Note 261.4 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

We can now deal with the purely Hellenic evidence. Confining our view first to the cults and legends of the higher divinities of Hellas, we cannot affirm that the death and resurrection of the deity is a primitive tradition of the Hellenes. We may suspect it to have been a leading motive in some of the local Arcadian cults of Artemis, if, for instance, we interpret the Arcadian Kallisto as a form of the great goddess herself; but it is very probable that Artemis in Arcadia and many other of her cult-centres represents the pre-Hellenic divinity of birth and fruitfulness. What we may dare to call the Hellenic spirit seems to speak in the answer given by Xenophanes to the people of Elea when they asked him whether they ought to sacrifice to Leukothea and bewail her: “If you regard her as a deity, do not bewail her; if as human, do not sacrifice.”261.4