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

420 From Daimon to Olympian [ch.
Eleusis ; Pherophatta is the Eleusinian Kore, not the Thraco-
Phrygian Semele, though their nature is one and the same. The
uprising we note is here eagerly greeted by a choros of goat-
daimones with hoofs and high pointed horns. Tityroi we might
call them, though perhaps it is safest they should be nameless 1
.
But on the vase in Fig. 124 it is horse-daimones, Satyrs, with
but one goat-daimon, who attend the uprising. Moreover seated
near the hill is Dionysos himself with his thyrsos waiting for
his Mother to rise up. We have before us unquestionably the
' Bringing up of Semele.'
Tradition said that Dionysos fetched his mother up from the
underworld. Apollodorus 2 sketching the history of the worship
of Dionysos ends it thus
:
Finding that he was a god, men paid him worship, but he went and
fetched his mother up out of Hades, gave her the title of Thyone and went
up with her into heaven.
The hasty Assumption of the mother, viewed as history,
strikes us as abrupt and unmeaning. It is of course simply an
Olympianized saga-my£/ios of the old ritual of the ' Bringing up
of Semele.' Semele, Earth, never could or did go to heaven, but
she rose up out of earth. She needed no son to bring her, her
son was indeed the fruits of the earth, the child Ploutos 3 . But,
when patriarchy came in, and the Mother takes the lower place,
someone has to ' fetch her up.' Moreover she must rise not only
up from earth but up to high heaven. There is no one but her
son to do all this. Later, Orpheus as lover ' fetches up ' Eurydike,
Earth, the ' wide-ruler,' the ' broad-bosomed.' He fails, because
she must perennially return to Hades that she may rise again
next spring.
In actual ritual at Athens the Son as well as the Mother is
summoned. And the Mother is summoned in her two-fold aspect
of Mother and Maid rather than Mother and Daughter. In the
ritual scene in the Frogs 4 , at the bidding of the Hierophant, the
chorus chant the Saviour Maid who—be it noted—comes first
1 Goat-daimones are also figured on the krater published by Dr Hartiug, Rom.
Mitt. xn. 1899, p. 88, 'Die Wiederkehr d. Kore.' The figure of Kore rises on this
vase straight from the ground. There is no omphalos-mound. The throng of
ithyphallie goat-daimones seem to be dancing a regular dance. The focus of
interest is clearly on them rather than on the figure of Kore.
- in. 5. 3. 3.
s Supra, p. 167. 4 vv. 373—396.