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

232 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ch.
moon months of the penteteris, and we are also told of Endymion,
that he set his sons to race at Olympia for the kingdom 1
.
This is
a variant of the race of suitors for the hand of the princess, which
in other similar stories carries the kingdom with it.
Now we know of another family of fifty daughters whose hands
were disposed of by competition in a foot-race—the Danaids. In
the Ninth Pythian Pindar tells how the Libyan king Antaeus,
desiring to compass a famous marriage for his daughter, followed
the example of Danaus in Argos, who
contrived for the forty and eight maidens a wedding most swift, before
midday should be upon them. He presently made the whole company stand
at the goal of the race-course and bade determine by a foot-race which
maiden each hero should have, of all that came to be his sons-in-law.
But, whereas Antaeus offered only one daughter as the prize for
one out of many suitors, Danaus offered a bunch of forty-eight
and another authority lets out the truth that some, if not all,
of these eight and forty got no husbands.
Pausanias 2 telling how Icarius set the wooers of Penelope to
run the race in which of course Odysseus was successful, adds that
Icarius (like Antaeus) imitated Danaus, who set the suitors to run
for his daughters. The first man home had first choice of a
Danaid, the second, the second choice, and so on. ' The daughters
that ivere left had to wait till other wooers came and had run
another race.' Now in Pindar's version forty-eight Danaids are
offered. Why this number ? Because, we are told, two were
already married—Hypermnestra and Amymone. Who are the
forty-eight who cannot get husbands ?
If the fifty daughters of Danaus are doubles of the fifty
daughters of Endymion and the Moon, the answer is clear. The
two who are married must be the first and last months of the
penteteric cycle—the moons who are paired in sacred marriage
with the midsummer sun 3 .
The Danaids are also well-maidens, with functions, perhaps,
like those of the Athenian Dew-Carriers (p. 173). To the moon-
bride may have fallen the duty of bringing water for rain-charms,
1 Paus. v. l. 3. 2 m 12 i.
3 Note that Pindar says (v. 113) the race was to be run ' before midday should
overtake them ' {-rrpiv p.iaov d/xap eXelv) ; before, that is to say, the sun at his height
of noon or of midsummer carries off the one who is married. It may be observed
that 48 = 16 + 16 + 16; does this account for the number of the Sixteen Women
sixteen for each of the remaining three years of the penteteris ?
—
;