Chapter II · THE SURVIVAL OF PAGAN DEITIES. (continued 6)

The young princess was much affected at the unfair treatment of her lover, and each day she grew more and more melancholy. But finally she hit upon a means of cheering herself. She proposed to her father that they should leave the palace and start an inn, not for money, but for the sake of the amusement to be derived from the stories and witty sayings of the guests. The king consented, and the inn was set up.

Now one day a boy who had been fishing dropped his rod into the river, and having dived in after it came to a flight of stairs at the bottom. Having walked down forty steps, he entered a large room where sat the ox-headed man, who talked with him and told him that he was waiting there for a princess who came not. The boy then returned without hurt, and on his way home had to pass the inn. Having turned in there, he was asked by the princess to tell her something amusing. He replied however that he knew no stories, but would recount to her an adventure which had just befallen him. In the course of the story the princess recognised that what the boy called the genius of the river (τὸ στοιχειὸ τοῦ ποταμοῦ) could be no other than her lover, and having been straightway conducted to the spot, found and married the ox-headed man, and in his palace under the river lived happily ever afterwards—“but” (as Greek fairy-tales often end) “we here much more happily.”

It is curious that Santorini of all places should be the source of this story; for the island does not possess a stream. Locally however certain gullies by which the island is intersected are known as rivers (ποταμοί)[734], and after unusually heavy rain they might perhaps form torrents; at any rate one known as ‘the evil river’ (ὁ κακὸς ποταμός) is frequently mentioned in popular traditions as a real river. Possibly the tradition is accurate; for the volcanic nature of the island would readily account for the disappearance of a single stream[735]. But the importance of the story lies in the mention of an ox-headed man as genius of a river. The fact that he is made the son of a peasant-woman need not concern us; the first part of the story is probably adapted from some other folk-tale with a view to account for the wooing of a princess by so ill-favoured a suitor. In the latter part we have a more ancient motif, the wedding of a mortal maid with a river-god. If only it were mentioned in this tale that, besides the power of performing miraculous tasks, the bull-headed man had the faculty, which modern genii possess, of transforming himself into other shapes, we should have a complete parallel (save in the princess’ willingness to wed) with the wooing of Deianira by the river-god Achelous; “for he,” says she, “in treble shapes kept seeking me from my sire, coming now in true bull-form, now as a coiling serpent of gleaming hues, anon with human trunk and head of ox[736].” The genii of rivers have not, it would seem, changed their forms and attributes, save for the admission of Arabs to their number, from the age of Sophocles to this day.

The third class of genius which we have to notice is terrestrial, inhabiting mountains, rocks, caves, and any other grim and desolate places. These genii are the most frequent of all, and are known as dragons. Not of course that all dragons are terrestrial; the dragon-form has already been mentioned among the forms proper to the genii of springs and wells, and also as a shape assumed at will by the Arabs who more frequently occupy those haunts. But terrestrial genii, in whatever place they make their lair—and no limit can be set to such places—are far most commonly pictured as dragons; and I have therefore preferred to speak of the dragons in general here, rather than among the genii of either buildings or water.

The term δράκος or δράκοντας[737] indicates to the Greek peasant a monster of no more determinate shape than does the word ‘dragon’ to ourselves. The Greek word however differs, and has always differed, from the English form of it in one respect, namely that it is often employed in a strict and narrow sense to denote a ‘serpent’ as distinguished from a small snake (in modern Greek φίδι, i.e. ὀφίδιον, the diminutive of the ancient ὄφις). On the other hand, a Greek ‘dragon,’ in the widest sense of the term, is sometimes distinctly anthropomorphic in popular stories, and is made to boil kettles and drink coffee without any sense of impropriety. It is in fact only from the context of a story that it is possible to determine in what shape the dragon is imagined; in general it is neither flesh nor fowl nor good red devil; heads and tails, wings and legs, teeth and talons, are assigned to it in any number and variety; it breathes air and fire indifferently; it sleeps with its eyes open and sees with them shut; it makes war on men and love to women; it roars or it sings, and there is little to choose between the two performances; for the lapse of centuries, it seems, has in no wise mellowed its voice[738]. The stories of the common-folk are full of these monsters’ savagery and treachery[739]; for it is the dragons, above all other supernatural beings, who provide the wandering hero of the fairy-tales with befitting adventures and tests of prowess.

A common motif of such stories is provided by the belief that dragons are the guardians of buried treasure. When a man in a dream has had revealed to him the whereabouts of buried treasure, his right course is to go to the spot without breathing to anyone a hint of his secret, and there to slay a cock or other animal such as is offered at the laying of foundation-stones, in order to appease the genius (which is almost always a dragon, though an Arab is occasionally substituted) before he ventures to disturb the soil. This is the very superstition which Artemidorus had in mind when he interpreted dreams about dragons to denote ‘wealth and riches, because dragons make their fixed abode over treasures[740].’ Having complied with these conditions the digger may hope to bring gold to light; but if he have previously betrayed to anyone his expectations or have failed to propitiate the dragon, the old proverb is fulfilled, ἄνθρακες ὁ θησαυρός[741], his treasure turns out to be but ashes (κάρβουνα).

The guardianship likewise of gardens wherein flow ‘immortal waters’ or grows ‘immortal fruit’ is the province of dragons. In Tenos a typical story concerning them is told in several versions[742]. The hero of them all bears the name of Γιαννάκης or ‘Jack’ (a familiar diminutive of Ἰωάννης, ‘John’)—a name commonly given in Greek fairy-tales to the performer of Heraclean feats. The hero who, after discovering that his youngest sister is a Strigla, has fled with his mother, the queen, from the palace where they were in imminent danger of being devoured[743], comes to a castle occupied by forty dragons. The prince straightway attacks them single-handed and slays, so he thinks, all of them, but in reality one has only feigned to be dead and so escapes to a hole beneath the castle, of which Jack now becomes the master. The remaining dragon however ventures forth, when the prince is gone out to the chase, and makes love to the queen, and after a while dragon and queen knowing that the prince would be incensed at their intrigue conspire to kill him. To this end the queen on her son’s return pretends to be ill, and in response to his enquiries tells him that the only thing that can heal her is ‘immortal water[744],’ which, as her paramour, the dragon, knows, is to be found only in a distant garden guarded by one or more other dragons. The prince at once undertakes to obtain the desired remedy, and is directed by a witch (who in some versions appears as the impersonation of his τύχη or ‘Fortune’) whither to go and how to deal with the dragons. These accordingly he slays or eludes, and so returns home unhurt bringing the immortal water. Then once more the dragon and the queen take counsel together, and the pretence of illness is repeated with a demand this time for some immortal fruit or herb[745] known to be guarded in the same way as the water; and once more the prince sets out and circumvents the dragons in some new fashion.

Between such stories and the ancient fable of Heracles’ journey to the land of the Hesperides in search of the golden apples, and of his victory over the guardian-dragon Ladon, the connexion is self-evident. Whether that connexion is one of direct lineage, is less certain. More probably, I think, a form of this same story was already current in an age to which the name of Heracles was as unknown as that of the modern Jack; and just as the story of Peleus and Thetis became the classical example of the winning of a nymph to wife by a mortal man[746], so the myth, by which the exploit of bearing off wonderful fruit from the custody of a dragon was numbered among the labours of Heracles, is nothing more than the authorised version, so to speak, of a fairy-tale that might have been heard of winter-nights in Greek cottage-homes any time between the Pelasgian and the present age.

Daemons of the air, the fourth class of genius which we have to consider, have been acknowledged ever since the time of Hesiod and doubtless from a period far anterior to that. In his theology it was the lot of the first race of men in the golden age to become after death daemons ‘clothed in air and going to and fro through all the world’ as good guardians of mortal men. But the goodness which Hesiod attributes to the genii of the air was never, I suspect, an essential trait in their character. In Hesiod it is a corollary of the statement that they are the spirits of men who belonged to the golden age; but there is no reason to suppose that the common-folk ever regarded them as more beneficent than other gods and daemons. At any rate at the present day the ἀερικά, or genii of the air, are no better disposed towards mankind than any other supernatural beings.

Of this class as a whole little can be said. The word ἀερικό is applied to almost any apparition too vague and transient to be more clearly defined. It suggests something ‘clothed in air,’ something less tangible, less discernible, than most of the beings whom the peasant recognises and fears. The limits of its usage are hard to fix. It may properly include a Nereid whose passing through the air is the whirlwind, and it will equally certainly exclude a callicantzaros or a dragon. Yet even the Nereids are more substantial than the genii of the air in their truest form; for the assaults of Nereids upon men and women are made, as we have seen, from without[747], while genii of the air are more often supposed to ‘possess’ men in the same way as do devils, and to be liable to exorcism.

But, if the class as a whole is too vague and shadowy in the popular imagination to be capable of exact description, one division of it is more clearly defined and has a generally acknowledged province of activity. These particular aërial genii are known as Telonia (τελώνια or, more rarely, τελωνεῖα). They cannot claim equal antiquity with some of their fellows, for they are, it would seem, a by-product of Christianity, with a certain accretion however of pagan superstition.

The origin of the name Telonia is not in dispute. It means frankly and plainly ‘custom-houses.’ Such is the bizarre materialism of the Greek imagination that the soul in its journeys no less than the body is believed to encounter the embarrassment of custom-houses. An institution which of all things mundane commands least sentiment and sympathy has actually found a place in popular theology. Many of the people indeed at the present day, as I know from enquiry, have ceased to connect their two usages of the word; but others accept as reasonable the belief that the soul in its voyage after death up from the earth to the presence of God must bear the scrutiny of aërial customs-officers.

But, apart from modern belief, the apotheosis of the douane is amply proved by passages cited by Du Cange[748] from early Christian authors. ‘Some spirits,’ says one[749], ‘have been set on the earth, and some in the water, and others have been set in the air, even those that are called “aërial customs-officers” (ἐναέρια Τελώνια).’ Another[750] speaks of ‘the Judge and the prosecutions by the toll-collecting spirits.’ Yet another[751] explains the belief in fuller detail: ‘as men ascend, they find custom-houses guarding the way with great care and obstructing the soaring souls, each custom-house examining for one particular sin, one for deceit, another for envy, another for slander, and so on in order, each passion having its own inspectors and assessors[752].’ Again a prayer for the use of the dying contains the same idea: ‘Have mercy on me, all-holy angels of God Almighty, and save me from all evil Telonia, for I have no works to weigh against my wrong-doings[753].’ Appeal in support of this belief was made even to the authority of Christ as given in the words, ‘Thou fool, this night they require thy soul of thee[754],’ where the commentators explained the vague plural as implying some such subject as ‘toll-collectors’ or ‘custom-house officers[755].’

But the belief does not stop here. One does not pass the custom-houses of this world, or at any rate of Greece, without some expenditure in duty or in douceur; and the same apparently holds true of the celestial custom-houses. Hence in some places the belief has generated a practice, or, to speak more exactly, has breathed a new spirit into the old practice of providing the dead with money. My view of the origin of this practice has already been explained; I have given reasons for holding that the coin placed in the mouth of the dead was simply a charm to prevent evil spirits from entering, or the soul from re-entering, into the body, and that the interpretation of the custom, according to which the coin was the fee of the ferryman Charon, was of comparatively late date. At the present day Charon in the rôle of ferryman is almost forgotten; but in his place the Telonia seem locally to have become the recipients of the fee, and the old custom has thus received a second and equally erroneous explanation.

This may have been the idea in the mind of my informant who vaguely said that a coin placed in the mouth of the dead was ‘good because of the aërial beings[756].’ If the particular aërial beings whom he had in mind were the Telonia, he no doubt thought of the coin as a fee payable to them, though in that case it is somewhat strange that he should not have used the name which actually denotes their toll-collecting functions.

But from other sources at any rate comes evidence of a less ambiguous kind that the idea of paying the Telonia for passage is, or has been, a real motive in the minds of the peasantry. In Chios (where however the object actually placed in the mouth of the dead is clearly understood as a precaution against a devil entering the body) it is believed that the soul after death remains for forty days in the neighbourhood of its old habitation, the body, and then making its way to Hades has to pass the Telonia. Happy the soul that makes its voyage on Friday, for then the activities of the Telonia (who in the conception of the islanders are clearly evil spirits and not, as sometimes, the ministers of God) are restrained. But, to appease the Telonia and to ensure the safe passage of the soul, money is distributed to the poor[757]. The same usage obtains also at Sinasos in Cappadocia, and there the money so distributed is actually called τελωνιακά, ‘duty paid at the customs[758].’ The fact that in both these cases the money is now given in alms instead of being buried with the body is clearly a result of Christian influence; before that change was effected, it is reasonably likely that the widely-known practice of placing a coin in the mouth of the dead was explained in some places, though erroneously, by the belief that the dead must pay their way through the aërial custom-houses. The term περατίκι, ‘passage-money,’ by which, in the neighbourhood of Smyrna, is denoted the coin still in that district buried with the dead, has reference possibly to the same Telonia rather than to Charon[759].

Another and wholly different aspect of the Telonia concerns the living and not the dead, while it still exhibits them as true genii of the air. Any striking phenomena of the heavens at night, such as shooting-stars or comets, are believed to be manifestations of the Telonia[760]; but most dreaded of all is the phenomenon known to us as St Elmo’s light, the flame that sometimes flickers in time of storm about the mast-head and yards. This light, the Greek sailor thinks, portends an immediate onset of malevolent aërial powers, whom he straightway tries to scare away by every means in his power, by invocation of saints and incantation against the demons, by firing of guns, and, best of all, by driving a black-handled knife (which is in the Cyclades thought doubly efficacious if an onion has recently been peeled with it) into the mast. For he no longer discriminates as did the Greek mariner of old; then the appearance of two such flames was greeted with gladness as a manifestation of the Dioscuri, the saviours from storm and tempest, and evil was portended only if there appeared a single flame, the token of Helena[761], who wrecked as surely as her twin brothers guarded; now the phenomenon in any form bodes naught but ill. This change is probably due to Christian influences; the seaman no longer looks to any pagan power for succour in time of peril; he accounts St Nicholas his friend and saviour; and the Telonia, who in this province of their activity represent the older order of deities, have become by contrast man’s enemies.

Other vague and incorrect usages of the term Telonia are also recorded. Sometimes it may be heard as a synonym for δαιμόνια, any non-Christian deities. In Myconos it is said to have been applied to the genii of springs[762]. In Athens men used to speak of Telonia of the sea, who like the Callicantzari were abroad only from Christmas until the blessing of the waters at Twelfth-night; and during this time ships were wont to be kept at anchor and secure from their attacks[763]. A belief is also mentioned by Pouqueville[764], in a very confused passage, that children who die unbaptised become Telonia; but the statement is corroborated by Bernhard Schmidt[765], who adduces information of the same belief existing in Zacynthos. The idea at the root of it probably was that unbaptised children could not pass the celestial customs, and were detained there on their road to the other world in order to assist in obstructing the passage of other souls. But these are local variations of the main belief, and, so far as I can see, are of little importance. In general the Telonia are a species of aërial genius, and their two activities consist in the collecting of dues from departed souls and assaults upon mariners.

There remain only for consideration the genii of human beings, or the attendant spirits to whom is committed in some way the guidance of men’s lives. To some of them the name genius (i.e. στοιχειό) would hardly perhaps be extended by the peasants; but they all bear the same kind of relation towards men, and may therefore conveniently be grouped together for discussion.

The best example which I know of an acknowledged genius attached to a man is in a story in Hahn’s collection[766], which tells of an old wizard whose life was bound up with that of a ten-headed snake which lived beneath a threshing-floor. Here the monstrous nature of the genius is doubtless intended to match the character of the wizard; ordinary men, unversed in magic, may have genii of a less complex pattern. Thus the snake which so commonly acts as genius to a house is also in many cases regarded as the genius of the head or some other member of the household. When therefore the death-struggle of any person is prolonged, this is sometimes set down to the unwillingness of the genius to permit his death; and in extreme cases of protracted agony recourse has before now been had to a priest, who, entering the sick man’s room alone, reads a special prayer for the sufferer’s release, and by virtue of this solemn office causes the house-snakes, who are pagan genii, to burst[767]. With their disruption of course the soul of the dying man is at once set free.

But the guardian spirits of whom the peasants most commonly speak belong to the personnel of Christian theology or demonology, and are therefore not actually numbered among genii. These are angels, two of whom are allotted to each man, the one good (ὁ καλὸς ἄγγελος) and the other bad (ὁ κακὸς ἄγγελος). But though the designation genius is not applied to them, in functions angels and genii do not differ. To them belongs the control of a man’s life, the one guiding him in the way of righteousness, and the other diverting him to the pitfalls of vice. Their presence is ever constant, but seldom visible. Sometimes indeed, in stories at any rate, we hear of the good angel appearing to a man and rewarding him in his old age for a virtuous life[768]; and in general men born on Saturday, σαββατογεννημένοι, are reputed to be ἀλαφροστοίχει̯ωτοι[769] and endowed with special powers of seeing and dealing with the supernatural. But most commonly the power to see the guardian angel is granted only to the dying, and the vision is a warning that the end is near. So, when the gaze of a dying man becomes abstracted and fixed, they say in some places βλέπει τὸν ἄγγελό του, or in one word ἀγγελοθωρεῖ[770], ‘he sees his angel,’ or again ἀγγελοσκιάζεται[771], ‘he is terrified of an angel.’ In these expressions it is not clear which of the two angels is intended; but, to judge from other expressions, popular belief recognises the activity of the one or the other according to the peace or pain of the death. ‘He is borne away by an angel,’ ἀγγελοφορᾶται[772], suggests a quiet passing, as of Lazarus who was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom; while the word ἀγγελομαχεῖ, ‘he is fighting with an angel,’ an expression used in Laconia of a protracted death-struggle, and again ἀγγελοκρούσθηκε[773], ‘he was stricken by an angel,’ a term which denotes a sudden death, argue rather the presence of the evil angel.

Another kind of genius sometimes associated with men is the ἴσκιος (the modern form of σκιά), the ‘shadow’ personified. The phrase ἔχει καλὸ ἴσκιο, ‘he has a good shadow,’ is used of a man who enjoys good fortune, and he himself is described sometimes as καλοΐσκι̯ωτος[774], ‘good-shadowed,’ that is, ‘lucky.’ But apparently a man may also get into trouble with this shadow no less than with an angel. The word ἰσκιοπατήθηκε, ‘he has been trampled upon by his shadow[775],’ is used occasionally of a man who has been stricken down by some sudden, but not necessarily fatal, illness such as epilepsy or paralysis. This personification of the shadow as genius is perhaps responsible in some measure for the fear which the peasant feels of having the foundation-stone of a building laid upon his shadow; but, as I have said above, the principle of sympathetic magic will explain the cause of fear without this supposition.

To these genii might reasonably be added the Fate (ἡ Μοῖρα or, more rarely, ἡ Τύχη) of each individual. But these lesser Fates, as well as the great Three, have already been discussed, and there is nothing to add here save that by virtue of the close connexion of each lesser Fate with the life of one man these too might be numbered among genii.

The same belief in a guardian-deity presiding over each human life is to be found throughout ancient Greek literature. In Homer the name for such a genius is Κὴρ (at any rate if it be of an evil sort), in later writers δαίμων—both of them vague terms which embrace other kinds of deities as well, yet not so vague but that with the aid of context we can readily discover in them the equivalent of the ‘guardian-angel’ or other modern genius. From Homer onwards the word λαγχάνειν is regularly used of the allotment of each human life from the moment of birth to one of these guardians, and the belief in their attendance upon men throughout, and even after, life seems to have had general acceptance. In the Iliad the wraith of Patroclus is made to speak of the hateful Ker to whom he was allotted at the hour of birth[776], and the Ker here mentioned is not, I think, merely fate in the abstract but as truly a person as that baneful Ker of battle and carnage ‘who wore about her shoulders a robe red with the blood of heroes[777].’ After Homer the word δαίμων is preferred, but there is no change in the idea. The famous saying of Heraclitus, ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμον, ‘the god that guides man’s lot is character,’ is in no wise dark, but Plato throws even clearer light upon the popular belief in guardian-daemons. ‘It is said that at each man’s death his daemon, the daemon to whom he had been allotted for his lifetime, has the task of guiding him to some appointed place[778],’ where the souls of men must assemble for judgement. Here the words ‘it is said’ indicate the popular source of the doctrine; and this is confirmed by another passage in which Plato[779] protests against the fatalism involved in the allotment of souls to particular daemons, and prefers to hold that the soul may choose its own guardian. Again in a fragment of Menander there is a simple statement of the belief in a form which robs fatalism of its gloom:

But there were others who did not take so cheerful a view, at any rate of their own guardian-deities; ‘alas for the most cruel daemon to whom I am allotted[781]’ is a complaint of a type by no means rare in Greek literature, and the word κακοδαίμων came as readily as εὐδαίμων to men’s lips[782].

From these passages it is evident that in general each man was believed to have one, and only one, attendant genius, and his happiness or misery to depend on the character of the guardian allotted to him by fate. But sometimes this injustice of destiny was obviated by a belief similar to the modern belief in both good and bad angels in attendance on each man. The comment of Servius on Vergil’s line, ‘Quisque suos patimur manes[783],’ sets forth this view: ‘when we are born two Genii are allotted to us, one who exhorts us to good, the other who perverts us to evil.’

As in modern so in ancient times these genii were rarely visible to the men whom they guarded. The genius of Socrates, which, like those of other men past and present, had been, so he held, divinely appointed to wait upon him from his childhood onward[784], spoke to him indeed in a voice which he could hear[785] (just perhaps as the priestess of Delphi heard the voice of Apollo[786]), but ever remained unseen.