The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR Additional services for The Classical Review: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here The Connection of Paean with Paeonia Grace Harriet Macurdy The Classical Review / Volume 26 / Issue 08 / December 1912, pp 249 - 251 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00200711, Published online: 27 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00200711 How to cite this article: Grace Harriet Macurdy (1912). The Connection of Paean with Paeonia. The Classical Review, 26, pp 249-251 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00200711 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 193.61.135.34 on 20 Apr 2015 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 249 two inferences is Thucydides the more 'AOrjvalcov AatceSaijiovioi Kal 01 i,vfj\ likely to have meant ? Bvva/iiv does not Kal ra fia/epa Teiyr) Kal TOV Heipaia decide ; I have rendered it by ' power,' KareXafiov. Thucydides often uses a word suggestive of dominion, but Ka,Ta\afi/3dveiv of military occupation, Suva/us implies no more than ' strength' by force or by stealth, by attack or or ' resources,' and when Athens had against the danger of attack. The lost her dominion she still had resources Thebans attempted KaraXafiftdveiv Pla- and strength. The reference to Sparta's taea in 431; when Syracusan ships hegemony, as well as to her territory, KareXafiov Messene in 425, it was on suggests at first sight that the Athenian the invitation of the inhabitants, but Empire, as well as Attica, is to be opposition was feared;3 when Thucy- taken into account; but against the dides hurried from Thasos, ifiovXero assumption of a common ratiox Thucy- <pOd<rai fidXia-Ta fiev oZv TTJV '' A^iiroXiv', dides is adducing a disproportion, and irpiv ri ivhovvai, el Be fiir\, TTJV 'Hiova the greater the disproportion the more irpoKaTaXafidav.* The word is appro- it is to his purpose. Again, the Spartan priate to a coup de main. But the entry half of the sentence, if it could be of the Peloponnesians into the Peiraeus dated, might date the Athenian half; and the Long Walls was under terms but the date of the Spartan half is itself of peace, and no resistance was to be undetermined in spite of much dispute. feared, -nrapeXafiov, ' took over,'6 would 'Ei> Kea> Ti? r/fiepa ; For my own part do, but I propose KaTe/3aXov.e That I find the first of the two inferences a /ca.Te/3a\op can govern TOV Heipaia, in little absurd, and so, by a different road, the sense which Lysias7 expresses more I reach the same conclusion as Herbst, fully by TOV Ueipaiws ret reixv irepiekelv that the passage is subsequent to 404. and TO irepl TOV Heipaia rej^o? irepieXeiv, But what I imagine Thucydides to appears from the actual decree of have imagined that a tourist would the Ephors, recorded by Plutarch,8 imagine as he stood amid the imaginary Ka/3/3a\6vTe<} TOV Uecpaid Kal TO, fiaiepa ruins of Athens, is not evidence; so, o-/ce\r), and from Xenophon's phrase9 if anyone differs from TO T€ i ^ TI VI. E. HARRISON. Before quitting this subject I should Trinity College, Cambridge. like to propose an emendation of the words in which the fate of Athens is mentioned by Thucydides himself :2 3 IV. i. * IV. 104. 5. & ov Tt)v re apxrjv Ka-ckiravirav T&V • Cf. III. 39. 8, 46. 3, 5o. 3; IV. 69. 4! V. 52. 1, etc. Plut. Lys. 15, 6 8' ovv AviravSpos, a>s nap4\a/3e rds re vavs indcras 7rX^v SwSetca Kal 1 Viz. between the strength exercised by a city in its prime, and the impressiveness of its e It is found in a late MS. ruins. 7 XII. 70, XIII. 14. 2 8 V. 26. 1. Lys. j4. 9 Hell. II. 2. 20. THE CONNECTION OF PAEAN WITH PAEONIA. AMONG the derivations proposed for the are points, however, in the scattered name of the Greek god Paeon, or Paean, references to Paeonian legend and ritual that which connects it with the Northern that seem to render it probable that the tribe of Haioves has, I believe, been name of the god is an ethnic adjective mentioned only to be rejected.1 There (like, for example, Maleatas, the god of healing, whose name appears sometimes as an epithet of Apollo), and that this 1 Gruppe, Mailer's Handbuch, 5. 3, pp. 1239- 40. Cf. Walton, Cults of AsTclepios, p. 5, who adjective was applied to the god wor- suggests that the name Paeonia is connected shipped as the Healer among the with the worship of Asklepios. Paeonians, whether the Sun, or Apollo, 250 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW or Asklepios, or a ' Pelasgian medicine Polyaenus6 tells of the reception by the chief god.' 1 Paeonians of their young prince Ariston, The Paeonian tribe occupied in early brought to them by Lysimachus. They time the country afterwards known as gave him the royal lustration of river- Macedon, a name that does not occur water, TO fiao-iXiicbv Xovrpov, according in Homer, whereas the Paeonians ap- to their ancestral rite, and performed pear in the catalogue and in books X., XI., other ceremonies to indicate that he XII., XVI., XVII., XXI. They are now was their rightful king. regarded on the score of language2 as of Concerning the religion of the Paeon- Illyrian origin, and are usually described ians we learn further from Herodotus as Thraco-Illyrian, or (as Niebuhr,3 and that their-women offer to Artemis the Ridgway4 would call them,) Pelasgian. same Upa ivBeBe/ieva iv irvp&v tcaka/iy, They were a river-folk, and their name i.e. offerings tied up in wheaten straw, appears most often in connection with which the Hyperboreans sent from the the Strymon and the Axius. North to Apollo at Delos. Maximus 7 Herodotus gives an account of primi- Tyrius makes the statement that the tive Paeonian Lake-Dwellers on Lake Paeonians worship Helios, and that the Prasias, and Thucydides speaks of their Paeonian image of Helios is a little disk home along the Axius. In the Iliad the above a long pole. The form of Sun- Paeonians are archers or spearmen worship is similar to the rite used at the Daphnephoria in the worship of under two princes, Pyraechmes and 8 Asteropaeus. The point lately made by Apollo, described by Proclus. more than one scholar that the battles In the passage mentioning the wor- in the Iliad are echoes of old tribal ship of Artemis with the same anvapyal victories6 that really took place, though as those offered to Apollo, Artemis has not at Troy, is excellently illustrated by the title fiaa-iXeia, on which Farnell the role played by the Paeonians. It is notes ' queen being probably one of the significant that the two Paeonian princes native titles.' Inscriptions contained are killed by Patroclus and Achilles re- in the third volume of the C. I. L. spectively. In Iliad XVI. Pyraechmes is coming from Moesia Inferior seem sig- the first victim of Patroclus in the armour nificant in this connection, as Paeonia of Achilles. In Iliad XXI. Achilles lies directly below Moesia. Four of them chokes up the stream of the Scamander read Dianae Reginae, and two (from with the bodies of Paeonians whom he Kutlovica) Dianae Reginae et Apolloni. has slain, beginning with Asteropaeus, Inscriptions to Apollo and Diana and ' And many more Paeonians still would to nymphae medicae appear in Pannonia, Achilles swift of foot have slain' had a country constantly confused with not the river-god interposed in wrath. Paeonia, of which Kretschmar says ' the In Iliad XVII. a third warrior, next best later identification of Pannonians and in battle to Asteropaeus, Apisaon, fights Paeonians at least testifies to the close next to Dardanian Aeneas, an old Euro- relationship of the two peoples.' pean neighbour. Asteropaeus, who ap- I suggest that the Sun-god who pears in Iliad XII. as a companion of specialised as God of Healing Waters Sarpedon in his attack on the wall, and in in the North Illyrian and Celtic tribes XXI. in combat with Achilles, has for his became associated among the Paeonians grandfather the wide-flowing Axius, and chiefly with healing herbs, with which as a great-grandfather appears 'A/ct<r<rd-the god Paean is always associated. fievoi, the Healer. Paeonian connection The god appears but twice in the Iliad with rivers appears in later accounts. and in a sense but once. In Iliad V. 899, at the command of Zeus, Paieon heals with magical speed the wound of 1 Anthropology in the Classics, p. 92. Ares, a Thracian god. Earlier in the 2 Kretschmar, Einleitung in die Griechische same book the same verse is used of Sprache. 3 Paieon as curing Hades in the account Lectures on Ancient Ethnography and Geo- graphy, I. 287. 4 Early Age of Greece, I. 353. 8 7 5 Strat. IV. 12, 13. VIII. 8. Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 156. 8 Farnell, Greek Cults, 4. 285. THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 251 given by Dione of various wounds re- for their decoctions and salves (Heca- ceived by gods from mortals. The pas- taeus, ap. Ath. XI. 447), and their ethnic sage has a patchy look.1 Hades does not name is given by Hesychius as syn- belong to Heaven and I should regard nymous with tarpon. Their land was the healing of Ares as the original pas- on the road by which the rose and many sage.