maidens, of whom the White maidens of Delos may be taken as the representatives. Their male counterparts are the Sons of Boreas. If we have rightly divined the meaning of the White maidens of the North, Hyperoche and Laodike, who were the primitive Delian saints, we must allow that the heroes Hyperochos and Laodikos, whose shrines are in the sacred enclosure at Delphi, are a pair of Boreads, who, further North and in earlier days, would have been the priests of the sanctuary. The actual passage of Strabo, with the fragment of Sophocles, to which we have been referring is as follows: Strabo, vii. p. 295. Nauck, Fragg. Trag. Gr. ed. 2, p. 333: ovde γὰρ εἴ τινα Σοφοκλῆς τραγωδεῖ περὶ τῆς Ὀρειθυίας, λέγων ὡς ἀναρπαγεῖσα ὑπὸ Βορέου κομισθείη ὑπέρ τε πόντον πάντ ̓ ἐπ ̓ ἔσχατα χθονός νυκτός τε πηγὰς οὐρανοῦ τ' ἀναπτυχάς, οὐδὲν ἀν εἴη πρὸς τὸ νῦν, ἀλλὰ ἐατέον. For κήπον in the third line some editors propose to emend σηκόν, because, as Miss Harrison says, they did not understand it ! Certainly the garden must stand, and it is the sacred garden of old-time, in the land of the Hyperboreans, to which ancient garden a modern garden at Delphi must have corresponded.1 We may confirm our previous observation that the "garden of Apollo" was a real garden and probably a medical garden in the following way : We learn from Aristides Rhetor that the goddess Hygieia, who is commonly looked upon as a feminine counterpart of Asklepios, but who is in reality an independent young lady who lives next door to him and manages her own affairs, had such a medical garden as we have been speaking of. To these gardens the sons of Asklepios were taken to be reared after their birth. Nothing could be clearer, they were medical gardens. The first doctors must have been herbalists. This striking instance confirms us in our previous statements about the garden of Apollo. We see also the importance 2 1 Observe also the language of Pindar, with regard to the visit of Apollo to the Hyperboreans; Ol., iii. 32, τόθι δένδρεα θάμβαινε σταθείς. One of the newly discovered Paeans at Delphi (vi. 14), is called "Aλoos Απόλλωνος. 2 For the reference, see Aristides, vii. 1, ed. Dindorf, p. 73: yevoμéνους δὲ αὐτοὺς τρέφει ὁ πατὴρ ἐν Υγιείας κήποις. of folk-medicine in theology. The history of one overlaps the history of the other. There are also traces of sacred gardens belonging to Artemis, and to Hecate (who is in some points of view almost the feminine counterpart of Apollo and a double of Artemis). For the former we may refer to the garlands which Hippolytus gathers for the goddess from a garden into which none but the initiate may enter (Eur. Hipp. 73 sqq.): for the latter (a real witch's garden full of magic plants), we have the description and botanical summary in the Orphic Argonautika, 918 sqq. 66 In the Corbridge dish, to which we were alluding just now, the foreground is occupied by a meadow in which plants grow According to Percy Gardner, this meadow with its associated plants and animals is conventional. The objection to this is that the fount of Castaly is not conventional ornament; the animals represented are not conventional; the stag and the dog belong to the huntress Artemis, the griffin belongs to Apollo. If, then, the animals are cult figures, what of the plants? One of them appears to be a figure of a pair of mistletoe leaves, with the berries at the junction of the leaves; the other is, perhaps, the peony. I should, therefore, suggest that the meadow in question is the medical garden of Apollo. 1 In conclusion of this brief study, it may be pointed out that we have emphasised strongly the Hyperborean origin of Apollo and his cult. There have been, from time to time, attempts to find the home of the god in more Southern regions, and with the aid of Semitic philology. The most seductive of such theories was one for which, I believe, Professor Hommel was responsible, that Apollo was a Greek equivalent of Jabal or Jubal in the Book of Genesis: and the linguistic parallel between the names was certainly reinforced by the existence of Jubal's lyre, and by the occurrence of a sister in the tradition of the triad in Genesis. That such transfers are possible appears to be made out from the case of Palaimon, who is thought by some to be a Corinthian modification of Baal-yam, the Lord of the Sea. We are, however, satisfied as to the Northern origin of Apollo, just as we are satisfied, until very convincing considerations to the 1 We should have expected a slip of bay-tree, but the bay-tree leaves do not come off from the stalk in pairs, as the mistletoe leaves do. contrary are produced, of the Thracian origin of Dionysos. The argument of the previous pages proceeds from the known overlapping and similarity of the cults of the two deities in question. Neither can be detached from the Sky-father, nor from the oak and its surrogates. Each appears to be connected with the production of fire by means of fire-sticks; in some respects this is the greatest of all human discoveries, and its history deserves a newer and more complete treatment. The connection of Apollo and Dionysos with the parasitic growths of the Sky-tree appears to be made out: and the parallelism between an Ivy-Dionysos and a Mistletoe-Apollo has been exhibited, with support from inscriptions. A new field has been opened out in the connection between early medicine and early religion, and it has been suggested that Apollo's reputation as a Healer, and Averter, may have a simple vegetable origin. A similar medical divinisation occurs in the case of the goddess Panakeia, the daughter of Asklepios; her name is a simple translation of a vegetable "all-heal ". Nothing further has been brought out as to the meaning of the associated Cult of Apollo's twin sister Artemis, beyond the suggestions which have already been made on the side of Twin Cult in my book Boanerges. There is evidently much more research needed into the origin and functions of the Great Huntress. Our next essay will, therefore, deal with the origin of the Cult of Artemis; we shall approach it from the side of the related Cult of Apollo, and bring forward, incidentally, some further and perhaps final proofs of the correctness of our identification of Apollo with the Apple-tree. .. in NOTE. That the inhabitants of Abella (Verg. Aen. vii. 740) were Celts and not Teutons, may be seen from the discussion of "cateia Bertrand and Reinace (Les Celtes, p. 198). THE ORIGIN OF THE CULT OF ARTEMIS.1 TH HE attempt which we have made to disentangle the strands which make up the complexity of the Cult of Apollo, and to determine the starting-point for the evolution of that cult, leads on naturally and necessarily to the inquiry as to the meaning of the cult of the twin-sister of Apollo, the Maiden-Huntress of Greek woods and mountains. It might have been imagined that the resolution of one cult into its elements would lead quite inevitably to the interpretation of the companion cult, but this is far from being the case. The twins in question are quite unlike the Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeuces, whose likeness is so pronounced and whose actions are generally so similar that Lucian in his "Dialogues of the Gods" sets Apollo inquiring of Hermes which of the two is Castor and which is Polydeuces, "for," says he, "I never can make out." And Hermes has to explain that it was Castor yesterday and Polydeuces to-day, and that one ought to recognise Polydeuces by the marks of his fight with the king of the Bebryces. Artemis, on the other hand, rarely behaves in a twin-like manner to Apollo: he does not go hunting with her, and she does not, apparently, practise divination with him; indeed, as we begin to make inquiry as to Apollo and Artemis in the Pre-Homeric days, we find that allusions to the twin-birth disappear, and a suspicion arises that the twin relation is a mythological afterthought, rendered necessary by the fact that the brother and sister had succeeded, for some reason or other, to a joint inheritance of a sanctuary belonging to some other pair of twin-heroes, heroines, or demi-deities; and if this should turn out to be the case, we must not take the twinrelationship and parentage from Zeus and Leto as the starting-point in the inquiry it may be that other circumstances have produced the supposed family relation, and that Leto, who is in philological 1 A lecture delivered in the John Rylands Library, 14 March, 1916. |