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

336 Daimon and Hero [ch.
The enquiry of the date of this influx of heroic saga belongs to
the Homeric Question and is beyond alike my scope and my com-
/"petence. When and how the old forms of the daimon-drama were
) replenished by the newly imported Ionic epos can only be
(conjectured. If conjecture be permissible I should imagine that
the Pot-Contests (^vrptt'oi dyayves) of the Anthesteria were, from
time immemorial, of the old daimon type. When Peisistratos
ordained the recitation of " Homer " at the Panathenaea, the influ-
ence of the epos on the rude dramatic art of the time must have
been immediately felt, and it only needed the birth of an iEschylus
to make him seize on the Tefidxv that lay so close to hand. He
or his predecessors took of necessity the prescrTrjecT form, the life-
history of the daimon, and filled it with a new content, the story of
a daimon de-daimonized ;
an Agamemnon who though he was a
tribal daimon at home was an individu al hero before the walls
of Troy.
The local daimons of Thessaly and Boeotia and the Peloponnese
were cte-daimonized by the Migrations; that is easily understood.
But once the fashion set, once the rationalizing story-telling
tendency started, once the interest in the local daimon and his
magical efficacy diminished, and even those stationary daimons
whose tribes never migrated, became de-daimonized, individualized.
Hippolytos, son of Theseus, is a clear and very instructive case.
He has a local cult at Trozen, later by some shift of population
taken in at Athens, but to the drama he is wholly human, the
hero of a widespread folk-tale. Yet even drama cannot wholly
forget the daimon-functionary, and Euripides 1
Artemis, tells us the manner of his cult.
Yea and to thee, for this sore travail's sake,
Honours most high in Trozen will I make,
For yokeless maids before their bridal night
Shall shear for thee their tresses.
,
by the mouth of
Pausanias 2 confirms Euripides; he tells us that at Trozen
A precinct of great renown is consecrated to Hippolytos son of Theseus
it contains a temple and an ancient image.... There is a priest of Hippolytos
1 Hipp. 1424:
Ti/xas p-eylcrras iv 7r6Xet Tpofyvia
Sdiacj " Kopai yap d^vyes ydixwv Trdpos
k-6/j.o.s Kepovvral