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

310 Daimon and Hero [CH.
(d) Commemorative, but of ritual facts, i.e. of the offerings of
meat and drink brought by survivors to the grave of the dead
man. This interpretation brings the 'Hero Feasts' almost into
line with the well-known Sparta reliefs, where the heroized dead
are 'worshipped' by diminutive descendants 1 .
Almost but not quite. To bring food and drink to your dead
relations, whether from fear or love, is to treat them as though
they were the same as when they were alive, creatures of like
passions and like potency or impotency with yourself. On the
Sparta relief 2 in Fig. 88, they are, like Cleomenes 3 , Kpelrrove^; rrjv
vaiv, stronger, greater in their nature, quite other than the
humble descendants who bring them cock and pomegranate.
Fig. 89.
How has it come to pass ? The relief speaks clearly. They too
have taken on the form and function of the Agathos Daimon. A
great snake is coiled behind their chair, and the male figure holds
in his right hand a huge kantharos, not ' in honour of Dionysos
1 See Mr A. J. B. Wace, Sparta Museum Catalogue, 1906, p. 102, for a full
analysis of the ' Totenmahlrelief,' andDr Rouse's instructive chapter on 'The Dead,
the Heroes and the Chthonian Deities,' in his Greek Votive Offerings, 1902.
- A. Mitth. 1877, ii. pi. xxn. For the snake's heard which marks him as a halfhuman
daimon not a real snake see Prolegomena, p. 327.
3 Supra, p. 269.
'