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

iv] Mana of Birds 113
about him and arose to dance imitating the bear going from his
den and chanting :
' Lone
Chief ' imitated
I take my robe,
My robe is sacred,
I wander in the summer.
with his hands a bear holding up its paws
and placing his feet together he moved backward and forward
with short jumps, making the lumbering movements of a bear,
running, breathing heavily and imitating his digging and turning
over stones for insects.
Any bird or beast or fish, if he be good for food, or if in any
way he arrest man's attention as fearful or wonderful, may become
sacred, that is, may be held to be charged with special mana ;
but,
of all living creatures, birds longest keep their sanctity. They
come and go where man and beast cannot go, up to the sun, high
among the rain clouds; their flight is swift, their cries are strange
and ominous, yet they are near to man ; they perch on trees, yet
they feed on earth-worms ; they are creatures half of Gaia, half of
Ouranos. Long after men thought of and worshipped the gods
in human shape they still remembered the ancieut Kingdom of
the Birds. On the archaic patera 1 in Fig. 53, p. 207, is depicted the
sacrifice of a bull—it may be at the Bouphonia. Athena is present
as Promachos with shield and uplifted spear. Behind her is the
great snake of Mother Earth which she took over, in front on a
stepped altar where the fire blazes is a holy bird. What bird is
intended is uncertain ; assuredly no owl, but perhaps a crow,
though Aristotle 2 says no crow ever entered the Acropolis at
Athens. At Korone, Crow Town, there was a bronze statue of
Athena holding a crow in her hand 3 .
We do not associate Artemis with any special bird, still less
she is altogether to us the human
do we imagine her in bird-form ;
maiden. Yet we know of the winged, or, as she used to be called,
the ' Persian ' Artemis, with her high curved wings. The recent
excavations of the British School at Sparta have taught us that
1 Brit. Mus. Cat. b 405, C. Smith, J.H.S. i. p. 202, PL m., and see my Ancient
Athens, p. 289, Fig. 30.
2
Frg. 324.
3 Paus. iv. 34. 6 ; for the relation of Athens to the crow and the enmity of crow
and owl see Dr Frazer's note on Paus. n. 11. 7, and for crow superstitions, Kopuvia-
\fiara, etc., see D'Arcy Thompson, op. cit., s.v. KopAvr).
H. 8