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

vni] Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche 283
Agathe Tyche we meet again at Elis and with her Agathos
Daimon, only he bears another and a now thrice familiar name,'
Sosipolis 1
. The
ujpipnifo'WWWP'
Fig. I'd.
mmm
V
-*#*
people of Elis, Pausanias 2 tells us, had a sanctuary
of Tyche with a colossal image on its colonnade.
Here too Sosipolis has honours (rifiai) in a small building to the left of
Tyche. The god is painted in the shape in which he appeared in a dream,
as a child, dressed in a chlatnys spangled with stars, and in one hand he
holds the horn of Amaltheia.
But what has a child in a spangled chlamys holding a cornu- (
copia to do with our sn&ke-daimont Much, indeed everything; he )
is the ' good ' snake- daimon. We remember 3 that when the child
was placed in the forefront of the Elean army, he changed into a
serpent, and fear fell on the Arcadians and they fled. The Eleans
won a great victory and called the god Sosipolis.
And where the serpent appeared to go down into the ground after the
battle, there they made the sanctuary 4 .
Sosipolis at Olympia, it will be remembered, had like Erech-
theus and Trophonios the snake's service of the honey-cake.
The Agathos Daimon and Sosipolis are one and the same, and
Sosipolis, it will be remembered, is but another name for Zeus
Soter, Saviour of the city. Now we understand—though this is
of but trifling interest save as a confirmation—the confusion in
1 Supra, p. 240, note 4.
3 Loc. cit., supra, p. 240.
2 vi. 25. 4.
4 Paus. vi. 20. 3 and 5.