd, Rep. x 616bc; Macrob. Comm. Scipio’s Dream; Olympiodoros Comm. on the Gorgias, Proklos on the Tim. and The Divine Names 3, 1. Also Lévêque, esp. 11-20, 46-8. See also Eliade 177 for puppets.