Note 65.2 — Chapter III · THE SECOND PERIOD, 900-500 B.C.
Reading edition
The serpent worshipped in the cavern, or in some hole or corner of the house—vaguely, in ‘Aryan’ times, as the Earth-daimon or House-genius—became interpreted as the embodiment of the ancestor Erechtheus of Athens, or Kuchreus of Salamis, or Zeus Κτήσιος, the guardian of the household possessions, or of Zeus Meilichios, the nether God. When the very human Asklepios came to Athens towards the end of the fifth century, he brought with him certain dogs who were ministers of healing; and the Athenians offered sacrificial cakes both to the God and to his dogs who partook of his sanctity.65.2 This may appear a strange imbecility; but at all events we discern in these facts the prevalent anthropomorphism dominating and transforming what it could not abolish of the old theriolatry; just as we see the coin-artist of Phigaleia transforming the uncouth type of the horse-headed Demeter into a beautiful human form of a goddess wearing a necklace with a horse-hoof as its pendant. The sacred animal never wholly died out of Hellas; but it could only maintain its worship by entering the service of the human gods.