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

278 Daimon and Hero [CH.
It has long been known of course that the Agathodaimon
Fig. (57.
of Hellenistic days was, as it is generally-
expressed, ' worshipped in the form of a
snake,' but, because his figure appears on
late Roman coins of Alexandria and often
crowned by the Egyptian Shent, it is assumed
that the snake-form was late or borrowed
from the East. This is true of course of the
Shent, false of the snake. We shall find
abundant evidence of the Agathos Daimon as snake at home in
Greece. The special value of the Alexandrian coin-types is that
they so clearly emphasize the fertility-aspect of the snake. In
Fig. 67 a coin of Nerva 1
, better preserved than the coin of Nero,
we have the same great fertility-snake, whom but for Nero's coin
we should not have certainly known to be the Agathos Daimon
he wears the Shent and has ears of corn and somewhat to our
surprise he holds in his coils a caduceus.
The snakes are sometimes two in number, a male and female
genius who later crystallized into the half-human figures of
Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche. A marriage was needed
magically to compel fertility. In Fig. 68 we have a great
modius or corn basket placed on the top of an Ionic column.
Fig. 68.
Fig. 69.
In the basket are ears of corn and poppyheads. To either side
is a snake ; that on the right wears a poppyhead, that on the
left a Shent. Probably the Shent-we&rer is the royal or male
snake, the bride being poppy-crowned, an eavth-daimon. On the
obverse is the head of Hadrian.
1 The coins in Figs. 67 to 70 are reproduced by kind permission of Dr George
Macdonald from his Catalogue of Greek Coins in the Hunterian Collection, Vol. in.
PI. lxxxvi. and lxxxvii.
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