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

384 From Daimon to Olympian [CH.
The snake-twined omphalos. We connect Asklepios with the
snake but not with the omphalos, yet on the coin 1 of Pergamos in
Fig. 107 the association is clear. On the obverse we have the
Fig. 107.
head of the god, of the usual bearded benevolent Zeus-like type,
on the reverse a netted omphalos round which coils a great snake
with upreared head. The mention of the omphalos brings Delphi
instantly to our minds, but it must be clearly noted that the
omphalos is not at Delphi only. The omphalos is of Ge rather
than of Apollo, and wherever there is worship of Mother-Earth
there we may expect the omphalos. We find it at Eleusis,
clearly figured on the Ninnion pinax 2 , the centre of the whole
design. We meet it again at Phlius 3 . Asklepios himself then
is a snake-daimon, twined round the omphalos of Ge. He is but
the daimon of the fertility of the Earth. As such he never
passes wholly to the upper air of the Olympians. He remains a
Saviour and a Healer, loved of the dream-oracle, very near to
earth and to man.
Herakles then and Asklepios, though as Saviours and Healers
they are greater than any Olympians, never became really
Olympianized. Their function is to make us feel how thin and
chill, for all their painted splendour, are these gods who live at
ease in the upper air, how much they lose when they shake off
mortality and their feet leave the earth who was their mother.
We now pass to the examination of a god who was perhaps
more Olympian than any Olympian, more serene, more radiantly
splendid, more aloof, more utterly in the fullest sense of the word
superior. By a fortunate chance we shall study him where his
cult and figure are brought into direct contrast and even conflict
1 Num. Chron. in. vol. n. PI. 1, p. 23.
2 See Prolegomena, p. 559, Pig. 160.
:! Paus. ii. 13. 7.