Volume II Part 21 (1/2)

Say to the king that the beautiful fane hath fallen asunder, Phoebus no more hath a sheltering roof nor a sacred cell, And the holy laurels are broken and wasted, and hushed is the wonder Of water that spake as it flowed from the deeps of the Delphian well.

* See ”Nature-Myths,” antea. Schwartz, as usual, takes Daphne to be connected, not with the dawn, but with lightning. ”Es ist der Gewitter-baum.” Der Ursprung der Mythologie, Berlin, 1860, pg. 160-162.

** For the influence of Apollo-wors.h.i.+p on Greek civilisation, see Curtius's History qf Greece, English transl., vol. i. For a theory that Apollo answers to Mitra among ”the Arians of Iran,” see Duncker's History of Greece, vol, i. 173.

In his oracle he appears as the counsellor of men, between men and Zeus he is a kind of mediator (like the son of Baiame in Australia, or of Puluga in the Andaman isles), tempering the austerity of justice with a yearning and kind compa.s.sion. He sanctifies the pastoral life by his example, and, as one who had known bondage to a mortal, his sympathy lightens the burden of the slave. He is the guide of colonists, he knows all the paths of earth and all the ways of the sea, and leads wanderers far from Greece into secure havens, and settles them on fertile sh.o.r.es.

But he is also the G.o.d before whom the Athenians first flogged and then burned their human scapegoats.* His example consecrated the abnormal post-Homeric vices of Greece. He is capable of metamorphosis into various beasts, and his temple courts are thronged with images of frogs, and mice, and wolves, and dogs, and ravens, over whose elder wors.h.i.+p he throws his protection. He is the G.o.d of sudden death; he is amorous and revengeful. The fair humanities of old religion boast no figure more beautiful; yet he, too, bears the birthmarks of ancient creeds, and there is a shadow that stains his legend and darkens the radiance of his glory.

* At the Thergelia. See Meursius, Graecia Feriata.

ARTEMIS.

If Apollo soon disengages himself from the sun, and appears as a deity chiefly remarkable for his moral and prophetic attributes, Artemis retains as few traces of any connection with the moon. ”In the development of Artemis may most clearly be distinguished,” says Claus, the progress of the human intellect from the early, rude, and, as it were, natural ideas, to the fair and brilliant fancies of poets and sculptors.”*

* De Dianae Antiguisstma apud Graecos Natura, Vratialaviae, 1881.

There is no G.o.ddess more beautiful, pure and maidenly in the poetry of Greece. There she s.h.i.+nes as the sister of Apollo; her chapels are in the wild wood; she is the abbess of the forest nymphs, ”chaste and fair”, the maiden of the precise life, the friend of the virginal Hippolytus; always present, even if unseen, with the pure of heart.* She is like Milton's lady in the revel route of the _Comus_, and among the riot of Olympian lovers she alone, with Athene, satisfies the ascetic longing for a proud remoteness and reserve. But though it is thus that the poets dream of her, from the author of the _Odyssey_ to Euripides, yet the local traditions and cults of Artemis, in many widely separated districts, combine her wors.h.i.+p and her legend with hideous cruelties, with almost cannibal rites, with relics of the wild wors.h.i.+p of the beasts whom, in her character as the G.o.ddess of the chase, she ”preserves” rather than protects. To her human victims are sacrificed; for her bears, deer, doves, wolves, all the tameless herds of the hills and forests are driven through the fire in Achaea. She is adored with bear-dances by the Attic girls; there is a gloomy Chthonian or sepulchral element in her wors.h.i.+p, and she is even blended in ritual with a monstrous many-breasted divinity of Oriental religion. Perhaps it is scarcely possible to separate now all the tangled skeins in the mixed conception of Artemis, or to lay the finger on the germinal conception of her nature. ”Dark,” says Schreiber, ”is the original conception, obscure the meaning of the name of Artemis.”**

* Hippolytus, Eurip., 73-87.

** Roscher's Lexikon, s. v.

It is certain that many tribal wors.h.i.+ps are blended in her legend and each of two or three widely different notions of her nature may be plausibly regarded as the most primitive. In the attempt to reach the original notion of Artemis, philology offers her distracting aid and her competing etymologies. What is the radical meaning of her name? On this point Claus* has a long dissertation. In his opinion Artemis was originally (as Dione) the wife, not the daughter, of Zeus, and he examines the names Dione, Diana, concluding that Artemis, Dione and Diana are essentially one, and that Diana is the feminine of Ja.n.u.s (Dja.n.u.s), corresponding to the Greek. As to the etymology of Artemis, Curtis wisely professes himself uncertain.** A crowd of hypotheses have been framed by more sanguine and less cautious etymologists. Artemis has been derived from ”safe,” ”unharmed,” ”the stainless maiden ”. Goebel,3 suggests the root _arpar_ or _par_, ”to shake,” and makes Artemis mean the thrower of the dart or the shooter. But this is confessedly conjectural. The Persian language has also been searched for the root of Artemis, which is compared with the first syllables in Artaphernes, Artaxerxes, Artaxata, and so forth. It is concluded that Artemis would simply mean ”the great G.o.ddess ”. Claus again, returning to his theory of Artemis as originally the wife of Zeus, inclines to regard her as originally the earth, the ”mighty mother”.****

* Roscher's Lexikon, s. v., p. 7.

** Etym. Or,, 5th ed., p. 556.

*** Lexilogus, i. 554.

**** For many other etymologies of Artemis, see Roscher's Lexikon, p. 558. Among these is ”she who cuts the air”. Even the bear, has occurred to inventive men.

As Schreiber observes, the philological guesses really throw no light on the nature of Artemis. Welcker, Preller and Lauer take her for the G.o.ddess of the midnight sky, and ”the light of the night”.* Claus, as we have seen, is all for night, not light; for ”Night is identical in conception with the earth”--night being the shadow of earth, a fact probably not known to the very early Greeks. Claus, however, seems well inspired when he refuses to deduce all the many properties, myths and attributes of Artemis from lunar aspects and attributes. The smallest grain of ingenuity will always suffice as the essential element in this mythological alchemy, this ”trans.m.u.tation” of the facts of legend into so many presumed statements about any given natural force or phenomenon.

From all these general theories and vague hypotheses it is time to descend to facts, and to the various local or tribal cults and myths of Artemis. Her place in the artistic poetry, which wrought on and purified those tales, will then be considered. This process is the converse of the method, for example, of M. Decharme. He first accepts the ”queen and huntress, chaste and fair,” of poetry, and then explains her local myths and rituals as accidental corruptions of and foreign additions to that ideal.

The Attic and Arcadian legends of Artemis are confessedly among the oldest.**

* Welcker, Oriechische Gotterlehre, i. 561, Gottingen, 1867; Preller, i. 239.

** Roscher, Lexikon, 580.

Both in Arcadia and Attica, the G.o.ddess is strangely connected with that animal wors.h.i.+p, and those tales of b.e.s.t.i.a.l metamorphosis, which are the characteristic elements of myths and beliefs among the most backward races.

The Arcadian myth of Artemis and the she-bear is variously narrated.

According to Pausanias, Lycaon, king of Arcadia, had a daughter, Callisto, who was loved by Zeus. Hera, in jealous wrath, changed Callisto into a she-bear; and Artemis, to please Hera, shot the beast.

At this time the she-bear was pregnant with a child by Zeus, who sent Hermes to save the babe, Areas, just as Dionysus was saved at the burning of Semele and Asclepius at the death of his mother, whom Apollo slew. Zeus then transformed Callisto into a constellation, the bear.*

No more straightforward myth of descent from a beast (for the Arcadians claimed descent from Areas, the she-bear's son) and of starry or b.e.s.t.i.a.l metamorphosis was ever told by Cahrocs or Kamilaroi. Another story ran that Artemis herself, in anger at the unchast.i.ty of Callisto, caused her to become a bear. So the legend ran in a Hesiodic poem, according to the extract in Eratosthenes.**

* Paus., viii. 3, 5.