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

238 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ch :h.
Take such a divinity as Osiris, who began life as a vegetation-
spirit, manifest in trees or in the corn. Ancient theologians and
modern students have again and again upheld or refuted the
propositions that ' Osiris is the Moon,' '
Osiris is the Sun,' or that
he is neither. The truth will, we believe, prove to be more
complex. These vegetation-spirits or Year Gods successively take
on moon and sun attributes, when the lunar calendar supersedes
the agricultural, and again when the lunar calendar is first com-
bined with, then superseded by, the solar. There is no simple
answer to the question :
' Is Osiris the Moon, or is he the Sun ?
He began as neither, and has passed through both phases.
As each new stage succeeds, the older festivals are not abolished.
Some are adapted, with necessary shifts to a different season of
the year. Others survive in a degenerate form, as holidays. So,
and so only, can we account for the extraordinary duplication of
festivals in ancient calendars, and for the occurrence, at different
times of the year and attached to different divinities, of rites which
are obviously identical in content.
If we may assume the same succession of calendars at Olympia,
the several stages would correspond to the succession we have
made out for the sacred Tree. In the earliest, seasonal or agri-
cultural, stage the olive belonged to Earth, to Demeter Chamyne.
Then it passed to Hera the moon-goddess and became the prize
of the moon-virgin's race. Finally, when sun and moon were
united in the ennaeteris, the olive-branch supplanted the original
apple-bough, and became the prize also for the foot-race of the
Sun-bridegroom.
The Mother and Child and Kouretes at Olympia.
Further evidence is not wanting in support of the tradition
at Olympia of the Idaean Daktyls or Kouretes, to whose foot-race
for the olive-branch the Games were traced back. This tradition
is firmly rooted in the monuments and cults of Olympia. The
legend, as we have seen, says that 'when Zeus was born, Rhea
committed the safe-keeping of the child to the Idaean Daktyls
or Kouretes, who came from Ida in Crete.' Pindar 1
himself is
1
01. V. 17 -iWTTjp i>\J/Lve(pes ZeD, Kpoviov re vaiwv \6v t '
\\tbv evpb peovra 'IdaTov re o~e/j.vbv avrpov.
Schol. ad v. 42 'Idaiov avrpov ev "HXiSt Arip.^rpios 6 '2.KTi r'i.os...iepbv Ai6s. evioi
oe vo/j.l£ovTes fj.rj tQv iv'HXidi x