Note 49.2 — Chapter II · THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD

We have also direct testimony of a magical dealing with the elements in the titles of officials at Athens called the ‘Heudanemoi’49.2 and of those at Corinth called Ἁνεμοκοῖται,49.3 both words denoting ‘wind-lullers,’ those ‘who charmed the winds to sleep’; and again in the description of the rite performed by the magicians at Kleonai who according to Clemens49.4 “averted the sky’s wrath by incantations and sacrifices”; or in Pausanias’ account of the operations of the priest of the winds at Titane in Sikyon49.5 who endeavoured to assuage their fierceness by “singing over them the spells that Medea used.” Doubtless these officials are only maintaining the practices of an indefinitely remote past. And these are also reflected in the legend of the ancient Salmoneus of Thessalian and possibly Minyan origin, who drove about in a chariot imitating thunder and, while merely practising a well-known type of weather-magic, was misunderstood by the higher powers and later moralists.