Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

412 Artemis and the Oak
honoured with a wreath of oak'. The second, proposed by Sosias,
son of Hippokrates, on Skirophorion 8 in the archonship of Lykeas,
ordains that Eukleides, son of Antimachos, for his services as
secretary receive the oak-wreath. Wilhelm infers that this was the
national wreath of the goddess. Was it accident or design that
combined the obverse Artemis with the reverse oak-wreath on the
shield-Hke tetradrachms issued in Makedonia from 158 to 149 B.C.''?
A silver coin of the Acarnanian League, referable to the year 192
191 B.C., shows a torch-bearing Artemis in a wreath of oak (fig. 318)'.
And literary allusions tell the same tale. An Orphic hymn to
Artemis invokes her as ' '
haunting the oak-woods of the mountains
and again as 'goddess of oak-woods^' Aristophanes similarly
describes her as ' the Maid that ranges the oak-clad hills*.' And
Statius not only makes Atalante dedicate a choice oak to her in
Arkadia^, but also speaks of her effigy as carved on ' pitch-pine and
cedar and every oak-tree ' of
her grove near Thebes'.
The goddess was perhaps even identified with her own tree.
The Saronic Gulf, according to Pliny, was formerly fringed with
forests of oak and drew its name from the factl On its shore, near
1 Spvhs o'Tecpa.vwt.
'^ Ant. 'Miinz. No7-d-Griechenlands iii. 53 fF. nos. 156 ff., 189 ff. pi- 2, 1— 4, 10— 13,
Brtt. Mtis. Cat. Coins Macedonia, Etc. p. 7 fig., p. 8 fig.. Head Coins of the Ancients
p. 96 pi. 54, 10, II, 12, Hunter Cat. Coins i. 354 pi. 24, 12. For the history of
these issues see H. Gaebler 'Zur Miinzkunde Makedoniens iii ' in the Zeitschr. f. Num.
1899 xxii. 141 ff. , G. F. Hill Historical Greek Coins London 1906 p. 148 ff. pi. 12, 87 f.,
Head Hist, num.^ p. 238 f. fig. 151 f.
''
Brit. Mils. Cat. Coins Thessaly, etc. p. 169 pi. 27, 5, Head Coins of the Ancients
p. 97 pi. 55, 20, id. Hist, num.''' p. 333 f. Fig. 318 is drawn from an electrotype of the
specimen in the British Museum.
^ Orph. h. Artem. 36. 10 r\ Ko.rkx'^'-'^ dpioiv dpv/JLOvs, 12 dpv/j.oviri.
® Aristoph. Thesni. 114 f. rav t' iv 6pe(Ti SpvoySvoiai \
Kbpav
delaar "Apre/juv dyporipav.
erat, Triviae
quercus ^ Stat. T/ic6. 9. 585 ff. nota per Arcadias felici robore silvas |
quam desacraverat ipsa | electam turba nemorum numenque colendo | fecerat : hie arcus
et fessa reponere tela, | armaque curva suum et vacuorum terga leonum | figere et ingentes
aequantia cornua silvas. |
vix
ramis locus, agrestes adeo omnia cingunt |
exuviae,
et
viiidem ferri nitor impedit umbram. etc. (608 virgo potens nemorum, 627 nemoralis
Delia). In 591 C. von Earth cj. vix radiis locus. But Statius may have been thinking of
the Italian Diana-trunks (supra p. 143 ff.).
additur; "^
Stat. Theb. 4. 425 ff. nee caret umbra deo : nemori Latonia cultrix |
picea cedroque (so O. Midler for piceae cedrique vulg.) et robore in omni j
hanc
efifictam
Sanctis occultat silva tenebris. Mr E. Harrison in the Cambridge University Reporter
Feb. 21, 1911 p. 663 comments: 'As things stand, we read that in a forest sacred to
Diana the image of the goddess was carved on every tree of three several kinds. If the poet
is worth relieving of a folly, we had better read in unam or in unum for iti omni, sup-
posing a triple i,oa.vov of the triune goddess (cf. Pausanias ii. 30. 2). Yet see what this poet
does at x. 100.'
^ Plin. 7iat. hist. 4. 18 sinus Saronicus, olim querno nemore redimitus, unde nomen, ita
Graecia antiqua appellante quercum.