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

396 From Daimon to Olympian [ch.
see what light is thrown on the situation and on the character
of the ultimately dominant Olympian by an examination of the
actual ritual at Delphi and the evidence of monuments. We
begin with the cultus of Gaia.
Of a ritual of Gaia under that name we have, it must be
clearly understood at the outset, no evidence. But of her chief
sanctity, the omphalos, we know much, and it is through our
understanding of the omphalos that we shall come to realize the
relation between Earth and Apollo and their ultimate hostility, as
figured in the slaying of the Python. It is of the first importance
to be clear about the omphalos, but it is not from iEschylus that
we shall learn its real nature, though it is only when that nature
is understood that we can feel the full beauty and reality of the
agon in his Eumenides.
The Omphalos.
By the time of yEschylus the omphalos was regarded as simply
a holy Stone which, by pious consent, was held to be the centre
of the earth ; it was a fetich-thing, supremely sacred, to which the
suppliant clings. This holy Stone is naturally in the innermost
shrine. Thither, when the priestess 1 has ended her ordering and
invocation of the Delphian divinities, she goes, and there she finds
Orestes, clinging to the omphalos, horribly polluting its sanctity
by his touch. The scene, mutatis mutandis, is figured on many
vase-paintings, one of which is given in Fig. 108 2 . It brings the
conical holy Stone clearly before us ; it is covered with fillets,
a refuge for the suppliant. Its sanctity is clearly established,
but what was the cause of this sanctity ? In a word what did
the omphalos really stand for, really mean ?
The name omphalos is little or no help. Like its correlative
umbilicus it came to mean navel, but originally it only meant any
sort of boss or thing that bulged, the boss of a shield or a phiale,
an island that stands up on the ' nombril ' of the sea 3 . Fortunately
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