THE ORIGIN OF THE CULT OF APHRODITE.1

WE

E have in previous essays shown that it was possible to dig down to the ground form of a number of the cults of the divinities which go to make up the Greek pantheon. Dionysus has been traced back to the ivy on the oak, and we can go no further in the direction of origins than this; we are actually at the starting-point of the cult, whatever other elements, ritual or orgiastic, may be combined with the. Ivy Cult. In the same way Apollo has been traced to the mistletoe on the apple-tree, which is a secondary form of the mistletoe on the oak, and we have shown that his skill as a healer and master in wizardry is due to the all-healing powers of his mistletoe and to certain other plants in his medical garden. From these conceptions the Apollo Cult must proceed, and although there is still some unresolved complexity in the cult, the major part of it is translucent enough. Artemis, too, with her woman's medicines, and garden of herbs helpful and of herbs hurtful, is now a much more intelligible figure, though still containing perplexities for further study and resolution. She, too, is, in the first instance, personified medicine.

We now pass on to the Cult of Aphrodite, and find ourselves face to face with a problem in which our previous investigations appear not to lend any assistance. She is a daughter of Zeus by tradition, apparently of Zeus and Dione, but there seems no way of attaching her to the sky, either bright or dark, or to the oak-tree, or to the woodpecker, or to the ivy or the mistletoe, or to a medical garden. Moreover, by common consent, she is ruled out of the company of gods with Greek originals. She is an immigrant in the Greek pantheon, an alien, however desirable, and however much at home. Her luggage has Cyprus labels on it, to say nothing of other islands where she has made stay; and this has not unnaturally led to the view that she is Oriental and not Greek at all. In spite of the interest 1 A lecture delivered in the John Rylands Library, 17 October, 1916.

which she takes in other people's business, she has no direct cult-relations with the rest of the gods, she does not share temples nor honours except in rare and insignificant cases1; her worship is conventional as far as the sacrifices are concerned, and no special animal, not even the dove, betrays by its presence the links which connect the great goddess of Love with her past and yet we are sure that she had a past, even if we do not at first know in what direction to look for it. The Greek mythology tells us nothing: the poets play with her name and perpetrate philological impertinences to show why she is born of the foam (após), and only lead us from the truth, instead of towards it, by their industrious myth-spinning. We evidently must begin this enquiry de novo, both as regards the ancient mythologists and their modern representatives. We will not even assume too hastily that she is a foreigner for that requires the underlying assumption that the Greeks had no god or goddess of Love of their own and had no necessity for one, which I, for one, find extremely difficult to believe. Cyprus and Cythera may turn out to be not so far from the mainland after all and even if she did originate in Cyprus or Cythera, we have still to be told the story of her birth. Is she a personified force of nature, a vegetable demon of fertility, some person or thing that makes for growth and multiplies products? Can we look on her as another view of the Corn-Mother, or as a spirit of physical inebriation, like Dionysos? or is it possible that she, too, may be like Apollo and Artemis, the virtue of a plant?

As we have said, her relation to Zeus is merely ornamental : so that if she has a vegetable origin, it can hardly be found in the oak or its parasites. It would have to be sought in that part of the botanical world that is supposed to have sexual virtues. Now a little enquiry into the history of medicine, which we have shown to be for the most part the history of plants, will tell us that the ancients were very interested in determining what plants would make people fall in love with one another; they used their observation leisurely and their imagination industriously, and in the end they evolved all that branch of magic which has for its object the manufacture of philtres and potions, and, as Falstaff would say, "medicines to make me love him".

1

1 The case of Dodona is not included: for here Aphrodite is hardly to be distinguished from Dione; the Dodona Cult is about the oldest thing in Greek religion.

Now it is clearly not an impossible thing that Aphrodite may have something to do with this wizardry: and, therefore, we will not too hastily assume that she is altogether out of kinship with Apollo and Artemis-Hekaté. Something, for instance, of a medical nature must be involved in the fact that "at Oropus she shared an altar with Athena the healer, and the daughters of Asklepios "."

We cannot, however, help feeling that this medical element which put her in the medical school of Athens is something unusual, and that she might more properly be called Panalgeia than Panakeia.

Suppose, now, we ask of the herbalist the question as to which of his simples is likely to operate most powerfully on the affections. If he belongs to the ancient world, he will reply without a moment's hesitation that Mandragora, or Mandrake, is the thing for our money: if he belong to the modern world, he will say that mandragora is only an opiate and not a stimulant. We leave the modern wizards on one side, and interrogate the ancient. What have they to say of this "drowsy syrup"? The answer is full and marvellous. The mandrake is a root which shrieks terribly when you pull it out of the ground; it is, indeed, so dangerous that you must not try to pull it : better tie a dog to the stalk and then entice the dog towards you with a bonne bouche: stop your ears by way of precaution, and use your eyes to see the last dying agonies of the dog who has pulled the root for you. Then go and pick it up. To your surprise, you will find the root to have a human form, sometimes male, and sometimes female: it is, in fact, like Falstaff's “forked radish,” a little parody of man for the description of the youthful Justice Shallow as a "forked radish " led on to the comparison of him with a mandrake. The experts will tell you that it is rarely to be found except under the gallows, and that it is the humours and juices of the suspended person, especially if the victim of the law be innocent, that have given it the human form.

Naturally one asks whether this is really ancient lore is it not a myth made in English out of the first syllable of mandrake? Then we recall how Medea, when she wished to make Jason secure from the brazen bulls that breathed fire on him, supplied him with an unguent made from a flower that had been fed with the ichor of the

1 1 Farnell, Cults, ii. 657.

innocent, martyred Prometheus; so we feel certain that we are, in the main, dealing with primitive matters.

So we must interrogate the herbalists and see where mandrake is to be found, and what can be done with it when you find it. The first thing one comes across is the well-known story in Genesis where little Reuben brings home to his mother Leah some pretty apples which he has found in the field: and Leah, who has no special need for such stimulants, trades them off to her sister Rachel for a consideration. The same love-apples turn up among the flora of the Song of Solomon, where we learn that in the spring-time they give an agreeable scent, a point upon which all nasal artists are not by any means agreed.1 Let us see what old Gerarde has to say on the question of Mandrake: he tells us (p. 357): "There hath been many ridiculous tales brought up of this plant, whether of old wives, or some runnagate surgeons, or physicke-mongers I know not (a title bad enough for them) but sure some one or moe that sought to make themselves famous or skilful above others were the first brochers of that errour I speake of [the supposed human form of the Mandrake]. They adde further that it is never, or very seldome, to be found growing naturally but under a gallowse, where the matter that hath fallen from the dead body hath given it the shape of a man; and the matter of a woman the substance of a female plant, with many other such doltish dreams. They fable further and affirme, That he who would take up a plant thereof must tie a dog thereunto to pull it up, which will give a great shreeke at the digging up: otherwise if a man should do it, he should surely die in short space after. Besides many fables of loving matters, too full of scurrilitie to set forth in print, which I forbeare to speak of. All which dreames and old wives tales you shall from henceforth cast out of your books and memory; knowing this, that they are all and everie part of them false and most untrue: for I myselfe and my servants also have digged up, planted and replanted very many, and yet never could either perceive shape of man or woman, but sometimes one straight root, sometimes two, and often six or seven branches coming from the maine great root, even as Nature list to bestow upon

1 Howbeit Levinus Lemnius saith, in his discourse on the Secret Miracles of Nature, that the "male Mandrake beareth a lovely pleasant and sweet-scented Apple, like to the yelk of a Hen's Egg, by the enticement whereof Rachel was allured" (p. 264, Anglice).