Chapter II · THE SURVIVAL OF PAGAN DEITIES.

§ 1. The Range of Modern Polytheism.

Thus far we have considered paganism in its bearing and influence upon modern Greek Christianity. We have seen how the Church, in endeavouring to widen her influence, countenanced many practices and conciliated many prejudices of a people whose temperament needed a multitude of gods and whose piety could pay homage to them all, a people moreover to whom the criterion of divinity was neither moral perfection nor omnipotence. From the ethical standpoint some of the ancient gods were better, some worse than men: in point of power they were superhuman but not almighty. Some indeed claimed that there was no difference in origin between mankind and its deities. ‘One is the race of men’ sang Pindar ‘with the race of gods; for one is the mother that gave to both our breath of life: yet sundered are they by powers wholly diverse, in that mankind is as naught, but heaven is builded of brass that abideth ever unshaken[107].’ One in origin, they are diverse in might. The test of godhead is power sufficing to defy death. Rightly therefore did Homer make ‘deathless’ and ‘everbeing’ his constant epithets for the gods. Immortality alone is the quality which distinguishes them in kind and not merely in degree from men, and makes them worthy of worship.

A people wedded to such conceptions were naturally ready enough to install new immortals of whom they had not known before, but reluctant to depose in their favour those whom they and their forefathers had known and served. Dangers were to be apprehended from neglect; blessings were to be secured by tendance. Greater honour might be paid to one god, less to another; but from no immortal should service be wholly withheld: even unconscious oversights should be remedied by offerings ‘to an unknown god.’ Such in its essence was the popular religion, inconsistent it may be and not deeply intellectual, but in sympathies very broad—broad enough to encompass the worship of all immortals, broad as the earth and the sky and the sea wherein they dwelt and moved.

So vital and so deep-seated in the hearts of the common-folk are these religious tendencies, that even at the present day when the word ‘Christian’ has become a popular synonym for ‘Greek’ in contradistinction not only with ‘Mohammedan,’ but even sometimes with ‘Western’ or ‘Catholic’ or with ‘Protestant,’ and when horror would be excited by any imputation of polytheism, there are yet recognised a large number of superhuman and for the most part immortal beings, whom the Church has been able neither to eradicate from the popular mind nor yet to incorporate under the form of saints or devils in her own theological system. These beings, whether benignant to man or maleficent, are all treated as divine. In ancient times the common people had probably little appreciation of the various grades of divinity; indeed it was one of the seven sages, we are told, who first differentiated God and the lesser deities and the heroes[108]; and at the present day the common-folk are certainly no more subtle of understanding than they were then. God and the Saints and these pagan powers are all feared and worshipped in the several ways traditionally suited to each; but the fact of worship proclaims them all alike to be gods.

The origin of the non-Christian deities, even if we were unable to identify any of them with the gods of classical Greece, would be clearly enough proved by some of the general terms under which all of them are included. Those who use these terms indeed no longer appreciate their significance; for all sense of antagonism between the pagan and Christian elements in the popular religion has, as we have seen, long been lost. But the words themselves are a relic of the early days in which the combat of Christianity with the heathen world was still stern. Among the most widespread of these terms is the word ξωτικά[109] (i.e. ἐξωτικά), the ‘extraneous’ powers, clearly an invention of the early Christians. The phrase ‘those that are without’ (οἱ ἔξω or οἱ ἔξωθεν) was used by S. Paul first[110] and afterwards generally by the Fathers of the Church to denote men of all other persuasions. In the fourth century Basil of Caesarea employed the adjective ἐξωτικός also in a corresponding sense[111]. This word no doubt became popular, and hence τὰ ἐξωτικά, ‘the extraneous ones,’ became a convenient term by which to denote comprehensively all those old divinities whose worship the Church disallowed but even among her own adherents could not wholly suppress. Another comprehensive term equally significant, if not so commonly used, is τὰ παγανά[112], ‘the pagan ones.’ This is in use in the Ionian islands and some parts of the mainland, but I have not met with it nor found it understood in the Peloponnese or in the islands of the Aegean Sea[113]. In Cephalonia it is chiefly, though not exclusively, applied to a species of supernatural beings usually called callicántzari (καλλικάντζαροι) of whom more anon: the reason of this restriction may be either the fact that these monsters—to judge from the folk-stories of the island—so far outnumber there all other kinds of ‘pagan’ beings that this one species has almost appropriated to itself the generic name, or that in old time, when the word παγανά, ‘pagan,’ was still understood in the sense which we attribute to it, these monsters were deemed specially ‘pagan’ because, as we shall see later, they delight in disturbing a season of Christian gladness. But elsewhere the term, still employed in what must have been its original meaning, comprises all kinds of non-Christian deities; and in earlier times ‘the pagan ones’ was probably as frequent an expression as its synonym ‘the extraneous ones.’ To these may perhaps be added the rare appellation recorded by Schmidt[114], τσίνια: for if the derivation from τζίνα, ‘fraud,’ ‘deceit,’ be right, it will mean ‘the false gods.’

Besides these three names, which indicate the pre-Christian origin of these deities, there are several others—some in universal usage, others local and dialectic,—which represent them in various aspects. As a class of ‘divinities’ they are called δαιμόνια: as ‘apparitions,’ whose precise nature often cannot be further determined, φάσματα or φαντάσματα and, in Crete, σφανταχτά[115]: as swift and ‘sudden’ in their coming and going, ξαφνικά[116]: as ghostly and passing like a vision, εἰδωλικά: as denizens, for the most part, of the air, ἀερικά: and from their similarity to angels, ἀγγελικά.

It may seem strange that the first and the last of these terms, δαιμόνια and ἀγγελικά, should be practically interchangeable; for the Church at any rate did her best in early days to make the former understood in the sense of ‘demons’ or ‘devils’ rather than ‘deities.’ But the attempted change of meaning seems to have failed to make much impression on a people who did not view goodness as an essential of godhead; and in later times the Church herself, or many of her less educated clergy at any rate, surrendered to the popular ideas. Father Richard[117], a Jesuit resident during the seventeenth century in the island of Santorini, mentions the case of an old Greek priest who had long made a speciality of exorcism and was prepared to expel angels and demons alike from the bodies of those who were afflicted by them. The priest when questioned by the Jesuit as to what distinction he drew between demons and angels, replied that the demons came from hell, while the angels were ἀερικόν τι, a species of aërial being; but while he maintained a theoretical difference between them, his practice betrayed a belief that both were equally harmful. Exorcism had to be employed in cases of ‘angelic’ as well as of ‘demoniacal’ possession; and Father Richard details the cruelties and tortures inflicted upon a woman suspected of the former in order to make the pernicious angelic spirit within her confess its name. The characters of δαιμόνια and ἀγγελικά are in fact the same, and the subtle theological distinctions which might be drawn between them are naturally lost on a people who see them treated even by the priests as equally baneful.

A few other local or dialectic names remain to be noticed. Two of them, στοιχει̯ά and τελώνια, denote properly two several species of supernatural beings—the former being the genii of fixed places[118], and the latter aërial beings chiefly concerned with the passage of men from this world to the next[119]—and are only loosely and locally employed in a more comprehensive sense. The name σμερδάκια, recorded from Philiatrá in Messenia, is apparently a diminutive form from a root meaning ‘terrible[120].’ A Cretan word καντανικά is of less certain etymology, but if, as has been surmised, it has any relation with the verb καντανεύω, ‘to go down to the underworld,’ and hence ‘to fall into a trance,’ (‘entranced’ spirits being thought temporarily to have departed thither,) it may denote either denizens of the lower world or beings who frighten men into a senseless and trance-like state[121]. Next come the two words ζούμπιρα and ζωντόβολα, of which I believe the interpretation is one and the same. Bernhard Schmidt[122], whose work I have constantly consulted in this and later chapters, would derive the former from a middle-Greek word ζόμβρος[123], equivalent to the ancient τραγέλαφος, a fantastic animal of Aristophanic fame; but it was explained to me in Scyros to be a jocose euphemism as applied to supernatural beings and to denote properly parasitic insects. The implied combination of superstitious awe in avoiding the name of supernatural things with a certain broad humour in substituting what is, to the peasant, one of the lesser annoyances of life is certainly characteristic of the Greek folk; and the accuracy of the explanation given to me is confirmed by the fact that in the island of Cythnos the other word, ζωντόβολα, is recorded to bear also the meaning of ‘insects[124].’ The joke, if such it be, must date from a long time back and in its prime must have enjoyed a widespread popularity; for at Aráchova on the slopes of Parnassus, a place far distant from Scyros, the word ζούμπιρα is employed in the sense of supernatural beings by persons who apparently are quite ignorant of its original meaning[125]. To these difficult terms must be added a few euphemisms of a simple nature—τὰ πίζηλα (i.e. ἐπίζηλα) ‘the enviable ones’ in one village of Tenos[126], and in many places such general terms as οἱ καλοί ‘the noble,’—οἱ ἀδερφοί μας ‘our brothers,’—οἱ καλορίζικοι ‘the fortunate ones,’—οἱ χαρούμενοι ‘the joyful ones.’ These evasions of a more direct nomenclature are very frequent, and, since the choice of epithet is practically at the discretion of the speaker, it would be impossible to compile a complete list of them.

How far each of these names may be applied in general to all the classes of pagan gods and demons and monsters whom I am about to describe is a question which I cannot determine. On the one hand many of the names, as we have seen, are purely local, confined to a few villages or districts or islands and unknown and unintelligible elsewhere: and on the other hand some of these supernatural beings themselves are equally local, and my information concerning them has been gathered from widely separated regions of the Greek world. Hence it follows that while the several terms which I have explained are comprehensive in local usage and include all the supernatural beings locally recognised, it is impossible to say whether the users of them would think fit to extend them to the deities of other districts. Probably they would do so; but only for the most widely current terms, δαιμόνια and ἐξωτικά, can I claim with assurance anything like universal application.

The surviving pagan deities fall naturally into two classes. There are the solitary and individual figures such as Demeter, and there is the gregarious and generic class to which belong for example the Nymphs. An exceptional case may occur in which some originally single personality has been multiplied into a whole class. The Lesbian maiden Gello, who, according to a superstition known to Sappho[127], in revenge for her untimely death haunted her old abodes preying upon the babes of women whose motherhood she envied, is no longer one but many; the place of a maiden, whom death carried off ere she had known the love of husband and children, has been taken by withered witch-like beings who none the less bear her name and resemble her in that they light, like Harpies, upon young children and suck out their humours[128]. But in the main the division holds; there are single gods and there are groups of gods. Of the former, in several cases, there is very little to record. Such memory of them as still lingers among the people is confined perhaps to a single folk-story out of the many that have been preserved. In such cases I do not feel entire confidence that the reference is a piece of genuine tradition; in spite of the popular form in which the stories are cast, it is always possible that, owing to the spread of education, some scholastic smatterings of ancient mythology have been introduced by the story-teller. There are certainly plenty of tales to be heard about Alexander the Great which are drawn from literary sources; and it is possible that two stories published by Schmidt which contain apparent reminiscences of Poseidon and of Pan are vitiated, from the point of view of folklore, in the same way. Fortunately the cases in which this reserve must be felt are few and in the nature of things unimportant: for, though proof of genuine tradition would be interesting, yet a single modern allusion is not likely to throw any light on the ancient conception of a deity or his cult. Where on the other hand modern folklore is more abundant—and in the case of the groups of lesser deities above all there is ample store of information—it is possible that study of the popular conceptions of to-day may illumine our understanding of ancient religion.

§ 2. Zeus.

Ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα.

To Zeus, the ancient father of gods and men, belongs precedence; but there is in truth little room for him in the modern scheme of popular religion. His functions have been transferred to the Christian God, and his personality merged in that of the Father whom the Church acknowledges. But though he is no longer a deity, the ancient conception of him has imposed narrow limitations upon the character of his successor. We have noted already that the God now recognised exercises the same general control, as did formerly Zeus, over all the changes and chances of this mortal life, but has, again resembling Zeus, for his special province only the regulation of the more monotonous phases of nature and the weather. The more unusual phenomena, and among them sometimes even the thunder, to which S. Elias has pretensions, are delegated to saints or to non-Christian deities; but for the most part the thunder remains the possession of God, as it was always that of Zeus; and its more important concomitant, the lightning, is never, I think, attributed to S. Elias, but is wielded by God alone.

The very name of this weapon which the Christian God has inherited is suggestive of the Olympian régime. Much has been heard lately of the double-headed axe as a religious symbol which seems to have been constantly associated, especially in Crete, with the worship of Zeus. The modern Greek word for what we call the thunderbolt is ἀστροπελέκι (a syncopated form of ἀστραποπελέκι by loss of one of two concurrent syllables beginning with the same consonant), and means literally a ‘lightning-axe.’ The weapon therefore which the supreme God wields is conceived as an axe-shaped missile; and, though in the ancient literature which has come down to us we may nowhere find the word πέλεκυς used of the thunderbolt, there is no reason why the modern word should not be the expression of a conception inherited from antiquity and so furnish a clue to what in itself seems a simple and suitable explanation of the much-canvassed symbol.

Again the divine associations of the thunderbolt now as in the reign of Zeus are attested by the awe in which men and cattle, trees and houses, which have been struck by lightning, are universally held—awe of that primitive kind which does not distinguish between the sacred and the accursed. It is sufficient that particular persons or objects have come into close contact with divine power; that contact sets them apart; they must not do common work or be put to common uses. In old days any place which had been struck was distinguished by the erection of an altar and the performance of sacrifice, but at the same time it was left unoccupied and, save for sacrificial purposes, untrodden[129]; it was both honoured and avoided. In the case of persons however the sense of awe verged on esteem. ‘No one,’ says Artemidorus, ‘who has been struck by lightning is excluded from citizenship; indeed such an one is honoured even as a god[130].’ The same feeling is still exhibited. The peasant makes the sign of the cross as he passes any scorched and blackened tree-trunk; but if a man has the fortune to be struck and not killed, he may indulge a taste for idleness for the rest of his life—his neighbours will support him—and enjoy at the same time the reputation of being something more than human.

But in spite of the reverent awe which the victim of the lightning excites, the thunderbolt is often viewed now, as in old time, as the instrument of divine vengeance. The people of Aráchova, when they see a flash, explain the occurrence in the phrase κάποιον διάβολον ἔκαψε, ‘He has burnt up some devil,’ and the implied subject of the verb, as in most phrases describing the weather, is undoubtedly God[131]. The same idea, in yet more frankly pagan garb, is well exhibited in a story from Zacynthos[132], which is nothing but the old myth of the war of the Titans against Zeus with the names of the actors omitted. The gist of it is as follows.

The giants once rebelled against God. First they climbed a mountain and hurled rocks at him; but he grasped his thunderbolts (τσακώνει τὰ ἀστροπελέκι̯α του) and threw them at the giants, and they all fell down from the mountain and many were killed. Then one whose courage was still unshaken tied reeds together and tried to reach to heaven with them (for what purpose, does not appear in the story; but folk-tales are often somewhat inconsequent, and this vague incident is probably an imperfect reminiscence of the legend of Prometheus); but the lightning burnt him to ashes. Then his remaining companions made a last assault, but the lightning again slew many of them, and the rest were condemned to live all their life long shut in beneath a mountain.

This story is one of those which in themselves might be suspected of scholastic origin or influence; but it so happens that practically the same story has been recorded from Chios also, with the slight addition that there the leader of the giants’ assault has usurped the name of Samson. Such corroboration from the other end of the Greek world goes far to establish the genuine nature of the tradition.

Thus though Zeus has been generally superseded by the Christian God, his character and mythic attributes have left a strong and indelible mark upon the religion of to-day. The present conception of God is practically identical with the ancient conception of the deity who was indeed one among many gods and yet in thought and often also in speech the god par excellence. Christianity has effected little here beyond the suppression of the personal name Zeus.

All this, no doubt, illustrates the fusion of paganism with Christianity rather than the independent co-existence of deities of the separate systems. But there are two small facts in virtue of which I have given to Zeus a place among the pagan deities whose distinct personality is not yet wholly sunk in oblivion. The men of Aráchova, as we have noticed above, still swear by the ‘god of Crete,’ who can be no other than Zeus; and in Crete itself there was recently, and may still be, in use the invocation ἠκοῦτε μου Ζῶνε θεέ, ‘Hearken to me, O god Zeus[133].’ Such expressions, though their original force is no longer known by those who use them, are none the less indications that perhaps not many generations ago Zeus was still locally recognised and reverenced as a deity distinct from the Christian God, to whom indeed everywhere he can only gradually have ceded his position and his attributes.

§ 3. Poseidon.

For the survival of any god of the sea in the imagination of the Greek people I cannot personally vouch. Though I have been among the seafaring population in many parts, I have never heard mention of other than female deities. That which I here set down rests entirely on the authority of Bernhard Schmidt.

In his collection of folk-stories there is one from Zacynthos, entitled ‘Captain Thirteen,’ which runs as follows[134]:—A king who was the strongest man of his time made war on a neighbour. His strength lay in three hairs on his breast. He was on the point of crushing his foes when his wife was bribed to cut off the hairs, and he with thirteen companions was taken prisoner. But the hairs began to grow again, and so his enemies threw him and his companions into a pit. The others were killed by the fall, but he being thrown in last, fell upon them and was unhurt. Over the pit his enemies then raised a mound. He found however in the pit a dead bird, and having fastened its wings to his hands flew up and carried away mound and all with him. Then he soared high in the air until a storm of rain washed away the clay that held the feathers to his hands, and he fell into the sea. ‘Then from out the sea came the god thereof (ὁ δαίμονας τῆς θάλασσας) and struck him with a three-pronged fork (μία πειροῦνα μὲ τρία διχάλια)’ and changed him into a dolphin until such time as he should find a maiden ready to be his wife. The dolphin after some time saved a ship-wrecked king and his daughter, and the princess by way of reward took him for her husband and the spell was broken.

Other characteristics of this trident-bearing sea-god are, according to the same authority[135], that he is in form half human and half fish; that his wealth, consisting of all treasures lost in the sea, is so great that he sleeps on a couch of gold; and that he rides upon dolphins. Thus Poseidon, it appears, (or it may be Nereus,) has survived locally in the remembrance of the Greek people as a deity unconnected with Christianity. Far more generally however his functions have been transferred to S. Nicolas, whose aid is invariably invoked by seamen in time of peril, and who has acquired the byname of ‘sailor’ (ναύτης)[136].

The allusion to the sea-god and his trident in the story which I have repeated must, I think, be accepted with some reserve as being possibly a scholastic interpolation. I cannot find confirmation of it in any other folk-story, and moreover the latter part of the tale is familiar to me in another form. The hero is usually a young prince who goes out to seek adventures in the world, not a king who has already a wife at home; and his transformation into a dolphin is effected by some malicious witch into whose toils he falls. But while for these reasons I do not put the story forward as certain evidence of the survival of Poseidon in the popular memory, I have recounted it at some length because it is an excellent type of current folk-tales, and from a study of it, if we may now leave Poseidon and make a brief digression, we may appreciate the relation existing between such stories and the myths of antiquity.

The king who was the strongest man of his time has a classical prototype in the Messenian leader Aristomenes. He too was thrown with his comrades into a pit by his enemies, the Spartans, and alone escaped death from the fall, being borne up on the wings of eagles. Again, the idea of a man’s strength residing in a certain hair or hairs is well known in ancient mythology; and although it is by no means peculiar to the Greeks, but is common to many peoples of the world, we may fairly suppose that the modern Greek has not borrowed it from outside, but has inherited it from those ancestors among whose myths was the story of Scylla and Nisus. Lastly, in the incident of the hero fastening wings to his arms with clay and his subsequent fall into the sea there are all the essentials of the legend of Icarus.

Here then combined in one modern folk-story we find the motifs of three separate ancient myths. And from it and others of like nature—for in the collection from which I have borrowed it there are several stories in which such figures as Midas, the Sphinx, and the Cyclopes are easily recognised—an inference may be drawn as to the real relation of ancient mythology to modern folk-stories. Certain themes must have existed from time immemorial, and these have been worked up into tales by successive generations of raconteurs with ever-varying settings. Fresh combinations of motifs have been and are still being tried; fresh embroidery of detail may be added by each artist; only the theme in its plainest form, the mere groundwork of story, remains immutable. This at the same time explains the wide variations of the same myth even among the ancients themselves, and warns us not to judge of the value of a modern folk-story or folk-song by the closeness of its resemblance to any ancient myth which may have been preserved to us in literature. It was naturally the most finished and artistic presentment of the story which appealed to the taste of educated men and thus became the orthodox classical version; but there is every likelihood that before the story reached the stage of acknowledged perfection much that was primitive had been suppressed as inartistic, and much that was not traditional had been added by the poet’s imagination. The unlettered story-teller, endowed with less fancy and ignorant of the conventions of art, is a far trustier vehicle of pure tradition; for though he feels himself at liberty to compose variations of the original theme, he certainly has less power and generally less inclination to do so; for it is on exactness of memory and even verbal fidelity to the traditional form of the story that the modern story-teller chiefly prides himself. Hence the modern folk-story, straight from the peasant’s lips in a form almost verbally identical with that in which successive generations of peasants before him narrated it, may contain more genuinely primitive material than a literary version of it which dates from perhaps two thousand years or more ago.

§ 4. Pan.

A story, again from the same collection[137], runs in brief as follows:—Once upon a time a priest had a good son who tended goats. One day ‘Panos’ gave him a kid with a skin of gold. He at once offered it as a burnt-offering to God, and in answer an angel promised him whatsoever he should ask. He chose a magic pipe which should make all hearers dance. So no enemy could come near to touch him. The king however sent for him, and the goatherd, after making the envoys dance more than once, voluntarily let himself be taken. The king then threw him into prison, but he had his flute still with him, and when he played even houses and rocks danced, and fell and crushed all save him and his. ‘The whole business,’ concludes the story, ‘was arranged by Panos to cleanse the world somewhat of evil men.’

Here the pastoral scene and the gift of the magic pipe (not by Panos himself, it is true, but indirectly thanks to him) suggest a genuine remembrance of Pan. It was from him that ‘bonus Daphnis’ learnt the art of music. The form which the name has assumed is the chief difficulty. The modern nominative, if formed in the same way as in other words of the same declension, would naturally be Panas (Πάνας), and the unusual termination arouses some suspicion that the narrator of the story had heard of Pan from some literary source and, as often happens in such cases, had got the name a little wrong. But if the tale be a piece of genuine tradition, the conclusion of it is remarkable. The moral purpose ascribed to the deity seems to indicate a loftier conception of him than that which is commonly found in ancient art and literature. But the popular tradition embodied in the legend is not therefore necessarily at fault; indeed it may be more true to the conception of Pan which prevailed among the common-folk in old days than were the portraits drawn and handed down by the more educated of their contemporaries. The patron-god of Arcadian shepherd-life would naturally have seemed a rude being to the cultured Athenians of the fifth century, who but for his miraculous intervention in the battle of Marathon would never have honoured him with a temple. But among his original worshippers it may well be that, besides presiding over the increase of their flocks, as did Demeter over the increase of their fields, he was deemed to resemble her also in the possession of more exalted attributes, so that there was cause indeed for lamentation over that strange message ‘Great Pan is dead[138].’

But perchance Pan is not dead yet, or if dead not forgotten. And as this solitary modern story, if it be genuine, testifies to a longlived remembrance of his better qualities, so in the demonology of the middle ages a sterner aspect of his ancient character still secured to him men’s awe. Theocritus[139] gave voice to a well-known superstition when he made the goat-herd say: ‘Nay, shepherd, it may not be; in the noontide we may not pipe; ’tis Pan that we fear’; for in his rage if roused from his midday slumber he was believed to strike the intruder with ‘panic’ terror: and it was this superstition which influenced the translators of the Septuagint when they rendered the phrase, which in our Bible version of the Psalms[140] appears as ‘the destruction that wasteth at noonday,’ by the words σύμπτωμα καὶ δαιμόνιον μεσημβρινόν. By the latter half of this phrase the memory of Pan was undoubtedly perpetuated; for in certain forms of prayer quoted by Leo Allatius[141] in the seventeenth century, among the perils from which divine deliverance is sought is mentioned more than once this ‘midday demon’; and a corresponding ‘daemon meridianus[142]’ found a place of equal dignity among the ghostly enemies of Roman Catholics.

Perhaps even yet in the pastoral uplands of Greece some traveller will hear news of Pan.

§ 5. Demeter and Persephone.

Of few ancient deities has popular memory been more tenacious than of Demeter; but in different districts the reminiscences take very different forms. There are many traces of her name and cult, and of the legends concerning both her and her daughter; but in one place they have been Christianised, in another they have remained pagan.

In so far as she has affected the traditions of the Church, a male deity, S. Demetrius, has in general superseded her. Under the title of στερεανός, ‘belonging to the dry land,’ he has in most districts taken over the patronage of agriculture; while his inherited interest in marriage receives testimony from the number of weddings celebrated, especially in the agricultural districts, on his day. But at Eleusis, the old home of Demeter’s most sacred rites, the people, it seems, would not brook the substitution of a male saint for their goddess, and yielded to ecclesiastical influence only so far as to create for themselves a saint Demetra (ἡ ἁγία Δήμητρα) entirely unknown elsewhere and never canonised. Further, in open defiance of an iconoclastic Church, they retained an old statue of Demeter, and merely prefixing the title ‘saint’ to the name of their cherished goddess, continued to worship her as before. The statue was regularly crowned with garlands of flowers in the avowed hope of obtaining good harvests, and without doubt prayer was made before it as now before the pictures of canonical saints. This state of things continued down to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Then, in 1801, two Englishmen, named Clarke and Cripps, armed by the Turkish authorities with a license to plunder, perpetrated an act unenviably like that of Verres at Enna, and in spite of a riot among the peasants of Eleusis removed by force the venerable marble; and that which was the visible form of the great goddess on whose presence and goodwill had depended from immemorial ages the fertility of the Thriasian plain is now a little-regarded object catalogued as ‘No. XIV, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, (much mutilated)[143].’

Saint Demetra however, though lost to sight, was yet dear to the memory of the village-folk; and in spite of the devastation of old beliefs and legends which the much-vaunted progress and education of Greece have committed in the more civilised districts without conferring any sensible compensation, the antiquarian Lenormant found in 1860 an old Albanian[144] priest who when once reassured that no ridicule was intended, recited to him the following remarkable legend[145]: ‘S. Demetra was an old woman of Athens, kind and good, who devoted all her little means to feeding the poor. She had a daughter who was beautiful past all imagining; since “lady Aphrodite” (κυρὰ ’φροδίτη) none had been seen so lovely. A Turkish lord of the neighbourhood of Souli, who was a wicked man and versed in magic, saw her one day combing her hair, which was of golden hue and reached to the very ground, and became passionately enamoured of her. He bided his time, and having found his chance of speaking with her tried to seduce her. But she being as prudent as she was beautiful, repulsed all the miscreant’s advances. Thereupon he resolved to carry her off and put her in his harem. One Christmas night, while Demetra was at church, the Turk (ὁ ἀγᾶς) forced the door of her house, seized the girl who was at home alone, carried her off in spite of her cries of distress, and holding her in his arms leapt upon his horse. The horse was a wonderful one; it was black in colour; from its nostrils it breathed out flames, and in one bound could pass from the East unto the West. In an instant it had carried ravisher and victim right to the mountains of Epirus.

When the aged Demetra came back from church, she found her house broken into and her daughter gone; great was her despair. She asked her neighbours if they knew what had become of her daughter; but they dared not tell her aught, for they feared the Turks and their vengeance. She turned her enquiries to the tree that grew before her house; but the tree could tell her nothing. She asked the sun, but the sun could give her no help; she asked the moon and the stars, but from them too she learnt nothing. Finally the stork that nested on the house-top said to her: “Long time now we have lived side by side; thou art as old as I. Listen; thou hast always been good to me, thou hast never disturbed my nest, and once thou didst help me to drive away the bird of prey that would have carried off my nestlings. In recompense I will tell thee what I know of the fate of thy daughter; she was carried off by a Turk mounted on a black horse, who took her towards the West. Come, I will set out with thee and we will search for her together.”

Accompanied by the stork, Demetra started; the time was winter; it was cold, and snow covered the mountains. The poor old woman was frozen and could hardly walk; she kept asking of all those whom she met, whether they had seen her daughter, but they laughed at her or did not answer; doors were shut in her face and entrance denied her, for men love not misery; and she went weeping and lamenting. In this manner however she dragged her limbs as far as Lepsína (the modern form of the name Eleusis); but, arriving there, she succumbed to cold and weariness and threw herself down by the roadside. There she would have died, but that by good luck there passed by the wife of the khodja-bachi (or head man of the village), who had been to look after her flocks and was returning. Marigo—such was her name—took pity on the old woman, helped her to rise and brought her to her husband, who was named Nicolas[146]. The khodja-bachi was as kind as his wife; both welcomed as best they could the poor sorrow-stricken woman, tended her and sought to console her. To reward them S. Demetra blessed their fields and gave them fertility.

Nicolas, the khodja-bachi, had a son handsome, strong, brave, and practised, in a word the finest pallikar of all the country side. Seeing that Demetra was in no condition to continue her journey, he offered to set to work to recover her daughter, asking only her hand in recompense. The offer was accepted, and he set out accompanied by the faithful stork who would not abandon the undertaking.

The young man walked for many days without finding anything. At last one night, when he was in a forest right among the mountains, he caught sight of a great bright light at some distance. Towards this he hastily bent his steps, but the point from which the light came was much further off than he had at first imagined; the darkness had deceived him. Eventually however he arrived there, and to his great astonishment found forty dragons lying on the ground and watching an enormous cauldron that was boiling on the fire. Undismayed by the sight, he lifted the cauldron with one hand, lit a torch, and replaced the vessel on the fire. Astounded by such a display of strength, the dragons crowded round him and said to him, “You who can lift with one hand a cauldron which we by our united efforts can scarcely carry, you alone are capable of carrying off a maiden whom we have long been trying to lay our hands on, and whom we cannot seize because of the height of the tower wherein a magician keeps her shut up.” The son of the khodja-bachi of Lepsína perceived the impossibility of escape from these monsters. Accompanied by the forty dragons, he approached the tower, and after having examined it, he asked for some large nails, which he took and drove into the wall, so as to form a kind of ladder, and which he kept pulling out again as he ascended to prevent the dragons from following him. Having arrived at the top and with some difficulty entered at a small window there, he invited the dragons to ascend as he had done, one by one, which they did, thus giving him time to kill each as it arrived while the next was climbing up, and to throw it over the other side of the tower, where there were a large court, a splendid garden, and a fine castle. Thus rid of his dangerous guardians, he went down into the interior of the tower and found there S. Demetra’s daughter, whose beauty at once inspired him with the most ardent love.

He was kneeling at her feet when suddenly the magician appeared, and in a fury of anger threw himself upon the young man, who met him bravely. The former was of superhuman strength, but Nicolas’ son was not inferior to him. The magician had the power to transform himself into any thing he might choose; he changed successively into a lion, into a serpent, into a bird of prey, into fire—hoping under some one of these forms to wear his adversary out; but nothing could shake the courage of the young man. For three days the combat continued. The first day the magician seemed beaten, but the next he regained his advantage; at the end of the day’s struggle he killed his young opponent, and cut his body into four quarters, which he hung on the four sides of the tower. Then elated by his victory, he did violence to Demetra’s daughter, whose chastity he had hitherto respected. But in the night the stork flew away to a great distance to fetch a magic herb which it knew, brought it back in its beak, and rubbed with it the young man’s lips. At once the pieces of his body came together again and he revived. Great was his despair when he learnt what had taken place after his defeat; but he only threw himself upon the magician with the greater fury the third day, to punish him for his crime.

Once again the young man, it seemed, was on the point of being vanquished, when suddenly he conceived the happy idea of invoking the Panagia, vowing that if victorious he would become a monk at the monastery of Phaneroméne[147]. The divine protection which he had invoked gave him strength and he succeeded in throwing his adversary: the stork, who had aided him so much, at once attacked the fallen magician and picked out his eyes; then with its beak pulled out a white hair noticeable among the black curls that covered his head. On this hair depended the life of the Turkish magician, who immediately expired.

His conqueror, taking with him the girl, brought her back to Lepsína, just at the season when spring was coming and the flowers were beginning to appear in the fields. Then he went, as he had vowed, and shut himself up in the monastery. S. Demetra, having received back her daughter, went away with her. What became of them afterwards, no one knows; but since that time the fields of Lepsína, thanks to the blessing of the Saint, have not ceased to be fertile.’

It would be superfluous to point out the numerous details of this legend which accord explicitly with the account of the rape of Persephone in the Homeric hymn. The interspersion of Christian ideas and reminiscences of Turkish domination and stories of fabulous monsters may strike oddly on the ear unacquainted with the vagaries of Greek folk-stories. Yet the most sceptical could not doubt that the tradition which forms the groundwork of the legend is none other than the old myth, or that the four chief actors in the drama are none other than Demeter and Core, Pluto and Triptolemus. Pluto, masked as a Turkish agha, is perhaps the least readily recognisable; yet in one way as a relic of ancient tradition the part he plays is the most remarkable in the whole legend. It is to Souli in Epirus that he carries off the maiden. Now this is the district of the ancient Cocytus and Acheron; here was one of the descents to the lower world; here Aidoneus held sway; and here, in one version of the myth[148], was laid the scene of the rape of Persephone by that god. Hence the claims of two separate localities to the same mythological distinction seem by some means to have become incorporated in the single modern legend.

In the same part of Epirus, according to Lenormant, a similar story to that which he heard at Eleusis concerning S. Demetra’s daughter, is told, mutatis mutandis, of S. Demetrius: but since either a sense of propriety or a want of knowledge prevented him from publishing the details of it, the mere statement that it existed is of no great value. But the legend which he narrates in full may I think be accepted as genuine without corroboration on the grounds of its own structure. Lenormant has indeed been accused of mala fides in his own department of archaeology and of tampering with some of the inscriptions which he published; but even if this charge could be substantiated, I should doubt whether he had either the inclination to invent a legend which he only mentions in a cumbrous foot-note, or the ability to fuse ancient and modern ideas into so good an imitation of the genuine folk-story. In my judgement the construction of the legend is practically proof of its genuinely popular origin.

Thus Eleusis and, in a lesser degree, the many places where S. Demetrius has succeeded to the chief functions of Demeter have hardly yet lost touch with the ancient worship of the goddess, Christianised in form though it may be. But Arcadia too, where alone of all the Peloponnese the indigenous population were secure from the Achaean and Dorian immigrations and maintained in seclusion the holiest of Pelasgian cults, preserves to the present day in story and in custom some vestiges of the old religion; and here they are less tinged with Christian colour.

Near the city of Pheneos, which according to Pausanias[149] was the scene of mysteries similar to those enacted at Eleusis, there are some underground channels by which the waters of Lake Pheneos are carried off, soon to reappear as the river Ladon. These channels were believed by Pausanias himself to be artificial—the work of Heracles, it was said, who also constructed a canal close by, traces of which are still visible: but according to another authority[150] they were the passage by which Pluto carried off Persephone to the infernal regions. Some memory of the latter belief seems still to linger among the people of Phoniá (the modern form of Pheneós), who call these subterranean vents ἡ τρούπαις τοῦ διαβόλου, ‘the holes of the devil,’ and who further believe that it is through them that the spirits of the dead pass to the lower world. My guide informed me also that the rise or fall of the waters of the lake—the level varies to an extraordinary degree—furnishes an augury as to what rate of mortality may be expected in the village. If the water is high, the lower world is for the time being congested and requires no more inhabitants; if it sinks, the lower world is empty, and thirsts for fresh victims. The connexion of such beliefs with the cult of Persephone, though vague, is probably real; but how general they may be among the present villagers I cannot say; Dodwell[151] apparently heard nothing of them except the name of ‘the devil’s holes,’ and the explanation of this name which was given to him took the form of a story about a conflict between the devil and a king of Phoniá, in which the former hurled explosive balls of grease at his adversary, one of which set him on fire and drove his body right through the base of the mountain which rises from the lake’s edge, leaving thereafter an escape for the waters. There is certainly nothing in common between this story, which Leake also heard in a slightly different version[152], and the beliefs communicated to me; and I suspect that it is a comparatively modern aetiological fable designed perhaps to satisfy the curiosity of children concerning the name. The belief that the subterranean channel is a descent to the lower world is more clearly a vestige of the old local cult of Kore.

Again in the neighbourhood of Phigalia there is current among the peasantry a curious story which I tried in vain to hear recited in full, but only obtained in outline at second-hand. I cannot consequently vouch for its accuracy, but such as it is I give it. There once were a brother and sister, of whom the former was very wicked and a magician, while the latter was very virtuous and beautiful. Her beauty was indeed so wonderful, that her brother became enamoured of her. In her distress she fled to a cave near Phigalia, hoping to elude his pursuit; but the magician straightway discovered her. Then being at her wits’ end how to save herself from the unholy passion which her beauty inspired, she prayed to be turned into some beast. Her prayer was straightway granted, but the wicked magician had power to change himself likewise. So when they had both been changed into several shapes he at length overcame her. But no sooner was the infamous deed done, than the Panagia caused an earthquake, and the roof of the cave fell and destroyed both brother and sister together.

A story of incest necessarily ends at the present day among the highly moral countryfolk of Greece with punishment inflicted by some Christian deity: but for the rest the story is practically the same as that which Pausanias heard concerning Poseidon and his sister Demeter in the same district[153]. In the old version, which Pausanias gives very briefly, there is only one transformation mentioned, that of Demeter into a mare and of Poseidon into a horse; but it is at least noteworthy that the statue of horse-headed Demeter which commemorated this incident is said to have had ‘figures of snakes and other wild animals’ fixed on its head; and possibly, if Pausanias had given a fuller version of the myth, we should find that these figures related to other transformations which Demeter had tried in vain before in equine form she was finally forced to yield. The mention of the cave in the modern story is also significant; for though the cave in the ancient version is not the scene of the rape, it was there that Demeter hid herself in her anger afterwards and there too that the statue of horse-headed Demeter was set up. It would be interesting to know whether the horse is one of the forms assumed in the modern story; perhaps some other traveller will be fortunate enough to hear the tale in full.

In northern Arcadia I also learnt that the flesh of the pig, in respect of which the ordinary Graeculus fully deserves the epithet esuriens, is taboo; and the result of eating it is believed to be leprosy. It might be supposed that this superstition has resulted from contact with Mohammedans; but such an explanation would not account for the confinement of it to one locality—and that a mountainous and unprofitable district where intercourse with the Turks must have been small; and further the Greek would surely have found a malicious pleasure, the most piquant of sauces, in eating that which offended the two peoples whom he most abhors, Turks and Jews. On the other hand, if we suppose this fear of swine’s flesh to be a piece of native tradition, its origin may well be sought in the ritual observances of the old cult of Demeter and her daughter, to whom the pig was sacred and in whose honour it was sacrificed once only in each year, at the festival of the Thesmophoria[154]. There are many instances among different peoples of the belief that skin diseases, especially leprosy, are the punishment visited upon those who eat of the sacred or unclean animal; for the distinction between sacred and unclean is not made until a primitive sense of awe is inclined by conscious reasoning in the direction either of reverence or of abhorrence[155]. Thus in Egypt, the land from which the Pelasgians, if Herodotus[156] might be believed, derived the worship of Demeter, it was held that the drinker of pig’s milk incurred leprosy[157]; and we may reasonably suppose that the same punishment threatened those Egyptians who tasted of pig’s flesh save at their one annual festival when this was enjoined[158]. Now the Thesmophoria resembled this Egyptian festival in that it was an annual occasion for sacrificing pigs and for partaking therefore of their flesh; if then the worshippers of Demeter, like the Egyptians, were forbidden to use the pig for food at other times, and if the penalty for disobedience in Greece too was believed to be leprosy, the present case of taboo in Arcadia—the only one known to me in modern Greece—may be a survival from the ancient cult.

But apart from these traces of the worship of Demeter and Kore in Christian worship, in folk-story, and in custom, traces which constitute in themselves cogent proof of the firm hold on the popular mind which the goddesses twain must long have kept, there exists in the belief of the Greek peasantry a personal Power, a living non-Christian deity, who still inspires awe in many simple hearts and who may reasonably be identified with one or rather perhaps with both of them.

For it must not be forgotten that the mother and the daughter were in origin and symbolism one. The idea of life’s ebb and flow, of nature’s sleeping and waking, is expressed in them severally as well as conjointly. It would be impossible to analyse the complete myth and, even if a purely physical interpretation were sought, to express in physiological terms the two persons and the parts which they play: for certain ideas find duplicate expression. Either Demeter’s retirement to some dark cave or the descent of Persephone to the underworld might have represented alone and unaided the temporary abeyance of earth’s productive powers. Yet it was with good reason that the myth expanded as it were spontaneously until the spirit of life, that pervades not only the cornfield but all that is animal and human too, was pourtrayed in double form; not because the mere physical fact of the decay and the revival of vegetation needed larger symbolism for its due expression, but because in the tie of mother and daughter and all that it connotes was fitly represented that by which the life-spirit works among the higher orders of created things, that which goes before life’s manifestations and outlasts its vanishings, the spirit of love.

Of all such ideas as these the modern peasant, needless to say, is wholly innocent. He has learnt from his ancestors of a woman beautiful, reverend, deathless, who dwells within a mountain of his land, and who by her dealings with mankind has proved her real and divine puissance. Her name is no more uttered, perchance because it is too holy for men of impure lips; they speak only of ‘the Mistress.’ She is a real person, not the personification of any natural force. The tiller of the land foresees his yearly gain from cornfield and vineyard; the shepherd on the mountain-side expects the yearly increase of his flock; but by neither is any principle inferred therefrom, much less is such a principle personified; the blessing which rests on field and fold is the work of a living goddess’ hands. Flesh and blood she is, even as they themselves, but immortal and very mighty, nobler than many of whom the priests preach, stronger to help the good and to punish the wicked. Simple people they are, who still believe such things, and ignorant; yet less truly ignorant than some half-educated pedants of the towns who vaunt their learning in chattering of ‘Ceres’ rather than of ‘Demeter’ and, misled by Roman versifiers who at least had an excuse in the exigencies of metre, misinterpret the name as a mere synonym for corn. Happily however the influence of the schools—for it is amongst the schoolmasters that the worst offenders in this respect are to be found—is not yet all-reaching, and in the remoter villages tradition is still untainted. There without fear of ridicule men may still confess their faith in the great compassionate goddess.

It was in Aetolia that I first recognised the popular belief in this deity. There I heard tell of one who was called ἡ κυρὰ τοῦ κόσμου, ‘the mistress of the world.’ Her dwelling was in the heart of a mountain, the means of access to it a cave, but where situated, the peasants either did not know or feared to tell. Her character indeed was ever gracious and kindly, but it may be they thought she would resent a foreigner’s approach. In her power was the granting of many boons, but her special care was the fertility of the flocks and the abundance of the crops, including in that district tobacco.

This revelation convinced me of the accuracy of what I had previously suspected only in North Arcadia and in Messenia. In both those regions I had heard occasional mention among the peasants of one whose title was simply ἡ δέσποινα, ‘the Mistress.’ The word had always struck me as curious, for in ordinary usage it is obsolete and the mistress of a house or whatever it may be is always ἡ κυρά (i.e. κυρία). Knowing however that the Church had preserved the title ἡ δέσποινα among those under which the Virgin may be invoked, I was disposed at first to think that the dedication of some church in the neighbourhood had influenced the people to use the rare name ἡ δέσποινα instead of the ordinary ‘Panagia.’ But when I enquired where the church of ‘the Mistress’ was, the answer was ‘she has none’: and yet, on making subsequent enquiries of other persons, I found that there was a church of the Panagia close by. Clearly then it was not in the ecclesiastical sense that the title ἡ δέσποινα was being used. More than this I failed to elicit—the peasants of the Peloponnese are on the whole more suspicious and secretive than those of northern Greece—but I have little doubt that this goddess is the same as she who in Aetolia bears a title more colloquial in form but identical in meaning.

The existence of this deity among the survivals of the old religion has never, I think, been observed by any writer on the subject of Greek folk-lore. But in Bernhard Schmidt’s collection of popular stories and songs there is evidence, whose value he himself did not recognise, to corroborate it. One of the songs[159] from Zacynthos contains the lines:

‘They wrought in me, even God and the Virgin and the Mistress of the world, and I fought with Turks and with Albanians: a thousand I slew, a thousand yea and two thousand.’

The editor of this song omits from his translation and does not even mention in his notes the last phrase of the first line, assuming, I suppose, that the Virgin is mentioned twice over under two different titles; but it is at least possible that three persons are intended. God and the Virgin belong to the category of Christian deities; the third may be the pagan goddess already discovered in Messenia, Arcadia, and Aetolia; if so, the collocation of her name along with those of the highest Christian powers is strong testimony to the reverence with which the people of Zacynthos too were wont, and perhaps still continue, to regard her.

In Schmidt’s stories again yet another variation of the title occurs. In one, which has already been narrated in full[160], ‘the Mistress of the earth and of the sea’ (ἡ κυρὰ τσῆ γῆς και τσῆ θάλασσας) rewards a poor man, on the recommendation of his good angel, with miraculous gifts, and when he is slain by an envious king, herself appears and sends down the tyrant quick into the pit where punishment for his wickedness awaits him. Another, in which the same ample appellation is used, runs in brief as follows[161]:

‘Once upon a time a king on his return from a journey gave to his eldest son as a present a picture of “the Mistress of the earth and of the sea.” The prince was so dazzled by her beauty that he resolved to seek her out and make her his wife. He accordingly consulted a witch who told him how to find the palace where the Mistress of earth and sea lived, and warned him also that before he could secure the fulfilment of his desire two tasks would be set him, the first to shatter a small phial carried by a dove in its beak without injuring the bird, the second to obtain the skin of a three-headed dragon. She also provided him with a magic bow wherewith to perform the first labour, and with two hairs from the dragon’s head, by means of which he would be magically guided to the monster’s lair. Arrived there he should glut it with a meal of earth which he was to carry with him, and then slay it as it slept.

Thus forewarned and forearmed the prince set out and passing through a cave, of which the witch had told him, came to the palace. The Mistress having enquired of him his errand at once set him to perform the two tasks. These he accomplished, and she returned with him as his wife to his own land. But they did not live peaceably together, and one day the Mistress of earth and sea in her anger bade the waters overflow the whole land, so that all mankind was drowned while she herself hovered above in the air and looked on. Then when the waters subsided, she descended to the earth and made new men by sowing stones; and thereafter she ruled again as before over the whole world.’

Both these stories hail, as does the song of which a few lines are cited above, from Zacynthos, and there is therefore good reason for believing that in that island the same ‘Mistress’ was recently acknowledged as at this very day is venerated in those parts of the mainland which I have mentioned.

Taking the common factors in these several traditions and beliefs, we are led at once to identify the goddess to whom they relate with Demeter.

First, the simplest form of her title, ἡ δέσποινα, of which the others are merely elaborations, is that which Demeter commonly shared with Persephone in old time; and that the title has been handed down from antiquity is shown clearly by the fact that the word is in ordinary usage obsolete. Since then it is unlikely that in the course of tradition such a title should be transferred (save, owing to Christian influence, in the case of the Virgin, who has locally no doubt superseded one of the goddesses twain and appropriated her byname), the word itself declares in favour of the identification of this still living deity with Demeter.

Secondly, her dwelling-place is consistently in the modern accounts the heart of a mountain, and the passage to it a cave. Such precisely, according to Pausanias, was the habitation of Demeter in Mt Elaïon[162]; and the same idea is reflected in her whole cult; for, though in the classical period she had temples built like those of other deities, yet her holy of holies, as befitted a Chthonian deity, was always a subterranean hall (μέγαρον) or palace (ἀνάκτορον), an artificial and glorified cavern.

Thirdly, the modern deity is in character benevolent, therein differing markedly from many of the pagan powers whom we have yet to consider and also from several of the Christian saints. Once only, in the second of the stories from Zacynthos, does she appear in angry mood, when she destroys all mankind by a flood. To the actual means of destruction employed too much importance must not be attached. The motif of the flood is common in modern Greek folk-tales. In the islands of the Aegean I encountered it several times, the fullest version being one which I heard in Scyros. The story as told there was exactly that of Deucalion, save that in deference to biblical tradition he was named Noah and, by a slight anachronism, it was the Panagia instead of Themis who counselled him to create fresh men by throwing stones over his shoulder. I was also taken to see the place where the flood was at its highest, a narrow glen through which runs a small stream, whose high sloping banks are certainly a mass of half-fossilised animal and vegetable matter; and I was escorted to the hill-top on which Noah’s caïque finally rested. Such a theme is easily worked into a story of the deity, usually benevolent though she be, who is ‘Mistress of the earth and of the sea’; and apart from the means of punishment so appropriately adopted by a goddess who rules the sea, this single outburst of somewhat unreasonable anger on the part of the modern deity against all mankind is singularly like the old-time Demeter’s resentful retirement into the depths of her cave, until ‘all the produce of earth was failing and the human race was perishing fast from famine[163].’ Yet otherwise the ancient goddess too was benevolent and gracious to man.

Fourthly, in Aetolia at any rate and probably also in the Peloponnese, where however I failed to extract definite information, the modern goddess is the quickener of all the fruits of the earth, and in functions therefore corresponds once more with the ancient conception of Demeter. On these grounds the identification seems to me certain.

This being granted, the permanence of tradition concerning the dwelling-place of Demeter raises a question which I approach with diffidence, feeling that an answer to it must rest with others more competent than myself in matters archaeological. First, is the tradition as old as that of the personality of the goddess? It is hard to suppose otherwise; for the primitive mind would scarcely conceive of a person without assigning also an habitation; and the habitation actually assigned is of primitive enough character—a cave in a mountain-side. Where then was Demeter worshipped by the Pelasgians in the Mycenaean age? That she was a deity much reverenced by the dwellers in the Argive plain is certain; small idols believed to represent Demeter Kourotrophos have been found at Mycenae[164]; others, of which the identification is more certain, at Tiryns[165]; and at Argos, in later times, Demeter continued to be worshipped under the title Pelasgian[166]. Was a mere cavern then her only home? Or did Mycenae lavish some of its gold on building her a more worthy temple? May not the famous bee-hive structures which have passed successively for treasuries and for tombs of princes prove to be μέγαρα, temples of Chthonian deities such as Demeter?

It is true that in some humbler structures of the same type, such as those at Menídi and Thoricus, clear evidences of inhumation have been found; but I question whether it is permissible to draw from this fact the inference that those magnificent structures also, the so-called Treasuries of Atreus and of Minyas, were in reality tombs. It would seem reasonable to suppose that dwelling-places for the dead beneath the earth and for earth-deities may have been constructed on the same plan, but that the abodes dedicated to immortals were more imposing than those destined for dead men. This hypothesis appears to me more consistent with the evidence of the actual sites at Mycenae and Orchomenos than the commonly accepted view that the inner chamber of the ‘Treasury of Atreus’ was a place of burial. ‘In the centre of the Mycenaean chamber,’ says Schuchhardt[167], ‘there is an almost circular depression three feet in diameter and two feet in depth, cut into the rocky ground. In spite of its unusual shape, we must recognise in it the actual site of the grave.’ Was it a royal posture to lie curled up like a cat? And if so, what of a similar depression in the floor of the ‘Treasury of Minyas’ at Orchomenos? ‘Almost in the centre of the treasure-room’—I again quote Schuchhardt[168]—‘was a long hole in the level rock, nine inches deep, fifteen inches broad and nineteen inches long, which’—must be recognised as the sepulchre of a royal baby? No, our faith is not to be so severely taxed;—‘which must have served to secure some monument.’ May we not, with more consistency, extend the same explanation to Mycenae? And what then were the monuments? May they not have been images of the deity set up in the most natural place, the centre of the outer or the inner sanctuary?

Again, the actual shape of the buildings is important. Ethnologists tell us that it is ultimately derived from a type of dwelling commonly occupied by primitive man, a circular wattle-hut with conical top; or even more directly, as some would have it, from a similarly shaped abode which the ancient Phrygians used to excavate in the ground, constructing the top of withies laced over beams converging to the apex and covered over with earth, while they tunnelled out an approach from one side where the ground sloped conveniently away[169]. From this it is argued that the domed chambers of Mycenae must be tombs, on the ground that ‘men in all ages have fashioned the dwellings of the dead in accordance with those of the living; but the dead are conservative, and long after a new generation has sought a new home and a new pattern for its houses, the habitations of the dead are still constructed in ancestral fashion[170].’ I readily admit conservatism in all religious matters; but how does the argument touch Mycenae? Archaeologists, and among them Schuchhardt himself[171], are agreed that the shaft-graves in the citadel are earlier in date than the bee-hive structures of the lower town. There was therefore a breach in the continuity of the ancestral fashion. Reversion to a disused fashion is a very different thing from conservatism in upholding an unbroken usage.

But even supposing that there were good evidence of the uninterrupted continuity of this type of sepulchre, may not the temples of Chthonian deities have been built on the same plan? The use of the old word μέγαρον suggests that the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone, though subterranean, was modelled on the dwellings of men, and, to borrow an argument, religious conservatism may well have preserved for the gods’ abodes the hut-like shape of primitive man’s dwellings long after a new type of house had become general among mortals. Concrete instances of this actually existed in much later times[172]. In Rome the temple of Vesta was of this primitive shape, and so also most probably was the Prytaneum of Athens, which, though not a temple, contained the sacred hearth of the whole community and a statue of Hestia[173]. Demeter then, as one of the deities of primitive Greece, might well have been provided with a temple constructed on the same primitive pattern as that of Vesta, but subterranean, as would befit a Chthonian deity, and thus analogous to the cave wherein she had been wont to dwell. The large domed chamber would be her megaron, wherein her worshippers assembled just as guests assembled in the megaron of a prince. The small square apartment, where such exists, opening on one side of the main room, might be the παστάς or ‘bedchamber,’ an inner sanctuary which temples of later ages also possessed. The approach or ‘dromos’ would represent the natural cave which had given access to her fabled palace in the bowels of the earth.

Finally, on such a view of these buildings, it would not be difficult to explain Pausanias’ belief that they were treasuries[174]. Treasuries only, we may be sure, they were not; for they would not have been built outside the walls of the citadel. But temples in later times were used as depositories for treasure; the would-be thief shrank apparently from the further crime of sacrilege; and it is not unlikely that in a more primitive age, when superstitious awe was certainly no less strong, while robbery far from being a crime was an honourable calling, men should have secured their treasure by storing it in some inviolable sanctuary. Indeed it may be to such a custom that Homer alludes in speaking of ‘all that the stone threshold of the archer, even Phoebus Apollo, doth enclose within at rocky Pytho[175].’ If then this practice prevailed in Mycenaean, as it did in later, times, Pausanias would be recording a tradition which was partially right; and it is not hard to see how, when Mycenae’s greatness had suddenly, as it seems, declined and her population perhaps had migrated for the most part to Argos, later generations, familiar in their new settlements with that different type of temple only which afterwards became general, might have forgotten the sacred character of the bee-hive structures and have remembered only the proverbial wealth once stored by the kings of Mycenae within them.

There remains one point to which I may for the moment direct attention here, reserving the development of the religious idea contained in it for a later chapter. The main theme of the second of the stories from Zacynthos was the seeking of the Mistress in marriage by a young prince. Now if this story stood alone, it would not be right to lay much stress upon it; for the adventures of a young prince in search of some far-famed bride form the plot of numerous Greek folk-tales; and it would be possible to suppose that the real divine personality of the Mistress had been partially obscured in the popular memory before such a story became connected with her name. But the same motif as it happens is repeated in two stories, one Greek and the other Albanian, in von Hahn’s collection[176]. The name of ‘the Mistress’ does not indeed occur; the deity is called in both ‘the beautiful one of the earth[177].’ But her identity is made quite clear in the Albanian story, which evidently must have been borrowed from the Greek and is therefore admissible as good evidence, by the mention of ‘a three-headed dog that sleeps not day nor night’ by which she is guarded. This is undoubtedly the same monster as the hero of the Zacynthian story was required to kill—the three-headed snake; and while the Albanian story, in making the beast a guardian of the subterranean abode whom the adventurer must slay before he can reach ‘the beautiful one,’ is better in construction and, incidentally, more faithful to old tradition[178] than the Greek version which makes the slaying an useless task arbitrarily imposed, yet in both portraits of the monster we can recognise Cerberus—half dog, half snake. But of him more anon; ‘the beautiful one of the earth’ whom he guards can be none other than Persephone.

Thus there are three modern stories which record the winning of Demeter or Persephone in marriage by a mortal lover. Is this a relic of ancient tradition? There was the attempt of Pirithous to seize Persephone for his wife; but that failed, and moreover was judged an impious deed for which he must suffer punishment. Yet there is also the story of Iasion who was deemed worthy of Demeter’s love. Wedlock then even with so great a deity as Demeter or her daughter was not beyond mortals’ dream or reach. Thus much I may notice now; when I come to examine more closely the ancient worship of these goddesses, I shall argue that the idea of a marriage-union between them and human kind was the most intimate secret of the mysteries, and that in such folk-tales as those which I have here mentioned is contained the germ of a religious conception from which was once evolved the holiest of ancient sacraments.

§ 6. Charon.

There is no ancient deity whose name is so frequently on the lips of the modern peasant as that of Charon. The forms which it has now assumed are two, Χάρος and Χάροντας, analogous to the formations γέρος and γέροντας from the ancient γέρων: for in late Greek at any rate the declension of Χάρων followed that of γέρων[179]. The two forms do not seem to belong to different modern dialects, for they often appear in close juxtaposition in the same folk-song. The shorter form however is the commoner in every-day speech, and I shall therefore employ it.

About Charos the peasants will always, according to my experience, converse freely. Neither superstitious awe nor fear of ridicule imposes any restraint. They feel perhaps that the existence of Charos is one of the stern facts which men must face; and even the more educated classes retain sometimes, I think, an instinctive fear of making light of his name, lest he should assert his reality. For Charos is Death. He is not now, what classical literature would have him to be, merely the ferryman of the Styx. He is the god of death and of the lower world.

Hades is no longer a person but a place, the realm over which Charos rules. But the change which has befallen the old monarch’s name is the only change in the Greek conception of that realm. It is still called ‘the lower world’ (ὁ κάτω κόσμος or ἡ κάτω γῆ), and even the name Tartarus (now τὰ Τάρταρα, with the addition frequently of τῆς γῆς) still may be heard. Nor is the character of the place altered. Its epithet ‘icy-cold,’ κρυοπαγωμένος, is well-nigh as constant in modern folk-songs as was the equivalent κρυερός in Homer’s allusions to Hades’ house, while the picturesque word ἀραχνιασμένος, ‘thick with spiders’-webs,’ repeats in thought the Homeric εὐρωείς, ‘mouldering.’ Such is Charos’ kingdom, and hither he conveys men’s souls which he has snatched away from earth.

Here with him dwells his mother, a being, as one folk-song tells[180], more pitiful than he, who entreats him sometimes, when he is setting out to the chase, to spare mothers with young children and not to part lovers new-wed. He has also a wife, Charóntissa or Chárissa, who as the name itself implies is merely a feminine counterpart of himself without any distinct character of her own. A son of Charos is also mentioned in song, for whose wedding-feast ‘he slays children instead of lambs and brides as fatlings[181],’ and to whose keeping are entrusted the counter-keys of Hades[182]. Adopted children are also counted among his family, but these are of those whom he has carried from this world to his own home[183]. The household is completed by the three-headed watch-dog, of whom however remembrance is very rare. Yet in two stories in the last section we recognised Cerberus, and even the less convincing of the embodiments there presented, that which represented him as a three-headed snake rather than dog, is not devoid of traces of ancient tradition. The hero who would slay the monster has to cross a piece of water—the sea instead of the river Styx—in order to reach an island where is the monster’s lair; and there arrived, he sees ‘looking out from a hole three heads with eyes that flash fire and jaws that breathe flames[184].’ This is Cerberus without doubt; and if the story calls him ‘serpent’ rather than ‘dog,’ ancient mythology and art alike justify in part the description; for his mother was said to be Echidna, and he himself is found pourtrayed with the tail of a serpent and a ring of snakes about his neck. Schmidt himself appears to have overlooked the testimony of this story and of that also from the collection of von Hahn in which, as I have pointed out, we have a modern picture of Cerberus guarding the realm of Persephone; for he speaks of some remarkable lines from a song which he himself heard in Zacynthos as an unique mention of Cerberus, and questions the genuine nature of the tradition. All doubt is however removed by the corroborative evidence contained in the two stories already mentioned and by the fact that a three-headed dog belonging to Charos was recently heard of by a traveller in Macedonia[185]. The lines themselves are put in the mouth of Charos:—

‘A savage dog have I, who guards us all, and when he sees me he rages and fain would devour me. A three-headed dog is he, and he burns like fire; his claws are sharp and his tail is long; from his eyes he gives forth flame and from his mouth burning heat; long is his tongue and grim his teeth.’

Here at least recognition of Cerberus must be immediate; every detail of the description, save for the characteristically modern touch which makes Charos afraid of his own dog, is in accord with classical tradition.

Such is the household of Charos, so far as a description may be compiled from a few scattered allusions; his own portrait varies more, in proportion as there are more numerous attempts in every part of Greece to draw it. Sometimes he is depicted as an old man, tall and spare, white of hair and harsh of feature; but more often he is a lusty warrior, with locks of raven-black or gleaming gold—just as Hades in old time was sometimes κυανοχαίτης, sometimes ξανθός,—who rides forth on his black steed by highway or lonely path to slay and to ravage: ‘his glance is as lightning and his face as fire, his shoulders are like twin mountains and his head like a tower[187].’ His raiment is usually black as befits the lord of death, but anon it is depicted bright as his sunlit hair[188], for though he brings death he is a god and glorious.

His functions are clearly defined. He visits this upper world to carry off those whose allotted time has run, and guards them in the lower world as in a prison whose keys they vainly essay to steal and to escape therefrom. But the spirit in which he performs those duties varies according as he is conceived to be a free agent responsible to none or merely a minister of the supreme God. Which of these is the true conception is a question to which the common-folk as a whole have given no final answer; and the character of Charos consequently depends upon the view locally preferred.

Those who regard him as simply the servant and messenger of God, find no difficulty in accommodating him to his Christian surroundings; for, as I have said, the peasant does not distinguish between the Christian and the pagan elements in his faith which together make his polytheism so luxuriant. We have already seen Charos’ name with the prefix of ‘saint[189]’; and though this Christian title is not often accorded him, yet his name appears commonly on tomb-stones in Christian churchyards. At Leonídi, on the east coast of the Peloponnese, I noted the couplet:

‘Me too Charos pitied not but took, even me the fondly-cherished flower of my home.’

So too in popular story and song he is represented as working in concord with the Angels and Archangels, to whom sometimes falls the task of carrying children to his realm[190]. Indeed one of the archangels, Michael, who as we saw above has ousted Hermes, the escorter of souls, and assumed his functions, is charged with exactly the same duties as Charos in the conveyance of men’s souls to the nether world, so that in popular parlance the phrases ‘he is wrestling with Charos’ (παλεύει μὲ τὸ Χάρο)[191] and ‘he is struggling with an angel’ (ἀγγελομαχεῖ)[192] are both alike used of a man in his death-agony.

This Christianised conception of Charos has not been without influence in softening the lines of the character popularly ascribed to him. The duties imposed upon him by the will of God are sometimes repugnant to him, and he would willingly spare those whom he is sent to slay. One folk-story related to me exhibits him even as a friend of man:—

‘Once upon a time there were a man and wife who had had seven children all of whom died in infancy. When an eighth was born, the father betook himself to a witch and enquired of her how he might best secure the boy’s life. She told him that the others had died because he had chosen unsuitable godparents, and bade him on this occasion ask the first man whom he should meet on his way home to stand sponsor for the child. He accordingly departed, and straightway met a stranger riding on a black horse, and made his request to him. The stranger consented, and the baptism at once took place; but no sooner was it over than he was gone without so much as telling his name.

Ten years passed, and the child was growing up strong and healthy. Then at last the father again encountered the unknown stranger, and reproached him with having been absent so long without ever making enquiry after his godson. Then the stranger answered, “Better for thee if I had not now come and if thou neededst not now learn my name. I am Charos, and because I am thy friend[193], am come to warn thee that thy days are well-nigh spent.” Thereupon Charos led him away to a cave in the mountain-side, and they entered and came to a chamber where were many candles burning. Then said Charos, “See, these candles are the lives of men, and yonder are thine and thy son’s.” Then the man looked, and of his own candle there were but two inches left, but his son’s was tall and burnt but slowly. Then he besought Charos to light yet another candle for him ere his own were burnt away, but Charos made answer that that could not be. Then again he besought him to give him ten years from the life of his son, for he was a poor man, and if he died ere his son were grown to manhood, his widow and orphan would be in want. But Charos answered, “In no way can the decreed length of life be changed. Yet will I show thee how in the two years that yet remain to thee thou mayest enrich thyself and leave abundant store for thy wife and child. Thou shalt become a physician. It matters not that thou knowest nought of medicine, for I will give thee a better knowledge than of drugs. Thine eyes shall ever be open to see me; and when thou goest to a sick man’s couch, if thou dost see me standing at the bed-head, know then that he must die, and say to them that summoned thee that no skill can save him; but if thou dost see me at the foot of the bed, know that he will recover; give him therefore but pills of bread if thou wilt, and promise to restore him.” Then did the man thank Charos, and went away to his home.

Now it chanced that the only daughter of the king lay grievously sick, and all the doctors and magicians had been called to heal her, but they availed nothing. Then came the poor man whom Charos had taught, and went into the room where the princess lay, and lo! Charos stood at the foot of her bed. Then he bade the king send away the other physicians, for that he alone could heal her. So he himself went home and mixed flour and water and came again and gave it to the king’s daughter, and soon she was recovered of her sickness. Then the king gave him a great present, and his fame was spread abroad, and many resorted to him, and soon he was rich.

Thus two years passed, and at the end thereof he himself lay sick. And he looked and saw Charos standing at the head of his bed. Then he bade his wife turn the bed about, but it availed nothing; for Charos again stood at his head, and caught him by the hair, and he opened his mouth to cry out, and Charos drew forth his soul[194].’

Again the unwillingness of Charos to execute the harsh decrees of God is illustrated in numerous folk-songs. Most often it is some brave youth, shepherd or warrior, a lover of the open air, who excites his compassion; for the same notes of regret which Sophocles made melodious in the farewell of Ajax to the sunlight, to his house in Salamis, even to the streams and springs of the Trojan land which brought his death, ring clear and true in modern folk-song too from the lips of dying warriors. Such were the last words of the outlaw-patriot (κλέφτης) Zedros:

Such laments are not lost upon Charos, the servant of God, but he must needs turn a deaf ear to prayers for a respite. Clear and final comes his answer, almost in the same words in every ballad[197],

Sometimes then the doomed man will seek to tempt Charos with meat and drink, that he may grant a few hours’ delay, but against offers of hospitality he is obdurate. Or again his victim refuses to yield to death ‘without weakness or sickness’ and challenges him to a trial of athletic skill, in wrestling or leaping, whereon each shall stake his own soul. And to this Charos sometimes gives consent, for he knows that he will win. So they make their way to the ‘marble-paved threshing-floor,’ the arena of all manly pursuits; and there the man perchance leaps forty cubits, yet Charos surpasses him by five; or they wrestle together from morn till eve, but at the last bout Charos is victor. One hero indeed is known to fame, whose exploits make him the Heracles of modern Greece, Digenes the Cyprian, who wrestled with Charos for three nights and days and was not vanquished. But then ‘there came a voice from God and from the Archangels, “Charos, I sent thee not to engage in wrestlings, but that thou should’st carry off souls for me[198].”’ And at that rebuke Charos transformed himself into an eagle and alighted on the hero’s head and plucked out his soul.

The other and more pagan conception of Charos excludes all traits of kindness and mercy; and men do not stint the expression of their hatred of him. He is ‘black,’ ‘bitter,’ ‘hateful’ (μαῦρος[199], πικρός, στυγερός). He is the merciless potentate of the nether world, independent of the God of heaven, equally powerful in his own domain, but more terrible, more inexorable: for his work is death and his abode is Hades. Thence he issues forth at will, as a hunter to the chase. ‘Against the wounds that Charos deals herbs avail not, physicians give no cure, nor saints protection[200].’ His quarry is the soul of man; ‘where he finds three, he takes two of them, and where he finds two, takes one, and where he finds but one alone, him too he takes[201].’ Sometimes he is enlarging his palace, and he takes the young and strong to be its pillars; sometimes he is repairing the tent in which he dwells, and uses the stout arms of heroes for tent-pegs and the tresses of bright-haired maidens for the ropes; sometimes he is laying out a garden, and he gathers children from the earth to be the flowers of it and young men to be its tall slim cypresses; more rarely he is a vintager, and tramples men in his vat that their blood may be his red wine, or again he carries a sickle and reaps a human harvest.

But most commonly he is the warrior preëminent in all manner of prowess—archer, wrestler, horseman. Once a bride boasted that she had no fear of Charos, for that her brothers were men of valour and her husband a hero; then came Charos and shot an arrow at her, and her beauty faded; a second and a third arrow, and he stretched her on her death-bed[202]. Often in the pride of strength have young warriors laughed Charos to scorn; then has he come to seize the strongest of them, and though the warrior strain and struggle as in a wrestling-match, yet Charos wearies not but wins the contest by fair means or foul: for he is no honourable foe, but dishonest above thieves, more deceitful than women[203]: he seizes his adversary by the hair and drags him down to Hades. Even more striking is the picture of Charos as horseman riding forth on his black steed to the foray, and it is this conception which has inspired one of the finest achievements of the popular muse:—

Such is the more pagan presentment of the modern Charos, a tyrant as absolute in his own realm as God in heaven, a veritable Ζεὺς ἄλλος[204] as was Hades of old, but hard of heart, heedless of prayer, delighting in cruelty.

At first sight then the Charos of modern Greece would seem to have little in common with the Charon of ancient Greece beyond the name and some connexion with death: and Fauriel, in the introduction to his collection of popular songs, pronounces the opinion that in this case the usual tendencies of tradition have been reversed, in that it is the name that has survived, while the attributes have been changed[205]. To this judgement I cannot subscribe. I suspect that in ancient times the literary presentation of Charon was far more circumscribed than the popular, and that out of a profusion of imaginative portraitures as varied as those seen in the folk-songs of to-day one aspect of Charon became accepted among educated men as the correct and fashionable presentment. Hades was, in literature, the despot of the lower world, and for Charon no place could be found save that of ferryman. But this, I think, was only one out of the many guises in which the ancient Charon was figured by popular imagination; for at the present day the remnants of such a conception are small, in spite of the fact that there has remained a custom which should have kept it alive—the custom of putting a coin in the mouth of the dead.