Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

464
Apollon and Artemis
The Muse is never absent from their haunt,
But, while the virgin dancers circHng chant,
Lutes Uft their sound.
Flutes echo round.
With golden bay they bind the brow
And glad at heart go revelling now.
No fell disease, no cursed age
Can spoil the pilgrims' heritage,
Who free at last from weary fight
And far from Nemesis' despite
Dwell safe at home.
Thither did Danae's son of valiant soul.
Guided by great Athena to his goal,
To join the band of all the blessed come.
Notice two points. On the one hand, when Pindar speaks of a
'wondrous way'— neither sea nor land—leading to a blissful abode
free from disease and old age, he means beyond all reasonable doubt
the Elysian track elsewhere described by him as 'the road of Zeus'
or 'the gleaming way\' in a word the Galaxy. This actually passes
through the constellation Perseus^ an astronomical fact which
explains the part played by that hero in the myth. On the other
hand, the sacrifice of asses suggests an earthly rather than a heavenly
location. Asses were slain for Ares by various tribes^ including the
inhabitants of Karmania*, and for Priapos by the Lampsacenes^
They were further connected with Dionysos, Silenos, the Satyrs, etc.*
These deities one and all emanate from the Thraco-Phrygian area.
And, if the Tarentines sacrificed an ass to the Winds', it was
presumably to the Etesian Winds which blew down the Adriatic
from the north-west^. The ass, however, was unknown to the
Scythians^ and is but a stranger in central Europe^". We may there-
fore provisionally assume that those who habitually offered this
beast to Apollon dwelt in or near Thrace.
The same curious bilocation of the Hyperborean realm appears in
1 Supra p. 36 f. ^ Hyg. poet. astr. 4. 7.
•* Cornut. theol. 21 p. 41, 9 fif. Lang. •* Strab. 727 (quoted sttpra i. 746 n. 2).
^ Ov./asL I. 391 ff., 6. 345 f., Lact. dtv. inst. i. 21, Myth. Vat. 3. 6. 26.
^ I have collected a good deal of the evidence in the Joio-n. Hell. Stud. 1894 xiv.
8i— 102 ('The Cult of the Ass'). See also L. Stephani in the Compte-rendu St. Pet.
1863 pp. 228— 242, Gruppe Gr. Myth. Rel. p. 1311 n. 3, F. Olck in Pauly—Wissowa
Real-Enc. vi, 652 f. , O. Keller Die antike Tierwelt Leipzig 1909 i. 267, 269 f.
' Hesych. s.v. dve/xwras, et. mag. p. 103, 33 f.
* Cp. T'rmsAos frag. 94
Infra § 7 (a).
[Frag. hist. Gr. i. 215 f. Miiller) ap. Diog. Laert. 8. 60.
* Hdt. 4. 28, 129, Aristot. hist. an. 8. 25. 605 a 20 ff., de gen. an. 2. 8. 728a 22 fF.,
Strab. 307. See further F. Olck in Pauly—Wissowa Keal-Enc. vi. 631 f., 654.
^^ Schrader Reallex. p. 205 f., S. Feist Kultur Ausbreitung und Herkunft der Indo-
germanen Berlin 1913 p. 158.
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