Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

500
Apollon and Artemis
It is noticeable that a town in Thrace^ and no fewer than four
towns in Makedonia bore the same name^ including the settlement
on Mount Athos whose inhabitants were called Macrobii'^—a title
suggestive of Hyperborean longevity^ With regard to ApoUon's
original character we are still lamentably ignorant. That he was
from the first a sun-god is neither proved, nor probable'. Apollon
appears to be merely a cult-epithet, ' he
of the Black-Poplars^'
The full name of the god is possibly preserved in the Homeric
designation Phoibos Apdllou\ If so, the name means 'the Clear
One,' 'the Pure One^' and would be applicable to any deity of the
bright, shining sky. Not improbably Phoibos and Phoibe were skygod
and earth-goddess respectively. On reaching Delphoi, Phoibe
as a chthonian power succeeded to Gaia and Themis", while Phoibos,
finding another sky-god already in possession, became affiliated to
Zeus and acted as his interpreter to men^". For the rest, Phoibos
Apdllo?i, god of the clear, pure sky, underwent both physical and
ethical development :
on
the one hand, his clarity, specialised into
that of the sun", enabled him to rival and in part displace the
ancient Helios; on the other hand, his essential purity ^^ made him a
god of light and leading to the whole civilised world.
We have, so far as 1 can see, no right to assume that Artemis
entered Greece along with Apollon or came from the same northern
home. Herodotos indeed adduces as a parallel to the Hyperborean
usage the fact that Thracian and Paeonian women, when they
sacrifice to Ari&xnxs Basileia, hold their offerings 'not without wheaten
^ G. Hirschfeld loc. cit. ii. 113 f. ^ Id. ib. ii. i 14. ^ pUn. nat. hist. 4. 37.
* Schol. Dionys. per. 560 Ma/cpo/3icof o.izoikoi yap eiaiv ovtoi tuiv €if>(>}v Aidioirwv ^
Tuiv'TTTip^opfioju. Orph. Arg. iio6ff. makes the Argonauts, after reaching the land of
the 'TireplidpfOL (1077, 1082), arrive at the weahhy folk of the Ma/ip6/3tot, whose span of
12000 months each as long as 100 years (1108) recalls Pindar's description of the Hyper-
boreans as x'^'fTwv (supra p. 465 n. i). See further Daebritz in Pauly—Wissovva Real-
Enc. ix. 261 f., 274 f.
^ Supra i. 258 n. 4.
** Supra p. 484 ff.
f., L. Meyer Handb.
"^ H. Ebeling Lexicon Homericuni Lipsiae 1885 i. 154, ii. 439
d. gr. Etyin. iii. 371. The Homeric poems, if drafted in northern Greece, would be
likely to preserve the original name of the god.
* Prellwitz Etym. IVorierb. d. Gr. Spr.- p. 493, Boisacq Dici. itym. de la Langue Gr.
p. 1032. Prof. H. M. Chadwick suggests to me (June 30, 1921) that a north-Greek form
of the same stem may be seen in BoijSr], i] Boi/37jt$ \ifj.vr], etc. : cp. W. Pape— G. E. Ben-
seler Worterbuch der griechischen Eigeniiaincn'^ Braunschweig 1875
i. 216.
* Aisch. Eum. i ff. See also Tiirk in Koscher Lex. Myth. iii. 2395 fif.
1" Aisch. Eum. 7 ff. Supra pp. 204 n. i, 265 f.
^' Cp. Aisch. P. V. 22 f. aradevTos 8' i]\iov (poi^rj oi/37/ (Tiirk in Roscher Lex. Myth. iii. 2397).
k.t.\.
One of the Heliades
^'^ Plout. dd E apiid Delphos 20 (poi^ov 8k drjirov to Ka6apbv /cat dyvbv oi Tra\aiol 'wav
wvo/JLa^ov, lbs ^Ti QeaaaKoi roiis iepeai fv rah dtrocppdaLV rjfxipaLi avrovs e