Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

iv] Picus, Faunas and Idaean Daktyls 107
Tree-King who watched over the Golden Bough, they haunt
the dark groves. At the foot of the Aventine was a grove so dim
it seemed a spirit must dwell there.
Lucus Aventino suberat niger ilicis umbra
Quo posses viso dicere, Numen inest 1 .
Here Picus and Faunus were run to earth, but like the genuine
old bogey-magicians they were, like Proteus himself, they had to
be caught and manacled before they would speak. In the best
accredited fashion, they changed themselves, Plutarch tells us,
into all manner of monstrous shapes 2 . But
caught and bound
at last they were, and they handed over to Numa the whole
magician's bag of tricks ; they taught him to foretell the future,
and most important of all, they taught him the charm, a purifica-
tion (Kadapnov), against thunderbolts. The charm was in use in
Plutarch's days; it was pleasantly compounded of onions, hairs,
and pilchards.
Picus and Faunus are magicians, medicine-men, and medicinemen
of a class with which we are already familiar. On this point
Plutarch 3 is explicit. 'The daemons, Picus and Faunus,' he says,
' were
in some respects (i.e. in appearance) like Satyrs and Panes,
but in their skill in spells and their magical potency in matters
idivine they are said to have gone about Italy practising the same
\arts as those tvho in Greece bore the name of Idaean Daktyls!
Now at last we are on firm familiar ground. The Daktyls of
iCrete, the initiates of Idaean Zeus we know, they were the men
who purified Pythagoras with the thunder-stone 4 and initiated him
[into the thunder-rites of the Idaean cave. If Picus the Bird- King
was of their company, small wonder that he could make and
iunmake the thunder. As we have already seen they were, com-
Ipared to the Kouretes, a specialized society of sorcerers. Of
(like nature were the Telchines in Rhodes, of whom Diodorus 5
says in an instructive passage, ' they are also said to have been
1
Fasti, in. 295.
2
Vit. Num. xv. . . .aWdKora.