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Mythological Studies 350 MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES. I.—THE THKEE DAUGHTERS OF CEOROPS. ANY oiie who investigates the mythology of Athens is confronted first and foremost by the figures of Cecrops and his daughters, Pandrosos, Herse, and Aglauros. Such shadowy personalities as Porphyrion, Kolanios, &c, are obvious interpolations from other local cults, and as such qua, Athens may be disregarded. In visiting the outlying denies Pausanias was told of other kings (P. i. 31, 5) who preceded Cecrops. Well and good for the demes, jealous of their local heroes and anxious to interpolate their names in the genealogical table of the pre-eminent Athens; but for Athens herself, and for the Athenian Apollodorus (Bibl. iii. 13, 8), it is with Cecrops the autoch- thon that the real live mythology of Athens begins—he is a person in art as well as in literary tradition. Above all, for our present purpose he has three famous daughters, whose personalities and activity are considerably more vital than that of their father. In dealing with Athenian local cults (Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, p. xxxiii.), and especially on examining the ceremony of the Hersephoria, I was constantly haunted by the conviction that behind the personalities of these three sisters more was hidden than came to light on the surface. Father and daughters alike seemed to me too personal—if I may be allowed a seeming contradiction—to be mere impersonations. Cecrops we are usually told is the eponymous of the Cecropidae; his three daughters some mythologists hold are impersonations of the dew, a view I hope I have shown is unsatisfactory, if not untenable (op. cit. p. xxxiv.), or else they were incarnations of certain attributes and aspects of Athene, bearing to her much the same relation as Erectheus to Poseidon. If so, these incarnations are very vivacious, and their activity is strangely independent and even adverse to that of the goddess herself. Such solutions somehow fail to carry conviction. The subject has been so long and so ably investigated that it is with considerable deference I offer for criticism a solution I believe to be wholly novel. The conviction has slowly grown up in my mind that, in seeking for the significance of a mythological figure, the only fruitful method is to examine the cultus. Rites and ceremonies are the facts, and are of amazing perman- ence ; myths are the professed explanation of these facts, and shift and vary MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES. 351 with the mental development of generations of worshippers. I proceed, then, to examine the cults of the three sisters, reserving for the present the cult of the father Cecrops. At the outset one fact strikes us. Aglauros and Pandrosos had regular shrines and precincts known in historical times, Aglauros on the N. slope of the Acropolis (P. i. 18, 2) and Pandrosos to the west of the Erectheion (P. i. 26, 6)—shrines, it should be noticed in passing, quite distinct and apart: that of Pandrosos more intimately connected with the Athene and Erectheus cults on the Acropolis. Of a shrine, precinct, sanctuary of Herse, no mention is made. Ovid {Met. ii. 739), probably feeling the difficulty, places Herse in a middle chamber between Aglauros and Pandrosos. Herse, then, has no recorded shrine. Has she a cult ? At first the answer seems obvious: she has the all-important ceremony of the Hersephoria, to which she gave her name. A glance at facts, however, shows that this is not the case. We can have no better authority than inscriptions, which deal with actual ritual statements and records, not with the often merely poetical fancies of literature. Three inscriptions deal with the Hersephoria as follows : G.I.A. iii. 887, . [TTJV kavr&>v\ dvyarepa Na[y\cn<TTpdTr)v e^pprjcfyopi]- aatrav 'Adrjva] HoXidSi ical Hav8p6cr[q) avedrjicav ejiri leprja<; KaXX(.<rT[o£)?]. G.I.A. iii. 318, 'Ep<rr)<f>6poK; /3. Et'X«#u<;'a[?] iv *Aypais. G.I.A. iii. 319, 'Qp<rr)<l>6poi<; /3. [1% ©e/«So?]. One thing is clear: Herse was not the object (so far as the evidence of inscriptions goes) of the Hersephoria. The only sister mentioned, i.e. if Kochler's restoration of G.I.A. iii. 887 be correct, is Pandrosos; her con- nection with Athene, &c, Themis, and Eileithyia, will be noted later. Against the evidence of inscriptions such literary statements as that of Istros (Schol. Aristoph. Lys. 643), TJ) yap "JLparrj iro^irevovcn TJI Ke/cpoTros OvyaTpl, weigh light on the scale; the yap betrays the prejudice of the etymologist. Moreover, to put one literary passage against another, Athenagoras {Leg. c. 1) says, 'AypavXa 'AQ-qvalot ical Te\eTa<; ical fivo-Trjpia dyovai ical HavBpoaqy, where, as the Hersephoria was a typical mystery, the omission of Herse is at least significant. I take it, then, that Herse is a mere etymological eponymous of the festival Hersephoria—a senseless double of Pandrosos put in to make up the sisters to the convenient canonical three of the * Charites; as such, for mythological purposes, she falls out of our investigation. It is worth noting that the Athenian women seem to have held her useless to swear by, another note of unsubstantial personality—Kara yap T»)? ' AypavXov m/ivvov KCLTO, Be Trj<; JlavSpocrov airdvtcoTepov {Schol. Aristoph. Them,. 533). We are left, then, with Pandrosos and Aglauros. These can certainly not be resolved into equivalents; their shrines, their cults, their characters, are all alike diverse, even antagonistic. Take Pandrosos first, and first her cult. The inscription quoted leaves, if it be correctly restored, no doubt that the Hersephnria was in her honour; further, though Pausanias does not distinctly state that there was any connection, he describes the ceremonial of the Hersephoria immediately after his mention (i. 27, 2) of the Pandroseion. 352 MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES. What we know of the Hersephoria can, as I have shown elsewhere {Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, pp. xxxiii. and 102), be supplemented by our knowledge of the analogous Thesmophoria. The scholiast on Lucian {Dial. Meretr. 211), and Clement of Alexandria in the Protrepticus (14, 15 P), both distinctly state that the ceremonies of the Thesmophoria, Arretophoria {i.e. Hersephoria) and the (obscure) Skirophoria were substantially the same, and the clue to the meaning of all three is in the words of the scholiast: Kal ayerai, TOV avrbv Xoyov k'^ovaa irepl rr}<; rS>v Kapnr&iv yevecrea><; Kal T»)? TS)V avdpdnrwv crTropa?. My object for the present is not to elucidate the festival, which has indeed, with abunda.nt analogies from the rites of primitive peoples of all parts of the world, been fully expounded by Mr. J. G. Frazer in his Golden Bough, vol. ii. 44-48, but rather to show how the analogy of these festivals lets out the secret of the nature and significance of Pandrosos. Setting aside the Skirophoria, we know that the Thesmophoria was a primi- tive rite carried on by women in honour of the Earth-goddess both at Athens and Megara, and probably at many other places. I say advisedly of the Earth- goddess, because, though it was associated later with the names of Denieter and Persephone, it probably preceded the formation of their myth. The women of Athena accounted among their various conservative excellences that ' they kept the Thesmophoria as they always used to do' (Aristoph. Eccl. 223). The meaning of the 'Epo-^opot? /3. Trjs ®e/wSo? thus becomes clear. Pandrosos, goddess of all young things, is none other than a form of Ge Themis, who is but the earlier aspect of Demeter Thesinophoros. Ge had, we know, not only a statue on the Acropolis (P. i. 24, 3) as Karpophoros, but also a sanctuary as Kourotrophos just at the entrance to the Acropolis gates (P. i. 22, 3), €<TTI Be Kal Fij? K.ovporpocf>ov Kal Ar]firjTpo<; tepbv XXOJJ? ; the goddesses, so near akin—in fact the one but the later form of the other—seem to have had a sanctuary in common. The foundation was of great antiquity, and attributed to Erichthonios. Suidas, sub voc. Kourotrophos, says : Kovporpo^xx; Yrj. ravTrj Be Qvaai <f>aal TO irpoiTov 'Epv^doviov iv 'A/cpoiroXei' Kal {3co/ibv IBpiitracrOai l)(api>v airoBiBovTa rfj Tjj TWV rpofeiwv K.T.X. Pandrosos, as (according to Apollodorus and Paiisanias) faithful keeper of the chest, gains a new significance seen to be one and the same with the actual Earth-mother Ge. She could not violate her own trust—she who was essentially Kouro- trophos. Themis is substantially Earth, earth when cultivated and owned by ordered men, a somewhat later conception than the primitive earth the mother. We observe the same sequence in the precedence of the oracle at Delphi— 7rp(orov /lev ev%y Tf}Be Trpeafievw ffecov TTJV TrpforofiavTiv Yalav i/c Be T?)? &efiiv. Aesch. Hum. 1, 2, where Themis is clearly but the later form of Gaia. We know from Clement of Alexandria that the imopp^Ta rr)<; ®e/u.iBot were of the same significance as those of the Thesmophoria {Protrcp. 86). The 'Epo-rjcfropot*; /3. ElXeidvias iv "Ay/jew? has a less obvious connection; but in the old primitive days, MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES. 353 when every god was a god of all work, that Pandrosos-Ge-Kourotrophos- Karpophoros should also be Eileithyia would present no difficulties. I fancy that the Eileithyia, so consistently present at the birth of Athene, was no mere late impersonation, but this early Earth-goddess. The figure of Ge-Pandrosos-Themis was bit by bit effaced by the more splendid personality of her later double Demeter.
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