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

ix] Heroines as Fertility'-Daimones 417
Why then is the festival called Herois ? Because Herois is
but the feminine of Hero, Strong One, Venerable One, and as it
was the business of all Heroes to be Good Daimones and to bring
fertility, so, and much more, was it the business of all Heroines.
Again we have the ancestral dead, the collective dead women at
their work of fertilization by way of reincarnation, and again they
crystallize into one figure, Herois.
That fertilization was indeed the business of Heroines and
that they were expected to' do it regularly for the Eniautos-
festival is plainly evidenced by an inscription 1 of about the third
century B.C. It was found in the precinct of Artemidoros in
Thera, cut into a small basis or rock-altar on which statues seem
to have stood. It runs as follows in two hexameter lines
Heroines they are who bring the new fruit to the Year-Feast,
Come then to Thera's land and accomplish increase for all things.
We remember well enough that the spirits of the Earth, the
ghosts, can be summoned for cursing. The ghost of Clytemnestra 2
hounds up her Erinyes, herself the leader of the pack. Althaea 3
beats upon the Earth with her hands to rouse the Curse ; the
priest of Demeter 4 at Pheneus in Arcadia smites the Earth with
rods to summon the underground folk when there is swearing to
be done by the holy Stones But we are apt to forget, perhaps
because Homer and sometimes iEschylus forgot, that there was a
ritual which summoned these underground folk to bless and not
to curse.
At Megara, near the Prytaneion, Pausanias 5 saw
a rock which they name Anaklethra, ' Place of Calling up,' because Demeter,
if anyone believe it, when she was wandering in search of her daughter called
her up there.
1 I.G. vol. xii. (1904) fasc. in. Supp. Thera, Ees Sacrae, No. 1340.
['Hpukcrjtrai Kapirbv viov
[e]is evtavTov Hyovcnv,
devTe [/c]ai iv Qrjpas x® 0VL
/xet[f]o[»'aJ tt6.vtix reXovaai.
The text is restored by Wilamowitz. For TjpQicrcrai, an emendation that seems
practically certain, he compares Anth. Pal. vi. 225, and Ap. Ehod. iv. 1309. Both
are references to Libyan heroines, and the relations of Thera to Cyrene in Libya
were of course close. In the epigram a tithe of the winnowed harvest is offered to
the heroines. I have again to thank Mr Cook for referring me to the important
evidence of this Thera inscription.
2 jEsch. Eum. 115.
3
II. ix. 529.
4 Paus. vin. 15. 2 ...reXerrj p&fidois Kara \6yov 8-i) riva tovs vwoxOoviovs -rratei.
5
I. 43. 2 ...'AvaKXr/Opav ry\v irerpav ovo/xd^ovai. . .ioLKora oe ry \6yu> dpCoaiv e's r)fj.as
in at Meyapiow.
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