Note 3 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

Hes. Op. 465, εὔχεσθαι δὲ Διὶ χθονίῳ Δημήτερί θ’ ἁγνῇ κτλ. It is impossible even by far-fetched methods of interpretation (such as Lehrs makes use of, Popul. Aufs.2 298 f.) to make this Ζεὺς χθόνιος into anything else than a Zeus of the underworld. The god of the lower world, totally distinct from the Olympian Zeus (Ζεὺς ἄλλος, Aesch., Supp. 231), is here a dispenser of blessings to the farmer. In the sacrificial regulation from Mykonos (SIG. 615) it is prescribed to offer: ὑπὲρ καρπῶν (καμπῶν on the stone) Διὶ Χθόνίῳ Γῇ Χθονίῃ ΔΕΡΤΑ μέλανα ἐτήσια; ξένῳ οὐ θέμις (where δερτὰ = hostias pelle spoliatas, see Prott, Leg. Sacr. i, p. 17; though the addition of the colour of the no longer visible skin seems remarkable)—ὑπὲρ καρπῶν here belongs to Διί, etc., as the division-mark on the stone before ὑπὲρ shows: see BCH. 1888, p. 460 f. Evidence of this sort makes it clear how unjustifiable it would be to rule out all fructifying influence from the “idea of the chthonic” and to regard the chthonic deities as simply the power of death and destruction in the world of nature and men, as is done by H. D. Müller (who is met by serious difficulty in this passage from the Op.: Mythol. d. griech. St. ii, 40). It is, indeed, scarcely necessary to seek for an abstractly formulated “idea of the chthonic”; but if this fructifying and life-giving force does belong to the nature of the χθόνιοι as such, what becomes of H. D. Müller’s ingeniously thought-out and violently defended view according to which the chthonic only constitutes one side of the nature of certain deities who have in addition a different, Olympian, side in which they are positively creative and beneficent?