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

184 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, etc. [ch.
The iviavros then was the cardinal turning-point of the year,
it was evq teal vea in one. Such a day to ancient thinking must
be marked out by rites de passage, for the issues were perilous.
Such rites de 'passage are those of Closing and Opening, of Going
to sleep and Waking up again, of Death and Resurrection, of
killing or carrying out the Old Year and bringing in the New.
To such rites it was natural, nay, it was necessary, to summon the
Kouros.
We have now briefly to consider the eVo? or period of
revolution with its varying lengths and various seasons.
We think of the ' year ' as a period of twelve months, beginning
in January and ending in December, and we think of the Horae
or Seasons as four in number—Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.
Clearly the year for which the Kouros is bidden to come begins,
not in Hecatombaion, at Midsummer, as at Athens, nor in mid-
winter as with us, but in the springtime. Our year with its
four seasons is a sun-year, beginning about the winter solstice.
It has four seasons because the four cardinal sun-periods are
the two solstices, winter and summer, the two equinoxes, spring
and autumn.
The important point about a year proper or ero? is that it is
a recurrent period of a length that varies with man's particular
methods of counting time. It is, in fact, a recurrence or cycle of
times of special tension and interest, a calendar of festivals 1
connected mainly with man's food-supply. Broadly speaking, the
distinction between a cult and a rite is that a rite is occasional,
a cult is recurrent. Seasonal recurrence has been one great, if
not the principal, factor in religious stability.
It is obvious that primitive man would not base his calendar
on solstices and equinoxes which are only observed late ; his year
would be based not on astronomy, but on the seasons of his food-
supply. Among the early inhabitants of Europe 2 there were two
seasons only—winter and summer. The people being mainly
pastoral, winter began in November with the driving home of
1 Hubert et Mauss, La Representation du Temps dans la Religion et la Magie in
Melanges d'Histoire des Religions, 1909, p. 189; see also the interesting chapter on
'Periodicity in Nature' in Dr Whitehead's Introduction to Mathematics in the
Home University Library.
2 E. K. Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, i. pp. 110 ff.